We could not expect early concurrence with the policy of preferring ethical to theological questions of theism and unprovable immortality. We accepted the maxim of Sir Philip Sydney—namely, that "Reason cannot show itself more reasonable than to leave reasoning on things above reason." We are not in the land of the real yet, common sense is not half so romantic to the average man as the transcendental, and an atheistical advocacy got the preference with the impetuous. The Secularistic proposal to consult the instruction of an adversary proved less exciting than his destruction. The patience and resource it implies to work by reason alone are not to the taste of those to whom a kick is easier than a kindness, and less troublesome than explanation. Those who have the refutatory passion intense say you must clear the ground before you can build upon it. Granted; nevertheless, the signs of the times show that a good deal of ground has been cleared. The instinct of progress renders the minority, who reflect, more interested in the builder than the undertaker. What would be thought of a general who delayed occupying a country he had conquered until he had extirpated all the inhabitants in it? So, in the kingdom of error, he who will go on breaking images, without setting statues up in their place, will give superstition a long life. The savage man does not desert his idols because you call them ugly. It is only by slow degrees, and under the influence of better-carved gods, that his taste is changed and his worship improved. The reader will see that Secularism leaves the mystery of deity to the chartered imagination of man, and does not attempt to close the door of the future, but holds that the desert of another existence belongs only to those who engage in the service of man in this life. Prof. F. W. Newman says: "The conditions of a future life being unknown, there is no imaginable means of benefiting ourselves and others in it, except by aiming after present goodness."*
Men have a right to look beyond this world, but not to overlook it. Men, if they can, may connect themselves with eternity, but they cannot disconnect themselves from humanity without sacrificing duty. The purport of Secularism is not far from the tenor of the famous sermon by the Rev. James Caird, of which the Queen said:
"He explained in the most simple manner what real religion is—not a thing to drive us from the world, not a perpetual moping over 'good' books; but being and doing good."**
* Prof. P. W. Newman, who is always clear beyond all
scholars, and candid beyond all theologians, has published a
Palinode retracting former conclusions he had published, and
admitting the uncertainty of the evidence in favor of after-
existence.
** The Queen on the Rev. J. Caird's sermon, Leaves from the
Journal of Our Life in the Highlands.
This end we reach not by a theological, but by a Secular, path.
CHAPTER XXII. SELF-EXTENDING PRINCIPLES
"Prodigious actions may as well be done
By weaver's issue as by prince's son."
—Dryden.
SO FAR as Secularism is reasonable, it must be self-extending among all who think. Adherents of that class are slowly acquired. Accessions begin in criticism, though that, as we have seen, is apt to stop there. In all movements the most critical persons are the least suggestive of improvements. Constructiveness only excites enthusiasm in fertile minds. After the Cowper Street Discussion with the Rev. Brewin Grant in 1853, see Chapter X, page 50, societies, halls, and newspapers adopted the Secular name. In 1863 appeared the Christian Reasoner, edited by the Rev. Dr. Rylance, a really reasoning clergyman, whom I afterwards had the pleasure to know in New York. His publication was intended to be a substitute for the Reasoner, which I had then edited for seventeen years. But when the Reasoner commenced, in 1846, Christian believing was far more thought of than Christian reasoning. One line in Dr. Rylance's Christian Reasoner was remarkable, which charged us with "forgetfulness of the necessary incompleteness of Re-velation."
So far from forgetting it, it was one of the grounds on which Secularism was founded. However, it is to the credit of Dr. Rylance that he should have preceded, by thirty years, the Bishop of Worcester in discerning the shortcomings of Revelation, as cited in Chapter XIX, page 101.