History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion

by Adam Storey Farrar

The causes just named in literature and philosophy respectively, are some of those which have contributed to create or to foster the change in the character of the literature, and in the spirit of the age, which has produced the alteration of tone which exists in the modern sceptical literature.

In passing from these remarks on the peculiarly subjective tone of modern unbelief, and the literary influences which have produced the general change in the public taste, of which it is only one example, to an enumeration of the authors who have given expression to doubt, and of the specific forms of doubt now existing, we encounter a difficulty of classification.

The most obvious arrangement would be to place the writers in groups, according as they manifest a tendency toward atheism, pantheism, deism, or rationalism,[902] respectively; but the mode which more nearly accords with our general purpose would be to adopt a philosophical rather than a theological classification, and arrange them according to the variety in the tests of truth employed by them, and the sources from which their arguments start, rather than the conclusions at which they arrive. Perhaps the advantage of both plans will be in a great degree combined, if we classify them according to the branch of science, physical, mental, or critical, from which the doubts take their rise.

We shall commence with those writers who make sensation to be the last appeal in belief, or whose doubts arise either from the methods or the results of physical science. This class of opinions varies from positive disbelief of the supernatural, generated by the fixed belief in the stability of nature and disbelief of miraculous interference, to merely isolated objections suggested by the conflict between the discoveries of natural science and the statements of holy scripture.

The name which most fitly describes the extreme form of unbelief is Positivism.[903] This system of philosophy, [pg 312] already stated to have been invented by Comte, is silent about the existence of a Deity. It inculcates the belief in general laws, and acknowledges the order in Nature, which we are accustomed to regard as the result of mind; but declines to argue to the existence of a designing mind, where the evidence cannot be verified by proof referable to sensation. Nature's laws are in its view the only Providence; obedience to them the only piety. A few minds may be found, which not only accept the positive philosophy, but even receive the religion taught in the positivist catechism.[904] Unable to satisfy the longings of their heart by this system of Cosmism, they receive the extravagant idea of the worship of humanity, which Comte invented in his later days.

Such a creed cannot hold the masses. But Positivism in another shape, called Secularism,[905] is actively [pg 313] propagated among the lower orders. Replacing the sensuous philosophy and political antipathies of Owen, it is taught, unconnected with the political agitation which marked his views, as a philosophy of life, and a substitute for religion. It asserts three great principles:—first, that nature is the only subject of knowledge; the existence of a personal God being regarded as uncertain: secondly, that science is the only Providence: and thirdly, that the great business of man is, as the name, secularism, implies, to attend to the affairs of the present world, which is certain, rather than of a future, which is uncertain. Not content however with this negative position, the writers of this class, as was to be expected, have directed positive attacks against the special doctrines of Christianity, and regard the Bible to be the enemy of progress.[906]

It is impossible to estimate the extent to which these views are diffused. The statistics of the sale of secularist tracts would doubtless give an exaggerated idea of it. The high standard of morality advocated in them, so likely to attract rather than repel, the clear writing, and the agreement of the views with the experience afforded by the daily life of working men, give them power among the lower orders. The absorbing character of labour has a tendency, especially in an advanced state of civilization, to depress the sense of the supernatural [pg 314] in man, and fix his thoughts on the present world: and it is generally the sense of trouble alone which can lift men out of themselves, and recall to their remembrance the presence of a God on whom the sorrowing heart may lean for help.

Opinions derived from positivism, or at least from physical science, enter into other spheres of thought than those just named; and both affect writers who hardly touch upon the subject of religion; and create difficulties in the minds of Christians themselves, either in reference to prime doctrines of religion, or the particular teaching on physical questions implied in the sacred books.

The diffusion of the fundamental conception of the perpetuity of nature's laws, has a tendency to create in literature a mode of viewing the world alien to the providential view of the divine government implied in religion. The application of statistics in social philosophy for the discovery of the general laws which regulate society and create civilization, not unfrequently leaves an impression that man as well as matter depends upon fixed laws; which is irreconcileable with belief in human freedom or in divine interference, and sometimes causes religion to be regarded as a conservative force, which in its nature is alien to civilization.[907]

Nor is the danger confined to the various branches of secular literature: the views of even religious men are not unfrequently modified by it, or painful doubts are created where the head contradicts the heart. In proportion as phenomena are shown not to depend on chance, the misgiving is felt as to the reality of special providence and the value of prayer, in reference to temporal affairs. The sphere for confiding petitions is felt to be narrowed; and miracles, instead of becoming an evidence for religion, become a difficulty. Even where fundamental difficulties, such as these, do not sap the religious life, the belief that the inspiration of the sacred books guarantees the truth of the views of physical [pg 315] science, the cosmogony, physiology, ethnology, and chronology, contained therein, creates a further body of difficulties,[908] less fundamental but more painful, because founded on the apparent want of harmony of scripture with the progressive discoveries of natural science.