III.] THE NEW GOSPEL ANTITHEISTIC.

77

as unphilosophical as to insist on rejecting the evolutionary theory of the origin of the human species on the ground that it robs man of his nobility and dignity. If any one feels bound to praise and worship the Creator he is bound to invest the object of his worship with praiseworthy attributes. But a philosopher is not bound to do anything except to explain the facts." "

Mr. Morley's practical conclusion is, that sensible men will be content to be what St. Paul calls ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, “ without God in the world," and is thus expressed in a passage of his Rousseau :

"Rousseau urged that Voltaire robbed men of their only solace. What Voltaire really did urge was that the solace derived from the attribution of humanity and justice to the Supreme Being, and from the metaphysical account of evil, rests on too narrow a base either to cover the facts, or to be a true solace to any man who thinks and observes. He ought to have gone on, if it had only been possible in those times, to persuade his readers that there is no solace attainable, except that of an energetic fortitude." †

The Revolutionary religion, then, is devoid of any Theistic conception. And the place which God holds in the old Gospel is to be filled in the new by Man. The creed of the Revolution is, in point of fact, a kind of Positivism. "The coming modification of religion," Mr. Morley tells "" will undoubtedly rest upon the solidarity of mankind, as Comte said." And in the spirit of that philosopher † + he would have men "turn back to the history of their own kind, to the long chronicle of its manifold experiences, for an adequate system of life and an

us,

Miscellanies, vol. iii. p. 50.

||

inspiring social faith."*"Acquiescence in Naturalism," Mr. Morley praises as "wise and not inglorious." t "The theologian," he judges, "discourages men: the naturalist arouses them: he supplies them with the most powerful of motives for the energetic use of the most powerful of their endowments."‡ "The preacher of Naturalism replaces a futile vanity in being the end and object of creation, by a fruitful reverence for the supremacy of human reason." § In "Naturalism in art," we have one "note" of the Revolution. In "materialistic solutions in the science of man we have another. Mr. Morley admits "that it may be convenient for purposes of classification to divide a man into body and soul, even when we believe the soul to be only a function of the body;"** which is clearly his own opinion. The spirit, he holds, is annihilated" by death.†† He tells us that "the only means through which the basis of a true positivism can be firmly laid" is "to establish at the bottom of men's minds the habit of seeking explanations of all phenomena in experience, and building up from the beginning the great positive principle that we can only know phenomena, and can only

66

Miscellanies, vol. i. p. 220.

Diderot, vol. ii. p. 177.

| Ibid. vol. i. p. 8.

** Rousseau, vol. i. p. 81.

tt Miscellanies, vol. ii. p. 210.

† Ibid. vol. i. p. 179. § Ibid.

Ibid.

Elsewhere he speaks of death.

as "eternal sleep" (Miscellanies, vol. i. p. 35.)

III.] THE GREAT POSITIVE PRINCIPLE.

79

know them experientially."* Perhaps his fullest exposition of the Revolutionary doctrine on this important matter is conveyed in the following passage which, moreover, is well worth citing for its literary excellence :

Positivity is the cardinal condition of strength for times when theology lies in decay, and the abstractions which gradually replaced the older gods have in their turn ceased to satisfy the intelligence and mould the will. All competent persons agree that it is the first condition of the attainment of scientific truth. Nobody denies that men of action find in it the first law of successful achievement in the material order. Its varied but always superlative power in the region of aesthetics is only an object of recent recognition, though great work enough has been done in past ages by men whoze recognition was informal and inexpress. It is plain that, in the different classes of æsthetic manifestation there will be differences in objective shape and colour, corresponding to the varied limits and conditions of the matter with which the special art has to deal; but the critic may expect to find in all a profound unity of subjective impression, and that, the impression of a self-sustaining order and a self-sufficing harmony among all those faculties and parts and energies of universal life, which come within the idealising range of art. In other words, the characteristically modern inspiration is the inspiration of law. The regulated play of forces shows itself as fit to stir those profound emotional impulses which wake the artistic soul, as ever did the gracious or terrible gods of antique or middle times. There are glories in Turner's idealisation of the energies of matter, which are at least as nobly imaginative and elevated, in spite of the conspicuous absence of the human element in them, as the highest products of the artists who believed that their work was for the service and honour of a deity.

It is as mistaken to suppose that this conviction of the supremacy of a cold and self-sustained order in the universe is fatal to emotional expansion, as it would be to suppose it fatal to intellectual

*Miscellanies, vol. iii. p. 73.

curiosity. Experience has shown in the scientific sphere, that the gradual withdrawal of natural operations from the grasp of the imaginary volitions of imaginary beings has not tamed, but greatly stimulated and fertilised scientific curiosity as to the conditions of these operations. Why should it be otherwise in the æsthetic sphere? Why should all that part of our mental composition which responds to the beautiful and imaginative expression of real truths, be at once inflamed and satisfied by the thought that our whole lives, and all the movements of the universe, are the objects of the inexplicable caprice of Makers who are also Destroyers, and yet grow cold, apathetic, and unproductive, in the shadow of the belief that we can only know ourselves as part of the stupendous and inexorable succession of phenomenal conditions, moving according to laws that may be formulated positively, but not interpreted morally, to new destinies that are eternally unfathomable? Why should this conception of a coherent order, free from the arbitrary and presumptuous stamp of certain final causes, be less favourable, either to the ethical or æsthetic side of human nature, than the older conception of the regulation of the course of the great series by a multitude of intrinsically meaningless and purposeless volitions? The alertness of our sensations for all sources of outer beauty remains unimpaired. The old and lovely attitude of devout service does not pass away to leave vacancy, but is transformed into a yet more devout obligation and service towards creatures that have only their own fellowship and mutual ministry to lean upon; and if we miss something of the ancient solace of special and personal protection, the loss is not unworthily made good by the growth of an imperial sense of participation in the common movement and equal destination of eternal forces.

To have a mind penetrated with this spiritual persuasion, is to be in full possession of the highest strength that man can attain. It springs from a scientific and rounded interpretation of the facts of life, and is in a harmony, which freshly found truths only make more ample and elaborate, with all the conclusions of the intellect in every order. The active energies are not paralyzed by the possibilities of enfeebling doubt, nor the reason drawn down and stultified by apprehension lest its methods should discredit a document, or its inferences clash with a dogma, or its light flash unseasonably

on a mystery. There is none of the baleful distortion of hate, because evil and wrongdoing and darkness are acknowledged to be effects of causes, sums of conditions, terms in a series; they are to be brought to their end, or weakened and narrowed, by right action and endeavour, and this endeavour does not stagnate in antipathy, but concentrates itself in transfixing a cause. In no other condition of the spirit than this, in which firm acquiescence mingles with valorous effort, can a man be so sure of raising a calm gaze and an enduring brow to the cruelty of circumstance. The last appalling stroke of annihilation itself is measured with purest fortitude by one, whose religious contemplation dwells most habitually upon the sovereignty of obdurate laws in the vast revolving circle of physical forces, on the one hand, and, on the other, upon that moral order which the vision and pity of good men for their fellows, guiding the spontaneous energy of all men in strife with circumstance, have raised into a structure sublimer and more amazing than all the majesty of outer nature."*

"Our new creed," Mr. Morley modestly admits is "but rudimentary." Still, its main outlines are, perhaps, indicated with sufficient clearness in the passages which I have cited. At its present stage of development, indeed, it is affirmative chiefly in negation. "Whosoever will be saved," it proclaims, "must before all things reject the elder gods," to whom Mr. Morley will not so much as "offer a pinch of incense." Turn we to the ethics of the new religion.

Now, as a matter of fact, the morality of the old "Miscellanies, vol. i. p. 236. † Compromise, p. 167. Ibid. p. 195. So at p. 75: "To have been deprived of the faith of the old dispensation is the first condition of strenuous endeavour after the new."

G