Theism

Growth in the knowledge of God is a kind of progress which can have absolutely no end, for the truth to be realised is infinite truth; truth unlimited by time or space; truth involved in all actual existence, and containing the fulness of inexhaustible possibilities. It is, I shall conclude by adding, a kind of progress which underlies and determines all other progress. Whenever our views of truth, of righteousness, of love, of happiness rise above experience; whenever we have ideals of existence and conduct which transcend the actual world and actual life; whenever we have longings for a perfection and blessedness which finite things and finite persons cannot confer upon us, – our minds and hearts are really, although it may be unconsciously, feeling after God, if haply they may find Him. It is only in and through God that there is anything to correspond to these ideals and longings. If man be himself the highest and best of beings, how comes it that all the noblest of his race should be haunted and possessed as they are by aspirations after what is higher and better than themselves – by visions of a truth, beauty, and holiness which they have not yet attained – by desires for a blessedness which neither earth nor humanity can bestow? Must not, in that case, his ideals be mere dreams – his longings mere delusions? Pessimists like Schopenhauer and Hartmann and their followers, openly avow that they believe them to be so; that the history of the world is but the series of illusions through which these ideals and longings have impelled humanity; that our ideals never have been and never will be realised; that our longings never have been and never will be satisfied, for, "behold, all is vanity." I believe them to be quite logical in thinking so, seeing that they have ceased to believe in God, who is the ideal which alone gives meaning to all true ideals, who can alone satisfy the deeper spiritual longings of the heart, and likeness to whom is the goal of all mental, moral, and religious progress. Of course, if the pessimists can persuade mankind that the sources of progress are not the truths and affections by which Infinite Goodness is drawing men to itself, but mere fictions of their own brains and flatteries of their own hearts, progress must soon cease. When a delusion is seen through, the power of it is gone. But the pessimists will not, we may trust, succeed. They will mislead for a time, as they are now misleading, certain unstable minds; but the main result of their activity must be just the opposite of what they anticipate. It must be that men will prize more the doctrines the most opposite to the dreary view of life and history which they propagate. Pessimism must send the philosophical few back with deepened reverence and quickened insight to Plato, in order to master more thoroughly, and take to heart more seriously, his great message to the world, that the actual and the ideal meet and harmonise in God, who is at once the First and the Final Cause, the Absolute Idea, the Highest Good; and it must increase the gratitude of the many, whether learned or unlearned, for the Gospel which has taught them that to glorify God is an end in which there is no illusion, and to enjoy Him a good which never disappoints. God, as the presupposition of all elevating ideals, and the object of all ennobling desires, is the primary source and the ultimate explanation of all progress.10

LECTURE III

THE NATURE, CONDITIONS, AND LIMITS OF THEISTIC PROOFI

If we believe that there is one God – the Creator, Preserver, and Ruler of all finite beings – we ought to have reasons or grounds for this belief. We can have no right to believe it simply because we wish or will to believe it. The grounds or reasons which we have for our belief must be to us proofs of God's existence. Those who affirm that God exists, and yet deny that His existence can be proved, must either maintain a position obviously erroneous, or use the term proof in some extraordinary sense, fitted only to perplex and mislead. True and weighty, therefore, seem to me these words of one of the most distinguished of living German philosophers: "The proofs for the existence of God, after having long played a great part in philosophy and theology, have in recent times, especially since Kant's famous critique, fallen into disrepute. Since then, the opinion has been widely spread, both among believers and unbelievers, that the existence of God does not admit of being proved. Even theologians readily assent to this opinion, deride the vain attempts, and imagine that in so doing they are serving the faith which they preach. But the proofs for the existence of God coincide with the grounds for the belief in God; they are simply the real grounds of the belief established and expounded in a scientific manner. If there be no such proofs, there are also no such grounds; and a belief which has no ground, if possible at all, can be no proper belief, but an arbitrary, self-made, subjective opinion. Yes, religious belief must sink to the level of the mere illusion or fixed idea of a mind which is insane, if contradicted by all reality, all facts scientifically established, and the theory of the universe which such facts support and justify."11

The proofs of God's existence must be, in fact, simply His own manifestations; the ways in which He makes Himself known; the phenomena on which His power and character are imprinted. They can neither be, properly speaking, our reasonings, nor our analyses of the principles involved in our reasonings. Our reasonings are worth nothing except in so far as they are expositions of God's modes of manifestation; and even when our reasonings are correct, our analyses of them, supposing we attempt to analyse them, may be erroneous. The facts, – the works and ways of God – which are the real evidences of His existence and the true indications of His character, – may raise countless minds to God which can give no general description of the process by which they are thus elevated, and are still less capable of resolving it into its principles. It is late in the history both of the individual mind and of the collective mind before they can so reflect on their own acts, so distinguish them one from another, and so discern the characteristics of each, as to be able even to give a clear and correct account of them; and it is much later before they can detect their conditions and laws. The minds of multitudes may therefore readily be supposed to rise legitimately from perception of the visible universe to apprehension of the invisible personal Creator, although either wholly unconscious or only dimly and inaccurately aware of the nature of the transition, and although, if called on to indicate the conclusion at which they had arrived, they would employ far weaker reasons in words than those by which they were actually convinced in thought. The principles of the theistic inference may be very badly determined, and yet the theistic inference itself may be perfectly valid.

If the real proofs of God's existence are all those facts which cannot be reasonably conceived of as other than the manifestations of God – His glory in the heavens, His handiwork on the earth, His operations in the soul, His ways among the nations – and if the task of the theist is to trace out these facts, and to show that they cannot reasonably be denied to be marks or impressions of Divine agency, then must a theist, when seeking or expounding the reasons for his belief, feel that his mind is conversant not with mere thoughts of his own, but with the manifested thoughts or acts of God Himself. He must carry into his inquiry the consciousness that he is not simply engaged in an intellectual process, but is trying to apprehend and actually apprehending the Divine Being. To him, therefore, the inquiry as to the ultimate source and reason of things must be an essentially solemn and awe-inspired one. To the atheist it must, of course, be much less so; but even he ought to feel it to be not only a most important inquiry, but one which carries him into the presence of a vast, eternal, and mysterious power – a power in darkness shrouded, yet on which hang all life and death, all joy and woe.

According to the view just stated, the evidences or proofs of God's existence are countless. They are to be found in all the forces, laws, and arrangements of nature – in every material object, every organism, every intellect and heart. At the same time, they concur and coalesce into a single all-comprehensive argument, which is just the sum of the indications of God given by the physical universe, the minds of men, and human history. Nothing short of that is the full proof. There may be points in space and instants in time where creative and sustaining power appear to our narrow and superficial intellects to have been strangely limited, but surely we ought not so to concentrate our attention on any such points or instants as to be unable to take in a general impression of the immeasurable power displayed throughout the realms of space and the ages of time. It may be possible to show that many things which have been regarded as evidences of intelligence or wisdom are not really so, and yet the universe may teem with the manifestations of these attributes. Faith in the righteousness and moral government of God must be able to look over and to look beyond many things calculated to produce doubt and disbelief. No man can judge fairly as to whether or not there is a God, who makes the question turn on what is the significance of a few particular facts, who is incapable of gathering up into one general finding the results of innumerable indications. A true religious view of the world must be a wide, a comprehensive view of it, such as demands an eye for the whole and not merely for a part – the faculties which harmonise and unify, and not merely those which divide and analyse. A part, a point, the eye of an insect, the seed of a fruit, may indeed be looked at religiously, but it must be in the light of the universe as a whole, in the light of eternity and infinity.

"Flower in the crannied wall,I pluck you out of the crannies;Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,Little flower – but if I could understandWhat you are, root and all, and all in all,I should know what God and man is."

In another respect the theistic proof is exceedingly complex and comprehensive. It takes up into itself, as it were, the entire wealth of human nature. The mind can only rise to the apprehension of God by a process which involves all that is most essential in its own constitution. Thus the will is presupposed. Theistic inference clearly involves the principle of causality. God can only be thought of in the properly theistic sense as the cause of which the universe is the effect. But to think of God as a cause – to apprehend the universe as an effect, – we must have some immediate and direct experience of causation. And such experience we have only in the consciousness of volition. When the soul wills, it knows itself as an agent, as a cause. This is the first knowledge of causation which the mind requires, and the most perfect knowledge thereof which it ever requires. It is a knowledge which sheds light over all the regions of experience subsequently brought under the principle of causality, which accompanies the reason in its upward search until it rests in the cognition of an ultimate cause, and which enables us to think of that cause as the primary, all-originating will. If we did not know ourselves as causes, we could not know God as a cause; and we know ourselves as causes only in so far as we know ourselves as wills.

But the principle of causality alone or by itself is quite insufficient to lead the mind up to the apprehension of Deity; and an immediate and direct consciousness of far more within us than will is required to make that apprehension possible. The evidences of intelligence must be combined with the evidences of power before we can be warranted to infer more from the facts of the universe than the existence of an ultimate force; and no mere force, however great or wonderful, is worthy to be called God. God is not only the ultimate Cause, but the Supreme Intelligence; and as it is only in virtue of the direct consciousness of our volitions that we can think of God as a cause, so is it only in virtue of the direct consciousness of our intellectual operations that we can think of Him as an intelligence. It is not from the mere occurrence of a change, or the mere existence of a derivative phenomenon, that we infer the change or phenomenon to be due to an intelligent cause, but from the mode of the occurrence or the character of the phenomenon being such that any cause but an intelligent cause must be deemed an insufficient cause. The inference supposes, however, that we already have some knowledge of what an intelligent cause is – that we have enough of knowledge of the nature of intelligence to convince us that it alone can fully account for order, law, and adjustment. Whence do we get this knowledge? We have not far to seek it; it is inherent in self-consciousness. We know ourselves as intelligences, as beings that foresee and contrive, that can discover and apply principles, that can originate order and adjustment. It is only through this knowledge of the nature of intelligence that we can infer our fellow-men to be intelligent beings; and not less is it an indispensable condition of our inferring God to be an intelligence.

Then, causality and design, and the will and intelligence within us through which they are interpreted, cannot, even when combined, enable us to think of the Creative Reason as righteous; although obviously, until so thought of, that reason is by no means to be identified with God. The greatest conceivable power and intelligence, if united with hatred of righteousness and love of wickedness, can yield us only the idea of a devil; and if separated from all moral principle and character, good or bad, only that of a being far lower than man, which might have reason for worshipping man, but which man cannot worship without degrading himself. The existence, however, of a moral principle within us, of a conscience which witnesses against sin and on behalf of holiness, is of itself evidence that God must be a moral being, one who hates sin and loves holiness; and the light of this, "the candle of the Lord," in the soul, enables us to discover many other reasons for the same conclusion in the constitution of society and the course of history. But if we had no moral perceptions on the contemplation of our own voluntary acts, we certainly would not, and could not, invest the Divine Being with moral perfections because of His acts.

There is still another step to be taken in order to obtain an apprehension of God; and it is one where the outward universe fails us, where we are thrown entirely, or nearly so, on our internal resources. The universe, interpreted by the human mind in the manner which has been indicated, may warrant belief in a Being whose power is immense, whose wisdom is inexpressibly wonderful, and whose righteousness is to be held in profoundest admiration and reverence, notwithstanding all the clouds and darkness which may in part conceal it from our view; but not in a Being whose existence is absolute, whose power is infinite, whose wisdom and goodness are perfect. We cannot infer that the author of a universe which is finite, imperfect, and relative, and all the phenomena of which are finite, imperfect, and relative, must be, in the true and strict sense of the terms, infinite, perfect, and absolute. We cannot deduce the infinite from the finite, the perfect from the imperfect, the absolute from the relative. And yet it is only in the recognition of an absolute Being of infinite power, who works with perfect wisdom towards the accomplishment of perfectly holy ends, that we reach a true knowledge of God, or, which is much the same thing, a knowledge of the true God. Is there, then, any warrant in our own nature for thinking of God as infinite, absolute, and perfect, since there seems to be little or none in outward nature? Yes, there are within us necessary conditions of thought and feeling and ineradicable aspirations which force on us ideas of absolute existence, infinity, and perfection, and will neither permit us to deny these perfections to God nor to ascribe them to any other being.

Thus the mental process in virtue of which we have the idea of God comprehends and concentrates all that is most essential in human nature. It is through bearing the image of God that we are alone able to apprehend God. Take any essential feature of that image out of a human soul, and to apprehend God is made thereby impossible to it. All that is divine in us meets, unites, co-operates, to lay hold of what is divine without us. Hence the fuller and clearer the divine image is in any man, the fuller and clearer will be his perception of the divine original. Hence what is more or less true everywhere, is especially and emphatically true in religion, that "the eye sees only what it brings with it the power of seeing." Where the will, for example, is without energy – where rest is longed for as the highest good, and labour deemed the greatest evil – where extinction is preferred to exertion, – the mind of a nation may be highly cultured, and subtle and profound in speculation, and yet may manifest a marked inability to think of God as a cause or will, with a consequently inveterate tendency to pantheism. The Hindu mind, and the systems of religion and philosophy to which it has given birth, may serve as illustration and proof. Where the animal nature of man is strong, and his moral and spiritual nature still undeveloped, as is the case among all rude and undisciplined races, he worships not the pure and perfect supreme Spirit, whose goodness, truth, and righteousness are as infinite as His power and knowledge, but gods endowed in his imagination chiefly with physical and animal qualities. "Recognition of Nature," says Mr Carlyle, "one finds to be the chief element of Paganism; recognition of Man and his Moral Duty – though this, too, is not wanting – comes to be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. Here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of Mankind. Man first puts himself in relation with Nature and her Powers, wonders and worships over those; not till a later epoch does he discern that all Power is Moral, that the grand point is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of Thou shalt, and thou shalt not." The explanation of the historical truth thus stated by Mr Carlyle is just that man is vividly alive to the wants and claims of his body and merely natural life during long ages in which he is almost dead to the wants and claims of his spirit or true self and the moral life. So the ordinary mind is prone, even at present, in the most civilised countries of the world, to think of God after the likeness of man, or, in other words, as a vastly magnified man. Why? Because the ordinary mind is always very feebly and dimly conscious of those principles of reason which demand in God the existence of attributes neither to be found in the physical universe nor in itself. Some exercise in speculation, some training in philosophy, is needed to make us reflect on them; and until we reflect on them we cannot be expected to do them justice in the formation of our religious convictions. Those who have never thought on what infinite and unconditioned mean, and who have never in their lives grappled with a metaphysical problem, will infer quite as readily as if they had spent their days in philosophical speculation that all the power and order in the universe, and all the wisdom and goodness in humanity, are the reflections of a far higher power, wisdom, and goodness in their source – the Divine Mind; but they must realise much less correctly in what respects God cannot be imaged in His works: they may do equal or even fuller justice to what is true in anthropomorphism, but they cannot perceive as distinctly where anthropomorphism is false. It is only through the activity of the speculative reason that religion is prevented from becoming a degrading anthropomorphism, that the mind is compelled to think of God not merely as a Father, King, and Judge, but as the Absolute and Infinite Being. This is, perhaps, the chief service which philosophy renders to religion; and it ought not to be undervalued, notwithstanding that philosophy has often, in checking one error, fallen into another as great, or even greater, denying that there is any likeness between God and man.

While the mental process which has been described – the theistic inference – is capable of analysis, it is in itself synthetic. The principles on which it depends are so connected that the mind can embrace them all in a single act, and must include and apply them all in the apprehension of God. Will, intelligence, conscience, reason, and the ideas which they supply; cause, design, goodness, infinity, with the arguments which rest on these ideas, – all coalesce into this one grand issue. The inferences are as inseparable as the principles from which they spring. A very large number of the objections to theism arise wholly from inattention to this truth. Men argue as if each principle involved in the knowledge of God were to be kept strictly by itself, as if each argument brought forward as leading to a theistic conclusion were to be jealously isolated; and then, if the last result of the principle, the conclusion of the argument, be not an adequate knowledge of God, they pronounce the principle altogether inapplicable, and the argument altogether fallacious. It is strange that this procedure should not be universally seen to be sophistical in the extreme – a kind of reasoning which, if generally adopted, would at once arrest all science and all business; but obviously anti-theists think differently, for they habitually have recourse to it. If you argue, for example, that the universe is an event or effect which must have an adequate cause, they will question your right to refer to the order which is in the universe as a proof that it is an event or effect, because order implies another principle, and is the ground of another argument. They overlook that you are not making an abstract use of the principle of causality, and that you are not arguing from the mere terms universe and event, but from the universe itself; and that in order to know whether it be an event or not – an effect or not – you must study it as it is, and take everything into account which bears on the question. They reason as if they supposed that a cause and an intelligence must be two different things, and that a cause cannot be an intelligence, nor an intelligence a cause. Similarly, the arguments from the power, order, and goodness displayed in nature have often been objected to altogether, have often been pronounced worthless, because they do not in themselves prove God to be infinitely powerful, wise, and good. They are brought forward to show that the Author of the universe must have the power, wisdom, and goodness required to create and govern it; and forthwith many oppose them by declaring that they do not show Him to be infinite. Now, no man who did not imagine nature to be infinite ever adduced them to prove God infinite. Their not proving that, is therefore no reason for denying them to prove what they profess to prove. No argument can stand if we may reject it because it does not prove more than it undertakes to prove.

It is clear that the evidences of design, instead of being wholly distinct from the evidences of power, and independent of the principle of causality, are evidences of a kind of power and manifestations of a kind of causality – intelligent power and causality. In like manner the evidences of goodness are also evidences of design, for goodness is a form of design – morally, beneficent design. Although causality does not involve design, nor design goodness, design involves causality, and goodness both causality and design. The proofs of intelligence are also proofs of power; the proofs of goodness are proofs both of intelligence and power. The principles of reason which compel us to think of the Supreme Moral Intelligence as a self-existent, eternal, infinite, and unchangeable Being, supplement the proofs from other sources, and give self-consistency and completeness to the doctrine of theism. The various theistic arguments are, in a word, but stages in a single rational process, but parts of one comprehensive argument. They are naturally, and, as it were, organically related – they support and strengthen one another. It is therefore an arbitrary and illegitimate procedure to separate them any farther than may be necessary for the purpose of clear and orderly exposition. It is sophistry to attempt to destroy them separately by assailing each as if it had no connection with the other, and as if each isolated fragmentary argument were bound to yield as large a conclusion as all the arguments combined. A man quite unable to break a bundle of rods firmly bound together may be strong enough to break each rod separately. But before proceeding to deal with the bundle in that way, he may be required to establish his right to untie it, and to decline putting forth his strength upon it as it is presented to him.12