ARE WE SCEPTICS ?
(TO TEE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR:]
SI11,-I do not know whether you will consider that your criticism on Mr. Leslie Stephen's article on this subject leaves room for the following protest against its assumptions. Should you decide that I only repeat what has already been said in your columns I shall be well satisfied. I attempt to reply to that article with something of the pain with which I read it. Such scorn as Mr. Stephen feels for us is not often so frankly expressed as in his pages, but it is common ; and to confront it is what every one must shrink from, though he may feel the call to utter a faith too thoroughly despised to be understood, stronger than this shrink- ing. There are times when it is a reason for uttering a creed that he who holds it is ungifted and unknown. But whether he is the spokesman of millions, or the exponent of insignificant idiosyn- oracles, must be decided by another.
I understand Mr. Stephen to contend that our doctrine implies as much disbelief in a certain order as his does, only that while we doubt as to an order which every man may verify for himself, his scepticism is reserved for that which we must leave for verification till beyond the grave. Your answer, while in some sense implying my protest, still seems to me to stop short of an explicit claim on behalf of Christianity to the possession of ample space for all in Mr. Stephen's creed that is not a denial. I believe in a future life,—that is, I believe that what you, and Mr. Stephen, and I mean when each of us says I, is something permanent ; that as thus entity does unquestionably survive the loss of a limb or a sense, it will survive the loss of the whole bodily organisation. But do I therefore in any sense disbelieve in a present life ? Do I the less care that the tiny circle which my influence may reach, and who will be here when I am out of sight, should load better, purer, happier lives in this world, because I believe I shall then be looking forward to an endless reunion with them, possibly still watching and helping them ? I ant astounded that it should be possible to ask such a question. I am not conscious, in throwing Mr. Stephen's accusations into this form, of dropping anything that may give them force, yet I seem to be repeating an absurdity as gross as that of ono who should accuse me of depreciating the value of Livy as a historian by saying that our copies are incomplete.
I believe in Heaven and Ile11,—that is, I believe in a world where moral laws operate without any interference from physical laws. But do I therefore disbelieve in the action of these moral laws here and now ? Do I doubt that the natural tendency of water is downwards whenever I see a fountain ? I see the action of moral law clearly enough for seine forms of evil, here and now. The envious and revengeful mulls miserable in a palace. The patient and loving nature is not very miserable anywhere. But that is almost all we can say on the one hand, and we are obliged to say a great deal on the other. There are sensa- tions which make life mere endurance to the virtuous and the holy ; and then, again, there are sensations which bring a passing waft of enjoyment to the spirit that fa crushed by remorse. The laws of sensation are in this world constantly coming in to con- fuse and conceal the laws of emotion. What I mean when I say I believe in heaven and hell, is that I believe in a world where this will be true no longer. I look forward to a time when those laws which here I see checked by other laws will be absolute. So far from denying their action here in order to establish it there, I feel that many traces of this action are visible only to the eye that can see in them the beginning of something that is to be coutitmed elsewhere. I am the more able to trace their partial action in this world, because 1 expect to enter one where nothing will interfere with it.
I believe that what Mr. Stephen calls the altruistic impulse is the voice in the human heart of One who loves and wills. But do I therefore disbelieve in that particular result of His will which we call Nature ? The only thing Mr. Stephen believes about it and I do not is that it is ultimate. That is a positive belief merely in form ; it means no more than that there is nothing else to believe in. When Mr. Tyndall says, " Gravity almost vanishes in comparison with these molecular forces," is he a sceptic with regard to gravity ? I believe that there are laws which are to the whole order of Nature what molecular force is to gravity ; but I do not deny that the order of Nature is.
Lastly, I believe in a Son of God who was also a Son of Man. Does this belief go one step towards Mr. Stephen's strange assertion that "Christ must be God, because all men are devils?" It seems to me, Sir, that he who is thus spoken of answered such, criticism as this when he asked those who had taken up stones to burl at him, "Is it not written in your law, 'I said ye are gods ?' If he called them gods to whom the Word of God came, say ye of him whom the Father bath made holy, 'Thou blasphemest,' because he said, '1 am the Son of God ?' " It is the writer who has preserved most of the exceptional element in Christ's claim who has preserved this vindication of that in it which was
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A certain amount of heat in water leaves it a mere passive body, the movement of which must come from without. Add heat beyond that amount, and the water becomes the source of our most rapid movement and our strongest power. Do we in stating this law deny that the very same heat which turns water to steam is present in water that we may wash our hands in ?
Mr. Stephen believes in the altruistic instinct in humanity, and so do I ; but I am forced, reluctantly enough, to believe in one side of it, which we would all gladly get rid of in other hearts, and still more in our own. Hatred is as disinterested as love. If he denies that the human heart is a magnet with two poles, do not let him call me sceptical because I deny that there is only ono.
I suppose that in this too long letter I have not said a word that is not common-place. I would not put it before you if I did not believe it common-place. A desire to be the exponent of the faith of the intellectual world would not overcome the repug- nance I feel to speak of such things in the columns of a newspaper.
I have as little wish as claim to vindicate the position of any aristocracy whatever. I desire simply to transcribe the beliefs which to millions of the poor, the ignorant, and the despised, are the spring of all their power and all their hope. Whether these beliefs are true or false has not been the question which in these remarks I have tried to answer. I have confined my atten- tion to the aim which I have been as surprised as a recent Roman Catholic correspondent to find necessary in an answer to Mr. Leslie Stephen,—that of deciding what these beliefs are.—I am,
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