The Supernatural - By Mr. GuizotWe extracted a remarkable chapter about the supernatural from the
new book ‘L’Église et la Societé Chrétienne’ 1861, by Mr. Guizot. It
is not a speech for or against Spiritism as one might think because it does
not discuss the new Doctrine, but since Spiritism is inseparable from the
supernatural to the eyes of many, being a superstition according to some
and a truth according to others, it is interesting to get to know the opinion
of a man of the caliber of Mr. Guizot about the subject. There are comments
in this work of indisputable accuracy, but we also believe there are
big mistakes given by the point of view or taken by the author. We will
provide an in-depth analysis in our next issue.
“Every attack against Christianity today, irrespective of how diverse they
are in nature and measure, start from the same point and tend to the same
end, that is the negation of the supernatural in human’s destiny and in the
world, and the abolition of the supernatural element from the Christian
religion, as with every religion, in their history and dogmas.”
“Materialists, Pantheists, Rationalists, Skeptical, Critics, Erudite,
some openly others discretely, all think and speak their ideas that the human being and the world, its moral as its physical nature, they are only
governed by general laws, permanent and necessary, whose course has
never been or will never be suspended or modified. I don’t have the intention
of thoroughly discussing this matter here, essential to all religions.
I just want to submit to the declared or occult adversaries of the supernatural
two observations, or more precisely, two facts that in my opinion
resolve the issue.”
“It is about a natural or supernatural faith, about an instinct inherent
to the supernatural that is the basis of every religion. I don’t mean every
religious idea but every positive religion, practical, powerful, lasting and
popular. Everywhere, in all climates, at all times in History, at all levels of
civilization, the human being carries this feeling that I would rather call
presentiment, and that the world which he sees, the order of things, the
facts that are succeeded regularly around him are not everything. In that
vast reality it is in vain that he finds new discoveries and conquers new
things; it is in vain that he wisely attests the permanent laws that preside
over everything. His thoughts are not bounded by this universe of his science.
Such spectacle is not enough to his soul. His soul goes beyond, seeking.
It foresees something else. It aspires for other destinies and another
master to the universe and to itself.”
“Beyond all these heavens the God of heaven resides, said Voltaire, and
the God who is beyond all heavens, is not the personified nature but the
supernatural itself. To him, this is how religions are addressed; they are
based in the objective of putting the human being in connection with
God. Without the instinctive faith of people in the supernatural, without
its spontaneous and invincible impulse towards the supernatural, there
would be no religion.”
“Among all creatures here, the human being is the only one that prays.
Among his natural instincts there isn’t any that is more natural, more universal,
and more invincible than prayer. The child accepts it with a kind
solicitude. The elderly kneel before it as in a refuge for decadence and
isolation. Prayer reaches the young lips just mumbling God’s name and
the lips of the agonizing that no longer have the strength to say it. Among
all people, luminary or obscure, civilized or barbarians, have their formulas
and prescriptions for invocation. Wherever there is man, in certain
circumstances, at certain times, under certain impressions of the soul, the
eyes look above, hands are united, and knees are bent to implore and to
say grace, to worship or appease.”
“With joy or fear, publically or in the intimacy of the heart, the human
being seeks prayer as the last resort to fulfill the emptiness of his soul
or to carry the heavy loads of his fate. It is prayer that he seeks when everything
else fails, when he doesn’t find support in his weakness, consolation
in his sufferings, hope for his virtue.”
“Nobody ignores the moral and innermost value of prayer, irrespectively
of its effectiveness given its objective. The soul is relieved for the
simple fact that it prays, it stands, calms down, finds strength. Returning
to God the soul experiences that feeling of health and rest that spreads all
over the body, changing from a heavy and troubled appearance to a serene
and pure ambience. God comes in support of those who have implored
before and without knowing if he will answer.”
“Will he listen? What is the definitive and exterior efficacy of prayer?
That is the mystery, the impenetrable mystery of God’s designs and actions
upon each one of us. What we do know is that our life, both the internal
and exterior life, it is not up to us to dispose of that according to our
thoughts and wishes. All names that we can give to that part of our destiny
and that does not belong to us: chance, fortune, star, nature, fatality
these are other veils that cover our ignorance. When we use those words
we refuse to see God where God actually is. God is beyond the limited
sphere of the human being’s actions and power, God that reigns and acts.
There is in the natural and universal act of prayer a natural and universal
faith in that free and permanent action of God upon the human being
and his destiny. We are workers together with God, says St. Paul: workers
with God in the works in general for the destiny of humanity and that of
our own destiny, past and future. That is what allows us to see prayer as
the link between the human being and God. But the light stops there for
us. The paths of God are not our paths. We walk them without knowing them. Belief without seeing and prayer without foreseeing are the conditions
imposed on the human being in this world for everything beyond
his own limits. It is in the awareness and acceptance of that supernatural
order that faith and religious life consist.”
“Thus, Mr. Edmund Scherer is right when he doubts that ‘Christian
rationalism is and can ever be a religion’. And why has Mr. Jules Simon,
who bows so respectfully before God, did he title his book: La Religion
Naturelle? He should have called it Philosophie Religieuse.” Philosophy pursues
and reaches some of the great ideas upon which religion is founded.
However, given the nature of its processes and the limits of its domain, it
has never founded and it could not found a religion. Speaking more accurately,
there is no natural religion, as soon as you abolish the supernatural,
religion disappears.”
“Who would dare deny that this instinctive faith in the supernatural
source of religion can be and has also been a source of an unlimited number
of mistakes and superstitions, a source to their tower of infinite pain,
but to dream of denying it? Here, as in everything else, it is in the human
being’s condition that good and evil are incessantly mixed in the human
being’s destiny and in his works, like in himself, however from that incurable
mixture it does not follow that our great destinies have no meaning
and that do nothing but to set as free in our elevations. Having said that,
and whatever our deviations, it is still certain that the supernatural is part
of the natural faith of the human being, being the sine qua non condition
(essential), the true object, the very essence of religion.”
“Here is a second fact that I believe deserves the thorough attention of
the adversaries of the supernatural.”
“It is acknowledged and attested by Science that our globe has not
always been in the condition that it is today; that at several and undetermined
times it suffered great transformations, transformations that altered
its face, the physical cycles, the population; that the human being,
in particular, has not always existed and that he could not have existed
in several of the progressive states through which Earth was submitted.”
“How has he come into being? How and through which power did
humankind begin on Earth?”
“There could only be two explanations for that origin: it was either
the product of nature’s own work and intimate natural forces of matter or
it was the works of a supernatural power, external and superior to matter.
For the appearance of the human being on Earth, it must have been one
of these two possible causes: spontaneous generation or creation.”
“Admitting, and that is something that I cannot admit, the spontaneous
generation, such mode of production could not ever have produced
but children, at the first hour and in the beginning of nascent life. I don’t
believe that anybody has ever said that true the virtue of spontaneous
generation a man and a woman, a couple, could have been produced out
of matter, and with their faculties, stature, strength, etc. such as the Greek
Paganism made Minerva out of Jupiter’s brain.”
“That is the only way that the human being could have appeared the
first time on Earth and lived, perpetuating the species. Now imagine the
first man appearing here as a child, alive but inert, unintelligent, powerless,
incapable of sustaining himself, in a single moment, cold and trembling,
without a mother to listen and feed him! That is, however, the first
man that could be produced by the system of spontaneous generation.”
“Evidently the other possible origin of the human species is the only
admissible, the only possible. It is only the supernatural event that can
explain the first apparition of the human being here on Earth.”
“Those who denied or abolished the supernatural would abolish every
religion at the same time. It is useless to triumph upon the supernatural,
so many times wrongly introduced in our world and in our history; they
are forced to stop before the supernatural cradle of humanity, powerless to
produce the human being without the hands of God.”
Guizot
