The Kernel and the Husk/Objections
XXVIII
My dear——,
You tell me that you have been shewing my letters to some of your young friends, and that they have expressed various objections to non-miraculous Christianity. Some say that I am an "optimist;" others that it is a compromise between faith and reason, and that compromises are always to be rejected; one says that I am for introducing "a new religion;" others that a Gospel of illusion must, by its own shewing, be itself illusive; others, that "these new notions are so vague that they can never be put into a definite shape, and they are so mixed up with theories and fancies and suppositions of error in every period of the Church, that they can never commend themselves to the masses."
Do you know what "cant" means, and why it was so called? "Cant" is the sort of language used (not always deceitfully) when a man "chants," or utters in a kind of sing-song, words that he has not felt himself, or, if he has ever felt, has ceased to feel, through the too frequent use of them. Hence he cannot speak them, but "sing-songs" them, "chants" or "cants" them. Now I take leave to think that two or three of the objections above-mentioned come under this head of "cant." I mean that your young objectors, not knowing exactly at the moment what to say about opinions that are new and require some thought to understand or criticise, and being desirous of saying something at the moment, and something, if possible, that shall be brief and smart, say what they have heard other people say about other sets of opinions which have some affinity of sound with mine. This is a very common habit with inferior professional reviewers, who are bound to say something readable and epigrammatic for limited remuneration and consequently in limited time: but your friends have not come to that yet, and are therefore not to be so easily excused.
"Optimist!" How can a man who believes in a real Satan be an optimist? I thought an optimist was one who believed the world to be the best of all possible worlds. This I do not, and cannot, believe. I trust indeed that a time may come when we may be optimists after a fashion; when we shall look back, in God, upon the universal sum of things and find that it has been the best possible under the circumstances, and that evil has been marvellously subordinated to good: but I never can believe that a Universe in which God defeats Satan is better than a Universe in which God reigns unresisted; and therefore, as to this "best of all possible worlds," I rest always humbly silent. Some people may believe, if they can, that evil is another form of good; that the world is like one of those spectroscopes—I think they call them—where several different pictures on a round card, each meaningless by itself, are converted into one significant picture by whirling the card round too quickly for the eye to follow. In the same way they seem to suppose they can take little pictures of oppression, adultery, murder, and the other myriad shapes of sin, spin them round fast enough along with other little pictures of temperance, purity, peace, and all the virtues; and the whole becomes a panorama of moral perfection! Argue thus who will; I cannot.
If I am not an optimist in my view of this world, you will surely not accuse me of optimism in my views of the next. Do my notions of heaven and hell encourage any one to be selfish and luxurious or idle now, in the hope that he will be let off easily hereafter? Have I not said that there will be no "letting off"? That God will do the best thing for Nero—is that do you think likely to make Nero altogether an optimist in the life to come? I think He will do the best thing for me; but I sometimes shiver when I say it; awe possesses me, awe mingled with trust, but certainly not without a touch of fear. Assuredly the certainty of retribution in heaven makes me no optimist for myself or others, as to the life after death. In one sense only am I an optimist, that I believe that the best will ultimately prevail, and that faith, hope, and love, will prove the dominant powers in the Universe. This I believe, and to this belief I cling as a most precious hope, to be cherished by action as well as by meditation; but this is not, I think, what is ordinarily meant by optimism; and certainly it does not encourage the spirit of laissez faire which optimism is supposed to breed.
Next as to "compromise." The ordinary cant about "compromise" is sometimes the lazy expedient of those who wish to avoid the trouble of coming to a decision, and to shelter their indolence under a noble censoriousness. What they mean by "compromise" is any theory that attributes results to more than one cause. It is generally very easy to elaborate some extreme theory which shall explain almost everything by some single cause, by Faith, for example, on the one side, or by Reason on the other; and it is equally easy for the advocates on either side to demolish the theory of their adversaries; but it is far from easy afterwards to shew how, and to what extent, both causes are accountable for the result which has been fictitiously attributed to a single cause. Now the two extreme parties, in their contests, afford us fine cut-and-thrust exhibitions; the via media exhibits an organized campaign. The theatrical multitude, which does not care in the least about truth, but delights in intellectual slashers, soon finds it dull work, after clapping an exciting mêlée, to have to sit still and listen to a dispassionate and impartial discussion; so they cry "compromise" and hiss. But the term is a misnomer. "Compromise," or "mutual promise," cannot describe a legitimate conclusion that hits the mark missed by two previously divergent shots. It is as if A were to hit the top of the target, and B the bottom, and then both A and B were to fall foul of C, and accuse him of "compromising," because he pierces the bull's eye half way between the two. "Compromise" often implies a failure of exact justice; as when Smith thinks Jones owes him 50l., and Jones thinks he owes Smith only 40l.; and they "split the difference" and make it 45l.; both of them thinking that the arrangement is unjust, but both preferring the injustice to the expensive formalities of legal justice. This is "compromise," and illogical; but there is none of this illogicality in a fair impartial discussion avoiding previous bias.
So in the present instance. Some have been biassed in favour of Faith, others in favour of Reason; some have accepted as historical all the miracles and mighty works in the Old and New Testament indiscriminately, others have rejected all indiscriminately; some have declared that every word in the Old and New Testament (I don't quite know how they have got rid of the difficulty of various readings) is exactly inspired and every detail historically true; others, that there are so many errors and illusions that the books may be put aside as no better than myths: some have said that, since we cannot worship an unknown Being, we must worship the human race; others that, since we cannot worship our very degraded selves, we must worship some being altogether different from ourselves: some have said that Christ is God, and have ignored His humanity; others have said that He was a "mere man," and therefore not divine. Now in all these cases the truth lies between the two extremes. Man derives religious truth from Faith, but Faith assisted by Reason; Christ did not perform miracles, but He did perform mighty works; the Old and New Testament, like all other vehicles of revelation, contain illusion, but illusion preserving and protecting truth; we must not worship ourselves, and yet we cannot worship one who is altogether different from ourselves; Christ is a man, and yet Christ is God. But to all these conclusions we are not led by "mutual promise," give and take of any kind, but by full and unbiassed consideration of all sides of the subject, knowing that (for the present at all events) we shall displease all, both the orthodox and heterodox alike.
So far from suggesting any compromise between Faith and Reason, I have merely pointed out that the provinces of the two are, to a very large extent, distinct, so that many of their operations can be performed altogether independently. I have never said, "Do not follow out the conclusions of your Reason in this or that instance because you would be led to inconvenient results," but, "Follow out the conclusions of your Reason in every instance and presently acknowledge that you are led, in some cases, to results so absurd and unpractical that you must infer Reason to be out of its province in these cases. Reason your utmost for example about a First Cause and Predestination and the Origin of Evil and the like; but then, when you have come to the conclusion that, logically speaking, it is equally absurd to suppose that the world had no cause, and that the First Cause had no cause, give the subject up as being beyond the syllogistic powers." Surely there is no unworthy compromise here, nothing but common sense! Wherever historical facts are affirmed in religion, I have said that the accounts of those facts are to be judged upon evidence and by Reason alone; here Faith and Hope have no place; history in the New Testament is to be judged like history in Thucydides.
In reality it is not I with my via media that am guilty of compromise; it is the Hyper-orthodox (if I may use a term that is nominally meaningless but really quite intelligible) and the Agnostic. For the Hyper-orthodox say "Accept the Scriptures in a lump." Why? "Because it would be so very inconvenient not to have an infallible guide." Of course they do not say so in these precise words: but this is what their replies ultimately amount to. Again the Agnostics say, "Reject the Scriptures in toto." Why? "Because it would be so very inconvenient to weigh evidence and discriminate the true from the false." It is these, not I, who are calling in emotion to do the work of Reason, and who (partly, I think, to avoid facing unpalatable facts) force Reason to make a compromise with prejudice. "Convenience," as I have pointed out in a previous letter, may be a legitimate basis for accepting as a Law of Nature the tried and tested suggestions of the Imagination; but it is not a legitimate basis on which to construct a belief in the genuineness of the Book of Daniel or the Second Epistle of St. Peter.
Let me mention one point where, in appearance, but not in reality, my theory is liable to the charge of compromise: I mean the discussion of the Miraculous Conception and the Supernatural Incarnation. In discussing the Miraculous Conception I have advised you to trust to your Reason alone, because here you have to deal with a statement of physical facts, true or untrue, and to be proved or disproved by evidence; but as regards the Supernatural Incarnation and the statement that the Word of God became a human spirit, I have pointed out that here we have a statement that cannot be proved or disproved by simple historical evidence, nor even by miracle, because even if an archangel descended from heaven to trumpet forth a "Yes" or "No" to the world, the message might be from the Devil. If then we are to believe in the Incarnation we must have a twofold testimony. First must come the historical evidence indicating the words, and deeds, and character, and results, of the life of Christ, the truth of which must be judged by the Reason; and then there must come the witness of the conscience exclaiming "This life is divine; this man is one with God." Consequently it is quite possible to accept the Supernatural Incarnation while denying the Miraculous Conception; and this I have felt obliged to do. But where is the compromise or inconsistency? I am compelled by evidence and Reason to deny the truth of the Miraculous Conception, on account of the very small amount of evidence for it and the very large amount of evidence against it; I am equally compelled by evidence and Faith to accept the Supernatural Incarnation, because the evidence convinces me that a certain life has been lived on earth, and my conscience convinces me that this life could not have been lived by any being who was not one with God.
Are my accusers equally free from confusion? I think not. Ask the Hyper-orthodox why they believe in the Miraculous Conception in spite of the silence of all the earliest documents; they will reply, (if you penetrate below their first superficial answers, such as, "Because it is in the Bible," "Because I have believed it from my youth upward," and the like), "Jesus must have been born miraculously, because He was the Son of God"—a confusion of things historical and spiritual, and a manifest expulsion of Reason from her rightful province. Again, ask the Agnostic why he does not believe that Jesus was the Son of God; he will reply that he sees no proof of the fact, nor even of the existence of a God; and if you press him to define what he means by "proof" of the existence of a God, you will find that he wholly ignores the influence of Imagination as a means of arriving at truth, and that he requires some kind of evidence that shall entirely dispense with Faith. Thus the Hyper-orthodox and the Agnostic are equally guilty, the one of dispossessing Reason, the other of dispossessing Faith, from their rightful provinces; and they accuse me of "compromising," not because I really compromise, but because I pursue truth at the cost of some trouble, while they—partly perhaps to avoid the pain of thinking, and the prospect of colliding with hard unpleasing truths—pursue severally that form of untruth to which they are inclined by prejudice.
And now for the next objection, that "this is a new religion." How can men give the name of a new religion to that which proclaims as the one means of salvation the Eternal Word of God believed in of old by Jews as well as by Christians? Or is it a mark of novelty to accept Jesus of Nazareth as that Word incarnate? The one thing new about the opinions put forward in my letters is this—that it is not a necessary condition for believing in Christ, that men should accept a number of historical statements which are, and have been, doubted by many honest seekers after truth. I believe I might add, without any exaggeration, that the statements which I impugn are rejected by so large a number of those who are most competent to judge, that, in spite of many inducements—some richly substantial, some nobly spiritual—many of the ablest and best educated young men of England cannot in these days be persuaded to become ministers of the religion which appears to insist on them. Beyond this protest, there is nothing, or very little, that is new about the theory which I have endeavoured to set forth. I do not protest against any moral abuse in the Church of England or the orthodox churches—such abuses as made a great gulf in the days of Luther between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants, when indulgences for sins were sold by the cart-load. Possibly indeed the protracted belief in the miraculous, when it has long outlived the conditions which made it natural or pardonable, may tend to produce some moral evil; some over-estimation of ostentatious and, so to speak, theatrical force; some depreciation of the quiet processes by which God has mostly taught and shaped mankind; some latent trust in a capricious God, who will not "reward men according to their works" but will exercise a dispensing power at the Day of Judgment. I say this may possibly soon happen, if it has not already begun to happen; but at all events it is at present latent, and it is not on any ground of this kind that I am advocating a new view of the Old and New Testament. My object has been not to destroy the old belief, but to remove certain obstacles which tend to prevent people from embracing the essence of the old belief. The existence of a God, the immortality of the soul, the conflict between God and Satan, the redemption of mankind through the sacrifice of the eternal Son of God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the operation of the Holy Spirit, the certainty of a heaven and hell, the efficacy of prayer, the ultimate triumph of goodness and God—all these things I steadfastly believe. But I see not the slightest reason why, in order to hold fast these precious truths, I should be compelled to believe that Joshua stopped the sun (or the earth?) or that an ass talked with a human voice, or that the incarnate Son of God drowned two thousand swine or destroyed a fig-tree with a word.
I am probably doing no more than give utterance to thoughts which have been already expressed by others, or which, though unexpressed, are latent in thousands of doubtful and expectant souls. But even were it otherwise, even were it granted that the form of Christianity set forth in my letters has some points of novelty, is mere novelty to suffice for its condemnation?—and this in our century, when God has been teaching and is teaching His children so much that is new in every department of knowledge! Is it absolutely incredible that the same Supreme Teacher who allowed some nineteen centuries to elapse between the Promise and the promised Seed, should allow another nineteen centuries to elapse between the Seed and the Harvest? Is it inconsistent that He who has led men to the truths of science through mistakes and illusions should lead men by the same paths to spiritual truth? How often must the Law of Illusion be inculcated before we take it to heart? Illusions have encompassed spiritual truth for Israel, for the Jews, for the Twelve in their Master's lifetime, for the first generation of Christians, and for every subsequent generation down to the time of Luther. So much we Protestants are bound to admit. Are we not then intolerably presumptuous in assuming that illusions must have suddenly disappeared in the fifteenth century and have left the theological atmosphere for the first time since the creation of the world free from all spiritual refraction? How much humbler and truer to suppose that every century and every generation has its special cloud of illusions through which in due course we must all toil upward, penetrating layer after layer of the illusive mist till we reach at last the summit of the hill of Truth!
I find I have left myself too little time to answer your last two objections as to the "vagueness" of my views and their inability to "commend themselves to the masses." I will try to answer them in my next letter.