“—Microscopically, that is to say. The lawyer’s, and especially the successful lawyer’s, habit of thought tends towards earnestness as the sparks fly downwards.”
“For the average lawyer’s habit of thought is perhaps the most typical example of the average intelligent secular view of things. Is it not the final fruit of what is called common-sense, that is to say of the sense of common people? Our good Judge more than once speaks of himself and his audience as “persons of ordinary common-sense,” as opposed to “metaphysicians,” and especially “ecclesiastical metaphysicians.” He wants clear solid statements which his mind can see, and as it were, touch and handle. He scoffs at all statements other than these, looking upon them as at bottom sophistical. It follows that, when he comes to criticise the Bible, he claims the right to criticise it, not only with the same spirit, but with the same manner, as he would criticise any other book. He will not only look at it straight, fearlessly, logically, but he will demand of its statements that they be clear and solid, that they bear the ordinary interpretation of ordinary statements. He will apply the same principles of examination to Moses and Jesus as he would do to Blackstone or Chitty. And all the secular persons of ordinary common-sense cry out: ‘Hear, hear!’”
“With the Judge,” said Maddock, “a metaphysician is a man who examines the Bible by the aid of principles other than those of one who is ignorant of all contemporary history save that which the Bible gives him.”
“The consequence of which is, that he is capable of such a statement as, that ‘without question early Christianity was far more free from paganism and from the taint of superstition than the Christianity of our own time,’ and others of a like force.”
“He has no notion whatever of the philosophy of history—of, what I call, the development of divine Truth.”
“And yet he is contradictory enough, while asserting the degradation of the Christian ideal, to lay much stress on the development of Divine truth in a civilization that has, till comparatively lately, been Christianic. Yes, he sees the development of divine Truth, but he does not understand the forms which that development has taken in Christianity. The Trinity—the Atonement—the Deity of Christ—are to him ‘mere crude superstitions which disfigure and obscure pure and true religion.’ It never seems to have occurred to him that, although these doctrines may be empty formulæ to him, they were and are passionate realities to others.”
“That is very true.”
“He will talk with the same ignorance of what he would call Jesuolatry as a Protestant will of what he calls Mariolatry, neither he nor the Protestant understanding any more of a deep spiritual truth than its cut-and-dried dogmatical letter.” The Doctor assented, though with a movement of slight qualification.
“We agree at starting, then, that his criticism as that of an historical Bible student does not exist. The authorities he quotes are, as you point out in your Reply, ludicrous. They culminate in his poor little some ‘celebrated Unitarian minister’ or other, than whom the habit of thought of the legal Biblical critic can, it is to be hoped, no further go! He is too, we agree, careless and superficial even in his own style, but we must not lay too much stress on individual cases of this in the face of his request for ‘indulgence’ for his ‘doubtless many imperfections here.’”