The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper

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All this was entirely expectable: and I can conceive that a deep
Reasoner among the first apostles, even without such supernal light as
"the Spirit speaking expressly," might have so calculated on the
probabilities to come, as to have written, long ago, words akin to
these: "In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving
heed to seductive doctrines, and fanciful notions about intermediate
deities, ([Greek: daimonion],) perverting truth by hypocritical
departures from it, searing conscience against its own cravings after
spiritual holiness, forbidding marriage, (to invent another virtue,) and
commanding abstinence from God's good gifts, as a means of building up a
creature-merit by voluntary humiliation." At the likelihood that such
"profane and old wives' fables" should thereafter have arisen, might
Paul without a miracle have possibly arrived.

Yet again: take another view. The Religion of Christ, though intended
to be universal in some better era of this groaning earth, was, until
that era cometh, meant and contrived for any thing rather than a
Catholicity. True, the Church is so far Catholic that it numbers of its
blessed company men of every clime and every age, from righteous Abel
down to the last dear babe christened yester-morning; true, the
commission is "to all nations, teaching them:" but, what mean the
simultaneous and easily reconciled expressions--come out from among
them, little flock, gathered out of the Gentiles, a peculiar people, a
church militant, and not triumphant, here on earth? Thus shortly of a
word much misinterpreted: let us now see what the Romanist does, what,
(on human principles,) he would be probable to do, with this
discriminating religion. He, chiefly for temporal gains, would make it
as expansive as possible: there should be room at that table for every
guest, whether wedding-garmented or not; there would be sauces in that
poisonous feast, fitted to every palate. For the cold, ascetical mind, a
cell and a scourge, and a record kept of starving fancies as calling
them ecstatic visions vouchsafed by some old Stylite to bless his
favoured worshipper; for the painted demirep of fashionable life, there
would be a pretty pocket-idol, and the snug confessional well tenanted
by a not unsympathizing father; for the pure girl, blighted in her
heart's first love, the papist would afford that seemingly merciful
refuge, that calm and musical and gentle place, the irrevocable nunnery;
a place, for all its calmness, and its music, and its gentle
reputations, soon to be abhorred of that poor child as a living tomb,
the extinguisher of all life's aims, all its duties, uses and delights:
for the bandit, a tythe of the traveller's gold would avail to pay away
the murder, and earn for him a heap of merits kept within the cash-box:
the educated, high-born and finely-moulded mind might be well amused
with architecture, painting, carving, sweet odours, and the most
wondrous music that has ever cheated man, even while he offers up his
easy adorations, and departs, equally complacent at the choral remedies
as at the priestly absolution; while, for those good few, the truly
pious and enlightened children of Rome, who mourn the corruptions of
their church, and explain away, with trembling tongue, her obvious
errors and idolatries, for these the wily scheme, so probable, devised
an undoubted mass of truth to be left among the rubbish. True doctrines,
justly held by true martyrs and true saints, holy men of God who have
died in that communion; ordinances and an existence which creep up,
(heedless of corruption though,) step by step, through past antiquity,
to the very feet of the Founder; keen casuists, competent to prove any
point of conscience or objection, and that indisputably, for they climax
all by the high authority of Popes and councils that cannot be deceived:
pious treatises and manuals, verily of flaming heat, for they mingle the
yearnings of a constrained celibacy with the fervencies of worship and
the cravings after God. Yes, there is meat here for every human mouth;
only that, alas for men! the meat is that which perisheth, and not
endureth unto everlasting life. Rome, thou wert sagely schemed; and if
Lucifer devised thee not for the various appetencies of poor,
deceivable, Catholic Man, verily it were pity, for thou art worthy of
his handiwork. All things to all men, in any sense but the right,
signifies nothing to anybody: in the sense of falsehoods, take the
former for thy motto; in that of single truth, in its intensity, the
latter.

Let not then the accident--the probable accident--of the Italian
superstition place any hindrance in the way of one whose mind is all at
sea because of its existence. What, O man with a soul, is all the world
else to thee? Christianity, whatever be its broad way of pretences, is
but in reality a narrow path: be satisfied with the day of small things,
stagger not at the inconsistencies, conflicting words, and hateful
strifes of those who say they are Christians, but "are not, but are of
the synagogue of Satan." Judge truth, neither by her foes nor by her
friends but by herself. There was one who said (and I never heard that
any writer, from Julian to Hobbes, ever disputed his human truth or
wisdom) "Needs must that offences come; but wo be to that man by whom
the offence cometh. If they come, be not shaken in faith: lo, I have
told you before. And if others fall away, or do ought else than my
bidding, what is that to thee? follow thou ME."

THE BIBLE.

Whilst I attempt to show, as now I desire to do, that the Bible should
be just the book it is, from considerations of anterior probability, I
must expand the subject a little; dividing it, first, into the
likelihood of a revelation at all; and secondly, into that of its
expectable form and character.

The first likelihood has its birth in the just Benevolence of our
heavenly Father, who without dispute never leaves his rational creatures
unaided by some sort of guiding light, some manifestation of himself so
needful to their happiness, some sure word of consolation in sorrow, or
of brighter hope in persecution. That it must have been thus an _a
priori_ probability, has been all along proved by the innumerable
pretences of the kind so constant up and down the world: no nation ever
existed in any age or country, whose seers and wise men of whatever name
have not been believed to hold commerce with the Godhead. We may judge
from this, how probable it must ever have been held. The Sages of old
Greece were sure of it from reason: and not less sure from accepted
superstition those who reverenced the Brahmin, or the priest of
Heliopolis, or the medicine-man among the Rocky Mountains, or the Llama
of old Mexico. I know that our ignorance of some among the most
brutalized species of mankind, as the Bushmen in Caffraria, and the
tribes of New South Wales, has failed to find among their rites any
thing akin to religion: but what may we not yet have to learn of good
even about such poor outcasts? how shall we prove this negative? For
aught we know, their superstitions at the heart may be as deep and as
deceitful as in others; and, even on the contrary side, the exception
proves the rule: the rule that every people concluded a revelation so
likely, that they have one and all contrived it for themselves.

Thus shortly of the first: and now, secondly, how should God reveal
himself to men? In such times as those when the world was yet young, and
the Church concentrated in a family or an individual, it would probably
be by an immediate oral teaching; the Lord would speak with Adam; He
would walk with Enoch; He would, in some pure ethereal garb, talk with
Abraham, as friend to friend. And thereafter, as men grew, and
worshippers were multiplied, He would give some favoured servant a
commission to be His ambassador: He would say to an Ezekiel, "Go unto
the house of Israel, and speak my words to them:" He would bid a
Jeremiah "Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words
that I have spoken to thee:" He would give Daniel a deep vision, not to
be interpreted for ages, "Shut up the words, and seal the book even to
the time of the end:" He would make Moses grave His precepts in the
rock, and Job record his trials with a pen of iron. For a family, the
Beatic Vision was enough: for a congregated nation, as once at Sinai,
oral proclamations: for one generation or two around the world, the zeal
and eloquence of some great "multitude of preachers:" but, indubitably,
if God willed to bless the universal race, and drop the honey of his
words distilling down the hour-glass of Time from generation to
generation even to the latter days, there was no plan more probable,
none more feasible, than the pen of a ready writer.

Further: and which concerns our argument: what were likely to be the
characteristic marks of such a revelation? Exclusively of a pervading
holiness, and wisdom, and sublimity, which could not be dispensed with,
and in some sort should be worthy of the God; there would be, it was
probable, frequent evidences of man's infirmity, corrupting all he
toucheth. The Almighty works no miracles for little cause: one miracle
alone need be current throughout Scripture: to wit, that which preserves
it clean and safe from every perilous error. But, in the succession of a
thousand scribes each copying from the other, needs must that the tired
hand and misty eye would occasionally misplace a letter: this was no
nodus worthy of a God's descent to dissipate by miracle.

Again: the original prophets themselves were men of various characters
and times and tribes. God addresses men through their reason; he bound
not down a seer "with bit and bridle, like the horse that has no
understanding"--but spoke as to a rational being--"What seest thou?"
"Hear my words;"--"Give ear unto my speech." Was it not then likely that
the previous mode of thought and providential education in each holy man
of God should mingle irresistibly with his inspired teaching? Should not
the herdsman of Tehoa plead in pastoral phrase, and the royal son of
Amoz denounce with strong authority? Should not David whilst a shepherd
praise God among his flocks, and when a king, cry "Give the King thy
judgments?" The Bible is full of this human individuality; and nothing
could be thought as humanly more probable: but we must, with this
diversity, connect the other probability also, that which should show
the work to be divine; which would prove (as is literally the case)
that, in spite of all such natural variety, all such unbiassed freedom
both of thought and speech, there pervades the whole mass a oneness, a
marvellous consistency, which would be likely to have been designed by
God, though little to have been dreamt by man.

Once more on this full topic. Difficulties in Scripture were expectable
for many reasons; I can only touch a few. Man is rational as he is
responsible: God speaks to his mind and moral powers: and the mind
rejoices, and moralities grow strong in conquest of the difficult and
search for the mysterious. The muscles of the spiritual athlete pant for
such exertion; and without it, they would dwindle into trepid
imbecility. Curious man, courageous man, enterprising, shrewd, and
vigourous man, yet has a constant enemy to dread in his own indolence:
now, a lion in the path will wake up Sloth himself: and the very
difficulties of religion engender perseverance.

Additionally: I think there is somewhat in the consideration, that, if
all revealed truth had been utterly simple and easy, it would have
needed no human interpreter; no enlightened class of men, who, according
to the spirit of their times, and the occasions of their teaching, might
"in season and out of season preach the word, reprove, rebuke, exhort,
with all long-suffering and doctrine." I think there existed an anterior
probability that Scripture should be as it is, often-times difficult,
obscure, and requiring the aid of many wise to its elucidation; because,
without such characteristic, those many wise and good would never have
been called for. Suppose all truth revealed as clearly and indisputably
to the meanest intellect as a sum in addition is, where were the need or
use of that noble Christian company who are every where man's almoners
for charity, and God's ambassadors for peace?

A word or two more, and I have done. The Bible would, as it seems to me
probable, be a sort of double book; for the righteous, and for the
wicked: to one class, a decoy, baited to allure all sorts of generous
dispositions: to the other, a trap, set to catch all kinds of evil
inclinations. In these two senses, it would address the whole family
man: and every one should find in it something to his liking. Purity
should there perceive green pastures and still waters, and a tender
Shepherd for its innocent steps: and carnal appetite should here and
there discover some darker spot, which the honesty of heaven had filled
with memories of its chiefest servants' sins; some record of adultery or
murder wherewith to feast his maw for condemnation. While the good man
should find in it meat divine for every earthly need, the sneerer should
proclaim it the very easiest manual for his jests and lewd profanities.
The unlettered should not lack humble, nay vulgar, images and words, to
keep himself in countenance: neither should the learned look in vain for
reasonings; the poet for sublimities; the curious mind for mystery; nor
the sorrowing heart for prayer. I do discern, in that great book, a
wondrous adaptability to minds of every calibre: and it is just what
might antecedently have been expected of a volume writ by many men at
many different eras, yet all superintended by one master mind; of a
volume meant for every age, and nation, and country, and tongue, and
people; of a volume which, as a two-edged sword, wounds the good man's
heart with deep conviction, and cuts down "the hoary head of him who
goeth on still in his wickedness."

On the whole, respecting faults, or incongruities, or objectionable
parts in Scripture, however to have been expected, we must recollect
that the more they are viewed, the more the blemishes fade, and are
altered into beauties.

A little child had picked up an old stone, defaced with time-stains: the
child said the stone was dirty, covered with blotches and all colours:
but his father brings a microscope, and shows to his astonished glance
that what the child thought dirt, is a forest of beautiful lichens,
fruited mosses, and strange lilliputian plants with shapely animalcules
hiding in the leaves, and rejoicing in their tiny shadow. Every blemish,
justly seen, had turned to be a beauty: and Nature's works are
vindicated good, even as the Word of Grace is wise.

HEAVEN AND HELL.

Probably enough, the light which I expect to throw upon this important
subject will, upon a cursory criticism, be judged fanciful, erroneous,
and absurd; in parts, quite open to ridicule, and in all liable to the
objection of being wise, or foolish, beyond what is written.
Nevertheless, and as it seems to me of no small consequence to reach
something more definite on the subject than the Anywhere or Nowhere of
common apprehensions, I judge it not amiss to put out a few thoughts,
fancies, if you will, but not unreasonable fancies, on the localities
and other characteristics of what we call heaven and hell: in fact, I
wish to show their probable realities with somewhat approaching to
distinctness. It is manifest that these places must be somewhere; for,
more especially of the blest estate, whither did Enoch, and Elijah, and
our risen Lord ascend to? what became of these glorified humanities when
"the chariot of fire carried up Elijah by a whirlwind into heaven;" and
when "HE was taken up, and a cloud received him?" Those happy mortals
did not waste away to intangible spiritualities, as they rose above the
world; their bodies were not melted as they broke the bonds of
gravitation, and pierced earth's swathing atmosphere: they went up
somewhither; the question is where they went to. It is a question of
great interest to us; however, among those matters which are rather
curious than consequential; for in our own case, as we know, we that are
redeemed are to be caught up, together with other blessed creatures, "in
the clouds, to meet our coming Saviour in the air, and thereafter to be
ever with the Lord." I wish to show this to be expected as in our case,
and expectable previously to it.

We have, in the book of Job, a peep at some place of congregation: some
one, as it is likely, of the mighty globes in space, set apart as God's
especial temple. Why not? they all are worlds; and the likelihood being
in favour of overbalancing good, rather than of preponderating evil from
considerations that affect God's attributes and the happiness of his
creatures, it is probable that the great majority of these worlds are
unfallen mansions of the blessed. Perhaps each will be a kingdom for one
of earth's redeemed, and if so, there will at last be found fulfilled
that prevailing superstition of our race, that each man has his star:
without insisting upon this, we may reflect that there is no one
universal opinion which has not its foundation in truth. Tradition may
well have dropped the thought from Adam downwards, that the stars may
some day be our thrones. We know their several vastness, and can guess
their glory: verily a mighty meed for miserable services on earth, to
find a just ambition gladdened with the rule of spheres, to which Terra
is a point; while that same ambition is sanctified and legalized by
ruling as vicegerent of Jehovah.

Is this unlikely, or unworthy of our high vocation, our immortality, and
nearness unto, nay communion with God? The idea is only suggested: let a
man muse at midnight, and look up at the heavens hanging over all; let
him see, with Rosse and Herschell, that, multiply power as you will,
unexhausted still and inexhaustible appear the myriads of worlds
unknown. Yea, there is space enow for infinite reward; yea, let every
grain of sand on every shore be gathered, and more innumerable yet
appear that galaxy of spheres. Let us think that night looks down upon
us here, with the million eyes of heaven. And for some focus of them
all, some spot where God himself enthroned receives the homage of all
crowns, and the worship of all creature service, what is there
unreasonable in suggesting for a place some such an one as is instanced
below?

I have just cut the following paragraph out of a newspaper: Is this the
ridiculous tripping up the sublime? I think otherwise: it is honest to
use plain terms. I speak as unto wise men--judge ye what I say. With
respect to the fact of information, it may or it may not be true; but
even if untrue, the idea is substantially the same, and I cannot help
supposing that with angels and archangels and the whole company of
heaven, such bodily saints as Enoch is, (and similar to him all risen,
holy men will be,) meet for happy sabbaths in some glorious orb akin or
superior to the following:

"A central Sun.--Dr. Madier, the Professor of Astronomy at Dorpat, has
published the results of the researches pursued by him uninterruptedly
during the last sixty years, upon the movements of the so-called fixed
stars. These more particularly relate to the star Alcyone, (discovered
by him,) the brightest of the seven bright stars of the group of the
Pleiades. This star he states to be the central sun of all the systems
of stars known to us. He gives its distance from the boundaries of our
system at thirty-four million times the distance of the sun from our
earth, a distance which it takes five hundred and thirty-seven years for
light to traverse. Our sun takes one hundred and eighty-two million
years to accomplish its course round this central body, whose mass is
one hundred and seventeen million times larger than the sun."

One hundred and seventeen million times larger than the Sun! itself, for
all its vastness, not more than half one million times bigger than this
earth. To some such globe we may let our fancies float, and anchor there
our yearnings after heaven. It is a glorious thought, such as
imagination loves; and a probable thought, that commends itself to
reason. Behold the great eye of all our guessed creation, the focus of
its brightness, and the fountain of its peace.

A topic far less pleasant, but alike of interest to us poor men, is the
probable home of evil; and here I may be laughed at--laugh, but listen,
and if, listening, some reason meets thine ear, laugh at least no
longer.

We know that, for spirit's misery as for spirit's happiness, there is no
need of place: "no matter where, for I am still the same," said one most
miserable being. More--in the case of mere spirits, there is no need for
any apparatus of torments, or fires, or other fearful things. But, when
spirit is married to matter, the case is altered; needs must a place to
prison the matter, and a corporal punishment to vex it.

Nothing is unlikely here; excepting--will a man urge?--the dread
duration of such hell. This is a parenthesis; but it shall not be
avoided, for the import of that question is deep, and should be answered
clearly. A man, a body and soul inmixt, body risen incorruptible, and
soul rested from its deeds, must exist for ever. I touch not here the
proofs--assume it. Now, if he lives for ever, and deliberately chooses
evil, his will consenting as well as his infirmity, and conscience
seared by persisted disobedience, what course can such a wilful,
rational, responsible being pursue than one perpetually erratic? How
should it not be that he gets worse and worse in morals, and more and
more miserable in fact? and when to this we add, that such wretched
creatures are to herd together, continually flying further away from the
only source of Happiness and Good; and to this, that they have earned by
sin, remorses and regrets, and positive inflictions; how probable seems
a hell, the sinner's doom eternal. The apt mathematical analogy of lines
thrown out of parallel, helps this for illustration: for ever and for
ever they are stretching more remote, and infinity itself cannot reunite
their travel.

This, then, as a passing word; a sad one. Honest thinker, do not scorn
it, for thine own soul's sake. "Now is the time of grace, now is the day
of salvation." To return. A place of punishment exists; to what quarter
shall we look for its anterior probability? I think there is a
likelihood very near us. There may be one, possibly, beneath us, in the
bowels of this fiery-bursting earth; whither went Korah and his company?
This idea is not without its arguments, just analogies, and scriptural
hints. But my judgment inclines towards another. This trial-world, we
know, is to be purified and restored, and made a new earth: it was even
to be expected that Redemption should do this, and I like not to imagine
it the crust and case of hell, but rather, as thus: At the birth of this
same world, there was struck off from its burning mass at a tangent, a
mournful satellite, to be the home of its immortal evil; the convict
shore for exiled sin and misery; a satellite of strange differences, as
guessed by Virgil in his musings upon Tartarus, where half the orb is,
from natural necessities, blistered up by constant heats, the other half
frozen by perennial cold. A land of caverns, and volcanoes, miles deep,
miles high; with no water, no perceptible air: imagine such a dreadful
world, with neither air nor water! incapable of feeding life like ours,
but competent to be a place where undying wretchedness may struggle for
ever. A melancholy orb, the queen of night, chief nucleus of all the
dark idolatries of earth; the Moon, Isis, Hecate, Ashtaroth, Diana of
the Ephesians!

This expression of a thought by no means improbable, gives an easy
chance to shallow punsters; but ridicule is no weapon against reason.
Why should not the case be so? Why should not Earth's own satellite,
void, as yet, be on the resurrection of all flesh, the raft whereon to
float away Earth's evil? Read of it astronomically; think of it as
connected with idols; regard it as the ruler of earth's night; consider
that the place of a Gehenna must be somewhere; and what is there in my
fancy quite improbable? I do not dogmatize as that the fact is so, but
only suggest a definite place at least as likely as any other hitherto
suggested. Think how that awful, melancholy eye looks down on deeds of
darkness how many midnight crimes, murders, thefts, adulteries, and
witchcrafts, that would have shrunk into nonentity from open, honest
day, have paled the conscious Moon! Add to all this, it is the only
world, besides our own, whereof astronomers can tell us, It is fallen.

AN OFFER.

Nothing were easier than to have made this book a long one; but that was
not the writer's object: as well because of the musty Greek proverb
about long books; which in every time and country are sure never to be
read through by one in a thousand; as because it is always wiser to
suggest than to exhaust a topic; which may be as "a fruit-tree yielding
fruit after its kind whose seed is in itself." The writer then intended
only to touch upon a few salient points, and not to discuss every
question, however they might crowd upon his mind: time and space alike
with mental capabilities forbade an effort so gigantic: added to which,
such a course seemed to be unnecessary, as the rule of probability, thus
illustrated, might be applied by others in every similar instance.
Still, as the errand of this book is usefulness, and its author's hope
is, under Heaven, to do good, one personal hint shall here be thrown
upon the highway. Without arrogating to myself the wisdom or the
knowledge to solve one in twenty of the doubts possible to be
propounded; without also designing even to attempt such solutions,
unless well assured of the genuine anxiety of the doubter; and
preliminarizing the consideration, that a fitting diffidence in the
advocate's own powers is no reason why he should not make wide efforts
in his holy cause; that, such reasonable essays to do good have no sort
of brotherhood with a fanatical Spiritual Quixotism; and that, to my own
apprehensions, the doubts of a rationalizing mind are in the nature of
honourable foes, to be treated with delicacy, reverence, and kindness,
rather than with a cold distance and an ill-concealed contempt;
preliminarizing, lastly, the thought--"Who is sufficient for these
things?"--I nevertheless thus offer, according to the grace and power
given to me, my best but humble efforts so far to dissipate the doubts
of some respecting any scriptural fact, as may lie within the province
of showing or attempting to show its previous credibility. This is not a
challenge to the curious casuist or the sneering infidel; but an
invitation to the honest mind harassed by unanswered queries: no
gauntlet thrown down, but a brother's hand stretched out. Such
questions, if put to the writer, through his publisher by letter, may
find their reply in a future edition: supposing, that is to say, that
they deserve an answer, whether as regards their own merits or the
temper of the mind who doubts; and supposing also that the writer has
the power and means to answer them discreetly. It is only a fair rule of
philanthropy (and that without arrogating any unusual "strength") to
"bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves:" and
nothing would to me give greater happiness than to be able, as I am
willing, to remove any difficulties lying in the track of Faith before a
generous mind. I hang out no glistening holly-bush a-flame with its
ostentatious berries as promising good wine; but rather over my portal
is the humbler and hospitable mistletoe, assuring every wearied pilgrim
in the way, that though scanty be the fare, he shall find a hearty
welcome.