The Note-Books of Samuel Butler Part 61

iii

We are all agreed that too much faith is as bad as too little, and too little as bad as too much; but we differ as to what is too much and what too little.

iv

It is because both Catholics and myself make faith, not reason, the basis of our system that I am able to be easy in mind about not becoming a Catholic. Not that I ever wanted to become a Catholic, but I mean I believe I can beat them with their own weapons.

v

A man may have faith as a mountain, but he will not be able to say to a grain of mustard seed: "Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea"--not at least with any effect upon the mustard seed--unless he goes the right way to work by putting the mustard seed into his pocket and taking the train to Brighton.

vi

The just live by faith, but they not infrequently also die by it.

The Cuckoo and the Moon

The difference between the Christian and the Mahomedan is only as the difference between one who will turn his money when he first hears the cuckoo, but thinks it folly to do so on seeing the new moon, and one who will turn it religiously at the new moon, but will scout the notion that he need do so on hearing the cuckoo.

Buddhism

This seems to be a jumble of Christianity and Life and Habit.

Theist and Atheist

The fight between them is as to whether G.o.d shall be called G.o.d or shall have some other name.

The Peculiar People

The only people in England who really believe in G.o.d are the Peculiar People. Perhaps that is why they are called peculiar. See how belief in an anthropomorphic G.o.d divides allegiance and disturbs civil order as soon as it becomes vital.

Renan

There is an article on him in the Times, April 30, 1883, of the worst Times kind, and that is saying much. It appears he whines about his lost faith and professes to wish that he could believe as he believed when young. No sincere man will regret having attained a truer view concerning anything which he has ever believed. And then he talks about the difficulties of coming to disbelieve the Christian miracles as though it were a great intellectual feat. This is very childish.

I hope no one will say I was sorry when I found out that there was no reason for believing in heaven and h.e.l.l. My contempt for Renan has no limits. (Has he an accent to his name? I despise him too much to find out.)

The Spiritual Treadmill

The Church of England has something in her liturgy of the spiritual treadmill. It is a very nice treadmill no doubt, but Sunday after Sunday we keep step with the same old "We have left undone that which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done" without making any progress. With the Church of Rome, I understand that those whose piety is sufficiently approved are told they may consider themselves as a finished article and that, except on some few rare festivals, they need no longer keep on going to church and confessing. The picture is completed and may be framed, glazed and hung up.

The Dim Religious Light

A light cannot be religious if it is not dim. Religion belongs to the twilight of our thoughts, just as business of all kinds to their full daylight. So a picture which may be impressive while seen in a dark light will not hold its own in a bright one.

The Greeks and Romans did not enquire into the evidences on which their belief that Minerva sprang full-armed from the brain of Jupiter was based. If they had written books of evidences to show how certainly it all happened, &c.--well, I suppose if they had had an endowed Church with some considerable prizes, they would have found means to hoodwink the public.

The Peace that Pa.s.seth Understanding

Yes. But as there is a peace more comfortable than any understanding, so also there is an understanding more covetable than any peace.

The New Testament

If it is a testamentary disposition at all, it is so drawn that it has given rise to incessant litigation during the last nearly two thousand years and seems likely to continue doing so for a good many years longer. It ought never to have been admitted to probate.

Either the testator drew it himself, in which case we have another example of the folly of trying to make one's own will, or if he left it to the authors of the several books--this is like employing many lawyers to do the work of one.

Christ and the L. & N.W. Railway

Admitting for the moment that Christ can be said to have died for me in any sense, it is only pretended that he did so in the same sort of way as the London and North Western Railway was made for me. Granted that I am very glad the railway was made and use it when I find it convenient, I do not suppose that those who projected and made the line allowed me to enter into their thoughts; the debt of my grat.i.tude is divided among so many that the amount due from each one is practically nil.

The Jumping Cat

G.o.d is only a less jumping kind of jumping cat; and those who worship G.o.d are still worshippers of the jumping cat all the time. There is no getting away from the jumping cat--if I climb up into heaven, it is there; if I go down to h.e.l.l, it is there also; if I take the wings of the morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there, and so on; it is about my path and about my bed and spieth out all my ways. It is the eternal underlying verity or the eternal underlying lie, as people may choose to call it.

Personified Science

Science is being daily more and more personified and anthropomorphised into a G.o.d. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.

Science and Theology

We should endow neither; we should treat them as we treat conservatism and liberalism, encouraging both, so that they may keep watch upon one another, and letting them go in and out of power with the popular vote concerning them.

The world is better carried on upon the barrister principle of special pleading upon two sides before an impartial ignorant tribunal, to whom things have got to be explained, than it would be if n.o.body were to maintain any opinion in which he did not personally believe.