which yet remains pending, necessarily arose between the philosophers and the mystics. The philosophers by their study of nature, by which term they designate the entire phenomena of which men are cognizant, always have been, and always will be, led to perceive and to acknowledge that there is and must be, a Cause of nature, an inscrutible, incomprehensible, infinite Cause of the existence, order, and progression of the universe; a Cause behind all those causes which observation will ever be able to demonstrate. They perceived that it was the idea of such a Cause personified, and mixed up with many fanciful notions and absurd traditions, in which popular religious opinions originated. That Cause, therefore, they called, God; and while the mystics only asserted, on the faith of tradition and testimony, that God did exist, and had been seen in dreams and visions, and by the corporeal eye, the philosophers undertook to prove that God must exist. It is to them that the theologians are indebted for all their arguments both those a priori and those a posteriori, for the being of a God. But the very same observation of nature which led the philosophers to conceive of God as an inscrutable, incomprehensible, infinite Cause, obliged them. to reject those popular notions which represented this Cause under the image of a person, and the laws of nature as his volitions, volitions which men might influence and might change. They perceived that this theory did not correspond with the phenomena. They had discovered, that the laws of nature are fixed, immutable, and totally beyond the power of man; and they rejected, as idle tales, the thousand stories of magic, miracles, and prophecies, which. the mystics cited to sustain their cause. Beaten in argument, the mystics called in the mob to their aid; they denounced the philosophers as atheists; banished them, or put them to death. 6. Finding it useless, in the then existing state of knowledge and humanity, to attempt to teach their doctrines openly, the greater part of the philosophers were content, for the sake of peace and their own security, to admit, to a certain extent, the personal character of the Deity; and it was they who invented the celebrated argument from final causes to prove that intelligence and benevolence are attributes of God. Hence arose the various schools of semimystics, who have labored so incessantly and to so little purpose, to reconcile faith with reason; and who have struggled by all sorts of expedients and plausibilities, to render the current theology of their day in some measure consistent with the progressive discoveries of science. 7. The thorough mystics, however, rejected from the beginning this union of religion with philosophy.* They perceived, that in the proposed alliance between faith and reason, faith must be always losing and reason always gaining; till at length the *The thorough philosophers were much of the same mind. Thus Bacon, in the Second Book of the "Advancement of Learning," speaks of "the extreme prejudice which both religion and philosophy have received, and may receive, by being commixed together; as that which undoubtedly will make an heretical religion, and an imaginary and fabulous philosophy." Upon this point, however, as upon most others, Bacon was unable to conform to his own teaching. idea of a personal God upon which their whole system rests, must gradually disappear. They at once denounced, and down to the present moment have continued to denounce the semi-mystics as no better than the philosophers, as unbelieving, faithless men, and, as such, worthy of universal execration and the severest punishments. 8. The definition of Faith has, indeed, been the great battle ground of the several sects of mystics and semi-mystics. Faith, according to the lowest of the semi-mystical schools, is, belief founded upon reason. It therefore can hardly be considered to indicate any peculiarity of moral character or ever to be wanting, except where the intellect is defective. A more numerous class of semi-mystics have defined faith to be, belief founded upon testimony of things above reason, but not contrary to it; and the merit of faith has been represented to consist in the compliment paid to the Deity in listening attentively and readily to his messengers. But the compliment in this case seems rather to be paid to the messengers themselves. The thorough mystics have maintained, that faith is a belief, or rather a vision of God as the only agent always and everywhere present, supernaturally infused into the mind by special grace, whereby the heart of man is changed, and he is enabled to act righteously; all morality not springing from this source being mere selfishness and deceit, and no better than filthy rags. This faith has nothing to do with reason. It is not only above it; it tramples reason under foot. Credo quia impossibile. Though the prevalence of semi-mysticism in the last two centuries hardly allows this doctrine to be taught, in the more celebrated schools, in this rude form, it still retains, in many countries, a strong hold on the popular mind. Mystic faith, as ordinarily inculcated, consists in putting on the spirit of a little child; continuing to receive the religious opinions in which one has been educated with implicit reverence and submission; repulsing with indignation all question or doubt; and not only admitting the speculative truth of these opinions, but making them the basis of our whole course of action. This is Catholicism, this is Puseyism, and this also at the present day is Lutheranism, Calvinism, Quakerism, and Methodism; for though the founders of new sects have ever extolled their own internal light, that is to say, their own fancies and their own judgments, above all established opinions, that is a liberty which they have not allowed to their disciples; or rather, which their disciples have not allowed to themselves. Such a liberty, indeed, would be utterly inconsistent with that unity of faith on which the existence of every sect depends. 9. At first thought it might seem difficult to conjecture how pure credulity and mere childishness could ever be extolled, especially in civilized and even enlightened communities, into a crowning virtue and a binding duty. Yet the explanation is easy and plain. Social institutions and current morality, though arising in fact from the very nature of man, have hitherto as far as teaching has been concerned, been almost universally based upon mere authority. Not having arrived at that pitch of science to be able to give the reason why institutions and manners are; or should be, as they are, men have rested them either upon the authority of wise ancestors, or the instructions of inspired prophets, or jointly upon both. They are so, and they ought to be so, because the wisdom of ancestors so arranged, or God so commanded. Now any person, who undertakes to call this wisdom of ancestors, and these divine commands into question, is looked upon—and, if he have no better substitute to propose, not altogether without reason as a reckless and unquiet person, who for the sake of gratifying his own prying disposition or love of superiority, is willing to risk the destruction of that sentiment of respect for established institutions and opinions, which not knowing any other more solid basis on which to rest them men suppose to be the only foundation, not of political institutions only, but of morals also. Hence systems of morals purely forensic have inculcated conformity to current religious observances, and profound respect for current religious opinions, as imperative duties. - The mystics themselves, moulding God after their own image, and supposing him to think and feel as they do, of course believe that any doubt or hesitation as to any opinions which they entertain about him, or any ceremonies which they practise, and much more their total rejection, must be regarded by the Deity as no better than rank rebellion; and so long as God was believed to visit the sins of individuals not upon themselves only, but upon the whole community, a notion not yet wholly ex |