The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Religion
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
"The Moral Law is found in the Intuitions of the Human Mind. These
Intuitions are natural; but they are also revealed. Our Creator wrought
them into the texture of our souls to form the groundwork of our
thoughts, and made it our duty first to examine and then to erect upon
them by reflection a Science of Morals. But He also continually aids us
in such study, and He increases this aid in the ratio of our obedience.
Thus Moral Intuitions are both Human and Divine, and the paradoxes in
their nature are thereby solved."--p. 136.
This statement may, perhaps, be received without cavil by most readers;
but the reasoning on which it depends is the weakest part of the book,
and we shall be surprised if some hard-headed divine, who fears that
this doctrine of Intuition will pester his Church, does not find out the
flaws in the argument. It will be urged, for instance, that, in
confessing that the Science of Morals can never be as exact as that of
Mathematics, because we have no terminology for Ethics so exact as for
Geometry, she, in effect, yields the whole question, and leaves us in
the old slough of doubt where Pyrrho and Pascal delighted to thrust us,
and where the Church threatens to keep us, unless we will pay her tolls
and pick our way along her turnpike. But though her major and minor
premises may not be on the best terms with each other,--even though they
may remind us of that preacher of whom Pierrepont Edwards said, "If his
text had the smallpox, his sermon would not catch it,"--her conclusion
is sound, and as inspiring now as when the poet said,--
"Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo,"--
or when George Fox trudged hither and thither over Europe with the same
noble tune sounding in his ears.
In the third chapter the old topics are treated, which, according to
Milton, the fallen angels discussed before Adam settled the debate by
sinning,--
"Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,"--
and it is concluded that the Moral Law can be obeyed:--
"1st. Because the Human Will is free. 2d. Because this freedom, though
involving present sin and suffering, is foreseen by God to result
eventually in the Virtue of every creature endowed therewith."
In this chapter the history of the common doctrine of Predestination is
admirably sketched, (pp. 159-164, note.) and the grounds for our belief
in Free Will more clearly stated than we remember to have seen
elsewhere. Especially fine is her method of reducing Foreordination to
simple Ordination, by directing attention to the fact that with God
there is no Past and Future, but an Endless Now; as Tennyson sings in
"In Memoriam,"--
"Oh, if indeed that eye foresee,
Or see, (in Him is no before.)"--
and as Dante sang five centuries ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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