through a glass darkly" strive towards the day when they shall "see face to face." Now, our present theistic contests and perils rise, in great part, from changes effected, or being effected, in our cosmic conception. The old Theism is supposed to have been based on teleology. The world was an effect which implied a Cause, exhibited everywhere marks of design which proved a Designer. It was argued,—the more curious a contrivance the more certain a contriver; the world is the most curious of all contrivances; therefore, the being and intelligence of its Contriver the most certain of all conclusions. But evolu Design has tion is said to have made an end of teleology. vanished from the face of the earth; and with it the proofs of a Designer. Theism is represented as an anthropomorphic theory of creation, a "process of manufacture" by "a manlike Artificer." As Mr. Herbert Spencer, with happy assurance, generalizes,*" Alike in the rudest creeds and the cosmogony long current among ourselves, it is assumed that the genesis of the heavens and the earth is effected somewhat after the manner in which a workman shapes a piece of furniture." And, of course, physicists who have every confidence in Mr. Spencer's metaphysics, cannot do less than follow him here, and set down the theistic theory as one which "converts the Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into * "First Principles," p. 33. an Artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken efforts, as man is seen to act."* Theism and evolution thus become antitheses, the one exhibiting "the method of Nature," the other "the 'technic' of a manlike Artificer." The one is monistic, mechanical, causal; the other dualistic, vital, teleological. But science knows nothing of final, knows only efficient, causes. And so it happens that we have, on the one side, men, for the sake of Theism, doing battle against a given cosmic conception; on the other, men, for the sake of a given cosmic conception, doing battle against Theism. The theologian, to save his evidences, denies a scientific theory; the scientist, to maintain his theory, denies a theological conception. Whether these are necessary issues is a not altogether unnecessary question. The question, then, that here meets us is this-whether the theory of creation by the art or technic of a manlike Artificer be necessary to Theism. As the question has both an historical and a philosophical side, the historical had better come first. Our scientific speculation assumes that the belief in God was the product of an anthropomorphic * Professor Tyndall, "Address," p. 58. + Haeckel, "Natürliche Schöpfungs-Geschichte," p. 19. Professor Huxley, however, who has always been much more cautious and skilful in metaphysics than some of his scientific brethren, denies that there is any antagonism between evolution and teleology. In his review of Haeckel in the Academy he rebuked the distinguished German for his thoroughgoing denial of teleology, and now he has in his Glasgow lecture told us that evolution leaves the argument from design practically where it was. interpretation of nature. Primitive man, superstitious, ignorant of the inductive method, and many other things, drew his creational theory not from the study of Nature, but the observation of himself. So he conceived God as a mechanic on a great scale, making the world as he made a machine. Now, how does the case actually stand? The earliest names of Deity show that men dreamed of nothing less than conceiving Him as an Artificer, or Architect, or Builder. The Hebrew was the purest monotheist of antiquity, the most strenuous believer in creation by God; but how did he conceive Him as acting? Not by a "process of manufacture," or like "a workman shaping a piece of furniture," but as an immanent yet intelligent Energy, Creator, Maker, if you like, but not mechanic. He created by speech, the symbol of thought; by a command, the symbol of will. The world was the expression of the divine thought, the creation of the divine will; and so came to be, not by an artificial constructive, but by a natural productive, process. In the Hebrew Scriptures there are indeed frequent anthropomorphisms of speech, but, allowing for the picturesque and sensuous orientalism of its form, little that is anthropomorphic in conception. Indeed, the fundamental relations of God and the world are conceived in a manner nearer Goethe's than Paley's. "The Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the waters." God is "covered with light as with a garment; ""clouds and darkness are round about Him." He is the Unseen, the Unsearchable, working unbeheld on the left hand, hiding unperceived on the right, yet knowing the way man takes, speaking to him out of the whirlwind, or by the sun, moon, and stars which He has ordained. He is in the heaven above, in the earth, in the abyss under it, and in the uttermost parts of the sea, no manlike Being, but an universal Presence, in moments of intense emotion realized by the attribution of human qualities, but not, therefore, conceived in his cosmic relations as a magnified mechanic. In the distinctive Hebrew Name of Deity there is nothing anthropomorphic; it is the very negation of anthropomorphism, as much SO as the most abstract term of metaphysics, or the most generalized notion of science. Perhaps, it may be thought, that statement ought to be personality; but as the personality is not "manlike,” does not individualize, it is more correct to leave the exception unmade. Hebrew Monotheism must, then, be allowed to stand as a Theism which did not know, therefore did not spring out of, the notion of creation by "the 'technic' of a manlike Artificer." qualified by, except Where, then, did that notion rise? Not in Judæa, but in Greece, and in Greece, not as a religious, but as a scientific and philosophic dogma. It did not create the belief in God or gods, but was created by the endeavours of men anxious to explain the being and becoming of the world. Mr. Spencer says,* "A religious creed is definable as an à priori theory of the universe." The definition may be concise and positive enough, but whether it be correct is another matter. Certainly, the native religion of Greece was no theory as to the origin of the universe. The Greek gods were, in no proper sense, creators. They stood in the system of Nature, the children of the universal Mother, as real creatures as men, subject to all the limitations of the created, distinguished from men as immortals from mortals, but their very immortality derivative, not inherent, due to divine ambrosia, not to their own wills or natures. One of the Homeric poets, in a hymu to "Earth, the Mother of all things," can invoke her as "Mother of the gods," Χαῖρε, θεῶν μήτηρ, ἄλοχ ̓ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος. + Hesiod, too, brings out of Chaos first "the broad-bosomed Earth, the firm abode of all things;" and then, from her union with "the starry Ouranos," makes the gods spring.§ A poet so devout as Pindar can attribute a common nature and parentage to gods and men: Εν ἀνδρῶν, ἓν θεῶν γένος· ἐκ μιᾶς δὲ πνέομεν ματρὸς ἀμφότεροι. || Sophokles, too, can speak of the earth as "the all-nourishing, the mother of Zeus himself:" Ορεστέρα παμβῶτι, Γᾶ, μᾶτερ αὐτοῦ Διὸς, ἃ τὸν μέγαν Πακτωλὸν εὔχρυσον νέμεις. Π * "First Principles," p. 43. "In Tellurem Matrem Omnium," 17. § Ib., 132-137. T Philoct., 391. |