REPLY TO THE DEFENCE OF THE “ECLIPSE OF FAITH.”

This small treatise was reviewed, unfavourably of course, in most of the religious periodicals, and among them in the “Prospective Review,” by my friend James Martineau. I had been about the same time attacked in a book called the “Eclipse of Faith,” written (chiefly against my treatise on the Soul) in the form of a Platonic Dialogue; in which a sceptic, a certain Harrington, is made to indulge in a great deal of loose and bantering argumentation, with the view of ridiculing my religion, and doing so by ways of which some specimen will be given.

I made an indignant protest in a new edition of this book, and added also various matter in reply to Mr. Martineau, which will still be found here. He in consequence in a second article of the “Prospective” reviewed me afresh; but, in the opening, he first pronounced his sentence in words of deep disapproval against the “Eclipse of Faith.”

“The method of the work,” says he, “its plan of appealing from what seems shocking in the Bible to something more shocking in the world, simply doubles every difficulty without relieving any; and tends to enthrone a devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere.... The whole force of the writer’s thought, his power of exposition, of argument, of sarcasm, is thrown, in spite of himself, into the irreligious scale.... If the work be really written in good faith, and be not rather a covert attack on all religion, it curiously shows how the temple of the author’s worship stands on the same foundation with the officina of Atheism, and in such close vicinity that the passer-by cannot tell from which of the two the voices stray into the street.”

The author of the “Eclipse,” buoyed up by a large sale of his work to a credulous public, put forth a “Defence,” in which he naturally declined to submit to the judgment of this reviewer. But my readers will remark, that Mr. Martineau, writing against me, and seeking to rebut my replies to him (nay, I fear I must say my attack on him; for I have confessed, almost with compunction, that it was I who first stirred the controversy) was very favourably situated for maintaining a calmly judicial impartiality. He thought us both wrong, and he administered to us each the medicine which seemed to him needed. He passed his strictures on what he judged to be my errors, and he rebuked my assailant for profane recklessness.

I had complained, not of this merely, but of monstrous indefensible garbling and misrepresentation, pervading the whole work. The dialogue is so managed, as often to suggest what is false concerning me, yet without asserting it; so as to enable him to disown the slander, while producing its full effect against me. Of the directly false statements and garblings I gave several striking exhibitions. His reply to all this in the first edition of his “Defence” was reviewed in a third article of the “Prospective Review,” Its ability and reach of thought are attested by the fact that it has been mistaken for the writing of Mr. Martineau; but (as clearly as reviews ever speak on such subjects) it is intimated in the opening that this new article is from a new hand, “at the risk of revealing division of persons and opinions within the limits of the mystic critical We.” Who is the author, I do not know; nor can I make a likely guess at any one who was in more than distant intercourse with me.

This third reviewer did not bestow one page, as Mr. Martineau had done, on the “Eclipse;” did not summarily pronounce a broad sentence without details, but dedicated thirty-four pages to the examination and proof. He opens with noticing the parallel which the author of the “Eclipse” has instituted between his use of ridicule and that of Pascal; and replies that he signally violates Pascal’s two rules, first, to speak with truth against one’s opponents and not with calumny; secondly, not to wound them needlessly. “Neglect of the first rule (says he) has given to these books [the “Eclipse” and its “Defence”] their apparent controversial success; disregard of the second their literary point.” He adds, “We shall show that their author misstates and misrepresents doctrines; garbles quotations, interpolating words which give the passage he cites reference to subjects quite foreign from those to which in the original they apply, while retaining the inverted commas, which are the proper sign of faithful transcription; that similarly, he allows himself the licence of omission of the very words on which the controversy hangs, while in appearance citing verbatim;... and that he habitually employs a sophistry too artful (we fear) to be undesigned. May he not himself have been deceived, some indulgent render perhaps asks, by the fallacies which have been so successful with others? It would be as reasonable to suppose that the grapes which deluded the birds must have deluded Zeuxis who painted them.”

So grave an accusation against my assailant’s truthfulness, coming not from me, but from a third party, and that, evidently a man who knew well what he was saying and why, could not be passed over unnoticed, although that religious world, which reads one side only, continued to buy the Eclipse and its Defence greedily, and not one in a thousand of them was likely to see the Prospective Review, In the second edition of the Defence the writer undertakes to defend himself against my advocate, And how does he set about his reply? By trying to identify the third writer with the second (who was notoriously Mr. Martineau), and to impute to him ill temper, chagrin, irritation, and wounded self-love, as the explanation of this third article:

“The third writer if, as I have said, he be not the second sets out on a new voyage of discovery ... and still humbly following in the wake of Mr. Newman’s great critical discoveries, repeats that gentleman’s charges of falsifying passages, garbling and misrepresentation. In doing so, he employs language, and manifests a temper, which I should have thought that respect for himself, if not for his opponent, would have induced him to suppress. It is enough to say, that he quite rivals Mr. Newman in sagacity, and if possible, has more successfully denuded himself of charity.... If he be the same as the second writer, I am afraid that the little Section XV.” [i.e. the reply to Mr. Martineau in 1st edition of the “Defence”] “must have offended the amour propre more deeply than it ought to have done, considering the wanton and outrageous assault to which it was a very lenient reply, and that the critic affords another illustration of the old maxim, that there are none so implacable as those who have done a wrong.

“As the spectacle of the reeling Helot taught the Spartans sobriety, so his bitterness shall teach me moderation. I know enough of human nature to understand that it is very possible for an angry man and chagrin and irritation are too legibly written on every page of this article to be betrayed into gross injustice.”

The reader will see from this the difficulty of my position in this controversy. Mr. Martineau, while defending himself, deprecated the profanity of my other opponent, and the atheistic nature of his arguments. He spoke as a bystander, and with the advantage of a judicial position, and it is called “wanton and outrageous.” A second writer goes into detail, and exposes some of the garbling arts which have been used against me; it is imputed to ill temper, and is insinuated to be from a spirit of personal revenge. How much less can I defend myself, and that, against untruthfulness, without incurring such imputation! My opponent speaks to a public who will not read my replies. He picks out what he pleases of my words, and takes care to divest them of their justification. I have (as was to be expected) met with much treatment from the religious press which I know cannot be justified; but all is slight, compared to that of which I complain from this writer. I will presently give a few detailed instances to illustrate this. While my charge against my assailant is essentially moral, and I cannot make any parade of charity, he can speak patronizingly of me now and then, and makes his main attacks on my logic and metaphysics. He says, that in writing his first book, he knew no characteristics of me, except that I was “a gentleman, a scholar, and a very indifferent metaphysician At the risk of encountering yet more of banter and insult, I shall here quote what the third Prospective Reviewer says on this topic. (Vol. x. :

“Our readers will be able to judge how well qualified the author is to sneer at Mr. Newman’s metaphysics, which are far more accurate than his own, or to ridicule his logic. The tone of contempt which he habitually assumes preposterously reverses the relative intellectual status, so far as sound systematic thought is concerned, of the two men.”

I do not quote this as testimony to myself but as testimony that others, as well as I, feel the contemptuous tone assumed by my adversary in precisely that subject on which modesty is called for. On metaphysics there is hitherto an unreconciled diversity among men who have spent their lives in the study; and a large part of the endless religious disputes turns on this very fact. However, the being told, in a multitude of ingenious forms, that I am a wretched logician, is not likely to raffle my tranquillity. What does necessarily wound me, is his misrepresenting my thoughts to the thoughtful, whose respect I honour; and poisoning the atmosphere between me and a thousand religious hearts. That these do not despise me, however much contempt he may vent, I know only too well through their cruel fears of me.

I have just now learned incidentally, that in the last number (a supplementary number) of the “Prospective Review,” there was a short reply to the second edition of Mr. Rogers’s “Defence,” in which the Editors officially deny that the third writer against Mr. Rogers is the same as the second; which, I gather from their statement, the “British Quarterly” had taken on itself to affirm.

I proceed to show what liberties my critic takes with my arguments, and what he justifies.

I. In the closing chapter of my third edition of the “Phases,” I had complained of his bad faith in regard to my arguments concerning the Authoritative imposition of moral truth from without. I showed that, after telling his reader that I offered no proof of my assertions, he dislocated my sentences, altered their order, omitted an adverb of inference, and isolated three sentences out of a paragraph of forty-six lines: that his omission of the inferential adverb showed his deliberate intention to destroy the reader’s clue to the fact, that I had given proof where he suppresses it and says that I have given none; that the sentences quoted as 1,2,3, by him, with me have the order 3, 2,1; while what he places first, is with me an immediate and necessary deduction from what has preceded. Now how does he reply? He does not deny my facts; but he justifies his process. I must set his words before the reader.

“The strangest thing is to see the way in which, after parading this supposed ’artful dodge,’ which, I assure you, gentle reader, was all a perfect novelty to my consciousness, Mr. Newman goes on to say, that the author of the ‘Eclipse’ has altered the order of his sentences to suit a purpose. He says: ’The sentences quoted as 1, 2, 3, by him, with me have the order 3, 2, 1.’ I answer, that Harrington was simply anxious to set forth at the head of his argument, in the clearest and briefest form, the conclusions he believed Mr. Newman to hold, and which he was going to confute. He had no idea of any relation of subordination or dependence in the above sophisms, as I have just proved them to be, whether arranged as 3, 2, 1, or 1, 2, 3, or 2, 3, 1, or in any other order in which the possible permutations of three things, taken 3 and 3 together, can exhibit them; ex nihilo, nil fit; and three nonentities can yield just as little. Jangle as many changes as you will on these three cracked bells, no logical harmony can ever issue out of them.”

Thus, because he does not see the validity of my argument, he is to pretend that I have offered none: he is not to allow his readers to judge for themselves as to the validity, but they have to take his word that I am a very “queer” sort of logician, ready “for any feats of logical legerdemain.”

I have now to ask, what is garbling, if the above is not? He admits the facts, but justifies them as having been convenient from his point of view; and then finds my charity to be “very grotesque,” when I do not know how, without hypocrisy, to avoid calling a spade a spade.

I shall here reprint the pith of my argument, somewhat shortened:

“No heaven-sent Bible can guarantee the veracity of God to a man who doubts that veracity. Unless we have independent means of knowing that God is truthful and good, his word (if we be over so certain that it is really his word) has no authority to us: hence no book revelation can, without sapping its own pedestal, deny the validity of our a priori conviction that God has the virtues of goodness and veracity, and requires like virtues in us. And in fact, all Christian apostles and missionaries, like the Hebrew prophets, have always confuted Paganism by direct attacks on its immoral and unspiritual doctrines, and have appealed to the consciences of heathens, as competent to decide in the controversy. Christianity itself has thus practically confessed what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man. What God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses. External teaching may be a training of those senses, but affords no foundation for certitude.”

This passage deserved the enmity of my critic. He quoted bits of it, very sparingly, never setting before his readers my continuous thought, but giving his own free versions and deductions. His fullest quotation stood thus, given only in an after-chapter: “What God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses.” “Christianity itself has practically confessed what is theoretically clear, (you must take Mr. Newman’s word for both,) that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man.” “No book-revelation can, without sapping its own pedestal, &c. &c.”

These three sentences are what Mr. Rogers calls the three cracked bells, and thinks by raising a laugh, to hide his fraud I have carefully looked through the whole of his dialogue concerning Book Revelation in his 9th edition of the Eclipse. He still excludes from it every part of my argument, only stating in the opening as my conclusions, that a book-revelation is impossible, and that God reveals himself from within, not from without In his Defence (which circulates far less than the “Eclipse,” to judge by the number of editions) he displays his bravery by at length printing my argument; but in the “Eclipse” he continues to suppress it, at least as far as I can discover by turning to the places where it ought to be found.

In the “Eclipse.” he implies, without absolutely asserting, that I hold the Bible to be an impertinence. He repeats this in of the “Defence.” Such is his mode. I wrote: “Without a priori belief, the Bible is an impertinence,” but I say, man has this a priori belief, on which account the Bible is not an impertinence. My last sentence in the very passage before us, expressly asserts the value of (good) external teaching. This my critic laboriously disguises.

He carefully avoids allowing his readers to see that I am contending fundamentally for that which the ablest Christian divines have conceded and maintained; that which the common sense of every missionary knows, and every one who is not profoundly ignorant of the Bible and of history ought to know. Mr. Rogers is quite aware, that no apostle ever carried a Bible in his hand and said to the heathen, “Believe that there is a good and just God, because it is written in this book;” but they appealed to the hearts and consciences of the hearers as competent witnesses. He does not even give his reader enough of my paragraph to make intelligible what I meant by saying “Christianity has practically confessed;” and yet insists that I am both unreasonable and uncharitable in my complaints of him.

I here reprint the summary of my belief concerning our knowledge of morality as fundamental, and not to be tampered with under pretence of religion. “If an angel from heaven bade me to lie, and to steal, and to commit adultery, and to murder, and to scoff at good men, and usurp dominion over my equals, and do unto others everything that I wish not to have done to me; I ought to reply, BE THOU ANATHEMA! This, I believe, was Paul’s doctrine; this is mine.”

It may be worth while to add how in the “Defence” Mr. Rogers pounces on my phrase “a priori view of the Divine character,” as an excuse for burying his readers in metaphysics, in which he thinks he has a natural right to dogmatize against and over me. He must certainly be aware of the current logical (not metaphysical) use of the phrase a priori: as when we say, that Le Verrier and Adams demonstrated a priori that a planet must exist exterior to Uranus, before any astronomer communicated information that it does exist. Or again: the French Commissioners proved by actual measurement that the earth is an oblate spheroid, of which Newton had convinced himself a priori.

I always avoid a needless argument of metaphysics. Writing to the general public I cannot presume that they are good judges of anything but a practical and moral argument. The a priori views of God, of which I here speak, involve no subtle questions; they are simply those views which are attained independently of the alleged authoritative information, and, of course, are founded upon considerations earlier than it.

But it would take too much of space and time, and be far too tedious to my readers, if I were to go in detail through Mr. Rogers’s objections and misrepresentations. I have the sad task of attacking his good faith, to which I further proceed.

II. In the preface to my second edition of the “Hebrew Monarchy,” I found reason to explain briefly in what sense I use the word inspiration. I said, I found it to be current in three senses; “first, as an extraordinary influence peculiar to a few persons, as to prophets and apostles; secondly, as an ordinary influence of the Divine Spirit on the hearts of men, which quickens and strengthens their moral and spiritual powers, and is accessible to them all (in a certain stage of development) in some proportion to their own faithfulness. The third view teaches that genius and inspiration are two names for one thing.... Christians for the most part hold the two first conceptions, though they generally call the second spiritual influence, not inspiration; the third, seems to be common in the Old Testament. It so happens that the second is the only inspiration which I hold. [I here super-add the italics] On this passage Mr. Rogers commented as follows :

“The latest utterance of Mr. Newman on the subject [of inspiration] that I have read, occurs in his preface to the second edition of his “Hebrew Monarchy,” where he tells us, that he believes it is an influence accessible to all men, in a certain stage of development! [Italics.] Surely it will be time to consider his theory of inspiration, when he has told us a little more about it. To my mind, if the very genius of mystery had framed the definition, it could not have uttered anything more indefinite.”

Upon this passage the Prospective reviewer said his say as follows :

“The writer will very considerately defer criticism on Mr. Newman’s indefinite definition, worthy of the genius of mystery, till its author has told us a little more about it. Will anyone believe that he himself deliberately omits the substance of the definition, and gives in its stead a parenthetical qualification, which might be left out of the original, without injury either to the grammatical structure, or to the general meaning of the sentence in which it occurs?” He proceeds to state what I did say, and adds: “Mr. Newman, in the very page in which this statement occurs, expressly identifies his doctrine with the ordinary Christian belief of Divine influence. His words are exactly coincident in sense with those employed by the author of the “Eclipse,” where he acknowledges the reality of ’the ordinary, though mysterious action, by which God aids those who sincerely seek him in every good word and work.’ The moral faithfulness of which Mr. Newman speaks, is the equivalent of the sincere search of God in good word and work, which his opponent talks of.”

I must quote the entire reply given to this in the Defence,:

“And now for a few examples of my opponent’s criticism. I said in the “Defence” that I did not understand Mr. Newman’s notions of inspiration, and that, as to his very latest utterance namely, that it was an influence accessible to all men in a certain stage of development [italics], it was utterly unintelligible to me. ’Will any one believe (says my critic) that he deliberately omits the substance of the definition, and gives in its stead a parenthetical qualification, which might be left out of the original without injury either to the grammatical structure or to the general meaning of the sentence in which it occurs? Was anything ever more amusing? A parenthetical clause which might be left out of the original without injury to the grammatical structure or to the general meaning! Might be left out? Ay, to be sure it might, and not only ‘without injury,’ but with benefit; just as the dead fly which makes the ointment of the apothecary to stink might be left out of that without injury. But it was not left out; and it is precisely because it was there, and diffused so remarkable an odour over the whole, that I characterized the definition as I did and most justly. Accessible to all men in a certain stage of development! When and how accessible? What species of development, I beseech you, is meant? And what is the stage of it? The very thing, which, as I say, and as everybody of common sense must see, renders the definition utterly vague, is the very clause in question.”

Such is his entire notice of the topic. From any other writer I should indeed have been amazed at such treatment. I had made the very inoffensive profession of agreeing with the current doctrine of Christians concerning spiritual influence. As I was not starting any new theory, but accepting what is notorious, nothing more than an indication was needed. I gave, what I should not call definition, but description of it. My critic conceals that I have avowed agreement with Christians; refers to it as a theory of my own; complains that it is obscure; pretends to quote my definition, and leaves out all the cardinal words of it, which I have above printed in italics. My defender, in the “Prospective Review,” exposes these mal-practices; points out that my opponent is omitting the main words, while complaining of deficiency; that I profess to agree with Christians in general; and that I evidently agree with my critic in particular. The critic undertakes to reply to this, and the reader has before him the whole defence. The man who, as it were, puts his hand on his heart to avow that he anxiously sets before his readers, if not what I mean, yet certainly what I have expressed, still persists in hiding from them the facts of the case; avoids to quote from the reviewer so much as to let out that I profess to agree with what is prevalent among Christians and have no peculiar theory; still withholds the cardinal points of what he calls my definition; while he tries to lull his reader into inattention by affecting to be highly amused, and by bantering and bullying in his usual style, while perverting the plainest words in the world.

I have no religious press to take my part. I am isolated, as my assailant justly remarks. For a wonder, a stray review here and there has run to my aid, while there is a legion on the other side newspapers, magazines, and reviews. Now if any orthodox man, any friend of my assailant, by some chance reads these pages, I beg him to compare my quotations, thus fully given, with the originals; and if he find anything false in them, then let him placard me as a LIAR in the whole of the religious press. But if he finds that I am right, then let him learn in what sort of man he is trusting what sort of champion of truth this religious press has cheered on.

III. I had complained that Mr. Rogers falsely represented me to make a fanatical “divorce” between the intellectual and the spiritual, from which he concluded that I ought to be indifferent as to the worship of Jéhovah or of the image which fell down from Jupiter. He has pretended that my religion, according to me, has received nothing by traditional and historical agencies; that it owes nothing to men who went before me; that I believe I have (in my single unassisted bosom) a spiritual faculty so bright as to anticipate all essential spiritual verities; that had it not been for traditional religion, we should everywhere have heard the invariable utterance of spiritual religion in the one dialect of the heart, that this divinely implanted faculty of spiritual discernment anticipates all external truth, &c. &c. I then adduced passages to show that his statement was emphatically and utterly contrary to fact. :

“I say with an unfaltering conscience, that no controvertist ever more honestly and sincerely sought to give his opponent’s views, than I did Mr. Newman’s, after the most diligent study of his rather obscure books; and that whether I have succeeded or not in giving what he thought, I have certainly given what he expressed. It is quite true that I supposed Mr. Newman intended to “divorce” faith and intellect; and what else on earth could I suppose, in common even with those who were most leniently disposed towards him, from such sentiments as these? ALL THE GROUNDS OF BELIEF PROPOSED TO THE MERE UNDERSTANDING HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH FAITH AT ALL. THE PROCESSES OF THOUGHT HAVE NOTHING TO QUICKEN THE CONSCIENCE OR AFFECT THE SOUL. How then can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect is led? I was compelled, I say, to take these passages as everybody else took them, to mean what they obviously express.”

Here he so isolates three assertions of mine from their context, as to suggest for each of them a false meaning, and make it difficult for the reader who has not my book at hand to discover the delusion. The first is taken from a discussion of the arguments concerning the soul’s immortality ("Soul,” , 2nd edition), on which I wrote thus, : that to judge of the accuracy of a metaphysical argument concerning mind and matter, requires not a pure conscience and a loving soul, but a clear and calm head; that if the doctrine of immortality be of high religious importance, we cannot believe it to rest on such a basis, that those in whom the religious faculties are most developed may be more liable to err concerning it than those who have no religious faculty in action at all. On the contrary, concerning truths which are really spiritual it is an obvious axiom, that “he who is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man.” After this I proceeded to allude to the history of the doctrine among the Hebrews, and quoted some texts of the Psalms, the argument of which, I urged, is utterly inappreciable to the pure logician, because it is spiritually discerned. I continued as follows:

“This is as it should be. Can a mathematician understand physiology, or a physiologist questions of law? A true love of God in the soul itself, an insight into Him depending on that love, and a hope rising out of that insight, are prerequisite for contemplating this spiritual doctrine, which is a spontaneous impression of the gazing soul, powerful (perhaps) in proportion to its faith; whereas all the grounds of belief proposed to the mere understanding have nothing to do with faith at all.”

I am expounding the doctrine of the great Paul of Tarsus, who indeed applies it to this very topic, the future bliss which God has prepared for them that love him. Does Mr. Rogers attack Paul as making a fanatical divorce between faith and intellect, and say that he is compelled so to understand him, when he avows that “the natural man understandeth not the things of God; for they are foolishness unto him.” “When the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” Here is a pretended champion of Evangelical truth seeking to explode as absurdities the sentiments and judgments which have ever been at the heart of Christianity, its pride and its glory!

But I justify my argument as free from fanaticism and free from obscurity when the whole sentence is read to a Jew or Mohammedan, quite as much as to a Christian.

My opponent innocently asks, how much I desire him to quote of me? But is innocence the right word, when he has quoted but two lines and a half, out of a sentence of seven and a half, and has not even given the clause complete? By omitting, in his usual way, the connecting particle whereas, he hides from the reader that he has given but half my thought; and this is done, after my complaint of this very proceeding. A reader who sees the whole sentence, discerns at once that I oppose “the mere understanding,” to the whole soul; in short, that by the man who has mere understanding, I mean him whom Paul calls “the natural man.” Such a man may have metaphysical talents and acquirements, he may be a physiologist or a great lawyer; nay, I will add, (to shock my opponent’s tender nerves), even if he be an Atheist, he may be highly amiable and deserving of respect and love; but if he has no spiritual development, he cannot have insight into spiritual truth. Hence such arguments for immortality as can be appreciated by him, and cannot be appreciated by religious men as such, “have nothing to do with faith at all”

 After naming local history, criticism of texts, history of philosophy, logic, physiology, demonology, and other important but very difficult studies, I ask:

“Is it not extravagant to call inquiries of this sort spiritual or to expect any spiritual results from them? When the spiritual man (as such) cannot judge, the question is removed into a totally different court from that of the soul, the court of the critical understanding.... How then can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect is led? What means the anathematizing of those who remain unconvinced? And how can it be imagined that the Lord of the soul cares more about a historical than about a geological, metaphysical, or mathematical argument? The processes of thought have nothing to quicken the conscience or affect the soul.”

From my defender in the “Prospective Review” I learn that in the first edition of the “Defence” the word thought in the last sentence above was placed in italics. He not only protested against this and other italics as misleading, but clearly explained my sense, which, as I think, needs no other interpreter than the context. In the new edition the italics are removed, but the unjust isolation of the sentences remains. “The processes of thought,” of which I spoke, are not “all processes,” but the processes involved in the abstruse inquiries to which I had referred. To say that no processes of thought quicken the conscience, or affect the soul, would be a gross absurdity. This, or nothing else, is what he imputes to me; and even after the protest made by the “Prospective” reviewer, my assailant not only continues to hide that I speak of certain processes of thought, not all processes, but even has the hardihood to say that he takes the passages as everybody else does, and that he is compelled so to do.

In my own original reply I appealed to places where I had fully expressed my estimate of intellectual progress, and its ultimate beneficial action. All that I gain by this, is new garblings and taunts for inconsistency. Mr. Newman, says be, is the last man in the world to whom I would deny the benefit of having contradicted himself. But I must confine myself to the garbling :

“Mr. Newman affirms that my representations of his views on this subject are the most direct and intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully written!” He still says, “what God reveals, he reveals within and not without,” and “he did say (though, it seems, he says no longer), that ’of God we know everything from within, nothing from without;’ yet he says I have grossly misrepresented him.”

This pretended quotation is itself garbled. I wrote, “Of our moral and spiritual God we know nothing without, everything within.” By omitting the adjectives, the critic produces a statement opposed to my judgment and to my writings; and then goes on to say. “Well, if Mr. Newman will engage to prove contradictions,... I think it is no wonder that his readers do not understand him.”

I believe it is a received judgment, which I will not positively assert to be true, but I do not think I have anywhere denied, that God is discerned by us in the universe as a designer, creator, and mechanical ruler, through a mere study of the world and its animals and all their adaptations, even without an absolute necessity of meditating consciously on the intelligence of man and turning the eyes within. Thus a creative God may be said to be discerned “from without.” But in my conviction, that God is not so discerned to be moral or spiritual or to be our God; but by moral intellect and moral experience acting inwardly. If Mr. Rogers chooses to deny the justness of my view, let him deny it; but by omitting the emphatic adjectives he has falsified my sentence, and then has founded upon it a charge of inconsistency. In a previous passage he gave this quotation in full, in order to reproach me for silently withdrawing it in my second edition of the Phases. He says:

“The two sentences in small capitals are not found in the new edition of the ‘Phases.’ They are struck out. It is no doubt the right of an author to erase in a new edition any expressions he pleases; but when he is about to charge another with having grossly garbled and stealthily misrepresented him, it is as well to let the world know what he has erased and why. He says that my representation of his sentiments is the most direct and intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully written. It certainly is not the intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully scratched out.”

I exhibit here the writer’s own italics.

By this attack on my good faith, and by pretending that my withdrawal of the passage is of serious importance, he distracts the reader’s attention from the argument there in hand , which is, not what are my sentiments and judgements, but whether he had a right to dissolve and distort my chain of reasoning (see I. above) while affecting to quote me, and pretending that I gave nothing but assertion. As regards my “elaborately and carefully scratching out,” this was done; 1. Because the passage seemed to me superfluous; 2. Because I had pressed the topic elsewhere; 3. Because I was going to enlarge on it in my reply to him, When the real place comes where my critic is to deal with the substance of the passage , the reader has seen how he mutilates it.

The other passage of mine which he has adduced, employs the word reveals, in a sense analogous to that of revelation, in avowed relation to things moral and spiritual, which would have been seen, had not my critic reversed the order of my sentences;  after my protest against his doing so in the “Eclipse.” I wrote: “Christianity itself has thus practically confessed, what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man. What God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses.” The words, “What God reveals,” seen in the light of the preceding sentence, means: “That portion of moral and spiritual truth which God reveals.” This cannot be discovered in the isolated quotation; , he chooses to quote my word What in italics, his reader is led on to interpret me as saying “every thing whatsoever which we know of God, we learn from within;” a statement which is not mine.

Besides this, the misrepresentation of which I complained is not confined to the rather metaphysical words of within and without, as to which the most candid friends may differ, and may misunderstand one another; as to which also I may be truly open to correction; but he assumes the right to tell his readers that my doctrine undervalues Truth, and Intellect, and Traditional teaching, and External suggestion, and Historical influences, and counts the Bible an impertinence. When he fancies he can elicit this and that, by his own logic, out of sentences and clauses torn from their context, he has no right to disguise what I have said to the contrary, and claim to justify his fraud by accusing me of self-contradiction. Against all my protests, and all that I said to the very opposite previous to any controversy, he coolly alludes to it as though it were my avowed doctrine, that: “Each man, looking exclusively within, can at once rise to the conception of God’s infinite perfections.”

IV. When I agree with Paul or David (or think I do), I have a right to quote their words reverentially; but when I do so, Mr. Rogers deliberately justifies himself in ridiculing them, pretending that he only ridicules me. He thus answers my indignant denunciation :

“Mr. Newman warns me with much solemnity against thinking that ‘questions pertaining to God are advanced by boisterous glee.’ I do not think that the ‘Eclipse’ is characterised by boisterous glee; and certainly I was not at all aware, that the things which alone I have ridiculed some of them advanced by him, and some by others deserved to be treated with solemnity. For example, that an authoritative external revelation, which most persons have thought possible enough, is impossible, that man is most likely born for a dog’s life, and ’there an end’ that there are great defects in the morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in the character of its founder, that the miracles of Christ might be real, because Christ was a clairvoyant and mesmerist, that God was not a Person, but a Personality; I say, I was not aware that these things, and such as these, which alone I ridiculed, were questions ‘pertaining to God,’ in any other sense than the wildest hypotheses in some sense pertain to science, and the grossest hérésies to religion.”

Now first, is his statement true?

Are these the only things which he ridiculed?

I quoted in my reply to him enough to show what was the class of “things pertaining to God” to which I referred. He forces me to requote some of the passages.“You shall be permitted to say (what I will not contradict), that though Mr. Newman may be inspired for aught I know ... inspired as much as (say) the inventor of Lucifer matches yet that his book is not divine, that it is purely human.”

I have quoted enough to show the nature of my complaints. I charge the satirist with profanity, for ridiculing sentiments which he himself avows to be holy, ridiculing them for no other reason but that with me also they are holy and revered.

I beg my reader to observe how cleverly Mr. Rogers slanders me in the quotation already made, by insinuating, first, that it is my doctrine, “that man is most likely born for a dog’s life, and there an end;” next, that I have taken under my patronage the propositions, that “the miracles of Christ might be real, because Christ was a clairvoyant and mesmerist, and that God is not a Person but a Personality.” I cannot but be reminded of what the “Prospective” reviewer says of Zeuxis and the grapes, when I observe the delicate skill of touch by which the critic puts on just enough colour to affect the reader’s mind, but not so much as to draw him to closer examination. I am at a loss to believe that he supposes me to think that a theory of mesmeric wonders (as the complement of an atheistic creed?) is “a question pertaining to God,” or that my rebuke bore the slightest reference to such a matter. As to Person and Personality, it is a subtle distinction which I have often met from Trinitarians; who, when they are pressed with the argument that three divine Persons are nothing but three Gods, reply that Person is not the correct translation of the mystical Hypostasis of the Greeks, and Personality is perhaps a truer rendering. If I were to answer with the jocosity in which my critic indulges, I certainly doubt whether he would justify me. So too, when a Pantheist objects (erringly, as I hold) that a Person is necessarily something finite, so that God cannot be a Person; if, against this, a Theist contend that God is at once a Person and a Principle, and invent a use of the word Personality to overlap both ideas; we may reject his nomenclature as too arbitrary, but what rightful place ridicule has here, I do not see. Nevertheless, it had wholly escaped my notice that the satirist had ridiculed it, as I now infer that he did.

He tells me he was not aware that the holding that there are great defects in the morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in the character of its Founder, was a question pertaining to God. Nor indeed was I aware of it.

I regard questions concerning a book and a human being to be purely secular, and desire to discuss them, not indeed with ridicule but with freedom. When I discuss them, he treats my act as intolerably offensive, as though the subject were sacred; yet he now pretends that I think such topics “pertain to God,” and he was not aware of it until I told him so! Thus he turns away the eyes of his readers from my true charge of profanity, and fixes them upon a fictitious charge so as to win a temporary victory. At the same time, since Christians believe the morality of the Old Testament to have great defects, and that there was much imperfection in the character of its eminent saints, prophets, and sages; I cannot understand how my holding the very same opinion concerning the New Testament should be a peculiarly appropriate ground of banter and merriment; nor make me more justly offensive to Christians, than the Pauline doctrine is to Jews.

In more than one place of this “Defence” he misrepresents what I have written on Immortality, in words similar to those here used, though here he does not expressly add my name. He says, that “according to Mr. Newman’s theology, it is most probable (in italics) that the successive generations of men, with perfect indifference to their relative moral conditions, their crimes or wrongs, are all knocked on the head together; and that future adjustment and retribution is a dream.”  In a note to the next page, he informs his readers that if I say that I have left the question of immortality doubtful, it does not affect the argument; for I have admitted “the probability” of there being no future life.

This topic was specially discussed by me in a short chapter of my treatise on the “Soul,” to which alone it is possible for my critic to refer. In that chapter assuredly I do not say what he pretends; what I do say is, (after rejecting, as unsatisfactory to me, the popular arguments from metaphysics, and from the supposed need of a future state to redress the inequalities of this life;) : “But do I then deny a future life, or seek to undermine a belief of it? Most assuredly not; but I would put the belief (whether it is to be weaker or firmer) on a spiritual basis, and on none other.”

I am ashamed to quote further from that chapter in this place; the ground on which I there tread is too sacred for controversy. But that a Christian advocate should rise from reading it to tell people that he has a right to ridicule me for holding that “man is most likely born for a dog’s life, and there an end;” absorbs my other feelings in melancholy. I am sure that any candid person, reading that chapter, must see that I was hovering between doubt, hope, and faith, on this subject, and that if any one could show me that a Moral Theism and a Future Life were essentially combined, I should joyfully embrace the second, as a fit complement to the first. This writer takes the opposite for granted; that if he can convince me that the doctrine of a Future Life is essential to Moral Theism, he will not add to but refute my Theism! Strange as this at first appears, it is explained by his method. He draws a hideous picture of what God’s world has been in the past, and indeed is in the present; with words so reeking of disgust and cruelty, that I cannot bear to quote them; and ample quotation would be needful. Then he infers, that since I must admit all this, I virtually believe in an immoral Deity. I suppose his instinct rightly tells him, that I shall not be likely to reason, “Because God can be so very cruel or careless to-day, he is sure to be very merciful and vigilant hereafter.” Accepting his facts as a complete enumeration of the phenomena of the present world, I suppose it is better inductive logic to say: “He who can be himself so cruel, and endure such monsters of brutality for six or more thousand years, must (by the laws of external induction) be the same, and leave men the same, for all eternity; and is clearly reckless of moral considerations.” If I adopt this alternative, I become a Pagan or an Atheist, one or other of which Mr. Rogers seems anxious to make me. If he would urge, that to look at the dark and terrible side of human life is onesided and delusive, and that the God who is known to us in Nature has so tempered the world to man and man to the world as to manifest his moral intentions; (arguments, which I think, my critic must have heard from Socrates or Plato, without pooling out on them scalding words, such as I feel and avow to be blasphemous;) then he might perhaps help my faith where it is weakest, and give me (more or less) aid to maintain a future life dogmatically, instead of hopefully and doubtfully. But now, to use my friend Martineau’s words: “His method doubles every difficulty without relieving any, and tends to enthrone a Devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere.”

Since he wrote his second edition of the “Defence,” I have brought out my work called “Theism,” in which (without withdrawing my objections to the popular idea of future Retribution) I have tried to reason out a doctrine of Future Life from spiritual considerations. I have no doubt that my critic would find them highly aboard, and perhaps would pronounce them ineffably ludicrous, and preposterous feats of logic. If I could hide their existence from him, I certainly would, lest he misquote and misinterpret them. But as I cannot keep the book from him, I here refer to it to say, that if I am to maintain this most profound and mysterious doctrine with any practical intensity, my convictions in the power of the human mind to follow such high inquiries, need to be greatly strengthened, not to be undermined by such arguments and such detestable pictures of this world, as Mr. Rogers holds up to me.

He throws at me the imputation of holding, that “man is most likely born for a dog’s life, and there an end.” And is then the life of a saint for seventy years, or for seven years, no better than a dog’s life? What else but a long dog’s life does this make heaven to be? Such an undervaluing of a short but noble life, is consistent with the scheme which blasphemes earth in order to ennoble heaven, and then claims to be preeminently logical. According to the clear evidence of the Bible, the old saints in general were at least as uncertain as I have ever been concerning future life; nay, according to the writer to the Hebrews, “through fear of death they were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” If I had called that a dog’s life, how eloquently would Mr. Rogers have rebuked me!

V. But I must recur to his defence of the profanity with which he treats sacred sentiments and subjects. After pretending, in , that he had ridiculed nothing but the things quoted above, makes formal admission of my charge and justifies himself.

“’Now (says Mr. Newman) I will not here farther insist on the monstrosity of bringing forward St. Paul’s words in order to pour contempt upon them; a monstrosity which no sophistry of Mr. Harrington can justify!’ I think the real monstrosity is, that men should so coolly employ St. Paul’s words, for it is a quotation from the treatise on the “Soul,” to mean something totally different from anything he intended to convey by them, and employ the dialect of the Apostles to contradict their doctrines; that is the monstrosity ... It is very hard to conceive that Mr. Newman did not see this.... But had he gone on only a few lines, the reader would have seen Harrington saying: ’These words you have just quoted were well in St. Paul’s mouth, and had a meaning. In yours, I suspect, they would have none, or a very different one.’”

According to this doctrine of Mr. Rogers, it would not have been profane in an unbelieving Jew to make game of Moses, David, and the Prophets, whenever they were quoted by Paul. The Jew most profoundly believed that Paul quoted the old Scriptures in a false, as well as in a new meaning. One Christian divine does not feel free to ridicule the words of Paul when quoted erroneously (as he thinks) by another Christian divine? Why then, when quoted by me? I hold it to be a great insolence to deny my right to quote Paul or David, as much as Plato or Homer, and adopt their language whenever I find it to express my sentiment. Mr. Rogers’s claim to deride highly spiritual truth, barely because I revere it, is a union of inhumanity and impiety. He has nowhere shown that Paul meant something “totally different” from the sense which I put on his words. I know that he cannot. I do not pretend always to bind myself to the definite sense of my predecessors; nor did the writers of the New Testament. They often adopt and apply in an avowedly new sense the words of the Old Testament; so does Dr. Watts with the Hebrew Psalms. Such adaptation, in the way of development and enlargement, when done with sincerely pious intention, has never been reproved or forbidden by Christians, Whether I am wise or unwise in my interpretations, the subject is a sacred one, and I treat it solemnly; and no errors in my “logic” can justify Mr. Rogers in putting on the mask of a profane sceptic, who scoffs (not once or twice, but through a long book) at the most sacred and tender matters, such as one always dreads to bring before a promiscuous public, lest one cast pearls before swine. And yet unless devotional books be written, especially by those who have as yet no church, how are we to aid one another in the uphill straggle to maintain some elements of a heavenly life? Can anything be more heartless, or more like the sneering devil they talk of, than Mr. Harrington? And here one who professes himself a religions man, and who deliberately, after protest, calls me an INFIDEL, is not satisfied with having scoffed in an hour of folly (in such an hour, I can well believe, that melancholy record the “Eclipse of Faith,” was first penned) but he persists in justifying his claim to jeer and snarl and mutilate, and palm upon me senses which he knows are deliberately disavowed by me, all the while pretending that it is my bad logic which justifies him! We know that very many religious men are bad logicians: if I am as puzzle-headed a fool as Mr. Rogers would make people think me, how does that justify his mocking at my religion? He justifies himself on the ground that I criticize the New Testament as freely as I should Cicero. Well, then let him criticize me, as freely (and with as little of suppression) as I criticize it. But I do not laugh at it; God forbid! The reader will see how little reason Mr. Rogers had to imagine that I had not read so far as to see Harrington’s defence; which defence is, either an insolent assumption, or at any rate not to the purpose.

I will here add, that I have received letters from numerous Christians to thank me for my book on the “Soul,” in such terms as put the conduct of Mr. Rogers into the most painful contrast: painful, as showing that there are other Christians who know, and he does not know, what is the true heart and strength of Christianity. He trusts in logic and ridicules the Spirit of God.

That leads me to his defence of his suggestion that I might be possibly as much inspired as the inventor of lucifer matches :

“Mr. Newman tells me, that I have clearly a profound unbelief in the Christian doctrine of divine influence, or I could not thus grossly insult it I answer... that which Harrington ridiculed, as the context would have shown Mr. Newman, if he had had the patience to read on, and the calmness to judge, is the chaotic view of inspiration, formally held by Mr. Parker.

The passage concerning Mr. Parker is in the preceding page: I had read it, and I do not see how it at all relieves the disgust which every right-minded man must feel at this passage. My disgust is not personal: though I might surely ask, If Parker has made a mistake, how does that justify insulting me? As I protested, I have made no peculiar claim to inspiration. I have simply claimed “that which all pious Jews and Christians since David have always claimed.” Yet he pertinaciously defends this rude and wanton passage, adding, : “As to the inventor of lucifer matches, I am thoroughly convinced that he has shed more light upon the world and been abundantly more useful to it, than many a cloudy expositor of modern spiritualism.” Where to look for the “many” expositors of spiritualism, I do not know. Would they were more numerous.

Mr. Parker differs from me as to the use of the phrase “Spirit of God.” I see practical reasons, which I have not here space to insist on, for adhering to the Christian, as distinguished from the Jewish use of this phrase. Theodore Parkes follows the phraseology of the Old Testament, according to which Bezaleel and others received the spirit of God to aid them in mere mechanical arts, building and tailoring. To ridicule Theodore Parker for this, would seem to me neither witty nor decent in an unbeliever; but when one does so, who professes to believe the whole Old Testament to be sacred, and stoops to lucifer matches and the Eureka shirt, as if this were a refutation, I need a far severer epithet. Mr. Rogers implies that the light of a lucifer match is comparable to the light of Theodore Parker; what will be the judgment of mankind a century hence, if the wide dissemination of the Eclipse of Faith lead to inscribing the name of Henry Rogers permanently in biographical dictionaries! Something of this sort may appear:

“THEODORE PARKER, the most eminent moral theologian whom the first half of the nineteenth century produced in the United States. When the churches were so besotted, as to uphold the curse of slavery because they found it justified in the Bible; when the Statesmen, the Press, the Lawyers, and the Trading Community threw their weight to the same fatal side; Parker stood up to preach the higher law of God against false religion, false statesmanship, crooked law and cruel avarice. He enforced three great fundamental truths, God, Holiness, and Immortality. He often risked life and fortune to rescue the fugitive slave. After a short and very active life full of good works, he died in blessed peace, prematurely worn out by his perpetual struggle for the true, the right, and the good. His preaching is the crisis which marked the turn of the tide in America from the material to the moral, which began to enforce the eternal laws of God on trade, on law, on administration, and on the professors of religion itself.”

And what will be then said of him, who now despises the noble Parker? I hope something more than the following: “HENRY ROGERS, an accomplished gentleman and scholar, author of many books, of which by far the most popular was a smart satirical dialogue, disfigured by unjustifiable garbling and profane language, the aim of which was to sneer down Theodore Parker and others who were trying to save spiritual doctrine out of the wreck of historical Christianity.”

Jocose scoffing, and dialogue writing is the easiest of tasks; and if Mr. Rogers’s co-religionists do not take the alarm, and come in strength upon Messrs. Longman, imploring them to suppress these books of Mr. Rogers, persons who despise all religion (with whom Mr. Rogers pertinaciously confounds me under the term infidel), may one of these days imitate his sprightly example against his creed and church. He himself seems to me at present incurable. I do not appeal to him, I appeal to his co-religionists, how they would like the publication of a dialogue, in which his free and easy sceptic “Mr. Harrington” might reason on the opposite side to that pliable and candid man of straw “Mr. Fellowes?” I here subjoin for their consideration, an imaginary extract of the sort which, by their eager patronage of the “Eclipse of Faith,” they are inviting against themselves.

Extract.

I say, Fellowes! (said Harrington), what was that, that Parker and
Rogers said about the Spirit of God?

Excuse me (said Fellowes), Theodore Parker and Henry Rogers hold very different views, Mr. Rogers would be much hurt to bear you class him with Parker.

I know (replied he), but they both hold that God inspires people; and that is a great point in common, as I view it. Does not Mr. Rogers believe the Old Testament inspired and all of it true?

Certainly (said Fellowes): at least he was much shocked with Mr. Newman for trying to discriminate its chaff from its wheat.

Well then, he believes, does not he, that Jéhovah filled men with the spirit of wisdom to help them make a suit of clothes for Aaron!

Fellowes, after a pause, replied: That is certainly written in the 28th chapter of Exodus.

Now, my fine fellow! (said Harrington), here is a question to rile Mr. Rogers. If Aaron’s toggery needed one portion of the spirit of wisdom from Jéhovah, how many portions does the Empress Eugenie’s best crinoline need?

Really (said Fellowes, somewhat offended), such ridicule seems to me profane.

Forgive me, dear friend (replied Harrington, with a sweet smile). Your views I never will ridicule; for I know you have imbibed somewhat of Francis Newman’s fancy, that one ought to feel tenderly towards other men’s piety. But Henry Rogers is made of stouter stuff; he manfully avows that a religion, if it is true, ought to stand the test of ridicule, and he deliberately approves this weapon of attack.

I cannot deny that (said Fellowes, lifting his eyebrows).

But I was going to ask (continued Harrington) whether Mr. Rogers does not believe that Jéhovah filled Bezaleel with the Spirit of God, for the work of jeweller, coppersmith, and mason?

Of course he does (answered Fellowes), the text is perfectly clear, in the 31st of Exodus; Bezaleel and Aholiab were both inspired to become cunning workmen.

By the Goose (said Harrington) forgive a Socratic oath I really do not see that Mr. Rogers differs much from Theodore Parker. If a man cannot hack a bit of stone or timber without the Spirit of God, Mr. Rogers will have hard work to convince me, that any one can make a rifled cannon without the Spirit of God.

There is something in that (said Fellowes). In fact, I have sometimes wondered how Mr. Rogers could say that which looks so profane, as what he said about the Eureka shirt.

Pray what is that? (said Harrington;) and where?

“If Minos and Praxiteles are inspired in the same sense as Moses and Christ, then the inventor of lucifer matches, as well as the inventor of the Eureka shirts, must be also admitted” to be inspired.

Do you mean that he is trying to save the credit of Moses, by maintaining that the Spirit of God which guides a sculptor is not the same in kind as that which guides a saint?

No (replied Fellowes, with surprise), he is not defending Moses; he is attacking Parker.

Bless me (said Harrington, starting up), what is become of the man’s logic! Why, Parker and Moses are in the same boat. Mr. Rogers fires at it, in hope to sink Parker; and does not know that he is sending old Moses to Davy’s locker.

Now this is too bad (said Fellowes), I really cannot bear it.

Nah! Nah! good friend (said Harrington, imploringly), be calm; and remember, we have agreed that ridicule against Mr. Rogers, not against you is fair play.

That is true (replied Fellowes with more composure).

Now (said Harrington, with a confidential air), you are my friend, and I will tell you a secret be sure you tell no one I think that Henry Rogers, Theodore Parker, and Francis Newman are three ninnies; all wrong; for they all profess to believe in divine inspiration: yet they are not ninnies of the same class. I admit to Mr. Rogers that there is a real difference.

How do you mean (said Fellowes, with curiosity aroused)?

Why (said Harrington, pausing and becoming impressive), Newman is a flimsy mystic; he has no foundation, but he builds logically enough at least as far as I see on his fancies and other people’s fancies. This is to be a simple ninny. But Mr. Rogers fancies he believes a mystical religion, and doesn’t; and fancies he is very logical, and isn’t. This is to be a doubly distilled ninny.

Really I do not call this ridicule, Mr. Harrington (said Fellowes, rising), I must call it slander. What right have you to say that Mr. Rogers does not believe in the holy truths of the New Testament?

Surely (replied Harrington) I have just as much right as Mr. Rogers has to say that Mr. Newman does not believe the holy sentiments of St. Paul, when Mr. Newman says he does. Do you remember how Mr. Rogers told him it was absurd for an infidel like him to third: he was in a condition to rebuke any one for being profane, or fancy he had a right to say that he believed this and that mystical text of Paul, which, Mr. Rogers avows, Newman totally mistakes and does not believe as Paul meant it. Now I may be very wrong; but I augur that Newman does understand Paul, and Rogers does not. For Rogers is of the Paley school, and a wit; and a brilliant chap he is, like Macaulay. Such men cannot be mystics nor Puritans in Pauline fashion; they cannot bear to hear of a religion from within; but, as I heard a fellow say the other day, Newman has never worked off the Puritan leaven.

Well (said Fellowes), but why do you call Mr. Rogers illogical?

I think you have seen one instance already, but that is a trifle compared to his fundamental blunder (said Harrington).

What can you mean? how fundamental (asked his friend)?

Why, he says, that I (for instance) who have so faith whatever in what he calls revelation, cannot have any just belief or sure knowledge of the moral qualities of God; in fact, am logically bound (equally with Mr. Newman) to regard God as immoral, if I judge by my own faculties alone. Does he not say that?

Well, next, he tells me, that when the Christian message, as from God, is presented to me, I am to believe it on the word of a God whom I suppose to be, or ought to suppose to be, immoral. If I suppose A B a rogue, shall I believe the message which the rogue sends me?

Surely, Harrington, you forget that you are speaking of God, not of man: you ought not to reason so (said Fellowes, somewhat agitated).

Surely, Fellowes, it is you who forget (retorted Harrington) that syllogism depends on form, not on matter. Whether it be God or Man, makes no difference; the logic must be tried by turning the terms into X Y Z. But I have not said all Mr. Rogers says, I am bound to throw away the moral principles which I already have, at the bidding of a God whom I am bound to believe to be immoral.

No, you are unfair (said Fellowes), I know he says that revelation would confirm and improve your moral principles.

But I am not unfair. It is he who argues in a circle. What will be improvement, is the very question pending. He says, that if Jéhovah called to me from heaven, “O Harrington! O Harrington! take thine innocent son, thine only son, lay him on the altar and kill him,” I should be bound to regard obedience to the command an improvement of my morality; and this, though, up to the moment when I heard the voice, I had been bound logically to believe Jéhovah to be an IMMORAL God. What think you of that for logic?

I confess (said Fellowes, with great candour) I must yield up my friend’s reputation as a logician; and I begin to think he was unwise in talking so contemptuously of Mr. Newman’s reasoning faculties. But in truth, I love my friend for the great spiritual benefits I have derived from him and cannot admit to you that he is not a very sincere believer in mystical Christianity.

What benefits, may I ask? (said Harrington).

I have found by his aid the peace which passeth understanding (replied he).

It passes my understanding, if you have (answered Harrington, laughing), and I shall be infinitely obliged by your allowing me to participate in the discovery. In plain truth, I do not trust your mysticism.

But are you in a condition to form an opinion? (said Fellowes, with a serious air). Mr. Rogers has enforced on me St. Paul’s maxim: “The natural man discerneth not the things of the Spirit of God.”

My most devout gentleman I (replied Harrington), how unctuous you are! Forgive my laughing; but it does so remind me of Douce Davie Deans. I will make you professor of spiritual insight, &c., &c., &c.

Now is not this disgusting? Might I not justly call the man a “profane dog” who approved of it? Yet everything that is worst here is closely copied from the Eclipse of Faith, or justified by the Defence. How long will it be before English Christians cry out Shame against those two books?

VI. I must devote a few words to define the direction and justification of my argument in one chapter of this treatise. All good arguments are not rightly addressed to all persons. An argument good in itself may be inappreciable to one in a certain mental state, or may be highly exasperating. If a thoughtful Mohammedan, a searcher after truth, were to confide to a Christian a new basis on which be desired to found the Mohammedan religion viz., the absolute moral perfection of its prophet, and were to urge on the Christian this argument in order to convert him, I cannot think that any one would blame the Christian for demanding what is the evidence of the fact. Such an appeal would justify his dissecting the received accounts of Mohammed, pointing out what appeared to be flaws in his moral conduct; nay, if requisite, urging some positive vice, such as his excepting himself from his general law of four wives only. But a Christian missionary would surely be blamed (at least I should blame him), if, in preaching to a mixed multitude of Mohammedans against the authority of their prophet, he took as his basis of refutation the prophet’s personal sensuality. We are able to foresee that the exasperation produced by such an argument must derange the balance of mind in the hearers, even if the argument is to the purpose; at the same time, it may be really away from the purpose to them, if their belief has no closer connexion with the personal virtue of the prophet, than has that of Jews and Christians with the virtue of Balaam or Jonah. I will proceed to imagine, that while a missionary was teaching, talking, and distributing tracts to recommend, his own views of religion, a Moolah were to go round and inform everybody that this Christian believed Mohammed to be an unchaste man, and had used the very argument to such and such a person. I feel assured that we should all pronounce this proceeding to be a very cunning act of spiteful, bigotry.

My own case, as towards certain Unitarian friends of mine, is quite similar to this. They preach to me the absolute moral perfection of a certain man (or rather, of a certain portrait) as a sufficient basis for my faith. Hereby they challenge me, and as it were force me, to inquire into its perfection. I have tried to confine the argument within a narrow circle. It is addressed by me specifically to them and not to others. I would not address it to Trinitarians; partly, because they are not in a mental state to get anything from it but pain, partly because much of it becomes intrinsically bad as argument when addressed to them. Many acts and words which would be right from an incarnate God, or from an angel, are (in my opinion) highly unbecoming from a man; consequently I must largely remould the argument before I could myself approve of it, if so addressed. The principle of the argument is such as Mr. Rogers justifies, when he says that Mr. Martineau quite takes away all solid reasons for believing in Christ’s absolute perfection. I opened my chapter  above with a distinct avowal of my wish to confine the perusal of it to a very limited circle. Mr. Rogers (acting, it seems, on the old principle, that whatever one’s enemy deprecates, is a good) instantly pounces on the chapter, avows that “if infidelity could be ruined, such imprudencies would go far to ruin it,” and because he believes that it will be “unspeakably painful” to the orthodox for whom I do not intend it, he prints the greater part of it in an Appendix, and expresses his regret that he cannot publish “every syllable of it,. Such is his tender regard for the feeling of his co-religionists.

“And now we have concluded our painful task, which nothing but a feeling of what justice literary, and personal required, would have induced us to undertake. The tone of intellectual disparagement and moral rebuke which certain critics, deceived by the shallowest sophisms with which an unscrupulous writer could work on their prepossessions and insult their understandings have adopted towards Mr. Newman made exposure necessary. The length to which our remarks have extended requires apology. Evidence to character is necessarily cumulative, and not easily compressible within narrow limits. Enough has been said to show that there is not an art discreditable in controversy, to which recourse is not freely had in the ’Eclipse of Faith’ and the Defence of it.”

The reader must judge for himself whether this severe and terrible sentence of the reviewer proceeds from ill-temper and personal mortification, as the author of the Eclipse and its Defence gratuitously lays down, or whether it was prompted by a sense of justice, as he himself affirms.