Chapter III (12)

If Protestantism continues to disintegrate as rapidly in the next decade as it has in the last two, our theological professors may skip all the tracts at present devoted to the refutation of the principles and consequences of the Reformation. The older controversial works are already antiquated, and the theological lore of thirty years ago is no longer available. Yet it is very doubtful if any solid advantage can be gained by the study of modern philosophy. The Holy Ghost, ever ruling the mind of the church, brought about the definition of Papal Infallibility at the most opportune period of the world’s history. The only salvation for the human intellect is the dogmatic authority of the church, and the clearer this is shown and enforced the better for the world. The day of tedious Christian controversy is gone for ever. Amicable discussions upon controverted points of doctrine are no longer possible. The field has been narrowed down. The contest now is conducted upon the primal bases of the primitive truths—God or Satan, heaven or hell. “Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die!” When the admired and acknowledged “leaders of modern thought” are come to such a pass as to ask if life is worth living? is there a hell? is not man the beginning and end of himself? was not Christ sublimely self-deceived? does not matter contain the promise and potency of all life, and is not immortality a splendid dream? it is manifestly useless labor for a Catholic theologian to pore for years over the question of Anglican Orders or the Donation of Constantine.

Our objection to the prolonged study of philosophy must be understood not of Catholic philosophy, which is the handmaid of revealed truth, but of those degrading systems that the materialistic mind of the age is constantly spawning. The facilities of the printing-press, and the habit of writing philosophical articles and systems in the common languages, have familiarized the world with a vast amount of error. One advantage of the learned tongues lay in their preventing many people from obtaining the little learning which is proverbially a dangerous thing. In our day we not only have technical treatises on science, philosophy, and theology, but popular hand-books which aim at the greatest simplicity and directness. Materialists give illustrated lectures to unscientific people, and labor strenuously to accommodate their ideas even to the unformed mind of childhood. The newspapers teem with all sorts of crude theories, and no effort is spared to disseminate the most outrageous fallacies. When Diderot and D’Alembert started the _Encyclopédie_ there were protests and remonstrances from the church and from scientific bodies; but few persons could afford to purchase the huge tomes, as compared with the multitudes that now can buy for a few cents a dangerous publication at any news-stand. The New York _Daily Graphic_, not content with printing a likeness of Müller, gave also long extracts from the article to which we have adverted; and nothing is commoner than a so-called philosophical essay even in our lightest magazines. With the help of a learned and often unintelligible phraseology the impression is left that a mighty mind, after many mental throes, has given birth to a wonderful truth or profound reflection destined to influence modern thought and lead eventually to the widest-reaching social results. The only remedy for such a delusion is to impress readers with a modest consciousness of their own ability to penetrate the sibyllic meaning, which, if they fail to do, is very likely without any meaning at all. By this manly and rational process it is surprising how quickly one sees through absurdities, and catches a glimpse of the ass’ ears under the lion’s skin. Our present study of the Religion of Humanity will illustrate this idea (not in our own case, of course). Let us take up a few of the most famous _dicta_ of humanitarianism. Note the obscurity of the language, which in many cases is intentional. In Eckermann’s _Conversations with Goethe_, who may be regarded as the first arch-priest of positivism, the sage of Weimar expressly remarks that philosophical writers contemporary with him had told him that when they were most perplexed and confused, that was the very time when they courageously wrote on! This is enough to make a man give up metaphysics for the rest of his days.

“My theory,” says Feuerbach, “may be condensed into two words—nature and man. The cause of existence is not God—a vague, mysterious, and indefinite term—but nature. The being in which nature becomes conscious of itself is man. It follows that there is no God—that is to say, no abstract being, distinct from nature and man, which disposes of the destinies of the universe and mankind at its discretion; but this negation is but the consequence of the cognition of God’s identity with the essence of nature and man.”

What does Feuerbach mean by nature? Something distinct from man, evidently, for he continually separates them. Ah! man is the being in which nature becomes conscious—of what? Then nature, God, and man are said to be identical in essence. But if God is only an abstract term, how can an abstraction enter into a conscious essence, and how does it follow that after all there is no God? Oh! you mistake. This negation (of what?) is a consequence of a cognition, etc. Now, all this stuff amounts to nothing but low, base materialism. There is not a particle of reasoning, fancy, or poetic beauty in the entire book from which this extract, which is clear by contrast with others, is taken. Yet George Eliot, who is trumpeted through the world as a glorious prophetess of humanity, deemed it worth her patient toil to translate this bathos into English. In the foregoing extract are used at random words of deep and pregnant import, the meaning of which has been fixed by the sharp and subtle but eminently truthful and honest minds of Catholic philosophy and theology. These words are vilely misused by reputed philosophers, until there is no clearness or exactitude of statement in half the philosophical treatises that one takes up to read. The church herself, in her dogmatic infallibility, has defined for all time the meanings of certain expressions which she has made touchstones of the faith—_tesseræ fidei_. The devil was the first to equivocate, and his children have always followed his example. The term “nature” has an exact philosophical meaning which Feuerbach knew, and his school know. Essence, existence, cognition, and cause are words that have to be weighed with the nicest care when used in a philosophical disquisition. If these writers are sincere they should speak their meaning plainly, and not darken counsel with vain words. The plain English of the extract is this: “There is no God in the sense of creator or judge of man. Man is his own God. We cannot know that anything exists outside of our own consciousness.” Even this is obscure, because there is darkness upon the face of these abysmal depths of unbelief, over which the Spirit of God never moved.

The Religion of Humanity, in contradiction to the very consciousness and irresistible instincts and traditions of the human race, thus assumes that there is no God but man, out-Mohammeding Mohammed, who admitted that there is one God, and contented himself with the humbler title of prophet. It stands alone in its horrible deformity. It is a leper from which all other creeds shrink. It has attempted to prove its identity with many of the old pagan beliefs, but, notwithstanding a cumbrous and learned exposition of mythology, no such identification could be proved. There are some gibing comments upon the gods in Lucian, and Juvenal at times hints slyly at the amours of Olympic Jove; but there is no student of mythology but knows the depth of the religious sentiment in the vast masses of the Greek and Roman states. The worship of the earth, sea, and skies was idealized. It may be boldly asserted that ancient history does not present any traces of the gross materialism of modern times. Æschylus repeatedly declares that there was a power superior to Jove himself, and the researches of Niebuhr have established the virtual monotheism of Greece and Rome. Despite the multitude of gods, there was the _Deus Optimus Maximus_, clearly spoken of by Tully, and not obscurely intimated in nearly every relic of ancient literature and art. The attempt to trace the Religion of Humanity back to the beginnings of the human race proved a complete failure. Man never worshipped himself as the Supreme God. There was a broad distinction made between the heroes or the emperors to whom divine honors were decreed and the gods themselves. These are but the commonplaces of the history of religion; but the attempt showed a consciousness of weakness on the part of this wretched school of unbelief. Euripides himself would have upbraided them:

Απιστ᾽ ἄπιστα, καινὰ χαινὰ δέρκομαι.
Ἔτερα δ᾽ εφ ἑτερῶν
Κακὰ κακῶν κυρεῖ.[133]

Every effort that has been made to find a purely natural and human cause for religion has failed. The wide study of religion which modern scepticism has unweariedly pursued always results in perplexing it the more. Volney went to Palestine to disprove the ancient prophecies, and his book shows their literal and startling fulfilment. Fichte used to open his lectures upon God with the blasphemous remark, “Gentlemen, to-day let us construct the Supreme Being,” but all attempts at such construction have only brought out more clearly the immemorial belief of his creatures in his existence. The permanency of the original traditions of the human family is so remarkable a phenomenon, in view of the perishableness of merely human records, that the most sceptical minds have been struck with fear and amazement. It is like the living proof of the Psalmist’s words: “If I go up into heaven, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and flee to the outermost ends of the earth, thou art there!” Even the pantheism of Brahminism is something entirely distinct from the confusion and chaos of the Religion of Humanity.

Strauss, in his last book, _The Old and the New Faith_, asks if the modern world is as religious as the ancient world was, and he appears to derive satisfaction from his conclusion that there is a vast falling off in religion. But as he does not deign to define what he means by religion, we are left in the dark. One loses patience with the perverse stupidity of the British and American public, that have always their ears erect for what Strauss will say, and sceptics will complacently assure you that there are arguments in Strauss that have left Christianity in a deplorable plight; whereas the fact is, Strauss’ _Life of Christ_ is familiarly cited in the schools of Germany as an illustration of the futility of an argument against well-authenticated human testimony. Whately wrote a book to prove that such a person as Napoleon Bonaparte never existed, and Strauss wrote a book to prove that Christ never existed, both with equal success.

The true _animus_ of Comte, Strauss, Renan, and the other heads of this school is demoniac hatred of Christ. Why are they for ever attacking him, if, as they claim, all religions are preparative of the advent of this Religion of Humanity? Why can they go into hysterics of admiration over Socrates, Voltaire, and Shakspere, yet foam with fury at the name of Jesus? They will not even credit our Saviour with effecting the slightest moral good in the world, but refer to his blessed religion as a darkness and blight on the human intellect. Surely no true measure for the elevation of humanity would throw aside Christianity. But it is clear that these men have no true love for man. It is only their insufferable pride that will not bend the knee before Christ, or bend it in mockery like Renan and the author of _Ecce Homo_. They cry out, “Son of David, what have we to do with you?” and their cry is that of lost souls. All the infidel literature about Christ that has appeared so abundantly in the past score of years bears traces of this humanitarian spirit. They fain would make out Christ to be a mere man, but they are in this quandary: that he had no “humanitarian” notions. He came to do the will of his Father. He said nothing about the Sublime Humanity, the greatness and glory of this world, the god-like intellect of man, the progress of vast ideas, the universal diffusion of knowledge, the infinite progressiveness of the species, the force of cosmic influences, and the gorgeous future that will dawn for woman. Therefore, worse than paganism, the Religion of Humanity will not erect a statue to him.

Comte, desirous of giving hierarchical form to positivism, invented a worship and a calendar in which were commemorated three hundred and sixty-five “eminent servitors of humanity” in place of the saints of the Catholic Church. He began with Moses and ended with himself. Among the saints were Bichat, Condillac, Gutenberg, and Frederick II. of Prussia. He also invented a public service, a hymnal, and a certain form of worshipping the Sublime Humanity, by which he probably meant himself. He himself adored the Sublime Humanity as embodied and idealized in a very commonplace lady. Guizot says of him that he made repeated attempts to commit suicide, and in his review of positivism seems to think the insanity of its founder a sufficient refutation of his strange opinions. He admits, however, that long before Comte’s death his religion had made considerable progress in France and in England, where it was enthusiastically embraced by two men who, one would suppose, would be the last to adopt a fantastic creed—J. S. Mill and Wm. Hartpole Lecky, the historian of rationalism.

Toning down the sublimities of the irrepressible Comte, and not deigning to admit his hierarchy or his saints—which, to say the truth, smacked too much of Catholicity—the positivists of England and America contented themselves with a denial of all supernatural religion, and announced with a flourish of trumpets the infinite perfectibility of the human race, the glory of humanity, the cosmic emotion which is the deepest religious feeling of humanity, and the superiority of aggregate immortality to a private or personal existence after death. Man, very much in the abstract, was exalted to the throne of the Deity. All this blatant puffing of modern progress, development, and evolution is kept up by these man-worshippers. The spirit is the spirit of pride. But it must in justice be said of Mr. Frothingham that he is not so enthusiastic in the cause of humanity as he might be. His book on the subject is quite tame when contrasted, say, with Comte’s _Woman and Priest_. He does not gush enough, and he has not the irreverent boldness of his master, Theodore Parker. Mr. Frothingham is not by any means an emotional man, and this is fatal to his humanitarian progress. Nor is he a deeply-read man even in his own theology, though, to be sure, no sane man would blame him for that defect.

The doctrine of the infinite progressiveness of man is another of those high-sounding phrases that no logic will tolerate. There can be no internal progress in religion. All the scientific discoveries that may be made to the end of time will not have the slightest influence upon one jot or one tittle of revealed truth. Nor will they have any essential or related power over the truths of natural theology, or what is generally known as such. The relations of man to God, the coming of Christ, the establishment and conservation of his church, are truths and facts that can never be changed. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but the word of God shall not pass. This is why the church is so calm when all Protestantism is in a ferment about science. The two spheres of truth, divine and human, supernatural and natural, can never collide. Man may progress in many things, but religion, the Everlasting Yea, as Carlyle calls it, cannot from its very nature change, transform, advance, increase, or diminish. The humanitarians long for the day when there will be no sects and no religious differences. Then the best plan is for all the sects to enter the Catholic Church. They want a religion for man, and surely that religion is the best which God himself made for man.

There is a great deal of speciousness in this cry of progress, culture, and modern enlightenment, and even Catholics are deceived by the spirit of pride, for man from the beginning loved to consider himself a god knowing good from evil. Humanitarianism gains adherents in Catholic countries who would roar with laughter at the idea of turning Protestants. France never forgets those delusive words, liberty, fraternity, and equality, and this religion of humanity has blazoned them over the world. The restlessness under church government, the rational submission which the faith exacts, the lessons of mortification, and the stern portrayal of man which Christianity presents are all influences that tend to the progress of humanitarianism. No man likes to hear the dread truth regarding his slavery to the devil, the necessity of grace, the duty of confessing, and his unutterable weakness. It is these that are the unpalatable truths which spoil the teaching of the Ideal Man, as they call our Saviour. Comte would not suffer him to be enrolled among his saints, perhaps for the reason that St. Frederick the Great of Prussia used to refer to our Lord as _L’Infame_. If there is one truth most saliently brought out in the Gospel, it is that without Christ we can do nothing, and this would never suit the apostles of the infinite progressiveness of the human race.

This latter absurdity, most ridiculous when applied to religion, is not a whit more reasonable as applied to science. There must be a limit. The human mind is not infinite. No doubt we shall continue our improvements in machinery. There can be no vast progress made in literature or art. It seems from the history of the race that our powers are limited, and, though we boast of our great mechanical improvements, Washington Irving said that he would not be surprised if they yet unearthed a locomotive engine from the ruins of Persepolis. Infinite progress would seem to be only a figment of the brain of a poetic humanitarian. It is well known that Don Quixote, who certainly gave himself up to redressing the wrongs of humanity, was peculiarly eloquent upon the charms and perfections of Dulcinea; though the honest old knight, crackbrained though he was, would have crossed himself devoutly at the idea of Dulcinea being a divinity in any other sense than that familiar to true lovers.

* * * * *

The motives for moral action presented by the humanitarian theory are very noble but, alas! very impracticable. While we entirely dissent from the opinion of Bentham and Paley, that selfishness is the guiding principle of our actions—an opinion which is at once an insult and a falsehood—still the vast majority of mankind cannot be influenced by the very airy and sublime notions of our philosophers. Even natural goodness appears to be prompted by heavenly intimations and aids. _Gratia supponit naturam._ Of course a good work, to merit salvation, must be attended with grace from its origin to its consummation. But our humanitarians will not even promise us happiness hereafter, and we know how slim are the chances for happiness in this world. This great humanity for which we must labor is only an abstraction. No doubt a man may have a real and pure love for his fellow-man on merely speculative grounds or through natural kindness of heart; for have we not a Bergh for the brutes? All of us, however, feel how vague and impotent such a feeling must be or is likely to become. Christ unites love of our neighbor with love of God, its reason and cause, and there is a world of sweet philosophy in this precept on which depend the law and the prophets. It is the only motive that has been found fruitful in any age. Charity is a Christian growth. There was not one hospital in pagan Athens or Rome, though there were numerous coteries of eminent philosophers.

From whatever side we view this strange “religion,” its hollowness and absurdity become apparent. Its genesis in a morbid mind clouded at times with insanity, and its elaboration in other morally unbalanced intellects, awaken at the outset doubts of its coherency. The vagueness of its formulas wearies and confounds the critic. It has no philosophical structure, and, we are afraid, no theological results. Its literature is marked with weak sentiment and an effusive love and praise of mere naturalism—we were going to say mere animalism—which cannot hold any mind that has a perception of the true dignity and exaltation of human nature as created by God and redeemed by his only Son. So far as we are aware, it has exerted no appreciable influence upon the morality of the world, and its failure to commend itself generally to the humanity it so loudly praises would indicate that men perceive its intrinsic weakness and ineptitudes.

We know that many Protestants condemn and detest this creed as heartily as does the church, which in simple and noble language condemned it in the very first session of the Vatican Council. But we cannot help thinking that Protestantism has had much to do in bringing the monster to birth. It is the logical evolution of Protestant right of private judgment, of personal independence of the doctrinal authority of the church, and of unwise tolerance of all sorts of mischievous religious vagaries. Stripped, of all disguises and forced to speak in true tones, this deified man of the Religion of Humanity is the Antichrist, setting himself up as God and claiming to be God. It is the apotheosis of man, who renews the folly of building a tower of pride in which he may secure himself against the wrath of the Eternal. But before the face of His wrath who can abide? It will not do to speak of the Omniscient as the Unknowable or the Unknowing.

The worst feature of this _placitum_ is that it is militant and aggressive. Comte, as we have said, established a regular system of worship, and what passes under the more respectable name of Unitarianism is really formulated positivism. We should care little for it, did it openly profess its origin and purpose, but it works under a false name and has no scruples about deceiving the confiding and unwary. The Boston _Index_ would be highly indignant if asked to defend Comte’s calendar of saints and to explain the _culte_ of the Sublime Humanity; and George Eliot places in the mouth of Daniel Deronda the most exquisite praise and appreciation of the Hebrew creed. Comte says that the day advances when we shall worship no being inferior to man; and as no man is very much disposed to think another greater than himself, especially under the religious teachings which we have analyzed, each of us will act practically upon Satan’s declaration to Eve, “You shall be as God.”

There is no doubt that as the doctrinal authority of Protestantism fades away year by year, this pronounced individualism will more boldly assert itself. The gospel of vulgar and intense selfishness will triumph, and the worst phases of paganism will return. St. Paul complains of the heathens that they were without affection, and this was because of their creed. The spirit of modern infidelity hates and despises the poor, the ignorant, and, like the Spartans of old, would soon dispose of the sick, the lame, and the blind. Herbert Spencer luckily is no philosopher, though he labors hard to synthetize humanitarianism. Should this monstrous parody on religion ever take clear and scientific form, all traces of faith and charity in Protestantism will disappear. Fetichism itself would be better than this horrible worship and deification of selfishness. If a man believes in anything outside of himself as something diviner and better than he, there is hope for him; but woe to him and to his neighbor when he enthrones himself upon an altar and worships his humanity. It is to be hoped that much of the excessive laudation of ourselves in these days springs from no deeper source than an overweening opinion of our abilities. It may be only vanity. It may not be spiritual and intellectual pride. This question we leave to the reflection of our readers, with a concluding remark that all exaltation of the merely natural powers of the human intellect is attended with extreme danger to moral sanity. The man who has cast off the yoke of the church, the traditions of his race, and the honest suggestions of his conscience has already joined the ranks of the arch-deceiver who first flattered us with hopes of divinity, and now tempts us with unbounded visions of the enlightenment of the world, social progress, the political amelioration of the human race, the downfall of all tyranny in church and state, and the splendid advent of the coming man; but he only lures us to that awful destruction which hurled him from heaven because of the usurping thought, “I will become like unto the Most High.”

Footnote 132:

1. _Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit._ Von L. A. Feuerbach.
Leipzig.

2. _The Essence of Christianity._ Idem. Translated by George Eliot.
London.

3. _The Religion of Humanity._ By O. B. Frothingham. New York.

Footnote 133:

_Hecuba._

SONNET.
UNCONSCIOUS FACULTIES.

Say, do the mighty winds in silence sweep
The crystal breadth of ocean’s quivering plane?
The unmeasured forests, quickening in their sleep,
Breathe they no sound, or breathe that sound in vain?
Say, can our compass small of ear and brain
With Nature’s boundless concords measure keep?
Not so! _Her_ lyre, we know, hath tones too deep,
Too high, for man to hear, or to sustain.
Nor doubt that likewise in this soul of ours
Functions and faculties there work alway
Below the level of our conscious powers;
And chords whose music—were there aught to wake
Its echoes ’mid that inner world—would shake
To dust our tenement of mortal clay.

PEARL

BY KATHLEEN O’MEARA, AUTHOR OF “IZA’S STORY,” “A SALON IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE,” “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” ETC.