Morality.—Kant.—the Human Representation of Absolute Morality.—Mr. Mansel’s Method of Dealing (1) with the Atonement; (2) with the Doctrine of Forgiveness; (3) with Eternal Punishment; (4) with the Existence and Immortality of Evil.
My dear Sir,
We have come to the Lecture which is to test the soundness of all that have gone before. Mr. Mansel cares nothing for speculation. He wishes only for Rules to guide action. Now we are to know whether he has found them. Our subject is Christian Morals.
The Lecture begins with the old topic of Kant’s delinquency. That “inconsistency scarcely to be paralleled in the history of philosophy,” of which we have heard so often, is here held up again to still stronger reprobation. It is a topic which causes so much sensitiveness in Mr. Mansel that I desire to pass it by as quickly as I can. I have said already that I regard our interest in it as being merely this, that Kant accorded to us vulgar men, in the name of Philosophy, rights which we had always claimed for ourselves, without being able to make good our title to them by any formal proofs.
Three remarks I must make respecting the criticism on Kant in this Lecture, but they shall be brief, and they will be for the sake of Englishmen, not of Germans. (1.) Mr. Mansel appears to regard it as an especial inconsistency in the German, that the moral sense is “elevated above the conditions of human intelligence… in that Philosophy which resolves Time and Space into forms of human consciousness, and limits their operation to the field of the phenomenal and the relative.” Now I apprehend that it was just because Kant had convinced himself that Time and Space are merely forms of human consciousness,—and because he was convinced that Moral Principles are not forms of human Consciousness,—because he had convinced himself that the understanding has only to do with the field of the phenomenal and relative, and because he was assured that Moral Principles must have to do with that which is,—that he supposed the moral sense to be above the conditions of the intellect. So doing, he maintained that identity of the Eternal with the Substantial which Theologians had always assumed; the temporal he connected, as they are wont to do, with the changeable and the apparent. Whether he was right or wrong, I cannot see the inconsistency. (2.) Mr. Mansel imputes to all who agree with Kant in affirming the existence of a practical Reason or moral sense which deals with things as they are and not with phenomena, with the eternal and not the changeable, a determination to make our morality the measure of the Absolute Morality. A more unjust assertion, or one more directly refuted by his own statements in this and his other Lectures, it is scarcely possible to conceive. Evidently, if we take merely his representations—coloured and caricatured as they always are—of his opponents, the aim of them, one and all, is to find some absolute morality which is not measured by human morality. Evidently their strong conviction is, that if the conditions of our intellect, the conditions of time and space, are applied to morality, it must cease to be absolute, it must be brought to our level. Every one may have his own opinion whether they have succeeded or failed in their attempt to discover something more stable and permanent than their own finite judgments and conclusions; but to deny that this is their object, is to take away the point from at least one-half of Mr. Mansel’s arguments and scoffs.
(3.) He discovers however in Kant a fiction “which is so manifest as hardly to need exposure.” Perceiving that there must be a standard which is the measure of our morality and which cannot be twisted and distorted by our individual feelings and apprehensions,—perceiving also that if it is the standard for mankind, there must be the closest and most intimate relation between it and that which is human,—Kant hinted at a “Universal Consciousness,” a Consciousness belonging to humanity itself. Such a notion strikes Mr. Mansel as supremely ridiculous.
“The fiction of a moral law binding in a particular form upon all possible intelligences, acquires this seeming universality, only because human intelligence is made the representative of all. I can conceive moral attributes only as I know them in consciousness: I can imagine other minds only by first assuming their likeness to my own. To construct a theory, whether of practical or of speculative reason, which shall be valid for other than human intelligences, it is necessary that the author should himself be emancipated from the conditions of human thought. Till this is done, the so-called Absolute is but the Relative under another name: the universal consciousness is but the human mind striving to transcend itself.”—(Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., p. 203.)
I spoke of my comments being for “Englishmen, not for Germans.” That remark I meant to apply especially to this last passage. I think you will see at once how it applies. And yet you will have a right to find some fault with it. The principle is true for all human beings or for none, that we must either make God in our image, or admit that we are made in His image. That, I take it, is the doctrine of the Bible; that is the meaning of idolatry, and the explanation of the steps by which men have been led out of idolatry. But since we boast more of receiving the Bible and the whole Bible than the Germans, we ought to be more possessed and penetrated with this principle than they are. And since we take credit to ourselves for admitting the union of the two Natures in Christ more fully, as a fundamental article of faith, than some of them do, we ought more distinctly to allow, first, that there is a divine standard for human morality; secondly, that this standard is in such direct affinity with humanity in its highest form, that the one is the exact reflex of the other; thirdly, that it is not a fiction, but the most pregnant of all facts, that there is a universal human morality, transcending the particular morality of each man, and yet capable of being brought to bear upon that morality in all the circumstances and details of our lives.
This is our old English faith, the faith, as I tried to show you in my last Letter, which is the foundation of our old English education, not merely of that which we call technically our religious education, but of the whole education of the man. What I desire is, that before we accuse any of departing from this faith, or produce ingenious arguments to show why they are foolish or wicked for doing so, we should seriously consider what is involved in it for ourselves, what notions of ours it must scatter, to what results it must lead us.
To this test I would in the first place bring such statements as I find in the following passage:—
That there is an Absolute Morality, based upon, or rather identical with, the Eternal Nature of God, is indeed a conviction forced upon us by the same evidence as that on which we believe that God exists at all. But what that Absolute Morality is, we are as unable to fix in any human conception, as we are to define the other attributes of the same Divine Nature. To human conception it seems impossible that absolute morality should be manifested in the form of a law of obligation; for such a law implies relation and subjection to the authority of a lawgiver. And, as all human morality is manifested in this form, the conclusion seems unavoidable, that human morality, even in its highest elevation, is not identical with, nor adequate to measure, the Absolute Morality of God.
“A like conclusion is forced upon us by a closer examination of human morality itself. To maintain the immutability of moral principles in the abstract is a very different thing from maintaining the immutability of the particular acts by which those principles are manifested in practice. The parallel between the mathematical and the moral sciences, as systems of necessary truth, holds good in this respect also. As principles in the abstract, the laws of morality are as unchangeable as the axioms of geometry. That duty ought in all cases to be followed in preference to inclination, is as certain a truth as that two straight lines cannot enclose a space. In their concrete application both principles are equally liable to error:—we may err in supposing a particular visible line to be perfectly straight; as we may err in supposing a particular act to be one of duty. But the two errors, though equally possible, are by no means equally important. For mathematical science, as such, is complete in its merely theoretical aspect; while moral science is valuable chiefly in its application to practice. It is in their concrete form that moral principles are adopted as guides of conduct and canons of judgment; and in this form they admit of various degrees of uncertainty or of positive error. But the difference between the highest and the lowest conception of moral duty is one of degree, not of kind; the interval between them is occupied by intermediate stages, separated from each other by minute and scarcely appreciable differences; and the very conception of a gradual progress in moral enlightenment implies the possibility of a further advance, of a more exalted intellect, and a more enlightened conscience. While we repudiate, as subversive of all morality, the theory which maintains that each man is the measure of his own moral acts; we must repudiate also, as subversive of all religion, the opposite theory, which virtually maintains that man may become the measure of the absolute Nature of God.”—(Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 206-208.)
“There is an Absolute Morality, but what it is we are unable to fix in any human conception.” I feel myself as utterly unable to fix relative morality in any human conception as absolute morality. If a man’s duty to wife and child is caged in a human conception, I believe it will never come out of that cage into any living action. What we have been taught in our Creed is, that because Absolute Morality could not be fixed in a human conception, or in any letters that express human conceptions, it came forth in the life of a Person, in His acts, His sufferings. The unbounded Righteousness and Truth and Goodness—so our fathers told us—showed themselves forth in Him. In Him we might see what that Being was who had made the worlds and all that dwell in them.
We have always been instructed also that this manifestation of the Absolute Goodness in a man was the removal of that perplexity respecting a Law of Obligation, which Mr. Mansel appears to treat as hopeless. A Son who perfectly delighted to do his Father’s will,—who obeyed Him because His law was in His heart,—would seem to set forth the very meaning and nature of obligation, the sense in which it is the submission of a Will and the power of a Will.
The readiness of that Son to fulfil all righteousness, to submit to all ordinary precepts, would seem to show how the inward obligation determined the outward conduct. And, if this is so, “the conclusion seems unavoidable that human morality”—because “in its highest elevation…it is manifested in this form” of filial obedience—“is one which is adequate to set forth” (I believe this language to be less equivocal than “identical with, and adequate to measure,” though I do not object to that) “the Absolute Morality of God.”
But it is to the second paragraph in this extract that I would especially invite the reader’s attention. “To maintain the immutability of moral principles in the abstract, is a very different thing from maintaining the immutability of the particular acts by which those principles are manifested in practice.” Assuredly, very different indeed. The Gospel of St. Luke supplies us with a remarkable instance and illustration of the difference. “And behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him, saying, ‘Master, what shall I do to inherit Eternal Life?’ He said unto him, ‘What is written in the Law? how readest thou?’ And he answering, said, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.’ And he said unto him, ‘Thou hast answered right; this do, and thou shalt live.’ But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, ’And who is my neighbour?‘” Here the ’immutability of the moral principle’ asserted in the book of Deuteronomy, is maintained ‘in the abstract,’ by the lawyer, with the greatest vigour. It is just as applicable to his own time as to the time of Moses. He would have confounded any member of an opposing school who said otherwise. But ‘the particular act by which that principle is manifested’ here was the difficulty. He could find no letter about that, or none which might not be explained to be applicable to other times, and not to his own. He was ‘unable to fix’ the Neighbour ‘in any human conception.’ ‘Who is he? Of course I am to love him as myself, if I meet with him; but where shall I meet with him?’ The parable which we all know, was (so we have been used to suppose) an answer to this question. The priest, the representative of the Jewish nation before God, appointed to bless the people in His Name,—the Levite, the authorized interpreter and defender of the Law which was given to Jews,—see a stripped and wounded Jew lying on the road, and never discover that he comes within the scope of the rule, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ A Samaritan, with little of this legal knowledge, a suspected heretic, sees that same Jew, the member of a race with which he has no dealings, and at once acts as if he were his neighbour. The law is within his heart; he is obeying a principle, and not a rule; it is not an individual principle; it is not one which he has learnt from his fathers. It is human; the Son of Man owns it as His. He bids the ruler”Go and do likewise.”
Compare this divine record with Mr. Mansel’s next position, which is only the former differently worded. “As principles in the Abstract, the laws of morality are as unchangeable as the axioms of geometry. That duty ought in all cases to be followed in preference to inclination, is as certain a truth as that two straight lines cannot enclose a space. In their concrete application both principles are equally liable to error; we may err in supposing a particular visible line to be perfectly straight; we may err in supposing a particular act to be one of duty.” The dogma that duty ought to be followed in preference to inclination, is as unlike as possible to the divine maxim which the ruler quoted so readily respecting the love of the neighbour. ‘That duty ought to be followed,’ means that ‘we ought to do what we ought to do.’ So very harmless a proposition is not likely to beget a very energetic course of action. The questions, ‘What is duty?’ ‘What is inclination?’ start up even more quickly than the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Let us go all lengths with Mr. Mansel. Let us confess that this morality in the abstract is the poorest, most miserable, most helpless of all unrealities. We have heard much of the great evil of Slavery in the abstract. What man of sense listens to such stuff? Who cares for an abstract slavery, a slavery which has nothing to do with the concrete driver, the concrete drivee, the concrete lash? Who would not endure such a slavery himself? Who can feel the least concern that those who are dearest to him should endure it? Or again, who is better for the abstract benevolence which crosses abstract seas, to visit abstract soldiers, in abstract Scutari, to place abstract plasters on abstract wounds?
But must not this abstract morality be the very opposite thing to that law of life, that royal law, that law of liberty, of which Apostles and Evangelists speak? Must not that mean something which actually governs human beings, which they are created to obey? Is it analogous to certain axioms, or propositions in books of ours, or to the law which the planets obey in their courses, which every tree and flower obeys in its budding and bearing fruit? If there is to be a morality which bears upon action, ‘the duty and destiny of man,’—a morality which cannot be explained away ‘as liable in its concrete form to various degrees of uncertainty, or of positive error,’—must it not be of this kind? Can there be a greater proof of the radical feebleness of a mere regulative morality, than that which Mr. Mansel himself has given us? The abstract proposition from which we start,—the logical generalization,—is a truism admitted at once, and cast aside as soon as admitted. The special application of this truism, that which is to bring it into contact with the actual doings and sufferings of men, is liable, as it must needs be, to endless debatings, before its propriety or impropriety can be settled. ‘Who is my neighbour,’ must be argued with profound skill between opposing casuists, the man who has been left half dead, dying altogether during the discussion. But let us hear the Lecturer again.
“God did not create Absolute Morality; it is co-eternal with Himself; and it were blasphemy to say that there ever was a time when God was and Goodness was not. But God did create the human manifestation of morality, when He created the moral constitution of man, and placed him in those circumstances by which the eternal principles of right and wrong are modified in relation to this present life. For it is manifest, to take the simplest instances, that the sixth Commandment of the Decalogue, in its literal obligation, is relative to that state of things in which men are subject to death; and the seventh, to that in which there is marrying and giving in marriage; and the eighth, to that in which men possess temporal goods. It is manifest, to take a more general ground, that the very conception of moral obligation implies a superior authority, and an ability to transgress what that authority commands; that it implies a complex, and therefore a limited nature in the moral agent; the intellect, which apprehends the duty, being distinct from the will, which obeys or disobeys. That there is a higher and unchangeable principle embodied in these forms, we have abundant reason to believe; and yet we cannot, from our present point of view, examine the same duties apart from their human element, and separate that which is relative and peculiar to man in this life from that which is absolute and common to all moral beings. In this respect, again, our moral conceptions offer a remarkable analogy to the cognate phenomena on which other systems of necessary truth are based. Take, for example, the idea of Time, the foundation of the science of Number. We find no difficulty in conceiving that this present world was created at some definite point of time; but we are unable to conceive the same moment as the creation of Time itself. On the contrary, we are compelled to believe that there was a time before as well as after the creation of the world: that the being of God reaches back in boundless duration beyond the moment when He said, Let there be light, and there was light. But when we attempt to unite this conviction with another, necessary to the completion of the thought;—when we try to conceive God as an Infinite Being existing in continuous duration,—the contradictions, which beset us on every side, admonish us that we have transcended the boundary within which alone human thought is possible. And so too, while we are compelled to believe that the creation of man’s moral nature was not identical with the creation of morality itself;—that the great principles of all that is holy and righteous existed in God, before they assumed their finite form in the heart of man;—we still find ourselves baffled in every attempt to conceive an infinite moral nature, or its condition, an infinite personality; we find ourselves compelled to walk by faith, and not by sight;—to admit that we have knowledge enough to guide us in our moral training here; but not enough to unveil the hidden things of God.”—(Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 208-210.)
Now here we have the most distinct assertion I can imagine, that the Gospel does not explain what was left unexplained by the law,—that the manifestation of Christ in the fullness of time, does not remove the veil which was over the minds of men in the old dispensation. ‘God could not create Absolute Morality,’ that is admitted. I rejoice that it is,—the Absolute Morality must be in Him, His own Nature. ‘But God did create the human manifestation of Morality.’ What, is not Christ the human manifestation of Morality? Or does Mr. Mansel mean to set aside the words of the Creed, ‘Not created, but begotten?’ He need not be afraid that I should impeach him of heresy. Happily, I should be very little listened to if I did. And I prize those words of the Creed too much, for their positive worth, to degrade them by turning them into excuses for discovering flaws in the faith of other men. But the loss we suffer from treating the unity of the Son with the Father as a formal tenet, not as an Eternal principle, becomes very evident in the next passage.
The commandments in the Decalogue are quoted to prove that they refer to a condition of things in which there is Marriage, Property, Death. Who ever thought otherwise? Moreover they belong to a condition of things in which there are transgressions against Marriage, against Property, against Life. The law, St. Paul says, is added because of transgressions. This law then, by the author’s own showing, presumes a certain order anterior to its own existence. And the order demands an interpretation which the law cannot give. What is this wonderful union of man and woman, which is said in Scripture to have been involved in the Constitution of the Universe as it came from the Creator? What is this Life which He has given us, and which He watches over so jealously? What is this property of man in things? whence comes it? The Law does not answer these questions, does not attempt an answer to them. It simply says, “Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal.” But, because the Thou is a real man capable of entering into the command, of obeying it or disobeying it,—because he recognizes the command as coming from some one who has a right to utter it, and who is right Himself,—he craves from Him the answer which the Law refuses. He asks after the source of that mysterious life which is in him and in all men. He asks after the ground of Marriage, the foundation of Property. If history speaks truly, these have been questions which have been awakened in men’s hearts wherever they have not been brutal, wherever there have been impulses of family affection, desires for national union, an impatience of anarchy, a perception of Law and Government. The Jewish people were reminded by the solemnest precepts of their law that precepts were not the ground of their morality. They were told in the Fourth Commandment that they were to work because God worked, to rest because God rested. ‘Be ye holy, because I am holy,’ was repeated to them as the sanction of the prohibition of the most outrageous crimes. Their Prophets admonished them that their indifference to Life, Marriage, the boundaries of thine and mine, were all traceable to their idolatry, to their indifference about Him—the God of Righteousness—whom the eye cannot see. We have been used to suppose that the Sermon on the Mount unfolded those principles which lay beneath the precepts of the old time; that ‘Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect’ fulfilled the words ‘Be ye holy, for I am holy;’ that the Son of God translated these words into Life; that His Spirit was promised to write them in the hearts and minds of those whom he was not ashamed to call His brethren. All this old teaching may be set aside; but if Mr. Mansel means to set it aside, should he not say so? Should he stand forth as the condemner of those who pronounce it unsatisfactory and obsolete, when his own philosophy appears utterly to ignore it?
The observations respecting Creation with which this passage closes, seem to show that Mr. Mansel had a sense of this earlier order; otherwise they would be out of place. They are bewildering; will prove more and more bewildering to the consciences of his readers; will darken all practical principles to them; will make action as impossible as belief; so long as we revile other persons for rejecting the plain words of Scripture, and refuse to accept those words as the guides of our own thoughts. Mr. Mansel tells us, “When we try to conceive of God as an Infinite Being, existing in continuous duration, the contradictions which beset us on every side admonish us that we have transcended the boundary within which human thought is possible.” Certainly, when we try to conceive of the Eternal Life of God as an existence in continuous duration, we transcend the bounds of thought by uttering words that mean nothing. But do those words of St. John mean nothing? Do they lead to nothing? “That which was From the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life. For the Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that Eternal Life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” I, for myself, accept this as the most perfect wisdom, as the deepest philosophy. And so accepting it, I am bound to say ‘that we have not knowledge enough to guide our moral training here,’ if the ‘hidden things of God’ have not been unveiled to us.
Mr. Mansel having shown to his satisfaction that we have no means of knowing the hidden things of God, no discovery of an Absolute Morality, proceeds to answer the objections which have been raised in different books against the Atoning Sacrifice of Christ. To some of these objections he introduced us in the First Lecture; I said then what I thought of them and of his treatment of the whole subject. But I am thankful to be recalled to it again.
The Atoning Sacrifice of Christ has been the mark assailed by various attacks of this kind; some of them not very consistent with each other; but all founded on some supposed incongruity between this doctrine and the moral attributes of the Divine Nature. By one critic, the doctrine is rejected because it is more consistent with the infinite mercy of God to pardon sin freely, without any atonement whatsoever. By another, because, from the unchangeable nature of God’s laws, it is impossible that sin can be pardoned at all. A third maintains that it is unjust that the innocent should suffer for the sins of the guilty. A fourth is indignant at the supposition that God can be angry; while a fifth cannot see by what moral fitness the shedding of blood can do away with sin or its punishment. The principle which governs these and similar objections is, that we have a right to assume that there is, if not a perfect identity, at least an exact resemblance between the moral nature of man and that of God; that the laws and principles of infinite justice and mercy are but magnified images of those which are manifested on a finite scale;—that nothing can be compatible with the boundless goodness of God, which is incompatible with the little goodness of which man may be conscious in himself.—(Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 211, 212.)
Is it not strange to hear these different objections quoted, as if they were the special imaginations of some particular writers, German or English? Have they never presented themselves to Mr. Mansel’s own mind? Has he not had to fight his way through them? Because, if so, he is unlike any other earnest religious man that I ever read of or met with. All that it has been my lot to encounter in biographies, or in the world, have spoken of these questions as having once been torments to them. Nor have they concealed the fact that the doubts rose up before them again and again, or that it was God who answered them to their minds, and not man. And what was the answer? So far as I could gather from their statements,—which met all the deepest convictions and experiences of my own soul,—they found the belief of an Atoning Sacrifice growing more dear and sacred to them in proportion as they took the words that express it more literally. They believed that God in Christ had actually removed the obstacles which separated them from Him; that in the Sacrifice He was declaring Himself to be at one with them, and inviting them to be at one with Him. As St. Paul puts it, ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself,’ therefore ‘we, as ambassadors of Christ, beseech you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.’ Or as the Church expresses it in the consecration prayer at the Eucharist,—“A full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction has been made for the sins of the whole world.” On which ground she invites her sons to draw nigh and enter into real and actual communion with their Father in Heaven. Believing that Gospel,—partaking of that Communion,—Christian men declare that they feel God’s mercy to be infinite in the putting away of sin; that sin is the separation from God; that Christ is union with God. They can rejoice, they say, in contemplating that Unchangeable Nature which never can be satisfied with any Perfection less than its own, with any Love less than its own. They can hail the sacrifice of the Innocent, as the highest and most practical exhibition of that love—as revealing to them the perfect fellowship of the Will of the Father with the Will of the Son,—as showing them why God’s Spirit is awakening them to offer themselves as sacrifices to God,—sacrifices to do His work for the guiltiest of His creatures. Such persons learn, they tell us, that the anger of God against Sin is not a detraction from His love, but the proof of it; they are sure the anger could not be less without the love being less; they wish to feel more and more how hotly it is burning against the evil which is in them and in the world. They say further, that the more they think of this Atonement, the more it connects itself with an actual participation of the nature of Him who died for them; that what once seemed to them the greatest of all puzzles, how the shedding of blood should be the doing away of sin, seems to them now—while they recognize an actual union with Christ as the secret of their peace—the most living and practical of truths. I am not going to defend these statements; I leave them to defend themselves. I merely ask which seem most in accordance with the belief that the Atonement is the fundamental principle of the Gospel, the key-stone of the Christian arch,—these statements, or the apologies which are grounded upon the assumption that it is presumptuous to connect our thoughts and acts and life with His thoughts and acts and life; which, in fact, excuse (!) the finished Sacrifice of Christ, by maxims which might have afforded some explanation of the Heathen dreams of a sacrifice, if the Son of Man had never offered His. I wrong those dreams in saying that the maxims would have afforded this explanation. The very worst of them presumed that there was some union between the worshiper and the object of his worship, some relation between the human morality and the divine, some correspondence between the sin of which the creature was conscious, and the nature of the Being against whom he had sinned. All foretold that this union would be revealed, that the contradictions which interfered with it would be put away. It is the last achievement of Christian orthodoxy in the nineteenth century, to prove that the separation is hopeless, the contradiction irremovable. This is the way of refuting Rationalism! This is the way of bringing young men to accept the Gospel of the atoning Sacrifice of Christ! This is the way of preparing them to preach it to the world!
If you think that my language is strong, and that there is not really that opposition between the morality of the Gospel and Mr. Mansel’s statements which I have supposed, consider seriously the following passage:—
“It is obvious indeed, on a moment’s reflection, that the duty of man to forgive the trespasses of his neighbour, rests precisely upon those features of human nature which cannot by any analogy be regarded as representing an image of God. Man is not the author of the moral law: he is not, as man, the moral governor of his fellows: he has no authority, merely as man, to punish moral transgressions as such. It is not as sin, but as injury, that vice is a transgression against man: it is not that his holiness is outraged, but that his rights or his interests are impaired. The duty of forgiveness is imposed as a check, not upon the justice, but upon the selfishness of man: it is not designed to extinguish his indignation against vice, but to restrain his tendency to exaggerate his own personal injuries. The reasoner who maintains, ‘it is a duty in man to forgive sins, therefore it must be morally fitting for God to forgive them also,’ overlooks the fact that this duty is binding upon man on account of the weakness and ignorance and sinfulness of his nature; that he is bound to forgive, as one who himself needs forgiveness; as one whose weakness renders him liable to suffering; as one whose self-love is ever ready to arouse his passions and pervert his judgment.”— (Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 214, 215.)
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.” “Forgiving if ye have a quarrel against any, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” “O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desiredst me; shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?”—“It is obvious, on a moment’s consideration, that the duty of a man to forgive the trespasses of his neighbour, rests precisely upon those features of human nature which cannot, by any analogy, be regarded as representing an image of God.” Can you conceive a more direct and literal opposition than you find here? But penetrate below the letter—connect our Lord’s words with the whole Evangelical history, with the doctrine of the Apostles, with His own words on the Cross, and see whether the contrast becomes less or greater. Is it not evident that we have here a war, if ever such were, of principles, of the most practical principles, of those which most determine the whole life and conduct of human beings? These maxims cannot coexist. Each of us must say by which he will hold.
I admit at once the ‘obviousness’ of Mr. Mansel’s conclusion. It is just as ‘obvious’ as that the sun is moving about the earth. It is the first impulse of every one to respond to his proposition, as to the Ptolemaic proposition, ‘Of course; a man must be a fool to think otherwise.’ But there were perplexities about the ‘obvious’ theory of the heavens practical difficulties—which suggested doubts about it, even before the ‘unobvious’ law had been demonstrated to be the actual one. And there are moral perplexities—practical perplexities—in the ‘obvious’ theory about the features in human nature that are the foundation of our forgiveness, which make it most embarrassing even to those who do not hold, as I do, that our Lord’s acts and words and sufferings if they are what we say they are—demonstrated the doctrine which Mr. Mansel rejects to be the only tenable, the only possible, one.
“The duty of forgiveness is binding upon man on account of the weakness and ignorance and sinfulness of his nature.” But what if the weakness, ignorance, and sinfulness of my nature dispose me not to forgive? What if one principal sign of the weakness, ignorance, sinfulness of my nature is that I am unforgiving? What if the more weak, ignorant, and sinful my nature is, the more impossible forgiveness becomes to me, the more disposed I am to resent every injury and to take the most violent means for avenging it? It is my duty to forgive, because I am “one whose self-will is ever ready to arouse his passions and pervert his judgment.” To arouse my passions; to what? To anything so much as to acts of revenge? To pervert my judgment; how? In any way so much as by making me think that I am right and other men wrong, and that I may vindicate my right against their wrong? And this is the basis of the duty of forgiveness!—The temper which inclines me at every moment to trample upon that duty, to do what it forbids!
The obvious conclusion then has some obvious difficulties. Obvious indeed! They meet us at every step of our way; they are the difficulties in our moral progress. Forgiveness is ‘to be a check on the selfishness of man.’ Where does he get the check? From his selfishness. It is the old, miserable, hopeless circle. I am to persuade myself by certain arguments not to do the thing which I am inclined to do. But the inclination remains as strong as ever; bursts down all the mud fortifications that are built to confine it; or else remains within the heart, a worm destroying it, a fire consuming it. Whence, oh whence is this forgiveness from the heart to come, which I cry for? Is it impossible? Am I to check my selfishness by certain rules about the propriety of abstaining from acts of unforgiving ferocity? God have mercy upon those who have only such rules, in a siege or a shipwreck, when social bonds are dissolved, when they are left to themselves!
All men have declared that forgiveness, real forgiveness, is not impossible. And all have felt that it is not impossible, because it dwells somewhere in beings above man, and is shown by them and comes down as the highest gift from them upon man. I say, in every nation there has been a sense of the duty of forgiveness, and there has been also the sense of its being a divine quality, of its being imparted to man in spite of the weakness, ignorance, selfishness of his nature. If it comes along with a feeling of weakness, ignorance, selfishness,—along with a feeling that we are not to judge lest we should be judged, that feeling is itself owned as a gift, a light proceeding from the forgiveness which is manifested towards us. But these common feelings have been worked into the heart of Christendom Morality; they have expressed themselves in every form of its Society; they have impressed themselves on its Literature. How could it be otherwise, if the Lord’s Prayer was anything but an idle form of words, if it was really a prayer to a Forgiving Father that His will might be done in earth as it is in heaven?
‘Why all the souls that are were forfeit once;
And He that might have best the advantage took
Found out the remedy,’—
this has been the maxim, the habit of thought which breaks forth unawares into words, because it is so deeply imbedded in the very existence of Society; because Society is recognized as standing on the principle which it embodies. And whenever the idea of Forgiveness has been severed from this root,—whenever the strong conviction that we are warring against the nature of God and assuming the nature of the Devil by an unforgiving temper, has given place to a sentimental feeling that we are all sinners, and so should be tolerant of each other,—there has come that weakness and effeminacy over Christian Society, that dread of punishing, that unwillingness to exercise the severe functions of the Ruler and the King, which has driven the wise back upon older and sterner lessons, has made them think the vigour of the Jew in putting down abominations, the self-assertion of the Greek in behalf of freedom, was manlier than the endurance and compassion of the Christian. Which I should think too, if, referring the endurance and compassion to a divine standard, I did not find in that standard a justification of all which was brave and noble in the Jewish protest against evil, in the Greek protest against tyranny. Submission or Compassion turned into mere qualities which we are to exalt and boast of as characteristic of our religion, become little else than the negations of Courage and Justice. Contemplated as the reflections of that Eternal Goodness and Truth which were manifested in Christ, as energies proceeding from Him and called forth by His Spirit,—submission to personal slights and injuries, the compassion for every one who is out of the way, become instruments in the vindication of Justice and Right, and of that Love in the fires of which all selfishness is to be consumed.
For this is what I meant by the demonstration which the Cross and Sacrifice of Christ have made of the nature and ground of Forgiveness. It is, I hold, impossible to maintain what our Christian Creeds have maintained respecting the Union of the two Natures in Christ,—impossible to think that His human Forgiveness was the perfect image of the divine Forgiveness,—without adopting that belief which has pervaded all the thought and dialects of modern Europe, and which involves, Mr. Mansel tell us, a prima facie absurdity.
Either (1) Christ’s forgiveness was the highest manifestation of the Divine character, and, being such, becomes effective through the gift of His Spirit for working the like forgiveness in us; or (2) He has not set us an example that we should follow in His steps; or (3) His forgiveness, like ours, was—I dare not quote the words in this connection; you have heard them already. If we think that Christ has died and risen again, we think He has demonstrated that Forgiveness is mightier than Unforgiveness, Good than Evil, Life than Death; if we think He has not died and risen again, we ought not to invent plausible arguments for keeping up a profession the meaning of which we have renounced.
Mr. Mansel proceeds to treat the question of Predestination and Freewill as he has treated all other questions which have agitated the human heart and conscience. “The controversy, whether viewed in its speculative or moral aspect, is but another example of the hardihood of human ignorance. The question, as I have observed before, has its philosophical as well as its theological aspect; it has no special difficulties peculiar to itself; it is but a special form of the mystery of the coexistence of the Infinite and the Finite.” Many such things have we heard; miserable comforters are ye all! This question, in its moral or practical ‘aspect,’ does present itself to every man and woman; does connect itself with action and suffering, with life and death. My dear friend, what does it signify? “It is but a special form of the coexistence of the Finite and the Infinite.” What I said before, I must repeat. Butler’s experience that man is dealt with as free, Luther’s experience that man is dealt with as a slave, are both veritable experiences which cannot be ignored: neither of which is less sure or less important to life than the other. Where do we find the resolution of the problem? I find it in the revelation of that Eternal Nature of which Mr. Mansel tells me I can know nothing. When I am poring over my own mind, the contradiction faces me at every turn, darkens all my course to me. When I acknowledge God as a Deliverer,—a deliverer of the Will out of that bondage into which it has cast itself by denying Him,—a Restorer of the Will to its true, reasonable, human state of subjection to Him,—I confess that I am meant for a Service which is perfect Freedom, I confess also what that bondage and prison-house of Self is, in which I must stay till that is dead wherein I am held.
These last words, which I use with the deepest certainty of their truth, with the most entire conviction that a man shut up in self must be miserable,—must be eternally miserable,—introduce the next topic in Mr. Mansel’s Lecture. Let him have all the advantage which can be derived from being allowed to state his own case and his opponent’s case also.
“And is not the same conviction of the ignorance of man, and of his rashness in the midst of ignorance, forced upon us by the spectacle of the arbitrary and summary decisions of human reason on the most mysterious as well as the most awful of God’s revealed judgments against sin,—the sentence of Eternal Punishment? We know not what is the relation of Sin to Infinite Justice. We know not under what conditions, consistently with the freedom of man, the final spiritual restoration of the impenitent sinner is possible; nor how, without such a restoration, guilt and misery can ever cease. We know not whether the future punishment of sin will be inflicted by way of natural consequence or of supernatural visitation; whether it will be produced from within or inflicted from without. We know not how man can be rescued from sin and suffering without the co-operation of his own will; nor what means can co-operate with that will, beyond those which are offered to all of us during our state of trial. It becomes us to speak cautiously and reverently on a matter of which God has revealed so little, and that little of such awful moment; but if we may be permitted to criticize the arguments of the opponents of this doctrine with the same freedom with which they have criticized the ways of God, we may remark that the whole apparent force of the moral objection rests upon two purely gratuitous assumptions. It is assumed, in the first place, that God’s punishment of sin in the world to come is so far analogous to man’s administration of punishment in this world, that it will take place as a special infliction, not as a natural consequence. And it is assumed, in the second place, that punishment will be inflicted solely with reference to the sins committed during the earthly life;—that guilt will continue finite, while the misery is prolonged to infinity. Are we then so sure, it may be asked, that there can be no sin beyond the grave? Can an immortal soul incur God’s wrath and condemnation, only so long as it is united to a mortal body? With as much reason might we assert that the angels are incapable of disobedience to God, that the devils are incapable of rebellion. What if the sin perpetuates itself,—if the prolonged misery be the offspring of the prolonged guilt?” —(Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 220-222.)
I quite agree with Mr. Mansel, that it is extreme ignorance and presumption to use the word Eternal in connection with one subject or another,—with life or death, with reward or punishment,—if by the conditions of our mind we can attach no signification to that word. To join it with solemn duties and responsibilities, with the hopes and fears of man,—if this is the case,—must be the most egregious trifling. My reason for adhering to the expressions Eternal Life, Eternal Death, Eternal Punishment—for desiring that we should meditate on them far more earnestly than we have ever done, and that we should introduce them into our discourses, not for oratorical purposes, not to move the nerves of our hearers, but to raise and deepen all their thoughts of their own destiny, and of human destiny,—is that I believe these phrases have been rescued from vagueness, have been translated into life, by the words and acts of our Lord Jesus Christ. Believing, as our fathers did, that He came to reveal the Eternal God, Him who is, and was, and is to come,—believing that He did manifest that life of Righteousness, Love, Truth, which is not and cannot be limited by Time,—believing that these are the invisible things which St. Paul opposes to the visible things that are temporal,—believing that the Gospel means the admission of men in Christ, into the possession and enjoyment of these Eternal Treasures, which men in the ages before His coming were feeling after, and in which they were sure that they had an interest,—believing that to be without these Eternal treasures, is to be in the state which the Apostles describe as Death, Eternal Death, that to possess them in any measure is to have a taste of Eternal Life, that to possess them altogether, to live and dwell in them, to go no more out of them, to sink no more back into our own evil nature, is the reward which God has prepared for those that love Him, the fullness of joy which is at His right-hand,—believing that this is the teaching of the Bible, and that the more we read it, the more that teaching explains to us all the capacities of good as well as of evil in ourselves,—I am not afraid of Christ’s own language. I desire to look more into it, I desire to take it more literally, more and more in the length and breadth of its spiritual significance. I cannot take it literally if I change the force of it at my pleasure, if I assume the adjective to have one sense when it is applied to God, and another when it is applied to Life or Death or Punishment. I take it as having the same force wherever it occurs; its highest application being the only measure of all the others.
To speak of God as ‘without beginning or end,’ and to say that punishment or death only means ‘without end,’ is to play with Scripture, to bring Christ’s awful revelations down to our sense because we will not permit Him to raise our sense to His revelations. If He comes to unveil God to us, if He comes to make us partakers of the life of God, the absence of that life must be eternal death. A lost soul must be, as all Evangelical teachers have said, in a state of death,—not in a state of temporal death, of bodily death, but of eternal because of spiritual death. To say that a soul in this world cannot be raised out of this death is to say that there is no gospel nor salvation for human beings at all. There is a deliverance from eternal death, in the strict Scriptural sense of eternal death. Whether that deliverance is only in this world, whether the threescore years are barrier beyond which Christ’s Gospel does not reach, is a question which cannot be determined by the use of that word. By all means let the question be discussed with the utmost earnestness whether the Scripture has settled it by the use of any other language. I long that all you who are preparing for orders,—that we who are in orders,—should enter upon that inquiry in the most serious temper, invoking the help of God’s Spirit to guide us in it, utterly distrusting the conclusions of our minds, ready to receive, and believing that we shall have His Light. How important it is I have long felt. I see clergymen turned away from it by the notion that morality must suffer if the check comes from the despair of the future is taken away. And I see them spending their strength for nought,—utterly failing to penetrate the mass of evil which is around them while they are using that check. Men seem to think that there is nothing better for them than to eat, drink, and be merry here, seeing that they have so little chance of not perishing with the immense majority of their race hereafter. I see some of more serious minds trembling lest they should strip such awful words of any of their force for themselves as well as for their hearers. And it seems to me that they do strip them of the awe which they ought to have for each one of us. When we look down into our own spirits we discover a pit of lovelessness, of atheism, there, which tells us, I think, more of what eternal death is—more of our own nearness to it—than all the rhetoric in the world. It is not well to speak much of such revelations; no serious man would care to do it. But are they not given us that we may not use rhetorical phrases for the frightening of others; that we may not trifle with God’s Word; that we may turn ourselves, that we may turn others, to His infinite Love as the only deliverance, for us or for them, from an infinite despair. Oh, my friend, you may be compelled to ask some day, What is this eternal horror of which I have been preaching to my people? Is it in some distant, unknown world? Is it not here? God grant that then you may be able to say, ‘Thou who hast revealed, in the Cross of Thy Son, a Love which is stronger than Death, the Grave, and Hell, art not Thou, too, here? Is there not an Eternal Life which I may claim that is mightier than the Eternal Death?’ When a man has been driven—not once, but again and again—to find that this is the only refuge for himself, he learns that he must not confine the message he brings from the Cross and Sepulchre and the Resurrection morn, by any terms or forms of his understanding. If St. Paul’s words about the length and breadth and depth of the Love of Christ are too vast for him, as he knows they are, he must yet proclaim them to beggars and outcasts. If it sounds dangerous to say that God willeth all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth, and that His Will shall one day be done, we must leave Him to justify the language; since we cannot, at least let us not contradict it.
But if I held the conviction before, that this question must be faced boldly in God’s strength, whatever shrinking there may be in our minds from it, I cannot tell you how this conviction has been deepened in me by the passage of Mr. Mansel’s Lecture which I have just quoted. I need scarcely point out to you how utterly he has mistaken the whole difficulty which has startled the consciences of those who have listened to the popular statements on this subject. He says, “We know not how man can be rescued from sin and suffering without the co-operation of his own will, nor what means can co-operate with that will beyond those which are offered to us all during our state of trial.” Why I do know most certainly, if I believe the Scripture and the warrant of my own conscience, that no man can be rescued out of the state of sin and suffering without the cooperation of his own will; because Sin is the very revolt of man’s will from the true will, and because to speak of being delivered from a disease in the will without the will itself being set right, is more monstrous than to speak of being cured of a disease in the liver without the liver being set right.
What is the whole Gospel but a message to the Will? What is Redemption but a redemption of the Will? But if this is so,—if we may at once concede to Mr. Mansel all that he asks with so much timidity, what becomes of the next inquiry? Do we ask any more means to co-operate with the Will besides those which God has provided? What we say is, that the revelation of that deliverance which God has wrought out, of that power by which He acts upon the Will of men, has nothing in its nature which fixes death as the limit of it, but everything which defies and breaks through that limit. What we say further is, that it is a cruel fiction to speak of the knowledge of that power by which God acts upon men’s Wills to raise them, as being offered to us all during this state of trial. To say that the prostitutes in our streets, that the Hindoos, that the Australian Bushmen, have had the same means of learning what power there is to reform and regenerate the Will, as Mr. Mansel and I have had, is to outrage all sense. To insist that the Scripture obliges us to utter so monstrous a contradiction of fact, is to blaspheme it as no German Rationalist ever did. The fear—I must repeat it—is for ourselves. Those who have seen and known most of the love of God, must feel most what there is in their wills which resists it, how they have fought and do fight against it. If we think God’s grace can overcome us, I am certain there is no obstinacy or rebellion in others which we can conclude must prove too mighty for it.
Mr. Mansel apologizes very humbly for venturing “to criticize the arguments of the opponents of the doctrine with the same freedom with which they have criticized the ways of God.” The last clause would be highly commendable in an Old-Bailey advocate; whether it is equally admirable as coming from a Clergyman and a Gentleman, I leave to the author’s conscience. I will say nothing of myself, but I declare that I have never met with any objector to the popular statements respecting Eternal Punishment (and I have met with many from whose opinions and arguments I entirely dissented), who did not desire to vindicate the ways of God from what seemed to him unlawful and injurious criticism. But waiving that point, the tenderness of Mr. Mansel towards us—his dread lest he should entirely crush us with the severity of his criticisms—was quite uncalled for. He may pour on; we can endure many more such as these; for there is not one of the points upon which he insists, which I, at least, have not always taken for granted. That punishment is not a special infliction for Sin, but the necessary consequence of it—following upon it, as Butler points out, because the world is subject to a righteous moral Governor; that Sin is not dependent upon the existence of a body,—supposing the body did cease to exist in a future state;—that sin perpetuates itself;—that prolonged misery must be the offspring of prolonged guilt;—these are data of the Conscience, which, so far from wishing to suppress, I complain of our popular teaching about punishment for suppressing; which I desire should be brought out into far greater prominence than they have been. For then the belief of a Lamb of God who taketh away the Sin of the World, will not be frittered and explained away into the belief of a Lamb of God who taketh away the punishment of a certain portion of the world; then it will be confessed in our theological theories, as every Christian confesses in his practical experience, that Punishment is one of God’s blessed instruments for making us aware of sin, and for making us feel that it is from that we need to be delivered; then we shall understand something of the battle which God has been waging against Evil, something of His triumph over it when He gave His Son to die for our sins, and raised Him again for our Justification.
But no! we are not to believe in that triumph. The following paragraph is nearly the most tremendous I ever read in a Christian writer.
“Against this it is urged that sin cannot for ever be triumphant against God. As if the whole mystery of iniquity were contained in the words for ever! The real riddle of existence,—the problem which confounds all philosophy,—ay, and all religion too, so far as religion is a thing of man’s reason,—is the fact that evil exists at all; not that it exists for a longer or a shorter duration. Is not God infinitely wise and holy and powerful now? and does not sin exist along with that infinite holiness and wisdom and power? Is God to become more holy, more wise, more powerful hereafter; and must evil be annihilated to make room for His perfections to expand? Does the infinity of His eternal nature ebb and flow with every increase or diminution in the sum of human guilt and misery? Against this immovable barrier of the existence of evil, the waves of philosophy have dashed themselves unceasingly since the birthday of human thought, and have retired broken and powerless, without displacing the minutest fragment of the stubborn rock, without softening one feature of its dark and rugged surface.”—(Bampton Lectures, 2nd ed., pp. 222, 223.)
I was beginning to comment on these words. I was trying to tell you what impression they made on me. I cannot. I can only say, ‘If they are true, let us burn our Bibles; let us tell our countrymen, that the Agony and Bloody Sweat of Christ, His Cross and Passion, His Death and Burial, His Resurrection and Ascension mean nothing.’ But oh, friend! do not let us lose the lesson which this language is to teach us. What I was, in my haste, about to condemn in Mr. Mansel, is in you and me. We have been tolerating evil; we have been believing that because it exists, it may just as well be immortal. This is the unbelief which has paralyzed all our arms and all our hearts. This it is which makes us patient of baseness and cowardice in ourselves, which makes us indifferent how much of moral corruption there is in the world. We have said to ourselves, What is there in that little word ‘for ever’? Is not God good now? Yet He suffers evil. We who are pledged by the vows of our Ordination, as well as by the vows of our Baptism, to resist evil to the death,—we have been actually propagating this accursed denial, we have been investing it with sacred names, we have been making it a part of our orthodoxy. Do you think that this can go on? Is not this habit of mind destroying the vitals of the Nation, the vitals of the Church?
After speaking with so much complacency of the possibility that evil may last for ever and ever,—after showing that if we admit its existence at all, there is no further difficulty in entertaining the cheering faith that nothing can overcome it,—Mr. Mansel alludes “to the great and terrible mystery of Divine Judgment.” What! to a Divine Judgment between good and evil, between light and darkness; that Judgment for which Christians in Scripture are encouraged to wait and hope and long, however searching and terrible it may be, because it will show that the Prince of the world is judged, that all things are gathered up in Christ, that to Him all things in earth and heaven are subject? Such a Judgment, that which is called, in the New Testament, the unveiling of the Son of Man, the discovery of the real Head and Source of all Life, Order, Peace, in God’s Universe, the overthrow and destruction of all Death, Disorder, War,—the Judgment which has cheered the heart of the sufferer on sick-beds, the lonely prisoner, the martyr at the stake, not because he expects some reward for himself, but because he shall see Righteousness and Truth triumphant; because he hopes to hear his prayers answered, that God’s Will may be done at last throughout His Creation; such a Judgment we must banish from our thoughts. By proclaiming that all the Divine Government and Education of mankind have not been necessarily tending to this issue, that the contradictions which every true man feels to be agonizing may be immortal, the idea of Judgment is destroyed. A shrivelled remnant of it may survive in the feeble, flickering expectation that we who have led tolerably respectable lives, shall be paid for our good behaviour hereafter, and that the disreputable will have endless wailings for their portion. But, thanks be to Almighty God, He will, by the goadings of His Spirit, by kindling in us a sense of our infinite evil, drive us from that refuge of lies, that beggarly hope which must make us ashamed, that He may restore to us that other and more glorious hope of a full revelation of His Kingdom, of the “restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.” I believe, if we lose that hope altogether,—if God gives us up, as He may, for our rebellions, to such an entire extinction of it as there never has been in any period of the world yet,—we shall not stop at Mr. Mansel’s point; we shall be certain that Evil must reign for ever and ever, must drive out all that is opposed to it. We shall praise thee, O Devil, we shall acknowledge thee to be the lord. And those who still retain the conviction that Christ has come into the world, will realize Jean Paul’s tremendous dream. They will suppose that His message to men was, “Children, you have no Father.”
Yet I am glad that this dreadful language has been used, and used in a Christian pulpit. It will bring the thoughts of many hearts to light. It will show who can and who cannot bear this prospect. And those who cannot, it will lead to reconsider some of the language into which they dropped through conformity to the habits of their time, though it has corresponded very ill to their inmost convictions, and to the teachings of God’s Spirit. Among many questions which will occur to them, this I am sure will be one. Has not the language we have used respecting the hopeless division between the world on this side death and the other, deprived us of some of St. Paul’s most elevating as well as most practical lessons? It may be well for Mr. Mansel to scoff at the notion of one moral law for all intelligent beings. But St. Paul speaks of Him in whom we say the Moral Law was embodied, as the head of all principalities and powers; speaks of the manifold wisdom and love of God being made known to those powers through the Church. When he bowed his knees, it was to the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the whole Family in Heaven and Earth is named.” Are Protestants afraid of such passages,—afraid of accepting the full force of them,—lest they should fall into Romanist notions, either about Purgatory, or our communion with the spirits of just men made perfect? Has not St. Paul always been the great deliverer from Romish notions? Do we tremble lest he should lead us into them? May not some on the right hand and the left be falling into them just because we have not confessed the truth of which they are the counterfeits?
And if private Christians may discover that the notions they have cherished on the subject of the future world, its joys and its terrors, have darkened the Universe, as well as the Gospel of God’s Kingdom to them,—surely the preachers of that Gospel have more need still to be inquiring whether they have not entertained theories which go near to make their preaching utterly vain, a tissue of empty truisms, or flagrant contradictions. Mr. Mansel’s words may be most effectual for bringing this question to a trial. Can I tell my congregation that God wills them to be saved and not damned? Can I tell them that they may trust His Will absolutely to conquer that which resists it in them? Can I preach Christ as a real deliverer of mankind, as a real conqueror for mankind? Compromises on this controversy must as much come to an end, as compromises about forgiveness when Tetzel preached his sale of pardons. We must determine what we have to declare, or for ever hold our tongues.
So far, then, we have not discovered in this Lecture many rules which can guide us in dark hours of trial, or help us in the action ‘which is our duty and destiny.’ We have only been taught that we are not to believe in any relation between human forgiveness and Divine forgiveness, that we must not look forward with any hope to the extirpation of evil. These are the great moral pole-stars which are to guide us over the deep; these are to be substituted for any “principles satisfying to the Reason.” Still there is one subject upon which it might have been hoped that a disciple of Butler would throw light. In a Lecture on morals, the Conscience was entitled to some notice. It is noticed in the last paragraph. We are told that “the very Philosopher whose writings have most contributed to establish the supreme authority of conscience in man, is also the one who has pointed out most clearly the existence of analogous moral difficulties in Nature and Religion, and the true answer to both,—the admission that God’s government, natural as well as spiritual, is a scheme imperfectly comprehended.” This is actually the only recognition we find of a fact which Butler esteemed so profoundly important to practical morality. A very strange one certainly! How astonished Butler would have been to hear that his writings ‘established the authority of that conscience in man’ which he affirmed had been established there by the Creator and Lawgiver of the Universe,—which he said that each man was obliged by the very constitution of his nature to confess. And this is no slip of the pen, no carelessness of language which it would be unworthy to notice even in a careful writer and a professed logician. It is in strict harmony with all Mr. Mansel’s teaching. The Conscience is something which we are told about in a book: we are to admit there is such a power, because a great philosopher found it indispensable for his system. How little it is suffered practically to exert itself, the whole course of Lectures bears witness. Mr. Mansel refers with triumph to an exposure which Mr. Rogers has made of the contradictions of the Moral Sense when it tries to utter its voice in protest against anything which seems to it immoral; no writers command so much of his admiration as those who disparage its testimonies, and prove its conclusions to be worthless. I may indeed be told that this incapacity of distinguishing right and wrong refers only to representations of the Divine nature. When I am called to settle what it is unjust, dishonest, treacherous for me to do, it may start into full vigour. At least the distinction should have been illustrated and explained in a treatise which professedly exalts action above speculation. It should have been shown how this faculty acquires a sudden clearness just at the very moment when all motives and inclinations are most likely to bewilder it; how that which cannot be trusted to give an honest verdict at other times, will do its work effectually, and assert its supremacy just when some hungering lust or great argument of covetousness is assailing us. It may be so, doubtless, but a little effort might have been spared to explain a perplexity which may strike others than Rationalists and Mystics as a very serious one.
I cannot help thinking that we have here decided evidence in support of a remark which I ventured to make when I was speaking to you of Butler before, that his great fame will not be maintained by those who servilely copy his opinions or adopt his nomenclature; that to vindicate it for our time,—to preserve the principles which he asserted from becoming dead letters,—we must be content to acknowledge some facts which the conditions of his age did not permit him to acknowledge. I have for many years felt this strongly about his doctrine of the Conscience; I never felt it so strongly as since I have read Mr. Mansel. Evidently those grand phrases which I am sure have done good, which when translated into life and action are of immense worth, about the supremacy of the conscience, are in infinite peril. They are exposed to the deadliest wounds in the house of his friends. And those who wish to defend him most are obliged to ask how they may do it without overlooking other facts which also have made themselves clear. What has been said and felt and suffered by those who have found that in themselves, that is, in their flesh, dwelleth no good thing, has worked more than all the logic and ridicule of Mr. Rogers and Mr. Mansel—though these may contribute their quota—to make men distrust that testimony to which Butler attached such worth. The difficulty must have a solution; talk about the finite and infinite is no solution at all. To me the solution has come through that very experience of evil which has led many to cast aside the idea of a Conscience, or to rob it of all its significance. The protest against that evil, whence does it proceed? It is in me, yet I cannot call it mine. Must I try? Must I adopt Butler’s phraseology, if the word Conscience itself, if the lessons of Scripture, will help me to a better, and so will save his practical principle from the contempt of his own professed disciples? Does not what was said of Consciousness apply with deepest emphasis to Conscience? Is not that the witness—not of some part of the man, but of the man himself—to a Word nigh him, even at his heart; to a divine Teacher from whose sentence he cannot fly; who judges him, whose judgment he owns, even when he is resisting it most, to be according to truth?
It is the entire failure to recognize the presence of such a teacher as this within man, which renders Mr. Mansel’s moral teachings at once so unscriptural and so unpractical. Because he differs from St. Paul and St. John, he must deal unfairly with the witness in our hearts; he must set at nought the lessons even of his own chosen master. For the same reason he is obliged to treat the doctrine of a Universal human Consciousness with mere contempt. The fact of such a Consciousness is forced upon us not by the dogmas of philosophers, but by the commonest observation of life. It works itself into our very dialect. Orators talk of appealing to the great common human heart. They may practise great cheats in the use of such phrases, but the cheats would be impossible if there were not a truth at the bottom of them. Pascal says that it is as dangerous to think basely of ourselves as to think highly of ourselves. Butler commands us to reverence Human Nature when we are most aware of our own evils. How can these sayings be good for anything if there is not some standard which men do confusedly recognize, which we should strive that they may recognize not confusedly but clearly and fully? How is it but because an individual selfishness—that which severs us from communion with our kind—is the great sin of the world? How is it but because Christ, who took away the sin of the world, is the bond between every man and his fellow, as well as the perfect manifestation of the Eternal and Absolute Goodness. Oh, may God make us ready to fight even to the death against the mere Public Opinion of an age which crushes the freedom of thought, which erects itself into the Judgment of God! But may He teach us to fight against it, not on behalf of some private opinion of ours, but on behalf of that great human standard which He sets before us, which justifies whatever is strong and vital in all our partial judgments, which confounds whatever in them is unsocial and dividing!
Faithfully yours,