History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion

by Adam Storey Farrar

In the last lecture we brought the history of unbelief on the continent down to the present time. In this, the concluding one of the series, we shall complete the history of it in our own country or language during this century; and afterwards deduce the moral of our whole historical sketch, and suggest practical inferences.

In the account of unbelief in England, given in a previous lecture,[895] we hardly entered upon the present century, except so far as to observe the influence of the philosophy of the last on works of literature, such as those of Shelley; or on political speculations, such as those of Owen. Yet even here we were already made to feel the presence of the new influences, which have completely altered the tone of unbelief. Even Shelley's later works, though marked by the outbursts of bitter passion against religion, contain more of the spiritual perception which is the characteristic of present thought:[896] [pg 307] and the oblivion into which Owen's system soon fell, save as it has been resuscitated in moments of political disaffection, together with its failure to leave a permanent impression, like the socialist systems of France, arose from the circumstance that the one-sided survey of man's nature, on which it was based, could not deceive an age which was characterised by an increasing depth in its moral perceptions.

The unbelief of the present day differs from that of the last century in tone and character; and in many respects shares the traits already noticed in the modern intellectualism of Germany, and the eclecticism of France. It is not disgraced by ribaldry; hardly at all by political agitation against the religion which it disbelieves: it is marked by a show of fairness, and professes a wish not to ignore facts, nor to leave them unexplained. Conceding the existence of spiritual and religious elements in human nature, it admits that their subjective existence as facts of consciousness, no less than their objective expression in the history of religion, demands explanation, and cannot be hastily set aside, as was thought in the last century in France, by the vulgar theory that the one is factitious, and the other the result of priestly contrivance. The writers are men whose characters and lives forbid the idea that their unbelief is intended as an excuse for licentiousness. Denying revealed religion, they cling the more tenaciously to the moral instincts: their tone is one of earnestness; their inquiries are marked by a profound conviction of the possibility of finding truth: not content with destroying, their aim is to reconstruct. Their opinions are variously manifested. Some of them appear in treatises of philosophy; others insinuate themselves indirectly in literature: some of them relate to Christian doctrines; others to the criticism of scripture documents: but in all cases their authors either leave a residuum which they profess will satisfy the longings of human nature, or confess with deep pain that their conclusions are in direct conflict with human aspirations; and, instead of revelling in the ruin which they [pg 308] have made, deplore with a tone of sadness the impossibility of solving the great enigma.

It is clear that writers like these offer a wholly different appearance from those of the last century. The deeper appreciation manifested by them of the systems which they disbelieve, and the more delicate learning of which they are able to avail themselves, constitute features formerly lacking in the works of even the most serious-minded deists,[897] and require a difference in the spirit, if not in the mode, in which Christians must seek to refute them.

The solution of this remarkable phenomenon is to be found in the universal change which has passed over every department of mental activity in England in the present century. The peculiar feature of it may be described by the word spirituality, if that word be used to imply, in contrast to the utilitarian and materialist tendencies of the last century, the consciousness in ourselves, and appreciation in others, of the operation of the human spirit, its rights, its powers, and its effects. This conviction stimulates in one the vivid consciousness of duty and moral earnestness; in another it hallows human labour, and throws a blessedness around the struggles of industry; in another it kindles the inspiration of art, breaking up conventionalities of style, or expresses itself in poetry, in soliloquies on the inner feelings or in meditations on life, as a set of problems to be explained by the heart. Elsewhere it lifts the man of science above the grovelling idea that discoveries must be sought solely for the purpose of utility. Again, transferring its perception of the operation of spirit to the world of nature, it not unfrequently attributes a soul thereto, and induces a subtle pantheism. Sometimes too by a singular reaction it has a tendency, by the moral earnestness which it stimulates, to depress intellectual speculation, and to wear the appearance of fostering the utilitarianism which it combats.

Such is the central principle which characterises our literature, and which, through the diffusion of [pg 309] reading, has moulded the public judgment, and, operating in every department of educated thought, has even altered the form in which unbelief expresses itself.

Probably the successive steps of the growth of this subjective tendency in literature might admit of easy statement. The meditative school of poetry, which flourished early in the century[898] among a few refined minds at the English lakes; which loved to ponder mystically on nature or on the spiritual world, or to catch the thought excited in the mind by nature, and follow the series of thoughts which the law of mental association suggested,[899] was one means of creating a subjective and spiritual taste among the youth of the generation which succeeded.

Another cause was found in the philosophy which arose. The years following the general declaration of peace, while the public attention was directed to the political reforms which were consummated in the Reform act, were marked by the thorough investigation of the first principles of every branch of knowledge. Two minds of that period have, more than any other, affected the succeeding generation; the one a utilitarian philosopher, the other an intuitional.

Both alike carried out the system which Descartes and Bacon had inaugurated, of finding the standard of truth in the analysis of the powers of the human understanding. But Bentham criticised to destroy the past; Coleridge to rebuild it. The one asked, Is a doctrine [pg 310] true? The other asked, what men had meant by it who had thought it so?[900] The one overlooked the truth previously known; the other too boldly strove to rebuild it from his own consciousness, after surrendering the old proofs of it. The one, with the practical spirit of the Englishman, looked upon an opposing opinion only as an object suited for attack; the other, with a spirit caught from Germany, felt that there was some truth everywhere latent. But both were reformers; both stimulated the revolt against the cold spirit of the last century; both contributed to create, the one indirectly, the other intentionally, a subjective spirit by their psychological analysis.

Even movements which at first sight seem most alien to this spirit in character, have really been affected unconsciously by it.[901] The ecclesiastical reaction which sprang up about a quarter of a century ago, though seemingly most objective in its nature, witnessed not less than the very opposite, or rationalistic tendency, to the presence of this influence. For both alike were founded on the idea that religion lacked a philosophical groundwork: both sought a new ground of faith different from that of the last century; the one in those utterances of consciousness which created a reverence for historic tradition; the other in those intuitions which were supposed to rise above scripture and tradition, and to form the basis and measure of both.