There are times indeed when the mere instructiveness of a history, independently of practical use, is a sufficient justification for writing it;-times when it is important to take the gauge of past knowledge as the condition of a step forward in the future. Those who are accustomed to meditate on the present age, on the multifarious elements which in a time of great peace are quietly laying the basis of great changes, and on the unity of intellectual condition which the international intercourse is creating in the world of letters, as really as in that of industry, will perhaps think that the present is such a period, when the knowledge of the history of the former perils of the Christian faith, the nature of the attack and of the defence, is itself of value in regard to the prospects of the future.(1008) Those again also, who are accustomed to look at the contemporary works of evidence in our own country, will deplore the fact that in many cases, however well meant in spirit, they are essentially deficient in a due appreciation of the precise origin and character of present forms of doubt, and the natural and literary history of doubt in general;(1009) reproducing arguments unanswerable against older kinds of doubt, but unavailing against the modern, like wooden walls against modern weapons of war. We stand in the presence of forms of doubt, which press us more nearly than those of former times, because they do not supersede Christianity by disbelief, but disintegrate it by eclecticism; which come in the guise of erudition, unknown in former times, appealing to new canons of truth, reposing on new methods, invested with a new air. In such a moment a reconsideration of the struggles of past ages becomes indirectly a contribution to the evidences, by supplying the knowledge of similarity and contrast, which is necessary, as a preliminary, before entering on a new conflict.
The dangers to faith in the present day are sometimes exaggerated; but there cannot be a doubt that we live in a time when old creeds are in peril; when the doubt is the result not of ignorance, but of knowledge, and acts in the minds that are pre-eminent for intellectual influence, and advances with a firmness that is not to be repelled by force but by argument. It is not the duty of Christians to shut their eyes to the danger, like the ostrich, which supposes by burying her eyes in the sand to avoid the huntsman"s arrow. There seems accordingly special reason why in such an age an acquaintance with the forms of doubt is requisite on the part of those who have to minister the religion which is the subject of attack.
If accordingly a clergy is to be trained up likely to supply the intellectual cravings of the present day, they must be placed on a level with its ripest knowledge, and be acquainted with the nature and origin of the forms of doubt which they will encounter. The church has indeed a large field, where work and not thought is to be the engine which the clergy must use in their labours; truly a home mission, where men and women for whom Christ died, require to be lifted out of their mere animalism, and taught the simplest truths of Christ, and prayer, and immortality: and n.o.ble are the efforts that Christians have made, and are making, for an object so religious and philanthropic; but there is a danger lest this very energy of work, which accords so naturally with the utilitarianism of the English character, should lead us to forget that there is an opposite stratum of society, to which also Christianity has its message, which is only to be reached by the delicate gifts of intellect and by the ripest learning.
If Christianity is to be presented to this cla.s.s, adapted to the demands of the age so far as they are reasonable, but unmutilated and unaltered in its body of revealed doctrine, preserving in its integrity the faith delivered to the saints; so that apostles might recognize it as being that which they themselves taught, and for which they laid down their lives; it is necessary that Christian students should be trained specially for the work, by a learned and intelligent appreciation of truth, such as will create orthodoxy without bigotry, and charity without lat.i.tude. If we have to dread their going forth with hesitating opinions, teaching, through their very silence concerning the mysterious realities which const.i.tute the very essence of Christianity, another gospel than that which was once for all miraculously revealed; there is almost equal ground for alarm if they go forth, able only to repeat the shibboleths of a professional creed, and unable to give a reason of the glorious hope that is in them.
In the former case they will fail to teach historic and dogmatic Christianity, because they do not believe it; in the latter because they do not understand its meaning and evidence. If they need piety as the first requisite, they need knowledge as the second. In certain conditions of the church, study is second only to prayer itself as an instrument for the Christian evangelist.
It is hoped, therefore, that a sketch of a department not previously treated as a whole, may indirectly be an aid to the Christian faith, if it shall perform the humble office of supplying some elements of instruction to the Christian student.
Such a purpose however would hardly have justified the introduction of the subject here. The motive which dictated its consideration was much more practical. It was hoped that the answer to many species of doubt would be found by referring them to the forms of thought or of philosophy from which they had sprung; that it would be possible to perceive how they might be refuted, by understanding why and how men have come to believe them.(1010) This is a study of mental pathology seldom undertaken. The practical aim of Christian writers has generally suggested to them a readier mode of treating the history of unbelief, by referring its origin to intellectual pride; and, if any margin remained unaccounted for by this explanation, to refer it to an invisible agent, the direct operation of Satan.(1011) Such a method, however true, commits the error, against which Bacon utters a warning, of ascending at once to the most general causes without interpolating the intermediate. It ignores the intellectual cla.s.s of causes, and omits to trace the subtlety of their mode of manifestation;-a problem equally interesting, whether they be regarded as original causes of doubt, or only as secondary instruments obeying the impulse of the emotional causes. It would have been possible to investigate the subject, by selecting a few leading instances to ill.u.s.trate the natural history of doubt; but the most likely mode for exhausting the subject, as well as for presenting it in a manner which would fall in with the historic tastes of the age, seemed to be, to treat it by means of a critical history, presenting the antidote by a running criticism; and to ask, frankly and fully, what have been the grounds on which Christianity has been doubted; and what have been those on which the faith of Christians in their hour of peril has reposed; and then finally to gather up the lessons which the history itself teaches.
The inquiry has been a.n.a.logous to the study of the history of a disease; and scientific rigour required that it should be conducted with a similar spirit of fairness towards those that manifest its symptoms. As the physiologist, who wishes to learn the laws of a disease, watches patiently the symptoms in the subject of it, not reproaching the sufferer, even if the malady be self-caused; so in moral diagnosis, the student of mental and religious error must carry out his inquiries in the spirit of cold a.n.a.lysis, if he would arrive at the real character of the intricate facts which he studies. The candour of our examination has not been prompted by any spirit of indifference to truth, nor by sympathy with error; but partly by the demands of historical accuracy, partly by deep pity for those who are the subject of spiritual doubts, even when the doubts are of their own fault.
This view of the inquiry, as an a.n.a.lysis of the intellectual causes of doubt, will also explain one or two peculiarities in it, which, if left unnoticed, might leave an impression of its inutility.
It will be seen, for example, that in the investigation of the natural history of doubt, and in the explanation of the antecedent metaphysical or critical questions which have produced it, we have indicated the schools of thought which have created it, but have abstained from insisting on the inherent necessity of the relation which subsists between the metaphysical tests of truth and the religious conclusions discussed. The reason is, that it seemed unfit to a.s.sume a side eagerly in the metaphysical controversy; and therefore, while showing that the use of certain grounds of belief and methods of inquiry has produced, both as a matter of history and logic, certain species of doubt or disbelief; we have not attempted to condemn the particular metaphysical theories on the ground of the logical consequences which are supposed to flow from them, nor to deny that they could be so amended, as either to avoid the sceptical conclusions to which our objections are taken, or be rendered innocuous by the co-existence of other causes. Science only shows the general tendency or law of logical connection between intellectual causes and effects. The production of the results in particular cases is subject to exception from the introduction of interfering causes.(1012)
Another peculiarity which appertains to the a.n.a.lysis of the intellectual sources of doubt, besides the seeming absence of invariable necessity in their operation, might be thought to destroy the practical value of the inquiry; viz. the feeling of disappointment excited when it is perceived that they do not wholly explain the phenomenon, and are merely antecedents or elements, not causes. This arises from the very nature of mental a.n.a.lysis. Being in nature like chemical, it aims only at the detection of the elements that make up the compound, and furnishes the material or formal causes, not the efficient. This longing of the mind to find causes, and to discover the original motive power, is however a witness to the ineffaceable connection of the idea of power with that of will. And while it does not destroy the completeness of the a.n.a.lysis, as the solution of the intellectual problem proposed, it nevertheless points to the instinctive wish of the heart to resolve the causes of doubt into some ultimate source in the will; and is thus a witness to the truth of the position which we have always a.s.serted,(1013) that the intellectual causes selected for our special study are only one branch, and must be united to the emotional in order to attain a full explanation of the phenomenon of doubt.
Thus the a.n.a.lysis offered will have, it is hoped, a utility in the limited sphere which was claimed for it, in supplying the account of the tangled and subtle processes through which doubt has insinuated itself.
What then are the lessons which the whole history teaches? To discover these was part of our original purpose,(1014) as well as to learn the facts and find the causes; to satisfy the longings of the heart, no less than the curiosity of the understanding.
First, What has been the office of doubt in history? Has it been wholly an injury, a chronic disease? or simply a gain? or has it operated in both ways? Let us find the answer, by testing each of these theories of its office by means of the facts.
The first of the three is that which has generally been held within the Christian church. It dates from the first ages of the church, and witnesses to a valuable truth. The sacred care with which the Christians treasured the doctrine, and spurned the attempts of heretics to explain it away, proves the strength of the conviction that they possessed a definite treasure of divine truth, introduced at a definite period. Their very want of toleration,(1015) the tenacity of their attachment to the faith, is a proof of their undoubting conviction concerning the historic verity of the facts connected with redemption, and the definite character of the dogmas which interpreted the facts. In later ages however, the same idea of sacredness has been extended by the Romish church to the ma.s.s of error which Christianity has taken up into itself in the progress of ages; and in Protestant countries has led to the attempt to restrain the thoughts of men even on the secular subjects most remote from religion, where the ancient sacred literature seemed to suggest any indirect information. The doubt on the part of religious men, of any progress being made by free thought, has often expressed itself too in the affirmation, that the history of unbelief shows an exact recurrence of the same doubts, without progress from age to age, and an intimation that new suggestions of doubt are only old foes under new faces.
While Christians have thus generally regarded free inquiry in religion as wholly a loss; freethinkers have taken the very opposite view, and regarded it as an unmixed gain. The distinguished writer(1016) of our own time on the history of civilisation, whose premature death will prevent the fulfilment of his large design, has ill.u.s.trated, with the clearness and grasp over facts which const.i.tute some of his excellences, the office of scepticism, in securing for the human mind the political liberty and toleration which he prized so dearly. His central thought was, that civilisation depended upon the progress of intellect,(1017) the emanc.i.p.ation of the human mind from all authority save that of inductive science: he pointed out with triumphant enthusiasm, the services which he conceived that unbelief had performed, in rescuing Europe from degrading beliefs like witchcraft, and from the introduction of supernatural causes for natural events, and in securing in France, in the eighteenth century, the political rights of the lower orders against the claims of the church.
Accordingly in his opinion scepticism was an almost unmixed boon.
Those who recall the outline of the history will probably think that each of these views, taken alone, is one-sided, and contains a partial truth.
The review of facts shows that free thought has had an office in the world; and, like most human agencies permitted under the administration of a benevolent Providence, its influence has neither been unmixed evil nor unmixed good. It has been an evil, so far as in the conflict of opinions it has invaded the body of essential truth which forms the treasure given to the world, in the miraculous revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; but it has been a good, so far as it has contributed, either directly to further human progress intellectually and socially, or indirectly to bring out into higher relief these very truths by the progress of discussion.
When, for example, Christian doctrine has been overlaid from age to age by concretions which had gathered round it, as was the case previously to the Reformation,(1018) it has been free thought which has attacked the system, and, piercing the error, has removed those elements which had been superadded. Or, when the church has attempted to fetter human thought in other departments than its own proper domain of religion, as when the ecclesiastical authorities disgraced themselves by vetoing the discoveries of Galileo,(1019) it has been to free thought that we owe the emanc.i.p.ation of the human mind. Or, when the church linked itself in alliance with a decaying political system, as in the last century in France, it was free thought that recalled to it the lesson to render to Caesar the things that were Caesar"s, and to G.o.d the things that were G.o.d"s. It is instances like these, where free thought has been the means of making undoubted contributions to human improvement, or of a.s.serting toleration, which have led writers to describe it as almost innocuous, and hastily to regard the ratio of the emanc.i.p.ation of the human mind from the teaching of the priesthood to be the sole measure of human improvement.
In many instances also, free thought has indirectly contributed to intellectual good, in points where it has ran a greater risk, than in those just cited, of trespa.s.sing upon the sacred truths of religion; instances, in fact, where the benefit resulting has been owing to the overruling Providence which brings good out of evil, rather than to any direct intention on the part of those who have exercised it. Examples are to be found in those epochs, when some sudden outburst of knowledge compelled a reconsideration of old truths by the light of new discoveries.
The awakening of the mind in the middle age, the Renaissance, the advance of modern science, the birth of literary criticism, are instances of such moments, wherein free inquiry has been a necessity forced on the mind by outward circ.u.mstances, not self-prompted. This att.i.tude of inquiry, this exercise of a provisional doubt, was not, like that described, called forth merely by the circ.u.mstance that religion had received additions from error, but must have arisen even if the faith once delivered had been preserved uncorrupted. For religion being a fixed truth, while truth in other departments is progressive, it would have been impossible to avoid the necessity of comparison of it with them from time to time, in those spheres where it intersected the field occupied by them.
Such examples, indeed, are not restricted to Christian history, but are general facts of the history of the human mind. The fifth century B.C. was such an epoch in Greece;(1020) when various causes, social and intellectual, created a sudden awakening of the human mind to reconsider its old beliefs, and find a home for the new views of nature and of the world which were opening. The free thought of the Sophists was the scepticism of doubt, of distrust; the proposal to surrender, to destroy the old: the free thought of Socrates was the scepticism of inquiry, the attempt to reconsider first principles, to rebuild truth anew. In all such moments, investigation is indirectly the means of stimulating knowledge.
The history of the progress of it, in reference to the difficulties which have beset the Christian church, shows us that the epochs of doubt have not generally been produced by unbelief taking the initiative in attacking old truths without some fresh stimulus, and repeating old objections so as to exhibit perpetually recurring cycles of unbelief. We have rather seen that doubt is reawakened by the introduction of new forms of knowledge; and though old doubts recur, yet that they come arrayed in a new garb, suggested by different motives, deduced from fresh premises, and accompanied by doubts of a new kind before unknown. In a practical point of view, frequently they may be thought not to differ widely in appearance from old ones, and to present similar effects as well as forms; but in a scientific one, they ought not to be confounded, inasmuch as they do not present ident.i.ty of cause. There has been a slow but real progress in knowledge, and a slow but real change in the modes of applying it to Christian religion. The effect of the defence offered for Christianity is equally powerful in leaving its impress on subsequent doubt, as the progress of knowledge is in suggesting novelty of form. The sphere is narrowed, or the direction changed. If thought seems to have come round in its revolution to the same spot in its...o...b..t, it will be found to be moving not on a circle, but on a spiral; slowly but surely approaching a little nearer to the great central truth, toward which it is unconsciously attracted.
The value of the free inquiry in this latter cla.s.s of cases is not in the process, but in the results; in producing the branch of theology which sets forth the evidences of revealed truth. We have previously had occasion to imply that the Christian evidences are too often regarded as mere weapons of defence; like the battle-fields of history, monuments of the struggle of evil. Being a form of truth which would never have been called forth if the church had not been attacked, the apologetic literature is usually regarded, either as obsolete because controversial, or as useless for believers. Yet truths brought to light by it, though dearly purchased, are a real contribution to Christian knowledge. As miracles are a part of Christianity as well as an evidence, so apologetic literature, while useful in argument, serves the purpose of instruction as well as of defence.(1021) The controversy with heresy or unbelief has caused truths to be perceived explicitly, which otherwise would have been only implicit; and has ill.u.s.trated features of the Christian doctrine which might otherwise have remained hidden. Though these good results have not been designed by unbelievers, and cannot therefore warrant the claim a.s.serted for scepticism, that it is always innocuous, nor be set down to the credit of free thought as a spirit; yet they evidence the value of it as a method; the free thought, that is, which is inquiry and consideration, not that which is disbelief.
While therefore fully appreciating the reverent wish of Christian men to defend the truth with sacred tenacity, which leads them to regard all doubt with alarm; we can frankly allow the function and use of the phenomenon of doubt in history, when viewed as an intellectual fact. The use of it is to test all beliefs, with the view of bringing out their truth and error. But the good result has often, we perceive, been undesigned. It has frequently too been dearly bought, attained at an incalculable spiritual loss to the souls of those who have doubted. The result accordingly leaves untouched the responsibility of the doubter, and only shows the use which an allwise Providence makes free thought subserve in the general progress of the world.
But the heart asks a further moral. Though it derives satisfaction from perceiving that even features of history which seem the darkest, and moments the most perilous, bear witness to the presence of a benevolent Creator, who overrules all for the improvement of man and the progress of the church; it still claims to know what those limits are, where doubt must expire in awe, and speculation in adoration. It longs to exercise inquiry, and yet retain the Christian faith. It asks earnestly what does the history teach us concerning the doubts that are most likely to meet us in our lifetime, and what lessons are supplied by it in reference to the best mode at once of maintaining our own faith, and of leading those who doubt to the faith which we receive. The materials are supplied for an answer to these questions; probably even the materials for the final answer which the church can give to them.
We venture not to utter predictions in reference to the future; but the thought is interesting and solemn, that there seems some reason to believe that the weapons which doubt on the one hand, and religion on the other, must use in the final adjudication of their claims, at least in reference to all fundamental questions, are already in men"s hands. Though our express denial that doubt perpetually recurs in cycles might cause it to be supposed that we should be inclined to antic.i.p.ate the existence of future crises of faith; yet we have remarked that such crises are always produced by the opening of some unexplored field of knowledge, the introduction of a collection of new ideas or of a new spirit excited by new ideas, on subjects traversed either by the Christian religion, or by the Christian inspired books. A survey of the present state of knowledge would probably lead us to think that no field lies unexamined from which such new material can hereafter come. The physical sciences which, by the discovery of an order of nature and general laws of causation, have heretofore suggested difficulties in reference to miraculous interposition, and, by means of the discoveries in astronomy and geology, have come into conflict with the ancient Hebrew cosmogony, are not likely to suggest fresh ones distinct in kind from the past. If there be not ground for discouragement in science, nor for doubting that the present state of it, which seems to offer employment for originality of mind rather in tracking old principles into details than in ascending to new ones,(1022) is merely a temporary one, destined to pa.s.s away when some happy guess shall reveal the highest laws which now baffle inquiry; yet it is not probable that such an advance will traverse the province of religion. The survey of those regions where discovery seems most hopeful, will explain the reason of this a.s.sumption.
If the present examination of some of the subtler forms of matter or of force,(1023) and of their existence in other globes of the solar system than our own, should hereafter lead to a generalization which shall extend natural philosophy as widely beyond its present limits as the discovery made by Newton beyond those of his predecessors, yet these discoveries can have no bearing, favourable or unfavourable to religion, distinct in kind from that of present ones. If even a still mightier stride should be taken, and physiology be able to lay bare the subtle processes through which mind acts on body;(1024) yet the difficulty would only be an enhanced form of that which is already used to discredit the spirituality and immortality of the soul.
If we pa.s.s from the physical to the moral or metaphysical sciences, there is still less ground for expecting progress. True so far as they go, they offer no opportunity for enlargement, unless perhaps a more careful a.n.a.lysis, by means of the fertile principle of mental a.s.sociation,(1025) should cast light on the sensational source of ideas and the physiological side of mind; and even this would leave the independent evidence of the mental data, moral and intellectual, of religion, on the same basis as at present. Critical science again has attained such perfection, that there is no possibility of an entirely new range of critical thought springing up in reference to religion, such as arose when the German mind was creating the science of historical criticism.
Thus, though each branch of science,-physical, metaphysical, and critical,-offers grounds of hope to the labourer, there is no reason to fear that sceptical difficulties will be generated by any of them, distinct in kind from those which now exist. And a similar line of argument will suggest, that there is little reason to hope, on the other hand, for enlargement of the grounds of the evidence of natural and revealed religion. If this be the case, the materials are accordingly supplied, from which thoughtful students must make up their minds finally on the questions at issue. Indeed the survey of modern thought which we have already made, will have shown that men are already taking their place in hostile array; and will have revealed differences so fundamental in reference to religion, on subjects where no further evidence can be offered, that there can be little reason to hope for the alteration of the state of parties to the end of time. Never was there an age wherein Christianity had so real, so potent an effect as the present; yet never was there one which, while so largely moulded by it, was so really hostile to it.(1026) It is the hostility, not of opposition which regards Christianity as false, but of the criticism which views it as obsolete, and considers it to be one phase of the world"s religious thought, the eternal truths of which may be a.s.similated without the historic and dogmatic basis under which its originators conceived it. Though the special forms of doubt that now exist derive their lineage, philosophical and historical, from the modern German and French sources, which we have studied in the last two lectures; yet it is in an older age of European history that the nearest general parallel to the present state of feeling may perhaps be found; and there is a deep truth in the a.n.a.logy which the learned and excellent critic,(1027) who has recently made a special study of the struggle of cla.s.sical heathenism against Christianity, has pointed out, between the feeling of philosophers in the second and third centuries of the Christian era and in the present time.
Amid very wide differences in tone and learning, there is this fundamental agreement between the age which was enriched with the acc.u.mulated learning of the old civilization, and the present, enriched with that of the new.
There is the same spirit of naturalism; the same indisposition to rise to the belief of the interference of Deity; the same feeling of contempt for positive religions; the same sensation of heart-weariness,-the utterance as it were of the desponding feeling, "Who will show us any good?" the same lofty theory of stoic morality, and disposition to find perfection in obedience to nature"s laws, physical and moral; the same approximation to the Christian ideal of perfection, while destroying the very proof of the means by which it is to be acquired. And if it be true that the state of intellectual men presents so marked a parallel, so in like manner the study of the arguments by which the early fathers in their apologetic treatises met the doubts of such minds, becomes a question of great practical as well as literary interest.(1028)
What then are the doubts which are most likely to meet us, either insinuating themselves into our own minds, or offering their difficulty to those who intend to become ministers of Christ? and what are the means by which they may be most effectually repelled?
The main difficulties may be summed up as three:-
(1) The question of the relation of religion, and more particularly of Christianity, to the human soul; whether religion is anything but morality, and Christianity its highest type.
(2) The question of the relation of the work of Christ to the human race, whether it involves a secret mystery of redemption known only to G.o.d, and hidden from the ken of man, except so far as revealed; or whether it is to be measured by the human mind, and reduced to the proportions which can be appropriated or understood by man.
(3) The question of the relation of the Bible to the human mind, whether it is to be that of a friend or a master; and its religious teaching to be a record or an oracular authority.
The history of recent doubt has brought before us some whose minds doubt wholly of the supernatural. In the case of a few of these, but only of a few, the doubt has pa.s.sed into positive unbelief; their convictions have become so fixed that they manifest a fierce spirit of proselytism, and can dare to point the finger of scorn at those who still believe in the unseen and supernatural relations of G.o.d to the human soul. Between these and religious men the struggle is internecine. We can have no sympathy with them: we can rejoice that they retain a moral standard, where they have rejected many of the most potent motives which support it; but must tremble lest their unbelief end in thorough animalism; lest Epicureanism be their final philosophy. But there are many more whose tone is that of sadness, not of scorn; the temper of Heracleitus, not Democritus; whose souls feel the longing want which nothing but communion with a Father in heaven can supply, but who are so clouded with doubt, and retain so faint a hold on the thought of G.o.d"s interference, and on the reality of the supernatural, that they are unable to soar on the wings of faith beyond the natural, either material or spiritual, up to the throne of G.o.d.
The history of such men generally tells of some mighty mental convulsion, which has driven them from their anchor-ground of belief. Sometimes the study of science, as it is seen gradually to absorb successive ranges of phenomena into the regular operation of universal law, until it removes G.o.d far away, and creation seems to move on without His interference, has been the cause:-in other cases philanthropic pity, musing on the sad catastrophes which daily occur, when the happiness and lives of innocent human beings are for ever destroyed by the stem unyielding action of nature"s laws, leading the heart to doubt G.o.d"s nearness, and the fact of a special Providence:-in other cases again, the study of the human mind in history, and the perception of the manner in which the gradual growth of knowledge seems to lessen the region of the supernatural, until the mind doubts whether the supernatural itself is not the mere _idolum tribus_, a mere giving objective being to a subjective idea, a truth relative merely to a particular stage of civilization. Such causes as these, producing a convulsion of feeling, may form the sad occasion from which the soul dates its loss of the grasp which it has heretofore had over the belief of G.o.d"s nearness, and of religion; and mark the moment from which it has gradually doubted whether anything exists save eternal law; or whether a personal Deity, if he exist, really communes with man; whether, in short, religion be anything but duty, and Christianity anything but the n.o.ble type of it to which one branch of the Semitic people was happy enough to attain.
Doubts like these, where they exist in a high-principled and delicate mind, are the saddest sight in nature. The spirit that feels them does not try to proselytise; they are his sorrow: he wishes not others to taste their bitterness. Any one of us who may have ever felt chilled, as the thought insinuated itself, of the remote possibility of the perception of the machine-like sweep of universal law removing our belief of the guardian care of Him to whom alone we can fly for refuge when heart or flesh faileth, as to a Father as infinite in tenderness as in condescension, the friend of the friendless:-whoever has known the bitterness of the thought of a universe unguided by a G.o.d of justice, and without an eternity wherein the cry of an afflicted creation shall no longer remain unavenged, has known the first taste of the cup of sorrow which is mournfully drunk by spirits such as we are describing. And who that has known it would grudge the labour of a life, if by example, by exhortation, by prayer, he might be the means of rescuing one such soul?
Yet no task is so hard; argument well nigh fails, because the doubts refer to those very ultimate facts which are usually required as data for argument. If intellectual means are sought for remedy, it is philosophy to which we must look to supply it;-the philosophy which recalls man to the natural realism of the heart, to the simple unsophisticated trust in the reality of the spiritual intuitions, not as derived from sense only, nor merely as necessary forms of thought, but as the vision of a personal G.o.d by the human soul.
If however there is any field which requires the presence of moral means, it is this: and we who believe in a G.o.d who careth so much for man that He spared not His own Son for our sakes, may well look upwards for help in such instances; in hope that the infinite Father, whose love overlooks not one single solitary case of sorrowing doubt, will condescend to reveal himself to all such hearts which are groping after Him, if haply they may find Him. The soul of such doubters is like the clouded sky: the warming beams of the Sun of righteousness can alone absorb the mist, and restore the unclouded brightness of a believing heart.
The instances however are rare, where we meet with a chaos of faith, half pantheism, half atheism, such as that which we have just described. The great majority of doubters are persons who not only retain a tenacious grasp over monotheism, but even possess a love for Christianity. Their love is however for a modified form of it, different from that which the apostles taught. They cordially believe that G.o.d cares for man, and that He has spoken to man through His Son. They accept the superhuman, perhaps the divine, character of Christ; but they consider his life to be a mere example of unrivalled teaching, and of marvellous self-sacrifice; his death the mere martyrdom that formed the crowning act of majestic self-devotion. G.o.d"s gift of His son is accordingly, in their view, to reconcile man to G.o.d; to remove the obstacle of distrust which prevented man from coming to G.o.d, by showing forth the love which G.o.d already bore to the world; not to remove obstacles, known or unknown, which prevented G.o.d from showing mercy to man. Christ is accepted as a teacher, and as a king, but not as a priest. His work is viewed as having for its purpose, to inculcate and embody a higher type of morality, not to work out a scheme of redemption. The ethical element of Christianity becomes elevated above the dogmatic. The sermon on the mount is regarded as the very soul of Christ"s teaching. And in looking forward to the future of Christianity, the Christian religion is considered likely to become the religion of the world, merely because it will have ceased to be the religion of form and dogma, and become the highest type of ethics.
Views like these are common, and their compatibility with Christianity is defended in different ways:-sometimes by the bold attempt, as in the speculations of the Tubingen school, to prove that primitive Christianity was such a religion as that just described; that the dogmatic Christianity of the early fathers was the addition made by philosophy to the first doctrine, the _idola theatri_, which haunted the minds of the early teachers; and that the books of the New Testament, to which we appeal to prove the contrary, belong to a later date than that usually a.s.signed:-sometimes, with less consistency, admitting the antiquity of the dogmas, by representing that we can penetrate into the philosophy of the apostolic doctrine, and express in modern phrase, more clearly than in the ancient, the meaning which was intended to be conveyed:-at other times, by regarding all truth as relative to its age, and supposing that Christ"s work was seen by the light of the sacrificial and Messianic ideas common in the apostolic times.
Connected with this fundamental disagreement with the ordinary teaching of the Christian church, on the central question of Christ"s work and the nature of Christianity, is the cognate question concerning the relation of the Bible as a rule of faith. Its superiority to ordinary books is admitted, as cordially as the superiority of Christ"s work to that of ordinary beings; but the religious contents of it, not to speak of the literary, are criticised, not indeed in a polemical, but in an independent spirit; and are measured in the manner just described, and approved or rejected in accordance with it.
Thus these two questions,-the atoning work of Christ, and the authority of the scriptures,-are the two forms of doubt which are most likely to meet us in the present age.
The expression of them in the clergy of any particular church may of course, if it be deemed necessary, be prevented by political means. A church, if regarded merely in a worldly point of view, is a political as well as a spiritual inst.i.tution, where the members cede somewhat of individual freedom for the good of the whole; a compact where certain privileges and remunerations are granted, in return for the communication of certain kinds of instruction, and the performance of certain offices: and no one can object that the terms of a treaty be maintained; but the prevention of the expression of doubt is not the extinction of the feeling. And such acts of repression cannot reach the laity of the church, even if they touch the clergy. The inquiry accordingly here intended, as to the means for repressing such doubts, does not descend to the political question, but is a spiritual one; viz. if these doctrines are contrary to Christ, how can such thinkers be directed by moral means to the truth which we believe? or what reason can we give for the hope that is in us, which leads us to decline yielding up one iota of dogmatic Christianity to them?
The history of evidences offers a series of experiments, in which we may find an answer to these questions, by studying the different methods adopted in various centuries for spreading Christianity.
In the earliest age of the church, previous to the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, we observe the unaided appeal to argument, and especially the abundant use made of the internal evidence, or philosophical argument concerning the excellence of Christianity, as a means for arresting attention, preparatory to the presentation of the external and historic proof.(1029) In the long interval of the middle ages, the church was able to supplement or supersede argument by force; yet it must be admitted that the political and intellectual condition of the European mind was then, to a large extent, such as to receive benefit from the imposition of an external rule of religious authority and doctrine, in the same manner that individuals, when in a state of childhood, need a rule, not a principle; a law, not a reason.(1030) This method however was unsuited when the mind of Europe awoke, and when free thought could no longer be suppressed by force.
The history of evidences since the spread of modern unbelief exhibits not only the return to the ancient Christian weapon of argument instead of force; but not unfrequently to the ancient mode of presenting the philosophical proof prior to the historical.
An attempt of this kind was intermingled with the English school of evidences of the last century; and the argument of a.n.a.logy used by Butler, if viewed as constructive, and not refutative, may be considered to have for its object to prepare the mind for accepting revealed religion, by first showing the probability of it on the ground of its similarity to nature. (48) And in the German movement, where the doubt thrown by criticism over the historical evidences even still more compelled the resort to the philosophical argument on the part of those who strove to defend the faith, we have seen various attempts to reconstruct Christianity from the philosophical side.(1031) Both methods, the philosophical and the historical, have had their place; but their use has varied with the wants of the age. In proportion as the pressure of doubt left less opportunity for the constraining force of the latter, the persuasiveness of the _a priori_ moral argument has been used.