WHEN one said to Dr. Parr, that he would believe in nothing that he did not understand,' the Doctor is said to have replied, "Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's I know.' Yet what harm is there in being as this young man ? Better to have

a short creed which you do understand, than a long one which you do not. The world has no time to discover what men really know, and so it is easily imposed upon by large pretensions of knowing. Neither the individual nor society is served by this. Is it not Bacon who says, that if there were let out of most men's minds all fancies, conjectures, and rumours, the residue of pure knowledge would be very small? If Bacon's experiment were tried, it would be like pricking a balloon, the collapse would be so obvious. It is true, all time over, that the frogs wish to be as large as the oxen; but, as Esop warns us, all vain puffing out is not merely ridiculous, it is dangerous. 'Whatever knowledge,' says Bacon, men cannot at all work upon and convert, is a mere intoxication, and ends in the dissolution of the mind and understanding.'

6

If we believe in matter which we cannot understand, that is no reason why we should also believe in spirit which the Theist cannot understand. But do we believe in what we do not understand, except in cases in which we believe upon authority? In philosophic inquiry, however, belief is supposed to rest, not upon authority, but upon evidence. This form of objection is put:-It is urged that we do believe that grass grows, though we do not know why it grows. Yet since we believe in its growth, it is clear that we do believe in what we do not understand.' The answer is this:-'Our belief is limited to the fact that grass does grow, and does not include why it grows.' When some one told Pascal that Sunday was a day of rest, it occurred to him to ascertain whether nature rested on that day; and being a mathematician, he went out in the evening of Saturday, and measured certain blades of grass in a field, and on Monday morning he measured them again, when he found that the grass had grown during the time, and that Nature (and, according to the Theist, the God of Nature) had been Sabbath-breaking. Now Pascal knew that grass grew, he had evidence of it; he therefore rationally believed that grass did grow; but this belief that grass did grow, in no way included a belief as to why it grew. The fact was clear, the cause was as much hidden as before. Now, all rational belief is of this restricted nature. The belief relates to processes, and not to causes-to operations, and not to

*This chapter is virtually a continuation of the preceding one, but placed under this title as bringing further out the purport of both.

essences.

What the properties of matter accomplish, and how far man assists.

Men believe that the sun shines, but do not believe why it shines; for no one has explained why. Men believe in the laws of light. They believe there is light, but do not believe in the nature of light; for no one has laid satisfactory evidence before the world on the subject. Physical philosophers do not believe why the sun shines, because they do not understand why. Faraday does not believe in the essential nature of the principle of light, because he does not understand what it is. His wise and cautious beliefs (in matters of science) are limited to processes and conditions which he can understand.*

The limited part man can but play in the great field of nature, either in act or understanding, has been put in a striking way by James Mill, in the opening of his 'Elements of Political Economy.' 'It is found,' he writes, that the agency of man can be traced to very simple elements. He does nothing but produce motion. He can move things towards one another, and he can separate them from one another. The properties of matter perform the rest. He moves ignited iron to a portion of gunpowder, and an explosion takes place. He moves the seed to the ground, and vegetation commences. He separates the plant from the ground, and vegetation ceases. Why, or how, these effects take place, he is ignorant. He has only ascertained, by experience, that if he perform such and such motions, such and such events are the consequence. In strictness of speech, it is matter itself which produces the effects. All that men can do, is to place the objects of nature in a certain position. The tailor, when he makes a coat, the farmer, when he produces corn, do but the same thing. Each performs a set of motions; the properties of matter accomplish the rest. It would be absurd to ask, to which of any two effects the properties of matter contribute the most; seeing they contribute everything, after certain portions of matter are placed in a certain position. One of the off-hand arguments of modern invention is this :

'What is life?

'You do not know-nor do I.

God, therefore, is the source of life.'t

This affects to meet the difficulty; but it does not remove it. As an argument it stands thus :—

What is life?

I do not know.

You do not know.

Therefore we both know—that is, we both know that God is its

source.

6

The safer way of reasoning is, where you know nothing, to say nothing.' Thoughtful men require that the difficulties that have 'accumulated on their course of religious faith be removed, and that

* In matters of theology he repudiates the prudence of science. Vide his 'Observations on Mental Education.'

†Thomas Cooper.

Laxity of belief characteristic of modern Theism.

not by the dishonest process of shutting their eyes to them, but by the manly and candid one of thinking more deeply.'* The Atheist is one not unwilling to believe, he is simply unable. His position is, that he does not see sufficient evidence in proof of Theism, and he endeavours to limit his affirmations to what he can explain or prove. His language is proportioned (as it should be with all men who do not mean to deceive) to what he knows. And there is grave reason for the rule. The constant presence of words in the mind slackens its curiosity by leading it to believe that, in fact, it knows what it does not know.'†

Without understanding, worship is a risk. Men know not whether they worship the right Being or not. Manner of existence, we repeat, is the only clue to the identity of a hidden existence. But of what are we sure, when Sir Isaac Newton tells us that God exists to us in a manner altogether unknown?' The Rev. W. Wollaston very clearly owns that comprehension will form but a small part of Theistical credence:- The manner of God's existence is above all conception; neither infinite space, nor infinite duration, nor matter infinitely extended, nor externally existing, nor any nor all of these taken together, can be God.'§

All men disbelieve in the idea of God at various periods of reflective life, and would continue to do so, in many cases, were they not indolent or cowardly-indolent in not seeking the path of Nature when the path of Theology is closed; cowardly in not daring to risk all upon the issue of the understanding. The only purpose of controversy is to satisfy the understanding. The Theist who makes a dark problem plain, carries him who observes it captive. Give me a case with which I can dare the judgment of others, and I thank you-give me the unanswerable word, and I shall be proud to speak it. But should I willingly propose to others a case I cannot defend, or pronounce a word I cannot explain?

A practical toleration has however been established, through sceptical criticism. So little is really known, as Christians now discover, concerning Deity, that when men are pressed to declare their knowledge, they are afraid of exposing that little-and any man who chooses to employ the name of God in a newspaper article, or a vestry speech, and takes an oath as though conscience was a caprice, passes in any society. He may hold any office, or be received in any company, provided he keeps clear of association with suspected sects. What he means by God' few will ask him; and if any do, any pretension is admitted-any evasion is accepted. You may call

*North British Review, No. 43, p. 114.

† Taylor's 'Physical Theory of Another Life,' p. 150. Quoted in 'Familiar Words,' p. 147. Brucker: Chalmers' Biog. Diction. Art. Newton.

§ 'Religion of Nature Delineated.'

It does not appear, from any true history or experience of the mind's progress, that any man, by formal deductions of his discursive power, ever reasoned himself into the belief of a God.-En. Brit., p. 305. Art. Moral Philosophy.

The pre-Lutheran doctrine of ignorance being the source of reverence, still extant.

God Mind, or Power, or Will,* or Spirit, or Love, or Law, or Life, or Light, or Intellect-anything-and anything will do; or you may fall back on consciousness, that new retreat of the bewildered, and confess you do not know, but you feel. If you neither know, nor see, nor apprehend, you may profess to feel-feeling will do-no man can deny that, and no man can challenge it. If you assert without proof that which defies proof, it will be accepted for proof. If you, however, confess to having a conscience-to employing serious thought upon so great a subject to be desirous of defining what you believe, and of believing only in that for which you find rational and sufficient evidence-if you make your words the honest measure of all you really know (little or much), then indeed you run the risk of being driven from the Court of Law, and distrusted in society. All this is the demoralisation of determined understanding and fearless veracity, which are the true glory and strength of man.

The doctrine of the pre-Lutheran days still holds its ground among us under new forms-namely, that blind faith is the sure source of reverence. In his 'Study of Words,' Dean Trench has some remarks which are an answer to this latent error, and which are an honour to the pen of a priest: We indeed hear it not seldom said that ignorance is the mother of admiration. No falser word was ever spoken, and hardly a more mischievous one; implying, as it does, that this healthiest exercise of the mind rests, for the most part, on a deceit and a delusion, and that with better knowledge it would cease; while, in truth, for once that ignorance leads us to admire that which with fuller insight we should perceive to be a common thing, and one demanding therefore no such tribute; a hundred, nay a thousand times, it prevents us from admiring that which is admirable indeed. And this is so, whether we are moving in the region of God's wonders, or in the region of art, which is the region of man's wonders.'

Beware of those who deride understanding as the test of belief. Only forgetful people or weak people make this objection. A true thinker knows that men cannot understand too much. A pure Superstition is that worship in which men understand nothing. A pure Rationalism is that system in which men understand everything. When you lay down the proposition that men ought not to believe what they do not understand, narrow people take alarm at once— for all they know, you may call upon them to explain how much they understand, and this would never do. So they stand up stoutly for the right of believing what you want, and understanding what

you can.

The Theologian is rather an obstructer than an instructor. He is not a Path-finder, he rather blocks new paths up. He seeks to pacify, not to gratify, the inquirer. Suppose that Euclid, instead of explain

*My faith is this:-God is the Absolute Will: it is his Name and the meaning of it.'Coleridge's Table Talk, June 23, 1834. Also Liter. Remains, Vol. III.

Basil Montague's description of the intellect of Bacon.

ing and demonstrating the properties of lines and angles, had called upon men to reverence the mystery of Mathematics; we should now have a creed of geometry, instead of a science of geometry; and our architects would have been priests, believing in houses and bridges, instead of building them. Thus priests have acted with regard to the properties of nature. They have deified what they should have studied, and they conceal their timidity, their incompetence, or their indolence, under the guise of reverence. One is tempted to say that if Deity cared for reverence at all, he would provide himself with better worshippers.

:

The conquest the clergy should promote is the conquest made by intellect. The faculties to be called forth are those which Basil Montague ascribed to Lord Bacon. There never lived a man, except Aristotle, to whom the same terms could be applied. The perfection of the human power was never so happily described before :'His noblest faculty was the understanding: it was sublime, clear, and aspiring...... His discourse was almost as quick as intuition; he was nimble in proposing, firm in concluding; he could sooner determine than we can dispute. Like the sun, his mind had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in motion; no quiet but in activity. It did not so properly apprehend as irradiate the object; not so much find, as make things intelligible......He came into the world a philosopher. He could see consequents yet dormant in their principles, and effects yet unborn and in the womb of their causes; his understanding could almost pierce into future contingents; his conjectures improving even to prophecy, or the certainties of prediction; it rested in the notion without the smart of the experiment. Could any difficulty have been proposed, his resolution would have been as early as the proposal; it could not have had time to settle into doubt. Like a better Archimedes, the issue of all his inquiries was an Eureka! an Eureka! the offspring of his brain without the sweat of his brow. There was with him no poring, no struggling with memory, no straining for invention. His faculties were quick and expedite; they answered without knocking, they were ready upon the first summons, there was freedom and firmness in all their operations.** There is no place for these faculties in theology, where Faith is higher than Conduct, where all but one-sided inquiry is prohibited, and Doubt is regarded as a crime.

* These words are borrowed by Montague, from one of Dr. South's Sermons, where he describes the genius of Adam before his fall.