ENGLAND CONTINUED: PHILOSOPHICAL AND LITERARY RATIONALISM.--COLERIDGE
AND CARLYLE.
All history betrays the operation of a compensating principle. The
payment may be slow, but there is seldom total repudiation. An influence
which departs from a country and sets in upon its neighbor, transforming
thought, giving new shades to social life, and instilling foreign
principles into politics, is sure, in course of time, to return from its
wanderings, bearing with it other forces with which to react upon the
land whence it originated. Thought, like the tidal wave, visits all
latitudes with its ebb and flow.
The present condition of Anglican theology is an illustration of
intellectual re-payment. Two centuries ago England gave Deism to
Germany, and the latter country is now paying back the debt with
compound interest. After the Revolution of 1789, and the brilliant
ascendency of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French spirit rapidly lost its
hold upon the English mind. But there immediately arose a disposition to
consult German theology and philosophy. English students frequented the
German universities, and the works of the leading thinkers of Berlin,
Heidelberg, and Halle, were on sale in the book-stores of London. The
intimate relations of the royal family of England to Germany, together
with the alliance between the German States and Great Britain for the
arrest of French arms, increased the tendency until it assumed
importance and power. The fruit was first visible in the application of
German Rationalism and philosophy to English theology. When Coleridge
came from the Fatherland with a new system of opinions, he felt as proud
of his good fortune as Columbus did on laying a continent at his
sovereign's feet. Ever since that profound thinker assumed a fixed
position, a reaction against orthodoxy has been progressing in the
Established Church. There are reasons why the slow but effectual
introduction of German Rationalism has been taking place imperceptibly.
The war which had agitated England, with the rest of Europe, came to a
close in 1815. Immediately afterward domestic polities needed
adjustment. "The disabilities were swept away," says a writer, "the
House of Commons was reconstituted, the municipalities were reformed,
slavery was abolished."[142] In due time the nation became adjusted to
peace; the popular mind lost its nervousness; the universities returned
to their sober thinking; and the Church took a careful survey to
ascertain what had been lost in the recent conflict, what gained, and
what new fields lay ready for her enterprise. But very soon fresh
political combinations attracted the attention of all classes. The
revolutionary changes and counter-changes in France were watched with
eager attention lest Waterloo might be avenged in some unexpected
manner. At home, church parties were reviving the old antagonisms
described by the pen of Macaulay. The popular mind has thus been
continually directed toward some exciting theme. England has not had a
day of leisure during the whole of the last half-century, when she
could come to a judicious conclusion concerning that class of her
thinkers who, though they make theology their profession, are so
intensely independent as to attach themselves to no creed or
ecclesiastical organization. But they have been thinking all the time,
and the outgrowth of their thought is now visible.
English Rationalism consists of three departments: Philosophical,
Literary, and Critical Rationalism. Whenever infidelity has arisen,
whether within or without the Church, it has usually developed these
forms. Philosophy has furnished undevout reason with a fund of
speculative objections to revelation; literature has dazzled and
bewildered the young and all lovers of romance; and criticism has seized
the deductions of science, language, and ethnology, and by their
combined aid aimed at the overthrow of the historical and inspired basis
of faith. Each of these three agents is in constant danger of arrogance
and error. The first, by a single false assumption, may lose its way;
the second, by making too free use of the imagination, can easily forget
when it is dealing with faith and facts; and the third, by one act of
over-reaching, is liable to become puerile, fanciful, and unreliable.
The philosopher, the _littérateur_, and the exegete need to be less
observant of the surrounding world than of the purity of their own inner
life and the teachings of the Holy Spirit.
Philosophical Rationalism in England commenced with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. A comprehensive view of that metaphysician produces a painful
impression. Though gifted with capacity for any sphere of thought, he
did not excel in either so far as to enable us to assign him a fixed
place in literature. He is known as poet, theologian, and philosopher.
But his own desire was that posterity might regard him as a theologian.
In addition to this indeterminateness of position, which always
seriously detracts from a great name, Coleridge presents the unfortunate
example of a man who, instead of laboring with settled convictions, and
achieving success by virtue of their operation, seems to have only
striven after them. His indefinite status was the result of that
theological difficulty which proved his greatest misfortune. His
sentiments never partook of an evangelical character until the latter
part of his life. His habits of thought had become confirmed, and it was
quite too late to counteract the influence of many views previously
expressed.
So far as we are able to collect the opinions of Coleridge by fragments
from his writings, we discover two elements, which, coming from totally
different sources, and originating in different ages, harmonized in his
mind and constituted the mass of his speculations. One was Grecian,
taking its rise in Plato and afterward becoming assimilated to
Christianity at Alexandria. The other was German, derived directly from
Kant, and undergoing no improvement by its processes of transformation
at the hands of that philosopher's successors. "From the Greek," says
Dr. Shedd, "he derived the doctrine of Ideas, and fully sympathized with
his warmly-glowing and poetic utterance of philosophic truths. From the
German he derived the more strictly scientific part of his system--the
fundamental distinctions between the Understanding and the Reason (with
the sub-distinction of the latter into Speculative and Practical), and
between Nature and Spirit. With him also he sympathized in that deep
conviction of the absolute nature and validity of the great ideas of
God, Freedom, and Immortality--of the binding obligation of
conscience--and generally of the supremacy of the Moral and Practical
over the purely Speculative. Indeed, any one who goes to the study of
Kant, after having made himself acquainted with the writings of
Coleridge, will be impressed by the spontaneous and vital concurrence of
the latter with the former--the heartiness and entireness with which the
Englishman enters into the method and system of this, in many respects,
greatest philosopher of the modern world."[143]
The Platonic element in the speculations of Coleridge is of earlier date
than the German. It was his reliance until introduced to the captivating
opinions of the philosopher of Königsberg. But it never wholly left
him,--it was the enchantment of his life.
He had severe struggles. His conquest of the habit of opium-eating,
contracted to soothe physical suffering, is an index of the persistent
purpose of the man. At first an ardent Unitarian, he was once about to
assume charge of a congregation at Shrewsbury. But he finally declined
the offer, by saying that, "Active zeal for Unitarian Christianity, not
indolence or indifference, has been the motive of my declining a local
and solid settlement as preacher of it."[144]
The media through which he passed in search of light were numerous. He
seems to have gone to Germany under the impression that he would there
find what he had fruitlessly sought in England. No one will deny that
the philosophy of Kant was better than the English empirical system of
the eighteenth century, which was the best metaphysical pabulum he had
received at home. He applied himself to the assiduous study of Kant's
disciples, but the master satisfied him best. Nevertheless, Coleridge
was not mentally adapted to the Kantian system. He had a psychical
affinity for Schelling. He loved him as a brother. He was charmed with
his vivid imagination, warm admiration of all natural forms, and ardent,
impulsive temperament. Schelling's philosophy was Spinozism in poetry,
and there can be no question of Coleridge's former adoption of some
parts of the Hollander's naturalism. But his tenacity to them, as well
as his subsequent affiliation with Schelling, was short-lived. When he
awoke to the unmistakable stratum of Pantheism underlying Schelling's
system, he hastily forsook it, and his diatribes indignantly hurled
against one whom he had so enthusiastically admired are the more notable
because of his former intense sympathy. From Schelling he returned once
more to Kant as the thinker who had more closely approximated the truth.
His mind must have undergone a total revolution when he could write such
words as these: "Spite of all the superior airs of the
_Natur-Philosophie_, I confess that in the perusal of Kant I breathe the
air of good sense and logical understanding with the light of reason
shining in it and through it; while in the Physics of Schelling I am
amused with happy conjectures, and in his Theology I am bewildered by
positions which, in their first sense, are transcendental
(_überfliegend_), and in their literal sense scandalous."[145]
Coleridge became firmly settled in theistic faith. Occupying that as his
final position, he is destined to wield a great salutary power over
English thought. Dr. Shedd, in estimating the probable future influence
of his theistic system, says: "Now as the defender and interpreter of
this decidedly and profoundly theistic system of philosophy, we regard
the works of Coleridge as of great and growing worth, in the present
state of the educated and thinking world. It is not to be disguised that
Pantheism is the most formidable opponent which truth has to encounter
in the cultivated and reflecting classes. We do not here allude to the
formal reception and logical defense of the system, so much as to that
pantheistic way of thinking, which is unconsciously stealing into the
lighter and more imaginative species of modern literature, and from them
is passing over into the principles and opinions of men at large. This
popularized Naturalism--this Naturalism of polite literature and of
literary society--is seen in the lack of that depth and strength of
tone, and that heartiness and robustness of temper, which characterize a
mind into which the personality of God, and the responsibility of man
cut sharply, and which does not cowardly shrink from a severe and
salutary moral consciousness.... The intensely theistic character of the
philosophy of Coleridge is rooted and grounded in the Personal and the
Spiritual, and not in the least in the Impersonal and the Natural.
Drawing in the outset, as we have remarked above, a distinct and broad
line between these two realms, it keeps them apart from each other, by
affirming a difference in essence, and steadfastly resists any and every
attempt to amalgamate them into one sole substance. The doctrine of
creation, and not of emanation or of modification, is the doctrine by
which it constructs its theory of the Universe, and the doctrine of
responsible self-determination, and not of irresponsible natural
development, is the doctrine by which it constructs its systems of
Philosophy and Religion."[146]
The Platonic portion of the views of Coleridge is more apparent in his
theology than in his philosophy. In his _Confession of Faith_, written
November 3, 1816, he avows his adherence to some of the prime doctrines
of revealed truth. He declares his free agency; defines God to be a
Being in whom supreme reason and a most holy will are one with infinite
power; acknowledges man's fallen nature, that he is "born a child of
wrath;" and holds Christ Jesus to be the Word which was with God from
all eternity, assumed human nature to redeem man, and by his merits
secured for us the descent of the Holy Spirit and the impartation of his
free grace. In the Preface to the _Aids to Reflection_ he thus states
his object in writing that work: "To exhibit a full and consistent
scheme of the Christian Dispensation, and more largely of all the
peculiar doctrines of the Christian faith; and to answer all the
objections to the same, which do not originate in a corrupt will rather
than an erring judgment; and to do this in a manner intelligible for all
who, possessing the ordinary advantages of education, do in good earnest
desire to form their religious creed in the light of their own
convictions, and to have a reason for the faith which they profess.
There are indeed mysteries, in evidence of which no reasons can be
brought. But it has been my endeavor to show that the true solution of
the problem is, that these mysteries are reason, reason in its highest
form of self-affirmation."[147]
The distinctions and definitions of Coleridge occasion the most serious
difficulty in the study of his opinions. His mode of statement more
frequently than his conception subjects him to the charge of
Rationalism. His life-long error of mistaking theology for metaphysics
resulted in his application of philosophical terminology to theological
questions; but making every reasonable allowance, we cannot doubt that
he had defective views of some of the essential truths of Christianity.
He clothes reason with authority to determine what is inspiration, by
saying that there can be no revelation "_ab extra_." Therefore, every
man should decide for himself the character of the Scriptures. The power
which Coleridge thus places in the hand of man is traceable to his
distinction between reason and understanding. He makes the latter the
logical, and the former the intuitive faculty. Even beasts possess
understanding, but reason, the gift of God to no less creature than man,
performs the functions of judgment on supersensual matters. "Reason,"
says he, "is the power of universal and necessary convictions, the
source and substance of truths above sense, and having their evidence in
themselves."[148] This admission to Rationalism has been eagerly seized
by the Coleridgean school, and elaborated in some of their writings.
Sin, according to Coleridge, is not guilt in the orthodox sense. When
Adam fell he merely turned his back upon the sun; dwelt in the shadow;
had God's displeasure; was stripped of his supernatural endowments; and
inherited the evils of a sickly body, and a passionate, ignorant, and
uninstructed soul. His sin left him to his nature, his posterity is heir
to his misfortunes, and what is every man's evil becomes all men's
greater evil. Each one has evil enough, and it is hard for a man to live
up to the rule of his own reason and conscience.[149] Redemption is not
salvation from the curse of a broken law, and Christ did not pay a debt
for man, because the payer must have incurred the debt himself.[150]
But the fruit of his death is the reconciliation of man to God. Man will
have a future life, but it was not the specific object of the Christian
dispensation to satisfy his understanding that he will live hereafter;
neither is the belief of a future state or the rationality of its belief
the exclusive attribute of the Christian religion, but a fundamental
article of all religion.[151]
All attempts to determine the exact theological position of Coleridge
from his own definitions are unsatisfactory. We must derive his real
convictions from the spirit and not from the letter of his works. He was
devout and reverent, never prosecuting his investigations from a mere
love of speculation, but as a sincere inquirer after truth. But his
statements have had their natural result in producing a large and
vigorous school of thinkers. Never bracing himself to write a
philosophical or theological system, but merely stating his views in
aphoristic form--as in the _Aids to Reflection_--he scattered his
thoughts as a careless sower, and left them to germinate in the public
mind. But many of his opinions have been perverted, and speculations
have been based upon them by numerous admirers who, proudly claiming him
for authority, thrust upon the world those sentiments which bear less
the impress of the master than the counterfeit of the weaker disciple.
A large cluster of important and familiar names appears in testimony of
the deep and immediate impression produced by the opinions of Coleridge.
Julius Charles Hare, not the least worthy of the number, has been one of
the prominent agents in communicating to the English people the
principles of that thinker, who was not superior to him in moral
earnestness and profound reverence. When lecturing as Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge, Hare was attentively heard by John Sterling,
Maurice, and Trench. He drank deeply of the spirit of Coleridge, of whom
he was ever proud to call himself a "pupil," and who, in connection with
Wordsworth, was the instrumentality by which he and others "were
preserved from the noxious taint of Byron."[152]
From whatever side we view Hare's life, it is full of interest. When
very young he traveled on the Continent, and became delighted with the
literature of Germany. He informs us that, "in 1811 he saw the mark of
Luther's inkstand on the walls of the Castle of Wartburg, and there
first learned to throw inkstands at the devil." His view of sacrifice
was very superficial, and similar to that of Maurice. The Jewish
offerings were typical "of the slaying and offering up of the carnal
nature to God.... The lesson of the cross is to draw nigh to God, not by
this work or that work, not by the sacrifice of this thing or that, but
by the entire sacrifice and resignation of their whole being to the will
of God."[153] Christ did not perform his important mission so much by
his death as by his entire life, and his sufferings were only the
completion of his task. "His great work was to be completed and made
perfect, as every truly great work must be, by suffering. For no work
can be really great unless it be against the course of the world.... It
was by losing his own life in every possible way--by the agony in the
garden; by the flight and denial of those whom he had chosen out of the
world to be His companions and friends; by the mockery and cruelty of
those whom his goodness and purity rendered more bitter against him; by
the frantic and murderous cries of the people, whom he had loaded with
every earthly benefit, and whom he desired to crown with eternal
blessings; and by the closing sufferings on the cross--that Jesus was to
gain his own life, and the everlasting life of all who will believe in
Him. All this, then, the whole work of the redemption of mankind, does
our Lord in the text declare to be finished."[154]
Hare declares the necessity of faith to Christian life, but he renders
it more passive than active by saying that it is a receptive moral
endowment capable of large development. Happy is the man who becomes
inured to the exalted "habit of faith." Sin is more a matter of regret
than of responsibility; inspiration is a doctrine we should not slight,
but the language of the Scriptures must not be regarded too tenaciously;
due allowance ought to be made for all verbal inaccuracies and
discrepancies; miracles are an adjunct to Christian evidence, but their
importance is greatly exaggerated, for they are a beautiful frieze, not
one of the great pillars in the temple of our faith.
Notwithstanding these evidences of Hare's digression from orthodoxy, we
cannot forget that consecration and purity of heart revealed in some of
his sermons, and especially in the glowing pages of the _Mission of the
Comforter_. His ministerial life was an example of untiring devotion,
and we know not which to admire the more, his labor of love in the
rustic parish of Herstmonceaux, or those searching rebukes of Romanism
contained in the charges to his clergy. Independent as both his friends
and enemies acknowledge him to have been, his misfortune was an
excessive reliance upon his own imagination and upon the opinions of
those whom he admired. Nature made him capable of intimate friendships,
both personal and intellectual. No one can examine his life without
loving the man, nor read his fervent words without concluding that the
Church has been honored by few men of his noble type. That
self-sacrifice and sympathy of which he often spoke feelingly in
connection with the humiliation of Christ, were the controlling
principles of his heart. Let not the veil with which we would conceal
his theological defects obscure, in the least, the brightness of his
resplendent character and pure purposes.
No view of Hare's position can be complete without embracing that of his
brother-in-law, Maurice; both of whom were ardently sympathetic with
Coleridge. But while the former gave a more evangelical cast to his
master's opinions than they originally possessed, the latter perverted
them by unwarranted speculations. Maurice is now one of the most
influential of the Rationalistic teachers of England. He has not
employed himself, like Kingsley and others of the Broad Church, in
publishing his theological sentiments in the form of religious novels,
but has had the commendable frankness to state his opinions without
circumlocution, and to furnish us with his creed in a single volume of
essays.[155]
Maurice's notion of an ideal creation betrays the media through which he
has received it,--from Coleridge to Neo-Platonism, and thence to Plato.
The creation of herbs, flowers, beasts, birds, and fishes, as recorded
in the first chapter of Genesis, was the bringing forth of kinds and
orders, such as they were according to the mind of God, not of actual
separate phenomenal existences, such as they present themselves to the
senses of man.[156] The creation of man is disposed of in the same ideal
way; so that we are inclined to ask the critic if man is not, after all,
only a Platonic idea? "What I wish you particularly to notice," says he,
"is that the part of the record which speaks of man ideally, according
to his place with reference to God, is the part which expressly belongs
to the history of CREATION; that the bringing forth of man in _this_
sense, is the work of the sixth day.... Extend this thought, which seems
to rise inevitably out of the story of the creation of _man_, as Moses
delivers it, to the seat of that universe of which he regards man as the
climax, and we are forced to the conclusion that in the one case, as in
the other, it is not the visible, material thing of which the historian
is speaking, but that which lies below the visible material thing, and
constitutes the substance which it shows forth."[157]
Maurice assumes also, with Neo-Platonism, that Christ is the archetype
of every human being, and that when a man becomes pure, he is only
developing the Christ who was within him already. "The Son was really in
Saul of Tarsus, and he only became Paul the converted when that Son was
revealed in him.... Christ is in every man.... All may call upon God as
a reconciled Father. Human beings are redeemed, not in consequence of
any act they have done, of any faith they have exercised; their faith is
to be grounded on a foregone conclusion; their acts are to be the fruits
of a state they already possess."[158]
From this premise alone the theological system of Maurice may be
accurately determined. Sin is an evil from which we should strive to
effect an escape, but it is nothing more, neither guilt nor
responsibility, only a condition of our life and not a consequence of
actual disobedience of God's law, or the effect of his displeasure. Deep
below it there is a righteousness capable of asserting its sovereignty.
Job had a righteousness within him, which led him to say, "I know that
my Redeemer liveth." Those persons who prate about our miserable
condition as sinners, "have a secret reserve of belief that there is
that in them which is not sin, which is the very opposite of sin....
Each man has got this sense of righteousness, whether he realizes it
distinctly or indistinctly; whether he expresses it courageously, or
keeps it to himself."[159]
The nature of the atonement, Maurice holds, is a subject of
misconception, and the notions of it, as they now obtain in Christendom,
darken and bewilder the mind. What Christ has really done for us through
suffering was his matchless sympathy; he became our brother, and was not
our mediatorial substitute but a natural representative. On this ground,
a regeneration is communicated to all, not by virtue of any
appropriating faith, but as a result of the sympathetic death of Christ.
The justification of humanity has been secured by his incarnation, and
the penalty resulting from sin is a mere scar of the healed wound.
Natural death is not the separation of soul and body, though both are
affected by it, for the body which seems to die is only the corruption
resulting from our sins, and the real body does not die. Hence, there
can never be any general resurrection or judgment.
It is astonishing that a man who unhesitatingly propagated these views,
could hold any office within the pale of the Established Church; but
Maurice enjoyed high favor a number of years before his displacement.
Though commencing life as a Unitarian and Universalist, he was rapidly
promoted by the ecclesiastical authorities. He took no pains to conceal
his theological opinions, and yet we find him advancing in King's
College, London, from the Professorship of English Literature to that of
Ecclesiastical History, and thence to the Chair of Divinity. Some time
elapsed after the publication of the _Essays_ before Dr. Jelf, Principal
of the College, even read them, but having made himself acquainted with
their contents, a correspondence took place between him and Maurice. The
result was that the Council pronounced "the opinions expressed, and the
doubts indicated in the _Essays_, and the correspondence respecting
future punishments and the final issues of the day of judgment, to be of
dangerous tendency, and likely to unsettle the minds of the theological
students; and further decide that his continuance as Professor would be
seriously detrimental to the interests of the College."[160] Maurice
afterward held the office of Chaplain to Lincoln's Inn, but in 1860 he
was appointed by the Queen to the district church of Vere St.
Marylebone.
The relations of Maurice and Kingsley are most intimate, for besides
their leadership of the Broad Church, they are the exponents of the
so-called Christian Socialism.
Charles Kingsley has made a profound impression upon the present thought
and life of England. He betrays his martial lineage in the vigor of his
pen, and in that unswerving purpose to counteract what, in his opinion,
are serious barriers to the progress of the age. That he should
entertain sympathy with Coleridge might be expected from the very cast
of his mind, but his adoption of such a large proportion of that
thinker's sentiments may be due to his private education under the care
of Derwent Coleridge, son of the philosopher. Though only forty-six
years old, twenty of which have been passed in the rectorship of
Eversley, an enumeration of his works shows him to have written
theology, philosophy, poetry, and romance. But his publications betray
unity of purpose. Instead of suffering Christianity to be a dead weight
upon society, he would adapt it to the wants of the masses. He holds
that when the adaptation becomes thorough, when, by any means, the
people can be made to grasp Christianity, the reflexive influence will
be so great as to elevate them to a point unthought of by the sluggish
Church. But what is the Christianity which Kingsley would incorporate
into the life of society? Upon the answer to this inquiry depends the
difference between him and evangelical theologians.
The advocates of orthodoxy maintain that Christianity is a remedial
dispensation, introduced to meet an evil which could not be counteracted
by any other agency, human or divine; but with Kingsley it is only the
outward exhibition of what had ever existed in a concealed state. Man
has always been one with the Word, or Son of God, and, by virtue of the
nature of each, they are in perfect union. Christ manifested the union
first when he appeared on earth in the incarnate state, since he came to
declare to men that they were not estranged from him, but had always
been, and still were, in harmony with him. Men are not craven enemies of
God, which error a harsh theology would make them believe. They are his
friends, for Christ regarded them complacently as such; and the
atonement must not be deemed the reconciliation of sinful humanity and
angry Deity, but as the first manifestation of an ever-existing unity of
the two parties. We need not pass through the long ordeal of repentance
to be placed in the relation of sons; because we are all by nature
"members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of
Heaven."[161]
The Church, according to Kingsley, is the world in a certain aspect.
"The world," says an English writer, in stating Kingsley's opinion, "is
called the Church when it recognizes its relation to God in Christ, and
acts accordingly. The Church is the world lifting itself up into the
sunshine; the world is the Church falling into shadow and darkness. When
and where the light and life that are in the world break out into
bright, or noble, or holy word or deed, then and there the world shows
that the nature and glory of the Church live within it. Every man of the
world is not only potentially, but virtually a member of Christ's
Church, whatever may, for the present, be his character or seeming. Like
the colors in shot silk, or on a dove's neck, the difference of hue and
denomination depends merely upon the degree of light, and the angle of
vision. In conformity with this principle, Mr. Kingsley's theology
altogether secularizes the Kingdom of Christ."[162]
Kingsley's views of the offices of the Holy Spirit indicate a decided
approbation of the pantheistic theory. The third person of the Trinity
operates not only upon man, but through him upon the secular and
intellectual life of the world. Poetry, romance, and each act of
induction, are the work of the Spirit, whose agency secures all the
material and scientific growth of the world. Without that power, the car
of progress, whether in letters, mechanics, or ethics, must stop.
Kingsley would elevate the degraded portion of the race until the lowest
member be made to feel the transmuting agency of Christianity. He was
first led into sympathy with the poor operatives in the English
factories by reading Mayhew's _Sketches of London Labor and London
Poor_, and, in connection with Maurice, organized coöperative laboring
associations as a check to the crushing system of competitive labor.
Their plans succeeded, and many abject working men have been brought
into a higher social and moral condition than they had hitherto enjoyed.
These humanitarian efforts have attracted large numbers to the reception
of the tenets entertained by those putting them forth. "For," the
unthinking say, "if the opinions of these men will lead them to labor on
this wise for the social elevation of our fellow-beings, they must needs
be correct, and if so, worthy of our reception." But if Neo-Platonism
can make Maurices, Kingsleys, and a whole school of "Muscular
Christians" and "Christian Socialists," nothing less than the pure
religion of Christ can raise up Howards, Wilberforces, and Budgetts.
* * * * *
The philosopher has always exerted a great power upon those who do not
philosophize. He is regarded by many as the inhabitant of a sphere which
few can enter, and his dictates are heard as fiats of a rightful ruler.
Those who cannot understand him fully often congratulate themselves that
the few unmistakable grains they have gathered from his opinions are
nuggets of pure gold, and entitled to the merit of becoming the world's
currency. The philosopher is not his own interpreter. There has seldom
been one who knew how to tell his thoughts to the masses. That is the
province of the popular writers who have adopted his opinions, and know
how to deal them out almost imperceptibly in the form of poetry and
fiction. One great philosophical mind has sometimes dictated the
literature of generations, and, in earlier periods, of entire centuries.
This influence of philosophy on literature is furnished with a new
illustration at the present day; some of the most popular and attractive
writers of Great Britain have extracted their opinions from one or more
of the later philosophers of Germany, and incorporated them into current
poetry, finance, and history. The effect has been to furnish the people
with a literature which possesses all the weight of vital religious
truth in the minds of those readers who prefer to derive their creed
from some enchanter in letters to seeking it immediately from the Bible
or its most reliable interpreters.
The department of literature in question inculcates as its cardinal
principle that man is unconscious of his power, he can do what seems
impossible, does not worship his fellows enough, is purer than his
clerical leaders would have him imagine, and ought, like certain of his
predecessors, to arouse to lofty efforts, assert his dignity and
divinity, and strive to advance the world to its proper glory and
perfection. The authors of these exciting and flattering appeals do not
surround their theory with proper safeguards, nor do they tell the world
that they have served up a delectable dish of Pantheism for popular
deglutition. The case is stated clearly by one who understands the
danger of this tendency, and whose pen has already been powerful in
exposing its absurdity. "In our general literature," says Bayne, "the
principle we have enunciated undergoes modification, and, for the most
part, is by no means expressed as pantheism. We refer to that spirit of
self-assertion, which lies so deep in what may be called the religion of
literature, to that wide-spread tendency to regard all reform of the
individual man as being an evolution of some hidden nobleness, or an
appeal to a perfect internal light or law, together with what may be
called the worship of genius, the habit of nourishing all hope on the
manifestation of the divine, by gifted individuals. We care not how this
last remarkable characteristic of the time be defined; to us its
connection with pantheism, and more or less close dependence on the
teaching of that of Germany, seem plain, but it is enough that we
discern in it an influence definably antagonistic to the spirit of
Christianity."[163]
The parentage of literary Rationalism in England is attributable to
Thomas Carlyle. Having "found his soul" in the philosophy of Germany, we
hear him, in 1827, defending the criticism of Kant as "distinctly the
greatest intellectual achievement of the century in which it came to
light." But the opinions of Fichte and Richter have subsequently had
more weight with Carlyle, and he has elaborated them in many forms.
Fichte, in particular, has influenced him to adopt a theory which gives
a practical denial to the Scriptural declarations of the fallen state of
humanity. Effort being goodness, the exterior world is only tolerable
because it furnishes an arena for the contest of work. Man will never
receive any prize unless he bestir himself to the exercise of his own
omnipotence. Individual life is all the real life possessed by this
world, and it is gifted with a spiritual wand capable of calling up
wondrous forms of beauty and worth. It matters not so much what man
works for, since his effort is the important matter. All ages have had a
few true men. The assertion of self-hood constitutes greatness; and
Zoroaster, Cromwell, Julius Cæsar, and Frederic the Great; heroes of any
creed or no creed, Pagan or Jew, are the world's worthies, its great
divinities. Men need not be conscious that they are doing great deeds
while in the act, nor, when the work is accomplished, that they have
performed anything worthy a school-boy's notice. On the other hand,
worth is tested by actual unconsciousness, "which teaches that all
self-knowledge is a curse, and introspection a disease; that the true
health of a man is to have a soul without being aware of it,--to be
disposed of by impulses which he never criticises,--to fling out the
products of creative genius without looking at them."
Man is the centre of the universe, which is everywhere clothed with
life. His is a spiritual power capable of effecting the great
transformations needed by his fellows. Let him be earnest, then, and
evolve the fruits of his wonderful strength. Since his mission is work,
here is Carlyle's gospel which calls him to it: "Work is of a religious
nature; all true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true
hand-labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth,
has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to the
sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler
calculations, Newton meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all
acted heroisms, martyrdoms,--up to that 'Agony of bloody sweat,' which
all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not 'worship,' then I
say the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet
discovered under God's sky." Work implies power, and power in the
individual is what society needs to keep it within proper bounds. Social
life requires the will of the single mind and hand; republicanism is
therefore the dream of fanatics, and ought not to be tolerated anywhere.
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 entitles them to our worship. Napoleon
III. preaches the pure gospel of politics in his _Life of Julius Cæsar_.
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 "Teufelsdröckh." 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 classes of men most exposed to temptations of
egotism and petulance, and least subjected to anything above
them,--academics, artists, _littérateurs_, 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 God." 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, assigned 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 God 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.
Assuming a thoroughly negative position, it repels every tendency toward
a higher type of piety, and retards, as far as it can, the popular
acceptance of the doctrines of Christianity. Its attacks on the sanctity
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 Tübingen 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 _noblesse_ 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 multitude, and conformed to the reigning
'churchmanship.' 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
assailing its walls. When the crisis shall have passed 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 class 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 God 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.