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CORRESPONDENCE WITH
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Taken from
CHARLES KINGSLEY, His
Letters and Memories of his Life
edited by his wife.
Published Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London,
1888.
Rev. Charles Kingsley (1819 – 1875)
Church of England clergyman, Christian Socialist,
university professor, historian, and novelist.
From a carte-de-visite.
THE
following are extracts given without regard to dates, from letters
to Mr. Thomas Cooper, Chartist, author of the "Purgatory of
Suicides." When Mr. Kingsley first knew Thomas Cooper, he was
lecturing on Strauss, to working men; but after a long struggle his
doubts were solved. He is now at the age of 70, a preacher of
Christianity.[1]
――――♦――――
February 15, 1850.—"Many thanks for your paper. On
Theological points I will say nothing. We must have a good long
stand-up fight some day, when we have wind and time. In the mean
time, I will just say, that I believe as devoutly as you, Goethe, or
Strauss, that God never does—if one dare use the word, never
can—break the Laws of Nature, which are His Laws, manifestations of
the eternal ideas of His Spirit and Word—but that Christ's Miracles
seem to me the highest realizations of those very laws. How? you
will ask—to which I answer. You must let me tell you by-and-bye. Your thinkings from Carlyle are well chosen. There is much in
Carlyle's 'Chartism' and the 'French Revolution,' and also in a
paper called 'Characteristics,' among the miscellanies, which is
'good doctrine and profitable for this age.' I cannot say what
I personally owe to that man's writings.
"But you are right, a thousand times right, in saying that the
[co-operative] movement is a more important move than any
Parliamentary one. It is to get room and power for such works, and
not merely for any abstract notions of political right that I fight
for the suffrage. I am hard at work—harder, the doctors say, than is
wise. But 'the days are evil, and we must redeem the time,'—Our one
chance for all the Eternities, to do a little work in for God and
the people, for whom, as I believe, He gave His well-beloved Son. That is the spring of my work, Thomas Cooper; it will be yours;
consciously or unconsciously it is now, for aught I know, if you be
the man I take you for. . . ."
――――♦――――
EVERSLEY: November 2, 1853.—"Your
friend is a very noble fellow.[2] As for converting either you or
him, what I want to do, is to make people believe in the
Incarnation, as the one solution of all one's doubts and
fears for all heaven and earth; wherefore I should say boldly,
that, even if Strauss were right, the thing must either have
happened somewhere else, or will happen somewhere some day, so
utterly does both my
reason and conscience, and, as I think, judging from history, the
reason and conscience of the many in all ages and climes, demand an
Incarnation. As for Strauss [Ed.—probably David
Friedrich Strauss], I have read a great deal of him, and
his preface carefully. Of the latter, I must say that it is utterly
illogical, founded on a gross petitio principii; as for the mass of the book,
I would undertake, by the same fallacious process, to disprove the
existence of Strauss
himself, or any other phenomenon in heaven or earth. But all this is
a long story. As long as you do see in Jesus the perfect ideal of
man, you are in the right path, you are going toward the light,
whether or not you
may yet be allowed to see certain consequences which, as I believe,
logically follow from the fact of His being the ideal. Poor ――'s
denial (for so I am told) of Jesus being the ideal of a good man, is
a more serious evil
far. And yet Jesus Himself said, that, if any one spoke a word
against the Son of Man (i.e. against Him as the perfect man) it
should be forgiven him; but the man who could not be forgiven either
in this world or that to
come, was the man who spoke against the Holy Spirit, i.e. who had
lost his moral sense and did not know what was righteous when he saw
it—a sin into which we parsons are as likely to fall as any men,
much more
likely than the publicans and sinners. As long as your friend, or
any other man loves the good, and does it, and hates the evil and
flees from it, my Catholic creeds tell me that the Spirit of Jesus,
'the Word,' is teaching
that man; and gives me hope that either here or hereafter, if he be
faithful over a few things, he shall be taught much. You see, this
is quite a different view from either the Dissenters or
Evangelicals, or even the High-Church parsons. But it is the view of those old 'Fathers' whom they
think they honour, and whom they will find one day, in spite of many
errors and superstitions, to be far more liberal, humane, and
philosophical than
our modern religionists. . . . . "
――――♦――――
TORQUAY: 1854.—"I am now very busy at two things. Working at the
sea-animals of Torbay for Mr. Gosse, the naturalist, and thundering
in behalf of sanitary reform. Those who fancy me a 'sentimentalist'
and a
'fanatic' little know how thoroughly my own bent is for physical
science; how I have been trained in it from earliest boyhood; how
I am happier now in classifying a new polype, or solving a
geognostic problem of strata,
or any other bit of hard Baconian induction, than in writing all the
novels in the world; or how, again, my theological creed has grown
slowly and naturally out of my physical one, till I have seen, and
do believe more
and more utterly, that the peculiar doctrines of Christianity (as
they are in the Bible, not as some preachers represent them from the
pulpit) coincide with the loftiest and severest science. This
blessed belief did not
come to me at once, and therefore I complain of no man who arrives
at it slowly, either from the scientific or religious side; nor
have I yet spoken out all that is in me, much less all that I see
coming; but I feel that I
am on a right path, and please God, I will hold it to the end. I see
by-the-bye that you have given out two 'Orations against taking away
human life.' I should be curious to hear what a man like you says on
the point, for
I am sure you are free from any effeminate sentimentalism, and by
your countenance, would make a terrible and good fighter, in a good
cause. It is a painful and difficult subject. After much
thought, I have come to the conclusion that you cannot take away human life. That
animal life
is all you take away; and that very often the best thing you can
do for a poor creature is to put him out of this world, saying, 'You
are evidently unable
to get on here. We render you back into God's hands that He may
judge you, and set you to work again somewhere else, giving you a
fresh chance as you have spoilt this one.' But I speak really in
doubt and awe . . . .
When I have read your opinions I will tell you why I think the
judicial taking away animal life to be the strongest assertion of
the dignity and divineness of human life; [3] and the taking away
life in wars the strongest
assertion of the dignity and divineness of national life."
――――♦――――
1855.— "―― sent me some time ago a letter of yours, in which you
express dissatisfaction with the 'soft indulgence' which I and
Maurice attribute to God . . . .
"My belief is, that God will punish (and has punished already
somewhat) every wrong thing I ever did, unless I repent—that is,
change my behaviour therein; and that His lightest blow is hard
enough to break bone and
marrow. But as for saying of any human being whom I ever saw on
earth that there is no hope for them; that even if, under the
bitter smart of just punishment, they opened their eyes to their
folly, and altered their
minds, even then God would not forgive them; as for saying that, I
will not for all the world, and the rulers thereof. I never saw a
man in whom there was not some good, and I believe that God sees
that good far more
clearly, and loves it far more deeply, than I can, because He
Himself put it there, and, therefore, it is reasonable to believe
that He will educate and strengthen that good, and chastise and
scourge the holder of it till he
obeys it, and loves it, and gives up himself to it; and that the
said holder will find such chastisement terrible enough, if he is
unruly and stubborn, I doubt not, and so much the better for him. Beyond this I cannot say;
but I like your revulsion into stern puritan vengeance—it is a lunge
too far the opposite way, like Carlyle's; but anything better than
the belief that our Lord Jesus Christ was sent into the world to
enable any man to be
infinitely rewarded without doing anything worth rewarding—anything,
oh! God of mercy as well as justice, than a creed which strengthens
the heart of the wicked, by promising him life, and makes ―― ――
believe (as I
doubt not he does believe) that though a man is damned here his soul
is saved hereafter. Write to me. Your letters do me good."
――――♦――――
1856.—"You have an awful and glorious work before you,[4] and you do
seem to be going about it in the right spirit—namely, in a spirit of
self-humiliation. Don't be downhearted if outward humiliation,
failure, insult,
apparent loss of influence, come out of it at first. If God be
indeed our Father in any real sense, then, whom He loveth, He
chasteneth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. And
'Till thou art emptied of
thyself, God cannot fill thee,' though it be a saw of the old
mystics, is true and practical common sense. God bless you and
prosper you. . . .
" . . . Your letter this morning delighted me, for I see that you
see. If you are an old hand at the Socratic method, you will be
saved much trouble. I can quite understand young fellows kicking at
it. Plato always takes
care to let us see how all but the really earnest kicked at it, and
flounced off in a rage, having their own notions torn to rags, and
scattered, but nothing new put in the place thereof. It seems to me
(I speak really
humbly here) that the danger of the Socratic method, which issued,
two or three generations after in making his so-called pupils the
academics mere destroying sceptics, priding themselves on picking
holes in
everything positive, is this—to use it without Socrates' great Idea,
which he expressed by 'all knowledge being memory,' which the later
Platonists, both Greek and Jew, e.g., Philo and St. John, and after
them the good
among the Roman Stoics and our early Quakers, and German mystics,
expressed by saying that God, or Christ, or the Word, was more or
less in every man, the Light which lightened him. Letting alone
formal
phraseology, what I mean, and what Socrates meant, was this, to
confound people's notions and theories, only to bring them to look
their own reason in the face, and to tell them boldly, you know
these things at heart
already, if you will only look at what you know, and clear from your
own spirit the mists which your mere brain and 'organisation,' has
wrapt round them. Men may be at first more angry than ever at this;
they will think
you accuse them of hypocrisy when you tell them 'you know that I am
right, and you wrong;' but it will do them good at last. It will
bring them to the one great truth, that they too have a Teacher, a
Guide, an Inspirer, a
Father: that you are not asserting for yourself any new position,
which they have not attained, but have at last found out the
position which has been all along equally true of them and you, that
you are all God's
children, and that your Father's Love is going out to seek and to
save them and you, by the only possible method, viz., teaching them
that He is their Father.
"I am very anxious to hear your definition of a person. I have not
been able yet to get one, or a proof of personal existence which
does not spring from ŕ priori subjective consciousness, and which
is, in fact, Fichte's. 'I
am I.' I know it. Take away my 'organisation,' cast my body to the
crows or the devil, logically or physically, strip me of all which
makes me palpable to you, and to the universe, still I have the
unconquerable knowledge
that 'I am I,' and must and shall be so for ever. How I get this
idea I know not: but it is the most precious of all convictions, as
it is the first; and I can only suppose it is a revelation from God,
whose image it is in me,
and the first proof of my being His child. My spirit is a person;
and the child of the Absolute Person, the Absolute Spirit. And so is
yours, and yours, and yours. In saying that, I go on 'Analogy,'
which is Butler's word
for fair Baconian Induction. I find that I am absolutely I, an
individual and indissoluble person; therefore I am bound to believe
at first sight that you, and you, and you are such also This is all
I seem to know about
it as yet.
"But how utterly right you are in beginning to teach the real
meaning of words, which people now (parsons as well as atheists) use
in the loosest way. Take even 'organisation,' paltry word as it is,
and make them
analyse it, and try if they can give any definition of it (drawn
from its real etymology) which does not imply a person distinct from
the organs, or tools, and organising or arranging those tools with a
mental view to a
result. I should advise you to stick stoutly by old Paley. He is
right at root, and I should advise you, too, to make your boast of Baconian Induction being on your side, and not on theirs; for 'many
a man talks of Robin
Hood who never shot in his bow,' and the 'Reasoner' party, while
they prate about the triumphs of science, never, it seems to me,
employ intentionally in a single sentence the very inductive method
whereby that
science has triumphed. . . . Be of good cheer. WHEN the wicked man turneth from his wickedness (then, there and then), he shall save
his soul alive—as you seem to be consciously doing, and all his sin
and his
iniquity shall not be mentioned unto him. What your 'measure' of
guilt (if there can be a measure of the incommensurable spiritual) I
know not. But this I know, that as long as you keep the sense of
guilt alive in your
own mind, you will remain justified in God's mind; as long as you
set your sins before your face, He will set them behind his back. Do
you ask how I know that? I will not quote 'texts,' though there are
dozens. I will not
quote my own spiritual experience, though I could honestly: I will
only say, that such a moral law is implied in the very idea of 'Our
Father in heaven'. . . . "
". . . . You must come and see me, and talk over many things. That is
what I want. An evening's smoke and chat in my den, and a morning's
walk on our heather moors, would bring our hearts miles nearer each
other,
and our heads too. As for the political move, I can give you no
advice save, say little, and do less. I am ready for all extensions
of the franchise, if we have a government system of education
therewith: till then I am
merely stupidly acquiescent. More poor and ignorant voters? Very
well—more bribees; more bribers; more pettifogging attorneys in
parliament; more local interests preferred to national ones; more
substitution of the
delegate system for the representative one . . . ."
――――♦――――
June 14, 1856.—"It is, I know it, a low aim (I don't mean morally)
for a man who has had the aspirations which you have; but may not
our Heavenly Father just be bringing you through this seemingly
degrading work,
[5] to give you what I should think you never had,—what it cost me
bitter sorrow to learn—the power of working in harness, and so
actually drawing something, and being of real use. Be sure, if you
can once learn that
lesson, in addition to the rest you have learnt, you will rise to
something worthy of you yet . . . . It has seemed to me, in watching
you and your books, and your life, that just what you wanted was
self-control. I don't
mean that you could not starve, die piece-meal, for what you thought
right; for you are a brave man, and if you had not been, you would
not have been alive now. But it did seem to me, that what you wanted
was the
quiet, stern cheerfulness, which sees that things are wrong, and
sets to to right them, but does it trying to make the best of them
all the while, and to see the bright side; and even if, as often
happens, there be no
bright side to see, still 'possesses his soul in patience,' and sits
whistling and working till 'the pit be digged for the ungodly.'
"Don't be angry with me and turn round and say, 'You, sir, who never
knew what it was to want a meal in your life, who belong to the
successful class who have.—What do you mean by preaching these cold
platitudes
to me?' For, Thomas Cooper, I have known what it was to want things
more precious to you, as well as to me, than a full stomach; and I
learnt—or rather I am learning a little—to wait for them till God
sees good. And
the man who wrote 'Alton Locke' must know a little of what a man
like you could feel to a man like me, if the devil entered into him. And yet I tell you, Thomas Cooper, that there was a period in my
life—and one not of
months, but for years, in which I would have gladly exchanged your circumstantia, yea, yourself, as it is now, for my circumstantia,
and myself, as they were then. And yet I had the best of parents and
a home, if not
luxurious, still as good as any man's need be. You are a far happier
man now, I firmly believe, than I was for years of my life. The dark
cloud has passed with me now. Be but brave and patient, and (I
will
swear now),
by God, sir! it will pass with you."
――――♦――――
June, 1856.—"You are in the right way yet. I can put you in no
more right way. Your sense of sin is not fanaticism; it is, I
suppose, simple consciousness of fact. As for helping you to Christ,
I do not believe I can
one inch. I see no hope but in prayer, in going to Him yourself, and
saying: 'Lord if Thou art there, if Thou art at all, if this all be
not a lie, fulfil Thy reputed promises, and give me peace and the
sense of forgiveness,
and the feeling that, bad as I may be, Thou lowest me still, seeing
all, understanding all, and therefore making allowances for all!' I
have had to do that in past days; to challenge Him through outer
darkness and the
silence of night, till I almost expected that He would vindicate His
own honour by appearing visibly as He did to St. Paul and St. John;
but He answered in the still small voice only; yet that was enough.
"Read the book by all means; but the book will not reveal Him. He
is not in the book; He is in the Heaven which is as near you and me
as the air we breathe, and out of that He must reveal Himself;—neither priests
nor books can conjure Him up, Cooper. Your Wesleyan teachers taught
you, perhaps, to look for Him in the book, as Papists would have in
the bread; and when you found He was not in the book, you thought
Him
nowhere; but He is bringing you out of your first mistaken
idolatry, ay, through it, and through all wild wanderings since, to
know Him Himself, and speak face to face with Him as a man speaks
with his friend. Have
patience with Him. Has He not had patience with you? And therefore
have patience with all men and things; and then you will rise again
in His good time the stouter for your long batte . . . .
". . . . For yourself, my dear friend, the secret of life for you
and for me, is to lay our purposes and characters continually before
Him who made them, and cry, 'Do Thou purge me, and so alone I shall
be clean. Thou requirest truth in the inward parts. Thou wilt make me to understand
wisdom secretly.' What more rational belief? For surely if there be
any God, and He made us at first, He who makes can also mend His own
work if it get out of gear. What more miraculous in the doctrines of
regeneration and renewal, than in the mere fact of creation at all?
"I am glad to hear you are regularly at work at the Board. It will
lead to something better, doubt not; and if it be dry drudgery,
after all, some of the greatest men who have ever lived (perhaps
almost all) have had their
dull collar-work of this kind, which after all was useful in keeping
mind and temper in order. I have a good deal of it, and find it most
blessed and useful."
――――♦――――
April 3, 1857.—"Go on and prosper.[6] Let me entreat you, in
broaching Christianity, to consider carefully the one great
Missionary sermon on record, viz., St. Paul's at Athens. There the
Atonement, in its sense of a
death to avert God's anger, is never mentioned. Christ's Kingship is
his theme; the Resurrection, not the death, the great fact. Oh,
begin by insisting, as I have done in the end of 'Hypatia,' on the
Incarnation as morally necessary, to prove the goodness of the
Supreme Being. Insist on its being the Incarnation of Him who had
been in the world all along. . . . Do bear in mind that you have to
tell them of The Father—Their Father—of
Christ, as manifesting that Father; and all will go well. On the
question of future punishment, I should have a good deal to say to
you. I believe that it is the crux to most hearts."
――――♦――――
May 9, 1857.—"About endless torment . . . . You may say,—1.
Historically, that, a. The doctrine occurs nowhere in the Old
Testament, or any hint of it. The expression, in the end of Isaiah,
about the fire
unquenched, and the worm not dying, is plainly of the dead corpses
of men upon the physical earth, in the valley of Hinnom, or Gehenna,
where the offal of Jerusalem was burned perpetually. Enlarge on
this, as it is
the passage which our Lord quotes, and by it the meaning of His
words must be primarily determined.—b. The doctrine of endless
torment was, as a historical fact, brought back from Babylon by the
Rabbis. It was a
very ancient primary doctrine of the Magi, an appendage of their
fire-kingdom of Ahriman, and may be found in the old Zends, long
prior to Christianity.—c. St. Paul accepts nothing of it as far as
we can tell, never
making the least allusion to the doctrine—d. The Apocalypse simply
repeats the imagery of Isaiah, and of our Lord; but asserts,
distinctly, the non-endlessness of torture, declaring that in the
consummation, not only
death, but Hell, shall be cast into the Lake of Fire.—e. The
Christian Church has never really held it exclusively, till now. It
remained quite an open question till the age of Justinian, 530, and
significantly enough, as
soon as 200 years before that, endless torment for the heathen
became a popular theory, purgatory sprang up synchronously by the
side of it, as a relief for the conscience and reason of the
Church.—f. Since the
Reformation, it has been an open question in the English Church, and
the philosophical Platonists, of the 16th and 17th centuries, always
considered it as such. g. The Church of England, by the deliberate
expunging
of the 42nd Article which affirmed endless punishment, has declared
it authoritatively to be open.—h. It is so, in fact. Neither Mr.
Maurice, I, or any others, who have denied it, can be dispossessed
or proceeded
against legally in any way whatsoever. Exegetically, you may say, I
think That the meanings of the word αίώυ and αίώυιος have little or
nothing to do with it, even if αίώυ be derived from άεί always,
which I greatly doubt. The word never is used in Scripture anywhere else, in the sense of
endlessness (vulgarly called eternity). It always meant, both in
Scripture and out, a period of time. Else, how could it have a
plural—how could you
talk of the ćons, and ćons of ćons, as the Scripture does? Nay,
more, how talk of οΰτος ό αίώυ, which the translators, with laudable
inconsistency, have translated 'this world,' i.e., this present
state of things, 'Age,'
'dispensation,' or epoch—ίώυιος, therefore, means, and must mean,
belonging to an epoch, or the epoch, αίώυιος κολασις is the punishment
allotted to that epoch. Always bear in mind, what Maurice insists
on,—and what is
so plain to honest readers,—that our Lord, and the Apostles, always
speak of being in the end of an age or aeon, not as ushering in a
new one. Come to judge and punish the old world, and to create a new
one out of
its ruins, or rather as the S. S. better expresses it, to burn up
the chaff and keep the wheat, i.e., all the elements of food as seed
for the new world.
"I think you may say, that our Lord took the popular doctrine
because He found it, and tried to correct and purify it, and put it
on a really moral ground. You may quote the parable of Dives and
Lazarus (which was the
emancipation from the Tartarus theory) as the one instance in which
our Lord professedly opens the secrets of the next world, that He
there represents Dives as still Abraham's child, under no despair,
not cut off from
Abraham's sympathy, and under a direct moral training, of which you
see the fruit. He is gradually weaned from the selfish desire of
indulgence for himself, to love and care for his brethren, a divine
step forward in his
life, which of itself proves him not to be lost. The
impossibility of Lazarus getting to him, or vice versa, expresses
plainly the great truth, that each being where he ought to be at
that time, interchange of place i.e., of
spiritual state, is impossible. But it says nothing against Dives
rising out of his torment, when he has learnt the lesson of it, and
going where he ought to go. The common interpretation is merely
arguing in a circle,
assuming that there are but two states of the dead, 'Heaven' and
'Hell,' and then trying at once to interpret the parable by the
assumption, and to prove the assumption from the parable. Next, you
may say that the
English damnation, like the Greek κατάκρισις, is perhaps κρίσις simple,
simply means condemnation, and is (thank God) retained in that sense
in various of our formularies, where I always read it, e.g.,
'eateth
to himself
damnation,' with sincere pleasure, as protests in favour of the true
and rational meaning of the word, against the modern and narrower
meaning.
"You may say that Fire and Worms, whether physical or spiritual, must
in all logical fairness be supposed to do what fire and worms do do,
viz., destroy decayed and dead matter, and set free its elements to
enter into
new organisms; that, as they are beneficent and purifying agents in
this life, they must be supposed such in the future life, and that
the conception of fire as an engine of torture, is an unnatural use
of that agent, and
not to be attributed to God without blasphemy, unless you suppose
that the suffering (like all which He inflicts) is intended to teach
man something which he cannot learn elsewhere.
"You may say that the catch, 'All sin deserves infinite punishment,
because it is against an Infinite Being,' is a worthless amphiboly,
using the word infinite in two utterly different senses, and being a
mere play on
sound. That it is directly contradicted by Scripture, especially by
our Lord's own words, which declare that every man (not merely the
wicked) shall receive the due reward of his deeds, that he who, &c.,
shall be beaten
with few stripes, and so forth. That the words 'He shall not go out
till he has paid the uttermost farthing,' evidently imply (unless
spoken in cruel mockery) that he may go out then . . .
"Finally, you may call on them to rejoice that there is a fire of
God the Father whose name is Love, burning for ever unquenchably, to
destroy out of every man's heart and out of the hearts of all
nations, and off the
physical and moral world, all which offends and makes a lie. That
into that fire the Lord will surely cast all shams, lies,
hypocrisies, tyrannies, pedantries, false doctrines, yea, and the
men who love them too well to
give them up, that the smoke of their Βασαυισμός (i.e., the torture
which makes men confess the truth, for that is the real meaning of
it; Βασαυισμός means the touch-stone by which gold was tested) may ascend
perpetually, for
a warning and a beacon to all nations, as the smoke of the torment
of French aristocracies, and Bourbon dynasties, is ascending up to
Heaven and has been ever since 1793. Oh, Cooper—Is it not good news
that that
fire is unquenchable; that that worn will not die. . . . The parti prętre
tried to kill the worm which was gnawing at their hearts, making
them dimly aware that they were wrong, and liars, and that God and
His universe were
against them, and that they and their system were rotting and must
die. They cannot kill God's worm, Thomas Cooper. You cannot look in
the face of many a working continental priest without seeing that
the worm is
at his heart. You cannot watch their conduct without seeing that it
is at the heart of their system. God grant that we here in
England—we parsons (dissenting and church) may take warning by them.
The fire may be
kindled for us. The worm may seize our hearts. God grant that in
that day we may have courage to let the fire and the worm do their
work—to say to Christ, These too are Thine, and out of Thine
infinite love they have
come. Thou requirest truth in the inward parts, and I will thank
Thee for any means, however bitter, which Thou usest to make me
true. I want to be an honest man, and a right man! And, oh joy,
Thou wantest me to be
so also. Oh joy, that though I long cowardly to quench Thy fire, I
cannot do it. Purge us, therefore, oh Lord, though it be with fire. Burn up the chaff of vanity and self-indulgence, of hasty
prejudices, second-hand
dogmas,—husks which do not feed my soul, with which I cannot be
content, of which I feel ashamed daily—and if there be any grains of
wheat in me, any word or thought or power of action which may be of
use as
seed for my nation after me, gather it, oh Lord, into Thy garner.
"Yes, Thomas Cooper. Because I believe in a God of Absolute and
Unbounded Love, therefore I believe in a Loving Anger of His, which
will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous,
abortive in His
universe, till all enemies shall be put under His feet, to be
pardoned surely, if they confess themselves in the wrong, and open
their eyes to the truth. And God shall be All in All. Those last are
wide words. It is he who
limits them, not I who accept them in their fulness, who denies the
verbal inspiration of Scripture.
"P.S. When you talk to them on the Trinity, don't be afraid of
saying two things.
"They will say 'Three in One' is contrary to sense and experience. Answer, that is your ignorance. Every comparative anatomist will
tell you the exact contrary; that among the most common, though the
most puzzling
phenomena is multiplicity in unity—divided life in the same
individual of every extraordinary variety of case. That distinction
of persons with unity of individuality (what the old schoolmen
properly called substance) is to
be met with in some thousand species of animals, e.g., all the
compound polypes, and that the soundest physiologists, like Huxley,
are compelled to talk of these animals in metaphysic terms just as
paradoxical as,
and almost identical with, those of the theologian. Ask them then,
whether, granting one primordial Being who has conceived and made
all other beings, it is absurd to suppose in Him, some law of
multiplicity in unity,
analogous to that on which He has constructed so many millions of
His creatures
"I have said my say on the Trinity in the end of 'Yeast,' and in the
end of ' Hypatia' . . . ."
.
.
.
.
.
"But my heart demands the Trinity, as much as my reason. I want to
be sure that God cares for us, that God is our Father, that God has
interfered, stooped, sacrificed Himself for us. I do not merely want
to love
Christ—a Christ, some creation or emanation of God's—whose will and
character, for aught I know may be different from God's. I want to
love and honour the absolute, abysmal God Himself, and none other
will satisfy
me—and in the doctrine of Christ being co-equal and co-eternal, sent
by, sacrificed by, His Father, that He might do His Father's will, I
find it—and no puzzling texts, like those you quote, shall rob me of
that rest for
my heart, that Christ is the exact counterpart of Him in whom we
live, and move, and have our being. The texts are few, only two
after all; on them I wait for light, as I do on many more:
meanwhile, I say boldly, if the
doctrine be not in the Bible, it ought to be, for the whole
spiritual nature of man cries out for it. Have you read Maurice's
essay on the Trinity in his theological essays? addressed to
Unitarians? If not, you must read it. About the word Trinity, I feel much as you do. It seems unfortunate
that the name of God should be one which expresses a mere numerical
abstraction, and not a moral property. It has, I think, helped to
make men
forget that God is a spirit—that is, a moral being, and that moral
spiritual, and that morality (in the absolute) is God, as St. John saith God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and
God in him—words
which, were they not happily in the Bible, would be now called rank
and rampant Pantheism. But, Cooper, I have that faith in Christ's
right government of the human race, that I have good hope that He is
keeping the
word Trinity, only because it has not yet done its work; when it
has, He will inspire men with some better one."
NOTES.
1. Thomas Cooper's autobiography, published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1872, is a book well worth reading for its
own sake and for the pictures
of working class life and thought, which it reveals.
2. This refers to a letter in which Thomas Cooper
says, "My friend, a noble young fellow, says, you are trying to
convert him to orthodoxy, and expresses great admiration for you. I
wish you success with him, and I
bad almost said I wish you could next succeed with me; but I think
I am likely to stick where I have stuck for some years—never
lessening, but I think increasing, in my love for the truly divine
Jesus—but retaining the
Strauss view of the Gospel." "Ah! that grim
Strauss," he says in a later letter, "How he makes the iron agony go
through my bones and marrow, when I am yearning to get hold of Christ! But you understand
me? Can you help me? I wish I could be near you, so as to have a
long talk with you often. I wish you could show me that Strauss's
preface is illogical, and that it is grounded on a petitio principii. I wish
you could bring me into
a full and hearty reception of this doctrine of the Incarnation. I
wish you could lift off the dead weight from my head and heart, that
blasting, brutifying thought, that the grave must be my 'end all.'"
3. See Sermon on Capital Punishment, preached in
1870, by Rev. C. Kingsley. (All Saints' Day and other Sermons. C. Kegan Paul & Co.)
4. Thomas Cooper had now re-commenced lecturing at
the Hall of Science on Sunday evenings, simply teaching theism, for
he had not advanced farther yet in positive conviction.
5. Thomas Cooper had been given copying work at the
Board of Health; and his hearers at the Hall of Science, already
made bitter by his deserting the atheist camp, made the fact of his
doing government work and
taking government pay, a fresh ground of opposition to his teaching.
6. T. Cooper had written to say that he had now
begun the "grand contest." "God has been so good to me that I must
confess Christ, and we shall have greater rage now that I have come
to Christianity.
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