though, it may be, transiently discrepant conclusions of the sciences of
philology, ethnology, and geology (in all of which we may rest assured
great discoveries are yet to be made) will tend to harmonise with the
ultimate results of a more thorough study of the records of the race as
contained in the book of Revelation. Let us be permitted to imagine
one example of such possible harmony. We think that the philologist may
engage to make out, on the strictest principles of induction, from the
tenacity with which all communities cling to their language, and the
slow observed rate of change by which they alter; by which Anglo-Saxon,
for example has become English*, Latin Italian, and ancient Greek modern
(though these languages have been affected by every conceivable cause of
variation and depravation); that it would require hundreds of thousands,
nay millions, of years to account for the production, by known natural
causes, of the vast multitude of totally distinct languages, and tens
of thousands of dialects, which man now utters. On the other hand, the
geologist is more and more persuaded of comparatively recent origin
of the human race. What, then, is to harmonise these conflicting
statements? Will it not be curious if it should turn out that nothing
can possibly harmonise them but the statement of Genesis, that in order
to prevent the natural tendency of the race to accumulate on one spot
and facilitate their dispersion and destined occupancy of the globe, a
preternatural intervention expedited the operation of the causes
which would gradually have given birth to distinct languages? Of the
probability of this intervention, some profound philologist have, on
scientific grounds alone, expressed their conviction. But in all such
matters, what we plead for is only--patience; we wish not to dogmatise;
all we ask is, a philosophic abstinence from dogmatism. In relation to
many difficulties, what is now a reasonable exercise of faith may one
day be rewarded by a knowledge which on those particular points may
terminate it. And, in such ways, it is surely conceivable that a great
part of the objections against Revelation may, in time, disappear; and,
though other objections may be the result of the progress of the other
sciences or the origination of new, the solution of previous objections,
together with the additions to the evidences of Christianity, external
and internal, which the study of history and of the Scriptures
may supply, and the still brighter light cast by the progress of
Christianity and the fulfilment of its prophecies, may inspire
increasing confidence that the new objections are also destined to yield
to similar solvents. Meanwhile, such new difficulties, and those more
awful and gigantic shadows which we have no reason to believe will ever
be chased from the sacred page,--mysteries which probably could not be
explained from the necessary limitation of our faculties, and are,
at all events, submitted to us as a salutary discipline of our
humility,--will continue to form that exercise of faith which is
probably nearly equal in every age--and necessary in all ages, if we
would be made 'little children,' qualified 'to enter the kingdom of
God.'
____
+ It contains, let us recollect, (after all causes of changes, including
a conquest, have been at work upon it,) a vast majority of the Saxon
words spoken in the time of Alfred--nearly a thousand years ago!
____
In conclusion we may remark, that while many are proclaiming that
Christianity is effete, and that, in the language of Mr. Proudhon (who
complacently says it amidst the ignominious failure of a thousand social
panaceas or his own age and country), it will certainly 'die out in
about three hundred years;' and while many more proclaim that, as a
religion of supernatural origin and supernatural evidence, it is already
dying, if not dead; we must beg leave to remind them that, even if
'Christianity be false, as they allege, they are utterly forgetting the
maxims of a cautious induction in saying that it will therefore cease to
exert dominion over mankind. What proof is there of this? Whether
true or false, it has already survived numberless revolutions of human
opinions, and all sorts of changes and assaults. It is not confined,
like other religions, to any one race--to any one clime--or any one form
of political constitution. While it transmigrates freely from race to
race, and clime to clime, its chief home; too, is still in the bosom of
enterprise, wealth, science, and civilisation; and it is at this moment
most powerful amongst the nations that have most of these. If not true,
it has such an appearance of truth as to have satisfied many of the
acutest and most powerful intellects of the species;--a Bacon, a Pascal,
a Leibnitz, a Locke, a Newton, a Butler;--such an appearance of truth as
to have enlisted in its support an immense army of genius and learning:
genius and learning, not only in some sense professional, and often
wrongfully represented as therefore interested, but much of both,
strictly extra-professional; animated to its defence by nothing but
a conviction of the force of the arguments by which its truth is
sustained, and that 'hope full of immortality' which its promises have
inspired. Under such circumstances it must appear equally rash and
gratuitous to suppose, even if it be a delusion, that an institute,
which has thus enlisted the sympathies of so many of the greatest minds
of all races and of all ages--which is alone stable and progressive
amidst instability and fluctuation,--will soon come to an end. Still
more absurdly premature is it to raise a paean over its fall, upon every
new attack upon it, when it has already survived so many. This, in fact,
is a tone which, though every age renews it, should long since have been
rebuked by the constant falsification of similar prophecies, from
the time of Julian to the time of Bolingbroke, and from the time of
Bolingbroke to the time of Strauss. As Addison, we think, humorously
tells the Atheist, that he is hasty in his logic when he infers that if
there be no God, immortality must be a delusion, since, if chance
has actually found him a place in this bad world, it may, perchance,
hereafter find him another place in a worse,---so we say, that if
Christianity be a delusion, since it is a delusion which has been proof
against so much of bitter opposition, and has imposed upon such hosts
of mighty intellects, these is nothing to show that it will not do so
still, in spite of the efforts either of Proudhon or a Strauss. Such
a tone was, perhaps, never so triumphant as during the heat of the
Deistical controversy in our own country, and to which Butler alludes
with so much characteristic but deeply satirical simplicity, in the
preface to his great work:--'It is come,' says he, 'I know not how, to
be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much
a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be
fictitious .... On the contrary, thus much at least will here be found,
not taken for granted, but proved, that any reasonable man, who will
thoroughly consider the matter, may be as much assured as he is of his
own being, that it is not, however, so clear that there is nothing in
it.' The Christian, we conceive, may now say the same to the Froudes,
and Foxtons, and to much more formidable adversaries of the present day.
Christianity, we doubt not, will still live, when they and their works,
and the refutations of their works, are alike forgotten; and a new
series of attacks and defences shall have occupied for a while (as so
many others have done) the attention of the world. Christianity, like
Rome, has had both the Gaul and Hannibal at her gates: But as the
'Eternal City' in the latter case calmly offered for sale, and sold, at
an undepreciated price, the very ground on which the Carthaginian had
fixed his camp, with equal calmness may Christianity imitate her example
of magnanimity. She may feel assured that, as in so many past instances
of premature triumph on the part of her enemies, the ground they occupy
will one day be its own; that the very discoveries, apparently hostile,
of science and philosophy, will be a great extent with the discoveries
in chronology and history; and thus will it be, we are confident, (and
to a certain extent has been already), with those in geology. That
science has done much, not only to render the old theories of Atheism
untenable and to familiarise the minds of men to the idea of miracles,
by that of successive creations, but to confirm the Scriptural statement
of the comparatively recent origin of our Race. Only the men of science
and the men of theology must alike Guard against the besetting fallacy
of their kind,--that of too hastily taking for granted that they already
know the whole of their respective sciences, and of forgetting the
declaration of the Apostle, equally true of all man's attainments,
whether in one department of science or another,--'We know but in part,
and we prophesy in part.'
Though Socrates perhaps expressed himself too absolutely when he said
that 'he only knew nothing,' yet a tinge of the same spirit,--a deep
conviction of the profound ignorance of the human mind, even at its
best--has ever been a characteristic of the most comprehensive genius.
It has been a topic on which it has been fond of mournfully dilating.
It is thus with Socrates, with Plato, with Bacon (even amidst all his
magnificent aspirations and bold predictions), with Newton, with Pascal,
and especially with Butler, in whom, if in any, the sentiment is carried
to excess. We need not say that it is seldom found in the writings of
those modern speculators who rush, in the hardihood of their adventurous
logic, on a solution of the problems of the Absolute and the Infinite,
and resolve in delightfully brief demonstrations the mightiest problems
of the universe--those great enigmas, from which true philosophy
shrinks, not because it has never ventured to think of them, but because
it has thought of them enough to know that it is in vain to attempt
their solution. To know the limits of human philosophy is the 'better
part' of all philosophy; and though the conviction of our ignorance is
humiliating, it is, like every true conviction, salutary. Amidst
this night of the soul, bright stars--far distant fountains of
illumination--are wont to steal out, which shine not while the imagined
Sun of reason is above the horizon! and it is in that night, as in the
darkness of outward nature, that we gain our only true ideas of the
illimitable dimensions of the universe, and of our true position in it.
Meanwhile we conclude that God has created 'two great lights,'--the
greater light to rule man's busy day--and that is Reason, and the lesser
to rule his contemplative night--and that is Faith.
But faith itself shines only so long as she reflects some faint
Illumination from the brighter orb.