What a striking and painful contrast is afforded by the generous encouragement given to the students of science by the annual bestowment of rewards by the scientific societies such as the Cuvier Prize, the Royal Medal, the Rumford Medal and the jealous contempt and assaults visited by the sectarian authorities upon those earnest students of theology who venture to propose any innovating improvement! Suppose there were annually awarded an Aquinas Prize, a Fenelon Medal, a Calvin Medal, a Luther Medal, a Channing Medal, not to the one who should present the most ingenious defence of any peculiar tenet of one of those masters, but to him who should offer the most valuable fresh contribution to theological truth! What should we think if the French Institute offered a gold medal every year to the astronomer who presented the ablest essay in support of the Ptolemaic system, or if the Royal Society voted a diploma for the best method of casting nativities? Such is the course pursued in regard to dogmatic theology. The consequence has been that while elsewhere the ultimate standard by which to try a doctrine is, What do the most competent judges say? What does unprejudiced reason dictate? What does the great harmony of truth require? in theology it is, What do the committed priests say? How does it comport with the old traditions?
We read in the Hak ul Yakeen that the envoy of Herk, Emperor of Rum, once said to the prophet, "You summon people to a Paradise whose extent includes heaven and earth: where, then, is hell?" Mohammed replied, "When day comes, where is night?" That is to say, according to the traditionary glosses, as day and night are opposite, so Paradise is at the zenith and hell at the nadir. Yes; but if Paradise be above the heavens, and hell below the seventh earth, then how can Sirat be extended over hell for people to pass to Paradise? "We reply," say the authors of the Hak ul Yakeen, "that speculation on this subject is not necessary, nor to be regarded. Implicit faith in what the prophets have revealed must be had; and explanatory surmises, which are the occasion of Satanic doubts, must not be indulged."26 Certainly this exclusion of reason cannot always be suffered. It is fast giving way already. And it is inevitable that, when reason secures its right and bears its rightful fruits in moral subjects as it now does in physical subjects, the mediaval theology must be rejected as mediaval science has been. It is the common doctrine of the Church that Christ now sits in heaven in a human body of flesh and blood. Calvin separated the Divine nature of Christ from this human body; but Luther made the two natures inseparable and attributed ubiquity to the body in which they reside, thus asserting the omnipresence of a material human body, a bulk of a hundred and fifty pounds' weight more or less. He furiously assailed Zwingle's objection to this monstrous nonsense, as "a devil's mask and grandchild of that old witch, mistress Reason." 27 The Roman Church teaches, and her adherents devoutly believe, that the house of the Virgin Mary was conveyed on the wings of angels from Nazareth to the eastern slope of the Apennines above the Adriatic Gulf.28 The English Church, consistently interpreted, teaches that there is no salvation without baptism by priests in the line of apostolic succession. These are but ordinary specimens of teachings still humbly received by the mass of Christians. The common distrust with which the natural operations of reason are regarded in the Church, the extreme reluctance to accept the conclusions of mere reason, seem to us discreditable to the theological leaders who represent the current creeds of the approved sects. Many an influential theologian could learn invaluable lessons from the great guides in the realm of science. The folly which acute learned wise men will be guilty of the moment they turn to theological subjects, where they do not allow reason to act, is both ludicrous and melancholy. The victim of lycanthropy used to be burned alive; he is now placed under the careful treatment of skilful and humane physicians. But the heretic or infidel is still thought to be inspired by the devil, a fit subject for discipline here and hell hereafter. The light shed abroad by the rising spirit of rational investigation must gradually dispel the delusions which lurk in the vales of theology, as it already has dispelled those that formerly haunted the hills of science. The spectres which have so long terrified a childish world will successively vanish
26 Merrick, Hyat ul Kuloob, note 74.
27 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 265, note 2.
28 Christian Remembrancer, April, 1855. A full and able history of the "Holy House of Loretto."
from the path of man as advancing reason, in the name of the God of truth, utters its imperial "Avaunt!"
Henry More wrote a book on the "Immortality of the Soul," printed in London in 1659, just two hundred years ago. It is full of beauty, acumen, and power. He was one of the first men of the time. Yet he seriously elaborates an argument like this: "The scum and spots that lie on the sun are as great an Argument that there is no Divinity in him as the dung of Owls and Sparrows that is found on the faces and shoulders of Idols in Temples are clear evidences that they are no true Deities."29 He also in good faith tells a story like this: "That a Woman with child, seeing a Butcher divide a Swine's head with a Cleaver, brought forth her Child with its face cloven in the upper jaw, the palate, and upper lip to the very nose."30 The progress marked by the contrast of the scientific spirit of the present time with the ravenous credulity of even two centuries back must continue and spread into every province. Some may vilify it; but in vain. Some may sophisticate against it; but in vain. Some may invoke authority and social persecution to stop it; but in vain. Some may appeal to the prejudices and fears of the timid; but in vain. Some may close their own eyes, and hold their hands before their neighbors' eyes, and attempt to shut out the light; but in vain. It will go on. It is the interest of the world that it should go on. It is the manly and the religious course to help this progress with prudence and reverence. Truth is the will of God, the way he has made things to be and to act, the way he wishes free beings to exist and to act. He has ordained the gradual discovery of truth. And despite the struggles of selfish tyranny, and the complacence of luxurious ease, and the terror of ignorant cowardice, truth will be more and more brought to universal acceptance. Some men have fancied their bodies composed of butter or of glass; but when compelled to move out into the sunlight or the crowd they did not melt nor break.31 Esquirol had a patient who did not dare to bend her thumb, lest the world should come to an end. When forced to bend it, she was surprised that the crack of doom did not follow.
The mechanico theatrical character of the popular theology is enough to reveal its origin and its fundamental falsity. The difference between its lurid and phantasmal details and the calm eternal verities in the divinely constituted order of nature is as great as the difference between those stars which one sees in consequence of a blow on the forehead and those he sees by turning his gaze to the nightly sky. To every competent thinker, the bare appreciation of such a passage as that which closes Chateaubriand's chapter on the Last Judgment, with the huge bathos of its incongruous mixture of sublime and absurd, is its sufficient refutation: "The globe trembles on its axis; the moon is covered with a bloody veil; the threatening stars hang half detached from the vault of heaven, and the agony of the world commences. Now resounds the trump of the angel. The sepulchres burst: the human race issues all at once, and fills the Valley of Jehoshaphat! The Son of Man appears in the clouds; the powers of hell ascend from the infernal depths; the goats are separated from the sheep; the wicked are plunged into the gulf; the just ascend to heaven; God returns to his repose,
29 Preface, p. 10.
30 Ibid. p. 392.