DR. LIDDON ON THE "NEW REFORMATION."* Ix his Preface to
this edition of his famous Bampton Lectures Dr. Liddon has made some caustic criticism on the "New Reformation," which Mrs. Humphry Ward offers as a sub- stitute for historical Christianity. We suppose we ought to apologise to that talented novelist for describing as "historical" a creed which she probably thinks she has undermined by proving, to her own satisfaction, on historical grounds, that it rests on mingled legend and unreasoning enthusiasm. With all due deference, however, we must modestly maintain that the only Christianity known to history, the Christianity which has abolished slavery within its borders ; which (in comparison with
• The Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. By H. P. Liddon, D.D., D.C.L. Thirteenth Edition. London : Bivingtons. 1989. Paganism), has established a brotherhood of nations ; which (Professor Donaldson notwithstanding) has indefinitely elevated and dignified woman ; which has diminished the frequency and mitigated the horrors of war ; which, in a word, has created modern civilisation,—is the Christianity which the "New Reformation" is to reform, as Dr. Liddon truly says, "out of existence." It is perhaps not presumptuous to believe that a, religion which has done so much for mankind, and survived so many perils, is not likely to go down before the portentous learning of the Squire in Robert Elsmere, or Mr. Merriman in the Nineteenth Century article. This is not the first time that premature paaa.ns have been sung over the approaching disso- lution of Christianity, and we suspect that Mrs. Humphry Ward will live to see her "New Reformation" pass into the limbo of ephemeral dreams. If she had more humour, she would have realised the hopelessness of making any serious impression on reflecting minds by the weapons she employs. Does the reader remember a scene in Robert Elsmere which is intended to be very impressive ? For Christian baptism the authoress had already substituted a metal badge; and we are then introduced in tones of great solemnity to two of the disciples of the "New Reformation," a father and daughter, parodying over their mid-day meal the Saviour's words in instituting the Eucharist. "Do this in remembrance of me," says the devout father; to which the daughter replies : "Jesus, we always remember thee." And this is said over a meal of "potatoes and bloaters " ! The authoress did not mean to be irreverent. To parody an incident charged with such sacred associations was, we are sure, far from her intention. But a reformer who bids us exchange the two great sacraments of the Gospel for a metal badge and. a noonday meal of potatoes and bloaters is not very likely to prove a formidable assailant. And this in the name of a creed which rests its claim to assail the creed of Christendom on historical criticism. If anything at all is historical about Christianity, slimly it is its initial Sacrament and the Eucharist. Yet our authoress offers us a grotesque substitute, and all in the name of historical criticism ! This, we presume, is a specimen of the reformer's critical method, an "improved translation" of the Gospel record "by the use of that same faculty, half-scientific, half-imaginative, which, in the rendering of a foreign language, enables a man to get into the very heart and mind of his author, to speak with his tones and feel with his feeling." Can she really suppose that in her (unconscious) parody of the Christian Sacraments she has "got into the very heart and mind of her Author"?
The "New Reformation," we are told, is "a revolt against miraculous belief." The Gospel narrative must be discredited because it rests on the miraculous. Mrs. Humphry Ward starts with a preconceived idea as to the relation of God to the universe, and bends and mutilates historical facts to the exigencies of her Procrustean theory. She frankly admits that her method is to read the ideas of the present day into the events of the Gospel story, rejecting or retaining quite arbitrarily what harmonises with or militates against her prejudices. But where is the "revolt against miraculous belief" to end? What is "miraculous belief " ? A resurrection from the dead ? But the restoration of life in an individual organism is less miraculous than the original apparition of life on our planet. The origin of life is a greater breach of continuity, a more conspicuous invasion of the order of Nature, than the resur- rection of Jesus from the dead. The new reformers make a great parade of their appeal to reason ; but the simple truth is, that they are, as Dr. Liddon says, the slaves of an "irrational postulate,"—namely, the antecedent incredibility of miracles. Miracles are impossible ; therefore we must reject whatever is miraculous in Christianity. Such is the short and easy method of the" New Reformation." But let it be logical, and reconcile the origin of life with its postulate. And the origin of life is bat one of a multitude of problems which the new reformers will find it as bard to solve as the resurrection of Jesus or his walking on the Bea and stilling the storm. Mrs. Humphry Ward's homage to the historical method is, after all, but a piece of intellectual, albeit unconscious, insincerity. It is plain that no amount of evidence would break down her in- vincible prejudice against "miraculous belief." And here we must protest against the polemical artifice which she employs, both in _Robert Elsnvere and in her Nineteenth Century article, to prejudice her readers unfairly against Christianity. The orthodox champion in Robert Elsm,ere is a cleverish, narrow- minded bigot of a Ritualist whose only notion of faith is the unreasoning subjection of the understanding to the im- perious demand of ecclesiastical authority. The orthodox champion in the article on the "New Reformation" has also a narrow forehead and a narrow mind, and makes learned references to German books which he has never read, for he is obliged to confess that he does not know German. Her unbelieving heroes, on the other hand, are large-minded, broad-browed, judicial in temper, and miracles of learning, although we are obliged to take their learning, like their other qualities, on the authority of Mrs. Humphry Ward. And when she cannot help admitting the learning, even in the field of German historical criticism, of men like Dr. Lightfoot and Dr. Westeott, she puts their authority aside with a wave of the hand as that of men whose judgment is vitiated by the bias of a foregone conclusion. As if Mrs. Humphry Ward and her German authorities were not steeped in the prejudices of a foregone conclusion ! Writers who begin their investigation of the evidences for Christianity with their minds in "revolt against miraculous belief" are not the persons to lecture others on the disturbing influences of a foregone conclusion. It is plain that there are innumerable aspects of the question and whole classes of evidence of which Mrs. Humphry Ward is altogether unaware. The philosophy of Christianity, its adaptation to human needs, its relation to modern civilisation, the vast body of internal evidence to their own genuineness, which the New Testament Scriptures supply, as also the relation of physical science to miraculous belief,—these are matters of which, judging from her writings, Mrs. Humphry Ward has not thought seriously at all. Yet they have an infinitely more important bearing on the right understanding of Christianity than the ingenious and, for the most part mutually destruc- tive criticism, which Mrs. Humphry Ward elevates to a quasi- pontifical infallibility. The most eminent men of science are among the foremost to deprecate the irrational" revolt against miraculous belief" which blinds the minds of the critics of the "New Reformation" against the plainest evidence if it tells against their foregone conclusion. It is impossible, for example, to read dispassionately the story of the raising of Lazarus in all its details without a strong conviction that it rests on the testimony of a veracious eye-witness. What a touch of pathetic reality there is in the hurried exclamation of the bereaved sister when the Master bade them remove the stone from the mouth of the grave : "Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days !" Her grief was overpowered for the moment by the antici- pated horror of finding the features she loved so well repelling her by the odour of incipient putrefaction. And how irresistible to the inventor of such a story would have been the temptation to give us some of the restored man's ex- periences in the world of spirits. The unique reserve of the Gospels, as well as their undesigned coincidences and minute touches of genuineness, make no impression at all on the critics of the "New Reformation." Their minds are hermetically sealed against a large body of evidence which they would have accepted as conclusive in any matter which did not come in conflict with their fundamental postulate, that all evidence must be rejected as untrustworthy which bears witness to the miraculous. Very different is the mental attitude of the true man of science. "The man who proclaims the Infinite (and no man can avoid it)," says Pasteur, "ac- cumulates in that affirmation more of the supernatural than can be found in all the miracles recorded in all religions."
But it is in dealing with the character of our Lord that the Apostles of the "New Reformation" show more especially their incapacity, by reason of profound prepossessions, to exercise the function of impartial critics. They profess to reverence, admire, and love him, yet if their estimate of him be correct, he was but an ignorant, arrogant, impulsive enthusiast, deceiving and self-deceived. How can a critic have even a glimmer of such a character as that of Jesus, when he calmly throws out the ghastly suggestion that the pathetic lament over Jerusalem was but the chagrin of a dis- appointed fanatic who then realised for the first time the hopelessness of his task, and thought of the Galilean maidens whose love he might have won had he foresworn all ambitious dreams, and been content to have ended his days as a village carpenter? Such is the profound criticism of Renan, in his once- famous Life of Jesus, which for a brief space made a few timid seals uneasy, and is now a literary curiosity. Mrs. Humphry Ward ridicules Canon Westcott's view that " affection " can play any part in the criticism of the records of Christianity. Affection is here but another word for sympathy, and we venture to say that sympathy is one of the most essential attributes of a critic. No; let the Apostles of the "New Reformation" deal honestly with themselves. The substitute for Christianity which they offer us has no evidence whatever to support it, either in the records of our religion or in secular history. It is a myth pure and simple. Talk of evidence indeed ! Where is the evidence for the Jesus who figures in Robert Elsmere 1 There is absolutely none. It is the offspring of a novelist's brain painted in fragmentary tints borrowed from the character of the historical Founder of Christianity. The Jesus of history is the offspring of miracle and a worker of miracles ; one, moreover, who claimed an unique superiority and lordship over the human race. "I am the light of the world ; " "I am the resurrection and the life " ; "Whosoever believeth in me shall never die,"—these are the self-assertions of one who is more than man, or who has no claim on the moral allegiance, or even respect of mankind. The "New Reformation" must do more before it can claim the serious attention of Christian apologists ; though we cannot regret that it has given occasion to the characteristic and delicate irony of Dr. Liddon's preface to his thirteenth edition of his Hampton Lectures.
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