Old faiths in new light

Front matter

BY

NEWMAN SMYTH

AUTHOB OF "THE RELIGIOUS FEELING'

Preface

JOHN RUSKIN has said that for the words, good and bad, we might almost substitute the words, makers and destroyers. While writ ing this book, I have seen workmen tearing down portions of the walls of a church whose beauty had vanished, like a dream, in the flames of an hour; but they tore down only so far as was necessary, in order to find firm points from which to build up again the crumbling arches. I have had thus, in a daily figure, before me the true object of any de structive criticism of old faiths. We are jus tified in pulling down as we cherish the pur pose of building up. If to any my work shall seem at points to unsettle traditional beliefs which have become sacred in their eyes, I would ask them to read on, and wait to see whether, upon the old foundations, a better home for our religious faiths is not to be built up by the Christian scholarship of to-day.

" I do not, as a rule, find what I want in

VI PREFACE.

the books where I naturally seek it;" so a friend writes to me, whose words I may per haps be permitted to quote, as one sign among others of the failure of many cultivated and sincere minds to find what their faith craves in the standard treatises or stereotyped meth ods of religious thought. Modern research lias gathered many truths which the people need for a livino- faith, but which lie scattered

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through numerous articles in reviews, or are

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hidden in philosophical phraseology, or remain inaccessible to most readers in voluminous German books. It has been my aim to meet what I believe to be a growing need of intelli gent people, by gathering materials of faith which have been quarried by many specialists in their own departments of biblical study or scientific research, but which, to a large extent, have been left by them in a disconnected and fragmentary state ; and by endeavoring to put these results of recent scholarship together, according to one leading idea, in a modern construction of old faiths. The science by which the works of the specialists are to be ill-ranged in one order and harmony, is a science which needs now-a-days to be ad vanced aud honored. Building firmly, on the

PREFA CE. Vll

one hand, upon the facts of nature and history, and, on the other, upon the moral and reli gious experience of the soul, its high office and endeavor is to spring from either side the arch which shall at last bring together the material and the spiritual, the natural and the supernatural, in one continuous and rounded whole of knowledge. The accomplishment of that task — the ultimate philosophy — seems in deed beyond the power of human reason, but we may at least pursue it as an ideal. My object, then, has been to make more popularly known results already gained in this direction by the labors of the learned, as well as to offer some contribution to this growing science of the sciences. I would read the old faiths, which I still believe, in the light of modern thought to which I cannot be blind. I would

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help others, if possible, walk still in the old ways which prophets and apostles have trod, but in the light of to-day.

The modern idea which seems to reopen old questions of faith, and the spirit in which re newed religious inquiries should be prosecuted, form the subject of the opening chapter. I have then dwelt in succession upon certain prominent points around which, as it seems to

Vlll PREFACE.

me, the Christian evidences need now-a-days to be worked up anew. The endeavor to single out these leading points, and to pursue a straightforward line of argument between them, has compelled me to give only a passing glance at many subjects which are deserving of thorough exploration, and to cross, often rapidly, over much debatable ground. While not wishing to burden my pages with the de tails of scientific investigations, or the minutiae of critical discussions, I have occasionally, however, given references, in foot-notes, to authorities for statements which might seem to require further support than my plan would allow me to bring forward ; and, so far as I am aware, I have indicated my obligations to writers whose suggestions I have found grown into my own thought. I am sensible, however, of more indebtedness than I can easily ac knowledge by passing references, in theology, to the broad, but genuine, Protestantism of Prof. Dorner ; in biblical history, to the always inspiring, but not always safe, leadership of Kw.'ihl; and, in metaphysics, to the profound spiritual thought of that master of physical pcience as well as of ideas, the sceptical be liever, Lotze.

Chapter I. The Idea Of Development, And The New Questions About Old Faiths

Separation between modern scholarship and the popular belief. — Prevalence of undefined unbelief. — Need of popularizing the results of the best Christian scholarship. — Evolution a revolu tionary call to modern thought. — Old faiths in the light of the idea of development. — Supreme importance of these questions, and the temper of mind to be observed in their discussion. — The three epochs of modern thought. — The age of theological reconstruction. — The service of destructive criticism. — The need of resetting our faiths. 13-32

Chapter II. The Historical Growth Of The Bible

The historical development of revelation. — The nature of inspira tion a secondary question. — Periods of the growth of the Bible. — Its materials. — The forces in its development. — The law of heredity, and the development of religion in Israel. — Signs of anti-historic evolution. — The higher law of selection in the canon. — The progress of revelation and its unity of design. — The broader view of revelation and its advantage. . . 33-6.1 1*

X CONTENTS.

Chapter III. The Course Of Moral Education And Progress Op Reve Lation

The educational method of God. — Three views of history. — The science of social statistics. — The idealistic philosophy of his tory. — The theology of history. — Revelation a progressive moral education of mankind. — The true moral test of a course of rev elation. — The educational method of God in the Bible. — Its truths are forces of progress. — Moral leadership of the Scrip tures. — Progress of doctrine. — Object-lessons. — Educational intent of the law. — Illustrated by the use of vows, the pre paratory law of the Sabbath, the advance in the names for God. — Success of the divine method of education. — Its results. — The family. — The end of human sacrifices. — Abraham's of fering an historical object-lesson, and its effect. — The aboli tion of slavery. — Growth of the hope of immortality. — Difficul ties surmounted by this view of revelation. — Revelation its own final test. — The silence of Scripture. — The moral limitations of revelation. — Evidence in the course of revelation of a su pernatural evolution 63-127

Chapter IV. The Advance Of Knowledge And The Scientific Tendency Of The Bii5i.k

The same educational method in the scientific teaching of the Bible. — Elementary scientific virtues of the Bible. — Freedom from nature-myths. — Contrast between the Mosaic Genesis and its environment. — The biblical conception of law. — Opti cal accuracy of the Bible. — Genesis a first lesson. — Its object and point of view. — Its real service to science. — The alphabet of science in revelation. — The spiritual origin of material things. — Creation not magic. — The impossibility of being a materialist. — Matter, life, and mind from God. — The biblical teaching of the development of the creation. — The element of time left indefinite. — The scientific tendency of revelation the

CONTENTS. XI

main question.— Summary.— The Mosaic Genesis a providen tial elementary lesson in nature. — Moses' genius for teaching. — Additional evidence of a supernatural course of history. 128-184

Chapter V

THE CULMINATION IN THE CHRIST : I. THE UNIQUENESS OF JESUS.

Jesus the surprise of history. — Failure to account for his appear ance by the laws of heredity. — Jesus not a Jew, nor a Gentile, nor the child of two races. — His teaching not eclecticism, nor a revival of an older prophetic spirit. — Uniqueness of Jesus shown in his doctrine, his moral ideal, his method and plan, and in the absence of certain common human traits. — The unique power of Jesus. — Peculiar moral quality of his mira cles. — His power in history. — The new society. — Originality of Jesus' self-consciousness. — Originality of the idea of the Lord's Supper. — These characteristics independent of ques tions concerning the origin of the Gospels. — Conflict of the conclusion thus gained with the law of continuity. — The deeper question. . 185-231

Chapter VI

THE CULMINATION IN THE CHRIST: II. THE NATURALNESS OF CHRIST.

The naturalness of the life of Christ as a whole — Correspond ence between being and influence. — The argument from proph ecy. — The place of Christ in the divine order of history. — The ascent of life. — The law of individualization. — Christ the end of the creation. — The moral interpretation of the crea tion. — The human need of the Messiah and its prophecy. — The moral necessity of the incarnation. — Its form determined by sin. — The incarnation a process. — The ideal truth of the incar nation. . . 232-288

Xll CONTENTS.

Chapter VII. The Unfinished World And Its Completion

Confirmation of foregoing reasonings by the signs of the future course of nature. — The unfinished world. — The unseen uniyerse. — Evidence of another order of existence from the tem poral origin of the world ; the apparent waste of nature ; the probable end of the present, visible creation ; the spiritual sig nificance of life, and the nature of mind. — Facts and theories. — Probabilities of science and teachings of revelation com pared. — Relation of the two spheres of the one creation. — In fluences of the unseen. — The final conservation and completion of the natural.— Where is heaven ?— Removal of difficulties. 289-348

Chapter VIII. The Process Op Resurrection And The End

The resurrection of Jesus a fact and a revelation to the disciples. — Circumstantial evidences of the fact. — Jesus' resurrection a special object-lesson illustrating a general law. — Its nature and process. — The apostolic doctrine and its corruption. — Ex treme materialistic and idealistic conceptions. — Elements of the biblical doctrine of the resurrection. — The continuity of the life of the individual. — Naturalness of the resurrection. — Its place in the constitution of the creation. — Contrast with Herbert Spencer's view of the end of evolution. — The super natural evolution. — Dualism and unity of the creation. — Con clusion 349-391

OLD FAITHS IN NEW LIGHT.

Chapter I. The Idea Of Development, And The New Questions About Old Faiths

IT is an open secret that there has been of late an increasing separation between many views of the Bible and religion gained by emi nent Christian scholars, and opinions gener ally held to be the truth in the religious com munions with which they still retain fellow ship. Even thoroughly evangelical divines are sometimes made painfully aware of the distance to which they have been carried by the course of their studies, or have unconsciously drifted with the current of modern thought, from religious positions still firmly maintained by many among their people, or their ecclesi astical associates, with whom, nevertheless, in spirit and aim, they are agreed. As a result of this alienation between much of the best scholarship and much of the best life of the

Christian world, there is often to be found, on the one side, a half-concealed mistrust of the freer methods of modern biblical criticism, or a flurried opposition to the claims of science ; while, on the other hand, there is sometimes manifested an over-confident and rude display of a little knowledge of the new learning ; but more often a cautious reticence is observed on the part of sober-minded scholars, who are slow to disturb by their own questionings, or by their improved methods of faith, the longsettled beliefs of the people. They wisely pre fer to hide many questions in their hearts, rather than to proclaim their doubts upon the housetops. In Cicero's treatise concerning the nature of the gods, Cotta, an orator and magis trate, is represented as saying that it would be allowable in a private conference to hold views which it would be difficult to advocate before a public assembly.* Some of our too eager disputants of received opinions might learn a useful lesson from the hesitancy of the Itoman magistrate to shake the foundations of tin* popular faith. But the doubts of the phi losophers could not always remain hidden, and when the soothsayers could hardly re frain from laughing in each other's faces, as they consulted the omens, there was little

* De Nat. Deorum, i. 22.

FAITH AND SCHOLARSHIP. 15

hope left for the popular religion of the Ro mans. In the nature of modern society, what is whispered in secret must soon be published abroad. Learning is no longer a cloistered virtue ; and any wide or continued separation between the best thought and the received opinions of the Christian world would be full of hazard to religion. The mere suspicion that the advanced scholarship and the old faiths are to-day at variance, is itself a fruitful cause of popular indifference and unbelief. Indeed, the Christian faith suffers more from a certain vague mistrust, or undefined unbe lief, among the people, than it does from any one positive and definite form of infi delity. This indefinite mistrust, moreover, arises partly from knowledge, and partly from ignorance. It emanates from the knowledge that there has been of late much destructive criticism of the old theologies, and from igno-

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ranee of the methods and the results of the best Christian scholarship. As a little warmth of the rising sun may call up the very mists which are to be dissipated by its more power ful shining, so this vague and chilling popu lar unbelief is to be dispelled, not by with holding knowledge, but by shedding abroad all possible light. Whatever may be known concerning the origin and comparative place of our sacred Scriptures ; whatever changes in the methods of studying the Bible, or the the ology of the Bible, have commended them selves* to the judgment of the best-informed niinds; and whatever new views of old faiths have been opened by the advances of science, must be brought forward cautiously, yet freely, in the teaching of any church that is to retain its hold upon the people. The history of doctrine shows that one work which is re quired, every generation or two, of Christian thought, is to rearrange its faiths in new lights ; and many signs indicate a present and growing need of some resetting of the so-called Christian evidences. This work, also, needs to be popularized, as science nowadays is popu larized. Our age comes speaking new tongues, which our fathers knew not of. We, who have inherited their faiths as our birthright, have tried, also, to learn these strange tongues, and we find to our joy that we can still proph esy in them ; that in some of the very words which at first we feared were without God, and without hope in the world, we begin to discover the best words the human reason has ever found in which to declare the ways of the Spirit.

The one word, which more than all others has been a revolutionary call to modern thought, is the word Evolution. The term covers many opinions which, though united in

THE IDEA OF DEVELOPMENT. 1 7

a common opposition to former views of the creation, are far from beino; at one amono*

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themselves. It is the watchword of the most gross materialists, and also the guiding princi ple of others who are led by its clew through the mazes of visible phenomena out to the borders of the unseen, and into the presence of the living God. The laws and forces, the nature and extent, of evolution are still under discussion ; and the most ardent believers in it differ widely among themselves. The late Mr. Lewes, for instance, was of the opinion that Mr. Darwin has mistaken the effect for the cause in his famous doctrine of Natural Selection ; * and, in opposition to the Darwin ian theory of descent from one far-oif ances tor, he insisted upon the necessity of suppos ing innumerable starting-points to explain the vast variety of organisms, f And it was after Prof. Huxley had informed us that evolution is demonstrated knowledge, % and after Haeckel had said that " to demand proofs in favor of the theory of descent ... is to give evidence of a lack of knowledge and understanding," § that Prof. Virchow, himself an evolutionist, not destitute of either, declared : " We cannot

* The Physical Basis of Mind, p. 121.

\ See American Addresses.

§ Munich Address.

teach, we cannot designate as a revelation of science, the doctrine that man descends from the ape or from any other animal.*

But questionable, or incapable of proof, as may be particular scientific theories of descent, and whatever may be the final form of the philosophy of evolution, — it is already evident that all our modes of reasoning and our most

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settled faiths are to-day brought to judgment before the idea of development. It is not al together a new idea, but it is an idea invested with new power. It admits of different defi nitions, but in some form it claims to preside over all scientific thought. It bids us beware of regarding existing things as though they were struck into being by successive blows of creative power. It maintains that, so far as things can be observed and events followed, they are con tinuous, and form one order. It directs us to trace everywhere processes of unfolding and growth. It declares that the world is the fruit of ages, and not the manufacture of a day. It accepts nothing as ready-made, but searches for the modes of production by which all thing have come to pass. Whether these great processes of formation be regarded as " a mechanical evolution," as Haeckel holds them to be — blind forces building better than

The Liberty of Science in the Modern State.

THE IDEA OF DEVELOPMENT. 19

they knew — or whether they be conceived as the course or method of creative wisdom, in telligently pursued from the beginning, it is beyond question that the idea of development, in some form of it, is the dominant idea of modern thought. To the test of that preva lent and powerful idea we are required to sub mit our most sacred spiritual and religious faiths. The Bible, Christianity, the hope of immortality, we shall bring under the light of this modern principle. I need hardly add that a theistic conception of evolution is the only one to which, in the last appeal, I feel bound to carry the argument for our old faiths.*

The complete execution of the author's plan would involve a comprehensive treatise on Christianity and development — an entire re working, in view of modern ideas of develop ment, of the department of apolegetics. In this volume so great a task — almost too great for any one mind to hope to accomplish — is not attempted ; but, as already indicated, I shall endeavor to examine certain connected and strategic points along the line of defence

* Having-, in a former work (The Religious Feeling-, New York, 1877), examined how our idea of God remains undissolved by the evolutionary philosophy, I take the liberty of referring- to that work for any theistic assumptions of this. Incidentally, however, these will receive further justification, and the author's idea of development be further defined, in the course of the present dis cussion.

of the Christian faith. Before addressing ourselves, however, directly to the work pro posed, something should be said concerning the temper of mind in which an essay like this should be both written and read.

The themes with which we shall be occu pied must ever be of supreme concern to any who can appreciate the motives which led Bishop Butler to write, in a letter to a friend, before he left school, that he intended to make truth the business of his life. It is said that Jacobi, the faith-philosopher, as he was called, while still a student at the university, upon

reading for the first time Kant's treatise on

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the proofs of the existence of God, was seized with a violent palpitation of the heart, so in tense was his interest in the renewed discus sion of man's oldest and greatest faith. True or false, these faiths are the supreme concern of our lives. It is above all things our busi ness here to think of them, and to work them out in our lives. For those who are indiffer ent to the value of truth ; for any persons like the traveller in that shrine of art, the Tribune of the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, who, after a moment's glance at the great paintings and statues, was overheard to express the desire to go and visit the king's stables, such themes may be too high and sacred ; — a passing glance at the visions of prophets and seers, a mo-

DEMAGOGISM IN SCIENCE. 21

ment's thought upon the greatest truths with which a human mind may be concerned, are all that can be expected of those who can be contented with visiting the king's stables; who are pleased with the mere trappings and externals of this royal realm through which our souls are travelling, while they might lin ger in the palace itself and rejoice in behold ing the wonderful treasures of the kingdom of Truth.

Among those who are interested in such discussions, there is sometimes cherished a temper of mind, which, wherever found, is wholly alien to the spirit in which inquiries like these should be conducted. It may aptly, and not too harshly, be characterized as the temper of the religious, or the scientific, dema gogue. For it is unfortunately true that there may be veritable demagogues in the republic of letters as well as in the State ; and, as in politics, so in religion, they are to be found in the ranks of all parties, and their spirit is pe culiar to no creed or sect. Liberalism and orthodoxisni alike produce them. Popular infi delity, too, has its arrant demagogues — lectu rers who carry on a notorious business of athe ism on a small capital of philosophic or scien tific thought, and usually borrowed capital besides. Thus a man of fluent wit will go up and down through the Bible, or ecclesiastical history, very much as a political stump-speaker will look through the Congressional records, or our national history, for the points of his partisan speech. He will begin with Genesis and find " mistakes of Moses " in abundance. He will expatiate upon the absurdities of the story of the ark. He will pause in dramatic horror before the cruel wars of the Jews. He will single out an imprecatory psalm or two; and when he comes to the New Testament, he will find in it discrepancies and misstatements enough to prove that all the Apos tles were little better than literary thieves and robbers. Then he will run up and down through the Christian ages, beholding every rack and thumbscrew, but regardless of the many martyrs ; putting his finger upon the dark stains, but not noticing the illuminated pages of ecclesiastical history; complaining of the gloom of the scholastic theology, but blind to the growing light. He will have at his tongue's end second-hand and unverified quotations from the Calvinists, and he will de scant knowingly upon the " Conflict of Reli gion and Science," though, like Dr. Draper in his book, it never occurs to him to spoil his declamation by giving an exact definition of either — and so on to the end of the chapter. Now all this is pure and simple demagoguism, — the more wicked and mischievous, the more

DEMAGOGISM IN THEOLOGY. 23

sacred and momentous the themes which it degrades.

But the demagogism of popular infidelity certainly does not justify, and cannot be put down by, the manifestation of a similar spirit on the part of the accredited defenders of the faith. The theological demagogue is unfortu nately a historical and not altogether anti quated character. He passes through the Bible and history in the same blind, partisan way. He fits the Bible to his notion of what it should be. He casts his drag-net over the Scriptures, to gather — it matters not from what part — proof-texts for his favorite dogma. If a religious itinerant, he provides himself with no scrip or staff, save a Bagster's Bible and a Concordance ; and upon these, and the enlight enment of the Holy Ghost, he relies for the removal of all difficulties. Not knowing what he does, nor always of what spirit he is of, he teaches the instructed, and often turns the Concordance itself into the worst enemy of a sound biblical theology. Or, if the theologi cal demagogue be not a mere wandering exhorter, but a man of some training, or even one wearing some official title as a valiant de fender of the faith, he will still be inclined to look upon all biblical learning which does not make for his traditional opinions, as essentially rationalistic and unsound ; he will have a confident answer for every doubt, a definite knowl edge of truths lying beyond experience on the very borders of revelation, and a ready method of harmonizing all discrepancies. He rarely, if ever, will arise in the morning, like Dr. Arnold, with the feeling that anything per taining to his creed can .be an open question ; and if Christian thinkers to whom nature, also, is a revelation, and its laws as sacred as the commandments of Sinai, and to whom all history is holy ground, refuse to accept his favorite interpretation of God's Word, or his theory of its mechanical infallibility, he stands ready to read them out of the party which in his sincere, perhaps, but narrow, zeal he mis takes for the Orthodox Church. But nowhere, surely, is this spirit so hurtful as in the con sideration of those august themes of which Jesus spake in parables, and before which the wisest are as little children. Not with such help are the threatening forms of unbelief to be laid ! A faith that leans upon its own pre judices cannot stand long in the days when all things are shaken. There is only one state of mind which in such investigations is truly and profoundly reverent and religious, and that is, the desire to find the facts as they are. Whoever is afraid of science does not believe in God ! Though the truths which the several sciences have discovered in the various fields

THE THIRD EPOCH. 2$

of inquiry are, with difficulty, brought together

and harmonized ; though the facts of nature.

history, and consciousness, lie before our rea son often unconnected and broken, like those fragments of Assyrian records which have been thrown together in the British Museum ; we should, nevertheless, regard every one of them as of value, and as having its own place and worth in the record of God's creative pur pose which, some day, we may hope not merely to decipher by syllables and to know in part, but to comprehend in its length and its breadth, and to read as one grand, con nected story.

Another caution should be observed in the discussion of these topics, and particularly in the consideration of those questions which be long partly to natural science and partly to moral and religious philosophy. It should not be forgotten that w^e have entered, or at least our most scientific science and most believing faith are now entering upon, what may be de scribed as a third epoch of modern thought. For the great question between religion and science, like other important movements of human thought and life, seems destined to pass through three distinctive stages or epochs. First there came the age of violent attack upon the Bible from the scientific side, and defence as violent. This controversy was inevitable. It resembled the age of agitation on the question of slavery, or of intemperance. A great many things were written and said— in the order of history had to be written and said — which we do not care to read or remem ber now. We can profitably forget many books and articles in which writers whose eyes were opening to the truthfulness of the Creator down to the last atom and least fossil of the world, attacked the received biblical ac count of a creation in six literal days ; and we can profitably commit also to the limbo of for gotten things the many sermons and treatises in which good men whose eyes, though not yet open to the new light of science, were not closed to the old glory of revelation, waxed valiant in their mistaken controversy with the prophets and priests of the God of nature.

Following this age of agitation and inevit able controversy, was the second epoch, marked by ingenious attempts at the reconciliation of religion and science. It resembled the age of compromise in our political history. Minds of great ability have been engaged in this work. Their writings are characterized by mutual concessions and a general air of candor. Theologians revise their interpretations of Scripture, and are fertile in theories of the harmony between Genesis and geology. Scien tists on their part, their liberty of investiga-