Theological Essays/X

Mr. Combe’s Essay on the Physical Constitution of Man has, I am told, had an enormous circulation, both here and in Scotland. I cannot wonder at its success; nor do I regret it, though I might not easily find a book from the conclusions of which I more entirely dissent. It has, I think, brought the question of education and many other questions to the right issue. What is the constitution of man? We want to know that. Till we know it we cannot educate; we cannot do much to benefit the condition of men individually or socially. When we know it, our main business will be to ask what there is which has hindered men from being in conformity with their constitution; how they may be brought into conformity with it. That I understand to be Mr. Combe’s main principle, and I heartily assent to it. I do not think it is now for the first time announced. I believe men have been trying to act upon it. But I believe also that many causes have prevented us from stating it to ourselves consistently; that notions of education and reformation inconsistent with this have intruded ​themselves into our minds; that they are confusing us greatly; that any one who recalls us to this sound and orthodox doctrine is doing us a service. Mr. Combe, however, claims for himself an honour which did not belong to our ancestors. He says that they knew little or nothing of man’s physical state, of the laws of his body, of the condition under which he exists as a citizen of this earth. I am not inclined to dispute either the charge against them or the pretensions which he puts forth for himself. I have no doubt this was their special ignorance, and that it was the mother of a multitude of false theories and mischievous practices. I think God has given us great means of removing the primary error and its fruits, and that we are guilty in His sight if we do not use them.

But further, Mr. Combe assumes that this knowledge which we have attained respecting men’s physical condition is the only secure knowledge, the only knowledge upon which we can act. All other, he thinks,—all which our ancestors supposed they had,—is a mere collection of guesses. They did not agree about it themselves; we agree about it still less. How can we teach men guesses? How can we apply them to practice? When they are put into one scale, and ascertained laws into another, must not they kick the beam? Practically, therefore, even if we have ever so much hankering after these guesses,—ever so much of what we call Faith in them—we must leave them out of our calculation. And is it not probable that we shall find at last that we had the best possible right to leave them out; that, in fact, these physical laws explain them; that if we understand them, we understand the whole constitution of man?

​To these questions I answer distinctly: Whenever guesses are balanced against laws, guesses must kick the beam; if divines and moralists have nothing but guesses to produce, and Mr. Combe has laws, it is not a matter of doubt but of certainty that he will be the teacher of the world, and that they must make their way out of it as fast as they can. I admit, further, that there are a great many appearances in the history of the world and in our present position, which may, very naturally, lead Mr. Combe and thousands of others to the conclusion that divines and moralists are guessers and nothing else. Not a few of them have almost admitted that they have no certain ground to stand on. Many of those who do not, rest the proof that they can teach things which may and should be believed upon reasons which do not satisfy the understandings and consciences to which they are presented. The divisions of Christendom, which have increased, and are increasing, seem to make out the strongest primâ facie case in favour of Mr. Combe’s practical decision. If every other method of education is laid aside and his adopted, as the only one which States can sanction, or which is available for men universally, he and those who have joined with him in advocating it will be much less answerable for the result than we who have opposed him.

After what I have said in previous Essays, it would be great affectation to pretend that I have any doubt as to the final issue of that experiment. As I have throughout been tracing feelings and consciousnesses in men which point to some spiritual object, and which are uneasy, feverish, tormenting, precisely because that which they seek they cannot find, and because some faint, obscure image is offered to them as the substitute ​for it;—as I have maintained that these feelings and consciousnesses are not less active now than in former days, but perhaps more active,—active in quarters where the influence of Church doctrines is utterly repudiated;—as I have differed from my brethren chiefly in confessing the wider extent of these consciousnesses, the evidence which proves them to exist where we should be inclined to ignore them;—as I have been reasoning with those who would build a new scheme of divinity on these very consciousnesses,—one which is, they say, to be universal, and to displace our exclusive doctrines;—it cannot be very necessary that I should enter at large into my reasons for not supposing that we can provide for all the necessities of human beings, or set them altogether right, by treating them as creatures possessing a stomach, a liver, and a brain. It is, of course, an obvious and familiar theory, that these consciousnesses are secreted in the stomach, the liver, and the brain; I am quite willing that any one should hold that theory, and should try to work it out. I believe that in the course of his workings he will do much good; that he will continually observe and may enable us to observe, the close connection of these bodily functions with the thoughts and moral state of human beings,—their action and re-action upon each other. I believe that the more the facts which establish that relation and interdependence are noted, the better; that the more they are meditated upon, the better. And this because the thorough patient observation and meditation of them will, I am sure, set right a great many crude notions of ours, and will also convince the inquirer that his scheme must fail; that when he has got all priests and traditions out of his way, he is only beginning the process of ​clearance which is needful for his success; that he must get the thoughts and convictions which have helped most to raise and civilise human society out of his way also; that if he does not, they will perplex and torment him continually. And I do tell him plainly and confidently, that, tolerant man as he is,—honestly tolerant, I have no doubt, and eager to rid the earth of us, because we are intolerant,—he will not be able to expel an infinite number of religious experiences, fancies, notions, by medicines allopathic or homœopathic; he will be obliged to resort to older, more tried methods. He must—I would say it to him in the lowest whisper—but I must say it, and he and the world will find whether I am right,—he must persecute. The inconvenient consciousnesses which do not let the physical constitution act freely and healthily, will have to be prohibited. And since it is not easy to reach them by decrees and swords, the expression of them must be checked, because it will be found that they are just as infectious as scarlet fever or smallpox. I do not speak these words lightly or inconsiderately. The history of persecution by all sects, governments, churches, in all families and neighbourhoods, seems to me most clearly to show that it originates with a desire (often an honest desire,—it was so in Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, when they ordered the deaths of Ignatius and Polycarp) to put down that which is found to interfere seriously, either with the quiet of society, or with the comfortable working of some system or theory which we have convinced ourselves is salutary and needful for human beings. That, I think, is an account of it which includes all cases, the particular motives and influences being of course most various. And I cannot under​stand how those who think that there are certain common tendencies in all men—call them physical or what you please—should suppose themselves free from this tendency, which experience shows to be so general; or, at least, why the world should suppose them free from it. I rather think the danger of their yielding to it is greatly increased by their apparent conviction that it never can assail them.

I do not, however, dream that warnings of this kind will deter any one from reducing Mr. Combe’s theory to practice; most certainly, I do not wish that they should hinder any one from giving it the most serious consideration. There are some eminent moralists among ourselves, formed in the school of Butler, who will be inclined to dismiss it rather superciliously, on another ground. They will exclaim, "Why, are Mr. Combe’s disciples really ignorant that a much closer observer and deeper thinker than he is has been in this field before him, and has shown us clearly and satisfactorily that there is a moral constitution in which all human beings are sharers? Have they never heard that Butler has proved social affections to be an integral part of our human nature,—a far more essential part of it than the senses or the power of locomotion? Do they not know that he has proved self-love and resentment to have a moral basis? Have they forgotten the evidence by which he has shown that the Conscience is not only one of the faculties of our nature, but the lordly, sovereign faculty, to which all owe obedience? Will. any one say that the processes by which these positions have been demonstrated are less legitimate or less scientific than those to which Mr, Combe has had recourse?"

I, at least, feel no temptation to maintain that ​paradox. I should find it difficult to say how much I honour Butler, or how much I owe to his discourses on Human Nature. But I cannot help perceiving that there are causes which give the exclusive believers in a physical constitution immeasurably inferior as they may be to him,—a very decided advantage over him. Though Physiology may be even yet in its infancy, the physiologist speaks confidently of some facts and laws which he has ascertained. As Butler is commonly interpreted, he assumes all moral principles to depend merely on probable evidence. Some of his disciples seem to look upon that as his most characteristic doctrine.

Again, there are certain diseases of the body which can without any hesitation be traced to certain conditions of the atmosphere, which are the effects of bad drainage, neglect of ventilation, want of cleanliness; others, which can be directly referred to drunkenness or profligacy. The former are positive evils, directly curable by physical remedies; the latter, which we commonly call moral, might be avoided by a man who noticed how much of sickness, pain, poverty, they produced. But when our social affections and our self- love are diseased, it does not appear that Butler has pointed out any satisfactory method of setting them right, of restoring their healthy activity. He shows that they are meant for us, and that they are meant to be in harmony; but suppose they are dormant, how are they to be awakened? suppose they are in discord, what is to reconcile them? Is it not likely that a man will say, "Mr. Combe helps me to a certain extent. He shows me some influences which may seriously derange the economy of my individual life and of the world. He tells me how I may avoid those influences. Till ​you can give me some aid that is more efficient, I must avail myself of his." The student of Butler’s doctrine on the Conscience is often forced even more painfully upon this conclusion. For he will say to himself, "My conscience ought, you say, to be a king. But it is not a king. It is a captive. How shall it be raised to its throne? And when it has got a temporary ascendency, can I trust it? Does not Butler himself admit the possibility of superstition acting upon it, and deranging its decisions? Is that a slight exception to a general maxim? Does not all history show that the decrees of this great ruler may be made contradictory, monstrous, destructive, by this disturbing force, which Butler notices, but hardly deigns to take account of?"

And thirdly, it must not be forgotten that so intelligent and ardent (I dare not say, so excessive) an admirer of Butler as Sir James Mackintosh, has complained that while he is bold and clear in asserting the fact of a conscience and its right to dominion, he is timid and hesitating in affirming what it is, and how its prerogatives are to be exercised. Is not this remark strictly true? Is not every practical student of Butler obliged to put the question to himself, "This faculty belongs to my nature, then—What to me? Is the conscience mine? Do I govern it, or does it govern me?" The school-doctor may dismiss this difficulty with great indifference. For the living man everything is involved in the answer to it.

I have taken Butler as the highest specimen and best-known representative of a noble class of thinkers and writers, to whom I believe we are under the greatest obligations; who have brought to light truths which we could never less afford than now to lose sight of, but ​who are in danger of being utterly supplanted by a race of mere physical philosophers, or of mere spiritualists, if we are not prepared to examine in what relation they stand to both. The great facts to which Butler bore so brave a witness cannot, I think, be explained while we regard them merely as facts in man’s nature. The more we look into them, the more they imply an ascent out of that nature,—a necessity in man to acknowledge that which is above it, that which is above himself. When we take in this necessity, as implied in our constitution, the difficulties which beset the most full and masterly explanation that can be given of these facts gradually disappear. I will endeavour to explain what I mean, and to offer one more evidence that Theology is the protector and basis of Morality and Humanity.

The word Regeneration occupies a prominent place in all summaries of Christian Theology. It seems to many who hear it, and to many who use it, as if it imported a principle most inconsistent with that which Butler has defended in his Sermons on Human Nature. "If a man requires to be regenerated," they ask, "before he can be that which God requires him to be, that upon which He looks with approbation, how can human nature in itself be the good thing which Butler would have us believe that it is? Must he not be at variance with the Scriptures, at variance with the testimony of our hearts, which confess the Scriptures to be true, and ourselves to be evil?" I am always glad when I hear a person who has really a reverence both for our great moralist and for the Scriptures, asking this question: it is nearly certain to lead him into a clearer apprehension of both. I am always sorry when I hear a person asking it who wishes to prove Butler wrong; it is nearly certain that he will be confirmed in the notion that he himself ​is perfectly right, and that in his eagerness not to twist the Bible into conformity with Butler’s notions he will twist it into conformity with his own.

Regeneration may mean the substitution, in certain persons, at some given moment (say in the ordinance of Baptism, or at a crisis called conversion), of a nature specially bestowed upon them, for the one which belongs to them as ordinary human beings. No doubt it has this meaning for a great many Protestants, as well as Romanists; no doubt this meaning mixes with another, in some of the purest and noblest hearts to be found in either communion. Such a doctrine of regeneration, I apprehend, is quite incompatible with the doctrine of a moralist who supposes the human constitution—that which belongs to us not as special individuals different from the race, but as members of the race—to be good, and any violations of it and transgressions of it to be evil. There is no possibility, so far as I see, of bringing these two schemes of thought into reconciliation; they are directly, essentially antipathic. For, to suppose that they can coexist in any human heart or intellect, merely because one has the label "moral," and the other "theological," is to suppose that heart or intellect a mere shop or warehouse of opinions, in which no living processes are going on, but where goods are kept to meet the inconsistent demands of different markets.

Regeneration may mean the renovation or restitution of that which has fallen into decay, the repair of an edifice according to the ground-plan and design of the original architect. This meaning is in accordance with the common usage of language. It is more like the sense which either a popular writer or a philologer would put upon the word, supposing he did not know that it had acquired another. And it is a signification ​which cleaves to the word in the discourses of the most religious people,—one which Romanists and Protestants adopt consciously in the way of argument, and fall into unconsciously in their prayers and exhortations. It is obvious that such a signification need not in the least contradict Butler’s idea of a human constitution, but might remarkably illustrate it. There being a certain constitution intended for man by his Creator, and certain influences about him or within him which weakened or undermined it, the author of the work might look lovingly upon it, and devise certain measures for counteracting those influences, and bringing it forth in its fulness and order. Some such theological complement of his moral system, we may suppose, gave coherency and satisfaction to the mind of Butler himself.

But there is a great difficulty in our way, if we seek to put this idea of Regeneration in the place of the one which I set forth previously. Such a regeneration may be intended for us; there may be processes leading some men, even leading the world, towards it; but are there any signs that it has been accomplished? Is the order, in this sense, restored? Can even good men be said in this sense to have recovered what the race had lost? Theologians therefore dwell on a restitution or reformation or complete renewal of the divine image in individuals, as an object of hope. Many of them connect with that a restitution and reformation of the earth and of the order of human society. But they contend as earnestly that there is something already obtained by Christ for those who will receive it. This something, they say, is very real; we are partakers of it now, not to be partakers of it in some future ideal state; it is the necessary beginning of and preparation for any such state. And ​the words "birth" and "generation" which they find recurring so continually in Scripture, do, they contend, suggest another thought than that which the restoration of an edifice suggests. They must indicate a life communicated from a Father. A life of this kind they affirm they have received; it is renewed every hour; they cannot possibly wait for it till the world recovers its primitive glory; they want it as a pledge that they shall not sink into utter debasement.

Those who use this language refer to the 3d chapter of St. John’s Gospel as containing the full interpretation of the doctrine which is so unspeakably precious to them. All Christians admit that this is the passage by which their opinions respecting Regeneration must be tested. No humble reader, I suppose, thinks that he has fathomed the depth of the discourse with Nicodemus. Every humble reader probably feels that he has caught glimpses of light from it which he would not exchange for the most costly treasures of the world. He perceives from the very letter of the Evangelist that the birth is from above; that a Divine Spirit is the author of it; that it is the birth of a spirit; that it is the condition of entering a kingdom ; that it has something to do with Baptism. He suspects that the latter part of the conversation—concerning earthly things and heavenly things, the Son of man who came down from Heaven and is in Heaven, the serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness, the love of God to the world in sending His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life; the light which is come into the world, the condemnation which consists in loving the darkness,—cannot be separated from the former part. But he is bewildered ​by the number of different opinions that present themselves to him respecting the relation which the portions of this truth, as our Lord sets it forth, bear to each other. "How comes the external rite of baptism," he inquires, "to be so linked with an in- ward operation? What has a kingdom to do with a new life? Is it a future state that is denoted by the term Heaven; or if not, what is it? How is the Son of man said to be in this Heaven, even while He is upon earth? Why should the exaltation of the Son of man upon the cross be referred to in this connection, all-important as it may be in reference to the doctrine of redemption, or the expiation for sins? Why is God’s love to the world brought into a passage which seems to speak expressly of the condition of those who are separated from the world? Is not the condemnation of men this, that they do not partake of this divine and spiritual birth? Why is it declared to be that they love darkness rather than light?"

All our disagreements, intellectually considered, arise from the answers which are given to these questions. Each of us is disposed to fix upon some one of our Lord’s statements, as that to which he shall refer all the rest. If we desire to have our thoughts orderly, not loose and incoherent, not mere qualifications or contradictions one of another, there must be a centre round which they revolve. But it is unspeakably important that we should not choose this centre, and so create a system for ourselves; but that we should find it. Then we may find also what are the orbits and interdependencies of the bodies which it illuminates. Will any one say that I am wrong if I affirm that God Himself is the centre here; that the love with which He loved the world is that ​to which our Lord is leading us; that if we learn from Him what that love is, what it has designed, what it has accomplished, we shall be in a better condition to apprehend all that He is teaching us respecting the birth from above?

Starting from this point, then, it seems to me- that this love is declared to have manifested itself in setting forth the only-begotten Son, not merely as the author of forgiveness, but as the very ground and source of man’s eternal life. Looking up to the cross as the exhibition of God’s love—as the exhibition of the true and perfect Man,—the man does not perish by the bite of that serpent which is continually stinging him, that spirit of selfishness which is continually separating him from God and from his brethren. He sees that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and which in the Divine Word is manifested to us; he becomes an inheritor of it. But his perception does not make the fact which he perceives. The Son of man, who is one with men and one with God, who is in Heaven, in the presence of God, whilst He is walking on earth, has come down to establish the kingdom of Heaven upon earth, to unite earth and heaven in Himself. He has come to claim men as spiritual beings, capable of this spiritual life, inheritors of this spiritual kingdom. Baptism declares this to be their proper and divine constitution in Christ. All who receive it claim the kingdom which God has declared to be theirs. They take up their rights as spiritual beings. He bestows His Spirit upon them that they may enjoy these rights; that they may be as much born into the light of Heaven, into the light of God’s countenance, as the child is born out of the womb into the light of the sun, That countenance is ​shining upon them, the Spirit is with them to open their eyes, that they may take in the light of it. And this is the condemnation, and this will be the only condemnation, that they do not come to it, that they shut the eyes of their spirit to it, that they love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.

We have considered three views of Regeneration, each of which was plausible, each of which had arguments from Scripture and arguments from experience to allege on its behalf. The first of them was directly opposed to Butler’s doctrine of a moral constitution for man. The second was compatible with it, but scarcely accorded with the exact language of Scripture. The third promised something like a kingdom or constitution to man hereafter, but seemed to make the existence of a spiritual society at present rather an anomaly and an exception among human societies. If we may take Christ’s own exposition, if we may assume Him to be the Regenerator of humanity, a light seems to fall on all these different aspects of the theological doctrine; we need not despair of . their being reconciled. And that same light enables us to remove the practical obstacles which hinder the application, even the acceptance, of Butler’s ethical principle.

First, that great and serious objection of his affectionate critic, Sir James Mackintosh, is taken away. The name Conscience would seem to import, not a power which rules in us, but rather our perception and recognition of some power very near to us, which has a claim on our obedience, I think this interpretation of the word is fully borne out by the most familiar, and at the same time by the most serious and thoughtful usage of it. The most conscientious man does not ​speak of his conscience as giving him a law; he speaks of it as confessing a law which he dares not violate. No one, I believe, felt this more strongly than Butler. Again and again one perceives how much it penetrated his whole mind. If the individual conscience undertakes to lay down laws of its own, his idea of a human constitution,—that is, of a law or order for all human beings,—is absolutely set at nought. And yet he was forced to say that in our nature conscience is the lordly faculty, the one entitled to speak and to be obeyed. But if I am entitled to say, "There is a Lord over my inner man to whom I am bound, apart from whom I cannot exercise the functions which belong to me as a man, according to the law of my being," conscience can be restored to its simple and natural signification; it does not demand sovereignty, but pays homage. And since it is the witness of His authority who governs all the faculties and energies of man—since it claims their service for Him, since it testifies of every act of disobedience done by any of them to Him,—it does occupy that position relatively to all of them which Butler has assigned it. They are all out of order when they do not listen to its voice; they are all in harmony when its suggestions are heeded. It may in the most true sense be said, that we are only in our natural, that is to say, in our orderly and reason- able state, when everything within us is preserving its subordination to its righteous ruler. It can be said with equal truth,—and one assertion illustrates instead of contradicting the other,—that naturally, that is to say, when we follow our own inclination, when we set up to govern ourselves, and forget that there is a super- natural government established within us, we become disorganised and bestial.

​The habits of Butler’s time, perhaps, did not allow him to use this language. Hence that hesitation and timidity which Mackintosh so livingly and admirably describes. We may see in it the shrinking of a reverent thinker when he approaches an awful truth, interwoven with his own being, which he is not able distinctly to express. But what was reverence in him, would be, it seems to me, cowardice in us. We have been driven forward into a new position, in which we must either grasp a higher truth, or let the one go which he vindicated. I feel that I am not confessing Christ before men, that I am ashamed of Him and of His words, if I do not say that it is of Him my conscience speaks, that I am under His government, in His kingdom. Nor dare I hide from any man the good news that he, too, is a subject of this kingdom, that the Regenerator of humanity is his Lord and Master, or the warning that if he chooses another condition than this, he is declaring war with his Creator, with his fellows, and with himself.

Next, if this truth be accepted, Butler’s honest admission respecting the possible effects of superstition in perverting the decrees of the conscience will no longer be fatal to his principle. Till the true Lord of the conscience has made Himself known to it, of necessity it must go about seeking rest and finding none. Every false king will assume dominion over it; as it bows to the impostor, it will become beclouded in its judgments ; the more it tries to regulate its vassals, the more mischief it will do them, the more cruel they will feel its tyranny. It may prescribe those very outrages on physical rules which I said would oblige the disciples of Mr. Combe to coerce it. It may prescribe outrages on the social affections, and so may drive the disciple ​of Butler, with all his reverence for its authority, to coerce it. Butler confesses the necessity; the appeals which he makes to our fears when he most desires to convince us that we have in ourselves a love of right for its own sake, are an acknowledgment of it. But if we believe that Christ is the ruler of this conscience, how beautifully that distinction of St. Paul between the flesh and the spirit, to which I alluded in my last Essay, would interpret the mystery of His divine government: what a solid basis would it lay for ethics and practical education! All the actual punishments which overtake wrong-doing, all the fears of punishment which visit the wrong-doer, are needful for that evil nature in us, which is always seeking to break loose from law, and which would reduce us into mere animals. But the Christ, the true bridegroom of man’s spirit, is ever drawing it towards Himself,—is holding out to it freedom from evil and the knowledge of Himself as its high reward. Owning Him, the man rises out of dark superstitions, out of immoral practices; he recognises the fitness of all God’s arrangements in the physical and moral world; he claims for the body as well as the soul a redemption from all which corrupts and degrades it.

The full bearing of the principle that Christ is the tegenerator of humanity upon Butler’s view of the human constitution is not, however, understood till we have sought to apply his doctrine that we are essentially social beings just as much as we are individuals. I say, to apply it: for nothing is easier than to state the maxim; it may sound to us like the veriest commonplace. But when we have tried, in any particular ease, to "bid self-love and social be the same," we have, probably, found that we could utter that command, ​just as we could call spirits from the vasty deep; but that self-love and social did not do as they were bid, any more than the spirits came when they were called. The theoretical commonplace then becomes the hardest of all practical paradoxes ; and yet in its very difficulty there lay the strongest witness of its truth. I am certain that I have no self that I can love,—nay, that self must be an object of intense torment and hatred to me, unless I am the member of a body. I am certain that I cannot be the member of a body consisting of persons, unless J am myself a person; that I cannot love another person unless I do also love myself. Bring in the belief of the one Head and Brother of each man the one Centre of Society, and that great moral contradiction is felt to be a great moral necessity,—one which we can welcome and rejoice in, and act upon.

"But after all," the disciples of Mr, Combe will say, "you have not proved these positions. They have not the certainty which belongs to our statements respecting the physical constitution of man. Butler, in his 'Analogy,' fairly admits that he is dealing only with probabilities and chances. That is affirmed by his disciples, his religious disciples especially, to be his great merit. You may pretend that you have given certainty to what was doubtful in his speculations by adding to them the words of Scripture. But you have only given us your interpretation of those words, which is surely not entitled to any great weight. It is but a guess sustaining a guess.”

Now, I am bound to own that Butler did use words addressed to the loose thinkers of his day—the men of wit and fashion about town—which seemed to confound probabilities with chances, to suggest the thought that we ought to calculate the odds for and ​against the truth of a religious principle, and that, if there is a slight balance in favour of it,—nay, none at all—we are to throw in the danger of rejecting it, and so force ourselves into the adoption of it. I mourn over these words as I read them, feeling how much a great and good man sacrificed of what was dearest to his heart for the sake of an argumentum ad hominem, which, after all, was not an argument that ever reached the conscience of any man, or that could do so, if the conscience is what Butler affirms it to be. But I have mourned more deeply when I have seen these passages culled out by persons of great acuteness,—acuteness cultivated in an Aristotelian, not a Baconian, school,—and used, first, as a representation of the whole plan and purpose of Butler, secondly, as the basis of a theory which was to save English divines from the necessity of demanding either the dogmatical certainty which Rome promises to her children, or the scientific certainty which Protestants seem to be craving for. Thanks be to God, that house of cards has fallen down. The ingenious architect has himself undertaken to expose its instability.^[1] How much better for him that he should be seeking even such a temporary standing-ground,—sandy and shifting as I believe it to be,—as Rome can afford him, till he finds an eternal rock, neither of authority nor of probabilities, on which he and the Church may rest; —nay, how much better that one in whose heart there is, I am convinced, a real, even a passionate love of Truth, should pass through all imaginable subtleties, distortions, impostures of the intellect, in ​his way to it, than that he should be content with a scheme which shuts out Truth from men as an unattainable, scarcely desirable treasure! How much better for us that we should incur the bitterest hatred and scorn, expressed with the most admirable cleverness and wit, of one who I yet doubt not is capable of all generous affections, than that we should be saddled with a theory which was leading numbers of young men to think that the main, perhaps the only, reason for believing in a God is that, if there should happen to be one, He might send them to hell for denying His existence. I am sure that the thought of tempting any to such an opinion would have been horrible to this writer at all times. I have dared to put it into words that it may awaken horror in the minds of those who are left among us, and may lead them to reflect on the infinite peril of resorting to plausible arguments for Faith, which may prove to be hiding- places for Atheism.

But to return to Butler. I entirely deny that either these conclusions of his disciples, or his own inconvenient statements in some passages of the "Analogy," represent his design or his method as it comes out in the first part of that great work, or in the "Sermons at the Rolls Court." On the contrary, he is pursuing precisely the same end as the physical inquirer, by an inductive process as nearly as possible the counterpart of his. He is as unwilling to accept hasty generalisations as every disciple of Bacon must be; he is as ready to look at facts and test them; he seeks to be delivered from vague hypotheses, that he may feel the ground upon which he is actually standing. What more can Mr. Combe do? He knows perfectly well that he cannot lay down conclusions ​which shut out further inquiry; that he would be a very mischievous man if he could; that he cannot have certainty in this sense; that he disclaims it. He must collect facts respecting the condition of men in different circumstances; respecting their states of health and of disease; respecting the treatment, mischievous or beneficial, which has been applied to them. Such facts must not be merely observed, loosely and carelessly: they must be submitted to a series of searching experiments. There must be experiments on the bodily frame which illustrate those on the influences to which it is exposed; the anatomist, physiologist, chemist, geologist, must each contribute his quota of observation and thought to the confirmation or correction of the other. Then, after many theories have been accepted and thrown aside, some simple law is brought to light, the great test of which is its power of explaining facts, new and old; so far as it can do that, it sustains its character; when it fails, it is not discarded, but it is supposed that some deeper, more comprehensive law is yet to reward the toil and humility of the inquirer. What can be better or truer than investigations of this kind? What duty can be greater than to avail ourselves of the results to which they lead? But the more we study them and admire them, the less shall we adopt these loose expressions which represent this evidence as something altogether different in kind from that which is open to moralists and divines, if they like to make use of it.

They may scorn facts; they may cling to anticipations and definitions which they bring with them, just as all the old physical students did; but if they take that course, they depart from all the precedents of the wisest of their predecessors; they depart still ​more from the precedents of Scripture. For the Bible is a book in which God is teaching His creatures induction, by setting them an example of it. Nothing is there taught as it is in the Koran, by mere decree; everything by life and experiment. It offers us the severest tests of its own credibility. It meets the facts of human life and the difficulties of human speculation; it undertakes to interpret the one, to show us the source of the other. If we accept Revelation for this purpose, we do not put our own sense upon it; we go to it in our great necessity, to see whether it can give us the help we need; we expect that if it is God’s, He will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. If that which was a presumption before—a presumption which I could not disown without disowning all my own processes of thought and judgment, but yet which I did not dare to pronounce certain, because I was afraid lest some idiosyncrasy of my mind should, in spite of my watchfulness, have mixed itself with these processes and falsified the result,—becomes clothed with a new force, illuminated with a new brightness; if it comes back to me, stripped of all that was merely my own, and yet I recognise it as more mine than ever,—I do not know what the reason can ask for besides, to quiet it, and satisfy it. That, and more than that, I think the belief of Christ as the Regenerator of humanity does for all the questionings and demands of human suffering beings; that, and more than that, for the speculations of the faithful moral student who has been painfully tracing the vestiges of an order and constitution in the thoughts and doings of himself and his fellow-creatures.

What I say is to be tested by life, and cannot be proved by words. But since Mr. Combe and his ​followers are rightly and naturally disturbed by the discords and contradictions of Christian divines—by their practical contradictions even more than their speculative,—by the evil acts and courses which have seemed to follow from their dogmas, and by their eagerness to enforce them,—I shall draw the evidence I produce from this source; I shall maintain that these can be distinctly traced to the unbelief of Christians in the fact that Christ is the Regenerator of man; that this faith, had they maintained it, must have made their conduct and their influence on society very different from what they have actually been.

1. It may sound like the strangest of all charges against Romanists to say that they have undervalued the Church; that they have thought meanly of it in relation to God and to man, of its work and of its powers. But I do believe that that is the very charge which we have most right to bring against both Latins and Greeks; it is for this sin, I hold, that they have been called, and will be called, to give account before the tribunal of Him who has committed to them their stewardship, and before those for whose use they have received it. Do you say, “They have done their very utmost to exalt the Church; they have boasted of it as divine; they have said that there was nothing in earth or heaven that it could not bind and loose; they have, till men became too enlightened to believe them, reduced their doctrine to practice, and made the priest the ruler over the spirits, souls, bodies of men?” Even so; your words are true; they establish my position. The Apostles, instead of doing their utmost to exalt the Church, did nothing. They spoke of the Church as being in God the father and in Jesus Christ; they told those who belonged to it that they were created ​and redeemed in Christ Jesus and called; they bade them remember that they had no worth or greatness of their own; they said that they were to be witnesses to all men of the redemption which had been wrought out for them by the love of God, through the sacrifice of Christ; they said that in proportion as they renounced idols and devil-worship and parties, and claimed the dignity of spiritual creatures, and acted as if they were sons of God and members one of another, they would be such witnesses. How could men who had this position make one for themselves? What had men who could exercise such a mighty power over the world to do with asserting or vaunting of it? No Jew or heathen believed that they had it; but they believed it, and acted as if they did. When the Church’s faith in its divine birth, in its regenerate position, in God’s calling, was growing weak, then it must begin to say how very divine it is. When it no longer understands itself to be in Christ, to be by its very nature and constitution spiritual, it must begin to assert that a certain mysterious spirituality. had been conferred upon it, apart from Christ; it must suppose that He had delegated His functions to those who should have been the witnesses that He was continually and in person exercising them; at last the notion must be adopted, and be regarded as necessary to the unity of the Church, that one person was representing Him in His absence, was His commissioned Vicar.

Every pretension of the Church which has been felt as tyrannical and intolerable by the inward conscience and reason of mankind, has arisen from this low and imperfect view of its own position. It must force men’s assent to opinions, because it did not ​believe that it had power to elevate them into a knowledge of the Truth; it must hold down human thoughts and energies, because it did not believe that it had a commission to awaken and emancipate them; it must be the worst of all civil rulers, the most miserable of policemen, the most despicable of intriguers, because it did not feel that the God of Truth was with it; that it might make men citizens of His kingdom; might raise them out of the inner corruptions, the evil results of which troubled the civil ruler—demanded the aid of the policeman; that it might deliver people and their rulers from the habit of lying one to another.^[2]

But the Church has done—all honest modern historians, infidel as well as Protestant, confess it—other works than these. However strange it may be to say that, having committed all these abominations, she has yet been a civiliser and educator of human beings; has given a new principle to society; has helped, at least, to break the chains of the serf; has made the new world quite unlike the old; this has been said, and must be said. Those who cannot bear the inconsistency cannot bear history. If they want it to utter either fact without the other, they must write it afresh; it is not what God has written. Both facts must be explained in some way. If I find that men who have acted in the faith of God, having regenerated the world in Christ, and who have thought themselves called, as Churchmen, to proclaim that fact and bear testimony to it by their lives, have been the great instruments of good to the world,—and if I find that men—possibly ​these very men at some other period of their lives, or at the very same period—who have acted on the opposite hypothesis, who have behaved as if it was their business to make human beings something else than God has made them, have produced all manner of mischief and confusion,—I have a right to say that my explanation is not altogether unreasonable.

2. But Protestants have said,—Englishmen especially have said with great energy:—The habit of magnifying the Church, which Romanists, and Greeks also, though not perhaps in an equal degree, have indulged in, has been utterly injurious to ordinary morality and human life, because the State and civil order, and ultimately, domestic order, have been disparaged, for the sake of glorifying it,—for the sake of maintaining a certain spiritual or ideal life, which is supposed to be the most truly Christian. Undoubtedly all this has happened; the complaint has the best possible foundation. And why has this been so? Because Romanists and Greeks, whatever they have professed, have not believed that Christ came into the world to regenerate all human society, all the forms of life,—all civil order, all domestic relationships;—because they have not really confessed that, when He took human flesh, and ate common food, and sat at the marriage feast, He declared these to be connected with Him, to have a divine, eternal, spiritual basis, and not to lose that character because they are connected with the earth and the body. A secret Manicheism has been infecting the practice of the Church, while she has denounced the heresy in terms; and that Manicheism has gained strength, and must gain strength every hour, till the idea of a regenerated humanity supersedes and extinguishes it. You may try other ​expedients, and you will try them in vain. The office of the magistrate will be scorned as secular, marriage will not be held to be honourable nor the bed undefiled, till neither king, father, mother, wife nor child, are loved more than Christ, till all are honoured and loved, because He is acknowledged as the bond of their union. What, then, are Protestants doing to maintain that which it is the peculiar glory of Protestantism to maintain, when they deny the renewal and regeneration of society in Christ; when they insist that we may not claim for our children the glory and privilege of the new birth, of being members of Christ; that this is the special distinction of a few persons who have been brought to know that they possess it? How can they defend the honour of kinghood or fatherhood, or of conjugal life, against Romanists, while they surrender their true position for so feeble a one?

3. And thus I am brought back to Mr. Combe and the Physical Constitution of Man. "That has been very often disparaged by Churchmen; the body has been spoken of contemptuously by them; health and cleanliness have been treated as vulgar things." Assuredly—to our shame be it spoken—it has been even SO. And why? Because we have forgotten that Christ took a human body, and spent the greater part of His time on earth in healing the sicknesses of it; because we have not confessed that the body and the earth are as much redeemed and regenerated by Him as our spirits, or intellectual powers; because we have not confessed the meaning and power of the Resurrection. A man who fully believes in Christ's Regeneration must regard every physical study as a sacred study—physiology as the most sacred of all; must desire that they should be pursued manfully and ​fearlessly, with no other check than that which every true student voluntarily submits to,—the check upon his own pride and impatience,—that restraint which tends to the highest freedom, which every scientific man covets, that he may be a true discoverer of God's laws, and a benefactor to his brethren. We ought to feel that all God's judgments by fever and cholera are judgments for neglect of His physical laws, but that they will not be obeyed till men obey His moral laws, by ceasing to live to themselves, by feeling that it is their business to care for their fellows and for the earth.

4. An able and benevolent man^[3] has complained that we have been talking and arguing about Baptismal Regeneration, while our brethren of the working classes are discussing the question whether there is a God. He means to intimate that we know next to nothing of what is going on in their minds, that we are quarrelling about our technicalities, while they are occupied with first principles. I feel the truth of much of the charge, and desire to take it home to myself. There is a sad chasm between us and them; the cause is all too well indicated by this remonstrance. But I cannot admit that we are discussing theological technicalities when we are talking about Regeneration; I believe we are discussing the most radical principle of human life. I cannot admit that the working classes are strangers to the word Re​generation, or to controversies about it; it is one of their favourite words; they are continually thinking about plans of social Regeneration. I cannot believe, finally, that they will ever come to the settlement of that primary question, whether they have a God to believe in and worship, till they are taught whether He has done anything, or is doing anything, for their Regeneration.

Our fault, I conceive, is, not that we have spoken too much on this great subject, not that we have been too earnest in asserting that God has regenerated us, and has given us a simple sign and pledge that He has done so, but that we have not made the people under- stand, because we have not understood ourselves, that we were needing such a Regeneration as they want and feel that they want,—a social as well as an individual Regeneration. If we did see our way to tell them this; to explain that we regard Christ as the Restorer of Humanity to its true and proper condition; as the King of kings, and Lord of lords; as the Head and bond of a universal brotherhood; as the righteous Judge and Punisher of all that violate their relations to each other, and set up self in opposition to society;—I think we might, in time, bring some of them to feel that the Church was their friend and deliverer, not as they now, with great excuse, consider it, the bitterest of their foes.

Let any one, however, who shall determine to speak and act on this principle, fully count the cost, and determine with himself whether he is ready to incur it. Let him be sure that he must offend all parties, without a single exception. He is a silly dreamer if he fancies that he shall conciliate High Churchmen because he defends Baptismal Regeneration, or Low ​Churchmen because he says that faith in Christ as the Redeemer and Regenerator is the ground of all right Christian action. He must offend priests, monarchs, nobles, for he must tell them they have sinned against Christ, who has appointed them to take care of His sheep. He must offend those who denounce priests, monarchs, and nobles, because he recognises their appointment, and does not conceive that the Church, being a brotherhood, is therefore a democracy. will displease those who say that you must reform the individual before you reform Society, for he declares that Christ is the Reformer of both, and that the individual who claims any relation to Him must own himself the member of a society. He must displease those who talk of reforming Society as the only way of reforming the individual, because they understand by the Reformation of Society the alteration of its circumstances, not the assertion of a spiritual root and ground of it. He must count upon the hostility of those who wish to keep things as they are, and who dread change lest the whole social fabric should fall to pieces, because he is certain that it will fall to pieces, unless Christ, who sacrificed Himself, is acknowledged as its foundation, and unless all maxims and practices, religious, political, commercial, which assume another and contrary foundation to this, are abjured and cast aside as anti-social, immoral, destructive. He must count upon the active opposition or profound contempt of the whole new school of philosophers and reformers, because their greeting to each other is, "Christ is not risen"; their message to the tyrants and wrong-doers of the earth is, "You need not fear the wrath of Him that sitteth upon the throne, or of the Lamb"; their gospel to the prisoners in Neapolitan or Roman dun​geons, "The deliverer of captives has not come; it is a figment of the priests that there is such a one." Whereas, his only hope of that which shall be lies in his acknowledgment of that which has been and is. His assurance that the bands of death and hell have been loosed is his only ground for confidence that they will be loosed; his certainty that Christ is the Judge of the earth is his only reason for believing that it will be one day purged of all its oppressors; his trust that the King has actually been one of the sufferers, and the chief of them, is his warrant for declaring that the earth shall not cover the blood of any of her slain,—that what has been done of good or evil to the least of Christ's brethren has been done to Him.

I cannot tell what amount of sympathy has been expressed by Unitarians generally with Mr. Combe's doctrines, but I should imagine that one class of Unitarians, being sincerely philanthropical, and more or less strongly inclined to materialism, must be very favourable to them. I have no arguments to urge upon them in reference to these doctrines besides those which I have addressed to my countrymen generally. Some of them, I know, are admirers of Butler, and regard his doctrine of human nature as a valuable counteraction to our favourite theological dogmas,-to that especially which they understand us to associate with the word Regeneration. If I have succeeded in showing that this dogma, interpreted not according to some peculiar theory of mine, but in the way most consistent with the profession of Churchmen, explains Butler's moral constitution, and proves that we need not reject it because we do all honour to Physics, I shall at least prepare their minds (and this is all I desire) for a calmer and less prejudiced consideration of the whole subject.

​As men earnestly interested in politics, I also claim their attention. They will see, I trust, that a clergyman may concern himself with politics, not merely as they bear upon the interests of his order, not merely as they contribute to make the office of the priest more honoured either on civil or ecclesiastical grounds. And this not because he thinks meanly of his order, or entertains any theories about a universal priesthood which interfere with the acknowledgment of individual priests; but because he counts it a most degrading thing for a priest to assert his powers instead of using them, and because he believes those powers must be used sinfully and shamefully if they interfere with those which are committed to any other functionary, and if they do not promote the moral and civil freedom of the community in which they are exerted. The elder Unitarians are, I believe, commonly Whigs. And so far as Whiggism implies the recognition of a constitution for each particular nation, the principles and forms of which are adapted to the character and circumstances of its inhabitants, and are brought to light through its history, I heartily sympathise with them, and would only suggest that in our day we can scarcely understand or defend such particular constitutions, unless we are willing to inquire whether there is a constitution for mankind,—one which does not destroy, as so many universal constitutions that men dream of do, but upholds the order of each country and each family. But if by Whiggism they mean merely a compromise between the past and the present, between order and freedom, I who hold that a faithful care of the treasures of the past ensures the brightest hopes for the ages to come,—that there cannot be an excess of order or of freedom,—must part company with them as wholly ​unsatisfactory teachers, from whom no practical good can be obtained, and betake myself to some of the younger men of the sect who, I suppose, would prefer the name of Radicals.

That name, too, I hold in sincere reverence, and wish that I were worthy to claim it. I fear we have none of us been radical enough, that we have all been too content with superficial changes, not demanding a full and thorough reformation. After thinking, with some earnestness, how that may be attained for us in England and for men everywhere, I have come to the conclusion which this Essay expresses. I hinted at it when I begged the new school of Unitarians to tell me plainly what kind of a Church it is which they look for in the future; whether it has anything to do with that which has existed in the world for eighteen centuries; whether He who is declared in our creeds to be the Corner-stone of that is also to be the Corner-stone of this. I press the inquiry again, now that I have told them my mind frankly upon it. I will add this only: that if I accepted the doctrine of some of those with whom they are associated, and whom they sometimes proclaim to be the heralds of a new dispensation,—if I thought that the world which is to arise out of the wreck of that in which we are living were one of which some other than Jesus Christ the Son of God was to be the king,—I should have no more fervent wish, supposing I could then form a wish—I could conceive no better prayer, supposing there was any one to whom I could offer a prayer— than that I and my fellow-men, and the whole universe, might perish at once and for ever.