Chapter III: Part 3

In continuing this course of lectures, I naturally follow the same wording of the subjects as that taken by the Bishop of Peterborough; and I may say that those who charge me with misquoting the Bishop, will probably think differently when I say that I have taken fair pains to be accurate in my representation. I took careful and almost verbatim notes, and I hold in my hand a transcript of the notes of an independent shorthand writer, and where these have disagreed, which has been very seldom, I have checked them by so much of the lecture as appeared summarised in the _Daily Press_. It appeared to me to be accurate, and I think there was no ground for saying that I misrepresented the Bishop. You who think so, had better leave that for him to say, if he thinks it necessary. He took the instance of Thomas as that of a representative Sceptic. He was good enough to tell us that the unbelief of Thomas was not unreasonable, that, on the contrary, it was reasonable and natural that he should feel some doubt about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I propose to examine that position. Was it reasonable that Thomas should doubt? Thomas was a disciple selected by Jesus. He had been present at the whole of the miracles of Jesus. If the Bishop’s case be true, he had seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, he had heard Jesus say he came to die, and to rise again; and I ask you, if it was reasonable for Thomas to doubt after he had seen a hundred miracles performed, then how much more reasonable for me to doubt? I have never seen any miracles. But, said the Bishop, Thomas is a fair example of the Sceptic, for Thomas said, I will not believe unless I see, &c. This, the Bishop said, is the very essence of scepticism. Now I don’t know where my Lord Bishop got his notion of scepticism; I am sure that there is no writer on the side of the party which permits me to speak for it, who defines scepticism in that manner. I have here the explanation of Buckle, which I take as that of a man occupying a position independent of the prejudices attaching to my extreme heresy. “By Scepticism, I merely mean hardness of belief, so that an increased Scepticism is an increased perception of the difficulty of proving assertions, or, in other words, it is an increased application and an increased diffusion of the laws of evidence. This feeling of hesitation and of suspended judgment, has in every department of thought been the invariable preliminary to all the intellectual revolutions through which the human mind has passed, and without it there could be no progress, no change, no civilisation. In physics it is the necessary precursor of science, in politics of liberty, in theology of toleration.” Now I take leave to say that there is no sceptical writer, neither Hobbes, nor Hume, nor Locke, nor Berkeley, no sceptical writer either upon my own side or upon the side of theology, unless you take the ravings of some wretched madman, who defines Scepticism as my Lord Bishop defined it. I say it was either a false definition within the knowledge of the Bishop, or that Dr. Magee was imperfectly acquainted with the views he proposed to answer. The definition conveys a false notion of Scepticism, which is really but a word for investigation. The Bishop draws a distinction, and a correct distinction, between knowledge and belief, and in that very distinction he annihilated his own definition of Scepticism. He said, and rightly, When once the senses have taken cognizance of any phenomenon, that is no longer a matter of belief but a matter of knowledge. If I sensate any condition of existence, I have passed the stage of belief and arrived at the stage of knowledge. I now come to a marvellous position—marvellous as advanced by a bishop—viz., that religion or Christianity must be taken as incapable of scientific demonstration; because, if that be true, what becomes of the arguments of the Paleys, of the Pye Smiths, and of the Gillespies? Are the volumes of proofs of the existence of Deity all waste paper? What becomes of the huge mass yearly issued from the press to prove the truth of Christianity? I take it that in the opinion of the Bishop every one of these has hitherto failed, for he says we cannot demonstrate the existence of a Deity or the truth of the Christian religion so as to leave no doubt. A demonstration so complete that it leaves no doubt, is admitted to be impossible; that is an admission for which I thank the Lord Bishop, because it is a justification to doubters. We have two admissions, one that the doubt of Thomas is a reasonable doubt, and another, that Christianity under no circumstances can be rendered free from doubt. I will thank you to bear those two positions in mind. The Bishop says we cannot demonstrate the existence of God, and I am inclined to accept his position, but he gives reasons of the strangest description to justify his conclusions. He says we cannot prove the existence of God because he is invisible. Does the Bishop mean that only the things cognised by sight can be proved? Is it true that he believes in an invisible God? What say the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church? They say that Jesus, with body, flesh, and bones, ascended to heaven. Were these invisible? The Bishop believes what is pictured in the Bible. Does the Bible teach an invisible God? We read in the twenty-fourth chapter of Exodus, 9, 10, 11: “Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and they saw the God of Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand; also they saw God, and did eat and drink.” I want to know if this God is an invisible God? I want to know whether the Bishop is on this point an infidel, and whether he here disbelieves the Bible? The Bible says that God is not invisible. Which are we to believe?—the Bishop, the Bible, or the Thirty-nine Articles? We are forbidden to deny either the Bible or the Thirty-nine Articles under penalty of prosecution. The Bishop said a Jew is not a sceptic, and the reason given is certainly equally a marvellous one, for he said the Jew believes in Moses, and therefore cannot believe in Jesus. Is it logical that any body who believes in Moses cannot believe in Jesus? Surely the Bishop contradicted himself, for it is to Moses and the prophets he appeals. It is not true, even from the Church of England stand-point, that a man disbelieves in Jesus because he believes in Moses. It is not true that if I believe in the authenticity of the Pentateuch, it necessarily excludes my belief in the Gospel, and yet this is the reasoning indulged in by the able and learned confuter of modern infidelity. The Bishop said that the Deist and the Pantheist are not sceptics, for they have a belief, nor, he said, are even those sceptics who say there is no God. I never read, except in tracts and sermons, and religious essays, of any who say there is no God. Some persons talk about the fools who say there is no God, and bishops preach against them, but an Atheist does not say there is no God. The Atheist says the term “God” conveys no idea to his mind. I have never yet heard a definition of God from any living man, nor have I read a definition by dead or living man that was not self-contradictory. I don’t deny the word “God,” because I don’t know anything about its meaning. Denial like affirmation must refer to some proposition that is understood. But the moment you tell me you mean the God of the Bible, or the God of the Koran, or the God of any particular church, I am prepared to tell you that I deny that God. So long as the term means your absence of knowledge as to particular phenomena, and represents the undiscovered, I am not “fool” enough to say there is no God; and I say the Bishop should have known that no modern Atheist ever propounded such a proposition to any one. It is when you tell me of God distinct from the universe, creating the universe different from himself, and adding to his own existence, that I am compelled to deny that God. The Bishop said the sceptic is not only one who denies, but one who asks for evidence of an unreasonable kind. Suppose myself; am I a sceptic as to the Bible, according to the Bishop’s notion? When I examine the Bible, I find it is admitted that the common version is so bad that a better is now in hand. I find when I refer to the sources of this version there are only three sources—the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Septuagint. When I examine the Septuagint I find the Protestant writers such as Fulke and Whittaker, writing against Bellarmine and others, declaring that the Septuagint is corrupt from beginning to end. Dr. Irons says no one knows where the so-called Septuagint version was written, when it was written, nor by whom it was written, and it is clearly the work of different generations. When I examine the Greek of the Septuagint as against the Hebrew, I find words and verses in the one that are not in the other. As a sceptic is it unreasonable for me to ask the Bishop how he knows that one is better than the other? When I go to the Hebrew the difficulty is still greater. I say that not even the Bishop knows enough of the Hebrew to guide us with reasonable explanation. It is not enough to say that mere ignorant infidels do not know it. I find Spinoza, writing 200 years ago, declaring that Hebrew was a language utterly dead, that its grammars and lexicons were lost, that time, the great consumer, had blotted out the meaning of many words from the memory of man. Suppose that I have recourse to those professing some knowledge of Hebrew. Gesenius, Bellamy, Parkhurst, Newman, Eichorn, Bresslau, Ginsburg, give me different meanings for many of the same words on important points of theology. How am I to be satisfied? What objections will be reasonable? Suppose I try to be content with the ordinary Hebrew version, what then? I find that it is a version written with points, which points have not existed more than 1250 or 1300 years; and the text itself is of two characters. That which is written is not always read, and that which is read is not written. I find a clergyman of the Church like Dr. Irons admitting that the traditional reading of the Hebrew text is often of more value than the text. I find Christians saying this Hebrew is an ancient language, and when I try to trace it I find that before 2500 years back there is no trace of it at all. Moses could not have written in the Hebrew we have, for what to-day we call the Hebrew did not then exist. Who is to decide on this point as to the reasonableness of my scepticism? Am I to decide or my Lord Bishop? Let us consider this a little more. We have a Samaritan, a Septuagint, and Hebrew Bible, but in the Samaritan we have only the Pentateuch, and I find words and verses in the Samaritan not in the Septuagint, and not in the Hebrew, and I find words and verses in the Hebrew and Septuagint, which are not in the Samaritan. Is it unreasonable for me to ask how so many blunders have got into this book, if it contains a revelation from God? Then I come to try to get a clue from the Gospels, and I find again that no man knows when they were written, where they were written, or by whom they were written. Clergymen of the Church have invented arguments from the first century fathers for the existence of the Gospels. I used to believe that such testimony existed; I could not suppose that writers like Dr. Paley had invented testimony of the fathers, but when I went to the great libraries to verify authorities, and I found that he manufactured evidence, I ask, was I, as a sceptic, a reasonable man in challenging the Church? The Bishop says a Sceptic is not to be attacked because he doubts, but because of his reason for the doubt. I doubt because I cannot help it. Is that a good reason or not? Is the Church entitled to say “It is not true, you might believe if you like?” And mark, the Bishop had the audacity to declare that Christianity is not intolerant of the doubter, but of the spirit of doubt. The Church used to burn the doubter, and then it burnt his books, and locked him up in prison. It now gathers 3,000 people into the nave of the Cathedral to hear the attack on the doubter, and refuses to grant the use of any place for a reply. It is not intolerant to the doubter, it is only intolerant of the spirit of doubt! I learned from the Bishop that a man might be a religious believer, and at the same time a sceptic, and in explaining this he used language of an astounding character. He said if a man were to say, _I_ cannot believe in the existence of God till I have it demonstrated to me as clearly as that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, then he is in principle a sceptic, because if he had not that sort of proof, he would begin to doubt of the existence of God; all this time his assent to the existence of God would have rested on a sceptical foundation. This was one of the most marvellous pieces of nonsense that any one could talk. How can any one, while assenting to God’s existence, say, I cannot believe in God till it is proved to demonstration? He makes the true believer commence by saying he cannot believe in God till it is proved. If anyone here had used that language, I should have said that he did not understand what he was talking about; but when a Bishop, a learned Bishop, the paragon of eloquence and logic, brought here as more competent than your own Bishop, talks such nonsense, how am I to reply? Let us take a startling contrast which the Bishop thought right to give us. He contrasted Thomas the doubter with Simon Peter the believer. I have read the Bible a little, and I think that of all the cowardly rascals of whom I ever read, the greatest rascal was Simon Peter. He was called under great advantages; he had been out fishing, and he caught nothing, and the Lord helped him to a good catch of fish; Simon Peter’s wife’s mother was cured of a fever; Simon Peter was with Jesus when he fed the people with a few loaves and fishes, and he took part in the collection of the fragments. He was present at the transmigration. It was to him that Jesus said, “To thee I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Simon Peter was with the Lord all through his life; and when Jesus came to trouble, he was the first who abandoned him and denied him, even with oaths, “I know not the man;” and that Peter is the model of faith whom the Bishop presents to you. Of the two I rather prefer Thomas to Peter. Certainly Peter came back to the Church when he caught more fish. When Jesus rose from the dead, Peter did not or would not know him, but when Jesus said “Throw in your net,” and he did so, and caught more fish, then he knew Jesus directly. I will ask what lesson the Lord Bishop meant to convey by the contrast between those two? In what sort of way is Peter put in contrast? Simon Peter was true enough when any profit was to be got by it; he ran away when danger came. This is the model which the Lord Bishop puts before you to copy. But Dr. Magee said that Christianity could not be demonstrated. Christian evidences were of some use as weapons when believers were exposed to assaults on their faith. If I thought he had intended to preach a comic sermon instead of a serious one, I could have heartily laughed at this. He says that the evidences of Christianity are weapons to put in the hands of every man and woman when his or her innermost soul is assailed by the enemy with desolating doubt. Is it true that God permits an enemy to reduce man to the level of the beast, and to be continually besieging the soul of man? Is it true that the subtle devil tempts man from the faith? If it be true, then the devil exists either because God cannot help it, or will not prevent it; and if he exists because God is powerless to prevent, then God is not omnipotent; if God wills it, then God consents to—nay, strives to procure man’s damnation. But, says the Bishop, Christianity does not repel the doubter, and he even admits the utility of doubt, subject only to one condition. Before I deal with the Bishop’s condition, permit me to quote what Buckle has said on the effect of doubt, and I quote him because he stands in a position entitling him to the attention of the extreme heterodox, as well as of the extreme orthodox. He says:

“Although the acquisition of fresh knowledge is the necessary
precursor of every step in social progress, such acquisition must
itself be preceded by a love of inquiry, and therefore by a spirit of
doubt, because without doubt there will be no inquiry, and without
inquiry there will be no knowledge, for knowledge is not an inert and
passive principle which comes to us whether we will or no; but it
must be sought before it can be won; it is the product of great
labour, and, therefore, of great sacrifice. And it is absurd to
suppose that men will incur the labour and make the sacrifice for
subjects respecting which they are already perfectly content. They
who do not feel the darkness, will never look for the light. If on
any point we have attained to certainty, we make no further inquiry
on that point, because inquiry would be useless or perhaps dangerous.
The doubt must intervene before the investigation can begin. Here,
then, we have the act of doubting as the originator, or at all events
the necessary antecedent of all progress. Here we have that
scepticism, the very name of which is an abomination to the ignorant,
because it disturbs their lazy and complacent minds; because it
troubles their cherished superstitions; because it imposes on them
the fatigue of inquiry; and because it rouses even sluggish
understandings to ask if things are as they are commonly supposed,
and if all is really true which they from their childhood have been
taught to believe. The more we examine this great principle of
scepticism, the more distinctly shall we see the immense part it has
played in the progress of European civilisation. To state in general
terms, what in this introduction will be fully proved, it may be said
that to scepticism we owe that spirit of inquiry which, during the
last two centuries, has gradually encroached on every possible
subject, has reformed every department of practical and speculative
knowledge; has weakened the authority of the privileged classes, and
thus placed liberty on a surer foundation; has chastised the
despotism of princes; has restrained the arrogance of the nobles, and
has even diminished the prejudices of the clergy. In a word, it is
this which has remedied the three fundamental errors of the olden
time, errors which made the people in politics too confiding, in
science too credulous, in religion too intolerant. We have thus seen
the rise of that scepticism which in physics must always be the
beginning of science, and in religion must always be the beginning of
toleration. There is, indeed, no doubt that in both cases individual
thinkers may by a great effort of original genius, emancipate
themselves from the operation of this law. But in the progress of
nations no such emancipation is possible. As long as men refer the
movements of the comets to the immediate finger of God, and as long
as they believe that an eclipse is one of the modes by which Deity
expresses his anger, they will never be guilty of the blasphemous
presumption of attempting to predict such supernatural appearances.
Before they could dare to investigate the causes of these mysterious
phenomena, it was necessary that they should suspect that the
phenomena themselves were capable of being explained by the human
mind. In the same way until men are content in some degree to bring
their religion before the bar of their own reason, they never can
understand how it is that there should be a diversity of creeds, or
how any one can differ from themselves without being guilty of the
most enormous and unpardonable crime.”

Chillingworth says, “Reason gives us knowledge, while faith only gives us belief, which is a part of knowledge, and is, therefore, inferior to it. It is by reason, and not by faith, that we must discriminate in religious matters, and it is by reason alone that we can distinguish truth from falsehood.” He solemnly reminds his readers that in religious matters no one ought to be expected to draw strong conclusions from imperfect premises, or to credit improbable statements upon scanty evidence; still less, he says, was it ever intended that men should so prostitute their reason as to believe with infallible faith that which they are unable to prove with infallible arguments. The Bishop, agreeing in the utility of doubt, which he expressed in language nearly as strong as that of Buckle, says there is one condition without which doubt cannot be useful, and this condition, being in truth an entire hindrance to doubt, is utterly unreasonable and impossible. He says the condition on which doubt can be accepted as useful is that it starts on a certain basis of religious belief. Now a doubt so based is only a fictitious doubt, a sham doubt, a hypocritical pretence of doubt. When the Bishop said it was possible to have a doubt based on belief in the proposition to be doubted, he said what he could not defend on any platform where reply was permitted. I feel that in talking of a man in his absence I may be under the imputation of saying harsh things. The manner in which this debate has gone on is not one of my fashioning. The Church has taken the pains to give lectures in the Cathedral where no reply could be offered; but I promise you that I will endeavour to carry the war into Peterborough, and see whether the Bishop will attempt an answer under the shadow of his own cathedral.

I have now to complain of something still worse than that the Bishop should have forgotten his Bible, entirely ignored the Thirty-nine Articles, and occasionally in the hurry of rapid speech contradicted his previous sentences. All these are matters at which in even an extraordinary man burdened with a bishop’s dignity, we need not wonder at all; but when we find him blundering in metaphysics, when we find him making mistakes which a man versed in the merest student’s rudiments of Mill or the Scotch and German metaphysicians, would not make, when we find the Bishop so blundering, either wilfully or ignorantly, it puts me in a position of extreme difficulty. He distinguished between the Sceptic and the Christian, and said the Christian had a faith in something underlying all phenomena. The Christian’s faith is nothing of the kind. I will explain my position, and then that of the Christian. The position of the Naturist is that there is only one existence. I can only know that existence as conditioned, as phenomenal. What we call “things” are modes or conditions of existence, known or distinguished from other conditions by various characteristics or qualities; we only know substance or existence as conditioned. We only know the phenomenal or the conditioned. We affirm one existence, and that all we know is condition of that one existence. But that is not the Christian’s position. The Christian says there are two existences, the one what he calls the material universe, and the other the Deity, distinct and differing in essence, who is the creator of that universe out of nothing, and who can be the destroyer of it. When the Bishop tried to make these two opinions into one, he either did not know what he was talking about, or he supposed that the people to whom he was talking had not the time to study. The Bishop defined faith as trust or assent, and he declared that not only in religion but in all other matters we have faith. He said, for example, and his illustration appeared to me most unfortunately chosen, that we trusted in our wives, and children, and friends, that it was possible that our wives might all the time be unfaithful, our children unloving, and our friends treacherous. These are not the words, but they give the exact sense of the words. Now I will explain the difference between religious faith and the ordinary faith. Our ordinary faith in one another in every-day life is a confidence founded upon our own experience and the experience of others; and it is because we find the unfaithful wives are the fewest in number, and the treacherous friends the fewest in number, that we trust in our wives and our friends. But religious faith is something entirely different, it is not only not founded on experience, but it contradicts experience. Religious belief is the prostration of the intellect; ordinary every-day trust is the result of the exercise of the intellect. The Bishop spoke of morality. He said morality was based upon faith, and he asked, supposing you did not go to faith, where were you to get your standard of morality? What is morality, the Bishop did not tell you. With me that is moral which tends to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which inflicts the least injury on any. What is moral the Bible does not tell you, the Thirty-nine Articles do not tell you, the Creeds do not tell you, the Nicene Creed does not tell you, the Apostles’ Creed does not tell you. They say that it is moral not to steal, but you must not say this with the Bible in your hand, where you find a thief protected and rewarded. And as to adultery, David got to heaven though he committed adultery, and planned the most treacherous murder of the dishonoured husband. It is moral to speak the truth, but Jacob, who lied, got to heaven, and was loved by God, while his brother was hated, though he appears to have been the better man of the two. What is the morality of the Athanasian Creed? You are to believe in a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost, three persons in one God, and if you do not believe in this, without doubt you are to perish everlastingly. Is that your morality? He that believes and is baptised, shall be saved. Is faith in Christ morality? Here it is moral to eat beefsteaks, but on the banks of the Ganges it is immoral. Where will you get your guide to morality? No one man, no one book, no one church, can give it you. Your guide to morality can only be got by gathering from the wisdom, and availing yourself of the experience of the greatest minds of past ages and the present times, and thus you may learn to be moral. I don’t speak to annihilate the Bible. No man can annihilate a book. If Moses or Isaiah wrote, no man can sweep their work away from the page of history, but I say that no book should dominate the world. I am a sceptic, for I deny the absolute authority of one book to dominate all people. I find among the Brahmins, among the Buddhists, among the Chinese and Japanese, phases of human truth which in other lands are almost entirely forgotten, which your Jew books do not contain.

If you want to know how I would make a code of morality, I would make it as you would a bouquet of flowers: from one plot in a garden you cull the rose, from another other flowers of sweet perfume, from another the flowers of brilliant hue, until colour blending with colour and fragrance aiding, your bouquet presents beauty to the eye and sweet perfume to the scent; so I would take from Shakspere the fruit of his wide grasping brains, from Swift his brilliant wit, from Montesquieu his great power of generalisation, from Voltaire his grand irony, from Rabelais his biting thought, from Spinoza his grand logic, from John Locke his wise reason, I would take from Dr. Magee his eloquence, and bring them and the thoughts of the world’s poets and philosophers together. I would make my bouquet of thought. I say the Bible is not a book to cast away, but to place on our shelves beside the Koran, the Vedas, and other old-world books, to mark how the thought of the world has grown. We know that religion has a hold upon the mass, but I claim for scepticism a higher morality. The belief in religion is the wearing the old clothes of a former age, the swaddling clothes adopted in the childhood of humanity, but scepticism is the bursting out from these old swaddling clothes. It is the effort of buried brain to burst its grave and stand out alive for human deliverance.

THIRD DISCOURSE OF THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH. CHRISTIANITY AND FAITH.

ON Thursday evening, March 30th, 1871, the nave of the Cathedral, Norwich, was much crowded with the citizens of all classes, to hear the third sermon of the Bishop of Peterborough, on “Christianity and Faith.” Before the sermon the Bishop prayed specially for the conversion of the infidels present. He selected his text from the Gospel according to St. John, xx. 29,

“Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

His Lordship said:

Last night, I endeavoured to show you what scepticism is, and what it
leads to. We saw that scepticism is not simply doubt, but that it is
doubt of a particular kind. It is that state of doubt which arises
from insisting on referring every question for solution to one part,
and one only, of our nature, to the sceptical understanding. It is
that state of doubt which arises from refusing to believe until it
has been made scientifically and mathematically impossible to doubt.
And we saw what this leads to; we saw that it necessarily leads to
the destruction of all belief properly so-called, to the destruction
of every kind of assent, except assent to scientific and demonstrated
facts; that it puts an end to all belief which rests upon moral
certainty, as distinguished from scientific certainty, and therefore
it puts an end to all belief that appeals to any part of our nature
except the understanding; all belief with which the heart and spirit
of man have anything to do; all belief of the higher and nobler kind;
all belief that arises out of the higher and nobler part of our
nature; all belief that is in character and essence moral, and all
the higher and nobler life which arises out of such belief. We saw
that scepticism was essentially fatal to morality; that there is no
scientific demonstration of morality, and that in order to be moral
it is necessary to exercise an act of faith; that morality cannot
justify itself to the sceptical understanding; as we saw that as
religion is not capable of scientific demonstration, as it does
appeal to something else than the logical faculty, as it does appeal
to man’s heart and spirit, it cannot justify itself to the sceptical
intellect; and that scepticism is necessarily as fatal to religion as
it is to morality, and to all belief except scientific belief.

I hope you saw what a waste of time it is to endeavour to satisfy the
consistent sceptic; we have absolutely nothing in common. It is
impossible that religion can silence scepticism, unless it ceases to
be religion. It is just as absurd to object to religion that it is
not science, as to object to science that it is not religion. It is
the wisest course we can take in dealing with sceptics to begin, and
for the most part to end the discussion, by asking this plain
question: You tell us that you are sceptical, and you demand all your
doubts to be satisfied before you believe; we ask you, Do you believe
in anything, and if so, what do you believe in the proper sense of
the word? Do you assent to anything on trust? Do you believe in
anything you cannot demonstrate? If so, you have no right to say to
us that we should not believe a religion. If you say, I believe in
nothing but what can be demonstrated, then we have nothing to answer,
we must leave you to be refuted by the common sense of mankind, and
by every act of your daily life which is based on trust. It would
save a vast deal of wasted time were we to take this course. Let me
advise all Christians; before you allow a sceptic to put you to the
proof, ask, What is it you believe? Do you believe anything in the
matter of religion? and if so, remember you should not bring any
objection against our faith which applies equally to yours. We
cannot allow of faith for all the difficulties of your belief, while
you ask demonstration for all the difficulties of our belief. Faith
for both, or faith for neither; but not faith for one and
demonstration for the other. We seek not to get a logical victory
over our opponents; that is the poorest of all ambitions; but we
recommend such a course for this reason, that you may see that the
very same objections which are brought against our belief, lie
against any belief, and all belief, and so be strengthened in your
faith; for after all man must believe something. There is a
necessity of belief in the soul of man. We ask for the sake of our
opponents, if we throw them back upon considering the basis of their
own belief, and ask them if they are not unconsciously to themselves
in some degree believers while they call themselves sceptics?

And now, while I have endeavoured thus clearly to show you that
religion, like morality, has no answer, properly speaking, to
scepticism—but that it rests upon an act of faith in answer to what
is ever saying, How, what, and why?—let us come back then to that
point at which we left it last night. That is the point at which we
saw, that in order to be moral, and to believe in morality, we must
exercise an act of faith, we must trust in ourselves, in our own
higher and better nature. It must be an act of faith which never can
justify itself to the understanding. Submit the understanding to the
soul, elevate the conscience above the merely logical and questioning
faculty; say by the exercise of a higher faculty, say by the power of
that instinct of faith, which is given us for the very purpose that
we may rise above the instinct of doubt—say, I know that this is
right and this is true, while I have a soul. There is in the heart
of every human being an eternal opposition between the merely
sceptical understanding and the spiritual faculty, between that which
demonstrates and that which believes, between the mind which we share
with the animal, and the soul which we Christians believe we
specially derive from God; and these two are opposite the one to the
other. That in us which says, This must be so, this shall be so so,
is a higher faculty than that which in us inquires, Why is it so, how
can this be so? And that act of faith in us on which our morality,
our religion, and our higher forms of being rest, is that by which we
assert the supremacy of the one above the other. We are not always
conscious, nor often conscious, of this contradiction in our
innermost nature, of the opposition between the spiritual part of our
nature and the mere fleshly man. There are times, however, when we
feel conscious of it. There are times when to each one of us comes
some dire and deadly temptation, when we find ourselves in the
presence of some coveted object, when the animal craves for its
gratification, and the spirit trembles at the thought of the unlawful
thing; and then we find the serpent intellect pleading in an
ingenious way that there is no law against it. I say, there is not
in this church a single man or woman who has not felt the eternal
opposition between the spirit and the flesh; who has not felt that
his deliverance from temptation, the mastery over the evil thing that
was leading him on to evil, lies not in any logic or demonstration,
but in the submission of the logical faculty to the spiritual, in
saying to the animal part of our nature, Be silent, submit, I will be
righteous, I will not sin. I say, in that moment we do become
conscious of the opposition that exists between the intellectual and
spiritual part of our nature. It is then that the great billows of
our souls are ebbing and flowing in the agony of our temptation. It
is at that time we feel the innermost parts of our being, the
fountains of the great deep broken up; and then the spirit says, I
will be righteous. And though we are not conscious of it, though the
animal has been accustomed to obey the man, there is this secret
opposition between the two. It is in the nature of what oculists
tell us. They tell us, that the image of an object is inverted on
the retina of the eye, and that it is only by constant habit of
correction of the impression that we see things truly. So there is
the natural inversion of the nature of the man; the animal gets the
upper hand in the man, and it is only by the unconscious training of
the man in Christian society that the supremacy of the moral part of
the man is strongly established; and we are not conscious of the act
of faith, but still that act of faith underlies all morality, and it
is true in morality as in religion, “The just shall live by faith.”
There is no righteous deed that any one of us has done that we did
not do by virtue of this act of faith; “The just shall live by
faith.”

Now let us pass on to another question, for if the whole moral and
religious life is based upon the act of faith, there doubtless must
be a good reason for it. We Christians believe that God made us so
for a good reason. Can we see any reason why we should live our
moral life by faith? That faith is not a mere assent to
propositions, it is trust in a person, in a nature, a belief that we
are better, nobler, than our understanding would persuade us we are.
Every time this opposition which I have described arises within a
man, he is given a choice; he has to pass through a probation, or a
test as to whether he will or will not believe in his better self,
whether he will rise up to the idea of his spiritual nature, or sink
down to the depths of his animal nature. There is a trial for him,
and a discipline in the trial, and a culture and a growth of his
moral nature if he stands firm in the trial. We cannot believe, in
such a moment of trial, in our nobler and better selves, without
becoming in the very act of believing, nobler and better out of such
strife; and the man comes out stronger every time he wrestles with
his baser self; his purer and nobler self comes out of the trial
nobler and purer.

There is a deep meaning in the temptation of our Saviour, when he is
said to have been with the wild beasts, in that hour when the man is
wrestling with the wild beasts, or the brute part of his nature, and
his spiritual nature comes strong out of the struggle; just as the
waving of the branches of the trees in the wind, makes the sap
circulate to the tiniest leaflet, and brings the life-blood of the
plant to every part. This is the use and object of the act of faith;
to train, discipline, and elevate the man. Further, I have said, in
every case in which a man believes in his better self, he becomes
better; but we have to deal not only with our better selves, we have
to come constantly in contact with other natures and other
personalities than our own. Now, what happens when we encounter a
higher or more moral nature than our own? Just the very same trial
and discipline; because if a man comes to deal with a higher and
better nature than his own, there is always a trial to the lower
nature. If a higher nature could be easily understood by a lower
nature, then the two natures would be equal. It is the very essence
of a higher and purer nature to be something of a mystery to a lower
nature. Some of the sayings or the doings of that higher nature,
will always appear strange and puzzling to the lower nature, just
because it is a lower nature. There is always the possibility of the
lower nature saying of the higher nature, This nature is no better
than mine, I do not believe in its higher or greater goodness. But
are these cynical, worldly-wise men who disparage others, generally
speaking, the most improving and valuable of our acquaintances? Do
we not generally find these cynical, bitter, disparaging men to be
men of low tone? They have lowered their moral nature in the hour of
probation and trial; they have sunk lower than themselves, because
they have refused to believe in something higher and better than
themselves. If these men could have risen to the higher natures they
had to deal with, then in that very hour, their own nature would have
grown purer, nobler, and higher. So we see again, the act of faith
would be an act of probation, an act of discipline, an act of moral
culture and growth. Therefore we say it is true, “Blessed are they
that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

But now let us go one step further. We have seen that in all
morality there is an act of faith, and we believe in our own higher
nature and the higher nature of others, and in so doing we ourselves
grow better; but is there not something better still? We that
believe in higher natures than our own, is there not in our hearts an
instinctive belief that there must be somewhere perfect
righteousness, perfect truth, perfect holiness? We seek for it,
believe in it; do we ever find it? The more we know of men, though
we may know more of their excellencies, we are compelled to know
something more too of their imperfections. The result of this
discovery is that one of two things happens, according as we listen
to our understanding or our will. The sceptical understanding says,
There is no such thing as perfection anywhere. That answer is
unanswerable if we look only to experience. Is that the answer of
the soul and heart of man? No, the soul and the heart rebel against
this cheerless teaching. The soul has ever been uttering its protest
against this despairing creed, ever speaking its belief in the
reality of a perfect righteousness, a perfect truth, a perfect
holiness; but can never attain to it. It may be a dream, but it is a
dream that has haunted humanity from the first hour of its existence.
We thus have faith in humanity, and the value of this faith is that
it elevates the soul which believes in it; a faith which cannot
justify itself to the understanding, a faith as deep as the human
heart, and as old as the hills.

There is in very deed, in a very true sense, although it may be a low
sense comparatively, a religion of humanity; a creed and an act of
faith; and that religion has for its creed these articles: man is
pure; he is not a bundle of passions merely; man is responsible, he
has to answer for his beliefs; man may yet be perfect. There is no
article in this creed that can be justified to the sceptical
intellect, and yet there is not a single article in it that the
loving heart of man, and that his soul in his highest and best
moments, does not cling to as the very life of its life. The heart
of man believes in the perfectibility of humanity, in spite of sin
and misery and oppression. The long litany of man’s [imperfections?]
comes down with a wail of despairing denial of the possibility of
perfection. Remedy after remedy has been tried, scheme after scheme
has been invented, and have been borne away like the bubbles on the
wave; but still the heart of man clings to the belief that there is a
perfect goodness somewhere, even when civilisation fails to produce
it, even in spite of what we have seen in the last three months when
the most civilised nations of Europe have banded themselves together
for mutual destruction; in spite of all this disproof of perfection,
the heart of man clings to it still. We do have faith in humanity,
and the value of the faith is that it elevates the soul which
believes in it. This belief in the possibility of perfection, in the
possibility of delivering men from sin and sorrow, this is not merely
the dream of the poet, it is not merely the Utopia of the
philosopher, but it is the instinctive might in the heart of the
earnest worker, that gives strength to him who does his duty amid the
haunts of sin and sorrow; it is this that sends the Christian worker
into the back streets and lanes of our great cities; it is this that
sends the Christian minister to the bedside of the dying; it is this
that makes men toil and suffer for their fellow men, like him whom we
worship, who saw in his dying hour of the travail of his soul and was
satisfied.

And now we take one step further. We have seen that there is a faith
which underlies all morality as well as religion, and that this faith
is the discipline of the soul, and without it the soul cannot grow in
morality or religion. Let us suppose, for argument’s sake, let us
suppose that for this yearning of the soul after an infinite
perfection, there is a corresponding reality—an absolutely perfect, a
supremely righteous and true and holy Being. And let us suppose that
it pleased him to make a revelation of himself to man; what should we
expect beforehand respecting that revelation? Should we not expect
that it would follow the analogy of all other revelations to the
higher and better part of man’s nature, and that inasmuch as morality
needs faith, so this manifestation of the Perfect One would come in
some way or other so as to call out the act of faith? Should we not
expect that if this were the only absolutely perfect nature, it would
appear to our lower and inferior nature in some respects
unintelligible, in some respects mysterious, in some respects
contradictory? For all mysteries, everything we cannot understand,
must come to our understanding in the shape of contradictory
propositions. We must expect that this higher nature, this perfect
nature, should try our faith. If it would be unreasonable to suppose
that an inferior man to himself should understand a man, so also it
would be unreasonable to suppose that our nature should not find some
difficulty in perfectly appreciating and understanding the absolutely
perfect nature of a supremely perfect Being. Should we not expect
from analogy that we should have some more difficulty in
understanding God, than we have in understanding man? We must expect
the same trial of our faith, the same probation and discipline of our
spiritual nature, when it is brought into contemplation of this
perfect nature. Surely we should beforehand expect that this would
be the case; surely we might say that the God who was perfectly
understood could not be the true God. When a man says, I want a God
that is not a mystery; I ask, Do you know a man who is without a
mystery? Are you not a mystery yourself? Is there one fellow being
whom you understand? And yet you say, I have not faith in a God whom
I cannot understand. Who can comprehend him who dwells in ineffable
light, in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning? If
there be revelation from God at all, it must try the faith of man.
In the next place, we should expect that it would be a revelation of
a righteous person; because we know that the highest tendencies of
our nature at their best moments are ever to find a righteous person,
and our faith that has been cultivated in our brother man naturally
looks for a person. Faith has ever been trusting in a person, in a
nature, and therefore we should expect beforehand that if there came
a revelation of this God, it would not come in the shape of a
revelation of doctrines or creeds, but that it would be a revelation
of a person. We Christians say there is made to us a revelation of
the working of the Divine Will, and the purpose of the Divine
Designer, in the works of his hands. We say the invisible things of
God are revealed by the things that are made. There is that in the
world which testifies to a creator and designer. This we believe
because there is that in us which instinctively, when it finds a work
of art, supposes an artist; and finding a work requiring design, has
belief in a designer. We say, “The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament shows his handy work.”