Gladstone v. Ingersoll.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 172, 21 July 1888, Page 3

Gladstone v. Ingersoll.

AN INTERESTING The current number of the Tor th American Review contains a long abide from Mr Gladstone in reply to one of Colonel Robert Ingersoll’s attacks on Christinity, This is how the New York Truth put the matter : — ‘ Col. Bob Ingersoll has at la-t in getting one of the most disinguished of living scholars and statesmen t( notice him critically. The mere contrast f these opponents is something like th> grotesque combats that the Roman empenrs got up when all ordinary matches ailed. Mr Gladstone represents the flower of Saxon culture and Saxon statemanship. Within a fortnight he has deliveredkix superlspeeches, which even the Tories of England an acknowledging to be unsurpassed for breadh of view and of fiery eloquence This is the nan who trans’ates Homer, governs an empire, defends Christianity, finds out in the English reviews the best thoughts on current science and philosophy, and for recreation chops down the oaks in his own forest.’ At the outset of h’B article Mr Gladstone says ‘ The Christain Church has iived long enough in external triumph and prosperity to expose of whom it is composed to all such perils of error and misfeasance a« triumph and prosperity bring with them. Belief in divine guidance it is not of necessity belief that such guidance can never be frustrated bv the lavity, the infirmity, the perversity of man, alika in the domain of action and in the domain of thought.’

darwin’s discoveries and the creeds. He then proceeds to notice Colonel Ingersoll’s methods. AH attempts at continuous argument ippeartobe deliberately abjured; denunciation, sarcasm, and invective constitute the staple of his work. Instances of the Colonel's ‘ tumultuous method ’ are given, and Mr Gladstone goes on to deal with some of his undemonstrated propositions. The system of Mr Darwin is hurled against Christainity as a dart which cannot be fatal. Says Ingersoll:— ‘ His (Darwin’s) discoveries carried to their legitimate conclusion destroy the creeds and Scriptures of mankind.’ To this Mr Gladstone replies ‘ On what ground and for what reason is the system of Darwin fatal to Scriptures and to creeds ? I do not enter into the question whether it has passed from the stage of working hypothesis into that of demonstration, but I assume, for the purposes of the argument, all that in this respect the reply can desire. It is not possible to discover, from the random language of the reply, whether the scheme of Darwin is to sweep away all theism or is to be content with extinguishing revealed religion. If the latter is meant, I should reply that the moral history pt man, in its principal stream, has been distinctly an evolution from the first until now, and that the succinct though grand account of the Creation of Genesis is singularly accordant with the same idea, but it is wider than Darwinism, since it includes in the grand progression the inanimate world as well as the history of organisms. But as this could not be shown without much detail the reply reduces me to the necessity of following its own satisfactory example in the bold form of an assertion, that their is no colorable ground for assuming evolution and revelation to be at variance with one another. “If, however, the meaning be that theism is swept away by D rwinism, I observe that, as before, we have only an unreasoned dog. ma or dictum to deal with, and, dealing perforce with the unknown, we are in danger of striking at a will of the wisp. . . One striking effect of the Darwinian theory of descent is, so far as I underst md, to reduce the breadth of all intermediate distinctions in the scale of animated life. It does not bring all creatures into a single lineage, but all diversities are to be traced back, at some point in the scale and by stages infinitely minute, to a common ancestry. A’l is done by steps, nothing by strides,leaps, or bounds; all from piotoplasm up to Shakspeare, and, again, from primal night and chaos up to protoplasm. Ido not ask, and am incompetent to judge, whether this is among the things proven, but I take it so for the sake of argument; and I ask, first, why and whereby does this d ctrine eliminate the idea of creation ? Does the new philosophy teach that if the passage from pure reptile t j pure bird is achieved by a spr*ng (so to sneak) over a chasm, this implies and requires creation ; but if that reptile passes into bird, and rudimental into finished bird, by a thousand slight and but just discernible modifications, each one of these so small that they are not entitled to a name so lofty, it mav be set down to any cause or no cause, as we please ? I should have supposed it miserably unphilosophical to treat the distinction between creative and nop-creative function as a simply quan<-ative distinction. As respects the subjective effect on the human mind, creation in small, when closely regarded, awakens reasons of admiring wonder, not less than creation is great; and as regards the function itself, to me it appears no less than ridiculous to hold that the broadly outlined and large advance of socalled Mo-aism are creation, but the refined and stealthy onward steps of Darwinism are only manufacture and relegate, the question of a cause into obscurity, insignificance, or oblvion.

“But does not reason really require us to go further, to turn the tables on the adversary and to contend that evolution by how much it binds more closely together the myriad ranks of th« living—aye, and of all other orders, by so much the more consolidates, enlarges, and enhances the true argument of design, and the entire theistic position ? If orders are not mutually related, it is easier to conceive of them sent at haphazard into the world. We may, indeed, sufficiently draw an argument of design from each separate structure, but we have no further title to build upon the position which each of them holds as towards any other. But when the connection between these objects has been established, and so established that the points of transition are almost as indiscernible as the passage from day to night, then, indeed, each preceding stage is a prophesy of the following, and each succeeding one a memorial of the past, and throughout the immeasurable series every single member of it is a witness to the rest.’

MYSTERIES OF PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. Again, Ingersoll asks : — ! 1 Why should an infinitely wise and power- J ful God destroy the good and preserve the vile ? Why should He treat all alike here, ' and in another world make an infinite differ* ' ence? Why should your God allow His worshippers, fiis adorers, to be destroyed by I His enemies? W*hy should He allow the honest, the loving, the noble, to perish at the stake ? ’ Mr Gladstone, on these points, observes, first that the upholders of belief or revelation cannot, and do not, seek to deny that the methods of divine government, as they are exhibited by experience, present to us many and varied moral problems insoluable by our understanding. But the assertions carried by implication in the queries are general, and because general untrue. Taking these challenges, however, as they ought to have been given, Mr Gladstone observes: — • I admit that great believers, who have been also great masters of wisdom and knowledge, are not able to explain the inequalities of adjustment between human beings and the conditions in which they have been set down to work out their destiny. The climax of these inequalities is perhaps to be found in the fact that, whereas rational belief, viewed at large, founds the providential government of the world upon the hypothesis of free agency, there are so many cases in which the overbearing mastery of circumstances appears to reduce it to extinction or paralysis. .. . As in ordinary conduct, so in considering the basis of belief, we are bound to look at the evidence as a whole. We have no right to demand demonstrative proofs, or the removal of all conflicting elements, either m the one sphere or in the other. What guides us sufficiently in matters of common practice has the very same authority to guide us in matters of speculation ; more properly peri haps, to be called the practice of the soul. ! By its contempt for authority the reply seems i to cut off from us all knowledge that is not - at first hand ; but then also it seems to asi same an original and first hand knowledge of r all possible kinds of things. * • • » Has the I writer really weighed the force and meatuteu the eweep of his own words? *

THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY.. A number of * inaccuracies of reference ’ are then dealt with by Mr Gladstone, and he next quotes Ingersoll on the question of immortality. The idea of immortality, says the champion Athiest, was not born of any book or creed or religion. *lt was born of human affection, and will continue as long as love kisses the lips of death.’ On this point Mr Gladstone says :— ‘ If the belief in immortality is not connected with any revelation or religion, but is simply the expression of a subjective want, then plainly we may expect the expression of it to be strong and clear in proportion to the various degrees in which faculty is developed among the various races of mankind. But how does the matter stand historically ? The ancient Greeks were a race of astonishing, perhaps unrivalled, intellectual capacity. But not only did they, in prehistoric ages, derive their scheme of a future world from Egypt; we find also that, with the lapse of time and the advance of the Hellenic civilization, the constructive ideas of the system lost all life and definite outline, and the most powerful mind of the Greek philosopy, that of Aristotle, had no clear conception whatever of a personal existence in a future state. ’

BELIEF AND THE WILL. Mr Gladstone proceeds to deal with a favorite doctrine of Colonel Ingersoll’s - the immunity of all error in be’ief from moral responsibility. The Colonel’s statement that belief is a universal law independent of the will Mr Gladstone remarks is a plausibility of the shallowist kind :— Even in arithmetic, if a boy through dislike of his employment, and consequent lack of attention, brings out a wrong result for his sum, it can hardly be said that his conclusion is absolutely and in all respects independent of his will. . . . But the truth is that, if we set aside matters of trivial import, the enormous majority of humau judgments are those into which the biasing nower of likes and dislikes more or less largely enters.’ Proceeding to develop this thought, Mr Gladstone says :— 1 A large part of the world have held that the root of civil power is not in the community, but in its head. In opposition to th : s doctrine, the American written Constitution and the entire American tradition teaoh right of a nation to self-government. And these propositions, which have divided, and still divide, the world, open out respectively into vast sy-tems of ‘Reconcilable ideas and laws, practices, and habits or«dnd. Will any rational man—above all, an AmerV can—contend thaf these conflicting systems have been adopted, upheld, and enforced on one side and the other, in the daylight, of pure reasoning only, and that moral or immoral causes have had nothing to do with their adoption? That the intellect has worked impartially, like a steam engine, and that selfishness, love of fame, love of money, love of power, envy, wrath, and malice, or, again, bias, in ita least noxious form, have never had anything to do with generating the opposing movements, or the frightfull collisions in which they have resulted? If we say that they have not, we contradict the universal judgment of mankind. If we say they have, then mental processes are not automatic, but may be influenced by the will and by the passions, affections, habits, fancies, that sway the will; and this writer will not have advanced a step towards providing the universal innocence or error until he has shown that propositions, and that no man ever has been, or from the nature of the case can. be, affected in their acceptance or reception by moral causes.’

CONCLUSION. Mr Gladstone concludes his article as follows : — * Whereas we are placed in an atmosphere of mystery, relieved only by a lit'le sphere of light round each of us, like a clearing in an American forest, and rarely can see farther than is necessary for the di ection of our own conduct from day to day, we find here, assumed by a particular person, the character of a universal judge without appeal. And whereas the highest self-restraint is necessary in these dark but, therefore, all the more exciting inquiries, in order to maintain the ever quivering balance of our faculties, this rider chooses to ride an unbroken horse, and to throw the reins upon his neck. I have endeavored to give a sample of the results.’