Supernatural Religion Volume I Part 12

Dr. Mozley is well aware that his a.s.sumption of a "Personal" Deity is not susceptible of proof;(2) indeed, this is admitted in the statement that the definition is an "a.s.sumption." He quotes the obvious reply which may be made regarding this a.s.sumption:--"Everybody must collect from the harmony of the physical universe the existence of a G.o.d, but in acknowledging a G.o.d, we do not thereby acknowledge this peculiar doctrinal conception of a G.o.d. We see in the structure of nature a mind--a universal mind--but still a mind which only operates and expresses itself by law. Nature only does and only can inform us of mind _in_ nature, the partner and correlative of organized matter. Nature, therefore, can speak to the existence of a G.o.d in this sense, and can speak to the omnipotence of G.o.d in a sense coinciding with the actual facts of nature; but in no other sense does nature witness to the existence of an Omnipotent Supreme Being. Of a universal Mind out of nature, nature says nothing, and of an Omnipotence which does not possess an inherent limit in nature, she says nothing either. And, therefore, that conception of a Supreme Being which represents him as a Spirit

{66}

independent of the physical universe, and able from a standing-place external to nature to interrupt its order, is a conception of G.o.d for which we must go elsewhere. That conception is obtained from revelation which is a.s.serted to be proved by miracles. But that being the case, this doctrine of Theism rests itself upon miracles, and, therefore, miracles cannot rest upon this doctrine of Theism."(1) With his usual fairness, Dr. Mozley, while questioning the correctness of the premiss of this argument, admits that, if established, the consequence stated would follow, "and more, for miracles being thrown back upon the same ground on which Theism is, the whole evidence of revelation becomes a vicious circle, and the fabric is left suspended in s.p.a.ce, revelation resting on miracles and miracles resting on revelation."(2) He not only recognizes, however, that the conception of a Person al" Deity cannot be proved, but he distinctly confesses that it was obtained from revelation,(3) and from nowhere else, and these necessary admissions obviously establish the correctness of the premiss, and involve the consequence pointed out, that the evidence of revelation is a mere vicious circle. Dr. Mozley attempts to argue that, although the idea was first obtained through this channel, "the truth once possessed is seen to rest upon grounds of natural reason."(4) Why, then, does he call it an a.s.sumption? The argument by which he seeks to show that the conception is seen to rest upon grounds of natural reason is: "We naturally attribute to the design of a Personal Being a contrivance which is directed to the existence of a Personal Being.... From personality

{67}

at one end I infer personality at the other." Dr. Mozley's own sense of the weakness of his argument, however, and his natural honesty of mind oblige him continually to confess the absence of evidence. A few paragraphs further on he admits:--"Not, however, that the existence of a G.o.d is so clearly seen by reason as to dispense with faith;"(1) but he endeavours to convince us that faith is reason, only reason acting under peculiar circ.u.mstances: when reason draws conclusions which are not backed by experience, reason is then called faith.(2) The issue of the argument, he contends, is so amazing, that if we do not tremble for its safety it must be on account of a practical principle, which makes us confide and trust in reasons, and that principle is faith. We are not aware that conviction can be arrived at regarding any matter otherwise than by confidence in the correctness of the reasons, and what Dr.

Mozley really means by faith, here, is confidence and trust in a conclusion for which there are no reasons.

It is almost incredible that the same person who had just been denying grounds of reason to conclusions from unvarying experience, and excluding from them the results of inductive reasoning--who had denounced as unintelligent impulse and irrational instinct the faith that the sun, which has risen without fail every morning since time began, will rise again to-morrow, could thus argue. In fact, from the very commencement of the direct plea for miracles, calm logical reasoning is abandoned, and the argument becomes entirely _ad hominem_.

Mere feeling is subst.i.tuted for thought, and in the inability to be precise and logical, the lecturer appeals

{68}

to the generally prevailing inaccuracy of thought.(1) "Faith, then," he concludes, "is _unverified_ reason; reason which has not yet received the verification of the final test, but is still expectant." In science this, at the best, would be called mere "hypothesis," but accuracy can scarcely be expected where the argument continues: "Indeed, does not our heart bear witness to the fact that to believe in a G.o.d"--i. e., a Personal G.o.d --"is an exercise of faith?" &c.(2)

It does not help Dr. Mozley that Butler, Paley, and all other divines have equally been obliged to commence with the same a.s.sumption; and, indeed, as we have already remarked, Dr. Mozley honestly admits the difficulty of the case, and while naturally making the most of his own views, he does not disguise the insecurity of the position. He deprecates that school which maintains that any average man, taken out of a crowd, who has sufficient common sense to manage his own affairs, is a fit judge, and such a judge as was originally contemplated, of the Christian evidences;(3) and he says: "It is not, indeed, consistent with truth, nor would it conduce to the real defence of Christianity, to underrate the difficulties of the Christian evidence; or to disguise this characteristic of it, that the very facts which const.i.tute the evidence of revelation have to be accepted by an act of faith themselves, before they can operate as a proof of that further truth."(4) Such evidence is manifestly worthless. After all his a.s.sumptions, Dr. Mozley is reduced to the necessity of pleading: "A probable fact is a probable evidence. I may, therefore, use a miracle as evidence of a revelation, though

{69}

I have only probable evidence for the miracle."(1) The probability of the miracle, however, is precisely what is denied, as opposed to reason and experience, and incompatible with the order of nature. A cause is, indeed, weak when so able an advocate is reduced to such reasoning.

The deduction which is drawn from the a.s.sumption of a "Personal" Deity is, as we have seen, merely the possibility of miracles. "Paley's criticism," said the late Dean of St. Paul's, "is, after all, the true one--'once believe that there is a G.o.d, and miracles are not incredible.'"(2) The a.s.sumption, therefore, although of vital importance in the event of its rejection, does not very materially advance the cause of miracles if established. We have already seen that the a.s.sumption is avowedly incapable of proof, but it may be well to examine it a little more closely in connection with the inferences supposed to be derivable from it. We must, however, in doing so carefully avoid being led into a metaphysical argument, which would be foreign to the purpose of this inquiry.

In his Bampton Lectures on "The Limit of Religious Thought," delivered in 1858, Dr. Mansel, the very able editor and disciple of Sir William Hamilton, discussed this subject with great minuteness, and although we cannot pretend here to follow him through the whole of his singular argument--a theological application of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy--we must sufficiently represent it. Dr. Mansel argues: We are absolutely incapable of conceiving or proving the existence of G.o.d as he is; and so far is human reason from being able to

{70}

construct a theology independent of revelation that it cannot even read the alphabet out of which that theology must be formed.(1) We are compelled, by the const.i.tution of our minds, to believe in the existence of an Absolute and Infinite Being; but the instant we attempt to a.n.a.lyse, we are involved in inextricable confusion.(2) Our moral consciousness demands that we should conceive him as a Personality, but personality, as we conceive it, is essentially a limitation; to speak of an Absolute and Infinite Person is simply to use language to which no mode of human thought can possibly attach itself.(3) This amounts simply to an admission that our knowledge of G.o.d does not satisfy the conditions of speculative philosophy, and is incapable of reduction to an ultimate and absolute truth.(4) It is, therefore, reasonable that we should expect to find that the revealed manifestation of the Divine nature and attributes should likewise carry the marks of subordination to some higher truth, of which it indicates the existence, but does not make known the substance; and that our apprehension of the revealed Deity should involve mysteries inscrutable, and

{71}

doubts insoluble by our present faculties, while at the same time it inculcates the true spirit in which doubt should be dealt with by warning us that our knowledge of G.o.d, though revealed by himself, is revealed in relation to human faculties, and subject to the limitations and imperfections inseparable from the const.i.tution of the human mind.(1) We need not, of course, point out that the reality of revelation is here a.s.sumed. Elsewhere, Dr. Mansel maintains that philosophy, by its own incongruities, has no claim to be accepted as a competent witness; and, on the other hand, human personality cannot be a.s.sumed as an exact copy of the Divine, but only as that which is most nearly a.n.a.logous to it among finite things.(2) As we are, therefore, incapable on the one hand of a clear conception of the Divine Being, and have only a.n.a.logy to guide us in conceiving his attributes, we have no criterion of religious truth or falsehood, enabling us to judge of the ways of G.o.d, represented by revelation,(3) and have no right to judge of his justice, or mercy, or goodness, by the standard of human morality.

It is impossible to conceive an argument more vicious, or more obviously warped to favour already accepted

{72}

conclusions of revelation:--As finite beings we are not only incapable of proving the existence of G.o.d, but even of conceiving him as he is; therefore we may conceive him as he is not. To attribute personality to him is a limitation totally incompatible with the idea of an Absolute and Infinite Being, in which "we are compelled by the const.i.tution of our minds to believe;" and to speak of him as a personality is "to use language to which no mode of human thought can possibly attach itself;" but, nevertheless, to satisfy supposed demands of our moral consciousness, we are to conceive him as a personality. Although we must define the Supreme Being as a personality to satisfy our moral consciousness, we must not, we are told, make the same moral consciousness the criterion of the attributes of that personality. We must not suppose him to be endowed, for instance, with the perfection of morality according to our ideas of it; but, on the contrary, we must hold that his moral perfections are at best only a.n.a.logous, and often contradictory, to our standard of morality.1 As soon as we conceive a Personal Deity to satisfy our moral consciousness, we have to abandon the personality which satisfies that consciousness, in order to accept the characteristics of a supposed Revelation, to reconcile certain statements of which we must admit that we have no criterion of truth or falsehood enabling us to judge of the ways of G.o.d.

Now, in reference to the a.s.sumption of a Personal Deity as a preliminary to the proof of miracles, it must be clearly remembered that the contents of the revelation which miracles are to authenticate cannot

{73}

have any weight. Antecedently, then, it is admitted that personality is a limitation which is absolutely excluded by the ideas of the Deity, which, it is a.s.serted, the const.i.tution of our minds compete us to form. It cannot, therefore, be rationally a.s.sumed. To admit that such a conception is false, and then to base conclusions upon it, as though it were true, is absurd. It is child's play to satisfy our feeling and imagination by the conscious sacrifice of our reason. Moreover, Dr.

Mansel admits that the conception of a Personal Deity is really derived from the revelation, which has to be rendered credible by miracles; therefore the consequence already pointed out ensues, that the a.s.sumption cannot be used to prove miracles. "It must be allowed that it is not through reasoning that men obtain the first intimation of their relation to the Deity; and that, had they been left to the guidance of their intellectual faculties alone, it is possible that no such intimation might have taken place; or at best, that it would have been but as one guess, out of many equally plausible and equally natural."(1) The vicious circle of the argument is here again apparent, and the singular reasoning by which the late Dean of St. Paul's seeks to drive us into an acceptance of Revelation is really the strongest argument against it. The impossibility of conceiving G.o.d as he is,(2) which is insisted upon, instead of being a

{74}

reason for a.s.suming his personality, or for accepting Jewish conceptions of him, totally excludes such an a.s.sumption.

This "great religious a.s.sumption"(1) is not suggested by any antecedent considerations, but is required to account for miracles, and is derived from the very Revelation which miracles are to attest. "In nature and from nature," to quote Words of Professor Baden Powell, "by science and by reason, we neither have nor can possibly have any evidence of a _Deity working_ miracles;--for that we must go out of nature and beyond science. If we could have any such evidence _from nature_, it could only prove extraordinary _natural_ effects, which would not be _miracles_ in the old theological sense, as isolated, unrelated, and uncaused; whereas no _physical_ fact can be conceived as unique, or without a.n.a.logy and relation to others, and to the whole system of natural causes."(2) Being, therefore, limited to Reason for any feeble conception of a Divine Being of which we may be capable, and Reason being totally opposed to the idea of an order of nature so imperfect as to require or permit repeated interference, and rejecting the supposition of arbitrary

{75}

suspensions of Law, such a conception of a Deity as is proposed by theologians must be p.r.o.nounced irrational and derogatory. It is impossible for us to conceive a Supreme Being acting otherwise than we actually see in nature, and if we recognize in the universe the operation of infinite wisdom and power, it is in the immutable order and regularity of all phenomena, and in the eternal prevalence of Law, that we see their highest manifestation. This is no conception based merely upon observation of law and order in the material world, as Dr. Mansel insinuates,(1) but it is likewise the result of the highest exercise of mind. Dr. Mansel "does not hesitate to affirm with Sir William Hamilton "that the cla.s.s of phenomena which requires that kind of cause we denominate a Deity is exclusively given in the phenomena of mind; that the phenomena of matter, taken by themselves, do not warrant any inference to the existence of a G.o.d."(2) After declaring a Supreme Being, from every point of view, inconceivable by our finite minds, it is singular to find him thrusting upon us, in consequence, a conception of that Being which almost makes us exclaim with Bacon: "It were better to have no opinion of G.o.d at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely."(3) Dr. Mansel asks: "Is matter or mind the truer image of G.o.d?"(4) But both matter and mind unite in repudiating so unworthy a conception of a G.o.d, and in rejecting the idea of suspensions of Law. In the words of Spinoza: "From miracles

{76}

we can neither infer the nature, the existence, nor the providence of G.o.d, but, on the contrary, these may be much better comprehended from the fixed and immutable order of nature;"(1) indeed, as he adds, miracles, as contrary to the order of nature, would rather lead us to doubt the existence of G.o.d.(2)

Six centuries before our era, a n.o.ble thinker, Xenophanes of Colophon, whose pure mind soared far above the base anthropomorphic mythologies of Homer and Hesiod, and antic.i.p.ated some of the highest results of the Platonic philosophy, finely said:--

"There is one G.o.d supreme over all G.o.ds, diviner than mortals, Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature;

But vain mortals imagine that G.o.ds like themselves are begotten, With human sensations, and voice, and corporeal members;'

So if oxen or lions had hands and could work iu man's fas.h.i.+on, And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of G.o.dhead, Then would horses depict G.o.ds like horses, and oxen like oxen, Each kind the Divine with its own form and nature endowing."(4)

He ill.u.s.trates this profound observation by pointing out that the Ethiopians represent their deities as black with flat noses, while the Thracians make them blue-eyed with ruddy complexions, and, similarly, the Medes and the Persians and Egyptians portray their G.o.ds like

{77}

themselves.(1) The Jewish idea of G.o.d was equally anthropomorphic; but their highest conception was certainly that which the least resembled themselves, and which described the Almighty as "without variableness or shadow of turning," and as giving a law to the universe which shall not be broken.(2)

3.

None of the arguments with which we have yet met have succeeded in making miracles in the least degree antecedently credible. On the contrary they have been based upon mere a.s.sumptions incapable of proof and devoid of probability. On the other hand there are the strongest reasons for affirming that such phenomena are antecedently incredible.

Dr. Mozley's attack which we discussed in the first part of this chapter, and which of course was chiefly based upon Hume's celebrated argument,

{78}

never seriously grappled the doctrine at all. The principle which opposes itself to belief in miracles is very simple. Whatever is contradictory to universal and invariable experience is antecedently incredible, and as that sequence of phenomena which is called the order of nature is established by and in accordance with universal experience, miracles or alleged violations of that order, by whatever name they may be called, or whatever definition may be given of their characteristics or object, are antecedently incredible. The preponderance of evidence for the invariability of the order of nature, in fact, is so enormous that it is impossible to credit the reality of such variations from it, and reason and experience concur in attributing the ascription of a miraculous character to any actual occurrences which may have been witnessed to imperfect observation, mistaken inference or some other of the numerous sources of error. Any allegation of the interference of a new and supernatural agent, upon such an occasion, to account for results, in contradiction of the known sequence of cause and effect, is excluded by the very same principle, for invariable experience being as opposed to the a.s.sertion that such interference ever takes place as it is to the occurrence of miraculous phenomena, the allegation is necessarily disbelieved.

Apologists find it much more convenient to evade the simple but effective arguments of Hume than to answer them, and where it is possible they dismiss them with a sneer, and hasten on to less dangerous ground. For instance, a recent Hulsean Lecturer, arguing the antecedent credibility of the miraculous, makes the following remarks: "Now, as regards the inadequacy of testimony to establish a miracle, modern scepticism has not advanced

{79}

one single step beyond the blank a.s.sertion. And it is astonis.h.i.+ng that this a.s.sertion should still be considered cogent, when its logical consistency has been shattered to pieces by a host of writers as well sceptical as Christian (Mill's _Logic_, ii., 157--160). For, as the greatest of our living logicians has remarked, the supposed recondite and dangerous formula of Hume--that it is more probable that testimony should be mistaken than that miracles should be true--reduces itself to the very harmless proposition that anything is incredible which is contrary to a complete induction. It is in fact a _flagrant pet.i.tio principii_, used to support a wholly unphilosophical a.s.sertion."(1) It is much more astonis.h.i.+ng that so able a man as Dr. Farrar could so misunderstand Hume's argument and so misinterpret and mis-state Mr.

Mill's remarks upon it. So far from shattering to pieces the logical consistency of Hume's reasoning, Mr. Mill substantially confirms it, and pertinently remarks that "it speaks ill for the state of philosophical speculation on such subjects" that so simple and evident a doctrine should have been accounted a dangerous heresy. It is, in fact, the statement of a truth which should have been universally recognized, and would have been so, but for its unwelcome and destructive bearing upon popular theology.

Mr. Mill states the evident principle, that--"If an alleged fact be in contradiction, not to any number of approximate generalizations, but to a completed generalization grounded on a rigorous induction, it is said to be impossible, and is to be disbelieved totally." Mr. Mill continues.: "This last principle, simple and evident as it

{80}

appears, is the doctrine which, on the occasion of an attempt to apply it to the question of the credibility of miracles, excited so violent a controversy. Hume's celebrated doctrine, that nothing is credible which is contradictory to experience or at variance with laws of nature, is merely this very plain and harmless proposition, that whatever is contradictory to a complete induction is incredible."(1) He then proceeds to meet possible objections: "But does not (it may be asked) the very statement of the proposition imply a contradiction? An alleged fact according to this theory is not to be believed if it contradict a complete induction. But it is essential to the completeness of an induction that it should not contradict any known fact. Is it not, then, a _pet.i.tio principii_ to say, that the fact ought to be disbelieved because the induction to it is complete? How can we have a right to declare the induction complete, while facts, supported by credible evidence, present themselves in opposition to it? I answer, we have that right whenever the scientific canons of induction give it to us; that is, whenever the induction can be complete. We have it, for example, in a case of causation in which there has been an _experimentum cruris_."

It will be remarked that Dr. Farrar adopts Mr. Mill's phraseology in one of the above questions to affirm the reverse of his opinion. Mr. Mill decides that the proposition is not a _pet.i.tio principii_; Dr. Farrar says, as in continuation of his reference to Mr. Mill, that it is a flagrant _pet.i.tio principii_. Mr. Mill proceeds to prove his statement, and he naturally argues that, if observations or experiments have been repeated so often, and by so many persons, as to exclude all supposition of