Know the Truth; A critique of the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Part 11

There does not appear in this chapter any further topic that has not already been touched upon. With these remarks, then, the examination of this chapter, and of Mr. Spencer's First Principles, may be closed.

CONCLUSION.

If it has ever been the reader's lot to examine Paley's "Evidences of Christianity," or the "Sermons of President Dwight on the Existence of G.o.d"; and if he has risen from their perusal with a feeling of utter unsatisfaction, enduring the same craving for a sure truth hara.s.sing as before, he will have partly shared the experience which drove the author forward, until he arrived at the foundation principles of this treatise.

Those works, and all of that cla.s.s are, for the object they have in view, worthless; not because the various statements they make are untrue, not because elegant language and beauty of style are wanting; but because they are radically defective in that, their _method_ is irrelevant to the subject in hand; because in all the arguments that have been or can be brought forward there is nothing decisive and final; because the skeptic can thrust the sharp sword of his criticism through every one of them; because, in fine, the very root of the matter, their method itself is false, and men have attempted to establish by a series of arguments what must be ground for the possibility of an argument, and can only be established by the opposite, the _a priori_ method. Though the Limitist Philosophy has no positive value, it has this negative one, that it has established, by the most thorough-going criticism, the worthlessness of the _a posteriori_ processes of thought on the matter in hand. Yea, more, the existence of _any_ spiritual person cannot be proved in that way. You can prove that the boy's body climbs the tree; but never that he has a soul. This is always taken for granted. Lest the author should appear singular in this view, he would call the attention of the reader to a pa.s.sage in Coleridge's writings in which he at once sets forth the beauty of the style and incompetency of the logic of Dr.

Paley's book. "I have, I am aware, in this present work, furnished occasion for a charge of having expressed myself with slight and irreverence of celebrated names, especially of the late Dr. Paley. O, if I were fond and ambitious of literary honor, of public applause, how well content should I be to excite but one third of the admiration which, in my inmost being, I feel for the head and heart of Paley! And how gladly would I surrender all hope of contemporary praise, could I even approach to the incomparable grace, propriety, and persuasive facility of his writings! But on this very account, I feel myself bound in conscience _to throw the whole force of my intellect in the way of this triumphal car_, on which the tutelary genius of modern idolatry is borne, even at the risk of being crushed under the wheels."

Instead of the method now condemned, there is one taught us in the Book, and the only one taught us there, which is open to every human being, for which every human being has the faculty, and respecting which all that is needed is, that the person exercise what he already has. The boy could not learn his arithmetic, except he set himself resolutely to his task; and no man can learn of G.o.d, except he also fulfils the conditions, except he consecrate himself wholly to the acquisition of this knowledge, except his soul is poured out in love to G.o.d; "for every one that _loveth, is born of G.o.d, and knoweth G.o.d_." We come then to the knowledge of G.o.d by a direct and immediate act of the soul. The Reason, the Sensibility, and the Will, give forth their combined and highest action in the attainment of this knowledge. As an intellectual achievement, this is the highest possible to the Reason. She attains then, to the Ultima Thule of all effort, and of this she is fully conscious. Nor is there awakened any feverish complaining that there are no more worlds to conquer. In the contemplation of the ineffable Goodness she finds her everlasting occupation, and her eternal rest.

Plainly, then, both Reason and Revelation teach but a single, and that the _a priori_ method, by which to establish for man the fact of the being of G.o.d. Let us b.u.t.tress this conclusion with other lines of thought.

Reader, now that it is suggested to you, does it not seem in the highest degree improbable, that the most important truths which can pertain to man, truths which do not concern primarily the affairs of this life, but of his most exalted life, the life of the spiritual person as the companion of its Creator, should be based upon an inferior, less satisfactory, and less adequate foundation of knowledge, than those of our childhood's studies, of the arithmetic and the algebra? The boy who cons the first pages of his arithmetical text-book, soon learns what he knows to be _self-evident_ truths. He who should offer to _prove_ the truth of the multiplication-table, would only expose himself to ridicule. When the boy has attained to youth, and advanced in his studies, the pages of the algebra and geometry are laid before him, and he finds new and higher orders of self-evident truths. Would any evidence, any argument, strengthen his conviction of the validity of the axioms? Yea, rather, if one should begin to offer arguments, would he not instinctively and rightfully feel that the confession was thereby tacitly made, that self-evidence was not satisfactory; and would he not, finding his spontaneous impulse, and his education, so contradictory, be _liable_ to fall into complete skepticism? If now there be this spontaneous, yea, abiding, yea, unalterable, yea, universal conviction respecting matters of subordinate importance, can it be possible,--I repeat the question, for it seems to carry with it irresistibly its own and the decisive answer,--can it be possible that the decisions of questions of the highest moment, that the knowledge of the principles of our moral being and of the moral government to which we are amenable, and most of all of the Governor who is at once Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge, is not based on at least equally spontaneous, yea, abiding, yea, unalterable, yea, universal convictions? And when the teacher seemingly, and may it not with truth be said _actually_, distrusting the reliability of such a conviction, goes about to bolster up his belief, and the belief of his pupil, in the existence of G.o.d, and thereto rakes together, with painstaking labor, many sticks and straws of evidence, instead of looking up to the truth which shines directly down upon him with steady ineffable effulgence, is it at all strange that the sharper-eyed pupil, keenly appreciating the contradiction between his spontaneous conviction and his teaching, should become uncertain which to follow, a doubter, and finally a confirmed skeptic? If, then, it is incredible that the fundamental principles of man's moral nature--that to which all the other elements of his being are subordinate, and for which they were created--are established on inferior grounds, and those less satisfactory than the grounds of other principles; and if, on the other hand, the conviction is irresistible, that they are established on the highest grounds, and since the truths of mathematics are also based on the highest ground, self-evidence, and since there can be none higher than the highest, it follows that the moral principles of the Universe, so far as they can be known by man, have _precisely the same foundation of truthfulness as the principles of mathematics--they are_ SELF-EVIDENT.

But some good Reader will check at the result now attained because it involves the position that the human Reason is the final standard of truth for man. Good reader, this position is involved, and is true; and for the sake of Christ's religion it must be taken. The only possible ground for a thoroughly satisfactory and thoroughly unanswerable Christian Philosophy, is the principle that _The human Reason is the final standard of truth for man_.

It has been customary for the devout Bible-reader to esteem that book as his final standard; and to such an extent in many instances has his reverential regard for it been carried, that the expression will hardly be too strong for truth, that it has become an object of worship; and upon the mind of such a one the above a.s.sertion will produce a shock.

While the author would treat with respect every religious feeling, he would still remind such a person that the Bible is the moral school-book of the spiritual person in man, which G.o.d himself prepared for man's use, and must in every case be inferior and subordinate to the being whom it was meant to educate; and furthermore, that, by the very fact of making man, G.o.d established in him the standard, and the right to require that this fact be recognized. Mark, G.o.d made the standard and thus established the right. This principle may be supported by the following considerations:

1. The church universally has acted upon it; and none have employed it more vigorously than those who have in terms most bitterly opposed it.

One of the cla.s.s just referred to affirms that the Bible is the standard of truth. "Admit," says a friend standing by, "that it would be if it were what it purports to be; but what evidence is there that this is the case." Thereupon the champion presents evidence from the fathers, and evidence from the book itself; and finally closes by saying, that such an array of evidence is ample to satisfy any _reasonable_ man of its truth and validity. His argument is undoubtedly satisfactory; but if he has not appealed to a reasonable man, _i. e._ to the Reason, _i. e._, if he has not acknowledged a standard for _the_ standard, and thus has not tacitly, unconsciously and yet decisively employed the Reason as the highest standard of truth, then his conduct has for us no adequate expression.

2. Nicodemus and Christ, in express terms, recognized the validity of this standard. Said the ruler to Christ, "We know that thou art a teacher come from G.o.d: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except G.o.d be with him."--_John_ III. 2. In these words, he both recognized the validity of the standard, and the fact that its requirements had been met. But decisively emphatic are the words of our Saviour: "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father."--_John_ XV. 24. As if he had said, "While I appeared among them simply as a man, I had no right to claim from them a belief in my mission; but when I had given them adequate and ample evidence of my heavenly character, when, in a word, I had by my works satisfied all the rational demands for evidence which they could make, then no excuse remained for their rejection of me."

The doctrine of this treatise, that man may know the truth, and know G.o.d, is one which will never be too largely reflected upon by the human mind, or too fully ill.u.s.trated in human thought. In no better strain can we bring our work to a close than by offering some reflections on those words of Jesus Christ which have formed the t.i.tle of our book.

"Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, 'If ye continue in my word, _then_ are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'"--_John_ VIII. 31, 32. Throughout all the acts of Christ, as recorded in John and especially during the last days of his life, there may be traced the marks of a super-human effort to express to the Jews, in the most skilful manner, the nature and purport of his mission. He appeared to them a man; and yet it would seem as if the G.o.dhead in him struggled with language to overcome its infirmities, and express with perfectest skill his extraordinary character and work. But "he came unto his own, and his own received him not." Being then such, even the Divine Man, Jesus Christ possessed in his own right _an absolute and exhaustive metaphysic_. We study out some laws in some of their applications; he knew all laws in all their applications. In these his last days he was engaged in making the most profound and highly philosophical revelations to his followers that one being ever made to another. Or does the reader prefer to call them religious? Very well: for here Religion and Philosophy are identical.

Being engaged in such a labor, it is certain that no merely human teacher ever used words with the careful balancing, the skilful selection, the certain exact.i.tude, that Jesus did. Hence in the most emphatic sense may it be said, that, whether he used figurative or literal language, he meant just what he said. The terms used in the text quoted are literal terms, and undoubtedly the pa.s.sage is to be taken in its most literal signification. In these words then, in this pa.s.sage of the highest philosophical import, is to be found the basis of the whole _a priori_ philosophy. They were spoken of the most important truths, those which pertain to the soul's everlasting welfare; but as the greater includes the less, so do they include all lesser science. In positive and unmistakable terms has Christ declared the fact of knowledge. G.o.d knows all truth. In so far as we also know the truth, in so far are we like him. And mark, this is knowledge, a purely intellectual act. Love is indeed a _condition_ of the act, but it is not the very act itself.

On this subject it is believed that the Christian church has failed to a.s.sert the most accurate doctrine. Too generally has this knowledge been termed a spiritual knowledge, meaning thereby, a sort of an impression of happiness made upon the spiritual sensibility; and this state of bliss has been represented as in the highest degree desirable. Beyond all question it is true, that, when the spiritual person, with the eye of Reason, sees, and thus knows the truth, seeing it and knowing it because his whole being, will, and intellect is consecrated to, wrapt in the effort, and he is searching for it as for hid treasures, there will roll over his soul some ripples of that ineffable Delight which is a boundless ocean in Deity. But this state of the Sensibility follows after, and is dependent upon, the act of love, and the act of knowledge.

There should be, there was made in Christ's mind, a distinction in the various psychical modifications of him who had sold all that he had to buy the one pearl. The words of Christ are to be taken, then, as the words of the perfect philosopher, and the perfect religionist. Bearing, as he did, the destiny of a world on his heart, and burdened beyond all utterance by the mighty load, his soul was full of the theme for which he was suffering, he could speak to man only of his highest needs and his highest capabilities. The truth which man may know, then, is not only eternal,--all truth is eternal,--but it is that eternal truth most important to him, the _a priori_ laws of the spiritual person and of all his relations. The what he is, the why he is, and the what he ought to become, are the objects of his examination. When, then, a spiritual person has performed his highest act, the act of unconditional and entire consecration to the search after the truth, _i. e._ to G.o.d; and when, having done this he ever after puts away all l.u.s.ts of the flesh, he shall in this condition become absorbed, wrapt away in the contemplation of the truth; then his spiritual eye will be open, and will dart with its far-glancing, searching gaze throughout the mysteries of the Universe, and he will know the truth. Before, when he was absorbed in the pursuit of the things of Sense, he could see almost no _a priori_ principles at all, and what he did see, only in their practical bearing upon those material and transitory things which perish with their using; but now balancing himself on tireless pinion in the upper ether, anon he stoops to notice the largest and highest and most important of those objects which formerly with so much painful and painstaking labor he climbed the rugged heights of sense to examine, and having touched upon them cursorily, to supply the need of the hour, he again spreads his powerful G.o.d-given wings of faith and love, and soars upward, upward, upward, towards the eternal Sun, the infinite Person, the final Truth, G.o.d. Then does he come to comprehend, "to KNOW, with all saints, what is the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of G.o.d." Then do the pure _a priori_ laws, especially those of the relations of spiritual persons, _i. e._ of the moral government of G.o.d, come full into the field of his vision. Then in the clear blaze, in the noonday effulgence of the ineffable, eternal Sun, does he see the Law which binds G.o.d as it binds man,--that Law so terrible in its demands upon him who had violated it, that the infinite Person himself could find no other way of escape for sinning man but in sending "his only-begotten Son into the world." And he who is lifted up to this knowledge needs no other revelation. All other knowledge is a child's lesson-book to him. All lower study is tasteless; all lower life is neglected, forgotten. He studies forever the pure equations of truth; he lives in the bosom of G.o.d. Such an one may all his life-long have been utterly ignorant of books. A poor negro on some rice plantation, he may have learned of G.o.d only by the hearing of the ear, but by one act, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he has pa.s.sed all the gradations of earthly knowledge, and taken his seat on the topmost form in heaven. He received little instruction from men; but forevermore G.o.d is his teacher.

This of which we have been speaking is, be it remembered, no rhapsody of the imagination. It is a simple literal fact respecting man's intellect.

It is the same in kind, though of far n.o.bler import, as if upon this act of consecration there should be revealed to every consecrated one, in a sudden overwhelming burst of light, the whole _a priori_ system of the physical Universe. This is not so revealed because it is not essential, and so would only gratify curiosity. The other and the higher is revealed, because it is essential to man's spiritual life.

In the culminating act, then, of a spiritual person, in the unreserved, the absolute consecration of the whole being to the search after truth, do we find that common goal to which an _a priori_ philosophy inevitably leads us, and which the purest, Christ's, religion teaches us. Thus does it appear that in their highest idea Philosophy and Religion are identical. The Rock upon which both alike are grounded is eternal. The principles of both have the highest possible evidence, for they are self-evident; and, having them given by the intuition of the Reason, a man can cipher out the whole natural scheme of the Universe as he would cipher out a problem in equations. He has not done it, because he is wicked; and G.o.d has given him the Bible, as the mathematical astronomy of the moral heavens, as a school-book to lead him back to the goal of his lost purity.

How beautiful, then, art thou, O Religion, supernal daughter of the Deity! how n.o.ble in thy magnificent preeminence! how dazzling in thy transcendent loveliness! Thou sittest afar on a throne of pearl; thy diadem the Morning Stars, thy robe the glory of G.o.d. Founded is thy throne on Eternity; and from eternity to eternity all thy laws are enduring truth. Sitting thus, O Queen, more firmly throned than the snow-capped mountains, calmer than the ocean's depths, in the surety of thy self-conscious integrity and truth, thou mayest, with mien of n.o.blest dignity, in unwavering confidence, throw down the gauntlet of thy challenge to the a.s.sembled doubters of the Universe.

It may be that to some minds, unaccustomed to venturing out fearlessly on the ocean of thought, with an unwavering trust in the pole-star truth in the human soul, certain of the positions attained and maintained in this volume will seem to involve the destruction of all essential distinction between the Creator and the created. If the universe is a definite and limited object, some created being may, at some period, come to know every atom of it. Moreover, if there is a definite number of the qualities and attributes--the endowments of Deity, some one may learn the number, and what they are, and come at length to have a knowledge equal to G.o.d's knowledge. Even if this possibility should be admitted,--which it is not, for a reason to appear further on,--yet it would in no way involve that the creature had, in any the least degree, reduced the difference in _kind_ which subsists between him and the Creator. A consideration of the following distinctive marks will, it would seem, be decisive upon this point.

G.o.d is self-existent. His creatures are dependent upon him.

Self-existence is an essential, inherent, untransferable attribute of Deity; and so is not a possible attainment for any creature. Every creature is necessarily dependent upon the Creator every moment, for his continuance in being. Let him attain ever so high a state of knowledge; let him, if the supposition were rational, acquire a knowledge equal to that of Deity; let him be endowed with all the power he could use, and he would not have made, nor could he make an effort even, in the direction of removing his dependence upon his Creator. In the very height of his glory, in the acme of his attainment, it would need only that G.o.d rest an instant, cease to sustain him, and he would not be, he would have gone out, as the light goes out on a burner when one turns the faucet.

Again, the mode by which their knowledge is attained is different in kind; and the creature never can acquire the Creator's mode. The Deity possesses his knowledge as a necessary endowment, given to him at once, by a spontaneous intuition. Hence he could never learn, for there was no knowledge which he did not already possess. Thus he is out of all relation to Time. The creature, on the other hand, can never acquire any knowledge except through processes; and, what is more, can never review the knowledge already acquired, except by a process which occupies a time. This relation of the creature to Time is organic; and this distinction between the creature and Creator is thus also irremovable.

Another organic distinction is that observed in the mode of seeing ideals. The Divine Reason not only gives ideas, _a priori_ laws, but it gives all possible images, which those laws, standing in their natural relations to each other, can become. Thus all ideals are realized to him, whether the creative energy goes forth, and power is organized in accordance therewith, or not. Here again the creature is of the opposite kind. The creature can never have an idea until he has been educated by contact with a material universe; and then can never construct an ideal, except he have first seen the elements of that ideal realized in material forms. To ill.u.s.trate: The infant has no ideas; and there is no radical difference between the beginning of a human being and any other created spiritual person. He has a rudimentary Reason, but it must grow before it can make its presentations, and the means of its education must be a material system. Let a spiritual person be created, and set in the Universe, utterly isolated, with no medium of communication, and it would stay forever just what it was at the beginning, a dry seed. The necessity of alliance with a material Universe is equally apparent in the mature spiritual person. Such a one cannot construct a single ideal, except he have seen all the elements already in material forms. He who will attempt to construct an ideal of any _thing_, which never has been, as a griffin, and not put into it any form of animals which have been on earth, will immediately appreciate the unquestionableness of this position. Therefore it is that no one can, "by searching, find out G.o.d."

The creature can only learn what the Creator declares to him.

Still another element of distinction, equally marked and decisive as those just named, may be mentioned. The Deity possesses as inherent and immanent endowment Power, or the ability of himself to realize his ideals in objects. Thus is he the Creator. If this were not so, there could have been no Universe, for there was no substance and no one to furnish a substance but he. The creature, on the other hand, cannot receive as a gift, neither attain by culture the power to create. Hence he can only realize his ideals in materials furnished to his hand.

Pigments and brushes and chisels and marble must be before painters and sculptors can become.

Each and every one of the distinctions above made is _organic_. They cannot be eliminated. In fact their removal is not a possible object of effort. The creature may _wish_ them removed; but no line of thought can be studied out by which a movement can be made towards the attainment of that wish. It would seem, then, that, such being the facts, the fullest scope might fearlessly be allowed to the legitimate use of every power of the creature. Such, it is believed, is G.o.d's design.

THE END.