THE WORLD AND THE CHURCH. LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD and THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED IN THREE LETTERS TO A FRIEND. A SEPTUAGENARIAN. (Tbirb (6&ition. WITH AN' INTRODUCTION BY JAMES BOOTH, C.B. LONDON : LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1879 . . All rights reserved. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 I ' 1 https://archive.org/details/problemofworldchOOdalt ?V 1 1 If ry PREFACE *= CT" THE THIRD EDITION. The present Edition consists merely of the text of the Second Edition with an Introduction. It is re- quested that the following errata may be corrected. Page 18, line 15, after belong read and ultimately „ 54, „ 8, dele as well „ 97, note , line 17, for D’Alemberg read D’Alembert „ 131, „ „ 13, „ sun read flame „ 152, „ „ 6, „ beings read beginnings PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. In the present edition the whole work has been carefully revised, new illustrative matter having been introduced, and some topics not essential to the main argument having been omitted. Among the most marked changes I may men- tion that the various opinions in support of the belief in a future state, collated in and forming the appendix to the first edition, are now embo- died with additions in the Second Letter ; and that the portion of the Third Letter, which treats of the credibility of the doctrinal system of the churches called orthodox, has been re-arranged and partly re-written. In propounding what I believe to be higher and juster views of the providential government of the world than are involved in the popular vi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. creed, it lias been my earnest endeavour (so far as it was possible without sacrificing the truth) to avoid giving pain to any of my readers who may have hitherto had an undoubting belief in its un- assailable truth and sanctity. My object has been to awaken thought and to substitute conviction in the place of unquestioning acquiescence, without unnecessarily wounding the religious feelings of anyone. J. B. Prince’s Gardens : November 1872 . PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. The occasion of my writing these Letters may be explained in a few words. In reflecting on the condition of man in this life it is impossible not to be struck with the large amount of privation and suffering which are the lot of the great mass of mankind, in contrast with the boundless provision which the constitution of the world seems to offer for their comfort and happiness. I was naturally led to consider what had been the influence of the Church in this matter. Is the way in which the Church (under any of its phases) professes to account for this painful state of things satisfactory? Has our National Church, with its vast establishment, had any sensible effect in correcting or alleviating this sad condition of our countrymen ? If it be true that these questions can be answered only in the [viii] PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. negative, what is the explanation of this lament- able failure ? Are we not bound to inquire whether the theory on which our National Church (in common with the churches of other denomi- nations) is founded is sound, and whether it is calculated to promote the well-being and progress of mankind in this world P In determining to publish the conclusions at which I have arrived in answer to these questions, I have thought that I ought not to be deterred from doing so by the fear of disturbing people’s minds, because I felt sure that few persons would be likely to read the Letters whose minds were not unsettled already. To such persons I am not without hope that the views which I have sug- gested may have the effect, in some degree, of relieving their present perplexity, by showing that if, as the result of their inquiries, they should be compelled to abandon a creed which, however it may have been cherished in times past, is no longer in harmony with the age, they may still find that all is not barren, and that there remains an ample field for the exercise of our highest faculties, our noblest virtues, and our holiest affections. November 1871 . CONTENTS. LETTER I. PAGE Origin of the Letters 1 Great amount of suffering in the world — Much of it avoidable . 4 The Church considered in relation to this question ... 7 Views undervaluing this life, unfavourable to well-being . . 9 Two views of the Divine Government — Religion common to both. 12 1 . According to the Church’s theory 16 2. According to the system of Nature 17 Importance to religion of sound views of the Divine Government . 20 Change as to the hold of the Church on the world . . .23 Character of the old Reformation — Of the coming change . . 24 Views taken by liberal clergymen — By cultivated laymen . . 30 The Oxford movement — Tracts for the Times — Church Missions 39 Ignorance at the root of most of the evil in the- world ... 43 Improved education the remedy 44 Tendency of population to outgrow the means of subsistence . 45 Growing power of the working classes — Urgent necessity for their enlightenment ......... 48 Little real assistance given by the Church to education . . 50 The kind of education most needed . . . . . .54 Signs of improvement —Hopes for the future .... 56 The Church’s mode of giving religious instruction to the young — The Church Catechism .61 Unsuitability of the Bible as a class-book 66 Vlll CONTENTS. LETTER IL PAGE Divine government of the world, according to the natural system, by general and invariable laws 69 The Church’s teaching at variance with this view ... 73 Condition of man at his first appearance on the earth ... 74 Horace’s description . . . . . . . . .77 Growth of civil society, law, and morals . . . . .78 Both in the physical and moral world, all to be found out by man 80 Ethical sentiment common to all men — Its objects various . . 83 A supernatural revelation not more required in the spiritual than in the material world 85 The principle of moral obligation — Intuitionists, Utilitarians . 86 Office of conscience — Need for its enlightenment — Its authority supreme .......... 91 Propensity to neglect the practical for the ideal, a hindrance to material improvement . . . . . . . .92 Baconian as compared with Platonic philosophy . . . .93 Materialism and spiritualism . . . . . . 97 The world and man’s destiny a mystery — Our business with the how, and mot with the why 99 Evil in the world — To becontended with — In great part remediable 101 Our quarrel with the Church . . . . . .106 Suffering supposed to be of God’s appointment — Asceticism . 109 Higher speculation —The whence and the whither . . .113 The imagination and the feelings, religious and other, to be kept ' in check by the reason 116 Special providence . . . . . . . . .118 Belief in a state of future retribution very general— Of little aid to the earthly legislator — Its value 122 Natural arguments for a future life numerous — Longing for immortality part of our nature — Bishop Hinds . . .125 Argument of Coleridge, following Pascal 126 Of Sir B. Brodie, in Psychological Inquiries — Tennyson . . 127 Of W. B. Greg, from the spiritual sense — Descartes . . .128 CONTENTS. IX PAGR Plato 129 Some uncertainty inseparable from the nature of the case . .130 Gothe’s ground of belief — D’Alembert — Wieland — Lord Byron — Lockhart — Moore — Wordsworth — Mrs. Barbauld . .132 The prospect of a future life no ground for neglecting our well- being in this life .137 Condition in a future life — No just ground for anxiety . .138 Recapitulation of Letter II. . • 140 LETTER III. Introductory 144 The Church system — Its various phases all incredible — All in- volving unworthy views of God . . . . . .145 The Church system not defensible by the analogy of nature . .150 The notion of a Fall not difficult to account for . . . .151 Faith and reason ......... 152 Sources of the Church doctrine — The Bible, its character and its mission 157 Christianity; its early history involved in obscurity — Circum- stances favourable to its introduction . . . . .167 Power of religious enthusiasm, exemplified in Wesley and Whitefield 170 Religious enthusiasm unguided by reason often hurtful . .173 Miracles — The miraculous conception and the resurrection of Jesus 174 Discrepancies in the Gospels . . . . . . .177 Plenary inspiration of the Scriptures 179 Excellence of the teaching and of the character of Jesus — Nothing supernatural in his doctrine . . . . . . .180 Reformation of morals and not a dogmatic system his object . 181 His example and motives more powerful than his doctrine . .183 Morality of the Stoics and early moralists . . . . .184 Many reforms attributed to Christianity, due rather to intellectual development . .187 Some of the precepts of Jesus practically questionable . .189 Probability that his teaching was sometimes misunderstood and misreported . . . . . . . . .192 X CONTENTS. PAGE St. Paul’s share in the spread of Christianity . . . .193 His Jewish prejudices, and the contrast between his teaching and that of Jesus .194 Reconciliation dogma . . . . . . . . .195 Low view of human nature taken by St. Paul . . . .199 Possibility that the system of supernaturally-revealed religion is founded on error — The belief in witchcraft once universal . 201 Why belief in the Church scheme still so general — Birth, early education, and the force of habit .203 Social impediments in the way of inquiry and change . . . 206 Vast powers of the Church engaged in defence of the received doctrine — Weekly influence of the pulpit — The arguments in defence why of little value . . . . . . 208 Lay defenders of the Church — Lord Chancellor Eldon — Words- worth ........... 212 Influence of Christianity not dependent on belief in its super- natural origin . .213 Present position of the Established Church — Indications of coming change .......... 216 Insufficiency of proposed reforms .217 Comparative number of Churchmen and Dissenters . . .218 Precedent of the Irish branch of the Church . . . .219 Some points in the present Church services open to objection — Creeds — Prayer . .220 Public worship considered as a duty . . . . . .227 Ideal of a National Christian Church . . . . . .230 Advantages of the present organisation 231 Value of the Sunday — Sabbatarian prejudices . . . .232 Is it for our interest to be able to prove the truth of the Orthodox scheme 235 Conclusion . . . . . . . . • • 241 INTRODUCTION. On recurring to the subject of these Letters, with a view to a new Edition, I am more than ever convinced that the system of our Church is altogether founded in error ; and that if we desire to make the best of the world in which we find ourselves — to get rid of, or at any rate to materially diminish, the evil, and to avail ourselves of the inexhaustible sources of good which it contains — we must proceed upon an entirely different system. Not but that the Christian religion, at the time of its introduction and for long afterwards, was of inestimable value to mankind. In the then condition of the world nothing could be so well fitted as the example and preaching of Jesus, and the earnestness and zeal of his disciples, to eradicate the polytheistic religion still lingering there, and to raise society from the depth of corruption in which it was sunk. Nor, with reference to the great subject of morals, am I blind to the fundamental reformation which took place contemporaneously with, or shortly after, the xii INTRODUCTION. introduction of Christianity, and that in a large degree we owe to Jesus the principles of love, benevolence, humility, self-abnegation, and others, which have as- sumed a place in the morality of the Christian world. The excellence of these principles has approved itself to advancing knowledge, and they are now a part of the established morality of civilised nations. For their original reception they were to a great extent indebted to the supernatural character attributed to Jesus. Having taken their stand, and their excellence being proved, they retain their hold on the esteem of mankind, and they will continue to do so. Other precepts of Jesus (as I have pointed out in my Third Letter), though approved of at the time, ad- vancing civilisation has shown to be pernicious and they have not been retained ; those, for instance, re- lating to almsgiving and mendicancy ; those which sanction improvidence, and some others.* Experience has shown that in the present state of the world among European nations, there could be no well-ordered society where these principles were generally acted on. Jesus believed, and he taught his disciples to believe, that the world was soon to come to an end. Supposing this to have been true, these principles would not have been so open to objection as they in reality were. * Part of the curse pronounced on man at the Fall is that he should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow — by labour. This, perhaps, may in some degree explain why Jesus, who was well versed in the Hebrew Scriptures, seems never to have insisted on industry as meritorious. INTRODUCTION. Xlll It is unquestionable, too, that the Christian Church has done good service in its time. At the period especially of the irruption of the Goths upon the Eoman world, the Christian religion and the Church by which its powers were wielded were of unspeakable benefit. It is difficult to conceive how else the violence and rapacity of those barbarous hordes could have been restrained, and law and order made prevalent. As Wieland eloquently says in the Agathoddmon (by the mouth of Apollonius , who is speaking prophetically of the event) : 6 Das einzige, was solchen ungeschlaehten Erdensohnen imponieren kann, die Religion , ehemahls die Stifterin der Humanitat, wird jetzt ihre Retterin seyn. Gliicklicher Weise ist die neue Volksreligion der rohen Fassungskraft dieser sinnlichen Menschen eben so angemessen, als sie geschickt ist, ihre Wildheit zu zahmen, und sie allmahlich das Joch der sittlichen Disciplin dulden zu lehren. Beiner und geistiger wiirde sie ihnen unverstandlich und unbrauchbar seyn ; gerade so, wie sie dann seyn wird, ist sie was sie seyn muss, um mit Erfolg auf solche Menschen zu wirken.’ (P. 462.*) But it does not appear that there was anything miraculous — that is, out of the ordinary course of nature — in the introduction and spread of Christianity, or that Jesus was essentially more than one of the very remarkable men who from time to time make their ap- pearance in the world. It may be admitted that, as * Leipzig, 1799. xiv INTRODUCTION. Grothe has remarked, Jesus is the highest example of moral excellence that the world has yet seen. His spiritual preeminence is beyond all question, though his practical teaching was not unaffected by the imperfect knowledge of his age and nation. How attractive were his character and teaching, especially among the gentler sex, we may well conceive from the readiness with which his doctrine was originally accepted, and the hold which it still maintains through all the changes of the world. And this, no doubt, in a modified degree will go on. What is good in the religion, and suited to our condition, we shall still retain. Nor does it seem to me by any means necessary to resort to the Supernatural in order to explain how it should have come to pass that Jesus and his disciples, and their successors, were able to bring about a moral reformation of the people which the Romans, with their comparatively greater intelligence and their lofty ethical system, seem never even to have attempted. It was not that the moral system inculcated by Jesus was of a higher order than that of the Latin moralists. There is, indeed, as I have pointed out in my Third Letter, little in the ethical systems of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca to distinguish them from those of the Christian moralists. The distinction in the case of Jesus was that he and his followers preached his doc- trine to the people ; enforcing it by dwelling on the life to come, and insisting on the near approach of the INTRODUCTION. XV end of the world. The Komans would seem to have entirely neglected popular education. It does not appear to have entered into their policy to attempt the improvement of the people by anything in the nature of moral or religious culture. Their priests were in no sense the instructors of the people ; the office of priest being ceremonial merely. Neither in- deed was it the object of Jesus and his disciples to instruct the people, but to make them religious. It is remarkable that, with all his anxiety to improve the condition of the poor, Jesus never seems to have insisted on the acquisition of knowledge as a matter of im- portance. Whilst in the Old Testament, with which Jesus must have been familiar, we read in the Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon, the earnest and eloquent language in which Solomon advocates the acquisition of wisdom and knowledge, Jesus nowhere insists on the importance of removing the ignorance which was a main cause of the poverty and wretchedness of the people. The civilised world has now learned the truth for which it was not then prepared, that to educate the people is not to benefit them only, but to benefit Society also ; and we educate with that view. I have in my First Letter adverted to the subject of popular Education, and pointed out what appear to me some of the leading particulars in which improvement is much wanted. So far from lending a helping hand to improve and extend popular education, the Church. XVI INTRODUCTION. has rather stood in the way. Any education not founded on her view of religion as expounded in her Catechism and formularies, she has looked upon as pernicious, and for a long period she persistently re- sisted its introduction. Instead of promoting an educa- tion adapted to fit the coming generations for the world in which they are to live — to enable them to understand it, and to make the best of it for themselves and their fellow-creatures — the Church has always taught and still does teach a view of the world which intelligent persons are in rapidly increasing numbers becoming- convinced is utterly untenable. What is the character of her Catechism I have attempted to show in my First Letter. I must** however.,,, admit that considerable advances have, in the last quarter of a century, been made in promoting popular education, and in these the clergy have taken some share. In many of the smaller towns and rural districts especially, good service has been done by the more intelligent clergy in promoting the establishment of reading-rooms and clubs, and in en- couraging occasional lectures ; and although this has not been done in any systematic way, nor upon such a scale as our Church with its extensive organisation might easily have accomplished, still in the aggregate the result has been no doubt considerable. But there is still much to be done. The character of the instruction generally given in the schools intended for the working INTRODUCTION . XY11 classes is by no means so well adapted as it might be to qualify men for the world in which they are to live. To take a single branch — Political Economy as applicable especially to the working classes — how little has been done towards instructing those classes in the particular doctrines on which their comfort and well-being depend, such as wages, population, and the value of freedom in the market of labour. All the truths on this subject which the artizan classes are immediately interested to know are capable of being made so plain that any person of ordinary understanding may easily compre- hend them. They ought, in feet, to be wrought into the texture of their minds. If as much time as is spent in drilling the young in the Church Catechism were devoted to making even so much as the principle of property and the laws which regulate wages thoroughly understood by the artizan class, it is impossible that we should have the lamentable strikes which now so fre- quently take place, and which are attended with so much distress and inconvenience in every way. It is not^Jiowever^^in popular education alone that there is room for improvement. How much of the education of the upper classes, and of those especially who con- stitute the governing class, is derived from a literature of which the tendency is to glorify ambitioq^aggression and conquest, and which places the highest object of Nations, not in the wisdom, goodness, and well-being of the men and women who compose them, but in the XV 111 INTRODUCTION. extent of territory which they can call their own, and the number of vassal people over whom they may rule. With the cry for Disestablishment becoming ever more determined — a reform which, sooner or later, is inevitable, and it will hardly take place without Dis- endowment — it is of the highest importance that the public mind should be prepared for this great change, so that steps may be taken in time for securing for the promotion of popular education, the large funds now at the disposal of the Church, after making due provision for the satisfaction of vested interests and other claims, and for the maintenance of the Cathedral and other buildings of a specially national character. Without unduly taking upon themselves the character of a paternal government, it is incalculable how much the Government, by organising and superintending an enlarged system of popular education throughout the country, might do in the way of guiding and stimulat- ing the people, and elevating their intellectual, phy- sical and spiritual condition. It would indeed be lamentable if the result of Disestablishment should be merely to add one more to the sects already too numerous, and if the State should, after the deductions above indicated, appropriate for its ordinary expendi- ture the funds now administered by the Church. It is not necessary for the purpose of my argument to determine the question whether there is to be a Fu- INTRODUCTION. XIX ture Life or not. What I insist upon is that our main business is with the world in which we find ourselves ; and that it is our duty to devote the whole of our powers to the study of this world, and to promoting the happi- ness and well-being of ourselves and our fellow-creatures there. If a future life be in store for us, there is, I contend, apart from the tenets of an assumed super- natural revelation, no sufficient ground to suppose that what is calculated to promote our highest good in this life would be an unfitting preparation for the life to come. On the contrary, the most reasonable view that we can assume of a future existence is one in which there would be a continuation and further development of all that is noblest and purest and most conducive to happiness in this life. In this view of a future life, namely, that it should be the complement of our existence here, and that in it what is left imperfect in this life will be carried forward and perfected, — the belief in a future state could hardly be otherwise than to be desired. What I deprecate is that we should sacrifice what is best and highest in the present life in the vain hope that we shall thereby insure inconceivable happiness in some future state of existence. And I do not hesitate to express my conviction (for reasons to which I shall presently have occasion to advert) that the view of life which I take — confining it to the present world, and endeavouring to make the best of ' our existence here — is not only sound, but that it is a XX INTRODUCTION. more cheerful view, and holds out a more certain pro- spect of happiness, than can reasonably be looked for under the system that is propounded for our acceptance by the Church. Independently of the truth of the Christian religion, the belief in a future state of existence has been very general. I have stated in my Letters the main grounds commonly relied on for entertaining this belief. They rest on feeling rather than on evidence. With Words- worth, c We feel that we are greater than we know.’ A great difficulty in the way is that if we suppose any human beings to live again we must suppose that all will, not merely the cultivated and the fairly intelligent, but those just above, or possibly only on a par with some of the higher anthropoidal quadrumana; such, for instance, as the Bushmen, the Fingoes, and the Andammans, as well as the Ashantees, Zulus, and other savages of a somewhat more advanced degree of in- telligence. This, the uniformity observable in the order of nature does not allow us to doubt. Can we reasonably believe that these savages in countless millions will, a second time, be called into existence ? a supposition in the highest degree improbable in itself and for which there is no tittle of evidence. A some- what similar difficulty presents itself on the score of the children who die in infancy. Even if we could suppose with the Church that the period of the world’s exist- ence has not exceeded six thousand years, and if we INTRODUCTION. XXI should limit our view to the United Kingdom, the number of children dying in infancy must be counted by millions. How can we, without some evidence of the fact, think it credible that these infants should be recalled to life ? And if we accept the Church’s doc- trine, and think what must be the fate of a large proportion of these infants, dying unbaptised, it is too shocking to contemplate. The argument in favour of a future state of existence, founded on the supposed nature of the human Soul, is not, I think, of much weight. The soul, it is argued, does not die with the body ; the body is material ; none of the properties of matter, it is urged, apply to the operations of the mind or soul : the soul must, therefore, be something distinct from the body, and not liable to dissolution with it. Why should it be supposed that this is the case ? We have never had experience of a mind or soul except in conjunction with a body. It is born with the body and grows with it ; and, so far as we have experience, it is incapable of independent existence. Why may it not be dissolved with the body? Thought, memory, all the mental operations are functions of the brain, which is part of the body. The dependence of the one on the other is shown by what logicians call the method of concomitant variations. The Mind changes with the body ; it grows with its growth ; it strengthens with its strength : XXII INTRODUCTION. as the body grows old and infirm the mind decays. Cerebral inflammation produces mental delirium : cere- bral malformation makes the mind idiotic : the idiot is below the ape in mental capacity. What reason, then, is there to suppose that the mind or soul survives the dissolution of the body ? Life, without which there is no mind or soul, is no doubt something mysterious, whether the life of man, or that of the lower animals. Our faculties thus far seem incapable of penetrating the mystery. It cannot^ however be denied that we never see life or mind except in connection with and as a property of matter. And as Professor Huxley has remarked, we know nothing of matter but as a name for the unknown hypothetical cause of states of our consciousness. May not the operations of the mind or soul be among these states of consciousness ? As to the question whether we can with confidence look forward to a future state of existence as desirable, we may, I think, not unreasonably assume that if there is to be such a state it will be suited to our condition, and that it will be only necessary there as here to cultivate the powers with which we are gifted, and to employ them in the promotion of our own well-being and that of those around us. Such a belief indulged as a hope, and not insisted on as matter of faith to be believed at the soul’s peril, could hardly be other than a source of interest to us in this life and a solace at the approach of death. The younger Mill, though not disinclined to INTRODUCTION. XX111 cherish the hope of immortality on account of the prospect which it holds out of rejoining the beloved dead, yet on the whole seems to have thought that if earthly affairs were better arranged we might rather drop quietly out of existence after enjoying a certain amount of useful and happy life, than be burdened by a perpetuation of being, the conditions of which may not always be favourable. For my own part, I am prepared to accept either fate ; and being satisfied that the preternatural system of the Church is wholly with- out foundation, I look forward to the approach of death with perfect tranquillity. Incertus moriar , nonpertur- batus. But though in this view of the case I can contem- plate without anxiety the possibility of a future existence, it would be far otherwise if I could believe in the truth of the Christian theology, either as it is to be collected from the commonly received Scriptures, or as pro- pounded in the doctrinal system of either the Roman Catholic or the Anglican Church. It is commonly supposed that we are interested to maintain the system of our Church, even if its truth be doubtful, and that if not true it is to be desired that it were so. This is so commonly assumed that it is worth while to inquire a little whether it really is so. I have stated in my Third Letter the Church’s view of the Fall and Re- demption, and the doctrinal system according to which those persons who believe in the Man-Grod Jesus of \ xxiv INTRODUCTION. Nazareth as the Redeemer of the World, and repent of their sins, and comply with the ordinances of the Church, may attain to eternal happiness in Heaven ; the rest of mankind being condemned to everlasting torments in Hell. Putting the most favourable con- struction on this scheme, how infinitely small is the number of persons who can be saved compared with the countless millions condemned to eternal perdition. For we must ever bear in mind that if we accept the supernatural system of the Church we must take it in its integrity. We cannot be allowed to take just so much of it as we find pleasant and reject the rest. If we ac- cept the hope of Heaven we must take the chance of Hell ; and the fear of the latter, considering the vast proportion of the adverse chances, must, with any intel- ligent and reasonable man, however perfect a Church- man, outweigh the hope of the former. Even of the comparatively very limited number of persons who have ever heard the name of Jesus and had any opportunity.,.^ therefore^ of embracing the Christian religion, what certainty can there be in the case of any one of them that he has embraced the true faith, and has thus escaped the dreadful fate of all who do not truly believe ? It is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that none beyond its pale can be saved. This opinion has been and is held and maintained by men of the highest intelligence and learning and of undoubted sincerity. Can we say that this opinion (the leading doctrine of INTRODUCTION. XXV the Roman Catholic Church) cannot possibly be true ? If there is even a doubt in the matter, no intelligent man would deliberately choose to incur the risk of being condemned to everlasting suffering if the alterna- tive were offered to him of simply ceasing to exist. But besides the risk of not belonging to the true Church, how many other chances are there to most of us that we should not be among the small number of the elect. We canno^therefore^ay that we are inter- ested to establish the truth of the supernatural Christian scheme. No good and benevolent man, whatever con- fidence he might feel that he was among the small number of the elect, could desire to establish the truth of a system which, though holding out a chance of unspeakable happiness to an infinitely small number of persons, comparatively speaking, would doom countless millions of his fellow creatures to endless suffering. It is sometimes urged that the mercy of Grod is infinite, and that we must trust that in some mysterious way the condition of those beyond the pale of the Church will not, in a future state, be so dreadful as we have been taught to believe. But we cannot forget what is the character of the Being, according to the Church’s own doctrine, from which this mercy is to be hoped for. This is a subject which has much perplexed divines. The late Dean Mansel did not shrink from admitting that the Grod whom we are called upon to worship is not a good Being according to our notions b XXVI INTRODUCTION. of goodness. 4 The infliction/ he says, 4 of physical suffering, the permission of moral evil, the adversity of the good, the prosperity of the wicked, the crimes of the guilty, involving the misery of the innocent ; the tardy appearance and partial distribution of moral and religious knowledge in the world ; these are facts which no doubt are reconcilable , we know not how, with the infinite goodness of God, but which certainly are not to be explained on the supposition that its sole and sufficient type is to be found in the finite goodness of man.’ * (Quoted in the 4 Westminster Review ’ for * With reference to this subject, there is a very remarkable passage in the late J. S. Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamil- ton's Philosophy , quoted in the Saturday Review for May 20, 1865, and in other places ; but it may bear repeating. 4 If,’ says Mr, Mill, 4 instead of the 44 glad tidings ” that there exists a Being in whom all the excellencies which the highest human mind can con- ceive exist in a degree inconceivable by us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a Being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his govern- ment, except that 44 the highest human morality we are capable of conceiving ” does not sanction them ; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this Being by the names which ex- press and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever powers such a Being may have over me, there is one thing he shall not do : he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no Being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures ; and if such a Being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.’ The late Bishop of St. Davids (Dr. Thirlwall), in a letter to the Spectator (June, 17, 1865), censuring the tone of the Record news- paper with reference to this passage, speaks of it as breathing the purest spirit of Christian morality. 4 1 do not envy the man,’ the Bishop says, 4 who could read it without being thrilled by a sense of the ethical sublime.’ INTRODUCTION. XXV11 January 1866, p. 16.) Other learned divines (Arch-, bishop King among others) before Dean Mansel, have asserted the utter incapacity of our minds to judge of the real nature or attributes of Grod. His justice and mercy and goodness, according to these divines, differ not only in degree but in kind from the qualities which go by those names among men. Surely it is better to acknowledge that the Power which sustains and governs the Universe is incomprehensible by us, than to assign to it a Personality with attributes which it is admitted we cannot understand, and which, according to the ordinary meaning of the words used, are contradictory. There is, no doubt, much in this world which, with our present limited faculties and extent of knowledge, we find it difficult to understand. The system not of this world only, but of the Universe of which it is an infinitesimal part, is involved in unfathomable mystery. The stars which we behold are, it seems probable, suns which are the centres of systems something similar to the Solar System of which our earth is a part — all of them parts of one infinite whole acting in unison and constituted, as the spectroscope leads us to believe, of materials similar to those of which the earth is com- posed, and sustained in their order by a Power, the nature of which is incomprehensible by us. To the operations of this Mysterious Power in this planet of ours, which we observe to be invariable in their XXV111 INTRODUCTION. sequences, we have given the name of Laws of Nature ; and we find that the more carefully we investigate and study these laws, the more do we learn what is con- ducive to the welfare of mankind or the reverse. And thus the task of conducting these investigations be- comes a source of the highest interest to us ; and whilst we exert ourselves in this way to promote the well-being of ourselves and others, we feel that we are acting in harmony with the all-pervading Power by which the Universe is sustained and governed, and that we may thus cultivate a religion, which has been not inappro- priately termed a Keligion of Humanity, and which is of a higher order than a religion founded on a system of rewards and punishments. As I have earnestly insisted in my First Letter, it must not be supposed, that because the incredible doc- trine of the Church is inadmissible, there must be an end of religion in the world. The religious sentiment, which seems a part of the spiritual nature of man, will still exist, Church or no Church. However it is to be ex- plained or however generated, the feeling is there. It has sprung up in some form among all the races of the earth, and there can be little doubt that the various Churches in the world are the fruit of this religious sentiment, though we may not be able to explain the steps by which they have sprung up or the way in which they have been founded, their early history being fre- quently obscure. These Churches are not however the only forms in which religion can clothe itself. INTRODUCTION. XXIX The late Lord Amberley, in his Analysis of Religious Belief ’, suggests that the various forms or creeds which natural religion has assumed have sprung from a com- mon principle, viz. the desire felt by the human race to establish a relationship with the Supernatural Powers upon whose will they suppose the course of nature and the well-being of mankind to be dependent, and to whom their prayers may be addressed.* Lessing’s ideal of natural religion seems to have been c that we should aim at forming the worthiest concep- tion possible of a Grod, and should regulate all our actions and thoughts by reference to that conception.’ f We aim at perfecting the ideal of religion for the sake of the reflex influence it will exercise on ourselves. The test of its perfection from time to time would be its capability of evolving and sanctioning our highest and purest feelings. Religion seems to be no exception to the law of Progress in the world.J * The ancient Greeks and Romans appear to have addressed prayers to their gods for very much the same objects as we adopt in addressing our God ; the Chorus on these occasions performing the office of the Church. Poscit opem Chorus et praesentia numina sentit ; Caelestes implorat aquas docta prece blandus ; Avertit morbos, metuenda pericula pellit ; Impetrat et pacem, et locupletem frugibus annum. Horace, Epistle to Augustus , 134-7. t * Einen Gott erkennen ; sich die wiirdigsten Begriffe von ihm zu machen suchen ; auf diese wiirdigsten Begriffe bei alien unsem Handlungen und Bedanken Riicksieht nehmen, ist der vollstandigste lnbegriff aller natiirlichen Religion.’ J With reference to one important division of the great Law of XXX INTRODUCTION. According to the younger Mill, 6 the cultivation of a high conception of what our earthly life may be made is capable of satisfying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the Unseen Powers.’ How far in the long roll of ages still to come, with our improved means of acquiring knowledge, and with our stores of informa- tion accumulating from age to age, what is now involved in obscurity may be explained, and new and enlarged principles of action adapted to the circumstances of the world in its advanced state may become prevalent, it would be idle to speculate. Enough, that even now y we have principles of action and elements of character which, if only an enlightened direction be given to them by education, promise to produce a state of things in the world with which the most aspiring of our race may reasonably be satisfied. Progress, I have in my Third Letter, in adverting to the decided predominance of good in the general scheme of the world, as dis- played in (amongst other indications) the tendency of the higher races to prevail over and supplant the lower, called attention to the encouragement afforded in this point of view by the progressive and rapid extension over the greater part of the world, of the in- fluence of England and the United States. It is* indeed* a general observation that uncivilised nations cannot hold their own against civilised governments. The long rule of the Turk in Constantinople and its dependencies may at first sight seem at variance with this theory ; but even the Turkish dynasty seems to be at length totter- ing to its fall. INTRODUCTION. XXXI The origin of mankind and the early history of the world are involved in impenetrable obscurity. With everything to find out, and with faculties originally wholly undeveloped, the progress of the human race (as I have pointed out in my Second Letter) must neces- sarily have been extremely slow ; and it seems probable that for countless ages they wandered on the earth in a condition inferior to that of the ordinary African savages of the present day. Even after the world had attained to some degree of what we call civilisation, the pro gress in improvement has still been very slow. For this, it must be admitted that since the introduction of Christianity the Church is in some measure account- able. Unhappily, as I have insisted in my Letters, the theory on which the Church proceeds is calculated to impede rather than to promote man’s advancement and well-being in the world, because, looking upon the future life as all in all, and on this life as a state of pre- paration only for the better world to come, the Church has, as was natural (and as would be commendable if her doctrine were true), with her vast organisation and her immense wealth and influence, devoted all her ener- gies to securing for mankind through her instrumentality an entrance into that better world, rather than to aid- ing them in the great task of making the best of their condition here. Nor can we be surprised that this should be so. Under a religious system such as that of the Church, XXX11 INTRODUCTION. which is disposed in all circumstances of difficulty to address itself to supernatural aid, we can hardly expect to find the energy of character which is fitted to struggle with the difficulties of this life ; and we cannot fail to remark this in cases of great public calamities, such as cholera and famine, where we see the Church, and the classes especially under the influence of the supernatural religion of the Church, disposed to depre- cate the wrath of Heaven by humbling themselves and resorting to fasts and the prayers of the Church, rather than at once to investigate the natural causes of these calamities with a view to their removal and to their prevention in future. We find in other classes of religionists, as well as those trained under the Estab- lished Church, the same disposition, when overwhelmed with private griefs, to dwell on the contemplation of supernatural relief. I have somewhere seen quoted with sympathy and approval by Dr. Martineau, those touch- ing lines : — 4 Or should the surges rise, And peace delay to come, Blest is the sorrow, kind the storm, That drives us nearer home.’ With all my respect, almost amounting to reverence, for the character and teaching of my friend Dr. Mar- tineau, I cannot help thinking that in this working world, where so much depends on our personal exertion, the feeling which should prompt a resolution to breast the 4 rising surges’ were the healthier feeling. As Leslie INTRODUCTION. XXX111 Stephen truly says, ‘the system which is really most calculated to make men happy, is that which forces them to live in a bracing atmosphere, which fits them to look facts in the face and to suppress vain repinings by strenuous action instead of luxurious dreams.’ Unfortunately the Church is not content patiently to observe the facts of the world and to understand so much of its constitution as she can, and to leave the rest in mystery. She takes upon herself to understand the nature of the Incomprehensible Power by which the world is sustained and governed, and she assigns to this Power attributes in accordance with her conception of what must be the nature of such a Power. If it be shown that the supposition of such attributes being possessed by that Power is inconsistent with unmis- takable facts observable in the order of the world, the Church does not* therefore* as would be the reasonable method of proceeding, suspend her judgment, but con- tents herself with saying that the supposed inconsistency is a mystery, and accordingly persists in her belief. Take, as an illustration of this practice, one of the leading dogmas of the Church, an opinion, perhaps, more universally held among Christians than any other, namely, the belief in a Personal God. In the gross ignorance of the early ages of the world, nothing is more natural than that an imaginative race like the Jews should have assumed that the Author and Governor XXXIV INTRODUCTION. of the World (for of the Universe they had no concep- tion) was a Being like themselves, although of a higher order and with larger powers — a Personal God, the Father of his people, standing in such relation to the early inhabitants of the earth as we find described in the Book of Genesis and other portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. But now that astronomy has revealed to us something of the extent and nature of the Universe of which this earth is an infinitesimally small part, we can no longer believe that it is governed by a Power in any way resembling the Personal God of the Jews and Christians. With regard to the character of the Personal God — according to the popular and received theology of all Christian communities, with the exception, perhaps, of the small sect of Unitarians — he is a Being who, shortly after the creation of the world, cursed all mankind ; condemning them (with the exception of a select few, to whom a chance of salvation through the instrumen- tality of the Church has been subsequently given) to everlasting torments ; and this not with any view to their reformation or amendment, or for any intelligible object. However, not to rest upon what is a question of doctrine which perhaps may not be received by some Christians, and to come to what admits of no doubt, consider for a moment the vast amount of misery in the world which an all-powerful Being standing in the relation of a Personal God, the Father of his people, if INTRODUCTION. XXXV benevolent, according to our ideas of benevolence, would certainly remove. Let us take a single example, the late Indian Famine, which was attended with suffering perhaps greater in amount even than the sufferings caused by the most horrible of wars that the world, in modern times at least, has known, namely, that between Russia and Turkey. Why was all this suffering endured if the Personal God of the Christians is a Being of infinite power, and can do therefore what he will ? What should we think of the Governor of Madras if it had been in his power to bring the suffering arising from the famine to an end simply by saying, 6 Let the famine cease and let plenty take its place,’ and he should have neglected to issue the necessary mandate ? What then must we necessarily think of the character of the supposed Personal God of the Christians ? It is, no doubt, painful to contemplate giving up the notion which we have entertained from our childhood, of communion with a great and good Being, standing in the relation of a Father to his children, and to whom we have been taught to resort in prayer in all our difficulties. But if the whole be nothing more than a 6 luxurious dream,’ is it not better that we should at once acknowledge the truth ? We in reality lose nothing by ceasing to indulge in this dream. If we have to suffer it is no alleviation, but rather an aggra- vation of our suffering, to think that it is intentionally inflicted by an all-powerful Being to whom we have XXXVI INTRODUCTION. been taught to resort in prayer for aid in all our diffi- culties. To feel that we cannot account for some great calamity from which we are suffering is surely more tolerable than to feel that it comes from a friend who could relieve us if he thought fit, but does not. What I wish to insist upon is, that instead of wasting our powers in vain endeavours to comprehend the mystery of Evil in the world, we should rather direct our attention to the consideration how much of that evil is remediable, and that whilst with increase of knowledge there seems no limit to the increase of good in the world, if we but take the proper steps to make it our own, so also there is no limit to the diminution of evil that may be effected. Our life is, or should be, one of struggle and progress : Excelsior our motto. The more carefully we observe and study the nature of the world, the more shall we be convinced that it depends very much upon ourselves what the condition of our life shall be. As the late lamented Professor Clifford has remarked (in an article in the 6 Fortnightly 5 for De- cember 1874), 6 We are not made by Frankenstein, but we have made ourselves. Not that every individual has made the whole of his character, but that the human race as a whole has made itself during the process of ages. The action of the whole race at any given time determines what the character of the race shall be in the future. From the continual storing up of the ef- fects of such actions, graven into the character of the INTRODUCTION. XXXV11 race, there arises in the process of time that exact human constitution which we now have. By that process of natural selection, all the actions of our ancestors are built into us and form our character ; and in that sense it may be said that the human race has made itself. 5 We need not be surprised that those who admit that the Power by which the Universe is sustained and governed is incomprehensible by us, should still suppose that that mysterious Power must be something like the Personal God of our childhood. I must admit that in my Letters, the second edition of which was published no longer ago than 1872, though insisting that the world is governed in accordance with general and invariable laws, I still was reluctant to abandon the old familiar phraseology, and was at pains to explain that we were not therefore without God in the world.* I did not sufficiently consider how liable the term God was to mislead if not accompanied by the necessary explana- tion. The editor of one of our liberal weekly publica- tions, 6 The Inquirer, 5 in a paper written with the object * In my Letters, when speaking of the systems of the World and the Universe, I have made use of the ordinary phraseology. It is hardly possible, however, to use the term God simply without sug- gesting the notion of an arbitrary Being governing the world by a series of special interferences — the God of the Jews and orthodox Christians. I have thought it better, therefore, in this Introduction, in speaking of the systems of the world and the universe, to speak of them as sustained and governed by a Mysterious and Incompre- hensible Power. XXXV111 INTRODUCTION. of vindicating from the charge of Atheism, Science and the Opening Address of Dr. Tyndall delivered at the meeting of the British Association in Belfast, in 1874, very fairly puts the case of the large party, himself included, who still struggle to retain something like the God of their childhood. 6 It is not,’ he says, 6 against the idea of God himself that the hostility of Science, as represented by the President of the British Associa- tion, is directed, but against a form of thought in which men in general have clothed God and presented him to their minds. They have thought of him under the image of a great artificer ; one who, using matter as his raw material, worked it up by his power and skill into the forms which we behold. It is this thought of an almighty artificer separate from matter that Science cannot tolerate. But the destruction of this form of thought, instead of plunging us into the depths of Atheism, opens upon us the light of true Theism. It leaves us free to form another far grander and worthier thought of God — that of the in-dwelling , all-forming , and all-sustaining Spirit of the Universe , which it is clear that Dr. Tyndall recognises under what he calls a cosmical life ; that is, a life of the Universe.’ But surely the wiser course would be to give up the attempt to define and explain the nature of this Mysterious and Incomprehensible Power, a task which seems beyond the reach of our present powers at least, and occupy ourselves with what is within their reach, INTRODUCTION. XXXIX where there is endless work for us to do. Is it not enough for us that by careful observation and study of the operations of this Incomprehensible Power we find more and more in the system of our world that is in- telligible ; and that there is an ample field there for the exercise of all our faculties in discovering the endless stores which it contains of what is conducive to the happiness of ourselves and of our fellow-creatures? Even if with Professor Huxley we take the least sanguine view of things, still this world is full of interest for us. 6 We live,’ he says, ‘in a world full of misery and igno- rance ; and the plain duty of each of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of two beliefs: 1st, that the order of nature is ascer- tainable by our faculties to an extent that is practically unlimited; 2ndly, that our volition counts for some- thing as a condition of the course of events.’ Why the charge of Atheism should, until quite re- cently, have been so universally considered matter of bitter reproach it is perhaps not difficult to explain ; though that such a reproach is unreasonable a moment’s consideration will show. It is indisputable that there is much in this world and the universe that is involved in impenetrable mystery, and that the nature of the Mysterious Power by which the whole is sustained and governed, is at present incomprehensible by us ; and if INTRODUCTION. xl we may ever hope to attain to some degree of know- ledge on this great subject, we must begin by admit- ting our ignorance. Ignorance mistaking itself for knowledge, as Socrates used to maintain, is the natural state of the human mind. And certainly our ordinary religionists form no exception to this rule. If we take the first step towards an attempt to acquire this know- ledge by admitting our ignorance, they at once cut short all discussion by the unanswerable reproach that we are Atheists and do not believe in God. It is remarkable how apt people are to deceive themselves by supposing that there is magic in words, and that nothing more is necessary, in order to get over all difficulty as to the nature of this Incomprehensible Power, than to make use of the term God, and to visit with bitter re- proaches all those who cannot get over the difficulty in the same way. They forget that the term God is a name only, not an explanation of the Mysterious Power by which the world is sustained and governed. We are told that Simonides being asked by Hiero what he thought of God, desired a week to consider, then a fortnight, then three weeks and so on ; the more he con- sidered the subject, the more difficulty he felt. So it will be with reference to the Personal God of our childhood. The more we consider the subject the more we shall find it impossible to reconcile what we see going on in the world with the assumed character and attributes of the Personal God. A great change has, in INTRODUCTION. xli late years, with the progress of knowledge, come over the public mind in dealing with this subject. One of the characteristic features of the present day is its toleration of free discussion of all subjects — Atheism among the rest. Mr. Mallock in his remarkable paper in the 7th number of the 6 Nineteeeth Century,’ on the question 6 Is LifeWorth Living ’ (a paper in which, as in so many other papers in the same publication, he displays a power of writing which makes one desire to examine whether his argument is as sound as his style is vigorous), seems to deprecate the freedom now allowed for the discussion of this great question. ‘In some small measure,’ he says (p. 251), 6 our toleration may indeed be a sign of our enlightenment, but in a far greater measure it is a sign and an effect of our ignorance.’ He does not conceal his regret that the term Atheism is no longer considered so shocking as it used to be. 6 In former times,’ he says (p. 254), 6 when Atheism was vague and stammering, incomplete and unorganised, it was condemned and suppressed with horror, anger, and indignation. Its apostles were execrated as monsters doomed to eternal torments. The world cast them out, and the Church burnt them. But now that Atheism is complete and organised, without concealment and with- out shame, its name is not even a term of mild re- proach.’ Again, Mr. Mallock says (p. 258), ‘ They (the unbe- lievers) have taken every thing away from life that to c xlii INTRODUCTION. wise men hitherto has seemed to redeem it from vanity.’ The unbelievers have taken nothing away from life. They merely endeavour to look at life as it really is ; and, seeing no sufficient ground for believing that any other life is in store for us, they try to make the best of the present one. So viewed^ however^Mr. Mallock considers life as nothing worth, and he desires to sup- plement it with a future state of existence. He is at elaborate pains to show that without a future life we have no stable basis for morality (a question on which I shall have a word to say by and bye) ; and he seems to assume throughout his paper that he has made out his case, if he has shown that we should be better with a future life than without it. He appears to consider that the onus is upon those who entertain doubts re- specting a future state to show that we can do as well without it. Now they do not deny that we might be better with a future life : they simply say there is a preliminary question to be determined, whether there is any sufficient ground for believing that there is such a future life. In the absence of any certainty on this point — the investigation of the question seeming to lead to a contrary conclusion — they say it is well to make the best of the present life, where they see that there is room for endless improvement if we but take the necessary means for that purpose. It is sometimes contended that /a future state of INTRODUCTION. xliii rewards and punishments is required in order to redress the injustice of this world. Vice, it is said, often goes without punishment, and virtue fails to receive its reward. The justice of the moral government of the world would therefore be open to impeachment were these rewards and punishments not provided in another world. Surely if the justice of the moral government of the world is to be impeached, it would rather be on the ground that virtue and vice have not their fitting rewards in this world. To bestow the reward or to inflict the punishment here would serve a moral purpose. To inflict the punishment in another world, after an indefinite lapse of time, and where it is not seen, is to inflict the pain without serving the moral purpose. What should we think of a human lawgiver who should enact that punishment for crimes should be inflicted in an unknown province, far away from the scene of the crime, and at an indefinitely distant period, and who, inasmuch as punishments remote and long-deferred have little effect in deterring from crime, should pro- pose to compensate for this imperfection by intensifying the severity of the punishment ? It is very commonly assumed that without a future state of rewards and punishments there is no solid basis for morality, a question which I have to some extent discussed in my Second Letter. Why should we sup- pose this to be the case ? Why are we not to suppose that morality and its value to mankind, and the means xliv INTRODUCTION. by which it may be enforced, have been left for us to find out with the faculties at our disposal, just as every- thing else that is valuable in this world has been left for us to find out ? As the physical laws are discovered by the observation and study of natural phenomena, so must moral laws be discovered by the observation of social phenomena. In the former case, what by experi- ence we find to be physically good we adopt ; and so in the latter, what in human conduct we observe to be morally good, that is, tending to promote the well-being of society, we adopt and enforce by education and public opinion ; and there can be no doubt that it may be so enforced. I by no means contend that religious motives are without effect in enforcing morality, especially among uneducated persons. What I contend is that among educated persons the religious motive — by which I understand the Supernatural Sanction— is not required ; and that to keep the people in ignorance in order that the religious motive may have greater effect (as was formerly, and to some extent still is, the policy of the Church) would cost more than it is worth. It is not very long ago that it was almost universally assumed that a thing so irksome as a boy’s lessons at school could not be enforced without the free use of the birch. As society has advanced in intelligence we find that this is not so, and that the precept of an intelligent master and the example of the better order of boys INTRODUCTION. xlv exert a happier influence than the physical means before resorted to. I am sometimes met by the argument that if our Church system were really so devoid of credibility as I contend, it could not be so generally believed as it is. I have adverted to this argument in my Third Letter. This very general belief need not, I think, surprise us, if we consider how few persons are capable of forming opinions for themselves, and that the Church with its enormous wealth and its extensive organisation is in possession of the field with so strong an interest to maintain its ground. Almost from the cradle we are laid hold of by the Church, and through all future life, in the nursery, in the school, at the university, and again at the weekly and other services of the Church, the truth of the Christian system is assumed and taught as a matter not requiring to be proved, but only to be enforced. It could hardly be otherwise than that the belief, however devoid of solid foundation, should under these circumstances be very general. But truth is great, and I have faith that in time it will prevail. It may, perhaps, be urged that if the belief in the doctrines of the Church is so general as it is admitted to be, however it may have been acquired and however unreasonable it may be, it would be better to leave mankind in possession of their faith. The great mass of mankind, it is argued, are incapable of forming xlvi INTRODUCTION. opinions for themselves ; and to many persons it is an inexpressible comfort to have the Church to rest upon and to look to for guidance. Many person^ indeec^as we see from the secessions from the Anglican Church which are constantly taking place, go farther, and desire to enjoy the more complete guidance afforded by the Church of Eome. There is, no doubt, something plausible in the argument of those who object to the discussion of these high subjects from the fear of un- settling people’s minds and undermining the principles which, whether well founded or not, are the mainstay of their moral being; and if the world were about soon to come to an end, the argument would have some force in it. But if we look forward to the countless ages which in all probability this world is still to endure, the aspect of things is entirely changed. The evil, although not inconsiderable, would be, at the worst, partial and temporary ; while any supposed benefit to be gained by leaving people in possession of their erroneous opinions would cost more than it is worth. I have discussed this question in my First Letter, where I have endeavoured to show that to decline the discussion necessary to the attainment of truth on the ground that cherished doctrines may thereby be disturbed, is to violate that law of our nature by which the search after truth is made the condition of all progress in the world. INTRODUCTION. xlvii Now, at length, we seem to be getting on the right road. Science is beginning to assert herself more freely ; and owing to the more general and practical adoption of her principle of careful observation of facts, questioning everything and admitting nothing as true which does not admit of verification, greater pro- gress, it is not too much to assert, has been made in the present century towards removing or alleviating pain and suffering, and discovering things conducive to the welfare and happiness of mankind, than has been accomplished in the long preceding period that man has existed on the face of the earth. Of the rapid pro- gress that science is now making, one or two instances were adverted to in an address of Professor Huxley at the meeting of the British Association, held last year in Dublin. The merest tjro, he said, knows a thou- sand times more on the subject of the higher animals than is contained in the work of Linnaeus, which at the time of its publication was the standard authority. Again, he said that at the Meeting of the British Association in Dublin, twenty-one years ago, the subject of Anthropology was not even adverted to, whilst now 7 there was no branch of science represented by a larger or more active body of workers. Whilst I write these pages we are startled by the discovery of new methods of lighting by means of Electricity ; and new methods of communicating our thoughts by means of the Tele- phone and Phonograph. Can we deem it impossible xlviii INTRODUCTION. that even now we may be on the eve of some discovery throwing a light on the System of the Universe now undreamed of, and which may rank in sweep of range with the law of gravitation? If we but proceed in the proper method, there seems to be no limit to the progress of the world in improvements and discoveries conducive to the well-being of mankind. And we may feel assured that though still far distant the time is steadily approaching when we shall be able with Wordsworth freely to indulge Our cheerful faith that all which we behold Is full of blessings. LETTER 1. My DEAR , You will not be surprised to see these letters addressed to you if you call to mind the long talks we used to have on that occasion when we were thrown much together, now more years ago than I like to re- member (seeing that we had then both of us reached the allotted age of man), on the problem of the world and man’s destiny here, and the unsatisfactory character of the solution of this great problem offered by the Church in any of its phases, — and if you remember the intention I then expressed, if ever I should have leisure for the purpose, of one day putting in order and publishing my thoughts on this all-engrossing subject, in the hope that I might perhaps be able to lighten in some degree the perplexities which are troubling so many excellent people among us, and do something towards clearing the way at least for the admission of sounder views than, as it appears to me, now generally prevail of the Divine government of the world. 2 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD I have not failed to consider the objection urged by you to the public discussion of these high subjects, from the danger of unsettling people’s minds, and un- dermining the principles which, whether well founded or not, are the mainstay of their moral being. This danger exists undoubtedly : there will always be some persons who will be liable to suffer from this cause. It is the Nemesis of the false system in which they have been educated ; but there would be an end to all pro- gress if, from the fear of this temporary and partial evil, we should abstain from the discussion of truths of vital importance to mankind. Changes of opinion, however ultimately valuable, are rarely sources of un- mixed good. Some degree of partial evil seems a neces- sary incident of the great law of progress in this world, ever working on from a lower to a higher condition of things. I am convinced that, in religion as in all other sub- jects, the prevalence of what is true must ultimately be for the general good, and any temporary and partial evil that may arise from the disturbance of established opinions, or from the dissemination even of erroneous opinions in the search after truth, is more than com- pensated by the ultimate benefit to society that results from the discussion. There is no infallible test by which we can distinguish the true from the false, and it is only by allowing unlimited inquiry and discussion that we can have any certainty of having got at the AND THE CHUKCH RECONSIDERED. 3 truth. We may regret that there is no infallible test or judge of the truth, but we must take the world as we find it. The Almighty has so ordained it, and we have only to submit. To refuse to discuss what is opposed to our cherished doctrines is to violate that law of our nature by which the search after truth is made the condition of all progress in the world. I can sympathise with the sentiment of those favourite lines of yours — Leave thou thy sister, when she prays, Her early heaven and cheerful views, Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse A life that leads melodious days. — Texxysox. We cannot but feel sorrow that these cheerful views should ever be exposed to disturbance. In the seclu- sion of a convent it were perhaps possible to guard against the intrusion of all disturbing influences ; but in the outer world, as society is now constituted, it is a thing not to be hoped for. And seeing how much there is in this mysterious world of ours that, with our present limited faculties, it is not given to us to com- prehend, and how many important questions there are on which, with every disposition to arrive at the truth, some degree of doubt must necessarily rest, we cannot too soon begin to learn the lesson of acquiescing tran- quilly in doubt, in those cases in which certainty is not to be attained. As Miss Emily Shirreff well remarks, in her Thoughts on Self-Culture : 6 When the young 4 THE PROBLEM OF THE WQRLB mind has been thoroughly impressed with the nature and extent of the difficulties in forming opinions, and of the value of probability as our only guide in so many momentous questions, it is time to inculcate a sad, perhaps, but necessary lesson, viz., acquiescence in doubt, as the inevitable condition of our earthly exist- ence We may make to ourselves, if we please, a panoply of prejudices, and say we are satisfied and certain ; but we cannot, even when we wish it, be always proof against reason, and once let our artificial defence be overthrown, we are cast into a sea of perplexities and rendered miserable because we have lost the cer- tainty we had deemed a virtue. There is but one true refuge : we must learn to bear doubt in order to ex- clude despair.’ (P. 223.) What cannot fail to strike anyone who bestows even a small amount of attention on what is passing around him in the world is the large amount of privation and suffering which are the lot of the great mass of the human race. Not less striking, though not so obvious at the first view, is the fact that of this suffering a great part might be avoided altogether, and nearly the whole might be alleviated, if only the necessary means, not beyond the reach of man, were resorted to. A very little observation will show that it mainly proceeds either from ignorance or neglect of the laws which Grod has ordained for the government of the world. The AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 5 world, or that portion of it at least in which our lot has been cast, is indeed, as Wordsworth felt in his serener moments, 4 full of blessings,’ if we would but take the appointed means to make them our own. Disease and poverty are the two most common forms of suffering. As to the former, it cannot be doubted that the greater part proceeds from intemperance, privation, imperfect acquaintance with the human frame and constitution, and ignorance or neglect of sanitary pre- cautions — in short, from causes which are remediable. As to the latter, viz., poverty, the political econo- mists assure us that, with the almost unlimited com- mand over mechanical force and the productive powers of Nature which advancing science has unfolded and is going on to unfold, the labouring classes, under due limitation of their numbers, might, but for the pre- valence of vices which are mainly the offspring of ignorance, be fed, housed and clothed with only such a moderate amount of labour as is conducive to health and enjoyment, and as would leave to them ample leisure for the pleasures arising from moral and in- tellectual cultivation. Why, then, does poverty exist ? It is not an inevit- able condition of human society. There is nothing in the constitution of Nature to make it impossible for all to have moderate labour and sufficient means, and to lead happy and virtuous lives. That this is not the 6 THE PROBLEM OP THE WORLD lot of humanity is the result of individual and social vices which might be eradicated. It is no doubt true that the poor often, and it may perhaps be said generally, suffer from the fault of pre- vious generations — their improvidence, intemperance, or other vices. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children : but this does not affect the truth of the general proposition. It does not show that these faults might not have been corrected at an earlier stage, or that they may not be corrected for the future. There is nothing in the constitution of things to make such an improved condition of the working classes as that suggested impossible. Not indeed that it could be realised suddenly, or before the lapse of perhaps many generations, when there shall have been time for the thorough reformation which might be effected in the masses of the people if a sound and enlightened educa- tion, physical, moral, and religious, were brought home to them.* Why is it, then, that so much wretchedness and suf- fering are allowed to exist in the world ? Here we are in the latter half of the nineteenth century from the * If there be any truth in Mr. Darwin’s great theory, and in the doctrine of hereditary genius propounded by Mr. Francis G-alton, and illustrated with so much ingenuity and research, what improvement may we not reasonably look forward to from the influence of education in a series of generations, even to the extent of developing an improved type of the race. A present the pauperised masses of the people, living in ignorance, demoralisation and vice, are left to propagate, unrestrained, their own bad kind. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 7 commencement of the era which was to inaugurate the regeneration of mankind, and yet, with the infinite resources of Nature at our command, and the great capacity for happiness implanted in man, the world is full of misery. There is surely something wrong in the system under which this state of things has been brought about and is allowed to continue. In our perplexity we naturally direct our attention first to the Church,* which we have been taught to look up to as our guide and instructor in all our most important concerns. What has been its action on the progress of the world and the happiness of mankind ? Startling as the avowal must appear, we can hardly help arriving at the conclusion that the Church has been rather a hindrance than a helper in the great business of humanity, and that she is in a great degree responsible for the fact that so small progress has been made. How little with its vast wealth and authority, and its almost unlimited control over the education of the country, the Church has done towards enlightening the world and improving the condition of humanity, * The greater part of the remarks in these letters has reference especially to the Established Church of England. It is the national Church established and regulated by Act of Parliament, and is endowed with great wealth. In these respects it differs from the various bodies of Nonconformists as weU as the Roman Catholic Church in these realms. But the objection which I make to the supernatural theory on which it is founded, and the spirit by which it is actuated, applies with equal force to nearly all those other bodies. 8 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD is matter of common observation and regret. Of the progress that has been made in the last few centuries, but especially in the last half century, how small is the share for which the Church can claim the credit ! 6 Let anyone,’ as remarked some time ago in the Pall Mall Gazette , 4 who is acquainted with the general course of thought throughout Europe for the last two centuries, ask himself honestly to what extent the Church of England has accepted, thrown into practical forms, and enforced on the minds of the people at large, the truths which have been brought to light during that period ? Whether it has been the home and haunt in this country of all those great principles which have so much altered and improved the state of affairs here and elsewhere ? Whether it exercises over the leading minds of the country that influence which is at once the test of the force of teaching and the highest reward of the teacher ? ’ Can any one great movement in the progress of man- kind be pointed out in which the Church has taken a leading part ? Its attention has ever been diverted from matters really conducive to the welfare of mankind to engage in some contest about disputed theological dogmas — to protest against the elevation to the episcopal bench of some divine whose opinions are sus- pected to be not of the true orthodox stamp — to settle the terms and conditions on which the education of the people may be tolerated, or to discuss some such question AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 9 as that which shook the Church to its foundations between Mr. Gorham and the late Bishop of Exeter on the subject of baptismal regeneration ; or, more lament- able still, wrangle about the vestments or the postures and position of the clergyman during the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.* Unhappily, the theory on which the Church proceeds is calculated rather to impede than to promote man’s happiness and well-being in this world. It assumes that this world is a fallen world, and man’s position in it merely a state of preparation for another and better state of existence; that man’s happiness here is a matter comparatively of little moment, and that his main business on earth is to qualify himself for happi- ness in that future state. It further assumes that there is some incompatibility between the pursuit of happi- ness and well-being in this world and the condition of attaining to happiness in the next. The question is not whether there is a future life or not, which is as- sumed in nearly all views of religion, but whether, in * According to Fraser’s Magazine, April 1871, * the questions about which the clergy are most desperately in earnest at the present day are such as these : Whether they may mix water with the sacramental wine ; whether, during the consecration of the elements, they may stand at the north end of the west side, or must stand at the proper north side of the altar ; whether they may wear certain garments known as copes, albs, and tunicles, or must confine themselves to a white surplice ; whether they may bum incense, or light tapers, or wear a cap called a biretta ; at what precise angle they may bend their knees without being convicted of kneeling ; and how high they may raise the consecrated elements without being guilty of a technical elevation/ (P. 458.) 10 TIIE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD order to gain that future life, we are to sacrifice all that to an intelligent, high-minded and reasonable man makes this life of any value. To employ the faculties which God has given us in endeavouring to discover His laws as displayed in His works, and to do His will by devoting all our energies to improve the condition of mankind and to alleviate the misery so prevalent in the world, and which mainly arises from ignorance or neglect of those laws ; to en- deavour by honest labour to raise ourselves in the scale of society — this, it is said, although it may be condu- cive to man’s happiness and well-being here, is not the way to prepare for a future life. We are to renounce this world — to lay up no treasures here. Eiches are the root of evil ; the elements of progress and civilisa- tion are matters of secondary moment. Our task here is to endeavour by patience, humility, repentance, faith in the Eedeemer, and through the efficacy of the sacra- ments administered by the Church, to secure eternal happiness in Heaven. That is the assumption of the Church. If it be correct, the more zealous the clergy are, and the more faithful in the discharge of their duties, the more will they endeavour to withdraw atten- tion from what concerns the temporal interests of those committed to their charge, in order to fix it steadily on that which alone, if the Church’s theory be true, is of real worth — the securing of their happiness in a future life. AND THE CHUHCII RECONSIDERED. 11 It may perhaps be said that though this is the theory of the Church, yet, in practice, it does not discourage a reasonable attention to the affairs of this world ; and it is true that there is a great deal of inconsistency between the theory and the practice of the Church. The clergy do not themselves practise, nor do they ex- pect their hearers to practise, all that the theory of the Church requires them to profess. There is much con- ventional insincerity ; but this very insincerity is one of the serious evils arising out of the artificial system with which the Church is encumbered. It goes fax to explain the discredit into which the Church has fallen with the working classes especially, and the powerless- ness of the clergy to make any impression by their teaching. The Church being committed to a dogmatic system, many of the doctrines of which are avowedly such as cannot now be maintained, and others of them such as may be shown to be hostile to the best interests of humanity, it finds itself in a false position. The dogmas being assumed to have been divinely inspired, and therefore to be absolute and unchangeable truth, cannot be varied from age to age, so as to be brought into harmony with the growing intelligence of man- kind ; and it becomes necessary, therefore to pretend at least to bring the belief of the age into harmony with the dogmas. This is the task which the Church undertakes, and hence it arises that its proceedings 12 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD are characterised by habitual insincerity, a habit fatal to all honesty of character. If this theory of man’s mission on earth be well founded ; if the future world be all in all, and man’s condition here of no account, except as fitting him for that future and higher state of existence; ^ indeed** this be the true solution of the world’s problem, and of man’s existence here, we have only to go on in the same direction as heretofore, and simply aim at such minor reforms as may enable the Church to accomplish more effectually its appointed work. But people are beginning to doubt this. The truth is opening upon men’s minds that there is more in this world than our clerical instructors are willing to admit — that the here- after is not all in all — that the earth is Grod’s as well as the heavens, and that religion is something more than a dogmatic system for rescuing a select number of favoured individuals from the wreck of a fallen world, not for any merits of their own, but through faith in a mysterious scheme of redemption, and in the efficacy of the sacraments, of which the Church professes to be the sole depositary. It must not be supposed that those who are unable to accept the Church’s solution of the world’s problem therefore call in question a Divine government of the world, or undervalue the influence of religion. The AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 13 difference between them (a large section of them at least) and the Church is rather as to the mode of the Divine government. Shortly indicated, the distinction may be said to be that, according to the one view, the Divine government is conducted by general and invari- able laws, and that by a careful observation and study of the facts of the world we may be able to discover these laws, and in some degree to understand the scheme of the Divine government, and learn to know the will of God and do it : according to the other view, the government of the world is conducted, not by general and invariable laws, but, in great measure at least, by special and direct interference of God from time to time, not uninfluenced by the prayers and inter- cessions addressed to Him by the Church or by indi- viduals. According to this theory a knowledge of the will of God is not to be sought in a study of His works, and the investigation of the laws by which they are regu- lated, but in the written record of a Revelation which it is alleged that, in an early stage of the world’s exist- ence, God made to a nation specially favoured by Him — a revelation in which are disclosed the terms and conditions on which alone the fallen race of man can escape the eternal misery which, in consequence of the fault of our first parents, awaits all who fail to comply with the conditions so revealed ; and the great business of the Church is to make known these terms and con- >C 4 W ^ A-**- **st- GK^J>x^VWUM^ ^ ^ __ f7\0^ 0*&dZtSl^t+* A*X— ^ y n*"' T ™ PROBLEM OF THE WOULD ^ &4CL W~^44fLM~ Os*m~ >*HnSC Cu4*^usLp <*✓— fajL- JXUjL testants how far the great principle on which they f^Xytc se P^rated from the Church of Rome, viz., the supre- !c*fyrJt % ma y legitimately be carried. Qu^ t/U. unobserved, ‘is a most venerabl JtxCZZLrt*. ;tion of the records of the divine economy ; a collection f\A*nr*,+ C m acy of the Bible as interpreted by private judgment , The Bible, as Burke has On*- sia. M-rooservea, '•is a most venerable but multifarious collec- IaaAT Q-f an infinite variety of cosmogony, theology, historv, y. /, P ro pbecy, psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legis- 2 i / ^ ethics, carried through different books by different authors at different ages, for different ends 4vo*w ^and purposes.’ Is the Protestant to bn at liberty to acMr^ \ reject historical statements which he is satisfied are JuxX* ^“4 untrue? or statements in cosmogony which are at vari- ance with the now established truths in geology and t£L' ..astronomy ? or moral teachings which are disapproved * f by wise and good men of the present age ? If he may reject these, are any limits to be imposed on the exercise of his reason in judging of the truths f ^ revea ^ e( ^ tbc Bible ? Are there any funda- br/^A- jmental points as to which he is not to be allowed to *£^^(^.0X6^86 his right of private judgment ? Dr. Temple, Bishop of Exeter, in his memorable l&t ^*7 speech in Convocation (as reported in tbe Times), in explanation of bis having withdrawn his contribution ^7 to the Essays and Reviews from the editions to be ^hereafter issued, begins by laying down principles OtJriv a *4 which would involve the right to call in question any- thing contained in the Bible, an d x c onsequently the fi/L. . 4 ^ k/ UZ ft* d *+*%*- & L* a ’ * TV V i r A / Z. -■ 'hjt* sf ma^. natural to assume that the Church is first to accept certain points as settled , and then to go on to the vestigation of other points ; but I am quite sure that U in many cases it is simply impossible, and it would not be healthy if it were possible. I am quite sure that A fcu- the belief in the most fundamental points , if once it were supposed that they were not to be investigated, would begin to lose its real vitality, and a belief with- ^ out vitality appears to me to be not merely a negative but a most positive and real mischief.’ ff j r He presently^ however proceeds to assign limits to the permitted liberty of discussion. ... 6 1 think,’ he ULcU^ ^JrtT says, 6 the discussion ought to be allowed the utmost yx4C^/ freedom that can possibly be given to it consistently with the acknowledgment of the Bible as the supreme **1 )***+*) revelation .’ If each part is allowed to be called in ^7) question, even in points the most fundamental, it is difficult to understand how the acknowledgment of the whole can be more than a form ; one of the c onv en - tionalisms of the Church. But the Church of England does not enjoy even the liberty of private judgment supposed to have been<^*^^-- secured to every Protestant Church at the Reformation.J^'^ #0^ What the Reformation was supposed to establish was the paramount supremacy of the word of Grod as con- tained in the Scriptures and as interpreted by private judgment. According to the constitution of the Church rfJi+mjC /<. £s>TMr<^ /xi. 28 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD of England as established by law, this right is not allowed either to the Church collectively or to the individual clergyman. Both are required to make their teaching conformable with the Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer Book. They are not to inves- tigate the truth, but to expound the doctrine prescribed in the Church formularies. This, it may be said, is not the act of the Church, but the usurpation^ of the State. It cannot,,, however*. he denied that among all the Christian Churches, with very few exceptions, whether established or not, the Popish principle of infallibility still prevails with more or less of disguise. They all of them have some fundamental doctrines which are not to be called in question — some dogma or another distinctive of their sect which is to be accepted on authority. The Protestant principle of free inquiry is nowhere thoroughly accepted unless per- haps among some branches of the Unitarian Church. Of the fact that the Church is losing its sway over mankind, and that a disposition to call in question the fundamental dogmas of our own branch of it is rapidly spreading, there is abundant evidence. The Eoman Catholic Archbishop Manning, in his 6 Pastoral ’ issued immediately before his departure to join the late (Ecumenical Council at Rome (as reported in the Times), thus describes the present position of the Catholic Church : — 6 What Government,’ he asks, 4 at this day professes AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 29 to be Catholic ? . . . . What country in Europe at this day recognises the unity and authority of the Catholic Church as a part of its public laws ? What country has not by royal edicts, or legislative enactments, or revo- lutionary changes, abolished the legal status of the Catholic Church within its territory ? As governments and nations they have by their own act withdrawn themselves from the unity of the Church. As moral or legal persons they are Catholics no longer.’ According to the Times correspondent at Berlin of' the same period, a large proportion of the educated men and women in North Germany have practically ceased to believe in Christianity. 6 No one,’ he says, 6 who knows modern Germany will call it a Christian land, either in the sense Home gives to the term or in the meaning Luther attached to it.’ * * Mr. Ernest de Bunsen, it is stated in the Times notice of a repub- lication of this correspondent’s letters ( Religious Thought in Germany : reprinted by permission from the ‘ Times' 1870), admits that the Nicene Creed ‘ has entirely ceased to be a living power,’ but he believes that a better kind of Christianity is embraced in its stead. Is this * better kind of Christianity’ the Christianity referred to by Miss Cobbe in her Dawning Lights as the Christianity of the Liberal party in our Church ? ‘Our modern Liberals,’ she says, p. 10, ‘ may call it Christianity to believe in a righteous God, a beneficent Christ, a train of prophets and apostles inspired in like manner as Plato or Milton ; a law of duty summed up in love to God and love to man, and a better life in store for all of us in the world to come : they may call all this Christianity, and exclude from it such doctrines as a devil, a hell, the creation in six days, the fall, original sin, atonement by blood, the infallibility of Scripture, the veracity of miracles, the reality of demoniacal possessions, the literal fulfilment of prophecy, the authenticity of the alleged dis- 30 TIIE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD Turning to England, I may mention, among the proofs that the old beliefs are giving way and that some change is at hand, the indisposition of men of ability to enter the Church of England, and the fact that several men have been induced to resign their position as clergymen, being no longer able conscientiously to hold and preach the required doctrine. Conspicuous among these is Mr. W. G. Clark, late Public Orator in Cambridge University and Vice- Master of Trinity College. In stating to his diocesan his reasons for the step he has taken, Mr. Clark says he no longer thinks the infallibility of the Scriptures tenable — that 4 some portions of the Canonical Scrip- tures seem to him to be of doubtful genuineness, and others to contain erroneous statements in history, and questionable teaching in theology and morals.’ 4 There are passages,’ he says, 4 in the Liturgy which I cannot now repeat with full assent. I cannot stand beside the altar and say, in the face of the congregation, 44 God spake these words ” when I am convinced He did not speak them.’ How many other clergymen are in the same position, but with less courage ! What a perennial source of insincerity and pain ! The case of Mr. Sedley Taylor is another instance of a clergyman withdrawing from the ministry of the courses of Christ, a local heaven to which he ascended through the sky, the last judgment, and the final conflagration ... I call their faith, not Christianity, but theism.’ AND TIIE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 31 Churcli of England, involving the forfeiture of a fellow- ship in Trinity College, Cambridge ; Mr. Taylor having been led, as he informs his diocesan in his letter of resignation, 4 to form convictions very much at variance with the formularies which bind the consciences of the English clergy.’ Having resigned his own position in the Church, Mr. Taylor points out, in an admirably reasoned pamphlet published by him,* the unjustifiable character and in- jurious results of the system of subscription in the Church of England, and pleads with great force for re- storing to those who remain in the ministry freedom of thought and utterance, not less in the interest of the Church itself than as being a right of which the clergy are unjustly deprived. 6 A time is coming,’ he says, 6 when hereditary and traditional theology will have to pass through the fire of criticism, and when everything which will not stand the test must be burned up. At such a crisis we shall need the aid of every com- petently informed man, and we cannot afford to be deprived of it by the benumbing force of antiquated legislation.’ (P. 24.) The following is the view of the Church of England doctrine and of the present critical position of the Church taken by a clergyman who has not resigned his office in the Church : — 6 Have we not a right,’ says Mr. Haweis, the Incumbent of St. James’s, Westmoreland * Macmillan , 1869. 32 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD Street, Marylebone,* 6 to say that much of the old theology in this nineteenth century is no longer profit- able doctrine but mere dogma — that we want some new expression of truth, and that our formularies and our conventional sermons and explanations are, in fact, ex- terminating religion, because they are keeping educated people out of our churches, driving the thoughtful and scientific world into opposition, and making enemies of those who should, of all others, be our friends ? If the Church cannot utilise some of the best men of the age, the Church will go down ; if the Church, which calls itself national, cannot use their enthusiasm, their learn- ing, their love of truth, their philanthropy and their goodness, except in connection with one Shibboleth, so much the worse for the Church — the Church will have to go down. Those who, under the garb of a spurious piety, refuse to recognise facts — those who oppose themselves to the voice of scientific, social and religious progress, will find themselves ere long in a very poor minority/ (P. 10.) But the indications of revolt against the received opinions are not confined to the clergy. Many of the more thoughtful among the lay adherents of our Church are also coming to the conclusion that our religious code has become antiquated ; that it no longer ex- * A sermon preached on Sunday morning June 18, 1871. Strahan & Co. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 33 presses the religious thought of the present day ; and that if the Church is to retain its hold upon the minds of men religiously disposed — if it is to stimulate the vital action of religion instead of crushing it, it must begin by putting an end to the present system of tests, and fall back upon the great central truths of Chris- tianity. Even so sincere a Churchman as the Attorney- Greneral, Sir John Coleridge, seems prepared to admit this. In a paper read by him at Sion College on January 20, 1870, and subsequently published in Macmillan's Magazine for March in that year, after pointing out, not without regret, the false position of the Establishment, where, he says, 4 the religious thought of devout men, within it and without, refuses to be expressed in phraseology three centuries old,’ a state of things which, he says, he for one has long thought cannot continue, he goes on to say : — 6 1 see no reason why anyone should desire its con - tinuance. I see nothing in the Thirty-nine Articles themselves, nothing in the history of the men who are mainly responsible for them, which should give them a flavour of consecration, or induce us to forget the heavy price which year by year we pay for maintaining them. Some of our ablest men are relinquishing their Orders, finding the burthen which our documents im- pose on the conscience too great to be borne ; many more, as our bishops tell us, will not undertake them. Many sign these documents, and at least outwardly in D 34 THE PKOBLEM OF THE WOULD some sense or other profess to hold them, whose real agreement with them must be of the vaguest kind, and whose position is inconsistent with a delicate sensibility to the claims of simple truth, and a considerable scandal to those who have such sensibility. I do not much wonder that a distinguished man told a public meeting the other day that he believed our public morality and our national sense of truth and honour had suffered seriously from our system of imposing religious tests to an extent which rendered evasion of them practically necessary.’ (P. 375.) The opinion of Matthew Arnold, an earnest lay member of the Church (and it is only from this class that we can reasonably expect to hear a frank expres- sion of opinion on this question), coincides very much with that of Sir John Coleridge on the subject of dogma and subscription to tests. In his papers upon St. Paul and Protestantism, originally published in the Cornhill Magazine , he says : 6 The Athanasian Creed and the Thirty-nine Articles our generation will not improbably see the Prayer Book rid of.’ * I am not so sanguine as Mr. Arnold, but it cannot be doubted that the whole fabric of dogmatism is * Matthew Arnold gives up the orthodox distinction between natural and revealed religion. ‘ The difference between the two,’ he says, ‘ is not one of kind, only of degree. The real antithesis to natural and revealed alike is invented , artificial ; religion springing out of an expert ence of the power, the grandeur, the necessity of righteousness, is revealed religion whether we find it in Sophocles or Isaiah; “the will AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 35 tottering. Principal Shairp, of the United Colleges at St. Andrew’s, in his Culture and Religion says : 6 It needs no diviner to tell us that this century will not pass without a great breaking up of the dogmatic structures that have held ever since the Reformation or the succeeding age. From many sides at once a simplifying of the code, a revision of the standards, is being demanded. I will not ask whether this is good or bad, desirable or not. It is enough that it is in- evitable.’ (P. 92.) How completely the whole thing is out of joint, and how powerless is the Church to set it right, we had a remarkable exemplification in the proceedings of the Pan-Anglican Synod a few years back ; a gathering of the leading men of the Anglican Church from all parts of the earth, a sort of (Ecumenical Council, seventy-five bishops in all, called together, one must suppose, for some solemn promulgation of the truth in these troubled times. With what result? Simply the passing of a few trifling resolutions of an adminis- trative character, without venturing to touch upon any of the great religious questions which are agitating the Church and the world. Disguise the matter as we will, it cannot be con- cealed that the Church in any of its orthodox phases, of mortal men did not beget it, neither shall oblivion ever put it to sleep.” ’ — Cornhill for July 1871, p. 43. The words quoted are from Sophocles. 36 THE PEOBLEM OF THE WOELD is no longer in harmony with the age. Its teachings are in principle altogether at variance with the teach- ings of science — that later revelation, as it has been called, to which the world is indebted for the astonish- ing progress which in the last few centuries, and more especially in the last half century, has been made in the improvement of the condition of mankind, moral as well as material. Had the world acted on the princi- ples still avowed by the rulers of the Church, the main division of it (the Eoman Catholic) especially, material improvement — all that distinguishes civili- sation from barbarism — must have made compara- tively little progress, and morals must have remained at the low level at which they stood when this Church succeeded in usurping authority over the minds of men. For how much the Church is in this respect responsible it is impossible to say. It is a striking exemplification of its power in dwarfing and stunting the growth of the human intellect, that it should have been able, as the crowning effort of eighteen centuries, to erect into an article of faith a falsehood so palpable as the infallibility of the Pope. That many of the clergy have their misgivings as to the truth of the system to which they have committed themselves, and that they do their best to stifle these misgivings, there can be little doubt, and I am far from saying that in so doing they have not acted con- scientiously. One of the most amiable and conscien- AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 37 tious of men, the late Professor Keble, it is said, deliberately advised his young friend Arnold to put down his doubts about the Trinity by main force, and to take a cure to get rid of them. Dr. Arnold himself, however he may have succeeded in putting down his doubts, did not pretend that the question of the truth of the religion professed by him was not beset with difficulty. 4 1 wish,’ he said in one of his pub- lished letters, 4 to make the main point not the truth of Christianity per se as a theorem to be proved, but the wisdom of abiding by it, and whether there is anything else for it but the life of beast or of devil.’ I think it may be shown that there is some- thing else than Christianity as it is generally under- stood, and that we may venture to inquire into its truth without any fear of its becoming necessary for us to lead the life either of beast or devil.* There are, no doubt, many clergyman remaining in the Church who feel as strongly as Mr. Clark and Mr. Sedley Taylor the objectionable character of its form- ularies, but who do not therefore think it incumbent upon them to quit its service. They probably view the matter something in this way The Church is there, * Coleridge does not admit even this alternative. ‘ If a man/ he says, ‘ is not rising upwards to he an angel, depend upon it he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast/ Dr. Arnold’s suggestions of the wisdom of abiding by Christianityy whether true or not, seems to come very near to Plato’s approval of ethical fiction as a means of government. ( Grotets Plato, iii. 334.) 38 THE PKOBLEM OF THE WOULD with its vast organisation for good if properly directed ; wisely or unwisely, they have become its ministers, and they are there to make the best of it. They may not unreasonably think that their chance of bringing about useful reforms is greater if they continue in the service of the Church than if they quit it. They may conscientiously believe that they serve the cause of religion and humanity better by retaining their po- sition in the Church, shutting their eyes to its imper- fections, and dwelling only on what is good in it. This good they wish to preserve along with the old and venerable associations which make the Church so powerful. They see very vividly the evils of any sudden and violent disruption of the Church system, and they are willing to make some sacrifice of con- sistency rather than incur the risk of encountering those evils. Many of them probably feel strongly that the old dogmatic system of the Church is no longer suited to the religious wants of the age, and desire nothing more than to let it fall quietly into disuse, if only their over zealous and less discreet brethren in the Church would allow it to do so. They share possibly the 4 confident belief ’ of that large- minded man the late Dean Milman (avowed in his History of Latin Christianity *), 6 that the words of Christ, and his words alone — the primal and inde- feasible truths of Christianity — shall not pass away.’ * Vol. vi. p. 447. AND THE CHTJRCn RECONSIDERED. 39 And what they have at heart is to hasten the blessed consummation when the simple creed of its great founder, the love of God and the love of man, shall generally prevail. For my part I have only to wish these liberal and excellent men God-speed. It is not only with regard to questions of dogmatic belief and religious ceremonial that the Church is losing its hold : the fact is, that the course of men’s lives has ceased to be regulated by ecclesiastical habits of thought, and the lay mode of looking at life is daily gaining ground more and more. 6 The life which,’ as Mr. Martineau says in one of his Miscellanies, 4 seems noble and great to the mechanic, the merchant, and the statesman, is unholy in sacerdotal eyes ; the heroes of modern fiction and biography are unconsecrate, ac- cording to the measure of theology; and against that which the newspaper praises, the sermon lifts its voice.’ It is well that the ideal of the Church is not realised among us, or we should cease to be the active, enter- prising, prosperous nation that we are. What we have accomplished in this way has been in spite rather than with the aid of the Church. The great religious movement made some quarter of a century ago among some of the leading Churchmen at Oxford University, among whom the names of Dr. Pusey and the elder Newman were conspicuous, which found its expression in the once celebrated Tracts for 40 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD the Times * shows how sensibly alive those remarkable men were to the fact that the Church was losing its hold on the minds of men. They*. however thought that the remedy for the evil which they deplored was not to be sought in an endeavour to bring the Church into harmony with the age ; to reconcile what was still vital in the old beliefs with the new truths which science and the progress of the world had revealed. On the contrary, they traced the mischief to the Church’s departure, under the guidance of the Protestant Re- formers, from the principles on which it was founded, and to which it owed its astonishing success in the early ages of its history. 4 We were making too much of thi^ world,’ said these earnest men, 4 and losing our hold on the next ; forgetting that the next was the only real world, and this but a thorny road to it, to be trod with bleeding feet and broken spirits.’ Mr. Froude, in a few pages of that remarkable theological romance of his, The Nemesis of Faith , sketches in a vivid manner the views of these zealous anti-reformers and the line of argument taken by them, to the following effect 4 We grant, say these adherents of the ancient faith, that the nations which remained Catholic have become * The leading argument of the Tracts for the Times , as addressed to Protestants, seems to be that, if they give up tradition and the authority of the Church, they have no foundation for many of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity or for church ceremonies deemed by Protestants of vital importance. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 41 comparatively powerless, while the Protestant nations have risen; and that the Catholic Church since the Reformation has produced no great man of science, no statesman, no philosopher, no poet : 6 We grant that the personal character of the people in Roman Catholic countries is poor and mean, and it cannot be denied that this is to be traced to the moral dependence in which they are trained — to the conscience being taken out of their own hands, and deposited with the priest — to the disrespect with which this life is treated by the Catholic theory : 6 We grant that historical criticism and scientific discovery have uniformly tended to invalidate the authority of histories to which the infallible Church has committed herself. But this argument tells not against Catholicism only, but against Christianity considered as historical and exclusive. From the beginning of time a peculiar body of people, not specially distin- guished for individual excellences, had nevertheless been the objects of peculiar care, the channels of pecu- liar grace. Their language was inspired, and their priests divinely guided. The power and greatness which had attended the progress of Protestantism is the power and greatness of this world, and the Bible everywhere denounced the world as the enemy of God. We fore- swore the world in baptism. You are not to look among Christians for power and greatness. Your arguments tell against Christianity as much as against Catholi- 42 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD cism. Catholicism is altogether a preternatural system, treating the world as a place of trial and temptation, and the devil as a main director of what seemed greatest and most powerful in it. The temper of a saint is quite different from the temper of a world’s great man. Broken-hearted penitence is not likely to produce the effects which seem to worldly people so admirable. The hold of Christianity was not on the reason, but on the heart. Reason is not the whole of man, and alone must ever lead to infidelity. Protestant Christianity on the Continent had uniformly developed into Socin- ianism and thence to Pantheism. Confessedly, Chris- tianity was mysterious — the mysterious solution of a mysterious world, not likely to be reasonable. Un- belief was a sin, not a mistake, and deserved not argu- ment, but punishment. The Reformers in allowing reason to sit in judgment on matters of faith were introducing an element which the subject (which was divine and not human) did not recognise. 6 The English were Protestants in the fullest sense of the word ; but in spite of this unhealthy symptom the English Church had retained, apparently providentially, something of a Catholic character. It had retained the succession ; it had retained the sacraments ; it had retained liturgical forms which committed it to the just Catholic understanding of them. The question with the Tract writers was whether, with the help of this old framework, they could unprotestantise its work- AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 43 in g character — re-inspire it with so much of the old life as should enable it to do the same work in England which the Roman Catholic Church produced abroad ; to make England cease to produce great men (as we count greatness) ; and for piety, courage, daring, en- terprise, resolution, and broad honest understanding, substitute devotion, endurance, humility, self-denial, sanctity, and faith.’ (Pp. 145 to 152.) Other and more recent attempts have been made in the same direction, but with no happier result, in the shape of revivals, missions, and the like, which have received the sanction of a large number of the clergy. What hope can there be of the improvement of man- kind if we are to look for guidance to a body of men who, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, can suggest nothing better to rouse the world and put it in the right way than a fortnight’s prayer-meeting ? Can we wonder that the more intelligent of the working classes look on with contemptuous indiffer- ence ? Certainly this is not the way to deal with the crying evil of the day — the immense mass of desti- tution and ignorance, and consequent vice, among the lower classes. General ignorance, and, among the masses of man- kind especially, the almost utter absence of moral and religious training, are at the root of the evil which we all deplore— ignorance of their own nature and 44 THE PEOBLEM OF THE WOULD concerns — ignorance of the world in which they live, of their duties there, and of everything therein on which their chances of well-being and happiness depend. The elements of comfort and happiness are within the reach of all, or nearly all, if only the proper means be taken to secure them ; but those means require to be discovered and made known, and they are only to be made available through diligent and per- sistent efforts for perhaps many ages ; and this must be the work of education — an education founded on an intelligent comprehension of man’s nature and of the system of the world. To make a beginning with this work is the great difficulty. The masses of the people in our great cen- tres of population for whom there is no employment and who are in a state of utter destitution present the most prominent obstacle. How to deal with this large amount of destitution and wretchedness is the ques- tion. In the midst of privation and suffering it is in vain to hope to inculcate instruction of any kind. The physical condition of the people must be improved before we can hope to make any impression upon them. Emigration might do something towards this, by ena- bling us to get rid of the excessive numbers ; but unless a recurrence of the evil can be prevented, we cannot look for any permanent relief from this source. A time must come, moreover when upon the present system the AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 45 outlets themselves will be full : the only real cure for a redundant population must be sought in self-restraint and a higher morality. With the aid of emigration as a temporary source of relief, enabling a commencement of the good work to be made, and by working down- wards from the better class of workmen, a higher standard of what are deemed the necessaries of life may by degrees be established among all. It is a primary object that the tastes of the lower classes of working men should be elevated and their ambition stimulated, and that they should learn to prize inde- pendence and respectability of character, and to aim at a higher quality of domestic comforts. With better habits only can we look for the moral and mental cultivation necessary to render improvement per- manent. No hope can*, howeveuk.be entertained of real and permanent improvement in the condition of the masses of the people until the world shall have courage to look steadily at that inexorable law of nature which is at the root of the difficulty in which the world finds itself, viz., the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. Nature is profuse of animal life, as well human life as that of the lower animals. In each the tendency is to increase beyond the means of living. In the case of the lower animals the equilibrium is in some degree restored by corre- 46 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD sponding destruction. With man the same law of nature prevails, and unless, by the exercise of his reason and through the influence of enlightened moral training, he check the undue multiplication, the na- tural law inevitably takes its course, as we painfully witness in our great cities and other large centres of population, where poverty and privation do the work of destruction. On this question, the one on which, perhaps, more than any other the happiness of the great mass of man- kind ultimately depends, our working men have hitherto been left almost without instruction or guidance. In the middle ranks and among the wealthier classes, intelligence, forethought, and a rational regard to the future, interpose to some extent the elements of pre- vention in lieu of the terrible agencies of destruction ; but with the masses the natural increase of the race in this country is almost entirely left to be counteracted by the destructive force of poverty, with its attendant sickness and premature death. On this head the influ- ence of the Church has, with very little exception, been exerted for evil. As Mr. John Mill has remarked, sentimentality rather than common sense is the genius that presides over the discussion of this question, and the working classes naturally listen willingly to senti- mental teachers who mislead them. It is the same throughout Christendom. The late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in one of his published AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 47 letters written from Malta,* having called attention to over population as the main evil of the lower classes in that dependency, proceeds as follows : — 6 On the latter subject nearly the same opinions and the same morality seem to prevail as in Ireland. The priests recommend early marriages on the score of what they are pleased to call virtue; the consequence of virtue being to cover this little rock with people so thickly that already Carrubas have become an article of food, and, if the increase goes on much further, the people must starve if they are not fed by English charity.’ (P. 67.) It is of vital moment that sound views on this all- important question should be thoroughly impressed on all classes, and that the working men especially should be made distinctly to understand that it depends wholly on themselves whether their position in the world is to be improved or not — whether their con- dition is to be one of comfort, respectability, and happiness, or whether they are to go on struggling with destitution, over-worked and wretched. Nor can this task be delayed. The working classes can no longer be safely left in their present condition. Enlarged political privileges have been conceded to them by the Legislature — so large indeed as to make them a preponderating power in the State ; and whether they are to wield this power for good or for evil — whether the share which they are now to take in * Longmans & Co., 1870. 48 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD the government of the country is to be a blessing or a source of danger, is a question of vital moment to the nation. In all our larger towns, moreover, large masses of the poorest class, who ought to be able to live by their labour, are, except at rare periods of sudden development of trade and manufactures creat- ing an extraordinary demand for labour, altogether without regular employment or means of subsistence, and ready at any moment to become masses of crime ; and though this precautionary consideration is perhaps not the highest motive for educating the people, it is one which it is well to bring to the notice of those who are not accessible to higher considerations. Nothing is more striking in the history of the last hundred years than the change which has come over the working classes in the view which they take of their condition. At the beginning of that period hard and unremitting toil, with coarse and somewhat scanty food, was with a blind endurance accepted by them as their inevitable lot. But this is no longer the case. The belief has grown up, and become very general among them, that they have a right to wages sufficient to pro- vide them with what they deem the requirements of comfortable subsistence. This belief has taken the shape, in this country especially, of Trades 5 Unions, and on a larger and more ambitious scale it has displayed itself in the form of 4 Lausanne Congresses , 5 4 Inter- national Leagues of Peace and Liberty , 5 4 International AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 49 Associations of Working Men,’ 6 Labour Representation Leagues,’ schemes for 6 Direct Legislation by the People,’ and the like, with their presidents and secre- taries, and annual meetings at Berne and other places on the Continent where such gatherings may be toler- ated by the police.* Not the less formidable is this movement because of the ignorance which the leaders display of the province and powers of governments, and of the economical and other laws and circumstances on which the well-being of the working classes necessarily depends. Their whole system* indeed^ proceeds on the principle of ignoring the well-established principles of political economy. According to the doctrine propounded at these gatherings, the Government alone is to blame that the condition of the working classes is not better than it is. If legislation were what it ought to * In a paper in the Fortnightly Review for Nov. 1870, Professor Beesley (who by the way presided at the meeting in St. Martin’s Hall in 1864, when the International Working Men's Association was founded) thus states the views of the leading members of the Association : — ‘ Wage-paid labour is destined to pass away, as serf-labour and slave- labour have passed away ; and will give place to associated labour, which ought to be developed to national dimensions and fostered by national means. No man has a right to caH anything his own which he has not produced by his own labour. Private property in the means of pro- duction should come to an end ; national debts should be wiped out ; the land, mines, machines, and railroads should revert to the com- munity ; whether the land so resumed should be cultivated by the w commune ” or leased by the State to Co-operative Associations is a moot point ; where the working class possesses political power, it is to produce these changes in a direct way.’ (P. 530.) E 50 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD be, work would, they insist, always be plentiful, wages high, hours light, and provisions cheap. These no doubt are delusions fatal to those who indulge them, but not to them alone ; and it behoves those upon whom the duty of instructing the ignorant devolves to take some more effectual way of dispelling these delu- sions than invitations to prayer-meetings and revivals. In this difficulty I fear that, notwithstanding the immense resources at her command, little help is to be looked for from the Established Church. What is wanted is a thoroughly reformed system of education among the poorer classes especially (but not among them only), such as may afford a prospect, distant though it may be, of diminishing among the coming generations the sad amount of suffering and destitution now prevailing, and as may realise in some measure the many blessings which Nature is ever ready to bestow on those who are intelligent and virtuous enough to make them their own. This is a task which it is vain to expect the Church as at present organised to undertake. Besides almost entirely neglecting, until quite a recent period, the education of the poor, the Church, from the peculiar views to which it is irrevocably committed, has long been a clog on the higher education of the country. This has been felt and lamented by our greatest writers. But so powerful has been its organisation, and so exten- sively ramified throughout the length and breadth of the land, that all the efforts of the lay intelligence of AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 51 the country to emancipate education from its control have until quite lately been ineffectual. ‘Men will some day open their eyes,’ said Mr. John Mill now nearly twenty years ago, in reviewing Dr. Whewell’s Moral Philosophy ,’ ‘ and perceive how fatal a thing it is that the instruction of those who are intended to be the guides and governors of mankind should be con- fided to a collection of persons pledged to a set of opinions made and prescribed, it matters little whether three or thirteen centuries ago How can intel- lectual vigour be fostered by the teaching of those who, even as a matter of duty, would rather that their pupils were weak and orthodox than strong with free- dom of thought ?’ — ‘ where,’ as Professor Seeley in the same spirit remarks,* ‘ the boy grows up among teachers whose lessons have been prescribed to them by authority, and the youth studies in an intimi- dated and bribed university, and men can get no instruction except from preachers whose mouths have been bridled by subscription.’ As regards the labouring classes, it is singular that in the Establishment of the Church of England there is no provision for the general education of the children of the poor. For education in the doctrines of the Established Church provision is made, of what kind I shall presently examine ; but the clergy, as a class, were from the first opposed to the general education of * In a paper on Milton and Carlyle, in Macmillan's Magazine. 52 THE PEOBLEM OF THE WOELD the poor (as those are well aware who are old enough to remember the early years of the present century), until it was forced upon them ; and since then, their great struggle has been to secure to themselves the guidance of that education, so that it may be as little hurtful as possible to that which is the beginning and the end of the clergyman’s aim in this matter, viz., to promote an unwavering belief in the great scheme of Christian doctrine of which he is the appointed teacher. Except upon this condition the clergy have consistently opposed what is called the education of the people. Hence 6 the religious difficulty,’ of which we have heard so much.* Nor do I presume to blame the individual clergyman for so doing. If he be sincere in the pro- fession of his faith, he can hardly do otherwise. Being impressed with the paramount importance of inculcating a belief in the Church’s doctrine (the sole condition of salvation), and feeling as he must do the improbability that it will be believed at all unless mixed up with the earliest training, and imbibed, as it were, with the mother’s milk, he will, if sincere, be prepared to sacri- * It was very striking to observe, in the agitation which preceded the election of the first School Board under the recent Education Act, how Church of England and Sectarian organisations were formed on every side, seeking to promote their own theological views, whilst- there was an almost entire absence of any common action having mainly in view the great interests of education. What enlarged scope is to be given to the education of the people under this Act remains to be seen ; it must be admitted that in their preliminary arrangements the London School Board have displayed a creditable degree of vigour. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 53 fice all other considerations to accomplishing this one great object. Moreover*. I am quite ready to admit that the clergy of the present day are, within the limits allowed by their position, very exemplary in their devo- tion to the task of instructing the poor children, and are ready to make sacrifices of money as well as time for that object. But the education which they so advocate and support is of the narrowest and most superficial character. To cultivate to some small extent the natural faculties, to furnish them with a very imper- fect key for acquiring knowledge, if earnestly so inclined, by teaching them the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and to instil a belief in the doctrines of the Church, is about the whole amount of education which they care to give to the children in our national schools. When the work of what, by the Church, is called educa- tion has been completed, how little has been taught which has any special bearing on what fits the pupil for the life he has to live ! There was a time when the work of education gene- rally was, from the necessity of the case, entrusted to the clergy ; i.e., when science could hardly be said to exist, and they alone had the literary qualifications necessary for teaching the elements of knowledge. That time has passed away, and the laity now in real knowledge are in advance of the clergy. I do not presume to attempt more than to suggest in the most general way what, as it appears to me, should 54 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD be the scope of a comprehensive scheme of education. Its general aim should of course be to cultivate the faculties of the learners, and to furnish them with such knowledge and to train them in such habits and princi- ples as will fit them for the world in which they are to live, and especially for the discharge of the duties be- longing to their several stations here. But, above all, the education should be founded on a true view as well of the system on which the Divine government of this world is conducted. And constantly, and in all stages of education, it should be impressed on the learner, whether in the school or from the pulpit, how much the well-being of himself and of all depending upon him, and remotely that of the society to which he belongs, depends on himself ; and how deep a respon- sibility he therefore incurs for the due exercise of the faculties that have been given him. With regard to the question of religion I should say generally that the aim of what may be called the higher education should be to set before the young a high and worthy ideal of life, and to cultivate in them the powers adapted to attain that ideal. Among these powers the motives supplied by religion hold a promi- nent place ; but it is as a power of life, an ever-acting principle of conduct, not as a system of doctrine, that the true influence of religion is to be looked for. What is wanted is practical, not dogmatic, religion. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 55 As regards education generally, the late Prince Consort, in one of the numerous addresses for which this country is for ever indebted to that great man, thus succinctly states its aim : It should be to teach — 1. The physical laws on which health depends. 2. The moral laws on which happiness depends. 3. The intellectual laws on which knowledge depends. 4. The social and political laws on which national prosperity depends. 5. The economic laws on which wealth depends.* A scheme of education grounded on this model would of course be too comprehensive for our primary schools ; but even in these, no system of education, as regards the working classes especially, will effectually answer the purpose which does not include, along with the ordinary elements of education, thorough and sound instruction in the circumstances immediately affecting their special condition in life. They should be in- structed, for example, in the laws which determine the * According to Chamfort, ‘ l’education doit porter sur deux bases, la morale et la prudence : la morale pour appuyer la vertu ; la prudence pour vous defendre contre les vices d’autrui. En faisant pencher la balance du cote de la morale vous ne faites que des dupes ou des martyrs ; en la faisant porter de F autre cote vous faites des calculateurs ego'istes. Le principe de toute societe est de se rendre justice a soi- meme etaux autres. Si l’on doit aimer son prochain comme soi-meme, il est au moins aussi juste de s’aimer comme son prochain.’ — (Euvres, i. 406. 56 THE PHOBLEM OF THE WOULD rate of wages, from ignorance of which, spring most of their contentions with their masters. Familiarity with the principle of property, and a knowledge of the natural laws by operation of which the annual produce of the labour of the community is distributed, seem to be the means best adapted to reconcile them to the inequality of distribution which they see take place, and which there are people ignorant or unprincipled enough to tell them is in violation of their rights, because it is, as they falsely allege, by their labour only that everything is produced. On the other hand, it would be well that it should be impressed on the upper classes that the rights of property are not all in all, and that they exist only because they are expedient for all. There should be added, especially in the girls’ school of the working class, instruction in the real business of the life they will have to lead, viz., the common domestic duties — the properties of food, the elements of cooking, and the various arts of humble life, on the knowledge of which the happiness of the class to which they be- long so much depends. There are many indications that improvement in education generally, and especially in that of the higher classes, is at hand. The wider and more practical scope now being given to public school and university educa- tion, and especially the greater attention paid to science as a means of education, are important steps in the way of improvement. 6 1 believe,’ says Professor Huxley in AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 57 one of his lay sermons, 6 that the greatest intellectual revolution mankind has yet seen is now slowly taking place by her agency. She is teaching the world that the ultimate court of appeal is observation and experi- ment, and not authority ; she is teaching it to estimate the value of evidence ; she is creating a firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the highest possible aim of an intelligent being. 5 (P. 130.) Scientific teaching has the advantage, whilst dealing with actual tangible things, of applying to them the accurate methods of reasoning derived from the study of mathe- matics ; and thus one great aim of education, that of teaching people to think accurately, is accomplished. Even in the primary schools, although the instruc- tion to beginners must be of an elementary kind, yet, if the teacher be of competent ability, the instruction may be conducted in such a way as to call forth any latent talent in the young pupil, and allow it an oppor- tunity to develop itself, so as to show the pupil’s fitness for removal into a high-class school. There is — as has been observed by Mr. Quain, in his highly instructive Hunterian Oration — no doubt, among the individuals of all classes a large amount of ability of various kinds, which is lying dormant, and only requires to be awakened and developed. We want all that there is to help on this world of ours. What sanguine hopes may we not entertain of 58 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD the increase of power to which by improved methods the human faculties, and with them the well-being of mankind, physical and moral, may attain I As Condorcet observes in his celebrated Esquisse Tun Tableau kistorique des Progres de V Esprit humain : c A mesure que les faits se multiplient, l’homme apprend a les elasser, a les reduire a des faits plus generaux, comme les instrumens et les methodes qui servent a les observer, a les mesurer avec exactitude, acquierent en meme temps une precision nouvelle ; mais comme a mesure que l’on connait entre un plus grand nombre d’objets des rapports plus multiplies, on parvient a les reduire a des rapports plus etendus, et les renfermer sous des expressions plus simples, a les presenter sous des formes qui permettent d’en saisir un plus grand nombre, meme en ne possedant qu’une meme force de tete et n’employant qu’une egale intensity d’attention, comme a mesure que l’esprit s’eleve a des combinaisons plus compliquees, des formules plus simples les lui rendent bientot faciles : les verites dont la decouverte a coute le plus d’efforts qui d’abord n’ont pu etre entendus que par des hommes capables de meditations profondes, sont bientot apres developpees et prouvees par des methodes qui ne sont plus au-dessus d’une intelligence commune. Si les methodes qui condui- saient a des combinaisons nouvelles sont epuisees, si leur application aux questions non encore resolues exige des travaux qui excedent ou le temps ou AND THE CHUBCH RECONSIDERED. 59 les forces des savans, bientot des methodes plus gene- rales, des moyens plus simples, viennent ouvrir un nouveau champ au genie. La vigueur, l’etendue reelle des tetes humaines sera restee la meme ; mais les instrumens qu’elles peuvent employer se seront multiplies et perfectionnes ; mais la langue qui fixe et determine les idees aura pu acquerir plus de precision, plus de generality ; mais au lieu que, dans la mecanique, on ne peut augmenter la force qu’en diminuant la vitesse, ces methodes qui dirigeront le genie dans la decouverte des verites nouvelles ont egalement ajoute et a la force et a la rapidite de ses operations.’ (P. 352, 2nd edit.) Another source of encouragement is the disposition very generally shown to enlarge the scope of female education. 4 Few have yet realised,’ as observed in an article in 4 Nature,’ for June 16, 1870, 4 the enormous gain that will accrue to society from the scientific education of our women. If, as we are constantly being told, the 44 sphere of woman ” is at home, what duty can be more clearly incumbent upon us than that of giving her the opportunity of acquiring a know- ledge of the laws which ought to guide her in the rule of her house ? Every woman on whom the manage- ment of a household devolves may profit by such know- ledge. If the laws of health were better known, how much illness and sorrow might be averted ! What insight would a knowledge of chemistry afford into the 60 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of different articles of food ! What added zest would be given to a country walk with the children, or a month by the seaside, if the mother were able to teach the little ones intelli- gently to observe and revere the laws of Nature ! Above all, what untold sufferings, what wasted lives, are the penalty we have paid for the prudish ignorance of the physiology of their bodily frame in which we have kept our daughters ! These considerations have had far too little place with us at present. We trust that a new era is dawning upon us.’ * The subject of health has been too much neglected in our educational institutions. The importance of obtaining as much knowledge as possible of the means of preserving health can hardly be exaggerated. Sir John Lubbock, in his Prehistoric Times , calls atten- tion to this subject. 6 With increased knowledge of and attention to the laws of health,’ he says, 4 disease will become less and less frequent. Those tendencies thereto which we have derived from our ancestors will * The College for Women , under the admirable direction of Miss Emily Davies (originally established at Hitchin, and since removed to Girton, in the immediate neighbourhood of Cambridge University), for providing instruction for young women in the higher branches of know- ledge, and ‘ The National Union for Improving the Education of Women * recently formed under the presidency of Her Eoyal Highness the Princess Louise, having for its object to secure for young girls of all classes the means of a thorough good education in day schools through- out the kingdom, constitute a movement in the direction of improved female education of which it is hardly possible to overestimate the beneficial results. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 61 gradually die out, and if fresh seeds are not sown, our race may one day realise the advantages of health.’ I have already adverted to the part taken by the Church of England in the education of the people.* Its method of instilling religion into the youthful mind is to begin by teaching the child the Church Catechism, a complicated system of theology, quite beyond the comprehension of a child even the most precocious, in repeating which the child is taught to assert as facts a great number of things which it does not and cannot know to be true — to say that it believes propositions which it cannot possibly understand — to draw infer- ences from the lesson which often the lesson does not warrant. This can hardly be the way to develop and cultivate the child’s nascent faculties — to instil into the infant mind the elements of religion, and lead it to the con- templation of the Author of all good. If it is nothing worse, it is an idle waste of time to attempt to burden* the child’s memory with unintelligible dogmas under the name of religion. It cannot be supposed that the child will be influenced to any good purpose by this, kind of formulated Christianity. It would almost seem as if the object were to cramp and bind the young in- tellect by beginning early enough to prepare it for the reception of a system at variance with all that we see See particularly p. 51. 62 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD around us. Certainly the lessons taught in the Cate- chism are anything but calculated to inspire the child with the love of truth, earnestness, or sincerity. That this is its character a very few specimens of its teaching will suffice to show.* First, the child is made to say that in its baptism (an operation of which it can know nothing) it was made a Member of Christ and a Child of Grod. What can it possibly understand about being made a Member of Christ or a Child of Grod ? Why should it be made to assert as a fact what it cannot possibly understand ? It is true that it must sometimes happen to a child to have to repeat things which it does not understand ; but why go out of our way to make it do this ? and that too in an exercise which is professedly intended to convey instruction to the child. Then the child is made to say that its godfather and godmother vowed that it should renounce the devil and all his works. What is the meaning of renouncing the works of the devil ? Is it well to say anything at all to the child about a devil ? Suppose the precocious child should ask, as it naturally may, why Grod allows such a mischievous creature to exist, can any satisfactory answer possibly be given ? f * Much, of this criticism is taken from Bentham’s Church of Englandism Examined. f It may perhaps be said that the fact of such a being as the devil being permitted to exist in the world is no greater mystery than the existence of evil itself. But the two things are quite different. The AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 63 The child is made also to assert that they vowed that it should renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. The child cannot possibly know any- thing about the subject of this vow. Why is it made to assert what it cannot know as a fact, and to which it cannot attach any meaning ? If it is desirable at this early age to teach the child anything about the pomps of the world, why is it not rather taught to take pomp at its true value, as the bishops do ? The bishops do not renounce pomp, as the child will see when the time for confirmation arrives, if not before, when it comes to know the meaning of the word. Besides the vow to renounce the devil and all his works and the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, the godparents further vowed, as the child is made to assert, that it should believe all the Articles of the Christian faith : and the child is then asked — > Dost thou not think that thou art bound to believe .... as they have promised for thee ? 5 and it is made to an- swer 6 Yes, verily,’ &c., &c. It is bad enough to instruct pain and suffering, moral and physical (which is what we mean by evil in the world), result mainly from ignorance or neglect of the laws ordained by God for the government of the world. They are apparently only imperfections in the working of the system, and which we are, by a beneficent impulse implanted within us, ever prompted to aim at removing. Whereas the devil of orthodoxy is an active living personal agent of evil. He exists only for mischief, a rival power in the govern- ment of the world. Wickedness is hateful enough and intelligible enough without referring it to the machinations of an imaginary evil spirit. 64 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD the child that it is hound to believe what some other persons have promised that it shall believe. Why add to this a lesson of insincerity in making the child say that it thinks it is so bound when it is quite unable to form an opinion on the subj ect ? Can it be right thus to trifle with so solemn a thing as belief, and of course also with truth ? Belief ought to follow, and real belief does follow only, upon our being satisfied of the truth of that which we are called on to believe. Belief is not a voluntary act. We cannot, by resolving to do so, believe whatever we please. Belief is dependent on the evidence presented to the mind. We may, it is true, resolve to Hear one side of a question only, and shut our ears to whatever is to be said on the other side. But that is a course of conduct which, out of the Church, will hardly be commended in these days. The only merit that can attach to belief must proceed from the faithfulness and diligence with which the inquiry from which the belief results has been conducted. But this merit is out of the question if the inquirer sets out with a foregone conclusion at which he is bound to arrive. All ob- servation shows, and it is a truth in science now gene- rally admitted, that the condition on which everything valuable is given to man on this earth is that he inquire and find out what is true, and that he accept nothing as true without examination and being satisfied that it is so. This is the great lesson of Nature, the key to all AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 65 true knowledge and progress in the world ; and yet the first thing a child is taught by the Church is, that three persons have taken upon themselves to make a vow by which it is bound not to inquire, but to believe — not to seek out the truth and hold fast to it when found, but to believe blindly a number of propositions that it is quite incapable of understanding. Surely it is time that an end were put to the practice of godfathers and godmothers entering into solemn en- gagements with God for a purpose so immoral. Truth and sincerity being two of the primary virtues, at all times to be enforced, can it be right to make the first solemn lesson that a child is taught, a lesson of in- sincerity and paltering with the truth ? In a question further on, the child is asked what it chiefly learns by the Ten Commandments, and it is made to answer that it learns two things — its duty to God and its duty to its neighbour ; and it proceeds to define the duty to its neighbour which it so learns. Now what is there set forth as the child’s duty to its neighbour, and alleged to be learned from the Ten Com- mandments, may be admitted to be a fair summary of the moral law and duty to one’s neighbour ; but it is not correct to say that the child learns this from the Ten Commandments : in the Commandments there is not a word about submitting ourselves to our superiors, pastors and masters, nor as to ordering ourselves lowly and reverently to our 4 betters 5 (whatever the word may F 66 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD mean), nor as to keeping our bodies in temperance, soberness, and chastity. Yet it is made to assert that it learns this from the Ten Commandments. So, in the question immediately following the Lord’s Prayer, it is asked 4 What desirest thou of Grod in this prayer ? ’ and it is made to answer 6 1 desire my Lord Grod .... to send His grace unto me and unto all people.’ Now throughout the Lord’s Prayer there is not one word about grace. It cannot but have a most injurious effect on the mental faculties, intellectual and moral, to accustom the child to this kind of laxity of statement. Such is a specimen of the Church of England’s especial teaching. It was in order to be allowed to give religious instruction of this character that the clergy so long and so pertinaciously (conscientiously it may be) stood in the way of the general education of the people by insisting, as a condition of any education being given at all, that the Catechism should be taught in the school, and the Bible read and explained in con- formity with it. The cause of education and of the general enlightenment of the people under such direction does not, I fear, present an encouraging aspect. A more unsuitable book than the Bible to be used as a class book for giving elementary instruction could hardly be selected, whether the question be looked at intellectually or morally. In training, and as it were AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 67 forming the mind of the child, we cannot begin too soon to teach it to see things as they are in nature. We cannot look into the Bible without feeling that we have got into an atmosphere, moral and intellectual, quite different from that which we breathe in the world and the world’s literature. In the Bible God is repre- sented as doing everything by His direct and immediate agency, and not by the operation of general and in- variable laws, which the enlarged experience and science of the present day show to be the case. Painful as may be the struggle to admit the truth, we are constrained, if honest, to acknowledge that the Bible interpretation of the course of nature ordained by its great Author can no longer be accepted as true ; 6 for,’ as Bacon says in his Advancement of Learning , 6 certain it is that God worketh nothing in nature but by second causes ; and if they would have it otherwise believed, it is mere imposture as it were in favour towards God, and nothing else but to offer to the Author of Truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie.’ In its lessons we should encourage the child to ask for explanations and to use its reasoning faculties. But how is it possible to do this, if the book which is the basis of the instruction treats of the world, not as we now know it to be governed by universal invariable laws, but as a world where all is marvellous and ex- ceptional — where no explanations can be given to the child that will not have the effect of confusing instead 68 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD of clearing and strengthening its powers of observation and reasoning, which is the great aim of education intellectually considered ? and, if looked at morally, what can be more unfit than to place in the hands of children, with the view of conveying instruction and forming their character, a book, whole chapters of which turn on subjects which cannot even be mentioned without impropriety, and where stories are told — and these are sure to take the fancy of the child — of persons represented to be high in the favour of God displaying deceit, treachery, thieving, lust — in short vices of every kind that ought never to be brought to the notice of a child except with the view of exciting its horror and aversion ? Surely the great principles of religion may be taught to children apart from all controversial dogmas, and without resorting to the use, as a school book, of a book so ill suited for elementary instruction, and which is so open to objection on the points that have been adverted to. I propose in my next letter to proceed to the con- sideration of the theory of the Divine Government of the World according to what I call the Natural System. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 69 LETTER II. My dear , I now proceed to consider the order of the world according to the natural system, as determined by the methods of science, viz., a careful examina- tion of God’s works. The first great truth that we discover is that it has pleased God that the world shall be governed by general and invariable laws.* That this is the order of Providence, however much at variance with what, * There seems nothing in this view of the universality of law which necessarily excludes the notion of a Personal God. Sir Richard Hanson, the Chief Justice of South Australia, observes in his admirable paper on Science and Theology, read before the Adelaide Philosophical Society, 1 p. 6 : ‘So far as science is concerned, there is nothing in the conception of causation which necessarily contradicts personality ; nothing in the universality of law which excludes will. On the con- trary, knowing that with men, the higher their moral and inteUectual faculties, the more nearly do they approach to consistency, and the more rarely do they manifest anomalies and imperfections ; we are naturally, if not necessarily, led to regard this connection as essential, and to Scott, Ramsgate. 70 THE PKOBLEM OF THE WORLD with our limited views, we should antecedently have deemed probable, a careful observation of the course of nature and of the facts of the world leaves no room for reasonable doubt. The only foundation indeed for belief in the natural sciences is that the general laws, known and unknown, which regulate the pheno- mena of the universe, are constant and invariable. It is by acting steadily on this supposition that all advances in human knowledge have been made. Without this invariable order in the processes of nature there could be no science. Why the world has been so constituted, or whether it could have been otherwise, it is vain to inquire. It may be that the inevitable evil which we see in the world is the neces- sary consequence of this, perhaps necessary, constitu- tion of things, and that here is to be found a solution of the great mystery of the existence of evil in the world. The dawning of this truth, that the world is go- verned by general laws, and not by a succession of providential interferences, as exemplified in the his- tory of the Jewish theocracy, is one of the first shocks that the belief (drawn from that history) impressed suppose that, in proportion to the wisdom, goodness, and power which any being possesses, will be the uniformity of the procedure in which his will is manifested. And hence, assuming the absolute wisdom, power, and goodness of Grod, we should deduce from that assumption an absolute uniformity in the processes of nature and the dealings of Pro- vidence, supposing that these are the results of His Will.’ AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 71 upon us in our youth by our religious teachers has to sustain. According to the Hebrew prophets, all the great operations of nature were the result of the immediate interference of Jehovah. They looked upon the thunder as His voice, and the lightning as the breath of His nostrils ; every striking occurrence of nature being referred to His direct agency. Nothing is more natural than that a highly imaginative race, entirely devoid of science, being possessed as they were, in common with some other Eastern races, with ? t hq no tion_ofjone Grod, the Creator and Governor of the world, should so conceive of the great operations of nature. Modern science teaches a different lesson. It looks upon the whole universe as governed by general and invariable laws, where everything is effected through the instrumentality of second causes ; and all the investigations of science lead us to con- clude that the order of nature which we find now pre- vailing has existed from the earliest ages. A little reflection will convince us of the inestim- able advantage that we derive from the fact that the laws of nature are invariable. The sequence being con- stant, we are able to look forward and calculate com- ing events. The past becomes the interpreter of the future : by careful observation and study we can dis- cover the laws, and regulate our conduct in conformity with them. We may readily conceive the confusion and perplexity that would have prevailed in the world 72 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD if there were no certain order in the course of nature. As it is, the laws being invariable, we have only to find them out and govern ourselves accordingly. The questioiyhoweve^is not what is advantageous or the contrary, but what is true. Our business is to find out what is true and to construct our system of laws and of morals in harmony with it. Experience shows us that the laws are fixed and inexorable. So the great Author of Nature has ordained. If we fail to discover or to understand the laws, or if we fail to regulate our conduct in conformity with them, we inevitably suffer the consequences of our neg- lect, whether the neglect arise from ignorance or from sloth, from wilful disobedience, or from what- ever other cause ; such is the stern, yet salutary, teaching of experience. If we take poison we die ; if we fail to rule our appetites we suffer in health or other ways, and that whether we have been better taught or not. The ruined health of the father in many cases causes the child to suffer ; this is the in- exorable law. It is immaterial whether the condition of the father arose from intemperance or vice, or from over-exertion in the laudable desire to do the best for himself and his family. If we do not sow, we cannot reap. If we marry and bring a family into the world without the means of supporting them, our life will be a long struggle with privation of every kind — a reproach to ourselves and a burden to our relations AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 73 and friends. And as of the individual, so it is of society and nations. If the nation fail to make or to enforce the laws required to restrain the violent or rapacious dispositions of its members, it must suffer the consequences of its neglect. If it fail to impose constitutional restrictions on its rulers, it must bear the evil arising from their despotic disposition. This being the great lesson of nature, and most of the evil of this world being ultimately traceable to the neglect of this lesson, it should in all our teachings be earnestly enforced. Yet, as already pointed out, our Church’s teaching is founded on an opposite system. The truth, however, is dawning on the Christian world, and greatly it perplexes the rulers of our Church. Our whole religious system being founded on the notion of a Grod specially interfering on all occasions, they, in their shortsightedness, deem it a matter of vital importance to the Church that this truth should be resisted, and they struggle to resist its admission accordingly.* With regard to the interesting and all-important * Some of our more liberal clergy already recognise the necessity of reconciling religion with science, and are preparing to rest the Church upon foundations less liable to be disturbed. In two very remarkable sermons preached by the Eev. Stopford Brooke, in St. James’s Chapel, York Street, and published in a volume, with others, in 1869 — the one on ‘ The Lessons of the Cholera,’ and the other on ‘ The Naturalness of God’s Judgments ’ — the preacher is at some pains to reconcile revealed religion with science. All the so-called judgments of God, he main- tains, are the natural results of the violation of laws, and as such are 74 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD question as to the nature and condition of the human race at its first appearance on the earth, involving, as it does, the great problem of the Fall, the investiga- tions of science lead to a conclusion at variance with the notion that man on his first introduction into the world was a more perfect being than at present. On the contrary, they lead to the belief that the world has been in a course of gradual development and progress from the first moment of its formation, countless ages ago, and that for a long period before the appearance of man on the earth things had been gradually shaping themselves into fitness for the existence of higher and higher classes of being, until at length Man appeared — at first, there is reason to believe, in a low animal form ; whether, as Mr. Darwin confidently thinks, de- scended from some less highly organised form, it is per- haps too early to determine. However this may be, man would seem, according to the most probable conjecture, to have originally come into the world very much as the more perfectly organised of the lower animals, and always unarbitrary. (P. 42.) In establishing this principle firmly, he says, ‘ we get rid of nearly all that sets scientific men in opposition to religions men.’ {Ibid.) He deprecates the notion ‘that G-od is liable to incursions of anger, subject to our passions and weakness, as if He were the Grod of disorder, and not of order, of special providences, and not of law.’ (P. 32.) To find out the laws, and to range ourselves upon their side, is, he maintains, the true prayer to G-od and the true way of meeting the judgments of Grod in our petitions. (P. 28.) AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 75 in many points resembling them, but distinguished by a higher intelligence and by a capacity for improve- ment such as is not found in them. He would at the first, it seems probable, be altogether ignorant of the powers and resources of nature ; being left to find out everything for himself. Being endowed with self-love and other passions to stimulate his activity, and with reason and other faculties — rude at first and dormant, but capable of being awakened and cultivated — to guide him in the pursuit of what he deemed conducive to his well-being, he would seem to have been left to grope in the dark through a long succession of generations, in a condition little better than 'that of the beasts of the field. With everything to find out, the progress of im- provement among the early inhabitants of the earth must have been very slow. Many generations would pass before they could do more than obtain a precarious subsistence from fishing, from the chase, and from such fruits as the earth spontaneously produced. Xext^per- hap^ would come the domestication of a few kinds of animals, with some rude attempts at agriculture. In the meantime would grow up some notions of property, and a commencement of the social order, with its laws and morality. At. first customs only would prevail ; then, as society increased, laws would become necessary, establishing property by defining rights and providing for the redress of wrongs. 76 THE PKOBLEM OF THE WOULD The growth of language must, it would seem, have been very slow. The discovery of letters, and conse- quently of written language, following probably upon a rude pictorial kind of language, would be one of the greatest steps in the world’s improvement. Yet there is in it nothing of a supernatural character. So soon as it came to be discovered that words were but the combination of a limited number of articulations, the step would be simple to the representation of each by a distinctive sign. After the discovery of letters and a written language, printing seems an obvious device ; so much so that it would seem probable that it was the invention of the art of making paper that gave it currency and value, rather than the invention of a separate type for each letter to be combined into a word. From the first, almost nothing has been given to man without great labour.* Labour, indeed — his own or that of his predecessors— is the condition of his ex- istence. He has been left to achieve everything by his own exertions. The elements of all good were there ; but, with very few exceptions, they had to be diligently sought out and appropriated, or they would remain for ever hidden. The conjectural description given by Horace is, per- * Ml sine magno Vita labore dedit mortalibus.— Hor. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 77 haps, as near the truth as we can hope to attain of the condition of the human race through many generations of its earliest history : — Cum prorepserunt primis animalia terris, Mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter Unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro Pugnabant armis, quae post fabricaverat usus ; Donee verba, quibus voces sensusque notarent, Nominaque invenere ; dehinc absistere bello, Oppida cceperunt munire, et ponere leges, Ne quis fur esset, neu latro, neu quis adulter.* Lib. I. Sat. iii. 99-106. Wieland, in his note on this passage, adopting Horace’s view, that it was the general good (utilitas) which led man to the distinction between right and wrong, proceeds to give his views of the development and establishment of society, and of law.f ‘As men,’ * When human beings from primeval clay Crawl’d forth at first and struggled into day, Dumb squalid brutes, for dens and acorn-mast They fought with nails and fists, then clubs, at last With such rude arms as they by slow degrees Were driven to frame by their necessities, Till they invented language to express Their thoughts and feelings : then grew less and less The rage of war ; wall’d towns began to rise And laws were framed to appal and to chastise Thieves, robbers, and adulterers . — Theodore Martin's Transl. See also a beautiful description of the formation of human societies in the fifteenth Satire of Juvenal, 11. 140 to 158. f Horazen’s Satiren. Leipzig, 1819. 78 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD he says, 4 wandered about in their first natural condi- tion in the woods and uncultivated plains, they had as yet no conception of laws and duties. They sought merely to satisfy their natural propensities, and if a contest arose the strongest prevailed. The consequence was a universal state of war (‘bellum omnium contra omnes ’), which must have ended in the extermination of the whole race, were it not that there is a some- thing in man, the development of which is as natural to him as the growth of his body and the unfolding of his animal strength. This something developes itself in man just as, through a like natural impulse (Trieb) speech has been invented, by means of which men have been enabled to hold fast their conceptions, and to raise their feelings into thoughts, and to communicate their thoughts one to another. From this point human life attains a higher form : the animal wildness disap- pears, and the feeling of the endless inconveniences they had endured in that state led them on to the idea of social order. Men saw that for their own good they must put a restraint on their inclinations — that they must bridle their passions ; and in this way the fear of wrong — i.e., a longing to be freed from the hurtful consequences of lawless freedom — becomes the mother of right or of the first positive law. This is the gift of reason to men. By this, violent actions, or injuries to others, seeing that they are wholly incompatible with the peace and general well-being of society, are de- AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 79 dared to be wrong, and to be offences which are to be subjected to the general vengeance (Eache). This ven- geance of society against wrongdoers could not, without falling into the old disorder, be left to the caprice of the injured persons. For nature alone does not teach men to distinguish in each case what is right or wrong, so surely as she teaches everyone through his feelings merely what is good or bad for him. On the contrary, the anger which inflames us on suffering an injury would, in the vengeance to be taken, be continually overstepping the bounds of what is reasonable. The law^-therefore^ must undertake the office of administer- ing punishment in society ; and as the adjustment of the punishment depends on the amount of injury which society or the person immediately injured has suffered, and as no man of sound understanding will in this view maintain that it is the same thing whether a man takes a turnip out of another man’s garden, or robs a church, whether he gives a man a blow on the head, or strangles his own father, so it cannot reasonably be maintained that these offences deserve the same punish- ments. Andj-therefore^it is clear that criminal laws, founded on equity, are required, according to which crimes may be punished in proportion to the injury which they do to society.’ Whether or not this be an accurate or complete ex- planation of the origin of law and the foundation of civil society, it is at least consistent with what we 8Q THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD observe going on in the present day to suppose that they grew up somehow in this way. The science of morals— of right and wrong conduct — that branch of the science of man’s well-being which treats of the due cultivation and government of the affections, and the consequent regulation of his conduct under the influence of conscience and a sense of duty, apart from the restraint of law — seems, no less than the science of law, to have been left to man to discover and build up, by slow and painful observation and expe- rience of the effects of different lines of conduct on the happiness of mankind. As Mr. Froude has expressed it, 6 The moral laws are inherent in nature like the laws of the material universe, and our business is to discover what they are.’ These laws rest on the same foundation as the other laws of nature, and are to be found out in the same mode, and their violation is in like manner followed by their allotted punishment. In the moral as in the material world, identical ante- cedents are followed by unvarying consequents. If we feel less certainty with respect to the moral than the physical order of things, it is not that there is any sufficient reason to doubt the uniformity of causation : our uncertainty arises from our ignorance whether on two similar occasions the same causes and no other are in operation. As was the case with regard to the origin of laws, AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 81 many generations must have passed away before even the simplest elements of morals were discovered ; and the early races had to endure the consequences of their ignorance. In pursuing inquiries of this nature our ancestors from a very early period must, it seems probable, have proceeded very much as we ourselves do at the present day. We find ourselves cast into the world under cir- cumstances over which we have no control, and for which we are in no way responsible. We are endowed with passions to stimulate us to exertion, and with reason to control those passions. Our passions are con- stantly tempting us to do that, in the pursuit of what we deem our happiness, which is hurtful to ourselves and others, and we are saved from this mischief only by having found, by long and painful experience (i.e. if we are to go to the origin of morals), the necessity of con- trolling them with a view to our own good not less than that of others. In exercising this control, we are aided by a certain faculty or feeling to which the name moral faculty, sense of duty, or conscience, has been given — an ethical sentiment vague and feeble, and almost evanescent in the absence of cultivation, but among races that have arrived at some degree of civilisation capable of exercising more or less influence over the dispositions and actions of man according to the degree in which it has been developed and culti- vated. It is the object of ethics to inquire into the Gr 82 THE PKOBLEM OF THE WOELD nature and working of this influence, and to construct a system of morals calculated to advance the happiness of mankind ; and it is the business of education to put it in practice. The passions — envy, ambition, and the like — which, when not kept under due control, issue in robbery, violence, and tyranny — are parts of our natural consti- tution, and are not without their advantages. Without them we should be less active and progressive.* What is required is that they should be kept under due con- trol, moral or legal. Happily, we find implanted within us an antagonistic principle — the moral faculty before referred to — only requiring due cultivation in order to form a check to the action of the passions in so far as they are injurious to ourselves or others, and so to bring about the harmonious working of the human constitution. If this harmonious action be not accom- plished, morally or legally, the subject of them himself suffers, or causes others to suffer, the natural conse- quences of the excess. Hence the strong motive for moral culture and for imposing legal restraint where necessary. As we are endowed with self-love to urge us to pursue our own happiness, so likewise we are en- * ‘ Les passions, disait Termite a Zadig , sont les vents qui enflent les voiles du vaissean ; elles le snbmergent quelquefois, mais sans elles il ne pourrait vogner.’ ‘ Our vices are the soil on which our virtues grow.’ — Grothe. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 83 dowed with a capacity for sympathy and compassion which leads us to desire to promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures; and the further our cultivation of the sentiments of sympathy and compassion ad- vances, the more we become convinced that our purest happiness lies in promoting the well-being of our fellow-creatures. To live exclusively for our own grati- fication, though our enjoyments be of a refined and intellectual kind, is to cultivate only the lower elements of our nature : there are few pleasures worthy of the name which are not largely increased in value when partaken by others. The moral feelings with which we are endued, how- ever they may have sprung up, seem in their nature common to all men of any degree of cultivation ; that is to say, the ethical sentiment is common to all, though there may be the greatest diversity in the ideas or objects answering to these feelings. With respect to the questions, What is the object of duty? What is right or wrong in various circumstances ? What is vice or virtue ? — as to these there is and has been consider- able diversity of opinion, not only among different per- sons of the same age and country, but more especially in different ages and countries. This diversity of opinion with respect to the objects of moral approba- tion and disapprobation, and the want of any acknow- ledged guide in the difficult questions that present themselves, has given rise to the notion that a special 84 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD or direct revelation of the will of Grod was required and was to be expected. It is urged*, moreover that the revelation to the intellect through the physical works of the universe cannot satisfy our moral constitution. That constitution craves, it is said, a moral manifesta- of the Deity ; and this longing after Grod’s moral nature is, it is urged, an intimation that such a revelation may be looked for and will be vouchsafed. But surely all analogy leads to an opposite conclu- sion. In the physical world there is no special revela- tion of the workings of Grod or of His laws in the government of the universe. Secrets of nature of the highest moment to our happiness (the virtues of chloroform, for instance) remain hidden for thousands of years, until by a diligent exercise of the powers of observation which Grod has given us — perhaps by a happy accident — we discover them. That is the only revelation vouchsafed to us in the physical world. Why should we suppose that it would be otherwise in the moral world ? In the moral world, as the reli- gious philosopher contends, Grod reveals Himself to the heart and the conscience of man, as He has revealed Himself to the intellect through the medium of what we call external nature. The living Book in which we are to read Grod’s moral nature — Grod’s mind in relation to His creature man — lies open to the inspection of our hearts as the book of external nature lies open to the inspection of our eyes and intellects. By a careful AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 85 observation of the working of God in the heart and the conscience — so to speak — and a comparison of our own experiences with those of others, we arrive at some notion of the moral character of God — imperfect, it is true, as our knowledge of His works in the physical universe is imperfect. As our ideas of what is right and noble and true improve, so do our ideas of a perfect God. In our knowledge of the moral not less than of the physical world there is room for apparently endless progressive improvement. In the meantime we must be content to accept such provision for our moral nature as God has thought fit to make ; to use our best efforts to understand and improve it, and to regulate our lives accordingly. It can hardly be contended that a special revelation was needed more in the moral than in the physical world : the degree of ignorance was at least as great in the one as the other, and the immediate necessity for supernatural aid was really more urgent in the physical than in the moral world, because in the state of utter destitution of all comfortable means of living which prevailed in the earlier ages of the world mankind were not in a condition to profit by a moral revelation. And if, as has been supposed by Lessing (in his Er- ziehung des Menschengesddechts ) and by other writers, there have been progressive divine revelations adapted to successive stages in the progressive improvement of the human understanding, it would seem probable (if 86 THE PROBLEM OF THE WORLD we are to resort to antecedent probability) that the first revelation would be of the knowledge necessary to raise mankind out of the gross ignorance and consequent destitution of everything necessary for the supply of their animal wants which prevailed in the early ages, so as to raise them into a position to avail themselves of the higher revelation in its due season. There is one thing with regard to which it may be admitted that, if in any case vouchsafed, a revelation might not unreasonably have been expected, viz., the question of a future state of existence and man’s destiny in relation thereto — a matter as to which it appears beyond our natural powers to form any certain opinion. But on this the revelation to the Jews contained in the earlier portions at least of the Bible is wholly silent. Among other nations, the Greeks especially, a firm conviction of this doctrine had been arrived at by natural means.* We may reasonably ask, Why did Moses give no hint of it ? And here Lessing’s theory of the revelation being accommodated to the intelligence of the age does not avail to remove the difficulty. It was not a matter beyond the comprehension of an infant world. As to the principle of moral obligation, the source of the feeling that we ought to do that which we think * In the Zoroastrian religion also (it is stated by Dean Milman) a resurrection holds a place no less prominent than in the later Jewish belief . — History of Christianity , i. 75. AND THE CHURCH RECONSIDERED. 87 right, the world is not yet agreed, nor, for practical purposes, is it very material that it should be so. That the feeling exists — implanted by the Power that made us — more or less in all persons of any degree of culti- vation, under the name of conscience, moral faculty, sense of duty, or by whatever other name it may be known, will be generally admitted ; and whether we adopt the view for which a comparatively small number of highly enlightened philosophers contend, viz., that the feeling which prompts us to do what we think right — a feeling which is at the root of all morals — is wholly the result of education (in the most enlarged sense of the word), being developed out of our social instincts ; or whether we adopt the view that it is a kind of moral sense — an ultimate feeling implanted in all human beings, approving or disapproving of acts or affections without reference to consequences — all agree — not less the intuitionists than the utilitarians — that the feeling is there and that it is capable of being improved and strengthened by education ; and the question, what is the origin of, or how we are to explain, the feeling which all admit to be there, becomes com- paratively unimportant.* * It is to this feeling that the author of Dawning Lights traces the first source of our knowledge of G-od : — ‘ In the sense that there is such a thing as duty — that we ought to sacrifice happiness, and even to die for the right — in that mysterious sense which we can neither create nor destroy, lies the true proof of the existence of a righteous G-od.’ (P. 70 .) Somewhat in the same way the elder Newman, in one of his latest 88 , THE PEOBLEM OF THE WOELD The important question to determine is the practical one, namely, what is the right thing to do on the various occasions that present themselves in the course of the world’s business ? — what, in short, is the stan- dard of duty ? And this being a question depending rather upon reason and observation than upon sen- timent, some hope may be indulged that the world may at length come to something like an agreement upon it. Although mankind are still divided on this question* the opinion is, I think, gaining ground among thought- ful and intelligent men that, in judging of the morality of actions independently of the supposition of a direct revelation of the will of Grod, or with regard to points to which any such revelation may not extend, we are to look to the consequences of such actions and observe whether their necessary tendency is to promote or diminish the general good, and to determine the moral rule or law accordingly. And so long as we are content to approve only of those moral rules or precepts which in their nature necessarily tend to promote the well- being of mankind, it is not very material whether we suppose that we have arrived at those rules through publications, traces a Personal God in an argument to this effect : if we feel responsibility, this implies that there is One to whom we are re- sponsible. If in doing wrong we feel sorrow — if in doing right we feel serenity of mind, we have within us the image of some Person to whom our love and veneration look, in whose anger we are troubled. y _ L*j «f < CSh-~^d- /^J /,£_ ^ 4cn%yv^rLiJ