Part 7 (2/2)

Look at the effects of Christian belief as exercised on human society--1st, by individual Christians on the family, &c.; and, 2nd, by the Christian Church on the world.

All this may lead on to an argument from the adaptation of Christianity to human higher needs. All men must feel these needs more or less in proportion as their higher natures, moral and spiritual, are developed.

Now Christianity is the only religion which is adapted to meet them, and, according to those who are alone able to testify, does so most abundantly. All these men, of every sect, nationality, &c., agree in their account of their subjective experience; so as to this there can be no question. The only question is as to whether they are all deceived.

PEU DE CHOSE.

'La vie est vaine: Un peu d'amour, Un peu de haine ...

Et puis--bon jour!

La vie est breve: Un peu d'espoir, Un peu de reve ...

Et puis--bon soir!'

The above is a terse and true criticism of this life without hope of a future one. Is it satisfactory? But Christian faith, as a matter of fact, changes it entirely.

'The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of a whole world dies With the setting sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is done.'

Love is known to be all this. How great, then, is Christianity, as being the religion of love, and causing men to believe both in the cause of love's supremacy and the infinity of G.o.d's love to man.

FOOTNOTES:

[55] Cf. Pascal, _Pensees_. 'For we must not mistake ourselves, we have as much that is automatic in us as intellectual, and hence it comes that the instrument by which persuasion is brought about is not demonstration alone. How few things are demonstrated! Proofs can only convince the mind; custom makes our strongest proofs and those which we hold most firmly, it sways the automaton, which draws the unconscious intellect after it.... It is then custom that makes so many men Christians, custom that makes them Turks, heathen, artisans, soldiers, &c. Lastly, we must resort to custom when once the mind has seen where truth is, in order to slake our thirst and steep ourselves in that belief which escapes us at every hour, for to have proofs always at hand were too onerous. We must acquire a more easy belief, that of custom, which without violence, without art, without argument, causes our a.s.sent and inclines all our powers to this belief, so that our soul naturally falls into it....

'It is not enough to believe only by force of conviction if the automaton is inclined to believe the contrary. Both parts of us then must be obliged to believe, the intellect by arguments which it is enough to have admitted once in our lives, the automaton by custom, and by not allowing it to incline in the contrary direction. _Inclina cor meum Deus_.' See also Newman's _Grammar of a.s.sent_, chap. vi. and Church's _Human Life and its Conditions_, pp. 67-9.

[56] [The author has added, ”For suffering in brutes see further on,”

but nothing further on the subject appears to have been written.--ED.]

[57] [In this connexion I may again notice that two days before his death George Romanes expressed his cordial approval of Professor Knight's _Aspects of Theism_--a work in which great stress is laid on the argument from intuition in different forms.--ED.]

[58] On this subject see Pascal, _Pensees_ (Kegan Paul's trans.) p. 103.

-- 5. FAITH IN CHRISTIANITY.

Christianity comes up for serious investigation in the present treatise, because this _Examination of Religion_ [i.e. of the validity of the religious consciousness] has to do with the evidences of Theism presented by man, and not only by nature _minus_ man. Now of the religious consciousness Christianity is unquestionably the highest product.

When I wrote the preceding treatise [the _Candid Examination_], I did not sufficiently appreciate the immense importance of _human_ nature, as distinguished from physical nature, in any enquiry touching Theism. But since then I have seriously studied anthropology (including the science of comparative religions), psychology and metaphysics, with the result of clearly seeing that human nature is the most important part of nature as a whole whereby to investigate the theory of Theism. This I ought to have antic.i.p.ated on merely _a priori_ grounds, and no doubt should have perceived, had I not been too much immersed in merely physical research.

Moreover, in those days, I took it for granted that Christianity was played out, and never considered it at all as having any rational bearing on the question of Theism. And, though this was doubtless inexcusable, I still think that the rational standing of Christianity has materially improved since then. For then it seemed that Christianity was destined to succ.u.mb as a rational system before the double a.s.sault of Darwin from without and the negative school of criticism from within.

Not only the book of organic nature, but likewise its own sacred doc.u.ments, seemed to be declaring against it. But now all this has been very materially changed. We have all more or less grown to see that Darwinism is like Copernicanism, &c., in this respect[59]; while the outcome of the great textual battle[60] is impartially considered a signal victory for Christianity. Prior to the new [Biblical] science, there was really no rational basis in thoughtful minds, either for the date of any one of the New Testament books, or, consequently, for the historical truth of any one of the events narrated in them. Gospels, Acts and Epistles were all alike shrouded in this uncertainty. Hence the validity of the eighteenth-century scepticism. But now all this kind of scepticism has been rendered obsolete, and for ever impossible; while the certainty of enough of St. Paul's writings for the practical purpose of displaying the belief of the apostles has been established, as well as the certainty of the publication of the Synoptics within the first century. An enormous gain has thus accrued to the objective evidences of Christianity. It is most important that the expert investigator should be exact, and, as in any other science, the lay public must take on authority as trustworthy only what both sides are agreed upon. But, as in any other science, experts are apt to lose sight of the importance of the main results agreed upon, in their fighting over lesser points still in dispute. Now it is enough for us that the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians, have been agreed upon as genuine, and that the same is true of the Synoptics so far as concerns the main doctrine of Christ Himself.

The extraordinary candour of Christ's biographers must not be forgotten[61]. Notice also such sentences as 'but some doubted,' and (in the account of Pentecost) 'these men are full of new wine[62].' Such observations are wonderfully true to human nature; but no less wonderfully opposed to any 'accretion' theory.

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