THEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS
The age into which Adam Smith was born was an age of religious doubt and
philosophic curiosity. During his lifetime the governing classes in
England, undisturbed by enthusiasms, were little disposed to entertain
revolutionary ideas in politics or religion. It seemed to be the
function of philosophic thinkers to leave the constitution of a
tolerably liberal State and a tolerably lax Church, and to advance in
other directions. The fierce storms that bent the course of Selden and
Milton and Hobbes had abated. Men tried to forget
“The lifted axe, the agonising wheel,
Luke’s iron crown, and Damien’s bed of steel.”
No one believed that the Deity created kings; many doubted whether there
was a Deity at all. Since the great days of Athens, philosophy had
seldom reaped a richer harvest than in Great Britain during the eighty
years that followed the Act of Union. Newton’s _Principia_, and the
philosophy of Shaftesbury, Clarke, Mandeville, Hutcheson, and Butler, as
well as of Hume and Adam Smith, all fall within this period. Speculative
discovery went hand in hand with mechanical invention. The poetry of
enthusiasm, religious and political fervour, persecution, martyrdom,
with all their heroic and squalid accompaniments, preceded and followed
this prosaic illumination. It was a chapter of dry light between two of
heat and fire and smoke. Reason reigned; and as reason seldom wears an
air of originality, we need not wonder if later ingenuity has discovered
that all these philosophers borrowed their doctrines either from the
ancients or from one another or from foreigners.
But though there appears to be just now a tendency to carry the search
for the genealogy and pedigree of ideas rather too far, it is certainly
not our purpose to show that Adam Smith was a solitary conqueror who
founded a kingdom entirely for himself, and peopled it with the
creatures of his imagination. Every great thinker holds the past in fee,
as he levies a perpetual tribute on the future. We may see how in the
_Theory of Moral Sentiments_ and in his lectures on Justice and Police
Smith selected and used his materials; how, with the aid of Hutcheson
and Mandeville and Hume, he invented a new doctrine of sympathy, and how
he worked up the Platonic idea of the division of labour, and the
Aristotelian theory of money, into a true science of national wealth.
Nothing is left of the first part of the lectures, which dealt (briefly,
no doubt) with natural theology and, in the earliest years of his
professorship, very fully with moral philosophy. His pupil and friend
Millar says that under the head of Natural Theology, the first part of
his course, Smith considered the proofs of the being and attributes of
God, and those principles of the human mind upon which religion is
founded.
In the _Moral Sentiments_ and his other writings there are plenty of
passages to indicate that he was a theist with a belief rather more
active and definite than that of his friend Hume or of his master
Aristotle, but few or none that he was a Christian. As professor he had
to sign the Westminster Confession of Faith, a perfunctory act which
even Hume would readily have performed without the scandal that
surrounded Jowett’s cynical subscription a century later. But it was
noticed by the orthodox that he was sadly wanting in zeal. Hutcheson,
doubtless with the purpose of naturalising theology, had conducted a
Sunday class on Christian evidences. Adam Smith discontinued this
practice, and it was even whispered that he had applied to the
authorities shortly after his appointment to be excused from opening his
class with prayer. The request was refused, but the results were not
satisfactory; for according to a contemporary, John Ramsay of
Ochtertyre, his opening prayers “savoured strongly of natural religion,”
while his theological lectures, though shorter, were no less flattering
to human pride than those of Hutcheson, and led “presumptuous
striplings” to draw the unwarranted conclusion “that the great truths of
theology, together with the duties which man owes to God and his
neighbours, may be discovered by the light of nature without any special
revelation.” He was also, they say, often seen to smile openly during
divine service in his place in the college chapel. When one remembers
what orthodox Scottish sermons at that time meant, it is safe to
conjecture that the smile was not always due (as Ramsay would have it)
to an absent thought.
Although the lectures on Natural Theology have disappeared, the lectures
on Morals were elaborated and published in 1759 as _The Theory of Moral
Sentiments_. From this, his first important work, we may sufficiently
ascertain how far Smith’s philosophy of life was based upon religious
conceptions. Fortune governs the world. Nature intended the happiness
and perfection of the species. Every part of nature, when attentively
surveyed, equally demonstrates the providential care of its Author.
Smith’s own scepticism is so carefully phrased and so disguised in soft
language, that a stupid reader is never perplexed, a devout one never
offended. Take, for example, his reflections upon the doctrine of a
future life. That there is a world to come, he says in a passage of
striking eloquence, “is a doctrine in every respect so venerable, so
comfortable to the weakness, so flattering to the grandeur of human
nature, that the virtuous man, who has the misfortune to doubt of it,
cannot possibly avoid wishing most earnestly and anxiously to believe
it. It could never have been exposed to the derision of the scoffer, had
not the distribution of rewards and punishments, which some of its most
zealous assertors have taught us was to be made in that world to come,
been too frequently in direct opposition to all our moral sentiments.”
Smith had no great respect for the devout. To him the ritual and worship
of the Deity seemed like the service and courtship of kings. He refuses
to believe that an all-wise Deity would have a mind for adulation or
would offer heavenly rewards to those who consecrate their lives to His
worship:—
“That the assiduous courtier is often more favoured than the faithful
and active servant; that attendance and adulation are often shorter
and surer roads to preferment than merit or service; and that a
campaign at Versailles or St. James’s is often worth two either in
Germany or Flanders, is a complaint which we have all heard from many
a venerable, but discontented, old officer. But what is considered as
the greatest reproach even to the weakness of earthly sovereigns, has
been ascribed, as an act of justice, to divine perfection; and the
duties of devotion, the public and private worship of the Deity, have
been represented even by men of virtue and abilities, as the sole
virtues which can either entitle to reward or exempt from punishment
in the life to come.”
His indignation flames out against celebrated doctors, both civil and
ecclesiastical, who have questioned whether faith should be kept with
rebels and heretics (“those unlucky persons who, when things have come
to a certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to be of the weaker
party”). Of all the corrupters of moral sentiments, “faction and
fanaticism have always been by far the greatest.”
Morality is natural, but its rules have been sanctioned by the rudest
forms of religion. Whether our moral faculties depend upon a
modification of reason, upon a moral sense, or upon some other principle
of our nature, they carry with them the most evident badges of
authority, and were plainly set up within us to superintend our passions
and appetites and to be the supreme arbiters of our actions. They are
described in religious language as the vice-regents of God within us;
they never fail to punish sin by the torments of inward shame and
self-condemnation; they reward obedience with tranquillity and
contentment. Oncken thinks that Smith’s eloquent vindication of
conscience helped to form Kant’s moral idealism; but it puts us more in
mind of the Roman satirist’s great line—
“Nocte dieque suum gestare in pectore testem.”
Moral judgments likewise help to correct in some measure the course of
this world. “The industrious knave cultivates the soil; the indolent
good man leaves it uncultivated. Who ought to reap the harvest?” Here
the natural course of things decides against the natural sentiments of
mankind. Human laws therefore often punish the knave or traitor though
industrious, and reward the good citizen though improvident. Thus man is
by nature prompted to correct nature; but even so his endeavours are
often impotent; the current is too strong. Our natural sentiments are
often shocked. We see great combinations oppress small. We see the
innocent suffer. Despairing of earthly forces to check the triumph of
injustice, we naturally appeal to heaven, “and thus we are led to a
belief in the future state by the love of virtue,” and moral rules
acquire new sanctity by being regarded as the laws of an all-powerful
Deity. As religion in this way enforces an innate sense of duty, mankind
is generally disposed to place great confidence in the probity of those
who seem to be deeply religious.
And where religion has not been corrupted, “wherever men are not taught
to regard frivolous observances, as more immediate duties of religion,
than acts of justice and beneficence; and to imagine, that by
sacrifices, and ceremonies, and vain supplications, they can bargain
with the Deity for fraud, and perfidy, and violence, the world
undoubtedly judges right in this respect, and justly places a double
confidence in the rectitude of the religious man’s behaviour.”
Upon the dangerous question of religious establishments and dissenting
sects he wrote afterwards in the _Wealth of Nations_ (Book v. i.) with a
boldness and an air of detachment that might well startle even that age
of tolerant indifference. He contrasts the teachers of new religions
with the clergy of an ancient system, who are frequently possessed of
learning, eloquence, and all the gentlemanly virtues. “Such a clergy,
when attacked by a set of popular and bold though perhaps stupid and
ignorant enthusiasts, feel themselves as perfectly defenceless as the
indolent, effeminate, and full-fed nations of the southern parts of
Asia, when they were invaded by the active, hardy, and hungry Tartars of
the north.” Commonly, the only resource of such a clergy upon such an
emergency is to summon the government to persecute or expel their
adversaries. “It was thus that the Roman Catholic clergy called upon the
civil magistrate to persecute the Protestants, and the Church of England
to persecute the Dissenters.”
An established church may have a superiority of learning, but in the art
of gaining popularity the advantage is always with its adversaries. He
finds that, as dissenting bodies grow richer, their zeal and activity
abate. The Independents, for instance, had many learned, ingenious, and
respectable men; but the Methodists, without half the learning of the
Dissenters, were more in vogue. The strength of the Church of Rome he
attributed to the fact that the industry of its inferior clergy was
better fostered by motives of self-interest than in the case of any
established Protestant church; for many of the parish priests subsisted
largely on voluntary gifts, “a source of revenue which confession gives
them many opportunities of improving.” He notes also Machiavelli’s
observation, that the establishment of the begging orders of St. Dominic
and St. Francis revived, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the
languishing faith and devotion of the Catholic Church. Upon the question
of the value of a State Church, Smith quotes from a certain passage of
Hume’s _History_, referring to his friend as “by far the most
illustrious philosopher and historian of the present age.” Hume had come
to the conclusion that the civil magistrate who neglects to establish a
religion will find he has dearly paid for his frugality, “and that in
reality the most decent and advantageous composition which he can make
with the spiritual guides, is to bribe their indolence by assigning
stated salaries to their profession,” so that ecclesiastical
establishments, “though commonly they arose at first from religious
views, prove in the end advantageous to the political interests of
society.”
But Smith, with the same dislike for “zeal,” had too much respect for
liberty, too much love of honesty in politics, to adopt Hume’s cynical
solution. He would find security in numbers. A State should extend
toleration to all; society would naturally divide itself into hundreds
of small sects, none of which could be considerable enough to disturb
the public tranquillity. The teachers of each sect would be forced to
learn a candour and moderation which is seldom to be found among an
established clergy; and in this way, by mutual concessions, their
doctrine would probably be reduced in time “to that pure and rational
religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or
fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see
established, but such as positive law has perhaps never yet established
in any country.” This plan of ecclesiastical government, he adds, or
more properly no ecclesiastical government, was what the Independents,
“a sect no doubt of very wild enthusiasts,” proposed to establish in
England towards the end of the Civil War. “If it had been established,
though of a very unphilosophical origin, it would probably by this time
have been productive of the most philosophical good temper and
moderation with regard to every sort of religious principle.” Such is
the plan favoured by Adam Smith, and he observes that in Pennsylvania,
where it had been adopted, experience justified his opinion.
Smith was so popular with his orthodox contemporaries that they tried to
parry charges of infidelity by saying either that he had adopted Hume’s
opinions out of the intense affection he felt for him, or that he had
been perverted by French atheists. “In the course of his travels,” says
one of the most broad-minded of his Presbyterian contemporaries (John
Ramsay), “he became acquainted with Voltaire and the other French
philosophers who were then labouring with unhallowed industry in the
vineyard of infidelity.” What impression they made upon him, adds this
cautious man, “cannot be precisely known, because neither before nor
after this period was his religious creed ever properly ascertained.”
Twenty years after Adam Smith’s death, Archbishop Magee, in a
controversy with Unitarian theologians, cited a passage from the _Moral
Sentiments_ on the doctrine of atonement, in which Smith had said that
the doctrines of revelation coincide in every respect with the original
anticipations of nature. “Such,” wrote the divine, “are the reflections
of a man whose powers of thinking and reasoning will surely not be
pronounced inferior to those of any even of the most distinguished
champions of the Unitarian school.” The rejoinder was at once made that
in the sixth edition, which Smith prepared for the press in 1790, the
passage was omitted; whereupon the prelate (forgetting that Hume died in
1776, after four editions had appeared with this presentation of the
reasonableness of an atonement) deftly turned a new moral: “It adds one
proof more to the many that already existed of the danger, even to the
most enlightened, from a familiar contact with infidelity.”