“Phases” of his faith. Educated in the tenets of the more spiritual
section of the church, he gradually began, as he has stated, to reconsider
his opinions as his mind was awakened by study. The moral identity of
Sabbath and Sunday; the practice of infant baptism; the connexion of a
spiritual effect with what he considered to be a material cause implied in
baptismal regeneration; the reasons for the superior efficacy of Christ’s
sacrifice over the Mosaic; the discovery of gradual development in
scripture; these were the first thoughts that agitated him.(961) Unable to
solve them to his satisfaction, he hesitated not to abandon, with noble
and manly self-sacrifice, the friends that he held dear; and to wander
forth from the established church, to seek a primitive Christianity
elsewhere. Puzzled by the difficulty of the supposed mistake of the
apostolic church, in expecting the sudden return of Christianity, he
adopted the chiliastic hypothesis; and, unable to join in ministerial work
in England, went as a missionary into the East.(962) On his return,
alienated from the friends of his youth and from the new instructors with
whom he had consorted, he sought truth in the solitude of his own heart;
and was led to throw off Calvinism and adopt Unitarianism.(963) His fourth
phase of faith led him, while clinging to Christianity, to renounce the
religion of the Book. It consisted in an examination of many of the
difficulties which criticism has discovered; from which he was unhappily
led to conclude that the Bible was not free from error, nor above moral
criticism;(964) believing nevertheless that the Bible was made for man,
though not man for the Bible. The two concluding phases of his faith(965)
consisted in appreciating the great law of progress which he considers to
mark religion; and discovering that faith at second hand is vain, and that
the historical truthfulness of Christianity is unimportant, the ideas
embodied in it constituting its truth.(966)
In reading this painful record, we feel ourselves in contact with a mind
cultivated in miscellaneous science and in the Semitic languages,
disciplined as well as informed; which lays bare with transparent
sincerity the history of the stages through which he has successively
passed. Hitherto we have seen only the destructive side of his teaching;
but he also strove to attain a definite dogma: his truth-searching spirit,
touched by deep longings for the presence of God, could not rest in the
blank of unbelief. The nature of this attempt is developed in a work on
“the Soul,”(967) in which the author lays bare at once his psychology, his
ethics, and his religion; which in substance are not unlike those of the
writer last named. He lays the foundation of religion in the spiritual
faculty, the sense of the infinite personality; showing the generation of
the various complex feelings which make up religion—awe, wonder,
admiration, reverence—as the attributes of this divine Personality
successively discover themselves.(968) Holding strongly the doctrine of
human freedom and the natural existence of a moral sense, he allows fully
the existence of the consciousness of sin,(969) and the necessity of
spiritual regeneration; asserting the belief in God’s sympathy and
communion with the soul, the efficacy of prayer, and the duty of
encouraging holy aspirations.(970)
Few more suggestive, and in many respects few truer, specimens exist of
the analysis of those facts of human nature which concern the basis of
natural religion and of the spiritual life,(971) than that which he has
offered in order to find a psychological basis for religion. The deep
spiritual longing for communion with God, the belief in prayer and in
moral renewal, are evidences of a creed which separate him utterly from
the naturalism and pantheism before described, and place him almost on the
frontier line between Christianity and deism.(972) And we may be permitted
to express the belief, that philosophy could not have raised him to his
present moral standard. His spirituality is due to the fragments of
Christianity which he has retained in his system. It has been truly said,
that the defenders of natural religion furtively kindle their torches by
the light of revealed.
In the course of this sketch of contemporary unbelief, we have gradually
advanced from the forms most alien to faith, till we have reached the
threshold of the Christian church. The necessity for making the narrative
complete compels us to pass within its limits, and to indicate, though it
be by a brief notice and with a delicate hand, the forms of the movement
of free thought therein which have given rise to the charge of
rationalism. This movement of thought is separated from those just
described, in that it loyally holds that God has revealed His will to man;
but it varies from the general view of the church of Christ in reference
to the extent and manner in which He has been pleased to reveal Himself;
and, under the pressure of the difficulties, doctrinal or literary, which
the progress of knowledge or of speculation has suggested, proposes to
separate in the holy scripture, or in the immemorial teaching of the
church, that which it regards to be the eternal element of revealed truth
from that which it ventures to conceive to be temporary; the heavenly
treasure from the earthen vessels in which it is contained. The literary
parallel to this tendency is not to be found in the deism of the last
century, but in some of the schools of free thought in Germany and France
in the present. Like them it professes to be conservative of revelation,
desiring to surrender a part in order to save the remainder.(973)
The movement is characterised by two forms; the one philosophical, the
other critical. We shall indicate their general character, without
specifying individual writings.(974)
It is perhaps to the influence of Coleridge, more than to that of any
other single person, that the origin of this philosophical movement can be
traced.(975) We have already(976) had occasion to mention the general
design of his philosophy. At a time when the world was wishing to break
with the past, in politics, in literature, and in religion, his spirit was
conservative of older truth, while sympathetic with that which was new. In
looking backwards, he sought to discover what mankind had meant by their
beliefs; in looking around, he asked what were the elements which the
present generation disapproved: and, wishing to eliminate the error of the
past and appropriate the truth of the present, he looked inwards into the
human heart, and thought that he perceived a faculty there which unveiled
to man the eternal, absolute truth,—the true, the beautiful, and the good;
which had been the object of search in all systems, the end for which all
earnest spirits had ever yearned. This faculty, “the reason” or intuition,
thus became the guide, by the light of which he was able to thread his way
through the manifold systems of thought of past times.(977) Not content
with applying it to other subjects, he carried it also into the domain of
revealed religion. It was the engine by which he hoped to get a view of
the truth which the ancient writers of holy scripture intended to convey.
It would become the means of interpreting their thoughts, by raising the
student to a perception of the same objects, similar in kind to that which
they possessed. Their inspiration was regarded as only an elevated form of
this faculty. When accordingly this method was applied by him to the study
of Christianity, it did not lead him to pare down the supernatural by the
cold interpretation of the older rationalism, but gave the explanation of
the mysteries by raising men to a state where mysteries ceased to be such
any longer. It did not pull down revelation to the level of the mind, but
strove vainly(978) to raise the mind to a level with revelation.
If viewed in reference to cognate schools of Christian philosophy, it
bears similitude in many respects to some of the schools of Germany. In
the analysis offered of the human faculties, it has much akin to Kant: in
the deep conviction that the highest truth is revealed to a faculty of
faith, and in the undoubting belief in our own intuitions and the
conviction of their reality, it resembles Jacobi and Schelling: in
regarding the human reason to be the impersonal reason, the divinity in
man, it resembles Schelling or Cousin. But it also has an element akin to
the ancient Neo-Platonic philosophy of Alexandria.(979) This is seen both
in the view taken of the organ of knowledge, and in the scheme of
philosophy evolved by it. The intuitive reason, the divine faculty above
described, which reveals eternal truth, is viewed as the divine Λόγος in
man, as was taught by the Neo-Platonists.(980) Inspiration is the action
of the same Λόγος. This branch of human intellect is absorbed in divinity:
a divine teacher is considered to exist in the human mind.(981) And as the
view of the faculty is parallel with the teaching of this ancient school,
so the explanations suggested of divine mysteries(982) like the Trinity or
Redemption are similar. These explanations are the mystical expressions of
the thoughts apprehended by this faculty, when it strives to raise itself
to oneness with the infinite object which it contemplates.
These remarks will explain the philosophical system taught by Coleridge,
and will furnish the clue to interpret the form of theological thought
which has originated from him. The parallel between his system and those
with which it has now been compared, will be no less obvious in noticing
the results of it. The system of Schleiermacher was the theological
corollary from the theories of German philosophy above named; and the
school of the Alexandrian fathers was the corresponding one which resulted
from the Neo-Platonic.(983) We should therefore expect that, if the
philosophy of Coleridge was a mixture of the two schools above described,
the teaching of his disciples would combine the two theological schools
which flowed from those systems. Attentive consideration of the
philosophical side of the modern movement of free thought in English
theology will confirm this anticipation, and show that its chief elements
are a union of these two theological schools. The tendency to require that
the human soul shall apprehend divine mysteries intellectually, as well as
feel their saving power emotionally; the reduction of inspiration
theologically, as well as psychologically, to an elevated but natural
state(984) of the human consciousness; the inclination to regard the work
of Christ as the office of the divine teacher to humanity, and human
history as the longing for such a divine voice; the description of the
work of Christ as a divine manifestation of a reconciliation which
previously existed, instead of being the mode of effecting it; the
tendency to view the death of Christ by the light of the incarnation,
instead of regarding the incarnation by the light of the atonement, the
death of Christ as the solution of the enigma of God becoming flesh;—these
seem all to be corollaries from the philosophy of the Neo-Platonists, and
find their parallel in the school of the Alexandrian fathers: they express
too, though with some differences, which will be apparent by recalling the
remarks in a preceding lecture,(985) the fundamental religious conceptions
of Schleiermacher, to which we before had occasion to object as inverting
the gospel scheme, and falling short of the dogmatic teaching of the
revelation of God.
The causes and character of the philosophical movement of free thought in
the church will now be clear. We stated that there had been also a
critical tendency. A stricter analysis would probably subdivide the
critical movement into two; viz. a philosophical form of it which examines
facts,(986) and a literary one which examines documents.
This philosophical movement differs from the former, in that it neither
approaches the subject of inquiry from a lofty speculative point of view,
which is intended to furnish a solution of the mysteries of nature and
revelation; nor seeks by means of the intuitive reason to penetrate
beneath the doctrines of ancient teachers, and discover the absolute truth
after which they were striving. It rather disbelieves in the possibility
of the attainment of absolute truth by the human mind, and regards all
truth to be relative to the age in which it was expressed.(987) Like the
former movement it possesses a method; but one which is tentative and
critical, not speculative; empirical, not _à priori_; founding its
knowledge on history, not on philosophy. The mode of investigation is
probably indirectly a result of the teaching of Hegel, as that which was
before described was the result of the rival schools contemporary with
him; but it is the adoption of Hegel’s method, and not of his philosophy.
In this respect it may be regarded as a critical tendency rather than a
philosophical; but one which is critical of the truths and religious facts
of revelation, and of its doctrinal teaching, and not merely of the
documents which record it.
Hence, when applied to revealed religion, in examining the teaching of the
scripture writers, it does not attempt, as the former school, to raise the
mind to a level with that of the writers, in order to apprehend the
eternal truth which was revealed alike to their intuition and to ours; but
it throws itself into the circumstances of their age, so as to understand
their meaning; and tests it by the altered conceptions which the progress
of ages has given to the world. Thus the inquirer not only asks what the
writers meant, but views the truth which they taught as relative to their
own age; and regards the office of criticism to be, to discriminate in it
that which is conceived to have been temporary and local, and that which
applies to all time. This school thus resembles the last, in asking what
the scripture writers meant in their own time, and what their meaning is
to us; but it seeks the answer, by using the same methods for the
investigation which would be applied in ordinary literature; not by
abstract speculation, apart from literary study of actual documents. It
makes the conceptions which civilization and history have created, to be
the test for comparison, not the eternal truths of reason which are
supposed to exist irrespective of civilization and history.
We may select one illustration. In surveying the doctrine of the atoning
work of Christ, the former school seeks to apprehend the absolute meaning
of the atonement as the manifestation of an act previously wrought out;
and, starting with the notion of the divine teacher of humanity, the Λόγος
of God in Christ teaching the world, and the Λόγος in the soul of man
apprehending this teaching, it construes the atoning work of Christ from
its didactic side, as teaching man concerning God’s love by means of a
majestic example of self-sacrifice. The second school treats the doctrine
historically; and, when it has separated the apostolic teaching from all
subsequent additions, compares this doctrine with the age in which it was
expressed, in order to separate what it conceives to be the permanent from
the temporary; and hence comes to view the atonement, apart from all the
hallowed associations of propitiatory sacrifice which in the minds of the
early converts were inseparably united with it. These ideas, which the
doctrine of the church regards as integral portions of revealed verity, it
considers to be the peculiarity of the age in which the revelation was
communicated. The revealed doctrines are handled in the same manner as
corresponding doctrines of philosophy.
The minuteness of this method, its disposition to seek for truth in the
investigation of details rather than by approaching a subject from some
general principle, connects it with the other form of the critical
tendency above named, which employs itself in the literary criticism of
the sacred records. The main object of this movement consists in examining
the questions, first, of the origin of the canon, its grounds and
contents; next, the authenticity and genuineness of the books; lastly, the
credibility of their contents. It is plain that, however objectionable may
be the conclusions arrived at on questions such as these, they are too
recondite and literary in character to possess the same doctrinal and
pastoral importance as those of the former kind; though the alarm which
they may cause will often be greater, because the variation from ordinary
belief is more easily apprehended by the mind, and, being a variation in
fact, and not only in idea, cannot be concealed by any ambiguity in the
use of theological terms, as may be the case in the former instances. Yet
in the third of these three questions, this species of criticism may have
a very intimate relation to practice; for it may so affect the rule of
faith as to overthrow the standard on which we repose for the proof of
revealed doctrines. In truth, in this branch it becomes identical with the
critical method before described, save so far as that examined the
credibility of doctrines, this of facts. But in spirit they are identical.
It proceeds upon the assumption, that the same critical process is
applicable in the investigation of the sacred history, as the former
assumed in the investigation of the sacred philosophy. The attitude of
both is independent: both teach that the sacred books are not to be
approached with a preconceived definition of their character or meaning:
prepossessions are not to bar the way to the exercise of criticism. The
difference from the first method above described will be equally obvious.
We may adopt the doctrine of inspiration as an illustration. The first
view would approach the contents of scripture with a psychological theory
of inspiration, as being a form of the intuition, which may furnish an
instrument for eclecticism: the second and third would investigate the
question empirically, and, declining on the one hand to accept the
psychological definition just described, and on the other to approach
Scripture with the preconceived notion of the nature of inspiration, as
held by the Church, would seek to determine the notion of inspiration from
the contents of scripture.(988)
The relation to holy scripture of the critical modes of inquiry will
obviously be as intimate in reference to the standard of faith, as that of
the philosophical in reference to doctrine. If the first of the three
methods which we enumerated(989) overlays doctrine with philosophy; the
second is in danger of subtracting from it integral elements of its
system; and the third of disintegrating it by criticism, and introducing
uncertainty with regard to the sacred books, which are the basis of
doctrine. In questions relating to literary criticism, like those which
are made the subject of investigation in the last-named method, it is
impossible to lay down, so absolutely as in the two former cases, the
tests to distinguish truth from error. The creeds are a practical gauge in
the former instances which is partly wanting in the latter. The greater
difficulty however which thus appertains to the latter, of placing the
limits to which reverent criticism may extend without endangering faith,
ought to generate the more solemn caution in its application.
We have dwelt long upon the modern forms of free thought which exist
within the church of Christ, because they have a living interest for us.
They meet us in life as well as in literature; and we must daily form our
judgment upon their truth and falsehood. They are not indeed peculiar to
one church, nor to one country;(990) but form the theological question
which is presented to the Christian church in this age.
The result of our inquiries in reference to the free thought of the
present time has been especially to exhibit three main tendencies; one,
arising from Positivism, a tendency to deny the possibility of
revelation;(991) a second, from an opposite philosophy, to deny its
necessity;(992) and a third, to accept it only in part.(993) These are the
three tendencies by which the world and church of the coming generation
are likely to be influenced. Our path in life will be in a world where
they are operating; and we shall have need to be armed with the whole
armour of God. If we have in our personal history so investigated the
evidences of our faith, as to feel that we have a well-grounded hope,
unassailable by these doubts, we may be thankful: if we have gone safely
through the perilous test of a careful examination of them, sometimes
staggering perhaps in our faith, yet struggling after truth in prayerful
trust that the Lord would himself be our teacher, until we now are able to
feel that we have our faith grounded on a Rock,—a faith which is the
result of inquiry, not of ignorance,—let us be still more thankful, and
exemplify our thankfulness by trying to assist the doubter with our tender
sympathy, and to aid him in finding the truth and peace which Christ has
given to us. Our attitude in moments of peril must be that of solemn
reliance on God’s help; and our behaviour towards others ought to exhibit
Christian firmness, mingled with candour and tenderness; evincing the
moderation of true learning, joined to the uncompromising adherence to the
Christian faith.
The history now given, of the doubt which is expressed at present through
the English language, completes the account of the fourth great crisis of
belief in church history;(994) and with it we bring to an end our long
survey of the history of free thought.
-------------------------------------
Since the commencement of the second lecture, we have been so involved in
the details of the investigation, that, to those who have lost sight of
the plan proposed in the commencement, the lectures may have appeared
historical rather than controversial, and hardly compatible with the
purpose of the founder of the Lecture. We have been like travellers moving
in a tangled plain, where the path at times seems lost. Before entering
upon it, we took our stand, as it were, on an eminence; and indicated the
plan of the route; pointed to the kind of territory through which it would
conduct us, and the direction to which it would tend. Now, that we have at
last extricated ourselves from its windings, and rest after our journey,
let us cast a glance backward over its course, and see how far the result
has verified our anticipations. Let us reconsider the purpose designed by
this course of inquiry; notice how far the promises in respect to it have
been fulfilled; show its relation to controversial purpose; and collect
the moral lessons which are derivable.
It will be remembered that we stated(995) the topic to be, a critical
history of free thought in Europe in relation to the Christian religion.
Our criticism started from a Christian point of view, and assumed alike
the miraculous character of Christianity, the exceptional character of the
religious inspiration of the first teachers of it, and the reality of its
chief doctrines. From this point of view we proposed to consider the
attempts of the human mind to get free from the authority of the Christian
religion, either by rejecting it in whole or in part.(996) Four great
crises of faith were enumerated in church history;(997) the first, the
struggle, literary and philosophical, of early heathenism against
Christianity;(998) the second, the reawakening of free thought in the
middle ages;(999) the third, that which appertained to the revival of
classical literature;(1000) the fourth, to the growth of modern
philosophy;(1001)—a series of epochs which exhibit the struggle of
Christianity in the great centres of thought and civilization, ancient or
modern; and it was proposed that our investigation should not only contain
a chronicle of the facts, but explain the causes, and teach the
moral.(1002) We considered that the causes which make thought develope
into unbelief are chiefly two,—the emotional and the intellectual;(1003)
and, while vindicating distinctness of operation for the intellectual
under certain circumstances,(1004) yet we allowed the union of them with
the moral to be so intimate,(1005) that not only must account always be
taken of the latter in estimating the unbelief of individuals, but the
exclusive study of the former, without allowing for the existence of the
latter, must be regarded as likely to lead to an imperfect and injurious
idea of unbelief.