Six Addresses on the Being of God
- Author:
Ellicott, D.D.,
Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Published under the direction of the Tract Committee. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge: Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross, London. &
It must be a source of gratification to all who take an earnest interest in the vital questions of the day, to find that the admirable addresses, delivered last autumn twelvemonths bv the Bishop of Gloucester, in the course of his visitation to’the clergy and others, have been published in a separate form by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The zeal, high mental culture, and profound scholarship of Dr Ellicott are an abundant guarantee that any subject which he takes in hand will be treated thoughtfully, cautiously, and faithfully. The Addresses are divided into six parts. 1. The nature of the principal arguments. 2. The Being of God attested by the general consent of mankind. 3. The being of God as shown by the existence of the universe. 4 The being of God as shown by the presence of final aims in nature. 5. The being of God as evinced by the moral law. 6. The evolutionary hypothesis.
It is impossible for us, within the limits of a review, to do more than quote a few passages from this valuable work. The following remarks are especially noteworthy:?
” To prove anything involves an appeal to something higher or more certain than the thing to be proved. But here we are attempting to prove the existence of the Ens recilissimum, of that which in itself is the very essence of all certitude; Ave are attempting to show that He is, who is himself the fountain and source of all existence. Proofs then, as proofs, and arguments, as arguments, may rightly be set aside, but in the form of considerations, especially if set forth with plain common sense, they may be found very useful to many of us just at the present time… . They will be of use to us in giving clearness to our own inner convictions; and will especially help us in all our more serious efforts to convince others. If we would really persuade in subjects of this higher nature, two things are imperatively required in us, first: ?thoroughly realised convictions, and that lucidity of thought which nothing but organised knowledge can give or will give to the mind that would bring home to others the primary and fundamental truth of the being and personality of God.”
” This lucidity of thought, and clear common sense is now required more than ever. Popular scepticism, at the present time, is increasingly guilty of confusions of thought that can hardly be too strongly condemned. Doubtful science, and still more doubtful logic are now united in the discussion of all deeper subjects; and of these in none more than in the discussion of the great subject we are nosv considering. The whole principles of causation, as we shall more clearly see in a later portion of this charge, have been tampered with and thrown into confusion. Definitions have assumed the conceptions of that which they are elaborately constructed to set forth and define. Even such fundamental ideas as force and energy have been mixed up by some of our greatest thinkers, and whole theories elaborated from data that will not stand the test of a moment’s really rigorous and scientific criticism.”
” The time, therefore, would seem to have fully come for a sober and impartial review of the leading considerations, which, apart from revelation, lead us to a belief in the blessed and consoling truth, that there is an almighty, all-wise, and all-holy personal God, who has created all things?worlds visible and invisible ; spiritual and material; and who governs all according to the good pleasure of His holy and eternal will. The considerations, it will be observed, are of different degrees of cogency; but taken together, and especially in their proper gradation, they will certainly be found to form a multiform argument which it would seem hard for any candid mind fairly to resist. This aspect of the momentous question has been far too much neglected. It has not been seen sufficiently clearly that it is on the cumulative, or to speak perhaps most accurately, the ascensive nature of the considerations or so-called proofs that conviction seems mainly to rest. No one of them, to a really candid mind, seems perfectly sufficient, taken by itself, to prove the whole truth ; but when all are taken together, it will be, I trust, acknowledged by every fair reader or hearer of this charge that the weight of the united considerations is especially great, and that the popular assertions as to the utterly invalid nature of the proofs for the existence of Grod are certainly without just foundation.”
Dr Ellicott first appeals to History for his proofs, secondly, to Nature, and thirdly, to Humanity. He says that the arguments derived from the moral world, are those that the deepest thinkers consider to be the most convincing.
With regard to the proofs derived from the general consent of mankind, he observes:?
” When we turn to the two most ancient of the great religions of the old heathen world, the two earliest religions of our own Aryan race, the Vedic and the Zoroastrian, it seems impossible to deny the evidences of a belief not only in supernatural and divine agency in regard of the existence of the visible and material, but even in the being of One who was regarded as the substratum and foundation of all existence. It may, and indeed ought to be admitted that in these ancient forms of faith the idea of creation was by no means clearly united with that of the One Being who was felt to be, though not definitely declared to be, the sort of First Cause or substratum of all things. Still we certainly do find in them the two ideas which, taken together, make up that one idea which we are now seeking to substantiate?the idea of an all-creative Grod. In the Vedic faith this was much more obscured, though in the remarkable practice of representing each god as, for the time being, supreme, we see the old monotheistic idea struggling to find expression, and again to assert itself in the soul of the devout worshipper. Far more clearly do we trace the conceptions of creation, and even of monotheism itself, in the profoundly interesting religion which connects itself with the great name of Zoroaster. If Ahura-Mazda is the maker of all things, if he is the Lord of the worlds, and the first fashioner of all existence, yet behind him and behind the Spirit of darkness and evil to whom he is eternally opposed, is the aboriginal One? whether destiny, Grod, or Supreme and Infinite Being we know not?is He who produced both. Even where dualism is most sharply accentuated, there are no obscure traces of a yet purer and older conception. ‘ The Duad, with the Monad brooding behind it,’ as has most truly been said, 4 is the fundamental principle of the Avesta’ and of the old and once wide-spread faith that is set forth in its venerable hymns.”
Dr Ellicott’s views, on the proofs of a deity derived from the existence of the universe and also from our moral nature, are equally lucid and convincing, and are all deserving of the most attentive perusal. J. M. W.
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