Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876. Flint Robert
the more how far they were from the attainment of it. From the beginning Judaism looked beyond itself and confessed its own preparatory and transitional character. And this consciousness grew with its growth. In the days of the later prophets men knew far better what spiritual communion with God ought to be than in the days of the patriarchs, but they did not actually enjoy even the same measure of childlike communion with Him. The law had done its work; it had made men feel more than ever the need of being in communion with God, but it had made them realise also the distance between God and them, and especially the awful width of the gulf between them caused by sin.
That gulf no mere spiritual vision of man could see across, and no mere declarations of love and mercy even from God Himself could bridge over. The reason of man could only be enlightened—the heart of man could only be satisfied—as to how God would deal with sin and sinners, by an actual self-manifestation of God in humiliation, suffering, and sacrifice, which would leave men in no doubt that high and holy as God was, He was also in the deepest and truest sense their Father, and that they were His ransomed and redeemed children. It was only when this was accomplished that religion and theism were alike perfected. Then the character of God was unveiled, the heart of God disclosed, and in such a manner that the most childlike confidence in Him could be combined with the profoundest sense of His greatness and righteousness. Perfect communion with Him in trustful love no longer supposed, as it did in earlier times, an imperfect knowledge, on the part of the worshipper, either of God's character or of his own. It required no overlooking of the evil of sin, for it rested on the certainty that sin had been overcome. Only the life hid with God in Christ can completely realise the idea of religion, for only in Christ can the heart of sinful man be sincerely and unreservedly yielded to a holy God. "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me," are words of the Lord Jesus which can only be denied by those who do not understand what they mean—what the truth and the life are, what fatherhood signifies, and what is involved in coming to a Father.
Christian theism alone gives us a perfect representation of God. It precedes and surpasses reason, especially in the disclosure of the depths of fatherly love which are in the heart of the infinite Jehovah; but it nowhere contradicts reason—nay, it incorporates all the findings of reason. It presents as one great and brilliant light all the scattered sparks of truth which scintillated amidst the darkness of heathendom; it combines into a living unity all the separate elements of positive truth which are to be found in systems like pantheism, deism, rationalism; it excludes all that is false in views lower than or contrary to its own. Whenever it maintains a truth regarding God, reason finds that it is defending a principle of Christian theism; whenever it refutes an error regarding Him, it finds itself assailing some one of the many enemies of Christian theism.
III.
Theism, I argued in last lecture, can never be reasonably rejected in the name of religious liberty. I may now, I think, maintain that it can never be reasonably thrown off in the name of religious progress. It can never be an onward step in the spiritual life to pass away from the belief which is distinctive and characteristic of theism. The highest possible form of religion must be a theistic religion—a religion in which the one personal and perfect God is the object of worship. Fetichism, nature-worship, humanitarian polytheism, and pantheism, are all very much lower forms of religion, and therefore to abandon theism for any of them is not to advance but to retrograde, is not to rise but to fall. We can turn towards any of them only by turning our back on the spiritual goal towards which humanity has been slowly but continuously moving through so many ages. There is no hope or possibility of advance on the side of any of the old forms of heathendom.
Shall we try, then, to get out of and beyond theism on that other side to which some moderns beckon us? Shall we suppose that as men have given up the lower for the higher forms of polytheism, and then abandoned polytheism for theism, so they may now surrender theism itself for systems like the positivism of Comte or the new faith of Strauss? No. And for two reasons. First, so far as there is any religion in these systems there is no advance on theism in them but the reverse. Comte strives to represent humanity, and Strauss to represent the universe, as a god, by imaginatively investing them with attributes which do not inherently and properly belong to them; but with all their efforts they can only make of them fetich gods; and Europeans, it is to be hoped, will never fall down and worship fetiches, however big these fetiches may be, and whoever may be willing to serve them as prophets or priests. Humanity must be blind to its follies and sins, insensible to its weakness and miseries, and given over to the madness of a boundless vanity, before it can raise an altar and burn incense to its own self. "Man," says an eloquent author, "is great is sublime, with immortal hope in his heart and the divine aureole around his brow; but that he may preserve his greatness let us leave him in his proper place. Let us leave to him the struggles which make his glory, that condemnation of his own miseries which does him honour, the tears shed over his faults which are the most unexceptionable testimony to his dignity. Let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict, and hope; but let us not deify him; for no sooner shall he have said, 'I am God,' than, deprived that instant of all his blessings, he shall find himself naked and spoiled."[9] Man, I may add, if his eyes be open and capable of vision, can still less worship the universe than he can worship himself. Mind can never bow down to matter except under the influence of delusion. Man is greater than anything he can see or touch; and those who believe only in what they can see and touch, who have what Strauss calls a feeling for the universe, but no true feeling for what is spiritual and divine, must either worship humanity or something even less worthy of their adoration. There is thus no advance on this side either, even if the systems which we are invited to adopt could be properly regarded as religious. But, secondly, we may safely say that so far as they are theories based on science, there is no religion in them; and that, consequently, to give up a religion for them would be to give up not one form of religion for another, a lower for a higher, but would be to give up religion for what is not religion, or, in other words, would be to cast off religion altogether. And to cease to be religious can surely never be to advance in religion. Positivism and materialism are not stages beyond theism, for they are not on the same road. They are not phases in the development of religion; they are forms of the denial of religion. The grossest fetichism has more of religion in it than either of them can consistently claim on scientific grounds. There is nothing in science, properly so called, which justifies the exaltation either of matter or man to the rank of gods even of the lowest fetich order.
It is only, then, by keeping within the limits of theism that further religious progress is possible. If we would advance in religion, it must be, not by getting rid of our belief in God, but by getting deeper and wider views of His character and operations, and by conforming our hearts and lives more sincerely and faithfully to our knowledge. There is still ample room for religious progress of this kind. I do not say, I do not believe indeed, that we shall find out any absolutely new truth about God. Were a man to tell me that he had discovered a Divine attribute which had never previously been thought of, I should listen to him with the same incredulous pity as if he were to tell me that he had discovered a human virtue which had escaped the notice of all other men. In a real and important sense, the revelation of God made in Scripture, and more particularly and especially the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, is most justly to be regarded as complete, and incapable of addition. But there may be no limits to the growth of our apprehension and realisation of the idea of God there set before us perfectly as regards general features. To perceive the mere general outline and general aspect of a truth is one thing, and to know it thoroughly, to realise it exhaustively—which is the only way thoroughly to know it—is another and very different thing; and centuries, yea, millenniums without number, may elapse between the former and the latter of these two stages, between the beginning and the end of this process. Thousands of years ago there were men who said as plainly as could be done or desired that God was omnipotent; but surely every one who believes in God will acknowledge, that the discoveries of modern astronomy give more overwhelming impressions of Divine power than either heathen sage or Hebrew psalmist can be imagined as possessing. It is ages since men ascribed perfect wisdom to God; but all the discoveries of science which help us to understand how the earth is related to other worlds—how it has been brought into its present condition—how it has been stocked, adorned, and enriched with its varied tribes of plants and animals—and how these have been developed, distributed, and provided for—must be accepted