The name which most fitly describes the extreme form of unbelief is Positivism.(903) This system of philosophy, already stated to have been invented by Comte, is silent about the existence of a Deity. It inculcates the belief in general laws, and acknowledges the order in Nature, which we are accustomed to regard as the result of mind; but declines to argue to the existence of a designing mind, where the evidence cannot be verified by proof referable to sensation. Nature"s laws are in its view the only Providence; obedience to them the only piety. A few minds may be found, which not only accept the positive philosophy, but even receive the religion taught in the positivist catechism.(904) Unable to satisfy the longings of their heart by this system of Cosmism, they receive the extravagant idea of the worship of humanity, which Comte invented in his later days.
Such a creed cannot hold the ma.s.ses. But Positivism in another shape, called Secularism,(905) is actively propagated among the lower orders.
Replacing the sensuous philosophy and political antipathies of Owen, it is taught, unconnected with the political agitation which marked his views, as a philosophy of life, and a subst.i.tute for religion. It a.s.serts three great principles:-first, that nature is the only subject of knowledge; the existence of a personal G.o.d being regarded as uncertain: secondly, that science is the only Providence: and thirdly, that the great business of man is, as the name, secularism, implies, to attend to the affairs of the present world, which is certain, rather than of a future, which is uncertain. Not content however with this negative position, the writers of this cla.s.s, as was to be expected, have directed positive attacks against the special doctrines of Christianity, and regard the Bible to be the enemy of progress.(906)
It is impossible to estimate the extent to which these views are diffused.
The statistics of the sale of secularist tracts would doubtless give an exaggerated idea of it. The high standard of morality advocated in them, so likely to attract rather than repel, the clear writing, and the agreement of the views with the experience afforded by the daily life of working men, give them power among the lower orders. The absorbing character of labour has a tendency, especially in an advanced state of civilization, to depress the sense of the supernatural in man, and fix his thoughts on the present world: and it is generally the sense of trouble alone which can lift men out of themselves, and recall to their remembrance the presence of a G.o.d on whom the sorrowing heart may lean for help.
Opinions derived from positivism, or at least from physical science, enter into other spheres of thought than those just named; and both affect writers who hardly touch upon the subject of religion; and create difficulties in the minds of Christians themselves, either in reference to prime doctrines of religion, or the particular teaching on physical questions implied in the sacred books.
The diffusion of the fundamental conception of the perpetuity of nature"s laws, has a tendency to create in literature a mode of viewing the world alien to the providential view of the divine government implied in religion. The application of statistics in social philosophy for the discovery of the general laws which regulate society and create civilization, not unfrequently leaves an impression that man as well as matter depends upon fixed laws; which is irreconcileable with belief in human freedom or in divine interference, and sometimes causes religion to be regarded as a conservative force, which in its nature is alien to civilization.(907)
Nor is the danger confined to the various branches of secular literature: the views of even religious men are not unfrequently modified by it, or painful doubts are created where the head contradicts the heart. In proportion as phenomena are shown not to depend on chance, the misgiving is felt as to the reality of special providence and the value of prayer, in reference to temporal affairs. The sphere for confiding pet.i.tions is felt to be narrowed; and miracles, instead of becoming an evidence for religion, become a difficulty. Even where fundamental difficulties, such as these, do not sap the religious life, the belief that the inspiration of the sacred books guarantees the truth of the views of physical science, the cosmogony, physiology, ethnology, and chronology, contained therein, creates a further body of difficulties,(908) less fundamental but more painful, because founded on the apparent want of harmony of scripture with the progressive discoveries of natural science.
While these are the species of temptations to unbelief which appertain to one source of opinions, viz. that which relies upon sensation as the ultimate test of truth; doubts similar in character, though different in cause, manifest themselves in that portion of our literature which appeals for its proof to the faculty of insight, and which believes in mental sources of information which are independent of sensation. If the one tends towards atheism, or to a deism in which the world is viewed as a machine; the other tends towards pantheism or to naturalism, wherein no opportunity for interposition by miraculous revelation is retained, but the inner consciousness of man is regarded as able to create a religion.
The former cla.s.s of views belongs to minds accustomed to experimental science; this to those which are conversant with spiritual or aesthetic subjects: the former expresses itself in the region of science, and tempts men of thought; the latter expresses itself rather in the region of literature, and tempts men of sentiment.
One writer, a prince in the region of letters,(909) may be adduced, many of whose works imply, directly or indirectly, a mode of viewing the world and society contrary to that which is taught in Christianity. He is the highest type of the antagonist position which literature now a.s.sumes in reference to the Christian faith, and which finds some parallel in the contest which occurred in Julian"s time, and at the Renaissance.
Though possessing too much originality to borrow consciously from the literature of Germany, yet it is easy to discover that the fire of his imagination has been kindled in contact with the marvellous insight of Goethe, the pathos of Jean Paul, and the faith in eternal truth which marked Jacobi. Their rival rather than disciple, he hails the philosophy of his own country as a first approximation to truth; but regards the German mind as having seen more deeply than any other of modern times into the mysteries of existence. Though not formal enough to throw his philosophy into a system, he has left an impress on the English literature of this century. In every branch of literature which he has surveyed, he has made it his mission to expose the hollow formalism, the cold materialism, which he considers that utilitarian philosophy had produced.
"Self in the sense of selfishness, and G.o.d as the artificial property of a party;" these have been said to be the two faults which he sees in politics, in science, in law, in literature, in religion: and, to oppose this inrush of objective knowledge; to call man to a recognition of his better self, to the unaltering spiritual laws stamped in the structure of the human consciousness, and to G.o.d as the eternal, infinite Divinity, whose presence fills creation; this is the mission which he has striven to effect.
Yet can there be no doubt that the victory of this great truth is won at the sacrifice of others; and that in the general tone of his writings, and above all in his memoir of the doubter Sterling,(910) he occupies a position opposed to the particular forms of religious truth taught by Christianity, and one which a philosopher of tastes cognate to his own, Coleridge, forming himself under the psychological rather than the literary influence of German thought, strove to retain. In elevating the doctrine of the revelation in the soul, he regards as unnecessary the revelation in the book:(911) his teaching tends to inculcate a worship of earnestness, and to ignore all consideration of the object toward which the earnestness is directed. In a.s.serting the reality of spiritual laws in the soul, he has implied the veracity of all religions, caring only for the subjective zeal of the believer, not for the objects of his belief.(912) In opposing the mechanical view of the universe, he is so overwhelmed with the mystery which belongs to it, that the soul recoils in the hopelessness of speculation, to rest content with work rather than belief. And his readers, attracted by his power of satire and depth of insight, expressed in a style full of force by reason of its peculiarity, return to their daily life after imbibing his teaching, excited to greater earnestness and faithfulness, but filled, it is to be feared, with a contempt for objective systems, for dogmatic truth, and for the Christian creed.(913)
In the master the strong and deep sense of personality and of freedom obliterates the tendency to absorb human individuality in the overpowering mystery of the universe; but this tendency is developed in the early works of an American writer,(914) who has drawn from some of the same sources as the author just described, but who also owes much directly to him. In him philosophy seems to degenerate into pantheism. Nature is a vast whole, in which we are parts, vibrations of a chord, radiations of the eternal light.(915) Starting from a unitarian point of view, Christianity appears to be resolved into natural religion; and the historic view of Christianity, and the habit of considering the revelation as something long ago given, are regarded as being at the bottom of the decay of religion. In his admiration of genius, he seems to imply an idolatry of mere intellect; and developes that tendency which has been always observable in pantheism to unite the worlds of good and evil, and teach that evil is "good in the making." The universe is G.o.d; evil and good are equally essential parts of it.
This peculiar tendency to narrow the barrier between the two worlds is observable, not merely in direct admissions of writers like the one just adduced, but lurks as a peculiar danger in the modern literature of fiction. The danger in fiction, as in all art, can arise only from the character of the subject portrayed, or the manner employed in producing the copy. In the present day the evil arises specially from the latter cause. The subjective spirit, causing a perception of the duty of exactness, has contributed to foster a realistic taste in art, which requires such minuteness of treatment, that a work of fiction so constructed, while preserving the freshness of nature, may violate moral perspective, and leave the impression that good and evil are inseparably intermixed in each character or in nature itself. The very photographic exactness of the modern novel copies the features without selection or discrimination, and presents each moral character as a mixed one, and makes evil pa.s.s into good, and good into evil. Though it is quite true that no character is unmixed, yet it ought not to be forgotten that the evil is present as a disease, the good as the normal state. If approached from the philosophical side, the presence of evil as well as its origin is inexplicable, save by the pantheistic hypothesis; if approached however from the moral, our own instincts tell us that it is diametrically opposed to good; and it is important to be on our guard against the influence of modern literature, which in any way implies the contrary.
We have hitherto exhibited the systems in the present day, which by their influence, direct or indirect, a.s.sume a position antagonistic to Christianity. Commencing with positivism, we explained the doubts which, being built on a sensationalist basis, reject the possibility of revelation; or, on an ideal, reject its necessity. We now proceed to describe the works written as direct attacks upon Christianity, founded indeed on an idealist basis, but in which the philosophy is in the main subordinate to the critical investigation. Marked by the improved tone which was before described, and enriched with the fruits of the researches of German theologians, they form at once the books which are likely to meet us in daily life; and equal those of past generations in subtlety and danger. We shall commence with those which are most openly infidel, and gradually pa.s.s onward to those which shade off almost into unitarianism, until we reach the critical difficulties which in the writings of avowedly Christian professors have given ground for the charge of rationalism.
The first writer to be named(916) is one who in two works, the one "a Comparison of the Intellectual Progress of Hebrews and Greeks in their religious development," the other on "the Origin of Christianity," has made a daring attempt, not to refute Christianity directly, but to grapple with the historic problem of the origin of revealed religions; and endeavoured to explain them by regular historic and psychical considerations. In making this attempt he has availed himself of the modern investigations into mythology, and the relation which it bears at once to the soul, to philosophy, and to religion. In the last century mythology was either derided in a Lucian-like spirit, or else regarded as the relic of primitive traditions. In the present these views have mostly disappeared; and the theories which exist in reference to it are chiefly two, in the one of which myths are explained by nature-worship, and sacred mysteries, and are regarded as parables descriptive of natural processes; in the other they are regarded as being connected with the origin of language, and the transfer of names from one object to another. (47) It is the former view which this writer has employed. Commencing with the Hebrew Cosmogony,(917) he traces the origin of the metaphysical notion of G.o.d(918) through personification and polytheism, up to theism; and next the origin of the moral notion of G.o.d,(919) regarding the notion of a fall to be a hypothesis to account for sin; and explains away the idea of mediation by the absurd theory of supposing it to be made up of the two notions, of emanation, and of a waning deity derived from the personification of natural processes.(920) Having thus used mythology, in the manner of Volney, to ill.u.s.trate the rise of these conceptions among the Greeks and Hebrews respectively, he enters(921) upon the religious history of the Hebrew people, and attempts to show that the idea of the theocracy with temporary rewards suggested the two correlative ideas of temporary reverse, and eventual restoration; and thus, by the personification of the people"s suffering, led to the idea of a suffering Messiah.(922) Discussing the complex Messianic conception, he tries to explain its origin by natural causes, by resolving it(923) into a combination of the different types of thought, presented in the earlier history. Approaching the subject of Christianity, he considers it to be one of the Jewish sects, a lawful continuation of the prophetic reforms;(924) therein antic.i.p.ating the idea which he has developed in the second work above named, concerning the rise and progress of Christianity; in which he has adopted the views of the historical criticism of the school of Tubingen. Regarding Christianity to be a reform of Judaism mixed with Greek dogmas,(925) he attributes to St. Paul, in contrast to the Jewish apostles, the idea of giving it universality; and to the early Roman church the idea of giving it unity;(926) ill.u.s.trating by natural causes the gradual origin of the church,(927) and the pretended concretion of dogmas(928) by mixture with Alexandrian philosophy.
These works, too recondite to be popular, and too unsatisfactory to be dangerous, do not appear likely to affect largely the English inquirer; but the case is different with the work which next meets us by another author, "the Creed of Christendom,"(929) which, on account of its clearness of statement and variety of material, is the most dangerous work of unbelief of this age.
In the first part of the work the writer attacks the idea of inspiration,(930) with all modifications of the notion, as a gratuitous a.s.sumption; and tries to disprove it by recapitulating the controversy respecting the authorship of the Pentateuch, and the authority of the Old Testament canon,(931) as well as by the pretended non-fulfilment of the prophetic writings,(932) and the gradually progressive development of the Theism of the Jews.(933) Applying a similar process to the Gospels, he states the difficulties which attend the literary question of their origin(934) and fidelity of the narrative;(935) trying to show that the apostles differed from each other, and held views differing from those taught by the Saviour, as recorded in the first three Gospels.(936) Approaching the subject of the use of miracles as an evidence, he contends that they cannot prove a doctrine, and that their existence cannot be proved by doc.u.ments.(937) In the examination of Christianity he holds only the humanity of Christ,(938) and regards Christianity not to be superhuman, but an eclecticism from the Jewish religion; a conception, not a revelation.(939) Successively attacking(940) the most sacred doctrines of our faith,-prayer, pardon, sin,-he is at last landed in the doubt of a future life, save so far as the intuitions seem to suggest it;(941) and in conclusion he contents himself with the religion which consists in obedience to the physical, moral, intellectual, and social laws; confessing however that the heart dictates to prayer and religion, but maintaining that the idea of general laws forbids the possibility of their reality.(942)
The next writer whom we must name,(943) has not rested content with a literary examination of existing religious forms, but has shown the consummation to which the modern criticism of religion leads. The work, "Thoughts in aid of Faith," that is, hints to advise those who have given up all other faith, is too characteristic of a certain type of thought to be omitted. It is an instance where the final result, to which philosophical investigation has conducted, bears a resemblance to that reached by Feuerbach in Germany.(944) In the treatment of the subject, the tenderness of human character has not disappeared; and belief in the teaching of religion is surrendered with painful sadness. Starting at first from the unitarian point of view, this writer has gradually advanced, by the aid of the modern philosophy, to the very pantheism at which philosophy stood in the early ages of oriental speculation. In a review of the historical and psychical(945) origin of religion and Christianity, the idea of a divine Being is regarded as merely the giving existence to an abstraction, the objectifying of the subjective; and Christianity, as the form in which the notion of a personal G.o.d necessarily clothes itself: so that the idea of G.o.d becomes a fiction created by the mind; Christianity a fiction created by the heart. Though an appreciation is shown of ancient forms of religion,(946) all are regarded as visionary; and, in looking forward to the future, philosophy affords no cheering hope: nothing remains, save the annihilation taught by the ancient Buddhists.(947)
The course of the history now brings before us two writers, who stand distinguished from the last group by their firm theism, and strong protest against pantheism in every form. One of them was an American;(948) the other an alumnus of this university.(949)
The life and work of the former, so far as they relate to our inquiries, may soon be told.(950) In early life a unitarian minister, he caught the spirit of intellectual inquiry and reconsideration which Channing had excited; and devoted himself with indefatigable industry to study the modern philosophy and criticism of Germany, until he became one of the most learned men of the American continent. In his own country his fearless and uncompromising denunciation of slavery, as well as of political and commercial hollowness, caused him to be viewed as a social reformer rather than a theological teacher. In ours he is viewed as a teacher of deism. The cause of his power is obvious. Feeling that his mission was not merely to pull down, but to build up, he spoke with the vigour of a dogmatist, not with the coldness of a critic. To a burning eloquence and native wit he united the picturesque power of the novelist or the artist. But his vigour of style was deformed by a power of sarcasm which often invested the most sacred subjects with caricature and vulgarity; a boundless malignity against supposed errors. How different is the tone of his satire from the delicate touches of the modern French critic(951) who was named in the last lecture! and yet, on the other hand, how changed from that of the infidel writers of the last century. Though he equals Paine in vulgarity, and Voltaire in sarcasm, his spirit and moral tone are higher. They wrote, actuated by a bitter spirit against the Christian religion, without earnestness, without religious aspirations, with the coldness of unbelievers: he, with the earnestness of a preacher touched with the deepest feelings; and though the Christian writer will shudder at his remarks as much as at theirs, yet he sees them modified by pa.s.sages of pathetic sentiment, in which, in words unrivalled in sceptical literature, admiration is expressed of Christ, of Christianity, and of scripture.(952)
Such was the man as a teacher. What was his doctrine? He sought and found in the human faculties the test of truth, not dwelling, like Strauss, on their tendency to deceive; but, like Sch.e.l.ling, on their cert.i.tude. He placed the ground of religion on the emotional side of the soul, in the feeling of dependence;(953) and correctively, on the intellectual side, in the intuitions of G.o.d, the moral law, and immortal life.
a.s.suming, on the principle of spiritual supply and demand, that capacity proves object, (the natural realism which we attribute to the senses being thus applied to the intellectual instincts,) he regarded the intuitions to be real, and traced the mode in which reasoning and experience develope them into conceptions.(954) But, afraid of giving too anthropomorphic a form to his conception of deity, he fell almost into the abstract conception of the English deists; and in the notion of G.o.d"s general providence, lost the fatherlike conception of the divine Being with which the human a.n.a.logy invests Him. Few n.o.bler attacks however on atheism,(955) or defences of the benevolent character of the divine Being,(956) exist, than those which he has supplied. But at this point the Christian must altogether part company with him; for he next proceeded to argue against the possibility of miracle or special providence; identifying inspiration(957) with the utterance of human genius, and regarding Christianity merely as the best exponent of man"s moral nature; as one form of religion, but not the final one. The Bible, which as a collection of literary works, the religious literature of a Semitic people, he appreciated with enthusiastic admiration,(958) was degraded from its position of a final authoritative utterance of religious truth, and was regarded as the embodiment of the thoughts of spiritual men of old time who were striving after truth, and spoke according to the light which they possessed. The religion which he taught was called by him "the absolute religion." It was merely deism, built on a sounder basis, and spiritualized by contact with a truer philosophy.
The other writer(959) to whom allusion has been made, though superior to the one just described in refinement and acuteness, resembles him in possessing deep aspirations and serious research, and in standing apart from the unbelief of the last century, which manifested no loftiness of aim, nor earnest conviction. He stands forth too in a more interesting position, from the circ.u.mstance that his starting-point was not unitarianism, but the creed of our own church; and that he has given a psychological autobiography, a painful and thrilling self-portraiture;(960) in which he traces step by step his surrender of his early opinions, from the time of his first doubts, when he was a student in this university, to his fully developed deism.
The destructive side of his teaching is conveyed in the narrative of the "Phases" of his faith. Educated in the tenets of the more spiritual section of the church, he gradually began, as he has stated, to reconsider his opinions as his mind was awakened by study. The moral ident.i.ty of Sabbath and Sunday; the practice of infant baptism; the connexion of a spiritual effect with what he considered to be a material cause implied in baptismal regeneration; the reasons for the superior efficacy of Christ"s sacrifice over the Mosaic; the discovery of gradual development in scripture; these were the first thoughts that agitated him.(961) Unable to solve them to his satisfaction, he hesitated not to abandon, with n.o.ble and manly self-sacrifice, the friends that he held dear; and to wander forth from the established church, to seek a primitive Christianity elsewhere. Puzzled by the difficulty of the supposed mistake of the apostolic church, in expecting the sudden return of Christianity, he adopted the chiliastic hypothesis; and, unable to join in ministerial work in England, went as a missionary into the East.(962) On his return, alienated from the friends of his youth and from the new instructors with whom he had consorted, he sought truth in the solitude of his own heart; and was led to throw off Calvinism and adopt Unitarianism.(963) His fourth phase of faith led him, while clinging to Christianity, to renounce the religion of the Book. It consisted in an examination of many of the difficulties which criticism has discovered; from which he was unhappily led to conclude that the Bible was not free from error, nor above moral criticism;(964) believing nevertheless that the Bible was made for man, though not man for the Bible. The two concluding phases of his faith(965) consisted in appreciating the great law of progress which he considers to mark religion; and discovering that faith at second hand is vain, and that the historical truthfulness of Christianity is unimportant, the ideas embodied in it const.i.tuting its truth.(966)
In reading this painful record, we feel ourselves in contact with a mind cultivated in miscellaneous science and in the Semitic languages, disciplined as well as informed; which lays bare with transparent sincerity the history of the stages through which he has successively pa.s.sed. Hitherto we have seen only the destructive side of his teaching; but he also strove to attain a definite dogma: his truth-searching spirit, touched by deep longings for the presence of G.o.d, could not rest in the blank of unbelief. The nature of this attempt is developed in a work on "the Soul,"(967) in which the author lays bare at once his psychology, his ethics, and his religion; which in substance are not unlike those of the writer last named. He lays the foundation of religion in the spiritual faculty, the sense of the infinite personality; showing the generation of the various complex feelings which make up religion-awe, wonder, admiration, reverence-as the attributes of this divine Personality successively discover themselves.(968) Holding strongly the doctrine of human freedom and the natural existence of a moral sense, he allows fully the existence of the consciousness of sin,(969) and the necessity of spiritual regeneration; a.s.serting the belief in G.o.d"s sympathy and communion with the soul, the efficacy of prayer, and the duty of encouraging holy aspirations.(970)
Few more suggestive, and in many respects few truer, specimens exist of the a.n.a.lysis of those facts of human nature which concern the basis of natural religion and of the spiritual life,(971) than that which he has offered in order to find a psychological basis for religion. The deep spiritual longing for communion with G.o.d, the belief in prayer and in moral renewal, are evidences of a creed which separate him utterly from the naturalism and pantheism before described, and place him almost on the frontier line between Christianity and deism.(972) And we may be permitted to express the belief, that philosophy could not have raised him to his present moral standard. His spirituality is due to the fragments of Christianity which he has retained in his system. It has been truly said, that the defenders of natural religion furtively kindle their torches by the light of revealed.
In the course of this sketch of contemporary unbelief, we have gradually advanced from the forms most alien to faith, till we have reached the threshold of the Christian church. The necessity for making the narrative complete compels us to pa.s.s within its limits, and to indicate, though it be by a brief notice and with a delicate hand, the forms of the movement of free thought therein which have given rise to the charge of rationalism. This movement of thought is separated from those just described, in that it loyally holds that G.o.d has revealed His will to man; but it varies from the general view of the church of Christ in reference to the extent and manner in which He has been pleased to reveal Himself; and, under the pressure of the difficulties, doctrinal or literary, which the progress of knowledge or of speculation has suggested, proposes to separate in the holy scripture, or in the immemorial teaching of the church, that which it regards to be the eternal element of revealed truth from that which it ventures to conceive to be temporary; the heavenly treasure from the earthen vessels in which it is contained. The literary parallel to this tendency is not to be found in the deism of the last century, but in some of the schools of free thought in Germany and France in the present. Like them it professes to be conservative of revelation, desiring to surrender a part in order to save the remainder.(973)
The movement is characterised by two forms; the one philosophical, the other critical. We shall indicate their general character, without specifying individual writings.(974)
It is perhaps to the influence of Coleridge, more than to that of any other single person, that the origin of this philosophical movement can be traced.(975) We have already(976) had occasion to mention the general design of his philosophy. At a time when the world was wishing to break with the past, in politics, in literature, and in religion, his spirit was conservative of older truth, while sympathetic with that which was new. In looking backwards, he sought to discover what mankind had meant by their beliefs; in looking around, he asked what were the elements which the present generation disapproved: and, wishing to eliminate the error of the past and appropriate the truth of the present, he looked inwards into the human heart, and thought that he perceived a faculty there which unveiled to man the eternal, absolute truth,-the true, the beautiful, and the good; which had been the object of search in all systems, the end for which all earnest spirits had ever yearned. This faculty, "the reason" or intuition, thus became the guide, by the light of which he was able to thread his way through the manifold systems of thought of past times.(977) Not content with applying it to other subjects, he carried it also into the domain of revealed religion. It was the engine by which he hoped to get a view of the truth which the ancient writers of holy scripture intended to convey.
It would become the means of interpreting their thoughts, by raising the student to a perception of the same objects, similar in kind to that which they possessed. Their inspiration was regarded as only an elevated form of this faculty. When accordingly this method was applied by him to the study of Christianity, it did not lead him to pare down the supernatural by the cold interpretation of the older rationalism, but gave the explanation of the mysteries by raising men to a state where mysteries ceased to be such any longer. It did not pull down revelation to the level of the mind, but strove vainly(978) to raise the mind to a level with revelation.
If viewed in reference to cognate schools of Christian philosophy, it bears similitude in many respects to some of the schools of Germany. In the a.n.a.lysis offered of the human faculties, it has much akin to Kant: in the deep conviction that the highest truth is revealed to a faculty of faith, and in the undoubting belief in our own intuitions and the conviction of their reality, it resembles Jacobi and Sch.e.l.ling: in regarding the human reason to be the impersonal reason, the divinity in man, it resembles Sch.e.l.ling or Cousin. But it also has an element akin to the ancient Neo-Platonic philosophy of Alexandria.(979) This is seen both in the view taken of the organ of knowledge, and in the scheme of philosophy evolved by it. The intuitive reason, the divine faculty above described, which reveals eternal truth, is viewed as the divine ????? in man, as was taught by the Neo-Platonists.(980) Inspiration is the action of the same ?????. This branch of human intellect is absorbed in divinity: a divine teacher is considered to exist in the human mind.(981) And as the view of the faculty is parallel with the teaching of this ancient school, so the explanations suggested of divine mysteries(982) like the Trinity or Redemption are similar. These explanations are the mystical expressions of the thoughts apprehended by this faculty, when it strives to raise itself to oneness with the infinite object which it contemplates.
These remarks will explain the philosophical system taught by Coleridge, and will furnish the clue to interpret the form of theological thought which has originated from him. The parallel between his system and those with which it has now been compared, will be no less obvious in noticing the results of it. The system of Schleiermacher was the theological corollary from the theories of German philosophy above named; and the school of the Alexandrian fathers was the corresponding one which resulted from the Neo-Platonic.(983) We should therefore expect that, if the philosophy of Coleridge was a mixture of the two schools above described, the teaching of his disciples would combine the two theological schools which flowed from those systems. Attentive consideration of the philosophical side of the modern movement of free thought in English theology will confirm this antic.i.p.ation, and show that its chief elements are a union of these two theological schools. The tendency to require that the human soul shall apprehend divine mysteries intellectually, as well as feel their saving power emotionally; the reduction of inspiration theologically, as well as psychologically, to an elevated but natural state(984) of the human consciousness; the inclination to regard the work of Christ as the office of the divine teacher to humanity, and human history as the longing for such a divine voice; the description of the work of Christ as a divine manifestation of a reconciliation which previously existed, instead of being the mode of effecting it; the tendency to view the death of Christ by the light of the incarnation, instead of regarding the incarnation by the light of the atonement, the death of Christ as the solution of the enigma of G.o.d becoming flesh;-these seem all to be corollaries from the philosophy of the Neo-Platonists, and find their parallel in the school of the Alexandrian fathers: they express too, though with some differences, which will be apparent by recalling the remarks in a preceding lecture,(985) the fundamental religious conceptions of Schleiermacher, to which we before had occasion to object as inverting the gospel scheme, and falling short of the dogmatic teaching of the revelation of G.o.d.
The causes and character of the philosophical movement of free thought in the church will now be clear. We stated that there had been also a critical tendency. A stricter a.n.a.lysis would probably subdivide the critical movement into two; viz. a philosophical form of it which examines facts,(986) and a literary one which examines doc.u.ments.
This philosophical movement differs from the former, in that it neither approaches the subject of inquiry from a lofty speculative point of view, which is intended to furnish a solution of the mysteries of nature and revelation; nor seeks by means of the intuitive reason to penetrate beneath the doctrines of ancient teachers, and discover the absolute truth after which they were striving. It rather disbelieves in the possibility of the attainment of absolute truth by the human mind, and regards all truth to be relative to the age in which it was expressed.(987) Like the former movement it possesses a method; but one which is tentative and critical, not speculative; empirical, not _a priori_; founding its knowledge on history, not on philosophy. The mode of investigation is probably indirectly a result of the teaching of Hegel, as that which was before described was the result of the rival schools contemporary with him; but it is the adoption of Hegel"s method, and not of his philosophy.
In this respect it may be regarded as a critical tendency rather than a philosophical; but one which is critical of the truths and religious facts of revelation, and of its doctrinal teaching, and not merely of the doc.u.ments which record it.
Hence, when applied to revealed religion, in examining the teaching of the scripture writers, it does not attempt, as the former school, to raise the mind to a level with that of the writers, in order to apprehend the eternal truth which was revealed alike to their intuition and to ours; but it throws itself into the circ.u.mstances of their age, so as to understand their meaning; and tests it by the altered conceptions which the progress of ages has given to the world. Thus the inquirer not only asks what the writers meant, but views the truth which they taught as relative to their own age; and regards the office of criticism to be, to discriminate in it that which is conceived to have been temporary and local, and that which applies to all time. This school thus resembles the last, in asking what the scripture writers meant in their own time, and what their meaning is to us; but it seeks the answer, by using the same methods for the investigation which would be applied in ordinary literature; not by abstract speculation, apart from literary study of actual doc.u.ments. It makes the conceptions which civilization and history have created, to be the test for comparison, not the eternal truths of reason which are supposed to exist irrespective of civilization and history.
We may select one ill.u.s.tration. In surveying the doctrine of the atoning work of Christ, the former school seeks to apprehend the absolute meaning of the atonement as the manifestation of an act previously wrought out; and, starting with the notion of the divine teacher of humanity, the ?????
of G.o.d in Christ teaching the world, and the ????? in the soul of man apprehending this teaching, it construes the atoning work of Christ from its didactic side, as teaching man concerning G.o.d"s love by means of a majestic example of self-sacrifice. The second school treats the doctrine historically; and, when it has separated the apostolic teaching from all subsequent additions, compares this doctrine with the age in which it was expressed, in order to separate what it conceives to be the permanent from the temporary; and hence comes to view the atonement, apart from all the hallowed a.s.sociations of propitiatory sacrifice which in the minds of the early converts were inseparably united with it. These ideas, which the doctrine of the church regards as integral portions of revealed verity, it considers to be the peculiarity of the age in which the revelation was communicated. The revealed doctrines are handled in the same manner as corresponding doctrines of philosophy.
The minuteness of this method, its disposition to seek for truth in the investigation of details rather than by approaching a subject from some general principle, connects it with the other form of the critical tendency above named, which employs itself in the literary criticism of the sacred records. The main object of this movement consists in examining the questions, first, of the origin of the canon, its grounds and contents; next, the authenticity and genuineness of the books; lastly, the credibility of their contents. It is plain that, however objectionable may be the conclusions arrived at on questions such as these, they are too recondite and literary in character to possess the same doctrinal and pastoral importance as those of the former kind; though the alarm which they may cause will often be greater, because the variation from ordinary belief is more easily apprehended by the mind, and, being a variation in fact, and not only in idea, cannot be concealed by any ambiguity in the use of theological terms, as may be the case in the former instances. Yet in the third of these three questions, this species of criticism may have a very intimate relation to practice; for it may so affect the rule of faith as to overthrow the standard on which we repose for the proof of revealed doctrines. In truth, in this branch it becomes identical with the critical method before described, save so far as that examined the credibility of doctrines, this of facts. But in spirit they are identical.
It proceeds upon the a.s.sumption, that the same critical process is applicable in the investigation of the sacred history, as the former a.s.sumed in the investigation of the sacred philosophy. The att.i.tude of both is independent: both teach that the sacred books are not to be approached with a preconceived definition of their character or meaning: prepossessions are not to bar the way to the exercise of criticism. The difference from the first method above described will be equally obvious.
We may adopt the doctrine of inspiration as an ill.u.s.tration. The first view would approach the contents of scripture with a psychological theory of inspiration, as being a form of the intuition, which may furnish an instrument for eclecticism: the second and third would investigate the question empirically, and, declining on the one hand to accept the psychological definition just described, and on the other to approach Scripture with the preconceived notion of the nature of inspiration, as held by the Church, would seek to determine the notion of inspiration from the contents of scripture.(988)
The relation to holy scripture of the critical modes of inquiry will obviously be as intimate in reference to the standard of faith, as that of the philosophical in reference to doctrine. If the first of the three methods which we enumerated(989) overlays doctrine with philosophy; the second is in danger of subtracting from it integral elements of its system; and the third of disintegrating it by criticism, and introducing uncertainty with regard to the sacred books, which are the basis of doctrine. In questions relating to literary criticism, like those which are made the subject of investigation in the last-named method, it is impossible to lay down, so absolutely as in the two former cases, the tests to distinguish truth from error. The creeds are a practical gauge in the former instances which is partly wanting in the latter. The greater difficulty however which thus appertains to the latter, of placing the limits to which reverent criticism may extend without endangering faith, ought to generate the more solemn caution in its application.
We have dwelt long upon the modern forms of free thought which exist within the church of Christ, because they have a living interest for us.
They meet us in life as well as in literature; and we must daily form our judgment upon their truth and falsehood. They are not indeed peculiar to one church, nor to one country;(990) but form the theological question which is presented to the Christian church in this age.
The result of our inquiries in reference to the free thought of the present time has been especially to exhibit three main tendencies; one, arising from Positivism, a tendency to deny the possibility of revelation;(991) a second, from an opposite philosophy, to deny its necessity;(992) and a third, to accept it only in part.(993) These are the three tendencies by which the world and church of the coming generation are likely to be influenced. Our path in life will be in a world where they are operating; and we shall have need to be armed with the whole armour of G.o.d. If we have in our personal history so investigated the evidences of our faith, as to feel that we have a well-grounded hope, una.s.sailable by these doubts, we may be thankful: if we have gone safely through the perilous test of a careful examination of them, sometimes staggering perhaps in our faith, yet struggling after truth in prayerful trust that the Lord would himself be our teacher, until we now are able to feel that we have our faith grounded on a Rock,-a faith which is the result of inquiry, not of ignorance,-let us be still more thankful, and exemplify our thankfulness by trying to a.s.sist the doubter with our tender sympathy, and to aid him in finding the truth and peace which Christ has given to us. Our att.i.tude in moments of peril must be that of solemn reliance on G.o.d"s help; and our behaviour towards others ought to exhibit Christian firmness, mingled with candour and tenderness; evincing the moderation of true learning, joined to the uncompromising adherence to the Christian faith.
The history now given, of the doubt which is expressed at present through the English language, completes the account of the fourth great crisis of belief in church history;(994) and with it we bring to an end our long survey of the history of free thought.
Since the commencement of the second lecture, we have been so involved in the details of the investigation, that, to those who have lost sight of the plan proposed in the commencement, the lectures may have appeared historical rather than controversial, and hardly compatible with the purpose of the founder of the Lecture. We have been like travellers moving in a tangled plain, where the path at times seems lost. Before entering upon it, we took our stand, as it were, on an eminence; and indicated the plan of the route; pointed to the kind of territory through which it would conduct us, and the direction to which it would tend. Now, that we have at last extricated ourselves from its windings, and rest after our journey, let us cast a glance backward over its course, and see how far the result has verified our antic.i.p.ations. Let us reconsider the purpose designed by this course of inquiry; notice how far the promises in respect to it have been fulfilled; show its relation to controversial purpose; and collect the moral lessons which are derivable.
It will be remembered that we stated(995) the topic to be, a critical history of free thought in Europe in relation to the Christian religion.
Our criticism started from a Christian point of view, and a.s.sumed alike the miraculous character of Christianity, the exceptional character of the religious inspiration of the first teachers of it, and the reality of its chief doctrines. From this point of view we proposed to consider the attempts of the human mind to get free from the authority of the Christian religion, either by rejecting it in whole or in part.(996) Four great crises of faith were enumerated in church history;(997) the first, the struggle, literary and philosophical, of early heathenism against Christianity;(998) the second, the reawakening of free thought in the middle ages;(999) the third, that which appertained to the revival of cla.s.sical literature;(1000) the fourth, to the growth of modern philosophy;(1001)-a series of epochs which exhibit the struggle of Christianity in the great centres of thought and civilization, ancient or modern; and it was proposed that our investigation should not only contain a chronicle of the facts, but explain the causes, and teach the moral.(1002) We considered that the causes which make thought develope into unbelief are chiefly two,-the emotional and the intellectual;(1003) and, while vindicating distinctness of operation for the intellectual under certain circ.u.mstances,(1004) yet we allowed the union of them with the moral to be so intimate,(1005) that not only must account always be taken of the latter in estimating the unbelief of individuals, but the exclusive study of the former, without allowing for the existence of the latter, must be regarded as likely to lead to an imperfect and injurious idea of unbelief.
The intellectual causes were however selected as the special subject of our study;(1006) partly because they have been much neglected by Christian writers, partly because they are the forms which for the most part create the doubts which Christians encounter in the present age. The princ.i.p.al intellectual causes were considered(1007) to be, either the new material of knowledge, such as the physical or metaphysical sciences, which may present truth antagonistic to the teaching of the sacred literature; or new methods of criticism, the application of which creates opinions differing from those of the traditionary belief; and, above all, the effects of the application of particular tests of truth,-sense, reason, intuition, feeling,-to the doctrines of revealed religion.
This was our plan; and we have been employed in tracing the influence of these causes in generating doubt in the four great crises, with a minuteness which may almost have been tedious; endeavouring to supply the natural as well as the literary history; a.n.a.lysing each successive step of thought into the causes which produced it; searching for them when necessary in the intellectual biography of individuals; and, if not refuting results, at least laying bare by criticism the processes through which they were attained. At the same time we have attempted to show the grounds on which the faith of the church has reposed in the various ages of history. A defence, itself also twofold in its character-emotional and intellectual-has been generated by the attack in each of the crises, and an example thus furnished of the law which governs human society,-progress by antagonism. Permanent gain to truth was seen to be the result of the various controversies; quiet and refreshment after the discharge of the storm had cleared the atmosphere from the intellectual and moral ills with which it was charged.
The utility of the inquiry will now, it is hoped, be apparent. Though these lectures must be regarded as instructive for the believer, rather than polemic against the unbeliever, yet they are intended to serve also a controversial purpose.