PART I

SPECULATIVE THOUGHT

CHAPTER I

THEOLOGY

THE surest and easiest way to penetrate the thought of any age is to study it in the systematic thinkers. The same ideas may possibly be more profoundly expressed in poetry; but they will certainly be more elusive; for, while it is the philosopher's business to express definite opinions, no one reproaches the poet if he only sees visions and dreams dreams.

Speculative thought falls into three great divisions, closely related in theory, but in practice often widely divergent. Science in most of its branches stands apart, and as a rule scarcely infringes upon literature at all; but in the nineteenth century it cannot be ignored. Theology ought to be the complement of philosophy, holding towards the latter the place of high-mindedness in the Aristotelian scheme of the virtues, and in fact Aristotle uses the word coλoyin as equivalent to ontology. But we must set it down as one of the results of creeds that the true relation is always obscured and sometimes completely lost. In England especially, the connexion of theology with philosophy is often very slight.

It will be most convenient to take the theologians first. In earlier times they themselves might have claimed priority on the

score of the dignity of "the queen of the sciences"; but such assertions of superiority are a little discredited, and of late "the queen of the sciences" has fallen on evil days. A better reason for priority can, however, be assigned; for, whatever may be thought of the comparative endowments of the philosophers and the theologians, the latter have in the Victorian period exercised the more potent influence upon literature.

The theologians of this period are divisible into four groups,the Evangelicals, who at the start were by far the most powerful; the Noetics, and their successors of the Broad Church; the followers of Coleridge; and, by far the most interesting of all, the exponents of the Catholic Reaction, which is known in England as the Oxford Movement.

The feet of men have travelled far from the ground on which they stood at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It would be fruitless to compare the opinions of men who simply rejected supernatural religion. There were multitudes who did so then, as there are multitudes still. But ex nihilo nihil fit: we learn nothing from a mere negation: we may learn much from the differences between those who are in partial agreement. In a passage published in 1893, Charles Pearson gave some data from which may be measured the distance that separates the thought of the present day from thought just a little less modern:-"Professor Agassiz, whom many still living can remember with affection and reverence, was brought up under teachers who held that God had scattered fossils about the world as a test of faith1; and an Oxford teacher of the highest local repute at least thirty years later published his belief that the typical vertebra-a column with lateral processes-was multiplied all over the world as a proof of the Crucifixion. A little later an Oxford divine, the accredited head of a great party in the Church, was consulting with an Oxford anatomist to know if it was not possible to point to a whale that might have swallowed Jonah." Illustrations might

1 Professor Agassiz told me this himself. (The notes are Pearson's.) 2 Christian Ethics, by the Rev. W. Sewell.

3 National Life and Character, 305.

easily be multiplied. In 1859, the year of Darwin's great book, the Bampton lecturer, Rawlinson, gravely assumed the accuracy of the biblical chronology from Adam. In 1864, eleven thousand clergy signed a declaration on inspiration and eternal punishment, the effect of which, according to Archibald Campbell Tait, then Bishop of London, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was that "all questions of physical science should be referred to the written words of Holy Scripture." Still later, in 1890, no less a person than William Ewart Gladstone wrote The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture, whose purpose was, not indeed to test physical science by Scripture, but to show that, after all the assaults of astronomy, geology and biology, the early chapters of Genesis stood undamaged.

Gladstone, however, was contemporary with Agassiz, and had been educated in an age when it was not impossible for intelligent men to believe that fossils were meant to be a test of faith. There are numerous evidences of change within the Churches themselves. In 1843, Chalmers, Guthrie and the other leaders of the Scottish Disruption, went out into the wilderness, a Bible in one hand and the Westminster Confession of Faith in the other. The doctrine of predestination had no terrors to them. Holy Willie's Prayer had been written; but the "New Licht" succumbed to the "Auld Licht"; and it is certain that men who put everything to the touch, as they did, believed in all sincerity of mind the creed they professed. And in those days the interpretation of the creed in question was that which Burns so vigorously expresses. Fifty years later their successors have become uneasy, and a Declaratory Act is needed to disburden troubled consciences. Now, the doctrine of 1843 seems to find its only safe home among some score of Highland congregations. In England, evidences of similar change may be seen on every side. It is unnecessary to go to the heterodox or to the doubtfully orthodox. The biblical chronology is abandoned; the word "inspiration" has wholly changed its meaning; a profound silence is observed with regard to the doctrine of eternal punishment. Bishops and dignitaries of the Church pick and choose among the miracles,

and invent marvellous hypotheses to reconcile the doctrine of the fall with the theory of evolution'.

If this great change-almost a revolution-be not borne in mind, it will be difficult to understand the position at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then, the idea of an infallible Book was easy and simple: it was readily accepted with little or no qualification. On the other hand, the conception of an infallible Church had scarcely any hold in England; and no one yet dreamed of attempting to reduce the Reformation, so far as the Anglican Communion is concerned, to the dimensions of a storm in a teacup. Circumstances therefore were favourable for the Evangelicals; and accordingly we find them throned in high places. It is true, their power had passed its zenith, and their fervour was already declining. The disintegrating forces of eighteenth century philosophy told upon the theologians; and even Christian apologists, like Butler, were profoundly influenced by them. Nevertheless, they were in the main stream of ecclesiastical life. In the Baptist Robert Hall (1764-1831) they possessed the most powerful preacher of the time, and, in the opinion of Coleridge, the master of the best style in English. It was they who made converts. When Thomas Scott (1747-1821) became convinced of the error of Unitarianism, it was to the Calvinistic Evangelicals that he attached himself; and his commentary on the Bible is written on strictly evangelical principles. Scripture is the sole test of Scripture: there is no appeal against the infallible Book; and the only criticism permissible is that which throws light upon one part by showing how it is explained by another. Newman speaks of Scott as the man "to whom (humanly speaking) I almost owe my soul"." Charles Simeon (1759-1836) of Cambridge, who is commemorated in Shorthouse's Sir Percival, is said to have had a following of young men larger even than that of Newman. It was the Evangelicals also who produced the most scholarly work of the time. No contemporary divines did work as solid as Scott's Commentary, already mentioned, or Simeon's Horae Homileticae.

1 See articles by Mr W. H. Mallock in XIX Century for September, November and December, 1904, and replies by the Rev. Prebendary Whitworth and the Rev. H. Maynard Smith. Apologia, 5.

2

The foundation is unsatisfactory, the method unphilosophical, and the conclusions often quaint; but, granted their presuppositions, these men were thorough.

An interesting feature of the Evangelicals is the ease with which the Church and the Dissenting sections of the party fraternise'. Thackeray in the Newcomes has drawn a picture of Clapham which gives the impression that the "sect" which had its centre there was a sect of Dissenters. Macaulay, who knew the place and the sect thoroughly, declared that this was a mistake. "The leading people of the place," says his biographer, "with the exception of Mr William Smith, the Unitarian member of Parliament, were one and all staunch Churchmen; though they readily worked in concert with those religious communities which held in the main the same views and pursued the same objects as themselves." But in truth, among the evangelical party the question of Church or Dissent was a small matter in comparison with that of unity or difference of aim. Their theory of the Church emphasised its Protestant character and minimised the points of resemblance between it and the Church of Rome. The more earnest among them devoted themselves to efforts for moral and social reform, and above all to the great struggle for the emancipation of slaves. In this they got little help from the bench of bishops or from the aristocracy, while they got much from nonconformist ministers and from the wealthy laymen who were influenced by these. It is the lasting glory of the evangelical party that this great reform was mainly their work. Whatever may be the merits or the faults of their theology, or of their views about the Church, they gave to the Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of man one of the greatest practical applications it has ever received.

The Evangelicals are also by far the richest of all the divisions of theologians in literary connexions. Carlyle, Macaulay, Browning, Ruskin and George Eliot all came under Calvinistic and evan

1 It must be observed that this is true only of the Evangelicals. Gladstone always believed that at Oxford he had run risk of rustication for the offence of attending Dissenting chapels. (Doyle's Reminiscences, 101.)

2 Life of Macaulay, i. 61.