The Eclipse of Faith Part 2

The current of conversation after a while, somehow swept us round again to the point I had resolved to quit for this evening. "But since we are there," said I, "I wish you would in brief tell me why, when you doubted of Christianity, you did not stop at any of those harbours of refuge which, in our time especially, have been so plentifully provided for those who reject the New Testament?

You are not ignorant, I know, of the writings of Mr. Theodore Parker, and other modern Deists. How is it that none of them even transiently satisfied you? An ingenious eclecticism founded on them has satisfied, you see, your old college friend, George Fellowes, of whom I hear rare things. He is far enough from being a sceptic,"

"Why," said he, laughing, "it is quite true that George is not a sceptic, He has believed more and disbelieved more, and both one and the other for less reason, than any other man I know. He used to send me the strangest letters when I was abroad, and almost every one presented him under some new phase. No, he is no sceptic.

If he has rejected almost every thing, he has also embraced almost every thing; at each point in his career, his versatile faith has found him some system to replace that he had abandoned; and he is now a dogmatist par excellence, for he has adopted a theory of religion which formally abjures intellect and logic, and is as sincerely abjured by them. If the difficulties he has successively encountered had been seen all at once, I fancy he would have been much where I am. Poor George! 'Sufficient unto the day,' with him, is the theology 'thereof'! I picture him to myself going out of a morning, with his new theological dress upon him, and, chancing to meet with some friend, who protests there is some thing or other not quite 'comme il faut,' he proceeds with infinite complacency to alter that portion of his attire; the new costume is found equally obnoxious to the criticism of somebody else, and off it goes like the rest."

This was a ludicrous, but not untrue, representation of George Fellows's mind; only the "friend" in the image must be supposed to mean his own wayward fancy; for he is not particularly amenable (though very amiable) to external influences. So dominant, however, is present feeling and impulse, or so deficient is he in comprehensiveness, that he often takes up with the most trumpery arguments; that is, for a few days at a time. Yet he does not want acuteness. I have known him s.h.i.+ne strongly (as has been said of some one else) upon an angle of a subject; but he never sheds over its whole surface equable illumination. Where evidence is complicated and various, and consists of many opposing or modifying elements, he never troubles himself to compute the sum total, and strike a fair balance. He stands aghast in the presence of an objection which he cannot solve, and loses all presence of mind in its contemplation.

He seldom considers whether there are not still greater objections on the other side, nor how much farther, if a principle be just, it ought to carry him. The mode in which he looks at a subject often reminds me of the way in which the eye, according to metaphysicians, surveys an extensive landscape. It sees, they say, only a point at a time, punctum visibile, which is perpetually s.h.i.+fting; and the impression of the whole is in fact a rapid combination, by means of memory, of perceptions all but coexistent; if the attention be strongly fixed upon some one object, the rest of the landscape comparatively fades from the view. Now George Fellowes seemed to me, in a survey of a large subject, to have an incomparable faculty of seeing the minimum visibile, and that so ardently, that all the rest of the landscape vanished at the moment from his perceptions.

"Well," said I, smiling, "you must not blame him for his not reaching at once and per saltum your position. He has been more deliberate in stripping himself. Yet he has come on pretty well.

You ought not to despair of him. I wonder at what point he is now."

"You may ask him to-morrow," said he, "for I am expecting him here to spend a few weeks with me. At whatever point he may be in these days of 'progress,' as they are called, he does not know that I am already arrived at the ne plus ultra; for my letters to him were yet briefer and rarer than to you: and I never touched on these topics. Where would have been the use of asking counsel of such an oracle?"

I said I should be glad to see him. "But I shall be still better pleased to hear from you, why you are dissatisfied with any such system as his; and especially why you say he ought in consistency to go much farther."

"I am far from saying that my reasons will be satisfactory, but I will endeavor, if you wish it, to justify my opinion."

"I shall certainly expect no less," replied I. "You are strangely altered, if you are willing to a.s.sert without attempting to prove; and if you were altered, I am not. When will you let me hear you?"

"O, in a day or two, when I have had time to put my thoughts on paper; but, if I mistake not, some of the most important points will be discussed before that, for Fellowes, I hear, is a very knight-errant of 'spiritualism,' and it is a thousand to one but he attempts to convert me. I intend to let him have full opportunity."

"I hardly know," said I. "Harrington, whether I wish him success or not. But one thing, surely, all must admire in him: I mean his candor. What less than this can prompt him, after abandoning with such extraordinary facility so many creeds and fragments of creeds, after travelling round the whole circle of theology, to confess with such charming simplicity the whole history of his mental revolutions, and expose himself to the charge of unimaginable caprice,--of theological coquetry? I protest to you that, a priori, I should have thought it impossible that any man could have made so many and such violent turns in so short a time without a dislocation of all the joints of his soul.--without incurring the danger of a 'universal anchylosis.'"

"One would imagine," said Harrington, with a laugh, "that, in your estimate, his mind resembles that ingenious toy by which the union of the various colored rays of light is ill.u.s.trated: the red, the yellow, the blue, the green, and so forth, are distinctly painted on the compartments of a card: but no sooner are they put into a state of rapid revolution than the whole appears white. Such, it seems, is the appearance of George Fellowes in that rapid gyration to which he been subjected: the part-colored rays of his various creeds are lost sight of and the pure white of his 'candor' is alone visible!"

"For myself," said I, "I feel in some measure incompetent to p.r.o.nounce on his present system. When I saw him for a short time a few months ago, he told that, though his versatility of faith had certainly been great, he must remind me (as Mr. Newman had said) that he had seen both sides; that persons like myself, for example, have had but one experience; whereas he has had two."

"If he were to urge me with such an argument," replied Harrington, "I should say we are even then. But I think even you could reply: 'You yourself injustice, Mr. Fellowes, in saying you have had two experiences. You have had two dozen, at least; but whether that can qualify you for speaking with any authority on these subjects I much doubt; to give any weight to the opinions of any man some stability at least is necessary.'"

This I could not gainsay. Slow revolutions on momentous subjects, when there has been much sobriety as well as diligence of investigation, are, perhaps, not despised as authority. Some superior weight may even be attached to the later and maturer views. But man changes them every other day; if they rise and fall with the barometer; if his whole life has been one rapid pirouette, it is impossible with gravity to discuss the question, whether at some point he may not have been right. Whoever be in the right, he cannot well be who has never long been any thing; and to take such a man for a guide would be almost as absurd as to mistake a weatherc.o.c.k for a signpost.

"In seeking religious counsel of George Fellows," said Harrington.

"I should feel much as Jeannie Deans, when she went to the Interpreter's House.' as Madge Wildfire calls it, in company with that fantastical personage. But he is a kind-hearted, amiable fellow, and, in short, I cannot help liking him."

____

July 2. Mr. Fellowes arrived this day about noon. He is about a year younger than Harrington. The afternoon was spent very pleasantly in general conversation. In the evening, after tea, we went into the library. I told the two friends that, as they had doubtless much to talk of, and as I had plenty of occupation for my pen, I would sit down at an adjoining table with my desk, and they might go on with their chat. They did so, and for some time talked of old college days and on indifferent subjects; but my attention was soon irresistibly attracted by finding them getting into conversation in which, on Harrington's account, I felt a deeper interest. I found my employment impossible, and yet, desiring to hear them discuss their theological differences without constraint, I did not venture to interrupt them. At last the distraction became intolerable; and, looking up, I said, "Gentlemen, I believe you might talk on the most private matters without my attending to one syllable you said; but if you get upon these theological subjects, such is my present interest in them," glancing at Harrington, "that I shall be perpetually making blunders in my ma.n.u.script. Let me beg of you to avoid them when I am with you, or let me go into another room."

Harrington would not hear of the last; and as to the first he said, and said truly, that it would impede the free current of conversation, "which," said he, "to be pleasurable at all, must wind hither and thither as the fit takes us. It is like a many-stringed lyre, and to break any one of the chords is to mar the music. And so, my good uncle, if you find us getting upon these topics, join us; we shall seldom be long at a time upon them. I will answer for it; or if you will not do that, and yet, though disturbed by our chatter, are too polite to show it, why, amuse yourself (I know your old tachygraphic skill, which used to move my wonder in childhood), I say, amuse yourself, or rather avenge yourself, by jotting down some fragments of our absurdities, and afterwards showing us what a couple of fools we have been." I was secretly delighted with the suggestion; and, when the subjects of dispute were very interesting, threw aside my work, whatever it was, and reported them pretty copiously. Hence the completeness and accuracy of this admirable journal. I cannot of course always, or even often, vouch for the ipsissima verba; and some few explanatory sentences I have been obliged to add. But the substance of the dialogues is faithfully given. I need not say, that they refer only to subjects of a theological and polemical nature.

I hardly know how the conversation took the turn it did on the present occasion; but I think it was from Mr. Fellowes's noticing Harrington's pale looks, and conjecturing all sorts of reasons for his occasional lapses into melancholy.

His friend hoped this and hoped that, as usual.

Harrington at last, seeing his curiosity awakened, and that he would go on conjecturing all sorts of things, said, "To terminate your suspense, be it known to that I am a bankrupt!"

"A bankrupt!" said the other, with evident alarm; "you surely have not been so unwise as to risk recently acquired property, or to speculate in----"

"You have hit it," said Harrington; "I have speculated far more deeply than you suppose."

The countenance of his friend lengthened visibly.

"Be not alarmed." resumed Harrington, with a smile; "I mean that I have speculated a good deal in--philosophy, and when I said I was a bankrupt, I meant only that I was a bankrupt--in faith; having become in fact, since I saw you last, thoroughly sceptical."

The countenance of Fellowes contracted to its proper dimensions. He looked even cheerful to find that his friend had merely lost his faith, and not his fortune.

"Is that all?" said he, "I am heartily glad to hear it. Sceptic! No, no; you must not be a sceptic either, except for a time," continued he, musing very sagely. "It is no bad thing for a while: for it at least leaves the house 'empty, swept and garnished.'"

"Rather an unhappy application of your remnant of Biblical knowledge,"

said Harrington; "I hope you do not intend to go on with the text."

"No, no, my dear friend; I warrant you we shall find you worthier guests than any such fragments of supposed revelation. If you are in 'search of a religion,' how happy should I be to aid you!"

"I shall be infinitely obliged to you," said Harrington, gravely; "for at present I do not know that I possess a farthing's worth of solid gold in the world. Ah! that it were but in your power to lend me some: but I fear" (he added half sarcastically) "that you have not got more than enough for yourself. I a.s.sure you that I am far from happy."

He spoke with so much gravity, that I hardly knew whether to attribute it to some intention of dissembling a little with his friend, or to an involuntary expression of the experience of a mind that felt the sorrows of a genuine scepticism. It might be both.

However, it brought things to a crisis at once. His college friend looked equally surprised and pleased at his appeal.

"I trust," said he, with becoming solemnity, "that all this is merely a temporary reaction from having believed too much; the languor and dejection which attend the morrow after a night's debauch. I a.s.sure you that I rejoice rather than grieve to hear that you have curtailed your orthodoxy. It has been just my own case, as you know: only I flatter myself, that, perhaps having less subtilty than you, I have not pa.s.sed the 'golden mean' between superst.i.tion and scepticism,--between believing too much and believing too little."

I looked up for a moment. I saw a laugh in Harrington's eyes, but not a feature moved. It pa.s.sed away immediately.

"I tell you," said he, "that I believe absolutely no one religious dogma whatever; while yet I would give worlds, if I had them, to set my foot upon a rock. I should even be grateful to any one, who, if he did not give me truth, gave me a phantom of it, which I could mistake for reality." He again spoke with an earnestness of tone and manner, which convinced me that, if there were any dissimulation, it cost him little trouble.

"If you merely meant," said Fellowes, "that you do not retain any vestige of your early 'historical' and 'dogmatical' Christianity, why, I retain just as little of it. Indeed, I doubt," he continued, with perhaps superfluous candor, "whether I ever was a Christian"; and he seemed rather anxious to show that his creed had been nominal.

"If it will save you the trouble of proving it." said Harrington, "I will liberally grant you both your premises and your conclusion, without asking you to state the one or prove the other."

"Well, then, Christian or no Christian. there was a time, at all events, when I was orthodox, you will grant that; when I should hate been willing to sign the Thirty-nine Articles: or three hundred and thirty-nine; or the Confession of Faith: or any other compilation, or all others; though perhaps, if strictly examined, I might have been found in the condition of the infidel Scotch professor, who, being asked on his appointment to his Chair, whether the 'Confession of Faith' contained all that he believed, replied, 'Yes, Gentlemen, and a great deal more.' I have rejected all 'creeds'; and I have now found what the Scripture calls that 'peace which pa.s.seth all understanding.'"

"I am sure it pa.s.ses mine," said Harrington, "if you really have found it, and I should be much obliged to you if you would let me partic.i.p.ate in the discovery."

"Yes," said Fellowes, "I have been delivered from the intolerable burden of all discussions as to dogma, and all examinations of evidence.

I have escaped from the 'bondage of the letter,' and have been Introduced into the 'liberty of the spirit.'"

"Your language, at all events, is richly Scriptural," said Harrington; "it is as though you were determined not to leave the 'letter' of the Scripture, even if you renounce the 'spirit' of it."

"Renounce the spirit of it! say rather, that in fact I have only now discovered it. Though no Christian in the ordinary sense, I am, I hope, something better; and a truer Christian in the spirit than thousands of those in the letter."

"Letter and spirit! my friend," said Harrington, "you puzzle me exceedingly; you tell me one moment that you do not believe in historical Christianity at all, either its miracles or dogmas,--these are fables; but in the next, why, no old Puritan could garnish such discourse with a more edifying use of the language of Scripture.

I suppose you will next tell me that you understand the 'spirit' of Christianity better even than Paul."

"So I do," said our visitor complacently, "'Paulo majora canamus'; for after all he was but half delivered from his Jewish prejudices; and when he quitted nonsense of the Old Testament,--though in fact he never did thoroughly,--he evidently believed the fables of the New just as much as the pure truths which lie at the basis of 'spiritual'

Christianity. We separate the dross of Christianity from its fine gold.

'The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,'--'the fruit of the spirit is joy, peace,' not---"

"Upon my word," said Harrington, laughing, "I shall begin to fancy presently that Douce Davie Deans has turned infidel, and shall expect to hear of 'right-hand failings off and left-hand defections.' But tell me, if you would have me think you rational, is not your meaning this:--that the New Testament contains, amidst an infinity of rubbish, the statement of certain 'spiritual' truths which, and which alone, you recognize."

"Certainly."