Extract from Mr. Gladstone's Address delivered at the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, December 21st, 1872.
"It is not now only the Christian Church, or only the Holy Scripture, or only Christianity, which is attacked. The disposition is boldly proclaimed to deal alike with root and branch, and to snap utterly the ties which, under the still venerable name of Religion, unite man with the unseen world, and lighten the struggles and the woes of life by the hope of a better land.
"These things are done as the professed results and the newest triumphs of Modern Thought and Modern Science; but I believe that neither Science nor Thought is responsible, any more than Liberty is responsible, for the misdeeds committed in their names. Upon the ground of what is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws, He is discharged from governing the world; and His function of judgment is also dispensed with, as justice and benevolence are held to forbid that men should hereafter be called to strict account for actions, which under these unchangeable laws they may have committed. But these are only the initial stages of the process. Next we are introduced to the doctrine of the Absolute and the Unconditioned; and under the authority of these phrases (to which, and many other phrases, in their proper places, I have no objection) we are instructed that we can know nothing about God, and therefore can have no practical relations with Him. One writer—or, as it is now termed, thinker—announces with pleasure that he has found the means of reconciling Religion and Science. The mode is in principle most equitable. He divides the field of thought between them. To Science he awards all that of which we know, or may know, something; to Religion he leaves a far wider domain,—that of which we know, and can know, nothing. This sounds like jest, but it is melancholy earnest; and I doubt whether any such noxious crop has been gathered in such rank abundance from the press of England in any former year of our literary history as in this present year of our redemption, eighteen hundred and seventy-two." (pp. 22-3.)
The writer, or thinker, mentioned by Mr. Gladstone is thus described at the end of the address, p. 33:—"My reference is to Mr. Herbert Spencer. See his 'First Principles,' and especially the chapter on the 'Reconciliation of Science and Religion.' It is needless to cite particular passages. It would be difficult to mistake its meaning, for it is written with great ability and clearness, as well as with every indication of sincerity. Still it vividly recalls to mind an old story of the man who, wishing to be rid of one who was in his house, said, 'Sir, there are two sides to my house, and we will divide them; you shall take the outside.'
"I believe Mr. Spencer has been described in one of our daily journals as the first thinker of the age."
To some people the Premier will appear more than reasonably disturbed by the journal's description. There is (as we have remarked) a very advanced type of the genus journalist in England, and its anonymous zealots are liberal in distributing titles of honour—that is, among their friends. Per contra, upon authors of Mr. Gladstone's calibre and lofty mode of thought they bestow epithets very much the reverse of complimentary. They seem, in fact, somewhat to resemble those critics of whom Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, that "though excellent fellows in their way, there are no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in a book, or less likely to recognize an author's heart in it." So far, however, as Mr. Herbert Spencer is concerned, the journal censured might observe in justification of its approval that his system seems a good deal read by the students of more than one school in our Premier's own University—a proud distinction shared by Mr. Spencer with several other eminent thinkers of the same speculative tendencies as himself.
The eloquent speaker next passes under brief review two other typical books,—one by a German, the second by an Englishman. Respecting the opinions of the former author (Strauss[6]) Mr. Gladstone writes thus (Authentic Report, p. 24):—"In his first chapter he puts the question, 'Are we still Christians?' and, after a detailed examination, he concludes, always speaking on behalf of Modern Thought, that if we wish our yea to be yea, and our nay nay, if we are to think and speak our thoughts as honourable, upright men, we must reply that we are Christians no longer. This question and answer, however, he observes, are insufficient. The essential and fundamental inquiry is, whether we are or are not still to have a Religion?
"To this inquiry he devotes his second chapter. In this second chapter he finds that there is no personal God; there is no future state; the dead live in the recollection of survivors—this is enough for them. After this he has little difficulty in answering the question he has put. All religious worship ought to be abolished. The very name of 'Divine Service' is an indignity to man. Therefore, in the sense in which religion has been heretofore understood, his answer is that we ought to have no religion any more. But proceeding, as he always does, with commendable frankness, he admits that he ought to fill with something the void which he has made. This he accordingly proceeds to do. Instead of God, he offers to us the All, or Universum. This All, or Universum, possesses, he tells us, neither consciousness nor reason. But it presents to us order and law. He thinks it fitted, therefore, to be the object of a new and true piety, which he claims for his Universum, as the devout of the old style did for their God. If any one repudiates this doctrine, to Dr. Strauss's reason the repudiation is absurdity, and to his feelings blasphemy."[7]
Many readers will agree with the Premier in calling these "astonishing assertions." Many will also speak of Strauss's positions as something worse than astonishing when they read in the Illustrative Passages (Address, p. 34) a declaration which he holds it his duty as well as his right to make without any kind of reserve.[8]