Page images
PDF
EPUB

points. A few years ago they would have been more successful. The caution, the provincialism, of the great mass of the sober stay-at-home electors, would have been alarmed at these adventures. The Democratic candidate, on this occasion, preached to deaf ears, when he denounced the abandonment of the non-intervention policy, the dangerous exploring of "untried paths," the following of new ideals, which appealed to ambition and the imagination. "It is essential more than ever to adhere strictly to the traditional policy of the country as formulated by its first President, to invite friendly relations with all nations, while avoiding entangling alliances with any."

Entangling alliances! It is a good phrase, a phrase not unknown to our own political controversy. It has a Congenial sound, as I have said, to the Anglo-Saxon householder, who does not want to "entangle" himself with any strange persons, if he can help it. But sometimes he cannot help it, unless he is to suffer various inconveniences. Is it a certain consciousness of this truth, which renders Americans much more tolerant of President Roosevelt's spirited foreign policy, and much more impervious to the Democratic invocations of the ancient idols, than they otherwise might be? The feeling, to which Mr. Roosevelt appeals, is a little vague, and not clearly articulate at present; but it is gathering force, as these movements do in America, and it may come to be held, by large numbers of people, with something like the passionate intensity with which the people of New England repudiated the Slave Power. There is a growing conviction that war is simply a survival of obsolete barbarism, a nuisance and a danger to civilization at large, and that it may become part of the "White Man's burden" to sit down on the thing altogether, or at least to see that it is kept within bounds.

As practical men, American statesmen are aware that neither peace conferences nor treaties of arbitration will carry us very far towards the goal. Every law implies what the jurists used to call a sanction-the knowledge that it is laid down by a superior power, which in the last resort is prepared to enforce it. International Law has no sanction; and that is why it is not law at all, but only custom and vaguely established practice, which nations will follow no longer than it suits them to do so. We want not merely a tribunal, but a policeman-a policeman with a big stick. And we should get our international guardian of the peace, if the pacific industrial communities, having first thoroughly armed themselves, were to make it known that any disturbance of the public order, any wanton aggression or violence, would be repressed by the strong hand: that any two peoples who had a quarrel, which could not be settled by mutual agreement, would be required to submit the dispute to the decision, not of force but of a properly constituted court of arbitration.

That is the ideal. It may never be reached; but the only way to approach it is by binding alliances between great Powers, or an efficient majority of them, willing and able to "levy execution," if necessary, upon offenders. The two European alliances, that of the central States on the one hand, and that of France and Russia on the other, have undoubtedly served the purpose of keeping the Continent at peace by rendering war too dangerous. Is it fantastic to hope that the precedent might be applied on a wider stage, and with less doubtful motives? Supposing that Great Britain and the United States entered into an agreement to employ their splendid navies, their immense moral and material force, for certain common beneficial objects? They would not, in the first

instance, look for anything so utopian as the repression of all international hostilities. But they might aim at securing two things: first, that a war, if it did break out, should be "local ized" and confined to the parties directly concerned; secondly, that in any case the freedom of the seas should be maintained, and neutral commerce protected. Such a League of Peace would almost certainly be joined by Japan, probably by Italy, possibly by France. In the end it might include Russia and Germany as well, and so bring about that "Areopagus" of the nations, which may eventually substi tute the Rule of Law for the Rule of Might in international politics.

The establishment of any pact of this nature would be a delicate, a difficult, and, in some ways, a perilous, enterprise; for, if hastily or clumsily attempted, it might make matters worse The Nineteenth Century and After.

and precipitate the conflicts it is designed to avert. But if a beginning is to be made, it would seem that it can come more easily from the United States than from any other Power; since the Washington Government can take the initiative without incurring the immediate dangers, or provoking the animosities, which must beset any other Foreign Office. Mr. Roosevelt will be a bold man if he sets himself seriously to overcome the prepossession of his countrymen for isolation and conservatism in external affairs. But the President has never lacked courage and ambition; and much more surprising things might happen than that the foundations should be laid of a League of Peace, based on a genuine and effective Anglo-Saxon Alliance, before it is time for him to quit the Executive Mansion.

Sidney Low.

RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE.*
I. SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

There was a time when religious people distrusted the increase of knowledge, and condemned the mental attitude which takes delight in its pursuit, being in dread lest part of the foundation of their faith should be undermined by a too ruthless and unqualified spirit of investigation.

There has been a time when men engaged in the quest of systematic knowledge had an idea that the results of their studies would be destructive not only of outlying accretions but of substantial portions of the edifice of religion which has been gradually erected by the prophets and saints of humanity.

Both these epochs are now nearly *The substance of an Address, given partly to students of the University of Birmingham,

over. All men realize that truth is the important thing, and that to take refuge in any shelter less substantial than the truth is but to deceive themselves and become liable to abject exposure when a storm comes on. Most men are aware that it is a sign of unbalanced judgment to conclude, on the strength of a few momentous discoveries, that the whole structure of religious belief built up through the ages by the developing human race from fundamental emotions and instincts and experiences, is unsubstantial and insecure.

The business of science, including in that term, for present purposes, philosophy and the science of criticism, is

and partly at Hope Hall, Liverpool, during the Church Congress week.

with foundations; the business of religion is with superstructure. Science has laboriously laid a solid foundation of great strength, and its votaries have rejoiced over it; though their joy must perforce be somewhat dumb and inexpressive until the more Vocal apostles of art and literature and music are able to utilize it for their more aerial and winsome kind of building: so for the present the work of science strikes strangers as severe and forbidding. In a neighboring territory Religion occupies a splendid buildinga georgeously-decorated palace; concerning which, Science, not yet having discovered a substantial and satisfactory basis, is sometimes inclined to suspect that it is phantasmal and mainly supported on legend.

Without any controversy it may be admitted that the foundation and the superstructure as at present known do not correspond; and hence that there is an apparent dislocation. Men of science have exclaimed that in their possession is the only foundation of solid truth, adopting in that sense the words of the poet:

To the solid ground Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye.

While on the other hand men of Religion, snugly ensconced in their traditional eyrie, and objecting to the digging and the hammering below, have shuddered as the artificial props and pillars by which they supposed it to be buttressed gave way one after another; and have doubted whether they could continue to enjoy peace in their ancient fortress if it turned out that part of it was suspended in air, without any perceptible foundation at all, like the phantom city in "Gareth

1 It will be represented that I am here intending to cast doubt upon a fundamental tenet of the Church. That is not my intention. My contention here is merely that a great structure should not rest upon a point. So

and Lynette" whereof it could be said:

the city is built

To music, therefore never built at all
And therefore built for ever.

Remarks as to lack of solid foundation may be regarded as typical of the mild kind of sarcasm which people with a superficial smattering of popular science sometimes try to pour upon religion. They think that to accuse a system of being devoid of solid foundation is equivalent to denying its stability. On the contrary, as Tennyson no doubt perceived, the absence of anything that may crumble or be attacked and knocked away, or that can be shaken by an earthquake, is a safeguard rather than a danger. It is the absence of material foundation that makes the Earth itself, for instance, so secure: if it were based upon a pedestal, or otherwise solidly supported, we might be anxious about the stability and durability of the support. As it is, it floats securely in the emptiness of space. Similarly the persistence of its diurnal spin is secured by the absence of anything to stop it: not by any maintaining mechanism.

To say that a system does not rest upon one special fact is not to impugn its stability. The body of scientific truth rests on no solitary material fact or group of facts, but on a basis of harmony and consistency between facts: its support and ultimate sanction is of no material character. To conceive of Christianity as built upon an Empty Tomb, or any other plain physical or historical fact, is dangerous. To base it upon the primary facts of consciousness or upon direct spiritual experience, as Paul did, is safer.' There are parts

might a lawyer properly say-"to base a legal decision unon the position of a comma, or other punctuation,-however undisputed its occurrence-is dangerous; to base it upon the general sense of a document is safer."

of the structure of Religion which may safely be underpinned by physical science: the theory of death and of continued personal existence is one of them; there are many others, and there will be more. But there are and always will be vast religious regions for which that kind of scientific foundation would be an impertinence, though a scientific contribution is appropriate; perhaps these may be summed up in some such phrase as "the relation of the soul to God."

Assertions are made concerning material facts in the name of religion; these science is bound to criticise. Testimony is borne to inner personal experience; on that physical science does well to be silent. Nevertheless many of us are impressed with the conviction that everything in the universe may become intelligible if we go the right way to work; and so we are coming to recognize, on the one hand, that every system of truth must be intimately connected with every other, and that this connection will constitute a trustworthy support as soon as it is revealed by the progress of knowledge; and on the other hand, that the extensive foundation of truth now being laid by scientific workers will ultimately support a gorgeous building of æsthetic feeling and religious faith.

Theologians have been apt to be too easily satisfied with a pretended foun

dation that would not stand scientific scrutiny; they seem to believe that the religious edifice, with its mighty halls for the human spirit, can rest upon some event or statement, instead of upon man's nature as a whole; and they are apt to decline to reconsider their formulæ in the light of fuller knowledge and development.

Scientific men on the other hand have been liable to suppose that no foundation which they have not themselves laid can be of a substantial character, thereby ignoring the possibility of an ancestral accumulation of sound though unformulated experience; and a few of the less considerate, about a quarter of a century ago, amused themselves by instituting a kind of jubilant rathunt under the venerable theological edifice: a procedure necessarily obnoxious to its occupants. The exploration was unpleasant, but its results have been purifying and healthful, and the permanent substratum of fact will in due time be cleared of the decaying refuse of centuries.

Some of the chief hurly-burly of contention between the apparently attacking force and the ostensibly defending garrison arose round that bulwark which upholds the possibility of the Miraculous, and the efficacy of Prayer. It will be sufficient if in this Address I discuss briefly these two connected subjects.

II. MEANING

I have to begin by saying that the term "miracle" is ambiguous, and that no discussion which takes that term as a basis can be very fruitful, since the combatants may all be meaning different things.

(1) One user of the term may mean merely an unusual event of which we do not know the history and cause, a bare wonder or prodigy; such an event

OF MIRACLE.

as the course of nature may, for all we know, bring about once in ten thousand years or so, leaving no record of its occurrence in the past and no anticipatory probability of its re-occurrence in the future. The raining down of fire on Sodom, or on Pompeii; the sudden engulphing of Korah, or of Marcus Curtius; or, on a different plane, the advent of some transcendent genius,

[blocks in formation]

example to think of is one wherein the lower animals are chiefly concerned; for instance, consider the case of the community of an ant hill, on a lonely uninhabited island, undisturbed for centuries, whose dwelling is kicked over one day by a shipwrecked sailor. They had reason to suppose that events were uniform, and all their difficulties ancestrally khown, but they are perturbed by an unintelligible miracle. A different illustration is afforded by the presence of an obtrusive but unsuspected live insect in a galvanometer or other measuring instrument in a physical laboratory; whereby metrical observations would be complicated, and all regularity perturbed in a puzzling and capricious and, to half-instructed knowledge, supernatural, or even diabolical, manner. Not dissimilar are some of the asserted events in a Séance Room.

(3) Another may use the term "miracle" to mean the utilization of unknown laws, say of healing or of communication; laws unknown and unformulated,

but instinctively put into operation by mental activity of some kind,-sometimes through the unconscious influence of so-called self-suggestion, sometimes through the activity of another mind, or through the personal agency of highly-gifted beings, operating on others; laws whereby time and space appear temporarily suspended, or extraordinary cures are effected, or other effects produced, such as the levitations and other physical phenomena related of the saints.

(4) Another may incorporate with the word "miracle" a still further infusion of theory, and may mean always a direct interposition of Divine Providence, whereby at some one time and place a perfectly unique occurrence is brought about, which is out of relation with the established order of things, is not due to what has gone before, and is not likely to occur again. The most striking examples of what can be claimed under this head are connected with the personality of Jesus Christ, notably the Virgin Birth and the Empty Tomb; by which I mean the more material and controversial aspects of those generally accepted doctrines -the Incarnation and the Resurrection. To summarize this part, the four categories are:-(1) A natural or orderly though unusual portent, (2) a disturbance due to unknown live or capricious agencies, (3) a utilization by mental or spiritual power of unknown laws, (4) direct interposition of the Deity.

III. ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE MIRACULOUS.

In some cases an argument concerning the so-called miraculous will turn upon the question whether such things are theoretically possible.

In other cases it will turn upon whether or not they have ever actually happened.

In a third case the argument will be

directed to the question whether they happened or not on some particular occasion.

And in a fourth case the argument will hinge upon the particular category under which any assigned occurrence is to be placed:

For instance take a circumstance

« PreviousContinue »