History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology Part 24

Popular rights are a fiction which the strong hand ought to dissipate at a thrust. The greatest men are the greatest despots, and the exercise of their unlimited authority is what ent.i.tles them to our wors.h.i.+p. Napoleon III. preaches the pure gospel of politics in his _Life of Julius Caesar_.

Absolute subjection--call it slavery, if you please--is the proper state of large bodies of helpless humanity, who are absolutely dependent upon some master of iron will for guidance and development.

Such being Carlyle's view of human rights, it is not surprising that he has applauded the most gigantic effort in history to establish a government upon the system of human bondage. But all slavery will by and by vanish like the tobacco-smoke of "Teufelsdrockh." Part of the world's best work will be the unceasing effort for its universal and perpetual extermination; and posterity will honor those who labor for this consummation as greater benefactors and workers than all the divinities idolized by the author of _Sartor Resartus_ and the _Life of Frederic the Great_.

While Carlyle's system does not appear to flatter humanity its effect is of that character. He would make his readers believe that they are pure, great, and capable beings like those deified by him. The adulation being too great for many who peruse his pages, large numbers of readers are led into dangerous vagaries. "The influence of Carlyle's writings,"

says an essayist, "and especially of his _Sartor Resartus_, has been primarily exerted on cla.s.ses of men most exposed to temptations of egotism and petulance, and least subjected to anything above them,--academics, artists, _litterateurs_, strong-minded women, 'debating' youths, Scotchmen of the phrenological grade, and Irishmen of the young-Ireland school."[164] There are very many beside this grotesque group, who exclaim, with one of his warmest admirers, "Carlyle is my religion!" There are others again who say gratefully what John Sterling wrote him in his last brief letter, "Towards me it is still more true than towards England that no man has been and done like you."[165]

The time has not yet come when men can awake from the spell of a charmer like Carlyle. But the illusion will some day be dissipated, and many of his readers in Great Britain and America will feel deeply and almost despairingly that, in the original fountain of his teaching, there was "a poison-drop which killed the plants it was expected to nourish, and left a sterile waste where men looked for the bloom and the opulence of a garden of G.o.d." It behooves those who idolize him to examine the image before which they stand. He is a man of unquestioned boldness and some originality, and no one of the present generation has greater power to dazzle and bewilder the young. Happily, age brings with it the clearing up of much of the obscurity of youth, and on the additional light of increasing years we depend for the illumination of many a mind obscured by his sentiments. The late R. A. Vaughan, a careful observer of the tendencies of English thought, says: "It may not be flattering to Mr.

Carlyle, but we believe it to be true that by far the larger portion of the best minds, whose early youth his writings have powerfully influenced, will look back upon the period of such subjection as the most miserably morbid period of their life. On awaking from such delirium to the sane and healthful realities of manful toil, they will discover the hollowness of that sneering, scowling, wailing, declamatory, egotistical, and bombastic misanthropy, which, in the eye of their unripe judgment, wore the air of a philosophy so profound."[166] The time will also come when Carlyle will be revealed to all in his true character: as the theologian preaching a pagan creed; as the philosopher emasculating the German philosophy which he scrupled not to borrow; as the stylist perverting the pure English of Milton and Shakspeare into inflated, oracular Richterisms; and as the arch demagogue who, despising the people at heart, a.s.signed no bounds to his ambition to gain their hearing and cajole them into the reception of his unmixed Pantheism.

The periodical press has been a successful agency in the dissemination of literary Rationalism throughout the British Islands. Years before the recent discussions sprang up, the _Westminster Review_ was the ablest and most avowed of all the advocates of the "liberal theology" of the Continent. It still rules without a rival. Emboldened by the late accession of sympathizers, it opposes orthodoxy and the Church with an arrogance equal to that of the _Universal German Library_, whose editor, Nicolai, is reported to have said: "My object is merely to hold up to the laughter and contempt of the public the orthodox and hypocritical clergy of the Protestant church, and to show that they make their own bad cause the cause of their office and of religion, or rather that of Almighty G.o.d himself,--to show that when they make an outcry about prevailing errors, infidelity, and blasphemy, they are only speaking of their own ignorance, hypocrisy, and love of persecution, of the wickedness of their own hearts concealed under the mantle of piety."[167]

From its character as a quarterly publication, the _Westminster Review_ has the constant opportunity to reply to every new work of Christian apology, and to elaborate each new heresy of the Rationalistic thinkers.

a.s.suming a thoroughly negative position, it repels every tendency toward a higher type of piety, and r.e.t.a.r.ds, as far as it can, the popular acceptance of the doctrines of Christianity. Its attacks on the sanct.i.ty of the Sabbath are bold, and carefully designed to affect popular sentiment. It gives its support to the fatal theories of Sociology, a system which holds "that so uniform are the operations of motives upon the actions of men that social regulations may be reduced to an exact science, and society be organized to a perfect model." It thus commits itself to the position that all history takes place by force of necessity.

The _Westminster Review_ studiously opposes the orthodox view of inspiration, miracles, the atonement, and the Biblical age of the world and of man. It indorses the sentiments of the Tubingen school, and holds with Baur that if we would know the truth of the early Church, its entire apostolic history must be reconstructed. It is compelled to confess the recent advance of evangelical doctrines in the German mind, but sees only evil in the fact, and utters this jeremiade: "This church sentiment, which has seized upon the whole of the _n.o.blesse_ in North Germany is becoming every year the sentiment of the clergy. The theological radicalism of the last period is now quite a thing of the past. The present is an epoch of restoration. Scientific criticism has no longer any interest; it is, who can be most orthodox, and reproduce more precisely the ideas of the sixteenth century. As the scientific and critical school is defunct, the mediation-theology, whose business was to compromise between the results of learning and the principles of orthodoxy, is necessarily in a state of decay. Its occupation is gone.

This school of theologians, which numbers in its ranks some of the most respectable names in Germany, and which traces its origin to Schleiermacher, can scarcely be said now to make head against the sweeping current of Pharisaical orthodoxy. Some of its older representatives have been withdrawn from the scene either by age or death; others have followed the mult.i.tude, and conformed to the reigning 'churchmans.h.i.+p.' It is the old story enacted in the Catholic revival of the end of the sixteenth century, and at other times before and since.

The reactionary clergy have succeeded in getting themselves regarded as the Swiss Guard of the throne. They stand between Royalty and Revolution. All the places in the gift of the crown--and all the places are in the gift of the crown--are filled on party considerations.

Learning goes for nothing. Thus inferior men are elevated to a platform from which they deliver their dicta with authority, and ignorance can contradict knowledge at an advantage. The mutual understanding among the party enables them to puff each other's books, and run down their opponents. Only learning can get no hearing."[168]

A number of writers have been furnished with a creed by the literature of which we have spoken, and are now endeavoring to teach it to the people. Their system has many names, among which are, Positivism, Secularism, and Socialism. Consummate shrewdness is exhibited in its presentation to the people, "the children of this world" sustaining their old reputation for superior wisdom. The circulating libraries abound in its books, and the newspaper and six-penny pamphlet are used as instruments for its wider dissemination.

The Protestant church of Great Britain has no time for idleness, and cannot afford to waste any truth-power while so many enemies are a.s.sailing its walls. When the crisis shall have pa.s.sed it will be seen that not a superfluous hand was lifted in the combat. What British and American Protestantism needs to-day is not a cla.s.s of discoverers of new truth, but that the defenders of the old truth, availing themselves of every new step of science and criticism, be chivalric in opposing their adversaries, and watchful of the interests which G.o.d has placed in their keeping.

FOOTNOTES:

[142] _National Review_, Oct., 1856.

[143] _Introductory Essay to Coleridge's Works._ Vol. i., pp. 21-22.

Harper's edition.

[144] Letter dated Shrewsbury, Jan. 19th, 1798, to Mr. Isaac Wood, High St., Shrewsbury.

[145] _Biographia Literaria._ Appendix III., p. 709.

[146] _Introductory Essay to Coleridge's Works_, vol. i., pp. 35-36.

[147] _Works_, vol. i., p. 115.

[148] _Works_, p. 241. The full argument is contained on pp. 241-253.

[149] Ibid. vol. i., pp. 269-271.

[150] _Works_, vol. i., p. 308.

[151] Ibid, p. 325.

[152] _Mission of the Comforter._ Note 8a.

[153] _Sermons on the Law of Self-Sacrifice, and the Unity of the Church._

[154] _Sermon on John_, xix., 30.

[155] _Theological Essays._ Second Edition. London, 1853. Maurice has published thirty-four works. _Vid._ Low's _English Catalogue_, 1835-1862, pp. 509-510.

[156] _Lectures on the Old Testament_, p. 6.

[157] Ibid. pp. 3-6.

[158] _Unity of the New Testament._ _Introduction_, pp. xxi.-xxvi.

[159] _Theological Essays_, p. 61.

[160] The date of this Sentence was Oct. 28th, 1853.

[161] _Sermons on National Subjects._ First Series, p. 14. London Edition.

[162] _Modern Anglican Theology._ By the Rev. J. H. Rigg. Second Edition. London, 1859. The student of contemporary theology will find this work the best summary of the opinions of Coleridge and his school.

[163] _Christian Life_, p. 14. American Edition.

[164] _National Review_, Oct. 1856.

[165] _Life of Sterling_, p. 334.

[166] _Essays and Remains_, vol. i., pp. 7-8.

[167] _Sebaldus Nothanker._ Second Edition. 1774.

[168] October Number, 1863.

CHAPTER XXI.

ENGLAND CONTINUED: CRITICAL RATIONALISM--JOWETT, THE ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, AND COLENSO.

The devout disciple of Christ regards the Scriptures with profound reverence, for they contain the doctrines which show him his path to the pure life of heaven. His theological opponents are not blind to this attachment, nor are they ignorant of the service of the Bible in supporting the entire Christian system. It could not therefore be expected that, while literature and philosophy were affected by Rationalism, the Scriptures should escape with impunity. There lies a deep destructive purpose beneath the brief utterance of Dr. Temple: "The immediate work of our day is the study of the Bible.[169]" The Critical Rationalism of England which is now attracting the attention of the civilized world is of recent growth, but the energy with which it has been cultivated is unsurpa.s.sed in the annals of skepticism.

Professor Jowett's commentary on the _Epistles to Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans_, was published in 1855. Coming from a highly respectable source, and a.s.sailing the doctrines of revelation boldly, it was a clear indication of what might be expected from the Critical Rationalists as a cla.s.s.

The doctrine of the atonement, according to this writer, is involved in perplexities whose growth is of more than a thousand years. Christ did not die to appease the divine wrath, and "sacrifice" and "atonement"

were accommodated terms used by the apostles because they had been reared among the Jewish offerings and were familiar with them. The great advantage we derive from Christ is his life, in which we behold a perfect harmony of nature, absolute self-renunciation, pure love, and resignation. We know nothing of the objective act on G.o.d's part by which he reconciled the world to himself, the very description of it being a figure of speech. Conversion is not in accordance with the claims of orthodoxy, for while there were conversions in the early Church, there is no possibility of establis.h.i.+ng a harmony between them and those which are now said to occur. The conversions of the first Christians were marked by ecstatic and unusual phenomena, whole mult.i.tudes were simultaneously affected, and the changes wrought were permanent; but the subjects were chiefly ignorant people, who no doubt did many things which would have been distasteful to us as men of education.[170]

The most noteworthy work of the Critical Rationalists is the _Essays and Reviews_ (1861), a volume which consists of broad generalizations against the authority of the Bible as a standard of faith.