MR. FREDERIC HARRISON'S " APOLOGIA." • MR. FREDERIC Ils.umsow's apologia
is like Cardinal Newman's in one respect,—that its strength lies in its sincerity, and not in its arguments. From each writer's history of his religious career we can understand what sort of man the pilgrim is; but in neither ease is there much temptation to follow in his steps. Mr. Harrison begins by sketching the Christianity in which he was reared, and on which, when reason developed, he turned his back, evidently under the impression that what he so justly despises is the faith of the saints, or at least the faith of most orthodox Christians. But is it? Take, for example, Mr. Harrison's description of Christian prayer "When we reflect what Christians conceive their Maker to be —the Ineffable Majesty which has created the Infinite Universe— when we think that each of us is but an infinitesimal mite, on one of the minor satellites that whirl round one of the smaller of the thirty millions of suns—when we hear this mite asking the Almighty to suspend in its favour the laws of life and death ; of sunshine and rain ; it may be, to help it draw a lucky number in the ballot; to win a prize in a lottery ; or to ruin a rival—the moral basis of ordinary prayer becomes too horrible, too grotesque to be endured."
One wonders what Mr. Harrison's experience can have been if this is his conception of "ordinary prayer." He tells us that "the vast percentage of actual prayers are almost as childish—some of them as odious—as the prayers howled forth by African savages or Asiatic fanatics." How can he know ? In the Church of England, at any rate, where the Book of Common Prayer exhibits the norm of devotion, this African and Asiatic element must be unusual. But the whole passage we have quoted is a good example of Mr. Harrison's loose way of writing. He begins by calling man a "mite," which he is not. He goes on to contrast him in bulk with the material universe, a consideration to which Pascal long ago supplied the sufficient answer : "Man is a reed, but a reed which thinks." He then characterises Christian prayer as a demand for the suspension of the divine laws. But if the Lord's Prayer is to be reckoned as the type of Christian prayer, as it certainly must be, this characterisation is almost grotesquely inappropriate. If Christians pray for life or death, for rain or sunshine, it is usually with the clause "if it be possible"; and even if not, how is a prayer for recovery a prayer for the suspension of "the laws of life and death" ? What are "the laws of life and death " ? Mr. Harrison's rhetoric has run away with him. Against the charge of praying "to win a prize or to ruin a rival" we do not care even to defend ourselves.
This indifference to facts is characteristic of the whole book ; it marks both Mr. Harrison's criticism of Christianity and his defence of his own creed. It is especially conspicuous in the critique upon Essays and Reviews, the most interesting of the many reprinted papers in the volume. Take, for example, the view here expressed of the Bible. Mr. Harrison tells us in his autobiography that he has always loved the Bible "as a book to read." He says nothing about any corresponding affection for the Koran or the Indian sacred books. But as soon as he begins to theorise, the incom- mensurableness between them and the Bible, of which as a reader be is conscious, drops out of sight ; and he piles up sen- tences of this sort :—" Were not the Egyptians as much as the Jews 'pioneers in civilisation ' ? Are Confucius and the infinite millions who have lived and died, under his dispensation drops in the ocean of humanity Didlluddhism do nothing for the principle of purity, or was Mohammed a feeble teacher, of the idea of monotheism ? The stupendous theocracies of the past and the present, the countless masses who have been and • !CR. Creed qf Layme, elpologes pro Pick mea. By Frederic Harrison London: Macmillan and Cu. 17.. ad. net.]
are held together in the faith of Islam, the infinite myriads of Buddhist societies, the polytheistic and fetichist races sown broadcast over the whole earth, each have their great prophets, play their part in the destiny of the race, and form real elements of its life." It is a little pathetic that Mr. Harrison, who has prophesied in the name of science all his life, should never have succeeded in grasping the fundamental principle of all science, that a theory is useless which does not take account of all the facts. His rough-and-ready way of settling the problem of the "inspiration" of Scripture—which the Church herself has never been reckless enough to define—takes account of what is common to all religious books, and ignores what is peculiar to those of the Jewish people. "The Bible," he says, "can hold its place either by a Divine sanction, or by glaring injustice to the other writings of mankind. The question is not whether, stripped of that sanction, it is worth- less, but whether other books are not equally valuable." That question Mr. Harrison would settle by an appeal to abstract reason. The world has settled it by an appeal to facts. Professor Max I/fuller's library of "sacred books" sleeps on the topmost shelf ; the Bible is still read with delight by Mr. Harrison and other beings in the van of civilisation. Secures judicat orbis terrarum.
When we turn from Mr. Harrison's criticism to his con- struction, we are still in the same abstract region. Facts are still held of no account. We are called upon to devote our- selves to "the vast Human whole," which, being interpreted, turns out to be no whole at all, but a mere arithmetical aggregate of the race, past, present, and future,—" what never was nor no man ever saw," or shall see. On Mr. Harrison's theory, there is no such fact as " Humanity "; there is nothing but a succession of races out of which, by and by, it is to be hoped the perfect animal may at last be produced. But why we should take any interest in the efforts of Nature to go one better than ourselves Mr. Harrison does not tell us. He prefers to juggle with such terms as "the collective destiny of men," which still retain some Christian colouring. Mr. Harrison's reading of the Bible may still, we hope, one day convince him that the true "religion of humanity" is that which St. Paul preaches in his letter to the Ephesian Church, when he tells of the purpose of God "that in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ." Mr. Harrison believes that the idea of mankind as "a colossal man possessing life, growth, and mind" is a Positivist conception ; it is, as an historical fact, purely Christian, and it is only credible on the Christian hypothesis.
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