A History of Freedom of Thought Part 10

[198] lies in the promise of a future life of which otherwise we should have no knowledge. If existence after death were proved and became a scientific fact like the law of gravitation, a revealed religion might lose its power. For the whole point of a revealed religion is that it is not based on scientific facts. So far as I know, those who are convinced, by spiritualistic experiments, that they have actual converse with spirits of the dead, and for whom this converse, however delusive the evidence may be, is a fact proved by experience, cease to feel any interest in religion. They possess knowledge and can dispense with faith.

The havoc which science and historical criticism have wrought among orthodox beliefs during the last hundred years was not tamely submitted to, and controversy was not the only weapon employed. Strauss was deprived of his professorship at Tubingen, and his career was ruined.

Renan, whose sensational Life of Jesus also rejected the supernatural, lost his chair in the College de France. Buchner was driven from Tubingen (1855) for his book on Force and Matter, which, appealing to the general public, set forth the futility of supernatural explanations of the universe. An attempt was made to chase Haeckel from Jena. In recent years,

[199] a French Catholic, the Abbe Loisy, has made notable contributions to the study of the New Testament and he was rewarded by major excommunication in 1907.

Loisy is the most prominent figure in a growing movement within the Catholic Church known as Modernism?a movement which some think is the gravest crisis in the history of the Church since the thirteenth century. The Modernists do not form an organized party; they have no programme. They are devoted to the Church, to its traditions and a.s.sociations, but they look on Christianity as a religion which has developed, and whose vitality depends upon its continuing to develop.

They are bent on reinterpreting the dogmas in the light of modern science and criticism. The idea of development had already been applied by Cardinal Newman to Catholic theology. He taught that it was a natural, and therefore legitimate, development of the primitive creed.

But he did not draw the conclusion which the Modernists draw that if Catholicism is not to lose its power of growth and die, it must a.s.similate some of the results of modern thought. This is what they are attempting to do for it.

Pope Pius X has made every effort to suppress the Modernists. In 1907 (July) he

[200] issued a decree denouncing various results of modern Biblical criticism which are defended in Loisy?s works. The two fundamental propositions that ?the organic const.i.tution of the Church is not immutable, but that Christian society is subject, like every human society, to a perpetual evolution,? and that ?the dogmas which the Church regards as revealed are not fallen from heaven but are an interpretation of religious facts at which the human mind laboriously arrived??both of which might be deduced from Newman?s writings?are condemned. Three months later the Pope issued a long Encyclical letter, containing an elaborate study of Modernist opinions, and ordaining various measures for stamping out the evil. No Modernist would admit that this doc.u.ment represents his views fairly. Yet some of the remarks seem very much to the point. Take one of their books: ?one page might be signed by a Catholic; turn over and you think you are reading the work of a rationalist. In writing history, they make no mention of Christ?s divinity; in the pulpit, they proclaim it loudly.?

A plain man may be puzzled by these attempts to retain the letter of old dogmas emptied of their old meaning, and may think it natural enough that the head of the Catholic

[201] Church should take a clear and definite stand against the new learning which, seems fatal to its fundamental doctrines. For many years past, liberal divines in the Protestant Churches have been doing what the Modernists are doing. The phrase ?Divinity of Christ? is used, but is interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous birth. The Resurrection is preached, but is interpreted so as not to imply a miraculous bodily resurrection. The Bible is said to be an inspired book, but inspiration is used in a vague sense, much as when one says that Plato was inspired; and the vagueness of this new idea of inspiration is even put forward as a merit. Between the extreme views which discard the miraculous altogether, and the old orthodoxy, there are many gradations of belief.

In the Church of England to-day it would be difficult to say what is the minimum belief required either from its members or from its clergy.

Probably every leading ecclesiastic would give a different answer.

The rise of rationalism within the English Church is interesting and ill.u.s.trates the relations between Church and State.

The pietistic movement known as Evangelicalism, which Wilberforce?s Practical View of Christianity (1797) did much to make popular, introduced the spirit of Methodism

[202] within the Anglican Church, and soon put an end to the delightful type of eighteenth-century divine, who, as Gibbon says, ?subscribed with a sigh or a smile? the articles of faith. The rigorous taboo of the Sabbath was revived, the theatre was denounced, the corruption of human nature became the dominant theme, and the Bible more a fetish than ever.

The success of this religious ?reaction,? as it is called, was aided, though not caused, by the common belief that the French Revolution had been mainly due to infidelity; the Revolution was taken for an object lesson showing the value of religion for keeping the people in order.

There was also a religious ?reaction? in France itself. But in both cases this means not that free thought was less prevalent, but that the beliefs of the majority were more aggressive and had powerful spokesmen, while the eighteenth-century form of rationalism fell out of fashion. A new form of rationalism, which sought to interpret orthodoxy in such a liberal way as to reconcile it with philosophy, was represented by Coleridge, who was influenced by German philosophers. Coleridge was a supporter of the Church, and he contributed to the foundation of a school of liberal theology which was to make itself felt after the middle of the century.

[203] Newman, the most eminent of the new High Church party, said that he indulged in a liberty of speculation which no Christian could tolerate. The High Church movement which marked the second quarter of the century was as hostile as Evangelicalism to the freedom of religious thought.

The change came after the middle of the century, when the effects of the philosophies of Hegel and Comte, and of foreign Biblical criticism, began to make themselves felt within the English Church. Two remarkable freethinking books appeared at this period which were widely read, F. W.

Newman?s Phases of Faith and W. R. Greg?s Creed of Christendom (both in 1850). Newman (brother of Cardinal Newman) entirely broke with Christianity, and in his book he describes the mental process by which he came to abandon the beliefs he had once held. Perhaps the most interesting point he makes is the deficiency of the New Testament teaching as a system of morals. Greg was a Unitarian. He rejected dogma and inspiration, but he regarded himself as a Christian. Sir J. F.

Stephen wittily described his position as that of a disciple ?who had heard the Sermon on the Mount, whose attention had not been called to the Miracles, and who died before the Resurrection.?

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There were a few English clergymen (chiefly Oxford men) who were interested in German criticism and leaned to broad views, which to the Evangelicals and High Churchmen seemed indistinguishable from infidelity. We may call them the Broad Church?though the name did not come in till later. In 1855 Jowett (afterwards Master of Balliol) published an edition of some of St. Paul?s Epistles, in which he showed the cloven hoof. It contained an annihilating criticism of the doctrine of the Atonement, an explicit rejection of original sin, and a rationalistic discussion of the question of G.o.d?s existence. But this and some other unorthodox works of liberal theologians attracted little public attention, though their authors had to endure petty persecution.

Five years later, Jowett and some other members of the small liberal group decided to defy the ?abominable system of terrorism which prevents the statement of the plainest fact,? and issued a volume of Essays and Reviews (1860) by seven writers of whom six were clergymen. The views advocated in these essays seem mild enough to-day, and many of them would be accepted by most well-educated clergymen, but at the time they produced a very painful impression. The authors were called the ?Seven against Christ.? It was

[205] laid down that the Bible is to be interpreted like any other book.

?It is not a useful lesson for the young student to apply to Scripture principles which he would hesitate to apply to other books; to make formal reconcilements of discrepancies which he would not think of reconciling in ordinary history; to divide simple words into double meanings; to adopt the fancies or conjectures of Fathers and Commentators as real knowledge.? It is suggested that the Hebrew prophecies do not contain the element of prediction. Contradictory accounts, or accounts which can only be reconciled by conjecture, cannot possibly have been dictated by G.o.d. The discrepancies between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, or between the accounts of the Resurrection, can be attributed ?neither to any defect in our capacities nor to any reasonable presumption of a hidden wise design, nor to any partial spiritual endowments in the narrators.? The orthodox arguments which lay stress on the a.s.sertion of witnesses as the supreme evidence of fact, in support of miraculous occurrences, are set aside on the ground that testimony is a blind guide and can avail nothing against reason and the strong grounds we have for believing in permanent order.

It is argued that, under the Thirty-nine

[206] Articles, it is permissible to accept as ?parable or poetry or legend? such stories as that of an a.s.s speaking with a man?s voice, of waters standing in a solid heap, of witches and a variety of apparitions, and to judge for ourselves of such questions as the personality of Satan or the primeval inst.i.tution of the Sabbath. The whole spirit of this volume is perhaps expressed in the observation that if any one perceives ?to how great an extent the origin itself of Christianity rests upon probable evidence, his principle will relieve him from many difficulties which might otherwise be very disturbing. For relations which may repose on doubtful grounds as matters of history, and, as history, be incapable of being ascertained or verified, may yet be equally suggestive of true ideas with facts absolutely certain??that is, they may have a spiritual significance although they are historically false.

The most daring Essay was the Rev. Baden Powell?s Study of the Evidences of Christianity. He was a believer in evolution, who accepted Darwinism, and considered miracles impossible. The volume was denounced by the Bishops, and in 1862 two of the contributors, who were beneficed clergymen and thus open to a legal attack, were prosecuted and tried in the Ecclesiastical Court. Condemned on

[207] certain points, acquitted on others, they were sentenced to be suspended for a year, and they appealed to the Privy Council. Lord Westbury (Lord Chancellor) p.r.o.nounced the judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Council, which reversed the decision of the Ecclesiastical Court. The Committee held, among other things, that it is not essential for a clergyman to believe in eternal punishment. This prompted the following epitaph on Lord Westbury: ?Towards the close of his earthly career he dismissed h.e.l.l with costs and took away from Orthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of everlasting d.a.m.nation.?

This was a great triumph for the Broad Church party, and it is an interesting event in the history of the English State-Church. Laymen decided (overruling the opinion of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York) what theological doctrines are and are not binding on a clergyman, and granted within the Church a liberty of opinion which the majority of the Church?s representatives regarded as pernicious. This liberty was formally established in 1865 by an Act of Parliament, which altered the form in which clergymen were required to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles. The episode of Essays and Reviews is a landmark in the history of religious thought in England.

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The liberal views of the Broad Churchmen and their att.i.tude to the Bible gradually produced some effect upon those who differed most from them; and nowadays there is probably no one who would not admit, at least, that such a pa.s.sage as Genesis, Chapter XIX, might have been composed without the direct inspiration of the Deity.

During the next few years orthodox public opinion was shocked or disturbed by the appearance of several remarkable books which criticized, ignored, or defied authority?Lyell?s Antiquity of Man, Seeley?s Ecce h.o.m.o (which the pious Lord Shaftesbury said was ?vomited from the jaws of h.e.l.l?), Lecky?s History of Rationalism. And a new poet of liberty arose who did not fear to sound the loudest notes of defiance against all that authority held sacred. All the great poets of the nineteenth century were more or less unorthodox; Wordsworth in the years of his highest inspiration was a pantheist; and the greatest of all, Sh.e.l.ley, was a declared atheist. In fearless utterance, in unfaltering zeal against the tyranny of G.o.ds and Governments, Swinburne was like Sh.e.l.ley. His drama Atalanta in Calydon (1865), even though a poet is strictly not answerable for what the persons in his drama say, yet with its denunciation of ?the supreme evil, G.o.d,? heralded the coming

[209] of a new champion who would defy the fortresses of authority. And in the following year his Poems and Ballads expressed the spirit of a pagan who flouted all the prejudices and sanct.i.ties of the Christian world.

But the most intense and exciting period of literary warfare against orthodoxy in England began about 1869, and lasted for about a dozen years, during which enemies of dogma, of all complexions, were less reticent and more aggressive than at any other time in the century. Lord Morley has observed that ?the force of speculative literature always hangs on practical opportuneness,? and this remark is ill.u.s.trated by the rationalistic literature of the seventies. It was a time of hope and fear, of progress and danger. Secularists and rationalists were encouraged by the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland (1869), by the Act which allowed atheists to give evidence in a court of justice (1869), by the abolition of religious tests at all the universities (a measure frequently attempted in vain) in 1871. On the other hand, the Education Act of 1870, progressive though it was, disappointed the advocates of secular education, and was an unwelcome sign of the strength of ecclesiastical influence. Then there was the general alarm felt in Europe by all outside the Roman Church,

[210] and by some within it, at the decree of the infallibility of the Pope (by the Vatican Council 1869?70), and an Englishman (Cardinal Manning) was one of the most active spirits in bringing about this decree. It would perhaps have caused less alarm if the Pope?s denunciation of modern errors had not been fresh in men?s memories. At the end of 1864 he startled the world by issuing a Syllabus ?embracing the princ.i.p.al errors of our age.? Among these were the propositions, that every man is free to adopt and profess the religion he considers true, according to the light of reason; that the Church has no right to employ force; that metaphysics can and ought to be pursued without reference to divine and ecclesiastical authority; that Catholic states are right to allow foreign immigrants to exercise their own religion in public; that the Pope ought to make terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization. The doc.u.ment was taken as a declaration of war against enlightenment, and the Vatican Council as the first strategic move of the hosts of darkness. It seemed that the powers of obscurantism were lifting up their heads with a new menace, and there was an instinctive feeling that all the forces of reason should be brought into the field. The history of the last forty years shows that the theory of

[211] Infallibility, since it has become a dogma, is not more harmful than it was before. But the efforts of the Catholic Church in the years following the Council to overthrow the French Republic and to rupture the new German Empire were sufficiently disquieting. Against this was to be set the destruction of the temporal power of the Popes and the complete freedom of Italy. This event was the sunrise of Swinburne?s Songs before Sunrise (which appeared in 1871), a seedplot of atheism and revolution, sown with implacable hatred of creeds and tyrants. The most wonderful poem in the volume, the Hymn of Man, was written while the Vatican Council was sitting. It is a song of triumph over the G.o.d of the priests, stricken by the doom of the Pope?s temporal power. The concluding verses will show the spirit.

?By thy name that in h.e.l.lfire was written, and burned at the point of thy sword, Thou art smitten, thou G.o.d, thou art smitten; thy death is upon thee, O Lord. And the lovesong of earth as thou diest resounds through the wind of her wings? Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things.?

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The fact that such a volume could appear with impunity vividly ill.u.s.trates the English policy of enforcing the laws for blasphemy only in the case of publications addressed to the ma.s.ses.

Political circ.u.mstances thus invited and stimulated rationalists to come forward boldly, but we must not leave out of account the influence of the Broad Church movement and of Darwinism. The Descent of Man appeared precisely in 1871. A new, undogmatic Christianity was being preached in pulpits. Mr. Leslie Stephen remarked (1873) that ?it may be said, with little exaggeration, that there is not only no article in the creeds which may not be contradicted with impunity, but that there is none which may not be contradicted in a sermon calculated to win the reputation of orthodoxy and be regarded as a judicious bid for a bishopric. The popular state of mind seems to be typified in the well- known anecdote of the cautious churchwarden, who, whilst commending the general tendency of his inc.u.mbent?s sermon, felt bound to hazard a protest upon one point. ?You see, sir,? as he apologetically explained, ?I think there be a G.o.d.? He thought it an error of taste or perhaps of judgment, to hint a doubt as to the first article of the creed.?

The influence exerted among the cultivated

[213] cla.s.ses by the aesthetic movement (Ruskin, Morris, the Pre- Raphaelite painters; then Pater?s Lectures on the Renaissance, 1873) was also a sign of the times. For the att.i.tude of these critics, artists, and poets was essentially pagan. The saving truths of theology were for them as if they did not exist. The ideal of happiness was found in a region in which heaven was ignored.

The time then seemed opportune for speaking out. Of the unorthodox books and essays, [2] which influenced the young and alarmed believers, in these exciting years, most were the works of men who may be most fairly described by the comprehensive term agnostics?a name which had been recently invented by Professor Huxley.

The agnostic holds that there are limits to human reason, and that theology lies outside those limits. Within those limits lies the world with which science (including psychology) deals. Science deals entirely with phenomena, and has nothing to say to the nature of the ultimate reality which may lie behind phenomena. There are four possible

[214] att.i.tudes to this ultimate reality. There is the att.i.tude of the metaphysician and theologian, who are convinced not only that it exists but that it can be at least partly known. There is the att.i.tude of the man who denies that it exists; but he must be also a metaphysician, for its existence can only be disproved by metaphysical arguments. Then there are those who a.s.sert that it exists but deny that we can know anything about it. And finally there are those who say that we cannot know whether it exists or not. These last are ?agnostics? in the strict sense of the term, men who profess not to know. The third cla.s.s go beyond phenomena in so far as they a.s.sert that there is an ultimate though unknowable reality beneath phenomena. But agnostic is commonly used in a wide sense so as to include the third as well as the fourth cla.s.s?those who a.s.sume an unknowable, as well as those who do not know whether there is an unknowable or not. Comte and Spencer, for instance, who believed in an unknowable, are counted as agnostics. The difference between an agnostic and an atheist is that the atheist positively denies the existence of a personal G.o.d, the agnostic does not believe in it.

The writer of this period who held agnosticism

[215] in its purest form, and who turned the dry light of reason on to theological opinions with the most merciless logic, was Mr. Leslie Stephen. His best-known essay, ?An Agnostic?s Apology? (Fortnightly Review, 1876), raises the question, have the dogmas of orthodox theologians any meaning? Do they offer, for this is what we want, an intelligible reconciliation of the discords in the universe? It is shown in detail that the various theological explanations of the dealings of G.o.d with man, when logically pressed, issue in a confession of ignorance. And what is this but agnosticism? You may call your doubt a mystery, but mystery is only the theological phrase for agnosticism.

?Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? We are a company of ignorant beings, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don?t know the map of the Universe as well as the map of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled,

[216] and perhaps told that he will be d.a.m.ned to all eternity for his faithlessness.? The characteristic of Leslie Stephen?s essays is that they are less directed to showing that orthodox theology is untrue as that there is no reality about it, and that its solutions of difficulties are sham solutions. If it solved any part of the mystery, it would be welcome, but it does not, it only adds new difficulties. It is ?a mere edifice of moonshine.? The writer makes no attempt to prove by logic that ultimate reality lies outside the limits of human reason.

He bases this conclusion on the fact that all philosophers hopelessly contradict one another; if the subject-matter of philosophy were, like physical science, within the reach of the intelligence, some agreement must have been reached.

The Broad Church movement, the attempts to liberalize Christianity, to pour its old wine into new bottles, to make it unsectarian and undogmatic, to find compromises between theology and science, found no favour in Leslie Stephen?s eyes, and he criticized all this with a certain contempt. There was a controversy about the efficacy of prayer.

Is it reasonable, for instance, to pray for rain? Here science and theology were at issue on a practical

[217] point which comes within the domain of science. Some theologians adopted the compromise that to pray against an eclipse would be foolish, but to pray for rain might be sensible. ?One phenomenon,? Stephen wrote, ?is just as much the result of fixed causes as the other; but it is easier for the imagination to suppose the interference of a divine agent to be hidden away somewhere amidst the infinitely complex play of forces, which elude our calculations in meteorological phenomena, than to believe in it where the forces are simple enough to admit of prediction. The distinction is of course invalid in a scientific sense.

Almighty power can interfere as easily with the events which are, as with those which are not, in the Nautical Almanac. One cannot suppose that G.o.d retreats as science advances, and that he spoke in thunder and lightning till Franklin unravelled the laws of their phenomena.?

Again, when a controversy about h.e.l.l engaged public attention, and some otherwise orthodox theologians bethought themselves that eternal punishment was a horrible doctrine and then found that the evidence for it was not quite conclusive and were bold enough to say so, Leslie Stephen stepped in to point out that, if so, historical