{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_21496/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_21496","id":"gutenberg_21496","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21496","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Immanence of God"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPROBLEMS OF IMMANENCE\n\n\nSTUDIES CRITICAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE\n\n\nBY\n\nJ. WARSCHAUER, M.A., D.Phil.\n\n\n\nAUTHOR OF \"THE NEW EVANGEL,\" \"JESUS: SEVEN QUESTIONS,\" ETC.\n\n\n\n\n    \"SEE THAT THERE IS NO ONE WHO MAKES YOU HIS\n  PREY BY MEANS OF HIS THEOSOPHY, WHICH IS A VAIN\n  DECEIT AFTER THE TRADITIONS OF MEN, AFTER THE\n  ELEMENTS OF THE WORLD AND NOT AFTER CHRIST.\"\n        _Col. ii. 8._ (_Dr. Moffatt's Translation._)\n\n\n\n\nLONDON\n\nJAMES CLARKE & CO. 13 & 14 FLEET STREET\n\n1909\n\n\n\n\n[Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers\nenclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}.  They have been located where page\nbreaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project\nGutenberg's FAQ-V-99.]\n\n\n\n\n{5}\n\nPREFACE\n\nAbout a year ago certain tendencies in the popular discussion of the\ndoctrine of Divine Immanence suggested to the present writer the idea\nof a brief sketch or article, to be published under the title, \"The\nTruth of Transcendence.\"  On further reflection, however, a somewhat\nmore extended treatment of so important a subject seemed desirable, and\nthis has been attempted in the following chapters.  When the doctrine\nof immanence began, as it has been of late, to be reasserted in a\nsomewhat pronounced manner, most of those who were best able to judge\nfelt conscious of certain dangers likely to arise through\nmisinterpretation and over-emphasis; that those anticipations have been\nabundantly realised, no careful student of recent developments will\ndispute, and the present book is intended both to call attention to\nthese dangers and to bring out the distinction between the truth of\nimmanence and what to the author seem perversions of that truth.\n\nIn the meantime, while these pages were passing through the press,\nthere has appeared a new work from the brilliant pen of Professor\nWilliam James,[1] some sentences from which might to a large extent be\ntaken as indicating {6} the standpoint of the volume now submitted to\nthe reader:--\n\n\n\"God,\" in the religious life of ordinary men is the name not of the\nwhole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal tendency in\nthings, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to co-operate\nin His purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy.  He works in\nan external environment, has limits, and has enemies.  When John Mill\nsaid that the notion of God's omnipotence must be given up, if God is\nto be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately right; yet,\nso prevalent is the lazy Monism that idly haunts the regions of God's\nname, that so simple and truthful a saying was generally treated as a\nparadox; God, it was said, _could_ not be finite.  I believe that the\nonly God worthy of the name _must_ be finite.\n\n\nIt is precisely the theory which identifies God with \"the whole of\nthings\" which will be combated in the following discussions; it is\nprecisely \"the lazy Monism that idly haunts the regions of God's name\"\nto which they offer a plain and direct challenge.  At the same time\nsuch a phrase as that in which Professor James speaks of God as working\n\"in an external environment\" would seem unduly to under-emphasise the\nfact of immanence; and it may be said at once that the theory of Divine\nfinitude put forward by the present writer will be seen to differ from\nthat of John Stuart Mill, as the idea of _self_-limitation differs from\nthat of a limitation _ab extra_--in other words, as Theism differs from\nDeism.\n\nIt is perhaps a little remarkable that the fundamental antinomies which\narise from the assumption of the actual infinity of God should not have\nbeen more frequently dealt with; or rather, that thinkers postulating\nthat infinity {7} as a basal axiom should have been comparatively blind\nto its logical implications.  For if God is infinite, then He is all;\nand if He is all, what becomes of human individuality, or how are human\ninitiative and responsibility so much as thinkable?  Benjamin Jowett,\nin his Essay on Predestination and Freewill, glanced at this problem in\npassing, and the remarks he made upon it more than fifty years ago, if\nsomewhat tentative, are well worth consideration to-day:--\n\n\n\"God is infinite.\"  But in what sense? . . .  Press the idea of the\ninfinite to its utmost extent, till it is alone in the universe, or\nrather is the universe itself, in this heaven of abstraction,\nnevertheless, a cloud begins to appear; a limitation casts its shadow\nover the formless void.  Infinite is finite because it is infinite.\nThat is to say, because infinity includes all things, it is incapable\nof creating what is external to itself.  Deny infinity in this sense,\nand the being to whom it is attributed receives a new power.  _God is\ngreater by being finite than by being infinite_ . . .  Logic must admit\nthat the infinite over-reaches itself by denying the existence of the\nfinite, and that there are some \"limitations,\" such as the\nimpossibility of evil or falsehood, which are of the essence of the\nDivine nature.[2]\n\n\nWhere, of course, Divine immanence is held to mean the \"allness\"--which\nis the strict equivalent of the infinity--of God, evil in every shape\nand form will either have to be ascribed to the direct will and agency\nof God Himself, or for apologetic purposes to be reduced to a mere\nsemblance, or \"not-being.\"  Thus we are told to-day in plain terms that\n\"if God does not avert evil, it is because He requires it\"; {8} that\n\"what to us seems evil is ordained of God\"; that--\n\n  \"If prayers and earthquakes break not Heaven's design,\n  How then a Borgia or a Catiline?\"\n\nBut if evil be only apparent and not real, we shall surely, having\ngained this insight, be too wise to waste indignation upon the\nnon-existent; if what we call misdeeds in reality fulfil God's own\n\"requirements,\" a thoroughly enlightened public opinion will not seek\nto interfere with the sacred activities of the pick-pocket, the forger,\nthe sweater, the _roue_, every one of whom may plead that he is but\ncarrying out the Divine ordinances; if Alexander Borgia's perjuries,\npoisonings and debaucheries \"break not Heaven's design,\" but are\n\"ordained of God for some purpose,\" morality itself becomes an exploded\nanachronism.\n\nIt is because these and such as these are the results in the fields of\nreligion and conduct which flow from certain errors in the field of\nspeculation, that these chapters have been written, and are now sent\nforth.  Belief in a personal God, personal freedom, personal\nimmortality--these essentials of religion are one and all endangered\nwhere the doctrine of Divine immanence is presented in terms of a\nmonistic philosophy; it has been the writer's object to safeguard and\nvindicate these truths anew in a volume which, though of necessity\nlargely critical in method, he offers as wholly constructive in aim.\n\nAugust 1st, 1909.\n\n\n\n[1] _A Pluralistic Universe._\n\n[2] _Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans_, vol. ii. pp. 388-9.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nCHAPTER                                                    PAGE\n\n       INTRODUCTION: DIVINE IMMANENCE  . . . . . . . . . .   11\n    I. SOME PROBLEMS OF IMMANENCE  . . . . . . . . . . . .   23\n   II. PANTHEISM: THE SUICIDE OF RELIGION  . . . . . . . .   41\n  III. THE ETHICS OF MONISM  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   53\n   IV. MONISM AND THE INDIVIDUAL . . . . . . . . . . . . .   64\n    V. THE DIVINE PERSONALITY  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   74\n   VI. EVIL _versus_ DIVINE GOODNESS . . . . . . . . . . .   87\n  VII. EVIL _versus_ DIVINE GOODNESS (_cont._) . . . . . .  101\n VIII. THE DENIAL OF EVIL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  119\n   IX. DETERMINISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  141\n    X. MORALITY AS A RELIGION  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  171\n   XI. PROBLEMS OF PRAYER  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  192\n  XII. IMMORTALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  218\n\n\n\n\n{11}\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nDIVINE IMMANENCE\n\nThe doctrine of Divine immanence is in a very special and unmistakeable\nmanner the re-discovery of the nineteenth century.  Nothing could be\nmore remote from fact than to call that doctrine a new--or even an\nold--heresy.  Old it certainly is, but heretical in itself it as\ncertainly is not; it can point to unquestionable warranty in Holy\nScripture, where such is demanded, and it has never been repudiated by\nthe Christian Church.  But just as a law, without being repealed, may\nfall into desuetude, so a doctrine, without being repudiated, may for a\ntime fade out of the Church's consciousness; and in the one case as in\nthe other any attempt at revival will arouse a certain amount of\ndistrust and opposition.  There would no doubt be a measure of truth in\nthe statement that the suspicion and antagonism with which the recent\nre-enunciation of this particular doctrine or idea was attended in some\nquarters, exemplified this general attitude of the human mind towards\nthe unaccustomed; and yet such a statement, made without qualification,\n{12} would be only a half-truth.  The fact is, and it cannot be stated\ntoo soon or too clearly, that if the antagonism and suspicion exhibited\nhave been exceptionally strong, there have been exceptional causes to\njustify both.  Alarm, and that of a very legitimate nature, has been\ncalled forth by one-sided and extravagant statements of the idea of\nDivine immanence on the part of ill-balanced advocates; and in this\nbook we shall be almost continually occupied with the task of\ndisengaging the truth of immanence from what appear to us mischievous\ntravesties of that truth.  That such a task is a necessary one, we are\nfirmly convinced; for if, as Principal Adeney says, \"among all the\nchanges in theology that have been witnessed during the last hundred\nyears this\"--_i.e._, the re-discovery of the principle of Divine\nimmanence--\"is the greatest, the most revolutionary,\" it must certainly\nbe of paramount importance that we should understand and apply that\nprinciple aright.  Confessedly, it denotes a great and far-reaching\nchange; can we, then, in the first instance, briefly and plainly state\nwhat this change is from, what it involves, and in what respect it is\nsupposed to help us in dealing with the problem of religion?\n\nIt has to be borne in mind, to begin with, that the very term\n\"immanence\" had for a long time ceased to be in current use, and had\nthus become strange to the average believer; it has equally to be\nremembered that in theology as {13} in other matters we have not yet\naltogether passed the stage where _hostis_ means both \"stranger\" and\n\"foe\"--that, in fact, to many minds, the unfamiliar is, as we said, _eo\nipso_ the suspect.  But immanence means nothing more abstruse than\n\"indwelling\"; and the renewed emphasis which, from the time of\nWordsworth onward, began to be laid upon the Divine indwelling, the\npresence of God in the Universe, represented in the first place the\nreaction of the human spirit against the cold and formal Deism of the\neighteenth century, which thought of God as remote, external to the\nworld, exclusively \"transcendent.\"  According to the deistic notion,\nGod was known to man only by reason of a revelation He had given once\nand for all in the far-off past--a revelation which in its very nature\nexcluded the idea of progress; as against this conception that of the\nimmanence of God declares that He is not far from each one of us, that\nin Him we live and move and have our being, that He is over all and\nthrough all and in all--the Life of all life, the Energy behind all\nphenomena, the Presence from which there is no escaping, unceasingly\nand progressively--though by divers portions and in divers\nmanners--revealed in the universe, in nature and in man.\n\nThus expressed, the doctrine of God's nearness and indwelling will\nprobably commend itself to most thoughtful religious people; but in\n{14} re-emphasising an aspect of truth there is always the danger of\nover-emphasising it, of claiming it as the whole and sole truth--of\nfalling, in a word, from one extreme into the other.  To that rule the\npresent case offers no exception; it is, on the contrary, very\ndistinctly one of the pendulum swinging as far in one direction as it\npreviously swung to the other.  Let us then at once state the thesis\nwhich many of the following pages will serve to elaborate: when the\n_indwelling_ of God in the universe is interpreted as meaning His\n_identity_ with the universe; when the _indwelling_ of God in man is\ntaken to mean His _identity_ with man, the whole structure of religion\nis gravely imperilled.  For in the identity of God with the world and\nwith man--which is the root-tenet of Pantheism--there is inevitably\ninvolved the surrender of both the Divine and the human personality.\nWe shall have occasion to see how much such a surrender signifies; for\nthe moment it suffices to say plainly that Pantheism, the doctrine\nwhich denies the transcendence of God, is by no means the same as that\nwhich affirms His immanence, nor does it logically follow from that\naffirmation.  The mistake so frequently made lies in regarding the\nDivine immanence and the Divine transcendence as mutually exclusive\nalternatives, whereas they are complementary to one another.  A\none-sided insistence on the immanence of God, to the exclusion of His\ntranscendence, leads to {15} Pantheism, just as a one-sided insistence\nupon His transcendence, to the exclusion of His immanence, leads to\nDeism; it is the two taken together that result in, and are necessary\nto, Theism.  Thus it cannot be too well understood, and it should be\nunderstood at the very outset, that we have not to make anything like a\nchoice between immanence and transcendence--that these two can never be\nseparated, but are related to each other as the less to the greater, as\nthe part to the whole.  One naturally shrinks from employing a diagram\nin dealing with such a topic as this; but perhaps recourse might\nwithout offence be had to this method--necessarily imperfect as it\nis--on account of its essential simplicity, and because it is\ncalculated to remove misapprehensions.  If we can think of a very large\nsphere, _A_, and, situated anywhere _within_ this, of a very small\nsphere, _a_--then the relation of the smaller to the greater will be\nthat of the sphere of immanence to the sphere of transcendence.  The\ntwo are not mutually separable, but the one has its being wholly within\nthe other.\n\n\nNevertheless it is quite true that there has been within recent years a\ndistinct shifting of the centre of gravity from the one doctrine to the\nother, a growing disposition to regard the immanence of God as the\nfundamental datum, the basis of the modern restatement of religious\nbelief.  How will this conception help us to {16} such an end?  The\nanswer to that question may be given in the words of Dr. Horton, who\nsays, \"The intellectual background of our time is Agnosticism, and _the\nreply which faith makes to Agnosticism is couched in terms of the\nimmanence of God_.\"  [1]  Dr. Horton's meaning will grow clearer to us\nif we once more glance at our imaginary diagram, letting the smaller\nfigure _a_, the sphere of immanence, stand for our universe.  If the\nsphere of God's being lay altogether outside the universe, _i.e._,\noutside the radius of our knowledge--if He, in other words, were merely\nand altogether transcendent--He would also be merely and altogether\nunknowable, exactly as Agnosticism avers.  His transcendent attributes,\nall that partakes of infinity, cannot--and that of necessity--become\nobjects of immediate knowledge to finite minds; if He is to be known at\nall to us, He can only be so known by being manifested through His\npresence within, or action upon, the finite and comprehensible sphere.\nIn other words, _it is primarily as He is revealed in and through the\nfinite world, that is to say as immanent, that God becomes knowable to\nus_; all that is included under His transcendence is of the very\nhighest importance for us--religion would be utterly incomplete without\nit--but it is an inference we make from His immanence.  It is, to give\nan obvious illustration, only to a transcendent God that we can offer\nprayer--God {17} over all whom the soul needs, to enter into relations\nwithal; but it is also true that we gain the assurance of His\ntranscendence through His immanence, and that\n\n  The God without he findeth not,\n    Who finds Him not within.\n\nIn a word, the Divine immanence is not the goal of our quest of God,\nbut it is the indispensable starting-point.\n\nA simple reflection will serve to place this beyond doubt.  Against the\nold-fashioned Deism which continued to bear sway till far into the last\ncentury, the agnostic had an almost fatally easy case; he had but to\nreject the revelation alleged to have been given once for all in the\ndim past--to reject it on scientific or critical grounds--and who was\nto prove to him that the universe had been created a few thousand years\nago by a remote and external Deity?  As for him, he professed, and\nprofessed candidly enough, that he could see nothing in nature but the\noperation of impersonal forces; there was natural law, and there was\nthe process of evolution, but beyond these----?  Now the only really\ntelling reply that can be made to those who argue in this fashion is\nthat which reasons from the Divine immanence as its _terminus a\nquo_--the doctrine which beholds God first of all present and active\n_in_ the world, and sees in natural law not a possible substitute for\nHim, but the working of His sovereign Will.  From this point of view,\nthe orderliness of the cosmos, {18} the uniformity and regularity of\nnature, attest not the unconscious throbbing of a soulless engine, or a\nblind Power behind phenomena, but a directing Mind, a prevailing Will.\nThe world, according to this conception, was not \"made\" once upon a\ntime, like a piece of clockwork, and wound up to run without further\nassistance; it is not a mechanism, but an organism, thrilled and\npervaded by an eternal Energy that \"worketh even until now.\"  In Sir\nOliver Lodge's phrase, we must look for the action of Deity, if at all,\nthen always; and this thought of the indwelling God, revealing Himself\nin the majestic course and order of nature, not only rebuts the\nassaults of Agnosticism, but compels our worship.  And as natural law\nspeaks to us of the steadfastness and prevailing power of the Divine\nWill, so evolution speaks of the Divine Purpose, and proclaims that\npurpose \"somehow good,\" since evolution means a steady reaching forward\nand upward, an unfolding and ascent from less to more.\n\nWe take a step higher up when we come to the further revelation of God\nas seen dwelling in man; a step higher up because on any sane view\nimmanence is a fact admitting of very various degrees, so that God is\nmore fully revealed in the organic than in the inorganic world, more in\nthe conscious than in the unconscious, far more in man than in lower\ncreatures.  We speak of God's indwelling in man in the {19} same sense\nin which there is something of an earthly parent's very being in his\nchildren; indeed, rightly considered, the Divine Parenthood is the only\nrational guarantee of that human brotherhood which is being so\nstrongly--or, at least, so loudly--insisted on to-day.  Man, that is to\nsay, is not identical with God, any more than a son is identical with\nhis father; but man is consubstantial, homogeneous, with God, lit by a\nDivine spark within him, a partaker of the Divine substance.  As in\nnature we discern God revealed as Power, Mind, Will, Purpose, so in\nman's moral nature, and his inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction\naccording as he does or does not approach a certain moral standard, we\ndiscern Him as Righteousness; and, more than all, since men, beings in\nwhom \"the Spirit of God dwelleth,\" are persons, it follows that God\nalso is at least personal, since there can be nothing in an effect that\nis not in the cause producing it.  Thus the doctrine of Divine\nimmanence throws at least a ray of light upon one of the problems which\npress with peculiar weight upon many modern minds--and which we shall\nconsider at greater length hereafter--_viz._, the Divine Personality.\n\nThere remains, however, a still further step to be taken along the line\nwhich we have been pursuing.  We are not fully satisfied when we know\nGod even as personal, even as righteous; the assurance which alone will\nsatisfy the awakened human spirit is that which tells us {20} that God\nis Love, and that His truest name is that of Father.  How could such a\nculminating assurance come to us?  We conceive that this end could only\nbe achieved through a complete manifestation of the Divine character on\na finite scale, _i.e._, through His indwelling in an unparalleled\nmeasure in a unique and ethically perfect being; and such an event, we\nhold, has actually taken place in what is known as the Incarnation.  In\nthe words of Dr. Horton, \"the doctrine of the immanence of God, the\nidea that God is in us all, leads us irresistibly to the conclusion\nthat 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.'\"  \"This\nargument,\" he says--_viz._, from Divine immanence--\"becomes more and\nmore favourable to the doctrine of Christ's Divinity.\"  [2]  The\nhighest and truest knowledge of God, that which it most concerns us to\npossess, could have become ours only through One in whom the fulness of\nGodhead dwelt bodily, in whom we saw Divinity in its essence and\nwithout alloy.  To bring us this perfect revelation was, indeed, the\nvery reason of Christ's advent.  We come to the Father through the Son,\nbecause there is no other Way.  We have seen the light of the knowledge\nof the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the very Image of His\nSubstance.  Divine Love, mighty to save, full of redemptive power,\nlonging for the soul with infinite affection--in fine, Fatherhood--this\nis what constitutes {21} religion's ultimate; and this revelation we\nhave in the Incarnate Son, in whom the Spirit dwelt without\nmeasure--who, _i.e._, stands forth as the supreme and unparalleled\nillustration of the Divine immanence.\n\n\nHere, then, we have a first, preliminary survey of the meaning of this\nmuch-discussed, much-misunderstood  term--a mere outline sketch which,\nneedless to say, requires a great deal of filling in, such as will be\nattempted in subsequent pages of this book.  So much should be clear\nfrom what has been said, that the nineteenth century, in practically\nrestoring this fruitful and far-reaching conception to a Church which\nhad largely forgotten it, made a contribution of the utmost importance\nto theology and religion; indeed, the value of that contribution could\nhardly be more strongly stated than in the utterances of Dr. Horton\nwhich we have quoted above.  Such a factor, however, cannot be\nintroduced, or re-introduced, into our theological thinking without\nnecessitating a good deal of revision, nor without causing a certain\nmeasure of temporary confusion and dislocation; it will accordingly be\nthe principal object of the following chapters to clear up\nmisapprehensions which have arisen in connection with the idea of\nimmanence, to assign to it its approximately proper place in Christian\nthought, and to safeguard an important truth against the injury done to\nit--and {22} so to all truth--by a zeal that is not according to\nknowledge.  _Corruptio optimi pessima_: in unskilled hands this\ndoctrine is certainly apt to become a danger to religion itself;\nnevertheless, rightly applied, there is probably no more potent\ninstrument than this to help us in that reconstruction of belief which\nis admittedly the urgent business of our age.  It is true, as Raymond\nBrucker said, that \"the answer to the riddle of the universe is\nGod--the answer to the riddle of God is Christ\"; but it is also true,\nwe hold, that the most effective key for the unlocking of the riddle is\nthe idea of Divine immanence.\n\n\n\n[1] _My Belief_, p. 107.\n\n[2] _Op. cit._; pp. 108, 109.\n\n\n\n\n{23}\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nSOME PROBLEMS OF IMMANENCE\n\nIt used to be said of a famous volume of apologetics--with what\njustification this is not the place to discuss--that it raised more\ndifficulties than it professed to settle; and a somewhat similar charge\nhas more than once been brought against the doctrine of Divine\nimmanence, _viz._, that if it succeeded in throwing light upon some\nproblems, it created new ones of a particularly insoluble character.\nThe old deistic notion which interposed a distance between the Creator\nand His creation, and in particular represented God as _there_ and man\nas _here_, might be untenable in philosophy, but it was at least\nintelligible and practically helpful to ordinary minds; but does not\nthe idea of God's immanence in the world and in man tend to efface that\ndistinction, and thus to introduce confusion where confusion is least\nto be desired?\n\nIn the present chapter we shall attempt to glance at some of the main\nquestions which arise in connection with this doctrine; and, to begin\nwith, we may state with the utmost frankness that nothing is easier\nthan to interpret the {24} conception of Divine immanence in such a\nmanner as to make it appear either ludicrous or hateful or simply\nmeaningless--in any case repulsive from the religious point of view.\nThis, to come straight to the point, is what is bound to happen when\nGod's indwelling in man is explained as meaning that man is _de facto_\none with his Maker.  What could the general reader think when he was\ntold with vehemence, \"You are yourself the infinite\"--\"You are yourself\nGod; you never were anything else\"?  If that reader was lacking in\nmental balance, he was likely to be swept off his feet by such a\ndeclaration, and to accept, with all its implications, a view so\nflattering to human vanity; if, on the other hand, he was a person of\nsoberly religious outlook and experience, he inquired what was the\ndoctrine in whose name such a proposition was offered to him for\nacceptance--and on learning that the name of that doctrine was the\nunfamiliar one of \"immanence,\" straightway set it down as the worst of\nbrain-sick heresies.  Thus, not for the first time, has a cause or\ntruth been wounded and discredited by injudicious advocacy.\n\nFor the purpose which we have in view we cannot do better than state\nwhat we consider the fundamental misinterpretation of this doctrine in\nthe considered words of one of its most popular exponents, who\nexpresses it as follows: \"God _in_ man is God _as_ man.  _There is no\nreal Divine Immanence which does not imply the {25} allness of God._\"\n[1]  It is not too much to say that this brief statement contains the\n_fons et origo_ of all the misunderstandings with which the\nre-enunciation of this idea has been attended; it is this assumption of\nthe allness of God which underlies and colours quite a number of modern\nmovements, and will be seen to lead those who accept it into endless\nand inextricable tangles.\n\nIf God is all, _then what are we_?  Granted the basal axiom of this\ntype of immanentism, it follows with irresistible cogency that our\nseparate existence, consciousness, volitions and so forth are merely\nillusions.  We can be \"ourselves God\" only in the sense that we are\nindividually nothing; the contrary impression is simply an error, which\nwe shall have to recognise as such, and to get rid of with what speed\nand thoroughness we can.  This, it is true, is more easily said than\ndone, for our whole life both of thought and action bears incessant\nwitness to the opposite; there are, however, those to whose temperament\nsuch a complete contradiction, so far from being distressing, is\npositively grateful because of its suggestion of mystery and mysticism.\nSometimes a Tertullian voices this abdication of the reasoning faculty\ndefiantly--_certum est quia impossibile est_; but more often perhaps\nthe same position {26} is expressed in the spirit of Tennyson's\nwell-known lines, which, indeed, bear directly upon our immediate\ntheme:--\n\n  We feel we are nothing--for all is Thou and in Thee;\n  We feel we are something--_that_ also has come from Thee;\n  We know we are nothing--but Thou wilt help us to be.\n\nWe submit, however, that while such a contemplation of, or oscillation\nbetween, mutually destructive tenets may for a time minister to some\nkind of aesthetic enjoyment, the healthy mind cannot permanently find\nsatisfaction while thus suspended in mid-air; nor are we appreciably\nadvanced by the temper which, after pointing out some alleged\nfundamental antinomy, \"quietly accepts\"--_i.e._, in practice\nignores--it.  Problems of this description are not solved by what\nMatthew Arnold called a want of intellectual seriousness; is it true,\nwe ask, that the \"mystical view of the Divine immanence\" compels us to\nbelieve in the allness of God, and so to deny our individual existence?\n\nThe answer is that this _soi-disant_ \"mystical view\" is simply a\ndistorted view of what immanence means.  We are not really called upon\nto do violence to the collective facts of our experience, which rise up\nin unanimous and spontaneous testimony against the monstrous fiction\nthat we are either nothing or God.  The fallacy upon which this fiction\nrests is not a {27} very subtle one.  When we speak of God's indwelling\nin man, we predicate that community of nature which the writer of Gen.\nii expresses by saying that God created man in His own image; we\npredicate, _i.e._, what we already called homogeneity--likeness of\nsubstance--and not identity, which is a very different thing.  We do\nnot commit ourselves to the proposition that \"God _in_ man is God _as_\nman.\"  Parent and child are linked together by a precisely analogous\nbond to that subsisting between God and man, but they are nevertheless\ndistinct individualities.\n\n\"But,\" it will be objected, \"the analogy does not hold, for parent and\nchild are both finite; how can a similar separateness be so much as\nthought to exist between God and man, seeing that God is infinite?\"  It\nwill be seen that the objection merely restates the allness of God\nunder a different form; and this brings us to the very heart of the\nmatter.  We must at length face the one conclusion which does not land\nus in self-contradiction--_viz._, that _in the act of creation God\nlimits His own infinity_, no matter to how infinitesimal an extent.  On\nthe alternative supposition we have ultimately to think of God and man\neither as All _plus_ something or All _plus_ zero--which is absurd.\nMr. Chesterton has rendered useful service by insisting that in\ncreating the world God distinguishes Himself from the world, as a poet\nis distinct from his poem--a truth which he has condensed into an\naphorism, {28} \"All creation is separation\"; but on the part of the\nDeity such \"separation\" implies of necessity the self-limitation just\nspoken of.  Just as a billion, _minus_ the billionth fraction of a\nunit, is no longer a billion, so infinity itself, limited though it be\nbut by a hair's-breadth, is no longer, strictly speaking, infinite.\nOnce we admit this Divine self-limitation as a working theory, we shall\nno longer be troubled by the unreal difficulty of having to reconcile\nthe principle of Divine immanence with the fact of individual\nexistence.  The Divine spark may burn in man, brightly or dimly as the\ncase may be, and yet be separate from the central and eternal Fire\nwhence it has been flung forth; in other words, man may be a partaker\nof the Divine nature without being \"himself God.\"  If we are to be able\nto believe in either a universe or a humanity which, though the scene\nof Divine immanence, are not identical with God, it seems to us that\nsuch a view of creation as we have just propounded is inevitable; and\nunless this non-identity can be maintained--unless, that is to say, we\ndefinitely repudiate the idea of the \"allness\" of God--religion itself\nis reduced to a misty and ineffective theosophy.\n\nThe issues involved in the acceptance or rejection of this view appear\nto us of such importance that, at the risk of seeming to labour our\npoint unnecessarily, we are anxious to make it perfectly plain.  In the\nphase through which {29} religious thought is passing to-day there are\nfew things more urgently needed than to dispel that interpretation of\nimmanence which obliterates the line of demarcation between God and\nman.  We may decline the mechanical dualism which placed the Creator\naltogether outside the universe, and yet embrace a view which for want\nof a better name might be called spiritual dualism, and which maintains\nthe distinction of which we are speaking.  What happens when that\ndistinction is lost, is sufficiently apparent from a statement like the\nfollowing, actually addressed to a miscellaneous audience: \"If there is\nan eternal throne, you are on it now; there has never been a moment\nwhen you were not on it.\"  Such downright extravagance is most suitably\nmet with a bald contradiction: man is _not_ on the eternal throne, and\nthere has never been a moment when he was on it.  It is this fact which\nmakes worship so much as possible; it is, in short, the transcendent\nGod with whom we are concerned in the exercise of religion, for as Mr.\nChesterton puts it in his own manner, \"that Jones shall worship the god\nwithin him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.\"\n\nLet us see what follows if we once seriously persuade ourselves that we\nare \"on the eternal throne,\" or, to extract its meaning from that\npicturesque phrase, that the presence of God is already perfectly\nrealised in us.  We cannot but think we shall carry the reader {30}\nwith us in saying that such a belief is in itself indicative of\nspiritual danger; indeed, there can hardly be a greater danger than\nthat which is directly encouraged by the idea that we have already\nattained, and that all is well with us, seeing that we are one with the\nAll-good.  On such a supposition, why pray--for even were there One\nother than ourselves to pray to, what is there to pray for?  Or, to\nquote the actual question of a believer in this kind of immanence, Why\nask outside for a strength which we already possess?  What a naive\nquestion of this calibre reveals only too plainly is that\nself-complacency which is the most deadly foe of the spiritual life.\nOne is reminded of the American story in which a bright and intelligent\nwife asks her cultured but indifferent husband, \"Is it true that God is\nimmanent in us all?\"  \"I suppose so,\" he answers; \"_but it does not\ngreatly matter._\"  The question is, Do we already possess the strength\nfor which we ask?  Or rather, Does not the very fact that we ask for it\nprove that we do not possess it, and that He from whom we ask it is not\nourselves?  Is not the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Divine invasion of\nthe soul, a fact of experience, and is it not also a fact that that\ngift is only to be had for the asking, only given in response to\nearnest and persevering prayer, and that it effects in those who\nreceive it a change of thought and feeling?\n\nAll these are facts resting on irrefragable evidence; the apparent\nproblem is, to {31} harmonise them with the affirmation of the divinity\nexisting in man.  If God be truly \"in us all,\" then in what sense or to\nwhat purpose can we pray for a consummation which, it will be urged, is\n_ex hypothesi_ an accomplished fact at the time that we ask for it?  We\nreply that the Divine indwelling in man is of the nature of a capacity\nfor striving rather than of an attainment, a potentiality rather than\nan actuality, a prophecy rather than a fulfilment.  Man's longing for\ncommunion with God, as for an unrealised good, is the longing of like\nfor Like, but it is only through struggle and effort that the goal can\nbe reached.  The Eternal is indeed the Life of all life, and to that\nextent it is true that all life expresses Him; nevertheless our\noriginal divine endowment is no more than the material which has to be\nshaped and wrought into \"the type of perfect.\"  Without this divinity\nof substance as it might be called, we should never have the finished\nproduct, divinity of character; but the latter can only be achieved\nthrough arduous and persevering endeavour.  Without a genuinely divine\nelement--without the Spirit breathed into man by his Creator--we could\nnot even realise our failure, nor aspire after a fuller portion of that\nsame life-giving Spirit; it is what we have that tells us of what we\nlack, and directs us to Him who alone can supply our want out of His\ninexhaustible fulness.\n\nAnd if we have thus found an answer to the question, \"How, from the\npoint of view of {32} Divine immanence, can there be anything but God?\"\nwe have at the same time received a hint indicating where we shall have\nto look for the answer to another query of even more directly practical\ninterest, _viz._, \"How, from the same point of view, can there be\nanything but _good_--how can there be any real evil, physical or\nmoral?\"  Put in that extreme form, this problem, like the one with\nwhich we have just dealt, arises from the erroneous assertion of the\nallness of God; but as the whole subject of the reality of evil will\ncome up for treatment at a later stage, we need not now enter into its\ndiscussion.  At one aspect, and one only, of this vast and complex\ntheme we may, however, be permitted to glance for a moment before we\npass on.  If God dwells in us, it is frequently asked, whence comes\nwhat Paul so pathetically calls \"the law of sin which is in our\nmembers\"--whence come the wrongful desires and harmful passions of\nwhose power we are so painfully conscious?  That is an entirely\nlegitimate and even inevitable query, but the solution of the enigma is\nnot past finding out, though we must content ourselves with a mere\nsuggestion.  We have, in the first place to keep our hold of the fact,\ndisregarding all pleas to the contrary, that sin is a reality, and not\na phantasm of our imagination; we shall then diagnose its nature as the\nmisuse, the unfaithful administration, of the power which God has\nconferred upon us for employment in His holy service; and then, {33}\nlastly, we shall grow aware that the very pain, the sense of\nunhappiness and moral discord by which the consciousness of guilt is\never accompanied, is the protesting voice of that which is the deepest\nreality within ourselves--the indwelling Divine.\n\n\nBut when we have shown that the doctrine of Divine immanence does not,\nas some of its advocates would have us believe, swallow up human\nindividuality--a subject to which we shall return--we are faced with\nyet another difficulty.  The question is asked--again, quite naturally\nand inevitably--In what sense can we speak of God as immanent in the\ninorganic world?  How, _e.g._, does a stone embody or express His\nessence?--and yet, if it is not somehow a manifestation of Him, what is\nthis cold, lifeless, ponderable substance we call a stone?  Nor do\nmatters grow simpler when we ascend in the scale: we may trace the\nimmanent Deity in all that is good and fair in nature, in all its\nsmiling and beneficent moods--but what of nature's uglinesses and\ncruelties?  Is God expressing Himself in the ferocity of the tiger, the\npoisonous malice of the cobra, the greed of every unclean carrion-bird?\nIf He is such as religion represents Him, how can He be present in\nthese?  We may quote with rapture the familiar lines in which the poet\ntells us:--\n\n          I have felt\n  A presence that disturbs me with the joy\n  Of elevated thoughts. . .\n\n{34} But the world which is the dwelling of that something \"far more\ndeeply interfused\" of which Wordsworth sings, does not consist\nexclusively of\n\n        the light of setting suns,\n  And the round ocean, and the living air,\n  And the blue sky. . .\n\n--it contains also dismal, fever-breeding swamps, dreadful deserts,\ndreary wastes of eternal ice, plunged into darkness half the year; are\nwe going simply to ignore these realities when we speak of the Divine\nindwelling in the world?  And, once more, shall we assert this doctrine\nwhen we remember the cold cunning of the spider, or the delight in\ntorture displayed by the domestic cat?\n\nIt depends, we answer, what we mean by \"this doctrine\"; if we construe\nimmanence to signify \"allness,\" we may as well admit first as last that\nthere is no way of escape from the difficulties which these queries\nsuggest.  In that case it is not for us to pick and choose--to say that\nGod is the beauty of the beautiful, but not the ugliness of the ugly;\nthe compassion of the compassionate, but not the cruelty of the cruel:\nif He is _all_, He is _both_, and for that very reason is _neither_.\nThat is the real inwardness of a conception of the Deity which\nrepresents Him, with Omar Khayyam, as One--\n\n  Whose secret Presence, through Creation's veins\n  Running, Quicksilver-like eludes your pains;\n    Taking all forms from Mah to Mahi; and\n  They change and perish all--but He remains.\n\n{35} Such a doctrine can only mean that the Divine Substance, under a\nmyriad-fold variety of appearances, is equally diffused through all\ncreation, like the universal ether of science; and such a conception of\nthe Eternal, whatever else it may be, ceases _ipso facto_ to be\nreligiously helpful.  The counterpart of the theoretical allness would\nbe the practical nothingness of God.[2]  But having quite definitely\ndeclined to place such a construction upon immanence, we are preserved\nfrom the absurdities which flow from it.  We may and do hold that all\nthe works of the Lord manifest Him in some manner and in some measure;\nbut, as we already stated in our introductory chapter, not all do so in\nthe same manner or the same measure, and not any of them nor all of\nthem are He.  To the specific inquiry, What, if not part of God, is\nthis stone?--we can, indeed, only answer in the words of Tennyson that\nif we knew what the least object was in itself, we \"should know what\nGod and man is.\"  But, dealing with the question more generally, we may\nsay that what inorganic nature shows forth of the indwelling God is His\nprevailing Power and abiding Law; looking upon the works of Him who\n\"stretcheth out the north over empty space, and hangeth the earth upon\n{36} nothing,\" we can but feel that awed admiration of His wisdom and\nmight which is expressed over and over again in the Book of Job.  And\nthis impression deepens when we pass upward from the inorganic to the\norganic creation; for not only do we behold the entire vast spectacle\nthrilled through and through by one Life, but we are also enabled to\ndiscern something of the august Purpose which progressively realises\nitself in all the phases of the cosmic process.  That the God revealed\nby the universe must transcend the universe in order to be in any real\nsense its Creator, is self-evident; but that it is His own Energy which\npervades it, a present Power operating from within--in other words,\nthat He is immanent in the world, as well as transcendent--is a thought\nfrom which we cannot legitimately escape.\n\nWhen we speak of the immanence of God in nature, therefore, we mean\nprincipally immanence of Power; and due weight should be given to this\nqualification, since its effect is to remove the obstacles we have\nenumerated above.  For it ought to be plain, though in popular\ndiscussion it is constantly overlooked, that God cannot be _ethically_\npresent in the unethical, nor _personally_ present in the impersonal.\nAnd here, it seems to us, we go to the root of our present problem,\n_viz._, by re-emphasising what is indispensable to a right conception\nof this whole doctrine--that immanence is of necessity a matter of\ndegrees.  Nature is not moral, {37} and hence does not reveal God's\nmoral character to us; nature is not personal, and therefore, while its\noperations point with irresistible cogency to personal directivity,\ndoes not show forth the Divine Personality as indwelling.\n\nAs soon as we grasp this obvious truth, we shall be led to find the\nanswer to that question which, as we saw, presents a stumbling-block to\nmany minds, namely, in what sense it is permissible to affirm the\nDivine immanence in the animal world.  How can God be in the denizens\nof the jungle, we ask, feeling that to make such an statement\nconcerning Him is to empty the idea of God of all its meaning.\nNatural, however, as such reasoning is, reflection will show it to be\nfaulty.  To use a simple, if necessarily imperfect, illustration,\nsomething of man's own being is in all his organs, but not all that\nmakes him man is in every one of them; certainly, his higher faculties\nare not displayed in the organs designed to fulfil the lower functions\nof the organism.  To proceed to the obvious application--animals are\nnot moral beings, but act, with the occasional exception of such of\ntheir number as have been humanised by contact with men, from instinct\nand not from conscious choice; and for that reason we are not called\nupon to reconcile the loving-kindness and tender mercy of God with the\nhabits and general behaviour of the lower creation.  In ascribing all\nsorts of moral qualities to animals we simply exhibit the same {38}\ntendency which leads children to endow lifeless objects both with life\nand purposiveness.  Moral attributes, however, whether good or bad,\npresuppose conscious choice, a faculty of weighing and if necessary\nrepelling motives; and with such a faculty we have no reason for\ncrediting animals.  No doubt, our incurable habit of reading the facts\nof our own moral nature into the actions of beasts and birds accounts\nfor the vogue alike of Aesop's Fables and of such works as the _Jungle\nBooks_; but what strikes us as cruelty in the tiger is not a moral\nquality at all, any more than it is a motive of heroism that impels the\nmongoose to fight cobras.  The tiger and the cobra are no more\ndeliberately \"cruel\" than they could be conceived as deliberately\n\"benevolent\"; they are below the ethical level, expressing no character\nat all, and least of all the character of God.\n\nBut if God is immanent in the cosmos as its pervading and sustaining\nPower and Life; if He is immanent in man as that moral and spiritual\nprinciple which reaches out after fuller communion with the Most High:\nwhere shall we say that He Himself is _personally present_, since He is\nnot so present either in nature or in man?  And assuming that such a\nsupreme and full revelation of God has been given in history, shall we\nnot do well to distinguish in some manner between it and every lesser\nmanifestation of immanence?  Mr. W. L. Walker has admirably pointed out\nthat while {39} God is personally present _to_ everything, and entirely\nabsent from nothing, yet it is certainly false to imagine that He is\n\"personally inside of everything.\"  \"Nothing can happen wholly apart\nfrom Him--He is in some measure in everything and being\"; but where\nshall He Himself be found, where shall we look for His very fulness?\n\"He cannot,\" says Mr. Walker--and we shall not attempt to better his\nwords--\"be personally present in anything, or in any being, till there\nis a being present in the world capable of containing and expressing\nHim in His essential truth; and that we do not have till we come to\nJesus Christ.\"\n\n\nAnd thus we may perhaps claim to have shown, however briefly, in what\ndirection we must look for the solution of our problem of universal\nimmanence--a problem unnecessarily complicated by a plausible but false\nconstruction of that doctrine.  We conclude that every portion of the\ncosmos, including our conscious selves, manifests so much, and such\naspects, of God as it has the capacity to manifest--His Power, His\nPurpose, His moral Law, which vindicates its sanctity upon whosoever\nwould violate it; but His own Essence, His Character, could be revealed\nonly in One whose soul harboured no single element at variance with the\nDivine Goodness, One who could be described as \"God manifest in the\nflesh\"--even that unique Son whose oneness with the Father was {40}\nundimmed and unbroken by any diversity of will.  It required the\nperfect Instrument to give forth the perfect Harmony.\n\nAnd here a final but important point arises.  If the Incarnation of God\nin Christ is in one sense the highest example of Divine immanence--just\nas man represents the highest form of animal life--yet in another sense\nit transcends mere immanence just as truly as humanity transcends the\nanimal creation.  We leave this as a suggestion which the reader may\ndevelop for himself.  So much is certain, that in Christ alone does the\nedifice of faith reach its culminating point--in Him our questionings\nreceive their complete and final answer, because what we see in Him is\nnot a stray hint or broken gleam, but the pure and quenchless light of\nGod's own Presence.  \"_No man hath seen God at any time; the only\nbegotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared\nHim._\"\n\n\n\n[1] The Rev. R. J. Campbell, M.A., in a paper on _Divine Immanence and\nPantheism_.  For the phrase and the Idea of the \"allness of God\" see\nalso _Rudimental Divine_ (_i.e._ Christian) _Science_, by Mary Baker\nEddy, p. 10.\n\n[2] We cannot forbear quoting two pungent lines of Mr. Hamish Hendry's,\nin which the outcome of such theosophising seems to be not altogether\nunjustly described as--\n\n  _A kind o' thowless Great First Cause,_\n    _Skinklin' thro' vapour._\n\n\n\n\n{41}\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nPANTHEISM: THE SUICIDE OF RELIGION\n\nIn speaking of Deism, the theory which explicitly denies the Divine\nimmanence, we already had occasion to acknowledge that quality of\nintelligibleness which makes this doctrine easy of assimilation, and\naccounts, _e.g._, for the success of Islam, the deistic religion _par\nexcellence_, as a propagandist creed.  There is, however, another\naspect of Deism, none the less real because it is not always recognised\nat first sight, which perhaps an illustration will serve to bring home\nto us.  We all know what is likely to happen to an estate in the\nowner's prolonged or permanent absence--it deteriorates;  his active\ninterest and personal supervision are wanting, and the results are\nvisible everywhere.  Sloth and mismanagement, which his presence would\ncheck, go uncorrected, the daily duties are indifferently performed or\nremain undone, and soon the property as a whole bears unmistakeable\ntraces of neglect.  There is always the possibility of the master's\nreturn some day, when he will exact an account from his servants; but\n{42} the long interval which has elapsed since such a visit took place\nhas deprived that mere possibility of any wholesome terror which it\nmight inspire, so that matters drift steadily from bad to worse.\n\nNow, from the deistic point of view, the world may not unfairly be\ncompared to such an estate.  God is remote--He may look down upon the\nterrestrial scene from His far-off heaven, but He does not actively\ninterfere, except by an occasional miracle, which is not the same as\ndirect hour-by-hour superintendence: is it any wonder that the ground\nshould bring forth weeds and brambles rather than flowers and fruit?\nIs it a wonder that this God-less world should be a dismal place and\nfull of misery, and that human nature, left to itself, should have \"no\nhealth\" in it?  It would be matter for wonder if it were otherwise; and\nthus Deism is well in accord with those gloomier forms of religious\nthought which for a long time were the generally predominating ones.\n\nThe distance between this conception and that which flows from the\ndoctrine of Divine immanence can hardly be measured; it certainly\ncannot be bridged.  The soul to which, through whatever experience,\nthere has come the revelation that God is closer to us than breathing,\nand nearer than hands or feet, looks out upon a new heaven and a new\nearth.  Once it is understood that God is really and truly in His\nuniverse, that He is not infinitely far {43} and inaccessible but\ninfinitely nigh, an encompassing Presence, a fresh light falls upon\nnature and human nature alike.  Viewed in that light, and from the\nstandpoint of this illuminating truth, \"the world's no blot for us, nor\nblank,\" but the scene of Divine activity and unceasing revelation; for\nall nature's forces are seen to be the expression of the Divine Energy,\nand all nature's laws the manifestation of the Divine Will.  If God\nHimself is the Life that stirs within all life, the Reality underlying\nall phenomena--if we live and move and have our being in Him, and His\nSpirit dwelleth within us--the direct outcome of such a belief should\nbe a sacred optimism, an assurance that the cosmos \"means intensely,\nand means good.\"\n\nThere can, we think, be little doubt as to the beneficial effects which\nhave accompanied the re-affirmation of this idea in recent times.  It\nis only too true as yet, in the case of many, that \"the past, which\nstill holds its ground in the back chambers of the brain, would\npersuade us that 'tis a demon-haunted world, where not God but the\ndevil rules; we are not yet persuaded that this is a cheerful, homely,\nwell-meaning universe, whose powers, if strict in their working, are\nnevertheless beneficent and not diabolic.\"  Against these phantasmal\nfears the doctrine of God's immanence, rightly understood, offers the\nbest of antidotes, and here lies its unquestionable value.  At the same\ntime it has already become apparent {44} to us that the suddenness of\nthe stress laid upon that idea has brought new dangers in its train.\nThe temptation is ever to swing round from one extreme to its opposite;\nand in the present case not a few have carried--or been carried by--the\nreaction against the belief in God's remoteness so far as to forget, in\ncontemplating the truth that He is \"through all and in all,\" the\ncomplementary and equally necessary truth that He is also God over all.\nBecause something of His Mind and Will is expressed by the universe,\nthey not only, as we saw in the previous chapter, conclude that the\nuniverse is identical with Him, but that He is no other than the\nuniverse which reveals Him.  \"All is God, and God is All,\" they\nexclaim, adding the doctrine of the Godness of all to that of the\nallness of God; the universe, in their view, is the one Divine and\nEternal Being of which everything, including ourselves, is only a phase\nor partial manifestation; as it is the Divine life which pulses through\nus, so it is the Divine consciousness which our consciousness\nexpresses, the Divine nature which acts through ours.  Here we are face\nto face with Pantheism full-grown: let us see what is involved in its\nassumptions, and why the Christian Church must resolutely refuse to\nmake terms with this teaching.\n\nNo one would deny that the pantheistic theory, which identifies God\nwith the universe and ourselves with God, has its fascination and {45}\nglamour--a fascination which is not ignoble on the face of it.  The\nmodern founder of Pantheism, Benedict Spinoza, was a man of pure and\nsaintly character, a gentle recluse from the world, lovable and\nblameless.  Nevertheless, we have no hesitation in avowing our belief\nthat the glamour of Pantheism is utterly deceptive; that those who set\nfoot on this inclined plane will find themselves unable--in direct\nproportion to their mental integrity--to resist conclusions which mean\nthe practical dissolution of religion, in any intelligible sense of\nthat word; and that in the present transitional state of religious\nopinion it is particularly necessary that the truth about Pantheism\nshould be clearly stated.  The test of a theory is not whether it looks\nsymmetrical and self-consistent in the seclusion of the study, but\nwhether it works.  If it fails in actual life, it fails altogether; and\nthe one fatal objection to this particular system is that it does not\nwork.  Nothing could be more significant than the admission of so\nrepresentative an exponent of Pantheism as Mr. Allanson Picton, who\ntells us that one, if not more, of Spinoza's fundamental conceptions\n\"have increasingly repelled rather than attracted religious people.\"\n[1]  It is the object of the present chapter to show why this must be\nthe case, wherever the implications of his teaching are understood.\n\n{46} Pantheism declares--it practically begins and ends with the\ndeclaration--that the universe is God, and that God is the totality of\nbeing.  Now, try as we will, such a conception can never take the place\nof the thought of God as our Father, and that for the simple reason\nthat the universe is not even what we mean by personal.  As\nSchopenhauer shrewdly remarked, \"To call the universe 'God' is not to\nexplain it, but merely to burden language with a superfluous synonym\nfor the word 'universe.'  Whether one says 'the universe is God' or\n'the universe is the universe' makes no difference.\"  It is when people\nno longer know what to do with a Deity, he continues, that they\ntransfer His part to the universe--\"which is, properly speaking, only a\ndecent way of getting rid of Him.\"  [2]  A totality of being is not the\nsame as a personal God, but the very contrary.  Nor is it any\nconsolation to be told that this totality, though not personal, is\n\"super-personal.\"  Such a super-personal Absolute or Whole, to quote\nDr. Ballard's penetrating criticism, \"is devoid of just those elements\nwhich for human experience constitute personality.  To our power of\nvision it matters nothing whether we say that the ultra-violet rays of\nthe spectrum are super-visible or invisible.  The pertinent truth is\nthat they are not visible.  So, too, that which is not 'merely'\npersonal is not really personal.  {47} If the Absolute of philosophy be\nthe super-personal, it is not, in plain truth, personal at all.\"  [3]\n\nNow, a God who is not what we mean by personal can be of no help to us\nin our religious life.  When a congregation of modern worshippers is\nappealed to in these terms--\"Do not, I beseech you, think of God any\nmore as a personal being like yourself, though immeasurably\ngreater\"--they are really being asked to commit spiritual suicide.  For\nwe cannot hold communion except with a person; we cannot pray to the\nuniverse.  We can neither give thanks to the universe, nor supplicate\nit, nor confess to it, nor intercede with it.  But a God to whom we\ncannot pray, with whom we cannot enter into communion, is for all\npractical purposes no God at all.  The only God with whom we can stand\nin personal, conscious, spiritual relationship must be one who is not\nidentical with the universe, but One in whom, on the contrary, the\nuniverse has its being.  It is the transcendent God with whom we have\nto deal in religion; such a God Pantheism does not acknowledge.\n\nBut not only is the universe not personal; this god of Pantheism is not\nethical either.  This \"totality\" is neither good nor bad, but made up\nindifferently of all manner of components, and according to Pantheism\nall of them--the evil as much as the good--are {48} necessary to the\nperfection of the whole.  Thus the pantheist's god has no moral\ncomplexion, and such a god is of no use to us.  So far as religion is\nconcerned, he--or it--might just as well be non-existent as non-moral.\nThe only Deity whom we can _worship_ is One who stands above the\nworld's confusion, its Moral Governor and Righteous Judge.\n\nBut Pantheism identifies not only God with the universe, but ourselves\nwith God.  Now if this view is accepted, if there is no real dividing\nline between man and God, then we can only once more point out that we\nhave no personality either; we are mere fragmentary expressions of\nGod's life, without selfhood or self-determination, no more responsible\nfor our acts than a violin for the tune that is played on it.  Mr.\nPicton, speaking with authority, tells us that \"to the true pantheist\"\nman is \"but a finite mode of infinite Being\"; that human personality is\nonly \"seeming\" [4] and that, from the pantheistic standpoint, the self\nmust be \"content to be nothing.\"  That is to say that the consistent\npantheist must be a consistent determinist.  Logical Pantheism rules\nout the possibility of sin against man or God--\"for who withstandeth\nHis will,\" seeing that He is the only real Existence?  Let a further\nquotation make this plain.  \"What,\" asks Mr. Picton, \"are we to say of\nbad men, the vile, the base, the liar, the murderer?  Are they {49}\nalso in God and of God? . . .  _Yes, they are_.\"  [5]  And this amazing\nconclusion--amazing, though involved in his fundamental outlook--is\nsought to be defended on the ground that we have \"no adequate idea\" \"of\nthe part played by bad men in the Divine Whole\"!  In other words, the\npantheist god expresses himself in a St. Francis, but he also does so\nin a King Leopold; he is manifested in General Booth and in Alexander\nBorgia; Jesus Christ is a phase of his being, and so is Judas Iscariot.\nA sentimental Pantheism may say that God is that in a hero which nerves\nhim to heroism, and that in a mother which prompts her self-sacrifice\nfor her children, for there is none else.  But that is only one-half of\nthe truth; arguing from the same premises, we must also say that God is\nthat in the sinner which succumbs to sin, and in the wrong-doer that\nwhich takes pleasure in wrong, for there is none else.  Once we rub out\nthe distinction between God and man, we rub out all _moral_\ndistinctions as well.  If we are not other than He is, how can we act\nother than He wills?  If we hold that the soul is only \"a finite mode\nof God's infinite attribute of thought,\" part of \"the necessary\nexpression of the infinite attributes of eternal Being,\" the sense of\nsin can be no more than an illusion.\n\nOr shall we be told that, whatever a man's theoretical Determinism, in\npractice he will {50} always be conscious of his freedom?  The answer\nis, Yes, perhaps, provided his moral instincts are sound; but the\naverage mortal, when he has to choose between the hard duty and the\neasy indulgence, will be sorely tempted to find a reason for yielding\nin his determinist philosophy.  And is a doctrine likely to be true\nwhich, the moment it is seriously applied, undermines the very\nfoundation of morality, and of which the best that can be said is that\npeople do not consistently apply it?  M. Bourget's _Le Disciple_ is not\na book for everyone; but in it the distinguished author has drawn an\ninstructive picture of the effect of Determinism as a theory upon a\nself-indulgent man's practice.  As Mr. Baring-Gould aptly says, \"Human\nnature is ever prone to find an excuse for getting the shoulder from\nunder the yoke.\"\n\nPantheism, as a matter of fact, whichever way we travel, is ultimately\ncompelled to deny the qualitative distinction between good and evil,\ndeclaring both to be equally necessary, and thus arrives once more at\nits conception of a Deity who, though said to be \"perfect\"--presumably\nin some \"super-moral\" sense--is not good, and hence cannot be a\npossible object of worship for us.  How little the pantheist's God can\nmean to us will be understood when it is stated that, according to\nSpinoza, man \"cannot strive to have God's love to him.\"  [6]  Indeed,\nhow could the universe \"love\" one of {51} its mere passing phases?  Is\nit a wonder that this cheerless creed has \"increasingly repelled rather\nthan attracted religious people\" when once they have understood its\ninwardness?  We ask for bread and receive--a nebula; we call for our\nFather, and are told to content ourselves with a totality of being!\n\nAnd when Pantheism has thus despoiled us of our religious possessions\none by one, so far as this life is concerned, what is its message\nconcerning the future?  This, that when we die there is an end even of\nour seeming self-hood; we are once more immersed in the All, the\nWhole--like a thimbleful of water drawn from the ocean and poured back\ninto the ocean again.  This is what Mr. Picton calls \"the peace of\nabsorption in the Infinite\"; would it not be simpler to call it\nannihilation, and have done with it?  Dissolve a bronze statue and\nmerge it in a mass of molten metal, and it is gone as a statue;\ndissolve a soul and merge it in the sum of being, and as a soul it is\nno more.  That is not immortality, but a final blotting out--a fit\nconclusion from those pantheistic premises which, consistently worked\nout, mean the end of religion, the end of morality, the end of\neverything.\n\nPantheism goes about under a variety of aliases to-day, and therein\nlies an additional danger; for whatever its assumed name or disguise,\nits essence is always the same, and its very speciousness calls for all\nour vigilance and {52} determination to fight it.  We must not weary of\nchallenging its root-assumption, or of exposing its insidious\ntendencies; we must not weary of reiterating the truth that God is not\nidentical with the universe, but to be worshipped as the One who is\nover all; we must insist that His nearness to us and our likeness to\nHim are not identity with Him--nay, that it is His otherness from us\nwhich makes us capable of seeking and finding Him, of experiencing His\nlove, and loving Him in return.  From the inhuman speculations of\nPantheism we turn with unspeakable gratitude to the revelation of the\npersonal God in the Person of Jesus Christ His Son, whom having seen,\nwe have beheld the Father, and whose are the words, not of\nannihilation, but of eternal life.\n\n\n\n[1] _Pantheism_, p. 15.\n\n\n[2] Parerga, vol. ii., pp. 101-102.\n\n[3] _The True God_, p. 118.\n\n[4] _Op. cit._, p. 15.\n\n[5] _Ibid_, p. 69.\n\n[6] J. Allanson Picton, _Spinoza_, p. 213.\n\n\n\n\n{53}\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE ETHICS OF MONISM\n\nTo say that religious thought is passing to-day through a period of\npeculiar stress is to utter a commonplace so threadbare that one\napologises for repeating it.  Even the man in the street--or perhaps we\nought to say even the man in the pew, the average member of a Christian\nChurch--is aware that certain potent forces have been for some time\npast directing a series of sustained assaults upon what were until\nrecently all but unquestioned beliefs; nor, if he is capable of\nappreciating facts, will he deny--though he may deplore it--that to all\nseeming these attacks have been attended by a considerable measure of\nsuccess.  If, however, our man in the pew were asked to specify what\nforces he had in his mind, he would probably in nine cases out of ten\npoint to two such, and two alone, _viz._, natural science and Biblical\ncriticism, which, he would tell us, had between them created an\natmosphere in which the old views of Scriptural authority found it more\nand more difficult to maintain themselves.\n\n{54}\n\nSuch an estimate of the situation would be true so far as it went; yet\nit would omit to take account of a third factor, a solvent far less\nobvious in its workings, but far more disintegrating in its effects.\nThe factor to which we are referring is philosophy; while science and\ncriticism have overthrown certain traditional ramparts, a type of\nphilosophy has sprung up, slowly undermining the very foundations; or,\nto vary the simile, while the former two have captured certain\noutworks, the latter has made its way to within striking distance of\nthe citadel, and that the more unobserved because attention has been\nfocussed almost exclusively upon the more imposing performances of the\ncritic and the biologist.\n\nAs a matter of fact, religion never had, nor could have, anything to\nfear from these two quarters, which--as we can now see--could not in\nany way touch the essence of religious faith, as distinguished from\nsome of its temporary forms; on the other hand, that very essence might\nbe imperilled by a false but plausible philosophy, and grave practical\nconsequences in the domain of conduct might arise from its spread.  For\nif it is accurate to say that behind every ethic there stands--whether\navowed or unavowed--a certain metaphysic, the converse holds true no\nless; every philosophy, in the exact proportion in which it is _ex\nanimo_ accepted, will tend to produce its ethical counterpart.  What we\n{55} submit in all seriousness is that the only real danger to religion\nthat is to be apprehended to-day--a danger to which it is impossible to\nblind ourselves--is that involved in a certain metaphysical outlook,\nwhose continued growth in popularity cannot but ere long produce its\nown results in the field of practice.\n\nThe philosophy in question is intimately related to that Pantheism at\nsome of whose implications we were glancing in our last chapter; if we\nrefer to it here and subsequently by the name of Monism, under which it\nhas of late obtained a considerable vogue in this country, it must be\nunderstood that we do not mean what Dr. Ballard calls _Theo_monism, but\na far less carefully thought-out and tested theory of life, which at\nthe present time is making a successful appeal to multitudes of inexact\nthinkers.  The fundamental idea common to this school is that the\nuniverse, including our individualities or what we think such,\nconstitutes only one being, and manifests only one will, which all its\nphenomena express.  Separateness of existence, according to such a\nview--which, after all, represents only the extreme logic of\nPantheism--is, of course, a chimaera, and so, _a fortiori_, must\nseparate volition be.  The only real will--_i.e._, the will of the\nuniverse--is regarded as good and right; and since there is no other\nwill but that one, and seeing that none resists or inhibits it, it is\never being carried out, continuously operative.  {56} To call this will\neven \"prevailing\" would be a misuse of language, since there is no\nother will for it to prevail against.\n\nNow, regarded merely in the abstract, this conception might be treated\nas a harmless eccentricity or speculative aberration, and is likely to\nbe so treated by the ordinary \"practical\" man, with his contempt for\n\"theories,\" and his pathetic conviction that speculation does not\nmatter; let us, however, see what is implied in this particular\nspeculative theory.  From the primary assumption of this philosophy it\nfollows with an irresistible cogency that there is no such thing as\nreal, objective evil.  Sin, if the term be retained at all, can at most\nbe only a blunder.  Evil is only an inexact description of a lesser\ngood, or good in the making.  Indeed, properly considered--_i.e._, from\nthe monistic standpoint--evil is a mere negation, a shadow where light\nshould be; or to be quite logical, evil is that which is not--in other\nwords, there is no evil, except to deluded minds, whose business is to\nget quit of their delusion.  The one and only cosmic will being\ndeclared good, it follows that for the monist \"all's right with the\nworld,\" in a sense scarcely contemplated by Browning when he penned\nthat most dubious aphorism.  We propose briefly to show how this creed\nworks out--what is its ethical counterpart or issue--not by arguing _in\nvacuo_ what it _must_ be, but by presenting to the reader three {57}\nselected illustrations taken from the writings of as many exponents of\nthis type of Monism.\n\nIn his volume _First and Last Things_--a work which he significantly\ncalls \"a confession of faith and rule of life\"--Mr. H. G. Wells avows\nhimself a believer in the \"Being of the Species,\" and, prospectively at\nleast, in \"the eternally conscious Being of all things.\"  The\nindividual as such is merely an \"experiment of the species for the\nspecies,\" and without significance _per se_; we are \"episodes in an\nexperience greater than ourselves,\" \"incidental experiments in the\ngrowing knowledge and consciousness of the race.\"  Mr. Wells's\nfundamental act of faith is a firm belief in \"the ultimate rightness\nand significance of things,\" including \"the wheel-smashed frog on the\nroad, and the fly drowning in the milk.\"  In other words, all is just\nas it has to be; regrets, remorses and discontents exist only for the\n\"unbeliever\" in this truth, while, speaking for himself, the author\nfrankly says, \"I believe . . . that my defects and uglinesses and\nfailures, just as much as my powers and successes, are things that are\nnecessary and important.\"  \"In the last resort,\" he concludes his book,\n\"I do not care whether I am seated on a throne, or drunk, or dying in a\ngutter.  I follow my leading.  In the ultimate I know, though I cannot\nprove my knowledge in any way whatever, that everything is right, and\nall things mine.\"\n\n{58}\n\nCertainly, this is uncompromising candour; but it is also,--though Mr.\nWells, strangely enough, calls himself a believer in freewill--the most\nuncompromising Determinism conceivable.  And this Determinism follows\nquite inevitably from Mr. Wells's monistic premises--belief in a cosmic\n\"scheme\" every part of which is ultimately right.  An end in the gutter\nor on the gallows may be as necessary to that scheme's perfection as a\nlife spent in strenuous goodness.  Whatever is, is right.  It can be\nhardly necessary to point out that such a belief, consistently\nentertained, puts an end to all moral effort; we \"follow our\nleading\"--_i.e._, we do not drive, but drift.  Arguing from his own\npremises, it is absolutely vain for Mr. Wells to wax indignantly\neloquent over social abuses, as when he says:--\n\n\nI see the grimy millions who slave for industrial production; I see\nsome who are extravagant and yet contemptible creatures of luxury, and\nsome leading lives of shame and indignity; . . .  I see gamblers,\nfools, brutes, toilers, martyrs.  Their disorder of effort, the\nspectacle of futility, fills me with a passionate desire to end waste,\nto create order.  (p. 99.)\n\n\nBut why, we ask, should Mr. Wells feel this passionate desire, if all\nthe failures and uglinesses of life are \"necessary and important\"?\nHow, on this assumption, are existing social ills to be remedied--nay,\nwhy _should_ they be remedied, why should they be stigmatised as ills,\nseeing that \"everything is right\"?  Let {59} Mr. Wells once take his\nprinciples seriously enough to apply them, and personal as well as\nsocial reform is at an end.  Perhaps it may be permissible to say that\nof all forms of Determinism the most irrational is that optimistic form\nwhich deprecates discontent with things as they are as a mark of\n\"unbelief.\"\n\nMr. Wells, however, while his influence is a very considerable one,\nutters his teaching from outside the Christian Church, and very\nproperly disavows the Christian name; what must give us pause is to\nfind the monistic ethics being preached and taught by official\nexponents of the Christian religion.  What, _e.g._, can we think of a\nstatement like the following, which we quote from the columns of a\nreligious journal?\n\n\nThere are people who think it is an evidence of superior Culture to\nshow themselves pained by certain things; but it is not really that;\nthey are pained because they are not cultured enough, or in the right\nway. . .\n\n  Nothing is good or ill\n  But thinking makes it so.\n\nThey think it desirable to dislike things because they dislike them; if\nthey thought it desirable not to dislike them, they would not dislike\nthem.\n\n\nAgain, no one will accuse this writer of want of frankness; according\nto him, there is simply no such thing as objective evil--acts and\nindividuals have no moral qualities or characters, but are such as we\nthink them, and our business is so to think of them that they will not\npain us.  {60} If we only knew aright, we should not regard anything as\nbad.  If we are pained by the thought of fifty thousand hungry children\nin London elementary schools, or by the condition of Regent Street at\nnight, it is because we are not \"cultured\" enough--we have not the\nright _gnosis_.  When we reflect that anyone who consistently believes\nthat \"nothing is good or ill, but thinking makes it so,\" will\ninevitably, first or last, apply that comforting maxim to his own acts,\nwe can see in what direction the ethics of Monism--in reality a return\nto the ultra-subjectivism of the Sophists, who made man the measure of\nall things--are likely to lead men.  And yet, if the monistic\npresuppositions are valid--if the universe in all its phases expresses\nonly one will--we do not see how these conclusions can be repelled.\n\nBut it is, perhaps, our last illustration, drawn from yet another\nwriter of the same school, which will exhibit both the teaching under\ndiscussion and its practical dangers in the clearest light.  We are\ntold that--\n\n\n_There is no will that is not God's will_.  I do not mean that yours is\nnot real, or that any man's is not real, but I do mean that nothing can\nhappen to any of God's children--no matter how evil the intention of\nthe person who does it, or how seemingly meaningless the calamity that\ncauses it--which is not in some way the sacrament of God's love to us,\nand His call upon our highest energies.  In a true and real sense,\ntherefore, it is God's own doing and meant for our greater glory; . . .\nI believe in the infinitude of wisdom and love; _there is nothing else_.\n\n\n{61}\n\nThose who will take the moderate trouble of translating these words\nfrom the abstract into the concrete will need no further demonstration\nof the moral implications of this type of Monism.  \"There is no\nwill\"--not even the most brutalised or the most debauched--\"that is not\nGod's will.\"  \"Nothing can happen to any of God's children\"--say, to\nthe natives of the Congo or to a Jewish community during a Russian\n_pogrom_--but is God's call upon their highest energies: wherefore they\nought, assuredly, to be thankful to King Leopold's emissaries and the\nTsar's faithful Black Hundreds!  But let us apply this thesis to yet\nanother case, which will bring out its full character: if an English\ngirl--one of God's children--is snared away by a ruffian, under pretext\nof honest employment, to some Continental hell, then we are to\nunderstand that the physical and moral ruin which awaits the victim is\n\"in some way the sacrament of God's love\" to her--\"in a true and real\nsense it is God's own doing,\" and meant for her greater glory!  We have\nno hesitation in saying that such teaching strikes us as fraught with\ninfinite possibilities of moral harm, the more so because of the rather\nmawkish sentimentality with which it is decked out; for if any\nscoundrel is really the instrument of God's will, why should he be\nblamed for his scoundrelism?  And we observe how yet once more, by a\nglib and vapid phrase--\"I believe in the {62} infinitude of wisdom and\nlove; _there is nothing else_\"--the fact of evil has been triumphantly\ngot rid of.  In words, that is to say, but not in reality; for in\nreality there is a great deal else--sin, and shame, and remorse, and\nheartbreak, and despair; against the first of which we need to be\nwarned, in order that we may escape the rest.\n\nWe are quite prepared to be told that our anxieties are groundless,\nbecause \"no one will ever draw such inferences as these.\"  To this we\nreply, firstly, that these are the logical and legitimate inferences\nfrom the principles enunciated; and secondly, that we do not at all\nshare the particular kind of optimism which trusts that good luck will\nprevent the application of these theories to practical life.  We are\nliving in an age of wide-spread intellectual unsettlement, an age\npresenting the difficult problem of a vast half-educated public, ready\nto fall an easy prey to all manner of specious sophistries, especially\nwhen they are dressed up in the garb of a pseudo-mysticism; we must\nabove all remember that human nature is habitually prone to welcome\nwhatever will serve as an excuse for throwing off the irksome\nrestraints of moral discipline.  That is why we repeat that the one\nreal danger religion has to face to-day is the danger arising from the\nspread of a false philosophy, whose tenets are ultimately incompatible\nwith Christian morals.  The worst heresies are moral {63} heresies; and\nof the views we have been discussing we say roundly that their\nfalseness is sufficiently proved by their ethical implications.  \"A\ngood tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; therefore by their fruits ye\nshall know them.\"  Against all the insidious attempts that are made\nto-day to minimise or explain away moral evil--attempts with which we\nshall deal in greater detail at a later stage--we have to reaffirm the\nreality and exceeding sinfulness of sin; more particularly, in\ncombating the preposterous notion of man's oneness with God as\nsomething already realised, we have to insist with renewed emphasis\nthat salvation, so far from being self-understood, is a prize only to\nbe won by a hard struggle, nor shut the door upon the dread possibility\nof that prize being missed.  There are perhaps few truths to which it\nis more desirable that we should pay renewed attention than that\nexpressed in the saying, \"_When belief waxes unsound, practice becomes\nuncertain._\"  Certainly, the ethics of Monism supply a case in point.\n\n\n\n\n{64}\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nMONISM AND THE INDIVIDUAL\n\nWhen Tennyson, in _Locksley Hall_, wrote the line declaring that \"the\nindividual withers and the world is more and more,\" he might have been\ninditing a prophecy summing up those modern tendencies which have\nengaged our attention in preceding chapters.  And there are perhaps few\nmore important questions before us to-day than this--whether Tennyson's\nprophecy is to be fulfilled, whether the individual is to be allowed to\n\"wither,\" and the world to become more and more.  There are those who\nhold that such a consummation is devoutly to be wished; there are those\nwho regard any movement making in such a direction with something more\nthan suspicion.\n\nLet us say at once that in discussing the status of the individual, we\nare not referring--at least, not directly--to the struggle between\nIndividualism and Socialism.  We know that individualists express the\nfear that under a socialist _regime_ there would be an end to\nindividual initiative, while socialists retort that the chief sin of\nthe competitive system is {65} that it crushes and destroys\nindividuality; but between the contentions of these rival schools of\neconomics we are not attempting to adjudicate.  Perhaps we cannot\nbetter indicate the scope of our subject than by quoting from two\nrecent theological works, written from such widely differing points of\nview as Professor Peake's _Christianity:  Its Nature and its Truth_,\nand Professor Bousset's _The Faith of a Modern Protestant_:--\n\n\"It is only in it\"--_viz._, in Christianity--says the learned Primitive\nMethodist theologian, \"that the individual has received his true place.\nIn antiquity the worth of the individual was greatly under-estimated;\nhe was unduly subordinated to the community.  But the Christian\nreligion, by insisting on the infinite value of each human soul, and by\nasserting the greatness of its destiny, supplied an immense incentive\nto the attainment by each of the highest within reach.  The doctrine of\nthe worth of man is, to all who accept it, a powerful stimulus in the\nstruggle to a fuller and deeper life.  An interest in mankind in the\nmass is compatible with heartless indifference to the lot of\nindividuals\" (p. 88).\n\n\"The Gospel,\" declares the Goettingen modernist, \"announces a God who\nseeks and desires above all else the individual human soul.  It unites,\nin a security and closeness hitherto unknown, belief in God with the\nimportance of the individual human life.  It {66} is the religion of\nreligious individualism raised to its highest point.\" (p. 36).\n\nSuch concurrence of testimony from two such different quarters is as\nremarkable as it is significant; and this brings us to our point.  The\nquestion with which we are confronted to-day, and which our\ncivilisation must either answer aright or perish, is not whether an\nindividualist or a socialist state would be more conducive to the\nindividual's self-realisation, but whether Christianity is right or\nwrong in its doctrine of the individual's paramount importance.  The\nissue, as we shall try to show, lies between Christianity on the one\nhand and Monism on the other.  From the Christian point of view the\nindividual matters supremely; from that of Monism the beginning of\nwisdom is that the individual should recognise and acquiesce in his\nutter insignificance.\n\nAs in our last chapter we glanced at the monistic ethics, so in the\npresent one we propose to inquire briefly first into the social and\nthen into the religious implications of this theory, which it must be\nremembered is receiving a good deal of support, and meeting with a\nlarge measure of acceptance just now.  Turning, then, to the social\nside first of all, no one, of course, would say that Socialism as such\nwas monistic; on the other hand it is easy to understand the attraction\nof Socialism for those whose philosophy is Monism.  They will embrace\nthe economic teachings of Collectivism the more {67} eagerly in exact\nproportion to their root-conviction that the only thing that matters is\nthe totality of things, while the individual, _per se_, does not count\nat all.  That is the conception which underlies the Socialism of a\nwriter like Mr. Wells, who is in nothing more emphatic than in\nasserting that the individual as such has no value at all.  \"Our\nindividualities,\" he says, \"are but bubbles and clusters of foam upon\nthe great stream of the blood of the species.\"  \"The race is the drama,\nand we are the incidents.\"  \"In so far as we are individuals . . . we\nare accidental, disconnected, without significance.\"  And when we ask\nfor what we should strive and labour, if not for the good of individual\nmen and women, his answer is that we ought to work for the Species, for\nthe Race, for what he calls a great physical and mental being, to wit,\nMankind.\n\nNow we believe that this philosophy, consistently embraced, is utterly\ndevoid of the dynamic which can generate any great social reform.  The\nsmallest and forlornest actual slum baby appeals to our sympathy\nimmeasurably more than a vast, dim aggregate of indistinguishable items\ncalled the Race; for we have actually met the slum-baby, and we have\nnever met--what is more, we shall never meet--the Race.  This tendency\nto treat the individual as negligible is as futile as it is inhuman; in\nthe long run it will be found that he who loveth not his brother whom\nhe hath seen, cannot love {68} the Race which he hath not seen.  No\nmatter by how many times we multiply nothing, the result is\nstill--nothing.  If the individuals do not count, neither can the\nspecies which is made up of such individuals.  Or, if \"the Race is the\ndrama, and we are the incidents,\" it must be observed that no great and\nnoble drama can be strung together out of trivial and unmeaning\nincidents.  All the talk about Mankind as the greater being, \"the great\nand growing Being of the Species,\" \"the eternally conscious Being of\nall things,\" is only the old, thin, unsatisfying idolatry of\nPositivism.  If we wish to be social reformers in earnest we must take\ncare of the individuals, and the race will take care of itself.\n\nThat the monistic denial of all individual significance should lead to\nthe denial of a future life is only what we should expect; for if man,\nas such, does not _matter_, why should he _survive_?  On the other\nhand, the more we care for the individual, refusing to regard him\nmerely as \"an experiment of the species for the species,\" the more\nirresistibly shall we be impelled to believe that this life is not all.\nIt is the inestimable achievement of Christianity, by its insistence on\nthe infinite value of the soul, to have given the strongest impetus and\nsupport to belief in personal immortality.  That, however, is an aspect\nof our subject which demands, and will subsequently come up for,\nseparate treatment.\n\n{69}\n\nWhat, for the present, we must yet once more point out, as we did in\nthe preceding chapter, is this--that wide as is the influence of a\nnon-Christian writer like Mr. Wells, the danger of such teaching is\nintensified when it is given by those who profess Christianity.\nDoubtless, Bousset is right when he points to the closer contact\nbetween East and West as one of the causes of the growth in our midst\nof a type of religion in which \"the human ego is put on one side and\nalmost reduced to zero.\"  Doubtless, also, he is correct in saying \"the\nadherents of this kind of religion will be chiefly found in circles\nwhere people do not regard religion seriously, where they desire and\naccept religion as aesthetic enjoyment.\"  Nevertheless, the evil\nattending this type of teaching is, to our thinking, great and serious,\ndesigned to undermine selfhood and to set up a species of dry-rot at\nthe very centre.\n\nLet us again show what we mean by quoting from an actual utterance:\n\"God,\" we read, \"is supposed to be thinking more about us than about\nanything else--a rather arrogant assumption when we come to think of\nit, considering what specks of dust we are amid these myriads of stars\nand suns whirling through space like motes in a ray of light--and the\ngreat object of His solicitude is to get us individually to toe the\nmark of Christ-likeness.\"  If this view be the true one, the writer\nwent on to ask, why do questions like unemployment, the Budget, {70}\nthe uprising of nationalism in Turkey, etc., bulk so largely in our\nthought?  These topics, he says, have \"little or no relation to the\nquestion of saving the individual soul, as commonly understood.\"  How,\nhe demands, does the actual life of every day fit into \"that view of\nthe scheme of things which bids us believe that the silent God above us\nis principally anxious about just one thing, the moral recovery and\ningathering of these individual souls one by one\"?  The answer is given\nwith characteristic confidence: \"It does not fit into it at all; _if\nGod be as anxious about that as we are assured He is, He has a queer\nway of showing it_.\"\n\nHere we have a conception of man and his place in the sum of things\nfundamentally at one with that of Mr. Wells, and as utterly\nirreconcilable with that of Christianity.  Not only does the individual\nnot matter in himself; he does not even matter to God.  The idea of the\nsoul's infinite value to God is held up to derision, and so is the idea\nof God's interest in individual character; man, the atom, must not\nthink that the Creator is specially anxious for his fate, and is bidden\nto measure his insignificance against the vastness of the heavenly\nbodies; and in conclusion we are pertly told that if God really cares\nabout the individual as such, \"He has a queer way of showing it.\"  In\nthis view--the view of Monism--it is indeed true that \"the individual\nwithers, and the world is more and more.\"\n\n{71}\n\nWe say that the issue is plain; it lies between Monism and\nChristianity; if the one is true, the other must be rejected.  On which\nside shall we cast our verdict?  For a warning example we have only to\nglance at the case of Buddhism, in which, the value of human\nindividuality having been steadily lowered, \"the other main factor is\nreligion, belief in God, was likewise lost\" (Bousset).  But, turning to\na more detailed examination of the statement just quoted, it is hardly\nnecessary to discuss the astounding suggestion that man must not take\nhimself too seriously by the side of the immensities of suns and stars.\nSuch a view merely betrays a spiritual perception miles below that of\nthe Psalmist, who saw man, to all appearance a negligible speck, yet in\nreality made by the Almighty little lower than the angels, and crowned\nwith glory and honour.  Neither need we combat at length the strangely\nsuperficial notion that such questions as unemployment, the Budget,\netc., have little or no relation to that of saving the individual soul,\nas commonly understood.  If they have no relation to _that_ subject,\nthey are hardly worth considering; but the fact is that the regulation\nof industry, the distribution of wealth--these and all other questions\nderive their importance solely from the manner in which they affect\nindividual men, women and children, fitting or unfitting them for the\nlife that now is and that which is to come.  A good deal might be said\nof {72} the temper which makes fun of the idea of God's \"solicitude to\nget us individually to toe the mark of Christ-likeness\"; but we may\nleave that unhappy phrase to be its own comment.\n\nThe attitude of Christianity to our question is perfectly clear.\nChristianity, in teaching each frailest, poorest human unit to address\nGod as Father, affirms in unmistakeable accents the Eternal's personal\ninterest in and care for the individual soul, and by so doing ennobles\nevery human life that falls under the sway of the Gospel.  It is\nChristianity's master-thought that to the Father from whom all\nfatherhood is named each one of His children is personally dear, and\nthat His desire is for the salvation of each one.  To the cheap and\nugly sneer that God has a \"queer way\" of manifesting His concern for us\nas individuals, the Christian consciousness has its own answer; how, in\nany case, such a sneer could come from the same source from which we\npreviously quoted the statement that \"nothing can happen to any of\nGod's children which is not in some way the sacrament of God's love to\nus,\" we do not profess to understand.  We are not mere individual\norgan-stops, each without use or significance apart from the rest,\nwaiting for our mutual dissonances to be swallowed up in some \"music of\nthe whole,\" but members of a family, each with a place in the Parent's\nheart and thought.  Finally, to the Christian there is one last, {73}\ncrowning proof of the soul's value for God, and God's yearning for the\nsoul; that proof is Calvary.  To the Christian there is one experience\nwhich settles this problem fully and finally for him; it is the\nexperience which Paul embodied in the cry, \"He loved me, and gave\nHimself for me.\"\n\nFor Monism the individual is a mere surface ripple on an infinite\nocean, alike impermanent and impersonal; for Christianity the soul is a\nchild of the Father of all souls, loved with an everlasting love.\nBetween these two conceptions we have to choose, remembering that each\nutterly excludes the other.  There is no third alternative.\n\n\n\n\n{74}\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE DIVINE PERSONALITY\n\nWhile in our last three chapters we have been dealing with certain\ntheories which implicitly or explicitly deny the Divine Personality, and\nwhile an impersonal God can be, as we have already seen, of no value for\nreligion, there is no mistaking the fact that this very\nquestion--whether, _i.e._, it is possible and legitimate for us to think\nof God as personal--constitutes one of the most typical of modern\n\"difficulties.\"  It is probably correct to say that this difficulty, like\nothers we have reviewed, dates practically from the collapse of Deism, a\ncreed which possessed a certain hard lucidity satisfying to many for the\nvery reason that it required no very profound insight for its\nunderstanding.  That a Deity localised in a far-away heaven, seated on a\ncelestial throne and surrounded by an angelic court, should be a person,\nlike any other sovereign, presented no problem to the understanding; but\nif God was not merely transcendent but also immanent--not merely\nsomewhere but in some indefinable manner everywhere--then to predicate\npersonality of {75} such a One seemed a very paradox.  In one of\nFeuillet's novels there occurs a phrase which sums up in a few expressive\nwords a very common spiritual misadventure: the hero says, \"_J'avais vu\ndisparaitre parmi les nuages la tete de ce bon vieillard qu'on appelle\nDieu_\"--\"I had seen the head of that good old man called God disappear\namongst the clouds.\"  His naive material conception of the Eternal had\ndissolved--and dissolved into nothingness.  May we not surmise that nine\ntimes out of ten this is precisely what has happened when we hear the\nquestion asked, \"But how _can_ God be personal?\"\n\nIn by far the greater number of cases, that is to say, the problem arises\nsimply and solely from the questioner's failure to dissociate\n_personality_ from _materiality_; a \"person\" suggests to him a tangible,\nvisible, ponderable form, with arms and legs and organs of sense--and\nwhen he has reflected sufficiently to understand that such a description\ncannot apply to God, he concludes that _therefore_ God cannot be\npersonal.  The next step is usually that, having seen this visibly\noutlined Deity disappear _parmi les nuages_, he passes into absolute\nunbelief; for somehow an impersonal \"Power,\" while it may possibly\ninspire awe, cannot move us to worship, cannot present to us a moral\nimperative, cannot, above all, either claim our love or give us its\naffection.  It is really the identical difficulty, stated a little {76}\nmore pretentiously, which the \"rationalist\" author of _The Churches and\nModern Thought_ presents to us by remarking that in all our experience\nthat which makes up personality is \"connected with nerve structures,\" so\nthat we cannot attribute such a quality to \"a Being who is described to\nus as devoid of any nerve structure.\"  \"I know of no answer,\" he quaintly\nadds, \"that could be called satisfactory from a theistic standpoint.\" [1]\nIt is evident that Mr. Vivian does not remember the famous passage in the\n_Essay on Theism_ where John Stuart Mill explains that \"the relation of\nthought to a material brain is no metaphysical necessity, but simply a\nconstant co-existence within the limits of observation,\" and concludes\nthat although \"experience furnishes us with no example of any series of\nstates of consciousness\" without an accompanying brain, \"it is as easy to\nimagine such a series of states without as with this accompaniment.\" [2]\nAccording to Mill--hardly a champion of orthodoxy--there is no reason in\nthe nature of things why \"thoughts, emotions, volitions and even\nsensations\" should be necessarily dependent upon or connected with \"nerve\nstructures \"; so that Mr. Vivian's argument palpably fails.\n\nBut what about this popular notion which identifies personality with\nmateriality, and {77} therefore denies the former attribute to God?  One\nwould think that even the most circumscribed experience, or reflection on\nsuch experience, must suffice to dispose of such a misapprehension; let\nus use the most obvious of illustrations for showing where the error\nlies.  We have only to imagine one of those everyday tragedies that make\na short newspaper paragraph--say, the case of a man passing a house in\nprocess of erection, and being killed on the spot by a piece of falling\ntimber.  He is left as a material form; he is decidedly not left as a\nperson.  Something has disappeared in that fatal moment that no one had\never seen or handled--his self-consciousness, his intelligence, his will,\nhis affections, his moral sense: _with_ these he was a person; _without_\nthem, he is a corpse.  If, then, it is these unseen, intangible\nqualities, and not flesh and bones, muscle and \"nerve structure,\" that\nconstitute _human_ personality, is it not rather childish to argue that,\nunless God possesses a body of some sort, the _Divine_ Personality is a\ncontradiction in terms?  If we can validly affirm in the Deity qualities\ncorresponding to those which in human beings we call consciousness,\nintelligence, etc., we shall obviously be compelled to assign personality\nto Him; the question is, Have we sufficient grounds for making such an\naffirmation?\n\nBut before we are allowed to answer that question, we have to meet\nanother preliminary {78} objection; for it seems that we are in conflict\nwith philosophy--or, to be more exact, with a certain philosophy which,\nwhile no longer perhaps in the heyday of its influence with students,\nstill enjoys a good deal of popular vogue.  We are, of course, referring\nto the Spencerian system, in which the word \"Absolute\" is used as a\nsynonym for what we should call the Deity; but, argues the Spencerian,\nsince \"Absolute is that which exists out of all relation,\" [3] whereas\n\"even intelligence or consciousness itself is conceivable only as a\nrelation,\" it follows that \"the Absolute cannot be thought of as\nconscious.\"  But if God cannot even be thought of as conscious, how much\nless can He be thought of as personal!\n\nSuch an inference would, indeed, be irresistible if only the premises on\nwhich it rests were sound.  But is it legitimate, we ask, to identify God\nwith \"the Absolute,\" or is not this merely a way of begging the question?\n\"Absolute is that which exists out of all relation,\" we were just told,\nand such a genuine Absolute would be genuinely \"unknowable,\" because its\nvery existence could not be so much as guessed at; but the Spencerian\nAbsolute is the most certain of certainties, described by Professor\nHudson as \"the one Eternal Reality, the corner-stone of all our {79}\nknowledge\"--otherwise as \"the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all\nthings proceed.\"  But the corner-stone of all our knowledge can be such\nonly because, so far from being unknowable, it is intimately related to\nall our experience--which is tantamount to saying that it is not absolute\nat all; and again, if God be the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which\nall things proceed, that Energy must be thought of as related to all\nthings--in other words, it is the very reverse of absolute.  And hence\nthe imaginary impossibility of thinking of the Deity as conscious and\nintelligent vanishes at one stroke.  If God were really absolute, in the\nsense of the definition quoted above, it would certainly be, as Professor\nHudson says, \"from the standpoint of philosophical exactness\" quite\ninadmissible \"to speak of the Divine Will, or a Personal Creator, or an\nintelligent Governor of the universe\"; but as we have seen that this\nabsoluteness is purely fictitious, it follows that we may legitimately\ninquire whether consciousness, intelligence, will--and hence\npersonality--are predicable of God, without heeding a veto which rests on\nimaginary foundations.\n\nIt is true Professor Hudson raises two further objections; these,\nhowever, will not long detain us.  We are informed in the first place\nthat \"the further progress of thought 'must force men hereafter to drop\nthe higher anthropomorphic characters given to the First {80} Cause, as\nthey have long since dropped the lower'\"; but since our guide, a few\npages later, quotes with approval the dictum that \"unless we cease to\nthink altogether, we _must_ think anthropomorphically,\" we may be\npardoned for declining to believe that \"the further progress of thought\nmust force men hereafter\" to \"cease to think altogether.\"  Such a suicide\nof thought would furnish an odd comment upon philosophic \"progress.\"  We\nshall, of course, continue to think anthropomorphically of God; our\nthought will thus inevitably fall short of the Reality, but it will be\ntruer than if we did not think of Him at all.  Again, Divine Personality\nis declared to be a self-contradiction because\n\n\"Personality implies limitation, or it means nothing at all.  To talk of\nan Infinite Person, therefore, is to talk of something that is at once\ninfinite and finite, unconditioned and conditioned, unlimited and\nlimited--an impossibility.\"\n\nTo this plea there are, however, two answers.  The first may be made in\nthe unprejudiced words of Mr. Vivian, who observes,[4]\n\n\"We must not forget that in philosophy and theology the word 'person'\nsimply implies 'a nature endowed with consciousness,' and does not\ninvolve limits.\"\n\nBut secondly, without committing ourselves to Professor Hudson's dictum\nthat personality implies limitation, we have to point out that we are not\nconcerned to defend any inference that might be drawn from the infinity,\nin the sense {81} of the \"allness\" of God.  We do not deny, but on the\ncontrary affirm, that in the act of creation God imposes limitations upon\nHimself; so that this last obstacle also is disposed of.\n\nSo far, then, we have dealt with the _a priori_ arguments against the\nPersonality of God, and have seen why none of these--neither that from\nHis non-materiality, nor from His alleged absoluteness or\ninfinity--raises any real bar to His being thought of as personal.  We\nare now in a position to inquire positively whether there is sufficient\nground for regarding Him as conscious, intelligent and purposive; if He\npossesses these qualities, we repeat that He certainly possesses that of\npersonality.\n\nThe method by which we must proceed is obvious, and will at once occur to\nthe reader who recalls our opening chapter; the question resolves itself\nsimply into this--Are the phenomena of nature such as to indicate\nintelligence and directivity in their Cause?  We submit that\nincontrovertible proof of the _absence_ of such directive intelligence\nwould be furnished, if the world were, as a matter of fact, chaotic--if\nit disclosed neither regularity nor continuity--if, in a word, we could\nnever be sure what would happen next.  True, in such a state of things\nlife itself could not be sustained, for life is only possible in a world\nof orderly sequences and uniform laws; but seeing that as a matter of\nfact such orderly sequences and uniform laws meet us everywhere {82} in\nnature, is not the inference fairly inevitable?  Let us be quite clear on\none point: there are two ways, and two only, in which any phenomenon can\nbe accounted for--design or chance; what is not purposed must be\naccidental.  Does, then, nature impress us as the outcome of chance?  If\nwe saw a faultlessly executed mathematical diagram illustrating a\nproposition in Euclid, should we really be satisfied with the statement\nthat it represented the random pencil-strokes made by a blindfolded child\nignorant of geometry?  On the other hand, if a fretful baby is allowed to\ndivert himself by hammering the piano keys, is the result ever remotely\nakin to a tune?  We know perfectly well that we never get harmony, order,\nbeauty, rationality by accident; and there is only one other\nalternative--design, purpose, guidance.  Professor Fiske quotes a quaint\nobservation of Kepler's illustrating this very point, which we may be\nallowed to reproduce:--\n\nYesterday, when weary with writing and my mind quite dusty with\nconsidering these atoms, I was called to supper, and a salad was set\nbefore me.  \"It seems then,\" said I aloud, \"that if pewter dishes, leaves\nof lettuce, grains of salt, drops of oil and vinegar, and slices of eggs,\nhad been floating about in the air from all eternity, it might at last\nhappen by chance that there would come a salad.\"  \"Yes,\" says my wife,\n\"but not so nice and well-dressed as mine is!\"\n\nMrs. Kepler's shrewd, homely remark gives its last touch of absurdity to\nthe suggestion {83} that a world which we see to be pervaded by unfailing\nlaw has come together by sheer, incalculable accident.  Not so much as a\nsalad of respectable calibre could be accounted for upon such a theory;\nhow much less credible is it that the universe began with a cosmic dance\nof unconscious atoms whirled along by unconscious forces, and happening\nso to combine as to produce order and sequence, life and consciousness,\nwill and affection!\n\nBut not only does the universe exhibit a sublime order which is the very\ncontrary of what we can associate with the blind workings of chance; not\nonly do the circling immensities of the stars and the microscopic\nperfections of the snow-crystals alike point to a shaping and directing\nMind and Will: what nature reveals--what is implied in the very term\nevolution--is not merely order but progress.  As Fiske has it, \"Whatever\nelse may be true, the conviction is brought home to us that in all this\nendless multifariousness there is one single principle at work, that _all\nis tending towards an end that was involved in the very beginning_.\"  In\nother words, the supreme certainty brought home to us by the researches\nof modern science is that all creation is thrilled through by an\nall-encompassing Purpose.  We really ask for no more than such an\nadmission; that, in short, is our case.  We can clinch the whole argument\nwith one quiet sentence of Mr. Chesterton's: \"Where there is a purpose,\n{84} there is a person.\" If Mr. Spencer's \"Infinite and Eternal Energy,\nfrom which all things proceed\" is purposive, that is equivalent to saying\nthat God is what we mean by personal.\n\nBut ought we not to have shown first of all that He is conscious?  No,\nfor the greater includes the less, and purpose is unthinkable apart from\nconsciousness.  In saying this we are aware that a philosopher like\nEduard von Hartmann speaks of \"the wisdom of the Unconscious,\" of \"the\nmechanical devices which It employs,\" of \"the direction of the goal\nintended by the Unconscious,\" etc., etc.; but this, we are bound to say,\nis to empty words of their meaning.  To intend, to direct anything\nrequires at least that the one so doing should be conscious of what it is\nhe is doing.  And consciousness, intelligence, directivity are\nconstituents never found apart from personality.  But, we are told, \"the\nchoice lies, not between personality and something lower, but between\npersonality and something inconceivably higher.\" [5]  We reply that we\nhave already made the acquaintance of this idea of a \"super-personal\"\nDeity, and found that for all practical--_i.e._, religious--purposes the\nsuper-personal is simply the impersonal under another name.[6]  And when\nwe remember that the \"inconceivably higher than personal\" ultimate\nReality of the agnostic possesses neither {85} consciousness, nor will,\nnor intelligence, we simply fail to see how a Power lacking these\nattributes could be even personal, to say nothing of its being _more_\nthan personal.  Be this, however, as it may, the decisive fact remains\nthat we are persons, and therefore personality is the highest category\nunder which we can think; and if we, the children of the Eternal, are\nendowed with personality, it is sufficient for us to know that a cause\nmust be at least adequate to produce the effects that have flowed from\nit.  Nothing can be evolved but what was first involved.  On this ground\nalone, whatever else God may be, He is at least personal; and that is all\nwe were anxious to establish.\n\nThat is all--but it is also all-important; for it cannot be too\nemphatically insisted that without a personal God religion simply ceases\nto be.  It is a strange and delusive fancy on Professor Hudson's part,\nand that of a good many people, that \"the religious emotions\" will\nsurvive the de-ethicising, depersonalising of the Deity, and that men\nwill remain \"deeply religious\" even when it is recognised that the \"Great\nEnigma,\" the \"eternal and inscrutable energy,\" the \"ultimate Reality\"\ncannot be spoken of as \"a Personal Creator, or an intelligent Governor of\nthe universe.\"  For our own part, we find it difficult to believe that\nsuch a forecast could have been framed by anyone possessing a first-hand\nknowledge of what \"the religious {86} emotions\" are; we say with the\nutmost confidence that no such emotions can be felt towards a Power which\n\"cannot be thought of as conscious,\" let alone as benevolent or\npersonally interested in us.  We well know that we can be nothing to such\na Power--nor can It be anything to us; for a God who does not care, does\nnot count.  We cannot commune with this chill and awesome Unknown; we can\nonly pray to One who hears; we can only love One who has first loved us.\nIn the last analysis, an \"impersonal Deity\" such as one hears\noccasionally spoken of, is a mere contradiction in terms, the coinage of\nconfused and inaccurate thought.  Where the meaning of personality is so\nmuch as understood, doubt as to the Divine Personality vanishes; and\nleast of all will that truth be doubted by those who see the supreme\nrevelation of God in Jesus Christ.  He, the Incarnate Son, has shown us,\nnot a Power but a Person--the Person of the Father--and, to-day as of\nold, \"it sufficeth us.\"\n\n\n\n[1] _The Churches and Modern Thought_, by Philip Vivian, p. 231.\n\n[2] _Three Essays on Religion_, R.P.A. reprint, p. 85.\n\n[3] This and subsequent quotations are taken from pp. 108-119 of Prof.\nHudson's _Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer_.\n\n[4] Op. cit., p. 231.\n\n[5] Hudson, _op. cit._, p. 116.\n\n[6] _Supra_, p. 46.\n\n\n\n\n{87}\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nEVIL _versus_ DIVINE GOODNESS\n\nThat the renewed emphasis upon the Divine immanence must have for one\nof its effects that of raising the problem of evil afresh, and in a\nparticularly acute form, will be obvious to anyone who has thought out\nfor himself the implications of that doctrine.  Dark and pressing\nenough before, this particular problem has, in appearance at least,\nbeen both complicated and accentuated by the displacement of Deism.\nIf, as we have argued on a previous occasion, there is a certain causal\nconnection between Deism and a somewhat sombre outlook upon the world,\non the other hand the existence of evil seemed to fit in better with a\nview of God which represented Him as outside the universe than with one\nwhich insists upon His indwelling in creation.  If the earth was the\nscene and playground of undivine agencies which work their will while\nthe Divine control is withdrawn, then many things became comparatively\neasy of comprehension; indeed, there was a certain consolation in the\nthought that--\n\n  All the things that had been so wrong\n  After all would not last for long,\n\n{88} but that ultimately God would resume the supreme control He had\ntemporarily abandoned, while the Power of darkness would be bound and\ncast into the abyss.  If, however, we must think of Him as omnipresent\nand for that reason directly and uninterruptedly cognisant of all, then\nthe plain man can only ask himself with a deepening wonder why an\nall-good and unimaginably powerful Being should permit evils of every\ndescription to lay waste His own creation.  \"No one can enter into the\nhouse of the strong, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the\nstrong\"; and since a direct overpowering of God by Satan is out of the\nquestion, is not the assumption to which we are driven this--that the\nStrong One is absent while His goods are being spoiled, and that it is\nthis very absence of which the spoiler has taken advantage?  Somehow,\nwe feel, if He were really present--as present as the doctrine of\nimmanence would have us believe--He would actively assert Himself\nagainst wrongs and abuses; and when we think of the blood and tears\nthat are shed the world over as the result of disordered desire,\nindustrial greed and political misrule, we find it difficult not to\necho the words of psalmist and prophet, \"Why standest Thou afar off, O\nLord?  Why hidest Thou Thyself in times of trouble?\"  \"Verily Thou art\na God that hidest Thyself.\"\n\nIn saying this we do not suggest that such an attempt to explain the\nphenomena of evil {89} by God's supposed absence from the world is\ndefensible; we do say that the belief in His all-encompassing nearness\nmakes those phenomena even more difficult of explanation than they were\nbefore.  The devout deist could always comfort himself with the thought\nthat, however mysterious God's standing afar off might be, by and by,\nwhen He drew nigh again, He would deal out even-handed justice to all;\nbut such comfort is not open to those who explicitly deny God's\nremoteness, but on the contrary assert that He is the Presence from\nwhich there is no escaping.  And the fact of evil, physical and moral,\nis precisely the chief and most fruitful source of religious\nscepticism; it is not the abstract question whether there is a God, but\nthe practical and insistent problem whether the Divine goodness can be\nreconciled with the facts of life and experience, that is agitating\nmen's minds, and sways their decision for or against religion.\n\nEveryone knows that this is what Mr. Mallock some time ago called \"the\ncrux of Theism\"; that \"crux,\" to use his own language, is not \"the\nexistence of intelligent purpose in the universe,\" which may be freely\nconceded, but whether the processes of nature are or are not consistent\nwith \"a God possessing the character which it is the essence of Theism\nto attribute to Him, and which alone could render Him an object of\nreligion, or even of interest, to mankind.\"  Sometimes in accents of\nwistful {90} wonder, sometimes in tones of revolt and defiant unbelief,\nthe question is asked:--Why does God allow dire calamity, painful\ndisease, earthquakes and shipwrecks, and accidents of the mine?  Why\ndoes He permit war, or vivisection, or poverty, or vice--in fact any of\n\"the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to\"?\nWe should stop these things if we could; why does not He?  One is\nreminded of Mr. William Watson's passionate arraignment of the Powers\nof Europe at the time of the Armenian massacres:--\n\n  Yea, if ye could not, though ye would, lift hand--\n  Ye halting leaders--to abridge Hell's reign. . .\n  If such your plight, most hapless ye of men!\n  _But if ye could and would not_, oh, what plea,\n  Think ye, shall stead you at your trial, when\n  The thundercloud of witnesses shall loom\n  At the Assizes of Eternity?\n\nThe application of these burning lines is painfully obvious.  It would\nbe a positive relief were it thinkable that the Eternal would, but\ncannot, stem\n\n          the flood that rolls\n  Hoarser with anguish as the ages roll;\n\nor if one might, with a modern novelist, compare the case to that of \"a\npractitioner doing his best for a wilful patient, with poor appliances\nand indifferent nursing.\"  _But if He could and will not--oh, what\nplea?_\n\nWhat frankly appals men and freezes the worshipful instinct in their\nhearts is the {91} apparent Divine indifference, the silence of God, in\nthe presence of so much human wretchedness.  If one could only feel\nthat He cared for and sympathised with His suffering creatures, it\nwould be a help, like the sympathetic pressure of the hand from a\nfriend, which does not lessen the actual calamity that may have\nbefallen us, but makes it easier to bear; but an _indifferent_ God is\nequivalent to no God at all--or, as we have previously expressed it, a\nGod who does not care, does not count.  The mere sense that He was\nsorry for us would lighten the stroke of fate which He had not been\nable to avert; but if the truth is that He might have averted it by the\nsimple exercise of His will, but refused to do so, coldly looking on at\nour grief--not from afar, but close by--then we can only say that no\nGod at all were better than that.  It seems, then, as though, in order\nto escape from palpable inconsistency between theory and fact, we\nshould have to make a surrender either of His immanence, or His\nomnipotence, or His benevolence, or the reality of evil.\n\nTo surrender the Divine immanence will not really solve our problem.\nNear or far, closer to us than breathing or dwelling beyond the\nfurthest star, God is still the Author of our being, the Framer of the\nworld and all that therein is, the Cause without which there would have\nbeen no effects.  If, after creating the world, He withdrew from it to\nan inconceivable {92} distance, it is none the less His handiwork; if\nit is in and through His absence that the cosmic mechanism has got out\nof gear, it is yet He who willed to be so absent, well knowing what\nresults would supervene; if a power other than He and hostile to Him\nhas usurped the place and title of Prince of this world, such\nusurpation would have been impossible but for His acquiescence, and\npersonified Evil, playing with human happiness, would still be His\nlicensed agent.  Evidently, the solution of which we are in search does\nnot lie along that way.\n\nWe turn, therefore, to the second possible explanation, strongly put\nforward by Mill, according to whom natural theology points to God as \"a\nBeing of great but limited power.\"\n\n\nThose who have been strengthened in goodness by relying on the\nsympathising support of a powerful and good Governor of the world (he\nsays) have, I am satisfied, never really believed that Governor to be,\nin the strict sense of the term, omnipotent.  They have always saved\nHis goodness at the expense of His power.  They have believed . . .\nthat the world is inevitably imperfect, contrary to His intention.[1]\n\n\nTo the question, \"Of what nature is the limitation of His power?\" he\nreturns the tentative answer that it\n\n\nprobably results either from the qualities of the material--the\nsubstances and forces of which the universe is composed not admitting\nof any arrangements by which His purposes could be more completely\nfulfilled; or else, the purposes might have been more fully attained,\nbut the Creator did not know how to do it; creative {93} skill,\nwonderful as it is, was not sufficiently perfect to accomplish His\npurposes more thoroughly.[2]\n\n\nSuch an answer, we need scarcely say, could only have been given by a\nthinker who had grown up in the intellectual atmosphere of Deism; the\nDeity which he contemplates is One who works upon the world purely _ab\nextra_, who cannot be spoken of as the Creator, except by courtesy; in\nreality He merely shapes and adapts materials over which He has only an\nincomplete control, and which, therefore, so far from having been\ncalled into being by Him, must be thought of as existing independently\nof Him.  Had He really _created_ the raw material from which He was to\nframe the universe, He would of course have created some medium\nperfectly plastic to His hand and adapted to His purposes; but if He\nmerely operates on matter from without, finding it stubborn and\nunamenable, He is only a secondary Deity or Demiurge, and we have still\nto answer the question, What is that real First Cause, the _Urgott_ who\ncreated the _Urstoff_, matter in its most elementary form, and endowed\nit with qualities some of which were destined to serve, while others\nresisted and frustrated, the sub-Divinity's intentions?\n\nClearly, this notion also will not do; but while we may reject Mill's\ntheory as to the _nature_ of the limitations of Divine power, there\n{94} is distinct force in his shrewd contention that religious people\ngenerally--professions to the contrary notwithstanding--have never\nreally believed God to be, in the strict sense of the term, omnipotent.\nThis contention we believe, indeed, to be almost self-evidently true;\nfor on the contrary supposition nothing can happen contrary to God's\nwill--all things and beings would necessarily be carrying out that\nwill, and sin, _e.g._, would become an utterly meaningless term.  But\nif omnipotence is limited--which sounds, we admit, a contradiction in\nterms--we ask once more, In what way and by whom?  To that question we\nhave no other reply than the one given in our first chapter, _viz._,\nthat when we predicate limitation of the Deity, we must mean\nself-limitation.  In creating the universe, we said, God made a\ndistinction between His creation and Himself, and to that extent\nlimited His Being--for the universe is not identical with God; we now\nadd that in endowing man with an existence related to, but distinct\nfrom, His own, He limited not only His infinite Being, but also His\ninfinite Power, delegating some portion thereof to us--for man's will\nis not identical with God's will, but capable of resisting, though also\ncapable of co-operating with it.  Without such individual initiative,\nwithout such an individual faculty of choosing between alternatives of\naction, man could never have been a moral agent; but moral liberty to\nchoose and act aright or amiss implies also {95} moral responsibility\nfor such choice on the part of the chooser.\n\nThis neglected truth of God's self-limitation of His power needs to be\nfar more explicitly avowed than has generally been the case.  Only so\nshall we get clear of the confusion and uncertainty with which the\nsubject of human freedom is so largely surrounded; only so shall we be\nenabled to place the burden of responsibility for sin, the cause of so\nimmense a proportion of the world's suffering, upon the right\nshoulders--_i.e._, man's, not God's.  It is urgently necessary to\ndisperse the common fallacy according to which God, being the Author of\nall, is the causative Agent answerable for all the happenings in His\nuniverse, for all human pain and all human sin.  Where freedom is,\n_there_ is responsibility.  For let us bring the matter down from the\nabstract to the concrete: if a dreadful railway accident is caused\nthrough the momentary mental lapse of a signalman who has been\novertaxed by excessive working hours, how is the responsibility God's?\nIt obviously belongs to those who imposed a task involving the safety\nof human lives on a man who was not in a fit condition to fulfil such a\nduty.  If an explosion in a coal-mine, accompanied by terrible loss of\nlife, is caused through some miner striking a match, or carrying a\nnaked light, in defiance of well-known regulations of safety, how is\nGod responsible?  He has endowed us with intelligence whereby to {96}\ndiscover His laws, and with freedom to obey or disobey them: the use or\nmisuse of that freedom rests with ourselves.\n\nBut now it may be asked--Was it the act of a benevolent Deity to\nentrust this terribly two-edged weapon of liberty to our unskilful\nhands, in which it was bound to work so vast an amount of injury?  And\nthis opens up the larger and more general question, Must we, in view of\nthe facts of life, surrender the idea of the Divine benevolence?  It is\nquite true that the evidence of purpose discernible in the whole\nstructure of the universe proclaims the Deity to be personal; but, as\nMr. Mallock says, \"the theistic doctrine of God is not a doctrine that\nthe supreme mind acts with purpose, but a doctrine that it acts with\npurpose of a highly specialised kind\"--_viz._, _benevolent_ purpose.\n\nLet us once more state the problem in the partial but very pertinent\nform in which it arises in connection with man's faculty of freedom.\nTo bestow upon His creatures a gift which He must have known they would\nuse in such a manner as to work infinite harm to themselves and to each\nother, seems _prima facie_ no more compatible with kindly intentions\nthan it would be to leave children to play with sharp tools, loaded\nfirearms and deadly poisons; since disaster was bound to ensue from\nsuch a course, does not responsibility for the disaster rest with the\none who deliberately provided the {97} elements for it?  But such a\ncomparison, while superficially plausible, upon reflection is seen to\nbe beside the mark.  We really cannot plead such inexperience of right\nand wrong, such ignorance of moral safety and moral danger, as would\nfurnish a true parallel between playing with temptation and playing\nwith cyanide of potassium.  In setting before us \"life and good, and\ndeath and evil,\" God has as distinctly placed within our hearts the\nmoral intuition which, says, \"Therefore choose life.\"  But why, the\nquestioner proceeds, have made sin even possible?  Because, we answer,\nnot to have done so would have made morality impossible.  It cannot be\ntoo often, or too plainly, pointed out that just as the only\nalternative to purpose is chance, so the only alternative to liberty is\nnecessity.  That is to say, God could no doubt have made us automata\ninstead of free agents; but even He could not have made us free to\n_choose_ the right, yet not free to choose its contrary.  Choice that\nis not willed is not choice at all; goodness by compulsion is not\ngoodness, but merely correctitude--the behaviour of a skilfully-devised\nmechanism, but possessing no _moral_ quality whatever.  We are not at\npresent concerned with the view of those who maintain that men are _de\nfacto_ no more than such \"cunning casts in clay\" a contention which\nwill occupy us at a later stage; we merely state the commonplace that\nin making us free God Himself could not also {98} make us impeccable,\ninsusceptible to temptation, immune against the possibility of sin.\n\nThe real question, then, shapes itself as follows: Can we discern the\nnature of the purpose which expresses itself in the bestowal of this\ngift of freedom?  Stated in that form, we see that the question has\nalready been answered by implication; for if there could be no morality\nwithout liberty, it is fair to make the inference that the very object\nof God in allowing us to choose between alternatives of conduct was to\nmake morality so much as possible.  Was that a good and beneficent\nobject?  We submit that even those who impeach the Deity for opening\nthe door to sin would on second thoughts confess that morally free--and\ntherefore peccable--beings stand on a higher level than marionettes,\nhowever faultlessly contrived to perform certain evolutions.  The truth\nof the matter is set forth with poetic insight in Andersen's story of\nthe Nightingale--the immeasurable difference between the artificial\nbird and the real songster, whose melodious raptures somehow touched a\nchord in the listener which all the nicely-calculated trills and\ncadences of the ingenious mechanical toy failed to set in motion.  In\nlike manner we repeat that the power to determine his own course raises\nman to a plane incomparably higher than he could have occupied as an\nautomaton.  The same faculty of free choice which in its abuse makes\nthe sinner, in its right {99} exercise furnishes forth the saint.  All\nthat we mean by moral progress, by \"the steady gain of man,\" his rise\nto more exalted ideals, his conquest of baser appetites--all that makes\nthe history of the race a thrilling and uplifting drama--is bound up\nwith his possession of liberty; it is this supreme gift which makes him\n\"a little lower than the angels,\" and \"crowns him with glory and\nhonour.\"  Alone of all earthly beings, man is not only an effect but a\ncause; his freedom--not unlimited but quite real within its not\ninelastic confines--is the noblest of all his faculties, even though\nfor that very reason it is capable of being most ignobly perverted.\nWhat its bestowal tells us is that God does not call us into servitude,\nbut to that service which is perfect freedom; He might have made us His\nplaythings, as Plato suggested,[3] but by endowing us with the power to\nchoose for ourselves He has made us His potential fellow-workers.  May\nwe not ask--Who, after all, would prefer the safety of automatism to\nthe glory of this Divine adventure?\n\nIn all this we are not shutting our eyes to what is involved in the\nmisuse of liberty--the dread nature of wilful sin and its ghastly\nharvest of wrecked and ruined lives; we do not say that the price of\nfreedom is not a heavy {100} one, nor do we pretend that the subject is\nfree from painful mystery.  It could not be otherwise; that we, with\nour limited vision and circumscribed understanding, should be able to\nsolve that mystery with any completeness, is not even to be imagined.\nNevertheless, we may claim that we have at least obtained a glimpse of\nthe purpose of God in conferring upon the race this fateful power; for\nthis and no other was the appointed means by which man was to ascend to\nhis true place as a moral and spiritual being.  If we can admit that\npurpose to be in harmony with the Divine benevolence, we may the more\nhopefully turn to other aspects of our problem.\n\n\n\n[1] _Three Essays on Religion_, p. 22.\n\n[2] _Ibid_, p. 79.\n\n[3] _The Laws_, vii, 803: [Greek] \"Theou ti paignion memechanmenon.\"\nCompare also Browning's unhappy phrase, \"God, whose puppets, best and\nworst, are we.\"\n\n\n\n\n{101}\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nEVIL _versus_ DIVINE GOODNESS (_Continued_)\n\nThere is probably no more serious aspect of the popular philosophy\nwhich declares so confidently, \"There is no will that is not God's\nwill,\" than that, while professing to be a Gospel of sweetness and\nlight, it in reality plunges us into the very depths of pessimism by\nmaking God Himself \"ultimately responsible for all the evil and\nsuffering in the world.\"  From such a position, from such premises as\nthese, there is only one step to such conclusions as have been actually\ndrawn:--\n\n\nIt is His world, remember; He made it, and He is omnipotent. . .  If\ncreation does not please the Creator, why did He not make it better?\nIf it is wayward and intractable, it can be no more than He expected,\nor ought to have expected.  Wherein consists His right to punish us for\nour transgressions?  Suppose we challenge it; what will He say in\ndefence?\n\n\nWe may shrink with distaste from such wild and whirling words; but if\nit be true that \"there is no will that is not God's will\"--if whatever\ntakes place in the universe expresses that almighty will--they are as\nrational in their very vehemence as Omar's lines are rational in their\nmelancholy:--\n\n{102}\n\n  O Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin\n  Beset the Road I was to wander in,\n    Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round\n  Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!\n\n  O Thou, who man of baser Earth didst make,\n  And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:\n    For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man\n  Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!\n\n\nIt is only when we clearly recognise that man is other than a mere\nphase or mode of the one Eternal Being; that he has been endowed with\nindividual existence and individual will, and therefore with individual\nresponsibility--and that for the express purpose of realising his\nhighest potentialities: it is only when we accept such a reading of the\nfacts as this that we escape from that worst of nightmares which\nreaches its climax in hurling its foolish defiance at the Most High,\nchallenging His right to punish the instruments of His own will, those\n\"helpless pieces of the game He plays,\" impotent items in that unending\nspectacle--\n\n  Which for the pastime of Eternity\n  He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.\n\n\nBut if it is true that God bestowed freedom upon us because only as\nfree agents could we learn to love and do the right for its own sake;\nif it is true that the struggle which we have to wage against our lower\nimpulses has the wholly benevolent object of enabling us to achieve the\nglory of a perfected character, it has also to be borne in mind that\nunder no {103} circumstances can character be conceived otherwise than\nas the \"result\" of growth.  That is to say, God Himself could not call\nmoral perfection into being ready-made, by a mere _fiat_, and that for\nthe same reason which precludes omnipotence itself from making two\nstraight lines to enclose a space, _i.e._, because the idea involves a\nself-contradiction.  So true is this that we read even of our Saviour\nthat \"though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which\nHe suffered,\" and in this manner was \"made perfect.\"  Character in its\nvery definition is the result of many deliberate exercises of a free\nwill; and if the evolution of character was an object dearer to God\nthan the highest mechanical or animal perfection, that object could\nhave been secured in no other way than by this particular endowment.\n\nAnd here we shall also find the reply to the very natural inquiry why\nGod does not, as He might, intervene or frustrate the evil designs of\nwrong-doers.  Why does a good God allow His intentions to be set at\ndefiance by those whom the prophet described as drawing iniquity with\ncords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope?  It would not\nmatter so much, we sometimes bitterly reflect, if the sinner injured\nonly himself by his wickedness; but how often are the innocent made to\nsuffer by the devices of the unscrupulous and selfish!  Why, we repeat,\nthis strange non-intervention of the Most High on behalf of His own\ncause?  {104} On this it must be remarked in the first place that those\nwho accept God's transcendence will be careful not to rule out _a\npriori_ the possibility of such Divine action as, regarded from our\npoint of view, would have to be described as intervention; the question\nwhether such action has ever taken place, is a question of fact, and\nthe view that at particular junctures God has thus actively\n\"intervened\" is at any rate capable of being strongly argued.  But\nadmitting, as we think we must, that ordinary life does not show any\ninstances of such supernatural interposition--that a reckless financier\nis allowed to enrich himself by cornering the wheat supply and sending\nup the price of the people's bread; that a band of reactionaries may\narrest the course of reform and plunge a country back into darkness;\nthat a beneficent act of the legislature may be defeated by greedy\ncunning--must we despair of solving the general problem which such\ncases suggest?\n\nWe think, on the contrary, that the explanation may be legitimately\nsought in what we conceive to have been the Divine intention in making\nman free; that intention, the making of character, would obviously\nsuffer defeat by God throwing His weight--if we may use such a\nphrase--into this scale as against that, furthering here and checking\nthere, for character, as we just said, can only result from the free\nexercise and interplay of will with will.  We may well imagine God's\nmode of action to {105} resemble that of a human parent who entrusts a\ngrowing child with a growing measure of liberty and responsibility,\nwell knowing that in the use of it he will have many a slip and\nstumble, and occasionally hurt himself; such a parent will carefully\nrefrain from interference, preferring that the child should learn his\nown lessons from his own mistakes, well knowing that we profit only by\nthe experience for which we ourselves have paid.  No one will, of\ncourse, pretend that such a reconciliation of the facts of sin with the\naxiom or intuition of Divine all-goodness is other than incomplete; we\nmerely urge that, having regard to the magnitude and the complexity of\nthe subject it could not be otherwise.  A theory, without accounting\nfor all the facts, may be true so far as it goes, correctly indicating\nthe way which, if we could pursue it further, would lead us into more\nand fuller truth.  No doubt, when that which is perfect is come, that\nwhich is in part will be done away; but pending the advent of a\ncomplete explanation, a partial one is not without all value.\n\nIndeed, the very inadequacy of our instruments, resulting in that\nincompleteness of which we just spoke, should once more suggest a\nreflection which, while in no wise original or startling, is specially\nrelevant to the subject under discussion: for if God's knowledge\nnecessarily and immeasurably transcends ours, if He knows _more_ than\nwe, does it not follow {106} with equal certainty that He knows\n_better_?  Granted that we do not understand how this or that\ndispensation of Providence fits in with the general belief in His\nperfect goodness, our failure to understand no more disproves that\ngoodness than the similar failure of a child to comprehend why such and\nsuch irksome tasks are imposed upon him by his parent, disproves the\nwisdom and goodness which prompt the parent's act.  The child _cannot_\nunderstand; but where the relations are at all normal he acquiesces,\nbeing on general grounds convinced that the parental commands aim at\nhis welfare, and that his parents, after all, know better than he.  Is\nthe application so far to seek?\n\nIn the second place--turning now from the subject of sin to that of\nevil generally--it may be worth while to remind ourselves of a fact\nwhich seems to be forgotten by some of the impetuous arraigners of the\nDeity, _viz._, that, after all, the problem is not a new one, which\nthey have suddenly discovered by dint of superior sagacity.  What we\nmean is this: the problem of evil as such is of anything but an\nabstruse or remote nature, nor one requiring unusual philosophical\npenetration to bring to light; on the contrary, pain and sorrow,\nprivation, adversity, death--these are experiences that have come\nwithin the cognisance of all.  If, then, the facts are neither so\nremote nor so inconsiderable that men could have simply {107} forgotten\nto take them into account in framing their estimates of the Divine\ncharacter, how is it, we ask, that they have arrived at and clung to\nthe belief in the benevolence of God at all?  If the proof to the\ncontrary was so overpowering, why, as a matter of fact, has it _not_\noverpowered them?  Why should an unknown Hebrew singer have given\nexpression to this extraordinary sentiment, \"Though He slay me, yet\nwill I trust in Him\"--and why has that sentiment been re-echoed by\nmillions of men and women acquainted with grief and affliction?  The\nearly Christians did not exactly live lives of luxury or even security,\nsheltered from contact with tragedy and horror; yet the keynote of\nprimitive Christianity is the note of joy, while the background of\nearly Christian experience is a radiant conviction of the Divine\nbenevolence.  And when we remember that the same holds true of so many\neminently spiritual souls in all ages, who have combined a keen\nsensitiveness to evil and suffering of every kind with an unshakeable\ntrust in the lovingkindness of God, we shall scarcely accuse all this\ncloud of witnesses of having simply drugged themselves and refused to\naccept the evidence of their own senses.  If men and women suffering\nfrom anything rather than moral blindness or moral anaesthesia could,\nand can, nevertheless believe with all their hearts in the Divine\nFatherhood, is not such a recurring circumstance significant in itself?\n{108} Evidently, granting all the facts, more than one reading of the\nfacts is possible; not cloistered mystics, or anchorites withdrawn from\nthe world, but heroes engaged in fighting its ills, have steadfastly\nproclaimed that God is good; is it an altogether unreasonable\nhypothesis that their faith, if it outsoars ours, may be the result of\na deeper insight?\n\nAnd this, in turn, suggests another thought, simple enough in itself,\nyet not always borne in mind in connection with this particular\ntheme--_viz._, that we are never dealing with facts _per se_, but with\nfacts _plus_ our interpretation of them, which may be right or wrong,\nbut which, right or wrong, helps to decide in a very large measure what\nthe facts themselves shall mean to us.  Our attitude towards the events\nwhich befall us makes all the difference.  If men have been ruined by\nsuccess, it is as true that men have been made by failure.  If men have\ndeteriorated through ease and plenty, men have been stimulated to\neffort through hardship and poverty.  In a word, if there is much in\nthe burden, there is as much in the shouldering.  But for Dante's\nconsecration of sorrow, the world would have lost the _Commedia\nDivina_.  But for a painful and permanently disabling accident, the\nEnglish Labour Movement would not have had one of its principal leaders\nin Mr. Philip Snowden.  And as for the influence of outward events and\nenvironment generally, Mr. Chesterton may exaggerate in {109}\nsuggesting that everything good has been snatched from some\ncatastrophe, but he is certainly right when he says that \"the most\ndangerous environment of all is the commodious environment.\"  On the\nother hand, of an environment the reverse of commodious, it has been\nobserved:--\n\n\nLogic would seem to say, \"If God brings great pain on a man, it must\nmake the man revolt against God.\"  But observation of facts compels us\nto say, \"No, on the contrary, nothing exercises so extraordinary an\ninfluence in making men love God as the suffering of great pain at His\nhands.\"  Scientific thinking deals with facts as they are, not with _a\npriori_ notions of what we should expect.  And in this matter, the fact\nas it is, is that goodness is evolved from pain more richly than from\nany other source.[1]\n\n\nWe may think such a statement too absolute, and point to cases where\nthe effect of physical suffering has been altogether different; but if\nit is true that in certain well-authenticated and not merely\nexceptional instances such visitations have resulted in strengthened\nfaith and heightened goodness, our main contention is proved, namely,\nthat the attitude of the individual himself towards the events of his\nlife has much to do with determining what those events are to mean to\nhim.  Instead of \"Was the gift good?\" we should more often ask, \"Was\nthe recipient wise?\"  Pain is pain, and disaster is disaster; but the\nspirit in which we meet them matters immensely.\n\n{110}\n\nBut now we are confronted with a more fundamental question: Could not\nGod have obviated the phenomenon of pain altogether?  Could He not have\nmade us incapable of feeling any but pleasant sensations?  Mill, who in\nhis essay on _Nature_ devotes some--for him--almost vehement pages to\nthis subject, reaches the conclusion that \"the only admissible moral\ntheory of Creation is that the Principle of Good _cannot_ at once and\naltogether subdue the powers of evil\" [2]; and in dealing with the same\ntopic in the essay on _Theism_, while admitting that \"appearances do\nnot indicate that contrivance was brought into play purposely to\nproduce pain,\" he holds to the view that its very existence shows the\npower of God to be limited _ab extra_, by the material conditions under\nwhich He works:--\n\n\nThe author of the machinery is no doubt accountable for having made it\nsusceptible to pain; but this may have been a necessary condition of\nits susceptibility to pleasure; a supposition which avails nothing on\nthe theory of an omnipotent Creator, but is an extremely probable one\nin the case of a Contriver working under the limitation of inexorable\nlaws and indestructible properties of matter.[3]\n\nSuch a view of the case, as we have already said in our previous\nchapter, is purely deistic; but we must now proceed to point out, with\ngreat respect for so great an intellect as Mill's, that the supposition\nwhich, he says, \"avails nothing {111} on the theory of an omnipotent\nCreator\"--_viz._, that susceptibility to pleasure involves\nsusceptibility to pain--seems to us to fit and cover the facts\nprecisely; for a capacity for pain and a capacity for pleasure are not\ntwo different things which could conceivably exist apart from each\nother, but are only different manifestations of one and the same\ncapacity, _viz._, for experiencing sensations of any kind whatsoever.\nWe could no more be capable of feeling pleasure, while _in_capable of\nfeeling pain, than we could be sensitive to musical harmonies, while\n_in_sensible to musical discords; besides which, monotony of sensation\nannihilates sensation.  On this point we may invoke against the\npre-evolutionist Mill a modern scientific authority like Professor\nFiske, who expresses himself to the effect that \"without the element of\nantagonism there could be no consciousness, and therefore no world.\"\n\"It is not a superficial but a fundamental truth,\" he observes, \"that\nif there were no colour but red, it would be exactly the same thing as\nif there were no colour at all. . .  If our ears were to be filled with\none monotonous roar of Niagara, unbroken by alien sounds, the effect\nupon consciousness would be absolute silence.  If our palates had never\ncome in contact with any tasteful thing save sugar, we should know no\nmore of sweetness than of bitterness.  If we had never felt physical\npain, we could not recognise physical pleasure.  For {112} want of the\ncontrasted background, its pleasurableness would cease to exist. . .\nWe are thus brought to a striking conclusion, the essential soundness\nof which cannot be gainsaid.  _In a happy world there must be sorrow\nand pain._\" [4]  And this necessity, we would add, does not follow from\nGod's failure to overcome any \"inexorable laws and indestructible\nproperties _of matter_,\" but is implied in the inexorable laws _of\nthought_--in that eternal right reason which makes it impossible for\nDeity to do what is self-contradictory or absurd.\n\nBut if the necessity of pain be thus admitted--a most important\nadmission--we may now take a step further ahead.  Even Mill, as we just\nsaw, expressly disclaimed the notion of attributing physical evil to\nmalign intention on the Creator's part; what separates us from Mill is\nthat in our view the laws of nature, in inflicting pain, do not act\nindependently of God, but are His laws.  Do those, it may be asked, who\nallege His \"indifference\" in not interfering with the operation of the\nforces of nature when they injure us, frame a very clear notion of the\nway in which they think that God should, or might, manifest His\n\"interest\"?  On reflection it will be found that what they ask for--the\nonly possible alternative to an unbroken natural order--is such\nconstant miraculous interposition as would make that order\nnon-existent.  But assuming that there {113} were no regular sequence\nor uniformity to speak of--if we never knew whether the course of\nnature might not be interrupted at any moment on somebody's\nbehalf--should we really be so much better off?  Would humanity be\nhappier if chaos was substituted for order?  Without seeking to\nmitigate the suffering entailed by the unhindered action of nature's\nforces, it is still certain that the sheer confusion of a world in\nwhich law had been abrogated would be infinitely worse.  Indeed, this\nis to understate the case; for the fact is that in such a world all the\nactivities of life would be completely paralysed, and hence life\nitself, as we have already had occasion to point out, could not be\ncarried on.  But if the reign of natural law thus represents the only\nset of conditions under which life is even possible; and if at the same\ntime this law, which operates all the time and never relaxes its hold,\nis the expression of the will of God, how can we charge Him with\nindifference?  The truth is, on the contrary, that He is exercising His\ncare, not intermittently, by performing a miracle whenever things go\nwrong, but continually, and without any interruption whatsoever.  Were\nHis law other than steadfast, were there occasional or frequent\ndepartures from it, were it possible to defy nature with impunity just\nnow and again, the results of such irregular action would be disastrous\nin the extreme; it is because His will is constant, and His decrees\nwithout {114} variableness, that we are able to learn and obey them,\nand by obeying to master nature.\n\n\"But, after all, He made the laws, and He could have made different\nones.\"  Certainly; but a moment's reflection will show that He could\nnot have made laws of _any_ kind, disobedience to which would have had\nthe same consequences as obedience.  He might--for all we can say to\nthe contrary--have made strychnine nutritious, and wheat deadly to us;\nbut even in that case an indulgence in wheat would have brought about\nthe unpleasant effects at present associated with an overdose of _nux\nvomica_.  He might have made a raw, damp atmosphere, with easterly\nwinds, the most conducive to health; but even then it would have been\nrash to take up one's residence in a warm, dry climate.  Pain is an\nindication that the processes of life are suffering some more or less\nserious disturbance; given, therefore, any set of natural laws, and the\nnecessity of obeying them as the condition of life itself, and we see\nthat disobedience to them would always and inevitably mean pain.  We\nrepeat that God might have made different laws; but whatever they were,\ntheir breach must have recoiled upon the breaker.\n\nYet even if reflections like these demonstrate to us the necessity for\npain, we are still left to face those greater calamities and disasters\nwhich sweep away human lives by the hundred and thousand, catastrophes\nlike the Sicilian {115} earthquakes, that are marked by an appalling\nwantonness of destruction; must not such events as these also be\nattributed to God, and how are they to be reconciled with His alleged\nbenevolence?  Certainly, no one would attempt to minimise the horrors\nof the Sicilian tragedy; the human mind is overwhelmed by the\nsuddenness, no less than the magnitude, of an upheaval of nature\nresulting in the blotting-out of whole flourishing communities.  And\nyet we venture to say, paradoxical though it sounds, that it is, partly\nat least, owing to a certain lack of imagination that such an event\nlooms so immense in our thoughts.  Most of us do not make the ordinance\nof death in itself an accusation against the Most High; we are not\nspecially shocked or outraged by the thought that the whole population\nof the globe dies out within quite a moderate span of time, nor even by\nthe reflection that several hundred thousand persons die every year in\nthe United Kingdom alone.  We know quite well that every one of those\nwho perished in Messina must have paid his debt to nature in, at most,\na few decades.  So, then, the whole point in our arraignment is\nthis--It would not have been cruel had these deaths been spread over a\nperiod of time, but it is cruel that they should have taken place\nsimultaneously; it would not have been cruel had the victims of the\nearthquake died of illnesses--in many cases prolonged and painful--but\nit is cruel {116} that death should have come upon them swiftly,\ninstantaneously, without menace or lingering pain; it would not have\nbeen cruel had children survived to mourn their parents, husbands their\nwives, brother the loss of brother, as in the ordinary course--but it\nis cruel that by dying in the same hour they were spared the pang of\nparting.  We repeat that it is because we ordinarily use our\nimaginations too little that we are so apt to lose our balance and\nsense of proportion in the presence of these catastrophes; and it may\nbe permissible to point out that there is probably, quality for\nquality, and quantity for quantity, more grey, hopeless suffering, more\nwretchedness and tragedy, in London to-day than was caused by the\nSicilian catastrophe--suffering and wretchedness that are due not to\nnature, but to sin, though not necessarily on the sufferer's part.\n\nAnd there is, in justice, something more to be said when we speak of\nthese dire visitations.  While every instinct of humanity inspires us\nwith sympathy for the victims buried under the ruins of Messina and\nReggio, it is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that the soil on\nthose coasts is volcanic, and liable to such commotions; if men will\ntake the risk of living in such localities, we may pity them when the\ndisaster comes, but we cannot very fitly impeach Providence.  There is\na village near Chur in Switzerland, which has twice been wiped out by\navalanches, yet each time re-built {117} on the same spot; year by year\nmaterial is visibly accumulating for a third deadly fall, and when it\ntakes place, as take place it will, men will speak of the dispassionate\ncruelty of nature.  Time after time the lava from Mount Vesuvius has\noverwhelmed the localities that nestle on its slopes, but human\nheedlessness proves incurable.  If the Sicilians, knowing the nature of\nthe soil, had built their towns of isolated, one-storied, wooden\nstructures, at a reasonable distance from the shore, the effects of\nearthquake and tidal wave would not have been one hundredth part as\nterrible; yet Messina is being re-built on its former site, and\napparently in the old style of architecture--a proceeding which simply\ninvites a repetition of the same kind of disaster.  It is literally\ntrue that these greater calamities are in nearly every instance capable\nof being averted or their incidence minimised; to give an obvious\ninstance, one is almost weary of seeing it repeated that the famines\nand consequent epidemics which visit India could be immensely reduced\nby a wise and generous expenditure on irrigation, the improved\ncultivation of the land, the enlargement of the cultivable area, and so\nforth.  But men find it easier to turn accusing glances to the sky than\nto bestir themselves and to use more wisdom, foresight and energy in\ndirecting and subduing the forces of nature.\n\nWe are well aware that what has been written in the pages of this\nchapter is no {118} more than a series of scattered hints; we do not\nfor a moment imagine that, in the aggregate, they amount to more than a\nmost fragmentary resolution of the difficulty presented by the reality\nof evil--indeed, we have already expressed our belief that a full\nsolution must in the nature of things lie beyond our ken.  But if it\nshould appear from the foregoing considerations that some aspects of\nour problem--such as the existence of sin and of pain--are not as\nirreconcilable with the goodness of God as may have seemed to be the\ncase, reflection should lead us to the reasonable hope that if we\nunderstood more, we should receive fuller and fuller proof of the truth\nthat God is Love.  And when we remember that that Love shines out most\nbrightly from the Cross, and that the world's greatest tragedy has been\nthe world's greatest blessing, the turning-point in the history of the\nrace, we may well hush our impatience, refrain over-confident\ncriticisms, and commit ourselves to the Father's hands even while we\ncan only see His purposes as in a glass, darkly.  We may believe, with\nthe psalmist of old, that by and by we \"shall behold His face in\n_righteousness_; we shall be satisfied, when we awake, with His\nlikeness.\"\n\n\n\n[1] R. A. Armstrong, _God and the Soul_, pp. 161-162.\n\n[2] _Op. cit._, p. 21.\n\n[3] _Ibid_, p. 82.\n\n[4] _Through Nature to God_, pp. 36, 37.\n\n\n\n\n{119}\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE DENIAL OF EVIL\n\nWe closed our last chapter with a confession and an appeal--a confession\nof the incompleteness of our answers to the questions suggested by the\nfact of evil, and an appeal for patience in recognising that that\nincompleteness is inevitable, having regard to our constitutional\nlimitations.  \"There is,\" as Newman said, \"a certain grave acquiescence\nin ignorance, a recognition of our impotence to solve momentous and\nurgent questions, which has a satisfaction of its own.\" [1]  That,\nhowever, is an attitude to which all will not resign themselves.  If a\nknot cannot be unravelled, their one idea of what to do is to cut it; if\nevil cannot be explained, it can at any rate be denied.  Thus we find a\ndistinguished living essayist, with a large constituency of cultured\nreaders, writing as follows:--\n\n\nThe essence of God's omnipotence is that both law and matter are His and\noriginate from Him; so that if a single fibre of what we know to be evil\ncan be found in the world, either God is responsible for that, or He is\n{120} dealing with something He did not originate and cannot overcome.\nNothing can extricate us from this dilemma, except that what we think\nevil is not really evil at all, but hidden good.\n\nIf the views of Divine power and responsibility set forth in this book\nare true--if, _i.e._, we are justified in having recourse to a theory of\nDivine self-limitation--it will be clear that Mr. Benson's \"dilemma\" is,\nto say the least, overstated; but were that dilemma as desperate as he\ndepicts it, it has strangely escaped him that his suggested mode of\nextrication is more desperate still.  For what he asks us to do is quite\nsimply to abdicate our judgment in respect of both physical and ethical\nphenomena--not merely to withhold our decision upon this or that\nparticular occurrence, but to admit in general terms that evil is only\napparent and not real.  But see to what such an admission commits us: if\nwe have no grounds for saying that evil is evil, we can have no grounds\neither for saying that good is good; if our faculties are incompetent to\ndiagnose the one kind of phenomena accurately, they cannot be any more\ncompetent to diagnose and deliver reliable verdicts upon the other kind.\nIt is quite a mistake to think that by getting rid of the reality of evil\nwe preserve or affirm the more emphatically the reality of good; if we\nconfidently pronounce our experience of evil an illusion, what value can\nthere attach to our finding that our {121} experience of its opposite is\na fact?  Such is the Nemesis which waits on remedies of the \"heroic\"\norder.\n\nNevertheless this particular remedy seems to be enjoying a considerable\npopularity at the present time; indeed, in discussing some aspects of the\ndoctrine which affirms the \"allness\" of God, and the allied one of\nMonism, we have already seen that where these are professed, evil must be\nexplicitly or implicitly denied.  This denial is common to the various\nconfused movements--all of them the outcome of a misconceived\nidealism--which under the names of \"New Thought,\" \"Higher Thought,\" \"Joy\nPhilosophy,\" \"Christian Science,\" etc., etc., find their disciples\nchiefly amongst that not inconsiderable section of the public which has\nbeen aptly described as dominated by a \"longing to combine a picturesque\ncertainty devoid of moral discipline with unlimited transcendental\nspeculations.\"  All these cults combine a vague optimism with an\nextravagant subjectivity; all would have us believe that so far from\nthings being what they are, they are whatever we may think them to be;\nall with one accord treat evil in its various manifestations as unreal,\nand maintain, as it has been neatly phrased, that \"the process of cure\nlies in the realisation that there is nothing to be cured.\"  The\nattraction of such a doctrine for that large number of persons who\ndislike strenuous effort--either intellectual or {122} moral--is easily\naccounted for.  Evil as a fact is not conducive to the comfort of those\nwho contemplate it--how pleasant to be told that it exists only in\ndisordered imaginations; the sense of sin has always interfered with the\nenjoyment of life--what a relief to learn that it is merely a chimaera;\npain is grievous indeed--what benefactors are those who teach us how to\nconjure it away by the simple process of declaring that there is no such\nthing!  A creed promising to accomplish such desirable objects could be\nsure of votaries, if proclaimed with sufficient _aplomb_; here, we may\nsurmise, is the main explanation of the welcome given to those monistic\nethics to which we referred in an earlier chapter, and of the vogue of\nso-called \"Christian Science,\" which invites consideration as the most\ntypical and important of a whole group of movements.\n\nWe repeat that the nature of the Christian Science appeal largely\nexplains the rapid spread of this cult.  Christian Science is quite\nunlike other religions in this, that while they promise at most\nsalvation--an intangible boon--Mrs. Eddy promises her followers _health_,\nrelief from bodily pain and sickness, and thus addresses herself to a\nuniversally and urgently felt want.  A merely spiritual message may fail\nto obtain listeners; but--to state the truth baldly--a person need not be\nparticularly spiritually-minded in order to be drawn towards Christian\nScience.  The natural man would much rather {123} be made well than made\ngood, and a creed which professes to be able to do the former will touch\nhim in his most sensitive part.  Certainly, this was one of the\ndifficulties of Christ's public ministry, _viz._, that the people flocked\nto Him to be cured rather than to be taught.  But while He declined to\nplace the emphasis on His works of healing--while He left Capernaum by\nHimself before sunrise in order to escape the importunities of the mob,\nand refused Peter's request that He should return thither with the words,\n\"Let us go elsewhere into the next towns that I may preach there also;\nfor to _this_ end came I forth\"--Christian Science addresses its sure\nappeal to man's material nature.  The contrast is significant.\n\nAnd yet the true essence of Christian Science is not \"faith-healing\" in\nthe ordinary sense.  It does not say, _e.g._, \"Here is a case of genuine,\nunmistakeable rheumatism or consumption, but faith is able to dispel it\";\non the contrary, it says, \"This alleged rheumatism or consumption is a\nmere illusion, a phantasm of the imagination; and the way to be cured is\nfor the 'patient' to discover his mistake.  There are no maladies--there\nare only _malades imaginaires_.\"  Mrs. Eddy states in plain words that\n\"Mortal ills are but errors of thought\" [2]; it is from this point of\nview that Christian Science as a system has to be approached and\nunderstood.\n\n{124}\n\nWith the fantastic exegesis of Scripture on which this creed professes to\nbe based, we are not directly concerned; else something might be said of\nthe method of interpretation which is to be found in the official\ntext-book of the movement--a method which sees in the serpent the symbol\nof malicious animal magnetism, which identifies the Holy Ghost and the\nNew Jerusalem with Christian Science, and the little book brought down\nfrom heaven by the mighty angel with Mrs. Eddy's own _magnum opus_,\n_Science and Health_.  As Mr. Podmore drily remarks, \"In these holy games\neach player is at liberty to make words mean what he wants them to mean\";\nat the same time, these grotesque and arbitrary constructions are not\nprecisely calculated to inspire the confidence of balanced minds.\n\nLet us, however, turn at once to the fundamental axioms of Christian\nScience:--\n\n(1) God is All in all.\n\n(2) God is Good.  Good is Mind.\n\n(3) God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.\n\n(4) Life, God, Omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease.\n\nIn other words, Christian Science begins--and, for the matter of that,\nends--with the categorical statement that the one and only Reality is\nMind, Goodness, God, all three of which terms it uses synonymously and\ninterchangeably.  So much being granted, the rest follows \"in a\nconcatenation according\"; the {125} possible permutations are many--the\nresult is always one.  _God is All_: hence, says Mrs. Eddy, \"_All is\nGod_, and there is naught beside Him\"; but _God is Good_, and as He is\n_All_, it follows that _All is Good_; and if all is good, _there can be\nno evil_.  Again, Mrs. Eddy propounds the following three propositions:\n_God is Mind; Good is Mind; All is Mind_; therefore, once more, all is\ngood, all is God, and _there can be no evil_.  Or, to introduce another\nvariation--_God is All_, and _God is Mind_; therefore _Mind is all_;\ntherefore _there is no matter_.  Grant the Christian Science premises,\nand there is no escaping the Christian Science conclusions.\n\nBut do we grant these premises--do we grant Mrs. Eddy's fundamental\npantheistic assumption of \"the allness of God\" [3]?  We have shown again\nand again why we do not; and with the rejection of the basal tenet of\nChristian Science the superstructure follows.  But now let us show how\nall Mrs. Eddy's juggling with words, all her assertions of the goodness\nof all and the allness of good, do not help her to get rid of evil.\nGranting for argument's sake that Mind is the only reality, then the test\nof reality must be this--that something exists in or for a mind; in so\nfar, {126} then, as evil, pain, and so forth exist, as Christian Science\ntells us, \"only\" in some mind--in so far as \"disease is a thing of\nthought\" [4]--evil, pain, disease, etc., must _pro tanto_ be real, nay,\nthe most real of realities, for where except in mind could they exist?\nAnd even if we can successfully annihilate them by denying their\nexistence, whence did they come in the first place?  From \"malicious\nanimal magnetism\"?  But if God is All in all, and All-good, what is that\nmalicious animal magnetism which is somehow not God and not good?  Does\nnot this whole tangle serve yet once more to illustrate the futility of\nthat doctrine of Divine allness which we have seen successfully\nmasquerading as Divine immanence?\n\nLet us test the worth of these speculations in yet another way.\nChristian Science declares evil to be non-existent, illusory, an \"error\nof thought.\"  But that which is true of a species must be true of all its\ngenera; if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, it follows that\nSocrates is mortal; if evil as a whole is nonexistent, that which applies\nto the general phenomenon must equally apply to each and all of its\nmanifestations.  But error is undoubtedly a form, and even a serious\nform, of evil; from which it would follow that if evil is not real, error\nis not possible--and in that case one opinion is as good as its opposite,\nand black and white are only different {127} descriptions of the same\nthing.  But if that is so, if one thing is as true as another, we shall\nconclude that, _e.g._, the rejection of Christian Science is no more\nerroneous than its affirmation.  Will Christian Scientists acquiesce in\nthat inference?  And if they will not, by what means do they propose to\nshow that it is not a legitimate deduction from their own axiom, the\nunreality of evil?  If error is a real fact, evil must be so to that\nextent; on the other hand, how can it be an error to believe that evil is\nreal, if error, being an evil, must itself be illusory?\n\nBut it is time we turned from our examination of the principles of\nChristian Science to their application.  So far as the wholesale\ndeclaration of the illusoriness of physical evil--the ravages and\ntortures of disease--is concerned, the implicit belief extended to the\npretensions of this creed to master all such ills is proof, if proof were\nwanted, of the success which rewards those who act on the maxim, \"_de\nl'audace, toujours de l'audace_!\"  Given the right kind and amount of\nfaith, we are assured, Christian Science treatment will prove effective\nin a case of double pneumonia, or compound fracture, or malignant tumour,\nwithout the assistance of the physician--above all, without \"drugs,\"\nwhich are pronounced _taboo_ by Mrs. Eddy; \"and that,\" to quote Mr.\nPodmore again, \"is a postulate which can never be contradicted by\nexperience, for failure can always be {128} ascribed--as it is, in fact,\nascribed by the Christian Scientist to-day--to want of faith or 'Science'\non the part of the sufferer.\"  Nothing could be more entirely simple or\nunanswerable: if the patient improves or recovers, the credit goes to\nChristian Science; if he gets worse or dies, the unfortunate result is\ndebited to his lack of faith.  The only thing Christian Science fails to\nanswer is, as we have already seen, the preliminary question, _viz._,\nwhat caused the disease--or at any rate the semblance, the malignant\nhallucination of disease--in the first instance.  If God is all and all\nis God; if God is Mind and there is nothing but Mind; if all therefore is\nmind and all is good--whence in a good Mind comes even the hallucination\nof pain and evil?  \"The thoughts of the practitioner,\" says Mrs. Eddy,\n\"should be imbued with a clear conviction of the omnipotence and\nomnipresence of God; . . . and hence, that whatever militates against\nhealth . . . is an unjust usurper of the throne of the Controller of all\nmankind.\" [5]  But if God is omnipresent, His presence must be displayed\nin the disease; if He is omnipotent, how can there be a usurper on His\nthrone?  If He is All, how can there be aught beside Him?  These are\npoints on which we wait in vain for enlightenment from the Boston\nmysteriarch.\n\n{129}\n\nWe shall be told, however, that whatever flaws there may be in the theory\nof Christian Science, this cult could not possibly have obtained its\nvogue if it were all promise and no performance; and as a matter of fact,\ntestimonies to the curative effect of the treatment abound, furnished by\nthose who say they have been restored to health by these methods, and as\nconvincing as such testimony can be.  We use the latter phrase advisedly;\nit is impossible to read these documents without being convinced of the\nentire good faith of the writers in relating what they themselves believe\nto be true; it is impossible not to be convinced by the perusal of their\naccounts that cures of some sort took place: the one thing of which it is\npossible to remain quite unconvinced is the fundamental contention of\nChristian Science, _viz._, that there was no disease to be cured.\nSpeaking quite generally, if one is going to be impressed by testimonials\nthere is of course, no patent pill of respectable advertising power which\ncannot produce such by the wastepaper-basketful; and perfectly sincere\nand unsolicited testimonials, too.  What these prove, however, is neither\nthat the patients have been cured of the particular diseases they may\nname--and in the diagnosis of which they may very likely be mistaken--nor\nabove all that it is the taking of a particular preparation to which they\nowe their cures; they prove the enormous power of suggestion and\nauto-suggestion, in {130} virtue of which many ailments yield to the\npatient's firm assurance that by following a certain course he will get\nbetter.  Everyone knows that a manner which inspires confidence, a happy\nblend of cheerfulness and suave authority, is of at least equal value to\na physician as his skill and diplomas; and it is probably true,\napproximately at any rate, that a man can no more be cured of a serious\nillness unless he believes in his curability, than he can be hypnotised\nagainst his will.  But between the recognition of such a fact, and the\ndescription of a cancer as an obstinate illusion, or a crushed limb as an\n\"error of thought,\" there is just the difference which separates sanity\nfrom extravaganza.\n\nIn short, that which is of truth in Christian Science is not peculiar to\nit; while what is peculiar to its teaching, the denial of the reality of\nshattered legs, wasted lungs, diseased spines, etc., is not true.  The\npower of mind over body, the possibility of healing certain diseases by\nsuggestion, is not the discovery of Mrs. Eddy; the assumption on the\nother hand, that _all_ diseases are susceptible to such treatment is\ncharacteristic of the school of which she is the latest and best-known\nrepresentative--only it is false.  \"All physicians of broad practice and\nkeen observation realise that certain pains may be alleviated or cured,\nand that certain morbid conditions may be made to disappear, provided a\nchange in the mental {131} state of the patient can be brought\nabout. . . .  It does not require special learning to build up a\npsychotherapeutic practice based upon the observation of such cases; and\nthe Christian Science healers, narrowly educated and of narrow\nexperience, have done just this thing, resting upon the theory that the\nmental influence of the healer is the effective curative agent.  It is\neasy to see how a development of this theory would lead to the assumption\nthat all kinds of diseases may be curable by mental influence emanating\nfrom a healer, this leading to the practice of the so-called\n'absent-treatment,' with all its follies and dangers.\" [6]  When it is\nadded that the Christian Science healer is a professional person, and\nthat the cost of \"absent-treatment\" may come to as much as ten dollars an\nhour, we need say no more about the \"dangers\" alluded to.[7]  That the\nquasi-religious formulas of Christian Science may prove extremely\neffective in bringing about such a change in the mental state of certain\npatients as will cause pains {132} to be alleviated or cured, and morbid\nconditions to disappear, one need have no hesitation in believing;\nmoreover, as the medical author just quoted acutely observes, it is quite\npossible that some patients would not be cured unless they were \"allowed\nto believe that their cures are due to some mysterious or miraculous\nagency.\"  But even such an admission does not mean that Christian Science\ndoes more than apply the principle of suggestion, increasing its efficacy\nby utilising the religious faculty of the patient; nor, above all, does\nit give countenance to the root-contention of the creed, _viz._, that\npain and disease are unreal.  Once more, if mind be the only reality,\nthen pain, seeing that it can only be experienced by a mind, is real in\nexact proportion as it is intense.\n\nIt might seem unnecessary to add anything more to what has been said in\nrefutation of the claims of Christian Science so far as physical healing\nis concerned; but one or two very simple considerations will complete our\ncase without greatly detaining us.\n\nIn stating categorically and without qualification that \"mortal ills are\nbut errors of thought,\" Mrs. Eddy seems to have overlooked two classes of\npatients to whom it would be somewhat difficult to apply this sweeping\ngeneralisation.  We wonder, for instance, how this theory could be made\nto cover the large category of infantile ailments.  How, we are {133}\nentitled to ask, would Christian Science deal with the teething-troubles\nwhich attend babyhood?  Is it seriously suggested that a feverish,\nwailing child is merely the victim of an hallucination--and how would the\nChristian Scientist undertake to convince him of his illusion?  On the\nface of it, such an enterprise does not look hopeful.  But further, it so\nhappens that human beings are not the only sufferers from pain and\nsickness; animals are subject to diseases, and often to the same diseases\nas men.  We disclaim all intention of treating the subject otherwise than\nseriously--but if a man's rheumatism is an illusion, what causes the same\naffection in a dog or a chimpanzee?  And if an embrocation may be used\nwith good effects in the latter case, why may it not be used in the\nformer?  We need not press these questions; they will serve as they stand\nto show once more how this whole pretentious philosophy about the\nunreality, the imaginary nature, of pain breaks down as soon as we\nsubject it to simple tests.  So also with the Christian Science attitude\ntowards \"drugs,\" the prescribing of which Mrs. Eddy places in the same\ncategory as the denial of God.[8]  An obvious comment suggests itself: If\ndrugs cannot cure, it follows that they cannot hurt; will some adherent\nto this teaching show his consistency in the faith by swallowing a small,\nbut sufficient quantity {134} of oxalic acid?  And so, finally, with Mrs.\nEddy's singularly futile question, \"As power divine is in the healer, why\nshould mortals concern themselves with the chemistry of food?\" [9]\nWithout unkindliness, one feels tempted to reply that this kind of\nlanguage will begin to be convincing when Christian Scientists show their\nreadiness and ability to sustain life on substances chemically certified\nto be without nutritive properties.\n\n\nBut it is not its denial of physical evil that makes this and allied\nmovements a real menace; dissent as we may from the Christian Science\ntheory of bodily illness, and deplore as we must the fatal results of\nwhich we read every now and again when a patient has been persuaded to\nsubstitute the Christian Science \"healer\" for the trained\nphysician--these results concern, to put it rather bluntly, no one but\nthe sufferer and his immediate friends.  But when we remarked that the\nnatural man desired to be made well rather than to be made good, we were\nnot merely thinking of one side of Christian Science teaching; we were\nbearing in mind that the author of _Science and Health_ declares the\nillusoriness of pain only as part of the illusoriness of all evil, moral\nas well as physical.  _Christian Science explicitly denies the reality of\nsin: and that denial follows with inexorable logic from its first\nprinciple--that {135} God is All, and All is Good_.  And here rather than\nin the material domain lies the danger we have to face; this is the side\nof Mrs. Eddy's doctrine which, the moment it is attractively presented\nto, and grasped by, half-educated and unstable minds, will, we fear,\nexercise a fatal fascination over large numbers.  For one person who will\nseriously persuade himself that there is no matter, or that his sore\nthroat is imaginary, there will be a number to welcome the good tidings\nthat what they had hitherto regarded as sin wears in reality no such\nsinister complexion--that, as Mrs. Eddy openly states, _what seems \"vice\"\nis to be explained as \"illusions of the physical senses_.\"  That is\nprecisely what every sinner would like to believe.  \"I have done that,\nsays my memory.  I cannot have done that, says my pride, and remains\nobdurate.  In the end, my memory gives in.\"  So wrote Nietzsche, keenly\nand cynically observant of his kind.  As a matter of fact, men would give\nalmost anything to be able to convince themselves that they \"have not\ndone that\"--not necessarily from pride, but in order to be rid of shame,\nof remorse, of self-contempt; will not many of them only too eagerly\naccept this fatal anodyne when it is offered to them in the pretended\nname of religion?\n\nWe have but one comment to urge, one protest to make.  It has taken long\nages to develop and heighten man's sensitiveness to {136} the distinction\nbetween good and evil; we say with the most solemn emphasis that anything\ncalculated to dull that sensitiveness, to wipe out that distinction, to\ndrug the conscience, is nothing less than a crime of high treason against\nhumanity.  Better call evil an unfathomable mystery, so long as we also\nregard it as a dread reality, a foe we must conquer or be conquered by;\nbut to solve the problem by denying its existence, to get over the fact\nof evil by declaring that all is good--that way not only madness but\nmoral disaster lies.  Let us at least understand what this doctrine is,\nwhich is being so energetically pressed upon us to-day; and if we see the\ndirection in which that ill-digested pseudo-revelation is likely to lead\nthose who consistently accept it, let us meet this insidious propaganda\nwith equal energy and better arguments.  Our first and simplest duty in\ndealing with the specious doctrine which asserts that evil is\n\"not-being\"--a mere illusion which, like the idols spoken of by the\nApostle, is \"nothing in the world\"--is to point out promptly and\nuncompromisingly that whatever such a reading of the facts may be, and\nfrom whatever quarter it may be offered, it is not Christian, but at the\nfurthest remove from Christianity.  Shall we be told that \"the question\nis not whether these opinions are dangerous, but whether they are true?\"\nWe reply that we are well aware that truth is the highest expediency; but\nwe are not {137} acquainted with any other test of the truth of an\nopinion save this--whether and how it works.  If a speculative theory,\nwhen carried into practice, should appear to make straight for pernicious\nresults, in what intelligible sense of the word can it be \"true\"?\n\nIt is the immense merit of Christianity that it has spoken out with no\nuncertain voice upon this subject; it has never sought to minimise or\nexplain away the fact of moral evil; on the contrary, it has consistently\npointed to the true nature of sin, by connecting it vitally and causally\nwith the sacrificial death of the Son of God: _tanta molis erat_ (if we\nmay slightly vary the immortal line) _humanam solvere gentem_.  A gospel\nwhich lightly dismisses this terrible reality, and seeks to hide its\nhideousness behind a rose-coloured mist of fine words,--such an\nemasculated gospel is not a message of life, but has the answer of death\nwithin itself.  That in the past, in a doctrine such as that of man's\ntotal depravity, the fact of sin has been over-emphasised, may be readily\ngranted; but in the present all the symptoms indicate that the peril we\nhave to meet is its _under_-emphasis.  Against this whole tendency we\nmust resolutely re-assert the Christian standpoint and attitude.\nChristianity is that religion which affirms in unfaltering accents the\nreality of evil--but it sets over against it the greater Reality of\natoning Love; it proclaims unsparingly the sinfulness and deadliness\n{138} of sin, but offers us the victory over sin and death through Jesus\nChrist our Lord.\n\n\"_O Timotheus, guard your trust, and eschew the irreverent empty phrases\nand contradictions of a mis-called 'Science,' professing which some have\nmissed their true aim in regard to the faith._\"\n\n\n\nNOTE.\n\nIn order to afford an illustration of Christian Science as a thing in\nbeing, we reproduce without comment the following report of an inquest,\nas published in the _Tribune_, on January 9th, 1908:--\n\nRemarkable questions were put by the coroner to witnesses at a Richmond\n(Surrey) inquest yesterday on Mary Elizabeth Dixon, 58, a Christian\nScientist, who died of bronchitis.\n\nMrs. E. D., of St. John's Road, said that at the request of Mrs. Dixon\nshe gave her Christian Science help--prayer which she had faith would be\nanswered.\n\nThe Coroner (Dr. Michael Taylor): Was it?--She was in a state of collapse\non Saturday night, but revived much.  When Mrs. Dixon had a cold\npreviously it improved wonderfully under Christian Science.\n\nThen Christian Science is effectual if not much is the matter, but is not\nin the case of a serious illness?--I don't think she wanted to get better.\n\nIs that the way you look at it?--No, I don't.  I know God is all-power\nand ever present.\n\nBut if God is all-powerful, as you say, and as we all know, why did you\nhave no response?--I suppose it was my lack of trust in that all-power.\n\n{139}\n\nIt comes to this, that although He is all-powerful, unless the person\npraying for another has perfect faith the patient will not\nrecover?--Nothing is impossible to God.  The doctor was called in because\nit was the law.\n\nThen it was too late.  It was as much the law to have called him in when\nthe woman was alive.  What is the practice with regard to illness?--It is\nprayer.\n\nIf you had a broken leg, would you send for a doctor?--Yes, to set it.  I\nhave not sufficient understanding.\n\nContinuing, witness said she did not believe in drugs, but she did in\nfood at present, because her understanding was not sufficient, as she was\nonly a student.\n\nBy a Juror: The reason Mrs. Dixon got worse was because of lack of\nunderstanding on witness's part.\n\nThe Coroner: When she got worse, why did you not send for a doctor?--I\nasked her if she wanted a doctor to tell me.\n\nYet she was getting worse owing to your lack of understanding?--I didn't\nlook at it in that light.\n\nB. H., who attended Mrs. Dixon, said she was a trained nurse with nine\nyears' experience.  Witness had, during the past two years, become a\nChristian Scientist nurse.  She was not a practitioner.\n\nThe Coroner: Has a practitioner any special qualifications?--No, a\npractitioner is one who prays for another.\n\nThe Coroner: Would you give a patient a mustard poultice?--No.\n\nBut you would give her a hot-water bottle?--Yes.\n\nThen where do you draw the line?  You don't believe in material aid?--No,\nI believe the other is better.\n\nDo you believe in a judicious continuation of both?--No.\n\nDid you give her beef tea?--Yes, as a nourishment.\n\nBut, nurse, you ought to know what every medical man knows, that beef tea\nis a stimulant.  Do you believe in stimulants?--Not at all.\n\n{140}\n\nThen why did you give her beef tea?--(After a pause) It was simpler to\nget.\n\nBut it is contrary to your principles.  Would you give _sal\nvolatile_?--No.\n\nWitness explained that she called in no other help because she believed\nprayer was the most effectual.\n\nWhy didn't you call in a doctor?--I think the patient should judge for\nherself.\n\nEven though her brain is clouded and she is dying?--Yes.\n\nOn another point the Coroner said: Did our Saviour use food and\nstimulants?--He gave wine.\n\nWhy don't you give wine?--He did not give it in illness, but at a\nmarriage feast.\n\nYou want us to believe He gave wine to people who could do without and\nwithheld it from those who wanted it.\n\nAsked a question as to calling in a doctor for surgery purposes, witness\nsaid he would only be called in for setting bones and not for an\noperation.\n\nThe Coroner: It amounts to this: you believe the Almighty is a bad\nsurgeon, but a good physician?--Our faith is not yet strong enough.\n\nDr. Cockell deposed that death was due to acute bronchitis.\n\nWould she have recovered with medical attendance for a week before?--Yes.\n\nThe Coroner, in summing up, said there was no doubt Mrs. Dixon was\ngrossly neglected.\n\nThe jury returned a verdict of \"Death from acute bronchitis, accelerated\nby gross neglect by Mrs. D. and especially by Nurse H.\"\n\nThe Coroner: I am afraid that will mean manslaughter, which would be too\nsevere.  Will you alter it, gentlemen?  The jury then altered the verdict\nto one of \"severe censure on Mrs. D. and Miss H. for neglecting to obtain\nmedical aid.\"\n\n\n\n[1] _The Grammar of Assent_, p. 201.\n\n[2] _Rudimental Divine Science_, p. 10.\n\n[3] _Op. cit._, p. 10.  Mrs. Eddy is so incredibly ignorant of the\nmeaning of words in common use that she says, \"Mind in matter is\npantheism.\"  It has apparently never dawned on her that her own doctrine,\n\"God is All--All is God\" is pantheism pure and simple!\n\n[4] _Ibid_.\n\n[5] _Op. cit._, p. 9.\n\n[6] Dr. Henry Rutgers Marshall, on \"Psychotherapeutics,\" in the _Hibbert\nJournal_, January, 1909.\n\n[7] The Christian Science healer is supposed to have had his or her\npowers trained by special tuition, for which, in the ordinary course, a\nfee is charged.  Mrs. Eddy states that she has \"never taught a Primary\nclass without several and sometimes seventeen free students in it,\" but\nadds significantly \"The student who pays must, of necessity, do better\nthan he who does not pay\" (_op. cit._, p. 14).  The \"necessity\" is not\nquite obvious, but the statement sets one wondering whether it would hold\ntrue if for \"student\" the word \"patient\" were substituted.\n\n[8] _Op. cit._, p. 3.\n\n[9] _Ibid._, p. 13.\n\n\n\n\n{141}\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nDETERMINISM\n\nThe under-emphasis of sin, we said, is one of the special dangers which\nthreaten the present age; and nothing is more remarkable or disquieting\nto observe than the number of attacks that are being made to-day from\nquarter after quarter, all of them converging upon the same point.  Now\nthe cry is raised that sin is a mere mistake, due to ignorance; or that\nit is merely the absence of something, as a shadow indicates the absence\nof light[1]; or we are assured that \"what we call 'evil' is only\nincidental to the progress and development of the [universal] order\"\n[2]--a necessary step in evolution.  Now again the burden of\nresponsibility is shifted from the shoulders of the individual on to\nheredity and environment; or compromise with what is known to be moral\nevil is not only excused as a necessity, but commended as a duty; or the\naverage person's feelings are considerately soothed by {142} the\npronouncement that \"the mass of a Christian congregation are about as\ninnocent as men and women can well be in a world where natural\ntemptations are so rife, and so many social adjustments discountenance\nheroic saintliness\" [3]--the latter a truly admirable feat of\ncircumlocution.  And sometimes, as we have seen, sin and evil are\nthemselves in essence negated--generally in virtue of some\npseudo-philosophic or pseudo-scientific \"doctrine of a universe\"--as when\nwe read that \"in a universe . . . there cannot be any room for\nindependent and creative wills, actually thwarting the Good Will.\" [4]\nDoubtless, these various statements, whether made in the name of Monism\nor Determinism, or some form of neo-Christianity, represent a reaction\nagainst that over-emphasis which taught that man was by nature under\nGod's wrath and deserving of everlasting torments; but there can be no\nquestion that this reaction has gone very far in the direction of the\nopposite extreme, and that the time has come for reconsideration and a\nreturn to more balanced views.\n\nSo far as the virtual denial of human freedom, human sin, and indeed of\nhuman selfhood, {143} flows from a perversion of the doctrine of Divine\nimmanence, we need not add anything to the observations made in earlier\nchapters upon this subject; we might, however, quote some pertinent words\nof Martineau's, affirming and explaining that distinction between the\nDivine and human personality which can only be ignored to the hopeless\nconfusion of thought:\n\n\n\"The whole external universe, then (external, I mean, to self-conscious\nbeings), we unreservedly surrender to the Indwelling Will, of which it is\nthe organised expression.  From no point of its space, from no moment of\nits time, is His living energy withdrawn, or less intensely present than\nin any crisis fitly called creative.  But the very same principle which\nestablishes a _Unity_ of all external causality makes it antithetic to\nthe internal, and establishes a _Duality_ between our own and that which\nis other than ours; so that, were not our personal power known to us as\n_one_, the cosmical power would not be guaranteed to us as the _other_.\nHere, therefore, at the boundary of the proper Ego, the absorbing claim\nof the Supreme will arrests itself, and recognises a ground on which it\ndoes not mean to step.  Did it still press on and annex this field also,\nit would simply abolish the very base of its own recognisable existence,\nand, in making itself all in all, would vanish totally from view. . .\nAre we, then, to find Him in the sunshine and the rain, and to miss Him\nin our thought, our duty and our love?  Far from it; He is with us in\nboth: only in the former it is His _immanent_ life, in the latter His\n_transcendent_, with which we are in communion.\" [5]\n\n\nOnly where this fundamental principle of the non-identity of God and man\nis recognised, can the facts of human personality, {144} freedom and\nresponsibility for willed acts be rationally based and defended.\n\nAt the same time this \"otherness\" of God, while it is the condition, is\nnot necessarily the guarantee, of our freedom.  Determinism is quite\ncompatible, in theory, and has been so found in history, with belief in\nthe Divine transcendence; but it is scarcely compatible with belief in\nthe Divine goodness.  There is no _a priori_ reason making it\ninconceivable that the doctrine of absolute predestination might be true;\nbut such a doctrine is not reconcilable with the belief that the Eternal\nOther is also the Eternal Father.  The Divine Autocrat of Calvinism, who\npre-ordained some of His creatures to eternal damnation--not for any\ndemerit of theirs, but \"just choosing so\"--is not unthinkable; what is\nunthinkable is that we could love such a One--a God who had predestined\nall human sin and woe, who had fore-ordered things in such a manner that\nunnumbered hapless souls were doomed evermore to stumble and to suffer.\nSuch a God might inspire a shuddering, wondering, abject awe, but never\naffection.  Only a good God, aiming at the evolution of goodness, the\nmaking of character, could have endowed us with freedom, for only through\nsuch an endowment can such an aim be realised.\n\nAnd hence there are perhaps few attitudes so entirely irrational as that\nwhich affects to see in a determinist interpretation of man's {145}\nnature a special reason for optimism.  Occasionally one is invited to\nrejoice in the \"great and glorious thought that every man is wholly a\nproduct of the Master Workman\"; it is even urged that such a conception\ncannot change our appreciation of what is fine in human thought and\naction, just as \"we do not admire a rose the less because we know that it\ncould no more help being what it is than could a stinging nettle or a\nfungus.\"  We can only say that such a superficial optimism seems\ninfinitely more open to objection than the temper which, in the face of\nso much suffering and sin, has to struggle hard sometimes to preserve its\nfaith in the Father's love, and half-wonders if some personal power of\nevil is not actively engaged in marring God's workmanship.  Anyone who\ncan believe that every man, just as he is, represents the Divine\nintention in concrete form--anyone who can believe this, and glory in the\nthought--must inhabit a strange world, remote from reality.  He can never\nhave learned anything of the greed which condemns myriads of human beings\nto sunless and degraded lives; he can never have been inside a\npolice-court; he can never have seen hapless womanhood flaunting its\nbe-rouged and be-ribboned shame under the electric light of West End\nthoroughfares--he can never even have reflected upon any of these things,\nand rejoiced in the thought that every human being was \"wholly the {146}\nproduct of the Master Workman.\" If such a thought does not produce\nsomething like despair, it ought to do so; if it does not, then it\nrepresents not a conviction but a pose.\n\nAs a matter of fact, the determinist creed, with all its professions of\ncharitableness towards the transgressor, and while pretending to soothe\nus by absolving us from responsibility for wrong-doing, fatally paralyses\nour endeavours.  It is a message, not of liberation from guilt, but of\ndespair.  Christianity, even while condemning sin, in its very\ncondemnation speaks of hope; it says to the sinner: \"You are guilty--you\nought to have done better, and you know it; you are guilty--you ought\nstill to do better, _and you can_.\"  That is a rousing, vitalising call:\nthe very censure implies the possibility of better things.  But\nDeterminism says to the moral wreck: \"Not only are you a wreck, but that\nis all you ever could have been; you not only cannot help being what you\nare, but in your wretchedness and degradation you are what you could not\nhelp being--this was your pre-ordained destiny from the beginning of\ntime.  We are not angry with you, any more than we are angry with tigers\nfor being fierce, or with thorns for not bearing grapes; only, being what\nyou are, you never _could_ have borne, and never will bear, grapes.\"\nTruly a \"great and glorious thought\"!  Determinism makes of the whole\nworld of erring men a hospital, and pronounces {147} every patient an\nincurable--it is ready to grant kindly, considerate treatment to each,\nbut holds out hopes of recovery to none.  Who would not rather submit to\na sterner physician, whose ministrations promised to medicine him back to\nhealth again!  A consistent Determinism, prepared to look stedfastly at\nthings as they are, can, we repeat, lead nowhere but to despair; a\nconclusion from which determinists, fortunately for themselves, escape by\nmeans of the most patent inconsistency.\n\nBut we turn to the further contention which we already mentioned in\npassing, _viz._, that the acceptance of Determinism would by no means\nchange our admiration of what was fine in human thought and action--just\nas we did not admire a rose the less because it could not help being\nfragrant and beautiful.  Here we have a very palpable, but all the more\nsignificant confusion between things totally different--aesthetics and\nethics.  Our admiration for a rose is aesthetic; our admiration for\ngoodness is ethical, and we give it with the implicit understanding that\nthe quality we admire is the result of voluntary acts and decisions.  All\nmoral judgments imply this; and in practice we know that the experience\nof moral struggle and moral conquest is intensely real, not to be argued\naway any more than we can be argued out of any other primary fact of\nconsciousness, which is its own sufficient evidence.  Let anyone ask\nhimself quite {148} candidly whether the feeling called forth by some\nrare work of art resembles remotely the emotion with which he reads of\nsome deed of humble heroism or self-sacrifice; the psychology which\ndiscerns here no difference is singularly shallow.\n\nBut when the would-be optimistic determinist is shown the sheer fatuity\nof pretending to rejoice in that everything is just as it is--a singular\ncompliment to the \"Master Workman\"--he executes a _volte-face_ and falls\nback upon the plea that his doctrine is at any rate a pre-eminently\npractical one.  Instead of vainly deploring imaginary \"sins,\" Determinism\nwould simply have us recognise plain facts: it would arrange for healthy\nhereditary influences to cradle the coming generations; it would adopt\nthe most enlightened educational, hygienic, reformatory methods; it would\nprovide for all the citizens of the State such an environment as would\nsteadily make for health and beauty and happiness.  There are no\n\"sinners,\" it says, but only the unhappy products of conditions which\nfoster anti-social proclivities as automatically as dirt fosters disease;\ninstead of punishing the products, let us attack the producing\nconditions, and by sweeping them away bring in the millennium.\n\nSuch a plea, it must be admitted, harmonises well with our modern\ntolerance, our modern zeal for reform; and yet it rests upon a\nfundamental fallacy.  No one, of course, denies the {149} moulding power\nof heredity and environment; no one denies such an obvious truism as that\nwe cannot expect to grow fine specimens of humanity in the reeking slum\nor the sweater's workshop.  But as environment is a greater power than\nheredity, so there is only one power greater than environment--and that\nis our power to alter environment.  \"But that,\" protests the determinist,\n\"is just what we hold ought to be done.\" Certainly; only it is just what,\non his presupposition, cannot be done.  For if the slum-dweller cannot\nhelp being what he is, owing to his environment, neither can the\nslum-owner, or the legislator, or the community, help being what they\nare, owing to the self-same cause.  In fact, we cannot get the word\n\"ought\" from Determinism; it is as much out of place in that connection\nas a free worker in a slave-compound.  But every reform springs from a\nsense of \"oughtness\"; and the sense of moral obligation is itself the\nspontaneous expression of the consciousness of moral freedom.  So far as\nwe believe in the duty of reform--or in \"duty\" itself, _sans phrase_--we\nhave already renounced Determinism, and proclaimed our belief in liberty.\nLet it be said once more, before we pass from this particular aspect of\nour subject, that too much may be set down to, or expected from, even\nenvironment; everybody knows that from gentle homes, surrounded by what\nseemed the most favouring influences, {150} there have sprung vicious and\ndepraved characters.  We ask ourselves, in encountering such cases,\n\"Wanting is--what?\"  And the answer must be given in Kant's famous\ndictum: that which is \"the only good thing in the world--_a good will_.\"\n\n\nIn one sense, paradoxical as it may sound, much of the strenuous modern\nadvocacy of Determinism or semi-Determinism is a kind of inverted\nacknowledgment of man's consciousness of freedom, _viz._, where that\nconsciousness appears as the sense of sin.  Of course, when a writer like\nMr. Dole assures us that \"there is no objection to a moral and spiritual\nDeterminism that binds all things over into the unity of good,\" [6] we\nmerely reply that on the contrary there is the very serious objection\nthat \"all things\" are not good.  But most advocates of the determinist\nposition are, to do them justice, well aware of the existence of wrong\nand discord in human life; and their object is, by emphasising the\ninfluence of heredity and environment, to remove or at least materially\nto lighten, the crushing burden of the sense of sin.  The same intention\nunderlies the effort, occasionally made, to persuade men that, seeing\nthey are such as God created them, it is not for them to repine at being\nwhat they are, nor to \"take too serious a view\" of any \"penchant for\n{151} revolt\"--another delightful phrase--they may discover within\nthemselves; as a recent writer has it, \"The responsibility of its\npresence _and action_ does not rest with us, nor are we justified in\ninsulting God who made us, by repenting of what He has done.  _We might\nas well repent of the tiger and the snake, the earthquake and the tempest\nin nature._\" [7]  What are we to say of this attempt to make God\nanswerable, not merely for the presence, but for the action, of whatever\nimpulse to \"revolt\" of which we may be conscious?\n\nTo be quite frank, we cannot think the utterance we have just quoted\nother than extraordinarily ill-considered.  The simple fact that we\ncannot follow _all_ the impulses which arise in us, but have to choose\nbetween higher and lower--the fact that we are well aware of this\nconflict of unharmonisable elements within ourselves, some of which can\nonly triumph at the expense of others--seems sufficiently to dispose of\nthis writer's main contention.  We may not be responsible for the\npresence of these warring instincts, but we are undoubtedly responsible\nfor translating one kind into action while holding the other kind in\ncheck.  The earthward and the heavenward are in each of us, striving for\nmastery; but no imagination is vainer than that we can indulge both, or\npractise the impartiality with which Montaigne's singular devotee lighted\none candle {152} to St. George and another to the dragon.  If we would\nrealise the type of perfect in the mind, we must not gratify \"the\npenchant for revolt,\" but exert ourselves to lay--\n\nThe ghost of the brute that is walking and haunting us yet and be free;\n\nwe must\n\n          Arise and fly\n    The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;\n    Move upward, working out the beast,\n  And let the ape and tiger die.\n\nGranted that the lower impulses, the inheritance from our animal\nancestry, are left in us by Divine decree, they are there, not to be\nindulged on the plea that to repent would be tantamount to \"insulting God\nwho made us,\" but to be conquered by the exercise of that freedom which\nis the earnest of our call to claim our birthright as children of God.\n\nBut when we are further told that, as well as repent of our actions, we\nmight repent of the tiger and the snake, we are immediately conscious of\na double confusion of thought behind that statement; for in the first\nplace, we are not even called upon to repent of _each other's_ failings\nbut only of our own, and in the second there is no analogy between\nourselves and the tiger and snake, creatures which act according to their\nanimal natures, and are incapable of desiring to be other than they are.\nOur capacity of, and desire for, better things attest our possession of a\nmeasure of liberty, and {153} indicate at once our responsibility for the\ncourse we take, and the essential distinction between the animal creation\nand ourselves--a distinction wittily expressed in the remark that\n\"everybody would admit that very few men are really manly; but nobody\nwould contend that very few whales were really whaley.\"\n\nBut those who seek to spare us the discomfort of repentance by teaching\nus to declare with a new inflection, \"It is He that hath made us, and not\nwe ourselves,\" forget that there is another side to this argument.  It\nis, of course, very alluring to be told that we are not really\nblameworthy for acts which hitherto we have blamed ourselves for--that\nour impulses are God-given--that \"the sinner is merely a learner in a\nlower grade in the school,\" [8] and so forth; one can understand how\ngrateful is such a morphia injection for deadening the pangs of an\naccusing conscience.  The art of making excuses, as old as the Garden of\nEden, will never lack ardent professors or eager disciples.  Says Cassius\nto Brutus:--\n\n  Have you not love enough to bear with me\n  When that rash humour which my mother gave me\n  Makes me forgetful?\n\nAnd Brutus answers with a smile:--\n\n  Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth,\n  When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,\n  He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so!\n\n{154} But, after all, we none of us do exclusively things for which we\nwish to escape being blamed; there is hardly anyone who could not name\nsome occasion on which he has made some sacrifice, foregone an unfair\nadvantage, declined to listen to selfish promptings, or held some baser\nimpulse in check.  None of these things were done for the sake of\nreceiving praise; nevertheless, and quite inevitably, the doer felt\npraise_worthy_, conscious of an inner accord whose self-attesting power\nstamped it a reality, and not an illusion.  But Determinism leaves no\nroom for this emotion, any more than for that of remorse or\nblame-worthiness; we cannot get rid of the sense of sin, yet retain the\nsense of righteousness.  The determinist sponge passes over the whole\nmoral vocabulary, not only over the inconvenient parts; it obliterates\nthe terms self-indulgence, dishonesty, cowardice, but the same fate\novertakes self-conquest, integrity, bravery.  To vary the phrase\nslightly, we must not, on the determinist hypothesis, insult God by\ntaking credit to ourselves for what He has done.  Are we prepared to\nsurrender the approval of our conscience, the new-won self-respect which\nrewards the successful resistance offered to temptation, as having no\nbasis in fact?  And if we are not, what is this but to affirm our freedom\nand our responsibility alike in doing and forbearing?\n\n{155}\n\nAnd this inner sense of peace or discord, according as we have acted thus\nor thus--this immediate consciousness that it lay with us to choose\naright or amiss--is both anterior and superior to all argument; it\nasserts itself victoriously against all merely intellectual perplexities,\nsuch as are apt to arise when we ask ourselves how man could be free to\ncommit or not to commit an act, in view of the Divine omniscience.  The\ncontradiction seems a stubborn one, yet in practice we never feel our\nfreedom circumscribed by it.  Probably our difficulty arises largely from\nthe mistake of applying time-relations to God at all, and thinking of\neternity as an enormously long period instead of timeless Present,\nexcluding both \"unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday.\" We, of course, have\nto think under the category of time, remembering and looking forward; but\nthe Divine _modus cognoscendi_ excludes either of these processes, being\nthe timeless act of One who \"knoweth altogether\"--in whose sight a\nthousand years are as a day, and a day as a thousand years.  To the\nEternal Intelligence, living in an unbeginning and unending Present,\n\"past\" and \"future\" must be equally unmeaning; to such a One we cannot\nbut think that all events must be equally and simultaneously present,\n\"for all live unto Him.\"  If we could behold the drama of existence _sub\nspecie aeternitatis_, we might be able to understand how {156} Divine\nomniscience can co-exist with human freedom; as it is, we can only say,\n\"Such knowledge is too wonderful for us--it is high, and we cannot attain\nunto it.\"  We know that we cannot know.  In any case, even while the\nDivine omniscience may present itself to us as a necessity of thought,\nhuman freedom remains a reality of experience and a postulate of\nmorals.[9]\n\n\nThere are, however, those to whom human freedom presents itself, not as a\ncontradiction to Divine omniscience, but as a contradiction in terms.\nMan's choice of a course of conduct, they argue, cannot be thought of as\nother than {157} determined by an efficient cause; but if it is so\ndetermined, in what sense can it be free?  An uncaused act is strictly\nspeaking unthinkable; but do we not affirm that acts are uncaused when we\nspeak of them as free--in other words, is not the only alternative to\nDeterminism what might be called _in_determinism?  The answer is (_a_)\nthat every choice is certainly the result of an efficient cause; but\n(_b_) the fact of this being so interferes in no wise with the reality of\nliberty, nor does it contradict the universality of the law of causation.\nFor _the efficient cause is the man himself_, and the fact that he can\nchoose is attested in the very act of choice--which would not be \"choice\"\nif there were not at least two real alternatives.  We do not quarrel with\nthe obvious truth, stated by Mill, that the will is determined by\nmotives; we contest the assumption that a \"free\" act is an \"uncaused\"\nact.  The act is caused or determined by the free choice of a causal\nself; in strict parlance, indeed, we should have to say that neither acts\nnor wills, but only human selves, are free.  The will is not\nself-determined, but determined by a self; and this self is able not only\nto choose between different motives, but to attend to one set of motives\nto the neglect of others, and even to create motives in order to become\nable to make a difficult decision.\n\nLet us, however, guard against a possible misconstruction by saying that\nthere is all the difference between this conception of _freedom_ {158}\nand the mere _spontaneity_ which is recognised by the followers both of\nSpinoza and Hegel, a difference which was luminously brought out by\nMartineau.[10]  The Spinozist doctrine of spontaneity, as Mr. Picton\npoints out, means that the individual follows an impulse which \"has its\nantecedents . . . in the chain of invariable sequences.\" [11] Man, in\nthis view, is \"free\" to do what he wants, because he wants it; he is\n_not_ free in the sense that he _could_ have wanted something\ndifferent.[12]  Nothing could be more frank than Mr. Picton's statements\non this point--as when he speaks of the \"_free_ man's\" sense that \"all\nthings are of God, and _could not have been otherwise_:\"\n\n\nOf course the obvious retort occurs, (he continues,) that if indeed\neverything . . . occurs by invariable sequence, all this intellectual\ngospel of freedom is vain, and exhortations to its acceptance thrown\naway.  And to those who are not satisfied with the freedom of conscious\nspontaneity, a condition in which we do just as we want to do, though our\nwill is a link in an endless series of untraceable sequences, I suppose\nthis objection must still be final.[13]\n\n\nThe objection is undoubtedly final, because it is absolutely valid; for\nby freedom we mean the ability to do or leave undone, to act thus or\nthus, and apart from such an ability moral judgments are quite\nunthinkable.  Where we pronounce praise or blame, the tacit {159}\npresupposition is always that the object of the pronouncement could have\nacted differently; and this Spinozism denies.\n\nThe same remark applies to the teaching of that modern Absolute Idealism\nwhich declares, with Green, that man is his motives, and that he is\n\"free\" inasmuch as it is by his own motives that he is governed.  It\nwould be as accurate to call an automatic machine \"free\" on the ground\nthat it is by its own works that it is moved.  This is only, as Professor\nWilliam James aptly calls it, \"soft Determinism.\"  If the automaton could\ndecide to slacken or increase its rate of speed, to go or to stop as it\nliked and where it liked--above all, if it could aim at and devise\nimprovements in its own mechanism so as to make itself a better\nautomaton--it would then be appropriate to speak of it as free; only it\nwould no longer be appropriate to call it an automaton.  And similarly it\nis only if man is able to determine his course of action--if he can\n\"choose\" in any real sense, _i.e._, in the sense that he might choose\ndifferently, if he wished to do so--that it can be anything but an abuse\nof language to speak of him as free; for only in that case can he be an\nobject of approbation or condemnation.  If he is merely the sum-total of\nhis motives, he is as little free to act other than he does as a number\nof chemical elements combined in certain proportions are free to form\nanything but a definite chemical substance.  As {160} Mr. Balfour has\nwell expressed it,[14] \"It may seem at first sight plausible to describe\na man as free whose behaviour is due to 'himself' alone.  But without\nquarrelling over words, it is, I think, plain that whether it be proper\nto call him free or not, he at least lacks freedom in the sense in which\nfreedom is necessary in order to constitute responsibility.  It is\nimpossible to say of him that he 'ought,' and therefore he 'can,' for at\nany given moment of his life his next action is by hypothesis strictly\ndetermined.\"  But the freedom of which we are conscious--_e.g._, in every\nexperience of conflict between inclination and duty--is something\naltogether different; we know that we can yield or resist, choose\nbetween, reinforce, and if necessary _make_, our motives.[15]\n\n{161}\n\nBut is not sin, it is sometimes asked, inevitable _per se_, and in that\nsense natural to man, and if so, how can we be blamed for what we could\nnot avoid?  And again, is there not some truth in the statement that much\nthat we call evil has been incidental to the progress of the race, just\nas the discords produced by the learner on a musical instrument are\nnecessary incidents in the process which will teach him by and by to\ncharm the ear with the perfect harmony?  Such questions are frequently\nput forward; let us see if we are able to clear away the\nmisunderstandings to which they bear witness.\n\n(1) Admitting that a free moral being must be able in theory to choose\nthe wrong as well as the right, it should in the first place be observed\nthat the possibility of that or any course does not render it\n_inevitable_ for him to take it, and it is only the possibility that is\ngiven.  But it may be justly argued that since as a matter of fact all\nmen sin, we cannot pretend that we are merely dealing with a theoretical\npossibility, but must pronounce sin to be _de facto_ natural to man as\nwell as inevitable--for who has ever avoided it?  Let us observe what\nfollows: this, and no more, that sin is \"natural\" only in the sense in\nwhich disease is \"natural\"--_viz._, as a disorder to which the human\nframe may become subject, but nevertheless a disorder.  As physical\ndisease entails a diminution of physical life, so sin entails a\ndiminution of {162} our moral and spiritual life, an alienation of the\nsoul from God; and while anyone may thus choose to describe sin--the\nwilful misuse of faculties lent us for other ends--as natural, it is\nsignificant that the result of sin is quite _un_natural, _viz._, a state\nof disunion between the soul and God.  So much is this the case that the\naim of all religion is to bring about a cessation of this unhappy state,\nand to effect the healing of the discord created by man's transgression.\nTrue religion treats sin, not as an error to be explained away, but as a\nwall of partition to be broken down; the essential aim of religion is\natonement, man's reconciliation to God.\n\n(2) But it is further urged that in historical retrospect, and in the\nlight of evolution, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in the\ncourse of man's development from a savage and barbaric condition all\nmanner of ills--bloodshed, slavery, etc.--have been necessary stages; may\nnot, then, sin be claimed as constituting part of the Divine plan?  And\nif such was the case once, may it not be the case still?  Here we are\ndealing with a very obvious confusion; for while man is in a low and\nundeveloped state, a good many acts which would be sins if committed by\npeople on a higher level, have not that character at all.  It is quite\nimpossible, _e.g._, to read the Homeric poems and find in them any trace\nor indication that deceit, war and massacres are {163} regarded with so\nmuch as moral distaste; the men of the Homeric age had simply not risen\nto that moral height, and it would be futile to judge them by the\nstandards of a more advanced civilisation.  Undoubtedly, in its slow\nevolution from sub-human origins, the race passes through long sub-moral\nstages during which the animal instincts--\"moods of tiger or of ape\"--are\nstill in the ascendant; it is only gradually that man becomes aware of\ncertain practices with shame, disgust or remorse, and it is only then\nthat we can begin to speak of the indulgence of the passions which prompt\nthose practices as \"sin.\"  When Paul calls the law the strength of sin,\nor says that the law came in that the trespass might abound, he states a\ntruth, but sees it, if one may say so, out of focus; for the law was not\narbitrarily imposed in order to brand a multitude of harmless acts as\noffences, but in proportion as the moral law is discerned by man's mind,\nacts which formerly were merely non-moral begin to range themselves on\nthis side or that, as right and wrong.  True, even when our moral\nperceptions have thus been quickened, we shall not always \"rule our\nprovince of the brute\" with a strong hand--true also that, owing to our\nearthly nature, \"in many things we all stumble;\" but so far from viewing\nthese failures complacently, they ought to spur us to more earnest\nendeavours to leave our lower inheritance behind.  The truth {164}\nconcerning the \"inevitableness\" of sin was stated by our Lord when He\nsaid, \"It must needs be that occasions\"--_viz._, of stumbling--\"come; but\nwoe to that man through whom the occasion cometh.\"  Sin as such, as an\n\"occasion,\" is inevitable; but for any particular sin, for acting\ncontrarily to the known best, the individual is responsible--and greatest\nof all is the responsibility of one who knowingly and of design becomes\nan \"occasion of stumbling\" to another, making sin more difficult to\navoid, or positively inciting another to wrong-doing.  We do not forget\nthe inequalities of moral endowment, nor do we leave out of sight that a\ntemptation which for one man scarcely so much as exists may prove\nwell-nigh irresistible to another; but the judgment upon each is in the\nwise and Fatherly hands of Him who knoweth our frame, and remembereth\nthat we are dust.\n\n\nWe have seen that Determinism, in spite of its humanitarian and even\noptimistic pretensions, when it is consistently applied falsifies every\none of its promises; it is worth while to ask ourselves yet once more\nwhat is likely to be the effect of this doctrine upon the characters of\nthose who seriously entertain it.  Mill, in his frigid and precise, yet\nscrupulously just manner, expressed the opinion that\n\nThe free-will doctrine, by keeping in view precisely that portion of the\ntruth which the word necessity puts {165} out of sight, namely the power\nof the mind to co-operate in the formation of its own character, has\ngiven to its adherents a practical feeling much nearer to the truth than\nhas generally (I believe) existed in the minds of necessarians.  The\nlatter may have had a stronger sense of the importance of what human\nbeings can do as to shape the characters of one another; but the\nfree-will doctrine has, I believe, fostered in its supporters a much\nstronger spirit of self-culture.[16]\n\n\nIf for \"self-culture\" we substituted self-reliance, buoyancy, a sense of\nresponsibility, we should scarcely go too far; for, indeed, it would be\ndifficult to say from what sources the consistent determinist is to\nderive these qualities.  He regards himself as the inevitable product of\nforces which have moulded him into that particular shape and no other; he\ncannot help himself or change his character by one hair's-breadth; he\nviews his own life, as has been well said, not in the light of a story\nwhich he can carry on as he may choose, but as a sum which must finish in\na given way; and his one dismal consolation is that he is not responsible\nfor his shortcomings.  He can but say with his favourite sage:--\n\n  The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,\n  But Here or There as strikes the Player goes;\n    And He that toss'd you down into the Field,\n  He knows about it all--_He_ knows--HE knows!\n\n\nBut to believe that no effort can avail will certainly not inspire anyone\nto make such an effort; on the contrary, the likelihood is only {166} too\ngreat that such a belief will upon occasion serve as a welcome excuse for\nnot making it.  It has been said that Determinism, if not a very heroic\ncreed, will at any rate make for tolerance and charity towards human\nfailings; but nothing is more certain than that this kind of charity\nwill, in practice, begin--while its tendency will be also to end--at home.\n\nThis estimate, it is true, is often warmly challenged; in actual life, we\nare told, many of those who profess determinist principles are notorious\nfor their strenuous moral calibre, and certainly not open to the charge\nof laxity.  Let that statement be ungrudgingly accepted; what it proves\nis no more than that prussic acid is entirely harmless--provided it is\nnot taken.  We are quite willing to admit that Determinism, provided it\nis not put into practice, is nothing more than a mistaken theory.  So\nlong as men are content to be determinists in their studies and\nlibertarians everywhere else, no particular mischief is likely to ensue;\nand it is matter of common experience, and for much congratulation, that\nour theoretical determinists should so far obey the instinct of moral\nself-preservation as to be for the most part practical libertarians,\nfreely pronouncing praise and blame on human conduct, and feeling praise-\nand blameworthy themselves.  But if they were logical and consistent\ndeterminists, they would do and feel no such thing; for the praise we\ngive to a {167} well-poised spring-cart is one thing, and the praise we\ngive to a well-poised character is another.  And again, given a man who\nreally believed, or whom it suited to believe, that he was quite\nirresponsible for his actions, and that no morally valid censure could\nattach to him for gratifying some appetite or passion, one cannot help\nsuspecting that the result would be something much worse than mere\nlaxity.  That most persons who argue in favour of Determinism do not act\nup to its principles, is surely nothing in the doctrine's recommendation;\non the other hand there is always the unpleasant possibility that some\nday they may begin to take their philosophy seriously.  And just as one\nwould not like prussic acid to lie about promiscuously where all and\nsundry could have access to it, lest there should be a great deal of\naccidental poisoning, so we are justified in viewing the broadcast\ndissemination of determinist theory not merely with the antipathy one may\nfeel towards intellectual error, but with the apprehension excited by a\nmoral danger.  Every system or movement which involves the denial of evil\nor of freedom--the denial or under-emphasis of sin--menaces not only\nreligion in the narrower sense, but the structure of civilisation itself.\n\n\nThe rock upon which all these theories make shipwreck is the fact that we\ncannot abolish the reality of sin and leave the reality of {168} goodness\nintact.  Saint and sinner, hero and coward, martyr and traitor, all, as\nwe have seen, are reduced by Determinism to a common level where there is\nneither admiration nor censure, but at most a vague wonder at all the\nunnecessary suffering--for _that_ at any rate remains real--involved in\nthis profoundly futile procession of phenomena; and that is a conclusion\nto which humanity has always refused, and will always refuse, to\nreconcile itself.  If we wish to see how utterly a deterministic\nconception empties morality of meaning, we need only turn to the earthly\ncareer of our Lord, and ask ourselves what it is that gives to that life\nand death their poignant significance but the voluntariness with which\nthe Saviour took each successive step on the road from His native\nNazareth to the place called Calvary.  Think of Him simply as the product\nof a compelling Force, unable to act otherwise than He did, and at one\nstroke all that moved us to gratitude, to admiration, all that appealed\nto us most deeply, is gone.  There can be no such thing as compulsory\nheroism or non-voluntary self-sacrifice; moral judgments upon\n\"inevitable\" conduct are merely absurd--we do not bestow moral approval\nupon this kind of higher automatism.\n\nSometimes, indeed, in a connection like this, an attempt is made at some\nsort of compromise: granted, it is said, that each separate action of\nChrist's was voluntary, yet His life-purpose {169} as a whole was surely\npre-determined, and not left to Him to adopt or refuse.  Yet how\nimpossible, upon closer reflection, is this species of semi-Determinism!\nEvery single act of Jesus was voluntary; but His whole life and character\nand purpose--which is just the sum-total of these single, voluntary\nacts--these, we are to believe, were strictly necessitated.  He could\nchoose every step of a way which was yet absolutely chosen for Him, so\nthat He could tread no other!  A tremendous decision like His going to\nJerusalem lay within His power; but the aim and meaning of His life,\nviewed as a whole, He had no power of voluntarily determining.  That, to\nour mind, is a wholly irrational position; one might as reasonably say,\n\"Every link of this chain is golden; but the chain itself is iron.\"\nSimple consistency requires the admission that if the chain is iron, so\nmust the links be, and if the links are golden, so must be the chain.\n\nWe say again--all that enshrines Jesus in our hearts, all that gives its\nredemptive power to His love-prompted death, and its significance to\nCalvary, rests upon the fact of His moral freedom.  He had _power_ to lay\ndown His life; therein lay the glory of His self-surrender.  He was,\nindeed, God's instrument in effecting the reconciliation of sinners to\nthe Divine Love, but it rested with Him to decide whether He would be\nthat instrument or no, and the course He chose was not that of {170}\nmechanical necessity, nor was the decision to which He came a following\nin the line of least resistance.  In accepting the pain and shame of the\nCross, Jesus worked His Father's will; but that will was not imposed upon\nHim from without, but freely responded to from within.  As the author of\nthe _Theologia Germanica_ has it, a man should strive \"to be to the\nEternal Goodness what his hand is to a man\": but all the ultimate\nsplendour of the achievement is bound up with the initial possibility of\nthe striving.  Not only the yearning love of God, but the conquering\nfreedom of Man is finally attested by that blood-red seal which bears the\nimpressure of a Cross.\n\n\n\n[1] So _e.g._, _In The Theology of Civilisation_, by Charles F. Dole, p.\n49.\n\n[2] _The Coming People_, by the same author, p. 49.\n\n[3] _The Over-Emphasis of Sin_, by the Rev. Alexander Brown, in the\n_Hibbert Journal_, April, 1909, p. 616.\n\n[4] _The Theology of Civilisation_, p. 61.  It would, of course, have\nbeen easy to give references from other authors; but there is an\nextraordinary family-likeness between the writers of this School,\nextending down to the very phrasing of their ideas.\n\n[5] _A Study of Religion_, vol. ii., pp. 166, 179.\n\n[6] _Theology of Civilisation_, p. 129.\n\n[7] The Rev. Alexander Brown, _loc. cit._, p. 619; italics ours.\n\n[8] Dole, _op. cit._, p. 101.\n\n[9] The analogy of the tyro and the expert chess-player--the tyro \"free,\"\nyet the expert foreseeing and holding the issue of the game in his own\nhands--is only superficially plausible.  There seems, however, one other\npossible explanatory hypothesis, though it is here advanced only in the\nmost tentative manner: may it not be possible for the Most High to impose\na limitation upon His infinite knowledge corresponding to that\nself-limitation of His infinite power which we regard as a necessary\nassumption?  It would be difficult on _a priori_ grounds to declare such\na thing to be inconceivable.  When Paul spoke of himself as \"determined\nnot to know anything save Jesus Christ,\" he signified his intention of\nshutting out from his knowledge whole ranges of facts, for reasons\ndictated by the purpose he had in hand; and as a matter of every-day\nexperience, we all practise something like this habitually, voluntarily\nnarrowing the range of our consciousness and our immediate interests for\none cause and another.  Might not God, if the reality of our freedom\ncould not be guaranteed in any other way, and if that freedom was\nnecessary for the attainment of His purpose with man, forbear in some\nmeasure, however slight, to exercise His omniscience?  We are well aware\nthat the subject admits of nothing more than reverent surmise; and having\nstated our suggestion, we simply leave it with the reader as one of those\npossibilities which will appeal differently to different minds.\n\n[10] _Types of Ethical Theory_, vol. ii., pp. 31 ff.\n\n[11] _Spinoza_, p. 195.\n\n[12] Cp. _Pantheism_, p. 74.\n\n[13] _Spinoza_, p. 196.\n\n[14] In _Mind_, October, 1893; quoted in Professor Upton's invaluable\nHibbert Lectures on _The Bases of Religious Belief_, p. 293, n.\n\n[15] It may be interesting to quote a recent popular statement of the\nneo-Hegelian position in regard to this question: \"The feeling that we\nare free is true in this sense, that the cause of a moral deed is a\nmotive within us, and not some power outside us.  But this motive moves\nus because of what we are, because of our characters, and the character\nis the product of inherited instincts, appetites and passions, modified\nby controlling ideas which have been acquired since our birth.  Mr.\nBlatchford is so far right in his book, _Not Guilty_.  The inward and\noutward conditions of a man's life, of course, _make him what he is\ninevitably_.  We choose, but our choice is governed by all our past, and\nby present circumstances. . .  We have our ancestors rolled up in us.  A\nman is the last result of the universe.  All is law.  All is inevitable\nby the laws of life:\"  (The Rev. G. T. Sadler, B.A., LL.B., in the\n_Clarion_, June 11th, 1909).  That, of course, is not liberty at all; and\nthe logical honours appear to rest with Mr. Blatchford, who, arguing on\nthe same assumptions, declares sin to be a meaningless term, seeing that\n\"man is not responsible for his nature, nor for the acts prompted by that\nnature.\"\n\n[16] _System of Logic_, vol. ii., p. 412 (third edition).\n\n\n\n\n{171}\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nMORALITY AS A RELIGION\n\nThat minimising or denial of moral evil with which we dealt in the\npreceding pages, is common to, and follows as the corollary from, all\nsystems in which the personality and transcendence of God are either\nexplicitly denied or virtually ignored.  Monism, that is to\nsay,--whether of the idealistic or the materialistic variety, whether\npantheist or atheist in complexion--finds its ethical counterpart in\nDeterminism.\n\nThere are, however, in our pathetically restless age a number--probably\na growing number--of serious men and women who attack the problem from\nthe opposite end.  Weary of speculation, and leaning on the whole to\nthe side of negation rather than affirmation in matters of theology,\nthey say that one thing at any rate is left, a certainty of which no\none can deprive them, an ideal sufficient to inspire mankind--the\nsupreme worthiness of the good life.  While the creeds of the Churches\ndivide their respective adherents from each other, here, they tell us,\nis a basis upon which all can unite, and which therefore {172} should\nassuredly prove adequate and attractive; nay, since religion is valued\nfor the kind of life it produces--since the tree is judged neither by\nits name, nor age, nor foliage, but simply and solely by its\nfruit--shall we not say that morality itself is the true and only\nreligion, that residuum of valid and vital truth which remains when all\nthe errors of supernaturalism have been purged and filtered away?\nCertainly there are those in our own day who, while definitely\nrejecting the sanctions and authority of religion in its commonly\naccepted meaning, are fully convinced that to live an unselfish life is\na duty incumbent on man, and who honestly endeavour to practise what\nthey believe.  That being so, is not faith shown to be practically\nsuperfluous, and the autonomy and sufficiency of ethics a demonstrated\nfact?\n\nSuch, in short, is the contention of the Ethical Movement, so ably and\noften eloquently represented by leaders like Felix Adler, W. M. Salter,\nWashington Sullivan, Stanton Coit, and others; all these teachers with\none accord deprecate and dismiss theological doctrines as at best not\nproven, at worst a hindrance, and commend instead morality as the\nall-embracing, all-sufficing  and  all-saving religion.  To quote Mr.\nSalter, who certainly speaks with authority for his side:--\n\n\nA religion that will teach us how to live, that will hold up clear and\nhigh the laws of life and win us to obedience {173} to them--this is\nthe religion the world needs, and it is the only true religion; all\nothers, all that seek to make something else sacred, that make men put\ntheir trust in \"God\" or Christ or the Virgin or the Bible or the Church\nor its sacraments and rites, are a diverting of man from the real\nissue; they are the blind leading of the blind; they are a delusion and\na snare.[1]\n\n\nMr. Salter is, indeed, willing to show \"charity\" for the belief \"that\nthe authority of the right is in some way connected with God\"; but it\nis the charity that may be extended to an exploded superstition on\naccount of certain beneficent associations that cling to it.  \"If by\nthe term 'God,'\" he says,[2] \"was meant simply the reason and nature of\nthings, it might perhaps be freely used; but the word means something\nelse to most persons\"--and therefore the honest ethicist will not\nemploy it.  For this sensible and candid course we cannot but feel\nthankful; Mr. Salter at any rate knows well enough that there is all\nthe difference between \"the reason and nature of things\"--between a\nmere \"totality of being\"--and a personal God.\n\nWe cannot disguise from ourselves that the present juncture is in many\nrespects singularly favourable to the ethical movement; to not a few\nwho have lost their earlier faith and feel the need of something to\ntake its place, Ethicism will seem to meet that want, and they will\naccordingly give a wistful, grateful {174} hearing to what Mr. Salter\nand his colleagues have to preach.  Probably, indeed, it will be people\nof a higher than the average intellectual and moral calibre who will\nseek to fill the void left by Agnosticism by embracing \"morality as a\nreligion\"; and more particularly is this likely to happen when this\ncult has for its apostles, men of high character and gracious\npersonality.  It is for that very reason that we are bound to examine\nthis plea carefully, and to ask ourselves whether it is really\npossible, as we are assured, \"by purely natural and human means to help\nmen to love, know, and do the right.\" [3]  The issue is no less than a\nmomentous one; for if religion, as generally understood, is a mere\ngraceful superfluity when it is not \"a delusion and a snare,\" very vast\nchanges are bound to follow the recognition of such a fact.  Dr. Coit\nmay be a little premature in making his voluminous arrangements for the\nadaptation of the Established Church and the Book of Common Prayer to\nthe uses of ethical religion; but if ethicists can convince us of the\nvalidity of their claims, then we must look forward to the fruitful\nservice of man taking the place of the fruitless service of God.\n\n\nNow the first remark we have to make is that as a matter of fact and of\nhistory a high morality has never made its appearance apart {175} from\nreligion.  Such as they are, our moral code and moral standards at\ntheir best are the product of the Christian faith; the ethical movement\nhas neither evolved a morality of its own, nor has it anything better\nto put in the place of that which we owe to Christianity.  Such\nsuggestions of alleged defects in the ethics of the Gospel as are\nbrought forward by Mr. Salter--_e.g._, that Jesus lacked \"a scientific\nsense of cause and effect\"; that He failed to inculcate \"intellectual\nscrupulousness and honesty\"; that we cannot go to Him for \"political\nconceptions\" and \"industrial ethics,\" and so forth--strike one as\npalpably trivial, irrelevant, and made to order;[4] and leaving these\nnot very imposing criticisms on one side, it is simply a fact that the\nhighest laws of life were declared by Jesus Christ, and have never been\nsuperseded.  And since ethicists have nothing better to propose in the\ndomain of conduct than what we find in the Gospel--since the \"higher\nlaw,\" as formulated by Mr. Salter, reduces itself to altruism versus\nliving for self--there is nothing harsh in saying that the ethical\nmovement proposes merely to take over Christian morality minus its\nChristian setting.  If a simile may be allowed, we should say that this\nnew firm has no goods of its own manufacture; it intends to trade with\nthe stock, and hopes to take over the goodwill, of the old.  {176}\nWhether that is a feasible _modus operandi_ is another question, at\nwhich we shall glance presently; for the moment we would simply insist\nupon the fact that hitherto at any rate the ultimate sanction of\nmorality has always been the _religious_ sanction.  The Churches, in\nbasing morality on religion, can at any rate point to some actual\nachievements in the past; on the other hand those who maintain that\nmorality is independent of religious belief, and that human conduct\nwill actually rise to a higher level when this truth is recognised,\nmust pardon us if we tell them that they are merely issuing promissory\nnotes which may or may not be honoured when they fall due.  A certain\nextremely important thing has been done--we will not say perfectly, but\nnevertheless done--in a certain way and by certain means for a very\nlong time; anyone who assures us that he will accomplish the same\nimportant thing for us without the means which we have hitherto deemed\nindispensable, can hardly be surprised if we reply that while we do not\ndoubt his entire good faith, we cannot possibly content ourselves with\nhis bare promises in so vital a matter.\n\nBut when we say this, we shall at once be met with the rejoinder that\nit is manifestly unfair to argue as if Ethicism were all promise and no\nperformance.  Are there not plenty of kindly, conscientious,\nwell-conducted agnostics who might serve as models to some of {177}\ntheir Church-going neighbours?  And have we not already referred to\nsome of the ethical teachers themselves as men of high character and\ngracious personality?  All this may be very readily admitted; but all\nthis has not an atom of bearing upon the matter in hand.  The question\nreally is not whether certain avowed agnostics are not as good men as\ncertain professing Christians; but whether the moral excellences of the\ngood agnostic are the _product_, the fruit, of agnosticism, in the same\nsense in which the virtues of the Christian are the _product_ of\nChristianity.  The answer to that question must be unhesitatingly in\nthe negative.  There is no disputing the historical fact that the force\nwhich has been most potent in building up our Western civilisation is\nnone other than Christianity; the ethics which have shaped and guided\nright conduct through all these centuries are Christian ethics.  Think\nas we will about dogma, few will feel competent to contest Lecky's\nverdict, when the historian of Rationalism and of European Morals\ndeclares that Christianity \"has been the main source of moral\ndevelopment in Europe\"; we know what this religion has done, because\nits actual record is open to inspection.  To quote Lecky again,\n\"Christianity has produced more heroic actions and formed more upright\nmen than any other creed.\"  Now Agnosticism has not created its own\nmoral system; agnostic morality at its {178} highest has so far grown\nin Christian soil, and to say that the flower will continue to grow in\nquite a different soil is to make a very bold and very hazardous\nprophecy.  In the West we have never had anything like an agnostic\ncivilisation, which would allow us to test the effects of non-belief\nupon conduct on a large scale; in the East, it is true, Japan offers us\nsomething like an agnostic civilisation, but those who are best\nacquainted with that nation are least inclined to exalt her\nperformances in the domain of ethics.  Japanese commercial morality is\nnotoriously low; while Japan's dealings with Korea have called forth\nthe unmeasured denunciations of European eyewitnesses.  The material\nadvances and military exploits of this virtually agnostic nation must\nnot blind us to other and less admirable features; it would, indeed,\nseem that this highly-gifted race, while frantically eager to \"gain the\nwhole world,\" has not yet discovered its own soul, and the familiar\nquestion, \"What shall it profit?\" inevitably suggests itself.\n\nBut not only has Agnosticism so far not grown its own morality; there\nis yet another consideration which leads us to listen with a certain\nmeasure of scepticism to the assurances of those who say that right\nconduct will survive though religion be surrendered.  It has perhaps\nnot been generally observed that just as the virtuous agnostic is\ngenerally the child of Christian parents, so by a seeming irony he is\n{179} often found to be the father of Christian children: there is\nhardly a genuine case on record where \"free-thought,\" Agnosticism,\nRationalism, has descended from parents to children to the third or\nfourth generation without a break, and the practical non-existence of\nsuch cases proves something of real and great importance.  It has been\nsaid that pure-bred Londoners die out in three generations at most,\nunless new blood from the country is brought in to replenish their\nfailing vital power.  If unbelief shows the same incapacity to\npropagate itself by natural descent--if the descendants of unbelievers\nshow a marked tendency to \"revert to type,\" _i.e._, to religion--such a\nfact suggests only one adequate explanation, _viz._, the instinct of\nself-preservation, a return to the soil which made the growth of the\nflower possible.  The virtues of the agnostic may be not unfairly\ncompared to cut flowers, which may continue to shed their perfume for\nawhile, but are bound to fade before long.  Our agnostic ethicists,\nbeing themselves the products of a Christian civilisation, may commend,\napprove and practise--they may _wear_ the Christian virtues; that those\nvirtues will bear transplanting into an agnostic soil and flourish in\nan agnostic climate is a highly dubious proposition.  We can only say\nthat available experience seems to be against it.  The Christian\nmorality implies the Christian religion which has created it; as for\nthe {180} high-minded, altruistic individual agnostic, he must simply\nbe pronounced a credit to Christianity.\n\nWe say \"the high-minded _individual_ agnostic,\" because candour compels\nus to go on to state that generally speaking those who have thrown\nreligion to the winds hardly strike one as standing on a particularly\nhigh ethical level.  One can only go by facts; and the facts are that\nthe frequenters of the betting-ring, the dram-shop, the light-minded,\npleasure-seeking throng that flutters from amusement to amusement\nwithout any interest in life's serious duties--these are hardly drawn\nfrom the Church-going strata of society.  Religion says \"no\" to this\nwhole mode of life; and unbelief is most frequently, and in its most\ntypical forms, found where the restraints of religion have proved too\nirksome to be tolerated.  Before arguing in the abstract that morality\nis independent of religion, and will be advanced by its abandonment, it\nwould perhaps be better to observe the average, concrete case of the\nman who has cut himself adrift from religious beliefs and influences;\nthen it will be time to decide whether we should like to see the\nexperiment tried on a national scale.  It is easy to theorise _in\nvacuo_; in practice we are well aware that without the sanctions and\nthe guardianship of religion morality tends to sink to the level where\nthe accepted motto is the hedonist's \"Let us eat and drink and be\nmerry, for to-morrow we die.\"\n\n{181}\n\nBut at this point another objection will be raised; \"surely,\" it is\nsaid, \"we do not seriously maintain that men are kind to their\nfamilies, honest in their every-day transactions, truthful in speech,\nand so forth, merely because they believe that to do so is to act in\naccordance with Divine injunction, and that if this belief were\nsuddenly destroyed we should be reduced to moral chaos.\"  But this\nargument, so frequently met with in this connection, misapprehends the\nreal issue.  We do not dispute that the elements of moral conduct begin\nto be inculcated wherever there is any social life at all.  Where there\nis any living together, complete selfishness is impossible; there must\ncome into being a rough law of give-and-take, a recognition of mutual\nrights to be respected, a certain loyalty from the individual towards\nthe tribe, which in turn befriends and defends each of its members.\nQuite a number of rudimentary virtues are thus developed by the force\nof public opinion, which cannot tolerate flagrantly anti-social acts\nfrom one member of the community towards the rest; murder, violence,\ntheft, false witness--these and the like offences are suppressed with a\nstrong hand, without the need of a special supernatural revelation to\ndecree \"Thou shalt not.\"  To be brief, there is no doubt that this\nsocial pressure is powerful enough to insist upon behaviour which will\nregulate most of the ordinary relationships of life in a fairly {182}\nsatisfactory manner--_i.e._, relationships between equals or members of\nthe same community.  The latter is a highly important qualification;\nwhere purely natural sanctions obtain, equal rights might be enjoyed by\nall _bona fide_ members of the tribe, but the same rights would not\nnecessarily extend to an alien.  And even within the community governed\nby such sanctions the weaker, and especially the weakest, did not rank\nas equals; among the most highly civilised nations of antiquity, the\nGreeks and Romans, infanticide and exposure flourished--indeed, as\nLecky points out,[5] by the ideal legislations of Plato and Aristotle,\nand by the actual legislations of Lycurgus and Solon, infanticide was\npositively enjoined.  Nothing can be more significant than to find in\nthe _Self-Tormentor_ of Terence the very character who expresses the\nnoble sentiment, \"I am a man, and deem nothing that is human alien from\nme,\" giving instructions that if the child that is to be born to him\nshould be a girl, it is to be put to death.  The public opinion of an\nenlightened and cultured paganism countenanced such deeds without\nreproach; it was Christianity, or rather He who said, \"Suffer the\nlittle children to come unto Me,\" that put a stop to these barbarities.\n\n\nThe point which we wish to establish is this: that while \"evolutional\nethics\" and natural {183} sanctions will carry us a certain way, they\nwill certainly not carry us all the way; indeed, the moment we come to\nthe higher reaches of character, these sanctions are seen to be quite\ninadequate.  Why, _e.g._, should the conviction be born in man, and\nbecome a governing conviction, that he must under no circumstances\ncommit a certain act, though to do so would be easy and advantageous,\nand detection not to be feared?  Why should the moral consciousness of\nthe higher races accept the principle which places self-sacrifice above\nself-seeking?  There is only one explanation for this paradoxical\nphenomenon: it is that, as men rise in the moral scale, there dawns on\nthem the sense of a law that is not of this world, an _Ought-to-be_,\nwhich speaks with a strange authority, and will not be denied; and when\nthis authority is properly interpreted, it reveals a Righteous and\nSovereign Will to which we owe unconditional obedience.\n\nAnd here we may quote in support some significant words of Mr.\nSalter's--words whose full significance, we venture to think, that able\nand distinguished writer hardly realised when he penned them: \"_The\nwhole meaning of ethics is in the sense of an invisible authority; to\nbow to custom, to public opinion or to law, is moral idolatry._\" [6]\n\"Whatever else I may doubt about, I cannot doubt the law of duty--that\nthere is a right and a wrong; that the {184} right obliges me, that I\nought to do it. . . .  The law is over all, though it were never\nobeyed. . . .  Ethics is nothing but the response which man and man\nmake to the higher order of things. . . .  Ecstasy is the grace heaven\nsets upon the moment in which the soul weds itself to the perfect\ngood.\" [7]  Let us see what is implied in these truly remarkable\nstatements.  The real sanctions of moral conduct are not the sanctions\nof expediency or force, but are derived from a higher law, an invisible\nauthority; the finest morality is man's free response to a higher\norder.  But, we ask, what is this higher order, this note of command,\nbut the expression of a higher Will?  And how can there be a higher\nWill without a Higher Personality, a God who impresses His law upon us\nand makes us aspire after the ideal good?  Mr. Salter explicitly denies\nthat the moral virtues come \"from below, from prudence, from the sense\nof decency, from longsighted selfishness; they who think so,\" he\ndeclares, in a fine burst, \"never breathed the climate of morality.\"\n[8]  But if not from below, they must come from above; and this \"above\"\nreally must be something more than an atmospheric conception.  Will Mr.\nSalter help us to determine its nature more clearly?  He says, \"The\nMighty Power, hid from our gaze by the thin screen of nature and of\nnature's laws . . . is {185} with our struggles after a perfect right\"\n[9]; _but if this Mighty Power_, which is not so much expressed as\nhidden by nature's laws--which therefore transcends nature--_is in the\nhighest sense moral, how can it be less than personal_?  It is this\nPower which, according to our author, gives us the vision of the ideal,\nthis Power which sets the mark of its approval upon our surrender to\nits behests, this Power which manifests its character in doing justice\nupon individuals and nations alike, weeding out the selfish, the\nwanton, the luxurious, and preserving the pure and upright; may we not\nask what reason there is for withholding from that Power the one\nadequate name of God?[10]\n\nLet us pursue and emphasise this thought a little further.  Already we\nhave seen that--_teste_ Mr. Salter--the highest ethics require our\nbelief in a mighty, transcendent and benevolent Power; that admission\nmeans nothing less than the surrender of naturalism {186} in morals--it\nis an acknowledgment that ultimately a true ethic involves and\npresupposes a metaphysic.  Indeed, when Mr. Salter speaks of ethical\nreligion, the same implication is there.  Religion signifies a living\nand personal relationship between the worshipper and the object of his\nworship: we can stand in such a relationship to a living, personal God,\nin harmony with whose will alone we are able to find our true\nhappiness; we cannot stand in such a relationship to an impersonal\npower or a universal order.  Mr. Salter speaks of man \"bending hushed\nand subdued, as he thinks of those mighty laws on which the health and\nsafety of the race depends,\" and calls that a religion; we submit that\nso far as such an emotion is religious, it means that behind those\nmighty laws there stands a mighty Lawgiver, whom we worship and seek to\nobey because He is good.  We can keep a law, we can conform to it so as\nto escape hurt, but we cannot worship it except when we conceive of it\nas the manifestation of a good Will; neither can we derive moral\nstimulus from an abstract ideal.  It is when the ideal speaks in us and\nto us as the behest of the Living God--above all, when it stands before\nus incarnated, made actual in the Son of God--that it becomes dynamic,\ndrawing and uplifting and transforming men into the Divine likeness.\nWe are not greatly helped by such a statement as that the bare idea of\nmorality, {187} quite apart from faith in God, \"may be the supreme\npassion to a man\"; we have to deal with things as they are, and in\nactual life we well know that the most commonplace presentation of the\nGospel has been more of a force in the making of character and as an\ninspiration to righteousness than the most refined philosophical\nEthicism.\n\nAnd now let us show, from yet another point of view, as we think may be\ndone quite simply and cogently, that it is impossible rationally to get\naway from the theistic position if we are in earnest about morality,\nviewed as the pursuit of the ideal.  In order to engage in such a\npursuit, we must in the first place be free agents, able to choose\nbetween conflicting motives and to follow the right.  If our actions\nare necessitated, then to speak of our \"pursuing\" this or that course,\nchoosing and rejecting, is of course a mere contradiction in terms.\nBut if the universe, including ourselves, is simply the resultant\noutcome of the interaction of unconscious mechanical forces, freewill\nis an absolute illusion, and Determinism the only true theory; and\nagain, if Determinism is true, we cannot choose, we cannot strive--in a\nword, we cannot help being what we are.  Hence, if morality in any\nintelligible sense is to exist at all, we must be free; and only a\npersonal and transcendent God could have conferred on us the faculty of\nfreewill.\n\n{188}\n\nWe pass on to one or two final considerations.  One of our ethicists,\nwho genially informs us that \"theology is discredited . . . and the\nworld is indifferent to what the Church either thinks or says,\" writes\nas follows: \"The Ethical Movement believes that the good life has an\nimperative claim upon us because of its supreme worth for humanity.\"\n[11]  As against this statement we have no hesitation in affirming that\nonly religion, in the accepted sense of the term, can give us the\nabsolute conviction of the absolute supremacy of moral claims--the\nassurance that it were better to suffer, to hunger, to be despised and\nrejected of men, to die on a cross, than to violate one of these.\nGrant that the good life is of supreme worth for humanity; yet\nsupposing a man is sorely tempted to obtain some immense advantage or\nto gratify some consuming passion, at the cost of injuring someone\nelse--suppose he can do so with safety and success--why should he\nprefer humanity's interests to his own?  Why, indeed?  We make bold to\nsay that no one in the throes of conflict between duty and desire, at\nthe moment of moral crisis, has ever been influenced by the worth of\nhis action for humanity.  The ultimate sanction of right conduct must\nbe drawn from a Source beyond humanity, which enjoins the right at all\ncosts--from Him who is humanity's Maker and Ruler.\n\n{189}\n\nAnd the same fact is borne witness to by the experience which waits\nupon wilful wrong-doing, by the sense of sin.  Such an emotion can\nnever be inspired by an impersonal order with which we have come into\nconflict, but only by a personal Will against which we are conscious of\nhaving offended.  The man who disregards the law of gravitation and\nfalls from a ladder, experiences one kind of painful sensation; but the\nman who disregards the law of righteousness and falls into sin,\nexperiences quite a different kind of painful sensation--the sensation,\nnot of self-pity, but of self-accusation and remorse, because it is\nGod's holiness against which he has transgressed; and that feeling\nfinds utterance age after age in the agonised cry, \"Against Thee, Thee\nonly, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in Thy sight.\"\n\nThe truth is, those who claim to set up morality as a religion, while\ndeclaring \"the personal Deity of theology illusory,\" are engaged in an\nimpossible task; and it is because of the inherent hopelessness of\ntheir enterprise that we must raise our voice in warning to any who may\nbe tempted to put faith in their fair promises.  The ethicist's\nintentions are admirable; but he sets about their realisation in a\nmanner which dooms him and them to failure.  Let us have practice\nwithout theory, he says, the superstructure without the foundation, the\nfruit without the root, works without the {190} faith which produces\nworks: and such being the nature of his undertaking, he fares\naccordingly, a spectacle of ineffectual goodness, wondering why the\nworld declines to listen to his so reasonable gospel.  But the world\ncontinues to cling to an ultra-rational Gospel because it is\ninstinctively aware that morality rests upon ultra-rational sanctions.\nEthicism may borrow from Christianity the doctrine of the brotherhood\nof man, but it has no explanation to give of the basis supporting that\naxiom--why we ought to regard each human being as having certain\nindefeasible claims upon us, so that we may not treat him as a mere\nmeans subserving our ends.  That position can never be defended on\npurely natural grounds; in the last analysis the brotherhood of man has\na right to be accepted as true only by those who believe in the\nFatherhood of God.\n\nIn conclusion, as all true morality pre-supposes religion, so it is\nonly religion which can supply the strongest incentive and\nencouragement to the good life; for it is religion alone which has the\npromise that the Good shall and must prevail, that the stars in their\ncourses are fighting on the side of right and truth, and that it shall\nbe well or ill with us according as we range ourselves on that side or\nin opposition to it.  Take away the idea of a God whose will is that\nrighteousness shall triumph, that life shall be lord of death, and\n{191} love victorious over all, and we have no guarantee but that all\nthe efforts and sacrifices of martyr and reformer may be in vain, and\nthe hope of the world a delusion.  It is only the believer who can\nnever despair, who knows that his work will endure and enrich the\nworld--that there will be no collapse or final disarray, that the world\nis no blot nor blank, but means intensely and means good.  It is that\nfaith which makes endeavour and surrender worth while; that faith--the\nassurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen--which\nalone gives us a right to sing Felix Adler's noble hymn:--\n\n  And the work that we have builded,\n    Oft with bleeding hands and tears,\n  Oft in error, oft in anguish,\n    Will not perish with our years,\n  It will rise and shine transfigured\n    In the final reign of light;\n  It will pass into the splendours\n    Of the City of the Light.\n\nFor the assurance which breathes in these lines rests on a previous,\ndeeper assurance: it is that which the Christian expresses in the\nwords, \"_If God be for us, who is against us?_\"\n\n\n\n[1] _Ethical Religion_, p. 48.\n\n[2] _Ibid_, p. 39.\n\n[3] See _A Few Points about Ethical Societies_, a tract issued by the\nUnion of Ethical Societies.\n\n[4] _Ethical Religion_, pp. 81, 84, 86, 89; for a concise treatment of\nthis subject the reader may be referred to the present writer's _Jesus\nor Christ_? chapter iv.\n\n[5] _History of European Morals_, ii., p. 26.\n\n[6] _Op. cit._, p. 38.\n\n[7] _Ibid._ pp. 16-18.\n\n[8] _Op. cit._, p. 17.\n\n[9] _Ibid._, p. 57.\n\n[10] \"If for the word 'God' you read the 'universal life,'\" writes the\nRev. R. J. Campbell, \"you have at once gained the ear of every\nhigh-minded thinking man to whom you appeal.\"  (_The Christian\nCommonwealth_, April 14th, 1909.)  Are we, then, to understand that if\nwe want to appeal to high-minded thinking men, we must drop the term\n\"God\" and substitute for it, as being less offensive to these higher\nthinkers, some non-committal phrase like \"universal life?\"  We say\nquite frankly that we are not prepared to pay such a price for making\nsuch a successful appeal; for the \"universal life\"--just because it is\nuniversal and all-embracing--is no more \"good\" than \"bad\"--it has no\nmoral character, and hence can exercise no moral authority, nor\ngenerate any moral enthusiasm.\n\n[11] _What the Ethical Movement is_, by Harry Snell.\n\n\n\n\n{192}\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nPROBLEMS OF PRAYER\n\nIn the opening chapters of this book we had occasion once or twice to ask\nourselves in passing how the new emphasis on the doctrine of Divine\nimmanence was likely to affect the question of prayer; in turning now to\na more direct treatment of the latter subject, this is again the first\nand most important query we shall have to consider.  Truth, as we all\nknow, is a \"_mean_\"--it represents a balance between opposing extremes;\nwhat is, however, not always recognised is that the extremes are not\nnecessarily equidistant from the true centre, and there are cases when it\nis of the greatest importance to discern which of them is nearer and\nwhich more remote from the truth.  In the present instance we have\ninsisted all along that of the two possible extremes of Deism and\nPantheism the former, with its exclusive insistance upon God's\ntranscendence, is not only more intelligible but far more true than the\nlatter, with its one-sided stress on His immanence; for, as we previously\nexpressed it, in the exercise of religion it is the transcendent God\n{193} with whom we are concerned.  In fact, Deism may be a very faulty\ntype of religion, theoretically considered; but Pantheism is religion's\npractical annihilation.  It is not for nothing that in Persia, _e.g._,\nthe name of _Sufi_--in theory a pantheistic believer in the identity of\nthe worshipper with his Deity--signifies in current use not a mystic, but\na freethinker!\n\nSo far as the religious _life_ is concerned, we repeat that Deism is the\nlesser error and the lesser danger; and nowhere is this more closely\nbrought home to us than when we consider the reality and the meaning of\nprayer.  For however far-off God may be thought to be, it has never been\nsuggested that the voice of prayer is not able to travel across the\ndistance--He may \"hear us in heaven, His dwelling-place, and when He\nheareth, forgive;\" but if His presence is so universally diffused that we\nourselves form part of it, we shall hardly know to whom or to what to\naddress ourselves in the act of adoration.  We can pray to a Deity\nconceived as solely transcendent, but not to a Deity conceived as solely\nimmanent, _i.e._, as the Sum of Being.  A vague \"cosmic emotion\" differs\n_toto coelo_ from worship; we cannot worship that which includes us, for\nif we did we should be indulging in self-worship, and as for prayer, we\ncould no more seriously offer it to the universe than to the atmosphere.\nThis point cannot be too clearly realised.  Prayer is the soul's\ncommunion with God; but if the soul is an {194} integral constituent of\nGod, a mode or phase of the Divine Being, then this communion, being\nalready an accomplished and unalterable fact, cannot be so much as\ndesired, still less does it need to be brought about by prayer or any\nother means whatsoever.  Nothing could be more instructive in this\nconnection than what is apparently a favourite illustration with those\nfor whom immanence is only a synonym for Monism, and which likens the\nrelation of God to the individual soul to that subsisting between the\nocean and some individual bay: \"the hundred bays and gulfs and creeks\nthat succeed each other round the island,\" we read, \"_are in the ocean,\nand the ocean is in them._\" [1]  Now let us see what this means.  There\nmay be the most urgent necessity for digging channels to connect a\nreservoir with the sea, so that it may be filled with its fulness; but it\nwould be absurd to speak of opening up or renewing communication between\nbay and ocean--a communication whose uninterrupted nature is implied in\nthe very terms of the image.  On such an interpretation of immanence,\nprayer in any real sense is either superfluous or impossible; for if no\none hopeth for that which he {195} seeth, neither would any one in his\nsenses seek to bring to pass a condition of things which is thought to be\nalready existing.  Here we see once more the unbridgeable gulf between\nevery form of \"idealistic Monism\"--Eastern or Western--and Christianity;\nfor while, _e.g._, \"the central idea of Indian piety is meditation, the\nabsorption of the individual in the life-spirit, the experience of\nidentity with the universality and oneness of the Godhead,\" on the other\nhand \"Christianity is the religion of prayer--prayer is its crown and its\npearl.\" [2]\n\nThat is really the crux of the whole matter; prayer must be conceived as\nan active intercourse between the worshipper and a Person other than\nhimself, who is the object of his worship.  It is not a soliloquy--what\nthe Germans expressively call a _Selbstgespraech_, or \"self-talk\"; it is\nnot a monologue, but a dialogue; it is not a mere contemplation, but\naddressed to Someone who is thought of as willing to listen and able to\nanswer.  As Sabatier has well said, \"_Prayer is religion in act; that is,\nprayer is real religion_.\"  Wherever men believe in a personal God, as\ndistinct from an \"all-inclusive consciousness of being\" of which they are\nfleeting expressions--mere surface ripples on an infinite ocean--that\nbelief will attest itself by the prayerful life.  On the other hand, a\nprayerless religion is a contradiction in terms; it either has no needs\nto express or {196} it will die from lack of self-expression.  The\nbeliever will pray from a sense of inner necessity, coupled with the\ninstinctive assurance that the need of which he is conscious will thus,\nand thus only, meet with its satisfaction.  \"The genuineness of\nreligion\"--to quote Professor William James--\"is thus indissolubly bound\nup with the question whether the prayerful consciousness be or be not\ndeceitful.  The conviction that something is genuinely transacted in this\nconsciousness is the very core of living religion.\" [3]\n\n\nIs there, then, or is there not, something \"genuinely transacted\" in the\nexperience of prayer?  A transaction, _ex hypothesi_, can only take place\nbetween two parties; it implies two volitional centres.  And,\nfurthermore, what is it that is transacted?  Is prayer only a very noble\nform of auto-suggestion--are its effects merely subjective, or are they\nalso objective?  These are problems which could hardly be said to exist\nfor an earlier age; to the modern mind they are intensely real, and press\nfor answers.  It must be recognised at once that the idea of God as\nimmanent in nature, expressing Himself in those observed uniformities to\nwhich we give the name of natural laws, creates difficulties of its own\nin regard to this subject; for if these laws show forth His will, is it\neven thinkable that our formulated desires could move Him to depart from\nwhat we might speak of as His original {197} intention?  His will is\neither the absolutely best or it is not; if it is, why pray that He may\nmodify it?  If it is not, is He not less than perfectly good, since His\ndesign admits of improvement?  Can we conceive of Him as doing something\nin answer to a human petition which He would not do apart from such a\npetition?  Can we think of Him as being prevailed upon by our assiduities\nand importunities to alter His decrees--is not this whole notion rather\npaltry and derogatory to His dignity?  Everybody is familiar with these\nquestions and arguments; let us see in what proportion truth and error\nare combined in them.\n\n(1) A good deal of unnecessary difficulty arises in the first place from\nthe habitual failure of many people to bear in mind that though God is\nimmanent in the cosmos, He is not _only_ immanent; as soon as His\ntranscendence is realised, it is seen that there exists no _a priori_\nreason against the possibility of what from our point of view would look\nlike Divine interpositions in the ordinary course of nature.  We have, it\nmust be remembered, not the slightest grounds for assuming that there can\nbe no departures from the uniformities of nature, nor are we in a\nposition to state dogmatically that no imaginable conditions would ever\nfurnish an adequate reason for such a departure.  Admitting that the\nregular processes observed in the physical universe represent something\nof the Divine mode of action, we have no {198} warrant for maintaining\nthat these are the only modes of such action; probability, in effect, is\nall the other way.  \"Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways; and how\nsmall a whisper do we hear of Him!  _But the thunder of His power who can\nunderstand?_\"  A transcendent God is _eo ipso_ not limited to such\nmethods as we happen to have caught a glimpse or a whisper of.\n\n(2) But when this is clearly understood, it has on the other hand to be\nas frankly admitted--indeed, it is stating the obvious to say--that in\nmodern times the idea of the uniformity of nature has obtained such a\nhold upon the general educated mind as renders any breach of that order\nfar more improbable to us than it could have appeared to a pre-scientific\ngeneration.  All physical science rests, broadly speaking, upon the\nassumption that nature acts uniformly; without saying that it must be so,\nwe are well assured that it is so, because all observation and experiment\nare found to bear out the truth of the principle we have assumed.  All we\nhave learned concerning nature excludes the notion that there is anything\nhaphazard or arbitrary in her ways.  We do not feel at all as though the\naction of natural forces might be suspended or modified for our\nparticular benefit, and hence certain ideas of the efficacy of\nprayer--_e.g._, for rain or fine weather--have become impossible for us\nto entertain with the ease of our ancestors.  We start with a mental\nattitude--hardly {199} to be called a prejudice, since it is based upon a\nlarge body of experience--of profound assurance that in matters like\nthese the will of God finds its expression in the unbroken operation of\nHis ordinary laws, \"without variableness or shadow of turning\"; most\npeople, moreover, would acknowledge that it is better that these laws\nshould be stable and capable of being learned and depended upon than that\nthe Divine will should be incalculable--_ondoyant et divers_--a matter of\nmoods on His side and of importunity on ours.  Tennyson's familiar lines\nrepresent the typically modern outlook with the utmost accuracy and\nconciseness:--\n\n  God is Law, say the wise; O soul, and let us rejoice[1]\n  For if He thunder by law, the thunder is yet His Voice.\n\n\n(3) And while the scientific temper of the present day could not fail to\naffect our thoughts concerning prayer in some directions, the same has\nsurely to be said about the ethical temper of the age, as shown in our\nenlarged conceptions of God.  To put it bluntly, much of the language\nabout what used to be called \"special providences\" has become unreal and\nceased to be edifying for us.  On this whole subject some words of\nPrincipal Adeney's can hardly be bettered:--\n\nUnder the old theory God had His favourites who were saved by\nhair-breadth escapes, in accidents that were fatal to persons who were\nnot the objects of \"special providences\"; this was supposed to account\nfor the fact that one man in particular found that somebody else {200}\nhad taken the last berth in the ship he had meant to sail by, and so\nescaped the fate of the crew and passengers when it went down with all on\nboard--no \"special providence\" saving them.  It looks like a reflection\nof the pagan mythological tales about heroes rescued by the timely\ninterference of gods and goddesses in battles where thousands of common\nmortals perish unheeded.  It is the aristocratic idea of privilege\ncarried up to religion.  The newer view is more democratic, and it seems\nto agree better with our Lord's assurance that not a sparrow falls to the\nground without our Father's notice, that the very hairs of our heads are\nall numbered.[4]\n\n\nAll this has its direct bearing upon the subject of prayer.  We may still\nbe occasionally regaled with stories of one solitary sailor being\nsaved--Providence looking after him in response to his mother's\npetitions--while every other soul on board was drowned; but these\nnarratives, once irresistible in the impression they created, are to-day\nreceived with somewhat mixed feelings.  The view of God's character which\nthey inculcate is apt to strike us as unsatisfactory; that He should\navert a great and presumedly unmerited physical calamity from one\nindividual simply and solely because He has been asked to do so by some\nother individual, while allowing the same calamity to overtake numerous\nothers no more deserving of affliction, does not fit in with our\nconception of Him.  We are slowly learning to substitute for the notion\nof any kind of preferential treatment at the hand of God a belief in the\nunchanging goodness of His decrees, in the wisdom of His counsel, {201}\nand in the reality of His abiding and enfolding love; by Providence we\nmean something that is neither local nor personal, nor particular, but\nuniversal--the Providence of unchanging law--that living and loving Will\nwhich \"knoweth altogether.\"\n\n(4) But if, owing to such considerations as these, we are less inclined\nto-day to frame certain kinds of petition, or to expect them to be\nanswered, it is also true that we are increasingly coming to re-discover\nwhat should never have been forgotten, _viz._, that petition is not the\nwhole but only a part, and perhaps a subordinate part, of prayer.  A\nglance at our Lord's priceless bequest to humanity, the Model Prayer,\nshould suffice to place this beyond a doubt.  If we study it clause by\nclause, we find that the first place is assigned simply to _adoration_,\nand the claiming of the supreme privilege of spiritual communion, with an\nimplicit, although not explicit, _thanksgiving_ for that privilege; next\nwe find two clauses expressive of _aspiration_ for the achievement of the\nhighest aims, with the implied vow to help on their realisation by our\nown conduct and efforts; and not until then do we come upon a\n_supplication_, which moreover prays only for the simplest of material\nblessings--for bare sustenance, in fact.  This is followed by\n_confession_, with a prayer for mercy, and a promise to show ourselves\nmerciful to our brethren; and a prayer for deliverance {202} and guidance\nbrings us to the final act of _praise_.  Thus, with one most modest\nexception, the blessings which God is asked to bestow are spiritual\nblessings; for a petition asking, _e.g._, that the operation of some\nnatural law may be temporarily suspended for our benefit we should look\naltogether in vain.  In any case we ought to learn from the one prayer\nwhich our Lord expressly taught His disciples to give to mere petition a\nmuch less prominent place than it usually occupies; adoration, confession\nand thanksgiving should between them take the predominant share in our\ncommunion with the Most High, thus correcting the tendency to make of\nprayer a mere recital of wants more or less indiscriminately addressed to\nthe Divine bounty.  The supreme object to be kept in view is that we\nshould become of God's way of thinking--not that we should attempt to\nmake Him of ours; in Matthew Henry's shrewd comparison, prayer is like\nthe boat-hook, which brings the boat to the land, not the land to the\nboat.\n\n\nBut when we have clarified our ideas on the subject to this extent, we\nmust once more face the question suggested by Professor James--_What is\nit that is transacted_?  The effect of prayer upon those who offer it is\ntoo well-attested to be called into doubt; what we have to ask ourselves,\nhowever, is whether those effects are, in the strict sense of the term,\npurely \"subjective,\" _i.e._, as we {203} previously expressed it, in the\nnature of a noble auto-suggestion.  The answer to that query must in the\nlast resort be determined by our thought concerning God and our relation\nto Him.  Let it be said once more: if, with the pantheist, we assume that\nwe are essentially and inalienably one with the All--part of It, as the\nbay is of the ocean--prayer, as the theist understands it, is a\nself-contradiction; if offered at all, it will be, not the establishment\nof a relation which is _ex hypothesi_ always in being, but at most a\nclearer realisation by the particle of its fundamental identity with the\nWhole.  Prayer is founded upon the belief that the Deity is at least\ninterested in His worshipper--or else, why speak to the Unheeding?  But\nSpinozism distinctly denies the possibility of God's entertaining any\nfeelings towards individuals--indeed, Spinoza condemns the individual's\ndesire for God's personal love; at most he will admit that \"'God,\ninasmuch as He loves Himself, loves men,' because men are parts and\nproportions of God. . .  The complacency of the Universe in its\nself-awareness, the love of God towards Himself, as Spinoza has it,\nincludes us in its embrace, and that is enough.\" [5]  We reply that this\n\"complacency of the Universe in its self-awareness\" may be enough for\nSpinozists; but it is not enough to move men to prayer--and this is borne\nout by Mr. Picton's total silence on this {204} topic in his exposition\nof his Master's doctrine.  Mr. Chesterton, with his usual felicity of\nphrase, hits the nail on the head when he says that upon this principle\n\"the whole cosmos is only one enormously selfish person;\" certainly it\nshould be clear that on this assumption, as there can be no return of\naffection from a God whose love is only self-love, so the effect of\nprayer can only be that which is produced upon the soul by its\nconsciousness--supposed to be elevating--of being an infinitesimal\nfraction of an infinite totality.  We say that this consciousness is\nsupposed to be elevating, though why it should be so is not quite\napparent; for whatever this heterogeneous sum-total of existences may be,\nit is not, in our sense of the term, _good_, as the God of Christianity\nis good.\n\nBut if, instead of losing ourselves in the fog-land of Pantheism,\nTheosophy and their unavowed congeners, we take our stand upon the firm\nbelief in the otherness of God, the case alters altogether.  Prayer at\nonce becomes rational instead of being a contradiction in terms; it is\nthe accomplishment of something which is not already accomplished; it\nsprings from the consciousness of a spiritual need, it is born of the\ninstinct of spiritual self-preservation.  It sets up a connection between\ntwo centres--man and God--which can only be connected because of a\nfundamental likeness subsisting between them; but the _likeness_ is not\n_oneness_--indeed, the latter would exclude {205} the former, for only\nseparates can be like each other.  On this theory prayer is no mere\nmeditation, but an intense and strenuous endeavour to make actual\nsomething that is only potential; to use the simile we previously\nemployed, it is a digging of channels along which the sea may pour of its\nfulness into an inland reservoir.  That this is what really takes place\nin prayer--that there is such a real response from Him to whom it is\ndirected--we have no hesitation whatever in affirming; and this\nnotwithstanding the fact that such an experience cannot be proved to one\nwho has not shared it, any more than we can convey a sense of the\ngrandeur of Mont Blanc to one whose eye has never beheld its majestic\nproportions.  Evidently, in this as in every corresponding case the\ntestimony of those who say that they have had a certain experience must\nbe preferred to that of others who can only say that they have not had\nit; and the witness to spiritual renewal, reinforcement, replenishing\nreceived in prayer--to the entering in of a Presence when the doors were\nthrown open; to a peace and blessedness which were not of the world's\ngiving--this witness is so strong and so uniform that we have no choice\nbut to pronounce it decisive.  In every such case something had been\n\"genuinely transacted\"; not only had man spoken, but God had\nanswered--the worshipper had not merely invoked, but in a very real sense\nhe had evoked, the Divine Presence.\n\n{206}\n\nBut can we go any further than this?  Can we, that is to say, maintain\nthat God answers prayer, not only by flooding the adoring soul with fresh\nstrength, gladness, confidence, but by bringing to pass events which\notherwise would not have come about?  This \"objective efficacy\" of\nprayer, in the narrower sense, is frequently doubted to-day; but, as we\nshall attempt to show, upon grounds which, when examined, prove\nuntenable.  The difficulty, as it is most generally stated, arises from a\nmisunderstanding; answers to prayer are regarded as interferences with\nthe uniformities of nature, as arbitrary--and therefore\nunthinkable--interruptions of the chain of cause and effect, for which\nthere can be no room in an orderly universe.  This, no doubt, was what\nTurgenev meant when he asked, \"Does not all prayer mean _au fond_ a wish\nthat in a given case two and two may not make four?\"  That Turgenev's\naphorism quite illegitimately narrows down the meaning of prayer to\npetition, may pass; it is more important for us to investigate his\nimplied challenge--the grounds upon which he expresses his absolute\ndisbelief in the fulfilment of such petitions.[6]\n\nA simple preliminary reflection should come to our aid.  God is surely\nalways bringing things to pass on condition that we first do certain\nother things, and on no other conditions {207} whatsoever.  The seeking\nhas to go before the finding, the knocking to precede the opening of the\ndoors.  He will give us waving corn, providing the ground is ploughed and\nsown; that is to say, He answers our request, if we will make it in the\nright manner--He lays down certain rules on compliance with which we may\nsecure certain blessings.  Is it objected that ploughing and sowing,\nunlike prayer, are physical exertions made for the purpose of bringing\nabout physical results?  That would be a very superficial view; it is\ncertainly truer to say that they are acts of will, and even acts of\nfaith; and in the ultimate analysis the power which has produced the\nharvest is not the power of matter, but of mind--the mind of man acting\nin accordance with the Mind of God.  Man has asked, God has answered; and\nwould not have answered in that particular manner but for the particular\nmanner of that request.\n\nLet us go a step further, still keeping to the obvious.  Most visitors to\nGeneva have made the short excursion to the _Forces matrices_, the great\npower-station where the swift waters of the Rhone are pressed into the\nservice of man and made to light the streets, propel the tramways and\ndrive all the machinery of the {208} city.  Now these vast powers were\nalways there--no law of nature was broken, nor any new one introduced,\nwhen they were utilised to lighten man's labours and multiply his\nenergies; all that has happened is that man has discovered existing laws\nand harnessed them to his use, and once more the real _force motrice_\nresides not in those silently-revolving engines that generate the\nelectric current, but in the mind that devised and controls them.\n\nThought, then--unseen, impalpable--is energy in its essence, the master\nforce which directs, subdues and uses matter; and in prayer we have\nalready seen that we place ourselves in communication with the Central\nForce of the universe, acquiring power we should not otherwise possess,\nand replenishing our emptiness from an inexhaustible store.  But if\nthought, mind, will, are that which lies behind all physical\naccomplishment, from the simplest to the most wonderful; and if by an\nexercise of the same faculty we may actually secure results of a\nspiritual order, direct answering messages, from God: why should it be _a\npriori_ unthinkable that we may by the same agency of prayer obtain more\n\"objective\" responses, _viz._, the fulfilment of our petitions?  Frankly,\nwe can discover no theoretical grounds on which such a possibility could\nbe merely waved on one side as not worth consideration.  Shall we be told\nthat we cannot think that God would grant a certain wish only on\ncondition that we {209} expressed it to Him?  But we have already found\nthat in the regular experience of life the Divine bounty seems to come in\nresponse to human efforts which are ultimately efforts of the will.  Once\nmore, everything depends upon our thought of God; if He is such as Jesus\ntaught us to regard Him, may it not well be that His Fatherly love goes\nout to us in fullest measure when we call upon it with fullest and most\nchildlike trust?  If it is urged that God would surely under all\ncircumstances grant His children whatever may contribute to their\nhappiness, we need only observe that every parent has had occasion to say\nto a much-loved child, \"You shall have this when you know how to ask for\nit.\"  The truth has been stated with characteristic simplicity and\ninsight by Dr. James Drummond, in the words, \"If God has left certain\nthings dependent on the action of the human will, He may also have left\ncertain things dependent on human petition.\" [7]\n\nSo much is sure, that in all true prayer we set spiritual forces in\nmotion, to whose effects upon ourselves we can bear witness; and if their\naction in one direction is an ascertained fact, however mysterious and\ninexplicable, with what warrant shall we deny the possibility of their\nacting in another?  Certainly we shall not argue that such action\ninvolves an \"interference\" with natural law; and if we have to admit our\nignorance as to {210} _how_ such a force would operate and bring results\nto pass, let us remind ourselves that the ultimate \"how?\"--the bridge\nbetween antecedent and consequent, and why the former should be followed\nby the latter--always and inevitably escapes us.  Why in the thousand and\nmore observed forms of snow-crystals the filaments of ice should always\nbe arranged at angles of 60 degrees or 120 degrees; why sulphate of\npotash and sulphate of alumina should crystallise in octahedrons or in\ncubes, but in no other forms; what is the real connection between\nmolecular changes in the brain-substance and states of consciousness--all\nthese, and a myriad more, are unsolved mysteries: we can only say that we\nare dealing with facts of experience.  And as in these and countless\nother cases, so here also, in this matter of answers to prayer, the final\nand only test is that of experience.  That a vessel in distress should be\nable to send a message to another vessel a hundred miles out of sight,\nand summon it to its aid, would have struck an earlier generation as a\npiece of wild romancing--but we know it is actually done; that a soul's\nearnest prayer may avail to enlist mighty energies in its help and so to\nbring about results which otherwise would not have come to pass, ought\nhardly to strike the present age as an inherently incredible proposition.\n\nBut we shall be told that our parallel does not hold good: if the Marconi\napparatus failed seven times out of ten, we should hardly {211} think it\nworth while to provide our ships with so unreliable an instrument; yet\nwho would say that even three out of ten prayers for stated objects met\nwith fulfilment?  The objection, however, is not unanswerable; indeed,\nthe very comparison employed in stating it may enable us to supply at\nleast a partial answer.  For we understand that the success of wireless\nmessages being transmitted and received depends upon absolutely perfect\n\"tuning\"; the electric waves set up, _i.e._, will only act upon a\nreceiver most delicately attuned to a particular rate of oscillations,\nand when the difference between the rate of oscillation of the waves and\nthe receiver exceeds one per cent., resonance ceases altogether, so that\nthe message may be sent, but will not be received.  It strikes us as\nhardly a fanciful supposition that many prayers fail to obtain an answer\nfor a precisely analogous reason, _i.e._, for lack of attuning.  The mere\nuttering of devotional phraseology, or even the sending forth of\nanguished appeals, does not of necessity constitute true prayer at all,\nand hence remains ineffective, because the soul is not really _en\nrapport_ with God.  We suggest that the supplication which \"availeth much\nin its working\" will be the outcome of a whole spiritual discipline,\nwhereby the individual spirit has become attuned to the Spirit whom it\nseeks; if the majority of prayers go unanswered, it is because they are\nmere recitals of a tale of wants, without even an attempt upon the {212}\npart of those who utter them to put themselves into the attitude upon\nwhich an answer depends.  On the other hand, where the adjustment of\nwhich we speak has reached a high state of perfection, the soul not only\ntransmits its message to God with the perfect assurance of being heard,\nbut it is also continually sensitive to the messages which incessantly\nflash through the spiritual ether from God, but which only those can hear\nwho have learned the secret of listening for His word.\n\nIn dealing with this question of unanswered prayer, we have given the\nfirst place to what seems to us the most important as well as the least\nfrequently regarded reason--the lack of spiritual discipline, which is\nultimately the lack of faith, with which we pray.  When we remember,\nmoreover, that many of our petitions are framed in very natural and\ninevitable ignorance of what is for our truest good, we realise another\nand very obvious reason for the non-fulfilment of a large proportion of\nthe wishes we lay before the throne of God, whose goodness is as much\nattested by what He denies to our foolishness as by what He grants to our\nentreaties.  And how numerous are the prayers which reflection and an\nawakened moral sense rule out of court: prayers which ask God to do for\nus by special intervention what we ought to do for ourselves by our own\neffort and industry; prayer for success in dealings and enterprises which\nin themselves are ethically {213} unjustifiable, and to which the only\nanswer could be, \"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as\nthyself\"; prayers which carry the spirit of egoism, of competition, of\nbargaining even into our relations with the Most High; prayers of an\nimprecatory character such as meet and shock us in some of the psalms.\nHow could these and their like possibly be granted by a just and merciful\nCreator?\n\nBut apart from such presumptuous, foolish, or impious supplications as\nare at once repulsed and rebuked by the Divine silence, what are the\nobjects we may lawfully pray for, asking for a response?  It must be\nconfessed that with the exception of petitions for spiritual\nblessings--for a deeper faith, for a more complete obedience, for a\nhumbler heart, for a wider sympathy--such as can never be out of place,\nit is impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line; there is, indeed, a whole\nvast category of possible objects of prayer which one cannot _a priori_\npronounce legitimate or otherwise.  We can only humbly confess that \"we\nknow not how to pray as we ought,\" nor what things it is in our best\ninterest to have granted or withheld from us; but with this proviso, and\nwith the clause, \"Nevertheless, not my will but Thine,\" added to our\npetitions, there can be no wrong in making our requests to God for every\nmanner of blessing, material or otherwise, and whether on our own behalf\nor on behalf of others.  Here we may surely with {214} all confidence and\nwith all reverence invoke the analogy of human parenthood.  No true\nearthly parent is offended or moved to impatience by his children\nexpressing to him all their wants and wishes with perfect unreserve, even\nthough his loving wisdom has anticipated their real needs, and will\ndecide which of their desires may be granted; indeed, as we already\nhinted, the granting of those desires may depend to some extent upon the\nchildren's attitude, upon the filial, trustful, affectionate disposition\nthey exhibit.  So in regard to the supplications we address to our Father\nin Heaven: we cannot think of His being moved by our mere importunity, or\nby the mechanical repetition of set phrases; but that the fulfilment of\nsome wish of ours may be conditioned by our humility and confidence in\nexpressing it, presents no improbability.  In any case, what is necessary\non our part is that we should have faith, not only in God's _power_ to\ngrant our petitions, but in His _wisdom_ in granting or refusing them as\nmay be most expedient for us.  We ourselves can, within limits, fulfil\nmost of our children's requests; but a wise and loving parent will many a\ntime say \"no,\" when his child may marvel at what to him must seem a mere\narbitrary or even unkind refusal of an innocent desire.  That hapless man\nof genius, the late John Davidson, condensed the truth into one\nilluminating phrase when he spoke of prayer rightly uttered as {215}\n\"submissive aspiration\"; it would be difficult to devise another form of\nwords equally brief yet containing so much of the essence of the matter.\nEven short of actual fulfilment, it is an immeasurable privilege simply\nto speak to God about all the things that weigh on our minds, assured of\nHis hearing, nor should the fact that He knows all about our troubles\nbefore we open our lips concerning them restrain our utterance; for our\nobject is not to give Him information, but to place ourselves in\nconscious communion with Him, and by viewing our affairs in His light to\nsee light.\n\nThis applies to all our petitions, and perhaps in an especial measure to\nintercessory prayer, those touching requests which we send up for our\ndear ones in sickness, peril, sorrow, need, or any other adversity.  Of\ncourse, all such intercessions ought to be mentally qualified by the\nassurance that God will do what is best, even though we may be unable to\nunderstand His decrees; but there is nothing unreasonable in the belief\nthat our prayers for others may be, and frequently are, directly\neffective, setting energies in motion which might otherwise have remained\nlatent and inoperative.  How these energies operate may be quite beyond\nour power to ascertain or even to guess; but if--to say it once more--the\naction of matter on matter, the \"how\" of chemical combinations, eludes\nus, shall we complain because the action of mind on mind, spirit on\nspirit, is no {216} less elusive?  The final test--whether, _e.g._, a\nmother's prayer that her absent son may be preserved from the snare of\nsome great temptation, is able to work a change in his mind--is, as we\nsaid above, the test of experience; and unless we are dogmatically\ndetermined to reject all testimony which bears on this subject, there\nseems no escaping the conclusion that specific prayers have been\nspecifically, directly, and unmistakeably answered in instances too\nnumerous to admit of explanation by coincidence.[8]  The volume of human\ntestimony bearing on this subject is too great to be swept aside by a\nsimple refusal to consider it; if there is no insurmountable logical\nobstacle to the possibility of prayer proving objectively effective--and\nwe have tried to show that there are no such obstacles--we must examine\nthe alleged instances of such answers without prejudice; and if we do so,\nthen, after making all legitimate deductions, we shall still find a body\nof residual fact which is not to be explained away.\n\nBy all means, then, we conclude, let us obey the instincts which urge us\nto turn to God in {217} prayer; they lie deeper and are less\nfallible--embodying as they do the experience of the race--than our\nindividual reasonings.  We may tell our Father in all simplicity of\nwhatever desires we may cherish with an approving conscience, leaving the\nfulfilment to His wise and steadfast love; it is not the ignorance of our\nrequests but the faithlessness of our spirits that we most stand in need\nof guarding against.  Let us here, as elsewhere, follow the example of\nthe Son of God, whose unique intimacy with the Father made Him only the\nmore earnest in communing with Him, least lonely when alone with God.\nAbove all, let us bear in mind that the best prayer is that which has\nleast of self-seeking in it, but is answered in the making, and so sends\nus back to our tasks--perhaps to our trials--refreshed as by a draught\nfrom some hidden and precious spring, renewed in manhood and nearer to\nGod.  In the oft-quoted aphorism of George Meredith, \"He who rises from\nhis prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.\"  As a Greater than\nMeredith said, \"Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all\nthese things; but seek ye first His Kingdom, and His righteousness, and\nall these things shall be added unto you.\"  The ideal prayer is that\nwhich will ask little, aspire much, submit altogether; it is the soul's\ncomplete surrender to and rest in God.\n\n\n\n[1] The Rev. E. W. Lewis, M.A., B.D., in a paper on \"The Divine\nImmanence, its Meaning and its Implications.\"  Compare also _The New\nTheology_, p. 34.  As Dr. William Adamson observes, \"The illustration is\nunfortunate.  The supposed ocean is to be thought of as infinite, and the\nbay is finite, but in their essence and existence they are essentially\none.  There can be no bay where there is no boundary, and where in this\ncase could the boundary be found, for there can be nothing outside the\ninfinite?\"\n\n[2] Bousset, _Faith of a Modern Protestant_, p. 59.\n\n[3] _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 466.\n\n[4] _A Century's Progress_, p. 105-6.\n\n[5] _Spinoza_, by J. Allanson Picton, p. 213.\n\n[6] So far, of course, as such an attitude may be the outcome of an\nantecedent disbelief in God, it is perfectly logical; only we have no\ncommon ground with those who take that view.  It is otherwise, however,\nwhere an avowed acceptance of Theism is nevertheless accompanied by\ndoubts as regards any objective effects flowing from supplications\naddressed to God; it is with such doubts as these that we are concerned.\n\n[7] _Studies in Christian Doctrine_, p. 197.\n\n[8] Precisely such an instance was brought under the notice of the\npresent writer by a correspondent, whose prayers that an absent one in\ndistant lands might be able to resist the power of strong temptation was\n\"heard\" past all doubting--and that without the object of these petitions\nbeing aware of the cause, as let a remark of his own attest: \"I don't\nknow why, but sometimes I feel myself in some way held back from doing\ncertain things--how, I cannot explain; I only know that I should do as\nothers do, were it not for this compelling feeling.\"\n\n\n\n\n{218}\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nIMMORTALITY\n\nThroughout the preceding pages we have been principally engaged in\ntracing the effects of the idea of Divine immanence upon the main\ncontents of religious thought.  While trying to show that this idea,\nrightly understood and set in its proper place, embodies an important\nand at one time unduly neglected truth, we have also seen that its\nmisinterpretation and over-emphasis--the tendency to view it as not\nonly true but as constituting the whole truth--is attended by dangers\nof a particularly grave character.  Under whatever name, idealistic\nMonism or any other, the doctrine which recognises only one ultimate\nExistence expressing itself in all things and working its will in all\nevents, is fatal to any religion worthy the name; indeed, since the\nterm \"religion\" indicates a _link_, and a link is possible only between\nthings or beings requiring to be held together, the fundamental tenet\nof Monism excludes religion in the only vital sense it has ever been\nknown to bear, and more especially the Christian religion.  Quite {219}\ninevitably it abandons the personality and Fatherhood of God, the\nselfhood and freedom of man, the reality of sin and evil, which it\ndescribes as \"not-being,\" and the value and rationality of prayer--for\nhow or to whom can we pray if we are already \"on the eternal throne\"?\nQuite inevitably, therefore, we may add, the votaries of this\nphilosophy, in attempting to accommodate it to the facts of life, the\nintuitions of the moral self and the aspirations of the soul, are faced\neverywhere by irreconcilable antinomies and \"find no end, in wandering\nmazes lost.\"\n\nAre the assumptions of the monist any more in harmony with the doctrine\nof immortality than with those other beliefs with which it thus finds\nitself at variance?  We have already seen that they are not: neither\nthe Monism of Mr. Picton nor that of Mr. Wells leaves any room for\npersonal survival--as is, indeed, only to be expected in accordance\nwith their premises; for if the individual as such does not really\nexist, why should he persist?  And from yet another monistic quarter we\nare oracularly assured that we shall \"one day know that the end of our\nbeing is that it may _be submerged without reserve in the infinite\nocean of God_.\"  Nothing could be more definite; nor, it must be\nconfessed, more utterly hopeless.  To be \"submerged without reserve\" is\nto cease from even the illusion of individuality; it is absorption,\nNirvana.\n\n{220}\n\nIn taking up this position, in finally quenching\n\n  The hope whereto so passionately cling\n  The dreaming generations from of old,\n\nthe monist is merely true to his creed; we may, however, express a\npreference that he should do so without religious circumlocutions--that\nthe verdict should be, as in the famous historical instance, \"_la mort,\nsans phrase_.\"  When Mr. Wells says--\n\nI do not believe I have any personal immortality. . .  The experiment\nwill be over, the rinsed beaker returned to its shelf, the crystals\ngone dissolving down the wastepipe--[1]\n\nwe know where we are, and feel thankful to the author for his\nfrankness; to talk about submersion in \"the infinite ocean of God,\" on\nthe other hand, invests an idea which, nakedly stated, means\nannihilation pure and simple, with a pseudo-religious air which is far\nmore subtly dangerous.  Indeed, of the various expedients for\nextinguishing men's faith in the life to come, this is probably the\nmost insidiously effective in use to-day; it is the silken\nhandkerchief, drenched with chloroform and held quite gently to the\nvictim's face--a lethal weapon in all but appearance.  And there are\nsome who are attracted by the faint, cloying odour of this chloroform.\n\nBefore we examine this fashionable doctrine of absorption, however, it\nmay be well to deal {221} with certain other causes which between them\naccount for much of the uneasiness--often unavowed but nevertheless\nvery real--concerning a future life, which unquestionably is widely\nfelt in our day.  All assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, it is\na case of uneasiness, and not of indifference; the bravado which\nprofesses to give thanks to \"whatever gods there be\"--\n\n  That no life lives for ever\n  That dead men rise up never,\n  That even the weariest river\n    Winds somewhere safe to sea--\n\nconvinces no one.  Most men have known moods of severe depression and\nlassitude when not to be at all seemed the one consummation to be\ndesired; but that is not the normal attitude of normal people.  Such\nwould still fain believe that the grave is not the end, but many of\nthem are in a state of bewilderment and insecurity.  On the one hand\nmen have never grown reconciled to the heart-breaking triviality of\ndeath, never accepted this dispensation without a question, a hope, or,\nfailing hope, a sense of rebellion; on the other, we have to recognise\nthat we live in an age when multitudes have ceased to accept religious\nbeliefs simply upon the authority of the Bible--when educated people\ngenerally have come quite definitely to disbelieve in the resurrection\nof the body, a final day of judgment, a localised {222} heaven and\nmaterial hell--an age which must be one of manifold doubts and\nmisgivings.\n\nBut this break-up of Biblical authority and its unquestioning\nacceptance is itself largely due to that resistless advance of physical\nscience which has reconstructed the world for us with such masterful\nhands.  The results of the modern conception of the universe are only\njust beginning to get into our system; as yet they are still largely\nunassimilated, and give us trouble accordingly.  Let us take such a\nstatement as the following, and imagine its effect upon the average\nindividual:--\n\nThink of Mercury in its wild rush through the solar heat, or Venus\ngleaming in the western sky, or ruddy Mars with its tantalising\nproblems, or of mighty Jupiter 1,230 times the size of our own planet,\nor of Saturn with its wondrous rings, or of Uranus and Neptune\nrevolving in their tremendous orbits--the latter nearly three thousand\nmillions of miles away from the centre of our system. . .  But the true\nawfulness is yet untouched.  What of the millions of millions of suns\nthat blaze in immeasurable space beyond our comparatively little solar\nsphere?  Sirius alone, at the foot of the constellation of Orion, is\n125 times larger than our sun.  Fifteen hundred millions of millions of\nmiles away, where ordinary eyes dimly descry half a dozen points of\nlight, the telescope reveals more than a thousand orbs, some seventy of\nthem vaster than our sun.  What indeed is the whole of this our tiny\nplanet compared with Alcyone--1,000 times larger than our central\nsun![2]\n\nThese, of course, are among the commonplaces of modern astronomy; but\nwe do not think we {223} are wrong in saying that they leave a great\nmany minds singularly ill at ease, in a condition of vague but\nunmistakeable discomfort, oppressed by the vastness of the universe as\nrevealed by science, feeling lost and utterly insignificant in this\nillimitable expanse of worlds on circling worlds, and aeons upon\nexhaustless aeons.  It was possible, when the universe was regarded as\na comparatively small affair, with our earth as its veritable centre,\nto think oneself of sufficient value in the scheme of things to live\nfor ever; but now such a claim seems to not a few grotesque in its\npresumption.  Have we not been told by Mr. Balfour that, so far as\nnatural science by itself is able to teach us, man's \"very existence is\nan accident, his story a brief and discreditable episode in the life of\none of the meanest of the planets\"?--and shall such a one, member of\nsuch a race, dream of prolonging his atomic existence world without\nend?  As Lucretius asked:--\n\n  What!  Shall the dateless worlds to dust be blown\n  Back to the unremembered and unknown,\n    And this frail Thou--this flame of yesterday--\n  Burn on, forlorn, immortal, and alone?\n\n\nThis mental attitude, familiar enough nowadays, has been forcibly and\ntypically expressed in a clever, melancholy book, _The Letters Which\nnever Reached Him_.  \"We suffer,\" the author says, \"from our own\ndiminutiveness and from the narrow limits of our life and knowledge\nsince the endlessness of space and time have {224} been taught to us.\nPeople of former epochs cannot have known this contrast between human\nsmallness and the world's infinity; they must have been more contented,\nbecause they fancied they were made in right proportion to everything\nelse.\"  Such conditions as these favoured the flourishing of \"that\nhighest blossom of the conviction of personal importance, the belief in\none's eternal individual continuance.\"  \"But one who has been cast by\nthe waves on countless foreign shores, and who has reflected that\neverywhere, and since times infinite, millions and millions have been\nborn and buried without leaving by their coming and going more trace\nthan the swarms of insects which for a moment glide through the rays of\nthe sun--such a one loses the belief in the importance of all\ntransitory phases, and doubts the inner necessity of an eternal\ncontinuance for all those ephemeral, ant-like existences which in\nendless, unchanging repetitions ever rise anew to disappear again.\"\nModern astronomy and geology, by expanding the world beyond all\nconception, seem, in fact, but to emphasise Omar Khayyam's mocking\nlines:--\n\n  And fear not lest Existence, closing your\n  Account and mine, should know the like no more;\n    The Eternal Saki from that bowl hath pour'd\n  Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.\n\n\nAnd if such are the reflections forced upon us by the contemplation of\nthe vastness of {225} the cosmos--a vastness in whose midst we feel\nhomeless and forlorn--it has further to be remembered that the attitude\nof modern science, as embodied in that of some of its most confident\nand popular representatives, has been distinctly and openly\nunfavourable to belief in a future life.  If  man was truly descended\nfrom the lower creation, it seemed obvious to infer that as had been\nhis origin, so also would be his destiny--the destiny of the beasts\nthat perish.  The _Kraft und Stoff_ school of physicists proclaimed\naloud that consciousness was only a function of the brain, and would\ncome to a stop together with the mechanism which produced it; as\nHaeckel expressed it, \"The various functions of the soul are bound up\nwith certain special parts of the brain, and cannot be exercised unless\nthese are in a normal condition; if the areas are destroyed their\nfunction is extinguished; and this is especially applicable to the\n'organs of thought,' the four central instruments of mental activity.\"\n[3]  But if our inner life was merely the counterpart of certain\nchanges in the grey matter of the brain, how could the function be\nexpected to persist after its organ had undergone decay?\n\n\nSuch, in short, are our principal modern difficulties with regard to\nbelief in a life to come; do they, or do they not, present valid and\ninsuperable obstacles to a reasonable faith?\n\n{226}\n\n(1) While making all allowance for the feeling of insignificance and\nforlornness which is apt to overwhelm us when we begin to realise the\nimmensity of the material universe, a little closer thought should make\nit obvious that nothing in the nature of mere bulk or bigness furnishes\neven a reasonable presumption, let alone a convincing argument, against\nthe survival of the soul; it is indeed difficult to perceive what\nlegitimate bearing these physical phenomena are supposed to have upon a\npurely spiritual question.  If we are to argue on _a priori_ grounds,\nwe are on the contrary justified in saying that the human mind, which\nhas discovered and is capable of co-ordinating the myriad facts\nconcerning the world of matter that make up modern science, is itself\nsomething far more wonderful than any of its discoveries, or the sum of\nthem.  If we are asked, \"Is it conceivable that suns and stars shall\npass away--as they undoubtedly will--and that man shall persist?\" we\ncan but answer, \"Yes; it is very conceivable; for man is far more\nhighly organised than suns and stars, moves on an immeasurably higher\nlevel, can reason, look before and after, form ideals of conduct, reach\nout in love, and think the thoughts of God after Him.\"  As soon as we\nleave the lower reaches of being, bulk is seen to matter very little.\nThe immense proportions of those flying reptiles and other monsters\nwhich peopled the earth in pre-historic {227} times did not protect\nthem against dying out, and their places being taken by much slighter\ncreatures which had some more valuable attributes than size; the\n_diplodocus Carnegii_ in the British Museum measures some seventy-five\nfeet, but that fact did not prevent the species from becoming extinct\nuncounted ages since--simply because it was lacking in the higher\nqualities which would have enabled it to survive.  And even the\n_diplodocus_, with its lumbering body and diminutive brain, was whole\nworlds superior to inorganic nature.  That the marvellous thing called\nhuman personality should outlast the decay of what is so much inferior\nto itself, is therefore not only not inconceivable, but in itself not\neven improbable.  It is a strange sort of modesty--to say the least of\nit--which would make us think ourselves of less account in the scale of\nexistence or the sight of God than unconscious matter in its cruder and\nlower stages.  One might as sensibly urge that the delicate hairspring\nof a watch, being of featherweight and almost invisible, must be worth\nless than a lump of crude iron-ore.\n\n(2) We turn to the supposed argument from evolution, _viz._, from man's\nlowly origin, as furnishing a strong presumption against his\nimmortality.  This plea, familiar enough in sceptical discussions of\nthe subject, has been put forward with great poetic force by Mr.\nWilliam Watson; after graphically describing {228} \"the gibbering form\nobscene that was and was not man,\" as lower in many respects than the\nbeasts and birds in whose midst he dwelt, he suggests that it was\n\n    Rather some random throw\n      Of heedless Nature's die,\n    'Twould seem, that from so low\n      Hath lifted man so high.\n    If, then, our rise from gloom\n      Hath this capricious air,\n    What ground is mine to assume\n      An upward process there,\n    In yonder worlds that shine\n      From upward tracts of sky?\n    No ground to assume is mine\n      Nor warrant to deny.\n  Equal, my source of hope, my reason for despair.\n\nBut, with great admiration for Mr. Watson as a poet, it is impossible\nnot to recognise that at least two radical flaws lurk in his agnostic\nargument.  In the first place, he makes the mistake of judging issues\nby origins instead of origins by issues; the sub-human beginnings of\nman trouble us not at all, since we can see in the subsequent history\nof the race how great were the possibilities infolded in that\n\"gibbering form obscene,\" and unfolded in a Plato, a Raphael, a\nShakespeare.  That such a development from such a lowly initial stage\nshould have been so much as possible, is in itself significant of much;\nfor nothing is evolved that was not first involved.  But in the second\nplace, Mr. Watson's assumption that the process which lifted man from\nthe level of the {229} brute to one immeasurably higher was dictated by\n\"hap and hazard\" strikes us as wholly gratuitous.  On the face of it,\nthat process, in itself so little to be expected, bears the mark, not\nof chance but of its very contrary.  That the cosmic drama should have\nfollowed this particular course; that from the cooling down of fiery\nnebulas there should have come forth the orderly system we behold in\nnature; that life should have climbed up from the speck of protoplasm\n\"through primal ooze and slime,\" making its way step by step through\nall the lower creation until it \"blossomed into man\"--this, to the\nunbiassed mind, does not wear the aspect of mere incalculable accident,\nbut of all-embracing wisdom and directivity.  And once we have shaken\noff the delusion that the marvellous order and progress we behold in\nnature are the outcome of chance, we have the best of reasons for\nassuming that the same \"upward process\" will still continue, reaching\nforward from the seen to the unseen; at any rate, so well-qualified and\nthorough-going an evolutionist as Professor Fiske gave it as his mature\nopinion that \"in the course of evolution there is no more philosophical\ndifficulty in man's acquiring immortal life, than in his acquiring the\nerect posture and articulate speech.\" [4]\n\n{230}\n\nAnd the reasonableness of this view grows the clearer to us the more we\nrealise the purposive character of the evolutionary process.  The\nunmistakeable purpose of that process is the production of the higher\nfrom the lower; all through the ages the vast design works itself out\nin a ceaseless ascending movement, the theme expanding, its meaning\nbecoming more apparent.  Then, when a certain point in this development\nhas been reached, evolution takes a direction such as no one could have\nforecast: \"its operation upon the physical frame is diverted to the\nmind, the centre of interest transferred from the outward organism to\nthe inner forces of which it is the vehicle\"--and man becomes a living\nsoul.  Since, then, it has taken all these myriad ages, all this\nimmense expenditure of planning and energy, to produce what is\nincontestably the crowning work of creation on this globe, must we not\nsay that this was the issue towards which the whole process was set in\nmotion from the very beginning?  And if this is so, are we to think\nthat at the end, when its carefully, patiently wrought-out purpose has\nbeen attained, this process suddenly turns irrational, and hands over\nits last and highest product to destruction?  As has been well said,\n\"To suppose that what has been evolved at such cost will suddenly\ncollapse, is to suppose that the whole scheme of things is\nself-stultifying\"; and for such a supposition we {231} see not only no\nnecessity, but no shadow of warrant.\n\n\nThe question is reduced to this: are man's highest spiritual qualities,\ninto the production of which all this creative energy has gone, to\ndisappear with the rest?  Has all this work been done for nothing?  Is\nit all ephemeral, all a bubble that bursts, a vision that fades?  Are\nwe to regard the Creator's work as like that of a child, who builds\nhouses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knocking them down?  For\naught that science can tell us, it may be so, but I can see no good\nreason for believing any such thing . . .  The more thoroughly we\ncomprehend that process of evolution by which things have come to be\nwhat they are, the more we are likely to feel that to deny the\neverlasting persistence of the spiritual element in man is to rob the\nwhole process of its meaning.  It goes far towards putting us to\npermanent intellectual confusion, and I do not see that anyone has as\nyet alleged, or is ever likely to allege, a sufficient reason for our\naccepting so dire an alternative.[5]\n\n\nIf belief in the soul's persistence must always be an act of faith, it\nis for the evolutionist an act of reasonable faith, based on his\nexperience of the rationality, and what has been called the integrity,\nof the cosmos.\n\n(3) Of the hostility of physical science to belief in life beyond the\ngrave it is perhaps sufficient to say that the somewhat dogmatic\nattitude of denial which flourished in certain scientific circles\nsomewhere about a quarter of a century ago has to-day made room for a\nvery different temper, at once more sympathetic and more willing to\nacknowledge {232} that a belief is not necessarily disproved because\nthe methods of the chemical or biological laboratory fail to\nsubstantiate it.  As for the crude proposition that the brain secretes\nthought as the liver secretes bile, and that the life of the soul must\ncease with that of the body, this was characterised by the eminent\nthinker whom we quoted a moment ago as \"perhaps the most colossal\ninstance of baseless assumption that is known to the history of\nphilosophy.\"  Admitting that to every state of consciousness, to every\nminutest transition in our thoughts, there corresponds a cerebral\nchange, it is yet nothing less than a childish blunder to confound\ncorrespondence with causality.  The materialist has positively no good\nground for stating that cerebral changes are the _causes_ of the mental\nstates corresponding to them; indeed, the contrary proposition is far\nmore inherently probable, since it is spirit, and not matter, that\n\"possesses the power of purpose,\" and may therefore be regarded as the\nfinal cause of matter.[6]  When Professor Haeckel urges that \"the\nvarious functions of the soul are bound up with certain special parts\nof the brain,\" and cease when the latter are destroyed, the reply is\nquite simple: _non sequitur_.  He has apparently forgotten his own\nwarning against the \"dangerous error\" of a \"one-sided over-estimation\nof experience.\" [7] {233} The utmost that experience can prove is that\nthe brain is the transmitting apparatus for flashing forth and making\nintelligible the messages of the soul, and that, when this apparatus\nbreaks down, further transmission of messages becomes impossible; but\nno experience can prove that when the instrument is destroyed, the soul\nwhich used it for purposes of communication and self-manifestation\nceases to be, and only slipshod logic would draw such an inference.  In\ndiscussing the Divine Personality, we already quoted Mill, a far more\ncareful reasoner than Haeckel, who laid it down that while experience\nfurnished us with no example of any series of states of consciousness\nwithout a material brain, yet it was \"as easy to imagine such a series\nof states without as with this accompaniment\"; indeed, he saw no valid\nreason to preclude us from supposing that \"the same thoughts, emotions,\nvolitions, and even sensations which we have here, may persist or\nrecommence somewhere else under other conditions\"--_i.e._, without such\nan apparatus as is at present at our disposal.  It is only a dogmatic\nmaterialist of Haeckel's almost extinct pattern who could fail to make\nthe simple distinction between visible instrument and invisible player.\n\n\nTurning aside, however, from the antiquated views of Haeckel--views\nwhich, as he himself bitterly complains, some of his most {234}\nillustrious scientific compeers in his own country, men like Virchow,\nDu Bois-Reymond and Wundt lived to repudiate[8]--we may for a moment\nglance at an argument on behalf of belief brought forward by so\ndistinguished and modern a spokesman of physical science as Sir Oliver\nLodge.  His contention, set forth in the course of a paper on _The\nPermanence of Personality_,[9] is really identical with that which\nBrowning expresses with such passionate conviction in the words, \"There\nshall never be one lost good.\"  While we have become familiar with such\na conception as the conservation of energy, Sir Oliver Lodge brings\nbefore us Professor Hoeffding's axiom of the \"conservation of value,\"\nand applies it to the question under discussion.  According to him,\n\"the whole progress and course of evolution is to increase and\nintensify the Valuable--that which 'avails' or is serviceable for\nhighest purposes\"; and he accordingly defines immortality as the\npersistence of things which the universe has gained and which, once\nacquired, cannot be let go.  \"From this point of view,\" he says, \"the\nlaw of evolution is that Good shall on the whole increase in the\nuniverse with the process of the suns: that immortality itself is a\nspecial case of a more general law, namely, that in the whole universe\nnothing really finally perishes that is worth keeping, that a thing\nonce attained {235} is not thrown away.\"  The soul, in other words,\nwill not perish--just as we had already argued--because it is too\nvaluable to perish; if we may trust this latest interpretation of the\nmeaning and purpose of evolution, the spiritual element in man will\nendure because it is worthy to endure.\n\n\nBut how are we to think of its enduring?  As a separate self, conscious\nof its identity, able to form the proposition \"I am I,\" or swallowed up\nin the Whole, with a final merging and loss of selfhood?  Must we think\nof man's ultimate destiny in the terms of the concluding distichs of\nMr. Watson's great _Hymn to the Sea_--a consummation\n\n  When, from this threshold of being, these steps of the\n        Presence, this precinct,\n  Into the matrix of Life darkly divinely resumed,\n  Man and his littleness perish, erased like an error\n        and cancelled,\n  Man and his greatness survive, lost in the greatness\n        of God?\n\nThat is the query with which we opened this chapter; and, in answering\nit, it is but fair to say that Sir Oliver Lodge shows a marked\ninclination to take up a position identical with that of Mr. Watson:\n\"Everything sufficiently valuable,\" he says, \"be it beauty, artistic\nachievement, knowledge, unselfish affection, may be thought of as\nenduring henceforth and for ever, _if not with an individual {236} and\npersonal existence, yet as part of the eternal Being of God_.\"\n\nNow this is not only a wholly unsatisfactory conclusion from the point\nof view of religion; it is a surrender of the very point at\nissue--_viz._, the permanence of personality--and in reality lets slip\nwhat Sir Oliver Lodge himself was contending for.  It is unsatisfactory\nfrom the point of view of religion; for such a re-absorption of the\nsoul into a \"grand self-conscious totality of being,\" involving of\nnecessity the end of all we mean by individuality, consciousness,\ncharacter, is not immortality at all--to all intents and purposes it\nis, as we said, annihilation.  There is not an iota to choose, so far\nas the religious believer is concerned, between this theory and the\nfrank materialism of Lucretius, so wonderfully rendered by Mr.\nMallock:--\n\n  The seeds that once were we take flight and fly,\n  Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky,\n    Not lost but disunited.  _Life lives on_.\n  _It is the lives, the lives, the lives that die_.\n\n  They go beyond recapture and recall,\n  Lost in the all-indissoluble All:\n    Gone like the rainbow from the fountain's foam,\n  Gone like the spindrift shuddering down the squall,\n\n  Flakes of the water, on the waters cease!\n  Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these.\n    Atoms to atoms--weariness to rest--\n  Ashes to ashes--hopes and fears to peace!\n\n{237} Pantheism may speak delusively of \"the peace of absorption in the\nInfinite,\" or of the end of our being as submersion, \"without reserve,\nin the infinite ocean of God\"; but regarded from the standpoint of\nindividuality, there is no difference between such a fate and the total\nextinction of the soul--\n\n  The healing gospel of the eternal death\n\n--preached with such haunting eloquence by the Roman poet.  The truth,\nas Dr. Illingworth has well expressed it, is that in practice\n\"Pantheism is really indistinguishable from Materialism; it is merely\nMaterialism grown sentimental, but no more tenable for its change of\nname.\" [10]\n\nBut, in the next place, in tentatively committing himself to the\nconclusion we are criticising, it seems to us that Sir Oliver Lodge\nloses sight of the very essence of his own contention: his conclusion,\nin effect, contradicts his premises.  Syllogistically, and, of course,\nvery bluntly stated, his argument might be summed up as follows: \"What\nis of value is preserved; the soul is of value; therefore the soul\nis--dissolved.\"  Let us put this a little more explicitly.  That which\nhas been gained in the course of evolution, so far as the human soul is\nconcerned--that which makes it worthy to endure, _viz._, its character,\nconscience, idealism and so forth--belongs to the {238} soul precisely\nas an individual entity, and in no other way whatsoever; neither can it\nbe effectively preserved save in the form of an individual entity.  The\nsoul, in other words, is not to be compared to a mere quantum of raw\nmaterial, or to a cupful of water temporarily drawn from an infinite\ndeep into which it may be poured back, and nothing lost: it is, on the\ncontrary, a highly individualised product, so individual as to be\nunique, and in simply being merged in the totality of being all that is\nmost valuable in it would be lost and wasted.  We have no difficulty in\nbelieving that mere _life_--the potentiality, the material out of which\nhigher things evolve--may go back into the all, to arise again in new\nmanifestations and combinations; but it is otherwise with the highly\ncomplex resultant of the evolutionary process which we call\n_personality_, endowed as it is with self-consciousness, with the sense\nof right and wrong, the capacity for ideals, the faculty of\nself-giving, a god-like within answering to the God without.  It is\nbecause these things--those which \"avail for highest purposes\"--make\nman personal and mark him off, broadly speaking, from the lower,\nsub-human life out of which he has emerged, that we believe in the\npermanence of human personality, of the spiritual element in man, in\nthe survival of the soul _as individual and personal_, and not merely\nas \"part of the eternal Being of God.\"  A simple illustration will help\nus to enforce our {239} point of view.  In the process of porcelain\nmanufacture the half-finished ware is placed in \"seggars\" or coarse\nclay shells for protection in the glaze or enamel kiln.  These\ntemporary shells, having served their purpose, are broken up and ground\ndown again into a shapeless mass under heavy revolving rollers; but no\none would dream of treating the graceful vases and figures they\nenclosed for a time after the same fashion.  The parallel is fairly\nobvious: the protecting clay envelope broken to pieces, merged and\nmingled with other clay, to be so used and broken a hundred times; the\nprecious product carefully taken from its coarse shell and preserved.\nThe dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns unto\nGod who gave it: returns, but not as it came forth from Him, but\ndifferentiated, individual, shaped and coloured; returns, not to be\nabsorbed and lost in an \"all-indissoluble All,\" but, as we hold, for\nstill further processes of perfecting.\n\nAnd if we are asked for the ground whence we derive the latter\nassurance, we answer, It is founded upon our belief, not in a\n\"universal substance\" or an \"all-inclusive consciousness of being,\" but\nin the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  By no possibility can\nthese two conceptions be made to harmonise or to pass into one another;\non the former view, as we have seen, the significance of the individual\nsoul is and must be _nil_--on the latter, the value of the soul is\ninfinite, because it is {240} the object of the Divine Love, created by\nGod \"unto Himself,\" in order to experience and respond to His\naffection.  On the former view, we are finite modes of infinite\nBeing--on the latter, we are children of the Father.\n\nIt is because we have believed the love which God hath to us--the love\nmade manifest supremely in Jesus Christ--that we echo so confidently\nthe poet's \"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust\": the Christian doctrine\nof immortality flows quite naturally from the Christian doctrine of\nGod.  The argument is frankly ethical; it flows from the view of God's\ncharacter which we have received through the revelation of that\ncharacter in His Son.  Without hurling any wild indictment at life, we\ndare to say that it requires to be supplemented by the life to come in\norder to fit in with the idea of a just and loving God, a faithful and\nmerciful Creator.  This span of days, this hand's-breadth of existence,\nis too palpably fragmentary.  The sinner, the failure, all those who\nhave here missed the way, ask another opportunity of the Divine mercy;\nthe wronged, the sufferers from unmerited griefs, those whose lives\npassed in gloom and closed in tragedy, appeal for justice; the longing\nfor reunion with loved ones whose going hence has left us permanently\npoorer, demands fulfilment; the goodness of the good and the sanctity\nof the saint plead for \"the wages of going on.\"  This ethical argument\nfor personal {241} immortality--Browning's \"On the earth the broken\narcs; in the heaven the perfect round\"--will carry no weight with those\nwho profess a \"religion of the universe\"; for the universe, viewed\nsimply as the sum-total of phenomena, possesses, as we have so\nfrequently pointed out, no sufficiently decided moral character to\ninspire us with confidence in its justice, or mercy, or pitifulness.\nOn the other hand, the same argument will powerfully appeal to all who\nbelieve in the Divine Goodness, and especially to those who, looking\nunto Jesus, have in His face beheld the lineaments of the Father.  If\nGod be such as Jesus taught, then life everlasting may be a dim,\nintangible dream, but a dream that is destined to come true: we shall\nbe satisfied when we awake.\n\n\nThus, at the close of this inquiry, we find ourselves left with two\nultimate realities--two, not one; alike, not identical; related, and\n_therefore_ distinct, for a relation can only subsist between one and\nanother: the realities of God and the soul.  _Gott und die Seele, die\nSeele und ihr Gott_--these two, eternally akin, yet in their kinship\nunconfounded, make up the theme and the content of religion; and any\nattempt to obliterate the distinction between them in some monistic\nformula, any tendency to surrender either the Divine or the human\npersonality, any philosophy which seeks to merge man in God and God in\nthe {242} universe, is fatal to religion itself.  We have been told of\nlate that \"there is no Divine immanence which does not imply the\nallness of God\"; we reply that there is no sane and sober theology\nwhich will not feel called upon to challenge this fundamental error.\nGod, immanent in the universe as life and energy, is not the universe;\nman, the partaker of the Divine nature, indwelt by the Spirit of God,\nis other than God.  These are commonplaces, truly; yet in the presence\nof more than one contemporary movement aiming to set these basal truths\naside--truths whose acceptance or rejection involves far-reaching\nissues in faith and morals--there may be some excuse and even some\nnecessity for reiterating them so persistently and at such length as\nhas been done in these pages.\n\n\nMan is inalienably akin to God--man is everlastingly other than God;\nupon this note we are content to close.  In that fact we have, not only\nthe ultimate explanation of the phenomenon of religion, the ultimate\nfoundation of ethics, the ultimate ground of the felt need of\nsalvation, but also the ultimate hope of immortality--that reasonable\nhope, expressed by the Hebrew seer for all time in words of sublime and\nintuitive insight: _Art not_ THOU _from everlasting, O Lord my God,\nmine Holy One_?  WE SHALL NOT DIE.\n\n\n\n[1] _First and Last Things_, pp. 80, 238.\n\n[2] Ballard, _Christian Essentials_, pp. 10-12.\n\n[3] _The Riddle of the Universe_, p. 72.\n\n[4] _Life Everlasting_, p. 85.  To the same effect is Huxley's\nstatement declaring that while he would \"neither affirm nor deny the\nimmortality of man,\" immortality itself struck him \"_as not half so\nwonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of\nmatter_.\"\n\n[5] _Man's Destiny_, by John Fiske, pp. 114-116.\n\n[6] Cp. Illingworth, _Divine Immanence_, p. 8.\n\n[7] _The Riddle of the Universe_, p. 7.\n\n[8] _Op. cit._; see ch. vi., _passim_.\n\n[9] See the _Hibbert Journal_, April 1908, pp. 565-567.\n\n[10] _Divine Immanence_, p. 39.","title":"Problems of Immanence: studies critical and constructive","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":57325}