Christian rationalism : essays on matters in debate between faith and unbelief

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Page ESSAY I.

ESSAY II.

On Keason and Faith 37

I. 01st Feee Thought

It might prove instructive, if one cared to go into the question, to ascertain how free thought ever came to be identified with infidel thought, or a freethinker with a disbeliever in the doctrines of Christianity. So it is, however, as we all well know, to the very serious prejudice of Christ's religion; the appropriation of the title of " Freethinkers " by the men who deny the Gospel of Jesus seeming to imply, that those who accept it do so on terms which will not bear the application of free thought ; or, if Christian believers may be credited with thinking at all, then are they to be counted slavish thinkers ; or held to be under bonds to some authority which discountenances thinking.

Some such assumption as that may be detected in the men who jingle the phrases Free Thought, Free Thinker, Free Eeligion, in our ears to-day ; with hinted scorn of those who are thus supposed to have a dread of all mental 7 freedom, as affecting the interests of Christianity. Talk and insinuation of such purport circulate very freely about us; specially in circles of sceptics of a certain intellectual grade ; the insults so offered to men of positive Christian convictions being less noticeable than the childish egotism of the men who so talk. The phrase "Free Thought" has come to have a touch of cant about it, indeed, very distasteful to men of discreet minds, whether Christian or infidel. There is a tone in the common use of it, which arrogates for all freethinkers a superior order of intellectual power. Free thinking is to supply the solvent for every problem that perplexes us, and to set the whole world right on all questions that trouble it ; the subjects of these anticipations forgetting the fact, that the ultimate value of thought of any sort, is to be estimated, not by the quality or the circumstance of its freedom, so much, but by its clearness, and its soundness, and its logical consistency. For freedom is simply the space, so to speak, in which thought operates. What thought can do, in the widest sphere of activity conceded to it, is the question. It may be narrow, with the largest possible room round it; or frivolous, conceited, blind. Or it may be ill-balanced, vapory, and run to riot. Freedom is only a condition, in other words, either of thought or of action. How will a man use his freedom, is the question. For the freedom itself supplies no sure guarantee that the thinking will be worth anything, how free soever it may be. There may be just as thorough a spirit of bigotry, indeed, in the man who boasts that he is a freethinker, as in the man who looks upon all free thought with a devout horror.

Yet must it not be inferred from this that it is ever just or expedient to repress by force the utterance of opinion or conviction in a community, as long as vital interests are not seriously threatened. "We must accept freedom of thought with all the extravagances it may lead to, as long as it does not violently interfere with thinkings that the freethinker might not call free. Mr. Mill, in his admirable little book on " Liberty," made out a very good case in behalf of freedom of opinion, and of debate. The truth therein contended for did not need, however, the pains which the philosopher bestowed in its defence ; the liberty he so cogently contended for having been very generally conceded by the governments of all free countries, even in his own time. All intelligent and open-minded men are substantially agreed to-day, that religious and social doctrines and institutions must be main-

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tained by other means than a blind force, if they are to be maintained at all. Rulers both of Churches and of States ought to have learned that by this time. For whenever force has been applied to curtail the free action and circulation of opinion, the policy, in all free countries, at least, has not only failed, in the long run, but has secretly fostered the evil it was intended to destroy ; by begetting resentments and a general sense of injustice in men's minds. While men remain in a state of intellectual childhood a policy of coercion may seem to succeed ; the imposing of an implicit subjection being a comparatively easy task in the case of children, but it is of ttimes hard in the case of grown men. A paternal government has always seemed to be the best for all concerned, as long as subjects have been content with their swaddling clothes ; but a time comes, in the development of nations as of individual men, when the garments of the child are found not to fit the stalwart limbs of the man. And then there is apt to be some rending done, if the swaddling clothes are not quietly laid aside in time. There was a very violent rending of such raiment in Europe toward the close of the last century ; the immediate results being most marked in a nation in which there had been working for some time

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a strong and an acute intelligence. For long the rulers had gone on ruling " by the grace of God," as they said; and fearfully dark and cruel things had been done under the assumed sanction ; till the people, or the more enlightened among them, became sceptical of the high claim, and a reaction set in. For a time it was repressed : then compromise was tried : but the weight of waters steadily gathered behind the embankments of authority, till they yielded ; and the floods went thundering down pleasant valleys, and across fertile plains, till the very globe seemed to shake to its centre. One of the rulers had said — "After me the deluge " ; and the deluge had come. Or, in a figure more familiar, possibly, to some of my readers, the civil and ecclesiastical engineers of those times, had for long sat smiling upon the safety-valve of the State machine ; till the pent-up power beneath blew them and the machine into the air! Developed powers in peoples must have larger room provided for their safe working; one great need in those who guide the energies of a nation, political, social, or religious, being a quickness of discernment

"When to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet."

Those bounds do not admit of very much widening for the people of these United States in the political sphere ; the largest possible liberty being guaranteed to all citizens by the fundamental provisions of the instrument which makes us a Commonwealth. But liberty of thought is still dreaded by multitudes among us, as somehow perilous to faith and piety ; all kinds of pleas and prophecies being heard, specially from our schools of theology, to bring it into discredit. While in lands where the Church retains anything of her old tyrannous power, stronger measures are still sometimes directed against heretical opinion. The folly of such attempts should be obvious, however, if only from the fact that thinking is just that one prerogative of man which cannot be controlled by force. Statecraft, or priestcraft, may bind and bend the body into all sorts of subservient attitudes ; by loading it with chains, or by putting it under the grim and grinding rack — for our frail humanity shrinks from pain — but we cannot touch the mind by such clumsy devices. You may make cowards, slaves, hypocrites, by penal coercion; but you cannot beget a single sentiment or conviction in the reason or in the conscience of men by either threat or penalty. It is not only cruel, therefore, but

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it is silly to resort to such methods of manipulating men's minds ; while as to practical consequences I venture to affirm, that the evils traceable to free thinking are a thousandfold less hurtful to Keligion, than the evils that have sprung from blindly attempting to repress free thinking.

Ecclesiastical rulers have assured us again and again, very solemnly, that if men should be suffered to do their own thinking without dictation or restraint, the world would soon be deluged with a licentious infidelity. But Ecclesiasticism likes to frighten people, for its own ends. Let the prediction be brought to the test of fact — for coercion has had ample scope to exhibit its virtues — and all the foolish fears which orthodoxy inspires into timid souls, touching this question as so many others, will vanish. What have been the fruits of coercion in Italy, in France, in Spain, or wherever the tyranny of power has tried to repress free inquiry ? Is Christian faith firmer in those countries to-day than in parts of Christendom where the claims of private judgment have been respected? Is there more of religious reverence, of devoutness, or of obedience to Divine Commandments there than elsewhere? Is the Bible more revered from men having been forbidden to read it ? Or is the Church stronger there in popular favor and affection, from men having been compelled to accept its mandates in dumb submission? Let the terribly irreligious condition of vast sections of continental Europe answer ; with their populations utterly alienated from the Church ; many being filled with a deep detestation of the very name of religion. "Which desperate condition of things is largely traceable to the policy which has tried to stifle all inquiry, outside of the very narrow limits allowed by the Church; to a policy which has denied men light lest they should see, and denied them knowledge lest they should know ; and which now has the audacity to impute the evils it originated, to the power that has at length risen up in protest against its tyranny and deceit !

Nor need we marvel if men, moved by a passionate hate of unreality and imposture, have rushed to the wildest extremes of opinion and feeling as to all things taught in the name of Keligion. When those who have long lived in darkness are suddenly brought into light, the eye is bewildered, and the brain sometimes dizzy, for a while. Or when the limb that has long worn a shackle is released from the coil, the nerves are unsteady till strengthened by use. But there is surely occasion of good hope, for those who believe

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both in Christ's religion and in mental freedom, in the fact, that where the latter is to-day allowed the widest range, the former has its firmest foundation.

I have myself, therefore, no sympathy with those who would lay any unfair restraint upon the free play of thought in our time ; or with those who apply opprobrious epithets to men calling themselves " freethinkers " ; or with the priests or preachers who tell us of a fiery and everlasting vengeance, awaiting all who doubt the generally accepted creeds of their churches. If such weapons were ever of any really good service in the maintenance of Christian Faith, they are worse than useless to-day. The rapid spreading of intelligence ; the progress of democratic doctrines and institutions in all enlightened States ; the sense of self-ownership, so to speak, that has everywhere taken possession of men's minds, and of rights which they deem their due, and of responsibilities in others toward them ; — these advances are rapidly rendering the task of authority to maintain its old imperious attitudes hopeless. Statesmen, of the old conservative order ; priests, who look upon themselves as set to insist upon ancient decrees Avithout abatement or qualification ; " privileged classes," who have hitherto had such a

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pleasant time of it in the many being willing to serve them in almost dumb subjection ; — all these begin to look round them in fear, upon the independent tone and bearing of the emancipated throng ; wondering why men cannot be content with the old " divinely ordered " condition of things, and with the methods which once worked so smoothly, seemingly, in the management of the world's affairs. Even so. One is almost moved to pity, at sight of men so bewildered 'mid the altered relations and commotion of our age ; yet are the ignorance and cowardice of such men really worthy of scorn. For such commotion was sure to ensue " in the process of the suns " ; and the worst is not yet, probably. "Were it not fitting to say, that men in positions of influence would more worthily occupy themselves in educating and guiding the energies newly let loose in society, than in foolishly trying to repress them ? or in speaking evil of them ? Yet is this the temper and disposition of many of our fellow citizens of character and culture ; apprehending, as they do, serious evils to religion from the intellectual ferment of the time. The battle is between Authority, with all its prestige and all its venerable sanctions, on the one hand, and what is called Individualism on the other ; this " bete noire " of Individualism being an ignorant, lawless, and desperately revolutionary creature, as depicted by those who dread it. Yet is it simply the right which a man claims to do his own thinking, and to draw his own conclusions, and to follow thinkings and conclusions out in life, so long as he does not hurtfully intrude upon the thinkings and conclusions of his neighbor in so doing. But what exposures and denunciations of Individualism we hear from pulpits, and get through " the religious press " ; an American prelate having lately leveled a book at the creature, in which he professes to "strike at its core." But who or what is it that condemns Individualism but Individualism? — as represented by some priest, or preacher, or professor of divinity. Or the condemnation comes from a collection of individualisms, as seen in some conference, or synod, or council. But though it may be sometimes true that " in a multitude of counsellors there is wisdom," yet a multitude of fallibilities can never yield us ^fallibility.

But I may be reminded that priestly Individualism, representing the historic Christian Church, rests back upon a vast, consolidated, and trustworthy Authority; before which all right-minded men might reasonably be expected to stand reverently silent.

Well ; I do not myself deny the existence of such an historical " deposit," upon which Faith may draw to some extent ; but I do deny that inquiry can be logically so precluded. For what is Authority, even of the very highest order known to us, but the gathered up and formulated opinions, testimonies, judgments — all duly endorsed, let us say — of individual men f — of martyrs, saints, apostles, prophets ? such opinions, testimonies, judgments, gathering not only bulk, but moral weight, as the fears and respect and reverence of men gathered round them, in the course of the centuries. Let us even say, that the first witnesses to truths now enjoined as authoritative, were unimpeachable witnesses ; yet must a man somehow decide for himself to-day, that their testimony, as delivered to us, is genuine, and adequate for the purpose, or purposes, for which it is cited. And thus we get Individualism again ; in the necessary work of authenticating the evidence on which Authority rests its claims ; the only plea that can be preferred in favor of the maintenance of the old docile submissiveness amounting to this, that men and women are to yield to Authority in settlement of all disputes affecting Eeligion because its utterances are authoritative I an argument which were as good for the Koran as it is for the

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Bible ; or for Buddhism as it is for Christianity. But more, along this line of caveat. Granted that the authority alleged as good ground for faith to-day, was sufficient and irrefutable at the first ; yet will it be conceded by all men of intelligence and candor, that in the vast, miscellaneous mass of doctrines and dogmas and conceits commonly enjoined by Authority in this age, there are many things of human invention, and some purely fictitious ; while others have had an exaggerated importance attached to them ; all such admixtures and perversions requiring discrimination in those who would have the truth free from error ; which sifting process involves the exercise of the dreaded Free Thought, or the assertion of the detested Individualism.

But why should it be assumed that Individualism is necessarily the unruly and destructive power it is represented to be, by those who seemingly stand in terror of it ? It may safely be contended, on the contrary, I think, that there are few men, except the light-minded and self -conceited, — and with such men we have nothing to do in this discussion, — who are not willing to show a proper deference to Authority, when of a kind to inspire an intelligent respect ; aye, even to Authority in the shape of a tolerably well-founded tradition, in any sphere of thought or investigation where tradition can claim to be considered at all. Let it come to this, then, that men shall be suffered to think freely, and freely to assert the conclusions they may reach touching Religion ; the necessary consequence would not be intellectual anarchy, much less the destruction of all faith in the foundation facts and doctrines of Christ's Gospel; but simply a larger variety of opinion, perhaps, about matters which could not command evidence sufficient to beget definiteness of conviction. As to all essential things enjoined or taught by Jesus and His Apostles, however, faith would be stronger and more influential, because intelligent and free. Take away all dictatorial authority affecting religious beliefs, and all the evidence upon which those beliefs profess to rest would remain to us ; begetting conviction in all men capable of appreciating the evidence ; and leading to a general convergence of opinions and feelings sufficient to satisfy all reasonable requirements as to a " Unity of the Faith." But why do I speak hypothetically ? It is thus that all intelligent belief knits itself together and gathers into a body even now ; Authority having very much less to do with the matter than those men think who dwell on its virtues so appealingly. It might allay the fears of such men, somewhat, would they only recollect, that there are conservative instincts in human nature, which will always secure a prevailing respect for truths, and for institutions, and for customs, that have the attributes of reasonableness and wholesomeness visibly in them ; while there will always remain moral authority, springing out of the very nature of the truths which Christianity proclaims, fortified by their necessary influence in and over individual men and society at large, sufficient to make itself a governing power in the world.

"VYhat we really have occasion to fear in the present unsettled condition of the public mind touching matters of a religious nature, is such a preaching and teaching of Authority as may spread the suspicion abroad that the faith of the Christian world rests on nothing deeper than Authority ; or, that at the touch of Free' Thought all the creeds of Christendom would melt into mist. Conceits of such sort are already harbored, indeed, by multitudes of our fellows; owing, very largely, to the foolish fears exhibited by our orthodox Scribes as to the ravages threatened by Free Thinking — these teachers thereby abjuring all title to be considered freethinkers themselves. Whereas their own faith, and their very trust in Author-

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ity, would be found, upon the issue of a thorough analysis of such faith and trust, to have no better guarantees of validity than those that can be made good by free thinking ; and which the most fervent believer in Authority must be supposed to have actually so made good, to escape the scorn of discerning men.

There is really nothing left for us, then, constituted and conditioned as we are, — let men lament it as they may — but to seek, mid all the embarrassments of this probationary state, to know the mind and will of the Great God toward us ; whether written in books, or on rocks, or in the constitution and intuitions of the human soul; and the sooner our religious guides begin to suffer such seeking to go on without hindrance, and without objection, the better will it be for the cause which they represent. ~No man can dictate to me what I shall hold as essential to acceptance with God, till he has submitted his credentials in proof of his right to dictate ; investigation into the reliability and sufficiency of which supposes, of course, the concession of all the rights claimed by Freethinkers.

But a difficulty emerges here ; or rather, a difficulty must now have attention that has been pressing for notice for some distance back

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in this discussion, as the reader has no doubt felt; which difficulty may be best indicated, perhaps, by a question as from the lips of a free-thinking friend. " How are you going to reconcile the claims of free thought, which you seem to concede," such an one might say to me, " with the predetermination of the conclusions which the Freethinker must reach to be acceptable to God, as you Christians talk? It seems to me, and to those who hold with me," our free-thinking friend might go on to say, " that you liberal Christians are ' playing fast and loose ' with us. On the one hand, you allow that a man has the right to the free use of his intellectual faculties in religious questions ; but on the other, you lay down beforehand the results which the inquirer must reach, to escape the ' eternal death ' you have in store for him, should he reach other conclusions than those you prescribe, or that your religion prescribes. But that, it seems to us, is a concession with a very illogical stipulation attached to it." Now, the exception is fairly taken and stated, it must be allowed ; and is deserving of as fair and frank an answer. It is an exception that has been an occasion of much mental perplexity, I suspect, in men who, while retaining devout respect for prescribed truth, acknowledge the rights of free Inquiry. How

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can these seemingly conflicting attitudes of mind be reconciled ?

Well ; it must be assumed, in the first place, and the assumption must be steadily borne in mind, that the Free Thought which we are to suppose to be bent upon finding out the truth or the untruth of the essential things in Christianity, is of a sober, intelligent, and — may I not stipulate? — reverent caste and character. That preliminary being conceded, as being required by the nature of the problem to be solved, it will be further allowed, I am sure, that the quest after the truth belief of which Christianity insists upon shall be thorough, before a man can be suffered to settle down in unbelief unblamed. Then, — and to this condition the most resolute Freethinker will bring no objection, I take it — that the process of truth-seeking shall be conducted with a vigilant fidelity ; with the mind of the inquirer open to every ray of light, come whencesoever it may ; and with the heart free from all perverting impurities, and possessed of the requisite moral susceptibilities for truth of the kind now in question to make its proper impression upon the nature. For the heart, as most men of a ripened discernment have learned, has a great deal to do in rendering moral investigations successful. Then one other condition will be

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granted me, I have no doubt, viz : that the life of the inquirer shall be one of practical submission to the great laws of Christian duty, while the inquiry is going on ; according to an authority which the Freethinker may not count divine, but which, in this case, asserts a principle of profound importance in ethical science : the principle expressed in the words — "If any man will do His will, (God's will), he shall know of the doctrine that it is of God." Now, holding that I have made no unfair demand in this preliminary statement of terms, I may here ask — where is the man who has conscientiously and thoroughly complied with these terms, and yet remains in a state of settled unbelief ? I do not know the man ; though I have had a good deal to do with unbelievers, of every grade, and of every shade of opinion. Somewhere there has been inattention, neglect, or possibly graver shortcomings, on the part of the man who has missed his way in the process of truth-seeking ; or he had surely come upon evidence enough to give him pause, at least, in his denial of the testimony of Jesus. It will be answered, I know, that this, in effect, is the old imputation upon the honesty of the unbeliever. I am too discriminating, while I know too much of the pain and trouble that some men have endured

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in quest of rest for their doubts, to put the conclusion in that bald way. But I am compelled, as a Christian, and as a man, to attribute the failure to find ground for faith in the New Testament revelation of Love and Eighteousness, not to the fact that such ground is wholly wanting, but to the inquirer's having failed, somewhere, to comply with conditions upon which faith is suspended, in the economy witnessed to in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Most assuredly may it be said, that of those who deny the essential facts and doctrines of Christianity, few can be found whose denial is traceable to searching thought of any sort. The many err through moral indolence, or from lack of intellectual seriousness ; through hasty assumptions, or a captious conceit ; or from foolishly imputing the foibles and faults of so-called Christians to the religion which condemns those faults ! To build conclusions affecting such weighty interests upon such flimsy foundations, however, is surely unworthy of a man who calls himself a free thinker. Thought with such an one, I should rather say, is narrow, crooked, self-willed, and therefore blind. And upon such a state of mind, God Almighty were impotent to produce the conviction of faith.

But much of this is beside the mark, as a contribution toward the confutation of the contentions of Infidelity. What is needed is, that the two parties to the debate, the Freethinker and the Christian Apologist, should somehow get at a better understanding of each other's position, and of each other's claims; or of the real question, or questions, they are supposed to be discussing.

Specially should the Freethinker be given to know, through fair and explicit presentations of the truth, that it is not faith in all the theories, speculations, far-fetched deductions, of our schools of theology, or in matters in any way necessarily doubtful, that Christianity insists upon ; but upon faith in the vital and vitalizing facts and doctrines of Christ's Gospel, which are few ; which distinction glances at an occasion of a vast amount of unbelief just now prevalent. For there are many things in our theologies and in our ecclesiasticisms which bewilder and ' vex men of an independent temper ; they in their heat and haste dismissing all religious claims as unworthy of serious regard ; the representatives of Eeligion having given the world to understand, that all the legendary incredibilities of early Jewish writings, with their sanctions of atrocities at which we shudder, and with all the groundless decrees of Church councils since Christ came ; — all these

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are to be received without question, and approved without scruple, say our priests and preachers, before men or women may presume to call themselves Christians !

No marvel that Infidelity is rife. It is the old story, which the records of human experience tell so distressingly ; but the Scribes, as of old, refuse to learn. The Church has made infidels by the hundred, and then has consigned them to the unquenchable fires for being infidels ! The superstitions and impostures of the Romish Church of the time, and of anterior times, were chiefly responsible for the infidelity of M. De Yoltaire. It was these which armed the keen-witted man with those shafts of criticism and of scorn, which he fired with such telling effect into the system which priestcraft had built up and administered in that age. While Protestant preachers have been doing the same thing, in their own way, for generations, as they are doing to-day. They tell the Freethinker, that every syllable in the Bible is " inspired," and equally inspired ; and therefore of divine, and unvarying, and everlasting authority. Which is taken to mean, which is commonly intended to mean, that every utterance which we find recorded within the bindings of the Sacred Book, and every transaction going to make up its history, and every

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precept and sentiment of the many and very variegated speakers and writers represented in the Yolume, — that all these are divinely true, and of unchanging obligation.