Martin Farquhar Tupper - Probabilities
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Martin Farquhar Tupper >> Probabilities
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And (returning to our present topic), was it not antecedently to have
been expected that God the Son (so to put it) should, in the shape He
was thereafter to assume upon earth, appear upon the eternal throne of
heaven? In a shape, however glorified and etherealized, with glistening
countenance and raiment bright as the light, nevertheless resembling
that more humble form, the Son of Man, who was afterwards thus by a
circle of probabilities to be made in the form of God; in a shape, not
liable, from its very sinfulness, to the deification either of other
worlds or of this [hero-worship is another and a lower thing altogether;
we speak here of true idolatries:]--was it unlikely, I say, that in such
a shape Deity should have deigned to become visible, and have blazed
Manifested God, the central Sun of Heaven?--This probability, prior to
our forth-flowing thoughts on the Incarnation, though in some measure
anticipating them, will receive further light from the views soon to be
set forth. I know not but that something is additionally due to the
suggestion following; namely: that, raise our swift imagination to what
height we may, and stretch our searching reason to the uttermost, we
cannot, despite of all inventive energies and powers of mind, conceive
any shape more beautiful, more noble, more worthy for a rational
intelligence to dwell in, more in one Homeric word [Greek: theoeides],
than the glorified and etherealized human form divine. Let this serve as
Reason's short reply to any charge of anthropomorphism in the doctrines
of his creed: it was probable that God should be revealed to His
creation; and as to the form of any such revealed essence in any such
infinite beginnings of His work, the most likely of all would appear to
be that one, wherein He, in the ages then to come, was well resolved to
earn the most glorious of all triumphs, the merciful reconciliation of
everlasting justice with everlasting love, the wise and wondrous scheme
of God forgiving sinners.
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.
It will now be opportune to attempt elucidation of one of the darkest
and deepest riddles ever propounded to the finite understanding; the _a
priori_ likelihood of evil: not, mind, its eternal existence, which is a
false doctrine; but its probable procession from the earliest created
beings, which is a true one.
At first sight, nothing could appear more improbable: nothing more
inconsistent with the recognised attributes of God, than that error,
pain, and sorrow should be mingled in His works. These, the spontaneous
offspring of His love, one might (not all wisely) argue, must always be
good and happy--because perfect as Himself. Because perfect?--Therein
lies the fallacy, which reason will at once lay bare. Perfection is
attributable to no possible creature: perfection argues infinity, and
infinity is one of the prerogatives of God. However good, "very good," a
creation may be found, still it must, from essential finitude, fall
short of that Best, which is in effect the only state purely
unexceptionable. For instance, no creature can be imagined of a wisdom
undiminished from the single true standard, God's wisdom: in other
phrase, every creature must be more or less departed from wisdom, that
is, verging towards folly. Again; no creature can be presumed of a
purity so spotless as to rank in an equality with that of the Almighty:
in other words, neither man, nor angel, nor any other creature, can
exist who is not more or less--I will not say impure, positively,
but--unpure negatively. Thus, the birth-mark of creation must have been
an inclination towards folly, and from purity. The mere idea of
creatures would involve, as its great need-be, the qualifying clause
that these emanations from perfection be imperfect; and that these
children of purity be liable to grow unpure. They must either be thus
natured, or exist of the essence of God, that is, be other persons and
phases of the Deity: such a case was possible certainly; but, as we have
already shown, not probable. And it were possible, that, in consequence
of some redemption such as we have spoken of, creatures might by
ingraftation into God become so entirely part of Him--bone of bone, and
flesh of flesh, and spirit of spirit--that an exhortation to such blest
beings should reasonably run, "Be ye perfect." But this infinite
munificence of the Godhead in redemption was not to be found among His
bounties as Creator. It might indeed arise afterwards, as setting up
again the fallen creature in some safe niche of Deity: and we now know
it has arisen: "we are complete in Him."
But this, though relevant, is a digression. Returning, and to produce
some further argument against all creature perfectness; let us consider
how rational it seems to presuppose that the mighty Maker in his
boundless love should have willed to form a long chain of classes of
existence more and more subordinated each to the other, each good of its
kind and happy in its way, but yet all needfully more or less removed
from the high standard of uncreate Perfection. These descending links,
these graduations downwards, must involve a nearer or remoter approach
to evil. Now, we must bear in mind that Evil is not a principle, but a
perversion: it amounts merely to a denial, a limitation, a corruption of
good, not to the dignity of its abstract antagonism. Familiarly, but
fallaciously, we talk of the evil principle, the contradictory to good:
we might as well talk of the nosologic principle, the contradictory to
health; or the darkness principle, the contradictory to light. They are
contraries, but not contradictories: they have no positive, but only a
relative existence. Good and evil are verily foes, but originally there
was one cemented friendship: slender beginnings consequent on a
creation, began to cause the breach: the civil war arose out of a state
of primitive peace: images betray us into errors, or I might add with a
protest against the risk of being misinterpreted, that like brothers
turned to a deadly hate, they nevertheless sprang not originally out of
two hostile and opposite hemispheres, but from one paternal hearth. Not,
however, in any sense that God is the author of evil; but that God's
workmanship, the finite creature, needfully perverted good.
The origin of evil--that is, its birth--is a term true and clear:
original evil--that is, giving it no birth but an antedate to all
created things, suffering it to run parallel with God and good from all
eternity--this is a term false and misty. The probability that good
would be warped, and grow deteriorate; that wisdom would be dwindled
down into less and less wisdom, or foolishness; and power degenerated
more and more towards imbecility; must arise, directly a creature should
spring out of the Creator; and that, let astronomy or geology name any
date they will: Adam is a definite date; perhaps also the first
day's--or period's--work: but the Beginning of Creation is undated. It
would then, under this impression of the necessary defalcation of the
creature from the strict straight line, be rational to look for
deviations: it would be rational to presuppose that God--just, and good,
and pure, and wise--should righteously be able to "charge his angels
with folly," should verily declare that "the heavens are not pure in his
sight."
Further; it would be a possible chance (which considerations soon
succeeding would render even probable) that for a wise humiliation of
the reasoning creature, and a just exaltation of the only Source of life
and light and all things, one or more of such first created beings, or
angels, should be suffered to fall, possibly from the vastest height,
and at first by the slenderest beginnings, lower and lower into folly,
impurity, and all other derelictions from the excellence of God. The
lines, once unparalleled, would, without a check, go further apart for
all eternity; albeit, the primal deviation arose in time. The aerolite,
dropping slowly at first, increases in swiftness as it multiplies the
fathoms of descent: and if the abyss be really bottomless, how
impossible a check or a return.
Some such terrible example would amount to a reasonable likelihood, if
only for a lesson and a warning: to all intelligent hierarchs, be not
high-minded, but fear; to all responsible beings, keep righteousness and
reverence, and tempt not God; to all the Virtues, Dominations,
Obediences, and due Subordinations of unknown glorious worlds, a loud
and living exhortation to exercise, and not to let grow dim their
spiritual energies, in efforts after goodness, wisdom, and purity. A
creature state, to be happy, must be a progressive state: the capability
of progression argues lack, or a tendency from good: and progression
itself needs a spur, lest indolence relapse towards evil.
Additionally: we must remember that a creature's excellence before God
is the reasonable service which he freely renders: freedom, dangerous
prerogative, involves choice: and choice necessitates the possibility of
error. The command to a rational intelligence would be, do this, and
live; do it not, and die: if thou doest, it is well done, good and
faithful servant; thou hast mounted by thine own heaven-blest exertions
to a higher approach towards infinite perfection; enter thou into the
joy, not merely of a creature, but of thy Lord. But, if thou doest not,
it is wo to thee, unworthy hireling; thou hast broken the tie that bound
thee to thy Maker--obedience, the root of happiness; thou livest on
indeed, because the Former of all things cancelleth not nor endeth his
beginning; but henceforth thine existence is, as a river which
earthquakes have divorced from its bed, and instead of flowing on for
ever through the fair pastures of peace and among the mountain roots of
everlasting righteousness, thy downward course is shattery, headlong,
turbulent, and destructive; black-throated whirlpools here, miasmatic
marshes there, a cataract, a shoal, a rapid; until the remorseless
stream, lashing among rocks which its own riot rendered sterile, pours
its unresting waters into the thirsty sands of the Sahara.
It was indeed probable (as since we know it to be true) that the
generous Giver of all things would in the vast majority of cases
minister such secret help to His weaker spiritual children, that, far
from failing of continuous obedience, they should find it so unceasingly
easier and happier that their very natures would soon come to be imbued
with that pervading habit: and that thus, the longer any creature stood
upright, the stronger should he rest in righteousness; until, at no very
distant period, it should become morally impossible for him to fall.
Such would soon be the condition of myriads, perhaps almost the whole,
of heaven's innumerable host: and with respect to any darker Unit in
that multitude, for the good of all permitted to make early shipwreck
of himself, simply by leaving his intelligence to plume its wings into
presumptuous flight, and by allowing his pristine goodness or wisdom to
grow rusty from non-usage until that sacred panoply were eaten into
holes; with respect to any such unhappy one, and all others (if others
be) who should listen to his glozing, and make a common cause in his
rebellion, where, I ask, is any injustice, or even unkindness done to
him by Deity? Where is any moral improbability that such a traitor
should be; or any just inconsistency chargeable on the attributes of God
in consequence of such his being? Whom can he in reason accuse but
himself for what he is? And what misery can such a one complain of,
which is not the work of his own hands? And lest the Great Offender
should urge against his God, why didst thou make me thus?--Is not the
answer obvious, I made thee, but not thus. And on the rejoinder, Why
didst thou not keep me as thou madest me? Is not the reply just, I made
thee reasonable, I led thee to the starting place, I taught thee and set
thee going well in the beginning; thou art intelligent and free, and
hast capacities of Mine own giving: wherefore didst thou throw aside My
grace, and fly in the face of thy Creator?
On the whole; consider that I speak only of probabilities. There is a
depth in this abyss of thought, which no human plummet is long enough to
sound; there is a maze in this labyrinth to be tracked by no mortal
clue. It involves the truth, How unsearchable are his judgments: Thou
hidest thy ways in the sea, and thy paths in the deep waters, and thy
footsteps are not known. The weak point of man's argument lies in the
suggested recollection, that doubtless the Deity could, if He would,
have upheld all the universe from falling by his gracious power; and
that the attribute of love concludes that so He would. However, these
three brief considerations further will go some way to solve the
difficulty, and to strengthen the weak point; first, there are other
attributes besides love to run concurrently with it, as truth, justice,
and unchangeableness:--Secondly, that grace is not grace, if manifested
indiscriminately to all: and thirdly, that to our understanding at least
there was no possible method of illustrating the amiabilities of
Goodness, and the contrivances of Wisdom, but by the infused permission
of some physical and moral evils: Mercy, benevolence, design, would in a
universe of best have nothing to do; that universe itself would grow
stagnant, as incapable of progress; and the principal record of God's
excellences, the book of redemption, would have been unwritten. Is not
then the existence of evil justified in reason's calculation? and was
not such existence an antecedent probability?
Of these matters, thus curtly: it is time, in a short recapitulation, to
reflect, that, from foregoing causes, mysteries were probable around the
throne of heaven: and, as I have attempted to show, the mystery of
imperfection, a concrete not an abstract, was likely to have sprung out
of any creature universe. Reason perceives that a Gordion knot was
likely to have become entangled; in the intricate complexities of
abounding good to be mingled needfully with its own deficiencies,
corruptions, and perversions: and this having been shown by Reason as
anteriorly probable, its difficult involvements are now since cut by the
sword of conquering Faith.
COSMOGONY.
These deep themes having been descanted on, however from their nature
unsatisfactorily and with whatever human weakness, let us now endeavour
mentally to transport ourselves to a period immediately antecedent to
our own world's birth. We should then have been made aware that a great
event was about to take place; whereat, from its foreseen consequences,
the hierarchies of heaven would be prompt to shout for joy, and the holy
ones of God to sing for gratitude. It was no common case of a creation;
no merely onemore orb, of third-rate unimportance, amongst the million
others of higher and more glorious praise: but it was a globe and a race
about to be unique in character and fate, and in the far-spread results
of their existence. On it and of its family was to be contrived the
scene, wherein, to the admiration of the universe, God himself in Person
was going visibly to make head against corruption in creation, and for
ever thus to quench that possibility again: wherein He was marvellously
to invent and demonstrate how Mercy and Truth should meet together, how
Righteousness and Peace should kiss each other. There, was going to be
set forth the wonderfully complicated battle-plan, by which, force
countervailing force, and design converging all things upon one fixed
point, Good, concrete in the creature, should overwhelm not without
strife and wounds Evil concrete in the creature, and all things, "even
the wicked," should be seen harmoniously blending in the glory of the
attributes of God. The mythologic Pan, [Greek: to pan] the great
Universal All, was deeply interested in the struggle: for the seed of
the woman was to bruise the serpent's head; not merely as respected the
small orb about to be, but concerning heaven itself, the unbounded
"haysh hamaim," wherefrom dread Lucifer was thus to be ejected. On the
earth, a mere planet of humble lustre, which the prouder suns around
might well despise, was to be exhibited this noble and analogous result;
the triumph of a lower intelligence, such as man, over a higher
intelligence, such as angel: because, the former race, however frail,
however weak, were to find their nature taken into God, and should have
for their grand exemplar, leader and brother, the Very Lord of all
arrayed in human guise; while the latter, the angelic fallen mass, in
spite of all their pristine wisdom and excellency, were to set up as
their captain him, who may well and philosophically be termed their
Adversary.
This dark being, probably the mightiest of all mere creatures as the
embodiment of corrupted good and perversion of an archangelic wisdom,
was about to be suffered to fall victim to his own overtopping
ambitions, and to drag with him a third part of the heavenly host--some
tributary monarchs of the stars: thus he, and those his colleagues,
should become a spectacle and a warning to all creatures else; to stand
for spirits' reading in letters of fire a deeply burnt-in record how
vast a gulf there is between the Maker and the made; how impassable a
barrier between the derived intelligence and its infinite Creator. Such
an unholy leader in rebellion against good--let us call him _A_ or _B_,
or why not for very euphony's sake Lucifer and Satanas?--such a
corrupted excellence of heaven was to meet his final and inevitable
disgrace to all eternity on the forthcoming battle-field of earth. Would
it not be probable then that our world, soon to be fashioned and stocked
with its teeming reasonable millions, should concentrate to itself the
gaze of the universe, and, from the deeds to be done in it, should
arrogate towards man a deep and fixed attention: that "the morning stars
should sing together, and all the sons of God should shout for joy." Let
us too, according to the power given to us, partake of such attention
antecedently in some detail: albeit, as always, very little can be
tracked of the length and breadth of our theme.
What would probably be the nature of such world and of such creatures,
in a physical point of view? and what, in a moral point of view? It is
not necessary to divide these questions: for the one so bears upon the
other, or rather the latter so directs and pervades the former, that we
may briefly treat of both as one.
The first probability would be, that, as the creature Man so to be
abased and so to be exalted must be a responsible and reasonable being,
every thing--with miraculous exceptions just enough to prove the
rule--every thing around him should also be responsible and reasonable.
In other words, that, with such exceptions as before alluded to, the
whole texture of this world should bear to an inquisitive intellect the
stamp of cause and effect: whilst for the mass, such cause and effect
should be so little intrusive, that their easier religion might
recognise God in all things immediately, rather than mediately. For
instance: take the cases of stone, and of coal; the one so needful for
man's architecture, the other for his culinary warmth. Now, however
simple piety might well thank the Maker for having so stored earth with
these for necessary uses; they ought, to a more learned, though not less
pious ken, to seem not to have been created by an effort of the Great
Father _qua stone_, or _qua coal_. Such a view might satisfy the
ordinary mind: but thinkers would see no occasion for a miracle; when
Christ raises Lazarus from the dead, it would have been a philosophical
fault to have found the grave-clothes and swathing bandages ready
loosened also. Unassisted man can do that: and unhelped common causes
can generate stone and coal. The deposits of undated floods, the
periodical currents of lava, the still and stagnant lake, and the
furious up-bursting earthquake; all these would be called into play, and
not the unrequired, I had almost said unreasonable, energies, which we
call miracle. An agglutination of shells, once peopled with life; a
crystallized lump of segregate minerals, once in a molten state; a mass
of carbonated foliage and trunks of tropical trees, buried by long
changes under the soil, whereover they had once waved greenly luxuriant;
these, and no other, should have been man's stone and coal. This
instance affects the reasonableness of such material creation. Take
another, bearing upon its analogous responsibilities. As there was to be
warred in this world the contest between good and evil, it would be
expectable that the crust of man's earth, anteriorly to man's existence
on it, should be marked with some traces that the evil, though newly
born so far as might regard man's own disobedience, nevertheless had
existed antecedently. In other words: it was probable that there should
exist geological evidences of suffering and death: that the gigantic
ichthyosaurus should be found fixed in rock with his cruel jaws closed
upon his prey: that the fearful iguanodon should leave the tracks of
having desolated a whole region of its reptile tribes: that volcanoes
should have ravaged fair continents prolific of animal and vegetable
life: that, in fine, though man's death came by man's sin, yet that
death and sin were none of man's creating: he was only to draw down upon
his head a preexistent wo, an ante-toppling rock. Observe then, that
these geological phenomena are only illustrations of my meaning: and
whether such parables be true or false, the argument remains the same:
we never build upon the sand of simile, but only use it here and there
for strewing on the floor. Still, I will acknowledge that the
introduction of such fossil instances appears to me wisely thrown in as
affects their antecedent probability, because ignorant comments upon
scriptural cosmogony have raised the absurdest objections against the
truth of scriptural science. There is not a tittle of known geological
fact, which is not absolutely reconcilable with Genesis and Job. But
this is a word by the way: although aimed not without design against one
of the poor and paltry weak-holds of the infidel.
ADAM.
Remembering, then, that these are probabilities, and that the whole
treatise purports to be nothing but a sketch, and not a finished
picture, we have suggestively thus thrown out that the material world,
man's home as man, was likely to have been prepared, as we posteriorly
know it to be. Now, what of man's own person, circumstances, and
individuality? Was it likely that the world should be stocked at once
with many several races, or with one prolific seed? with a specimen of
every variety of the genus man, or with the one generic type capable of
forming those varieties?--Answer. One is by far the likelier in itself,
because one thing must needs be more probable than many things:
additionally; Wisdom and Power are always economical, and where one will
suit the purpose, superfluities are rejected. That this one seed,
covering with its product a various globe under all imaginable
differences of circumstance and climate, should, in the lapse of ages,
generate many species of the genus Man, was antecedently probable. For
example, morality, peace and obedience would exercise transforming
powers: their opposites the like in an opposite way. We can well fancy a
mild and gentle race, as the Hindoo, to spring from the former
educationals: and a family with flashing eyes and strongly-visaged
natures, as the Malay, from a state of hatred, war, and license. We can
well conceive that a tropical sun should carbonize some of that tender
fabric the skin, adding also swift blood and fierce passions: while an
arctic climate would induce a sluggish, stunted race. And, when to these
considerations we add that of promiscuous unions, we arrive at the just
likelihood that the whole family of man, though springing from one root,
should, in the course of generations, be what now we see it.
Further. How should this prolific original, the first man, be created?
and for a name let us call him Adam; a justly-chosen name enough, as
alluding to his medium colour, ruddiness. Should he have been cast upon
the ground an infant, utterly helpless, requiring miraculous aid and
guidance at every turn? Should he be originated in boyhood, that hot and
tumultuous time, when the creature is most rash, and least qualified for
self-government? or should he be first discerned as an adult, in his
prime, equal alike to obedience and rule, to moral control and moral
energy?
Add also here; is it probable there would be any needless interval
placed to proecreations? or rather, should not such original seed be able
immediately to fulfil the blank world call upon him, and as the
greatly-teeming human father be found fitted from his birth to propagate
his kind? The questions answer themselves.
Again. Should this first man have been discovered originally surrounded
with all the appliances of an after-civilization, clad, and housed, and
rendered artificial? nor rather, in a noble and naturally royal aspect
appear on the stage of life as king of the natural creation, sole warder
of a garden of fruits, with all his food thus readily concocted, and an
eastern climate tempered to his nakedness?
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