CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7002, 26 April 1884, Page 1 (Supplement)

CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM.

LFROM THE FEBRUARY NUMBEK OS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.] ' The title at the head of this article may appear to some a contradiction in terms. But it is not really ao. And no religious man need shrink from saying, "I am a Christian Agnostic. I hold firmly by the doctrine of St. Paul, who exclaims, in sheer despair of fathoming the unfathomable, ' 0 the depth of God! How unsearohable are Hin judgments, and insorutable His ways !' I say with Job and all the great prophets of the Old Testament, ' Canst thou by searching find onr God?' And I bow to the authority of Christ, who tells me, 'No man hath seen God at any time;' 'God is a Spirit;' 'Blessed are they that have not Been and yet have believed.' And in so holding, lam in full accord with the Church. I say with her, ' "We know Thee now by faith ;' ' The Father is incomprehensible {immensus);' 'There is but one God, eternal, incorporeal, indivisible, beyond roach of suffering, infinite'—in short, a profound and insorutable Being. Nor do I find that Catholic theology, for 1800 years, has ever swerved from a clear and outspoken confession of this Agnostioism. So early as the second century, we read in Justin Martyr, ' Can a man know God, as he knows arithmetic or astronomy?- Assuredly not'(a). Irenseus, in the same century, repeatedly speaks of God as 'indefinable, incomprehensible, invisible' (b). That bold thinker in the third century, Clement of Alexandria, deolarea (with Mr. Spencer) that the process of theology is, with regard to its doctrine of God, negative and agnostic, always ' setting forth what God is not, rather than what He is'(c). All the great Fathers of the fourth century eoho the same statement.' St. Augustine is strong on tho point. John of Damascus, the greatest theologian of the East, says bluntly, ' It is impossible for tho lower nature to know the higher' (d). Indeed, it would be a mere waate of time to adduce any more of the great Catholic theologians by name. They are all ' agnostics' to a man. And M. Emile Burnouf is quite right when he says, 'Les dooteurs chretienß sont unanimes a deolarer que leur dien est cache et incomprehensible, qu'il est plein de mysteries, qu'il est l'objet de la foi et non pas de la raiaon' " (e).

Thus there is nothing new under the sun, not even in the highest flights of modern philosophy; and no man, with all the Fathers of the Church at his back, need hesitate to say "I am a Christian Agnostic." Yet all who ooncur in this will, I am sure, warmly welcome a powerful auxiliary like Mr. Herbert Spencer, if only he remain true to the principles so lucidly set forth in the last number of this Keview. . For, although he might not himself care' to qualify his philosophy by the adjective "Chriutian," fearing thereby to limit—as a philosopher is bound not to do—his perfect freedom of speculation, still his guidance' is none the less valuable to those who are approaohing the same subject from a different side. The Christian, indeed, is, of all men, the most absolutely bound over to be truthful. When, therefore, any great leader of thought arises, whether in the higher or lower departments of human inquiry, the liegeman of a "God of truth" must needs feel such reverence as Dante expressed for Aristotle, "the great master of them that know;" and wiu borrow from the other twin luminary of the Mediaeval Church, St. Augustine, the most apt of'all mottoes for a really " Catholic" philosopher: " The Christian claims as his Master's own possession every broken fragment of truth, wherever it may be found." In the firm conviotion, then, that in Mr. Spencer's works much truth—not in detached . fragments merely, but in large ooherent masses —is to be found, the present writer hopes to show how little there is to repudiate, how muoh to accept and to be sincerely grateful for, in his masterly speculations. 1. First of all, Mr. Speuoer led us in.his interesting article last month to take a retrospective view of religion, in its origin and history. Naturally, he does not approach the question in the old-fashioned way. His purpose is not dogmatic, but analytic. That lovely Hagada, therefore, or religious story whereby, for babes and philosophers alike, the wonderful genius which constructed the Jewish Scriptures has projected onoe for all, upon a plsine surface (as it were) a picture of the origin of all things—this our man of science properly passes by ; and he proceeds to inquire how precisely the beginnings of things, and. especially of religion, may be conceived. And since, in these days, we have all o:E. us " evolution" on the brain, it was not to be expected that any other line of thought should be attempted. Indeed, it may be fairly conceded that, amid our modern soientifio environment, no other method of inquiry is jußt at present possible. We belong to our own age. And while other ages have taken grand truths ere bloc, and have deftly hammered them out into finer shapes for practical use, the speoial delight and the crowning glory of our own age consist rather in a power of traaking things backward. Hence a hundred books of (so called) " origins" issue annually from the press. Of course, no origin, is ever really deaoribed; simply because there is no suoh thing in natureas "an origin." If there were, at that point all hunt upon the traces'of evolution would abruptly come to an end ; whereas, by the usual soientifio hypothesis, evolution knows neither beginning nor end. By_ " origins," therefore, oan only be meant, arbitrary points a little way back, marked (as children or jockeys set up a starting-post) for commencing the inquiry. Indeed, it is very easy to imagine some imperturbable savago—say, a Zulu of Natal or an English schoolboy—asking the most reprehensible questions as to what happened before'the ."origin" began. Suoh a oritio would be* sure to express a languid wonder, for instance, as to how the primeval star-mist got there; or he would casually inquire whence the antediluvian thunderbolt, which introduced vegetable life upon this globtf, procured its vegetation; or. he would ask ■ why Mr; Spencer's aboriginal divine, ronssd from hiß post-prandial nightmare, should have selected a "ghost" out of the confused kaleidoscope of his dreams as the.recipient; of divine honours. Nay, as was long ago suggested by a muoh more serious thinker in reply to a similar theory : ■■"■ To stop there

is to Bee but the surface of things; for it still .remains to ask how mankind have effected this transformation of a metaphor (or a dream) into a god, and what mysterious force has poshed them into making the transition. '"..... .In order to change any sensuous impression into a god, there most have previously existed the idea of a god" (f). Yes; clearly the latent idea must have been, in some way, already ingrained in human nature, so that it only needed (as Plato would say) an awakening from its hybernation; else why - should human dreams produce a "religion" and bestial dreams prodnce none ? The question, therefore, is not folly answered by Mr. Spencer's entertaining speculation, any more than the miracle (as Dr. Buchner all but calls it) of "hereditary gout" is explained by the jubilant paean of the materialist, "Give me bat matter and force, and all obscurities instantly vanish away" (g). For no reasonable man, who accepts the modern doctrine of the eternity and identity of energy, can entertain a doubt that religion—the most powerful human stimulant we know of— must have pre-existed somehow in the bosom of the unknown, though it only revealed itself at a certain fitting stage in the development of the world. And when we have reached this confession, have we not simply found our way back to that general truth which the Cburch has couohed in every sort of parable and symbol, viz., that (the "how" and the " when" being left for history to unravel) religious ideas, especially in their most fruitful and catholic form, are a gift, an unfolding, a revelation from the bosom of the unknown God ?

: 2. There are, however, far more serious and more practical subjects for reflection suggested by Mr. Spencer's paper, than any which relate to the past. Let bygones be bygones! Our contemporaries are an impatient generation, and are very apt "to consign to their mental wastepaper-basket anything which they are pleased to condemn as " ancient history." What, then, has Mr. Spencer to tell us about the present state of religion ? and what hopes does he unfold to us as we gaze, under his direction, into the future ? It is truly disappointing to be obliged to say of so devoted a student and so patient a thinker (1) that he has failed to work his subject out, and (2) that he has fallen into a pasaion {h). It would be well worth while to ma'ke these two not unfriendly charges, if only they should succeed in inducing this able writer to give to the world some further product of his thinking on the strangely fascinating subject of .Religion. For the truth is that, when Mr. Bradlaugh and others proolaim, "I know not what you mean by God ; I am without idea of God" (i), they almost put themselves out of court at once by parading their inherent defect of sympathy with ordinary mental conditions. And when in higher social grades, Dr. Congreve and the Positivists openly " substitute Humanity for God" (j), and refuse the transforming adoration of the heart to any conception which is not level to the bare positive understanding, they also—with all their eloquence and persuasive amiability— "charm" their contemporaries utterly in vain. As modern England will never again become Papal and Mediasval, so (it may be safely predicted) modern England will never become Atheist or Positiviat. Our countrymen are in too healthy and vigorous a mental condition to impale themselves on either horn of this uncongenial dilemma. But they may, and it is to be hoped they will, surrender themselves to the far higher and more scientific teaching of men like Mr. Spenoer; and will learn from them to think out to just and practical conclusions the deeply interesting—and. to some minds the quite absorbing—question of Religion. Bat then—with all respect be it said—Mr. Spencer must really help us to think farther on than he has yet done; or he will find the Christian clergy (whom he is under temptation to despise) will be beforehand with him. He has most ably "purified" for ub our idea of God; he has pruned away all kinds of anthropomorphic accretions; he haa dressed up and ridiculed afresh the Guy Fawkes crudities of bygone times, which he apparently "sees no reason should ever be forgot;" he has reminded the country parsons of a good many scientific facts, which they road, it is true, in every book and review from Monday till Saturday, and then so provokingly forget on Sundays ; and he has sohooled them into the reflection that a Power present in innumerable worlds hardly needs onr. flattery, or, indeed, any kind of service from us at all. But then all this is abundantly done already by the steady reading, from every lectern throughout the land, of those grand old Prophets and Apostles of the higher religious thought, who perpetually harp upon the same string. " God," they reiterate, "is not a man," that He should lie or repent: "Bring no more vain oblations :" " The sacrifices of God are a troubled spirit:" "Thou thoughtest wickedly that I am such a one as thyself :" "God dwelloth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed anything." Nay, the present writer—who probably sits under a great many more sermons in the course of the year than Mr. Spenoer doesis firmly persuaded that every curate in the Church of England, and every Nonconformist minister,' are perfeotly aware of these great truths, and on suitable occasions preach them ; and that what they want to be taught is something beyond all this ABO and all thiß negation—viz., what are the fundamental conceptions on whioh they may securely build up, not their philosophical negations, but their popular assertions about religion. For a religion of mere negations is as good as no' religion at all. It seems hardly worth while to go down Sunday after Sunday to St. George's Hall, or any other hall, simply to be told that Heaven has nothing whatever to say to us. We cannot believe that we are physioally so well oared for as we are—naturally selected, evolved, provided with every possible adaptation to our material environment, and given the prize at last as " the fittest of all possible beings to survive"—and then are left utterly in the luroh as regards all our higher wants. No, our instinct revolts against such a supposition ; and we crave to know on what grounds something can be said, as well as on what grounds almost everything can be denied.

3. Now, Mr. Spencer could help us in this quest, if he would. His analysis, in "First frinciples," of our religions conceptions Bhowa what he could do. He there—while carefully warning us that all our knowledge is merely relative, and that our reasoning faculties do not present to us truth as it is, but only as it is refleoted on the mirror of our mind—places nevertheless such confidence in those faeulties that he allows them, in Buddhist fashion, to strip away feature after feature, as it were, from our religious conception of God, and to reduce It to a grim skeleton labelled "Everlasting Force." But why " Force" only ? To begin with, surely this &Ibo in a "conception." It is engendered by a multitude of observations blending into a higher-unity and taking at last a definite shape. And the only sanction it has to rest upon is, not (ex hypoihesi) any certainty or absolute truth in human logic, but simply an ineradicable' faith, that, to ua at any rate, the notions of "permanence" and "foroe" sufficiently represent, though they may not actually be, the truth. We seem, then, already to have made the grand transition from reasoning to oonoeiving, from destruction to construction, from restless analysis to quiet synthesis, and from logio to belief that the great Unknown is, in one word, Power —"an infinite and eternal energy."

4. Bat just as we draw from the stores ol our conroiousneßs this idea of "Power," of force, of mußOular or mental energy, precisely in the same way we are justified in drawing the idea of " purpose" in the direction of that energy. In fact, we cannot anyhow conceive of force without " direction" of some kind; and onr instincts imperatively demand of us, when we think of force in the highest and sublimest way we can, that we impregnate that idea with another product of our plastic imagination, and conceive it as efficiently directed to some worthy end—in short, as power and wisdom combined. TMb may be, and undoubtedly is, quite as human and relative and provisional a conception as that of a pure, blind, nnguided Force would be. But while the mind shrinks with unmitigated horror from the notion of "an infinite and eternal Energy," loose, as it were, in the universe, without any rational purpose or aim, but wielding portentous cosmic forces at haphazard, as a' madman or a rogue-elephant might do, the mind rests and is satisfied when it can once feel assured that all is guided and has perfeot efficiency, for (what we can only call) some worthy "design." The word is, of' cour •, utterly inadequate when things of such a soale are in question. But can Mr. Spencer or anyone "else deny

.that, whatever sanction the human and .relative conception of " power" draws from the inner certainties of our own sensations, that same, or. a still higher, sanction can also be claimed for the conception of; an infinite and eternal " Wisdom 1" . And, if so, it appears that if the Agnostic lines which had reached the one conception were prolonged a little farther, they would also reach the other; and that so the magnificent idea would be recovered for mankind of an Intelligent Being, . with whom our infinitesimal yet kindred minds can enter into relations, and the woi cof whose works we can—an surely men ot science above all others do—appreciate and assimilate aa a kind of nutriment to ourselves,

5; But even then the imperative instinct which demanded the integration of Nature's observed forces into a conception of Infinite Power, and which was irresistibly borne on to add wisdom also to that Power—even then it is not pacified. It clamours for one more quality; and then it will be still. Relative, human, provisional—call it what you will—nevertheless this third and complementary conception will no more take a denial, will no more obey a frown and waive itß right to rush into the inevitable combination, than matter will politely waive its chemical affinities. As the human mind is stupefied with terror at the bare idea of swift and gigantic energy abroad in the universe without purpose or intelligence (as we inadequately say) to guide it, so assuredly the human heart stands still in palsied horror at the frightful thought of "an infinite and eternal force," guided, indeed, by an infinite cunning, but checked by no sort of goodness, mercy, or love. In short, no authority on earth—not even that of all the philosophers and scientists and theologians that, have ever lived—could impose upon any man, who thought Mr. Herbert Spencer's "First Principles" out to their ultimate conclusion, the portentous belief in an eternal, 'almighty, and omniscient Devil. And therefore to add goodness to the other two factors of power and wisdom, which we are compelled by the constitution of our nature to attribute to the Great Unkno\vn, is pardonable because inevitable. But, if so, it seems that Agnostioism—if allowed to develop freely on its own lines, without artificial hindrance— must needs become a " Christian Agnosticism. " ' And it only remains .to ask, why in the world should not such an Agnostic "go to ohurcb," fall in with the religious symbolism in ordinary use, and contribute his moral aid to those who have taken service nnder the Christian name on purpose to purify gross and carnal eyes, till they become aware of the Great Unknown behind the veil, and so come to relatively know what absolutely passes knowledge?

6. There is only one obstacle in the way ; and that is of so unworthy a character that it passes comprehension how men of cultivation can allow it a moment's influence upon their conduct. The objection referred to has never been more clearly expressed than by one whom we all delight to honour and to listen to, Professor Tyndall. He wrote as follows in the pages of this Review a few years ago (November, IS7S) :—"lt is against the mythological scenery, if I may use the term, rather than against the life and substance of religion, that Science enters her protest." But how, in the name of common sense and charity, is religion—that speoial provision for bringing strength to the feeble-minded, elevation to the lowly, and wisdom to the ignorant—to be brought home to all mankind, without the use of even coarse symbolism, which is as "relative" to the masses for whom it is intended as scientific conceptions are to philosophers ? In both oases the realities behind are most imperfectly represented ; and a higher intelligence, if it were not loving as well as intelligent, would certainly display impatience with Professor Tyndall's own kindly effort a few pages further on, where he says, " How are we to figure this moleonlar motion? Suppose the leaves to be shaken from a birch-tree; and, to fix the idea, suppose each leaf to repel and attract," and so on. Is it not clear that the Professor is here doing the very same thing, in order to bring science home (all honour to him!) to the unlearned, which he refuses to the ministers of religion when they try to bring home tne Gospel to the poor? How oan such subtle ideas, such far-reaching thoughts, as those of theology be brought home to the mass of mankind without the boldest use of symbol and of figured speeoh ? How can that most precious result of Cnristiaoity, a unity of general conceptions about mankind and about the Great Unknown, be secured without a symbolism of the very broadest and most striking kind? Panoramas cannot be painted with stippling brußhea. Nor, indeed, does any sort of painter aim to compete with the bald truthfulness of photography. 'He does not imitate; he_ merely hints. He throws out things ipmvavra, avvetoiow. He summons imagination of the spectators themselves to his aid and awakens their finer susceptibilities. And by this means a "picture," which is in itself the most unreal of all unrealities, beoomes in skilful hands a fruitful reality for good, perhaps to a hundred generations.

If, then, any scientific man does hot for himself need rituals and symbols, still let him remember how invaluable an aid these things are to the mass of mankind. Let him reflect how the purest and loftiest ideas of the Eternal lie enshrined within every form of Christian adoration, and how the most touching memories speak in everyChristian Sacrament. Is it nothing, too, to be brought in contact with the boundless gentleness and tolerance of Christ; to hear such words as "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it," and "He that is not against us is on our side ?" Is it nothing to feel the sympathy of such a devoted benefactor of Europe as St. Paul, and to accept his judgment that " He who regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it?" .Nay, is it nothing to bow the knee in acknowledged brotherhood beside the simple and the lowly; to submit to learn from them, as we all learn from our ohildren in the nursery ; and to feel ourselves, in spite of our divergent views and notions, in the attitude of common adoration before the Great Unknown? Better this, surely, by far than to • cover with philosophic scorn ministrants whose days are given to soothing every form of human distress, amid whose simplest teaching can always be deteoted in undertone the deep thoughts of Hebrew prophets and apostles, and to despise whom is to orown once more, with paper or with thorns, the meek head of Christ. H. G. Cubteis. ,