The Collateral Spiritual Argument

We may fitly approach the critical and controversial inquiry which a full discussion of this great subject necessitates, by looking at the collateral argument which is suggested by the fact that even the common objects and affairs of life have their metaphysical or spiritual side, so much so that by the exercise of our physical senses, as commonly understood, we can neither wholly apprehend them, nor wholly account for them. Things which are vividly apparent when viewed superficially, owe their existence to causes or influences which do not appear, and have round about them an atmosphere which no merely bodily sense is acute enough to analyse or explain. If this can be established we shall secure an outside standpoint from which we can look with intellectual advantage upon the higher spiritual mysteries. For the sake of illustration we shall ask for a bold assumption. Let it be granted that we can construct a world of our own: itself and all its contents shall be fabricated by human hands, — its lights, its beauties, its conveniences are all of our own invention and arrangement. Does such a world get rid of the spiritual quantity, and establish the fact of absolute materialism? We think it can be proved that it does nothing of the kind. Such a world is the creation of thought; it is the embodiment of ideas; in short, even that small and dreary world has come up out of the invisible and spiritual, and is inferior to the mind which planned its existence, and is able also to plan its destruction. Given such a world, and the power (whatever it be) which formed it shall be unto it as God.

The discussion will be simplified if we undertake, in the first instance, to deal with a materialist of the rudest type, — -a man whose beliefs are wholly governed by what he calls his “senses,” and who looks at all thinofs in their most obvious and vulrar aspects. Even such a man may be driven to admit that the brick wall which he. admires so much was thought about before it was built, and if asked why it was not twelve inches higher will probably acknowledge that the owner had his reasons for stopping just where he did, and if further pressed to explain why the wall is of brick and not of stone, he will again wander into the spiritual region to account for the fact. The vulgar man believes only in what he calls “material civilisation,” in the progress of the arts, and in the cultivation of the soil; — “that” says he, “is my religion.” Has he, then, in this easy manner escaped the spiritual and ghostly side of life This ignorant man looks upon a band of workmen setting up engines, building cisterns, laying tubes, and he pronounces them, in opposition to what he calls “the philosophers,” to be the true benefactors of society; he believes in facts not in theories, in the sons of labour and not in intellectual speculators and fanatics. He thinks he sees the whole case. He never dreams that behind all he looks upon there is a spiritual civilisation out of which it all comes. If he could hear “the philosophers” talking about the pressure, equilibrium, cohesion, and motion of fluids, he would be startled to find that even his admired water-supply has its hydronamic ghost. His idea has been limited by cisterns, taps, and sound plumbing; as for flotations, specific gravities, and capillary attractions, they are no part of his religion. He loves the waterworks, he loves material civilisation. But educate him a little, just far enough to get a dim glimmering of the meaning of such elementary propositions as “the densities of different substances are as their specific gravities,” and “the specific gravities of two fluids may be compared by weighing the same solid in each,” and he will begin to suspect that even the water question goes back into what will be to hini something very like a ghostly and religious region. He will, too, modify and redistribute his appreciation of workers. At first, he paid homage to the men who cut the ground, then to the men who laid the tubes, and then to the skilled artisans; but now he beeins to see that the mechanic is but the servant of the thinker, and that, after all, it may possibly be the philosophers who are the true motors and masters of civilisation. He will be hastened in this direction if he extend his inquiries into other lines of human progress. He admires the lofty and beautiful bridge which is being built over the broad

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river. He likes bridge-building better than praying, as it appears to him to be more sensible and useful; yet the early rudeness of his materialism is somewhat humbled when he learns that the men who planned the bridge agreed that ‘* in all homogeneous and solid bodies, the resistances to extension and compression must be initially equal, and proportional to the change of dimensions,” and that they came to many conclusions which apparently had nothing to do with putting up a bridge. Further consideration will show him that if the thoitgJit had been wrong the building never could have been right; in short, that the bridge was a spiritual conception long before V it was a material fact. We are not to suppose that these discoveries will make him a religious man, but we are entitled to expect that they will lead him to admit that even outward civilisation has its invisible world, and that the arts which enrich and refine human life come up out of an abstract and metaphysical region; — these discoveries establish our right [ to insist that when the world of fact is applauded, 1 the world of thouzht shall not be ignored.*” These

* “There are, I am aware, persons who willingly admit that not in articles of faiih alone, but in the heights of geometry, and even in the necessary first jjrinciples of natural philosophy, there exist truths of apodictic force in reason, which the mere understanding strives in vain to comprehend. Take, as an instance, the ascending series of infinites in every finite, a position which involves a. contradiction for the understantling, yet follows demonstrably from the very definition of body as that which fills a space. For wherever there is a space filled, there must be ar extension to be divided.” — S. T. (Jolcriihe. And again: —

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grand practical innovations,” to quote the words of Cuvier, “are only the facile applications of verities of a superior order, not sought with a practical intent, — -verities which their authors have pursued for their own sake, impelled solely by an ardour for knowledge. Those who put them in practice could not have discovered them; those who have discovered them had neither the time nor the inclination to pursue them to a practical result. Absorbed in the high regions whither their contemplations had carried them, they had hardly perceived this movement and these creations, though born of their own words. These rising workshops, these peopled colonies, these vessels which furrow the sea, this abundance, this luxury, this tumult, all this comes from discoverers in science, and all this remains strange to them. The day that a doctrine comes into practice they abandon it to the populace, it concerns them no more.”

It is easy to see the next .occasion of stumbling. The rude inquirer, whose Case we are developing, may have advanced far enough to contend that although material civilisation has undoubtedly its intellectual or speculative side, on which the value

“They (Bentham and Coleridge) were destined to renew a lesson given to mankind by every age, and always disregarded — to show that speculative philosophy, which to the superficial appears a thing so remote from the business of life and the outward interests of men, is in reality the thing on earth which most influences them, and in the long run overbears every other intlucncc save those which it must itself obey.” — Stuart Mill.

T of Its practical expression eventually depends, yet he cannot admit any parallel between civilisation and religion, because the one is knowable and the other is unknowable; and he insists that even if there is a God, he neither knows Him nor has any powir of knowing Him. Suppose we admit at once that man neither knows God nor has any power of knowing Him, what then? We believe we could justify this admission by the authority of the Bible itself; still, what then? It has not only to be proved that man has no power to know God, it has also to be proved that God has no power to make Himself known. And if the supposed proof fall short of absolute demonstration it is worthless; for if any rational hope be left that God may have such power, the world will build its religion upon that hope. So, the difficulty is fairly turned upon the objector; the more obviously so that there is a Book, no matter at this moment what is or is not its authority, which declares that God actually has made Himself known to mankind. Here, then, are two statements before us, and we are content that in the first instance nothing should be claimed on the ground of mere authority for the second of them. Let them be taken upon their respective merits, and argued without prejudice. The first statement is, that man has no power to know God; and the second is, that God has power to make Himself known to man. The supporter of the second doctrine has an immense advantage over his opponent in being able to grant what he says, and yet in having the right to demand a plain answer to a still higher proposition. The objector cannot be allowed to escape on the plea that we are resting upon the authority of a book whse inspiration he utterly denies, for we are resting on no such authority; we merely set one doctrine against another, — the one supported by A and the other supported by B, all churches and books being meanwhile ignored. Our contention is that the proposition, God Jicis power to make Himself known, is presumptiv’ely true, and that as such it is philosophical, sensible, and morally satisfactory. The other proposition, Man has no power to know God, if taken as a settlement of the case, is absurd because of its one-sidedness, and immoral because of its disguised self-sufficiency: it is one-sided in confining its views solely to man, and it is self-sufficient in supposing that if man cannot know God it is impossible that God can make Himself known. Is it probable that a trick may be here played with words by a suggestion to the effect that even if God did make Himself known, man has no power to know Him? Such a suggestion Is a contradiction in terms, and on that orround alone it might be dismissed with contempt. It is more, however, than a contradiction in terms; by direct implication it throws discredit upon the Christian consciousness of ages, and charges the deepest convictions of mankind with folly and superstition. We are, for these reasons, reluctant to believe that so unworthy a trick will be played, and therefore we insist that the Christian proposition be discussed and determined strictly on its own merits.

Such discussion will almost certainly involve the consideration of a difficulty proposed by the late Stuart Mill, viz.: “Nothing whatever can be known respecting the origin of things; if you teach a child that God made him, you only put the difficulty one step back by raising the question, Who made God?” Let us, for the sake ot unity, suppose that the materialist whose case we are developing, has reached this point in his inquiry, and that he is willing to hear what may be said in reply. It may surprise him to be told that in this instance as in the former the Bible may be quoted in support of the doctrine that nothinof whatever can be known concernino- the origin of things, and that there’ is no answer to the question Who made God? We cannot, however, allow any man to fix “the origin of things” at a point which will suit his own argument. He cannot even be allowed to stop at the creation of the heavens and the earth; for who can say with certainty that their creation was not a trifling point in an infinite series of creations? Oti.r history may begin with the establishment of the heavens and the earth, but who can tell what creations preceded them, or of what universes they may be but the outposts or shadows y Let us, then, first settle what is meant by “the origin of things,” — an ambiguous and elastic term. Probably we are agreed that on the Christian side we cannot go farther back than the point which is marked “God,” and we are warned by Mr. Mill not to stop at that point, because we may be asked Who made God But the Bible has provided

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against this very difiiculty. The Bible itself declares “the incognoscibility of the Infinite”; it challenges the universe to find out the Almighty unto perfection, and declares that there is no searching of His understanding. It even says that no man hath seen God at any time; that no man can see God and live; and that consequently, in its primary and inclusive signification, nothing whatever can be known concerninsf the origin of thino-s. The Christian will properly insist that he believes in the Christian revelation of God; his faith goes out in the direction of mediation; he will say that though he has not seen God yet he has seen J esus; and as for the rest, he will -walk by faith and not by sight. By the compulsion of his Christian veneration he veils himself before the essential Deity. He speaks of Him as “the only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, dwelling- in liofht which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see;” yet his faith exults in the fact that “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” With such plain biblical declarations before us, we are entitled to deny all originality to the philosopher who warns us that nothing can be known concerning the^Drigin of things, and who points out that sooner or later we shall raise the question. Who made God?’ The Christian believes in God who made the heavens and the earth, and rules all things by an outstretched arm; he has a conception of infinitude and eternity which fills his soul with satisfaction; and he will not

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allow his worship to be marred or suspended because there may be beyond his imagination a “thunder of power” which is yet withheld.

Even Stuart Mill himself (trifling to all appearance with his own consistency), “in reviewing the series of arguments adduced by Sir W, Hamilton for the incognoscibility and inconceivability of the Absolute,” acknowledges that if for the metaphysical abstraction “The Absolute” be substituted the intelligible concrete expression “Something absolute,” the most of Sir William’s arguments will lose their application; and, he adds, “if I talk of a Being who is absolute in wisdom and goodness, that is, who knows everything, and at all times intends what is best for every sentient creature, I understand perfectly what I mean; and however much the fact may transcend my conception, the shortcoming can only consist in my being ignorant of the details of which the reality is composed.” Now this is what the Christian student does; he knows “perfectly what he means” when he uses the term “God,” though “the fact transcends his conception;” it fills him with satisfaction and thankfulness; it draws out his whole life in one tr istful and loving act of w-orship; and, in his judgment, it sets him in a rio’ht relation to the universe, to society, and to the future. But why aim at the concejDtion of such a Being, if it be true that when we have succeeded in realising it, we have only reached the point of asking, ]Vho made Him? It appears to us that this reasoning on the part of Stuart Mill apples disastrously (if it apply at all) in other than theologflcal directions. It discourages all hio-h investigation, and in so many words tells intellectual ambition that when it has done its utmost there is still another question that it cannot answer. If we may not speak of God because we may be asked, “Who made Him?” neither may we speak of the highest intellectual conceptions pf man, because we may be asked, “Are there not conceptions higher still?” It is on record that Ellicott set one clock going by the ticks of another, even when the two clocks were separated by a wall; but according to Stuart Mill’s reasoning we must not ask. Who started the first clock? because though Ellicott may have started it, we only raise the further question, Who started Ellicott? By such verbal trifling men may be affrighted out of worship by the very question which, when properly understood, ought to invest religious homage with the charm of a profounder solemnity.

In criticisinor Dean Hansel’s definition of “The Infinite,” it appears to us that Mr. Mill too easily contents himself with a flippant answer. Having cited the Dean’s definition, he exclaims, — “Here certainly is an Infinite whose infinity does not seem to be of much use to it.* Through the word “us€” we see into the error which pervades much of Mr. Mill’s reasoning upon religious subjects. But what, after all, if it should be proved that Infinity is ?iot of much use to itself? It would appear as if this

* Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy, p. 96.

were very likely to be the case, and as if it were a most gracious instead of a most lamentable fact Suppose it should be true that infinity is of “use” to others; that Infinity can only be revealed relatively; that infinity can only be known through condescension? Would any great disaster befall mankind if this were proved to be so? Mr. Mill himself again and again proposes to substitute for such abstractions as “The Infinite” and “The Absolute,” such concrete expressions as “an infinitely good Being,” and “a Beino” absolute in knowledsfe.” But who knows that any Being is Infinitely good, except by judging the public administration which he conducts? The infinity of God is one thing, and our knowledge of that infinity is another. What if God does not exist for Himself, and If infinity should be but the supreme pain, in the absence of channels through which it can pour the expressions of its love? Seeing that there is more or less of difficulty in every attempted solution of divine mysteries, it is not Inconceivable that some minds should adopt conclusions which secure the sanction of the heart in addition to the assent of the understanding. Mr. Mill makes himself grimly merry with Dean Mansl’s “Infinite,” In the following manner:” Instead of ’ the Infinite,’ substitute ‘an infinitely good Being,’ and Mr. Mansel’s argument reads thus: If there is anything which an infinitely good Being cannot become — if He cannot become bad — that is a limitation, and the goodness cannot be infinite. If there is anything which an infinitely good Being actually

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is (namely good), He is excluded from being any other thing, as from being wise or powerful.” In the first part of this reasoning it is forgotten that one attribute may exclude another, — for example infinite goodness excludes evil, and infinite power excludes weakness; and in the second part of this reasoning it seems to be overlooked that a being cannot be infinite in one attribute without being infinite in all others which are of the same quality 01 move in the same direction: thus, infinite goodness connotes and necessitates infinite wisdom, for if the wisdom be less than the goodness, the degree in which it is less is the possible measure of its deficiency or misapplication. In like manner infinite goodness and infinite wisdom involve infinite power. Infinite wisdom must know how to resist every destructive agent or influence; if it does not know, then it is not infinite. As to infinite power, it must be remembered that power is more than strength; strength is but an element, or at best merely an expression, of power, — wisdom is necessary to power, so is goodness, for without them there could be nothing but misdirectd and lawless force. But may there not be infinite goodness and infinite wisdom, without power to bring them to bear successfully on a definite object? Everything will depend upon the nature of the object to be secured; if it be the creation of a world the answer will be an unqualified negative, but if it be the renewal of a human heart the answer will be as unqualified an afiirmative. Let us suppose that infinite wisdom can be the attribute of one Being”, and infinite power the attribute of another: then we have infinite power creating a universe whose structure and appointments indicate infinite wisdom, yet the power itself cannot be infinitely wise because infinite wisdom is the attribute of a distinctly separate Being. But if there is a verbal difficulty in the proposition, Infinite wisdom involves infinite power, it will be seen to be merely verbal if we transpose the terms, and conduct the argument from the other end, viz.: infinite power involves infinite wisdom. Thus, whoever has power to create a universe, even of an extent which optical instruments have discovered, must have had wisdom in at least the same deoree. That universe we know to consist of innumerable planets; those planets we know to be in many cases millions of miles distant from one another, and to revolve in orbits of inconceivable extent, — here we have at all events an approximation to the infinite, and our contention is that whatever be the degree of power represented by the universe, precisely the same degree of “djisdom is logically involved.

But the materialist who has accompanied us thus far may state a difficulty: he may now admit that more importance attaches to the intellectual or spiritual side of things than at first he supposed; he may even go farther, and give the decided preponderance of importance to that -side, and yet he may find it so difficult as to be almost impossible to believe that spirituality can be not only personi-The Collateral Spiritital Alignment. 28 iied but deified, so that behind all things in secrecy, and above all things in power, is the Being known and worshipped as God. But, as it appears to us, he Is bound to believe this, or to deny the spirituality which is known to be less than divine. He must remember that the spirituality which he has admitted to underlie the works of civilization is distinctly pci’soiial; he will probably find himself unable to think of it apart from personality; from this point he must give extension and elevation to his reasoning, and if he feel himself overpowered and bewildered, as undoubtedly he will, as he proceeds with the great argument, he may call in Faith, and in its exercise he will enjoy religious rest. In doing so he may honestly claim to be acting even more reasonably than the intellectual libertine who denies everything that cannot be certified by the senses. It may be worth while to point out in this connection that in denying the existence of God we do not escape all difficulty and put an end to all mystery. When a man says he will not trouble himself about reliction farther than to deny it, has he, as a rational being, cleared the whole region of difficulty, and found his way into unclouded light and complete repose? Mark the qualification, “as a rational being,” for if he please to commit intellectual suicide, and to live the life of a mere animal, he may escape all mystery and all joy by this act of madness. But let him continue to think and to reason, and mystery will follow his denial, and rest upon him as the shadow of death. WitJi God there is the mystery of light; without Him there is the mystery of darkness. If men say they will believe only what they see, the philosophers (not only the theologians) will at once demand to know what they mean by “seeing,” and will startle them with some statements which will show that all mystery does not darken around purely religious questions. Sir William Hamilton will tell them “To say we perceive by sight the sun or moon, is a false, or an elliptical, expression”! Even when Dr. Reid, so eminent as an intellectual philosopher, says, “When ten men look at the sun or moon, they all see the same individual object,” Sir William contradicts him, and says, “The truth is that each of “these persons sees a different object, because each person sees a different complement of rays in relation to his individual organ “; and Sir William adds that” each individual sees two different objects, with his right eye and with his left eye.” Yet men talk of limiting their faith by their sight. They talk, too, of perception as if it were a simple act of the physical vision. Sir William Hamilton teaches a more spiritual doctrine: “It is not by perception, but by a process of reasoning, that we connect the objects of sense with existences beyond the sphere of immediate knowledge. It is enough that perception affords us the knowledge of the non-ego .at the point of sense. To arrogate to it the power of immediately informing us of external things which arc only the causes of the object we im-The Collateral Spiritual Arginncnt. 285

mediately perceive, is either positively erroneous, or a confusion of lanQfuaee arisinQf from an inadequate discrimination of the phenomena.” It is plain, therefore, that the man who boasts of emancipating himself from the thraldom and fear of religious mystery, will not feel himself very comfortable if he exchange the society of theologians for the society of metaphysicians. The fact is that men who walk backwards cannot feel themselves comfortable anywhere; they are out of sympathy with the spirit of the universe, and their boasted liberty soon proves itself to be but .a theatrical attitude.

In accepting the doctrine of the personality of God, the Infinite and Absolute Being, we elevate human nature itself to its proper dignity. Human nature as a self-contained quantity is manifestly a failure, if regard be had to the barbarism, the oppression, the tumult, the injustice, and the confusion, which so largely preponderate in the history of mankind; it is a contest of blind forces; what appears to be virtue is but a cunning adaptation of vice; retribution is degraded into a lucky coincidence; and generosity is but an improved form of speculative investment. On the other hand, human nature as the creation of the Infinite and Absolute Being called God, is undergoing a process of discipline and education; the terrific conflicts which are apparently fraught with destruction are all under control. Weakness, poverty, and sin itself, have their great uses in the social system,

The present, with all its exaggerated proportions and furious clamour, is but a point upon an immeasurable circumference of splendid possibilities. Over all, enthroned as King and Judge of the universe, is the all-wise, the all-good, the all-powerful God, who in His own good time will bring in the spiritual summer of which we see now only the early and unpropitiolis spring, — this is the Christian hope; and we claim that, viewed merely as a theory of human life, it has an infinite advantage over every suggestion that excludes God and denies the invisible and the eternal state.

Possibly the supposed opponent in this argument may content himself by saying that whatever be the exact truth of these difficult questions, he has resolved upon a position of neutrality; he will

not vex himself either with metaphysics or theology; he will do the plain work of the day, and leave everything beyond without any attempt at solution. So be it, then. There is more hope of a fool than of him. Only let it be clearly understood

by others that the world owes nothing to such men,, either for the healing of its sorrows or the direction of its progress. They are but consumers at best,

and what good they occasion is limited strictly to their capacity as such. Possibly, on the other hand, our supposed opponent may not be unwilling to advance with us, but for the presence of certain difficulties which physical science has gathered around the distinctively spiritual argument. This

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is reasonable and therefore hopeful. We proceed accordingly to ascertain, as far as possible, th(! exact nature of those difficulties, and to inquire whether there is any sufficient answer to them on the part of Christian faith.