THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN "THE MODERN SPIRIT."
N an admirable article in the May number of Fraser's Magazine I on " The Modern Spirit," the writer points out the double current of thought which has been undermining the old dogmatic authority of the Churches, —on the one hand, the spirit of logic, weighing evidences and finding a succession of verdicts of " not
proven,"—on the other hand, the spirit of mysticism, grasping at large, vague, vital beliefs, without much evidence or much value for evidence, indeed accepting them only because they :seem to satisfy a want of the soul, and quite ready to modify or dismiss them as soon as any other more importunate claimant demands admittance and recognition from our spiritual senti- ments. It is to the latter element only in this " modern spirit,"
by no means the least important element, that we want to ask attention just now. Nothing is more curious, as the writer of the article in Fraser points out, than the undermining effect which this positive element of our faith, or at least our desire for faith, has produced on " modern thought." • The just and legitimate effect of a careful weighing of evidence, is to show where we have been credulous, and where we must give up what we had formerly accepted as true. But at first sight one would scarcely have supposed that this thirst for large beliefs without evidence,— and it is an essential feature of this element in " the modern spirit" that there should be no show of the trammels of direct argument, for all the passion in this kind of belief exhales if you attempt to _justify it by the aid of the reason,—would have had so under- mining an effect upon those beliefs which had hitherto been held upon evidence. Yet we sincerely believe that a great deal more of modern doubt has been created by this absorption of vague elemental faiths from "the Eternities and Immensities," at least by the habit of mind which chafes against logical grooves and yet craves after mystical inspirations, than by the solvent of modern criticism. The latter has, indeed, often worked in the service of the former. You can trace many an acute conclusion of modern criticism less to the state of the special evidence, than to the rebellion of the critic's mind against being asked to surrender at discretion to the force of evidence which he feels to be inade- quate in grandeur to the greatness of the spiritual issues con- nected with it. Paley's evidences, both of Natural Theology and • of Christianity, for example, have revolted as many minds as they have convinced. As regards Natural Theology, persons -craving for the mystic clasp of the Immensities were naturally angered by Paley's modest but exigeant " watch." As regards Christianity, persons craving for the Word made flesh were re- -volted by being compelled to found so much on the discovery that St. Paul's Epistles contained several minute coincidences as to his times and modes of travelling with the book called the Acts of the Apostles.' The modern spirit, on its thirsty pantheistic side, has done more to dissolve the power of dogmatic definitions and -orthodox apologies, than even the careful toil, of critical investiga- tion.
It is a true account, we believe, of the origin of this mystical frequently on the same grotesque transformation of divine gender,—are all following in the same path, seizing on a vague sentiment which women would have carefully subordinated to some visible and authoritative system, and recklessly enthroning it above all visible and authoritative systems, to show how much they prefer warm sentiment to tradition, evidence, or revelation. But the moat curious illustration of this remarkable tendency in "the modern spirit" boldly to enthrone a sentimental feminine element where no woman ever would have placed it, above all other elements of modern religion and theology, is one that proceeds apparently out of the Swedenborgian school of thought. In a curious little book* that has just appeared, and which is so sincere, fresh, and evidently written out of genuine personal emotion, that we hope to give it a more extended notice in these columns, Mr. Horace Field attempts to establish a rigid fatalism on spiritual grounds, by attributing our apparent free-will to what we must call a loving feminine finesse on the part of God. Nay, this is the express analogy which he finds for God's goodness in making us fancy we are free when we are not,—that it is just what a woman does when she makes her husband, think he originated some token of love to her, while in reality she put him up to it :— " My statement is, then, that God Himself directs all our movements, and so directing, gives us the feeling that we direct ourselves. There is a process so strangely parallel among our social relationships that I cannot pass it by. I refer to conjugial love. An observer of the work- ing of the heart well knows that.conjugial love springs from the woman and returns to her. It originates with the woman. It is a gift from her to the man, which he feels in himself as though he originated it, and feels this so strongly that it will even vanish away—as the woman is herself well aware—if she by acting failed to keep up this strange delusion in his mind. Shakespeare makes Rosalind relate the art employed to effect this purpose, among the other female secrets he allows her to betray under her male disguise- ' OrL Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love. Bus. Me believe it! You may as soon make her that you love believe it ; which I warrant she is apter to do than to confess she does ; that is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their oonsoienees.' Now, the remarkable part in all this is, that the delusion in the man's mind, that he himself originates the love, is essential to the existence of the love itself ; just as when doing any act at the direct bidding of God, the delusion that we do it ourselves is the heart of all social existence. Human nature is full of such contradictions. We may say, for example, to a mischievous child, 'Your whole life is needfully a cause of trouble to all about you ; you ought to try, therefore, and give as little needless trouble as you can,—not that we do not all delight to take trouble for you—we should, indeed, be lost without it—but our delight will pass away if we do not see you endeavour to relieve us of all the trouble you can ;' and this desire to rob us of trouble is the only way to keep up our delight in it ; and these contradictions must be in the heavenly nature, if we regard its essential life to be self-sacrifice, until they cul- minate in conjugial love, the essence of which is the complete absorption of the gift by the receiver, and its consequent return to the giver. In conjugial love, then, the woman plays toward the man the part of Deity. She gives that all-engrossing heavenly love to him, accompanied by the persuasion that he himself originates it. She first selects him from among other men, and he perceives it ; each advance is hers, and he feels it as his own, because he loves it ; she induces the final declaration, but the man speaks the word, and heaven and earth cannot persuade him that he is not the author of it, because he pours out his whole being in it ; and these persuasions she will induce in him at any cost, and will not disturb him in them—no, not at the price of life itself. And what does the wise man do when convinced of these truths? He accepts these doings on the part of the woman as of her true nature ; he revels in the delusion itself thus valued by her, and thus supported, as the richest jewel in her diadem, and as men thus deal with women as to conjugial love, so should the whole race deal with our Father in heaven as to free-will,—receive the inspiration to the deed, accompanied by the love for it, as His gift, and adore Him for ever that the gift thus given persuades them that they, and not God, are the authors of their acts." Indeed, the key-note of this remarkable little book,—remarkable for combining real logical cohesion of thought with extraordinary feats of sentiment,—is that while there is nothing, no other agency, in the world but God, He has managed matters with so loving and delicate a feminine finesse, that we all imagine ourselves to be doing freely what we are really constrained to do, and so enjoy as spontaneous in ourselves acts of self-devotion and prayer, which are really only God's acts passed through the funnel of our seeming personality. We attribute this curious • Heroism; or, Gott Our Father, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent. By Horace Field, B.A. Loudon: Longman'. doctrine concerning God's feminine finesse of tenderness to the Swedenborgian school of thought, both on account of the odd and objectionable word " conjugial," which we never saw in any other class of writings, and from the dedication to the " Bridegroom and the Bride, the Lamb and the Lamb's wife," which is a favourite vein of mystical ajlegory in the Swedenborgian school ; but there is nothing in the book Swedenborgian in doctrine, Sweden- borg himself having been, we believe, a strong believer in free-will. Now, what can be more remarkable than the fact that from so many different sources, —from the Spinozistic school of Pan- theism, from Comte's school of rigidly phenomenal generalization, from Theodore Parker's school of robust, sometimes almost rudely masculine, Theism,—from the Swedenborgian school of types and allegories,—there proceed the .same tendencies to extol the femi- nine type of mind,—nay, as we have seen, even feminine finesse in action, not only above religious dogma, but even above the intellectual side of faith. To defend God for deceiving us as to free-will by saying that in this He is just like a woman who makes a man offer to her and makes him think he did it without any guid- ance from her, is surely one of the strangest apologies for Fatalism which the world has ever heard of. Yet though an exaggerated illustration of the modern tendency to substitute vague fascina- tions of sentiment for truths for which we can plead the authority of historical revelation, it is only one of many all going to show that the most popular elements of modern religious faith are those at which men vaguely grasp in moods of elevated feeling, and for which they require no evidence in the proper sense of the term, except just the very sort of momentary fascination which beautiful women themselves exercise over men. Our inference from all this is that the positive side of "the modern spirit " in relation to religion is the tendency to fall in love with " the infinite," and to revolt, as lovers will, against the restraint of rational laws; while the negative side,—the masculine side, —is the logical tendency to demand evidence for all asserted facts, and to reject all facts not established by evidence in the most satisfactory manner. The great religious calamity of our time is that so few seem to be able to combine habitually, and in the same religious mood, the two attitudes of thought,—to guide criticism by spiritual cravings, to check spiritual cravings by in- tellectual criticism. Our most religious feelings nowadays help the revolt against Revelation just because it is revelation ; in other words, because God's revelation of Himself is governed by moral laws and limited by historic evidence, and so has not the delicious charm of the inspirations of vague and wayward passion. The critical spirit, on the other hand,—one of the most hopeful evidences of the scrupulous intellectual conscience of the present day,—is left unassisted in its investigations by that religious thirst which could alone enable it to detect the true springs of the water of life. We shall never reach by our own investigations, and without the aid of that dogmatic " authority " which is gone for ever, the true life of God, as He has so long been revealing it to us, till we can combine in the same attitude of mind and heart the scrupulous intellectual conscientiousness of modern times, with the spiritual thirst which, without it, is so lawless and vagrant, but which, under its guidance, will prove a truer divining rod to detect the " living waters," than any authori- tative Church, or any verbally inspired Bible.
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