Theism. Flint Robert
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pluck you out of the crannies;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower – but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."
In another respect the theistic proof is exceedingly complex and comprehensive. It takes up into itself, as it were, the entire wealth of human nature. The mind can only rise to the apprehension of God by a process which involves all that is most essential in its own constitution. Thus the will is presupposed. Theistic inference clearly involves the principle of causality. God can only be thought of in the properly theistic sense as the cause of which the universe is the effect. But to think of God as a cause – to apprehend the universe as an effect, – we must have some immediate and direct experience of causation. And such experience we have only in the consciousness of volition. When the soul wills, it knows itself as an agent, as a cause. This is the first knowledge of causation which the mind requires, and the most perfect knowledge thereof which it ever requires. It is a knowledge which sheds light over all the regions of experience subsequently brought under the principle of causality, which accompanies the reason in its upward search until it rests in the cognition of an ultimate cause, and which enables us to think of that cause as the primary, all-originating will. If we did not know ourselves as causes, we could not know God as a cause; and we know ourselves as causes only in so far as we know ourselves as wills.
But the principle of causality alone or by itself is quite insufficient to lead the mind up to the apprehension of Deity; and an immediate and direct consciousness of far more within us than will is required to make that apprehension possible. The evidences of intelligence must be combined with the evidences of power before we can be warranted to infer more from the facts of the universe than the existence of an ultimate force; and no mere force, however great or wonderful, is worthy to be called God. God is not only the ultimate Cause, but the Supreme Intelligence; and as it is only in virtue of the direct consciousness of our volitions that we can think of God as a cause, so is it only in virtue of the direct consciousness of our intellectual operations that we can think of Him as an intelligence. It is not from the mere occurrence of a change, or the mere existence of a derivative phenomenon, that we infer the change or phenomenon to be due to an intelligent cause, but from the mode of the occurrence or the character of the phenomenon being such that any cause but an intelligent cause must be deemed an insufficient cause. The inference supposes, however, that we already have some knowledge of what an intelligent cause is – that we have enough of knowledge of the nature of intelligence to convince us that it alone can fully account for order, law, and adjustment. Whence do we get this knowledge? We have not far to seek it; it is inherent in self-consciousness. We know ourselves as intelligences, as beings that foresee and contrive, that can discover and apply principles, that can originate order and adjustment. It is only through this knowledge of the nature of intelligence that we can infer our fellow-men to be intelligent beings; and not less is it an indispensable condition of our inferring God to be an intelligence.
Then, causality and design, and the will and intelligence within us through which they are interpreted, cannot, even when combined, enable us to think of the Creative Reason as righteous; although obviously, until so thought of, that reason is by no means to be identified with God. The greatest conceivable power and intelligence, if united with hatred of righteousness and love of wickedness, can yield us only the idea of a devil; and if separated from all moral principle and character, good or bad, only that of a being far lower than man, which might have reason for worshipping man, but which man cannot worship without degrading himself. The existence, however, of a moral principle within us, of a conscience which witnesses against sin and on behalf of holiness, is of itself evidence that God must be a moral being, one who hates sin and loves holiness; and the light of this, "the candle of the Lord," in the soul, enables us to discover many other reasons for the same conclusion in the constitution of society and the course of history. But if we had no moral perceptions on the contemplation of our own voluntary acts, we certainly would not, and could not, invest the Divine Being with moral perfections because of His acts.
There is still another step to be taken in order to obtain an apprehension of God; and it is one where the outward universe fails us, where we are thrown entirely, or nearly so, on our internal resources. The universe, interpreted by the human mind in the manner which has been indicated, may warrant belief in a Being whose power is immense, whose wisdom is inexpressibly wonderful, and whose righteousness is to be held in profoundest admiration and reverence, notwithstanding all the clouds and darkness which may in part conceal it from our view; but not in a Being whose existence is absolute, whose power is infinite, whose wisdom and goodness are perfect. We cannot infer that the author of a universe which is finite, imperfect, and relative, and all the phenomena of which are finite, imperfect, and relative, must be, in the true and strict sense of the terms, infinite, perfect, and absolute. We cannot deduce the infinite from the finite, the perfect from the imperfect, the absolute from the relative. And yet it is only in the recognition of an absolute Being of infinite power, who works with perfect wisdom towards the accomplishment of perfectly holy ends, that we reach a true knowledge of God, or, which is much the same thing, a knowledge of the true God. Is there, then, any warrant in our own nature for thinking of God as infinite, absolute, and perfect, since there seems to be little or none in outward nature? Yes, there are within us necessary conditions of thought and feeling and ineradicable aspirations which force on us ideas of absolute existence, infinity, and perfection, and will neither permit us to deny these perfections to God nor to ascribe them to any other being.
Thus the mental process in virtue of which we have the idea of God comprehends and concentrates all that is most essential in human nature. It is through bearing the image of God that we are alone able to apprehend God. Take any essential feature of that image out of a human soul, and to apprehend God is made thereby impossible to it. All that is divine in us meets, unites, co-operates, to lay hold of what is divine without us. Hence the fuller and clearer the divine image is in any man, the fuller and clearer will be his perception of the divine original. Hence what is more or less true everywhere, is especially and emphatically true in religion, that "the eye sees only what it brings with it the power of seeing." Where the will, for example, is without energy – where rest is longed for as the highest good, and labour deemed the greatest evil – where extinction is preferred to exertion, – the mind of a nation may be highly cultured, and subtle and profound in speculation, and yet may manifest a marked inability to think of God as a cause or will, with a consequently inveterate tendency to pantheism. The Hindu mind, and the systems of religion and philosophy to which it has given birth, may serve as illustration and proof. Where the animal nature of man is strong, and his moral and spiritual nature still undeveloped, as is the case among all rude and undisciplined races, he worships not the pure and perfect supreme Spirit, whose goodness, truth, and righteousness are as infinite as His power and knowledge, but gods endowed in his imagination chiefly with physical and animal qualities. "Recognition of Nature," says Mr Carlyle, "one finds to be the chief element of Paganism; recognition of Man and his Moral Duty – though this, too, is not wanting – comes to be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. Here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of Mankind. Man first puts himself in relation with Nature and her Powers, wonders and worships over those; not till a later epoch does he discern that all Power is Moral, that the grand point is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of Thou shalt, and thou shalt not." The explanation of the historical truth thus stated by Mr Carlyle is just that man is vividly alive to the wants and claims of his body and merely natural life during long ages in which he is almost dead to the wants and claims of his spirit or true self and the moral life. So the ordinary mind is prone, even at present, in the most civilised countries of the world, to think of God after the likeness of man, or, in other words, as a vastly magnified man. Why? Because the ordinary mind is always very feebly and dimly conscious of those principles of reason which demand in God the existence of attributes neither to be found in the physical universe nor in itself. Some exercise in speculation, some training in philosophy, is needed to make us reflect on them; and until we reflect on them we cannot be expected to do them justice in the formation of our religious convictions. Those who have never thought on what infinite and unconditioned