I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God;
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
If ever man were serious and earnest in his doubting, we believe him to be so. His is the wailing voice of one crying in the wilderness—of one who comes neither eating nor drinking; and they say, He hath a devil. Emerson, indeed, in his paradoxical way, assures us, that it is great believers who are always reckoned infidels; and that the spiritualist finds himself driven to express his faith by a series of scepticisms. But to proffer Emerson's voucher fer Newman's faith were to risk allusion to Bardolph's proffered bond for Falstaff, concerning which Master Dumbleton said, he liked not the security.[1] More consonant with public notions is the doctrine, that all scepticism is not only incompatible with spirituality, but is essentially akin to coarsest materialism—earthly, sensual, devilish. Mr. Trench, in his etymological survey of the word "libertine,"—which signified, according to its earliest use in French and in English, a speculative free-thinker in matters of religion and in the theory of morals or politics—explains its present usage by affirming, that by a sure process free-thinking does and will end in free-acting.[2] Were the author of "Phases of Faith" an instance of this "sure process," there would be no lack of that sympathy which we have assumed to be lacking, between him and Horace. But, with no disposition to palliate the evils of a sceptical bias, and with a lively sensibility to the withering and chilling touch it pitilessly lays on hearts most ardent and hopes most-sacred, we yet demur—with Professor Newman[3] before our eyes—to the sweeping generalisation which refuses to discriminate between a roving intellect and a wanton life, or which regards as one "common cry of curs" the mocking devilries of insensate scoffers, and the sorrowful sighing of the prisoners of hope. And therefore, as we would not "extenuate," so neither would we "set down aught in malice," nor, to use words put by Mr. Landor into the mouth of Andrew Marvel, "strangle a man because he has a narrow swallow ."[4] Especially since
- ↑ Falstaff.—What said Master Dumbleton about the satin for my short cloak and slops?
Page.—He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph; he would not take his bond and yours; he liked not the security.—Second Part of Henry IV. Act I, Scene 2.
- ↑ Study of Words. Lecture II.
- ↑ As to the ability or the fairness of his polemics, we say nothing.
- ↑ Latitudinarian in tone as the original passage is, it will bear quoting: "A wise man will always be a Christian … but men equally wise may differ and diverge on the sufficiency of testimony, and still further on matters which no testimony can affirm, and no intellect comprehend. To strangle a man because he has a narrow swallow, shall never be inserted among the 'infallible cures' in my 'Book of Domestic Remedies.'"—Landor's Works, vol. ii., p. 101.
and not the least able, of Christian apologists, who allows that intellectual scepticism has taken hold of many "sincere, conscientious, and highly cultivated minds, which command our respect for the freedom and fearlessness of their inquiries after truth, though none for the decision at which they have arrived."—Bases of Belief, p. 492.
