We need not pursue the enquiry further, nor ask how Protestantism will fare at the hands of Comparative Mythology. The blow dealt by Biblical criticism is to all appearances mortal, and there is no need to look about for a second. But let us turn to Catholicism, and we shall see that the whole case is different. To its past history, to external evidence, and to the religions outside itself, Protestant Christianity bears one relation, and Roman Christianity quite another.
Protestantism offers itself to the world as a strange servant might, bringing with it a number of written testimonials. It asks us to examine them, and by them to judge of its merits. It expressly begs us not to trust to its own word. '_I cannot_,' it says, '_rely upon my memory. It has failed me often; it may fail me again. But look at these testimonials in my favour, and judge me only by them._' And the world looks at them, examines them carefully; it at last sees that they look suspicious, and that they may, very possibly, be forgeries. It ask the Protestant Church to prove them genuine; and the Protestant Church cannot.
But the Catholic Church comes to us in an exactly opposite way. She too brings with her the very same testimonials; but she knows the uncertainty that obscures all remote evidences, and so at first she does not lay much stress upon them. First she asks us to make some acquaintance with herself; to look into her living eyes, to hear the words of her mouth, to watch her ways and works, and to feel her inner spirit; and then she says to us, '_Can you trust me? If you can, you must trust me all in all; for the very first thing I declare to you is, I have never lied._ _Can you trust me thus far? Then listen, and I will tell you my history. You have heard it told one way, I know; and that way often goes against me. My career, I admit it myself, has many suspicious circumstances. But none of them positively condemn me: all are capable of a guiltless interpretation. And when you know me, as I am, you will give me the benefit of every doubt._' It is thus that the Catholic Church presents the Bible to us. '_Believe the Bible, for my sake_,' she says, '_not me for the Bible's_.' And the book, as thus offered us, changes its whole character. We have not the formal testimonials of a stranger; we have instead the memoranda of a friend.
We have now that presumption in their favour that in the former case was wanting altogether; and all that we ask of the records now is, not that they contain any inherent evidence of their truth, but that they contain no inherent evidence of their falsehood.
Farther, there is this point to remember. Catholic and Protestant alike declare the Bible to be inspired. But the Catholics can attach to _inspiration_ a far wider, and less assailable meaning: for their Church claims for herself a perpetual living power, which can always concentrate the inspired element, be it never so diffused; whereas for the Protestants, unless that element be closely bound up with the letter, it at once becomes intangible and eludes them altogether. And thus, whilst the latter have committed themselves to definite statements, now proved untenable, as to what inspiration is, the Catholic Church, strangely enough, has never done anything of the kind.
She has declared nothing on the subject that is to be held of faith. The whole question is still, within limits, an open one. As the Catholic Church, then, stands at present, it seems hard to say that, were we for other reasons inclined to trust her, she makes any claims, on behalf of her sacred books, which, in the face of impartial history, would prevent our doing so.
Let us now go farther, and consider those great Christian doctrines which, though it is claimed that they are all implied in the Bible, are confessedly not expressed in it, and were confessedly not consciously assented to by the Church, till long after the Christian Canon was closed. And here let us grant the modern critics their most hostile and extreme position. Let us grant that all the doctrines in question can be traced to external, and often to non-Christian sources. And what is the result on Romanism? Does this logically go any way whatever towards discrediting its claims? Let us consider the matter fairly, and we shall see that it has not even a tendency to do so. Here, as in the case of the Bible, the Church's doctrine of her infallibility meets all objections. For the real question here is, not in what storehouse of opinions the Church found her doctrines, but why she selected those she did, and why she rejected and condemned the rest. History and scientific criticism cannot answer this. History can show us only who baked the separate bricks; it cannot show us who made or designed the building. No one believes that the devil made the plans of Cologne Cathedral; but were we inclined to think he did, the story would be disproved in no way by our discovering from what quarries every stone had been taken. And the doctrines of the Church are but as the stones in a building, the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a language. Many are offered and few chosen. The supernatural action is to be detected in the choice. The whole history of the Church, in fact, as she herself tells it, may be described as a history of supernatural selection. It is quite possible that she may claim it to be more than that; but could she vindicate for herself but this one faculty of an infallible choice, she would vindicate to the full her claim to be under a superhuman guidance.
The Church may be conceived of as a living organism, for ever and on all sides putting forth feelers and tentacles, that seize, try, and seem to dally with all kinds of nutriment. A part of this she at length takes into herself. A large part she at length puts down again. Much that is thus rejected she seems for a long time on the point of choosing. But however slow may be the final decision in coming, however reluctant or hesitating it may seem to be, when it is once made, it is claimed for it that it is infallible. And this claim is one, as we shall see when we understand its nature, that no study of ecclesiastical history, no study of comparative mythology can invalidate now, or even promise to invalidate. There is nothing rash in saying this. The Church knows the difficulties that her past records present to us, especially that of the divine character of the Bible. But she knows too that this divinity is at present protected by its vagueness; nor is she likely to expose it more openly to its enemies, till some sure plan of defence has been devised for it. Rigid as were the opinions entertained as to Biblical inspiration, throughout the greater part of the Church's history, the Church has never formally assumed them as articles of faith. Had she done so, she might indeed have been convicted of error, for many of these opinions can be shown to be at variance with fact. But though she lived and breathed for so many centuries amongst them, though for ages none of her members perhaps ever doubted their truth, she has not laid them on succeeding ages: she has left them opinions still. A Catholic might well adduce this as an instance, not indeed of her supernatural selection, but of its counterpart, her supernatural rejection.
And now, to turn from the past to the future, her possible future conduct in this matter will give us a very vivid illustration of her whole past procedure. It may be that before the Church defines inspiration exactly (if she ever does so), she will wait till lay criticism has done all it can do. She may then consider what views of the Bible are historically tenable, and what not; and may faithfully shape her teaching by the learning of this world, though it may have been gathered together for the express purpose of overthrowing her.
Atheistic scholars may be quoted in her councils; and supercilious and sceptical philologists, could they live another hundred years, might perhaps recognise their discoveries, even their words and phrases, embodied in an ecclesiastical definition. To the outer world such a definition would seem to be a mere natural production. But in the eyes of a Catholic it would be as truly supernatural, as truly the work of the Holy Spirit, as if it had come down ready-made out of heaven, with all the accompaniments of a rushing mighty wind, and of visible tongues of flame. Sanguine critics might expose the inmost history of the council in which the definition was made; they might show the whole conduct of it, from one side, to be but a meshwork of accident and of human motives; and they would ask triumphantly for any traces of the action of the divine spirit. But the Church, would be unabashed. She would answer in the words of Job, '_Behold I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him; but He knoweth the way that I take; when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Behold my witness is in heaven, and my champion is on high._'
And thus the doctrine of the Church's infallibility has a side that is just the opposite of that which is commonly thought to be its only one.
It is supposed to have simply gendered bondage; not to have gendered liberty. But as a matter of fact it has done both; and if we view the matter fairly, we shall see that it has done the latter at least as completely as the former. The doctrine of infallibility is undoubtedly a rope that tethers those that hold it to certain real or supposed facts of the past; but it is a rope that is capable of indefinite lengthening.
It is not a fetter only; it is a support also; and those who cling to it can venture fearlessly, as explorers, into currents of speculation that would sweep away altogether men who did but trust to their own powers of swimming. Nor does, as is often supposed, the centralizing of this infallibility in the person of one man present any difficulty from the Catholic point of view. It is said that the Pope might any day make a dogma of any absurdities that might happen to occur to him; and that the Catholic would be bound to accept these, however strongly his reason might repudiate them. And it is quite true that the Pope _might_ do this any day, in the sense that there is no external power to prevent him.
But he who has assented to the central doctrine of Catholicism knows that he never _will_. And it is precisely the obvious absence of any restraint from without that brings home to the Catholic his faith in the guiding power from within.
Such, then, and so compacted is the Church of Rome, as a visible and earthly body, with a past and future history. And with so singular a firmness and flexibility is her frame knit together, that none of her modern enemies can get any lasting hold on her, or dismember her or dislocate her limbs on the racks of their criticism.
But granting all this, what does this do for her? Does it do more than present her to us as the toughest and most fortunate religion, out of many co-ordinate and competing ones? Does it tend in any way to set her on a different platform from the others? And the answer to this is, that, so far as exact proof goes, we have nothing to expect or deal with in the matter, either one way or the other. The evidences at our disposal will impart a general tendency to our opinions, but no more than that. The general tendency here, however, is the very reverse of what it is vulgarly supposed to be. So far from the similarities to her in other religions telling against the special claims of the Catholic Church, they must really, with the candid theist, tell very strongly in her favour. For the theist, all theisms have a profound element of truth in them; and all alleged revelations will, in his eyes, be natural theisms, struggling to embody themselves in some authorised and authoritative form. The Catholic Church, as we have seen, is a human organism, capable of receiving the Divine Spirit; and this is what all other religious bodies, in so far as they have claimed authority for their teaching, have consciously or unconsciously attempted to be likewise; only the Catholic Church represents success, where the others represent failure: and thus these, from the Catholic stand-point, are abortive and incomplete Catholicisms. The Bethesda of human faith is world-wide and as old as time; only in one particular spot an angel has come down and troubled it; and the waters have been circling there, thenceforth, in a healing vortex. Such is the sort of claim that the Catholic Church makes for herself; and, if this be so, what she is, does not belie what she claims to be. Indeed, the more we compare her with the other religions, her rivals, the more, even where she most resembles them, shall we see in her a something that marks her off from them. The others are like vague and vain attempts at a forgotten tune; she is like the tune itself, which is recognised the instant it is heard, and which has been so near to us all the time, though so immeasurably far away from us. The Catholic Church is the only dogmatic religion that has seen what dogmatism really implies, and what will, in the long run, be demanded of it, and she contains in herself all appliances for meeting these demands. She alone has seen that if there is to be an infallible voice in the world, this voice must be a living one, as capable of speaking now as it ever was in the past; and that as the world's capacities for knowledge grow, the teacher must be always able to unfold to it a fuller teaching. The Catholic Church is the only historical religion that can conceivably thus adapt itself to the wants of the present day, without virtually ceasing to be itself. It is the only religion that can keep its identity without losing its life, and keep its life without losing its identity; that can enlarge its teachings without changing them; that can be always the same, and yet be always developing.
All this, of course, does not prove that Catholicism _is_ the truth; but it will show the theist that, for all that the modern world can tell him, it may be. And thus much at least will by-and-by come to be recognised generally. Opinion, that has been clarified on so many subjects, cannot remain forever turbid here. A change must come, and a change can only be for the better. At present the so-called leaders of enlightened and liberal thought are in this matter, so far as fairness and insight go, on a level with the wives and mothers of our small provincial shopkeepers, or the beadle or churchwarden of a country parish. But prejudice, even when so virulent and so dogged as this, will lift and disappear some day like a London fog; and then the lineaments of the question will confront us clearly--the question: but who shall decide the answer?
What I have left to say bears solely upon this.
CHAPTER XIII.
BELIEF AND WILL.
'_Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness._'
Arguments are like the seed, or like the soul, as Paul conceived of it, which he compared to seed. They are not quickened unless they die. As long as they remain for us in the form of arguments they do no work.
Their work begins only, after a time and in secret, when they have sunk down into the memory, and have been left to lie there; when the hostility and distrust they were regarded with dies away; when, unperceived, they melt into the mental system, and, becoming part of oneself, effect a turning round of the soul. This is true, at least, when the matters dealt with are such as have engaged us here. It may be true, too, of those who discern and urge the arguments, just as well as of those upon whom they urge them. But the immediate barrenness of much patient and careful reasoning should not make us think that it is lost labour. One way or other it will some day bear its fruit. Sometimes the intellect is the servant of the heart. At other times the heart must follow slowly upon the heels of the intellect.
And such is the case now. For centuries man's faith and all his loftier feelings had their way made plain before them. The whole empire of human thought belonged to them. But this old state of things endures no longer. Upon this Empire, as upon that of Rome, calamity has at last fallen. A horde of intellectual barbarians has burst in upon it, and has occupied by force the length and breadth of it. The result has been astounding. Had the invaders been barbarians only, they might have been repelled easily; but they were barbarians armed with the most powerful weapons of civilisation. They were a phenomenon new to history: they showed us real knowledge in the hands of real ignorance; and the work of the combination thus far has been ruin, not reorganisation. Few great movements at the beginning have been conscious of their own true tendency; but no great movement has mistaken it like modern Positivism.
Seeing just too well to have the true instinct of blindness, and too ill to have the proper guidance from sight, it has tightened its clutch upon the world of thought, only to impart to it its own confusion. What lies before men now is to reduce this confusion to order, by a patient and calm employment of the intellect. Intellect itself will never re-kindle faith, or restore any of those powers that are at present so failing and so feeble; but it will work like a pioneer to prepare their way before them, if they are ever revived otherwise, encouraged in its labours, perhaps not even by hope, but at any rate by the hope of hope.
As a pioneer, and not as a preacher, I have tried to indicate the real position in which modern knowledge has placed us, and the way in which it puts the problem of life before us. I have tried to show that, whatever ultimately its tendency may prove to be, it cannot be the tendency that, by the school that has given it to us, it is supposed to have been; and that it either does a great deal more than that school thinks it does, or a great deal less. History would teach us this, even if nothing else did. The school in question has proceeded from denial to denial, thinking at each successive moment that it had reached its final halting-place, and had struck at last on a solid and firm foundation.
First, it denied the Church to assert the Bible; then it denied the Bible to assert God; then it denied God to assert the moral dignity of man: and there, if it could remain, it would. But what it would do is of no avail. It is not its own master; it is compelled to move onwards; and now, under the force of its own relentless logic, this last resting-place is beginning to fail also. It professed to compensate for its denials of God's existence by a freer and more convincing re-assertion of man's dignity. But the principles which obliged it to deny the first belief are found to be even more fatal to the substitute. '_Unless I have seen with my eyes I will not believe_,'
expresses a certain mental tendency that has always had existence. But till Science and its positive methods began to dawn on the world, this tendency was vague and wavering. Positive Science supplied it with solid nutriment. Its body grew denser; its shape more and more definite; and now the completed portent is spreading its denials through the whole universe. So far as spirit goes and spiritual aspirations, it has left existence empty, swept and garnished. If spirit is to enter in again and dwell there, we must seek by other methods for it. Modern thought has not created a new doubt; it has simply made perfect an old one; and has advanced it from the distant regions of theory into the very middle of our hearts and lives. It has made the question of belief or of unbelief the supreme practical question for us. It has forced us to stake everything on the cast of a single die. What are we? Have we been hitherto deceived in ourselves, or have we not? And is every hope that has hitherto nerved our lives, melting at last away from us, utterly and for ever? Or are we indeed what we have been taught to think we are?
Have we indeed some aims that we may still call high and holy--still some aims that are more than transitory? And have we still some right to that reverence that we have learnt to cherish for ourselves?
Here lie the difficulties. The battle is to be fought here--here at the very threshold--at the entrance to the spiritual world. Are we moral and spiritual beings, or are we not? That is the decisive question, which we must say our Yes or No to. If, with our eyes open, and with all our hearts, it be given us to say Yes--to say Yes without fear, and firmly, and in the face of everything--then there will be little more to fear.
We shall have fought the good fight, we shall have kept the faith; and whatever we lack more, will without doubt be added to us. From this belief in ourselves we shall pass to the belief in God, as its only rational basis and its only emotional completion; and, perhaps, from a belief in God, to a recognition of His audible voice amongst us. But at any rate, whatever after-difficulties beset us, they will not be new difficulties; only those we had braved at first, showing themselves more clearly.
But that first decision--how shall we make it? Who or what shall help us, or give us counsel? There is no evidence that can do so in the sensible world around us. The universe, as positive thought approaches it, is blind and dumb about it. Science and history are sullen, and blind, and dumb. They await upon our decision before they will utter a single word to us: and that decision, if we have a will at all, it lies with our own will--with our will alone, to make. It may, indeed, be said that the will has to create itself by an initial exercise of itself, in an assent to its own existence. If it can do this, one set of obstacles is surmounted; but others yet confront us. The world into which the moral will has borne itself--not a material world, but a spiritual--a world which the will's existence alone makes possible, this world is not silent, like the other, but it is torn and divided against itself, and is resonant with unending contradictions. Its first aspect is that of a place of torture, a hell of the intellect, in which reason is to be racked for ever by a tribe of sphinx-like monsters, themselves despairing. Good and evil inhabit there, confronting each other, for ever unreconciled: _there_ is omnipotent power baffled, and omnipotent mercy unexercised. Is the will strong enough to hold on through this baffling and monstrous world, and not to shrink back and bid the vision vanish? Can we still resolve to say, 'I believe, although it is impossible'? Is the will to assert our own moral nature--our own birthright in eternity, strong enough to bear us on?
The trial is a hard one, and whilst we doubt and hesitate under it the universal silence of the vast physical world itself disheartens us. Who are we, in the midst of this unheeding universe, that we can claim for ourselves so supreme a heritage; that we can assert for ourselves other laws than those which seem to be all-pervading, and that we can dream of breaking through them into a something else beyond?
And yet it may be that faith will succeed and conquer sight--that the preciousness of the treasure we cling to will nerve us with enough strength to retain it. It may be that man, having seen the way that, unaided, he is forced to go, will change his attitude; that, finding only weakness in pride, he will seek for strength in humility, and will again learn to say, '_I believe, although I never can comprehend_.' Once let him say this, his path will again grow clearer for him. Through confusion, and doubt, and darkness, the brightness of God's countenance will again be visible; and by-and-by again he may hear the Word calling him. From his first assent to his own moral nature he _must_ rise to a theism, and he _may_ rise to the recognition of a Church--to a visible embodiment of that moral nature of his, as directed and joined to its one aim and end--to its delight, and its desire, and its completion.
Then he will see all that is high and holy taking a distinct and helping form for him. Grace and mercy will come to him through set and certain channels. His nature will be redeemed visibly from its weakness and from its littleness--redeemed, not in dreams or in fancy, but in fact. God Himself will be his brother and his father; he will be near akin to the Power that _is_ always, and _is_ everywhere. His love of virtue will be no longer a mere taste of his own: it will be the discernment and taking to himself of the eternal strength and of the eternal treasure; and, whatever he most reveres in mother, or wife, or sister--this he will know is holy, everywhere and for ever, and is exalted high over all things in one of like nature with theirs, the Mother of grace, the Parent of sweet clemency, who will protect him from the enemy, and save him in the hour of death.
Such is the conception of himself, and of his place in existence, that, always implicit in man, man has at last developed. He has at last conceived his race--the faithful of it--as the bride of God. Is this majestic conception a true one, or is it a dream only, with no abiding substance? Is it merely a misty vision rising up like an exhalation from the earth, or does a something more come down to it out of heaven, and strike into it substance and reality? This figure of human dreams has grown and grown in stature: does anything divine descend to it, and so much as touch its lips or its lifted hands? If so, it is but the work of a moment. The contact is complete. Life, and truth, and force, like an electric current, pass into the whole frame. It lives, it moves, it breathes: it has a body and a being: the divine and the eternal is indeed dwelling amongst us. And thus, though mature knowledge may seem, as it still widens, to deepen the night around us; though the universe yawn wider on all sides of us, in vaster depths, in more unfathomable, soulless gulfs; though the roar of the loom of time grow more audible and more deafening in our ears--yet through the night and through the darkness the divine light of our lives will only burn the clearer: and this speck of a world as it moves through the blank immensity will bear the light of all the worlds upon its bosom.
Thinkers like Mr. Leslie Stephen say that such beliefs as these belong to dreamland; and they are welcome if they please to keep their names.
Their terminology at least has this merit, that it recognises the dualism of the two orders of things it deals with. Let them keep their names if they will; and in their language the case amounts to this--that it is only for the sake of the dreams that visit it that the world of reality has any certain value for us. Will not the dreams continue, when the reality has passed away?
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS have in preparation a series of volumes, to be issued under the title of
CURRENT DISCUSSION,
A COLLECTION FROM THE CHIEF ENGLISH ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS OF THE TIME.
The series will be edited by Edward L. Burlingame, and is designed to bring together, for the convenience of readers and for a lasting place in the library, those important and representative papers from recent English periodicals, which may fairly be said to form the best history of the thought and investigation of the last few years. It is characteristic of recent thought and science, that a much larger proportion than ever before of their most important work has appeared in the form of contributions to reviews and magazines; the thinkers of the day submitting their results at once to the great public, which is easiest reached in this way, and holding their discussions before a large audience, rather than in the old form of monographs reaching the special student only. As a consequence there are subjects of the deepest present and permanent interest, almost all of whose literature exists only in the shape of detached papers, individually so famous that their topics and opinions are in everybody's mouth--yet collectively only accessible, for re-reading and comparison, to those who have carefully preserved them, or who are painstaking enough to study long files of periodicals.
In so collecting these separate papers as to give the reader a fair if not complete view of the discussions in which they form a part; to make them convenient for reference in the future progress of those discussions; and especially to enable them to be preserved as an important part of the history of modern thought,--it is believed that this series will do a service that will be widely appreciated.
Such papers naturally include three classes:--those which by their originality have recently led discussion into altogether new channels; those which have attracted deserved attention as powerful special pleas upon one side or the other in great current questions; and finally, purely critical and analytical dissertations. The series will aim to include the best representatives of each of these classes of expression.
It is designed to arrange the essays included in the Series under such general divisions as the following, to each of which one or more volumes will be devoted:--
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, NATURAL SCIENCE, RECENT ARCHaeOLOGICAL DISCOVERY, QUESTIONS OF BELIEF, ECONOMICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, LITERARY TOPICS.
Among the material selected for the first volume (International Politics), which will be issued immediately, are the following papers:
Archibald Forbes's Essay on "The Russians, Turks, and Bulgarians;"
Vsct. Stratford de Redcliffe's "Turkey;" Mr. Gladstone's "Montenegro;" Professor Goldwin Smith's Paper on "The Political Destiny of Canada," and his Essay called "The Slaveholder and the Turk;" Professor Blackie's "Prussia in the Nineteenth Century;"
Edward Dicey's "Future of Egypt;" Louis Kossuth's "What is in Store for Europe;" and Professor Freeman's "Relation of the English People to the War."
Among the contents of the second volume (Questions of Belief), are:
The two well-known "Modern Symposia;" the Discussion by Professor Huxley, Mr. Hutton, Sir J.F. Stephen, Lord Selborne, James Martineau, Frederic Harrison, the Dean of St. Paul's, the Duke of Argyll, and others, on "The Influence Upon Morality of a Decline in a Religious Belief;" and the Discussion by Huxley, Hutton, Lord Blatchford, the Hon. Roden Noel, Lord Selborne, Canon Barry, Greg, the Rev. Baldwin Brown, Frederic Harrison, and others, on "The Soul and Future Life." Also, Professor Calderwood's "Ethical Aspects of the Development Theory;" Mr. G.H. Lewes's Paper on "The Course of Modern Thought;" Thomas Hughes on "The Condition and Prospects Of the Church of England;" W.H. Mallock's "Is Life Worth Living?"
Frederic Harrison's "The Soul and Future Life;" and the Rev. R.F.
Littledale's "The Pantheistic Factor in Christian Thought."