The Peak in Darien With Some Other Inquiries Touching Concerns of the Soul and the Body: An Octave of Essays

“Be of good cheer, brother!” said John Bradford to his fellow-martyr while the fagots were kindling: “we shall have a brave supper in heaven with the Lord to-night!” “Be of good cheer, everybody!” cry an army of modern confessors, seated in library chairs: “there is no heaven and no Lord, and when we die there will be an end of us all, in saecula saeculorum; but the generations who come after us will be greatly edified by our beautiful books and our instructive example.”

Perhaps the moral vitality of our age is in no way better exemplified than by the fact that certain doubts, which seem to strike mortal blows at the head and heart of human virtue, yet leave it breathing, and even pulsating with aspirations after some yet loftier excellence than saints and heroes have hitherto attained. To look back to the “infidels” with whom Massillon and Jeremy Taylor had to do, and compare them with the Agnostics of our time, is indeed more encouraging than to compare the “faithful” of past centuries with those of the present age. While the old Atheist sheltered his vice behind a rampart of unbelief where no appeals could reach him, the new Agnostic honestly maintains that his opinions are the very best foundations of virtue. No one can for a moment say of him that he chooses darkness rather than lightbecause his deeds are evil. If it be (as we think) darkness which he has chosen, there can be no question that his deeds are good, and that his conceptions of duty are truly elevated and far-reaching, and enforced by every argument which he has left himself at liberty to use. Renouncing faith in God and in the life hereafter,—that is to say, in Goodness Infinite and Goodness Immortalized,—he retains the most fervent faith in goodness as developed in human life,—that is to say, in goodness finite in degree and in duration. If we are to accept his own statement of the case, the Agnostic has completely turned the front of the theological battle. It is now the pagans who have seized and hold aloft the sacred labarum of duty and self-sacrifice, andin hoc signo are destined to victory.

The claim is one of the gravest which can be put forth between man and man. It was not easy—it was, alas! often beyond our strength—to combat our doubts or those of others, while yet we fought against them as a sailor fights against enemies cutting his anchor cable on a stormy night. We stand amazed and disarmed by the strange intelligence that, when these doubts have done their work, and cast us adrift altogether from allegiance to God and hope of another life, then, when all seems lost, we shall suddenly discover that we have touched the Fortunate Isles of virtue and peace. Only the thorough sceptic, we are assured, can be the perfect saint. Nobody can disinterestedly serve his brother on earth till he is entirely persuaded he has no Father in heaven. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (of course it is always assumed that it is a tree of genuine knowledge on which Atheism grows) is to be desired, not only because it will make us “wise,” but because it will make us good. Who will hesitate any more to pluck and eat?

To the consideration of this now common pretension of Agnosticism to be the true Friend of Virtue, in the room of the old delusion of religion, the following pages will be devoted. For the purposes of our particular argument and to avoid entangling ourselves with too many collateral questions, I shall treat it here as the Assumption of the Moral Superiority of Atheism over Theism. Is that assumption justifiable? I, for one, am entirely ready to admit that, if there be anything in the faith in God and immortality which detracts from the highest conceivable perfection of human virtue,—if, in short, Atheism have a better morality to teach than Theism,—then the case of Theism must be abandoned. The religion which is not the holiest conceivable by the man who holds it is condemned ipso facto.

For the present, I may assume that no important difference of opinion exists as to the practical rules of morality. It is the proper motives to a virtuous and self-sacrificing life which Agnostics claim to place on higher ground than that which has been hitherto given to them. They propose to tell us to “do justice and love mercy” both in a better and more disinterested way than while we added to those unquestionable duties the mistaken attempt to walk humbly with our God. The question lies in a nutshell,—Can they do it? Is there anything in the true Theistic faith detracting from the disinterestedness of virtue, or calculated to rob it of a single ray of purity and glory? This must be our first contention, since religion now stands on its defence as a basis of morality. When it is settled, it may perhaps appear that religion may justly again assume the offensive, and challenge Atheism to prove its capacity for serving equally efficiently as a support for the virtue of humanity; and, if it appear that to such a challenge no satisfactory reply can be given, then it will be manifest that, in their expressions of satisfaction and joy at the anticipated downfall of religion, Atheists display disregard of the moral interests of their race.