Martin Farquhar Tupper - Probabilities
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Martin Farquhar Tupper >> Probabilities
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Now, as to the solitariness of this one seed. From what we have already
mused respecting God's benevolence, it would seem probable that the
Maker might not see it good that man should be alone. The seed,
originally one, proved (as was likely) to resemble its great parent,
God, and to be partitionable, or reducible into persons; though with
reasonable differences as between creature and Creator. Woman--Eve, the
living or life-giving--was likely to have sprung out of the composite
seed, Man, in order to companionship and fit society. Moreover, it were
expectable that in the pattern creature, composite man, there should be
involved some apt, mysterious typification of the same creature, after a
fore-known fall restored, as in its perfect state of reunion with its
Maker. _A posteriori_, the figurative notion is, that the Redeemed
family, or mystical spouse, is incorporated in her husband, the
Redeemer: not so much in the idea of marriage, as (taking election into
view) of a coecreation; as it were rib of rib, and life woven into life,
not copulated or conjoined, but immingled in the being. This is a
mystery most worthy of deep searching; a mystery deserving philosophic
care, not less than the more unilluminate enjoyment of humble and
believing Christians. I speak concerning Christ and his church.
THE FALL.
There is a special fitness in the fact, long since known and now to be
perceived probable, that if mankind should fail in disobedience, it
should rather be through the woman than through the man. Because, the
man, _qua man_, and the deputed head of all inferior creatures, was
nearer to his Creator, than the woman; who, _qua woman_, proceeded out
of man. She was, so to speak, one step further from God, _ab origine_,
than man was; therefore, more liable to err and fall away. To my own
mind, I confess, it appears that nothing is more anteriorly probable
than the plain, scriptural story of Adam and Eve: so simple that the
child delights in it; so deep that the philosopher lingers there with an
equal, but more reasonable joy.
For, let us now come to the probabilities of a temptation; and a fall;
and what temptation; and how ordered.
The heavenly intelligences beheld the model-man and model-woman,
rational beings, and in all points "very good." The Adversary panted for
the fray, demanding some test of the obedience of this new, favourite
race. And the Lord God was willing that the great controversy, which he
fore-knew, and for wise purposes allowed, should immediately commence.
Where was the use of a delay? If you will reply, To give time to
strengthen Adam's moral powers: I rejoin, he was made with more than
enough of strength infused against any temptation not entering by the
portal of his will: and against the open door of will neither time nor
habits can avail. Moreover, the trial was to be exceedingly simple; no
difficult abstinence, for man might freely eat of every thing but one;
no natural passion tempted; no exertion of intelligence requisite. Adam
lived in a garden; and his Maker, for proof of reasonable obedience,
provides the most easy and obvious test of it--do not eat that apple.
Was it, in reality, an improbable test; an unsuitable one? Was it not,
rather, the likeliest in itself, and the fittest as addressed to the
new-born, rational animal, which imagination could invent, or an amiable
fore-knowledge of all things could desire? Had it been to climb some
arduous height without looking back, or on no account to gaze upon the
sun, how much less apt and easy of obedience! Thus much for the test.
Now, as to the temptation and its ordering. A creature, to be tempted
fairly, must be tempted by another equal or lower creature; and through
the senses. If mere spirit strives with spirit, plus matter, the strife
is unequal: the latter is clogged; he has to fight in the net of
Retiarius. But if both are netted, if both are spirit plus matter, (that
is, material creatures,) there is no unfairness. Therefore, it would
seem reasonable that the Adversary in person should descend from his
mere spirituality into some tangible and humbled form. This could not
well be man's, nor the semblance of man's: for the first pair would well
know that they were all mankind: and, if the Lord God himself was
accustomed to be seen of them as in a glorified humanity, it would be
manifestly a moral incongruity to invest the devil in a similar form. It
must, then, be the shape of some other creature; as a lion, or a lamb,
or--why not a serpent? Is there any improbability here? and not rather
as apt an avatar of the sinuous and wily rebel, the dangerous,
fascinating foe, as poetry at least, nay, as any sterner contrivance
could invent? The plain fact is, that Reason--given keenness--might have
guessed this also antecedently a likelihood.
A few words more on other details probable to the temptation. Wonderful
as it may seem to us with our present experience, in the case of the
first woman it would scarcely excite her astonishment to be accosted in
human phrase by one of the lower creatures; and in no other way could
the tempter reach her mind. Much as Milton puts it, Eve sees a beautiful
snake, eating, not improbably, of the forbidden apple. Attracted by a
natural curiosity, she would draw near, and in a soft sweet voice the
serpent, _i.e._ Lucifer in his guise, would whisper temptation. It was
likely to have been keenly managed. Is it possible, O fair and favoured
mistress of this beautiful garden, that your Maker has debarred you from
its very choicest fruit? Only see its potencies for good: I, a poor
reptile, am instantly thereby endued with knowledge and the privilege of
speech. Am I dead for the eating?--ye shall not surely die; but shall
become as gods yourselves; and this your Maker knoweth.
The marvellous fruit, invested thus with mystery, and tinctured with
the secret charm of a thing unreasonably, nay, harmfully, forbidden,
would then be allowed silently to plead its own merits. It was good for
food: a young creature's first thought. It was pleasant to the eyes:
addressing a higher sense than mere bodily appetite, than mental
predilection for form and colour which marks fine breeding among men. It
was also to be desired to make one wise; here was the climax, the great
moral inducement which an innocent being might well be taken with;
irrespectively of the one qualification that this wisdom was to be
plucked in spite of God. Doubtless, it were probable, that had man not
fallen, the knowledge of good would never have been long withheld: but
he chose to reap the crop too soon, and reaped it mixed with tares,
good, and evil.
I need not enlarge, in sermon form, upon the theme. It was probable that
the weaker creature, Woman, once entrapped, she would have charms enough
to snare her husband likewise: and the results thus perceived to have
been likely, we have long since known for fact. That a depraved
knowledge should immediately occasion some sort of clothing to be
instituted by the great moral Governor, was likely: and there would be
nothing near at hand, in fact nothing else suitable, but the skins of
beasts. There is also a high probability that some sort of slaying
should take place instantly on the fall, by way of reference to the
coming sacrifice for sin; and for a type of some imputed righteousness.
God covered Man's evil nakedness with the skins of innocent slain
animals: even so, Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, and
whose sin is covered.
With respect to restoration from any such fall. There seems a remarkable
prior probability for it, if we take into account the empty places in
heaven, the vacant starry thrones which sin had caused to be untenanted.
Just as, in after years, Israel entered into the cities and the gardens
of the Canaanite and other seven nations, so it was anteriorly likely,
would the ransomed race of Men come to be inheritors of the mansions
among heavenly places, which had been left unoccupied by the fallen host
of Lucifer. There was a gap to be filled: and probably there would be
some better race to fill it.
THE FLOOD.
Themes like those past and others still to come, are so immense, that
each might fairly ask a volume for its separate elucidation. A few
seeds, pregnant with thought, are all that we have here space, or time,
or power to drop beside the world's highway. The grand outlines of our
race command our first attention: we cannot stop to think and speak of
every less detail. Therefore, now would I carry my companion across the
patriarchal times at once to the era of the Deluge. Let us speculate, as
hitherto, antecedently, throwing our minds as it were into some angelic
prior state.
If, as we have seen probable, evil (a concretion always, not an
abstraction) made some perceptible ravages even in the unbounded sphere
of a heavenly creation, how much more rapid and overwhelming would its
avalanche (once ill-commenced) be seen, when the site of its infliction
was a poor band of men and women prisoned on a speck of earth. How
likely was it that, in the lapse of no long time, the whole world should
have been "corrupt before God, and filled with wickedness." How
probable, that taking into account the great duration of pristine human
life, the wicked family of man should speedily have festered up into an
intolerable guiltiness. And was this dread result of the primal curse
and disobedience to be regarded as the Adversary's triumph? Had this
Accuser--the Saxon word is Devil--had this Slanderer of God's attribute
then really beaten Good? or was not rather all this swarming sin an
awful vindication to the universe of the great need-be that God
unceasingly must hold his creature up lest he fall, and that out of Him
is neither strength nor wisdom? Was Deity, either in Adam's case or
this, baffled--nor rather justified? Was it an experiment which had
really failed; nor rather one which, by its very seeming failure, proved
the point in question, the misery of creatures when separate from God?
Yea, the evil one was being beaten down beneath his very trophies in sad
Tarpeian triumph: through conquest and his children's sins heightening
his own misery.
Let us now advert to a few of the anterior probabilities affecting this
evil earth's catastrophe. It is not competent to us to trench upon such
ulterior views as are contained in the idea of types relatively to
anti-types. Neither will we take the fanciful or poetical aspect of
coming calamity, that earth, befouled with guilt, was likely to be
washed clean by water. It is better to ask, as more relevant, in what
other way more benevolent than drowning could, short of miracle, the
race be made extinct? They were all to die in their sins, and swell in
another sphere the miserable hosts of Satan. There was no hope for them,
for there was no repentance. It was infinitely probable that God's
long-suffering had worn out every reasonable effort for their
restoration. They were then to die; but how?--in the least painful
manner possible. Intestine wars, fevers, famines, a general burning-up
of earth and all its millions, were any of these preferable sorts of
death to that caused by the gradual rise of water, with hope of life
accorded still even to the last gurgle? Assuredly, if "the tender
mercies of the wicked are cruel," the judgments of the Good one are
tempered well with mercy.
Moreover, in the midst of this universal slaughter there was one good
seed to be preserved: and, as Heaven never works a miracle where common
cause will suit the present purpose, it would have been inconsistent to
have extirpated the wicked by any such means as must demonstrate the
good to have been saved only by super-human agency.
The considerations of humanity, and of the divine less-intervention, add
that of the natural and easy agency of a long-commissioned comet. No
"_Deus e machina_" was needed for this effort: one of His ministers of
flaming fire was charged to call forth the services of water. This was
an easy and majestic interference. Ever since man fell--yea, ages before
it--the omniscient eye of God had foreseen all things that should
happen: and his ubiquity had, possibly from The Beginning, sped a comet
on its errant way, which at a calculated period was to serve to wash the
globe clean of its corruptions: was to strike the orbit of earth just in
the moment of its passage, and disturbing by attraction the fountains of
the great deep, was temporarily to raise their level. Was not this a
just, a sublime, and a likely plan? Was it not a merciful, a perfect,
and a worthy way? Who should else have buried the carcases on those
fierce battle-fields, or the mouldering heaps of pestilence and
famine?--But, when at Jehovah's summons, heaving to the comet's mass,
the pure and mighty sea rises indignant from its bed, by drowning to
cleanse the foul and mighty land--how easy an engulfing of the corpses;
how awful that universal burial; how apt their monumental epitaph
written in water, "The wicked are like the troubled sea that cannot
rest;" how dread the everlasting requiem chanted for the whelmed race by
the waves roaring above them: yea, roaring above them still! for in
that chaotic hour it seems probable to reason that the land changed
place with ocean; thus giving the new family of man a fresh young world
to live upon.
NOAH.
When the world, about to grow so wicked, was likely thus to have been
cleansed, and so renewed, the great experiment of man's possible
righteousness was probable to be repeated in another form. We may fancy
some high angelic mind to have gone through some such line of thought as
this, respecting the battle and combatants. Were those champions,
Lucifer and Adam, really fit to be matched together? Was the tourney
just; were the weapons equal; was it, after all, a fair fight?--on one
side, the fallen spirit, mighty still, though fallen, subtlest, most
unscrupulous, most malicious, exerting every energy to rear a rebel
kingdom against God; on the other, a new-born, inexperienced, innocent,
and trustful creature, a poor man vexed with appetites, and as naked for
absolute knowledge in his mind as for garments on his body. Was it, in
this view of the case, an equal contest? were the weapons of that
warfare matched and measured fairly?
Some such objection, we may suppose, might seem to have been admissible,
as having a show at least of reason: and, after the world was to have
been cleansed of all its creatures in the manner I have mentioned, a new
champion is armed for the conflict, totally different in every respect;
and to reason's view vastly superior.
This time, the Adam of renewed earth is to be the best and wisest, nay,
the only good and wise one of the whole lost family: a man, with the
experience of full six hundred years upon his hoary brow, with the
unspeakable advantage of having walked with God all those long-drawn
centuries, a patriarch of twenty generations, recognised as the one
great and faithful witness, the only worshipper and friend of his
Creator. Could a finer sample be conceived? was not Noah the only spark
of spiritual "consolation" in the midst of earth's dark death? and was
not he the best imaginable champion to stand against the wiles of the
devil? Verily, reason might have guessed, that if Deity saw fit to renew
the fight at all, the representative of man should have been Noah.
Before we touch upon the immediate fall of this new Adam also, at a time
when God and reason had deserted him, it will be more orderly to allude
to the circumstances of his preservation in the flood. How, in such a
hurlyburly of the elements, should the chosen seed survive? No house,
nor hill-top, no ordinary ship would serve the purpose: still less the
unreasonable plan of any cavern hermetically sealed, or any aerial
chariot miraculously lifted up above the lower firmament. To use plain
and simple words, I can fancy no wiser method than a something between a
house and a diving-bell; a vessel, entirely storm-tight and water-tight,
which nevertheless for necessary air should have an open window at the
top: say, one a cubit square. This, properly hooded against deluging
rain, and supplied with such helps to ventilation as leathern pipes, air
tunnels and similar appliances, would not be an impracticable method.
However, instead of being under water as a diving-bell, the vessel would
be better made to float upon the rising flood, and thus continually
keeping its level, would be ready to strike land as the waters assuaged.
Now, as to the size of this ark, this floating caravan, it must needs be
very large; and also take a great time in building. For, suffering cause
and effect to go on without a new creation, it was reasonable to suppose
that the man, so launching as for another world on the ocean of
existence, would take with him (especially if God's benevolence so
ordered it) all the known appliances of civilized life; as well as a
pair or two of every creature he could collect, to stock withal the
renewed earth according to their various excellences in their kinds. The
lengthy, arduous, and expensive preparation of this mighty ark--a vessel
which must include forests of timber and consume generations in
building; besides the world-be-known collection of all manner of strange
animals for the stranger fancy of a fanatical old man; not to mention
also the hoary Preacher's own century of exortations: with how great
moral force all this living warning would be calculated to act upon the
world of wickedness and doom! Here was the great ante-diluvian
potentate, Noah, a patriarch of ages, wealthy beyond our
calculations--(for how else without a needless succession of miracles
could he have built and stocked the ark?)--a man of enormous substance,
good report, and exalted station, here was he for a hundred and twenty
years engaged among crowds of unbelieving workmen, in constructing a
most extravagant ship, which, forsooth, filled with samples of all this
world's stores, was to sail with our only good family in search of a
better. Moreover, Noah here declares that our dear old mother-earth is
to be destroyed for her iniquities by rain and sea: and he exhorts us by
a solid evidence of his own faith at least, if by nothing else, to
repent, and turn to him, whom Abel, Seth, and Enoch, as well as this
good Noah, represent as our Maker. Would not such sneers and taunts be
probable: would they not amply vindicate the coming judgment? Was not
the "long-suffering of God" likely to have thus been tried "while the
ark was preparing?" and when the catastrophe should come, had not that
evil generation been duly warned against it? On the whole, it would have
been Reason's guess that Noah should be saved as he was; that the ark
should have been as we read of it in Genesis; and that the very
immensity of its construction should have served for a preaching to
mankind. As to any idea that the ark is an unreasonable (some have even
said ridiculous) incident to the deluge, it seems to me to have
furnished a clear case of antecedent probability.
Lastly: Noah's fall was very likely to have happened: not merely in the
theological view of the matter, as an illustration of the truth that no
human being can stand fast in righteousness: but from the just
consideration that he imported with him the seeds of an impure state of
society, the remembered luxuries of that old world. For instance, among
the plants of earth which Noah would have preserved for future insertion
in the soil, he could not have well forgotten the generous, treacherous
Vine. That to a righteous man, little used to all unhallowed sources of
exhilaration, this should have been a stepping-stone to a defalcation
from God, was likely. It was probable in itself, and shows the honesty
as well as the verisimilitude of Scripture to read, that "Noah began to
be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and
was drunken." There was nothing here but what, taking all things into
consideration, Reason might have previously guessed. Why then withhold
the easier matter of an afterward belief?
BABEL.
This book ought to be read, as mentally it is written, with at the end
of every sentence one of those _et ceteras_, which the genius of a Coke
interpreted so keenly of the genius of a Littleton: for, far more
remains on each subject to be said, than in any one has been attempted.
Let us pass on to the story of Babel: I can conceive nothing more _a
priori_ probable than the account we read in Scripture. Briefly consider
the matter. A multitude of men, possibly the then whole human family,
once more a fallen race, emigrate towards the East, and come to a vast
plain in the region of Shinar, afterwards Chaldaea. Fertile,
well-watered, apt for every mundane purpose, it yet wanted one great
requisite. The degenerate race "put not their trust in God:" they did
not believe but that the world might some day be again destroyed by
water: and they required a point of refuge in the possible event of a
second deluge from the broken bounds of ocean and the windows of the
skies. They had come from the West; more strictly the North-west, a land
of mountains, as they deemed them, ready-made refuges: and their scheme,
a probable one enough, was to construct some such mountain artificially,
so that its top might reach the clouds, as did the summit of Ararat.
This would serve the twofold purpose of outwitting any further attempt
to drown them, and of making for themselves a proud name upon the earth.
So, the Lord God, in his etherealized human form (having taken counsel
with His own divine compeers), coming in the guise wherein He was wont
to walk with Adam and with Enoch and his other saints of men, "came down
and saw the tower:" truly, He needed not have come, for ubiquity was
his, and omniscience; but in the days when God and man were (so to
speak) less chronologically divided than as now, and while yet the
trial-family was young, it does not seem unlikely that He should. God
then, in his aspect of the Head of all mankind, took notice of that
dangerous and unholy combination: and He made within His Triune Mind the
wise resolve to break their bond of union. Omniscience had herein a view
to ulterior consequences benevolent to man, and He knew that it would be
a wise thing for the future world, as well as a discriminative check
upon the race then living, to confuse the universal language into many
discordant dialects. Was this in any sense an improbable or improper
method of making "the devices of the wicked to be of none effect, and of
laughing to scorn the counsels of the mighty?" Was it not to have been
expected that a fallen race should be disallowed the combinative force
necessary to a common language, but that such force should be dissipated
and diverted for moral usages into many tongues?--There they were, all
the chiefs of men congregated to accomplish a vast, ungodly scheme: and
interposing Heaven to crush such insane presumption--and withal
thereafter designing to bless by arranging through such means the future
interchange of commerce and the enterprise of nationalities--He, in his
Trinity, was not unlikely to have said, "Let us go down, and confound
their language." What better mode could have been devised to scatter
mankind, and so to people the extremities of earth? In order that the
various dialects should crystallize apart, each in its discriminative
lump, the nucleus of a nation; that thereafter the world might be able
no longer to unite as one man against its Lord, but by conflicting
interests, the product of conflicting languages, might give to good a
better chance of not being altogether overwhelmed; that, though many "a
multitude might go to do evil," it should not thenceforward be the whole
consenting family of man; but that, here by one and there by one, the
remembrance of God should be kept extant, and evil no longer acquire an
accumulated force, by having all the world one nation.
JOB.
Every scriptural incident and every scriptural worthy deserves its own
particular discussion: and might easily obtain it. For example; the
anterior probability that human life in patriarchal times should have
been very much prolonged, was obvious; from consideration of--1, the
benevolence of God; 2, the inexperience of man; and 3, the claim so
young a world would hold upon each of its inhabitants: whilst Holy Writ
itself has prepared an answer to the probable objection, that the years
were lunar years, or months; by recording that Arphaxad and Salah and
Eber and Peleg and Reu and Serug and Nahor, descendants of Shem, each
had children at the average age of two-and-thirty, and yet the lives of
all varied in duration from a hundred and fifty years to five hundred.
And many similar credibilities might be alluded to: what shall I say of
Abraham's sacrifice, of Moses and the burning bush, of Jonah also, and
Elisha, and of the prophets? for the time would fail me to tell how
probable and simple in each instance is its deep and marvellous history.
There is food for philosophic thought in every page of ancient Jewish
Scripture scarcely less than in those of primitive Christianity: here,
after our fashion, we have only touched upon a sample.
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