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 How To Use This E-Book
This Explore Guide has been produced by the editors of Insight
Guides, whose books have set the standard for visual travel guides
since 1970. With ­top-­quality photography and authoritative
recommendations, these guidebooks bring you the very best routes
and itineraries in the world’s most exciting destinations.

Best Routes
The routes in this book provide something to suit all budgets, tastes
and trip lengths. As well as covering the destination’s many classic
attractions, the itineraries track lesser-known sights, and there are
also ex­cursions for those who want to extend their visit outside the
city. The routes embrace a range of interests, so whether you are an
art fan, a gourmet, a history buff or have kids to entertain, you will find
an option to suit.
We recommend reading the whole of a route before setting out. This
should help you to familiarise yourself with it and enable you to plan
where to stop for refreshments – options are shown in the ‘Food and
Drink’ box at the end of each tour.

Introduction
The routes are set in context by this introductory section, giving an
overview of the destination to set the scene, plus background
information on food and drink, shopping and more, while a succinct
history timeline highlights the key events over the centuries.

Directory
Also supporting the routes is a Directory chapter, with a clearly
organised A–Z of practical information, our pick of where to stay while
you are there and select restaurant listings; these eateries
complement the more low-key cafés and restaurants that feature
within the routes and are intended to offer a wider choice for evening
dining. Also included here are some nightlife listings, plus a handy
language guide and our recommendations for books and films about
the destination.

Getting around the e-book

In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see
hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the
section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are
also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to
the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more
information.

Maps
All key attractions and sights mentioned in the text are numbered and
cross-referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the
reference [map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can
also double-tap any map for a zoom view.

Images
You’ll find lots of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the
essence of the destination. Simply double-tap on an image to see it
full-screen.
© 2016 Apa Digital (CH) AG and Apa Publications (UK) Ltd
 Table of Contents
How To Use This E-Book
Recommended Routes For...
Architecture fans
Art and Museum Buffs
Clubbers
Cold War and Wall connections
Foodies
Prussian Palaces
Shoppers
World War II remembrance
Explore Berlin
City Districts
East and West
Cultural Renewal
Climate
Population
Young at Heart
Local Dialect
Economy
Green Spaces
Food And Drink
High-end Restaurants
 Pubs (Kneipen)
Ethnic Variety
Chains
Where to Eat
Drinks
Shopping
What to Buy
Sales
Opening Times
Entertainment
Theatre
Variety and Comedy Theatres
Cabaret
Musicals
Music
Classical Music
Jazz
Rock, Pop and World Music
Film
Nightlife
Tickets
History: Key Dates
Early History
 19th and Early 20th Centuries
Hitler’s Berlin
Post-World War II: Berlin Divided
The Fall of the Wall and Beyond
Berlin highlights by bus
Breitscheidplatz
Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church
The Ku’damm
Tiergarten
Victory Column
The Reichstag
Brandenburg Gate
Unter den Linden
Museum Island to Alexanderplatz
Schlossplatz and Nikolaiviertel
Alexanderplatz
Charlottenburg
Breitscheidplatz
Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church
Europa-Center
Tauentzienstrasse
Kaufhaus des Westens
On and Around the Kurfürstendamm
Fasanenstrasse
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 Story of Berlin
North Towards Savignyplatz
Bleibtreustrasse
Savignyplatz
Tiergarten
Berlin Zoo
Zoo Highlights
Aquarium
Embassy Quarter
Bauhaus Archive
Neuer See
Victory Column
Schloss Bellevue
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
The Reichstag
Visiting the Building
Paul-Löbe-Haus and Chancellery
Chancellery
Potsdamer Platz and the Kulturforum
Potsdamer Platz
Alte Potsdamer Strasse
Marlene-Dietrich-Platz
Sony Center
The Kaisersaal
 Kulturforum
Philharmonie and Kammermusiksaal
St Matthäus-Kirche
Gemäldegalerie
Decorative Arts Museum
Musical Instruments Museum
Neue Nationalgalerie
Resistance Memorial
History
The Memorial
Around the Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate
History
Pariser Platz
Southern Side
Hotel Adlon
British Embassy
Holocaust Memorial
Nazi Headquarters
Hitler’s Bunker
Unter Den Linden To Alexanderplatz
Around Pariser Platz
Komische Oper
Deutsche Guggenheim
Historic Libraries
 Forum Fridericianum
Staatsoper
St Hedwigstkathedrale
Humboldt University to Museum Island
Neue Wache
Deutsches Historisches Museum
Royal Residences
Museum Island
Berliner Dom
Nikolaiviertel
Town Hall
Alexanderplatz
Fernsehturm
Museum Island
Pergamonmuseum
The Collection
Bode-Museum
The Collection
Neues Museum
Alte Nationalgalerie
Altes Museum
Berliner Dom
Scheunenviertel
Hackescher Markt
 Hackesche Höfe
Sophienstrasse
Grosse Hamburger Strasse
Jewish School
Oranienburger Strasse
Neue Synagoge
Tacheles
Auguststrasse
Kunst-Werke
Friedrichstrasse and Gendarmenmarkt
Around S-Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse
Tränenpalast
Northern Friedrichstrasse
The Admiralspalast
The Distel
Friedrichstadtpalast
German Theatres
Shopping on Friedrichstrasse
Gendarmenmarkt
Konzerthaus
German and French Cathedrals
Treats and Refreshment
Friedrichstadtpassagen
Quartier 207
Quartier 206
Quartier 205
 Communications Museum
Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie Museum
Peter Fechter Memorial
Axel-Springer-Verlag
Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse
Kochstrasse
Niederkirchnerstrasse
Abgeordnetenhaus and Martin-Gropius-Bau
Topography of Terror
Anhalter Bahnhof
Kreuzberg
Hallesches Tor
Viktoriapark
Riehmers Hofgarten
Bergmannstrasse
Tempelhof Airport
Around Gneisenaustrasse
Turkish Market
Oranienstrasse
Mariannenplatz
Bethanien Art Centre
Schlesisches Tor
Prenzlauer Berg
Senefelder Platz
Jewish Cemetery
Kollwitzplatz
Water Tower
Synagogue
Husemannstrasse
Kulturbrauerei
Friedrichshain
Karl-Marx-Allee
Towards the River
East Side Gallery
Mercedes-Benz Arena Berlin
Potsdam
Potsdam Town
Sanssouci
Sanssouci Palace
Picture Gallery and New Chambers
Chinese Teahouse
New Palace
Other Highlights
Accommodation
Charlottenburg
Tiergarten
 Potsdamer Platz
Mitte
Kreuzberg and Schöneberg
Prenzlauer Berg
Friedrichshain
Outskirts
Restaurants
Mitte
Charlottenburg
Scheunenviertel
Friedrichstrasse
Kreuzberg, Schöneberg & Neukölln
Prenzlauer Berg
Friedrichshain
Other Areas
Nightlife
Theatre and Music
Cinemas
Jazz Clubs
Arenas
Clubs
Bars
A-Z
A
Age Restrictions
B
Budgeting
C
Children
Clothing
Crime and Safety
Customs
D
Disabled Travellers
E
Electricity
Embassies/Consulates
Emergencies
F
Festivals/Fairs
January
February
March
June
July
September
October
November
December

G
 Gay and Lesbian Issues
Green Issues
H
Health
Healthcare and Insurance
Hospitals and Pharmacies
Hours and Holidays
National and Religious Holidays

I
Internet Facilities
L
Language
Lost Property
M
Maps
Media
Print Media
Radio
Television
Money
Currency
Credit Cards
Cash Machines
Travellers’ Cheques
Tipping
Taxes

P
Police
Post
 Stamps and Postboxes

R
Religion
S
Smoking
T
Telephones
Country Codes
Operator Numbers
Mobile (Cell) Phones
Card Phones
Time Zones
Toilets
Tourist Information
In Berlin
German Tourist Offices Abroad
Tours and Guides
Boat Tours
Bus Tours
Bunker Tours
Walking Tours
Transport
Airports and Arrival
Public Transport
Taxis
Driving
Car Hire
Bicycle Hire

V
Visas and Passports
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 W
Websites
Weights and Measures
Women
Y
Youth Hostels
Language
Pronunciation
The Alphabet
Words & Phrases
General
On Arrival
Travelling
Shopping
Sightseeing
Dining Out
Table Talk
Suppen/Soups
Vorspeisen/Starters
Fleischgerichte/Meat Courses
Knödel/Dumplings and Noodles
Eier/Eggs
Zubereitung/Preparation
Gemüse/Vegetables
Nachspeisen/Desserts
Früchte/Obst Fruit
Emergencies
Days of the Week/Seasons
 Spelling Rules
How to Say ‘You’
Numbers
Books and Film
Film
Books
RECOMMENDED ROUTES FOR...
 ARCHITECTURE FANS
Explore the Sony Center and the other glass-and-steel buildings
around Potsdamer Platz (route 4) and indulge in the great historic
landmarks along the boulevard Unter den Linden (route 6) or on
the Gendarmenmarkt (route 9).
Jon Santa Cruz/Apa Publications
 ART AND MUSEUM BUFFS
Top arty tours are the Unesco-protected Museum Island, home to
five internationally important museums (route 7), and an afternoon
in the art galleries around the Kulturforum in the Tiergarten district
(route 4).
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comes Reason afterwards, comparing and contrasting these
imaginative premature conclusions with a wider and contradictory
experience and widening the conclusion accordingly. Hence it is the
part of Reason to suggest those varied experiments which are a
necessary part of scientific Induction; and this is generally done by
pointing out to us some neglected difference: “You say you had a
Turkish bath three times, and each time caught a cold: but were the
antecedents of these three colds quite alike? If not, how did they
differ? Did you not on the first occasion sit in a draught at a public
meeting? on the second, forget to put on your great coat? on the
third, let the fire out though it was freezing? Consider therefore, not
the single point of likeness, the Turkish bath, but the points of
unlikeness also, in the antecedents of your three colds; and try the
Turkish bath again, omitting these antecedents, before you say ‘A
Turkish bath always gives me cold.’”
You see then that in Induction the positive and suggestive part of
the work is done by the Imagination; the negative and eliminative
part by Reason.
(ii) As regards Deduction, the business of Reason is to ascertain that
the Premises are not only true but also connected in such a way that
a conclusion can be drawn from them. But even here Imagination
plays a part: for the conclusion of every syllogism (roughly speaking)
depends upon the following axiom: “If a is included in b, and b is
included in c, then a is included in c; in other words, if a watch is in
a box, and the box is in a room, then the watch is in the room.” Now
this general proposition, like all general propositions, is arrived at
with the aid of the Imagination, so that we may fairly say that the
Imagination, helps to lay the foundation of the Syllogism. When
therefore you bear in mind that in every Syllogism the Premises are
often the result of an Induction in which Imagination has played a
part, and that the conclusion always depends upon an axiom of the
Imagination, you must admit that even Deductive Reasoning by no
means excludes the Imagination.
(iii) Practically, errors seldom arise, and truth is seldom discovered,
from mere Deductive Reasoning. Any one can see his way through a
logical Syllogism, and almost any one can lay his finger on the weak
point in an illogical one. But the difficulty is to start the Reasoning in
the right direction and to begin the Logical Chain with an
appropriate Syllogism.
For example, suppose we wish to prove that “every triangle which
has two angles equal, has two sides opposite to them equal”: how
can our Reason, our discriminative faculty, help us here? At present,
not at all. We must first call to our aid the Imagination, which says
to us, “Imagine the triangle with two equal angles to have two
unequal sides opposite to them, and see what follows.” And every
one who has done a geometrical Deduction knows that we
frequently start by “imagining” the conclusion to be already proved,
or the problem to be already performed, and then endeavouring to
realise, among the many consequences that would follow, which of
those consequences would harmonize with, or be identical with, the
data to which we are working back.
The same process is common in the reasoning that deals with what
is called Circumstantial Evidence. Thus, it is asserted by A that he
saw B commit a murder in the midst of a field, five minutes before
midnight, on the first day of last month: how can we test the truth
of A’s assertion? The negative faculty of Reason cannot answer the
question. But once more Imagination steps in and says, “Imagine
the story to be true; imagine yourself to be in A’s place; imagine the
circumstances which would have surrounded him, the hidden place
from which he saw the murder, the light which enabled him to see it,
the precise sight that he saw, the voices or sounds that he heard,
and, in a word, all the details of a likely and coherent narrative.”
When the Imagination has done this and “imagined” the place—
perhaps a hedge—the light—moonlight, and so on, Reason steps in,
and corroborates or rejects, by shewing that there was, or was not,
a hedge whence the deed could have been witnessed; that there
was a full moon or no moon on the night in question; that, if there
had been a moon, the place in question was open to the moonlight,
or in deep shadow: and thus Imagination and Reason (aided by
experience of the place and knowledge of the time) arrive at a
conclusion, the former making a positive, the latter a negative
contribution. Hence it appears that even in those questions which
are called pre-eminently “practical”—for what can be more
“practical” than a trial in a law-court for life or death?—the
Imagination plays so great a part that without its aid the reason
could effect little or nothing.
Here I must break off; but I hope I have said enough to satisfy you
that the imaginative faculty, though it needs the constant test of
Reason and Experience, is far more intimately connected with what
we call knowledge, than is commonly supposed. But if this be so, we
ought not (I think) to be surprised if a careful analysis of our
profoundest religious convictions should reveal that for these also we
are indebted, and intended by God to be indebted, to the
Imagination far more than to the Reason.
 VII
THE CULTURE OF FAITH

My dear ——,
I have been very much pained by your sprightly account of the lively
and witty conversation between you and your clever young friends,
—— and ——, on the proofs of the existence of a God. Bear with me
if I assure you that discussions in that spirit are likely to be fatal to
real faith. They may often be far more dangerous than a serious
collision between untrained faith and the most highly educated
scepticism. I do not deprecate discussion, but I do most earnestly
plead for reverence.
Young men at the Universities stand in especial need of this warning
because their studies lead them to be critical; and habits of criticism
may easily weaken the habit of reverence. I remember once being
shewn over a great public school by the Headmaster, justly
celebrated as a Headmaster once, and much more celebrated since
in another capacity. It was a grand school, though a little too
ecclesiastical to suit my taste. While we were in the chapel my friend
spoke earnestly of the pleasure it gave him on Sundays to see in the
chapel the familiar faces of the old boys who came to revisit the old
place. At the same time he deplored the contrast between those
who went into the army, and those who went to the Universities:
“The army fellows,” he said, “almost always come to Communion,
the university fellows almost always stop away.” These words made
an indelible impression on my mind, “Who is to blame, or praise, for
this?” asked I, on my journey homeward. “Is it the army that is to be
praised for its inculcation of discipline and self-subordination, helping
the young fellows to realise the meaning of self-sacrifice? Or is it the
University that is to be blamed for its negative and destructive
teaching? Or can it be that the school is in part to blame for
teaching the boys to believe too much; and the University in part to
blame for teaching the young men to criticize too much?”
Over and over again, since that time, I have asked myself these
same questions about many other young men from many other
public schools. I honour the army as much as most men, more
perhaps than many do: but after all the profession of a soldier is the
profession of a throat-cutter; throat-cutting in an extensive,
expeditious, and honourable way,—throat-cutting in one direction
often undertaken merely to prevent throat-cutting in another
direction—but still throat-cutting after all: and it seemed very hard to
believe that the profession of throat-cutting is, and ought to be, a
better preparation than the pursuit of learning at the Universities, for
participation in the Holy Communion. On the whole I was led to the
conclusion that the young men in the army had retained and
deepened the instinctive obedience to authority, the sense of the
need of the subordination of the individual to the community, and
perhaps also the feeling of reverence, while they had not been
taught so fully to appreciate all that was implied in attendance at
Communion or to realize the intellectual difficulties presented by the
New Testament. In other words—to put it briefly and roughly—the
young cadets and officers came to Communion because they had
been taught to feel and not taught to think; and the University men
stayed away because they had been taught to think and not to feel.
Now I will ask you to excuse me if I suggest that the principal
danger to your character at present arises from the want of such
discipline as may be obtained by some in the army, and by others in
the practical work of life. You need some emotional and moral
exercise to counterbalance your mental and intellectual training. You
are not aware how much of the most valuable knowledge,
conviction, certainty—call it what you will, but I mean that kind of
moral and spiritual knowledge which is the basis of all right conduct
—springs in the main from spiritual and emotional sources.
In the present letter I should like to confine myself to this subject,
the culture, if I may so say, of Christian faith. Let me then ask you
first to clear your mind by asking yourself what is the essence of the
faith which you would desire to retain. It is (is it not?) a faith or trust
in the fatherhood of God. This surely is the Gospel or Good News for
which Christ lived and died, in order that He might breathe it into
the hearts of men. “Fatherhood”—some of your young friends will
exclaim—“What an antiquated notion! Flat anthropomorphism!” By
“anthropomorphism” they mean a tendency to make God in human
shape; just as Heine’s four-legged poetic Bruin makes God to be a
great white Polar Bear, and the frogs of Celsus imagine Him to be a
gigantic Frog. No doubt, this is very funny; but the decryers of
anthropomorphism who venture on any conception of a God—are
they any less funny? Do not they shew a similar disposition to make
God in the shape of human works or human experiences? Shall I be
exploring a nobler path of spiritual speculation if I say God is a Rock
or a Buckler, or a Centre, or a Force, than if I say God is a Father in
heaven? Ask your sceptical companions what conception of God they
can mention which is not open to objection, and they will perhaps
reply “An Eternal, or a Tendency, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness.” Now to reply “an Eternal,” appears to me to be
taking a rather mean and pedantical advantage of the uninflected
peculiarities of English (and Hebrew), which leave it an open
question whether you mean your “Eternal” to be masculine, or
neuter. And “Tendency”—what is it? Is it not a “stretching,” or
“pulling,” or partially neutralised force—a common human
experience? Now we are dealing with the accusation of limiting our
conception of God to our experiences as men. And, so far as this
charge is concerned, what is the difference between calling God a
“Tendency,” or a “Rock,” or a “Shield,” or a “House of Defence,” as
the old Psalmist does? Are not all these names mere metaphors
derived from human experience? In the same way to call God a
Father is (no doubt) a metaphor: but is it more a metaphor than to
call Him a Tendency?
Some metaphors, which describe God by reference to the relations
of man to man, may be called anthropomorphic; others, which
describe Him by reference to implements (such as a Shield) may be
called organomorphic; others, which assimilate Him to lifeless and
inorganic objects (such as a Hill) may be called by some other grand
name, such as apsychomorphic; others, which would subtilize Him
down to a thought, or a mind, or a spirit, may be called
phronesimorphic, noumorphic, pneumatomorphic; but in the name
of common sense—or in the name of that sense which ought to be
common, and which ought to revolt against bondage to mere words
—what is there in that termination “morphic” which should stagger a
seeker after divine truth? Do we not all recognize that all terms
applied to the supreme God are “morphisms” of various kinds? And
the question is not how we can avoid a “morphism”—for we cannot
avoid it—but how or where we can find the noblest and most
spiritually helpful “morphism.” And as between the ancient and the
modern metaphors just set before you can you entertain a moment’s
doubt? Might we not imagine the question put—after the old Roman
authoritative fashion—to an assembly of the consciences of universal
mankind: “Christ says that God is a Father in heaven; refined
thinkers say that He is a Tendency; utri creditis, gentes?” To which I
seem to hear the answer of the Universe come back, “We will have
no Tendencies seated on the throne of Heaven. Give us a Father, or
we will have nothing.” And you, my dear friend, how is it with you?
Utri credis?
But perhaps you complain, or some of your friends might complain,
that this is not treating the question fairly. “The doctrine of the
Fatherhood of God,” they may say, “is to be discussed like any other
proposition, upon the evidence.” I entirely deny it, if from your
“evidence” you intend to exclude the witness of Imagination
expressed in Faith and Hope. I assert, on the contrary, that it is to
be believed in, against what may be called quasi-evidence. It cannot
be demonstrated to be either true or false. Do not misunderstand
me. There is abundant evidence of a certain kind—as I will hereafter
shew—for the Fatherhood of God; but there is also evidence against
it: and what I mean is, that the mind is not to sit impartially and
coldly neutral between the two testimonies, but is to grasp the
former and hold it fast and keep it constantly in view, while it lays
less stress on and (after a time) puts on one side the latter. I have
shewn you that many of our deepest and most vital convictions are
based less upon Reason than upon Imagination. Why then should
we be surprised if the most profound convictions of all, our religious
certainties, rest upon that imaginative desire to which we have given
the name of Faith?[4] If an archangel (robed in light) were to step
down to me this moment and were to cry aloud, “Verily there is no
God,” I should reply, or ought to reply, “Verily thou art a devil.” If the
same archangel were to come in the same way and to say “Verily
there is a God,” I should reply, “I felt sure there was; and now I am
more sure than ever.” How unfair, how illogical, if our belief is to be a
matter of mere evidence! But it is not to be a matter of mere
evidence. It is to be a struggle against an evil thought—shall I not
say an evil being?—that is perpetually attempting to slander God to
men by representing Him as permitting or originating evil.
Does this startle you—this suggestion of an evil being—as being too
old-fashioned for an educated Christian? Well then, put it aside for
the time (though it is indeed Christ’s doctrine): and merely assume
as a temporary hypothesis that the essence of Christ’s Gospel is a
trust in the Fatherhood of God. Now, if this be so, and if this trust or
faith is to be kept pure and strong, must it not be regarded with
reverence and reserve as being (what indeed it is) a kind of private,
domestic, and family relation? Is it to be made the subject for light,
casual, frivolous discussions; epigrammatic displays; cut-and-thrust
exhibitions of word-fence; logical or rhetorical symposia? What
would you say of a young man who should allow his relations with
his father and mother to be discussed with humour and epigram on
every light occasion? Would he be likely long to retain the bloom of
domestic affection unimpaired? I remember reading about some
well-educated and enlightened free-thinker—I fancy it was
Bolingbroke—on whose table a Greek Testament was regularly
placed by the side of the port when the cloth was drawn, and whose
favourite topic for discussion after dinner was the existence and
attributes of the Deity. Does not your instinct teach you that from
such discussions as these no good could possibly come, nothing but
a hardening of the conscience, a fatal familiarity with sacred things
regarded with a view to witticism—that kind of familiarity which too
surely breeds contempt? What a terrible contrast it is—complacent
Bolingbroke at his wine, analysing the attributes of God, and the all-
pitying Father looking down from heaven and pleading, through
Christ, not to be analysed but to be loved and trusted!
May we not go a step further and say that Christian Faith or trust—if
it be once recognized as faith or trust, altogether distinct from the
kind of assent which we give to a proposition of Euclid—needs not
only to be protected from certain evil influences but also to be
subjected to certain good influences? It is a kind of plant, and
requires its spiritual soil, air, rain and sunshine; in other words it
needs good thoughts, noble aspirations, and unselfish acts, to keep
it alive. You may retort perhaps that Faith itself ought to produce
these results, and not to be produced by them. But I reply that,
though Faith does tend to produce these results, it is strengthened
by producing them; and it is weakened and finally extinguished by
not producing them. “Our faith” has been described as “the victory
that hath overcome the world.” What is there in the world that it
should need to be “overcome”? I suppose the writer meant that this
present, visible, tangible, enjoyable system of things—which was
meant by the Supreme to be a kind of glass through which we might
discern something of the greatness and order of the Maker has been
converted, partly by our selfishness, partly by some Evil in the world
outside us, into a mirror shutting out all glimpse of God and giving
us back nothing but the reflection of ourselves. On the other hand,
there is a different way of regarding the world when, our eyes being
opened like the eyes of Aeneas amid burning Troy, we discern in the
midst of this present condition of things a great conflict between
Good and Evil, and on the side of goodness, we see the forms of
Righteousness, Justice and Truth, supported by Faith, Hope, and
Charity; amid the smoke and roar of battles and revolutions, the
destructions of nations, and the downfall of empires and of
churches, we realise that these are abiding influences; that either in
this world, or in some other, these things shall ultimately prevail,
because these are the Angels that stand about the throne of the
Ruler of the Universe. This state of mind is Faith, and it is to be
nurtured by effort, partly in action, partly in thought. Bacon bids us
nurture it by “cherishing the good hours of the mind.” St. Paul says
nearly the same thing in different words: “Whatsoever things are
honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,
if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these
things.”
Are you surprised at this? Does faith seem to you, on these terms, a
possession of little worth—this quicksilver quality which varies with
every variation of our spiritual atmosphere? Why surely everything
that lives and grows is liable to flux. You do not disparage bodily
health because it is dependent on supports and influences, and
liable to changes; why then disparage spiritual health because it is
similarly dependent? No doubt one would not be willingly a religious
valetudinarian; a man’s spiritual constitution ought not to be at the
mercy of every slight and passing breeze of circumstance; but at
present there is little danger of spiritual valetudinarianism. Physical
“sanitation” is on every one’s tongue; but no one thinks of the
necessity of good spiritual air and of the evils of bad spiritual
drainage. We do not recognize that there are laws of our spiritual as
well as of our material nature. We wilfully narrow our lives to the
sabbathless pursuit of gain or pleasure—self everywhere, God
nowhere—and then go about hypocritically whining that the age of
faith has passed and that we have lost the power of believing. With
our own hands we put the stopper on the telescope and then
complain that we cannot see!
Do not however, suppose that I call upon you, because hope is the
basis of Christian belief, on that account to hope against the truth
and to believe against reason. I bid you believe in the Fatherhood of
God, first because your conscience tells you that this is the best and
noblest belief, but secondly also because this belief—although it may
be against the superficial evidence of the phenomena of the
Universe—is in accordance with these phenomena when you regard
them more deeply and when you include in your scope the history of
Christianity.
I admit that we have to fight against temptations in order to retain
this belief; and sometimes I ask myself, “If I and my children had
been slaves in one of the Southern States of America; or if I and my
family had suffered such indelible outrages as were recently inflicted
by the Turks upon the Bulgarians; or if I were at this moment a
matchbox-seller or a father of ten children (girls as well as boys) in
the East of London—should I find it so easy to believe that God is
our Father in heaven?” And I am obliged to reply, “No, I should not
find it easy;” I fear that I might be tempted to say, as a workman
did not long ago to a lecturer on co-operation who mentioned the
name of God: “Oh, no; no God for us; the workman’s God deserted
him long ago.” And perhaps you yourself may remember the answer
of one of those wretched Bulgarians to some newspaper
correspondent who endeavoured to console him in his anguish by
the reflection that “After all there is a God that governs the world:”
“I believe you,” was the reply; “there is indeed a God; and he
governs the world indeed; and he is the Devil.” Or take a spectacle
of the Middle Ages as a problem. In the lists are two armed knights;
on the one side a man of might and muscle, exulting in conflict; on
the other, a slight, weak creature, who never fights save on
compulsion, and is to fight now on sternest compulsion, being
accused (though innocent) of some gross crime by yonder man of
flesh, who combines scoundrel, liar, traitor, oppressor, thief, and
adulterer, all in one; and the fight is to begin under the sanction of
the Church of Christ. As the trumpets sound, while the heralds are
still calling on God to “shew the right,” the two men meet, and “the
right” is cast to the ground, trampled on by his enemy, and dragged
from the lists to the neighbouring gallows, while the muscular
scoundrel wipes his forehead and receives congratulations. Do you
suppose that the innocent man’s wife, if she were looking on, would
be able easily to say at that moment, “Verily there is a God that
judgeth the earth”?
Can I possibly put the case for scepticism more strongly? I would
fain put it with all the force in my power in order to convince you
that I have thought often over these matters, and that, although my
own life may have been happy and free from stumbling-blocks, I
have at least tried to understand and sympathize with those who
find it very hard to believe that there is a God. But, in the presence
of such monstrous evils as these, I take refuge in a belief and in a
fact; first, in the belief (which runs through almost every page of the
Gospels and has received the sanction of Christ Himself) that there
is an Evil Being in the world who is continually opposing the Good
but will be ultimately subdued by the Good; secondly, in the fact that
in one great typical conflict between Good and Evil,—where
apparently God did not “shew the right,” and where, in appearance,
there was consummated the most brutal triumph of Evil over Good
that the world ever witnessed—there the Good in reality effected its
most signal triumph. The issue of the conflict on the Cross of Christ
is my great comfort and mainstay of faith, when my heart is
distracted with the thought of all the spurns, buffets, and outrages,
endured by much-suffering humanity. “At last, far off,” I cry, “the
right will be shewn, even as it was in the contest on the Cross.”
You see then the nature of the conflict of faith. It is a struggle of
hope against fear, trustfulness against trustlessness, where strict
logical proof is impossible. But I do not call you to set Faith against
Reason, or to make hope trample on the understanding, or to shut
your eyes to the presence or absence of historical evidence. If
religion comes down from the region of hope and aspiration into the
region of fact and evidence, and asserts that this or that fact
happened at this or that time and place, then, so far, it appeals to
evidence, and by evidence it must be judged.
Half the earnest scepticism of the present day is not really spiritual
scepticism but simply doubt about historical facts. Distinguish
carefully and constantly between two terms entirely different but
continually confused—the super-natural and the miraculous.
In the super-natural every rational man must believe, if he knows
what is meant by the term; for every rational man must
acknowledge that the world had either a beginning or no beginning,
a First Cause or no First Cause; and either hypothesis is altogether
above the level of natural phenomena, and therefore supernatural.
The theist and the atheist are alike believers in the supernatural. The
agnostic, poised between the two, admits that some supernatural
origin of the world is necessary, but is unable to decide which of the
two is the more probable. All alike therefore believe in the
supernatural; but the important difference is that some take a
hopeful or faithful, others a hopeless or faithless, view of the
supernatural. Proof in this region is not possible, unless the
testimony of the conscience may be accepted as proof. If Jesus were
to appear to-morrow sitting on the clouds of heaven and testifying
that there is a Father in heaven, I can imagine some men of science
replying, “This is a mere phantom of the brain,” or, “This is the result
of indigestion,” or “Assertion is not proof.” Mere force of logical proof
or personal observation can convince no one that there is a God or
that Jesus is the Eternal Son of God; such a conviction can only
come from a leaping out of the human spirit to meet the Spirit of
God; and hence St. Paul tells us that “no man can say”—that is, “say
sincerely”—“that Jesus is the Lord save by the Spirit.” Here
therefore, in this region of the indemonstrable, I can honestly use an
effort of the will to ally myself with the spirit of faith. “I will pray to
God; I will cling to God; will refuse to doubt of God; refuse to listen
to doubts about God (except so far as may be needful to do it, in
order to lighten the doubts of others, and then only as a painful
duty, to be got through with all speed); I am determined (so help
me God) to believe in God to the end of my days:” resolving thus I
am not acting insincerely nor shutting my eyes to the truth, but
taking nature’s appointed means for reaching and holding fast the
highest spiritual truth.
But I do not feel justified in thus using my will to constrain myself to
believe in the miraculous; for here God has given me other means—
such as history, experience, and evidence—for arriving at the truth.
Nor does a belief in the super-natural in the least imply a belief in
the miraculous also. I may believe that God is continually supporting
and impelling on its path every created thing; but I may also believe
that there is no evidence to prove that His support and impulsion
have ever been manifested save in accordance with that orderly
sequence which we call Law. I may even believe that the Universe is
double, having a spiritual and invisible counterpart corresponding to
this visible and material existence, so that nothing is done in the
world of flesh below which has not been first done in the world of
spirit above; yet even this latitude of spiritual speculation would not
in the least establish the conclusion that the observed sequence of
what we call cause and effect in the material world has ever been
violated. To take a particular instance, I may be convinced, that
Jesus of Nazareth was the Eternal Word of God, made flesh for men;
and yet I may remain unconvinced that, in thus taking flesh upon
Him, He raised Himself above the physical laws of humanity. In other
words I may, with the author of the Fourth Gospel, heartily believe in
the supernatural Incarnation while omitting from my Gospel all
mention of the Miraculous Conception. Nay, I may go still further.
While cordially accepting the divine nature of Christ, I may see such
clear indications and evidences of the manner in which accounts of
miracles sprang up in the Church without foundation of fact, that I
may be compelled not merely to omit miracles from my Gospel and
to confess myself unconvinced of their truth, but even to avow my
conviction of their untruth. But into this negative aspect of things I
do not wish now to enter. I would rather urge on you this positive
consideration, that, since our recognition of the Laws of Nature
themselves, depends in a very large degree upon faith, we ought not
to be surprised if our acknowledgment of the Founder of these Laws
rests also on the same basis. And, if this be so, we cannot speak
accurately about the “evidence” for the existence of a God, unless
we include in that term the aspirations of the human conscience
toward a Maker and Ruler and Father of all.
 VIII
FAITH AND DEMONSTRATION

My dear ——,
I am afraid your notions about “proof” are still rather hazy; for you
quote against me a stern and self-denying dictum which passes
current among some of your young friends, that “it is immoral to
believe what cannot be proved.”
Have you seriously asked yourself what you mean by “proved” in
enunciating this proposition? Do you mean “made sufficiently
probable to induce a man to act upon the probability”? Or do you
mean “absolutely demonstrated”?
If you mean the former, not so many as you suppose are guilty of
this “immorality.” Give me an instance, if you can, of a man who
“believes what cannot be made sufficiently probable to induce him to
act upon the probability.” Of course some men say they believe what
they, in reality, do not believe; but you speak, not about “saying” but
about “believing;” and I do not see how any man can “believe” what
he does not regard as probable. I am inclined to think therefore
that, in this sense of the word “prove,” your proposition is
meaningless.
But perhaps by “prove,” you mean “absolutely demonstrate;” and
your thesis is that “it is immoral to believe what cannot be absolutely
demonstrated;” in that case I am obliged to ask you how you can
repeat such cant, such a mere parrot cry, with a grave face.
Do you not see that, as soon as you conceded (as I understand you
to have done) that our belief in the Laws of Nature is based upon
the Imagination, you virtually conceded the validity of a kind of
proof in which faith and hope play a large part, and in which
demonstration is impossible. “Demonstration” applies to
mathematics and to syllogisms where the premises are granted,
though it is also sometimes loosely used of proof conveyed by
personal observation; “proof” applies to the other affairs of life.
Demonstration appeals very largely (not entirely, as I have shown
above, but very largely) to Reason; proof is largely based on Faith.
Having defined “angles,” “triangles,” “base,” and “isosceles,” and
having been granted certain axioms and postulates, I can
demonstrate that the angles at the basis of an isosceles triangle are
equal to one another; but I cannot “demonstrate” that, if I throw a
stone in the air, it will come down again, though I am perfectly
convinced that it will come down, and though I commonly assert
that I can “prove” that it will come down.
Why, your whole life is full of beliefs—as certain as any beliefs can
be—which it is impossible to demonstrate! When you got up this
morning did you not believe that your razor would shave and your
looking-glass reflect; that your boiling water would scald if you spilt
it, and your egg break if you dropped it; and a score or two of other
similar perfectly certain beliefs—all entertained and acted on in less
than an hour, but all incapable of demonstration? But you maintain
perhaps that “these beliefs are not beliefs, but knowledge based on
the uniformity of the laws of nature; you know that the laws of
nature are uniform, and therefore you knew that your razor would
shave.” But how, I ask, do you know that the laws of nature are
uniform? “By the experience of mankind during many thousands of
years.” But how do you know that what has been in the past will be
in the future—will be in the next instant? “Well, if a law of nature
were broken—say, for example, the law of gravitation—the whole
Universe would fall to pieces.” In other words, you and I would feel
extremely uncomfortable, if we existed long enough to feel anything;
but what does that demonstrate? Absolutely nothing. It would no
doubt be extremely inconvenient for both of us if any law of nature
observed in the past did not continue to be observed in the future;
but inconvenience proves nothing logically. It is no doubt extremely
inconvenient not to be able to believe that your razor will shave; but
what of that? Where is the demonstration? And remember your own
dictum, “It is immoral to believe what cannot be demonstrated.”
Perhaps you may try to writhe out of this application of your own
principle by the use of grand terms; “The Laws of Nature have been
proved to be true by experiment as well as by observation; they
have been made the basis for abstruse calculations and inferences
as to what will happen; then the philosopher has predicted ‘this will
happen,’ and it has happened. Surely no one will deny that this is a
proof!” A proof of what? Of the future invariableness of the
sequences of Nature? I shall not only deny, but enjoy denying, that
it is a proof; if you mean by proof such a demonstrative proof as you
obtain in a syllogism, where the premises are assumed, or in
mathematics, where you are reasoning about things that have no
real existence but are merely convenient ideas of the imagination.
Believe me, this distinction of terms is by no means superfluous. You
and your young scientific friends are continually confusing “proof”
with “demonstration;” and you have one use of the word “proof” for
religion and another for science. When you speak of religion, you
say “it is immoral to believe in it for it cannot be proved” (meaning
“demonstrated”); when you speak of science, you say, “This can be
proved” (not meaning “demonstrated,” but simply “made probable,”
or “proved for practical purposes”).
You may discourse for hours upon the Laws of Nature, but you will
never succeed in convincing any one, not even yourself, that they
will remain valid in the moment that is to come, by the mere force of
logic. You are certain—so am I practically quite certain—that the
stone which I throw at this moment up in the air, will, in the next
moment, fall to the ground. But this certainty does not arise from
logic. We have absolutely no reason for this leap into the darkness of
the future except faith,—faith of course resting upon a basis of facts,
but still faith. The very names and notions of “cause” and “effect”
are due not to observation, nor to demonstration, but to faith. The
name, and the notion, of a Law of Nature are nothing but
convenient ideas of the scientific imagination, based upon faith. Take
an instance. We say, and genuinely believe, that fire and gunpowder
“cause” explosion; that explosion is the “effect” of gunpowder and
fire; and that the effect follows the causes in accordance with the
“laws of nature;” but you have not observed all this and you cannot
demonstrate it. You have merely observed in the past an invariable
sequence of explosion following (in all cases that you have seen or
heard about) the combination of gunpowder and fire; you have also
perhaps predicted in the past that explosion would follow, and
demonstrated that it did follow this combination, as often as you
pleased; you have found, or have heard that others have found, that
this sequence agrees with other chemical sequences, which you are
in the habit of calling causes and effects; but all this is evidence as
to the past, not as to the future. Your certainty as to the future
arises not from any demonstration about the future, but from your
faith or trust in the fixed order of Nature, and from nothing else.
Now the greater part of the action of life deals with the future. It
follows therefore that, in the greater part of life, we act, not from
demonstration, but from a proof in which faith is a constituent
element.
Whence arises this trust in the uniformity of the phenomena of the
Universe? We can hardly give any other answer except that we could
not get on without it. Having been found to “work” by ourselves, and
by many generations of our forefathers, this faith is possibly by this
time an inherited instinct as well as the inbred result of our own
earliest experiences. But when we analyse it we are forced to
confess that we can give no logical account of it. Logically regarded,
it savours of the most audacious optimism, arguing, or rather
sentimentalizing, after this fashion: “It would be so immensely
inconvenient if Nature were every moment changing her rules
without notice! All forethought, all civilization would be at an end;
nay, we could not so much as take a single step or move a limb with
confidence, if we could not depend upon Nature!” Does not this
personification of Nature, and trust or faith in Nature, somewhat
resemble our trust or faith in God? I think it does; and it is very
interesting to note that the very foundations of science are laid in a
quasi-religious sentiment of which no logical justification can be
given.
I might easily go further and shew that, even as regards the past,
we act in our daily lives very often on the grounds of faith and very
seldom on the grounds of demonstration. On this I have touched in
a previous letter; but your dictum about the “immorality of believing
what cannot be proved” makes it clear that you are hardly as yet
aware of the nature of the ordinary “proofs” on which we act. How
few there are who have any grounds but faith for believing in the
existence of a Julius Cæsar or an Alexander! Yet they believe
implicitly. Many have heard these two great men loosely spoken of,
or alluded to; but they have never weighed, nor have they the least
power to weigh, the evidence that proves that Cæsar and Alexander
actually existed. Now as the unlearned are quite certain of the
existence of a Julius Cæsar, so are you too quite certain of many
facts upon very slight grounds. You ask one man his name; another,
how many children he has; a third, the name of the street in which
he lives, and so on; how certain you often feel, on the slight
evidence of their answers (unless there be special grounds for
suspecting them) that your information is correct! The reason is that
all social intercourse depends on faith; if you began to suspect and
disbelieve every man who gave you answers to such simple
questions as these, social life would be at an end for you, and you
might as well at once retire to a hermitage; scepticism in matters of
this kind has not worked, and faith has worked; and this has gone
on with you from childhood and with your forefathers from their
childhood for many generations. Thus faith has become a second
instinct with you, and you act upon it so often and so naturally that
you are not aware of the degree to which it influences and
permeates your actions. The cases in which you act thus instinctively
upon very slight evidence, and upon a large and general faith in the
people who give the evidence, are far more numerous than those
cases in which you formally weigh evidence and attempt to arrive at
something like demonstrative proof. In other words, not only as
regards the future but also as regards the past, faith is for the most
part the underlying basis of action. You believe, to a large extent
and in a great many cases, simply because “it would be so
immensely inconvenient not to believe.”
I claim that I have fulfilled my promise of shewing that people act
much more upon faith than upon demonstration in every department
of life; and I now repeat and emphasize what I said before, that if all
our existence is thus dominated by faith, it is absurd to attempt to
exclude faith from any religion. But if our special religion consists in
a recognition of God the Maker as God the Father, then it is more
natural than ever to suppose that our religion will require a large
element of faith or trust. Just as family life would break down if the
sons were always analysing the father’s character, and declining to
believe anything to his credit beyond what could be demonstrated to
be true, so religious life will break down, if we treat the Father in
heaven as a mere topic for logical discussion and declare that it is
“immoral to believe” in His fatherhood if it cannot be proved.
Of course I do not deny that you must have evidence of the
existence of the Father before you can trust in Him. You could not
trust your parents if you had not seen, touched, heard them—known
something of them in fact through the senses: so neither can you
trust God if you have not known something of Him through the
senses. Well, I maintain that is what you are continually doing. God
is continually revealing Himself to us in the power, the beauty, the
glory, the harmony, the beneficence, the mystery, of the Universe,
and pre-eminently in human goodness and greatness. Contemplate,
touch, hear; concentrate your mind on these things, and especially
on the perfection of human goodness, power, and wisdom: thus you
will be enabled to realize the presence of the Father and then to
trust in Him. Contemplate also the Evolution of the present from the
past: the ascent from a protoplasm to the first man, from the first
man to a Homer, a Dante, a Shakespeare and a Newton; do not
entirely ignore Socrates, St. Paul, St. Francis. You cannot indeed
shut your eyes to the growth of evil simultaneously with the growth
of good: but do not fix your eyes too long upon the evil: prefer to
contemplate the defeat of evil by goodness, especially in the
struggle on the Cross; and with your contemplation let there be
some admixture of action against the evil and for the good. Do this,
and I think you will have no reason to complain of the want of
“evidence” of the existence of One who has made us to trust in Him.
I have told you what to do: let me add one word also of warning as
to what you are not to do. You are not to regard the world from the
point of view of a neutral and amused spectator. You are not to
detach yourself from the great struggle of good against evil, and to
look on, and call it “interesting.” That attitude is fatal to all religion.
Reject, as from the devil, the precept nil admirari; better be a fool
than a dispassionate critic of Christ. Again, you are not to regard the
world from the mere student point of view, looking at the Universe
as a great Examination Paper in which you may hope to solve more
problems and score more marks than anybody else. High intellectual
pursuits and habits of enthusiastic research are sometimes terribly
demoralizing when they tempt a man to think that he can live above,
and without, social ties and affections, and that mere sentiment is to
be despised in comparison with knowledge. This danger impends
over literary as well as other students, over critical theologians as
well as over scientific experimenters; we all sometimes forget—we
students—that, if we do not exercise the habit of trusting and loving
men, we cannot trust and love God. To harden oneself against the
mute but trustful appeal of even a beast is not without some
spiritual peril of incapacitating oneself for worship.
 IX
SATAN AND EVOLUTION

My dear ——,
Your grounds of objection appear to be now changed. You say you
do not understand my position with regard to Evolution, as I
described it before, and referred to it in my last letter. If I admit
Evolution, you ask how I can consistently deny that every nation and
every individual, Israel and Christ included, “proceeded from
material causes by necessary sequence according to fixed laws;” and
in that case what becomes of such metaphors as “the regulating
hand of God,” “God the Ruler of the Universe” and the like? It is a
common saying, you tell me, among those of your companions who
have a turn for science, that “Evolution has disposed of the old
proofs of the existence of a God:” and you ask me how I meet this
objection.
I meet it by asking you another question exactly like your own. I
take a lump of clay and a potter’s wheel, and “from these material
causes by necessary sequence according to fixed laws” I mould a
vessel; is there no room in this process for “the regulating hand of
man” and for “man the creator of the vessel”? In other words, may
not these “fixed laws,” and that “necessity” of which you admit the
existence, represent the perpetual pressure of the Creator’s hand, or
will, upon the Universe?
By Evolution is meant that all results are evolved from immediate
causes, which are evolved from distant causes, which are
themselves evolved from more distant causes; and so on. In old
times, men believed that God made the world by a number of
isolated acts. Now, it is believed that He made a primordial
something, say atoms, out of which there have been shaped series
upon series of results by continuous motion in accordance with fixed
laws of nature. But neither the isolated theory nor the continuous
theory can dispense with a Creator in the centre. We speak of the
“chain of creation;” and we know that in old days men recognized
few links between us and the Creator. Now, we recognize many. But,
because a chain has more links than we once supposed, are we
excused for rejecting our old belief in the existence of a chain-
maker? Whether things came to be as they are, by many creations,
or by one creation and many evolutions, what difference does it
make? In the one case, we believe in a Creator and Sustainer: in the
other case, in a Creator and Evolver. In either case, do we not
believe in a God?
What then do your young friends mean—for though they express
themselves loosely, I think they do mean something and are not
merely repeating a cant phrase—when they say that Evolution has
“disposed of the old proofs of the existence of a God”? I think they
mean that Evolution is inconsistent with the existence of such a God
as the Christian religion proclaims, that is to say, a Father in heaven.
The old theory of discontinuous creation (in its most exaggerated
form) maintained that everything was created for a certain
benevolent purpose—our hair to shelter our heads from the weather,
our eyebrows and eyelashes to keep off the dust and the sun, our
thumbs to give us that prehensile power which largely differentiates
us from apes; in a word, paternal despotism was supposed to do
everything for us with the best of intentions. The new theory says
there is no sufficient evidence of such paternal benevolence. Our
hair and our eyebrows and eyelashes and thumbs came to us in
quite a different fashion. Life, ever since life existed, has been one
vast scramble and conflict for the good things of this world: those
beings that were best fitted for scrambling and fighting destroyed
those that were unfit, and thus propagated the peculiarities of the
conquerors and destroyed the peculiarities of the conquered. Thus
the characteristics of body or brain best fitted for the purpose of life
were developed, and the unfit were destroyed. Although therefore a
purpose was achieved, it was not achieved as a purpose, but as a
consequence. There is no room, say the supporters of Evolution, in
such a theory as this for the hypothesis of an Almighty Father of
mankind, or even of a very intelligent Maker. What should we think
of a British workman who, in order to make one good brick, made a
hundred bad ones, or of a cattle-breeder whose plan was to breed a
thousand inferior beasts on inadequate pasture, in order ultimately
to produce, out of their struggles for food, and as a result of the
elimination of the unfittest, one pre-eminent pair?
When he expresses himself in this way, my sympathies go very far
with the man of science, if only he could remember that he is
protesting, not against Christ’s teaching about God, but against
some other quite different theory. Though God is called “Almighty” in
the New Testament, we must remember that it is always assumed
that there is an opposing Evil, an Adversary or Satan, who will
ultimately be subdued but is meantime working against the will of
God. The origin of this Evil the followers of Christ do not profess to
understand but we believe that it was not originated by God and
that it is not obedient to Him. We cannot therefore, strictly speaking,
say that God is the Almighty ruler of “the Universe as it is.” God is
King de jure, but not at present de facto (metaphors again! but
metaphors expressive of distinct realities). His kingdom is “to come:”
He will be hereafter recognized as Almighty; He cannot be so
recognized at present.
I know very well that I can give no logical or consistent account of
this mysterious resistance to the Supreme God. But I am led to
recognize it, first, by the facts of the visible world; secondly, by the
plain teaching of Christ Himself. Surely the authority of Christ must
count for something with Christians in their theorizing about the
origin of evil. Would not even an agnostic admit that as, in poetry, I
should be right in following the lead of a poet, so in matters of
spiritual belief (if I am to have any spiritual belief at all) I am right in
deferring to Christ? It is a marvel to me how some Christians who
find the recognition of miracles inextricably involved in the life and
even in the teaching of Christ, nevertheless fail to see, or at all
events are most unwilling to confess, that the recognition of an evil
one, or Satan, is an axiom that underlies all His doctrine. In the view
of Jesus, it is Satan that causes some forms of disease and insanity;
Satan is the author of temptation, the destroyer of the good seed,
the sower of tares, the “evil one”—so at least the text of the
Revisers tells us—from whom we must daily pray to be delivered.
The same belief pervades the writings of St. Paul. Yet if you preach
nowadays this plain teaching of our Lord, the heterodox shrug their
shoulders and cry “Antediluvian!” while the orthodox think to dispose
of the whole matter in a phrase, “Flat Manichæism!” But to the
heterodox I might reply that Stuart Mill (no very antiquated or
credulous philosopher) deliberately stated that it was more easy to
believe in the existence of an Evil as well as a Good, than in the
existence of one good and all-powerful God; and the orthodox must,
upon reflection, admit that in this doctrine about Satan Christ’s own
teaching is faithfully followed.
Of course if any one replies, “Christ was under an illusion in
believing in the existence of Satan,” I have no means of logically
confuting him. But I think there must be many who would say, with
me: “If I am to have any theory in matters of this kind which are
entirely beyond the sphere of demonstration, I would sooner accept
the testimony of Christ than the speculations of all the philosophers
that ever were or are. Christ was possibly, or even probably, ignorant
(in His humanity) of a great mass of literary, historical, physiological,
and other scientific facts unknown to the rest of the Jews. But we
cannot suppose Him to be spiritually ignorant; least of all, so
spiritually ignorant as to attribute to the Adversary what ought to
have been attributed to God the Father in Heaven.”
It would be easy for you to shew that any theory of Satan is
absurdly illogical; nobody can be convinced of that more firmly than
I am already. Whether Satan was good at first and became evil
without a cause; or was good at first and became evil from a certain
cause (which presupposes another pre-existing Satan); or was evil
from the beginning and created by God; or evil from the beginning
and not created by God—in all or any of these hypotheses I see, as
clearly as you see, insuperable difficulties. If you cross-examine me,
I shall avow at once a logical collapse, after this fashion: “Were
there then two First Causes?” I believe not. “Did the Evil spring up
after the Good?” I believe so. “Did the first Good create the Evil?”[5] I
believe not. “Did the Evil then spring up without a cause?” I cannot
tell. “Did the Good, when He created the Goodness that issued in
Evil, know that he, or it, contained the germ of evil, and would soon
become wholly evil?” I do not believe this. “Whence then came the
Evil, or the germ of the Evil?” I do not know. “Are you not then
confessing that you believe, where you know nothing?” Yes, for if I
knew, there would be no need to believe.
Here you have a sufficiently amusing exhibition of inconsistency and
ignorance; but this seems to me of infinitely little concern where I
am dealing not with matters that fall within the range of experience,
but with spiritual and supernatural things that belong to the realm of
faith, hope, and aspiration. I could just as easily turn inside out my
cross examiner if he undertook to give me a scientific theory on the
origin of the world. No doubt he might prefer having no theory
about the origin of the world, and might recommend me to imitate
him by having no theory about the origin of Evil, or about the nature
of the Supreme Good. But my answer would be as follows: “I have a
certain work to do in the world, and I cannot go on with my work
without having some theories on these subjects. Most men feel with
me that they must have some answer to these stupendous problems
of existence. As the senses are intended to be our guide in matters
of experience, so our faculty of faith seems to me intended to guide
us in matters quite beyond experience.” There is another answer
which I hardly like to give because it seems brutal; but I believe it to
be true, and it is certainly capable of being expressed in the
evolutionary dialect so as to commend itself to the scientific mind:
“An agnostic nation will find itself sooner or later unsuited for its
environment, and will either come to believe in some solution of
these spiritual problems or stagnate and perish. And something of
the same result will follow from agnosticism in the family and in the
individual.”
From this doctrine of Christ then I am not to be dislodged by any
philosophic analysis demonstrating that good and evil so run into
one another that it is impossible to tell where one ends and the
other begins. “Is all pain evil? Is it an evil that a sword’s point pains
you? Would it not be a greater evil that a sword should run you
through unawares because it did not pain you? Is not the pain of
hunger a useful monitor? Has not pain in a thousand cases its use as
a preservative? Is not what you call ‘sin’ very often misplaced
energy? If a child is restless and talkative and consequently
disobedient, must you consequently bring in Satan to account for the
little one’s peccadilloes? If a young man is over-sanguine, reckless,
rash, occasionally intemperate, must all these faults be laid upon the
back of an enemy of mankind? Is animal death from Satan, but
vegetable death from God? And is the death of a sponge a half and
half contribution from the joint Powers? And when I swallow an
oyster, may I give thanks to God? but when a tiger devours a deer,
or an eagle tears a hare, or a thrush swallows a worm, are they
doing the work of the Adversary? Where are you to begin to trace
this permeating Satanic agency? Go back to the primordial atom. Are
we to say that the Devil impelled it in the selfish tangential straight
line, and that God attracts it with an unselfish centripetal force, and
that the result is the harmonious curve of actuality? If you give
yourself up to such a degrading dualism as this, will you not be more
often fearing Satan than loving God? Will you not be attributing to
Satan one moment, what the next moment will compel you to
attribute to God? Where will you draw the line?” To all this my
answer is very simple: “I shall draw the line where the spiritual
instinct within me draws it. Whatever I am forced to pronounce
contrary to God’s intention I shall call evil and attribute to Satan.”
Herein I may go wrong in details, and I may have to correct my
judgments as I grow in knowledge; but I am confident that, on the
whole, I shall be following the teaching of Christ. My spiritual
convictions accord with the teaching of that ancient allegory in the
book of Genesis, which tells us that Satan, not God, brought sin and
death into the world. There was a Fall somewhere, in heaven
perhaps as well as on earth—“war in heaven” of the Evil against the
Good—a declension from the divine ideal, a lapse by which the
whole Universe became imperfect. It has been the work of God, not
to create death, but upon the basis of death to erect a hope and
faith in a higher life; not to create sin, but out of sin, repentance,
and forgiveness, to elicit a higher righteousness than would have
been possible (so we speak) if sin had never existed. Similarly of
disease, and pain, and the conflict in the animal world for life and
death: good has resulted from them; yet I cannot think of them, I
cannot even think of change and decay, as being, so to speak, “parts
of God’s first intention.” Stoics, and Christians who imitate Stoics,
may call these things “indifferent:” I cannot. And even if I could,
what of the ferocity, and cruelty, and exultation in destruction, which
are apparent in the animal world? “Death,” say the Stoics, “is the
mere exit from life.” Is it? I was once present at a theatre in Rouen
where the hero took a full quarter of an hour to die of poison, and
the young Normans who sat round me expressed their strenuous
disapprobation: “C’est trop long,” they murmured. I have made the
same remonstrance in my heart of hearts, ever since I was a boy
and saw a cat play with a mouse, and a patient stoat hunt down and
catch at last a tired-out rabbit: “It is too long,” “It is too cruel.” “Did
God ordain this?”—I asked: and I answered unhesitatingly “No.”
These are but small phenomena in Nature’s chamber of horrors: but
for me they have always been, and will always remain, horrible. I
believe that God intends us to regard them with horror and perhaps
to see in them some faint reflection of the wantonly destructive and
torturing instinct in man.
Those are fine-sounding lines, those of Cleanthes:—

οἰδέ τι γίγνεται ἔργον ἐπὶ χθονὶ σου δίχα, δαῖμον,

πλὴν ὅποσα ῥέζουσι κακοὶ σφετέρῃσιν ἀνοίαις.[6]
I should like to agree with them; but I cannot. The picture of the cat
and the mouse appears—fertile in suggestions. “This at least,” I say,
“was not wrought by ‘evil men in their folly;’ and yet it did not come
direct from God.” Isaiah pleases me better with his prediction,
physiologically absurd, but spiritually most true: “The lion shall eat
straw like a bullock.” That is just the confession that I need: it comes
to me with all the force of a divine acknowledgment, as if God
thereby said: “Death and conflict must be for a time, but they shall
not be for ever: it was not my intention, it is not my will, that my
creatures should thrive by destroying each other.”
Applying this theory to Evolution, I believe that Satan, not God, was
the author of the wasteful and continuous conflict that has
characterized it; but that God has utilized this conflict for the
purposes of development and progress. This is what I had in my
mind when I said that Evolution diminished the difficulties in the way
of acknowledging the existence of a God. The problems of death,
destruction, waste, conflict and sin, are not new; they are as old as
Job, perhaps as old as the first-created man; but it is new to learn
that good has resulted from those evils. In so far as Evolution has
taught this, it has helped to strengthen, not to weaken, our faith.
But then, if we are to use this language, we must learn to think, not
of “Evolution by itself,” but of “Evolution with Satan.” “Evolution
without Satan” would appal us by the seeming wastefulness and
ubiquity of conflict and the indirectness of its benefits; but “Evolution
with Satan” enables us to realize God as our refuge and strength
amid the utmost storms and tempests of destruction.
If any one says that the belief in Satan is inexpedient, I am ready to
give him a patient hearing; but I find it difficult to listen patiently to
what people are pleased to call arguments against it. For example,
“Duty can exist only in a world of conflict;” to which the reply is
obvious, “But God might have made men for love and harmonious
obedience, and not for duty and conflict.” This, of course, is a very
presumptuous statement, such as Bishop Butler would have
condemned; but it is a fitting reply to a still more presumptuous
implied statement. God has revealed Himself as Righteousness and
Goodness without internal conflict; He has also revealed His purpose
to conform us to Himself; and the Bible speaks of Him as being
opposed by an Adversary who caused men for a time to differ from
the divine image; is it not then a very presumptuous thing to imply
that “God could not have created men but for conflict and duty,” or,
in other words, “God could not have made us better than we are,
even had there been no Adversary opposing His will?” Again, we
hear it said that, “An evil Spirit contending against a good Spirit
must needs have produced two distinct worlds, and not the one
progressive world of which we have experience:” to which the
answer is equally obvious, “The orbit of every planet, or the path of
any projectile, shows that two different forces may result in one
continuous curve.”
The only consistent and systematic way of rejecting a belief in the
existence of Satan is to reject the belief in the existence of sin. Then
you can argue thus, “The notion of a Satan arises from the false and
sharp antagonism which our human imaginations set up between
‘good’ and ‘evil,’ whereas what we call ‘evil’ is really nothing but an
excess of tendencies good in themselves and only evil when carried
to excess. The difference therefore between good and evil is only a
question of degree.” That theory sounds plausible; but it ignores the
essence of sin, which consists in a rebellion against Conscience. It is
not excess, or defect, the more, or the less; it is the moral disorder,
the subversion of human nature, which is so frightful to contemplate
that we cannot believe it to have proceeded from God. But perhaps
you reply, “That very disorder is merely the result of energy out of
place or in excess.” Well, in the same way, when gas is escaping in a
room in which there is a lighted candle, there is first a quiet and
inoffensive escape of the gas, and secondly a violent and perhaps
calamitous explosion; and you might argue similarly, “The difference
was only one of degree; the explosion was merely the result of a
useful element out of place and in excess.” But I should answer that
no sober and sensible householder would justify himself in this way
for allowing a lighted candle and escaping gas to come together;
and so I cannot believe that God is willing that men should justify