"THEOLOGY IS NOT A PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE."
It may, however, be retrogressive; and it is sure to repay flippant
neglect by lending its empty space to mean delusions. To its great
problems _some_ answer will always be attempted; and there is much to
choose between the solutions, however imperfect, found by reverential
wisdom, and the degrading falsehoods tendered in reply by the
indifferent and superficial. Even in their failures, there is a vast
difference between the explorings of the seeing and the blind. We deny,
however, that Christian theology can assume any aspect of failure,
except to those who use a false measure of success. It is not in the
nature of religion, of poetry, of art, to exhibit the kind of progress
that belongs to physical science. They differ from it in seeking, not
the _phenomena_ of the universe, but its _essence_,--not its laws of
change, but its eternal meanings,--not outward nature, in short, except
as expressive of the inner thought of God; and being thus intent upon
the enduring spirit and very ground of things, they cannot grow by
numerical accretion of facts and exacter registration of successions.
They are the product, not of the patient sense and comparing
intelligence which are always at hand, but of a deeper and finer
insight, changing with the atmosphere of the affections and will.
Instead of looking, therefore, for perpetual advance of discovery in
theology, we should naturally expect an ebb and flow of light, answering
to the moral condition of men's minds; and may be content if the divine
truth, lost in the dulness of a material age, clears itself into fresh
forms with the returning breath of a better time.
Most readers will find suggestions of great freshness in the passage
next cited:--