HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OF RELIGION.
After renouncing any "Canon of Scripture" or Sacred Letter at the end
of my fourth period, I had been forced to abandon all "Second-hand
Faith" by the end of my fifth. If asked _why_ I believed this or that,
I could no longer say, "_Because_ Peter, or Paul, or John believed,
and I may thoroughly trust that they cannot mistake." The question now
pressed hard, whether this was equivalent to renouncing Christianity.
Undoubtedly, my positive belief in its miracles had evaporated; but
I had not arrived at a positive _dis_belief. I still felt the actual
benefits and comparative excellencies of this religion too remarkable
a phenomenon to be scored for defect of proof. In Morals likewise
it happens, that the ablest practical expounders of truth may make
strange blunders as to the foundations and ground of belief: why was
this impossible as to the apostles? Meanwhile, it did begin to appear
to myself remarkable, that I continued to love and have pleasure in so
much that I certainly disbelieved. I perused a chapter of Paul or of
Luke, or some verses of a hymn, and although they appeared to me to
abound with error, I found satisfaction and profit in them. Why
was this? was it all fond prejudice,--an absurd clinging to old
associations?
A little self-examination enabled me to reply, that it was no
ill-grounded feeling or ghost of past opinions; but that my religion
always had been, and still was, a _state of sentiment_ toward God, far
less dependent on articles of a creed, than once I had unhesitatingly
believed. The Bible is pervaded by a sentiment,[1] which is implied
everywhere,--viz. _the intimate sympathy of the Pure and Perfect God
with the heart of each faithful worshipper_. This is that which is
wanting in Greek philosophers, English Deists, German Pantheists, and
all formalists. This is that which so often edifies me in Christian
writers and speakers, when I ever so much disbelieve the letter of
their sentences. Accordingly, though I saw more and more of moral and
spiritual imperfection in the Bible, I by no means ceased to regard it
as a quarry whence I might dig precious metal, though the ore needed a
refining analysis: and I regarded this as the truest essence and most
vital point in Christianity,--to sympathize with the great souls from
whom its spiritual eminence has flowed;--to love, to hope, to rejoice,
to trust with them;--and _not_, to form the same interpretations of an
ancient book and to take the same views of critical argument.
My historical conception of Jesus had so gradually melted into
dimness, that he had receded out of my practical religion, I knew not
exactly when I believe that I must have disused any distinct prayers
to him, from a growing opinion that he ought not to be the _object_ of
worship, but only the _way_ by whom we approach to the Father; and
as in fact we need no such "way" at all, this was (in the result) a
change from practical Ditheism to pure Theism. His "mediation" was to
me always a mere name, and, as I believe, would otherwise have been
mischievous.[2]--Simultaneously a great uncertainty had grown on me,
how much of the discourses put into the mouth of Jesus was really
uttered by him; so that I had in no small measure to form him anew to
my imagination.
But if religion is addressed to, and must be judged by, our moral
faculties, how could I believe in that painful and gratuitous
personality,--The Devil?--He also had become a waning phantom to
me, perhaps from the time that I saw the demoniacal miracles to be
fictions, and still more when proofs of manifold mistake in the New
Testament rose on me. This however took a solid form of positive
_dis_belief, when I investigated the history of the doctrine,--I
forget exactly in what stage. For it is manifest, that the old Hebrews
believed only in evil spirits sent _by God_ to do _his bidding_, and
had no idea of a rebellious Spirit that rivalled God. That idea was
first imbibed in the Babylonish captivity, and apparently therefore
must have been adopted from the Persian Ahriman, or from the "Melek
Taous," the "Sheitan" still honoured by the Yezidi with mysterious
fear. That _the serpent_ in the early part of Genesis denoted the
same Satan, is probable enough; but this only goes to show, that that
narrative is a legend imported from farther East; since it is certain
that the subsequent Hebrew literature has no trace of such an Ahriman.
The Book of Tobit and its demon show how wise in these matters the
exiles in Nineveh were beginning to be. The Book of Daniel manifests,
that by the time of Antiochus Epiphanes the Jews had learned each
nation to have its guardian spirit, good or evil; and that the fates
of nations depend on the invisible conflict of these tutelary powers.
In Paul the same idea is strongly brought out. Satan is the prince of
the power of the air; with principalities and powers beneath him; over
all of whom Christ won the victory on his cross. In the Apocalypse
we read the Oriental doctrine of the "_seven angels_ who stand before
God." As the Christian tenet thus rose among the Jews from their
contact with Eastern superstition, and was propagated and expanded
while prophecy was mute, it cannot be ascribed to "divine supernatural
revelation" as the source. The ground of it is dearly seen in infant
speculations on the cause of moral evil and of national calamities.
Thus Christ and the Devil, the two poles of Christendom, had faded
away out of my spiritual vision; there were left the more vividly, God
and Man. Yet I had not finally renounced the _possibility_, that
Jesus might have had a divine mission to stimulate all our spiritual
faculties, and to guarantee to us a future state of existence. The
abstract arguments for the immortality of the soul had always appeared
to me vain trifling; and I was deeply convinced that nothing could
_assure_ us of a future state but a divine communication. In what mode
this might be made, I could not say _à priori_: might not this really
be the great purport of Messiahship? was not this, if any, a worthy
ground for a divine interference? On the contrary, to heal the sick
did not seem at all an adequate motive for a miracle; else, why
not the sick of our own day? Credulity had exaggerated, and had
represented Jesus to have wrought miracles: but that did not wholly
_dis_prove the miracle of resurrection (whether bodily or of whatever
kind), said to have been wrought by God _upon_ him, and of which so
very intense a belief so remarkably propagated itself. Paul indeed
believed it[3] from prophecy; and, as we see this to be a delusion,
resting on Rabbinical interpretations, we may perhaps _account_ thus
for the belief of the early church, without in any way admitting the
fact.--Here, however, I found I had the clue to my only remaining
discussion, the primitive Jewish controversy. Let us step back to an
earlier stage than John's or Paul's or Peter's doctrine. We cannot
doubt that Jesus claimed to be Messiah: what then was Messiah to be?
and, did Jesus (though misrepresented by his disciples) truly fulfil
his own claims?
The really Messianic prophecies appeared to me to be far fewer than is
commonly supposed. I found such in the 9th and 11th of Isaiah, the
5th of Micah, the 9th of Zechariah, in the 72nd Psalm, in the 37th of
Ezekiel, and, as I supposed, in the 50th and 53rd of Isaiah. To these
nothing of moment could be certainly added; for the passage in Dan.
ix. is ill-translated in the English version, and I had already
concluded that the Book of Daniel is a spurious fabrication. From
Micah and Ezekiel it appeared, that Messiah was to come from Bethlehem
and either be David himself, or a spiritual David: from Isaiah it is
shown that he is a rod out of the stem of Jesse.--It is true, I found
no proof that Jesus did come from Bethlehem or from the stock of
David; for the tales in Matthew and Luke refute one another, and
have clearly been generated by a desire to verify the prophecy. But
genealogies for or against Messiahship seemed to me a mean argument;
and the fact of the prophets demanding a carnal descent in Messiah
struck me as a worse objection than that Jesus had not got it,--if
this could be ever proved. The Messiah of Micah, however, was not
Jesus; for he was to deliver Israel from _the Assyrians_, and his
whole description is literally warlike. Micah, writing when the name
of Sennacherib was terrible, conceived of a powerful monarch on the
throne of David who was to subdue him: but as this prophecy was not
verified, the imaginary object of it was looked for as "Messiah,"
even after the disappearance of the formidable Assyrian power. This
undeniable vanity of Micah's prophecy extends itself also to that in
the 9th chapter of his contemporary Isaiah,--if indeed that splendid
passage did not really point at the child Hezekiah. Waiving this
doubt, it is at any rate clear that the marvellous child on the throne
of David was to break the yoke of the oppressive Assyrian; and none of
the circumstantials are at all appropriate to the historical Jesus.
In the 37th of Ezekiel the (new) David is to gather Judah and Israel
"from the heathen whither they be gone" and to "make them one nation
_in the land, on the mountains of Israel_:" and Jehovah adds, that
they shall "dwell in the land _which I gave unto Jacob my servant,
wherein your fathers dwelt_: and they shall dwell therein, they and
their children and their children's children for ever: and my servant
David shall be their prince for ever." It is trifling to pretend that
_the land promised to Jacob, and in which the old Jews dwelt_, was
a spiritual, and not the literal Palestine; and therefore it is
impossible to make out that Jesus has fulfilled any part of this
representation. The description however that follows (Ezekiel xl.
&c.) of the new city and temple, with the sacrifices offered by
"the priests the Levites, of the seed of Zadok," and the gate of the
sanctuary for the prince (xliv. 3), and his elaborate account of
the borders of the land (xlviii. 13-23), place the earnestness of
Ezekiel's literalism in still clearer light.
The 72nd Psalm, by the splendour of its predictions concerning the
grandeur of some future king of Judah, earns the title of Messianic,
_because_ it was never fulfilled by any historical king. But it is
equally certain, that it has had no appreciable fulfilment in Jesus.
But what of the 11th of Isaiah? Its portraiture is not so much that of
a king, as of a prophet endowed with superhuman power. "He shall smite
the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips
he shall slay the wicked." A Paradisiacal state is to follow.--This
general description _may_ be verified by Jesus _hereafter_; but we
have no manifestation, which enables us to call the fulfilment a fact.
Indeed, the latter part of the prophecy is out of place for a time so
late as the reign of Augustus; which forcibly denotes that Isaiah was
predicting only that which was his immediate political aspiration: for
in this great day of Messiah, Jehovah is to gather back his dispersed
people from Assyria, Egypt, and other parts; he is _to reconcile Judah
and Ephraim_, (who had been perfectly reconciled centuries before
Jesus was born,) and as a result of this Messianic glory, the people
of Israel "shall fly upon the shoulders of the _Philistines_ towards
the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay
their hand on _Edom_ and _Moab_, and the children of _Ammon_ shall
obey them." But Philistines, Moab and Ammon, were distinctions
entirely lost before the Christian era.--Finally, the Red Sea is to be
once more passed miraculously by the Israelites, returning (as would
seem) to their fathers' soil. Take all these particulars together,
and the prophecy is neither fulfilled in the past nor possible to be
fulfilled in the future.
The prophecy which we know as Zechariah ix.-xi. is believed to be
really from a prophet of uncertain name, contemporaneous with Isaiah.
It was written while Ephraim was still a people, i.e. before the
capture of Samaria by Shalmanezer; and xi. 1-3 appears to howl over
the recent devastations of Tiglathpilezer. The prophecy is throughout
full of the politics of that day. No part of it has the most remote or
imaginable[4] similarity to the historical life of Jesus, except that
he once rode into Jerusalem on an ass; a deed which cannot have been
peculiar to him, and which Jesus moreover appears to have planned with
the express[5] purpose of assimilating himself to the lowly king here
described. Yet such an isolated act is surely a carnal and beggarly
fulfilment. To ride on an ass is no mark of humility in those who must
ordinarily go on foot. The prophet clearly means that the righteous
king is not to ride on a warhorse and trust in cavalry, as Solomon
and the Egyptians, (see Ps. xx. 7. Is. xxxi. 1-3, xxx. 16,) but is to
imitate the lowliness of David and the old judges, who rode on young
asses; and is to be a lover of peace.
Chapters 50 and 53 of the pseudo-Isaiah remained; which contain many
phrases so aptly descriptive of the sufferings of Christ, and so
closely knit up with our earliest devotional associations, that they
were the very last link of my chain that snapt. Still, I could not
conceal from myself, that no exactness in this prophecy, however
singular, could avail to make out that Jesus was the Messiah of
Hezekiah's prophets. There must be _some_ explanation; and if I did
not see it, that must probably arise from prejudice and habit.--In
order therefore to gain freshness, I resolved to peruse the entire
prophecy of the pseudo-Isaiah in Lowth's version, from ch. xl. onward,
at a single sitting.
This prophet writes from Babylon, and has his vision full of the
approaching restoration of his people by Cyrus, whom he addresses by
name. In ch. xliii. he introduces to us an eminent and "chosen
servant of God," whom he invests with all the evangelical virtues, and
declares that he is to be a light to the Gentiles. In ch. xliv. (v.
1--also v. 21) he is named as "_Jacob_ my servant, and _Israel_ whom
I have chosen." The appellations recur in xlv. 4: and in a far more
striking passage, xlix. 1-12, which is eminently Messianic to the
Christian ear, _except_ that in v. 3, the speaker distinctly declares
himself to be (not Messiah, but) Israel. The same speaker continues in
ch. l., which is equally Messianic in sound. In ch. lii. the prophet
speaks _of_ him, (vv. 13-15) but the subject of the chapter is
_restoration from Babylon_; and from this he runs on into the
celebrated ch. liii.
It is essential to understand the _same_ "elect servant" all along.
He is many times called Israel, and is often addressed in a tone quite
inapplicable to Messiah, viz. as one needing salvation himself; so in
ch. xliii. Yet in ch. xlix. this elect Israel is distinguished from
Jacob and Israel at large: thus there is an entanglement. Who can be
called on to risk his eternal hopes on his skilful unknotting of it?
It appeared however to me most probable, that as our high Churchmen
distinguish "mother Church" from the individuals who compose the
Church, so the "Israel" of this prophecy is the idealizing of
the Jewish Church; which I understood to be a current Jewish
interpretation. The figure perhaps embarrasses us, only because of the
male sex attributed to the ideal servant of God; for when "Zion"
is spoken of by the same prophet in the same way, no one finds
difficulty, or imagines that a female person of superhuman birth and
qualities must be intended.
It still remained strange that in Isaiah liii. and Pss. xxii. and
lxix. there should be _coincidences_ so close with the sufferings of
Jesus: but I reflected, that I had no proof that the narrative had not
been strained by credulity,[6] to bring it into artificial agreement
with these imagined predictions of his death. And herewith my last
argument in favour of views for which I once would have laid down my
life, seemed to be spent.
Nor only so: but I now reflected that the falsity of the prophecy
in Dan. vii. (where the coming of "a Son of Man" to sit in universal
judgment follows immediately upon the break-up of the Syrian
monarchy,)--to say nothing of the general proof of the spuriousness of
the whole Book of Daniel,--ought perhaps long ago to have been seen by
me as of more cardinal importance. For if we believe anything at all
about the discourses of Christ, we cannot doubt that he selected "_Son
of Man_" as his favourite title; which admits no interpretation so
satisfactory, as, that he tacitly refers to the seventh chapter of
Daniel, and virtually bases his pretensions upon it. On the whole,
it was no longer defect of proof Which presented itself, but positive
disproof of the primitive and fundamental claim.
I could not for a moment allow weight to the topic, that "it is
dangerous to _dis_believe wrongly;" for I felt, and had always
felt, that it gave a premium to the most boastful and tyrannizing
superstition:--as if it were not equally dangerous to _believe_
wrongly! Nevertheless, I tried to plead for farther delay, by asking:
Is not the subject too vast for me to decide upon?--Think how many
wise and good men have fully examined, and have come to a contrary
conclusion. What a grasp of knowledge and experience of the human mind
it requires! Perhaps too I have unawares been carried away by a love
of novelty, which I have mistaken for a love of truth.
But the argument recoiled upon me. Have I not been 25 years a reader
of the Bible? have I not full 18 years been a student of Theology?
have I not employed 7 of the best years of my life, with ample
leisure, in this very investigation;--without any intelligible earthly
bribe to carry me to my present conclusion, against all my interests,
all my prejudices and all my education? There are many far more
learned men than I,--many men of greater power of mind; but there are
also a hundred times as many who are my inferiors; and if I have been
seven years labouring in vain to solve this vast literary problem, it
is an extreme absurdity to imagine that the solving of it is imposed
by God on the whole human race. Let me renounce my little learning;
let me be as the poor and simple: what then follows? Why, then, _still
the same thing follows_, that difficult literary problems concerning
distant history cannot afford any essential part of my religion.
It is with hundreds or thousands a favourite idea, that "they have an
inward witness of the truth of (_the historical and outward facts of_)
Christianity." Perhaps the statement would bring its own refutation
to them, if they would express it clearly. Suppose a biographer of Sir
Isaac Newton, after narrating his sublime discoveries and ably stating
some of his most remarkable doctrines, to add, that Sir Isaac was a
great magician, and had been used to raise spirits by his arts, and
finally was himself carried up to heaven one night, while he
was gazing at the moon; and that this event had been foretold by
Merlin:--it would surely be the height of absurdity to dilate on the
truth of the Newtonian theory as "the moral evidence" of the truth of
the miracles and prophecy. Yet this is what those do, who adduce the
excellence of the precepts and spirituality of the general doctrine of
the New Testament, as the "moral evidence" of its miracles and of its
fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. But for the ambiguity of the
word _doctrine_, probably such confusion of thought would have been
impossible. "Doctrines" are either spiritual truths, or are
statements of external history. Of the former we may have an inward
witness;--that is their proper evidence;--but the latter must depend
upon adequate testimony and various kinds of criticism.
How quickly might I have come to my conclusion,--how much weary
thought and useless labour might I have spared,--if at an earlier time
this simple truth had been pressed upon me, that since the religious
faculties of the poor and half-educated cannot investigate Historical
and Literary questions, _therefore_ these questions cannot constitute
an essential part of Religion.--But perhaps I could not have gained
this result by any abstract act of thought, from want of freedom to
think: and there are advantages also in expanding slowly under great
pressure, if one _can_ expand, and is not crushed by it.
I felt no convulsion of mind, no emptiness of soul, no inward
practical change: but I knew that it would be said, this was only
because the force of the old influence was as yet unspent, and that
a gradual declension in the vitality of my religion must ensue. More
than eight years have since past, and I feel I have now a right to
contradict that statement. To any "Evangelical" I have a right to
say, that while he has a _single_, I have a _double_ experience; and
I know, that the spiritual fruits which he values, have no connection
whatever with the complicated and elaborate creed, which his school
imagines, and I once imagined, to be the roots out of which they are
fed. That they depend directly on _the heart's belief in the sympathy
of God with individual man_,[7] I am well assured: but that doctrine
does not rest upon the Bible or upon Christianity; for it is a
postulate, from which every Christian advocate is forced to start. If
it be denied, he cannot take a step forward in his argument. He talks
to men about Sin and Judgment to come, and the need of Salvation,
and so proceeds to the Saviour. But his very first step,--the idea
of Sin,--_assumes_ that God concerns himself with our actions, words,
thoughts; _assumes_ therefore that sympathy of God with every man,
which (it seems) can only be known by an infallible Bible.
I know that many Evangelicals will reply, that I never can have had
"the true" faith; else I could never have lost it: and as for my
not being conscious of spiritual change, they will accept this as
confirming their assertion. Undoubtedly I cannot prove that I ever
felt as they now feel: perhaps they love their present opinions _more
than_ truth, and are careless to examine and verify them; with that
I claim no fellowship. But there are Christians, and Evangelical
Christians, of another stamp, who love their creed, _only_ because
they believe it to be true, but love truth, as such, and truthfulness,
more than any creed: with these I claim fellowship. Their love to God
and man, their allegiance to righteousness and true holiness, will
not be in suspense and liable to be overturned by new discoveries in
geology and in ancient inscriptions, or by improved criticism of texts
and of history, nor have they any imaginable interest in thwarting
the advance of scholarship. It is strange indeed to undervalue _that_
Faith, which alone is purely moral and spiritual, alone rests on
a basis that cannot be shaken, alone lifts the possessor above the
conflicts of erudition, and makes it impossible for him to fear the
increase of knowledge.
I fully expected that reviewers and opponents from the evangelical
school would laboriously insinuate or assert, that I _never was_
a Christian and do not understand anything about Christianity
spiritually. My expectations have been more than fulfilled; and the
course which my assailants have taken leads me to add some topics to
the last paragraph. I say then, that if I had been slain at the age of
twenty-seven, when I was chased[8] by a mob of infuriated Mussulmans
for selling New Testaments, they would have trumpeted me as an
eminent saint and martyr. I add, that many circumstances within easy
possibility might have led to my being engaged as an official teacher
of a congregation at the usual age, which would in all probability
have arrested my intellectual development, and have stereotyped my
creed for many a long year; and then also they would have acknowledged
me as a Christian. A little more stupidity, a little more worldliness,
a little more mental dishonesty in me, or perhaps a little more
kindness and management in others, would have kept me in my old state,
which was acknowledged and would still be acknowledged as Christian.
To try to disown me now, is an impotent superciliousness.
At the same time, I confess to several moral changes, as the result of
this change in my creed, the principal of which are the following.
1. I have found that my old belief narrowed my affections. It taught
me to bestow peculiar love on "the people of God," and it assigned an
intellectual creed as one essential mark of this people. That creed
may be made more or less stringent; but when driven to its minimum, it
includes a recognition of the historical proposition, that "the Jewish
teacher Jesus fulfilled the conditions requisite to constitute him
the Messiah of the ancient Hebrew prophets." This proposition has been
rejected by very many thoughtful and sincere men in England, and by
tens of thousands in France, Germany, Italy, Spain. To judge rightly
about it, is necessarily a problem of literary criticism; which has
both to interpret the Old Scriptures and to establish how much of the
biography of Jesus in the New is credible. To judge wrongly about it,
may prove one to be a bad critic but not a less good and less pious
man. Yet my old creed enacted an affirmative result of this historical
inquiry, as a test of one's spiritual state, and ordered me to think
harshly of men like Marcus Aurelius and Lessing, because they did
not adopt the conclusion which the professedly uncritical have
established. It possessed me with a general gloom concerning
Mohammedans and Pagans, and involved the whole course of history and
prospects of futurity in a painful darkness from which I am relieved.
2. Its theory was one of selfishness. That is, it inculcated that my
first business must be, to save my soul from future punishment, and
to attain future happiness; and it bade me to chide myself, when I
thought of nothing but about doing present duty and blessing God for
present enjoyment.
In point of fact, I never did look much to futurity, nor even in
prospect of death could attain to any vivid anticipations or desires,
much less was troubled with fears. The evil which I suffered from
my theory, was not (I believe) that it really made me selfish--other
influences of it were too powerful:--but it taught me to blame
myself for unbelief, because I was not sufficiently absorbed in the
contemplation of my vast personal expectations. I certainly here feel
myself delivered from the danger of factitious sin.
The selfish and self-righteous texts come principally from the three
first gospels, and are greatly counteracted by the deeper spirituality
of the apostolic epistles. I therefore by no means charge this
tendency indiscriminately on the New Testament.
3. It laid down that "the time is short; THE LORD IS AT HAND: the
things of this world pass away, and deserve not our affections: the
only thing worth spending one's energies on, is, the forwarding of
men's salvation." It bade me "watch perpetually, not knowing whether
my Lord would return at cockcrowing or at midday."
While I believed this, (which, however disagreeable to modern
Christians, is the clear doctrine of the New Testament,) I acted an
eccentric and unprofitable part. From it I was saved against my will,
and forced into a course in which the doctrine, having been laid
to sleep, awoke only now and then to reproach and harass me for
my unfaithfulness to it. This doctrine it is, which makes so many
spiritual persons lend active or passive aid to uphold abuses and
perpetuate mischief in every department of human life. Those who stick
closest to the Scripture do not shrink from saying, that "it is not
worth while trying to mend the world," and stigmatize as "political
and worldly" such as pursue an opposite course. Undoubtedly, if we are
to expect our Master at cockcrowing, we shall not study the permanent
improvement of this transitory scene. To teach the certain speedy
destruction of earthly things, _as the New Testament does_, is to cut
the sinews of all earthly progress; to declare war against Intellect
and Imagination, against Industrial and Social advancement.
There was a time when I was distressed at being unable to avoid
exultation in the worldly greatness of England. My heart would, in
spite, of me, swell with something of pride, when a Turk or Arab asked
what was my country: I then used to confess to God this pride as
a sin. I still see that that was a legitimate deduction from the
Scripture. "The glory of this world passeth away," and I had professed
to be "dead with Christ" to it. The difference is this. I am now as
"dead" as then to all of it which my conscience discerns to be sinful,
but I have not to torment myself in a (fundamentally ascetic)
struggle against innocent and healthy impulses. I now, with deliberate
approval, "love the world and the things of the world." I can feel
patriotism, and take the deepest interest in the future prospects of
nations, and no longer reproach myself. Yet this is quite consistent
with feeling the spiritual interests of men to be of all incomparably
the highest.
Modern religionists profess to be disciples of Christ, and talk high
of the perfect morality of the New Testament, when they certainly
do not submit their understanding to it, and are no more like to the
first disciples than bishops are like the pennyless apostles. One
critic tells me that _I know_ that the above is _not_ the true
interpretation of the apostolic doctrine. Assuredly I am aware that we
may rebuke "the world" and "worldliness," in a legitimate and modified
sense, as being the system of _selfishness_: true,--and I have avowed
this in another work; but it does not follow that Jesus and the
apostles did not go farther: and manifestly they did. The true
disciple, who would be perfect as his Master, was indeed ordered to
sell all, give to the poor and follow him; and when that severity was
relaxed by good sense, it was still taught that things which lasted
to the other side of the grave alone deserved our affection or our
exertion. If any person thinks me ignorant of the Scriptures for being
of this judgment, let him so think; but to deny that I am sincere in
my avowal, is a very needless insolence.
4. I am sensible how heavy a clog on the exercise of my judgment has
been taken off from me, since I unlearned that Bibliolatry, which I am
disposed to call the greatest religious evil of England.
Authority has a place in religious teaching, as in education, but it
is provisional and transitory. Its chief use is to guide _action_,
and assist the formation of habits, before the judgment is ripe. As
applied to mere _opinion_, its sole function is to guide inquiry. So
long as an opinion is received on authority only, it works no inward
process upon us: yet the promulgation of it by authority, is not
therefore always useless, since the prominence thus given to it may
be a most important stimulus to thought. While the mind is inactive or
weak, it will not wish to throw off the yoke of authority: but as soon
as it begins to discern error in the standard proposed to it, we have
the mark of incipient original thought, which is the thing so valuable
and so difficult to elicit; and which authority is apt to crush. An
intelligent pupil seldom or never gives _too little_ weight to the
opinion of his teacher: a wise teacher will never repress the free
action of his pupils' minds, even when they begin to question his
results. "Forbidding to think" is a still more fatal tyranny than
"forbidding to marry:" it paralyzes all the moral powers.
In former days, if any moral question came before me, I was always
apt to turn it into the mere lawyerlike exercise of searching and
interpreting my written code. Thus, in reading how Henry the Eighth
treated his first queen, I thought over Scripture texts in order to
judge whether he was right, and if I could so get a solution, I left
my own moral powers unexercised. All Protestants see, how mischievous
it is to a Romanist lady to have a directing priest, whom she every
day consults about everything; so as to lay her own judgment to
sleep. We readily understand, that in the extreme case such women may
gradually lose all perception of right and wrong, and become a mere
machine in the hands of her director. But the Protestant principle of
accepting the Bible as the absolute law, acts towards the same end;
and only fails of doing the same amount of mischief, because a book
can never so completely answer all the questions asked of it, as a
living priest can. The Protestantism which pities those as "without
chart and compass" who acknowledge no infallible written code, can
mean nothing else, than that "the less occasion we have to trust our
moral powers, the better;" that is, it represents it as of all things
most desirable to be able to benumb conscience by disuse, under the
guidance of a mind from without. Those who teach this need not marvel
to see their pupils become Romanists.
But Bibliolatry not only paralyzes the moral sense; it also corrupts
the intellect, and introduces a crooked logic, by setting men to the
duty of extracting absolute harmony out of discordant materials. All
are familiar with the subtlety of lawyers, whose task it is to elicit
a single sense out of a heap of contradictory statutes. In their case
such subtlety may indeed excite in us impatience or contempt; but
we forbear to condemn them, when it is pleaded that practical
convenience, not truth, is their avowed end. In the case of
theological ingenuity, where truth is the professed and sacred
object, a graver judgment is called for. When the Biblical interpreter
struggles to reconcile contradictions, or to prove that wrong is
right, merely because he is bound to maintain the perfection of the
Bible; when to this end he condescends to sophistry and pettifogging
evasions; it is difficult to avoid feeling disgust as well as grief.
Some good people are secretly conscious that the Bible is not an
infallible book; but they dread the consequences of proclaiming this
"to the vulgar." Alas! and have they measured the evils which the
fostering of this lie is producing in the minds, not of the educated
only, but emphatically of the ministers of religion?
Many who call themselves Christian preachers busily undermine moral
sentiment, by telling their hearers, that if they do not believe the
Bible (or the Church), they can have no firm religion or morality, and
will have no reason to give against following brutal appetite.
This doctrine it is, that so often makes men atheists in Spain, and
profligates in England, as soon as they unlearn the national creed:
and the school which have done the mischief, moralize over the
wickedness of human nature when it comes to pass instead of blaming
the falsehood which they have themselves inculcated.
[Footnote 1: A critic presses me with the question, how I can doubt
that doctrine so holy _comes from God_. He professes to review my
book on the Soul; yet, apparently became he himself _dis_believes the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit taught alike in the Psalms and Prophets
and in the New Testament,--he cannot help forgetting that I profess
to believe it. He is not singular in his dulness. That the sentiment
above is necessarily independent of Biblical _authority_, see p. 133.]
[Footnote 2: I do not here enlarge on this, as it is discussed in my
treatise on The Soul 2nd edition, p. 76, or 3rd edition, p. 52.]
[Footnote 3: 1 Cor. xv. 3. Compare Acts xii. 33, 34, 35 also Acts ii.
27, 34.]
[Footnote 4: I need not except the _potter_ and the thirty pieces of
silver (Zech. xi. 13), for the _potter_ is a mere absurd error of text
or translation. The Septuagint has the _foundry_, De Wette has the
_treasury_, with whom Hitzig and Ewald agree. So Winer (Simoni's
Lexicon).]
[Footnote 5: Some of my critics are very angry with me for saying
this; but Matthew himself (xxi. 4) almost says it:--"_All this was
done, that it might be fulfilled_," &c. Do my critics mean to tell me
that Jesus _was not aware_ of the prophecy? or if Jesus did know of
the prophecy, will they tell me _that he was not designing_ to fulfil
it? I feel such carping to be little short of hypocrisy.]
[Footnote 6: Apparently on these words of mine, a reviewer builds up
the inference that I regard "the Evangelical narrative as a mythical
fancy-piece imitated from David and Isaiah." I feel this to be a great
caricature. My words are carefully limited to a few petty details of
one part of the narrative.] [Footnote 7: I did not calculate that
any assailant would be so absurd as to lecture me on the topic, that
God has no sympathy _with our sins and follies_. Of course what I
mean is, that he has complacency in our moral perfection. See p. 125
above.]
[Footnote 8: This was at Aintab, in the north of Syria. One of my
companions was caught by the mob and beaten (as they probably thought)
to death. But he recovered very similarly to Paul, in Acts xiv. 20,
after long lying senseless.]