with the previous standard of belief, is presented to the human mind; or
when conversely any alteration in the state of knowledge on which the
human mind forms its judgment, imparts to an old established religion an
aspect of opposition which was before unperceived; the religion is
subjected to the ordeal of an investigation. Science examines the
doctrines taught by it, criticism the evidence on which they profess to
rest, and the literature which is their expression. And if such an
investigation fail to establish the harmony of the old and the new, the
result takes two forms: either the total rejection of the particular
religion, and sometimes even of the supernatural generally, or else an
eclecticism which seeks by means of philosophy to discover and appropriate
the hidden truth to which the religion was an attempt to give expression.
The attack however calls forth the defence. Accordingly the result of this
action and reaction is to produce scientific precision, either apologetic
or dogmatic, within the religious system, and scepticism outside of it;
both reconstructive in purpose, but the former defensive in its method,
the latter destructive. The elements of truth which exist on both sides
are brought to light by the controversy, and after the struggle has passed
become the permanent property of the world.
These statements, which convey a general expression for the influence of
free thought in relation to religion, are verified in the history of
Christianity.
There are four epochs at which the struggle of reason against the
authority of the Christian religion has been especially manifest, each
characterized by energy and intensity of speculative thought, and
exhibiting on the one hand partial or entire unbelief, or on the other a
more systematic expression of Christian doctrine; epochs in fact of
temporary peril, of permanent gain.(69)
In the first of these periods, extending from the second to the fourth
century, Christianity is seen in antagonism with forms of Greek or Eastern
philosophy, and the existence is apparent of different forms of scepticism
or reason used in attack. The very attempt of the Alexandrian school of
theology to adjust the mysteries of Christianity and of the Bible to
speculative thought, by a well meant but extravagant use of allegorical
interpretation, is itself a witness of the presence or pressure of free
thought. The less violent of the two forms of unbelief is seen in the
Gnostics, the rationalists of the early Church, who summoned Christianity
to the bar of philosophy, and desired to appropriate the portion of its
teachings which approved itself to their eclectic tastes; the more violent
kind in the rejection of Christianity as an imposture, or in the attempts
made to refer its origin to psychological causes, on the part of the early
enemies of Christianity, Celsus and Julian, prototypes of the positive
unbelievers of later times. The Greek theology, which embodied the
dogmatic statements in which the Christian Church under the action of
controversy gave explicit expression to its implicit belief, is the
example of the stimulus which the pressure of free thought gave to the use
of reason in defence.
As we pass down the course of European history, the Pagan literature which
had suggested the first attack disappears: but as soon as the elements of
civilization, which survived the deluge that overwhelmed the Roman empire,
had been sufficiently consolidated to allow of the renewal of speculation,
a repetition of the contest may be observed.
The revived study of the Greek philosophers, and of their Arabic
commentators introduced from the Moorish universities of Spain, with the
consequent rise of the scholastic philosophy in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, furnished material for a renewal of the struggle of reason
against authority, a second crisis in the history of the Church. The
history of it becomes complicated by the circumstance that free thought,
in the process of disintegrating the body of authoritative teaching, now
began to assume on several occasions a new shape, a kind of incipient
Protestantism. Doubting neither Christianity nor the Bible, it is seen to
challenge merely that part of the actual religion which, as it conceived,
had insinuated itself from human sources in the lapse of ages.
Accordingly, the critical independence of Nominalism, in a mind like that
of Abélard, represents the destructive action of free thought, partly as
early Protestantism, partly as scepticism; while the series of noted
Realists, of which Aquinas is an example, that tried anew to adjust faith
to science, and thus created the Latin theology, represents the defensive
action of reason. The imparting scientific definition to the immemorial
doctrines of the Church constituted the defence.
In the later middle ages, however, philosophy gradually succeeded in
emancipating itself so entirely from theology, that when the Renaissance
came, and a large body of heathen thought was introduced into the current
of European life by means of ancient literature, a third crisis occurred.
The independence passed into open revolt, and, fostered by political
confusion and material luxury, expressed itself in a literature of
unbelief.
The mental awakening which had commenced in art and extended to literature
paved the way for a spiritual awakening. The Reformation itself, though
the product of a deep consciousness of spiritual need, an emancipation of
soul as well as mind, is nevertheless a special instance of the same
dissolution of mediæval life, and must therefore be regarded as belonging
to the same general movement of free thought, though not to that sceptical
form of it which comes within the field of our investigation. For
Protestantism, though it be scepticism in respect of the authority of the
traditional teaching of the Church, yet reposes implicitly on an outward
authority revealed in the sacred books of holy Scripture, and restricts
the exercise of freedom within the limits prescribed by this authority;
whereas scepticism proper is an insurrection against the outward authority
or truth of the inspired books, and reposes on the unrevealed, either on
consciousness or on science. The one is analogous to a school of art which
desires to reform itself by the use of ancient models; the other to one
which professes to return to an unassisted study of nature. The spiritual
earnestness which characterized the Reformation prevented the changes in
religious belief from developing into scepticism proper; and the theology
of the Reformation is accordingly an example of defence and reconstruction
as well as of revulsion.
During the century which followed, mental activity found employment in
other channels in connexion with the political struggles which resulted
from the religious changes. But the seventeenth age was another of those
epochs which form crises in the history of the human mind. The
reconstruction at that time of the methods on which science depends, by
Bacon from the empirical side, by Descartes from the intellectual, created
as great a revolution in knowledge as the Renaissance had produced in
literature or the Reformation in religion; and a body of materials was
presented from which philosophers ventured to criticise the Bible and the
dogmatic teaching of the Church. This fourth great period of free thought,
which extends to the present time, has been marked by more striking events
than former ones.(70) Though the movement relates to a similar sphere, the
history is rendered more complex by union with literature, and connexion
as cause or effect with social changes, as well as by the reciprocal
operation of its influence in different countries. Language, which is
always a record of opinion, popular or scientific,(71) classifies the
forms of this last great movement of free thought under three names, viz.
Deism in England in the early part of the eighteenth century; Infidelity
in France in the latter part of it; and Rationalism in Germany in the
nineteenth; movements which exhibit characteristics respectively of the
three nations, and of their intellectual and general history. English
Deism, the product of the reasoning spirit which was stimulated by
political events, directed itself against the special revelation of
Christianity from the stand-point of the religion of natural reason, and
ran a course parallel with the gradual emancipation of the individual from
the power of the state. French infidelity, breathing the spirit of
materialist philosophy, halted not till it brought its devotees even to
atheism, and mingled itself with the great movements of political
revolution, which ultimately reconstituted French society. German
Rationalism, empirical or spiritual,(72) in two parallel developments, the
philosophical and the literary, neither coldly denied Christianity with
the practical doubts of the English deists, nor flippantly denounced it as
imposture with the trenchant and undiscriminating logic of the French
infidels; but appreciating its beauty with the freshness of a poetical
genius, and regarding it as one phase of the religious consciousness,
endeavoured, by means of the methods employed in secular learning, to
collect the precious ideas of eternal truth to which Christianity seemed
to it to give expression, and by means of speculative criticism to exhibit
the literary and psychological causes which it supposed had overlaid them
with error.
Nor has the activity of reason used in defence been less manifest in these
later movements. The great works on the Christian evidences are the
witness to its presence; and the deeper and truer appreciation of
Christianity now shown in every country, and the increasing interest felt
in religion, are the indirect effect, under the guidance of divine
Providence, of the stirring of the religious apprehension by
controversy.(73)
We have thus at once exhibited the province which will be hereafter
investigated in detail, and stated the general law observable in the
conflict between free thought and Christianity. The type reappears,
perpetuated by the fixity of mind, though the form varies under the force
of circumstances. Christianity being stationary and authoritative, thought
progressive and independent, the causes which stimulate the restlessness
of the latter interrupt the harmony which ordinarily exists between belief
and knowledge, and produce crises during which religion is re-examined.
Disorganization is the temporary result; theological advance the
subsequent. Whatever is evil is eliminated in the conflict; whatever is
good is retained. Under the overruling of a beneficent Providence,
antagonism is made the law of human progress.
The restriction of our inquiry to the consideration of the free action of
reason will cause our attention to be almost entirely confined to the
operation of reason in its attack on Christianity, to the neglect of the
evidences which the other office of it has presented in defence; and will
also exclude altogether the study of struggles, where the opposition to
Christianity has rested on an appeal to the authority of rival sacred
books; such for example as the conflict with rival religions like the
Jewish (4) or Mahometan (5); as well as of heresies which, like the
Socinian (6), claim, however unjustly, to rest on the authority of the
Christian revelation.
The law thus sketched of this struggle needs fuller explanation. We must
employ a more exact analysis to gain a conception of the causes which have
operated at different periods to make free thought develop into unbelief.
It will be obvious that the causes must depend, either upon the nature of
the Christian religion, which is the subject, or of the mind of man, which
is the agent of attack. The former were touched upon in the opening
remarks of this lecture, and may be reconsidered hereafter;(74) but it is
necessary to gain a general view of the latter before treating them in
their application in future lectures.
These causes, so far as they are spiritual and disconnected from admixture
with political circumstances, may be stated to be of two kinds, viz.
intellectual and moral; the intellectual explaining the types of thought,
the moral the motives which have from time to time existed.(75) The
actions, and generally the opinions of a human being, are the complex
result arising from the union of both. Yet the two elements, though
closely intertwined in a concrete instance, can be apprehended separately
as objects of abstract thought; and the forms of manifestation and mode of
operation peculiar to each can be separately traced.
In a history of thought, the antagonism created by the intellect rather
than by the heart seems the more appropriate subject of study, and will be
almost exclusively considered in these lectures. Nevertheless a brief
analysis must be here given of the mode in which the moral is united with
the intellectual in the formation of opinions. This is the more necessary,
lest we should seem to commit the mistake of ignoring the existence or
importance of the emotional element, if the restriction of our point of
view to the intellectual should hereafter prevent frequent references to
it.
The influence of the moral causes in generating doubt, though sometimes
exaggerated, is nevertheless real. Psychological analysis shows that the
emotions operate immediately on the will, and the will on the intellect.
Consequently the emotion of dislike is able through the will to prejudice
the judgment, and cause disbelief of a doctrine against which it is
directed.(76) Nor can we doubt that experience confirms the fact. Though
we must not rashly judge our neighbour, nor attempt to measure in any
particular mind the precise amount of doubt which is due to moral causes,
yet it is evident that where a freethinker is a man of immoral or
unspiritual life, whose interests incline him to disbelieve in the reality
of Christianity, his arguments may reasonably be suspected to be suggested
by sins of character, and by dislike to the moral standard of the
Christian religion, and, though not on this account necessarily
undeserving of attention, must be watched at every point with caution, in
order that the emotional may be eliminated from the intellectual causes.
It is also a peculiarity belonging to the kind of evidence on which
religion rests for proof, that it offers an opportunity for the subtle
influence of moral causes, where at first sight intellectual might seem
alone to act. For the evidence of religion is probable, not demonstrative;
and it is the property of probable evidence that the character and
experience determine the comparative weight which the mind assigns in it
to the premises.(77) In demonstrative evidence there is no opportunity for
the intrusion of emotion; but in probable reasoning the judgment
ultimately formed by the mind depends often as much upon the antecedent
presumptions brought to the investigation of the subject, as upon the
actual proofs presented; the state of feeling causing a variation in the
force with which a proposition commends itself to the mind at different
times. The very subtlety of this influence, which requires careful
analysis for its detection, causes it to be overlooked. Accordingly, in a
subject like religion, the emotions may secretly insinuate themselves in
the preliminary step of determining the weight due to the premises, even
where the final process of inference is purely intellectual.
We can select illustrations of this view of the subtlety of the operation
of prejudice from instances of a kind unlike the one previously named; in
which it will be seen that the disinclination of the inquirer to accept
Christianity has not arisen primarily from the obstacle caused by the
enmity of his own carnal heart, but from antipathy toward the moral
character of those who have professed the Christian faith.
Who can doubt, that the corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries
of the middle ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness
shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court of
the fifteenth century, excited disgust and hatred toward Christianity in
the hearts of the literary men of the Renaissance, which disqualified them
for the reception of the Christian evidences; or that the social
disaffection in the last century in France incensed the mind against the
Church that supported alleged public abuses,(78) until it blinded a
Voltaire from seeing any goodness in Christianity; or that the religious
intolerance shown within the present century by the ecclesiastical power
in Italy drove a Leopardi(79) and a Bini(80) into doubt; or that the sense
of supposed personal wrong and social isolation deepened the unbelief of
Shelley(81) and of Heinrich Heine?(82) Whatever other motives may have
operated in these respective cases, the prejudices which arose from the
causes just named, doubtless created an antecedent impression against
religion, which impeded the lending an unbiassed ear to its evidence.
The subtlety of the influence in these instances makes them the more
instructive. If, as we contemplate them, our sympathies are so far
enlisted on the side of the doubters that it becomes necessary to check
ourselves in exculpating them, by the consideration that they were
responsible for failing to separate the essential truth of Christianity
from the accidental abuse of it shown in the lives of its professors, we
can imagine so much the more clearly, how great was the danger to these
doubters themselves of omitting the introspection of their own characters
necessary for detecting the prejudice which actually seemed to have
conscience on its side; and can realize more vividly from these instances
the secrecy and intense subtlety of the influence of the feelings in the
formation of doubt, and infer the necessity of most careful attention for
its discovery in others, and watchfulness in detecting it in our own
hearts.
There are other cases of doubt, however, where the influence of the
emotional element, if it operates at all, is reduced to a minimum, and the
cause accordingly seems wholly intellectual. This may happen when the
previous convictions of the mind are shaken by the knowledge of some fact
newly brought before its notice; such as the apparent conflict between the
Hebrew record of a universal deluge(83) and the negative evidence of
geology as to its non-occurrence; or the historical discrepancies between
the books of Kings and Chronicles,(84) or the varying accounts of the
genealogy and resurrection of Christ. A doubt purely intellectual in its
origin might also arise, as we know was the case with the pious
Bengel,(85) in consequence of perceiving the variety of readings in the
sacred text; or, as in many of the German critics, from the difficulty
created by the long habit of examining the classical legends and myths, in
satisfying themselves about the reasons why similar criticism should not
be extended to the early national literature of the Hebrews. Causes of
doubt like these, which spring from the advance of knowledge, necessarily
belong primarily to the intellectual region. The intellect is the cause
and not merely the condition of them. But there is room even here for an
emotional element; and the state of heart may be tested by noticing
whether the mind gladly and proudly grasps at them or thoughtfully weighs
them with serious effort to discover the truth. The moral causes may
reinforce or may check the intellectual: but the distinctness of the two
classes is apparent. Though co-existing and interlocked, they may be made
subjects of independent study.
The preceding analysis of the relations of the moral and intellectual
facilities in the formation of religious opinions might enable us to
criticise the ethical inferences drawn in reference to man’s
responsibility for his belief. Those who think that our characters, moral
and intellectual, are formed for us by circumstances, are consistent in
denying or depreciating responsibility.(86) There is a danger however
among Christian writers of falling into the opposite error, of dwelling so
entirely on the moral causes, in forgetfulness of the intellectual, as to
teach not only that unbelief of the Christian religion is sin, (which few
would dispute,) but that even transient doubt of it is sinful; and thus to
repel unbelievers by imputing to them motives of which their consciences
acquit them.
A truth however is contained in this opinion, though obscured by being
stated with exaggeration, inasmuch as the fact is overlooked that doubts
may be of many different kinds. Sinfulness cannot, for example, be imputed
to the mere scepticism of inquiry, the healthy critical investigation of
methods or results; nor to the scepticism of despair, which, hopeless of
finding truth, takes up a reactionary and mystical attitude;(87) nor to
the cases (if such can ever be,) of painful doubt, perhaps occasionally
even of partial unbelief, which are produced exclusively by intellectual
causes, without admixture of moral ones. This variety of form should
create caution in measuring the degree of sinfulness involved in
individual cases of doubt. Yet the inclination to condemn in such
instances contains the fundamental truth that the moral causes are
generally so intertwined with the intellectual in the assumption of data,
if not in the process of inference, that there is a ground for fearing
that the fault may be one of will, not of intellect, even though
undetected by the sceptic himself. And a conscientious mind will learn the
practical lesson of exercising the most careful self-examination in
reference to its doubts, and especially will use the utmost caution not to
communicate them needlessly to others. The Hebrew Psalmist, instead of
telling his painful misgivings, harboured them in God’s presence until he
found the solution.(88) The delicacy exhibited in forbearing unnecessarily
to shake the faith of others is a measure of the disinterestedness of the
doubter. “If I say, I will speak thus; behold I should offend against the
generation of thy children.”
These remarks will enable us to estimate the manner and degree in which
the emotions may, consciously or unconsciously, influence the operations
of the intellect in reference to religion; and will clear the way for the
statement of that which is to form the special subject of study in these
lectures, the nature and mode of operation of the intellectual causes, and
the forms of free thought in religion to which they may give rise. This
branch is frequently neglected, because satisfying the intellect rather
than the heart, indicating tendencies rather than affording means to
pronounce judgment on individuals; yet it admits of greater certainty, and
will perhaps in some respects be found to be not less full of instruction,
than the other.