Some, again, declare themselves Secularists pure and simple; but it is questionable if, outside the lower ranks of civilisation, such a profession can be, consistently, carried into practice. Bread being granted highly important, indeed indispensable, the life is, nevertheless, in every sense, more than meat. If pure Secularism be endeavoured after, the result must be a purely Materialistic confession, expressed or understood, and a consultation of present needs alone, such as has always degraded and always will degrade. Nor is this creed of eating, drinking, and amusement in any way elevated by seeking to prove that such "presentlife philosophy," as it is called, regards the spending of a long and virtuously respectable career as its aim. The prolongation of life by a well-calculated temperance or abstinence is merely a feat of cleverness and foresight. "A short life and a merry one" is, it may be, the motto of the profligate-and he gets that for which he bargained. But a prudent carefulness and control of appetite in order to enable us to tarry somewhat longer by the swine-trough is little higher. It is only a question of investment and returns, at the best. Popular "present-life philosophy" is hard put to it at times; its parrot-cry for "one world at a time" is not to be granted it, for the plain reason that, here and now, there are undoubtedly two. Popular Secularism meets its plainest, most unwelcome contradiction in the logical necessity laid upon it (and it professes to be severely logical) of facing present life as it is, and not only as it appears to be on the surface. If it be the well-merited despair of Materialism to find its reputed solid bases melting away beneath the ray of philosophic vision; its doom to know, at last, that the "thing in itself" promises to be other than that which it seemeth to be; so it is the discovery of the Secularist (who is Secularist and nothing more), sooner or later, that it is an awkward matter to profess belief in that which now is, only to find that, in this comprehensive statement of belief, he is committed to the intangible spiritual, altogether ghostly, "double" which lurks under the plain outlines of this every-day world. "Whatever is, is," has been considered a very safe and wholly practical conclusion; but some doubt exists in well-informed quarters whether a somewhat Hibernian version of the maxim be not preferable, the latter verb being changed to the plural number! Without doubt, Secular philosophy, in its place, is true; a part of the truth, but not the whole. Alone, it cannot face the riddle of our twofold present world. Something additional is required. In this strait. the theologians have been despairingly appealed to. An answer from this class of persons is seldom sought in vain. One of these, not the least of his tribe, has instructed us, in volume form, and at considerable length, "how to make the best of both worlds;" and a treatise so-called might, at first sight, be looked upon as likely to shed some light on the difficulty. Unfortunately, however, the two worlds therein dwelt upon are very different from ours, being, in fact, two separate and successive states of conscious existence-placed tandem fashion, as present and to come; whereas the two worlds we have to do with are blent together, undistinguishably, in the now time. It is much to be feared that neither. Augustine nor Calvin (leaving Comte out of the reckoning) can help us in this matter. Why not try to "make the best" of our indissoluble dwelling-place after another fashion, finding, at one and the same time, a workshop and a sanctuary undefiled on common earth. If there be, as some have said, a chrysolite-paradise yet to come, doubtless its aims and activities will also be manifold. Two worlds are ours now; why fret for a third, possibly bringing a fourth in its train? Plain yet profound the truth that, here and now, all things are faceted doubly— practical and mystical, earthly and spiritual, one-fold and manifold. The earthly track for bleeding feet is the highway to the heaven of heavens; earthly love is the espousal of soul with soul; a universe blind and forlorn, without a print of any shining feet, the very Holiest of All. Space! it is a truth, and yet, I say, a falsehood; for that which we know not verily filleth all things, and, were our ears not dull, we might listen the beat of unseen wings. We have but to take this two-fold world in our thoughts and rudely divide its realms to find how poor is each portion without its fellow; to find again that "vulgar actualities" are, in truth, and by necessity, appearances only-appearances superinduced upon that which passeth understanding. Take the crude, popular view first, that with which we all begin, but which we must add to and enlarge upon, if we would be worthy of ourselves. What have we upon eyesight evidence alone? That which, by itself, were most execrable-the stall, the manger, and feeding-pen of life, some coarse pleasures ending in satiety-not a little pain, some crying and tears, and a sleep at both ends. "Make the most of it," we are told; "it is a fairly enjoyable, though not a very elevated, life. If surfeited, you must, of course, pay the invariably exacted penalty; for, although most assuredly there is no God, yet it might just be as well for all concerned if there were one: he might sometimes, in play, if not in pity, remit some punishments. But away with sad thoughts; do not listen to the tapping of the hammer on the elm boards hard by, and, if you are hipped, pray resort to the wineskin!" And, on the other hand, we have a profitless expatiation upon the mysteries of life to the neglect of its clamant duties-moonstruck fancies; that which is true blasphemy -the contempt of life's great sacraments; sackcloth and ashes on the fair, young head; proposals to mortify the flesh unspeakably, and other unnameable horrors. The unnatural divorce tells most cruelly here ; there is not even the consolation of the swine-husks. Vainer than vanity his desire who seeks to live in the unknown. He alone overcometh the world who liveth in the life abundant of its central whirl, equal to the fortune of the known and the unknown— neither Secularist nor Visionary alone, but something of both, as becomes the denizen of a world most real, and yet most shadowy. Grafted deftly together, as are the real and the mystic spheres, their activities do not intermeddle with each other. All things alike are common, and yet cleansed from taint-star-dust of the heavens, spindrift of the waves, and mire of the streets. To the extent that a man lives in this dual persuasion, he is a Secularist, and an Agnostic. Subtract the purely Secular position, and our Agnosticism remains. Properly, the divorce should not be made, save illustratively, for no man ever built a worthy confession of Agnosticism upon aught but daylight vision. Upon this broad Secular foundation of every-day labour the fabric of our Agnosticism is impregnably reared. When, amid the cares and joys of life, we turn to life's inmost secrets, we confess our inability to unravel them. Colloquially (the name is unimportant), we are, therefore, Agnostics. In reality, we are Agnostic also in regard to the ultimate explanation of everything around us. But we accept the practical, the insistent side, as a convenient working hypothesis. We lean upon it, find it sufficiently strong to bear our weight, and we reserve our unknown quantity in the actual and in that which underlies it, and say again, We do not know. Thus everything is to us "as a crumb of Eucharistic bread: not without a Real Presence in it," fit for the use of the body, and also dowered with the consubstantiate indwelling of the unknown. Such is the Bread of Life. sneer. Men clothe ideally this unknown sacramental presence, which has no name, but which they call the Absolute, with many quaint dresses of their own device-"like people, like" absolute, in the words of the old The Religionist, born again unto Agnosticism, loves to endue this mysterious noumenon with the attributes of his forsaken God; the Sentimentalist images therein the creations of fancy; the Materialist calls it "occult-matter," and fatally exhausts his argument and his vocabulary in the effort. A certain strange variety of inquirers set themselves to (of all things) question it, as if it heeded them, or were an oracle, when all other oracles are dumb. Why cannot this unknowable be analysed? say some; and they turn to stellar measurements—the length of a broomstick, the unit-seeking for its height and depth. Others, despising measurement and finding the string of thought somewhat too short for the fathomless, seek refuge in vague abstractions, and prate to us of an ocean or a flood, as if a drop of water in this connection were not quite as good as a bucketful. And every one now laughs at the employment of capital letters to give apparent dignity to a favourite abstraction. In these and other matters, drearily laughable, it is strange that common sense has not more part; for the approach to the highest is ever by the common path and daily track of life. Our Agnosticism, it is plain, needs a firm secular groundwork, if it is to be saved from folly. Agnostic Temple Services are spoken of. In the absence of any suggested ritual for the same, I can only speculate what object is likely to occupy the place of the accustomed Cross on the high-altar of such a sanctuary-perhaps the serpent-circle of Eternity, fittingly moulded in brass, with its tail in its mouth, as if with tongue in cheek. Again, the depth of metaphysical subtlety may be far from reaching the confines of the unknown, when the philosophy of the wayside flower is close to the garment of the infinite. For how singularly transparent the fallacy of isolating, or attempting to isolate, the spiritual unknown. from the earthly known by boundaries of division, assigning sanctity peculiar to place, person, time, or term. As if it were not of the essence of the spiritual to be independent of locality, duration, and respect of persons. The simplest object (simple no more to us, for all things are infinitely folded) is, at the same time, to us, the last and sharpest height of thought where the atmosphere is rare for mortal breath. There is, in truth, relatively, no lower and no higher. All things are full of labour; all things are full of mystery. Some have said, daringly, that all things are full of God. "Higher than himself [that is, than his pulsing brain-pulp] can no man think." So we are told. The saying is true, if, by the result of that thinking, be meant that which is vulgarly useful, practical, or (as we say) to purpose. But if it be meant thereby that beyond his "gnosis" not man can think, either in the sense of arrival at the point of meeting with the unknowable, or in the sense of being incapable of possible influence from the unknown in which he lives and moves and hath his being-then, I, for one, dissent. To tell the limit of man's height in this respect, you must have passed the impassable limit, and yourself divined that which you say is beyond your powers. If you know not the secrets of the forbidden dark around us, how know you that they have no share in the issues of life? Granted communication shut and barred one way, how know you it to be impenetrable the other, and not as an "endosmose" without an "exosmose"? How affirm dogmatically that, in the murky depths with which we are swathed, as with folding bands, we have neither lot nor part, when, for aught you can tell, they may be our home of homes? Let such dogmatism be far from us, and let our Agnosticism be frank. If depth there be beyond us (and who can doubt it?), let the possibilities of that depth be left undefined, yet not ignored. nor flouted. If I live in a two-fold world, one part of my habitation is not enough for me, not high enough for the measure of the stature of my fulness. I live and move and have my being and my citizenship in the twain. (To be continued.) AGNOSTIC. G. M. McC. A BOUNDLESS sea beyond thee there doth lie; G. L. MACKENZIE. |