FullReads

“An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.”

“Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near.”

It is not a mere exercitation of the intellect, it is an endeavor to get nearer God–to assert his eternal Providence, and vindicate his ways to men. We know no performance more wonderful for such a boy. Pascal might have written it. As was to be expected, the tremendous subject remains where he found it–his glowing love and genius cast a gleam here and there across its gloom; but it is brief as the lightning in the collied night–the jaws of darkness do devour it up–this secret belongs to God. Across its deep and dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick cloud, “all dark, dark, irrecoverably dark,” no steady ray has ever, or will ever, come,–over its face its own darkness must brood, till He to whom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the night shineth as the day, says, “Let there be light!” There is, we all know, a certain awful attraction, a nameless charm for all thoughtful spirits, in this mystery, “the greatest in the universe,” as Mr. Hallam truly says; and it is well for us at times, so that we have pure eyes and a clean heart, to turn aside and look into its gloom; but it is not good to busy ourselves in clever speculations about it, or briskly to criticize the speculations of others–it is a wise and pious saying of Augustin, Verius cogitatur Deus, quam dicitur; et verius est quam cogitatur.

“I wish to be understood as considering Christianity in the present Essay rather in its relation to the intellect, as constituting the higher philosophy, than in its far more important bearing upon the hearts and destinies of us all. I shall propose the question in this form, ‘Is there ground for believing that the existence of moral evil is absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of God’s essential love for Christ?’ (i. e., of the Father for Christ, or of {ho pater} for {ho logos}).

“‘Can man by searching find out God?’ I believe not. I believe that the unassisted efforts of man’s reason have not established the existence and attributes of Deity on so sure a basis as the Deist imagines. However sublime may be the notion of a supreme original mind, and however naturally human feelings adhered to it, the reasons by which it was justified were not, in my opinion, sufficient to clear it from considerable doubt and confusion…. I hesitate not to say that I derive from Revelation a conviction of Theism, which without that assistance would have been but a dark and ambiguous hope. I see that the Bible fits into every fold of the human heart. I am a man, and I believe it to be God’s book because it is man’s book. It is true that the Bible affords me no additional means of demonstrating the falsity of Atheism; if mind had nothing to do with the formation of the Universe, doubtless whatever had was competent also to make the Bible; but I have gained this advantage, that my feelings and thoughts can no longer refuse their assent to what is evidently framed to engage that assent; and what is it to me that I cannot disprove the bare logical possibility of my whole nature being fallacious? To seek for a certainty above certainty, an evidence beyond necessary belief, is the very lunacy of skepticism: we must trust our own faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that moment we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its name. I am determined therefore to receive the Bible as Divinely authorized, and the scheme of human and Divine things which it contains, as essentially true.”