THEORY OF RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM.
The Eclectic method of Philosophy, which was first exemplified in the
celebrated School of Alexandria, and which has been recently revived
under the auspices of M. Cousin in the Schools of Paris, may be
regarded, in one of its aspects, as the most legitimate, and, indeed, as
the only practicable course of successful intellectual research. If by
"eclecticism" we were to understand the habit of culling from every
system that portion or fragment of truth which may be contained in it,
and of rejecting the error with which it may have been associated or
alloyed,--in other words, the art of "sifting the wheat from the chaff,"
so as to preserve the former, while the latter is dissipated and
dispersed,--there could be no valid objection to it which would not
equally apply to every method of Inductive Inquiry. But this is not the
sense in which "eclecticism" has been adopted and eulogized by the
Parisian School. For, not content with affirming that the same system
may contain both truth and error, and that it is our duty to separate
the one from the other,--which is the only rational "eclecticism,"--M.
Cousin maintains that _error itself is only a partial or incomplete
truth_; that if it be an evil, it is a necessary evil, and an eventual
good, since it is a means, according to a fundamental law of human
development, of evolving truth and advancing philosophy; and that thus
the grossest errors may exert a salutary influence, insomuch that
_Atheism itself may be regarded as providential_.[224] In this form,
Eclecticism becomes a huge and heterogeneous system of SYNCRETISM,
including all varieties of opinion, whether true or false; and it has a
natural and inevitable tendency to issue in a spirit of INDIFFERENCE to
the claims of truth, which may assume the form either of Philosophical
Skepticism or of Religious Liberalism, according to the taste and
temperament of the individual who embraces it.
In the form of Religious Liberalism, it has often been exemplified in
our own country by those who, averse from definite articles of faith,
and prone to latitudinarian license, have studiously set themselves to
disparage the importance of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, and
even to obliterate the distinction between the various forms of
Religion, natural and revealed, by representing them all as so many
varieties of the same religious sentiment, so many diverse, but not
antagonistic, embodiments of the same radical principle. In the writings
of Pope, several expressions occur which are easily susceptible of this
construction, and which have often been quoted and applied in defence of
Religious Liberalism, notwithstanding his explicit disavowal of it in
his letter to the younger Racine, prefixed to the collected edition of
his works. But on the continent of Europe, Syncretism has been much more
fully developed, and fearlessly applied to every department of human
thought. Pushed to its ultimate consequences, it obliterates the
distinction not only between truth and error, but also between virtue
and vice, nay even between Religion and Atheism; and represents them all
as constituent parts of a scheme, which is developed under a law of
"fatal necessity," but which is described also as a scheme of
"optimism." Its range is supposed to be unlimited: for it has been
applied to the History of Philosophy, by Cousin, to the theory of the
Passions, by Fourier, to the doctrines of Christianity, by Quinet and
Michelet, and to the Philosophy of Religion, by Benjamin Constant. The
practical result of such speculations is a growing _skepticism_ or
_indifference_ in regard to the distinction between truth and error, and
a very faint impression of the difference between good and evil.[225]
The speculations of Pierre Leroux, the head, if not the founder, of the
Humanitarian School, are strongly tinged with this spirit: they amount
to a justification of evil, an apotheosis of man.[226]
We do not class these speculations among the formal systems of Atheism,
although they have often been associated with it; but we advert to them
as specimens of that style of thinking which has a natural tendency to
induce an atheistic frame of mind.[227] The profession of such
sentiments is a symptom rather of incipient danger, than of confirmed
disease. But that danger is far from being either doubtful or
insignificant. For should the distinction between "truth and error" be
obliterated or even feebly discerned, should it come to be regarded as a
matter of comparative indifference whether our beliefs be true or false,
should it, above all, become our prevailing habit to "call good evil,
and evil good," we can scarcely fail, in such circumstances, to fall
into a course of _practical Atheism_; and this, as all experience
testifies, will leave us an easy prey, especially in seasons of peculiar
temptation and trial, to any form of _speculative Infidelity_ that may
happen to acquire a temporary ascendancy. If there be no dogmatic
Atheism involved in this state of mind, there is at least the germ of
_skepticism_, which may soon grow and ripen into the open and avowed
denial of religious truth. At the very least, it will issue in that
heartless _indifference_ to all creeds and all definite articles of
faith, which, under the plausible but surreptitious disguise of
"freethinking" and "liberalism," is the nearest practical approximation
to utter Infidelity.[228]
The system which is known under the name of Religious Liberalism or
Indifference has been recently avowed in our own country with a
frankness and boldness which can leave no room for doubt in regard to
its ultimate tendency. The late Blanco White avowed it as his mature
conviction, that "to declare any one unworthy of the name of Christian
because he does not agree with your belief, is to fall into the
intolerance of the articled Churches; that the moment the name Christian
is made necessarily to contain in its signification belief in certain
historical or metaphysical propositions, that moment _the name itself
becomes a creed_,--the _length_ of that creed is of little
consequence."[229] This is the extreme on one side, and it plainly
implies that _no one article of faith_ is necessary, and that a man may
be a Christian who neither acknowledges an historical Christ, nor
believes a single doctrine which He taught! But there is an extreme also
on the other side, which is exemplified in the singularly eloquent, but
equally unsatisfactory, treatise of the Abbé Lamennais,[230] in which,
as _then_ an ardent and somewhat arrogant advocate of the Romish Church,
he attempts to fasten the charge of _Indifference_ or _Liberalism_ on
the Protestant system, and to prove that there can be no true faith, and
of course no salvation, beyond the Catholic pale. The chief interest of
his treatise depends on his peculiar "theory of certitude," to which we
shall have occasion to advert in the sequel; in the meantime, we may
notice briefly the grievous error into which he has fallen in treating
of the faith which is necessary to salvation. He _overstates_ the case
as much, at least, as it has been _understated_ by the abettors of
Liberalism. The latter deny the necessity of _any_ articles of faith;
the former demands the implicit reception of _every_ doctrine propounded
by the Romish Church. He repudiates the distinction between
_fundamentals_ and _non-fundamentals_ in Religion, and insists that, as
every truth is declared by the same infallible authority, so every truth
must be received with the same unquestioning faith. He forgets that
while all the truths of Scripture ought to be believed by reason of the
Divine authority on which they rest, yet some truths are more directly
connected with our salvation than others, as well as more clearly and
explicitly revealed. Nor are we justly liable to the charge of
"Indifference" or "Liberalism" when we tolerate a difference of opinion,
on some points, among men who are, in all important respects,
substantially agreed: for true toleration is the fruit, not of unbelief
or indifference, but of charity and candor; and it is sanctioned in
Scripture, which enjoins that we should "receive those who are weak in
the faith, but not to doubtful disputations," and that "every man should
be fully persuaded in his own mind."[231]
But it is not so much in its relation to the articles of the Christian
faith, as in its bearing on the different forms of true and false
religion, that the theory of Liberalism comes into collision with the
cause of Theism, and evinces its infidel tendencies. If any one can
regard with the same complacency, or with the same apathetic
indifference, all the varieties of religious or superstitious belief and
worship; if he can discern no radical or important difference between
Monotheism and Polytheism, or between the Protestant and Popish systems;
if he be disposed to treat each of these as equally true or equally
false, as alike beneficial or injurious in their practical influence,
then this may be regarded as a sufficient proof that he is ignorant of
the evidence, and blind to the claims, of truth,--a mere skeptical
dreamer, if not a speculative Atheist.
An attempt has recently been made to place the theory of Religious
Liberalism on a philosophical basis, by representing religion as a mere
_sentiment_, which may be equally elicited and exemplified in various
forms of belief and worship. Several writers, following in the wake of
Schleiermacher, who gave such a powerful impulse to the mind of Germany,
have made Religion to consist either in _a sense of dependence_, or in
_a consciousness of the infinite_; and this sentiment, as well as the
spontaneous intuitions of reason with which it is associated, is said to
be alike natural, universal, and invariable, the essential principle of
all Religion, the root whence have sprung all the various forms of
belief and worship. These varieties are supposed to be more or less
rational and salutary, according to the conception which they
respectively exhibit of the nature and character of God,--a conception
which may be endlessly diversified by the intellect, or the imagination,
or the passions of different men; while all the forms of belief are
radically identical, since they all spring from the same
ground-principle, and are only so many distinct manifestations of it.
Thus Mr. Parker tells us that, stripping the "religious sentiment" in
man "of all accidental circumstances peculiar to the age, nation, sect,
or individual, and pursuing a sharp and final analysis till the subject
and predicate can no longer be separated, we find as the ultimate fact,
that the religious sentiment is this,--'_a sense of dependence_.' This
sentiment does not itself disclose the character, and still less the
nature and essence, of the object on which it depends, no more than the
senses declare the nature of _their_ objects. Like them it acts
spontaneously and unconsciously, as soon as the outward occasion offers,
with no effort of will, forethought, or making up the mind. But the
religious sentiment implies its object; ... and there is but _one
religion_, though _many theologies_."[232]
There is, as it appears to us, a mixture of some truth with much grave
and dangerous error, in these and similar speculations. It is an
important truth, and one which has been too often overlooked in treating
the evidences of Natural Theology, that the _sentiments_ of the human
mind, not less than its intuitive perceptions or logical processes, have
a close relation to the subject of inquiry; but it is an error to
suppose that _all_ the sentiments having a religious tendency can be
reduced to _one_, whether it be called "a sense of dependence" or "a
consciousness of the infinite," for there are other sentiments besides
these which are equally subservient to the uses of Religion, such as the
sense of moral obligation, of the true, of the ideal, of the sublime,
and of the beautiful. It is also an important truth, that there are
spontaneous "intuitions of reason," or fundamental and invariable "laws
of thought," which come into action at the first dawn of experience, and
which have a close connection with the proof of the being and
perfections of God; but it is an error to suppose that the proof depends
_exclusively_ on these, or that it could be made out irrespective of the
evidence afforded by the works of Creation and Providence. It is further
an important truth, that the religious sentiment, or religious tendency,
is natural to man, and that it may appear either in the form of Religion
or Superstition: but it is an error to suppose that "there is but _one
religion_, although _many theologies_;" for these theologies must spring
from fundamentally different "conceptions of God," and what are these
conceptions, in their ultimate analysis, but so many beliefs, doctrines,
or dogmas, which, whether formally defined or not in articles of faith,
have in them the self-same essence which is supposed to belong only to
the bigotry of "articled churches?" But the fundamental, the fatal error
of all these speculations, is the denial of any _stable and permanent
standard of objective truth_. Truth is made purely _subjective_, and, of
course, it must also be progressive, insomuch that the truth of a former
age may be an error in the present, and the supposed truth of the
present age may become obsolete hereafter. So that there is really
nothing certain in human knowledge; and "truth" may be justly described
as never existing, but only _becoming_, as never possessed, though ever
pursued; it is a _verité mobile_, a truth not in _esse_, but in _fieri_.
Hence we read in recent speculations of a "new Christianity," of a "new
Gospel," and of "the Church of the Future," as if there could be any
other Christianity than that of the New Testament, any other Gospel than
that of Jesus Christ, or any other Church than that of apostolic times.
I have adverted to this theory, because, while it is of little value in
a speculative point of view, it is often found to exert a powerful
practical influence, especially on "men of affairs," men who have
travelled in various countries, or who have been employed in the arts of
diplomacy and government; and who, finding religious worship everywhere,
but clothed in different forms, and marking its subserviency to social
and political interests, have been too prone to place all the varieties
of belief in the same category, if not precisely on the same level, and
to regard with indifference, perhaps even with indulgence, the grossest
corruptions both of Natural and Revealed Religion. The world is surely
old enough, and its history sufficiently instructive, to prove, even to
the most indifferent statesmen, that truth is always salutary, and
error noxious, to the commonwealth, and that nowhere is society more
safe, orderly, or stable, than in those countries which are blessed with
"pure and undefiled religion." But let the opinion spread from the
prince to the peasant, from the aristocracy to the artisans, from the
philosopher to the public, that there is either no difference, or only a
slight and trivial one, between truth and error, that it matters little
what a man believes, or whether he believes at all: let the general mind
of the community become indoctrinated with such lessons, and it needs no
prophetic foresight to predict a crisis of unprecedented peril, an era
of reckless revolution. A philosophic dreamer may affect a calm
indifference, a bland and benignant Liberalism; but a nation, a
community, cannot be neutral or inert in regard to matters of faith: it
must and will be either religious or irreligious, it must either love
the truth or hate it: it is too sharp-sighted, and too much guided by
homely common sense, to believe that systems so opposite as Paganism and
Christianity, or Popery and Protestantism, are harmonious manifestations
of the same religious principle, or equally beneficial to the State.
FOOTNOTES:
[224] M. COUSIN, "Introduction," I. 318, 391, 405, 419; II. 134. Ibid.,
"Fragmens Philosophiques." Preface, VII.
[225] VALROGER, "Etudes Critiques," pp. 115, 126, 151, 308, 316. MARET,
"Essai sur Pantheisme," p. 249.
[226] P. LEROUX, "Sur l'Humanité," 2 vols.
[227] BUDDÆUS, "De Atheismo et Superstitione," pp. 184, 212.
[228] RICHARD BENTLEY, "On Freethinking," Boyle Lectures. VILLEMANDY,
"Scepticismus Debellatus," III. His words are remarkable:--"Passim haec,
aliaque generis ejusdem, placita disseminantur,--neque verum neque
bonum, qualia sunt in seipsis, posse dignosci; hinc que adeo sectandam
esse duntaxat cum veri, tum boni, similitudinem: quæ si stent ac
valeant,--illud omne erit verum, illud omne æquum,--illud omne pium et
religiosum,--illud omne utile, quod _cuiquam tale videatur_; privatam
cujusque conscientiam supremam esse agendorum, vel non agendorum,
normam."
[229] JAMES MARTINEAU, "Rationale of Religious Inquiry," p. 108.
[230] F. DE LAMENNAIS, "Essai sur l'Indifference en matiere de la
Religion," 4 vols. Paris, 1844.
[231] Romans 14: 1, 5.
[232] THEODORE PARKER, "Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion,"
pp. 14, 17.