tihrary of Che Cheolojical ^eminarjp PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY BR 85 .W27 1893 1 Ward, Wilfrid Philip, 1856-| 1916. Witnesses to the unseen, ani other essays f^^4J^^^ WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN AND OTHEE ESSAYS hr jyyt WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN AND OTHER ESSAYS BY VVILFKID AVARD AUTHOR OF ' WILLIAM GEORGE WAKD AND THE OXFORD MOVEMENT * AND ' WILLIAM GEORGE WARD AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL ' 3Lontion MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1893 All rights reserved TO THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED WITH AFFECTIONATE RESPECT BY THE AUTHOR PKEFATOKY NOTE The Essays in this volume, with the exception of the Introduction, have all appeared in the leading Eeviews, and I have to thank the Editors of the Nineteenth Century, the Contemporary Review, and the National Review for their kindness in allowing me to reprint them. Considerable addi- tions have, however, been made to some of the Essays, as they originally stood. Their scope and connection with each other are explained in the Introduction. It may be worth while to add that the first Essay, which gives the book its title, was in part suggested by a conversation with the late Lord Tennyson. This fact, and his subsequent approval of the Essay itself, so far as it deals with the spirit of his own work, have, of course, a direct bearing on the worth of some of the views put forth in the Essay. CONTENTS Introduction ...... I. Witnesses to the Unseen II. The Clothes of Eeligion III. New Wine in Old Bottles IV. Some Aspects of Newman's Influence v. Philalethes : Some Words on a Misconception of Cardinal Newman . ■. VI. The Wish to Believe ...... PAGE xi 1 32 68 97 119 156 INTKODUCTION The essays in tliis volume, written at intervals in the course of the past twelve years, have a real connection with one another which it will be well to explain. They are, for the most part, suggestions towards the solution of a problem which is not fully stated in them, — a problem more or less familiar to us all, but which I must here endeavour to set forth in the lio;ht in which it is viewed in the following pages. The problem is concerned chiefly with the answer to a very practical question, which had best be stated in all simplicity. It is this : What is and what ought to be the influence of the public opinion of our time, as represented' by its intellectual leaders, — of what Germans call the Zeitgeist — in determining our own convictions ? The answer is that it is and ought to be large, but that it is far larger than it ought to be. Let us first consider something of what it is. When a man of sensitive and receptive mind begins to be alive to the problems of the hour, and to associate with his contemporaries, he accepts, often enough without question, the conclusions which are placed before him in the name of " exact thought," INTRODUCTION or as the discoveries of an age of scientific jDrogress. At different epochs opinions on such different subjects as Free Trade, Darwinism, the results of modern Old Testament criticism, have been accepted by many as a faith, long before they had weighed accurately the reasons alleged in their behalf, or even before they had any full or exact knowledge as to the conclusions to which their faith committed them. The word of the Zeitgeist, as in earlier days the word of the Church, has been the essence of the faith. As a man may be a good Catholic before he has acquired detailed theological knowledge, provided only he trusts the authority of the Church, so the devotees of the Zeitgeist have believed in its word before they knew in detail what it said. And the Zeitgeist affects us all in another way. Mr, Lecky has pointed out that arguments which quite fail to appeal to one age seem absolutely convincing to the succeeding age. The assumption that this change follows an absolute law of intellectual progress does not appear to be borne out by the facts of the case, as I shall endeavour to show; but it is un- doubtedly a testimony to the subtle and impalpable means whereby the Zeitgeist influences us; to the numerous minute preconceptions and axioms which have passed into the mind of the age, and which affect us all imperceptibly, sometimes beyond our power of analysing the why and wherefore. To one age metaphysical argument appeals powerfully. Another age, weary of the unsolved questions meta- physic has left, and of the unpractical and unreal INTRODUCTION problems which have been mooted in its name, refuses to be afFected by any metaphysical argument at all. One age is sensitive to complete and coherent logical polemic, and is severe in its criticism of any logical flaw in the form of an argument. Another is alive to the narrowness of the field which logic covers, and to the comparative force of massive, though unsym- metrical proofs. It is afFected rather by wide and suggestive views, and refuses perhaps in the end to regard the most urgent logical dilemmas as having a claim on its decision. To one age, as Mr. Lecky himself points out, the manifold phenomena of the universe suggest most obviously the direct action of super- natural agencies ; while an age which has realised the extent of the underlying uniformities of natural law may be unaffected by the strongest evidence for a miraculous occurrence. It is obvious how far-reachinsf is the efiect of such opposite tempers of mind on our estimate of arguments, and ultimately on our opinions on many subjects. And both these forms of the influence of the Zeitgeist have especially a great efi"ect on the attitude adopted in respect of the supreme problems of reli- gious faith. Is there a God ? Is the soul immortal ? Is the Christian revelation credible ? These cpes- tions are answered in the affirmative by public opinion in an age of faith ; and the imagination of the man who is sensitive to the Zeito'eist avoids, at such a time, the initial suggestion of doubt, which comes from the uncertainty and divergency of all around him in an age of hesitation. And for the INTRODUCTION more thouglitful inquirer it is inevitable that the further consideration of such questions, as they have been treated by theologians and apologists, will be affected by the intellectual preconceptions of his time. If he has imbibed from his surroundings a distrust of metaphysics, a whole chapter in Natural Theology loses its effect on him. If he regards miracles as impossible, the invocation of their testi- mony will discredit rather than support the claims of Christianity. If the age in which he lives distrusts mere logic, as invoked to decide such far-reaching issues, Paley's evidences will provoke rather than help him. On the other hand, he may find at such a time in the unspoken and unanalysed sugges- tions of his own moral nature and experience, a value which was unknown to an age which postulated logical form as essential, and dwelt in an atmosphere of abstract philosophy. These are some of the ways in which the Zeitgeist in point of fact may and does affect us, in our way of regarding problems of the hour, and in our religious convictions. Now for the second question : How far ought it to affect us ? To one who believes in a law of unalloyed progress in human thought, reflection on the very great influence which the temper of the time has on his convictions will not be unwelcome. Such a one has, indeed, consciously given his faith to the Zeitgeist, and the more he feels himself to have caught its spirit, the more satisfied he is. He INTRODUCTION welcomes its " pious opinions," as well as its " defini- tions of faith," the latter forming the largest aggregate of attainable certainties, the former of attainable probabilities. The view advocated in the following Essays is a different one from this. Setting aside for the moment the consideration that the law of progress may not work for an indefinite time, that declension may ultimately follow ascension, I endeavour to point out that the guidance of the Zeitgeist, even in an age of progress, is not necessarily trustworthy. Allowing even that the age is on the whole progressing towards further knowledge, the cultivated public opinion of the hour does not represent its fresh knowledge un- alloyed. Public opinion tends to extremes. A given age tends to exaggerate the significance of its own discoveries, and to fill in their details prematurely and inaccurately. And it tends to carry too far its criticisms and revisions of the thoughts proper to an earlier time. The age which found such excessive intellectual satisfaction in the Thomistic adaptation of the Aristotelian metaphysic, which fed on the cate- gories, whose deepest passions were aroused by the contest between Realism and Nominalism, was suc- ceeded by an age which quite failed to do justice to the value of the Summa contra gentiles, — which would not even read it. The reaction from the mediaeval readiness to believe in the miraculous led to an extreme of incredulity on the subject, which ultimately found voice in the celebrated argument of Hume. The suspicion of logical controversy which h INTRODUCTION characterises our own time goes hand in hand with a tendency to excessive indefiniteness of thought, and revives in a very different spirit the attempt of the " Moderates " of the Oxford Movement to " steer between the ScyUa and Charybdis of Aye and No." AVhen Free Trade was one of the cries of the Zeitgeist in our own country, it took an extreme form which we are now learninsf to discount. Darwinism and the Tubingen criticism, when they were most dogmatically and definitely pressed upon general belief, were still more noteworthy instances of the exaggerated form in which the new truths, to which progress may lead, are held by the public opinion of the hour. This consideration becomes one of gravest import- ance when it is applied to the painfully practical question of faith in God and in Immortality. In this, as in other matters, we are, as we have seen, deeply affected by the Zeitgeist. And it becomes a matter of greatest moment to estimate accurately the value of that influence. It is perhaps a hopeful sign of the present age, so far as our own land is concerned, that the Zeitgeist itself in some degree recognises its own want of accuracy and finality. It is more inquiring and less confident than many of its predecessors. True so far to the great instrument of its typical achievements — the inductive method — it continues to note cautiously and accurately the phenomena of history, and refrains from a final decision which might be premature. Keenly alive as it is to the importance of the comparative method — of comparing the opinions be- INTRODUCTION longing to one place and time with those of another — it begins to see that each age has had something to learn from other ages, and that we, in our turn, may have something to learn from our forebears. Reviewing the various ages of faith and doubt, it sees elements in each which were supposed to be stamped out once for all by its successor, reappearing again under different forms. The doubts of Sextus Empiricus were faced by St. Thomas Aquinas ; but the triumph of the visible Church, which possessed the whole mind of thirteenth century Christendom, made them appear to him power- less where the Church was known. Yet they reappear point by point in the philosophy which took its origin in the " methodic doubt " of the Catholic Descartes.^ And on the other hand, the faith of St. Thomas himself, so vivid in face of the paralysing considera- tions wdiich he fully recognises, was a testimony to something in human nature which neither the Academics nor Empiricus had analysed or destroyed. The " grain of mustard seed " had escaped the de- structive critics, and had shown what was the ulti- mate form and power, under circumstances favouring its development, of what in the germ stage had escaped them from its minuteness. The present age, then, while characteristically an age of hesitation on these great questions, notes the nature of the law of progress as exhibited in the past, and has a lurking suspicion that it has not seen the end of supernatural belief or even of Christian faith. It is warier than its predecessors 1 Cf. p. 3. xviii INTRODUCTION — warier than the Academics or Empiricus or even than the Humes and Gibbons of a time which had a longer sequence of alternatives between ages and civilisations of doubt and of faith to impress it. Nothing escapes its questioning ; and though the fanaticism of Atheism is little indulged in, an infinity of grades of Agnosticism, including under its influence persons whom the census would distribute through many creeds, is even predominant. But this Agnosti- cism itself, if we examine it in the full breadth of its extent, not in its professed leaders, or even in its pro- fessed maintainers, but throughout the many shades by which it colours contemporary thought, has in it a hopeful, as well as a destructive, element. It notes the failure of the old corporate faith ; it points to the causes of its failure ; it analyses the old Natural Theology and finds it inconclusive ; it scrutinises and dilutes the Christian evidences with the aid of the new discoveries in comparative religion ; it contem- plates, often sadly, the calm and scientific examination of the biblical documents, so long saved by our reverence, and by the modesty of past ages, from exposure, and from the dissecting knife ; it asks, if sometimes with irritation, more often with reluctant sadness, how the faith of the people, already stricken, can ultimately survive the destruction of so much which had for centuries been inseparably bound up with Christianity — of much which had been deemed essential to the very belief in God and another world. And yet, with all this, there is a lurking suspicion that the end of the matter is not reached. INTRODUCTION Tlie vitality of religious belief and its many revivals are remembered. The victory of Christian faith after the scepticism of the later Eoman republic and over the individualism which had seemed so trium- phant in the Rome of Augustus is not forgotten. The sentiment — " after all when criticism has orone its furthest, what a history remains in that of Israel, what a character in that of Christ, how unlike all else in the story of the human race," gains ground. The dogmatism of materialism is already rejected. Idealism and transcendentalism — shadowy, it is true, and of manifold hue — are beins; reinstated. The statement "nothing can be known" becomes daily more and more " beyond this ' bourne of Time and Place ' is the Unknowable, — or at least the Un- known." Professed tokens of the supernatural are not regarded in Hume's temper. Even the attention devoted by our contemporaries to thought - trans- ference and hypnotism, and to the various subjects of " psychical research," shows a keen interest in the borderland of spirit, at variance with last century materialism and scepticism. The evidence for the miracles at Lourdes is regarded with a very different animus from that which Hume would have ex- hibited towards the holy thorn of Port Royal. Our own age feels, if any age has ever felt, " that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." All this betrays, I say, a half- consciousness of something be5^ond its own accjuirements, which was wanting in such an age of scepticism as that of INTRODUCTION Gibbon and Voltaire. And it may be worth while to inquire whither the consciousness may lead and what it suggests. In the first place it suggests, as I have im- plied, a dim realisation, which it may be possible to press home, that the characteristic tenets of any age need balancing and correcting by the know- ledge acquired in other ages. And correlatively it susfo-ests that an individual will do well not to throw himself unreservedly and without question into the currents of thought specially characteristic of his time, but to keep his head ; to learn from the discoveries and advances of the time, but to avoid its excesses. Public opinion tends, I have said, to extremes. It moves at one time towards credulity, at another towards scepticism or panic. We now see that the wave of triumphant confi- dence which accompanied the wonderful spread of Christianity in mediaeval times did bring with it a tendency to excessive credulity. Over and above that ready belief in the miraculous which prevailed in days when the wide extent of natural law was little understood, there came, with the victory of the Christian Church, a general anticipation and ready acceptance of wonderful legends which illustrated or gave token of the Divine presence within her. No marvel was hard to believe while such a marvel was standing fresh and living before the eyes of the people. The generous love which the new-found gospel inspired felt criticism of the heavenly by the earthly to be unworthy and ungrateful. That beliefs INTRODUCTION were beyond reason, made them all the more credible if they came in company with the triumph on earth of Him whose " Kingdom was not of this world." So felt the poet of our own time — had I lived in that great day, How had its glory new Filled earth and heaven, and caught away My ravished spirit too. No thoughts that to the world belong Had stood against the wave Of love which set so deep and strong From Christ's still open grave. It was an age, then, in which popular belief accepted miracles and legends uncritically. The individual who wished to be a philosopher in an age of faith, who strove to keep his head, and to avoid the characteristic error of the time, as well as imbibe its true genius — its ethical ideals and spiritual discoveries — had need to apply canons of criticism proper to another age. We now see that the Natural Theology of that time needs supplementing ; that it appealed in part to a temper and to pre- existing beliefs peculiar to the then state of society. The opinions current among the unquestioning as to the accuracy of the historical narrative in the Bible were excessive. Legends which 'the criticism of the Maurists and the Bollandists has since expunged from Church history were accepted without question. Physical science had not yet given to miraculous explanations any 'prima facie, improbability ; and if they were not improbable. Faith made them, in such cases, normal and even probable. These and a mass of other things were swept in in the wake of the INTRODUCTION tremendous advance of Christian faith, and of the victory of the Christian Church which, as Cardinal Newman has said, made revehation appear as visible a reality as the sun in the heavens. And similarly one living in an age of destructive criticism has to beware of the extremes of public opinion on the other side. The great Christian miracle carried in incidental credulity in its wake. All legends which claimed to illustrate it seemed to be tinged with the halo of its glory. We must beware now lest having removed these fragments from a light which was not their own, we conclude not merely that this light was not theirs by rights, but that the halo which has surrounded Christian revelation itself is only the reflection of our own disordered imao-inations ; lest the legends havino- walked in, under false pretences, with Christianity, Christianity, with equal injustice, be expelled with the legends. The step from one conclusion to the other is very great, but it is often lightly made. JJhi ires medici ihi duo athei. The habit of dwelling on the minutice of physical sequences, so characteristic of an age of scientific discovery, biasses the mind unduly against the supernatural. Much that fills the un- scientific with wonder raises no wonder in the man of science, who is familiar with its causes. And yet the rustic to whom all the phenomena of life are a miracle, is not more extreme or irrational than the doctor who sees no wonder in the mechanism because he knows its details ; who looks for no " why " beyond nature because he finds the "how" in nature INTRODUCTION itself. The reasoning, again, of him who views each event as the immediate interposition of Providence is not more at fault than that of the man who denies to his God a power of modifying natural forces which he allows to every man who throws a stone or lights a fire. Thus, while a man living in an age of faith had good reason to apply a habit of criticism which he would find little general, one who lives in an age of criticism will do well to give his attention very closely to many of the phenomena of an age of faith as a corrective. The characteristic discoveries of his own time he will imbibe without any determined eff'ort. The modifying truths proper to another time he must needs apply himself to with industry ; and they can only be apprehended by an emancipation, at least momentary, from habits of thought and sym- pathies which have become very habitual and very close to him. This duty, which common sense enforces, is becoming, I have said, dimly recognised in our own time, even by public opinion itself. But in the nature of the case public opinion cannot suf- ficiently inculcate a task so individual in its character. Public opinion has got so far as dimly to realise that there may be more to be seen by an age which comes after us than we see at present ; and that possibly this " more " may in- clude some kind of' revival of belief in the super- natural. But this, though removed from an agnosticism which is as final and as dogmatic as atheism, still remains a state of opinion of which INTRODUCTION uucertaiuty is the prevailing characteristic. Nor has it got so far as to recognise that, in view of all the circumstances, any reasonable certainty in relation to the supreme problems of religious faith is attainable at the present time. But it respects faith as a phenomenon ; it feels that it has not altogether mastered its springs ; it is perhaps not altogether without hope of some new twilight after darkness, though it has despaired of a return of the sunlight. Taking advantage, then, of this tendency of the age, in virtue of its own Zeitgeist, to suspect the completeness and entire accuracy of its own conclusions, I endeavour, in the following Essays, to specify some particulars as to the existing and as to the lawful relations between the individual and the opinion of his times. In the first Essay — ^Y^tnesses to the Unseen — the characteristic of the present age as an age of intellectual hesitation, and of uncertainty in reference to supernatural beliefs, is emphasised. For those who have recognised that the Zeitgeist is almost always an inaccurate guide, and who are nevertheless alive to the folly of a position of intellectual isolation and total independence, — of the average mind pursuing its own course without reference to the insight and convictions of the wide and powerful natures and minds around it, — the question arises : How are they best to gain the truths which the age is exhibiting without lapsing into its defects or excesses ? And the answer suggested is that those master-minds which INTRODUCTION have been keenly sensitive to the force of the destruc- tive criticism of the time, and have preserved never- theless a vivid faith in the supernatural, have a iwimd facie claim as trustworthy guides. Reversing Mr. Morley's boast that Christianity will be destroyed by being explained, the Essay suggests that a phenome- non which is beyond the explanation of an age of criticism, a faith which can coexist with a keen appreciation of the force of that criticism, has in it an unexplained element which justifies its vitality. While the typically critical minds do not appear to realise the power and reality of faith, there are on the other hand men whose vision of the supernatural is keen, and who nevertheless realise to the full the sio^nificance and force of the negative and critical attitude. This second class thus exhibits a primd facie claim to a wider and truer vision of the pheno- mena as a whole. The Essay thus urges the validity of De Maistre's saying, " Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth." Pascal's was typically such a mind ; but he lived in a time when its significance appeared less than it does at present. But, besides the influence of such minds as intel- lectual guides, a further and more prominent purpose of the Essay is to illustrate their power as an antidote to the unreasoning panic with which an age of doubt is calculated to inspire the multitude. It is suggested that these men, who see and express the reasons for doubt with force and weight, and yet retain the higher vision of the supernatural, should be witnesses to its reality. Their work, in restoring confidence to JL^Vj5^- ' -^--f IXTRODUCTION public opinion, is compared to that of the Christian martyrs, who, in an age of slavery to pleasure and of paralysed moral impulses, bore witness, by courting pain and death itself, to the unseen force which supported them. Such individual witnesses wrought by degrees, under Providence, the new confidence in the powers and worth of human nature which became manifest in the corporate faith of the Christians. And the question is asked whether the witnesses to faith who endure fully the trials proper to an age of doubt, may not be the pioneers to renewed confidence, as the witnesses to the power of supernatural virtue, who sought the pain and death which seemed intolerable to an age of sensuality and moral paralysis, ultimately restored confidence and orave strength which without their example would have appeared impossible. Kant, Cardinal Newman, and Tennyson, are named as in different ways and degrees evincing the peculiar intellectual and moral temper necessary to such a work, and laying down the lines on which it should be carried on. In New Wine in Old Bottles, the composite elements whereof the public opinion of a given time is made up are further considered. The process whereby the legacy of untrue beliefs, bequeathed by an age of credulity, may be discarded by individuals without their lapsing into the extreme of dis- carding also the characteristic truths of such an age, is discussed : and the patient and tentative testing which is required before the truths of a former age can be safely disentangled from its Msehoods, is INTRODUCTION considered and illustrated ; — tlie revision of the old explanations of Scriptural inspiration necessitated by the doctrine of evolution and modern biblical criticism being especially instanced. In the Wish to Believe^ one common axiom of an ao'e of doubt is discussed — the axiom that the desire for belief in the supernatural is, normally, a distraction, biassing the mind in its view of the evidence attainable in favour of such belief. The view indicated in the Essay is that this axiom par- takes of the one-sided character so common in the maxims of an ao;e. The Zeitgeist is inclined to dismiss the Wish to Believe — regarded as a factor in religious inquiry — indiscriminately and as an element characteristic of a credulous age. I en- deavour, on the other hand, to discriminate between the " wish to believe " which is the foe to due impartiality, and the "wish to believe" which is the necessary antidote to apathy. And while admitting that the phrase " passion for knowledge " more truly expresses the essence and aim of this second wdsh, I try to illustrate the fact that such a passion necessarily becomes, in its concrete activity, the wish to find true a religion which apjDcars to offer wide spiritual knowledge. And this passion for know- ledge is not only, as Pascal has so urgently insisted, absolutely demanded by right reason, but is essential to a due appreciation of the strength of the Christian position. As the passion for knowledge made Newton wish to be able to assure himself, and in the end actually led him to assure himself, that the law of INTRODUCTION sravitation was certainly true — and thus to sjain finally the key to so much which was else chaotic — so in many minds the wish to confirm their belief in Christianity arises from their passion for that religious knowledge wdiich gives the key to man's life and destiny. The apparent paradox in this analogy — as an analogy between discovery and the mere estimate of existinof and lono--discovered evidences — seems to disappear if we accept the view, set forth elsewhere in the Essay, as to the necessarily personal nature of the inquiry into Christianity by each individual ; the full apprehension of its proofs being such as in great measure to depend on individual experience and personal realisation. The view of Cardinal Newman's teachino; and genius indicated in Witnesses to the Unseen is incidentally elaborated and illustrated in the fifth Essay, entitled Pkilalethes. This Essay likewise calls attention to a really unusual instance of controversial unfairness in one of the Cardinal's critics, and analyses some of the Cardinal's views as to the assumptions implied in the attitude of various schools of thought towards the Christian miracles. The two remaining Essays — the second and the fourth — are concerned, one with further illustrations of the work and character of Cardinal Newman, and the other with the consideration of an instance of the vagaries into which the religious sense does, in point of fact, lead able men who have accepted the negative position which is the extreme logical development of the Zeitgeist. It does not profess INTRODUCTION to be a review of Positivism, but is an attempt to test what the result woukl be if our country- men took some of the Positivist teachers seriously and endeavoured to carry their popular teaching into practical life. The tone of this Essay is neces- sarily less serious than that of the others; but I trust that my readers may feel, as I did, that such a tone was the inevitable result of the Essay to which it was a reply. ^ ^ Cardinal Ne^vmau wrote to me of the tone suitable to such a criticism of popular Positivism : — "It required to be done mth both good humour and humour as you have done it. You have been especially hapjiy in your use of Mr. Pickwick, but this is only one specimen of what is so excellent in your article." I may be allowed, also, to recall with gratitude the Cardinal's approval of the line of argument in the Wish to Believe, in a letter which led to the intercourse with him which was my privilege during the last years of his life. " When an old man feels," he wrote, "as I do after reading your Essay, great pleasure in the work of another, he may speak of its author and to its author with a freedom not warranted by personal intimacy. I do really think your Essay a very successful one, and I have more to say of it than I have room or leisure to say it in." WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN Mr. Pater remarked not lono- ao^o that we have all lost our faith. This remark, however little we may consider it true, is felt by most thinking men to represent a truth. And the truth it represents was more exactly expressed to the present writer by a veteran and very acute observer of our times, in commenting on the change which the last fifty years have brought about in public opinion. " When I was young," he said, " a man who advocated agnosticism or negation in matters of reliction had to veil his full meaning, and to assume an apologetic tone ; now precisely the same holds of the man who defends religious certainty. Cultivated public opinion was then in favour at all events of theism as unquestion- able ; now it is equally pronounced against all religious certainty as certainty." Cardinal Newman saw the turn of the tide in this direction thirty-five years ago, and expressed the incoming phase with characteristic point and force. He stated it thus : — It is absurd for men in our present state to teach anything positively about the next world, that there is a heaven or a hell, or a last judgment, or that the soul is immortal, or that there is I' WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN a God. It is not that you have not a right to your own opinion, as you have a right to place implicit trust in your physician, or in your banker ; but undeniably such persuasions are not know- ledge, they are not scientific.^ This, I say, is the true account of the new phase of public opinion to which Mr. Pater has referred. No religious truth is admitted as acknowledged beyond question ; and those who hold to dogmatic Christianity, or even to definite Theism — and they are not a few in spite of Mr. Pater's statement to the contrary — are deprived of the support to the imagination which an age of faith afi'orded. Further, as the effect of public opinion cannot be neutral, as absence of confidence means pres- ence of doubt, the conditions of our time render faith especially liable to trial in a sensitive and receptive mind. What is widely questioned seems thereby to be questionable. That support which individuals have a right to look for from healthy public opinion, in a healthy society, is taken away ; and each one is thrown on his own resources, to a degree which actually lessens the proofs available for religious belief. Corporate action, mutual confirmation and support, are a usual and natural condition of trust and knowledge, in re- ligion as in other things ; and doubt in the air renders them to a great extent impossible. A panic will cause a run on a bank, which in ordinary circumstances would be felt to be, and would actually be, safe enough. The fever of doubt makes each man want greater tangible security than is needful or attainable in the ordinary course of life. Each client wants to count ^ See Idea of a University, p. 387. WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN his gold ; each believer wants to realise all his reasons — to have them in his hand and before his eyes. The tacit compact of mutual trust and forbearance is broken ; and disorganisation and ruin are the con- sequence. There was another time, often compared both by believers and doubters to the present, — the time when the old Eoman virtue and religion, noble in part as things then were, had given way to dissoluteness of life and scepticism of intellect. Open the pages of Sextus Empiricus, and you find a startling anticipa- tion of the state of things which Mr. Pater observes among us. We are accustomed to think of the sub- jectivity of our own time as peculiar ; as the outcome in the popular mind of the movement inaugurated by Descartes ; as the extension of the principle of self- scrutiny, and of the critical examination of our faculty of knowing, its limitations and its analysis. The relativity of knowledge, again, is regarded as an outcome of this inquiry — indicated by Kant among others, and impressed on the English mind by Herbert Spencer. Locke's incisive criticism on the arbitrary assumptions of dogmatic schoolmen is an inheritance of which we are proud. That the syllogism is a petitio princqni, and that deductive reasoning is therefore sterile, is a view which we gain from J. S. Mill. The existence of evil is held by many to be a fact which modern thought has for the first time realised in its bearing on Theism. Yet the third century of the Christian era was acquainted in detail with each of these questions, and applied them to a root and WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN branch destruction of religious faith, from traditional Paganism, to the purer and higher Theism of the Stoics.^ And over and above the definite points of attack there was then, as now, the thought — vague but supremely paralysing to one whose introspection is sensitive and real, — How can anything be certain in these difficult matters, when the wisest men dis- agree ? ^ It was from a civilisation which was haunted by these ideas that Christianity emerged; and that wonderful transformation from helpless doubt and paralysed moral impulses to deep and unwavering- trust, and a fixed ideal of action, clearly realised and hopefully followed, has been the marvel of succeeding ages, and the witness to the divinity of the Christian religion ; until, perhaps, by sheer force of repetition the story has lost its natural vividness. It is difficult to feel that to be unique and extraordinary which has been familiar to us from childhood. What was it that transformed passive spectators of the drama of life into enersjetic actors ? What turned the stream from delicate intellectual criticism, and refined sensuality, and absorption in the art of living and the interest of life, and the placid and self- indulgent routine of the Roman villa, the baths and banquets, the splendid equipages and lazy pride, to ^ The TpbiroL t^s (TKiipews of the later sceptics of the Empire include each of the points here specified. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathemalicos, ix. 207. - (Enesidemus gives as his tenth "reason for doubt" the "opposition prevailing among luiman opinions as to justice and injustice, good and evil, religion and law," and "the opposition between philosophers in their opinions." Cf. Stoekl's History of Philosojihy, Fiulay's translation, p. 155. WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN the narrow, intense, exclusive, resolute, austere, self- effacing, and resistless torrent of Christian faith and enthusiasm ? The story has, as I have said, often been told ; and to Christians its bare outline speaks of forces which unaided human nature could never approach to supplying. But this is not what I wish for the moment to insist upon. The question here asked is hoiv — in the order of providence — a public opinion, characterised by in- tellectual scepticism, and individualism, and moral paralysis, was changed ; and what lesson the past may teach to the present ? I do not ask if the change proves the truth of Christianity ; I only ask how it came about. How did individualism in religious opinion pass into a corporate enthusiasm in which doubt was as abnormal as undoubting faith had been in the earlier conditions? St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century saw, as clearly as Empiricus in the third, the difficulties attending on proof by the individual mind of even the first truths of natural religion. He points out as clearly as the pagan sceptic that men with a reputation for wisdom often teach contrary things on the very first truths of religion. He speaks of this as, in many cases, an insuperable obstacle to the knowledge by this or that person of the truths in question through the unaided light of reason.^ Yet the teaching of the corporate Church remains to him a living fact, and he states the 1 " Remaueret igitur luimanum genus, si sola rationis via ad Deuni cognoscendum pateret, in maximis ignorantite tenebris ; cum Dei cognitio, qufti homines maxime perfectos et bonos facit, non nisi quibnsdam paucis, et his post temporis longitudinem proveniret." — Contra Gentiles, I. c. 4. WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN difficulty which to Empiricus in his isolation was overwhelming, with the greatest force and without the smallest dismay. How came the change from the public opinion which unnerved Empiricus to that which strengthened and supported Thomas ? The " constancy of the martyrs " is a phrase which has for so many centuries been a commonplace in theological aud evidential text-books, that it requires some effort to bring it from the land of formulcB to that of realities. And perhaps for some readers it will be necessary to say at starting that I have no intention of entering on the questions disputed by sceptical historians from Gibbon to Mr. Lecky.^ Such controversies do not affect the main theme of my pre- sent essay. There is no question that it was chiefly the witness borne by intense conviction, tested often by ^ I have carefully confined my remarks to two points in connection with the complicated history of thought at this period, on either of which an historian like Mr. Lecky is as explicit as any orthodox Christian writer. The first is the destruction of the old corporate faith among the Romans of the first three centuries of the Christian era, and the prevalence either of scepticism or of individualism in religion. "The path was cleared," writes Mr. Lecky, "by a long course of destructive criticism. The religions and philosophies of mankind were struggling for the mastery in that great metropolis where all were amply represented." The second point is that the intense conviction of the early Christians, witnessed in devoted lives and martyrdom, was the most potent instrument in the spread of Christianity. On this point Mr. Lecky is equally explicit. "Noble lives," he writes, "crowned by heroic deaths, were the best arguments of the infant Church. . . . Justin Martyr tells us that it was the brave deaths of the Christians that converted him." I have not followed him into the more disputable question as to the other transforming elements to be noted then or later on. The persecutions were the turning- point in the first formation of a corporate Christian public opinion. Mr. Lecky holds that in pagan Rome the Christians had secured amoral power which made their total extinction the only alternative to their final victory. "The question of their destiny was a simple one," he writes ; " they must either be crushed or they must reign. The failure of the persecution of Domitian conducted them inevitably to the throne." — See Lecky, History of EuroiKan Morals, vol. i. pp. 410, 418, 441. WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN torture and death, to the power of Christianity, whicli from the first, fanned the flame, and changed the spark of individual certainty to the blaze of corporate faith. " Noble lives," writes Mr. Lecky, " crowned by heroic deaths, were the best arguments of the infant Church." The intensity of the belief of individuals has received undying testimony in the fact that the word which only meant "witness" has become inseparably associated with the sufi*ering by which witness was willingly borne. Whether we hold with Matthew Arnold only that Christ " lived while we believed," or prefer the alternative that truth may continue truth though the human mind is changeable and unfaithful, it is an admitted element in that great transforma- tion that faith kindled faith. The "witnesses" or "martyrs" whose vision of the next world was such as to be undimmed by the immediate prospect of sufi'ering and death, or by the atmosphere of doubt around them, helped to expel that atmosphere, and to restore confidence in the possibilities of human nature for virtue, and in the ground for faith and hope. The depth of the faith prevailed over the breadth of the doubt ; the intensity of moral purpose over the extent of indolence and sensuality : and on an infinitely greater scale, and in a sphere where directly super- natural forces intermingled with the natural, was evidenced the power of individual heroism by which a great general or a great citizen will stem a panic among followers or fellows, restore confidence, expel by very shame unworthy thoughts or designs, bring- forth by his word and example unsuspected traits of WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN heroism in ordinary men, set the good forces accumu- lating and fructifying by mutual interaction, and kill the bad ; until the death of the one and the unchecked growth of the other issue in a complete transforma- tion of the character of state or army. Individual "martyrs" or "witnesses" for the faith, then, wrought a great transformation in that earlier age of agnosticism ; and it is to individual witnesses that w^e must look now, if there is to be the hope of a change, though the nature of the danger and of the remedy is in some respects markedly different. Similar as were the intellectual perplexities raised by the philosophers of those days, it will scarcely be doubted by a student of the period that the force determining public opinion was far more deeply moral then, and is more deeply intellectual at present. Intellectual scepticism played on the surface of widespread moral anarchy in the days of the Empire ; moral disorganisation is only threatening to crown in our own day the ever-widening doubt as to the validity of all religious faith. And the character of the witness who is to help us must differ as the character of the dang-er differs. Servility to pleasure and abject shrinking from pain are, I suppose, the mainspring of any movement of utter moral degeneracy ; and how they translated themselves into action in the days of the Empire we may read, or avoid reading, in the pages of Petronius. The witness which was needed for this special danger was that of the hero and saint, to whom pleasure and pain are alike despicable. The intellectual scepticism WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEAr readily fell once the moral basis on which it rested was destroyed. But when the proportions are reversed the character of the witness in some degree changes. The witness, in an age of sensuality, to the possibility of a noble morality, and to the worth of the soul and its connection with the unseen world of reality, was one who saw pleasure and despised it, who saw pain and embraced it, if to avoid the one and to endure the other were the conditions of that hisiher life which was his one inspiring aim. The witness to faith amid difficulties primarily intellectual, is he who sees and feels those difficulties ' vividly, and yet sees clearly beyond them the highest truth which to others they render obscure. It is the endurance of torture which testifies to the martyr's heroism and love ; it is the keen sense of the reality and force of intellectual difficulties which alone can give the intellectual witness for the faith real power in the present day. The sufi"ering element — in the one case suffering of sense, in the other of mind — is requisite for bearing eff"ective witness, whether in the moral order or the intellectual. There is, indeed, no comparison between the two in the category of Christian greatness. The in- tellectual witness is inferior to the martyr of old, as thought is morally inferior to action. But thinking aright is often a necessary condition to acting aright ; and so the intellectual witness may be equally in- dispensable. Again the moral witness — the hero or saint — has ever been needed in time of trial, and is needed still. The intellectual is comparatively a WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN requirement special to the time that is coming upon us. The seductions of the life of pleasure in frail human nature constantly call, in some measure, for those heroic witnesses to the Unseen World to whom what appears so attractive in the twilight, is seen in its true unsightliness by the all-revealing light of ftiith, and spurned as of no account. The intellectual witness supplies a need less universal in time and place, but absolutely necessary here and now. The crowd ojaze at the one witness — the Roman crowd oppressed and enslaved by sensuality, and without hope of anything better or more real : and the ques- tion passes from breast to breast, " What gives him this confidence which makes pleasure and pain, which are all in all to us, of no account to him ? The agony he endures we can see ; the force which supports him is unseen. Yet to him the former is nothing, the latter everything. He feels the agony ; he writhes under it ; it kills him. Can what is unreal prevail over what is so real and so terrible ? " And in like manner — thouoh in so difterent a field- — the numbers who are anxious in mind ; who have shared in the general reaction from the old peaceful confidence ; who have realised difiicult questions ; who have been thrown back on their unnatural isolation and have felt unequal to answering them ; whose bewilderment has looked on doubt as the only reasonable state in the circumstances, regard the intellectual Witness to the Unseen in a similar spirit : " The criticism of Feuerbach, or of Strauss, or of Huxley, or of Matthew Arnold, or of Renan cannot be fatal, for he feels it and states it with greater force WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN than I can, and yet is unabashed. If he did not see the difficulties his faith would not help me : I should esteem it mere prejudice. But one who sees better than I do the agnostic view of life, and sees the cer- tainty of religious truth in spite of it, and beyond it, redresses the balance of sceptical public opinion. If he shows stronger sight where I can see, I will trust his perception of what to me is unseen." Such a witness as this, I say, is needed at present. Whether his strength is mainly intellectual or greatly moral does not radically affect his peculiar work. Thomas Aquinas would have been such a witness had he been among us ; Bacon would have helped us in his measure. Men can preserve moral insight for some time after they have failed to turn it to the best account. And they may help others to see to good purpose what they themselves see and neglect. But they are still witnesses, as he may be who " preaches to others" and yet " himself becomes a castaway." It is an interesting illustration both of the reality and of the comparative novelty of this requirement, that the great German thinker who in the early part of this century — before the agnostic movement had touched, generally, even educated minds — was re- garded as sceptical in his influence, from his keen sense of the difficulties attending on the theory of religious knowledge, is now among thinking men felt to be a power distinctly on the side of faith in the high purpose of human life, and in the fundamental truths which explain that purpose. However much we may disagree with the details of Kant's scepticism, 12 WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN his marvellous critical acumen is felt to be a guarantee of the accuracy and firmness of his grasp of the truths of natural rclifrion. Difficulties which were so little felt one hundred years ago that to mention them was to unsettle the average mind, are now so generally recognised that to face them, and yet to believe with undiminished confidence, has a reassuring effect. To a generation which was blind to the danger his frank- ness seemed falseness ; to the present generation such candour is, for some minds, the indispensable condition of influence. Kant was the prophet of scepticism in an age of belief; he is a witness, in a sceptical age, to man's moral nature and its connection with the Unseen World. The need for witnesses will bring its own supply. In the very outset of the movement we have not been without our '' protomartyrs." Amid the sudden and rapid spread of doubt, and the almost abrupt abandonment of the old safeguard of reverent absten- tion from dispute on sacred subjects, there have been those who have felt to the full the force of the flood which has carried away weaker minds, and have yet stood firm. Professor Huxley has said that he could compile a primer on Infidelity from Cardinal Newman's works ; and it is curious that he has failed to see the peculiar significance of this statement. Newman was, in the very outset of the agnostic movement — which he foresaw in marvellously close detail before it had shown its true character to the world at large — a " martyr " or " witness " in the sense I have indicated. He saw and felt every reason for doubt which the WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN sceptic could allege ; but he saw sometliing beyond, which was to him as much higher and truer than the " muscse volitantes " of a questioning and negative philosophy, as the vision of Christ was more potent to Stephen or Ignatius than the infuriated mob or the onslaught of the lion. The very intensity of his con- fidence that the constant failures and mistakes of our powers of analysis do not touch the truest springs of faith and trust made him ever fearless in facing and proclaiming those failures, which to a hesitating mind would have been so unwelcome and alarming, and to a truly sceptical mind so significant. This characteristic of the late Cardinal has been understood by others if not by Mr. Huxley. Perhaps it has not been so generally recognised in the case of one — almost his contemporary — who, though diff"ering from him widely in his history and falling far short of the conclusions which Newman knew to be essential to the preservation of religious truth, had, nevertheless, a similar gift in a high degree in respect of those first truths, the denial of which is the essence of agnos- ticism. Tennyson was, I believe, the first to coin the phrase " know-nothing creed " which re]3resents the modern movement better than any other. The feeling of the average agnostic of the nineteenth century about God is exactly given in these lines : — He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire, The guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire. The earlier stages whereby this feeling has gradu- ally obtained a hold on so many minds have been faithfully reproduced by the same poet. He has 14 WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN fulfilled the double condition I have laid down for the intellectual witness. He has felt the doubt ; he has known the faith. The faith has ever been deeper; the difficulty has always been real. The mysteries of providence may suggest to him that man in his ignorance and superstition " built him fanes of fruit- less prayer ; " but there is deeper feeling and clearer indication of the poet's sympathy in the parting request of Arthur : — If tliou sliouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this ^vorld dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of jDrayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend l For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. The long wail of doubt and difficulty against Nature and Providence which we find in In Memoriam, or in DesiJair, does not prevent the abiding con- viction that a loyal will should be unabashed by them ; and that there is an intellectual light, could we but see it, which would make all things plain. It is true that we read how man . . . trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law, Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed. But we are not allowed to forget that the tempta- tion to listen to Nature's " shriek " may mean the absence of that " faith which comes of self-control," WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN 15 or that there is a hioher and truer mental vision than o our own, Seraphic intellect and force To seize and throw the doubts of man. I have named three " witnesses " — Kant, Newman, and Tennyson — who are, each in his measure, typicaL One flourished immediately after Hume had first, with power not since surpassed, marked out the lines of the agnostic position. The second ruled the strong- hold of English thought just before the wave of doubt had broken on the popular mind. The third lived his most active mental life in the very midst of the dissolution of the spirit of belief, and has ever been regarded as specially sensitive to the intellectual conditions of his time. Kant wrote in a day when scepticism was for philosophers — before it had made its way to " the j^eople." He was awakened from " his dogmatic slumbers " by Hume. He took in hand with far deeper metaphysical acumen and with German thoroughness the inquiry, which Locke had already attempted, into the nature and limits of our knowing- faculty. He exhibited, in a degree not paralleled in the history of thought, the combination of a critical and even sceptical intellect, with moral enthusiasm and deep practical convictions ; and this is, as I have said, an essential qualification for individual power on the side of belief at the present moment. AVe may hold that the complete separation of the two is unreal ; and we may consider with Cardinal Newman that a true theory concerning human certainty must take account of the insight afibrded by the practical 1 6 WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN reason. Nevertheless Kant's mode of treating the subject was — even from the limited point of view I am regarding — peculiarly instructive. The very com- pleteness of his distinction between the two aspects brought into relief a nesjlected truth. If his entire separation of practical belief from speculative ground- work was unreal, it was a reaction from a yet more unreal fusion. The scholastic "irrefragable demon- strations," the " nimia subtilitas," and pretensions to exhaustive logical proof on all subjects which Leo the Thirteenth has recognised in some of the schoolmen amid all their ability, had made the theory of belief far too complete. It was felt not to correspond with actual facts. The vision " through a glass darkly " ^ was in some cases almost forgotten ; and first principles were laid down with an absoluteness which corresponded neither to their accuracy nor to their power of self- justification. And amid the suspicion, which had been growing since the days of Descartes, that their axioms could not endure, there remained in many minds the impression that to tamper with them was to destroy the validity of religious belief. Criticism was identified with scepticism. Objections not fully answered must be allowed to destroy certainty. AVhat was not fully analysed could not be accepted with confidence. Kant, then, in the course of a much ^ Perhaps the most typical instance of the combination in the scholastic movement of extraordinary aeuteness with an exaggerated estimate of the powers of tlie speculative intellect was Abelard. I need hardly say that the criticism in the text does not apply to such writers as St. Thomas or St. Bonaventura. I refer to that tendency which characterised scholasticism in so far as it disparaged the mystical side of religion and the reverent temper of the great patristic writers. WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN 17 fuller and more technical work, struck out a concep- tion of the greatest practical effect, in the separation of actual conclusion from theoretical analysis. He helped to form that tone of thought which regards the limits and defects of the speculative intellect not as a motive for practical scepticism, but as a reason for seeking elsewhere what reason apart from moral light — reason, that is, which is maimed and truncated — cannot supply. By carrying to the utmost limits conceivable his theoretical scepticism, while at the same time his own faith and enthusiasm were un- shaken, he taught, with whatever exaggeration, a lesson most needed for the time which was coming — of firmness in obedience to the deepest practical convictions and highest insight, in spite of difficulties in detailed analysis which to the individual intellect may seem unanswerable.^ And in the limited but all-important field of prac- tical religious conviction Cardinal Newman grasped this lesson and pressed it home on his own generation. No number of difficulties need amount to one doubt, — " difficulty and doubt are incommensurable," — this was his version of the lesson which may be learnt from Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. And Tennyson, though his form of expression is not the same, enforces on the whole the same doctrine. He dwells on the wanderings of the human intellect, the thousand questions it can ask for one that it can answer, the difficulties of formal proof, the difierent 1 I may refer for some very suggestive passages on the true significance of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason to Mr. W. S. Lilly's recent work, The Great Enigma, pp. 277 seq. C 1 8 WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN views we take in different moods of the same proof, the relativity of all knowledge if it is analysed, and yet the force with which beliefs, which such thoughts seem to destroy, justify themselves by their own intensity and light. Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, Am not thyself in converse with thyself. For nothing worthy proving can be proven. Nor yet disproven, he writes. And while the intellect, when moving in mere speculation, and as a spectator of the riddle of life, tends to lose itself, to become morbid and paralysed, and reach no conclusion, we are reminded with equal power of the light shed by a living prac- tical faith, which brings us into the action of life, and gives knowledge and experience which cannot be translated into language intelligible to purely passive speculation, any more than the glow of the hunting field or the wild excitement of the field of battle can be known by those who have always lived an inactive life. To this extent faith is its own evidence, and establishes itself by a solvitur ambulando. The doubt is seen by him who has shaken it off to have been in great part the result of hesitation and inaction, due to the absence of perceptions which action alone can supply ; and faith justifies itself to the mind which is aroused from undue passivity. Faith sees further and more truly, just as the confident rider sees clearly, and acts promptly, and takes the fence successfully, while the man who hesitates fails to see with precision, and fails in gaining the additional experience and WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN 19 perception which prompt action on that first rapid vision would have brought. The whole being moves together, and sight, action, experience, and knowledge are inseparably linked. Hopefulness, promptness, decision, affect mental perception as well as moral action. " Cling then to faith," the poet warns us : — She reels not in the storm of warring words, She brightens at the clash of " Yes " and " No," She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst, She feels the Sun is hid but for a night. She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before^lie blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail'd " Mirage " ! The question however arises, what account is to be given of this higher vision which Tennyson calls Faith ? How do we explain the fact that it is unseen or passed over as a blind impulse by the sceptic ? How can acute minds ignore what professes to be so real ? The answer which may be drawn in different degrees from all three writers to whom I have referred seems to be that the sceptic makes an unreal isolation of the speculative intellect, and refuses to view life as a whole — in its hope and its action as well as in the analysis of the passive impressions of the mind.^ If a man were to sit still and sketch a landscape from one point of view, he might indeed be exact in his picture from that point, but he would gain compara- 1 The scholastic distinction between sensatio activa and saisatio passiva brings out, in one limited field, the incompleteness of this procedure, and the necessity, in order to obtain real knowledge, of something beyond passive receptivity in the human consciousness. WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN tively little knowledge of the country. He could not know all that was to be known of it without using his faculty of locomotion. He could not tell by mere sight the nature of the soil ; nor, by looking from a distance, the botanical interest of the plants which enter into his sketch as vague patches of colour. Again the flying birds, which he sets down as dots, have each a nature and a history ascertainable by activity and inquiry. To know what is to be known he must use all his faculties ; whereas he sits down and uses one set only, with painful exactness, perhaps, and greatest industry, — with greater technical accuracy than many a man will show whose common sense makes him bestir himself and gain a truer practical knowledge of the country and its features. And this seems to be the answer suggested by these writers. The sceptic is using but one set of faculties and assuming the proportions due perhaps to his special point of view to be real. The tall hill in the distance measures a less ano^le than the horse in the foreground. Change your standpoint and this apparent untruth is instantly corrected ; sit still and measure reality by the picture and you go quite wrong. So too the sceptical mind falls into the very snare of relativity against which it protests, and viewing our capacities for knowledge as identical with our capacities for speculation, refrains from the activity and movement which are the natural corrective to relativity and one-sidedness. It views religious evidence as purely metaphysical, or as purely historical, instead of measuring it in the actual working of life, in action WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN as well as in theory ; as a belief in the living soul and in its ejffects on that soul, as well as in its pre- vious condition of a creed or set of formulae ; as an expression of the moral nature as well as the object of mental contemplation. This general view, I say, would serve to explain the wanderings of the sceptic in spite of his acuteness. His method is wrono-. Kant stated the three great questions to which philosophy addresses itself to be : "What can I know?" " AVhat oudit I to do?" '* What may I hope ? " and it is a special characteristic of the thinkers I have referred to that they see the intimate relations between the three. The sceptic separated them, and wrote as though knowledge could be completely dealt with apart from hope and action. The Christian philosopher of the middle ages often did the same, though from another point of view. When a thinker lived, as the schoolmen did, among those with whom the second and third questions had but one answer — the answer given by Christian ethics and the belief in immortality — the first question was apt to be treated, as a matter of technical philosophy, with the help of assumptions really based on Christian morality and Christian hopes. Now that the change of public opinion has led these assumptions to be questioned, it is recognised that either they must be abandoned and scepticism accepted, or "duty" and " hope " must be treated co-ordinately with " know- ledge." The school of Hume chose the former alternative; the school which looks to the Kantian conception as expressed by Cardinal Newman adopts WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN the latter. The truth of ascetics — that a life of neglected duty brings loss of faith — completes with them the truth of philosophy — that moral disposi- tions are required for the very recognition of certain first principles of religious knowledge — Belief in God and in another world (wrote Kant) is so inter- woven vni\\. my moral nature, that the former can no more vanish than the latter can ever be torn from me. The only point to he remarked here is that this act of faith of the intellect assumes the existence of moral dispositions. If we leave them aside and suppose a mind quite indifferent to moral laws, the inquiry started by reason becomes merely a subject for specu- lation . . . supported by strong arguments from analogy, but not by such as are competent to overcome persistent scepticism.^ And the other two writers are equally emphatic on the same subject. The effect of this on any theory of belief is obvious. If moral perception is increased by moral action ; if religious knowledge (in the sense explained) in part depends on moral perception ; if moral action is often prompted by a hope which falls short of certainty ; then it is clear that the three elements^aiowledge, hope, and duty — constantly interact, varying in degree and effect accordinjo; to the faithfulness of each individual and his circumstances ; and probation for those living amid the influences of modern thought does not keep the character it had in happier days of being mainly dependent only upon fidelity on the second point, " what ought I to do ? " apart from the other two, but on alertness and persistency in rejecting no light on any one of the three. ^ Krilik dcr rcincn Vernunft, ed. Haitenstein, ]>. 547. WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN How subtly this is indicated in Tennyson's Ancient Sage, where the young man who goes to the Seer for advice — One that loved and bonour'd liiui, and yet Was no disciple, richly garb'd, bvit worn From wasteful living, is contrasted, in life, in hope, and in knowledge, with the ascetic prophet ! The reader feels how the ever- changing hopes and aspirations of the inconstant pleasure -seeker, his purposeless life, his nerveless acquiescence in the inclination of the moment, go hand in hand with an acute and passive sensitive- ness to each fragmentary view of the world which scepticism suggests, and an inability to concentrate the mind or to form a deeper or more complete estimate. This restlessness and changeableness lead him to feel that Man to-day is fancy's fool, As man hath ever been. There is in thought, as in life, the kind of surface- perception which is increased by inaction and dissipation. The sensualist is morbidly sensitive to pain. The sceptical mind is morbidly alive to those side-lights of human existence and of the world's drama whose connection with its central purpose is not seen. In majestic contrast stands forth the sage himself, ascetic in life, concentrated in hope, profound in thought, firm in faith ; too full of his life-work to think much of pleasure ; with an inward light which is undimmed by the darkness of the world around. To the youth faith 24 WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN is but an idle gleam amid tlie earthy life which has become so real to him : Idle gleams will come and go, But still the clouds remain. With the sage the gleam is allowed to gain entrance, and to be steadily seen : Idle gleams to thee are light to me. And the seer's final answer to the youth's scepticism is not a treatise on philosophy, but the rebuke of vice, and the statement of plain duty as the con- dition of higher vision ; the true solution consisting rather in making him see more, than in establishing in detail the fallacy of his sceptical complaints. It is the sense of proportion, and the fulness of vision which are wanting ; and these cannot be acquired without that knitting together of a nature unstrung by dissipation which persevering moral action alone can effect. Let be thy wail and help thy fellow men, And make thy gold thy vassal, not thy king, And fling free alms into the beggar's bowl. And send the day into the darken'd heart. Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men, A dying echo from a falling wall ; Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue, Nor drown thyself with flies in honied wine ; Nor be thou rageful, like a handled bee, And lose thy life by usage of thy sting ; And more — think well ! Do-well will follow thought. And in the fatal sequence of this world An evil thought may soil thy children's blood ; But curb the beast would cast thee in the mire, And leave the hot swamp of voluptuousness, WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN A cloud between the Nameless and thyself, And lay tliine upliill shoulder to the wheel, And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou Look higher, then — perchance — thou niayest — beyond A hundred ever-rising mountain lines, And past the range of Night and Shadow — see The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day Strike on the Mount of Vision ! So, farewell. While the writers I have named are agreed in these general characteristics, that they are sensitively- alive to the sceptical appearance of certain aspects of the world, if man's moral nature be overlooked or deadened, they differ in some degree in the proportion assigned to particular manifestations of that nature. With Kant — in the passage I have cited and else- where — the " sense of law " is foremost. For Tennyson the depths, revealed in the power of the human heart to love, occupy a large space. While Newman— combining in his nature the philosopher and the poet — finds at once the sense of law and of deepest personal love, in conscience ; and appeals to both as testifying to a personal lawgiver and a God of love. Let us compare for a moment — to select a small portion from a large subject — the sense expressed by Newman and Tennyson alike of the mystery of the world — the apparent purposelessness of all that is greatest and noblest ; the moral greatness of what the universe treats as insignificant, the moral insignificance of what nature allows to triumph ; and the thought and belief which calms each in his perplexity. Is all that we see and know indefinitely great, and 26 WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN part of a vast plan of whose meaning our moral nature gives us a glimpse wliicli we are to understand more fully hereafter? the poet seems to ask. Or is that glimpse a cheat revealing only an ignis-fatuus, and is death the end of all, and life the measure of its worth ? Is the agony of human sorrow, the exalta- tion of human tenderness, the self-abandonment of the love which is stronger than death, a spark from something spiritual, divine and eternal 1 Or is it but the expression of self - preserving instincts in a living atom, an insignificant and infinitesimal component part of a planet whose proportion to the universe is inappreciable ? Are the deeds of men to be regarded in their worth on the first view or on the last ? Was Democritus right or Heraclitus ? Is the sense of infinite pathos a mere combination of self- protecting feelings, and is a sneer the most truly intellectual attitude ? Or do tears see to the depths and does laughter view only the surface ? "A tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to those who think " : — does heartless thought take in all the truth, or are feelings facts which it fails truly to reckon with ? Such is the fundamental train of thought which accompanies him as he surveys in the great poem of Vast7iess the contrasted views of this universe, great or insignificant according to the light in which it is regarded. Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish'd face, Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a vanish'd race. Raving politics, never at rest — as this poor earth's pale history runs, — WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN 27 What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns ? Star of the morning, Hope in the sunrise ; gloom of the evening, Life at a close ; Pleasure who flaunts on her wide down-way with her flying robe and her poison'd rose ; National hatreds of whole generations, and pigmy spites of the village spire ; Vows that will last to the last death-ruckle, and vows that are snapt in a moment of fire ; He that has lived for the lust of the minute, and died in the doing it, flesh without mind ; He that has nail'd all flesh to the Cross, till Self died out in the love of his kind ; Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, and all these old revolu- tions of earth ; All new-old revolutions of Empire — change of the tide — what is all of it worth 1 What the philosojahies, all the sciences, poesy, varying voices of prayer 1 All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy with all that is fair ? What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own corpse-coflins at last, Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown'd in the depths of a meaningless Past ? What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger of bees in their hive ? — And the wail is broken off, and one line assures us that peace and trust remain to the poet — trust in man's higher destiny and in the meaning of life. It is a line which is only understood by reading the whole of In Memoricmi — Peace, let it be ! for I loved him, and love him for ever : the dead are not dead but alive. With Cardinal Newman we have the same sense of an aimless and purposeless surface of things, though the scope he takes is more limited ; but 28 WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN his solution goes more directly to conscience itself, which draws to it and purifies those deep human feelings, which Tennyson rightly derives from the hiorhest source. He writes as follows : — o The ^yorld seems simply to give the lie to that great truth [the existence of God] of which my Avhole being is so full ; and the effect upon me is, in consequence, as a matter of necessity, as confusing as if it denied that I am in existence myself. If I looked into a mirror and did not see my face I should have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me, when I look into this living busy world and see no reflection of its Creator. This is to me one of those great difficulties of this absolute primary truth, to which I referred just now. Were it not for this voice, speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist, when I look into the world. . . . The sight of the world is nothing else than the prophet's scroll, full of "lamentations and mourning and woe." To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history ; the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts ; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship ; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements ; the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of Avhat turn out to be great powers and truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes ; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disap- pointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, johj-sical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irre- ligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the apostle's words, " Having no hope and without God in the world," — all this is a vision to dizzy and appal ; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profoiuid mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.^ ^ Apologia, p. 241. WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN 29 Such is the Cardinal's sense — not less acute than the poet's — of the darkness and chaos of a world in which moral light is an uncertainty, and spiritual faith an unreality. And that conscience which is the great witness to the truth which the world seems to deny is thus described by him, as in- cluding at once Kant's sense of law, and the revela- tion of that capacity for personal love of which Tennyson speaks in its human manifestation : — Conscience always involves the recognition of a living object towards which it is directed. Inanimate things cannot stir our affections ; these are correlative with persons. If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgress- ing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claim upon us we fear. If, on doing wrong, we feel the same tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us on hurting a mother ; if, on doing right, we enjoy the same sunny serenity of mind, the same soothing satisfactory delight which follows on our receiving praise from a father, Ave certainly have within us the image of some person, to whom our love and veneration look, in Avhose smile we find our happiness, for whom Ave yearn, towards whom Ave direct our pleadings, in whose anger Ave are troubled and Avaste away. These feelings in us are such as require for their exciting cause an intelligent being : we are not affectionate toAvards a stone, nor do Ave feel shame before a horse or a dog ; Ave have no remorse or compunction on breaking mere human laAv ; yet, so it is, conscience excites all these painful emotions, confusion, foreboding, self-condemnation ; and, on the other hand, it sheds upon us a deep peace, a sense of security, a resignation and a hope, which there is no sensible, no earthly object to elicit. " The Avicked flees Avhen no one pursueth ; " then Avhy does he flee 1 Avhence his terror ? Who is that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of his heart ? If the cause of these emotions does not belong to this 30 WITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN visible world, the object to which his perception is directed must be sujiernatural and divine. AVitli these specimens I must close. I have no wish to exaggerate the scope of the special work of which I have spoken. It cannot take the place of detailed critical inquiry into problems with w^hich none of the three writers I have named have dealt. But here again a similar work is done, if not quite in the same way or by the same persons. The Christian critic in all departments may be a witness to the many as he is a guide to the few, if his temper be, in his own work, what I have described in connection with trains of thought primarily philosophical. Such writers as Professor Bickell of Innsbruck and Bishop Lightfoot,^ by their width of mind and their loyalty to truth, combined with their deep and unquestioned learning, may be a source of confidence and light to the thousands whose knowledge of destructive Biblical criticism does not go beyond the popular sketch of its efiects in Rohert Elsmere; while they are gradually, each in his measure, working, out for themselves, and for other thoughtful scholars, a modus vivendi between what is true in modern criticism and what is essential to Christian faith. Thoroughness and honesty in painful, laborious, and anxious work, unshrinking recognition of the difficulties of the case, are here again the pre- requisites ; but the persevering adherence to these 1 This Essay was written during the life -time of the late Bishop of Dui-ham, and I have retained tlie reference to him rather than substitute the name of any living critic, as no other name appeared to me quite so suitable to my theme. IVITNESSES TO THE UNSEEN conditions, which is appreciated by so few at the outset, has, by a divine law of equity, its own far-reaching reward. Often misunderstood and con- demned at first even by good men, it justifies its claim in the long run to the true " martyr's " work. It is in its place an extension of the general law of pain- ful labour as the condition of fruit ; of sowing in tears that we may reap with joy. The unwieldy and un- stable crowd who form public opinion are won at last to trust ; and in this department, as in others, those who have combined full appreciation of the difii- culties of each problem with unwavering faith, stand forth to the age as Witnesses to the Unseen. THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION A STUDENT of liuman character was once anxious to see over a lunatic asylum. The doctor who superin- tended it, being very busy, said that he would depute one of his patients to show him over it. " He is a very intelligent man," the doctor said, "though a mono- maniac. He talks so sensibly on subjects uncon- nected with his monomania that you would never suspect any deficiency in his mental furniture. And, indeed, I think it possible that you will not discover where his mind has given way." The visitor found it to be just as the doctor had prophesied. His guide talked to him about all subjects connected with the asylum — and, indeed, about other subjects too, — with intelligence quite above the average. The phenomena of madness and the peculiarities of mad people formed a specially favourite topic ; and his remarks upon them were most sensible, and betrayed not the slightest sign of his malady. The visitor found it hard, in spite of his previous information, to believe that one so sober in his way of talking and thinking — nay, so much above the average in common sense and intelligence, — was indeed mad, and half thought THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 33 that the doctor must have made some mistake, or that his patient had recovered from any mental derange- ment he might once have had. However, as he was approaching the end of his inspection, he thought he would make one attempt to test the man's condition, and asked him if there were not such people as mono- maniacs in the asylum. His guide promptly answered that there were many such, and forthwith commenced an interesting description of the various forms of monomania he had met with. Some, he said, fancied themselves to be made of glass, and rubbed their hands hard with towels in the morning, until they declared that the dust was gone, and that they were in their natural state of transparency ; others thought that certain individuals were constantly plotting against their lives, and always slept with a loaded revolver at their side — the place of which was, however, supplied by a toy -gun furnished for them by the keeper. Others, again, thought them- selves to be great personages in history — Csesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, or the Duke of Wellington. " And the most curious part of it is," added the man, " that many of these are most intelligent and sensible if only you do not discuss their monomania with them. They talk about other subjects so sens- ibly that you would not suspect them to be mad at all." This was too much for the visitor. It seemed impossible that a man who was really a monomaniac could see this very peculiarity so distinctly in others, and yet be unconscious of it in himself " There must be some mistake," he thought ; " this D 34 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION cannot be the patient of whom the doctor spoke. He must be one of the officials connected with the place." Just as he was preparing to leave, his guide pointed to a man who sat reading a book, in a room the door of which was open, near the entrance of the asylum. " We were talking," he said, " of mono- mania. There is a curious specimen of a monomaniac; — a very well-read, sensible, and intelligent man, until you get him on Greek history. Then you will find out his weakness. He is persuaded that he is Alexander the Great, and nothing will shake his con- viction. Like the philosopher in Johnson's Rasselas, who thought he could control the winds and the weather, he acknowledges that he cannot prove to you that he is Alexander, but nevertheless he knoivs it. Why, he remembers the battle of Arbela, and poor Darius' flight. He will describe Diogenes to you minutely, and past conversations with him. He will give you an accurate picture of the appearance of Thais and Timotheus, and a graphic account of the scene of Dryclen's Ode : he says he remembers the whole thing vividly." The visitor remarked that it was very curious. "You know he is not Alexander," said the guide, showing for the first time a somewhat wild expression in his eyes. The other took this as a joke. " I should think there was considerable doubt as to his identity," he replied. " Ah, but," said the guide, " I hiow he is not ; I have good reason to know," and he looked very mysterious. " I will confide a secret to you," he continued ; " I have not yet told you my name. I am Philip of Macedon, and until I came to THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 35 this place I had never set eyes on that man. I re- member my son Alexander well ; he was much taller and fairer. I can't possibly be mistaken." The cat was out of the bag, and our friend went away much amused and even more surprised. I have told this story — which I believe to be sub- stantially true — at some length, because it is, I think, a very instructive parallel to something which aroused the attention of many of us a few years ago. I speak of the utterances of Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Frederic Harrison in the Nineteenth Century, on the subject of Keligion.^ Eeaders of the essays to which I refer will recollect that Mr. Spencer, after explaining that the old idea of a Personal God, such as Christianity be- lieves in, is plainly unscientific, and is merely a develojDment of the primitive belief in Ghosts, and after maintaining that we have no capability of acquiring any knowledge as to the ultimate cause of existence, bequeathed us, with his parting breath, a few capital letters for a religion. He had destroyed for us, it is true, certain objects of worship and belief to which we fondly clung — Conscience, God, the Soul ; but he did not " leave us orphans." He sent his spirit to comfort us with a new religion, whose deity is the Unknowable. The Christian God consisted of a Trinity, namely, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Unknowable will not be behindhand in this respect. It, too, consists of a Trinity — Infinity, Eternity, and Energy. It is " ab- solutely certain," he wrote, that we are in " the presence ^ "Religion: Retrospect and Prospect," by Herbert Spencer, which ap- peared in the Nineteenth Century for Januaiy 1884; and "The Ghost of Religion," by Frederic Harrison, which appeared in the following March. 36 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed." And this Unknowable energy is, he has explained, the true object of the sentiments of awe and worship — and a far more worthy object than the old-fashioned God whom it endeavours to replace. Here, then, is the Religion which Mr. Spencer has left us ; and Mr. Harrison, in some very pregnant sentences, and with the aid of some very happily con- ceived phrases, has shown that Mr. Spencer's bequest is really not a Religion at all, but only the Ghost of a Religion. He points out that " the attempt, so to speak, to put a little unction into the Unknowable," by describing it in terms " with so deep a theological ring as we hear in the phrase ' Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed,' " is really a " philosophical inaccuracy." He reduces Mr. Spencer's statement to its true logical limits, and divests it of the unction and enthusiasm which that writer had endeavoured to infuse into it, in the following passage : — Fully accepting Mr. Spencer's logical canons, one does not see why it should be called an "absolute certainty." " Practical belief " satisfies me ; and I doubt the legitimacy of substituting for it "absolute certainty." "Infinite" and "Eternal," also, can mean to Mr. Spencer nothing more than " to which we know no limits, no beginning or end," and, for my part, I prefer to say this. Again, " an Energy " — why an Energy ? The Unknowable may certainly consist of more than one energy. To assert the j^resence of one uniform energy is to profess to know something very important aliout the Unknowable ; that it is homogeneous and ever identical throughout the Universe. And, then, " from which all things proceed," is, perhaps, a rather equivocal reversion to the theologic type. In the Athanasian Creed the Third Person THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 37 "proceeds" from the First and the Second. But this process has always been treated as a mystery ; and it would l)e safer to avoid the phrases of mysticism. Let us keep the old words, for we all mean much the same thing ; and I prefer to put it thus. All observation and meditation, Science and Philosophy, bring us " to the practical belief that man is ever in the presence of some energij or energies, of which he knows nothing, and to which, therefore, he would be wise to assign no limits, conditions, or functions." This is, doubtless, what Mr. Spencer himself means. For my part I prefer his old term the Unknowable, though I have always thought that it would be more philosophical not to assert of the Unknown that it is Unknowable. And indeed, I Avould rather not use the capital letter, but stick literally to our evidence, and say frankly the unknown. This is, to my mind, quite unanswerable common sense. Mr. Spencer has no right — has, indeed, no logical power — to have his cake after he has eaten it. If we have no reason to believe in an all-powerful and all-holy Author of Nature, we can have no right to cherish the feeling of boundless awe and reverence which such a being alone could rightly claim. Still less right have we to squander such feelings upon the unknown energies which underlie the phenomena with which we are acquainted. What reason have we to suppose these energies to be worthy of reverence at all, except on a principle which, as Mr. Harrison tersely puts it, would hold "ignotum omne pro divi7io " ? The fact seems to be that Mr. Spencer, belonging as he does to that race of religious animals called " man," and unable in consequence to do with- out an object of worship, having pursued his critical philosophy to the point at which absolute negation is reached in the domain of theology, finding nothing 38 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION else within his reach is forced to worship it ; and, to give it a little more dignity, he has to dress its skeleton-like form in capitals, and write it Absolute Negation. Here is his monomania. To suppose that by dressing up nothing he can make it something — and not merely something, but the object of those deepest feelings which, for good and for ill, have played a wider and more important part than any others in the history of our race — is surely little short of a monomania. To conceive that out of the state- ments " nothing can be known," and " a sort of a something exists which is beyond our knowledge," we can evolve the absolutely certain existence of an Un- knowable object of worship, consisting of an Infinite and Eternal Energy whence all things proceed, is to introduce a new species of Evolution which Mr. Spencer himself could hardly sanction when in his right mind. The leap is very great, and as Darwin confesses, '^ Natura 7ionfacit saltum." Mr. Harrison seems to me, then, in this portion of his criticism, to reason with an accuracy and sobriety which are quite beyond praise. He brings Agnosticism back to its true position, and it resumes its character of negation. " So stated," he says, " the positive creed of Agnosticism still retains its negative character." And this cannot be religion. Religion " cannot be found in this No-man's-land and Know-nothing creed. Better bury religion at once than let its ghost walk uneasy in our dreams." His conclusion is stated in yet stronger terms in the following passages, which must be quoted, as I shall THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 39 shortly have to refer to them in detail: — "How mere a phrase must any religion be of which neither belief, nor worship, nor conduct must be spoken ! " '' A mother wrung with agony for the loss of her child, or the wife crushed by the death of her chil- dren's father, or the helpless and the oppressed, the poor and the needy, men, women, children, in sorrow, doubt, and want, longing for something to comfort them and to guide them, something to believe in, to hope for, to love, and to worship, they come to our philosopher, and they say, ' Your men of science have routed our priests, and have silenced our old teachers. What religious faith do you give us in its place ? ' And the philosopher replies (his full heart bleeding for them), and he says, ' Think on the Unknowable.' And in the hour of pain, danger, or death, can any one think of the Unknowable, hope anything of the Unknowable, or find any consolation therein?" "The precise and yet inexhaustible lan- guage of mathematics enables us to express, in a common algebraic formula, the exact combination of the unknown raised to its highest power of infinity. That formula is (cc") .... where two or three are gathered together to worship the Unknowable .... they may be heard to profess their unwearying belief in (cc"), even if no weak brother with ritualistic ten- dencies be heard to cry, ' x'\ love us, help us, make us one with Thee ! ' " So far, I repeat, Mr. Harrison has shown so just an appreciation of the consequences of the Agnostic position, so quick an eye in detecting and exposing 40 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION Mr. Spencer's mania for transforming scientific nega- tion into an object of worship, by means of his own enthusiasm and capital letters, and so clear an insight into the deflection from just reason which this involves, that he figures as before all things a sober and cautious thinker. If the death-knell of the old Theology be indeed sounded, all reasonable religious worship must die with it. No enthusiasm and no rhetoric can persuade a sensible man that it is reasonable to worship that which he has no means of knowing to be worthy of worship. We must be content, if Theism be destroyed, to bid farewell to religion for good and all, and, in company with Mr. Huxley rather than Mr. Spencer, to look upon all speculations and thoughts connected with it as of no more practical concern to us than the politics of any supposed inhabitants of the moon. At this point, however, as we give utterance with a sigh to this conclusion, we observe a strange look come over Mr. Harrison's face. " I am sure the Unknowable will not afibrd a rational religion," he says in efiect. We readily assent, and allow the point to have been proved by him. "Ah ! but I am quite certain it cannot be the real Keligion," he continues, "because I know that the worship of Humanity is the real Religion." " I am Philip of Macedon, and I know that is not my son." We are startled be- yond description. He continues — and we can listen to the explanation as given in his own words — " The religion of man in the vast cycles that are to come will be the reverence for Humanity as supported by THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION \\ Nature." His hearers are inclined to interrupt liini : " Prune down your capital letters, at all events. Let us examine your statements on their own merits — as they are in themselves and without the clothing of enthusiasm. You have been ruthlessly undressing the Infinite Eternal Energy ; you have knocked, all assumed dignity out of the Unknowable ; you have laughed at it because it has managed to get itself spelt with a capital U ; — in common fairness, then, do the same by your own gods. Let us see calmly, and by careful and sober analysis, what humanity supported by nature comes to, in itself, and without unction or capitals, and how far it will be able to serve us as a religion." But we must hear Mr. Harrison out. "The final religion of enlightened man," he continues, " is the systematised and scientific form of the spontaneous religion of natural man. Both rest on the same elements — belief in the Power which controls his life, and grateful reverence for the Power so acknowledged. The primitive man thought that Power to be the object of Nature as affecting man. The cultured man knows that Power to be Humanity itself, controlling and controlled by Nature according to natural law." This is certainly a marvellous collapse of the critical and cautious spirit by which the earlier portion of Mr. Harrison's paper was distinguished. How Humanity controlled by Nature can hear our prayers any better than x''' ; how we can be grateful to it if it is an abstraction ; how it can deserve gratitude if it is the net result of human and natural forces on an unhappy world ; 42 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION how it can comfort us in sickness, or give us hope on the bed of death any better than the Unknowable — these difficulties, which naturally arise, Mr. Harrison does not explain. Consistency and sobriety of reasoning vanish directly he touches on his mono- mania, and enthusiasm and capitals are the order of the day. In company with Mr. Spencer, he has relentlessly pursued the path of negation, until they have arrived at the common conclusion that all that is known is phenomenal nature in its operation on mankind. Here, then, is the exhaustive division of all things — Phenomenal Nature and the Unknown. But at this point comes before us the truth of the saying, " Naturam expellas furcd tcmien usque re- curretJ' All that need of something to reverence which George Eliot lays down as a primary demand of our nature, the satisfaction of which is essential to happiness, comes in full force upon both. It matters not that their reason has decided that no- thing exists to satisfy the need. A starving man has been known to endeavour to appease his hunger by eating a pair of boots, in default of any more attractive species of food ; and in like manner the Positivist and the Agnostic, finding in reach only Nature and the Unknown, make a desperate effort to satisfy their religious cravings with these very un- promising objects. The Positivist takes Nature, the Agnostic the Unknown ; and by a mental process, which can only be characterised as monomania, they con- trive to enjoy a sort of religious Barmecide's feast. The truth seems to be that these philosophers THE CLOTHES OE RELIGION having conspired together to kill all real religion — the very essence of which is a really existing per- sonal God, known to exist, and accessible to the prayers of His creatures — and having, as they sup- pose, accomplished their work of destruction and put religion to death, have proceeded to divide its clothes between them. By the clothes of religion I mean those ideas and corresponding emotions with which our minds have surrounded the objects of our religious faith, and which were their natural and due adornment, and the phrases which had become associated with religious feelings and belief. The saying of the Psalmist, which was applied to other slayers of their God, may be used of these also — "■ Diviserunt sihi vestimenta onea et super vestem meam miserunt sortem." "They have parted my garments among them, and on my vesture they have cast lots." The Ideas of Lifinity, Eternity, and Power, which have hitherto clothed the Deity, fell to Mr. Spencer's share, together with the correlative emotion of awe. Mr. Harrison came in for a larger quantity — though perhaps less indispensable, and more allied to the perfection of dress which Christianity introduced than to the simple clothes of Natural Eeligion, necessary for decency and dignity. Brotherly love, the improvement, moral, mental, and material, of our fellow men, Self-Sacrifice for the general good, Devotion to an Ideal — here are some of the " clothes of reliction " which Mr. Harrison and the Positivists have appropriated. And having appropriated them. 44 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION both these philosophers try to persuade themselves and the world that, after all, the clothes are the important part of religion, and that if they dress up something else in the same clothes, its worship will do just as well as the old Faith. Mr. Spencer dresses u}) the Unknowable with Infinity, Eternity, and Energy ; Mr. Harrison dresses up Humanity with Brotherly Love and the worship of an Ideal. But the clothes won't fit. The world may be duped for a time, and imagine that where the garments are there the reality must be ; but this cannot last. It is not the cowl that makes the monk, and it is not the clothes that make religion. The misfit is too apparent to remain long unnoticed ; and then, again, the clothes cannot even cover the whole substance of the new creed. Mahomet and Hume, two of the saints in the Positivist Calendar, are patent excrescences ; and the clothes of Christianity can by no stretching be made to cover them at all. Ked Riding-Hood thought for a time that the wolf which had put on her grand- mother's clothes was her grandmother in reality ; but the long rough arms, the big eyes, and the large teeth, which the clothes could not hide, helped to betray its real nature. The clothes of Religion will never fit either the Unknowable or Humanity. The misfit will arouse suspicion ; and if suspicion makes us look closely we shall see the teeth and rough arms. But it is not until each has been stripped of its clothes that it will be visible in its full deformity — or, rather, to drop for a moment our latest comparison, in its full meagreness and unsubstantiality. Mr. THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 45 Harrison has stripped the Unknowable. Let us now endeavour to strip his own Deity — " Humanity, as controlling and controlled by nature according to natural law." But before proceeding further, let me endeavour to explain more in detail my meaning in calling the religious language and conceptions which the Agnostic and Positivist have preserved "clothes of religion." The very essence of Religion is belief and trust. All the emotions which the great Object of true religion arouses, whether as God creating or as God Incar- nate, have their whole raison cVetre in our absolute belief and trust. They are called forth by facts and realities, and their beauty, depth, and essential char- acter depend on this. They differ from mere senti- ment just as a man's love for his wife differs from the sentiment he may have for a heroine of romance. No love is too ardent for God, because He is all-good and all-loving ; no awe too deep, because He is all- wise and all-powerful ; no trust too absolute, because He never deserts them that put their trust in Him. So too as to the sentiments proper to Christianity. The Martyrs did not die for a feeling or an idea as such ; they died because they believed Christ to be God, and that He bid them go through all torments rather than deny Him. They believed Him to exist, and that death would unite them to Him w^hom they loved, for whom they suffered, whose smile was their joy, whose every word and action was their rule of life, and union with whom was the only perfect end of their beino;. " If Christ is not risen," said the 46 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION Apostle, " then is your faith vain." The root of their devotion was belief in a real fact. Convince the would-be martyr that Christ is no longer in existence, is not approving his action, and will not welcome him after he has passed through the gates of death, and his love and devotion evaporate. The essence of the deepest feelings consists in their being aroused by a reality ; and if that be taken away, the feelings themselves lose all meaning and dignity. The clothes of a handsome man are intended to set off the essential dignity of his appearance. Put them on a scarecrow, and be they never so rich and well-made, their dignity is gone. Their dignity was part of 1x18 dignity. And so too religious sentiments depend for their dignity on religious belief — on belief in really existing Objects to which they may be worthily applied. I say, then, that all these phrases, ideas, and emotions which are associated with religion are its fitting clothes, but that the essence of religion, the central figure which they adorn, is trust in real objects worthy of these things ; and further, that while these clothes are suitable to a belief in God and the supernatural — while they are the normal accompani- ment and fitting ornament of supernatural belief — they are nothing less than grotesque when they array the Unknowable or the Positivist deity Humanity. Awe for the Infinite Godhead is fitting, is dignified, is rational. Awe for a sort of a something of which we can know nothing is grotesque. But this Mr. Har- rison himself has sufficiently shown. It remains now THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 47 to consider his own deification of Humanity, and to see how badly the clothes of religion fit it, and then to perform in its regard that kind office which he himself performed for the Unknowable — to take the clothes off and see how it looks without them. Our task presents, at first sight, some difficulties. The grand simplicity of the Unknowable, with His three robes of Infinity, Eternity, and Energy, made it easy work to unvest Him. And once He was unvested the whole of His religion was exposed. Awe for the Unknowable is the beo-innino; and end of the Agnostic religion. But with Positivism the case is otherwise ; and when we glance at Comte's Catechism and at Mr. Harrison's Addresses, and see the terms Supreme Being, Immortality, Last Judgment, Choir Invisible, Sacraments, look at the formidable calendar of over five hundred Saints, examine its elaborate ritual and numerous precepts of devotion, we are inclined at first to think that if these be clothes, and we are to find the real figure beneath, the process of undressing will be long and tedious. But this is not so. Mr. Maccabe, the ventriloquist, was for many years in the habit of giving entertain- ments involving a rapid and complete change of dress, and I have seen clothes prepared for his, or similar performances, which in spite of their apparent number were so arranged that the loosening of one or two strings, whereby they are secretly fastened, is sufficient to make them all come off easily enough. And so, too, the exposition of one or two root 48 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION principles in the Positivist religion will very readily lay the whole fabric bare in spite of its apparent complexity. And now, to begin at the beginning, the Power which we are gratefully to reverence as controlling our destiny is Humanity. And what is Humanity ? Comte's latest expression for it was, " the continuous sum-total of convergent beings" — the whole human race taken toa^ether. It includes all that are to exist in the future, and in consequence Humanity, or " The Great Being," as Comte styled it, is as yet incomplete. Certainly, at first sight, when we are told to have " grateful reverence " for the whole human race as acting upon us in connection with Natural Law ^ and controlling our life, many of us will demur. " You should trust in Providence," said a clergyman once to a poor man who was in distress. "Ah! sir," replied the man, "that Providence, he have always treated me badly. Last year he killed my wife, the year before he burnt down my house, and the year before that he drove two of my children mad, and now he's sending the bailiffs to take what little I have left me. He bean't a kind 'un to me. But there's One above as '11 punish him some day, and as '11 make it rio-ht to me and a;ive me back what I've lost." The man had taken Providence as beins^ tanta- mount exactly to the Positivist Deity. He regarded it ^ ' ' The devout submission of the heart and will to conform our life to the laws which govern the world is religion." So said Mr. Harrison in his New Year's Address for 1884, and the " Providence " for which we are to have "grateful reverence" is "Humanity as controlling and controlled by" these laws. THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 49 as exactly, to use Mr. Harrison's phrase, the Power controlling his life, — as natural forces and the mass of mankind in their capacity of controlling his destiny. And if you had told him that there was not One above to reverse the unpleasant machinations of this earthly Providence, I should have doubts of his inclination to give much grateful reverence to the ruling Powers which would remain. But both M. Comte and Mr. Harrison eagerly explain the inaccuracy of this conception of Humanity, the " Great Beins;." It excludes all " the worthless and the evil, whose worthlessness and evil die away in the tide of progress and good." These are Mr. Harrison's words, and Comte speaks to the same effect. I am afraid that this explanation would not have much effect with the poor man of whom we have spoken. He would probably insist, his mind being unable to rise to so large a conception as the " tide of progress and good," that the Power control- ling Ms life at all events includes an evil and unhappy influence, and would ask how he is to feel grateful towards a Power which makes him unhappy, however happy it may make his companions or his successors, and however much it may minister to their progress ? Perhaps this is a narrow-minded view. Every religion must have its mysteries ; and this problem is probably one of the mysteries of Positivism, for whose solution it is unbecoming to be impatient. Let us, however, go a little further into particulars as to the elements whereof Humanity — the Supreme Being — is com- posed. 50 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION Seven years must intervene after the death of each individual, — so the Positivist Catechism explains, — before the Last Judgment of posterity decides whether or no he is to be " incorporated in the Supreme Being" and honoured with a commemorative bust. Only worthy specimens of humanity are a part of this Great Being. It is called generally Humanity, because the evil members do not count, — because evil is absorbed in good. We are only to worship the good, — those who have exercised a beneficial influ- ence on the race, and who enjoy (the Catechism tells us) an Immortality consisting in fame, and in the operation upon their successors of the energies they originally set in motion. Progress is the great end ; and these men are deified as having contributed to- wards it. The chief constituent elements of the Supreme Being who have lived in the past, the principal worthies of Humanity who have gone from among us, are commemorated by days set apart in their honour in the Positivist calendar. Mahomet, St. Bernard, Phidias, St. Thomas Aquinas, Hume, Galileo, Newton ; — here are names taken at random, but showing the wide embrace of Positivism, and the heterogeneous character of the progress it commends. So then, Humanity, or the Great Being, if submitted to a process of disrobing parallel to that which re- duces the Unknowable, Infinite, and Eternal Energy to certain unknown energies or energy to which it would be wise in our ignorance to assign no limits, becomes merely — those members of our race who did in the past or will in the future exercise an influence THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 51 in favour of its progress. And religion consists in an acknowledgment of these beings, and " grateful rever- ence " for their good offices, — in worship of them as constituting, in conjunction with the forces of Nature, the "Power which controls our life." I am quite sure that none of us have ever denied their existence ; and I think that most of us have a profound rever- ence for such men as Newton and Phidias as types of genius, and gratitude for their services. So then we have, it seems, been Positivists without knowing it. But I am afraid this happy conclusion will not serve us very long. There will be men of a matter-of-fact turn of mind, who will insist that all this explanation is much ado about nothing ; that to roll together these worthy persons and call them Humanity, and to call the worship of them, in their eftect on us. Religion, is not a process of Religious teaching at all, but only a bad joke. They will insist that the name " Religion " does not make the thing. Mr. Harrison, after un- clothing the Unknowable, proceeded to examine its essence, and to test its claims to the title " Religion." We have, in our turn, done a good deal of un- dressing. Let us now make sure whether we have reached anything which can make good its claims to the same title. We have to see how far the so-called religion of Humanity will guide life, support in afflic- tion, give hope in death. These are functions which Mr. Harrison expressly recognises as belonging to all religion worthy of the name. It was by these tests that the Unknowable was tried and condemned. Let us, then, see how in actual practice Positivism fulfils them. 52 THE CLOTHES OE RELIGION Let US suppose wliat Reid calls " a plain man " of average common sense, who, in a world where belief in God is overthrown, is anxious to take every advantage of the assistance Positivism can offer him. Progress is the great end and aim, as his Catechism tells him ; and all who contribute to this end are, as we have seen, incorporated in the Supreme Being after death. The Calendar contains 558 names of the typical heroes of the past who have achieved this distinction, and in whose footsteps Positivism bids him tread. He reads Mr. Harrison's address of last New Year's Eve, and learns from it that the Positivist Saints are in no way limited as to the line which their sanctity takes. " Let us put aside all kinds of limitations," he said ; " let us honour the great and holy sjDirits of every religion worthy the name. Let us remember the saints of poetry and the saints of art, science, politics, and industry." "Let us turn to the great spirits whose images surround us in this hall — Moses, Homer, Archimedes, Newton, Caesar, St. Paul, Charlemagne, Dante, Shakespeare, Guttenberg, etc. ... A kindly word, a clear thought, or a brave result does not die with the body that was associated with it. Shakespeare, Raphael, Dante, St. Paul, Homer, and Moses enable us to think, live, and enjoy better hour by hour." This is truly a vast and varied field for worship. And as Mr. Harrison proceeded to explain that not only all these 558 Saints, but all their acts, and all the acts of all others who have lived in the past — except the worthless, whose acts are, he considers, swallowed up in the general pro- THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 53 gress towards good — contribute to the sum of Humanity, we can hardly be surprised at the climax of his remarks. He said that " words failed him to give an adequate idea " of the vastness of this thought. " The dull monotony of prose did no sort of justice to their feelings ; ... on the present occasion even poetry could not adequately express their feelings, and they must resort to music, because the very in- definiteness of that art could clothe an almost infinite idea." Infinite, one is inclined to add, much as a square inch of ground may be considered infinite if it is measured by the infinite number of infinitesimals of which it is composed. Mr. Harrison's language reminds me of that of a Parisian shopwoman, who once charged the present writer a very high price for a note-book, and said in self-defence, by way of show- ing the infinite value of the book, " Mais, Monsieur, cest un livre extraordinaire. Vous pouvez ecrire la-dedans tout ce que vous voidez.'' This was an almost "infinite" idea. But to return to our "plain man." His purpose being practical, he endeavours to gain from the con- templation of these heroes some guidance as to how he is to obtain the same good success as they did, and to walk in their footsteps. He looks to their example as a guide for conduct, as that of men who have accomplished the aim which Positivism holds up for each of us. And here he is at once puzzled. The Progress aimed at and achieved by the Saints seems to be not only heterogeneous, but even opposed. Which contributed really to human progress — Angus- 54 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION tine, whose one aim was to extend the influence of Christianity, or Vespasian, who tried to exterminate it ? Which should he imitate, the chaste St. Bernard or the unchaste Mahomet ? All these names are in the Calendar, and the whole 558 form a most im- posing array, well fitted to arouse the " glow " ^ which, as it may be remembered, Mr. Harrison commends ; but as models of conduct they at once puzzle the straightforward inquirer, as embodying directly oppo- site ideals. Still, the Positivist teacher insists that each was a " holy spirit," according to his lights and in his own way, and the student will perhaps let this pass, and proceed to fix upon one or two as embody- ing the type of excellence which most appeals to him, dismissing; the "infinite idea" as well fitted for " glow," but little suited for action. His primary object being moral conduct, as that is what was associated with the bygone religion, and the motive for which is now lacking, he fixes, perhaps, on St. Bernard or St. Paul. And here, again, rises a fresh difficulty. Directly his meditation on St. Bernard becomes vivid he comes to realise the fact that the Saint's consistent rectitude and self-devotion leaned for support on a fcdtli which supplied both a trust in present assistance and a belief in an aim to be achieved. "How am I," he asks, "to have the ^ " Tliose who were assembled in that hall had met with the view of understanding better, and of adding some breadth and depth and glow to the old sentiment and practice," with regard to the grateful remembrance and commemoration of the heroes of the past. — See the Times' report of Mr. Harrison's Address on New Year's Eve, 1884. THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 55 strength and consistency of St. Bernard when the whole source whence he derived them is gone ? The sight of the goal — of the future life — and the con- sciousness of God's presence and assistance nerved his arm. How can I fight as he fought without themV But the Positivist priest, nothing daunted, will tell us of the new faith and the new aim which supply the place of the old ; and will forthwith explain that Humanity supplies the faith and Human Progress the aim. But here I am afraid that Positivism will begin to unclothe itself very rapidly so far as its effect on moral conduct goes. We are very near the strings I have spoken of, which so quickly unloose its manifold robes. And the issue will be most clearly shown by a practical instance, not of exalted virtue but of ordinary right conduct. That a man should refrain from beating his wife be- cause he believes in a God whose claims on him are paramount, and who will reward him or punish him according as he refrains or does not refrain, is reason- able and natural. But that love for the human race should make him refrain when love for his wife was an insufficient motive is hardly to be expected. " Keep yourself up for my sake," said Mr. Winkle to Mr. Pickwick, who was in the water. The author remarks that he was probably yet more eflfectively moved to do so for his own sake. And to tell a man to be good to his wife for the sake of the human race has in it a considerable element of similar bathos. It is exactly parallel to the well - known method of catching a bird. No doubt if you can put salt on 56 THE CLOTHES OF' RELIGION his tail you can catch him. And so, too, if you can get a man to love the human race with a surpassing love, no doubt he will treat his wife well. But the first step in putting the salt on is to catch the bird ; and the first step towards loving the human race is to have tenderness for those who are nearest. The conclusion, then, to which I fancy the " plain man," whose questions are perversely practical, will come on this subject, after a short cross-examination of his teacher, is something of the following kind. The progress of the human race is, as Comte's own Calendar implies, the progress of very various kinds of activity. There must be scientific progress, artistic progress, moral progress. Newton, Raphael, and Thomas a Kempis are all parts of the Supreme Being. And those who have contributed to each of these depart- ments have had faith and hope in the aim they worked for. Science and art will no doubt continue to have their devotees as heretofore — no thanks to Positivism, for they are devotees not in virtue of the general thought of progress, but in consequence of their genius and enthusiasm in relation to a special object. But where is the moral regenerator of man- kind in the past or the consistent pursuer of virtue who has worked without faith in supernatural guid- ance and sanctions ? I have somewhere heard a saying — I forget to whom it is ascribed — " In astronomy I should be sorry to hold a difterent opinion from Newton, and in religion I would not difi"er from the Saints." This seems to point to that indissoluble connection between moral progress and THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 57 spiritual faitli of whicli I speak. And if, in meditat- ing on the heroes of morality, we find that their action has been invariably inspired by a faith — that their strength came from a belief in supernatural guidance, that what conscious genius has ever been to the great painter, that consciousness of the inspira- tion of a higher Power has been to the moral reformer and to the saint — where is our hope that, if all such faith be parted with, that progress of which such faith was the very life can be continued ? Positivism, then, seems to leave the motives, hopes, and beliefs which have hitherto inspired men to work for the progress of the race in secular sciences and arts just where it found them, consisting, not in the general worship of human progress, but in devotion to some particular department of study ; while it fails to give any faith parallel to that which has hitherto been found indis- 23ensable to moral progress. And this is surely to fail in exhibiting even that small amount of religious- ness which it professes to exhibit. It gathers together all the sentiments and beliefs which are associated with the various types of activity, and gives them the name of " religion"; but upon exam- ination we find that the one type of activity which ought to be associated with religion is left without its belief and motive. High moral greatness must remain in such a scheme a mere idea, having no motive force left whereby it may realise itself in action. So much, then, for the practical effect of this system on conduct. And what of the consolation it gives in affliction ? of the hope in death ? It seems a 58 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION mockery to speak of it. And how is it that Mr. Harrison has failed to see the obvious tu quoqua which his criticism on the Unknowable must provoke in this connection ? When the mother of whom he speaks, wrung with anguish for her loss, asks for consolation, does it seem greater irony to say to her, " Think on the Unknowable," than to say, " Think on Humanity or Human Progress ? " It is hard to say whether it would be a more grotesque or a more pathetic spectacle to see a humble, simple-minded woman betake herself to Mr. Harrison in such straits, and attempt to gain consolation from the thoughts he holds out. It would probably be, in the words of the proverb, a comedy to him that thinks, but a tragedy to her, for which she would feel. " Your son is not dead," the Positivist says, " he has joined the choir invisible. He lives even more in the energies he has set in motion and the works he has done, than while he was yet here." But the woman, having a hopelessly concrete mind, asks for further explanation, and tries to get beyond the phrase — the clothes — " choir invisible." She asks lioiv he lives — what are the works — where are the energies ? " He lives in all of you whom he influenced. He lives in the results of his labours. That bench which he made, that useful table,^ keep him more with you than ever. Cherish them. He lives in them though you see him ^ ]\Ir. Harrison is very express in his statement that those who enjoy immortality in the Positivist sense are by no means exclusively distinguished people. " We are apt," he said in the Address last referred to, " to associate the memory of the men of the past with the great men alone. But all men of the past had a common life with us, and were in us, and round us, and with us — all but the worthless and evil," etc. THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 59 not." This is recally no exaggeration of Mr. Harrison's statement. The saints of industry live in their works, he says. " We live by one another, we live again in one another, and, therefore, as much after death as before it, and often, indeed, much more after death than before it." ^ It is breaking a butterfly on the wheel to insist upon the poor woman's failure to gain consolation from such thoughts. Or take again the thought of Human Progress, which is supposed to be so soul-ill spiring. What does it come to if, with the persistence of grief, she asks for a concrete instance ? I suppose she must be told to think of the electric telegraph or of the steam plough. What, in short, has Positivism to offer to those in distress ? Only illusions and dreams. I do not mean in every case untrue dreams. An historical play may represent true facts, but they are not a part of the spec- tator's life, or of the reality with which he is or ever will be in contact. And similarly for Positivism to soothe anguish by bidding you think on facts relative to human progress is to bid you forget what are facts to you in what are dreams to you. Christianity bids you dwell on a hope and a reality connected with your own life — tells you that God is with you and will comfort you, and will make it good to you in the future if you are faithful to Him in time of trial. Positivism bids you not mind your trial, because somebody else has been good or successful — bids Mrs. Jones not cry at her son's death, because Mrs. Smith has just added another baby to the human race ; and 1 See Mr. Harrison's Address for New Year's Eve already referred to. 6o THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION if Mrs. Jones be patient enough and hopeful enough to pursue her questioning yet further, and ask why it should give her consolation and hope that another or many others are happy, she will be told that she is only a part of the Great Being, and that evil and woe, of which her loss is a part, are swallowed up in the tide of progress and do not matter. She should rejoice in the progress of the Great Being, and re- member that it is the only concrete Reality, and that she is in fact only a component part of it. At this point she will, I think, with a sigh desist from further questioning. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, having searched long and vainly for one who should give him practical guidance as to how he might find happiness in this life, came at last upon a philosopher who with much confidence insisted that the road was plain. It consisted in living according to nature — in acting upon one simple and intelligible maxim, " that de- viation from nature is deviation from happiness." •''Sir,' said the Prince, with great modesty, 'as I like the rest of mankind am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed on your discourse ; I doubt not the truth of a position which a man so learned has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to nature.' ' When I find young men so humble and so docile,' said the philosopher, ' I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and eff'ects ; to concur with the great and THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 6i unchangeable scheme of universal felicity ; to co- operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.' The prince soon found that this was one of those sages whom he should understand less as he heard him lono;er. He therefore bowed and was silent ; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, . . . rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-operated with the present system." To sum up, then, the contrast between Positivism and Eeligion under Mr. Harrison's three heads — belief, worship, conduct. Eeligion offers belief in a really existing Superior Power, in whom it is reasonable to trust, who will, in return for our trust and fidelity, guide us in life and bring us through the darkness of this world into light and happiness. Positivism bids us keep the feeling of trust without the reason for trust ; bids us trust in forces which we know to be untrustworthy, so far as our own future is concerned, and which many of the deepest thinkers consider to promise no ultimate benefit for our race. That is to say. Positivism bids us keep the feeling after its motive is gone — keep the clothes after the substance is destroyed. And, to help our minds to sustain the illusion which this implies, it uses phrases which, as originally expressing realities, readily call up the feelino;s and ideas which those realities claimed as their due. Thus it speaks of a Supreme Being, a Power controlling our life, of Immortality, and even of Sacraments. So much for belief. Next as to worship. The religious prayer and meditation consisted in com- 62 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION miiniug with real persons, unseen but trusted, and in making vivid by force of imagination what was believed to be real, — just as one who is haunted by a nightmare may make an effort to throw off his unhappy illusions, and bring his mind to dwell on the comparative happiness of his real life, real and known to be real, though less vividly felt at the moment than the dream he knows to be false. Positivist worship is here again the clothes without the essence. The essence of the religious prayer and meditation is that the imaginative effort and asjDiration are felt to be a process of reaching out towards realities, and it is precisely this that Positivism drops out of its worshi}^. The effort of imagination, the aspiration, the com- muning with other minds in spirit, are preserved, but the objects are all unreal. The religious meditation aims at the fullest sense of reality ; the Positivist attains to perfection only in the illusions of the mad-house. Religion says to him who is in trial, " Your trial is but a dream compared with the happy reality which exists for God's servants." Positivism says, " Your trial may be sad, but don't think of it ; live in dreamland." It is the remedy of one who takes to drink that he may forget the trials of life ; and let him who thinks that constant dram-drinking, and its consequent illusions, can give substantial com- fort and make an unhappy life happy, rest content with the Positivist Clothes of Religion, and declare that they are as good as the reality they profess to replace.^ ' It will, I hope, be understood that I am speaking of the effects of religion in this life — of its practical working on earth. The ' ' need for religion, " THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION And, finally, the effects of any general acceptance of Positivism on moral conduct and moral progress would be the natural consequence of the nature of its belief and worship. A man may indulge in the pleasures of day-dreaming, but none save a madman will act on a dream as though it were truth. The goal of physical progress is in sight, and the motive for scientific labours is untouched by Positivism. But the goal both of moral conduct for the individual and of moral progress for the race is in the world of spirits ; and if that world be only a dream no motive is left for the self-denial involved in the pursuit of virtue. The moral hero must become, as soon as human nature has completely adjusted itself to this new creed, an ideal conception belonging to the past — noble to think on as the hero of chivalry is, with his armour, his battle-axe, and his lance in rest ; but not to be imitated, because he is not adapted to the intellectual conditions of the age. A man who went to the Franco-German war, accoutred after the fashion of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, would find his costume and weapons of little use against Krupp guns or mitrail- leuse. And a man who, inspired by St. Bernard's moral greatness, attempted to imitate it, without religious faith himself, and in a world without faith, would soon find that all motive for consistent action of this nature was dissolved. He would find the type old-fashioned and quite unable to resist the onslaught which Positivism professes to supply, is a need here. Of the life hereafter it is obviously irrelevant to speak, except so far as the hope for it is an im- portant element in the working of religion here. And it has been alluded to so far and no further in the text. 64 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION of a belief wliich destroys the essential and central motive for moral heroism. Here then, again, in the domain of conduct, we have the conception left and the reality gone. We can still admire the beauty of self-devotion, but, as a practical reality, it is impos- sible. Once more the clothes without the substance. Clothes in every case. Phrases, emotions, ideas are kept ; the essence of religion is gone. Surely if it is to be war to the knife between the philosophers and the old religion — if, indeed, they think they have killed it, it would be more becoming in them to bury it clothes and all, and give forth a sigh over its grave, as Schopenhauer did, than to keep its clothes as perquisites wherewith to array their own children. The former is, at all events, the ordinary procedure of civilised warfare ; the latter is rather suggestive of the hangman. But I have already dwelt too long upon the claim of the Positivist scheme to the title of " Religion." It only needs that we should look closely at its features, and remain for a short time in its company, that we may find out how grotesquely unlike it is to all that mankind has hitherto meant by the term, and how completely it must fail of all practical helpful- ness. The danger is that it may pass without close observation, and may sustain its claim by means of the clothins: it has borrowed. If we hold intercourse with it, and listen to its voice, we become speedily convinced that it is not the voice of religion. Readers of JEsop's flibles will remember that a certain animal once tried to pass himself off as a lion by putting on THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 65 the lion's skin ; but his voice betrayed him. I do not mean to imply that the voice of Positivism is the voice of the ass, but it certainly is not that of the lion. All that remains now is to point, as shortly as may be, the moral to be drawn from what has preceded. The two essays of which I have spoken are perfectly agreed as to one thing — that the central features of the old Theology are effete ; that a Providence ruling the destiny of the world, who watches over us and hears our prayers, who will guide us if we are faithful to Him, who is all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful, is a bygone conception. Mr. Harrison says of Mr. Spencer's paper : " It is the last word of the Agnostic philosophy in its controversy with Theology. That word is decisive ... as a summary of philosophical conclusions on the Theo- logical problem it seems to me frankly unanswerable." They seem likewise to be agreed that mankind cannot do without some religion. The problem, then, which each discusses in his own w^ay is — what is to be the religion of the future ? We have, in company with one philosopher, laughed at the so-called religion of the Unknowable ; and we have endeavoured to show that if that be laughable, a fortiori so is the religion of Humanity. What, then, is the net result of our inquiry ? Surely this : that the philosophers who would destroy Theism and Christianity can not give us a religion in their place ; and that the destruction of Theism is the destruction of Keligion. " Which is the harder question," asked a great Christian thinker of our day, " whether the world can do without a 66 THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION relia'ion, or whether we can find a substitute for Christianity ? " Our philosophers answer the former question in the negative, and attempt to answer the latter in the affirmative — we have seen with what indifferent success. And if they fail whose ability is unquestioned, and to whose interest it is to do all in their power to succeed, we may confess the attempt to be hopeless. It is well, then, for those who occupy their minds with the speculation on these subjects which is now so rife, and A\ho are unsettled in their religious convictions, to face frankly and honestly the central issue of the whole controversy. Modern philosophy may j^rofess to prove that we Q^n have no knowledge of God or of Immortality ; but let us not deceive ourselves as to the result of such proof. It can give us no ideal vision and no practical hojDe to replace those it would destroy. It professes to offer us the tree of knowledge ; but if we accept it, we must give up all hope of the tree of life. It says to us, as the serpent did of old, " Ye shall be as gods." But this is false. We have seen that it is untrue. Its hopes are delusive, its religion a lifeless skeleton. This does not prove it to be ftdse ; but it makes a sensible man less content to accept it finally as true. The inquirer who clearly sees this is led to look back at its initial assumption — that the faith and the hope of the believer in God are unreasonable. And that is all we wish. Let the glamour of "advanced thought" and the dream of " the progress of humanity " lose their brightness and fade away ; let men soberly and earnestly strive to ascertain wliether they cannot find THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION 67 in their own hearts and minds, in their own experi- ence and observation of mankind and of the world, sufficient reason to preserve them from the hopeless pessimism, which is so ill-disguised by the clothes of the old Religion, and their path will be illumined. Their minds will be enlightened, and faith will return to them. What natural reason and earnestness for knowledge commence, God's grace will complete. Facienti quod in se est Dens suam non denegat gratiam. This was the hope which the old schol- astics held out for the heathen who had not found God ; and it is surely no less applicable to those who, in our day, have lost Him in the mazes of philo- sophical speculation. It is hard to hear a " still small voice " in the din of controversy ; and it is hard to distinguish the sun of truth through a cloud of words. But he who is determined, in all earnestness and patience, to hear the voice if it is to be heard, and to see the sun if it is really to be seen, will, sooner or later, succeed in his endeavour. Whether it will be soon or late no man can say ; but the time will come when, during a momentary lull in human disputing, the Divine voice will come distinctly and unmistak- ably on the ear of the attentive listener ; when the clouds will disperse and reveal the sun in his glory. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES We hear a good deal in the present day of the love of truth which animates the explorers of physical or historical science ; and those who do not unreservedly sympathise with them are said to be indifferent to truth — or even to be its enemies. It is perhaps worth while to remind ourselves that truths may be lost as well as gained ; that there are old truths to preserve as well as new truths to learn ; that scientific discovery is concerned only with new truth ; that though all truth is intrinsically consistent, it may not always appear so in the course of its attainment ; and that at a given stage a too exclusive concentration on steps towards new truth may obscure for the individual mind its perception of truths already possessed. The truest discoveries may come upon an individual, or even upon a nation, accompanied by all the peculi- arities of a new fashion ; and it is of the essence of the new fashion to neglect and undervalue the old ; to develop a pet tendency out of due proportion ; to pass over as of no account that which is out of NEPV WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 69 liarmony with itself; to absorb the attention of its votaries for the moment as though it were all-suffi- cient ; to discourage and expel by its sneer that which is unlike itself. These are the characteristics of all fashions, intellectual or social, artistic or reli- gious. The question, then, may be asked whether qualified sympathy with a particular scientific move- ment may not sometimes be due to suspicion of its form as a fashion, its surroundings and exaggerations, rather than to any want of love for the truth to which it is leading ; to an attachment to old truth rather than indifi'erence to new — nay, to love of truth itself measured by the quantity and importance of the knowledge preserved rather than by its novelty alone. That great intellectual movements have in the past had the characteristic of exaggerating for the moment their own imjDortance, and expelling and discrediting much that was really valuable, needs no proof. The litterateurs of the Eenaissance despised the Bible. The deep and subtle intellects of the medieval scholastics w^ere in so little repute at the time of the Reformation, that the popular nickname for the remnant who read the works of Duns Scotus furnished for our own day the word " dunce." ^ Or, to take an instance of scientific discovery proper. Bacon's doctrine of induction, in insisting on the value of observation, so undervalued the deductive method of the older logic, which was required for its fruitful exercise, that while he bequeathed to us the ^ See Trench, Sluchj of Words ; 19th edition, p. 144. 70 A'EW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES greatest instrument of discovery we possess, ins system as lie expounded it was almost useless.^ Fashions reign intolerant and imperious ; but fashions die and truth lives. Thouo-h obscured or lost for a season it prevails in the end. Time prunes the excrescences of novelty. Lovers of Horace do not now despise the literary features of the Bible. No one in our own day denies the subtlety of the scholastic intellect ; no one hopes for discovery with- out deduction from hypothesis. But, learning from past experience, those who love old truths and wish to preserve them in their- oivn generation will do well to wait till discoveries are mellow, and have lost the dangerous characteristics of new fashion, and can rest peacefully in company with all that is true in our inheritance from the past, before they finally estimate their bearing on the universe of knowledge. There are old truths whose knowledge is of vital importance to each individual ; and he cannot afibrd to lose them, even though his grandson should eventu- ally regain them. Let him then be chary of allowing the raw exaggerations which accompany new dis- coveries to mutilate or destroy his inheritance. Let the two be kept apart until the new is ripe for assimi- lation with the old. " No man seweth a piece of raw cloth to an old garment, otherwise the new piecing taketh away from the old, and there is made a greater rent : and. no man putteth new wine into old bottles ; otherwise the wine will burst the bottles, and both ^ This is brought out in a very interesting manner by Jevons {Logic, p. 255). See also Dean Churcli's Bacon, p. 244. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 71 the wine will be spilled and the bottles will be lost."^ These remarks are suggested by recent attempts, to which public attention has been drawn, to find a modus vivendi between Christian faith and advancing science. We have in the first place the scheme of Mrs. Humphry Ward, as set forth in the manifesto to which Dr. Martineau's subscription has given a weight which it could not otherwise have had."^ The tone and spirit, however, of the manifesto are the tone and spirit of Rohert Elsmere and not of Dr. Martineau. The peculiar vividness with which Dr. Martineau realises the bearing and importance of the dogmas to which he adheres — definite Theism, the life of prayer, personal immortality — and which makes him far more in sympathy ethically with Mr. Hutton, or the late Mr. F. D. Maurice, than with any school of negative criticism, is entirely absent from the manifesto, which brino-s us rather into the vao;ue and enervatinsj atmo- sphere of Rohert Elsmere than the bracing oxygen of A Study of Religion. Read in the light of its origin and with Rohert Elsm^ere as its commentary, it is so complete and melancholy an illustration of my theme, that its discussion need not detain me long. " Hope in God and love of man," this is the meagre remnant of the old truth which Mrs. Ward's scheme, as ex- plained in her preface to the manifesto, aims at preserving and fostering. The study of biblical criticism and of comparative religion is to be one 1 St. Mark ii. 21. 2 See Pall Mall Gazette, March 10, 1890. 72 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES main instrument for increasing the spiritual stature of the neo-Christians, and we know from Robert Elsmere the manner in which this is conceived ; — the latest theories in criticism accepted bodily, not as steps, as hypotheses with more or less of plausibility, to be examined and re-examined, to be tested as to their unconscious and unproved assumptions, and the views of human nature and of the supernatural which these presuppose ; but to be swallowed wholesale, and judged to be final by a mysterious " historical sense " which is without appeal. The natural exaggerations of a dis- coverer, the tendency of novelty, of which I have spoken, to assume for the time the undue preponder- ance of a fashion, the tentative character of the proofs themselves, are entirely ignored. If the Tubingen school were in fashion, its conclusions would be inter- woven as integral parts of the new gospel. The general acceptance of any suggestion of an able critic as a proved fact, has eviscerated natural religion itself. Theism has become a manifestation of a divine " something " in good men ; immortality has ceased to. be a certain hope. If Reuss and his friends share the fate of Baur and Volkmar, the articles of belief must undergo a corresponding change. Were the scheme to last, its gospel would have to be considerably remodelled every ten years at least, and a formula for retractation should in common prudence be pro- vided in the new liturgy. But more than this, the inspiring ideal of Christ's character, which is to be the animating principle of its philanthropic work, may well cease to inspire NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 73 when criticism has been allowed to rove freely, with no better rudder or compass than the scheme furnishes. M. Kenan will not be excluded from the programme, and to many minds his conclusions will be far from satisfying. The " frightful accesses of enthusiasm " which he describes, the acquiescence in pious frauds which he postulates in his account of the central figure of the Gospels, may temper the enthusiasm of some, and will hopelessly bewilder more. The figure which is supposed to be one of ideal perfection may in the end appear to combine the very unstimulating mass of contradictions which it conveyed to Bishop Alexander of Derry : — Divinely gentle yet a sombre giant, Divinely perfect yet imperfect man, Divinely calm yet recklessly defiant. Divinely true yet half a charlatan. Enough has been said. In such a plan there is no modus vivendi, no recognition of the independent claims and basis of old truth. New methods, new exaggerations, new fashions have been swallowed with a wholesale timidity, and in defiance of all the lessons which history teaches as to the advancing tide of truth, with the constant incidental errors, which, like the back-draw of each wave in a flowing tide, are its normal accompaniment. We may sympathise with the kindness and philanthropy in the practical aim of such a plan, but of stable intellectual basis it has none. The new wine has been poured bodily into the old bottles, and the bottles have burst forthwith. The scheme preserves only a few of their fragments. 74 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES But a much more serious and important attempt at the modus viveiicli to which I have referred is contained in the collection of Essays entitled Lux Mundi, issued a few years ago by some influential members of the High Church party. To many the special interest of the volume will arise from the mode and motive of its composition. It is not the work of a number of men airing pet theories on the relations between science and religion ; but it arose, as we gather from the w^ork itself, from the practical experience of a few able and thoughtful tutors and clergymen in the University of Oxford, as to the necessity of reconciling apparent contradictions between current Christianity and current biblical criticism and other scientific movements, for the sake of their own faith and peace of mind, and that of their friends. It is this actuality of the problem it attempts to solve, and the accompanying sense which many readers will have that that problem is a very real one for themselves, which raises the discussion from the rank of mere abstract speculation, and gives it an interest for the general reader as well as the professed theologian. The two deep feelings which inspire the writers are a devotion to many elements in traditional Catholic Christianity and belief in its essence (as they conceive it) on the one hand, and on the other a sense of the dis- crepancy between modern research, physical and critical, and certain features in the current Anglican teaching. This discrepancy has doubtless been forced on the writers with peculiar vividness by the diffi- NEIV WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 75 culties they have witnessed in the minds of young- men, at an age when the logical powers are keen, and a sense of inconsistency the more urgent because the experience, which life brings, of the many puzzles and enigmas which the finite mind must patiently bear with to the end, is yet to come. On the other hand, men of the old school whose minds have been formed, and whose associations have been welded together, before the problems raised by the theory of evolution and modern biblical criticism became pressing, fail to realise the vividness with which these theories and their apparent consequences press on those who are in process of educating their in- tellectual nature and shaping and arranging their convictions. Such men see no difficulty because they see no reality (as it has been expressed) in a series of hypotheses or scientific proofs, which have come before them after their capacity for assimilating new ideas and principles as active and determining forces has, in the course of nature, become dulled. Thus Archdeacon Denison has characterised this book — a book, be it observed, prompted apparently by the motive of saving the faith of many who are in danger of losing it — as " the most grievous specimen of defence of truth of all those I have had to contend against, and the most ruinous under all the circum- stances of its production, a blow ah intra without parallel." And other divines of influence are known to entertain similar feelings. It is not to my purpose to discuss the problems 76 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES raised by Lux Mundi : the work of writers of so much weight and ability would call for fuller treat- ment than my limits allow. But, looking at the opposite attitudes of Mr. Gore and Archdeacon Denison in the light of the opening remarks of this essay, an important question suggests itself. If Mr. Gore finds that those who seek his sympathy or guidance are hard-pressed by the apparent in- consistency between the outlook suggested by science at the moment and the religion they have been taught, is he not bound to make some such attempt as Lux Mundi to solve the problem, if only to help men to hold by their faith ? On the other hand, if what I said at starting is true, — that scientific advance, in the rawness, inaccuracy, and imperfection of its different stao-es, is far more exactins; in its demands for sacrifice of traditional interpretations than truth requires, — may not Archdeacon Denison be right in discouraging a modus vivendi? Does not Lux Mundi tend to the rashness of pouriug new wine into old bottles ? Still the retort will be that young men cannot be infiuenced by advice which appears to ignore the march of science, and will not listen to conservatives who tend to think that the distinctive glory of their age is an idle boast. The fact is that the problem is a double one : truth is to be guarded, and individual consciences are to be protected ; and the matter cannot be dealt with satisftxctorily unless this is recognised. The young man canijot practically, in the present NEIV WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 77 day, be simply told not to believe in scientific progress. Such a course would put his faith in opposition to his common sense. On the other hand, the ever - growing, ever - changing forms of scientific opinion may not be in such a state that the Church can commit herself to them, or should con- descend to revise and guard her statements to suit what may be a temporary phase of opinion. Such a thought suggests an explanation of the mode of action often pursued in the Catholic Church in these matters, though her apj^lication of the same principle is, as we shall see, naturally somewhat different in different ages. The question formed a theme of interesting dis- cussion at the International Scientific Cong-ress of Catholics at Paris, which I attended in company with the late Father Perry, S.J., in 1888, and which held its second session in 1891. And I the rather choose that Cono-ress as furnishino; a sort of text to my remarks, as it partook of the actuality and practicalness which, as I have said, lends such interest to Lux Mundi. It was no authoritative meeting in its form, but an assembly which included many very distinguished and eminent Catholics, who met to discuss scientific and critical questions, and who made use of the opportunity for comparing notes as to how practically an individual could and should stand w^ith reference to the modern specula- tions to which I have referred. Let me, as indicating a line of thought which I found to be a common one among the congressists, 78 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES make a citation from the introductory address of the organiser of the Congress, Monseigneur d'Hulst, rector of the Catholic University of Paris. II a tou jours existe, il existera tou jours des dissentiments parmi nous sur les points que I'autorite de I'figlise n'a pas tranches. Les occasions de rencontre sont nombreuses entre la science et la foi. Si la foi est immobile, la science ne Test pas. C'est la gloire de la parole divine d'etre toujours semblable a elle-meme. C'est I'honneur de la pensee humaine de n'etre jamais contente d'elle-meme et de reculer sans cesse les bornes toujours etroites de ses connaissances. Mais entre deux termes contigus, dont I'un est en repos, I'autre en mouvement, il est inevitable que les points de contact se deplacent. Si le deplace- ment se faisait toujours au nom d'une certitude absolue, I'accord serait facile entre croyants ; car autant ils sont convaincus qu'une proposition revelee n'a rien k craindre des constatations scientifi- queS; autant ils sont prets a affirmer qu'une proposition demontree n'encomTa jamais le dementi autorise des juges de la croyance. Ces deux axiomes repr6sentent les deux faces d'une meme veritee enseignee en termes expres par le Concile du Vatican et par toute une serie d'actes pontificaux, et qu'on peut r6sumer en cette formule : le dogme catholiqiie ne saurait Ure pis en ddfaut par I cs fails. Mais le probleme est moins simple que cela dans la pratique. La science, en effet, arrive rarement d'un bond a la certitude. EUe precede par I'hypothese, s'essaie aux verifications experi- mentales et s'achemine a tivavers des probabilites grandissantes vers le terme desire de I'evidence discursive. Encore si cette marche etait r^gulicre et constante ! Mais non. II y a des tatonnements et de fausses manceuvres ; il y a des chevauchees liors de la route : magni passus, sed extra viam ; il y a des hypotheses qui jouissent longtemps d'une certaine faveur et que de nouvelles recherches obligent d'abandonner. Tant que dure leur credit provisoire, bon nombre d'esprits trop prompts a conclure les confondcnt avec les dires absolus de la science, et pendant ce temps-1^ on se demande comment les mettre d'accord avec I'enseignement chretien. Les uns disent : "Le disaccord est manifeste, c'est I'hypo- jYEIV wine in old bottles 79 these qui a tort." Les autres r^pondent : " L'hypothese est bien appuy^e, c'est vous qui interpretez mal la croyance. Ce que vous prenez pour I'enseignement catholique n'est qu'une fa^on d'entenclre cet enseignement, fa9on bien naturelle tant qu'on n'avait pas de raisons d'en chercher une autre, mais qu'il faut abandonner a la demande de I'experience." Sans doute, si Tautorit^ supreme intervient pour fixer le sens indecis du dogme, le dissentiment fait place a I'unanimite. Mais il est rare que cette autorite se mele ainsi aux virements de bord de la science. Gardienne prudente de la parole sacr(^e, protectrice bienveillante de I'activite humaine, elle attend d'ordinaire, se contentant de surveiller le mouvement et de condamner les exc6s de part et d'autre. Pendant ce temps-la, deux tendances se manifestent parmi les catholiques : celle des hardis, qui sont parfois temeraires ; celles des timides, qui sont parfois arri^res. Et la encore la situation se complique et les reproches se croisent. Les hardis pretendent que ce sont eux qui sont prudents, parce qu'ils reservent I'avenir et 6pargnent aux th6ologiens la n^cessite de s'infliger plus tard a eux-memes un d^saveu. Les timides r6pondent que ce sont eux qui meritent la louange d^cernee aux braves, parce qu'ils temoignent moins d'appr6hensions devant les attaques de la science, plus de confiance dans la victoire finale de la conception traditionnelle. Encore une fois. Messieurs, ces divergences sont inevitables, et vouloir les prevenir serait interdire aux croyants de penser. Aussi bien, le danger n'est pas dans ces discussions loyales et fraternelles, un peu vives parfois, mais toujours placees sous la double garantie du respect r^ciproque et d'une commune docility envers I'Eglise. Le peril commencerait le jour oil Ton pretendrait engager I'Eglise elle-meme dans I'expression d'opinions particu- lieres. Et ce peril croitrait si cette imprudence etait le fait non plus d'un 6crivain ou d'un groupe, mais d'une assemblee nombreuse et accr6dit6e par le m^rite individuel de ses membres, par I'^clat de leurs travaux et de leurs services ; si une telle assemblee usurpait sans autorit6 le role d'un concile. This passage brings into special relief the help which the constitution of the Catholic Church may 8o NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES give in dealing with the double aspect of the pro- blem to which I have already referred. Where there is no clear distinction between the individual teachers and the final living authority of the Church, the immediate skirmishes called for by each fresh scientific hypothesis, which has for a time a hold on public opinion, seem to commit the whole faith of a Christian to the counter movement which is made on the spur of the moment. An under- graduate comes to his tutor full of Baur's theory as to the dates of the Gospels in the days when Baur reigned supreme, or looking on Darwin's ac- count of the origin of the moral sense as finally proved, and his adviser tells him that though not in keeping with traditional Anglicanism both may be accepted. In many cases Baur's theory, as dis- crediting all approach to contemporary evidence of Apostolic Christianity, has, as we know, been found to weaken or destroy all belief in the received Christian history; to commend the "myth" hypo- thesis ; and even to lead to Agnosticism. And the evolution theory of conscience has often had a parallel result. Years pass on : the exaggerations of the Tubingen school become discredited, and Wallace brings his great authority to destroy on purely scientific grounds the urgency of the young- man's original difiiculty as to the moral faculties of mankind. The tutor sees that a little patience would have saved his pupil. Or suppose he has taken the opposite course, which Archdeacon Denison would perhaps prefer, and has said " You cannot accept NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES Baur or Darwin," the young man, overcome by the tide of popular opinion and the tyranny of the Zeitgeist, refuses to retain belief in a religion so antiquated, so unable to keep pace with the times. Years pass ; irreligious habits are formed, and by the time that scientific teachers have modified their decision he is incurably a godless man of the world. I do not deny that want of tact on the part of a Catholic teacher might issue in a similar result. But I want to point out the vital importance of the third alternative which obviously suggests itself in the case of a Catholic. He may simply be told, as Monseigneur d'Hulst reminded his hearers, that the Church has not contemplated what is new, and has not pronounced on it ; and he may be reminded that neither has science pronounced fully and finally. The lesson appropriate to the situation is that of prudence and patience. There stand the corresponding principles, of scientific progress and development of Christian doctrines ; and the limits of their application, so far as the trials hie et nunc to individual faith go, have to be decided to the best of the Catholic tutor's or adviser's ability. The double guidance attainable from the Church's general principles and decisions, and from their appli- cation to a new case, is parallel to the double action of preacher and confessor. The preacher preaches in general terms the principles of Christian morality and duty. The confessor listens to his penitent's account of his special case ; judges as best he can as to his circumstances and disposition, and decides wdiich of the principles, universally true in themselves, apply G 82 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES to the j^articular instance. Further knowledge may modify his decision in the confessional ; nothing can change the principles of morality he preaches from the pulpit. One is a statement of absolute and abstract truth ; the other is concrete and relative. It is a system for dealing with each case as it arises, with the half-knowledge of facts and circumstances, which is possible at the moment, liable to reconsidera- tion, capable of addition, capable even of absolute contradiction in presence of new discoveries as to antecedents, surroundings, and character ; yet all the while it is the application of the same eternal principles of right and wrong. So the individual teacher looks at the analogies in Church history and at the general principles laid down by theologians, and to their treatment of similar cases, and decides to the best of his power what is tenable by a Catholic with respect to a new scientific hypo- thesis; but he does not and cannot commit the Church to the conclusion he draws except so far as he may say he thinks it is the true conclusion. He under- stands to the best of his power the real bearing of the hypothesis on dogma ; endeavours to distinguish the traditional interpretation of a Christian belief from its essence, and decides as he can for the individual con- science he is helping. But his knowledge and his applications of it are liable to error. His acquaintance with theological precedents may be one-sided and in- complete. His apprehension of the scientific hypo- thesis may be so wrong as to make him miss its true bearing. And a change in his opinion and counsel as NEIV WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 83 science advances, or as his knowledge is corrected, is quite as consistent with the Church's truthfulness as the confessor's change is with the changeless moral law. But this is not all. While individual Catholics often have what may be called a certain provisional power of reconsideration ^ where the Church has not decided authoritatively, we may also see in the Church a power of assimilation and of ultimate consolidation of her teaching in its relations to assured scientific advance, or well-examined and tenable hypotheses. While her caution protects her against those whims of the Zeitgeist which prematurely claim the title of discoveries, the activity of her life enables her in the end to find a modus vivendi with what is really valuable in intellectual movements, or really true in scientific achievement. This is a special prerogative of a living authoritative tribunal which, from the nature of the case, cannot be clearly asserted by any ruling power whose nature is documentary. And the Church has, on occasion, exhibited this principle of progressive assimilation in a marked manner. It is perhaps instructive to note the illustration the principle in question receives from cases which often seem at first sight instances of unmixed narrow- 1 St. Thomas expresses this power, so far as the interpretation of Scripture texts is concerned, as follows : " Since the divine Scripture may be expounded in many ways, it is not right to attach oneself so strictly to any one opinion as still to maintain it after sure reason has proved the statement supposed to he contained in Scripture false ; lest on this account Scripture be derided by infidels and the way to faith closed against them." This passage is cited in the very interesting article on Creation in the Catholic Dictionary as bearing on the interpretation of the account of Creation in Genesis. 84 NEIV WINE IN OLD DOTTLES ness and bigotry on the part of ecclesiastical authority. In days when the temper of the age, as shown in all religious parties, was less sympathetic and tolerant than at present, when every school of religious thought asserted its claims by more or less stringent persecution of its ojDponents, the slowness of the Church to commit herself prematurely to any novel form of thought which seemed at first sight at variance with traditional teaching, naturally led to intolerance on the part of the teachers or officers of the Church. There was in this as in other matters less of in- dividualism than at present ; and a new opinion to which the Church refused to commit herself was often not tolerated in private persons, as a matter of dis- cipline. There was probably less need for toleration for the sake of individual consciences, as scientific dis- covery had not yet got so firm a foothold as to be in many cases a living source of difiiculty ; and the greater simplicity of thought in these matters made especially true Cardinal Newman's saying, "Novelty is often error to those who are unprepared for it from the refraction with which it enters into their concep- tions." The immediate danger to conscience and faith may generally have come rather from the admission of startling novelty, than from over-severe repression of individual opinion. We can, perhaps, see in this fact the reason why, though some might sufier unfairly from such a policy, ecclesiastical authority tended to be more chary then than now of allowing — apart from infallible decisions, and as a matter of practical guid- ance — new opinions, not absolutely proved, and which NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 85 at first sight shook dogmatic beliefs, whose traditional interpretation had from the temper of the age become for many indistinguishable from their essence. That very duty of protecting the Christian's conscience which, as I have said, is the motive of the immediate action of the Christian teacher as disting-uished from the final decision of the Church herself, would, in many cases at all events, lead to an opposite policy in circumstances so difi"erent. The over-subtle mind of the present day, readily grasping the real weight of evidence for a new scientific discovery, more readily than formerly distinguishing between the essence and the traditional interpretation of dogmatic belief, has more to fear from the temporary denial of what may prove true, and less to fear from the readjustment of explanations of dogma : whereas the l^ulk of medieval Catholics would feel less the weight of scientific proof, and more the shock of novelty in expression. Just as the simple Silas Marner believed in God's justice and in its unfailing expression in the decision by lot, and to find the lots unfair was for him to find that there was no just God ; so, when thought was ruder and education rarer, there was greater danger of identifying a religious truth with its popular forms of expression. To invalidate the latter was to shake belief in the former. Perhaps then of the two alternatives our teachers would now be more ready to allow provisional freedom, as a con- cession to a puzzled intellect, where the will seems to have no disposition to indocility, while formerly inde- pendent thought, as arguing disobedience in spirit and 86 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES having less primd facie claim to genuineness and simplicity, would be checked ; the double change of circumstances bringing the further excuse for a change of policy, that the novelty, which is now more quickly interwoven with a modified expression of dogma, would formerly have seemed inevitably to contradict it. But doubtless an individual in advance of his generation was liable in days of old to suffer from a rule of action suited to the many. The condemnation of Galileo may be considered to be an instance of this by those who think that he himself was hardly used by ecclesiastical authority. The primary duty of pro- tecting religious belief in the mass of Christian souls may have called for a check on the propagation of an imperfectly ascertained discovery for which the minds of the faithful were unprepared, and which seemed to impugn the authority of Holy Scripture. This is the view of the matter indicated by Cardinal Newman in his preface to the last edition of the Via Media. Be this as it may, a marked instance of the earlier method of procedure — of the condemnation on grounds of prudence of a system which was ultimately assimi- lated with Catholic teaching — was the case of the peripatetic philosophy. Though, of course, uncon- nected with discovery properly so called, it assumed in the twelfth century, as Schlegel has pointed out, very much the position of " advanced thought " at the present day. When it came over to the West, from the hands of the Arabian revivalists, whom the era of Haroun al Raschid had first begotten, it was looked upon as the daring, enterprising philosophy which NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 87 appealed to the highly cultured intellect. Portions of the Stagirite's logical works had gained a footing a few years earlier, and his dialectical method had attracted some of the most brilliant minds of the Western Church. The new philosophy was the "rationalism" of the day. The most celebrated of the early advocates of the Aristotelian dialectic was the famous Abelard, who applied it to theology in the Western as John Damascene had already done in the Eastern Church. It is not to my purpose to dwell fully on its history. We all remember the historic conflict between St. Bernard the Abbot of Clairvaux and Abelard. St. Bernard saw that the scholastic method as it stood exalted reason at the expense of faith. That mystical and mysterious side of religion which must ever remain only seen in part — through a glass darkly — was exposed to the pretence of full analysis, and to a shallow confidence in the all-suf- ficiency of syllogistic deductions. The tendency which he saw was that expressed by another saint, who beheld in a vision a theologian attempting with his measuring tape to ascertain the height of the gates of heaven. "Posuit in coelo os suum," said St. Bernard of Abelard indignantly, " et scrutavit alta Dei." They met for a public disputation, but Abelard's courage, it is said, failed him ; and he refused to defend his own doctrines. Abelard, the prince of Western scholastics, was condemned in Rome. Nor did this sense of the dano;ers of the new method quickly pass away. Seventy years later Aristotle's metaphysical works were burnt by order of a council NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES at Paris, and a papal legate, by direction of Innocent the Third, forbade their use to the faithful. Here we have an extreme case of the first side of the principle to which I am referring. The rational- istic spirit was the danger of the times. It was the danger from which the conscience and faith of the multitude were to be protected ; and ecclesiastical teachers, in the rough and summary manner which was customary at that time, put their hand down upon the cause of the evil and checked it. Whatever was good or bad, true or false, in Aristotle, here was a practical danger. The province of faith was being ignored, and a secular and rationalistic spirit propa- gated. As the summariness of a court-martial provides less accurately than a civil trial for just treatment of the individual, and yet is called for by the danger to larger interests, so St, Bernard and Pope Innocent, leaving nice distinctions for a less critical juncture, checked the new philosophy with prompt energy. All the more remarkable, in remembrance of this, is the fact of which Catholics have been specially reminded of late years by Leo the Thirteenth. It would have been a strange vision alike to St. Bernard and to Abelard could they have seen the Encyclical " ^terni Patris " in which a few years back the present pope traced the lineal descent of the philo- soj^hy of St. Thomas Aquinas from Leo, Gregory, and Augustine ; and could they have turned to the volumes in which it was contained, and found the Aristotelian dialectic and Metaphysics adopted into its very essence. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES And yet this fact is but the other term of the Church's double attitude, which shows itself in a jealousy of hasty and dangerous submission to novel doctrines — which is, nevertheless, compatible with her assimilation in the end of however much they contain which is true or intellectually valuable. In the reign of Innocent the Third a system fraught with the associations of the paganism of Aristotle and the pantheism of Averroes, the Arabian commentator, which had not yet found place for faith, and advo- cated the autonomy of the reason, was claiming accept- ance in the name of the intellect of the day. This intemperate claim had simply to be met by a decisive check. In St. Thomas's time all was changed. Years had passed, and the details of Aristotelianism had been discussed and weighed in the academic circles of the Schola Theologoimm. Albert the Great and Alexander of Hales had adopted such of its principles as were consistent with Christianity, and interwoven them with the ethics of the Fathers, texts of Holy Scripture, and the decisions of Church authority. In this new garb and surrounded with these new associa- tions and safeguards, the condemned Metaphysics lost their terrible character. The dialectical method was held in check by the faith and sanctity of St. Thomas, and the insistence on the mystical side of religion which we find in his great scholastic contemporary, St. Bonaventura, The dano^er of exaltinej reason and destroying faith had passed away under these altered circumstances. Time had been allowed ; and the con- temptuous sneer of the hasty rationalist of the twelfth 90 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES century, that Catholic faith was irreconcilable with the best products of the human reason and the great thoughts of the philosophy of Grecian antiquity, was folsified. The saying " Roma patiens quia seterna " received a fresh illustration, which succeeding ages, so unsparing in their criticism of the temporary con- flicts between secular science and religion, would do well to note. Now to point, as briefly as may be, the moral with which I set out. The principle of double treatment which the Church has variously applied at diff"erent times seems to have peculiar importance in view of the circumstances of our day ; and the constitution of the Church undoubtedly off'ers certain facilities for its application. Outside the Church a decision for the immediate guidance of Christians tends to become final. A book with the weight attaching to Lux Mundi, from the ability and position of its writers, is as near an approach to an ex cathedra decision as to what are within the limits of Anglican orthodoxy as the case admits. On such a subject there is no effective court to revise its declarations. The case of Essays and Reviews has shown (if it needed showing) that, so far as the State Church is concerned, the utmost freedom in dogmatic matters is compatible with retaining official status as a member of the Church of England. For those, on the other hand, who consider that the only true Anglicans are those who retain the traditional dogmas which they deem the Anglican Church's inheritance, disowning, as they generally do, the Privy Council and Crown as a final A^EIV WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 91 court of appeal, and accepting in practice no living- authority as dogmatically supreme, the opinion of a weighty section of their number as to what is com- patible with their position, is in a sense final. There will always be a certain number to follow suit, and there is no machinery to check either the increase of adherents to such views, or their further development in the direction of free thouo;ht. Thus we find a Review of position describing this book as the Mani- festo of the High Church party. ^ On the other hand, a Catholic book on similar lines would be necessarily tentative, and would be liable to many hierarchical grades of revision and reconsideration. It might be condemned as danger- ous or inopportune, yet much of it might be ulti- mately adopted as true. It might be (as in a recent case in France) approved by an ecclesiastical superior, and then censured by a more authoritative tribunal. And yet such a double fact need not prevent much of the substance of a book from being finally declared consistent with Catholic doctrine. Or, on the other hand, in view of the harm done by too much public discussion, or of the intrinsic unimportance of the work, it may be left unnoticed ; and yet the points it raises may receive in due time and place more or less authori- tative treatment, limiting the degree to which it can safely be accej^ted. A work of this kind, if expressly dealt with, is weighed by an authority which considers in its diff"erent functions what it is wise to say, what is possible, what is probable, what is calculated to 1 See Academy, March 8, 1890. jvejv wine in old bottles produce a false impression, what, though creating a true impression in itself, will jar with some article of belief which has not yet been fully explained, as well as what is in itself absolutely true or absolutely false. And this last, in religion as in science, is a matter on which infinite caution and slowness are natural and necessary. Fenelon's Maximes des Sai7its was con- demned as objectively containing false doctrine, but the pope refused to censure the author's own mean- ing (in sensu ah auctore intento), which he subse- quently set forth, though his enemies pressed for such a condemnation. The famous congregation de Auxiliis allowed as tenable the extremely opposite doctrines of Thomism and Molinism, contenting itself with condemning only such conclusions on either side as struck at the morality of the active Catholic life. A common form of reply in Rome, when a decision is asked for as to the lawfulness in a " penitent " of some habitual course of conduct, is " that he is not to be disquieted " {non esse inqidetandum), a purely personal precept involving the refusal to decide on the principle. The authority does not attempt to enunciate there and then a general principle which is to apply to all possible cases, and yet desires in the interests of the individual to give him the practical rule which his case demands. Many steps, then, are possible towards supplying materials (so to speak) for the Church's ultimate decision and guiding individuals provisionally, which yet do not commit the Church finally and fully one way or another. And this likewise leaves time for A^EIV WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 93 anotlier important factor in the progress of universal truth — the further development and analysis and proof of scientific hypotheses themselves. Thus when finally the truth emerges with scientific certainty, a double office has been performed — minds have been familiarised with an hypothesis, and j^repared for its reconciliation with Christian teaching should it prove true, and at the same time positive assent on the part of the Church herself has been withheld to what may after all prove to some extent false. It is hardly worth while to recall the application of such a principle to the innumerable varieties, advocated on purely scientific grounds, which our own day has witnessed in Dar- winism — the numerous and partially conflicting- theories of physiological selection, sexual selection, development and atrophy by use and disuse, and the very different limits assigned to the operation of natural selection itself by Wallace and Darwin ; facts which, however, do not affect the belief most of us have that Darwin discovered a causa vera, whose exact operation and limitations it will take many generations to determine. But Darwinism is a signal instance in both departments of what has just been said. Not only do we see the very considerable modifications which it is gradually undergoing at the hands of men of science, but within the Church its tenability, and the degree and form in which it is tenable, and the precedents and means for its recon- ciliation with Scripture, have within the last twenty years been discussed to an extent amounting almost to a literature. 94 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES I will observe, finally, that the 'modus agendi I have described — though doubtless many will consider that the immovable limits set to its operation in the Church by past decisions of an infallible authority prevent its being adequate to the requirements of the case — seems, as a principle of action, to be only an extension of that philosophic temper of mind which, in their own departments, all great natural philo- sophers, the Darwins and the Newtons of history, have enjoined. It combines readiness to consider the working of every possible hypothesis with great slow- ness in ultimate decision on its limits or on its truth at all. We remember how Newton for sixteen years refused to consider the principle of gravitation estab- lished because of a very slight discrepancy between the time he calculated to be taken by the moon to fall through space and by a stone at the same height. " Most men," writes a competent authority,^ " would have considered the approach to coincidence as a proof of his theory." Sixteen years later more accurate calculations as to the moon's distance re- moved the apparent discrepancy. And then he finally declared his hypothesis to be proved. Again, few of us have failed to contrast the slowness and accurate measurement by Darwin and Wallace of conclusions drawn with any certainty as to the details of evolution, with the sweeping generalisations of their second-rate followers, Darwin and Newton have at once the greatest instinctive confidence that they are on the road to truth, the greatest quickness in noting the 1 Professor Jevons. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 95 possible significance of phenomena, and the greatest slowness in finally stating what conclusions are ascertained beyond doubt. In the absence of a living and final authority and of such a system as we have been considering, a religious body tends, as I have said, to become identi- fied (without any internal principle of recovery) with the momentary conclusions of its members in view of contemporary controversy. Thus I see no inherent principle in the High Church party which would prevent its gradual development into a ritual system with dogma almost entirely eliminated ; nor do I see any principle in the scheme of Mrs. Humphry Ward which would prevent such views as E-enan's from suddenly finding themselves in the ascendant. AVith this suggestion I bring my imperfect sketch to a close. My purpose has not been polemical, and my sympathy with the aim of the authors of Lux Mundi, so far as it is the outcome of the real crux of all thinking Christians, is very deep. But I think a principle is to some extent lost sight of in these controversies which has been exhibited by the Church even when its application may be open to criticism, and in times of corruption and tyranny. Two interests are, as I have said, at stake — individual faith and conscience, and abstract truth. A provi- sional concession to a school of criticism, which at the moment enjoys, perhaps, undue ascendency, may be needed for individual consciences, and yet it would be very unwise to commit the Church finally to such a concession : and conversely the general and public 96 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES inculcation of new and startling views, wholesale, may be dangerous, even though they should ulti- mately prove to be in great measure true. The dis- coveries of science are among the acknowledged criteria used by the Church in the explanation of Scripture ; but the time is probably far distant when we shall be able to appraise with confidence many of the tentative conclusions of Reuss and Wellhausen.^ ^ I may be allowed to refer the reader to the last chapter of the second edition of my work, W. O. Ward and the Oxford Movei^ient (Macmillan), in which one or two of the lines of thought suggested in this essay are more fully developed. SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE It probably struck many persons, at the time of Cardinal Newman's death, that the general feeling of enthusiasm displayed on the occasion was quite out of proportion to the extent to which he or his writings are known. The thought that a great man had passed away, a high example of unworldliness been taken from us, possessed many who felt and knew little more than this. It used to be said that the great Duke of Wellington's influence for good while he lived was immense, even on those who knew nothing of him except that a great example of English courage and English sense of duty was still among us. And in the sphere of spiritual life Newman had a similar influence. The consequence has been, however, in the case of Cardinal Newman, that many who have written and spoken of him with genuine feeling — to whom the knowledge that the author of Lead, kindly Light, still lived and prayed at Birmingham was a real source of spiritual strength — have given a very im- perfect account of the man himself. There have indeed been not a few beautiful sketches by personal H 98 SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE friends and admirers. But he has also been described, both in print and in conversation, by epithets \Yhich have struck those who knew anything of his writings or of himself with a sense of their incompleteness and unsatisfactoriness. "Mystic," "giant controversialist," "learned theologian," "recluse" — such descriptions have seemed little nearer the mark than the discoveries of the few who have found fault, and have noted that he lacked imagination, and that his style was inferior to that of Mr. Stevenson. And yet perhaps the failure to characterise him rightly arose, in some cases, from the difficulty of the task — from the complexity of his nature. "Prose- poet " gives a fair description of Carlyle ; "A great thinker in verse" is a true account of Browning by an able critic ; but a many-sided genius like Newman's refuses to be explained or even suggested in a few words. And when we ask ourselves ivliy we are dissatisfied with the epithets in question, it is not easy in a moment to give the reasons. The descrip- tions contain some truth. There was in him some- thing of the mystic. He was full of j)ower in controversy. His mind had been absorbed in patristic theology. His life was one of seclusion. Yet these epithets, singly or collectively, quite fail to give any idea of him, or of the nature of his influence. We remember the story of the Buddhist who was asked to describe "Nirvana." "Was it annihilation?" "No," he answered impatiently. "Was it the beatific vision of the great Unknown ? " " No," with equal impatience ; and so on with further SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE 99 queries. "What was it then?" "How can you ask what is so plain ? . . . Nirvana is , . . Nirvanay And so in the present case. " Not a theologian, not a mystic, not a controversialist. Newman was Newman." However, as many have succeeded in bringing out sonfie at least of those distinctive elements which are felt in their combination by the majority of his readers, it may be worth while for each, according to his lights, to put his mite in contribu- tion. Let us look through the phrases I have cited and attempt to limit their "connotation " as applied to Newman. " Mystic ! " Yes ; he had a keen hold on the unseen world, on the mysterious teachings of con- science, on the shadow of God's presence in the human heart, and of God's wrath on the world at large. But the typical mystic lives in the clouds. He is not in touch with things around him. He is little interested in the microscopic inspection of the play of life about him. And what is to be said of the Cardinal from this point of view ? He loved to talk on current topics of the day. " He was inter- ested," says J. A. Froude, speaking of his Oxford days, " in everything which was going on in science, in politics, in literature." He could throw himself into spheres of action far removed from his own. " What do you think," a friend asked, " of Gurwood's Despatches of the Duke of Wellington f " " Think ? " he replied ; " they make one burn to have been a soldier ! " His senses were keenly alive to the small loo SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE things of earth. How delicately he weighs in Loss and Gain the respective attractions of sights, scents, and sounds ! Ascetic though he was, he chose the wdnes for his collesre cellar at Oriel. Vivid and real as was the world of religious mystery to him, he could give the closest attention to matters of secular detail. He could, in a moment, pass from the greatest matters to the smallest. Gregory the Great left his audience with ambassadors to teach the Roman choristers the notes of the " plain song " ; and so, too, Newman would leave the atmosphere of religious thought and meditation and betake himself to his violin. He is still remembered by the villagers at Littlemore as teaching them hymn-tunes in their boyhood.^ It was a recreation to him in later life to coach the Oratory boys for the Pincerna- or the Aulularia. He delighted in Miss Austen and Anthony Trollope. He enjoyed a good story from Fichcick. All this limits very much the a]3plication to him of the popular idea of a "mystic"; and yet all this is true of a man whose sense of religious mystery was surpassed by few. " Giant controversialist I " Certainly the original edition of the A2^ologia, the Letter in answer to Pusey's Eirenicon, and the Lectures on Anglican Difficulties are masterpieces of religious controversy ; and yet we can fancy the Cardinal smiling quietly if he heard himself spoken of as a '"' giant contro- versialist." " Tell me what books to read on such 1 Guardian, Sept. 3, 1890, p. 1358, ^ The Pincerna was Newman's expurgated version of the Eimuchus. SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE loi a subject," an old pupil asked liini. " AVhy do you ask me ? " was the answer ; " I know nothing about books." How — we can see it in every page of his works — he hated the pedantry and parade of con- troversy ! He would help inquirers, but he cared not to do the work of sledge-hammer argument. If it was done it was done for the sake of his friends and of anxious seekers after truth, and not for the sake of opponents whom he had no hope of convincing. He believed in the proverb, " He who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." He said fifty years ago that if views were clearly stated and candidly recognised, all controversy would be either superfluous or useless — superfluous to those who agreed in first principles, useless to those who differed fundamentally.^ With him, controversy was chiefly exposition and the pointing out of mis-statements. There was little of direct argument. " Griant con- troversialist ! " One can fancy the fate — there are stories on record as to the fate — of the pompous man who went to talk to him of controversy, as one great controversialist to another. One specimen of the class comes with notes, and books, and points for discussion on problems of education, but finds the Cardinal so absorbed with news about the " barley crop " in Norfolk that no other subject seems to interest him. Another presses him for a refutation of one of Mr. Gladstone's arguments against the Vatican decrees, but only succeeds in eliciting the reply that Mr. Gladstone is an old Oxford acquaint- ^ Cf. UnivcrsifAj Sermons, pp. 200, 201. I02 SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE ance, and lias been very kind to liim. And when the subject is insisted on, the conversation suddenly passes- — his visitor knows not how — to the oaks of Hawarden and the exercise of cuttino; dow^n trees. A third visitor finds himself engaged in Ihnine in a discussion as to the number of stoppages in the 1.30 train as contrasted with the 3.40, and has un- expectedly to employ his conversational talent in explaining his cross-country route, and the lines by which he came. And then there is the Oxford story of Newman's guest who introduces the " origin of evil " at dinner, and at once produces a dissertation — full of exact knowledge, and apparently delivered with earnest interest — as to the different ways of treating hot-house grapes, and the history of the particular grapes on the table before him. Such are the stories which are current : — not that really anxious inquirers who approached him with tact could ever have such a tale to tell ; with them he took infinite pains. But where the pomp of controversy was invoked by tactless or self-sufficient persons, he remembered the proverb, " Answer a fool according to his folly." And what of " learned theologian " ? An unques- tionable truth ; yet we cannot help seeing the Cardinal's smile again. Who that has read it can forget the irony of his description of the typical learned man, the historian, or archseologist, or theo- logian, whose learning has overgrown and stiffened the freedom of his mind ? It expresses the half- restrained irritation— half irritation, half amusement SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE 103 — of Cardinal Newman himself after a two hours' walk and talk with Mr. Casaubon. It may be read in a lecture delivered at Dublin, and is, perhaps, so little known as to be worth writino- down here. o Such readers are only possessed by their knowledge, not possessed of it \ nay, in matter of fact they are often even carried away by it, without any volition of their own. Recollect, the memory can tyrannise as well as the imagination. Derange- ment, I ])elieve, has been considered as a loss of conti'ol over the sequence of ideas. The mind, once set in motion, is hence- forth deprived of the power of initiation, and becomes the victim of a train of associations, one thought suggesting another, in the way of cause and effect, as if by a mechanical process, or some physical necessity. No one who has had experience of men of studious habits but must recognise the existence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of those who have over-stimulated the memory. In such persons reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman : once fairly started on any sub- ject whatever, they have no power of self-control ; they passively endure the succession of impulses which are evolved out of the original exciting cause ; they are passed on from one idea to another, and go steadily forward, plodding along one line of thought in spite of the amplest concessions of the hearer, or wandering from it in endless digression in spite of his remon- strances. Now, if, as is very certain, no one would envy the madman the glow and originality of his conceptions, why must we extol the cultivation of that intellect which is the prey, not indeed of barren fancies, but of barren facts, of random intrusions from without, though not of morbid imagina- tions from within 1 And, in thus speaking, I am not denying that a strong and ready memory is in itself a real treasure ; I am not disparaging a well -stored mind, though it be nothing besides, so that it be sober, any more than I would despise a bookseller's shop — it is of great value to others even when not so to the owner. Nor am I banishing — far from it — the pos- sessors of deep and multifarious learning from my ideal university ; they adorn it in the eyes of men : I do but say I04 SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE that they constitute no type of the results at which it aims ; that it is no great gain to the intellect to have enlarged the memory at the expense of faculties which are indisputably higher. Once more — " recluse ! " He lived in the Oratory and saw little or nothing of the world. But where were the gloominess, the sternness, the unsociableness which the word suggests ? As has been well said by a recent WTiter, his need of loneliness was fully bal- anced by his need of friendship. Cor ad cor loquitur was his motto, and it expressed the man. He loved to unbend among familiar friends. His sense of humour was of the keenest. His life-long habit, formed at Oxford, of living in intimacy with those whose objects were his objects, and who loved and understood him, had become to him a second nature. True, he despised the vanity of society. He felt the heartlessness of the world and withdrew from it. But he withdrew from the world only to give himself more fully to his friends. With his brilliancy and fastidiousness it might have been expected that the best society, with its ideal of exclusiveness and refinement, would in early days have had some attraction for him (so at least the late Canon Mozley seems to hint) ; but there was in him a far deeper force which made him shun all that approached to dissipation of mind, and put away all that savoured of ambition. But it was not in the spirit of a hermit. The sternness of a recluse, the austerity of his demeanour, the marked protest against the rest of the world which the conception conveys, were uncon- SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE 105 genial to liim. He was like his own St. Philip Neri. An intimate friend of his wrote, a few years ago, on his " naturalness," on the simplicity with which he laughed at his own failures — his "floors," as he called them. Though his natural refinement was intense, there was no trace of anything artificial or of afi'ected reserve. "A. B. is a man one can't talk to in one's shirt sleeves," he would complain. Just as the abstraction of the mystic was not his, nor the pedantry of the controversialist, so the pronounced rtle of a recluse was foreion to his nature. He loved to be as o other men. His prayer for himself and his friends was, he said, not for those heavy trials some saints have asked for — persecution, calumny, reproach — but simply that they might be overlooked, passed over as members of the crowd. ^ And thus we ofet from the limits which must be placed on the meaning of " mystic," " controversialist," " learned theologian," " recluse," as applied to New- man, a glimpse of one aspect of his distinctive charm — a kind of social charm rare in all classes, especially rare in one whose life-work is greatly that of the student. Men of letters and men of science are often known to men of the world as " book-worms," or regarded with distaste and some alarm as " very learned^ And with a certain amount of ignorance implied in the tone of such unsympathetic judgments there is a grain of truth in them. Such men are often eccentric, and are wanting in the sense of humour which should teach them to avoid talking " shop," ^ Sermons on Various Occasions, p. 241. io6 SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE and to find common ground of converse with the rest of the world. Newman was the antithesis to the " book- worm " or the " learned man " as conceived by the man of the world. Full though he was of know- ledge gained by observation and reading, he could put it entirely aside on occasion. He valued inter- course with his fellows more than mere study as a means of improvement, " Given the alternative," he once said, " in a University, of social life without study, or study without social life, I should unhesi- tatingly declare for the former, not the latter." ^ Life was for action, and action was determined by character. All his intellectual efforts were guided and limited by this thought. His sermons, his lectures, his philosophy at Oxford were all designed to meet the practical difficulties of those to whom he was a spiritual father. There was no rhetoric for rhetoric's sake ; he never preached abstract dogma except as helping the spiritual life, nor taught philosoj^hy as a speculative science, but solely as a practical help to those in doubt. And this brings me to another point which I can only touch on briefly. The word " philosopher " has been used of him less often than the epithets I have referred to. It has been used by some of the best critics ; yet it has been, by implication, denied by men who were in close contact with him. Dean Stanley in his well-known estimate of the Oxford movement never once refers to the Oxford University sermons, which were, at that time, the embodiment 1 This sentiiuent is also expressed iu the Idea of a University, 2nd edition, p. 205. SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE 107 of Newman's philosophy. And one who opens these sermons will find nothing in the form of a philo- sophical treatise; nothing about the origin of ideas, about the categories, about the distinction between the pure and the practical reason. Yet those men of acute and religious mind who went to hear him, in doubt and trouble as to man's risfht to confident belief in the very being of a God and in the hope of immortality, came away reassured. Does philosophy require a formal and technical treatise, completely elaborated, on the human faculties and on meta- physics ? If so, Newman was no philosopher. Is he a philosopher who takes in at a glance the root- problems as to what practical beliefs are reasonable in matters of deepest moment to each individual ; who treats these problems in such a way as to help those in need, the deepest thinkers if so be ; who treats them informally, suggestively, incompletely, seldom using technical language ; who almost pro- fesses that he is not philosophising but only reminding us of the asseverations of sober common sense ; who refrains from entering on questions which cannot help the action of practical life, but who gives to more systematic writers the groundwork, if they care to build on it, of a philosophy of faith, unsurpassed for breadth and depth, which he does not fully elaborate himself? If such a man is a philosopher — a religious philosopher — Newman was a great philosopher. His philosophy was like the rest of his work, the expression of his personality. It was the expression of his own deep reflections, as they came io8 SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE to him ; of answers almost as he would have oiven them in conversation. When a conclusion was obvious he had not the pedantry to draw it. When it would offend some and help others, again he would not draw it. He gave the materials for it which would be of service to the one class ; he refrained from making the statement which would scare the other. Where a professional philosopher would press for a logical explanation, he would perhaps suddenly "shut up," and break off an argument which had really done its work, and pass on to something else instead of engaging in fruitless logomachy. When he had shown in the Grammar of Assent some of the strongest instances of clear and confident religious conclusions, which certain minds attain to without recognising more than mere suggestions of their real premises, he foresaw the indignant objections of the incurable logician. But he had really said enough for his purpose, which was to show that such infer- ences in untrained minds may be practically reliable ; and that was sufficient. He did not want to argue o with the logician ; he wanted to satisfy the simple mind that it was on the right road. So instead of an elaborate answer we find the foUowinor words : o " Should it be objected that this is an illogical exercise of reason, I answer that since it actually brings them to a right conclusion, and was intended to bring them to it, if logic finds fault with it so much the worse for logic." ^ In a similar spirit — though this is not an instance ^ Grammar of Assent, 5th edition, p. 403. SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE 109 from his philosophy — when years ago he had strung togjether a catena of Catholic doctrines from Bull, Andrewes, and other Anglican divines, old Oxford men relate how he foresaw the objection, " But other passages from them tell a different tale." This opens an endless argument on Anglican inconsistency — endless and hopeless. It was enough for him to have got a rough catena — enough for the past, as much as could possibly be expected. He had never thought, as more sanguine men had, that Anglican tradition could be proved consistent ; all he hoped was to show a tradition, feeble enough at times, damaged by Protestant influences, yet never actually broken. Let the future be consistent. Let the dead past bury its dead. But he could not say all this in hearing of the Puseys and Palmers who thought otherwise. He must not break up his party by his own pessimism. And so he gave the following characteristic reply : " To say this is to accuse them of inconsistency, which I leave it for their enemies to do." And so on throughout. What DoUinger styled Newman's " subjectivity " in philosophy, though the present writer does not believe that it diminishes the real objective value of his thought, was, in the sense of personal element, most marked. A recent critic has spoken of the Graimmar of Assent as a treatise showing how things may be taken for granted. There cannot be a greater mistake, though the subjective mode of expression in some passages partly accounts for it. Newman shows that all begin with first principles which cannot be logically proven. no SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE He sees in himself religious first principles of which his nature assures him. He sees that those who cry out " You are taking them for granted " are them- selves assuming a number of other first principles. A man who denies that human nature is normally Christian assumes it to be something different. He starts with one conception of human nature as the Christian starts with another. A man who denies that conscience reveals sin, in the Christian sense of the word, starts with his own different impression of what conscience conveys, and proceeds to account for his impression as being due to an offence against society, or against law, or to an inherited feeling resulting from past experiences of general utility. Cardinal Newman's conclusion is not " We all assume unwarrantably," but rather ''You say I assume ; I can at once retort that you assume ; but in fact I do not assume ; I see with certainty."^ Or, as he expressed it in a letter to myself written during his last years, " The religious mind must always master much which is unseen to the non-religious. ... I can't allow that a religious man has no more evidence necessarily than a non-religious." " The contrast between the arbitrary assumptions of the Agnostic and the first principles which a reli- gious mind adopts rightly and with certainty, and the tests whereby they may be distinguished, were subjects which exercised his mind, as we see from his last ^ Cf. Dcvelopnient of Religious Error, p. 459. - Tlie Cardinal gave me permission in 1885 to make public use of any part of this letter, which is for the most jiart a discussion on the nature of religious knowledge. SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE in publication in 1885, on The Development of Religious Error, to the very evening of life. But it would carry me too far to attempt here an analysis of that essay. The personal element then, both in style and in matter, is most prominent. In the former this is the result of his object and his method, of helping others by his own personal influence, and by putting himself before them. In the latter it is an illustration of the principle which he maintains, that " egotism is true modesty." A strong man in fully revealing his own mind — its struggles and its victories — aids weaker minds in time of trial and difficulty. Briefly it may be said that two points give the key to much of his work and influence, whether in philosophy, or in preaching, or in religious contro- versy, or in the guidance of individual consciences, — the power over others of his personality, and the exercise of that power with absolute simplicity to make men better than he found them. And as the peculiar power of his personality was that it appealed to such different minds, so, according to the bent and genius of each, his influence as a whole was most various. His was not simply a spiritual influence, as John Wesley's ; not merely that of the dry light of philosophy, as Kant's, or Coleridge's in our own country ; nor of a brilliant converser and critic, as Johnson's ; nor of intellectual and imaginative power, as Carlyle's ; nor of the religious poet, as Keble's ; nor of the Christian counsellor to the men and women of the world, as Fenelon's or St. Francis of Sales'. It was to each man one or more of these 112 SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE kinds of influence ; and thus it was to all a combin- ation of them. Some of the most remarkable published testimonies to his early power over others come from men as different from each other as Mr. J. A. Froude, Principal Shairp, Dean Church, and Mr. Mark Pattison. While he influenced intellectualists like Pattison and Froude, and men of high mental gifts like Church, intellect was not in the least a necessary qualification for the most intimate friendship with him. This fact, which aroused Mr. Mark Pattison's supercilious contempt, was part of Newman's peculiar strength. Littlemore was no assemblao;e of intel- lectual lights ; it was a community of religious and devoted friends — some, as Dalgairns, men of special mental gifts, others not so. Men living in the great world also, taking part in politics or in public aff'airs, leant on him and appealed to him, as well as those whose life was in abstract thought or religious seclusion. To mention only a few and life -long friends, Lord Blachford, Lord Emly, and Mr. Hope Scott were as thorough in their personal allegiance to him as Dr. Pusey or Dean Church. He himself has described that assemblage of qualities which constitute the perfection of University refine- ment, which make up the idea of a " gentleman," if not exactly in the popular English sense, still in the highest sense of the perfection of the intellectual and social nature.^ He tells us that men may have those ^ The well-known description I refer to comes in Idea of a University, 2nd edition, pp. 305-309. SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE 113 qualities and yet not be Christians ; or they may have them and use the attractiveness they give simply for good. " They may subserve the education," he writes, "of a St. Francis of Sales or a Cardinal Pole ; they may be the limits of the virtue of a Shaftesbury or a Gibbon. Basil and Julian were fellow-students at the schools of Athens ; and one became a Saint and Doctor of the Church, the other her scoffing and relentless foe." Newman had the qualities he describes, — they were a great part of his magnetism ; they pervaded his writing and his conversation ; and he used the influence they gave as St. Francis or Basil would have used it, but with greater variety of gifts than either, and over a more heterogeneous collection of disciples. Beginning, then, at Oxford among young men, his equals in age many of them, passing into the com- parative obscurity of the Birmingham Oratory, living there unseen by the world at large, holding for many years no position of official importance, his personality, in a manner so subtle that it is hard fully to account for it, made itself felt over the whole country. Lead- ing the simple consistent life of a priest, ever ready to help those who came to him or wrote to him for advice, shunning the crowd, welcoming each individual, helping each according to his character to love God and to realise the true end of life, never seeking influence for his own sake, thinking only of those he was helping, grateful for their trust, but deeply feeling its sacredness before God and his responsibility for the use he made of it, throwing himself into the 114 SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE position of each of those who consulted him as if each were the only one, he gained steadily in immediate influence as life went on ; while the power of a devoted life, as a witness to the unseen world, made its way to the crowds who form public opinion. It would be hard to estimate the number of those who have sought his help, during the last forty years, on their road to the Catholic Church; and many more have been guided by him in other matters. In his measure, and allowing for the diff"erence of gifts and circumstances, he carried out the kind of work done by his own St. Philip, which, early in his Catholic life, he had spoken of as the only work he had a call to do. The Cardinal's chief instruments were writing and correspondence, the Saint chose direct conversation ; but the spirit of the work was the same in both cases. As St. Philip, by his love for those who leant upon him, and by his personal character, drew all men to him for guidance and advice, winning respect and esteem from Jews and Infidels as well as members of the Church, so did Newman, by the power of his personality, find him- self the centre of influence among vast numbers, priests and laymen, non-Catholics as well as Catholics. The simple priest was by the popular voice called Apostle of Rome ; the English Oratorian was, as a representative critic has expressed it, canonised at his death by the voice of the English people. " Whether or not," he wrote early in his Catholic life, " I can do anything at all in St. Philip's way, at least I can do nothing in any other. Neither by my SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE 115 habits of life, nor by vigour of age, am I fitted for the task of authority, or of rule, or of initiation." And what was St. Philip's way ? Let us read Newman's beautiful account of it. It describes his aspiration in 1852 ; it describes the spirit of his work done in the Catholic Church forty years later. He lived in an age as traitorous to the interests of Catholi- cism as any that preceded it, or can follow it. He lived at a time when pride mounted high, and the senses held rule ; a time when kings and nobles never had more of state and homage, and never less of personal responsibility and peril ; when mediaeval ■\Wnter was receding, and the summer sun of civilisation was bringing into leaf and flower a thousand forms of luxurious enjoyment; when a new world of thought and beauty had opened upon the human mind, in the discovery of the treasures of classic literatiu-e and art. He saw the great and the gifted, dazzled by the Enchantress, and drinking in the magic of her song ; he saw the high and the wise, the student and the artist, painting, and poetry, and sculpture, and music, and architecture, drawn within her range and circling round the abyss ; he saw heathen forms mounting thence, and forming in the thick air : — all this he saw, and he perceived that the mischief was to be met, not with argument, not Avith science, not vtdth protests and warnings, not by the recluse or the preacher, but by means of the great counter-fascination of purity and truth. He was raised up to do a work almost peculiar in the Church : not to be a Jerome Savonarola, though Philip had a true devo- tion towards him and a tender memory of his Florentine house ; not to be a St. Carlo, though in his beaming countenance Philip had recognised the aureole of a saint ; not to be a St. Ignatius, wrestling with the foe, though Philip was termed the Society's bell of call, so many subjects did he send to it ; not to be a St. Francis Xavier, though Philip had longed to shed his blood for Christ in India with him ; not to be a St. Caietan, or hunter of soiils, for Philip preferred, as he expressed it, tranquilly to cast in his net to gain them ; he preferred to yield to the stream, and ii6 SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE direct the current — which he could not stop — of science, litera- ture, art, and fashion, and to sweeten and to sanctify what God had made very good and man had spoilt. And so he contemplated as the idea of his mission, not the propagation of the faith, nor the exposition of doctrine, nor the catechetical schools : whatever was exact and systematic pleased him not; he put from him monastic rule and authoritative speech, as David refused the armour of his king. No ; he would be but an ordinary individual priest as others, and his weapons should be but unaffected humility and unpretending love. All he did was to be done by the light, and fervour, and convincing eloquence of his personal character and his easy con- versation. He came to the Eternal City and he sat himself down there, and his home and his family gradually gi'eAV up around him, by the spontaneous accession of materials from Avithout. He did not so much seek his own as draw them to him. He sat in his small room, and they in their gay worldly dresses, the rich and well-born as well as the simple and illiterate, crowded into it. In the mid-heats of summer, in the frosts of winter, still was he in that Ioav and narrow cell at San Girolamo, reading the hearts of those who came to him, and curing their souls' maladies by the very touch of his hand. ... In the words of his biographer, " he Avas all things to all men. He suited himself to noble and ignoble, young and old, subjects and prelates, learned and ignorant, and received those who were strangers to him Avith singular benignity, and embraced them with as much love and charity as if he had been a long while expecting them. When he was called upon to be merry he was so : if there was a demand upon his sympathy he Avas equally ready. He gave the same welcome to all, caressing the poor equally with the rich, and wearying himself to assist all to the utmost limits of his power. In consequence of his being so accessible and Avilling to receive all comers many Avent to him every day, and some continued for the space of thirty, nay, forty years, to visit him very often both morning and evening, so that his room went by the agreeable nickname of the Home of Christian mirth. Nay, people came to him not only from all parts of Italy, but from France, Spain, Germany, and all Christendom ; and even the Infidels and JeAvs Avho had ever SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE 117 any communication with him revered him as a holy man." The first families of Rome, the Massimi, the Aldobrandini, the Colonna, the Altieri, the Vitelleschi, were his friends and his penitents. Nobles of Poland, grandees of Spain, knights of Malta, could not leave Rome without coming to him. Cardinals, archbishops and bishops were his intimates : Federigo Borromeo haunted his room and got the name of "Father Philip's soul." The Cardinal- Archbishops of Verona and Bologna wrote books in his honour. Pope Pius the Fourth died in his arms. Lawyers, painters, musicians, physicians, it was the same too with them. Baronius, Zazzara, and Ricci left the law at his bidding and joined his congregation, to do its work, to write the annals of the Church, and to die in the odour of sanctity. Palestrina had Father Philip's ministrations in his last moments. Animuccia hung about him during life, sent him a message after death, and was conducted by him through Purgatory to Heaven. And who was he, I say, all the while, but an humble priest, a stranger in Rome, with no distinction of family or letters, no claim of station or of office, great simply in the attraction with which a Divine Power had gifted him ? And yet thus humble, thus un- ennobled, thus empty-handed, he has achieved the glorious title of Apostle of Rome. And, in drawing to a conclusion, the present writer feels how much he has not even touched on which was essential to the Cardinal's influence. That unique gift which made one who was no orator the greatest preacher of his age ; his faithfulness to his friends — " faithful and true," as he loved to say of Our Lord ; his power of resentment of injury done to those he loved, or to his cause ; the attractiveness which came of his sensitiveness, even of over-sensi- tiveness ; the combination of far - seeing and dis- passionate wisdom with keen and quickly - roused emotion ; his tenderness for and sympathy with the distressed in faith, which made on-lookers, even ii8 SOME ASPECTS OF NEWMAN'S INFLUENCE fear, at times, lest, in meeting them half-way, he was losing sight of the very principles he was in reality protecting ; the very " defects of his qualities," which his closest friends loved almost as they did his virtues — which made him so truly human amid his greatness ; these were all part of him. And the thought of them makes me fall back upon the description with which I began as the only true one, that as Nirvana is Nirvana, so Newman was Newman. PHILALETHES SOME WORDS ON A MISCONCEPTION OF CARDINAL NEWMAN It is not to be expected at the present hour that the question of miracles should receive very patient or serious consideration from those to whom the judg- ment of what has been called the Zeitgeist is a final test of truth. The present age, instead of learning effectually the one true lesson which Agnosticism suggests — how much there is in the supernatural region which we can neither prove nor disprove— has passed rapidly to a new Gnosticism, and con- siders direct Providence or Miracle not only unproved, but utterly at variance with the conclusions of physical and critical science. Consequently the title-page of a work published not long after Cardinal Newman's death, " Philomythus, an Anti- dote against Credulity. A discussion of Cardinal Newman's ' Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles,' by Edwin Abbott, D.D., late Head -Master of the City of London School," is not calculated to astonish any one. Nor would the present writer have been surprised to find in it a stringent and even con- PHILALETHES temptuous criticism of Cardinal Newman's conclusions. But the wholesale condemnation of the man, which it contains, the systematic, though no doubt uninten- tional, misrepresentations by which this condemnation is supported, the charges which involve nothing less than accusations of habitual dishonesty in dealing with evidence, are graver matters. These charges are avowedly based on only a " partial examination" of the Cardinal's works ; ^ they are preferred with an intemperate violence of language — "foulness and falsehood," " immoral shiftiness," " insolent aggres- siveness," are specimens of the phrases thrown about — and they are such in their details as would have been simply impossible to one who knew either the man or his works intimately, however much he dissented from the views which those w^orks contain. Coming from a writer of known antecedents they can only be regarded as remarkable instances of the heat- ing and blinding force of a strong bias. The union of Christianity with belief in the miraculous is in this writer's eyes the most disastrous obstacle to the cause of religion ; Catholicism is committed to that union • Newman is the most influential name among Catholics in this land. Little dreaming — apparently not able to comprehend — the extent and depth of reflection, the wide vision from different points of view, which were characteristic of the man he assails, he seizes on the work whose title promises to be most directly to his purpose — the Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles — and goes through it, without to the end under- ^ See Philomythus, p. 44. PHILALETHES standing what Newman's attitude towards miracles was. He treats his phrases and sentences as a man unacquainted with the art of watch-making would behave, if by way of ascertaining how a watch was constructed, he should hastily pull it wheel from wheel, and should suppose that scrutiny of some of the fragments taken at random, would explain to him the mechanism of the whole. By a similar process of hastily setting down passages from Newman's writings, without taking the pains to enter into his mind or to understand their organic connection, the writer has accomplished the feat of covering most of his 259 pages with an assault not on Newman, but on a lay figure, first constructed and then demolished by himself. True, he has clothed it in some of Newman's language, but as in the case of most persons who are burnt in efiigy, the clothes are the only, and not very essential, point of re- semblance. I should have thought that — quite apart from any other reason — one broad consideration would have suggested to this critic that there must be a flaw somewhere in his theory. Newman lived a long life ; he was often misrepresented ; all did not share the extraordinary enthusiasm of his Oxford disciples. There is perhaps at the present moment in some quarters a reaction from the almost universal ad- miration which has lasted in England since the publication of the A'pologia. There is in some quarters a tendency to impatience at what is thought to be his over -subtlety, his subjectivity, his rejection 122 PHILALETHES of broad and bold statements as inexact, his over- scrupiilousness, bis strong feeling — repugnant to an age in which critical and physical science have done so much — that the highest knowledge is independent of the intellectual achievements of any particular time, and finally, at the superstition attributed to the creed he ultimately adopted. Such a tendency is only a return to a view commonly taken of him years ago at Oxford by a certain school ; but those who maintained it and who had also the opportunity of knowing him, pronounced, both intellectually and morally, a judgment quite inconsistent with the statements in this book. No one could be more opposed to his conclusions or to his subjectivity than J. A. Froude ; no one has been less in sympathy with the subtlety — the " tortuousness " he called it — of Newman's sensitive intellectual nature than Dean Stanley ; few men had less doctrinal sympathy with Newmanism than Principal Shairp, the friend of Tait. Yet read Froude's testimony to the moral depth of Newman's teaching and to the nobility of his personal character in the Short Studies ; read Stanley's words in reference to the ethical elevation of his sermons in his Essay on the " Oxford School" ; read the noble tribute paid by Shau^p to his influence on the moral tone of Oxford, and you realise that those who least agreed with him entertained, where they had any right to speak from real knowledge, a con- ception of him utterly opposed to the conclusions of this book. Kingsley was allowed by his own admirers to have overstepped the mark ; and this PHILALETHES 123 writer, by the pertinacity and detail of his accusations, oversteps Kingsley. He is running counter to a judgment universal among those who have had a claim to speak ; and in personal judgments, as in religious, it is dangerous to violate the rule " qiiod sempei\ quod uhique, quod ah omnibus" The modern Yankee has, I believe, expressed the same truth in language no less forcible, if less dignified : " You can take in some of the people for all of the time, and you can take in all of the people for some of the time ; but you can't take in all of the people for all of the time " : and consequently the very first impression produced by many of Dr. Abbott's charges, once their gravity is under- stood, is that parts of his book must be either not serious or not fair. He must be prepared to find them read by very many in much the same spirit as Whately's ingenious tour de force, which establishes the fact that Napoleon I. never existed. However, Newman's writings are not familiar to the majority, who are, consequently, at the mercy of such a WTiter as this. I have already pointed out how little real knowledo;e there was in the chorus of admiration which we heard at the time of his death ; and in such circumstances the crowd is ready to pass rapidly from the cry of " Hosanna " to that of " Crucify him." It seems necessary, then, to note in some salient instances the contrast between the real Newman and the mythical figure depicted in these pages. 1 2 4 PHIL ALE THES The writer's general view may be summarised thus. Newman's religion was primarily one of fear ; ^ there was scarcely any element of love in his religious temper- or in his faith.^ His "conscience was a horror,"* his expressions of self-clistrust were signs that he suspected himself of being shifty and insincere, and it is a serious question whether he was not really hollow at heart,^ though the writer finally refuses to believe this. He is represented as throwing himself into the superstitions of the Catholic Church as a means of escape from the terrors and horrors of his con- science. So much for Newman's fundamental religion. But the bulk of the book is directed towards showing hoiv he advocated the beliefs to which his fears had led him ; and here he is described as using language with scarcely any regard for truth, with special plead- ing, systematic, habitual, and barefaced, though ex- tremely clever and effective with the dupes of his fascination.*^ His great object was to deceive others, having first deceived himself, into thinking that his conclusions were logically tenable.^ With this end he devised his theory of belief ; ^ with this end he altered or suppressed inconvenient phrases in the evidence for facts he wanted to prove. ^ With this end he cultivated for the purpose of obscuring the truth, a use of words " verging on immoral shiftiness," and studied all the arts of rhetorical deceit, ^° which the writer exposes at great length. He was habitually un- 1 e.g., p. 35. - p. 38. '■^ p. 81. ^ p. 37. '* pp. 41, 42, 82. ^ Cf. chapters 8 and 9, 2}nssim. ^ ibid. ^ pp. 74 seq. » pp. 4 scq., 14, 207. i" pp. 211 seq. PHILALETHES 125 truthful with himself/ aud his great power in the use of language furnished a " grace " of expression " calculated to conceal the underlying foulness and falsehood" of his method. This is, I think, a true summary of the indictment, which is however qualified by occasional assertions which are incapable of being reconciled with the detailed charges in the l)ook, that he was aiming at sincerity, and that he was striving with all his might to be honest. If he was striving he is certainly not represented as striving with any success. So much, then, for the general accusation, of which his view of miracles is a particular instance. Newman was bent on accepting miracles however weak the evidence ; and if the evidence would not do as he found it, with careful carelessness he omitted or altered words in the documents he cited, so as to make it appear stronger than it really was. At the root of all this is a great psychological mistake, which must be shortly noticed before special instances are considered. The writer when preparing his brief takes note of certain peculiar intellectual gifts in Newman ; but he quite misses the guiding principle in his employment of these gifts. He sees mental peculiarities, but he misses the candid and deep intellectual insight which was essential to their true nature ; and consequently he identifies these gifts and qualities with a character diametrically opposed to Newman's. He sees truly an extraordinary subtlety of mind, great rhetorical power, a changeableness in ^ pp. 211 seq. 126 PHILALETHES the use of words, a power of evasion in argument, a method which leads him on occasion summarily to put aside detailed considerations that tell against his con- clusions, a conception of an ever-present Providence, which to thinkers of a certain order must appear superstitious. But while the man who had these characteristics was beyond all things truthful with himself, and sensitively alive to every fact which told against his conclusions, while he used his intellectual gifts in analysing, arranging, representiug to his readers the perplexed and intricate web of the universe of spiritual and phenomenal fact as he saw it, with its apparently irreconcilable contradictions ; — though at the same time he indicated the direction in which he looked for the harmony which he believed to be real though unperceived ; — the writer of this book pictures him as intent only on bending facts to his purpose and doing the work of a special pleader. Yet this concep- tion of Newman contradicts what is plain on the very surface of his writings. Far from taking pleasure in representing evidence as persuasive, he is constantly reminding us of its insuflBciency, as contrasted with the numerous considerations not in evidence, which determine our deepest convictions. His own most intense belief was in God's existence ; and yet to him it was most fraught with difficulty, most hard to justify by evidence.^ He disparages the argument from causation ; " he is not satisfied with the argument from design ; ^ he looks on the world at large (apart from ^ Aiwlocjia, p. 239. " Chammar of Assent, fourth edition, p. 66. ^ University Sermons, p. 70. PHILALETHES 127 the human conscience) as " giving the lie " to this great truth of which his whole being was full.^ Again, the Catholic Church was to him a great fact which, as viewed in the light of the anticipations raised by con- science, was in some sense its own evidence. Yet, instead of idealising its history to make it persuasive, as some ecclesiastical historians have done, — finding- Popes perfect, scandals absent, popular Catholic religion admirable, — he notes with cold scrutiny all the flaws in the " earthen vessels " in which the treasure of faith has been preserved. Popular religion must be, he has said, corrupt.^ Malaria is at the foot of St. Perter's rock.^ Popes themselves have been, on occasion, he sees, a scandal to Christen- dom. Catholics are often apparently no better — perhaps apparently they are worse — than the non- Catholics by whom they are surrounded.^ Similarly when defending the simple unquestioning faith of a Christian in God and Christ, he sees each point that can be urged against it — how it seems to violate the primary laws of inquiry and reasoning, how hard at first sight it is to distinguish it from bigotry or sense- less credulity. Indeed, so far is he from being a special pleader that, by comparison, Mr. Leslie Stephen's estimate seems discerning, that he held that the human mind can prove contradictory positions, and was thus a sceptic. This view, at least, recognises a marked feature in his method which the other simply fails to account for. ^ Apologia, p. 241. - See also Difficulties of Anglicans, i. pp. 229 seq. ^ Ibid. ii. p. 297. * Essay on Bevelopment, p. 322. 128 PHILALETHES No doubt, here and there, the connecting link and true interpretation of his deej)est convictions, and of the facts' which seemed to tell against them, broke upon Newman with comparative clearness ; and then his rhetorical gift gave him unsurpassed power in present- ing forcibly to others the trains of thought which had come to him through years of struggle with difficulty. And a part of this peculiar power lay in a very delicate appreciation of the effect of each of his words on the reader's mind. He made his reader feel the difficulty which had so long troubled himself, and then brought the solution home with well-calculated force. But to confuse the pathway he made, and showed to others, from fact to fact, each recognised with scrupulous ex- actness, and from these facts to ultimate convictions, due to what were to him an overwhelming crowd of unmistakable truths witnessed by the human con- science and by experience, with a clever and shifty progress towards a desired conclusion, with little care for exactness as to fact, and great readiness to see things as he wished, is one of the most curious identi- fications of opposite methods and opposite intellectual and moral temperaments which the present writer has ever met. The very lines on Newman's face, the very expression of his features told of w^hat his writing bears detailed witness to, — his critical, careful, con- scientious recognition of all that was perplexing and apparently contradictory ; as the smile which would break forth now and again had in it something which spoke of the vision of the unseen, which promised an ultimate solution, in another world, but never in this. PHILALETHES 129 And even if this vision appeared to some — as to J. A. Froude — to be mixed up witli the delusions of super- stition, and calcuhited to vitiate his conclusions, the devotion to truth which characterised both his critical and his mystical side could not even by them be un- noticed, if they knew really the man or his writings.^ And with the clue afforded by the habits of thought I have been considering, it is easy to under- stand that what this writer takes for something- like " immoral shiftiness " in language was really only the attempt, in view of the extraordinary delicacy of his insight into the complex problems he considered, to express more and more accurately truths which he always held to transcend words. Truths simple to others were complex to him, because he recognised all the assumptions, prepossessions, and previous ques- tions which they involved. His self-criticism and the criticisms of others perpetually led him to verbal alterations. Many such have a history well known to persons now living, which I cannot here enter into, but Avhich throws an amusing light on the elaborate and suspicious exposure in this book of artifice, where no artifice whatever was intended. His subtlety was the subtlety of the highest and most critical fastidiousness, and his changes of expression all had a definite drift towards a conclusion more and more clearly seen, but which he never hoped to express quite to his satisfac- tion. His power of evasion was used in protection of the true proportion of an argument as a whole. Truth ^ "Newman's whole life had been a struggle for truth" (Froude, Short Shtdies, iv. p. 326). K I30 PHILALETHES would suffer, and not gain from undue space being devoted to what was minor and irrelevant. And the same sense of due proportion led him to feel that difficulties in the details of a proof which was over- whelming in the mass, should be put aside. These peculiarities in Newman's method were really insepar- able from a very fine sense of fact; though some of his facts would be, in the eyes of a sceptic, the delusions of mysticism. And if they were used to prevent ir- relevant facts from being unduly prominent with his readers, this was due not to deception, but to an extraordinarily wide and candid vision in himself. Passing now to the broad and definite charges preferred in the book, it is a significant fact at start- ing that the author has curiously missed the object of the very essay he is criticising, and ought to be well acquainted with, the Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles. He has treated it as what he expected to find it — as a polemical and critical essay professing to justify belief in miracles in general, and in certain miracles in particular. Now I think that any one who has read the essay without this initial preconcep- tion will have seen that it is not a polemical, but in some sense a philosophical essay ; that it is not designed to prove the miraculous or particular miracles to the world at large, but rather to trace the rela- tions of belief in the miraculous to various ethical tempers, and various conceptions of Christianity : and, still more, to exhibit in concrete instances, the attitude towards the evidence for miracles which is natural and logical for one who accepts the Catholic view of PHILALETHES God's active Providence in the visible church, with all its corollaries. But before enlarging on this, I must deal with the previous questions of which I have spoken. First, as to the statement that Cardinal Newman's religion was a religion of fear — that " the love of God as it is described in the New Testament appears to have been either absent or quite latent in him," and that the absence of love " was not compensated by any profound trust in God's infinite justice and righteousness " {Philomythus, p. 38), — it is contradicted so fully throuo-hout his sermons and other ethical writings, both Anglican and Catholic, that it becomes a curious question which of them his critic has studied carefully. A recent writer confronted him with a passage from the Dream of Gerontius, and the critic, to wdiom the passage was evidently new, replied that that only referred to an anticipation of the love of God in the next world. That Newman recognised that there is no realisation of what God is without fear — and deep fear — is true enough. But it was this very realis- ation of what God is which gave to Newman's love a depth and intensity which it could not otherwise have had. His fear was a necessary condition to a love as much deeper than the easy-going confidence advocated in these pages, as God is, even to our finite appre- hension, lovable beyond the best of men. His position is exactly defined in his sermon on " Love the one thing needful," in which, after describing " a system of fear," he says "it is not religion, which really consists not in the mere fear of God but in His love ; 132 PHILALETHES or, if it be religion, it is but the religion of devils." I do not think it will repay us to dwell long on a charge which can only be refuted as fully as it really admits of being refuted by more extracts than I have space for. I will content myself with setting down one passage from his sermons which gives some indication of the feelings which possessed him. The contemplation of [God] and nothing but it is able fully to open and relieve the mind ; to unlock, occupy, and fix our affections. We may indeed love created things Avith great intenseness, but such affection when disjoined from the love of the Creator is like a stream running in a narrow channel — impetuous, vehement, turbid. The heart runs out, as it were, only at one door ; it is not an expanding of the whole man. Created natures cannot open to us or elicit the ten thousand mental senses which belong to us, and through Avhich Ave realh' live. None but the presence of our Maker can enter us, for to none besides can the whole heart in all its thoughts and feelings be unlocked and subjected ! " Behold," He says, " I stand at the door and knock ; if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come unto him, and Avill sup Avith him, and he Avith Me." " My Father Avill love him, and We Avill come unto him, and make Our abode Avith him." "God has sent forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts." " God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things." It is this feeling of simple and absolute confidence and communion Avhich soothes and satisfies those to Avhom it is vouchsafed. We knoAV that even our nearest friends enter into us but partially, and hold intercourse Avith us only at times, Avhereas the consciousness of a perfect and enduring presence, and it alone, keeps our heart open. WithdraAV the object on which it rests and it will relapse again into its con- finement and constraint ; and in proportion as it is limited, either to certain seasons or to certain affections, the heart is straitened and distressed. If it be not ovei'-bold to say it — He Avho is infinite alone can be its measure. He alone can ansAver to that mysterious assemblage of feelings and thoughts Avhich it has Avithin it. — {Parochial Sermons, \6\. v. p. 318.) PHIL A LE THES 1 33 What is to be said of this? Did St. Augustine himself ever convey the sense of deeper, more absorb- ing, more overwhelming love of God ; or of more trustful confidence in His guidance and protection ? And this is the man of whom " absence of love " is gravely alleged. Let us now turn to the question of Newman's theory of religious belief. The writer seizes on the phrase " belief on a probability," which Newman has used in the Apologia and elsewhere, and of which I shall have something to say presently. He sees in it only an artifice for justifying belief in any super- stition, for which any reason can be alleged. Con- sequently he springs to the conclusion that it is a very dangerous doctrine — whatever it may be. There is no love in Newman's belief, he maintains ; and religious certainty is not with him connected either with moral action, or with religious love ; it is all a matter of probability. What is to be said of this ? The student of Newman knows that he has been charged with connecting faith too closely with moral goodness and its reward ; that his theory of probability is an attempt to analyse not only a connection between Faith and Love, but the proposition that Faith is in a true sense based on Love. " Love is the parent of Faith," he writes in Tract 85. And his critic, resting on a few isolated passages which he has not understood, blames Newman for denying what he may be considered to have affirmed almost too emphatically. I will place Newman's account of himself and his critic's account of him on these matters in parallel columns, italicising 134 PHILALETHES portions. And I will take my representation of New- man's mind from his most suggestive volume on the subject — the University Sermons — which he devoted almost exclusively to the analysis of religious belief and the investigation of its basis, as I have said elsewhere, though the author seems to be unaware of this, and amusingly corrects my word " exclusively," and suggests that I meant " extensively" (p. 2). Philomythus. Cardinal Newmax. The emotions of Hope, The safeguard of Faith is Love, Faith, seem to he altogether a right state of heart. This it is which gives it birth ; it also disciplines it. . . . It is holi- ness, or chdifitlncss, or the new creation, or the spiritual mind, however we Avord it, which is the quickening and illuminating jjrincijyle of true faith, giving it eyes and hands and feet. It is Love which foims it out of the rude chaos into an image of Christ. . . . . " Ye believe not because ye are not of My sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." .... What is here said about exercises of Reason in m-der to believing ? "What is there not said of synqnUhetic feeling, of nevmess of spirit, of Love ? — ( University Sermons, new edition, p. 235.) Take aoain the followinsi; : — Philomythus. Cardinal Newman. "We are to believe in God It is written in the and in Christ on the same Prophets, "And they shall be out of court, to have no place, no right to say a word, in the formation of religious certi- tude, nor is the '■^acting" to he moral action, beneficent action, that kind of action which ap- pears to be contemplated in the words, " If any man do his will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." It is to be a piling up of prob- abilities, a supplying oneself with a logical basis (p. 81). PHILALETHES 135 grounds as we are to believe in the liquefaction of St, Januarius' blood ; only in the former case the probabilities are by some mysterious process (not illus- trated by anything in Nature) converted into a " certitude," whereas in the latter case they remain untransmuted, merely " beliefs " or " pious opinion." .... Practical atheism being that state of mind in which a man believes in God without a basis of Love, Newman, if in his heart of hearts he had adopted this theory, would have been a practical atheist (pp. 81-2). all taught of God." Every man, therefore, that hath heard and hath learnt of the Father, cometh unto Me. It is the new life and not the natural reason which leads the soul to Christ. Does a child trust his parents because he has proved to himself that they are such, and that they are able and desirous to do him good, or from the instinct of affection ? AYe believe because we love. How plain a truth ! AVhat gain is it to be wise above that which is written 1 Why, men, deface with your minute and arbitrary philosophy the simplicity, the reality, the glorious liberty of the inspired teaching 1 — (University Sermons, p. 236.) I have said enough on this head. One who has so " partially examined " Newman as to attack him for denying what were central and emphatic points in his teaching, cannot claim to be followed throughout the innumerable detailed mistakes which arise from his initial error, and which further reading would have enabled him to correct for himself It may be worth while, however,- briefly to indicate what appears the source of the writer's missing what most readers of Newman are familiar with. On the first point — the absence of love in Newman's religious ethos — he implies^ that he is to some extent open 1 See p. 44. 1 36 PHILALE THES to correction from those who know Newman's works better than he ; though we may remark that it is an unusual course to bring such heavy charges against a man on an avowedly uncertain basis. But on the other two, which are concerned with his theory of certitude and on which the writer proudly says that he does "not speak under correction" (p. 45), a word more must be said. Newman was dealing with a question which from the days of the Academics has vexed thoughtful minds, the question how to justify theoretically our practical certainties. Of course the religious application of the question was the most prominent ; but as any reader of his varied and suggestive treatment of the subject will see, the diffij- culty concerned all knowledge ; and in its religious application the primary truths of Theism and the supernatural rather than the details of dogma were uppermost in his mind. In the two great works in which he expressly deals with the subject — the Grammar of Assent and the University Sermons — this is especially evident. Beginning with the difficulty of ascertaining sufficient logical grounds for the confident belief each man has in such truths as the fact that unexplored parts of Greenland exist, or even that Great Britain is an island — for the nature of the proof is for most persons cumulative, and each reason by itself is theoretically liable to error — and rising to our belief in God, he treats the subject with that "sure and piercing judgment" which Dean Church has happily described as his characteristic. The fundamental question is : Is PHILALE THES 1 37 certitude a possible thing at all ? ^ His language varies a good deal, and the careful reader will see that the difficulty haunted him through life ; but he got nearer and nearer to its solution, his last words on the subject being published in the Contemporary Review in 1885. There are here and there modes of expression which to one unfamiliar with his writings seem paradoxical. And again the occasional promi- nence of psychological observation as to how the mind does act, when the reader is anxious to know how it should act, has caused some thinkers to miss a great deal which he contributes, by implication, to the deeper problem. The difficulty which begins in the possibility that in recalling and analysing the grounds for belief in such indubitable facts as the insular character of this country, memory may err as to any one of the recollected facts or proofs which are essential to its justification, and the testimony on which we depend may in any one case be false ; that this may theoretically be so in any case, and therefore theoretically in all cases ; and that consequently a belief really certain is theoretically based on probable reasoning, finds its parallel in Faith and religious conviction, in which reasons for trust and confidence may not be fully expressible or theoretically justifi- able by the individual. And again in the special case of religious belief, admitting that goodness and love are an essential part of its deepest basis, the question arises : May not a belief so grounded be only delusive fanaticism ? How distinguish merely ^ Grammar of A sacnf, fifth edition, p. 228. 1 38 PHILA LE THES emotional love which leads to delusion from that religious love which claims to represent the outcome of our highest reasonable nature ? (cf University Sermons, new edition, p. 236 note). Of this funda- mental question his critic gets no real glimpse. He sees only in Newman's theory an attempt to get some principles which will justify him in accepting the liquefaction of St. Januarius' blood and the whole mass of the superstitions of Rome. Thus he grasps at isolated statements in ignorance of Newman's mind, draws his own conclusions, and must inevitably find himself confronted (as we have seen) with words of Newman's directly contrary to conclusions which are based on a complete misapprehension. He sways backwards and forwards, treating " probability " at one moment as belief consciously reflected on as doubtful,^ when Newman is all the while trying to explain how we are conscious of certainty or of undoubting assent, and at another as " provableness,"^ when Newman is showing that complete explicit proof is just what we cannot attain. The writer never sees that he is cutting the ground from under his own feet by his assault ; that Newman is really inquiring with great delicacy into the nature of that very Faith and Love which his critic professes to be the basis of his own Christianity, but fails to justify against the Agnostic. Newman as the reflective thinker, as the man to whom himself and his Creator were ever the two most luminous of realities (Aj^ologia, p. 5), as the man who is 1 pp. 53, 69, 74, 79. - p. 71. PHILALETHES I39 bringing all his gifts of profound analysis and religious imagination to justify belief in God and. Immortality, never enters into the limited range of this writer's vision ; and while the great Oxford thinker's own mind and soul are concentrated on securing from assault those primary truths on which the religious life of every Christian depends, the critic can only see an artificial theory, planned with the express purpose of tricking unwary souls into believing in miraculous Madonnas with moving eyes, or giving their confidence to priests intent on fraud and extortion. He only once catches a glimpse of the very necessity of justifying, for the satisfaction of those in whom questions inevitably arise, that loving trust which is popularly called Faith ; and then simply remarks that to " entertain questions of this kind leads to insanity."^ He does not see, with the full tide of Ao-nosticism at his door, what Newman foresaw fifty years ago, that the question will force itself upon many a religious mind — Is my lovino' trust a o-roundless delusion ? Is it a sentiment corresponding to no reality, as the Agnostics say ? And where Newman with patient anxiety devotes volumes to this question, the critic, hardly looking at his solution in its fundamental application, but scared beyond words at the superstitious horrors it will be made to sanction, endeavours with blind violence to dislocate and disable w^ords and sentences ^ The writer says tliis with reference to tlie case which Newman so often places as parallel to religious Faith of personal trust ; — belief that a certain course of action is inconsistent with this or that person's character. (See Philomythus, p. 62.) I40 PHILALETHES whereby Newman meant to convey principles with which no Christian can dispense, however little many may consider them applicable, as Newman ultimately did, to belief in the Catholic Church. All the deep, candid, careful analysis of the springs of Faith, all the subtle introspection into the ultimate unconscious basis of every degree of belief; all the fine com- parisons and contrasts between the definiteness and shallowness of the unbelieving view of the world, and the imperfect form and yet conscious depth of the religious view ; between the conclusions of mere logic and the conviction of the whole man ; between vivid living belief and deep restful certitude ; between the credulity of superstition and the confident faith which is protected by love ; between the formal dogmatism of bigotry and the teachableness of faith, and the wide, calm, all-seeing vision of the spirit of wisdom — all this remains unnoticed, as this writer blunders on, eagerly moving his single eye, looking for St. Walburga's oil in one corner, Papal infallibility in another, Newman's own hollow heart in a third. Oh, the pity of it ! The handiwork which Newman fashioned so delicately and with such infinite pains, adding each year to the very end a finishing touch — new thoughts and new words as fresh truths broke on him, or old truths were seen better — all the beautiful and delicate ware utterly and hopelessly smashed by the invader, as he advances with bovine stride, wholly unconscious of the value of the Dresden figures, of the antiquity of the Crown Derby, of the history of the Worcester vases, of the irredeemable PHILALETHES 141 and Philistine destruction lie is perpetrating in his wild-goose chase after superstitions and deceptions. " Sad work, my masters, sad work ! " Turning now to Newman's Essay on "Ecclesi- astical Miracles," it is, as I have said, a work on quite a different plan from this critic's conception of it. It is in some sense a psychological investigation which must be read in connection with his general Oxford teaching, on the relations of certain precon- ceptions to the view which is naturally taken of the evidence for miracles. Newman admitted in great part Hume's contention as to the antecedent improb- ability of all miracles whatsoever. He saw, however, that once the Scriptural miracles are believed — once miracle is admitted at all into the category of estab- lished fact — logically the deep incredulity which from Hume's standpoint was not unreasonable, must give way. He contrasts the two views of Christianity which were current at the time he wrote — the one allowing the Scripture miracles, allowing that a mass of supernatural agencies and interferences had set the Christian scheme afloat, and maintaining that the Creator had afterwards, so to say, retired from His creation; the other viewing the great outlines of Church history as providential, looking on Catholic sanctity, and the activity of Catholic life, and the great fact of the Catholic Church as tokens of the presence of God among us, and contemplating alleged miracles throughout the history of Christendom, as possible instances, primd facie, of His active Providence. The former view he held to be illogical. Denying so 142 PHILALETHES mucli, it should deoy more. Or, admitting so much, it should admit more. He indicates the two con- ceptions of the universe which are philosophically tenable — of fixed and uniform law on the one hand, evolving steadily, consistently excluding any direct supernatural action ; and, on the other hand, the conception of Providence as ever controlling the universe, by fixed laws as general rules, but not without power and will to direct or modify the workino; of the laws it has made. And these two conceptions, which should logically be in permanent opposition, were, he shows, by the inconsistent school to which I have referred, hotli adopted — one in refer- ence to the Christian scheme in the present, the other in reference to the rise of Christianity and the Scripture miracles which they accepted. Finally, if the providential conception be consistently adopted, if all that is involved in allowing the truth of the Scriptural miracles is realised and the Catholic position accepted, the weight lawfully attaching to evidence for miracles in general, and for special miracles in particular, is materially affected. On the other hand, the nature of alleged miracles is con- sidered by him, and the dangers of credulity and the risk of deception are taken into account. And suggestions as to the reasonable attitude of a Catholic in view of all these considerations, form the scope of the rest of the Essay. This, then, is the fundamental purpose and plan of the Essay — not to "prove the miraculous nor to prove individual miracles — for this would involve on New- PHILALETHES 143 man's principles a previous proof of the divinity and true character of the Catholic Church — but to sketch the actual views of the evidence in question as a psychological study ; to sketch the reasonable views according as one or another set of first principles is adopted as a logical study ; and then more fully to apply the Catholic first principles to individual cases, for the benefit primarily of his Oxford disciples, as a chapter in the Catholic theology which the Tracts had been developing. With the same dramatic power with which he drew out in his Dublin Lectures the contrast between heathen and Christian in ethical temper, or with which he depicted in the Univer- sity Sermons the alternative views of sound reason- ing adopted respectively by the man of the world and by St. Paul — the wisdom of the world and the foolishness of the Gospel — he depicts in the Essay on " Ecclesiastical Miracles," the " ethical incredulity " of Douglas and Middleton, he enters into the logical incredulity of Hume, and he draws out, more fully, the lawful effect on our attitude towards the evidence for miracles, of a belief — which so many readers w^ill refuse to entertain as worth serious consideration — in a visible Church under an active Providence. " Our view of the evidence," he wrote, " will practically be decided by our views on theology." His critic, quite missing this central point, is throughout beating the air. He is in the difficulty of having to deal with an apparent contradiction. He thinks that he must have his eyes eagerly open to detect Newman's sharp practice in proving his mon- 144 PHILALETHES strous superstitions ; and then lie is disconcerted when he finds time after time that Newman, after all his cunning and special pleading on behalf of a miracle, draws a very hesitating conclusion as to the amount of credence to be attached to it. Thoroughly exasperated, the critic concludes that " all his in- quiries were farces." ^ But he has no dream of the true fact — that the logical plan of the Essay is such as to make Newman comparatively indifferent whether or no he ends by establishing this or that particular miracle beyond question. The author repeatedly says that Newman in selecting his nine miracles ought to have chosen the best attested, and must have meant to do so." He laughs at miracle after miracle as a specimen of what professes to be proved by " cogent and complete " evidence. But to have so selected his instances would have been to have reasoned on quite different lines from those chosen by Newman, who expressly says (p. 228), "It does not strictly fall within the scope of this Essay to pronounce upon the truth or falsehood of this or that miraculous narrative ; " and he adds as his reason for looking into the evidence at all in individual cases "to throw off the abstract and unreal character which attends a course of reasoning." He chose, then, certain well-known miraculous stories, chiefly from the history he was editing, avowedly on the ground, not that they were better ^ PhilomytliHs, \). 156. ^ Near the end of the book he intimates a doulit. however, whether Newman " recognised the duty " of doing so at first. PHILALETHES 145 established, but that they were " more celebrated than the rest" (p, 134). Their finding their way into the pages of history no doubt marked them oflf from mere fables, and gave them a certain i^vima facie claim ; but no more than this. He probably did not know at starting how he should stand in reference to this or that one, when he should have sifted the evidence in each case. But they ajfforded the opportunity of exhibiting, in the case of con- spicuous instances, the application of the principles he had sketched as logically following from the Catholic position ; and these were applied with singular deli- cacy and candour. One more point must be noted briefly. Whereas, generally speaking, Newman, in commending one or another miracle to a Catholic's belief, has no thought beyond that sort of belief which is a basis of devo- tion, his critic never grasps this as a real state of mind, and often assumes that such 'devotional belief must have a depth and certainty almost parallel to belief in God. In words he recognises "pious opinion," but he never gets any true insight into that attitude of mind which has so large a share in all Catholic devotion — the imaginative dwelling on tokens of the unseen, whose genuineness can never be proved to demonstration, and may be seriously doubted. He says in one place ^ that, surely, doubt as to the authen- ticity of a relic must make devotion to it impossible, 1 "If in any of these ' devotions ' the thought of ' probability ' steps in, must it not be fatal ? " he writes, after quoting Newman's statement, " Who can really pray to a Being about whose existence he is seriously in doubt ? " (Philomythus, p. 236.) L 146 PHILALETHES just as doubt of God's existence makes prayer impos- sible ; a most curious evidence of what I am noting. The difference is this, that while devotion to the relic involves the thought of God as the ultimate rest of the mind and heart, which thought remains even if the relic is not what it was supposed to be, prayer to God begins and ends in Him. This applies to other objects of devotion — to possible miracles, to provi- dences. A lover who knows that he is loved dwells on what he takes to be a token of love — of a feeling of whose existence he is certain. Suppose he is mistaken — suppose Edith Plantagenet had not seen Sir Kenneth, and had dropped the rose by accident — still his feeling as he kisses the rose is not futile or given in vain. He passes, through the token which is more or less probable, to the love which is (I am supposing) certain. And so a Catholic dwells on that which bears evidence of being providential, or even miraculous, passing through the sign of which he may not be certain, to the constant presence of Pro- vidence of which he is certain. And devotion may remain when all thought of authenticity is gone. Hallowed shrines may raise the heart to God, as scenes of historic worship, after the legends which had clustered round them have been, for the indi- vidual, disproved. They may help devotion, not as Edith's rose which she dropped, but as her picture, which the knight has gained possession of without her knowledge ; — which enables him to imagine that she is present while he knows that she is absent. If "belief" — when there is a belief — meant absolute PHILALETHES 147 certainty, no doubt tlie dangers of credulity would be present ; but it does not : and its primary object is not intellectual, but devotional. The ultimate rest of the lover's confidence is the love of another ; and the ultimate rest of a Catholic's unalterable convic- tion in such matters is that Providence of which the particular instance or token is a suggestion, and may or may not be a manifestation. So much for the primary mistakes which make the bulk of this book simply beside the mark. The author expected to find a work of one kind ; New- man proposed to write a work of quite a different kind ; and to the end his critic cannot get over his indignation at being baulked of his prey — at finding- Newman refuse to make test cases, for him to criticise, of particular ecclesiastical miracles. An example of this is worth giving before concluding this part of the subject. Having furiously demol- ished (as he supposes) the evidence for the miracle of the Thundering Legion — the thunderstorm which Eusebius and Tertullian refer to as supposed to have come in answer to the prayers of the Christian soldiers of Marcus Aurelius — he reaches Newman's own conclusion, that the thunderstorm occurred, but " whether through miracle or not we cannot say for certain, but more probably not through miracle in the philosophical sense of the word. All we know and all we need know is that ' He made darkness His secret place. His pavilion round about Him, with dark water and thick clouds to cover Him. The Lord thundered out of Heaven, and the Highest gave His 148 PHILALETHES thunder, hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows and scattered them, He sent forth His lightnings and destroyed them.' " The critic, who endeavours all through to give the impression that Newman is selecting miracles whose evidence he thinks " cogent and complete," and who had been longing to turn over the page and find Newman quite sure that he had got hold of a miracle, is highly irritated at this conclusion, and writes as follows : Now this would be all very well for the conclusion of a sermon, but it is not well, it is very ill, for the conclusion of an " inquiry " into a particular miracle, which if it can be proved true by " cogent and complete evidence " will afibrd a basis for " recommending " a great number of other ecclesiastical miracles to the "devout attention of the reader." For the serious " inquirer " into one of the alleged nine great historical miracles of post-Apostolic Christendom it is mere trifling to be told that "a// he needhioio is the truth of Psalm xviii. 11-14." But the fact is that Newman is trifling. All his proposed inquiries are farces, and this is but one among many proofs of their farcical nature. And yet if this writer had taken more pains to under- stand Newman, he would have seen that the passage is simply an illustration of a view which Newman had thought out very carefully. What he means — and what is so beautifully expressed in the citation from the 18th Psalm — is that the important point at issue is not between what is philosophically speaking an interruption of a permanent and fixed law and what is not ; but between the conception of an universe whose phenomena proceed uniformly by blind neces- PHILALETHES 149 sity, and an universe in which Providence, in ways of which we can know little or nothing, is accessible to our prayers and guides the course of events. The storm was, he says, probably an answer to prayer ; and that is the important thing. The question as to whether this involved an actual breach of a law otherwise universal, or could be effected l3y means which Providence habitually employs, is a far less important one, as being mainly a speculative and not a practical one. Had the writer understood this — and it is a view with which aay thorough student of Newman is familiar — he would have seen that the remark "all we need know," etc., far from show- ing that the inquiry was " a farce," has a most definite and clear meaning. That Providence versus blind necessity is the primary issue — that far from the idea of fixed laws being the product of " exact thought," which is super- seding the antiquated idea of Providence, the two conceptions have always been rivals, entertained by opposite schools, is a view which runs through several of Cardinal Newman's unpublished memoranda on religious philosophy, which were by his desire placed in my hands after his death. In a memorandum dated Sept. 13, 1861, for example, he writes thus : To my mind it is wondei^ful thut able men like [A. B.] should take for granted that the notion of fixed laws is a neAv idea of modern times which is superseding, and to supersede the old idea of a Providence — referring to Mr. Dar-win and Mr. Buckle who [are] developing the new truths in the physical and moral worlds. Why, it is the old idea of Fate or Destiny which 1 50 PHILALE THES we find in Homer. It is no new and untried idea, but it is the old antagonist of the idea of Providence. Between the philo- sophies of Providence and Fate there has been a contest from the beginning. Fate may have new and better arguments now, but Pro\idence has been able to stand against it for 3000 years, and there is no reason why it should not keep its ground still, though the philosophy of Fate may still have followers. And the relation of miracle itself to the ordinary- course of nature — its respect, so to say, for the laws it supersedes, is referred to in a memorandum dated Sept. 3, 1865. Some miracles, as the raising the dead, certainly are not a continuation or augmentation of natural processes, but most are : e.g. there is said to be something like manna in the desert ordinarily, and the sacred narrative mentions a icind as blowing up the waters of the Eed Sea — and so in numerous other miracles. It is a confirmation of this to look at Gibbon's " Five Causes of Christianity." We do not deny them, but only say they are not sufficient — i.e. the spread of Christianity was something more than natural. Once more, in September 1861, we have the following expression of a view somewhat similar to Dean Mansel's — that 2:)]iilosop]iically miracle is only parallel to the interference of human volition in the blind sequence of physical cause and effect : Is not human volition in its action upon mechanical pro- cesses, a miracle ? I put out my hand and stop the pendulum of a clock. The clock stops. Again, I am falling. I catch hold of a beam, and I stop the action of gravity. Here is a force, volition, which impedes, or strengthens, or quickens, as the case may be, the operation of physical laws. . . . Now, what is a miracle in theological science but the interference of such an extra-physical cause, viz. of a Being, not hypothesised for the occasion, but known already to exist as a moral governoi' by means of the conscience ? Again, as the hand of a showman PHILALETHES 151 may be so introduced into clockwork or the like as not to obtrude itself on our notice in the effects it produces, so divine interpositions may really take place, yet without a manifest criterion of their occurring. The space I have occupied warns me to a conclu- sion. And yet there is another feature of Dr. Abbott's book which its critic cannot leave unnoticed. The great contrast in intellectual temper accounts in part for the writer's failure to understand the Cardinal intellectually. But, even if his work be looked at only in the details of its literary criticisms, the failure to represent at all accurately the Cardinal's arguments and authorities is a very serious blemish, which marks its character still more pointedly as a partisan indictment. I have already pointed out some instances of this {Spectator, April 25, 1891); and the Guardian (May 20) has mentioned others. I will give one specimen here — briefly, as my limits require. Mrs. Humphry Ward has been content, in dealing with the controversy, to cite this writer's criticism on Newman's treatment of the Thunderino- Lesfion as a case plainly showing his unreasoning credulity. I, on the other hand, am quite content that any one who wishes to form an opinion as to the worth and spirit of this work, and the temper of the Cardi- nal's book, should do no more than read carefully the twenty pages (pp. 241-60) in which Newman deals with this story, and the five pages (152-6) in which his treatment is criticised in Philomythus. Let it be borne in mind that the critic throue^hout 1 5 2 PHILALETHES takes no absolute line asfainst belief in answers to o prayer, or in special Providences, and that his criticism on Newman is that he does not deal honestly with facts, and that he makes out facts to have occurred . which never did occur. This being so, let me put down the logical order of Newman's section on the Thundering Legion. (1) He gives the testimony of Apollinaris and Tertullian, and the words of Eusebius, in which that testimony is introduced, to the effect that the thunder- storm came in answer to the prayers of Christian soldiers. (2) He dismisses their evidence on account of its i^iaccuracy, " the evidences as evidences are not true" (p. 243). (3) He examines the evidence in both cases, showing that its inaccuracies are not fatal to the broad facts of the story being ])ossihly true. (4) He finally puts the statements of Tertullian and Apollinaris out of court as reliable evidence for the facts as a whole, and proves the storm and its effects by reference to pagan authorities and monu- ments, etc. (pp. 248-50). (5) Allowing (on these authorities) that there was a storm which scattered the enemy and delivered the Romans from drought, he says that " from the general history of the times " (p. 250) we may be sure that there were Christians in the army, and we " may be sure also, even before we have definite authority for the fact, that they offered up prayers for deliverance." (6) Then he accepts the statements to this effect of Eusebius, Apollinaris, and Tertullian, not on the sole ground of their evidence (which he has already described as PHILALETHES i53 untrustworthy), but as a confirmation of what was practically certain beforehand. So little weight does he attach to their words as evidence that he contem- plates in a foot-note Moyle's suggestion that there were few or no Christians in the army (p. 251) ; and instead of settinsj the evidence of Tertullian and the rest against this he says, " This is an objection which, if valid, strikes deeper tlian any of those which I have noticed in the text." No doubt his own con- clusion is that Moyle's objection is probably un- founded, and that " on the whole, we may conclude that the facts of this memorable occurrence are as the early Christian writers state them " ; a conclusion substantially identical, it will be remembered, with Bishop Lightfoot's ; but throughout is maintained Newman's plan of setting down the evidence " for and asfainst," and leavino; his readers to draw their con- elusion from it. Throusfhout we have the union of readiness to give a providential interpretation, with caution in accepting for certaiji convenient /ac^s. Be it noted that the whole evidence for the remarkable fact of the thunderstorm and its effects is based on the heathen writers and monuments, whereas the whole criticism in the work before us is on the evidence of Tertullian and Ap)ollinaris, which as evidence for the main facts Newman has expressly dism,issed, and on that of Eusehius, on which, in itself Neivman lays no stress. The impression which the reader of the book gets is that their evidence, which Newman really treats as in great measure unreliable, is his main or indeed his sole ground ; and 154 PHILALETHES. that, when he finally accepts the main facts as they state them, he means because they state them. Whereas in reality he bases the startling facts on pagan evidence, and the coincidence of Christian prayer mainly on antecedent considerations. That the storm came in answer to the prayers of Christians, assuming that there were Christians in the army who prayed, is no doubt a pious belief which to many minds is unreasonable. But what has it to do with perverting facts? It no more enters on ground challengeable from the point of view of history, than does the belief in answers to prayer for personal help and guidance which has ever been common among all kinds of Christians. In conclusion, after this imperfect estimate of a most misleading book, let me say that if the author had written with a little more of Cardinal Newman's candour and accuracy, his work might have been a contribution to problems of real difiiculty, which even those who rejected its conclusions could read with profit. Catholics may welcome Dr. Martineau's con- tributions to the philosophy of Theism much as they dissent from his views of Scripture criticism. They can be grateful for Professor Green's constructive philosophy, while they reject his destructive religious creed. They can regard with gratitude the work of a Lightfoot or a Westcott, though they adopt in fact a different standpoint from those critics. But such a work as this, inaccurate in statement, partisan in character, and based throughout on the travesty of a misconception of the man whom its author assails, PHILALE THES 1 5 5 can satisfy no one, except other blind partisans, who welcome any attack on views they dislike, caring more for statements in harmony with their prejudices than for statements accurate in fact. As a serious contribution to the important matters it reviews it can have no value, whether for those who agree with the author's conclusions or for those who do not. THE WISH TO BELIEVE DIALOGUE I Bernard Darlington and Edmund Ashley became acquainted for the first time during their residence together for some ten days at a small hotel near Lake Coniston, on the borders of Cumberland. They were men whose calling and religious tenets would have led one to expect great dissimilarity in their character ; but who had, in reality, many sympathies in common. Darlington was by profession a barrister. When an undergraduate at Muriel College, Oxford, he had been thrown in contact with men of keen and eager mind, whose principal ambition it was to keep pace with what is called the thought of the day ; and who had sufficient powers of argument to enable them to say a good deal that was difficult to answer in favour of advanced opinions on things in general, and on religion in particular. He had constantly heard those around him speak of the absurdity of expecting certainty on questions connected with another world, when all the arguments producible in favour of religious belief had by many of the very greatest THE WISH TO BELIEVE 157 minds been lono; since wei2;hed in a balance and found wanting. This idea had been for many years a first principle with him, and seemed indeed only the veriest common sense. " Who am I," thought he, " that I should pretend to be positive as to the conclusiveness of arguments which Hume and Gibbon, Huxley and Spencer have felt to be inconclusive ? " Ques- tions as to the immortality of the soul, the Divine origin of Christianity, and the like, should, he thought, be left alone by a sensible, rational man. The con- troversies in their regard might, indeed, have an historical interest, but no more. Dispassionate judges held them to be incapable of solution : and the idea of certainty in their regard had only arisen from the passionate craving which exists in some minds to have definite knowledge and grounds for hope as to the future, which, in days when emotion was strong and reason not very circumspect, led many to catch at any theory, however insufficiently proved, that professed to satisfy their desire. Some great intellects of mystical and ideal tendencies were led by this same desire to create systems of belief which should answer to the need of their own hearts, and should at the same time serve as a sanction for their moral code. To aid them in their endeavour they had invoked those myths and traditions of the past which in a more or less confused way express the anticipa- tions, hopes, and fears of nations in the course of their history, and the speculations of the popular mind ; and out of these raw materials of emotion, desire, and tradition, supported by a certain measure of plausible 158 THE WISH TO BELIEVE argument a priori, they constructed their several relisfious theories. The mass of mankind sjet their knowledge from the teaching of experts, and when master minds professed aloud their belief, the multi- tude felt that there must be ample warrant for it, and hence it soon spread ; and as faith is in its very nature unquestioning, once gained, it was not readily aban- doned. Then, when religion in one shape or another had thus become considerably diffused, common con- sent seemed to be a confirmation of its truth. There was, moreover, much in the nature of the human mind and of the world in which we live to strengthen religious belief as soon as it had come into existence. Man's natural feeling of helplessness and dependence amid the powers of nature harmonised well with the account which had been given him of certain potent and invisible personalities having control over the universe ; while the idea of prayer and of its efficacy in securing Divine protection was readily welcomed as lessening the feeling of impotent dread which must have arisen in the human mind, should these vast powers have been deemed to act blindly, and without regard to our own wishes or happiness. Such was, Darlington considered, in outline the origin of all religions — from the systems of Moses, Zoroaster, and Buddha, to those of Christ and Mohammed — and the foundations on which they rested needed only to be looked at that it might appear how weak and unsubstantial they were. There might very likely be much truth to be found as it THE WISH TO BELIEVE 159 were " in solution " among the various creeds ; but the idea of religious certainty was, he said, "utterly incompatible with exact thought " ; a phrase, we may remark by the way, which is often made to do duty for a great deal of the thing which it signifies ; which magnificently condemns as unworthy of notice many arguments which require for their refutation con- siderably greater power of " exact thought " than is possessed by him w^ho disdainfully dismisses them. Darlington was, then, what is commonly called an Agnostic, using the word in its wider sense. He had been educated without any deep concern about religious subjects, and had believed rather because he never questioned himself about his belief than deeply or after reflection ; and therefore it had not cost him much to abandon a Christianity which in him had never amounted to much more than an external profession. Ashley was a Catholic priest ; the Professor of Moral Philosophy at Sandown College. He had been a Catholic all his life, and had never been touched by the wave of scepticism which is sweeping over the non-Catholic world in England. He had arrived at that time of life at which the opinions are generally fixed and set ; so that now, although he might under- stand a point of view diff^ering from his own by force of imagination, there was little fear of his own belief being in any way shaken. He had, however, great powers of sympathy, and was readily drawn to Darlington by the perception in him of a natural temperament both attractive in itself, and especially i6o THE WISH TO BELIEVE SO to liim by reason of its similarity to his own. Both of them had a strong love for scenery, which, in the Lake country, was a sure bond of union ; both were men of active minds and keen interests ; and though one was by profession a dealer in syllogisms and the other a barrister, neither was given to that argumenta- tiveness which so often makes able men disagreeable. They conversed a great deal, but rather with a view to gaining information than to disputing. Eeligion was naturally a subject of interest to both ; to one as the great centre of the outgoing phase of civilised thousfht ; and to the other as the foundation of his whole life, and man's most important possession. Father Ashley found in his new acquaintance, in the course of their rows on the lake and rambles among the hills, so much of natural religious feeling, and so fair and candid a mind, as to make him form great hopes that some day or other he might come to a knowledge of the truth. Rightly judging, however, that much more than mere argument is required for conversion, he asked him to come and spend a few days at Sandowm after the students had reassembled at the end of the vacation, in the hope that the sight of the practical working of Catholicism and its in- fluence over the lives of the boys, so far as these mio'ht be seen even by a casual visitor, might arouse within him a still greater interest in the subject, and spur him on to more active inquiry. In the course of their conversations it transpired that "Walton, an old college friend of Darlington's, and a convert to Catholicism, was now a priest in the immediate THE WISH TO BELIEVE 16 1 neio-hbourhood of the colleo;e. He had been driven by the free-thinking spirit at Muriel in a direc- tion exactly opposite to his friend. Dismayed at seeing so many cherished convictions, of whose truth he was deeply conscious, called into question and cleverly combated, he soon began to feel the difficulty — nay, the impossibility — of holding to the principle that each separate belief had to be proved by him on its own merits against men of far superior knowledge and logical acumen. He felt that life was not long enough for a work of this kind : and ao-ain he was often most dissatisfied witli his own advocacy of the various doctrines. " Surely," he said to himself, " life is meant for action, and it cannot be right that the very foundations and springs of well-doing should be in constant danger of giving way. All my efforts are spent in securing them, and very insecurely after all. How can I go on doing good when at every step the very thoughts I rely upon as proving my course to be worth pursuing are cleverly attacked as being so many illusions, and when I feel my own knowledge to be in many cases so imperfect that I am ashamed to rest my belief on it ? " This feeling led him by desfrees to recognise the voice of God in the Catholic Church, speaking absolutely and categorically, and relying not on processes of argument, but on its own Divine mission and inspiration. He recognised that the Church was God's vicegerent on earth. He had studied her in her various aspects, her moral and ascetical theology, her official pronouncements, her practical system, and he found in them all a profound M 1 62 THE WISH TO BELIEVE knowledge of human nature, and an uncompromising and elevated moral tone quite unlike anything he had seen elsewhere. He was not at all blind to the human weakness of her members, or the scandals of her history ; but the system, and the representatives of the system — those who had taken full advantage of the assistance it offers to mankind — gave to the Church in his eyes a stamp of Divinity. Vera, incessu patuit dea. And when his mind had taken this step, he felt that his old belief in the primary Christian truths rested on a new and secure basis. It was no longer his own reasonings from the nature of things or from Scripture, but the voice of God speaking through His chosen oracle which sanctioned his creed ; and this being recognised, the mazes of human speculation were powerless to mislead him any more. Indeed, when he had once satisfied himself that he had found a living guide and teacher, he considerably lost his intellectual interests, which had ever been concerned more or less with inquiry into religious subjects, and betook himself on his reception into the Church to active missionary work as a priest. Darlington had been grieved at the very opposite courses he and his friend had taken. "You will never convince me, however, Walton," he said. " Your change is no argument to me, much as I believe in your ability. You were determined to believe ; you were not dis- passionate, so you are no fair judge. You wouldn't give up your pet ideas, though, if you had been really fair, you should have done so. Your wish to believe was father to your thought." THE WISH TO BELIEVE 163 " I was determined to get at the truth,'' replied Walton. " I believed Christianity to be the truth, and I was resolved, if there was a way to seeing its truth more clearly, that I would find it ; and I have found it." Darlington arrived at Sandown at about eight o'clock on a Thursday evening, some six weeks after the vacation had terminated. He was favourably im- pressed on entering the college, which was on a far larger scale than he was prepared for. The stone cloisters, pointed arches, and Gothic windows and doors, gave it quite the appearance of a mediaeval monastery. The professors had finished dinner when he arrived, but Walton had been asked to meet him, and they dined together with Ashley in the professors' " parlour," a spacious room, simply but tastefully fur- nished with an oaken sideboard and chairs, a large mantel-piece of carved stone, designed by Pugin, standing over the fireplace. After dinner Ashley pre- sented Darlington to the President, who asked him if he would wish to attend the "benediction" service which was about to commence. He expressed his will- ingness, and was ushered into the chapel, a small edifice built in the Gothic style of the elder Pugin, and adorned with much handsome carving in wood and stone. He was a good deal struck by the serious and earnest demeanour of the boys, both older and younger. They all seemed, without any undue affectation of fervour, to be quietly conscious that they had a serious duty to perform, and to perform it as though they meant what they were doing. At the end of the service one 1 64 THE WISH TO BELIEVE of Bishop Challoner's solid and practical discourses was read, as the subject for the next morning's medi- tation, and then all turned round to the statue of Our Lady, which w^as so designed as to appear to offer the prayers of those in the chapel at the throne of grace, and sang the beautiful hymn, " Maria, mater gratiae, dulcis parens clementise, tu nos ab hoste protege et mortis hora suscipe." After all was over, a certain number of the "professors," principally the younger ones, adjourned to the parlour to have tea, and invited Darlington and Walton to join them there. " Certainly," said Darlington to Father Davenport, the procurator, as they entered the parlour together, " your liturgy and ritual are extremely beautiful. I think the idea of devotion to the Virgin Mother so touchino-. The ideal of a tender mother with human affections, to whom you have recourse as to one who can readily understand you and sympathise with you in your troubles, who has no heart to refuse to plead for you and help you, is to me a most beautiful conception." "And yet," said Father Davenport, "it is so often a difficulty to outsiders ! It is one of the commonest stumbling-blocks in the way of conversions." " I think it very beautiful," pursued Darlington. " I declare, w^hen you all turned round to the statue at the end of the prayers and sang that hymn to the Virsfin, the idea of trust and confidence in the invisible Mother who intercedes for you and protects you all, was so strongly expressed that it quite moved me — let me see, what are the words ? " Father Davenport repeated them. " Yes," con- THE WISH TO BELIEVE 165 tinued Darlington, "with the two 'amens' at the end, one like the echo of the other. It affected me very much." " Ah ! my dear friend," said Ashley, who came into the room while he was speaking, "a man who has the soul to feel all that should be a Catholic. He is out of place anywhere but in the true Church." Darlington smiled. " T am afraid a good deal more is wanted for my conversion than that," he said ; " you would hardly have me helieve in a doctrine simply because I think it beautiful and con- soling ? " " No," said Father Ashley, " but a man who has insight into and perception of the Divine beauty of Catholic doctrine, must, I think, be on the high road to the perception of its truth. His admiration for it is surely a grace of the Holy Spirit, and if he is not unfaithful the rest will follow." " Won't you sit down ? " said Father Davenport. They had been standing while they were talking, and Darlington perceived on looking round that the other professors were gradually settling themselves down in knots of two or three at different parts of the long- table. Walton was seated at a little distance from them, intent on something in a newspaper. Darling- ton and Ashley sat down. " Let me give you a cup of tea, Mr. Darlington," said Father Davenport ; " we are rather proud of our tea and of our cream too." " I shall be very glad to try it," replied Darling- ton. " I think that good tea is the most refreshing 1 66 THE WISH TO BELIEVE drink that ever was invented. No suo-ar, thanks. Of course/' he continued to Ashley, " you express the thing differently from me, but I think we mean pretty much the same, and you are not the first man whom I have heard, talk in a similar way. That manner of speaking and thinking, which I perceive in so many religious people, as though the fact that a doctrine is consoling makes it also true, is, I think, at the root of a good deal of my scepticism. It makes me suspect the whole basis of their belief." " But I think you are wrong," said Ashley. " We may say that the intrinsic beauty of a doctrine is an additional sign that it comes from God, but none would maintain that all doctrines which are beautiful are true. Take the Pagan myths ; many of them were the creations of highly poetic minds ; but cer- tainly none of us believe in Elysian fields, however pleasant a prospect they might be." " Perhaps I expressed myself too generally," said Darlington. " I don't suppose that Christians would expressly maintain that a doctrine which is beautiful is therefore true. But still I must say that all my obser- vations have tended to convince me that in very many cases their real state of mind falls very little short of that. They have some additional reasons, no doubt, but very insufficient ones ; and their chief motive for believing is because belief is consoling and desirable. Do you remember Gibbon's account of the belief of the Christians of Eome under Pope Gregory the Great ? He says that their temporal dangers and mis- fortunes, from the constant invasions of the Lombard THE WISH TO BELIEVE 167 and various other causes, led tliem to lend a ready ear to the hopes which the preacher held out to them of a ha^^pier state of things beyond the grave. Well, it seems to me that this is the state of many nowadays. They are not happy in this world, and so they readily believe on very insufficient evidence tidings of another and a more satisfactory future life, and doctrines con- nected with it which tend to console them." " Should you say that the doctrine of hell tended to comfort or console ? " put in a youngish man who had been listening to the conversation. Darlington hesitated. "It is not fair," he said, "to isolate a doctrine from the system to which it belongs. It is almost proverbial that ho^DC, even though one i^ays for it with a certain measure of fear, is preferable to a dead level of hopeless dulness. I don't think you can dispute that the Christian view of the world, taken as a wJiole, giving as it does a great- ness to life and a connection with a realised ideal, imparting to labour and privation, and all that would naturally be irksome, a value which far more than compensates for their unpleasantness, and holding out a hope for the gratification in the future of all our highest and deepest yearnings, is, in spite of every- thing on the other side, a far preferable and more con- soling one to a mind which is dissatisfied with the present, than the prospect of dull repetition of j)ast experiences until, in the end, annihilation arrives." " Surely," said Father Ashley, going back to the first question which Darlington had raised, " you cannot apply Gibbon's remark to the present age or 1 68 THE WISH TO BELIEVE to this country. He spoke of an exceptional state of things when the Romans were so wretched that they were ready to cling to any idea which afforded them a ray of hope. Not that I admit Gibbon's charge even with reference to the Romans, but I think there is even less colour for it nowadays." " The exact circumstances may be different," replied Darlington, " but the general fact remains the same. Dissatisfaction was no doubt more widely spread then. But in one shape or another the luisli to believe seems to me to be at the root of all relioion still. One man turns to religion because he is ennuye with the world ; another clings to it because he has been brought up to it, and it is bound up closely with all the memories and associations of his childhood ; another is attached to his creed because his ancestors died for it. Many become Roman Catholics because of the effect the gorgeous vestments, incense, and tapers have upon them. Newman himself admits that many can give no better account of the matter than that the Catholic religion is true because its fragrance is as perceptible to their moral sense as that of flowers to their sense of smell. In all these cases religion or a particular form of religion is embraced or adhered to from no rational motive, but simply because the believer wants to believe. As I said, the wish is father to the thought. Look at Moody and Sankey's converts — even the best of them. They had no new reason given them for belief. They were pleased and excited by the hymns and sermons. Mr. Sankey's performances on the THE WISH TO BELIEVE 169 harmonium constituted one of their chief motives. Eeligious belief gave them under the circumstances pleasant excitement, and so they believed — not because their intellects had received any new light — but because what they saw and heard made them ivisli to believe. I have seen so much of this that 1 am on my guard. / am quite alive to the consoling power of religion. I often suffer from great depres- sion of spirits and tcedium vitce. I remember a schoolfellow of mine of a melancholy disposition, who used to go about crying out, 'Who will tell me of something to look forward to 1 ' That is often my own feeling; and religious conviction would be the greatest comfort to me. But I am so alive to the fallacy of religious minds — the fallacy of believing because one ivishes to believe — that I myself can never be a believer." "Don't you think, Mr. Darlington," said the young man who had spoken before, "that the strong wish implanted in man's nature for religion may be worth something as an argument ? Most of our appetites and cravings have a legitimate satisfaction ; their existence seems to point to the existence of an object capable of satisfying them. Hunger is correla- tive with food, love with objects of love, and so forth ; so it seems hard to believe that man has a thirst for religious knowledge, and yet that such knowledge is entirely unattainable." " I don't think," replied Darlington, " that you are attacking exactly the position I have assumed, though doubtless I do tend to think religious certainty in- I70 THE WISH TO BELIEVE capable of attainment. I do not speak of any natural or general craving for religion among mankind. What I say is that attachment to religion or to a particular form of religion on the part of an individual, and for reasons peculiar to his case, so often supersedes — and most unreasonably supersedes — argument. This would hold good even if I granted what you are saying. I am speaking merely of that common fallacy — believing what suits one, or is pleasant — creeping into religious inquiry." " I don't yet see," said Ashley, " how you iwove that the wish of the believer is father to his thous^hts. After one has arrived by reason and grace at doctrines which are consoling, one may feel that they are con- soling ; but that is no proof that it is their consoling- power which has made one believe them. If it is proved to me beyond doubt that I have come into a fortune of £10,000 a year, I may find the fact very consoling, but it would be very unjust in you to turn round on me and tell me that I believe it simply because it is consolino;." " I really could not give you in mood and figure an exact proof that it is as I say," said Darlington. "It is a matter of observation rather than of argu- ment ; and then, every one knows the tendency of human nature to believe what is pleasant. I think that it is at least a very remarkable fact that, whereas the evidences of Christianity are, to a great extent, common property and in everybody's hands, the people who are convinced by them are those who have what is called religious minds, or, in other words, THE WISH TO BELIEVE 171 who wish to believe. Lacordaire points out some- where that, whereas Fenelon found in Scripture the strongest evidence of the truth of Christianity, Voltaire found in it only food for laughter. The proofs, such as they were, were open to both alike ; but to him who had no prepossession in favour of belief they were quite insufficient. Take Hume and Johnson, again ; both able men and capable of doing- justice to the arguments on both sides. Hume was dispassionate and unprejudiced ; Johnson had, as one sees at every turn in his life, strong emotional religious cravings. The calm and dispassionate man found the evidences for Christianity quite insufficient — and surely such a man is the best judge of their tr%iie worth. It is the same nowadays : your calm, clear-headed men of science think them quite insuffi- cient and fallacious." " I don't know that calm and unbiassed men are always the best judges," said Father Ashley. *' No doubt bias is a bad thing, but I think that apathy is worse. If your unprejudiced men are apathetic, if their minds and hearts are in things other than religion, I had rather have a 'prejudiced man wdio is in earnest, and whose heart is in the matter. If I w^ere a prisoner, I had rather my judge were some- what prejudiced against me, than that he had neither bias nor sense of responsibility. The former kind of judge, if he is conscientious, has something in him to which one can appeal, and which may overcome his prejudice ; the latter may condemn me through mere sleepiness or inattentiveness. You may reason away 172 THE WISH TO BELIEVE prejudice, but not apathy, as its very cliaracteristic is that it takes no pains to attend to your reasonings." Here a man, who had been an attentive listener for the Last five minutes, but had not as yet spoken, broke into the conversation. He was somewhat stout, of middle age, and spoke with a resonant bass voice. He had been sitting alone at the other side of the table with a newspaper before him, but had for some time been making small pretence of reading it, as the conversation was evidently engrossing his attention. This was Father Walton, of whom we have already spoken. "I think, Darlington," he said, "that your philosophy is at fault. You speak of tlie well- j known tendency of human nature to believe what is pleasant. Well, I should say not only that such a tendency is not well known, but that it does not exist , at all. I tliink the truth is exactly the opposite. If I am very anxious that a thing should be true, I find ; that I am slower, and not quicker, in believing it." The others seemed to be waitino" for him to explain himself. " For instance," he continued, " many years ago I was weak enou";h to bet rather heavilv on a horse which was running in the Derby. When the first report got out that that horse had won, I found that all my companions, who were not betting men, believed it at once ; but I was not satisfied until I had seen it in print, and its truth was beyond the possibility of doubt. Yet I was far more anxious than the others / that the report should prove true." THE WISH TO BELIEVE 173 "That does certainly seem to be an exception to the rule," said Darlington. " But still you can't deny that, as a rule, men tend to believe what is pleasant. ' Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought,' has passed into a proverb." " I can't admit that it is a rule," replied Walton. " When boys here are anxious for a holiday, and have sent to ask the President to give one, I don't at all find that they over-estimate the reasons in favour of expecting it. The other day, in a French religious community w^here I was staying, they were electing a new superior, and I found many who expected their favourite candidate to fail, though there was really a good chance in his favour. It seems to me that there is no rule of the kind you suppose." Here Father Davenport interrupted the conversa- tion for a moment to replenish Darlington's cup with tea. Ashley, however, took the question up. Much as he wished to convince his friend, he could not see his way to accepting Walton's uncompromising denial of the former's principle. " Surely you will not dispute, Walton," he said, " that there is a class of cases on the other side. I remember a very eminent physician who was so determined to believe that his remedies were effective, that if you told him they had not cured you, he simply answered that you were wrong and that they must have done so. It used to be quite an amusing scene with poor Bowring, whom you remember. Bowring suffered from very severe headaches, and Dr. E, , as I will call him (for 174 THE WISH TO BELIEVE I don't want to mention his name), was confident that he could cure him in two days. At the expiration of that time Dr. E made his ap- pearance, and said with a confident smile, ' Well, and how are the headaches now f 'As bad as ever,' replied Bowring. ' Ah, then,' said Dr. R quite gravely, 'you did not take my prescriptions.' ' I took them most religiously,' said Bowring. ' Oh ! ' said the doctor in a tone of relief, ' then the head- aches have gone.' 'But they haven't! I feel them still,' said poor Bowring. ' No, no,' said R , .' believe me, they are gone. You have had so much of them that you can't help imagining that they are there still, but I assure you they are gone ; ' and it was impossible to convince him that they were not. Bowring had to pay his guinea for nothing, and to go to another doctor."^ Every one laughed. " Poor Bowring ! " said Father Davenport, who had been listening to the story. " I can well imagine his distress of mind. I susjDect he found food for a fortnight's grumbling m it. " Well," continued Ashley, " I think tliat a strong case of believing because one wishes to believe. Dr. R had made up his mind that his medicine was to be successful, and therefore he would have it that it liad been." " I remember a case something like that," said ^ All the anecdotes in this paper are substantially true, although reference to persons and places has been carefully avoided. Of course, their value as illustrations depends on their being true. THE WISH TO BELIEVE 175 Darlington, " of old Mrs. Arton, the wife of one of our farmers in Yorkshire. She had manufactured some ointment which she believed to be an infallible remedy for bruises and sores of every kind. To the best of my belief it really retarded their cure very considerably. However, in the end nature's tendency to self-healing used to assert itself, and it was most amusing to see the old lady's triumph at the complete success of her ointment." " I suppose," said Ashley, " she argued, ' post hoc, propter hoc' The cure was subsequent to the anoint- ing, therefore it was due to it." " It was just the same," continued Darlington, " with her prophecies about the weather. They were invariably wrong, but this never in the least shook her faith in her own powers ; and when a glorious, still, sunny day appeared after she had prophesied ' heavy rain and high winds,' she would gravely assure you that it was raining in some parts." "Surely," said the young man who had spoken before, " the belief of some of the Tichborne tenants in the claimant illustrates what you are saying, Mr. Darlington. I should think there is little doubt that their strong wish to see their squire back again had a great influence in determining their belief." " Or," added Ashley, " take a conceited coxcomb, who thinks all the world is admirino; him. That surely comes from his love of admiration." " I don't think we want for instances," said Darlington ; " you must admit, Walton, that men 176 THE WISH TO BELIEVE have, at least in many cases, and under certain circumstances, a tendency to believe what is pleasant on very insufficient evidence." " I admit," replied Walton, " that men often deceive themselves into thinhing what is pleasant, where there is no danger of being brought imme- diately face to face with the fact that it is untrue ; but I don't think that in those cases they seriously believe, though they may say they do. If they have the pleasure of the thought without the pain of finding out that it is untrue, it gives them for the time almost as much satisfaction as real and deep belief. But it is not belief — or at least it is not conviction." "Dear me," suddenly interrupted Ashley, "what a very animated conversation is going on between Merton, Kershaw, and Gordon Brabourne I I suppose it is their usual topic — Roman versus Gothic in architecture and vestments." " He doesn't mean w^hat he says, Gordon," Merton was saying, a man with lively manner and pleasant voice, who sat at the end of the table. '•' If the Romans wore the present Gothic vestments, and the square ones w^ere Gothic, Kershaw would see all sorts of defects in the square ones, and would discover all manner of hidden devotional and sym- bolical meaning in the many -folded robes so much loved by Pugin. Now, don't protest. You hold that the Roman Pontiff's infallibility extends to the shape of your antijpendimn, the carving on your pillars, and the cut of your albs ; you know you do." THE WISH TO BELIEVE 177 " Kershaw is a recent convert," explained Ashley to Darlington ; "a splendid fellow, but a little ex- treme. He has just come back from Rome, and Merton chaffs him about what he calls his Roman fever." "My dear Merton," replied Kershaw, "how can you talk so much at random ? AVhoever said it was a question of infallibility ? All that I say is, that where Rome has set the example our duty is not to criticise but to imitate ; that we do better by trying to appreciate duly the customs and usages of Holy Church, and to admire them as they deserve, than by setting up idols of our own creation in opposi- tion." " Rank heresy, Kershaw," said Merton. " As though the style of architecture in Rome were set up for our imitation, any more than the way the Romans cut their hair, or the shape in which they trim their beards." " It seems to me," said Brabourne, the third speaker, "that if you insist on tracing these things to their origin, and making them more than a mere matter of taste, you should not forget that the present Roman architecture is originally Pagan — an introduction of the Renaissance. Gothic is the creation of Christianity." " Besides," continued Merton, " Kershaw is not even content with making it simply a question of what is authoritatively held up for our imitation. He demands interior assent also. Roman archi- tecture and vestments are not only to be used N 178 THE WISH TO BELIEVE by every loyal son of the Cliurcli, but to be admired also. The duty of interior assent is not confined to decisions on faith and morals ; matters of taste are likewise infallibly decided for us." " You are very hard on me, Merton," replied Kershaw ; " I never said that anything had been infallibly decided. I spoke only of my own taste in the matter, and it was you that insisted that it was grounded on the teaching of Rome ; though I certainly do think that a priest shows a more becoming and loyal spirit if he is not content with obeying simply the letter of the law, but tries likewise to admire and like what Mother Church tells us to make use of, instead of look- ing in the first place to find out what he can criticise and run down without fear of formal heresy." " Without fear of formal heresy ! " repeated Merton ; " what Mother Church tells us to make use of. Good heavens ! I suppose you would agree with Ashburton ; Ashburton, after he had been to Home (shortly after his conversion), on his return to England used frequently to bring into church with him two large dogs with bells attached to their collars, which ran about during mass, making a most ungodly noise, because it reminded him of Rome." " I am surprised the congregation allowed it," said Brabourne. " It was a very small congregation," said Merton, THE WISH TO BELIEVE i79 "and lie was a considerable personage there, and a great benefactor to tlie mission, and so he was privi- leged. I remember asking him what he did it for, and he gravely assured me that it had a most devotional effect upon him," " Nonsense ! " said Brabourne. "He did really," said Merton. "I suggested an idea which would make what he said more rational. I said I supposed that all that reminded him of Rome was so associated in his mind with his first fervour, that it had a great attraction for him. But he would not accept this explanation at all. He would have it that there was something in its own nature devotional in the sound of the collar bells of these animals as they ran about in the church." Every one laughed except Kershaw, who said, " Well, if you are going to make a joke of the whole subject, I don't think I can do much good by arguing it out with you. Besides, I have to say the half- past five o'clock mass to-morrow for the servants ; so I will wish every one good- night." " I don't think he was sorry of an excuse to get away," said Brabourne, as Kershaw left the room. '"He knows that when he gets on these subjects he has to fight against considerable odds; and then you are always so merciless with him, Merton." "Yes," put in Ashley, from the other end of the table, " you are really too hard on him, Merton. Remember, Newman lays it down as one i8o THE WISH TO BELIEVE of the marks of a well-bred man that he is merciful towards the absurd." " Well, I really think it does him good," said Merton. " I have no patience with men who talk as though the cut of your chasuble and the length of your cotta were matters authoritatively ruled by the Holy See. As though great Rome, who is so large- hearted and liberal wherever she can be so without compromising principle, who tolerates an Armenian and a Greek rite utterly unlike her own, would ever indulge in such petty tyranny over our artistic tastes." "Kershaw will be a very different man ten years hence," said Brabourne. " Some converts are so determined to find ideal perfection in every stick and stone in Rome that their judgment as to things Roman is completely warped." " To me," said Ashley, " there is something admir- able in Kershaw's spirit, though I should not go the length he does. ' Love me, love my dog,' says the proverb. I think it shows true devotion to Rome to have an affection for all, even the smallest things, that remind one of her." "Yes," said Merton, "but the proverb does not say ' Believe in me, believe my dog to be perfect,' or ' Condemn others for not believing it to be perfect.' " . " Surely," said Darlington, turning to Ashley and Walton, " Mr. Kershaw's frame of mind, as you describe it, is another instance of the very thing we have been talking about. His wish to find ideal per- fection in everything Roman makes him think he has found it." THE WISH TO BELIEVE " I remember," said Brabourue, " an amusing instance of the same sort of thing when I took Compton — the Muriel man who was received two years ago — to Eome, just after his conversion. He had such an intense belief in the all-pervading piety of the place, that he gave a religious interpretation to everything he saw. AVe were strolling one day in the Campagna and lost our way. We wanted to find the Flaminian gate, and so we asked an old carter whom we met which was our way. He looked a surly fellow, and either found a difficulty in understand- ing our bad Italian, or did not feel in the humour for conversation. At any rate, not one word could we get out of him. I began saying, ' What a churlish old man that is ! ' but Compton was quite indignant with me for my shallow and uncatholic view of the matter. ' This comes,' he said, ' of living in a Pro- testant country, where all motives are secular and natural. Depend upon it, that man is under a vow of silence undertaken in expiation for some sin of the tongue.' " " Well, I remember our friend Kershaw here used to talk," said Merton, " as though all the actions of a Roman were religious in object and motive, until at last I asked him point blank if he supposed that every man, woman, and child in Rome was a person of interior life, and he was quite ofifended at my making a joke of it. ' I am sure they are,' he said." " Well now," said Darlington, " after all you have told us, Mr. Merton, you should be a good authority on the question we have just been discussing. Don't 1 82 THE WISH TO BELIEVE you think that, in a general way, a man is more ready to believe in a thing because he wishes it to be so ? " "You mean, I suppose," said Merton, "that men like Kershaw believe Roman vestments to be perfect because they are determined to find everything that is Roman perfect ? " "Well, it seems to me from what you have been saying," said Darlington, " that men of this stamp have made up their minds to find their ideal realised when they enter the Church. They are sick of con- stant contention and are enamoured of the idea of an authority which they are to reverence as infallible, which is to be decisive, and to set all fruitless disputa- tion at rest. And then they expect her to fulfil more than she ever could fulfil or has promised — to decide on matters which she has neither the power nor the will to decide on ; and wdth this expectation in their minds they see in the customs of Rome — wdiich are v[\^x^j 'private customs — the decisions of authority." "They follow Rome in matters in which she acts, so to speak, as a private person, and not officially," said Merton, who was more intent upon the peculiari- ties of Kershaw than upon the application Darlington was making of them. "They remind me of those who imitate the mannerisms of a great man as though his very imperfections must have a touch of his Divine genius. They are like the actors who imitate Irving's way of walking and articulating, whereas most sensible men know that these are, to say the least, not at all essential to his greatness as an actor." " I can't help admiring it," said Ashley. " It is THE WISH TO BELIEVE 183 devotion of the intensest sort wliicli loves even the most insignificant thing connected with its object." " I can't agree," said Darlington. " I think it is ten to one that such a mind is a small one, and loves only what is unimportant; that it is incapable of appreciating true greatness. The actor who takes most note of Irving's gait and voice will not be his most intelligent admirer. A greater mind will take no note of them, but will pass to the soul of his acting. It is the small mind that observes his peculiarities, and ten to one stops short at them, and fails to appre- ciate anything beyond." Merton and Brabourne here looked at their watches, and, finding that it was late, wished the others good- night and left the room. "At any rate," resumed Darlington, "it seems pretty clear that the converts of whom we speak supply us with an illustration of the principle I was supporting. Here are men maintaining in opposition to the arguments of those who have the very best right to speak, that all Eome's ecclesiastical customs are perfection even from an artistic point of view, and are designed as models for the rest of your Church ; and all this simply because they have made up their minds beforehand to find Rome all perfect." " I think," said Ashley, " that both their expecta- tion and their belief arise from a naturally sanguine disposition. That seems to me the solution of the whole difliculty we raised. It is a matter of tempera- ment ; a sanguine man is ready, a despondent man slow, to believe what he wishes. Ask Father M'Arton 1 84 THE WISH TO BELIEVE yonder " (pointing to a grave-looking priest who was reading^ a book and had taken no share in the conver- satiou) " if he believes that Macmillan will publish his translation of the Eclogues. He is very anxious to think that he will, but he is not at all a cheerful man, and I don't think you will find him very ready to believe it." Here Walton, who had for some time been occupied with his own thoughts, interposed. "Temperament has its effect, no doubt; but it is a very imperfect account to give of the matter to say that is all. A man may be ever so sanguine, and yet in the case I gave before of his having a large bet on a horse at the Derby, he won't be over ready to believe on slight evidence that he has won. On the other hand, there may be far stronger reasons against the truth of the coxcomb's high opinion of himself, and yet he won't give it up. The coxcomb is not Jionest with himself. He nurses the pleasure of his vanity ; and as there is no external test, as he is not forced to verify or dis- prove the truth of his view, he is able to keep it. The man who has the bet, on the contrary, is forced by the circumstances of the case to be honest with himself. He knows that the truth of his belief will soon be tested. He will soon know whether it is right or wrong, and there is little pleasure in the mere expectation, if after all it proves wrong." "This seems to me to be a new point," said Darlington, " and I don't quite follow you." " Well," said Walton, " I have been trying while you were talking to see the essential distinction THE WISH TO BELIEVE 185 between the cases that have been cited on both sides. I fancy I can point it out by an example which has occurred to me, which I think you will admit to be true to nature. There are two very dififerent states of mind — anxiety that something should be really true, and the wish to have the pleasure of believing something. Here are two pictures. First take some lazy, comfort-loving, and selfish man. He is walking with a companion on a sea beach. No one is visible near him. Suddenly he hears what, he half suspects, might be the shriek of a drowning man, beyond some rocks at the end of the beach. His companion thinks it is only children at play. The rocks are hard to climb, and at some distance off. The man is readily persuaded that it is only children at play, and that there is no call on him to climb the rocks, or assist anybody. There is one attitude of mind — one picture. Now for another. An affectionate mother is placed in exactly the same circumstances as my lazy man. She thinks she recognises in the shriek her son's voice. Her companion says it is only children at play ; but this does not satisfy he?-. She entreats him to help her to climb the rocks, and they arrive just in time to rescue her son — for it is her son — from drowning. Now surely you won't deny that the mother would be far more desirous to be convinced that her son was not drowning tlian the lazy man in the parallel case ; ^ yet her wish, far from making her 1 A friend to whom I showed these pages objects tliat tlie illustration is not apposite, as the mother's prompt response to what she takes for her son's cry for help is instinctive, and so affords no guarantee for the action of one who has not the mother's instinct, under similar circumstances. I have, 1 86 • THE WISH TO BELIEVE believe it, only makes her take all the more pains to satisfy herself as to the true state of the case. Genuine conviction that the fact is really as she hoped is what she wants ; and wishing for it doesn't help her a bit to get it. Our other friend, on the contrary, was not really and truly anxious to ascertain the fact. He wished to banish an unpleasant idea from his mind. I don't think he was truly or deeply convinced that there was no call on him to climb the rocks. He was not anxious to be convinced that there was no call ; he only cared to iliink that there was none. He did not wish to adjust his mind to the fact at all ; he only wished to have a comfortable idea, and to banish an uncomfortable suspicion. He was not primarily anxious that the yc(c^ should be as he wished ; if he had been he would have used every means to ascertain whether it were so or not. If it is a matter of some thousands to a man that Oxford should have won the boat-race, he is not ready to believe it on slight evidence ; on the contrary, he examines into the reports he hears far more carefully than another would." All listened attentively to Walton's explanation, and most felt that he had thrown light on the subject. There was a pause before Ashley said — " Don't you think that in the case you have given the fact that there is an immediate prospect of the belief being verified, and again the fact that it is a question of immediate action, ra^y affect the frame however, retained it, as I cannot myself see that the mother's action is, strictly speaking, instinctive. Let those, however, who think that it is so substitute for the mother a very ail'ectionate friend, and judge for themselves whether in that case also Walton's picture is not true to nature. THE WISH TO BELIEVE 187 of mind of the individuals concerned ? Of course in religious belief the case is otherwise. One has to wait for verification until the end of one's life." " The only effect that I can see," said Walton, " is that it ensures a person's being honest with himself. Where there is no immediate prospect of verification he can enjoy the luxury of a false belief without danger of discovery. Where there is an immediate prospect he feels it is of no use to think of anything but truth. If you observe, my lazy man, who was dishonest with himself and shirked his duty, took care that there should be no immediate test of the truth of his thought. Had he expected such a test, I think he would have climbed the rocks and made sure of the facts." " Then," said Darlington slowly, " as I understand you, you hold that where there is a real anxiety and wish about the thing — an honest desire for the truth of the thing, and not merely for the pleasure of the thought — that desire makes you less ready rather than more ready to believe." " Precisely," said Walton ; " a shallow self-deceit- ful thought, called only by a misnomer ' belief,' may well enough be the result of wishing to believe ; but true conviction never. I remember well a lady of my acquaintance who used to think her nephew a perfect paragon of perfection, and far the cleverest man at his college at Oxford. She sucked in eagerly all the civil things that people said in his favour, and systematically disbelieved less flattering reports. Here was one sort of belief. It arose from her wish THE WISH TO BELIEVE — but her wish for what ? That her nephew should really be the cleverest and most successful man ? " " I suppose so," said Ashley unguardedly. "Not entirely so, I think," said Walton; "but mainly from her wish for the satisfaction of thinJcing that he was so. The actual fact was of secondary importance to her ; but it is of primary importance to him who wants a real and deep conviction. I remember, too, in that very case that the truth of this was evidenced in a most amusing manner when this brilliant nejDhew was trying for a fellowship which was of some consequence to him. She paid far more attention to and was rendered far more anxious by arguments against the probability of his success, and seemed very doubtful as to the result — quite prepared for his failure ; and why ? Because hei^e it w^as the fact of his success which w^as of moment, and not the pleasure of her own subjective impression." " You are getting dreadfully metaphysical," said Darlington, laughing. " I admit then," continued Walton, " that where the satisfaction of believino; a thinsf is what is desired, and the correspondence of your belief with objective fact is a matter of small anxiety or importance to yourself, the wish is often father to the thought. Belief is readily obtained, although its quality is extremely bad. But where the truth of the yac^ is of the first importance, and an untrue belief is useless, — where genuine conviction of the fact in question is desired, the desire will not beget readiness but rather THE WISH TO BELIEVE caution in believing. It will make a man less easily convinced than another by the evidence ready to hand. He so much wishes that the thing should be true that he fears to believe it, holding, in the words of the proverb, that it is ' too good to be true.' But, on the other hand, he is more ready than another to give himself every chance of discovering whether what he so much wishes for he really true. He is interested in the subject, and his desire will make him search for a road to certainty, instead of waiting until such a road is unmistakably pointed out to him. The wish then, as I have said, may be father to a shallow self-deceitful idea, but it renders true conviction in a certain sense (as I have explained) slower, although proportionally deeper and surer." Here, for a time at least, Walton's homily came to a halt ; and Darlington, who had been much interested with what he said, though a little bored at the aro'umentativeness and seriousness of his tone, continued turning over in his mind the whole question, and trying to put into shape his own impressions as to how much of truth there was in his friend's view. "I don't deny," he said, as he absently stirred his empty teacup with his spoon, " that there is some truth in what you say. But as applied to religion it has a fallacy, and remember that ' a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.' You have to take it for granted that religious believers have these cZeep convictions and this anxiety for truth, and are not satisfied with prejudice. Of course the igo THE WISH TO BELIEVE very thing I should say is that they are prejudiced and unfair. They view all the evidence partially. They ignore half of it." " AVell, of course," replied Walton, " I can't j^rove to you that they are unprejudiced. All I am saying is that if they are honest and anxious for true con- viction — anxious about the fact of religious truth with all its consequences, and not only for its consoling power as a beautiful thought, then their anxiety to believe is no argument against them, but rather in their favour. Of course how far one is honest and convinced is a question which each man must answer from his own personal consciousness. I can't prove to another that I am deeply convinced, though I may be certain of it in my own mind." " I suppose it comes to this," said Darlington, " that all your party are honest, and sincere, and convinced, and the rest, and all others are prejudiced and insincere. This is, to say the least, a decided and marked division of the human race." " No, my dear Darlington," replied Walton, " you quite misunderstand me. My position in all that I am saying is purely negative. I am only answering your objection. All that I say is that where one is conscious of real conviction, one need not be afraid that it is the result of a wish to believe ; and this because a desire to be convinced of a truth makes one harder and not easier of belief. I am defending our side of the question and not attacking you. There may be prejudiced Christians who arrive at the truth in a wrong way, or others who do not deeply believe. THE WISH TO BELIEVE 191 iVli I say is, that if I am conscious of conviction, I am sure it has not been caused by my wish to believe." Darlington was somewhat annoyed at a new element he thought he perceived in the discussion. His friend was not content with differins; from him intellectually ; he seemed to impugn his honesty and sincerity. His annoyance made him lose the thread of the discussion. " It comes to this," he said. " You feel convinced, ergo you are right. What do you say if I reply, ' I am convinced that certainty on these religious questions is impossible ; that they are outside our ken altogether; ergo I am right, and it is so.' I have just as much right as you to lay down the law. You make your own mind the measure of all truth." " You persist in misunderstanding me," said Walton. " I allow as much to you as I do to myself. If you feel really sure that religious certainty is unattainable, I think that a strong proof that this belief is not the result of a wish to think it so ; and that is all that I say in my own case. You tried to make out that one's wishes, so far as they influenced conviction, did so unreasonably ; and in self-defence I tried to show that anxiety for certainty that some- thing is true is an assistance in learning the true state of the case ; and that it spurs one on to search for whatever proofs on the subject are attainable ; and that, far from making one's views of existing proofs sanguine, it has the contrary effect. Lastly, I maintain that where belief is the result of prejudice, 192 THE WISH TO BELIEVE there is generally a feeling that it is not firm or deeply rooted. The mind is dimly conscious of its own want of candour, and of not having done justice to the question ; although, of course, explicit self- examination on the subject would be contrary to the very nature of an uncandid mind." As Darlington made no reply, Walton pursued his own train of thought. " I have always thought," he said, " that the shallow^ness of false and spurious convictions is ex- cellently shown by Newman in quite a different connection in his Essay on Assent, He speaks of the confident opinions many people profess as to St. Paul's meaning in a particular text ; and then he supposes that St. Paul were suddenly to appear to answer for himself. How each speaker would modify and explain away what he had just been dogmatically asserting ! Yet they had really persuaded themselves that their convictions were genuine, until there was a prospect of their being put to the test. When that prospect came, they were exposed to themselves and to others. As long as truth was not of the first moment to them, they tortured their minds into believing what prejudice or fancy dictated ; or at best they professed certainty on most inadequate grounds, and where there was in reality no certainty. Their search had been not for truth, but for arguments to support their pet notions. They did not attempt to conform their minds honestly to the evidence before them, but viewed that evidence through the refracting medium of their own preconceived ideas, and gave all THE WISH TO BELIEVE 193 their real effort to the search for arguments in sup- port of their views. Then suddenly, when truth became everything, and its discovery threatened to render impossible the satisfaction of believing, and of defending their own prejudices, the shallowness and unreality of their previous pretended convictions be- came unmistakable. It is the realising that truth is everything, and the mere repose of believing what is pleasant (if after all the belief is wrong) nothing, that makes a conviction worthy of the name, and ensures its being genuine ; and surely, as far as it goes, this state of mind renders it more probable that your belief is right. It is not believing a thing that makes it true, but the thing being true is all that gives any value to belief. One should realise this. ' If Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain.' These words always strengthen my faith. They show that the Apostle's absolute belief and intense enthusiasm did not make him forget that they rested, not on themselves, but on objective facts for support, and that if these facts were mistaken all was in vain. His conviction must have had dee]3 root to stand against this thought. He felt that he had staked everything on his belief, and so no one could be more desirous for real certainty of its truth than he. Yet he so clearly realised that it was not the present satisfaction of believing, but the truth of what he believed that was important, that his desire and anxiety to be convinced was a guarantee of the depth of his conviction rather than a reason for suspecting it ; and it seems to me that 194 THE WISH TO BELIEVE the case is the same with any earnest Christian who has a sense of realities. Of course he is anxious to convince himself; but he knows that a spurious con- viction is worthless, and so his anxiety makes him all the more careful in the matter, lest he may be staking his all on an uncertainty." Walton was evidently full of his subject, but his whole tone was out of sympathy with the bent of Darlington's mind, and the latter began to find it hard to bear an active part in the conversation. His friend was so changed. He spoke with such earnest- ness — unpleasant earnestness. It seemed a sort of reproach to Darlington for being unable to rise to the same pitch. Then all his language about " depth of conviction " and the " necessity of being in earnest " was so new. Talkinsf to him was a strong; contrast to the religious discussions he remembered at Muriel years ago. They had been so delightful. Every one interested in the subject ; no one unpleasantly excited or anxious : theory after theory mooted, discussed, and criticised : a real intellectual treat. Even to-nig;ht they had had a pleasant talk enough until Walton had absorbed the lion's share of the conversation. He introduced a tone of his own. It was like the change from fencing with foils to a duel with rapiers. He seemed to talk not for pleasure but like one who is defending something personal of great value, which he fears may be taken from him. At Muriel an objection used to be welcomed as fresh food for dis- cussion ; but with Walton it seemed to hurt and dis- tress him. His answers were w^anting in bris^htness. THE WISH TO BELIEVE 195 They were painfully elaborate and full. He seemed never content until he had pushed his arguments as far as possible, and answered objections to the very utmost that they admitted. In short his tone and manner had commenced to bore Darlington. Ashley was very quick to observe this, and he feared that the good effect of the conversation on Darlington might be undone if it was prolonged. As he saw that Walton was preparing to continue in the same strain, he said, " I think it is getting too late for so exciting a discussion, and you will not sleep. Father Walton, if you go any deeper into metaphysics and psychology." Walton looked up and saw in Darlington's face the true state of the case. " I fear I have been too warm," he said, " but that is the natural consequence of the subject we have been discussing. Dr. Johnson says that the reason the early Greeks could argue so good-humour- edly about religion was because they did not believe in it." The conversation passed to indifferent topics, and Darlington was thankful for the relief. Walton was obliged to go some ten minutes later, and his de- parture was the signal for the retirement of those who had not as yet gone to bed ; and as Darlington was tired after his journey, he was not sorry to follow suit and make his way to his room. Ashley saw his friend upstairs and wished him good-night, leaving him hardly in the humour to ask himself candidly how far his own views had been affected by what he 196 THE WISH TO BELIEVE had heard. The chief impression left on his mind by the conversation was that it had tired him at tlie end of a tiring day. DIALOGUE II Darlington passed a night of unbroken rest and was awakened at six o'clock on Friday morning by a gong, which seemed to him to resound just outside his room, and then to make its way along the winding- passages, echoing more and more faintly in the distance. This he rightly concluded to be the signal for the students to rise ; and as he was unwilling to lose any opportunity of observing the customs of the place he got out of bed and dressed himself. He left his room at twenty minutes after six, and as he went downstairs heard the sound of footsteps in the amhu- lacrurii — the large corridor where students and pro- fessors had been walking and talking before Benedic- tion on the previous evening. No voice was audible, however ; and when he reached the foot of the stair- case he found some twenty or thirty of the theological students, or "divines" as they were called, walking to and fro in perfect silence. He himself paced slowly up and down, not speaking to any one, as it did not seem customary, but wondering in his own mind what could be the meaning of this silent march. As the clock struck half-past six all turned round with almost military precision and went into churcli. Darlington followed them, expecting to be pleased THE WISH TO BELIEVE 197 and interested by the service, as lie had been on the previous evening. He was disappointed, however. All assembled in their places, professors and students — excepting the younger boys — but no service commenced. Some had books open before them, which they seemed to be reading ; others M^ere apparently doing nothing, but remained kneeling perfectly still, their faces buried in their hands. Darlington irreverently surmised that they had fallen asleep. Ten minutes of waiting for something to take place was enough for his patience, and he arose from the seat he had occupied in the ante-chapel, and wandered through the adjoining cloisters, which led, as he found, to several smaller chapels, which were sufficiently ornamented with carving in wood and stone and with pictures of various scriptural and historical subjects, to keep him occupied with their inspection until the sound of footsteps in the main chapel warned him, twenty minutes later, that some change was taking place in the monotonous proceed- ings therein. He hastened back, and found the younger boys all pouring in. Once in their places, they recited morning prayers, one of the divines reading the main portion, and all joining in the answers. Then came mass, a service familiar to Darlington in the course of his travels on the Con- tinent. Each of the Professors said his own mass in one of the chapels which Darlington had just been exploring. He followed Ashley, and listened to him for a time, and then quitted the church. He knew THE WISH TO BELIEVE the mass, and did not care to see it through. He made his way to the Professors' parlour, where Dr. Russell, the President, and Ashley found him, reading a book, when they came in to breakfast. Darlino^ton had been curious as to the meanino- of the silence in church, and took the first opportunity of asking. " It was the meditation," said Dr. Pussell. " I understand," replied Darlington, " a mystic contemplation and reverie, I suppose, such as Comte was in the habit of indulging in every morning." "No," said Dr. Russell, rather sharply; "it is not mystical, but very practical. It is a preparation for the duties of the day, and ends with a series of practical resolutions," Darlington did not press Dr. Russell further, but took occasion, when the President was talking to some one else, to ask Ashley for a fuller explanation. Then he learnt that meditation had been customary in the Church from earliest times, that it had been systematised by St. Ignatius Loyola, that it consisted in reflection on a scene in our Lord's life, or on sin, or death, or any other important truth — an attempt to make it vivid in the mind, so as to have a real effect on conduct, including practical resolutions, and prayer for strength to carry them out. This was, he gathered, an ordinary type of meditation, though there were many technical modifications of it. " You see," added Ashley to his explanation, " we THE WISH TO BELIEVE 199 believe that we are living in the midst of supernatural influences, and that our actions will aff'ect, for good or ill, our fate for all eternity ; but these facts are easily forgotten 'practiccdly. Meditation is intended to ensure what we speculatively believe having the effect on us which it ought to have. We think of these truths just as a father places before his spend- thrift son the consequences of his folly and extra- vagance, which he already knows, but does not reflect on." All this was very interesting to Darlington, and seemed to him logical and reasonable from Ashley's point of view. He then questioned him about the silence before they entered the chapel, and learnt that the students were supposed, in order to make sure of the thoughts in question taking root in their minds, to read the meditation the night before, and to think as little as possible of anything else until mass time next morning. To help them in this, strict silence was enjoined. " From your account," Darlington said, " it seems to be a sort of retreat, such as I have known Catholics make abroad." " Precisely," Ashley replied ; " a miniature re- treat." He then explained that the tension on the mind was considerable, and that the younger boys were not thought capable of it ; but that at special times they also had similar exercises allotted to them — that is to say, during the regular formal retreats which took place twice in the year. Ashley watched with pleasure the THE WISH TO BELIEVE interest which Darlington showed in hearing the particulars of the spiritual training of the students, and took the earliest opportunity he could find to sound him as to the efi'ect of the previous night's conversation, now that he had had ten hours for it to sink into his mind. " Well," Ashley began, as he and Darlington walked out of the breakfast-room together, "have you thought over our last night's talk at all ? Are you ready to acquit us of being unreasonable fanatics who believe, or profess to believe, merely because religion suits our taste ? " Darlington hesitated. "I thought," he said, "that we had an interesting talk, and that there was a good deal in what Walton said. I thought that we got at the truth as far as we went, but I can't see that he really proved his case against me." " Where did he fail then — what is your difficulty?" asked Ashley. " I think," said Darlington, " that he analysed correctly the two sorts of wish with respect to a belief — one being the wish to manufacture or to nurse it as the case may be, the other the wish that it should be true. The one is readily father to the thought, the other makes one fear that what is wished for is too good to be true. One beo-ets a belief like Bentley's theory of an imaginary editor of Paradise Lost, the importance of which to him was not its truth, but its utility in affording him an hypothesis to rest upon which would warrant his continuing work which interested him. The other is the wish THE WISH TO BELIEVE of Penelope for the return of Ulysses, wliicli was so strong that she could not for a long time convince herself that it had come to pass. All this I see ; and I think that in the sense which he explained the first class of belief has no great depth of root, while the other, from the caution and anxiety it implies, requires fully sufficient reasons and does take deep root." " That is precisely what Walton was contending for," said Ashley. " Wait a moment," Darlington continued. " Now for my point of divergence from him. He seemed to think it clear that the wish of religious believers is of the latter type, whereas it seems to me that facts point to an opposite conclusion. Theirs is no case of breathless expectation of news — tidings of unspeak- able happiness, which prevents them from daring to believe with confidence for fear of the shock of dis- appointment. On the contrary, the belief will not be verified for a long time to come, or at least a time which most people picture as indefinitely distant — the time of death. It is rather the continuance of habits and trains of thought endeared by constant association, just as Bentley wished to pursue the line of study which interested him ; or in the case of converts, it is the attraction which religion has for them either by force of reaction, or from a natural interest in and taste for religious thoughts and ceremonies. There is no near prospect of a rouwh awakenins^ from the dream, and so it is indulged." THE WISH TO BELIEVE " You certainly don't give us credit for much sincerity in our professions," said Ashley. " You mistake me," replied Darlington ; "I don't for a moment think you are insincere. But I say that your principal motive — or one of your principal motives — for belief is a wish, hardly acknowledged perhaps in the case of those who have always believed, to cling to what is dear to you. This is not insin- cerity any more than a doctor is dishonest who has not probed far enough, and says there is no bullet in a wound when there really is. He thinks honestly that there is none. I am not sure that Bentley was insincere, though, of course, his is an extreme case. He did not care about the truth of his belief suffi- ciently to test its depth, to probe the bullet-wound thoroughly." " I don't know that you would find it an easy matter to prove that to many of us religion would be so pleasant if we had not a really deep belief in its truth," said Ashley thoughtfully. " If you examined the details of the life of a Trappist monk (to take a strong case), I think you would find your account of the thing somewhat reversed. He does not believe in religion because he loves it, but he loves what is almost intolerable to flesh and blood because he has a deep belief that it is commanded by God. As to probing and testing the depth of his belief, it cannot surely be more effectually done than by his performance of a series of acts which are worse than worthless • if his belief is not true. Surely that should suffice, if anything could, to THE WISH TO BELIEVE 203 make him attend seriously to the soundness and truth of his religion." There was a pause of a few moments. Darlington was conscious that from the very nature of his attack he must be in constant danger of wounding the sus- ceptibilities of a religious man ; and the point he was now insisting upon was a peculiarly delicate one, as it seemed to border on a charge of insincerity. He had, therefore, two difficulties instead of one in replying. The first was to find a reply, and the second to/ express it without giving offence. Ashley, too, haK'l'!»I'X»*.'M'Mf'