Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

antithesis to Faith is not, as he would have it, Knowledge, but Sensuous perception, together with the notions and

he has to offer in place of that which presupposes knowledge. He sums up his speculations as follows :

"This rapid and condensed résumé of the modes in which the Unknowable has manifested itself to Man will suffice for the purposes of this essay. It puts upon human affairs a somewhat less cheerless and pessimistic aspect than lugubrious philosophers and theologians are apt to present to their disciples. We recognize that above and beyond all that is known, all that the human mind is ever likely to know, there is a Boundless Unknown on which the imagination may play, and in which poetry may find an adequate field for her creative powers. Then entering on the known and knowable we observe the resplendent phenomena of the starry universe, vast and distant; then, separated from the stars by immeasurable space, our Solar system— and then in the midst of that system, like a little bead dropped from the hand of a wanderer in the waste of the Sahara, the world on which we dwell. On this little dot of a world, we have discerned certain organisms, great in variety, untold in numbers. Among the organisms we discover some so delicately strung, that they are susceptible of Pleasure and Pain; others, with a still more complex organisation, are capable of distinguishing Right from Wrong. They are endowed further with the faculties of Reasoning and Judging, and insignificant animalcula though they are, they have by much gazing and creeping about on the surface of the tiny globule which serves them for a dwelling, come to the conclusion that the Author of all things, the Creator of the Universe, the Governor of all Worlds, is wise, and good, and strong. Some of them, however, more guarded and reverent than the multitude, say that these words denote merely human notions, and ought not to be applied to a Being or beings that are superhuman, and altogether unlike ourselves. And that we may acquire correct views on these and other important questions, we have recourse to the wise and good amongst ourselves, those whom, in all ages, mankind has regarded as the teachers of the human race: one division of these teachers has employed itself in showing forth the manifestations of the Godhead in such a way as to appeal to the conscience and rouse the feelings-to engender the emotions of love, awe, reverence, worship, and self-consecration. The other division has set forth the Divine manifestations in such a way as to appeal to the thinking powers-to cultivate habits of observation, reflection, calculation, and inference. In former ages these two sets of teachers quarrelled with each other ; and fancied-though as teachers they ought to have known better

expectations it suggests and the emotions it tends to generate. "We walk by means of faith, not by means of

that the instructions of the one were destructive and antagonistic to that of the other. But of late years both sets have grown wiser. Recognizing the existence of Evil, physical and moral, in the world, and reverently admitting that a race of beings who knew nothing of the distinctions between Pain and Pleasure, Right and Wrong, Truth and Falsehood, would be an insentient and rather stupid race, they nevertheless see a much higher manifestation of energy in that grand evolutionary process-the Elimination of Evil. In furtherance of this process, all the efforts of our best teachers, religious and scientific, have consciously or unconsciously been applied " (" The Creed of a Modern Agnostic,” by Richard Bithell, p. 134).

In the passage just quoted, the writer, I freely admit, has something in common with the believer in God; but whatever opinion of this kind there may be, which we are bound to ascribe to him, does he not hold it at the expense of consistency? Is not his assertion that the Unknowable has manifested itself in certain modes a contradiction in terms? How can anything manifest itself to us, except as coming to our knowledge? It is in the act of intellectual apprehension that an impression conveyed to the brain through the organs of sense becomes a manifestation; but to apprehend intellectually is to know. If knowing be some process which cannot be thus described, it is time we should be informed clearly and distinctly what that process is. The Eternal is undoubtedly in possession of an incommunicable secret: in His thoughts, in His experience—if for a moment we may be permitted the use of such expressions in application to such a Being—there is something which He cannot disclose; in respect to that He is beyond all question Unknowable. But that is precisely the mystery in respect to which He is incapable of being manifested.

The Mysterious One, however, notwithstanding that He—or rather It; for, if I am to express myself with agnostic reverence, I must use the neuter pronoun-this Mysterious Something, then, notwithstanding that It is Unknowable, is to have Its Prophets, if I may so term them. They are the wise and good; they constitute two classes, and they are denominated alike Teachers. But what it is that they can teach, in the fulfilment of their proper function, I have failed to discover. Those of the first-named class are expected, it would seem, to teach without appealing to the thinking powers-without cultivating habits of observation, reflection, calculation, and inference. They are thus to teach men to love and reverence the Unknowable—no easy task, assuredly, even were they to make the most fruitful use of their in

appearance (διὰ εἴδους).”ε "Our aim is, not the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen (rà un BλεTÓμεva)." These are the things which the animal man accounts folly; for they come not under his cognizance; tellectual gifts. But if, after the fashion just described, they proceed to expound even the plain rules of morality-to deal with cases of conscience-to define and to apply the various obligations which must be taken into account by every one who aspires to be truthful, honest, charitable, and temperate, and to keep himself unspotted from the world—it is quite certain they will make poor work of it. Doubtless, if they will submit to constitute themselves mere machines for detailing to their hearers the dogmas of those teachers who do not make it their business to appeal to the conscience and rouse the feelings; if, at their dictation, they will deny that the terms wise, and good, and strong, may with reverence and propriety be applied to the Being who is to be loved and revered; if, moreover, they will consent to attribute to the more delicately strung organisms-in other words, to certain organic combinations of atoms or of forces-susceptibility of Pleasure and Pain, and even the faculties of Reasoning and Judging and distinguishing Right from Wrong; if, except perhaps when their language is clearly understood to be poetical, they will studiously avoid using the words soul and spirit,—they will get on very smoothly with these professedly scientific instructors; but if they should assert the privilege of thinking for themselves and speaking out of the abundance of their hearts, and in such a manner as really to engender the emotions of love, awe, reverence, and worship towards Him in whom we live and move and have our being, the two classes of teachers must needs be at perpetual strife.

It will be observed that in the passage I have been reviewing no prospect whatever of a life to come is presented to the reader. At the close of the work the writer sums up all that he has to say upon this matter. I subjoin his words without comment: "As to another life, after the dissolution of the body, no agnostic would be so utterly false to himself as categorically to deny it. He not knowing, or even pretending to know anything about the matter, assumes an attitude of hopeful, expectant receptivity-ready to learn whatever can be certainly known, and to believe whatever can be supported by evidence, or verified by an appeal to fact. But one thing he will not do. He will not pretend to know what is not, and cannot be known, nor profess a belief in absurdities and contradictions, even though the act be dignified with the sacred name of Faith” (p. 152).

[blocks in formation]

it is impossible for him to form any judgment respecting them. But is that a sufficient reason for assuming them to be incognoscible? Clearly not, if it be true that there is a spiritual man. In his case, as may be easily understood, they are objects of that sort of perception which is proper to him as spiritual; they form part of his intellectual acquisitions; they constitute real knowledge. "We received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we may know the things freely given to us by God."

7. The plan and purpose of this treatise forbid me to avail myself of the authority which commends to us the assertions I have just made. Whether these assertions will stand the test of a philosophical investigation, conducted on those rigid principles to which students of the physical sciences hold themselves bound to conform, and which, applied to theology, leave in it, as many seem to think, nothing whatever for intelligence to discern and faith to seize upon and firmly grasp, is a question which I hope will be found to have been adequately discussed and satisfactorily solved in the following chapters. The conclusions arrived at are, as I believe, none other than those which were quickly reached in the first instance ages ago, and may be yet at this day, on the wings of a Divinely inspired intelligence, a soaring, heaven-seeking aptitude for illumination from the Fountain of Eternal Light. My object is to help to the best of my power the plodding wayfarer, the traveller who finds occasion to tread the intermediate path; and my hope is that my efforts may in some instances at least prove useful to such persons as shall think fit to accompany me, and are willing to pursue the indicated route with untiring patience and with cautious steps.

1 Cor. ii. 12.

THE FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCE.

CHAPTER I.

COGNOSCIBILITY OF THE INFINITE.

“Τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ φανερόν ἐστιν ἐν αὐτοῖς· ὁ Θεὸς γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἐφανερωσεν. Τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασιν νοούμενα καθορᾶται, ἥ τε ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις καὶ θειότης.”—Rom. i. 19, 20.

I. INCOMPLETENESS will be ever a characteristic of any science which deals exclusively with phenomena and their inter-relations. Investigation in these, whether destined to reach an impassable barrier, or allowed to proceed without fixed limits, must needs leave depths still unexplored. There can be no hope that the phenomenal world will at last render a full and exhaustive account of itself. From the organic conditions of human thought and feeling to the remotest indications of external existence that have for their background the immensity of seemingly empty space, it will still baffle the latest attempt to pry into its deepest secret. No discoveries may be looked for which will put an end to all speculations respecting causes or antecedents, and make room for the satisfaction which arises from a pursuit achieved, a labour accomplished.

B

« ForrigeFortsæt »