PROFESSOR ALLEN ON "RELIGIOUS PROGRESS."* IT may be said that
not even Mr. Llewelyn Davies, who would usually be reckoned the most prominent among Mr. Maurice's disciples in this country, has entered so thoroughly into the method of the master as the author of the thoughtful and interesting volume above-mentioned, Professor Alexander V. G. Allen, of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was already apparent in that admirable work of his (reprinted in this country), The Continuity of Christian Thought, which may be looked upon as the com- plement, from the side of theology, of Mr. Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. The whole depth of the master may not be there, but you feel yourself treading in his foot- steps, as Professor Allen places himself and his reader at the point of view by turns of each successive leader of Christian thought. The present work more especially reproduces another characteristic of Mr. Maurice's teaching,—what may be called the acceptance of opposites. For instance, in a lecture on English History, published as No. 1 in a series of " Tracts by Christian Socialists," and never reprinted, Mr. Maurice began by telling his hearers that he was "a Tory, a Whig, and a Radical; not a little bit of one and a little bit of each of the others,—not what is sometimes called an Eclectic (there is no name or character I hate more than that) ; nor yet something new of my own, unlike what all people have been before me ; but in the ordinary sense of the words, a downright, thoroughgoing Tory—a downright, thoroughgoing Whig—a downright, thoroughgoing Radical." It is exactly in this spirit that Professor Allen writes :—
" It is a lesson which we are slow to learn, that opposites are closely, even vitally, related,—that hostile attitudes which seem
irreconcileable may both be true Churches are strong, and best fulfil their mission, not in proportion as they maintain a narrow consistency, but rather in so far as they are capable of embracing opposite attitudes and contrasted views of truth. The church which we look for in the coming age of Christian unity must embrace greater contradictions than any church that now exists is willing to receive. Let me enumerate some of them.
the sovereignty of God and the freedom of the will; total depravity and the divinity of human nature ; the unity of God and the triune distinctions in the Godhead ; gnosticism and agnosticism ; the humanity of Christ and his incarnate deity; the freedom of the Christian man and the authority of the church; individualism and solidarity ; reason and faith ; science and theology ; the miracle and the uniformity of law ; culture and piety ; the authority of the Bible as the word of God, with abso- lute freedom of Biblical criticism ; the gift of administration as in the historic episcopate, but the gift of prophecy as the highest sanciion of the ministerial commission ; the apostolic succession, but also the direct and immediate call which knows only the succession of the Holy Spirit."
The two lectures of which the volume is composed deal, the first, with " Religious Progress in the Experience of the
• Religious Progress. By Alexander Y. G. Allen, Professor in the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. Boston and New York: Houghton, and Cu.
Individual ; " the second, with " Religious Progress in the Organic Life of the Church." Starting with the attempt to define "progress," the author concludes that the word "is one of those great words, summaries of a people's philosophy, which we use the more freely just because we take it for granted and do not think to define it To adopt the words of St. Augustine which he used concerning the know- ledge of God, we know what it is if we are not asked to tell what it is ; but if we are asked to tell what it is, we do not know what it is." The thought is larger than the word. Going on to inquire " whether progress in religion is possible," he deals with Macanlay's denial that there is any constant progress in religion to be traced—only " movement to and fro "—treating that judgment as one of "a representative character," and as having an element of truth in it so far as concerns the "difference between the spheres of religion and of material civilisation," in so far as the same law does not "prevail alike in both." Mr. Allen declares that he has "no theory to advocate," and disclaims the presumption of seeking to demonstrate "the existence of any law or method under whose uniform operation the phenomena of religion are in- cluded." His " more modest task " is that of " calling atten- tion to certain demonstrated tendencies in religious thought or experience, which may throw some light on the situation of the religious world, when they are viewed together as parts of a larger whole."
In the life of the individual he notes three distinct ten- dencies entering into "the vital movements of religious thought and experience." First, the impulse "to reject the old belief or practice in order to the reception of some new truth." Men so acted on "by the contact of new truth may become the world's reformers ; they are the stuff out of which martyrs are made ; they would gladly go to the stake for their convictions This method of religious progress must be recog- nised as one of the constituent elements of religious history.
When successful, it forces the Church to compromises and readjustments ; when it fails, it is stigmatised as heresy." (And here occurs a very suggestive page as to the contribu- tions made by heresies to the fuller development of Christian truth, an idea which one would have liked to see developed by the author.) The second tendency is that of conceiving pro- gress "as a uniform movement forward and upward, so that each age prepares the way for that which follows ; that which comes later in time being for that very reason higher, truer, more complete than that which preceded it." This is the view which evidently finds most favour with the author, but he is too candid and dispassionate to let it master him. " We may and we must hold to the doctrine that religious reforms are better accomplished by the gradual process of education and enlightenment ; but we must admit that there come moments in history when this method does not avail,—the birth-hour of great institutions which are to remould the fortunes of society." Moreover, " the conception of progress as an even or uniform development encounters other obstacles It is a conception peculiarly liable to be mis- understood," as " when it is so construed as to teach that every change is a direct advance ; " or, again, "that if a belief or practice can be traced to a remote origin, or the stages of its growth be shown, it ought no longer to commend itself " to our age. The third conception of true progress " makes it consist in a constant struggle to regain or adhere to that which is old," assuming " that the new is false ; only that which can be shown to be old is true The principle which lies beneath this attitude toward progress is that divine revelation has once for all imparted the full truth It is also assumed that there is an evil and downward tendency in human nature to pervert the truth by overlaying it with additions, corrupting it by complications, till at last it becomes so obscured as to need a reproclamation in its original simplicity." It is characteristic of the author's mind that he scarcely controverts this view (observing merely that it represents " the rude philosophy of Mohammedanism"), but is rather anxious to establish a ground for agreement with it as far as possible :—" We shall readily admit, I think, this tendency to deterioration which waits upon all religions institutions There is a deep root of truth also in the demand for the unchangeable, the immutable, as the final word in religion." And his conclusion is that "we grow by means of these antagonisms within us, so that a life in subordination to one of these motives alone becomes shallow, or one-sided, and incomplete. A man who has not detected within himself the presence of these contradictory forces, has missed the larger interpretation of life, and can neither under- stand himself nor the world around him."
It has been sought here, by a rather detailed analysis of the first lecture, to give an idea of the author's method. A long potation has been given from the second, which is at least as interesting as the first. A few lines more shall, however, be quoted from two of the last pages :—
" To the ever new man, the old world will be for ever new. Common and familiar things will shine with a new light. As there may be no limit to the wonders of scientific discovery, so the relations which may exist between the world and the soul of the man who is for ever growing in faith and spiritual imagination are practically without limit ; and so the everlasting interest of life, the perpetual progress of humanity, is sure."
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