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"Atheism." V.—On "The Martyrdom Of Man." A Sermon,

Preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, February 16th, 1873, by the

Rev. Charles Voysey.

From the Eastern Post, February 22nd, 1873.

On Sunday (Feb. 16th) at St. George's Hall, the Rev. C. Voysey took his text from Hebrew xii, 11, Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."

He said:—In my last sermon I endeavoured to describe what true Love is; how it differs from merely animal attachment, how complete is its triumph over the natural desires, and how it raises us into the highest happiness in the supreme act of self-sacrifice. It is my purpose now to point out the process by which Love is generated or brought out into manifestation; to show that Love cannot be developed at all except under the conditions of suffering or sin, and therefore that that which we deem the most beautiful flower of humanity is the result of those very conditions on which the Atheist bases his strongest arguments against the existence of a Good God. The Atheist, as represented by Mr Winwood Reade in his Martyrdom of Man, argues thus:—

"The conduct of a father towards his child appears to be cruel but it is not cruel in reality. He boats the child but he does it page 2 for the child's own good; he is not omnipotent; he is therefore obliged to choose between two evils. But the Creator is omnipotent; He therefore chooses cruelty as a means of education or development; He therefore has a preference for cruelty, or He would not choose it; He is therefore fond of cruelty, or He would not prefer it; He is therefore cruel, which is absurd."

"Again, either sin entered the world against the will of the Creator, in which case he is not omnipotent, or it entered with His permission, in which case it is His agent, in which case He selects sin, in which case He is fond of sin, in which case He is sinful, which is an absurdity again."—(pp, 518519.)

It would be easy to dispose of this argument by at once disputing the hypothesis that God is omnipotent. The so-called "omnipotence" of God has assumed the most extravagant shapes in the human imagination. We could name a score or two of things inherently impossible, which God Himself has no power to do He cannot make the phenomena of noon and midnight to coincide. He cannot so alter the nature of a thing as to make it at the same moment both a cube and a sphere. He cannot confound the parts of a thing with each other, or put any part for the whole. God could not make my hand to be my eye; nor my eye to be my hand Never could a single limb be a whole human body. Never can God undo the past or break the sequence of time. God Himself could not make any material thing to be in two places at once. God's power is limited—by what, we do not know—possibly by His own will; i.e.—if he wills a thing to be such and such, he cannot at the same time make it to be absolutely different. We have no difficulty whatever in giving up the notion of God's omnipotence, when the idea of that omnipotence is stretched beyond the limits of common sense. But this is not quite the point in the passage quoted from Mr. Reade's book which I desire to take up. He manifestly assumes and elsewhere affirms, that if there be a God, He cannot be either cruel or sinful. Mr. Reade page 3 calls it "an incontrovertible maxim in morality that a God has no right to create men except for their good." We would go further still, and say, "God has no right to create any self-conscious creatures at all, except for their good." The author then turns to man and nature, and finds visible tokens of suffering and sin; from which he draws the conclusion that there is no God. It is perfectly logical, because his suppressed premiss is, "that suffering and sin are evils per se, and what is more, they are unnecessary evils."

If this were true, then with the facts before us, we could draw no other conclusion than that an evil God caused the unnecessary evils; but when we confront this conclusion with the axiom that an evil God is a contradiction in terms; or more plainly, that "if there be a God, He must be good," it follows at once that if suffering and sin are unnecessary evils, there is no God at all.

What, then, we have to dispute is the assumption that suffering and sin are evils, per se, and unnecessary evils.

If we can show that suffering and sin are not evils, per se, but only relatively evils compared with other conditions; and further, that they are not unnecessary, but absolutely indispensable to our highest good, then, instead of going to prove that there is no God, suffering and sin will go far to prove that there is a God; and moreover, a good and holy God, who would not create any creature except for its good. Now, as I must not attempt too many things at once, I must leave on one side for the present the sufferings of the lower orders of animals, and confine myself only to the subject of the sufferings and sin which are endured by man.

Of the various functions which suffering and sin serve in the economy of the moral world, I have elsewhere written at some length; I now only desire to dwell upon one function, the chiefest of all, viz.,—they are the agents by which the purest Love is called forth. If they do originate or call into activity this noblest, most beautiful part of man's nature, they cannot be evils per se; and if, page 4 as far as we know, such Love could never have birth apart from suffering and sin, then they are necessmy.

You will remember that true Love is the very opposite of selfishness—it makes us do sometimes the most painful things; it is most exalted and supreme in a perfect self-sacrifice.

Now, what do we find, e.g., in the relations between husband and wife. Granted that there has been much animal attachment between them, and that true Love has not been yet elicited. Let one or the other be in sickness or pain, or in any trouble of mind, body, or estate, and then, if there be a germ of Love in the other, it will come forth in thoughts, words, and deeds, of exquisite sympathy and self-devotion. "We need not lift the sacred veil which covers wedded life, but surely all husbands and wives must know that their real Love first made itself heard and seen in some season of suffering and pain; they know what holy sacrifices it has demanded and received. Suffering is the cradle of Love.

See, too, how the mother's love, even as a mere animal affection, surpasses the Love which first made her a bride; and how it quickens her into activity of devotion; giving, and toiling, and watching; watching, and toiling, and giving, day and night, to her own cost of health, rest, and ease; and why? because her infant is feeble, dependent, suffering. Its cries lacerate the mother's heart, and fill her eyes with tears; but the same sting kindles a Love which is Divine, making her ready to give her life for her babe.

You see the same thing in the family. How selfish, how quarrelsome, children often are; till the hour comes when there is an accident, a terrible bruise, or a broken bone; and up the little wranglers run and are like ministering angels to the sufferer. Toys that were once fought for are now heaped on the sickbed without being asked for, and the dreariness of the siekchamber is willingly endured by sturdy ruddy boys who would ten times rather have been out at play. But Love has made them stay by the sickbed, drawn thither by her handmaid—Suffering. It is page 5 almost invariable that the weakest, sickliest, member of a family receives the most love, and is served with the greatest self-sacrifices. And it often happens that a son who has brought the family into trouble, or a daughter who has put it to shame, is the object of the parent's tenderest, most anxious, self-denying Love. The old story of the Prodigal Son is not only exquisitely true to nature, but a most powerful illustration of the theory that suffering and sin are the very cradle of the Highest Love.

By very instinct we look on sin as a terrible kind of suffering—a fearful moral disease—and it has a tendency to call out Love, in spite of its first tendency to call out hatred. We are angry and indignant if any injury be done to ourselves it is true, but the highest and rarest forms of Love—viz., mercy and forgiveness, are very often developed by the wrong doing of others. What sight more pretty among children than the making up of some quarrel, the sweet overtures of tiny arms around tiny necks, and the smothering kisses all wet with tears, which tell of the birth of the highest Love in their little souls!

In domestic life it often happens that sin, as well as sorrow, calls forth this noblest virtue. Neglected duties, careless accidents, even want of fidelity and honesty on the part of servants, have been overlooked, or forgiven and forgotten out of true pity and charity, which "hopeth all things." In like manner loving servants have borne long and patiently with the provocations of of their masters, forgiving their harsh and inconsiderate treatment and their surly tempers, and covering with a sacred privacy their worst failings. Old and young, all around in turn, have to bear and forbear, i.e., to bear gently the injuries of others and to forbear from revenge, to return good for evil, and thus to rise into man's most exalted condition because of the sin which is being continually committed. Love cannot rise higher than this—to render good for ill, to overcome all evil with good. And where, we ask, would such Love be but for the evil which calls it into exercise?

But go abroad and look on men and women beyond the home which is but a microcosm, and you will see the same beautiful sights if you knew how to look for them. Sin and sorrow every page 6 where—but sin and sorrow followed by the holiness and joy of Heaven-born love. What man or woman who had ever felt the bliss of it would wish it had never been?

To have received an injury, and yet to have pardon freely, and to have turned our foe into a friend, is unspeakably better than to have received no injury at all. To have kindled Love—true Love in the breast of another, is worth doing at the cost of much suffering. And although no one would be so mad as to incur disease on purpose to arouse sympathy, or so idiotic as to commit an injury for the sake of being forgiven; yet, for all that, the suffering and the sin do raise the hearts of those who come in contact with them, and teach them what they could not otherwise learn. As Miss Cobbe says in her Intuitive Morals. "Instead of an evil nature, our lower nature is a necessary postulate of all our virtue." Every word you use to denote the highest human qualities implies the conditions of pain and sin. You speak of patience? How could you be patient if there were no trials to bear, no cruel suspense to undergo, no provocation to irritate your temper, or to prompt your revenge? You speak of mercy and forgiveness? How could you be merciful to those who have done you no wrong, or forgive those who have never sinned? You speak of generosity of heart and hand? What generosity of heart could you feel for those who never failed in duty, who never transgressed the exact limits of their own rights? What generosity of hand could you show to those who never needed your bounty, and what happiness was already full? You speak of sympathy, but sooner could the light be severed from the sun than sympathy be detached from suffering. How could you know what this perfectly holy feeling is, had there been no suffering to feel for, no pains to lament, no sin to degrade and distress? And you speak of Love—the word which gathers up patience, mercy, forgiveness, generosity, sympathy, and surpasses them all? How could you have known the bliss of it unless human feeling had been, as it were, bruised and trampled on, to spread its fragrance, and to shed its life-giving wine? Humanity has indeed been martyred. Its flesh has been given for the life of the world. Its sacrifice was needed before men could grow out of the human into the Divine. Sin and sorrow must rend it, pain and shame must page 7 tread it clown, before Love can grow out of it. Your animal affections, miscalled Love, are only the products of physical ease, of undisturbed selfishness; but you had to mortify the flesh with its affections and lusts before true Love could take its throne in your soul. You must see and feel what sin and suffering are; you must feel them in your own proper person that you may know what they mean in others, and then you shall enter by that gate through which all must pass who would fain be Divine. As fast as one set of sins and sufferings are overcome, new ones arise in their place. Generation succeeding generation finds the martyrdom of man taking new shape; but this is only that man may not die eternally, but share the life which is endless and divine. Each age must bear and be hung upon its own cross, that everyone may learn how to love and be loved.

Evils, you call them? Well! so they are, if, by evil, you mean that which makes one uncomfortable. The rod, the medicine, and the surgeon's knife, are, in this sense, evils. But not so do I define evil. I call that an evil which works only for harm and incurable misery; and of such kind of evil I do not know one single specimen in the whole universe. Relatively, many things are evil, nay, almost all things but Love, because they are imperfections, and constantly under the correction of something better; but so long as they are working for final good, all things are good, and to dispense with any one of them while it thus works would be our bitter loss.

But granting that sin and suffering are evils—not absolute but relative, we must admit that they are necessary to the development of that which is highest and most lovely in man's nature. Because, as I have tried to show, Love in its highest and purest forms has no existence apart from the conditions of sin and sorrow which call it into exercise.

I do not say that this, therefore, proves the existence of God, but it removes one of the most common and powerful arguments against it. It destroys the objection of the Atheist which is based on the sin and misery of the world.

There remains one more objection to meet, and that is contained in Mr. Reade's question, "If God is Love, why is there any bad at all?" Because, I answer, there would have been no more love in page 8 God than love in man, but for the bad. Had there been no conditions like ours in the universe, the Creator's heart could have known nothing of that feeling which we call Love.

Rightly or wrongly, we ascribe to the Divine Being a divine conquest of Love over what are to us the difficulties and obstacles in nature. We believe He is taming and subduing all things to His purposes, and making all things work together for good to every creature which He has made. Our own highest attitude in our difficulties of sin and sorrow is that of patient, untiring Love; and this it is, only in its supremest exaltation that we ascribe to Him when we say "God is Love."

To do the final good at once, instead of to prolong the process through painful stages, even if it were possible, would be to achieve something quite foreign to our best conceptions of good. But it is a begging of the whole question to imply that it could be done To make men good at once, without the intermediate processes of pain and sin, would be to make another kind of creature altogether, of whom and of whose happiness we have neither experience nor conception. As well might you try to imagine a man who had never been a child, as a man made perfect without the discipline of sin and sorrow.

I rejoice in it all, as I have often said, with unspeakable and glowing delight. My frail flesh would fain escape some of its dreadful pangs, would fain lay the heavy burden of its cross upon the shoulders of others. I shudder when I see and think of the martyrdom of pain, and the worse crucifixion of shame, which have been the portion of some, and might have been my own; but I would not have one grain of the world's burden lightened by evasion, or one pang dulled by the deadly anodyne, ^* so as to miss the Heaven-sent blessing which comes to us in disguise, or to interfere even in thought with the perfect arrangements of the most Loving Will. I would still say of it all,

"It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good."