ME TAPHYSICS AND THEISM. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SpEoTATos:1
`112,—Mr. Gladstone's address at Liverpool has been blamed for advertising, as it were, the atheistic tendencies of the science of the age, and for recommending, as read by some, a falling-back upon authority. There have appeared in your pages of late many -evidences that the question is more and more coming to the top, " Is the Science of the future to be Atheistic or not?" Jam not -foolish enough to suppose that any words of mine can do anything to help to settle that question, but perhaps I may be allowed to Tress the importance of its being discussed upon its true grounds.
So far as theologians rest their case on the metaphysical im-
possibility of accounting for the genesis of the universe or of the -first germ of it without supposing an Artifex Maximus, their philosophical opponents will be ready with the answer,—" It is a ,priori impossible that you can demonstrate the existence of such an Artifex Maximus; it seems to us, therefore, a useless inquiry ; but most likely there is none." Surely science ought to lift the ques- tion out of the region of metaphysics altogether.
If the object of Christian worship were indeed a mere meta- physical abstraction, a supposed metaphysical necessity, and -nothing more, the continuance of the public worship of it in a -scientific age might be very much like the hypocrisy of the cour- tiers in Hans Andersen's fable, who professed to see the invisible garments which the knaves had woven out of invisible thread, heat by acknowledging the fact that they could not see them they should acknowledge themselves to be fools.
Bat historically, till the Hebrew theology became mixed up with Greek speculations about the Infinite and Absolute, I think it never professed to rest itself upon a metaphysical basis. It always -consistently asserted itself to be an irresistible inference from facts verified in the experience of those to whom they occurred.
- Ask of the prominent characters both of the Old and New 'Testament what made them believers in Divine agency in human -affairs ? The answer consistently is, not any mental attempt to -solve the problem of the Universe, but the occurrence of certain facts in their own experience which drove them to draw the infer- -ence that such Divine agency was at work. The facts drove 'them to the inference that there was a Being other than human, mot so much absolute and infinite, as morally good and gracious, -claiming their moral allegiance, winning their love; revealing little but His goodness and love, and doing this not to satisfy their philosophical curiosity, but in order to use them as messengers through whose agency that goodness and love might attain its ends upon mankind. They were, as a rule, not even men who seem to have been first craving for such influence and then receiving it. Reluctance more than eagerness to receive it seems to have been the rule, rather than the exception, from Moses and Elijah down to St. Paul.
From first to last, what was alleged to be revealed was not infinite and Absolute attributes, but moral qualities. In the Book of Exodus God is made to say, "Thou canst not see my face, but I will show thee my goodness." And so in St. John, "No one bath seen God at any time, but the Son bath revealed his grace and truth." So, too, the object of these divine influences was always .alleged to be, not the inflation of man's speculative knowledge, but the attraction of his love. From first to last, from Deuteronomy and the Prophets to the beloved Apostle and his Master, the duty of man was declared to be to love God ; and this loving, and not the reception of a philosophy, was from first to last declared to be the true religion.
The Christian hypothesis is therefore not the product of meta- physical speculation, nor does it (unless indirectly and incident- ally) contribute anything towards the solution of metaphysical problems about the Infinite and Absolute. Its historical basis and -origin was the occurrence of facts, and it is itself an inference from them. Thus I conclude that the true questions for science to -investigate are simply these :— (1) Whether there is traceable in the experience of mankind 4Svhat Mr. Matthew Arnold calla "a power outside ourselves making for righteousness"? and (2) whether the facts from which this inference, if true, is drawn, are such as to justify belief in the Christian hypothesis that this power working for righteousness is what Christ himself meant by the "Father in secret" whose messenger he was ?
Inquiry into the truth of such a hypothesis is surely not to be set aside as, a priori, on metaphysical grounds, a barren inquiry. The faculties of a dog enable him to draw a reasonable canine inference, from the actions of a being of higher powers than his, that his master is a moral being, and that his moral character is such as to secure his confidence and affection, or inspire distrust and fear. Even if the moral faculties of man be, as Mr. Darwin propounds, of the same kind as the dog's, but more highly developed, he must surely be allowed to possess faculties making him capable of drawing fallible, no doubt, but generally correct inferences as to the presence or absence, in the experience of human life and history, of moral action higher than human.
And if this be so, then without claiming (as it is said Mr. Gladstone meant to do) the right of anchoring on ecclesiastical authority as the alternative to "drifting, roving, and vagrant," on the seas of doubt, it may surely be claimed (and this, I think, is what Mr. Gladstone meant) that it is more reasonable to accept as of some weight the evidence of thousands of Christians who during eighteen centuries have built their lives upon the Christian hypothesis, and declared it to be verified in their own experience, than to abandon it in panic because philo- sophers, deserting the terra firma of science and plunging into metaphysical depths, pronounce the Universe to be complete without a Creator.—I am, Sir, &c.,
F. SEEBOHM.
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