Morality as a Religion | Page 4

his views appear to have undergone a marked
change. Some of his disappointed friends ascribed the change to the
serious shock he suffered at his wife's death. There may possibly be
truth in that opinion; "the winnowing wings of death" often bring about
a searching change. No one yet has ever been able to seriously live up
to the Hedonistic rule, "eat and drink for to-morrow we die". If death
were announced, the very last thing man would do would be to eat and
make merry.

However, it is notoriously possible to "bring forth fruits of
righteousness," or, to use modern language, to live the good life,
without seeking any help from that world of the ideal in which religion
lives. This teaching, of course, is diametrically opposed to that of the
Churches, who lay it down almost as an axiom that without such
extraneous assistance as "grace," generally conveyed in answer to
direct supplication, or through the mystery of Sacramental agencies,
such as Baptism or the Lord's Supper, it is fairly impossible to keep the
moral law. To the credit of humanity, this dark theology has been
falsified by results in countless instances, and never more frequently
than to-day. Men whose names are in the mouth of everybody have
lived and died in the enjoyment not merely of the esteem, but of the
reverent admiration of their age, whose lives were wholly uninspired by
religious motives. I need only mention Charles Darwin, and when we
remember that not even sectarianism ventured to dispute his right to
rest within the hallowed precincts of an abbey-cathedral, ecclesiastics
themselves must be fast forgetting the deplorable narrowness of old
views which made morality and dogmatism inter-dependent terms.
Nevertheless, it must be conceded, and such men as I have spoken of
were the first to admit it, that lives such as these are necessarily
imperfect. The stunting or the atrophy of the religious instinct, the
hunger and thirst for something beyond the sphere of sense when left
totally unsatisfied, produces at length a restless, tormented feeling,
which turns the very joy of existence to sadness, and dims the light of
life. Such men may plunge into pleasure, absorb themselves in their
books or research, wear and waste themselves in the making of wealth,
and for a time they are satisfied. But the imperious craving reasserts
itself at length; there is the cry of the soul for some lost inspiration,
some transfiguring influence to soften the hard way of life, console a
lonely hour, comfort a bereavement, inspire that tenderness and
sympathy, without which we are scarcely even human. One remembers
Darwin's sorrowful admission, that the deadening of his spiritual
instincts left him incapable of enjoying, or even tolerating, the rhythm
of the poet's verse. The world has heard the note of weariness with
which Mr. Spencer absolved himself from further effort on behalf of
science and man. The late Prof. Romanes, in his volume entitled A

Candid Examination of Theism, made the melancholy declaration that
the admission of a philosophy of pure mechanism or materialism had,
for him at least, "robbed the universe of its soul of beauty". In later
years, as is well known, the same writer came to see things with other
eyes. Mind took the place of force as the ultimate fact of creation, and
with it the sun of loveliness returned once more.
Have we ever sufficiently reflected that the purely negative philosophy
has done nothing for idealism in any shape or form? It has inspired no
art, music or poetry. With nothing to draw upon but the blind whirl of
infinite atoms and infinite forces, of which man is himself the
haphazard and highest production, it has contented itself with the
elementary work of destruction, without even attempting to dig the
foundations for anything which it is proposed to erect in the place of
what has been destroyed. "Scepticism," says Carlyle, "is, after all, only
half a magician. She calls up more spectres than she can lay."
Scepticism was, nay is, sometimes, a necessary attitude of the human
mind. But man cannot live on doubt alone, and therefore, though we
profoundly believe the possibility of living the good life independently
of religious sanctions, we unhesitatingly affirm the deep need man has
of religious emotion to satisfy the ineradicable instinct of his nature
towards communion with the unseen world. Here are the words of a
man who had exhausted the possibilities of life before he wrote them,
conveying in the simplest, though most penetrating way, a most
momentous truth: "Fecisti nos Domine ad Te, et irrequiêtum est cor
nostrum donec requiescat in Te". "Thou hast made us, O Lord, for
Thyself, and our heart is restless until it find rest in Thee." And if we
would have a modern commentary upon this