Part 10 (2/2)
(Introduction)
I have my doubts--admire the modesty of a sceptic--whether the entire phenomena of religion do not favor the conclusion, that man, in this respect, only the traces of an imperfect, truncated creature; that, he is in the predicament of the half-created lion so graphically described by Milton:--
”Now half appeared The tawny lion, pawings to get free His hinder parts”;
only, unfortunately, man's ”hinder parts”--his lower nature--have come up first, and appear, unhappily, prominent; while his n.o.bler ”moral and spiritual faculties” still seem stuck in the dust!
There is, indeed, another hypothesis, which squares, perhaps, equally well with the phenomena,--I mean that of the Bible:--that man is not in his original state; that the religions const.i.tution of his nature, in some way or other, has received a shock. But either this, or the supposition that man has been insufficiently equipped for the uniform elimination of religious truth, is, I think, alone in harmony with the facts; and to those facts, patent on the page of the whole world's history, I appeal for proof that man has not on these highest subjects, the cert.i.tude of any internal revelation, marked by the remotest a.n.a.logy to those other undoubted principles and faculties which exhibit themselves with undeniable uniformity.
It will perhaps be said, that the spiritual phenomena are not so uniform as those of sense,--as Mr. Parker and Mr. Newman both abundantly admit,--but that there is an approximate uniformity. And you must seek it, says Mr. Parker, in the ”Absolute Religion”
which animates every form of religion, and is equally found in all.
I know the chatters about this incessantly; but when I attempt thus to ”hunt the one in the many,” as Plato would call it.--to seek the elusive unity in the infinite multiform,--to discover what it is which equally embalms all forms, from the Christianity of Paul to the religion of the ”grim Calmuck,” I acknowledge myself as much at loss as Martinus in endeavoring to catch the abstraction of a Lord Mayor; Mr. Parker, on the other hand, is like Crambe, ”Who, to show his acuteness, swore that he could form an abstraction of a Lord Mayor, not only without his horse, gown, and gold chain, but even without stature, feature, color, hands, head, feet, or any body, which he supposed was the abstract of a Lord Mayor.” Or if it be vain to attempt to abstract this Absolute Religion from all religions, as Mr. Parker indeed admits,--though it is truly in them,--and I take his definition from his ”direct consciousness,”
--which direct consciousness we can see has been directly affected by his abjured Bible,--namely, ”that it is voluntary obedience to will of G.o.d, outward and inward,”--why, what on earth does this vague generality do for us? What of G.o.d? Is he or it one or many?
of infinite attributes or finite? of goodness and mercy equal to his power, or not? What is his will? How is he to be wors.h.i.+pped?
Have we offended him? Is he placable or not? Is he to be approached only through a mediator of some kind, as nearly all mankind have believe but which Mr. Parker denies,--a queer proof, by the way, of the clearness of the internal oracle, if he be right,--or is he to be approached, as Mr. Parker believes, and Mr. Newman with him, without any mediator at all? Is it true that man is immortal, and knows it by immediate ”insight,” as Mr. Parker contends, or does the said ”insight,” as Mr. Newman believes, tell us nothing about the matter? Surely the ”Absolute Religion,” after having removed from it all in which different religions differ, is in danger of vanis.h.i.+ng that imperfect susceptibility of some religion, which I have already conceded, and which is certainly not such a thing as to render an external revelation very obviously superfluous. It may be summed up in one imperfect article. All men and each may say, ”I believe there is some being, superior in some respects to man, whom it is my duty or my interest to”--caelera desunt.
To affirm that every man has this ”Absolute Religion” without external revelation is much as if a man were to say that we have an ”Absolute Philosophy” on the same terms, in virtue of man's having faculties which prompt him to philosophize in some way. All religions contain the Absolute Religion, says Mr. Parker: Just, I reply, as all philosophies contain the absolute philosophy. The philosophy of Plato, of Aristotle of Bacon, of Locke, of Leibnitz, of Reid, are all philosophies, no doubt; but that is all that is to be said. Even contraries must resemble one another in one point, or they could not be contrasted. In truth, there is, I think, a striking a.n.a.logy between man's spiritual and intellectual condition; only his intellect is a little less variable than his ”spiritual faculty”; far more so, however, than his senses. His animal nature is more defined than his intellectual, his intellectual than his spiritual and moral. All the phenomena point either to an imperfect organization of his n.o.bler faculties, or to the doctrine of the ”Fall.”
But further, surely if this internal oracle exists in man, every sincere and earnest soul, on interrogating his consciousness, would hear the indubitable response,--would enjoy the beatific vision of ”spiritual insight.” If this be a.s.serted, I for one have to say to this representation, that, so far as my own consciousness informs me, I have honestly, sincerely, and with utmost diligence, interrogated my spirit; and I solemnly protest, that, apart from those external influences and that external instruction which the revelation from within is supposed to antic.i.p.ate and supersede, I am not conscious that I should have any of the sentiments which either of these writers make the sum of religion. Even as to that fundamental position,--the existence of a Being of unlimited power and wisdom, (as to his unlimited goodness, I believe nothing but an external revelation can absolutely certify us,) I feel that I am much more indebted to those influences from design, which these writers made so light of, than to any clearness in the imperfect intuition: for if I found--and surely this is the true test--the traces of design less conspicuous in the external world, confusion there, as in the moral and in both greater than is now found in either; I extremely doubt whether the faintest surmise of such a Being would have suggested itself to me.
But be that as it may; as to their other cardinal sentiments,--the nature of my relations to this Being,--his placability; if offended, --the terms of forgiveness, if any,--whether, as these gentlemen affirm, he is accessible to all, without any atonement or mediator;--as to all this, I solemnly declare, that, apart from external instruction; I cannot by interrogating my racked spirit, catch even a murmur. That it must be faint, indeed, in other men, so faint as to render the pretensions of the cert.i.tude of the internal revelation, and its independence of all external revelation, perfectly preposterous, I infer from this,--that they have, for the most part, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions from those of these interpreters of the spiritual revelation. As to the articles, indeed; of man's immortality and a future state, it would be truly difficult for my ”spiritual insight” to verify theirs; for, according to Mr. Parker, his ”insight” affirms that man is immortal, and Mr. Newman's ”insight” declares nothing about the matter!
Nor is my consciousness, so far as I can trace it, mine only. This painful uncertainty has been the confession of mult.i.tudes of far greater minds; they have been so far from contending that we have naturally a clear utterance on these great questions, that they have acknowledged the necessity of an external revelation; and mankind in general, so far from thinking or feeling such light superfluous, have been constantly gasping after it, and adopted almost any thing that but bore the name.
What, then, am I to think of this all-sufficient revelation from within?
There is, indeed, an amusing answer of Mr. Newman's to the difficulty: but then it formally surrenders the whole argument. He says to those who say they are unconscious of those facts of spiritual pathology which he describes in his work on the ”Soul,” that the consciousness of the spiritual man is not the less true, that the unspiritual man is not privy to it; and this most devout gentleman somewhere quotes, with much unction, the words, ”For the spiritual man judgeth all things, but himself is judged of no man.”
”I shall be curious to know,” said I, interrupting him, ”what you will reply to that argument?”
Reply to it, said he, eagerly; does it require any reply?--However, I will read what I have written. Is it not plain, that while Mr. Newman is professedly anatomizing the spiritual nature of man, as man,--the functions and revelations of that inward oracle which supersedes and antic.i.p.ates all external revelations--he is, in fact, anatomizing his own? What t.i.tle has he, when avowedly explaining the phenomena of the religious faculty which he a.s.serts to be inherent in humanity,--though how they should need explaining, if his theory be true, I know not,--what t.i.tle has he, when men deny that they are conscious of the facts he describes, to raise refuge in his own private revelations, and that of the few whose privilege it is to be ”born again” by a mysterious law which he says it is impossible for us to investigate? ”We cannot pretend,” he says, ”to sound the mystery whence comes the new birth, in certain souls. To reply, 'The Spirit bloweth where He listeth,'
confesses the mystery, and declines to explain it. But it is evident that individuals in Greece, in the third century before the Christian era, were already moving towards an intelligent heart-wors.h.i.+p or had even begun to practise it!” (Soul, p.64) High time, I think, that after some thousands of years some few individuals should begin to manifest the phenomena of the universal revelation from within, if such a thing be!
This is not to delineate the religions nature of humanity, but to reveal--yes, and to reveal externally--the religious nature of the elect few,--and few they are indeed,--who, by a mysterious infidel Calvinism, are permitted to attain, by direct intuition, and independent of all external revelation, the true sentiments and experiences of ”spiritual insight.” It this be Mr. Newman's solution of our difficulties, it is utterly nugatory. It is not to dissect the soul, ”its sorrows and aspirations”; it is merely to give us the pathology--perhaps the morbid pathology--of Mr. Newman's soul; its sorrows and its aspirations. If the answer merely respected the practical value of a theory of spiritual sentiments, which all acknowledged, then Mr. Newman's answer might have some force; for certainly, only he who reduced that theory to practice, or attempted to do so, would have a right to conclude against the experience of him who did. But it is obvious that the question affects the theory itself, and especially the consciousness of those terms of possible communion with G.o.d, those relations of the soul to him, on the reception of which all the said spiritual experience must depend.
How, then, stands the argument? I ask how I shall know the intimation of the spiritual faculty, which renders all ”external revelation” an impertinence? I am told, with delicious vagueness, that I must gaze on the phenomena of spiritual consciousness; I say I exercise earnest and sincere self-scrutiny, and that I can discern nothing but shadowy forms, most of which do not answer to those which these new spiritualists describe; and then Mr. Newman turns round and says, that the unspiritual nature cannot discern them! What is this but to give up the only question of any importance to humanity,--which is not what are Mr.
Newman's spiritual phenomena; if they are known to himself, it is well; he has been very long in discovering them, in spite of the clearness of the internal revelation;--but what are those of man? In the former be all, Mr. Newman is safe indeed; he is intrenched in his own peculiar consciousness, of which I am quite willing to admit that all other men (as well as I) are inadequate judges. But the monograph of a solitary enthusiast is of the least possible consequence to humanity. For reasons similar to those which render us incompetent to p.r.o.nounce on his experience, he is incapable of judging of ours. There is only one other answer that I know of, and that is the answer which Fellowes made to me the other day, when you were not by:--”O, but you have the same spiritual consciousness as I have, only you are not aware of it?” I contented myself with saying, that I was just as able to comprehend a perception which is not perceived, as a consciousness which when sought was not to be found. The question is one of consciousness; you say you have it, I do not deny it; I have it not. Now, if we are not disputing as to whether it be a characteristic of humanity, it little matters: if we are, I plainly have the best of it, because want of uniformity in the phenomenon is destructive of the hypothesis.
But I proceed to ask my second question. Is the ”absolute religion”
of Mr. Parker, or the ”spiritual faculty” of Mr. Newman, of such singular use as to supersede all external revelation, since by the unfortunate ”conceptions” of the one, and the ”degraded types” of the other, it has for ages left man, and does, in fact, now leave him, to wallow in the lowest depths of the most debasing idolatry and superst.i.tion; since, by the confession of these very writers, the great bulk of mankind have been and are hideously mal-formed, in fact, spiritual cripples, and have been left to wander in infinitely varied paths of error, but always paths of error?--for Judaism and Christianity, though better forms, are, as well as other forms, --according to these writers,--full of fables and fancies, of lying legends and fantastical doctrines. Think for a moment of a ”spiritual faculty,” so bright as to antic.i.p.ate all essential spiritual verities, --the universal possession of humanity,--which yet terminates in leaving the said humanity to grovel in every form of error, between the extremes of Fetichism, which consecrates a bit of stone, and Pantheism, which consecrates all the bits of stone in the universe, in fact, a sort of comprehensive Fetichism;--which leaves man to erect every thing into a G.o.d, provided it is none,--sun, moon, stars, a cat, a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, a shapeless trunk,--which the devout impatience of the idolater does not stay to fas.h.i.+on into the likeness of a man, but gives it its apotheosis at once! Think of the venerable, wide-spread empire of the infinite forms of polytheism, the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, and Hindoo mythologies; and then acknowledge, that, if man has this faculty, it is either the most idle prerogative ever bestowed on a rational creature, or that, somehow or other, as the Bible affirms, it has been denaturalized and disabled. If, on the other hand, man has this faculty, and yet has never fallen, it can only be because he never stood; and then, no doubt, as John Bunyan hath it, ”He that is down need fear no fall!”
There is an answer, indeed, but it is one which, in my judgment, covers those who resort to it with the deepest shame. It is that which apologizes for all these abominations,--so humiliating and odious, by representing them as less humiliating and odious than they are. It is true that Mr. Parker, when it is his cue, is most eloquent in his denunciations of the infinite miseries and degradation which have followed the exorbitancies of the religious principle.
Thus he says of superst.i.tion (and there are other innumerable pa.s.sages to a similar effect), ”To dismember the soul, the very image of G.o.d,--to lop off the most sacred affections,--to call Reason a liar, Conscience a devil's oracle, and cast Love clean out from the heart,--this is the last triumph of superst.i.tion, but one often witnessed in all the three forms of Religion, Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism; in all ages before Christ, in all ages after Christ.” Far be it from me to deny it, or the similar horrors which he liberally shows flow from fanaticism. But then, at other times, that quintessence of all abstractions which all religions alike contain--the ”absolute religion”--imparts such perfume and appetizing relish to the whole composition, that, like Dominie Sampson in Meg Merrilies's cuisine, Mr. P. finds the Devil's cookery-book not despicable. The things he so fearfully describes are but perversions of what is essentially good. The ”forms,” the ”accidentals,” of different religions become of little consequence; whether it be Jehovah or Jupiter, the infinite Creator or a divine cat, a holy and gracious G.o.d that is loved, or an impure demon that is feared,--all this is secondary, provided the principles of faith, simplicity, and earnestness--that is, blind credulity and idiotic stupidity--inspire the wretched votary; as if the perversions he deplores and condemns were not the necessary consequences of such religions themselves, or, rather, as if they were aught but the religions! In virtue of the ”absolute religion,”
”many a savage smeared with human sacrifice,” and the Christian martyr peris.h.i.+ng with a prayer for his persecutors, are hastening together to the celestial banquet. I hope the ”savage” will not go with ”unwashen hands,” I trust he may be Pharisee enough for that; I also hope the two will not sit next one another; otherwise the savage may be tempted to offer up a second sacrifice, and the Christian martyr be a martyr a second time. Hear him:--”He that wors.h.i.+ps truly, by whatever form,”--that is, who is sincere in his Fetichism, his idolatry, his sacrifices, though they may be human, --”wors.h.i.+ps the only G.o.d; he hears the prayer, whether called Brahma, Pan, or Lord, or called by no name at all. Each people has its prophets and its saints; and many a swarthy Indian who bowed down to wood and stone,--many a grim-faced Calmuck, who wors.h.i.+pped the great G.o.d of Storms,--many a Grecian peasant who did homage to Phoebus Apollo when the sun rose or went down,--yes, many a savage, his hands smeared all over with human sacrifice,--shall come from the East and the West, and sit down in the kingdom of G.o.d, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates and Jesus.” (Discourses, p. 83) The charity which hopes that men may be forgiven the crime of ”religions”
which, if there be a G.o.d at all, must be ”abominations,” one can understand; but these maudlin apologies for the religions themselves, --as if they were not themselves crimes, and involved crimes in their very practice,--I do not understand. According to this, all that man has to do is to be sincere in any thing, however diabolical, and it is at once trans.m.u.ted into a virtue which nothing less than heaven can reward!
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