53

it would, we think, be impossible for any candid and open-hearted reader of the little volume* recently published, to think of him as a Sceptic. Scepticism is not a creed but a disposition a form of mind a peculiarity of nature-and this is not the mental character of Mr. Greg. Elsie was scarcely conscious of this. He believes almost in spite of himself She was still looking out, attracted-fas--having no means, he confesses, of cinated, it would seem, by the golden pinnacles of the stacks that rose clear from the vague shadow of the trees, and nursed the flattering rays of the daylight after the day had gone.

From Blackwood's Magazine.
ENIGMAS OF LIFE.

AMONG the many things which change
from one age to another, there is scarcely
any so subject to variation, strangely
enough, as those opinions on religious
subjects which are the most important our
minds are capable of forming. Though
the hottest controversies in the Church
are generally raised for the rigid conser-
vation of old forms and old conceptions of
religious truth, it is nevertheless true that
every century, and often every generation,
has its own characteristic way of setting
forth these truths; and that, not to go
back too far nor to venture upon any dis-
cussion such as that which has risen
round the Athanasian Creed, a pious and
even highly orthodox Christian of the
present day would hesitate at least, and
possibly shudder, were he called upon to
utter assertions or explanations which dis-
tilled like dew from the lips of his proto-
type in 1773, only a hundred years ago.
And scepticism, or philosophy, or counter-
theology, whatever name may be the best
to use, changes with equal variety and
persistency. From Voltaire to Mr. W.
R. Greg, what a difference! We do not
know by what name to distinguish the
later author. He disbelieves the greater
part of we may almost say all that
Christians believe. He seems on the
whole to be of opinion to us a new and
strange one - that Christianity has rather
retarded than helped forward the reign of
purity and truth on the earth. He is
cruelly and unjustly, and sometimes we
think ignorantly, contemptuous of all re-
ligious teachers of every class, creed, and
country. He is not without that intoler-
ance and dogmatism which are so curi-
ously characteristic of the philosophic
antagonists of spiritual oppression; but

proving the truth of what he believes in, and acknowledging a great many arguments against it. There is something amusing even in the humility with which he makes this avowal, or rather, something that would be amusing but for the perfect and dignified seriousness of the thinker, who, declining to receive Revelation as a possibility, and rejecting Christianity as a great blunder, cannot yet, he allows, divest himself of his faith in God and the Hereafter. We have used a word which we ought not to have used, it is pathetic rather than amusing. Mr. Greg puts himself voluntarily at the bar, and gives for his defence the humanest, the most unassailable, of all pleas. It is not at any bar of ours that he makes his defence. We are ready to give him full and frank absolution for believing in God because he cannot help it, because it is plus forte que lui: but there is something infinitely curious in the spectacle of this man standing humbly uncovered before his peers, excusing himself for his faith. We can easily conceive that a great effort was necessary to enable him to confront such a tribunal with such a confession. The great leading principle of all the philosophical researches of our day, both physical and mental, is that faith is the one unallowable sentiment-the accursed thing. The very state of mind which makes such a feeling possible, fills science with disgust and opposition; yet here is a distinguished philosopher coming forward to confess to it, with a sense of his own weakness, yet with an absolute incapacity to separate himself from it, which is at once strange and whimsical and pathetic. What he avows is pure faith of the highest and most visionary kind, faith in things unprovable, without tangible foundation, without authority yet in its naked force prevailing over all the methods and habits of doubt, and all the prejudices of the intellect. The folplowing is Mr. Greg's own explanation or excuse the plea with which he presents himself at the bar of philosophical thought:

Enigmas of Life: by W. R. Greg. London: Trubner & Co. 1872.

The religious views in which we have been | once when he was young he believed. In brought up, inevitably colour to the last our short, he does what the weakest of us do, tone of thought on all cognate matters, and what the most illogical do: he believes largely affect the manner and direction of our because he believes. Honour to the philapproach to them, even where every dogma of our early creed has been, if not abandoned, yet scoff at him who will, he shall have no osopher who dares to say so! Let those deprived of its dogmatic form, as well as of its original logical or authoritative basis. Not only scorn from us. We may grieve that he are doctrines often persistently retained, though can proceed no further that he cannot the old foundations of them have been under- go in at the doors open to us, or see what mined or surrendered—but beliefs that have it hath not entered into the heart of man dwelt long in the mind leave indelible traces to conceive; but for this vindication, even of their residence years after they have been though uttered somewhat against his will, discarded and dislodged. It would be more of pure Faith without foundation or reacorrect to say that they linger with a sort of loving obstinacy in their old abode, long after son, he is to be thanked, almost more they have received formal notice to quit. Their deeply than is another man who feels himchamber is never to the end of time quite self able to speak with fuller certainty and swept and garnished. The mind is never alto- a more definite hope. This confession is gether as if they had not been there. When a a triumph of that something above nature, "yes" or "no" answer is demanded to a prop- above reason, above all that can be taught osition, for and against which argument and or learned: that something ineffable, inevidence seem equally balanced, the decision is comprehensible in us, which makes us sure to be different in minds, one of which what we are which cannot be altogether comes new to the question, while the other has destroyed by brutality, nor altogether held a preconceived opinion, even though on eliminated by intellect; and which makes grounds which he now recognizes as erroneous or insufficient. It was my lot to inherit from us, on the whole, very indifferent to Mr. Puritan forefathers the strongest impressions Darwin's monkeys, even could we see as to the great doctrines of religion, at a time them in actual process of development. when the mind is most plastic and most tena- Tails are one thing-but souls are quite cious of such impressionsanother thing. The appendage might be got rid of; but the other is not to be got rid of nor accounted for. And here it stands, clear-shining, ineffable, poising on angels' wings over the big brain of this thinker, as over the smallest brain of any one of us. We trust and hope that there is a great deal more of this kind of faith present in the world at this doubting and doubtful period, than the Christian critics of the time have any idea of. It is a Faith which has little to say for itself, which sometimes may be somewhat ashamed of itself; but its very shame and its avowed want of absolute foundation are its most valuable qualities. It is like the testimony of an unwilling witness, of whom honour and truth demand that he should tell something which goes against the cause he favours.

"Wax to receive and marble to retain."

And though I recognize, as fully as any man of science, the hollowness of most of the foundations on which those impressions were based, and the entire invalidity of the tenure on which I then held them, yet I by no means feel compelled to throw up the possession merely

Decause the old title-deeds were full of flaws.

The existence of a wise and beneficent Creator, and of a renewed life hereafter, are still to me beliefs-especially the first-very nearly reaching the solidity of absolute convictions. The one is almost a Certainty, the other a solemn Hope. And it does not seem to me unphilosophic to allow my contemplation of life, or my speculations on the problems it presents, to run in the grooves worn in the mind by its antecedent history, so long as no dogmatism is allowed, and no disprovable datum is suffered for a moment to intrude.

The feeling which dictates this plea is Another curious peculiarity of the phias little sceptical as that which makes the losophy of our day is the modesty with firmest believer cling to his creed- nay, which it avows its absolute inability to it is almost, if we may be permitted to answer any of the questions it raises. say so, a more pure and unmixed Faith The very name of Mr. Greg's volume than are those beliefs which are founded shows his full acquiescence in this sentiupon authority, either human or divinement. To the deeper Enigmas of Life on Revelation itself, the great final au- which he here proposes he offers no anthority in which Christians trust. Mr. swer; he holds out no hope to us that any Greg rejects the idea of Revelation as a folly; he smiles at authority in matters of the mind. He believes-because, as we have said, he cannot help it; because he had Puritan forefathers because

answer can ever be found by intellect or thought. It is true that to the less lofty - to those which concern the physical wellbeing and progress of man -he believes in the possibility of a limited and

conditional answer, but that only by the | ago raised themselves "to the highest
interposition of a philosophical millenni- summit which any nation has yet reached
um-a time when all men will do justly the culminating point of human intelli-
and love mercy, when sanitary science gence." To be able to think is surely a
shall vanquish disease, when Peace shall greater gift, after all that can be said,
have a universal reign, when men shall than to be able to flash a possibly foolish
learn in all things how much better and message from one end of the world to the
more comfortable it is for themselves to other in twelve minutes. Almost the
do well than to do ill, and vice and dys- only way in which we can consider this
pepsia shall alike vanish from the face of latter privilege as an unmingled boon, is
the earth. We have no disposition to as- either when it works in the service of the
sail with harsh criticism this foolishness affections and relieves the anxious, or
of wisdom. We remember that another when it is used in the royal work of gov-
philosopher, more celebrated still than ernment, facilitating the action of a cen-
Mr. Greg, once proposed the same sum- tral authority or summoning aid to a de-
mary and delightful remedy for the woes, pendency in peril;-yet we all know that
not of the world, but of that small part in both these cases the telegraph has
of it called Ireland: Let every man but probably done as much harm as good,
do his duty; let all be good, sober, virtu- torturing the absent who cannot be of
ous, honest, and peaceable, as it was right any service to a sufferer with all the fluc-
to be, and lo, at once, without beating tuations of his malady, and confusing and
about the bush, or search after elaborate stultifying the unhappy State subordin-
political panaceas, the remedy was found!ate, who is now never out of reach of an
So said Bishop Berkeley a hundred years ignorant chief, nor allowed to act as his
ago. An older philosopher still-Fran- superior local knowledge sees fit. We
cis, of the town of Assisi, in Umbria cannot see how this merely external
held similar yet still wider views. His agency, great as it is, could, even if it had
cure for Turk and Infidel was, not to cru- no défauts de ses qualités, be either an
sade against them with armies and chiv- intellectual or moral influence affecting
alry, but the simplest thing, which any the minds or wills of men.
And certainly
poor monk was good for to convert its existence is no balance whatever to
them! In such company Mr. Greg need the confessed non-existence of any
not be ashamed to stand; and if he, too, marked and general elevation of intellect
dreams of a time when the lion shall lie or wisdom in man. Yet, notwithstanding
down with the lamb, and the sucking child all this, Mr. Greg still holds his ideal as
lay its hand on the cockatrice' den, we realizable. Everything is possible. It is
will not attempt to smile down his hope true he grants that we may still go on as
as a devout imagination, as, we fear, did we have done for past centuries; that
we venture to breathe a word of the mil-"passion may still be in the ascendant,
lennium of the Apocalypse, he would do speaking in a louder tone than either in-
to us. No; that obstinate hope in human terest or duty."
"It may
be so,
"he says,
nature, which is one of the highest symp- and thus proceeds to explain what hope
toms of the possibilities in us, is not one is in him of better things:
which we can cast any scorn at; but the
philosopher's faith in it is yet another
proof of the endless potency of that prin-
ciple which he despises scientifically, but
which in the blessed inconsistency of hu-
man nature hangs by him still.

But there are three sets of considerations

which point to a more hopeful issue: the inevitably vast change which cannot fail to ensue when all the countless influences which have hitherto been working perversely in a wrong direction shall turn their combined forces the In the paper called "Realizable Ideals," other way; the reciprocally reacting and cumulaMr. Greg sets forth candidly enough the tive operation of each step in the right course; absolute want of foundation for any such and the illimitable generations and ages which hope. Though he makes much more a yet lie before humanity ere the goal be reached. great deal than we should be disposed to Our present condition, no doubt, is discouragmake of those external signs of prog- ing enough; we have been sailing for centuress which everybody dins into our ears ries on a wrong tack, but we are beginning, -the railway, the telegraph, gas, &c. though only just beginning, to put about the he acknowledges that man has reached when the condition of the masses shall receive helm. What may we not rationally hope for, no corresponding advancement; that that concentrated and urgent attention which neither thinker nor poet has gone beyond has hitherto been directed permanently, if not the range of Plato and Homer; and that exclusively, to furthering the interests of more the Athenians some two thousand years | favoured ranks? What, when charity, which

for centuries has been doing mischief, shall It may sound romantic, at the end of a decade begin to do good? What, when the countless which has witnessed, perhaps, the two most pulpits that, so far back as history can reach, fierce and sanguinary wars in the world's hishave been preaching Catholicism, Anglican- tory, to hope that this wretched and clumsy ism, Presbyterianism, Calvinism, Wesleyanism, mode of settling national quarrels will ere long shall set to work to preach Christianity at last? be obsolete; but no one can doubt that the Do we ever even approach to a due estimate commencement of higher estimates of national of the degree in which every stronghold of interests and needs, the growing devastation vice or folly overthrown exposes, weakens, and and slaughter of modern wars, the increased undermines every other;-of the extent to range and power of implements of destruction, which every improvement, social, moral, or which, as they are employable by all combatmaterial, makes every other easier; -of. the ants, will grow too tremendous to be employed by countless ways in which physical reforms react any, and the increasing horror with which a on intellectual and ethical progress? cultivated age cannot avoid regarding such What a gradual transformation-transform-scenes, are all clear, if feeble and inchoate, ination almost reaching to transfiguration-will dications of a tendency towards this blessed not steal over the aspect of civilized communi- consummation. ties, when, by a few generations during which Hygienic science and sense shall have been in the ascendant, the restored health of mankind shall have corrected the morbid exaggeration of our appetites; when the more questionable instincts and passions, less and less exercised

and stimulated for centuries, shall have faded into comparative quiescence; when the disordered constitutions, whether diseased, criminal, or defective, which now spread and propagate so much moral mischief, shall have been eliminated; when sounder systems of education shall have prevented the too early awakening of natural desire; when more rational because higher and soberer notions of what is needful and desirable in social life, a lower standard of expenditure, wiser simplicity in living, shall have rendered the gratification of these desires more easy; when little in comparison shall be needed for a happy home, and that little shall have become generally attainable by frugality, sobriety, and toil? It surely is not too Utopian to fancy that our children, or our grandchildren at least, may see a civil state in which wise and effective legislation, backed by adequate administration, shall have made all violation of law-all habitual crime — obviously, inevitably, and instantly a losing game, and therefore an extinct profession; when property shall be respected and not coveted, because possessed or attainable by all; when the distribution of wealth shall receive, both from the Statesman and the Economist, that sedulous attention which is now concentrated exclusively on its acquisition; and when, though relative poverty may still remain, actual and unmerited destitution shall everywhere be as completely eliminated as it has been already in one or two fortunate and limited communities. Few, probably, have at all realized how near the possibility at least of this consummation may be. An intellectual and moral change. both within moderate and attainable limits

and the adequate and feasible education of all classes, would bring it about in a single generation. If our working men were as hardy, enduring, and ambitious as the better specimens of the Scotch peasantry, and valued instruction as much, and if they were as frugal, managing, and saving as the French peasantry, the work would be very near completion.

Heaven forbid that we should sneer at any man for holding so hopeful a view. Yet of all unlikely things this philosophical Utopia seems to us the most unlikely

a thing absolutely without warrant from experience, and little justified, so far as we can see, by the only agencies which are avowedly at command-agencies wholly material, affecting our comfort, but neither touching our minds nor our hearts.

We have not time to do more than indicate Mr. Greg's curiously fine and searching argument on the question of prayer -a question so often and so disagreeably discussed of late days, with what seems to us equal ignorance and bad taste on the sceptical side of the question, and much feebleness on the Christian. Here once again the fine spiritual sense (if we may use such an expression) of which Mr. Greg is incapable of divesting himself, comes in, lifting the argument out of the vulgar circle in which it has been bandied about from one hand to another, into a clearer and serener air. Mr. Greg's eyes are too keen and too candid not to see that in this case, as in so many others, it is a mere question with all thinkers which set of difficulties they' will choose to protect and patronize,those which set forth the impossibility of disturbing the order of nature by the interposition of such an agent as prayer or those which regard the still deeper impossibility of believing in a God and not appealing to Him. Mr. Greg considers both sides of the question carefully. He declares prayer to be "an inevitable consequence and correlative of belief in God," stinct." original and nearly irresistible in"We cannot picture to ourselves," he says, with a force of expression which might well be consolatory to timid believers, "what our nature would be without it." He considers both sides

an

of the question-and he makes no an-
swer to it. We especially recommend to
the notice of the reader the few sentences
in which he suggests the idea that any
extraordinary or importunate search for
human aid, such as those which love and
wealth make continually, is as much an
interference with the rigid sequence of
nature as any appeal for divine aid can
be. "If," he says, "as philosophers have
maintained, we all and always live under
the dominion of settled law; if the pres-
ent in all points flows regularly and inex-
orably from the past; if all occurrences
are linked together in one unfailing chain
of cause and effect, and all are foreseen
by Him whose foresight is unerring; if
indeed they are mere portions of an order
of events of which the motive power has
been set in action from the beginning,-
then is not aid rendered to us by our
human friends in consequence of our en- 'From the cool cisterns of the midnight air."
treaties as an effect of that cause-as and when for a few brief and ineffectual in-
much a disturbance of the ordained law stants the temptations which have led us astray,
of sequence as if God Himself had direct- the pleasures for which we have bartered away
ly aided us, in compliance with our the future, the desires to which we have sacri-
Him?" This will show, ficed our peace, appear to
prayers to
though Mr. Greg gives no conclusion, wretched folly and miserable meanness.
and evidently feels no certain conclusion our feelings then we may form a faint imagina-
tion of what our feelings will be hereafter,
possible in such a question, that he treats when this occasional and imperfect glimpse
it in a different spirit, and with a differ- shall have become a perpetual flood of light,
ent feeling of its gravity and profound irradiating all the darkest places of our earthly
interest, from that which has shown itself pathway, piercing through all veils, scattering
in many recent arguments-arguments all delusions, burning up all sophistries; when
such as discredit science without having
anything really to do with her and
which disgust us by that irreverence for
human nature which is even more revolt-
ing to the human spirit than profanity

Mr. Greg condemns; but we do not
know where else, except in Isaiah, to find
a more terrible or a more powerful pic-
ture of a real and spiritual hell:

When the portals of this world have been hind, and this "body of death" has dropped. passed, when time and sense have been left beaway from the liberated soul, everything which clouded the perceptions, which dulled the vision, which drugged the conscience while on earth, will be cleared off like a morning mist. We shall see all things as they really are-ourselves and our sins among the number. No other punishment, whether retributive or purgatorial, will be needed. Naked truth, unfilmed eyes, will do all that the most righteous venhave a glimpse of such perceptions while on geance could desire. Every now and then we earth. Times come to us all when the passions, by some casual influence or some sobering shock, have been wholly lulled to rest, when all disordered emotions have drunk repose

shall

us in all their

From

the sensual man, all desires and appetites now utterly extinct, shall stand amazed and horrorstruck at the low promptings to which he once yielded himself up in such ignominious slavery, the reflected image of his own animal brutality; and shall shrink in loathing and shame from when the hard, grasping, sordid man, come now into a world where wealth can purchase nothing, where gold has no splendour, and luxury no meaning, shall be almost unable to comprehend how he could ever have so valued such unreal goods; when the malignant, the passionate, the cruel man, everything which called forth his vices now swept away with the former existence, ers upon earth, shall hate himself as others appear to himself as he appeared to othhated him on earth. We shall see, judge, feel about all things there, perfectly and constantly, as we saw, judged, and felt about them partially in our rare better and saner moments her. We shall think that we must have been mad, if we did not too well know that we had been wilful. Every urgent appetite, every boiling passion, every wild ambition, which obscured and confused our reason here below, will have been burnt away in the valley of the which we blinded or excused ourselves on shadow of death; every subtle sophistry with earth will have vanished before the clear glance of a disembodied spirit; nothing will intervene between us and the truth. Stripped