The Eclipse of Faith Part 3

"But you do not acknowledge that these are derived from the New Testament."

"Heaven forbid; they are indigenous to the heart of man, and are anterior to all Testaments, old or new."

"Very well; then speak of them as your heart dictates, and do not, unless you would have the world think you a hypocrite, willing to cajole it with the idea that you are a believer in the New Testament, while you in fact reject it, or one of the most barren uninventive of all human beings, or fanatically fond of mystical language,--do not, I say, affect this very unctuous way of talking.

And, for another reason, do not. I beseech you, adopt the phraseology of men who, according to your view, must surely have been either the most miserable fanatics or the most abominable impostors; for if they believed all that system of miracle and doctrine they professed, and this were not true, they were certainly the first; and if they did not believe it. They were as certainly the second."

"Pardon me; I believe them to have been eminently holy men,--full of spiritual wisdom and of a truly sublime faith, though conjoined with much ignorance and credulity, which it is unworthy of us to tolerate."

"Whether it could be ignorance and credulity on your theory," retorted Harrington, "is to my mind very doubtful. Whether any men can untruly affirm that they saw and did the things the Apostles say they saw and did, and yet be sincere fanatics, I know not; but even were it so, since it shows (as do also the mystical doctrines you reject as false) that they could be little less than out of their senses; and as you further say that the spiritual sentiments you retain in common with them were no gift of theirs, but are yours and all mankind's, by original inheritance, uttered by the oracle of the human heart before any Testaments were written,--why, speak your thoughts in your own language."

"Ay, but how do we know that these original Christians said that they had seen and done the things you refer to? which of course they never did see and do, because they were miraculous. How do we know what additions and corruptions as to fact, and what disguises of mystical doctrine, 'the idealizing biographers and historians' (as Strauss truly calls them) may have acc.u.mulated upon their simple utterances?"

"And how do you know, then, whether they ever uttered these simple 'utterances'? or whether they are not part of the corruptions? or how can you separate the one from the other? or how can you ascertain these men meant what you mean, when you thus vilely copy their language?"

"Because I know these truths independently of Bible, to be sure."

"Then speak of them independently of the Bible. If you profess to have broken the stereotype-plates of the 'old revelation' and delivered mankind from their bondage, do not proceed to express yourself only in fragments from them; if you profess freedom of soul, and the possession of the pure truth, do not appear to be so poverty-stricken as to array your thoughts in the tatters of the cast-off Bible."

"Ay, but the 'saints' of the Bible," replied Fellows, "are, even by Mr. Frank Newman's own confession, those who have entered, after all, most profoundly the truths of spiritual religion, and stand almost alone in the history of the world in that respect."

"If it be so, it is certainly very odd, considering the mountain-loads of folly, error, fable, fiction, from which their spiritual religion did not in your esteem defend them, and which you say you are obliged to reject. It is a phenomenon of which, I think, you are bound to give some account."

"But what is there so wonderful in supposing them in possession of superior 'spiritual' advantages, with mistaken history and fallacious logic, and so forth?"

"Why" answered Harrington, "one wonder is, that they alone, and amidst such gross errors, should possess these spiritual advantages.

But it also appears to me that your notions of the 'spiritual' are not the same theirs, for you reject the New Testament dogmas as well as its history; if so, it is another reason for not misleading us by using language in deceptive senses. But, at all events, I cannot help pitying your poverty of thought, or poverty of expression,--one or both; and I beg you, for my sake, if not for your own, to express your thoughts as much as possible in your own terms, and avail yourself less liberally of those of David and Paul, whose language ordinary Christians will always a.s.sociate with another meaning, and can never believe you sincere in supposing that it rightfully expresses the doctrines of your most; spiritual' infidelity. They will certainly hear your Scriptural and devout language with the same feelings with which they would nauseate that most oppressive of all odors, --the faint scent of lavender in the chamber of death. My good uncle here, who cannot be prevailed upon to reject the Bible will not, I am sure, hear you, without supposing that you resemble those Rationalists of whom Menzel says, 'These gentlemen smilingly taught their theological pupils that unbelief was the true apostolic, primitive Christian belief; they put all their insipidities into Christ's month, and made him, by means of their exegetical jugglery, sometimes a Kantian, sometimes a Hegelian, sometimes one ian and sometimes another, 'wie es dem Herrn Professor beliebt': neither will he be able to imagine that you are not resorting to this artifice for the same purpose. 'The Bible,' says Menzel, 'and their Reason being incompatible, why do they not let them remain separate? Why insist on harmonizing things which do not, and never can harmonize? It is because they are aware that the Bible has authority with the people; otherwise they would never trouble themselves about so troublesome a book.' I cannot suspect you of such hypocrisy; but I must confess I regard your language as cant.

As I listen to you I seem to see a hybrid between Prynne and Voltaire. So far from its being true that you have renounced the 'letter' of the Bible and retained its 'spirit,' I think it would be much more correct to say, comparing your infidel hypothesis with your most spiritual dialect, that you have renounced the 'spirit' of the Bible and retained its 'letter.'"

"But are you in a condition to give an opinion?" said Fellowes, with a serious air. "Mr. Newman says in a like case, 'The natural man discerneth not things of the spirit of G.o.d, because they are foolishness unto him'; it is the 'spiritual man only who search the deep things of G.o.d.' At the same time I freely acknowledge that I never could see my way clear to employ an argument which looks so arrogant; and the less, as I believe, with Mr. Parker, that the only revelation is in all men alike. Yet, on the other hand, I cannot doubt my own consciousness."

"Why, no man doubts his own consciousness," said Harrington, laughing.

"The question is, What is its value? What is the criterion of universal 'spiritual truth,' if there be any? Those words in Paul's mouth were well, and had a meaning. In yours, I suspect they would have none, or a very different one. He dreamt that he was giving to mankind (vainly, as seems) a system of doctrines and truths which were, many of them, transcendental to the human intellect and conscience, and which when revealed were very distasteful (and not least to you); but the a.s.sertion of a spiritual monopoly would a.s.suredly sound rather odd in one who professes, if I understand you, that has given to man (for it is no discovery of any individual) an internal and universal revelation! But of your possible limitations of your universal spiritual revelation,--which all men 'naturally'

possess, but which the 'natural man' receiveth not,--we will talk after. Sceptic as I am, I am not a sceptic who is reconciled to scepticism. Meantime, you reject the Bible in toto, as an external revelation of G.o.d, if I understand you."

"In toto; and I believe that it has received in this age its death-blow."

"Ay, that is what the infidel has been always promising us; meantime, they somehow perish, and it laughs at them. You remember, perhaps, the words of old Woolston, so many fragments of whose criticism, as those of many others, have been incorporated by Strauss. He had, as he elegantly expresses it, 'cut out such a piece of work for the Boylean lectures as should hold them tug as long as the ministry of the letter should last'; for he too, you see, masked his infidelity by a distinction between the 'letter' and the 'spirit,' though he applied the convenient terms in a totally different sense. Poor soul!

The fundamental principles of his infidelity are surrendered by Strauss himself. Similarly, a score of a.s.sailants of the Bible have appeared and vanished since his day; each proclaiming, just as he himself went to the bottom, that he had given the Bible its death-blow!

Somehow, however, that singular book continues to flourish, to Propagate itself, to speak all languages, to intermingle more and more with the literature of all civilized nations; while mankind will not accept, slaves as they are, the intellectual freedom you offer them. It is really very provoking; of what use is it to destroy the Bible so often, when it lives the next minute? I have little doubt your new attempts will end just like the labors of the Rationalists of the Paulus school, so graphically described by the German writer whom I have already referred to. 'It is sad, no doubt,' says he, or something to the same effect, 'that, after fifty years' exegetical grubbing, weeding, and pruning at 'the mighty primitive forest of the Bible, the next generation should persist in saying that the Rationalist had destroyed the forest only in his own addled imagination, and that it is just as it was.'"

"Yes; but the new weapons will not be so easily evaded as those of a past age."

"Will they not? We shall see. You must not prophesy; in that, you know, you do not believe."

"No; but nevertheless we shall see so-called sacred dogma and history exploded, for Mr. Newman--"

"Thinks so, of course; and he must be right, because he has never been known to be wrong in any of his judgments, or even to vary in them. But we have had enough, I think, of these subjects this evening, and it is too bad to give you only a controversial welcome.

I want to have some conversation with you about very different things, and more pleasant just now. We shall have plenty of opportunity to discuss theological points."

To this Fellowes a.s.sented: they resumed general conversation, and I finished my letters.

July 3. We were all sitting, as on the previous day, in the library.

"Book-faith!" I heard Harrington say, laughing; "why, as to that I must needs acknowledge that the whole school of Deism, 'rational' or 'spiritual,' have the least reason in the world to indulge in sneers at book-faith; for, upon my word, their faith has consisted in little else. Their systems are parchment religions, my friend, all of them;--books, books, for ever, from Lord Herbert's time downwards, are all they have yet given to the world. They have ever been boastful and loud-tongued, but have done nothing; there are no great social efforts, no organizations, no practical projects, whether successful or futile, to which they can point. The old 'book-faiths' which you venture to ridicule have been something at all events; and, in truth, I can find no other 'faith' than what is somehow or other attached to a 'book,' which has been any thing influential. The Vedas, the Koran, the Old Testament Scriptures,-- those of the New,--over how many millions have these all reigned!

Whether their supremacy be right or wrong, their doctrine true or false, is another question; but your faith, which has been book-faith and lip-service par excellence, has done nothing that I can discover. One after another of your infidel Reformers pa.s.ses away, and leaves no trace behind, except a quant.i.ty of crumbling 'book-faith.' You have always been just on the eve of extinguishing supernatural fables, dogmas, and superst.i.tions,--and then regenerating the world! Alas! the meanest superst.i.tion that crawls laughs at you; and, false as it may be, is still stronger than you."

"And your sect," retorted Fellowes, rather warmly, "if you come to that, is it not the smallest of all? Is that likely to find favor in the eyes of mankind?"

"Why, no," said Harrington, with provoking coolness; "but then it makes no pretensions to any thing of the kind. It were strange if it did; for as the sceptic doubts if any truth can be certainly attained by man on those subjects on which the 'rational' or the 'spiritual'

deist dogmatizes, it of course professes to be incapable of constructing any thing."

"And does construct nothing," retorted Fellowes.

"Very true," said Harrington, "and therein keeps its word; which is more, I fear, than can be said with your more ambitious spiritualists, who profess to construct, and do not."

"But you must give the school of spiritualism time: it is only just born. You seem to me to be confounding the school of the old, dry, logical deism with the young, fresh, vigorous, earnest school' which appeals to 'insight' and 'intuition.'"

"No," said Harrington, "I think I do not confound. The first and the best of our English deists derived his system as immediately from intuitions as Mr. Parker or you. You know how it sped--or, if you do not, you may easily discover--with his successors: they continually disputed about it, curtailed it, added to it, altered it, agreed in nothing but the author's rejection of Christianity, and forgot more and more the decency of his style. So will it be with your Mr. Newman and his successors. They will acquiesce in his rejection Christianity; depend upon it, in nothing more. He may get his admirers to abandon the Bible, but they will have naught to do with the 'loves, and joys, and sorrows, and raptures, which he describes in the 'Soul'; they would just as soon read the 'Canticles.'"

"I really cannot admit," said Fellowes, "that we modern spiritualists are to be confounded with Lord Herbert."

"Not confounded with him, certainly," replied Harrington, "but identified with him you may be; except to be sure, that he was convinced of the immortality of man as one of the few articles of all religion; while many of you deny, or doubt it. The doctrines--"

"Call them sentiments, rather; I like that term better."

"O, certainly, if you prefer it; only be pleased to observe that a sentiment felt is a fact, and a fact is a truth, and a truth may surely be expressed in a proposition. That is all I am anxious about at present. If so far, at least, we may not patch up the divorce which Mr. Newman has p.r.o.nounced between the 'intellect and the 'soul,'

it is of no use for us to talk about the matter. I say that Lord Herbert's articles--"

"There again, 'articles,'" said Fellowes; "I hate the word; I could almost imagine that you were going to recite the formidable Thirty-nine."

"Rather, from your outcry, one would suppose I was about to inflict the forty save one: but do not be alarmed. The articles neither of Lord Herbert's creed nor of your own, I suspect, are thirty-nine, or any thing like it. The catalogue will be soon exhausted."

"Here again, 'creed': I detest the word. We have no creed. Your very language chills me. It reminds me of the dry orthodoxy of the 'letter,'

'logical processes,' 'intellectual propositions,' and so forth. Speak of 'spiritual truths' and 'sentiments,' which are the product of immediate 'insight,' of 'an insight into G.o.d,' a 'spontaneous impression on the gazing soul,' to adopt Mr. Newman's beautiful expressions, and I shall understand you."

"I am afraid I shall hardly understand myself then," cried Harrington.

"But let us not be scared by mere words, nor go into hysterics at the sound of 'logic' and 'creed,' lest 'sentimental spirituality' be found, like some other 'sentimental' things, a bundle of senseless affectations."

"But you forget that there is all the difference in the world between Herbert and his deistical successors. They connected religion with the 'intellectual and sensational,' and we with the 'instinctive and emotional' sides of human nature."

"If you think," said the other, "(the substance of your religious system being, as I believe, precisely the same as that of Lord Herbert and the better deists,) that you can make it more effective than it has been in the past, by conjuring with the words 'sensational and intellectual,' 'instinctive and emotional,' or that the mixture of chalk and water will be more potent with one label than with the other, I fancy you will find yourself deceived. The distinctions you refer to have to do with the theory of the subject, and will make din enough, no doubt, among such as Mr. Newman and yourself; but mankind at large will be unable even to enter into the meaning of your refinements.

They will say briefly and bluntly, 'What are the truths, whether, as Lord Herbert says, they are "innate," or, as you say, "spiritual intuitions," (we care nothing for the phraseology of either or both of you,) which are to be admitted by universal humanity, and to be influential over the heart and conscience?' Now, I suspect that, when you come to the enumeration of these truths, your system and that of Lord Herbert will be found the same; only as regards the immortality of the soul his tone is firmer than perhaps I shall find yours. But I admit the policy of a change of name: 'Rationalist' and 'Deist' have a bad sound; 'Spiritualist' is a better nom de guerre for the present."

"We shall never understand one another," said Fellowes: "the spiritual man--"

"Pshaw!" said Harrington; "you can immediately bring the matter to the test by telling me what you maintain, and then I shall know whether your system is or is not identical with Lord Herbert's; or rather tell me what you do not believe, and let us come to it that way. Do you believe a single shred of any of the supernatural narratives of the Old and New Testament?"