RAYMUND-RAYS, PALEYS, ETC. 25 more than a century and a half after its presumed composition. Montaigne, too, who translated it into French for his father, speaks in the highest terms of it. "Many folks amuse themselves reading it," he says, "and especially the ladies." I had noted some passages to quote, but they are hardly worth the time. In the ascent of things to God, man is on the fourth grade, he remarks: he is, he lives, he feels, and he understands. This is a fourfold distinction taken from Aristotle, which we find in most writers throughout the Middle Ages; it is the esse, vivere, sentire, intelligere, so universally applied in exposition of the stages of creation during the Hexaemeron-the six days of it. After Raymund, or his commentator Montaigne, I fancy we need hardly mention any other writers on the subject till we come to the Grews, Rays, Cudworths, Stillingfleets, Derhams, Clarkes, and Fénélons nearer our own times; in which (times) all previous authorities have been superseded by our Paley and our Bridgewater Treatises. These last, then, -this now is the important consideration, and here is the critical pause, these last, then, represent Natural Theology, and, as a whole, exhibit it--is it their contents that shall constitute the burden of these lectures, and be reproduced now? It is Natural Theology we have to treat-Paley is Natural Theology. Shall we just give Paley over again? I fear the question will be met by most of us with a shudder. For many years back it would seem as though the Natural Theology of the Rays and the Derhams, of the Paleys and the Bridgewater Treatises had vanished from our midst. "Where," asked a metaphysician some fourscore years ago, -" where may or can now a single note of former Natural Theology be heard-all that has been destroyed root and branch, and has disappeared from the circle of the sciences?" His own question, all the same, did not hinder the same metaphysician from lecturing affirmatively on Natural Theology a considerable number of years later; while, at about the same time in England, there was a revival of interest in the subject, principally in consequence, perhaps, of a new edition of Paley's work, to which Sir Charles Bell and Lord Brougham had, each in his own way, contributed. From that time, quite on indeed till 1860, we may say, there was the old interest, the old curiosity, admiration, reverence, awe, as in presence of the handiwork of God, when the descriptions of Natural Theology were before us, whether in lecture or in book. But now, again, a new wave has come and washed, for some twenty years back, Natural Theology pretty well out of sight. He who should take it up now as Paley took it up, or as Lord Brougham took it up, would simply be regarded as a fossil. In such circumstances the resource seems to be to turn to what is called the Philosophy of Religion, and has been introduced into Great Britain almost quite recently in the form of one or two translations from the German. There are other philosophies of religion in existence besides any as yet translated. Perhaps, indeed, there is no department of philosophy, so far as publishers' lists are in evidence, which claims a greater number of books at present. Even here, however, with a special view to the requirements of Lord Gifford's Bequest, I do not find my look of inquiry quite hopefully met. In one of the translated books, for example, what we find as a philosophy of religion is pretty well a series of biographies; while, in the other, there are two parts-a part that is general, and a part that is biographical. Now, I do not apprehend that a mere series of biographies would suit the requirement which we PHILOSOPHIES OF RELIGION. 27 have in view; and, as for the general part, it does not seem to satisfy me in that consideration either. That part may be said to consist of three divisionsone division being given to what we may call alien religions, another to our own Christianity, and a third to what may be regarded as specially general. Now, as regards Christianity, I do not feel that I should be happy did I philosophize it to you, even if that were competent to us on Lord Gifford's foundation, in the way in which it has been usual to do so, as, in fact, we find at once in the example readiest to handI mean in the Raymund of Sabunde we have just spoken of. This writer holds that there must, of necessity, be a plurality of persons in the Godhead, quia in Deo debet esse communicatio, quæ nequit esse sine dante, et recipiente atque communicante (that is, "because in God there must be communication or community, which, again, is impossible unless there be a Giver, a Receiver, and a Communicator"). Of course, as is obvious at once, Raymund means that the Father should be the Giver, the Son the Receiver, and the Third Person in the Godhead the Communicator. I do not mean to say that it is literally thus our modern writers philosophize to us the Trinity; but it is an example in point, and perfectly illustrates the general method actually in use. I do not know that it is popularly known; it is quite true, nevertheless, that in the greater number of the Fathers of the Church, and the other ecclesiastical, especially mystical, writers of the Middle Ages, some such method of philosophizing the persons of the Godhead is commonly to be found. In them, for example, as in more modern philosophical writers, it is quite usual for Christ to stand as the existent world. Now, I am not at all a foe to a warranted religious philosophizing; I am not at all a foe even to the carrying of trinity-trinity in unity-into the very heart of the universe in constitution of it. But it strikes me that in these days, and as we are here in Great Britain, so to attempt to philosophize the Christian Godhead would only repugn. I, for my part, cannot feel at home in it. I feel quite outside of it. There is such a naked naïveté in the Old Testament, and there is such a direct trust of natural simplicity in the New, as comport but ill with the apparent artifice and mere ingenuity of these seeming externalities. Again, as regards the division which, in these books, is devoted to other religions than our own, one finds it hard to put faith in that adjustment of them, the one to the other, that would make a correlated series of them, and a connected whole. With whatever attempt to philosophize them, there appears little for us that is vital in these religions now. They are not lively these nondescript divinities. My reading of these parts of these philosophies has been careful enough; but I always found that a Gesindel (a rabble) of gods would not prove to me, as a Gesindel of ghosts had proved to a German professor, entertaining, that is, and refreshing. My experience rather seemed to be something like that of De Quincey in his dreams. "I fled from the wrath of Brahma; Vishnu hated me; Siva lay in wait for me; I came suddenly on Isis and Osiris. I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at." Milton's "Lars and Lemures," and "wounded Thammuz," and "the dog Anubis," and "that twice-battered god of Palestine," were only delightful to me in his own most glorious poem. Apart from it, I was as grimly content to see them turn tail and flee as he was. I quite sympathized with Augustine in his contempt or horror of such gods as Jugatinus and Domiducus, and Domitius and Manturna, and Subigus and Prema and Pertunda. I agreed with Cicero that it was "detestable," that it was to be "repudiated," and not to be "tolerated," that there should be such gods as Fever and Mischance, Insolence and Impudence. I did not wonder at Pliny's disgust with the human folly that would believe in such gods. And did not Juvenal tell us of the Leek and the Onion as the gods whom, inviolably, the Egyptians swore by? "Oh, the holy nation," exclaims Juvenal," oh, the holy nation whose very gods grow in their gardens!" One remembers, nevertheless, that in the erection of the pyramids, according to Herodotus, these same Egyptians ate up ever so many hundred talents' worth of those gods of theirs. As for the divinity of the onion in particular, Aulus Gellius informs us that the Egyptian priests believed it, because the onion reversed for them the usual order of sublunary things, growing, namely, as the moon declined, and declining as the moon grew. I am not aware that modern science has confirmed the supposition; but, no doubt, they knew a great many more things then than we know now! A Gesindel, a canaille, a rabble of gods truly! And Pliny has it that there was, in his time even, a greater population of gods and goddesses than of human beings! The Greek poets and the Roman poets-I am just recounting my relative experiences here were all as pleasing to me, no doubt, as to another; but I could not say that the special gods, Jupiter and the rest, made any very appreciable part of the pleasure. I had no interest in the gods of polytheism at all: after strange gods I suppose it formed no part of my idiosyncrasy to run. In short, in the division under reference of the said philosophies of religion, the philosophizing of the various gods of the various nations failed to move me or inspire me with a will to follow in the same direction. This, of course, cannot be without some natural exaggeration; for, in the end, I by no means deny a certain affinity |