Part 12 (1/2)
”I am supposing that we have the right as well as the power; as, for example, to prevent a man from murdering his neighbor, or a thief from entering his dwelling. There are, no doubt, many acts which, from our very limited right, we should have no business to prevent; as, for example, to prevent a man from getting tipsy at his own table with his own wine. But no such limitation can apply to Him who is supposed to be the Absolute Monarch of the universe; and yet He (according to your view) notoriously does not interpose to prevent the daily commission of the most heinous wrongs and cruelties under which the earth has groaned, and hearts have been breaking, for thousands of years. You will say, perhaps, that in all such instances we must believe that there are some reasons for His conduct, though we cannot guess what they are. Ah! my friend, if you come to believing, you may believe also that the difficulties involved in the Scriptural representations of the Divine character and proceedings are susceptible of a similar solution. If you come to believing, I think the Christian can believe as well as you, and rather more consistently. But let me proceed.” He then read on.
It is plain, that, in accordance with our primitive ”moral intuitions”
(if we have any), we should hold him who had the power to prevent a wrong, and did not use it, as a partic.i.p.ator and accomplice in the crime he did not prevent. Applying, therefore, the principles of Mr. Newman, I must refuse to acknowledge such conduct on the part of the Divine Being, and to say, that such things are not done by him.
If I may trust my whisper of him, derived from a.n.a.logous moral qualities in myself, I must believe that an administration which so ruthlessly permits these things is not his work; but that his power, wisdom, and goodness have been thwarted, baffled, and overmastered by some ”omnipotent devil,” to use Mr. Newman's expression; if it be, then that whisper of him cannot be trusted: the heathen was right, ”Sunt superis sua jura.” In other words, I feel that I must become an Atheist, a Pantheist, a Manichaean, or--what I am--a sceptic.
All these perplexities are increased when I trace them up to that profound mystery in which they all originate,--I mean the permission of physical and moral evil. Either evil could have been prevented or not; if it could, its immense and horrible prevalence is at war with the intuition already referred to; if it could not, who shall prove it?
I am no more able to contradict the intuitions of the intellect than those of the conscience; and if any thing can be called a contradiction of the former, it is to be told that a Being of infinite power, wisdom, and beneficence could not construct a world without an immensity of evil in it; no reason being a.s.signable or even imaginable for such a proposition, except the fact that such a world has not been created!
I am therefore compelled to doubt, whether such a universe be really the fabrication of such a Being. It is impossible to express my astonishment at the ease with which Mr. Newman disposes of the difficulties connected with the origin and perpetuation of physical and moral evil. His arguments are just two of the most hackneyed commonplaces with which metaphysicians have attempted to evade these stupendous difficulties; and it is not too much to say, that there never was a man who was not resolved that his theory must stand, who pretended to attach any importance to them. They are most gratuitously a.s.sumed, and even then are most trivial alleviations; a mere plaster of brown paper for a deep-seated cancer.
I certainly know of no other man who has stood so unabashed in front of these awful forms. One almost envies him the truly childlike faith with which he waves his hand to these Alps, and says, ”Be ye removed, and east into the sea”; but the feeling is exchanged for another, when he seems to rub his eyes, and exclaim, ”Presto, they are gone sure enough!” while you still feel that you stand far within the circ.u.mference of their awful shadows.
As to physical evil, Mr. Newman tells us, ”Here may be sufficient to remark, that the difficulty on the Epicurean a.s.sumption, that physical case and comfort is the most valuable thing in the universe: but that is not true even with brutes. There is a certain perfection in the nature of each, consisting in the full development of all their powers, to which the existing order manifestly tends ...... As for susceptibility to pain, it is obviously essential to every part of corporeal life, and to discuss the question of degree is absurd. On the other hand, human capacity for sorrow is equally necessary to our whole moral nature, and sorrow itself is a most essential process for the perfecting of the soul.” (Soul, pp. 43, 44.)
This, then, is the fine balm for all the anguish under which the world has been groaning for these thousands of years! But, first, how does suffering tend to the perfection of the whole lower creation?
It enfeebles, and at last destroys them, I know; but I am yet to Learn that it is essential to the perfection of animal life.
Again, how does it minister to that of man, except he be more than the insect of the day, of which Mr. Newman's theology leaves him in utter doubt? And if he be immortal, how does it operate beneficially except as an instrument of moral improvement? And how rarely (comparatively) do we see that it has that effect! How often is it most prolonged and torturing in those who seem least to need it, and in those who are absolutely as yet incapable of learning from it; or, alas! are too evidently past learning from it! How often do we see, slowly sinking under the protracted agonies of consumption, cancer, or stone, all these various cla.s.ses of mortals, without our being able to a.s.sign, or even conjecture, the slightest reason for such experiments! I acknowledge freely, all, at we can give no reasons for them; but it is to mock miserable humanity to give such reasons as these; doubly to mock it, if men be the ephemeral creatures which Mr. Newman's theology leaves in such doubt: since in that case we see not only (what we see at any rate) that physical evil does not always, nor even in many instances, produce a salutary moral effect, but that it hardly matters whether it does or not; for just as the poor patient may be beginning to be benefited by his discipline, and generally in consequence of it, he is unluckily annihilated; he dies of his medicine! Surely, if physical evil be this grand elixir, never was such a precious balm so improvidently expended. We may well say, only with much more reason, what the Jews said of Mary's box of ointment,--”Why was all this waste?” To be sure it is ”given” in abundance ”to the poor.”
And, at the best, this exquisite reasoning gives no account whatever of that suffering which falls upon innocent infancy and childhood. It destroys them, however, and effectually prevents their attaining the ”perfection” which it is so admirable an instrument of developing, and that too before they can be morally benefited by the ”salutary” sorrow it brings!
”Susceptibility to pain,” says Mr. Newman, ”is essential to corporeal being.”
Yes, susceptibility to pain; just as a created being must be liable to annihilation. Must he be annihilated? Just as a hungry stomach must be liable to starvation. Must it be starved? The primary office of susceptibilities to pain would seem to be to forewarn us to provide against it. They certainly have that effect. Does it necessarily follow that they must involve anguish and death? Unless it be supposed, indeed, that nature, having provided such an admirable apparatus of ”susceptibilities” of pain, thought it a thousand pities that they should not be employed.
But when it comes to ”moral evil,” which Mr. Newman acknowledges cannot be so lightly disposed of, what then?
Why, then he says, ”Let the Gordian knot be cut.”
Well, what then? Why, then Mr. Newman frankly ”a.s.sumes” that it is ”transitory and finite,” (Soul, p. 45.) and will one day vanish from the universe, a supposition for which he condescends to give no reason whatever.
Stat pro ratione voluntas.
That this ”moral evil” should have existed at all, much more to so immense an extent, under the administration of supposed infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence, is the great difficulty; that it will ever cease to be, is a pure a.s.sumption for the nonce; but if it will one day entirely vanish, it is gratuitous to suppose it might not have been prevented.
I, of course, acknowledge that we can give no answer to the questions involved in this transcendent mystery,--that our ignorance is absolute; but I do say, that, if I am to trust to those ”intuitions” of the Divine Goodness, on whose warranty Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker reject the Bible, as containing what is unworthy of their conceptions of G.o.d, I am compelled to proceed further in the same direction; and repudiate, as unworthy of Him, not merely some of the phenomena of the Book which men profess to be His word, but also some of the phenomena of that universe which men profess to be His work. If I can only judge, as these gentlemen urge, of such a Being by the a.n.a.logies of my own nature, no ”intuition” of theirs can possibly seem stronger than do mine, that beings absolutely innocent ought not to suffer; that to inflict suffering upon them is injustice; that to permit any evils which we can prevent is in like manner to be accomplices in the crime. On those very principles of all moral judgment which Mr. Newman says are innate and our only rule, I say I am compelled to these conclusions; for if G.o.d does those things which are ordinarily attributed to Him, He acts as much in contravention of these intuitions as in any acts attributed to Him in the Bible. If it be said, that there may be reasons for such apparent violations of rect.i.tude, which we cannot fathom, I deny it not: but that is to acknowledge that the supposed maxims derived from the a.n.a.logies of our own being are most deceptive as applied to the Supreme; it is to remit us to an act of absolute faith, by which, with no greater effort, nor so great, we may be reconciled to similar mysteries of the Bible.
But above all is it to do this, to say that the origin and permission of physical and moral evil are inexplicable; and it is to double this demand on faith, to declare that it was all necessary, and could not be evaded in the construction of the universe even by infinite power, directed by infinite wisdom, and both animated by an infinite benevolence!
As far as I can trust my reason at all, nothing seems more improbable; and if I receive it by a transcendent exercise of faith, I may, as before, give the Bible the benefit of a like act. I am compelled, therefore, on such principles, either to adopt a Manichaean hypothesis of the universe, or do what I have done,--adopt none at all.
I was talking to a friend on these subjects the other day: ”Ah! but,”
said he, ”many of those difficulties you mention oppress every hypothesis,--Christianity just as much as the rest.”
This, I replied, is no answer to me nor to you, if you have a particle of candor; still less is it one to the Christian, who consistently applies the same principle of absolute faith to things apparently a priori incredible, whether found in the works or in the word of G.o.d. But if you think the argument of any force, apply it to the next Christian you meet, and see what answer he will make to you; it will not trouble him. But it is far more ridiculous addressed to me.
I ask for something in the place of that Bible of which the faithful application of your own principles deprives me; and when I affirm that the difficulties of the universe are no less than those of the Bible I have surrendered, you tell me that the perplexities of my new position are no greater than those of the old! That clearly will not do. I must go further. If I am to yield to pretensions of any kind, I would infinitely prefer the yoke of the Bible to that of Messrs. Parker and Newman; for it is to nothing else than their dogmatism I must yield, if I admit that the difficulties which compel me to doubt in the one case are less than those which compel me to doubt in the other.
But it is not even true that the difficulties in question are left where they were by the adoption of any such theory as that of either Mr. Parker or Mr. Newman. I contend that they are all indefinitely increased. The Bible does at least give me a plausible account of some of the mysteries which baffle me: it tells me that man was created holy and happy; that he has fallen from his ”excellent estate”; and hence the misery, ignorance, and guilt in which he is involved, and which have rendered revelation necessary.
But--and it brings me to the last step of my argument--if I accept the theory of the universe propounded by these writers, not only am I left without any such approximate solutions, or, if that be thought too strong a term, without any such alleviations, but all the difficulties as regards the character, attributes, and administration of G.o.d, are increased a thousand-fold. The Scripture account of the ”fall,”--however inexplicable it may be that G.o.d should have permitted it,--yet does expressly a.s.sert that, somehow or other, it is man's fault, not G.o.d's; that man is not in his normal condition, nor in the condition for which he was created. Dark as are the clouds which envelop the Divine Ruler, ”their skirts are tinged with gold,”--pervaded and penetrated throughout their dusky depths by that mercy which a.s.sures us that, in some intelligible sense, this condition of man is contrary to the Divine Will, which, from the first, resolved to remedy it; and that a day is coming when what is mysterious shall be explained,--so far, at least, that what has been ”wrong” shall be ”righted.” But what is the theory of the universe propounded by these writers? So hideous (I solemnly declare it) that I feel ten times more compelled to reject the universe as a work of an infinitely gracious, wise, and powerful Creator, than if the difficulties had been simply left where the Bible leaves them. According to their theory, man is now, just what he was at first,--as he came from his Creator's hand; or rather in some parts of the world (thanks to himself though) a little better than he was originally; that G.o.d cast man forth, so const.i.tuted by the unhappy mal-admixture of the elements of his nature,--with such an inevitable subjection of the ”idea” to the ”conception,” of the ”spiritual faculty” to ”the degraded types,”--that for unnumbered ages--for aught we know, myriads of ages--man has been slowly crawling up, a very sloth in ”progress” (poor beast!), from the lowest Fetichism to Polytheism,--from Polytheism, in all its infinitude of degrading forms, to imperfect forms of Monotheism; and how small a portion of the race have even imperfectly reached this last term, let the spectacle of the world's religions at the present moment proclaim!