we now inhale impurity in the atmosphere of the world." So in regard to the immortality of the soul, we "must learn to realize the next world through Faith." From it comes Regeneration, which is "the death of the carnal nature, which we have in common with the lower animals, and the establishment in its place of a complete spiritual life in God."* Were we engaged in controversy with Christians, it might be important to show how inadequate a conception this is of the doctrine of saving Faith as taught by Christ; but we may be confident that a year or two will correct the excesses of the Brahmists in this respect and as the realizing God's Presence as well as the other fundamental truths of Theism, and the distrusting ourselves, are important virtues, we may accept them as common ground, and endeavour to bring out the points which the Brahmist writers still treat defectively. They seem to confine their attention to remedying the errors of the will rather than the errors of the reason in fallen man, and the issue must be made a little clearer to analyze the question properly. Retracing our steps, then, we find it admitted that important differences of opinion are found, "even in regard to Catholic and essential truths"; now the question is, does Faith remedy this evil, and bring with it a correct apprehension of Divine truth; and if so, how? Evidently a Brahmist must admit that it does, since if a doctrine be an essential error, the vivid spiritual perception and realization of this error as truth can only be fatal to virtue instead of fruitful of it. The question then arises, how? Here too we are again in accord in the first step. A person who realizes the doctrine of an omnipotent and just Creator will feel bound to exercise his reason in prayerful dependence on his Maker, and to supplicate Him earnestly and confidingly for guidance. But from this point two rival theories present themselves: (1) that God should directly assist the individual reason to decide correctly all the essential doctrinal questions which require belief; (2) that the Almighty should embody His essential commands and teaching in an objective revelation, and should guide the individual reason to accept it as a religious authority. The latter is the Catholic principle; low Churchmen and Dissenters generally adopt an inconsistent and confused intermixture of the two; while the Brahmists appear to have adopted the former, without, however, in any way justifying their preference. Yet this point is, in fact, the crucial question in the whole field of religious inquiry; and the principles which Brahmists have admitted ought to lead them unhesitatingly to look upon a revelation as being morally preferable, and à priori probable. Regenerating Faith, passim. (1.) In the first place, if God's will is to assist each intellect to determine particular truths for itself, then each man is, in the last resort, his own authority, he is the voice of God to himself. His guarantee for any doctrine under discussion being true, is his own conviction that it is so; he may honestly believe that this conviction proceeds from God, but still his theory makes his own mind the inevitable channel of Divine inspiration, and therefore he can admit of no appeal from his own opinion to any other tribunal. The consequence is, that a man must be self-confident and selfsufficient on religious questions. Now Brahmists teach that humility and self-distrust are true Theistic virtues, and should be the result of Faith. How can they be so, if the theory of personal guidance in regard to doctrine be true? In the lecture first named at the head of this article there is a special reference to this question : I desire to say a few words on the charge of arrogance and self-sufficiency, which has of late been frequently advanced against the Somaj. . . . Gentlemen, if the Brahmo Somaj inculcates one principle more than another on the minds of its followers, that principle is humility. Humility is one of the vital principles of the religion of the Brahmoes. . . . To say that Brahmism inculcates self-sufficiency is to say an untruth. That religion is not and cannot be a religion of self-sufficiency which acknowledges prayer to be indispensable to faith and salvation. . . . We admit as fully as anybody else the imperfections of man, his weakness and his liability to sin (also to error), and the impossibility of mere human agency to secure salvation.* We quite admit that the Brahmists preach humility, but if truth is to be obtained without the aid of objective revelation where is there any consistent field for the exercise of that virtue in its most important branch, intellectual humility? As we said, prayer is the common property of all religions, certainly of none more than Catholicity; but if, after prayer, a man is to be justified in saying, in regard to a religious controversy, you are wrong because my judgment is against you, and I am divinely guided, how can he practise intellectual humility? No! Brahmists correctly recognize humility and self-distrust as fundamental virtues. "We must love God so thoroughly that our feelings, our reason, our faith, and our will may be entirely surrendered to Him, and be in unison with His holy nature"; and these virtues cannot be practised in their integrity unless God has somewhere revealed His Will and His teaching objectively and externally to each individual. Otherwise each man is the final judge in the case of his own doubts and difficulties, and has no other way of surrendering his reason to God than by submitting to himself! * The Brahmo Somaj Vindicated, p. 11. To this all-important principle a very insidious objection is sometimes urged; it is said that to accept revelation as true, and an authority as divinely commissioned, is in itself an act of private judgment, and if we must rely on ourselves for this, we display no more self-sufficiency in constituting ourselves judges in detail. This is constantly objected to Catholics by Protestants, and may be equally objected to revelation in general; but by comparing the analogous operations of the intellect and the will it is found to be entirely fallacious. To be self-willed is regarded as a very intelligible fault, and to be unselfish a virtue; yet the whole merit of doing an act pleasing to another is that it be voluntary. An act which is involuntary is in no way meritorious; but if a man, by the exercise of his own will, brings himself to carry out the wishes of others, he is rightly considered to deserve the greatest credit. Hence it is plain that a man is properly regarded as unselfish when he wills, in the general, to sacrifice his own will in particulars to the will of others. The very same may be said of the intellect. Man, being an intelligent creature, an act of faith must be an act of his intelligence; but the merit of intellectual humility and of submission to the Divine reason lies not in abdicating the use of reason, but in so using it in the general as to be ready to waive the right of following it in particulars: an act which is impossible if the individual judgment be the channel of Divine teaching in particulars, but possible if there be anywhere a revelation external to the individual. Hence, in proportion as a man realizes, as the Brahmists do, the important truth that intellectual humility, diffidence, and selfdistrust are virtues proper to intelligent creatures in respect to their Creator, so ought he to be drawn on to conclude that it is fitting and probable that the Divine teaching should be embodied in an authority external to himself and entitled to claim his belief. (2.) A second reason why an objective revelation is probable is to be found in the fact that though fundamental truths are attainable by the natural reason, man has an instinctive craving for a deeper and clearer insight into the mysteries of religion than he can thus obtain. The primary truths of Theism serve but to stimulate a devout man to seek to know more of the mysteries of Divine love, salvation, and redemption. Now, if God's guidance is limited to assisting each prayerful and virtuous man to decide correctly the questions which come within the cognizance of natural reason, it is plain that deeper truths must remain for ever a sealed book, and this want be unsatisfied; whereas an objective revelation, besides fixing on an immovable rock the truths of natural religion, and rescuing those who believe in it from the dangers of error, also affords a channel for such supernatural truths beyond the range of human reason as the Divine wisdom may see fit to communicate to man. We are convinced that this argument has far greater implicit weight than may seem to attach to it when stated explicitly. God, who designed to reveal Himself to man, has implanted in the human mind an instinctive craving for a revelation, and a kind of dissatisfaction with the limits of natural religion, which are specially designed to induce him to persevere in a state of inquiry, till he finds rest in submission to the truth. All (3.) There is a third most important distinction between the two theories, which reason intuitively perceives in its full force, though we find it difficult to express it with equal cogency. mathematicians know that at certain angles some of the functions of those angles cannot be employed in calculation without increasing a hundredfold the risk of mistake. For instance, to use the tangent of an angle measured to be nearly 90°, or the cotangent of an angle of a few seconds only, is to court error. In a similar manner, the theory of individual inspiration evokes the maximum of human error and frailty, while that of an external inspiration, and of Divine guidance to accept the inspired authority, reduces it to a minimum. We may assume it as admitted that prayer, earnestness, a vivid realization of the Divine Presence and of other fundamental verities, and a virtuous life, are requisites to a correct appreciation of doctrinal truth; now if the problem to be solved with the Divine guidance, is whether such and such an alleged revelation is true or not, each man can and should once for all concentrate all his prayers, all his inquiries, all his intellectual energies, all his earnestness, in deciding the question, and, once decided, he has but to become as a little child, and accept the teaching of his Heavenly Father. But if there is no objective revelation, if the natural reason of the individual has to determine each doctrinal truth, each moral question as it arises, the liability to error is at a maximum. The will acts powerfully upon the intellect and disturbs its correctness, and the reason will consequently be placed at the extreme of disadvantage for aiming at an unbiassed and true conclusion at each critical moment, when its pronouncement ought to be most clear and decisive. For the more a man is tempted by interest or inclination to deviate from the right path, the more he needs that his conscience be clearly guided by his intellect to condemn it. If his rule of faith is external to himself, this will be so, the teaching he accepts will be as sharply, as pointedly adverse to his wishes as ever; not so, however, if he is his own final arbiter. The very judgment which his intellect clearly endorsed before, when not under temptation, will now appear doubtful and uncertain, for the very reason that the intellect is urged by the will to question it. As an instance, Theists as well as Catholics may be monogamists. The Catholic accepts this doctrine on the authority of the Church, and if ever tempted to marry a second wife, could not alter the pre ciseness of the condemnation which his wishes receive from it. Not so, however, a Theist. His previous opinion is always open to reconsideration, by the same authority that promulgated it, viz., himself; and the chances are that, in the hour of temptation, the will to marry a second wife would bias the intellect, which previously condemned the practice, into now approving of it. It was thus that Luther and the leaders of the so-called Reformation gave their sanction to bigamy in a well-known instance; and Henry VIII. found any pretext sufficient for a divorce, when he had once rejected the authority which curbed his licentiousness. We might multiply arguments in favour of the à priori propriety of a revelation; but the above considerations, derived as they are from fundamental verities implanted in every human heart, seem abundantly to establish the principle we are contending for; in fact, we can trace a dawning conviction of this kind among the Brahmists themselves, since in the arbitrary distinction drawn between Deism and Theism, the former is condemned, among other errors, for being independent of any revelation that is made of God's nature from time to time by such holy men or prophets or his chosen children as He honours with special inspiration for that purpose over and above other human beings." Whereas Theism "yields itself to the counsels of higher experience, the gentle precepts of sainted human brotherhood, left to earth as a holy legacy of heaven."* But this reasoning does not stop short at the abstract probability of a revelation; all the arguments which we have just urged in proof of its à priori probability and propriety apply with equal force in favour of God having instituted a system such as Catholicity as the pillar and ground of truth, the custodian and judge of His revelation. For the one fundamental principle which recommends the theory of an objective revelation, is the provision which it affords for a standard of truth and right, external to the individual mind, to which it can with humility, self-distrust, and childlike confidence conform itself; but this requires as a sine qua non that the revelation be definite and decisive in regard to all the essential doctrines which it teaches. If it fails to do so; if its pronouncements are faltering and uncertain; if learned, or even ordinarily sensible and well-informed men, adopt different and inconsistent interpretations; it ceases to be an authority, and the individual, however much he may wish to be humble, childlike, and self-distrustful, is compelled to arrogate to himself the task of sitting in judgment on the conflicting opinions of others probably wiser and better than himself, and placing his confidence in the correctness of his own decision! Now it is not too much to say that no religion in the world affords an authority of this kind except * Deism and Theism, pp. 2, 4. |