If the change which resulted from our inquiries were indeed a descent from certainty to probability, it would involve a loss beyond all power of compensation. But it is not so. It is merely an exchange of conclusions founded on one chain of reasoning for conclusions founded on another. The plain truth--if we dared but look it in the face -is this:that absolute certainty on these subjects is not attainable, and was not intended. We have already seen that no miraculous revelation could 'make doctrines credible which are revolting to our reason; nor can any revelation give to doctrines greater certainty than that which attaches to its own origin and history. Now, we cannot conceive the proofs of any miraculous revelation to be so perfect, flawless, and cogent, as are the proofs of the great doctrines of our faith, independent of miracle or revelation. Both set of proofs must, philosophically speaking, be imperfect;--but the proof that any particular individual was supernaturally inspired by God, must always be more imperfect than the proof that Man and the Universe are the production of His fiat; that goodness is His profoundest essence; that doing good is the noblest worship we can pay Him. To seek that more cogent and compelling certainty of these truths which orthodoxy yearns after, is to strive for a shadow-to fancy that we have attained it, is to be satisfied with having affixed Man's indorsement to "the true sayings of God."1 In grasping after this shadow, ordinary Christianity has lost the substance:-it has sacrificed in practical, more than it has gained in dogmatic, value. In making Christ the miraculous Son of God, it has destroyed Jesus as a human exemplar. If he were in a peculiar manner "the only begotten of the Father," a partaker in his essential nature, then he is immeasurably removed from us;-we may revere, -we 1 "Having removed the offence we took in fancying God speaking with a human voice, and saying, 'This is my beloved Son: hear ye him,'certainly do not incline to call that a loss. But we do not lose anything else; for considering the godliness and purity of the life of Jesus, and then thinking of God and his holiness on the one side, and of our destination on the other, we know, without a positive declaration, that God must have been pleased with a life like that of Jesus, and that we cannot do better than adhere to him. We do not lose, therefore, with those voices from heaven, more than is lost by a beautiful picture from which a ticket is taken away that was fastened to it, containing the superfluous assurance of its being a beautiful picture.' Strauss's Letter to Professor Orelli, p. 20. we cannot imitate him. We listen to his precepts with submission, perhaps even greater than before. We dwell upon the excellence of his character, no longer for imitation, but for worship. We read with the deepest love and admiration of his genius, his gentleness, his mercy, his unwearying activity in doing good, his patience with the stupid, his compassion for the afflicted, his courage in facing torture, his meekness in enduring wrong;-and then we turn away and say, "Ah! he was a God; such virtue is not for humanity, nor for us." It is useless by honeyed words to disguise the truth. If Christ were a man, he is our pattern; the possibility of our race made real." If he were Goda partaker of God's nature, as the orthodox maintain—then they are guilty of a cruel mockery in speaking of him as a type, a model of human excellence. How can one endowed with the perfections of a God be an example to beings encumbered with the weaknesses of humanity? Adieu, then, to Jesus as anything but a Propounder of doctrines, an Utterer of precepts! The vital portion of Christianity is swept away. His Character-that from which so many in all ages have drawn their moral life and strength-that which so irresistibly enlists our deepest sympathies, and rouses our highest aspirations-it becomes an irreverence to speak of. The character--the conduct-the virtues-of a God!-these are felt to be indecent expressions. Verily, orthodoxy has slain the life of Christianity. In the presumptuous endeavour to exalt Jesus, it has shut him up in the Holy of Holies, and hid him from the gaze of humanity. It has displaced him from an object of imitation, into an object of worship. It has made his life barren, that his essence might be called divine. "But we have no fear that we should lose Christ by being obliged to give up a considerable part of what was hitherto called Christian creed! He will remain to all of us the more surely, the less anxiously we cling to doctrines and opinions that might tempt our reason to forsake him. But if Christ remains to us, and if he remains to us as the highest we know and are capable of imagining within the sphere of religion, as the person without whose presence in the mind no perfect piety is possible, we may fairly say that in Him do we still possess the sum and substance of the Christian faith."1 1 Strauss's Soliloquies, p. 67 "But," it will be objected, "what, on this system, becomes of the religion of the poor and ignorant, the uneducated, and the busy? If Christianity is not a divine revelation, and therefore entirely and infallibly true, if the Gospels are not perfectly faithful and accurate expositors of Christ's teaching and of God's will,-what a fearful loss to those who have neither the leisure, the learning, nor the logical habits of thought requisite to construct, out of the relics that remain to them and the nature that lies before them, a faith for themselves!" To this objection we reply that the more religion can be shown to consist in the realization of great moral and spiritual truths, rather than in the reception of distinct dogmas, the more the position of these classes is altered for the better. In no respect is it altered for the worse. Their creeds, i.e. their collection of dogmas, those who do not or cannot think for themselves must always take on the authority of others. They do so now: they have always done so. They have hitherto believed certain doctrines because wise and good men assure them that these doctrines were revealed by Christ, and that Christ was a Teacher sent from God. They will in future believe them because wise and good men assure them of their truth, and their own hearts confirm the assurance. The only difference lies in this :—that in the one case, the authority on which they lean vouches for the truth; in the other, for the Teacher who proclaimed it. Moreover, the Bible still remains; though no longer as an inspired and infallible record. Though not the word of God, it contains the words of the wisest, the most excellent, the most devout men, who have ever held communion with Him. The poor, the ignorant, the busy, need not, and wil. not, read it critically. To each of them, it will still, through all time, present the Gospels and the Psalms,-the glorious purity of Jesus, the sublime piety of David and of Job. Those who read it for its spirit, not for its dogmas, as the poor, the ignorant, the busy, if unperverted, will do,—will still find in it all that is necessary for their guidance in life, and their consolation in sorrow,—for their rule of duty, and their trust in God. A more genuine and important objection to the consequences of our views is felt by indolent minds on their own account. They shrink from the toil of working out truth for themselves, out of the materials which Providence has placed before them. They long for the precious metal, but loathe the rude ore out of which it has to be extricated by the laborious alchemy of thought. A ready-made creed is the Paradise of their lazy dreams. A string of authoritative dogmatic propositions comprises the whole mental wealth which they desire. The volume of nature- the volume of history-the volume of life-appal and terrify them. Such men are the materials out of whom good Catholics-of all sects-are made. They form the uninquiring and submissive flocks which rejoice the hearts of all Priesthoods. Let such cling to the faith of their forefathers -if they can. But men whose minds are cast in a nobler mould and are instinct with a diviner life,—who love truth more than rest, and the peace of Heaven rather than the peace of Eden,-to whom "a loftier being brings severer cares," "Who know, Man does not live by joy alone, But by the presence of the power of God,' such must cast behind them the hope of any repose or tranquillity save that which is the last reward of long agonies of thought'; they must relinquish all prospect of any Heaven save that of which tribulation is the avenue and portal; they must gird up their loins, and trim their lamp, for a work which cannot be put by, and which must not be negligently done. "He," says Zschokke, "who does not like living in the furnished lodgings of tradition, must build his own house, his own system of thought and faith, for himself." 10 Thou! to whom the wearisome disease Of Past and Present is an alien thing, Thou pure Existence ! whose severe decrees Into a timeless Eden of sweet ease, Clear-eyed, clear-hearted-lay thy loving wing Thy great Creation-thought thou wilt to me make known." R. M. Milnes. 2 Zschokke's Autobiography, p. 29. The whole section is most deeply interesting. CHAPTER XVI. CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM. CHRISTIANITY not being a revelation, but a conceptionthe Gospels not being either inspired or accurate, but fallible and imperfect human records-the practical conclusion from such premises must be obvious to all. Every doctrine and every proposition which the Scriptures contain, whether or not we believe it to have come to us unmutilated and unmarred from the mouth of Christ, is open, and must be subjected, to the scrutiny of reason. Some tenets we shall at once accept as the most perfect truth that can be received by the human intellect and heart;-others we shall reject as contradicting our instincts and offending our understandings; others, again, of a more mixed nature, we must analyze, that so we may extricate the seed of truth from the husk of error, and elicit "the divine idea that lies at the bottom of appearance." I. I value the Religion of Jesus, not as being absolute and perfect truth, but as containing more truth, purer truth, higher truth, stronger truth, than has ever yet been given to man. Much of his teaching I unhesitatingly receive as, to the best of my judgment, unimprovable and unsurpassable -fitted, if obeyed, to make earth a Paradise indeed, and man only a little lower than the angels. The worthlessness of ceremonial observances, and the necessity of active virtue Not every one that saith unto me, Lord! Lord! but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven; "By their fruits ye shall know them;" "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice; Be not a slothful hearer only, but a 66 i Fichte. |