Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

particularly needful. Thus he was selected to preach before the British Association at Norwich in 1868, and it was he also who delivered the inaugural sermon at the Church Congress in Dublin. The latter discourse has since been republished under the title of "The Breaking Net," and its perusal years after its delivery will explain to a large extent the remarkable enthusiasm with which it was received at the time. The other discourses of Dr. Magee which have excited most attention are "The Gospel and the Age," preached at the ordination at Whitehall Chapel in 1860; "The Church's Fear and the Church's Hope," preached in Wells Cathedral in 1864; and "The Relation of the Atonement to the Divine Justice," an address delivered to the clergy at Radley. A series of discourses delivered at Norwich in defence and confirmation of the Christian faith have also attracted great notice, and have been translated into several continental languages. Dr. Magee has had opportunities, however, of delivering other than purely ecclesiastical addresses. As a member of the House of Lords he has occasionally taken part in discussions on subjects of a political character. His speech in vindication of the Irish Church was beyond all question the ablest defence of that institution, and at once brought him into the first rank of parliamentary debaters in the Upper House. He has since made noteworthy addresses on the Permissive Bill and other public measures.

William Connor Magee was born at Cork | tion of opinion from the English Church was in 1821, and comes from a family which is very distinguished in ecclesiastical history. His grandfather, Archbishop Magee, was, as is known, one of the most influential politicians and ablest theologians of his time. His father was the Rev. John Magee, vicar of St. John's, Drogheda. The career of Dr. Magee at Trinity College was distinguished both in the official studies prescribed, and in that unofficial but perhaps equally important arena, the College Historical Society. He there stood out for oratorical power from all his contemporaries, and heads the list of auditors in the revived Intern Society. Over his gradations in ecclesiastical office we can pass rapidly. Ordained in 1844, his first charge was that of a curate of St. Thomas's Church in Dublin. After a residence of two years in Malaga, where he was obliged to take refuge on account of his health, he was attached to St. Saviour's Church in Bath for two years, and in 1850 he was transferred to the Octagon Chapel, first as joint and afterwards as sole incumbent. His tenure of office gave opportunity for the exercise of his activity and intellectual influence. Among other results of his incumbency, it may be mentioned that when the Liberation Society started an organization in Bath, a counter association was established through the efforts of Dr. Magee under the title of "The Bath Church Defence Society;" and a brilliant lecture on "The Voluntary System and the Established Church" was so effective that several other societies of a like kind immediately arose throughout the country. Dr. Magee was afterwards attached to the Quebec Chapel in London. In 1864 he became rector of Enniskillen, in the same year was made dean of Cork, and in 1866 became dean of the Chapel Royal, Dublin. Dr. Jeune, the bishop of Peterborough, died in 1868, and Dr. Magee was raised to the vacant see. Some unflattering comment was naturally evoked by the promotion of an Irishman and a graduate of Trinity College to an English bishopric; but the commanding position which Dr. Magee has since attained in the Church, and the great abilities-of which, indeed, he had already given ample proof-have more than vindicated his right to the high position. The published writings of Dr. Magee are almost exclusively of a religious character, and consist in the main of sermons preached upon special occasions. Long before his elevation to the episcopate he was sought after on several notable occasions on which a declara

Dr. Magee's style is the very reverse of that which is usually, but most unjustly, associated with Irish eloquence, and is also free from the most frequent vices of popular preaching. He is simple, and indeed seems to scorn ornament. Lucidity of statement and cogency of argument are the characteristics of all his writings, in which a definite object is always kept steadily in view, and is gradually brought nearer by what appears to be the easiest and most certain steps.]

CHRISTIANITY AND SCEPTICISM.

Scepticism demands certainty. Christianity offers certainty, and gives it in the end. But the certainty Christianity gives is the certainty partly of reason, partly of faith, and partly of experience, whereas the certainty that scepticism demands is the certainty of science only. Or we may state it finally thus:-Every one, even the most extreme of unbelievers, will

admit that there is something to be said for Christianity. Christianity is not altogether unreasonable and unworthy of a hearing as regards its evidences; for, after all, the men who have believed in Christianity during the last eighteen hundred years have not been precisely the greatest fools of their age. Leibnitz, and Butler, and Pascal were not exactly drivellers they were men capable of thinking, of weighing an argument, of understanding evidences; and not these only, but hundreds and thousands of the most powerful and subtle intellects that humanity has ever known, who in their day weighed the evidences of Christianity,―aye, and weighed them in spite of doubt, and fought their way through every one of those doubts that are tangling round the feet of men now as they come to Christwere not such utter fools, that any one is entitled with a wave of his hand to dismiss Christianity altogether as an absurdity and a folly. All who are at all reasonable will admit there is something to be said for the evidences of Christianity; and, on the other hand, every reasonable Christian will admit there is something to be listened to-something at least that appears at first sight reasonable and fair-in some of the objections to Christianity. But the real question is this:-The Christian says to the sceptic, "It is unreasonable of you to ask that every difficulty should be got rid of, and every question answered, before you believe Christianity." The sceptic says to the Christian, "It is unreasonable of you to ask me to believe Christianity until you have set at rest every doubt and answered every possible question." Now I ask you to consider which of these is right, which is the reasonable demand, that of the Christian for faith upon sufficient, probable evidence; or that of the sceptic for assent only upon scientific demonstration? This is our question to-night.

In order to argue this question fairly and calmly, without passion or prejudice, let us pass away altogether for the moment from the subject of religion and religious doubt, and let us consider the uses and abuses of doubt in other matters than religion. We all know that men do doubt and have doubted about many subjects besides religion. Try, then, and recall to your minds your first doubt. It will be long, very long, ago in your life. Your first doubt is only a little later than your first belief. The first instinct of the child is to believe everything to believe that everything he sees, everything he hears, is true. All appearances for the child are realities. The sun is to him

a ball of fire that climbs up the sky in the morning and sets in the evening. The stars are little specks of light set in a blue firmament. The earth is a flat space. The words of men are true words. Everything that appears to him at first is. Very soon, however, the child learns that what appears is not always what it appears-learns to distrust appearances,-learns that under the appearance there is often a different reality; that is to say, he learns his first lesson of doubt. And very valuable and important is this first calling out of the instinct of doubt, this first awakening of the sceptical part of man,-of his understanding. For the nature of the understanding is ever to ask the question, "What?" and "Why?"-ever to seek under appearances for their cause or for their underlying reality. And so the mind of man-the sceptical, inquiring mind-is ever questioning of every apparent fact, "Is this what it seems?" and if it is, "Why is it so?" or if it is not, "Why is it not?" Thus doubt-precious and invaluable doubt-is ever leading man on from question to question, and every question that he asks, if he can but gain from science the true answer to it, is ever leading him a step on in knowledge. The mind of man is ever asking, and nature and science are ever furnishing answers to his questions. So man goes on from belief to doubt, from doubt to belief, from belief to greater knowledge; and thus doubt is still the cause of progress, the implement of discovery, the spur to reformation, the motive power that is specially needed for the ever-onward march of humanity in knowledge and science. Doubt! without this invaluable instinct of doubt humanity would be stagnant: with it, and by its help, humanity progresses. We do not disparage, we highly value, the uses of doubt.

But, observe! this doubt is useful upon one condition and one only, that it start from a first belief. For what is the source of all this doubt and this thirst after knowledge? It is the supreme, instinctive belief that beneath all appearances there is a reality,-that something underlies and causes all being; and it is the search after this (if I may so speak of it) Essence of Existence, the search after this I AM,

that still leads on the doubter. If he had no faith in some underlying reality beneath all these phenomena, these appearances,— there would be no progress; and so doubt is ever seeking for that which is, ever seeking to get below that which appears, and yet it never reaches it. Never yet has scientific investiga

tion, whetted and excited by sceptical inquiry, ever reached to the great Reason of all reasons; the great Cause of all causes; the great Fact that underlies all facts; and yet ever, as we seek for it, we are advancing in knowledge. We do not reach it, but we are ever reaching and passing on beyond that which lies between us and it. So you see the action of doubt in the human mind is just like that of the mainspring in a watch. The mainspring of a watch, as you know, is firmly attached at one end, and it is ever seeking to uncoil itself but yet never completely doing so, and the result of this is that the hands of the watch move uniformly. If you cut the attachment the hands will give one wild whirl, and then be still and useless. It is just the same with faith and doubt in the human mind. Doubt is attached to the primary belief that there is a Cause for all things, but it is ever seeking to escape from that belief; it is ever trying to detach itself, but never succeeding; and the result is, there is a constant and a measured progress of the human mind.

But we have next to consider how much further the intellect, which thus has been ruling and testing our beliefs, may go. So far we have seen the intellect, the sceptical understanding in man-that in us which asks "Why?" and "What?"-acting as supreme judge and ruler, and all evidence as yet has been submitted to it alone. Now the real question is this:-Must it indeed be the sole rule and judge of all beliefs? Are there any beliefs that cannot be submitted to it alone? Are there any domains of knowledge and of certainty which cannot be reached by the sceptical intellect, and into which some other part of man's nature must enter, to decide as to his belief? Let us go back to that early childhood of which I have been speaking, in which the child, who at first believes everything, learns his first lesson of doubt. A child, as I have said, not only believes in appearances, but he believes in testimony. He believes in human nature. His intuitive belief is in the truthfulness of humanity. Every word that is said to a child at first he believes; but he very soon learns his second great lesson of doubt and distrust; learns that every one who speaks to him is not true; learns that it is not wise for him to believe everything that is said to him. Is that as happy a discovery as that other discovery of which we spoke? Does it lead to like happy results? Does it make the discoverer feel better, wiser, happier? Would you say to the child, "Go on, my child, in this

[ocr errors]

progress of doubt and distrust. Believe no one until he has proved to you that you must believe him. Doubt every one, distrust every one, refuse to accept any word of any human being until you have demonstration for it?" Would the man who grew up in that distrustful spirit be a happy man? Would he be a wise man? Is it wisdom always to distrust human nature? and yet, if it is not, I ask you what demonstration you can have of the truthfulness of every person whom you trust? You are always trusting. Can you prove logically that you are right in any of those trusts? The wife of your bosom may be false to you for all you can tell. The little children whose eyes look up to yours with such loving trust, and whose laughter sounds in your ears like the music of summer brooks,-you cannot prove that they are not hating you in their hearts. The friend whom you trust in business,--you cannot prove logically that he is not a traitor and a rogue. Such things have been; we know they have. Men have been deceived by their wives, hated by their children, betrayed by their friends, and robbed by their men of business. It is quite possible that this may be so in your case. Are you therefore to distrust every one? Would it be wise of you to do so? Why! you know that if a man were to act upon this principle, and were to say, "I do not trust my wife, my children, my friends; I do not trust any one until they prove to me, demonstrate to me, leave me in no doubt of their honesty, their love, or their truthfulness," you would not call him a wise man, you would call him a madman. You would put that man in a lunatic asylum. And why? Because, you would say, that he gave the surest evidence of madness; that one part of his nature had acquired a diseased intensity, which had mastered all the rest. You would say that that man had gone mad with distrust and suspicion,-had gone sceptically mad,and you would treat him accordingly. And yet I defy any one here to show logically that the man might not be right. I defy any one to give that man such a logical and scientific demonstration as would prove to him beyond all possibility of doubt that his friends, or his wife, or his children, were not in a conspiracy to deceive and to wrong him. You see, then, that there is an absolute necessity for trust in the ordinary affairs of common life.

But I pass on to another and still more important point. I have said, and I hope you see, that life must be conducted upon the principle of faith or trust; but let us ask now,

whether the rule of life, morality, can exist | Which are in the right?—I am not asking you without faith?—whether we can get a demon- which you feel to be right; but I am asking strative or scientific basis for morality itself? you which you can prove logically or to deI ask this question, because those who are monstration to be right? Or if you cannot loudest in their prophecies of the destruction decide the question by majority or minority, of religion are always loudest in their boasts of the gain to morality that would follow. They tell you, "When we have swept away every vestige of religion, then, and then only, will morality be really strong, free from the corrupting influence of religious superstition." Let us consider this. Let us ask-How will morality bear the assaults of scepticism? What is morality? Morality is that code or rule of action which you follow in questions of right or wrong. It is something different from the moral sense or the power of feeling right or wrong: it is the power of knowing what is right or wrong. Practically it is the established code or rule of right and wrong in the society in which you happen to be living. This is morality for most men. Or if not this, it is the code (or rule) of right and wrong which each man forms or adopts for himself. Let us try how this code will resist the action of the sceptical principle which, you remember, demands demonstration for everything before it believes, asks to see before it assents. I ask the man who says he has a system of morality, "What is it? Is it your own code, or is it the code of what you call the common sense or common morality of mankind?" I will take the last first, for that is what most people do say. Very few persons are bold enough to say, "Everything that I think about morals must necessarily be right." On the whole morality means what mankind generally think is moral. But I ask you first: "Have you ever got the universal sense of humanity upon any one question of right or wrong? Do you know that all mankind agree with you? Do you know that even the greater part of mankind agree with you? Have you ever submitted this particular question to the great majority of mankind? Have you got their answer? If you have, can you prove to me logically, that the majority on any question of morals must always be right, and the minority always wrong? If men differ, and they do differ, on a great many moral questions, which is right?-the majority or the minority? Or, again, whose morality is it that you will have? That of your own day or that of the past generation? These differ very much on many points. As you know, our ancestors approved of duelling and the slave-trade. We disapprove of both.

and I suppose very few persons would think of deciding a question of morality, as they would settle the election of a member of parliament, by majority or minority,-how are you to decide it? "By asking what the opinion of the wise and good in all ages has been." How are you to know the wise and good? Before you can know the wise and good, you must know what wisdom and goodness are, and if you know what wisdom and goodness are, what need have you to look to the wise and good to tell you? "I question the wise and good, because I want wise and good opinions." But who are the wise and good? "Why, the men who give me wise and good opinions." Is that logical? Will that stand the test of sceptical inquiry? Is that what men call demonstration about morals? This appeal to the universal verdict of humanity is simply illogical and preposterous, for the reason that you yourself are a part of that universal humanity, and that, if you differ from its verdict, it is not the verdict of universal humanity, and if you agree with it, and take it because it agrees with your own, you might as well have taken your own in the first instance. As you cannot get out of this logical difficulty, then it comes to this-that each man is to decide entirely for himself and apart from all others what is right or wrong. Is it so? What is it then in us which decides what is right and wrong? Our conscience. It is an authority, then! And what about freethought and authority? Why should man's free-thought, his sceptical intellect, submit itself to the decision of that in him which we call the conscience? Why, he knows that his conscience has been mistaken more than once —that at one time he thought that right which he now thinks wrong. Why must he submit himself, then, to these contradictory decisions of his conscience? Because we are told it is a part of his nature. But it is also part of his nature to have passion and appetite. Give me a logical proof, a demonstration that will hold water, something I can see as clearly as that two and two make four-that one part of my nature is to yield to another part? Why am I to mutilate one part of my nature at the bidding of another? And who and what am I? Have I any logical demonstration as to what I am? I have a scientific demonstration.

if you like, and what is that? Why, that I am carbon, and lime, and phosphorus, and certain other chemicals put together after a particular fashion. No dissector has ever dissected out a soul-no man of science has ever demonstrated a spirit or a conscience. Then, I ask, why am I to obey the bidding of one convolution of my brain more than that of another? Or if my interests come into collision with the interests of another man-that is to say, another mass of carbon, lime, and phosphorus-what is there in the existence of that collection of chemicals (and, mind you, science tells you no more than that) which gives it the right to give a law to that other collection of chemicals which I call myself? What is the duty that I owe to that mass of chemicals? I owe nothing to it. You cannot demonstrate it-you cannot make it as clear as that two and two make four-that I am to do to another man what I would he should do unto me. "Duty!" "Right!" These are words of the spirit, of the soul. Science never yet revealed the soul, and therefore the man who will believe nothing but what he sees and what can be demonstrated to him, will deny at last the existence of duty, in obedience to his sceptical intellect, just as he begins by denying the existence of God for the same

reason.

Now, I ask you, how do you get out of this difficulty? I know that many do, and I thank God for it. I am very far indeed from saying that every man who denies Christianity must necessarily be an immoral man. We thankfully acknowledge that, as men may be worse than their principles, so they may be far better than their principles; and we do most firmly believe and thankfully acknowledge that men who are not Christians extricate themselves from this logical difficulty. But how do they do it? They do it just in the same way in which men extricate themselves from difficulty and doubt and scepticism in the affairs of life.

They extricate themselves by calling up another instinct of their nature to fight the instinct of doubt: they call up the instinct of faith. How does a man in practical life fight the sceptical instinct which bids him doubt his fellows? He appeals to the instinct of faith. He says--"I will believe,-I will silence this busy devil in my heart that is ever bidding me doubt of what is holiest and best; I will to believe in human nature; I will to silence these sceptical questions of the mere understanding; I will to believe in a higher and nobler humanity."

And so it is in the matter of morality. How is it that any one can extricate himself from the logical and scientific difficulties that I have been speaking of? He does so in one way, and one only. He does it by an act of faith. He rises up to a belief in a nature and a person— in his own personality and in his own higher and better nature. He wills to believe that he is something more than a compound of material elements. He wills and chooses to believe that conscience in him is something supreme and divine. He wills and chooses to believe that the man in him is something above the animal. And by an exercise of faith,

of faith in himself, of faith in his own higher and better self-and by this alone, he silences the eternal "Why?" of the sceptical intellect the serpent in him "more subtle than any beast of the field," which, if it had its way, would make of every man nothing but a beast; the sceptical understanding, which, taking its retaining fee from the passions and the appetites, ever seeks to reason away the supremacy of the conscience-to justify the revolt of man's appetites against his own higher and spiritual nature. This is the only way of escape from the difficulties which the sceptical intellect raises against morals, against society, against law, against all that makes life endurable or lovable, quite as much as it does against religion itself.

WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL.

[Dr. Russell is the founder of a new and most useful department in journalism. He was, to all intents and purposes, the first "special correspondent," since his letters from the Crimea first gave the English world regular and graphic accounts of the doings at the seat of war. The "special correspondent" has

now become a necessity of every newspaper; and that branch of journalistic work has attracted to it picked men in point of ability, courage, and dash, but Dr. Russell may still claim a foremost place in his power of graphic, picturesque, and, at the same time, unpretentious description of war and war's alarms.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »