The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

While Christian thinkers were struggling with the problems raised by the Positive philosophy, the natural sciences were commanding in an increasing degree the world’s attention, until Darwin made his great discovery of a law of evolution, when it seemed as though natural science had become the arbiter and final tribunal before whose judgments the world must bow. Then there followed the sharp, even bitter conflict between science and theology, when scientific men whose lives had been spent in devotion to the study of natural phenomena were tempted to write expositions of religious history in order to show the fallaciousness of the religious attitude, and theologians, accustomed only to the postulates of the spiritual sphere, ventured into the domain of science to put a spiritual interpretation on its conclusions and discoveries. It was a confusing and painful moment when a subtle scepticism pervaded the Churches and haunted even the minds of Christian believers. Now that the smoke of the battle has cleared away, while many tragedies are disclosed, it does not appear that the Churches have been weakened by the strife or have yielded any essential truth or conviction. The belief in God, and in his creation and government of the world, the incarnation of God in Christ, the miracle for which Christ stands, and pre-eminently the miracle of His resurrection—in a word, the supernatural interpretation of life, remains unshaken. It is unjust to charge, as has sometimes been done, dishonesty and a spirit of evasion against those who, while the fierce battle was in progress, kept silence, unable to defend by cogent argument what yet they cherished still as true.

In the latter part of the century there came efforts at the reconstruction of theology in order to a better adjustment of the increase of knowledge regarding the nature of God and His relation to the world. The doctrine of God as immanent in the world, and not only transcendent or above and apart from it, has proved valuable in reconciling many of the discoveries of history and of natural science with the Christian faith. Efforts have also been made to simplify theology by the reduction of the large and complex, even conflicting, mass of Christian tenets and beliefs, given in history or represented in various Christian sects, to a few simple principles in which all must agree, resting for their confirmation not on metaphysics, but on the genuine Christian instincts as revealed in the New Testament. There has been attained also a better philosophical method for meeting the difficulties and perplexities of the age.

But these attempts at the better interpretation of revealed religion, and the formation of more consistent theological systems, have found a temporary rival in efforts to create, first of all, a better system of “natural theology,” as it may be called, which shall take account of the doctrine of evolution and other discoveries of natural science since Paley’s time and the day of the Bridgewater Treatises. Those who aim at a reconciliation of religion with science treat the idea of evolution as a mediating principle by which the conflict between science and religion may be overcome. This effort is the more significant, in view of the popular interest in evolution—a word which has become almost the watchword of the age. From this point of view the invasion of religious territory by scientific men (Huxley, Tyndale, Haeckel, and others), and the counter-invasion of scientific territory by philosophers and theologians, give promise of some mutual understanding in the future.

III

It remains now to turn to another most potent motive which has affected the fortunes of religion in the nineteenth century. It may be called Nationalism, meaning by the term that higher conception of the life of the state or nation, slowly but most effectively asserting itself throughout the nineteenth century, never apart from religious convictions, always indeed in their support and furtherance. In illustration of this point, we turn again to the French Revolution, as giving the momentum, both directly and by way of reaction, to the conception of the sacredness of the state, as an ultimate fact in God’s government of the world. In that fearful outburst of the French people, their long pent-up indignation was vented no less against the state than against the Church—the one a device of kings and lawgivers for holding mankind in subjection, as the other was a scheme for the same end by a designing priesthood. The humanitarian sentiment received in consequence at this impressive moment a direction of antipathy to nationality as an evil to be overcome, or at least to be kept in subjection to some higher principle, if the rights of man were to be secured. Something even of this negative mood entered into the formation of the American Constitution, where there is to be noted a singular omission of any reference to Deity as the author and preserver of the national life. On the continent of Europe there was the phenomenon of Napoleon building on the ruins of the French Revolution, while yet preserving the destructive motives which inspired it. Napoleon revived the dream of empire, in whose expansive embrace the nations of Europe were to be subordinated, if not suppressed altogether. He proposed to reconstruct the map of Europe, as though nationalities and crowns were purely human artificial arrangements to be disposed of at his sovereign pleasure.

The failure of the French nation, its demonstrated inability to do the proper work of a state, as well as the fact that the career of a Napoleon was possible, indicates inherent weakness in all the nations of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They existed either in repose, and even stagnation, after the long turmoil of the age of the Protestant Reformation, averse to change, distrustful of enthusiasm, or were content to strive for purely selfish aims. In accordance with the principle that the people existed for the state, rulers followed their personal whims, indifferent to moral sanctions, heedless of the growing evils calling aloud for redress. Such in particular was the condition in France. It was better in England, but even there the same tendency existed, manifested in the unnecessary alienation of the American colonies. However this may be, there has been a reaction against nationality during the nineteenth century. The nations have been forced to struggle against this opposition, and through the struggle they have attained their rebirth, their purification.

The subject is connected with the fortunes of religion in many ways. The indifference to nationality, the distrust of the nation as incompetent for the exigencies of life, the placing of an abstract humanity as an ideal above nationality, so that to labor directly for the interests of humanity apart from the well-being of the nation, and even in its defiance, became the motive of reformers—these characteristics, when seen in the religious sphere, have led to a reaction against the various forms of Protestantism, and especially as represented in the state Churches. The Roman Catholic Church, which in all its history has subordinated national distinctions to the higher interests of a common Christendom, had fallen into inefficiency in the eighteenth century, and was no longer reckoned a force worthy of consideration, either by religious thinkers or by statesmen. But in the first third of the nineteenth century there came a change, when the Roman Church arose from its lethargy to meet the demand imposed upon it by the timid fears of statesmen and ecclesiastics, as the safeguard of religion and morality, where national Churches or particular Churches were thought to have failed. The Napoleonic aspiration after universal empire and the frantic effort to realize it by rearranging or suppressing nationalities has its counterpart in the religious world in the effort to restore a Christian empire with the Papacy at its head, as in the Middle Ages. The effect of this ambition may be seen in Germany and other countries, but is most clearly manifest in England, where the Oxford Movement (1833) appears as an unnational, if not anti-national, uprising in behalf of some imperfectly conceived cosmopolitan Church designated as “Catholicity.” The date of the “Movement,” as Newman fixed it, was Keble’s sermon on the “Apostacy of the National Church.” This same feeling, that national existence is inferior in importance to humanitarian reforms or to the expression of religion in some other shape than in any particular or national Church, has been shown in the break with the Established Church in Scotland, or in the difficulties experienced in Germany in consolidating the forms of Protestantism in a strong state Church, or in the aspirations after some universal form of religion to be accomplished by a parliament of religions. Beneath these various schemes there is the common principle that humanity is a worthier object of devotion than the state, and constitutes a higher ideal in whose cause to labor. This conviction, it may be added, has been strengthened vastly by the extraordinary way in which, during the nineteenth century, the whole world has been brought together by the material forces of steam and electricity.

That there is here a great truth no one can deny, but the point to be noticed now is that nationality has been at a disadvantage in the competition with humanity. Out of the necessities of the situation there has been born the spirit of a deeper inquiry into the place and significance of the nation as the indispensable medium by which the highest result can be secured for the world at large. Thus we have the studies in this direction of German students, Hegel and Stahl, Trendelenburg and Bluntschli, Maurice in England, and in America Mulford in his book The Nation, all of them combating the motive of Comte and setting forth the essential, even the eternal, significance of nationality. The ancient doctrine is still preserved that the people exist for the state, but it is justified on the ground that the state also exists for the people, for the freedom of the individual man, so that through the state the rights of man are better subserved and more securely guaranteed than by an exclusive one-sided devotion to the cause of an abstract humanity.

As the nineteenth century drew to its close, it became increasingly apparent that the nations had emerged from the depression in which they were found when the century opened. America may be said to have attained the consciousness of nationality in its highest form in consequence of the Civil War, and to have entered from that time upon a new career. In that awful conflict, whose origin dates back to the rise of the anti-slavery movement, may be discerned the issue of the century—humanitarianism, on the one hand, contending for the rights of man, careless, if need be, for the national unity if only a great reform could be secured; and on the other hand, the nation, slowly realizing that slavery was a force hostile to national unity and integrity, and on this ground demanding its suppression. The two attitudes in this instance appear organically related, while yet they spring from distinct and separate motives. In 1870 Germany and Italy took their places in the family of nations. Nor should there be omission to mention Greece, which, after its subsidence for hundreds of years, again attained its national independence.

It has become further apparent that it is to the Protestant nations, America, England, and Germany, that the leading place must be conceded, together with the determination of the world’s fortunes. And to these must be added Russia, which is also outside the pale of Latin Christianity. Those nations remaining in alliance with the Papacy are, for the present at least, in an inferior position.