[23] See Tract No. II. of the Madagascar Committee.

[24] See Lord Granville's speech in reply to the address of the Madagascar Committee, Nov. 28.

[25] The Admiral, so it is reported on good authority, congratulated the Queen and her Government on having solved the question of Madagascar by showing that the Hova could govern it. He also said that France and England were in perfect accord on this point, and on the wisdom of recognizing Queen Ranavalona as sovereign of the whole island. See Daily News, Dec. 14. This will no doubt be confirmed by the publication of the official report which has been asked for by Mr. G. Palmer, M.P.



THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF THE WORLD.

PART THE FIRST.

I.

I suppose there are few students of man and of society to whom the present religious condition and apparent religious prospect of the world can seem very satisfactory. If there is any lesson clear from history it is this; that, in every age religion has been the main stay both of private life and of the public order,—"the substance of humanity," as Quinet well expresses it, "whence issue, as by so many necessary consequences, political institutions, the arts, poetry, philosophy, and, up to a certain point, even the sequence of events."[26] The existing civilization of Europe and America—I use the word civilization in its highest and widest sense, and mean by it especially the laws, traditions, beliefs, and habits of thought and action, whereby individual family and social life is governed—is mainly the work of Christianity. The races which inhabit the vast Asiatic Continent are what they are chiefly from the influence of Buddhism and Mohammedanism, of the Brahminical, Confucian, and Taosean systems. In the fetichism of the rude tribes of Africa, still in the state of the childhood of humanity, we have what has been called the parler enfantin of religion:—it is that rude and unformed speech, as of spiritual babes and sucklings, which principally makes them to differ from the anthropoid apes of their tropical forests: "un peuple est compte pour quelque chose le jour ou il s'eleve a la pensee de Dieu."[27] But the spirit of the age is unquestionably hostile to all these creeds from the highest to the lowest. In Europe there is a movement—of its breadth and strength I shall say more presently—the irreconcilable hostility of which to "all religion and all religiosity," to use the words of the late M. Louis Blanc, is written on its front. Thought is the most contagious thing in the world, and in these days pain unchanged, but with no firm ground of faith, no "hope both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the vail," no worthy object of desire whereby man may erect himself above himself, whence he may derive an indefectible rule of conduct, a constraining incentive to self-sacrifice, an adequate motive for patient endurance,—such is the vision of the coming time, as it presents itself to many of the most thoughtful and competent observers.

II.

In these circumstances it is natural that so thoughtful and competent an observer as the author of "Ecce Homo" should take up his parable. And assuredly few who have read that beautiful book, so full of lofty musing, and so rich in pregnant suggestion, however superficial and inconsequent, will have opened the volume which he has recently given to the world without high expectation. It will be remembered that in his preface to his former work, he tells us that he was dissatisfied with the current conceptions of Christ, and unable to rest content without a definite opinion regarding Him, and so was led to trace His biography from point to point, with a view of accepting those conclusions about Him which the facts themselves, weighed critically, appeared to warrant. And now, after the lapse of well-nigh two decades, the author of "Ecce Homo" comes forward to consider the religious outlook of the world. Surely a task for which he is in many respects peculiarly well-fitted. Wide knowledge of the modern mind, broad sympathies, keen and delicate perceptions, freedom from party and personal ends, and a power of graceful and winning statement must, upon all hands, be conceded to him. What such a man thinks on such a subject, is certain to be interesting; and, whether we agree with it or not, is as certain to be suggestive. I propose, therefore, first of all to consider what may be learnt about the topic with which I am concerned, from this new book on "Natural Religion," and I shall then proceed to deal with it in my own way.

The author of "Natural Religion" starts with the broad assumption that "supernaturalism" is discredited by modern "science." I may perhaps, in passing, venture to express my regret that in an inquiry demanding, from its nature and importance, the utmost precision of which human speech is capable, the author has in so few cases clearly and rigidly limited the sense of the terms which he employs. "Supernaturalism," for example, is a word which may bear many different meanings; which, as a matter of fact, does bear, I think, for me a very different meaning from that which it bears for the author of "Natural Religion." So, again, "science" in this book, is tacitly assumed to denote physical science only: and what an assumption, as though there were no other sciences than the physical! This in passing. I shall have to touch again upon these points hereafter. For the present let us regard the scope and aim of this discourse of Natural Religion, as the author states it. He finds that the supernatural portion of Christianity, as of all religions, is widely considered to be discredited by physical science. "Two opposite theories of the Universe" (p. 26) are before men. The one propounded by Christianity "is summed up," as he deems, "in the three propositions, that a Personal Will is the cause of the Universe, that that Will is perfectly benevolent, that that Will has sometimes interfered by miracles with the order of the Universe" (p. 13). The other he states as follows:—"Science opposes to God Nature. When it denies God it denies the existence of any power beyond or superior to Nature; and it may deny at the same time anything like a cause of Nature. It believes in certain laws of co-existence and sequence in phenomena, and in denying God it means to deny that anything further can be known" (p. 17). "For what is God—so the argument runs—but a hypothesis, which religious men have mistaken for a demonstrated reality? And is it not precisely against such premature hypotheses that science most strenuously protests? That a Personal Will is the cause of the Universe—this might stand very well as a hypothesis to work with, until facts should either confirm it, or force it to give way to another, either different or at least modified. That this Personal Will is benevolent, and is shown to be so by the facts of the Universe, which evince a providential care for man and other animals—this is just one of those plausibilities which passed muster before scientific method was understood, but modern science rejects it as unproved. Modern science holds that there may be design in the Universe, but that to penetrate the design is, and probably always will be, beyond the power of the human understanding. That this Personal Will has on particular occasions revealed itself by breaking through the customary order of the Universe, and performing what are called miracles—this, it is said, is one of those legends oL which histories were full, until a stricter view of evidence was introduced, and the modern critical spirit sifted thoroughly the annals of the world" (p. 11). These, in our author's words, are the two opposite theories of the Universe before the world: two "mortally hostile" (p. 13) theories; the one "the greatest of all affirmations;" "the other the most fatal of all negations," (p. 26) and the latter, as he discerns, is everywhere making startling progress. "The extension of the methods of physical science to the whole domain of human knowledge," he notes as the most important "change of system in the intellectual world" (p. 7). "No one," he continues, "needs to be told what havoc this physical method is making with received systems, and it produces a sceptical disposition of mind towards primary principles which have been of steam locomotion and electric telegraphs, of cheap literature and ubiquitous journalism, ideas travel with the speed of light, and the influences which are warring against the theologies of Europe are certainly acting as powerful solvents upon the religious systems of the rest of the world. But apart from the loud and fierce negation of the creed of Christendom which is so striking a feature of the present day, there is among those who nominally adhere to it a vast amount of unaggressive doubt. Between the party which avowedly aims at the destruction of "all religion and all religiosity," at the delivery of man from what it calls the "nightmare" or "the intellectual whoredom" of spiritualism, and those who cling with undimmed faith to the religion of their fathers, there is an exceeding great multitude who are properly described as sceptics. It is even more an age of doubt than of denial. As Chateaubriand noted, when the century was yet young, "we are no longer living in times when it avails to say 'Believe and do not examine:' people will examine whether we like it or not." And since these words were written, people have been busily examining in every department of human thought, and especially in the domain of religion. In particular Christianity has been made the subject of the most searching scrutiny. How indeed could we expect that it should escape? The greatest fact in the annals of the modern world, it naturally invites the researches of the historian. The basis of the system of ethics still current amongst us, it peremptorily claims the attention of the sociologist. The fount of the metaphysical conceptions accepted in Europe, until in the last century, before the "uncreating word" of Lockian sensism,

"Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before Sinks to her second cause, and is no more,"

it challenges the investigation of the psychologist. The practical result of these inquiries must be allowed to be, to a large extent, negative. In many quarters, where thirty or forty years ago we should certainly have found acquiescence, honest if dull, in the received religious systems of Europe, we now discern incredulity, more or less far-reaching, about "revealed religion" altogether, and, at the best, "faint possible Theism," in the place of old-fashioned orthodoxy. And earnest men, content to bear as best they may their own burden of doubt and disappointment, do not dissemble to themselves that the immediate outlook is dark and discouraging. Like the French monarch they discern the omens of the deluge to come after them; a vast shipwreck of all faith, and all virtue, of conscience, of God; brute force, embodied in an omnipotent State, the one ark likely to escape submersion in the pitiless waters. A world from which the high sanctions of religion, hitherto the binding principle of society, are relegated to the domain of old wives' fables; a march through life with its brief dream of pleasure and long reality of thought to lie deeper than all systems. Those current abstractions, which make up all the morality and all the philosophy of most people, have been brought under suspicion. Mind and matter, duties and rights, morality and expediency, honour and interest, virtue and vice—all these words, which seemed once to express elementary and certain realities, now strike us as just the words which, thrown into the scientific crucible, might dissolve at once. It is thus not merely philosophy which is discredited, but just that homely and popular wisdom by which common life is guided. This too, it appears, instead of being the sterling product of plain experience, is the overflow of an immature philosophy, the redundance of the uncontrolled speculations of thinkers who were unacquainted with scientific method" (p. 8). And then, moreover, there is that great political movement which has so largely and directly affected the course of events and the organization of society on the Continent of Europe, and which in less measure, and with more covert operation, has notably modified our own ways of thinking and acting in this country. Now the Revolution in its ultimate or Jacobin phase, is the very manifestation, in the public order, of the tendency which in the intellectual calls itself "scientific." It bitterly and contemptuously rejects the belief in the supernatural hitherto accepted in Europe. It wages implacable war upon the ancient theology of the world. "It delights in declaring itself atheistic"[28] (p. 37). It has "a quarrel with theology as a doctrine. 'Theology,' it says, even if not exactly opposed to social improvement, is a superstition, and as such allied to ignorance and conservatism. Granting that its precepts are good, it enforces them by legends and fictitious stories which can only influence the uneducated, and therefore in order to preserve its influence it must needs oppose education. Nor are these stories a mere excrescence of theology, but theology itself. For theology is neither more nor less than a doctrine of the supernatural. It proclaims a power behind nature which occasionally interferes with natural laws. It proclaims another world quite different from this in which we live, a world into which what is called the soul is believed to pass at death. It believes, in short, in a number of things which students of Nature know nothing about, and which science puts aside either with respect or with contempt.

These supernatural doctrines are not merely a part of theology, still less separable from theology, but theology consists exclusively of them. Take away the supernatural Person, miracles, and the spiritual world, you take away theology at the same time, and nothing is left but simple Nature and simple Science" (p. 39). Such, as the author of "Ecce Homo" considers, is "the question between religion and science" now before the world. And his object[29] in his new work is not to inquire whether the "negative conclusions so often drawn from modern scientific discoveries are warranted," still less to refute them, but to estimate "the precise amount of destruction caused by them," admitting, for the sake of argument, that they are true. His own judgment upon their truth he expressly reserves, with the cautious remarks, that "it is not the greatest scientific authorities who are so confident in negation, but rather the inferior men who echo their opinions:"[30] that "it is not on the morrow of great discoveries that we can best judge of their negative effect upon ancient beliefs:" and that he is "disposed to agree with those who think that in the end the new views of the Universe will not gratify an extreme party quite so much as is now supposed."[31]

The argument, then, put forward in "Natural Religion," and put forward, as I understand the author, tentatively, and for what it is worth, and by no means as expressing his own assured convictions, is this:—that to banish the supernatural from the human mind is "not to destroy theology or religion or even Christianity, but in some respects to revive and purify all three:"[32] that supernaturalism is not of the essence but of the accidents of religion; that "the unmiraculous part of the Christian tradition has a value which was long hidden from view by the blaze of supernaturalism," and "that so much will this unmiraculous part gain by being brought, for the first time into full light ... that faith may be disposed to think even that she is well rid of miracle, and that she would be indifferent to it, even if she could still believe it" (p. 254). That religion in some form or another is essential to the world, the author apparently no more doubts than I do: indeed he expressly warns us that "at this moment we are threatened with a general dissolution of states from the decay of religion" (p. 211). "If religion fails us," these are his concluding words, "it is only when human life itself is proved to be worthless. It may be doubtful whether life is worth living, but if religion be what it has been described in this book, the principle by which alone life is redeemed from secularity and animalism, ... can it be doubtful that if we are to live at all we must live, and civilization can only live, by religion?" And now let us proceed to see what is the hope set before us in this book: and consider whether the Natural Religion, which it unfolds, is such a religion as the world can live by, as civilization can live by.

III.

The author of "Natural Religion," it will be remembered, assumes for the purposes of his argument, that the supernatural portion of Christianity is discredited, is put aside by physical science; that, as M. Renan has somewhere tersely expressed it, "there is no such thing as the supernatural, but from the beginning of being everything in the world of phenomena was preceded by regular laws." Let us consider what this involves. It involves the elimination from our creed, not only of the miraculous incidents in the history of the Founder of Christianity, including, of course, His Resurrection—the fundamental fact, upon which, from St. Paul's time to our own, His religion has been supposed to rest—but all the beliefs, aspirations, hopes, attaching to that religion as a system of grace. It destroys theology, because it destroys that idea of God from which theology starts, and which it professes to unfold. This being so, it might appear that religion is necessarily extinguished too. Certainly, in the ordinary sense which the word bears among us, it is. "Religio," writes St. Thomas Aquinas, "est virtus reddens debitum honorem Deo."[33] And so Cardinal Newman, somewhat more fully, "By religion I mean the knowledge of God, of His will, and of our duties towards Him;" and he goes on to say that "there are three main channels which Nature furnishes us for our acquiring this knowledge—viz., our own minds, the voice of mankind, and the course of the world, that is, of human life and human affairs."[34] But that, of course, is very far from being what the author of "Ecce Homo" means by religion, and by natural religion, in his new book. Its key-note is struck in the words of Wordsworth cited on its title-page:—" We live by admiration."[35] Religion he understands to be an "ardent condition of the feelings," "habitual and regulated admiration" (p. 129), "worship of whatever in the known Universe appears worthy of worship" (p. 161). "To have an individuality," he teaches, "is to have an ideal, and to have an ideal is to have an object of worship: it is to have a religion" (p. 136). "Irreligion," on the other hand, is defined as "life without worship," and is said to consist in "the absence of habitual admiration, and in a state of the feelings, not ardent but cold and torpid" (p. 129). It would appear then that religion, in its new sense, is enthusiasm of well-nigh any kind, but particularly the enthusiasm of morality, which is "the religion of right," the enthusiasm of art, which is "the religion of beauty," and the enthusiasm of physical science, which is "the religion of law and of truth" (p. 125).[36] "Art and science," we read, "are not secular, and it is a fundamental error to call them so; they have the nature of religion" (p. 127). "The popular Christianity of the day, in short, is for the artist too melancholy and sedate, and for the man of science too sentimental and superficial; in short, it is too melancholy for the one, and not melancholy enough for the other. They become, therefore, dissenters from the existing religion; sympathizing too little with the popular worship, they worship by themselves and dispense with outward forms. But they protest at the same time that, in strictness, they separate from the religious bodies around them, only because they know of a purer or a happier religion" (p. 126). It is useful to turn, from time to time, from the abstract to the concrete, in order to steady and purge our mental vision. Let us therefore, in passing, gaze upon Theophile Gautier, the high priest of the pride of human form, whose unspeakably impure romance has been pronounced by Mr. Swinburne to be "the holy writ of beauty;" and, on the other, upon Schopenhauer, the most thorough-going and consistent of physicists, who reduces all philosophy to a cosmology, and consider whether, the author of "Ecce Homo" himself being judge, the religion of the one can be maintained to be purer or that of the other to be happier, than the most degraded form of popular Christianity. I proceed to his declaration, which naturally follows from what has been said, that the essence of religion is not in theological dogma nor in ethical practice. The really religious man, as we are henceforth to conceive of him, is, apparently, the man of sentiment. "The substance of religion is culture," which is "a threefold devotion to Goodness, Beauty, and Truth," and "the fruit of it the higher life" (p. 145). And the higher life is "the influence which draws men's thoughts away from their personal existence, making them intensely aware of other existences, to which it binds them by strong ties, sometimes of admiration, sometimes of awe, sometimes of duty, sometimes of love" (p. 236). And as in the individual religion is identified with culture, so, "in its public aspect" "it is identical with civilization" (p. 201), which "expresses the same threefold religion, shown on a larger scale, in the character, institutions, and ways of life of nations" (p. 202). "The great civilized community" is "the modern city of God" (p. 204).

But what God? Clearly not that God spoken of by St. Paul—or the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was—"the God of Peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant;" for that God, the Creator, Witness, and Judge of men—is assuredly Deus absconditus, a hidden God, belonging to "the supernatural;" and the hypothesis upon which the author of "Ecce Homo" proceeds in his new work is that men have "ceased to believe in anything beyond Nature" (p. 76). The best thing for them to do, therefore, he suggests, if they must have a God, is to deify Nature. But "Nature, considered as the residuum that is left after the elimination of everything supernatural, comprehends man with all his thoughts and aspirations, not less than the forms of the material world" (p. 78). God, therefore, in the new Natural Religion, is to be conceived of as Physical "Nature, including Humanity" (p. 69), or "the unity which all things compose in virtue of the universal presence of the same laws" (p. 87), which would seem to be no more than a Pantheistic expression, its exact value being all that exists, the totality of forces, of beings, and of forms. The author of "Natural Religion" does not seem to be sanguine that this new Deity will win the hearts of men. He anticipates, indeed, the objection "that when you substitute Nature for God you take a thing heartless and pitiless instead of love and goodness." To this he replies, "If we abandoned our belief in the supernatural, it would not be only inanimate Nature that would be left to us; we should not give ourselves over, as is often rhetorically described, to the mercy of merciless powers—winds and waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, and fire. The God we should believe in would not be a passionless, utterly inhuman power." "Nature, in the sense in which we are now using the word, includes humanity, and therefore, so far from being pitiless, includes all the pity that belongs to the whole human race, and all the pity that they have accumulated, and, as it were, capitalised in institutions political, social and ecclesiastical, through countless generations" (pp. 68-9).

He, then, who would not "shock modern views of the Universe" (p. 157) must thus think of the Deity. And so Atheism acquires a new meaning. "It is," we read, "a disbelief in the existence of God—that is, a disbelief in any regularity in the Universe to which a man must conform himself under penalties" (p. 27); a definition which surely is a little hard upon the libres-penseurs, as taking the bread out of their mouths. I remember hearing, not long ago, in Paris, of a young Radical diplomatist who, with the good taste which characterizes the school now dominant in French politics, took occasion to mention to a well-known ecclesiastical statesman that he was an Atheist. "O de l'atheisme a votre age," said the Nuncio, with a benign smile: "pourquoi, quand l'impiete suffit et ne vous engage a rien?" But with the new signification imposed upon the word, a profession of Atheism would pledge one in quite another sense: it would be equivalent to a profession of insanity; for where, except among the wearers of strait-waistcoats or the occupants of padded rooms, shall we find a man who does not believe in some regularity in the universe to which he must conform himself under penalties? But let us follow the author of "Natural Religion" a step further in his inquiry. "In what relation does this religion stand to our Christianity, to our churches, and religious denominations?" (p. 139). Certainly, we may safely agree with him that "it has a difficulty in identifying itself with any of the organized systems," and as safely that the "conception of a spiritual city," of an "organ of civilization," of an "interpreter of human society," is "precisely what is now needed" (p. 223). "The tide of thought, scepticism, and discovery, which has set in ... must be warded off the institutions which it attacks as recklessly as if its own existence did not depend upon them. It introduces everywhere a sceptical condition of mind, which it recommends as the only way to real knowledge; and yet if such scepticism became practical, if large communities came to regard every question in politics and law as absolutely open, their institutions would dissolve, and science, among other things, would be buried in the ruin. Modern thought brings into vogue a speculative Nihilism ... but unintentionally it creates at the same time a practical Nihilism.... There is a mine under modern society which, if we consider it, has been the necessary result of the abeyance in recent times of the idea of the Church" (p. 208). In fact, as our author discerns, the existence of civilization is at stake. "It can live only by religion" (p. 262). "On religion depends the whole fabric of civilization, all the future of mankind" (p. 218). The remedy which he suggests is that the Natural Religion which we have been considering, the new "universal religion," should "be concentrated in a doctrine," should "embody itself in a Church" (p. 207). "This Church," we are told, "exists already, a vast communion of all who are inspired by the culture and civilization of the age. But it is unconscious, and perhaps, if it could attain to consciousness, it might organize itself more deliberately and effectively" (p. 212). The precise mode of such organization is not indicated, but its main function it appears would be to diffuse an "adequate doctrine of civilization," and especially to teach "science," in "itself a main part of religion, as the grand revelation of God in these later times," and also the theory "of the gradual development of human society, which alone can explain to us the past state of affairs, give us the clue to history, save us from political aberrations, and point the direction of progress" (p. 209). Of the clerus of the new Natural Church we read as follows:—

"If we really believe that a case can be made out for civilization, this case must be presented by popular teachers, and their most indispensable qualification will be independence. They perhaps will be able to show, that happiness or even universal comfort is not, and never has been, within quite so easy reach, that it cannot be taken by storm, and that as for the institutions left us from the past they are no more diabolical than they are divine, being the fruit of necessary development far more than of free-will or calculation. Such teachers would be the free clergy of modern civilization. It would be their business to investigate and to teach the true relation of man to the universe and to society, the true Ideal he should worship, the true vocation of particular nations, the course which the history of mankind has taken hitherto, in order that upon a full view of what is possible and desirable men may live and organize themselves for the future. In short, the modern Church is to do what Hebrew prophecy did in its fashion for the Jews, and what bishops and Popes did according to their lights for the Roman world when it laboured in the tempest, and for barbaric tribes first submitting themselves to be taught. Another grand object of the modern Church would be to teach and organize the outlying world, which for the first time in history now lies prostrate at the feet of Christian civilization. Here are the ends to be gained. These once recognized, the means are to be determined by their fitness alone" (p. 221).

IV.

So much must suffice to indicate the essential features of the religion which would be left us after the elimination of the supernatural. And now we are to consider whether this religion will suffice for the wants of the world; whether it is a religion "which shall appeal to the sense of duty as forcibly, preach righteousness and truth, justice and mercy, as solemnly and as exclusively as Christianity itself does" (p. 157). Surely to state the question is enough. In fact the author of "Natural Religion" quite recognizes that "to many, if not most, of those who feel the need of religion, all that has been offered in this book will perhaps at first seem offered in derision" (p. 260), and frankly owns that "whether it deserves to be called a faith at all, whether it justifies men in living, and in calling others into life, may be doubted" (p. 66). He tells us that "the thought of a God revealed in Nature," which he has suggested, does not seem to him "by any means satisfactory, or worthy to replace the Christian view, or even as a commencement from which we must rise by logical necessity to the Christian view" (p. 25) and it must be hard not to agree with him. It is difficult to suppose that any one who considers the facts oL life, who contemplates not the individua vaga of theories, but the men and women of this working-day world can think otherwise. Surely no one who really surveys mankind as they are, as they have been in the past, and, so far as we are able to judge, will be in the future, can suppose that this Natural Religion, even if embodied in a Natural Church, and equipped with "a free clergy," will meet their wants, or win their affections, or satisfy those "strange yearnings" of which we read in Plato, and which, in one form or another, stir every human soul; which we may trace in the chatterings of the poor Neapolitan crone to her Crucifix, or in the hallelujahs of "Happy Sal" at a Salvationist "Holiness Meeting," as surely as in the profoundest speculations of the Angelic Doctor, or in the loftiest periods of Bossuet. Can any one, in this age of all others, when, as the revelations of the physical world bring home to us so overwhelmingly what Pascal calls "the abyss of the boundless immensity of which I know nothing, and you know nothing," man sinks to an insignificance which, the apt word of the author of "Natural Religion" "petrifies" him, can—can any one believe that the compound of Pantheistic Positivism and Christian sentiment—if we may so account of it—set forth in these brilliant pages, will avail to redeem men from animalism and secularity? But, indeed, we need not here rest in the domain of mere speculation. The experiment has been tried. Not quite a century ago, when Chaumette's "Goddess of Reason," and Robespierre's "Supreme Being," had disappeared from the altars of France, La Reveillere-Lepeaux essayed to introduce a Natural Religion under the name of Theophilanthropy[37] to satisfy the spiritual needs of the country over which he ruled as a member of the Directory, Chernin Dupontes, Dupont de Nemours and Bernardin de St. Pierre constituting with himself the four Evangelists of the new cult. The first mentioned of these must, indeed, be regarded as its inventor, and his "Manuel des Theophilanthrophiles" supplies the fullest exposition of it. But it was La Reveillere-Lepeaux whose influence gave form and actuality to the speculations of Chemin, and whose credit obtained for the new sect the use of some dozen of the principal churches of Paris, and of the choir and organ of Notre Dame. The formal debut of the new religion may, perhaps, be dated from the 1st of May, 1797, when La Reveillere read to the Institute a memoir in which he justified its introduction upon grounds very similar to those urged in our own day against "the theological view of the universe." Moreover, he insisted that Catholicism was opposed to sound morality, that its worship was antisocial, and that its clergy—whom he contemptuously denominated la pretraille, and whom he did his best to exterminate—were the enemies of the human race. In its leading features the new Church resembled very closely the system which we have just been considering, offered to the world by the author of "Ecce Homo." It identified the Deity with Nature:[38] religion, considered subjectively, with sentiment, and objectively, with civilization; and it regarded Atheists and the adherents of all forms of faith—with the sole exception of Catholics —as eligible for its communion. Its dogmas, if one may so speak, were a hotchpotch of fine phrases about beauty, truth, right, and the like, culled from writers of all creeds and of no creed. Its chief public function consisted in the singing of a hymn to "the Father of the Universe," to a tune composed by one Gossee, a musician much in vogue at that time, and in lections chosen from Confucius, Vyasa, Zoroaster, Theognis, Cleanthes, Aristotle, Plato, La Bruyere, Fenelon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Young, and Franklin, the Sacred Scriptures of Christianity being carefully excluded on account, as may be supposed, of their alleged opposition to "sound morality." The priests of the "Natural Religion" were vested in sky-blue tunics, extending from the neck to the feet, and fastened at the waist by a red girdle, over which was a white robe open before. Such was the costume in which La Reveillere-Lepeaux exhibited himself to his astonished countrymen, and having the misfortune to be—as we are told—"petit, bossu, et puant," the exhibition obtained no great success. It must be owned, however, that the Natural Church did its best to fill the void caused by the disappearance of the Christian religion. It even went so far as to provide substitutes for the Sacraments of Catholicism. At the rite which took the place of baptism, the father himself officiated, and, in lieu of the questions prescribed in the Roman Ritual, asked the godfather, "Do you promise before God and men to teach N. or M. from the dawn of his reason to adore God, to cherish (cherir) his fellows, and to make himself useful to his country?" And the godfather, holding the child towards heaven, replied, "I promise." Then followed the inevitable "discourse," and a hymn of which the concluding lines were:

"Puisse un jour cet enfant honorer sa patrie, Et s'applaudir d'avoir vecu."

So much must suffice as to the Natural Church during the time that it existed among men as a fact, or, in the words of the author of "Ecce Homo," as "an attempt to treat the subject of religion in a practical manner." But, backed as it was by the influence of a despotic government, and felix opportunitate as it must be deemed to have been in the period of its establishment, very few were added to it. Whereupon, as the author of "Ecce Homo" relates, not without a touch of gentle irony, La Reveillere confided to Talleyrand[39] his disappointment at his ill-success. "'His propaganda made no way,' he said, 'What was he to do?' he asked. The ex-bishop politely condoled with him, feared indeed it was a difficult task to found a new religion—more difficult than could be imagined, so difficult that he hardly knew what to advise! 'Still'—he went on, after a moment's reflection—'there is one plan which you might at least try: I should recommend you to be crucified, and to rise again the third day'" (p. 181). Is the author of "Ecce Homo" laughing in his sleeve at us? Surely his keen perception must have suggested to him, as he wrote this passage, "mutato nomine, deme." It may be confidently predicted that, unless he is prepared to carry out Talleyrand's suggestion, the Natural Religion which he exhibits "to meet the wants of a sceptical age" will prove even a more melancholy failure than it proved when originally introduced a century ago by La Reveillere-Lepeaux.

V.

Are we then thrown back on Pessimism—"the besetting difficulty of Natural Religion" (p. 104), as the author of "Ecce Homo" confesses? Is that after all the key to the enigma of life? And is the prospect before the world that "universal darkness" which is to supervene, when, in the noble verse of the great moral poet of the last century—the noblest he ever wrote—

"Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares morality expires; Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine."

I venture to think otherwise. And as with regard to the subject of which I am writing, it may be said that "egotism is true modesty," I shall venture to say why I think so, even at the risk of wearying by a twice-told tale, for I shall have to go over well-worn ground, and I must of necessity tread more or less in the footprints of others. The reasons which satisfy me have satisfied, and do satisfy, intellects far more subtle, acute, and penetrating than mine. All I can do is to state them in the way in which they present themselves to my own mind. I shall be genuine, if not original, although indeed I might here shelter myself under a dictum—profoundly true it is—of Mr. Ruskin: "That virtue of originality that men so strive after is not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new) it is only genuineness."

Cardinal Newman, in writing to me a few weeks ago, suggests the pregnant inquiry, "Which is the greater assumption? that we can do without religion, or that we can find a substitute for Christianity?" I have hitherto been surveying the substitute for Christianity which the author of "Ecce Homo" has exhibited to the world in his new book. I shall now briefly consider the question whether the need for such a substitute does in truth exist. The book, as I have already more than once noted, assumes that it does. It takes "the scientific view frankly at its worst"[40] as throwing discredit upon the belief "that a Personal Will is the cause of the Universe, that that Will is perfectly benevolent, that that Will has sometimes interfered by miracles with the order of the Universe," which three propositions are considered by its author to sum up the theological view of the universe. "If," he writes, "these propositions exhaust [that view] and science throws discredit upon all of them, evidently theology and science are irreconcilable, and the contest between them must end in the destruction of one or the other" (p. 13). I remark in passing, first, that no theologian—certainly no Catholic theologian—would accept these three propositions as exhausting the theological view of the universe; and secondly, that if we were obliged to admit that physical science throws discredit upon that view, it would by no means necessarily follow that physical science and theology are irreconcilable, for ampler knowledge might remove the discredit.

"What do we see? Each man a space, Of some few yards before his face. Can that the whole wide plan explain? Ah no! Consider it again."

But is it true, as a matter of fact, that physical science throws discredit upon these three propositions? Let us examine this question a little. I must of necessity be brief in the limits to which I am here confined, and I must use the plainest language, for I am writing not for the school but for the general reader. Brevity and plainness of speech do not, however, necessarily imply superficiality, which, in truth, is not unfrequently veiled by a prolix parade of pompous technicalities.

First, then, as to causation. The shepherd in the play, when asked by Touchstone, "Hast any philosophy in thee?" replies, "No more but that I know that the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep: and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun," and upon the strength of this knowledge is pronounced by the clown to be "a natural philosopher." Well, is not in truth the "science" of the mere physicist, however accomplished, in pari materia with that of honest Corin? He observes certain sequences of facts, certain antecedents and consequents, but of the nexus between them he knows no more than the most ignorant and foolish of peasants. He talks, indeed, of the laws of Nature, but the expression, convenient as it is in some respects, and true as it is in a sense—and that the highest—is extremely likely to mislead, as he uses it ordinarily. What he calls a law of Nature is only an induction from observed phenomena, a formula which serves compendiously to express them. As Dr. Mozley has well observed in his Bampton Lectures, "we only know of law in Nature, in the sense of recurrences in Nature, classes of facts, like facts in Nature:"[41]

"In vain the sage with retrospective eye Would from the apparent what conclude the why;"

physical "science has itself proclaimed the truth that we see no causes in nature"[42]—that is to say, in the phenomena of the external world, taken by themselves. We read in Bacci's "Life of St. Philip Neri" that the Saint drew men to the service of God by such a subtle irresistible influence as caused those who watched him to cry out in amazement, "Father Philip draws souls, as the magnet draws iron." The most accomplished master of natural science is as little competent to explain the physical attraction as he is to explain the spiritual. He cannot get behind the fact, and if you press him for the reason of it—if you ask him why the magnet draws iron—the only reason he has to give you is, "Because it does." It is just as true now as it was when Bishop Butler wrote in the last century that "the only distinct meaning of the word [natural] is, stated, fixed, or settled," and it is hard to see how he can be refuted when, travelling beyond the boundaries of physics, he goes on to add, "What is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so—i.e., to effect it continually, or at stated times—as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once."[43] Then, again, the indications of design in the universe may well speak to us of a Designer, as they spoke three thousand years ago to the Hebrew poet who wrote the Psalm "C[oe]li enarrant," as they spoke but yesterday to the severely disciplined intellect of John Stuart Mill, who, brushing aside the prepossessions and prejudices of a lifetime, has recorded his deliberate judgment that "there is a large balance in favour of the probability of creation by intelligence."[44] Sir William Thomson, no mean authority upon a question of physical science, goes further, and speaks not of "a large balance of probability," but of "overpowering proofs." "Overpowering proofs," he told the British Association, "of intelligence and benevolent design, lie all around us; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us through Nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one ever-acting Creator and Ruler."[45] And, once more, it is indubitable that matter is inert until acted upon by force, and that we have no knowledge of any other primary[46] cause of force than will. Whence, as Mr. Wallace argues in his well-known work, "it does not seem improbable that all force may be will-force, and that the whole universe is not merely dependent upon, but actually is, the will of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence."[47]

If then things are so—as who can disprove?—we may reasonably demur to the assertion that physical science throws discredit upon the position that a Personal Will is the cause of the universe. Let us now glance at the last of the propositions supposed to be condemned by the researches of the physicists—namely, that this Personal Will has sometimes interfered by miracles with the order of the universe. Now, here, as I intimated in an earlier portion of this article, I find myself at variance with the author of "Natural Religion" upon a question, and a very important question, of terminology. I do not regard the supernatural as an interference with, or violation of, the order of the universe. I adopt, unreservedly, the doctrine that "nothing is that errs from law." The phenomena which we call supernatural and those which we call natural, I view as alike the expression of the Divine Will: a Will which acts not capriciously, nor, as the phrase is, arbitrarily, but by law, "attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia." And so the theologians identify the Divine Will with the Divine Reason. Thus St. Augustine, "Lex aeterna est ratio divina vel voluntas Dei,"[48] and St. Thomas Aquinas, "Lex aeterna summa ratio in Deo existens."[49] It is by virtue of this law that the sick are healed, whether by the prayer of faith or the prescription of a physician, by the touch of a relic or by a shock from a galvanic battery; that the Saint draws souls and that the magnet draws iron. The most ordinary so-called "operations of Nature" may be truly described in the words of St. Gregory as God's daily miracles;[50] and those events, commonly denominated miraculous, of which we read in the Sacred Scriptures, in the Lives of the Saints, and elsewhere, may as truly be called natural, using the word in what, as I just now observed, Bishop Butler notes as its only distinct meaning—namely, stated, fixed, or settled;[51] for they are the normal manifestations of the order of Grace—an order external to us, invisible, inaccessible to our senses and reasonings, but truly existing and governed by laws, which, like the laws of the physical and the intellectual order, are ordained by the Supreme Lawgiver. Once purge the mind of anthropomorphic conceptions as to the Divine Government, and the notion of any essential opposition between the natural and the supernatural disappears. Sanctity, which means likeness to God, a partaking of the Divine nature, is as truly a force as light or heat, and enters as truly into the great order of the universe. There is a passage in M. Renan's "Vie de Jesus" worth citing in this connection. "La nature lui obeit," he writes; "mais elle obeit aussi a quiconque croit et prie; la foi peut tout. Il faut se rappeler que nulle idee des lois de la nature ne venait, dans son esprit ni dans celui de ses auditeurs, marquer la limite de l'impossible.... Ces mots de 'surhumain' et de 'surnaturel,' empruntes a notre theologie mesquine, n'avaient pas de sens dans la haute conscience religieuse de Jesus. Pour lui, la nature et le developpement de l'humanite n'etaient pas des regnes limites hors de Dieu, de chetives realites assujetties aux lois d'un empirisme desesperant. Il n'y avait pas pour lui de surnaturel, car il n'y avait pas pour lui de nature. Ivre de l'amour infini, il oubliait la lourde chaine qui tient l'esprit captif; il franchissait d'un bond l'abime, infranchissable pour la plupart, que la mediocrite des facultes humaines trace entre l'homme et Dieu."[52] These words seem to me to express a great truth. The religious mind conceives of the natural, not as opposed to the supernatural, but as an outlying province of it; of the economy of the physical world as the complement of the economy of Grace. And to those who thus think, the great objection urged by so many philosophers, from Spinoza downwards—not to go further back—that miracles, as the violation of an unchangeable order, make God contradict himself, and so are unworthy of being attributed to the All-Wise, is without meaning. The most stupendous incident in the "Acta Sanctorum" is, as I deem, not less the manifestation of law than is the fall of a sparrow.[53] The budding of a rose and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ are equally the effect of the One Motive Force, which is the cause of all phenomena, of the Volition of the Maker, Nourisher, Guardian, Governor, Worker, Perfecter of all. Once admit what is involved in the very idea of God as it exists in Catholic theology—as it is set forth, for example, in the treatise of St. Thomas Aquinas "De Deo"—and the notion of miracles as abnormal, as infractions of order, as violations of law, will be seen to be utterly erroneous.

And now one word as to the bearing of physical science upon the doctrine of the Divine goodness[54]—the second of the theological positions which, as we have seen, the author of "Natural Religion" assumes to be discredited by physical science. No doubt he had in his mind what has been so strongly stated by the late Mr. Mill: "Not even on the most distorted and contracted theory of good, which ever was framed by religious or philosophical fanaticism, can the government of Nature be made to resemble the work of a being at once good and omnipotent."[55] Now there can be no question that physical nature gives the lie to that shallow optimism, which prates of the best of all conceivable worlds, and hardly consents to recognize evil, save as "a lower form of good;" unquestionably recent researches of physicists have brought out with quite startling clearness what St. Paul calls the subjection of the creature to vanity. Ruin, waste, decay are written upon every feature of the natural order. All that is joyful in it is based on suffering; all that lives, on death; every thrill of pleasure which we receive from the outward world is the outcome of inconceivable agonies during incalculable periods of time. But how does this discredit the teaching of theology as to God's goodness? Theology recognizes, and recognizes far more fully than the mere physicist, the abounding misery that is in the world, the terribleness of that "unutterable curse which hangs upon mankind," for it sees not only what he sees, but what is infinitely sadder and more appalling, the vision of moral evil presented by the heart and conscience of man, by every page in the history of the individual and of the race. It was not reserved for professors of physical science in the nineteenth century to bring to light the fact that "the world is out of joint," and thereby to discredit the theological view of the universe. Theology knows only too well that life is "a dread machinery of sin and sorrow." It is the very existence of the vast aboriginal calamity, whatever it may have been, in which the human race, the whole creation, is involved, that forms the ground for the need of the revelation which Christianity professes to bring. If there were no evil, there would be no need of a deliverance from evil. Of course, why evil has been suffered to arise, why it is suffered to exist, by the Perfect Being, of whom it is truly said that He is God, because he is the highest Good, we know not, and no search will make us know. All we know is that it is not from Him, of whom, and for whom, and by whom, are all things; "because it has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance." The existence of evil is a mystery—one of the countless mysteries surrounding human life—which, after the best use of reason, must be put aside as beyond reason. But it is also a fact, and a fact which is so far from discrediting the theological view of the universe, that it is a primary and necessary element of that view.

VI.

Thus much as to physical science and the propositions in which the author of "Natural Religion" supposes the theological view of the universe to be summed up. But, as he notes, the case urged in the present day against Christianity does not rest merely upon physical science, properly so called; but upon the extension of its methods to the whole domain of knowledge (p. 7), the practical effect being the reduction of religion to superstition, of anthropology to physiology, of metaphysics to physics, of ethics to the result of temperament or the promptings of self-interest, of man's personality to the summation of a series of dynamic conditions of particles of matter. I shall proceed to state the case, as I often hear it stated, and I shall put it in the strongest way I can, and to indicate the answer which, at all events, has satisfied one mind, after long and patient consideration, and in spite of strong contrary prepossessions. And this evidently has the most direct bearing on my theme. If Christianity be irrational, its claims to the world's future may at once be dismissed. But if, as I very strongly hold, the achievements of the modern mind, whether in the physical sciences, in psychology, in history, in exegetical criticism, have not in the least discredited Christianity, as rightly understood, here is a fact which is a most important factor in determining our judgment as to the religious prospect of mankind. What I have to say on this grave question I must reserve for the Second Part of this article. I end the First Part with one observation. It seems to me that the issue before the world is between Christianity and a more or less sublimated form of Materialism—not necessarily Atheistic, nay, sometimes approximating to "faint possible Theism"—which is most aptly termed Naturalism; a system which rejects as antiquated the ideas of final causes, of Providence, of the soul and its immortality; which allows of no other realities than those of the physical order, and makes of Nature man's highest ideal: and this issue is not in the least affected by decking out Naturalism in some borrowed garments of Spiritualism, and calling it "Natural Christianity."

W. S. LILLY.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] "La Genie des Religions," l. i. c. i.

[27] Ibid., c. iv.

[28] The author of "Natural Religion" thinks it mistaken in so declaring itself. "Its invectives against God and against Religion do not prove that it is atheistic, but only that it thinks itself so. And why does it think itself so? Because God and Religion are identified in its view with the Catholic Church; and the Catholic Church is a thing so very redoubtable that we need scarcely inquire why it is passionately hated and feared" (p. 37). But this is an error. God and Religion are not identified, in the view of the Revolution, with the Catholic Church. It will be evident to anyone who will read its accredited organs that it is as implacably hostile to religious Protestantism as to Catholicism. Perhaps I may be allowed to refer, on this subject, to some remarks of my own in an article entitled "Free Thought—French and English," published in this REVIEW, in February last, p. 241.

[29] See his Preface to the Second Edition.

[30] Warburton, a shrewd observer enough, expressed the same view a hundred years ago, with characteristic truculence:—"Mathematicians—I do not mean the inventors and geniuses amongst them, whom I honour, but the Demonstrators of others' inventions, who are ten times duller and prouder than a damned poet—have a strange aversion to everything that smacks of religion."—Letters to Hurd, xix.

[31] Preface to Second Edition, p. vii.

[32] Ibid., p. v.

[33] Summa, 1^ma 2^de qu. 60, art. 3.

[34] "Grammar of Assent," p. 389. 5th ed.

[35] What Wordsworth says is—

"We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love, And, even as these are well and wisely fixed, In dignity of being we ascend."

This is widely different from the nude proposition that "we live by admiration."

[36] See also p. 127.

[37] A good deal of information about Theophilanthropy and the Theophilanthropists, in an undigested and, indeed, chaotic state, will be found in Gregoire's "Histoire des Sectes Religieuses," vol. i.

[38] The Theophilanthropists were most anxious that the object of their worship should not be supposed to be the Christian God. Thus in one of their hymns their Deity is invoked as follows:—

"Non, tu n'es pas le Dieu dont le pretre est l'apotre, Tu n'as point par la Bible enseigne les humains."

[39] The author of "Natural Religion" says, Talleyrand; I do not know on what authority. Gregoire writes:—"Au Directoire meme on le raillait sur son zele theophilantropique. Un de ses collegues, dit-on, lui proposait de se faire pendre et de ressusciter le troisieme jour, comme l'infaillible moyen de faire triompher sa secte, et Carnot lui decoche dans son Memoire des epigrammes sanglantes a ce sujet."—Histoire des Sectes Religieuses, vol. I. p. 406. Talleyrand was never a member of the Directory.

[40] Preface to second edition.

[41] "Eight Lectures on Miracles," p. 50.

[42] Ibid. See Dr. Mozley's note on this passage.

[43] "Analogy." Part I. c. i. I give, of course, Bishop Butler's words as I find them, but, as will be seen a little later, I do not quite take his view of the supernatural.

[44] "Three Essays on Religion," p. 174.

[45] "Address to the British Association," 1871.

[46] I say "primary cause;" of course I do not deny its own proper causality to the non-spiritual or matter.

[47] "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," p. 368. I am, of course, aware of Mr. Mill's remarks upon this view in his "Three Essays on Religion" (pp. 146-150). The subject is too great to be discussed in a footnote. But I may observe that he rests, at bottom, upon the assumption—surely an enormous assumption—that causation is order. Cardinal Newman's argument upon this matter in the "Grammar of Assent" (pp. 66-72, 5th ed.) seems to me to be unanswerable; certainly, it is unanswered. I have no wish to dogmatize—the dogmatism, indeed, appears to be on the other side—but if we go by experience, as it is now the fashion to do, our initial elementary experience would certainly lead us to consider will the great or only cause. To guard against a possible misconception let me here say that I must not be supposed to adopt Mr. Wallace's view in its entirety or precisely as stated by him. Of course, the analogy between the human will and the Divine Will is imperfect, and Mr. Mill appears to me to be well founded in denying that our volition originates. My contention is that Matter is inert until Force has been brought to bear upon it: that all Force must be due to a Primary Force of which it is the manifestation or the effect: that the Primary Force cannot exert itself unless it be self-determined: that to be self-determined is to be living: that to be primarily and utterly self-determined is to be an infinitely self-conscious volition: ergo, the primary cause of Force is the Will of God. This is the logical development of the famous argument of St. Thomas Aquinas. He contends that whatever things are moved must be moved by that which is not moved: a movente non moto. But Suarez and later writers complete the argument by analyzing the term movens non motum, which they consider equivalent to Ens a se, in se, et per se, or Actus Purissimus.

[48] "Contra Faustum," 22.

[49] Summa, 1, 2, qu. 83, art. 1. But on this and the preceding quotation, see the note on page 118.

[50] "Quotidiana Dei miracula ex assiduitate vilescunt."—Hom. xxvi. in Evan.

[51] "Stated, fixed, or settled" is a predicate common to natural and supernatural, not the differentia of either. And here let me remark that the expression, "Laws of Nature," is a modern technical expression which the Catholic philosopher would require, probably, to have defined before employing it. "Natura," in St. Thomas Aquinas, is declared to be "Principium operationis cujusque rei," the Essence of a thing in relation to its activity, or the Essence as manifested agendo. Hence "Natura rerum," or "Universitas rerum" (which is the Latin for Nature in the phrase "Laws of Nature") means the Essences of all things created (finite) as manifested and related to each other by their proper inherent activities, which of course are stable or fixed. But since it is not a logical contradiction that these activities should be suspended, arrested, or annihilated (granting an Infinite Creator), it will not be contrary to Reason should a miraculous intervention so deal with them, though their suspension or annihilation may be described, loosely and inaccurately, as against the Laws of Nature. By Reason is here meant the declarations of necessary Thought as to possibility and impossibility, or the canons of contradiction, the only proper significance of the word in discussions about miracles. Hence, to say that miracles have their laws, is not to deny that they are by the Free Will of God. For creation is by the Fiat of Divine Power and Freedom, and yet proceeds upon law—that is to say, upon a settled plan and inherent sequence of cause and effect. But it is common with Mr. Mill and his school to think of law as necessary inviolable sequence; whereas it is but a fixed mode of action whether necessarily or freely determined; and it is a part of law that some activities should be liable to suspension or arrestment by others, and especially by the First Cause.

[52] "Vie de Jesus," p. 247.

[53] When Mr. Mill says ("Three Essays on Religion," p. 224), "The argument that a miracle may be the fulfilment of a law in the same sense in which the ordinary events of Nature are fulfilments of laws, seems to indicate an imperfect conception of what is meant by a law and what constitutes a miracle," all he really means is that this argument involves a conception of law and of miracle different from his own, which is undoubtedly true. Upon this subject I remark as follows: There is a necessary will (spontaneum non liberum) and a free will(liberum non spontaneum); and these are in God on the scale of infinite perfection, as they are in man finitely. With Mr. Mill, as I have observed in a previous note, Law is taken to signify "invariable, necessary sequence;" and its test is, that given the same circumstances, the same thing will occur. But it is essential to Free Will (whether in God or man) that given the same circumstances, the same thing need not, may not, and perhaps will not, occur. However, an act may be free in causa which hic et nunc must happen; the Free Will having done that by choice which brings as a necessary consequence something else. For there are many things which would involve contradiction and so be impossible, did not certain consequences follow them. This premised, it is clear that the antithesis of Mr. Mill's "Law" is Free Will. Law and antecedent necessity to Mr. Mill are one and the same. But Law in Catholic terminology means the Will of God decreeing freely or not freely, according to the subject-matter; and is not opposed to Free-Will. It guides, it need not coerce or necessitate, though it may. Neither in one sense, is Law synonymous with Reason, for that is according to Reason, simply, which does not involve a contradiction, whether it be done freely or of necessity; and many things are possible, or non-contradictives, that Law does not prescribe. Nor again does Free-Will mean lawless in the sense of irrational; or causeless, in the sense of having no motive: "contra legem," "praeter legem" is not "contra rationem," "prater rationem." The Divine Will, then, may be free, yet act according to Law, namely, its own freely-determined Law. And it may act "not according to Law," and yet act according to Reason. In this sense, then, theologians identify the Divine Will with the Divine Reason—I mean, they insist that God's Will is always according to Reason—in this sense, but, as I think, not in any other. For the Divine Will is antecedently free as regards all things which are not God; but the Divine Intellect is not free in the same way. St. Augustine always tends to view things in the concrete, not distinguishing their "rationes formales," or distinguishing them vaguely. And Ratio with him does not mean Reason merely, but living Reason or the Reasoning Being, the Soul. When St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of Lex AEterna he means the Necessary Law of Morality, concerning which God is not free, because in decreeing it, He is but decreeing that there is no Righteousness except by imitation of Him.

The root of all these difficulties and of all the confusion in speech which they have brought forth is this: the mystery of Free-Will in God, the Unchangeable and Eternal, The great truth taught in the words of the Vatican Council, "Deus, liberrimo consilio condidit universa," must ever be borne in mind. Undoubtedly, there are no afterthoughts in God. But neither is there a past in which He decreed once for all what was to be and what was not to be. He is the Eternal Now. But still all events are the fulfilment of His Will, and contribute to the working out of the scheme which He has traced for creation. Feeble is human speech to deal with such high matters, serving, at the best, but dimly to adumbrate ineffable truths. As Goethe somewhere says, "Words are good, but not the best: the best cannot be expressed in words. My point, however, is that there is, on the one hand, a connection of events with events all through creation and an intelligible sequence, while, on the other, the Free-Will of man is a determining force as regards his own spiritual actions, as is the Free-Will of God in respect of the whole creation, and that miracles are neither afterthoughts, nor irregularities, nor contradictions, but at once free and according to law. Miracles are not abnormal, unless Free-Will is a reduction of Kosmos to Chaos, and the negation of Reason altogether."

[54] I say "the doctrine of the Divine goodness," because that is, as I think, what the author of "Natural Religion" means. As to the "simple, absolute benevolence"—"benevolence," indeed, is a milk-and-water expression; "God is love"—which "some men seem to think the only character of the Author of Nature," it is enough to refer to Bishop Butler's striking chapter on "The Moral Government of God," (Analogy, Part I. c. iii). I will here merely observe that although, doubtless, God's attribute is Love of the creation, He is not only Love, but Sanctity, Justice, Creative Power, Force, Providence; and whereas, considered as a Unit He is infinite, He is not infinite—I speak under correction—viewed in those aspects, abstractions, or attributes which, separately taken, are necessary for our subjective view of Him. I allow that God's power and His "benevolence" may in some cases work out different ends, as if separate entities, but still maintain—what the author of "Natural Religion" ignores—that God in His very essence is not only "Benevolence," but Sanctity, &c. also; all as One in His Oneness.

[55] "Three Essays on Religion," p. 38.



SYRIAN COLONIZATION.

During the past few years many proposals have been made, and schemes formed, for repeopling the wastes of Syria and Palestine with the surplus population of Europe. These schemes, sometimes philanthropic, sometimes commercial, are always advocated on the assumption that the current of European emigration and capital might be turned to Syria and Palestine in accordance with sound economic and financial considerations. In this paper I propose—

First. To take a survey of the agricultural resources of the country.

Second. To draw attention to the difficulties which immigrants would experience in obtaining secure titles to landed property.

Third. To give a summary of the different kinds of land tenure, and the burdens on agriculture.

Fourth. To point out some of the dangers and inconveniences to which immigrants would be exposed.

* * * * *

I. In the first place we may say broadly that the natural resources of Syria and Palestine are agricultural. On the eastern slopes of Mount Hermon there are a few bitumen pits from which a small quantity of ore of excellent quality is yearly exported to England. Small deposits of coal and iron exist in several localities, and there are chemical deposits about the shores of the Dead Sea. Gypsum and coloured marble are found in Syria, and along the coast opposite the Lebanon range sponges are fished annually to the value of L20,000. Hot sulphur springs exist at Palmyra and the Sea of Galilee, and there are ruined baths on the way between Damascus and Palmyra and in the Yarmuk Valley; but none of these natural products are of sufficient importance to attract European labour or capital.

Forests can scarcely be said to exist in Syria or Palestine. A few groves of cedars of Lebanon, which escaped the axes of Hiram, are fast disappearing. On the limestone ridges and in some of the valleys there are clumps of pine, and throughout a great part of the country there is a considerable quantity of scrub oak which the peasants reduce to charcoal, and carry into the cities. In Galilee one comes on places where the trees give a pleasing character to the landscape. On Mount Carmel there are jungles and thickets of oak, and on the slopes towards Nazareth there are considerable groves, but the nearest approach to a forest is where the oaks of Bashan, which recall the beauties of an English park, assert their ancient supremacy.

Rows of poplars mark the courses of rivers and streams throughout the land, and supply beams for flat-roofed houses; but when churches or other important buildings have to be roofed, or timber is required for domestic purposes, it has to be imported from America, and carried into the interior on the backs of animals. There remain trees enough in some places to lend beauty to the landscape, and to show what the country may once have been, as well as to suggest what it may again become; but there are no forests to attract labour or capital.

The few manufactories of wool and cotton and soap and leather are chiefly limited to local want. Besides these there are the silk-spinning factories in the Lebanon, managed by Frenchmen and natives, and a manufactory of cotton thread on one of the rivers of Damascus.

The popular accounts of the agricultural resources of Syria and Palestine are very different. As instances of extremes:—Mark Twain tells us he saw the goats eating stones in Syria, and he assures us that he could not have been mistaken, for they had nothing else to eat; while Mr. Laurence Oliphant saw even in the Dead Sea "a vast source of wealth" for his English Company. We read in his "Land of Gilead" these words: "There can be little doubt, in fact, that the Dead Sea is a mine of unexplored wealth which only needs the application of capital and enterprise to make it a most lucrative property."[56]

The tourists who traverse the country in spring, immediately after the latter rains, when there is some vegetation in the barest places, and when their horses are up to the fetlocks in flowers, never forget the beauty of the landscape. Others, who have been picturing to themselves a land flowing with milk and honey, hills waving with golden grain, and green meadows dappled with browsing flocks, and who pass through the land in autumn, find themselves bitterly disappointed. As they trudge along the white glaring pathways, and through the roadless and flinty wilderness, breasting the hot beating waves of a Syrian noonday, with only an ashy chocolate-coloured landscape around them, scorched as if by the breath of a furnace, they get an impression of dreary and blasted desolation which time can never efface. They looked for the garden of the Lord, and they find only the "burning marl." It was my fate, during a long residence in Syria, to hear autumn tourists criticize books written by spring tourists, and spring tourists criticize books written by autumn tourists, and generally in a manner by no means complimentary to the authors' veracity;—the fact being that the writers had given their impression of what they saw, with perhaps a little of American wit, which consists in exaggerating "the leading feature."

I think, however, that to most English travellers, who have no hobbies to ride, the barren appearance of Syria and Palestine is a disenchantment. Accustomed to their own moist climate and green fields, they are not prepared for the dry and parched, and abandoned appearance of the greater part of the country. With us an abundance of water spoils the crops; in Syria and Palestine the case is reversed, for unless water can be poured over the land the crops are stunted and uncertain. For six or seven months in the year scarcely any rain falls, and scarcely a cloud darkens the sky. In October the early rain commences, with much thunder and lightning; and in April the latter rain becomes light and uncertain, and generally ceases altogether. Then the sky becomes intensely blue, and the sun comes out in all his glory, or rather in all her glory, for with the Arabs the sun is feminine. Suddenly grass and vegetation wither up and become dry for the oven. The level country, except where there are rivers, becomes parched. The stones stick up out of the red soil like the white bones of a skeleton. Limestone, flint, and basalt, and thorny shrubs, cover the face of the wilderness country. Here and there you may see a dwarf oak, or an olive tree, or a wild fig tree, and among the mountains you may notice little patches scratched and cultivated by the fellahin; but, unless on the great plains of Bashan and Esdraelon and Hamath, and on the uplands of Gilead, or where there is water for irrigation, you may ride for hours along the zigzag paths, over mountain and high-land, and before and behind extend the limestone and flinty rocks, white and blinding, and broken into fragments or burnt into powder. It thus happens that few tourists who pass along the beaten tracks of Syria and Palestine have any just conception of the vast agricultural resources of the land.

The most striking features in the Syrian landscape are two parallel mountain ranges, which appear on the map like two centipedes, running north and south. These are the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges. Lebanon proper lies along the shore of the Mediterranean. The narrow strip of land between the mountain and the sea was the home of the Ph[oe]nicians, who steered their white-winged ships to every land, and dipped their oars in every sea, before the Britons were heard of. The gardens of Sidon, luxuriant with bananas, oranges, figs, lemons, pomegranates, peaches, apricots, &c., extend across the plain for two miles to the mountain, and show what Ph[oe]nicia may once have been. The palm trees that adorn the fertile gardens of Beyrout are doubtless survivors of the groves from which the strip of land once took its name.[57]

By the exertions of Lord Dufferin in 1860, a Christian governor was placed over the Lebanon in a semi-independent position. Since then the terraced mountain has been marvellously developed, and every foothold has been planted with vines and figs and mulberries. The industrious peasantry, comparatively safe from Turkish rapacity, have cultivated the ledges among its crags and peaks, and enjoy the fruits of their industry, sitting under their vines and fig trees. The bloodthirsty and turbulent Druzes, restrained by law, and unable to hold their own in a field of fair competition, are being rapidly civilized off the mountain, and betake themselves to remote regions in Bashan where no law is acknowledged but that of the strong arm.

Between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon stretches for seventy miles C[oe]lo-Syria or Buka'a, a well-watered and fertile plain, containing about 500 square miles and 137 agricultural villages, and marked by such ruins as those of Chalcis and Baalbek.

The Anti-Lebanon consists of a series of mountain ranges, some of which run parallel with Lebanon, and flatten into the plain at "the gathering in of Hamath," while some bend off in a more easterly direction, and shoot out boldly into the desert. The westward end of this mountainous range rises into Mount Hermon. The eastward end sinks into Palmyra. North of the Anti-Lebanon, the narrow plain of C[oe]lo-Syria expands into the great rolling country of high-land, river, lake, and plain, where for more than a thousand years the Hittite kings rolled back the tide of Egyptian and Assyrian invasion, and where, in later years, the Selucidae kings pastured their elephants and steeds of war.

Among the ranges and spurs of the Anti-Lebanon are many green spots of great picturesque beauty. Wherever there are fountains the habitations of men are clustered together at the water, seemingly jostling and struggling like thirsty flocks to get to its margin. The cottages cling to the edges of fountains and rivers in the most perilous positions. Sometimes they are stuck to the rocks like swallows' nests, and sometimes they are placed on beetling cliffs like the home of the eagle above the chasm. No solitary houses are met throughout the country. The people build together for safety, and near the water for life, and by the village fountains and wells cluster the fairest scenes of Eastern poetry, as well Arab and Persian as Hebrew, and around them have taken place some of the fiercest of Oriental battles.

At the villages a little water is drawn off from the rivers, and carefully apportioned among the different families and factions. By means of this water, carefully conducted to the various gardens, apples and plums, grapes and pomegranates, melons and cucumbers, corn and onions, olives and egg plants are cultivated; and such is the bounty of Nature, that with the least effort existence is possible wherever there is water. A little rancid oil and a few vegetables are sufficient to sustain life, and these can be had by a few hours labour in the cool of the day. The rest of the time may be spent squatting cross-legged by the water, or smoking and dozing in the shade. This is existence, but not life; yet why should the fellah labour for anything beyond what is absolutely necessary, when the slightest sign of wealth would create anxious solicitude on the part of the Turk?

A ride of seventy-two miles across Ph[oe]nicia, Lebanon, C[oe]lo-Syria, and Anti-Lebanon, brings us, by French diligence, to Damascus. Abana and Pharpar break through a sublime gorge, about 100 yards wide, down the middle of which the French road winds its serpentine course, the rivers on either side being fringed with silver poplar and scented walnut. As we look eastward from the brow of the hill, the great plain of Damascus, encircled by a framework of desert, lies before us. The river, escaped from the rocky gorge, spreads out like a fan, and, after a run of three miles, enters Damascus, where it flows through 15,000 houses, sparkles in 60,000 marble fountains, and hurries on to scatter wealth and fertility far and wide over the plain. Those who have gazed on this scene are never likely to forget its supreme loveliness. Its beauty is doubtless much enhanced by contrast. The eye has been wandering over a chocolate-coloured and heated landscape throughout a weary day; suddenly, on turning a corner, it rests on Eden.

The city is spread out before you, embowered in orchards, in the midst of a plain of 300 square miles. Around the pearl-coloured, city—first in the world in point of time, first in Syria and Western Asia in point of importance—surge, like an emerald sea, forests of apricots and olives and apples and citrons, and "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food," with all their variety of colour and tint, according to their season, sometimes all aglow with blossoms, sometimes golden and ruddy with fruit, and sometimes russet with the mellowing tints of autumn. Beyond the city the water conveys its wealth by seven rivers to shady gardens and thirsty fields; and, as far as cultivation extends, two or three splendid crops during the same year reward the industry of the husbandman. But even in the plain of Damascus the land is cultivated for only a few miles beyond the gates of the city. The water that would fertilize the whole plain flows uselessly into pestiferous marshes, and the wide plain within sight of the Damascus garrison is abandoned to the Bedawin of the Desert and the wild boars of the jungle.[58]

In Palestine there is the great plain of Esdraelon, now, to a large extent, in the hands of a Greek firm at Beyrout, and partially cultivated, but capable of producing wheat and maize and cotton and barley, throughout its whole extent. On the southern side of Carmel spreads out the extensive plain of Sharon, a vast expanse of pasture-land, ablaze with flowers in early spring, and rank with thistles in the time of harvest; and further south extends the still more fertile regions of Philistia.

Looking south, from the southern slopes of Mount Hermon, the green plain of the Huleh, with Lake Merom glassed in its centre, forms a beautiful picture. Mr. Oliphant here first saw an enchanting location for his colony. "I felt," he says, "a longing to imitate the example of the men of Dan; for there can be no question that if, instead of advancing upon it with six hundred men, and taking it by force, after the manner of the Danites, one approached it in the modern style of a joint-stock company (limited), and recompensed the present owners, keeping them as labourers, a most profitable speculation might be made out of the 'Ard el Huleh.'" The lake "might, with the marshy plain above it, be easily drained; and a magnificent tract of country, nearly twenty miles long by from five to six miles in width, abundantly watered by the upper affluents of the Jordan, might then be brought into cultivation. It is only now occupied by some wandering Bedawin and the peasants of a few scattered villages on its margin."[59]

East of the Jordan are the corn-growing table-land of Bashan and the beautiful and fertile high-lands of Gilead. In the former I have ridden for hours, with an unbroken sea of waving wheat as far as I could see around me, and as regards the "land of Gilead," I can confirm Mr. Oliphant's most enthusiastic descriptions of its beauty, fertility, and desolation.

Nor are the agricultural resources of Syria and Palestine limited to the great irrigated plains and broad trans-Jordanic table-lands. Throughout the country there are numerous villages shut in among bare hills, with apparently no resource; but on closer inspection it turns out that there are a few cultivated terraces, where tobacco and grape-vines and vegetables are cultivated, and on a still closer inspection it is evident that the bare mountains all around were once terraced, and doubtless clothed with the vine.

I was once crossing a series of undulating ranges abutting on Mount Hermon with an English tourist who was making merry at the utterly barren appearance of "the promised land." It turned out, however, that his attempted wit served to sharpen our observation, and we found that all the hill-sides had once been terraced by human hands. A few miles further on we came to Rasheiya, where the vineyards still flourish on such terraces, and we had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the bare terraces, from which lapse of time had worn away the soil, were once trellised with the vine, the highest emblem of prosperity and joy. Similar terraces were noticed by Drake and Palmer in the Desert of Judea, far from any modern cultivation.

It is rash to infer that because a place is desolate now, it must always have been so, or must always remain so. The Arab historian tells us that Salah-ed-Din, before the battle of Hattin, set fire to the forests, and thus encircled the Crusaders with a sea of flame. Now there is scarcely a shrub in the neighbourhood.

In wandering through that sacred land, over which the Crescent now waves, one is amazed at the number of ruins that stud the landscape, and show what must once have been the natural fertility of the country. Whence has come the change? Is the blight natural and permanent? or has it been caused by accidental and artificial circumstances which may be only temporary? Doubtless, each ruin has its tale of horror, but all trace their destruction to Islamism, and especially to the blighting and desolating presence of the Turk.

That short, thick, beetle-browed, bandy-legged, obese man, that so many fresh tourists find so charming, is a Turkish official. He and his ancestors have ruled the land since 1517. A Wilberforce in sentiment, he is the representation of "that shadow of shadows for good—Ottoman rule." The Turks, whether in their Pagan or Mohammedan phase, have only appeared on the world's scene to destroy. No social or civilizing art owes anything to the Turks but progressive debasement and decay.

That heap of stones, in which you trace the foundations of temples and palaces, where now the owl hoots and the jackal lurks, was once a prosperous Christian village. Granted that the Christianity was pure neither in creed nor ritual; yet it had, even in its debased form, a thew and sinew that brought prosperity to its possessors. The history of that ruin is the history of a thousand such throughout the empire. Its prosperity led to its destruction. The insolent Turk, restrained by no public opinion, and curbed by no law, would wring from the villagers the fruits of their labour. Oppression makes even wise men mad, and the Christians, goaded to madness, turned on their oppressors. Then followed submission, on promise of forgiveness. The Christians surrendered their arms, and the flashing scymitar of Islam fell upon the defenceless; and the place became a ruin amid horrors too foul to narrate. No greater proof of the exhaustless fertility of the soil of Syria and Palestine could be furnished than this: that the spoiler, unrestrained, has been in it for 365 years, and that he has not yet succeeded in reducing it all to a howling wilderness.

II. Those who embark capital in land, with a view to securing a home for themselves and their children, should look closely to the character of their title-deeds. The foremost Englishman in the Levant assured me that he never invested money in houses or land because there was no such thing as security of title in the Turkish Empire. My own opinion, based on an experience of ten years, is that it is impossible to know whether or not you have a title in Syria. Unfortunately this judgment does not rest on mere opinions as to what might happen, but it is fortified by the authoritative Commercial Reports of Her Majesty's Consuls throughout Syria and Palestine, and by a series of facts of daily occurrence.

Vice-Consul Jago, of Beyrout, in a report dated July 11, 1876, thus writes:—

"Efforts made by wealthy native Christians and Europeans to employ capital in agriculture have been invariably met by great obstacles, the apparent impossibility of getting incontestable title-deeds being one of the many, although such documents may have emanated from the highest authority in the land. Actions of ejectment have invariably followed such efforts, to which the fact of the Government itself being often the seller opposed no bar."

The same Vice-Consul, writing from Damascus, under date March 13, 1880, referring to the difficulty of investing capital in agricultural enterprise, says:—

"Unfortunately, the present judicial system is of a nature to permit, if not to foster, the thousand and one intrigues and vexations which seem to be almost inseparably connected with the possession of land in Syria, and additional facilities for such are to be found, if wanting, in the state in which the land registry offices are kept. Erasures, irregular entries, at the request of the interested, change of one name for another as the legitimate owner, resulting often in persons finding their names down in the Government books as owners of property, the existence of which was unknown to them, and vice versa, cause the validity of title-deeds, issued as they are by various courts in the country, to be a fertile source of litigation, and fraudulent action.... The fact, however, that title-deeds can be set aside by verbal testimony perhaps sufficiently accounts for the little value they practically possess."