of the religions, the one to the other, and a consequent possibility of philosophically bringing them together. I only wish that for the purpose of use the actual attempts in this direction, so far as possibility of presentation is concerned, were better suited for our public. But, for the mere histories of the various popular divinities, I failed to see that I could make any application of them in the charge I had accepted in connection with Lord Gifford's bequest. Natural Theology as Natural Theology I could not in any way find in them. But, besides the divisions philosophizing, the one Christianity and the other paganism, there was the intermediate division of a more general philosophical matter, discussing, for example, the question of the seat of religion, whether it was a sentiment, or whether it was a knowledge-even here I failed to find myself satisfied as to its sufficient availableness in respect of the conditions in view. The best performances in this regard had in them, assuming all else to be unobjectionable, such a mode of presentation and treatment as hardly could be acceptably and intelligibly conveyed. Recurring perforce from the Philosophy of Religion to Natural Theology again, it suggested itself that, after all, Paley's way of it did not exhaust the subject. The field was really a larger field than Paley occupied. Paley entertained no questions of the proofs as the proofs, and the proofs as the proofs constituted the subject. The arguments, the proofs for the Being of a God-that was Natural Theology. And, again, not less are these proofs the very essential elements and bases of the philosophy of religion itself. There is no philosophy of religion that, extricating itself from mere biography, possesses a general part, but finds room-the best of them large, important, and essential room for the subject of the proofs. Whence come these proofs, then? They must THE PROOFS HISTORICALLY TREATED. 31 have had a beginning. But begin where they might, they could have had no place where paganism and polytheism obtained. Side by side with religion, there might have been vague, crude, general philosophizings, but there could have been no Natural Theology as Natural Theology, and no proofs as proofs of Natural Theology. Polytheism, therefore, must fade, monotheism must dawn, before there could be even a thought of Natural Theology or its proofs. What, then, is the history of these proofs, and in this relation? Suppose, at long and last, we take up this, -suppose we take up consideration of the known, received, tabulated, traditional proofs, and in connection with their history, that would be an escape at once from what is alleged to be antiquated, and to what brings with it an element that promises to be new; for there may be in existence sketched suggestions in regard to those who have written on the subject; but it seems unknown that any attention has been paid as yet to the historical derivation of the proofs themselves. In this way, too, there would be no abandonment of the subject itself. Natural Theology-God as the sole content of Natural Theology-would never fall from sight nor cease to be before our eyes. Nor yet are we any more in this way excluded from philosophy: we are at once here in the very heart of the philosophy of religion itself; and, in a personal regard, there can be no want of every opportunity to say everything whatever that one may have a wish or ability to say on such theme generally. With four men, at four universities, all declaiming, year after year, on the same text, there may come necessity for diversion and digression; but now, in this first year, it would ill become the lecturer who was first elected on the whole foundation, and in the university at least of the capital-it would ill become him, so signalized and so placed, to set the example of an episode, while it was the epic he was specially engaged for. There can be no doubt that Lord Gifford was very serious in his bequest, there can be no doubt of the one meaning, end, aim, intention, and object of all those emphatic specifications and designations of his, there can be no question but that the Testator's one wish, in these days of religious difficulty and distrust, was for some positive settlement in regard to the Being of a God. One cannot read that last Will and Testament of Lord Gifford's, indeed, without being reminded of what Porphyry tells us of Plotinus. Plotinus died, he says, with these last words in his mouth: Πειράσθω τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν θεῖον ἀνάγειν πρὸς τὸ ἐν τῷ πάντι θεῖον (strive to bring the God that is in us to the God that is in the All). Kepler, apparently in contrast to this, says: "My highest wish is to find within the God whom I find everywhere without." In such a matter, however, it does not signify from which side we take it. There can be no doubt that the last thoughts of Lord Gifford concerned his own soul, and the God who made it. To know that, was to Lord Gifford to know all. It was with him just as though he soliloquized with St. Augustine (Soliloq. i. 7): Deum et animam scire cupio (I desire to know God and the soul). Nihilne plus (Nothing more)? Nihil omnino (Nothing at all)! It is true at the same time-and it may be well for a moment to meet this point-that Lord Gifford wished the subject to be treated as a strictly natural science, just as astronomy or chemistry is. But natural obviously is only opposed here to supernatural, only to what concerns Revelation. It were idle to ask me to prove this: every relative expression is a proof in place. If it were said that astronomy is to be treated as a strictly natural science just as chemistry is, would it be necessary to substitute in the former the method of the latter to roast Jupiter in a crucible, or distil Saturn over in a retort? Things that are identical in the genus are very unlike in the NATURAL THEOLOGY NOT POSSIBLY A PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 33 species, as in the Aristotelian example of the ox and the man, where each is an animal. The apparatus of chemistry is for chemistry, and the apparatus of astronomy is for astronomy: neither can be substituted for the other; and both are powerless in regard to the object of Natural Theology. Our transatlantic brothers, as we hear at this moment, are going to have object glasses, or reflectors, or refractors, of ever so many feet; but the very tallest American, with the very tallest of telescopes, will never be able to say that he spied out God. Natural Theology is equally known as Rational Theology; and Rational Theology is equally known as the Metaphysic of God. That last phrase is acceptable enough; it repugns not; but fancy the Physic of God! The Greek term, doubtless, has an identity with the Latin one; but it has also a difference. Natural Theology may be considered a strictly natural science; but it were hardly possible to treat it as a strictly physical science. Physical Theology sounds barbarous, and carries us no farther than Mumbo-Jumbo and the fetich in general. What we have to aim at, wholly and solely, here, in our science, is the knowledge of God, a knowledge that can come to us only metaphysically; for it is a knowledge that, with whatever reference to nature, is still beyond nature; -a knowledge, in fact, whose very business in the end is to transcend nature-the knowledge, namely, to which the Finite is only the momentary purchase that gives the rise to the Infinite. It can come to us, then, as said, only metaphysically, and for that matter, too, only religiously. The old way of it is not without its truth, the old way of it, as in the time of Augustine, or as in the time of Anselm. To both Augustine and Anselm there may be a necessity for a cultivation of the understanding; but to both also there is a necessity that faith precede. Augustine (Civ. Dei, ix. 20) has in mind the verse (1 Cor. viii. 1), "Know C ledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up." "And this can only be understood," he says, "as meaning that without charity, knowledge does no good, but inflates a man, or magnifies him with an empty windiness." So it is that to Augustine faith, love, charity must precede knowledge. Even as the ground must be loosened and softened for reception of the seed, so must the heart be made tender by faith, charity, and love, if it would profitably receive into itself the elements of knowledge. The same necessities, to the same end, with humility, occur in Anselm. So here we have only to recollect his most frequent expressions to know that the general object of Lord Gifford, too, was faith, belief the production of a living principle that, giving us God in the heart, should, in this world of ours, guide us in peace. How inapplicable mere Physics are to Natural Theology is obvious also from this, that Lord Gifford directly styles the latter "the only science, the science of Infinite Being." It is not in a science of Infinite Being that the lever or the pulley or the screw can have any place; in respect of such a science, there is no power to deal with it but what lies in philosophy. And thus in meeting an objection that may rest on such expressions as astronomy, chemistry, natural science, etc., we are brought back to where we were in connection with the proofs and their appearance in history. Natural Theology as Natural Theology, the philosophy of Infinite Being as the philosophy of Infinite Being, neither the one nor the other can be found in Physics, and just as little in paganism or in polytheism; but both are to be found, and found together, when on the stage of history polytheism is melting into monotheism, and paganism is drawing nigh to Christianity. I have been met with surprise when I have said that religion proper only begins with monotheism. But you will realize what I mean, if you will |