This is the first great fact to notice about the speech of God, which
is the culmination of the inquiry. It represents all human sceptics
routed by a higher scepticism. It is this method, used sometimes by
supreme and sometimes by mediocre minds, that has ever since been the
logical weapon of the true mystic. Socrates, as I have said, used it
when he showed that if you only allowed him enough sophistry he could
destroy all the sophists. Jesus Christ used it when He reminded the
Sadducees, who could not imagine the nature of marriage in heaven, that
if it came to that they had not really imagined the nature of marriage
at all. In the break up of Christian theology in the eighteenth
century, Butler used it, when he pointed out that rationalistic
arguments could be used as much against vague religion as against
doctrinal religion, as much against rationalist ethics as against
Christian ethics. It is the root and reason of the fact that men who
have religious faith have also philosophic doubt, like Cardinal Newman,
Mr. Balfour, or Mr. Mallock. These are the small streams of the delta;
the Book of Job is the first great cataract that creates the river.
In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right
method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to
tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day
newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange
enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.
This, I say, is the first fact touching the speech; the fine
inspiration by which God comes in at the end, not to answer riddles,
but to propound them. The other great fact which, taken together
with this one, makes the whole work religious instead of merely
philosophical, is that other great surprise which makes Job suddenly
satisfied with the mere presentation of something impenetrable.
Verbally speaking the enigmas of Jehovah seem darker and more desolate
than the enigmas of Job; yet Job was comfortless before the speech of
Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he
feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too
good to be told. The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a
burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than
the solutions of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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