Reply to Westminster Review.

PART II.

A SERMON

PREACHED AT THE LANGHAM HALL, 43, GREAT PORTLAND STREET, W., OCTOBER 31, 1875, BY THE

REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.

PSALM XXV. 4., "Lead me forth in thy truth and teach me, for thou art the God of my salvation."

In my present course of lectures in reply to the article on "Theism" in the Westminster Review it must not be supposed that I attempt to answer all that this pregnant and suggestive essay contains. I can only pick out here and there a few salient points for attack, passing over many others, not because they are unanswerable, but simply for want of time. It would take a whole volume to reply to the essay exhaustively. This morning I select a few passages between pages 460 and 465, which seem to call for special notice.

Having, as our essayist thinks, demolished Theism by the argument we were examining last Sunday, he goes on to say:

"Such are the difficulties-insuperable we are surely justified in pronouncing them-which attend the doctrine of Theism considered as a philosophical theory; such the Nemesis that awaits us for venturing beyond the bounds of our reason."

To this we have already replied by shewing that Theism is independent of philosophical theories; that "the difficulties" pronounced to be "insuperable," though admitted to be great, are not without a possibility of reasonable solution; and that the hypothesis on which our solution rests is far more likely to be true than false. Moreover, we have not "ventured beyond the bounds of our experience and the

Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at Langham Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny, postage a halfpenny.

powers of our reason further than all other seekers and searchers after truth have done in exploring the secrets of the visible world. Most of our grandest discoveries may be traced to the fortunate or skilful selection of a particular hypothesis which was subsequently verified by cumulative observation. The hypothesis of a God, if we may use the expression without irreverence, is now in the course of verification, and is only clung to by the intelligent because no other hypothesis has yet been brought forward which so well harmonizes with the facts of human existence.

Instead, therefore, of Theism being visited with a Nemesis, her pathway is smoothed and her prospects brighter than ever they were before; since even our essayist admits with commendable frankness: "We have not, it will be noticed, proved the doctrine false," and further on he says "Not that it will ever be positively disproved."

But while thus assured, even by our opponents, that the game is not lost; that "religion is capable of surviving changes which at first sight seem to threaten it with total extinction ; we shall be the first to admit that we have not" reached the end of our tether in Theism," and we sit submissively at the feet of the writer who declares :

"We write for men who as a matter of belief prefer a sombre reality to the brightest dream or fiction; for men who hold truth too sacred to sport with hypotheses; for men who would rather know the worst and face it, than lull apprehension to sleep with the narcotics of a fond imagination."

I know not to whom these words will apply if not to ourselves; we are no slaves to a foregone conclusion, we pant and toil for the truth alone.

In return for the noble passage just read, let me quote from a sermon preached nearly three years ago:

"Even granting that the truth is on our side we may be very sure that the Atheist has some truth to tell, some correction of error to impart which is of priceless value. We must not be afraid to argue with him; for an opinion or belief that will not bear hard reasoning is in a rapid decline and will soon have to be buried.

"If our faith be true, it will outmatch all falsehood. If our belief in God be worth anything, it will be armourproof against the most subtle denials. So dearly, so intensely, do we love truth, that we would give up God Him

self, if God were a lie, and we would hug our own despair rather than be the dupes of a false hope. Let the Atheist see then that we are quite as much in earnest as he is; quite as desirous of learning from him, as that he should learn from us.”

Again, "The pleasantness of a conviction, by itself, is no more proof of the truth of that conviction than the pleasantness of an action is a proof that that action is right. 'Pleasant but false', is quite as good a proverb as 'pleasant but wrong.' To believe a doctrine only because it consoles is to infer that it has no other logical basis, and therefore is not to be accepted by reasonable men. We must be prepared to be utterly loyal to reason and truth, remembering that if there be no God, it is our manifest duty to ascertain and prove the fact; and that if there be a God-a God of truth and equity-it will not please Him to deceive ourselves, or to prop up our belief by false arguments. If there be a God, the very Atheist commends himself to the divine approval whenever he is true to himself."

"For what other purpose was our reason given us than to be supreme in all intellectual enquiries. It was surely intended to raise us into a condition superior to all fear and far above all bribes. It was given to be the master of our spiritual emotions as well as the governor of our animal passions, and we cannot honour God by renouncing our own reason, or suffering ourselves to be carried away from the stern truth however terrible, by the allurements of a false hope, however attractive, or driven from it by the terrors of a dismal certainty." (Sermon on Atheism. Part I. January 12th, 1873.)

some risk of wearying how richly we have deessayist of the men for believe in God, we do

I have quoted these passages at you in order to show how long and served the character drawn by the whom he writes. Though we still not merit the scornful sarcasm- "It is after all only the women who will not venture across the deserts of life unless the gods be stowed safely in the packs of the camels." (Page 465.)

I turn now to those passages in which the essayist endeavours to disparage Theism by patronizing revelation :

"Natural Theology, as it is called, is gone as hopelessly as the Christian religion, if once men venture to give up revelation. If persons who abandon the name of Christian

still find themselves able to maintain Theism, it is because their former beliefs retain a stronger hold over them than they are themselves aware of. Men do not come with just minds to the contemplation of things around them; it is only by a vigorous effort that they can fling off the shackles of old creeds, and learn to form conclusions for themselves." To this passage I at once make answer :

It is indeed true, not only of the believers, but of the unbelievers also that they do not come with fresh minds to the contemplation of things around them; they have never known what real religion is, and hence confound it with the absurd superstitions they have been taught to call true, or to mistake for it the hollow religious observances they have been taught to call right; their former unbeliefs retain a stronger hold on them than they are aware of, it is only by a vigorous effort that they can fling off the shackles of the practical Atheism forged by their old creeds, and learn to form conclusions for themselves. It was thought very hard of me to call the Christian Church the cradle of Atheism ; but facts daily coming into view bear me out. The genera tion now springing up have to a great extent been prepared to become open Atheists by the false beliefs and false practice of the religion of their youth. It has not taught them to trust in God.

On page 462 he says, "We have looked in vain for any reason to believe it (Theism) true, and have come to the conclusion that the doctrine is not credible, except on the authority of revelation. Now revelation, though far from being the mere imposture that its enemies would make it out, never offers absolute truth, but only such an adumbration of truth as is adapted to the capacity of the recipient. It cannot, therefore, be of permanent authority."

With every wish to give the essayist credit for sincerity, this passage from his lips sounds very insincere. If revelation be rejected by those who believe in God, on the ground that it contains statements unworthy of God and therefore untrue, and if therefore to them it is an imposture, whenever men claim for it divine authority-how much more a sham and an imposture must it be to one who denies that there is any God at all. The believer in God may or may not believe also in revelation as a fact; or he may dispute the claim of one revelation to be divine and grant that of another; or he may say "part of this is revelation, for its

truth convinces me of its divine origin, and the other part is no true revelation for it is manifestly false"all or any of these positions the believer might hold, without making out all Revelation whatever to be an "imposture; " but the Atheist has no option but to reject every possible form of revelation as the most ridiculous pretence, because to him there is no God to reveal anything. If then revelation be "far from the imposture that its enemies would make out," perhaps there is some truth in the notion that revelation is possible, and that there may be a God behind the veil after all? Ímposture or not, our essayist so far rejects revelation as to agree precisely with ourselves when he says "Men's conception of God is always derived from themselves and coloured by their own notions." More than two pages he devotes to prove what we have admitted and insisted on over and over again, viz: that man is the only, or the best, revelation of God we can get. That man is the author of his own Bibles, his Creeds and his religion. I do not remember having ever used the word "imposture in speaking of revelation; I have never used it in reference to the Bible; for the Bible does not claim for itself to be the divine revelation which Bibliloators declare it to be. If there is any imposture it is in the Church or Churches of Christendom which claim divine authority to over-ride the intellects and direct the consciences of men. But the word imposture is very appropriate. If a thing comes to me under false pretences and I am deceived thereby, the thing is an imposture and the person who imposes upon me perpetrates a fraud. Hence if I believe in God, and the ministers tell this Bible is God's revelation of His will to you and to all men," and I find out that in that book I am told to do something which is wicked or to believe something which is false, I use strictly accurate language when I say I have been imposed upon. But if there be no God at all, the imposture is greater still; inasmuch as while there was a God, a revelation was at least possible; but there could be none whatever if there was no God to make one. Hence I trace a tone of insincerity in this passage of the essay, and one might almost infer from it that the writer desired to terrify back into the arms of authority and traditional Christianity the souls of independent believers by shewing that all free enquiry in religion must lead to Atheism, so soon as authority is abandoned. Theism, however, which he calls also Natural

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