be even less than in the case of any other writings; from their very
structure,--the varied and reiterated forms in which all the great
truths are expressed; from the greater veneration they inspired; the
greater care with which they would be transcribed; the greater number
of copies which would be diffused through the world,--and which, though
that very circumstance would multiply the number of variations, would
also afford, in their collation, the means of reciprocal correction;--a
correction which we have seen applied in our day, with admirable
success, to so many ancient writers, under a system of canons which
have now raised this species of criticism to the rank of an inductive
science. This criticism, applied to the Scriptures, has in many
instances restored the true rending, and dissolved the objections which
might have been founded on the uncorrected variations; and, as time
rolls on, may lead, by yet fresh discoveries and more comprehensive
recensions, to a yet further clarifying of the stream of Divine truth,
till 'the river of the water of life' shall flow nearly in its original
limpid purity. Within such limits as these, the most consistent advocate
of Christianity not only must admit--not only may safely admit--the
existence of discrepancies, but may do so even with advantage to his
cause. he must admit them, since such variations must be the result of
the manner in which the records have been transmitted, unless we suppose
a supernatural intervention, neither promised by God nor pleaded for by
man: he may safely admit them, because--from a general induction from
the history of all literature--we see that, where copies of writings
have been sufficiently multiplied, and sufficient motives for care have
existed in the transcription, the limits of error are very narrow, and
leave the substantial identity untouched: and he may admit them with
advantage; for the admission is a reply to many objections rounded on
the assumption that he must contend that there are no variations, when
he need only contend that there are none that can be material.
But it may be said, 'May not we be permitted, while conceding the
miraculous and other evidences of Christianity, and the general
authority of the records which contain it, to go a step further, and
to reject some things which seem palpably ill-reasoned, distasteful,
inconsistent, or immoral?' 'Let every man be fully persuaded in his
own mind.' For ourselves, we honestly confess we cannot see the logical
consistency of such a position; any more than the reasonableness, after
having admitted the preponderant evidence for the great truth of Theism,
of excepting some phenomena as apparently at variance with the Divine
perfections; and thus virtually adopting a Manichaean hypothesis. We
must recollect that we know nothing of Christianity except from its
records; and as these, once fairly ascertained to be authentic and
genuine, are all, as regards their contents, supported precisely by the
same miraculous and other evidence; as they bear upon them precisely
the same internal marks of artlessness, truth, and sincerity; and,
historically and in other respects, are inextricably interwoven with one
another; we see not on what principles we can safely reject portions as
improbable, distasteful, not quadrating with the dictates of reason;'
our 'intuitional consciousness,' and what not. This assumed liberty,
however is, as we apprehend, of the very essence of Rationalism; and
it may be called the Manichaeism of interpretation. So long as the
canonicity of any of the records, or any portion of them, or their true
interpretation, is in dispute, we may fairly doubt; but that point once
decided by honest criticism, to say we receive such and such portions,
on account of the weight of the general evidence, and yet reject other
portions, though sustained by the same evidence, because we think there
is something unreasonable or revolting in their substance, is plainly
to accept evidence only where it pleases us, and to reject it where it
pleases us not. The only question fairly at issue must ever be whether
the general evidence for Christianity will overbear the difficulty which
we cannot separate from the truths. If it will not, we must reject it
wholly; and if it will, we must receive it wholly. There is plainly no
tenable position between absolute infidelity and absolute belief.
And this is proved by the infinitely various and Protean character of
Rationalism, and the perfectly indeterminate, but always arbitrary,
limits it imposes on itself. It exists in all forms and degrees, from a
moderation which accepts nearly the entire system of Christianity,
and which certainly rejects nothing that can be said to constitute its
distinctive truth, to an audacity of unbelief, which, professing still
vaguely to reverence Christianity as 'something divine,' sponges out
nine tenths of the whole; or, after reducing the mass of it to a caput
mortuum of lies, fiction, and superstitions, retains only a few drops of
fact and doctrine,--so few as certainly not to pay for the expenses of
the critical distillation.*
____
* It may be as well to remark, that we have frequently observed a
disposition to represent the very general abandonment of the theory
of 'verbal inspiration' as a concession to Rationalism; as if it
necessarily followed from admitting that inspiration is not verbal,
that therefore an indeterminate portion of the substance or doctrine
is purely human. It is plain, however, that this is no necessary
consequence: an advocate of plenary inspiration may contend, that,
though he does not believe that the very words of Scripture were
dictated, yet that the thoughts were either so suggested, (if the matter
was such as could be known only by revelation,) or so controlled, (if
the matter were such as was previously known,) that (excluding errors
introduced into the text since) the Scriptures as first composed
were--what no book of man ever was, or can be, even in the plainest
narrative of the simplest events--a perfectly accurate expression of
truth. We enter not here, however, into the question whether such a view
of inspiration is better or worse than another. We are simply anxious
to correct a fallacy which has, judging from what we have recently read,
operated rather extensively. Inspiration may be verbal, or the contrary;
but, whether one or the other, he who takes the affirmative or negative
of that question may still consistently contend that it may still be
plenary. The question of the inspiration of the whole or the inspiration
of a part, is widely different from that as to the suggestion of the
words or the suggestion of the thoughts. But these questions we leave to
professed theologians. We merely enter our protest against a prevailing
fallacy.
____
Nor will the theory of what some call the 'intuitional consciousness
avail us here. It is true, as they assert, that the constitution of
human nature is such that, before its actual development, it has a
capacity of developing to certain effects only,--just as the flower
in the germ, as it expands to the sun, will have certain colours and a
certain fragrance, and no other;--all which, indeed, though not very new
or profound, is very important. But it is not so dear that it will give
us any help on the present occasion. We have an original susceptibility
of music, of beauty, of religion, it is said. Granted; but as the actual
development of this susceptibility exhibits all the diversities between
Handel's notions of harmony and those of an American Indian--between
Raphael's notions of beauty and those of a Hottentot--between St. Paul's
notions of a God and those of a New Zealander--it would appear that
the education of this susceptibility is at least as important as the
susceptibility itself, if not more so; for without the susceptibility
itself, we should simply have no notion of music, beauty, or religion;
and between such negation and that notion of all these which New
Zealanders and Hottentots possess, not a few of our species would
probably prefer the former. It is in vain then to tell us to look into
the 'depths of our own nature' (as some vaguely say), and to judge
thence what, in a professed revelation, is suitable to us, or worthy of
our acceptance and rejection respectively. This criterion is, as we
see by the utterly different judgments formed by different classes of
Rationalists as to the how much they shall receive of the revelation
they might generally admit, a very shifting one--a measure which has no
linear unit; it is to employ, as mathematicians say, a variable as if it
were a constant quantity; or, rather, it is to attempt to find the value
of an unknown quantity by another equally unknown.
We cannot but judge, then, the principles of Rationalism to be logically
untenable. And we do so, not merely or principally on account of the
absurdity it involves,--that God has expressly supplemented human
reason by a revelation containing an indeterminate but large portion
of falsities, errors, and absurdities and which we are to commit to our
little alembic, and distil as we may; not only from the absurdity of
supposing that God has demanded our faith, for statements which are
to be received only as they appear perfectly comprehensible by our
reason;--or, in other words, only for what it is impossible that we
should doubt or deny; not merely because the principle inevitably leaves
man to construct the so-called revelation entirely for himself; so that
what one man receives as genuine communication from heaven, another,
from having a different development of 'his intuitional consciousness,'
rejects as an absurdity too gross for human belief:--Not wholly, we
say, nor even principally, for these reasons; but for the still stronger
reason, that such a system of objections is an egregious trifling with
that great complex mass of evidence which, as we have said, applies to
the whole of Christianity or to none of it. As if to baffle the efforts
of man consistently to disengage these elements of our belief, the whole
are inextricably blended together. The supernatural element, especially,
is so diffused through all the records, that it is more and more felt,
at every step, to be impossible to obliterate it without obliterating
the entire system in which it circulates. The stain, if stain it be,
is far too deep for any scouring fluids of Rationalism to wash it out,
without destroying the whole texture of our creed: and, in our judgment,
the only consistent Rationalism is the Rationalism which rejects it all.
At whatever point the Rationalist we have attempted to describe may take
his stand, we do not think it difficult to prove that his conduct is
eminently irrational. If, for example, he be one of those moderate
Rationalists who admit (as thousands do) the miraculous and other
evidence of the supernatural origin of the Gospel, and therefore also
admit such and such doctrines to be true,--what can he reply, if further
asked what reason he can have for accepting these truths and rejecting
others which are supported by the very same evidence? How can he be sure
that the truths he receives are established by evidence which, to all
appearance, equally authenticates the falsehoods he rejects? Surely, as
already said, this is to reject and accept evidence as he pleases.
If, on the other hand, he says that he receives the miracles only to
authenticate what he knows very well without them, and believes true on
the information of reason alone, why trouble miracles and revelation
at all? Is not this, according to the old proverb to 'take a hatchet to
break an egg'?*
____
* If such a man says that he rejects certain doctrines, not on
rationalistic grounds, but because he denies the canonical authority, or
the interpretation of portions of the records in which they are
found, and is willing to abide by the issue if the evidence on those
points--evidence with which the human mind is quite competent to
deal,--we answer, that he is not the man with whom we are now arguing.
The points in dispute will be determined by the honest use of history,
criticism, and philology. But between such a man and one who rejects
Christianity altogether, we can imagine no consistent position.
____
Nor can we disguise from ourselves, indeed, that consistency in the
application of the essential principle of Rationalism would compel us
to go a few steps further; for since, as Bishop Butler has shown, no
greater difficulties (if so great) attach to the page of Revelation than
to the volume of Nature itself,--especially those which are involved in
that dread enigma, 'the origin of evil,' compared with which all other
enigmas are trifles,--that abyss into which so many of the
difficulties of all theology, natural and revealed, at last disembogue
themselves,--we feel that the admission of the principle of Rationalism
would ultimately drive us, not only to reject Christianity, but to
reject Theism in all its forms, whether Monotheism, or Pantheism, and
even positive or dogmatic Atheism itself. Nor could we stop, indeed,
till we had arrived at that absolute pyrrhonism which consists, if such
a thing be possible, in the negation of all belief,--even to the belief
that we do not believe!
But though the objections to the reception of Christianity are numerous,
and some insoluble, the question always returns, whether they over
balance the mass of the evidence in its favour? nor is it to be
forgotten that they are susceptible of indefinite alleviation as time
rolls on; and with a few observations on this point we will close the
present article.
A refinement of modern philosophy often leads our rationalist to speak
depreciatingly, if not contemptuously, of what he calls a stereotyped
revelation--revelation in a book. It ties down, he is fond of saying,
the spirit to the letter; and limits the 'progress' and 'development' of
the human mind in its 'free' pursuit of truth. The answer we should
be disposed to make is, first, that if a book does contain truth, the
sooner that truth is stereotyped the better; secondly, that if such
book, like the book of Nature, or, as we deem, the book of Revelation,
really contains truth, its study, so far from being incompatible with
the spirit of free inquiry, will invite and repay continual efforts more
completely to understand it. Though the great and fundamental truths
contained in either volume will be obvious in proportion to their
importance and necessity, there is no limit to be placed on the
degree of accuracy with which the truths they severally contain may be
deciphered, stated, adjusted--or even on the period in which fragments
of new truth shall cease to be elicited. It is true indeed that theology
cannot be said to admit of unlimited progress, in the same sense as
chemistry--which may, for aught we know, treble or quadruple its
present accumulations, vast as they are, both in bulk and importance.
But, even in theology as deduced from the Scripture, minute fragments
of new truth, or more exact adjustments of old truth, may be perpetually
expected. Lastly, we shall reply, that the objection to a revelation's
being consigned to a 'book' is singularly inapposite, considering that
by the constitution of the world and of human nature, man, without
books,--without the power of recording, transmitting, and perpetuating
thought, of rendering it permanent and diffusive, ever is, ever has
been, and ever must be little better than a savage; and therefore, if
there was to be a revelation at all, it might fairly be expected that it
would be communicated in this form; thus affording us one more analogy,
in addition to the many which Butler has stated, and which may in
time be multiplied without end, between 'Revealed Religion and the
Constitution and Course of Nature.'
And this leads us to notice a saying of that comprehensive genius,
which we do not recollect having seen quoted in connexion with recent
controversies, but which is well worthy of being borne in mind, as
teaching us to beware of hastily assuming that objections to Revelation,
whether suggested by the progress of science, or from the supposed
incongruity of its own contents, are unanswerable. We are not, he says,
rashly to suppose that we have arrived at the true meaning of the whole
of that book. 'It is not at all incredible that a book which has been
so long in the possession of mankind, should contain many truths as
yet undiscerned. For all the same phenomena and the same faculties of
investigation, from which such great discoveries in natural knowledge
have been made in the present and last age, were equally in the
possession of mankind several thousand year's before.' These words are
worthy of Butler: and as many illustrations of their truth have been
supplied since his day, so many others may fairly be anticipated in the
course of time. Several distinct species of argument for the truth
of Christianity from the very structure and contents of the books
containing it have been invented--of which Paley's 'Horae Paulinae' is a
memorable example. The diligent collation of the text, too, has removed
many difficulties; the diligent study of the original languages of
ancient history, manners and customs, has cleared up many more; and by
supplying proof of accuracy where error of falsehood had been charged,
has supplied important additions to the evidence which substantiates the
truth of Revelation. Against the alleged absurdity of the laws of
Moses, again, such works as that of Micholis have disclosed much of that
relative wisdom which aims not at the abstractedly best, but the best
which a given condition of humanity, a given period of the world's
history, and a given purpose could dictate. In pondering such
difficulties as still remain in those laws, we may remember the answer
of Solon to the question, whether he had given the Athenians the best
laws; viz. that he had given them the best of which they were capable:
or the judgment of the illustrious Montesquieu, who remarks, 'When
Divine Wisdom said to the Jews, "I have given you precepts which are not
good," this signifies that they had only a relative goodness: and this
is the sponge which wipes out all the difficulties which are to be found
in the laws of Moses.' This is a truth which we are persuaded a profound
philosophy will understand the better the more deeply it is revolved;
and only those legislative pedants will refuse weight to it, who would
venturously propose to give New Zealanders and Hottentots, in the
starkness of their savage ignorance, the complex forms of the British
constitution. In similar manner, many of the old objections of our
deistical writers have ceased to be heard of in our day, unless it be
from the lips of the veriest sciolism; the objections, for instance,
of that truly pedantic philosophy which once argued that ethical and
religious truth are not given in the Scripture in a system such as a
schoolman might have digested it into; as if the brief iteration and
varied illustration of pregnant truth, intermingled with narrative,
parable, and example, were not infinitely better adapted to the
condition of the human intellect in general! For similar reasons, the
old objection, that statements of Christian morality are given without
the requisite limitations, and cannot be literally acted upon, has
been long since abandoned as an absurdity. It is granted that a hundred
folios could not contain the hundredth part of all the limitations of
human actions, and all the possible cases of a contentious casuistry;
and it is also granted that human nature is not so inept as to be
incapable of interpreting and limiting for itself such rules as
'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.'
In the same manner have many of the objections suggested at different
periods by the progress of science been dissolved; and, amongst the
rest, those alleged from the remote historic antiquity of certain
nations on which infidels, like Volney and Voltaire, once so confidently
relied. And it is worthy of remark, that some of the old objections
of philosophers have disappeared by the aid of that very
science--geology--which has led, as every new branch of science probably
will, to new ones. Geology has, however, in our judgment, done at least
as much already to remove difficulties as to occasion them; and it is
not illogical, or perhaps unfair, to surmise that, we will only have
patience, its own difficulties, as those of so many other branches of
science, will be eventually solved. One thing is clear,--that, if the
Bible be true and geology be true, that cannot be geologically true
which is scripturally false, or vice versa; and we may therefore
laugh at the polite compromise which is sometimes affected by learned
professors of theology and geology respectively. All we demand of
either--all that is needed--is, that they refrain from a too hasty
conclusion of absolute contradictions between their respective sciences,
and retain quiet remembrance of the imperfection of our present
knowledge both of geology and, as Butler says, of the Bible. The recent
interpretation of the commencement of Genesis--by which the first verse
is simply supposed to affirm the original creation of all things, while
the second immediately refers to the commencement of the human economy;
passing by those prodigious cycles which geology demands, with a silence
worthy of a true revelation, which does not pretend to gratify our
curiosity as to the previous condition of our globe any more than our
curiosity as to the history of other worlds--was first suggested by
geology, though suspected and indeed anticipated by some of the
early church Fathers. But it is now felt by multitudes to be the more
reasonable interpretation,--the second verse certainly more naturally
suggesting previous revolutions in the history of the earth than its
then instant creation: and though we frankly concede that we have
not yet seen any account of the whole first chapter of Genesis which
quadrates with the doctrines of geology, it does not become us hastily
to conclude that there can be none. If a further adjustment of those
doctrines, and a more diligent investigation of the Scripture together,
should hereafter suggest any possible harmony,--though not the true
one but one ever so gratuitously assumed,--it will be sufficient to
neutralise the objection. This, it will be observed, is in accordance
with what has been already shown,--that wherever an objection is founded
on an apparent contradiction between two statements, it is sufficient to
show any possible way in which the statements may be reconciled, whether
the true one or not. The objection, in that case, to the supposition
that the facts are gratuitously assumed, though often urged, is, in
reality, nothing to the purpose.* If it should ever be shown, for
example, that supposing as many geological eras as the philosopher
requires to have passed in the chasm between the first verse, which
asserts the original dependence of all things on the fiat of the
Creator, and the second, which is supposed to commence the human era,
any imaginable condition of our system--at the close, so to speak, of a
given geological period--would harmonise with a fair interpretation of
the first chapter or Genesis, the objection will be neutralised.
____
* Some admirable remarks in relation to the answers we are bound to give
to objections to revealed religion have been made by Leibnitz (in reply
to Bayle) in the little tract prefixed to his Theodicee, entitled 'De
la Conformite de la Foi avec la Raison.' He there shows that the utmost
that can fairly be asked is, to prove that the affirmed truths involve
no necessary contradiction.
____