Almost every year some new society is organized, having for its avowed object the conversion of souls and the relief of the suffering. Those now in prosperous existence will compare favorably with similar institutions in Great Britain and the United States. We mention the most prominent: The French and Foreign Bible Society, which sold eighty-eight thousand copies of the Bible in 1862; the Protestant Bible Society; the Tract Society; the Paris Missionary Society; the Primary School Society and the Protestant Son Society. Each of these has its well-defined field of labor, one aiming to arouse slumbering Protestants, another to seek out wandering Protestants, and a third to educate homeless children. The Evangelical Society of France, whose secretaryship M. de Pressense has held for thirty years, founded during the year 1862 nine new Churches; created six additional centres of evangelization; aided twenty churches; supported two Normal Schools; organized many others; cultivated two of the faubourgs of Paris; and expended three millions five hundred and eighty thousand francs for the purposes of evangelization. In addition to these societies, there are Orphan institutions, Schools, Asylums for the unprotected, destitute, fallen, sick, and infirm; some associations for the aid of those near at hand, and others for those at a distance. The press has been active in the same great cause. Weekly and monthly journals have been multiplied, and carry the good news of God not only through France but into all parts of the Continent. The theological schools are in a flourishing condition, and evangelical professors are everywhere in the majority. Of the seven teachers at Montauban, five are outspoken adherents of orthodoxy. The inability of M. Reville to be elected to a chair in that institution indicates the religious status of those in authority of it.

Neander said one day to M. de Pressense, "This period in which we live is indeed a critical one. It is to be a dismal abyss or a rosy morning light. But, depend upon it, it is going to be whatever we have a mind to make it." The Evangelical Protestant clergy of France "have a mind" to do a good and permanent work. We do not apprehend an unfavorable issue from the present conflict, but that the prayers, proscription, and exile of eight hundred thousand Huguenots will yet reap their appropriate harvest, and that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes will be avenged by the pure faith and permanent triumphs of Protestantism.

FOOTNOTES:

[117] Revue Chretienne, Feb., 1861.

[118] Religions before Christ, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1862.

[119] Le Redempteur, Paris, 1854.

[120] Meditations on the Essence of Christianity. Preface, pp. 6-10.



CHAPTER XVIII.

SWITZERLAND: ORTHODOXY IN GENEVA, AND THE NEW SPECULATIVE RATIONALISM IN ZUeRICH.

Switzerland has failed to retain the influence over the theological thought of Europe enjoyed by her in the days of Zwinglius and Calvin. Impressions, instead of being given, have of late only been received. France and Germany have contributed their respective phases of theology, the French Cantons adopting the opinions emanating from the former country, and the German those from the latter. We must not therefore expect to find a very wide difference either respecting theology or practical religion between the Swiss and their two influential neighbors.

When the Skepticism of Voltaire and his disciples was penetrating the French mind the Reformed Church of Switzerland did not long remain unaffected by it. While that crafty man was enjoying his romantic retreat at Ferney, he was visited and even flattered by persons who had taken upon themselves the vows of the Christian ministry. The pastors of Geneva were regarded by the Encyclopaedists as sympathizers and co-laborers in overthrowing the distinctive doctrines of the Gospel. In the early part of the nineteenth century there was in Switzerland, as in Germany, a strife between the old confessional faith and Rationalism. But in Germany Reason attacked the contents of the Scriptures, while in Switzerland the attempt was made to reduce all revealed truth to a system of natural religion. Rationalism in the Swiss Church was Arianism and Socinianism revived.[121] It swept away the strong Calvinism of the old Genevan theology. The clergy were little better than the English Deists. D'Alembert says, "All the religion that many of the ministers of Geneva have is a complete Socinianism, rejecting everything called mystery, and supposing that the first principle of a true religion is to propose nothing to be received as a matter of faith which strikes against reason." Rousseau declares that those who filled the pulpits of that venerable city had no answer to the question, "Is Christ divine?"

Theological training was neglected. The professors, like the pastors, committed themselves to an undisguised system of Rationalistic Unitarianism. M. Bost, writing in 1825, says that, "for more than thirty years the ministers who have gone out of our schools of theology, to serve either the churches of our own land or those of France and other foreign countries, have not received one single lecture on the truths which exclusively belong to revelation, such as the redemption of mankind by the death of Christ, the justification of the Saviour by faith, the corruption of our nature, the divinity of our Saviour, &c. In theology we were taught nothing but what are called the dogmas of natural religion. The extent to which this practical incredulity was carried is clear from the fact, elsewhere unheard of, I suspect, in the annals of the Protestant churches, that, excepting for a lecture in the Hebrew language, when the Bible was used simply as a Hebrew book, and not for anything it contained, the word of God was never used throughout our course; in particular, the New Testament never appeared, either as a language-book or for any other purpose; there was no need of the New Testament, whatever, in order to complete our four years' course in theology; in other words, that book, especially in the original, was not at all among the number of books required in order to accomplish the career of our studies for the sacred ministry."[122]

The Venerable Compagnie, comprising the clergymen and theological professors of Geneva, went so far, in 1817, as to impose upon all candidates for ordination to the ministry, the obligation not to preach on the two natures of Christ, original sin, predestination, and other received doctrines of their confession. As might be expected, practical piety was thrown into the background. Children were not instructed in the Scriptures, and the churches were attended by small congregations, who were favored with no better gospel than the combined opinions of Voltaire and the German Rationalists. There were here and there loud protests against this apostasy. The Canton Vaud was benefited by the labors of that excellent woman, Madame de Kruedener, who exchanged a life of Parisian gayety and affluence for humble labors among the poor and uninstructed Swiss. She loved to sit upon a wooden bench and teach all who came to her the truths of the Bible and the necessity of a regenerated heart. Her influence was powerful in Geneva after the commencement of the evangelical movement. Another counteracting agency was a sect of Methodists, nicknamed the "Momiers," who had gone thither from England, and were rebuking the prevalent Rationalism by every available means.[123]

From the outset Geneva had been the centre of the great religious decline. The Theological Academy founded by Calvin had become the nursery of as injurious errors as had emanated from Halle in the period of Wolf's triumphant career. Its chairs were occupied by the very teachers described by M. Bost, men in every respect unworthy to prepare students for the Christian pulpit. But, by the providence of Him who watches every juncture with a Father's care, a new influence was brought to bear upon the Academy, and through it upon the whole Protestant Church of Switzerland. Robert Haldane, having sold his large estate in Scotland, directed his attention to the moral dearth at Geneva by endeavoring to imbue the students with his own evangelical opinions and earnest spirit. His labors were eminently successful. Many of the young men became converted, and for the first time had a clear conception of the great work before them. It was through Haldane that Merle d'Aubigne, Adolphe Monod, Malan, and others of their school, were inspired with the spirit of the Gospel. Switzerland can never be too grateful to God for sending such a man at that important crisis.

The immediate issue of this awakening was the organization of the Evangelical Dissenting Church. All who had grown dissatisfied with the formalism and Rationalism of the National Church came to the new fold and co-operated in the work of reformation. A school of theology, established in Geneva, was visited by students who came seeking an education that might enable them to relieve the moral wants of the masses. Gaussen, the author of La Theopneustie, was one of the professors. The new Church soon found in him its leader. He has recently died, but his long life has been of valuable service to the kingdom of Christ. Besides reviving and reorganizing the Sunday School system in Geneva, and personally superintending the religious instruction of the children, for whom he wrote his inimitable Catechisms, he became the author of many theological works adapted to the wants of clergy and laity. In company with a few friends, he published the popular Swiss version of the New Testament. It occasioned him real joy when he witnessed late in life the improvement of the National Church of Switzerland. But it must be confessed that the parent has yet much to learn and accomplish before reaching the high evangelical status now occupied by the earnest daughter.

The name of Vinet belongs to the whole of Protestant Europe, and is identified with the revival of religious sentiment in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and France. His excellent writings have familiarized him to the theological readers of Great Britain and the United States. The separation of Church and State was one of the leading aims of his life, and he eloquently contended for it whenever occasion offered. In 1837 he accepted the invitation of the government of his native canton to take charge of the professorship of Theology in the Seminary in Lausanne. Already profoundly impressed with the opinions of Pascal, he admired the more evangelical portion of Schleiermacher's theology. Combining these, he originated the only native theological system which Switzerland has produced since Calvin's day.[124] In all his works he manifests profound thought and erudition. His Homiletics and Pastoral Theology have already become text-books in many theological seminaries.

The spirit now dominant at Geneva clearly indicates the success of the late efforts toward reform. The congregations have largely increased; various humanitarian enterprises have been vigorously prosecuted; societies for the circulation of religious knowledge have been founded; and the laity have come to the assistance of the clergy in labors for the social and moral elevation of the masses. For a quarter of a century young men have been judiciously trained in theology, and Switzerland is now supplying many prominent French pulpits with her graduates.

The present sojourner in Geneva finds but few remnants of that skeptical preaching and general religious indifference so lamentably prevalent before the rise of the Evangelical Dissenting Church. M. Levalois, who is an avowed skeptic, looks upon a very different scene from that which once so delighted Rousseau. Coming from the source they do, his words are a valuable testimony to the religious growth of the mother-city of French Protestantism. "I now come," says this traveler, "to the essential characteristics of Geneva. Before being literary and liberal, the Genevan is Christian. In Geneva the free-thinking stranger is advised of Christianity. In the souls of men, instead of meeting with no resistance, no solidity,—as, for instance, among the greater part of our Parisian Catholics,—instead of finding himself in the face of a creed mechanically repeated, of a memory and not of a conscience,—you feel yourself in contact with an individual who will believe, who can believe, who is in full possession of the why of his belief. Nothing in the world is to me so sacred as sincerity in intelligent faith. Just as I despise certain time-serving Catholics, who are converted because they dread socialism, or because they dread the Empire, so much do I respect the man who freely attaches himself to the Gospel, devotes himself to Christ, and prays to Him. Does this imply that I return from Geneva a Protestant? No; I have not been converted, but, I repeat, advised. I have seen Christianity working, not only in churches, but, which is much more edifying, in individuals. Yes, I have seen it in turns the inspirer of language, the spring of actions, the spur and the discipline, rule and support of the future, impregnating, so to speak, the flesh and the spirit. Such a spectacle excites one to reflection. We have been in too great haste to exclaim, Christianity is dead! An hour's conversation with two or three Genevese, suffices to convince us that if Christianity is dead it is not yet buried."[125]

The course of lectures delivered in the Theological Academy of Geneva in the winter of 1862-'63, may be taken as an illustration of the character of the instruction imparted in that influential institution. M. Secretan delivered learned lectures on "Theism." He showed that the objections which can be raised, on the ground of natural religion, against the existence and personality of God, lose all their force on Christian ground; therefore Hegelianism has no base. M. Naville, in his course on "Spiritualism," summoned the resources of his learning and genius to aid him in his heroic combat with every form of current materialism. Pastor Coulin lectured on "Christian Works." It was an eloquent appeal for renewed Christian activity. MM. Bungener, Bret, and Rorich lectured on "Christian Life;" M. Gaberel on the "Part taken by Geneva at the time of the Reformation;" and also on the "Present Literary and Religious state of Germany;" M. Archinard on the "Ancient Religious Edifices of Switzerland;" M. Aug. Bost on the "First Fifteen Centuries of the History of Mankind;" and M. De Gasparin on the "Family Life, its Organization and Duties." In addition to these, there were lectures on detached subjects, such as religious prejudices, the study of the Bible by simple-hearted believers, drunkenness, the religious education of children, the instruction of catechumens, the dissipation of cities, and the duty of evangelization.[126]

Of the German cantons, Basle has been the only one which has successfully resisted the encroachments of Rationalism. The University has fully recovered from the influence of De Wette, and the professors now stand in the front rank of evangelical thinkers. The Mission House has been a highly useful agency. Though not a half-century old, it has already trained four hundred missionaries, nearly three hundred of whom are still living and actively engaged in evangelizing the dark places of the earth. The people are unwilling to permit any minister to occupy one of their pulpits whom they have reason to suspect of skeptical opinions. The infidel Rumpf was excluded in 1858 from the list of candidates for the ministry, and all his subsequent efforts for restoration have failed in the chief council. A similar occurrence took place in Berne in 1847, upon the calling of Zeller to the theological professorship.

We now turn to a less evangelical part of Switzerland. Zuerich is one of the acknowledged centres of European Rationalism. Its spiritual decline has been rapid during the last twenty-five years. In 1839, Strauss, the author of the Life of Jesus, was invited by the chief council to take a theological chair in the seminary. But the people arising as one man against the measure, the appointment failed, the council was overthrown by a popular revolution, and the city still pays a pension to the disappointed aspirant. But in lamentable contrast with that event is one of more recent occurrence. As late as 1864, when the little town of Uster was about to elect a pastor, the candidate declared himself "a friend of progress and light." Some religious men, unwilling to see their children placed under the instruction of a skeptic, took upon themselves the task of showing in what the "progress" consisted. They accordingly published a notice to their fellow citizens in which they set forth the avowed opinions of their candidate. The document asserted that he believed the Bible to be a tissue of fictions and fables; Jesus a sinful man like others, neither risen from the dead, nor sitting in the glory of his Father; no one can assert with positiveness a life beyond the grave; and the opinion that we are reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, merely a superstition and a day-dream. The authors of the circular besought the ecclesiastical council to deliver them and their children from the promulgation of such doctrines, and further reminded them that every pastor on entering upon his functions must swear to preach faithfully the word of God, both law and gospel, according to the fundamental principles of the evangelical Reformed church. The council took no notice of the remonstrance, though the candidate did not deny the charges. He was elected by eight hundred and sixty-five votes against one hundred and forty-five. In the church, where the result was proclaimed, the acclamations were so loud that they "shook the windows." In the evening there was a serenade, accompanied by rockets and blue lights.[127]

The only representative of evangelical doctrines in the theological faculty of Zuerich is a tutor, placed there and supported by a private society. The most effective means by which Rationalism emanates from that city is periodical literature. The leading publications are, The Church of the Present, and Voices of the Times. The latter journal was commenced in 1859. Its editor, Lang, is a frequent contributor to prominent Rationalistic serials of Germany, particularly the Protestant Church Gazette of Berlin. He has published, besides other works, A System of Doctrine, and A March through the Christian World. Professor Biedermann, an instructor in Zuerich, has embodied his skeptical opinions in a Manual of Christian Doctrine, for the use of the youth in Swiss colleges. Dr. Volckmar, another theological professor of the same city, has advanced in his numerous works on primitive Christianity, opinions even more radical than those of Strauss or the Tuebingen School. All those men are members, in good standing, of the Reformed church of Switzerland.[128]

The Rationalistic works in question are studiously adapted to the common mind. They contain a complete system, which we term the New Speculative Rationalism. It declares a strong attachment to Protestantism, and professes to cultivate a much higher development of Christian life than was aimed at by its German predecessor. Like the Groningen school of Holland, it lays stress on the character of Christ. It proposes to establish a new church, which shall have a wider door for the entrance of Protestant Christians than that opened by the confessions. The present fold is entirely too small; the new Rationalism would organize one of colossal popular dimensions. "Our church," say these teachers of Zuerich, "is truth and morality. Whoever thinks upon these things and strives for them shall find a place in it." Their opinions are the direct result of the Hegelian philosophy applied speculatively to the obsolete, destructive Rationalism of Germany.

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. Protestantism mistakes itself in treating the Bible as authority. Though the Scriptures declare our relations to God, they should not escape our free criticism and occasional censure. Every man has a right to interpret them for himself, and on his individual understanding of their contents he should feel bound to act. No man has a right to impose his opinion upon another, nor has any church a guarantee for obliging its members to subscribe to a fixed creed. All deductions from the positive statements of the Scriptures are mere human opinions, and should only receive the credit due to them as such. What are confessions but human opinions?

CHRIST. Strauss was wrong in taking his cold view of Jesus. There was a real historical personage whom we properly call Jesus. Nothing is gained, but everything lost by resolving all the statements of the gospels into myths. It is through Christ that salvation is attained, for Christianity is the reconciliation of God and man as revealed to us in the consciousness and life of Christ. He is the end of the law, the second Adam, the fulfilment of prophecy, the head of a renovated humanity. In him we find the revelation of a new religious principle in man, a real unity with God, a filial adoption, freedom from natural corruption, the pardon of sin, and victory over the world. Jesus became the one man who bore in himself the fullness of the godhead.

Important concessions to Christianity seem to be made; nevertheless subtle Pantheism underlies their statements. But one of their opinions subverts everything they grant to orthodoxy. Christ was not, according to their view, the Messiah in the sense foretold by the prophets and preached by the apostles. We must judge him apart from all poetry, speculation, and human judgment. The Christ of the present church is the creation of theologians, not the character portrayed by the evangelists. Unfortunately for our correct view of him, Paul speculated entirely too much upon his nature and work. The resurrection of Christ never took place, because there was no necessity for it. It was a good thing for the apostles to believe that such an event took place, for it encouraged them. Christ never showed himself to any one after his death, and the belief that he did appear arose purely from the excited nerves, imaginative temperament, and strong desire of his followers to see him. His spirit did not die with his body, but entered upon another stage of existence.

Jesus did not work miracles, for he had not the power. He was eminently a moral man, the very personification of the truly religious character. Religion became flesh in him, and he was the exemplification of love. The salvation we find through him is by virtue of his example and inculcation of moral truths. The spirit of Christ still exists, but it does not live in a purely personal relation, nor does it operate as a personal existence. His spirit and example are with us, but he is not here himself. The good man is favored with the influence imparted to humanity by Christ's exemplary life, but he is nowhere actually present in the world.

GOD AND HIS MIRACLES. No miracles, in the orthodox sense of the term, have ever occurred. The scientific examination of the Scriptures banishes them altogether. Neither are miracles possible, otherwise we should see them every day. They would be acts of arbitrary authority on God's part; and if he performed them he would destroy the harmony and connection of natural laws. Christianity was not introduced by miracles. It was inaugurated, and even originated, by underlying causes of a purely natural character. Miracle is only a creation of the imagination, and should be discarded as a human error.

The personality of God is freely spoken of, but his self-consciousness, in the strictest sense, is not allowed. Hence God is really deprived by them of all plan, aim, love, and favor. He is a spiritual being, but he is not a spirit. He is spirit, yet not a real, thinking, self-conscious, willing spirit. He is not a personality or individuality. "A person," these men appear to say, "must have a place to stand upon, and surely we would not say this of God? The fact is, we grossly misrepresent the great All-Father. We picture him in our sensuous forms, and almost imagine him to be like one of ourselves."

IMMORTALITY. The Speculative Rationalists attach less importance to individual immortality than their predecessors conceded. We might infer this, however, from the Hegelian point of view adopted by the former. They profess adherence to Schleiermacher's dictum: "In the midst of the finite to be one with the infinite, and to be eternal every moment." But they adhere to the doctrine of "eternal life," by which term they mean an existence commencing and terminating with faith. It is a life of such value that it should be called "eternal" life, although it ends with our last breath in this world. It consists in the attainment of the end of our existence and of conquest over sin. Thus, they reduce the eternal life of which the gospel speaks to a mere method and duration of stay in this world. This life, with them, exhausts life; the kingdom of God has not an eternal, but a present and temporal existence; there is, therefore, no new heaven and new earth.

SIN. The fall of man did not take place. It is an absurd superstition. Since the world is but a limited and imperfect representation of God, sin came into it immediately upon its origin. We err when we look at sin apart from a correct conception of the world. Sin has its seat in the natural weakness of man, for he is a temporal being, and in process of necessary development from impure naturalness to reason and freedom. It is the condition in which man finds himself before arriving at an idea of what he is or will be. If it be asked, "Why is sin in the world?" the rejoinder is made, "Why is not man, in the outset of his existence, what he is destined to be, and why must he stand in need of development?" Sin, in the beginning, was natural imperfection, but it never becomes a work of the will until man is developed. It is the melancholy result of an awakened consciousness. But, after man is once aroused to self-consciousness and begins his actual, sinful life, he never becomes a lost sinner.

FAITH. The gospel is not a compendium of principles. Its only value consists in its description of the moral and religious character of Christ, and every one must derive from it such opinions as seem most plausible and reasonable. But they err who excogitate from it those severe dogmas which express only dreams of the imagination and wishes of the religious spirit. Faith in the gospel is not a condition of salvation. For faith is the inner relation of the spiritual man to God, not the acceptance of fixed traditions. It is such a feeling, emotion, and relation as can exist independently of doctrine. Objective truth is not the measure of faith, and the salvation of man is not conditioned by his theoretical opinions. The human spirit in man is the agent of regeneration. Therefore, man, and not God, is the author of human regeneration. Justification by faith is produced by seeking God's favor, but Christ has nothing at all to do with the matter.

We cannot as yet foresee the complete result of the efforts of the New Speculative Rationalism to propagate itself. German Switzerland will be influenced by Germany, and because of the thorough improvement already inaugurated in the latter country no general resurrection of skepticism need be feared. The evangelical professors at Basle are eagerly watching every new movement, and we believe they have sufficient strength to meet every emergency. Christianity is aggressive. Sometimes it is obliged to halt and give battle. The carnage may last long, and the on-looking world may, in its ignorance, decide too speedily that the day is lost. But the victory of error is only temporary. The ark in Dagon's house was still the ark of God. Since good men are a perpetual power to a people, we may reasonably hope that the Swiss reformers will continue to animate the citizens of all the French and German cantons. May the pulpits and theological chairs of Switzerland ever be filled with men who can say what Zwinglius uttered one New Year's Day as his first words to the assembled multitude in the cathedral of Zuerich: "To Christ, to Christ will I lead you,—to the source of salvation. His word is the only food I wish to furnish to your hearts and lives!"

FOOTNOTES:

[121] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte d. 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, vol. II., p. 416.

[122] Alexander, Switzerland and the Swiss Churches, p. 194.

[123] Kurtz, Church History, vol. ii., p. 334.

[124] Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, p. 444.

[125] L'Opinion Nationale, 1863.

[126] Christian Work, Aug., 1863.

[127] Semaine Religieuse. Geneva: 1864.

[128] Riggenbach, Der Heutige Rationalismus besonders in der Deutschen Schweiz. Basel: 1862.



CHAPTER XIX.

ENGLAND: THE SOIL PREPARED FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF RATIONALISM.

The religious lesson taught by the condition of England during the eighteenth century is this: The inevitable moral prostration to which skepticism reduces a nation, and the utter incapacity of literature to afford relief. English Deism had advantages not possessed by the Rationalism of Germany. Some of its champions were men of great political influence; and in no case was there a parallel to the abandoned Bahrdt. The Deists were steady in the pursuit of their game, for when they struck a path they never permitted themselves to be deflected. But the Rationalists were ever turning into some by-road and weakening their energies by traversing many a fruitless mile.

The literature of England, during the most of the last century, presents a picture of literary ostentation. The Deists had toiled to build up a system of natural religion which would not only be a monument to their genius, but serve as an impassable barrier to all such claims as were urged by the zealous and loud-spoken Puritans. But early Deism lacked an indispensable element of strength,—the power of adapting itself to the people. Its best priests could not leave the tripod, though many of the oracular responses were heard some distance from the temple-doors. In time, there arose a group of essayists and poets, who, with a similar coterie of novelists, dictated religion, morals, politics, and literature to the country. Their influence was so great that when they flattered the heads of government, the latter were equally assiduous in playing the Maecenas to them.

The writers of the eighteenth century, viewed in a literary sense alone, have never had their superiors in English literature. The works of Addison, Pope, Gray, Thomson, Goldsmith, and Johnson will continue to be classics wherever the English language is spoken. The British metropolis was pervaded with the atmosphere of Parnassus. It was a time when literature was the El Dorado of youth and old age. Those were the days when clubs convened statedly in the neighborhood of the Strand, and when, every night, the attics of Grub street poured out their throngs of quill-heroes, who were welcomed into the parlors of the nobility as cordially as to their own club-houses. The last new work engaged universal attention. Society was filled with rumors of books commenced, half finished, plagiarized, successful, or defunct. Literary respectability was the "Open Sesame" to social rank. There has never been a season when cultivated society was more imbued with the mania of book-writing and criticism than existed in England during at least three-quarters of the eighteenth century.

While many of the publications of that time were prompted by Deism, French society and literature were contributing an equal share toward poisoning the English mind. France and England were so intimately related to each other that the two languages were diligently studied in both countries. If the English adventurer in letters had not spent a few months in Paris, and could not read Corneille almost as readily as Spenser or Shakspeare, he was cashiered by certain Gallicists west of the Channel as a sorry aspirant to their coveted favor.[129] The rise of the French spirit in England was mainly due to Bolingbroke, who was as much at home in Paris as in London. He had numerous friends and admirers in the former metropolis, and at two different times made it his residence. Freely imbibing the skeptical opinions of the court of Louis XIV., he dealt them out unsparingly to his English readers. He was one of the most accomplished wits who frequented the salon of Madame de Croissy, and he developed his skeptical system through the medium of the French language, in a series of letters to M. de Pouilly.[130]

Bolingbroke accused the greatest divines and philosophers of leading a great part of mankind into inextricable labyrinths of reasoning and speculation. Natural theology and religion, he held, had become corrupt. In view of these results of mental infirmities, he applied himself to correct all errors. He proposed "to distinguish genuine and pure theism from the profane mixtures of human imagination; and to go to the root of that error which encourages our curiosity, sustains our pride, fortifies our prejudices, and gives pretense to delusion; to discover the true nature of human knowledge, how far it extends, how far it is real, and where and how it begins to be fantastical; that, the gaudy visions of error being dispelled, men may be accustomed to the simplicity of truth."[131] The Scriptures, according to Bolingbroke, are unworthy of our credence. They degrade the Deity to mean and unworthy offices and employments.[132] The New Testament consists of two distinct gospels; one by Christ, the other by St. Paul. The doctrine of future rewards and punishments is absurd, and contrary to the divine attributes.[133] Christianity has been of no advantage to mankind. "The world hath not been effectually reformed, nor any one nation in it, by the promulgation of the gospel, even where Christianity flourished most."[134] There is a supreme All-Perfect Being, but he does not concern himself with human affairs as far as individuals are concerned. The soul is not distinct from the body, and both terminate at death. The law of nature, being sufficient for the purposes of our being, is all that God has proclaimed for our guidance.[135]

There were other members of the English nobility who used their influence for the introduction of French infidelity, literature, morals, and fashions. Some did not equal Bolingbroke in repudiating the spirit of the gospel, but nearly all were willing students at the feet of their pretentious Gallic instructors. The house of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, at Wickenham, was the centre whither gravitated that large class of acknowledged chiefs in letters represented by Steele, Pope, and the Walpoles. They thought, spoke, and dressed according to the French standard, which, in respect to religion and morals, was never lower than at that very time. The attempt to rear a Paris on English soil was a complete success. The young were delighted with the result; the aged had been too ill-taught in early life to raise the voice of remonstrance. With the exception of the Puritan opposition, the gratification was universal; and that took place in religion and literature which, had it occurred in warfare, would have kindled a flame of national indignation in every breast: England fell powerless, contented, and doomed into the arms of France.

The attacks of Hume and Gibbon on the divine origin of Christianity take rank with the mischievous influences imparted by the elder school of Deists, and by French taste and immorality.

Hume was a philosopher who drew his inspiration directly from his own times. Attaching himself to the Encyclopaedists, he played the wit in the salons of Paris. He became fraternally intimate with Rousseau, and brought that social dreamer back with him to England as a mark of high appreciation of his talents. He was a metaphysician by nature, but he erred in speculating with theology. That was the mistake of his life. He fell into Bolingbroke's error of excessive egotism. Standing before the superstructure of theology, he carefully surveyed every part of it, and deemed no theme too lofty for his reasonings, and no mystery beyond the reach of his illuminating torch. He lamented the absence of progress in the understanding of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact. But this difficulty did not impede him from an attempted solution. He thought himself performing a great service when he addressed himself to the "destruction of that implicit faith and credulity which is the bane of all reasoning and free inquiry."[136] He refused to acknowledge a Supreme Being, in the following words: "While we argue from the course of nature, and infer a particular intelligent cause, which at first bestowed and still preserves order in the universe, we embrace a principle which is both uncertain and useless, because the subject lies entirely beyond the reach of human experience."[137]

The miraculous evidences of Christianity were also opposed by Hume. His Essay on Miracles (1747), consists of two parts; the former of which is an attempt to prove that no evidence would be a sufficient ground for believing the truth and existence of miracles. Experience is our only guide in reasoning on matters of fact; but even this guide is far from infallible, and liable at any moment to lead us into errors. In judging how far a testimony is to be depended upon, we must balance the opposite circumstances, which may create any doubt or uncertainty. The evidence from testimony may be destroyed either by the contrariety and opposition of the testimony, or by the consideration of the nature of the facts themselves. When the facts partake of the marvelous there are two opposite experiences with regard to them, and that which is most credible is to be preferred. Now the uniform experience of men is against miracles. We should not, therefore, believe any testimony concerning a miracle, unless the falsehood of that testimony should be more miraculous than the miracle it is designed to establish. Besides, as we cannot know the attributes or actions of God otherwise than by our experience of them, we cannot be sure that he can effect miracles; for they are contrary to our own experience and the course of nature. Therefore, it is impossible to prove miracles by any evidence.

The second part of the Essay on Miracles is intended to show that, supposing a miracle capable of being proved by sufficient testimony, no miraculous event in history has ever been established on such evidence. The witnesses of a miracle should be of such unquestionable good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves. They should also be of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of design to deceive others. Then they should be of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose if detected in any falsehood. Last of all, the facts attested by the witnesses should be performed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render detection unavoidable.[138]

Now, according to Hume, these requisitions are not met in the supposed witnesses of the miracles of Christ. Consequently, we are no more obliged to believe their accounts than the reports of miracles alleged to have been wrought at the tomb of the Abbe de Paris. All must be rejected together.

Hume's History of England met with a cold reception on its first appearance. But he lived to see the day when, as he egotistically said, "it became circulated like the newspapers." Yet he wrote that work not as an end, but as a means. Historical writing was then the medium in which it was common to couch theology or philosophy. Hume had a profound contempt for everything Puritanic on the one hand, and hierarchical and traditional on the other. He would make every trace disappear beneath his scathing pen. He ignored the development of religious life in England, and would subject all events which indicated a deep Christian piety and purpose, to his cold system of philosophy. Writing with an inflexible adherence to his theological opinions, he cast over historical events the drapery of his own interpretation. The question with him was not, "What is the history of England during the period of which I treat?" but "Does not the history of England sustain my philosophy?" And his own answer was, "Yes; I record facts, and draw my own conclusions. Is not that a good philosophy!"

Gibbon was even more of a Frenchman than Hume. Sundering his relation to Oxford in his seventeenth year, he embarked upon a course of living and thinking which, whatever advantage it might afford to his purse, was not likely to aid his faith. By a sudden caprice he became a Roman Catholic, and afterwards as unceremoniously denied his adopted creed. In due time he found himself in Paris publishing a book in the French language. He there fell in with the fashionable infidelity, and so far yielded to the flattery of Helvetius and all the frequenters of Holbach's house that he jested at Christianity and assailed its divine character.

While residing at Lausanne, Switzerland, he cultivated the florid French style of composition, and applied it in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. That work has been severely censured, but despite its defects, it is one of the permanent master-pieces of English literature. In the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters the author gives his opinion of Christianity. He attributes the progress of the Christian religion to the zeal of the Jews, to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as stated by philosophers, to the miraculous powers claimed by the primitive church, to the virtues of the first Christians, and to the activity of the Christians in the government of the church. He attributed to outward agencies what could have been effected only by inward forces. But he did not assume the philosopher's cap, for, not being metaphysical by nature, he never did violence to his own constitution. He has left much less on record against Christianity than Hume, but they must be ranked together as the last of the family of English Deists.

Gibbon made loud professions of independence and of an earnest desire for the enlargement of popular liberty. But he was less attached to principle than to expediency. At the very time the first volume of his history appeared, in which he pays lofty tributes to human freedom, he came into Parliament as an avowed abettor of the ministry of George III., in their attempts to subjugate the American colonies. He was doubtless well paid for his votes; for he was at the same time a member of the Board of Trade, a nominal office with a large salary.[139] A verse, attributed to Fox, expresses the popular sentiment concerning him;

"King George in a fright Lest Gibbon should write The story of England's disgrace, Thought no way so sure, His pen to secure, As to give the historian a place."

In addition to these evidences of religious decay we may add the most unwelcome of all: the moral prostration of the English Church. Instead of being "a city set upon a hill," she was in the valley of humiliation; and few were the faithful watchmen upon her walls. The period commencing with the Restoration, and continuing down to the time of which we speak, was one of ministerial and laic degeneracy. Bishop Burnet, writing of his own generation, said, "I am now in the seventieth year of my age, and as I cannot speak long in the world, in any sort, I cannot hope for a more solemn occasion than this of speaking with all due freedom, both to the present and to the succeeding ages. Therefore I lay hold on it to give a free vent to those sad thoughts that lie on my mind both day and night, and are the subject of many secret mournings. I cannot look on without the deepest concern, when I see the imminent ruin hanging over this church, and, by consequence, over the whole Reformation. The outward state of things is black enough, God knows, but that which heightens my fears rises chiefly from the inward state into which we are unhappily fallen.... Our ember-weeks are the burden and grief of my life. The much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest strangers. Those who have read some few books, yet never seem to have read the Scriptures. Many cannot give even a tolerable account of the Catechism itself, how short and plain soever. This does often tear my heart. The case is not much better in many who, having got into orders, come for institution, and cannot make it appear that they have read the Scriptures, or any one good book since they were ordained; so that the small measure of knowledge upon which they get into holy orders, not being improved, is in a way to be quite lost; and they think it a great hardship if told they must know the Scriptures and the body of divinity better before they can be trusted with the care of souls."[140]

Archbishop Secker, who wrote at a later period, testifies to the same state of religious petrification: "In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age; that this evil is grown to a great height in the metropolis of the nation; is daily spreading through every part of it; and, bad in itself as any can be, must of necessity bring in others after it. Indeed it hath already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance, and fearlessness of committing crimes, in the lower, as must, if this impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal. And God knows, far from stopping, it receives, through the ill designs of some persons, and the inconsiderateness of others, a continual increase. Christianity is now ridiculed and railed at, with very little reserve; and the teachers of it, without any at all."[141]

The Church had not the moral power or purity to assert her own authority. She had lost the respect of the world because she had no respect for herself. She was therefore enervated at a time when all her power was needed to resist the skeptical and immoral tendencies of the day. But a new religious power, from an unexpected source, began to influence the English mind. We refer to the movement inaugurated by the Wesleys and Whitefield, who were fellow-students in Oxford University. They were appalled at the dissoluteness of the students, the frigid preaching of the day, and the universal religious destitution of the nation. These themes burdened the hearts of the "Holy Club" at Oxford from day to day, and sent them from their cloisters to visit prisons, preach in surrounding towns, and impart religious truth wherever a willing recipient could be found. No sooner had John Wesley returned from his missionary voyage to Georgia than there were unmistakable evidences of the adaptation of the new preaching to the wants of the people. The masses, long affected by a deplorable indifference to religious truths and pious living, heard the earnest preaching of the Methodists with profound attention and in such large numbers that no impartial observer could doubt the peculiar fitness of Methodism to the existing state of society, morals, literature, and philosophy. As a result, the number of converts multiplied. The Established Church was aroused to activity. Dissenters began to hope for the return of the good days of Bunyan and Baxter and Howe.

Isaac Taylor says of the new influence, that "it preserved from extinction and reanimated the languishing nonconformity of the last century, which just at the time of the Methodist revival, was rapidly in course to be found nowhere but in books." But the Wesleyan movement made little impression on the literary circles to whom Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon had communicated their gospel of nature. The poets continued to sing, the essayists to write, and the philosophers to speculate, in a world peculiarly their own. They shut themselves quite in from the itinerant "helpers" of Wesley. The large class of English minds which stood aloof from all ecclesiastical organizations, and failed to see any higher cause of the revival than mere enthusiasm, were the persons whom those writers still influenced. But it was plain to both the masters and their disciples that their principles were in process of transition. They were therefore ready for the reception of whatever plausible type of skepticism might present itself for their acceptance.

History is the illustration of cause and effect. The fountain springs up in one period, and generations often pass before it finds its natural outlet. The issue of the final efforts of English Deism, of the impure French taste, and of the works of the grosser class of literary men living in the last century, is now manifested in that spirit which welcomes the Essays and Reviews, and the criticism of Colenso. It is not true that these and similar publications have created a Rationalistic taste in Great Britain. The taste was already in existence, and has been struggling for satisfaction ever since the closing decades of the eighteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[129] For an excellent view of the relation of France and England in the eighteenth century, vid. Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Dec., 1861.

[130] Schlosser, History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. i., p. 98.

[131] Works, vol. iii., p. 328. London Edition of 1754. 5 vols., quarto.

[132] Ibid. p. 304.

[133] Ibid. vol. v., p. 356.

[134] Ibid. p. 258.

[135] Leland, View of Deistical Writers of England, pp. 307-308. London Edition of 1837, with Appendix and Introduction, by Brown and Edmonds.

[136] Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding, p. 49. London Edition, 1750.

[137] Philosophical Essays, &c., p. 224.

[138] Leland, View of Deistical Writers, pp. 230-250.

[139] Schlosser, History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii., p. 85-86.

[140] Pastoral Care.

[141] Works, vol. v., p. 306.



CHAPTER XX.

ENGLAND CONTINUED: PHILOSOPHICAL AND LITERARY RATIONALISM.—COLERIDGE AND CARLYLE.

All history betrays the operation of a compensating principle. The payment may be slow, but there is seldom total repudiation. An influence which departs from a country and sets in upon its neighbor, transforming thought, giving new shades to social life, and instilling foreign principles into politics, is sure, in course of time, to return from its wanderings, bearing with it other forces with which to react upon the land whence it originated. Thought, like the tidal wave, visits all latitudes with its ebb and flow.

The present condition of Anglican theology is an illustration of intellectual re-payment. Two centuries ago England gave Deism to Germany, and the latter country is now paying back the debt with compound interest. After the Revolution of 1789, and the brilliant ascendency of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French spirit rapidly lost its hold upon the English mind. But there immediately arose a disposition to consult German theology and philosophy. English students frequented the German universities, and the works of the leading thinkers of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Halle, were on sale in the book-stores of London. The intimate relations of the royal family of England to Germany, together with the alliance between the German States and Great Britain for the arrest of French arms, increased the tendency until it assumed importance and power. The fruit was first visible in the application of German Rationalism and philosophy to English theology. When Coleridge came from the Fatherland with a new system of opinions, he felt as proud of his good fortune as Columbus did on laying a continent at his sovereign's feet. Ever since that profound thinker assumed a fixed position, a reaction against orthodoxy has been progressing in the Established Church. There are reasons why the slow but effectual introduction of German Rationalism has been taking place imperceptibly.

The war which had agitated England, with the rest of Europe, came to a close in 1815. Immediately afterward domestic polities needed adjustment. "The disabilities were swept away," says a writer, "the House of Commons was reconstituted, the municipalities were reformed, slavery was abolished."[142] In due time the nation became adjusted to peace; the popular mind lost its nervousness; the universities returned to their sober thinking; and the Church took a careful survey to ascertain what had been lost in the recent conflict, what gained, and what new fields lay ready for her enterprise. But very soon fresh political combinations attracted the attention of all classes. The revolutionary changes and counter-changes in France were watched with eager attention lest Waterloo might be avenged in some unexpected manner. At home, church parties were reviving the old antagonisms described by the pen of Macaulay. The popular mind has thus been continually directed toward some exciting theme. England has not had a day of leisure during the whole of the last half-century, when she could come to a judicious conclusion concerning that class of her thinkers who, though they make theology their profession, are so intensely independent as to attach themselves to no creed or ecclesiastical organization. But they have been thinking all the time, and the outgrowth of their thought is now visible.

English Rationalism consists of three departments: Philosophical, Literary, and Critical Rationalism. Whenever infidelity has arisen, whether within or without the Church, it has usually developed these forms. Philosophy has furnished undevout reason with a fund of speculative objections to revelation; literature has dazzled and bewildered the young and all lovers of romance; and criticism has seized the deductions of science, language, and ethnology, and by their combined aid aimed at the overthrow of the historical and inspired basis of faith. Each of these three agents is in constant danger of arrogance and error. The first, by a single false assumption, may lose its way; the second, by making too free use of the imagination, can easily forget when it is dealing with faith and facts; and the third, by one act of over-reaching, is liable to become puerile, fanciful, and unreliable. The philosopher, the litterateur, and the exegete need to be less observant of the surrounding world than of the purity of their own inner life and the teachings of the Holy Spirit.

Philosophical Rationalism in England commenced with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A comprehensive view of that metaphysician produces a painful impression. Though gifted with capacity for any sphere of thought, he did not excel in either so far as to enable us to assign him a fixed place in literature. He is known as poet, theologian, and philosopher. But his own desire was that posterity might regard him as a theologian. In addition to this indeterminateness of position, which always seriously detracts from a great name, Coleridge presents the unfortunate example of a man who, instead of laboring with settled convictions, and achieving success by virtue of their operation, seems to have only striven after them. His indefinite status was the result of that theological difficulty which proved his greatest misfortune. His sentiments never partook of an evangelical character until the latter part of his life. His habits of thought had become confirmed, and it was quite too late to counteract the influence of many views previously expressed.

So far as we are able to collect the opinions of Coleridge by fragments from his writings, we discover two elements, which, coming from totally different sources, and originating in different ages, harmonized in his mind and constituted the mass of his speculations. One was Grecian, taking its rise in Plato and afterward becoming assimilated to Christianity at Alexandria. The other was German, derived directly from Kant, and undergoing no improvement by its processes of transformation at the hands of that philosopher's successors. "From the Greek," says Dr. Shedd, "he derived the doctrine of Ideas, and fully sympathized with his warmly-glowing and poetic utterance of philosophic truths. From the German he derived the more strictly scientific part of his system—the fundamental distinctions between the Understanding and the Reason (with the sub-distinction of the latter into Speculative and Practical), and between Nature and Spirit. With him also he sympathized in that deep conviction of the absolute nature and validity of the great ideas of God, Freedom, and Immortality—of the binding obligation of conscience—and generally of the supremacy of the Moral and Practical over the purely Speculative. Indeed, any one who goes to the study of Kant, after having made himself acquainted with the writings of Coleridge, will be impressed by the spontaneous and vital concurrence of the latter with the former—the heartiness and entireness with which the Englishman enters into the method and system of this, in many respects, greatest philosopher of the modern world."[143]

The Platonic element in the speculations of Coleridge is of earlier date than the German. It was his reliance until introduced to the captivating opinions of the philosopher of Koenigsberg. But it never wholly left him,—it was the enchantment of his life.

He had severe struggles. His conquest of the habit of opium-eating, contracted to soothe physical suffering, is an index of the persistent purpose of the man. At first an ardent Unitarian, he was once about to assume charge of a congregation at Shrewsbury. But he finally declined the offer, by saying that, "Active zeal for Unitarian Christianity, not indolence or indifference, has been the motive of my declining a local and solid settlement as preacher of it."[144]

The media through which he passed in search of light were numerous. He seems to have gone to Germany under the impression that he would there find what he had fruitlessly sought in England. No one will deny that the philosophy of Kant was better than the English empirical system of the eighteenth century, which was the best metaphysical pabulum he had received at home. He applied himself to the assiduous study of Kant's disciples, but the master satisfied him best. Nevertheless, Coleridge was not mentally adapted to the Kantian system. He had a psychical affinity for Schelling. He loved him as a brother. He was charmed with his vivid imagination, warm admiration of all natural forms, and ardent, impulsive temperament. Schelling's philosophy was Spinozism in poetry, and there can be no question of Coleridge's former adoption of some parts of the Hollander's naturalism. But his tenacity to them, as well as his subsequent affiliation with Schelling, was short-lived. When he awoke to the unmistakable stratum of Pantheism underlying Schelling's system, he hastily forsook it, and his diatribes indignantly hurled against one whom he had so enthusiastically admired are the more notable because of his former intense sympathy. From Schelling he returned once more to Kant as the thinker who had more closely approximated the truth. His mind must have undergone a total revolution when he could write such words as these: "Spite of all the superior airs of the Natur-Philosophie, I confess that in the perusal of Kant I breathe the air of good sense and logical understanding with the light of reason shining in it and through it; while in the Physics of Schelling I am amused with happy conjectures, and in his Theology I am bewildered by positions which, in their first sense, are transcendental (ueberfliegend), and in their literal sense scandalous."[145]

Coleridge became firmly settled in theistic faith. Occupying that as his final position, he is destined to wield a great salutary power over English thought. Dr. Shedd, in estimating the probable future influence of his theistic system, says: "Now as the defender and interpreter of this decidedly and profoundly theistic system of philosophy, we regard the works of Coleridge as of great and growing worth, in the present state of the educated and thinking world. It is not to be disguised that Pantheism is the most formidable opponent which truth has to encounter in the cultivated and reflecting classes. We do not here allude to the formal reception and logical defense of the system, so much as to that pantheistic way of thinking, which is unconsciously stealing into the lighter and more imaginative species of modern literature, and from them is passing over into the principles and opinions of men at large. This popularized Naturalism—this Naturalism of polite literature and of literary society—is seen in the lack of that depth and strength of tone, and that heartiness and robustness of temper, which characterize a mind into which the personality of God, and the responsibility of man cut sharply, and which does not cowardly shrink from a severe and salutary moral consciousness.... The intensely theistic character of the philosophy of Coleridge is rooted and grounded in the Personal and the Spiritual, and not in the least in the Impersonal and the Natural. Drawing in the outset, as we have remarked above, a distinct and broad line between these two realms, it keeps them apart from each other, by affirming a difference in essence, and steadfastly resists any and every attempt to amalgamate them into one sole substance. The doctrine of creation, and not of emanation or of modification, is the doctrine by which it constructs its theory of the Universe, and the doctrine of responsible self-determination, and not of irresponsible natural development, is the doctrine by which it constructs its systems of Philosophy and Religion."[146]

The Platonic portion of the views of Coleridge is more apparent in his theology than in his philosophy. In his Confession of Faith, written November 3, 1816, he avows his adherence to some of the prime doctrines of revealed truth. He declares his free agency; defines God to be a Being in whom supreme reason and a most holy will are one with infinite power; acknowledges man's fallen nature, that he is "born a child of wrath;" and holds Christ Jesus to be the Word which was with God from all eternity, assumed human nature to redeem man, and by his merits secured for us the descent of the Holy Spirit and the impartation of his free grace. In the Preface to the Aids to Reflection he thus states his object in writing that work: "To exhibit a full and consistent scheme of the Christian Dispensation, and more largely of all the peculiar doctrines of the Christian faith; and to answer all the objections to the same, which do not originate in a corrupt will rather than an erring judgment; and to do this in a manner intelligible for all who, possessing the ordinary advantages of education, do in good earnest desire to form their religious creed in the light of their own convictions, and to have a reason for the faith which they profess. There are indeed mysteries, in evidence of which no reasons can be brought. But it has been my endeavor to show that the true solution of the problem is, that these mysteries are reason, reason in its highest form of self-affirmation."[147]

The distinctions and definitions of Coleridge occasion the most serious difficulty in the study of his opinions. His mode of statement more frequently than his conception subjects him to the charge of Rationalism. His life-long error of mistaking theology for metaphysics resulted in his application of philosophical terminology to theological questions; but making every reasonable allowance, we cannot doubt that he had defective views of some of the essential truths of Christianity. He clothes reason with authority to determine what is inspiration, by saying that there can be no revelation "ab extra." Therefore, every man should decide for himself the character of the Scriptures. The power which Coleridge thus places in the hand of man is traceable to his distinction between reason and understanding. He makes the latter the logical, and the former the intuitive faculty. Even beasts possess understanding, but reason, the gift of God to no less creature than man, performs the functions of judgment on supersensual matters. "Reason," says he, "is the power of universal and necessary convictions, the source and substance of truths above sense, and having their evidence in themselves."[148] This admission to Rationalism has been eagerly seized by the Coleridgean school, and elaborated in some of their writings.

Sin, according to Coleridge, is not guilt in the orthodox sense. When Adam fell he merely turned his back upon the sun; dwelt in the shadow; had God's displeasure; was stripped of his supernatural endowments; and inherited the evils of a sickly body, and a passionate, ignorant, and uninstructed soul. His sin left him to his nature, his posterity is heir to his misfortunes, and what is every man's evil becomes all men's greater evil. Each one has evil enough, and it is hard for a man to live up to the rule of his own reason and conscience.[149] Redemption is not salvation from the curse of a broken law, and Christ did not pay a debt for man, because the payer must have incurred the debt himself.[150] But the fruit of his death is the reconciliation of man to God. Man will have a future life, but it was not the specific object of the Christian dispensation to satisfy his understanding that he will live hereafter; neither is the belief of a future state or the rationality of its belief the exclusive attribute of the Christian religion, but a fundamental article of all religion.[151]

All attempts to determine the exact theological position of Coleridge from his own definitions are unsatisfactory. We must derive his real convictions from the spirit and not from the letter of his works. He was devout and reverent, never prosecuting his investigations from a mere love of speculation, but as a sincere inquirer after truth. But his statements have had their natural result in producing a large and vigorous school of thinkers. Never bracing himself to write a philosophical or theological system, but merely stating his views in aphoristic form—as in the Aids to Reflection—he scattered his thoughts as a careless sower, and left them to germinate in the public mind. But many of his opinions have been perverted, and speculations have been based upon them by numerous admirers who, proudly claiming him for authority, thrust upon the world those sentiments which bear less the impress of the master than the counterfeit of the weaker disciple.

A large cluster of important and familiar names appears in testimony of the deep and immediate impression produced by the opinions of Coleridge. Julius Charles Hare, not the least worthy of the number, has been one of the prominent agents in communicating to the English people the principles of that thinker, who was not superior to him in moral earnestness and profound reverence. When lecturing as Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Hare was attentively heard by John Sterling, Maurice, and Trench. He drank deeply of the spirit of Coleridge, of whom he was ever proud to call himself a "pupil," and who, in connection with Wordsworth, was the instrumentality by which he and others "were preserved from the noxious taint of Byron."[152]

From whatever side we view Hare's life, it is full of interest. When very young he traveled on the Continent, and became delighted with the literature of Germany. He informs us that, "in 1811 he saw the mark of Luther's inkstand on the walls of the Castle of Wartburg, and there first learned to throw inkstands at the devil." His view of sacrifice was very superficial, and similar to that of Maurice. The Jewish offerings were typical "of the slaying and offering up of the carnal nature to God.... The lesson of the cross is to draw nigh to God, not by this work or that work, not by the sacrifice of this thing or that, but by the entire sacrifice and resignation of their whole being to the will of God."[153] Christ did not perform his important mission so much by his death as by his entire life, and his sufferings were only the completion of his task. "His great work was to be completed and made perfect, as every truly great work must be, by suffering. For no work can be really great unless it be against the course of the world.... It was by losing his own life in every possible way—by the agony in the garden; by the flight and denial of those whom he had chosen out of the world to be His companions and friends; by the mockery and cruelty of those whom his goodness and purity rendered more bitter against him; by the frantic and murderous cries of the people, whom he had loaded with every earthly benefit, and whom he desired to crown with eternal blessings; and by the closing sufferings on the cross—that Jesus was to gain his own life, and the everlasting life of all who will believe in Him. All this, then, the whole work of the redemption of mankind, does our Lord in the text declare to be finished."[154]

Hare declares the necessity of faith to Christian life, but he renders it more passive than active by saying that it is a receptive moral endowment capable of large development. Happy is the man who becomes inured to the exalted "habit of faith." Sin is more a matter of regret than of responsibility; inspiration is a doctrine we should not slight, but the language of the Scriptures must not be regarded too tenaciously; due allowance ought to be made for all verbal inaccuracies and discrepancies; miracles are an adjunct to Christian evidence, but their importance is greatly exaggerated, for they are a beautiful frieze, not one of the great pillars in the temple of our faith.

Notwithstanding these evidences of Hare's digression from orthodoxy, we cannot forget that consecration and purity of heart revealed in some of his sermons, and especially in the glowing pages of the Mission of the Comforter. His ministerial life was an example of untiring devotion, and we know not which to admire the more, his labor of love in the rustic parish of Herstmonceaux, or those searching rebukes of Romanism contained in the charges to his clergy. Independent as both his friends and enemies acknowledge him to have been, his misfortune was an excessive reliance upon his own imagination and upon the opinions of those whom he admired. Nature made him capable of intimate friendships, both personal and intellectual. No one can examine his life without loving the man, nor read his fervent words without concluding that the Church has been honored by few men of his noble type. That self-sacrifice and sympathy of which he often spoke feelingly in connection with the humiliation of Christ, were the controlling principles of his heart. Let not the veil with which we would conceal his theological defects obscure, in the least, the brightness of his resplendent character and pure purposes.

No view of Hare's position can be complete without embracing that of his brother-in-law, Maurice; both of whom were ardently sympathetic with Coleridge. But while the former gave a more evangelical cast to his master's opinions than they originally possessed, the latter perverted them by unwarranted speculations. Maurice is now one of the most influential of the Rationalistic teachers of England. He has not employed himself, like Kingsley and others of the Broad Church, in publishing his theological sentiments in the form of religious novels, but has had the commendable frankness to state his opinions without circumlocution, and to furnish us with his creed in a single volume of essays.[155]

Maurice's notion of an ideal creation betrays the media through which he has received it,—from Coleridge to Neo-Platonism, and thence to Plato. The creation of herbs, flowers, beasts, birds, and fishes, as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, was the bringing forth of kinds and orders, such as they were according to the mind of God, not of actual separate phenomenal existences, such as they present themselves to the senses of man.[156] The creation of man is disposed of in the same ideal way; so that we are inclined to ask the critic if man is not, after all, only a Platonic idea? "What I wish you particularly to notice," says he, "is that the part of the record which speaks of man ideally, according to his place with reference to God, is the part which expressly belongs to the history of CREATION; that the bringing forth of man in this sense, is the work of the sixth day.... Extend this thought, which seems to rise inevitably out of the story of the creation of man, as Moses delivers it, to the seat of that universe of which he regards man as the climax, and we are forced to the conclusion that in the one case, as in the other, it is not the visible, material thing of which the historian is speaking, but that which lies below the visible material thing, and constitutes the substance which it shows forth."[157]

Maurice assumes also, with Neo-Platonism, that Christ is the archetype of every human being, and that when a man becomes pure, he is only developing the Christ who was within him already. "The Son was really in Saul of Tarsus, and he only became Paul the converted when that Son was revealed in him.... Christ is in every man.... All may call upon God as a reconciled Father. Human beings are redeemed, not in consequence of any act they have done, of any faith they have exercised; their faith is to be grounded on a foregone conclusion; their acts are to be the fruits of a state they already possess."[158]

From this premise alone the theological system of Maurice may be accurately determined. Sin is an evil from which we should strive to effect an escape, but it is nothing more, neither guilt nor responsibility, only a condition of our life and not a consequence of actual disobedience of God's law, or the effect of his displeasure. Deep below it there is a righteousness capable of asserting its sovereignty. Job had a righteousness within him, which led him to say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Those persons who prate about our miserable condition as sinners, "have a secret reserve of belief that there is that in them which is not sin, which is the very opposite of sin.... Each man has got this sense of righteousness, whether he realizes it distinctly or indistinctly; whether he expresses it courageously, or keeps it to himself."[159]

The nature of the atonement, Maurice holds, is a subject of misconception, and the notions of it, as they now obtain in Christendom, darken and bewilder the mind. What Christ has really done for us through suffering was his matchless sympathy; he became our brother, and was not our mediatorial substitute but a natural representative. On this ground, a regeneration is communicated to all, not by virtue of any appropriating faith, but as a result of the sympathetic death of Christ. The justification of humanity has been secured by his incarnation, and the penalty resulting from sin is a mere scar of the healed wound. Natural death is not the separation of soul and body, though both are affected by it, for the body which seems to die is only the corruption resulting from our sins, and the real body does not die. Hence, there can never be any general resurrection or judgment.

It is astonishing that a man who unhesitatingly propagated these views, could hold any office within the pale of the Established Church; but Maurice enjoyed high favor a number of years before his displacement. Though commencing life as a Unitarian and Universalist, he was rapidly promoted by the ecclesiastical authorities. He took no pains to conceal his theological opinions, and yet we find him advancing in King's College, London, from the Professorship of English Literature to that of Ecclesiastical History, and thence to the Chair of Divinity. Some time elapsed after the publication of the Essays before Dr. Jelf, Principal of the College, even read them, but having made himself acquainted with their contents, a correspondence took place between him and Maurice. The result was that the Council pronounced "the opinions expressed, and the doubts indicated in the Essays, and the correspondence respecting future punishments and the final issues of the day of judgment, to be of dangerous tendency, and likely to unsettle the minds of the theological students; and further decide that his continuance as Professor would be seriously detrimental to the interests of the College."[160] Maurice afterward held the office of Chaplain to Lincoln's Inn, but in 1860 he was appointed by the Queen to the district church of Vere St. Marylebone.

The relations of Maurice and Kingsley are most intimate, for besides their leadership of the Broad Church, they are the exponents of the so-called Christian Socialism.

Charles Kingsley has made a profound impression upon the present thought and life of England. He betrays his martial lineage in the vigor of his pen, and in that unswerving purpose to counteract what, in his opinion, are serious barriers to the progress of the age. That he should entertain sympathy with Coleridge might be expected from the very cast of his mind, but his adoption of such a large proportion of that thinker's sentiments may be due to his private education under the care of Derwent Coleridge, son of the philosopher. Though only forty-six years old, twenty of which have been passed in the rectorship of Eversley, an enumeration of his works shows him to have written theology, philosophy, poetry, and romance. But his publications betray unity of purpose. Instead of suffering Christianity to be a dead weight upon society, he would adapt it to the wants of the masses. He holds that when the adaptation becomes thorough, when, by any means, the people can be made to grasp Christianity, the reflexive influence will be so great as to elevate them to a point unthought of by the sluggish Church. But what is the Christianity which Kingsley would incorporate into the life of society? Upon the answer to this inquiry depends the difference between him and evangelical theologians.

The advocates of orthodoxy maintain that Christianity is a remedial dispensation, introduced to meet an evil which could not be counteracted by any other agency, human or divine; but with Kingsley it is only the outward exhibition of what had ever existed in a concealed state. Man has always been one with the Word, or Son of God, and, by virtue of the nature of each, they are in perfect union. Christ manifested the union first when he appeared on earth in the incarnate state, since he came to declare to men that they were not estranged from him, but had always been, and still were, in harmony with him. Men are not craven enemies of God, which error a harsh theology would make them believe. They are his friends, for Christ regarded them complacently as such; and the atonement must not be deemed the reconciliation of sinful humanity and angry Deity, but as the first manifestation of an ever-existing unity of the two parties. We need not pass through the long ordeal of repentance to be placed in the relation of sons; because we are all by nature "members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven."[161]

The Church, according to Kingsley, is the world in a certain aspect. "The world," says an English writer, in stating Kingsley's opinion, "is called the Church when it recognizes its relation to God in Christ, and acts accordingly. The Church is the world lifting itself up into the sunshine; the world is the Church falling into shadow and darkness. When and where the light and life that are in the world break out into bright, or noble, or holy word or deed, then and there the world shows that the nature and glory of the Church live within it. Every man of the world is not only potentially, but virtually a member of Christ's Church, whatever may, for the present, be his character or seeming. Like the colors in shot silk, or on a dove's neck, the difference of hue and denomination depends merely upon the degree of light, and the angle of vision. In conformity with this principle, Mr. Kingsley's theology altogether secularizes the Kingdom of Christ."[162]

Kingsley's views of the offices of the Holy Spirit indicate a decided approbation of the pantheistic theory. The third person of the Trinity operates not only upon man, but through him upon the secular and intellectual life of the world. Poetry, romance, and each act of induction, are the work of the Spirit, whose agency secures all the material and scientific growth of the world. Without that power, the car of progress, whether in letters, mechanics, or ethics, must stop.

Kingsley would elevate the degraded portion of the race until the lowest member be made to feel the transmuting agency of Christianity. He was first led into sympathy with the poor operatives in the English factories by reading Mayhew's Sketches of London Labor and London Poor, and, in connection with Maurice, organized cooeperative laboring associations as a check to the crushing system of competitive labor. Their plans succeeded, and many abject working men have been brought into a higher social and moral condition than they had hitherto enjoyed. These humanitarian efforts have attracted large numbers to the reception of the tenets entertained by those putting them forth. "For," the unthinking say, "if the opinions of these men will lead them to labor on this wise for the social elevation of our fellow-beings, they must needs be correct, and if so, worthy of our reception." But if Neo-Platonism can make Maurices, Kingsleys, and a whole school of "Muscular Christians" and "Christian Socialists," nothing less than the pure religion of Christ can raise up Howards, Wilberforces, and Budgetts.

* * * * *

The philosopher has always exerted a great power upon those who do not philosophize. He is regarded by many as the inhabitant of a sphere which few can enter, and his dictates are heard as fiats of a rightful ruler. Those who cannot understand him fully often congratulate themselves that the few unmistakable grains they have gathered from his opinions are nuggets of pure gold, and entitled to the merit of becoming the world's currency. The philosopher is not his own interpreter. There has seldom been one who knew how to tell his thoughts to the masses. That is the province of the popular writers who have adopted his opinions, and know how to deal them out almost imperceptibly in the form of poetry and fiction. One great philosophical mind has sometimes dictated the literature of generations, and, in earlier periods, of entire centuries.

This influence of philosophy on literature is furnished with a new illustration at the present day; some of the most popular and attractive writers of Great Britain have extracted their opinions from one or more of the later philosophers of Germany, and incorporated them into current poetry, finance, and history. The effect has been to furnish the people with a literature which possesses all the weight of vital religious truth in the minds of those readers who prefer to derive their creed from some enchanter in letters to seeking it immediately from the Bible or its most reliable interpreters.

The department of literature in question inculcates as its cardinal principle that man is unconscious of his power, he can do what seems impossible, does not worship his fellows enough, is purer than his clerical leaders would have him imagine, and ought, like certain of his predecessors, to arouse to lofty efforts, assert his dignity and divinity, and strive to advance the world to its proper glory and perfection. The authors of these exciting and flattering appeals do not surround their theory with proper safeguards, nor do they tell the world that they have served up a delectable dish of Pantheism for popular deglutition. The case is stated clearly by one who understands the danger of this tendency, and whose pen has already been powerful in exposing its absurdity. "In our general literature," says Bayne, "the principle we have enunciated undergoes modification, and, for the most part, is by no means expressed as pantheism. We refer to that spirit of self-assertion, which lies so deep in what may be called the religion of literature, to that wide-spread tendency to regard all reform of the individual man as being an evolution of some hidden nobleness, or an appeal to a perfect internal light or law, together with what may be called the worship of genius, the habit of nourishing all hope on the manifestation of the divine, by gifted individuals. We care not how this last remarkable characteristic of the time be defined; to us its connection with pantheism, and more or less close dependence on the teaching of that of Germany, seem plain, but it is enough that we discern in it an influence definably antagonistic to the spirit of Christianity."[163]

The parentage of literary Rationalism in England is attributable to Thomas Carlyle. Having "found his soul" in the philosophy of Germany, we hear him, in 1827, defending the criticism of Kant as "distinctly the greatest intellectual achievement of the century in which it came to light." But the opinions of Fichte and Richter have subsequently had more weight with Carlyle, and he has elaborated them in many forms. Fichte, in particular, has influenced him to adopt a theory which gives a practical denial to the Scriptural declarations of the fallen state of humanity. Effort being goodness, the exterior world is only tolerable because it furnishes an arena for the contest of work. Man will never receive any prize unless he bestir himself to the exercise of his own omnipotence. Individual life is all the real life possessed by this world, and it is gifted with a spiritual wand capable of calling up wondrous forms of beauty and worth. It matters not so much what man works for, since his effort is the important matter. All ages have had a few true men. The assertion of self-hood constitutes greatness; and Zoroaster, Cromwell, Julius Caesar, and Frederic the Great; heroes of any creed or no creed, Pagan or Jew, are the world's worthies, its great divinities. Men need not be conscious that they are doing great deeds while in the act, nor, when the work is accomplished, that they have performed anything worthy a school-boy's notice. On the other hand, worth is tested by actual unconsciousness, "which teaches that all self-knowledge is a curse, and introspection a disease; that the true health of a man is to have a soul without being aware of it,—to be disposed of by impulses which he never criticises,—to fling out the products of creative genius without looking at them."

Man is the centre of the universe, which is everywhere clothed with life. His is a spiritual power capable of effecting the great transformations needed by his fellows. Let him be earnest, then, and evolve the fruits of his wonderful strength. Since his mission is work, here is Carlyle's gospel which calls him to it: "Work is of a religious nature; all true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true hand-labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to the sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroisms, martyrdoms,—up to that 'Agony of bloody sweat,' which all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not 'worship,' then I say the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky." Work implies power, and power in the individual is what society needs to keep it within proper bounds. Social life requires the will of the single mind and hand; republicanism is therefore the dream of fanatics, and ought not to be tolerated anywhere. Popular rights are a fiction which the strong hand ought to dissipate at a thrust. The greatest men are the greatest despots, and the exercise of their unlimited authority is what entitles them to our worship. Napoleon III. preaches the pure gospel of politics in his Life of Julius Caesar. Absolute subjection—call it slavery, if you please—is the proper state of large bodies of helpless humanity, who are absolutely dependent upon some master of iron will for guidance and development.