CHRISTIANITY COMPELS RESPECT. 667 What religious faith do you give us in its place?' And the philosopher replies (his full heart bleeding for them), and he says, 'Think of the Unknowable!' The same objection is open to Comte's religion of Humanity. It is no consolation in the hour of death to think of the Impersonal Humanity." Section 6.-From Defiant Discourtesy to a Patronizing Respect. Another converging tendency is a manifest change in the dress, form and spirit of modern skepticism, showing the modifying influence of Christianity. The defiant spirit of the Diderots and the Paines has almost wholly disappeared. What naturalist now speculates like D'Holback? What historian discourses like Volney? And what metaphysician dogmatizes like Helvetius? Infidelity has greatly accommodated itself to Christian phraseology; has accepted, in the form of half truths, fundamentals of the Christian system which a century ago were scouted, and has become more rational and religious in its manner. However deceptive its attitude in these accommodated forms, the fact itself is a substantial concession in favor of Christianity and of the need of its faith. "Infidelity can now deny a personal God, and at the same time, as by a double consciousness, breathe out the devotional language of the Bible in spurious religiosity.' It adorns itself with religious sentiments, and with 'words which belong by right to faith alone.' It talks of prayer, permeates literature with a self-conscious devoutness, breathes heavenly aspirations, wails languidly over the evils of the world, talks wonderfully of the All-Father, and even sings David's psalms."* What a peculiar power is this in Christianity, that even "its deadly foes and traducers borrow its speech and trade upon its capital. This borrowing and wearing in public view the insignia of the divine kingdom obscures somewhat the distinction between the body of faith and the body of unbelief, renders Christianity less conspicuous by reason of her very triumphs, and, forsooth, perils somewhat her hold upon undiscriminating minds." But it is her glory that, as a living power, she has so wrought upon her great enemy as, by constraint, to change it so far into her own image. The solid central truths of Christianity have compelled these things. While these changes have been going on, the aggregate of skeptical gain has been nothing. Not a single great concession has been made by Christianity to unbelief; but "the life of Jesus is still The Light: Is it Waning? Boston, 1879. Ibid. Full of significance are also these lines of Matthew Arnold: Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here, as on a darkling plain, Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Professor Youmans, eminent as a scientific evolutionist, recently said, that while there were $54,000,000 invested in churches in New York city: If there is a scientific society in New York that owns a roof or shelter we do not know of it. Religious people every-where are pouring out their money in behalf of all manner of religious enterprises, in quantities that are without precedent, and that, we take it, is very solid proof, in this money-grabbing age, of the reality of their faith and the intensity of their enthusiasm. The churches include within their ranks the large majority of the best classes of citizens; and their teachings are accepted by thinkers who do not "advance" with evolutionists, but who have quite as much learning, quite as high intellectual capacity, and quite as much skill in determining the respective values of the new doctrines. The religion that the advanced thinkers turn over to the antiquary is the mainstay and bulwark of our civilization; it is the one great force that stems the tide of demoralizing and disintegrating influences that threaten social order, and it is the sole guarantee that mankind has of progress, elevation and liberty in this world, to say nothing of the promise it makes of better and higher things in the impenetrable hereafter. Frederick Harrison, who has ranked as a distinguished disciple of Comte, has shown the inadequacy of the agnosticism of Herbert Spencer as a religion: "In the hour of pain, danger and death," says Mr. Harrison, “can any one think of the Unknowable, hope any thing of the Unknowable, or find any consolation therein? . . . A mother wrung with agony for the loss of her child, or the wife crushed by the death of her children's father, or the helpless and the oppressed, the poor and the needy, men, women and children, in sorrow, doubt and want, longing for something to comfort them and to guide them-something to believe in, to hope for, to love and to worship-they come to our philosopher, and they say, 'Your men of science have routed our priests and have silenced our old teachers. CHRISTIANITY COMPELS RESPECT. 667 What religious faith do you give us in its place?' And the philosopher replies (his full heart bleeding for them), and he says, 'Think of the Unknowable!' The same objection is open to Comte's religion of Humanity. It is no consolation in the hour of death to think of the Impersonal Humanity." Section 6.-From Defiant Discourtesy to a Patronizing Respect. Another converging tendency is a manifest change in the dress, form and spirit of modern skepticism, showing the modifying influence of Christianity. The defiant spirit of the Diderots and the Paines has almost wholly disappeared. What naturalist now speculates like D'Holback? What historian discourses like Volney? And what metaphysician dogmatizes like Helvetius? Infidelity has greatly accommodated itself to Christian phraseology; has accepted, in the form of half truths, fundamentals of the Christian system which a century ago were scouted, and has become more rational and religious in its manner. However deceptive its attitude in these accommodated forms, the fact itself is a substantial concession in favor of Christianity and of the need of its faith. "Infidelity can now deny a personal God, and at the same time, as by a double consciousness, breathe out the devotional language of the Bible in spurious religiosity.' It adorns itself with religious sentiments, and with 'words which belong by right to faith alone.' It talks of prayer, permeates literature with a self-conscious devoutness, breathes heavenly aspirations, wails languidly over the evils of the world, talks wonderfully of the All-Father, and even sings David's psalms."* What a peculiar power is this in Christianity, that even "its deadly foes and traducers borrow its speech and trade upon its capital. This borrowing and wearing in public view the insignia of the divine kingdom obscures somewhat the distinction between the body of faith and the body of unbelief, renders Christianity less conspicuous by reason of her very triumphs, and, forsooth, perils somewhat her hold upon undiscriminating minds." But it is her glory that, as a living power, she has so wrought upon her great enemy as, by constraint, to change it so far into her own image. The solid central truths of Christianity have compelled these things. While these changes have been going on, the aggregate of skeptical gain has been nothing. Not a single great concession has been made by Christianity to unbelief; but "the life of Jesus is still The Light: Is it Waning? Boston, 1879. + Ibid. majestic and divine-the insoluble enigma to the cold critic, but attractive and comprehensible to the humble believer." "It would take a good octavo to contain merely the titles of the works that the last forty years have produced in favor of the divine foundations of Christianity. The war has been carried into the enemy's camp, and the leading skeptical writers are more busied just now with. defending their own ground than with advances upon the Church."* Nor have these converging tendencies been wholly from without the fold of Christianity. From within the fold of "orthodoxy" there have been movements which have been bringing Protestantism nearer the center and core of truth. Section 7.-From Scholastic to Vital Truth. It must be confessed that Christian truth has formerly been too much in bondage to arbitrary systems and dialectical forms, compromising its purity, and investing it with qualities which do not belong to the truth "as it is in Jesus." A liberating and purging process has been greatly needed, delivering it from human constructions which have been only misconstructions, and presenting it in those purer and simpler forms in which it was originally presented by the Great Teacher and the apostles. This purification of theology, under the modifying influence of modern culture and the increasing spirituality in the churches, has sometimes been mistaken for disintegration and decay. But the changes have chiefly related to outward expression, not to central truths; while some things once magnified are now minified, and others once in the background have been brought to the front. A rehabilitating and restating process has been going on, not only in theology, but in medicine, in statesmanship, in political economy, in education, in general science, and as we have noticed, even in skepticism. While there has been such great progress in all departments of knowledge, in philology, in biblical interpretation, it would be positively discreditable to the churches not to make restatements of Christian doctrine. they have done so is to their credit. That And how greatly has theology been sweetened and made attractive and helpful, by discarding the old repellent features of Calvinism. The phrases, "The American Theology," "The Theology of our Age and Country," occasionally appearing among us, imply some *Rev. Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D. GROWTH OF VITAL RELIGION. 669 thing peculiar in the religious thought of the United States. It cannot have escaped the notice of wide observers, that there is apparent in the current religious ideas of American Christians, what may be denominated a concensus of opinions upon the more practical and experimental views of Christianity, in strking contrast with the concensus of religious opinions one hundred and fifty years ago. Then it was Calvinistic, now it is of a decidedly Arminian type. It would not be possible in less than a volume to trace the processes by which this transition has been effected; but so prominent a phase of religious thought must not be wholly omitted. About a dozen years ago an eminent theologian, in accounting for this transition, said, "It was born in a powerful revival of religion toward the middle of the last century. It may be dated from the profound and devout speculations of the pure and venerable Jonathan Edwards and his successors, who manfully grappled with the problems of Christian metaphysics." To this he added that, "more recent importations of vast stores of European learning, etc., have also contributed." This is all true so far as it goes. Edwards had a line of successors-Bellamy, Smalley, Backus, Hopkins, Burton, Emmons, etc., under whom Calvinism of the olden time was gradually modified in the old Puritan churches; but the doctrinal revulsion from Calvinism was manifold. With some it was a revolt from Christianity to infidelity; with others, from "orthodoxy," as evangelical theology was styled, to Unitarianism, Universalism, etc., already sketched in this volume,† and falsely called in the last century "Arminianism," but strictly Pelagianism; and with others still the broadest and deepest revulsion led to Methodist Arminianism. There can be no true history of American theological thought without the recognition of the Arminian revolution which has largely eliminated the Augustinian theology, and which is of permanent historical interest, because it has been attended with a general resuscitation of spiritual life and activity, and because it seems destined to give permanent character to American religious thought. As for the Edwardean metaphysics, they have been gradually outgrown and widely repudiated, and the Edwardean "awakening" was local and temporary. The latter had disastrously reacted before Arminian Methodism reached America and began its work, which has lasted and grown until the present time. Whitefield, though a Calvinist, was not a theologian, and labored only to revive the life of the churches. The Arminian Methodist preachers followed closely in + See chapter on "Diverse Currents." Dr. Philip Schaff, in an Inaugural Address. |