So Schelling in his Transcendental | tion of the Axiom' which we are consiIdealism' views the universe as the neces- dering. His purpose throughout is to sary self-evolution of the infinite mind, and show how 'la grande notion des lois de la Hegel regards it as an eternal mathemati- nature,' 'enfin appliquée à l'étude même cal process, or an animated series of propo- de l'homme et de la société,' is certain ulsitions, every step of which is linked to the timately to extirpate le système théolopreceding by unalterable law. gique.'-Comte, tom. iii. p. 271. Of course we need not say that we believe Mr. Jowett would sincerely repudiate the views above cited. But might not the following passages be interpreted so as to appear to countenance them? Thus the Hegelian Oken 'As the whole of mathematics emerges out of zero, so must everything which is a singular have emerged from the eternal, or nothing of nature.'-(Physio-Philosophy, p. 9.) Thus again Humboldt in the Cosmos' In submitting physical phenomena and historical events to the exercise of the reflective faculty, and in ascending by reasoning to their causes, we become more and more penetrated by that ancient belief that the forces inherent in matter, and those regulating the moral world, exert their action under the presence of a primordial necessity.' And to the same effect speak the disciples of materialism, of whom we may take Miss Martineau and the author of the 'Vestiges' as the English exponents. In the words of the latter 'The relation in which science stands to us may seem to bear but a remote resemblance to that in which the law stood to the apostle St. Paul. Yet the analogy is not fanciful, but real. Traces of physical laws are discernible everywhere in the world around us; even in ourselves also, whose souls are knit together with our bodily frames, whose bodily frames are a part of the material creation. It seems as if nature came so close to us as to leave no room for the motion of our will: instead of the inexhaustible grace of God enabling us to say, in the language of the Apostle, "I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me," we become moro and more the slaves of our own physical constitution. And as the consciousness of this becomes stronger, and the contrast between faith and experience more vivid, there arises a conflict between the spirit and the flesh, nature and grace, not unlike that of which the Apostle speaks. No one who, instead of "hanging to the past," will look forward to the future, can expect that natural science should stand in the same attitude towards revelation fifty years hence as at present. . Doubtless God has 'The human being, a mystery considered as an individual, becomes a simple and natural phenomenon when considered in the mass.' And Morals, that part of the system of things which seemed least under natural regulation or law, is as thoroughly ascertained to be wholly so as the arrangement of the heavenly bodies.'-(Explana-provided a way that the thought of Him should tions of Vestiges, p. 26.) not be banished from the hearts of men. habits, and opinion, and prescription may "last And To the same effect Martineau and Atkin- our time," as men say; and many motives may son declare that 'drunk or sober, mad or idiot, a man is at all times the result of his material condition and the influences without. Some men are, as it were, a law unto themselves, while others by their nature are disposed to thieve and to mur der. Some men are wolves by their nature, and some are lambs, and it is vain to talk of responsibility, as if men made themselves what they are. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" "We do not quarrel with the stone that strikes us," says Bacon, nor shall we quarrel with man when we know man's nature, and that he merely exhibits the law of his being.'-(M. and A., 131.) 'I feel that I am as completely the result of my nature, and impelled to do what I do, as the needle to point to the north, or the puppet to move according as the string is pulled.'-(M. and A., 132.) It is unnecessary to quote Auguste Comte on this subject, since the whole of his four volumes is one continuous exposi conspire to keep our minds off the coming struggle. But if there ever be a day when our present knowledge of geology, of languages, of the races and religions of mankind, of the human frame itself, shall be regarded as the startingpoint of a goal which has been almost reached, we can hardly anticipate, from what we already see, the nature of the conflict that will then arise between reason and faith. The cry of the soul to God, "who shall deliver me from the body of this death," may be the entrance to a new life.'-ii. 444. 'Extending our conception of Nature by fixing our minds solely on its highest operations, we are reconciled to the thought that even the workings of our hearts and the acts of our lives are subject to this order; and that wonderful as the human will is, nature, or the God of nature, will not allow it to interfere with the structure of the world in which it is placed. 'Looking at ourselves from within, we seem to be the heirs of a boundless freedom; with a glance at the material world "our nerves are all chained up in alabaster." Fixing our minds again on "those portions of matter in which we are more nearly interested," we seem to be the subjects of an imperfect necessity. Turning our thoughts to others, were it not for the illusion of their resemblance to ourselves, mere observation would probably lead us to regard their volition in the same way that we think of the motion of animals. What is the inference? It is this, that so wavering and indefinite a sense as our own internal consciousness cannot be brought as a witness against facts of outward experience. These remain as they are, whether we admit them or not. Still we cannot deny that there are two ways in which the world within and the world without may be considered. We may set a great gulf between them: so that it is impossible to pass from one to the other, opposing God to man, mind and matter, soul and body. We may speak of mind as the correlative of matter, and describe the soul after the analogy of the body. Morality and religion often seem to require that we retain such distinctions, even in opposition to experience. Or we may regard these pairs of opposites as passing into one another; the opposition of the will of God, and the free agency of man, being lost in the idea of a communion of the Creator with His creatures; that of soul and body in a higher conception of nature; that of necessity and freedom in the notion of law, which seems to partake of both.'-ii. 505. 6 The preceding Axiom' obviously involves the following corollary : Ax. 1. Cor. 1. The chain of physical causation is eternal, and excludes a creator.' This is expressed by Fichte as follows:'If, therefore., any one should say that the world might also not exist that at one time it actually did not exist that at another time it arose out of nothing-that it came into existence by an arbitrary act of God, which act he might have left undone had he so pleased, it is just the same as if he should say that God might also not exist that at one time he actually did not exist that at another time he came into 'There is no theory of a God, of an author of nature, of an origin of the universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties.'-(M. and A., 217.) The same author makes the following remarks upon the evidence of a Creator derived from final causes :--- final causes, and by an inverted reason see their 'Thus deluding themselves, they wander after designer, creation and a Creator; as if the laws own image in nature, and imagine design and a of matter were not fundamental and sufficient in themselves, and design were not human, and simply an imitation; or, as Bacon designates it, ture's doings, and the fitness and form of things a memory with an application." To call Nadesign, is absurd. Man designs; Nature is.'M. and A., 176.) We regret to say that Mr. Jowett not only echoes this often-refuted objection, but enters into a long dissertation to prove the futility of the teleological argument, which seems to show that he himself does not comprehend it. For instance, he calls it 'a defect in the argument' that it fixes our minds on those parts of the world which exhibit marks of design, and withdraws us from those in which marks of design seem to fail;' and again, that 'it leads us to suppose that all things are made in the best call it a defect in the argument of the Asses' manner possible.' As though a man should Bridge that it has led some mistaken persons to suppose that they had squared the circle. Again he objects to it as giving 'an imperfect conception of the Divine Being' -as if any one ever supposed that it could give a perfect conception of the Divine BeBut his main objection is the same existence out of non-existence, and determined could not have been present, at least with consciousness, at that event, or been able to observe how he passed over from non-existence into existence; nor can he relate it as a fact to posterity. As to the origin of the world and of the human race, neither the philosopher nor the historian has anything to say, for there is absolutely no such origin: there is only the one necessary being raised above all time.'-Origin of History, Lecture 9. 'In the case of a work of art it [the argument] has an intelligible meaning; what meaning can we attach to it in the case of natural objects? As certainly as the man who found a watch or piece of mechanism on the sea shore would conclude, "here are marks of design, indications of an intelligent artist," so certainly, if he came across the meanest or the highest of the works of nature, would he infer, "this was not mado So, according to the oracle of Miss Mar- by man, nor by any human art and skill." He tineau sees at first sight that the sea-weed beneath his feet is something different in kind from the productions of man. What should lead him to say, 'Philosophy finds no God in nature; no perBonal being or creator; nor sees the want of any; nor has a God revealed himself miraculously; for the idea is in the mind of most savage naWe are surprised to find Mr. Jowett attributtions, because under like ignorance like effects ing the invention of this argument to Aristotle (p. will recur. The human mind, whenever placed 407); we should have thought every one must have under similar circumstances of ignorance, will remembered the well-known passage in the 'Meform similar conceptions, and have similar long-morabilia,' where Socrates is represented as emings and superstitions.'-(M. and A., 173.) ploying it. 7 that in the same sense that man made the watch | comprehended by the poor; and, moreover, To which it may suffice to give the reply made by Dr. Whewell twenty years ago : 'How came we to know the existence of human design and purpose at first, or at all? What we see around us are certain appearances, things, successions of events. How came we ever to ascribe to other men the thought and will of which we are conscious ourselves? How do we come to believe that there are other men? How are we led to elevate in our conceptions some of the objects which we perceive into persons? No doubt their actions, their words, induce us to do this. We feel that such actions, such events, must be connected by consciousness and personality; that the actions are not the actions of things but of persons. In arriving at such knowledge we are aided only by our own consciousness of what thought, purpose, will are; and possessing this regulative principle, we so decipher and interpret the complex appearances around us-that we receive irresistibly the persuasion of the existence of other men, with thought, and will, and purpose like our own. And just in the same manner, when we observe the adjustment of the parts of the human frame to each other and to the elements, the relation of the properties of the earth to those of its inhabitants, or of the physical to the moral nature of man, we infer the existence of a personal Cre ator. 'If any one ever went so far in scepticism as to doubt the existence of any other person than himself, he might (as far as this argument is concerned) reject the being of God.' Mr. Jowett goes on to refute all the other common arguments for the being of a God (which are all more or less inconsistent with the Hegelian conception), and then concludes (p. 410) "The arguments from first or final causes will not bear the tests of modern metaphysical inquirers. The most highly educated minds are above them, the uneducated cannot be made to comprehend them. We should have thought the minds of those writers who, in the present day, have urged the argument from final causes, including Brougham, Herschel, Whewell, Sedgwick, and Owen, were not among the least highly educated of our generation. But this is a matter of opinion. Mr. Jowett's other assertion, that the uneducated cannot be made to comprehend' that argument, is only a fresh proof that the seclusion of the cloister has hindered him from estimating the forces which act upon the common understanding. We can venture to assure him, that by the great mass of his countrymen the argument from design is held irresistibly conclusive; that none is more easily world has ever witnessed. : We now come to the second of the abovementioned corollaries, viz. :Ax. 1. Cor. 2. A miracle, being by definition* an interruption of the physical laws of the universe, is impossible.' On this subject the following is the utterance of the Hegelian Strauss 'We may summarily reject all miracles, prophecies, narratives of angels and of demons, and the like, as simply impossible, and irreconcileable with the known and universal laws which govern the course of events.' And to the same effect his brother idealist Emerson: 'The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression-it is Monster.'-(Emerson's Christian Teacher.) The opinion of Miss Martineau is equally summary: 'I hold that there never has been or can be any miracle or interruption of the laws of na ture.' And again: 'Strange as it may appear, and impossible as it may seem to so many, the Christian religion is in fact, and will soon be generally recognised as no better than an old wife's fable.'-(Martineau and Atk., 239, 241.) In order to meet such views, and get rid of such objections, many apologists for religion in modern times have tried to construct a Christianity without miracles. And some who have themselves firmly believed the Christian miracles, have yet been very anxious to eliminate them from the evidences' of Christianity. ridge was the first in England to set this Cole *It has been often remarked that this common definition of a miracle is faulty. So Coleridge exclaims 'Suspension-Laws-Nature-Bless me! a chapter would be required for the explanation of each several word in the definition, and little less than omniscience for its application in any one instance.'-(Notes on English Divines, ii. 227.) He proceeds to give a definition of his own, which is which he rejects. Bishop Butler has observed that liable to nearly the same objections with that miracles may really be not suspensions of the laws of nature, but manifestations of certain more general laws; and Mr. Babbage has illustrated this view in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise,' by showing from his calculating machine how an intermittent law may appear to be a violation of law. fashion, in which he has been followed by so many in recent times, who have repeated his maxim, that the doctrine proves the miracle, and not the miracle the doctrine.' We need not now inquire into the degree of truth which this opinion may contain. But we must express our sorrow that it should have led to a tone of depreciation and disparagement, which some even among Christian writers do not hesitate to adopt concerning the external evidences of Christianity. Thus, Mr. Williams, in the work before us, states, that those who agree with him 'would never be so illogical as to make these remote and often obscurely attested events the proof of things being true which they know by experience.' (Rational Godliness, p. 398.) Whence it would seem to follow that nothing can be a Christian truth which we cannot know by experience.' In the same spirit Mr. Jowett repeats that 'Miracles are not appealed to singly in Scripture as evidences of religion, in the same way that they have been used by modern writers.' The qualification makes it difficult to deal with this assertion; but it is certainly prima facie opposed to the fact that our Lord is frequently represented in the Gospel as appealing to his miracles in proof of his divine commission; and not less so to the practice of St. Paul, who, in writing to the Corinthians, makes miracles a proof of his apostleship (2 Cor. xii. 12); and appeals to the same test as an evidence of the truth of his teaching to the Galatians, in a passage which is paraphrased by Mr. Jowett himself as follows: I say then again, did he who supplied you the Spirit, and gave you miraculous powers, work by the deeds of the law, or by the hearing of faith.' (Gal. iii. 5.) We now come to the second Axiom,' namely: Ax. 2. The will of God is only another name for the laws of nature.' good is there, so is the evil. If the affinity, so So the oracle, or Saíuwv, of Miss Martineau declares 'I cannot believe in a manufacturing God as implied in the idea of a Creator and a creation; nor can I believe in any beginning or end, to the operations of nature. The cause in nature or of nature is eternal and immutable. The earth and stars may pass away into other forms, but the law is eternal. Man, animals, plants, stones, are consequently in nature. The mind of man, the instincts of animals, the sympathies (so to speak) of plants, and the properties of stones, are results of material developmentthat development itself being a result of the properties of matter, and the inherent cause and principle, which is the basis of matter.'—(M. and A., 240.) Such are the utterances of a system which, as Neander truly says, is the direct antithesis of Christianity. Yet it might be thought by a hasty reader that they received some countenance from the following passage :— 'Past and present strive together in our minds; the modes of thought which we have derived from Scripture and from antiquity are at variance with the language of science. It is our duty as Christians and as reasonable beings to lay aside such illusions. Language and religious feeling supply many blinds which we may interpose between ourselves and truth. But there is no resting-place until we admit freely that the laws of nature and the will of the God of nature are absolutely identical.' ii. 413. When Mr. Jowett wrote this, he surely forgot that the existence of moral evil is a law of nature,' but yet cannot be supposed a part of the will of God' by those who are taught to pray Deliver us from Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, notwith-evil.' He also could not have remembered standing their minor differences, all unite that those who hold the axiom which he in the opinion of the last, that Apart God with the Devil, by deducing from it seems here to concede, virtually identify the following consequence : from the universe is no God.' The most popular expositor of Transcendentalism in our own language expresses this view in his vivid manner as follows: Ax. 2. Cor. 1. It is absurd to suppose sin offensive to God; for sin is a manifestation of the laws of man's moral nature, and as such is a part of the will of God! This was a favourite sentiment of the Pantheistic Goethe, and it has been rendered familiar to the English public by his disciple Mr. Carlyle, in his essays and * * See the Essay on Goethe in Carlyle's Essays. elsewhere. So we read in Hare's Life of Sterling, 'I find in all my conversations with B. [Mr. Carlyle], that his fundamental position is the good of evil. He is for ever quoting Goethe's epigram about the idleness of wishing to jump off one's shade.'-i. 74. time; present in our good actions in one way; also in our evil actions in another way; as the Author of good, and the Permitter of evil;* the Fountain of all physical, moral, and spiritual laws; or rather, as we may say, the law of all other laws, the person, idea, principle, fact, in which they are gathered up.'-ii. 501. 'In modern times we say God is not the cause of evil he only allows it; it is a part of his On the same theme Emerson copiously moral government, incidental to his general declaims after this fashion : "Nature as we know her is no saint. The lights of the Church, the ascetics, Gentoos, and Grahamites, she does not distinguish by any favour: she comes eating and drinking, and sinning. Her darlings, the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law; do not come out of the Sunday school; nor weigh their food, nor punctually keep the commandments. If we will be strong with her strength, we must not harbour such disconsolate consciences, borrowed, too, from the consciences of other nations. We must set up the strong present tense against all the rumours of wrath, past or to come.-(Emerson on Spiritual Laws.) My friend suggested: "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, they do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live, then, for the devil; no law can be sacred to me but that of my nature good and bad are but names, very readily transferable to that or this. The only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong, what is against it. ... My life is not an apology, but a life: it is for itself, and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear these actions which are reckoned excellent; I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right.'-(Emerson on Self-reliance.) Miss Martineau, we need scarcely say, entirely coincides in the same view :— 'Knowledge sees no more sin in a crooked disposition than in the crooked stick in the water, or in a humpbacked, or a squint. Ignorance conceives its will to be free; a strange arrogance, if it could see it. Knowledge recognises universal law, and that nothing can be free, or by chance; no, not even God; but that God is the substance of law, and origin of all things.'-(M. and A., 141). 'Of course, as a part of nature, as a creature of necessity, as governed by law, man is neither selfish nor unselfish, neither good nor evil, worthy nor unworthy, but simply nature, and what is possible to nature, and could not be otherwise.'-(M. and A., 232.) Mr. Jowett expresses himself on this subject as follows: 'He [God] is within and without at the same laws. Without considering the intimate union of good and evil in the heart of man, or the manner in which moral evil itself connects with physical, we seek only to remove it, as far as tion from the Author of good. The Gospel possible, in our language and modes of concepknows nothing of these modern philosophical distinctions, though revolting, as impious, from the notion that God can tempt man. of thought of the Apostle is still the same as that implied in the aphorism -"Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat."-ii. 58. The mode We cannot quote this without passage an earnest protest against the last assertion. Surely Mr. Jowett could not have made it, had he written down the aphorism in English instead of Latin :- God first maddens the man whom he wishes to deIs this the stroy !' doctrine of the Gospel? Is this the thought of the. Apostle? Does he, indeed, teach us that God is worse than the Devil? Or is it any justification of such an assertion that St. Paul describes God as punishing sin by the infliction of judicial blindness? Have not all moralists, from Aristotle downwards, recognised the existence of the law by which the repetition of sin is punished by hopeless subjugation to habitual vice? And is there any further difficulty in this doctrine than that necessarily involved in the existence of evil? a difficulty which we do not pretend with Hegel to render comprehensible by any logical formula, but which we need not increase by making God himself the minister of sin. the Pantheistic doctrine that God is the It may be added that those who hold author of evil, cannot consistently object to any doctrine of any religion whatever on the ground of its contradicting our ideas of morality; for no doctrine can so utterly contradict our ideas of morality as this. We now proceed to consider a further consequence of the preceding principle, namely, Ax. 2. Cor. 2. All religions are equally from God, being equally developments of *In another place (vol ii. p. 59,) Mr. Jowett says that he rejects the distinction between God causing and God permitting evil. But some inconsistency may be permitted to a believer in the 'Doctrine of Contradiction.' |