Consequently, upon all this we are quite consistent in maintaining that all great teachers of whatever kind are vehicles of revelation, each in his proper sphere, and in accepting their verified conclusions as Divinely true; while we reject them the moment they transgress their limits, as thereby convicted of unsound thinking, and therefore deprived of the Divine assistance which was the secret of their previous success. And though such transgression may in many cases involve a minimum of moral error, there are abundant instances in the history of thought that it is not always so. Francis Bacon, and the penitent, pardoned Abelard are typical, in different degrees, of a countless multitude of lesser men.
'For our knowledge of first principles,' says S. Augustine, 'we have recourse to that inner truth that presides over the mind. And that indwelling teacher of the mind is Christ, the changeless virtue and eternal wisdom of God, to which every rational soul has recourse. But so much only is revealed to each as his own good or evil will enables him to receive[211].'
'Nor is it the fault of the Word,' adds S. Thomas, 'that all men do not attain to the knowledge of the truth, but some remain in darkness. It is the fault of men who do not turn to the Word and so cannot fully receive Him. Whence there is still more or less darkness remaining among men, in proportion to the lesser or greater degree in which they turn to the Word and receive Him. And so John, to preclude any thought of deficiency in the illuminating power of the Word, after saying "that life was the light of men," adds "the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." The darkness is not because the Word does not shine, but because some do not receive the light of the Word; as while the light of the material sun is shining over the world, it is only dark to those whose eyes are closed or feeble[212].'
It has been necessary to dwell upon this doctrine because it has an important bearing upon two further questions, which the philosophy of evolution has brought into new prominence, the relation of Christianity to previous philosophy and other religions. It was the fashion, not long ago, to give an undue value to the part played by environment or surrounding circumstances in the creation of characters and institutions and creeds, to the exclusion of all elements of native originality. And the attempt was made accordingly, in various ways, to represent Christianity as the natural product of the different religions and philosophies which were current in the world at the time of its appearing. But the further study of evolution has qualified this whole mode of thought by the way in which, as we have seen above, it has led us to look at things as organisms rather than machines. A machine has no internal principle of unity. Its unity is impressed upon it from without. And it may be granted therefore, for the sake of argument, that we might conceive a machine or number of machines as formed like the patterns in a caleidoscope by a happy coincidence of atoms; and man, if he were only a machine, as strictly the creature of circumstance. But an organism is a different thing. Dependent as it is upon its environment in an hundred various ways, it is yet more dependent upon its own selective and assimilative capacity, in other words upon its own individuality, its self. And so the notions of individuality, originality, personal identity have been restored to their place in the world of thought. The old error lingers on, and is sometimes crudely re-asserted, especially in its anti-Christian bearing; but it has been discredited by science, and is in fact a thing of the past. And in consequence of this, the attempt can no longer be plausibly made to account for Christianity apart from the personality of Jesus Christ. The mythical theories have had their day. And it is recognised on all hands that mere aspiration can no more create a religion than appetite can create food. A foundation needs a founder.
But the attack thus diverted from our religion glances off on our theology. The Christian religion, it is granted, was founded by Jesus Christ; but its theological interpretation is viewed as a misinterpretation, a malign legacy from the dying philosophies of Greece. This objection is as old as the second century, and has been revived at intervals in various forms, and with varying degrees of success. Modern historical criticism has only fortified it with fresh instances. But it has no force whatever if we believe that the Divine Word was for ever working in the world in co-operation with human reason; inspiring the higher minds among the Jews with their thirst for holiness, and so making ready for the coming of the Holy One in Jewish flesh: but inspiring the Greeks also with their intellectual eagerness, and preparing them to recognise Him as the Eternal Reason, the Word, the Truth; and to define and defend, and demonstrate that Truth to the outer world. The fact that Greek philosophy had passed its zenith and was declining did not make its influence upon Christianity an evil one, a corruption of the living by the dead. It was only dying to be incorporated in a larger life. The food that supports our existence owes its power of nutrition to the fact, that it too once lived with an inferior life of its own. And so the Greek philosophy was capable of assimilation by the Christian organism, from the fact that it too had once been vitally inspired by the life that is the light of men. And the true successors of Plato and Aristotle were the men of progress who realized this fact; not Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, but the Fathers of the Church.
Clement and Origen, Athanasius and Augustine, the Gregories and Basil understood Greek philosophy as clearly as S. Paul understood Judaism, and recognised its completion as plainly in the Incarnation of the Word. Nor was this view of the Incarnation in the one case, any more than in the other, assumed for a merely apologetic purpose. These men were essentially philosophers, among the foremost of their age. They knew and have testified what philosophy had done for their souls, and what it could not do; how far it had led them forward; and of what longings it had left them full. True, philosophy had as little expected Wisdom to become incarnate, and that amongst the barbarians, the outcast and the poor, as Judaism had expected Messiah to suffer, and to suffer at the hand of Jews. But no sooner was the Incarnation accomplished, than it flooded the whole past of Greece no less than Judaea with a new light. This was what it all meant; this was what it unwittingly aimed at; the long process of dialectic and prophecy were here united in their goal.
'Those who lived under the guidance of the Eternal Reason μετὰ λόγου βιώσαντες as Socrates, Heraclitus, and such-like men, are Christians,' run the well-known words of Justin Martyr, 'even though they were reckoned to be atheists in their day.' (Ap. i. 46.) Different minds have always differed, and will continue to differ widely as to the degree in which Greek thought contributed to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. It is a difficult and delicate question for historical criticism to decide. But the essential thing to bear in mind is that the Christian doctrine of the Logos amply covers any possible view which criticism may establish upon the point. For, in the light of that doctrine, it is merely a question of the degree in which the Eternal Word chose to reveal Himself through one agency rather than another.
Any attack, therefore, upon our theology for its connection with Greek thought, is powerless to disturb us; since we accept the fact but give it another, a deeper interpretation: while we rejoice in every fresh proof that the great thoughts of the Greek mind were guided by a higher power, and consecrated to a nobler end than ever their authors dreamed of; and that the true classic culture is no alien element but a legitimate ingredient in Catholic, complete Christianity.
And the same line of thought gives us a clue to the history of religious development, the latest field to which the philosophy of evolution has been extended. For though a superficial comparison of religions, with a more or less sceptical result, has often been attempted before, as for instance in the thirteenth century with its well-known story of the three impostors; anything like a scientific study of them has been impossible till now. For now for the first time we are beginning to have the facts before us; the facts consisting in the original documents of the various historic creeds, and accumulated observations on the religious ideas of uncivilized races. In both these fields very much remains to be done; but still there is enough done already to justify a few generalizations. But the subject is intensely complex, and there has been far too great a tendency, as in all new sciences, to rush to premature conclusions. For example, there is the shallow scepticism which seizes upon facts, like the many parallelisms between the moral precepts of earlier religions and the sermon on the Mount, as a convincing proof that Christianity contains nothing that is new. No serious student of comparative religions would justify such an inference; but it is a very common and mischievous fallacy in the half-culture of the day. Then there is the rash orthodoxy, that is over eager to accept any result that tallies with its own preconceived opinions as, for instance, the belief in a primitive monotheism. No doubt several very competent authorities think that the present evidence points in that direction. But a majority of critics equally competent think otherwise. And meanwhile, there is a mass of evidence still waiting collection and interpretation, which may one day throw further light upon the point. Under such circumstances, therefore, it is as impolitic as it is unscientific to identify Christian apology with a position which may one day prove untenable. Attention has already been called to a similar imprudence in connection with Biogenesis, and the history of past apology is full of warnings against such conduct. Then, again, there is the converse view which is often as glibly stated as if it were already a scientific truism; the view that religion was evolved out of non-religious elements, such as the appearance of dead ancestors in dreams. This rests, to begin with, on the supposition that the opinions of uncivilized man, as we now find him, are the nearest to those of man in his primitive condition; which, considering that degradation is a recognised factor in history, and that degradation acts more powerfully in religion than in any other region, is a very considerable assumption. But even granting this, the psychological possibility of the process in question, as well as the lapse of time sufficient for its operation, are both as yet unproved. It is an hypothetical process, happening in an hypothetical period; but, logically considered, nothing more.
All this should make us cautious in approaching the comparative study of religions. Still, even in its present stage, it has reached some general results. In the first place, the universality of religion is established as an empirical fact. Man, with a few insignificant exceptions which may fairly be put down to degradation, within the limits of our observation, is everywhere religious. The notion that religion was an invention of interested priestcraft has vanished, like many other eighteenth century fictions, before nineteenth century science. Even in the savage races, where priestcraft is most conspicuous, the priest has never created the religion, but always the religion the priest. Beyond this fact it is unsafe to dogmatize. There is abundant evidence of early nature-worship in very various forms, but whether this was the degraded offspring of purer conceptions, or as is more generally supposed the primitive parent from which those conceptions sprang, is still an open question. The universality of the fact is all that is certain.