MR. TENNYSON'S POEM.
[TO TEE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Does not Mr. Tennyson, in his new poem, fall away from his high faith that the truths which Christ has made current
" In manhood darkly join Deep-seated in oar mystic frame" P
You say that it is obvious enough that the poem "paints the legitimate results of the agnostic creed on a tortured human heart." Surely, for Christians, this is a most suicidal assump- tion, and is a subtle restatement of the argument, now aban- doned in its crude form, that the agnostic has no basis for morality. Say that the agnostic cannot interpret, account for, explain his moral impulses, but pray do not say that because he has lost his conscious, formal faith, he no longer feels "bound, by any overpowering obligation," to do the very things that a Christian feels most bound to do. In the fact that he cannot rid himself of his sense of obligation lies the strongest proof that this sense is eternal, and is only to be accounted for as the very power of the Divine Spirit in him. Admit that the sense of obligation is not eternal, but dependent on conscious faith, and you ignore your most indestructible evidence of the existence of a Light that lighteth every man, who comes unto His own, though they receive Him not. A man's conviction that his life is not his own, to be parted with when its pains outweigh its pleasures, is "deep-seated in" his "mystic frame." The Christian revelation may show him why the pain is worth bearing. It gives currency to, and works upon, it does not create, this conviction, any more than it creates the eternal ideas of right and wrong. An agnostic always fails to explain to me why he feels bound to act for the highest good of the greatest number. He can never deny that he does feel so bound. If I tell him that he has not really this conviction, am I not myself Atheistic P—I am, Sir, &c., G. SARSON.
[Our correspondent quotes a fragment only of our sentence. If he had quoted the whole, it would have been seen to be entirely in agreement with his own drift. Our contention was simply that the agnostic philosophy, taken alone, involves these consequences. We quite agree with him that every actual agnostic cannot really escape the necessity of looking at his actions in the light of eternal issues which he yet consciously ignores, and eternal purposes to which he professes to be blind. —En. SpccIator.]
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