36 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of psalm-singing. My language as to the selfish- 

 ness of the vulgar ideas of salvation was directed 

 to those who insist that, unless they are to feel a 

 continuance of pleasure, they do not care for any 

 continuance of their influence at all. The vulgar 

 are apt to say that what they desire is the sense 

 of personal satisfaction, and, if they cannot have 

 this, they care for nothing else. This, I maintain, 

 is a selfish and debasing idea. It is the common 

 notion of the popular religion, and its tendency 

 to concentrate the mind on a merely personal sal- 

 vation does exert an evil effect on practical con- 

 duct. I once heard a Scotch preacher, dilating 

 on the narrowness of the gate, etc., exclaim, " 

 dear brethren, who would care to be saved in a 

 crowd?" 



I do not say this of the life of grander activi- 

 ty in which Mr. Hutton believes, and which Lord 

 Blachford so eloquently describes. This is no 

 doubt a fine ideal, and I will not say other than 

 an elevating hope. But on what does it rest ? 

 Why this ideal rather than any other ? Each of 

 us may imagine, as I said at the outset, his own 

 Elysian fields, or his own mystic rose. But is 

 this philosophy ? Is it even religion ? Besides, 

 there is this other objection to it : It is not 

 Christianity, but Neo-Christianity. It is a fanta- 

 sia with variations on the orthodox creed. There 

 is not a word of the kind in the Bible. Lord 

 Blachford says he believes in it " because he is 

 told." But it so happens that he is not told this, 

 at any rate in the creeds and formularies of or- 

 thodox faith. If this view of future life is to rest 

 entirely on revelation, it is a very singular thing 

 that the Bible is silent on the matter. Whatever 

 kind of future ecstasy may be suggested in some 

 texts, certain it is that such a glorified energy as 

 Lord Blachford paints in glowing colors is no- 

 where described in the Bible. There is a con- 

 stant practice nowadays, when the popular re- 

 ligion is criticised, that earnest defenders of it 

 come forward exclaiming : " Oh ! that is only the 

 vulgar notion of our religion. My idea of the 

 doctrine is so and so," something which the 

 speaker has invented without countenance from 

 official authority. For my part, I hold Christian- 

 ity to be what is taught in average churches and 

 chapels to the millions of professing Christians. 

 And I say it is a very serious fact when philo- 

 sophical defenders of religion begin by repudiat- 

 ing that which is taught in average pulpits. 



Perhaps a little more attention to my actual 

 words might have rendered unnecessary the com- 

 plaints in all these papers as to my language 

 about the hopes which men cherish for the fu- 



ture. In the first place I freely admit that the 

 hopes of a grander energy in heaven are not open 

 to the charge of vulgar selfishness. I said that 

 they are unintelligible, not that they are unwor- 

 thy. They are unintelligible to those who are 

 continually alive to the fact I have placed as my 

 first proposition — that every moral phenomenon is 

 in functional relation with some physical phenom- 

 enon. To those who deny or ignore this truth, 

 there is, doubtless, no incoherence in all the ide- 

 als so eloquently described in the papers of Mr. 

 Hutton and Lord Blachford. But, once get this 

 conception as the substratum of your entire men- 

 tal and moral philosophy, and it is as incoherent 

 to talk to us of your immaterial development as 

 it would be to talk of obtaining redness without 

 any red thing. 



I will try to explain more fully why this idea 

 of a glorified activity implies a contradiction in 

 terms to those who are imbued with the sense 

 of correspondence between physical and moral 

 facts. When we conceive any process of think- 

 ing, we call up before us a complex train of con- 

 ditions : objective facts outside of us, or the re- 

 vived impression of such facts ; the molecular 

 effect of these facts upon certain parts of our 

 organism, the association of these with similar 

 facts recalled by memory, an elaborate mechan- 

 ism to correlate these impressions, an unknown 

 to be made known, and a difficulty to be over- 

 come. All systematic thought implies relations 

 with the external world present or recalled, and 

 it also implies some shortcoming in our powers 

 of perfecting those relations. When we medi- 

 tate, it is on a basis of facts wdiich we are ob- 

 serving, or have observed and are now recalling, 

 and with a view to get at some result which baf- 

 fles our direct observation and hinders some 

 practical purpose. 



The same holds good of our moral energy. 

 Ecstasy and mere adoration exclude energy of 

 action. Moral development implies difficulties to 

 be overcome, qualities balanced against one an- 

 other under opposing conditions, this or that ap- 

 petite tempted, this or that instinct tested by 

 proof. Moral development does not grow like a 

 fungus ; it is a continual struggle in surrounding 

 conditions of a specific kind, and an active put- 

 ting forth of a variety of practical faculties in 

 the midst of real obstacles. 



So, too, of the affectjpns : they equally im- 

 ply conditions. Sympathy does not spurt up 

 like a fountain in the air ; it implies beings in 

 need of help, evils to be alleviated, a fellowship 

 of giving and taking, the sense of protecting and 



