Pascal - Divinity of Christ

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THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST

PASCAL
|Uhil (Obstat.
HENRICUS W. CATOR,
Cnunr deputatus.
Imjmimitur.
HKRBERTUS CARDINALIS VAUGHAN,
ArchiepiscopvJ Westmonast
Die
Maii, 1898.
THE DIVINITY OF
OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST

PASCAL
A COMMENTARY
BY
WILLIAM BULLEN MORRIS

OF THE ORATORY
c est
et
Seigneur, je sais que je ne sais qu une chose ; qu il est bon de vous suivre,
qu
il est
mauvais de vous
offenser.
PASCAL
LONDON: BURNS & OATES, LIMITED

DUBLIN: M.
H.
GILL & SON
1898
CONTENTS.
CIIAI
TKK
PAUC
vii
STMMAKY
PREFACE
I.
PASCAL
WAY
TO BELIEF
....
....
xv
1
U. THE JEWS AND THEIR ABIDING TESTIMONY

III.
50
70
84
136
THE PROPHECIES
On; LOUD JESTS CHRIST
IV.
V.
THE NEW UNBELIEF

INDEX OF NAMES
.
193
SUMMARY.
CHAPTER
PASCAL S
I.
WAY
TO BELIEF.
PAGE
Converging and confederate evidences, Bishop Gibson and Edmund Burke

Pascal, clear as to
.
what he knows, and cannot know Insurmountable obstacle in the way of Voltaire and
Condorcet
Inspires Nicolas, Hettinger, His Pensees merely private own use
...... ........
and Lacordaire
.
.
4
5
memoranda
for
Pascal
His principle that

against reason
folly
is
the malediction on revolt
His independence of mind, a recommendation to
many
His religious influence in France Like that of Newton, Johnson and Burke in England To Pascal and Dante, religion was the centre of
.
.........10
9
. .
12
life
13
His mathematical mind forces reason on to

clusions
Some minds do not

superior
Pascal, arbiter
Others, like St. Augustine, must be conquered by a
........ ... ........

its
con
14
15
require such a master
16
between religion and modern philo

.
.
sophy
.17
Vlll
SUMMARY.
PAGE
He worked
on the same lines as those of Bacon and

18
Newton
Pascal and Pope
Bossuet fights Pascal never proves the obvious
Rousseau and Helvetius with an army Pascal alone

:
19
21
Newton our guide
to Pascal
Alike in their freedom from vanity In their mathematical style of argument Pascal a mathematician from his childhood
(JEt. 29.)
.... ..... ....

. .
22
23
24
25 26
...
.
.
All his ideas converge, and meet in Christ
27
28
The
religion of
Religious
Newton purpose of Book
III. of the Principia
Newton ridicules a "blind The Creator must have

"mathematically"
cause
"
....
.
30
31
......
foreseen,
and calculated
32 33
Prophecy, a proof to Newton of similar foresight in Revelation
Lord Bacon on
"
Confederate Causes
"
Intolerance of unbelief, Dr. Johnson and
... Edmund
34
35
Burke
Pascal ignored superficial and frivolous Free-thinkers His compassion for those who "mourned in the sin
cerity of their
doubts"
38 39
Pascal
comparative estimate of matter, mind, and
grace
His reverence
......... ....
for
.....
...
.
.
40
41
human
reason
scorn of presumption and bombast His principle that love inspires the understanding
And
42
44
45
Best part of lay-intellect on the side of belief Understanding and agreeing, concord doubles the
.
strength of conviction
46
"
Example the school of mankind We must choose our side, and our
"
leaders
...
.
.47
48
SUMMARY.
IX
CHAPTER
II.
THE JEWS AND THEIR ABIDING TESTIMONY.

Spiritual sterility of the Jews To Pascal, the greatest of nations before Christ
50
.
.
51
Indifferent to all other ancient creeds, as destitute of
proofs
The Jewish religion foretold its mission The first nation with a law Their Bible which made them, ever witnesses them
......... ...
sealed up, as was foretold
52
53
54
against
And
is
now
...
. .
.
55
56
57
The Jews spiritually sterile, materially dominant The synagogue only a type, therefore now captive
Pascal estimates the Jews, in the spirit of St. Paul blind hatred of the Jews perverts Christian history Their avarice not more degrading than sensuality
58 59
60
61
The ideals of the Jew, the inheritance of The Jews are promised to the Church
All the Jews did not reject Christ Pascal loves Christ for the reasons which led the Jews
to reject
... ....
the Christian
62
63
64
65
Him
of
M. Sainte-Beuve, comparison
suet
Pascal
and Bos66
67
Necessity of chivalrous antagonism with the Jews Dignity of woman amongst the Jews
....
.
68
CHAPTER
evidence.
III.
THE PROPHECIES.
Prophecies Felix
greatest
Pascal
and
Pere
70
Preparation of the minds of the Jews for their
ment
......
fulfil
71
SUMMARY.
Their history from Abraham
Christ
T
PACK
to
Herod
fulfilled
in
o 7& i
Jewish history alone satisfied Pascal His power of concentrating evidences
The The
...
.
73
74
75 76 77
dispersion of the
Mess-ias predicted in many All came to pass Jews cast off
Jews a part of ways
....
their mission
.
.
Pagans converted The Jews rejected Christ, and were cast off by God Christ assailed by Jew and Gentile, rules in Rome and in Jerusalem
the other
78
79
Destroys the idols of the one, and the superstitions of
.... ....
CHAPTER
$Q
8i
Expectation of the Messias from the beginning of the world

Christ came in accordance with predicted
stances
.....
circum
82
IV.
OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.

Christ the centre of
men s thoughts Neither truth nor error new

Voltaire, his blasphemies
and
his failure
Antagonistic influence of Rousseau Rousseau s scorn of his associates

"
"
Their reasons only those that destroy "Christ the fountain of His own wisdom His life and death those of a God
"
.... ... .... ....

. .
"
84
85
86
87
88 90
.89
.
"
.91
93
of
Dante and Pascal alike

of Christ
....
way
alone,
in the spirit of their adoration
Dante
finds an interpreter in the
human Mother
Christ
Pascal went his
94
quence
....
and suffered in conse

95
SUMMARY.
Intensity of his religions feelings Nicolas, impregnated with the spirit of Pascal
.
XI
PAGE
96
. .
97 98
Pascal, like
cies
Newton, goes
to
Christ by the Prophe

"both
Apostles, deceived or deceivers,

"
"
suppositions
If
unmanageable only one had belied himself,

of
99
all
were
lost"
100
Language
Christ,
"
"God,"
says
.
Pascal,
.
.
"speaks
.
By
truly of God Christ alone we
.101
.
know
life
and death
Without Christ reason

Christ in every sacred Pascal and St. Teresa
falls
short
....
. . .
.
102 103 104

105
human
and
His reverence
tions
.........
for her,
......
relationship
his belief in her revela
106
Pascal
"
prayers, his struggle and final victory

. . .
108 109 110
"
His mystical ladder The MyKtrry of Jesus
no step
wanting"
"
In His agony Christ

"
"troubled Himself"
Troubled by men, He was altogether strong "As hard to prove that Christ was man, as that
"
.111 .112
He
113 114
115
was God
"
To
"0
"
desire Christ
is
to possess
Him
....
. .
Mystical death of Christ in the Eucharist
God, who so loves the body that suffers" Unite Thy consolations to my sufferings
"
116
118
.117
.
Pascal
s "elevations"
Like Cardinal
a captive
"
Newman
his
"
more than private devotions in his sense that his soul was
he
. .
120
misery
.
Man knows
knows
it
is
great because he
. .
121
St.
Augustine and
sinners"
"the
immortal Just, and mortal

123
St.
Pascal
admiration of St. Augustine and
Thomas
124
Xll
SUMMARY.
"
"
Obscurity (in religion) a blessing to the elect dispute in Pascal s mind about Revelation In Christ all that Pascal wanted
125
126
No
....
. . . .
127 128
Identical doctrine of St. Teresa

St.
Paul
mind ever
way
Christ.
......
fixed
St.
.
on the Sacred Humanity of

129
130
131
In the same
Catherine of Siena sought her
ôd
way, therefore, the way of the Saints Thus, lie argues, the world was converted
s
Pascal
132
Free-thinkers
who
.
imitate
.
.
Augustine
.
in his
.
Mani.
When
chean stage he thought of Christ

wisdom"
.
.133 .134
135
only as a
.
.
man
.
of trans
.
cendent
After reason, comes the light that transcends
it
CHAITKU V. TH1-] XKW UXBKLIKF.

Its leaders
who
are they, where no one

to
is
led
136
Old leaders
same way when He was found

lias
......
Christ
some separated
137
goes his
Every free-thinker way
his
own wav
own
138
1
And
For
very tew care to ask themselves,

all
that free-thinkers are slaves to
Whither "hero wor
?"
139 140
ship"
Kant now
Few
in the place of Voltaire serious men trouble themselves with

.
.141
.
Kant
.
142
But now a duty for the sake of Kant s Critique of Pure Reason
his captives
143
144
145
Criticism ignoring logic and grammar Kant tells us what he meant to do .
146
SUMMARY.
In 1781 he promised universal metaphysic In 1787 he sinks into mere "experience"
.
Xlll
A;E 147
.148
149
Xoumena, he
tion
".
tells
...
us,
.
.
have
"no
positive
....
significa
so
Kant wanders from

reader.
his subject,
. .
and
-
must the
.150
into
Schopenhauer supposes that senile imbecility

.
Kant had lapsed

.
.
.151
152
it
is
Kant absolutely
hensible
satisfied
with himself
His philosophy attractive because

. . .
incompre
.153
154
.
Kantism fifty years ago Kant reives absolute freedom

.
to his interpreters
.156
I
Kathylriuii,
the
water-god
of
Huxley, Hiickel, and

57
"
Strauss
The C osmos
St.
Humboldt, and its Ordainer Augustine model and comfort of victims

of
"
158
159
lusion
...." "
of de
As
boy
"thirsting
for the truth
proud and
60
-
talkative
His days of private judgment Hi? reason swayed by lust

"
...
. . .
161
162
.
Liberation, and new
life
of his reason
.
163 165
Influence of Cicero
Hortensius
.164
.
Kant knows no authority but himself ideas Carlyle boldest interpreter of Kantian
.
167 Kant and Carlyle their own gods sails on .168 Kant and Fichte falter Carlyle 169 Mr. Gostwick s German Culture and Christianity .171 His conclusions on the lines of Pascal in the Christ, the one ruler and interpreter of truth
.
....
.
.
.166
New
early Church Biblical Criticism, an offspring of Kantism Kant claims universal intellectual domination .
1
1
74
175
XIV
SUMMARY.
PAGE
Kant changes Kant

St.
s
"
truth never changes Schopenhauer on the empty verbiage

.
"
.
"
.176
.
of Hegel no clearer than Hegel s Bernard and Lord Bacon on doubt and delight
177
realm of shadows
"
"
178
"
"
"
in giddiness
.179
.
Huxley and "his Cosmic system

and the new
belief
"
forefathers,
"
the
. .
puppets of the
.
.
180
No agreement possible between the

.
<
ld lords of thought,
. . .
.182
183
Proof dismissed from the categories of the

Mistiness the mother of
New Un
184
1
wisdom
"
....
. .
Spinoza and Descartes Believers and unbelievers

Majority of
"
"
85
comparative strength
187
scientists
on the side of belief
188
Amongst
tions
those
who
distinguish tacts from imagina
189
190
of the
Longfellow, and (Jarlyle on the delusions of verbositv
The pretensions
New
its
Philosophy
Expiring, like those of
predecessors
.191 .192
PREFACE.
IF asked,
why amongst
defenders of
Re
vealed Religion, I look to Pascal for my text, rather than to any of our professed theolo
gians,
man,
answer, because Pascal was a lay and no theologian. In Protestant

I
England, laymen have long been, and are most popular, and perhaps the still, the
most
authoritative,
advocates
and
ex
I doubt much pounders of Christian truth. whether in the long line of her bishops and divines, from Cranmer to his present succes
sor,
any of her
ecclesiastical
writers
have
of
had as much influence on the
religion
the nation as Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson, Burke and Coleridge, and in our own times
I
may add
Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Balfour.
In Scotland, where a more logical religion has

prevailed,
and principles
as far as they
went
could be tested, exact learning, and special
XVI
PREFACE.
training have been
more esteemed
but
if
we
on
are to believe Carlyle,

this point,
no bad witness
Biblical
knowledge, as well
as the spirit of the old Covenanter, are
now
well nigh things of the past in the land of
the Scot.
If,
then,
am
in
right
in
thinking
"
that
all
those
who
in
Christian
name,"
the England, to borrow the words of
glory in
Leo XIII.
his
1
recent
"
Letter to
the
English people," are disposed to take into account the opinions and arguments of a
religious
layman,
may hope
Pascal
that a short
will
summary
of those of
not
be
unacceptable.
Pascal never studied theo

of the
logy in the strict sense
word, and
us that he
more than
this,
lie
plainly tells
shrank even from the idea of assuming the

place of a teacher of this science
;
and
his
most
fiery
the candour and simplicity of Pascal
opponents have never questioned s words

of himself.
.
when speaking
1
In
the
Pro-
Ad
Anglos
.
<iw>t<]iwt
gloriantnr Christiana
nomine.
PREFACE.
rhiridl
XV11
Letter*
indeed, of
he
gave
his
own
their
views on
is
;i
"Cases
Conscience";
all
hut this
subject on which
opinions, at least so far

sciences are
men have as their own

and
con
concerned
this,
when
Pascal
did more
that
than
he candidly
the
tells
us
he
of
was
merely
agent
theologians,
on
spokesman and whose wisdom
and honesty he unfortunately placed too
much
reliance.
In dealing with the fundamental evidences

of Christianity, Pascal
is
himself and noth
ing but himself, and takes his stand on that ground which is common to every
believer,
lay
and
clerical,
is
learned and un
learned.
That which
uncommon
is
the
extent of ground which he covers in a single sentence, and the way in which he enters
into
the
difficulties,
and
identities
himself
men in all stages of the world s conversion. He makes himself a Jew with those who listened to St. Peter,
with the minds of
a Pagan with the hearers of St. Paul, and carries the scepticism of
b
Montaigne beyond
XV111
PREFACE.
it
t
the inveutor, by proving that
runs away
(S eniporte$oi-i)ienw) leaving the so was before sceptic precisely where he

with
itself
;
that
his
it
is
mind
hardly is an epitome oi
all
too
much
say that the assent ol

to
human
reason in
;
from on high
ages to the .Revelation and so it may turn out that

certainly
modern minds, which

find
seem more
complex than those of former days, may

that .Pascal
s
rare gift
will
of
impressing
in
unity
on variety
1
be
a help
their
religious entanglements.
The idea
Pascal face
had on starting was to bring to face with some of the most
popular
styled
expounders of that wild medley The A ew Unbelief," but as 1 ad
vanced into the heart of
my
subject, a feeling
grew upon me
that there was a sort of pro
fanity in the process.
There
is
something
sacred in the earnestness of Pascal.
Even
when, in the Pensees, he is ironical, there is never any sign of that amusement which
other
men
find
in
the contradictions and

i
follies of their
fellow-men,
have there-
PREFACE.
fore separated the text of Pascal
XIX
from the
will come study of modern unbelief, which as a separate chapter at the end of the hook,
in
the hope that the conti ast will he an argument in itself, and that the mind of the reader
may
revert from the spectacle of
modern
chaos, to the vision of ancient truth
in the sonl of Pascal.

I
have
my
fears that
some parts of
this
hook may displease certain minds, seeing

that
it
is
partly
belief,
made up
of evidences in
favour of
taken from writers whose

in
names
will
seem very much out of place

a subject as
pages devoted to so august

present.
the
T
But
for this style of
argument
have the example and the sanction of great authorities in other countries, and especially
in
France, where the battle for belief has
been fought out so long and vigorously. Ft will be no small point gained if it is made clear that intellectual eminence has
no necessary connection either with the bold
denials
of or
the
aggressive
atheist,
the
languid and impotent queries of the agnostic
XX
PREFACE.
practical
Ono
way
of meeting
tliis
very wide
confessions spread prepossession is from the of witnesses like Napoleon, Rousseau, and
Lord Byron
men whose daring
spirits,
and
ungoverned passions would naturally lead to universal lawlessness, the denial of Hod,
and
of the requisitions of Ilis justice.
careful
and what
may
be
called
critical
study of the characteristics of genius, brings out the fact that it has ever been on the
side of belief, so
loiiii
as
it
condescended
:
to
associate with
common-sense
its
which comes
to this, that reason in

tions, lias
highest manifesta
long as
in
it
always found its way to (Jod, so \Ve find indeed was reasonable.
of
contrasting the stvle
men
such
as
those above mentioned, with that of

ton,
New
is
Johnson and Burke, how essential

1
earnestness and dignity of moral character

for success
in
religious
all
is
discussions.
om-
mon-sense after
only
man
servant,
and
in
religion
he
must have
a master,
otherwise his recklessness and frivolity, and

still
more
his passions are certain to stultify
PREFACE.
the conclusions of reason.
to attempt, either to
Tt is loss
of time
meet or
to
make any
use of the admissions in favour of religion
on the part of the professional unbelieving of reason, of our own fdrrcHi tf, and
jugglers
is
times; Imt
old
like
it
otherwise with infidels
ot
Holingbroke
and
Rousseau,
who
wrote before the invention of words without
meaning,
sions.
and arguments
])e
without
conclu
The chivalrous
chivalrous
Maistre. and the

are
equally
patient
Moiitalembert
im
with
the
Laconlaire for the

l>acon,
Abbe Emery, and Penuse they make of Lord
It
and Xapole.m, as witnesses to religion. seems as if they cannot believe that there
be faith without works, as well as works
faith.
may
without
of the perfect,
in
we only take the evidence how are we to know the way

If
which
the
as
mind of man goes astray?

well
said,
Experience
as
reason
were
with be
is
Byron when he
tween
a
"The
difference
religious
and
irreligious
man
that the one sacrifices the present to the future, and the other the future to the pres-
XXli
PREFACE.
or again,
"
ent";
Blindness
is
the first-horn
of
excess".
Moroovor.
if witli
Do Maistre
we suppose that Lord Bacon, and others like him were hypocrites when they witnessed to the truths of Christianity, we are met
by the
writers
religion.
these difficulty that the best things
produced
This
is
are
those
in
favour
of
proved by the fact that critical they still delight and satisfy the most Christian minds, whereas, their own distinc
tive views,
and wild and extravagant philo
sophical speculations, are as little respected by those who make use of them, as those
writings of Byron which, in bold defiance of

reason, he confesses were written at midnight
under the influence of alcoholic stimulants.

Truths committed
life
to ink
and paper have a
and unity of their own as real as a pic ture, and no writer using intelligible words,
has ever yet succeeded in winning the en during assent of mankind unless he himself
believed
the
things
that
which
he
wrote.
s
am
convinced
Lord
Campbell
ver
dict on
the religious opinions of his great
PREFACE.
predecessor,
when
"
lit-
says,
to
know not
his
what right we have

cerity"
question
is
sin
(Life, p.
>l),
ls.">^j,
more
just
than that of JJe

Card.
to
Alaistre.
"Bacon,"
says
great
;
Newman, "was too intellectually hate, or condemn the Catholic faith

writings
to
and
he deserves by his
tlie
be
called
greatest
of
PrutesUmt
;jl<j.
philosophers"
(Idea of a Unicen*ity, p. 4b J, 444, 440,

(
44<S,
4."),"),
lor his
See pp. I IS, estimate of
Lord Bacon lives in philosophy). history as a sad and terrible example ol one of whom St. Bernard would have said that
s
"his
Bacon
mind was
".
in
heaven, and his will
in
the mire
Cardinal
Newman,
Lacordaire,
Nicolas,
and amongst Protestants, Canon Liddon, have made good use of Napoleon s clear and
sublime profession of faith in the Divinity of Jesus Christ. If, therefore, with such mixed auxiliaries, we can put together a
consistent
argument
in the
form of a com
mentary on Pascal,
in
ought to go some way proving that inherent life and unity

it
XXIV
in
ll
K FACE.
our subject, which,
like
the
in
vital
force
subjugates organism, masters

part of
itself.
which
matter
the
living
it
evidence and
makes
CHAPTER
PASCAL
S
I.
WAY
TO P.ELIKF.
minds on any point is an argument in itself more convincing than the testimony of innumer able minds of an inferior order, and it is all the more cogent when thev are even vio
of several great
lently opposed about conclusions which leave untouched the fundamental principles on
THE agreement
the following s ail illustration. Bishop Ullathorne relates that in a controversy between the Catholic
which
they
agree
i.
Bishop Gibson, Burke, shortly before the death of the latter, the bishop observed that If all sects separated from
"
and
Edmund
the Catholic Church were assembled in jury

to judge any single Catholic, on each point there would be a majority to approve his
THE DIVINITY OF JKSUS CHRIST.

For where any Protestant
the
sects,
Faith.
sect raised
point,
Eastern
sects,
majority and from other
derived
from
the
Protestant
;
would
lu>
where there
is
on the Catholic side and an error in an Eastern sect,
the other Eastern, and the higher Protestant on the Catholic side. would sects
l>e
Burke sunk his head between his hands, After a time he and remained astounded. lifted up his face full of wonder, and ex
claimed
:
An
!
amaxino- truth
I
an astound
tell it to
ing argument O c5
will iro
and
Fox,
soon,
you attain. hope concludes Bishop (Gibson, he died. If then we can carry on this style of argu ment, and assemble a iurv of the greatest
I
and
to sec
But
\)
minds whose opinions are enshrined in our own mother tongue and if we find that on
;
We
218. Memoir* of Lndy Cltntterton, Dering, have here an interesting proof that time had Fox healed the breach between Hurke and Fox. and is reported to have said to had learned wisdom,
1
]>.
some one who observed that Burke was a

madman,"
"mad
"
splendid
"fate
or
inspired,"
he
replied,
seems to have determined that he should be an un
common
ii.,
political
prophet".
Prior
Life of Burke,
p.
275.
PASCAL
WAY TO
BELIEF.
them, were identical with those of Pascal, it will serve to make us more at home with him. For many reasons Pascal is a writer
the subject of the Divinity of Jesus Christ their ideas, and their way of expressing
who
requires an introduction to what is called the cultured mind of the day. His clear
"
"
and unquestioning- convictions about things which modern philosophy has carried off far
from the world of common-sense, and com mon language, into the interminable region
philosophy no one is so clear about what he knows, and he is equally clear as to what he does not, and cannot know.
of abstractions, adjectives and impersonals, incredulity in minds which have been trained to suspect conclusions. Pascal is the very antithesis of the of the un
arouse
known
begin
1
whom
by confessing that this wi-iter, have undertaken to interpret, Cc

is
(jenw e/raynut, as he
briand, amazes
styled by Chateau
me more now,
I
than
when
as
it
some
to
forty-five years ago master him; but after

to be
first
attempted
is
all,
this
ought
when we take
above
us.
o-
u jd e to
fore into regions
go be believe these
THK DIVINITY OF
JKST S CHRIST.
result of the
feelings are a
common
study
1
ot
Pascal, and that the will to now attempting, has arisen
am do what in many who

"
have been held back by a feeling something

read akin to that of Shelley, who said that ing Dante was unfavourable to writing, from
its
all possible compositions superiority to however, that some one is it time, Here is a writer the attempt.should make
whose genius has for centuries been the wonder and admiration of men of every whose /V/wVx, ohiter shade of opinion
:
(l/i-t<i,
jottings
for
his
own
use
ot
thoughts
that passed without effort through hi- mind. have become the solid basis of the deepest
arguments of the Christian apologist, and the rock on which Voltaire, and Oondorcet
have been
to
broken
his
in
their
vain
:
attempt
will,
undermine
taken
reasonings
reasonings
which,
where and
when you
Moreover,
Medwin,
i.,
alone, or in their context, like a leaf from a
flower are alwavs perfect.

1
in
no
2 -\ 2.
Con
I
r<
rant
i<ni.<
lit
Lord
Ili/ron,
p.
am
not aware that even
in
France any writer
has attempted to separate Pascal s (Jhrintidit Evidences from the literary, and other obiter dicta of the Pense es.
PASCAL
sense
is
\VAY TO BKLIKF.
Pascal
of the
kindred
of
those
for
a
meteoric
philosophic
puzzle,
inventors
who
time
dazzle,
and
in
generation, leaving them
disappoint their darkness deeper

1
which they found them. The of Pascal on all matters which reasonings belong to the world of common-sense, are
in
than that
as
dear and were and to

;
irresistible
now
as
ever tliev
in
tins piercing
and imperial
telligence, the Divinity of Jesus Christ was

a
truth as certain as anv problem in that Mathematical Science of which lie was so
a
great
master.
mind may
little
Perhaps the inflexible character of Pascal s also account for the fact that so
has been done to give a consecutive
to his evidences,
form
and
reflections on the
greatest subject which can occupv the of man. so that our acquaintance with
is
mind them
chiefly
and there
derived from gems shining here in the pages of Nicolas, llettinger,
Lacordaire and other Christian apologists.

1
think
"
it
is
the
poet
lough
who
says
of
left
Carlyle,
He
led us into the wilderness,
and he
us
there,"
master
is
found
and the same despairing judgment on his in Fronde s Nemesis of Faith, p. 35.
6
Jt
is
THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST.

hard
to
make
his
<J
ideas
run
in
This at the O groove of any other stvle. J Start least has been my own experience. ing; with the intention of doing; something, C O O
1
consecutive, at the
end of two years

idea,
have
had
self
in
to
modify
a
my
and
to
content
my
:
with
fact,
sort
of
broken
commentary
"
Pascal s thoughts suggested by is is rig;lit, this If M. Havel Thoughts".
not to be wondered
at.
In
his
<!<
very pro
found
Etn<h
xtir
/V/wVx
have
considers
it
doubtful
/V/xw/, he whether even Pascal

satisfied
himself could
ever
himself
that he had reached his

ideal of
own immeasurable
demanded.
1
what
his subject
Si Pascal a
pen
ecrit, et jainais rien
d entendu, ce
lui
est pas seulement, je crois, paree (pie la saute

il
manque, inais aussi paree (pi une rigueur do critique qui

de contenter, et
]>ar
exeivait sur sa pensee
le
1
hnjuelle
rendait trop nial aise exccution d un gi-and
ouvrage devenait un travail au-dessus des forces humaines. On dit tons les jours (pie s il cut acheve
les Pensees,
]>eut
il
eut fait
un
livre
si
incomparable, mais on
et
douter
(pie ce livre,
difficile,
qu
il
aiirait
recommence sans
p. 3.
eesse, eut
c -t6
jainais
s
fini.
Pensees,
References are to M. Havet
edition in one vol.,
Paris, 1892, as being easiest of access.
PASCAL
It
WAY TO BELIEF.
his
was Pascal s intention, interrupted by death, to have put aside every other
studv and interest, that he might devote ten years to a work on Christian Evidences;
forging and uniting the links of a chain which should bind the earth to the throne
of (iod, and the fact that the writings which he has left on this ^reat theme were never
meant
merelv
for
his
the
eves of other men,
being
own private reflections and con
with (iod, gives them a special character and charm not unlike thai which
versations
attaches to the contemplations of St. Teresa. No one who values Christ, and the truths
taught, can refuse to pay homage to the genius of Pascal. The ages are strewn with the wrecks which mark the
which
He
has
wild
course
man, and
its
of the ungoverned genius of yet the world, ever young and
heedless, follows the
same
tracks.
Which of
sages or prophets has ever brought his ship to a haven of rest, or taught any one else the way of peace ? One by one
own
the brightest minds, and the noblest hearts lost their wisdom have either like Lucifer
in their brightness." or
have sunk victims to
those sensual pleasures which one, himself a
despairing captive, likens to

.
8non
tlmt
i(/K
upon a river,
for
ever.
A moment
"
fbife, tltm gone

"
Reason,"
says
Pascal,
rules us far
more
imperiously than any master: for in revolting in against the latter a man is miserable
:
revolting against the first lit- is a fool." How man\ there are who, wearied and
disappointed by adventurers and speculators in philosophy, as false to the head as to the

heart, have
renewed their
of Pascal.
lie attracts those
voutli in the pages who are pre

is
possessed against writers whose profession

to lead
and although this is as much as to say that those who devote their
to (iod
;
men
lives
to religion
still
witnesses,
are the least trustworthy we cannot ignore a prejudice
which
is
so
very general.
Neither
is
this
it
is prepossession always unpardonable, that some people s minds are now granted as much a tahnla raw regarding Revelation
if
as were those of Tacitus, or This Pliny. was at one time the state of the apparently
1
Pejtxc i-ft, p. 175.
PASCAL
WAY TO BELIEF.
until
lie fell
mind of Napoleon,
back on the
thought that the greatest philosophers have been believers, men who seemed, as he
strangely remarked, to concern with religion.
1
have
no
special
if
ever then was a
man who appeared

:
to
have the intellectual and moral preparations so for an intellectual rebel, it was Pascal
much
so that in the face of his devotion to
the cause of religion, which resembles that

of a saint, people are found who are stag gered as to the reality of the subjugation
Moreover, from youth up he never seemed to have had an

of
his
mind
to
belief.
Mnnoriid de Sainte He lene, Las Cases,

fact that
iii.,
249.
Napoleon singles out Bossuet, Newton, and Leibnitz as representing the highest gifts of the
The
human mind, shows

at its true value.
that he estimated military genius

is
It
plain from
many
1
passages in
his conversations that he considered his

to be a greater
Code Napoleon
cannot find
in his
work than Austerlitx.
that he ever came across Pascal.
time
Pascal was buried

of Voltaire,
Probably under the rubbish
of
the
Commentaries
and Condorcet.
If
he had
known
field.
Pascal, this extraordinary genius would have recognised a kindred intelligence in a higher and nobler
10

master.
it,
intellectual
rather than learnt

to discover in
anticipated truth and therefore we fail

for his
He
him that enthusiasm

writers,
teachers,
which colours the early produc
tions of
most
their
to
which, while
it
is
key
to
own minds, sometimes

the
;
lays
them open
it
charge of being mere echoes of others who have gone before and
may
is
be
remarked that
of
this
independ
ence
one
Pascal
are
recommendations
with
those
ledging
that
intellectual
jealous of acknow owe anything to their they ancestors. Here indeed they
is
who
have
one
who
self-sufficient
;
in
the
for his highest sense of the word fidence in himself does not make
con
him
a
ridiculous.
The
subjugation
"
of
such
head and heart, a subjugation so absolute

that he can that
1
Lord, 1 only cry out, know but one thing that

;
know
it
is
good to follow Thee, and evil to offend is an argument from head and Thee," heart together, more cogent than logic and
eloquence
;
so that
1
1
think
it
is
M. Havet
who
that
says, speaking
it
is
presume
for France,
probable that not even Bossuet
PASCAL
WAV TO
JIKLIEF.
11
has .saved as
Pascal.
It
1
many
l>e
souls from
infidelity as
may
spirit
also
safely affirmed
is
that the
literature,
new
in
which
appearing
in
Lf Moureinent Neo-Cliretien,
France,
to
as
it
is
styled
great the influence of Pascal.

in
is
in
part to be attributed
very much
prefer
the
His brevity is favour with people who labour of thinking to that of

his
study.
and
ever
A little of Pascal goes a uTeat way; no one whose mind has been at once
and purified bv
with
of
.M.
exalted
his
influence
can
return
relish
to
the
the
obscene
critical
blasphemies
frivolities
Voltaire,
or
"
of
Kenan.
life
Pascal,"
says
the
writer
of
"
his
is,
in
the
the
lliotft Ctphie
greatest of philosophers, taking philosophy as the art of appreciating the true value of things; man s knowledge of himself, and the under-
Unirei xelle,
perhaps,
It
is
remarkable that
Hettinjj;cr in his jjreat work,
The Ajxilojy for Christianity, jrives twenty-six quotations from Pascal s little work, and only twenty-four from Bossuet s immense treasures of erudition and
criticism.
12
UK DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST.

l
and standing of his destinies and duties." if this estimate reduces him to the simple
dimensions of
sense,
faint
a
man
in
of
supreme commonthis
praise
an age when philo
sophers profess to transcend

still
it
is
common,
rea>on
;
and therefore vulgar, attribute of

the
Pascal
certainly himself would have most esteemed.

is
character
which
This then
simplicity,
the
as
writer,
it
so
"Teat
in
his
who,
were, spontaneously
"
"
and without help from any one, marked out in his /Vy/.x-erx with mightv strokes the chief lines of that all-embracing Re velation which recalls the religions of the
ancient world to that of the Jew, and reveals Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of all. In these countries, .side by side with the perplexity, confusion and indifference which followed the
relioi, )Us
revolt O f the sixteenth

:
century, we have had some like Pascal men who with Xewton, Johnson and Burke, have
set a
1
high value on their own, and other

"
Art.
Pascal
".
See also
"
Bayle,"
//,/,/.
This
Pascal.
tianisrue,
is
the .substance of Lacordaire

Philosophi<iurs
judgment on
sur
le
Nicolas, Etude*
I.,
Chrix-
xvi.,
19th
ed.,
1868.
PASCAL
WAY TO BELIEF.
13
men
little
souls,
and treated fraudulent, or even

with
as
frivolous
speculators in religion, consideration as the world

to such as these
gives to
we owe the swindler, and the best part that remains of our ancient But outside the world of civilisation.
sanctity,
so
little
valued,
or
noticed
in
literature, religion
has had few so devoted
servants as Pascal.
Others have witnessed with to ic bv the way, as occasions arose was the centre Pascal, as with i Unite, religion around which everything worth loving in his
:
own
life,
and
in that of
other men, revolved.

logical,
in their
"into
But he goes further, and by pure or mathematical reasonings, which

essence
captivity
are
the
same,
1
he
brings
every
understanding
It is
tit
unto
the
obedience of
Christ".
true that this
not style of reasoning does

It
will
not work in
the same way
every subject. in the
investigation of doubtful <[iiestions truth is often only found in the balance

of
wherein
apparent
fact
contradictions,
the
that
Pascal
and therefore makes it work
-2
Cor.
x.
~).
14
successfully in dealing \vith Christian evi dences is a proof that these evidences,
reduced
matics.
to
their
all
primarv
and
essential
the certainty of mathe therefore Pascal, dealing with the proofs of the Divinity of .Jesus Christ, in language which disdains every
elements, have
When
attempt at
artifice or decoration,
is
absolute
with reason, clusion, with
and
all
forces
it
on to the con
the inflexible rigour of the the objector gets at any rate mathematician,
;
as far as this
is
either
Pascal
is
right, or
he
a better reasoner than Pascal.
Every one
who
has asserted the same truths has be

as
lieved
Pascal, but no writer since Tertullian has held the mind in such
as
much
grip, or carried to its conclusions he rapidity

irresistible
:
an
it
is
with such
the
Napo
leon of logic, and it is remarkable that a similarity has been observed in their hand
writings.
Starting with the idea of a Creator, and

1
Pascal
refusal
on principle to make any con

:
cession to taste
truth, is seen in his defiance of the rules when a word against tautology expresses his meaning he always uses it again.
when seeking
PASCAL
WAY TO
BELIEF.
15
ever active Governor of the World, he comes

to Christ as the centre,
fulfilled,
and end of prophecy

;
gifts exceeding even the imagination of man and then he leaves the mind with one of two alterna
and the possessor of
tives
to
deny
all,
or to confess
all.
It
is
;
true that he goes too fast for some people as well for those who stop to remove ob
stacles,
or
want
to
take
breath
and
cull
flowers on the road, as for those
who would
Probably
difficulties
wait
and
wonder and
all
adore.
some, or
of these
were the
of Chateaubriand,
whose admiration was
mingled with fear as he followed the flight of the genius of Pascal, advancing from
things that are capable of proof to those that
and descending, must do, from the as all religious reasoning visible to the invisible, from creation and
are
beyond
proof, ascending
mind of man to God, in the spirit of Reacheth from end that wisdom which
the
"
to end
mightily
"/
and ordereth
his
all
things
sweetly
Every one, on
1
way
to belief, does not
Wisdom
viii.
1.
10

of a
want the guidance

Pascal.
mind
like
that of
in a
Genius
is
no more an essential
teacher than a talent for poetry or music. No one has taught this truth with such
sublime
Pascal
scorn
himself.
if
of
intellectual
pride
as
seem
as
for
that they will

intellect
But for all that it does some it is a necessity, and only submit to those whose
own.
It
seems to them greater than their was so with St. Augustine, who
has been given to
men
as the type of the
strong proud intellect struck down and sub jugated by the stronger power of grace.
He
tells
us
all
this
himself,
and who has

head and
ever laid
bare the ways of the
He tells how, in the heart like Augustine? of life and the plenitude of his prime
powers and
his
fame, he listened
the
spirit,
to
St.
Ambrose
laying
"
lifting
mystic
veil,
and
letter
bare
the
when
the
seemed to me an error, saying nothing which displeased me, although as yet [ knew not whether what he said was true. I held my heart from all assent, fearing some pitfall and more and more 1 was tormented unto death. I wished to be as
;
PASCAL
WAY TO BELIKF.
17
sure of things 1 saw not, as that seven and And all the while three made ten.
.
O Lord, was your merciful sweet hand, heart little by touching and fashioning my how innumerable were little, as I considered the things 1 believed, which L had neither when they were nor been
seen,
present
done
so
so
many
had
hi the histories of nations,
many
I
in the records of places
and towns
which
friends,
never seen
so
m;my from
we
must
physicians, believe under pain of the utter stagnation

of
1
and
which
life."
If,
then,
it
is
possible
to
mala-
Pascal
arbiter
between
it
religion,
sophy,
may
be a
conciliation in an age
and modern philo re step towards their in all its con when,
is
literature tending forms, philosophic
the
of religion. great antagonist not so gigantic an undertaking that this is After all is it a-; it at first sight appears. not the experience of those who have read
Let us hope
many books
that truth
is
limited quantities,
1
and that
given to man in it is the same

4
Cvafe-woH*
"f
&.
Awjn*tine, book
vi.,
and
").
IS
THE DIVINITY OF JESTS CHRIST.

find
it ?
wherever we
writers
The small number

and the
fact that it
of
who have perpetuated anything
like
is
intellectual dominion,
by agreement, not by
difference that they of this, and it is as reio;n, are an evidence as in other intel manifest in
philosophy
If therefore we find that lectual provinces. such men as Bacon and Newton, our ac
religious lines as those
to knowledged masters, \vorked their way the same conviction on precisely
of
Pascal,
it
ought at any
is
rate to
convince us that
it
be at once a philosopher and Unfortunately, with many people

times,
It
is
possible to a Christian.
in
our
philosophy
has
got
bad
name.
to be hope supposed in sonu- way divorced from common-sense, and to lessly be a mere arena for the mental tournaments
of dreamers
else.
it
who But when
are
its
unfit
for
anything
fling
antagonists
at
the lines,
Physic from metaphysic
be<js
defence,
sense,
And
they
sion
:
metaphysic
calls for
aid on
ought
to
go
on
to
Pope
conclu
PASCAL
WAY TO
IJELIKF.
19
Philosophy, that lean d on heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause and is no more. 1
Although philosophy cannot take us to heaven, Jike wine, it is a uood servant if

"
it
is
not abused
".
Neither physics,
nor
metaphysics are to blame himself of his power to

servants of
It
is
when man avails make them the

frivolity.
his
own
intellectual
man,
the
pay
tions,
philosophy, who penalty when he sets

not
has
to
matter
tradi
against mind, and
mind against the
and tribunals of common-sense, and his degradation and miserv bear witness to the height from which he has cast himself.
The very splendours

said
"to
of vour
degradation,"
Rousseau
me
the materialist Ilelvetius, 2 are an evidence of vour intelligence."

to
Rousseau often meets us in the pages of the Christian apologists of France and Germany. Like Lord Byron he is reasonable onlv when,
1
Dnm-i KL Some
of the deepest
and most trenchantPascal.

it
ideas of Pope are identical with those of may he that Pope borrowed them; but
It
also
may
be that two clear and Catholic minds ran in the same groove when fixed on the same truths.
-
Lasserre,
L"
Esprit
et In
Chair,
p.
19.
20

it
with sincerity, us eloquent us

lie
is
reckless,
cunbeurs witness uguinst himself. not afford to ignore writers of this stump. They huve met mu-ny of us on the threshold
at the period when tuste und char und principles are formed, und when too often the imagination und the pussions
We
of
life,
acter
leave
little
room
;
in
the
mind
for reason or
consideration
but
when
us time
went on
took for
we found those
whom we
once
messengers of life und strength expiring in intellectual und moral despair, the warning It is wus like a message from the dead.
true that irreligion und the pussions huve
a
new prophet
Tricks his
for
every generation,
t/
who
oefutifs,
and
it/t
new-spangled ore
the
Flames
in the
forehead of
morning
ski/,
only the manner that changes, the matter remains the same.
but
it
is
In availing ourselves, by the way, of the acknowledgment of writers who are wise
only
in
lucid intervals,
line
we
are
certainly
taken by Pascal. When things are evident, he affirms that they are certain, and he does not invoke assist-
departing from the
PASCAL ance
WAY TO
"
BELIEF.
21
from any one. M. Bossuet," says like a general marshalling his Havet,
"is
army.
swift
Pascal fights in single combat,
and
silent,
but
fierce
and
terrible
rising at times into sublimity which Bossuet himself has never reached. Pascal, says
M. Sainte-Beuve,
which are finished,
still
wonderful in
is
:
"
his writings
when cut
truth
in
short
perhaps more wonderful n which conies to this,

like
that
his sentences,
a planet
riung from the hand of God, goes on its way because it must go on. He does not tell us
how
he conquers
but there
in
is
a mysterious
fascination and
of reason
power
this manifestation
working by
itself,
which sets us
to verify the problems, and when we have done so they become our own, and what is
our own
rowed
useful than anything bor from the learning of others. On all

is
more
the fundamental evidences of Christianity Pascal s arguments are within the grasp of the
simplest mind, and so we are saved from those long processes of reasoning in which both writer and reader so often lose their way:
1
Etude
mr
les
Pensees, pp.
4, 5.
22
"(live
THK DIVINITY OF
JEST
CHHIST.
us your opinions and spare us expla safest as well as the easiest nations," is the that can be said on the rule when
other side
is
nothing worth attention
and of
all
the
debts we owe to Pascal, one of the greatest that is the clear way in which he teaches,
proving the obvious
is
and \ery often

1
loss
always loss ot time, of the mental ground

the author of the
writer
we stand on. With the exception

liniliit HHt,
<f
<>t
Clu
ixl,
no uninspired
has become familiar to the thoughts of the
multitude
outside
his
own
land.
Every
Pascal
attempt
into
to put the
wit and irony of
need It failure. English has been a so with his simple statements of not be Here there is nothing Christian Evidences.
so weak," says Pascal, "as the language eaeli seek to define primitive terms and every one defining the same tiling in his own manner, they confuse everything, and deprived of all
1
"Nothing is
of those
who
order,
and
of
all
light,
they wander
in
inextricable
embarrassments."
Esprit (Jfonietrii/ue, pp. 605-9. Whether this principle is universal or not, does not concern us anyhow it comes as an encouragement
DC
to those
who have
neither talents nor time for
meta
physics.
PASCAL
WAT TO BELIEF.
23
singular or even new, no perfume that is lost in travelling, nothing of his own ex
cept his marvellous condensation of thought,
and simplicity of expression,
for
it
was
his
fixed principle that novelty and originality in the treatment of truths which were al
ready the common property of the reason of evidence of foolish vanitv mankind, was an in the writer, and of error in his reasonings".
"
best introduction of Pascal to English readers, will he to examine how it was that
his
Uur
tion on the
ers to
mind worked same
its
way
to religions convic
lines as those great reason -
whom
have alreadv alluded, who are

If
the stars in our intellectual firmament.

Pascal stood alone, or took a
it
way
of his own,
would
l>e
imprudent
to follow
him
it
is
his fellowship with the wise, and clear-headed in all ages that gives us security. Lf lie has made mistakes, so has Newton but
;
because they were both reverent followers and servants of truth, who never tried to
confine
it
in their
own
cisterns,
they cast
off
their errors in their flight like superfluous feathers from the eagle s wing.
To
besfin with Sir Isaac
Newton. Few men
24
have won so much admiration, even from this as extraordinary man.

antagonists,
Earnestness, simplicity, pure love of truth
amounting
to
passion,
\vith
intellectual
words and humility, arc stamped upon 1 Sir David Brewster, a biographer, writings. well prepared for the om ce, says of Xcwton,
all his
never even suspected of vanity," and continues in the words of Dr. Pember"
He was
ton,
"But
this at
immediately discovered
once both
surprised
in
him,
which
and
charmed me.
stiff in
Neither his extreme age, nor his universal reputation had rendered him
this
Of opinion or in any way elated. had occasion to have almost daily

The remarks
on
the
I
experience.
continually sent
/V/y/r//>/V/
him
by
far
letters
were
received with the utmost goodness.
These
from being in any way displeasing to him, that on the contrary it occasioned him to speak many kind things of me to his
were so
Even De Maistre cannot
find
it
in his heart to
be
angry with Newton for his anti-Catholic commentaries on Scripture, upon which he entered with imprudence as great as that of Pascal when he wrote on moral
theology.
PASCAL
friends,
WAV TO BKLIKF.
25
a
and to honour
me
with
public
testimony of his
one, good opinion." when a therefore, will doubt his sincerity do short time before his death he said
:
No
not
know what
may
appear to the world
but to myself 1 seem only like a boy playing by the sea-shore, and diverting myself in
now and then

a prettier great ocean & before
finding a smoother pebble or shell than ordinary, whilst the

of truth lay j
1
all
undiscovered
Pascal dealt
me
"-
The
fact that
Newton and
with the evidences of Revealed Religion in the same spirit, is the more remarkable when
we
reflect
how
respects,
save
they were in all This their use of reason.

different
resemblance in their style can be verified all the more easily, seeing that both their
minds worked on the same

matical
lines.
strict
mathe
All the
world knows
how
great was Newton s mastery of the exact sciences but every one does not know that
;
even
when
a child
Pascal
mathematical
knowledge amazed
1
his masters,
and a
little
Life of Newton, Brewster, p. 338.
Murray, 1831.
26

In Pas
Perrier, a
it
later astonished Descartes himself.

cal s Life,
by
his sister
Madame
biography so perfect in ever} seems as if no one else can

another,
way that
venture
s
on
she
tells
us that
Pascal
father,
himself a learned mathematician, and con scious of the fascinations of the study
studiously kept it out of sight in the edu cation of his son, which lie himself con
ducted, as his one idea was that he should master the classics. One day, however, Pascal being in his twelfth year, his father
entered the playroom and found the boy on his knees on the floor, so absorbed in
working out mathematical problems, that like Archimedes at Syracuse he was un

conscious of everything else. Then he ques tioned him, and found that the child, who
had never even learned the names of and lines, calling them "rounds" and
circles
"bars,"
had
worked out for himself definitions, axioms, and perfect demonstrations, and had travelled at a hound, the road on which, probably, Euclid had to go slowly, and that
as
far
as the thirty-second
proposition
of
that author.
The amazement
of M. Pascal,
PASCAL
WAY TO BELIEF.
is
-7
finding vent in tears,
told with wonderful
his daughter, and simplicity and beauty by needless to say, henceforth M. Pascal made to restrain the mathe no further
attempt
It is impossible matical genius of his son. to conjecture what Pascal might have done like Newton, he had given himself up if,
to
laws that govern the visible universe; but from his earliest years we see that he thought more of man himself
the study of the
than
<>f
the world in which
man
lives;
and
some ten years before his death the universe itself and all that it contains became to him
like the poet s
in
baseless fabric of a
vision"
the presence of Jesus Christ,
whom
he
so vividly recognised as at once the centre the one of all things and
;
interpretation Light of the World,"
in
the
past,
the
future. present and the But to return to Sir Isaac Newton. Sir
David Brewster
Newton
and
his
of gives us the essence belief, extracted from his works
conversations,
from
which
it
is
clear that
he was as calmly convinced as

de Pdwtl,
1
\"><-
;tj).
Havet,
p. 40.
28
THE DIVINITY OF JKSTS CHRIST.
Pascal himself, that Jesus Christ was that
one and only he had found

in
(TO<!
whom
In-
adored,
whom
in
the rising and
the light of the stars, and the setting sun, and so
thus uniting philosophy "By with religion, he dissolved the league which genius had formed with scepticism, and
says Brewster,
<~
"^
added
to the cloud of witnesses the brightest
name of As we
ancient and of
shall
modern times
far
1
.
see,Xewton was
from think
stars,
ing that the discovery of
God
in the
and of the .Messiah in Prophecy, was a sign of weakness of mind, indeed it is plain that
he agreed with the Prophet David that
1
it
was
Life
<>f
X<-n
ti,n,
p.
SL
This
will
probably be
as great a surprise to some people as the religious convictions of M. Kmery were to the French jJtiloxopk*;
who asked
"if
it
was possible that so clever a

".
man
could
believe in religion
Napoleon
relations with the
Abbr
Emery were very remarkable.

heroic Superior of St. Sulpice,
As
far as
know, the
were almost the only
brave, who resisted too much for him. It
and Cardinal Consalvi, once great and Napoleon, and they were both
ecclesiastics, at
is
to the credit of
for
Napoleon
that he
"
had a genuine admiration

the only
man,"
M.
He
Emery.
is
he said,
"
who can make me
afraid."
PASCAL
WA\ TO BELIEF.
it
oq
tool
.
other way, and that q uite the
was the
who
"said
in
is hi* heart there
no God
\s
,;
neither .\ewhave already observed has as far as 1 know, nor any one else,
I
of the exact sciences carried the principles Pascal. of Revelation as far into the heart with atheists Newton dealt principally oft the common and restricted acceptation distinction no while 1 asral makes W( ,,,l of Cod, and the nef between the negation and thus he anticipated tion of Jesus Christ, in our times, that tail the truth, so manifest and faith in Go,l once in a personal God, live or die together visible oil earth, must and that darknes: in Christian societies, is the that of heathenism "reater than
even
punishment
1
of wilful
and obstinate
rejec
of Christ.
i
We
find tins idea in
artinal
Neman.
"
become I n.testm.t, Catholicism, and yon n,f l,b in a dreadfn! but Deist, PanTheist, Sceptic accident of ûc, yo infallible, by some cession; only not not -nf.l ,b e -nind ,,n,y Ition and of yonr cast of violence of religion, <lomg dismiss the subject !,
nlaru mtanan,
I
you ora duties, ov to to your reason, devote yourself of the world.
,li
J,,ate them
in
engagements
3IM
30
When
therefore,
from
to
the
principles
have presided over the creation of the sidereal world, and the laws which now govern it, Newton proves the
necessity of an abiding supernatural intelli
which are understood
gent
ruler, lie
brings us face to face with a
God who
do
is
so,
has done as He willed, and can still and whosoever is dear on these points
In his letters prepared for Revelation. to Dr. Bentley. he says that when he wrote his treatise about our svsteni, rf.z., the
third book of the
Pr nicjfnn,
"
he had an
eye upon such principles as might work, with considering men. for the belief of a and he expressed his happiness that deity," it had been found useful for that purpose, and the magnificence of his illustrations, and the way in which his science makes the
silent
heavens
speak,
give an
almost un
;
paralleled sublimity to his style
while
its
simplicity
is
an
illustration
of
Pascal
is
principle that the truly great writer who has the gift of saying great
he
things in a
way which
1
inferior
minds can understand. 2

Havet,
640.
Life of Newton, p. 286.

2
De
Esprit
Gvoinetriijiie,
p.
PASCAL
WAY TO BELIEF.
31
In the following extracts, wherein we con Newton going as far template the mind of
into infinity as it is given to reason to go, we find none of those unmeaning adjectives,
which
arc
a disgrace to science,
and the age

writings
"
which tolerates them, Professor Huxley and

argument,"
in
the
of
his
school.
His
runs
thus
Had
says Sir David Brewster, a natural and blind cause,
without contrivance and design, placed the

earth in the centre of the
moon
of
his
orbit,
and
Jupiter
in
the
centre
system of
Satellites,
and
the sun in
the centre of the
sun would have been planetary system, the and the earth, that is, like Jupiter a
body
without light and heat, and consequently, he (Newton) knows no reason why there is
only one body qualified to give light, to all the rest, but because the author of the
and because system thought it convenient, one was sufficient to warm and enlighten all and he continues in the words of the rest,
"
Newton
stood,
"
To make such
a system with
all
its motions, required a cause which under
and compared together the quantities

bodies of the sun
of matter in the several
32

planets,
and
and the gravitating powers

;
re
sulting from thence
the several distances
of the primary planets from the sun,
and of
the secondary ones from Saturn, Jupiter and the earth, and the velocities with which
planets could revolve about those quantities of matter in the central bodies
;
those
these things in so great a together variety of bodies, that cause to be, not blind and for argues
all
and
to
compare and adjust
tuitous, but very well skilled in
mathematics
and
geometry;"
of innate
and again, on the hypothesis gravity, and the necessity of a

agent
of
to
supernatural
reconcile
the
inde
pendent powers
the
"For
various
if
heavenly
bodies, he observes,
there be innate
gravity, it is impossible now for the matter of the earth, and all the planets and stars, to
Hy up from them, and become evenly spread through all the heavens without a super natural power and certainly that which can never be hereafter without a supernatural power, could never be heretofore without the
;
same power
1
Life of Newttm, pp. 287, 87-90.
PASCAL
WAY TO
BELIEF.
33
Perhaps
witness to
man
its
never made
dumb
matter
language, out syllogisms with worlds as the members of his propositions, applied the same prin ciples to Revelation. "Sir savs Isaac," Brewster,
"regards
Creator in more intelligible and this reasoner who worked
the
prophecies of the
Old and
New
s
Testament not
curiosities,
gratify to foreknow
men
given to by niablmo- men

that
after"
as
things,
were
fulfilled,
the event, and afford convincing arguments that the world is governed by Providence. He considers that there is so much of this
they they might be interpreted by
but
prophecy already fulfilled, as to afford to the diligent student sufficient instances of
God
Providence."
With regard
to the other great
names
have given of men whose belief in Jesus Christ was on the same- level as their belief
the Creator and Ruler of the universe, Lord Bacon In the naturally comes first. extract from his Ewii/ on following ixm
in
Ath<
we
see
how
1
tranquilly his
mind runs
in the
Life of Newton, p. 280.
34

lines as those of Pascal
is
true,"
same
"
and Newton.
that
a
little
;
It
he
"
writes,
philosophy inclines man s mind to atheism but depth in philosophy bringeth man s For while the mind about to religion.
mind
upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked to
of
man
looketh
must needs fly to Providence and Here we have philosophy like that Deity." of Newton which carried him from star to star, and from prophecies to their fulfilment, finding God everywhere; but it is in Bacon s
gether,
it
incidental allusions
of
regarding the Divinity

the
clear
Jesus
Christ
that
Christian
convictions of this extraordinary, but very unbalanced genius shine out, as for instance
in the last lines
of his sublime
facts
Essay on
Goodness:
are
"The
many.
If a
man
it
teous to strangers,
1
and signs of goodness be gracious and cour shows he is a citizen
Lord Campbell, in his judicial, and convincing defence of the Christianity of Bacon, regards these allusions as specially conclusive in favour of Bacon s
sincerity.
Life of Lord Bacon,
p.
229.
PASCAL
of the
WAY TO BELIEF.
that
his
35
is
world
and
heart
no
island cut off from other lands but a con
tinent that joins to them. If he be com towards the affliction of others it passionate
shows that
that
If
is
his heart
itself
is
like the
it
noble tree
wounded
his
when
gives the balm.

it
he easily pardons and remits offences,
shows that
so that
mind
it
is
planted above
injuries,
hecannot be
shot.
If he be thankful for
shows that he weighs men s minds and not their trash. But above all, if he have St. Paul s perfection, that he
small benefits,
would wish
to be
an audihcuui from Christ

of his brethren,
l
for the salvation
it
shows
much
of a divine nature, and a kind of con

Himself."
formity with Christ
The strong and unmeasured language of Dr. Johnson, and Edmund Burke when deal
ing with unbelief and unbelievers, is well known, and is counted very bad taste by
those
who
to
attempt
to
erect
it
into
principle are only
that
expressions be tolerated
of
indignation
political,
when
pecuniary, or personal interests are at stake.

1
Essay*, Chandos ed., pp. 29, 23.
36
"
of a Imagine a writer now-a-days saying Professor of the unknowable," as Johnson

"
he had just light take himself to hell," or with enough to a foul as Burke, stigmatising atheism unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and Burke believed consolation of mankind".
said
of Gibbon, that
and it was his way to say the whole truth whenever the occasion required his words are identical with those it, and of Bacon in his terrible indictment of 1 Even Newton, the "lone watcher atheism. of the stars," was equally intolerant, and
what he
said,
he severed his friendship with Mr. Whiston,
when the
latter questioned
Newton
;
belief
also, in the Divinity of Jesus Christ on similar grounds, with his old
and
apparently
college
astronomer Dr. Halley, whose frivolous impiety was 1 have studied more than he could endure and you said Newton, these
friend,
the
celebrated
"
"
questions,"
2
have
not".
This
is
what
is
now
called
"
obscuranti-
29. Essays, Chandos ed., p.

Life,
by Brewster,
pp. 284, 339.
PASCAL
cism,"
WAY TO
BKLIEF.
37
that terrible imputation, which of itself has submerged many a reasoner less strong
than Sir Isaac Newton.
This word would
know
hind
never have obtained the power which we it to have, were it not that it has be
it
the whole force of that wild wave of
modern opinion which declares that one man has as good a right as another to speak and
to write about religion, and that it is tyran nical, as well as offensive to tell him that lie
The announcement of an incompetent. inherent omniscience in everybody, is very

is
attractive to people who are as disinclined to study as they are to restraint, and have
been
by that flattering philosophy, Kantian and such like, which tells them that
to
fed
all
that they want for time and eternity is be found in themselves but this was
;
not the opinion of Newton, and his stern re buke loses none of its force when addressed
to
very inferior to Dr. Halley, who in our own times are emulators
intellectually
men
of his frivolity, impiety, and self-assurance. Pascal s estimate of the free-thinkers of

liis
his
day was similar to that of Newton. From youth he] looked on them as people
"
38
possessed by the false principle that human reason is supreme over all things," and
although persuaded of the clearness and cogency of his ideas about religion he did
"
not
believe
that necessarily
it
should
be
so with
others
his
who were
first
indifferent,
and
therefore
step
before
entering
on these questions, was to find out whether his questioners were really in earnest in
their search for the
1
truth".
"Let
them
it."
learn at
is
least,"
he says,
"what
the religion
before they attack This, he says, they do not do, adding, and I hope to demonstrate here that no reasonable person makes such an assertion
assail
;
which they
nay,
dare
to
affirm
that no reasonable
know well person has ever done so. is the of people in this way enough what of mind. They imagine they have temper
made
tion,
We
great efforts in the
way
of instruc
when they have spent
a few hours
in reading
some book of Scripture, and have questioned some ecclesiastic on matters of

This done, they boast that they have
1
faith.
Vie de Pascal, pp. 45, 53.
PASCAL
WAY TO BELIEF.
39
searched in vain in hooks and amongst men. But in truth 1 tell them, as 1 have often told
them, that this negligence
is
insufferable.
The question at interests of some

selves
issue
is
not
the trifling
stranger, that it should be dealt with in this fashion it concerns our

;
and
all
that
we
possess.
...
can
have nothing but compassion

are
for those
who
doubts, mourning and who, regarding them as the final term of all evil, and sparing no efforts to escape from make this search the principal and most them,
serious
in the sincerity of their
of
their
occupations.
life
But
as
for
those
who go through
life,
of this last end of

in a
without thinking etc., I look on them
This negligence in a matter which concerns themselves, their
very different way.
eternity,
and
all
that they possess, irritates

;
me more than it stirs up pity it amazes and fills me with fear, it is a monster to my
mind.
I
do not say this under the impulse
of the pious zeal of spiritual devotion. On the contrary I take it, that this my state of
mind
is
a duty enforced by principles

self-love itself.
bound
race,
up with the interests of the

and by those of
human
There are
40
THK DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST.

two
classes
who ran he called reasonable those who serve (Jod with their whole heart because they know Him and those who seek Him with their whole heart because they know Him
only
of persons
: :
not."
This ninth chapter of the /V//>rVx tells how great was value Pascal set on the
th<
other
world,
and
the
soul
of
man.
and
reveals the sources of that weariness with
everything else in this world, which came over him in the prime of life, and in the
All plenitude of his intellectual triumphs. the material world," he writes. the firma
"
"
ment, the
stars, the earth
and
its
kingdoms,
are not equal to the least amongst spirits, fora spirit knows all these things, and itself;
and the body knows nothing. things in one. and all spirits
all
All material
in
one,
and
their productions, are not worth as

least
as the
impulse of the love of this belongs to an order infinitely exalted.

:
much God
more
\\
ithout real veneration for
ticular,
man in par veneration for truth in general is

Ibi<L,
Pense es, pp. 242, 253.
p. 348.
ASC.U/S
WAY TO BELIEF.
a
41
little
more than
In
vague and unmeaning
de Sales,
is
}
speculation. Pascal
the spirit of St. Francis held that by reason man

j
constituted
Lc
/treniitT
<
*1r<
<lu
niondc
msible.
for
So
far did
that
individual
of
he carry his reverence dignity of the soul,

the
linage
ot
that that
avail
derivation
in
(Jod,
appeals to reason he refused to himself of any of those auxiliaries
which
other
men
use
"
their arguments.
pressing home in Never/ he savs,

in
"
definitions
than
those
and discourses, use other words already explained and per
And again, "Nothing fectly understood." is so commonplace as things that are good
;
all
that
1
is
wanted
is
discrimination
with whose
and
it
In like
manner
St. Teresa,
spirit, as
we
:
shall see, Pascal

"The
had extraordinary sympathy, writes more we are aware that He communicates Him
the more shall we praise His great
self to creatures,
ness,
in
and endeavour to have a high esteem of that soul which our Lord takes such pleasure and delight
soul each one of us has.
lint since
and such a
we do
not prize her as a creature, made after the image of God, deserves to be, neither do we understand the
great secrets which are concealed within Interior Castle, 1th Mansion, ch. i.
her."
The
42
is

all
certain that they are at our door, as well as
natural to us and
to the whole
known
world,
only
people do not learn how to
notice them.
This
is
the universal
la\v.
It
is not in things that are extraordinary and fantastic that excellence of any description We rise to seize them, and is to be found.
we wander away from them

rule
is
the
common
to
descend.
The
best
books are
those
which people, as they read, think that they themselves might have written. Nature which alone is good, is altogether
familiar
and common.
:
We must
not
compositions ever lal tour ing and ever on the stretch, till a man with silly presumption, the fruit of an elevation
strain the spirit
which
is
not natural to him, and with vain

in place of solid
1
and ridiculous bombast

vigorous nourishment. bombastic style."
l
and
detest this puffing,
And so did St. Augustine, and so has every man before his time and since, who detected
and detested falsehood under all
In his day philosophers
1
"
its disguises. identified crimi-
De
Esprit Geome triqiie,
p.
641.
PASCAL
WAY TO
BELIEF.
43
nals with gods, that crime
might cease to
its
be
counted crime,
when
perpetrators
1
were depicted as imitators of gods in heaven, What rather than of men in hell".
matters
right
:
it
how man
is
is
robbed of
his birth
that
"character
of the Deity without
which man
thing, no better than
a busy, mischievous, wretched 2 a kind of vermin

"?
The language
stronger; for
kind, and
11
of
Edmund Burke
worse
in
is
even
time.
he was
a passionate lover of his
things were
his
They who do not love religion, hate it. The rebels to God perfectly abhor the Author
of their being.
heart, with
soul,
all
They
all
hate
Him
with
all
their
their mind, their
with
all
.
their
and with
strength
He
never presents Himself to their thoughts but to menace and alarm them. They cannot strike the Sun out of Heaven, but
they are aide to raise a smouldering smoke that obscures Him from their own eyes.
Not being
God,
1
able to revenge themselves on they have a delight in vicariously
defacing, degrading, torturing and

Confessions of
tit.
tearing
Augustine, bk.
i.,
p. 16.
Bacon
Essays, Chandos
ed., p. 22.
44
in
THE DIVINITY OF
pieces His
JEST S CHRIST.
image
in
num.
"
In
other
this
"
writings he explains what he rose from the "smoke" that

of
Voltaire,
"
means by
obscenities
and
into
the
"adulterated
meta
physics
"
of
"
Rousseau
and
Helvetius,
mere smuggled England and magpies of philosophy," and by jays writers of whom he says the work be
by the
:
"If
pompous and
sure, as its
puzzles".
unmeaning,
dazzles,
its
success
its
is
pomp
is
and
vacancy
writes
fly
In a similar style, Pascal
that
Miod
hidden from those who

all
from Him with

"
their
hearts,"
and that
the understanding of the benedictions of the future depends on the heart which
easily claims that which
1
it
loves
"."
Regicide Peitcc,
Pensees, pp.
.
ii.,
p.
ll J,
37l>,
3S1.
Payne s ed. The same idea, that we

love,
only really take

is
in,
and learn that which we
very clearly and powerfully expressed by Carlyle. Of Dante he says: "The Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante s song, had produced the
Practical Life of which Shakespeare was to sing. For then, as it now and always is, was the soul Religion
of Practice
;
the primary vital part in
man
s life.
Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk but, consider it, without morality, intellect
;
PASCAL
WAY TO BELIEF.
said
45
that
Enough has been
to
prove
believers have good reason to claim the best part of the lay-intellect of the world on their
side,
and
also that its highest representatives

in
they indignantly rejected the claim that ignor ance makes to an equality with knowledge
in
were intolerant
the
sense
that
religious o
discussions,
and
in
religious o
is
discussions alone.
tainty,
Wherever there
is
cer
intolerance
restrained
by prudence.
moral duty, only Never were there
more unfettered minds than those whose opinions we have been studying, and one and all they held that the assailants of the
as Natural
fundamental doctrines of Revealed, as well Religion, were put out of court
by reason
itself,
and therefore that they

:
were impossible for him a thoroughly immoral man could not know anything at all To know a thing,
!
sympathise with
it.
it
that
is,
be virtuously related to
If
.selfishness at
he have not the justice to put down his own every turn, the courage to stand by the
dangerous true at every turn how shall he learn 1 His virtues, all of them, will be recorded in his know
ledge."
Lecture* on Heroes,
Hi.,
pp. 261-3.
Carlyle
:
admired the religion of Dante and Shakespeare what would they have thought of the religion of Carlyle
!
46

to be heard.
had no claim
it
matters not that our
For our purpose allies differed on
points in Revealed Religion, deduced and developed in the course of time, so long as
they were convinced that the evidences that Jesus Christ was God were as conclusive as
those which creation bears to
its
Creator.
Great
minds are
find
fortresses
wherein
the
populace
shelter,
and their reasonable
indignation like cannon thundering from the battlements gives a sense of security. Here
we have philosophers whose

telligible
ideas are in
all
at all
times and to
men
to
the Hottentot as well as to the
European-
writers whose every argument is an honest attempt to establish an agreement between their own minds and that of the reader,
that concord
may
double the strength of
and on the other side a new philosophy beginning and ending in the unknown, without common principles or common language, whose end seems to be O O
conviction
;
merely to give
for
its
authors
an
exercising
ground god is merely a thing dreams are made

of"
their
own
conceits,
"
and whose
stuff
of such
as
PASCAL
If
it
WAY TO BELIEF.
47
is
said that now, as in the days of
Voltaire,
letters
the
majority in the
republic
of
and sciences is on the side of freethought and unbelief, it may be answered that whatever authority is attributed to
majorities in politics and domestic affairs, no one has ever pretended that they are
pure thought and exalted speculation. Entering these the most imperious and self-sufficient regions mind must select an individual guide and
master.
"
"
worth much
in the realms of
Is,
"
then,
example
nothing
It is everything. says Burke. Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other and they alone
"
are
safe
first
who
as
are
ever
to
submitting
the
to
their
own
the
thoughts
well
as
judgments of
those
of
wise,
as
it
time
and
experience,
his
"
was
with
Burke
about
he
himself and
Bolingbroke.
"
early
I
impressions
When
was very
young,"
a popular fashion told me to admire says, this writer a little more maturity taught
;
me
as
much
1
to despise
him."
With such
Regicide Peace,
p. 90.
48
an example, none of us need be ashamed The present generation has to reconsider.
been educated on certain

"
lines,
and been
of
in
"
told
to
admire
ne\v
philosophy
it
infinite
common
If
anything assumption. with the spirit and the principles

then
it
Has
of the writers we
not,
have been considering ? is antagonistic and de

:
structive.
We
cannot adhere to both
our
minds cannot go up and down at the same time we must take, our part with Pascal, Newton, Burke or with Voltaire, Kant and Hegel, and to mariv it will turn out that the O
:
consequences of their choice will be quite as grave as those of which the Prophet spoke
when he
two
li
said,
lloir IOIHJ
do
be
//on halt betireen

(,
.svVA s
f if the
Lord
od
s
folloir him,
but if liaal then folio ir him For my own and the reader
I
sake
wish
the
could
continue
of
this in
discussion
in
company
tongue
;
writers
I
our own
said,
but, as
far
have
Pascal,
mother none of them

in
all
went
so
as
who
and
2.
his latter
years saw Christ alone,

1
things in
3 Kings xviii.
PASCAL
WAY TO
hope
BELIEF.
to
49
into
Him.
cannot
transmit
another language the beauty and the fire of his style, and therefore my hopes of
getting a hearing are founded on the in herent majesty and beauty of the subject,
and on the earnestness of readers with con minds and tastes similar to those
"
sidering
men
"
to
whom
Sir Isaac
Newton
in
addressed his religious observations third book of the Principia.
the
CHAPTER
II.
THE study
Jewish people has increased rather than diminished in im which have elapsed portance in the centuries of Pascal. They are a wonder since the days even more inexplicable than the Church her
self, for
of the mysterious vocation of the in their relations to Christ,
with them
is
ment, or growth.
people
without develop From age to age the

life
the rejected Christ perpetuate was the punishment of living death which blindness. their wilful Nothing in the world,
who
nothing ever known in the world, bears any resemblance to the intellectual, and spiritual Their history and litera state of the Jews.
ture, their examples,
and ideals of truth and heroism, and beauty, which are ever expand soul of the ing and taking new life in the Christian, lie cold and dead in their own
hearts,
and the
Jew-
with
(50)
all his
marvellous
THE JEWS AND THE IK ABIDING TESTIMONY.

gifts of intelligence, goes
51
on
his
way from
the
in
age
to
age,
incapable
of
drinking at
fountains
which
God Himself opened
the souls of his forefathers.
As may be expected, Pascal, who ever

revolutions, philo sophies, sciences and literatures by a super natural standard, forms a very different
measures the world,
its
estimate of the Jews from that of writers

history find nothing more wonderful than themselves. Pascal s clear perception of the supremacy of Christ in the intellectual,
in
who
as well as the moral order, and the poverty and shortcomings of human nature in its highest manifestations, ever in his mind invests the Jews with that dignity which once was theirs by right divine as the heralds
If they have fallen so low, it is because they were once so exalted for we
;
of Christ.
must always remember that the abomina tions for which the Jews are rebuked by the
Prophets, were not only tolerated, but even made integral parts of the religions of the
Pagan:
".
"You
"
worship as
gods,"
said
the
the things you are ashamed to Christian, name The chastisements of the Jews were
52
evidence that they were God s own children, and His chosen people, from whom great
On this subject we things were demanded. have the advantages of some consecutive which tell us how much we pages of Pascal, should have had, if time had been given him other ideas in a similar manner. to
expand
see
He
starts thus
"I
how
I
the
Christian
religion
has
been built upon a preceding religion,

this is
and
.
what
I
find to be conclusive.
Then
all
behold religions in unstinted pro fusion in many parts of the world, and in
times.
please my attention.
But they have neither morality to me, nor proofs which are worthy of
And
so without distinction
would have put away the religion of Ma homet, and that of China, of the ancient Romans, and of the Egyptians, for this simple more signs reason, that no one of them having and nothing which of truth than another,
reason necessarily led me to a conclusion, one more than to another." could not incline to
pondering on this changeful whimsical variety of manners and beliefs

"But,
and
in
successive ages, I
find in a corner of the
53
earth a people distinct, and separated from all other nations of the earth the most
;
ancient of
centuries
all,
whose
histories
go back
many
beyond all
others,
however ancient,
which we possess. I find this people, the descendants of one man, great and numerous, adoring one only God, and following a law which they declare they have received from
His hands.
alone in
all
They
;
affirm that
it
is
to
them
God has revealed His mysteries that all men are corrupt, and in disgrace with God and all given over to their senses and their own humours,
the world that
;
and that from thence have come their strange errors, and interminable changes in religions, and customs whereas, they themselves remain fixed and unshaken in their course
;
but that
God
will
not for ever leave these
other nations in this darkness
deemer
selves
will
come
in
for all
Re that they them

;
that a
are
the
world that
they
may
announce
that they are established expressly as the forerunners and heralds of this great event to call on all
;
;
Him
to other
men
nations to unite with

this
deliverer."
them
in expectation of
54
"
THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHIUST.
This meeting with this people fills me with wonder, and seems to me worthy of
attention.
boast to
law which they have received from (ilod, and find

1
examine
this
that
it is
admirable.
of
all
In order of time
in
it
is
the
first
laws
even the word

(i
l<ur
such sort, that before was used amongst the

years,
reeks,
for
thousand
thev
it
(the
Jews) had received and observed

I
without
Thus am struck by the interruption. singularity of the fact that the first law to
be met with
in the
world
is
also the
most
perfect, so that
borrowed from
the greatest legislators have it, as appears from the law
of the Twelve Tables at Athens, which was
subsequently used by the Romans, as might easily be proved if it wen- not that .losephus, and others have said enough on the subject.
**
t/
But this law is of all others the most severe and rigorous in all that relates to the
. . .
observance
of
their
religion,
binding this
people, so as to keep them to their obliga tions, and that in a multitude of special and
irritating observances,
and these under pain
of death.
that
it
So that truly it is astounding has been ever preserved with such

constancy, and for so
so rebellious
55
many
ages,
;
by a people
all other and impatient their states, from time to time, have changed laws, although in many ways more easy.
while
The book
laws,
is
in
which
this law, the first of all

is itself
contained,
the world
;
the most ancient
book in Homer, Hesiod and others more being some six or seven hundred years
modern."
With love and fidelity they (-any with them this book in which .Moses declares
"
that in the whole course of their career they have been ungrateful to God, and that he
foresaw
after
that they
would be
but
that
still
more
called
so
his
death
he
on
heaven
and earth to
bear witness against
them that he had taught them all they wanted he declares that, finally, God grow
:
ing indignant
them amongst and yet this book, which
disperse of the earth the nations

: .
with
them, would
in
so
many ways
dishonours them, they preserve at the cost This is sincerity without of their lives.
parallel in the world,
and without root
in
nature.
a very great difference between a book written by some one, which
There
is
56

casts
he
amongst a people, and a hook

has
which
as the
itself
made
the people.
is
No
one
can doubt that such a book

!
itself as old
people."
ways, and from many other points of view, Pascal turns his gaze on the Jewish people, and to rind
In
many
other
always
:
something which
is
an
evidence of their
evidence supernatural place in the world so obvious, that as we read, we wonder we

did not think of
"
it
before.
"
Visibly,"
he
say.s, the) are a people expressly formed to serve as witnesses to the Messias." They
carry the books with them, and love them, and do not know their And all
meaning.
the
this
was foretold
"
that
judgments of
"
God
should be confided to them, but as a

;
book sealed up and again, The more I examine them, the more truths I find in that which went before, and in that which
;
has followed.
...
find
this chain,
its
this
religion altogether divine, in in its duration, in its

1
authority,
its
perpetuity, in
Pensees, pp. 307-13. He refers us to Isaias
xliii.
10 and
xliv.
"
You
are
my
tvitnessez,"
etc.

morality, in
its
57
doctrine, in its results
the
appalling and predicted darkness of the Dahitur Jews, Erix palpans in meridie.
1
liber scienti litteras, et
dicet,
non poxxmn
will prepare us for the the prophetic dispensation which place Pascal gives to the Jews as a nation, and
in
These extracts
that in the present, as well as the As past. he remarks, it was a people who prophesied in the past by their national, and domestic
by their religious observances, and they are with us still that their testimony may never be for
laws,
life
and
traditions, as well as
gotten.
While spiritually the Jews are the most sterile and unprogressive of nations, they are a portent and a terror to the world in
that struggle for
1
"
its visible
treasures in which
is
Mayest thou grope at mid-day as the blind

to grope in the
dark"
wont
"
(Deuteronomy
xxviii. 29).
The
vision of all shall be unto

is
of a
book that
is
to one that
you as the words which when they shall deliver and learned, they shall say, Read this
sealed,
;
he shall answer,
xxix. 11).
cannot,
for
it
is
sealed
"
(Isaias
J ense es, p. 325.
58
their success has been so prodigious, that in the minds of most men, it obscures every
other national characteristic.
Not
so with Pascal.
"truth
"
Amongst the
away.
Jews,"
he observes, heaven the
was only
taken
typified.
In
veil
i*
In
the
veiled, and recognised by its relations with the tvpe. The type has been
Church
it
is
fashioned on
the
truth,
and the truth
is
seen in the
type."
remains because
it
it
was merely
Again, "The synagogue was the type, but because type it has sunk into cap
lasted
until
tivity.
The type
the
truth
came, so the Church was ever

iu the picture in the event."
visible, either
by which she was foretold, or

far
We
see
how
for
Pascal was raised above
that ferocious and unchristian hatred of the
Jews which
general.
in the light
many
centuries has been so
His desire was to give them a share
which was
in his
own
soul.
To
those
who
are in admiration at their ever-
increasing financial doubtless say that

1
domination
he
would
"
The
heareit of heavens
Pensees, pp. 323, 332.

i* the to the
59
Lord
*,
and
the earth
lie
hath
<jiren
children of
men"
and that
this
kind
of success, under the Christian dispensation,
and in spiritual sterility, and also that no such cases, a malediction

was often a sign of
;
one need fear the -lews who lived like a Christian, appetite, putting a muzzle on
"
l>y
the
universal
wolf".
The more we study
grows that his estimate of all things past and present was drawn lie looked on the from the inspired writers.
Pascal the clearer
it
Jews
in
the spirit
of
St.
Paul,
of
whom
"
Cardinal
Newman
says
that
:
he
was
at
once a Jeremias,
patriotic care for
and a David David them, and Jeremias

it/teak the
in his
in his
~
plaintive
and resigned
says,
nit/
"/
denunciations,"
as
when he
I lie not,
truth in Christ,
conscience hearing ntc witness
in
the
Holy
G hoxt
and
hare treat sad

<
ness
I
and continual sorrow

for
tn//
in, /////
heart.
For
irished myself to he
the
an anathema from
are
Jfr*h.
Christ,
hretlireu, irho
to
men
<(ccordimj
my kinsWho are
s. cxiii.
St.
aul,"
Occasional Sen/totts,
p.
100.
()()

t<>
Israelites,
trhoin
belongetli
<i/or>i,
Ihc a the texta-
of children, and the
<ind
mmi, and
Mt
rice
of the /tor, and the of (lod, ami the i>roini*ex ; and again, "For I hear them iritiiex* that theii ltd re (i of (Sod, hut not nccord nxj to
the
///>/>///
"
:<
<(/
"
kinnrledije
"/
MI//
then: Hath (Sod eaxt
a ivit ii
liix
aho am
(lod forb id. For / an Israelite, of tin xeed of Abraham,

i>eo/>le
of the tr ibe of Benjamin" The Jews have been, and are still, amount the most implacable foes of Christianity, and in the conflict, which so often has been
deadly, both sides have suffered
in their goods,
:
Christians
and Jews
here
is
in their
diameters.
the
Our business
national
to defend
against a false estimate of their religious

character which
Jews and
weaken our
mav very easily interest in their past history, or
even pervert our judgments. The anger of the Christian, and the scorn of the pagan ancient and modern, in this work to way
gether against the truth, and the majesty of divine revelation in the Old Testament
1
K[>.
to
Romans
ix.
1-4, x. 1, xi.
1.
THE JEWS AND THKIR ABIDING TESTIMONY.

is
(51
obscured by the blind bigotry of the in

Christian,
7
and the supercilious It is bad logic, scorn of the unbelie\ er. or rather no logic at all, as Pascal shows O
temperate
us, to identify the
Jew
Jew
is
before
Christ
of to-day with the But fallen as came.

it
is
the Jew from
his high estate,
clear
that Pascal would not allow that his avarice
more degrading than sensuality, or that Shylock was as bad as the foul and re Measure for Mea morseless tempter in I sure". question whether he had Nay,
is
"
so great scorn for the miser, as for slaves of what are called lawful pleasures, those who think that man s treasure is in the flesh, and
"
evil that
which turns him from the pleasures
of the senses, let such a
man
stuff himself
and die
".-
The Jews
inherit
the
been once great as a nation

1
"
glory of having but it does

;
"
Then must your brother die 1 Anyelo. hahdld. And twere the cheaper way Better it were a brother died at once,
.
.
Than that a
343.
sister,
Should die for

p.
ever."
by redeeming him, Act ii. 4.
62
THI:
mvrxiTY OF
.rr.srs
CHRIST.
not appear that Pascal will allow that this can be said of any pagan nation. He measures all men by their relations to God,
and nations bv their religions. J men whoso characters shine out

r~>
The great
,
>
in the
dark
ness of paganism were great by nature and

their
own inherent
strength,
which saved
debased
the
them from
multitude
;
religions
which
whereas, it was their religion which made the saints and heroes of the Old Testament. Now, the Jew with "eyes
"
that see not
and heroism
says,
has
"
has got these types of sanctity in that Hook which, as Pascal made the people," and still
;
preserves them and following his argument, the fact that for nigh two thousand years the teaching and example of characters like
Moses, David, and Klias. Ifuth, and Esther, has never produced fruit bearing anv re
semblance to the original,

that
"
"
is
an evidence of
of the
servitude mysterious which was foretold, gogue

that they possess
these,
syna
fact
lint the
ideals,
preserving
them with preternatural

ever in
It
is
tenacity, keeps them their place as witnesses to Christ.
the Church that gives reality, and a
63
Were she to to her antagonists. the Jew as well as the heretic disappear,
meaning
would become equally unmeaning, and soon have no spiritual place in the world. Hut,
while heresv changes like all the inventions of our fretful and rebellious nature, the Jew
has a predestined place marked out in the future, and a vocation, which, however long
delayed, must yet be fulfilled, according to the prophecy of St. Paul "For I would not
hare you
brethren, of thi* iniixtery (lent you should be wise // your otr/t that blindness in part ha* happened ceitft),
i<jnor<tnt,
-/
<-<>n-
Israel until the fulness of the Gentile* should come in. And so all Israel should
to
he
.sv/w/."
"
had all been says Pascal, Jesus Christ, we should have converted by no witnesses except those who were open to
If
the
"
.Jews,"
suspicion
and
if
exterminated,
;it
we should
is
have no witnesses
astonishing
all.
It
subject
and
worthy of singular con
sideration to see this Jewish people subsist ing so long, and always miserable, as it was
1
ED. to
Romans
xi.
25, 26.
64
necessary that as an evidence to Jesus Christ they should subsist as witnesses, and that having crucified Him they should
be miserable.
When Nabuchodonosor
car
ried off the people, lost it should be thought that the sceptre had been taken from Juda, they were told beforehand that they should
be only for a short time in captivity, and that they should be re-established. They
were
their
always
consoled
by the
without
promise of re-establishment, without prophets, without kings, without consolation, without hope,
is
kings were second destruction
continued.
prophets But the
because the sceptre has been for ever taken

away."
"
those
The Jews rejected Him, but not all who were holy received Him, and not
those who were carnal. And this is so far from being an obstacle to His glory, that
it
is the final stamp of its perfection. As the reason which influenced them, the
only one which is found in their writings, in the Talmud, and the Rabbis, was merely that Jesus Christ has not subdued the
nations with an armed hand, ytadinm
tuum

potentissime? Jesus Christ,
Is this all
65
He
they have to say ? they object, has been slain; has perished He has not conquered the
;
pagans by
spoils
;
force
He
He has not given us their Have has not given us riches.

;
they no more than

because of this that
love.
1
this
He
is
It is to say ? the object of my
would not have

It
is
Him whom
it is
picture.
plain that
His
life
they alone
which prevents them from receiving Him, and this refusal renders them irreproachable witnesses, and what is more, they accom
plish the
prophecies."
These bold
reflections, in
which the
"
facts
and the
of history, the teaching of revealed religion, naturally testimony of a soul
Christian,"
run together and end
in
the
same conclusion, are something more than No doubt mere philosophy of history. critics, who are critics and nothing more, will rind matter in them for disputation but as it was in his lifetime, so now in his book, Pascal does not wait for them. While
;
they are groping, and tumbling into pits

1
I
s.
xliv. \.
Penxfrs, p. 3G9.
66
THE DIVINITY OK JESUS CHRIST.

themselves,
lie
made by
him
to
has carried us with

lie
heights from which

:
looks over
the wide expanse

oiif
Cm-it
1
ii lt/
a, iuitli
ijic,
e<jle
ei/cx,
Hi
stared, at flu J n/
And
all
A/.s
men
n<ith
<!nzed
at each oilier
"/:
?///</
.ir/tiixr,
Silent vtoti a
in
Darlen.
It is this style of writings
which exercises
such an extraordinary fascination over the minds of free-thinkers like ^\I. Saintc-Beuve
men who seem

the sake of
its
to worship truth simply for
brightness and beauty, without any reflection on the obligations it

"
own
imposes.
"
When
seals
interprets of the Old
says this writer, the Prophecies, and lifts the

Pascal,"
Testament, when he
ex
plains
the
work of the Apostles amongst Gentiles, and the wonderful plan of

the
the designs of God, lie clearly anticipates Universal His Bossuet, the Bossuet of
tory
;
he opens
out
many
fields
to
be
surveyed, and filled up by the other." In conclusion it may be remarked that

1
Port-Royal, 2nd
eel.,
t.
iii.,
p.
3G4.

Pascal
s
07
most the Jews themselves, and it is of no slight importance that w e should he on terms
*/
i_
style of controversy is that which is likely to obtain ;i patient hearing from

^71
of chivalrous antagonism with this race. This was the spirit, and the
mighty
way
of
1
those saints
who had most

It
is
success in dealino o
with them.
that
"
whenever he saw a Jew, he
related of St. Philip Neri felt so
strong a desire for his conversion that at the mere sight he often broke forth into
tears
and sighs, and left no for his conversion In his

".
means untried work for Christ
he never divorced logic from charity, like

those
who deem they only wound Thy

"
when they and his success in the conversion of the Jews was not the least remarkable of those works which in
love Thee
foes,"
the
sixteenth
century won
title
for
him
the
1
extraordinary No one knows

will
"All
of
"
Apostle of
Rome".
when
come
in
which, as
that promised day St. Paul tells us,

;
Israel xhall he
the
sawd"
and
in
the
meantime
1
disinherited
of
the great
Bacci, Life of
M. Philip (2nd
cd.), pp. 42-50.
68
family of
God go on
"
their
way
in
what has
been well defined as

".
the utter sadness of the
unredeemed They are promised to the Church in language which has no parallel and as Pascal in the case of other nations
;
reminds
their stern, silent, unreasoning resistance, without O growth, and as religious O

us,
agents, without vitality of head or heart, is They part of their predestined mission. are silent about their ways, as if they dis
dained to justify themselves, and therefore understand their social rela it is hard to
tions
and customs.
One
that
thing, however,
is,
seems certain, and

the Jews,
woman
that amongst retains much of that dig-
nit} which God gave her at the dawn of If she has none of that new grace creation.
and
light
which has come from the

!
Woman
Our
at
above
all
women
-
glorified,
1
tainted uatuiv
it
is
solitary boast,
any
rate
clear that as the daughters
of the old covenant
have never withered
under the
legal slaverv of paganism, so now they are proof against that modern licence
1
Wordsworth,
"
The Virgin
".
69
wherein extremes meet with results equally

destructive.
Under either of these social conditions, the Jews as a nation would long ago have ceased to exist and thus even
;
the dead letter of the law remains as an
evidence of
its
first life,
and a prophecy of
what
is
promised
in
the future.
CHAPTEE
THK
I
III.
ROl HECIKS.
Mu
so
evidence of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, impressed the mind of Pascal as the
.Prophecies,
and
it
is
in
his
reflections
on
the nature of these proofs that his genius comes out with all its irresistible force.
JIc
calls
them
"the
dences for Jesus

his
greatest of the evi Christ". Pere Felix in
Divinitv, hold a different opinion, when he says, "The Divinity of Jesus Christ is the foundation of Christianity and Jlis Divinity
Conferences
to
on
our
Lord
seems
beyond
everything else
1
rests
upon
His
miracles".
Pascal argues that the miracles of Christ were of primary importance only
in
His
lifetime,
and
in the first stage of the O
life of the Church, before the Prophecies

1
were
Dame,
Jesus Christ,
p.
174.
Conferences de Notre
1864.
(70)
THE PROPHECIES.
fulfilled
71
by the Resurrection, tin.- destruction Jewish kingdom, and the victories of of the Christianity; and certainly Pascal s opinion
is
of the supported by the language
first
and writers. No doubt Si. Peter, St. Stephen, and St. Paul do not lake trouble to meet what Bossuet styles and such chicaneries of chronology, the had no need to do dith culties. like They
Apostolic, preachers
so.
They spoke
of the
subject excursionist into the distant
in
to people who were masters a way which no critical
past
can
now
hope even to approach. of the early Church in

Apostles,
From
the
the history Acts of the

of the
we
learn
that
the minds
Jews were prepared for the doctrine of the and this preparation was a Divine
Apostles,
work, like the doctrine
itself.
As
it is
with
was a everything in Holy Scripture, this to any wonder which has no resemblance
thing
known
before or since.
We
find, in
deed, enlightened nations, taught and guided of their by the writings or the eloquence
leaders
;
but how
much
of their
?
arguments
did they really understand

tors
like
Popular ora
Demosthenes and Cicero carried
72
the people with them when they spoke of of the invader, things such as the advance matters which or questions of taxation were obvious without knowledge of the past,
:
But in the the future. Jews we have a people who case understood that their past history was the and as clearly as interpreter of the present,
or views
about
of the
Pascal himself they saw the mystery.
They
understood arguments which creation, and were carried on
started with
in the history
of Abraham, Moses, and their kings and at the conclusion prophets, and they arrived Never did in Christ, that all was fulfilled
intellectual conviction give such evidence of as well as of sincerity, as in the case
light,
of that multitude of about three thousand
the da} of Pentecost, in the teeth of Pharisaical frenzy, backed by Roman

1
souls,
who on
were baptised, and made open pro The words fession of the Christian faith. of the Apostles, that of Pascal when he says he willingly believed men who were ready
tortures,
to be strangled for their testimony,

1
have a
Acts
ii.
41.
THE PllOPHECIES.
still
73
wider
and deeper significance
when
applied to people, chiefly strangers in Jeru salem, the majority of whom had probably
never seen the face of Christ.

appreciation of the way in which the Jews as a nation were, and are still,
Pascal
one of those subjects genius discovers evidences which have escaped other writers, and no
witnesses to Christ,
in
is
which
his
where
in his
in his writings
is
the vigour of his
mathematical reasoning more manifest than treatment of this evidence in its con
Like our own nection with the Prophecies. Johnson he does not seem to have had much
To Pascal it respect for secular historv. was the record of man, with man as the
witness
:
that creature of
a chimera then
is
whom
man
of
!
he writes,
What
all
Judge of
the
earth, things, trustee of the truth, sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the outcast of the
l
imbecile
worm
universe,"
and
therefore, on
rise
the principle
its
that the river cannot

source, there
higher than
was
1
little in
secular history to
Pensees, p. 230.
74
satisfy

Pascal
s
passion for
lie
certainty.
Jn
Jewish literature alone

suited
to
his
taste.
all
found
as
1
matter
As
far
Pascal
exceeds
in his
writers
ancient
know, and
modern
power of fusing and combin

be called disparate evidences.
ing what
may
Probably if we knew St. Augustine as well as M. Saci, we should say with him that
that was sublime in the language of M. Pascal he had already seen in St. Augus
"
all
"
tine
l
:
but who has read
all St.
Augustine
since
the
days
?
pupils tried to
his writings
when Jansenius and his make a new religion out of we have
Pascal sees things in one, which
vaguely contemplated separately, and then as we read, suddenly, we know not how, he
carries our
minds with him, and apparently

effort
l>ut
without an
conclusion.
"
we
are
landed at the
to return to his
argument:
the proofs of Jesus Christ," Amongst says Pascal, "the prophecies are the greatest.
all
The as Entretien avec M. Sad, Havet, p. 81. tonishment of M. Saci arose from the fact that, as he tells us, he knew that Pascal had not studied St.
1
Augustine.
THE PROPHECIES.
Moreover
lias
75
this i.s the point concerning which done most for the event in which they were fulfilled, is a miracle ever subsist ing from the birth of the Church until the end of all things. Thus God raised up for the space of six hundred prophets years and subsequently for a period of four
God
years, lie dispersed their pro phecies, as well as the Jews themselves, who
to every part of the world. Behold what has been the preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ, whose Gospel was to be believed
hundred
carried
them
by the whole world.

only that
lead
it
It
was
be
necessary
not
to
there
should
also prophecies belief, that these prophecies should be everywhere throughout the world, so that all the world
to
but
might receive
Him."
Were
posed Jesus
a
it
one
man
only
who had com
predictions concerning regarding both time and manner; and if Jesus Christ had come ac
Christ,
book of
cording to these prophecies,

infinite
force.
it
is
would be of
But there
much more
constancy,
here.
It
is
a chain of men, for the space
of four thousand years,
who with
76

after
It is
and without variation come one

other to predict this same advent.
the
an
entire people who announce it, and who sub sist for four thousand years to give corporate
witness of the promises they have received, from which neither menaces nor persecutions
can turn them
this
is
something remark
things."-
able in quite another order of

"The
t
of
the
ime predicted, according to the state Jewish people, the state of the
pagans, the state of the temple, the

of years. to predict
1
number
It
certainly needed a daring spirit the same event in so many
ways."
was necessary that the four idolatrous, or pagan monarchies, the end of the reign
>;
It
of .Juda, and the seventy weeks should come together at the same time, and all before
the second temple was destroyed that the period of the fourth monarchy, 2 during before the destruction of the second temple,
.
before the
kingdom
of the
Jews was taken

of
The quiet irony of this sentence resembles that Newton at p. 32. 2 The Roman Empire.
1
THE PROPHECIES.
77
away, in the seventieth week of Daniel, while the second temple was still standing, the pagans should be instructed, and led
on to the knowledge of that God whom O the Jews adored, and that those who loved Him should be delivered from their
enemies, and
love."
:
filled
with His fear and His
has come to pass that during the fourth monarchy, before the destruction
it
And
of the second temple, etc.,
the pagans in
multitudes adored God, and led an angelic life maidens consecrated to God their
;
virginity,
men gave up and their lives That to which Plato could every pleasure. not lead a few chosen men so well in structed, a secret and persuasive force im
;
pelled a hundred millions of ignorant in the strength of a few words."

"
men,
The
rich
abandoned
their
possessions,
and children their luxurious parental homes

for
the austerity of the desert, etc. What does all this Philo, the Jew).
?
(see
come
what was predicted so long For two thousand years no pagan before. had adored the God of the Jews, and in the
to
It
is
78
THE DIVINITY OF JKSUS CH1UST.
time predicted pagans in multitudes adore tliis one only (!od. The temples are de and kin^s themselves become sub stroyed,
jects of the Cross.
What
(
does
all
this
is
come
to
It
is
the spirit of
Jod which
diffused
over the
"
earth."
It is
predicted that in the time of the
Messias, fie would
come
to establish a
new
;
covenant which would bring oblivion on the going forth from Egypt (Jerem. xxiii. 5
Is.
xliii.
not
1G): which should place His law in externals, but in the heart that
;
Jesus Christ would place Tlis fear, which had only been without, in the centre of the heart. Who does not see the Christian law
in all this
"(It
?"
is
predicted) that the Jews would

(Jod
cast off Jesus Chris].
be cast
oft
by
that they should because the chosen vine

;U id
1
That the gave nothing but wild grapes. chosen people should be faithless, ungrateful and unbelieving, [n^ndum -non credentem at That God would strike them with blindness, and that they should
a>itii
(i.(U<:cnl t <ni;
Isaias v. 2.
Unmans
x. 21.
Isaias Ixv. 2.
THE PROPHECIES.
grope
like
79
blind
men
at
midday
that
precursor should (tome before

is
"(It
Ilini."
predicted) that Christ should be
little in
His beginnings and then increase.

stone of Daniel
(ii.
:.Jo)."
The
In-
little
is
"(It
predicted) that their idolatry should overthrown that this Mossias should
;
overturn
all
idols (Ezech. xxx.
13)
and lead
.
men to the worship of the true God. And never before or since has man appeared who has taught anything divine approaching
. .
to
this."
"(It
of
predicted) that He should be king the Jews and the entiles (Ps. Ixxi.).
is
And behold this king of Jews and Gentiles crushed by both, who plot together to put
Him
the
and destroying Moses in Jerusalem, its religion centre, where He founded His first Church, and the religion of idols in its centre at
to death, ruler of both,
of
Rome, where He founded Plis chief Church." Then Jesus Christ came to tell men that
"
they had no other enemies than themselves that these were their passions which separ
ator!
them from God
that
He
(tame
to
destroy them, and to give
men His
grace,
80

to
and
make
to
of
them
holy Church
that
that
He came
gather
into this
;
Church the
pagans and the Jews
He came
to
destroy the idols of the one, and the super stitions of the other."
themselves, not merely from the natural opposition of
Against
this,
all
men
all,
set
their lusts,
but above
the kings of the
earth banded together to destroy this
new
born
t in n.
1
religion, as
had been predicted

?
lt<
<i<
Quart
fremuei unt
bined,
the
(jeiitea
* ttdrcrsutt 67//v x-
All that was

learned,
mighty on earth com

the
wise,
the
kings.
Some
slew."
wrote,
others
in
condemned,
all
others
And
spite of
this
resistance,
without violence on their
side, these
all
simple
men made head
against
these powers,
and subjugated these kings themselves, and the learned and the wise, and took away
idolatry from the earth. brought about by that
And
all
this
was
power which had
been
1
foretold."
Ps.
ii.
2.
This sentence probably inspired Do Maistre when ho said of the Church that she "alone has withstood
the scatlbld, the syllogism, and the epigram
?
THE PROPHECIES.
is
"(It
81
liberate His people from their sins, eji nmnilntit iniquitatibus (Rs. cxxix. 8) that there should he a new Testament,
come who who would
predicted) that a deliverer should would crush the head of the demon,
which would he eternal

be a
that there should
priesthood, according to the order of Melchisedech (Rs. cix. 4) that it should be eternal that CHRIST should be glorious,
;
new
powerful, strong, and yet so miserable that He should not be recognised that they would not take Him for that which He is
;
deny Him, should no longer be His people that the idolaters would receive Him, and have recourse to Him, and that He would leave
;
;
that they would cast Him off and put to death that His people who should
Him
Sion
to set
;
idolatry
up His reign at tin- centre of that nevertheless the Jews should

end
;
last to the
that
at
He
should be of the
the time when they should no longer have a kino-." o o Let us reflect that from the beginning
race of Juda,
;
and
of the world, the expectation, or adoration of the Messias had subsisted without inter
ruption
that
men were found who
said
82
that
Cod
h;ul
revealed
lie
to
them
that
Saviour should
His people should
;
born who would redeem
then that
a
Aliraham came to
revelation that
l>y
declare that he had had
He
who
a sou. proceed from him that Jacob declared he Itoru to him should
;
that
amongst
honi
of
his
twelve children He should

;
br
.luda
that
Moses
and
ihe
declare the time and prophets then came to of His coming; that they as the manner
serted
that
the
la\v
which
they had was

;
only in expectation of that of the Messias that until then it should last, hut that the
other would
last
for ever
that thus their

it
law. or that of the Messias. of which

tor
was
the promise, should continue that in effect it has continued; on the earth that in fine .Jesus Christ has come in accord
;
evermore
ance with
This
is
all
these predicted circumstances.
wonderful."
I
think, has been quoted for our Some other diver into present purpose. the depths of Pascal, will no doubt see his
Enough,
v\
ay
still
further to develop his argument
but
THE PROPHECIES.
whatever
line
d
in
he takes
lie
will find that
the end Pascal will force him to go his way. The objections that Pascal does not argue
like other
men, that he goes too fast, is sometimes "emotional," and does not always finish his sentences, and that he quotes Scripture roughly from memory, remind
of the indignant complaints of those Austrian generals, who declared that Napo leon did not fight fair, because he would not
us
wait until they had arranged the battlefield Pascal writes as one who like a chessboard.
knew
live
that the truth
by its own not depend on his style, or on the arrange ment of his arguments, and the result is
so
he expounded could inherent strength, and did
that reason ascends her throne in his pages, that never perhaps was there a more
fascinating style, or logic
more conquering.
CHAPTER
IV.
OUR LORD JKSTS CHRIST.

"\VHATEVKR
people
who assume
the office of
say about the future, it is certain that, at present, there are no signs that interest in the life and doctrine of
prophets
mav
Christ
is
in
anv way diminished

or
of
their
for their
resurrection
ruin
He
abides
In
is
as
the
centre
is
men
:
thoughts.
Him
there
no change, of Jlim there

1)0
nothing
new
to
in
said
way
is
which
the only change is in the men look at Jlim, and one the ages go on, of their interminable
as as
mystery which grows

the
fact
that out
speculations, lawless, knowledge of Christ
well as
reverent,
increase
is
increases, and every an addition to His glory, and to
that of mankind.
The more w e
r
learn the
more cautious we
grow
in saying that
anything either true or

(84)

false in religious ideas is
infinite,
all
85
field is
new.
The
is
but the mind of
man
the
same
in
head and the pure heart ages. go to God now on the same lines and in the same way as of old. As M. Saci found that
clear
The
Pascal
thoughts ran
in
the
same
line as
those of St. Augustine, so in another sphere it does not need much study to discover
that
the
of
so-called
philosophy,
and
criti
cism
in
German and French
infidels,
are
great part, a re-appearance of some of the
innumerable forms of the phantasmagoria of ancient Gnostic-ism, borrowed or indigenous, in minds There is, similarly constituted.
however, one form of religious speculation, which is peculiarly new, as it is in great part a growth of time and the experience
mean what may be called the Philosophy of the Sacred Humanity of

of ages
:
Jesus
Christ;
of
Person
which, starting from the Christ as its centre, draws all
Revelation, dogmatic, moral, and historical, past and present, to itself as the end of all
religion.
Like so
much
that
is
most sublime
in the
writings of the first Fathers of the Church,
80
THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST
the expansion and development of Christian evidences lias been tin- growth of conflict. ialse brethren within the. In the first
ages,
Church,
"dividing
Christ,"
inspired
the
and Augus genius of Athanasiiis, Ambrose, tlie last century the enemy was hi tine, abso without, and made open profession of lute separation, and war to its last extremity. That war in which Voltaire was the leader
was
terrible while
it
lasted
beyond anything
the world had ever witnessed; but even in the lifetime of their master, his disciples saw that his rage had betrayed him, and that blasphemy of Christ ever stultifies
open
itself.
Never did angry and impotent
as
sailant
make
lie
so great a
blunder
as Voltaire
:
when
ous.
wrote the words wrasez linfdnie
they are as ridiculous as they are blasphem

Moreover, when Voltaire was vomiting forth what even Renan styles his exegesis
"
for disciples in Parisian, obscenity and Prussian stews, he was confronted in his own camp by a rival immeasurably his
"
of
superior.
Granting with Victor Hugo that the reign of Voltaire was an approach to

hell
87
upon
earth,
it
is
hard to overrate the

It
antagonistic influence of Rousseau. O
was
in fidelity in antagonistic ljucau.se it divided its attack on the Christian ideal, as repre
The effect of Rous sented by its Founder. seau s writings on his contemporaries must have been very great, if, as seems reasonable,
\ve
measure
it
by the use made of them by

greatest Christian
It
some
of the
writers
of
this century.
may
;
not suit the taste of
to bear every one to allow an unbeliever but it would be a bold witness to Christ
the part of thing to call it a mistake on such men as Lacordaire, Auguste Nicolas, and after all it agrees with and
llettinger
;
what the inspired writer has done case of Balaam the false prophet.
If it is said
in
the
that
it is
from Rousseau that
Renan and
1
"
his school
have learned the art
Voltaire alors rdgnait, ce singe de genie, Chez 1 homme en mission par le diable envoy
e."
Les Rayons
et les
Ombre*.
"apes
Napoleon had a
"
like
contempt
for
the
of
the eighteenth century ; and explained genius their influence by the fact that they addressed a race
of
of pigmies (un generation des nains).
88
THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHEIST.
of poisoning the wells
by jumbling together
it
praise and blasphemy,
that granting this it was the way of Rousseau.
be answered, does not follow that it
may
Were
it so,
do
not believe that the mask would have held
on to
his face for so long a period

in
or that
critics
he would have taken

as those
I
such keen
have enumerated, seeing that a

see
child
through the insincerity of Kenan. Rousseau, like Byron, was one who saw the truth clearly at intervals, and then from a corrupt heart the clouds arose and
all
can
was dark again. Very like the wild candour of Byron is the following estimate from Kousseau of his fellow-workers and associates I know not
"
wherefore they try to attribute the beauti ful morality of our literature to the progress
of philosophy. This morality, borrowed from the Gospel, was Christian before it was
philosophic;"
and again, have questioned philosophers, gone over their works, exam
"I
ined
their
various opinions
find
them
haughty, positive, dogmatic even in their

affected scepticism, ignorant of nothing, and good for nothing, laughing at each other

and
this
89
to
common ground seems
me
the
only one on which they are all reasonabletriumphant in attack, they are lifeless in de
their reasons, they are only those that destroy; if you sum up their each each one is reduced to his own
fence.
If
you weigh
ways,
one knows
he upholds
well
that
his
system
his
has
no
In
more foundation than that of another, hut

it
because
it
is
own."
the same style he deals with those philoso phers whose real merits he recognises when
an attempt
as
is
made
to bring
"
them forward
they
.say,
rivals to Christ.
Socrates,
invented morals
;
others before
them in practice what others had done

example into
him had put he did no more than say

:
he only turned their

Aristides
lessons.
had been
;
Leonijust before Socrates defined justice clas had died for his country before Socrates
V Education, iv., nouv. ed., pp. 297, best tiling the metaphysicians have done 349. The this may be a service of is to refute themselves
1
Eiuile,
ou
<le
the highest kind, because the detection and exposure of an error may be, and generally is, the discovery and The Philosophy of Belief, by vindication of a truth."
the
Duke
of Argyll, p. 539.
90

love of fatherland u
made
.solter
duty
JSparta \vas
;
forc
lie
bebefore Nx-rates praised sobriety hcid defined virtue Greece \vas rich
in virtuous
men.
.Bui
from whence amongst

he alone gave the
his
own
liad
Jesus drawn that exalted and
pure morality of which
From the midst lesson and the example? of tin: most furious fanaticism came the confess voice of the highest wisdom. ...
I
the majesty of the Scriptures astounds me, the sanctity of the Gospel speaks to my
heart.
Consider
all
the
writings of philoso
phers with
cant
their
pomp
how
insignifi
Is it pos they are in its presence. sible that a book at once so sublime and so
simple could be the work of possible that he whose history
men
man
Is
it
it tells
?
could
. .
have been himself merely a
Shall we say that the Gospel history has been an invention of fancy ? My friend, it is not thus that inventions are fabricated,
and the facts of the life of Socrates, which no one doubts, are less clearly attested than
those
of Jesus
Christ.
In reality this
is
merely pushing back the
difficulty without
removing
it
it is
more inconceivable that
OUH LORD JESUS

several
CII1UST.
91
fabri
together should have cated this book, than that one man should Never could have furnished its matter.
men
Jewish authors have discovered either this
and the Gospel has stylo, or this morality, marks of truth so sublime, so striking, so
absolutely
1
inimitable,
that
the
inventor
would have been more astounding than the and lastly, we have his declaration hero;"
that
"
If
the
lite
were those of a Jesus Christ were those of

tence which
and the death of Socrates death of sage, the life and the
a
God"
:
sen
re
Lacordairc believes will be

Christians
as
membered by
world
as
endures."
long
as
this
Even
far
if
our enthusiasm does not go so

of
that
Lacordairc,
this
it
certainly
does
strange appear has been one of the chief agents in start-
that
unbeliever
mo- this
is
new Philosophy
not the highest dence indeed, it is not of a nature to satisfy

those to
It of Comparison. evi form of Christian
whom
1
Christ
is
His own evidence.
Comparison, as an argument, requires equalEmile, ou de V Education,

Conferences, Jesus Christ,
ii.,
p.
157.
ii.,
p. 442.
92
ity

under certain
aspects and superiority in the things compared, and
under others
therefore nothing that has the stain of our tainted nature upon it can hold its own in
the presence of Christ. Comparisons with the inanimate universe, on which rests the
untroubled image of God, are alone worthy

of
Him who
did not scorn
To make himself
his
own creation ... It may not

;
be,
That one, who looks upon that
light,
can turn
To other
For
Is
all
objects willingly his view. the good, that will may covet, there
;
summ d
1
and
all,
elsewhere defective, found
Complete.
The discovery of
.
is
oreat minds & one of the greatest rewards of lono- and o

a trinity in
Dante,
I
i.
l><nu<li*<>,
(S), xxiii. (29).

whom,"
Quoting Dante
"Dante
follow .Mr. Cary,
"to
owes more than poet ever owed to translator". A very moderate knowledge of Catholic and philosophy
theology makes this plain. When we compare Cary with Longfellow, Wright, or Dayman, we find that it is Cary alone who makes a Catholic of Dante. A very distinguished literary friend told me that he was in great measure led on to the Church by the study of Gary s Dante.
says Macaulay,
93
of their works, and not the patient study least of these rewards is the knowledge
limits of our intellectual they give us of the
powers.
When we
all
find that
is
Pascal,
who
in
beyond almost
men
unembarrassed
his treatment of evidence that leads
up
to
Christ, veils his face
"like
who
adores and
burns"
the rapt angel when he reaches His
that Dante did the same, we presence, and iustified in arguing that they stopped are J saw that they had arrived at because
they the frontiers of the Infinite where

Our
such depth absorb d That memory cannot follow.
intellect is to
And
Christ,
again,
applying
the
same idea
to
In bright pre-eminence, so saw I there O er million lamps a sun, from whom all drew Their radiance, as from ours the starry train
:
so lustrous glow d And, through the living light, The substance, that my ken endured it not.
In another
way Dante
"
reveals his sense of
the divinity in Christ,

the fulness
In
whom
dwell* all
1
of the Godhead
1
corporally".
Colossians
ii.
9.
94

so subjugates his intellect in
The Godhead
a sort
of ecstasy of adoration, that he is forced to seek for a created interpreter in
the pel-son of the

.
.
.
human mother
of Christ,
the rose
Wherein the Word Divine was made incarnate. 1

It is
here that
Dante excels
Pascal,
who
had not the same clear vision of the place and office of that Messed one whom Car dinal Newman styles, "The grace and
The two smiling light of everv devotion concluding cantos of the Paradiso are
".
better
than
volumes
of
controversy
in
human mother
instructs
I
vindicating the Catholic doctrine that the is the mirror in whom we
can best behold the Son.

)ante
:
Tims
St.
Bernard
..." Xo\v raise thy view nto the visage most resembling Christ For, in her splendour only, shalt tliou win
I
:
The power to look on him." Forthwith I saw Such Hoods of gladness on her visage shower d,
From holy spirits, winging that profound; That, whatsoever I had yet beheld, Had not so much suspended me with wonder, Or shown me such similitude of God. 2
-
//,///.,
xxxii. (75),
OUR LORD JKSrS CHRIST.
95
Pascal in his youth "fell amongst robbers," for not even Calvin and his withering creed,
did as
much
as the -lanscnists to strip re
ligion of its consolations,
and this because and its sphere its agents were more gifted, and to my mind the of destruction wider not in which Pascal w;is in it, and yet
;
way
a special importance gives quite his soul on to the study of the workings of
r.-ally
of
it.
its
way
to Christ,
Any one who
carefully
reads his sister s
account of his last illness and death, will there clearly see the awful
and despair in his struggle between love of love, when the soul, and the final victory the bed of death with the
priest approached
from Blessed Sacrament, and aroused Pascal Him his stupor with the words, "Behold
whom you
As we
his
have
so long desired
1
".
shall see later on,
make
great use
with of those unstudied devotional colloquies
which Pascal Lord, and the prayers his deepest religious reflec mingled with that some will tions, although 1 must expect deem this an unsatisfactory style of reasoning.
1
Vie de Pascal, p. 72.
96

short,
However
are his
abrupt,
and disconnected
arguments on questions which appeal to the intellect alone, they stand by their
own
strength
is
of iron
but strange to say, this man one of the most emotional of

;
"
"
writers, to use a favourite expression of the day, when he treats of the personal rela
tions of the soul with Christ.

characteristic
It is
on this
that
/
Voltaire
has
based his
ingenious theory that as soon as Pascal D gave himself up entirely to religion, from that
hour he was a monomaniac, a view which presents little difficulty to believers in Vol
taire.
1
of
But even in the passionate aspirations Pascal we find those very ideas which
subsequent writers have developed into what 1 have called the Philosophy of
Christian
1
Comparison.
Auguste
Nicolas,
man to pray day long he would certainly be accounted insane whereas, were he to make np his mind never to pray at all, he might go down to his grave with the reputa tion of being a very sensible man. Voltaire styled Johnson superstitious dog," and Shakespeare a
Dr. Johnson remarks that were a
all
;
"a
"
drunken
savage"
no doubt because they manifested
evident religious emotions.

deepest and most logical recent writers in this lino, is so
97
of
perhaps
the
impreg
nated with the spirit of Pascal that he seems

unconsciously to use his ideas and forms of those sentences of Pascal which expression in the absorb the whole argument. The page
study of the utter and unresisting- subjuga tion of such an intellect as that of
in
love and adoration

is
Pascal, before the imao e of
Jesus Christ,
worthy of our consideration.
Even though we may not always see how his mind worked, the study is, at anv rate
important, as well as interesting, as an evi dence of that faith, which in Pascal,
beyond
most men. was

hoped
appear
for,
"
the
"
substance of things evidence of things which

it
the
not,"
while
was ever a
into
"reason
able service
V
who has looked
Pascal
s
No
plete
one
will
writings
body
expect to find in them a com of Christian evidences. It is
because his genius renders this unnecessary

that his arguments are so useful to those whose minds are unaccustomed to bear the
1
Hebrews
xi.
1.
Romuiis
7
xi.
1.
98
As I deep and continued study. to the Prophecies that he have said, it was turned his mind. They led him
strain of
specially to Christ,
meditation, ly his extra* mlinary power of abstract reasoning he had found Christ, he seems to have put away
in
and when
every
other
assistance
and
consideration,
having found the bond which united earth and therefore, with Pascal, we to heaven
;
now
to pass from the Prophecies
.Jesus Christ
Himself.
There are
in the
to
fit
many fragments
but
I
on
miracles
/V//.srVx,
do not see
my way
them in with the simple line of argu ment we arc following. If .lesus Christ is
once
proved
cease to
to be
Him
Cod, then miracles in Moses before be wonderful.
and Apostles and disciples after Christ, worked miracles more astounding than His own, and this He had Himself foretold. Nothing in Pascal is more wonder
Christ,
1
ful
than the
way
M/ri
in
which his judgment on

is in
everything in Revelation
i"//^
i
<!<>,
the spirit, and

flint
that
ixl
<<f/i
in
i/i
me, the work*

tl*<-
he
!<!<>,
K/i>t/f
greater
t/i
*hll he
<!<>."
St.
John
xiv. \-L

according to the measures of Revelation
99
itself.
purely secular historical studies we find writers with an extent of vision and a
Even
in
power of combination which, enables them to live in the

intercourse with
its
as
it
were,
past,
and hold
occupants, and this gift Pascal carried with him to the very frontiers
eternity.
is
of
that he
Pascal gives us the impression as unembarrassed in the
of the inspired writers, as Cardinal
company
Newman
Cent urn,
effort,
when
in his
Arim/x
<>f
tin
h\>nr1h
apparently without to the minds of the doctors,

tics,
he introduces
us,
sophists, here
so chaotic
and populace of that period,

pages of other writers.
in the
it seems a matter of as little that men believed in Christ as surprise that his they saw the sun is surprise always at their blindness in not He has a believing.
:
To Pascal
few reflections on the Apostles, and makes short work of the view that they invented Jesus Christ. -The he
Apostles."
writes,
were either deceived or deceivers.
Both
suppositions are unmanageable. For it is not possible to assume that a man has been raised from the dead. \V],il c Jesus
.
100
Christ
THK PlYINITY OK
\vas
.IK.Sl S
CHRIST.
with them
it
up: Imt
[
after that,
>ol
Ho Ho
could hold thorn

did not appear to
them. \vho
knaves,
all
them
to
work
tho
Let
he liYpothesis that
is
Apostlos wore
us follow this
von
;
al>surd.
imagine these twelve men. uathered together after the doath of Jesus Christ, and plotting to teaeh that Ho has risen from tho dead: in doing so thoy
tho
wav
let
us
attacked
hoart of
OYOVY
established
st
power.
man
leans
ramjylv to levity,
The and
to change,
of this
l>elied
and promises, and tho good tilings had If OU!Y ono of them world.
under the intlnenee ot all theso attractions, or still more under the and death, thoy pressuro of prisons, tortures
himself,
wore
S/tH
i
lost.
(<
Let
any one follow

is
this."
((Jtt
oit
/<(.}
"Tho
st\de of tho liospel

>.
womloiiul
in
in
sit
inanv wax
it
and amongst others
the
fact that
never introduces anything like inYOctivo against the exeout lonors and enoFor in none ot tho mios of Jesus Christ.
narrators
against
"If
is
there
I
anything of
the
sort
dato or any of the Jews. this modest Y of tho evangelical his-
Judas.
OUK LORD
torians, as
traits ol
l
.JKSL S CIIKIS J
101
well
as so nianv ol her beautiful

a fleeted
lie
:
character had leen

il
if
they
:
|;
"l
pill
on
hat
it
ini^lit
remarked
il
they had not ventured

i
to direct attention
"
themselves, they would not have failed

ind
Irieiids
"
to
make
these
remarks to
But as they acted thus îlhont allectat ion, and from a disinterested
their advantage.
motive, they did

:I
"V
not
1
draw the attention of

Ih
one
to
it.
And
thai
lieve that
;
manv
this
of
is
these things were not remarked
and
all
evidenced
î h which
rich
Kiiej;
ly
the
absence of
passion
work has Keen done.

correct Iv
al>out,
al>oiit
The
he
man speaks
riches, the
speaks quietly has imparted, and

.
. .
jjreat
n lft
<{od
speaks well
of (iod.
Jesus
hrist has
it
so
simply
that-
spoken of ^reat things seenictl as if He made no
JK-couiit
of tliein,
|
and m-vcrt heless so

1
dis
;
tinctly
this
Ie houojit clearly what clearness and this absence of all art are
t
hat
we
see
wonderful."
Flu-re
are
few
things
in
ascal
more
original than these sentences, and thev are a key to all that he has written about our
Lord,
and
in
secondary
sense
to
the
102

to
Apostles
office
whom
Christ
committed the
of transmitting His words to men.
In Jesus Christ all says, contradictions find tlieir solution," lie is
When
Pascal
"
in an speaking of the Idler of Scripture: Xot on the idea, other fragment he carries is it onlv," he says, by Jesus Christ alone
"
"
that
we know God, we do not know ourselves Through through .lesus Christ. except Jesus Christ alone can \ve know life and
death.
A way from
know what what Cod is, nor what we

"Thus
Jesus Christ, we neither our life is. nor our death, nor
are ourselves.
without the Bible, which has Jesus

sole object,
we know nothing, and see nothing but obscurity and confusion in the nature of Cod, and in our own nature. Without Jesus Christ, man must lie
Christ for its
1
with Jesus Christ, man and miser} In Him is all is free from vice and misery. our strength and all our joy. Away from
in vice
;
Him
there
is
nothing but
vice, misery, error,

. . .
darkness,
death,
despair.
Without
last,
Jesus Christ the world could not

pp. 368, 349, 339, 392.
for
I ense e*,
103
be destroyed, or inevitably it would either All those who seek God become a hell. outside of Jesus Christ, either stop short at
. .
nature, where they find no light to satisfy of them, or they go on to make a way
knowing and serving God without a media tor; and hence they fall either into atheism, or into deism, two things almost equally ab
horrent to the Christian religion.
those
. . .
All
who
pretend to
1
know God, and prove
without Jesus Christ, have only got im But in proving Jesus Christ potent proofs. we have the prophecies, which are proofs
Him
solid
and palpable.
And
these prophecies
to be having been accomplished, and proved true by the event, denote the certainty of
these truths, and therefore prove the divinity

1
We
need not stop here to defend Pascal against
the charge of Jideism, that is the denial of the meta He explains of God. physical proofs of the existence All he asserts is that the proofs are himself (p. 271). so much above human reason that they make little
See also M. Havet s impression, and are soon forgotten. note in the page from Bossuet, in the same line, sup
"Insomuch ported by the words of St. Augustine, as they come near by reason, they depart by pride
".
De
Concupiscent ia.
104

In
.
of Jesus Christ.
we know God
Jesus Christ.
l>v
God
oi
is
Him, and by Him, then Jesus Christ, and in proved, and morals and
is
dogmas
the true
taught.
Jesus Christ
men."
therefore
God
Pascal s principle that Jesus Christ is to us the centre of all truth in heaven and on
the earth runs like a thread of gold through his speculations on everything in which the
soul of
says,
man
is
concerned.
all
behold,"
he
"Jesus
Christ in
characters and in
i
ourselves.
father,
Jesus Christ as
Christ
as
ather in one
in
Jesns
brother
our
brothers, Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ as
as doctor
as
rich in
as poor in the poor, the rich, Jesus Christ

priests.
and
priest in
Jesus Christ
sovereign
lie
is
in
all
princes, etc.
that
For by Jlis
great,
beiii^
glory
which
is
Cod, and by His mortal life all that is lor this end lie has pitiful and abject assumed this miserable condition th;it He
;
might have power to exist in everyone, and be the model in all ranks of society."
Fnougli
1
I
think has been said about the
Ptnw?,
]).
3 Jl.
-Ibid., p. 511.
OUH LORD JESUS CHRIST.

lines
in
105
on which the mind of Pascal travelled its swift and unfaltering course from
creation to Jesus Christ.

to multiply
Were
still
more
"
the
\va,v in
examples from his writings of which the Light of the World

"
in his soul
lit
up
all
mysteries,
should fear
to tax the patience of readers perhaps not as enthusiastic about Pascal as myself. I shall
therefore
of Pascal
n<>\v
confine
myself to the study
own
relations with the Incarnate

in
\\ord as revealed
The Mi/xtei
}
tf
<>/
./rx^x,
and
his
a
Pnujcr
rule
hi,
Sicknexx.
As
the
study
of
anv particular
mind is more hazardous than the stud\ of minds in general. Mind in general is com
mon
property, hut the personality of indi
viduals, dead as well as living, seems to rise
up against the interpreter of their secrets. But there are, exceptions, and Pascal is
one, as
St.
Teresa
is
another.
that
as
It
is
cer
tainly
very remarkable
St.
far
as
can discover,
St.
1
Athanasius,
St.
Thomas and
St. Teresa, are
Augustine, the only un-
Le Mystere de Je xus, and Pricrc pour demnnder a Dieu le bon uxage des Malddies, will be found at p. 542 to p. 565 of M. Haver s one vol. ed. of the Pensces.
106
inspired writers, to whom in the Pascal alludes either as authorities,
or as
objects of admiration, although from none of them does lie borrow much. This con
firms
the
statement
Pascal
of
AI.
quoted, and without the

his
that
by
his
Saei, already native genius,
labour of study, worked
philosophy by inspiration similar to that by which in his childhood lie had discovered the propositions of Euclid.
way
in divine
The fragments
in
which he alludes
"
to St.
Teresa are remarkable in more ways than one. Exterior works. They run thus
:
There
pleases
is
nothing so perilous as that which both God and men. For states
which please both God and men have one part which is pleasing to God, and another
Like the great pleasing to men. ness of St. Teresa that which pleases God
is
:
which
is
that which pleases
her deep humility amidst her revelations men is her spiritual illu
mination.
And
thus people strain to imi

;
tate her style, aspiring to imitate her state and take no trouble to imitate that which
God
loves,
and
that
to place themselves in the
condition
God
loves."
In
the
first

place
107
we
eagle amongst the false principles of Epictetus, .Montaigne, and Descartes that this inexorable critic
learn from this fragment that the critics who saw at a glance
believed in
the
revelations of St.
Teresa.
This
is
confirmed
fragment,
by
what
he
another
"That
which
says in confuses
us in comparing what happened formerly in the Church with what goes on now, is that commonly we look on St. Athanasius, St.
Teresa and others as crowned with glory, At pres and working amongst us as gods.
ent,
so.
when time has

this
things up, it seems But at the time when he was perse

lit
cuted,
great
saint
was a man called

1
Athanasius, and St. Teresa a young maiden." 1 am not aware that amongst the innu
merable commentaries, and speculations sug

gested
use of
by Pascal s personal and private devotions, any one has, as yet, made much
them
as an evidence of the divinity
of Jesus Christ,
will
At
first
probably seem keeping with the other arguments

1
sight the attempt idealistic, and out of

of
Pensees, p. 442.
108
niind
Pascal.
cal s
THE DIVINITY OE JESUS

so
HKIST.
as
inexorably
it
logical
that
of
Again, may be said, thai Pas iairh in Jesus Christ goes no further
himself,
than
and cannot be
to
turned
into
an argument addressed
these
it
1
other minds.
that
in
To
itself
may
answer, objections an argument to

i>e
other
minds
that after years of wrestling in the solitude of his own soul with every anti-
to find
Christian
argument invented bv the fertile ingenuity of man, the end in Pascal s case was absolute and adoring submission.
P>ut
thc
truth
is,
ascai s
conversations
inoiv
with
Christ
feelings,
b; v
ii"
:
reveal
much
this
AI.
is
than
his
own
thev
and
the
impression
"
made on
(the
Jlavet.
ni
In
this
itetx),
fmn 1
iit
rni/icr
H/r/.
he
remarks, sentiments
otherwise
so
strano-c
is
to
our
to
and
ideas,
one
bound
is
admire
hat
same character which
every
where
cal
:
present in the eloquence of Pas the union ot passionate imagination

precision
with
ity"
M.
mathematical sever ;md he continues in the words of Nisard It seems that in a prayer
; :
and
we ought
to
find
some evidence of
self-
109
abandonment, some enthusiasm and that confidence which no longer weighs its own That of Pascal has nothing of motives.
this. in
i>\
It
is
a passionate process of reason-
in
It
which
is
God.
argues with neither bv the enthusiasm of

a
mortal
man
the psalmist, nor the inflamed imagination of the ascetic, that this prayer lifts itself
by reasonings which follow one from the other, and rise like the steps of a \Ve fed that no step is mystical ladder.
up
it
is
wanting beneath the feet of Pascal. Apart from the vein of naturalism in M. J la vet s and M. Nisard s tone, we may
aiiree
with
of
their
estimate
s
of
the
logical
character
Pascal
I
conversations
with
Jesus Christ.
advisedly, in
"
use the word conversation

St.
the spirit of
Teresa,
who
is nothing else, in on terms of friend my opinion, but being in ship with God, frequently conrersiny we know, loves us".secret with Him who.
says
[Mental
prayer
Hixtoire (h la Litterature Franfaise, toiu.

p.
-")G5,
ii.,
up.
Havet,
-
n.
p. 54.
Life of Xt. Teresa, written by herself,
Lewis
trans.,
Burns & Gates, 1870.
Probably unconsciously,
110
The sustained and unfaltering flight of Pascal s mind in its ascent to Christ, until
with Dante his
that of St.
"ken
endured
in
not,"
is
unlike
Augustine,
whose soul love

outstrip
seems
to
anticipate
and
reason;
any one wishes to say with .ALM. I In vet and Xisard. that this is an evidence
if
and
that Pascal
and speculative,
prayer was purely intellectual can only answer that even

1
so it does not affect our Pascal argument. does not belong to that small number upon
whose sanctity the Church has set her seal; but as we are incompetent to canonize him,
so are
tlie
i.
we incompetent
in
to pass
in/ill/ ftir nnii

1).
tun! ti^f/n
nnnlis
judgment upon (Hebrews
which
Cod
1
holds communication
with His creatures.

Tin
Mystery
-l<
<>f
xnx
begins
thus
St.
Teresa repeats the words of

"
St.
John Climaciis,
nature confidential inter course with Cod, and the union of man with Him". Fathers the Desert, llahn llalnn, 605.
says,
who
Prayer
is
in its
<tf
p.
St.
Teresa answered one who asked

perfectly united to
"
"
What
a soul
felt
when
its
Creator?"
that in
order to answer
difference
it was necessary to know what the was between a Creator and a creature
".

"
Ill
In
Plis
Passion Jesus
suffers
torments
inflicted
\>y
men
but in the agony Tie suf

brings upon
fers
torments which
a
self (ttirhitrit
It is a punishment hand that is not human, inflicted by but all-powerful, since it needed Almighty
He wi/mumY
Him
strength to endure it. Jesus seeks some consolation, at least

"
in
His three dearest friends, and they sleep. He prays them to suffer a little with Him, and they abandon Him with absolute inthat differenee, having so little compassion
they could not keep
off sleep for a
moment.
And
thus Jesus
is left
is
of Qod.
Jesus
alone under the anger left alone on the earth,
not only without one to feel and share His au onv, but without one who knows it
:
heaven, and Himself alone understand Jesus is in a garden, not of delights, as the first Adam, where he brought ruin
it.
"
on himself and
all
the
human
race,
but in
one of tortures, where lie saves Himself and the whole human race.
1
"Jesus,
therefore,
when he saw her weepinn, and

/u-r,
wc<-/>iii<i,
the
Jews that
spirit,
were come with
in the
<jroan<<d
and troubled
himself."
St.
John
xi. 33.
112
Tin-
DIVINITY OF JEST
CHRIST.
agony and desolation aniid the horrors of the night. believe that Jesus never complained save on this one occasion but then He complains as if He could no
I ;
He
sutlers this
longer restrain the excess of His sorrow J/// mnil ttt xorroirfuf ii death Jesus seeks the of company and the
:
cr<
tn/t<>
sympathy
j
mtMI
In *-
it
seems
to
me,
lite.
the whole course of His not obtain

Iu
it,
unique in But He does

"
for His
disciples
sleep."
:
another place Pascal remarks AVho has tauu ht the evangelists the characteristics
of a perfectly heroic soul, that they mi^ht paim it so perfectly in Jesus Christ?
Wherefore do they make Him weak
in
Jlis
agony? Did they not an untroubled death

.
know how
Yes.
St.
to depict
tor the
same
St
lik
pictures that of
Stephen as
stronger than that of Jesus Christ. They make Him then subject to fear before the
time came when

then
altoovther
it
was necessary to
it
strong.
j
make Him
altogether
"
so troubled,
die. and But when they when He troubles
Himself, and when men trouble

strong."
Him He
is
The Church has had
as
hard a task to
OUlt LORI) JESUS CHRIST.
113
prove that Jesus Christ was man against those who denied it, as to prove that He was God appearances were as strong one way
:
as the other.
"Jesus
Christ
is
(Jod
proach without pride, and under abase ourselves without despair."
whom we ap whom we
"
The
will
it
is
Mt/xt<Ti!
l)c
in
Jesus of ./WAV continues until the end of the world agony

: :
Jesus
not right to sleep during this time. in the midst of this universal abandon
ment, and of that of His friends, chosen to watch with Him, finding them asleep, is
disturbed not at the peril to which they expose Himself, but at that which threatens
He reminds them of their own and of that which is for their good salvation, with heartfelt tenderness in the hour of their ingratitude, and warns them that the
them, and
spirit is willing
and the Hesh
weak."
After some other similar considerations,

Pascal changes his style, and, as it were, speaks to his own soul in the person of Jesus
Christ.
Pensces,
p.
350.
114
"Be

comfortc d
:
thou wouldst not seek,

1
if
thou hadst not already found me. thoimht of thee in mv aôny shed many drops of blood lor thee.
"
have
It is
reflect
is
tempting me rather than proving thyseli to whether thou wilt do well that which
to
"
come
will
do
it
in
thee
if it
comes.
;
si
Surrender thvself to be led by my rules how have faithfully led the Virgin, and
I
the Saints,
who have allowed me

all
I
to act in
them.
"The
"
Father loves
mv
works.
Do you wish that blood of mv humanity

thy tears
"
should ever pay the without the idft of
Your conversion
is
my
affair
fear
not,
for
and pray with confidence,

me.
"
as
if
it
were
am
by
present by
my
\\ord in the Scrip
tures,
ni} spirit in
the Church, and by
"
Reason, with the aid of grace, teaches him (the
creature) that there than (!od, and that
nothing more worthy of love taken away from He can only

is
l>e
those
who
reject
Him;
to
since
to
desire
is
Him
lose
is
to
possess Him, and

Pensccs,
p.
refuse
Him
to
Him."
646.
115
in priests,
my
inspirations and
by
my
power
and by
"The
my
prayer
in the faithful.
;
physicians will not cure thee
for in
the end tliou must die.
But
it is
who
cure
and make thy body immortal. Be patient under thy chains and tin- servitude of the
body at present only deliver thee from those that arc spiritual. 1 am more thy friend than such and such an one for I
:
have done more
for
thee than they have,
and they do not

infidelities
suffer
what
as
in
have suffered
for thee, nor die for thee in the
am
"
and cruelty, ready to do, and do

If
hour of thy have done, and my elect, and in
the Blessed Sacrament.
you knew your

lose
it
sins,
you would
I
lose
heart
(1
then, Lord, for
believe in
J,
their malice, on
Thy
you
word).
is
No, for
by
whom you
that which
to cure
learn them,
I
tell
can cure you, and a sign that 1 wish
you."
With two extracts from the J rajier in tin-kit cxx we will conclude our study of
Pascal
s
mystical reasonings.
1
He
continues
Pensees, p.
542
et seq.
116
in the
THK DIVINITY OF
JEST
CHRIST.
same
find
with Jesus style of conversation
Christ.
myself which can see nothing hut my suffer please Thee. ings which have any resemblance with Thine. Remember then the evils which suffer, and
"
nothing
1
in
those which menace me.
Look with an eye on the wounds which Thy hand of mercy hast inflicted on me, O my Saviour, who hast () loved your own sufferings in death
!
God who
!
made Thyself man only to suffer more than any man for the salvation God who hast only become incar of men nate after the fall of man, and who hast
hast
(.)
taken a bodv only to suffer in which our sins have merited!

so
it
all
()
the evils
loves
the
body
for
that
suffers,
God who and who
hast chosen
Thvself a body the most down with suffering that has ever weighed let my body be ac existed in this wor d
!
ceptable to Thee, not for itself, nor for all that it encompasses, tor all therein deserves
your anger, but because of the evils it endures, which alone can make it worthy Love my sufferings, Lord, and of Thy love.
let
my
calamities invite
Thee
to visit me.
OI R LORI) JESUS CHRIST.
117
But,
to
finish
the
dwelling, grant, U body has that in common with Thine, that

it
preparation of Thy my Saviour, that if my
suffers for
in
my
offences,
my
soul also
may
it
have that
in
common
the
with Thine, that

offences,
be
sorrow
I
for
same
and that
like Thee,
thus
mav
suffer with Thee,

in
and
both
sins I
"
in
my body, and have committed. my
my
soul, for the
(Jive UK- grace, Lord, to unite
your con
1
solations to
sufferings, so that
1
may
to
suffer as a Christian.
do not ask
be
exempt from sufferings, for that is the re ask not to be ward of the Saints; but abandoned to the sorrows of nature without
1
the consolations of vour spirit, for that is the malediction on the Jews, and the Pagans. 1 do not ask to have the plenitude of con
solations without an} the life of glory.
. .
suffering, for that

.
is
But
ask, Lord, to
feel at
one and the same time the sorrows of
nature for
my
sins,
and the consolations of

;
Thv
that
spirit
by Thy grace
. . .
for
such
is
the
true Christian state.

in
Grant,
of
my
God,
I
the
same
all
uniformity
spirit
may
receive
things as they come, since
118
\vc
THE DIVINITY OF JESUS
HEIST.
ask,
know
not what
we should
and
cannot desire one thing rather than another without presumption, making myself judge,
and responsible for eonse<|uenees, which Thy wisdom justly wills to hide from me. Lord,
J
know
good
that
know hut one thing:

and that
I
that
it
is
to follow Thee,
it
is
evil to
otlend Thee.
is
After that,
best or worst in anything;

profits
in
know not what know not i

all
what
things
me. whether, amongst

it
the
the world,
he health or sickness,
riches or poverty. This is discernment which surpa.-ses the vision of men and angels, and
is
hidden
I
"
in
the secrets of
Thy
I
providence,
care not
to
"which
adore, and into which
search.
I
Pascal
think the reader will acknowledge that s conversations with Christ, the. eleva
tions of his soul to God, are
something more
than specimens of a man s private devo tions. 1 do not mean that before God they
were worth more than the prayer of the

peasant, or of the child at his mother s knee, but that to men who are searchers into the
relations of the soul with
God, thev have

it is a
another and a special meaning,
bold
OUR LORD
JF.ST S
CHRIST.
119
thins to use the superlative about any

Sifts, for
it
man
the
human
conies to passing judgment on But \vc often challenge race.
the past and the present, and their inter think we may do in the preters, and this
I
case
of
Pascal,
and
inquire
whether
man
ever gazed so steadfastly as he did into the nature of the mysterious relations of the Creator with His creature. repeat that
1
iliis
is
no evidence of
the
his
sanctity:
it
this
does not concern

be that
it
argument.
his
may
was because
of nature
to
light
\vas
was only
so bold,
ideas.
it
the
lislit
that
lie
and able so ch-arly
expres:
s
his
Granting
so,
it
argument makes the proof only

it
for
sake that
all
was
the more
coovut. that although o the gate of heaven,
reason
cannot open
lead
can
l
man
in
fallibly to its threshold.
Can
you,"
writes
Cardinal
amid
when
deliberately sit down the bewildering mysteries of creation, a refuge is held out to you in which
Newman,
"
reason
is
rewarded
for
its
fulfilment of
its hopes? from the trial of believing, but exempt you it does return it gives you nothing in
;
faith by the Nature does not
120

. . .
but disappoint you.

say, that there
is
The very fact, I and a hidden one, powerfully bears you on, and sets you down at the very threshold of revelation, and leaves you there looking up earnestly
a Creator,
for Divine tokens that a revelation lias
1
been
made."
No two
their
writers
were more different in
course,
and
more
similar
in
their
essential religious conclusions than Cardinal
Newman, and
Pascal.
from childhood, for ing for, and finding (Jod evervwhere, like one who
Fnnla,
tijii
The former went on some eight v years, look
/tns in //vex,
<m<l
/>i}L-.<
in
t/n-
winning brooks,
Sermons
nt N/O//CX,
<jnil
in
ewrythinyf
while the other saw the light in its source. In both there is ih;it same sense of the im
prisonment
<>t
the spirit in the liesh, which
made
in
the former write thus to his mother

"his
answer to her remark that was a want of self-confidence, and

1
"
fault
a
dis-
Mysteries of Nature and
draco."
Discourses,
pp. 292, 294.

2
As You Like
It,
ii.
1.

satisfaction
121
me,"
with
"
himself".
"Take
when I am most foolish at he replied, home, and extend mirth into childishness I think stop mi, short and ask me then what
;
of
myself, whether
;
my
I
gloomy
j
no,
i
think
opinions are less should seriously re

I
turn the same answer, that
shuddered at
Again and again Pascal expresses the

1
Letters of J, II-
Xcn man,
vol.
i.,
p.
-~>8.
1891.
Thirty-five years later
and
his ideas
Longmans, had not
changed.
Addressing his students of the Catholic
University of Ireland, lie says, "The religion of the natural man is based on self-sufficiency, and results in
self-satisfaction
own
is
all such persons walk by their not by the True Light of men, because self light,
.
. .
their supreme teacher, and because they pace round and round in the small circle of their own thoughts and of their own judgments, careless to know what
God
says of
if
.
.
by Him,
sight.
.
fearless of being condemned stand approved in their own only they The Catholic saints alone confess sin, be
them
and
cause the Catholic saints alone see
God
"
"
and he
adds that
of
it is
because of this that
there
is
so
much
emotion, so
much
that
of
is
conflicting
and alternating
that
is
feeling, so
much
high, so
".
much
abased,
in the devotion of Christianity
Occasional Sermons,
pp. 25-27.
122
THE DIVINITY
Alan
()!
Jl .Sl S
CHRIST.
lie
is
same idea:
less;
lie
i-
knows
that
worth
it
worthless
is
then
because
he
the
is
so
it.
but
.
. .
he
great
because
to
l>e
knows
end
of
What
Shall
lie
then
lie
i-
man
the
the
e<|iial
of (iod, or nf
th<-
beasts?
Ho\v
appalliii" .^
What then
from
that
all
lie
is
shall
we
lie
\\
is inilf! O ho doe- not see
this
that
man
from
ha- strayed away,

his
fallen
it
;
place,
that
he
searches
for
it
restlessly, that
he
can
no
longer
It
tind
is
well
for
11-
that
the manifestations
as
of genius
are
as
varied
il
(lowers in
if.
the
material world, and

or slowly,
is
enough
swiftly
clusion.
more
thev arrive at the same con Take another mind greater, and immeasurable than that of either
(
Pascal, or
fe$tiion*t St.
ardinal
Newman.
r
In
his
COH-
long road
Christ.
Augustine tra\ els o\ er again the which he arrived at i aitli in

l>y
Who
has ever taken in

in
all
that
is
contained even
this
one book? to say
nothing of those ten folio volumes from which, as from a storehouse, the defenders
1
Pensi
es,
pp. 241, 279.

of
123
Divine
truth
this
have
for
drawn
their
argu
ments, and
years.
nigh
fifteen
hundred
In the course of these long ages his writings have been a part of the minds of
myriads with whom Christ has been the be ginning and the end of life: the inspiration
and guide of the nun
in
as well as of the theologian
her contemplations, in the schools,
and
his
like the
ocean seen under different skies.

is
wisdom
it
is
ever
new and yet ever the

that
same.
But
easily
plain
St.
the
s
variety,
and
immensity
those who.
of
Augustine
mind may
all
be a snare to beginners, and to

in religious
investigations, in spite
of St. Paul, assume that they have alreadv A glance at a Summary or apprehended
"
".
Table of Contents of The Confesxioiii* of tit. Augustine, from Book 1., beginning with his
prayer,
"
who opposes the proud," to the beginning of Book The Alediator of God and man, the X., man Christ. Jesus appearing between mortal
"
Thou
art
mighty,
()
Lord,
sinners,
and the immortal Just

God,"
mortal with
sinners, just with
reveals
how many
were the
mysteries
which,
blending into
124
THP] DIVINITY
in
OF JESUS CH1UST.
of St.
unity
as
the
mind
and
is
Augustine, found
in
their solution
their
end
:
Him,
"who
Man
in
alone
.Mediator
as the
Word
not
an instrument, because
G<>d
He is equal to God, and with the Holv Spirit one God,

is
only
God".
way of Pascal, that, as has been said, he has laid himself open
to the charge of being the
:
"
So different
the laconic,
enemy
of that
Anguswant it himself, ;ind clearly held that there was a better way to truth in the minds of the lowly and simple, to whom God speaks by faith, and the inspirations of grace.If
tine.
Ir is
bright darkness of Christian philosophy which pervades the writings of St.

certain that he did not
Pascal
despised
philosophy,
St.
he
could not
have been an admirer of

St.
Thomas,
as he certainly was,
Augnstine and and Pascal
was never one who could admire, much less follow any religious teacher whose principles and ways were not true to reason. No one was more intellectually exclusive than Pas
cal
;
but at the same time no writer has stated

neither St. Augustine, nor St.
this doctrine.
And
Thomas would
have disputed
OUR LOUD JESUS CHRIST.
125
more
"
that it is one thing to clearly the truth be above, and another to be contrary to reason. turns to blessing he writes,
"
Everything,
for the elect,
even the very obscurities of
for the Scriptures, for they worship them and every the sake of the Divine light
;
thing
turns
to
evil
for
;
the others, even
they blaspheme these lights themselves because of the obscurities, which they them
for
do not
understand."
It,
therefore, in his
and with the fixed purpose of despotic way, his proofs of Revelation home to
bringing seems at times to be every mind, Pascal his words are at impatient with philosophy,
any
rate a consolation to those
who
are also
because they are con it impatient with Nothing is vinced that it is beyond them. more touching as well as sublime in Pas all the cal than the way in which, with the vio-our of conviction, he forces home &
1
"All
thin<j*
fork together for

viii.
the
<jood
of those who
love
-
God."
Romans
28.
"
Pentees, p. 378.
So
in St.
Augustine.
He who
;
and seeks religiously, honours the Holy Scriptures, as yet he understands not does not find fault because and therefore he does not resist,"
120

liy
truth that
urace every soul, the simplest

is
as well as the wisest,
in direct
communi
cation
with (;)d, and that

<>f
the extent and
the clearness
the revelation are altogether

hiiinan
science,
independent
formulas.
of
and human
He does
he
those
his
meditations
not arûe the point in in which, in a way all

his
in
own.
makes
own reason
the
trial
cutor and defendant
prose of faith,
and
in
so doing
has
made
of
lie
his
mind the
Tie
tribunal
of
the
reason
mankind.
asserts as a tiling to
taken for granted,

(Jod,
that Revelation
is
the
work of
and
in
the court of his o\vn
was no dispute.
he
in
It
understanding there may he said that were
the arena of human disputation, in stead of that of he would have taken prayer, trouble to prove the 1 doubt it. point. I believe lie would have answered that
people who
held
statue in the
Book
that revelation, like the of )aniel, was a com

I
pound partly divine and
partly
Avere out of his religious court,
human, and that it
would be waste of time to dispute with Xot so, however, with those who were in darkness the
them.
concerning
divinity
OUK LORD JESUS CHRIST.

of Jesus Christ.
127
For such people, if they were sincere, Pascal had that tender com
passion which
is
passion
.Paul.
which reminds
ever akin to respect com us of that of St.

:
\\ork lor others under the load of
phvsical tortures, and until the last spark ot hie expires, is certainly a proof of love and thus it was that Pascal worked that his
;
fellow-men might have that knowledge which to him was light in the darkness of life.
When
is
he says that
all
to
know
-Jesus Christ
to
know
that
man wants
to
know
in
the past, the present and future, he offends the pride ot those who aspire here on earth
to a
knowledge of the hivinity similar

of
to
that
It
the
liberated
spirits
in
heaven.
St.
is
remarkable that this was one of

s
Teresa
dilliculties,
under the guidance of

experience taught They advise us much,"
teachers
whom
"to
further
"
her to condemn.
.she writes,
withdraw from all bodilv ima and draw near to the contempla gination,
tion of the Divinity
j
; J
for
thev sav that they d J

*;
who have advanced
so
far,
would be
em
barrassed or hindered in their

highest contemplation
if
way
to the
thev regarded even
128
the Sacred
Humanity
l>v
their opinion of our Lord
The} defend bringing forward the words

itself.
to
the
Apostles,
concerning
;
mean Holy Ghost coming that coming which was after the Ascension. If the Apostles had believed, as the} be
the
of
the
lieved after the that He,

is
coming of the llolv Ghost, both God and Man, His bodily
presence would, in my opinion, have been no hindrance for these words were not
;
said
to
the
loved
as
Him more
Mother of God, though she than all. They think that,
work of contemplation is wholly spiritual, any bodily object can disturb or hinder it. They say that the contempla
this
tive should regard himself as being within a definite space, God everywhere around,
and himself absorbed what he should aim at.

right
in
Him.
This
is
This seems to
;
me
enough now and then

Christ,
but to with
and to com His Divine Body with our miseries, pare or with any created thing \vhatever, is
1
"
draw altogether from
It-
ix
expedient to
i/ou
that 1 go
to
for if I go not
the Paraclete will not
come
you
but if
I go, I
will
send him
to
you."
St.
John
xvi. 7.
129
what
soul,
I
cannot endure.
...
Lord of
my
!
and
my God
;
Jesus Christ crucified
held without pain
never think of this opinion which I then 1 believe it was an act of

.
high treason, though done in ignorance. I did not continue long of this opinion, and
.
so
returned to
mv
habit of
deli<ditmo
o in
Lord, particular!} at Communion. I I could have His and imaê picture i O always before my eyes, since I cannot have
our
wish
Him
wish.
St.
graven on
.
my
us
soul
as
deeplv
the
as
Let
consider
as
if
glorious
Paul,
who seems
Jesus was never

he had
I
absent from his
lips, as if
Him
deep
this
down
of
I
in his heart.
After
had heard
some great saints given to contemplation, considered the matter carefully, and 1 see
that they walked in no other St. way. Francis with the stigmata proves it, St. Antony of Padua with the Infant Jesus,
St.
Bernard rejoiced
;
in the Sacred
Human
ity
so
did St.
others,
I
Catherine
many
as
do.
your
. . .
of Siena, and reverence knows
better than
That
we
should
carefully and laboriously accustom our selves not to strive with all our might to 9
130
have always and please God it be always! the most Sacred Humanity before our me this, say. is what seems to eyes
I
;
not to be
ri^lit
it
is
making the
the
full
air,
soul, as
it
they say, nothing to

it
to
rest
walk
on.
in
for
has
how
soever of
God
St.
may
think
see
itself to
be/
alludes to
We
that
St.
Teresa
Catherine,
her sister star in the

of the Church.
l)i<tl<xjiH
mystical
constellation
entitled
In the
Internal
:
work
her
*,
the
Father
is as if "It speaks thus to St. Catherine the sweet and loving Word, my Son, should have made the way, Behold how say
:
and opened the door with

to
sit still
my
blood
it,
be
not slothful therefore to follow

in
content
love of yourself, in ignorance of the way, and in presumptuous desire of
Life, written
by
herself.
Lewis
trans., pp. 16o-
70.
Thus, a century before Molinos, and

this extraordinary
Madame
her celes
Guyon,
tial
woman brought
irony to bear upon Quietism.

Dalton,
p.
See also Interior
Cattle,
"
172.
say,
Blessed be
God
Well might her Confessor but 1 woidd rather dispute
with
all
the theologians in the world than with this
woman".
Foundation*, Lewis,
p.
270
(n.).
OUR LORD JKSUS CHRIST.

choosing to than
serve
131
me
in
rather
mine, who
your own way have made the
straight road saturated with blood, by of my Truth, the Incarnate Word.
means
Arise
then upon
it.
and follow
the the
it
for
no one can
through
throu<di
come Him.
which
1
to
me He is
Father
except
<>
way and the O ate *
lies
the entrance into
me
the peaceful
sea."
There is surely something more than a mere coincidence in the harmonv of these
three minds, so different in antecedents, and
character.
Neither can
it
lie
attributed to
identity of instruction and training, save in so far as they believed in. and Joved the
same Lord.
The daughter
of the Sienese
tradesman, the noble Spanish lady, and the French philosopher had little else in com
mon.
If
ever spirits rose and
fell
upon the
St.
breath of inspiration, it Catherine, and St. Teresa
was those of
:
if
ever mind went

it
by the common ways of reason,

1
was that
// Dniloi/o (Jflla
15<S.
semfica Santa Cater ina da Siena,
Looking on the sea, and seeing in it an image of God, she was heard mare murmuring, mare piacevole. pacifico,
Gigli, p.
;}

;
of Pascal and yet same conclusion.
all
Do we know
three arrived at the of any
minds endowed as these were with that vision, and gift of origination, which we call to themselves, which have genius, and left 1 am thus been run into the same mould ?
dealing
reason
now with
is
those
who demand
all,
evi
to
dence which
;
open to
those
and appeals
for
<>f
to
operations
grace,
who understand this harmony we
the
are
only a specially clear manifesta tion of that universal unity of faith which
studying
is
holds the children of the Church together.
Anyhow,
it
is
something
if it is
made
plain
that Pascal was orthodox in narrowing, or rather concentrating, the evidences of re
vealed religion in the person of Jesus Christ it was thus he argues that the Apostles con It is one of verted both Jew and pagan.
:
the most significant and hopeful signs of our times, in so many ways like those in which
the Apostles laboured, that over the dark and troubled sea of modern unbelief, the
Sun
is
of Justice, the
"
Light of the
World,"
Swelled by the paganism of the rising. and the brutal lust of its own day, past,
133
it
the tide of revolt rose, until in Voltaire
broke and spent

his failure
itself in its rage,
and with
seem
began from whence it came.
its
sullen retreat to the abyss
These
will not
mere words
of rhetoric to
those
who have
thoughtfully studied the genesis, and course of modern unbelief, especially in the litera
that country whose mission amongst nations seems to be to bring ideas to a head, and push the world to its con
:
ture of France
clusions.
Voltaire
The change is great indeed from and ( oiidorcet, to .M. Sainte-Beuve
and M. Cousin, and that catena of gentle, dreamy, pathetic free-thinkers enumerated
men who seem to by Auguste Nicolas have taken St. Augustine, as he described
:
himself in his young Manichean days," as their guide. "And I he writes, "for sought,"
the
fit
way
of gaining that strength which would

to enjoy Thee,
me
and
found
the
it
not
until
had
embraced
Mediator
in-
of
God and Man, the Man who is over all, God blessed
1
Christ Jesus,
for
ever,
La
St.
Divinite
tie
Jesus Christ, 2nd ed., 1864.

of thirty-
Augustine was converted at the age
three.
134
viting

I
and saying. truth, and the life,

strong enough
that
to
am
it
the
way,
I
the
food which
was not
take, as
the flesh, since the
Word
l>v
mingles with was made Mesh
Thy wisdom,
all
which
Thou
hast
made
"
things, should
become the milk of
our infancy. For was not humble to take hold of

I
my
humble Lord Jesus

the
lesson
Christ, nor could
understand
of
His infirmity.
rising-
For Thy Word, the eternal Truth,

above
lifts
all
the creature, highest His subjects to Himself. For in the

is
that
in
depths
He
had built
mansion in would rule,

and pass
ing love.
to
.
Himself a lowly our clay, by which those He should fall from themselves,
for
Him. healing pride and nourish

.
.
thoughts were other than these, and I only thought of the Lord my Christ as a man of transcendent wisdom, and beyond all comparison with other men.
But
my
And
it
babbled as one
I
scientific,
and
sought my way our Saviour, instead of being learned I should have been on the way to destruction."
1
were
not that
in Christ
Confessions, bk.
vii., 18 tt
se</.
135
Here then we have one whose subjugation of the soul was as complete, and his lan guage as lowly as that of Pascal, and so they both reached the same goal, and abide as witnesses at once to the greatness and the limits of the mind of man, and to
the
way
in
which belief
in
Jesus Christ
on begins in the reason, and then passes transcends it. ward into liii ht that
CHAPTKK
THK NK\V
I
V.
XBKUKK.
IN the preface made a pledge to the reader that as a conclusion would bring I ascal face to face with the chief leaders of modern
I I
unbelief,
filled.
and
this
promise must now he

are
ful
But
whom
all
we
to select as chief
leaders where
are
supreme? and how are
we
to
ever
shift! no;
meet intellectual antagonists who are their ground, and who make
no account of differences and contradictions

writings, agreeing oidy on the one point that the old religion, and the old philosophy must at all costs be put out
even
in their
own
of the
way
It is clear
that whether long
or short, a discussion with such antagonists cannot be either systematic or consecutive,
and that the utmost we can arrive at are reflections, which at any rate may give some idea of the character of the new unbelief, if
r
(136)
THE NEW UXliELIEF.

not of
its
J
;
137
youth
meaning and the fact that in my was myself an admirer, and almost
a disciple, of that new philosophy which is the way to the new unbelief, encourages the
hope that on the

self
lines
whereon
is
was
my
to
convinced,
that
may
succeed in convincing
hostile
others
this
philosophy
reason, as well as to religion.
In the preceding pages we have seen how minds, second to none in their own pro vinces, have been subjugated by Revela
tion,
and have acknowledged Christ

sun
of
to be
the central
the
spiritual
universe.
Also, that while differing as to consequences and conclusions, the intellectual processes by
which these men arrived
at
belief in the
:
Divinity of Jesus Christ were the same
Lord Bacon and Newton went back to Christ on the same road as Pascal and was on the return it Cardinal Newman found Him, journey, and when they had Such separations that they separated. amongst Christians, however, leave un
;
touched the fact that up to they are one, using reason
a certain point
in the
same way,
and therefore upholding each
other.
138

this
Over against
host
of believers, in
which, as in a disciplined army, the strength of all is in each member, we have now that
multitude of
"
Free-Thinkers,"
who, as their
name
in
implies,
make
it
their chief glory that
religion and philosophy they will neither submit reason to any restraints, nor acknow ledge any masters in the past or the present. That these pretensions, unheard of in what is called real life, from the cradle to the
grave, should have such attractions in

that, relates to
all
the unseen,
s
:
is
merely a con
worship
of
sequence
of
man
passionate
liberty at all costs
Luther won his way by
promising the soul liberty within the bound aries of the Bible, the New Philosophy offers
it
universal emancipation. When these ideas were
first
presented
minds of men educated on the ancient lines, they felt scorn and impatience similar to that which heresy arouses on its first
to the
but as it is with heresy, so appearance with false philosophy, the time comes when we have to deal with those who have been
;
brought up under
its
influence, to
whom
its
principles are like a
second
nature.
On
THE NEW UNBELIEF.
139
such people indignation and irony are thrown away and, moreover, we must remember that it is not always a moral fault, or even
;
a great intellectual disgrace, to be deceived cn tfre, and those who have hunuiniuii
:
<^t
once lieen under the influence of illusions which laded away when confronted by their
maturer judgments, are bound to be patient and considerate, when they find others in dano-ers from which thev themselves have * o
escaped.
But unfortunately
remembering,
this
is
not
the
way
Few people are capable of of controversy. and fewer still of confessing

their past errors and follies. a good things are necessary,
For this two
memory, and
Burke, who in
"
candour
like that of
Edmund
"
the words aleady quoted, refers to the way a popular fashion in which in his youth
told
him
"to
many
of us,
admire Bolingbroke in our day, have been
".
How
"
"
told
be by fashion to admire, and have obeyed, cause we were told, and how few, save those whose office imposes the duty, have gravely
oiven their o
tion
!
mind
to the
work
of reconsidera-
140
by experience, we must now meet the fact that, outside the patiently Church, in all questions which extend beyond the boundaries of sense and time, the pro cesses by which men s minds in search of go conviction, have very generally undergone a
Taught
radical revolution
belief
the contest
is
and unbelief
not so
now between much about the way

to
nature of truth, but rather as to the

get at
II
it.
it
seems
contradiction in terms to
speak of a distinct
way
of
"
"
Free-Thought
when its essence consists in independence, we must remember that it still leaves the mind five to follow the way of another
:
liberty
of
choice
in
the
matter
of
Thus guide leaves all its aspirations free. Nature asserts herself, and men bolder and more inventive than their fellows have in modern times, and up to a certain point, practically obtained an intellectual domina tion more absolute than anything of the
sort ever
known
before.
If these leaders of
thought, from Spinoza
Hegel,
in
Ha ckel
it
common,
to Voltaire, Kant, and Huxley, had nothing would be useless to attempt
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

to
141
answer them.
in their
But the
fact is that
they
are one
primary and fundamental
or absolute principle of free-thought,
eman
is
cipation from
all
authority
and
if this
it fall proved to be unreasonable, with raised upon it. the structures they have
all
Free-Thought,"
like authority, liberty,
and other generic ideas, takes its colour and special meaning from the mind of the It has a rational, and an writer or speaker.
irrational
sense.
is
Under
the
restraint
of
reason,
it
the
way
of genius as well as
necessary
restrained,
for
it
mental
stultifies
development genius, and
un
bids
farewell to reason.
to
fix
If it is
no easy mutter
do
exist
as
the limits, laws, and boundaries of

still
thought,
clearly licence
in
in
fact
they
of
distinct
as
those
for
freedom and
after
all
action,
action
is
in
every
reasonable
being
only
If so
thought
carried on to a conclusion.
much
is
char plain that the life, acter, and words of the professional free thinker, will turn out to be the simplest
granted, then,
it is
and plainest exposition of his opinions and if I take Kant as the chief representative
;
14 2
of
THE DIVINITY OF JEST
HKIST.
was
free-thought in our times, as Voltaire in the last centurv, believe 1 shall be

I
safe.
It
is
tru.-
that
in
Kant
been disputed even

that
it
leadership has (Jermany but fur all

;
seems
and that
easily
go.
Kant retains his empire, him five-thinkers cannot Iteyond

that
This
Peseh
in his
,
opinion of Father recent work l\nnl ct iff

is
Sr/<
the
)ic<>
Mnili-riH
is
which
in
the
French
us.
It
translation
will,
well
known amongst
more
to
how
ever,
be
our purpose to
o direct i;
to
of the
Kant himself, and see wh;it is the secret power which he exercises over multi
tudes
who
confess that
thev cannot
Lîve
an
intelligible
is in
explanation
of this faith which
them.
is
many of our own most distinguished philosophers, of all deno minations, have refused seriously to discuss
It
well
known
that
is
the elaims of that philosophy of which Kant the parent. They have met it with con
as
tempt
undisguised
that of -Johnson.
and unmitigated Burke, and Napoleon
as for
the French philosopher of the last century. But as have said, when any system has lived long enough to become hereditary, and
I
THK XKW UNBELIEF.
143
first
when
its
doctrines have become

the education
of
prin
ciples in
the
young, we
must meet them
patiently,
it
and discuss them
on their own merits

hearing from their
that
"ridicule
is
we want to obtain a adherents. The principle

the test of truth,
only
works successfully when people are goodhumoured and dispassionate when passion
:
and partv feeling are

intensifies the
in
the
field,
it
only
fierceness of discussion,
and
when
polemics
did conviction ever attend on angry The best controversy is that ?

fairly, in the
which gives both sides
words
of their most approved advocates, and leads the mind of the reader to take the place of
an unbiassed judge.
In the
preceding pages we have seen
how
the greatest minds in the past

reason, and
made
use of
their ruling principle was the conviction of its limits and restraints
how
we
will
now turn to the ideas of Kant on

that
I
the same subject. should premise I
cannot study
;
Kant
defect,
in
the
original
in
German
but
this
so
fatal
imagination and
dealing with works of taste, need be no obstacle
144
to the understanding of scientific and philo sophical works, which are intended for all
nations.
of a language
it is
Indeed, unless a critic s knowledge is both accurate and profound,

safer to use the
much
proved and competent

I
work of an ap translator, and such
presume; is .Mr. .Meiklejohn, to whom the task of translating Kant was committed in
18(i()
as
by the editor of so learned Bohris Philoxopkwal Library.

it
collection
From
his
is
preface serious
is
plain that the translator

writer,
and candid
his
proaches
religious
therefore,
and that he ap with something like subject
solemnity.
From
his
preface,
and from the two

Criti<ji
prefaces
j
of
Kant himself to the of Pure we may expect to obtain that know Reason, ledge of Kant and his system, which few
can hope to attain from Kant
ings.
s
own
writ
In the case of writers whose char

are
acteristics
strongly
marked,
:
extracts
need not be either

therefore deal
many or long we shall with Kant, as with Pascal

if it
and Newton, and
turns out that
Kant s
utterances are incomprehensible, and con tradictory, he himself must answer for it.
THE NEW UNBELIEF.
145
We
of
Kant
begin with the translator s estimate s method and of his style, for the
"
latter being, as Cicero says,
the counten
ance of the
the mind.
>:
soul,"
it is
a very
dear index of
"The
difficulties,"
johii,
which meet
tlie
reader,
says MY. Meikleand the trans

(the
Criti</tw
lator of this celebrated

Pin-<
work
of HWIXUH) arise from various causes. Kant was a man of clear, vigorous, tren
thought, and after years meditation could not
to his
chant
nearly twelve be in doubt as

m<>-e
and in the same O Mr. Meiklejohn attributes these difficulties to the obscurity of Kant s style, for he tells
; -L
own system
"
us
"
no main verb
There are some passages which have others in which the author
;
loses sight of the subject with
which he
set
out, a predicate regard ing something else mentioned in the course of his argument Then he goes on to tell
".
and concludes with
tion of the
us of the effect produced by the second edi (!i it which of Ptirv

n/ti<
R<
<ixou,
appeared
1
in
L787, after an
interval of six
is
What
the
the Siintma of St.

(Jritii/u*
Thomas
is
to the
Scho
:
lastic,
it is
of l*un: Reason the Summit of Kant.
to the
Kantian
10
141)
years, inferior
be far which Rosenkrantz declared to to the first, while Schopenhauer condemned it as changed from "unworthy old age," and motives in the weakness of muti a self-contradictory and
"
turned into
lated
work,"
and
this
was
also
the opinion
Mr. Meiklejohn adds of "the elder Jacobi,
those severe Michelet and others," but to Kant s admirers, criticisms on the part of
Mr.
Meiklejohn
ralinlv
replies:
Kant s
own
weight
held to be of greater testimony must be of other than that of any number
philosophers,
however
learned
and
pro
found
".
We
in hi s
then turn to Kant
own testimony
an
Ins
,wn opinion as to
therefore,
edition (1781), to the prefaces They contain to the second (1787). what he intended to
first
do,
done. and supposed that he had

that
in
this
clear,
way we
are
likely to
arrive at a better understanding
of his
mind than can be hoped for from numerous disquisitions, for and study of the
against
i
the
his philosophy, with

Keax<m,
which literature
s
Criti iw of Pure
translator
preface, pp.
XL, xiv.
THE NEW UN HE LIEF.

is
147
As we shall see, Mr. JMeikledeluged. john goes too far when he says that Kant "could not lie in doubt as to his own
system"
;
but we are safe
in
as far as
it
it
was
"
knowable,"
supposing that he understood
better than any one else.

In 1781
Kant
writes
"
Human
is it
reason, in
one
sphere. of its cognition,
called
upon
to
consider question* which

as they are presented
by
its
cannot decline, own nature, but
cannot answer, as they transcend of the mind three pages on every faculty he writes 1 make bold to say that there is not a single metaphysical problem that does not find its solution, or at least the key to
it
"
which
"
Pure reason is a nerfect and therefore if the unity principle pre sented by it prove to be insufficient for the
i. ;
its
solution here.
solution of even a single one of these ques tions to which the very nature of reason
gives birth, we must reject it, as not be perfectly certain of its
we could
sufficiency in
the case of
others."
From
1
his
second preface (1787), however,

s
Criti<fue
of Pure Reason, Kant
1st preface, pp.
xvii., xx.
148

difficulties
we learn that he had found more

in
:
he anticipated. In this metaphysics than conclu he says "We come to the preface is unable to sion that our faculty of coalition
trans.-cnd the limits of possible experience, most essential and yet this is precisely the
1
object
of this
science".
contra Here we have a specimen of those which so dictions in Kant s speculations, and other disciple bewildered Schopenhauer,
of Kaut.
at
In
Kant
s first
preface,
reason
:
is,
once,
limited,
and
unlimited
in
his
of
the evidence second preface, knowledge, be merely co-extensive reason, is declared to If any one can explain with experience. let him do an d reconcile these statements, but 1 do not so in intelligible language,
think
or that
am bound
<> >
to
make
1
the attempt;
Take, lor instance matters any dearer. "Transcendental hook ii., ch. iii., entitled understand Ins ex and try to \milytic," At p. 189 lie tells of noamena. planation
i
by multiplying Jtwu, / Critique of
extracts Iron.
*^> lll(1
Kant
make
Critique of Pure Reason,
Kant
2nd preface, pp.
xxx., xxxix.
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

us
"
149
relate to possible experience, Imt to things in themselves"; then (p. 205) he says, things are iionmcna
"
noumeiia
do
not
inasmuch
as these
have no positive
207),
"the
sig
nification,"
and
to
(p.
conception
which
is
no
object of a intuition can be
found
it
is
to correspond, a
= nothing.
That
is,
conception without an object (eux
rationix), like noumena".
The inquirer must himself

Cr/ti /iK
go
to
the
of
I tire
]t<
<nt<>n,
if
not satisfied
explain
that
these
is,
characteristic
extracts
how it Kant
"
as Mr. Meiklejohn remarks, that loses sight of the subject with which
"
he set out
verdict that
I
and support Schopenhauer Kant is "self-contradictory".

;
now
1
return
to
the
is,
question
with
which
set out, that
fascination
he
exercises.
the origin of the The reader will
remember that in the preceding pages I have made no pretence of measuring the philosophic methods of the writers 1 have
brought forward
in defence
of revelation
only contention was, that they all went the same way to the frontiers of the invisible
my
world, and that in translations, as well as in
150
the original, they are intelligible to

reason,
in
all
human
times.
nations,
and at
nil
Now, that this is we have the testimony

I
not the case with
Kant, of his greatest ad

\ve
It
mirers and disciples, and from the specimens
have given of
his
philosophy,
cannot
would be surprised at their confession. not be fair to the reader, or to Kant, to from what is called his multiply quotations
"Scientific
Work".
It
is
his boast
that
it
is
made up
of ideas,
language, names and
definitions which were never heard of before. To understand him we must be educated.
But by whom ? has been asked and

this
This
is
the question which

last
for the
hundred years,
never
ciples
is
answered, seeing that his dis And surely themselves cannot agree.
not wonderful
?
If
Kant
lose- sight
of his subject, how is the learner to learn? blind leading "the Truly this is a ease of
the
can such a philoso of Schopenhauer pher escape the reproach mutilates/ and thus dismembers that he
blind".
And how
"
himself,
This,
and
as
is "self-contradictory"?
was also the and of Micheopinion of the elder Jacobi,
we
have seen,
THE NEW UXP.KLIEF.

let
;
151
but Schopenhauer second

<ixoit,
imputation of senile
of the
imbecility, at the period of the publication

of the
edition
Critique
<>j
Pare
.l{<
seems
to be unfounded.
Kant
attained the age of eighty, and had only reached his sixty-fourth year when this
edition
that
it
was published, and it seems clear was later in life that lie began to
those
eccentricities
in
exhibit
real
matters
of
life,
which are
1
so vividly depicted
by
l)e
tells
Quincey.
us that
it
Moreover,
is
Mr.
Meiklejohn
edition of
this
"second
subsequent ones have been reprinted without alteration," and it is therefore with Kant s philosophy,
the Kritik, from which
all
:
sane or insane, as
that
believers in
it
stands in this edition
Christianity have to deal. written by the author I repeat that prefaces be the best explanation himself ought to
of his work.
reveal an
In
the
case of
Kant they
corifi
absolute and
undoubting
deuce
this
1
in
is
unequalled, and on the threshold of precisely what,
himself almost
vol.
-
f/m Loxt Dug* of iii., 1862.

Pref .. xiv.
K<mt.
De Quincey
Works,
LVJ
THK DIVINITY OK JKSUS CHRIST.
all
"
the inquiry, arouses doubt in the minds of who hold on to the principle that Securitv is mortal s chiefest enemv
".
Considering
deals,
it
the
subjects
with
which
he
hard to find amongst modern philosophers such calm assurance as breathes in any page of the
ancient or
prefaces of Kant.
"as
"
would he
At
present,"
he
tells us,
methods, according to the general per.-uasion, have been tried in vain, there
all
reigns nought Imt weariness and complete the mother of chaos and indijffreiitiwn
night in the scientific
world."
"
tribunal,"
he says,
tribunal
must
is
he
established,
less
f
and
"
this
nothing
<>/
than the Critical

]t<
I tire d*on" and he Inrestiyation This path the only one re concludes maining has been entered upon by me
"
and
have, myself discovered the cause of and conseway, quentlv the mode of removing all the
I
flatter
that
in
this
errors
which
have hitherto set reason at

"
variance with itself in the sphere of nonempirical

1
thought
Pure
I
but in
his
second
"Non-
Critii/ue of
Reas<m,
preface, p. xviii.
is
suppose, means all that empirical thought, The italics are Kant s own. sensuous.
super-
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

preface,
as
158
us that
we have
is
seen,
lie
tells
"cognition
unable to transcend the limits
of possible
experience".
li
deeper than these prefaces, we can arrive at the conclusion that Kant s philosophy is as obscure and un
Surely, without
oino;
certain as
it
is
that this
is
tin
Is it pretentious. possible It of its influence? secret
has ever been the
way
that the mysterious
and the incomprehensible seem greater than truth which is comprehended, and thus, as
it
were, reduced to the dimensions of the

it
mind which makes
its
own.
Moreover,
besides the sense of liberty and expansion, which the mysterious and unaccountable
carry with them, the stud} involves no real labour it is easier to affirm, or dream all day long, than to solve one problem in Euclid.
:
Only those who have once been under the

influence of this philosophy of dreams can realise its power but not all even of these,
;
for
some continue in their dream, and others, and fortunately they are the great
1
St.
Thomas
i.,
styles the soul in
(omnia
</uod<iiiMnodo)
some sense all things the senses and intelligence. by
Summa,
80.
<].
l.")4
majority, have forgotten all about it amidst the st rubles, and realities of life. But
those
who remain under

its
agents, and continue
the spell are its work in the rising
generation, and
at
verv widespread. conic to an age

attractive
present their influence is It is to those who have
in
which relied ion

that
I
is
more
than
invention
appeal.
Can any one. who. like the present writer, was in youth under the influence of this
form
of
(Jcrmaii
philosophy, give
1
clear
and rational account of

cesses
at
his intellectual pro

I
that
in
time;
call
it
(Jerman,
although as we have
reality
it
the
is
New
a
now,
river
Philosophy, swollen by
fift.v
contributions from the most

sources.
I
heterogeneous
or
believe
less
that
fort v
vears
ago
\\ e
it
was
diffuse
and easier
to studv.
from Carl vie. and Emerson, and it Kivnch writers who, sick of Voltaire, those looked beyond the Rhine for something more
took
But no one then regarded it respectable. as a serious studv: a system with fixed laws
and
principles.
Kvery one went

his
his
own
way. and found
own
intellectual asso
ciates in books, for masters thev could not
THE NEW r\ HE LIEF.
155
be called, seeing that thev were taken up,
and abandoned from dav to dav. To serious people who are of one mind
with
Pascal,
the accusation
that
the
New
Philosophy is merely an amusement of the mind is one of tin- worst that can be brought
against
it.
It
i-
bad enough to
"peep
;
and
it
botanize upon
mother
urave
but
is
worse to
"
jimvJe"
with religion and morals.

not onlv believers,
lnit
Kant knew that
his
own
associates as well, took that view ot his
philosophy which is put forth with daring effrontery hv Mr. Stirling in that volumi Jerman )! nous work The Secret of He</el.
( (
and of philosophy, which he himself worships, which he makes Kant and Hegel the princes,
he writes:
There
is
the direct testimony of
the intelligent
toes of the
;
philosophers in question of the highest ability in themselves, and of the most consummate accomplishment as to
all
philosophy, and we possess writers
learning requisite
Sir William
for
Hamilton,
Coleridge, have instituted each of
De Quince v,
inquest
1
into the
/,<-
who own special them his matter, and who all agree
example
<1<-
uriinoh-K
Knt.
DC Muistre.
lo(

us of the Atheistic, Pantheistic,
in assuring
and
for the rest, self-contradictory,
and
in
deed nugatory, nature of the entire industry, from Kant who began it, to Heirel, and
Schelling who finished It is not the Catholic Church then alone,
1
it".
which condemns
tive of religion,
this
philosophy as destruc
morals,
its
and reason
itself,
and
it
the
list
is
of
own
writers
antagonists amongst our not longer, it is because very

it
few capable of answering

contradictorv
cared to take
"
the trouble to analvse that which
is
self-
and
"nugatory".
students, our philo sophic freedom was absolute as regards both the matter anil the manner of our studies,
I
As
have
said, as
so
we learned our
us.
lessons in the
way
that
Hence, essays, with poetry and were our primers and class-books fiction, never knew any one who faced indeed,
pleased
:
Kant s own
called,
1
Krilik, or the Loyic, as

-
it
is
of
i
Hegel.
1/./
Those who remember

prof., p. xx.
St
i-i
if 1 1
/d,
i.,
We
also read
Pascal, but no one stopped to in
quire
how he
differed
from Kant, Comte, Cousin, and
Carlyle.
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

the rising
of
"
157
"
German Culture
in
the
under early years of the present Queen, of the German Prince Con the patronage
sort, will
agree with
me
that on the whole

"
we were spared one complication.

Evolution,"
Cosmic
as the beginning of all things,
was only incubating, and when we studied Todd biology in Bicliat, Carpenter, and
and Bowman, our minds were undisturbed
by
<1ttl<
Ha ckel
,
/Vr///fy/rx/x
of
the
"
rinxtl-
or
visions of that
creative
Cosmic
which
Substance,"
ity,"
with
its
"nebulous
latency,"
potential
to
and
"
indciinable
of
his
in
the end
days
Professor
Huxley
transferred
snatched
the sceptre of creation, rudely from the hand of his water-god
Bathybius".
Daring
"thinkers"
as
we
were, our sense of the comic, would have been fatal to the mixed physics, and imagina
tion of
1
"
Professor
Huxley, were he to
tell
Bathybius/ pronounced by Huxley all earthly life; by Haekel, parent and progenitor of its stem; bv Strauss, the extermination of the super
natural,
to be the
was restored to
Ch<dh-n<i<>r,
its
crew of H.M.S.
place by the scientific and now remains what it
into was, sulphate of lime, which crystalli/.es
gypsum.
158
THK PIVIXITY OF
.TKST S
CH1UST.
us that our
"forefathers,"
Pascal,
Newton,
"natural
Cuvier,
etc.,
were
"the
puppets of the
Cosmic
System."
and that now
knowledge
conclusion
tends more and

that
all
more
of
to
the
the choir
heaven
and furniture of earth. are the transitory forms of parcels of Cosmic Substance, wend
ing along the road of evolution from
lous
potentiality,
etc.,
etc.,
nebu
to
back
the
1
indefinable latency from which they

I
arose".
believe,
fierce
\\-e
as
was our
taken
passion
to
for
progress, ideas of
should have held on
our
"Cosmos,"
from Alexander
von Humboldt; when quoting Aristotle, this great and sober philosopher finds in creation
the
"
ordainer."
the
"ultimate
cause of
all
sensuous changes, who must be regarded as something non-sensuous, and distinct from
all matter";
and again
"
The unity of nature

problem of
was
to the Stagyrite, the great

:
in this unity, he (Aristotle) observes, with singular animation of expres there is nothing unconnected, or out sion,
the Cosmos
of place,
1
a.s
in a
bad tragedy
".-
Evolution and Ethics, pp. viii., 50. Cosmos, p. 12. Bohn, 1851.
London, 1894.
THE NEW UNBELIEF.
159
The ways
a
difficulty
of the Creator
to
must always be
leading, as
the
us
creature,
the wise to (p. 125), but worship, and the proud to blaspheme made any the wiser by the views neither are Pascal has told
;
of Hackel in
his
"
Huxley s various was there a wilder dream than

that the material world, with
History of Creation, or Cosmic schemes. Never

"
to
expect
its
stern and
inexorable certainties,
"
is
a safe theatre for
the exercise of a sportive imagination, to be turned, not into a bad tragedy," but rather
into a very contemptible comedy.
an angel comes," converts from delusion as well as from sin, under the instinctively shelter themselves
"consideration like
When
u cjix of illustrious precursors in penance and to the victims of falsehood no greater

;
consolation
in
is
anywhere
to be
found than
pages of the Confessions of St. Auyustine, with its vivid revelations of

the
long and turbulent intellectual orgies, and final conversion. I know no book so that very to dissipate well calculated
his
impression that modern unbelief, as compared with old unbelief, is something

"
"
young
160

kind, and
at once different in
more exalted and new we find the In in its nature. same proud assumption, everywhere domin ant, that unbelievers are sapient, and be
<>ld
and great are the fas lievers simpletons cinations of assumption for the young,
;
the inexperienced, and the
indolent.
St.
fell
Augustine amongst men
tells
Honoratus that he
by pure and would lead to God, and simple reason they deliver from all error those who had the
said that
"
who
will to listen to
them.
What
else
impelled
me, about the age of nine vears, to reject

the religion planted in me by my parents, and to follow and diligently listen to these
men, but the fact that they declared that we were terrified bv superstition, and ruled bv faith, before the use of reason whereas,
;
they
pressed truth had been discussed and disentangled ? Who could be proof against these promises,
least of all
for the
tive,
in
>
no one to believe until the
a boy with his mind thirsting truth, as well as proud and talka
matters
In
learned
disputed amongst the such guise they then found

as
it
me,
despising,
were,
old
women s
THE XEW UNBELIEF.

tales,
161
and longing to hold, and exhaust the manifest and open truth which they promised.
i
"
Augustine, asserting the rights of private
judgment
in
religion,
and setting up
for
himself at the age of nine, in itself, is not so singular as Pascal s discovery of Euclid at twelve intellectual insolence is the
:
appanage
of
youth.
of his
It
was
the
use
Augustine made
private
judgment
which astounds us. Everything true and false was ground up in the logical mill of
Never had falsehood stupendous brain. such a champion as Augustine, and we are
his
not surprised to learn that
when
the
young
philosopher set up
his chair at Milan, St.
Ambrose added
words,
to the public Litanies the
lo</iea
Auyustini,
liber a
nos
Domine.-
The
fact that
Augustine tried to under
stand the philosophic doubt of his day, and that if it was cognisable, he was certainly
capable of understanding
it,
makes him an
Df
Utilitatf Credendi.
Ad Honoratum,
i.,
2.
(Jirv,
Vie de* tiaintx, 28th August.
11
1(52

;
inestimable witness
for
it is
only those who
have been
in the
who
In
can
tell
1
the cast
depths and conic up auain, us what is to be found there. head and of Augustine
J>oth
heart had u one astray, and in language as awful as that of Dante, lie reveals how
"reason
by
lust
is
swayed".
In
every
way,
therefore. St.
Augustine
is
the voice,
and the interpreter of the liberated mind and remembrance of It is plainlv the heart. his long and shameful slavery which gives
such fierceness to his zeal, reminding us of the words of Ivlmund l.urkc that: "They
never
who do
love where they ought to love, not hate where they ought to hate However, il is only those who have: absolute
will
".
possession of their principles, ment, can safely allow head
who
and
"
in
argu
to
heart
run together with

himself,
all his
slack rein, like
who as Coleridge says, powers unless when he is
Burke rarely shows

passion";
in a
and
in a still
Augustine.
higher sense this is true of St. At the same time it. was only
when
he
fell
back
upon
those
eternal
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

principles of truth,
163
always, every that lie began to say where, and by ami write those words which will last for
all,"
held
"
\Yho cared, any more than Augus tine himself, for anything that he had said
ever.
written up to the age of thirty-three, the period of his conversion ? They had
or
gone the way of the dreams and fantasies oi Faustus, his Manichean bishop, and
"
others,
proudly
.
. .
delirious,
in
carnal
and
talkative
fall
who
their
unholy pride
:
away and
are blinded
by Thy Light
prophets of eclipses of the sun, they had no suspicion of the eclipse going on in their own souls V
infallible
St.
Augustine does not deny any more

the
than
Blessed
Sir
Thomas More,:
or
Pascal, that the
pagan sages were great and
learned in
are few
their
own way
indeed, there
more important testimonies to the greatness of natural wisdom than that which
St.
1
Augustine gives to
(Jicero s exhortation to
iii.,
mftxfi inx of
I
tit.
Auyustine,
.
. .
0, v.
5.
ayuim philosophers
1).
nimble to cure
shops."
SOUK- good drugs have they yet in their

lof/t, p.
Dia-
1(54
TIIK DIVINITY Ol
JKSUS CHRIST.
in
the stutlv of philosophy

"When
the
working
imbecile"
at
rhetoric, in
what
lie
calls
the
"
canic
says,
upon
"
this
period of his life, Augustine work. This study," he

"
altered
1
my
aspirations,
and
the
offered to Thyself, O Lord, prayers which and turned my longings and desires into All at once altogether another direction.
saw nothing but degradation in the hopes coveted the wisdom of the world, and
1 I
which
is
immortal with an incredible
flight
of the heart
up
in
mv
began already return to Thee."

I
;
to
lift
myself
We
little
see that St.
Augustine came to have

the unbelief of his
respect
it
for
day.
He found
the
as baseless
<iruix>ir<\
and
"
and unmeaning as the objective noumenal
reality"
of Kant, were to
De
to
JMaistre,
and
alge
Svdney Smith, and the

braic ghost
"phantasmal
of
Com t
ism,"
Carlyle,
and
for similar reasons, his
and
lie
did not measure
language in assailing philosophers xtijH rlH There are excesses of intellec dclu tuilt^.
tual
pride which
nature
itself tells
us are
THE NEW UNBELIEF.
165
incompatible with the immunities and privi leges of our common reason. Amongst o
these
is
the assumption that everybody was
wrong
until
somebody made
a talxthi
his
appearance
like
in the world,
and the philosopher who
Kant makes
rdwi of the wisdom of
the past that he may have a free start, must this if he means anything. It is a claim exceeding even that made by our
mean
Lord Himself, who said:
"Do
not
think
am come am prophets.
that
I
to destroy the
law or the
not come to destroy, but
to
"
fulfil.
It is
hard to keep to the compact made with
the reader,
when
at starting
promised to
deal gravely with such usurpations of reason, for the sake of minds in which they have
become
like a
second nature.
is
It
may
be that
the Catholic
mind
not patient enough with

is
them, and that the difficulty

the case of one
tim.
I
doubled in
who
has himself been a vic
will, therefore, fall
back on a Pro
I
testant author,
who
of
all
the writers
in
has
approached
J
the
subject
v. 17.
the
know, most
St.
Matthew
)*

and earnest manner
of using
:
serious
one who
in
stead
as
a
German
to
Ins
be>t
])lnloso])liy
merely
eviit.
background
liis
own
tin
pictures,
dentlv docs
(
to
(
understand
Mr.
lost
wick
has
(li riittni
til I
and Chrixtiaulie
it/r
two
givat
is
merits:
writes
in
plain
Kno lish. and

his
not content
lie
is
to give us
merelv
own
views.
not
intoxi
cated or bewildered even
by Garlyle.
right.
whom
"Ger
he selects
as our chief interpreter ot

"
man Thought
not so
and he
is
Garlyle
is
dear
a writer as
Emerson, and there
mind is more Kmerson s thought.

fore his
in the line of
German
at
style
C
broke down
al\
.-ses
over
which
it
could
ii"t
adapt
to
He arlyle leaped. the intellectual prowherein

lts
cesses of
Kant, and
tells
to sentences,
drop and the predicate wanders vainly in out/ writes Here search of its subject.
Mciklejohn
k1
Mi\
us
main
vei
sit,"
Emerson
with very
to
Carlvle,
"and
read and write
little
composition,
1
svstem, and as far as regards with the most fragmentary

The term
System
"Culture it
is
Northgute,
1SS:>.
both
:
correct and expressive.

it
cannot be called
is
only a new \vav of thinking.
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

result
:
167
sentences unintelligible, each para

1
graph an infinitely repellent particle". am safe in saying that all Kant s think doctrines may he said to spring from his
I
Ethical
made
Philosophy, by \yhich he practically himself his own god, and supreme judge
of everything, and that if here he is found to be uncertain and mutable, the same
must be said of
That
is.
special doctrines; nf all that he has not borrowed from

all
his
ine
common
a strong
treasury of the
The study
on
this
of the results of
human mind. Herman culture
mind
like
:
recommendation
"
that of Carlyle, has the illustrates it
principle,
them"
:
By
in
it
their
it
fruits
you
shall
know
it will
what
has done in his case

others
is
probably do
who
are
and
fair
after all
only its effects

logical
is
like him, on strong
minds,
which
that
are
it
when they get

our while to
play, consider.
"His
worth
Air.
Of Carlyle
Gostwick writes:
setting-
positive
ethical
teaching
is
aside
some discursive passages that have

pantheistic
substantially
429.
been called
1
Th? Month, March, 1883,
p.
1()S

with the moral doctrine of Kant,
;
identical
and Fichte
in
other words,
it
asserts
the
autonomy, independence of man s con This is the doctrine maintained science

or
.
1787, of which the practical inefficiency was confessed by that writer in

in
by Kant
17
1
.); ).
Again, and
liv
still
more
boldly,
it
was
he
asserted
as
1
Fichte
in
17W5-S, and as early

in
s
SOC>,
and more explicitly
181-
>,
retracted his assertion of
man
moral antoto
nomv
gion."
at
least,
he then ceased
regard
reli
is
morality as a
sullicient
,
substitute for
As
.Mi
(lost
wick remarks, and as
well
known
to readers of Carlyle, while

fell
his
teachers tacked, or
on,
holding on
is
"Clod
to
s
back, Carlyle sailed the principle that con

mandate":
science
own
and
a
very
sound axiom
in
the case of those to

ruler distinct
whom
from
;
Cod
1
is
reality,
:
hemselves
but for
one to be consulted and obeyed those, who like Coleridge, thus took
the guide of conscience, Carlyle had supreme contempt. "lie had skirted the
as
Cod
howling- deserts of infidelity

this
(says Carlyle),
was evident enough
but he had not
the courage, in defiance of pain and terror,
THE XEW UNBELIEF.
169
to press resolutely across said deserts to the
new
"
firm land of faith beyond
"
the fact
was that the only thing in these ne\v lands of faith," was Carlyle s own appalling pride, and faith in himself, and not even Shelley in his youth, came to a more
"firm"
pitiable conclusion
than did Carlyle

careful
in
his
old
a:_! e.
Mr. Gostwick
is
and learned work

still
remarkable illustration of the way in

out of court
which Catholic writers are

in
ture.
English philosophic, and religious litera In his index of the authors from
whom he draws his very powerful argu ments against unbelief, we look in vain for the names of Pascal, Bossuet, or Cardinal
Newman,
fender
of or
indeed
of
any
Catholic,
de
last
Revealed
Religion
of
the
three centuries.
And
yet educated
as he
plainly was by masters of free-thought, infidel, and Protestant, it is touching as it

is
instructive
to
observe
how
this
clear
is
headed and candid writer, clear because he candid, found conviction and rest for
1
German Culture and
Christianity, pp. 209, 217.
170
TIM;
;uul
lvixiTY OF JKSTS CHKIST.
head
Pascal
as
his
In-art,
on
the
at
a
travelled,
and
from
same road that the same centre,
will
he seen
few extracts .from
concluding
}aue.-.
Covenant,"
lie
"The
New
writes,
"was
foreshadowed
passed awav.
in
the
Old,
which
ot
now
has
is
The temple
w<-
the .lews
hearts
destroved,
dwells,
. .
.
and
in
whose
He
be-
are
is
now
tin-
the
temple of the
to
Lord.
lie
1
Lord
whom
in
the
in
înniiiLi
Cod
.
said.
Let us
make man
our
likeness
Yom Him
their inspiration. incarnate, how conid
the prophets derived If lie had not appeared
we
is
uiicoiisiimed
have
looked
upon
Him, since
we cannot view
in
its
even the sun, which

full
His creature,
splendour?"
Of
the concord of testi

"Those
mony
Christ
in
Holv Scripture he says:

relate to
supremacy".
already named
s
one central tenetOthers

"are
con our
cordant
Lord.
tic,
portraiture In the three; gospels called

in
traits
in
our
of
Synop
four
and
the
fourth
...
in
the
dated not after A.D. GO, epistles of St. Paul, and in the other epistles, in the Apocalypse,
written
about
A.D.
70,
in
St.
Clement
THK NEW UN
Epistle
patristic
all
!K LIEF.
171
in
to
the Corinthians,
and
other
writings earlier than A.D. 150. in these arc found the self-same traits of
one commanding, self-evidential portraiture,

retains its brightness, beauty that still and majesty, after the lapse of more than Air. Gostwiek eighteen hundred years."
then
((notes
from
the
rationalistic
Air.
that vivid passage in which he of Christ and that "ideal character, speaks which through all the changes of eighteen
Lecky
cent.uries has tilled the hearts of
men with an
1
impassioned love/ and then .Mr. Gostwiek continues on the same lines as those of ascal
:
"i>v
whom was
the
portraiture
here
.
called
ideal By any one man produced? where and when lived the mighty Then, poet (and far more than a poet) who could
create such an ideal
Or was
it
produced
authors
?
by
several
contemporaneous
their
How
miraculous
concord!
several living in various times
by and places ?
led
Or
This concord must be
still
more marvellous.
But whence came the influence that

1
lfi-4.
of European Jforalx,
ii.,
p. 8.
Ir2

doctrine as his-
multitudes to accept the

toricallv
true
The
\vord portraiture
has
been used as familiar, and to some degree Imt it is a feeble word, and hardly useful There was serves to indicate the truth.
;
recognised in the Christian churches of St. Paul s time, and afterwards, the virtual
presence of one living Lord, by whose be judged, to spirit everv doctrine might
\vh<>sc
life
it required, the proof, series of the epistles included in the

F<>r
every were
precept
had
reference.
whole
Canon
cited.
of
the
New Testament might

addressed
to
be
Those
Ephesians and Colossians might be especially named, but

the
oid\-
because
is
the
truth,
expressed every
where,
often repeated here with a

It
is
remark
able enerin-. O^
taken for granted that
one presence pervades every congregation of Christians, and there need be mentioned
only one
name
to
remind them
to
all
of their
duties.
all
common faith and their A word is enough to call

every heart.
practical
mind
the
traits of a portraiture that is
Thus
in
engraved on one place that name

of doctrine
:
serves instead of a
summary
THE NEW UNBELIEF.
173
Remember them who have the rule over you, who have spoken to you the Word of God whose faith follow, considering the
;
end of them Jesus Christ, the same yester Of day, and to-day, and for ever
:
all
conceivable
error
to
errors
the
greatest
is
our
modern
ascribes
especially
!
German
which
of
philosophy the origin

Mr.
I
our
Christian
faith."
To
my mind
any
Gostwick
succeeds
the
diffi
better than
writer
know
in
cult operation of grappling with those ex halations as many-coloured as the minds
of men, which are called
"
ideals
".
am
not
aware that
Ft
is
his
work attracted much

in
"
notice.
wanting
emulate
original
views,"
and he has neither the power nor the

clination
to
in
the
popular essayist
of the dav,
who month
after
month
careers
half a through dozen German or French philosophers har nessed to his car. I am persuaded, how
ever, that serious people who seriously want to know the wlx tirc the why ? and the
the lower empyrean with
German Culture and
Christianity, pp. 493 to 496.
1,1

.
of the
New
his
Philosophy, will get
as
much
light from
ll
book as the subject
allows.
is
we
realise
that
as well as its
great point gained when (Jennan Biblical Criticism, fantastic and frivolous French
a
all
(laughter,
nothing more than the application of the ideas, for we cannot call them principles, of Kant and Hegel, to a sub
is
after
ject in
lie
which fact and reasoning must ever inextricably bound together, and when
facts
the reasoning
false,
fundamentally lawless and become the mere ornaments

is
of the so-called
for
critic s
theme.
(Jranting,
the
lectual
sake of argument, that the intel gifts of the founders of the New
Philosophy are remarkable and peculiar, it cannot be expected that mankind will give
over reason
itself,
with
all its
accumulations
in the past, to be refashioned, and that not nierelv by one. but by a succession of
speculative philosophers. children and It is onlv
barbarians
valuation
who
:
take
people
at
their
own
and his privilege freclv granted to Kant, many imitators. When a philosopher has
obtained
this
semi-religious
position,
his
THE NEW UNBELIEF.
.175
disciples expect him to be treated with a kind of veneration, and any failure in
arouses indignation, and that retalia tion which puts an end to discussion. In
this
this
country
the
at
present this
is
one of our
enthusiasts
farther,
greatest difficulties.
for
Indeed,
New
Philosophy go
and
are
indignantly contemptuous, when we timidly say we do not understand masters, who boldly assert that tiiev are new in
every sense of the word, and that their mission is to lead the reason of mankind
by paths which were never before imagined.

Surely there
that,
is
we
are nervous
nothing offensive in saving when asked to give up
our veteran pilots for others who have onlv made vovages on the map. Kant wrote his Crifn/uc of Pure Jtwtxoii
in
not a province, material or moral, into which reason enters, which he has not attempted to reorganise,
is
live
months.
There
and as we have seen, he

satisfied that he has
fect contentment":
tells
us that he
is
brought reason to per which is

<-oiiclii>ion
170

Moreover,
not universally acknowledged.

as
\ve
have seen,
guides,
it
if
the
ne\v
we follow Kant and must he \vith loss of

Plato,
Socrates,
Aristotle,
Cicero,
P>acon,
Newton, Leihnitx, Burke, Cuvier Pascal, and Pasteur we must all go to school, or
:
rather to the nursery attain.
one argument against the New Philosophy in all its forms, which its de It voted adherents treat with indifference. is that of Hossuet to the Sects, which made
There
is
a Catholic, of (Jihbon in
"
his
in
You
I
change."
he writes
Oxford days. his Histnrif of

"and
the
that
artt/f tmts
of
tin/
Protestant Sects,
changes is not the truth." Kant as we have seen changed, and HO did famous ILegel, Kant s most Fichte, and
which
if pupil, who, finished hauer,
we
s
are to believe
that adulteration
Schopen and con

the
fusion
of
Kant
the
philosophy,
which
his
philosopher
edition
"
himself
began
of
in
second
of
Crit n/m
of Pure Reason.
degradation,"
s
The lowest stage
says
and
Uiibbon also read Bossuet

says,
"My
"Exposition,"
me".
man,
p.
iv.
conqueror oppressed 1840.
Life,
Young-
THE NEW UXBKLIKF.

"
177
Schopenhauer,
to
stifle
the
was reached by Hegel, who freedom of thought won by
Kant, turned Philosophy, the daughter of Reason and future mother of Truth, into
tant
an instrument of obscurantism, and Protes Jesuitism, but in order to hide the
disgrace,
men
and at the same time stupefy brains to the utmost, drew over her a
veil of the emptiest verbiage
and the most

heard
out
of
senseless
Bedlam."
hodge-podge ever
This
//n
is
taken from a notice in the J)ubir
.Re rii
Jieijel,
of
Professor Wallace
Lofjic
of
and
proves
Professor
that
Schopenhauer
agreed
said
"
with
Ferrier
when
he
has ever yet uttered one in Not one of telligible word about Hegel? seldom his countrvmen -not any foreigner
:
Who
and certainly I think, even himself;" that any one who reads a few pages of the will share philosopher, or his commentators
in
it
the perplexity of Professor Ferrier.
So
was ninety years ago with Sydney Smith

Muly,
1S9-1, p. L l l.
Hi-,/,-1,
-Secret of
Stirling, vol.
1-2
i.,
p. xxiv.
178

of
"
in the presence
Professor
Kant and
his
twelve categories; his distinctions between empirical, rational and transcendental philo
sophy his absolute unity, absolute totality, and absolute causation; his four reflective
;
conceptions, his objective noumenal reality, his subjective elements, and his pure cog
nition
singular of perception, but he was unable to powers

".
Sydney
Smith
had
Kant s realm of shadows penetrate the title which Ilegel, with amusing can
"
"
dour, gives to his
own system.
"
hope, has been done to illus trate the contrast between the intellectual
Enough,
and processes of Pascal, Bacon, and Newton, those of Kant, Ilegel, and Schopenhauer,
and
venture to attempt. The most superficial student cannot fail to observe that the former are as pointed and
this
is
all
that
dear and
their style, as the latter are obscure. To all, therefore, to

in
vague
whom
conclusions are of any value in philosophy, this want of point and limitation in the
1
Morn! Philosophy,
Rtv.,
loc. cit.
sect,
iii.,
p.
-34.
Longmans,
1850.
Dn/>.
THE NEW UNBELIEF.
179
Philosophy must be a fatal objection. Schopenhauer s view that Philosophy, the daughter of Reason," is merely the future
" "
New
mother of
Truth,"
will
who
only satisfy those
hold that the

is
of Truth, is the
belief,
not the possession the cud of life; an idea which

[mi-suit,
animating principle of modern un and is boldly affirmed some of its
by
leaders.
Herein
its
lies
one secret of
It is
its influ
important, however, to reflect that this characteristic of our times is only a new fashion of an old folly. St. Bernard tells of those whose
glory
it
ence and
fascinations.
was
that
to
1
"doubt
know
there
everything,
and and
"
nothing,"
and Lord Paeon,

delight
in
"Certainly
be
it
giddiness,
.... Again
it
to fix a belief, affecting 2 free-will in thinking as well as in actiuo-
count
bondage
&
is
of the
mind that
one of the strange perversities it prides itself on asking

"
questions to which it does not expect an answer. It was said of old that one fool can ask more questions than ten wise men
1
DC Erroribus
Abrelardi, cup.
iv.
Essay on Truth.
180
(.-an

answer
:
lor
lie
does not
know
that
his
questionings are an evidence of his ig norance of the Boundaries of knowledge, and

t
of those
reason
itself:
"
Tlie
tool
dotli
think he
is
wise, hut
a tool
.
the wise
man knows
philosophic
himself to he
If
this
is
estimate of modern
its
wavs
no
otfensive to
to
is
votaries, they
for
have
their
riu ht
complain,
not
collision
certainly
lane/na^c
more measured when they

with
the
come
of
into
philosophy
their
forefathers:
Professor
Huxley
of the Cosmic system". They "puppets ouuht to understand that we who hold on to
authority as well as to reason, and identify all that is most precious and sacred with
the
perhaps, as jealous of the honour of our masters as they are of their
past,
arc,
own
There are limits to literreputations. and philosophic courtesy. If the enemies arv of Christianity have persuaded themselves
interests of opposed to the mankind, then they are in their right in
that
it
is
l>est
assailing
it,
hut the} must allow the same

1
As You
Ilk,- It, v.
1.
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

freedom
of
181
If
speech
that
to
its
defenders.
in
every philosophers, shape and form, who directly or indirectly

assail, either religion itself, or its
we
believe
aboriginal
ar<>
foundations
in
the
mind
of
man,
as
man
most deadly enemies: Burke says, all the

"to
"foes,"
Edmund
this,
dignity and con

believing
solation
of
mankind
"
we
must le allowed to Lord Bacon say so. was no religious enthusiast, and it is he
who
is
has
said:
s
"They
that
deny bodv
(iod,
destroy
man
nobility, for
certainly
;
man
if
of kin to the beasts
by
his
and
he be not of kin to
a
God by
his spirit, lie is
base
likewise
and ignoble creature. It destroys magnanimity and the raising of

nature."
human
Believing as we do that the Xoiuitenti of
Kant and
of
"
"the
the
Absolute"
"
self-cognition of the process of Hegel, with the
Christologies Kenan, are as
of their pupils Strauss, hostile to the
and
supernatural
Essays,
^
"Atheism,"
p. .31.
Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 178-185.

i.,
Secret of
Hegel,
p. 9.
182
interests of
man
as tin-
"
Greek
phvsics
atheists,
"
or the
"
of the giddiness adulterated meta\vhoni
of the
French, to
refer,
Bacon
and
Burke respectively
he
we
are not so
simple as to
propitiated hy the faint and patronage which the New Philo praise sophy sometimes gives to a god of its own
making, and
neither
Before
to
\ve
a Christ
who
in
their pages
is
God nor man.

leave
them we mav look hack

of
those
great
masters
reason
under
whose guidance we began our investigation, and ask whether there is any agreement possible helween their minds, as seen in
t
heir writ ings,
and the philosophy, historical

rritieisin
it
is
method-, and Granted that
of
Five-Thought
to
important
preserve
the ronrinuitv, and
inheritance of
human
If
thought, this
is
a practical question.
the
specimens 1 have given from masters old and new, are fair representations, they are enough to prove that the gulf between the
Old and
Xuw
Philosophies
styled
his
is
impassable.
"a
When
Hegel
own system
in strict
realm of
shadows,"
he was
ment with Kant, whose primary
agree doctrine
THE NEW UNBELIEF.
183
was that
"
there
is
no such thing us an
to
objective reality
corresponding
human
knowledge, and that knowledge is merely a product, or so to speak, a work of art and in such a elaborated by the thinker" system there is no place for that ascending
:
;
and descending
deductions, that
scale of proof,
those rigid
harmony
unit}"
of ideas
which
give
life
and
to
the
speculations of Bacon,
Xewton and
philosophic Pascal
:
with authority, proof has disappeared from the categories of Free-Thought.
There are some who think that

Philosophy, or
correctly styled,
all
"
this
New
Culture,"
as
is
now
so
it is more dominant that
as
world must come to terms with it, with an established power, and even
the
Catholics have been found

of a
who have dreamt

St.
concordat
between
Thomas, and
Tilman Pesch,
"are
G.
"
K.nt The
;
et
la Science Jfoderne, F.
p.
rationalists,"
says Lord Bacon,
like the
spiders
they spin
all
out of their
own
bowels.
But
give
me
a philosopher,
who
like the Lee hath a middle
faculty,
gathering from abroad, but digesting that

is
which
gathered
by
his
own
virtue."
Essays,
Chandos ed., p. 386.
184
Kant.
The truth
is
"
that
it
is
"
with reason
has to
itself that the

:
new
Culture
is
make
reason which peace and religion indirectly in

it
is
assailed directly,
its
rational minis
ter.
The worship of
wisdom"
is
"
mistiness as
mother of
no novelty;
Edmund Burke
speaks compositions, admired by credulous ignorance, for no other reason than because they were not understood
"certain
.
of
the
generality being because it is the fashion to admire.
content
to
admire
If
the
work under these circumstances he pom pous and unmeaning, its success is sure,
as its
pomp
both
daxxles. and its vacancy puzzles, which are admirable ingredients to

]
procure
respect."
Perhaps
an
:
something
lesson,"
like
what
is
called
object
or
argument,
lists
may
be
roughly constructed by parallel

chief masters of the old,
of the
and the new way
of thinking and This plan brings arguing. out the great preponderance of master minds on the side of belief in its wide
1
Letter to Barry.
Prior
Life of Burke,
i.,
430.
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

sense,
185
which, although its extent was dif ferent, did not differ in kind, as is the cast with the unbelief of those Free-Thinkers
1
with
if
whom
have confronted them.
Again,
the following Catena of believers begins so much earlier, it is because the New Unbelief,
being a development of Protestantism, has no other positive, ancestry. I think, there

fore,
I
am
near
enough
to
the
mark
in
starting
modern
philosophic
doubt
this
with
meta Spinoza (1623-77) although physical -Few appears to be nothing more

than Descartes driven on to his conclusions.
Descartes,
as
is
not) of Pascal,
known, was the hete who, layman as he was, saw

well
clearly
wit,
what Bossuet
only foreboded,
to
his
the philosopher built on his own cogitations was build system ing his house without plan or foundations,
that
]
who
and encouraging
1
all
men
I
to
do the same.
I
Cogito, ergo
sum
"
think, therefore
am
"-
is to make reason begin with its own operations the cart putting the work before the worker, before the horse". "What can be more opposed to
which
"
than to endeavour by says St. Bernard, reason to ascend above reason ?

"
reason,"
"
186
In support of the view that Spinoza was the immediate father of the New Unbelief,
perhaps
oi
may
l>e
conversation with
a rationalist of
allowed to quote from a the school
Carlyle, and a distinguished member of the once famous Knglish "Metaphysical So

ciety,
which seems
I
to
find
me
in
as
instructive
"
as
anything
he
can
books.
never,
said,
I
"could
give
my
mind
in
to
metaphysics.
see
far
no
as
it
meaning
bears on
anv-
thing except
life.
so
human
Once when sulfering from sleepless ness. began the study of Kant on the nature of existence, as, for instance, whether it makes any difference to us, whether
I
Hamlet was
study secure
to
1
real
being or not, and the
me
month
of sound sleep,
the
great
I
friends
day, and 1 be said on the
disgust of my metaphysical have worked at Spinoza in my think he has said all that can
subject."
And now
and
for
our Parliament of the dead
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

Born.
187
Died,
1623 1694 1711 1732 1724 1737 1749 1770 1820 1825 1834
1677 1778 1777 1776 1804 1794 1832 1831 1893 1895
The reader
will
observe
that
this
list
of believers amongst our intellectual sove reigns is confined to laymen, and the two
the suggests are these Oo bad and indifferent, who literary men, good, escaped infidelity were always those who looked things straight in the face, and
chief reflections
it
188
honestly tried to find out what they knew, and what they did not know, and could not know while the august names of physical
;
philosophers which are found in our list, prove that dear ideas about the visible
world, and the sciences which deal with
it,
generate
relates
1
a.
similar
clearness
is
in
all
1
that
to
;is
that
which
invisible.
1
Here
those
Kven
regards
it
Biology,
believe
that
\vlio
have studied
deeply, and been
intimate with
will
learned
as
members
of the
medical profession
to the falsehood of
the popular impression
agree that
to
biological
faith
:
studies are in any special
way
a trial
the non-appearance of the soul in the brain of a dead man disturbs the anatomist less than the non-
appearance of sense
in
the writings of materialists.
A year before his death, Sir Andrew Clark, M.D., told me that his materialistic adversaries were then much
perplexed. that they
They had been driven

could not
get on
to the conclusion
without some sort of
god, which they called "A force behind the universe". When he retorted that this was the personal God of
anthropornorthey called him an that it was impossible to conceive a phite," saying to which he replied person who was not a man that it was this assumption which was anthropomor-
the
"
Christian,
phitic.
"
He seemed
"
surprised at the
it
list
of believing
scientists
fancy
had never occurred to him
to count
them up.
THE XEW UNBELIEF.

then is something which asks answer on the part of those who
that
religion,
if
189
for
tell
an
us
not mere hysteria, and a emotions,

is
product
of
the
at
any
rate
something altogether transcendental,
ever
soaring or diving, in regions far away from the sober world of common-sense.
It
is
not necessary to inquire

believer"
how
it
far
all
is
each-
was
in
harmony with
;
the decrees of the Council of Trent
enough
all
if
we
are convinced that one
and
they gave the same meaning to words, so that we can tell when thev agreed and Moreover, although we cannot affirm positively that they were never
when they
differed.
so intoxicated with their
or
conceits,
as
to
set
own concepts them above the

"
"
common-sense of mankind, we are
at least
safe in saying that they kept these conceits to themselves, for never until our times
have men had the face to
offer their
own
imaginations to the public as constituent
and parts of historical, critical, biological, This is the logical other scientific works.
and inexorable conclusion of Kant
prin that truth having no objective reality ciple
190
separate from the mind, facts begin in each
man
lie
s brain, and so being personal property, can use them as freely as fancy itself. To those then who tell us that we must
devote
to
share
of
our short span of
life
the
New
Philosophy,
we
may
reply
that
is
we must first be convinced that there some new truth to be found in it.
I
What
sophy/
in a
mainly dislike
in
the
is
New
Philo
Longfellow, with which an old idea, folded pertinence
says
the cool im
new garment,
looks
you
in
the face
and pretends not to know you, though you have been familiar friends from childhood.
.
. .
Often
proposition
of
inscrutable
and dread aspect, when resolutely grappled with and torn from its shadv den and its
of uncouth ter and drained forth into the open minology, of day. to be seen by the natural liii ht eye and tried by merely human understanding,
bristling
intrcnchments
proves to be
truism.
very harmless truth, familiar to
us from old, sometimes so familiar as to be a

. .
.
(Jan
you believe that those words
ever came from the pen of

1
Thomas
Carlyle?"
Longfellow, Hyperion,
p. 86.
THE NEW UNBELIEF.

Certainly the influence of the
191
New
Philo
widely spread, Imt we can under stand the nature of this influence without
sophy
the
is
aid of
the
Encyclopaedia
CritH/tn of Hegel.
of Kant, or the
We
find
it
in
historians, poets,
and materialistic preachers, more clearly in philosophic novels, into which all the rivers of modern specu and
still
have begun to empty themselves. The pretension on the part of the New
lation
Philosophy of changing the course of the current of the human mind, or rather of
opening new fountains hitherto unknown,

so extravagant that
it
is
own
destruction,
must rapidly work its and when the fickle and
transitory patronage of fashion has deserted this new form of revolt against God, there
is
will
ever} reason to hope that its consequences lie less serious than those of its French
in
precursor
in
the
last
century.
Voltaire,
intelligible language, carried
on the old
war of the pride and passions of man against God, and so he has bequeathed a legacy of death to the world. Voltaire needs no in
terpreter save a kindred spirit.
as
He
differs
much from Kant
as
lire
from smoke.
192

\vitli
Those who have been familiar
dis
ciples of \ oltaire in the early years of this
century, and later on with those of Carlyle
during his maddening but transitory reign, can realise this difference between the Vol
tairian,
and the Kantian
spirit.
The
fierce
fires of the French volcano are burning out, ere long the smoke will clear away, and
like
"
Dante coming up from Hell, we

behold the stars
"
shall
ao-ain
INDEX OF NAMES.
A.
Abraham, 72, 82. Adam, 111. A Kempis, Thomas,
Albert, Prince, 157.
Bossuet. 9 (n. ; 10, 11
,
(n.;, 21,
66, 71, 103 (n.), 185.

22.
169,
176,
Bowman,
157.
Brewster, Sir David, 24, 27.

28, 31, 33.
Ambrose,
St., 16, 86, 101.
Antony
of Padua, St., 129.

2G.
of,
Burke, Edmund,
36, 43,
1, 2.
12.
35
Archimedes,
Argyll, Duke Ariosto, 187.
Aristides, 89.
47,
48,
139,
142.
89
(n.).
162, 176, 181, 182, 184, 187.
Byron, Lord,
4 (n.), 19, 88.
Aristotle. 158,
17(i.
c.
Campbell, Lord, 34
Carlyle,
(n.),
(n.).
Athanasius, St., 86, 105, 107.
Augustine, 74, 86, 103
St., 16,
(n.),
17,42, 43.
105, 110,
Thomas,
(n.),
5 (n.),
44
45
154, 156 (n.),
122-125, 133-135, 159-164.
164, 166, 167-169. 186, 190,

192.
B.
Bacon,
187.
Carpenter, Dr., 157.

33-36, 43,
Lord,
18,
137, 176, 178, 179, 181, 182,
Gary, 92 (n.). Catherine of Siena,

131.
St.,
129-
Bentley, Dr., 30.
Cervantes, 187.
129,
179,
Bernard, St., 185 (n.).

Bichat, 157.
94,
Chateaubriand,
Chaucer, 187.
3,
15.
(n.).
Chatterton, Lady, 2
Bolingbroke, Lord, 47, 139.
Cicero, 71, 145, 163, 176.
(193)
13
194
Clark. Sir Andrew, 188
INDEX.
n.
.
Felix, Pere, 70.
Clement,
Climarus,
(
St., 170.
FerritT, Professor, 177.
St. .Idlm,
n.
.
110
(u.).
Fichte, 168, 176.
Idii-li, 5
Fox,
I
(Miiirli-s
James,
2.
Coleridge, S. T., of), 102, 168. Comte, 156 n. 164.

.
Francis, St., 129.
Fniude,
,1.
A., 5 (n.).
Condoivet.
4,
u.
1:53.
Consalvi, Cardinal. 28 (n.\

Ci>]ierilii
U>,
G.
Oalih-o, 187.
187.
(n.).
Cousin, Victor, I. }:}, 156 Cuvier, 158. 176. 187.
Gibbon,
(
36, 176, 187.

Ilishoj), 1, 2.
(n.).
Jilisiiii,
D.
Daniel. 77,
7!).
(Jiry,
(
161
liiftlif,
1S7.
Dante.
I,
13.
-U
(Jnstwirk, 166-169, 171, 173.

(11.
,
92-94,
(hivuii,
110. 162, 187. 192.
Madame, 130
(n.).
David. Kin;, 59, 62. )aymaii. 92 in.).

,
H.
HiVkeK
1
!)
Maisiiv, .Joseph, 24 (n.). 164. 80 n.), 155 n.

.
M, 157,
159. 187.
Demosthenes,
71.
lf>5.
Halley. Dr.. 36, 37. Hamiltun. Sir \Villiam, 155.
DC Quineey, 15 1. De Sales, St. Franris,
Harvey, 187.
41.
Dr.-cartes, 26, 107, 185, 187.
Havel, M., 108-110.
6, 10, 21,
103
(n.),
E.
Klias, 62.
He-el, 48, 140, 155, 156, 174, 176-178. 181, 182, 187, 191.
1
el vet ius, 19,
44.
Emerson, 154,
166.
n.).
lesiod, 55.
Emery, M., 28
Ejiictetus, 107. Erasmus, 187.
Ilettiii^ er, 5, 11, 87.
Homer,
55.
1.
Honoratus,
Esther, 62.
Euclid, 26, 106, 161.
Huô, Victor, 86. Humboldt, 158.
Hume,
F.
Faustus, 163.
187.
Huxley,
Professor,
31,
140,
157, 159, 180, 187.
INDEX.
J.
Jacob, 82.
Jacobi, 146, 150.
195
Mr.,
Meiklejohn,
144-147,
149, 150, 166.
Melchisedech, 81.
Michelet, 146, 150.
Jansenius, 74.
Jeremias, 59. John, St., 98
(n.),
Ill
(n.),
Milton, 187. Molinos, 130
(n.).
182
(n.).
Montaigne, 107.
73,
Johnson, Dr., 12, 35, 36, 96 (n.), 142, 187.
More,
Moses,
98.
Blessed
Sir
Thomas,
79,
163, L87.
55,
Joseph us,
54.
62,
72,
82,
Juda, 70, 82. Judas, 100.
N.
K.
Kant, 37, 48, 140-153,
155,
Nabuchodonosor,
64.
(n.), 83,
Napoleon, 9, 14, 28 87 (n.), 142, 187. 150, 104-168, 174-178, 181184, 186, 187, 189, 191.
Xeri, St. Philip, 67.
Kepler, 187.
Newman,
L.
Cardinal,
29,
59,
94, 99, 119-122, 137, 169.
Newton, Sir
12
(n.),
Isaac, 9 (n.),
12,
Lncordaire,
91.
5,
87.
18, 23-25, 27-34, 36, 37, 48, 49,
76
(n.),
137, 144,
158,
Las Cases, 9 (n.). Lassere, 19 (n.).
176, 178, 183, 187.
Nicolas, Auguste, 5, 12
87, 96, 133.
(n.),
Lecky, 171.
Leibnitz, 9
(n.),
176, 187.
Nisard, M., 108-110.
Leouidas, 89.
Locke, 187.
Longfellow, 92
(n.),
P.
190.
Pascal,
1,
3-30, 34, 37-42,44,
Luke, St., 112. Luther, 138.
48, 50-59, 61-83, 85, 93-122,
124-127, 132, 135-137, 144,

155, 156 (n.), 158, 159, 161,
M.
Macaulay, Lord, 92 Mai 10 met, 52.
(n.).
163, 169, 170, 176, 183, 185,

187.
Pasteur, 176, 187.
lor,
i.
!".
1*0
-7.
I-J7.
I-J
17".
.11-.
Mi.,
I
"..
..
IM.
1
l-J.
1-7.
1
T.
.
77.
1",
I".
.
.
..
..
In;,.
1
|-J l,
i;,
R.
: .
-:
1^1.
11
T\
H, 1^7
:.
1-7
u.
1
:u
:;.
.
Y.
l
;-
.".u.
I7l. 1-7.
1
"
.
:"
..
\:
,: ,.
i<).
I.M.
.M,
r.
^7.
w
U
.ill
i
s;
l|.^l
..
I!!.
.
.-,
r-.f.-
-or.
:;;
;-.
.
177
Sum]
i;j. 177. 17-.

:>\,
Mr.,
\\
..
.
17-;.
1
S 7.
.U
M.
TEFICKXTMXATJV OF PASCAL
The tercentenary
occurred
!
of
tli
liirtli
of
Ulaiso
tih>
Pascal
anniversary at the Church of St. Fti-mie-dii-Mont. where Pascal attended during his lifetime and where he was lnirie I. The Cardinal Archbishop of Paris |,n-i led at the solemn
a_(<>.
few days
and Paris
,-
-lebnited
Ma.a, and with him

Bishop;:. of Pascal
in the s-.n.
tiurv wer.- live
.if
the French
As
by
n literary man, hon.i ir was don.- to the a representative d"leijntii>:i fr uu the
meinorv French
Cath lios such a Hord -aux. Tiie Paris "niver-ity of was repreente:l by IN K.-ctor, and mo-t, if not all. the learned were r. prt-sentf Kocit ti in on.- wav or another. The cuioîum of was d.-Ii\ere bv (, ardinul Charosl,
Aradeipy,
liene
aMnm^
and
the body b.-in^ prominent

1
l/.in
!I"nry
"*
P:I<IM!
Archbishop churchman,
ci
It-Mil
;,
who outlJMcd
I
ie
cai. ^r n(
IViscal as n
a moralist, an
hristian.

Pascal - Divinity of Christ

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ts

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST

OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST

WILLIAM BULLEN MORRIS

LONDON: BURNS & OATES, LIMITED

GILL & SON

U. THE JEWS AND THEIR ABIDING TESTIMONY

THE NEW UNBELIEF

Converging and confederate evidences, Bishop Gibson and Edmund Burke

His principle that

the malediction on revolt

His independence of mind, a recommendation to

His mathematical mind forces reason on to

Some minds do not

Others, like St. Augustine, must be conquered by a

........ ... ........

require such a master

between religion and modern philo

on the same lines as those of Bacon and

Bossuet fights Pascal never proves the obvious

Rousseau and Helvetius with an army Pascal alone

Newton our guide

.... ..... ....

All his ideas converge, and meet in Christ

Newton purpose of Book

III. of the Principia

Newton ridicules a &quot;blind The Creator must have

Prophecy, a proof to Newton of similar foresight in Revelation

Intolerance of unbelief, Dr. Johnson and

comparative estimate of matter, mind, and

THE JEWS AND THEIR ABIDING TESTIMONY.

Indifferent to all other ancient creeds, as destitute of

Preparation of the minds of the Jews for their

Jewish history alone satisfied Pascal His power of concentrating evidences

Mess-ias predicted in many All came to pass Jews cast off

Jews a part of ways

Destroys the idols of the one, and the superstitions of

Expectation of the Messias from the beginning of the world

OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.

men s thoughts Neither truth nor error new

Antagonistic influence of Rousseau Rousseau s scorn of his associates

.... ... .... ....

Dante and Pascal alike

in the spirit of their adoration

finds an interpreter in the

and suffered in conse

Christ by the Prophe

Apostles, deceived or deceivers,

unmanageable only one had belied himself,

truly of God Christ alone we

Without Christ reason

102 103 104

prayers, his struggle and final victory

108 109 110

His mystical ladder The MyKtrry of Jesus

In His agony Christ

Mystical death of Christ in the Eucharist

immortal Just, and mortal

admiration of St. Augustine and

Identical doctrine of St. Teresa

on the Sacred Humanity of

Catherine of Siena sought her

chean stage he thought of Christ

Newton ridicules a "blind The Creator must have

Whither "hero wor

Huxley and "his Cosmic system

expounders of that wild medley The A ew Unbelief," but as 1 ad