Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
of, with reverence rather than admiration, when I came up to Oxford.
When one day I was walking in High Street with my dear earliest friend
just mentioned, with what eagerness did he cry out, "There's Keble!" and
with what awe did I look at him! Then at another time I heard a Master
of Arts of my College give an account how he had just then had occasion
to introduce himself on some business to Keble, and how gentle,
courteous, and unaffected Keble had been, so as almost to put him out of
countenance. Then too it was reported, truly or falsely, how a rising
man of brilliant reputation, the present Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Milman,
admired and loved him, adding, that somehow he was strangely unlike any
one else. However, at the time when I was elected Fellow of Oriel he was
not in residence, and he was shy of me for years in consequence of the
marks which I bore upon me of the evangelical and liberal schools. At
least so I have ever thought. Hurrell Froude brought us together about
1828: it is one of the sayings preserved in his "Remains,"--"Do you know
the story of the murderer who had done one good thing in his life? Well;
if I was ever asked what good deed I had ever done, I should say that I
had brought Keble and Newman to understand each other."
The Christian Year made its appearance in 1827. It is not necessary, and
scarcely becoming, to praise a book which has already become one of the
classics of the language. When the general tone of religious literature
was so nerveless and impotent, as it was at that time, Keble struck an
original note and woke up in the hearts of thousands a new music, the
music of a school, long unknown in England. Nor can I pretend to
analyze, in my own instance, the effect of religious teaching so deep,
so pure, so beautiful. I have never till now tried to do so; yet I think
I am not wrong in saying, that the two main intellectual truths which it
brought home to me, were the same two, which I had learned from Butler,
though recast in the creative mind of my new master. The first of those
was what may be called, in a large sense of the word, the Sacramental
system; that is, the doctrine that material phenomena are both the types
and the instruments of real things unseen,--a doctrine, which embraces
in its fulness, not only what Anglicans, as well as Catholics, believe
about Sacraments properly so called; but also the article of "the
Communion of Saints;" and likewise the Mysteries of the faith. The
connexion of this philosophy of religion with what is sometimes called
"Berkeleyism" has been mentioned above; I knew little of Berkeley at
this time except by name; nor have I ever studied him.
On the second intellectual principle which I gained from Mr. Keble, I
could say a great deal; if this were the place for it. It runs through
very much that I have written, and has gained for me many hard names.
Butler teaches us that probability is the guide of life. The danger of
this doctrine, in the case of many minds, is, its tendency to destroy in
them absolute certainty, leading them to consider every conclusion as
doubtful, and resolving truth into an opinion, which it is safe indeed
to obey or to profess, but not possible to embrace with full internal
assent. If this were to be allowed, then the celebrated saying, "O God,
if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!" would be the highest
measure of devotion:--but who can really pray to a Being, about whose
existence he is seriously in doubt?
I considered that Mr. Keble met this difficulty by ascribing the
firmness of assent which we give to religious doctrine, not to the
probabilities which introduced it, but to the living power of faith and
love which accepted it. In matters of religion, he seemed to say, it is
not merely probability which makes us intellectually certain, but
probability as it is put to account by faith and love. It is faith and
love which give to probability a force which it has not in itself. Faith
and love are directed towards an Object; in the vision of that Object
they live; it is that Object, received in faith and love, which renders
it reasonable to take probability as sufficient for internal conviction.
Thus the argument from Probability, in the matter of religion, became an
argument from Personality, which in fact is one form of the argument
from Authority.
In illustration, Mr. Keble used to quote the words of the Psalm: "I will
guide thee with mine _eye_. Be ye not like to horse and mule, which have
no understanding; whose mouths must be held with bit and bridle, lest
they fall upon thee." This is the very difference, he used to say,
between slaves, and friends or children. Friends do not ask for literal
commands; but, from their knowledge of the speaker, they understand his
half-words, and from love of him they anticipate his wishes. Hence it
is, that in his Poem for St. Bartholomew's Day, he speaks of the "Eye of
God's word;" and in the note quotes Mr. Miller, of Worcester College,
who remarks in his Bampton Lectures, on the special power of Scripture,
as having "this Eye, like that of a portrait, uniformly fixed upon us,
turn where we will." The view thus suggested by Mr. Keble, is brought
forward in one of the earliest of the "Tracts for the Times." In No. 8 I
say, "The Gospel is a Law of Liberty. We are treated as sons, not as
servants; not subjected to a code of formal commandments, but addressed
as those who love God, and wish to please Him."
I did not at all dispute this view of the matter, for I made use of it
myself; but I was dissatisfied, because it did not go to the root of the
difficulty. It was beautiful and religious, but it did not even profess
to be logical; and accordingly I tried to complete it by considerations
of my own, which are to be found in my University Sermons, Essay on
Ecclesiastical Miracles, and Essay on Development of Doctrine. My
argument is in outline as follows: that that absolute certitude which we
were able to possess, whether as to the truths of natural theology, or
as to the fact of a revelation, was the result of an _assemblage_ of
concurring and converging probabilities, and that, both according to the
constitution of the human mind and the will of its Maker; that certitude
was a habit of mind, that certainty was a quality of propositions; that
probabilities which did not reach to logical certainty, might suffice
for a mental certitude; that the certitude thus brought about might
equal in measure and strength the certitude which was created by the
strictest scientific demonstration; and that to possess such certitude
might in given cases and to given individuals be a plain duty, though
not to others in other circumstances:--
Moreover, that as there were probabilities which sufficed for certitude,
so there were other probabilities which were legitimately adapted to
create opinion; that it might be quite as much a matter of duty in given
cases and to given persons to have about a fact an opinion of a definite
strength and consistency, as in the case of greater or of more numerous
probabilities it was a duty to have a certitude; that accordingly we
were bound to be more or less sure, on a sort of (as it were) graduated
scale of assent, viz. according as the probabilities attaching to a
professed fact were brought home to us, and as the case might be, to
entertain about it a pious belief, or a pious opinion, or a religious
conjecture, or at least, a tolerance of such belief, or opinion or
conjecture in others; that on the other hand, as it was a duty to have a
belief, of more or less strong texture, in given cases, so in other
cases it was a duty not to believe, not to opine, not to conjecture, not
even to tolerate the notion that a professed fact was true, inasmuch as
it would be credulity or superstition, or some other moral fault, to do
so. This was the region of Private Judgment in religion; that is, of a
Private Judgment, not formed arbitrarily and according to one's fancy or
liking, but conscientiously, and under a sense of duty.
Considerations such as these throw a new light on the subject of
Miracles, and they seem to have led me to reconsider the view which I
had taken of them in my Essay in 1825-6. I do not know what was the date
of this change in me, nor of the train of ideas on which it was founded.
That there had been already great miracles, as those of Scripture, as
the Resurrection, was a fact establishing the principle that the laws of
nature had sometimes been suspended by their Divine Author, and since
what had happened once might happen again, a certain probability, at
least no kind of improbability, was attached to the idea taken in
itself, of miraculous intervention in later times, and miraculous
accounts were to be regarded in connexion with the verisimilitude,
scope, instrument, character, testimony, and circumstances, with which
they presented themselves to us; and, according to the final result of
those various considerations, it was our duty to be sure, or to believe,
or to opine, or to surmise, or to tolerate, or to reject, or to
denounce. The main difference between my Essay on Miracles in 1826 and
my Essay in 1842 is this: that in 1826 I considered that miracles were
sharply divided into two classes, those which were to be received, and
those which were to be rejected; whereas in 1842 I saw that they were to
be regarded according to their greater or less probability, which was in
some cases sufficient to create certitude about them, in other cases
only belief or opinion.
Moreover, the argument from Analogy, on which this view of the question
was founded, suggested to me something besides, in recommendation of the
Ecclesiastical Miracles. It fastened itself upon the theory of Church
History which I had learned as a boy from Joseph Milner. It is Milner's
doctrine, that upon the visible Church come down from above, at certain
intervals, large and temporary _Effusions_ of divine grace. This is the
leading idea of his work. He begins by speaking of the Day of Pentecost,
as marking "the first of those _Effusions_ of the Spirit of God, which
from age to age have visited the earth since the coming of Christ." Vol.
i. p. 3. In a note he adds that "in the term 'Effusion' there is _not_
here included the idea of the miraculous or extraordinary operations of
the Spirit of God;" but still it was natural for me, admitting Milner's
general theory, and applying to it the principle of analogy, not to stop
short at his abrupt _ipse dixit_, but boldly to pass forward to the
conclusion, on other grounds plausible, that as miracles accompanied the
first effusion of grace, so they might accompany the later. It is surely
a natural and on the whole, a true anticipation (though of course there
are exceptions in particular cases), that gifts and graces go together;
now, according to the ancient Catholic doctrine, the gift of miracles
was viewed as the attendant and shadow of transcendent sanctity: and
moreover, since such sanctity was not of every day's occurrence, nay
further, since one period of Church history differed widely from
another, and, as Joseph Milner would say, there have been generations or
centuries of degeneracy or disorder, and times of revival, and since one
region might be in the mid-day of religious fervour, and another in
twilight or gloom, there was no force in the popular argument, that,
because we did not see miracles with our own eyes, miracles had not
happened in former times, or were not now at this very time taking place
in distant places:--but I must not dwell longer on a subject, to which
in a few words it is impossible to do justice[4].
[4] Vide note B, _Ecclesiastical Miracles_, at the end of the volume.
* * * * *