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CHAPTER VII.

SPIRITUAL ILLUMINATION.

Περὶ τὸν παντων Βασιλέα παντ' εξί, και εκέινου ἕνεκα πάντα, και ἐκεῖνο άιτιον ἀπάντ TWY TWV KaλWY.-Concerning the King of all, all things are, and for his sake are all things, and he is the cause of all the beautiful.-Plato's Epist. II. to Dionysius. "The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his Spirit."— Bacon's Essay of Truth.

§ 1. THE TRUE RELIGION.

BENJAMIN CONSTANT, setting out upon an investigation into the origin and progress of all religions, with a purpose of showing that Christianity was only one of the many superstitions of the world's history, becomes himself convinced that there is such a thing as religion in itself, resting on an eternal foundation of divine truth, and recognized more or less distinctly in all phases of human experience, and in all forms of human society, from the lowest barbarisms up to the highest degree of civilization; and Goethe, no less learned in historical criticism, and perhaps a still deeper philosopher, finds that there are at least "three Reverences" and "one true Religion," which stand upon such eternal foundation. Morell, writing a philosophy of religion, finds, also, that all religious opinion and belief must come to man through his own reason only; and that there can be no revelation to men of things altogether above their comprehension. These and many other learned writers and scholars, both ancient and modern, take religion to be something universal and necessary, founded in the very nature and constitution of the soul of man,

wherein he is made sensible of his dependence upon 66 some Higher Powers." Lord Bacon had attained to a like comprehension of the true nature of religion. "The true religion," he says, " is built upon the rock; the rest are tossed upon the waves of time." This metaphor appears again in the plays

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Abound as thick as thought could make them, and

Appear in forms more horrid, yet my duty
(As doth a rock against the chiding flood)
Should the approach of this wild river break,
And stand unshaken yours.".

And again, thus:

Henry VIII., Act III. Sc. 2.

"Tit. For now I stand as one upon a rock,

Environ'd with a wilderness of sea;

Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,

Expecting ever when some envious surge

Will in his brinish bowels swallow him."

Tit. And., Act III. Sc. 1.

The same metaphors upon the same subject appear again in a letter drafted by Bacon for Essex, thus:

"

Duty, though my state lie buried in the sands, and my favours be cast upon the waters, and my honours be committed to the wind, yet standeth surely built upon the rock, and hath been, and ever shall be, unforced and unattempted." 1

And in the same Essay (of the Vicissitude of Things), he observes, that "there be three manner of plantation of new sects by the power of signs and miracles; by the eloquence and wisdom of speech and persuasion; and by the sword":

"Gent.

This is a creature,

Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal

Of all professors else, make proselytes

Of who she but bid follow."

Win. Tale, Act V. Sc. 1.

Christianity in itself is perhaps not a sect, nor any man's creed of belief, whether that of Channing, Edwards, Wes1 Letters and Life, by Spedding, II. 193.

ley, Penn, Cranmer, Luther, St. Augustine, St. Paul, St. Peter, or even of Jesus of Nazareth, nor the decree of any Church council, but rather the true religion of holy men. It is not exactly philosophy; but it presumes a true philosophy of the universe to be already established in the mind of the true believer. Christianity would seem to proclaim the fact by authority of miracle, all the miracles of the universe, no less than some few, and the universal revelation therein, that God, the creator and preserver of all created things, reigns in and over all His universe, judges the quick and the dead, and raises, if He will, the soul to life, light, and immortality. Philosophy unfolds the past and present order of His providence in the known and knowable universe of fact and truth, and endeavors to explain, as far as man can comprehend, how it is possible for God and Nature and Man to exist as they have existed, and do in fact exist, and in what manner, and how it is conceivable and credible that He can create and destroy, remember and forget, govern, judge, and make souls immortal. Christianity is religious culture and worship: philosophy is the science of sciences, the Universal Science. Philosophy is to Christianity what Plato was to Jesus Christ. There must be a Plato before there can be a Jesus, and a philosophy before there can be a Christianity. Every man's Christianity will be according to his philosophy, whether he knows it or not. And when he has advanced his philosophy and his Christianity together to a knowledge of God and His providence in the universe, he will be sure to find them one, but two names for "the same thing more large." Religion is the live worship of the living God. "It is not without cause," says Bacon, "that the Apostle calls Religion the Rational Worship of God;" and again he says, " As to seek divinity in philosophy is to seek the living amongst the dead, so to seek phi

66

1 De Aug. Scient., Lib. IX.

losophy in divinity is to seek the dead amongst the liv ing":

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough hew them how we will."

Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 2.

He was one of the men, or rather the man of that age, for whom "this approaching and intruding into God's secrets and mysteries" had no terrors; nor, as it is even now with some, was he "unjustly jealous that every reach and depth of knowledge, wherewith their conceits have not been acquainted, should be too high an elevation of man's wit, and a searching and ravelling too far into God's secrets"; on the contrary, his spirit was rather that of Lear in the play:

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And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of Court news; and we 'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who 's in, who 's out; -
And take upon us the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we 'll wear out,

In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by th' moon." Act V. Sc. 3.

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But, in a Latin fragment, never printed until lately, he takes care to distinguish the true limits of sobriety in the approach of sense-perception merely to things divine; "for if we attempt an impudent flight, on the ill-glued wings of sense, as if audaciously to explore more nearly the nature, ways, will, rule, and other mysteries of God, certain downfall awaits us. The summary law of Nature, which is like the vertical point of the Pyramid, in which all things come together into unity, this, I say, and nothing else, is withdrawn from the human intellect. . . . Nor let any one fear that the Faith can be more diametrically opposed by Sense than by what is now believed by virtue of divine inspiration ["afflatus"]; such as the creation of the world out of nothing; the incarnation of God; the resurrection of the body. But for me it is perfectly clear, that Natural

Philosophy, which is (next after the word of God) the most certain remedy for superstition, is also (what may seem wonderful) the most approved aliment of faith; and the more deeply it penetrates, the more profoundly is the human mind imbued with religion."1

Allusion is frequently made in the plays to the ebb and flow of the sea and the action of the moon; this was a new theory of the tides, at that day, and Bacon had particularly studied the subject; and he wrote a treatise "Of the Ebb and Flow of the Sea," in which the action of the moon is curiously discussed, and the doctrine laid down very much as in the play:

"P. Hen. Thou say'st well, and it holds well, too; for the fortune of us that are the moon's men doth ebb and flow like the sea; being governed, as the sea is, by the moon."-1 Hen. IV., Act I. Sc. 2.

Having lived in a world-prison, taking all knowledge for his province, from the beginning, when walled prisons were not far off, he was fully aware of the dangers which a philosophical writer had to incur from these same "packs and sects of great ones." They appear to have infested all ages: Anaxagoras had to flee from them; they made Socrates drink hemlock, and sold Plato into slavery; Aristotle had to escape through a back door into Thessaly; Jesus was crucified, Bruno burnt, Ramus massacred, and Campanella tortured; John Selden had to apologize, and Des Cartes, to hide his book; Spinoza was terribly excommunicated, and Locke banished; Kant had to stalk, Fichte, to resign, and even Cousin, to take refuge in Germany. Bacon, remembering that one of the uses of poetry was "to retire and obscure what is taught or delivered," and that "the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, and philosophy" might be involved in fables, chose a more cunning way, and got safely through by wearing a mask. But the Great Instauration itself, strictly scientific in character, and steering as clear as possible of any direct conflict with them, and full of paren

1 Cogitationes, Works (Boston), V. 435.

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