The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

The influence of the doctrine of development has been felt in the study of Scripture, leading to a recognition of progressiveness in the divine revelation, whose record has been preserved in the Old and New Testaments (Mozley, Ruling Ideas in the Early Ages). By means of this truth have been overcome, till they now seem unworthy, the objections to the Old Testament on the ground that it gave sanction to cruelty, deceit, or an imperfect morality. But the inference has also followed that the revelation of God to humanity must be searched for in the sacred records, and even by the light of close critical scrutiny, if the divine utterance is to be distinguished from crude misapprehensions or misapplications. Forms of literary expression, current usages, the historical environment of the time—for these allowance must be made as their influence is recognized. The science of biblical criticism has gained from the study of general history a larger knowledge of the nature of man, which, in turn, has made the study of the Bible more profound and thorough, because more real and human than were the biblical studies of the eighteenth century. The primary question which it has been found necessary to ask in regard to any doctrine or institution is not whether it is true—for the canons of truth may vary with the relative position of the inquirer; but, rather, what does it mean? When the meaning of the record is seen, the question of its truth has answered itself.

The effect of these studies, even of what is called the “higher criticism,” has not lessened the authority of the Bible or changed the character of Christianity as “a religion of the book”; but their tendency has been to vindicate the unique and essential place of the Bible in literature as containing the veritable record of a divine revelation. Some things, indeed, have been changed: the order in which the books of the Bible were written is not the order in which they stand; some of them are of composite authorship, whose various parts were written at different times; the traditional chronology, known as Ussher’s (1656), has been abandoned, nor is there anything in the Bible which places it in opposition to the teachings of geology relative to the length of time during which man has occupied the earth; the historical order of priest and prophet has been reversed, so that the voice of prophecy comes before the decline into ritual (Wellhausen and others). Popular misapprehensions tend to vanish in the light of a true insight and interpretation, such as that the first chapter of Genesis was intended to be an infallible record of the divine order in the creation of the world. That a similar account of the creation is found in Babylonian literature only shows that the Bible writer was illustrating by the best scientific knowledge of the time the vastly higher spiritual truth with which the Bible opens, that the creation is the work of God, thus leading man to the worship of God and away from the lower worships of sun and moon and all the hosts of Heaven.

The mechanical conceptions as to the mode of inspiration and revelation tend to give way before a larger and truer conception of the process by which the revelation is made—that God speaks to man actually and authoritatively through the experience of the events of life. Thus revelation becomes a living process, and all later history may become a commentary on sacred history, renewing and confirming the primal utterance of God to the soul of man. Much, it is true, yet remains to be done in bridging the gulf between the learned and scientific interpretation of the sacred record and the popular apprehension, which, formed in the uncritical moments of youth, often persists to mature years and constitutes a source of confusion and weakness. A similar situation was seen in the Middle Ages in the wide breach which existed between the scholastic theologians and the popular mind.

A new department has been added to religious inquiry in Comparative Religion, which aims at an impartial investigation and free from prejudice, and is also moved by the sentiment of a common humanity to respect all utterances of religious feeling in the soul of man. How widely the nineteenth century has advanced in this respect is seen by recalling a statement of Dr. Johnson: “There are two objects of curiosity—the Christian world and the Mohammedan world. All the rest may be considered as barbarous.” One of the most representative monuments of religious scholarship in the last century is Professor Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East. Some inquirers in this unfamiliar department have worked under the impression that these ancient religions were equal in value to the Christian revelation; others even have thought them to be in some respects superior. And, in general, the first effect of the discovery that there was truth in other religions had a tendency to weaken the claim of Christianity to be the absolute religion. But as the results of the study have been placed in their normal perspective, it becomes evident that they only confirm the words of St. Paul, that God has at no time left Himself without witnesses in the world. Revelation also is seen to have been a universal process; and profound spiritual motives are to be discerned beneath the diverse manifestations of the religious instincts. Yet, on the whole, the preponderating judgment leads to the conclusion that Christianity contains the larger, even the absolute, truth; that while it confirms some features in these religions as true, it condemns others as false; that Christianity also has for one of its essential characteristics an assimilative power, which not only enables, but forces, it to appropriate as its own any aspects of truth contained in other religions, which have not hitherto been illustrated in the history of the Christian Church. Nor is the familiar test applied to religions wholly indefensible which judges them by their historical fruits or associations. In accordance with this test, Confucianism is represented by China, Hinduism by India, Buddhism by Ceylon and Siam, Mohammedanism by Turkey, Christianity by Europe and America.

The influence of the humanitarian sentiment may be further traced in softening the asperities of some forms of traditional theology, as, for example, the Calvinistic doctrine of election with its alternatives of reprobation or preterition. These certainly have not been the favorite doctrines which have commended themselves to the spirit of the age. The effort has been made to bring the doctrine of the atonement within the limits of human experience. It has been found impossible to present the doctrine of endless punishment after the manner of an earlier age. Many causes have combined to deepen the sense of mystery in which is enveloped the destiny of man, and there has been begotten in consequence an unwillingness to dogmatize where in earlier times such a reluctance was not felt. In this connection may be mentioned two religious bodies, which took their rise about the beginning of the century—Universalism, proclaiming ultimate salvation for all men; and Unitarianism, asserting the dignity of man and his divine endowment. But in all the Churches alike has the same humanizing force been felt, leading to efforts in theological reconstruction in order to make it apparent that the primary truths of Christianity are not merely arbitrary principles or arrangements unrelated to life and to the needs of the soul, but that in their essential quality there is conformity with the larger reason of humanity, with that feeling for the inherent worth of things out of which reason proceeds, and with which its conclusions must conform.

II

Thus far the humanitarian sentiment has been regarded in its combination with Christian faith, and as giving new force and distinction to Christian life and thought. But, on the other hand, it must now be noted that the same force working apart from the Church, and often in opposition to it, has been a limitation to Christian progress. In the French Revolution humanitarianism was associated with a negative, destructive tendency, which overthrew the Church, disowned God and immortality, and set up in the place of deity a so-called Goddess of Reason. This negative tendency has continued to exist and has found influential manifestation. It has attempted the deification of humanity, as though the human race were worthy in itself of being an object of worship. It has exalted man at the expense of God, conceiving of humanity as alone immortal, as competent to steer its own course without supernatural direction. It has weakened the sense of nationality, has injured and endangered family life, has taken away the highest sanctions from morality, and has reduced religion from being a revelation from God to a purely subjective process in the soul of man, worthy of respect, but without authority. It has created an abnormal sensitiveness in many directions. It has swayed socialistic movements aiming at the rights of man and seeking to achieve universal happiness, but with an antagonism sometimes latent, sometimes expressed, to God and Christ and the Christian Church. The prejudice remains which had its birth in the French Revolution, that religion is a creation of priests for their own selfish ends, and the Church an agency for robbing humanity of its rights, liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Principles and convictions like these found utterance in the philosophy of Comte (1789–1857), who called himself the “founder of the religion of humanity,” and who proposed the scheme of a humanitarian Church, limited by no national boundaries, whose only deity was man, whose ritual found a place only for great men who had been the benefactors of the race. Theology and metaphysics were discarded as outgrown methods of explaining the phenomena of the universe, and in the place they vacated stood the so-called “Positive philosophy” which rejected all supernatural influence. The Church of humanity had, indeed, no history and was a failure from its birth. But the combination, first seen in Comte, of humanitarianism with the methods and principles of natural science, has been the most formidable opponent against which Christianity was ever called to struggle. It has been represented in England by John Stuart Mill and by Herbert Spencer and many others. To the influential writings of this school of thinkers is due in great measure the widespread, deep-seated scepticism since the middle of the century. To the same cause, by way of reaction, are owing the spiritualistic movement, the so-called “Christian Science” and other kindred tendencies towards a crude supernaturalism.

Those who entered the controversy in behalf of Christianity and against the adherents of the Positive philosophy suffered at first for the lack of any adequate philosophical method on which to rest in the effort to overcome this stupendous alliance between a humanitarianism working for the improvement of social conditions in combination with natural science, whose postulates involved the denial of the miracle, and indeed of all supernatural agency (agnosticism). It seemed for a time as though the philosophy of Hegel would serve the purpose of a stronghold to which Christian warriors might resort while in the stress of a conflict which involved not only the readjustment of Christian doctrines to their new environment, but also the maintenance of the idea of God, of the kingdom of God in this world and of a future life for the immortal soul. In Germany systems of theology were worked out on the basis of Hegelian principles, which, as interpreted by orthodox theologians, stood for a principle of surpassing value if it could be maintained—that the life of humanity, while dependent in the present order on physical conditions, was yet above the life in external nature with which the natural sciences deal; that the very definition of humanity implies the power of rising to the knowledge of God. Nature has no knowledge or consciousness of God, or intimation of immortality. It is in bondage to natural law and without freedom. The life of humanity must not be studied from the point of view of natural science, but is seen in the records of human history. The influence of Hegel deepened the interest in historical inquiry at a moment when the absorption in the natural sciences threatened to gain the ascendency. But the Hegelian philosophy, for reasons which it is not possible here to render, failed to accomplish the service expected from it. It may be that the failure was temporary only, and because it was not fully understood. There arose a school of thinkers—the Hegelian left wing—who, while retaining their interest in history, yet fell under the influence of the presuppositions of the natural sciences. Thus Strauss, in his Leben Jesu, conceived of the person of Christ as a casual product of the human imagination, while Feuerbach, in his Essence of Christianity, reached the conclusion that religion begins and ends in a subjective process in the soul. Thus, instead of overcoming the Positive philosophy, German thought gravitated to the same result, with this difference perhaps, that it assumed the form of pantheism rather than of atheism. In the Tübingen school, led by F. C. Baur, whose contributions to the study of Church history are yet of high value, there was reserve about the miracle, if not its tacit denial, and a conception of the Christian Church as a product of human origin rather than the purpose of Christ.

But the effect of Strauss was beneficial in that it sent inquirers back to the study of the person of Christ and of His age. Never before was attention so concentrated upon the life of Jesus, as illustrated in a large number of biographical works, too large to be enumerated here. As a result of these studies, the conviction grows that while there is a local aspect of the person of Christ, so that He reflected the peculiar opinions and living interests of His age, and availed Himself of current beliefs, yet He was also infinitely above His time. What He was and did and said in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago must be supplemented by what He has been to the world in subsequent ages, or what He is and is doing in the present age.