"Zeal without knowledge is like expedition to a man in the
dark."
--John Newton.
CRITICISM in theology, as in literature, is with many an intoxication.
Zest in showing what is wrong is apt to blunt the taste for what is
right, which it is the true end of criticism to discover. Lord Byron
said critics disliked Pope because he afforded them so few chances
of objection. They found fault with him because he had no faults. The
criticism of theology begets complacency in many. There is a natural
satisfaction in being free from the superstition of the vulgar, in the
Church as well as out of it. No wonder many find abiding pleasure in the
intellectual refutation of the errors of supernaturalism and in putting
its priests to confusion. Absorbed in the antagonism of theology, many
lose sight of ultimate utility, and regard error, not as a misfortune
to be alleviated, so much as a fault to be exposed. Like the theologian
whose color they take, they do not much consider whether their method
causes men to dislike the truth through its manner of being offered
to them. Their ambition is to make those in error look foolish. Free
thinkers of zeal are apt to become intense, and like Jules Ferry (a late
French premier), care less for power, than for conflict, and the lover
of conflict is not easily induced to regard the disproof of theology
as a means to an end* higher than itself. It is difficult to impart to
uncalculating zealots a sense of proportion. They dash along the warpath
by their own momentum. Railway engineers find that it takes twice as
much power to stop an express train as it does to start it.
* Buckle truly says, "Liberty is not a means, it is an end
in itself," But the uses of liberty are means to ends
Else why do we want liberty?
When I first knew free thought societies they were engaged in
Church-fighting--which is still popular among them, and which has led
the public to confuse criticism with Secularism, an entirely different
thing.
Insurgent thought exclusively directed, breeds, as is said elsewhere,
a distinguished class of men--among scholars as well as among the
uninformed--who have a passion for disputation, which like other
passions "grows by what it feeds upon." Yet a limited number of such
paladins of investigation are not without uses in the economy of
civilisations. They resemble the mighty hunters of old, they extirpate
beasts of prey which roam the theological forests, and thus they render
life more safe to dwellers in cities, open to the voracious incursions
of supernaturalism.
Without the class of combatants described, in whom discussion is
irrepressible, and whose courage neither odium nor danger abates,
many castles of superstition would never be stormed. But mere
intellectual-ism generates a different and less useful species of
thinkers, who neither hunt in the jungles of theology nor storm
strongholds. We all know hundreds in every great town who have freed
themselves, or have been freed by others, from ecclesiastical error, who
remain supine. Content with their own superiority (which they owe to
the pioneers who went before them more generous than they) they speak no
word, and lend no aid towards conferring the same advantages upon such
as are still enslaved. They affect to despise the ignorance they ought
to be foremost to dissipate. They exclaim in the words of Goethe's
Coptic song:
"Fools from their folly 'tis hopeless to stay,
Mules will be mules by the laws of their mulishness,
Then be advised and leave fools to their foolishness,
What from an ass can be got but a bray."
These Coptic philosophers overlook that they would have been "asses"
also, had those who vindicated freedom before their day, and raised it
to a power, been as indifferent and as contemptuous as believers in
the fool-theory are. Coptic thinkers forget that every man is a fool
in respect of any question on which he gives an opinion without having
thought independently upon it. With patience you can make a thinker out
of a fool; and the first step from the fool stage is accomplished by a
little thinking. It is well to remember the exclamation of Thackeray:
"If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man."
It is, however, but justice to some who join the stationariness, to
own that they have fared badly on the warpath against error, and are
entitled to the sympathy we extend to the battered soldier who falls
out of the ranks on the march. Grote indicates what the severity of
the service is, in the following passage from his _Mischiefs of Natural
Religion_:--"Of all human antipathies that which the believer in a God
bears to the unbeliever, is the fullest, the most unqualified, and
the most universal. The mere circumstance of dissent involves a tacit
imputation of error and incapacity on the part of the priest, who
discerns that his persuasive power is not rated so highly by others
as it is by himself. This invariably begets dislike towards his
antagonist."
Nevertheless it is a reproach to those whom militant thought has made
free, if they remain unmindful of the fate of their inferiors. Yet
Christian churches, with all self-complacent superiority to which
many of them are prone, are not free from the sins of indifference and
superfineness. This was conspicuously shown by Southey in a letter to
Sir Henry Taylor, in which he says:--"Have you seen the strange
book which Anastasius Hope left for publication and which his
representatives, in spite of all dissuasion, have published? His notion
of immortality and heaven is that at the consummation of all things he,
and you, and I, and John Murray, and Nebuchadnezzar, and Lambert the fat
man, and the Living Skeleton, and Queen Elizabeth, and the Hottentot,
Venus, and Thutell, and Probert, and the Twelve Apostles, and the noble
army of martyrs, and Genghis Khan and all his armies, and Noah with all
his ancestors and all his posterity,--yea, all men, and all women, and
all children that have ever been, or ever shall be, saints and sinners
alike, are all to be put together and made into one great celestial,
eternal human being.... I do not like the scheme. I don't like the
notion of being mixed up with Hume, and Hunt, and Whittle Harvey, and
Philpotts, and Lord Althorp, and the Huns, and the Hottentots, and the
Jews, and the Philistines, and the Scotch, and the Irish. God forbid! I
hope to be I, myself, in an English heaven, with you yourself,--you and
some others without whom heaven would be no heaven to me."
Most of these persons would have the same dislike to be mixed up with
Mr. Southey. Lord Byron would not have been enthusiastic about it. The
Comtists have done something to preach a doctrine of humanity, and
to put an end to this pitiful contempt of a few men for their
fellows,--fellows who in many respects are often superior to those who
despise them.
All superiority is apt to be contemptuous of inferiors, unless
conscience and generosity takes care of it, and incites it to instruct
inferior natures. The prayer of Browning is one of noble discernment:--
"Make no more giants, God--
But elevate the race at once."
Even free thought, so far as it confines itself to itself, becomes
stationary. Like the squirrel in its cage:
"Whether it turns by wood or wire,
Never gets one hair's breadth higher."
If any doubt whether stationariness of thought is possible, let them
think of Protestantism which climbed on to the ledge of private judgment
three centuries ago--and has remained there. Instead of mounting higher
and overrunning all the plateaus of error above them, it has done its
best to prevent any who would do it, from ascending. There is now,
however, a new order of insurgent thought of the excelsior caste which
seeks to climb the heights. Distinguished writers against theology in
the past have regarded destructive criticism as preparing the way to
higher conceptions of life and duty. If so little has been done in this
direction among working class thinkers, it is because destructiveness
is more easy. It needs only indignation to perfect it, and indignation
requires no effort. The faculty of constructiveness is more arduous in
exercise, and is later in germination. More men are able to take a state
than to make a state. Hence Secularism, though inevitable as the next
stage of militant progress, more slowly wins adherents and appreciation.