unattractive as the French unbelievers; whose coarseness of mind in
failing to appreciate that which is beautiful in Christianity is so
evident, that charity could not forbid us to doubt, even if there were not
independent proof, that faults of character contributed very largely to
the formation of their unbelief. Nevertheless, the political aspect of the
movement carries a solemn warning to the Christian church, not to endanger
the everlasting Gospel of the Son of God by making it the buttress to
support corrupt political and ecclesiastical institutions. It is true that
Christ will not abandon his true church. Whatever is divine and eternally
true will always as in this case survive the catastrophe. But this period
of history shows that Providence will not work a miracle to save religion
from a temporary eclipse, if the church forgets that Christ’s kingdom is
not of this world; and that the mission which he has given it is to
convert souls to him; and that learning and piety are intellectual and
moral means for effecting this object.(618) The political faults or
shortcomings of the church are no apology for the infidelity of France;
but they must be taken into account in explaining its intensity.
A theological movement so vast could not fail to exercise an influence in
other lands. Incidental allusions have already been made to its effects at
the court of Prussia,(619) and to the traces of its tone in some of the
later of the English deists.
-------------------------------------
The remainder of this lecture will be employed in tracing the history of
free thought in England, from the date at which the narrative was
interrupted to a little later than the end of the century; especially
noticing the mode in which it was influenced by the movement in France.
It will be remembered that we brought down the history of it as far as
Hume.(620) We paused there, because deism then ends as a literary
movement. Politics and new forms of literature absorbed the mind. Free
thought continued to exist; but it was less frequently expressed in
literature, and was considerably modified by foreign influences. In
Gibbon, about 1776, the ancient spirit of deism, the spirit of
Bolingbroke, speaks, but the form is changed. Instead of denying
Christianity on _à priori_ moral considerations, he feels bound to explain
facts. The attack is not so much moral as historic. The inquiry into
historical _origines_ as well as logical causes has commenced. The mode of
attack too has changed, as well as the point from which it is made. The
French influence is visible in the satire and irony prevalent. There is no
longer the bitter moral indignation of the early English deists, but the
sneer that marks the spirit of contempt. Fear and hatred of Christianity
have given way to philosophical contempt. (25)
In Thomas Paine, who wrote in France in the midst of the meeting of the
French Convention, we meet a nearer reproduction of the spirit of early
English deism, but he has even more than Gibbon caught the spirit of the
French movement. Gibbon’s scepticism is that of high life; Paine’s of low.
The one writer sneers, the other hates. The one is a philosopher, the
other a politician. Paine represents the infidel movement of England when
it had spread itself among the lower orders, and mingled itself with the
political dissatisfaction for which unhappily there was supposed to be
some ground. Paine’s spirit is that of English deism animated by the
political exasperation which had characterised the French. His doctrines
come from English deism; his bitterness from Voltaire; his politics from
Rousseau.
Within the limits of the present century two other traces are found of the
influence of the French school of infidelity, which therefore ought
logically to be comprised with it. The one is political, the other
literary; viz. the socialist schemes of Owen, which in some respects seem
to be derived by direct lineage from Paine, and the expression of unbelief
in the poetry of Byron and Shelley.
We must briefly notice these writers in succession. The first in the
series is Gibbon.(621) Though he has left an autobiography, he has not
fully unveiled the causes which shook his faith, and made him turn deist.
We can however collect that the reaction from the doubts suggested by the
perusal of Middleton’s work on the subject of the cessation of miracles,
then recently brought into notoriety, (26) turned him to the church of
Rome; and that his residence abroad and familiarity with French literature
caused him to drift afterwards into the opposite extreme of scepticism. He
did not become an atheist, like some of the French writers whom we have
been studying: but he seems to have given up the belief in the divine
origin of Christianity; and he manifested the spirit of dislike and
insinuation common in the unbelief of the time.
He did not write expressly against Christianity; but the subject came
across his path in travelling over the vast space of time which he
embraced in his magnificent History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire. It is a subject of regret to be compelled to direct hostile
remarks against one who has deserved so well of the world. That work,
though in the pageantry of its style(622) it in some sense reflects the
art and taste of the age in which it was written, yet in its love of solid
information and deep research is the noblest work of history in the
English tongue. Grand alike in its subject, its composition, and its
perspective, it has a right to a place among the highest works of human
conception; and sustains the relation to history which the works of
Michael Angelo bear to art. In the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of
this work, Gibbon had occasion to discuss the origin of Christianity, and
assigned five causes for its spread; viz. its internal doctrine, and
organization, miracles, Jewish zeal, and excellence of Christian morals.
The chapters were received with denunciations. Yet those(623) who in later
times have re-examined Gibbon’s statements candidly admit that they can
find hardly any errors of fact or intentional mis-statement of
circumstances.
The great mistake which he commits is obvious, and the cause hardly less
so. The mistake is twofold: first, he attributes to the earliest period of
Christianity that which was only true of a later; and secondly, he
confounds the circumstances of the spread of Christianity with the cause
which gave it force.(624) The powerful influence of the causes which he
specifies cannot be doubted;(625) and we may hold it to be not derogatory
to our religion that it admits of union with every class of efficient
causes; and adapts itself so fully to man’s wants, as to accept the
support of ordinary sources of influence. But the causes which he alleges
operated far less strongly, and some of them not at all, in the primitive
age of Christianity. The discussion of this period lay beyond Gibbon’s
purpose; and as he dwelt wholly on the aspects of a later age, he has left
the impression that the earliest age partook of the same characteristics.
Nor is he correct in regarding the five causes as solely efficient. There
is a subtler force at work, of the operation of which they exhibit only
the conditions. They reveal the mechanism, but do not explain the
principle. Without judging him as a theologian in omitting the theological
cause for an alleged supernatural power, he must be censured as a
historian in failing to appreciate the spiritual movement at work in
Christianity, the deep excitement of the spiritual faculty, the yearning
of the mind after truth and holiness. The same fault is observable in his
appreciation of religion generally, and not merely of Christianity. With
the want of spiritual perception common to his age, he had not the ethical
sensibility to appreciate the internal part of a religious system; and
hence he regards unworldly phenomena in the tone of the political world of
his time.
In pointing out his errors, we have hinted at their causes. The coldness
which scepticism and sensational philosophy(626) had induced in his mind,
which could kindle into warmth in describing the greatness either of men
or of events, but not in depicting the moral excellence of Christianity,
was but the reflection of the cold hatred of religious enthusiasm common
in his day. Nor would the historic views of primitive Christianity
commonly entertained in his time tend to dissipate his error. For it was
usual in that age of evidences to regard the early converts as cold and
cautious inquirers, accustomed to weigh evidences and suggest doubts. In
attempting to discover the doctrines and discipline of the English church
in apostolic times, there was a danger of transferring the notions of
modern decorum to the marvellous outburst of enthusiastic piety and
supernatural mystery which attended the communication of the heaven-sent
message; and therefore it is some palliation for Gibbon that he too failed
to perceive that those were times of excitement, when new ideas fell on
untried minds and yearning hearts. And it is a remarkable proof of the
improved general conception which men now entertain of Christianity, that
no apprehension of danger is now felt from Gibbon’s views. The youngest
student has imbibed a religious spirit so much deeper, that he cannot fail
instinctively to perceive their insufficiency as an explanation of the
phenomena.(627)
One of our great poets has celebrated the two literary exiles of the Leman
lake.(628) But how different are our feelings in respect of them in
relation to this subject! Both were deists; but the one dedicated his life
to a crusade against Christianity, the other only insinuated a few slight
hints: the one derived his faults from himself, the other from his age:
the one, the type of subtlety, acted by his pen on the world political;
the other, the type of industry, sought to instruct the student. The
writings of Voltaire remain as works of power, but not of information:
Gibbon’s history will endure as long as the English tongue.
Paine is a character of a very different kind from the freethinker last
named.(629) Instead of the polished scholar, the polite man of letters,
and the historian, like Gibbon, we see in him an active man of the world,
educated by men rather than books, of low tastes and vulgar tone, the
apostle alike of political revolution and infidelity. Though a native of
England, his earliest life was spent in America at the time of the war of
independence. Returning to England with the strong feelings of liberty and
freedom which had marked the revolt of the colonies, he wrote at the time
of the outbreak of the French revolution a work called the Rights of Man,
in reply to Burke’s criticism on that event. Prosecuted for this work, he
fled to France, and was distinguished by being the only foreigner save
one(630) elected to the French Convention. During its session he composed
the infidel work called the Age of Reason, by which his name has gained an
unenviable notoriety; and after the alteration of political circumstances
in France, he returned to America, and there dragged out a miserable
existence, indebted in his last illness for acts of charity to disciples
of the very religion that he had opposed.
The two works, the Rights of Man, and the Age of Reason, being circulated
widely in England by the democratic societies of that period, contributed
probably more than any other books to stimulate revolutionary feeling in
politics and religion.(631) This popularity is owing partly to the
character of the language and ideas, partly to the state of public
feeling. Manifesting much plebeian simplicity of speech and earnestness of
conviction, they gave expression in coarse Saxon words to thoughts which
were then passing through many hearts. They were like the address of a
mob-orator in writing, and fell upon ground prepared. Political reforms
had been steadily resisted; and accordingly, when the success of foreign
revolution had raised men’s spirits to the highest point of impatience,
the middle classes, which wanted a moderate reform, were unfortunately
thrown on the side of the wild and anarchical spirits that wished for
utter revolution. The church, by holding with the state, was partly
involved in the same obloquy. Paine’s works, resembling Rousseau’s in
purpose, though quite opposite in style, were as much adapted to the lower
classes of England as his to the polished upper classes of France.
The Age of Reason, was a pamphlet admitting of quick perusal. It was
afterwards followed by a second part, in which a defence was offered
against the replies made to the former part. The object of the two is to
state reasons for rejecting the Bible,(632) and to explain the nature of
the religion of deism,(633) which was proposed as a substitute. A portion
is devoted to an attack on the external evidence of revelation, or, as the
author blasphemously calls it,(634) “the three principal means of
imposture,” prophecy, miracles, and mystery; the latter of which he
asserts may exist in the physical, but not by the nature of things in the
moral world. A larger portion is devoted to a collection of the various
internal difficulties of the books of the Old and New Testament, and of
the schemes of religion, Jewish and Christian.(635) The great mass of
these objections are those which had been suggested by English or French
deists, but are stated with extreme bitterness. The most novel part of
this work is the use which Paine makes of the discoveries of
astronomy(636) in revealing the vastness of the universe and a plurality
of globes, to discredit the idea of interference on behalf of this
insignificant planet,—an argument which he wields especially against the
doctrine of incarnation. But no part of his work manifests such
bitterness, and at the same time such a specious mode of argument, as his
attack on the doctrine of redemption and substitutional atonement.(637)
The work, in its satire and its blasphemous ribaldry, is a fit parallel to
those of Voltaire. Every line is fresh from the writer’s mind, and written
with an acrimony which accounts for much of its influence. The religion
which Paine substituted for Christianity was the belief in one God as
revealed by science, in immortality as the continuance of conscious
existence, in the natural equality of man, and in the obligation of
justice and mercy to one’s neighbour.(638)
The influence of the spirit of Paine lingered in some strata of our
population far into the present century: by means of the views of
Owen,(639) the founder of English socialism, which essentially reproduce
the visionary political reforms which belonged to the philosophy and to
the doubt of the last century.
Being desirous to improve the condition of the industrial classes, Owen
speculated on the causes of evil; and, approaching the subject from the
extreme sensational point of view, regarded the power of circumstances to
be so great, that he was led to regard action as the obedience to the
strongest motive. He thus introduced the idea of physical causation into
the human will; and made the rule of right to be each one’s own pleasures
and pains. Founding political inferences on this ethical theory of
circumstantial fatalism, he proposed the system called socialism, which
aimed at modifying temptations and removing two great classes of
temptations, by facilitating divorce, and proposing equality of property.
The system is now obsolete both in idea and in history, yet it has an
interest from the circumstance that until recently it deceived the minds
and corrupted the religious faith of many of the manufacturing population.
The history of the influence of French infidelity on the course of English
thought closes with names of greater note.(640) If Owen, though belonging
to the present century, represents the political tone of the past, we must
also refer to the same period, morally though not chronologically, the
spirit of unbelief which animated literature in the poetry of Byron and
Shelley.
Saddened by blighted hopes, political and personal, Byron affords a type
of the unbelief which is marked by despair.(641) If compared with the two
exiles of the Leman lake, whom the sympathy of a common scepticism and
common exile commended to his meditation, he stands in many respects
widely contrasted with them in tone and spirit. Allied rather to Gibbon in
seriousness, he nevertheless wholly lacked his moral purpose and resolute
spirit of perseverance. More nearly resembling Voltaire in the nature of
his unbelief, he nevertheless differed in the features of gloom by which
his mind was characterized. His unbelief was a remnant of the philosophic
atheism of France; but it received a tinge in passing through the wounded
mind of the poet.
His brother poet, of a still loftier genius, is more widely contrasted
with him in mental qualities, than united by similarity in the character
of his unbelief. Both were weary of the world; but the one was drawn down
by unbelief to earth, the other soared into the ideal: the one was driven
to the gloom of despair, the other was excited by the imagination to the
madness of enthusiasm: the one was made sad by disappointment, the other
was goaded by it into frenzy.
Shelley merits more than a passing notice, both because his poetry is a
proof of our main position concerning the influence of certain forms of
philosophy in producing unbelief, and because his mental history, as
learned by means of his works and memoirs, is a psychological study of the
highest value. The infidelity which shows itself in him is an _idolum
specûs_, as well as an _idolum theatri_.(642)
His life, his natural character, and his philosophy, all contributed to
form his scepticism.(643) His life is a tale of sorrow and ruined hopes,
of genius without wisdom: one of the sad stories which will ever excite
the sympathy of the heart. Early sent to this university, he seems like
Gibbon to have lived alone; and in the solitude of that impulsive and
recluse spirit which formed his life-long peculiarity, to have nursed a
spirit of atheism and wild schemes of reform. Charged by the authorities
of his college with the authorship of an atheistical pamphlet,(644) he was
expelled the university. An outcast from his family, he went forth to
suffer poverty, to gather his livelihood as he could by the wonderful
genius which nature had given him. Wronged as he thought by his university
and his country, his wounded spirit imputed the supposed unkindness which
he received to the religion which his enemies professed. In a foreign
land, brooding over his wrongs, he cherished the bitter antipathy to
priestcraft and to monarchy which finds such terrific expression in his
poems.(645) His end was a fit close of a tragic life. A friendly hand paid
the last office of friendship to his remains; and the urn which contains
the ashes of his pyre rests in the solemn and beautiful cemetery of the
eternal city, which he himself had described so strikingly in his
affecting memorial of his friend, the poet Keats.(646)
His natural character contributed to produce his scepticism not less than
his life to increase it. He has left us a clear delineation of himself in
his writings. If considered on the emotional side, he was a creature of
impulses. His predominant passion was an enthusiastic desire to reform the
world. Filled with the wildest ideas of the French revolution, his
impulsiveness hurried him on to give expression to them. His intellectual
nature was analogous to the moral, and itself received a stimulus from it.
His mental peculiarity was his power of sustained abstraction. His poems
are not lyrics of life, but of an ideal world. His tendency was to
insulate qualities or feelings, and hold them up to the mental vision as
personalities. The words which he has addressed to his own skylark fitly
describe his mind as it soared in the solitude of its abstraction:
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
It has been well observed, that this tendency of the mind to personify
isolated qualities or impulses, was essentially the mythological
tendency(647) which had created the religion and expressed itself in the
poetry of the Greeks, and possibly contributed to foster Shelley’s
sympathies with heathen religion. His mind was peculiarly Greek, simple
not complex, imaginative rather than fanciful, abstract not concrete,
intellectual not emotional; wanting the many-sidedness of modern taste,
partaking of the unity of science rather than the multiformity of nature,
like sculpture rather than painting. This mental peculiarity contributed
to scepticism by inclining his mind to the pantheistic philosophy, which
can never be held save by those whose minds can give being to an
abstraction, and is revolting to those who are deeply touched with the
Hebrew consciousness of personality and of duty. His philosophy was at
first a form of naturalism, which identified God with nature, and made
body and spirit co-essential. In this stage he oscillated between the
belief of half personified self-moved atoms, or a general pervading spirit
of nature. From this stage he passed into a new one, by contact with the
philosophy of Hume; and, while admitting the diversity of matter and
spirit, yet denied the substantial reality of both. In this state of mind
he studied the philosophy of Plato, which was originally designed for
doubters somewhat analogous to him; and he readily imbibed the theory that
the passing phenomena are types of eternal archetypes, embodiments of
eternal realities. But it was Plato’s view of the universe that he
accepted, not his view of man; his metaphysics, not his ethics. In none of
these three theories is the rule of the universe ascribed to a character,
but in each to animated abstractions. They are a pantheistic or
mythological view of things.(648) Nor was the effect of this philosophy
merely theoretical, for the distorted view of the physical and moral
cosmos led him to believe that both should be regulated by the same
conditions; that men should have the unconstrained liberty which he
thought he saw in material things. Like Rousseau, ascribing moral evil to
the artificial laws of society, Shelley proposed to substitute a new order
of things, in which man should be emancipated from kings and priests. This
philosophy also increased his hatred against the moral order of the world,
and especially against Christianity; and led him to regard it as the
offshoot of superstition and the impediment to progress. Yet even here,
while echoing the irreverent doctrines of the French revolution, he bore
an unconscious witness to the majesty of the Christian virtues, in that he
could find no nobler type with which to invest his ideal race of men.
We have dwelt long on Shelley, as a most instructive example for observing
the various influences, personal and social, intellectual and moral,
philosophical and political, combining to form unbelief. His thoughts are
the last echo of the unbelief of the last century. The great movement of
Germany has completely changed the scepticism of the present. The
instances that we have found of unbelief in England were indications of a
tendency rather than a movement. They were however of sufficient
importance to call forth the voices of the church in reply or in protest.
It has been remarked, that in the former half of the eighteenth century
the attack was chiefly directed against the internal doctrines and
narratives of revelation, on the assumption that they clashed with the
judgment of common sense, or of the moral faculty. And therefore the
writers on the evidences, adapting their defence to the attack, employed
themselves chiefly in establishing the internal evidences, the moral need
of a revelation generally, and the suitability of the Christian in
particular, before producing the divine testimony which authenticates it.
But about the middle of this century the historic spirit arose, and the
point of attack shifted to an assault on the historic value of the
literature which contains the revelation. The question thenceforth became
a literary one, whether there was documentary proof that a revelation had
been given. The defence accordingly ceased to be philosophical, and became
historical.(649)