Scripture texts illustrated by general literature

“We know in part,” said the apostle; who, therefore, prophesied in part; always with the assurance that when that which is perfect is come, then shall that which is in part be done away. Meanwhile, we see through a glass darkly, through a medium obscurely—“now I know in part.”

If so it was with him that once was caught up into the third heavens, much more with his readers. For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing. “Behold, God is great, and we know Him not.” At the height of our knowledge we can but fall back upon the old saying, “Lo, these are parts of His ways; but how little a portion is heard of Him!” And when we consider the heavens, the work of His hands; the moon and the stars, which He hath ordained; the earth beneath, the ocean round about, the waters under the earth, the pent-up fires within it,—verily He is a God that hideth Himself still, and that revealeth but a portion of His work, clouds and darkness covering the rest. His thoughts are very deep; and what is man that he should know them, or the son of man that he should find them out unto perfection? From the topmost pinnacles attained by science he can see but the utmost part of them, and cannot see them all.

Locke argues the intellectual and sensible world to be in this perfectly alike: that the part which we see of them holds no proportion with what we see not; and that whatsoever we can reach with our eyes, or our thoughts, of either of them, is but a point, almost nothing, in comparison with the rest. Shall he whose birth, maturity, and age, as Beattie has it, scarce fill the circle of one summer day—shall the poor gnat conclude nature in collapse because of a passing cloud, not transparent to the insect’s vision?

Freethinking Lord Shaftesbury begins a section of his “Characteristics” with the remark, that when we reflect on any ordinary frame or constitution, either of art or nature, and consider how hard it is to give the least account of a particular part without a competent knowledge of the whole, we need not wonder to find ourselves at a loss in many things relating to the constitution and frame of the universe. Elsewhere he suggestively observes, that in an infinity of things mutually relative, a mind which sees not infinitely, can see nothing fully; “and since each particular has relation to all in general, it can know no perfect or true relation of anything in a world not perfectly and fully known.” And supposing the case of an ignorant landsman presuming to question the details of a ship’s rigging, his lordship breaks out into the apostrophe, “O my friend, let us not thus betray our ignorance, but consider where we are, and in what a universe. Think of the many parts of the vast machine in which we have so little insight, and of which it is impossible we should know the ends and uses; when instead of seeing to the highest pennons, we see only some lower deck, and are in this dark case of flesh, confined even to the hold and meanest station of the vessel.” There is Mrs. Browning’s usual energy of diction in the exclamation,

The same good Providence, as Madame de Sévigné writes, that governs all, shall one day unravel all; we poor mortals being, in the meanwhile, so many all but stone-blind and utterly ignorant lookers-on. We suffer, as the author of “Thorndale” says—there is no doubt about that—and we naturally speak and think under the sharp pang of our present agony; but the ultimate and overruling judgment which we form of human life, should be taken from some calm, impersonal point of view. “We should command the widest horizon possible. Of the great whole of humanity we see but a little at a time. We pause sometimes on the lights only of the picture, sometimes only on the shadows. How very dark those shadows seem! Yet if we could embrace in our view the whole of the picture, perhaps the very darkest shadows might be recognised as effective or inevitable portions of a grand harmonious whole.” How closes Thomson his poem of “The Seasons,” drear Winter then his cue?—with the memorable lines:—

The theme of our part knowledge, so strictly cabin’d, cribb’d, confined, is one to which Thomson repeatedly recurs. For instance, in an earlier book:—

Again, with emphasis and discretion (as Polonius says), he puts the query—

Horace Walpole makes use of a similar figure in one of his three or four thousand published letters: “We are poor silly animals: we live for an instant upon a particle of a boundless universe, and are much like a butterfly that should argue about the nature of the seasons, and what creates their vicissitudes, and does not exist itself to see one annual revolution of them.”

Addison, in one of his essays, comments on the body of an animal as an object comparatively adequate to our senses, it being a particular part of Providence that lies within a narrow compass, so that the eye is able to command it, and by successive inquiries to search into all its parts. Could the body of the whole earth, he goes on to say, or indeed the whole universe, be thus subjected to the examination of our senses, were it not too big and disproportioned for our inquiries, too unwieldy for the management of the eye and hand, “there is no question but it would appear to us as curious and well-contrived a frame as that of a human body. We should see the same concatenation and subserviency, the same necessity and usefulness, the same beauty and harmony, in all and every of its parts, as what we discover in the body of every single animal.” To adopt an illustration of Fénélon’s to the same purpose: imagine the letters of a sentence to be so enormous in size, that a man could only make out one of them at a time; in that case he could not read, that is, collect the letters together and discover the sense of them in combination. So it is, argues the benign prelate, with the grands traits of Providence in the conduct of the world at large during the lapse of centuries. It is only the whole that is intelligible, and the whole is too vast to be scrutinised near at hand. Each event in the process of ages is like a separate letter or sign, which is too large for our petty organs, and which is without a meaning when taken apart from the rest. A more vigorous philosopher than the gentle Fénélon compares the universe to a picture, the beauty of which is then alone perceptible when the true stand-point of perspective is taken. There are certain inventions in perspective, or certain beautiful designs, he says, which look all confusion until you either inspect them from the right point of view, or make use of some kind of glass or mirror as the medium of observation. In the same manner the apparent deformities of our fractional side-views, resolve themselves into harmonious unity when the eye is directed aright.

Dr. Johnson was in an unwontedly placid and benignant frame of mind, by Boswell’s account, when the two stood together, one serene autumn night, in Dr. Taylor’s garden, and the sage delivered himself, in meditative mood, of this noteworthy surmise: “Sir,” said he, “I do not imagine that all things will be made clear to us immediately after death, but that the ways of Providence will be explained to us very gradually.” Be that as it may, few could have been found more ready than the melancholic Johnson to agree that meanwhile, until the day star arise and the shadows flee away,

It was at a time of national and household tribulation, when darkness that might be felt seemed to encompass altar and hearth, that Joseph de Maistre wrote to a friend in trouble: “Be it enough for us to know, that for everything there is a reason with which we shall one day become acquainted; let us not weary ourselves with seeking out the why and the wherefore, even when possibly they might be discerned.” He would have his correspondent bear in mind that the epithet “very good” is a necessary adjunct to “very great;” and that is sufficient. The inference is self-evident, that under the sway of the Being who combines in himself those two qualities—the très-bon and the très-grand—all the evils we either suffer or witness must needs be acts of justice or means of reformation equally indispensable. In the declared love of God to man, M. de Maistre found a general solution of all the enigmas that can offend (scandaliser, in the New Testament sense of putting a stumbling-block in the way of) our ignorance. “Fixed to one little point of time and space, we are insane enough to refer all to this point; and in so doing we are at once blameworthy and absurd.” If De Maistre’s collation of the très-bon with the très-grand resembles the lines of Drummond’s hymn beginning,

so is the scope of his argument at one with what follows:

What we call this life of men on earth, as Mr. Browning’s island-poet has it, is, as he finds much reason to conceive,

Pope’s well-worked line is of perpetual application,

So is the avowal of the present laureate:

To us, as Sir Benjamin Brodie remarks, in one of his psychological discussions, the universe presents itself as an assemblage of heterogeneous phenomena, some of which we can reduce to laws of limited operation, while others stand by themselves, bearing no evident relation to anything besides. We may well, he thinks, suppose that there are in the universe beings of a superior intelligence, and possessed of a greater range of observation, who are sufficiently “behind the scenes” to be able to contemplate all the immense variety of material phenomena as the result of one great general law. Their standpoint may enable them to see a Cosmos, a world of order, where to lower intelligences Chaos alone is discernible, a world comparatively without form and void, with darkness upon the face of its deep. And as with the physical, so with the metaphysical. As with the material, so with the moral.