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not true, but erroneous, its effect will be of a corresponding character; for there is a brotherhood of Error as close as the brotherhood of Truth. Therefore, to accept as a truth that which is not a truth, or to fail in distinguishing the sense in which a proposition may be true, from other senses in which it is not true, is an evil having consequences which are indeed incalculable. There are subjects on which one mistake of this kind will poison all the wells of truth, and affect with fatal error the whole circle of our thoughts.

It is against this danger that some men would erect a feeble barrier, by defending the position that Science and Religion may be, and ought to be, kept entirely separate that they belong to wholly different spheres of thought, and that the ideas which prevail in the one province have no relation to those which prevail in the other. This is a doctrine offering many temptations to many minds. It is grateful to religious men who are afraid of being thought to be afraid of Science. To these, and to all who are troubled to reconcile what they have been taught to believe with what they have come to know, the doctrine affords a natural and convenient escape. There is but one objection to it but that is the fatal objection-that it is not true. The spiritual world and the intellectual world are not separated after this fashion; and the notion that they are so separated does but encourage men to accept in each, ideas which will at last be found to be false in both. The truth is that there is no branch of human inquiry, however purely physical, which is no more than the word branch implies; none which is not connected through endless ramifications with every other, and especially that which is the root and centre of them all. If He who formed the mind be one with Him who is the Orderer of all things concerning which that mind is occupied, there can be no end to the points of contact between our different conceptions of them, of Him and of ourselves.

The instinct which impels us to seek for harmony in the truths of Science and the truths of Religion, is a higher instinct and a truer one than the disposition which leads us to evade

the difficulty by pretending that there is no relation between them. For after all it is a pretence and nothing more. No man who thoroughly accepts a principle in the philosophy of nature which he feels to be inconsistent with a doctrine of Religion, can help having his belief in that doctrine shaken and undermined. We may believe and we must believe, both in Nature and Religion, many things we cannot understand; but we cannot really believe two propositions which are felt to be contradictory. It helps us nothing in such a difficulty to say that the one proposition belongs to Reason and the other to Faith. The endeavor to reconcile them is a necessity of the mind. We are right in thinking that, if they are both indeed true, they can be reconciled, and if they really are fundamentally opposed, they cannot both be true. That is to say, there must be some error in our manner of conception in one or in the other, or in both. At the very best, each can represent only some partial and imperfect aspect of the truth. The error may lie in our Theology, or it may lie in what we are pleased to call our Science. It may be that some dogma, derived by tradition from our fathers, is having its hollowness betrayed by that light which sometimes shines upon the ways of God out of a better knowledge of His works. It may be that some proud and rash generalization of the schools is having its falsehood proved by the violence it does to the deepest instincts of our spiritual nature.-Duke of Argyle.

FRANCIS W. NEWMAN.

[Professor in Uuiversity College, London.]

SAVINGS AND FORETELLINGS.

Virtue is man's highest good,

Justice the chief virtue between man and man,
Truth makes sure the instincts of virtue;

Free thought is needed for the search of Truth.

Man has a mind for virtue and truth,
As truly as limbs for useful labor,
And labor and virtue are close akin.
Labor of head or labor of hand

Are needful to health of mind and body.
Either labor is noble and right;

No rightful labor ought to be debasing.

Women are weakest and most need defense,

Yet in Christian cities they are trampled under foot,

Through the league between Mammon and a spurious policy.

When woman is duly honored and homes are purified,
And fiery drink is withheld from the weak in mind,
And the traffickers in Sin are pursued as felons,
And Truth is open-mouthed, and Thought is free—

God will soon bless the land with blessings undreamed of.

WOMAN'S DUTY, AND THE WORLD'S NEED.

Yet I speak not for women only, but also for men; that is, for our common country. All who have read history, even superficially, are aware that it is usual to moralize over the fall of great States after they become rich and powerful, and to impute it to luxury. Luxury is not the correct word. Historians ought to say impurity; fostered by wealth, by venal Art, by vicious trade and vicious philosophy. The very profligates of old Rome saw and avowed how much these causes conduced to fatal degeneracy. Paris is discovering that despotism and immorality are firm allies, and that the State-patronage of Vice is fatal to freedom. For myself, I have learned in a few months, more than in fifty years before, how deep are the corruptions of England, and how vehement her downward career. With minds preoccupied by materialism and fatalism, our publicists and officials are quietly accepting our abominable state as the natural order of things, which ought to be organized and made comfortable by Law and Art; thus smoothing our

path downwards into a hell of sensuality. The public men who will arrest this seem to be a small minority, and hitherto feeble: their adversaries have a permanent hold of official posts, where they are practically irresponsible and most difficult to dislodge. I see not how anything can purify English society, and destroy the legal incentives and facilities of manifold corruption, quickly enough and decisively enough to save our future, without a greater intensity in the political influence of women.

Because this is a crisis, at which our nation is called to choose between moral life and death, I am bold to address women themselves, and especially educated ladies. If you, ladies, are happy, remember that others are unhappy. If you have kind and just husbands, remember that thousands of women have selfish or wicked husbands. If you have enough of this world's goods, remember that scores of thousands of women and girls can scarcely get bread and shelter even by an excess of toil. If you have been tenderly watched over from childhood, learn that thousands of your sisters are untaught and untrained, and many hundreds wickedly sold by parents or kinsfolk to the shambles of the voluptuous rich. It is a grievous fact, that men possessed of political power, and fully aware of things concerning which we fear to speak very plainly, have enacted in a course of many centuries just enough law against these horrors to salve their own consciences, but never have so enforced any enactment as to make the law a reality; much less have they enacted all that the case demands. I boldly say, that History and the voice of God sounding through its miserable pages, call upon pure hearted and happier women to succor their unhappy sisters, whom the ruder and less virtuous sex tramples down. You cannot succor them without some power to mould the law and incite its enforcement. To claim a purely domestic status, disables you for contest against odious. enormities, pregnant with fraud, cruelty and social decay. Such modesty is not womanly sensitiveness; it is rather to be called womanish selfishness. I implore you, ladies, in the cause of

the wretched and injured, and to quell that licentiousness which is the ruin of great nations, arise and claim your rightful position in the State!

JUSTICE.

Between man and man, or between man and brute, Justice is Righteousness.

So between nations, or orders of men, Justice is the law of duty.

Justice is the cement of mankind. A Nation or Empire which neglects to be internally just, falls asunder by discord or decay.

To be first just and then loving, is to advance towards fullness of virtue.

To refuse Justice and bestow Love, is an affectation of Mercy and a reality of Insult.

Without Chastity in man, there is no Justice to woman. Peace, without Justice, is not peace, but a truce of war. Policy which shuts its eyes to Justice is pernicious folly. Without entire Virtue there is no entireness of Justice; for all Vice disables soul or body for some active service.

SACRED BOOKS.

Books pre-eminently honored by the voluntary selection of piety, are reasonably held to be sacred, in a high and peculiar sense; and such books may fulfil a high function in moral history, as have the sacred books of India, Persia, Judea and Christendom.

Their benefit nevertheless has been grievously lessened by the strong tendency of mankind to idolize and lift into ideal perfection whatever has engaged their sacred feelings.

Hebrew and Christian books for which the writers advanced no high pretensions have thus been gratuitously and hurtfully exalted into a miraculous greatness. Even the Confessions of

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