Symbolism and Belief

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Originally published in 1938. SYMBOLISM AND BELIEF by EDWYN BEVAN PREFACE: THE lectures contained in this volume were given for the University of Edinburgh on Lord Giffords founda tion In the years 1933 and 1934. I have delayed their publication in the hope that with process of time I might, by further reading and thought, be able to expand and modify them, so as to make them more worthy of presen tation to the public in the form of a book. This hope has been so meagrely realized that it now seems best to let them go forth, with all their imperfections on their head, hardly at all altered from the form in which they were delivered. Some changes in arrangement have been made in the order of lectures the two on Time now follow immediately the two on the spatial symbol of Height. Four lectures have been omitted altogether from the present volume, those on image-worship and doctrines ondemning the manufacture of images in antiquity and in the Christian Church. Since in the rest of the lectures ihe symbolism of material objects in worship was not the kind of symbolism under consideration, these four lectures seemed somewhat of a digression from the main ine of argument. I hope later on to issue them as a small book by themselves. As is generally known, Lord Giffords Will prescribes hat lecturers on his foundation are not to ask their iudience to believe any statement on the ground of any special revelation, whether contained in Scripture or the iogma of a Church, but to rest what they affirm solely upon grounds of reason. That is to say, their basis must be the facts of the world so far as they are accessible to the reason common to mankind. I hope that I have nowhere transgressed this restriction imposed t by the munificent benefactor to whom these lectures owe their existence. Of course beliefs entertained by the Christian Church, or by Theists, are, as psychological facts, among the indisputable facts of the world, and a Gifford lecturer is, I take it, permitted to point to them, as such, though he may not ask his hearers to accept them on the authority of Church or Scripture. Since my two lectures on Time were written, a note worthy contribution to the subject, from a Christian standpoint, has been made by Mr. F. H. Brabant in his Bampton Lectures, Time and Eternity in Christian Thought delivered in 1936, published in 1937. It was unfortunate for me that I had not Mr. Brabants book before me, when I wrote my two lectures. Of one thing I am sure that the questions I have raised regarding the element of symbolism in our religious conceptions take us to the very heart of the religious problem. How inadequate my attempts to answer them have been no one can be more conscious than I am. But if I have succeeded in putting the questions themselves in a somewhat clearer light, so that the thought of others may be directed upon them with richer result, that at any rate is something which I trust the University which honoured me by appointing me to this lectureship will accept as something worth doing. Contents include: LECTURE PAGE Preface 7 I. Introductory 1 1 II. Height 28 III. Height continued 58 IV. Tiihe 82 V. Time continued 102 VI. Light 125 VII. Spirit 151 VIII. Spirit continued 177 IX. The Wrath of God 206 X. The Wrath of God continued 23 1 XI. Distinction of Literal and Symbolical 252 XII. Symbols Without Conceptual Meaning 275 XIII. Pragmatism and Analogy 297 XIV. Mansel and Pragmatism 318 XV. Rationalism and Mysticism 341 S XVI. The Justification of Belief 364 Index 387.