Plenty, used under the absurd misleading of its terminal 'y' as an adjective.Alongst, rememberof; ablefor, the worseofliquor, to callfor, to go the lengthof, as applied to a distance; 'I don't thinkit,' instead of 'I don't thinkso.'
In theLady's Newspaperfor Saturday, May 8, 1852 (No. 280), occurs the very worst case of exaggerated and incredible mixed silliness and vulgarity connected with the use ofassistforhelpat the dinner-table that I have met with. It occurs in the review of a book entitled 'The Illustrated London Cookery Book,' by Frederick Bishop. Mr. Bishop, it seems, had 'enjoyed the office of cuisinier at the Palace, and among some of our first nobility.' He has, by the way, an introductory 'Philosophy of Cookery.' Two cases occur of this matchless absurdity:
1. An ideal carver is described: he, after carving, 'is as cool and collected as ever, andassiststhe portions he has carved with as much grace as he displayed in carving the fowl.'
2. Further on, when contrasting, not the carvers, but the thingsto becarved, coming to 'Neck of Veal,' he says of the carver: 'Should the vertebræ have not been jointed by the butcher, you would find yourself in the position of the ungraceful carver, being compelled to exercise a degree of strength which should never be suffered to appear, very possibly, too,assistinggravy in a manner not contemplated by the person unfortunate enough to receive it.'
Genteelis the vulgarest and most plebeian of all known words. Accordingly (and strange it is that the educated users of this word should not perceive that fact), aristocratic people—people in the most undoubtedéliteof society as to rank or connections—utterly ignore the word. They are aware of its existence in English dictionaries; they know that it slumbers in those vast repositories; they even apprehend your meaning in a vague way when you employ it as an epithet for assigning the pretensions of an individual or a family. Generally it is understood to imply that the party so described is in a position to make morning calls, to leave cards, to be presentable for anything to the contrary apparent in manners, style of conversation, etc. But these and other suggestions still leave a vast area unmapped of blank charts in which the soundings are still doubtful.
The word 'genteel' is so eminently vulgar apparently for this reason, that it presents a non-vulgar distinction under a gross and vulgar conception of that distinction. The true and central notion, on which the word revolves, is elevating; but, by a false abstraction of its elements, it is degraded. And yet in parts of this island where the progress of refinement is torpid, and the field of vision is both narrow and unchanging in all that regards thenuancesof manners, I have remarked that the word 'genteel' maintains its old advantageous acceptation; and as a proof of this, eminent and even revolutionary thinkers born and bred in such provincial twilight, use the word as if untainted and hardly aware that it is flyblown.
Among ourselves it is certain that a peculiar style of gossip, of babble, and of miniature intriguing, invests the atmosphere of little 'townishness,' such as often entangles the more thoughtful and dignified of the residents in troublesome efforts at passive resistance or active counter-action. In dealing with this matter, Mr. Wordsworth instanced Northampton and Nottingham; but a broader difference could hardly be than between these towns. And just as 'genteel' remains the vulgarest of all words, so the words 'simple' and 'simplicity,' amongst all known words, offer the most complex and least simple of ideas.
Having made this deprecation on behalf of my own criminality in using such a word as 'genteel,' I go on to say that whilst Northampton was (andis, I believe) of all towns the most genteel, Nottingham for more than two centuries has been the most insurrectionary and in a scarlet excess democratic. Nottingham, in fact, has always resembled the Alexandria of ancient days; whilst Northampton could not be other than aristocratic as the centre of a county more thickly gemmed by the ancestral seats of our nobility than any beside in the island. Norwich, again, though a seat of manufacturing industry, has always been modified considerably by a literary body of residents.
'Mein alter Herr' (von Stein) 'pflegte dann wohl scherzend zu sagen: Ich müsse von irgend eine Hexe meinen Altem als ein Wechselbalg in's Nest gelegt seyn; ich gehöre offenbar einem Stamm amerikanischer wilden an, und habe noch die Hühnerhundnase zum Auswittern des verschiedenen Blutes.' Arndt, speaking of his power to detect at sight (when seen at a distance) Russians, English, etc., says that Von Stein replied thus in his surprise. But I have cited the passage as one which amply illustrates the suspensive form of sentencein the German always indicated by a colon (:), thus: 'zu sagen: Ich müsse'—to say that I must have been (p. 164).
The active sense offearful, viz., that which causes and communicates terror—not that which receives terror—was undoubtedly in Shakespeare's age, but especially amongst poets, the preponderant sense. Accordingly I am of opinion that even in neutral cases, such as are open indifferently to either sense, viz., that which affrights, or that which is itself affrighted, the bias in Shakespeare's interpretation of the feeling lay towards the former movement. For instance, in one of his sonnets:
'Oh, fearful meditation! where, alas!'
'Oh, fearful meditation! where, alas!'
the true construction I believe to be—not this: Oh, thoughderivingterror from the circumstances surrounding thee,sufferingterror from theentourageof considerations pursuing thee; but this: Oh, thought impressing and creating terror, etc. A 'fearful' agent in Shakespeare's use is not one that shrinks in alarm from the act, but an agent that causes others to shrink; not panic-struck, but panic-striking.
Miss Edgeworth, let me remark, commits trespasses on language that are really past excusing. In one place she says that a man 'had acontemptibleopinion' of some other man's understanding. Such a blunder is not of that class which usage sanctions, and an accuracy not much short of pedantry would be argued in noticing: it is at once illiterate and vulgar in the very last degree. I mean that it is common amongst vulgar people, and themonly. It ranks, for instance, with the common formula of 'Iam agreeable, if you prefer it.'
Style is the disentangling of thoughts or ideas reciprocally involved in each other.
Top
Religion under any of its aspects, revealing or consoling—religion in connection with any of its affinities, ethics or metaphysics, whenself-evoked by a person of earnest nature, not imposed from without by the necessities of monastic life, not caught as a contagion from the example of friends that surround you, argues some 'vast volcanic agency' moving at subterraneous depths below the ordinary working mind of daily life, and entitled by its own intrinsic grandeur to ennoble the curiosity (else a petty passion) which may put questions as to its origin. In any case of religion arising, as a spontaneous birth, in the midst of alien forces, it is inevitable to ask for itswhyand itswhence.Religion considered as a sentiment of devotion, as a yearning after some dedication to an immeasurable principle of that noblest temple among all temples—'the upright heart and pure,' or religion, again, as the apprehension of some mighty synthesis amongst truths dimly perceived heretofore amidst separating clouds, but now brought into strict indissoluble connection, proclaims a revolution so great that it is otherwise not to be accounted for than as the breaking out of a germ of the supernatural in man as a seed from a hitherto barren soil.
Sin is that secret word, that darkaporrétonof thehuman race, undiscoverable except by express revelation, which having once been laid in the great things of God as a germinal principle, has since blossomed into a vast growth of sublime ideas known only to those nations who have lived under the moulding of Scriptural truth—and comprehendingallfunctions of the Infinite operatively familiar to man. Yes, I affirm that there is no form through which the Infinite reveals itself in a sense comprehensible by man and adequate to man; that there is no sublime agency whichcompressesthe human mind from infancy so as to mingle with the moments of its growth, positively none but has been in its whole origin—in every part—and exclusively developed out of that tremendous mystery which lurks under the name of sin.
Yes, I affirm that even in its dreams every Christian child is invested by an atmosphere of sublimity unknown to the greatest of Pagan philosophers: that golden rays reach it by two functions of the Infinite; and that these, in common with those emanations of the Infinite that do not settle upon the mind until mature years, are all projections—derivations or counterpositions—from the obscure idea of sin; could not have existed under any previous condition; and for a Pagan mind would not have been intelligible.
Sin.—It is not only that the Infinite arises as part of the entire system resting on sin, but specifically from sin apart from its counterforces or reactions, viz., from sin as a thing, and the only thing originally shadowy and in a terrific sense mysterious.
Stench.—I believe that under Burke's commentary, this idea would become a high test of the doctrine of theInfinite. He pronounces it sublime, or sublime in cases of intensity. Now, first of all, the intense state of everything or anything is but a mode of power, that idea or element or moment of greatness under a varied form. Here, then, is nothingproperor separately peculiar to stench: it is not stenchasstench, but stench as a mode or form of sensation, capable therefore of intensification. It is but a case under what we may suppose a general Kantian rule—that every sensation runs through all gradations, from the lowest or most obscure and nascent to the highest. Secondly, however, pass over to the contemplation of stenchasstench: then I affirm—that as simply expounding the decay, and altering or spoiling tendency or state of all things—simply as a register of imperfection, and of one which does not (as ruins to the eye) ever put on a pleasing transitional aspect, it is merely disagreeable, but also at the same time mean. For the imperfection is merely transitional and fleeting, not absolute. First, midst and last, it is or can be grand when it reverts or comes round upon its mediating point, or point of reaction.
The arrangement of my Infinite must be thus: After having expounded the idea of holiness which I must show to be now potent, proceed to show that the Pagan Gods did not realize and did not meet this idea; that then came the exposure of the Pagan Gods and the conscious presence of a new force among mankind, which opened up the idea of the Infinite, through the awakening perception of holiness.
I believe that in every mode of existence, which probably is always by an incarnation, the system of flesh ismade to yield the organs that express the alliance of man with the Infinite. Thus the idea of mystery,αποροητα, finds its organ of expression in the sensualities of the human race. Again, the crime, whatever it were, and the eternal pollution is expressed in these same organs. Also, the prolongation of the race so as to find another system is secured by the same organs.
Generally, that is, for a million against a unit, the awful mystery by which the fearful powers of death, and sorrow, and pain, and sin are locked into parts of a whole; so as, in fact, to be repetitions, reaffirmations of each other under a different phase—this is nothing, does not exist. Death sinks to a mere collective term—a category—a word of convenience for purposes of arrangement. You depress your hands, and, behold! the system disappears; you raise them, it reappears. This is nothing—a cipher, a shadow. Clap your hands like an Arabian girl, and all comes back. Unstop your ears, and a roar as of St. Lawrence enters: stop your ears, and it is muffled. To and fro; it is and it is not—is not and is. Ah, mighty heaven, that such a mockery should cover the whole vision of life! It is and it is not; and on to the day of your death you will still have to learn what is the truth.
The eternal now through the dreadful loom is the overflowing future poured back into the capacious reservoir of the past. All the active element lies in that infinitesimalnow.The future is not except by relation; the past is not at all, and the present but a sign of a nexus between the two.
God's words require periods, so His counsels. Hecannot precipitate them any more than a man in a state of happinesscancommit suicide. Doubtless it is undeniable that a man may arm his hand with a sword: and that his flesh will be found penetrable to the sword, happy or not. But this apparent physical power has no existence, no value for a creature having a double nature: the moral nature not only indisposes him to use his power, but really creates a far greater antagonist power.
This God—too great to be contemplated steadily by the loftiest of human eyes; too approachable and condescending to be shunned by the meanest in affliction: realizing thus in another form that reconcilement of extremes, which St. Paul observed: far from all created beings, yet also very near.
'A conviction that they needed a Saviour was growing amongst men.' How? In what sense? Saviour from what? You can't be saved from nothing. There must be a danger, an evil threatening, before even in fancy you can think of a deliverer. Now, what evil was there existing to a Pagan? Sin? Monstrous! No such idea ever dawned upon the Pagan intellect. Death? Yes; but that was inalienable from his nature. Pain and disease? Yes; but these were perhaps inalienable also. Mitigated they might be, but it must be by human science, and the progress of knowledge. Grief? Yes; but this was inalienable from life. Mitigated it might be, but by superior philosophy. From what, then, was a Saviour to save? If nothing to save from, how any Saviour? But here arises as the awful of awfuls to me, the deep, deep exposure of the insufficient knowledgeand sense of what is peculiar to Christianity. To imagine some sense of impurity, etc., leading to a wish for a Saviour in a Pagan, is to defraud Christianity of all its grandeur. If Paganism could develop the want, it is not at all clear that Paganism did not develop the remedy. Heavens! how deplorable a blindness! But did not a Pagan lady feel the insufficiency of earthly things for happiness? No; because any feeling tending in that direction would be to her, as to all around her, simply a diseased feeling, whether from dyspepsia or hypochondria, and one, whether diseased or not, worthless for practical purposes. It would have to be a Christian lady, if something far beyond, something infinite, were not connected with it, depending on it. But if this were by you ascribed to the Pagan lady, thenthatis in other words to make her a Christian lady already.
Exhibition of a Roman Dialogue on Sin.—What! says the ignorant and unreflecting modern Christian. Do you mean to tell me that a Roman, however buried in worldly objects, would not be startled at hearing of a Saviour? Now, hearken.
Roman.Saviour! What do you mean? Saviour for what? In good faith, my friend, you labour under some misconception. I am used to rely on myself for all the saving that I need. And, generally speaking, if you except the sea, and those cursed north-east winds, I know of no particular danger.
Christian.Oh, my friend, you totally mistake the matter. I mean saving from sin.
Roman.Saving from a fault, that is—well, what sort of a fault? Or, how should a man, that you say is nolonger on earth, save me from any fault? Is it a book to warn me of faults that He has left?
Christian.Why, yes. Not that He wrote Himself; but He talked, and His followers have recorded His views. But still you are quite in the dark. Not faults, but the fountain of all faults, that is what He will save you from.
Roman.But how? I can understand that by illuminating my judgment in general He might succeed in making me more prudent.
Christian.'Judgment,' 'prudent'—these words show how wide by a whole hemisphere you are of the truth. It is your will that He applies His correction to.
Roman.'Will!' why I've none but peaceable and lawful designs, I assure you. Oh! I begin to see. You think me a partner with those pirates that we just spoke to.
Christian.Not at all, my friend. I speak not of designs or intentions. What I mean is, the source of all desires—what I would call your wills, your whole moral nature.
Roman(bridling). Ahem! I hope Roman nature is quite as little in need of improvement as any other. There are the Cretans; they held up their heads. Accordingly they had their fire institutions, and that true institution against bribery and luxury, and all such stuff. They fancied themselves impregnable. Why, bless you! even Marcus Tullius, that was a prosing kind of man and rather peevish about such things, could not keep in the truth. 'Why, Cato, my boy,' says he, 'you talk.' And to hear you, bribery and luxury would not leave one a stick to fight for. Why, now, these same Cretans—lord! we took the conceit out of them intwenty-five minutes. No more time, I assure you, did it cost three of our cohorts to settle the whole lot of them.
Christian.My friend, you are more and more in the dark. What I mean is not present in your senses, but a disease.
Roman.Oh, a disease! that's another thing. But where?
Christian.Why, it affects the brain and the heart.
Roman.Well, now, one at a time. Take the brain—we have a disease, and we treat it with white hellebore. There may be a better way. But answer me this. If you are generally affected, what right have you to bring, as you are supposing, a diseased brain to a sound one? We Romans are all sound—sound as a bell.
Then Christian goes on to the history of the fall. But the whole would be self-baffled and construed away from want of sin as the antithesis of holiness.
Why St. Paul and the Athenians did not come to an Understanding.—So, again, if you think that St. Paul had a chance with the Athenians. If he had, it would tax his divine benevolence to see that he forbore to pursue it. This attempt shows that he was under a misconception. He fancied a possibility of preaching a pure religion. What followed? He was, he must have been defeated. That is, practically, else why did he not persist? But his confutation was the factual confutation of experience. It was no go. That he found too surely. But why? I am sure that he never found out. Enough that he felt—that under a strong instinct he misgave—a deep, deep gulf between him and them, so that neither could he make a way to their sense, nor they, except conjecturally, to his. For, just review the case. Whatwas theευαγγελιον, the good tidings, which he announced to man? What burthen of hope? What revelation of a mystery of hope arising out of a deeper mystery of despair? He announced a deliverer. Deliverer! from what? Answer that—from what? Why, from evil, you say. Evil! of what kind? Why, you retort, did not the Pagans admit that man was lying under evil? Not at all; nothing of the kind. But you are sure you have heard of such things? Very likely. And now you are forced back upon your arguments you remember specially that evil as to its origin was a favourite speculation of theirs. Evil, in its most comprehensive designation, whence is it? How came it? Now, mark, even to that extent, viz., the extent indicated by this problem, the ancients had no conception of evil corresponding to, no, nor dimly approaching to, a correspondence with ours. They had no ineffable standard of purity; how, then, any function of impurity? They had no ineffable doctrine of pain or suffering answering to a far more realized state of perception, and, therefore, unimaginably more exquisite; how, then, could they raise a question on the nature or fountains of such pains? They executed no synthesis, and could execute none upon the calamities of life; they never said in ordinary talk that this was a world of sorrow, either apostrophizing a newborn child, or a world of disappointment, bemoaning a mature victim; neither as in the anguish of meditative reflection, nor in the prudence of extenuating apology. The grandsanctuswhich arises from human sensibility, Perish empires and the crowns of kings, etc., first arose in connection with Christianity.[30]Life was a good life;man was a prosperous being. Hope for men was his natural air; despondency the element of his own self-created folly. Neither could it be otherwise. For, besides that, it would be too immeasurable a draught of woe to say in one breath that this only was the crux or affirmation of man's fate, and yet that this also was wretchedper se; not accidentally made wretched by imprudence, but essentially and irrevocably so by necessity of its nature. Besides all this, which has a lurking dependency upon man's calculations of what is safe, he sees that this mode of thinking would leave him nothing; yet even that extreme consequence would not check some honest or sincere or desperate minds from uttering their convictions that life reallywasthis desperate game—much to lose and nothing in the best case to win. So far there would have been a dangerous gravitation at all times to the sad conclusion of Paganism. But, meanwhile, this dangerous gravitation was too dangerous, and Providence has deeply counteracted it by principles laid down in human nature. I affirm that where the ideas of man, where the possible infinities are not developed, then also the exorbitant on the other field is strongly pulled up. No ideals of evil can take place except under ideals of happiness that passeth all understanding. No synthesis can ever be executed, that is, no annumeration of A, B, C into a common total, viewed as elements tending to a common unity, unless previously this unity has been preconceived, because the elements are not elements, viz., original constituents of a representative whole (a series tending to a summation), unless that which is constituted—that whole—is previously given in idea. Since A and B and C could not be viewed as tending to a unity, having no existence except through them, unless previously that unity had existed for the regulation and eduction of its component elements. And this unity in the case of misery never could have been given unless far higher functions than any which could endure Paganism, or which Paganism could endure. Until the sad element of a diseased will is introduced, until the affecting notion is developed of a fountain in man himself welling up the misery for ever, no idea of misery could arise. Suffering is limited and transitory. What pain is permanent in man? Even the deepest laceration of the human heart, that which is inflicted by the loss of those who were the pulses of our hearts, is soothed (if never wholly healed) by time. One agency of time would avail for this effect were there no other.The features of the individual whom we mourn grow dimmer and dimmer as time advances; and,pari passu, the features of places and collateral objects and associated persons from whom reverberated these afflicting reminiscences of the lost object.
I return: Deliverer from what? From suffering or misery. But that was not acknowledged, nor could have been, we could see no misery as a hypothesis except in these two modes: First, as a radication in man by means of something else, some third thing. Secondly, as a synthesis—as a gathering under a principle which must act prior to the gathering in order to provoke it. (The synthesis must be rendered possible and challenged by theà prioriunity which otherwise constitutes that unity.) As a metaphysical possibility evil was recognised through its unfathomable nature. But this was because such a nature already presupposed a God's nature, realizing his own ends, stepped in with effect. For the highest form—the normal or transcendent form—of virtue to a Pagan, was in the character of citizen. Indeed, the one sole or affirmative form of virtue lay in this sole function, viz., of public, of patriotic virtue. Since here only it was possible to introduce anadditionalgood to the world. All other virtue, as of justice between individual and individual, did but redress a previous error, sometimes of the man himself, sometimes of social arrangement, sometimes of accident. It was apluswhich balanced and compensated a pre-existingminus—an actionin regressu, which came back with prevailing power upon an actionin progressu.But to be a patriot was to fulfil a call of the supererogatory heart—a great nisus of sympathy with the one sole infinite, the sole practical infinite that man pre-Christian ever could generate for his contemplation.Now, therefore, it followed that the idea of virtue here only found its realization. Virtue, in fact, was not derivatively or consequentially connected with patriotism, it wasimmanent; not transitively associated by any links whatever, but immanently intertwisted, indwelling in the idea. Therefore it happened that a man, however heartsick of this tumid, bladdery delusion, although to him it was a balloon, by science punctured, lacerated, collapsing, trailed through ditch and mud under the rough handling and the fearful realities of life, yet he durst not avow his private feelings. That would have been even worse than with us: it would have been to proclaim virtue and vice mere bubbles and chimeras. He who really thinks so even we reasonably suspect ofpracticalindifference unless when we believe him to speak as a misanthrope.
The question suppose to commence as to the divine mission of Christ. And the feeble understanding is sure to think this will be proved best by proving the subject of this doubt to have been a miracle-working power. And of all miracles, to have mastered (not merely escaped or evaded) death will be in his opinion the greatest. So that if Christ could be proved to have absolutely conquered death,i.e., to have submitted to death, but only to recoil from his power and overthrow it, to have died and subsequently to have risen again, will,à fortiori, prove Him to have been sent of God.
Not so. All and every basis of credibility must be laid in themoralnature, where the thing to be believed is important,i.e., moral. And I therefore open with this remark absolutelyzermalmendeto the common intellect: That from a holy faith you may infer a power of resurrection, but not from a power of resurrection fifty times repeated can we infer a holy faith. What in the last resultis the thing to be proved? Why, a holy revelation, not of knowledge, but of things practical; of agenda, not scienda. It is essential that this holy should also benew,original,revelatum.Because, else, the divinest things which areconnataand have been common to all men, point to no certain author. They belong to the dark foundations of our being, and cannot challenge a trust, faith, or expectation as suspended upon any particular individual man whatever.
Here, then, arises theπρωτοντοκινον. Thick darkness sits on every man's mind as to Christ's revelation. He fancies that it amounts to this: 'Do what is good. Do your duty. Be good.' And with this vague notion of the doctrine, natural is it that he should think it as old as the hills. The first step to a saner view is, to understand—if a man has sense enough to reach so high—that the subtlest discoveries ever made by man, all put together, do not make one wave of that Atlantic as to novelty and originality which lies in the moral scheme of Christianity. I do not mean in the total scheme of Christianity, redemption, etc. No, but in the ethics.
All ethics that ever Greece refined or Rome illustrated, was, and could be, only the same universal system of social ethics—ethics proper and exclusive to man and maninter se, with no glimpse of any upward relationship.
Now Christianity looks upward for the first time. This in the first place. Secondly, out of that upward look Christianity looks secondarily down again, and reacts even upon the social ethics in the most tremendous way.
For my Book on the Relations of Christianity to Man.—S. T. C. cites Jeremy Taylor, etc., for horrible passageson the gloomy state of the chances for virtuous Pagans. S. T. C. in a more liberal generation is shocked; and of course in his readers as in himself secretly, he professes more liberal ideas. Aye, but how is he entitled to these ideas? For, on further consideration, it is not Cicero only, or Epictetus only, that would suffer under this law of Christianity viewed in its reagency, but also Abraham, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hezekiah. Because, how could they benefit by a Redeemer not yet revealed—nay, by a Redeemer not even existing? For it is not the second person in the Trinity—not He separately and abstractedly—that is the Redeemer, but that second person incarnated. St. Paul apparently wished to smuggle this tremendous question into a fraudulent solution, by mixing up Abraham (with others pre-Christian and Christian) into the long array of those whoseFaithhad saved them. But faith in whom? General faith in God is not the thing, it is faith in Jesus Christ; and we are solemnly told in many shapes that no other name was given on earth through which men could be delivered. Indeed, if not, how is the Messiah of such exclusive and paramount importance to man? The Messiah was as yet (viz., in Abraham's time) a prophecy—a dim, prophetic outline of one whoshouldbe revealed. But if Abraham and many others could do without Him, if this was a dispensable idea, how was it in any case, first or last, indispensable? Besides, recur to the theory of Christianity. Most undeniably it was this, that neither of the two elements interested in man could save him; not God; He might have power, but His purity revolted. Power (or doubtfully so), but no will. Not man—for he, having the will, had no power. God was too holy; manhood toounholy. Man's gifts, applicable, but insufficient. God's sufficient, but inapplicable. Then came the compromise. How if man could be engrafted upon God? Thus only, and by such a synthesis, could the ineffable qualities of God be so co-ordinated with those of man.
Suppose even that a verbal inspiration could have been secured—secured, observe, againstgradualchanges in language and against the reactionary corruption of concurrent versions, which it would be impossible to guarantee as also enjoying such an inspiration (since, in that case,whatbarrier would divide mine or anybody's wilfully false translations from that pretending to authority? I repeatwhat? None is conceivable, since what could you have beyond the assurance of the translator, even which could only guarantee his intentions)—here is a cause of misinterpretation amounting to ruin, viz., after being read for centuries as if practically meant for our guidance, such and such a chapter (e.g., Jael and Sisera), long proscribed by the noble as a record of abominable perfidy, has at length been justified on the ground that it was never meant for anything else. Thus we might get rid of David, etc., were it not that for his flexible obedience to theclerushe has been pronounced the man after God's own heart.
Is it not dreadful that at the very vestibule of any attempt to execute the pretended law of God and its sentences to hell we are interrupted by one case in every three as exceptional? Of the deaths, one in three are of children under five. Add to these surelyverymany up to twelve or thirteen, andmanyup to eighteen or twenty, then you have a law which suspends itself for one case in every two.
Note in the argument drawn from perishableness of language.Not only (which I have noted) is any language,ergothe original, Chaldæan, Greek, etc., perishable even for those who use it, but also the vast openings to error which all languages open to translators form a separate source of error in translators, viz.:
1. The old one on my list that for them the guidance of inspiration has ceased, else, if not, you must set up an inspiration separately to translators, since, if you say—No, not at all, why, which then?
2. The uncertainty of a foreign language even in a day contemporary with the original writer, and therefore over and above what arises from lapse of time and gradual alterations.
On Human Progress.—Oftentimes it strikes us all that this is so insensible as to elude observation the very nicest. Five years add nothing, we fancy. Now invert your glass. In 1642 Englishmen are fighting for great abstract principles. In 1460-83 (i.e., 100 + 17 + 42 years before, or 159 years) they are fighting for persons, for rival candidates. In 1460 they could not have conceived more than an Esquimaux can entertain a question about the constitution of lyric poetry, or the differential principles of English and Greek tragedy, the barest approximation to questions that in 1642 are grounds of furious quarrel, of bloody quarrel, of extermination. Now then, looking forward, you would see from year to year little if any growth; but inverting your glass, looking back from the station of 1642 to 1460, you see a progress that if subdivided amongst all the 159 years would give to eachx/0 as its quota,i.e.infinity. In fact, it is like the progression from nothing to something. It is—creation.
All the body of the Christian world would fly out in a rage if you should say that Christianity required of you many things that were easy, but one thing that wasnot.Yet this is undoubtedly true; it requires you tobelieve, and even in the case where you know what it is to believe, and so far are free from perplexity, you have it not in your own power to ensure (though you can influence greatly) your own power to believe. But also great doubt for many (and for all that are not somewhat metaphysical) attends the knowledge of what is believing.
As to my mother's fancy that Sir W. Jones had found in the East proofs of Christianity, having gone out an infidel.
To do her justice, never once after she had adopted a theory of Christianity did she inquire or feel anxious about its proof. But to review the folly of this idea.
1. That Christianity there where it reigned and was meant to reign should be insufficient in its proofs; but that in a far distant land, lurking in some hole or corner, there should be proofs of its truth, just precisely where these proofs were not wanted. And again, that these should be reserved for one scholar rambling into a solitary path, where in a moral sensenobodycould follow him (for itisnobody—this or that oriental scholar). And we are sure that his proof was not of that order to shine by its own light, else it would have resounded through England.
2. That for many hundreds of years Christianity should have been received, generation after generation should have lived under its vital action, upon no sufficient argument, and suddenly such an argument should turn up as a reward to a man in a country not Christian for being more incredulous than his neighbours; how impossible!
That fraudulent argument which affects to view the hardships of an adventurous life and its perils as capable of one sole impression—that of repulsion—and secondly as the sole circumstances about such adventures, injures from the moment when it is perceived: not
1. The writer only; no matter for him, worthless liar, how much he sinks in the opinion of his readers: but
2. The Apostles. Now see the injury of falsehood. Suddenly it snaps, and with a great reaction causes a jar to the whole system, which in ordinary minds it is never likely to recover. The reason it is not oftener perceived is that people read such books in a somnolent, inactive state of mind, one-tenth coming to a subject on which they have already made up their minds, and open to no fresh impressions, the other nine-tenths caring not one straw about the matter, as reading it in an age of irreflectiveness and purely through an act of obedience to their superiors, else not only does this hypocritical attempt to varnish give way all at once, and suddenly (with an occasion ever after of doubt, and causing a reflection to any self-sufficient man, suddenly coming to perceive that he has been cheated, and with some justification for jealousy thenceforwards to the maker up of a case), but also it robs the Apostles of the human grace they really possessed. For if we suppose them armed against all temptations, snares, seductions, by a supernatural system of endowments, this is but the case of an angel—nay, not of an angel, for it is probable that when an angel incarnated himself, or one of the Pagan deities, who was obliged first to incarnate himself before he could act amongst men, or so much as be seen by men, he was bound by all the defects of man,i.e., he could choose only an ideal, so far ideal as to eludethe worst effects from vice, intemperance, etc. The angel who wrestled with Jacob probably did his best; he was a stout fellow, but so was the patriarch. The very condition of incarnation, and this because the mere external form already includes limitations (as of a fish, not to fly; of a man, not to fly, etc.) probably includes as anecessity, not as a choice, the adoption of all evils connected with the nature assumed. Even the Son of God, once incarnated, was not exempted from any evil of flesh; He grew, passed through the peculiar infirmities of every stage up to mature life; would have grown old, infirm, weak, had He lived longer; was liable to death, the worst of all human evils, and was not, we may be sure, exempted from any one fleshly desire with regard to sex, or enemies, or companions, but because that divine principle, which alsois in man, yes, in every man the foulest and basest—this light which the darkness comprehended not, and which in some is early extinguished, but inallfights fitfully with the winds and storms of this human atmosphere, in Him was raised to a lustre unspeakable by His pure and holy will.
If the Apostles were more celestially armed in any other sense than as we are all armed from above by calling forth our better natures, if in any other sense than as sorrow arms us by purifying our natures, as sorrowful reflection, as meditation and earnest endeavours to resist our angry instincts (which, on the contrary, how often do menobeyunder the vile pretence of being put by conscience on a painful duty), then, I say, what were the Apostles to us? Why should we admire them? How can we make them models of imitation? It is like that case of Anarcharsis the Scythian.
It does certainly incense a Christian to think that stupid Mahommedans should impute to us suchchildishidolatries as that of God having a son and heir—just as though we were barbarous enough to believe that God was liable to old age—that the time was coming, however distant, when somebody would say to him, 'Come, Sir,' or 'Come, my Lord, really you are not what you were. It's time you gave yourself some ease (ευφημι, time, indeed, that you resigned the powers to which you are unequal), and let a younger man take the reins.' None but a filthy barbarian could carry forward his thoughts so little as not to see that this son in due time would find himself in the same predicament.
Now mark how Christian lands would enforce this doctrine of unity by horrid coercions. They hang, drown, burn, crucify those who deny it. So that, be assured you are planting your corner-stone on the most windy of delusions. You yourselves do not ascribe any merit to Mahommed separate from that of revealing the unity of God. Consequently, if that is a shaken craze arising from mere inability on his part, a little, a very little information would have cut up by the very roots the whole peculiarity of Islam. For if a wise man could have assembled these conceited Arabians and told them: Great thieves, you fancy yourselves to have shot far ahead of the Christians as to the point of unity, and if you had I would grant that you had made a prodigious advance. But you are deceiving quarrellers. It is all a word—mere smoke, that blinds you. The Christian seems to affirm three Gods, and even to aggravate this wickedness by calling one of them 'a Son,' thus seeming to accept that monstrous notion that God is liable to old age and decrepitude, so as to provide wisely against Hisown dotage. But all this is an error: these three apparent Gods are but one, and in the most absolute sense one.
The most shockingly searching, influential, and permanent blunder that ever has affected the mind of man has been the fancy that a religion includes a creed as to itsαπορῥητα, and a morality; in short, that it was doctrinal by necessity, enactory, and (which has been the practical part of the blunder) therefore exclusive, because:
1. With our notion of a religion as essentially doctrinal, the very first axiom about it is, that being true itself it makes all others false. Whereas, the capital distinction of the Pagan was—that given, supposing to be assumed, 10,000 religions—all must be true simultaneously, all equally. When a religion includes any distinct propositions offered to the understanding (that is, I think, resting upon a principle or tendency to a consequence by way of differencing from facts which also are for the understanding, but then barely to contemplate not with a power of reacting on the understanding, for every principle introduces into the mind that which may become a modification, a restraint; whereas, a fact restrains nothing in the way of thought unless it includes a principle), it would rise continually in its exclusive power according to the number of those propositions. At first it might exclude all but ten, eight, seven, and so on; finally, as integrated it would exclude all.
2. If you ask on what principle a Pagan believed his religion, the question to him was almost amusing and laughable. I will illustrate the case. A man meets you who inquires in a hurried, suppose even in an agitated way,whether you met a tall man, blind of one eye, dressed in such a coloured dress, etc. Now, does it ever occur to you that the inquirer is lying? Lying! Wherefore should he lie? Or again, if you say that your house stands under a hill, that three out of four chimneys smoke, and that you must indeed try some of the inventions for remedying this annoyance, would any man in his senses think of speculating on the possibility that all this should be a romance? Or, to come nearer in the kind of fact, if a man represented his family fortune as having been bequeathed by a maiden aunt in the last generation, would any man say otherwise than that doubtless the man knew his own benefactors and relatives best? On this same principle, when Christ was mentioned as the divinity adored by a certain part of the Jews who were by way of distinction called Christians, why should a Roman object? What motive could he have for denying the existence or the divine existence of Christ? Even the idea of dissent or schism, some Jews worshipping, some protesting, would not much puzzle him. Something like it had occurred in Pagan lands. Neptune and Athene had contended for Attica. And under the slight inquiry which he would ever make, or listen to when made by others, he might wonder at the rancour displayed by the protesting party, but he would take it for granted that a divinity of some local section had been unduly pushed into pre-eminence over a more strictly epichorial divinity. He would go off with this notion, that whereas, the elder Jews insisted on paying vows, etc., to a God called Jehovah, a section sought to transfer that allegiance to a divinity called Christ. If he were further pressed on the subject, he would fancy that very possibly, as had been thought, found or imagined in the case of Syrian deitiesor Egyptian, etc., that perhaps Christ might correspond to Apollo, as Astarte to Diana, Neptune of Latium to the Poseidôn of Greece. But if not, that would cause no scruple at all. Thus far it was by possibility a mere affair of verbal difference. But suppose it ascertained that in no point of the symbols surrounding the worship of Christ, or the conception of His person, He could be identified with any previously-known Pagan God—that would only introduce Him into the matricula of Gods as a positive novelty. Nor would it have startled a Roman to hear that in India or any country large enough there should be a separate Pantheon of many thousand deities,plussome other Pantheon of divinities corresponding to their own. For Syria—but still more in one section of Syrian Palestine—this would surprise himquoadthe degree, notquoadthe principle. The Jew had a separate or peculiar God, why not? No nation could exist without Gods: the very separate existence of a people, trivial as it might be in power and wealth, argued a tutelary God, but, of course, proportioned to the destinies at least (and in part to the present size) of the country. Thus far no difficulties at all. But the morality! Aye, but that would never be accounted a part of religion. As well confound a science with religion. Aye, but theαπορῥητα. These would be viewed as the rites of Adonis, or of Ceres; you could not warn him from his preconception that these concerned only Jews. Where, therefore, lodged the offence? Why here, as personalities—for such merely were all religions—the God must be measured by his nation. So some Romans proposed to introduce Christ into the Roman Pantheon. But what first exploded as a civil offence was the demand of supremacy and the inconceivableprinciple set up of incompatibility. This was mere folly.