The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

Regarding theories of the origin of conscience such as those of J. S. Mill, Bain, Darwin, and Spencer, Dr. Flint remarks: “It does not matter whether conscience be primary or derivative; it exists.”35 That it does matter is shown by the fact that the bulk of the apologists still stoutly maintain that conscience is a special attribute of man—a divine instinct—and is not derived from the lower animals. We have, I think, gone into this sufficiently in the previous chapter, and I shall confine my remarks to another aspect of the question—the fallibility of the moral consciousness.

“The existence,” it is urged, “of a moral principle within us, of a conscience which witnesses against sin and on behalf of holiness, is of itself evidence that God must be a moral being, one who hates sin and loves holiness.”36 Given the existence of a personal God, this argument is plausible enough till we examine it more closely. The liability of conscience to err is, or should be, a platitude. Its two components—the reason and the emotions—both being fallible, it necessarily follows that conscience must have the same quality. We have only to think for a moment to discover innumerable examples in proof of this. An illustration which occurs to me, and which will hurt no one’s susceptibilities, is that of the Wa Daruma. This is an East African tribe practising a strict morality which is all the more remarkable on account of the gross immorality of the neighbouring tribes. Nevertheless, the conscience of the Wa Daruma bids them kill their twin offspring. If conscience, then, be fallible, how is it a Theistic proof? Because, though it may make a mistake through an untutored reason, or through a reason clouded by deceptive emotions, the consciousness that there is a right or wrong at all is sufficient proof of a moral intelligence? So be it; but it is passing strange that God should allow conscience to deceive us. John Locke well said, many years ago: “Children are travellers newly arrived in a strange country: we should therefore make conscience not to deceive them.” Are we not children of God in a strange country? We would not deceive our children.

The acquittal of conscience gives pleasure, as the condemnation gives pain—remorse—and every man must obey his conscience if he would be happy. What a thousand pities it seems that it should ever lead him into error! Should it not be a divine intuition of the right both in our religious beliefs and in our conduct?

It is an intuition of the right, the believer will say, when it tells you to believe in Christ and God. I would gladly think so; but every believer of every creed on the face of the earth says the same about his belief, and hence the amazing persistence of erroneous beliefs. When the voice of conscience is composed of a blind reliance on intuition (i.e., on the emotions) and a distrust of reason, how can the result be otherwise? The whole question of the truth of beliefs hinges upon whether intuition can or cannot be relied upon. We know that mistakes do occur through trusting to intuition, especially in the matter of beliefs; how, then, can we assume that it is infallible? Strange as the freaks of faith among cultured persons may appear, they are perfectly intelligible. They are the result of reliance on intuition rather than on reason. I will give an example. Who more logical, apparently, than John Henry Newman, the coadjutor of Whately in his popular work on logic? His illogical conduct is, therefore, particularly instructive. In 1832, after a visit to Rome, he wrote describing the Roman Catholic religion as polytheistic, degrading, and idolatrous,37 and then, after all, entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. He did so because he found that the difficulties of the creed and of the canon of Scripture were insurmountable unless over-ridden by the authority of the Church. To escape becoming an agnostic he elected to join a Church calling herself infallible.

He was able to come to this decision although, to his own knowledge, her infallibility was belied by her conduct! Further, so eloquent was his reasoning on the subject, so apparently logical, that some hundreds of clergymen joined him in making their submission to the Church of Rome. Underlying all this apparent inconsistency is the assertion, so eloquently pleaded by Cardinal Newman, of the supremacy of conscience and the correctness of intuition. So also have asserted the followers of every religion from all time, and to what have their consciences and intuitions led them—to truth, or to a pot-pourri of absurd and conflicting beliefs? We have the testimony of all history to prove the extreme fallibility of conscience. Conscience possesses no divine spark to keep a man from acting wrongly through ignorance. Even when knowledge is present we see, as in Cardinal Newman’s case, that the voice of conscience may still speak incorrectly; for reason is swamped when emotion’s flood-gate is left ajar.

Cardinal Newman’s opinions have a special interest for us at the present time. He held that, “apart from an interior and unreasoned conviction, there is no cogent proof of the existence of God”; that “the man who has not this interior conviction has no choice but to remain an agnostic, while the man who has it is bound sooner or later to become a Roman Catholic.”38

So inexplicable did his motives appear that Charles Kingsley accused him of saying that “truth for its own sake need not be, and, on the whole, ought not to be, a virtue of the Roman clergy.” Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua, however, leaves no doubt of the author’s own personal rectitude. His premises—the infallibility of conscience and intuition—were false. But that is not an unusual feature of Christian apologetics. The keen intellects of the two pious brothers, John Henry and Francis William, were really buried beneath a mass of preconceptions. That of the latter, however, being less submissive, proceeded to a slow and sure upheaval, and finally Francis Newman rejected Christianity altogether.39 In the Apologia pro Vita Sua we find, I think, the key to Cardinal Newman’s convictions. He was intensely superstitious, and inclined also to be timid. On the opening page, where he gives the recollections of his boyhood, we read: “I used to wish the Arabian tales were true.” And again: “I was very superstitious, and for some time previous to my conversion (when I was fifteen) used constantly to cross myself on going into the dark.”