The inspiration of the holy book of Christianity is quite a different thing: it is special and supernatural. There is divine inspiration in all the great works of man; these books are a work directly and personally inspired by God: they affirm this themselves. The language used by Jesus in the Gospels incessantly implies it; and, in numerous passages, the epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul, as well as the Acts of the Apostles, declare it positively. [Footnote 19]
[Footnote 19: In his History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, M. Reuss acknowledges it: "This inspiration," says he, "was regarded as something unlike any other, and reserved to a few individuals chosen by Providence, and only to them upon special and solemn occasions;" and he refers to the different texts of the New Testament which prove his assertion. (Vol. i. p. 411, ed. 1860.)]
This Christian principle of the special and divine inspiration of the Scriptures was not originally taken in so narrow an acceptation as in later times.In the first ages of the Christian era, the Christians of the school of Plato, whilst carefully distinguishing the inspiration of the sacred volumes from the inspiration of the great poets, strove to determine the process common to these two kinds of inspiration, and to explain one by the other—"It is not by any effect of nature nor by any human faculty," says St. Justin, "that it is in the power of men to know things so grand and so divine; it is by the grace which descends from on high upon the saints. They have no need for any art to be revealed to them; pure themselves, they must offer themselves to the action of the divine spirit, in order that the divine bow, descending itself from heaven and making use of the just, in the same way as the musician does of the chords of a harp or lyre, may unfold to us the knowledge of things divine." "I think," says Athenagoras, "that you are not ignorant of Moses, or of Isaiah, or of the other prophets, who, being turned aside from any process of individual reasoning, and moved by the spirit of God, proclaimed aloud that which echoed within them, the holy spirit employing them and attaching itself to them as the player adds to his flute the breath which makes it discourse its music."
Questions soon began to be agitated in Christendom as to which of the religious books in circulation were really inspired, and as to which did not possess this divine characteristic. Hence proceeded disputes in respect to the Apocryphal books, and the formation of the Canon, or collection of the Holy Scriptures. But even in the very books, received by all as divinely inspired, great Christian doctors, not merely Origen, but St. Jerome and St. Augustin, discovered grammatical errors and faults which it was impossible to attribute to divine inspiration; and they distinguished, with greater or less exactness, the inspiration of God from the imperfection of man. St. Jerome points out solecisms in the Epistles of St. Paul; and St. Augustin says, in speaking of St. John, "I venture to say that John perhaps has not spoken of the thing as it really was, but only as it was in his power to speak; for he is a man, and he speaks of God.Inspired, no doubt, by God, but still a man. … When we meet with such diversity of expressions—although not in themselves contradictory—used by the Evangelists, we should regard, in the words of each, only the intent with which the words are pronounced, and not, like wretched cavillers, attach an idea of truth to the external form of the letter; for we must seek the very spirit, not only in all the words, but in everything else which serve as symptoms of the manifestation of the spirit."
It was in the presence and in spite of these discussions, of this explanation and of this free criticism, that the divine inspiration of the Scriptures was nevertheless upheld in the fourth century as the common and positive faith of Christians.
I pass by the twelve following centuries: a long period; full of darkness, but yet with flashes of light; silent yet full of uproar, full of liberty and oppression: period beginning with the invasion of the Barbarians and terminating with the Renaissance; that period in short which, taken together, is called the Middle Age.
I transport myself at once to the sixteenth century, that epoch of political struggles, when men reduced to systems, and reasoned upon, the different elements of moral and social institutions; for they had, ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, been fermenting pell-mell in Europe, which, although so small, was yet destined to conquer and civilize that globe, termed by us the world.
Striving to discover what, after the lapse of so many years and events, had become of the principle of the divine inspiration of the sacred books, that base of the religious faith and rule of Christian societies, I find that this question had received two solutions: one in the name of the Church of Rome, by its representative the Council of Trent; the other in the name of the Protestant churches, by their great founders and teachers. The Council of Trent "receives all the books both of the old and of the new Testament, since the same God is the author of each; surrounds them with the same respect, and with an equally pious reverence;" inserts in its decree the complete catalogue of these books, and "anathematises whoever does not accept as sacred and canonical those books, with all that they contain, just as they are in use in the Catholic Church, and as they exist in the ancient Latin edition known as the Vulgate." [Footnote 20]
[Footnote 20: Le Saint Concile de Trente, translated by the Abbé Chanut, pp. 10—13. Paris, 1686.]
The founders of the great Protestant Churches, although they began to apply the right of historical criticism to both texts and manuscripts, proclaimed nevertheless the absolute and complete inspiration of the holy volumes, in form and sense, narrative, precepts, and words. The Bible, all the Bible, the old, the new Testament, were, according to them, written at God's dictation to serve as the law of Christian Faith.
The Decree of the Council of Trent remains the Rule of the Church of Rome in the nineteenth century as much as it was in the sixteenth century; and in our days a Protestant Divine, justly respected for elevation of thought as much as for the energetic sincerity of his Faith, in maintaining the principle of the complete and divine inspiration, and of the absolute infallibility, of the Bible, has been driven so far as to make this strange assertion: "All the expressions and all the letters of the ten commandments were certainly written by the finger of God, from the Aleph with which they begin, to the Caph with which they end;" a few pages further on he says: "The Decalogue, we repeat, was written entirely by the finger of Jehovah upon the two stone slabs." [Footnote 21]
[Footnote 21: Théopneustie. By M. Gaussen. 2nd ed., 1842, pp. 225, 242.]
"Be on your guard," said Bossuet, "you assign to God arms and hands; unless you strip these expressions of all that savours of humanity, so as to leave nothing of arms and hands but their action and their force, you err. … God does everything by command; he has no lips to move, neither does he strike the air with his tongue to draw forth sounds from it; he has only to will, and his will is accomplished." [Footnote 22]
[Footnote 22: Elévations sur les Mystères, vol. ix. pp. 66-68, 85, 109; and the Sixiéme Avertissement sur les lettres de Jurieu, vol. xxx. pp. 57, 134.]
The empire of circumstances, both in the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, has had much to do with the adoption of these two doctrines, thus conceived and expressed. The Council of Trent, in order to cut short all controversies with the Reformers, took the Scriptures, and the interpretation of the Scriptures, under the guardianship of the supreme and infallible authority of the Church of Rome. The Reformers, in their turn, found their fixed point and a basis, firm in the midst of the movement to which they were giving the impulse, in the infallibility of the Bible, itself divinely inspired. And at the present time, on the one side the Church of Rome in its new dangers, and on the other side the Protestants, sincere in their ardent zeal to awaken that Christian Faith which is languishing, have pushed the two doctrines,—the former of ecclesiastical authority, the latter of biblical infallibility,—to their extremest verge: in my opinion each beyond the limits of right and of truth. History explains errors, it does not justify them.I resume, briefly: those with which I reproach the two doctrines referred to,—they severally infringe, the one the rights of religious liberty, the other those of human science. In both cases they greatly endanger that Christian Religion which they have, in these respects, severally ill understood.
I have already expressed my views upon this subject. [Footnote 23]
[Footnote 23: Meditations on the Essence of Christianity. Sixth Meditation. Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, pp. 145-146. London, 1864.]
Fervent and learned men maintain "that all, absolutely all, in the Scriptures is divinely inspired—the words as well as the ideas, all the words used upon all subjects—the material of language, as well as the doctrine which lies at its base. In this assertion I see but deplorable confusion, leading to profound misapprehension both of the meaning and the object of the sacred books. It was not God's purpose to give instruction to men in grammar, and if not in grammar neither was it his purpose to give instruction in geology, astronomy, geography, or chronology.It is on their relations with their Creator, upon duties of men towards Him and towards each other, upon the rule of faith and of conduct in life, that God has lighted them by light from heaven. It is to the subject of religion and morals, and to these alone, that the inspiration of the Scriptures is directed."
I have read the Holy Scriptures scrupulously, and over and over again, with a view neither to criticise nor defend, with the sole object of familiarising myself with their character and sense. The more I advanced in this study, the longer I had lived in the Bible, the more did the two facts seem clear to me, the Divine truths and the human faults at once profoundly distinct and in intimate contact. I meet at each step in the Bible with God and with man: God, Being real and personal, to whom nothing happens, in whom nothing changes, Being identical and immovable in the midst of the universal movement, who gives of himself the unparalleled definition, "I am that I am:" on the other side man, Being incomplete, imperfect, variable, full of deficiencies and of contradictions, of sublime instincts and gross desires, of curiosity and ignorance, capable of good and of evil, and perfectible in the midst of his imperfection.What the Bible is incessantly showing us is, God and Man, their points of connection and their contests,—God watching over and acting upon man; man at one time accepting, at another rejecting, God's influence. The divine person and the human person, if the expression is permissible, are in each other's presence, each acting upon the other and upon events. It is the education of man after his Creation: his education as a religious and moral being, nothing less and nothing more. God does not, in thus educating man, change him: he created him intelligent and free: he enlightens him as to the religious and moral law with light from heaven; in other respects he leaves him absorbed in the laborious and perilous exercise of his intelligence and of his liberty as a free agent.At each epoch, in every circumstance, during his continuous action upon man, God takes him as he finds him, with his passions, vices, defects, errors, ignorance; just such a being as he has made himself; nay, every day is making himself, by the good or bad use of his intelligence and of his freedom of action. This is the Biblical account, and the Biblical history of the relations of Man with God.
What a strange contrast, and still what an intimate and powerful connection exists, in this history, between those whom—how shall I dare to permit myself to call the two actors! God does not appear so elevated, so pure, so strange to imperfection, so untroubled by any human nature, so immutable and serene in the plenitude of the divine nature, so really God, in any tradition, invention of poetry, or in any mythology, as he is presented to us in the Bible. On the other hand, in no nation, in no historical narrative or document, does man show himself more violent and ruder, more brutal, more cruel, more prompt to ingratitude, and more rebellious to his God, than he is amongst the Hebrews.Nowhere else, and in no history, is the distance so great between the divine sphere and the human region, between the sovereign and the subject. Still, Israel never entirely separates itself from God; and, in spite of vices and excesses, Israel returns to God, and recognises his law and empire, even whilst incessantly violating them. Nowhere, on the other hand, does God appear, in his turn, so occupied with man, does he at once exact so much from him and yet evince so much sympathy for him: he does not change him suddenly, by any act of his sovereign will; he is a witness to all his imperfections, all his weaknesses, and all his errors; nevertheless, he abandons him not; he holds ever steadily before him the torch of Heavenly Light, and never omits to interest himself in his destiny. The religious and moral idea is ever present and dominant; nowhere else have the business and labour of human science held so small a place in man's thoughts and man's society. God, and the relations of God and man, are the only subjects which fill the Holy volumes.
In what do those relations consist? By what results does this continuous action manifest itself, of God upon man; this incessant dialogue between God and man? By laws, precepts, and commands, religious and moral—God proposes these to man; he enjoins nothing more; he speaks to him of nothing else; demands nothing from him but obedience to his Law. God does not teach, he commands; God does not discuss, he warns. And the organs of God's speech, the men whom he takes for his interpreters and his prophets, Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, do neither less nor more. Although superior to most of their contemporaries by reason of possessing certain attainments, they are no professors of human sciences: just as they speak the language of the common people whom they address, just so do they share most of their ignorance and errors respecting the objects and facts of the finite world, in the midst of which they are living.When they are made the medium for the religious and moral precepts and warnings of God, it is then that they are no longer mere men of their time; it is then, only then, that the light of divine inspiration descends upon them, and that they diffuse it to all around them.
I do not wish to limit myself to a general summary only of what I regard as the essential character of the Holy Scriptures,—the simultaneous presence of the divine element and of the human element; the one in all its sublimity, the other in all its imperfection; God revealing to man in a certain place his religious law and his moral law, but without conveying elsewhere the divine light; God taking man as he finds him, in the points of time and of space in which he is placed, with all his barbarism and imperfections. I proceed, therefore, to consider some of the particular examples presented by the Scriptures, which make this great truth so evident as to be incontestable.
I open the book of Genesis and read:—
"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.Then on the third day Abraham lift up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son: and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife: and they went both of them together.And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering: so they went both of them together.And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order; and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, here am I.And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son."
A man who, by his enlightened views, and the elevation of his mind, as well as by his faithfulness as a follower of Christ, is an honour to the church which he serves, Dr. Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, explains and characterises in these terms the Biblical truths to which I am referring.
"There have been," he says, "in almost all ancient forms of religion, and also in some of more modern date, two strong tendencies, each in itself springing from the best and purest feelings of humanity, yet each, if carried into the extremes suggested by passion or by logic, incompatible with the other and with its own highest purpose. One is the craving to please, or to propitiate, or to communicate with the powers above us, by surrendering some object near and dear to ourselves. This is the source of all sacrifice. The other is the profound moral instinct that the Creator of the world cannot be pleased, or propitiated, or approached by any other means than a pure life and good deeds. On the exaggeration, on the contact, on the collision of these two tendencies, have turned some of the chief difficulties of evangelical history. The earliest of them we are about to witness in the life of Abraham. …The sacrifice, the resignation of the will in the father and the son was accepted; the literal sacrifice of the act was repelled. The great principle was proclaimed that mercy was better than sacrifice,—that the sacrifice of self is the highest and holiest offering that God can receive. … We have a proverb which tells us that man's extremity is God's opportunity." [Footnote 24]
[Footnote 24: Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. By Arthur P. Stanley, D.D. Vol. i. pp. 47, 48, 50. London, 1867.]
Abraham was upon the point of accomplishing an act which, even in the presence of virtuous motives and a divine command, has been forbidden, and is held accursed by the subsequent Revelation and the sentiments of all whom it has enlightened. At this moment the hand of Abraham is stayed, and patriarchal religion is saved from the antagonism of a conflict between the rigour of the Hebrew law and the merciful dispensation of the Gospel.
The sentiment which Dean Stanley expresses has my full concurrence; but I go still further, and maintain that there is in the pathetic narrative of Abraham's sacrifice something more than he points out.This interposition of God in order to arrest the very act which he has required is in accord with the general doctrine of the Bible, expressly condemning human sacrifices; [Footnote 25] but Abraham's as well as several other examples prove how such sacrifices continued to exist in the ferocious traditions and manners, not only of several nations of Semitic origin, but even of the Hebrews themselves. God's intent is to try Abraham, and he pauses as soon as Abraham's obedience to the divine order is beyond doubt. Abraham does not hesitate to execute the divine command; he expresses no surprise at it. The sacrifice of Isaac is prepared, and very nearly consummated, as an event almost of course. Here we have man in the grossest and blindest condition of barbarism, in the presence of God, in whom as sovereign he believes, and whose sovereignty it is not his purpose to dispute.
[Footnote 25: Leviticus xviii. 21; Deuteronomy xii. 31; Ezekiel xx. 26. This question is treated and conclusively solved in the Theologische Encyclopedie of Herzog, art. Sacrifice, vol. x. p. 621.]
It would be easy for me to multiply these examples, and to show, in many other passages of the Bible, the following fundamental characteristic of Biblical History: the thought and word of man, although constantly in presence of the divine law and of the divine action, yet in contact and contrast with the thought and word of God. I prefer seeking for proofs in support of my conviction in a comparison of the Old and New Testaments, and in the light which Christianity sheds upon the Hebrew Revelation, which it does not contradict, but to which it applies a movement of progress.
I say progress,—progress immense, infinitely grander than man's imagination could ever have conceived,—and at the same time the character of the divine work remaining absolutely the same. It is no longer, as in the Old Testament, the stormy combat, the continuous struggle of God and of man in the events of the world and in the life of the people. God no longer interposes in the New Testament to warn or direct, to raise up or humble, to recompense or to punish man in this world; he decides no longer directly the issue of battle or the destiny of states.It is still God, God in Jesus Christ, with all his sublimity: He, and He only, occupies and fills the place. He appears there under a different aspect. In his human form, He is weakness itself, intended and destined to become the very type of humility and of suffering; the voluntary victim, who expiates man's sin; the victim of man's fall. But in the midst of His miseries it is God, God as He was for Israel in all the splendour of His power. Christ's own knowledge of this appears throughout. He says it, He manifests it unceasingly by actions and by words; sometimes by natural effects, sometimes by miracles. And yet how different! what a range in the object and the bearing of His actions and of His words! In the Old Testament the scene concentrates itself upon a corner of the world, a single people, a petty nation, separated by God from the rest of the world, in order to withdraw it from the contagion of idolatry;—but now it is for the whole world, for all nations, for future as well as for living generations, for the Gentile as well as for the Jew, for the barbarians of Malta as well as for the Greeks of Athens, that the God of the New Testament manifests Himself and speaks; it is over the whole of humanity that He spreads His light and orders His servants to extend His empire.
He does more, much more. That divine light which Jesus comes to spread over the whole world, although it continues to emanate from the same fountain, becomes more complete and more pure. Jesus is the first to recognise the fact that the ancient law, although issuing from God, bears here and there traces of human errors and passions. "I am not come," says he, "to abolish the law, but to fulfil it." How fulfil it? By removing the errors with which it had become intermixed owing to the imperfect nature of the men, of the time, and of the place, at which it appeared, and by filling up the gaps which that imperfection had entailed. He disentangles the ancient law from every human element, and brings it back to its one divine element, its one pure and perfect source. I refrain from all argument or commentary. I will not cite anything in proof of this grand fact but those very texts of the Ancient and of the New Testament which embody their most essential precepts.
I read in Exodus, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." [Footnote 26] Jesus effaces thislex talionis. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 26: Exodus xxi. 24, 25.][Footnote 27: Matthew v. 43, 44.]
It is said in the book of Deuteronomy: "When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, an
[Footnote 28: Deuteronomy xxiv. 1.]
I read in the New Testament: "And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? … And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." [Footnote 29]
[Footnote 29: Mark x. 2-9; Matthew xix. 3-9.]
The Mosaic law condemns to death every adulterer: "If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel." [Footnote 30]
[Footnote 30: Deuteronomy xxii. 22.]
Jesus is called upon to pronounce upon the very case: "And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery; in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." [Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: John viii. 3-11.]
The Mosaic law is full of minute ceremonial regulations, and of rigorous conditions, which attach to the performance of certain external acts, in certain appointed places, the duty of adoration and of prayer. Not only does Jesus object to the Scribes and Pharisees that they place all their faith and their piety in the acts alone; he does more; he gives his disciples personally a lesson of striking simplicity by teaching them the Lord's Prayer; and when the Samaritan woman, whom he meets near the well of Jacob, says to him: "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. … Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, … the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." [Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: John iv. 20, 21, 23, 24.]
Thus Jesus, not to abolish but to accomplish the ancient law, and to make it harmonise with the new and universal work which he is about, separates from the law that which the imperfection of man had introduced in it in other times, and for a more limited work; he leaves in it nothing but the divine element in all its purity and empire. He only leaves to the divine element its religious and moral empire, for it is in its name alone that he speaks; the religious and moral law is the only law revealed by Jesus, and extended over the entire world; no other thought mixes itself with his doctrine, no other motive influences his action; political science, human science, have absolutely no place at all in the New Testament; Jesus does not think of satisfying either social ambition or intellectual curiosity; he desires to make neither kings nor doctors; as soon as he finds such pretensions advanced, he sets them aside;"Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's; and unto God the things that are God's." "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." [Footnote 33]
[Footnote 33: Matthew xxii. 21; xi. 25.]
Jesus occupies himself with man's soul alone, with the human being in his native simplicity; the relations of man, of every man, with God; the state and destiny of the human soul, of every human soul, in the present and in the future: this is the sole idea, the sole mission, of the New Testament. Jesus knows that when once accomplished this will bring with it its own salutary consequences: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." [Footnote 34]
[Footnote 34: Matthew vi. 33.]
I do not hesitate, then, to affirm, that human science, in its different and special objects,—whether astronomy, geology, geography, chronology, physics, historical criticism,—is as foreign to the object as it is to the source of the sacred Volumes. In the sciences we have the domain of the mind of man left to itself, and to itself alone. They are the fruits, assiduously cultivated and slowly acquired by the laborious exertions of the human intellect during a succession of ages. If, then, you meet, in Scriptural texts, not treating of acts declared miraculous, terms and assertions apparently repugnant to facts recognised as truths in these different sciences, feel no disquietude. It is not there that God has set up His divine torch; it is not there that God has spoken. The language is the language of the men of the different epochs, men who speak according to the measure of their knowledge or of their ignorance, the language which they are obliged to speak in order to be understood by their contemporaries. I feel surprised that men should require to be told this, so simple, so clear is it.In matters of religion and of morality there have always existed, and in every place there have existed, spontaneous instincts, aspirations, and ideas common to all men, which lead them to employ a similar language,—a language comprehended and received by all who hear it, whatever in other respects may be their inequality in attainments and civilization; whereas, in matters purely scientific we find nothing at all like this; men in the mass see and speak of these, not as they are to the eye of science, but according to their appearances, and so men comprehend or do not comprehend them, hear them or do not hear them, according to the degree of scientific knowledge or of ignorance prevalent at the time and place at which they live. What would the Hebrews in the Desert, or the Jews about the person of Christ, or the savages of the Pacific have said to his missionaries, if they had been told that it is the earth which turns round the sun, that its shape is that of a spheroid, that it is habitable and inhabited at opposite points of its circumference?What is more natural, what more inevitable, than that the language of the Scriptures should agree with the scientific imperfection of men upon all these matters, even where that language is full of divine inspiration as to the religious or moral law of humanity?
No one honours science more than I do, no one feels a greater admiration for it. It is a mission that man has to perform, and it is one of his glories; but it has no place in the relation of man with God, and in the action of God upon man. God is no sublime, no mighty doctor, who reveals truths of science to man, to give him the noble pleasure of contemplating them, or of publishing them; he has left such researches to labours purely human. The work of God is more complex and grander: it is essentially practical. That of which man, every man, stands in need, that after which he thirsts, that which all mankind asks of God, simple as well as learned, is to be enlightened as to the religious and moral truths which are to regulate his soul and his life, and to decide his lot in eternity.It is to all mankind that God responds; it is to the salvation of all men that the Scripture applies itself. A celebrated philosopher, a man of a mind lofty and sincere, but one of the most lost of the great lost ones of the human intelligence, thought differently. According to Spinoza, "all men are far from being called to enjoy eternal life in the same plenitude. … After death the reason,—just ideas survive; all the rest perishes. Souls governed by reason, philosophical souls, who even from the moment when their life in this world ceases, live in God, are consequently exempt from death; for death deprives them only of that which is of no value. But those dim and feeble souls, upon which reason hardly gleams at all, those souls made up entirely, so to say, of empty imaginings and passions, perish almost entirely; and death, instead of coming to them as a simple accident, penetrates to the very bottom of their being. The soul of the sage, on the contrary, cannot be more than barely troubled; possessing, by a sort of eternal necessity, the consciousness of itself and of God, and of things as they really are, it never ceases to exist; and as for real tranquillity of soul, it possesses it for ever." [Footnote 35]
[Footnote 35: Œuvres de Spinoza. According to the translation of Emile Saisset. Introduction, vol. iii. p. 291.]
I know not if human pride ever gave expression to a thought showing a stranger aberration of intellect; and in spite of the favour with which some men of distinguished abilities endeavour at the present day to encircle the name of Spinoza, I do not believe that there is any chance, at an epoch when war is declared against all privileges, for philosophers to make good their exclusive claim to the privilege of immortality.
When I use the term "Christian Ignorance," I would not have either the sense which I attach to the expression, or the intention with which I use it, misunderstood. I do not think that it should be denied to man to make any use of his intelligence, to exercise any right to inquire freely after truth, or after any kind of truth. Is the field which is open to the human mind limited in extent? Is the mind itself of limited reach? Is there a difference of degree in human knowledge according as the objects are different to which it is applied? These are questions, all of them, fundamentally contained in the words "Christian Ignorance;" and of these questions it is my aim to offer what appears to me to be the right solution.
I am in the presence of four sciences, and of six schools or systems, which have made, are making, and will always continue to make, much noise in the world. The sciences are, Physiology, Psychology, Ontology, and Theology. The systems to which these sciences have given birth are, Materialism, Positivism, Scepticism, Spiritualism, Scientific Theology, Mystical Theology. I am far from meaning to discuss here the principles of these systems, or to attempt to determine their value; it would be to undertake the task of examining all philosophy and all philosophies. I mean to touch only upon one of the special questions which furnish in our days matter of debate between Christianity and these different schools. It is thus, and thus only, that I can clearly establish the sense which I attach to the words "Christian Ignorance;" and determine, at the same time, their bearing and their limitation.
I have, and for very simple reasons, little to say respecting the first three systems to which I have just referred, i. e., Materialism, Positivism, Scepticism. By its denial of the distinction of the soul and the body, of mind and matter, Materialism rejects Psychology, and arrives, as far as Ontology is concerned, only at Atheism or at Pantheism. Of the four great philosophical sciences, Physiology is the only one with which Materialism has any concern. Amongst Positivists, some, the more eminent, admit, it is true, the reality of Objects, or to speak more exactly, the reality of the domain of Psychology and of Ontology; but in admitting it they declare it to be inaccessible to the human mind: "Inaccessible," says M. Littré, "not null or non-existent; it is an ocean which washes our shore, and for which we have neither bark nor sail." [Footnote 36]
[Footnote 36: A. Comte et la Philosophie Positive. By M. Littré, p. 519.]
That is to say, that, according to Positivists, Psychology, Ontology, and Theology are not—cannot be—sciences.As for sceptics, they contest to the human mind all certitude, and especially certitude with respect to the subject-matters of Psychology, Ontology, and Theology. The fundamental principle of Christian belief is then too absolutely strange to those three schools for it to be necessary that I should discuss with them the source, bearing, and legitimacy of that which I term "Christian Ignorance."
It is only with Spiritualists, with scientific Theologians, and with mystic Theologians, that it is possible to discuss this question of Christian Ignorance, for the three schools to which they belong are the only ones which, in the same way as Christianity itself does, open to the human mind the domain of the four sciences—Physiology, Psychology, Ontology, and Theology, and which recognise the right of the human mind there to search after truth, and the possibility of its being there discovered.
When I speak of Spiritualists, a preliminary remark is indispensable. Christianity is as spiritualistic, not to say more so, than Spiritualism itself.It is not, then, with Spiritualism in general, and with all Spiritualists without distinction, that Christians have to deal in the question of "Christian Ignorance," as it has in other questions; the discussion here lies between Christianity and Rationalistic Spiritualism alone; and not only between Rationalism and Christian ignorance, but also between Rationalistic science and Christian science.
Rationalistic Spiritualism admits the reality of Psychology, of Ontology, and of Theology, just as it does that of Physiology; it admits that these different sciences owe their birth and development necessarily to the spectacle of the universe, of men and of things, and have for their object the solution of the questions which this spectacle suggests. But this great fact once admitted, Rationalism places in Psychology, and in Psychology alone, the starting-point and the fulcrum of Ontology and of Theology; it only admits in these two sciences results to which the human mind attains by its own unaided efforts, that is to say, by way of observation and of reasoning; it recognises for human knowledge, with respect to Ontology and Theology, no source other than human reason.Christianity opens to Ontology and Theology a larger sphere and other sources of knowledge: besides the psychological facts supplied to these two sciences by observation and reasoning, it recognises historical facts as truths, not only which they are bound themselves to admit, but which they have a right to demand that others shall admit; Christianity does not make the human mind the sole object of its belief; it believes also in the history of Humanity, and finds in that History facts to the truth of which centuries, and the traditions of centuries, have testified, which it therefore holds, and is bound to hold, as well proved and as certain as any physical or psychological fact proved by the observations of contemporary science. The Creation, the primitive Revelation, the Mosaic Revelation, the Evangelical Revelation, are in Christian Doctrine historical facts which Ontology and Theology take, with reason, as the elementary data and the legitimate bases of science.
I am here met by a fundamental objection made to these facts and to their scientific authority; they are, it is said, opposed to the permanent laws of nature and of reason, as well as of human experience; science cannot admit supernatural facts. I have no intention in merely passing to re-enter here upon this great question; I have already expressed unreservedly my opinion with respect to it, [Footnote 37] and upon some other occasion I shall return to it; for, if I do not deceive myself, the question has not hitherto been properly sounded and to the depth which it demands. Here I confine myself to referring to two ideas—facts, rather—absolutely forgotten or ignored by the systematic opponents of the supernatural.
[Footnote 37: Meditations on the Essence of Christianity. Third Meditation: "The Supernatural," pp. 84-108. London, 1864.]
Liberty, free agency, in presence of the external or internal causes which operate upon the will, is the peculiar and distinctive characteristic of man.It is by this that man separates himself from and raises himself above nature, understanding by the term the ensemble of things determined by laws general, anterior, permanent. Man alone has it in his power to commence a new series of facts foreign to any general law, and originating in his will alone. To deny such facts, is to deny that man is a free agent, and to make him a machine regulated by external and fatal laws; that is to say, to drive man back to the condition of that nature which is substantially governed by laws of this kind, and thus to abolish at one blow human morality and human liberty.
The blow strikes still higher—it would abolish God. God, who created man, is, and was previous to the existence of his creations, a being essentially free; for liberty cannot be the daughter of Fatality. It is in the free divine volition that human Liberty has its source, and man's Liberty itself testifies to the source from which it emanates.By denying human liberty, we throw not only man but God into the condition of physical nature, that is to say, into the ensemble of causes obedient to fate, and deprived of all moral essence; that is to say, we plunge into Pantheism, which, in spite of Spinoza and Goethe, in spite of all the efforts of logical reasoning or poetic imagination, is, in ultimate analysis, nothing more than Atheism.
The systematic opponents of the supernatural must submit to this consequence. Most of them, I am certain, are far from being disposed to accept it, and would indeed repudiate it with the most honourable perseverance. Vain efforts! Driven from entrenchment to entrenchment, from fall to fall, they will be finally reduced to this extremity; and if divine wisdom had not assigned limits to the force of man's Logic, the practical consequences of such a system would soon make themselves evident in the moral and social condition of humanity.