Of what passed at the subsequent interview nothing must be said except that the dying man (whose anticipations of death were speedily verified) expressed the conviction that one reason why he had fallen into that abyss of agnosticism—for an abyss he then felt it to be—was that he had been “taught to believe too much when young;” and he urged and almost besought that something might be done soon to “give young men a religion that would wear.” These words were not to be forgotten; they recurred again and again to the author with the force of a command. The present work is an attempt to carry them into effect, an attempt, by one who has passed through doubts into conviction, to look the doubting reader in the face and say, “This theology and Christology of mine is not merely literary. I feel with joy of heart that God is not unknown to man. Try even now to feel with me.”
The author does not profess to clear Christianity from all “difficulties.” If a revelation is to enlarge our conceptions of God, it must involve some spiritual effort on our part to receive the larger truth; if it claims to be historical, it may well impose on some of its adherents the labour needed for the judgment of historical evidence; if it prompts, without enforcing, obedience, it must excite in all some questionings as to the causes which led the Revealer not to make His revelation irresistibly convincing. Even the explanations of the mysterious phenomena of motion, light, and chemistry, involve “difficulties” in the acceptance of still more mysterious Laws which we cannot at present explain. Nevertheless we all feel that we understand astronomy better in the light of the Law of gravitation: and in the same way some may feel that Christianity becomes more spiritual, as well as more clear, when it becomes more natural; and that many of its so-called “difficulties” fade or vanish, when what may be called its celestial and its terrestrial phenomena are found to rest upon similar principles.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| Letter | Page |
| [1] Introductory | [1] |
| [2] Personal | [5] |
| [3] Knowledge | [20] |
| [4] Ideals | [29] |
| [5] Ideals and Tests | [40] |
| [6] Imagination and Reason | [47] |
| [7] The Culture of Faith | [59] |
| [8] Faith and Demonstration | [72] |
| [9] Satan and Evolution | [80] |
| [10] Illusions | [97] |
| [11] What is Worship? | [111] |
| [12] The Worship of Christ | [125] |
| [13] What is “Nature”? | [134] |
| [14] The Miracles of the Old Testament | [142] |
| [15] The Miracles of the New Testament | [158] |
| [16] The Growth of the Gospels | [170] |
| [17] Christian Illusions | [185] |
| [18] Are the Miracles inseparable from the Life of Christ? | [201] |
| [19] The Feeding of the Four Thousand and the Five Thousand | [212] |
| [20] The Manifestation of Christ to St. Paul | [225] |
| [21] The Development of Imagination and its bearing on the Revelation of Christ’s Resurrection | [233] |
| [22] Christ’s Resurrection regarded naturally | [240] |
| [23] Faith in the spiritual Resurrection is better than so-called knowledge of the material Resurrection | [246] |
| [24] What is a Spirit? | [258] |
| [25] The Incarnation | [267] |
| [26] Prayer, Heaven, Hell | [281] |
| [27] Pauline Theology | [298] |
| [28] Objections | [310] |
| [29] Can Natural Christianity commend itself to the masses? | [320] |
| APPENDIX | |
| [30] Can a believer in Natural Christianity be a Minister in the Church of England? | [339] |
| [31] What the Bishops might do | [354] |
| [Definitions] | [369] |
I
INTRODUCTORY
My dear ——,
I am more pained than surprised to infer from your last letter that your faith has received a severe shock. A single term at the University has sufficed to make you doubt whether you retain a belief in miracles; and “If miracles fall, the Bible falls; and with the fall of the Bible I lose Christ; and if I must regard Christ as a fanatic, I do not see how I can believe in a God who suffered such a one as Christ thus to be deceived and to deceive others.” Such appear to be the thoughts that are passing through your mind, as I infer them from incidental and indirect expressions rather than from any definite statement.
Unfortunately I understand all this too well not to be able to follow with ease such phases of disbelief even when conveyed in hints. Many young men begin by being taught to believe too much, a great deal too much. Then, when they find they must give up something, (the husk of the kernel) their teachers too often bid them swallow husk and all, on pain of swallowing nothing: and they prefer to swallow nothing. An instance of this at once occurs to me. Many years ago, a young man who wished to be ordained, asked me to read the Old Testament with him. We set to work at once and read some miraculous history—I forget precisely what—in which I thought my young friend must needs see a difficulty. So I began to point out how the difficulty might be at least diminished by critical considerations. I say “I began”: for I stopped as soon as I had begun, finding that my friend saw no difficulty at all. He accepted every miracle on every page of the Old and New Testament on the authority of the Bible; just as a Roman Catholic accepts every ecclesiastical doctrine on the authority of the Church. This seemed to me not a state of mind that I ought to interfere with: I might do more harm than good. So I stopped. But I have since regretted it. Circumstances prevented me from meeting my friend for some weeks. During that time he had fallen in with companions of negative views, against which he had no power to maintain his position: and he had passed from believing everything to believing nothing. That is only too easy a transition; but I hope you will never experience it. Surely there is a medium between swallowing the husk, and throwing the nut away. Is it not possible to throw away the husk and keep the kernel?
Now I have no right (and therefore I try to feel no wish) to extract from you a confidence that you do not care to repose in me. I have never tried to shake any one’s faith in miracles. There may come—I think there will soon come—a time when a belief in miracles will be found so incompatible with the reverence which we ought to feel for the Supreme Order as almost to necessitate superstition, and to encourage immorality in the holder of the belief: and then it might be necessary to express one’s condemnation of miracles plainly and even aggressively. But that time has not come yet: and for most people, at present, an acceptance of miracles seems, and perhaps is, a necessary basis for their acceptance of Christ. In such minds I would no more wish to disturb the belief in miracles than I would shake a little child’s faith that his father is perfectly good and wise. But when a man says, “the miracles of Christ are inextricably connected with the life of Christ; I am forced to reject the former, and therefore I must also reject the latter”—then I feel moved to shew him that there is no such inextricable connection, and that Christ will remain for us a necessary object of worship, even if we detach the miracles from the Gospels. Now I cannot do this without shewing that the miraculous accounts stand on a lower level than the rest of the Gospel narrative, and that they may have been easily introduced into the Gospels without any sufficient basis of fact, and yet without any intention to deceive; so that the discrediting of the miracles will not discredit their non-miraculous context. In doing this, I might possibly destroy any lingering vestige of belief which you may still have in the miraculous; and this I am most unwilling to do, if you find miracles a necessary foundation of Christian faith.
I do not therefore quite know as yet how I ought to try to help you, except by saying that I have myself passed through the same valley of doubt through which you are passing now, and that I have reached a faith in Christ which is quite independent of any belief in the miraculous, and which enables me not only to trust in Him, but also to worship Him. This new faith appears to me purer, nobler, and happier, as well as safer, than the old: but I do not feel sure that it is attainable (in the present condition of thought) without more unprejudiced reflection and study than most people are willing to devote to subjects of this kind. And to give up the old faith, without attaining the new, would be a terrible disaster. Hence I am in doubt, not about what is best, but about what may be best for you. Do not at all events assume—so much I can safely say—that you must give up your faith in Christ, if you are obliged to give up your belief in miracles. At the very least, wait a while; stand on the old paths; keep up the old habits, above all, the habit of prayer; pause and look round you a little before taking the next step. I do not say, though I am inclined to say, “avoid for the present all discussions with people of negative views,” because I fear my advice, though really prudent, would seem to you cowardly: but I do unhesitatingly say, “avoid all frivolous talk, and light, airy, epigrammatic conversations on religious subjects.” You cannot hope to retain or regain faith if you throw away the habit of reverence. With this advice, farewell for the present.