The Contemporary Review, January 1883

III

The author of "Natural Religion," it will be remembered, assumes for the purposes of his argument, that the supernatural portion of Christianity is discredited, is put aside by physical science; that, as M. Renan has somewhere tersely expressed it, "there is no such thing as the supernatural, but from the beginning of being everything in the world of phenomena was preceded by regular laws." Let us consider what this involves. It involves the elimination from our creed, not only of the miraculous incidents in the history of the Founder of Christianity, including, of course, His Resurrection—the fundamental fact, upon which, from St. Paul's time to our own, His religion has been supposed to rest—but all the beliefs, aspirations, hopes, attaching to that religion as a system of grace. It destroys theology, because it destroys that idea of God from which theology starts, and which it professes to unfold. This being so, it might appear that religion is necessarily extinguished too. Certainly, in the ordinary sense which the word bears among us, it is. "Religio," writes St. Thomas Aquinas, "est virtus reddens debitum honorem Deo."33 And so Cardinal Newman, somewhat more fully, "By religion I mean the knowledge of God, of His will, and of our duties towards Him;" and he goes on to say that "there are three main channels which Nature furnishes us for our acquiring this knowledge—viz., our own minds, the voice of mankind, and the course of the world, that is, of human life and human affairs."34 But that, of course, is very far from being what the author of "Ecce Homo" means by religion, and by natural religion, in his new book. Its key-note is struck in the words of Wordsworth cited on its title-page:—" We live by admiration."35 Religion he understands to be an "ardent condition of the feelings," "habitual and regulated admiration" (p. 129), "worship of whatever in the known Universe appears worthy of worship" (p. 161). "To have an individuality," he teaches, "is to have an ideal, and to have an ideal is to have an object of worship: it is to have a religion" (p. 136). "Irreligion," on the other hand, is defined as "life without worship," and is said to consist in "the absence of habitual admiration, and in a state of the feelings, not ardent but cold and torpid" (p. 129). It would appear then that religion, in its new sense, is enthusiasm of well-nigh any kind, but particularly the enthusiasm of morality, which is "the religion of right," the enthusiasm of art, which is "the religion of beauty," and the enthusiasm of physical science, which is "the religion of law and of truth" (p. 125).36 "Art and science," we read, "are not secular, and it is a fundamental error to call them so; they have the nature of religion" (p. 127). "The popular Christianity of the day, in short, is for the artist too melancholy and sedate, and for the man of science too sentimental and superficial; in short, it is too melancholy for the one, and not melancholy enough for the other. They become, therefore, dissenters from the existing religion; sympathizing too little with the popular worship, they worship by themselves and dispense with outward forms. But they protest at the same time that, in strictness, they separate from the religious bodies around them, only because they know of a purer or a happier religion" (p. 126). It is useful to turn, from time to time, from the abstract to the concrete, in order to steady and purge our mental vision. Let us therefore, in passing, gaze upon Théophile Gautier, the high priest of the pride of human form, whose unspeakably impure romance has been pronounced by Mr. Swinburne to be "the holy writ of beauty;" and, on the other, upon Schopenhauer, the most thorough-going and consistent of physicists, who reduces all philosophy to a cosmology, and consider whether, the author of "Ecce Homo" himself being judge, the religion of the one can be maintained to be purer or that of the other to be happier, than the most degraded form of popular Christianity. I proceed to his declaration, which naturally follows from what has been said, that the essence of religion is not in theological dogma nor in ethical practice. The really religious man, as we are henceforth to conceive of him, is, apparently, the man of sentiment. "The substance of religion is culture," which is "a threefold devotion to Goodness, Beauty, and Truth," and "the fruit of it the higher life" (p. 145). And the higher life is "the influence which draws men's thoughts away from their personal existence, making them intensely aware of other existences, to which it binds them by strong ties, sometimes of admiration, sometimes of awe, sometimes of duty, sometimes of love" (p. 236). And as in the individual religion is identified with culture, so, "in its public aspect" "it is identical with civilization" (p. 201), which "expresses the same threefold religion, shown on a larger scale, in the character, institutions, and ways of life of nations" (p. 202). "The great civilized community" is "the modern city of God" (p. 204).

But what God? Clearly not that God spoken of by St. Paul—or the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was—"the God of Peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant;" for that God, the Creator, Witness, and Judge of men—is assuredly Deus absconditus, a hidden God, belonging to "the supernatural;" and the hypothesis upon which the author of "Ecce Homo" proceeds in his new work is that men have "ceased to believe in anything beyond Nature" (p. 76). The best thing for them to do, therefore, he suggests, if they must have a God, is to deify Nature. But "Nature, considered as the residuum that is left after the elimination of everything supernatural, comprehends man with all his thoughts and aspirations, not less than the forms of the material world" (p. 78). God, therefore, in the new Natural Religion, is to be conceived of as Physical "Nature, including Humanity" (p. 69), or "the unity which all things compose in virtue of the universal presence of the same laws" (p. 87), which would seem to be no more than a Pantheistic expression, its exact value being all that exists, the totality of forces, of beings, and of forms. The author of "Natural Religion" does not seem to be sanguine that this new Deity will win the hearts of men. He anticipates, indeed, the objection "that when you substitute Nature for God you take a thing heartless and pitiless instead of love and goodness." To this he replies, "If we abandoned our belief in the supernatural, it would not be only inanimate Nature that would be left to us; we should not give ourselves over, as is often rhetorically described, to the mercy of merciless powers—winds and waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, and fire. The God we should believe in would not be a passionless, utterly inhuman power." "Nature, in the sense in which we are now using the word, includes humanity, and therefore, so far from being pitiless, includes all the pity that belongs to the whole human race, and all the pity that they have accumulated, and, as it were, capitalised in institutions political, social and ecclesiastical, through countless generations" (pp. 68-9).

He, then, who would not "shock modern views of the Universe" (p. 157) must thus think of the Deity. And so Atheism acquires a new meaning. "It is," we read, "a disbelief in the existence of God—that is, a disbelief in any regularity in the Universe to which a man must conform himself under penalties" (p. 27); a definition which surely is a little hard upon the libres-penseurs, as taking the bread out of their mouths. I remember hearing, not long ago, in Paris, of a young Radical diplomatist who, with the good taste which characterizes the school now dominant in French politics, took occasion to mention to a well-known ecclesiastical statesman that he was an Atheist. "O de l'athéisme à votre âge," said the Nuncio, with a benign smile: "pourquoi, quand l'impiété suffit et ne vous engage à rien?" But with the new signification imposed upon the word, a profession of Atheism would pledge one in quite another sense: it would be equivalent to a profession of insanity; for where, except among the wearers of strait-waistcoats or the occupants of padded rooms, shall we find a man who does not believe in some regularity in the universe to which he must conform himself under penalties? But let us follow the author of "Natural Religion" a step further in his inquiry. "In what relation does this religion stand to our Christianity, to our churches, and religious denominations?" (p. 139). Certainly, we may safely agree with him that "it has a difficulty in identifying itself with any of the organized systems," and as safely that the "conception of a spiritual city," of an "organ of civilization," of an "interpreter of human society," is "precisely what is now needed" (p. 223). "The tide of thought, scepticism, and discovery, which has set in … must be warded off the institutions which it attacks as recklessly as if its own existence did not depend upon them. It introduces everywhere a sceptical condition of mind, which it recommends as the only way to real knowledge; and yet if such scepticism became practical, if large communities came to regard every question in politics and law as absolutely open, their institutions would dissolve, and science, among other things, would be buried in the ruin. Modern thought brings into vogue a speculative Nihilism … but unintentionally it creates at the same time a practical Nihilism.... There is a mine under modern society which, if we consider it, has been the necessary result of the abeyance in recent times of the idea of the Church" (p. 208). In fact, as our author discerns, the existence of civilization is at stake. "It can live only by religion" (p. 262). "On religion depends the whole fabric of civilization, all the future of mankind" (p. 218). The remedy which he suggests is that the Natural Religion which we have been considering, the new "universal religion," should "be concentrated in a doctrine," should "embody itself in a Church" (p. 207). "This Church," we are told, "exists already, a vast communion of all who are inspired by the culture and civilization of the age. But it is unconscious, and perhaps, if it could attain to consciousness, it might organize itself more deliberately and effectively" (p. 212). The precise mode of such organization is not indicated, but its main function it appears would be to diffuse an "adequate doctrine of civilization," and especially to teach "science," in "itself a main part of religion, as the grand revelation of God in these later times," and also the theory "of the gradual development of human society, which alone can explain to us the past state of affairs, give us the clue to history, save us from political aberrations, and point the direction of progress" (p. 209). Of the clerus of the new Natural Church we read as follows:—

"If we really believe that a case can be made out for civilization, this case must be presented by popular teachers, and their most indispensable qualification will be independence. They perhaps will be able to show, that happiness or even universal comfort is not, and never has been, within quite so easy reach, that it cannot be taken by storm, and that as for the institutions left us from the past they are no more diabolical than they are divine, being the fruit of necessary development far more than of free-will or calculation. Such teachers would be the free clergy of modern civilization. It would be their business to investigate and to teach the true relation of man to the universe and to society, the true Ideal he should worship, the true vocation of particular nations, the course which the history of mankind has taken hitherto, in order that upon a full view of what is possible and desirable men may live and organize themselves for the future. In short, the modern Church is to do what Hebrew prophecy did in its fashion for the Jews, and what bishops and Popes did according to their lights for the Roman world when it laboured in the tempest, and for barbaric tribes first submitting themselves to be taught. Another grand object of the modern Church would be to teach and organize the outlying world, which for the first time in history now lies prostrate at the feet of Christian civilization. Here are the ends to be gained. These once recognized, the means are to be determined by their fitness alone" (p. 221).

IV

So much must suffice to indicate the essential features of the religion which would be left us after the elimination of the supernatural. And now we are to consider whether this religion will suffice for the wants of the world; whether it is a religion "which shall appeal to the sense of duty as forcibly, preach righteousness and truth, justice and mercy, as solemnly and as exclusively as Christianity itself does" (p. 157). Surely to state the question is enough. In fact the author of "Natural Religion" quite recognizes that "to many, if not most, of those who feel the need of religion, all that has been offered in this book will perhaps at first seem offered in derision" (p. 260), and frankly owns that "whether it deserves to be called a faith at all, whether it justifies men in living, and in calling others into life, may be doubted" (p. 66). He tells us that "the thought of a God revealed in Nature," which he has suggested, does not seem to him "by any means satisfactory, or worthy to replace the Christian view, or even as a commencement from which we must rise by logical necessity to the Christian view" (p. 25) and it must be hard not to agree with him. It is difficult to suppose that any one who considers the facts o£ life, who contemplates not the individua vaga of theories, but the men and women of this working-day world can think otherwise. Surely no one who really surveys mankind as they are, as they have been in the past, and, so far as we are able to judge, will be in the future, can suppose that this Natural Religion, even if embodied in a Natural Church, and equipped with "a free clergy," will meet their wants, or win their affections, or satisfy those "strange yearnings" of which we read in Plato, and which, in one form or another, stir every human soul; which we may trace in the chatterings of the poor Neapolitan crone to her Crucifix, or in the hallelujahs of "Happy Sal" at a Salvationist "Holiness Meeting," as surely as in the profoundest speculations of the Angelic Doctor, or in the loftiest periods of Bossuet. Can any one, in this age of all others, when, as the revelations of the physical world bring home to us so overwhelmingly what Pascal calls "the abyss of the boundless immensity of which I know nothing, and you know nothing," man sinks to an insignificance which, the apt word of the author of "Natural Religion" "petrifies" him, can—can any one believe that the compound of Pantheistic Positivism and Christian sentiment—if we may so account of it—set forth in these brilliant pages, will avail to redeem men from animalism and secularity? But, indeed, we need not here rest in the domain of mere speculation. The experiment has been tried. Not quite a century ago, when Chaumette's "Goddess of Reason," and Robespierre's "Supreme Being," had disappeared from the altars of France, La Reveillère-Lepeaux essayed to introduce a Natural Religion under the name of Theophilanthropy37 to satisfy the spiritual needs of the country over which he ruled as a member of the Directory, Chernin Dupontés, Dupont de Nemours and Bernardin de St. Pierre constituting with himself the four Evangelists of the new cult. The first mentioned of these must, indeed, be regarded as its inventor, and his "Manuel des Théophilanthrophiles" supplies the fullest exposition of it. But it was La Reveillère-Lepeaux whose influence gave form and actuality to the speculations of Chemin, and whose credit obtained for the new sect the use of some dozen of the principal churches of Paris, and of the choir and organ of Notre Dame. The formal début of the new religion may, perhaps, be dated from the 1st of May, 1797, when La Reveillère read to the Institute a memoir in which he justified its introduction upon grounds very similar to those urged in our own day against "the theological view of the universe." Moreover, he insisted that Catholicism was opposed to sound morality, that its worship was antisocial, and that its clergy—whom he contemptuously denominated la prêtraille, and whom he did his best to exterminate—were the enemies of the human race. In its leading features the new Church resembled very closely the system which we have just been considering, offered to the world by the author of "Ecce Homo." It identified the Deity with Nature:38 religion, considered subjectively, with sentiment, and objectively, with civilization; and it regarded Atheists and the adherents of all forms of faith—with the sole exception of Catholics —as eligible for its communion. Its dogmas, if one may so speak, were a hotchpotch of fine phrases about beauty, truth, right, and the like, culled from writers of all creeds and of no creed. Its chief public function consisted in the singing of a hymn to "the Father of the Universe," to a tune composed by one Gossee, a musician much in vogue at that time, and in lections chosen from Confucius, Vyasa, Zoroaster, Theognis, Cleanthes, Aristotle, Plato, La Bruyère, Fénélon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Young, and Franklin, the Sacred Scriptures of Christianity being carefully excluded on account, as may be supposed, of their alleged opposition to "sound morality." The priests of the "Natural Religion" were vested in sky-blue tunics, extending from the neck to the feet, and fastened at the waist by a red girdle, over which was a white robe open before. Such was the costume in which La Reveillére-Lepeaux exhibited himself to his astonished countrymen, and having the misfortune to be—as we are told—"petit, bossu, et puant," the exhibition obtained no great success. It must be owned, however, that the Natural Church did its best to fill the void caused by the disappearance of the Christian religion. It even went so far as to provide substitutes for the Sacraments of Catholicism. At the rite which took the place of baptism, the father himself officiated, and, in lieu of the questions prescribed in the Roman Ritual, asked the godfather, "Do you promise before God and men to teach N. or M. from the dawn of his reason to adore God, to cherish (chérir) his fellows, and to make himself useful to his country?" And the godfather, holding the child towards heaven, replied, "I promise." Then followed the inevitable "discourse," and a hymn of which the concluding lines were:

So much must suffice as to the Natural Church during the time that it existed among men as a fact, or, in the words of the author of "Ecce Homo," as "an attempt to treat the subject of religion in a practical manner." But, backed as it was by the influence of a despotic government, and felix opportunitate as it must be deemed to have been in the period of its establishment, very few were added to it. Whereupon, as the author of "Ecce Homo" relates, not without a touch of gentle irony, La Reveillère confided to Talleyrand39 his disappointment at his ill-success. "'His propaganda made no way,' he said, 'What was he to do?' he asked. The ex-bishop politely condoled with him, feared indeed it was a difficult task to found a new religion—more difficult than could be imagined, so difficult that he hardly knew what to advise! 'Still'—he went on, after a moment's reflection—'there is one plan which you might at least try: I should recommend you to be crucified, and to rise again the third day'" (p. 181). Is the author of "Ecce Homo" laughing in his sleeve at us? Surely his keen perception must have suggested to him, as he wrote this passage, "mutato nomine, deme." It may be confidently predicted that, unless he is prepared to carry out Talleyrand's suggestion, the Natural Religion which he exhibits "to meet the wants of a sceptical age" will prove even a more melancholy failure than it proved when originally introduced a century ago by La Reveillère-Lepeaux.

V

Are we then thrown back on Pessimism—"the besetting difficulty of Natural Religion" (p. 104), as the author of "Ecce Homo" confesses? Is that after all the key to the enigma of life? And is the prospect before the world that "universal darkness" which is to supervene, when, in the noble verse of the great moral poet of the last century—the noblest he ever wrote—

I venture to think otherwise. And as with regard to the subject of which I am writing, it may be said that "egotism is true modesty," I shall venture to say why I think so, even at the risk of wearying by a twice-told tale, for I shall have to go over well-worn ground, and I must of necessity tread more or less in the footprints of others. The reasons which satisfy me have satisfied, and do satisfy, intellects far more subtle, acute, and penetrating than mine. All I can do is to state them in the way in which they present themselves to my own mind. I shall be genuine, if not original, although indeed I might here shelter myself under a dictum—profoundly true it is—of Mr. Ruskin: "That virtue of originality that men so strive after is not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new) it is only genuineness."