ST. PAUL AT ATHENS.* CANON FARR -IR, in the preface
he has prefixed to this little volume, says very justly of these sermons, "On whatever grounds any may object to them, no one, I think, can possibly say that they are nothing more than another wave on the Dead Sea of Common-place.'" Certainly they are not common-place sermons. They are the sermons of one who has felt very pro- foundly the collision between the scientific and the theological ideas of the present day, and who has no slight amount of sym- pathy with both, and entirely believes that there is no real contradiction between them. They are the sermons, too, of a man endowed with no small amount of eloquence, and with that com- plete sincerity which is the first condition of treating matters of this kind with anything like success. How much Mr. Shak- speare sympathises both with the spirit of unbiassed philosophi- cal investigation,—with what Mr. Arnold calls "modern cub. ture,"—as well as with the spirit of Christian faith, this pre- liminary contrast between the functions which Athens and St. Paul both served in the plan of God's universe will sufficiently show,—and it will show also how clearly and vigorously he can express his meaning :—
"And thus the city and the Apostle met,—the glory of human culture, and the enthusiasm of Divine faith. Many lessons touching the thought and life of our own day, suggested by this singular con. trast, I propose to draw out, to the best of my power, in succeeding sermons. One only, in conclusion, will I now note. It is this : God has a place and work in the world for Athens, as well as for St. Paul, for St. Paul as well as for Athens. It did not seem so then ; there are some, on either side, who do not believe it now ; it is true, not- withstanding. Neither the Athenian philosopher nor the Jewish apostle understood it, and yet it has come to pass. Alike for the influence of the city in which Pericles ruled, in which Socrates lived and died, and for the influence of the preacher of his Christ, has God made room in his own world. Very strange to each other were the Athenian and St. Paul. 'What will this babbler say P'—this Jew, with his foreign garb, with his quaint language and his uncouth accent, retailing to us scraps of knowledge picked up here and there, which he evidently does not tmderstand,—this eager disputant, who talks in the market-place like another Socrates, and, like Socrates, seemeth to be a setter-forth of strange gods.' What does it all mean ? The apostle, too, could even he understand Athens ? Marvelling at the idolatry around him, he saw, in the tumult of his spirit, little more than the idolatry. What Athenian listening in that crowd could dream that the day would come when the creed preached by St. Paul would dethrone the goddess of the Parthenon and the lords of Olympus, close the schools of philosophy, seat itself in the place of the Ctesars, transmute the temple of the virgin goddess into the church of the Virgin Mother, and create a new civilisation out of the ruins of the old ? But neither did St. Paul foresee, when he looked upon the city wholly given up to idolatry, that the spirit of Socrates, of Plato, and of Aristotle—names of which he had probably just heard, and no more—would hereafter profoundly penetrate the theology of the Church, and mould and tincture the Christendom of the future. Greece,' it has been said, arose from the dead with the New Testament in her hand,' and, I may add, has leavened with her culture, her art, her subtle intellectual force, the world which the New Testament has created. Ah, yes ! God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor our ways his. Athens and St. Paul alike saw but a little way into the future ; both being dead, yet speak. As God lifts his world age by age to higher and nobler levels, he brings from the * St. Paul at Athens: Spiritual Christianity in Relation to some Aspects of Modern Thought. Nine Sermons, preached In St. Stephen's Church, Westbourne Park, by Charles Shakspeare, RA.. Assistant-Curate; with a Preface by the Rev. Canon Farrar, DD. London: C. Regan Pant and Clo. ENO.
east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, men who sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in his kingdom, and who are helping to make one bright and perfect thing out of the sundered elements of human life."
All this is true, and in the later lectures the idea that Greek thought supplied something that was absolutely essential to the development of humanity, if not so essential as the Jewish and Christian revelation,—something which contributed to the true understanding of that revelation, and to its proper adaptation to the needs of the human spirit,—is thoughtfully worked out. So well is it worked out, that we are almost disposed to consider Mr.
Shakspeare inconsistent with himself, when he says, in his fourth sermon :—
"The fact is past all question that this spiritual faith which St. Paul preached won its best victories in those its earlier days, when it was purest, when the intensity of its moral heat was greatest, when its forms of worship were simplest—prayer and praise and breaking of bread in the upper chamber, or in the catacomb, or in the lecture- hall—when it had no systematic theology, when priesthood it had none, when populace and magistrates and philosophers were all arrayed against it, and when yet, by simple force of moral suasion, it had become such a living power in the heart of the Roman Empire that it had, in the former half of the second century, in one province at least, in the province of Bithynia, emptied the temples, ruined the trade in sheep and oxen for sacrifice, and brought to a standstill all the routine of Pagan ritual. So mightily grew the word of Gad and prevailed.' "
If Christianity won "its best victories" before it mingled with the stream of Greek thought, how is it that Greek thought must be regarded as adding something indispensable and divine to the evolution of Christianity ? We confess we doubt the fact. Nor do we believe that the religion of the Gospels was a religion without, to a considerable extent, a systematic theology, though it was a religion in which a systematic theology was only implicitly contained. We do not believe that Christianity won, before the passing-away of the Jewish dispensation, any victories so great as it won afterwards, in the schools of Athens and Alexandria, and later again, in the schools of Ireland, France, and Germany. If that be the greatest victory which is won over the most dangerous foe, the victories won in Judma were none of them so great as those won over Greek and Roman, over Goth and Visigoth, over Saxon and Celt ; best of all, perhaps, over modern Agnostics and disciples of the new knowledge.
The only fault we have to find with Mr. Shakspeare's ex-
cellent little book is, that in trying to show that the human mind, in ignoring all its actual relations with the infinite Mind, is dwarfing and mutilating its own nature, he is too little explicit as to the particular class of facts which the attitude of mind called sceptical really tempts men to ignore. When, for instance, he speaks of healthy doubt as a mere means to an end, he is hardly addressing himself to genuine sceptics any longer, for he is speaking from the point of view not of the sceptic, however honest, but of the Christian. He says :— " So far then, my brethren, as scepticism, whether ancient or modern, is simply inquiry, the doubt from which issues the search after truth, not only is it not what it has been rhetorically called, a loaded shell flung into the fortress of the soul by its great enemy,' but it is in the sphere of intellectual research an indispensable element of progress, and often enough in the spiritual life of the soul an agony which is close akin to faith. There is, however, something else ; and you will not suspect me of taking back with the left hand what I have given with the right when I say, that doubt is a means, not an end, having no value for itself alone, and, whether in the realm of science or of religion, of service only, as the road which may lead to certainty. And it is owing to the fact that scepticism does often really imply something more than this, that those who themselves shrink from inquiry have found some justification, both in ancient and in modern times, in giving scepticism a bad name. The doubt that is essential to investigation may pass from a mere negative and pro- visional attitude of expectancy into a positive and permanent state of mind—may be changed from a means into an end, and become a mental habit quite as unfavourable to the discovery of truth as the most pronounced dogmatism. In this sense, scepticism is a mis- fortune, and may become a moral malady."
Now, of course, doubt is, in the first instance, an attitude of mind leading to inquiry, and so far as inquiry may lead to cer- tainty, a means to the end of certainty. But you cannot properly specify to what end, doubt,—if it be honest doubt,—is to lead you. It must lead you to any end, positive or negative, in which the inquiry it stimulates, ultimately issues. Suppose that inquiry to issue in showing that the problem investigated is indeterminate, that a solution is, with the means at our disposal, impossible,— then and there, doubt is not a means to the end, of certainty, but a means to the end of positive uncertainty,—of deliberate re fusal to entertain any distinct belief on the subject investigated. Doubt is, if you please, a suspension of judgment until you
obtain,—if ever you do obtain,—the means of forming a sound judgment. But you are not entitled to assume, while you are in doubt, that a sound judgment will be its result. Doubt is a question which solicits an answer, but does not lead to an answer unless the elements of the answer exist, and exist within our reach. We object, therefore, to the assumption that doubt is merely a means to the end of knowledge. It is one- of two things, either a means to the end of knowledge, or a means to the end of convincing yourself that the conditions of knowledge are as yet unattainable. Doubt is a problem ; but of the problems known to us, the greater part are beyond our solution ; and as this is so, the next best thing to solv- ing a problem satisfactorily, is to be clear that the solutions hitherto proposed are mistaken or inadequate. Hence we think that in showing why the Agnostics of to-day, like the Agnostics of St. Paul's day, are mistaken in rejecting the enunciation of Divine truth, Mr. Shakspeare should have laid down more explicitly those facts even of human nature which the Agnostic view is obliged to ignore, and should not merely have contented himself with pointing to the tendency of the mind to assert and assume its relation to an infinite Being, as if that alone were final proof of its living relation with such a Being. The positive side of these sermons seems to us, then, a little vague and thin, as compared with the admissions so frankly made. The drift of St. Paul's great speech on Mars Hill was to show that the life of man had proceeded out of the life and will of One infinitely superior to man and man's devices,. and who would require an account of all His gifts to man, in another world, which should be higher even than this world ; aud the modern argument with the Agnostic is still one of the same kind. If we are only evolved out of that which is lower than ourselves,—whence this wavering of the will, as if we were- free, when by that hypothesis we should be really bound,— whence this starting of the conscience, as if we were under moral obligation, when by that hypothesis we should be at liberty to act as we please,—whence this sense of awe and reverence, as if we owed our life to what is higher, when, by that hypothesis, we spring out of that which is lower than ourselves,—whence this apparent power of the latest fruit of evolution to alter and mysteriously modify the very roots of its own life, when, by that hypothesis, there is no supernatural, and the highest creations of nature are those which most completely recognise their own servitude ? If the Agnostic hypothesis is really to be compared with the Christian,—the hypothesis of the unknown or unknow- able God, with that of St. Paul,—there should be, we think, a somewhat closer and more minute comparison of the two than Mr. Shakspeare's latest sermons give us. They excite rather more hope than they fulfil, and are least satisfactory where our expectations are most raised. But this is the only unfavourable- criticism we can pass on a book that is at once full of eloquence, full of knowledge, and, what is perhaps as good as anything,. full of apt and noble quotations. The various mottoes prefixed to each sermon comprehend almost a little literature of the- subject in themselves.
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