The Eclipse of Faith; Or, A Visit to a Religious Sceptic. Henry Thomas Rogers
see," said Fellowes, "you are profoundly prejudiced against the spiritualists."
"I believe not," said Harrington; "the worst I wish them is that they may be honest men, and appear what they really are."
"I suppose next," exclaimed the other, "you will attribute to the modern spiritualists the scurrility of the elder deists—of Woolston, Tindal, and Collins?"
"No," said Harrington, "I answer no; nor do I (remember) compare Lord Herbert in these respects with his successors. He was an amiable enthusiast; in many respects resembling Mr. Newman himself. Do you remember, by the way, how that most reasonable rejecter of all 'external' revelation prayed that he might be directed by Heaven whether he should publish or not publish his 'book'? about which, if Heaven was very solicitous, this world has since been very indifferent. Having distinctly heard 'a sound as of thunder,' on a very 'calm and serene day,' he immediately received it as a preternatural answer to prayer, and an indubitable sign of Heaven's concurrence'."
"No such taint of superstition, however, will be found clinging to Mr. Newman. He has most thoroughly abjured all notion of an external revelation; nay, he denies the possibility of a 'book-revelation of spiritual and moral truth'; and I am confident that his dilemma on that point is unassailable."
"Be it so," answered Harrington; "you will readily suppose I am not inclined to contest that point very vigorously; yet I confess that, as usual, my inveterate scepticism leaves me in some doubts. Will you assist me in resolving them?—but not to-night; let us have a little more talk about old college days—or what say you to a game at chess?" ____
July 4. I thought this day would have passed off entirely without polemics; but I was mistaken. In the evening Harrington, after a very cheerful morning, relapsed into one of his pensive moods. Conversation flagged; at last I heard Fellowes say, "I have this advantage of you, my friend, that my sentiments have, at all events, produced that peace of which you are in quest, and which your countenance at times too plainly declares you not to possess. If you had it, you would not take so gloomy a view of things. Like him from whom I have derived some of my sentiments, I have found that they tend to make me a happier man. The Christian, like yourself, looks upon every thing with a jaundiced or distorted eye, and is apt to underrate the claims and pleasures of this present scene of our existence. I can truly say that I now enter into them much more keenly than I could when I was an orthodox Christian. I can say with Mr. Newman, I now, with deliberate approval, 'love the world and the things of the world.' The New Testament, as Mr. Newman says, bids us watch perpetually, not knowing whether the Lord will return at cock-crowing or midday; 'that the only thing worth spending one's energies on, is the forwarding of men's salvation.' Now I must say with him, that, while I believed this, I acted an eccentric and unprofitable part."
"Only then?" said Harrington. "You were fortunate."
"He says, that to teach the certain speedy destruction of earthly things, as the New Testament does, is to cut the sinews of all earthly progress; to declare against intellect and imagination, against industrial and social advancement."
My gravity was hardly equal to the task of listening to the first part of Mr. Fellowes's speech. To hear that the common and just reproach against all mankind, but especially against all Christians, of taking too keen an interest in the present, was in a large measure at least founded upon a mistake; to find, in fact, that there was some danger of an excessive exaggeration of the claims of the future, which required a corrective; that the Christian world, owing to the above pernicious doctrine, might possibly evince too faint a relish for the pleasures or too diminished an estimate for the advantages of the present life; that, their "treasure being in heaven," it was not impossible but "their heart" might be too much there also—there, perhaps, when it was imperatively demanded in the counting-house, on the hustings, at the mart or the theatre; all this, being, as I say, so notoriously contrary to ordinary opinion and experience, seemed to me so exquisitely ludicrous that I could hardly help bursting into laughter, especially as I imagined one of our new "spiritual" doctors ascending the pulpit under the new dispensation, to indulge in exhortations to a keener chase, of this world, and "the things of this world." I found afterwards similar thoughts were passing through Harrington's mind, rendered more whimsical by the recollection that, during college life, his friend (though very far from vicious) had certainly never seemed to take any deficient interest in the affairs of this world, nor to exhibit any predilection for an ascetic life. Indeed, he acknowledged that, after all, he could not sympathize with Mr. Newman's extreme sensitiveness in relation to this matter. (See Phases, p. 205.)
Harrington answered, with proper gravity, "I am glad to find that any undue austerity of character—of which, however, I assure you, upon my honor, I never suspected you—has received so invaluable a corrective. Still, it is obvious to remark, that, if the chief effect of this new style of religion is to abate any excessive antipathy which the New Testament has fostered, or was likely to foster, to the attractions of this life, it has, I conceive, an easy task. I never remarked in Christians any superfluous contempt of the present world or its pleasures; any indication of an extravagant admiration of any sublimer objects of pursuit. In truth, the tendencies of human nature, as it appears to me, are so strong the other way, that the strongest language of a hundred New Testaments would be little heeded. Your corrective is something like that of a moralist who should seriously prove that man was to take care that his appetites and passions are duly indulged, of which ethical writers have, alas! condescended to say but little, supposing that every body would feel that there was no need of solemn counsels on such a subject. It reminds one of the Christmas sermon mentioned in the 'Sketch Book,' preached by the good little antiquarian who elaborately proved, and pathetically enforced on reluctant auditors, the duty of a proper devotion to the festivities of the season. However, every one must like the complexion of your theology, though its counsels on this subject do not seem to me of urgent necessity."
"Perhaps," said Fellowes, "I ought rather to have said that Christians inculcate, theoretically, a contempt of the present life, while, practically, they enter as keenly into its pleasures as the 'worldling,'"—uttering the last word with an approach to a sneer.
"You may be sure," said Harrington, "I shall leave the Christian to defend himself; but if the case be as you now represent it, your new religious system seems to be superfluous as a corrective of any tendencies to Christian asceticism, and can do nothing for us. It appears that your Reformation was begun and ended before your 'spiritual' Luthers appeared."
"Not so," said Fellowes, "for the eagerness with which the Christian pursues the world, while he condemns it, is, as Mr. Greg has recently insisted, gigantic hypocrisy': it is founded on a lie. They say this world is not to be the great object for which we are to live and in which we are to find our happiness; we say it is: they say it is not our 'country' or our 'home'; we say it is: they say that we are to live supremely for the future, and in it; we say, for and in the present; that if there be a future world (of which many doubt, and I, for one, have not been able to make up my mind), we are to hope to be happy there, but that the main business is to secure our happiness here—to embellish, adorn, and enjoy this our only certain dwelling-place—and, in fact, to live supremely for the present. Such is the constitution of human nature."
"I shall not be at the trouble," replied Harrington, "to defend the inconsistencies of the Christian; but your system, I fear, is essentially a brutal theology, and, I am certain, a false philosophy. All the analogies of our nature cry out against it. All, even with regard to the 'present,' as you call this life, man is perpetually living for and in the future. This 'present' (minute as it is) is itself broken up into many futures, and it is these which man truly lives for, when he is not a beast; and not for the passing hour. It is not to-day, it is always to-morrow, on which his eye is fixed; and his ever-repining nature perpetually confesses its impatient want of something (it knows not what) to come. The child lives for his youth, and the youth is discontented till he is a man; every attainment and every possession pails as soon as it is reached, and we still sigh for something that we have not. It is simply in analogy with all this that the Christian and every other religion says (absurdly, if you will, but certainly with a deeper knowledge of human nature than you), that, as every little present has its little future for which we live, so the whole present of this life has its great future, which must, all the way through,