ST. JOHN XX. 29 383
Newman did not deny that one reasoned rightly, the other wrongly. He did not deny that there might be responsibility for the false principles which led to unbelief — for the failure of the unbehever to recognize the deeper principles which a Christian thinker adopts (as he phrased it a little later) " under the happy guidance of the moral sense." But he did away with the old contrast to which Protestants as well as Catholics had long been accustomed, between believer and unbeliever as men looking at and apprehending precisely the same evidence, which was so obviously cogent that only a man whose will was here and now perverse could disbelieve. He substituted a far subtler analysis in which circumstances and education played their part in the power of mental vision on the particular subject : in which the appreciation of reasons was personal, and gradual ; religious earnestness and true principles being necessary not only to the acceptance of the reasoning for Christianity, but to its adequate apprehension.^
Cue must have King-recognizing eyes To recognize the King in mean disguise.^
^ My soul, do not pray for too little. Do not imagine that mere things will make thee blessed. No outward contact with any visible beauty would satisfy thee for an hour. The unseen alone will content thee. The things that belong unto thy peace are not worlds of space. They perish but thou remainest, they all wax old as a garment, and as a vesture shall they be folded up, but thou art the same. Ask that which is invisible, eternal, com- mensurate with thyself — love, sacrificial love, love even for the loveless. Ask the pain of beholding pain, the joy of seeing joy, the hope of bringing hope. That is to touch the print of the nails, for that is to bear in the spirit the marks of the Lord Jesus.^
2. Faith in the unseen is believing what we have never seen at all. — " Now faith is the substance (the assurance, E.V.) of things hoped for, the evidence (proving, R.V.) of things not seen." That is to say, it is the faculty which reaches to that which is beyond the sense, yet which apprehends it as certain — as being as certain as the things which we see.
Men have never seen God. The astronomer said, "I have
* Wilfrid Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, ii. 247. ' Jalaluddin Rumi, in A Little Book of Eastern Wisdom, 19. ^ G. Matheson, My Aspirations.
384 BELIEVING WITHOUT SEEING
swept the heavens with my telescope, and I have not found God." He looked for God as for a star, and could not find Him. A voice spoke from those heavens which the astronomer did not hear, and it said, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." And thousands upon thousands of trustful souls who would never look for God through a telescope have found Him with their hearts, and they face the fight of life every day bravely, knowing that He goes down to the battle with them; they lie down to rest at night feeling there is One who neither slumbers nor sleeps ; if they are out in the raging tempest they sing, " The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms " ; if they go through places of danger and terror they hear a voice say, " When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee " ; and while the learned astronomer says he cannot find God, these simple souls say, " 'Tis blessed to believe."
^ One of the most interesting and romantic discoveries of last century in the realm of astronomy was the detection of the planet Neptune, the outermost of those " wanderers " which circle round the sun. Until the year 1846 the furthest planet known was Uranus, discovered by Sir William Herschel some fifty years before this date. Study of the movements of Uranus showed variations from the path which, on the known data, it ought to follow ; and these variations could not be accounted for by the attraction of any of the inner planets upon its mass. Two astronomers, one in England, and one in France, began almost simultaneously to investigate the problem presented by its perturbations. By long and arduous calculations involving profound mathematical re- search, they found that the facts presented by the variations of the known planet could be explained by the presence of an unseen neighbour beyond it, of a certain mass and following a particular path. They knew that nothing else could account for the phenomena with which they had to deal. Although they had not seen another planet in the telescope or demonstrated its exist- ence beyond doubt until their researches were confirmed: yet they believed in its existence. They saw it "as Columbus saw America from the shores of Spain." They "felt its movements trembling along the far-reaching line of their analysis." And when they finished their calculations and indicated the spot in the heavens where the new member of the system would be found, the observers pointed their telescopes to the skies: and at the very place foretold the " new planet swam into their ken." ^
* See Ball, TJie Story of the Ecaxais, ch. xv.