The other passage of mine which he has adduced, employs the word _reveals_, in a sense analogous to that of _revelation_, in avowed relation to _things moral and spiritual_, which would have been seen, had not my critic reversed the order of my sentences; which he does again in p. 78 of the “Defence,” after my protest against his doing so in the “Eclipse.” I wrote: (Soul, p. 59) “Christianity itself has thus practically confessed, what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative _external_ revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man. What God reveals to us, he reveals _within_, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses.” The words, “What God reveals,” seen in the light of the preceding sentence, means: “That portion of _moral and spiritual truth_ which God reveals.” This cannot be discovered in the isolated quotation; and as, both in p. 78 and in p. 95, he chooses to quote my word _What_ in italics, his reader is led on to interpret me as saying “_every thing whatsoever_ which we know of God, we learn from within;” a statement which is not mine.
Besides this, the misrepresentation of which I complained is not confined to the rather metaphysical words of _within_ and _without_, as to which the most candid friends may differ, and may misunderstand one another;–as to which also I may be truly open to correction;–but he assumes the right to tell his readers that my doctrine undervalues Truth, and Intellect, and Traditional teaching, and External suggestion, and Historical influences, and counts the Bible an impertinence. When he fancies he can elicit this and that, by his own logic, out of sentences and clauses torn from their context, he has no right to disguise what I have said to the contrary, and claim to justify his fraud by accusing me of self-contradiction. Against all my protests, and all that I said to the very opposite previous to any controversy, he coolly alludes to it (p. 40 of the “Defence”) as though it were my avowed doctrine, that: “_Each_ man, looking exclusively within, can _at once_ rise to the conception of God’s infinite perfections.”
IV. When I agree with Paul or David (or think I do), I have a right to quote their words reverentially; but when I do so, Mr. Rogers deliberately justifies himself in ridiculing them, pretending that he only ridicules _me_. He thus answers my indignant denunciation in the early part of his “Defence,” p. 5:–
“Mr. Newman warns me with much solemnity against thinking that ‘questions pertaining to God are advanced by boisterous glee.’ I do not think that the ‘Eclipse’ is characterised by boisterous glee; and certainly I was not at all aware, that the things which _alone_[13] I have ridiculed–some of them advanced by him, and some by others–deserved to be treated with solemnity. For example, that an authoritative external revelation,[14] which most persons have thought possible enough, is _im_possible,–that man is most likely born for a dog’s life, and ‘there an end’–that there are great defects in the morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in the character of its founder,–that the miracles of Christ might be real, because Christ was a _clairvoyant_ and mesmerist,–that God was not a Person, but a Personality;–I say, I was not aware that these things, and such as these, which alone I ridiculed, were questions ‘pertaining to God,’ in any other sense than the wildest hypotheses in some sense pertain to science, and the grossest heresies to religion.”
Now first, is his statement true?
_Are_ these the _only_ things which he ridiculed?
I quoted in my reply to him enough to show what was the class of “things pertaining to God” to which I referred. He forces me to requote some of the passages. “Eclipse,” p. 82 [1st ed.] “You shall be permitted to say (what I will not contradict), that though _Mr. Newman may be inspired_ for aught I know … inspired as much as (say) _the inventor of Lucifer matches_–yet that his book is not divine,–that it is purely human.”
Again: p. 126 [1st ed.] “Mr. Newman says to those who say they are unconscious of these facts of spiritual pathology, that _the consciousness of the spiritual man is not the less true, that_ [though?] _the unspiritual man is not privy to it_; and this most devout gentleman quotes with unction the words: _For the spiritual man judgeth all things, but himself is judged of no man_.”
P. 41, [1st ed.], “I have rejected creeds, and I have found what the Scripture calls, _that peace which passeth all understanding_.” “I am sure it passes mine, (says Harrington) if you have really found it, and I should be much obliged to you, if you would let me participate in the discovery.” “Yes, says Fellowes:… ‘_I have escaped from the bondage of the letter and have been introduced into the liberty of the Spirit…. The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The fruit of the Spirit is joy, peace, not_–‘” “Upon my word (said Harrington, laughing), I shall presently begin to fancy that Douce Davie Deans has turned infidel.”
I have quoted enough to show the nature of my complaints. I charge the satirist with profanity, for ridiculing sentiments which _he himself_ avows to be holy, ridiculing them for no other reason but that with _me also_ they are holy and revered. He justifies himself in p. 5 of his “Defence,” as above, by denying my facts. He afterwards, in Section XII. p. 147, admits and defends them; to which I shall return.
I beg my reader to observe how cleverly Mr. Rogers slanders me in the quotation already made, from p. 5, by insinuating, first, that it is my doctrine, “that man is _most likely_ born for _a dog’s life_, and there an end;” next, that I have taken under my patronage the propositions, that “the miracles of Christ might be real, because Christ was a _clairvoyant_ and mesmerist, and that God is not a Person but a Personality.” I cannot but be reminded of what the “Prospective” reviewer says of Zeuxis and the grapes, when I observe the delicate skill of touch by which the critic puts on just enough colour to affect the reader’s mind, but not so much as to draw him to closer examination. I am at a loss to believe that he supposes me to think that a theory of mesmeric wonders (as the complement of an atheistic creed?) is “a question pertaining to God,” or that my rebuke bore the slightest reference to such a matter. As to Person and Personality, it is a subtle distinction which I have often met from Trinitarians; who, when they are pressed with the argument that three divine Persons are nothing but three Gods, reply that Person is not the correct translation of the mystical _Hypostasis_ of the Greeks, and Personality is perhaps a truer rendering. If I were to answer with the jocosity in which my critic indulges, I certainly doubt whether he would justify me. So too, when a Pantheist objects (erringly, as I hold) that a Person is necessarily something finite, so that God cannot be a Person; if, against this, a Theist contend that God is at once a Person and a Principle, and invent a use of the word Personality to overlap both ideas; we may reject his nomenclature as too arbitrary, but what rightful place ridicule has here, I do not see. Nevertheless, it had wholly escaped my notice that the satirist had ridiculed it, as I now infer that he did.
He tells me he _was not aware_ that the holding that _there are great defects in the morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in the character of its Founder, was a question pertaining to God_. Nor indeed was _I_ aware of it.
I regard questions concerning a book and a human being to be purely secular, and desire to discuss them, not indeed with ridicule but with freedom. When _I_ discuss them, he treats my act as intolerably offensive, as though the subject were sacred; yet he now pretends that _I_ think such topics “pertain to God,” and he was not aware of it until I told him so! Thus he turns away the eyes of his readers from my true charge of profanity, and fixes them upon a fictitious charge so as to win a temporary victory. At the same time, since Christians believe the morality of the _Old_ Testament to have great defects, and that there was much imperfection in the character of its eminent saints, prophets, and sages; I cannot understand how my holding the very same opinion concerning the _New_ Testament should be a peculiarly appropriate ground of banter and merriment; nor make me more justly offensive to Christians, than the Pauline doctrine is to Jews.
In more than one place of this “Defence” he misrepresents what I have written on Immortality, in words similar to those here used, though here he does _not_[15] expressly add my name. In p. 59, he says, that “according to Mr. Newman’s theology, it is most _probable_ (in italics) that the successive generations of men, with perfect indifference to their relative moral conditions, their crimes or wrongs, are all knocked on the head together; and that future adjustment and retribution is a dream.” (So p. 72.) In a note to the next page, he informs his readers that if I say that I have left the question of immortality _doubtful_, it does not affect the argument; for I have admitted “the probability” of there being no future life.
This topic was specially discussed by me in a short chapter of my treatise on the “Soul,” to which alone it is possible for my critic to refer. In that chapter assuredly I do _not_ say what he pretends; what I _do_ say is, (after rejecting, as unsatisfactory to me, the popular arguments from metaphysics, and from the supposed need of a future state to _redress the inequalities of this life_;) p. 232: “But do I then deny a future life, or seek to undermine a belief of it? _Most assuredly not_; but I would put the belief (whether it is to be weaker or firmer) on a _spiritual_ basis, and on none other.”
I am ashamed to quote further from that chapter in this place; the ground on which I there tread is too sacred for controversy. But that a Christian advocate should rise from reading it to tell people that he has a right to _ridicule_ me for holding that “man is _most likely born for a dog’s life_, and there an end;” absorbs my other feelings in melancholy. I am sure that any candid person, reading that chapter, must see that I was hovering between doubt, hope, and faith, on this subject, and that if any one could show me that a Moral Theism and a Future Life were essentially combined, I should joyfully embrace the second, as a fit complement to the first. This writer takes the opposite for granted; that if he can convince me that the doctrine of a Future Life is essential to Moral Theism, he will–not _add_ to–but _refute_ my Theism! Strange as this at first appears, it is explained by his method. He draws a hideous picture of what God’s world has been in the past, and indeed is in the present; with words so reeking of disgust and cruelty, that I cannot bear to quote them; and ample quotation would be needful. Then he infers, that since I must admit all this, I virtually believe in an immoral Deity. I suppose his instinct rightly tells him, that I shall not be likely to reason, “Because God can be so very cruel or careless to-day, he is sure to be very merciful and vigilant hereafter.” Accepting his facts as a _complete_ enumeration of the phenomena of the present world, I suppose it is better inductive logic to say: “He who can be himself so cruel, and endure such monsters of brutality for six or more thousand years, must (by the laws of external induction) be the same, and leave men the same, for all eternity; and is clearly reckless of moral considerations.” If I adopt this alternative, I become a Pagan or an Atheist, one or other of which Mr. Rogers seems anxious to make me. If he would urge, that to look at the dark and terrible side of human life is onesided and delusive, and that the God who is known to us in Nature has so tempered the world to man and man to the world as to manifest his moral intentions;–(arguments, which I think, my critic must have heard from Socrates or Plato, without pooling out on them scalding words, such as I feel and avow to be blasphemous;)–then he might perhaps help my faith where it is weakest, and give me (more or less) aid to maintain a future life dogmatically, instead of hopefully and doubtfully. But now, to use my friend Martineau’s words: “His method doubles every difficulty without relieving any, and tends to enthrone a Devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere.”
Since he wrote his second edition of the “Defence,” I have brought out my work called “Theism,” in which (without withdrawing my objections to the popular idea of future _Retribution_) I have tried to reason out a doctrine of Future Life from spiritual considerations. I have no doubt that my critic would find them highly aboard, and perhaps would pronounce them ineffably ludicrous, and preposterous feats of logic. If I could hide their existence from him, I certainly would, lest he misquote and misinterpret them. But as I cannot keep the book from him, I here refer to it to say, that if I am to maintain this most profound and mysterious doctrine with any practical intensity, my convictions in the power of the human mind to follow such high inquiries, need to be greatly _strengthened_, not to be undermined by such arguments and such detestable pictures of this world, as Mr. Rogers holds up to me.
He throws at me the imputation of holding, that “man is _most likely_ born for a _dog’s life_, and there an end.” And is then the life of a saint for seventy years, or for seven years, no better than a dog’s life? What else but a _long_ dog’s life does this make heaven to be? Such an undervaluing of a short but noble life, is consistent with the scheme which blasphemes earth in order to ennoble heaven, and then claims to be preeminently logical. According to the clear evidence of the Bible, the old saints in general were at least as uncertain as I have ever been concerning future life; nay, according to the writer to the Hebrews, “through fear of death they were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” If I had called _that_ a dog’s life, how eloquently would Mr. Rogers have rebuked me!
V. But I must recur to his defence of the profanity with which he treats sacred sentiments and subjects. After pretending, in p. 5, that he had ridiculed nothing but the things quoted above, he at length, in pp. 147-156, makes formal admission of my charge and _justifies himself_. The pith of his general reply is in the following, p. 152:–
“‘Now (says Mr. Newman) I will not here farther insist on the monstrosity of bringing forward St. Paul’s words in order to pour contempt upon them; a monstrosity which no sophistry of Mr. Harrington can justify!’ I think the _real_ monstrosity is, that men should so coolly employ St. Paul’s words,–for it is a quotation from the treatise on the “Soul,”–to mean something totally different from anything he intended to convey by them, and employ the dialect of the Apostles to contradict their doctrines; that is the monstrosity … It is very hard to conceive that Mr. Newman did not see this…. But had he gone on only a few lines, the reader would have seen Harrington saying: ‘These words you have just quoted were well in St. Paul’s mouth, and had a meaning. In yours, I suspect, they would have none, or a very different one.'”
According to this doctrine of Mr. Rogers, it would not have been profane in an unbelieving Jew to _make game_ of Moses, David, and the Prophets, whenever they were quoted by Paul. The Jew most profoundly believed that Paul quoted the old Scriptures in a false, as well as in a new meaning. One Christian divine does not feel free to ridicule the words of Paul when quoted erroneously (as he thinks) by another Christian divine? Why then, when quoted by me? I hold it to be a great insolence to deny my right to quote Paul or David, as much as Plato or Homer, and adopt their language whenever I find it to express my sentiment. Mr. Rogers’s claim to deride highly spiritual truth, barely because I revere it, is a union of inhumanity and impiety. He has nowhere shown that Paul meant something “totally different” from the sense which I put on his words. I know that he cannot. I do not pretend always to bind myself to the definite sense of my predecessors; nor did the writers of the New Testament. They often adopt and apply _in an avowedly new sense_ the words of the Old Testament; so does Dr. Watts with the Hebrew Psalms. Such adaptation, in the way of development and enlargement, when done with sincerely pious intention, has never been reproved or forbidden by Christians, Whether I am wise or unwise in my interpretations, the _subject_ is a sacred one, and I treat it solemnly; and no errors in my “logic” can justify Mr. Rogers in putting on the mask of a profane sceptic, who scoffs (not once or twice, but through a long book) at the most sacred and tender matters, such as one always dreads to bring before a promiscuous public, lest one cast pearls before swine. And yet unless devotional books be written, especially by those who have as yet no church, how are we to aid one another in the uphill straggle to maintain some elements of a heavenly life? Can anything be more heartless, or more like the sneering devil they talk of, than Mr. Harrington? And here one who professes himself a religions man, and who deliberately, after protest, calls _me_ an INFIDEL, is not satisfied with having scoffed in an hour of folly–(in such an hour, I can well believe, that melancholy record the “Eclipse of Faith,” was first penned)–but he persists in justifying his claim to jeer and snarl and mutilate, and palm upon me senses which he knows are deliberately disavowed by me, all the while pretending that it is my bad logic which justifies him! We know that very many religious men _are_ bad logicians: if I am as puzzle-headed a fool as Mr. Rogers would make people think me, how does that justify his mocking at my religion? He justifies himself on the ground that I criticize the New Testament as freely as I should Cicero (p. 147). Well, then let him criticize me, as freely (and with as little of suppression) as I criticize it. But I do not _laugh_ at it; God forbid! The reader will see how little reason Mr. Rogers had to imagine that I had not read so far as to see Harrington’s defence; which defence is, either an insolent assumption, or at any rate not to the purpose.
I will here add, that I have received letters from numerous Christians to thank me for my book on the “Soul,” in such terms as put the conduct of Mr. Rogers into the most painful contrast: painful, as showing that there are other Christians who know, and _he does not know_, what is the true heart and strength of Christianity. He trusts in logic and ridicules the Spirit of God.
That leads me to his defence of his suggestion that I might be possibly as much inspired as the inventor of lucifer matches. He says, p. 154:–
“Mr. Newman tells me, that I have clearly a profound unbelief in the Christian doctrine of divine influence, or I could not thus grossly insult it I answer… that which Harrington ridiculed, as the context would have shown Mr. Newman, if he had had the patience to read on, and the calmness to judge, is the chaotic view of inspiration, _formally_ held by Mr. Parker, who is _expressly_ referred to, “Eclipse,” p. 81.” In 9th edition, p. 71.
The passage concerning Mr. Parker is in the _preceding_ page: I had read it, and I do not see how it at all relieves the disgust which every right-minded man must feel at this passage. My disgust is not personal: though I might surely ask,–If Parker has made a mistake, how does that justify insulting _me_? As I protested, I have made no peculiar claim to inspiration. I have simply claimed “that which all[16] pious Jews and Christians since David have always claimed.” Yet he pertinaciously defends this rude and wanton passage, adding, p. 155: “As to the inventor of lucifer matches, I am thoroughly convinced that he has shed more light upon the world and been abundantly more useful to it, than many a cloudy expositor of modern spiritualism.” Where to look for the “many” expositors of spiritualism, I do not know. Would they were more numerous.
Mr. Parker differs from me as to the use of the phrase “Spirit of God.” I see practical reasons, which I have not here space to insist on, for adhering to the _Christian_, as distinguished from the _Jewish_ use of this phrase. Theodore Parkes follows the phraseology of the Old Testament, according to which Bezaleel and others received the spirit of God to aid them in mere mechanical arts, building and tailoring. To ridicule Theodore Parker for this, would seem to me neither witty nor decent in an unbeliever; but when one does so, who professes to believe the whole Old Testament to be sacred, and stoops to lucifer matches and the Eureka shirt, as if this were a refutation, I need a far severer epithet. Mr. Rogers implies that the light of a lucifer match is comparable to the light of Theodore Parker; what will be the judgment of mankind a century hence, if the wide dissemination of the “Eclipse of Faith” lead to inscribing the name of Henry Rogers permanently in biographical dictionaries! Something of this sort may appear:–
“THEODORE PARKER, the most eminent moral theologian whom the first half of the nineteenth century produced in the United States. When the churches were so besotted, as to uphold the curse of slavery because they found it justified in the Bible; when the Statesmen, the Press, the Lawyers, and the Trading Community threw their weight to the same fatal side; Parker stood up to preach the higher law of God against false religion, false statesmanship, crooked law and cruel avarice. He enforced three great fundamental truths, God, Holiness, and Immortality. He often risked life and fortune to rescue the fugitive slave. After a short and very active life full of good works, he died in blessed peace, prematurely worn out by his perpetual struggle for the true, the right, and the good. His preaching is the crisis which marked the turn of the tide in America from the material to the moral, which began to enforce the eternal laws of God on trade, on law, on administration, and on the professors of religion itself.”
And what will be then said of him, who now despises the noble Parker? I hope something more than the following:–“HENRY ROGERS, an accomplished gentleman and scholar, author of many books, of which by far the most popular was a smart satirical dialogue, disfigured by unjustifiable garbling and profane language, the aim of which was to sneer down Theodore Parker and others who were trying to save spiritual doctrine out of the wreck of historical Christianity.”
Jocose scoffing, and dialogue writing is the easiest of tasks; and if Mr. Rogers’s co-religionists do not take the alarm, and come in strength upon Messrs. Longman, imploring them to suppress these books of Mr. Rogers, persons who despise _all_ religion (with whom Mr. Rogers pertinaciously confounds me under the term infidel), may one of these days imitate his sprightly example against his creed and church. He himself seems to me at present incurable. I do not appeal to _him_, I appeal to his co-religionists, how they would like the publication of a dialogue, in which his free and easy sceptic “Mr. Harrington” might reason on the _opposite_ side to that pliable and candid man of straw “Mr. Fellowes?” I here subjoin for their consideration, an imaginary extract of the sort which, by their eager patronage of the “Eclipse of Faith,” they are inviting against themselves.
_Extract._
I say, Fellowes! (said Harrington), what was that, that Parker and Rogers said about the Spirit of God?
Excuse me (said Fellowes), Theodore Parker and Henry Rogers hold very different views, Mr. Rogers would be much hurt to bear you class him with Parker.
I know (replied he), but they both hold that God inspires people; and that is a great point in common, as I view it. Does not Mr. Rogers believe the Old Testament inspired and all of it true?
Certainly (said Fellowes): at least he was much shocked with Mr. Newman for trying to discriminate its chaff from its wheat.
Well then, he believes, does not he, that Jehovah filled men _with the spirit of wisdom_ to help them make a suit of clothes for Aaron!
Fellowes, after a pause, replied:–That is certainly written in the 28th chapter of Exodus.
Now, my fine fellow! (said Harrington), here is a question to _rile_ Mr. Rogers. If Aaron’s toggery needed one portion of the spirit of wisdom from Jehovah, how many portions does the Empress Eugenie’s best crinoline need?
Really (said Fellowes, somewhat offended), such ridicule seems to me profane.
Forgive me, dear friend (replied Harrington, with a sweet smile). _Your_ views I never will ridicule; for I know you have imbibed somewhat of Francis Newman’s fancy, that one ought to feel tenderly towards other men’s piety. But Henry Rogers is made of stouter stuff; he manfully avows that a religion, if it is true, ought to stand the test of ridicule, and he deliberately approves this weapon of attack.
I cannot deny that (said Fellowes, lifting his eyebrows).
But I was going to ask (continued Harrington) whether Mr. Rogers does not believe that Jehovah filled Bezaleel with the Spirit of God, for the work of jeweller, coppersmith, and mason?
Of course he does (answered Fellowes), the text is perfectly clear, in the 31st of Exodus; Bezaleel and Aholiab were both inspired to become cunning workmen.
By the Goose (said Harrington)–forgive a Socratic oath–I really do not see that Mr. Rogers differs much from Theodore Parker. If a man cannot hack a bit of stone or timber without the Spirit of God, Mr. Rogers will have hard work to convince me, that any one can make a rifled cannon without the Spirit of God.
There is something in that (said Fellowes). In fact, I have sometimes wondered how Mr. Rogers could say that which _looks_ so profane, as what he said about the Eureka shirt.
Pray what is that? (said Harrington;) and where?
It is in his celebrated “Defence,” 2nd edition, p. 155. “_If_ Minos and Praxiteles are inspired in the same sense as Moses and Christ, then the inventor of lucifer matches, as well as the inventor of the Eureka shirts, must be also admitted”–to be inspired.
Do you mean that he is trying to save the credit of Moses, by maintaining that the Spirit of God which guides a sculptor is _not_ the same in kind as that which guides a saint?
No (replied Fellowes, with surprise), he is not defending Moses; he is attacking Parker.
Bless me (said Harrington, starting up), what is become of the man’s logic! Why, Parker and Moses are in the same boat. Mr. Rogers fires at it, in hope to sink Parker; and does not know that he is sending old Moses to Davy’s locker.
Now this is too bad (said Fellowes), I really cannot bear it.
Nah! Nah! good friend (said Harrington, imploringly), be calm; and remember, we have agreed that ridicule–against _Mr. Rogers_, not against _you_–is fair play.
That is true (replied Fellowes with more composure).
Now (said Harrington, with a confidential air), you are my friend, and I will tell you a secret–be sure you tell no one–I think that Henry Rogers, Theodore Parker, and Francis Newman are three ninnies; all wrong; for they all profess to believe in divine inspiration: yet they are not ninnies of the same class. I _admit_ to Mr. Rogers that there is a real difference.
How do you mean (said Fellowes, with curiosity aroused)?
Why (said Harrington, pausing and becoming impressive), Newman is a flimsy mystic; he has no foundation, but he builds logically enough–at least as far as I see–on his fancies and other people’s fancies. This is to be a simple ninny. But Mr. Rogers fancies he believes a mystical religion, and doesn’t; and fancies he is very logical, and isn’t. This is to be a doubly distilled ninny.
Really I do not call this ridicule, Mr. Harrington (said Fellowes, rising), I must call it slander. What right have you to say that Mr. Rogers does not believe in the holy truths of the New Testament?
Surely (replied Harrington) I have just _as_ much right as Mr. Rogers has to say that Mr. Newman does not believe the holy sentiments of St. Paul, when Mr. Newman says he does. Do you remember how Mr. Rogers told him it was absurd for an infidel like him to third: he was in a condition to rebuke any one for being profane, or fancy he had a right to say that he believed this and that mystical text of Paul, which, Mr. Rogers avows, Newman _totally_ mistakes and does _not_ believe as Paul meant it. Now I may be very wrong; but I augur that Newman _does_ understand Paul, and Rogers does _not_. For Rogers is of the Paley school, and a wit; and a brilliant chap he is, like Macaulay. Such men cannot be mystics nor Puritans in Pauline fashion; they cannot bear to hear of a religion _from within_; but, as I heard a fellow say the other day, Newman has never worked off the Puritan leaven.
Well (said Fellowes), but why do you call Mr. Rogers illogical?
I think you have seen one instance already, but that is a trifle compared to his fundamental blunder (said Harrington).
What can you mean? how fundamental (asked his friend)?
Why, he says, that _I_ (for instance) who have so faith whatever in what he calls revelation, cannot have any just belief or sure knowledge of the moral qualities of God; in fact, am logically bound (equally with Mr. Newman) to regard God as _im_moral, if I judge by my own faculties alone. Does he not say that?
Unquestionably; he has a whole chapter (ch. III.) of his “Defence” to enforce this on Mr. Newman (replied Fellowes).
Well, next, he tells me, that when the Christian message, as from God, is presented to me, I am to believe it on the word of a God whom I suppose to be, or _ought_ to suppose to be, immoral. If I suppose A B a rogue, shall I believe the message which the rogue sends me?
Surely, Harrington, you forget that you are speaking of God, not of man: you ought not to reason so (said Fellowes, somewhat agitated).
Surely, Fellowes, it is _you_ who forget (retorted Harrington) that syllogism depends on form, not on matter. Whether it be God or Man, makes no difference; the logic must be tried by turning the terms into X Y Z. But I have not said all Mr. Rogers says, I am bound to throw away the moral principles which I already have, at the bidding of a God whom I am bound to believe to be immoral.
No, you are unfair (said Fellowes), I know he says that revelation would confirm and _improve_ your moral principles.
But I am _not_ unfair. It is he who argues in a circle. What will be _improvement_, is the very question pending. He says, that if Jehovah called to me from heaven, “O Harrington! O Harrington! take thine innocent son, thine only son, lay him on the altar and kill him,” I should be bound to regard obedience to the command an _improvement_ of my morality; and this, though, up to the moment when I heard the voice, I had been _bound logically_ to believe Jehovah to be an IMMORAL God. What think you of that for logic?
I confess (said Fellowes, with great candour) I must yield up my friend’s reputation as a _logician_; and I begin to think he was unwise in talking so contemptuously of Mr. Newman’s reasoning faculties. But in truth, I love my friend for the great _spiritual_ benefits I have derived from him and cannot admit to you that he is not a very sincere believer in mystical Christianity.
What benefits, may I ask? (said Harrington).
I have found by his aid the peace which passeth understanding (replied he).
It passes my understanding, if you have (answered Harrington, laughing), and I shall be infinitely obliged by your allowing me to participate in the discovery. In plain truth, I do not trust your mysticism.
But are you in a condition to form an opinion? (said Fellowes, with a serious air). Mr. Rogers has enforced on me St. Paul’s maxim: “The natural man discerneth not the things of the Spirit of God.”
My most devout gentleman I (replied Harrington), how unctuous you are! Forgive my laughing; but it does _so_ remind me of Douce Davie Deans. I will make you professor of spiritual insight, &c., &c., &c.
* * * * *
Now is not this disgusting? Might I not justly call the man a “profane dog” who approved of it? Yet everything that is worst here _is closely copied from the Eclipse of Faith, or justified by the Defence_. How long will it be before English Christians cry out Shame against those two books?
VI. I must devote a few words to define the direction and justification of my argument in one chapter of this treatise. All good arguments are not rightly addressed to all persons. An argument good in itself may be inappreciable to one in a certain mental state, or may be highly exasperating. If a thoughtful Mohammedan, a searcher after truth, were to confide to a Christian a new basis on which be desired to found the Mohammedan religion–viz., the absolute moral perfection of its prophet, and were to urge on the Christian this argument in order to convert him, I cannot think that any one would blame the Christian for demanding what is the evidence of the _fact_. Such an appeal would justify his dissecting the received accounts of Mohammed, pointing out what appeared to be flaws in his moral conduct; nay, if requisite, urging some positive vice, such as his excepting himself from his general law of _four wives only_. But a Christian missionary would surely be blamed (at least I should blame him), if, in preaching to a mixed multitude of Mohammedans against the authority of their prophet, he took as his basis of refutation the prophet’s personal sensuality. We are able to foresee that the exasperation produced by such an argument must derange the balance of mind in the hearers, even if the argument is to the purpose; at the same time, it may be really away from the purpose to _them_, if their belief has no closer connexion with the personal virtue of the prophet, than has that of Jews and Christians with the virtue of Balaam or Jonah. I will proceed to imagine, that while a missionary was teaching, talking, and distributing tracts to recommend, his own views of religion, a Moolah were to go round and inform everybody that this Christian believed Mohammed to be an unchaste man, and had used the very argument to such and such a person. I feel assured that we should all pronounce this proceeding to be a very cunning act of spiteful, bigotry.
My own case, as towards certain Unitarian friends of mine, is quite similar to this. They preach to me the absolute moral perfection of a certain man (or rather, of a certain portrait) as a sufficient basis for my faith. Hereby they challenge me, and as it were force me, to inquire into its perfection. I have tried to confine the argument within a narrow circle. It is addressed by me specifically to them and not to others. I would _not_ address it to Trinitarians; partly, because they are not in a mental state to get anything from it but pain, partly because much of it becomes intrinsically bad _as argument_ when addressed to them. Many acts and words which would be _right_ from an incarnate God, or from an angel, are (in my opinion) highly _unbecoming_ from a man; consequently I must largely remould the argument before I could myself approve of it, if so addressed. The principle of the argument is such as Mr. Rogers justifies, when he says that Mr. Martineau _quite takes away all solid reasons for believing in Christ’s absolute perfection._ (“Defence,” p. 220.) I opened my chapter (chapter VII.) above with a distinct avowal of my wish to confine the perusal of it to a very limited circle. Mr. Rogers (acting, it seems, on the old principle, that whatever one’s enemy deprecates, is a good) instantly pounces on the chapter, avows that “if infidelity _could_ be ruined, such imprudencies[17] would go far to ruin it,” p. 22; and because he believes that it will be “unspeakably[18] painful” to the orthodox for whom I do _not_ intend it, he prints the greater part of it in an Appendix, and expresses his regret that he cannot publish “every syllable of it,” p. 22. Such is his tender regard for the feeling of his co-religionists.
My defender in the “Prospective Review” wound up as follows (x. p. 227):–
“And now we have concluded our painful task, which nothing but a feeling of what justice–literary, and personal–required, would have induced us to undertake. The tone of intellectual disparagement and moral rebuke which certain critics,–deceived by the shallowest sophisms with which an unscrupulous writer could work on their prepossessions and insult their understandings–have adopted towards Mr. Newman made exposure necessary. The length to which our remarks have extended requires apology. Evidence to character is necessarily cumulative, and not easily compressible within narrow limits. Enough has been said to show that there is not an art discreditable in controversy, to which recourse is not freely had in the ‘Eclipse of Faith’ and the Defence of it.”
The reader must judge for himself whether this severe and terrible sentence of the reviewer proceeds from ill-temper and personal mortification, as the author of the Eclipse and its Defence gratuitously lays down, or whether it was prompted by a sense of justice, as he himself affirms.
[Footnote 1: The “Eclipse” had previously been noticed in the same review, on the whole favourably, by a writer of evidently a different religious school, and before I had exposed the evil arts of my assailant.]
[Footnote 2: The authorship is since acknowledged by Mr. Henry Rogers, in the title to his article on Bishop Butler in the “Encyclopaedia Britannica.”]
[Footnote 3: That is, my “discovery” that the writer of the “Eclipse of Faith” grossly misquotes and misinterprets me.]
[Footnote 4: Page 225, he says, that each criticism “is quite worthy of Mr. Newman’s _friend_, defender and admirer;” assuming a fact, in order to lower my defender’s credit with his readers.]
[Footnote 5: As he puts “artful dodge” into quotation marks, his readers will almost inevitably believe that this vulgar language is mine. In the same spirit to speaks of me as “making merry” with a Book Revelation; as if I had the slightest sympathy or share in the style and tone which pervades the “Eclipse.” But there is no end of such things to be denounced.]
[Footnote 6: Italics in the original.]
[Footnote 7: In the ninth edition, p. 104, I find that to cover the formal falsehood of these words, he adds: “what he calls his arguments are assertions only,” still withholding that which would confute him.]
[Footnote 8: I will here add, that this “stinking fly”–the parenthesis (“in a certain stage of development”)–was added merely to avoid dogmatizing on the question, how early in human history or in human life this mysterious notion of the divine spirit is recognizable as commencing.]
[Footnote 9: If the word _essential_ is explained away, _this_ sentence may be attenuated to a truism.]
[Footnote 10: Paul to the Corinthians, 1st Ep. ii.]
[Footnote 11: This clause is too strong. “Expect _direct_ spiritual results,” might have been better.]
[Footnote 12: The substance of what I wrote was this. Socrates and Cicero ask, _where did we pick up our intelligence?_ It did not come from nothing; it most reside in the mind of him from whom we and this world came; God must be more intelligent than man, his creature.–But this argument may be applied with equal truth, not to intelligence only, but to all the essential high qualities of man, everything noble and venerable. Whence came the principle of love, which is the noblest of all! It must reside in God more truly and gloriously than in man. He who made loving hearts must himself be loving. Thus the intelligence and love of God are known through our consciousness of intelligence and love _within_.]
[Footnote 13: He puts _alone_ in italics. A little below he repeats, “which alone I ridiculed.”]
[Footnote 14: He should add: “external _authoritative_ revelation _of moral and spiritual truth_.” No communication from heaven could have moral weight, to a heart previously destitute of moral sentiment, or unbelieving in the morality of God.–What is there in this that deserves ridicule?]
[Footnote 15: He puts it between two other statements which avowedly refer to me.]
[Footnote 16: Mr. Rogers asks on this: “Does Mr. Newman mean that he claims as much as the _apostles_ claimed, _whether they did so rightfully or not_?” See how acutely a logician can pervert the word _all_!]
[Footnote 17: There is much meaning in the word imprudencies on which I need not comment.]
[Footnote 18: “Unspeakably painful” is his phrase for something much smaller, (“Eclipse” ninth edition p. 194,) which he insists on similarly obtruding, against my will and protest.]
APPENDIX I.
It is an error not at all peculiar to the author of the “Eclipse of Faith,” but is shared with him by many others, and by one who has treated me in a very different spirit, that Christians are able to use atheistic arguments against me without wounding Christianity. As I have written a rather ample book, called “Theism,” expressly designed to establish against Atheists and Pantheists that moral Theism which Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans have in common, and which underlies every attempt of any of the three religions to establish its peculiar and supernatural claims; I have no need of entering on that argument here. It is not true, that, as a Theist, I evade the objections urged by real atheists or sceptics; on the contrary, I try to search them to the very bottom. It is only in arguing with Christians that I disown the obligation of reply; and that, because they are as much concerned as I to answer; and ought to be able to give me, _on the ground of natural theology_, good replies to every fundamental objection from the sceptic, if I have not got them myself. To declare the objections of our common adversaries valid against those first principles of religion which are older than Jesus or Moses, is certainly to surrender the cause of Christianity.
If this need more elucidation, let it be observed, that no Christian can take a single step in argument with a heathen, much less establish his claim of authority for the Bible, without presuming that the heathen will admit, on hearing them, those doctrines of moral Theism, which, it is pretended, _I_ can have no good reason for admitting. If the heathen sincerely retorts against the missionary such Pagan scepticism as is flung at me by Christians, the missionary’s words are vain; nor is any success possible, unless (with me) he can lay a _prior_ foundation of moral Theism, independent of any assumption concerning the claims of the Bible. It avails nothing to preach repentance of sin and salvation from judgment to come, to minds which are truly empty of the belief that God has any care for morality. I of course do not say, and have never said, that the doctrine of the divine holiness, goodness, truth, must have been previously an active belief of the heathen hearer. To have stated a question clearly is often half the solution; and the teacher, who so states a high doctrine, gives a great aid to the learner’s mind. But unless, after it has been affirmed that there is a Great Eternal Being pervading the universe, who disapproves of human evil and commands us to pursue the good, the conscience and intellect of the hearer gives assent, no argument of moral religion can have weight with him; therefore neither can any argument about miracles, nor any appeal to the “Bible” as authoritative. Of course the book has not as yet any influence over him, nor will its miracles, any more than its doctrines, be received on the ground of their being in the book. Thus a direct and independent discernment of the great truths of moral Theism is a postulate, to be proved or conceded _before_ the Christian can begin the argument in favour of Biblical preternaturalism. I had thought it would have been avowed and maintained with a generous pride, that eminently in Christian literature we find the noblest, soundest, and fullest advocacy of moral Theism, as having its evidence in the heart of man within and nature without, _independently of any postulates concerning the Bible_. I certainly grew up for thirty years in that belief. Treatises on Natural Theology, which (with whatever success) endeavoured to trace–not only a constructive God in the outer world, but also a good God when that world is viewed in connexion with man; were among the text-books of our clergy and of our universities, and were in many ways crowned with honour. Bampton Lectures, Bridgewater Treatises, Burnet Prize Essays, have (at least till very recently in one case) been all, I rather think, in the same direction. And surely with excellent reason. To avow that the doctrines of Moral Theism have no foundation to one who sees nothing preternatural in the Bible, is in a Christian such a suicidal absurdity, that whenever an atheist advances it, it is met with indignant denial and contempt.
The argumentative strength of this Appendix, as a reply to those who call themselves “orthodox” Christians, is immensely increased by analysing their subsidiary doctrines, which pretend to relieve, while they prodigiously aggravate, the previous difficulties of Moral Theism; I mean the doctrine of the fall of man by the agency of a devil, and the eternal hell. But every man who dares to think will easily work out such thoughts for himself.
APPENDIX II.
I here reproduce (merely that it may not be pretended that I silently withdraw it) the substance of an illustration which I offered in my 2nd edition, p. 184.
When I deny that History can be Religion or a part of Religion, I mean it exactly in the same sense, in which we say that history is not mathematics, though mathematics has a history. Religion undoubtedly comes to us by historical transmission: it has had a slow growth; but so is it with mathematics, so is it with all other sciences. (I refer to mathematics, not as peculiarly like to religion, but as peculiarly unlike; it is therefore and _a fortiori_ argument. What is true of them as sciences, is true of all science.) No science can flourish, while it is received on authority. Science comes to us _by_ external transmission, but is not believed _because_ of that transmission. The history of the transmission is generally instructive, but is no proper part of the science itself. All this is true of Religion.
THE END.