The motives which have acted upon religion in the nineteenth century,
either by way of directly enhancing its power or by restricting its
influence, are these: (1) Humanitarianism; (2) The Historical Spirit;
(3) Science; (4) Nationalism. Although the course of religious history
has varied somewhat in different countries as well as in the different
Churches, yet it is possible to form an approximate picture of the
resultant of these forces which will reveal the progress of the Kingdom
of God in the world.
I
The first of these motives—humanitarianism—has powerfully influenced
the Christian world by asserting the rights of man, liberty, equality
and the spirit of fraternity, the sense of human brotherhood. The germs
of the humanitarian movement may be traced in the eighteenth century,
as in the teaching of Lessing and Herder and Rousseau; in religious
movements like the Great Awakening in the United States, the revival
in England under Wesley and Whitefield, in tentative efforts for the
abolition of slavery (Hopkins and Clarkson), and prison reform (John
Howard). But the nineteenth century has been distinguished above all
the other Christian centuries in the results achieved by the sentiment
of humanity. It has led to the abolition of slavery under English rule,
in the United States, and in Russia; to many reform movements of every
kind and degree, wherever there existed actual or latent tyranny,
which robbed humanity of its inherent privileges.
The humanitarian sentiment is Christian in its origin, derived
primarily from the conviction of the incarnation of God in Christ.
Christ appears in history as the leader of humanity in the struggle for
freedom. Slowly but surely ever since His advent, the world of man has
been moving forward to the attainment of the ideal of humanity revealed
in Him. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
And if the Son of God shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
The progress towards freedom inspired by Him who taught the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of men has been accomplished in the face
of great hinderances and long reverses, overcoming obstacles which
would have been insuperable without Christian faith. In the nineteenth
century the movement towards human freedom seems almost to have reached
its culmination. Within the sphere of religion the progress is most
manifest in the spread of Christian missions, which stand out in any
review of the century as one of its most extraordinary achievements.
It might be justly designated as a missionary age. So intense and
persistent has been its devotion to the gospel of Christ as essential
for man that when the century closed it might be truly said that the
round world had been girdled with Christian missions, whose results
are more significant for civilization, as well as for religion, than
any statistics can reveal. The missionary has been the pioneer, it is
becoming increasingly evident, of momentous changes yet to appear.
The sentiment of humanity has operated as a motive in the study of
human history, giving to historical inquiry a new interest and impetus.
No age has been so fruitful in the results of historical research,
with conclusions of vital importance for every department of life,
but chiefly this, that an independent place has been vindicated for
humanity, as having a life of its own distinct from and above the
natural order of the physical world. The study of man as he appears
in history has tended to strengthen faith in the essential truths of
religion, opening up as it has done the deeper knowledge of the nature
of man to which the religion of Christ appeals; for the modern method
of studying history, as compared with earlier methods, consists in
seeking for those inward subjective moods of the human soul which
lie beneath creeds or institutions, and not solely in the accurate
description of the objective fact. The facts of human life call for
interpretation, and for this the historian must search. Thus has been
born what is almost a new department of inquiry—the philosophy of
history (Hegel and many others). Differ as do these attempts at a
philosophy of history, they yet possess one ruling idea—the conviction
of a development in the life of humanity when viewed as a whole. The
idea of development controlled the higher intellectual life of the
first half of the century. It was applied with important results to the
study of ecclesiastical history, by Schleiermacher, Neander, Gieseler,
Baur, Rothe, Bunsen, and many others, by the Roman Catholic Möhler,
in his _Symbolik_, and by John Henry Newman, in however one-sided and
imperfect manner. The doctrine of development found its classic formula
in the lines of Tennyson:
“Yet, I doubt not through the ages
One increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened
With the process of the suns.”
The influence of the doctrine of development has been felt in the
study of Scripture, leading to a recognition of progressiveness in
the divine revelation, whose record has been preserved in the Old and
New Testaments (Mozley, _Ruling Ideas in the Early Ages_). By means
of this truth have been overcome, till they now seem unworthy, the
objections to the Old Testament on the ground that it gave sanction
to cruelty, deceit, or an imperfect morality. But the inference has
also followed that the revelation of God to humanity must be searched
for in the sacred records, and even by the light of close critical
scrutiny, if the divine utterance is to be distinguished from crude
misapprehensions or misapplications. Forms of literary expression,
current usages, the historical environment of the time—for these
allowance must be made as their influence is recognized. The science
of biblical criticism has gained from the study of general history a
larger knowledge of the nature of man, which, in turn, has made the
study of the Bible more profound and thorough, because more real and
human than were the biblical studies of the eighteenth century. The
primary question which it has been found necessary to ask in regard to
any doctrine or institution is not whether it is true—for the canons
of truth may vary with the relative position of the inquirer; but,
rather, what does it mean? When the meaning of the record is seen, the
question of its truth has answered itself.
The effect of these studies, even of what is called the “higher
criticism,” has not lessened the authority of the Bible or changed
the character of Christianity as “a religion of the book”; but their
tendency has been to vindicate the unique and essential place of the
Bible in literature as containing the veritable record of a divine
revelation. Some things, indeed, have been changed: the order in which
the books of the Bible were written is not the order in which they
stand; some of them are of composite authorship, whose various parts
were written at different times; the traditional chronology, known as
Ussher’s (1656), has been abandoned, nor is there anything in the Bible
which places it in opposition to the teachings of geology relative
to the length of time during which man has occupied the earth; the
historical order of priest and prophet has been reversed, so that the
voice of prophecy comes before the decline into ritual (Wellhausen
and others). Popular misapprehensions tend to vanish in the light of
a true insight and interpretation, such as that the first chapter of
Genesis was intended to be an infallible record of the divine order in
the creation of the world. That a similar account of the creation is
found in Babylonian literature only shows that the Bible writer was
illustrating by the best scientific knowledge of the time the vastly
higher spiritual truth with which the Bible opens, that the creation is
the work of God, thus leading man to the worship of God and away from
the lower worships of sun and moon and all the hosts of Heaven.
The mechanical conceptions as to the mode of inspiration and revelation
tend to give way before a larger and truer conception of the process
by which the revelation is made—that God speaks to man actually and
authoritatively through the experience of the events of life. Thus
revelation becomes a living process, and all later history may become
a commentary on sacred history, renewing and confirming the primal
utterance of God to the soul of man. Much, it is true, yet remains
to be done in bridging the gulf between the learned and scientific
interpretation of the sacred record and the popular apprehension,
which, formed in the uncritical moments of youth, often persists to
mature years and constitutes a source of confusion and weakness. A
similar situation was seen in the Middle Ages in the wide breach which
existed between the scholastic theologians and the popular mind.
A new department has been added to religious inquiry in Comparative
Religion, which aims at an impartial investigation and free from
prejudice, and is also moved by the sentiment of a common humanity
to respect all utterances of religious feeling in the soul of man.
How widely the nineteenth century has advanced in this respect is
seen by recalling a statement of Dr. Johnson: “There are two objects
of curiosity—the Christian world and the Mohammedan world. All the
rest may be considered as barbarous.” One of the most representative
monuments of religious scholarship in the last century is Professor
Max Müller’s _Sacred Books of the East_. Some inquirers in this
unfamiliar department have worked under the impression that these
ancient religions were equal in value to the Christian revelation;
others even have thought them to be in some respects superior. And,
in general, the first effect of the discovery that there was truth in
other religions had a tendency to weaken the claim of Christianity to
be the absolute religion. But as the results of the study have been
placed in their normal perspective, it becomes evident that they only
confirm the words of St. Paul, that God has at no time left Himself
without witnesses in the world. Revelation also is seen to have been a
universal process; and profound spiritual motives are to be discerned
beneath the diverse manifestations of the religious instincts. Yet, on
the whole, the preponderating judgment leads to the conclusion that
Christianity contains the larger, even the absolute, truth; that while
it confirms some features in these religions as true, it condemns
others as false; that Christianity also has for one of its essential
characteristics an assimilative power, which not only enables, but
forces, it to appropriate as its own any aspects of truth contained
in other religions, which have not hitherto been illustrated in the
history of the Christian Church. Nor is the familiar test applied to
religions wholly indefensible which judges them by their historical
fruits or associations. In accordance with this test, Confucianism is
represented by China, Hinduism by India, Buddhism by Ceylon and Siam,
Mohammedanism by Turkey, Christianity by Europe and America.
The influence of the humanitarian sentiment may be further traced in
softening the asperities of some forms of traditional theology, as, for
example, the Calvinistic doctrine of election with its alternatives
of reprobation or preterition. These certainly have not been the
favorite doctrines which have commended themselves to the spirit of the
age. The effort has been made to bring the doctrine of the atonement
within the limits of human experience. It has been found impossible
to present the doctrine of endless punishment after the manner of an
earlier age. Many causes have combined to deepen the sense of mystery
in which is enveloped the destiny of man, and there has been begotten
in consequence an unwillingness to dogmatize where in earlier times
such a reluctance was not felt. In this connection may be mentioned
two religious bodies, which took their rise about the beginning of the
century—Universalism, proclaiming ultimate salvation for all men; and
Unitarianism, asserting the dignity of man and his divine endowment.
But in all the Churches alike has the same humanizing force been felt,
leading to efforts in theological reconstruction in order to make
it apparent that the primary truths of Christianity are not merely
arbitrary principles or arrangements unrelated to life and to the needs
of the soul, but that in their essential quality there is conformity
with the larger reason of humanity, with that feeling for the inherent
worth of things out of which reason proceeds, and with which its
conclusions must conform.