Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876Flint, Robert
Religion
Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876
Flint, Robert
Theism
not on the organic evolution of a particular faculty, but on the
general state of the soul, on the one hand; and on the influence of
external circumstances--education, example, law, &c.--on the other
hand. It is this difference in the character of their development
which explains why the deliverances of the senses are so uniform and
nearly infallible, while the most cursory survey of the religious
world shows us the greatest want of uniformity and truthfulness in
religious judgments. The various phases of polytheism and pantheism
are inexplicable, if an intuition of God be universally inherent in
human nature. Theism is perfectly explicable without intuition, as the
evidences for it are numerous, obvious, and strong.
The opinion that man has an intuition or immediate perception of God
is untenable; the opinion that he has an immediate feeling of God
is absurd. A man feels only in so far as he perceives and knows.
Feeling is in consciousness essentially dependent on, and necessarily
subsequent to, knowing. Mere feeling--feeling without knowing--is an
utterly inconceivable and impossible experience. Admit, however, not
only that there may be a mere feeling, but that there is a mere feeling
of God. What worth can it have? By supposition--by definition--no
knowledge of God underlies and explains it. But in that case, how can
any man pretend to get a knowledge of God out of it? What right can
any one have to represent it as a source of knowledge of God? I am not
aware that these questions have ever been answered except by the merest
verbal jugglery. The very men who tell us that we cannot know God, but
that we feel Him, tell us also that the feeling of Him is an immediate
consciousness of Him, and that immediate consciousness is its own
self-evidence, is absolute certainty, or, in other words, the highest
and surest knowledge. We do not know God, but we feel Him; however, to
feel Him is to know Him,--such is their answer more or less distinctly
expressed, or, I should rather say, more or less skilfully concealed.
It is at once a Yes and a No, the affirmation of what is denied and
the denial of what is affirmed. And it is this because it cannot be
anything else--because mere feeling is an impossible experience--and
because feeling, so far as it is uncaused and unenlightened by
knowledge, testifies only to the folly or insanity of the being which
feels. If theism have no other basis than feeling, it is a house
which foolish men have built upon the sand. The first storm will cast
it down, and no wise man will regret its fall. Whatever is founded on
mere emotion--on emotion which is not itself explained and justified by
reason--stands but by sufferance; has no right to stand; ought to be
cast down and swept from the earth. But the storms which have already
in the course of the ages spent their force against theism with no
other effect than to make its strength more conspicuous, and to carry
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