^v BL 240 .M37 1894 i !;!^^^^^°^. George, 1842-1906 The psalmist and the i scientist, or. Modern valu ./^ \J THE PSALMIST AND THE SCIENTIST ,Kt\A wi rnijfCf 1* 7 l.zz THE \ " -^^ PSALMIST AND THE SCIENTIST OR MODEEN VALUE OF THE EELIGIOUS se]^time:n^t BY GEOEGE MATHESON, M.A., D.D. AUTHOR OK 'CAN THE OLD FAITH LIVE WITH THE NEW?' 'SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT OF ST PAUL,' 'THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGES OF THE OLD RELIGIONS,' 'SACRED SONGS,' ETC. v> ^\ ^J'"^ ■ i THIRD EDITION I NEW YORK DODD, MEAD, AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS MDCCCXCIV All Rights reserved PREFACE, I HAVE SO fully indicated my purpose in the body of this work that a preface is almost superfluous. I design to inquire whether the religious sentiment of the past has been superannuated or rendered obsolete by the modern conception of nature. I have ex- pressed respectively these seemingly opposite stand- points by the title, ' The Psalmist and the Scientist.' Science is confessedly the author of the modern conception of nature ; the Book of Psalms is ad- mittedly the repository of the religious sentiment in its largest and most comprehensive form. Of course it will be understood that the Psalms are here used not as an authority but as a type ; the hymns of the Piig Veda would have served my purpose equally well if they had expressed the religious sentiment with equal catholicity. My vi Preface. present aim does not transcend the province of what is called natural religion. It is in some respects akin to that of Professor Seeley, but the thought moves on totally difTercnt lines and aspires to a less negative result. I have given few references, because, although this book has demanded much previous reading, its positions are neither to be affirmed nor denied on the authority of names. If it shall succeed in suggesting to abler and acuter minds any road of inquiry which may have been overlooked in the heat of discussion, if it shall stimulate some future explorer in the field of apologetics to examine more closely the relations of religion and science, the object of these pages shall be amply attained. GEORGE MATHESON. St Bernard's, Edinburgh. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. INTRODUCTION, . . . . . . . 1 II. THE psalmist's DEFENCE OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT, 18 III. THE psalmist's ARGUMENT FOR GOD, ... 47 lY. THE psalmist's VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE, . 85 V. THE psalmist's VIEW OF HUMAN INSIGNIFICANCE, 120 VL THE psalmist's TWOFOLD CREATION, . . .138 VIL THE psalmist's GROUND OF RELIGIOUS CONFI- DENCE, 157 VIIL THE psalmist's OPTIMISM, 180 IX. THE psalmist's PRINCIPLE OF SURVIVAL, . . 202 X. THE psalmist's PRINCIPLE OF SURVIVAL— (co?!- tinued), 228 XI. THE psalmist's VIEW OF SIN, .... 253 XIL THE psalmist's PRINCIPLE OF CONSERVATION, . 290 XIIL CONCLUSION, 314 THE PSALMIST AND THE SCIENTIST. CHAPTEE I. INTRODUCTION. The religious sentiment is the earliest and the latest fruit of the religious spirit ; it begins before the birth of dogma, and it survives after dogma has passed away. Men feel before they have learned to see. As in the individual life the first impressions of the mind are those of simple pleasure and pain, so in the life of the religious spirit the earliest impressions of the recipient are those of feeling and sentiment. And just as in the individual life it is by pleasurable and painful feeling that we reach our first knowledge of an outer world, so in the religious life it is by pleasurable and painful feeling that we reach our first perception of a world which transcends the outer. In neither case is the sentiment merely in- A 2 Tlic Psalmist and the Scientist. ward or subjective ; in both it is an organ through which the human soul beholds something other than itself. The religious sentiment, like the element of sensuous feeling, is the earliest of those messengers which convey to us the tidings of a Power not our- selves. It begins before logic, before reasoning, be- fore argument. It precedes all tlie forms of reli- gious tliought ; it is antecedent to all the systems of theological speculation. And as it is earlier than the forms of dogmatic thought, so it is capable of surviving them. Our little systems may have their day and cease to be ; but when they cease to be, it is only in order that they may give place to the sys- tems of another day. What is the source of this reproduction ? Why is it that when old theological formulas are quite extinguished there immediately appear in their room new expressions of dogmatic thought ? There can be only one reason for this ; there must be something which survives when the old form has perished, and which constitutes the link of connection between the old form and the new. That something we call the religious sentiment. It is that sense of divine truth which existed in the mind before it had obtained an explanation, and before it had received a name, and which, because it was independent of dogma in its origin, has been incapable of being destroyed by the dissolution of dogma ; it survives to be the nucleus for the recon- struction of the system yet to be. Introduction. 3 Now, what is the nature of this religious senti- ment ? The popular notion is that it is simply that minimum of religious belief which remains when all its essential articles have been destroyed, the last plank to which the drowning mariner may cling when the rest of the ship has gone to pieces. We are, for our part, quite convinced that this view is founded upon a delusion ; it assumes that dogma is the staple of religious belief, and that sentiment belongs to a more limited sphere than dogma. We hold, on the other hand, that the sphere of religious sentiment is not distinct from the sphere of religious dogma— that the difference between them is not a difference of road, but a difference of vehicle. They both travel over the same way ; the contrast between them lies in their mode of travelling. Dogma goes on foot; sentiment goes on the wing. The move- ment of the one is slow, measured, calculated ; the movement of the other is a flight wherein the dif- ferent points of the journey are almost instantane- ously forgotten in the consummated goal. We have already pointed out that religious feeling is not simply a subjective or inward state — that equally with religious dogma it implies the presence of an object. We have now to add that the object of religious feeling may be identical with the object of religious dogma ; what distinguishes the one from the other is not the thing perceived, but the mode of perceiving it. We may illustrate our meaning 4 Tlic Psalmist and the Scientist. by a coiiipiirisoii drawn from the external senses. There are two modes in which I may learn the form of the same outward object— the touch and the sight. Let the object be one of considerable size placed within the reach of the hand; it will be possible for me by means of the liand to arrive at a perception of its form. Ikit this perception will be reached not as a first but as a last result. My sense of the object's form will be attained not as an intuition, but as an inference. The whole will only be perceived when I have touched in detail the different parts, and when I have pieced these parts together by an act of imagination. But let me apply to the same object the sense of sight, and the result will be very different. In this case the per- ception of the form will be an immediate intuition, the first thing to be perceived. The whole will be seen before the parts; the vision of the object in itself will precede the examination of any of its constituent elements. Here, within the sphere of material nature, and in the region of natural sense, we have the illustration of a process by which the same object may at one and the same moment be looked upon in two totally different ways. It may be acted upon by two perceptions, each of which shall present it in a separate, in some respects in a contrary liglit. In the one case it may be viewed as a product of the reason, as something at whose form we arrive by an examination of its individual parts ; Introduction. 5 in the other, it may be presented as an immediate intuition of the mind, whose component elements must be studied in the lisjht which itself has ^-iven Xow, in the sphere of religion we are continually called to observe precisely the same process. Every doctrine may be metaphorically said to be an object either of touch or of siglit. The man of the third century endeavoured to reach a knowledge of the person of Christ by manipulating one by one the different parts of His nature. He put his hand upon one side and declared it to be human; he touched the other and said it was divine. The result of the whole process was a composite Christ —a Christ in whose nature were amalgamated, without being blended, the ideas of divinity and humanity; some actions were assigned to the God, others were made peculiar to the Man. But the man of the first century looked upon the matter in a very diflerent liglit. What he saw first of all was the whole Christ, the completed Christ, the Christ in His entire personality. He found in the person of Jesus something which appealed to his experience, and therefore he declared His person to be human ; but he found in it at one and the same moment something which transcended his experi- ence, and therefore he declared it to be divine. The divine and the human were not separate fields dividing the person of Jesus ; the whole Son of Man was also tlie whole Son of God. 6 TJic Psalmist and the Scientist. We have employed this ilhistration from the actual course of Church history, in order to make clear our view of the relation betw^een religious doGfma and reli^ifious sentiment. If our view be the o o true one, we shall be forced to modify some con- clusions which we have formed in the past. Fore- most among these is our belief that the shaking of religious dogma is equivalent to the shattering of religious conviction. NothinGj is more common in our day than to hear men descant on the ravages which science has made on the dogmatic forms of the past. We are told that one by one the strong- holds of former belief have been taken, and that the only remaining refuge for the spirit of man is to fall back from religious dogma into the S]Dhere of religious life. Now there are worse places in which to reside than the sphere of religious life ; the man who can live there has reached a per- manent dwelling - place. But what we want to point out is, that in passing from dogma into life there is an intermediate region which the spirit of man may traverse. In leaving the sphere of dogma, he does not need to leave behind him the articles of his former faith. Intermediate between the in- tellectual form and the outward practice, there is a region conterminous with both, and uniting all that is best in each; it is that which we call the sphere of religious sentiment. The wine is not necessarily destroyed when tlie bottles are broken ; Introduction. 7 it may flow into a new receptacle. Religious belief is not necessarily shaken when those forms are shaken which originally contained it. The forms may be proved to be inadequate ; they may be seen to be waxing old and ready to vanish away. It was thus that they appeared to him who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews ; he lived in a time of such transition that it seemed as if God were shak- ing not only tlie earth but the heavens. Yet it is to the author of this epistle that we are indebted for the thought that this shaking itself was only preparatory to a higher permanence. He declares that its real design was to show that there were things independent of dogma, which dogma could neither give nor take away. The earth and the heavens might be shaken, but it was only to mani- fest the fact that these were not the necessary sup- ports of the religious life of man — that there were things wdiich could not be shattered even by the passing aw^ay of the old heaven and the old earth. Behind the forms of religion there dwelt its spirit, its essence, its voice. God had in times past, in various modes and diverse parts, spoken to the fathers ; the various modes and the diverse parts were being rapidly superseded by something new, but in the voice of the everlasting Father there was no variableness nor the least shadow of turning. There is, then, a clear distinction between religious doonia and religious sentiment — a distinction not 8 Tlic Pscdmist and the Scientist. extending, indeed, to tlie truth perceived, but vividly affecting the mode of its perception. It is here, if anywhere, tliat we reach the exphanation of a pheno- menon in actual life which otherwise is incompre- licnsible ; we allude to the apparent inconsistencies in the religious beliefs of great thinkers. Take, for example, such a man as Schleiermacher. When we look at him we seem to be in contact with two lives, and the two lives appear to be j^ulling in contrary directions. On one side we see the cold, calculating, critical intellect, analysing everything into its ele- ments, and seeming to reduce these elements to the veriest minimum ; on the other, we feel the presence and the power of an intensely earnest and a sincerely pious soul. Schleiermacher the critic is a sceptic, a man who weighs evidence and rejects everything which does not conform to his evidential standard ; Schleiermacher the pastor is a simple believer, a man of religious feeling, faith, and prayer. How are we to reconcile these discrepancies ? Shall we say that the great German thinker had different opinions at different times of the day ? or shall we say that the attitude of the sceptic represented his reality, and the attitude of the pastor his acting ? Neither ; the explanation lies in a different region altogether. The dualism is to be sought, not in the nature of Schleier- macher, but in the nature of religious truth itself. There is a sphere of dogma and there is a sphere of sentiment, and what a man perceives in the sphere Introduction. 9 of dogma may not correspond in clearness to what he perceives in the sphere of sentiment. In the sphere of dogma he knows only in part, and the part which he knows is but an insignificant fragment of the whole ; in the sphere of sentiment he sees the whole already completed, already fully realised. This is really what Paul means when he says, " We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall b3 done away." By " that which is perfect" he means, of course, love — the element of feeling as distinguished from the element of knowing. He means to imply that we can only know a doctrine by analysing its different parts, but that w'e can feel a doctrine without any analysis, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. This is the true explanation of Schleiermacher and of such men as Scldeiermacher. It brings before us the fact that every religion con- sists of two sides, the articles and the prayer-book, and that the range of the prayer-book is in every case infinitely wider than the range of the articles. The schoolmen said that a thing might be philoso- phically false and yet theologically true. In this we cannot agree with them ; but we can accept a somewhat analogous statement, that a thing may seem dogmatically false and yet be sentimentally true. Tlie logical understanding deals only with the parts, and as it sees only a limited number of these, it is liable to behold contradictions ; but the religious 10 The Psalmist and the Seientisi, sentiment, beginning as it does with the perception of the whole, has from the outset a full and com- pleted vision of that which the critical reason aspires to reach only at the end of all. The Theism of the Old Testament, like every otlier religion, consists of two parts — the articles and the prayer-book. Its articles are implicitly contained in its cosmogony, in its history, and in its law. By combining the different elements of these we obtain a certain portraiture of the divine nature, which has stamped the Jewish religion with a mark of decided originality. This portraiture of the divine nature, constructed as it is out of the Jewish records of cosmogony, history, and law, has been vehemently assailed in each of its three com- ponent elements. It has been declared to be an inadequate expression of the God of creation, of the God of history, and of the God of moral government. In the present work we have no concern with these questions. AVe have simply to remark that the articles of every religion, whether inspired or unin- spired, are bound to yield an inadequate expression of that which they seek to convey. Their expres- sion is bound to be inadequate, for the simple reason that they are articles ; in other words, dogmas or formulas of the understanding. It is impossible that the logical understanding can in a formula adequately represent any religious truth ; there must always be something left unsaid, and this Introduction. 11 silent factor is itself a source of contradiction. But what we have to remark is this, that the articles of Old Testament Theism are only the half of its religion ; it has another half — a prayer-book. Here, as elsewhere, the thoughts of the religious world have not been limited to dogmas or formulas ; they have expressed themselves in emotions, in aspira- tions, in prayers. These emotions and aspirations have come down to us enshrined in a single volume which we call the Book of Psalms ; it is distinctively the prayer-book of Old Testament theology. Little does the ordinary reader think that in perusing this prayer-book he is studying the religious life of centuries. It seems to him as if he were reading a work produced by a single mind in the course of a single year. And this is really the triumph and the vindication of the Old Testament prayer-book. We should naturally have expected to find that a work whose beginning is separated by so many centuries from its ending, would have revealed in its progress vast inequalities and extreme differences in the development of its individual parts. AYe should have thought that those portions of the book which had their rise in a primitive state of society would have been easily distinguishable from those which originated in the noonday of Jewish civilisation. It is not difficult to discover such a development in what we have called the dogmatic portion of Judaic Theism. The representation of God given in tlie 12 21ic Psalmist and the Scientist. Book of Genesis is at once perceived to belong to a primitive age, and is seen to occupy the oj)posite remove in development from the representations given by the writers of Ecclesiastes and the Pro- verbs. But in the Psalms the modern reader looks in vain for any such evidence of mental evolution. It is not difficult, indeed, to assign certain dates to certain psalms — to say that one belongs to the age of David, another to the age of Solomon, and a third to the age of the Captivity ; but this is done through the accident of historical reference or the peculiarities of linguistic construction. The con- clusion is in no sense reached by a comparison of different thoughts which mark different epochs. Such a comparison is here out of the question, because the difference of thought does not exist. The earliest psalm breathes the same spirit as the latest, and breathes it with an equal intensity. We feel that we are here, not in a region of progress, not in a world of development ; we are under the presence of one unchanging sky, and we never for an instant lose the sense of youth's morning. The spirit of the Jewish prayer-book is a spirit of per- petual youth ; and when everything else in the nation reveals the signs of waxing old, the fervent devotion of its psalms preserves the glow of its spring-time. Now this is as it should be. Genuine sentiment never grows old to the heart, never becomes an Introduction. 13 aiiachroiiism to the life of the spirit. We are con- stantly reminded of this in the study of ancient history. Often when we are perusing the annals of an age whose civilisation and institutions lie far behind our own, we are arrested by some trait of feeling which in a moment dispels the anachronism and recalls us to the eternal brotherhood of man. There is perhaps no period more completely di- vorced from our intellectual sympathies tlian the days of the Israelitish judges. It has been called the Iron Age. It is separated from our life, from our manners, from our civilisation, by tlie length and breadth of a whole universe ; and one feels, in studying its annals, that he is in the presence of something with which his mind has no contact. But even as this thought passes through him, he is arrested in the very heart of this age by a spectacle which reminds him of the eternity of human nature. It is in this barbarous sphere of the Israelitish judges tliat we are confronted by that touching story of sacrificial love which is enshrined in the Book of Euth. The picture of filial devotion is as modern as any incident of the present day ; and it is as a picture of the present day that we reverence and prize it : we feel that it expresses a sentiment which is independent of human development. Now tliis is precisely the feeling with which the great prayer- book of the Jewish nation is regarded by every devout mind. It is an oasis in a desert of time. 14 TIlc Psalmist and the Scientist. It comes to us from the depth of a past whose annals lie hehind ns, whose opinions we have sur- mounted, whose institutions we have far outgrown. Yet we are compelled to confess that it is not outgrown. The prayers which it breathes, the aspirations wliicli it utters, are as fresh to-day as tliey were in the days of Solomon. They have been altogether unaffected by the lapse of time or the changes of life. And here is the proof : we never associate them with any time. We do not say that they are David's, or that they are Solomon's; w^e accept them as our own. We appropriate them as the direct and exact expression of the need which now presses upon our hearts, and we value them precisely for the fact that they do express our needs. It is the utter absence of any sense of anachronism in these prayers — the utter freedom from any reference to a stage of surmounted development — that constitutes them the prayer-book of the Gentile as much as of the Jew : they belong to the things of the heart, and therefore they are unchangeable and eternal. Thus much, indeed, every one w^ill admit. It will not be denied by any that the Psalms do not present any sense of anachronism to the heart. But a more important question remains. Do they present that sense of anachronism to the intellect ? Admitting that the feelings which they awaken have lost nothing of their freshness, does it follow that these feelings Introduction. 15 still represent realities ? The poetry of the psalmist retains to our poetic faculty the same beauty which it had to liim, but we know that to him it was some- thing more than poetry ; it was fact : is it still fact to us ? Modern science has assailed and shaken many ancient fortresses ; have the sentiments of this prayer-book been amongst the things that cannot be shaken ? Science has attacked the articles one by one. It has attacked the ancient conception of God, and has refused any longer to accept the notion of an architect living outside of the machine. It has attacked the old idea of creation, and has refused any longer to believe that the world, as we know it, could have emerged into being in a moment and in the twinkling of an eye. It has attacked the conception of miracle which was held by the men of old time, and has denied that the world as it now exists can manifest any violation of law. It has attacked the primitive notions of moral government, and has rejected that view of divine action which has been content to see God only in the superinten- dence of a single people. All this science has done, and is still doing. What effect it has produced, it is not our province here to say. In the oj^inion of many, it has rendered it henceforth impossible that the articles of ancient Theism can ever again be re- stated in their original form. Assuming that it be so, we have still to remind the reader that the articles are only the one half of the religion, and we have 16 The Psalmist and the Scientist. still to cask the scientist what is his relation to the other half. If it be conceded that we can no longer throui^h the niediiun of the understanding look at the old truths in the old way, can we look at them in the old way through the medium of the heart ? We do not merely ask if the sentiments of the Jewish prayer-book can still be cherished by the poetic faculty. Lange, in his ' History of Materialism/ has laboured to show that although religion be expelled as an outward reality, it may and ought still to be preserved as a product of art and imagination. We cannot admit that either art or imagination could survive for a single year, unless they were believed to represent some great reality; we cannot allow that the visions of the poet would for a moment charm, if there were not in the mind of the beholder a deep-seated hope that somewhere and at some time they might prove to be true. And if it be so even with the professed products of imagination, it must be emphatically so with the spirit of religion. No man's religious devotion could subsist for an hour if he believed it to be the expression of a mere subjec- tive feeling, if he refused to recognise the hope that it might have a corresponding reality. The question, therefore, which we have to ask of science is this, Is the religious sentiment of the psalmist an anachron- ism ? Has any discovery been made in the realm of physical nature which has reduced that sentiment to the rank of a mere poetic dream ? Has the introduction. 17 change in our conception of the universe which the nineteenth century has confessedly seen, involved a mitigation or an annihilation of the value of that spirit of devotion which influenced and dominated the minds of the men of old time ? That is the question which these pages seek to answer. Meantime we have to remark that the prayer- book of the Jewish nation itself seeks to furnish a reason for the hope which is in it. The religious sentiment of the Book of Psalms is very far from being a religious sentimentalism ; it contains an argument for its own existence. There is an argu- ment in feeling as well as in reasoning ; they differ only in their method. The argument of reason mounts on steps to its goal ; the argument of feeling flies on wings. The former can vindicate its every stage, the latter can only vindicate its completed ascent ; but the effect in each case is the same. There are sentiments which produce conviction as powerfully as the most elaborate demonstration, and to the sense of whose certainty the most elaborate demonstration could not add. The Book of Psalms enfolds within itself a reason for its own bein^. What is that reason ? What is that process of argument by which the prayer-book of the Jewish nation vindicates its own existence and maintains its right to be ? The answer to that question shall be the subject of our next chapter. B 18 Tlic rsalmist and the Scientist. CHAPTER II. THE psalmist's DEFENCE OF THE EELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. Psalm cxlv. 15, 16 ; xlii. 1, 2; Ixxxiv. 1-3. We liave placed these three passages in this order, because when taken in this order they reveal a con- nected argument — an argument, it is true, whose basis is not reason but feeling, but which is none the less secure on that account. The first step of the process will be found in Ps. cxlv. 15, 16: "The eyes of all wait upon Thee ; and Thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing." Tlie psalmist is not arguing, not moralising, not laying dow^n a thesis ; he is praying. He is engaged in that which is the preliminary part of all prayer — thanksgiving. His words are meant to express, not the dictum of a logician, but the burst of gratitude which flows from a devout soul. JSTone the less the burst of gratitude is expressive of a great thought. Defence of the Religious Sentiment. 19 He declares that in the world of animated nature all things are double, that there is everywhere a cor- respondence between the organism and its environ- ment. Within the living organism there exist certain definite desires, and each of these has been met by an object which satisfies it. The world of livinc-' nature, as it appears to the eye of the psalmist, reveals a world without and a world within; and between this world without and this world within there subsists the strictest harmony. He lias no theory about this harmony; he does not say, with Leibnitz, that it is a pre-established harmony — or, with the modern doctrine of evolution, that it is a harmony resulting from the adjustment of the or- ganism to its environment: these theories belono- to the domain of reason, and the psalmist is a man of feeling. He therefore contents himself with saying that the adaptations in the physical world are the law of God: "Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every livincr thino" Will the scientist admit them to be the law of nature .? If so, he has conceded that the sentiment of the psalmist is no anachronism. When the scien- tist speaks of nature, he always sees the word in his mind's eye printed with a capital letter. Even to the most materialistic of the class, nature is some- thing more than that which we see, hear, and touch ; it is at the very least the manifestation of a great inscrutable Force. We shall therefore not here 20 The rsalniid and the Scientist. dispute about the use of a term ; our sole concern is \villi tlie fact. The question is, whether the sentiment of the Israclitish psahnist be or be not an anachronism in the view of modern science, wliether it be or be not one of the things which cannot be sliaken ? And to tliis question science itself returns a decided answer. The most modern definition of life which has been stamped with the imjyrimatur of science is one wdiich is actually based on a recoguition of that truth which the psalmist saw. Life is in our days said to consist in the adaptation of the organism to its environment. When the psalmist declared that every living thing derived its satisfaction from an outward accommoda- tion to its desires, he arrived in other words at the same conclusion. He saw around him in the life of every organism certain appetites, wants, needs. He beheld hungering and thirsting, an eye waiting for the light and an ear waiting for the breath of sound. It occurred to him to ask, What if these wants had found no supply in nature ? What if nature had implanted a hunger without food, a thirst without drink, an eye without light, an ear without the breath of sound ? It was in putting this question to himself that the psalmist awoke to a sense of the real benevolence of nature. He saw that this benevolence consisted just in giving to each organ- ism its environment, just in supplying that object which its want specially required. He felt that Defence of the Beligioiis Sentiment. 21 the Author of the universe liad shown His love for the universe in instituting a law of correspondence, whereby every living creature found outside of itself the complement of that which lay within it ; and he expressed his adoration of that love in the voice of thanksgiving : " The eyes of all w^ait upon Thee ; and Thou givest them their meat in due season." We are now prepared to take tlie second step. We shall find it in the transition from Ps. cxlv. 15, 16, to Ps. xlii. 1, 2. We have seen that in the view of the psalmist every natural desire has a right to its object. He now goes on to declare that the desire for God is as natural as any other necessity of life : " As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, God. My soul thirstetli for God, for the living God : when shall I come and appear before God ? " The idea is tliat the thirst of the soul for God has as much its seat in nature as the thirst of the hart for the water- brooks. That religion is natural to man is admitted by all science. Men whose systems diverge from one another in many respects, and whose creeds diverge in all respects from orthodoxy, have been unanimous in recognising that the religious life of man is a positive factor of liuman nature which needs to be accounted for. Auguste Comte, after relegating theology to the limbo of the past, con- cludes his scientific career by instituting a religion of humanity. G. H. Lewes, one of the best types of 22 Tlic Psalmist and the Scientist. positivism which England has produced, has, in his * Problems of Life and Mind/ no scruple in record- ing his conviction that in the age of the future, religion will not die. Lange, as we have already seen, although himself practically a materialist, ad- vocates in the interest of poetry the cultivation of the religious faculty. Dr Carpenter, in his ' Mental Physiology,' does not hesitate to express his belief in the universality of that sentiment which has prompted man to seek for God. Herbert Spencer, liimself the apostle of modern evolution, has devoted the opening chapters of his work on ' First Prin- ciples ' to show that the ultimate object of religion is the ultimate object of science. These converging testimonies from minds in other respects so widely varying, may be taken as affording conclusive evi- dence that the opinion of the modern scientist is on this head not opposed to the sentiment of the ancient psalmist, and that in our days, as in his own, the religious thirst of the human soul is ad- mitted to be as natural as the hart's thirst for the water-brooks. We pass, therefore, to the third of those steps taken by the mind of the psalmist. It will be found in Ps. Ixxxiv. 1-3 : " How amiable are Thy tabernacles, Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my llesh crieth out for the living God. Yea, tlie sparrow hath found an house, and the Defence of the Rclirjious Sentiment. 23 swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, Lord of hosts, my King, and my God." Let ns understand what is the meaning of these words. The psalmist virtually says : If the thirst for God be as natural to man r.s any other appetite of human nature, and if every appetite of human nature has found its satisfaction in correspondence with an outward object, shall the thirst for God be the only thing in the nature of man which has nothing to correspond to it either in the heavens above or in the earth beneath ? Shall the relioiious instinct of the human soul be the one unsatisfied instinct, the one hunger of man for which there has been provided no food, the one thirst for which there has been supplied no water ? There is a tabernacle for everything in nature, a house in which every desire can find shelter and sustenance. The sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself ; the hart has discovered the water- brooks for which she panted. My soul is of more value than many sparrows, yet my soul longeth, fainteth ; it cries out for tabernacles which it has not yet found amongst the things which are seen and temporal ; it stands in the open air and waits for a dwelling-place. Surely there cannot exist such an anomaly in nature ; surely there must be some- where in the universe a resting-place for the spirit of man, corresponding to those resting-places which nature has provided for the natural lives of all. 24 The Psalmist and the Scientist. Tliis is really the sentiment of the psalmist, and it is a sentiment in which there is deep philosophy. He is impressed heyond measure with the compara- tive unrest of man in creation. He is struck with the fact that the correspondence between the desire and its object prevails so universally in the lower spheres, and seems to disappear in the highest of all. He marvels that there should be provided a house for the sparrow and a nest for the swallow, and yet that the spirit of man should seem betimes to be wandering through dry places seeking rest and finding none. He is convinced that such a state of things cannot be permanent, must of necessity be transient and evanescent. He is satisfied that there is somewhere an environment for the spiritual na- ture of the human soul, a divine tabernacle within wliicli its restless longings may repose, and by whose shelter its religious life may be explained and vindi- cated. AVithout such an explanation and vindica- tion, the religious life of man is to him the anomaly of anomalies. The sentiment expressed in this psalm is by no means an isolated one in the Jewish prayer-book, otherwise we might have been content to assign it a merely historical reference. We might have re- fused to see in it anything beyond the fact that an exile from his native land yearned to behold the ancient courts of worsliip, and envied even the swallows that still built their nests there. That Defence of the Religious Sentiment. 25 this was the historical origin of the words we have not the slightest doubt ; but had they rested in their origin, they never would have become part of the national prayer-book. What gave them their place in that book was the fact that the circumstance which first suggested them was merely a metaphor expressive of a great principle. It expressed a prin- ciple, moreover, which had already found a place in the sacred songs of Israel. AVe find, as it seems to us, a forecast of the same sentiment in the lauGfuaae of Ps. XXX vi. 5-7. The psalmist is there speaking of the universal adaptations of the benevolence of God throughout the visible universe. What he designs to say is this : The divine mercy stretches over all the works of creation. The Lord preserveth " man and beast," i.e., natural life in all its phases, human and animal. If He preserves man generically, shall He not preserve man spiritually ? Shall not the children of men — those who have in them the ripe- ness and the fulness of human nature — " put their trust under the shadow of His wings " ? If there are pleasures adapted to the thirst of the physical creation, surely these latest products of the creative spirit shall be made to drink of the river of the pleasures of God. We see the same thought in a somewhat moa^.'^'^.d form in the concluding verses of Ps. xvii., although the psalmist is there contrasting, not man with the rest of creation, but the spiritual man with those 26 Tlw Psalmist and the Scientist. wlio are unspiritiial. He tells us that unspiritual men liave in the present life an abundant fulness ; every faculty is satisfied because each faculty is adapted to its environment. But then, in striking contrast to this, he concludes with the words: "As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness." He feels that his spiritual nature cannot claim in the meantime any such adaptation to its environment. He feels that in fact his spiritual nature is mainly distinguished just by the absence of such adaptation, just by the sense of vacancy which it experiences when it tries to rest in tabernacles of clay. None the less is he persuaded that in the universe as a whole there can exist no such anomaly. He knows that somewhere there must be found for the spirit of man that which will bring it into harmony with all other faculties and desires, and he expresses this conviction in words which already breathe the hope of immortality : " I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness." We have now to ask. Is this an anachronism ? Is it capable of standing unshaken in the light of modern science ? Is there any way in which the conclusion may be evaded that the spiritual nature of man ought to have that adaptation to its needs which all temporal natures reveal ? There are two ways in which it may be attempted to evade this conclusion, and as they frequently present themselves Defence of the Religious Sentiment. 27 to our view in the discussion of this subject, we shall take leave briefly to estimate their leadings. In the first place, it has been said that the re- ligious sentiment is not a distinct or separate power of the human mind. We are asked what right we have to assume that the tendency of man towards an object of religious worship is an original and underived part of his nature. AVe are told, on the contrary, that so far from being a simple and inde- pendent faculty, the instinct of worship is a senti- ment made up of several feelings, and only acquires unity in their blending. We are told that the re- ligious sentiment is a combination of at least three other sentiments — the impression of fear, the sense of dependence, and the feeling of wonder. Man at first trembled before the majesty of visible nature, then submitted himself resignedly to that majesty, and ultimately, as the sense of freedom woke within him, began to wonder and admire. The instinct of worship conies from the blending of these different shades, and therefore it has no right to claim that special environment which should only belong to a special power. Now it is not our intention to dispute here the truth of this doctrine. Were we disposed to be metaphysical, we might perhaps pertinently ask how the religious sentiment can be a union of two such contrary elements as the sense of abject de- pendence and the sense of childlike wonder; the 28 TliC rsalmist and the Scientist. one is a stage of necessity, the otlier is a realisa- tion of freedom. It is very easy, indeed, to see how a sense of ahject dependence can be followed hy a feeling of chikUike wonder; this is in accord- ance with liistorical fact, and in harmony with the law of liuman development. But it is a very dif- ferent thing to say that these two elements can coalesce, and that in their coalition they can pro- duce something wliicli has all the appearance of a spiritual unity. As we have said, however, we have no wish to dispute the point, for it is not on this ground that w^e would defend the scientific value of the psalmist's argument. If we refuse to be swayed by the objection before us, it is on a totally different ground, and one which cannot be shaken by any speculative reasoning. Suppose w^e concede that the religious sentiment is not origin- ally a simple and independent faculty, but has been built up by the combination of other feel- inG;s. What then ? Would it follow from this that the relii^ious sentiment has no ridit to claim an environment, no right to assume that there is somewhere an object adapted to it ? Assuredly not. For, what are the facts of the case ? Those powers and faculties of the human mind which have received an environment and an adaptation are, according to modern science, not one of them in their origin simple and independent. Nothing appears more original and underived than the Defence of the Religious Sentiment. 29 sense of sight ; and yet it is the doctrine of modern science that the sense of sight, like all the other organs of sensation, is only the last result of a neural process, a perception whose unity has been constituted by the coalition and the blending of a variety of nervous impressions. Such, in the view of modern science, is the origin of those natural faculties by which we commune with the external world. But the point to be observed is this, that in spite of their composite origin these faculties do commune with the external world. Althou^-h in their origin they are not special powers, they become special powers in their combination ; and the moment they become special powers, they receive a special environment. Whatever the human eye was in its initial stage, it is assuredly a human eye now, a power which in its final com- pleteness is altogether unlike any other power. And just on account of this ultimate unlikeness to other things, the human eye has now received an environment specially adapted to its nature, and quite unadapted to any other nature. The con- troversy whether light was made for the eye or the eye made for light is idle here; we keep to the scientific admission that the one is adapted to the other, that the one is the environment of the other. Keeping to that admission and accepting the scien- tific account of the eye's composite origin, we arrive at the definite conclusion that, wherever a natural 30 The Psalmist and the Scientist. faculty becomes special, whatever its origin may have been, it immediately receives in the outer world an avenue of communion suited to its nature. Now the psalmist asks no more for that faculty which we call supernatural, but which really claims to be an integral part of human nature. It is in virtue of its claim to naturalness, it is in virtue of its right to be considered a normal phase of our humanity, that the religious sentiment demands an object corresponding to its nature. It asks by what authority or by what law it is put out of uniformity with existing things ; why, alone of all organs, alone of all faculties, alone of all desires, it should be left without a dwelling-place, without an environment, without an object with which it may commune. It asks, in the interest of science, in the interest of that regularity of law which science delights to preach, why the law of adaptation should in one solitary instance be violated, and violated precisely in that instance in which the power that seeks en- vironment has greatest pretensions to originality. Its language is still substantially the language of the psalmist when he inquires why his spiritual nature should faint and long when the sparrow hath an house and the swallow a nest. But this brings us to consider a second objection which may be made to the conclusiveness of the psalmist's reasoning — an objection which is com- monly used against the argument from design, but Defence of the Religious Sentiment. 31 which, if sustained, must bear with equal force against the princi2:)le of adaptation in general. AVe allude to the doctrine frequently promulgated that there are useless organs in the world. It is alleo-ed that both in the framework of the animal creation and in the constitution of the human body there are discoverable certain organs for which no use can be found, and whose absence in some cases would be a positive advantage. If this fact be conceded, it will be pertinently asked, By what law of reasoning does the prayer-book of the Jewish nation claim an object for the religious faculty? Why should not this religious faculty be itself just one of those elements of human nature which are works of supererogation— just one of those things for which no purpose can be found in the earth, or in the heavens, and which, because they have nothing adapted to them, can only be sources of pain? Why should not the unrest of the religious senti- ment, the disquietude which it awakens in the heart of man, be simply an evidence of its superfluity in the scheme of creation, and a proof that its absence would be the evolution of a his/her ^rood ? Now here, as in the former objection, we do not intend to dispute the truth of the alleged fact that there are certain individual forms in which orfjans have been discovered without a purpose. We are far indeed from admitting the fact. Volumes of theology have been written in disproof of it, but 32 The rsalmist and the Scientist. none of tliese have impressed us so powerfully as the candid concession of one whose interest lay in establishing the negation of purpose. The argument which seems to us conclusive against the existence of useless organs in nature, is that of evolution itself as advocated by Professor Huxley.^ Professor Huxley advances in tlie interest of evolution a stronc: arcru- ment against the perpetuation of faculties which have no work to do. He tells us, and tells us truly, that according to the law^s of evolution, a faculty or organ can only be kept in life by being kept in exercise. He tells us that if a faculty or organ should by any chance pass into a state of quiescence — in other words, should cease to be of any use — it will in process of time inevitably cease to live. In the Mammoth cave of Kentucky there is dense darkness. It is inhabited by fishes which are not only without sight, but have merely rudimentary eyes. Are we to suppose that the fishes were created without perfect organs because it was foreseen that they should live in darkness ? Such a supposition is no longer tenable. But another supposition re- mains; it is, that by reason of long disuse the organ itself has become imperfect and is gradually disappearing. This is precisely what, according to Professor Huxley, would follow from the lengthened disuse of any organ. 1 See his article in criticism of Haeckcl, in the collected volume of his essays published in 1871. Defence of the Religions Sentiment. 33 Weighty, however, as this reasoning seems, and all the more weighty because it is the concession of one not favourable to teleology, we do not intend on this occasion to avail ourselves of its candour. We shall take for granted, for the sake of the argu- ment, the averment that there are useless organs in nature — that is to say, that there exist at the present time certain individual forms which reveal the presence of organs that have no present purpose. It is very important that the doctrine should be expressed in this roundabout and qualified way, because, if expressed absolutely, it would not be the doctrine of modern science. No votary of modern science, whether Christian, theist, or atheist, ever held or ever asserted that the so-called useless or^jans of nature were useless organs from the beginning. What the adherents of this doctrine hold is simply this: There is in the body of a certain animal a part of the structure which is at present useless, if not even hurtful. But this animal was itself originally derived from the life of another animal, and that again from a still earlier structure. The organ in the latest pro- duct is useless simply because its day is past. It is the survival of an earlier culture. In the ancestors of this recent animal the organ had its function, like all other things ; it was exactly adapted to the environ- ment of that primitive age. But the old environ- ment is gone; the waves have receded and left it high and dry on the beach. It exists as the monu- c ?)4 The PsaJmid and the Scientist. inent of a past, as the relic of a time when things were different from what they now are, and its use- lessness in the present generation proceeds from the fact that it has exhausted all its strength in the effort to serve its own day. Admitting then that there are such organs, is the religious sentiment one of them ? If we answer in the aflirmative, let us observe what follows. Nothing less than the destruction of that theory of evolution which is now scientifically accepted as the law of natural development. Those powers which by sup- position are superseded in their function, are by supposition powers which have been outgrown by the race which has lost the use of them. But the claim of the religious sentiment is nothing less than the claim to be in communion with a divine nature. Will it then be said that the communion with a divine nature which is now denied to man, was possessed originally by the beast of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea ? Will it be said that the environment of the religious life which is refused to a rational soul, was possessed at the beginning by creatures devoid of that attribute to which we give the name of reason ? The pessimist Hartmann has advanced a view somewhat analo^'ous to this : he says that in the passage from the animal to the man there has been lost a sense; humanity is poorer by one faculty than the beast of the field. But then Hartmann, in advancing this theory, is Defence of the Bcligious Sentiment. 35 quite prepared to take the inevitable inference, and does take it — the inference, namely, that Darwinism is a delusion and modern science an error. He re- jects the modern doctrine of scientific development, on the ground that the development is not upwards but downwards, and that in passing from the animal to the human we have passed from the higher to the lower. We may safely say that in the light of such a conclusion the modern scientist will prefer to revert to the view of the psalmist. There is, then, no scientific anachronism in that sentiment of the Jewish prayer-book wliich causes the heart of man to claim an environment for his religious faculty, which leads him to seek for the instinct of his worship an object in the outward world such as all other instincts possess. But now, driven by the exigencies of the argument, there are some who have placed the difficulty on another field. Granted, they say, that the religious life of man, like all other phases of his life, must have an object adapted to it in the outer universe. Why should that object be sought where other objects are not sought ? — in the supernatural. Why should not nature itself be the object of the religious faculty, or of that power called by whatever name whereby man desires to commune with something beyond him ? Doubtless the religious sentiment, like every other impulse of our being, must have its environ- ment in some object of the surrounding world ; but 3G The Psalmist and the Scientist. why slioukl not that object be the surroiuidiiig world itself ? Is it not a monstrous leap in the reasoning process to bound to the conclusion that because every sense has its adaptation in natural things, the religious sense must have its adaptation in super- natural things ? Would we not expect the inference to be exactly the reverse of this ? Now we freely admit that if the object of the religious sentiment be conceived as supernatural in its adaptation, we have reached a conclusion out of harmony with all nature ; a supernatural adapta- tion to natural faculties is a contradiction in terms. The very notion of adaptation is the notion of correspondence — that is to say, of a certain uni- formity of character between the object communed with and the power with which it communes. How- ever transcendent be the object of our religious worship, it can only be an object of true worship in so far as it is understood by us — in other words, in so far as it is in contact with our own life. If any man likes to call the object of his religious worship by the name Nature, we shall make no objection. We cannot object to any name which expresses the fact that the Being whom we worship is worshipped by us by reason of a congruity between His life and ours. All worship must be founded on communion, and that with which a man communes must ever be natural to him. If, therefore, any one shall choose to m.\Q to the Being with whom he communes the Defence of the Ileligious Sentiment. 37 name of Nature, we shall refuse to see anything irreverent in the act. We shall only insist that he who gives to his deity this name, shall use the word in no partial or limited sense. We shall insist that in calling God Nature, he will mean something more than any particular object in nature, such as sun, or moon, or stars. We shall insist that he shall employ the term in its etymological and only rightful sense, to express all that is. He must use it to desig- nate not a particular phase of being, either physical, intellectual, or moral, but that which comprehends even while it transcends them all, which binds their diversities into a common unity, and makes them one. Above all, he must be careful not to exclude from his conception of nature any element which now exists within it — not to leave out of account from his estimate of the universe any portion of that universe which is now a matter of experience. Ac- cordingly, he will give scrupulous attention to incor- porate in his idea of nature the idea of life. The manifestation of life is nature's latest ]3roduct, but in a question of this kind time counts for nothinir. However it came and whenever it came, it is now as much a part of nature as any mass of matter or any atom of space. As such, it must be accounted for — that is to say, it must be counted in the estimate. He who speaks of God as Nature, must understand a living Nature — a principle which, whatever else it may contain, contains assuredly the element of life. 38 The Psalmist and ilic Scientist. Now it is worth while remarking that this seems to he the condition on which the Jewish prayer- book insists beyond all others — the association of the object of our worship with the idea of life. It is not very particular about the name it gives to the Deity ; sometimes it says Elohim, sometimes Je- hoA^ali. But the one thing on which it insists is, that its God shall be a living God. That for which the soul of the psalmist thirsts is a fountain of life — an object which, by community of life, can com- mune with his own nature. " My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." One w^ould almost im- agine that he had in his mind certain prevalent conceptions of God, which made religion "a dry, parched land." There were some amongst the Jewish theologians who, in their excessive desire to emphasise the personality of God, had made Him less than a living God. They had driven Him back into the remotest circle of the universe, and had placed Him there on an inapproachable throne. They had made His personalit}^ so distinct from all other personalities, that His life was incommuni- cable to any other life. Men believed in His exist- ence as they believed in the existence of a land beyond the sea, whose shores they had no means of ever reaching. And so it came to pass that the place of the living God was supplied by a hierarchy of angels. The chasm between earth and heaven Defence of the Beligious JShitimcnt. 39 was filled up in the imagination of the worshipper by a ladder of intermediate intelligences, on whose steps the humble suppliant might send up his petition to the throne of the Eternal. It was tliis conception of the universe which the soul of the psalmist repudiated. He thirsted for something more direct, more immediate, more divine. He was weary of liaving his prayers transmitted through second-hand agencies; he felt that such agencies were really further removed from him than was the Supreme Fountain of life. There had dawned within his heart the sense of a unity between himself and that Eternal whom he w^orshipped, the conviction that there was something in his own nature which responded to the nature of God. With such a con- viction, he chafed at the thought that he was made to send his messages through ambassadors in whose image he was not made and to whose nature he was not allied. He felt that he would be nearer to his goal if he could break down the celestial ladder and rise on the wings of a dove into personal communion and rest. He wanted to see the life which he believed to throb at the heart of the universe break forth from its isolation in tlie heart and penetrate through tlie arteries, to feel its pulsations every- where and always, alike in the rise of an empire and in the fall of a sparrow. The God whom he desired to worship was a God who should permeate the 40 Tlic Psahnist and tlic Scientist. length and tlic breadth, the height and the depth of all being, and in whose universal presence all things should live and move. Such was the thirst of the psalmist as expressed in the Jewish prayer-book ; the question is, Is this thirst an anachronism ? That men have still the same longing will be denied by none; but has the longing any longer an object to correspond with it ? The psalmist in his day believed that there was a life in nature corresponding to the aspirations of his living soul, and the presence of such a belief was itself a source of strength. Have we in our days lost the right to believe? Has the advance of modern science compelled us to banish from our conception of physical nature that element of life which constituted to the mind of the Jew the only source of physical beauty ? Are we no longer en- titled to regard the natural universe as anything more than a piece of mechanism knit together by wires and propelled by unintelligent forces ? If so, we must indeed cease to call God by the name of Nature, or to invest the idea of nature with any association of worship; it becomes an anachronism to print with a capital letter that which in our conception has ceased to be alive. But on what evidence are we asked to give up this primitive hope ? On what grounds are we required to believe that nature as a collective unity is devoid of the principle of intelligent life ? It Defence of the Ileligious Sentiment, 41 is surely fair, before coming to siicli a tremendous conclusion, to weigh carefully, calmly, and dispas- sionately the premisses on which it professes to be based. These premisses, indeed, are not difficult to find and very easy to state. AVe are told that the investigations of modern science are gradually tend- ing to the conclusion that all things in the universe have originally come from one thing, and that this one thing w\as a mass of matter. All the varieties of creation, what we call material and what we call immaterial alike, suns and systems^ trees and mountains, animals and men, were, we are told, originally comprehended within the folds of a fire- cloud. Whatever differences now prevail between them have been after-growths ; at the beginning, all things were indistinguishable. Mind with its lofty pretensions can claim no higher origin than the flower of tlie field, and the flower of the field can claim no superior pedigree to the most insensate atom of matter. Such is the doctrine of a large section of the scientific world. It stands at the farthest remove from our own personal belief. AYe believe, and shall in a subsequent chapter endeavour to show, that the original element out of which creation was evolved could not have been matter. But we are not yet ripe for this inquiry, and we do not wish to anticipate its conclusion. We shall, accordingly, sink on this occasion our own personal convictions, 42 Tkc p6cdmist and the Scientist. and shall endeavour for the sake of the arejumeiit to meet on its own ground the materialistic section of the scientific world. We shall assume in the meantime that the scientific materialist is riiiht. We shall take it for granted that he has proved his case, that he has established beyond controversy the position that the original element of creation was an element of matter. The question is, If it be so, what then? What the scientific materialist wants to prove is, that the sentiment of the Jewish prayer-book is an anachronism, that the belief in a living intelligent Nature can no longer be held. The argument by wliicli he professes to prove this, is the reduction of all things to a materialistic origin. Let us suppose that this position had been established, would the conclusion follow ? It is almost universally taken for granted that the proof of materialism would henceforth render impossible our belief in an intelligent principle in nature. Standing as we do at the farthest pole from mate- rialism, we are bound to confess that the inference has always seemed to us a premature one. Let us imagine that a revelation were made to the human race of its origination from dead matter, that it were clearly and demonstrably revealed to man that his whole mental constitution had been simply the pro- duct of what is called protoplasm — w^ould it follow from this, that men would thenceforth be illoc{ical in having an object of religious worship, or in recog- Defence of the Edigious Sentiment. 43 iiising that object as a concrete intelligence ? So far from being illogical, we hold that the reversion to such a worship would be strictly in accordance with the principles of materialistic reasoning. For, might not the worshipper argue thus : If dead matter has been able within a limited compass to produce such a wonderful intelligence as mine, why should it not with an infinite compass produce an infinite Intelligence ? If within a narrow sphere protoplasm has been able to bring forth this won- drous thing which I call my life, is it not reasonable to suppose that in the unlimited spheres of nature it may have brought forth a life commensurate with the vastness of the universe ? May not that life have been eternally begotten ? The scientist tells me that matter had no beginning : may not its living superstructure have been also without beginning ? And if I am allowed to go so far, may I not logically go further ? If this life of mine, which is by sup- position the product of protoplasm, has been able to dominate over that which made it, why should not the Infinite life, which is by supposition the product of material nature, be also able to dominate over that which is the basis of its being? If I, notwith- standing my material origin, have become a provi- dence to things beneath me, may not the life of nature be a Providence to the course of nature ? Nay, am I not entitled on these premises to take yet higher ground ? If I with my life hypothetical ly 44 Tlic Psalmist and the Scientist. derived from material principles am yet able to im- part my being to future generations, why should not this Infinite life, whose origin is also supposed to be material, be able in like manner to impart itself to mankind ? Is not the possibility of immortality itself involved in this analogy ? If the life of nature be a life which exhibits no diminution in its forces, would not its impartation to me make me partaker of its indestructibility ? Finally, if life as it exists in me is able to reveal itself to life as it exists in my brother man, why should not life as it exists in nature be able to reveal itself to my life ? If criti- cism should prove, which it never has proved, that no such revelation has yet been given, how would that demonstrate that no such revelation ever will be given ? Might it not be that the revelation itself had to wait for the development of the creature, and that the principle of scientific evolution might itself usher the life of creation into the glorious liberty of the sons of God ? You say this is, after all, but a poor conception of God. Undoubtedly it is — that is to say, it is poor when weighed against the riches of that thought of God which we derive from Christianity. But we must remember that religious worship existed long before the dawn of Christianity, and that in the large majority of cases the pre-Christian conception of God was no richer than this. Nay, it is not too Defence of the Religious Sentiment. 45 much to say that in the large majority of cases the pre-Christian conception of God was to all intents and purposes exactly this conception. The God of heathendom was for the most part not a being who created the universe, but a being whom the universe created. The Brahma of Hindu worship had his origin in a neuter principle analogous to what we understand by dead matter. The incarnations of Buddha were the coming into life and into person- ality of a principle which originally was impersonal, and which had risen into the rank of deity through a succession of transmigrations. The Logos of Philo was conceived to be an intelligent spirit who had risen or been developed out of the inanimate uni- verse ; the origin from which he sprang was a parent- age from something as dead as matter, and he ruled over a universe to which he owed his very being. Meagre and unsatisfactory as such conceptions were, they constituted for centuries the faith of millions of the human race. To such a God as this were poured forth the prayers of hundreds of thousands. The religious sentiment proved itself able to exist in a state of things analogous to that which would be produced by the establishment of scientific mate- rialism. The inference is not unreasonable that the establishment of scientific materialism would be fol- lowed by a regress towards this surmounted stand- point — a regress miserable and deplorable indeed 4G The Psalmist and the Scientist. when compared with the light of Christianity, yet evidencing even in its decay the continuity and im- perishableness of the religious sentiment. But now, having for the sake of the argument taken the lowest room, are we bound to remain there ? Whatever the sentiment of pagan antiquity may have been, the God of the Jewish prayer-book was a God wlio created all things, a Being who was not the product of material mechanism, but Himself the producer and the soul of the mechanism of nature. It remains, therefore, to ask on tliis branch of the subject, whether this higher conception of God is itself unscientific, whether the advance of modern research can ever shake this claim of the religious consciousness to place the object of its worship in the background and at the origin of all existing things. A consideration of the psalmist's position on this question will engage us in the following chapter. The Psalmist's Argument for God. CHAPTEE III. THE psalmist's ARGUMENT FOR GOD. Psalm xciv. 9-11. In our last chapter we considered the psalmist's evidence for the existence of a religious sentiment ; we have now to consider his view of the object of that sentiment. He has proved that there is ground for the belief in the existence of some higher Power adapted to the religious nature of man ; he now proceeds to show what is the character of that Power. The point which he wishes to establish is, not the being but the personality of God. He takes it for granted that there is a Power which has planted the ear, formed the eye, and given under- standing to the human soul ; what he wants to know is whether the Power which can thus con- fer intelligence can itself be less than intelligent. Our first impression is that the argument is labour thrown away. Is it not a truism, we say, to seek to establish a point which nobody ever doubted — 48 The Psalmist and the Scientist. that a being' who can give any possession to another must at first have liad that possession in his own hands ? Is it not a waste of time to construct the conclusion that the former of the eye must himself have light, and that the inspirer of knowledge must himself be wise ? And truly, to the common mind this first im- pression would seem to be the only tenable one. It so happens, however, that the common mind is in this instance at variance with the view of modern scientific and philosophic systems. The psalmist asks, " lie that planted the ear, shall He not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall He not see ? " The scientific materialist answers. There is not the least necessity. Let it be observed that the scientific materialist has no more doubt than the most orthodox theist, that the ear must have been planted and that the eye must have been formed by something. What that something is he does not profess to know, but he expresses his idea of its working by the general term evolution. He has no objection whatever to say that the ear has been planted and the eye formed by the developing process of Nature. He is therefore at one with the theist in seeking a cause or antecedent for the plant- ing of the ear and the forming of the eye. But where he differs from the theist is in the refusal to recognise the necessity that the giver of such intelligent organs as the ear and the eye should The Psalmist's Argument for God. 49 itself be intelligent. It is to him self-evident that these instruments of intellectual thought may have proceeded from a source of which the idea of thought is not prcdicable. Tlie scientific materialist would not for an instant deny that there is design in nature ; he admits that there is design in the actions of his own mind. But then he will not accept the doctrine that design must have come from desisfn : Lange says in so many words that tlie purposeful has grown out of the purposeless. This is only, in other words, directly to reverse the psalmist's argu- ment, and maintain that the ear may be planted by a power that is deaf, that the eye may be formed by a force that is blind. Now at first sight it seems incredible that such a view should be held by any class of men. But if we look a little beneath the surface, we shall find that science is not wholly responsible for its pro- mulgation, that in truth it rests upon a basis which is commonly accepted as much by the philosopher as by the scientist. It is almost universally held, alike by spiritualists and by materialists, that an effect has no resemblance to its cause. We are told again and again that there is no analogy whatever between a blow and the pain that follows it, be- tween the vibration of the air and the sensation of music which succeeds it, between the image on the retina and the perception of light which flows from it. From this it is said to follow as the veriest J) 50 TJic Psalmist and the Scientist. truism, that the effect is not in any sense similar to that whicli produced it. Whether the conclusion follows from the premiss, we shall presently con- sider ; hut in the meantime we wish to point out that if this conclusion be true, agnosticism is the only rational belief in tlie universe. Once grant that the effect has no resemblance to its cause, and you have destroyed for ever not only the argument from design, but every other argument for the sup- port of theism. Once grant that there is no analogy between that winch is produced and that which has produced it, and, for all that you know to the con- trary, every effect may be the result of its direct opposite. The materialist is then right in saying that life does not require life to account for its origin ; if the effect has no resemblance to the cause, why should not spirit be the child of matter ? The agnostic is then right in saying that the existence of design in me is no proof of the presence of design in that which produced me ; if the effect has no resemblance to the cause, why should not the pur- poseful have grown out of the purposeless ? The admission of this so widely accepted principle de- stroys at one blow the very possibility of faith, the very foundation of all religion. On the other hand, if this position be denied, if it be held that the effect has a resemblance to the cause, agnosticism must of necessity cease to exist. Once grant that wliat exists in the product must Tlie Psalmisfs Argument for God. 51 have existed in the producer, and all argument is thenceforth at an end ; religion has triumphed, and triumphed permanently. There is no longer any need of pursuing the argument from design, there is no longer any necessity for indulging in abstract speculation. The rankest materialist will admit that if the necessary resemblance of the effect to its cause could be established, materialism would, as a matter of course, cease to be. Human beings feel themselves to be in possession of intelligence ; if it could be proved that the cause must resemble the effect, it would be proved that the cause of human beings was intelligent ; there would be a direct affirmative to the question of the psalmist, " He that planted the ear, shall He not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall He not see ? " It has always seemed to us a very singular thing that the principle here insisted on should have occupied so insignificant a place in the history of natural theology. We have had whole treatises on the argument from design ; we have had bulky volumes on the argument a 2^'i^iori ; we have had lengthy disquisitions on the traces of a providential government. These are all good, but none of them lies at the root of the matter. The root of the matter is the unanswered question of the psalmist : " He that x^^^^i^ted the ear, shall He not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall He not see ?" — the ques- tion, in other words, whether there can exist an 52 The Fsal'mist and the Scientist. effect which has no resemblance to the cause of its being ? On the answer to that question depends the validity of every other argument. If a negative answer be returned, what is the use of establishing the proof of design in nature ? As we have already said, no one ever denies that design exists in yov. The question, and the only question, is, whether design in you implies design in that which originated you ? If the effect has no necessary resemblance to its cause, your proof of intelligence in nature is labour in vain. The real point of the difficulty has been touched by the old Jewish psalmist, when he desires to know whether an ear can be the product of aught but hearing, or an eye the off'spring of aught but sight. If natural theology would reach the crucial point, it must go back to the principle involved in the question of the psalmist. Let the theologian retrace his steps beyond the outworks into the citadel. Let him leave in the meantime his argument from design, his argument a piHori, his argument from the Providence of history, and let him go back to the ancient but still unanswered question of the psalmist — unanswered, that is, by scientific investigation. Let him confine his atten- tion solely and earnestly to the principle involved in that question — the relation which subsists between an effect and its cause. If, as the result of long study and exhaustive induction, he shall succeed in establishing the position that their relation is one The Psalmist's Arr/ument for God. 53 of resemblance, he shall have crowned apologetics with a triumph which all the united works on Christian evidence have failed to achieve, for he shall have placed it beyond all possible doubt that the Power Ivinoj at the basis of this universe is the force of an intelliGjent life. The psalmist, it will be observed, never entertains a doubt as to the affirmative answer which must be returned to his question ; he makes the inquiry in the manner of a redudio ad absurdum. Now the question is. Is this confidence of the psalmist an anachronism ? We have already said that it is the common opinion both of scientists and philosophers that there is no necessary resemblance between an effect and its cause. But this does not make the psalmist's view an anachronism. Nothing can make an old view obsolete but a knowledge of contrary facts. The question is, Have there intervened since the days of the psalmist any new facts which have rendered it impossible to adhere to his opinion ? or, Have we reached any interpretation of the old facts which militates against that opinion ? That is the question we intend to consider in the present chapter. We do not seek here to establish a ^roof that the effect must have a resemblance to its cause ; that is a task which would require a volume to itself, and would demand a more extensive knowledge of all departments of nature than we claim to possess. We here confine ourselves to the disproof of the 54 Tlic Fsalviist and the Scientist. negative. The whole motive of our present inquiry is to investigate whether tlie religious sentiment be an anachronism, whether it has been superseded by the facts of the new science. It is in this liuiht alone, therefore, that we propose to view the present subject. The psalmist declares that an effect can- not exist which has no resemblance to its cause ; we want to know whether the advance of modern investigation has made that declaration obsolete, whether the light of the new science has compelled us to revise the old conclusion, and so placed another barrier in the w'ay of the religious sentiment. There are three directions in which the conclusion of the psalmist has been assailed, three grounds on which it has been declared impossible to hold that the effect must necessarily have a resemblance to its cause. They are all grounds of experience, and as such they merit our closest attention. They may be comprehended under the names — everyday ex- perience, chemical experience, and evolutionary experience. Strangely enough, it is in the field of everyday experience that the sentiment of the psalmist has encountered its severest opposition. Obvious as the conclusion seems to be that an effect cannot proceed from something which is wholly unlike it, there are yet facts of common observation which appear on the surface to point to a contrary inference. It is on the ground of one of these everyday experiences The Psalmist's Argument for God. 55 that the psalmist's argument has met the ridicule of one of our greatest modern thinkers. Mr J. S. Mill, in speaking of the belief that an effect must resemble its cause, sarcastically asks whether the cook who made this hot soup must herself have been made of pepper. A¥e were ourselves lately accosted by the same question in another form. In ventilating the views to which we are here giving publicity, we were interrupted by a gentleman's interrogation, whether his wife had any resemblance to the picture of a dog which she had just painted. The question came to us as a help, and threw back its light upon that of Mr J. S. Mill. We saw it to be a test case on which the whole fabric must rise or fall. Clearly there was no resemblance between the living woman and the painted dog, any more than there was any resem- blance between the pepper in the soup and the nature of the cook. Was, then, the whole ship to be wrecked on this small rock, or was there an error somewhere in the statement of the question ? Was there any point assumed in the question which was not really involved in it ? If so, where did it lie ? A very brief reflection soon led us to the discovery that there was an error in the statement of the major premiss — the woman who painted this dog is the cause of the dog. Such a premiss, if accepted as valid, could certainly lead to only one conclusion — that the effect in this case was altogether unlike its cause. But a deeper observation makes it clear that 56 Tlic Psalmist and the Scientist, the woman in this instance is not the cause of the painted dog. The cause of the painted dog is not the woman in herself, but the woman in the act of paint- ing. The inward personality has very little to do with the matter ; any other person would have done as well, provided he or she had performed the same physical process. Now, let us observe that the mo- ment the matter is stated in this way, we get a com- plete reversal of our first impression. When the painted dog is referred to the act of the painter, so far from being unlike the cause which produced it, it will be found to be an exact copy of that cause, a direct transcript of the impression which has been made. The two elements to be taken into the account are the colour and the form, and each of them is explained, and only explained, on the prin- ciple of resemblance to the cause. The colour im- pressed on the canvas is the colour originally con- tained (5n the brush which communicated it; the form of the completed structure is the final result of those movements by which the hand of the artist guided itself into different spatial directions. It seems to us that there are more things in the uni- verse than the painted dog which may be ultimately found to have their explanation in the same way. It is a favourite doctrine of mental philosophy tliat there can be no resemblance between things as they really are and things as we see them. If so, we shall be warranted in asking whether the forms of The Psalmist's Alignment for God. 57 things as they really are, are the causes of those forms which we see; and if not, what are these causes ? May it not be that the forms which we see are, like the form of the painted dog, the last results of those spatial directions which the forces of the brain traverse in conducting the processes of life ? The question is one for the physiologist ; we merely throw out the suggestion and pass on. The illustration of the painted dog is exactly analogous to the illustration of Mr J. S. Mill, and as the result of examination it must share the same fate. He says that on the principle of resemblance between the effect and its cause, the cook who made the hot soup must herself have been made of pepper. We accept the conclusion, but we insist on a defini- tion of terms. Mr Mill understands the cook to be the woman ; clearly this is inadequate — the cook is the woman in action, and in that particular form of action called culinary. Looking at the matter in this light, we have no hesitation whatever in saying that pepper must have been in the cook's composi- tion ; it is one of the ingredients in the cause, the other ingredient being an active will. Meantime, what we have to observe is, that everything which has passed from the cause into the effect bears an exact resemblance in the latter to what it presented in the former. The pepper in the soup owes its origin to pepper outside the soup. There is more than that : whatever may be said of the principle of 58 The Psalmist and the Scientist. biogenesis in general, there is no doubt that in this instance the vital sensation of heat is the direct re- sult of a preceding vital sensation of the same sort. If the pepper came into the soup by an act of cook- ery at all, and not by the force of a blind accident, it will be impossible to avoid the conclusion that the heat which I feel owes its orisjin to the mental feeling: of the same heat in the cook's imagination, the mental feeling being itself, according to materialistic science, only a reproduction of the actual sensation. Here then, in this famous illustration of Mr Mill, we have a direct instance of the principle that an effect re- sembles its cause. We have an outward inojredient, called pepper, associated with an inward sensation, called heat, and each of them, as a matter of fact, is referable to a similar element. The pepper has its origin in the impartation of its own essence from without, and the sensation of heat, on the part of the recipient, owes its origin to the fact that the same sensation was at first experienced and afterwards imagined by the woman who made the soup. Now, it will be found that in every instance in which the experience of everyday life has seemed to violate the argument of the psahiiist, the cause of the seeming violation has been the same as in the famous illustration of Mr Mill. What is the reason that, at first sight, Mr Mill's illustration wears an appearance of plausibility ? Why is it TJte Fscdniisfs Argument for God. 59 that, on a superficial view, it seems to establish the position that there is no necessary resembhmce be- tween an effect and its cause ? The reason of the plausibility lies in this, that there is an assumed major premiss which is yet not expressed; if it were expressed, the validity of the reasoning w^ould at once be questioned. Mr Mill says that there is no resemblance between the pepper in the soup and the woman who put it there ; this is true and indis- putable. But then Mr Mill takes it for granted that the woman is the sole cause of the pepper ; he for- gets that the act of imtting it there counts for some- thing in the transaction. The cook is with him simply the person ; in any scientific statement of causality, she must be viewed as the person in action. The error of Mr Mill, therefore, is a logical error ; it consists in attributing to the part of a cause the accomplishment of the whole. Now, in every case in which the commonplace experiences of life seem to lend a similar plausibility to the essential differ- ence of effect and cause, it will be found on exam- ination that there is a similar logical error at the root of the statement; in other words, that a part of the cause is taken for the whole. Take, for example, that instance adverted to above— the state- ment that there is no resemblance between the force which inflicts a blow and the pain which follows it. Of course there is no resemblance; no man, either ancient or modern, would maintain tliat there is. 60 Tlie Psalmist and the Scientist. But shall we conclude from this that there is no necessary resemblance between an effect and its cause ? If we do, we are simply repeating the logical error of Mr Mill ; we are assuming that the force which inflicts a blow is the cause of that pain which follows it. Now, it is certainly one of the causes, but only one. There is another important factor in the process, and that is — the existence of a sentient organism. AVe are popularly in the habit of thinking that the sentiency has been created Ijy the blow ; in point of fact, unless the sentient ele- ment be co-operative, there can be no pain at all. The force of the most ponderous blow descending on a wooden board will never produce pain, nor would it have any effect even on a human organism if the members of that organism were mortified. This is, of course, a truism; but it is one of those truisms which, in a discussion of this kind, are highly suggestive. To say that no force impinging on a dead body can communicate pain to that body is just, in other words, to say that life itself is re- quired as one of the factors in the production of pain. It is quite unnecessary, therefore, to seek a resem- blance between the striking force and the suffering impression, quite irrelevant to discover a difference between them. AVhatever difference exists between the effect and that part of the cause under observa- tion, is to be accounted for by the fact that there is another part of the cause which is not under obser- The Psalmist's Argument for God. 61 vation, but which, were it only visible, would destroy the appearance of uulikeness between the thing pro- duced and the agency of its production. This leads us to consider the second of these classes of phenomena which appear at first sight to militate against the view of the psalmist; it is that which we have called chemical experience. It is alleged that in the sphere of chemistry two com- pounds can produce a third element which in its nature is distinctly different from either. If so, we shall be driven inevitably to the conclusion that the argument of the psalmist is untenable; that there is no necessity for a resemblance to exist between an effect and its cause — that the power which planted the ear need not hear, and that the force which formed the eye need not see. But is it so ? To answer this question we do not require to examine a series of instances; w^e shall take a test case, a case on which modern science itself desires that the argument may stand or fall. The instance to which we allude is Professor Huxley's celebrated illustra- tion derived from the supposed absence of an anal- ogy between the substance called water and those elements of oxygen and hydrogen which compose it.^ Professor Huxley wishes to show that there is no reason in the nature of things why the thing we call life should not have been originally produced by non-living matter. To support this view he adduces ^ Lay Sermons, p. 149. G2 The Psalmist and the Scientist. the instance of water, which is a product of the two chemical elements called oxygen and hydrogen, but which he avers bears no resemblance to these ele- ments. He asks if there is any greater difference between tlie product called life and the material structure which forms its basis, than there is be- tween the substance called water and the oxygen and hydrogen which constitute its composition. He says that in this latter case there is not a single analogy between the effect and its cause ; and he asks with an air of triumph, why in the case of life and mind we should not be content to accept a similar absence of resemblance. If an element like water can proceed from elements so unlike it as oxygen and hydrogen gas, why should not the ear be planted by that which does not hear, and the eye formed by that which does not see ? Now, Professor Huxley has thrown down this case as a gantlet ; he is willing to rest upon it the issue of the whole argument. We shall therefore accept it as a test case, and should we find that it does not bear out Professor Huxley's conclusion, we shall be warranted in inferring that no objection on the side of chemistry can be made to the faith of the psalmist. The simple question then is. Does the instance given by Professor Huxley bear out his own position ? does the nature of the element called water prove by illustration that there is no necessary resemblance between an effect and its cause ? Pro- The Psalmisfs Argwnent for God. 63 fessor Huxley says that water difiers essentially from the oxygen and liydrogen which compose it. We ask, Wherein does that difference consist ? If it lie anywhere it must be in one or other of three things — either in the quantity, in the effective power, or in the appearance. Is the difference between water and the two elements which compose it a difference of quantity ? Professor Huxley himself and every man of science in the world will strenuously main- tain that it is not. It is the express doctrine of evolution that in the correlation of forces the quan- tities are exactly equivalent. The forces involved in each of the elements called oxygen and hydroo-en are neither more nor less than the forces involved in that union of oxygen and hydrogen which forms water. So far, then, the effect is not only not dissimilar to the cause, but is the exact reproduction of the cause. Let us take, therefore, the second alternative. Is the effective power of water different in its quality from what we should predict the united effect of oxygen and hydrogen to be ? Oxygen and hydrogen, when taken separately, have confessedly contrary properties : oxygen preserves flame ; hydrogen ex- plodes or extinguishes it. Let us consider now those relative proportions of tlie two elements which are necessary to the production of water. In order to produce water two volumes of hydrogen must be combined with one volume of oxygen ; in other words, a double portion of tlie explosive or extin- 64 The Psalmist and the Scientist. guishiiig element must be brought into contact with a single portion of the preserving element. What, then, should we naturally expect or predict from such a combination ? Clearly that after the union of the two there would be an element in existence which would have the effect of extinguishing flame wherever it was applied to it, and yet of extin- fruishinoj it not with absolute instantaneousness, but as the result of an overcome resistance. Such is exactly the effect which as a matter of fact results from the application of water to fire : the fire is extinc^uished after a resistance more or less strong^. The reason both of the extinction and of the struo^gle lies in the fact that the water is on both sides of the question. It contains within itself an element com- mon to the fire, and therefore an element which if it stood alone would preserve the fire. But it does not stand alone. In addition to this force in common with the fire, the water contains another force of exactly the opposite tendency, a force which by its nature is opposed to the continuance of flame ; and as the water possesses this second force in a double proportion to the former, there results a complete suppression of the first tendency and an ultimate extinction of the fire. Here again there is not only no contrariety between the effect and its cause, but a complete and unbroken harmony, a perfect resem- blance between the effect produced with the two forces in combination, and the effect which must The Psalmist's Argument for God. 65 liave been predicted from looking at the two forces in isolation with reference to such a union. On two sides, therefore, we have been brouiiht to one conclusion — that the illustration given by Pro- fessor Huxley, so far from proving his position, goes to establish a contrary position, the necessary resem- blance between an effect and its cause. We have seen that whatever distinction exists between oxy- gen and hydrogen in their separation, and oxygen and hydrogen in their union, does not consist in a difference of quantity. We have seen that wherever the dissimilarity may lie between the elements in isolation and the elements in combination, it cer- tainly does not lie in the fact that the elements in combination have a power which we could not have predicted from seeing them in isolation. One other alternative remains, and it is that on which Profes- sor Huxley will probably base his case : it may be said, and it cannot be gainsaid, that when oxygen and hydrogen are united in the form of water, they present to the senses a totally different a;ppearance from that which they have in separation. This is the most plausible point in Professor Huxley's case, because it is something which is instantaneously evident to the most common observation. When Professor Huxley speaks of the dissimilarity be- tween this effect and its cause, his mind is mainly dwelling upon a dissimilarity of appearance. He is looking at water as he proposes to look at life — in E C)G The Psalmist and tlic Scientist. the light of a phenomenon addressed to the senses. If the phenomenon called water when addressed to the organs of sense presents so totally different an appearance from those phenomena called oxygen and liydrogen which caused it, why should not the ele- ment named life he also allowed to present an appearance totally unlike those materials which formed its being ? Why should we not be entitled to say that as the appearance called water is a manifestation of oxygen and hydrogen, so the appearance called life is a manifestation of material protoplasm ? Such is Professor Huxley's reasoning, and it has in it an air of plausibility. But now, if we loolv deeper, we shall see that there is a flaw in the argument — nay, that there is precisely the same flaw which appeared in the reasoning of Mr Mill. Let us observe that throughout the whole train of Professor Huxley's argument there is the as- sumption of something whose truth is considered so self-evident that it is not only never proved, but never even stated. It is taken for wanted that o the peculiar appearance presented by water owes its origin to the combination of the two elements, oxygen and hydrogen. Now, so far from being self-evident, this is not the fact. The combination of oxygen and hydrogen is certainly a part of the reason why water has its peculiar appearance, but it is only a part, and therefore by itself it is as The Fsahnisfs Argument for God. G7 inadequate to explain the whole as if it had no connection with the process at all. Professor Huxley assumes that there are only two factors engaged in producing the appearance of water — oxygen and hydrogen. In reality there are three — oxygen, hydrogen, and the sensuous organism. It is the wildest delusion to imagine that in the appearance which w^ater presents to the senses these senses themselves have no share ; on the contrary, they are the main factor in the produc- tion of the result. If two men come behind me and push me violently forward, there results from that combination of forces the manifestation of a third and quite different apparition — I am myself brought to the ground. But will it be said that this third phenomenon is entirely due to the com- bination of the two first forces ? Is it not clear that I myself am a most important factor in the production of my own fall ? The principle in Professor Huxley's illustration is precisely the same. The two forces, oxygen and hydrogen, are in combination to produce a result upon Qiie, but in order to produce the result upon me I must myself co-operate with them. If I insist on shutting my eyes, the combination of the two forces will never present to my sight the appearance called water. No outward force and no combination of outward forces could ever generate a sensuous impression where there was not already in existence a sentient 68 The Psalmist and the Seientist. organism, and where that sentient organism was not already acting in harmony with them. If oxygen and hydrogen could produce the appear- ance of water in a bodily framework not already animated by life, Professor Huxley's illustration would be perfect, and the sentiment of the psalm- ist would be an anachronism. But in order to produce that appearance it is necessary that there should already be in existence a sentient principle which lias proved itself otherwise capable of re- ceiving visual impressions from the forces of nature, or of imparting to these forces its own visual en- velopment. We have put the matter alternatively, because there are and probably w^ill always be two distinct schools of thought on the subject of percep- tion — one holding that the mind is clothed by nature from without, the other that the mind clothes nature from within. To our present subject it matters not. Whichever of the schools of thought we elect to fol- low — whether we say with Locke that the mind was originally a sheet of blank paper on which nature wrote, or whether we hold with Berkeley that wliat we call nature is itself but mind's handwriting on an unknown wall — we shall equally be driven to the conclusion that mind is an integral part in the causation of all phenomena. Whether it acts first or acts last it always acts energetically, and with- out its action the universe, as we know it, would cease to be. It is vain, therefore, for Professor The Psalmist's Argument for God. 69 Huxley to attempt a parallel between the nature of life and the nature of water. Life itself is one of the ingredients in the production of water — nay, it is the main ingredient, for it is by this and by this alone that we reach that appearance of peculi- arity and distinctiveness which seems to separate the water from those elements which constitute its structure. We have now looked at this question from two sides ; we have viewed it from the side of every- day experience, and we have considered it in the light of chemical knowledge. There remains yet another aspect in which we may regard it ; we may contemplate it in its relation to the great principle of evolution itself. This is the field most commonly chosen by the professed scientific materi- alist. He tells us that as a matter of fact it has now been demonstrated that the law of the universe is a law of evolution, and he goes on to tell us that the law of evolution is a principle by which the higher comes out of the lower. He points as evi- dences of tliis demonstration to what we actually see in the world around us. He tells us that our own consciousness has been developed out of an unconscious germ-cell, that those lofty sensuous manifestations to which in their collective unity we give the name of mind were originally compre- hended within the automatic movements of a piece of protoplasm. He tells us that what happens to 70 The Psalmist and the Scientist. the human embryo in each individual form, is pre- cisely what has happened to the embryo of life in freneral. There must have been a time in which it began to be, and its beginning must liave been like the beginning of the embryonic cell. It must have had its origin in forms analogous to those creatures which reveal simply movement and no more, and in which the passage from death into life has as yet not been detected on the part of the recipient. If, then, evolution teaches that as a matter of fact the higher grows out of the lower, the conscious out of the unconscious, the purposeful out of the purposeless, we are asked by what species of reasoning we shall attempt to show that there must exist a resemblance between the effect and its cause ; by what argument we shall establish the position that the power which planted the ear must itself have been capable of hearing, and that the force which formed the eye must itself have been endowed with sight. Such is the reasoning of the materialist based on the principle of evolution. But there is an error in the very heart of that reasoning — an error which will be admitted on reflection by the candid evolu- tionist himself ; it lies in the materialist's definition of what evolution is. He defines it to be the prin- ciple by which the higher comes out of the lower. This is not the definition of evolution. Evolution is not the principle by which the higher comes out The Psalmist's Argument for God. 71 of the lower, but it is the principle by which the many come out of the one. An evolution may be an ascent from the lower to the higher, or it may be equally a descent from the higher to the lower; but it is neither the ascenclinfy nor the descendincp which makes it an evolution. The only thing which can entitle it to such a name, is the fact of its being a process whereby a single form of existence has been multiplied into many forms ; whether the multiplication has been in an upward or in a down- ward direction, is quite another question. The nearest approach we can make to a description of what evolution is, will perhaps be reached by im- agining the case of a very primitive community in which all professions are combined in the efforts of a single man ; he is butcher, grocer, tailor, doctor, lawyer. In process of time the talents of the com- munity will develop in different directions, and each man will start business in his own direction. The result will be that in a few years those offices origin- ally discharged by a single man will be discharged by different men ; there will be a distribution of those elements which at first were concentrated in unity. Yet in all this there is not really any generic advance from the lower to the higher ; there is simply a disintegration of the one into the many. The elements which are ultimately shared through- out the community are not new discoveries; they have all already existed as the functions of one 72 TJie Psalmist and the Scientist. being. They are like tlie rivers of Paradise, which, in leaving their seat of unity, are parted into four heads, but which in the act of their partition have added noticing either to tlieir quantity or to tlieir essence. If, then, evolution signifies essentially a disinte- gration of the one into the many, it is highly un- scientific to assume before examination, that in any given case it must have been an ascent from the lower to the higher. To prove any process to be an evolution, we liave only to prove that it has been a process whereby multiplicity has come from unity ; but when w^e have reached this goal, the question will still remain in abeyance whether it has been a process upward or downward. That question can- not be solved by assumption ; it can only be settled by patient investigation. We have no right, there- fore, to say beforehand that the development of man is a process by which the conscious has grown out of tlie unconscious; we must try that question on other grounds. It is not difficult to see on what grounds it ought to be tried. Instead of assuming that consciousness is something which has been added in the course of development, the scientific method is to begin by asking whether anything else has been added. Let us in the meantime put con- sciousness on one side, and leave its origin an open question. Let us then direct our attention to those other elements wliich confessedly belong to the na- The Psalmist's Argument for God. 73 ture of man, and let ns inquire whether these liave or have not been added in the course of evolutionary development. If we shall find that any one of them has been so added, we shall require to give up the original pre - existence of consciousness, and along with it the argument of the psalmist. One negative instance is sufficient to overturn a whole train of inductive reasoning. If in the constitution of human nature there exists one element now which did not exist at the beginning, we shall liave every reason to believe that the phenomena of consciousness are in a similar position. But if, on the other hand, we shall find that there is no physical element of man's present structure which did not exist at the first hour of his formation, if we shall discover that those organic materials which now constitute his com- pleted development were present originally in that primitive process wherein his development began, we shall be justified in coming to the conclusion that the phenomena of consciousness also have been no after-growth of man's being, but have been them- selves the main factors in brinoino- his being: to perfection. Now, at first sight it seems a startling and even an absurd question to ask whether the organic materials whicli are found in man's latest structure were originally present at the formation of that structure. It appears equivalent to asking whether tlie germ-cell is equal to the developed organism, 74 The Psalmist and the Scientist. whether the embryo is on a level with the full- grown man. Is it not transparent, previous to any argument, that the germ-cell is but a nucleus of the structure, that the embryo is but the first step in the organic ladder? And if so, how can it be asked whether the fully developed structure has added anything to the first nucleus of its forma- tion ? Is it not plain that it has added nearly every- thing to the elements of the germ-cell in which its life began ? Undoubtedly it has ; it has added nearly everything to the germ-cell, but the germ- cell is not the entire source of its original forma- tion. The source of its original formation is the germ-cell in union with all nature. The doctrine of evolution does not hold — nay, does not admit — that the cause of the man is the embryo, or that the cause of the oak is the acorn. There was a time in which it was believed that the embryo contained the man, and the acorn the oak, in miniature. That doctrine has, in our century, been exploded. No man of science would now admit that the primitive elements of any structure existed originally in the nucleus of that structure. That every structure has an original nucleus will be denied by none, but it has in our days been ascertained that the original nucleus in any case forms a very insignificant factor in the development of the future plant or organism. The acorn could never produce the oak, the embryo could never produce the man; in order to reach The Psalmist's Argument for God. 75 their goal, each of them must enter into union with another and a more powerful factor. That factor is nothing less than the universe itself — that whole system of nature in which the primitive element of the future plant or animal is environed. In order to bring forth the oak, the acorn must be married to the material universe; the oak may have the acorn for its father, but it has united nature for its mother. Measured by tlie acorn in itself, the oak has vastly added to the materials of the original structure, for scarcely one of its later elements existed in the bosom of that structure. But thouo^h they existed not in the acorn, they were all present in the co-operative agency of nature ; they were qualities of the mother, though not of the father. Amidst all the apparent addition, there has in reality been nothing added at all. Everything which did not at one time belong to the tree was at one time absorbed out of the air and sunshine. Not only has there been no addition in the direction of generic novelty ; it is only in a qualified sense that we can affirm any addition in the direction of comparative intensity. To say that the effect cannot transcend the cause, is not merely to say that the absolutely new cannot come out of the old ; it is to say that the perfect cannot come out of the imperfect. If the imperfect can of itself produce a form nearer to perfection, the principle of causality is as much transcended as if the old could produce the absolutely 76 The Psalmist ami the Scientist. new. The developed man is vastly nearer to perfec- tion than the embryonic germ-cell which formed the nucleus of his being; but we have seen that this nucleus is not the sole cause of his beiuo;. What prevents it from being the sole cause of his develop- ment is just the fact of its imperfection. There is an element in the developed man which is not present in the embryonic germ. Not being present in the embryonic germ, evolutionists conclude that at the first formation of man's being it must have been present elsewhere ; elsewhere, accordingly, they have sought for it, and have found it in nature. Why have the evolutionists sought for the cause of human development outside as well as inside the germ ? Why have they not been content to say that the imperfect embryo has produced the com- paratively perfect man ? Simply because the evo- lutionists themselves, whatever some of them may hold in theory, cannot admit in practice that the less can ever make the greater, that the part can ever generate the whole. Accordingly, it has become to them clear that the elements of man's materially developed structure are in no sense new elements, that the forces of man's physically organised being are in no sense new forces. They are merely readaptations, redistributions, readjustments, the entrance into new combinations, of thinos wliich in their isolated state existed long before in equal perfectness. The Psalmist's Argument for God. 77 Such is the doctrine of evolution itself on this im- portant and far-reaching question. It is not some- thing advanced by the theologian as an argument against the modern theory of development ; it is it- self an integral part of that theory. Every evolu- tionist, whether materialist or spiritualist, atheist or theist, is agreed in asserting that the physical elements which compose any developed structure were originally present at the formation of that structure. They were not all nor even most of them present in the germ-cell, but those which were not in the germ- cell were supplied by external na- ture. To destroy this doctrine would be to destroy evolution at a blow, for it is a distinctive principle of evolution that no new element can be added to the original system of nature. The argument, there- fore, begins to narrow itself. On the verdict of evolution itself, we have arrived at the conclusion that whatever physical elements exist now in any developed structure, must have existed beforehand at the formation of that structure. The question is. Is there to be one exception to the rule ? There is an element in every organism whose origin presents a mystery to the eyes of all ; it is the thing called life. Whether it be a thing physical or spiritual, is a question that will be differently answered by the materialist and tlie intuitionist. We shall not here dispute the point; it is irrelevant to our present purpose. What is relevant to our present 78 Tlic Psalmist and tlic Scientist. purpose is to observe that the argument now in hand is of equal weight whether we adopt the view of the materialist or intuitionist, whether w^e decide to say that life is a very subtle form of matter, or prefer to call it a distinct and independent essence. We sliall hereafter have occasion to estimate the relative probabilities of these views ; meantime we shall assume, for the sake of the argument, that the materialist is right. We shall say that life is only the latest fruit of the physical tree, only tlie last and most refined product of the elements of outward nature. The question then comes to be this : Is this physical element which we call life to be the only physical element in nature whose phenomena and manifestations are altogether unlike tlie source from which they come ? We have seen that in every other case, evolution itself being the judge, we have simply a distribution and collocation of old manifestations into new^ orders of arrangement; is this to be the one solitary instance in which the new distribution is to produce an effect so novel as to be, in the strictest sense, equivalent to a new creation ? We ask the question in the interest of evolution itself ; nor is it w^e who ask it for the first time. Why is it that Professor Huxley, after re- ducing everything to protoplasm, winds up by sug- gesting that protoplasm may not be what it seems ? Why is it that Professor Tyndall,^ after bringing all ^ See Belfast addresf^'. The Psalmist's Argument for God. 79 things within the circle of the material, declares that the common parentage from matter is inex- plicable unless matter itself contain the promise and potence of life ? Why is it that Professor Clifford/ after repudiating all theological concep- tions, lias referred the ultimate origin of things not to a set of physical forces, but to a series of sentient impressions or feelings ? AVhy is it that Professor Haeckel,^ after launching the thunderbolts of his wrath against every form of dualism, has declared that all matter has also a mental «ide ? In each and all of these cases the reason is the same. It is be- cause these men perceive that if matter be from the beginning the opposite of what we call life, the exist- ence of life at the end is a creation out of nothing. It is because they see that to admit the rise of life from elements which had in them no original oemi of the vital principle, is to deprive evolution itself of that basis of continuity on wliose lines alone it can work. That is the ground on which the evolu- tionists of our day have been driven, in other words and in another form, to assert tlie self-same teachino^ of the psalmist, that the power which planted the ear must hear, and that the principle which formed the eye must see. If that teaching of the psalmist be in our days no longer valid, if it be one of those ^ See an essay "Of Things as they are," in Su' Frederick Pollok's collection. - See preface to his 'History of Creation.' 80 Tlie Psalmist and the Scientist. things which evohition has superseded, and science has rendered an anachronism, our evokitionists have given themselves useless trouble in seeking to find in matter the promise and the potence of life. Why should life liave either a promise or a potence ? If there is no need to seek any resemblance between an effect and its cause, there is surely no need to seek any premonition of the spiritual in the material. If that which makes one thing the cause of another is simply the fact of its antecedence, it is highly irrelevant to search in the antecedent for a promise or potence of the consequent. The fact that modern science does so search is itself deeply significant. It shows that in the view of evolutionists, and within the domain of evolution, we have not emerged from that ancient necessity of thought expressed in the question of the psalmist — the necessity to find in the cause a prefiguration of that which it produces. It reveals to our modern civilisation that with all its vaunted advance it has not even scientifically eman- cipated itself from the power of those primitive intuitions which regulated the life and the belief of earlier days, and that the instinct is as strong in science as it was in the Judaic religion, which prompted the mind of the psalmist to ask, " He that planted the ear, shall He not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall He not see ? " We have seen, indeed, one curious attempt to re- fute this principle by the weapons of theology itself. The Psalmist's Argument for God. 81 It occurs in one passage of a book written in the interest of evolution with much power and ability — • Fiske's ' Cosmic Universe.' What Mr Eiske says is in effect this : Carry out your principle of the neces- sary resemblance between an effect and its cause, and see where it will land you. You feel intelli;::^ence in yourself, and you conclude that the cause which produced you must also be intelligent ; you attribute to the Deity that which you perceive to be the noblest part of you. But why do you not say that because you are possessed of a body, the being who created you must also be a body ? If you could imagine a piece of matter gifted with a momentary intelligence sufficient to inquire into the cause of its own existence, would it not be natural for that piece of matter to say, "I am material, therefore God must be material " ? You would not accept the conclusion of this hypothetically endowed piece of matter, and yet in rejecting it you are rejecting the whole principle of your argument, the necessary resemblance between an effect and its cause. It seems very easy to infer that He who planted the ear must hear, and that He who formed the eye must see, because sight and hearing are to you the types of noble things whose analogies you are not unwilling to attribute to the Deity. But the ear itself would have an equal right to say that the power which created it must be an ear ; the eye would have an equal right to affirm that the cause 82 The Psalmist and the Scientist. which formed it must be an eye. Your reason for rejecting the latter conclusion is simply your belief that matter is something degraded, which, therefore, you are not entitled to attribute to the Deity. But you must either accept your principle througliout, or abandon it altogether. If it be a principle that the effect must necessarily and at all times have a resemblance to its cause, then must you attribute materialism to God as well as spirituality and in- telligence ; if you refuse to seek tlie origin of mate- rialism in something analogous in the nature of God, you are bound logically to reject the validity of the psalmist's argument that the planter of the ear must hear, and that the former of the eye must see. Now in all this specious reasoning there is a glaring assumption. It is taken for granted from the outset that a piece of matter, as we know it, is something different from intelligence, and therefore something which on the psalmist's principle requires a different origin from intelligence. It is, on the contrary, a notorious fact that a piece of matter, as we know it, is neither more nor less than a form of intelligence. We say, " as we know it ; " what it is in itself we cannot tell, and philosophers have always been divided as to whether its ultimate nature be real or ideal. But as to the appearance which it presents to us, there is not and never has been any difference of opinion at all. All of every school are agreed that whatever the piece of matter be in itself, The Psalmist's Argitment for God. 83 it is, as known to us, only a series of sensations bound together by an act of thought. Its colour, its shape, its size, its hardness, its softness, are known to me simply as affections of my senses, and are per- fectly inconceivable by me apart from the existence of a thinking mind. It cannot be too clearly kept in view that in the judgment of all scientists as well as of all philosophers, on the admission alike of Christian, theist, pantheist, agnostic, and materialist, the objects which we call physical are, as known to us, simply the manifestations of that which we term spirit. AYhat appearance they may have outside the realm of spirit we shall never be able to know, but we know beyond all controversy that all which we see and hear and touch is simply a mental manifes- tation. We who believe in an ultimate principle of intelligence, and who ground our faith in that prin- ciple on the necessity for a resemblance between the effect and its cause, can have no difficulty whatever in finding the origin of matter in the nature of God. If matter is to us simply a manifestation of mind, it seems natural and even necessary to conclude that it has always been a manifestation of mind. "What do we mean by attributing to God the fact of creation ? Not merely that at some remote period of the past He called into being the visible system which we now behold — a conception which, if it stopped there, would leave us but half a God. What we mean by calling (lod the Creator is not that 84 The Psalmist and the Scientist. creative power was once one of His attributes, but that it is alicays one of His attributes. The creative power of God is a manifestation of Himself. The visible lives within the invisible ; it is already to the spirit of the universe what it becomes to tlie spirit of man. Creation, all that we know of creation, exists in our thought — exists as a spiritual eifect ; where shall we look for a resembling cause ? Where else can we look than to the recognition of the great belief that the creation which now exists in our thought existed eternally in the thought of God ? In the recognition of that belief the presence of the material universe shall become not a denial but a corroboration of the psalmist's faith, "He that planted the ear, shall He not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall He not see ? " The Fsaliidd'^ Vicio of the Origin of Life. 85 CHAPTEE IV. THE psalmist's VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. Psalm xxxvi. 9. The great scientific search of the nineteenth cen- tury is to elude the guardianship of the cherubim and the flaming sword, which, according to old tra- dition, keep the secret of the origin of life. Every step in the progress of evolution has been a step taken by science with the express purpose of un- masking this secret — of penetrating, if possible, be- yond the environment of things into that inner court of the tabernacle which contains their unknown essence and hides their undisclosed mystery. Dar- winism, in attempting to find a common origin for the plant, the animal, and the man, was really seek- ing to minimise the difference between the material and the immaterial ; and the systems which have succeeded Darwinism in attempting to find a com- mon origin for the man, the animal, the plant, and the earth on which they dwell, have sought to 86 The Psalmist and the Scientist. obliterate that difference altogether in the interest of an underlying unity. Now the search for unity is a noble thing ; it is the true aim of science and the highest goal of philo- sophy. We shall go far wrong, however, if we im- agine for a moment that it owes its existence either to science or to philosophy ; it is older than both. It finds its highest manifestation and receives its most perfect illustration in the religion of the Jewish commonwealth and in the sentiments of the Jewish prayer-book. The leading aim of the Israelitish nation was identical with the leading aim of modern science ; it was the reference of all things to a prin- ciple of unity. Modern science, indeed, is more than a reference ; it is an attempt to trace the unity. Judaism made no such attempt ; it would have deemed it a vain and even a presumptuous task. But in spite of the distance in relative culture and development, Judaism aspired to do that very thing which modern science is seeking to achieve — to find a principle in the universe which may ultimately be recognised as the source of all things. Modern science searches for that principle laboriously and by slow degrees ; Judaism approached it at a bound, and refused to analyse the steps by which it had found it. Instead of beginning with multiplicity and tracing the many up to the one, it began by postulating the one and tracing its influence down to the many. No scientific investigator of our age The Psalmist's View of the Origin of Life, 87 is more opposed to dualism than was the Jew. His whole life consisted in resting the universe on a single centre; any other thought, any other possi- bility, would have been to him a sentence of death. "The Lord our God is one Lord," was the main article of liis creed and practice. The unity which he attributed to the object of his worship was not simply a pre-eminence over religious things ; it was a centrality in the affairs of the world itself. The Alpha and the Omega of his belief lay in the one word Theocracy; God was all in all. He reigned not only without a rival, but without a second. Agencies to which the pious theist of our day gives the name of secondary causes, were to him as such non-existent. He did not deny their mediation, but he emphatically denied their co-operation. He ad- mitted the influence of the winds, but he said that the winds were God's messengers ; he admitted the strength of the fire, but he said that its flame was God's minister. When he had once adopted this principle as his standard, he never for a moment halted, never hesitated, never shrank from carrying out its conclusions into every region of human ob- servation. He would not say with the Parsee that God was the cause of the light and the Devil the cause of the darkness ; he insisted on finding for the darkness a place within the circle of light ; he asked in so many words, ''Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it ? " What the pious 88 TJw Psalmist and the Scientist. theist of our day would call a divine permission, tlie Jew thought of as a divine decree ; to him tlie very passiveness of God was active, and tlie determination to allow was equivalent to the command to be. The religion of the Jew was like the scientific faith of the nineteenth century, a protest against the ad- mission that any event of life could be isolated from the chain of law, and on the incorporation of every event within that chain he meditated day and night. Now let us here ask, Wliat is the precise differ- ence between the faith of the ancient Jew and the faith of the modern scientific materialist ? Both are at one in seeking a principle of ultimate unity to which all objects and events may be referred. But the difference lies here : To the modern ma- terialist life is one of those objects or events for which a principle of unity is to be sought ; to the ancient Jew life was itself that principle of unity through which all other things were to be explained. This article of Jewish faith is clearly brought out in the text which we have prefixed to the begin- ning of this chapter: "With Thee is the fountain of life." Let it be observed that the psalmist does not mean to attribute to God the origin of life; he would have emphatically denied that life had any origin. His fundamental position is not that God created life, but that life is itself the nature of God, and therefore uncreated. It flows from Him as the stream flows from the fountain, yet the stream is The Psalmist's View of tlie Oriyln of Life. 89 of the same substance witli the fountain ; it is sim- ply the diffusion into a new direction of what has ah'eady existed in concentrated unity. Even so the psahnist teaches that life is but a stream, a stream whose waters are not created but derived, and the source of whose derivation is an eternal fountain. This is the reason of that expression which is so constantly appearing in the aspirations of the Jew- ish prayer-book, "The living God." So far from looking upon life as something which is special and peculiar to organised beings, the psalmist would not have admitted that it is a necessary property of organisation at all. He held it to be the necessary property of one Being, and one aloue — that Power which presides at the centre of the universe. He called this Power living, not merely to indicate that it was personal and intelligent, but to em- phasise the fact that it alone lived by necessity. He expressed by anticipation that thought to which one of his own countrymen in far-distant years gave utterance when he declared that " in Him was life, and the life was the light of men." To us, in- deed, the manner in which the fourth evangelist has spoken of the origin of life has always appeared very striking, and singularly characteristic of the national faith. He attributes to the divine Logos the work of creation, but lie does so in very pointed lan- guage : " Without Him was not anything made that was made." It is customary to read the latter clause 00 The Psalmist and the Scientist. as a redundancy ; this is not our opinion. The evan- gelist, in our view, meant to say that by the divine Logos everything was made luliich reqidred to he made. But he clearly implies that there was some- thing which did not require to he made, something already in existence which only needed to be util- ised, and he does not leave us long in doubt what that something was. In the very next verse he says: "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." Other things were created ly Him- but life was eternally in Him; He was the foun- tain of life. Life, being an eternal portion of His nature, was something which had no need to be created, and therefore it is presented by the evan- gelist as an exception to those "all things" which the divine Logos made. In making that exception the evangelist is at one with the spirit of his coun- try. He is in harmony with that ancient tradition which saw, in the first movement of life in tiie waters, the very breath of the spirit of God; in unison with that religious sentiment which in- spired the psalmist to proclaim that the fountain of life was the life of the Eternal. To the psalm- ist and to the evangelist alike, the researches of modern science, even did they issue in discovery, would have given no alarm. They would not have been startled by what is now called an act of spon- taneous generation, any more than the writer of Genesis was startled by the boldness of his own Tlie Fsahnist's Vievj of the Origin of Life. 91 statement that the earth brouc'ht forth the mo vino- creature that has life. The writer of Genesis, the writer of the Psahns, and the writer of the fourth Gospel are too intent upon the Power from which life flows to attach much importance to the channel through which it flows. To them, as to the religious consciousness of their nation, there is no humilia- tion in the process of tracing man back to the dust of the ground, for they regard that beginning itself as but the end of a higher process — the action and the inspiration of the Spirit of God. But for us the main question is, Is this senti- ment an anachronism ? Is it one of those modes of thought which are doomed to be dissipated with advancing light ? Is it able to stand the test of that scientific investigation which has become the pre - eminent heritage of this nineteenth century ? One thing, at the outset, is clear, and deserves to be carefully noted; there is no alternative on this matter between the view of the psalmist and the view of the scientific materialist. Either life is itself the fountain of life, or the fountain of life is matter — that which has no life. There is no middle course possible between the belief in a literally spontaneous generation, and the belief that life has never been generated at all. We must either stop short at some primitive form of matter and say. The vital spark had its origin here ; or we must be content to assume that the vital spark had no origin 02 The Psalmist and the Scientist. anywliere — that, in fact, it has been eternal. If we take this latter course, two roads are open to us. We may say that the vital spark has been propa- gated from parent, to offspring through an endless series of generations, or we may say that it had its eternal home in the being of one supreme Intelli- gence. It is, of course, possible to hold both these views at once ; we might believe simultaneously in an eternal God and an eternal series of generations, but in this case the fountain of life is God and not the generations. We are not here discussing the relative probability of these two hypotheses. What we want to point out is this, that whichever of the roads we choose to follow, will bring us substantially to the psalmist's conclusion — life is the fountain of life. Wliether we look upon that life as something originally concentrated in a single being, or whether we prefer to regard it as diffused through an infinite series of beings throughout endless time, we are alike agreed in holding that the source of present life is life eternal, that the fountain from which flows the vitality of every living form is itself a living fountain without beginning of years. There is another preliminary consideration which should nat be left out of account in a review of this subject, and it is this : every plausible attempt which modern science has made to find the fountain of life in the order of material nature, has ended unconsciously in adopting the conclusion of the The Psalmist's View of the Orirjin of Life. 93 psalmist. This may seem a somewhat sweeping assertion and even a paradox, but we think it will be borne out by the facts. There have been in our days several important efforts to find an origin for life identical with the origin of all other things. As representing this tendency, we may instance in our own country the names of Professor Huxley and Professor Tyndall, and in Germany, the name of Pro- fessor Haeckel. In relation to the first two, it is quite notorious that they ultimately reach a common origin for things by altering at the last moment their own conception of matter. Tyndall, after reducing everything to a fire -cloud, declares that it would be positive insanity to believe in the parentage from that fire-cloud, provided it is conceived to be what it appears to be. In order to accept it as the original germ out of which life sprang, it is necessary to hold that the fire-cloud itself w^as in its deepest essence, not material, but spiritual, and contained the promise and potence of that life which it generated. When we turn to Professor Haeckel, we seem at first sight to be confronted with a more uncompromising oppo- nent. He declaims vehemently against the tendency of spiritual thinkers to see a dualism in the universe. He professes to treat the existence of consciousness in man very much in the light of a lusus naturce. He regards it as a kind of abnormal growth or devel- opment which instituted a special and unique mani- festation in one department of the universe. But. 94 The Psalmist and the Scientist. he asks what right man has to project this con- sciousness of his into the past. He professes to show that everything else in nature can be traced back to what he calls a principle of monism. What right has this little insignificant thing, called con- sciousness, coming as it does late upon the stage, and occupying an infinitesimal portion of that stage, to set up its puny self as coeval with the eternity of matter ? It is at present the one solitary element which seems to resist the tendency to a materialistic origin; is it not the highest presumption for it to hold that an existence, apparently but of yesterday, has been present at the birth of worlds ? This is an unpromising beginning. But when we come to the end of Professor Haeckel's investijja- tions, we are struck by the fact that the hands of Esau have issued in the voice of Jacob. The preface of a book is always the latest part of an author's work, and therefore the statement of a preface may be accepted as the last word of the writer. Now, in the preface to his ' History of Creation,' Professor Haeckel, as we have already seen, makes the asser- tion that all matter has a mental side. We believe he never uttered a more profound truth. It is quite certain tliat the dualism which exists between the outward world and the inward human consciousness, so far from being something special and peculiar to the nature of man, finds a precise analogy through- out all the works of nature. There is as i^reat a The PsalmisVs View of the Origin of Life. 95 dualism, as inexplicable a chasm, between the primi- tive elements of force and matter, as there is between the latest elements of subject and object. Every piece of matter is a compound of two worlds, a world without and a world within. Its outer world is what we call its materialism ; its inner is the force which keeps it together. How these two elements are united, no man can tell ; the only points clear are, that they are united and that they are seemingly contrary. No man can understand how matter should produce force, for it is the nature of matter to continue in its present condition, whatever that may be. If at rest, it would remain at rest for ever unless moved from without ; if in motion, it would never come to rest unless impeded on its way. On the other hand, it is equally impossible to conceive how force can generate matter, for force itself is simply motion, and motion demands that there be something to be moved. Here is a dilemma exactly analogous in its nature to that seeming contradiction of matter and spirit which meets us partially in the animal and fully in the man, and Professor Haeckel could not have expressed himself more happily or more truly than he has done in the aphorism, that all matter lias a mental side. But the wonder in this case is that Professor Haeckel of all men should have ever arrived at or admitted this truth. He has been telling us from the beginning that monism is the law of the universe, 9G The Psalmist and the Scientist. and he has written his book with the express view of establishing that position. And now, at the end of his book, and at the summing up of all his inves- tigations, lie comes forward with a position exactly the contrary of that which it has been his aim to demonstrate ; he tells us in the last result that the law of the universe is not monism but dualism, and that matter has a side allied to mind. Has it, then, all come to this ? Has all this vaunted effort after unity issued only in the affirmation which is accepted even by the vulgar, that there is an eternal dualism in the nature of things ; that in every movement of the natural universe we are compelled to assume the co-operation of something which transcends the ordinary notions of matter ? It is not here our object, however, to criticise Professor Haeckel for his want of consistency ; we have to do, not with his book, but with his conclusion. For that conclusion, we have to thank him ; it is a concession from the camp of materialism. The most pronounced advocate which this century has produced of a materialistic tendency in modern science, has reached, at the last step of his analysis, the conception of a matter which on one side of its nature is allied to spirit. What is tliis but in other words to say that the conclusion of modern science is but a reiteration of the conclusion reached by that religious sentiment which declared, three thousand years ago, that the fountain of life could be life alone ? The Psalmist's View of the Origin of Life. 97 We have now cleared the ground for the considera- tion of this subject. We have seen that there are only two alternatives which are open to discussion — the hypothesis that life has been eternal, and the hypothesis that life has been generated by matter. Which of these is the view most consonant with the results of modern science ? It is commonly assumed that the tendency of modern science has been to give currency to the belief in the possibility of a spon- taneous generation. The truth is, it is to modern science that we are indebted for any doubt that has been cast upon that belief. The doctrine of spon- taneous generation was, up to the close of the seven- teenth century, held by all classes, both amongst the vulgar and amongst the learned. The belief that certain inferior forms of life could spring from forms which were not living, was not only held by our ancestors, but it was held without alarm. The reason, however, of the comparative unconcern is not difficult to find. To a man of the seventeenth or eighteenth century there could be nothing alarm- ing in the suggestion that the lowest forms of life might have a purely physical origin, for he firmly believed that there was a great gulf fixed between his own human life and all animal forms whatsoever. But to the man of the nineteenth century it is all the reverse. The doctrine of evolution is in the air, and the doctrine of evolution distinctly teaches that there is no possibility of a gulf between any forms G 98 The Psalmist and the Scientist. of life. Let the primitive form once be accounted for, and evolution will account for all the rest. Only explain how the earliest vital impulses began to manifest themselves, and the modern doctrine of development will trace the whole windings of the stream, from its first small and insignificant flow to its expansion into the ocean of human intelligence. It is easy to perceive what a vast difference the belief in spontaneous generation must make to men holding such a creed. To one who believes that the race of man is distinct from all other races, the con- troversy between a Pasteur and a Bastian must be a subject rather of curiosity than of solicitude ; if my orioin is from above, it can matter little to me that certain fungi have revealed an origin from beneath. But if I have become partaker of the scientific spirit of the nineteenth century, if I have come to the conclusion that the life of the human race was once the life of the fungi, the controversy of a Pasteur and a Bastian becomes to me a matter of death and life. If the fungus be proved to have had its origin from beneath, I too, in accordance with the spirit of evolution, have been placed amongst inferior things. It matters not how many and how devious be the stages that have intervened between the first pro- duction of the primitive life and the culmination of that life in me ; the question of origin centres purely in the first production, and if that production has The Psal mist's View of the Origin of Life. 99 been a growth out of dead matter, then is dead matter the author of my bemg. We have thought it right to emphasise this point, in order to show wherein consists tlie materialistic danger of the nineteenth century. It is popularly thought to consist in the advent of new facts ; it really lies in tlie application of old facts to the doctrine of evolution. The facts supposed to point in the direction of materialism have been rather diminished than increased by the science of our century. What has given a materialistic tendency to this science is the promulgation of that doctrine of development which has put old things in a new light, and rendered formidable wdiat at one time was innocent and indifferent. So far then as experiment is concerned, the scien- tific influence of the nineteenth century has been, from the materialistic standpoint, rather reactionary than progressive, has tended rather to diminish than to augment the alleged number of those instances in which the science of the past thought to detect the evidence of spontaneous generation. In spite of this, however, it remains none the less true that the science of the nineteenth century has amongst its votaries a larger number of professed materialists than the science of any preceding age. We have seen that the cause of this is not the discovery of any addi- tional fact which points in the direction of materi- 100 The Psalmist and the Scientist. alisin ; the tendency, on the contrary, exists in the very midst of the confession that every new experi- ment has tended more and more to discredit the evidence for spontaneous generation.^ What is the ground of this paradox? If the majority of our leading scientists are agreed in holding that actual experiment has failed to establish one well-authenti- cated case of spontaneous generation ; if they have thrown discredit upon conclusions which were once received as undoubted facts, and which, if accepted as facts, would make for materialism, — why is it that the tone of these same scientists is, in spite of their candour, more pronouncedly materialistic than the tone of their predecessors ? The question is one which demands strict investigation. It seems to us that the paradox points to a fact which has not com- monly been observed by apologetic writers. It is usually taken for granted that the question of the existence or non-existence of spontaneous generation is to be determined by the discovery or by the fail- ure to discover the procession of living germs from dead matter. Very naturally, therefore, apologetic writers are surprised to find, that in spite of the failure to discover such germs, scientific materialism is more rampant than ever. But the truth is, that whether spontaneous generation be true or false, it does not need to wait for its confirmation upon the ^ See Pi'ofessor Huxley's article "Evolution" in ninth edition of ' Encyclopaedia Britannica.' The Psalmist's Vieiv of the Origin of Life. 101 discovery of any such germs. To the science of our century the evidence for spontaneous generation is not a fact of experiment, but an alleged fact of ex- perience. The materialist of our day offers to give every man an individual and personal proof that life can spring from material forces. He offers to give him that proof without leading him into any labor- atory, without showing him any instruments, with- out asking him to witness any experiments. He proposes simply to lead him into his own conscious- ness, and to bid him examine the process of his own life. This is in our day the real stronghold of the doctrine of spontaneous generation. Instead of in- troducing us to a series of intricate experiments which can only be observed by a scientific eye, and can only be tested by a scientific culture, we are ushered into the commonplace chamber of our own experience, and are told to observe those facts of daily life which he that runneth may read. Let us try briefly to explain the nature of these alleged facts. In order to do so, we shall endeavour to throw ourselves into intellectual sympathy with the mate- rialist ; we shall try to be impressed as he is with the force of the argument he designs to put before us. What the materialist then says is this: Some ten, twenty, or thirty years ago you were a cliild ; now you are a man. Here are two commonplace facts of your experience, the observation of which requires no culture. Now I ask you to put together 102 The Psalmist and the Scientist. these facts, to consider as a matter of experience what is the precise point of contrast between the life which you now have as a man and the life which you once had as a child. Does it not lie just in this, that you have now more life than you had then ? Is not the difference between the years of your childhood and the years of your maturity just the fact that in the interval there has been added to your being a new stream of vitality ? But now observe what is implied in this : is it anything else than spontaneous gen- eration ? Where has the more life come from ? If there has been an addition to the original vital stream of your being, to what is that addition to be referred? To what can it be referred but to the correlation of the material forces ? If new life has entered into you in the interval between the child and the man, it can only be because new life has been generated by the action of matter upon your organism ; and what is this but spontaneous gener- ation ? You tell me that I have failed to produce one well - authenticated instance of a new germ of life being generated from dead matter. It is true I have so failed, but why ? Simply because, in order to produce life, there must exist beforehand the con- ditions of life. If you could bring into one focus all those material conditions which are necessary to vital being, there would be no difficulty in showing an in- stance of spontaneous generation. In the case of The Psalmist's View of the Origin of Life. 103 organic germs we cannot get these preliminary con- ditions, but in the case of your own organism we can. The body which you had as a child had in it all the conditions necessary to the existence of life. What was the result ? It was not only able to keep alive the life which it had, but it was able to add life more abundantly. It w^as able to generate out of mere material elements, out of food and air and sunshine, out of forces which are popularly called physical, a life identical with its own, and harmo- nious with the law of its being. What further proof do you require of the possibility — nay, of the reality — of spontaneous generation ? We have tried to give this argument all the force w^e can. If we remember rightly, we first met with it in the writings of Dr Maudsley, and it made at' the time a great impression on us. It seemed to us that the whole question was rested in a test case, in a manner which could be easily verified by every man's experience, and whose verification or disproof ought not to occupy much time. A deeper reflection has led us to a different conclusion. It will be found, we think, that this seemingly simple test case is really a syllogism consisting of three propositions, every one of which is taken for granted, and every one of which is, to say the least, very doubtful. The syllogism may be put thus : You have more life as a man than you had as a child ; there is no other source from which your new life could have come 104 The Psalmist and the Scientist. than the physical forces of matter ; therefore the phy- sical forces of matter have spontaneously generated that life which has been added to your original being. Of course it is evident that if the first and second propositions are proved, tlie third must also be true. But in order to test the value of this syllogism it will be necessary to consider eacli proposition by itself. We propose, tlierefore, to begin with the third — the assertion that matter is the cause of that alleged addition to our original life which intervenes between the child and the man. We shall leave the question meantime in abeyance whether there has or has not been such an addition. We shall confine ourselves simply to the undoubted fact that there is a vast difference in development between the man and the child, reserving all judgment as to what constitutes that difference. The question now before us is whether the difference between the child and the man is something which has been brought about, or which ever could be brought about, by the agency of matter alone. The materialist has referred us to our own experience; to our own experience, there- fore, let us go. Let us see whether the laws of human thought would naturally lead us to the conclusion that the difference between childhood and manhood can be produced by the unaided in- fluence of the forces called physical. Let us suppose that there were put into our hands, with the express purpose of testing this The Psalmist's Viciv of the Origin of Life. 105 point, tlie life of a very young child. Let us sup- pose that we were asked for the benefit of physical science to make the life of this child an experiment. The problem would be to discover whether it would develop from childhood to maturity through the sole agency of matter. To work out this problem, we should therefore, from the beginning, studiously exclude from the child's development every other influence besides matter. Let it be observed that the word "matter" would itself here require to be used in a very restricted sense. We would not be at liberty to include the phenomena of \\^\\t and sound amongst the permitted influences, because the phenomena of light and sound in the moment of their perception cease to be material, and become influences of the spirit. The truth is, in order to test our problem we would require to limit the developing influences of the child to the simple participation in food and air, these being the near- est approach we have to distinctively bodily in- fluences. Let us, therefore, limit our hypothetical child to the use of these two elements. Let us ordain that, from this day forth, it shall be in- carcerated within walls which shall not even reveal the shadows of Plato's cave. Let us command that it shall be kept studiously from the contact with every ray of light, and tlie communion with every note of sound. Let us deny it the fellowship of all comrades, the perusal of all books, the access 106 The Psalmist and tlic Scientist. to all newspapers — everything, in short, but that which is essential to the maintenance of present life and the growth of bodily strength. The ques- tion is, At the end of the intervening years what will be the difference between the child and the man ? There will clearly be a difference in physical strength, physical size, physical proportions ; and this difference will certainly imply that something has been added to the child since the day of its incarceration. But this something will be precisely such a thing as could be added by matter ; in point of fact, it will be found to consist exclusively of the forces called material. No man has ever denied that these forces exist in a larger measure in the man than in the child, and no man has ever dis- puted that the cause of their increase is materialism. But it is not the increase of these forces which has ever been supposed to constitute the difference between the man and the child. That which con- stitutes the difference between them lies in the phenomena of consciousness. Whether the differ- ence amounts to an increase of consciousness is not here the question ; it is not denied on any hand that the man is a vast development beyond the child, and it is doubted by no one that what marks the distinction between them is mental superiority. Now let us ask, Will this crucial point of distinction appear in the instance before us ? Will the con- sciousness of the child after its years of incarceration The Psalmist's Vieio of the Origin of Life. 107 be one whit superior to the consciousness of the child before it was incarcerated? We have admitted that in bodily strength it will have become a man ; will it have become a man in mind ? Will it be one stage nearer than it was in its earliest years to that which constitutes our ideal of manhood ? The uni- versal answer of every intelligent mind will be "No." It is almost a truism to say that in the circumstances we have supposed, a child would remain for ever a child, which is only in other words to say that there would in this instance be no increase in that element which distinguishes between the child and the man. But now, what is implied in this admission ? Clearly that matter alone is not adequate to pro- duce the difference indicated. Matter in this in- stance has had a fair trial; it has been the only agency allowed to have any share in the child's development. Everything has been excluded but bread, with the view of determining the question whether man can live by bread alone, whether that life of higher reason which we call distinctively the age of manhood could ever be produced at all were matter the sole agent at work. The common-sense of the observer has been constrained to Q-ive a ne^ra- o o tive answer, has been forced to confess that in the circumstances here indicated no lapse of time could effect the change from the child into the man. The conclusion is irresistible that, whatever part matter 108 The Psalmist and the Scientist, may have in the ordinary production of that change, it cannot have the sole part ; it has been unable to effect it alone, and therefore it can only effect it through the co-operation of other influences. So much then for the third proposition — the assertion that matter is the cause of the additional life which is supposed to intervene in the passage from childhood into maturity. We come now to the second proposition, which asserts that if there be more life in the man than in the cliild, there is no other source but matter from which the addition could come. Now it is quite plain that this is an assumption ; it assumes that matter is the fountain of life. There is clearly another alternative which, whether it be accepted or not, cannot be put aside as non-existent. If the question before us had ever suggested itself to the mind of the psalmist, he would have answered it by saying that the ad- ditional life which the man possesses over the child is the result of a fresh stream of existence which is perpetually issuing from a principle of divine life. " Thy mercies are new every morning " is an utter- ance which on prophetic lips covers a very wide field. There was a belief common amongst the Jewish rabbis, that each night when the body sinks into repose the soul is taken out of it and washed by the Creator from the sins of the past day. Some such thought as this breathes in that sense of re- newal which the child of Israel feels in contemplat- The Psahnist's View of the Origin of Life. 109 ing each rising sun. He feels tliat he has awakened with more freshness than was present to him when he lay down, and he explains the increase in vitality by the newness of God's mercy every day. In the field of Christian thought men still hold this form of the ancient faith. The work which they look for from the Divine Spirit is emphatically a work whose mercies must be new every morning. When Paul says, " Though the outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day," he gives utterance to the self-same thought. He per- ceives that in the spiritual world there is a con- tinuous need for the repair of tissue, and he knows that the tissues of spiritual life can only be repaired by the Power which first created them. Accord- ingly, his view of the Spirit's work is really the view of a perpetual creation — a creation in which the yesterday is ever being replaced by the to- morrow, and in which the vanishing products of the past are continually supplied by renewals of divine life. Now, in the natural world no one can deny that the same principle is also a possible alternative. If we concede the truth of the alleged proposition that the organism experiences an increase of life in passing from the child to the man, we shall have no option but to conclude that what the Christian sees in the world of grace the scientist beholds in the world of nature. We have seen that the clianoe 110 The Psalmist and the Scientist. from the cliild to the man cannot be effected by matter alone ; and therefore, wliatever that change be, we are bound to look elsewhere for the com- pletion of its cause. If that change be an actual augmentation of life, and if matter has been found inadequate to produce such an augmentation, we shall be driven in the interest of science to a doc- trine analogous to that which was held by the psalmist of Israel — the belief that the increase of life results from the impartation of a fresh vital stream. Shall we, then, definitely adopt this view ? Shall w^e say that the increase of life wdiich marks the difference between the man and the child owes its origin to a direct intervention of the primal source of nature ? We would certainly say so if we were convinced that tliat which marks the difference be- tween the man and the child is an increase of life. But this leads us back naturally to the first of the assumed propositions, and the one to explain which the other two were formulated. The whole syllo- gism has been constructed by the scientist with the view of accounting for the alleged fact that there is more life in the man than in the child. What if this be not a fact at all ? What if the explana- tion has been given to account for something which exists only in the theory of the observer ? Is there really more life in the man than in the child ? Let it be remembered that when we speak of life here The Psalmist's Vieiu of the Origin of Life. Ill we mean consciousness. ISTone lias ever denied that the transition from cliildhood to maturity is marked by an increase in the power of the physical forces, an increase which is amply explained by the as- similation on the part of the organism of the in- fluences of material nature. But when we speak of life we always mean something distinct from these. Whatever our theory of life may be, wdiat- ever our view of its origin, whatever our sense of its destiny, w'e are bound in the interest of science to look at it as it actually manifests itself, and the form in which it actually manifests itself is consciousness. Other agencies may accompany it, other influences may condition it, other phenomena may How from it, but the thing itself, as we know it, is consciousness and consciousness alone. When, therefore, we ask whether there be more life in the man than in the child, we must be understood to ask whether the man has more consciousness than the child. ISTow, for our part, paradoxical as it may seem, we are con- vinced that the man has not. We believe that there is not more consciousness, but, what is a very differ- ent thing, a consciousness of more. The eye which is circumscribed by a range of buildings is in a very different position from the eye which is permitted to travel freely over the expanse of wood and held ; yet no one would assert that the difference consists in the fact of the latter having more sight. What it has in reality is more to see. The change is a 112 The Psalmist and the Seientist. change of environment, and the widening of the environment has simply brought into conscious action that power which already is latently present. Now the human eye is a mode of consciousness, and it is consistent with analogy to infer that what happens in one of its modes is the law for conscious- ness as a whole. We do not ask for the evolution of life the admission of any principle which is not equally recognised in the evolution of matter. It is strenuously maintained by every evolutionist that since the day of first formation there never has been any increase of matter in the universe. N"or is the evolutionist appalled by the fact that there is no resemblance whatever between the universe as it now appears and the universe as it must have been in the day of its first formation ; he amply accounts for that fact by the difference of environment which material forms have in the interval undergone. We claim no more for life. Why should not conscious- ness be allowed to exist in the child in the same way that the powers now exhibited by matter are allowed to have existed in the universe ? In the fire-cloud of primitive matter there was discernible only one power — gravitation ; yet the result has shown that other powers were latent there. In the conscious- ness of the individual child there is manifested at the beginning only one feeling — the sense of pain. Why should not the subsequent result be allowed here also, to show that other feelings were latent The Psalmist's Vicio of the Origin of Life. 113 there ? The child has not less feeling than the man ; it would be more correct to say that it feels less — i.e.y has a smaller number of objects over which its con- sciousness can range. The difference between the child's sense of pain and the man's sense of beauty is not a difference of quantity but of object. In respect of quantity the child in its agony of suffering may have a larger amount of sensation than the man in his perception of beauty. There is more than this ; the comparison of the sense of beauty with any single feeling of individual pain is not a just comparison. When the child burns its hand, it has really only one sensation ; when a man admires a landscape, he is successively experiencing a variety of sensations. We say successively, for no man can really experience two sensations at precisely the same moment. The true point of comparison, there- fore, would be between the child's sense of pain and any one of those various sensations which make up the perception of beauty. Looked at from this stand- point, we shall probably reconsider our opinion that the man has more consciousness than the child. We shall probably come to the conclusion that the rich- ness and variedness which distinguish the former from the latter are the result, not of an increased vitality, nor of a quantitively enlarged consciousness, but simply of those new modifications which the primitive life has undergone through its passage into other scenes. H 114 The Psalmist and ilie Scientist. We have now examined the three propositions of that syllogism whicli is the stronghold of scientific materialism. We have found that every one of them requires itself to be scientifically proved, and that to doubt the trutli of any of them would not at present make us at variance with modern science. To have reached this conclusion is only, in other words, to say that the aphorism of the psalmist remains un- contradicted still. We do not forget that the mate- rialist has another and an opposite door by which he claims to reach his inference. If he has failed to establish the theory that matter can increase life, he may still fall back upon the position that matter can diminish or annihilate life. He may still tell us that a blow on the head may deprive a man of con- sciousness. He will ask us, in the old spirit, whether the consciousness of the man after the blow is not less in quantity than the consciousness of the man before the blow ; and if so, what could have made it less but the blow itself — in other words, the con- cussion of a material force. We must point out that this latter stronghold of materialism has nothing to do with the speculations of modern science. It cannot be ranked amongst the difficulties which the doctrine of evolution has thrown in the way of the old belief, for it existed long before the advent of the doctrine of evolution. Its origin as an argument does not lie with the man of science at all, but with the heart of man at all times in contemplating the old The Psalmist's Vieio of the Ori(jin of Life. 115 old story, death. There is no mind, however super- ficial, that has not had its moments of perplexity in considering the apparent power of material influences to diminish the vitality of bygone years. It is not death itself which perplexes ; that is an unknown quantity, and does not of necessity suggest any more than that the principle of life is away. That which casts a cloud over the mind is the process of dying, and the seeming decline of vital power which this process involves. That a mere form of physical disturbance should diminish consciousness, or should go to the extent of rendering a man unconscious, is from the spiritual side a very hard problem. From tlie spiritual side it would be an insoluble problem if we were bound to accept the apparent fact as real. But is it real ? Do the data at our command lead inevitably to the conclusion that the disturbance in the physical framework has diminished the amount of consciousness ? My perception of objects through a mirror is an act of consciousness. There are two conceivable ways in which that act may be arrested ; you may cause me to close my eyes, or you may throw a covering over the mirror. Now, what hap- pens in one particular mode of consciousness finds its precise analogy with consciousness as a whole. The process of dying interrupts the communication between subject and object, interposes a barrier to the mind's perception ; that is the only fact within our observation, and beyond this all is inference. 116 The Psalmist and the Scientist. The question is, What shall we infer ? Shall we say that the eye of the mind is closed, or shall we say that a covering has been thrown over the mirror ? The former is the view of the materialist, the latter of the spiritualist. The question is not, which of these views is most favourable to religion, most conducive to morality, most elevating to feel- ing? on all these sides it will probably be univer- sally conceded that the spiritualist retains possession of the field. But the only point we are now con- cerned with is. Is the view of the spiritualist an anachronism in science ? And it must be answered that on this subject the science of the nineteenth century is in possession of no fact which has not for ages been familiar to the most unlettered peasant. In the process of dying, what is that which the unlettered peasant sees ? Simply an interrupted communication. He perceives the eye of his brother unable to respond to his eye, the ear unable to listen to his words, the hand unable to answer to his touch ; he is convinced beyond all question that the intelligence which once communed with his own has now become oblivious to the sense of his presence. What, then, does the unlettered peasant conclude ? Does he say that because his brother man is no longer conscious of hivi, the consciousness of that man no longer exists ? No, he does not say so ; and why ? Because, peasant as he is, he knows as a matter of experience that there are innumerable The Psalmist'' s Viciv of the Origin of Life. 117 cases in which the same unconsciousness of his ovai presence exists in union with the most vivid con- sciousness on the part of the very man who does not know him. He has heard the lips of his brother muttering in dreams, and expressing intelligence within the sphere of dreamland. He has had ex- perience of the effect of fevers in which the patient, unconscious of all around, has yet betrayed by un- mistakable signs that he is living all the time in a world of his own. With such facts in his mind, the peasant hesitates to draw the conclusion that the inability to communicate with himself is a proof of suspended consciousness. Now these facts in the mind of the peasant are all the facts of the case. In other directions the man of science has an advantage over him; here they stand on an equal level. Before the mystery of the process of death, the distance between the simple and the learned is annulled, and science has to con- fess that it has no more authority than ignorance. In this region we are bound still to feel that we stand, as it were, at the opening of primitive life. We are in no higher intellectual position than we were at the dawn of human civilisation, have no more right to speculate, no more authority to dog- matise. The question then is. What shall be our attitude to the speculations of the past ? We may say they are unproved, but by what line of reason- ing shall we maintain that they are anachronisms ? 118 The Psalmist and the Seientist. Nearly three thousand years ago the Jewish prayer- book employed these words, " With Thee is the fountain of life." At the time when the words were written, all the facts of the case were known as familiarly as they are now ; death was in existence, and death is the mystery of the seeming domination of mind by matter. The men who first chanted these words were thoroughly aware of the mystery of death, strongly impressed with its solemnity, and deeply alive to its horror. The fact which pressed upon them was precisely that fact which presses upon the scientist of to-day — the paradox of a seem- ingly immaterial element appearing to succumb to the force of material influences. Yet they never for a moment relinquished the belief that this element was immaterial, that it had its fountain in God. They have not left it doubtful why it was that the process of death did not shake this confidence. " I laid me down and slept ; I awaked ; for the Lord sustained me," are the words in which the psalmist expresses the ground of his confidence in life's per- petuity. He declares that in the light of the great miracle of sleep he will not be afraid of ten thou- sands of foes. His confidence lies in the fact not only that last night God awakened him out of sleep, but that He was sustaining him iii sleep ; he was only awakened because he had been all along sus- tained. To all outward appearance the vital element had been obliterated by the force of material influ- The Psalmist's Vieio of the Origin of Life. 119 ences, yet all the time it had been continuously preserved. It had been preserved because its foun- tain had never been matter, and therefore it was incapable of being diminished by the decay of its environment ; its fountain was God, and therefore its duration was eternal. That was the reasoning: of the psalmist based upon the most familiar fact of human experience, a fact which the advances of modern science have neither explained nor explained away. The scientist has the same difficulty as the psalmist, neither less nor more; he has the same solution as the psalmist, neitlier increased nor diminished in the force of its argument. He has no facts at his command on this question which were not equally at the command of the ancient Israelite, nor any suggestion to offer which seems more probable than that arrived at by the Jewish prayer-book ; to him, therefore, it is not yet an anachronism to say, "With Thee is the fountain of life." 120 The Psalmid and the Scientist. CHAPTER V. THE psalmist's VIEW OF HUMAN INSIGNIFICANCE. Psalm viii. 3-5. There is no subject which has been more fruitful in the hands of scientific scepticism than the change which has been effected on man's estimate of him- self by the influences of modern culture. There is no writer who has dwelt more persistently on this side of the question than Mr Draper.^ He labours to show how the intellectual development of Europe has tended steadily to contract the range of that vision which man has had of his own possibilities. The men of old time are compassionated and com- miserated on account of their faith. It was not surprising, we are told, that those who believed themselves to be the astronomic centre of the uni- verse should persuade themselves that all things in heaven and earth existed purely with a view to their welfare. It was not surprising that in the ^ See his ' Conflict of Science and Eeligion,' chaji. vi, and sequel. Psalmist's View of Hitman Insignificance. 121 insignificant estimate tliey formed of the magni- tude of the visible universe their own little world should have assumed proportions extravagant and overwhelming. The times of this ignorance must be winked at, and we should be charitable to the weaknesses of our ancestors. But now, all men are commanded to repent. The time has come when a new heaven and a new earth have chased away the primitive darkness. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy is dead, and Copernicus reigns in its room. Man is no longer at liberty to think of himself as the centre of the universe; he and the earth on which he dwells are but insignificant atoms in a space which is fathomless, measureless. Modern culture has taught him true humility. The men of old time were children in knowledge, and therefore they had the pride of children; the man of civilised Europe has awakened to the vastness of the mystery that surrounds him, and has there- fore the humility that belongs to a man. Those who believed that all other worlds revolved round this little globe of ours, might well speak of the counsels of heaven as devised for the good of man ; but in the light of an astronomy which reveals this globe as but one of myriad specks in an infinite sky, the notion of such a human teleology becomes a delusion and a dream. Such is the spirit of Mr Draper's reasoning. Yet nothing can be more certain than that, in one re- 122 The Fscdmist and the Scientist. spect at least, he himself is subject to a delusion. Whether the light of modern astronomy does or does not furnish an argument for human nothing- ness, is a question which meantime may be left in abeyance. But whatever be the decision of that question, it is quite certain that the sense of human nothingness did not be.i^in with the light of modern astronomy. It is too bad of Mr Draper to assume that the men of the past were ignorant of their insignificant position, when compared to the vast- ness of material nature. From any materialistic standpoint of comparison, the men of Israel at least were willing to acknowledge their inferiority not only to the vastness of the universe, but to things which Mr Draper himself would admit to be their subordinates. We have seen in a previous chapter how, from a materialistic point of view, the psalmist contrasts his own position unfavourably with that of the beast of the field, how he is not afraid to admit that the si^arrow has found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, while yet the spirit of man has received no adequate dwelling- place. And if on that occasion we found the psalmist recognising an inferiority even to the lower creatures, we are now to find him recognis- ing a natural littleness in comparison with the ce- lestial firmament. " When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained ; what is man, that Thou Psalmist's View of Human Insignificance. 123 art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him ? " How strangely modern the words sound ! Leaving out the form of invocation, we could have imagined that there was speaking a saiwfit of the nineteenth century. We feel that here is a man whom J\Ir Draper has no right to patronise, a man who is thoroughly awake to the vastness of that system in which he lives, and per- fectly, painfully conscious how little right by nature he has to live there at alh He goes out beneath the stars and meditates at eventide, and his meditations are such as Mr Draper himself might have envied. Without knowing the Copernican system of astro- nomy, he reaches at a bound that conclusion which the Copernican system of astronomy is said to have attained. He arrives at the conviction that, meas- ured by ffny natural standard, his own life has no glory in comparison with an all-excelling glory. He feels himself to be dwarfed by the magnificence and the variety of other worlds. He sinks into a sense of insignificance in the presence of a splendour before which his own light grows dim, and he ex- presses that sense of insignificance in language which Mr Draper himself would not deem unscientific, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" In one respect, indeed, the position of the psalmist is radically different from the position of Mr Draper. ]\Ir Draper's wonder at the immensity of stellar spaces leads him to a spirit of scepticism as to the 124 Tlie Psalmist and the Scientist. destiny of man. The psalmist's wonder, on the other hand, originates in the fact that he has already sur- mounted all scepticism as to man's destiny. It is not with him a problem whether God will or will not be mindful of man ; he speaks after conviction that God has already been mindful. He does not say, When I consider the heavens, how can I believe that my little life has been an object of special in- terest to the Source of universal life ? What he says is this : When I consider the heavens, and how insignificant I am from a materialistic point of view, I marvel at that divine condescension which has manifestly made such provision for my wants, which has set all things on earth under my feet, and crowned me wdtli the glory and honour of being king over this present world. And truly, no one can say that this wonder of the psalmist rests on an unscientific basis. God, evolu- tion, nature, the creative principle, called by what name you will, has not only done great things for man, but has done as great things for man as for any other object in the universe ; every evolutionist in the world will admit this. So great is the evi- dence for a teleological plan in human nature, that if its existence be denied in human nature, it must be denied everywhere. The basis of the psalmist's wonder, therefore, is the only scientific basis. We must start from the undoubted fact that man is conscious in himself of a marvellous adaptation to Psalmist's View of Human Insignificance. 125 his wants in the system of nature, conscious of a harmony between his desires and the objects which fulfil them, of a congruity between his faculties and the world on which they are exercised. To admit this fact, and no one has ever denied it, is really to reco2;nise the truth that the interests of man have been cared for by some power in tlie universe. Whether we call that power God or evolution, whether we term it conscious or unconscious, is not here the question. Man is what he is by reason of that system of nature in which he dwells. This being so, it is surely legitimate, even on scientific principles, to wonder at that confluence of circum- stances which have conspired to make him what he has become, and to inquire, in a spirit of scientific and religious reverence, what has been the origin of that which looks so like a mindfulness of man. Mr Draper, indeed, would object very much to the word " mindfulness " ; it would suggest to him that very notion of teleology which he regards as a relic of barbarism. He would be willing to allow that man has become what he is through the evolu- tionary convergence of circumstances, but he would altogether reject the doctrine that this evolutionary convergence has been the result of intelligent fore- sight. The unpardonable sin of the psalmist would, in his eyes, be just his reference of these circum- stances to an intelligent foresight. To say that God is mindful of man is to make man an end in the 126 The Psalmist and the Scientist. universe. What age but one of primitive ignorance, especially of astronomic ignorance, could ever have conceived such a thought ? If the Jewish nation had known the Copernican system, would it have been possible for it to have fallen into such folly? It believed man to be the centre because it believed the earth to be the centre, and its belief that the earth was the centre was the product of its ignorance of the vastness of the material system. Such is substantially the view of Mr Draper, and the view of that whole class of writers who have seen, in the scientific development of the nineteenth century, a ground for pitying the ignorance of the past. Now there is no doubt whatever that, in the days of the Israelitish psalmist, men did believe the earth to be the centre of the universe, and there is equally little doubt that in this belief they were wrong. But the whole question here is, What effect had this primitive belief on the primitive religion of mankind ? Mr Draper thinks that the primitive belief in the mindfulness of a Supreme Being was caused by the notion that the earth was the centre of the universe. To us, on the other hand, it is perfectly clear that, so far as Israel is concerned, the order of procedure was exactly the reverse. Instead of the Psalmist's conviction of God's mindfulness being caused by his belief in the earth's centrality, his belief in the earth's centrality was caused by his conviction of God's mindfulness. Fsalmisfs Vicio of Human Insignificance. 127 To him the firsb object of contemphition was God Himself. We in modern times are in the liabit of seeking God in the light of all things ; the psalmist seeks all things in the light of God. To him God is before all things, and His will is the sole ground of their being. If he believes man to be endowed with glory and honour, it is not because he thinks that there is anything in the nature of man which is worthy of this glory and honour, nor anything in his astronomical position which has helped to make him dignified. It is because he believes that God's sovereign will has chosen man. He recognises hu- man dignity as the simple result of divine election, and everything that seems to favour that dignity as a provision of the same election. He thinks of the earth as the centre of the universe, simply because God has chosen to make it so ; this is really the thought which lies at the back of the words, " Tiie earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." And the fulness of the earth to him is man ; the material is chosen for the sake of the immaterial. So far from seeing in man a being who is favoured on account of the earth's centrality, he sees in the earth's centrality a result of that elective favour which, in the good pleasure of the Eternal, has been bestowed upon the human race. The psalmist, in short, is, like all the men of his nation, an anticipa- tive Calvinist ; he lives in the thouglit of God, and outside the thought of God he cannot admit the life 128 The Psalmist and the Scientist. of anything. It is vain, therefore, to ascribe the teleology of the Hebrew to his ignorance of the earth's astronomic position. He ivas ignorant of the earth's astronomic position ; but this was an effect, not a cause. If we want to prefer a charge of icrnorance against the Hebrew on the ground of his teleological views, we must prefer that charge against the teleology itself. We must not say that he was incompetent to speak of the great Source of nature by reason of his inadequate view of as- tronomy ; it was not astronomy that led him to his notion of God. The greatness of stars and systems was to him not to be measured by the vastness of their dimensions and the extent of their distances ; their greatness lay in the fact that they were mani- festations of the life of God, that they declared His wlory and showed forth His handiwork. The ques- tion is. Was his notion of God Himself erroneous ? Did his primitive ignorance appear in the concep- tion he formed of the Deity as well as in the con- ception he formed of the stars ? When he said that God was mindful of man, when he declared that the human was an object of solicitude to the divine, did he state something which science has proved an anachronism? That is the question, and the only question with which we are here concerned. It is not simply between the scientist and the psalmist ; it is between the scientist and the religious senti- ment at its root. On the answer to it depends the Fsalmist's Vieiv of Human Iiisignificance. 129 solution of the problem whether religion shall or shall not continue to exist. If there be no capacity for mindfulness in God — in other words, if God be not a Being of whom we can predicate the attribute of thought — there is no use of pursuing the subject any further ; let us say at once that the age of science is the antithesis of the age of religion. But if the conception of scientific evolution is not in itself opposed to the presence of a mind in nature; if the order of natural law, as expounded by modern physics, is not proved to be incompatible with the order of an intelligence working behind the law, — would it not be scientific to pause before charging with primitive ignorance a nation whose sole offence has been the recognition of a God who is mindful of man ? Let us ask, then, if Mr Draper himself has rightly diagnosed the facts of the case. He holds that the belief in evolution must for ever destroy man's sense of his own dignity, by denying him that cen- tral position in the astronomic universe which in primitive days he was wont to claim. Is it the fact that the doctrine of evolution does deny to man a central place in the astronomic or in any other uni- verse ? Paradoxical as it may seem, and contrary to the common statement as it certainly is we contend that the doctrine of evolution does no such thing. What the doctrine of evolution does deny is that man can any longer be regarded as the centre of I 130 Tlic Psalmist and the Scientist. the universe, exclusively or peculiarly. It does not take away his central position, but it insists that this central position shall be shared by everything else in turn. There are two ways in which I may deny that London is any longer to be regarded as the capital of the British empire. I may insist that for the future the metropolitan dignity shall be transferred to Dublin, or I may enact that hence- forth tfie metropolitan dignity shall every month be assigned to a different city of the empire until each shall have enjoyed the privilege of centrality. Now, if evolution had taken away the centrality of the earth in the former sense, there would have been great ground for Mr Draper's scepticism. If it had said that henceforth the central position was to be given to Jupiter, or Mercury, or Venus, there would have been very good ground for asking, not in a spirit of gratitude, but of incredulity, " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? " But when evolution denies the centrality of the earth it is only in the latter sense. It will not allow the earth any longer to hold its central position as a monopoly, as a privilege unshared by other things. But in asking the earth to give up its central posi- tion as a monopoly, evolution does not ask it to give up its central position in itself. It only insists that the earth shall henceforth recognise the fact that it is not the sole or exclusive centre ; that the privi- lege which it enjoys is a privilege which every Psalmist's Vieio of Human Insignificance. 131 object in the universe equally enjoys, and to which every object in the universe can equally vindicate its claim. What is the doctrine of evolution ? It is the belief that every part exists for the sake of the whole, and that the wliole exists for the sake of every part. Let us observe the latter half of this definition ; it is the one which is most frequently overlooked. That every part exists for the sake of the whole — in other words, that the whole would not be what it is if any one of its individual parts had been modified in its structure — is a truth which will be grasped by all minds scientific and unscien- tific. But it is not at first sight so clearly seen that the whole equally exists for the sake of every part ; indeed, for any clear insight into this truth we are indebted to the doctrine of evolution itself. When an event liappens in a humble village, we are accus- tomed in philosophic moments to say that it will produce influences beyond itself, will indirectly affect the whole structure of society. To say so is both philosophic and scientific, for it is a fact of observation that the whole structure of society is bound by a single chain. But it does not often occur to us, even in philosophic moments, to say that the humble event here specified has been the end towards which all other events have been con- verging, that it owes its very existence to the com- bined operations of the united universe. Yet that 132 The Psalmist and the Scientist. is the doctrine of evolution. The lifting of a feather by the wind is the result of the entire process of nature which went before it. If we had knowledge perfect enough we could trace back to the very beginning of nature the process by which the feather was lifted, and we should find that, trivial as the act appears, it yet owed its being to the en- tire course of the preceding order of things. Now, let us imagine for a moment that this feather were to be gifted with an intelligence sufficient to com- prehend its own position in the universe. What, in such circumstances, would be its opinion of it- self ? Would it not be very much the same as that opinion which the psalmist formed of the human nature within him ? It would feel, on the one hand, that it was marvellously small and wondrously in- significant in comparison with the objects around it, quite unworthy in itself to occupy any place in the temple of nature. And yet side by side with this feeling — nay, growing directly out of this feeling- there w^ould be a strong surprise at the fact that it actually did occupy not only a place, but the central place in this natural temple. For this intelligent feather would recognise that it was indeed the centre of the universe ; it would say, as the psalmist said of himself. What am I, that nature is mindful of me ? for it has put all things under my feet. It would find what the psalmist found— that its life had been an end in the universe, and an end to- Psalmist's View of Human Insignificance. 133 wards which the universe itself had been working. Nor, on the principles of evolution, would the dis- covery in any sense be a delusion. It is the direct doctrine of evolution that everything is what it is just tlirough the co-operation of all other things ; in other words, that any single object waking up into scientific intelligence would be justified in beholding itself as the centre of the universe. It could write a history of the universe with the express purpose of showing that all things had been making towards itself, and its purpose would be vindicated by actual scientific proof ; it would be able without difficulty to demonstrate that, alike in its genesis and in its exodus, the stream of universal being had been workinsj towards the consummation of its own in- dividual life. Now, instead of the hypothetical feather let us take the actual man. He has, as a matter of fact, come into existence in a way unknown to himself. His deepest conviction is not that of natural dig- nity, but that of natural weakness. He is impressed with his nothingness and insignificance amid the forces of material nature, and in a large number of cases it is this sense of nothingness which has been the parent of his religious worship. Never- theless, what happened to the hypothetical feather happens to the actual man, and for precisely the same reason. In point of fact he is the only crea- ture on the earth who has been gifted witli a scien- 134 The Psalmist and the Scientist. tific intelligence — in other words, tlie only creature who has received a vision of that central position which he shares with every other creature, and which every other creature would claim if it had only the same vision. He writes the history of creation with a reference to himself as the centre ; he tells how the herb of the field was made for his use, and how the beast of the field was made for his service. In doinir so he is in full accord with the principle of evolution, which declares him to be indeed the centre. It is true the principle of evo- lution equally declares that the herb and the beast of the field are also centres. But then neither the herb nor the beast of the field is endowed with that scientific intelligence which can make it conscious of its centrality. Man alone has this possession, and therefore man alone has written the record of the convero^ence of all thinojs towards his own beincj. Accordingly, it is not unscientific in the psalmist to wonder at the prominence of one naturally so in- significant, to say to the Power who represents his ideal of culminated nature, " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? " He only says what in other language every evolutionist might say in contem- plating how any single object results from the united whole. The truth is, Mr Draper is under a delusion in supposing that the doctrine of evolution has con- tributed to divorce the thought of the psalmist from modern sympathies. Its effect, on the contrary, has Psalmist's Vieiu of Human Insignificance. 135 been of rather a reactionary nature, has tended some- what to bring back the old conception. There was a time in which men were indeed prone to ask in a spirit of scepticism, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? "—it was precisely at that epoch in which the former skies were passing away and new heavens wxre breaking upon a new earth. The age in which Copernicus proclaimed that the system of Ptolemy was no longer tenable, was the age when man felt the psalmist's sense of insignificance with- out the psalmist's wonder at the manner in which the insignificance had been compensated. He felt that he could no longer regard himself as the special centre of the visible universe, and he was driven back into the position of one who stood infinitely remote from all influences of protective care. This was undoubtedly the tendency of the age imme- diately succeeding the Eeformation. But where Mr Draper goes wrong is in making an age of transition the characteristic period of all scientific development. The Copernican system of astronomy was a prepara- tion for the doctrine of evolution, but it was not itself the doctrine of evolution, and when that doc- trine came it destroyed its negative aspect. Evolu- tion has taken away that very sense of distance which the first discovery of the Copernican system created between man and the universe. It has served as a bridge over that seeming gulf of infini- tude which the first discovery of the larger dimen- 136 The Psalmist and the Scientist. sion of the heavens left before the eyes of men. The infinitude of the universe still remains, but it is no longer an infinite void ; it is a universe per- meated by a chain whose first link is intimately connected with its last, and whose every part is necessary to the production of the whole. Man has lost his position as the exclusive centre of uni- versal nature, but he has regained that position in combination with all other things. No object, how- ever minute, is in the light of this new doctrine too insignificant to be a centre; no event, however trivial, too unimportant to have its place in the development of the mighty whole. The doctrine of the correlation of forces has revealed the wondrous truth that the same power which plays on the sur- face operates also at the interior, and that the force which acts at the extremities of the universe is iden- tical with that force which lies at the centre of all being. We arrive, then, at this conclusion : The psalmist of Israel was not guilty of primitive ignorance in feeling himself to be the centre of the universe. He was as alive as Mr Draper to the natural in- significance of man, and was prompted to utter his words by the very sense of that insignificance. He felt that by nature he had no right even to be, much less any claim to aspire to the height of being. It was this feeling of insignificance which awakened his surprise, a surprise originating in the fact that Psalmist's View of Human Insignificance. 137 this puny life of his was yet something whose in- fluence ramified into all other things, and which in turn all other things conspired to influence. This was the paradox which was awakened in the heart of the psalmist — the paradox of the mingled little- ness and greatness of man. And that conclusion has not become an anachronism; it is as true and as paradoxical to-day as it was in the days of ancient Israel. Man is still conscious of his utter impotence amid the forces of material nature, and he is made every day increasingly conscious that these forces have a relation to his impotent life. The paradox of the psalmist remains the paradox of the evolu- tionist, and the latter must ask his Universe as the former asked his God, " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? " 138 The Psalmist and the Scientist. CHAPTEK VI. THE psalmist's TWOFOLD CREATION. i SALM XIX. In the previous chapter we found the psahnist engaced in contrasting^ the condition of man with tlie condition of physical nature. On that occa- sion he had not yet risen above the view of man as a physical being ; he had contemplated him only as one of the many forces which operated through- out the universe. Viewed from this physical stand- point, the psalmist had been naturally impressed above all other things with the insignificance of man amid the forces of material nature, and his main wonder had been that, in spite of his insig- nificance, he had yet obtained amongst these forces a central and a commanding position. But in this nineteenth psalm to which we now turn, the psalmist has altered his standpoint. He has come to see that the reason of man's pre-emin- ence over the forces of material nature is the posses- llic Psalmist's Tioofold Creation, 139 sioii by man of a force which is not material. The creation, which at first presented itself to his eye merely as a physical unity, is now seen breaking up into two parts, the one physical and the other moral. Viewed as a mere physical entity, man had been simply a part of nature, and a very insignificant part indeed. But now there rises in the view of the psalmist a region in which man is no longer a part of physical nature, and in which his position cannot be measured by anything that is material. This psalm, in short, is the revelation of a dualism in a sphere which was once perceived only as a imity. The world of creation divides itself before the eye of the psalmist into two distinct worlds, — the one material, tlie other moral — the one comprehending the physical firmament, the other embracing the statutes of the heart. The Gorman philosopher Kant has said that there were two things which uniformly filled him with wonder — the starry heavens above, and the moral law within. The psalmist is impressed with the same twofold wonder — the marvel of the heavens that declare the glory of God, and the marvel of those moral intuitions which rejoice the heart and make the simple wise. Now, let us observe at the outset that in the view of the psalmist these are not two creations, but simply two aspects of the same creation. They are indeed contrasted aspects ; the psalmist is quite un- able to find in either of them any connecting link by 140 The Psalmist and the Scientist. which it could pass over into the other. But that connecting link which he fails to find in them, he discovers behind them. The marvel of the starry heavens is not to be explained by the marvel of the moral law, nor is the moral law^ to be accounted for as an evolution of the starry heavens. Neverthe- less these two worlds, distinct in themselves, are united in the fact that they come from a common source; the glory which the heavens declare is tlie glory of God, the perfection which the moral law displays is the perfection of "the law of the Lord." Now we must recognise the fact that, not- withstanding the great distance in time and the great transformation in form of thought which have intervened between the days of the psalmist and our own, the conclusion here arrived at is no anachron- ism ; it is in strict accordance with the latest results of science. The latest result of science is the doc- trine of evolution, and the doctrine of evolution is simply the effort to find for all things a common source and a united origin. It does not yet profess to tell the precise steps by w^hich any one form of existence developed into another ; what it does pro- fess to hold is that all forms of existence, however diverse they now may be, were originally derived from one parentage and took their start from a com- mon home. What that parentage is, science does not say; it confesses its inability to give it a definite name. Sometimes it calls it the Unknowable, some- The rsalmisfs Twofold Creation. 141 times Eorce, sometimes Power, sometimes the Order of Nature, but in each case it prints tlie word with a capital letter, to express the conviction that its meaning transcends description. Now the psalmist of Israel agrees with the modern scientist in the belief that all forms, however various, may be traced to a single source. He differs from the modern scientist in giving that source a definite name; he calls it God. But this difference is in no sense a contradiction. The modern scientist will not affirm that the common origin of all things was a personal life, but as little will he deny it. To affirm it, there- fore, cannot be unscientific ; it can at most be only beyond science. It is one thing to say that faith belongs to a region which science has not yet tra- versed ; it is another and a very different thing to say that the region traversed by faith is at variance with the region traversed by science. In pronounc- ing the ultimate source of things to be indefinable by name and unknowable by nature, science has left a marginal sphere open to the flight of faith. The psalmist has occupied that sphere ; he has ventured to define that which science has left undefined. He has given a name to the ultimate source of all things ; he has called it God. We may not say that in so doing he has followed the lines of science ; it may be that the lines of science do not yet stretch so far. But we can say without the slightest f