“intellectual cause,” when applied to a series of phenomena like sceptical
opinions. It does not merely denote the antecedent ideas which form
previous links in the same chain of thought: these are sufficiently
revealed by the chronicle which records the series. Nor does it mean the
uniformity of method according to which the mind is observed to act at
successive intervals: this is the law or formula, the existence of which
has been already indicated.(89) But we intend by “cause” two things;
either the sources of knowledge which have from age to age thrown their
materials into the stream of thought, and compelled reason to
re-investigate religion and try to harmonize the new knowledge with the
old beliefs; or else the ultimate intellectual grounds or tests of truth
on which the decision in such cases has been based, the most general types
of thought into which the forms of doubt can be analysed. The problem is
this:—Given, these two terms: on the one hand the series of opinions known
as the history of free thought in religion; on the other the uniformity of
mode in which reason has operated. Interpolate two steps to connect them
together, which will show respectively the materials of knowledge which
reason at successive moments brought to bear on religion, and the ultimate
standards of truth which it adopted in applying this material to it. It is
the attempt to supply the answer to this problem that will give organic
unity to these lectures.
A few words will suffice in reference to the former of these two subjects,
inasmuch as it has already been described to some extent,(90) and will be
made clear in the course of the history. The branches of knowledge with
which the movements of free thought in religion are connected, are chiefly
literary criticism and science. The one addresses itself to the record of
the revelation; the other to the matter contained in the record.
Criticism, when it gains canons of evidence for examining secular
literature, applies them to the sacred books; directing itself in its
lower(91) form to the variations in their text; in its higher(92) to their
genuineness and authenticity. Science, physical or metaphysical, addresses
itself to the question of the credibility of their contents. In its
physical form, when it has reduced the world to its true position in the
universe of space, human history in the cycles of time, and the human race
in the world of organic life, it compares these discoveries with the view
of the universe and of the physical history of the planet contained in the
sacred literature; or it examines the Christian doctrine of miraculous
interposition and special providence by the light of its gradually
increasing conviction of the uniformity of nature. In its moral and
metaphysical forms, science examines such subjects as the moral history of
the Hebrew theocracy; or ponders reverently over the mystery of the divine
scheme of redemption, and the teaching which scripture supplies on the
deepest problems of speculation, the relations of Deity to the universe,
the act of creation, the nature of evil, and the administration of moral
providence.
There is another mode, however, in which speculative philosophy has
operated, which needs fuller explanation. It has not merely, like the
other sciences, suggested results which have seemed to clash with
Christianity, but has supplied the ultimate grounds of proof to which
appeal has consciously been made, or which have been unconsciously
assumed:—the ultimate types of thought which have manifested themselves in
the struggle.(93)
It will be useful, before exhibiting this kind of influence in reference
to religion, to illustrate its character by selecting an instance from
some region of thought where its effects would be least suspected. The
example shall be taken from the history of literature.
If we compare three poets selected from the last three centuries, the
contrast will exhibit at once the change which has taken place in the
literary spirit and standard of judgment, and the correspondence of the
change with fluctuations in the predominant philosophy of the time.—If we
commence with the author of the Paradise Lost, we listen to the last echo
of the poetry which had belonged to the great outburst of mind of the
earlier part of the seventeenth century, and of the faith in the
supernatural which had characterized Puritanism. His philosophy is Hebrew:
he hesitates not to interpret the divine counsels; but it is by the
supposed light of revelation. Doubt is unknown to him. The anthropomorphic
conception of Deity prevails. Material nature is the instrument of God’s
personal providence for the objects of His care.—But if we pass to the
author of the Essay on Man, the revolution which has given artistic
precision to the form is not more observable than the indications of a
philosophy which has chilled the spiritual faculties. The supernatural is
gone. Nature is a vast machine which moves by fixed laws impressed upon it
by a Creator. The soul feels chilled with the desolation of a universe
wherein it cannot reach forth by prayer to a loving Father. Scripture is
displaced by science. Doubt has passed into unbelief. The universe is
viewed by the cold materialism which arraigns spiritual subjects at the
bar of sense.—If now we turn to the work consecrated by the great living
poet to the memory of his early friend, we find ourselves in contact with
a meditative soul, separated from the age just named by a complete
intellectual chasm; whose spiritual perceptions reflect a philosophy which
expresses the sorrows and doubts of a cultivated mind of the present day,
“perplext in faith but not in deeds.”(94) The material has become
transfigured into the spiritual. The objective has been replaced by the
subjective. Nature is studied, as in Pope, without the assumption of a
revelation; but it is no longer regarded as a machine conducted by
material laws: it is a motive soul which embodies God’s presence; a
mystery to be felt, not understood. God is not afar off, so that we cannot
reach Him: He is so nigh, that His omnipresence seems to obscure His
personality.
These instances will illustrate the difference which philosophy produces
in the classes of ideas in which the mind of an age is formed. In Milton,
the appeal is made to the revelation of God in the Book; in Pope, to the
revelation in Nature; in the living poet, to the revelation in man’s soul,
the type of the infinite Spirit and interpreter of God’s universe and
God’s book.(95)
It is an analysis of a similar kind which we must conduct in reference to
sceptical opinions. The influence of the first of the two classes of
intellectual causes above named,(96) viz. the various forms of knowledge
there described, could not exist unobserved, for they are present from
time to time as rival doctrines in contest with Christianity; but the kind
of influence of which we now treat, which relates to the grounds of belief
on which a judgment is consciously or unconsciously formed, is more
subtle, and requires analysis for its detection.
We must briefly explain its nature, and illustrate its influence on
religion.
Metaphysical science is usually divided into two branches; of which one
examines the objects known, the other the human mind, that is the organ of
knowledge. (7) When Psychology has finished its study of the structure and
functions of the mind, it supplies the means for drawing inferences in
reply to a question which admits of a twofold aspect, viz. which of the
mental faculties,—sense, reason, feeling, furnishes the origin of
knowledge; and which is the supreme test of truth? These two questions
form the subjective or Psychological branch of Metaphysics. According to
the answer thus obtained we deduce a corollary in reference to the
objective side. We ask what information is afforded by these mental
faculties in respect to the nature or attributes of the objects
known,—matter, mind, God, duty. The answer to this question is the branch
commonly called the Ontological. The one inquiry treats of the tests of
knowledge, the other of the nature of being. The combination of the two
furnishes the answer on its two sides, internally and externally, to the
question, What is truth?
The right application of them to the subject of religion would give a
philosophy of religion; either objectively by the process of constructing
a _theodicée_ or theory to reconcile reason and faith; or subjectively, by
separating their provinces by means of such an inquiry into the functions
of the religious faculty, and the nature of the truths apprehended by it,
as might furnish criteria to determine the amount that is to be
appropriated respectively from our own consciousness and from external
authority.
The influence of the Ontological branch of the inquiry in producing a
struggle with Christianity, has been already included under the
difficulties previously named, which are created by the growth of the
various sciences.(97) It is the influence of the Psychological branch that
we are now illustrating, by showing that the various theories in respect
of it give their type to various forms of belief and doubt.
The well-known threefold distribution of the faculties that form the
ultimate grounds of conviction will suffice for our purpose: viz.,
sensational consciousness revealing to us the world of matter; intuitive
reason that of mind; and feeling that of emotion.(98) These are the forms
of consciousness which supply the material from which the reflective
powers draw inferences and construct systems.
It is easy to exhibit the mental character which each would have a
tendency to generate when applied to a special subject like religion,
natural or revealed.
If the eye of sense be the sole guide in looking around on nature, we
discover only a universe of brute matter, phenomena linked together in
uniform succession of antecedents and consequents. Mind becomes only a
higher form of matter. Sin loses its poignancy. Immortality disappears.
God exists not, except as a personification of the Cosmos. Materialism,
atheism, fatalism, are the ultimate results which are proved by logic and
history(99) to follow from this extreme view. The idea of spirit cannot be
reached by it. For if some other form of experience than the sensitive be
regarded as the origin of knowledge; if a nobler view be forced on us by
the very inability even to express nature’s phenomena without superadding
spiritual qualities; if regularity of succession(100) suggest the idea of
order and purpose and mind; if adaptation suggest the idea of morality; if
movement suggest the idea of form and will; if will suggest the idea of
personality; if the idea of the Cosmos suggest unity, and thus we mount
up, step by step, to the conception of a God, possessing unity,
intelligence, will, character, we really transfer into the sphere of
nature ideas taken from another region of being, viz., from our
consciousness of ourselves, our consciousness of spirit. It is mental
association that links these ideas to those of sense, and gives to a
sensational philosophy properties not its own. If however sensational
experience can by any means arrive at the notion of natural religion; yet
it will find a difficulty, created by its belief of the uniformity of
nature, in taking the further step of admitting the miraculous
interference which gives birth to revealed: and even if this difficulty
should be surmounted, the disinclination to the supernatural would
nevertheless have a tendency to obliterate mystery by empirical
rationalism, and to reduce piety to morality, morality to expedience,(101)
the church to a political institution, religion to a ritual system, and
its evidence to external historic testimony.
The rival system of proof founded in intuitive consciousness is however
not free from danger. A difference occurs, according as this endowment is
regarded as merely revealing the facts of our own inner experience, or on
the other hand as possessing a power to apprehend God positively, and
spirit to spirit.(102) The result of the former belief would be indeed an
ethical religion, compared with the political one just described. If it
did not rise from the law to the law-giver, it would at least present
morality as a law obligatory on man by his mental structure, independently
of the consideration of reward and punishment. The ideas of God, duty,
immortality, would be established as a necessity of thought, if not as
matters of objective fact. Yet religion would be rather rational than
supernatural; obedience to duty instead of communion with Deity; and
unless the mind can find ground for a belief in God and the divine
attributes through some other faculty, the idealism must destroy the
evidence of revealed religion. Or at least, if the mind admit its truth,
it must renounce the right to criticise the material of that which it
confesses to be beyond the limits of its own consciousness; and thus, by
abdicating its natural powers, blindly submit to external authority, and
accept belief as the refuge from its own Pyrrhonism.
If, on the other hand, instead of regarding all attempts to pass beyond
logical forms of thought to be mental impotence, the mind follows its own
instincts, and, relying upon the same natural realism which justifies its
belief in the immediate character of its sensitive perceptions, ventures
to depend with equal firmness on the reality of its intuitional
consciousness, religion, natural or revealed, wears another aspect; and
both the advantages and the dangers of such a view are widely
different.(103) The soul no longer regards the landscape to be a scene
painted on the windows of its prison-house, a subjective limit to its
perceptions, but not speculatively true; but it wanders forth from its
cell unfettered into the universe around. God is no longer an inference
from final causes, nor a principle of thought. He is the living God, a
real personal spirit with whom the soul is permitted to hold direct
communion. Providence becomes the act of a personal agent. Religion is the
worship in spirit. Sin is seen in its heinousness. Prayer is justified as
a reality, as the breathing of the human soul for communion with its
infinite Parent (8). And by the light of this intuition, God, nature, and
man, look changed. Nature is no longer a physical engine; man no longer a
moral machine. Material nature becomes the regular expression of a
personal fixed will; Miracle the direct interposition of a personal free
will. Revelation is probable, as the voice of God’s mercy to the child of
His love. Inspiration becomes possible, for the intuitional consciousness
seems adapted to be used by divine Providence as its instrument.(104)
But the type of mind created by the use of intuition as a test of truth is
rarely alone. It is cognate to, if it is not connected with, that produced
by the third of the above-named tests, feeling. The emotions, according to
a law of spiritual supply and demand, suggest the reality of the objects
toward which they are aspirations. The longing for help, the feeling of
dependence, is the justification of prayer; the sense of remorse is the
witness to divine judgment; the consciousness of penitence is the ground
for hope in God’s merciful interference; the ineradicable sense of guilt
is the eternal witness to the need of atonement; the instinct for
immortality is the pledge of a future life.
Yet the use of these tests of intuition and feeling in religion, though
possessing these advantages, has dangers. If the feelings, instead of
being used to reinforce or check the other faculties, be relied upon as
sole arbiters; especially if they be linked with the imagination instead
of the intuition; they may conduct to mysticism and superstition by the
very vividness of their perception of the supernatural.(105) Likewise the
intuitive faculty, if it be regarded as giving a noble grasp over the fact
of God as an infinite Spirit, may cause the mind to relax its hold on the
idea of the Divine Personality, and fall into Pantheism, and identify God
with the universe, not by degrading spirit to matter, but by elevating
matter to spirit.(106) Or, instead of allowing experience and revelation
to develop into conceptions of the fundamental truth whose existence it
perceives, it may attempt to develop a religion wholly _à priori_,(107)
and assert its right to create as well as to verify. Also, when applying
itself to revealed religion, this type of thought necessarily makes its
last appeal to inward insight. It cannot, like sensationalism, or
subjective idealism, admit its own impotence, and receive on authority a
revelation, the contents of which it ventures not to criticise. It must
always appropriate that which it is to believe. Accordingly it will have a
tendency to render religion subjective in its character, uncertain in its
doctrines, individual in its constitution.
These general remarks, every one of which admits of historic
exemplification,(108) will suffice to illustrate the kind of influence
exercised by these respective tests of truth in forming the judgment or
moulding the character in relation to the belief or disbelief of natural
and revealed religion. These effects are not adduced as the necessary
results but as the ordinary tendencies of these respective theories. The
mind frequently stops short of the conclusions logically deducible from
its own principles. To measure precisely the effect of each view would be
impossible. In mental science analysis must be qualitative, not
quantitative.
It will hardly be expected that we should arbitrate among these theories,
inasmuch as our purpose is not to test the comparative truthfulness of
metaphysical opinions, but to refer sceptical opinions in religion to
their true scientific and metaphysical parentage. Truth is probably to be
found in a selection from all; and historical investigation is the chief
means of discovering the mode of conducting the process. It is at least
certain, that if history be the form which science necessarily takes in
the study of that which is subject to laws of life and organic growth, it
must be the preliminary inquiry in any investigation in reference to
mental phenomena. The history of philosophy must be the approach to
philosophy.(109) The great problem of philosophy is method; and if there
be a hope that the true method can ever be found it must be by uniting the
historical analysis of the development of the universal mind with the
psychological analysis of the individual. The history of thought indicates
not only fact but truth; not only shows what has been, but, by exhibiting
the proportions which different faculties contribute toward the
construction of truth, and indicating tendencies as well as results,
prepares materials to be collated with the decision previously made by
mental and moral science concerning the question of what ought to be (9).
A definite conviction on this metaphysical inquiry seems perhaps to be
involved in the very idea of criticism, and necessary for drawing the
moral from the history; yet the independence of our historical inquiry
ought to be sacrificed as little as possible to illustrate a foregone
conclusion. It will be more satisfactory to present the evidence for a
verdict without undue advocacy of a side in the metaphysical
controversy.(110)
The execution of this design of analysing the intellectual causes of
unbelief will necessarily involve to some extent a biographical treatment
of the subject, both for theoretical and practical reasons, to discover
truth and to derive instruction. This is so evident in the history of
action, that there is a danger at the present time lest history should
lose the general in the individual, and descend from the rank of science
to mere biography.(111) The deeper insight which is gradually obtained
into the complexity of nature, together with the fuller conviction of
human freedom, is causing artistic portraiture and ethical analysis to be
substituted for historical generalization. The same method however applies
to the region of thought as well as will.
Thought, as an intellectual product, can indeed be studied apart from the
mind that creates it, and can be treated by history as a material fact
subject to the fixed succession of natural laws. But the exclusive use of
such a method, at least in any other subject of study than that of the
results of physical discovery, must be defective, even independently of
the question of the action of free will, unless the thoughts which are the
object of study be also connected with the personality of the thinker who
produces them. His external biography is generally unimportant, save when
the individual character may have impressed itself upon public events; but
the internal portraiture, the growth of soul as known by psychological
analysis, is the very instrument for understanding the expression of it in
life or in literature.(112) It is requisite to know the mental bias of a
writer, whether it be practical, imaginative or reflective; to see the
_idola specus_ which influenced him, the action of circumstances upon his
character, and the reaction of his character upon circumstances; before we
can gain the clue to the interpretation of his works. But if we wish
further to derive moral instruction from him, the biographical mode of
study becomes even more necessary. For the notion of freedom as the ground
of responsibility is now superadded; and the story of his life is the sole
means for such an apprehension of the causes of his heart-struggles as
shall enable us to take the gauge of his moral character, and appropriate
the lessons derivable from the study of it.
Indeed biographical notices, if they could be extended compatibly with the
compass of the subject, would be the most instructive and vivid mode of
presenting alike the facts relating to scepticism and their
interpretation. Such memoirs are not wanting, and are among the most
touching in literature. The sketch which Strauss has given of his early
friend and fellow student Maerklin,(113) gradually surrendering one
cherished truth after another, until he doubted all but the law of
conscience; then devoting himself in the strength of it with unflinching
industry to education; until at last he died in the dark, without belief
in God or hope, cheered only by the consciousness of having tried to find
truth and do his duty:—the sad tale, told by two remarkable biographers,
of Sterling,(114) doubting, renouncing the ministry, yet thirsting for
truth, and at last solacing himself in death by the hopes offered by the
Bible, to the eternal truths of which his doubting heart had always
clung:—the memoir of the adopted son of our own university, Blanco
White,(115) a mind in which faith and doubt were perpetually waging war,
till the grave closed over his truth-searching and care-worn spirit:—the
confessions of one of our own sons of the successive “phases of
faith”(116) through which his soul passed from evangelical Christianity to
a spiritual Deism, a record of heart-struggles which takes its place among
the pathetic works of autobiography, where individuals have unveiled their
inner life for the instruction of their fellow-men:—all these are
instances where the great moral and spiritual problems that belong to the
condition of our race may be seen embodied in the sorrowful experience of
individuals. They are instances of rare value for psychological study in
reference to the history of doubt; sad beacons of warning and of guidance.
Accordingly, in the history of free thought we must not altogether neglect
the spiritual biography of the doubter, though only able to indicate it by
a few touches; by an etching, not a photograph.
We have now added to the explanation before given of the province of our
inquiry, and of the law of the action of free thought on religion, an
account of the moral and intellectual causes which operate in the history
of unbelief, and have sufficiently explained the mode in which the subject
will be treated.
The use of the inquiry will, it is hoped, be apparent both in its
theoretical and practical relations. It is designed to have an
intellectual value not only as instruction but as argument. The tendency
of it will be in some degree polemical as well as didactic, refuting error
by analysing it into its causes, repelling present attacks by studying the
history of former ones.