The second stage is that in which the right of self-thought is applied to the criticism of theology, with a view to clear the way for life according to reason. This is not the work of a day or year, but is so prolonged that clearing the way becomes as it were a profession, and is at length pursued as an end instead of a means. Disputation becomes a passion and the higher state of life, of which criticism is the necessary precursor, is lost sight of, and many remain at this stage when it is reached and go no further.
The third stage is that where ethical motives of conduct apart from Christianity are vindicated for the guidance of those who are indifferent about theology, or who reject it altogether. Supplying to such persons Secular reasons for duty is Secularism, the range of which is illimitable. It begins where free thought usually ends, and constitutes a new form of constructive thought, the principles and policy of which are quite different from those acted upon in the preceding stages. Controversy concerns itself with what is; Secularism with what ought to be.
It is pertinent here to say that Christianity does not permit eclecticism—that is, it does not tolerate others selecting portions of Christian Scriptures possessing the mark of intrinsic truth, to which many could cheerfully conform in their lives. This rule compels all who cannot accept the entire Scriptures to deal with its teachings as they find them expressed, and for which Christianity makes itself responsible.
All the while it is quite evident that Christians do permit eclecticism among themselves. The great Congress of the Free Churches, recently held in Nottingham, representing the personal and vital form of Christianity, had a humanness and tolerance un manifested by Christianity before, showing that humanity is stronger than historical integrity. If any one, therefore, should draw up, as might be done, a theory of Christianity solely from such doctrines as are represented in the elliptical preaching, practice, and social life of Christians of to-day, a very different estimate of the Christian system would have to be given from that with which the author deals in the subsequent chapters. In them Christianity is represented as Free-thought has found it, and as it exists in the Scriptures, in the law, in the pulpit, and in the school, which constitute its total force in the respects in which it represses and discourages independent thought. Science, truth, and criticism have engrafted themselves on historic Christianity. It has now new articles of belief. When it avows them it will win larger concurrence and respect than it can now command.
CHAPTER II. THE QUESTION STATED
"Look forward—not backward; Look up—not down; Look around;
Lend a hand."*
—Edward Everett Hale, D. D.
Where a monarchy is master, inquiry is apt to be a disturbing element; and though exercised in the interest of the commonwealth it is none the less resented. Where the priest is master inquiry is sharply prohibited. The priest represents a spiritual monarchy in which the tenets of belief are fixed, assumed to be infallible, and to be prescribed by deity. Thus the priest regards inquiry as proceeding from an impertinent distrust, to which he is not reconciled on being assured that it is undertaken in the interest of truth. Thus the king denounces inquiry as sedition, and the priest as sin. In the end the inquirer finds himself an alien in State and Church, and laws are made against his life, his liberty, property, and veracity.**
* Dr. Hale did not popularise these energetic maxims of
earnestness in the connexion in which they are here used;
but their wisdom is of general application.
**When martyrdoms and imprisonments ceased, disabling laws
remained which imposed the Christian oath on all who
appealed to the courts, and any who had the pride of
veracity and declined to to swear, were denied protection
for property, or credence of their word.
Thus from the time when monarch and priest first set up their pretensions in the world, the inquiring mind has had small encouragement. When Protestantism came it merely conceded inquiry under direction, and only so far as it tended to confirm its own anti-papal tenets. But when inquiry claimed to be independent, unfettered, uncontrolled,—in fact to be free inquiry,—then Papist, Lutheran, and Dissenter, alike regarded it as dangerous, and stigmatised it by every term calculated to deter or dissuade people from it.