Part 10 (1/2)
”How can you talk so, when we make it a mark of a false revelation, that it contradicts any intuition of our moral nature?”
”Then cease to talk of your 'absolute religion,' as capable in any way of consecrating the hateful forms of false and cruel superst.i.tion for which you and Mr. Parker condescend to be the apologists. The fanaticism of such pious and devout beasts as those saint-loving pirates is not a more flagrant violation of the principle of morality, than the acts which flow directly as the immediate and natural expression of the infinitely varied but all-polluting forms of idolatry with which you are pleased to identify your 'absolute religion,' and in all of which you suppose an acceptable 'faith' to be very possible. You see how Mr. Parker extends the apology to the foulest sets of his Tartar and Calmuck scoundrels; acts called murders in the codes of Christendom and civilization, but varnished over by the beautiful 'faith' which somehow still lurks under the most frightful practices of a simple-minded barbarian. If this faith will shelter the abominations of a gross idolatry, I see not what else it may not sanctify.--But, in fact, neither in the case of idolaters, nor any other religionists, is it true that 'faith' is independent of 'belief'; in the case of your Calmuck, for example, the 'belief' is vile, and therefore the 'faith' vile too; faith practical enough, certainly, but one that as certainly does not 'work by love'; and which, I think, would be well exchanged for a dead orthodoxy, or any thing else.”
It is not difficult to see the source of the fallacy into which Mr. Fellowes had fallen. It lies in the attempt to make a distinction in fact, as well as in theory, between the ”intellectual” and ”emotional” parts of our nature. It is very well for the spiritual and mental a.n.a.lyst to consider separately the several principles which const.i.tute humanity, and which act, and react, and interact, in endless involution. That there may be acts of belief that terminate chiefly in the intellect, and may be wholly worthless, who denies? The drunkard, for example, may admit that sobriety is a duty; but yet, if he gets drunk every night of his life, we shall, of course, think little of that act of belief,--of his daily repet.i.tion of moral orthodoxy. In the same manner, a man may admit that it is his duty to exercise implicit love, grat.i.tude, and obedience towards the great object of wors.h.i.+p; but if his habitual conduct shows that he has no thought of acting in accordance with this maxim, he must be regarded, in spite of the orthodoxy of his speculative creed, as no better than a heathen; or worse.
But though it is very possible that a true belief may not involve true faith, does the converse follow,--that therefore true faith is essentially different from it, and independent of it? All history shows, that when religion is practical at all,--that is, issues in faith,--such faith is as the truth or falsehood believed; the emotional and active conditions of the soul are colored, as usual, by knowledge and intellect. These, again, are not independent of the will and the affections, as we all familiarly know. And hence the fallacy of supposing that no man is to be thought better or worse for his ”intellectual creed.” His ”creed” may be his ”crime”; and surely none ought to see this more clearly than the writers who deny it; for why their eternal invectives against ”dogmas,”--and especially the tolerably universal dogmas that men are responsible for the formation of their opinions,--except upon the supposition that men are responsible for framing and maintaining them? If they are not, men should be left alone; if they are, they are to be thought of as ”worse and better” for their ”intellectual creed.”
Before the conclusion of the conversation, Mr. Fellowes asked me for my opinion.
”If,” said I, ”faith be defined independent of an act of intellect, then I think, with our sceptical friend here, there can be no such thing at all. For I neither know nor can conceive of any such unreasonable exercise of the emotions or affections. If it be meant, on the other hand, that, though some act of the intellect be indeed uniformly involved, yet that it matters not what it is, and that faith does not take its complexion, as of moral value, from it, then I also think, with Harrington, that it is impossible to deny that such a doctrine will sanctify any sort of wors.h.i.+p, and any sort of deity, provided men be sincere; are you prepared to contend for much?”
Mr. Fellowes put an adroit objection here. ”Why,” said he, ”you will not deny, surely, that even Scripture often commends, as good, a faith which is founded on a very imperfect conception of the spiritual realities to which it is directed?”
”It is ingeniously put, I admit. I grant that there are here, as in so many other cases, limits which, though it may not be very easy to a.s.sign them, as plainly exist. But that does not answer my question. I want to know whether the principle is to be applied without limits at all, as your speculative theory demands? In other words, will it or not sanctify acts of the most degrading and pernicious idolatry, of the most debasing superst.i.tion, because allied to that state of the affections in which you make the essence of faith consist? If it will not, then your objection to me is nothing; it merely asks me to a.s.sign limits within which the exercise of the affection in question may be acceptable, or almost equally acceptable, in cases of a partially enlightened understanding. If it will, then it leaves you open, as I conceive, and fairly open, to all the objections which have been so brusquely urged against you by your friend, in whose indignant protest against the detestable apologies for the lowest forms of religious degradation, in which so many 'spiritual'
writers indulge, I for one heartily sympathize.”
I ventured to add, that the account of ”faith” as a state of the emotions exclusively, given by some of his favorite writers, is perfectly arbitrary. ”Belief,” say they, ”is wholly intellectual: faith is wholly moral.” Now it would be of very little consequence, if the terms be generally so understood, whether they be so used or not; men would, in that case, suppose that faith, thus restricted, implies a previous process of mind which is to be called exclusively belief. I added, however, that I did not believe that the word faith was ever thus understood in popular use; but that, on the contrary, it was employed to imply belief founded on knowledge, or supposed knowledge, and, where the belief was, in its very nature, practical, or involved emotion, a conduct and a state of the affections corresponding thereto.
”But this,” said I, ”merely respects the Popular use of the words, and if is hardly worth while to prolong discussion on it. As to the reasoning which would show that belief does not properly exist at all, because it may be all resolved into reason, founded on the preponderance of evidence, where it does not matter whether that preponderance be a ton or a scruple,--surely it is over-refined. Men will always feel that there is a marked difference between the states of mind in which they a.s.sent to a proposition of which they have no more doubt than they have of their own existence, or to a proposition in the mathematics, and to one in which they feel that only a few grains turn the scale. To this conscious difference in the condition of mind, they have given (and I suppose will not give) very different names; and though they will continue to say that they believe that two and two make four, but that they know it, they will say that they believe that they will die before the end of the century, though they will not say that they know that. The distinction between the certain and the probable is felt to be far too important not to be marked by corresponding varieties of speech; and speech has made them according.”
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July 10. This morning Harrington fulfilled his promise of acquainting me with a few of the reasons which prevented his taking refuge in the ”half-way houses” between the Bible and Religious Scepticism. Mr. Fellowes was an attentive listener. Harrington had ent.i.tled his paper,--
REASONS FOR DECLINING THE VIA MEDIA BETWEEN REVEALED RELIGION AND ATHEISM--OR SCEPTICISM WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE THEORIES OF MR. THEODORE PARKER AND MR. FRANCIS NEWMAN.
I shall be brief; not being solicitous to suggest doubts to others, but merely to justify my own.
Both Mr. Parker and Mr. Newman make themselves very merry with a ”book-revelation,” as they call it; and if they had given any thing better,--more rational or more certain than the Bible,--how gladly could I have joined in the ridicule! As it is, I doubt the solidity of the theories they support, and hardly doubt that, if the principles on which they reject the Bible be sound, they ought to go much farther.
Both affirm the absurdity of a special external revelation to man; both, that the fountain of spiritual illumination is exclusively from within, and not from without. A few brief citations will set this point in a clear light. ”Religion itself.” says Mr. Parker, ”must be the same thing in each man; not a similar thing, but just the same; differing only in degree.”* ”The Idea of G.o.d, as a fact given in man's nature, is permanent and alike in all; while the sentiment of G.o.d, though vague and mysterious, is always the same in itself.” (ibid. p. 21)--”Of course, then, there is no difference but of words between revealed Religion and natural Religion; for all actual Religion is revealed in us, or it could not be felt.” (ibid. p. 33). The Absolute Religion, which he affirms to be universally known, he defines as ”Voluntary Obedience to the Law of G.o.d,--inward and outward Obedience to that law he has written on our nature, revealed in various ways through Instinct, Reason, Conscience, and the Religious Sentiment.”
(ibid. p. 34). Similarly, Mr. Newman says, ”What G.o.d reveals to us he reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses.”
(Soul, p. 59) ”Christianity itself has practically confessed, what is theoretically clear,”--you must take his word for both,--”that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man.” (Soul, p. 59) ”No book-revelation can (without sapping its own pedestal) authoritatively dictate laws of human virtue, or alter our a priori view of the Divine character.” (Ibid. p.
58)
---- * Discourses of Matters pertaining to Religion, p. 36.
”Happy race of men,” one is ready to exclaim, with this Idea of G.o.d, one and the same in all; this ”Absolute Religion,” which is also ”universal”; this internal revelation, which supersedes, by antic.i.p.ating, all possible disclosures of an external revelation, and renders it an ”impertinence.” Men in all ages and nations must exhibit a delightful unanimity in their religious notions, sentiments, and practices!
”They would do so,” cries Mr. Parker; but unhappily, though the ”idea”
of G.o.d is ”one and the same, and perfect” in all ”when the proper conditions” are complied with, yet practically, if, in the majority of these proper ”conditions are not observed”; (Discourses, p. 19) ”the conception, which men universally form of G.o.d is always imperfect, sometimes self-contradictory and impossible”; ”the primitive simplicity and beauty” of the ”idea” are lost. And thus it is, he tells us, that, owing to this awkward ”conceptions” the vast majority of the human race have been, and are, and for ages will be, sunk in the grossest Fetichism,--Polytheism,--and every form of absurd and misshapen Monotheism;--the horrors of all which he proceeds faithfully, but not too faithfully, to describe, and sometimes, when he is in the mood, to soften and extenuate; in order that he may find that the ”grim Calmuck,” and even the savage, ”whose hands are smeared over with the blood of human sacrifices,” are yet in possession of the ”absolute Idea” and the ”absolute religion.”
And what must we infer from Mr. Newman? The unanimity antic.i.p.ated would, doubtless, be obtained, only that, unfortunately, there are various principles of man's nature which traverse the legitimate action and impede the due development of the ”spiritual faculty”; and so man is apt to wander into a variety of those ”degraded types” of religious development, which the dark panorama of this world's religions has ever presented to us, and presents still. ”Awe,”
”wonder,” ”admiration,” ”sense of order,” ”sense of design,” may all mislead the unhappy ”spiritual faculty” into quagmires; and, in point of fact, have wheedled and corrupted it ten thousand times more frequently than it has hallowed them. This all history, past and present, shows.
It is certainly unfortunate, and as mysterious, that those unlucky ”conceptions” of G.o.d should have the best of it,--or rather, that the ”idea” of G.o.d should have the worst of it; nor less so that Awe, Reverence, and so forth, should thus put the ”spiritual faculty” so hopelessly hors de combat.
Nevertheless, two questions naturally suggest themselves. Since the destructive ”conceptions” have almost everywhere impaired the ”Idea,”
and the ”degraded types” seduced the ”spiritual faculty,”--1st. What proof have we that man has an original and universal fountain of spiritual illumination in himself? and 2dly. If he have, but under such circ.u.mstances, is its utility so unquestionable that no s.p.a.ce is left for the offices of an external revelation?
First. What is the evidence of the uniform existence in man of any such definite faculty?
When we say that any principle or faculty is common to the whole species, do we not make the proof of this depend upon the uniformity of the phenomena which exhibit it? When we say, for example, that hunger and thirst are universal appet.i.tes, is it not because we find them universal? or if we say that the senses of sight and hearing are characteristic of the race, do we not contend that these are so, because we find them uniform in such an immense variety of instances, that the exceptions are not worth reckoning? If men sometimes saw black where others saw white, some objects rectilinear which others saw curved, objects small which others saw large,--nay, the very same men at different times seeing the same objects differently colored, and of varying forms and att.i.tudes, and every second man almost stone-blind into the bargain,--I rather think that, instead of saying men were endowed with one and the same power of vision, we should say that our nature exhibited only an imperfect and rudimentary tendency towards so desirable a faculty; but that a clear, uniform, faculty of vision there certainly was not. As I gaze upon the spectacle of the infinite diversities of religion, which variegate, but, alas! do not beautify the what is there to remind me of every uniformity of which I do see the indelible traces in every faculty really characteristic of our nature; as, for example, our senses and our appet.i.tes? Powerfully does Hume urge this argument in his--”Natural History of Religions.”