The dynamic of Christianity : a study of the vital and permanent element in the Christian religion

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Contents

I. Introduction 1

II. The Zeitgeist 22

III. The Present State of Popular Theologi-

Introduction

More than six decades have now passed since Macaulay imagined his famous traveler from New Zealand perched upon a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. The essayist's contention was that even in the day when London should have become a desolation, and the centre of her formal worship a heap, the Church of Rome might still prove to be an undiminished power in the world. He argued with characteristic grace and assurance that theology was not, and could not become, a progressive science ; that Socrates, in confuting the little atheist Aristodemus, had anticipated all that is really significant in Paley's argument from design ; and that the fact of Sir Thomas More's readiness to die for his faith in transubstantiation is sufficient to lead us to expect that any man of similar intelligence and honesty may hold the doctrine now as firmly as Henry VIII's chancellor held it, since our advance in science, great as it has been, scarcely served to make it more unreasonable in the nineteenth than it must have seemed to be in the sixteenth century. His process of reasoning applied to natural theology applies a fortiori, of course, to theology based upon what Macaulay called " revelation." " All divine truth is, according to the doctrine of the Protestant Churches, recorded in certain books. ... A Christian of the fifth century with a Bible is neither better nor worse situated than a Christian of the nineteenth century with a Bible, candor and natural acuteness being, of course, supposed equal."

Nothing could better illustrate the transformation that the years have wrought in the Protestant attitude toward theology than the mere quotation of such a passage as the above. It is to be remembered that in writing it Macaulay hardly misrepresented the thought of his day in England and America. He perceived the Evangelical to be scarcely less bound by the traditions of the Fathers than the Tractarian, though, they were of course very different Fathers. The Nonconformist as well as the Churchman was to a considerable extent an antiquarian ; and the results of his antiquarian research, so far as they had theological significance, concerned an institution known as the Church, rather than a body of truth closely related to life. The " Leben Jesu " of Strauss had been published but five years, and its author was in disgrace even in Germany. George Eliot's translation was not yet begun, nor to be issued until 1846. Few English students of theology read German, and some of those who did, read it upon the sly. And twenty years were still to pass before Colenso should precipitate the great question of the Higher Criticism of the Bible upon his unwilling countrymen.

The Unitarians kept something of the temper of the elder Maurice, whose enthusiasm we are told " went out, like that of so many others of his class, into politics rather than religion." * The avowed champions of unbelief had not yet revolted against the crass misrepresentations and travesties of religion which men like the elder Mill were not ashamed to perpetuate, and which, to the

1 Tulloch, Religious Thought in Britain, p. 263.

amazement of later generations, seem to have been not without some influence upon the thought of his far greater son. The more intellectual among the Presbyterians and Independents were largely occupied with barren doctrinal controversy. In the realm of philosophy, students at the universities heard much talk of " progress of the species, dark ages, and the like, but the hungry young looked up to their spiritual nurses, and for food were bidden eat the east wind." 1

It may be answered that when Macaulay wrote his " Edinburgh Review " essay on Yon Ranke's " History of the Popes," from which I have quoted, a new era had been ushered in by Coleridge and Maurice, torch-bearers of the higher and richer thought of Germany. This is true, and with them should be numbered Thomas Erskine ; while Wordsworth's parallel influence in the realm of poetry, and Carlyle's in the field of general literature, but especially of the ethical interpretation of history, is not to be overlooked. Maurice, the near spiritual kinsman of both Coleridge and Erskine, had but just published his "Kingdom of Christ," — it appeared in 1838, —

1 Sartor Resarius, bk. ii. e. iii.; Tulloch, p. 170.

and the sub-title of this notable work, "Hints on the Principles, Ordinances, and Constitution of the Catholic Church, in Letters to a Member of the Society of Friends," reveals that institutional bent or tendency which has proven itself to be at once the strength and the limitation of so many English theologians.

Nor should the fact be overlooked that it always takes time, and what often seems to be a disproportionate and unreasonable length of time, for the results of theological investigation to find their way out of the study and the treatise into the general thought and speech of men. It is not enough to say that the man of the street does not care about such things. He probably does not care about their mere academic aspect, but in their relation to life they interest him and often interest him profoundly. It frequently happens, moreover, that the " man of letters " is among the worst informed and the least intelligent of the observers of theological and religious phenomena. Like the cockney who counts his ignorance of country ways the cachet of his town-bred superiority, he chooses to hold aloof from any special acquaintance with this branch of what he very likely calls a pseudo-science. If he be a portrayer of the manners of the time, as an essayist or a novelist, he has of course a theologian among the lay figures in his studio. Occasionally he makes large use of him, profiting especially by that infirmity of position, that feebleness of " stance," to filch a word from golf, which makes him such an easy prey to the attacks of his master ; for, be it observed, this figure is always set up to be overthrown. He is carefully provided beforehand with so much of the theological equipment of day before yesterday as his master's odds and ends of yesterday may suffice to vanquish. An excellent type of this sort of creature appears in the late Mr. Harold Frederic's " Theron Ware." Mrs. Humphry Ward laid him under tribute for the original of " Robert Elsmere." He it is who is periodically ground to powder when Professor Goldwin Smith essays Old Testament topics ; while the man who clamors from time to time in the newspapers and magazines for a " prayer-test " would find his occupation gone without him.

The contention of Macaulay with reference to theology is only another case in point.

Though tricked out in seemly dress enough, it was in reality nothing less than a damning accusation, and none could have known better than he that the doom of theology as a fit subject for the consideration of intelligent men would be sounded if he should succeed in substantiating his claim. Nor is this the less true because many theologians of the most orthodox type would have rejoiced to agree with him; for the ultimate nature of a current theological system has been a favorite premiss of the most devout believers as well as the most cynical scoffers, though they have reasoned from it to utterly diverse conclusions. Indeed, among those who read this essay was very likely one man of thirty-nine from whom Macaulay's contention would have won a glad assent, — a man whose efforts in behalf of the dependent classes in English society were just beginning to assume influential proportions, and who was one day to be counted among the most significant and beneficent forces in the social life of the century. The pronounced evangelicalism of Lord Ashley, better known to the world as the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, was of precisely the type that dreaded theological change, and was prepared to deny the possibility of any appreciable theological development, while it reverenced theology as the mother of sciences. Though Lord Shaftesbury never laid claim to the gift of tongues, he possessed one tongue whose facility, eloquence, and occasional acerbity made it quite equal to the work of many. " I have not," said he on one occasion, " that faculty for mild speech which distinguishes some persons in this country." * He justified the confession by characterizing "Ecce Homo " as " the most pestilential book ever vomited from the jaws of hell." 2 He " loathed with the utmost abhorrence " Colenso's book, even while with characteristic high-mindedness he protested against Bishop Gray's summary methods of disciplining its author. 3 He called heaven to witness how absolutely he abhorred the theology of Jowett, 4 though he would not put him down by dishonoring his office. Perhaps most significant of all was his letter to Pusey during the " Essays and Keviews " controversy, in which he said : " Time, space, and divergent opinions have separated

1 Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Earl of Shaftesbury, K. G., iii. 160.

INTRODUCTION us for many years. . . . We will fight about those another day; in this 'we must contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the Saints ; ' and it must be done together now." 1

Yet at this very period, though neither Macaulay nor Shaftesbury was clear eyed enough to discern the signs of its advent, an era of theological development was opening which in its ultimate results is likely to prove to be the most significant since the Reformation. The day of the barren deistic rationalist of the eighteenth century was past. The Evangelical Revival as a revival had practically spent its force, though its substantial fruits remained. The German leaven was at work. Schleiermacher, who died in 1834, was still little but a name to most Englishmen and Americans, with the exception of such as knew their Coleridge well. But his interpreters were at the door. The ethics of Kant were receiving practical application to the problems of life at the hands of Carlyle, and coming to such men as Froude like a new gospel.

1 Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Earl of Shaftesbury, K. G., iii. 166.

With respect to Hegel and his influence the case was somewhat different. There is a story that Comte once expressed a half -petulant wish that Hegel would publish a little book summing up his philosophy " succinctly and in French ; " to which the great philosopher replied that his system was capable of expression " ni succinctement, ni en f rancais." The saying, though doubtless apocryphal, is none the less significant. The practical Englishman with his institutional tendency was not very likely to become a student of so great and abstruse a system, and still less likely to become its apostle. In Germany upon the appearance of Hegel's philosophy, " Theology," as a distinguished critic has said, " was happy at the supreme good fortune that had come to her, — her ability to speak in her own tongue the thoughts of her old enemy." 1 But among English-speaking peoples the practical theological outcome of the Hegelian philosophy has long been closely associated with the work of Strauss. Strauss has been cleverly characterized as the Frankenstein of Hegelianism. He was its unnatural by-product, — made, not begotten ; and he has

1 Fairbairn, Christ in Theology, p. 222.

perhaps done more than any other writer to bring German influence in theology under suspicion among the mass of British and American Christians. Even at this late day great numbers of intelligent persons, to whom the works of Baur and his Tubingen brethren are sealed books, know the name and dread the power of Hegel. Of the real and abiding service to the faith which the Tubingen school rendered in compelling the adoption of a new and scientific historical method in theology they know nothing. Shaftesbury and Pusey, with the multitudes for whom they stood, when they thought of theological development, beheld it branded with the mark of the Teutonic Beast.

In America the situation was apparently though not essentially different. The ultra- Calvinism of the Fathers had from its very nature compelled "improvement." It was a perpetual challenge to men's reason. There was a haunting power about it quite distinct from its almost regal place among the systems, that forbade its contemptuous or cavalier rejection. Its preeminent qualities fascinated as well as repelled the student. Hence arose endless more or less successful tamperings with it. It stood like some vast structure, — a tour de force of other days, — ill adapted to the needs of the present, but too splendid to be destroyed; though its interior might be remodeled, and so many minor changes wrought upon its outside as to tone down its pristine ruggedness and, it must be added, belittle its original majesty. So in almost every generation after Edwards there was a new school to which a newer school succeeded. Thus the general notion of theological change and development was less strange to the men of New than to those of Old England. But it is to be noted that it was change within definite limits. The content of revelation was fixed. There was a certain sum of truth delivered to men. It might be rearranged. Deeper research might result in the discovery of heretofore hidden things. The immediate limits of the mine in which it was man's privilege to delve might be unknown to him, but they were none the less limits, precisely as a " coal measure " may reach for an indeterminate distance into a mountain-side, but still be defined by the general shape and size of the mountain. There was an academic assent given to Bobinson's historic dictum that more truth might yet break out from the Word of God, but it was a rather hard saying even when the Word of God to men was supposed to be altogether included within the covers of a book. In short, the present dispensation was generally admitted to be an ordo ordinatus rather than an ordo ordinans.

Here and there, to be sure, a voice was raised in protest ; none clearer or braver than Horace BushnelTs. Yet in a singular sense Bushnell stood

" Between two worlds, — one dead, The other powerless to be born."

He reminds us of those souls in Tintoretto's great Judgment Scene who, though arisen, are not yet wholly risen. The bars of their earthly prison-house have burst and they are living in the free upper air, but not yet unhampered by the clods. This is in no sense to belittle BushnelTs place or work. Had he cut loose from all that was temporary in the thought of his day, it is possible that our debt to him might have been less rather than greater. For in the literal rather than the tropical sense, Bushnell's work has proven itself to be profoundly conservative. His greatness is the substantial greatness of the reinterprete^ the rebuilder, and the reformer, rather than the notoriety of the mere revolutionist. Had he held a different view of the Fall, for instance, his ability to interpret the significance of the Atonement might conceivably have been diminished rather than increased. Had he foreseen the significance of the new doctrine of Evolution, it is doubtful if his message to the men of his day with reference to Nature and the Supernatural would have been so intelligible and uplifting. While had he undertaken to grapple with the modern science of Biblical Criticism, he would have found it hard work to convince those about him that there was any common ground for them to stand on.

As things were, he found, to quote the luminous words of his latest biographer, that " relief was needed at four points : first, from a revivalism that ignored the law of Christian growth; second, from a conception of the Trinity bordering on tritheism; third, from a view of miracles that implied a suspension of natural law ; and fourth, from a theory of the Atonement that had grown almost shadowy under ' improvements/ yet still failed to declare the law of human life. The time had also come when a rational, scientific, cause-and-effect habit of thought was imperatively required, not only on these four points, but in the whole realm of theology." 1

Now it is preeminently such a "rational, scientific, cause-and-effect habit of thought" that has been exerting its influence upon every branch of human knowledge during the six decades since Macaulay assured the world of 1840 that theology was not a progressive science. It has been very learnedly and plausibly contended that the theological temper has always been either implicitly or overtly hostile to scientific progress ; and the contention voices one of those half truths which deceive quite as many as they instruct. The warfare that has seemed to exist between Theology and Science has really been a conflict between institutionalism and science. It is the priest who has laboriously and painfully reared the walls and completed the roof of his particular system, often at expense of utmost personal sacrifice be it remembered, to whom the structural change that accompanies natural growth seems dreadful. There has been

1 T. T. Munger, Horace Bushnell, p. 387.

no provision for it in his plan. So when the prophet comes to tell him either in the name of religion or of natural science that his whole structural system is wrong, and must continue to be wrong until he ceases to do violence to the organic by classing it with the inorganic, he is incontinently met with bell, book, and candle. Yet the prophet is no less a theologian than the priest; nay, in most instances he is the greater and the more perspicacious theologian, in so far as he sees the subject-matter of his science to be living and continuous rather than dead and completed revelation. It would be quite possible, too, to counter upon those who maintain that science has always found theology at odds with it by two equally plausible contentions. One is that a vast number of the discoveries whereby scientific advance has been accomplished have been made possible by those very systems of education and schools of learning which the church and priesthood have always fostered. The other is that it is to the theological implications of his scientific hypotheses that the investigator often owes no small part of the popular interest which it is to his advantage to arouse.

Swedenborg, for instance, anticipated in his mystical way the nebular hypothesis. Kant, as early as 1755, gave it form and practically established its scientific basis. Here was the doctrine of evolution in embryo, waiting for general application throughout the whole realm of human thought. But it attracted comparatively little interest among those multitudes, the horizon of whose intelligence it was finally to broaden so wonderfully, until Darwin had formulated the theory of Natural Selection, and his disciples began to expound what they supposed to be its theological significance. Then the world of plain people began to attend to the new teaching. A feeling went abroad that here was something to be dealt with, pro or con ; and the result has been of the greatest possible moment. Darwin, to be sure, carefully avoided this phase of the discussion. But Tyndall and Huxley and Clifford welcomed it so heartily that it is scarcely too much to say that they are known as theologians by many who would be sorely puzzled to tell whether or not they had rendered any considerable service to pure science ; while in America great numbers of intelligent people would forever remain in ignorance of Prof essor John Fiske's special contribution to the doctrine of evolution, had he not wisely and suggestively expounded it in certain little theological treatises that found their thousands of readers while his " Cosmic Philosophy " was waiting for its hundreds.

Keturning now for the moment to Macaulay's thesis, we may fairly reduce it to this syllogism. Systems of thought which are constitutionally intolerant of development are doomed to extinction. Theology is thus constitutionally intolerant of development. Therefore theology is doomed to extinction. It is, however, only in the light of the evolutionary notion of life as a perpetual adaptation to environment that we reach this conclusion. Macaulay by no means went so far. He seems to have felt instinctively that some provision must be made for the ineradicable tendency of men to cherish superstition ; and this provision he believed that the Church of Rome might still be found to furnish when the ruins of St. Paul's should adorn the sketchbooks of cultivated New Zealand travelers. His difficulty lay in accepting his own major premiss ; the minor constituted his principal contention. Our difficulty lies with the minor ;

the major we are coming to regard as almost axiomatic. It is quite true that the change of position has been made unwillingly, and that multitudes of honest folk have contended that a theological system which was capable of development could not really interpret eternal truth to the minds and hearts of men. But that is only to say that theology has not found herself exempt from the same hard conditions that have forced reconstruction in every other field of human thought. She has, like astronomy and anthropology and medicine, been forced to discover some practicable path of progress between the rocks of dogmatism and the gulf of superstition. It is useless to deny that there is any such path, and to claim that the man who searches for it is bound to find, like the victim of Poe's " Pit and Pendulum" adventure, that the wall is so arranged as of necessity to thrust him who would fain creep about its foot into the abyss. The human mind will not consent to be thus put to confusion. Comte essayed a hopeless task when he undertook to convince the world that the themes which had in all ages fascinated some of the greatest men were not germane to the human intellect ; and that it was the part of the true philosopher to relegate them to the limbo of chimeras. The dogmatism of negation is even more antipathetic to the mass of men than the dogmatism of assertion. Nothing can be more profoundly unscientific than an a priori denial of religious experience, or an unwillingness to give candid and unbiased attention to religious phenomena. Nor can anything bring true science into greater contempt than the refusal to regard the investigation of these phenomena and the generalizations which such investigation appears to justify, as worthy of the best thought and endeavor which men can bring to the task ; unless, indeed, it be an assumption upon the theologian's part that all the significant facts in his particular realm have been discovered; that investigation, except for the purposes of rearrangement, is therefore futile ; that the content of his budget of premisses is fixed ; and that his true work is merely to manipulate them in accordance with the well-worn processes of a deductive logic.

It is my purpose in the chapters which follow to state a condition ; to propound a question ; and to suggest an answer. Condition, question, and answer all have their theological implications. But the theological substructure which they imply appears to me to be in no sense a finished product. Christianity is not a completed system gloriously fashioned after the similitude of a temple, but an organism instinct with the power of an endless life. Its helpful application to the affairs of men depends less upon the discovery of some architectonic plan, than upon acquaintance with the power and principle of its development. In our reverent search after this Dynamic of Christianity we shall first look at the theological, religious, and social conditions amid which it is at work.

II

The reader will remember that on the evening after Faust's compact with Mephistopheles he sat down to translate the prologue of St. John's Gospel into German. This, by reason of the compact, had become a forbidden occupation, and he was at once interrupted by the howling of his dog, in whom just then his evil genius chanced to be embodied ; but not until he had opportunity to begin debate with himself upon the great question which the prologue raises.

" ' T is writ, ' In the Beginning was the Word ! '

I pause, perplexed ! Who now will help afford ?

I cannot the mere word so highly prize ;

I must translate it otherwise,

If by the Spirit guided as I read. ' In the Beginning was the Sense ! ' Take heed.

Lest thy too hasty pen be led astray !

Is force creative then of Sense the dower ? 4 In the Beginning was the Power ! '

Thus should it stand : yet while the line I trace,

A something warns me, once more to efface. The Spirit aids ! from anxious scruples freed, I write, * In the Beginning was the Deed ! ' "

Faust, part i. 876-89, Swanwick's trans.

It is a tribute to the prophetic element in Goethe's genius that as early as 1808 — and very probably a score of years earlier — he should thus have made Faust forecast the philosophical temper of the nineteenth century. It has been eminently critical in its attitude toward received opinion in every department of life ; and it has often chosen to deal with phenomena as though they were ultimate realities. The " thing in itself " in the scientific thought of the century has been the Deed rather than the Word or the Power. I do not mean, of course, that outside the school of Comte men have chosen to defend this as a thesis ; but they have been willing to accept it as a rule of life and thought.

Their experience, however, has not been satisfying. As the century grew old, it became increasingly evident that they could never rest in Faust's position, though they might sojourn there for a time. A somewhat larger view of the sphere and scope of man has been accepted. Phenomenon though he be, set amid kindred phenomena, there is still noumenon-stuff in him. Something in his personality bespeaks his kinship with the Power behind the Deed — the Reason which the Word utters. As the shallower and more materialistic scientific doctrine of the first three quarters of the century was forecast by Goethe in criticising the prologue of St. John, so the deeper and more vital faith of its later years has been suggested by Browning in his comment upon the prologue of Genesis.

" I find first Writ down for very A B C of fact, * In the Beginning God made heaven and earth ;' From which, no matter with what lisp, I spell And speak you out a consequence — that man, Man, — as befits the made, the inferior thing, — Purposed, since made, to grow, not make in turn, Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow, — Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain The good beyond him, — which attempt is growth, — Repeats God's process in man's due degree, Attaining man's proportionate result, — Creates, no, but resuscitates perhaps."

The Ring and the Book — Prologue.

The contrast between these utterances of two great interpreters of life separated by fourscore years is even more significant than at once appears. It extends to the manner as well as the matter of their prophecy. Goethe's word is graceful, but hollow and cynical. It is the message of one who has compassed life in its length and breadth only to find it of more than doubtful quality — worth beautifying and bedecking, perhaps, but to be adorned as a stage is adorned that a play may be elaborately produced. He says in effect to man,

" Thou 'rt after all — just what thou art, Put on thy head a wig with countless locks, Raise to a cubitus height thy learned socks, Still thou remainest ever — what thou art."

Faust, part i. 1451-4, Swanwick's trans.

Browning is as negligent of the Graces as Goethe is worshipful toward them. His style is as chaotic as that of his predecessor is orderly and finished. But the attitude of the man himself is ever prophetic and expectant. He looks to see things come to pass, and summons men to the exercise of their high prerogative of putting compulsion upon events. The very ruggedness of his method seems to reflect the abundance of the unorganized material which he sees lying in rough masses about him, waiting the constructive genius of the architect, bravely seconded as he would have it by the honest handiwork of the mason. Indeed, the relation and the contrast between the two poets are not unlike those which a very acute critic has discerned to exist between the Italian Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. The outlook of the former is toward culture, the exercise and enjoyment of balanced and regulated faculty; that of the latter toward religion, the genesis of new beliefs as to God and man, and the impulse to embody them in action. 1

It is not to be denied that the theological situation as it faced us at last century's end was primarily suggestive of chaos. The Zeitgeist had proved to be no respecter of great theological names or systems ; and those who have rejoiced to see the wreck of time-honored structures, or who have lifted up their voices to prophesy the passing of theology altogether from the sphere of rational human interest, have seemed able to enroll Time and the Hour among their allies. Two very stubborn facts, however, have maintained their ground amid the confusion. One is that the general subject-matter of theology — the raw material with which it deals — appears to possess permanent interest for men. They may grow weary of the theological terminology of