That which has been called the “negative theology,” has been spreading rapidly these last few years, though for the most part silently. In the first instance it may have been simply “a recoil from some of the doctrines which are to be heard at church and chapel; a distrust of the old arguments for, or proofs of, a miraculous revelation; and a misgiving as to the authority, or extent of the authority of the Scriptures.” But as was sure to be the case, the “negative theology” could not stop, and has not stopped here. Men who have come across these recoils, distrusts, misgivings, will soon find, if they are honest and resolute with themselves, that there is another doubt underlying all these, a doubt which they may turn from in horror when it is first whispered in their hearts, but which will come back again and again. That doubt is whether there is a God at all, or rather, whether a living, personal God, thinking, acting, and ruling in this world in which we are, has ever revealed Himself to man.
This is the one question of our time, and of all times; upon the answer which nations or men can give to it hang life and death.... One cannot stand upon a simple negation. The world is going on turning as it used to do, night succeeding day and generation generation; nations are waking into life, or falling into bondage; there is a deal of wonderful work of one sort or another going on in it, and you and I in our little corner have our own share of work to get done as well as we can. If you put out my old light, some light or other I must have, and you would wish me to have. What is it to be?
You will answer, probably, that I have touched the heart of the matter in putting my question. Night follows day, and generation, generation. All things are founded on a “permanent order,” “self-sustaining and self-evolving powers pervade all nature.” Of this order and these powers we are getting to know more every day; when we know them perfectly, man, the colossal man, will have reached the highest development of which he is capable. We need not trouble ourselves about breaking them, or submitting to them; some of you would add, for we cannot either break them or submit to them. They will fulfil themselves. It is they, these great generalizations, which are alone acting in, and ruling the world. We, however eccentric our actions may be, however we may pride ourselves on willing and working, are only simple links in the chain. A general law of average orders the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.
But here I must ask, on what is this permanent order, on what are these laws which you tell me of, founded? I acknowledge a permanent order, physical laws, as fully as you can, but believe them to be expressions of a living and a righteous will; I believe a holy and true God to be behind them, therefore I can sit down humbly, and try to understand them, and when I understand, to obey. Are the permanent order, the laws you speak of, founded on a will? If so, on whose will? If on the will of a God, of what God? Of a God who has revealed His character, His purpose, Himself, to you? If so, where, how, when?
But if you tell me that these laws, this order, are not founded on any living will, or that you do not know that they are, then I say you are holding out to me “an iron rule which guides to nothing and ends in nothing—which may be possible to the logical understanding, but is not possible to the spirit of man”—and you are telling me, since worship is a necessity of my being, to worship that. In the name and in the strength of a man, and a man’s will I utterly reject and defy your dead laws, for dead they must be. They may grind me to powder, but I have that in me which is above them, which will own no obedience to them. Dead laws are, so far as I can see, just what you and I and all mankind have been put into this world to fight against. Call them laws of nature if you will, I do not care. Take the commonest, the most universal; is it or is it not by the law of nature that the ground brings forth briers and all sorts of noxious and useless weeds if you let it alone? If it is by the law of nature, am I to obey the law, or to dig my garden and root out the weeds? Doubtless I shall get too old to dig, and shall die, and the law will remain, and the weeds grow over my garden and over my grave, but for all that I decline to obey the law.
I see a law of death working all around me; I feel it in my own members. Is this one of your laws, a part of the “permanent order,” which is to serve me instead of the God of my fathers? If it be I mean to resist it to the last gasp. I utterly hate it. No noble or true work is done in this world except in direct defiance of it. What is to become of the physician’s work, of every effort at sanitary reform, of every attempt at civilizing and raising the poor and the degraded, if we are to sit down and submit ourselves to this law?
Am I never to build a house, out of respect to the law of gravitation? Sooner or later the law will assert itself, and my house will tumble down. Nevertheless I will conquer the law for such space as I can. In short, I will own no dead law as my master. Dead laws I will hate always, and in all places, with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, and with all my strength.
