The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

I

The first of these motives—humanitarianism—has powerfully influenced the Christian world by asserting the rights of man, liberty, equality and the spirit of fraternity, the sense of human brotherhood. The germs of the humanitarian movement may be traced in the eighteenth century, as in the teaching of Lessing and Herder and Rousseau; in religious movements like the Great Awakening in the United States, the revival in England under Wesley and Whitefield, in tentative efforts for the abolition of slavery (Hopkins and Clarkson), and prison reform (John Howard). But the nineteenth century has been distinguished above all the other Christian centuries in the results achieved by the sentiment of humanity. It has led to the abolition of slavery under English rule, in the United States, and in Russia; to many reform movements of every kind and degree, wherever there existed actual or latent tyranny, which robbed humanity of its inherent privileges.

The humanitarian sentiment is Christian in its origin, derived primarily from the conviction of the incarnation of God in Christ. Christ appears in history as the leader of humanity in the struggle for freedom. Slowly but surely ever since His advent, the world of man has been moving forward to the attainment of the ideal of humanity revealed in Him. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. And if the Son of God shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” The progress towards freedom inspired by Him who taught the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men has been accomplished in the face of great hinderances and long reverses, overcoming obstacles which would have been insuperable without Christian faith. In the nineteenth century the movement towards human freedom seems almost to have reached its culmination. Within the sphere of religion the progress is most manifest in the spread of Christian missions, which stand out in any review of the century as one of its most extraordinary achievements. It might be justly designated as a missionary age. So intense and persistent has been its devotion to the gospel of Christ as essential for man that when the century closed it might be truly said that the round world had been girdled with Christian missions, whose results are more significant for civilization, as well as for religion, than any statistics can reveal. The missionary has been the pioneer, it is becoming increasingly evident, of momentous changes yet to appear.

The sentiment of humanity has operated as a motive in the study of human history, giving to historical inquiry a new interest and impetus. No age has been so fruitful in the results of historical research, with conclusions of vital importance for every department of life, but chiefly this, that an independent place has been vindicated for humanity, as having a life of its own distinct from and above the natural order of the physical world. The study of man as he appears in history has tended to strengthen faith in the essential truths of religion, opening up as it has done the deeper knowledge of the nature of man to which the religion of Christ appeals; for the modern method of studying history, as compared with earlier methods, consists in seeking for those inward subjective moods of the human soul which lie beneath creeds or institutions, and not solely in the accurate description of the objective fact. The facts of human life call for interpretation, and for this the historian must search. Thus has been born what is almost a new department of inquiry—the philosophy of history (Hegel and many others). Differ as do these attempts at a philosophy of history, they yet possess one ruling idea—the conviction of a development in the life of humanity when viewed as a whole. The idea of development controlled the higher intellectual life of the first half of the century. It was applied with important results to the study of ecclesiastical history, by Schleiermacher, Neander, Gieseler, Baur, Rothe, Bunsen, and many others, by the Roman Catholic Möhler, in his Symbolik, and by John Henry Newman, in however one-sided and imperfect manner. The doctrine of development found its classic formula in the lines of Tennyson:

“Yet, I doubt not through the ages
One increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened
With the process of the suns.”

The influence of the doctrine of development has been felt in the study of Scripture, leading to a recognition of progressiveness in the divine revelation, whose record has been preserved in the Old and New Testaments (Mozley, Ruling Ideas in the Early Ages). By means of this truth have been overcome, till they now seem unworthy, the objections to the Old Testament on the ground that it gave sanction to cruelty, deceit, or an imperfect morality. But the inference has also followed that the revelation of God to humanity must be searched for in the sacred records, and even by the light of close critical scrutiny, if the divine utterance is to be distinguished from crude misapprehensions or misapplications. Forms of literary expression, current usages, the historical environment of the time—for these allowance must be made as their influence is recognized. The science of biblical criticism has gained from the study of general history a larger knowledge of the nature of man, which, in turn, has made the study of the Bible more profound and thorough, because more real and human than were the biblical studies of the eighteenth century. The primary question which it has been found necessary to ask in regard to any doctrine or institution is not whether it is true—for the canons of truth may vary with the relative position of the inquirer; but, rather, what does it mean? When the meaning of the record is seen, the question of its truth has answered itself.

The effect of these studies, even of what is called the “higher criticism,” has not lessened the authority of the Bible or changed the character of Christianity as “a religion of the book”; but their tendency has been to vindicate the unique and essential place of the Bible in literature as containing the veritable record of a divine revelation. Some things, indeed, have been changed: the order in which the books of the Bible were written is not the order in which they stand; some of them are of composite authorship, whose various parts were written at different times; the traditional chronology, known as Ussher’s (1656), has been abandoned, nor is there anything in the Bible which places it in opposition to the teachings of geology relative to the length of time during which man has occupied the earth; the historical order of priest and prophet has been reversed, so that the voice of prophecy comes before the decline into ritual (Wellhausen and others). Popular misapprehensions tend to vanish in the light of a true insight and interpretation, such as that the first chapter of Genesis was intended to be an infallible record of the divine order in the creation of the world. That a similar account of the creation is found in Babylonian literature only shows that the Bible writer was illustrating by the best scientific knowledge of the time the vastly higher spiritual truth with which the Bible opens, that the creation is the work of God, thus leading man to the worship of God and away from the lower worships of sun and moon and all the hosts of Heaven.

The mechanical conceptions as to the mode of inspiration and revelation tend to give way before a larger and truer conception of the process by which the revelation is made—that God speaks to man actually and authoritatively through the experience of the events of life. Thus revelation becomes a living process, and all later history may become a commentary on sacred history, renewing and confirming the primal utterance of God to the soul of man. Much, it is true, yet remains to be done in bridging the gulf between the learned and scientific interpretation of the sacred record and the popular apprehension, which, formed in the uncritical moments of youth, often persists to mature years and constitutes a source of confusion and weakness. A similar situation was seen in the Middle Ages in the wide breach which existed between the scholastic theologians and the popular mind.

A new department has been added to religious inquiry in Comparative Religion, which aims at an impartial investigation and free from prejudice, and is also moved by the sentiment of a common humanity to respect all utterances of religious feeling in the soul of man. How widely the nineteenth century has advanced in this respect is seen by recalling a statement of Dr. Johnson: “There are two objects of curiosity—the Christian world and the Mohammedan world. All the rest may be considered as barbarous.” One of the most representative monuments of religious scholarship in the last century is Professor Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East. Some inquirers in this unfamiliar department have worked under the impression that these ancient religions were equal in value to the Christian revelation; others even have thought them to be in some respects superior. And, in general, the first effect of the discovery that there was truth in other religions had a tendency to weaken the claim of Christianity to be the absolute religion. But as the results of the study have been placed in their normal perspective, it becomes evident that they only confirm the words of St. Paul, that God has at no time left Himself without witnesses in the world. Revelation also is seen to have been a universal process; and profound spiritual motives are to be discerned beneath the diverse manifestations of the religious instincts. Yet, on the whole, the preponderating judgment leads to the conclusion that Christianity contains the larger, even the absolute, truth; that while it confirms some features in these religions as true, it condemns others as false; that Christianity also has for one of its essential characteristics an assimilative power, which not only enables, but forces, it to appropriate as its own any aspects of truth contained in other religions, which have not hitherto been illustrated in the history of the Christian Church. Nor is the familiar test applied to religions wholly indefensible which judges them by their historical fruits or associations. In accordance with this test, Confucianism is represented by China, Hinduism by India, Buddhism by Ceylon and Siam, Mohammedanism by Turkey, Christianity by Europe and America.

The influence of the humanitarian sentiment may be further traced in softening the asperities of some forms of traditional theology, as, for example, the Calvinistic doctrine of election with its alternatives of reprobation or preterition. These certainly have not been the favorite doctrines which have commended themselves to the spirit of the age. The effort has been made to bring the doctrine of the atonement within the limits of human experience. It has been found impossible to present the doctrine of endless punishment after the manner of an earlier age. Many causes have combined to deepen the sense of mystery in which is enveloped the destiny of man, and there has been begotten in consequence an unwillingness to dogmatize where in earlier times such a reluctance was not felt. In this connection may be mentioned two religious bodies, which took their rise about the beginning of the century—Universalism, proclaiming ultimate salvation for all men; and Unitarianism, asserting the dignity of man and his divine endowment. But in all the Churches alike has the same humanizing force been felt, leading to efforts in theological reconstruction in order to make it apparent that the primary truths of Christianity are not merely arbitrary principles or arrangements unrelated to life and to the needs of the soul, but that in their essential quality there is conformity with the larger reason of humanity, with that feeling for the inherent worth of things out of which reason proceeds, and with which its conclusions must conform.