ANTHROPOMORPHISM. A COMMENT ON SOME POETRY SENT BY A LADY. [1870.] I DEAR MADAM, THANK you for the elegant Poetry which you have sent me, with a purpose, as I believe. In the name of the writer I seem to recognize an amiable gentleman who was my pupil more than twenty years ago. Permit me to give an opinion, theologically, upon his doctrine. He desires to know something more of God than that which can be seen by the outward eye, even by the painter's eye, on the surface of nature. He is right. His religious instinct leads him to address God, and to entitle him "Father!" Again he is right. He evidently attributes to God a mind that understands us, and a soul that loves us. To believe this firmly, unchangeably, is the core of religion, in my judgment, and suffices for everything. It gives peace in trouble and even amid a sense of guilt; and not peace only, but joy, if it be but intense enough. Yet the writer of the poetry is not satisfied with a spiritual belief in God: he wishes to put sight in place of faith. He tells us that he wants to gaze upon a Face, and puts the word into italics. Here I think he drops out of rational and spiritual religion into a credulity which has everywhere induced baneful idolatry, assimilating God to man. A face? and why not a hand? why not a foot? Does God need eyes and nose? To suppose it, is to abandon the first principles of manly religion, and go back into ancient puerilities. This is the basis of so many people's notion, that in a future world the immeasurable Divinity will be seen and known by our bodily eyes, not merely by our mental powers, and that we are to walk by faith on earth, but by sight in heaven. In my conviction mental faith alone can appreciate or apprehend the Infinite One. The eye, whether it see a face or a glare of light, has none the more insight into M God. The pure in heart may see something of him now, because they know him from within; and if hereafter they become nobler and purer within, they will know him less imperfectly. But against the notion that the ocular vision of a face is,-here or there, to give insight into God, I ask permission to protest, as against a pernicious superstition. I am, Very truly yours, FRANCIS W. NEWMAN. EMORI NOLO: MORTUUM ME ESSE NIHIL ÆSTUMO. I. ONE wrote of old, "The struggle of this dying Is all I dread : I shall not heed when men above me, sighing, Not in such words, oh Father of our Spirits, A fear, a hope each child of us inherits, II. Awful the hour, and shall be through the ages, With the worn Soul the weary Body wages Till far, so far from loving eyes around them, And that close wedlock that for years hath bound them The pale still Form, so late so dear a treasure, Its fate we know; The Dust, the Worm, its depth of ruin measure But the vast doubt wherewith our souls are shaken Outlasts the tomb! "Where, in what regions shall the Wanderer waken, III. Father! I live or die, in this confiding, That thou art King; That each still Star above me owns thy guiding,- That Nature feels Thee, great unseen Accorder That tokens manifest of thy mightier order And that without Thee not a wave is heaving That all the giant Powers of her conceiving IV. Yet, I beseech Thee, send not these to light me They are so strong, so passionlessly mighty, No! let me gaze, not on some sea far reaching But on a Face in which mine own, beseeching, For more than Poets' song or Painters' seeing Thrills me this dread of waking into Being &c., &c., &c. CAUSES OF ATHEISM. DELIVERED TO WORKING MEN IN BRISTOL. [1871.] ὦ γῆς ὄχημα κἀπὶ γῆς ἔχων ἕδραν, Euripidis Troades, 884. EVE Theism has a VERY great phenomenon has a history. history as well as Atheism, and each is instructive. But Atheism, being a more limited fact, may be treated in a narrower space; and I venture to hope, its stimulating causes may be so expounded as to aid towards some result. This hope induced me to invite your attention this evening. I called Atheism a limited fact; yet in an important sense of the word, and some may think the truest sense, it is painfully common even among professing Christians. Such is the use of the word by Paul to the Ephesians, who, during their immoral Pagan state, he says, were without God in the world, or (closer to the Greek) "atheists in the world." As I understand him, to believe in God is not merely to assent with the intellect that there is something in the universe superior to man, but to revere that superior existence. He who reveres nothing, who worships. nothing above him, but lives unconscious of allegiance to God, is in the estimate of Paul an atheist. Wherever sensuality or avarice is widely spread, in whatever form men live to self, there Atheism widely prevails. But if this phraseology be thought too ambiguous, I will modify it as follows. He who gives intellectual assent to the being of a God, yet neither reveres God, nor regards man, is worse than an atheist. In contrast, I will add, He who finds intellectual difficulties in the doctrine of a righteous God, and knows not what to think of it, yet is intellectually modest and morally reverential, has the heart of a Theist, and may eminently deserve esteem. The short of it is, that Religion is in the heart, not in the dry mind. Intellectual belief may be barren, but moral faith conduces to true virtue and is a natural companion of those noble virtues, Reverence and Love. Yet in this short statement we do not embrace the whole. A man may be admired for the accuracy and power of his intellect, but he is not therefore esteemed or loved on the other hand, whatever the deficiency of his intellect, he deserves esteem, if he be good. If we can love God himself, it is only from a belief in his goodness; not for his power or high intelligence; and the same law of love applies to man. Thus there are two sorts of Theists and two sorts of Atheists. One who is intellectually a Theist may either be reverential, or destitute of reverence, and so may an Atheist. But Reverence is the vital element of moral and spiritual character. In an intellectual Theist this element may be dead or stagnant; and in an intellectual Atheist it may be active. If we fully possess ourselves with this thought, we shall come to the discussion of the Theistic argument with a chastened, calmer and wiser heart. It is an old saying* among Pagan Greeks as well as among Hebrews, that Reverence is Wisdom. The wisest of the Greeks, in the midst of their highest cultivation, were so conscious of the extreme imperfection of their religious knowledge, that in their address to God theistic doubt seems to blend with theistic faith. There is a celebrated passage in Euripides, (Troades 884) which I beg to read to you, translated as I am best able: Oh thou on whom Earth rideth,-who on Earth In Nature fix'd, or Mind which rules in man; Thee I adore:† for Thou, by noiseless track An anecdote is told among the Greeks, that Hiero, military ruler of Syracuse, requested the accomplished poet Simonides to tell him what was his belief concerning God. The poet asked leave to defer his reply till the next day; but when the next day came, he asked yet another day to shape his thoughts more accurately; and after that, a third day. At length he confessed, that the longer he meditated, the harder he found it to define a reply. You find the elements of this doubt in the passage which Euripides, Iphig. Αul. 564, τὸ γὰρ αἰδεῖσθαι, σοφία. + Closer to the Greek: "Thee I have been accustomed to approach with vows." |