NOTES ON THE RELIGIOUS TRADITION.[23]
It is impossible for any scholar to have read, and studied, and reflected without forming a strong impression of the entire uncertainty of history in general, and of the history of Christianity in particular.
It is equally impossible for any man to live, act, and reflect without feeling the significance and depth of the moral and religious teaching which passes amongst us by the name of Christianity.
The more a man feels the value, the true import of this, the more will he hesitate to base it upon those foundations which as a scholar he feels to be unstable. Manuscripts are doubtful, records may be unauthentic, criticism is feeble, historical facts must be left uncertain.
Even in like manner my own personal experience is most limited, perhaps even most delusive: what have I seen, what do I know? Nor is my personal judgment a thing which I feel any great satisfaction in trusting. My reasoning powers are weak; my memory doubtful and confused; my conscience, it may be, callous or vitiated.
I see not how it is possible for a man disinclined to adopt arbitrarily the watchword of a party to the sacrifice of truth—indisposed to set up for himself, and vehemently urge some one point—I see not what other alternative any sane and humble-minded man can have but to throw himself upon the great religious tradition.
But I see not either how any upright and strict dealer with himself—how any man not merely a slave to spiritual appetites, affections, and wants—any man of intellectual as well as moral honesty—and without the former the latter is but a vain thing—I see not how any one who will not tell lies to himself, can dare to affirm that the narrative of the four Gospels is an essential integral part of that tradition. I do not see that it is a great and noble thing, a very needful or very worthy service, to go about proclaiming that Mark is inconsistent with Luke, that the first Gospel is not really Matthew’s, nor the last with any certainty John’s, that Paul is not Jesus, &c. &c. &c. It is at the utmost a commendable piece of honesty; but it is no new gospel to tell us that the old one is of dubious authenticity.
I do not see either, on the other hand, that it can be lawful for me, for the sake of the moral guidance and the spiritual comfort, to ignore all scientific or historic doubts, or if pressed with them to the utmost, to take refuge in Romish infallibility, and, to avoid sacrificing the four Gospels, consent to accept the legends of the saints and the tales of modern miracles.
I believe that I may without any such perversion of my reason, without any such mortal sin against my own soul, which is identical with reason, and against the Supreme Giver of that soul and reason, still abide by the real religious tradition.
It is indeed just conceivable that the Divine Orderer of the universe, and Father of our spirits, should have so created these and ordered that, as that the one should be directly contradictory to the other. It may be that the facts which we, by the best force of our intellects, discern, are by His ordinance delusions, intended of a set purpose to tempt us from our highest path, that of His love and the worship of Him. It is conceivable that he has subtly arranged that two and two should be four (by delusion) everywhere, that our faith (the one reality) may be tried when we propose to harmonise it with this fallacy. It is possible that as our senses and appetites would make us believe bad things, because pleasant, therefore good, so also our reason may cheat us to believe wrong things, because reasonable, therefore right. The rule which He has placed to measure all things by, and bid us trust in them implicitly, may be, by His special purpose, false for the highest things. What in our solemn courts of justice we should call false witness, may be in the Church to decide our verdict; what in the exchange would be imposture, may be in the sanctuary pure truth. I say, this thing is conceivable, yet it is conceivable also that sense and mind, that intellect and religion, things without and things within, are in harmony with each other. If it is conceivable that the earth in the natural world goes round the sun, delusively to tempt us from the revealed act of the supernatural world that the sun goes round the earth, it is also conceivable that the heavens, as astronomically discerned, declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handywork.