THE

HISTORICAL OR PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS

OF

THE PRINCIPLE OF DEVELOPMENT IN RELIGION

GENERALLY.

INTRODUCTION.

PRIMITIVENESS OF RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATION, AND THE NATURE OF REVELATION AND HISTORICAL TRADITION.

THE primitiveness of religious sense and religious manifestation is proved philosophically, first by the analogy of all instinctive perceptions and actions: secondly, by showing that the previous existence of that consciousness of God is necessary to all progress, and to the existence of all that forms human civilization.

The first manifestation of the human mind is generally said to be language. Certainly the manifestation of the religious feeling, both in the domain of worship and of practical ethical action in the world, beyond external acts and gestures, presupposes language as the perception of things manifested by articulate sounds. But language itself could never exist without the primitive religious consciousness. It is the distinctive nature of language, that it does not echo the impression made upon the mind, through sensation, by the external world, but that it expresses organically the reaction of the contemplative mind upon that impression. In other words, language does not express things as striking the senses, but things as represented

by qualities perceived in them by the mind. A word is originally the expression both of a quality contemplated in a thing, and of a thing contemplated in a quality: and therefore the original word implies necessarily a whole logical proposition; that is to say, subject, predicate, and copula-the copula being nothing but the implicit or explicit acknowledgment of the concordance of subject and predicate:

This formula is nothing but the application of the primitive religious consciousness to individual things. The consciousness of the first cause is necessary to form any original word, and, more explicitly, to enunciate the unity of that which permanently is (substance), and that which is evolving (person or thing) or starting from one state of existence into another.

Finally, the primitiveness of religious consciousness can be proved historically, as strictly as any historical demonstration admits, by the fact, that it may be suppressed, and may be driven into madness, but can no more be extirpated than reason can. External or internal adverse circumstances may depress the human religious consciousness, individually and collectively, in a given family or tribe, to such an extent as to degrade the human mind to a loss of that consciousness: but that this state is abnormal, is proved by the collateral depression of the reasoning faculty, and by the circumstance, that both return when the depressing circumstances cease. That depression is nothing but a form of idiotcy. The opposite degeneration of the religious consciousness, pantheism, in the form of man believing himself to be God, gives direct evidence, like every form of madness, of the existence of the normal consciousness, from which it is the exceptional aberration. Spinoza says somewhere: "Remoto errore, nuda veritas remanet" (Take away error, and naked

truth remains). It may be said with equal truth: "Remotâ insaniâ, ratio pura apparet" (Remove aberration of mind, and pure reason appears).

Civilization, in the highest sense, is nothing but the restoring of the depressed or savage state to the normal, by the action of a superior mind, or a higher and nobler race, upon that state of degradation. In this process of development the tribe may become extinct, as individuals may die in the process of organic development. But there are abundant instances of their surviving this development, and thriving better than before.

There never was brought forward a more crude and unphilosophical notion than that of the English and French deists of the last century respecting natural religion. Its most absolute formula is that of Diderot: "All positive religions are the heresies of natural religion." There no more exists a natural religion, than there exists a natural or abstract language in opposition to a positive or concrete language. What was called natural religion is, on the contrary, but the dross of religion, the caput mortuum which remains in the crucible of a godless reason after the evaporation of reality and life.

Such a

But this crude notion was the negative reaction against the equally untenable, unphilosophical, and irrational notion: that revelation was nothing but an external historical act. notion entirely loses sight of the infinite or eternal factor of revelation, founded both in the nature of the infinite and in that of the finite mind, of God and man.

This heterodox notion became still more obnoxious, by its imagining something higher in the manifestation of God's will and being than the human mind, which is the divinely appointed. organ of divine manifestation, and in a twofold manner: ideally in mankind, as object, historically in the individual man, as instrument.

The notion of a merely historical revelation by written records is as unhistorical as it is unintellectual and materialistic. It

necessarily leads to untruth in philosophy, to unreality in religious thought, and to Feticism in worship. It misunderstands the process necessarily implied in every historical representation. The form of expressing the manifestation of God in the mind, as if God was Himself using human speech to man, and was thus Himself finite and a man, is a form inherent in the nature of human thought, as embodied in language, its own rational expression. It was originally never meant to be understood materialistically, because the religious consciousness which produced it was essentially spiritual; and, indeed, it can only be thus misunderstood by those who make it a rule and criterion of faith, never to connect any thought whatever with what they are expected to believe as divinely true.

Every religion is positive. It is therefore justly called a religion "made manifest" (offenbart), or as the English expression has it, revealed: that is to say, it supposes an action of the infinite mind, or God, upon the finite mind, or man, by which God in His relation to Man becomes manifest or visible. This may be mediate, through the manifestation of God in the universe or nature; or a direct, immediate action, through the religious consciousness.

This second action is called revealed, in the stricter sense. The more a religion manifests of the real substance and nature of God, and of His relation to the universe and to man, the more it deserves the name of a divine manifestation or of revelation. But no religion which exists could exist without something of truth, revealed to man, through the creation, and through his mind.

Such a direct communication of the Divine mind as is called revelation, has necessarily two factors which are co-operating in producing it. The one is the infinite factor, or the direct manifestation of eternal truth to the mind, by the power which that mind has of perceiving it: for human perception is the correlative of divine manifestation. There could be no revelation of

God were there not the corresponding faculty in the human mind to receive it, as there is no manifestation of light where there is no eye to see it.

This infinite factor is, of course, not historical: it is inherent in every individual soul, but with an immense difference in degree.

The action of the Infinite upon the mind is the miracle of history and of religion, equal to the miracle of creation. Miracle, in its highest sense, is therefore essentially and undoubtedly an operation of the divine mind upon the human mind. By that action the human mind becomes inspired with a new life, which cannot be explained by any precedent of the selfish (natural) life, but is its absolute opposite. This miracle requires no proof: the existence and action of religious life is its proof, as the world is the proof of creation.

As to the preternatural action of the infinite mind upon the body and upon nature in general, two opinions divide the Christian world, both of which are conscientious. The one supposes any such action of the infinite to exist only by the instrumentality of the finite mind, and in strict conformity with the laws of nature, which, as God's own laws, it considers immutable. It therefore considers miracles, which appear to contradict these laws, as misunderstandings on the part of the interpreter, who mistakes a symbolical, poetical, or popular expression, for a scientific or historical one. This is now acknowledged to be the case as regards the celebrated miracle of Joshua and the sun. If the miracle has reference to the human body, the one view ascribes it either to the same misinterpretation, or to the influence of a powerful will upon the physical organization of another individual, or, lastly, to the operation of the mind upon its own body. The other sees the divine miracle in the alleged fact, that these laws have been set aside for a providential purpose. As the subject is primarily a historical one, the safest rule seems to be, to judge