My belief; answers to certain religious difficulties

Preface

I could never bring myself to any admiration of the schoolman's famous formula, Credo quia tmpossibile. Nor does even Principal Forsyth's defence of it quite convince me. When I ask for truth, I resent an epigram or a paradox. Even as a boy I imbibed the spirit of Olrig Grange, and separated myself from those who say :

" Credo, that is the door of heaven,

The more impossible, so much more Virtue lies in the credo given To open the everlasting door."

For my own part I believe only what seems to me certain. I do not believe it because it is impossible, but because it is impossible, with all the evidence before me, to disbelieve it.

There are mysteries which transcend language and defy reasoned description, but these I believe, only because arguments, which do not transcend language or defy reason, shut one up to them. I believe them as mysteries; the steps which lead up to them I believe as strong and irrefragable arguments.

By faith, therefore, I mean always a mode of knowledge which alone avails in dealing with the ultimate realities of God, the World, and the Soul.

ROBERT F. HORTON.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE DIFFICULTIES STATED g

II. IS RELIGION NECESSARY? 32

II Is Religion Necessary?

Professor William James, dividing mankind into the " tender " and the " tough," i.e., the idealist and the materialist, and admitting that the bulk of mankind blend in themselves the two extremes, says in his sparkling way: " If radically tough, the hurly-burly of the sensible facts of Nature will be enough for you, and you will need no religion at all." * That would imply that persons of a certain disposition, persons of the highest value to society, admirable in character and conduct, may yet do without religion. Professor James is so profound a student of human nature, and especially of the varieties of the religious side of human nature, that it is presumptuous to dispute his verdict. It must be allowed that in the sense that religion is understood, there may be and there are a vast number of persons in Christendom who do without it. They do not admit or even betray any missing. I remember a writer in the Fortnightly Review some time ago declaring that the question of religion, the being of God, the immortality of the soul, etc., had not the faintest interest for him. The hurly-burly of the sensible facts of Nature, the satisfaction of appetite, the business or profession, the public life of the community, or perhaps the delights of Nature,

1 " Pragmatism," p. 301. 32

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of science, of literature or of art, are all that such men desire in life ; and of such things they get on the whole enough to make them content. To worship, to pray, to enquire into the ways or will of God, to meditate or treat seriously the Christian revelation, does not occur to them. If they are losers by the omission they are unconscious of it. If there is a future life, a judgement seat and an account to give, they will with a serene conscience quote the sentiment of the Preacher l , and will, so far as they know, anticipate no ill consequences.

These men and women may, in popular phrase, be said to be without religion. They are not irreligious, sacrilegious, profane; they are non-religious, of the world, and confined to the world.

But when we come to ask for a satisfactory, a sufficiently inclusive definition of religion, we are not able to admit that the " radically tough " are, on account of their temperament, or natural bias, without religion. For religion is " the conception which we form of the Power that is responsible for our being, our relation to that Power, and the course of life which results from the conception and the relation." To be without religion therefore would be to be without any conception of the meaning or the end of life ; that is to say, it would be to be something less than human. No one possessed of his reason can be without thought. Everyone must have some idea of the Power which brought him into being: Haeckel may be of opinion that the Power is an unintelligent force, Herbert Spencer may regard it as an unknown and unknowable,

1 eccl. ix. 8 — II.

but indisputable fact, or with the great bulk of men we may call it God ; but our conception of that Power, however crude or inadequate it may be, is the basis of our religion. On that basis a man may relate himself to the Power, just as an unconscious fact of Nature is related to it, and fancy himself an automaton ; or, regarding the Power as unknown, he may shape his relation to it as simply his own scheme of thought about it, or he may regard the Power as a person and enter into living relations with Him. In the first case the course of life resulting will be mechanical and unreflecting, without sense of responsibility, without moral expansion : Haeckel, for instance, presents a moral life so jejune and attenuated that it is hardly distinguishable from that of the higher animals. In the second case the life may be strenuous and noble, but it must be intrinsically sad and hopeless; thus Herbert Spencer n his Autobiography expresses a curious regret for the religious life which he had lost and for the neglect of that side of his nature which in others he saw developed. In the third case, i.e., where the conception of God as a Person leads to a conscious relation with Him, life may become a task fulfilled under the great Taskmaster's eye, expectant of His approbation, and all the wealth of experience and endeavour which are familiar to us in the lives of eminent Christians become possible.

But each of these types is religious in its own way ; each has, and must have, a religion. A creature without religion is, so far forth, not a man at all. Man might be sufficiently defined as "a religious animal," for by the constitution of his mind, directly he emerges

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out of the evolutionary process from the previous stages of development, that is to say, so soon as he is human and becomes a subject of anthropology, he begins to form some idea of the Power that made him, to enter into some relation with it, and to live the life which is determined by that relation.

The most godless, sacrilegious wretch living has a religion. It may be a religion without God, or in defiance of God. For God he may think only of Fate or of Luck, and act accordingly. His relation to the Power that made him may be only one of revolt and defiance. But bad as it is, that is his religion.

But this being the case, the question will be, not, Is religion necessary ? but, What religion is right ? Is there God, or only a blind, unintelligent Force ? If there is God, can we know Him ? If we can know Him, what can we know ? Can we enter into relations with Him ? Can our lives be lived on the basis of that relationship ?

It will be self-evident that if the Eternal and Infinite Power which is responsible for our being is God, if we can know Him, and if we can enter into relations with Him, we are bound to conform our lives to His will and purpose.

Now while it is quite possible that atheistic religions may exist, and may produce certain results — Haeckel's religion is atheistic, for example, and Haeckel is an interesting and useful factor in the science of our time ; or again, Buddhism, at least in its origin, was atheistic, and that religion has had and still has a great influence on the world — the general instinct of mankind points to the recognition of a personal God. Is that belief necessary, are there reasons cogent enough to prove it ? Can it be said that, if to be without religion is to be something less than man, to be without God is to be something less than religious ?

The arguments by which Theism is defended, the Ontological argument, the argument from Causation, the argument from Design, do not appeal very powerfully to the present generation. For the examination of them the reader may be referred to Professor Flint's lectures on Theism. But there is an argument which has sprung into prominence with the closer study of psychology, and it appeals with direct and living force to people of our time. Mr. Illingworth, in his book " Personality, Human and Divine," has made that argument accessible to all thoughtful readers. Perhaps I may offer the results of that book in another form.

So long as the mind is directed to the universe of phenomena, the Maker of the universe may be easily conceived as a Workman, who works on the gigantic scale, as we work on a minute scale. But it may also be contended that the Maker is nothing more than the inherent force which initiates and continues evolution. While therefore the mind is directed only to phenomena, it is possible to argue for a Being, a Cause, a Designer, as the Author of Nature ; but on the other hand it is possible to say that the Being or Cause is impersonal, and to treat the evidences of design as merely the accidental results of the evolutionary process.

But when the mind is directed to the observation of itself, and it begins to realise the significance of its

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own consciousness, and to grasp the idea of personality, it finds an ever increasing difficulty in the idea of Being apart from thought, of cause apart from Will, ot development without purpose. The retrospection on which all ordered thinking in modern times depends drives the mind irresistibly to one conclusion, viz. : that the Power which is responsible for the All cannot be less or lower in kind than the Ego, at present engaged in thought, which is responsible for a minute part of the whole. That is to say, if I hesitate to call that Power a Person, because to me a person is limited, an item in a great whole, while the Power must be Infinite, indeed the whole itself, I cannot hesitate to say that the Power is, at the lowest, personal ; must have at least the qualities of thought and will and purpose which constitute my own personality, though I must immediately recognise that the Personality so conceived, the Being that conceived, the Will that executed, the purpose which designed the universe, are as far beyond my capacity of conception as the ocean is beyond the capacity of a cup.

The more this line of reasoning is pursued the more certitude grows in the mind that in the Power which is responsible for the world we have to do with Intelligence, Will, Purpose, working by processes which we imperfectly and slowly discover ; or, in other words, that the Power is personal, that is, God.

The most direct and convincing argument, therefore, for God is accessible to thought, and may be made plain to everyone who will take the trouble to think. As the argument cannot possibly be evaded, those who deny the existence of Gcd are under the responsibility of refusing to think. They might be sure of God, as they are sure of their own existence. The reasoning is not intricate ; it is direct. It does not demand elaborate training in the logic and metaphysics of the schools. It requires only calm and unbiassed reflection; and such reflection is surely obligatory on every one who is

" A being drawing thoughtful breath, A traveller between birth and death."

But this argument for showing that God is, carries us a great deal further, and when supplemented by other facts of immediate observation, shows us to some extent what God is. Always granting, as even Herbert Spencer granted, that we must admit the personality of God, we know, and must know, much more about Him than Spencer perceived. He is not unknowable, nor unknown. To begin with, if in finding that God is, we find, as we have seen, that He is Intelligence, that in itself carries us very far beyond the limits of Agnosticism. We may therefore dwell a little more particularly, not only on the intelligence in us which assures us of Intelligence as Creator, but also on the intelligence in Nature which appeals to us as intelligent. Little as some scientific men realise it, the fact of science is a broad and convincing proof of God as personal. For unless the universe were an order, a cosmos, governed by fixed and ascertainable laws, there could be no science at all. But " order," " uniformities," " laws," all imply intelligence. Every scientific enquiry is sustained, and every scientific conclusion is secured, by faith, that is, by

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the underlying conviction that the scheme of things is a scheme, and not a succession of chances. The globe spins through space, the atmosphere and other physical conditions of life on the planet are maintained, every living thing lives, and the whole society of graded life on the earth continues and evolves, by virtue of an inherent principle which is described in the Book of Wisdom, as " reaching from one end of the world to the other with full strength and ordering all things graciously." 1

As the ancient thinkers taught, as the Roman poets sang, there is a mind in Nature which nourishes all the parts and maintains the unity. Not to seek recondite illustrations, keeping within the bounds of universal observation, what is the vis medicatrix natures- on which we instinctively rely ? If a wound is made in the body, immediately a process is set up, which can only be compared with a gang of workmen sent post haste to a wrecked train. I do not control those busy workers, that St. John's Ambulance in the blood and nerves of my own body. I do not even know how they work. It is an Intelligence other than my own which restores the balance, invigorates the weak part, heals the wound. An unthinking Science thinks to evade enquiry by describing this as the healing power of Nature. But directly we think we recognise that the healing power is intelligent, not only intelligent as a doctor, but much more so ; more subtle, more rapid, more resourceful.

Natural history teems with, nay, may be said to consist of, illustrations of the same fact. A breed of sheep from our own colder climate introduced into the West

1 wisd. viii. i.

Indies will in two or three generations alter the thick warm fleece for a fine hair adapted to the warm climate. Natural selection may be a plausible formula for recording how the change is effected, but it cannot evade the point that Nature selects, that is, acts in a way which is intelligent, a way which can only be associated in our minds with personality. Or examine, with Maeterlinck, a hive of bees. The modern mystic has repeated the exquisite argument in Virgil's "Georgics," with greater wealth of knowledge, but with less spiritual insight. The unmistakable fact is that there is a soul of the swarm, intelligence which is not to be found in any individual bee, animating and directing the community. The drones which consent to die, when the consort of the queen is selected, the queen, who is merely the mother of the hive, soaring to heaven in a brief inspiration of nuptial rapture, and returning to deposit the ova of a new generation, the guardian soldiers of the gate, and the busy traffickers of the pollen and the honey, are all individually unintelligent, stupid, like living automata. Those skilful builders of the cells have not the sense to overcome the slightest unaccustomed obstacle. Those provident storers of the food for a new generation betray no sense of relation to one another : —

In a word, nothing is more certain than the intelligence of the hive, than the unintelligence of the bees. Where, then, resides that intelligence which makes the little commonwealth a marvel and a mystery to our less skilful minds ? In Nature, says Science. But that is equivalent to saying that Nature is an Intelligence whose

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wisdom, contrivance and power, are manifested even in the life of ephemeral insects.

Much more significant is the life of plants, because while an animal or insect has something of the apparatus — brain and sense organs — which in ourselves is the condition of personal activity, the vegetable world is without these mental organs, and is yet everywhere and always a scene of mental life, which amazes and delights us. Look at the marriage of the plants, the delicate arrangement, for example, by which the yucca shrub is fertilized by the yucca moth, a balance so finely adjusted that the plant could not continue without the insect, nor the insect without the moth. How childish it would be to say that the intelligence of the moth makes the yucca ; and how meaningless to say that the intelligence of the yucca produces the moth ! But how much more absurd it would be to say that the whole mystical work of life and reproduction is without intelligence ! One who could say that has not reflected on the meaning of intelligence, and is so far, however keen an observer, without intelligence himself. No ; the Power that made the solar system, that relatively large machine, has made also the minute organic machinery and relations of insect and plant. To treat it as unintelligent, as less intelligent than we are ourselves, is highly irrational.

One other illustration must suffice ; where the sundew or the pinguicula found itself growing in soil of the bog and the peat which did not suffice for its nutriment, it developed a faculty which must fill other plants with astonishment. It furnished its fat leaves with filaments and a viscous fluid which could trap the insects that settled upon them, and it learnt to roll up the bodies and to dissolve and absorb them as food. It is altogether as marvellous and intelligent a process as the action of our highborn sportsmen on the moors or our less distinguished butchers in the shambles. Here is a sensitive and adaptive intelligence at work, which is yet in the plant itself unconscious. If our mind, more developed than the vital functions of the drosera, can recognise the intelligent purpose in which it takes its automatic part, we must at the same time be able at least to conjecture the Mind which is at work not in the plant only, but in ourselves, the supreme, creative, purposive, overruling Intelligence which is responsible for the cosmos.

We are undeveloped, ill-educated, or atrophied and debased, unless we are, like Job, smitten with reverence, awe and adoration before the Mind in Nature.

There is a second fact about the Creative Power, which may be certainly known, and with the growing aesthetic faculty of the race, it must become increasingly impressive. That Power must love beauty, for the most ubiquitous fact of the universe, as it appeals to our senses, is that it is all beautiful. Beauty is not the accident of a particular thing, or a temporary condition. But the galaxy in the sky at night, the sky itself by night or day, the whole earth and the multitudinous seas, the coming of the dawn, the colours of the sunset, the forms of vegetable life, the forms of animal life, the very dust of the earth, the coal measures, the chalk cliffs, the primeval rocks, everything everywhere is steeped in the magic of beauty. Beautiful are the woods when they burgeon in spring,

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but beautiful are they when they wane ; still beautiful when they are

•' Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang,"

or when they are silvered with frost, and covered with the* white mantle of snow.

Beautiful is the world which by its minuteness evades the eye of man. Peer into it through the microscope, and you find that the minute particle of dust, or the filmy wing of the tiniest insect, is beautiful and perfect as the starry sky or as the flower-pranked meadows of the spring.

When St. Paul argued from the visible things the everlasting divinity and power of the maker, he spoke as a Hebrew. If a Greek had written the passage, he might have inferred with equal justice " even his sublime intelligence and unfailing aesthetic sense." But it is not only much to know about the Power that made the universe, it is a cause of reverence and love, that the love of beauty is a formal and motive principle within it.

I saw some time ago the gallery of Holman Hunt's pictures. I do not know him. But after studying " The Lady of Shalott," " The Shadow of the Cross," " The Finding of Jesus in the Temple," and, above all, that masterpiece, the portrait of himself, I might with some justice say that I do know him. As the painter of these pictures, as the brain teeming with these ideas of truth and beauty, as the face which he shows to the public in his portrait, he is more familiar to me than many people whom I meet. But the universe as we study it is a great picture gallery of masterpieces, a moving panorama of truth and beauty, in which the breadth surpasses that of Paul Veronese, and the minute detail defies the Pre-Raphaelites. The Artist can be surmised, and even known to the observer. And if in that gallery is found a picture, His own self-portraiture, the image of the Invisible, the brightness of His glory, and the expression of His substance, we may have ground for saying that we know, or can know, Him better than we know our fellow-man or even ourselves.

But, thirdly, there is a revelation of God in the course of human history, which enjoins on every thoughtful observer the duty of learning and understanding the moral or eschatological purpose that works in men's affairs. When the student of history examines the course and connections of events, he cannot resist the conclusion that there is an intelligible movement in it. The medieval philosopher was apt to think that history is a series of cycles, each returning to the point from which it began. But the modern mind is sure that there is a progress in it all. We never return to the same point, except in the sense that the ascent is spiral. Whatever doubt there may be about a given philosophy of history, we all agree that there is a philosophy in it. There is a development as independent of the individual's design as the life of the hive is independent of the purpose of the bee. Perhaps at bottom we are all agreed that the progress of civilization, the rise and fall of races, the growth of institutions, the arts, the sciences, and the ranges of intellectual life, are determined by a principle which is essentially moral. Emerson said that organised Nature has a destiny,

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and that is amelioration. Who can tell its limits ? We are leaving behind the past to enter on a better future. The ape and tiger within us gradually but surely die. Man is in the course of appearing.

But if the principle of history is moral, it is directed by a Being that is personal. Morality has no meaning apart from will and choice and purpose. To read the purpose of history, the moral of human affairs, is the underlying motive for all historical research, and scientific handling of historical materials.

The histories of the Bible palpably aim at this one

end. Compact and brief, they are written by prophets

to show God at work in human affairs, choosing His

agents, punishing and rewarding, with the end in view,

and controlling the course of things which is far beyond

the power of any individual. The history of England

is in its way just as impressive as that of Israel. There

is a recognisable progress in it. The people has a

destiny. The whole course of development is intensely

moral and religious. The idea of duty is dominant.

The story seems written to illustrate it :

" Not once, nor twice, in this rough island story, The path of duty was the way to glory."

I am always surprised that this Bible of our own race is not more intelligently taught to English children. I opened a page at random, in order to test the principle. I lighted on the story of Henry V. who went over to conquer France, on the pretext, a daring and impudent pretext, that he had a title to the crown. He besieged Rouen, and the citizens, driven out of its gates, were left to perish between the wall and his lines. Surely justice slept ! And when he passed on to Agincourt, and the archers who there drew their " sounding bows " earned for themselves eternal fame, the reader might conclude that God was not, or did not observe the deeds of men. But wait ! Within a few weeks of Agincourt Henry V. was smitten down with disease, and died in the full tide of his unfruitful victories. On the next page the lesson is repeated. The Duke of Bedford captured Joan of Arc, the pure and inspired leader of her king, and the saviour of her land ; he burnt her as a witch. As she perished in the flames one might have said : " Surely justice sleeps ! " But no, read on; you find that from that time the crown of England lost its possessions in France for ever.

Study history at any point, with the enquiry in your mind, What is the underlying principle, what the directing power? You cannot hesitate to say, There is amoral purpose at work ; all makes for justice ; poetic justice is historic justice. And even though the mind hesitates to define the controlling Power, and shrinks from the name " God," it virtually admits that the Power is moral, " a stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." And so Hecuba, in the " Troades " of Euripides, an agnostic as far as the gods of Hellas were concerned, exclaims :

" Thou deep base of the world, and thou, high Throne Above the World, Whoe'er thou art, unknown And hard of surmise, Chain of things that be, Or Reason of our reason, God, to Thee I lift my praise, seeing the silent road That bringeth justice ere the way be trod To all that breathes and dies."

4 6

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This principle and power at work in history is not ourselves, it is not expressed or realised by any individual. It is intrinsic, as a Conscience, in the long progression of the generations, a guiding thought which runs through human action, as evolution runs through the organic world. " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " asks the Bible. We might ask, " Shall not the justice which works through history be God ? "

But there is another line of reflection and observation. We are bound to infer the nature of God from human nature. Herbert Spencer is on this point very suggestive, though he does not see how his suggestion modifies his doctrine of God as the Unknown and the Unknowable. " The power manifested throughout the Universe," he says, " as material is the same power which in ourselves wells up in the form of consciousness." But clearly we know the Power best in consciousness, and if it manifests itself in me as consciousness, that is the surest evidence I can have that it is consciousness. When I take into account what consciousness in me means, the sense of personal identity, the power to will, the distinction between right and wrong, and the sense of obligation to do right, the capacity for strong feeling, and the distinction between feelings, with the apprehension that the one set — fear, cruelty, lust, pride, egotism — are wrong, and the other set — unselfishness, humility, purity, courage, and love — are right, I am at once impressed with the conviction that this consciousness in me existed in the Power that produced me. If I am led to believe that I am the ultimate product of an evolutionary process, I am impelled to the belief that the Power which initiated and directed the Process, contained within itself the result. And if I am one of myriads of co-existent or successive consciousnesses, I conclude that the Power was an infinite Consciousness, containing within itself from the beginning the Will, the moral distinctions, the feelings, the thought, which appear divided and immature in the myriad finite consciousnesses of which I am one. Herbert Spencer hesitated to call the Power personal because personality to us implies a limitation. The absolute cannot be brought into a common designation with the conditioned, the infinite with the finite. Personality means for us an individual consciousness among many. In that sense it seems derogatory to call God personal. But Herbert Spencer's objection has been taken as suggesting that God is something less than personality, whereas it means that He is something infinitely more. The faculties that compose my consciousness are capable of being carried out to infinity, though I may not have the mental power to conceive or to state the result. Clearly there can be a Will which is omnipotent, the maker of the finite wills which are restricted by its omnipotence ; clearly there can be a Moral Being which is absolutely good, the norm and authority of our own wavering and struggling moral natures ; clearly there can be a mind of capacity to conceive, control and produce what exists, a love which is the motive or spring of all love in creatures, supreme and ultimately triumphant in the process of things. And if such a Being is conceivable, a moral, thinking,