Lecture VIII. Free Thought in England in the Present Century; Summary of the Course of Lectures; Inferences in Reference to Present Dangers and Duties.

Eccles. xii, 13.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.

In the last lecture we brought the history of unbelief on the continent down to the present time. In this, the concluding one of the series, we shall complete the history of it in our own country or language during this century; and afterwards deduce the moral of our whole historical sketch, and suggest practical inferences.

In the account of unbelief in England, given in a previous lecture,895 we hardly entered upon the present century, except so far as to observe the influence of the philosophy of the last on works of literature, such as those of Shelley; or on political speculations, such as those of Owen. Yet even here we were already made to feel the presence of the new influences, which have completely altered the tone of unbelief. Even Shelley's later works, though marked by the outbursts of bitter passion against religion, contain more of the spiritual perception which is the characteristic of present thought:896 [pg 307] and the oblivion into which Owen's system soon fell, save as it has been resuscitated in moments of political disaffection, together with its failure to leave a permanent impression, like the socialist systems of France, arose from the circumstance that the one-sided survey of man's nature, on which it was based, could not deceive an age which was characterised by an increasing depth in its moral perceptions.

The unbelief of the present day differs from that of the last century in tone and character; and in many respects shares the traits already noticed in the modern intellectualism of Germany, and the eclecticism of France. It is not disgraced by ribaldry; hardly at all by political agitation against the religion which it disbelieves: it is marked by a show of fairness, and professes a wish not to ignore facts, nor to leave them unexplained. Conceding the existence of spiritual and religious elements in human nature, it admits that their subjective existence as facts of consciousness, no less than their objective expression in the history of religion, demands explanation, and cannot be hastily set aside, as was thought in the last century in France, by the vulgar theory that the one is factitious, and the other the result of priestly contrivance. The writers are men whose characters and lives forbid the idea that their unbelief is intended as an excuse for licentiousness. Denying revealed religion, they cling the more tenaciously to the moral instincts: their tone is one of earnestness; their inquiries are marked by a profound conviction of the possibility of finding truth: not content with destroying, their aim is to reconstruct. Their opinions are variously manifested. Some of them appear in treatises of philosophy; others insinuate themselves indirectly in literature: some of them relate to Christian doctrines; others to the criticism of scripture documents: but in all cases their authors either leave a residuum which they profess will satisfy the longings of human nature, or confess with deep pain that their conclusions are in direct conflict with human aspirations; and, instead of revelling in the ruin which they [pg 308] have made, deplore with a tone of sadness the impossibility of solving the great enigma.

It is clear that writers like these offer a wholly different appearance from those of the last century. The deeper appreciation manifested by them of the systems which they disbelieve, and the more delicate learning of which they are able to avail themselves, constitute features formerly lacking in the works of even the most serious-minded deists,897 and require a difference in the spirit, if not in the mode, in which Christians must seek to refute them.

The solution of this remarkable phenomenon is to be found in the universal change which has passed over every department of mental activity in England in the present century. The peculiar feature of it may be described by the word spirituality, if that word be used to imply, in contrast to the utilitarian and materialist tendencies of the last century, the consciousness in ourselves, and appreciation in others, of the operation of the human spirit, its rights, its powers, and its effects. This conviction stimulates in one the vivid consciousness of duty and moral earnestness; in another it hallows human labour, and throws a blessedness around the struggles of industry; in another it kindles the inspiration of art, breaking up conventionalities of style, or expresses itself in poetry, in soliloquies on the inner feelings or in meditations on life, as a set of problems to be explained by the heart. Elsewhere it lifts the man of science above the grovelling idea that discoveries must be sought solely for the purpose of utility. Again, transferring its perception of the operation of spirit to the world of nature, it not unfrequently attributes a soul thereto, and induces a subtle pantheism. Sometimes too by a singular reaction it has a tendency, by the moral earnestness which it stimulates, to depress intellectual speculation, and to wear the appearance of fostering the utilitarianism which it combats.

Such is the central principle which characterises our literature, and which, through the diffusion of [pg 309] reading, has moulded the public judgment, and, operating in every department of educated thought, has even altered the form in which unbelief expresses itself.

Probably the successive steps of the growth of this subjective tendency in literature might admit of easy statement. The meditative school of poetry, which flourished early in the century898 among a few refined minds at the English lakes; which loved to ponder mystically on nature or on the spiritual world, or to catch the thought excited in the mind by nature, and follow the series of thoughts which the law of mental association suggested,899 was one means of creating a subjective and spiritual taste among the youth of the generation which succeeded.

Another cause was found in the philosophy which arose. The years following the general declaration of peace, while the public attention was directed to the political reforms which were consummated in the Reform act, were marked by the thorough investigation of the first principles of every branch of knowledge. Two minds of that period have, more than any other, affected the succeeding generation; the one a utilitarian philosopher, the other an intuitional.

Both alike carried out the system which Descartes and Bacon had inaugurated, of finding the standard of truth in the analysis of the powers of the human understanding. But Bentham criticised to destroy the past; Coleridge to rebuild it. The one asked, Is a doctrine [pg 310] true? The other asked, what men had meant by it who had thought it so?900 The one overlooked the truth previously known; the other too boldly strove to rebuild it from his own consciousness, after surrendering the old proofs of it. The one, with the practical spirit of the Englishman, looked upon an opposing opinion only as an object suited for attack; the other, with a spirit caught from Germany, felt that there was some truth everywhere latent. But both were reformers; both stimulated the revolt against the cold spirit of the last century; both contributed to create, the one indirectly, the other intentionally, a subjective spirit by their psychological analysis.

Even movements which at first sight seem most alien to this spirit in character, have really been affected unconsciously by it.901 The ecclesiastical reaction which sprang up about a quarter of a century ago, though seemingly most objective in its nature, witnessed not less than the very opposite, or rationalistic tendency, to the presence of this influence. For both alike were founded on the idea that religion lacked a philosophical groundwork: both sought a new ground of faith different from that of the last century; the one in those utterances of consciousness which created a reverence for historic tradition; the other in those intuitions which were supposed to rise above scripture and tradition, and to form the basis and measure of both.

The causes just named in literature and philosophy respectively, are some of those which have contributed to create or to foster the change in the character of the literature, and in the spirit of the age, which has produced the alteration of tone which exists in the modern sceptical literature.

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In passing from these remarks on the peculiarly subjective tone of modern unbelief, and the literary influences which have produced the general change in the public taste, of which it is only one example, to an enumeration of the authors who have given expression to doubt, and of the specific forms of doubt now existing, we encounter a difficulty of classification.

The most obvious arrangement would be to place the writers in groups, according as they manifest a tendency toward atheism, pantheism, deism, or rationalism,902 respectively; but the mode which more nearly accords with our general purpose would be to adopt a philosophical rather than a theological classification, and arrange them according to the variety in the tests of truth employed by them, and the sources from which their arguments start, rather than the conclusions at which they arrive. Perhaps the advantage of both plans will be in a great degree combined, if we classify them according to the branch of science, physical, mental, or critical, from which the doubts take their rise.

We shall commence with those writers who make sensation to be the last appeal in belief, or whose doubts arise either from the methods or the results of physical science. This class of opinions varies from positive disbelief of the supernatural, generated by the fixed belief in the stability of nature and disbelief of miraculous interference, to merely isolated objections suggested by the conflict between the discoveries of natural science and the statements of holy scripture.

The name which most fitly describes the extreme form of unbelief is Positivism.903 This system of philosophy, [pg 312] 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 masses. But Positivism in another shape, called Secularism,905 is actively [pg 313] 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 substitute for religion. It asserts three great principles:—first, that nature is the only subject of knowledge; the existence of a personal God 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 class, 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 [pg 314] 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 God 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 petitions 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 [pg 315] 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 class of views belongs to minds accustomed to experimental science; this to those which are conversant with spiritual or æsthetic 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 assumes in reference to the Christian faith, [pg 316] 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 God 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 God 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 [pg 317] teaching tends to inculcate a worship of earnestness, and to ignore all consideration of the object toward which the earnestness is directed. In asserting 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 [pg 318] 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 God; 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 pass 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, assume a position antagonistic to Christianity. Commencing with positivism, we explained the doubts [pg 319] 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 pass 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 named916 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 [pg 320] 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 God918 through personification and polytheism, up to theism; and next the origin of the moral notion of God,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 illustrate the rise of these conceptions among the Greeks and Hebrews respectively, he enters921 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 it923 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 anticipating 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 Tübingen. Regarding Christianity to be a reform of Judaism [pg 321] 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 illustrating by natural causes the gradual origin of the church,927 and the pretended concretion of dogmas928 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 assumption; 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 origin934 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 [pg 322] they cannot prove a doctrine, and that their existence cannot be proved by documents.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 attacking940 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 [pg 323] 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 psychical945 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 God necessarily clothes itself: so that the idea of God 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 [pg 324] 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 critic951 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 passages of pathetic sentiment, in which, in words unrivalled in sceptical literature, admiration [pg 325] 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 Schelling, on their certitude. 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 God, the moral law, and immortal life.

Assuming, 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 God's general providence, lost the fatherlike conception of the divine Being with which the human analogy invests Him. Few nobler 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 inspiration957 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, [pg 326] 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 writer959 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 circumstance 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 identity 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, [pg 327] with noble 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 faith965 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 constituting 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 passed. Hitherto we have seen only the destructive side of his teaching; but he also strove to attain a definite [pg 328] dogma: his truth-searching spirit, touched by deep longings for the presence of God, 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; asserting the belief in God'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 analysis 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 God, 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 [pg 329] 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 pass 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 God 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

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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 already976 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 [pg 331] 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 vainly978 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 analysis offered of the human faculties, it has much akin to Kant: in the deep conviction that the highest truth is revealed to [pg 332] a faculty of faith, and in the undoubting belief in our own intuitions and the conviction of their reality, it resembles Jacobi and Schelling: in regarding the human reason to be the impersonal reason, the divinity in man, it resembles Schelling 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 Λόγος in man, as was taught by the Neo-Platonists.980 Inspiration is the action of the same Λόγος. 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 mysteries982 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 [pg 333] 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 anticipation, 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 state984 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 God 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 [pg 334] 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 God.

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 analysis would probably subdivide the critical movement into two; viz. a philosophical form of it which examines facts,986 and a literary one which examines documents.

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 à 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 documents 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 [pg 335] eternal truth which was revealed alike to their intuition and to ours; but it throws itself into the circumstances 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 documents. 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 illustration. 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 Λόγος of God in Christ teaching the world, and the Λόγος in the soul of man apprehending this teaching, it construes the atoning work of Christ from its didactic side, as teaching man concerning God'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 associations 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 [pg 336] 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 assumption, that the same critical process is applicable in the investigation of the sacred history, as the former assumed in the investigation of the sacred philosophy. The attitude 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 [pg 337] will be equally obvious. We may adopt the doctrine of inspiration as an illustration. 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 enumerated989 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.

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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 [pg 339] 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 God. If we have in our personal history so investigated the evidences of our faith, as to feel that we have a well-grounded hope, unassailable 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 assist the doubter with our tender sympathy, and to aid him in finding the truth and peace which Christ has given to us. Our attitude in moments of peril must be that of solemn reliance on God'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 [pg 340] 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 anticipations. 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 stated995 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 assumed 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 classical 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 [pg 341] 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 circumstances,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 principal intellectual causes were considered1007 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; analysing 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 [pg 342] 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.

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 [pg 343] 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 [pg 344] of Christ, and prayer, and immortality: and noble 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 class, 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 latitude. If we have to dread their going forth with hesitating opinions, teaching, through their very silence concerning the mysterious realities which constitute 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.

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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 class 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 illustrate 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.

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The inquiry has been analogous 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 analysis, 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 analysis 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 assume 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 [pg 347] 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 analysis 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 analysis. 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 analysis, 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 asserted,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 analysis 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 [pg 348] 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 mass 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 [pg 349] unmixed gain. The distinguished writer1016 of our own time on the history of civilisation, whose premature death will prevent the fulfilment of his large design, has illustrated, with the clearness and grasp over facts which constitute 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 emancipation 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 [pg 350] 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 emancipation 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 Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's, and to God the things that were God's. It is instances like these, where free thought has been the means of making undoubted contributions to human improvement, or of asserting toleration, which have led writers to describe it as almost innocuous, and hastily to regard the ratio of the emancipation 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 trespassing 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 circumstances, not self-prompted. This attitude of inquiry, this exercise [pg 351] of a provisional doubt, was not, like that described, called forth merely by the circumstance 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 [pg 352] do not present identity 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 orbit, 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 class 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 illustrated 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 asserted 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 [pg 353] 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 [pg 354] that doubt perpetually recurs in cycles might cause it to be supposed that we should be inclined to anticipate 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 pass 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 assumption.

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 [pg 355] 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 pass 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 analysis, by means of the fertile principle of mental association,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 [pg 356] 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 assimilated 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 analogy which the learned and excellent critic,1027 who has recently made a special study of the struggle of classical 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.

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Amid very wide differences in tone and learning, there is this fundamental agreement between the age which was enriched with the accumulated 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 God, 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 [pg 358] 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 passed 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 God 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 God'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 God.

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 God 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 God'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 [pg 359] of knowledge seems to lessen the region of the supernatural, until the mind doubts whether the supernatural itself is not the mere idolum tribûs, 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 God'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 noble 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 God 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?