An eminent ecclesiastic of the Church of England not long ago
characterized the present age as pre-eminently the age of _doubt_, and
lamented that whether he took up book, or magazine, or sermon, he was
confronted with some form of it.
This picture of our age is not an unjust one. The modern mind is
thoroughly wide awake and has quite thrown off the leading-strings of
ancient timidity. It looks all questions in the face and demands to be
shown the real facts in every realm. All the traditions of history,
the laws of science, the principles of morals are overhauled, and the
foundations on which they rest relentlessly probed. And our modern
curiosity can see no reason why it should cease its investigations
when it comes to the frontiers of religion. It deems no dogma too old
to be summoned before its bar; no council nor conclave too sacred to
be asked for its credentials; no pope or Scripture too venerable to be
put in the witness-box and cross-examined as to its accuracy or
authority. In all the churches there is a spirit of inquiry abroad;
almost every morning breeze brings us some new report of heresy, or
the baying of the sleuth-hounds of orthodoxy, as they scent some new
trail of infidelity; and the slogan of dogmatic controversy echoes
from shore to shore.
As we look around the ecclesiastical horizon, we find agitation and
controversy on all sides. In one denomination, it is the question of
the salvation of the _heathen_; in another, that of the virgin birth
of Christ and the apostolic succession; in a third, it is the invasion
of doubt as to the eternal torment of the wicked; in a fourth, the
evidential value of the miracles; in a fifth, the grand questions
included under the higher criticism of the Scriptures and the relative
authority of reason and the Bible. In Congregational, Episcopalian,
Baptist, Universalist, and Presbyterian folds, it is the same,
everywhere some heresy to be disciplined, some doubt to be
suppressed, some doctrinal battle hotly waged.
To the greater part of the Church, this epidemic of scepticism is a
subject of grave alarm. Unbelief seems to them, as to Mr. Moody, the
worst of sins; and they consider the only proper thing to do with it,
is to follow the advice of the Bishop of London, some years ago, and
fling doubt away as you would a loaded shell. They apparently look
upon Christianity as a huge powder magazine, which is likely to
explode if a spark of candid inquiry comes near it.
Others, on the contrary, fold their arms indifferently and regard this
new spirit of investigation as only an evanescent breeze, which can
produce no serious result upon the citadel of faith. A third party
hail it with exultation as the first trumpet blast of the theological
Goetterdaemerung, the downfall of all divine powers and the destruction
of the Christian superstition, to give place to the naked facts of
scientific materialism.
What estimate, then, shall we put on this tendency?
In the first place we must recognize that it is a serious condition;
that it is no momentary eddy, but a permanent turn in the current of
the human mind. Humanity is looking religion square in the face,
without any band over its eyes, in a way it never has before; and when
humanity once gets its eyes open to such questions,--it is in vain to
try to close them, before the questions have been thoroughly examined.
Certainly, Protestantism cannot call a halt upon this march. For it
was Protestantism itself, proclaiming at the beginning of her struggle
with Rome the right of private judgment, which started the modern mind
upon this high quest; and Protestantism is therefore bound in logic
and honor to see it through to the end, whatever that end may be.
And in the next place, I believe that quest will end in good. Why the
champions of faith should regard doubt as devil-born, rather than a
providential instrument in God's hand, is something I do not
understand. If doubt humbles the Church and acts as a thorn in its
flesh, may not such chastening be providential, quite as much as the
things which puff it up? As Luther well expressed it, "We say to our
Lord, that if he will have his church, he must keep it, for we cannot.
And if we could, we should be the proudest asses under heaven." As
Attila was the scourge of God to the Roman world, when God needed to
clear that empire out of the way, as he built his new Christendom, so
may not doubt be the scourge of God to the easy-going, sleepy, too
credulous piety of to-day, which gulps down all the husks of faith so
fast that it never gets a taste of the kernel?
Yes, doubt is often the needed preparation for obtaining truth. We
must clear out the thorny thicket of superstition before we can begin
to raise the sweet fruit of true religion.
There are times when careful investigation is rightly called for. When
doubting Thomas demanded to see the print of the nails, and touch and
handle the flesh of the risen Christ, before he would believe in the
resurrection of his Lord, his demand for the most solid proof of the
great marvel was a wise and commendable one; one for which all
subsequent generations of Christians are deeply indebted to him. To
believe without evidence, or to suppress doubt where it legitimately
arises, is both fostering superstition and exposing ourselves to error
and danger. What shall we say of the merchant who refuses to entertain
any question about the seaworthiness of his vessel, but sends her off
across the Atlantic undocked and unexamined, piously trusting her to
the Lord? Shall we commend him? or not rather charge him with culpable
negligence? And what we say of such a merchant seems to me just what
we should say of the Christian who refuses to investigate the
seaworthiness of that ship of faith which his ancestors have left him.
In astronomy, in politics, in law, we demand what business the dead
hand of the past has on our lip, our brain, our purse? Why should the
dead hand of an Augustine or Calvin be exempt from giving its
authority? Why should these mediaeval glimpses of truth be given the
right to close our eyes to-day from seeing what we ourselves can see
and speaking forth what we can hear of heavenly truth?
In all other departments of knowledge, investigation has brought us up
to a higher outlook, where we see the true relations of things better
than before. In all other branches, God has given us new light, so
that we discern things more as they really are. Science has risen by
making a ladder of its earlier errors and by treading them under foot,
reaching to higher truths. The Bible itself is the growth of ages; and
Christian doctrine and Christian creeds have been the evolution of a
still longer period. The dogmas of the churches are most manifold and
conflicting. Is it not rather immodest and absurd for each church to
claim infallibility for its present creed, and that wisdom died when
the book of Revelation closed the Bible, or the Council of Trent or
the Westminster Assembly adjourned its sitting? It seems to me that
the churches ought, instead, to be willing and anxious to receive
whatever new light God may grant them to-day, and with the potent
clarifying processes of reason, separate the pure gold of religion
from the dross and alloys of olden superstition and misguided
judgment.
But to the modern devotees of dogma, any subjection of it to the
cleansing of the reason seems shocking. The forefront of Dr. Briggs'
recent offending, for which he is about to be formally tried as a
heretic, is that he admits errors in the Bible and gives reason (by
which he means, as he explains, not merely the understanding, but also
the conscience and the religious instinct in man), a conjoint place
with the Bible and the Church in the work of salvation and the
attainment of divine truth. To the modern dogmatist, these positions
seem sceptical and pernicious. But to the philosopher, who knows the
laws of human nature, to every scholar who knows the actual history of
the Bible, these positions seem only self-evident. That in the
Scriptures there are innumerable errors in science, mistakes in
history, prophecies that were never fulfilled, contradictions and
inconsistencies between different books and chapters,--these are facts
of observation which every Biblical student knows full well. Granting,
for the sake of the argument, that the Bible was given originally by
infallible divine dictation, yet the men who wrote down the message
were fallible; the men who copied it were fallible; the men who
translated it (some of it twice over, first from Hebrew to Greek, and
then from Greek to English) were fallible; and the editors, who from
the scores of manuscripts, by their personal comparison and decisions
between the conflicting readings, patched together our present text,
were most fallible. And when thus a Bible reader has got his text
before him, how can he understand it, except by using his own reason
and judgment? Instruments, again, most fallible.
How is it possible, then, to get Bible-truth independently of the
reason or in entire exemption from error? The only way would be to
say, that not only was the Bible verbally inspired, but all its
authors, copyists, editors, and pious readers were also infallibly
inspired. As in the old Hindoo account of how the world was supported,
the earth was said to be held up on pillars, and the pillars on an
elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and when the defender of the
faith was asked what, then, did the tortoise rest on, he sought to
save himself in his quandary, by roundly asserting that "it was
tortoise all the way down";--so the defender of the infallibility of
the Scripture has to take refuge in "inspiration all the way down."
But if this be so, ought not the modern scripture editors and
revisers, translators and Biblical professors also to be inspired, as
much as those of King James' day or the printers at the Bible house?
And thus we reach, as the _reductio ad absurdum_ of this argument,
this result: that Tischendorff, and Koenen, and the Hebrew professors,
among whom Doctor Briggs is a foremost authority, while accused of
heresy are really themselves the very channels of infallible
inspiration.
The sincere investigators into the character of the Bible and the
nature of Christ are charged with exalting human reason above the word
of God. But as soon as the subject is investigated and a Professor
Swing or a Mr. MacQueary corroborates his interpretation by the
Scripture itself, or Doctor Briggs shows his views to be sustained by
history, by philosophy, by a profounder study of both nature and the
Bible, then the ground is shifted, and it is maintained that it is not
a question whether the views are true, but whether they conform to the
creed; that the Catechism is not to be judged by the Bible or the
facts in the case, but Bible and facts are to be interpreted by the
words of the Confession; and if they do not agree with this, then
heresy and infidelity are made manifest. The question is not whether
the water of truth be found, but whether it is drunk out of an
orthodox bottle, with the Church's label glued firmly upon it. The
pretext for the charge of heresy against these eminent Biblical
scholars is that they are undermining the Bible; but in conducting the
trial, prosecutors themselves refuse to abide by the testimony of the
Scriptures to decide the matter and erect above them soul creed or
catechism.
But let us stop for a moment and ask whence came these creeds and
catechisms themselves? What else was their origin than out of the
reason of man; out of the brains of scholars, as they in former years
criticised and interpreted the same Scripture, and nature, and laws of
God? And these scholars of the past were quite as fallible, quite as
partisan, and far less well informed than our scholars to-day. Thus it
is the dogmatists themselves who exalt the reason of man above the
word of God, forbidding us to listen to the more direct voice of God
in our own soul; forbidding us to decipher the revelations which the
Divine Hand has written on the rocks, and tree, and animal structure,
and even frowning upon that profounder study of the Scripture called
the higher criticism, but bidding us accept, in its stead, the
man-made substitute of some council or assembly of former generations.
There have undoubtedly been periods when the doubt with which the
Church had to deal was mainly frivolous or carnal; a passionate
rebellion of the worldly nature, attacking the essential truths of
religion. But such is not the nature of the doubt which is at present
occupying the public eye; such is not the doubt most characteristic of
our generation. It proceeds from serious motives. It is a doubt marked
by essential reverence and loyalty to truth. It is a desire for more
solid foundations; for the attainment of the naked realities of
existence. It is a necessary incident of the great intellectual
awakening of our century. As the modern intellect comes back on Sunday
from its week-day explorations of the history of Rome, or the myths of
Greece, or the religious ideas of Buddha or Zoroaster, it must return
to the contemplation of the Christian dogmas under new influences. It
will necessarily demand what better evidence the law of Moses or the
creed of Nicea has than the law of Mana or the text of the Zendavesta?
The scepticism of our age is not so much directed against the great
truths of religion as against the man-made dogmas that have usurped
the sacred seat. If irreverent, scoffing scepticism were to be found
anywhere to-day, it would most likely be found manifested among
the throng of young men gathered at our most progressive
University,--Harvard. But Dr. Lyman Abbot, after several weeks'
association with the students there, and a careful study of their
states of mind, not long ago testified, that "if they are sceptical,
it is because they are too serious-minded and too true to accept
convictions ready made, traditional creeds for personal beliefs, or
church formularies for a life of devotion." Now to call such a state
of mind irreligious or infidel is most unjust. The irreligion lies
rather with those who make a fetish of the Bible and substitute a few
pet texts from it; that sustain their own private opinions, in place
of that divine light that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world. The real infidels are they who reject the revelation which God
is making us continually in the widening light of modern knowledge,
and by a species of ecclesiastical lynching, condemn, before trial,
the sincere, painstaking, and careful scholars and reverent disciples
of Christ, who are so earnestly seeking after truth, because the
results of their learned researches do not agree with the prejudices
of their anathematizers. It is with no less cogency of argument than
nobility of feeling that Dr. Briggs replied to his assailants: "If it
be heresy to say that rationalists, like Martineau, have found God in
the reason, and Roman Catholics, like Newman, have found God in the
Church, I rejoice in such heresy, and I do not hesitate to say that I
have less doubt of the salvation of Martineau and Newman than I have
of the modern Pharisees who would exclude such noble men,--so pure, so
grand, the ornaments of Great Britain and the prophets of the
age,--from the kingdom of God."
Scepticism and religious questioning are, then, no sins; they are not
irreligious. But surely they do vex the Church. What shall the Church
do about them? In the first place, we should not try to suppress them.
Nor should we tell religious inquirers to shut their eyes and put the
poppy pillow of faith beneath their heads and go to sleep again, and
dream. They have got their eyes wide open and they are determined to
know whether those sweet visions which they had on faith's pillow are
any more than illusions. Nor will they be satisfied and cease to
think, by having a creed of three hundred or fifteen hundred year's
antiquity recited to them. The modern intellects that have taken Homer
to pieces, and excavated Agamemnon's tomb, and unwound the mummy
wrappings of the Pharaohs, that have weighed the stars and chained the
lightnings, are not to be awed by any old-time sheepskin or any
council of bishops. They demand the facts in the case; fresh manna to
satisfy their heart hunger; the solid realities of personal
experience. No. It is too late to-day for the churchmen to play the
part of Mrs. Partington, and sweep back the Atlantic tide of modern
thought with their little ecclesiastical broom. The old ramparts are
broken through and we must give the flood its course. The only spirit
to meet it in is that of frankness and friendliness. Let us not foster
in these questioning minds the suspicion that there is any part of
religion that we are afraid to have examined. We smile at the bigoted
Buddhist who, when the European attempted to prove by the microscope
that the monk's scruples against eating animal food were futile
(inasmuch as in every glass of water he drank he swallowed millions of
little living creatures), smashed the microscope for answer, as if
that altered at all the facts. But are not many of the heresy-hunters
in Christendom quite as foolish in their efforts to smash the
microscope of higher criticism, or the telescope of evolution, and
suppress the testimony which nature, and reason, and scholarship every
day present afresh?
Let us, therefore, give liberty, yes, even sympathy, to these
perplexed souls who are struggling with the great problems of
religion.
And secondly, let us be honest with them, and not claim more certainty
for religious doctrines or more precise and absolute knowledge about
divine and heavenly things than we have. One of the great causes of
modern doubt is, unquestionably, the excessive claims that theology
has made. It has not been content with preaching the simple truths
necessary to a good life; that we have a Maker to whom we are
responsible,--a divine Friend to help us, a divine voice within to
teach us right and wrong; that in the life that is to follow this,
each shall be judged according to his deeds, and that in the apostles
and prophets, especially the spotless life of Jesus, we have the noble
patterns of the holy life set up before us for our imitation; a
revelation of moral and religious truth all sufficient for salvation.
The Church has not been content with these almost self-evident truths;
but it must go on, to make most absolute assertions about God's
foreknowledge, and foreordination, and triune personality; and the
eternal punishment of the wicked, and the double nature and
pre-existence of Christ,--things not only vague and inconsistent, but
contradictory to our sense of justice and right. It must go on to make
manifold assertions about the inerrancy and verbal inspiration of the
Bible and the details of the future life and the fall of human nature,
which are utterly incredible to rational minds. And the worst of it
is, that all these things are bound up in one great theological
system, and poor, anxious inquirers are told that they must either
take all or none; and so (soon coming face to face with some palpable
inconsistency or incredibility) they not unnaturally give up the
whole. Trace out the religious history of the great sceptics,--the
Voltaires, the Bradlaughs, the Ingersolls, the Tom Paines,--and you
will see that the origin of their scepticism has almost always been in
a reaction from the excessive assumptions of the ecclesiastics
themselves. It is too fine spun and arrogant orthodoxy that is itself
responsible for half of the heterodoxy of which it complains.
Let the Church, then, be honest, and claim no more than it ought. Let
it respect and encourage honesty in every man in these sacred matters.
The Church itself should say to the inquirer: You are unfaithful to
your God if you go not where He, by the candle of the Lord (i. e., the
reason and conscience he has placed within you), leads you. And when a
man in this reverent and sincere spirit pursues the path of doubt, how
often does he find it circling around again toward faith and
conducting him to the Mount of Zion! The true remedy for scepticism is
deeper investigation. As all sincere doubt is at bottom a cry of the
deeper faith that only that which is true and righteous is divine, so
all earnest doubt, thought through to the end, pierces the dark cloud
and comes out in the light and joy of higher convictions. It lays in
the dust our philosophic and materialistic idols and brings us to the
one Eternal Power, the ever-living Spirit, manifested in all, that
Spirit whose name is truth, whose word is love.
You remember, perhaps, the story of the climber among the Alps, who,
having stepped off a precipice, as he thought, frantically grasped, as
he fell, a projecting root and held on in an agony of anticipated
death, for hours, until, utterly exhausted, he at last resigned
himself to destruction, and let go of his support, to fall gently on
the grassy ledge beneath, only a few inches below his feet. So when we
resign ourselves to God's hand, our fall, be it little or be it great,
lands us gently in the everlasting arms that are ever underneath.
Do not fear, then, to wrestle with doubt, or to follow its leadings.
Out of every sincere soul-struggle, your faith shall come forth
stronger and calmer. And do not hesitate to proclaim your new
convictions when they have become convictions. Such is the
encouragement and sympathy that the Church should give the candid
questioner.
On the other hand, it may wisely caution him, not to be precipitate in
publishing his doubt. Let him wait till it has become more than a
doubt; till it has become a settled and well-considered conclusion,
before he inflicts it upon his neighbor. The very justification for
doubting the accepted opinion, the sacredness of truth, commands
caution and firm conviction that our new view is something more than a
passing caprice of the mind, before we publish it. But when the
doubter is sure of this, then let him no longer silence his highest
thoughts.
Again, the Church is justified in cautioning the doubter not to be
proud of his doubt as a doubt. There is no more merit, it is well to
remember, in disbelieving than in believing; and if your opinions
have, as yet, only got to the negative state and you have no new
positive faith or philosophy to substitute for the old, you are doing
your neighbor a poor service in taking away from him any superstition,
however illogical, that sustains his heart and strengthens his virtue.
And further, let me say, I would dislike very much to have you
contented with doubt. Doubt makes a very good spade to turn up the
ground, but a very poor kind of spiritual food for a daily diet. It is
a useful, often an indispensable half-way shelter in the journey of
life; but a very cold home in which to settle down as the end of that
journey.
In all our deepest hours, when our heart is truly touched, or our mind
satisfied, we believe. It is each soul's positive faith, however
unconventional or perhaps unconscious that faith may be, that sustains
its hope, that incites its effort, that supports it through the trials
of life. Any doubt, even, that is earnest and to be respected, is
really an act of faith, faith in a higher law than that of human
creeds; in a more direct revelation, within ourselves, in our own
sense of justice and consistency, than in any manuscript or print.
The very atheist, who in the name of truth repudiates the word God, is
really manifesting (in his own different way) the belief which he
cannot escape, in the divine righteousness and its lawful claim on
every human soul.