LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A LAYMAN'S DOUBTS.—H.
MO THE EDITOR OF TEE SPECTATOR.") Sm,—It is related of Coleridge, I think, that having expressed a desire for a reasonable faith to his tutor, the latter replied, "Oh, you want a reasonable faith, do you,—but that is precisely what you can never have." Yet Bishop Butler, no mean authority, said in the preface to his "Analogy," "Reason is the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself." And in the same strain he speaks in his sermon on "Self-deceit." "Religion is true, or it is not. If it be not, there is no reason for any concern about it." We must con- cern ourselves with the truth of what we believe therefore, and there must be many who think, with Mr. Clifford, that it is wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, and that to those who reply, "They have no time to investigate," it is sufficient to rejoin that "they should have no time to believe." It is not passible for man to live satisfied in a state of doubt or simple nescience, when all that is most momentous in this life and the next is in question. We all seek, consciously or otherwise, to rest in a conviction of assured truth. We should seek this, if for no other or better reason than the Duke of Argyll urges in his "Reign of Law," that "every one truth is connected with every other truth in this great universe of God. Therefore, to accept as a truth that which is not a truth is an evil having consequences which are indeed incalculable. There are subjects on which one mistake of this kind will poison all the wells of truth and affect with fatal error the whole circle of our thoughts," and of such subjects, religion pre-eminently must be one in which error will indeed "poison all the wells of truth." We are not at liberty, therefore, to close our eyes, and in blind faith accept whatever creed is offered us by any Church or sect. We must fight our doubts, though the battle be one bringing only anguish; "face the spectres of the soul," and not make our judgment blind, in apathy or craven fear. Were it otherwise, how gladly would many pass through the portals of the first Church on their path, Romanist or Protestant, and there lay down on the "altar-steps of faith" all their doubts, and still any promptings of the spirit to further inquiry Leaving all question as to the existence of a personal Deity, a Creator and Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and of a moral government, as self-evident truths which have been accepted by the great mass of mankind, certainly by all the Christian and /dahommeclan world, leaving, as equally settled, all question either as to the possibility of a revelation, or even the probability that He who created man would also enlighten him by means of inspired prophets or other instrumentality, by visions, dreams, or a written Word for all ages,—there would only remain the question of fact, whether we possess such a revelation ? The Jewish Scriptures were believed by their possessors and custodians to contain such a revelation, and Christian nations have accepted the Old Testa- ment at their hands, and the Gospel which followed and endorsed it, undeterred by its composite form, and by many manifest con- tradictions and inconsistencies. Errors, however, great or fre- quent, may well have been due to the imperfection which must attach to all human instruments.
But these are questions which lie on the threshhold. They are only the outer husk of the theological doubts and difficulties of the present day. Taking this revelation, with all its disputed cosmo- gony, its imperfections and outrages on the moral sense, not dimin- ished by the innumerable commentators and interpreters, no two of whom are entirely in accord, while many differ in fundamental and vital points ; taking, I say, for granted as primary data that there is a God and moral governor of the universe, and a divine revelation of things needful to be known by man in his relation to the Deity embodied in the Bible, can it be truly said, as Mr. Peek alleges of this revelation, that "while it sustains uninjured the fiercest criticism of the sceptics, and adapts itself to the ad- vancing discoveries of the philosopher, it is also recognised as re- sponding to the deepest cravings and highest aspirations of our nature ?"
Whatever may be the feeling of imperfection about the utter- ances attributed to God himself and the varied records of the Jews bound up in the Old Testament, this is but a secondary diffi- culty, as simply rendering impossible the acceptance of any theory of a verbal inspiration. The religious system of the Jewish Scriptures is comparatively simple and consonant with the -moral sense of mankind, apart from what may be put down to human errors in transmission of divine light, as it is comprised in the compendious summary given in the Gospel,—" There is one God, and him shalt thou love with all thy heart and all thy soul ; and thy neighbour as thyself." There is no problem of a future life and immortality, with a retributive law extending beyond this world, and involving eternal punishment and misery to any of God's creatures. There is no question of a Trinity in unity, so far transcending human powers of comprehension. There is, in a word, no Athanasian Creed, to harass and perplex the devout worshipper of God, revealed in the Mosaic dispensation.
When Mr. Peek, therefore, says that this revelation, as it has been read and interpreted these eighteen centuries, from St. Paul to Athanasius, and by successive Popes of Rome and heads of other Churches, all claiming divine authority and sanotioni and to speak with "the living voice of the Church," about which we are hearing so much just now, "responds to the deepest cravings and highest aspirations, either of the cultured or the sincere and unlearned' men of successive ages, and of this age more especially," I question the correctness of his con- clusion. What becomes, then, of the vast numbers who pro. test against all the damnatory clauses, as well as many of the dogmas and definitions, of the Athanasian Creed respecting the nature and personality of the Godhead and its triune subsistence, as wholly incomprehensible, and without intelligible meaning, if the words are to be taken in their natural sense? What of the Calvinistic tenets of predestination and election, which so large a body of Presbyterians, with Huguenots and Lutherans, are assumed to accept in their full and natural sense, but which throughout the greater part of Christendom are received with doubt only,—on the authority of the Church, and chiefly by women, and children, under clerical teaching and influence.
When Mr. Peek undertakes to defend the reasonableness of the faith of the sincere and unlearned, has he considered how these widely pervading elements of doubt and disbelief are to be recon- ciled with an unquestioning faith in the tenets taught every week from Protestant pulpits ? Nor is this all. A sad and bewilder- ing feeling is often expressed as to the Church's teaching on the "Atonement." The necessity for a vicarious sacrifice, by which means alone, a just and adequate satisfaction could be made for the sins of the whole world—the sacrifice of the life of the Son of God,—of God himself incarnate in the flesh, and walking this earth, to be crucified by fanatic Israelites,—what does it all mean, if regarded with the limited powers given to man ? God is a spirit,—we are told by Christ. What can we understand, there- fore, by the filial relationship of Christ, gave as something only imperfectly comprehensible, by analogy with that of human beings with a corporeal existence and nature ? We know, indeed, that vicarious sacrifices were offered by the Israelites, until the Temple must have resembled a shambles for the slaughter of innumerable victims,—said to be by divine command, but does this make the theory of the Atonement more intelligible or less revolting to the moral sense of mankind.
The incarnation, the atonement, everlasting punishment, the double procession, predestination and free-will, and the other dogmas embodied in the Three Creeds and the Thirty-nine Articles, are in their own words," incomprehensible " to the reason. Whether the materials of these exist in the Gospels, out of which such systems of theology may be framed, are questions of fact also. Only in so far as the Gospels are believed to be authentic records of what actually took place in the time of Christ and his dis- ciples, and do actually furnish such materials and foundations for the dogmas therein set forth, can they have any authority. They can in no sense be affirmed to have been part of the matter expressly revealed by Christ, but a system of doctrine drawn up
by men, with or without divine guidance ; and, in their opinion, derivable from what was actually revealed and taught by Christ and his Apostles. But on this, how great is the divergence of opinion and faith in the Christian world
Not long ago a pamphlet appeared in its "fifth thousand," with the ominous title, "Modern Christianity, or Civilised Heathenism." I cannot say I felt disposed to endorse many of the arguments of the writer, nevertheless the general postulate he took for his theme I think he went far to establish, namely, that Christianity failed in power from its want of reality, and an irrecon- cilable contradiction between its tenets and practice. He con- tended that "if either prayer and praise in church on Sunday have any sense at all, they positively forbid our spending the week in money-making or worldly pleasure, or any other work than that of anxious preparation for judgement and acts of mercy towards Christ's poor." Of course this assumes that the logical issues of the creed of Christendom lead to this fatal inconsistency between our practice and our faith, and can only be avoided by renouncing all the secular interests and activities, and leading a life of monachism and seclusion from the cares of -the worid and family life,—the end of which in two genera- tions would be the end of the world, which, indeed, was what the Apostles expected. As we, in the nineteenth century after the Christian era, cannot but see this anticipation was founded in error, though seemingly deduced from their Master's words and by his Apostles, we may be excused if we doubt also whether
• this negation of all temporal things, and absolute devotion of a whole life to prayer, fasting, and acts of charity, in the endea- vour to follow in Christ's footsteps, and in obedience to the literal tenor of his teaching, is in accord with the spirit and aim of his precepts. Christianity, without some principle of interpretation and qualification reconciling its duties to the essential require- ments of social and civilised life, with their inevitable activities and practical interests, leads to a hopeless contradiction between the faith and practice of Christian men and women, however devoutly disposed, if living in the world, and not in a desert or a convent.
The infallibility of a Pope or the Church of Rome does not offer to a reasoning man a more impossible dogma than the life and standard of faith and duty which the Church Service of our Common Prayer-book prescribes, if read in its plain and natural sense. Can it be matter of surprise that it does not command general assent, and has no hold upon the faith and affection of the great majority of those who compose the congregations ? If this be so, may it not be truly said that all these years the Clergy have been preaching the "Gospel of Unreality" to the world, and the world seems as far from conversion as ever? Do we live visibly or really, as, according to such teaching, we ought,—as men to whom this earth is absolutely nothing, and the salvation of our souls from all but certain damnation as the sole object of our thought and efforts ? If not, how can we reconcile our lives with the teaching of the Churches, or our faith with our practice ; and failing this, what is life itself but one continued hypo- erisy ? It is, I believe, the manifest impossibility of recon- ciling the two—our lives and the faith we profess—that spreads a feeling of unreality and unsoundness in the creeds of Christi- anity and the doctrines of its Churches far and wide in the
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