Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

But if Providence had reserved to itself the whole of the work-not merely the first suggestion of a new and divine magnetism for interlinking reciprocally all members of the human family, but had also appropriated the whole process of deducing and distributing into separate rills the irrigation of God's garden upon earth, in that act it would have defeated on the largest scale its own scheme of training for man; just as much as if (according to a former speculation of mine) God, by condescending to teach science in the Bible (astronomy suppose, chronology, or geology), had thus at one blow, besides defrauding the true and avowed mission of the Bible, self-counteractingly stepped in to solve his own problems, and thus had violently intercepted those very difficulties which had been strewed in man's path seriatim, and so as to advance by measured increments of difficulty, for the specific purpose of applying graduated irritations to the stimulation of man's intellect. Equally in the training of his moral habits, and in the development by successive steps of his intellect, man and the religion of man must move by co-operation; and it cannot be the policy or the true meaning of revelation to work towards any great purpose in man's destiny otherwise than through the co-agency of man's faculties, improved in the whole extent of their capacities. This case, therefore (of charity arising suddenly as a new command to man), teaches three great inferences:

First, the power of a religion to stimulate vast developments in man, when itself stimulated by a social condition not sleeping and passive, but in a vigilant state of healthy activity.

Secondly, that if all continued cases of interchangeable development—that is, of the Bible downwards upon man, or reversely of man upwards upon the Bible and its inter

pretation-may be presumed to argue a concurrent action between Providence and man, it follows that the human element in the co-agency will always account for any admixture of evil or error, without impeaching in any degree the doctrine of a general overriding inspiration. For instance, I see little reason to doubt that economically the apostles had erred, and through their very simplicity of heart had erred, as to that joint-stock company which they, so ignorant of the world, had formed in an early stage of the infant church; and that Ananias and Sapphira had fallen victims to a perplexity and a collision between their engagements and their natural rights, such as overthrew their too delicate sensibilities. But, if this were really so, the human element carries away from the divine all taint of reproach. There lies one mode of benefit from this joint agency of man and Providence.*

Thirdly, we see here illustrated one amongst innumerable cases of development applicable to the Bible. And this power of development in general proves one other thing of the last importance to prove-viz., the power of Christianity to work in co-operation with time and social progress-to work variably, according to the endless variation of time and place. And this is the exact shibboleth of a spiritual religion.

For, in conclusion, here lies a consideration of deadliest importance. On reviewing the history of false religions,

* Coleridge, as may be seen in his "Notes on English Divines," though free in a remarkable degree, för one so cloudy in his speculative flights, from any spirit of licentious tampering with the text of the New Testament, or with its orthodox explanation, was yet deeply impressed with the belief that the apostles had gone far astray in their first provision for the pecuniary necessities of the infant Church; and he went so far as to think that they had even seriously crippled its movements, by accumulations of debt that might have been evaded.

and inquiring what it was that ruined them, or caused them to tremble, or to exhibit premonitory signs of coming declension, rarely or never amongst such causes has been found any open exhibition of violence. The gay mythologic religion of Greece melted away in silence; that of Egypt, more revolting to unfamiliarised sensibilities, more gloomy, and apparently reposing on some basis of more solemn and less allegoric reality, exhaled like a dream-i. e., without violence, by internal decay. I mean, that no violence existed where the religion fell, and there was violence where it did not. For even the dreadful fanaticism of the early Mahometan sultans in Hindostan, before the accession of Baber and his Mogul successors from the house of Timour, failed to crush the monstrous idolatries of the Hindoos. All false religions have perished by their own hollowness, and by internal decay, under the searching trials applied by life and the changes of life, by social mechanism and the changes of social mechanism, which wait in ambush upon every mode of religion. False modes of religion could not respond to the demands exacted from them, or the questions emerging. One after one they have collapsed, as if by palsy, and have sunk away under new aspects of society and new necessities of man which they were not able to face. Commencing in one condition of society, in one set of feelings, and in one system of ideas, they sank instinctively under any great change in these elements, to which they had no natural power of plastic self-accommodation. A false religion. furnished always a key to one subordinate lock; but a religion that is true will prove a master-key for all locks alike. This transcendental principle, through which Christianity transfers herself so readily from climate to

climate,* from land to land, from century to century, from the simplicity of shepherds to the utmost refinement of philosophers, carries with it a corresponding necessity (corresponding, I mean, to such infinite flexibility) of an infinite development. The paganism of Rome, so flattering and so sustaining to the Roman nationality and pride, satisfied no spiritual necessity: dear to the Romans as citizens, it was at last killing to them as men.

"From climate to climate:"-Sagacious Mahometans are often troubled and scandalised by the secret misgiving that, after all, their Prophet must have been an ignorant man. It is clear that the case of a cold climate had never occurred to him; and even a hot one was conceived by him under conditions too palpably limited. Many of the Bedouin Arabs complain of ablutions incompatible with their half-waterless position. Mahomet coming from the Hedjas, a rich tract, and through that benefit the fruitful mother of noble horses, knew no more of the arid deserts and Zaarrahs than do I. These oversights of its founder would have proved fatal to Islamism, had Islamism succeeded in producing a high civilisation.

[ocr errors][merged small]

Ir is remarkable—and, without a previous explanation, it might seem paradoxical to say it-that oftentimes, under a continual accession of light, important subjects grow more and more enigmatical. In times when nothing was explained, the student, torpid as his teacher, saw nothing which called for explanation-all appeared one monotonous blank. But no sooner had an early twilight begun to solicit the creative faculties of the eye, than many dusky objects, with outlines imperfectly defined, began to converge the eye, and to strengthen the nascent interest of the spectator. It is true that light, in its final plenitude, is calculated to disperse all darkness. But this effect belongs to its consummation. In its earlier and struggling states, light does but reveal darkness. It makes the darkness palpable and "visible."* Of which we may see a sen

* Accordingly, some five-and-thirty years ago I attempted to show that Milton's famous expression in the "Paradise Lost," ," "No light, but rather darkness visible," was not (as critics imagined) a gigantic audacity, but a simple trait of description, faithful to the literal realities of a phenomenon (sullen light intermingled with massy darkness) which Milton had noticed with closer attention than the mob of careless observers. Equivalent to this is Milton's own expression, "Teach light to counterfeit a gloom," in "L'Penseroso."

« ForrigeFortsæt »