The Heavenly Father: Lectures on Modern Atheism. Ernest Naville
levity of spirit is not the best means of penetrating the thought of leading minds; and it very often happens to us to fail of understanding because we have failed in respect.
Let us examine with serious attention, not the very words of Descartes, as an historian might do, but the course of thought of which Descartes is one of the most illustrious representatives.
To recognize in the reason traces of God, and to show that in faith in God consists the only warrant of the reason, is not to argue in a vicious circle, because, in this way of proceeding, what we are employed in is not reasoning, but analysis; we are establishing a fact in order to ascertain what that fact implies and supposes. This fact is the natural faith which man has in his own reason, when his reason reveals to him the immediate light of evidence, or the mediate light of certainty. Now, when man confides in his reason, it is not in his individual reason that he confides, for he has no doubt that what is evident for him is so also for others. If, tossed by a tempest, he were thrown upon an island of savages, he would not think that those savages, when they came to reflect, would be able to discover that the axioms of our geometry are false, or to make elements of logic which would contradict our own. We believe in a general reason, everywhere and always the same, and in which the reason of each individual participates. We believe therefore that there is a principle of truth which exists in itself, a reason which is eternal and everywhere present; in other words, we believe in God considered as the source of the universal intelligence. To believe in one's reason, is to believe in God, in this sense: the fact of the confidence which we place in our own faculty of thought, supposes a concealed faith in eternal truth. This is the analysis of which I was speaking. It is a circle if you please, but it is a circle of light, outside of which there is, as we shall see by and by, nothing but darkness and hard contradictions.
You deny the existence of God. On what ground do you rest this denial? On the ground of your reason. You believe then that your reason is good, you believe it very good, since you do not hesitate to trust it, while you undertake to prove false the fundamental instincts of human nature. But you would not venture to say that this reason which you believe in with a faith so firm is your own separate reason merely, your personal and exclusive property. You believe in the universal reason; you believe in God, considered at least as the source of the understanding. The man therefore who denies God, affirms Him in a certain sense at the same time that he denies Him. He denies Him in his words, in the external form of his thought; he affirms Him in reality, as the Supreme Intelligence, by the very trust which he places in his own thought. Our understanding is only the reflected ray of the Divine verity. Therefore it is that Descartes, as soon as he has laid the first foundations of his system, interrupts the chain of his reasonings to trace these lines: "Here I think it highly meet to pause for a while in contemplation of this all-perfect God, to ponder deliberately his marvellous attributes, to consider, admire, and adore the incomparable beauty of that immense light, at least so far as the strength of my mind, which remains in a manner dazzled by it, shall allow me to do so."[19] Thus it is that while descending into the depths of the understanding, the philosopher who is supposed to be absorbed in pure abstractions, discovers all at once a sublime brightness, and exclaims with the ancient patriarch: "The Lord is in this place, and I knew it not!"[20] God is everywhere; He is in the heights of heaven, He is in the depths of thought. Remember those celebrated words of Lord Chancellor Bacon: "A little knowledge inclineth the mind to atheism, but a further acquaintance therewith bringeth it back to religion."
God is not demonstrated, in the ordinary sense which we attach to the word demonstrate;[21] He is pointed out[22] as the source of all light. The attempt to demonstrate God as anything else is demonstrated, by descending, that is, from higher principles until the object in view is arrived at—this attempt implies a contradiction. God is in fact the first principle, the foundation of all principles, the principle beyond which there is nothing. We may describe the process by which the human mind rises to this supreme idea; but to wish to demonstrate God by mounting higher than Himself in order to look for a point of departure—this is literally to wish to light up the sun. If the sun of intelligences is extinguished, reason sets out on its way vaguely enlightened still with the remains of the light which it has reflected; but it is not long ere it is stumbling in darkness. Then it is that—be not deceived about it!—the doubts which Descartes called up by an act of his own will do in good earnest invade the soul. We possess a natural certainty, which does not suppose a clear view of God; we reason without thinking distinctly of the principles on which we reason, just as, when we are in a hurry, we take the shortest cut without thinking of the axiom of geometry which prescribes the straight line. But if we pass from the natural order of our thoughts into the domain of science, if we ask—what is it which guarantees to me the value of my reason? then the question is put, and many perish in the passage which separates natural faith from the domain of science—that dangerous passage where doubt spreads out its perfidious fogs and its deceitful marshes. The moment the question is started of the worth of reason, and all the schools of scepticism do start it, our answer must be—God; and we must find light in this answer, or see thought invaded in its totality by an irremediable doubt. Then men come to ask themselves if all be not a lie; and they speak of the universal vanity, without making the reserve of Ecclesiastes.[23] There are more souls ill of this malady than are supposed to be so. Many begin by setting up proudly against God what they call the rights of reason, and by and by we see this reason, which has revolted against its Principle, vacillate, doubt of itself, and at last, losing itself in a bitter irony, wrap itself, with all beside, in the shroud of a universal scorn.
Without God reason is extinguished. What, in like case, will happen to the conscience? The conscience is a reality. I will say willingly in the style of the prophets: Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ere I deny conscience, and disparage the sacred name of duty! Yes, conscience is a reality; but God is in it: He it is who gives to it its necessary basis and its indispensable support. The conscience is the august voice of the Master of the universe. God has given us the light of the understanding that we may see and comprehend some portions of the works which He has created without us: a work there is for which He would have us to be fellow-workers with Him. The heaven of stars is a spectacle for the eyes of the body, a grander spectacle still for the contemplation of the mind which has understood their wondrous mechanism. We admire them; but if the stars failed to attract our admiration, no one of them on that account would cease to trace its orbit. There is another heaven, a heaven of loving stars and free, the sight of which is one day to fill us with rapture, and the realization of which is to be the work of our love and of our will. Before we contemplate it we must make it; this is our high and awful privilege. The plan of the spiritual heavens is deposited in the soul, and the utterances of the conscience reveal it to the will. It is a law of justice and of love. This law is evermore violated, because it is proposed to liberty, and liberty rebels: it subsists evermore, because it is the work of the Almighty. Humanity, in its strange destiny, has never ceased to outrage the rule which it acknowledges, and to pronounce upon its own acts a ceaseless condemnation. The laws which are investigated by the physical sciences are the plan of the Creator realized in nature: the law proposed to liberty is the plan of the Creator to be realized by the community of minds. Such is the explanation of the conscience: God is its solid foundation.
Duty and God, morality and religion, are inseparable principles; all the efforts of a false philosophy have never succeeded, and never will succeed, in disjoining them. Men will never be prevented from believing that God is holy, and that His will is binding upon them: they will never be prevented from believing that holiness is divine, and that the will of God reveals itself in the admonitions of the conscience. Therefore the progress of religion and the progress of morality are closely united; the morality of a people depends above all on the idea which it forms to itself of God. The conscience, in fact, at the same time that it is real and permanent in its bases, is variable in the degrees of its light. It is enlightened or obscured, according as the man's religious conceptions are pure or corrupted; and, on the other hand, when the religious worship is degraded beyond a certain