Part 15 (1/2)

But are you in a condition to form an opinion? (said Fellowes, with a serious air). Mr. Rogers has enforced on me St. Paul's maxim: ”The natural man discerneth not the things of the Spirit of G.o.d.”

My most devout gentleman I (replied Harrington), how unctuous you are!

Forgive my laughing; but it does _so_ remind me of Douce Davie Deans.

I will make you professor of spiritual insight, &c., &c., &c.

Now is not this disgusting? Might I not justly call the man a ”profane dog” who approved of it? Yet everything that is worst here _is closely copied from the Eclipse of Faith, or justified by the Defence_. How long will it be before English Christians cry out Shame against those two books?

VI. I must devote a few words to define the direction and justification of my argument in one chapter of this treatise. All good arguments are not rightly addressed to all persons. An argument good in itself may be inappreciable to one in a certain mental state, or may be highly exasperating. If a thoughtful Mohammedan, a searcher after truth, were to confide to a Christian a new basis on which be desired to found the Mohammedan religion--viz., the absolute moral perfection of its prophet, and were to urge on the Christian this argument in order to convert him, I cannot think that any one would blame the Christian for demanding what is the evidence of the _fact_.

Such an appeal would justify his dissecting the received accounts of Mohammed, pointing out what appeared to be flaws in his moral conduct; nay, if requisite, urging some positive vice, such as his excepting himself from his general law of _four wives only_. But a Christian missionary would surely be blamed (at least I should blame him), if, in preaching to a mixed mult.i.tude of Mohammedans against the authority of their prophet, he took as his basis of refutation the prophet's personal sensuality. We are able to foresee that the exasperation produced by such an argument must derange the balance of mind in the hearers, even if the argument is to the purpose; at the same time, it may be really away from the purpose to _them_, if their belief has no closer connexion with the personal virtue of the prophet, than has that of Jews and Christians with the virtue of Balaam or Jonah. I will proceed to imagine, that while a missionary was teaching, talking, and distributing tracts to recommend, his own views of religion, a Moolah were to go round and inform everybody that this Christian believed Mohammed to be an unchaste man, and had used the very argument to such and such a person. I feel a.s.sured that we should all p.r.o.nounce this proceeding to be a very cunning act of spiteful, bigotry.

My own case, as towards certain Unitarian friends of mine, is quite similar to this. They preach to me the absolute moral perfection of a certain man (or rather, of a certain portrait) as a sufficient basis for my faith. Hereby they challenge me, and as it were force me, to inquire into its perfection. I have tried to confine the argument within a narrow circle. It is addressed by me specifically to them and not to others. I would _not_ address it to Trinitarians; partly, because they are not in a mental state to get anything from it but pain, partly because much of it becomes intrinsically bad _as argument_ when addressed to them. Many acts and words which would be _right_ from an incarnate G.o.d, or from an angel, are (in my opinion) highly _unbecoming_ from a man; consequently I must largely remould the argument before I could myself approve of it, if so addressed.

The principle of the argument is such as Mr. Rogers justifies, when he says that Mr. Martineau _quite takes away all solid reasons for believing in Christ's absolute perfection._ (”Defence,” p. 220.) I opened my chapter (chapter VII.) above with a distinct avowal of my wish to confine the perusal of it to a very limited circle. Mr. Rogers (acting, it seems, on the old principle, that whatever one's enemy deprecates, is a good) instantly pounces on the chapter, avows that ”if infidelity _could_ be ruined, such imprudencies[17] would go far to ruin it,” p. 22; and because he believes that it will be ”unspeakably[18] painful” to the orthodox for whom I do _not_ intend it, he prints the greater part of it in an Appendix, and expresses his regret that he cannot publish ”every syllable of it,” p. 22. Such is his tender regard for the feeling of his co-religionists.

My defender in the ”Prospective Review” wound up as follows (x. p.

227):--

”And now we have concluded our painful task, which nothing but a feeling of what justice--literary, and personal--required, would have induced us to undertake. The tone of intellectual disparagement and moral rebuke which certain critics,--deceived by the shallowest sophisms with which an unscrupulous writer could work on their prepossessions and insult their understandings--have adopted towards Mr. Newman made exposure necessary. The length to which our remarks have extended requires apology. Evidence to character is necessarily c.u.mulative, and not easily compressible within narrow limits. Enough has been said to show that there is not an art discreditable in controversy, to which recourse is not freely had in the 'Eclipse of Faith' and the Defence of it.”

The reader must judge for himself whether this severe and terrible sentence of the reviewer proceeds from ill-temper and personal mortification, as the author of the Eclipse and its Defence gratuitously lays down, or whether it was prompted by a sense of justice, as he himself affirms.

[Footnote 1: The ”Eclipse” had previously been noticed in the same review, on the whole favourably, by a writer of evidently a different religious school, and before I had exposed the evil arts of my a.s.sailant.]

[Footnote 2: The authors.h.i.+p is since acknowledged by Mr. Henry Rogers, in the t.i.tle to his article on Bishop Butler in the ”Encyclopaedia Britannica.”]

[Footnote 3: That is, my ”discovery” that the writer of the ”Eclipse of Faith” grossly misquotes and misinterprets me.]

[Footnote 4: Page 225, he says, that each criticism ”is quite worthy of Mr. Newman's _friend_, defender and admirer;” a.s.suming a fact, in order to lower my defender's credit with his readers.]

[Footnote 5: As he puts ”artful dodge” into quotation marks, his readers will almost inevitably believe that this vulgar language is mine. In the same spirit to speaks of me as ”making merry” with a Book Revelation; as if I had the slightest sympathy or share in the style and tone which pervades the ”Eclipse.” But there is no end of such things to be denounced.]

[Footnote 6: Italics in the original.]

[Footnote 7: In the ninth edition, p. 104, I find that to cover the formal falsehood of these words, he adds: ”what he calls his arguments are a.s.sertions only,” still withholding that which would confute him.]

[Footnote 8: I will here add, that this ”stinking fly”--the parenthesis (”in a certain stage of development”)--was added merely to avoid dogmatizing on the question, how early in human history or in human life this mysterious notion of the divine spirit is recognizable as commencing.]