Thoughts on Religion Part 8

Observe, when we become honestly pure agnostics the whole scene changes by the change in our point of view. We may then read the records impartially, or on their own merits, without any antecedent conviction that they must be false. It is then an open question whether they are not true as history.

There is so much to be said in objective evidence for Christianity that were the central doctrines thus testified to anything short of miraculous, no one would doubt. But we are not competent judges _a priori_ of what a revelation should be. If our agnosticism be _pure_, we have no right to pre-judge the case on _prima facie_ grounds.

One of the strongest pieces of objective evidence in favour of Christianity is not sufficiently enforced by apologists. Indeed, I am not aware that I have ever seen it mentioned. It is the absence from the biography of Christ of any doctrines which the subsequent growth of human knowledge--whether in natural science, ethics, political economy, or elsewhere--has had to discount. This negative argument is really almost as strong as is the positive one from what Christ did teach. For when we consider what a large number of sayings are recorded of--or at least attributed to--Him, it becomes most remarkable that in literal truth there is no reason why any of His words should ever pa.s.s away in the sense of becoming obsolete. 'Not even now could it be easy,' says John Stuart Mill, 'even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life[63].' Contrast Jesus Christ in this respect with other thinkers of like antiquity. Even Plato, who, though some 400 years B.C. in point of time, was greatly in advance of Him in respect of philosophic thought--not only because Athens then presented the extraordinary phenomenon which it did of genius in all directions never since equalled, but also because he, following Socrates, was, so to speak, the greatest representative of human reason in the direction of spirituality--even Plato, I say, is nowhere in this respect as compared with Christ. Read the dialogues, and see how enormous is the contrast with the Gospels in respect of errors of all kinds--reaching even to absurdity in respect of reason, and to sayings shocking to the moral sense. Yet this is confessedly the highest level of human reason on the lines of spirituality, when unaided by alleged revelation.

Two things may be said in reply. First, that the Jews (Rabbis) of Christ's period had enunciated most of Christ's ethical sayings. But, even so far as this is true, the sayings were confessedly extracted or deduced from the Old Testament, and so _ex hypothesi_ due to original inspiration. Again, it is not very far true, because, as _Ecce h.o.m.o_ says, the ethical sayings of Christ, even when antic.i.p.ated by Rabbis and the Old Testament, were _selected_ by Him.

It is a general, if not a universal, rule that those who reject Christianity with contempt are those who care not for religion of any kind. 'Depart from us' has always been the sentiment of such. On the other hand, those in whom the religious sentiment is intact, but who have rejected Christianity on intellectual grounds, still almost deify Christ. These facts are remarkable.

If we estimate the greatness of a man by the influence which he has exerted on mankind, there can be no question, even from the secular point of view, that Christ is much the greatest man who has ever lived.

It is on all sides worth considering (blatant ignorance or base vulgarity alone excepted) that the revolution effected by Christianity in human life is immeasurable and unparalleled by any other movement in history; though most nearly approached by that of the Jewish religion, of which, however, it is a development, so that it may be regarded as of a piece with it. If thus regarded, this whole system of religion is so immeasurably in advance of all others, that it may fairly be said, if it had not been for the Jews, the human race would not have had any religion worth our serious attention as such. The whole of that side of human nature would never have been developed in civilized life. And although there are numberless individuals who are not conscious of its development in themselves, yet even these have been influenced to an enormous extent by the atmosphere of religion around them.

But not only is Christianity thus so immeasurably in advance of all other religions. It is no less so of every other system of thought that has ever been promulgated in regard to all that is moral and spiritual.

Whether it be true or false, it is certain that neither philosophy, science, nor poetry has ever produced results in thought, conduct, or beauty in any degree to be compared with it. This I think will be on all hands allowed as regards conduct. As regards thought and beauty it may be disputed. But, consider, what has all the science or all the philosophy of the world done for the thought of mankind to be compared with the one doctrine, 'G.o.d is love'? Whether or not true, conceive what belief in it has been to thousands of millions of our race--i.e. its influence on human thought, and thence on human conduct. Thus to admit its incomparable influence in conduct is indirectly to admit it as regards thought. Again, as regards beauty, the man who fails to see its incomparable excellence in this respect merely shows his own deficiency in the appreciation of all that is n.o.blest in man. True or not true, the entire Story of the Cross, from its commencement in prophetic aspiration to its culmination in the Gospel, is by far the most magnificent [presentation] in literature. And surely the fact of its having all been lived does not detract from its poetic value. Nor does the fact of its being capable of appropriation by the individual Christian of to-day as still a vital religion detract from its sublimity. Only to a man wholly dest.i.tute of spiritual perception can it be that Christianity should fail to appear the greatest exhibition of the beautiful, the sublime, and of all else that appeals to our spiritual nature, which has ever been known upon our earth.

Yet this side of its adaptation is turned only towards men of highest culture. The most remarkable thing about Christianity is its adaptation to all sorts and conditions of men. Are you highly intellectual? There is in its problems, historical and philosophical, such worlds of material as you may spend your life upon with the same interminable interest as is open to the students of natural science. Or are you but a peasant in your parish church, with knowledge of little else than your Bible? Still are you ...[64]

_Regeneration_.

How remarkable is the doctrine of Regeneration _per se_, as it is stated in the New Testament[65], and how completely it fits in with the non-demonstrative character of Revelation to reason alone, with the hypothesis of moral probation, &c. Now this doctrine is one of the distinctive notes of Christianity. That is, Christ foretold repeatedly and distinctly--as did also His apostles after Him--that while those who received the Holy Ghost, who came to the Father through faith in the Son, who were born again of the Spirit, (and many other synonymous phrases,) would be absolutely certain of Christian truth as it were by direct vision or intuition, the carnally minded on the other hand would not be affected by any amount of direct evidence, even though one rose from the dead--as indeed Christ shortly afterwards did, with fulfilment of this prediction. Thus scepticism may be taken by Christians as corroborating Christianity.

By all means let us retain our independence of judgement; but this is pre-eminently a matter in which pure agnostics must abstain from arrogance and consider the facts impartially as unquestionable phenomena of experience.

Shortly after the death of Christ, this phenomenon which had been foretold by Him occurred, and appears to have done so for the first time. It has certainly continued to manifest itself ever since, and has been attributed by professed historians to that particular moment in time called Pentecost, producing much popular excitement and a large number of Christian believers.

But, whether or not we accept this account, it is unquestionable that the apostles were filled with faith in the person and office of their Master, which is enough to justify His doctrine of regeneration.

_Conversions._

St. Augustine after thirty years of age, and other Fathers, bear testimony to a sudden, enduring and extraordinary change in themselves, called _conversion_[66].

Now this experience has been repeated and testified to by countless millions of civilized men and women in all nations and all degrees of culture. It signifies not whether the conversion be sudden or gradual, though, as a psychological phenomenon, it is more remarkable when sudden and there is no symptom of mental aberration otherwise. But even as a gradual growth in mature age, its evidential value is not less. (Cf.

Bunyan, &c.)

In all cases it is not a mere change of belief or opinion; this is by no means the point; the point is that it is a modification of character, more or less profound.

Seeing what a complex thing is character, this change therefore cannot be simple. That it may all be due to so-called natural causes is no evidence against its so-called supernatural source, unless we beg the whole question of the Divine in Nature. To pure agnostics the evidence from conversions and regeneration lies in the bulk of these psychological phenomena, shortly after the death of Christ, with their continuance ever since, their general similarity all over the world, &c., &c.

_Christianity and Pain_.

Christianity, from its foundation in Judaism, has throughout been a religion of sacrifice and sorrow. It has been a religion of blood and tears, and yet of profoundest happiness to its votaries. The apparent paradox is due to its depth, and to the union of these seemingly diverse roots in Love. It has been throughout and growingly a religion--or rather let us say _the_ religion--of Love, with these apparently opposite qualities. Probably it is only those whose characters have been deepened by experiences gained in this religion itself who are so much as capable of intelligently resolving this paradox.

Fakirs hang on hooks, Pagans cut themselves and even their children, sacrifice captives, &c., for the sake of propitiating diabolical deities. The Jewish and Christian idea of sacrifice is doubtless a survival of this idea of G.o.d by way of natural causation, yet this is no evidence against the completed idea of the G.o.dhead being [such as the Christian belief represents it], for supposing the completed idea to be true, the earlier ideals would have been due to the earlier inspirations, in accordance with the developmental method of Revelation hereafter to be discussed[67].

But Christianity, with its roots in Judaism, is, as I have said, _par excellence_ the religion of sorrow, because it reaches to truer and deeper levels of our spiritual nature, and therefore has capabilities both of sorrow and joy which are presumably non-existent except in civilized man. I mean the sorrows and the joys of a fully evolved spiritual life--such as were attained wonderfully early, historically speaking, in the case of the Jews, and are now universally diffused throughout Christendom. In short, the sorrows and the joys in question are those which arise from the fully developed consciousness of sin against a G.o.d of Love, as distinguished from propitiation of malignant spirits. These joys and sorrows are wholly spiritual, not merely physical, and culminate in the cry,'Thou desirest no sacrifice.... The sacrifice of G.o.d is a troubled spirit[68].'

I agree with Pascal[69] that there is virtually nothing to be gained by being a theist as distinguished from a Christian. Unitarianism is only an affair of the reason--a merely abstract theory of the mind, having nothing to do with the heart, or the real needs of mankind. It is only when it takes the New Testament, tears out a few of its leaves relating to the divinity of Christ, and appropriates all the rest, that its system becomes in any degree possible as a basis for personal religion.

If there is a Deity it seems to be in some indefinite degree more probable that He should impart a Revelation than that He should not.

Women, as a cla.s.s, are in all countries much more disposed to Christianity than men. I think the scientific explanation of this is to be found in the causes a.s.signed in my essay on _Mental differences between Men and Women_[70]. But, if Christianity be supposed true, there would, of course, be a more ultimate explanation of a religious kind--as in all other cases where causation is concerned. And, in that case I have no doubt that the largest part of the explanation would consist in the pa.s.sions of women being less ardent than those of men, and also much more kept under restraint by social conditions of life.

This applies not only to purity, but likewise to most of the other psychological _differentiae_ between the s.e.xes, such as ambition, selfishness, pride of power, and so forth. In short, the whole ideal of Christian ethics is of a feminine as distinguished from a masculine type[71]. Now nothing is so inimical to Christian belief as un-Christian conduct. This is especially the case as regards impurity; for whether the fact be explained on religious or non-religious grounds, it has more to do with unbelief than has the speculative reason. Consequently, woman is, for all these reasons, the 'fitter' type for receiving and retaining Christian belief.

Modern agnosticism is performing this great service to Christian faith; it is silencing all rational scepticism of the _a priori_ kind. And this it is bound to do more and more the purer it becomes. In every generation it must henceforth become more and more recognized by logical thinking, that all antecedent objections to Christianity founded on reason alone are _ipso facto_ nugatory. Now, all the strongest objections to Christianity have ever been those of the antecedent kind; hence the effect of modern thinking is that of more and more diminishing the purely speculative difficulties, such as that of the Incarnation, &c. In other words the force of Butler's argument about our being incompetent judges[72] is being more and more increased.

And the logical development of this lies in the view already stated about natural causation. For, just as pure agnosticism must allow that reason is incompetent to adjudicate _a priori_ for or against Christian miracles, including the Incarnation, so it must further allow that, if they ever took place, reason can have nothing to say against their being all of one piece with causation in general. Hence, so far as reason is concerned, pure agnosticism must allow that it is only the event which can ultimately prove whether Christianity is true or false. 'If it be of G.o.d we cannot overthrow it, lest haply we be found even to fight against G.o.d.' But the individual cannot wait for this empirical determination.

What then is he to do? The unbia.s.sed answer of pure agnosticism ought reasonably to be, in the words of John Hunter, 'Do not think; try.' That is, in this case, try the only experiment available--the experiment of faith. Do the doctrine, and if Christianity be true, the verification will come, not indeed mediately through any course of speculative reason, but immediately by spiritual intuition. Only if a man has faith enough to make this venture honestly, will he be in a just position for deciding the issue. Thus viewed it would seem that the experiment of faith is not a 'fool's experiment'; but, on the contrary, so that there is enough _prima facie_ evidence to arrest serious attention, such an experimental trial would seem to be the rational duty of a pure agnostic.

It is a fact that Christian belief is much more due to doing than to thinking, as prognosticated by the New Testament. 'If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of G.o.d' (St. John vii. 17). And surely, even on grounds of reason itself, it should be allowed that, supposing Christianity to be 'of G.o.d,' it _ought_ to appeal to the spiritual rather than to the rational side of our nature.

Even within the region of pure reason (or the '_prima facie_ case') modern science, as directed on the New Testament criticism, has surely done more for Christianity than against it. For, after half a century of battle over the text by the best scholars, the dates of the Gospels have been fixed within the first century, and at least four of St. Paul's epistles have had their authenticity proved beyond doubt. Now this is enough to destroy all eighteenth-century criticism as to the doubtfulness of the historical existence of Christ and His apostles, 'inventions of priests,' &c., which was the most formidable kind of criticism of all. There is no longer any question as to historical facts, save the miraculous, which, however, are ruled out by negative criticism on merely _a priori_ grounds. This remaining--and, _ex hypothesi_, necessary--doubt is of very different importance from the other.

Again, the Pauline epistles of proved authenticity are enough for all that is wanted to show the belief of Christ's contemporaries.

These are facts of the first order of importance to have proved. Old Testament criticism is as yet too immature to consider.

_Plan in Revelation_.

The views which I entertained on this subject when an undergraduate [i.e. the ordinary orthodox views] were abandoned in presence of the theory of Evolution--i.e. the theory of natural causation as probably furnishing a scientific explanation [of the religious phenomena of Judaism] or, which is the same thing, an explanation in terms of ascertainable causes up to some certain point; which however in this particular case cannot be determined within wide limits, so that the history of Israel will always embody an element of 'mystery' much more than any other history.

It was not until twenty-five years later that I saw clearly the full implications of my present views on natural causation. As applied to this particular case these views show that to a theist, at all events (i.e. to any one who on independent grounds has accepted the theory of Theism), it ought not to make much difference to the evidential value of the Divine Plan of Revelation as exhibited in the Old and New Testaments, even if it be granted that the whole has been due to so-called natural causes only. I say, 'not much difference,' for that it ought to make some difference I do not deny. Take a precisely a.n.a.logous case. The theory of evolution by natural causes is often said to make no logical difference in the evidence of plan or design manifested in organic nature--it being only a question of _modus operandi_ whether all pieces of organic machinery were produced suddenly or by degrees; the evidence of design is equally there in either case. Now I have shown elsewhere that this is wrong[73]. It may not make much difference to a man who is already a theist, for then it is but a question of _modus_, but it makes a great difference to the evidence of Theism.

So it is in evidence of plan in proof of a revelation. If there had been no alleged revelation up to the present time, and if Christ were now to appear suddenly in His first advent in all the power and glory which Christians expect for His second, the proof of His revelation would be demonstrative. So that, as a mere matter of evidence, a sudden revelation might be much more convincing than a gradual one. But it would be quite out of a.n.a.logy with causation in nature[74]. Besides, even a gradual revelation might be given easily, which would be of demonstrative value--as by making prophecies of historical events, scientific discoveries, &c., so clear as to be unmistakeable. But, as before shown, a demonstrative revelation has not been made, and there may well be good reasons why it should not. Now, if there are such reasons (e.g. our state of probation), we can well see that the gradual unfolding of a plan of revelation, from earliest dawn of history to the end of the world ('I speak as a fool') is much preferable to a sudden manifestation sufficiently late in the world's history to be historically attested for all subsequent time. For

1st. Gradual evolution is in a.n.a.logy with G.o.d's other work.

2nd. It does not leave Him without witness at any time during the historical period.

3rd. It gives ample scope for persevering research at all times--i.e. a moral test, and not merely an intellectual a.s.sent to some one _(ex hypothesi)_ unequivocally attested event in history.

The _appearance_ of plan in revelation is, in fact, certainly remarkable enough to arrest serious attention.

If revelation has been of a progressive character, then it follows that it must have been so, not only historically, but likewise intellectually, morally, and spiritually. For thus only could it be always adapted to the advancing conditions of the human race. This reflection destroys all those numerous objections against Scripture on account of the absurdity or immorality of its statements or precepts, unless it can be shown that the modifications suggested by criticism as requisite to bring the statements or precepts into harmony with modern advancement would have been as well adapted to the requirements of the world at the date in question, as were the actual statements or precepts before us.

Supposing Christianity true, it is certain that the revelation which it conveys has been predetermined at least since the dawn of the historical period. This is certain because the objective evidences of Christianity as a revelation have their origin in that dawn. And these objective evidences are throughout [evidence] of a scheme, in which the end can be seen from the beginning. And the very methods whereby this scheme is itself revealed are such (still supposing that it is a scheme) as present remarkable evidences of design. These methods are, broadly speaking, miracles, prophecy and the results of the teaching, &c., upon mankind. Now one may show that no better methods could conceivably have been designed for the purpose of latter-day evidence, combined with moral and religious teaching throughout. The mere fact of it being so largely incorporated with secular history renders the Christian religion unique: so to speak, the world, throughout its entire historical period, has been const.i.tuted the canvas on which this divine revelation has been painted--and painted so gradually that not until the process had been going on for a couple of thousand years was it possible to perceive the subject thereof.