__________________________________________________________________ Title: The Limits of Religious Thought Examined in Eight Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford, in the Year MDCCCLVIII., on the Bampton Foundation Creator(s): Mansel, Henry Longueville (1820-1871) CCEL Subjects: All; __________________________________________________________________ THE LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT EXAMINED IN EIGHT LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, IN THE YEAR MDCCCLVIII., ON The Bampton Foundation. BY HENRY LONGUEVILLE MANSEL, B. D., READER IN MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY AT MAGDALEN COLLEGE; TUTOR AND LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE. FIRST AMERICAN, FROM THE THIRD LONDON, EDITION. WITH THE NOTES TRANSLATED. BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. CINCINNATI: GEORGE S. BLANCHARD. 1860. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY W. F. DRAPER, ANDOVER, MASS. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ THE OBJECTIONS MADE TO FAITH ARE BY NO MEANS AN EFFECT OF KNOWLEDGE, BUT PROCEED RATHER FROM IGNORANCE OF WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS. BISHOP BERKELEY. NO DIFFICULTY EMERGES IN THEOLOGY, WHICH HAD NOT PREVIOUSLY EMERGED IN PHILOSOPHY. SIR W. HAMILTON. __________________________________________________________________ EXTRACT FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, CANON OF SALISBURY. . . . . “I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and singular the said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned; that is to say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time being shall take and receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in the said University, and to be performed in the manner following: “I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary’s in Oxford, between the commencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term. “Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics—upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures—upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church—upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost—upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. “Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be always printed, within two months after they are preached, and one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled to the revenue, before they are printed. “Also I direct and appoint, that no person shal be qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge; and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice.” __________________________________________________________________ PUBLISHERS’ ADVERTISEMENT TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. The work, here offered to the American public, has been received with the most marked attention in England, and has already reached a third edition, though but few months have elapsed since the issue of the first. It is believed that its great merits will command for it a like attention wherever it is known; the rare learning and metaphysical ability with which it discusses problems, no less profound in their philosophical nature than practical in their religious applications; the devout reverence for the authority of the Bible, and the truly Christian spirit with which it is imbued, must gain for it a cherished place in the minds and hearts of all who wish well to a sound philosophy, and a pure, and we may add, a real, Christianity. In its more immediate aspect, it is eminently a work for the present times; so closely is it connected with the higher thinking of the present generation, and so boldly and triumphantly does it carry the Christian argument through the entire course of recent, and especially German, speculation. But rightly viewed, these Lectures of Mr. Mansel have a far wider scope than this; for, in unfolding his great theme, the author aims to lay the foundations of a sound religious philosophy in the laws of the human mind, and in the general conditions to which it is thereby necessarily subject in the attainment of all truth and knowledge; his work therefore belongs, in its principles and applications, to all periods of human inquiry, and is thus invested with a universal interest and a permanent value. But without enlarging upon the general merits of this work, the Publishers have only to mention the single change of any importance, which it has undergone in the present reprint. This change is the translation in the author’s learned Notes—a most valuable portion of his work—of the numerous passages from foreign writers, Greek, Latin, French, and German, which in the English edition appear in the original languages. It has been thought best to translate these passages, in order to bring them within the reach of all general readers; and it is hoped that this proceeding will be regarded by scholars with indulgence at least, if not with entire approval. The translations have been made by Prof. John L. Lincoln, of Brown University, whose reputation as a scholar is deemed by the Publishers a sufficient guaranty for the execution of the work. It has been the translator’s endeavor to reproduce the original with as much fidelity as possible; and to make only such departures, even in the form of the thought, as the English idiom seemed to require. The difficulties belonging to the task of translating isolated passages from so many and so different writers, will doubtless be best understood by those who are most familiar with the languages in which they are written, and with the abstruse subjects which they discuss. An Index of the Authors, quoted in the work, has been also prepared for the American edition, which will be of great service to readers, and will indicate the wide and various range of Mr. Mansel’s studies. Boston, April 20, 1859. __________________________________________________________________ PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. THE various Criticisms to which these Lectures have been subjected since the publication of the last Edition, seem to call for a few explanatory remarks on the positions principally controverted. Such remarks may, it is hoped, contribute to the clearer perception of the argument in places where it has been misunderstood, and are also required in order to justify the republication, with little more than a few verbal alterations, of the entire work in its original form. On the whole, I have no reason to complain of my Critics. With one or two exceptions, the tone of their observations has been candid, liberal, and intelligent, and in some instances more favorable than I could have ventured to expect. An argument so abstruse, and in some respects so controversial, must almost inevitably call forth a considerable amount of opposition; and such criticism is at least useful in stimulating further inquiry, and in pointing out to an author those among his statements which appear most to require explanation or defence. If it has not done more than this, it is because the original argument was not put forth without much previous consideration, nor without anticipation of many of the objections to which it was likely to be exposed. At present, I must confine myself to those explanations which appear to be necessary to the right appreciation of the main purposes of the work, on the supposition that its fundamental principles may be admitted as tenable. To reargue the whole question on first principles, or to reply minutely to the criticisms on subordinate details, would require a larger space than can be allotted to a preface, and would be at least premature at the present stage of the controversy, while the work has in all probability not yet completed the entire course of criticism which a new book is destined to undergo if it succeeds in attracting any amount of public attention. In the first place, it may be desirable to obviate some misapprehensions concerning the design of the work as a whole. It should be remembered, that to answer the objections which have been urged against Christianity, or against any religion, is not to prove the religion to be true. It only clears the ground for the production of the proper evidences. It shows, so far as it is successful, that the religion may be true, notwithstanding the objections by which it has been assailed; but it cannot by itself convert this admission into a positive belief. It only calls for an impartial hearing of the other grounds on which the question must be decided. When, therefore, a critic objects to the present argument, that “the presence of contradictions is no proof of the truth of a system;” that “we are not entitled to erect on this ethereal basis a superstructure of theological doctrine, only because it, too, possesses the same self-contradictions;” that “the argument places all religions and philosophies on precisely the same level;”—he merely charges it with accomplishing the very purpose which it was intended to accomplish. So far as certain difficulties are inherent in the constitution of the human mind itself, they must of necessity occupy the same position with respect to all religions,—the false no less than the true. It is sufficient if it can be shown that they have not, as is too often supposed, any peculiar force against Christianity alone. No sane man dreams of maintaining that a religion is true because of the difficulties which it involves: the utmost that can reasonably be maintained is that it may be true in spite of them. Such an argument of course requires, as its supplement, a further consideration of the direct evidences of Christianity; and this requirement is pointed out in the concluding Lecture. But it formed no part of my design to exhibit in detail the evidences themselves;—a task which the many excellent works already existing on that subject would have rendered wholly unnecessary, even if it could have been satisfactorily accomplished within the limits of the single Lecture which alone could have been given to it. But granting for the present the main position of these Lectures, namely, that the human mind inevitably and by virtue of its essential constitution, finds itself involved in self-contradictions whenever it ventures on certain courses of speculation; it may be asked, in the next place, what conclusion does this admission warrant, as regards the respective positions of Faith and Reason in determining the religious convictions of men. These Lectures have been charged with condemning, under the name of Dogmatism, all Dogmatic Theology; with censuring, “the exercise of Reason in defence and illustration of the truths of Revelation;” with including “schoolmen and saints and infidels alike” in one and the same condemnation. Such sweeping assertions are surely not warranted by anything that is maintained in the Lectures themselves. Dogmatism and Rationalism are contrasted with each other, not as employing reason for opposite purposes, but as employing it in extremes. The contrast was naturally suggested by the historical connection between the Wolfian philosophy and the Kantian, the one as the stronghold of Dogmatism, the other of Rationalism. The religious philosophy of Wolf and his followers, whose system, and not that of either “’schoolmen or saints,” is cited as the chief specimen of Dogmatism, was founded on the assumption that philosophical proofs of theological doctrines were absolutely necessary in all cases. “He maintained,” says a writer quoted in the Notes, “that philosophy was indispensable to theology, and that, together with biblical proofs, a mathematical or strictly demonstrative dogmatical system, according to the principles of reason, was absolutely necessary.” Dogmatism, as thus exemplified, is surely not the use of reason in theology, but its abuse. Unless a critic is prepared to accept, as legitimate reasoning, Canz’s demonstration of the Trinity, cited at p. 232 of the present volume, or the more modern specimen of the same method noticed at p. 51, he must surely admit the conclusion which these instances were adduced to prove; namely, that the methods of the Dogmatist and the Rationalist are alike open to criticism, “in so far as they keep within, or go beyond those limits of sound thought which the laws of man’s mind, or the circumstances in which he is placed, have imposed upon him.” All Dogmatic Theology is not Dogmatism, nor all use of Reason Rationalism, any more than all drinking is drunkenness. The dogmatic or the rational method may be rightly or wrongly employed, and the question is to determine the limits of the legitimate or illegitimate use of each. It is expressly as extremes that the two systems are contrasted: each is described as leading to error in its exclusive employment, yet as being, in its utmost error, only a truth abused. If reason may not be used without restriction in the defence any more than in the refutation of religious doctrines; if there are any mysteries of revelation which it is our duty to believe, though we cannot demonstrate them from philosophical premises,—this is sufficient to show that the provinces of Faith and Reason are not coextensive. But to assert this is surely not to deny, that the dogmatic method may be and has been rightly used within certain limits. The dogmatism which is condemned is not system, but the extravagance of system. If systematic completeness is made the end which the theologian is bound to pursue, at every cost; if whatever is left obscure and partial in revealed truth is, as a matter of necessity, to be cleared and completed by definitions and inferences, certain or uncertain; if the declarations of Scripture are in all cases to be treated as conclusions to be supported by philosophical premises, or as principles to be developed into philosophical conclusions,—then indeed Dogmatic Theology is in danger of degenerating into mere Dogmatism. But it is only the indiscriminate use of the method which is condemned, and that not simply as an employment of reason in religious questions, but as an employment beyond its just limits. And if, in citing instances of this misuse, it has been occasionally necessary to point out the errors of writers whose names are justly honored in the Church, and whose labors, as a whole, are entitled to the reverence and gratitude of posterity, I wish distinctly to state, that the censure, such as it is, reaches only to the points directly indicated, by reference or quotation, and is not intended to apply further. What, then, is the practical lesson which these Lectures are designed to teach concerning the right use of reason in religious questions? and what are the just claims of a reasonable faith, as distinguished from a blind credulity? In the first place, it is obvious that, if there is any object whatever of which the human mind is unable to form a clear and distinct conception, the inability equally disqualifies us for proving or disproving a given doctrine, in all cases in which such a conception is an indispensable condition of the argument. If, for example, we can form no positive notion of the Nature of God as an Infinite Being, we are not entitled either to demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity as a necessary property of that Nature, or to reject it as necessarily inconsistent therewith. Such mysteries clearly belong, not to Reason, but to Faith; and the preliminary inquiry which distinguishes a reasonable from an unreasonable belief, must be directed, not to the premises by which the doctrine can be proved or disproved as reasonable or unreasonable, but to the nature of the authority on which it rests, as revealed or unrevealed. The brief summary of Christian Evidences contained in my concluding Lecture, [1] and others which might be added to them, are surely sufficient to form an ample field for the use of Reason, even in regard to those mysteries which it cannot directly examine. If to submit to an authority which can stand the test of such investigations, and to believe it when it tells us of things which we are unable to investigate,—if this be censured as a blind credulity, it is a blindness which in these things is a better guide than the opposite quality so justly described by the philosopher as “the sharp-sightedness of little souls.” In the second place, a caution is needed concerning the kind of evidence which reason is competent to furnish within the legitimate sphere of its employment. If we have not such a conception of the Divine Nature as is sufficient for the a priori demonstration of religious truth, our rational conviction in any particular case must be regarded, not as a certainty, but as a probability. We must remember the Aristotelian rule, to be content with such evidence as the nature of the object-matter allows. A single infallible criterion of all religious truth can be obtained only by the possession of a perfect Philosophy of the Infinite. If such a philosophy is unattainable; if the infinite can only be apprehended under finite symbols, and the authority of those symbols tested by finite evidences,—there is always room for error, in consequence of the inadequacy of the conception to express completely the nature of the object. In other words, we must admit that human reason, though not worthless, is at least fallible, in dealing with religious questions; and that the probability of error is always increased in proportion to the partial nature of the evidence with which it deals. Those who set up some one supreme criterion of religious truth, their “Christian consciousness,” their “religious intuitions,” their “moral reason,” or any other of the favorite idols of the subjective school of theologians, and who treat with contempt every kind of evidence which does not harmonize with this, are especially liable to be led into error. They use the weight without the counterpoise, to the imminent peril of their mental equilibrium. This is the caution which it was the object of my concluding Lecture to enforce, principally by means of two practical rules; namely, first, that the true evidence, for or against a religion, is not to be found in any single criterion, but in the result of many presumptions examined and compared together; and, secondly, that in proportion to the weight of the counter-evidence in favor of a religion, is the probability that we may be mistaken in supposing a particular class of objections to have any real weight at all. These considerations are no less applicable to moral than to speculative reasonings. The moral faculty, though furnishing undoubtedly some of the most important elements for the solution of the religious problem, is no more entitled than any other single principle of the human mind to be accepted as a sole and sufficient criterion. It is true that to our sense of moral obligation we owe our primary conception of God as a moral Governor; and it is also true that, were man left solely to a priori presumptions in forming his estimate of the nature and attributes of God, the moral sense, as being that one of all human faculties whose judgments are least dependent on experience, would furnish the principal, if not the only characteristics of his highest conception of God. But here, as elsewhere, the original presumption is modified and corrected by subsequent experience. It is a fact which experience forces upon us, and which it is useless, were it possible, to disguise, that the representation of God after the model of the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving, is not sufficient to account for all the phenomena exhibited by the course of His natural Providence. The infliction 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. What right, then, has the philosopher to assume that a criterion which admits of so many exceptions in the facts of nature may be applied, without qualification or exception, to the statements of revelation? The assertion that human morality contains in it a temporal and relative element, and cannot, in its highest manifestation, be regarded as a complete measure of the absolute Goodness of God, has been condemned by one critic as “rank Occamism,” [2] and contrasted with the teaching of “that marvellously profound, cautious, and temperate thinker,” Bishop Butler; it has been denounced by another, of a very different school, as “destructive of healthful moral perception.” That the doctrine in question, instead of being opposed to Butler, is directly taken from him, may be seen by any one who will take the trouble to read the extract from the Analogy quoted at p. 211. But it is of little importance by what authority an opinion is sanctioned, if it will not itself stand the test of sound criticism. The admission, that a divine command may, under certain circumstances, justify all act which would not be justifiable without it, is condemned by some critics as holding out an available excuse for any crime committed under any circumstances. If God can suspend, on any one occasion, the ordinary obligations of morality, how, it is asked, are we to know whether any criminal may not equally claim a divine sanction for his crimes? Now where, as in the present instance, the supposed exceptions are expressly stated as supernatural ones, analogous to the miraculous suspension of the ordinary laws of nature, this objection either proves too much, or proves nothing at all. If we believe in the possibility of a supernatural Providence at all, we may also believe that God is able to authenticate His own mission by proper evidences. The objection has no special relation to questions of moral duty. It may be asked, in like manner, how we are to distinguish a true from a false prophet, or a preacher sent by God from one acting on his own responsibility. The possibility of a special divine mission of any kind will of course be denied by those who reject the supernatural altogether; but this denial removes the question into an entirely different province of inquiry, where it has no relation to any peculiar infallibility supposed to attach to the moral reason, above the other faculties of the human mind. Those who believe, with the Scriptures, that the Almighty has, at certain times in the world’s history, manifested Himself to certain nations or individuals in a supernatural manner, distinct from His ordinary government of the world by the institutions of society, will scarcely be disposed to admit the assumption, that God could not on such occasions justify by His own authority such acts as are every day justified by the authority of the civil magistrate whose power is delegated from Him. To assert, with one of my critics, that upon this principle, “the deed which is criminal on earth may be praiseworthy in heaven,” is to distort the whole doctrine and to beg the whole question. For we must first answer the previous inquiry: Does not a deed performed under such circumstances cease to be criminal at all, even upon earth? The question, so far as moral philosophy is concerned, is simply this: Is the moral quality of right or wrong an attribute so essentially adhering to acts as acts, that the same act can never vary in its character according to the motives by which it is prompted, or the circumstances under which it is committed? If we are compelled, as every moralist is compelled, to answer this question in the negative, we must then ask, in the second place, whether the existence of a direct command from the supreme Governor of the world, supposing such a command ever to have been given, is one of the circumstances which can in any degree affect the character of an act. On this question, to judge merely by the conflicting statements on opposite sides, men whose moral judgments are equally trustworthy may differ one from another; but that very difference is enough to show that the moral reason is not by itself a sufficient and infallible oracle on such questions. The further inquiry, whether such a command has ever, as a matter of fact, been given; and how, if given, it can be distinguished from counterfeits, is one which does not fall within the province of moral philosophy, in itself or in its relation to theology. The philosopher, as such, can at most only prepare the way for this inquiry, if he can succeed in showing that there is nothing in the moral reason of man which entitles it to pronounce on a priori grounds, that such a command is absolutely impossible. It remains to make some remarks on another of the opinions maintained in the following Lectures, on which, to judge by the criticisms to which it has been subjected, a few words of explanation may be desirable. It has been objected by reviewers of very opposite schools. that to deny to man a knowledge of the Infinite is to make Revelation itself impossible, and to leave no room for evidences on which reason can be legitimately employed. The objection would be pertinent, if I had ever maintained that Revelation is or can be a direct manifestation of the Infinite Nature of God. But I have constantly asserted the very reverse. In Revelation, as in Natural Religion, God is represented under finite conceptions, adapted to finite minds; and the evidences on which the authority of Revelation rests are finite and comprehensible also. It is true that in Revelation, no less than in the exercise of our natural faculties, there is indirectly indicated the existence of a higher and more absolute truth, which, as it cannot be grasped by any effort of human thought, cannot be made the vehicle of any valid philosophical criticism. But the comprehension of this higher truth is no more necessary, either to a belief in the contents of Revelation or to a reasonable examination of its evidences, than a conception of the infinite divisibility of matter is necessary to the child before it can learn to walk. But it is a great mistake to suppose, as some of my critics have supposed, that if the Infinite, as an object, is inconceivable, therefore the language which denotes it is wholly without meaning, and the corresponding state of mind one of complete quiescence. A negative idea by no means implies a negation of all mental activity. [3] It implies an attempt to think, and a failure in accomplishing the attempt. The language by which such ideas are indicated is not like a word in an unknown tongue, which excites no corresponding affection in the mind of the hearer. It indicates a relation, if only of difference, to that of which we are positively conscious, and a consequent effort to pass from the one to the other. This is the case even with those more obvious negations of thought which arise from the union of two incongruous finite notions. We may attempt to conceive a space enclosed by two straight lines; and it is not till after the effort has been made that we become aware of the impossibility of the conception. And it may frequently happen, owing to the use of language as a substitute for thought, that a process of reasoning may be carried on to a considerable length, without the reasoner being aware of the essentially inconceivable character of the objects denoted by his terms. This is especially likely when the negative character of the notion depends, not, as in the above instance, on the union of two attributes which cannot be conceived in conjunction, but on the separation of those which cannot be conceived apart. We can analyze in language what we cannot analyze in thought; and the presence of the language often serves to conceal the absence of the thought. Thus, for example, it is impossible to conceive color apart from extension; an unextended color is therefore a purely negative notion. Yet many distinguished philosophers have maintained that the connection between these two ideas is one merely of association, and have argued concerning color apart from extension, with as much confidence as if their language represented positive thought. The speculations concerning the seat of the immaterial soul may be cited as another instance of the same kind. Forgetting that, to human thought, position in space and occupation of space are notions essentially bound together, and that neither can be conceived apart from the other, men have carried on various elaborate reasonings, and constructed various plausible theories, on the tacit assumption that it is possible to assign a local position to an unextended substance. Yet, considering that extension itself is necessarily conceived as a relation between parts exterior to each other, and that no such relation can be conceived as an ultimate and simple element of things, it would be the mere dogmatism of ignorance to assert that a relation between the extended and the unextended is in itself impossible; though assuredly we are unable to conceive how it is possible. It is thus manifest that, even granting that all our positive consciousness is of the Finite only, it may still be possible for men to speculate and reason concerning the Infinite, without being aware that their language represents, not thought, but its negation. They attempt to separate the condition of finiteness from their conception of a given object; and it is not till criticism has detected the self-contradiction involved in the attempt, that we learn at last that all human efforts to conceive the infinite are derived from the consciousness, not of what it is, but only of what it is not. [4] Whatever value may be attached, in different psychological theories, to that instinct or feeling of our nature which compels us to believe in the existence of the Infinite, it is clear that, so long as it remains a mere instinct or feeling, it cannot be employed for the purpose of theological criticism. The communication of mental phenomena from man to man must always be made in the form of thoughts conveyed through the medium of language. So long as the unbeliever can only say, “I feel that this doctrine is false, but I cannot say why;” so long as the believer can only retort, “I feel that it is true, but I can give no reason for my feeling,”—there is no common ground on which either can hope to influence the other. So long as a man’s religion is a matter of feeling only, the feeling, whatever may be its influence on himself, forms no basis of argument for or against the truth of what he believes. But as soon as he interprets his feelings into thoughts, and proceeds to make those thoughts the instruments of criticism constructive or destructive, he is bound to submit them to the same logical criteria to which he himself subjects the religion on which he is commenting. In this relation, it matters not what may be the character of our feeling of the infinite, provided our conception cannot be exhibited without betraying its own inherent weakness by its own self-contradictions. That such is the case with that philosophical conception of the Absolute and Infinite which has prevailed in almost every philosophy of note, from Parmenides to Hegel, it has been the aim of these Lectures to show. If a critic maintains that philosophy, notwithstanding its past failures, may possibly hereafter succeed in bringing the infinite within the grasp of reason, we may be permitted to doubt the assertion until the task has been actually accomplished. The distinction between speculative and regulative truths, which has also been a good deal misapprehended, is one which follows inevitably from the abandonment of the philosophy of the Absolute. If human thought cannot be traced up to an absolutely first principle of all knowledge and all existence; if our highest attainable truths bear the marks of subordination to something higher and unattainable,—it follows, if we are to act or believe at all, that our practice and belief must be based on principles which do not satisfy all the requirements of the speculative reason. But it should be remembered that this distinction is not peculiar to the evidences of religion. It is shown that in all departments of human knowledge alike,—in the laws of thought, in the movement of our limbs, in the perception of our senses, the truths which guide our practice cannot be reduced to principles which satisfy our reason; and that, if religious thought is placed under the same restrictions, this is but in strict analogy to the general conditions to which God has subjected man in his search after truth. One half of the rationalist’s objections against revealed religion would fall to the ground, if men would not commit the very irrational error of expecting clearer conceptions and more rigid demonstrations of the invisible things of God, than those which they are content to accept and act upon in all the concerns of their earthly life. The above are all the explanations which, so far as I can at present judge, appear to be desirable, to obviate probable misapprehensions regarding the general principles advocated in these pages. Had I thought it worth while to enter into controversy on minute questions of detail, or to reply to misapprehensions which are due solely to the inadvertence of individual readers, [5] I might have extended these remarks to a considerably greater length. For the present I shall content myself with only two further observations; one on a single sentence, the language of which, having been misinterpreted in more than one quarter, may perhaps need a brief explanation; the other on a matter affecting, not the literary merit of these Lectures, but the personal honesty of their author. The sentence occurs at p. 76, in the following words: “‘What kind of an Absolute Being is that,’ says Hegel, ‘which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included?’ We may repudiate the conclusion with indignation; but the reasoning is unassailable. If the Absolute and Infinite is an object of human conception at all, this, and none other, is the conception required.” This passage has been censured by more than one critic, as involving the skeptical admission that a false conclusion can be logically deduced from true premises. The concluding words may explain the real meaning. The whole argument is designed to show that to speak of a conception of the Absolute implies a self-contradiction at the outset, and that to reason upon such a conception involves ab initio a violation of the laws of human thought. That reasoning based on this assumption must end by annihilating itself, is surely no very dangerous concession to the skeptic. Suppose that an author had written such a sentence as the following: “A circular parallelogram must have its opposite sides and angles equal, and must also be such that all lines drawn from the centre to the circumference shall be equal to each other. The conclusion is absurd; but the reasoning is unassailable, supposing that a circular parallelogram can be conceived at all.” Would such a statement involve any formidable consequences either to geometry or to logic? It remains only to say a few words on a question of fact, involving one of the most serious accusations that can be brought against the character of an author. A writer in the Rambler, to whom in other respects I feel indebted for a liberal and kindly appreciation of my labors, has qualified his favorable judgment by the grave charge that the “whole gist of the book” is borrowed without acknowledgment from the teaching of Dr. Newman, as a preacher or as a writer. Against a charge of this kind there is but one possible defence. No obligation was acknowledged, simply because none existed. I say this, assuredly with no intention to speak slightingly of one whose transcendent gifts no differences should hinder me from acknowledging; but because it is necessary, in justice to myself, to state exactly the relation in which I stand towards him. Dr. Newman’s teaching from the University pulpit was almost at its close before my connection with Oxford began: his parochial sermons I had very seldom an opportunity of hearing. His published writings might doubtless have given me much valuable assistance; but with these I was but slightly acquainted when these Lectures were first published; and the little that I knew contained nothing which appeared to bear upon my argument. This is but one out of many deficiencies, of which I have been painfully conscious during the progress of the work, and which I would gladly have endeavored to supply, had circumstances allowed me a longer time for direct preparation. The point, indeed, on which the Reviewer lays the most stress, is one in which there was little room for originality, either in myself or in my supposed teacher. That Revelation is accommodated to the limitations of man’s faculties, and is primarily designed for the purpose of practical religion, and not for those of speculative philosophy, has been said over and over again by writers of almost every age, and is indeed a truth so obvious that it might have occurred independently to almost any number of thinkers. Doubtless there is no truth, however trite and obvious, which may not assume a new and striking aspect in the hands of a great and original writer; and in this, as in other respects, a better acquaintance with Dr. Newman’s works might have taught me a better mode of expressing many arguments to which my own language may have done but imperfect justice. Even at this late hour, I am tempted to subjoin, as a conclusion to these observations, one passage of singular beauty and truth, of which, had I known it earlier, I would gladly have availed myself, as pointing out the true spirit in which inquiries like these should be pursued, and the practical lesson which they are designed to teach. “And should any one fear lest thoughts such as these should tend to a dreary and hopeless skepticism, let him take into account the Being and Providence of God, the Merciful and True; and he will at once be relieved of his anxiety. All is dreary till we believe, what our hearts tell us, that we are subjects of His Governance; nothing is dreary, all inspires hope and trust, directly we understand that we are under His hand, and that whatever comes to us is from Him, as a method of discipline and guidance. What is it to us whether the knowledge He gives us be greater or less, if it be He who gives it? What is it to us whether it be exact or vague, if He bids us trust it? What have we to care whether we are or are not given to divide substance from shadow, if He is training us heavenward by means of either? Why should we vex ourselves to find whether our deductions are philosophical or no, provided they are religious? If our senses supply the media by which we are put on trial, by which we are all brought together, and hold intercourse with each other, and are disciplined, and are taught, and enabled to benefit others, it is enough. We have an instinct within us, impelling us, we have external necessity forcing us, to trust our senses, and we may leave the question of their substantial truth for another world, ‘till the day break, and the shadows flee away.’ And what is true of reliance on our senses, is true of all the information which it has pleased God to vouchsafe to us, whether in nature or in grace.” [6] Oxford, February 18th, 1859. __________________________________________________________________ [1] See below, p. 214. [2] It is in fact the very reverse of the doctrine usually attributed to Occam, which admits of no distinction between absolute and relative morality, but maintains that, as all distinction of right and wrong depends upon obedience or disobedience to a higher authority, therefore the Divine Nature must be morally indifferent, and all good and evil the result of God’s arbitrary Will. The above assertion, on the other hand, expressly distinguishes absolute from relative morality, and regards human virtue and vice as combining an eternal and a temporal element,—the one an absolute principle grounded in the immutable nature of God; the other a relative application, dependent upon the created constitution of human nature. But I am by no means sure that the “Invincible Doctor” has been quite fairly dealt with in this matter. [3] See Sir W. Hamilton’s Discussions, p. 602. [4] A critic in the National Review is of opinion that “relative apprehension is always and necessarily of two terms together;” and “if of the finite, then also of the infinite.” This is true as regards the meaning of the words; but by no means as regards the conception of the corresponding objects. If extended to the latter, it should in consistency be asserted that the conception of that which is conceivable involves also the conception of that which is inconceivable; that the consciousness of anything is also a consciousness of nothing; that the intuition of space and time is likewise an intuition of the absence of both. [5] A writer in the Christian Observer has actually mistaken the positions against which the author is contending for those which he maintains, and on the strength of this mistake has blundered through several pages of vehement denunciation of the monstrous consequences which follow from the assumption that the philosophical conception of the absolute is the true conception of God. The absolute and the infinite, he tells us (in opposition to the Lecturer!!!), “are names of God unknown to the Scriptures:” “The conception of infinity is plainly negative:” “the absolute and infinite, as defined in the Lectures after the leaders of German metaphysics, is no synonym for the true and living God:” and “a philosophy of the so-called absolute is a spurious theology.” Est il possible? The same critic denounces, as “radically and thoroughly untrue,” the distinction between speculative and regulative truths, and the consequent assertion that action, and not knowledge, is man’s destiny and duty in this life, and that his highest principles, both in philosophy and in religion, have reference to this end. “On the contrary,” he says, “all right action depends on right knowledge.” As if this were not the very meaning of a regulative truth,—knowledge for the sake of action. Another critic asserts that the author “sweeps down schoolmen and saints and infidels alike, with the assertion that dogmatism and rationalism equally assign to some superior tribunal the right of determining what is essential to religion and what is not.” Had he looked a second time at the page which he quotes, he would have seen that this is said of rationalism alone. [6] University Sermons, p. 351. __________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS. LECTURE I. Dogmatism and Rationalism as methods of religious philosophy—meaning of these terms—errors of the respective systems denoted by each; the one forcing reason into agreement with revelation, the other forcing revelation into agreement with reason.—Both methods may be regarded as attempts, from opposite sides, to produce exact coincidence between belief and thought.—Instances of each exhibited and examined.—Human conceptions are unavoidable in Theology; but there is need of some principle to determine their proper place in it.—Such a principle can only be gained by an investigation of the Limits of Human Thought.—The proper object of criticism is not religion, but the human mind in its relation to religion.—A direct criticism of religion as a representation of God can only be accomplished by the construction of a Philosophy of the Infinite.—It is therefore necessary to inquire whether such a philosophy is possible; and this can only be ascertained by an examination of the laws of human thought in general, which will determine those of religious thought in particular.—Analogous difficulties may be expected in philosophy and in religion, arising from the limitations of thought common to both.—Contrast between two opposite statements of the extent of human knowledge, in the words of St. Paul and of Hegel.—Purpose of the following Lectures, as an Examination of the Limits of Religious Thought, . . . . 45 LECTURE II. Statement of the two opposite methods by which a Philosophy of Religion may be attempted; the Objective or Metaphysical, based on a supposed knowledge of the nature of God, and the Subjective or Psychological, based on a knowledge of the mental faculties of man.—Relation of these methods respectively to the Criticism of Revelation—dependence of the former method upon the latter.—Further examination of the Objective or Metaphysical method. Two different modes in which man may be supposed to be capable of attaining to a knowledge of God—specimen of each—insufficiency of both to found a Rational Theology.—Examination of the fundamental ideas of Rational Theology,—the Absolute—the Infinite—the First Cause—mutual contradictions involved in these three ideas—conception of an eternal Causation incompatible with the Absolute—conception of a temporal Causation incompatible with the Infinite.—The Absolute cannot be conceived as a necessary and unconscious cause,—nor as a voluntary and conscious cause,—nor as possessing’ consciousness at all,—nor as containing within itself any kind of relation,—nor as one and simple, out of all relation. Effect of these counter impossibilities on the conceptions of Theology—apparent contradictions in the conception of the Divine Attributes as absolute and infinite.—Further contradictions involved in the coexistence of the Relative with the Absolute, and of the Finite with the Infinite. Pantheism avoids these contradictions by denying the existence of the Finite and Relative—this solution untenable—self-contradictions of the Pantheistic hypothesis.—Alternative of Atheism, which denies the existence of the Infinite and Absolute—contradictions involved in this hypothesis.—Summary of conclusions.—Necessary failure of all attempts to construct a Metaphysical Theology—alternative necessitated by this failure.—Practical result of the above inquiry, . . . . 68 LECTURE III. Recapitulation of the results of the last Lecture.—Necessity of examining the Philosophy of Religion from the Subjective or Psychological side, as dependent upon a knowledge of the laws of the human mind.—General conditions of all human Consciousness.—First condition of Consciousness, Distinction between one Object and another—such a distinction necessarily implies Limitation—consequent impossibility of conceiving the Infinite.—Explanation of the contradictions involved in the idea of the Infinite—this idea inadmissible as the basis of a scientific Theology.—Second condition of Consciousness, Relation between Subject and Object—consequent impossibility of conceiving the Absolute.—Explanation of the contradictions involved in the idea of the Absolute.—Impossibility of a partial knowledge of the Infinite and Absolute.—Third condition of Consciousness, Succession and Duration in Time—hence all objects are conceived as finite—consequent impossibility of conceiving Creation, and counter impossibility of conceiving finite existence as uncreated.—Attempt to evade this limitation in Theology by the hypothesis of the existence of God out of Time—this hypothesis untenable in philosophy and unavailable in theology.—Fourth condition of Consciousness, Personality—Personality a limitation and a relation, and hence inadequate to represent the Infinite.—Theological consequences of this condition. Personality the source and type of our conception of Reality, and therefore the only fitting representation of God.—Necessity of thinking of God as personal and yet of believing in Him as infinite—apparent contradiction between these representations—hence Thought cannot be the measure of Belief.—Consequent impossibility of constructing a Rational Theology.—Attempt to avoid the above conclusions by placing the Philosophy of the Infinite in a point beyond Consciousness—necessary failure of this attempt.—Summary of Conclusions.—Practical lesson from the above inquiry. . . . . 91 LECTURE IV. Analysis of the religious Consciousness, reflective and intuitive.—Relation of the reflective Consciousness to Theology; its reasonings sufficient to correct our conception of a Supreme Being, but not to originate it—examination of some current theories on this point—statement of the value of the reflective faculties within their proper limits.—Reflection, as well as intuition necessary to distinct consciousness; but intuition is first in the order of nature, though not in that of time.—Two principal modes of religious intuition—the Feeling of Dependence and the Conviction of Moral Obligation, giving rise respectively to Prayer and Expiation.—Examination of these two modes of Consciousness.—Dependence implies a Personal Superior; hence our conviction of the Power of God—Moral Obligation implies a Moral Lawgiver; hence our conviction of the Goodness of God.—Limits of the Religious Consciousness—Sense of Dependence not a consciousness of the Absolute and Infinite—opposite theory of Schleiermacher on this point—objections to his view.—Sense of Moral Obligation not a consciousness of the Absolute and Infinite.—Yet the Infinite is indirectly implied by the religious consciousness, though not apprehended as such; for the consciousness of limitation carries with it an indirect conviction of the existence of the Infinite beyond consciousness.—Result of the above analysis—our knowledge of God relative and not absolute—the Infinite an object of belief, but not of thought or knowledge; hence we may know that an Infinite God exists, but not what He is as Infinite.—Further results of an examination of the religious consciousness.—God known as a Person through the consciousness of ourselves as Persons—this consciousness indispensable to Theism; for the denial of our own Personality, whether in the form of Materialism or of Pantheism, logically leads to Atheism.—Summary of conclusions—our religious knowledge is regulative, but not speculative—importance of this distinction in theological reasoning—conception of the Infinite inadmissible in Theology.—Office of religious philosophy, as limited to finite conceptions.—Practical benefits of this limitation.—Conclusion, . . . .114 LECTURE V. Distinction between Speculative and Regulative Truth further pursued.—In Philosophy, as well as Religion, our highest principles of thought are regulative and not speculative.—Instances in the Ideas of Liberty and Necessity; Unity and Plurality as implied in the conception of any object; Commerce between Soul and Body; Extension, as implied in external perception; and Succession, as implied in the entire consciousness.—Illustration thus afforded for determining the limits of thought- distinction between legitimate and illegitimate thought, as determined by their relation to the inexplicable and the self-contradictory respectively.—Conclusion to be drawn as regards the manner of the mind’s operation—all Consciousness implies a relation between Subject and Object, dependent on their mutual action and reaction; and thus no principle of thought can be regarded as absolute and simple, as an ultimate and highest truth.—Analogy in this respect between Philosophy and Natural Religion which apprehends the Infinite under finite forms—corresponding difficulties to be expected in each.—Provinces of Reason and Faith.—Analogy extended to Revealed Religion—testimony of Revelation plain and intelligible when regarded as regulative, but ultimately incomprehensible to speculation—corresponding errors in Philosophy and Religion, illustrating this analogy.—Regulative conceptions not therefore untrue.—The above principles confirmed by the teaching of Scripture.—Revelation expressly adapted to the limits of human thought.—Relation of the Infinite to the Personal in the representations of God in the Old Testament.—Further confirmation from the New Testament.—Doctrine of the Incarnation; its practical position in Theology as a regulative truth; its perversion by modern philosophy, in the attempt to exhibit it as a speculative truth.—Instances in Hegel, Marheineke, and Strauss.—Conclusion, . . . .136 LECTURE VI. Result of the previous inquiries—religious ideas contain two elements, a Form, common to them with all other ideas, as being human thoughts; and a Matter, peculiar to themselves, as thoughts about religious objects—hence there may exist two possible kinds of difficulties; the one formal arising from the universal laws of human thought; the other material arising from the peculiar nature of religious evidence.—The principal objections suggested by Rationalism are of the former kind; common to all human thinking as such, and therefore to Rationalism itself.—Proof of this position by the exhibition of parallel difficulties in Theology and Philosophy.—Our ignorance of the nature of God compared with our ignorance of the nature of Causation.—Doctrine of the Trinity compared with the philosophical conception of the Infinite and the Absolute, as one and yet as many.—Doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son compared with the relation of an Infinite Sub stance to its Attributes.—Purpose of such comparisons, not to prove the doctrines, but to show the weakness of human reason with regard to them—true evidence of the doctrines to be found, not in Reason, but in Revelation.—Further parallels.—Doctrine of the twofold nature of Christ compared with the philosophical conception of the Infinite as coexisting with the Finite.—Reason thus shown not to be the supreme judge of religious truth; for Religion must begin with that which is above Reason.—Extension of the same argument to our conceptions of Divine Providence.—Representations of General Law and Special Interposition—supposed difficulty in the conception of the latter shown to be really common to all human conceptions of the Infinite.—Both representations equally imperfect as speculative truths, and both equally necessary as regulative.—Imperfections in the conception of General Law and mechanical action of the universe—this conception is neither philosophically necessary nor empirically universal; and hence it is not entitled to supersede all other representations—it is inapplicable to the phenomena of mind, and only partially available in relation to those of matter.—Conception of Miraculous Agency, as subordinate to that of Special Providence—no sufficient ground, either from philosophy or from experience, for asserting that miracles are impossible.—Comparison between the opposite conceptions of a miracle, as an exception to a law, or as the result of a higher law—both these conceptions are speculatively imperfect, but the former is preferable as a regulative truth.—Summary of Conclusions—parallel difficulties must exist in Theology and in Philosophy—true value and province of Reason in relation to both, . . . . 158 LECTURE VII. Philosophical parallel continued with regard to the supposed moral objections to Christian doctrines.—Error of the moral theory of Kant.—Moral convictions how far necessary and trustworthy, how far contingent and fallible—parallel in this respect between moral and mathematical science, as based on the formal conditions of experience—possibility of corresponding errors in both.—Human morality not absolute, but relative.—The Moral Law cannot be conceived as an absolute principle, apart from its temporal manifestations—parallel in the idea of Time and its relations.—Morality, as conceived by us, necessarily contains a human and positive element; and therefore cannot be the measure of the Absolute Nature of God.—Application of the above principles to Christian Theology.—The Atonement—weakness of the supposed moral objections to this doctrine-such objections equally applicable to any conceivable scheme of Divine Providence.—Predestination and Free Will—Predestination, as a determination of the Absolute Mind, is speculatively inconceivable, and therefore cannot be known to be incompatible with human Freedom—parallel in this respect between Predestination in Theology and Causation in Philosophy.—Eternal Punishment—rashness and ignorance of rationalist criticisms of this doctrine—the difficulties of the doctrine are not peculiar to Theology, but common to all Philosophy, and belong to the general problem of the existence of Evil at all, which is itself but a subordinate case of the universal impossibility of conceiving the coëxistence of the Infinite with the Finite.—Contrast between illegitimate and legitimate mode of reasoning on evil and its punishment—illustrations to be derived from analogies in the course of nature and in the constitution of the human mind.—Extension of the argument from analogy to other religious doctrines—Original Sin—Justification by Faith—Operation of Divine Grace.—Limits of the Moral Reason.—Conclusion, . . . . 182 LECTURE VIII. Right use of Reason in religious questions—Reason entitled to judge of a Religion in respect of its evidences, as addressed to men, but not in respect of its correspondence with philosophical conceptions of the Absolute Nature of God.—No one faculty of the human mind is entitled to exclusive preference as the criterion of religious truth—the true criterion is to be found in the general result of many and various Evidences—practical neglect of this rule by different writers.—Comparative value of internal and external evidences of religion, the former as negative, the latter as positive.—Cautions as requisite in the use of the negative argument from internal evidence—external and internal evidence can only be estimated in conjunction with each other.—Distinction between the proper and improper use of the Moral Sense in questions of religious evidence.—Application of this distinction to facts recorded in Sacred History.—Analogy between physical and moral laws as regards miraculous interventions.—Probable and partial character of the moral argument; error of supposing it to be demonstrative and complete; possibility of mistakes in its application.—General summary of Christian Evidences—alternative in the case of their rejection—Christ’s teaching either wholly divine or wholly human.—Impossibility of an eclectic Christianity.—Value of the a priori presumption against miracles—nothing gained in point of probability by a partial rejection of the supernatural.—Christianity regarded as a Revelation must be accepted wholly or not at all.—Speculative difficulties in religion form a part of our probation—analogy between moral and intellectual temptations.—General result of an examination of the Limits of Religious Thought—Theology not a speculative science, nor in the course of progressive development.—Cautions needed in the treatment of religious knowledge as regulative—this view does not solve difficulties, but only shows why they are insoluble.—Instance of the neglect of this caution in Archbishop King’s rule of scripture interpretation as regards the Divine Attributes.—No explanation possible of those difficulties which arise from the universal laws of human thought—such difficulties are inherent in our mental constitution, and form part of our training and discipline during this life.—The office of Philosophy is not to give us a knowledge of the absolute nature of God, but to teach us to know ourselves and the limits of our faculties.—Conclusion, . . . . 204 __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ THE LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT EXAMINED. __________________________________________________________________ LECTURE I. YE SHALL NOT ADD UNTO THE WORD WHICH I COMMAND YOU, NEITHER SHALL YE DIMINISH AUGHT FROM IT.—DEUT. IV. 2. DOGMATISM and Rationalism are the two extremes between which religious philosophy perpetually oscillates. Each represents a system from which, when nakedly and openly announced, the well regulated mind almost instinctively shrinks back; yet which, in some more or less specious disguise, will be found to underlie the antagonist positions of many a theological controversy. Many a man who rejects isolated portions of Christian doctrine, on the ground that they are repugnant to his reason, would hesitate to avow broadly and unconditionally that reason is the supreme arbiter of all religious truth; thiough at the same time he would find it hard to point out any particular in which the position of reason, in relation to the truths which he still retains, differs from that which it occupies in relation to those which he rejects. And on the other hand, there are many who, while they would by no means construct a dogmatic system on the assumption that the conclusions of reason may always be made to coincide with those of revelation, yet, for want of an accurate distinction between that which is within the province of human thought and that which is beyond it, are accustomed in practice to demand the assent of the reason to positions which it is equally incompetent to affirm or to deny. Thus they not only lessen the value of the service which it is capable of rendering within its legitimate sphere, but also indirectly countenance that very intrusion of the human intellect into sacred things, which, in some of its other aspects, they so strongly and so justly condemn. In using the above terms, it is necessary to state at the outset the sense in which each is employed, and to emancipate them from the various and vague associations connected with their ordinary use. I do not include under the name of Dogmatism the mere enunciation of religious truths, as resting upon authority and not upon reasoning. The Dogmatist, as well as the Rationalist, is the constructor of a system; and in constructing it, however much the materials upon which he works may be given by a higher authority, yet in connecting them together and exhibiting their systematic form, it is necessary to call in the aid of human ability. Indeed, whatever may be their actual antagonism in the field of religious controversy, the two terms are in their proper sense so little exclusive of each other, that both were originally employed to denote the same persons;—the name Dogmatists or Rationalists being indifferently given to those medical theorists who insisted on the necessity of calling in the aid of rational principles, to support or correct the conclusions furnished by experience.^([1]1) A like signification is to be found in the later language of philosophy, when the term Dogmatists was used to denote those philosophers who endeavored to explain the phenomena of experience by means of rational conceptions and demonstrations; the intelligible world being regarded as the counterpart of the sensible, and the necessary relations of the former as the principles and ground of the observed facts of the latter.^([2]2) It is in a sense analogous to this that the term may be most accurately used in reference to Theology. Scripture is to the theological Dogmatist what Experience is to the philosophical. It supplies him with the facts to which his system has to adapt itself. It contains in an unsystematic form the positive doctrines, which further inquiry has to exhibit as supported by reasonable grounds and connected into a scientific whole. Theological Dogmatism is thus an application of reason to the support and defence of preëxisting statements of Scripture.^([3]3) Rationalism, on the other hand, so far as it deals with Scripture at all, deals with it as a thing to be adapted to the independent conclusions of the natural reason, and to be rejected where that adaptation cannot conveniently be made. By Rationalism, without intending to limit the name to any single school or period in theological controversy, I mean generally to designate that system whose final test of truth is placed in the direct assent of the human consciousness, whether in the form of logical deduction, or moral judgment, or religious intuition; by whatever previous process those faculties may have been raised to their assumed dignity as arbitrators. The Rationalist, as such, is not bound to maintain that a divine revelation of religious truth is impossible, nor even to deny that it has actually been given. He may admit the existence of the revelation as a fact: he may acknowledge its utility as a temporary means of instruction for a ruder age: he may even accept certain portions as of universal and permanent authority.^([4]4) But he assigns to some superior tribunal the right of determining what is essential to religion and what is not: he claims for himself and his age the privilege of accepting or rejecting any given revelation, wholly or in part, according as it does or does not satisfy the conditions of some higher criterion to be supplied by the human consciousness.^([5]5) In relation to the actual condition of religious truth, as communicated by Holy Scripture, Dogmatism and Rationalism may be considered as severally representing, the one the spirit which adds to the word of God, the other that which diminishes from it. Whether a complete system of scientific Theology could or could not have been given by direct revelation, consistently with the existing laws of human thought and the purposes which Revelation is designed to answer, it is at least certain that such a system is not given in the Revelation which we possess, but, if it is to exist at all, must be constructed out of it by human interpretation. And it is in attempting such a construction that Dogmatism and Rationalism exhibit their most striking contrasts. The one seeks to build up a complete scheme of theological doctrine out of the unsystematic materials furnished by Scripture, partly by the more complete development of certain leading ideas; partly by extending the apparent import of the Revelation to ground which it does not avowedly occupy, and attempting by inference and analogy to solve problems which the sacred volume may indeed suggest, but which it does not directly answer. The other aims at the same end by opposite means. It strives to attain to unity and completeness of system, not by filling up supposed deficiencies, but by paring down supposed excrescences. Commencing with a preconceived theory of the purpose of a revelation and the form which it ought to assume, it proceeds to remove or reduce all that will not harmonize with this leading idea; sometimes explaining away in the interpretation that which it accepts as given in the letter; sometimes denying, on a priori grounds, the genuineness of this or that portion of the sacred text; sometimes pretending to distinguish between the several purposes of Revelation itself, and to determine what portions are intended to convey the elements of an absolute religion, valid in all countries and for all ages, and what must be regarded as relative and accidental features of the divine plan, determined by the local or temporal peculiarities of the individuals to whom it was first addressed. The two methods thus contrasted may appear at first sight to represent the respective claims of Faith and Reason, each extended to that point at which it encroaches on the domain of the other. But in truth the contrast between Faith and Reason, if it holds good in this relation at all, does so merely by accident. It may be applicable in some instances to the disciples of the respective systems, but not to the teachers; and even as regards the former, it is but partially and occasionally true. The disciples of the Rationalist are not necessarily the disciples of reason. It is quite as possible to receive with unquestioning submission a system of religion or philosophy invented by a human teacher, as it is to believe, upon the authority of Revelation, doctrines which no human reason is competent to discover. The so-called freethinker is as often as any other man the slave of some self-chosen master; and many who scorn the imputation of believing anything merely because it is found in the Bible, would find it hard to give any better reason for their own unbelief than the ipse dixit of some infidel philosopher. But when we turn from the disciples to the teachers, and look to the origin of Dogmatism and Rationalism as systems, we find both alike to be the products of thought, operating in different ways upon the same materials. Faith, properly so called, is not constructive, but receptive. It cannot supply the missing portions of an incomplete system, though it may bid us remain content with the deficiency. It cannot of itself give harmony to the discordant voices of religious thought; it cannot reduce to a single focus the many-colored rays into which the light of God’s presence is refracted in its passage through the human soul; though it may bid us look forward to a time when the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped; [7] when that apparent discord shall be known but as the echo of a halfheard concert, and those diverging rays shall be blended once more in the pure white light of heaven. But Faith alone cannot suggest any actual solution of our doubts: it can offer no definite reconciliation of apparently conflicting truths; for in order to accomplish that end, the hostile elements must be examined, compared, accommodated, and joined together, one with another; and such a process is an act of thought, not of belief. Considered from this point of view, both Dogmatism and Rationalism may be regarded as emanating from the same source, and amenable to the same principles of criticism; in so far as they keep within or go beyond those limits of sound thought which the laws of man’s mind, or the circumstances in which lie is placed, have imposed upon him. In fact the two systems may be considered as both aiming, though in different ways, at the same end; that end being to produce a coincidence between what we believe and what we think; to remove the boundary which separates the comprehensible from the incomprehensible. The Dogmatist employs reason to prove, almost as much as the Rationalist employs it to disprove. The one, in the character of an advocate, accepts the doctrines of revealed religion as conclusions, but appeals to the reason, enlightened, it may be, by Revelation, to find premises to support them. The other, in the character of a critic, draws his premises from reason in the first instance; and, adopting these as his standard, either distorts the revealed doctrine into conformity with them, or, if it obstinately resists this treatment, sets it aside altogether. The one strives to lift up reason to the point of view occupied by Revelation: the other strives to bring, down Revelation to the level of reason. And both alike have prejudged or neglected the previous inquiry,—Are there not definite and discernible limits to the province of reason itself, whether it be exercised for advocacy or for criticism? Thus, to select one example out of many, the revealed doctrine of Christ’s Atonement for the sins of men has been alternately defended and assailed by some such arguments as these. We have been told, on the one hand, that man’s redemption could not have been brought about by any other means^([6]6):—that God could not, consistently with his own attributes, have suffered man to perish unredeemed, or have redeemed him by any inferior sacrifice^([7]7):—that man, redeemed from death, must become the servant of him who redeems him; and that it was not meet that he should be the servant of any other than God^([8]8):—that no other sacrifice could have satisfied divine justice^([9]9):—that no other victim could have endured the burden of God’s wrath.^([10]10) These and similar arguments have been brought forward, as one of the greatest of their authors avows, to defend the teaching of the Catholic Faith on the ground of a reasonable necessity.^([11]11) While, on the other hand, it has been argued that the revealed doctrine itself cannot be accepted as literally true; because we cannot believe that God was angry, and needed to be propitiated^([12]12):—because it is inconsistent with the Divine Justice that the innocent should suffer for the sins of the guilty^([13]13):—because it is more reasonable to believe that God freely forgives the offences of his creatures^([14]14):—because we cannot conceive how the punishment of one can do away with the guilt of another.^([15]15) I quote these arguments only as specimens of the method in which Christian doctrines have been handled by writers on opposite sides. To examine them more in detail would detain me too long from my main purpose. I shall not therefore at present consider whether the conclusions actually arrived at, on the one side or on the other, are in themselves reasonable or unreasonable, orthodox or heretical. I am concerned only with the methods respectively employed, and the need of some rule for their employment. May reason be used without restriction in defence or refutation of religions doctrines? And if not, what are the conditions of its legitimate use? It may be that this man has defended, on reasonable grounds, none but the most essential articles of the Christian Faith: but has he pointed out any rule which can hinder the same or similar reasoning from being advanced by another in support of the most dangerous errors? It may be that that man has employed the test of reasonableness, only in the refutation of opinions concerning which the church has pronounced no positive judgment: but has he fenced his method round with any cautions to prevent its being used for the overthrow of Christianity itself? If we can find no other ground than the arbitrary will of the man himself, why he should stop short at the particular point which he has chosen, we may not perhaps condemn the tenets of the individual, but we may fairly charge his method with the consequences to which it logically leads us. Thus, we find a late lamented writer of our own day, and at that time of our own church, defending the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ, on the metaphysical assumption of the real existence of an abstract humanity. “This,” he tells us, “is why the existence of human nature is a thing too precious to be surrendered to the subtleties of logic, because, upon its existence depends that real manhood of Christ, which renders him a copartner with ourselves.” And again: “To the reality of this work, the existence of that common nature is indispensable, whereby, as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He Himself took part of the same. Else, how would the perfect assumption of humanity have consisted with His retaining that divine personality which it was impossible that He should surrender? Since it was no new person which He took, it can only have been the substratum, in which personality has its existence.”^([16]16) In this case, our belief in the undeniable truth of the doctrine defended may dispose us to overlook the questionable character of the defence. But if we are inclined for a moment to acquiesce in this unnatural union of metaphysical premises and theological conclusions, we are recalled to ourselves by the recollection of the fearful consequence which Occam deduces from the same hypothesis, of the assumption by Christ of a “substratum in which personality has its existence;”—a consequence drawn in language which we shudder to read, even as it is employed by its author, merely for the purpose of reducing to an absurdity the principles of his antagonists.^([17]17) There is an union of Philosophy with Religion in which each contributes to the support of the other; and there is also an union which, under the appearance of support, does but undermine the foundations and prey upon the life of both. To which of these two the above argument belongs, it needs but a bare statement of its assumption to determine. It tells us that our belief in the doctrine of God manifest in the flesh, indispensably depends upon our acceptance of the Realist theory of the nature of universal notions. Philosophy and Theology alike protest against such an outrage upon the claims, both of Reason and of Revelation, as is implied in this association of one of the most fundamental truths of the Christian Faith with one of the most questionable speculations of mediaeval metaphysics. What does Theology gain by this employment of a weapon which may, at any moment, be turned against her? Does it make one whit clearer to our understandings that mysterious two-fold nature of one Christ, very God, and very Man? By no means. It was a truth above human comprehension before; and it remains a truth above human comprehension still. We believe that Christ is both God and Man; for this is revealed to us. We know not how He is so; for this is not revealed; and we can learn it in no other way. Theology gains nothing; but she is in danger of losing everything. Her most precious truths are cut from the anchor which held them firm, and cast upon the waters of philosophical speculation, to float hither and thither with the ever-shifting waves of thought. And what does Philosophy gain? Her just domains are narrowed, and her free limbs cramped in their onward course. The problems which she has a native right to sift to the uttermost, are taken out of the field of free discussion, and fenced about with religious doctrines which it is heresy to call in question. Neither Christian truth nor philosophical inquiry can be advanced by such a system as this, which revives and sanctifies, as essential to the Catholic Faith, the forgotten follies of Scholastic Realism, and endangers the cause of religion, by seeking to explain its greatest mysteries by the lifeless forms of a worn-out controversy. “Why seek ye the living among the dead? Christ is not here.” [8] But if the tendency of Dogmatism is to endanger the interests of religious truth, by placing that which is divine and unquestionable in too close an alliance with that which is human and doubtful, Rationalism, on the other hand, tends to destroy revealed religion altogether, by obliterating the whole distinction between the human and the divine. Rationalism, if it retains any portion of revealed truth as such, does so, not in consequence of, but in defiance of, its fundamental principle. It does so by virtually declaring that it will follow reason up to a certain point, and no further; though the conclusions which lie beyond that point are guaranteed by precisely the same evidence as those which fall short of it. We may select a notable example from the writings of a great thinker, who has contributed, perhaps, more than any other person to give a philosophical sanction to the rationalizing theories of his countrymen, yet from whose speculative principles, rightly employed, might be extracted the best antidote to his own conclusions, even as the body of the scorpion, crushed upon the wound, is said to be the best cure for its own venom. Kant’s theory of a rational religion is based upon the assumption that the sole purpose of religion must be to give a divine sanction to man’s moral duties.^([18]18) He maintains that there can be no duties towards God, distinct from those which we owe towards men; but that it may be necessary, at certain times and for certain persons, to give to moral duties the authority of divine commands.^([19]19) Let us hear: then the philosopher’s rational explanation, upon this assumption, of the duty of Prayer. It is a mere superstitious delusion, he tells us, to consider prayer as a service addressed to God, and as a means of obtaining His favor.^([20]20) The true purpose of the act is not to alter or affect in any way God’s relation towards us; but only to quicken our own moral sentiments, by keeping alive within us the idea of God as a moral Lawgiver.^([21]21) He, therefore, neither admits the duty unconditionally, nor rejects it entirely; but leaves it optional with men to adopt that or any other means, by which, in their own particular case, this moral end may be best promoted;—as if any moral benefit could possibly accrue from the habitual exercise of an act of conscious self-deception. The origin of such theories is of course to be traced to that morbid horror of what they are pleased to call Anthropomorphism, which poisons the speculations of so many modern philosophers, when they attempt to be wise above what is written, and seek for a metaphysical exposition of God’s nature and attributes.^([22]22) They may not, forsooth, think of the unchangeable God as if Ile were their fellow man, influenced by human motives, and moved by human supplications. They want a truer, a juster idea of the Deity as He is, than that under which He has been pleased to reveal Himself; and they call on their reason to furnish it. Fools, to dream that man can escape from himself, that human reason can draw aught but a human portrait of God! They do but substitute a marred and mutilated humanity for one exalted and entire: they add nothing to their conception of God as He is, but only take away a part of their conception of man. Sympathy, and love, and fatherly kindness, and forgiving mercy, have evaporated in the crucible of their philosophy; and what is the caput mortuum that remains, but only the sterner features of humanity exhibited in repulsive nakedness? The God who listens to prayer, we are told, appears in the likeness of human mutability. Be it so. What is the God who does not listen, but the likeness of human obstinacy? Do we ascribe to him a fixed purpose? our conception of a purpose is human. Do we speak of Him as continuing unchanged? our conception of continuance is human. Do we conceive Him as knowing and determining? what are knowledge and determination but modes of human consciousness? and. what know we of consciousness itself, but as the contrast between successive mental states? But our rational philosopher stops short in the middle of his reasoning. He strips off from humanity just so much as suits his purpose;—“and the residue thereof he maketh a god;” [9] —less pious in his idolatry than the carver of the graven image, in that he does not fall down unto it and pray unto it, but is content to stand off and reason concerning it. And why does he retain any conception of God at all, but that he retains some portions of an imperfect humanity? Man is still the residue that is left; deprived indeed of all that is amiable in humanity, but, in the darker features which remain, still man. Man in his purposes; man in his inflexibility; man in that relation to time from which no philosophy, whatever its pretensions, can wholly free itself; pursuing with indomitable resolution a preconceived design; deaf to the yearning instincts which compel his creatures to call upon him.^([23]23) Yet this, forsooth, is a philosophical conception of the Deity, more worthy of an enlightened reason than the human imagery of the Psalmist: “The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers.” [10] Surely downright idolatry is better than this rational worship of a fragment of humanity. Better is the superstition which sees the image of God in the wonderful whole which God has fashioned, than the philosophy which would carve for itself a Deity out of the remnant which man has mutilated. Better to realize the satire of the Eleatic philosopher, to make God in the likeness of man, even as the ox or the horse might conceive gods in the form of oxen or horses, than to adore some half-hewn Hermes, the head of a man joined to a misshapen block.^([24]24) Better to fill down before that marvellous compound of human consciousness whose elements God has joined together, and no man can put asunder, than to strip reason of those cognate elements which together furnish all that we can conceive or imagine of conscious or personal existence, and to deify the emptiest of all abstractions, a something or a nothing, with just enough of its human original left to form a theme for the disputations of philosophy, but not enough to furnish a single ground of appeal to the human feelings of love, of reverence, and of fear. Unmixed idolatry is more religious than this. Undisguised atheism is more logical. Throughout every page of Holy Scripture God reveals himself, not as a Law, but as a Person. Throughout the breadth and height and depth of human consciousness, Personality manifests itself under one condition, that of a Free Will, influenced, though not coerced, by motives. And to this consciousness God addresses Himself, when lihe adopts its attributes as the image under which to represent to man His own incomprehensible and ineffable nature. Doubtless in this there is much of accommodation to the weakness of man’s faculties; but not more than in any other representation of any of the divine attributes. By what right do we say that the conception of the God who hears and answers prayer [11] is an accommodation, while that of Him in whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning [12] is not so? By what right do we venture to rob the Deity of half His revealed attributes, in order to set up the other half, which rests on precisely the same evidence, as a more (absolute revelation of the truth? By what right do we enthrone, in the place of the God to whom we pray, an inexorable Fate or immutable Law—a thing with less than even the divinity of a Fetish; since that may be at least conceived by its worshipper as capable of being offended by his crimes and propitiated by his supplications? Yet surely there is a principle of truth of which this philosophy is the perversion. Surely there is a sense in which we may not think of God as though He were man; as there is also a sense in which we cannot help so thinking of Him. When we read in the same narrative, and almost in two consecutive verses of Scripture, “The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for He is not a man that He should repent;” and again, “The Lord repented that He had made Saul king over Israel:” [13] we are imperfectly conscious of an appeal to two different principles of representation, involving opposite sides of the same truth; we feel that there is a true foundation for the system which denies human attributes to God; though the superstructure, which has been raised upon it, logically involves the denial of His very existence. What limits then can we find to determine the legitimate provinces of these two opposite methods of religious thought, each of which, in its exclusive employment, leads to errors so fatal; yet each of which, in its utmost error, is but a truth abused? If we may not, with the Dogmatist, force Philosophy into unnatural union with Revelation, nor yet, with the Rationalist, mutilate Revelation to make it agree with Philosophy, what guide can we find to point out the safe middle course? what common element of both systems can be employed to mediate between them? It is obvious that no such element can be found by the mere contemplation of the objects on which religious thought is exercised. We can adequately criticize that only which we know as a whole. The objects of Natural Religion are known to us in and by the ideas which we can form of them; and those ideas do not of themselves constitute a whole, apart from the remaining phenomena of consciousness. We must not examine them by themselves alone: we must look to their origin, their import, and their relation to the mind of which they are part. Revealed Religion, again, is not by itself a direct object of criticism: first, because it is but a part of a larger scheme, and that scheme one imperfectly comprehended; and secondly, because Revelation implies an accommodation to the mental constitution of its human receiver; and we must know what that constitution is, before we can pronounce how far the accommodation extends. But if partial knowledge must not be treated as if it were complete, neither, on the other hand, may it be identified with total ignorance. The false humility which assumes that it can know nothing, is often as dangerous as the false pride which assumes that it knows everything. The provinces of Reason and Faith, the limits of our knowledge and of our ignorance, must both be clearly determined: otherwise we may find ourselves dogmatically protesting against dogmatism, and reasoning to prove the worthlessness of reason. There is one point from which all religious systems must start, and to which all must finally return; and which may therefore furnish a common ground on which to examine the principles and pretensions of all. The primary and proper object of criticism is not Religion, natural or revealed, but the human mind in its relation to Religion. If the Dogmatist and the Rationalist have heretofore contended as combatants, each beating the air in his own position, without being able to reach his adversary; if they have been prevented from taking up a common ground of controversy, because each repudiates the fundamental assumptions of the other; that common ground must be sought in another quarter; namely, in those laws and processes of the human mind, by means of which both alike accept and elaborate their opposite systems. If human philosophy is not a direct guide to the attainment of religious truth (and its entire history too truly testifies that it is not), may it not serve as an indirect guide, by pointing out the limits of our faculties, and the conditions of their legitimate exercise? Witnessing, as it does, the melancholy spectacle of the household of humanity divided against itself, the reason against the feelings and the feelings against the reason, and the dim half-consciousness of the shadow of the infinite frowning down upon both, may it not seek, with the heathen Philosopher of old, to find the reconciling and regulating principle in that justice, of which the essential character is, that every member of the system shall do his own duty, and forbear to intrude into the office of his neighbor?^([25]25) A criticism of the human mind, in relation to religions truth, was one of the many unrealized possibilities of philosophy, sketched out in anticipation by the far-seeing genius of Bacon. “Here therefore,” he writes, “I note this deficiency, that there hath not been, to my understanding, sufficiently enquired and handled the true limits and use of reason in spiritual things, as a kind of divine dialectic: which for that it is not done, it seemeth to me a thing usual, by pretext of true conceiving that which is revealed, to search and mine into that which is not revealed; and by pretext of enucleating inferences and contradictories, to examine that which is positive: the one sort falling into the error of Nicodemus, demanding to have things made more sensible than it pleaseth God to reveal them, ‘Quomodo possit homo nasci cum sit senex?’ the other sort into the error of the disciples, which were scandalized at a show of contradiction, ‘Quid est hoc quod dicit nobis, Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum, modicum, et videbitis me?’”^([26]26) An examination of the Limits of Religious Thought is an indispensable preliminary to all Religious Philosophy. And the limits of religious thought are but a special manifestation of the limits of thought in general. Thus the Philosophy of Religion, on its human side, must be subject to those universal conditions which are binding upon Philosophy in general. It has ever fared ill, both with Philosophy and with Religion, when this caution has been neglected. It was an evil hour for both, when Fichte made his first essay, as a disciple of the Kantian school, by an attempted criticism of all Revelation.^([27]27) The very title of Kant’s great work, and, in spite of many inconsistencies, the general spirit of its contents also, might have taught him a different lesson,—might have shown him that Reason, and not Revelation, was the, primary object of criticism. If Revelation is a communication from an infinite to a finite intelligence, the conditions of a criticism of Revelation on philosophical grounds must be identical with those which are required for constructing a Philosophy of the Infinite. For Revelation can make known the Infinite Being only in one of two ways; by presenting him as he is, or by representing him under symbols more or less adequate. A presentative Revelation implies faculties in man which can receive the presentation; and such faculties will also furnish the conditions of constructing a philosophical theory of the object presented. If, on the other hand, Revelation is merely representative, the accuracy of the representation can only be ascertained by a knowledge of the object represented; and this again implies the possibility of a philosophy of the Infinite. Whatever impediments, therefore, exist to prevent the formation of such a philosophy, the same impediments must likewise prevent the accomplishment of a complete criticism of Revelation. Whatever difficulties or contradictions are involved in the philosophical idea of the Infinite, the same or similar ones must naturally be expected in the corresponding ideas which Revelation either exhibits or implies. And if an examination of the problems of Philosophy and the conditions of their solution should compel us to admit the existence of principles and modes of thought which must be accepted as true in practice, though they cannot be explained in theory; the same practical acceptance may be claimed, on philosophical grounds, in behalf of the corresponding doctrines of Revelation. If it can be shown that the limits of religious and philosophical thought are the same; that corresponding difficulties occur in both, and, from the nature of the case, must occur, the chief foundation of religious Rationalism is cut away from under it. The difficulties which it professes to find in Revelation are shown to be not peculiar to Revelation, but inherent in the constitution of the human mind, and such as no system of Rationalism can avoid or overcome. The analogy, which Bishop Butler has pointed out, between Religion and the constitution and course of Nature, may be in some degree extended to the constitution and processes of the human mind. The representations of God which Scripture presents to us may be shown to be analogous to those which the laws of our minds require us to form; and therefore such as may naturally be supposed to have emanated from the same author. Such an inquiry occupies indeed but a subordinate place among the direct evidences of Christianity; nor is it intended to usurp the place of those evidences. But indirectly it may have its use, in furnishing an answer to a class of objections which were very popular a few years ago, and are not yet entirely extinguished. Even if it does not contribute materially to strengthen the position occupied by the defenders of Christianity, it may serve to expose the weakness of the assailants. Human reason may, in some respects, be weak as a supporter of Religion; but it is at least strong enough to repel an attack founded on the negation of reason. “We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” [14] Such is the Apostle’s declaration of the limits of human knowledge. “The logical conception is the absolute divine conception itself; and the logical process is the immediate exhibition of God’s self-determination to Being.”^([28]28) Such is the Philosopher’s declaration of the extent of human knowledge. On the first of these statements is founded the entire Theology of Scripture: on the second is founded the latest and most complete exposition of the Theology of Rationalism. The one represents God, not as He is in the brightness of His own glory, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; [15] but as He is reflected faintly in broken and fitful rays, glancing back from the restless waters of the human soul. The other identifies the shadow with the substance, not even shrinking from the confession that, to know God as He is, man must himself be God.^([29]29) It turns from the feeble image of God in the soul of the individual man, to seek the entire manifestation of Deity in the collective consciousness of mankind. “Ye shall be as gods,” [16] was the earliest suggestion of the Tempter to the parents of the human race: “Ye are God,” is the latest assurance of philosophy to the human race itself.^([30]30) Revelation represents the infinite God under finite symbols, in condescension to the finite capacity of man; indicating at the same time the existence of a further reality beyond the symbol, and bidding us look forward in faith to the promise of a more perfect knowledge hereafter. Rationalism, in the hands of these expositors, adopts an opposite view of man’s powers and duties. It claims to behold God as He is now: it finds a common object for Religion and Philosophy in the explanation of God.^([31]31) It declares Religion to be the Divine Spirit’s knowledge of himself through the mediation of the finite Spirit.^([32]32) “Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.” [17] Philosophy too confesses that like must be known by like; but, reversing the hope of the Apostle, it finds God in the formis of human thought. Its kingdom is proclaimed to be Truth absolute and unveiled. It contains in itself the exhibition of God, as He is in His eternal essence, before the creation of a finite world.^([33]33) Which of these two representations contains the truer view of the capacities of human reason, it will be the purpose of the following Lectures to inquire. Such an inquiry must necessarily, during a portion at least of its course, assume a philosophical, rather than a theological aspect; yet it will not perhaps on that account be less ultimately serviceable in theological controversy. It has been acutely said, that even if Philosophy is useless, it is still useful, as the means of proving its own uselessness.^([34]34) But it is not so much the utility as the necessity of the study, which constitutes its present claim on our attention. So long as man possesses facts of consciousness and powers of reflection, so long he will continue to exercise those powers and study those facts. So long as human consciousness contains the idea of a God and the instincts of worship, so long mental philosophy will walk on common ground with religious belief. Rightly or wrongly, men will think of these things; and a knowledge of the laws under which they think is the only security for thinking soundly. If it be thought no unworthy occupation for the Christian preacher, to point out the evidences of God’s Providence in the constitution of the sensible world and the mechanism of the human body; or to dwell on the analogies which may be traced between the scheme of revelation and the course of nature; it is but a part of the same argument to pursue the inquiry with regard to the structure and laws of the human mind. The path may be one which, of late years at least, has been less frequently trodden: the language indispensable to such an investigation may sound at times unwonted and uncouth; but the end is one with that of those plainer and more familiar illustrations which have taken their place among the acknowledged evidences of religion; and the lesson of the whole, if read aright, will be but to teach us that in mind, no less than in body, we are fearfully and wonderfully made [18] by Him whose praise both alike declare: that He who “laid the foundations of the earth, and shut up the sea with doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further,” is also He who “hath put wisdom in the inward parts, and hath given understanding to the heart.” [19] __________________________________________________________________ [7] Isaiah xxxv. 5. [8] St. Luke xxiv. 5, 6. [9] Isaiah xliv. 17. [10] Psalm xxxiv. 15. [11] Psalm lxv. 2; St. James v. 16 [12] St. James i. 17. [13] 1 Sam. xv. 29, 35. [14] 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 10, 12. [15] 1 Tim. vi. 16. [16] Genesis iii. 5. [17] 1 St. John iii. 2, 3. [18] Psalm cxxxix. 14. [19] Job xxxviii. 4, 8, 11, 36. __________________________________________________________________ LECTURE II. KEEP THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED TO THY TRUST, AVOIDING PROFANE AND VAIN BABBLINGS, AND OPPOSITIONS OF SCIENCE FALSELY SO CALLED; WHICH SOME PROFESSING HAVE ERRED CONCERNING THE FAITH.—1 TIMOTHY VI. 20, 21. A PHILOSOPHY of Religion may be attempted from two opposite points of view, and by two opposite modes of development. It may be conceived either as a Philosophy of the Object of Religion; that is to say, as a scientific exposition of the nature of God; or as a Philosophy of the Subject of Religion; that is to say, as a scientific inquiry into the constitution of the human mind, so far as it receives and deals with religious ideas. The former is that branch of Metaphysics which is commonly known by the name of Rational Theology. Its general aim, in common with all metaphysical inquiries, is to disengage the real from the apparent, the true from the false: its special aim, as a Theology, is to exhibit a true representation of the Nature and Attributes of God, purified from foreign accretions, and displaying the exact features of their Divine Original. The latter is a branch of Psychology, which at its outset at least, contents itself with investigating the phenomena presented to it, leaving their relation to further realities to be determined at a later stage of the inquiry. Its primary concern is with the operations and laws of the human mind; and its special purpose is to ascertain the nature, the origin, and the limits of the religious element in man; postponing, till after that question has been decided, the further inquiry into the absolute nature of God. As applied to the criticism of Revelation, the first method, supposing its end to be attained, would furnish an immediate and direct criterion by which the claims of any supposed Revelation to a divine origin might be tested; while at the same time it would enable those possessed of it to dispense with the services of any Revelation at all. For on the supposition that we possess an exact idea of any attribute of the Divine Nature, we are at liberty to reject at once any portion of the supposed Revelation which contradicts that idea; and on the supposition that we possess a complete idea of that Nature as a whole, we are at liberty to reject whatever goes beyond it. And as, upon either supposition, the highest praise to which Revelation can aspire is that of coinciding, partially or wholly, with the independent conclusions of Philosophy, it follows that, so far as Philosophy extends, Revelation becomes superfluous.^([35]1) On the other hand, the second method of philosophical inquiry does not profess to furnish a direct criticism of Revelation, but only of the instruments by which Revelation is to be criticized. It looks to the human, not to the divine, and aspires to teach us no more than the limits of our own powers of thought, and the consequent distinction between what we may and what we may not seek to comprehend. And if, upon examination, it should appear that any portion of the contents of Revelation belongs to the latter class of truths, this method will enable us to reconcile with each other the conflicting claims of Reason and Faith, by showing that Reason itself, rightly interpreted, teaches the existence of truths that are above Reason. Whatever may be the ultimate use of the first of these methods of criticism, it is obvious that the previous question, concerning our right to use it at all, can only be satisfactorily answered by the employment of the second method. The possibility of criticism at all implies that human reason is liable to error: the possibility of a valid criticism implies that the means of distinguishing between its truth and its error may be ascertained by a previous criticism. Let it be granted, for the moment, that a religion whose contents are irreconcilable with human reason is thereby proved not to have come from God, but from man,—still the reason which judges is at least as human as the religion which is judged; and if the human representation of God is erroneous in the latter, how can we assume its infallibility in the former? If we grant for the present the fundamental position of Rationalism, namely, that man by his own reason can attain to a right conception of God, we must at any rate grant also, what every attempt at criticism implies, that he may also attain to a wrong one. We have therefore still to ask by what marks the one is to be distinguished from the other; by what method we are to seek the truth; and how we are to assume ourselves that we have found it. And to answer this question, we need a preliminary examination of the conditions and limits of human thought. Religious criticism is itself an act of thought; and its immediate instruments must, under any circumstances, be thoughts also. We are thus compelled in the first instance to inquire into the origin and value of those thoughts themselves. A Philosophy which professes to elicit from its own conceptions all the essential portions of religious belief, is bound to justify its profession, by showing that those conceptions themselves are above suspicion. The ideas thus exalted to the supreme criteria of truth must bear on their front unquestionable evidence that they are true and sufficient representations of the Divine Nature, such as may serve all the needs of human thought and human feeling, adequate alike for contemplation and for worship. They must manifest the clearness and distinctness which mark the strong vision of an eye gazing undazzled on the glory of Heaven, not the obscurity and confusion of one that turns away blinded from the glare, and gropes in its own darkness after the fleeting spectrum. The conviction which boasts itself to be superior to all external evidence must carry in its own inward constitution some sure indication of its truth and value. Such a conviction may be possible in two different ways. It may be the result of a direct intuition of the Divine Nature; or it may be gained by inference from certain attributes of human nature, which, though on a smaller scale, are known to be sufficiently representative of the corresponding properties of the Deity. We may suppose the existence in man of a special faculty of knowledge, of which God is the immediate object,—a kind of religious sense or reason, by which the Divine attributes are apprehended in their own nature:^([36]2) or we may maintain that the attributes of God differ from those of man in degree only, not in kind; and hence that certain mental and moral qualities, of which we are immediately conscious in ourselves, furnish at the same time a true and adequate image of the infinite perfections of God.^([37]3) The first of these suppositions professes to convey a knowledge of God by direct apprehension, in a manner similar to the evidence of the senses: the second professes to convey the same knowledge by a logical process, similar to the demonstrations of science. The former is the method of Mysticism, and of that Rationalism which agrees with Mysticism, in referring the knowledge of divine things to an extraordinary and abnormal process of intuition or thought.([38]4) The latter is the method of the vulgar Rationalism, which regards the reason of man, in its ordinary and normal operation, as the supreme criterion of religious truth. On the former supposition, a system of religious philosophy or criticism may be constructed by starting from the divine and reasoning down to the human: on the latter, by starting from the human and reasoning up to the divine. The first commences with a supposed immediate knowledge of God as He is in his absolute nature, and proceeds to exhibit the process by which that nature, acting according to its own laws, will manifest itself in operation, and become known to man. The second commences with an immediate knowledge of the mental and moral attributes of man, and proceeds to exhibit the manner in which those attributes will manifest themselves, when exalted to the degree in which they form part of the nature of God. If, for example, the two systems severally undertake to give a representation of the infinite power and wisdom of God, the former will profess to explain how the nature of the infinite manifests itself in the forms of power and wisdom; while the latter will attempt to show how power and wisdom must manifest themselves when existing in an infinite degree. In their criticisms of Revelation, in like manner, the former will rather take as its standard that absolute and essential nature of God, which must remain unchanged in every manifestation; the latter will judge by reference to those intellectual and moral qualities, which must exist in all their essential features in the divine nature as well as in the human. Thus, for example, it has been maintained by a modern philosopher, that the absolute nature of God is that of a pure Will, determining itself solely by a moral law, and subject to no affections which can operate as motives. Hence it is inferred that the same law of action must form the rule of God’s manifestation to mankind as a moral Governor; and therefore that no revelation can be of divine origin, which attempts to influence men’s actions by the prospect of reward or punishment.^([39]5) In this mode of reasoning, an abstract conception of the nature of God is made the criterion to determine the mode in which He must reveal Himself to man. On the other hand, we meet with an opposite style of criticism, which reasons somewhat as follows: All the excellences, it contends, of which we are conscious in the creature, must necessarily exist in the same manner, though in a higher degree, in the Creator. God is indeed more wise, more just, more merciful than man; but for that very reason, I-is wisdom and justice and mercy must contain nothing that is incompatible with the corresponding attributes in their human character.^([40]6) Hence, if the certainty of man’s knowledge implies the necessity of the events which he knows, the certainty of God’s omniscience implies a like necessity of all things:^([41]7) if man’s justice requires that he should punish the guilty alone, it is inconsistent with God’s justice to inflict the chastisement of sin upon the innocent:^([42]8) if man’s mercy finds its natural exercise in the free forgiveness of offences, God’s mercy, too, must freely forgive the sins of His creatures.^([43]9) From the same premises it is consistently concluded that no act which would be wrong, if performed by a man upon his own responsibility, can be justified by the plea of a direct command from God.^([44]10) Abraham may not be praised for his readiness to slay his son in obedience to God’s command; for the internal prohibition must always be more certain than the external precept.^([45]11) Joshua cannot be warranted in obeying the Divine injunction to exterminate the Canaanites, unless he would be equally warranted in destroying them of his own accord.^([46]12) And, as the issuing of such commands is contrary to the moral nature of God, therefore the Book which represents them as so issued is convicted of falsehood, and cannot be regarded as a Divine Revelation.^([47]13) In this mode of reasoning, the moral or intellectual nature of man is made the rule to determine what ought to be the revealed attributes of God, and in what manner they must be exercised. Within certain limits, both these arguments may have their value; but each is chiefly useful as a check upon the exclusive authority of the other. The philosophy which reasons downwards from the infinite, is but an exaggeration of the true conviction that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways: [20] the philosophy which reasons upwards from the human, bears witness, even in its perversion, to the unextinguishable consciousness, that man, however fallen, was created in the image of God. [21] But this admission tends rather to weaken than to strengthen the claims of either to be received as the supreme criterion of religious truth. The criticisms of rationalism exhibit the weakness as well as the strength of reason; for the representations which it rejects, as dishonoring to God, are, on its own showing, the product of human thought, no less than the principle by which they are judged and condemned. If the human mind has passed through successive stages of religious cultivation, from the grovelling superstition of the savage to the intellectual elevation of the critic of all possible revelations, who shall assure the critic that the level on which he now stands is the last and highest that can be attained? If reason is to be the last court of appeal in religious questions, it must find some better proof of its own infallibility than is to be found in its own progressive enlightenment. Its preëminence must be shown, not by successive approximations to the truth, but by the possession of the truth itself. Of the limits within which reason may be legitimately employed, I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. At present, I am concerned only with its pretensions to such a knowledge of the Divine Nature, as can constitute the foundation of a Rational Theology. There are three terms, familiar as household words, in the vocabulary of Philosophy, which must be taken into account in every system of Metaphysical Theology. To conceive the Deity as He is, we must conceive Him as First Cause, as Absolute, and as Infinite. By the First Cause, is meant that which produces all things, and is itself produced of none. By the Absolute, is meant that which exists in and by itself, having no necessary relation to any other Being.^([48]14) By the Infinite, is meant that which is free from all possible limitation; that than which a greater is inconceivable; and which, consequently, can receive no additional attribute or mode of existence, which it had not from all eternity. The Infinite, as contemplated by this philosophy, cannot be regarded as consisting of a limited number of attributes, each unlimited in its kind. It cannot be conceived, for example, after the analogy of a line, infinite in length, but not in breadth; or of a surface, infinite in two dimensions of space, but bounded in the third; or of an intelligent being, possessing some one or more modes of consciousness in an infinite degree, but devoid of others. Even if it be granted, which is not the case, that such a partial infinite may without contradiction be conceived, still it will have a relative infinity only, and be altogether incompatible with the idea of the Absolute.^([49]15) The line limited in breadth is thereby necessarily related to the space that limits it: the intelligence endowed with a limited number of attributes, coëxists with others which are thereby related to it, as cognate or opposite modes of consciousness.^([50]16) The metaphysical representation of the Deity, as absolute and infinite, must necessarily, as tihe profoundest metaphysicians have acknowledged, amount to nothing less than the sum of all reality.^([51]17) “What kind of an Absolute Being is that,” says Hegel, “which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included?”^([52]18) We may repudiate the conclusion with indignation; but the reasoning is unassailable. If the Absolute and Infinite is an object of human conception at all, this, and none other, is the conception required. That which is conceived as absolute and infinite must be conceived as containing within itself the sum, not only of all actual, but of all possible, modes of being. For if any actual mode can be denied of it, it is related to that mode, and limited by it;^([53]19) and if any possible mode can be denied of it, it is capable of becoming more than it now is, and such a capability is a limitation. Indeed, it is obvious that the entire distinction between the possible and the actual can have no existence as regards the absolutely infinite; for an unrealized possibility is necessarily a relation and a limit. The scholastic saying, Deus est actus purus,^([54]20) ridiculed as it has been by modern critics, is in truth but the expression, in technical language, of the almost unanimous voice of philosophy, both in earlier and later times.([55]21) But these three conceptions, the Cause, the Absolute, the Infinite, all equally indispensable, do they not imply contradiction to each other, when viewed in conjunction, as attributes of one and the same Being? A Cause cannot, as such, be absolute: the Absolute cannot, as such, be a cause. The cause, as such, exists only in relation to its effect: the cause is a cause of the effect; the effect is an effect of the cause. On the other hand, the conception of the Absolute implies a possible existence out of all relation.^([56]22) We attempt to escape from this apparent contradiction, by introducing the idea of succession in time. The Absolute exists first by itself, and afterwards becomes a Cause. But here we are checked by the third conception, that of the Infinite. How can the Infinite become that which it was not from the first? If Causation is a possible mode of existence, that which exists without causing is not infinite; that which becomes a cause has passed beyond its former limits. Creation at any particular moment of time being thus inconceivable, the philosopher is reduced to the alternative of Pantheism, which pronounces the effect to be mere appearance, and merges all real existence in the cause.^([57]23) The validity of this alternative will be examined presently. Meanwhile, to return for a moment to the supposition of a true causation. Supposing the Absolute to become a cause, it will follow that it operates by means of free will and consciousness. For a necessary cause cannot be conceived as absolute and infinite. If necessitated by something beyond itself, it is thereby limited by a superior power; and if necessitated by itself, it has in its own nature a necessary relation to its effect. The act of causation must, therefore, be voluntary; and volition is only possible in a conscious being. But consciousness, again, is only conceivable as a relation. There must be a conscrious subject, and an object of which he is conscious. The subject is a subject to the object; the object is an object to the subject; and neither can exist by itself as the absolute. This difficulty, again, may be for the moment evaded, by distinguishing between the absolute as related to another, and the absolute as related to itself. The Absolute, it may be said, may possibly be conscious, provided it is only conscious of itself.^([58]24) But this alternative is, in ultimate analysis, no less self-destructive than the other. For the object of consciousness, whether a mode of the subject’s existence or not, is either created in and by the act of consciousness, or has an existence independent of it. In the former case, the object depends upon the subject, and the subject alone is the true absolute. In the latter case, the subject depends upon the object, and the object alone is the true absolute. Or, if we attempt a third hypothesis, and maintain that each exists independently of the other, we have no absolute at all, but only a pair of relatives; for coexistence, whether in consciousness or not, is itself a relation.^([59]25) The corollary from this reasoning is obvious. Not only is the Absolute, as conceived, incapable of a necessary relation to anything else; but it is also incapable of containing, by the constitution of its own nature, an essential relation within itself; as a whole, for instance, composed of parts, or as a substance consisting of attributes, or as a conscious subject in antithesis to an object.^([60]26) For if there is in the absolute any principle of unity, distinct from the mere accumulation of parts or attributes, this principle alone is the true absolute. If, on the other hand, there is no such principle, then there is no absolute at all, but only a plurality of relatives.^([61]27) The almost unanimous voice of philosophy, in pronouncing that the absolute is both one and simple, must be accepted as the voice of reason also, so far as reason has any voice in the matter.^([62]28) But this absolute unity, as indifferent and containing no attributes, can neither be distinguished from the multiplicity of finite beings by any characteristic feature, nor be identified with them in their multiplicity.^([63]29) Thus we are landed in an inextricable dilemma. The Absolute cannot be conceived as conscious, neither can it be conceived as unconscious: it cannot be conceived as complex, neither can it be conceived as simple: it cannot be conceived by difference, neither can it be conceived by the absence of difference: it cannot be identified with the universe, neither can it be distinguished from it. The One and the Many, regarded as the beginning of existence, are thus alike incomprehensible. The fundamental conceptions of Rational Theology being thus self-destructive, we may naturally expect to find the same antagonism manifested in their special applications. These naturally inherit the infirmities of the principle from which they spring. If an absolute and infinite consciousness is a conception which contradicts itself, we need not wonder if its several modifications mutually exclude each other. A mental attribute, to be conceived as infinite, must be in actual exercise on every possible object: otherwise it is potenti