The difficulties of belief : in connexion with the creation and the fall, redemption and judgment

Preface To The First Edition

The object of the following Essay is to remove some of those difficulties which have often haunted thoughtful and inquiring minds, when they reflect on the deeper truths and more solemn aspects of religion, both natural and revealed. As it is to readers of this class alone that it is addressed, the work should be read with re¬ ference to its own object. There are some, perhaps, whose childlike faith is content to follow the plainer lessons of natural conscience and of Christian revelation, without being ever troubled by the dark shadows that lie around them. The aim of these pages is not to awaken the sense of difficulty in their minds, but to relieve the depth of these shadows, where they have been felt in their chilling and depressing power. In the hope that the views here partly unfolded, and which are not hastily entertained, may be to some weary spirits like a streak of morning light upon the distant mountains, when the gloom of night is passing away, they are committed to the blessing of the true Fountain of all wisdom.

Kelshall, Nov. 1855.

Preface To The Second Edition

In the “Ways of God”, published in October 1863, the line of thought in the first edition of this work was continued, and applied to the difficulties in Provi¬ dence and Redemption. The subjects there treated were the long continuance of moral evil, the perils of human probation, the infrequency of miracles, the vanity of human life, the moral anomalies of providence, the In¬ carnation, the Atonement, Regeneration, Predestination, and the Supposed Failure of Christianity. In the pre¬ face I was able to mention, with deep thankfulness, that many testimonies had reached me, both from dear and intimate friends, some of them since removed by death, and from strangers personally unknown, of help and comfort received from the former work, in removing dark clouds, which had burdened their spirits, and ob¬ scured their vision of the Divine goodness. Some of these were from missionaries, both in the north and south of India, who had found help from it in their conflict with the dark fatalism, by which Mohammedans and Buddhists are alike fenced, as with a buckler, from

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Preface To Tile Second Edition

the appeals of the Gospel. Many other testimonies of the same kind have reached me, from various quarters, in the thirteen years that have since followed to the present day.

The “Victory of Divine Goodness”, published ten years ago, continued the same line of thought, in con¬ nexion with the sjztecial perplexities of a private cor¬ respondent, personally unknown to me, and with the two main subjects of Atonement and Judgment to Come. But nearly one half of the work, the notes on Coleridge’s Confessions, had no proper unity with the rest, and the letters to my correspondent were too fragmentary in form to deal worthily with so many subjects of high importance. The remarks on eternal judgment gave birth to strange misrepresentations, of which I do not seek to revive the memory. But I have here included the two Essays on the Atonement and Eternal Judgment, somewhat revised, in the series of sub¬ jects treated in the former edition of the Difficulties, so that the treatise will now range onward from the Creation and the Fall to the Redemption and the New Creation still to come. I have also }3refixed a brief summary of the direct Scripture evidence for the doctrine, and some examples of the strong and deep prejudices awakened by it in leading writers of the present day. These will prove, I think, convincingly, the great need for such an effort as I have honestly made, in entire dependence on the teach¬ ing of the Word and the Spirit of God, to clear away

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xi

false representations, and causeless additions to the truth Divinely revealed, to show its harmony with other great truths no less plainly, and even more fully taught, and thus to strengthen the defences of the Christian faith ; and show that, even when clouds and darkness are round about the Almighty Creator, justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne, that his goodness is infinite, and his name is Love. While I humbly desire his forgiveness for every defect in my treatment of themes so high and mysterious, I com¬ mend the work, in its enlarged and revised form, to his favour and blessing, in the prayer once offered before: — “May the great Head of the Church, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment, accept the humble offering, and make it minister to the glory of his excellent name, and the ripening and perfecting of the faith of his true servants.”

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INTRODUCTION.

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.

The existence of One First Cause, powerful, wise, good, and holy, the Lord and Governor of the universe, is the foundation of all natural and revealed religion. It is the fountain out of which every other truth must really flow. “ I AM THAT I AM. I AM THE FlRST AND THE LAST, and beside me there is no God.” In these messages, God has announced to mankind his own prerogative of unchange¬ able, eternal, essential being. All creatures, compared with Him, are less than nothing, and vanity. His majesty dwarfs the splendour of all created beauty ; and the uni¬ verse, apart from Him who formed and sustains it, would almost appear, to the eye of reason, like a shadowy dream.

But there may he a great contrast between the cer¬ tainty and dignity of a truth in itself, and the clearness with which it is apprehended by men. What is first and highest in its own nature, may possibly he latest in the order of human knowledge. The laws on which the movements of our earth, and the changes of its seasons depend, existed for long ages before their discovery. So also that primal truth, on which all others are secretly

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THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.

suspended, may require slow and successive steps of thought, before we can reach the mountain-top where we can gaze on it with a clear and steadfast vision. The child becomes familiar with many objects, its toys and playthings, and the countenances of its nurse and parents, before it knows the source of the light by which all these are made visible, or has ever beheld the calm beauty of the rising or setting sun. And when it is seen at last, its brightness must be tempered by clouds, or by the mists of the morning or evening sky; and the number is small of those who borrow the help of art, in order to gaze directly on its meridian brightness. In like manner, to behold with steadfast and unclouded gaze the true and uncreated Light is a hard and high attainment. Its brightness dazzles and confounds the reason of man. It

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must be seen reflected upon the objects of earth, or tempered with some veil which heavenly love itself has provided, before the vision of sinful creatures can endure its glory.

This contrast between the nature of the truth, and our faint and variable apprehensions of it, has led to some perplexity with regard to the evidence on which it rests. The pious mind shrinks from the thought that a doctrine so momentous should be viewed merely as a high proba¬ bility. It claims for it instinctively some absolute de¬ monstration.

Now demonstrative reasoning usually descends from generals to particulars, from causes to their effects, from principles to their necessary consequences. But when we reverse the process, and ascend from effects to causes, the result often appears to be tentative and imperfect. After much labour and a wide induction, we arrive at conclusions not absolutely, but only partially true; which

INTRODUCTION.

have to be modified by further investigation, and a more comprehensive range of experience. Must, then, our faith in the Being of God be of this vague, uncertain kind % Is it only, after all, a probable and imperfect guess, instead of a sure and firm foundation for our whole moral hems’ ?

To remove this doubt, we must distinguish between partial and absolute knowledge. To infer a cause from an effect, and an effect from a cause, are processes in themselves equally sure and demonstrative. Whether we ascend or descend in the chain of reasoning, it is the nature of the links alone which determines the degrees of evidence. But while we may deduce a large variety of effects from a single cause, clearly defined and fully known, our knowledge of the cause must be imperfect and limited, if it be gained from a few effects only. A planet acted upon by a constant central force, varying inversely as the square of the distance, will describe an ellipse, with the areas, measured from the focus, pro¬ portional to the time. The cause being assumed to act undisturbed, the result is capable of a strict and absolute demonstration. And conversely, if such motions are ob¬ served through one revolution of the planet, the existence of a central force, varying by such a law and no other, may be concluded with equal certainty. But we cannot infer that this force will remain constant through succes¬ sive revolutions. It may vary by a periodical and inter¬ mittent action. We cannot he sure that the same force, or any force, will he exercised on a body in a different plane of motion, or that the same law of intensity will extend to all distances, nearer or more remote, in the same plane. These extensions of the law are inferences from other facts, or from the observed simplicity of natural laws in general, and may he either confirmed or disproved

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THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.

by the lessons of a wider and more prolonged experience. In most departments of physical science, these hypotheti¬ cal extensions of laws derived from a partial experience will sometimes prove erroneous, and thereby will seem to reflect doubt upon the very process of inductive reasoning. But this is a mere illusion. The reasoning is firm and demonstrative on its own nature, and only fails us, when we mingle our imperfect guesses with the actual results of pure and simple induction.

Now these remarks apply to the higher truths of the moral universe. No finite being can fully comprehend the nature of God. It is a mystery too deep for us to fathom in all its real profundity. He “dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen or can see, the King of kings and Lord of lords.” All our conceptions must be very imperfect, and fall far short of the glorious reality. We cannot, by searching, find out the Almighty unto perfection. It is only a faint whisper of his greatness that our ears can receive ; but “the tliunder of his power who can understand?” But those sepa¬ rate elements, which, when combined, form our highest conceptions of his being, may be separately capable of pure and absolute demonstration, as well as those inter¬ mediate steps by which we rise to them ; although few, comparatively, may apprehend the whole of them, or com¬ bine them harmoniously into one pure and perfect idea of Supreme and Absolute Goodness. Hence may arise all the existing varieties of religious faith, in which truths, demonstrable and sure in themselves, are either seen through a mist, or held down in unrighteousness; so that “gods many, and lords many,” usurp the homage due to Jehovah; or dark shadows, where his supreme power is owned, obscure his perfections and his glory. Wherever

INTRODUCTION.

superhuman and unseen powers are worshipped, which, in the view of the worshippers themselves, have not supreme dominion or essential being, the religious instinct is in exercise, but stops short entirely of its proper object ; and the first great commandment is transgressed, “Thou shalt have none other gods but me.” Where the worship is directed to a Being supreme above all others, but under false representations, whether of the senses or the imagi¬ nation, by which his true character is obscured or denied, there is a breach of the second commandment, and a more or less aggravated form of religious idolatry. But if the separate truths, which underlie this mass of religious in¬ stincts and traditions, are cleared from the dross of human errors, each of them will be found capable of a true demonstration by principles which lie at the foundation of our daily life ; while their various rays, all converging to one centre, will reveal to our minds that Awful and Glorious Presence, which decks itself with light as a gar¬ ment, and sits enthroned on the riches of the universe.

And first, that every event and every object must have some cause, is a principle so rooted in our minds, that our whole life involves its hourly application. We are conscious of it in the motions of our own bodies. We discern it in all the changes of physical nature, and apply it by an unalterable instinct to the actions and conduct of our fellow-men. Hence we ourselves, and the objects that surround us, must have some cause of our being. But we are conscious that we ourselves are not the cause. We did not make ourselves, nor create the objects which we see around us. Experience shows, as plainly, that our fellow-men, living with us, are not the cause of their own being, nor of the outward world which is our common home. If we refer to our parents, and prolong the chain

THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.

backward, we have no key at all to the existence of the lower creatures, and have advanced no nearer to a full and adequate explanation. The whole series of genera¬ tions, and the generative power itself, are effects that need to be explained. If we conceive some being, finite and mutable, a mere Demiurge of limited faculties, and born in time, yet endued with might and wisdom to fashion the lower creatures, and give birth to the whole human race, a higher Cause will still be required to account for his existence. Reason, when once it wakes to the simple truth, that every effect requires a cause, leads us upward, with swift and irresistible progress, to the feet of the Almighty. It cannot rest till it has pointed us to one great First Cause, on which all lower causes and all created beings must depend. There may be, for aught we can tell by experience, “gods many and lords many,” un¬ seen by the eye of man, and superior to human power ; but there is and must be one Only God, of whom are all things, the Fountain of Being, and self-existent cause of all created things.

Again, we are conscious to ourselves, and observe the presence in others, of a faculty of design. We can choose for ourselves objects of desire, and combine various means for their attainment. Life is one stream of human pur¬ poses, hopes, and fears, either disappointed or fulfilled. In the choice of ends to be pursued, and of the means for securing them, we perceive by experience the widest varieties, both in ourselves and our fellow-men. To some plans we give the title of wisdom, to others, of folly. But whether successful or unsuccessful, whether wise or fool¬ ish, the idea of design is the same. We are conscious of it in ourselves. We perceive it, without a shade of doubt, in the conduct of our fellow-men, and even in the instincts

of the lower creatures. But we also discover the clearest traces of it in the events of Providence, and in the frame of the world, where we can trace it to no human agency whatever. Reason tells us plainly, that these marks of design prove the existence of a Designer. Still further, the same reason teaches us that the first cause of ex¬ istences, themselves capable of design, and gifted with various degrees of wisdom, must itself be wise. A blind, unconscious fate could never be an adequate cause of con¬ scious wisdom. And thus, by a double inference, which grows in clearness the longer our thoughts dwell upon it, we are assured that the First Cause must be also the Supreme Architect and Designer of the universe, and that the Creator of beings gifted with the faculty of wisdom and foresight must Himself be the True and Absolute Wisdom.

But, further, we are moral agents. We are conscious of a will and power of choice, and cannot avoid passing judgment on ourselves and others with regard to the manner in which this power of choice is exercised. We praise and blame, we approve and condemn. We do this by an instinct which it is impossible to control, and the sophists who strive to quench it are themselves unwilling witnesses to its mighty and unquenchable power. The Epicurean kindles into zeal when he denounces in super¬ stition the guilty curse of mankind ; and the Materialists, who would resolve our being into a concourse of atoms, often inveigh against the crimes of priests and kings with a strange' and instructive inconsistency. The moral in¬ stinct, violently repressed in its natural outlets, forces itself a passage some other way. The deep-seated con¬ trast of moral good and evil lies at the root of all our daily judgments. The conscience of all men, as the

THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.

Apostle tells us, bears witness to its truth, and their rea¬ sonings among themselves, while they accuse or else ex¬ cuse one another. But the same law of thought, which compels us to look up through all the long vista of second causes, till we reach one First Cause, self-caused and absolute, constrains us no less to trace all derived and partial goodness in the creatures to a perfect and absolute goodness, the uncreated and hidden Fountain, whence every stream of blessing must flow. And thus Power, Wisdom, Goodness, in one common source, in which every one is found absolute and perfect — the First Cause, the Supreme Architect, the Purely Good — together constitute our fundamental conception of the Godhead. These three letters compose his ineffable and glorious Name, who is the Maker of all things, the only wise God, a Being of spotless holiness and perfect love.

There is nothing arbitrary, uncertain, or hypothetical in this threefold cord of reason, which binds the soul of man to the footstool of the Almighty. We may, through a careless and ungodly heart, stop short in the ascent of wisdom, and thus fail to attain, even in its bare outline, this knowledge of the true and only God. We may rise, for instance, to the apprehension of many second causes, higher than man, and unseen by our bodily eyes, and rest on these, as the agents in all the events of Providence and the changes of the outward world. These secondary powers may be many in number, as well as limited and imperfect in their power. Born in time, like ourselves, they may be conceived subject to changes and decay. We may take the signs of wisdom and design in the universe, and distribute them among these unseen powers. We may also ascribe to them distinct forms of moral excellence, or chequer these with varieties of moral defect, such as we

INTRODUCTION.

meet with among our fellow-men. In such a creed we have the system of Polytheism. So far as it recognises the existence of such higher powers, it may he a truth. But it is not the truth to which reason conducts the patient inquirer. It stops short at the foot of the mount. And hence, in an age of active thought, such a system of Polytheism must either sink into mere Atheism, or rise into a pure Theism, as the sensual or spiritual element prevails in the minds of men. Jove, the son of Saturn, who reigned, by deposing his own father, on the snowy heights of Ida and Olympus, amidst a family of gods and goddesses, must either give place to the atoms of Demo¬ critus and the philosophy of Epicurus, or be transmuted into a higher object of faith — the Living One and the Supreme, whose offspring we all are,

The object of a heathenish worship is here displaced by a dim apprehension of the true and only God, ignorantly worshipped, though still practically unknown. Reason lies down and sleeps midway on her journey, and Polytheism is the child of her dreams. She awakes and pursues her journey, and the morning light of heaven dawns upon her footsteps, and greets her with a vision of the blessed and only Potentate, the true Lord of heaven and earth.

Again, we may trace up all effects to a great First Cause, and forbear to dwell on those proofs of design of which we are conscious to ourselves, and of which the universe is full. Our conception will thus remain essen¬ tially and radically imperfect. Faith in such a Deity is vain and useless for every moral purpose. We are not believers in an All-wise God, but in a Supreme Fate — unwise, unconscious, and unreasoning — which acts Avith io

TIIE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF \ relentless vigour, by some blind and unaccountable neces¬ sity. In this case there can be no providence, and no moral government. There will brood over creation the dark shadow of an Absolute Power, which works it knows not why, and cares not how, and crushes in swift succes¬ sion under its wheels the creatures to which it has given birth. This creed of fatalism, though disguised, is often the chief element in false religions. Compared with the fatal Sisters, even Jove himself was feeble in the Greek mythology. This serpent hid itself amidst the festoons of flowers with which the Pagans wreathed the statues of their divinities, and asserted a true and awful supremacy over the practical faith of mankind.

But a further step may be taken, and the soul may still come short of the fundamental truth of natural and revealed religion. The outward and the inner world may alike be recognised as full of the evidences of design. All the rays of power and natural wisdom in the various creatures may be seen converging upward to one common source in whom they centre, and from whom they must flow. The great First Cause is then owned to be a wise and conscious Being, the Supreme Architect, the Natural Governor of the universe. But the consciousness of moral good and evil may still slumber; and hence the highest and most distinguishing element may be wanting entirely in our conception of the Supreme Being. Providence is now recognised, but in forms of natural goodness alone. From the minutest speck which the microscope discovers, to the wide range of infinite space which the telescope vainly seeks to explore, this Power revels in the display of its ever-varied wisdom, amidst the mechanism of suns and systems, and all the countless wonders of animal and vegetable life. But no moral purpose is discerned in this

INTRODUCTION.

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display of superhuman power and sagacity. We have only a Mechanician of unrivalled skill, who has formed the universe, like an immense toy-shop, to display with a capricious prodigality the inexhaustible resources of his mechanical ingenuity.

Such is the abstract Deity which meets us too often in the writings of natural philosophers, whenever they suffer their conscience to go to sleep amidst their profound scien¬ tific inquiries. Such students of nature fail to learn the first and simplest lesson of true religion, that God is no abstract and lifeless Being, but the Moral Governor of accountable creatures ; perfect not only in natural wisdom, but in righteousness and holiness; supremely good, no less than supremely wise.

But when we reach the last mountain-top, from which the glory of the true and living God begins to dawn upon our spirits, new mists gather around us, and threaten to rob us of the vision, and plunge us into darkness again. The same deep instinct which reveals to us the contrast of moral good and evil, and compels our reason to ascribe perfect goodness to the Supreme Source of all being, dis¬ closes also the mournful fact, that moral evil does exist and prevail widely through the universe. How, then, can we explain this fact, if there be a God of infinite power and goodness? Surely, either the power or the will to remove it must be wanting. If the power, then how can God be Almighty? If the will, then how can He be infinitely good? The minds of men, as reasonable beings, would acquiesce readily in the simple and glorious truth, that there is a God, All- wise, Almighty, and All-perfect; but this fact, the existence and power of moral evil, and that for long ages, flings them back into sceptical doubt and perplexity. The infidel appeals to it with a kind of

TIIE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.

malicious joy, to warrant his own unbelief; and even the devout Christian is often afraid to trust himself into these deep waters, and, while conscious of a doubt still unsatis¬ fied, is tempted to stifle it, if possible, by a violent effort of the will. But, in spite of these efforts, the doubt and perjdexity still recur. This dark shadow, which shut the heathen world in a hopeless gloom, hovers still over the various schools of Christian theology; and the bright dis¬ covery of Divine love in the Gospel has not succeeded in driving away entirely this pall of night from the spiritual heavens.

When the faith of the Christian borrows the aid of reason to remove the darkness, it tends to lose itself in two opposite labyrinths, from which no outlet is found. In one direction we encounter the Manichean doctrine, that there are two original independent powers of good and evil, the Ormusd and Ahriman of Zend theology, which contend with balanced might for the dominion of the universe. In the other, we meet a Christian fatalism, which only avoids the admission of an evil Power, by introducing dualism into the bosom of the Godhead. The Supreme Sovereign is placed above the laws of righteous¬ ness, which He has implanted in the heart of his own creatures. Moral good and evil, happiness and misery, salvation and ruin, are viewed as alike the results of his arbitrary and sovereign will. Between the Scylla of Mani¬ chean heresy, and the deeper gulf of this blasphemous perversion of truth, which makes God himself the author of all evil, how shall we guide the vessel of our reason in safety, so as not to make shipwreck of our faith? How shall we avoid either limiting the almighty power, or denying the spotless and perfect holiness, of the God whom our hearts inwardly adore ? . .

IN TROD UCTION.

All the difficulties which obscure the wisdom and good¬ ness of their Maker from the eyes of men, and tempt numbers to doubt even the firm and simple conclusion of awakened reason, when it assures them of his power and Godhead, resolve themselves into this one question — the nature of moral evil, and the righteousness and goodness of God in the moral government of the world. It is the presence of moral evil alone, which disjooses men to doubt the goodness and wisdom of the Most High. It is the fact of moral evil, borne with, but not removed, which gives force to all their questionings against the ways of Providence. It is the solemn threatening of judgment to come upon the workers of iniquity, which forms the stumbling-block of the unbeliever in coming to the word of God, and persuades him that the Bible contradicts the pure instincts of perfect benevolence. If this one problem were solved, all other petty cavils would die away of them¬ selves. While darkness broods over it, these spectres will start up in ten thousand forms; and every part of God’s word, every act of his providence, will be a fresh occasion for unwilling perplexity in the humble, and for open blasphemy in the proud and arrogant sinner. It is a pro¬ blem, too, with which it seems impossible to deal sepa¬ rately, by natural reason and the light of supernatural revelation. Without the light which the word of God supplies, we cannot even make any approach to a solution of the immense difficulty. And when we take Revelation for our guide, the darkness which seems removed in some directions, thickens and deepens in others; and all the miseries and wrongs of the present life seem often more tolerable to the awakened reason, than the prospect of the retribution which is declared to await the rebellious in the world to come.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF.

It is comparatively an easy task to rove through all creation, and come back laden with evidence of the Divine power and greatness, and of the bounty displayed in the formation of innumerable wmrlds. The mind, enriched with the treasures of science, and gifted with eloquence, may compose a beautiful and glowing panegyric on the countless tokens of the Divine beneficence. But amidst all the beauty of these lovely songs, the plague-spot of the spirit will remain untouched and unhealed, unless a cure can be found for those cruel suspicions which flow out of the prevalence of sin and sorrow in the present life, and the repeated warnings of strange judgment to come here¬ after on the workers of iniquity. If further light, however feeble and imperfect, can be thrown upon this mystery, it will be a real and lasting boon to the Church of Christ, and, indirectly, a new power for the triumphs of Divine truth in the world. If this mystery remains in total dark¬ ness, all declamation on the benevolence of the Almighty, and attempts to answer cavils, are almost utterly vain. The believer must be content to own himself a child, who cannot answer the aspersions thrown out against the Father whom he loves, but believes that his Father will himself scatter them in due time.