Part 5

When any new material of thought, such as a new religion which interferes 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.

We must distinctly apprehend what is here intended by the term “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.