156

FAITH NOT SERVITUDE

neither can we refute them."1 We may wish for God, freedom, and immortality, but that does not justify us in assuming them. But, he adds, if the pure moral law inexorably binds every man as a command (not as a rule of prudence), the righteous man may say: "I will that there be a God, and that my duration be endless."

We cannot safely argue from a want to the objective reality of the object, yet it must be remembered that the wish for God, freedom, and immortality amounts to much more than mere inclination. A right conception of the moral law justifies us in assuming the conditions proper for it. To realize the summum bonum to the utmost of our power is our plain duty; the rational man therefore cannot avoid assuming what is necessary for its objective possibility. The assumption is as necessary as the moral law.2

Faith is not servitude, as it would be if we were compelled to believe in the doctrines of Christianity; nor are we compelled to believe in the sun's light and the motion of the waves. Faith initiates us into the highest freedom, because, in the words of St. Augustine, "it opens the way for the understanding."

"Belief or unbelief Bears upon life, determines its whole course."

1 Kant's Ethics, Pt. II., ch. ii. 7.

"3

2 See note to Kant's Ethics, Pt. II., ch. ii. 7.
3 Bishop Blougram's Apology.

DESIRE FAITH, YOU HAVE IT

157

In his first published poem, Pauline, Browning

avows

"That he will give all earth's reward

But to believe, and humbly teach the faith."

How nobly he fulfilled his promise to his life's
end the most superficial examination of his
works will show. Yet he had just the warm
sympathy with the honest doubter that we
should expect from a mind of his calibre. He
had doubted, had "faced the spectres of the
mind," but with such religious earnestness that,
as his Paracelsus said, his scepticism was but
"Just so much of doubt

As bade me plant a surer foot upon
The sun-road."1

Bishop Blougram's faith is not of a very high order; yet the poem shows how lenient the poet could be to the honest half-believer. "If you desire faith-then you've faith enough." Pure faith sears too much our sense to be borne. Creation is intended to hide God, "and that's what all the blessed evil's for." It is to shield us from the potent light till we can bear its stress—just as the brain-pan and the eyelid keep brain and eye from withering. Faith with the half-believing Bishop meant "perpetual unbelief kept quiet." A poor thing that! Well-the Bishop could retort unanswerably-" It is as good as any of 1 Paracelsus

158

"THE GRAND PERHAPS

your scepticism!" The Agnostic, the Atheist, and Indifferent are no safer from the pangs of doubt than the weakly Christian. How does the unbeliever know his unbelief will last?

"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,—

The grand Perhaps !"

A man throws off his early faith, discards his church-going, puts aside his Bible, his religious books, neglects prayer, and scoffs at what he once held precious beyond all else in the world. If he reads, thinks, observes at all, his mind will oscillate as a pendulum from one point to another, and he will be compelled to admit to his own heart at least

"All we have gained then by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,

For one of faith diversified by doubt."1

And if our doubt be sincere, and truth, and not self-will and perversity, be our motive power

"The more of doubt the stronger faith, I say,
If faith o'ercomes doubt." 2

The rejection of Christianity is too often due to a reckless spirit of trifling; a careless tampering with sacred things far enough removed from the only spirit which can excuse the "neglect of

1 Bishop Blougram s Apology ·

2 Ibid.

"DOUBT FINGERS AT EACH CREVICE" 159

the pearl while dredging for whelks and mudworms."1 "No inquiry," says Cardinal Newman,2 "comes to good which is not conducted under a deep sense of responsibility, and of the issues depending upon its determination." It is not enough to bring the intellect to bear on the question of religion, for its mere apprehension by the intellect will be of little service to the soul. Religion must be lived, not debated merely; and irreverent, ungrateful minds must be transformed by it before they are competent to discuss it.

Our torment now-a-days is unbelief. True the vast majority of unbelievers are very little concerned about the matter; yet if any one is in doubt concerning those things which involve his most precious interests, and takes no trouble to solve his perplexities, he must surely be the most miserable and unfair of men. "The cause

of unbelief is in the will," says St. Thomas, “but unbelief itself is in the intellect." Faith is a treasure of which we are in danger of being robbed. It is a poor thing to be vain of, that our most precious possession is stolen from us. Yet the greater part of those who have lost their faith, or have never possessed it, are so little concerned at their poverty that they treat the

1 See The Ring and the Book: "The Pope," 11. 1440-50. 2 Grammar of Assent, p. 241.

3 Summa, II.—II., Qu. x., Art. ii. 2.

NOT ALL DOUBTERS HONEST

160 matter as no more than a diversion of the intellect, a game at which they can exhibit their critical skill. Unbelief, therefore, is usually a great sin-the greatest of all sins, because it has its roots in rebellion against God, pride and perversity of will. How often do we hear young persons exclaim with Tennyson

་

"There is more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds"?

Yes, if the doubt be really honest, and if the creeds be merely professed with the lips, and do not touch the heart. But how many doubters in matters of religion are honest? It is so clever to discard our mother's faith as an old wife's fable-so smart to know so much more about worn-out creeds and discredited dogmas" than our father. And so, having taken, by dint of a few years' cramming, a good memory, and considerable perseverance a more or less valuable University degree, the faith which has sufficed for the brightest intellects of the world for nigh two thousand years is cast aside as an old and worthless garment, and naked and not ashamed stands the son of the age of science.

I have no desire to be unkind; my heart goes out towards such poor naked souls, and I long to introduce them to my spiritual clothier. If Robert Browning cannot cover their mental nakedness, I fear they are like the casuals in our