Thomas Babington Macaulay - "The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4"

Alice Hegan Rice - "Calvary Alley"

Edward J. Lowell - "The Eve of the French Revolution"

Laura Lee Hope - "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws

J >> James Buchanan >> Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws




The exclusion of all knowledge of causes is so indispensable to M.
Comte's theory that he admits "the inevitable tendency of our
intelligence towards a philosophy radically Theological, as often as we
seek to penetrate, on whatever pretext, into the intimate nature of the
phenomena."[89] The exclusion of such knowledge would, of course, be
fatal to Theology, since, without taking some account of causes,
efficient and final, we cannot rise to God as the author of the
universe. But did it never occur to M. Comte that the self-same
principle may possibly be destructive of his present, or, at least, of
his posthumous fame, as the author of the Positive Philosophy? For, if
we can know nothing of _efficient causes_, in what sense, or on what
ground, shall any one presume to ascribe the authorship of this system
to M. Comte? True, it may be said,--Here is an effect which exhibits
manifest signs of intelligence, order, and scientific skill; its parts
are regularly adjusted and all directed to a common end; and, reasoning
after the _teleological_ method, we must infer that it proceeded from a
very clever, but somewhat eccentric mind; but, unfortunately, _final
causes_ are as expressly interdicted as efficient ones; and, on the
principles of his own theory, the "Course of Positive Philosophy" can
never be warrantably ascribed to the authorship of M. Comte.

A still more serious objection to M. Comte's theory respecting the law
of human development arises from the false view which it exhibits of
_the nature and history of Truth_, considered as the object of human
knowledge. It is a favorite opinion with him, that man can have no
_absolute_ knowledge; that truth is not fixed, but fluctuating; that
what was believed in one age, and believed _necessarily_, according to
the fundamental laws of thought, is as necessarily disbelieved in the
next; and that there is no standard of truth at any time better or surer
than the public opinion, or general consent, of the most advanced
classes of society.[90] This theory of Truth, as necessarily mobile and
fluctuating, has a tendency, we think, to engender universal skepticism,
even when it is stated, with various important modifications, by such
writers as Lamennais and Morell; but, in the hands of M. Comte, it
becomes more dangerous still, since it represents the human race as
having been from the beginning, through a long series of ages, subject
to a law of development which not only _permitted_, but actually
_compelled_ them to believe a lie; and thus casts a dark shade of
suspicion both on the constitution of man and on the government of God.

Such a theory would seem also to preclude all rational calculations
respecting the future progress and prospects of the race. For what
ground can exist for any prognostication in regard to the ulterior
advancement or ultimate destiny of man, if it be true that, in his past
history, Fetishism has passed into Polytheism, and Polytheism into
Monotheism, without any extraneous instruction, and by the mere action
of those inherent laws to which humanity is subject? And, still more, if
it be further true that even now the human mind is in a state of
transition, passing through the crisis of Metaphysical doubt towards the
goal of Positive Atheism, who shall assure us that this will be its last
and final metamorphosis? It does appear to us to be one of the most
singular and perplexing anomalies of his elaborate system, that he can
dogmatize so confidently on the _terminus ad quem_ of human progress,
when from the _terminus a quo_ there has been, according to his own
account, a series of variations so wonderful, and a succession of states
so diverse and opposite, as those which he describes. And yet he
pronounces oracularly that Positive Science is the ultimate
landing-place of human thought, and that universal Atheism is the final
barrier which must needs close and terminate the long series of
developments.

We have spoken sternly of his system; we have no wish to speak harshly
of the man. Had we any disposition to do so, there is more than enough
in the personal explanation, prefixed to the closing volume of his work,
effectually to disarm us. We have too much sympathy with the trials of a
vigorous but eccentric mind, struggling in untoward circumstances, and
against an adverse tide, to maintain a position of honorable
independence, to say a word that could wound the feelings or injure the
prospects of a man of science. But it is not unkind to add that his life
might have been a more prosperous one had he devoted himself to the
pursuits of Science, without assailing the truths of Religion; and that
his fame would have been at once more extensive and more enduring had it
been left to repose on his Classification or Hierarchy of the Sciences,
without being associated with the more doubtful merits of his
fundamental law of Man's Development.


SECTION IV.

THEORY OF _ECCLESIASTICAL_ DEVELOPMENT.--J. H. NEWMAN.

This particular phase of the general theory bears less directly on the
subject of our present inquiry than either of the _three_ which have
already passed under review, and yet it has recently been applied in
such a way as may entitle it to a passing notice.

For while the theory of Ecclesiastical Development has a _direct_
relation only to the question in regard to the Rule of Faith, it has
also an _indirect_ or _collateral_ relation to the truths of Natural as
well as of Revealed Religion; and this relation demands for it,
especially in the existing state of theological speculation, the earnest
attention of all who are concerned for the maintenance even of the
simplest and most elementary articles of Divine truth.

The most elaborate and systematic exposition of this theory is exhibited
in the "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, by JOHN HENRY
NEWMAN;" an Essay primarily directed to the discussion of the points of
difference between the Popish and the Protestant Churches, but which
will be found to have an important bearing, also, on some doctrines
which are common to both, and especially on the fundamental articles of
Natural Religion itself.

It is thus stated by Mr. Newman:[91] "That the increase and expansion of
the Christian Creed and Ritual, and the variations which have attended
the process in the case of individual writers and churches, are the
necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which takes possession
of the intellect and heart, and has had any wide or extended dominion;
that, from the nature of the human mind, time is necessary for the full
comprehension and perfection of great ideas; and that the highest and
most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by
inspired teachers, could not be comprehended all at once by the
recipients, but, as received and transmitted by minds not inspired, and
through media which were human, have required only the longer time and
deeper thought for their full elucidation. This may be called _the
Theory of Developments_."

It is further illustrated as follows: "It is sometimes said that the
stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of
this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or sect,
which, on the contrary, is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when
its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily rises out
of an existing state of things, and, for a time, savors of the soil. Its
vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and
is employed in efforts after freedom, more vigorous and hopeful as its
years increase. Its beginnings are no measures of its capabilities, nor
of its scope. At first, no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It
remains, perhaps, for a time, quiescent; it tries, as it were, its
limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to
time it makes essays which fail, and are, in consequence, abandoned. It
seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and, at length, strikes
out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory;
points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and fall about
it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations, and old principles
reappear under new forms; it changes with them, in order to remain the
same. In a higher world it is otherwise; but here below _to live is to
change, and to be perfect is to have changed often_."[92]

In answer to the objection, "that inspired documents, such as the Holy
Scriptures, at once determine the doctrines which we should believe," it
is replied, "that they were intended to create an idea, and that idea is
not in the sacred text, but in the mind of the reader; and the question
is, whether that idea is communicated to him, in its completeness and
minute accuracy, on its first apprehension, or expands in his heart and
intellect, and comes to perfection in the course of time. Nor could it
be maintained without extravagance that the letter of the New Testament,
or of any assignable number of books, comprises a delineation of all
possible forms which a Divine message will assume when submitted to a
multitude of minds."[93]

What relation, it may be asked, can this theory respecting the
development of revealed or Christian truth bear to the question of the
being and perfections of God? We answer, that it is founded on a general
philosophical principle which may affect the truths of natural as well
as those of revealed Religion; and that it is applied in such a way as
to show that, as it has already led to the worship of angels and saints,
so it may hereafter issue in the deification of Nature, which is
Pantheism, or in the separate worship of its component parts, which is
Polytheism; and, in either case, the personality and supremacy of the
one only, the living and the true God, would be effectually superseded,
if not explicitly denied.

But, is there any real danger of such a disastrous consummation? We
answer, that the mere coexistence of the theory of Ecclesiastical
Development with the infidel speculations on the doctrine of Human
Progress is of itself an ominous symptom; and, further, that the mutual
interchange of complimentary acknowledgments between the Infidel and
Popish parties is another, especially when both are found to coincide in
some of the main grounds of their opposition to Scripture as the supreme
rule of faith, and when the homage which the advocates of Development
render to the theory of progress is responded to by glowing eulogiums
from the infidel camp on the genius of Catholicism as the masterpiece of
human policy. But there are other grounds of apprehension, arising more
directly out of the very nature of the theory of Development itself.

That theory has been described by Dr. Brownson--himself a convert to
Catholicism--as the product of "a _school_ formed, at first, outside of
the Church, but now brought within her communion," and compared, in
regard to its dangerousness, with the speculations of Hermes and
Lamennais.[94] And a still more competent judge--Professor Sedgwick, of
Cambridge[95]--has characterized it as "a monstrous compound of Popery
and Pantheism," according to which "the Catholic faith is not a religion
revealed to us in the Sacred Books we call canonical, and in the works
of the Fathers which are supposed to contain the oral traditions of the
Apostles and their followers; but a new Pantheistic element is to be
fastened on the faith of men,--a principle of Development which may
overshadow both the _verbum Dei scriptum_ and the _verbum Dei non
scriptum_ of the Romish Church, and change both the form and substance
of primitive Christianity."

It is only justice to Mr. Newman to say that he appears to have been
aware of this possible objection to his theory, and that he makes an
attempt to obviate it. Speaking of the difficulty which the Church
experienced in keeping "Paganism out of her pale," he adverts to "the
_hazard which attended on the development_ of the Catholic ritual,--such
as the honors publicly assigned to saints and martyrs, the formal
veneration of their relics, and the usages and observances which
followed." And he asks: "What was to hinder the rise of a sort of
refined Pantheism, and the overthrow of Dogmatism _pari passu_ with the
multiplication of heavenly intercessors and patrons? If what is called
in reproach 'Saint-worship' resembled the Polytheism which it
supplanted, or was a corruption, how did Dogmatism survive? Dogmatism is
a religious profession of its own reality as contrasted with other
systems; but Polytheists are liberals, and hold that one religion is as
good as another. Yet the theological system was developing and
strengthening, as well as the monastic rule, all the while the ritual
was assimilating itself, as Protestants say, to the Paganism of former
ages."[96]

It seems to be admitted in these words, that, in the _past_ history of
the Church, the development of the Catholic ritual _was_ attended with
some danger of infection from Paganism or Pantheism; and there may be
equal reason to fear that, in the _future_ history of the Church, still
working on the principle of development, that danger may be very
considerably aggravated by the general prevalence of theories utterly
inconsistent with the faith of primitive times. What the Church has
already done in the exercise of her developing power may be only a
specimen of what she may hereafter accomplish. She has already
developed Christianity into a system which bears a striking resemblance
to Polytheism; she may yet develop it more fully, so as to bring it into
accordance with philosophical Pantheism; or, retaining both forms,--for
they are not necessarily exclusive of each other,--she may use the first
in dealing with the ignorant, and reserve the second as a sort of
esoteric doctrine for minds of higher culture. Nor let it be said that
we are either unjust or uncharitable towards the Romish Church, in
suggesting the possibility of some such development; for what she has
already done, and what she still claims the power of doing, afford very
sufficient ground for our remarks. When Dr. Conyers Middleton published
his celebrated "Letter from Rome," showing an exact conformity between
Popery and Paganism, and that "the religion of the present Romans is
derived from that of their Heathen ancestors," many liberal Catholics
resented the imputation as an insult to their faith; but now Mr. Newman
not only admits the fact that the Church did _assimilate_ its ritual to
the Paganism of former ages, but vindicates her right to do so, and
ascribes to her _a power of assimilation_ to which it seems impossible
to assign any limits. "There is, in truth," says this writer, "a certain
virtue or grace in the Gospel, which changes the quality of doctrines,
opinions, usages, actions, and personal characters, which become
incorporated with it, and makes them right and acceptable to its Divine
Author, when before they were either contrary to truth, or, at best, but
shadows of it."--"Confiding, then, in the power of Christianity to
resist the infection of evil, and to _transmute the very instruments and
appendages of demon worship to an Evangelical use_, ... the rulers of
the Church from early times were prepared, should the occasion arise, to
adopt, or imitate, or sanction _the existing rites and customs of the
populace_, as well as _the philosophy of the educated class_."--"The
Church can extract good from evil, or, at least, gets no harm from it.
She inherits the promise made to the disciples, that they should take
up serpents, and, if they drank any deadly thing, it should not hurt
them."--"It has borne, and can bear, principles or doctrines which, in
other systems of religion, quickly degenerate into _fanaticism or
infidelity_." This marvellous power of assimilation, which made "those
observances pious in Christianity" that were "superstitions in
Paganism," advanced, rapidly in its work, and successively introduced
the deification of man, the _cultus_ of angels and saints, and the
beatification of Mary as Queen of heaven and earth. The sanctification,
or rather _the deification of the nature of Man_, is one of these
developments. Christ "is in them, because He is in human nature; and He
communicates to them that nature, deified by becoming His, that it may
_deify_ them." The worship of saints is another of these developments:
"Those who are known to be God's adopted sons in Christ are fit objects
of worship on account of Him who is in them.... Worship is the necessary
correlative of glory; and, in the same sense in which created nature can
share in the Creator's incommunicable glory, do they also share in that
worship which is His property alone." But a "new sphere" was yet to be
discovered in the realms of light, to which the Church had not yet
assigned its inhabitant. "There was 'a wonder in heaven;' a throne was
seen, far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title
archetypal; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the
Eternal Throne; robes pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all. And
who was the predestined heir of that Majesty? Who was that Wisdom, and
what was her name?--'the Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope,'
exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi and a rose-plant in Jericho, created
from the beginning before the world in God's counsels, and 'in Jerusalem
was her power.' The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed
with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of
twelve stars." The DEIFICATION of Mary is decreed. The doctrine of her
Immaculate Conception is a further _development_ at the present moment,
and who can tell what other developments may be in store for the future?

We advert to this form of the theory only in so far as it stands related
to our great theme,--the existence, perfections, and prerogatives of the
one only, the living and the true God; and it can scarcely be
questioned, we think, that it has already introduced doctrines and
practices into the Church which have a manifest tendency to obscure the
lustre and impair the evidence of some of the most fundamental articles
of Natural Religion. Let it still advance in the same direction, and who
shall assure us that it may not develop into still grosser idolatry, or
even into Pantheism? Why should it not develop, for example, into Sun
worship? "On the new system," says Professor Butler, "a modern growth of
Christian Guebres might make out no feeble case; the public religious
recognition of this great visible type of the True Light is but a fair
development of 'the typical principle;' the justifiable imitation of the
guilt of heathens in its adoration is but an instance of the
transforming powers of 'the sacramental principle;' while it requires
but the most moderate use of the great instrument of orthodoxy,
'mystical interpretation,' to find the duty hinted (clearly enough for
watchful faith, though obscurely to the blinded or undevout) in those
passages that speak of a 'tabernacle for the Sun,' or Deity itself being
'a Sun,' or the rising of 'the Sun of righteousness.'... Indeed, the
whole body of the righteous are promised to 'shine as the Sun' in the
heavenly kingdom,--an expression which, though it appear superficially
to refer to a period not yet arrived, the Church has correctively
developed into an assurance of their present beatification, and
consequent right to worship; while it must be at once manifest that, if
any representative emblem of the Deity may demand religious prostration
in our Churches, the analogous emblem of the 'deified,' in the great
temple of the Material Universe, may fairly expect a participation in
that honor. It is true there is an express command, 'Take heed lest,
when thou seest the Sun, ... thou shouldst be driven to worship them;'
but so there is a command, at least as distinct and imperative, against
the worship of _Images_, which, Mr. Newman instructs us, has been
repealed under the Gospel, and was never more than a mere Judaic
prohibition, 'intended for mere temporary observance in the
letter.'"[97]

If it be said that, in the case of the Church of Rome, there is not only
a process of development, but an infallible developing power, and that
this affords a guaranty, strong as the Divine promise itself, against
that risk of error which is attendant on the ordinary methods of human
teaching,--we answer, that this is a mere assumption, which requires to
be proved, and that it cannot be proved in the face of the facts which
attest the historical variations of the Romish Creed, as these are
admitted and defended by Mr. Newman himself. For some of these
variations are not consistent developments of the primitive articles of
faith, but involve either a corruption or a contradiction of these very
principles; and if her infallibility has not preserved her from the
deification of saints, what security have we that it will preserve her
from the deification of Nature? If it has already introduced a Christian
Polytheism, why may it not issue in a Christian Pantheism?

Admit the principle of development, and it may lead to the deification
of man, as well as to the worship of Mary; to a sacred Calendar of
Heroes, as well as of Saints.[98] It may terminate either in Infidelity
or in Superstition, according to the mental temperament of the
individual by whom it is adopted and applied. "An organ of
investigation being introduced, which may be employed for any purpose
indifferently, the tendency of such a theory of religious inquiry will
just tell according to the spirit in which it acts. A skeptic will
develop the principle into Infidelity, a believer into Superstition; but
the principle itself remains accurately the same in both."[99] The
connection between the theory of Ecclesiastical Development and the
infidel theory of Progress has not escaped the notice of many acute and
profound thinkers in recent times, nor the danger resulting from it to
the most fundamental articles of faith. "Modern Spiritualists tell us
that Christianity is a development, as the Papists also assert, and the
New Testament is its first and rudimentary product; only, unhappily, as
the development, it seems, may be things so different as Popery and
Infidelity, we are as far as ever from any criterium as to which, out of
the ten thousand possible developments, is the true; but it is a matter
of the less consequence, since it will, on such reasoning, be _always
something future_."[100] One of the most pernicious tenets of the
Neologists beyond the Rhine is thus expressed by themselves:
"Christianity renews itself in the human heart, and follows _the
development_ of the human mind, and invests itself with new forms of
thought and language, and adopts new systems of Church organization, to
which it gives expression and life." ... "But are these teachers the
_only_ destroyers of Faith and Morals? Are not _they_ also chargeable
with precisely the same offence who command us to submit implicitly to
the so-called divinely-inspired Spirit of '_one_ living Infallible
Judge' or 'Developing Power'? Can we have _fixed_ articles of faith and
morals in this system, any more than in the other? No. '_Unus utrisque
error, sed variis ill[=u]det partibus._' There is the same evil in both,
but it operates in different ways; in the former, every one develops
for himself; in the latter, the Pope develops for every one. You look
with fear on the progress of Rationalism; and what hope can any man
derive from that of Romanism?"[101]

* * * * *

We have examined, each on its own peculiar merits, the various forms of
the Theory of Development which have been propounded in modern times,
and applied to account for the origin of planets and astral systems, of
vegetable and animal races, and of the different successive systems of
human opinion and belief. We have found that, imposing as it may seem to
be, and high as its pretensions are, that theory has no claim to the
character of a scientific doctrine; that it is a mere hypothesis, and
nothing more; a speculative figment, which may be injurious to those who
thoughtlessly dally with it, but which can have no power to hurt any one
who will resolutely lay hold of it, and examine its claims.

"Gently, softly, touch a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it, like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains."

It is only necessary to add, that _the same general principle_ seems to
be involved in _all_ the forms of this theory,--the principle, namely,
that we are bound to account for the past _only_ by causes known to be
in actual operation at the present day. M. Comte lays it down in the
following terms: "Our conjectures on the origin, or formation of our
world should evidently be subjected to this indispensable
condition,--not to allow of the interposition of any other natural
agents than those whose influence we clearly discern in our ordinary
phenomena, and whose operations, _then_, would only be on a greater
scale. Without this rule, our work can have no truly scientific
character, and we shall fall into the inconvenience, so justly made a
ground of reproach to the greater number of geological hypotheses,--that
of introducing, for the purpose of explaining the ancient revolutions of
the globe, agencies which do not exist at the present day, and whose
influence it is impossible, for that very reason, to verify or even to
comprehend." The same principle is strongly stated, but with due
limitation, by Sir Charles Lyell, who insists on the explanation of all
terrestrial changes by _means of causes and according to laws known to
be in operation at the present day_: "During the progress of Geology,
there have been great fluctuations of opinion respecting the nature of
the causes to which all former changes in the earth's surface are
referable. The first observers conceived that the monuments which the
Geologist endeavors to decipher relate to a period when the physical
constitution of the earth differed entirely from the present, and that,
even after the creation of living beings, there have been causes in
action distinct in kind or degree from these now forming part of the
economy of nature. These views have been gradually modified, and some of
them entirely abandoned."[102]

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