PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION.
PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S concluding paper on "The Evolution of Theology" is even more unsatisfactory than the first. So far as he confines himself to the exposition of the superstitions of the Tonga islanders or the Samoan islanders, he does not throw any light on what he means by evolution. He shows that there was a certain similarity between the practices by which Saul, for instance, endeavoured to dis-
cover something hidden from him, and the practices of the Pacific islanders when they attempt divination of the same cover something hidden from him, and the practices of the Pacific islanders when they attempt divination of the same kind ; and that there is a close analogy between David's prayer to have his offence visited exclusively on his own head, and the desire of a Tongan prince to secure the same result. We cannot say that either of these analogies seems to us at all important. Tte impression that you can discover by a sort of natural magic what you do not know, and desire to know, is not confined to rude peoples. It is implied in the popular usages of almost every people in the world, and we do not believe that it is half so vivid an impression among any class of minds on which revealed religion has taken a strong hold, as it is among those given up to the eager superstitions of the uneducated heart. That Jehovah was consulted by Urim and Thummim, by casting lots, and other Hebrew methods of divination, is quite true ; but the question is not whether such modes of discovering the secrets of destiny prevailed among the Hebrews, but whether they did not prevail much less among the Hebrews in consequence of the revelation they had received, than they prevailed amongst the Gentile nations to whom there was no such revelation, and who sent near and far to consult oracles in time of danger. Again, that David prayed that the conse- quence of his supposed disobedience might be visited exclusively upon himself, is no doubt as true as it is true that the Tongan chief did the same; and, indeed, there is hardly a noble-minded ruler, or a true father or mother, in existence, who has not prayed to be allowed to bear, on behalf of those for whom the heart has been deeply moved, the penalty which might otherwise be expected to descend on those whom it is desired to shield. But we think it would be easy to show that, natural as this passionate desire to be allowed to suffer vicariously for another is, to the heart of a loyal ruler, or parent, or protector of any kind, reve- lation has always tempered, instead of stimulating, this un- chastened eagerness, by enlightening the conscience, and showing those who have any real knowledge of God that his ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts. What Professor Huxley utterly fails to do is to show that in any sense whatever the higher ideas of revelation can be traced to the gradual accretions of human superstition. For all we know, the religion of the Tongan islanders has bad a longer time in which to evolve itself than the religion of the Jewish Prophets had had in the days of Isaiah. But compare the two results. The one is all magic and intellectual groping ; the other was a coherent, severe, and sublime faith.
But, as we understand Professor Huxley, the Prophets did not, in his opinion, continue the line of theological evolution. On the contrary, they did their best to purge away the adven- titious sacerdotal and ceremonial elements from the Hebrew religion. They tried to bring Israel back to the worship of a "moral ideal,"—Jehovah being, in Professor Huxley's opinion, a mere moral ideal. In Professor Huxley's view, the Prophets were the reformers, the Puritans of the Hebrew people. Far from developing the dogmas and ceremonies handed down to them, they are constantly striving to free the moral ideal from the stifling embrace of the current theology and its concomitant ritual." Yet in spite of his two papers on "The Evolution of Theology," we have arrived at no clear impression at all of what Professor Huxley understands by theology ; for a more extra- ordinary statement as to the aim of the Prophets than the statement that they were always engaged in attempting to free their moral ideal from the stifling embrace of the current theology, we never read. As we understand the Prophets, a theological revelation is the alpha and the omega of their power. "Thus saith the Lord" is not only the formula miler which they speak, but the key-note of their convictions. It is because they believe, and only because they believe, that they can announce the true will of God, that they hope to be able to elevate the true nature of man. If Professor Huxley should reply that he meant to lay a special emphasis on the adjective "current" which he attached to the word "theology," and that he regards the Prophets as endeavouring to refute the prevalent theology, and to set up a purer theology in its place, we should reply that it was not a theology at all which the Prophets tried to clear away, but a conventional and punctilious faith in re- ligious observances, and that he cannot produce the least trace in Hebrew history of the false theology which he supposes. On the contrary, the ceremonialism and formalism which the Prophets assailed were rooted in the oblivion of theology, in the loss of that very revelation of himself by God of which from the earliest times we have a continuous series of records in the Old Testament. And why, while Professor Huxley dwells so much on ephods, and high priests' bells, and the Witch of Endor's incantation, and the casting of lots, and the offering of sin- offerings, he steadily ignores all the true theology of the Old Testament,—we mean the declarations of God concerning his own will and purposes,—we cannot even imagine. "From one end to the other of the Books of Judges and Samuel," he says, "the only 'commandments of Jahveh' which are specially adduced refer to the prohibition of the worship of other gods, or are orders given ad hoc, and have nothing to do with questions of morality." Undoubtedly the Book of Judges is a story of barbarous times, in which it is often difficult to trace the predominance of any moral spirit ; but equally undoubtedly the Book of Samuel begins with the announcement of the severe sentence of God on the immorality of the sons of Eli, and on the weak indulgence shown to them by their father ; and how it is possible even for Professor Huxley to ignore the moral revelation running through thee books, which contain, for instance, Samuel's grand protest against the popular un- belief which could not accept God's guidance through the agency of uncrowned Kings, but craved the outward show of a regular monarchy; and again, the noble Psalm in which David anticipates the building of a temple for the Ark, and expresses his own deep humility and infinite trust in God ; and most of all, the announcement to him by Nathan of the judgment of God upon his sin, in the beautiful parable of the rich man's seizure of the poor man's pet lamb,—is to us quite inexplicable. Nor is the record of the revelation of the Divine nature during the time of these chronicles confined to these books, for all those of the Psalms which belong to this period,—and even the most sceptical critics assign not a few of them to this period, —tell us far more of the real progress of revelation than the terse chronicles of those violent times themselves. As it seems to us, from the judgment on the first murderer in Genesis to the times of the Prophets, there is one continuous and steadily increasing testimony to the righteousness and purity of God, which, so far from being in any way inconsistent with the prophetic teachings, is the very heart of them. Indeed, Pro- fessor Huxley is inconsistent with himself when, on the one hand, he is so anxious to show that a great part of the Levitical law dates from a far later period than that to which it is referred ; and yet, on the other hand, is so eager tQ attribute to the Prophets an effort to purify the Jewish religion from "the stifling embrace" of a ceremonialism which, according to his view, had not at that time been even conceived.
Where Professor Huxley gets his evidence for that worship of ancestors among the Hebrews to which he refers so large a part of all theology, is to us a profound mystery. He referred in his first article to the evidence that the Patriarchs carried about teraphim, and he enlarged greatly on the story of the Witch of Endor. But when he has made the most of these matters, he has done nothing more than show that superstitions common everywhere else were not absolutely excluded by the light of revelation from Hebrew religion. This may be granted. But to grant this is no more to assert that the belief in a righteous God, which is the main subject of the Hebrew revela- tion, originated in these superficial superstitions, than to grant that the Celts believe in second-sight is to assert that they regard second-sight as the root of their religion. The truth is that Professor Huxley has no consistent conception of what it is that he means by evolution. He seems to think that to trace out a few superficial analogies between the superstitions of savages and the superstitions of the Hebrew people, establishes a high probability that the noblest beliefs of that people originated exactly as the superstitious of savages have originated. We should have supposed that a very different inference was justified by these analogies. The superstitions of the Tongau and Samoan islanders are still, after we know not what period of development, crude, inconsistent, debasing. The faith of the Israelite attained, on Professor Hurley's own showing, in the time of the Prophets, to a noble and sublime type, of which the very essence was not, as Professor Huxley puts it, "to do justice, love mercy, and bear himself humbly before the Infinite," but "to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God,"—God being to the Hebrew in every sense a real person, one in whom he had trusted and did trust, and through his trust in whom, and through that alone, he found it possible to do the justice and love the mercy which had their fountain in the Divine nature. Was this great result due to precisely the same groping of the unassisted human understanding at great problems which, in the esse of savage tribes, has issued in results so confused and un- meaning ? Or was it due to the direct influence of him whose mighty hand and stretched-out arm had, in the belief of the Hebrews, guided the destiny of the nation ? Surely evolution in theology has a far better meaning, a meaning far more closely analogous to its meaning in science, if it be taken to express the gradually unfolding conformity of the inward creed to external realities, than it can ever have if it is only taken to express the shifting mists and vapours in which the nervous affections of man unfold themselves when they recall the ancestors who are lost to their view, and dream of other invisible agencies which may be even more formidable than those of their ancestors themselves. We believe in a real evolution of theology,—an evolution in conformity with the revealing righteousness in which alone theology originates. So far as we understand him, Professor Huxley believes only in the evolution of a dreamland of confused fears and hopes, which it is the true function of the ethical nature to repress, if not to extinguish.
Previous page
