There is a second necessity to which the systematic opponents of the supernatural must make up their minds. They must affirm that the laws proclaimed by them as general laws, laws immanent and permanent in what they call nature, are in effect the essential laws of all nature, of the entire universe, and of all the beings whose seeds are there sown. They would have no right to reject absolutely facts as supernatural if they were not supernatural of necessity and everywhere; if, in short, they were anywhere in harmony with laws of nature other than the laws of this hardly perceptible corner of nature which is the residence of man. If the laws of our world are not universal and absolute, who will venture to affirm that they cannot be changed or suspended, even there where they reign? Is human science ready to maintain that the laws which she discovers from her infinitely small Observatory are in effect universal and absolute laws in every place where matter exists, and where life manifests itself, in the midst of space and of time?
Here it is that Christian Ignorance begins to take its place; it admits the unknown and the diverse in the universe—an unknown incommensurable, a diverse infinitely possible. I respect and admire science profoundly; I am as moved, I feel as proud as M. de Laplace could ever have been at the aspect of this sublime flight of the human intelligence, which marches with sure footing in space and across worlds, measures their distances, and knows how many years are required for the light of the nearest of the fixed stars to reach us, whereas the light of our own sun reaches us in a few minutes. I am not less touched by the labours and the discoveries of the great modern Physiologists, who, walking in the footsteps of Bichat, observe and note, even in their minutest and most obscure details, the different phenomena which life in the midst of matter presents. But when I have rendered homage to these triumphs of human science, I compare them with the reality of things, with this universe infinitely great and infinitely minute, which man makes his study, and I cannot prevent the reflection, that the universe contains infinitely more objects than man's mind attains to, and infinitely more secrets than it discovers.What astronomer will dare to affirm that he has counted all the worlds, and that his eye has reached the point beyond which no more exist? What physiologist, what naturalist, will affirm that all those worlds have living inhabitants? and that, if so, those inhabitants must have the same form, and be subject to the same conditions and laws, as govern the inhabitants of this globe. Our science becomes very modest when set side by side with our ignorance, even in the matters appropriate to science; and, however extensive and various the conquests of the human mind may be, the universe is infinitely vaster and more varied than is either the genius or the strength of its vain conqueror. Knowing this, and without ceasing to admire the works of human science, Christian Ignorance bows humbly before that work of God, which outstrips and surpasses immeasurably every attainment of man.
Thus on two sides, and by two different processes, Christianity has a higher point of view, and penetrates further into the reality of things than Rationalistic Spiritualism. On the one side, by allowing its place to historic facts which are the life of mankind, as well as to psychological facts which are the life of man's soul, Christianity gives to Christian science a deeper, a broader foundation than rationalistic science supplies. On the other side, Christianity admits, both with greater grandeur and with more modesty than Rationalism, the unfathomable immensity of the universe, as well as the infinite diversity of its possible laws; and by the avowal of a "Christian Ignorance," it places itself, at least, at the most elevated point to view the spectacle of which human science cannot traverse or measure the extent.
It is in the presence of another rival, I do not say of another adversary, that I have now to set Christian Ignorance. I begin by asking learned Theologians to forgive the freedom of my thoughts and of my speech; I feel for them a sincere sentiment of respect, let me say brotherly respect; for in the question to which I address myself I am now to deal with Christians. But actuated by the same feeling as that which influenced me when I was before speaking of the relation of the sacred writings to human science, I must declare my profound conviction that the subject which is here being treated is of pressing interest to Christian Religion in the great struggle in which it is engaged.
The Christian Religion is founded upon facts, upon an uninterrupted series of facts recorded in documents which exist. Whether the authenticity or the authority of any part of these documents, the reality or even the possibility of any of the facts which they contain is admitted or contested, it is not the less true that Christianity is not, as Greek Paganism was, a poetical mythology attributed to fabulous times; as the religion of Zoroaster was, a personification of the great forces and of the great phenomena of nature; or as the writings of Confucius were, a collection of philosophical meditations, and of moral precepts and counsels, for the use of wise and simple, of princes and subjects.I am far from contesting that poetry and philosophy, human imagination and human meditation, have their share in the books which form the documents of Christianity; it is at the same time incontestable, however, that the peculiar and essential characteristic of Christianity, from its very origin down to its latest development, is that it is historical: we behold the Christian Religion starting to life, living, traversing centuries, growing great and independent, just as we behold civil society doing, in a series of facts which succeed to one another and are different from one another. Christianity is not merely a religious doctrine; it is the history of the events wherein have been manifested the relations of God to man, and the action of God upon the destinies of Mankind.
In proportion to the vigour with which these events have developed and spread themselves, the human mind has been exposed to two temptations, which constitute at once its honour and its peril, the temptation of explanation and that of controversy.
What an undertaking! to explain God! his relation to man! the means and the process of his action upon man! Even when he essays to study, and to describe, the Nature of the God in whom he believes, Man's vision is troubled by the dazzling light; his thought exhausts itself, loses itself in the vain effort to attain, by means of comparisons and figures of all kinds, to the Divine Person: he conceives that person, he affirms that person, he contemplates that person, and yet that person he cannot know, cannot explain. The nearer he feels himself to God, the more does Man cast his eyes down, the more lowly does he incline himself, to adore, where he cannot pretend to observe. Even the very presence of God does not aid man in attaining to the science of God. What, then, the result where he would seek closely to follow the agency of God in the facts in which he only sees Him imperfectly,—where he attempts to carry the torch of human science into the depths of the secrets of Divine action?
I here enter into the domain which Christianity ignores. Two examples will fully suffice, I hope, to make my meaning clear.
The Divinity of Jesus, God's incarnation in Jesus, Jesus God and Man, these are the truths admitted, proclaimed, incessantly repeated in different forms, by the Gospels and the primitive documents of Christianity. I have already said [Footnote 38] that "it is the fact itself of the Incarnation which constitutes the Christian faith, and which rises above all definitions and all theological controversies. To disregard this fact—to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ—is to deny, to overthrow the Christian religion, which would never have been what it is, and would never have accomplished what it has, but that the Divine Incarnation was its principle, and Jesus Christ—God and Man—its author."
[Footnote 38: Meditations on the Essence of Christianity. Second Meditation, pp. 75, 76.]
But Christians have not confined themselves to the belief of this sublime truth; they have striven to explain it; they have sought to know and to define how, and when, the divine nature and the human nature became united in Jesus Christ, to what extent such union took place, and what effect it produced upon Christ's personality. Hence all the questions, all the controversies, which were raised as to the mode and the consequences of the divine incarnation, by Nestorius and Eutyches, and which in the councils of Constantinople, of Ephesus and Chalcedon, divided and agitated the Christian Church, especially in the East.
Man had here essayed to construct a science of Religion and of divine History.
The Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles, as unanimously and persistently as they have proclaimed the Incarnation, contain and proclaim another great truth of Christianity, the co-existence of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and their combined action upon the human soul.The Trinity is written in the New Testament, where it takes its place in the history and in the Faith of Christ from their very beginning. Here, again, men have refused to restrict themselves to History, or to a belief in History; they have essayed to determine the elements, and to explain the "quomodo" of the religions truth; in other words, to transform history into science. Hence all the controversies, all the contests, all the authoritative decisions which have pretended to fix the nature, rank, and relations of the three Divine persons, or the manner of the one God's existence and action in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
I enter into none of these controversies; I examine none of the doctrines and decisions which those controversies have either originated, or disputed; I now only seek to determine their essential character; it is the transition from divine truth to human science: it is Theology, the offspring, more or less legitimate, of Religion.
When I say its offspring more or less legitimate, and speak of Theological science in these guarded terms, it is not that I do not design to say openly all that I think upon the subject. The scientific Theology of Christianity commands often my admiration, always my respect. In their effort to explain the grand facts of the Old and New Testament, its writers have addressed themselves to a glorious task; they have in pursuing it fallen upon and thrown light upon sublime truths; they have engaged for the cause of Christianity in formidable contests; they have lent a moral influence often pregnant of effect to the institutions and authorised teachers of Christ's religion. But their efforts have been even more ambitious than energetic, more compromising than efficacious; they have, even with the words unceasingly in their mouths, shown an ignorance of the limits of human science. The Christian Religion is a miracle, the miraculous work of God; this was the point from which they started, their fundamental datum; forgetting what they have so affirmed, they have sought and they have thought to ensure the triumph of the divine truth by explaining it; they have obscured and changed it by an intermixture of man's work.Man can recognise as realities the facts which are at the same time both Christian dogmas and Christian mysteries. Man can recognise his own subjection to them, but it is not given to man to make of them a science.
Bossuet also essayed to fathom the Trinity; in the midst of his explanations and of his comparisons, he stops short and exclaims: "I do not know who can vaunt that he understands that perfectly, or who can satisfy himself as to what the modes of being can add to being, or as to whence arises their distinction in the unity and the identity which they have with the being itself. All this is not very comprehensible; all this, nevertheless, is truth." [Footnote 39]
[Footnote 39: Élévations sur les Mystères. Works of Bossuet, vol. ix., p. 49.]
Thus after this final effort of his genius, it was in Christian ignorance that the last great doctor of the Church was forced to take refuge.
It is not only that these attempts of Scientific Theology are unsuccessful, they entail, as experience painfully shows, a serious danger. Pride is the ordinary companion of science, and what pride equal to the pride of the science which dares to believe that it has penetrated the secrets of God's action and of man's destiny! Scientific Theology has had the greatest share in religious persecutions; its doctors have had to defend not only their faith but their system, not only God's work but their own work and this simultaneously. Those whose systems were the most logical have generally been the most tyrannical; history in this respect fully confirms what independently of history might fairly be presumed; namely, that supposing the faith equal, "Christian ignorance" is far more naturally and readily inclined to moderation and charity than Theological science.
But it is not only the scientific Theologians whose ambition and efforts have led them to mount beyond the sphere of human science; others there are who fall in a different manner into the same error and the same peril.The Mystic Theologians ask for light as to the relations of God to man, not from dialectics and reasoning, but from sentiment and inspiration. They admit between God and man a direct and mysterious communication, which, in certain cases and upon certain conditions, conveys to the human being divine revelations of a character personal and individual. With this torch in the hand they approach the questions which concern grace, prayer, and the destiny awarded by Providence to each creature, and flatter themselves that they are able to raise the veil by which the solution of such questions is hidden.
I cannot contemplate without profound emotion these pious impulses of the human soul, desirous of penetrating the secrets of God. What more excusable than that ardent and trembling curiosity in the midst of the darkness of our life and destiny? Whoever believes really in God cannot fail to believe himself under the eye and in the power of God; how, indeed, would it be possible for him to admit that his Creator is indifferent and powerless?There are, it may be added, very few who, at certain moments and under certain circumstances, have not felt, in the innermost recesses of their being, a stirring, an impulsion, not proceeding from themselves, nor from the world around them, inexplicable to them, except as proceeding from a superior source and power. Who of us has not, in the course of his life, been sometimes aware of a design foreign to his own volition, his own forecast, conducting him to an end which he did not forecast? And, finally, in the infinite number of prayers rising to God from the midst of human misery and suffering, are there not some to which the event brings satisfaction, just as there are others with respect to which the contrary is the case? Hence the problems of the divine Grace, the divine Providence, the efficacy of prayer. No doubt the desire is very natural which passionately aspires to solve problems so grand, and which, in the hope to do so, strives to rise to a direct and personal communication with their Divine author.But the more natural the desire, the more profound the error. No doubt God acts upon us, upon our soul, and upon our destiny, by his providence and by his grace; no doubt he hears and listens to our prayers; but it is not given to us to foresee his action and his answer, nor to appreciate them in their motives and their effects. "The ways of God are not our ways." Whether general problems are submitted to man's intelligence, or questions touching him personally trouble his soul; whether the Doctors of Theology construct systems, or the Mystic Theologians fall into ecstasies, we see in all these cases that man has arrived at limits which oppose an effectual barrier to his scientific vision, and which no transports of piety will ever enable him to overleap. Beyond those limits, the condition imposed by God upon man is confidence in spite of ignorance; or in other words, "Christian Ignorance" which is gage at once for his wisdom, his charity, and his liberty.
Forty years ago, upon the appearance of a work of the Abbé Bautain, entitled "The Morality of the Gospel compared with the Morality of the Philosophers," I published, in the "Revue Française," an essay upon that state of the human soul which is called Faith, upon the different intellectual facts which it expresses, and the different ways by which man attains to it. Although my special subject, at present, is no longer Faith in its abstract sense, but of Faith in Christ, it is not foreign to my purpose to lay before readers in the year 1868 some passages which appeared in my essay in 1828. For notwithstanding the imperfection of the essay referred to, I have not ceased to regard it as founded on just reasoning; it serves as a starting-point for that Meditation upon Christian Faith which I now give to the press.
By the word faith is commonly understood a certain belief in facts or dogmas of a special nature—in facts or dogmas of religion. This word, indeed, has only this meaning, when in speaking ofthe faiththe term is used alone and absolutely. This, however, is neither its sole meaning, nor its fundamental meaning; it has a still more extended sense from which its religious sense is derived. Expressions like the following are met with:—"I have fullfaithin your words; this man hasfaithin himself—in his strength—in his fortune, &c." This employment of the wordfaithin secular matters, so to say, occurs more frequently in the present day; it is, however, no recent invention, and religious ideas have never been so exclusively its sphere that the word faith has not had also other significations attached to it.
It appears, then, by the usages of common speech and popular opinion, 1st, that the wordfaithdesignates a certain internal condition of the person who believes, and not merely a certain species of belief: that it refers to the nature itself of the conviction, not to its object; 2ndly, that this word was, nevertheless, in its origin, and still is, more generally applied to those kinds of belief termed religious. What then, in its special and ordinary application to religious belief, are the variations which have taken place in its meaning, and which are taking place every day?
Men engaged in teaching and preaching a religion, a doctrine, a religious reform, sometimes whilst appealing to the whole energy of the human mind in its state of liberty, succeed in producing in their disciples an entire, profound, and powerful conviction of the truth of their teaching. This conviction is calledFaith; a name which neither masters and disciples will repudiate, nor even their adversaries disallow.Faith then is only a profound and imperious conviction of the truth of a dogma of religion; it matters little whether the conviction has been acquired by way of reasoning, or has been generated by controversy, or by free and rigorous examination; that which gives to it its character, and entitles it to the name ofFaith, is its energy, is the empire which that energy gives to it over the whole man. Such at every time was the faith of the great Reformers, and more especially in the sixteenth century, such the faith of their most illustrious disciples, of Calvin after Luther, and Knox after Calvin.
The same men have preached the same doctrine to persons whom it was impossible for them to convince by the use of reasoning, by an appeal to examination, or to science, to women and crowds of persons incapable alike of laborious study and of lengthened reflection. They spoke to the imagination, to the moral affections, where the persons whom they addressed were prone to feel emotion, and to believe in consequence of emotion. They gave the name ofFaithto the result of their action, just as they had done so to the result of the process essentially intellectual of which I was before speaking.Faith thus instilled was a religious conviction, not acquired by reasoning, and deriving its origin in human sensibility. This is the idea of faith as entertained by the Mystic Sects.
Appeals to human sensibility and human emotion have not always sufficed to generate faith. Another spring of human influence has been resorted to; and men have been commanded to adhere to practices and to form habits. Man must sooner or later attach ideas to the acts which are habitual to him, and attribute a meaning to that which produces in him a constant effect. The mind was led to the belief of the principles which had given birth to certain practices and habits. A new kind of faith appeared, it had for its principle and dominant characteristic, the submission of the mind to an authority invested with the right at once to govern man's life and to regulate his thought.
Finally, faith has not everywhere nor constantly been generated in the human mind, either by the free exercise of the intelligence, or by appeals to sensibility, or by the formation of habits. It was then said that faith was incommunicable, that it was not in man's power to impart faith, or to acquire it by any exertion of his own, that for this purpose God's intervention and the action of his grace were necessary. Divine grace became thus the preliminary condition of faith and its definitive character.
The wordfaithhas, consequently, in turn expressed: 1st, a conviction acquired by the free efforts of the human intelligence; 2ndly, a conviction acquired by way of the sensibility, and without the concurrence of the reason, and often even against its authority; 3rdly, a conviction acquired by man's long submission to a power invested with a power from on high to command conviction; 4thly, a conviction induced by supernatural means,—by divine grace.
What in the midst of this variety of sources from which it may emanate is the essential and invariable character of faith? What is the state of the soul in which faith reigns when we consider it independently of its origin and of its object?
Two kinds of belief exist in man: the one, I will not call it innate, for this is an inexact and justly criticised expression, but a belief natural and spontaneous which springs up and establishes itself in the mind of man, if not without his being aware of it, at least without the help of any reflection or volition on his part, by the development alone of his nature and the influence of that external world in the midst of which his life is passed; the other kind of belief is the result of laborious examination and reflection, the fruit of voluntary study and of the power possessed by man either to concentrate all his faculties upon a certain object with the design of mastering it, or to direct the thought inwards, and realise what is there taking place—to render an account thereof to himself, and thus to acquire by an act of volition and of reflection, a knowledge which he did not before possess, although the facts which form its object nevertheless existed as facts external—and which he might see by his eyes,—or as facts which were taking place within him.
Of these two kinds of belief which merits the name offaith?
It seems at first sight that the name is perfectly suitable to that kind of belief which I have termed natural and spontaneous: such belief is exempt from doubt and disquietude; it directs man in his judgment, in his actions, and with an empire which he dreams neither of eluding nor contesting; it is ingenuous, unhesitating, practical, sovereign; who would not recognise in it the characteristics offaith?
Faith has in effect two characters; but it has at the same time others which belief natural and spontaneous has not. Almost unnoticed by the man who is yet guided by it, this natural and spontaneous belief is to him, as it were, a law from without which he has received, not accepted; which he obeys by instinct without having given it any intimate and personal assent.It suffices for the exigencies of his life; it guides him, admonishes him, impels him, or checks him; but without, so to say, any concurrence on his own part, without giving birth in him to the sentiment that any active, energetic, or powerful principle is stirring within him, without procuring him the profound joy of contemplating, loving, adoring the truth which reigns over him.Faith, on the contrary, has this power; faith is not science, neither is it ignorance; the mind which faith penetrates has never yet, perhaps, rendered a true account to itself of that in which it has faith; and, perhaps, never will do so; but the mind is, nevertheless, certain of it; to the mind it is present, living; it is no longer a general belief, a law of human nature which governs the moral man, as the law of gravitation governs bodies; it is a personal conviction, a truth which the moral man has made his own by force of contemplation, of voluntary obedience, and love. Henceforth this truth does much more than suffice to his life, it satisfies his soul; it does much more than direct him, it enlightens him.How many, for instance, live under the empire of a natural and instinctive belief that moral good and moral evil exist, without our being able to affirm that they havefaithin them. Such belief is in them, as it were, a master undisputed; to whom, nevertheless, they render no homage, whom they obey without seeing and without loving. But if a circumstance, a cause, however trivial, revealing, so to say, the conscience to itself, should attract and fix their attention upon this distinction between moral good and evil, which is a spontaneous law of their nature; should they knowingly acknowledge and accept it as their legitimate master, should their intelligence honour itself by comprehending it, and their liberty do itself honour by obeying it; should they feel their soul, as it were, the sanctuary of a sacred law, as the focus into which this truth concentrates and establishes itself in order thence to diffuse its rays of light; this is no longer simple natural belief, it isfaith.
Faith, then, does not exclusively consist of either of the two kinds of belief which at first sight seem to share between them the soul of man; it partakes at once of natural and spontaneous belief and of the belief which is the fruit of reflection and science; yet it differs from each; like the latter, it is individual and intimate; like the former confidant, active, dominant. Considered in itself, independently of all comparison with any other particular and analogous state of the intellect, faith is the full security of man in the possession of his belief, as absolved from effort, as exempt from doubt; the path which the mind has pursued in arriving at it is obliterated, and a sentiment only is left behind of the natural and pre-existent harmony between the mind of man and the truth itself. To the man whose mind faith penetrates, his intelligence and his volition present no longer any problems for solution as to the things which are the objects of his faith: he feels himself in full possession of the truth to light and to guide him on his way, and in full possession of himself to act according to the truth.As faith has internal characteristics which are peculiar to it, it has also, with some strange and rare exceptions, external conditions which are necessary to it; it is distinguishable from other modes of human belief, not only by its nature, but by its object. Up to a certain point these conditions may be determined and perceived, although imperfectly, according to the nature itself of that state of the soul and of its effects. A belief may be so entire and sure of itself that no further effort of the intellect seems necessary, and the believer, wholly absorbed in the truth which in his judgment he possesses, may lose all memory of the way by which he arrived at it. A conviction may be so forcible as to become master of his every action, as well as of every impulse of his mind, and may imperatively force and morally oblige him to submit all things to its empire; a state this of the intellect which is the fruit, perhaps, not merely of the exercise of the intelligence, but of a strong emotion, of a long obedience to certain practices, and in the midst of which all the three great faculties of man, the sensibility, the intelligence, and the will, are simultaneously in activity, and simultaneously satisfied.Where all this is the case, the occasion which has induced such a situation of the soul, had need be one worthy of the soul, and of its situation; the subject with which it is so occupied, had need be one which embraces the entire man, which sets in play all his faculties; responding to all the requirements of his moral nature, it has a right in return to all his devotedness.
The characteristics of ideas proper to become really a faith would seemà priorito be intellectual beauty, and practical importance. An idea which should present itself to the mind as true, without at the same time striking it by the extent or the gravity of its consequences, might produce certitude; but the name offaithwould not be suitably applied to it.Nor would the practical merit, or the immediate utility of an idea suffice of itself to generate faith; to do so it must also attract, it must also take possession of the human mind by the pure beauty of truth. In other words, in order that a simple belief, whether instinctive, or arising from reflection, may become faith, the thing believed must be of a nature to procure to man the united joys of contemplation and of activity, to awaken in him the twofold sentiment, that it is of lofty origin and of potent influence; his idea must be such as that he shall be induced to regard it as a medium between the ideal world and the real world, as a missionary charged to model the one upon the other, and to unite them.
It is easy to understand why the name of faith is used almost exclusively to characterise religious beliefs; no other belief possesses in so high a degree the two characteristics, [Footnote 40] which provoke the development of faith.
[Footnote 40: Intellectual beauty and practical importance.]
Many principles of science are beautiful and fruitful in useful applications; political theories may strike the mind by the elevation of the ideas which they embody, and by the grandeur of their results; the doctrines of a pure morality are still more surely and more commonly invested with this double power. Nor have these kinds of belief failed sometimes to generate faith in the human soul. Still, to receive a clear and profound impression at one time of their intellectual beauty, at another of their practical importance, a certain measure of science and of sagacity, or a certain turn for public life, or for politics, as the case may require, is almost always necessary, and this does not belong to all men, nor to every epoch. Religious belief, on the contrary, has no need of such resources: it carries in itself, and in its very nature, infallible means of effect; having once penetrated into the heart of man, however limited and undeveloped in other respects his intelligence may be, or however rude and low his condition, it seems to him a truth at once sublime and usual, a truth which addresses itself to him as an habitant of this earth, and at the same time which opens to him access to those lofty regions, to those treasures of intellectual life, which without the light of faith he would have never known; it has for him the charm of the purest truth, and exercises over him the empire of the most powerful interest.Can it astonish us, that the belief once existent, its transition to a state offaithshould be so rapid and so general? But it is precisely on account of its instinctive tendency to transform itself into faith, and into a faith of extraordinary energy, that religious belief has need to continue always free and always subject to the tests which Liberty has the right to impose. Legitimate faith, that is, as we understand it, the faith which does not deceive itself as to its objects, and which addresses itself really to the truth, is beyond contradiction the loftiest condition to which the human mind, in its present state, can attain, for it is that state in which man feels his moral nature fully satisfied, in which he gives himself up entirely to the mission prescribed to him by his thought.But a faith may be illegitimate; it is possible for this state of the soul to be produced by error; the chance of error (experience proves this at every step) is even here greater, the more the different routes which lead to faith are multiplied and the more its effects are energetic; man may be led astray in his faith by his sentiments, by his habits, by the empire of moral affections or of external circumstances, as well as by the defect or the abuse of his intellectual faculties; for his faith may spring from any of these various sources. Nevertheless, faith once there, it is daring and ambitious; it passionately aspires to diffuse itself, to usurp, to reign, and constitute itself the law of opinions and facts. Not only is faith ambitious, it is strong, it possesses, it displays, in support of its pretensions and its designs, an energy, an address, a perseverance, which are almost always wanting to opinions simply scientific. So that for this mode and degree of conviction and belief, far more than for any other, there is chance of the individual falling into error, and of society falling under oppression.
For these perils there is but one remedy, Liberty. Whether in belief or in action, the nature of man is the same: not only his will but his thought, if it is not to become absurd or culpable, has incessantly need of contradiction and of control. Where faith fails, moral energy and moral dignity fail equally; where liberty does not exist, faith first usurps,—then becomes bewildered—finally destroys itself. If human belief passes to the state of faith, it is its progress and its glory; if, in its efforts toward this result, and after having attained it, it abides constantly under the control of the free intelligence; we have, in this fact, at once a guarantee for society against the tyranny of that faith and a pledge that the faith is legitimate. In the co-existence and mutual respect of these two forces consist the excellency and security of society. [Footnote 41]
[Footnote 41: Revue Française (January, 1828), Méditations et Études Morales, par M. Guizot, pp. 143, 173-175 (edition of 1861).]
If I consider this essay, or psychological portrait, shall I rather call it, of faith in general, and compare with it Christian faith, I am immediately struck by two features as characterising it. On the one side, the ideas and the facts upon which Christian faith is founded, have evidently that twofold merit of intellectual beauty and of practical importance which has both the right and the power to compel faith. On the other side, Christian faith may originate, in fact does originate, in sources the most diverse, in study and rational meditation, in sentiment, in authority, in an appeal to the divine grace.
What grander and more impressive to the mind of man than the principles of Christian faith, regarded as a whole? God and Man incessantly present the one to the other, in the life of each man, as in the history of the human race! What more grave and more momentous, regarded from a practical point of view? In the present hour, it is peace to the soul of man, peace to his life; in the future, it is his destiny throughout eternity.
The diversity of the sources of Christian faith is not less evident than its intellectual beauty and its practical importance. Beyond a doubt, the Christian faith of the Chancellor de l'Hospital, of Pascal, of Bossuet, of Fénelon, of Luther, of Calvin, of Newton, of Euler, of Chalmers, was as much the fruit of reflection and of learning, was as freely meditated and adopted as the scepticism of Montaigne and of Bayle, as the sensualism of Hobbes, and the pantheism of Spinoza. It is equally certain that all Christian communities, Roman Catholic or Protestant, have had their mystics, their eminent and sincere believers, whose faith was illumed and fed by sensibility and imagination; in the former case in the emotions and practices of fervent piety; in the latter, in empassioned transports and strivings after a direct communication with God and with Christ. As for the faith founded upon authority, the Church of Rome has presented the most extraordinary example which the world has ever seen, and if Protestantism has caused the faith of individuals to make great strides in the direction of liberty, it has nevertheless taken for its fixed basis the divine inspiration of the Sacred Book, and has thus ensured a great importance and very efficacious influence to the principle of authority.
Having thus placed Christian Faith in its true point of view, and assigned to it its just rank in the history of the human soul, let us see whence arises the contest in which that Faith is engaged with natural Religion and with religious philosophy? What is the principle of this contest, and what its character?
Here we are met by that all-important question, the question which has been agitated during nineteen centuries, and to which all the intellect of modern times has applied itself. Is the Christian Faith in contradiction to human reason? Some affirm that a contest between the two is natural and inevitable; of these there are who tell us that reason should give way to faith, and again others who say that faith should yield to reason: whereas, on the contrary, there are those also who deny that such contest is inevitable, and who maintain that faith and reason, as they ought to do, may both live in peace with each other.
In my opinion, the difference between Christian Faith and that which is styled natural Religion, or religious philosophy, is profound; but I do not think that the question between the two has been rightly put, or that the character of their opposition has been rightly defined.
To discover what, in effect, this character is, I address myself, first, to the philosophers.
We know how Descartes began his great philosophical inquiries, to what state he brought his mind in order to enter upon his task: "I persuaded myself," says he, "that I could not do better with respect to the opinions which up to that time I had entertained, than to begin by ridding myself of them entirely, in order then either to replace them by better opinions, or to return to the old ones if I should find them, on examination, to conform to the standard of reason."Then proceeding to determine the precepts to be followed by him in this recasting of all his opinions by such standard,—"My first principle," said he, "was never to accept anything as true, unless I could evidently recognise its truth; in other words, to avoid carefully any precipitate judgment, to allow my mind to follow no bias, and not to comprise anything in its judgments but what presented itself so clearly and so distinctly to my mind as to leave me no room for doubt." [Footnote 42]
[Footnote 42: Discours de la Méthode. Works of Descartes, vol. i., pp. 135, 141; edition of M. Cousin.]
More than a century after Descartes, Condillac, wishing to trace to its source the origin of human knowledge, and to write the history of its progressive development, did far more than obliterate from his mind its primitive ideas. He began his labours by curtailing the human mind of a great part of its proper proportions; he reduced man to the primitive condition of a statue, leaving to it no other faculty than the sensation: and then he fancied he could derive from sensations all man's ideas, all his knowledge,—in fact, the entire man himself.
Thus these two great systems, Spiritualism and Sensualism, have their very commencement, each in an arbitrary assumption. Descartes, effacing from the human mind all that it has learnt to know or to believe, solely by its spontaneous activity, and by the natural course of human life, has treated the mind as atabula rasa, and to fill up the void which he has so made, he does not admit anything there unless it presents itself "so clearly and so distinctly to his mind, as to leave him no room to doubt respecting it." Condillac, on the other hand, suppresses not only all that which man has learnt spontaneously and without reflection, but the man himself; leaving in the place of man a statue, sentient, it is true, but only sentient, and with this statue and his sensations alone, he undertakes to reconstruct the man—the entire man—with all the developments of his nature and of his thought.
I see nothing in either of these processes more than a starting point entirely fictitious, a false step made at the very commencement of philosophy,—in short, a mere hypothesis. Descartes rendered admirable services to the cause of liberty and of intellectual sincerity; Condillac contributed to the progress of the method which I shall call, the method of anatomy and scientific dissection applied both to the human mind and to the material world; but from their very commencement both these philosophers threw themselves out of the high road, the straight road of philosophy; each from the very commencement substituted a mere hypothesis in the place of an exact and complete appreciation of facts. It is far from my intention to discuss either of these two systems; I am content to put aside the two hypotheses, thetabula rasaof Descartes, and the statue of Condillac, and I proceed, my way lighted by the facts, as they are, naturally produced in the history of the mind of man, to inquire what is the cause, and what the import, of the struggle which is taking place between rationalistic religious philosophy, and Christian faith.