Vol. V. No. 1] LANGHAM HALL PULPIT [JAN. 8, 1882

Man's Misery.

REPLY TO THE LORD BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH,

PREACHED AT THE LANGHAM HALL, JANUARY 1, 1882.

BY

REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.

PSALM 1xxxiv. 5.-Blessed is the man whose strength is in
Thee, in whose heart are Thy ways.

You will remember that I read last Sunday for our first
Lesson a noble passage from a Sermon by the Bishop of
Peterborough on Man and the Gospel which I have again
read from this morning. This Sermon is easy of access to
all of you, being published in Good Words for this month.
Not being well able to read the whole of it, I would recom-
mend you to get it and read it for yourselves. We must
come to it as free from all bias and prejudice as possible.
Indeed if we had auy prejudice it ought to be entirely
removed by the Bishop's own introduction to the subject of
his discourse. Nothing can be more just, more strictly
fair, more candid and frank than his assertion that it is every
man's duty to sift the claims of any religion or religious
teacher that may come before him, and that the tests which we
are to apply to the religion and to the teacher are the simple
tests of reasonableness and truth.

Rev. O. Voysey's Sermons are to be obtained at Langham Hall, 43 Great Portland Street, every Sunday Morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden House, Dulwich, S.E. or of Mr. W. P. Collins, Bookseller, Weymouth Street, Corner of Great Portland Street. W. Price One Penny.

LEIA

The questions the Bishop would have us put are 'What have you to tell us concerning the nature of God?' and 'What have you to tell us concerning the nature of man?' The main line of his discourse is to state the answers given to these questions by the Bible and to contrast them, not with a pure Theism, but with what he calls the new gospel for humanity, the gospel of materialism, the gospel which weighs and measures and calculates the forces of matter and tells us that these are all.'

It will not be within the scope of my remarks to go into the details of the philosophy which the Bishop calls the gospel of materialism' nor yet to criticize at any length the analysis which he has given us of the Bible teaching. My main objects will be to examine his statements regarding man, and while shewing how far he has succeeded in drawing the contrast favourable to the Bible, to show also wherein the weakness of his argument lies and how much stronger he could have made it had he suffered himself to be entirely dominated by the principle laid down in his introduction.

His Lordship, possibly without knowing it, has adopted exactly the method which is characteristic of our own Theism. He has began with man in order to arrive at conclusions about God:

We know the nature of man, or think we do. Of the Divine nature we are necessarily and naturally in comparative ignorance. We do know something of human life and its conditions, and therefore he who tells us that concerning man's nature which we know to be untrue, has lost his claim upon our attention when he goes on to tell us something concerning God. If he has told us earthly things which we simply cannot believe, how can we believe when he goes on to tell us of heavenly things? Convicted of falsehood or of absurdity, as regards the visible, he can have no trustworthy message for us concerning the invisible.'

The Bishop then proposes to submit the Bible theory of humanity to the test of one admitted and notorious fact in the nature and condition of man, and to see how it explains that fact and how it proposes to deal with it. And the 'fact' he describes as 'the admitted and notorious one of the exceptional unhappiness of man.'

Taking for his text and for an illustration of man's exceptional unhappiness the condition of the Prodigal Son in the parable of Jesus, the Bishop dilates on the unhappiness

T 1962

of mankind in a masterly manner and with a flow of graceful language not easy to withstand. His paragraphs are so full of truth, obvious truth, that one cannot resist the inferences drawn, and a really happy and cheerful-hearted reader begins to feel the depressing influences of the gloomy picture and wonders how it is that he is exceptionally happy when apparently he ought to be miserable. Having pondered deeply over this part of the discourse, I have come to the conclusion that in spite of its many important truths it is somewhat exaggerated, drawn in colours too dismal. If the unhappinesses of man were really as deep and universal as it is here represented even among those who have not the resources or consolations of religion, or who are not blessed with native contentment and cheerfulness, life would be unendurable and suicide would become the rule instead of the exception. Even if life is too often chequered with gloom, yet it is still accounted worth living by those who could easily part with it, but who nevertheless cling to it tenaciously. Indeed it would be quite possible with truth to write an essay on the wide spread and undeserved happiness of many people whose lot, if we had the government of the world, we might, perhaps, have made much harder than it is. Considering all we know of the faults of men and the blessedness of corrective sorrow, we might well wonder that so many are happy and light-hearted, while those of a higher nature and whose lives are almost without blemish go mourning all their days. God forbid we should make any heart sad whom He has not made sad, or take upon ourselves the discipline and chastisement of souls whose merits and demerits are partly hidden, if not wholly hidden, from our view. But we may at least with truth declare that happiness and unhappiness are not always distributed according to our notions of desert, and that if the unhappiness of mankind may be taken as a basis or starting point of a theory concerning God, surely the vast amount of happiness which is enjoyed, and enjoyed so widely, may be taken as a basis for an opposite theory concerning man and consequently concerning God. The Bishop however may safely reckon on a very large following, since cheerless, morbid, desponding people, who invariably look on the dark side, are sufficiently numerous to endorse his gloomiest descriptions, while the

vast majority of the contented and happy will not think it

worth while to contradict him.

With this solitary exception of exaggeration or over statement, I agree with and heartily admire all the rest of this portion of the discourse. I think the way in which the Bishop has set forth some of the leading features of human misery inpossible to improve. The unhappiness caused to man, as man, by the faculty of looking into the future and meeting troubles more than half-way is certainly characteristic and exceptional. Then we cannot be unmindful of the misery occasioned by the incessant conflict between our higher and lower nature. 'The flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that we cannot do the things that we would.' A great portion of the devout literature of all ages-and I had nearly said of all religions -has been taken up with that one source of human sorrow. Then again it is forced upon us that gratification by itself is not real or lasting happiness, but sometimes the cause of frightful and incurable depression. The Royal Sensualist who had tasted-nay who had drunk deep draughts-of every animal pleasure, on a retrospect of all his possessions and past enjoyments, was forced to cry out in the bitterness of his disappointment- Therefore I hated life. All is vanity and vexation of spirit.' And, once more, there is the misery of self reproach and remorse for having done wrong, for permitting ourselves to be overruled and overcome, by our lower nature. All this the Bishop has depicted in its true colours and cannot be gainsaid. And he is I think justified in saying that a religion or religious teacher which ignores these facts of human misery, or teaches falsely concerning their origin or their removal is not entitled to our allegiance nor can be trusted when he goes on to profess to enlighten us concerning God.

Our next duty then is to examine what the Bishop states is the Bible account of their origin and removal. Having already read this passage to you I need not repeat it. In the main it is deeply true as a description of man's twofold nature and the misery consequent upon our endeavour to find our whole satisfaction in yielding to our lower instead of our higher instincts, an endeavour to live by bread alone' instead of living by every word of God' in our consciences and hearts. The Bible is precious indeed for teaching this

truth on many a page. It is a perpetual entreaty to man to come home to his Father and find peace, plenty, and blessedness in doing His will.

But the Bishop seems to me to have done a double wrong to the cause he would advocate and to the Bible itself by introducing the doctrine of the fall of man from perfection (or the image of God) as the Bible theory. True, it is found in the Bible, but have you never stopped to enquire where or how often? The Bishop, followed by a multitude whom no man can number, will triumphantly exclaim that the Bible begins with it. The third chapter of Genesis tells the simple story, that all mankind might learn the secret of their sin and misery along with the record of the birth of their first parents. But once spoken, it is never again alluded to in the most distant manner. Not a line in all the rest of the Pentateuch nor in the records of Judges and Kings of Israel or of Judah, not in all the devotional scriptures, not in the Psalms, or Proverbs, or the book of Job; not once in Ecclesiastes which professes to set forth a philosophy of man.

The writer of this book says, 'God hath made man upright, but they (ie. women) have sought out many inventions.' This is the nearest approach to an illusion I can find; but if it had been an allusion, he would have said not, 'God hath made,' but 'God made' man upright.

Nor is it ever found in all the books of the prophets, although Ezekiel who, writing on the banks of the Chebar actually makes use of the imagery of the legend of the Garden of Eden, never touches on the theory of man's fall from original perfection. Such a striking omission as this, all through the pages of the Old Testament, is only to be explained by the fact that the story of the fall was absolutely unknown to the Old Testament writers, or if known, was by them disbelieved. Later criticism has traced it to a Persian fable which found its way into Genesis through some hand writing during or after the Babylonish captivity. The theory of the fall therefore cannot any longer with truth be called a 'Bible theory' so far as the Old Testament is concerned. But still more surprise awaits us. We turn to the New Testament and examine the words of Jesus himself and not one single trace of this theory can we find. Amidst the mass of teaching in which man's sinfulness is continually prominent, not a word is said by the prophet of Nazareth