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ON THE HINDRANCES
TO
PROGRESS IN THEOLOGY.
*
*
MBY THE LATE
EEV. JAMES CRANBROOK.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
�L---------------------- ---------------
ILUIL—.
‘I
L
�ON THE
HINDRANCES TO PROGRESS IN THEOLOGY.
HEN one considers the great amount of intelli
gence and active thought existing in modern
society, especially as compared with the past, one is
apt at first to be surprised that so little progress has
been made amongst people in general in religious, or
more properly speaking, in theological questions.
Those who venture upon such questions, to think for
themselves and to doubt, or in any very serious
degree to modify, the old and long received dogmas,
are still the easily numbered few ; whilst the
unreasoning, quiescent and bigoted recipients of the
orthodox beliefs are the overwhelming majority. It
may help to encourage those of you who are for mak
ing progress in theology as well as everything else,
and possibly to awaken profitable reflection in those
who have hitherto been indifferent in the matter, if
I offer you this evening some considerations serving to
account for the still great preponderance of the old
beliefs.
In the first place, then, notwithstanding the
admittedly wide-spread intelligence of the present
day, I think the comparatively slow progress of
theology is due to the very imperfect education which
has been and still is generally received. It must be
observed that the active intelligence amongst us is
not due to the education in the technical or scholastic
sense of the term. Whatever improvements have
been made in the methods and subject-matter of
W
�4
On the Hindrances to
teaching, have been made within the last fifteen or
twenty years, and such improvements have not
affected those who have advanced to the middle
stage of life, and whose thinking constitutes the char
acter of the present generation. When they were at
school scarcely a single step had been taken out of the
old rut along which scholastic education had dragged
. its slow course for generations. There was nothing in
it to quicken the mind or to form those habits of
thought which alone constitute a liberal, broad and
national intelligence. Boys in the middle classes learn
ed a little Latin, less Greek, some Geography, scraps of
naratives called History, under the designation of
Astronomy the names of stars they never were
taught to identify, and were in many cases pretty
well drilled in Arithmetic. Girls learned still less of
what was useful; in arithmetic seldom got beyond
reduction, and became prodigies if they reached the
rule of three (as it was called); but were thought to
make up for the deficiency by acquiring the power
of tinkling dance music and battles of Prague on the
piano, of drawing on paper straight lines which did
not lie evenly between extreme points, and circles
whose radii were anything but equal to one another,
and of making embroidery and other fancy articles
the taste of which was an offence to gods and men.
In all this education received by both boys and girls,
there was nothing to teach them observation,
analysis, reflection, comparison, reasoning, or any of
those intellectual processes which are essential to the
full exercise and development of our rational nature
Of course there were exceptions to this. Here and
there were teachers far before their time, whose pupils,
if led through the same routine course, had breathed
■into them a spirit of enquiry which has made them
assume a place amongst the most progressive of the
day. These, however, were the exceptional cases, and
education was for the most part such as I have
described it.
Fortunately, however, there were influences at work
�Progress in Theology.
5
in society ready to meet these boys as soon as they
left the school for the business of life, which were
calculated to do in part the work their school educa
tion ought to have done. The great discoveries of
science, applied to manufactures and commerce, had
already begun to change the whole aspect of social
life. The most active thought had become necessary
to conduct the ordinary affairs of business. Accurate
observation and reasoning had become as necessary
in the shops and the mercantile counting-house, as in
the study of the savant and the philosopher. Infor
mation became essential; the cheapening of the
newspapers supplied the want, and with the com
mercial information, they furnished other kinds of
intelligence. Thought thus became amazingly quick
ened, and the intellectual activity of the present day
has ensued.
But now, observe, this kind of intellectual activity,
thus superinduced, does not necessarily extend itself
to all subjects coming within its sphere. On the
contrary, being called forth for a specific purpose, it
is very apt to confine its activity to the purpose for
which it has been called forth. It does not assume
the character of a general habit of mind, but is merely
a particular instrument employed for a particular end.
It is analogous to the development of the physical
powers. The physical powers may be developed by
proper training altogether, so that whenever anything
has to be done by any, or all of them, it will be done
with the full and most perfectly developed powers;
but instead of this general education, we may develop
for a particular end some one or the other of these
powers alone, that of the arm for working, hammering,
&c., or of the legs for running, walking, or say, turning
a lathe. Just so is it with our thoughts—there are
the general and the special education; and the special
education may be very complete for its purposes and
yet leave the thoughts without those habits of general
application which are essential to the completely
rational man.
�6
On the Hindrances to
Now that is precisely what we find (with daily
increasing exceptions, however, thank God) to be the
effect of the training or education forced upon men
by the business pursuits of the present day. The
special training for business does not extend its
influences over the general habits of thought, and
consequently men may be found most intellectually
efficient within the sphere of their active life, who
beyond it shew no more rationality than children.
The want of early training affects the whole sphere
of their thought excepting in that one direction in
which the necessities of their circumstances have
compelled them to become rational. As I have said,
there is a great increasing number of exceptions to
this statement, where men of all classes and pursuits
are exercising rational habits of thought upon all
subjects coming under their notice; but still, I have
described what up to this time has been the prevailing
fact. And the fact explains at once the slow progress
made amongst the majority of people in theology, or,
as it is generally termed, religion. They have received
their creed in the mass, there has been nothing in
their education to lead them to enquire into the truth
of either this doctrine and that, or of the system as a
whole. They listen to the teachings they receive from
Sunday to Sunday with absolute credulity, leaving all
their faculties of reasoning in abeyance; or if exer
cising them, exercising them upon the most insignifi
cant points. Or if they attempt to reason and enquire
upon the vital points, they never bring to bear upon
the subject the same acuteness of observation and
analysis, the same closeness of comparison and reason
ing, that they employ in their business concerns.
They treat religion as altogether a different kind of
thing, and indulge in all the loose habits of thought
their unsound education left untouched. And so,
when we consider all the other influences at work’
we. cannot wonder that such men remain fixed in
their , old superstitions, and become sometimes even
the bigoted, opponents of progress. Their education
has determined their destiny.
�Progress in Theology,
7
And all I have said of men applies equally to the
case of those women whose household affairs are of
sufficient magnitude to require the exercise of much
attention and judgment. Indeed, such women are
often better situated than men for acquiring general
rational habits of thought, for the objects they
have to attend to are of a more miscellaneous char
acter, and less likely, therefore, to confine the appli
cation of the rational powers to one narrow and
specific line. But then, on the other hand, there areother causes, chiefly arising out of the affections,
which counteract these more favourable circumstances,
and which nothing but an early training could in the
majority of cases correct. And thus it comes to pass
that amongst both men and women rational opinions
make but slow head-way, and only here and there are
found those, who, having risen above the education of
their youth, become rational in matters of religion.
The second cause I assign for the slow progress
of religious thought is fear—blind, unreasoning,
superstitious fear—which extends its influence over
all persons not yet redeemed from its curse. Fear
has been the prime and most effective motive power
in nearly all, if not all^the religions of the world up
to the present time. In some, of them its agency was
overwhelming. God, or the gods, were represented
in an awful aspect full of vindictiveness, revenge, and
cruelty. Men trembled at the thought of them.
Their religion became a mere effort to appease the
divine displeasure, or to purchase the divine favour.
Oriental speculations had considerably modified these
conceptions when Christianity arose and became (at
all events as presented by its founders) the gentlest
form of faith the world then had known. The
teaching of both Christ and Paul, so far as it is ascer
tainable, presented the character of God in a benign
relation to the world, and encouraged trust and love
rather than- fear. One dark and gloomy doctrine
however was still retained, which although neutralized
�8
On the Hindrances to
in the loving spirits and teaching of these noble men,
became developed into fearful forms under the influ
ence of the fiery and dark minds which succeeded
them. I refer, of course, to the doctrine of eternal
punishment. That doctrine I am compelled to own
both Paul and Christ distinctly taught. I should be
glad to think that the philanthropic apostle, and
above all that the gentle, loving Jesus had given no
countenance to the immoral doctrine. But all honest
criticism forbids me from doing so. The methods of
criticism adopted by those who hold the contrary
conclusion seem to me altogether subversive of rational
interpretation, and would leave every document at
the mercy of the interpreter.
Now, the doctrine they sanctioned, and which the
whole ®f the New Testament teaches or recognises,
has ever since been made more or less an efficient
instrument of terror. In the hands of the best men
of the church it has been used merely for the purpose
of restraining vice or stimulating faith. But the
darker spirits have used it with Satanic power to
mould men to their will. Especially has this been
the case in times of doubt, heresy, and schism. Then
with all the vehemence of eloquence, and with all the
invention of art, its awful, sulphurous terrors have
been drawn forth before the affrighted imaginations,
of men, in the expectation that the fear of the horrible
torments of an endless life might preserve them
within the orthodox fold of Christ. In the present
day such representations are much modified, and the
fear arising out of them is consequently less active.
The genteel, tolerably-educated minister of your city
churches would not venture to deal out flames and
fiery darkness as his fathers did. It is only in some
out of the way parish, situated at what seems the
worlds end, in some little conventicle where the
preacher is innocent of a day’s schooling, that you now
hear of eternal damnation in all the fulness of its
horrors. Yet the influence if it has a strong hold of
men s, and especially of women’s feelings.
�Progress in Theology.
9
Fear has always restrained enquiry.
The
anathemas of the church long held back the mind
of Europe from enquiry into the protestant dogmas.
“ What if the Church’s dogmas should prove to be
true ? The eternal perdition would be incurred by
the doubting of her creed.” The same fear virtually
operates now. “ One’s first concern is the salvation
of the soul. What if one exposed it to jeopardy by
pursuing these inquiries about the incarnation, the
atonement, the inspiration and authority of the
Bible ? Leave such questions alone, and tread not on
such dangerous ground.”
Such dangerous ground !—that is of course,
assuming, before the enquiry, that these orthodox
dogmas are true. But what if they be untrue ?
Which will be the dangerous ground then ? And
how can you tell whether they be true or untrue
until you have thoroughly investigated the matter ?
Should they prove to be untrue, and untrue I
thoroughly believe them to be, they must be working
intellectual and moral mischief in your souls. For
every lie entails intellectual and moral mischief.
But it is of no use to tell a large portion of the
orthodox this. The fear of losing the soul has so
taken possession of the feelings that it shuts out all
reason, all common sense, and leaves them the miserable
victims of their superstitious delusions. They turn
a deaf ear to all argument, evidence, and proof of
every kind, and see nothing but the hazard of eternal
woe in the questionings of reason. They have no con
fidence in the divine fatherhood that the gospel of
John tells them about ;•—no confidence that the God
of truth will guide aright the mind seeking to know
the truth, much less have they any confidence in the
rational faculties with which man is endowed, and in
the certainty that all honest enquiry must bring a
blessing of some kind with it. But that grim devil
the ignorance of barbarous times conjured into
existence, and those dreaded torments over which he
presides, frighten them out of their seven senses into
�io
On the Hindrances to
the irrational act of clinging tenaciously, as if for
their life, to the unexamined dogmas of orthodoxy.
One grieves to see the gentle nature of women so
abused, but grows indignant when men, pretending
to a higher intellect and a stronger understanding,
show the same foolish weakness.
And yet all
around us the dark superstition is keeping both men
and women, parsons and people, from all thorough
going rational enquiry. It is as powerful in this
respect amongst large masses as ever ; and no doubt
it will require another generation before the multitude
arise above it.
In the third place, I think an ignominious love of
ease, comfort, or peace of mind, keeps a large number
from enquiry. There are very few who love truth for
its own sake. It is courted rather for the fortune it
brings, the blessings of a physical and spiritual kind.
Most seek some ulterior end, and above all ease,
comfort, peace of mind and great enjoyment. Now if
you do not harass your brains by entertaining doubts
and making enquiries, orthodoxy will furnish you
with these desired blessings. On cheap terms it will
assure you of the salvation of your soul and God's
present and eternal favour, and in addition will
bring you the approbation, sympathy, and regard of
the respectable people around you. But if you once
set off upon the dangerous road of free enquiry,
instantly all these blessings disappear, and there is
no saying to where you will be led. Knowing this,
the majority of quiet well-to-do people are very care
ful to shun enquiry.
And the mischief feared lies in two directions :
first, in the dogmatical. When verities which have
been venerated for ages are once called into question
and doubt, their mind loses all its anchorage ground,
and seems to itself like a ship out at sea in the midst
of a storm. Whither it will be driven no one can
tell. And there are again two things which distress
it; the one is the uncertainty and suspension of faith
into which it is brought. Most minds rebel at this.
�Progress in Theology.
11
It requires thorough mental training and discipline
to be able to suspend one’s judgment without pain
during the examination of evidence. We become
impatient of it, and want to settle down on the one
side or the other. The mind wants rest; but as long
as enquiry lasts there can be no rest—no reposing
on assured truths—no drawing of comfort from’
sweetly consolatory doctrines ! It is all hard work,
and moving on from point to point. And so rather
than embark upon such troubled waters, shoals of men
superstitiously keep the harbour of the old faiths.
There at least, so long as they do not doubt, they
find quiet and comfort.
And then the other thing which keeps them from
enquiry is that they find many are led when once
they loosen their moorings, lengths which seem to
them perfectly horrifying. Some who once were good,
sound, orthodox believers have become what these
people call perfect infidels; and mistrust of themselves,
apparently, or mistrust of the truth, leads them to
fear such if they once set out might become their
own fate. Some could go as far as Robertson of
Brighton, but it would be dreadful to get to the
length of Martineau! Some could go as far as
Carlyle, but it would be ruin to think like Stuart
Mill 1 Some could accept of the theism of Newman,
but the positivism of Comte would be perdition ! So
each and all have their several bugbears of infidelity
which terrify them from thought. It does not seem
to occur to such people that it is just possible that
those who have gone the lengths they fear to go,
may have reached the truth. They only think of the
consequences to which they presume it will lead.
“ Oh, say they, we could find no comfort, no ease, in
such horrible doctrines, however true they might
appear. All peace would be thrust from our souls
for ever.”
Well, and suppose it were so; did you come into
this world for ease and comfort, or to find the truth
and live by it 1 Is blessedness to be had in a false
�12
On the Hindrances to
peace, or in the living facts of the universe ? Ease !
Comfort! For shame ! Go get you into a cradle and
call out some crazy beldame from the workhouse to
rock you your worthless life long. That is all such
drowsy souls are fit for. And yet although all reason
must condemn them, although they themselves must
for very shame be forced to own that in the pure and
perfect truth man’s supreme bliss can alone be found,
and that in this day of the disruption of parties and
the dissolution of churches each one must search out
that truth for himself, this bugbear of extreme
Infidelity keeps thousands, and will continue to keep
thousands, from all manly and honest enquiry. One
grieves over their weakness, but the remedy seems
far away.
The other disturbance to one’s comfort and peace
lies in the social direction. Men like to be at ease
when their professional or business engagements are
over. It is comfortable to get home, sit down by the
fireside, chat with one’s wife and children, read the
newspapers, or doze over a glass of wine. Besides,
these are acquaintances, perchance friends, amongst
whom one likes to spend a pleasant evening now and
then over a game at cards, or in conversation upon
the social and political gossip of the day. But now,
earnest religious enquiry is very apt to break in upon
all this, to make one’s home a scene of constant con
tention and tears, and to make one’s acquaintances
very shy and distant. If the wife have not the
intellect to enter into the questions with the
husband, or the husband with the wife, to what
bickerings, sometimes angry discussion and wordy
contentions, it leads. And then who can resist those
tears and those earnest appeals, “ if not for your own
sake, for the sake of the souls of our darling
children give up such wicked doubts!” And
then the good people, too, aid the home influence.
Who will associate with an infidel ? Who will have
anything to do with him who denies the verities of
the faith ? “ My dear fellow, such notions are
�Progress in Theology.
13
not respectable, and I can assure you if it became
known that you hold opinions so dangerous it will
materially affect your business. You have a young
family rising up, and cannot afford to indulge in such
speculations. Besides, I confess all your friends
concur with my own feeling in the matter, that is,
however much we respect you, we should not like it
to be known we associate with the companion of
infidels. You are all right, you know, but you will
be thrown amongst all sorts of vagabonds, and people
will suspect that you have fallen into the vices to
which Infidelity always leads. Give it up, my dear
fellow, give it up, if you do not wish every respectable
acquaintance to give you up.”
Who could withstand such arguments as that ?
So the poor fellow does give it up, dismisses his
doubts, henceforth walks demurely with his wife and
sweet babies every Sunday regularly to church, and
by and by gets held up by his minister as the very
type of “ That large and respectable class of intelli
gent men who amidst the doubts and scepticism of
a licentious age hold fast by the old faiths 1”
Another reason just alluded to operates with some.
I referred to the low character imputed to those who
depart from the old beliefs. It is the common con
clusion of weak minds that he who doubts the accepted
dogmas is a bad man. And even what the world
calls respectable men and women, great professors of
religion, think it no shame to either create or pro
pagate all sorts of lying slanders against the infidels.
Now and then this is done unconsciously of the wrong,
the ignorant people not knowing that slander is a form
of immorality and that to speak evil of one another
without sufficient evidence is a crime. But generally
the evil is known, but committed under the palliating
thought that it does God service. Now the effect of
this is twofold: 1st, Ignorant people who do not
know the wickedness of which religious people can be
guilty, believe the slanderers, and shrink very natu
rally from connecting themselves with such seemingly
�14
Hindrances to Progress in Theology.
disreputable parties. And 2dly, They are very apt to
conclude that bad men cannot have found the truth.
Of course the character of a person cannot affect the
truth or untruth, the validity or invalidity, of his
arguments and propositions. And a rational person
would judge of the doctrines by these alone. But in
matters of religion, as we have seen, the majority are
not rational. And so these slanderers succeed in
their efforts to deter the weak-minded from enquiry,
and in God’s name effectually do the devil’s work.
Other reasons might be added to these to account
for the large number shunning all enquiry upon the
questions of religion; but these must at present suffice.
And they are sufficient to encourage our faith and
hope in the gradual progress of the truth. That which
lies at the root of them all, the want of a sound judg
ment, a disciplined mind habituated to exercise its
reason upon all things, must gradually give way
before the more enlightened system of education all
classes are feeling their way towards. And in time
it will affect women as well as men. Those tender
affections which now bind them to superstition will
not always be so perverted. When woman receives
the education her nature requires, the intellect will
assert its proper supremacy. Already there are some
noble pioneers, the vanguard of the advancing race.
When the whole host has come forward, then divine,
bliss-giving, beauteous truth shall be our sovereign
mistress, and all men will dare to follow whithersoever
she may lead.
Turnbull and Spears, Printers, Edinburgh.
�
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On the hindrances to progress in theology
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https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/7b95d3d0e333951a347317403976b045.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=n4Aa4TnjuHv86XWXgI5eIPLgvlgGXCw5uf1gjXkp--Arr90oe2IM5tR55m3FXCYRSucZWZ23C%7E8245FN6KAI8r1Bu4-0ojN9VHOWDmeorUWZyAjEhkFoQQlVkh2jfXgF-Otc5AKn0aq7oIGCrPpFTUETkAH2v-AKKTod93bw6780%7EW1lKyPRLtVEPAVumT0UBZw-38r2L0xHFE971Zn0PntDwb5f7zZ4XxE%7EKowgd0XmQ1ZfTgTalgnWsEn7RBkhV87%7EzP-K7SYWgKefpHojpHQSuzTYRLkOiGEpiXDIshcvQvYQhFhwRn33GV6H5xvij-6%7ECj0GTKJ52YilbL4RSg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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PDF Text
Text
POSITIVE RELIGION:
ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS.
LECTURE III.
BY THE LATE
REV. JAMES CRANBROOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
�■
�LECTURE III.
N the last Lecture, I directed your attention to
certain feelings which arise within us whenever we
come face to face with nature. They are common to
the cultivated and the uncultivated alike, hut, I think,
are greatly intensified by the larger knowledge of the
cultivated obtained through the revelations of science.
The feelings are those of wonder, awe, and the sense of
the mysterious arising out of the perception of the order
and constancy, the adaptation and fitnesses, the beauty
and beneficence of the whole universe. The smallest
object as well as the most sublime tends to excite them,
and the more fully we comprehend the processes by
which all the changes in nature are effected the more
deeply they excite our wonder and awe, and the more
intensely they make us feel how mysterious every thing
around is.
Now, as we have also seen, it is not natural for man
to stand before this mystery with these feelings of
wonder and awe without his curiosity being excited, and
his being led to investigate the origin and causes of the
objects which so move him. He must ask himself,
How came this universe into existence ? What is it
that determines the order and constancy with which
each antecedent is followed only by its own consequent ?
Who or what arranges those organizations by means of
which such admirable results are obtained? What
controls the course of human actions so that they
become not merely an accumulation of events but a
I
�4
Positive Religion.
history ? And the answer in almost every case which
has hitherto been given has laid the basis of man’s
doctrine of God. For, failing to find any response from
without to his questioning, each man has been content
to project upon the phenomena his own image, and in
it to find the cause. As he has gazed upon his own
thought reflected upon the universe, in delight at his
discovery he has exclaimed, Behold the solution of the
mystery! See the Creator of the universe revealed in
the midst of his works !
But now, what are we to do who have been con
vinced of the truth of the phenomenal philosophy ?
who deny that it is in the power of man by any means
to transcend the phenomenal? Such explanations as
others resort to are proscribed to us. We may neither
affirm nor deny anything which rests on conjecture
merely, however seemingly plausible an explanation of
the facts it may be. We are bound down to that
which can be verified, and can only admit -of
hypotheses as the temporary guides of our tentative
inquiries. To us therefore the theories of Polytheism,
Monotheism, Pantheism, and Atheism are alike idle
fancies making affirmations about that of which we can
know nothing. And yet in us nature moves these
feelings of wonder, awe, and mystery as deeply as in
others, and we not less than they intensely long to
penetrate the great secret of the universe. Yes, in
some of us I believe these feelings swell with a power,
an intensity, a consuming fervour others never experi
ence ; and that because we know the questions they
originate can never be answered. What then must we
do ? Are we alone of all mankind doomed to live
without a religion ? Has our culture come to this, that
nothing is left for us to worship ?
Now let us be calm and look at the facts. And,
first, this is clear, the mystery is insoluble; God is
unknowable; we can affirm nothing whatsoever of his
existence. The orthodox no less than we constantly
�Lecture 111.
5
say this. Mr Mansel says it; Sir William Hamilton
said it; the whole School of Locke has always said it;
and indeed all modern philosophers bnt the Cartesians.
Only most of them endeavour by means of a special
revelation or of some specious argument to take back
what they thus have clearly admitted. We however
abide firmly by that admission. We cannot transcend,
we cannot know anything but phenomena and the
relations in which they exist, and therefore we can
neither know God in himself nor explain the mysteries
of the universe. However intense therefore the feelings
which nature inspires within us, however deep and
ardent the longing to explain these mysteries we have
in common with others, we own our inability and never
attempt to satisfy the longing.
But are we therefore worse off than those around us?
We are better off. They in explanation of the
mysteries of the universe create by their fancies an
object they call God, and then fall down and worship
it. We knowing the worthlessness of fancy abstain
from such creations and content ourselves without the
explanation. They in their ignorance glory in their
knowledge.
We in our knowledge confess our
ignorance. At least we have learned this, not to walk
where there is no light to lead. But I meant more
than this when I said that we are better off than they
who delude themselves with the creations of their own
fancy. I meant that the unknowable, the mystery of
the universe, is truer, more real to us, than it is to them,
is more present and has greater and a grander, purer
influence over our feelings. The very fact that we do
not play with it and transmute it into fanciful forms,
but accept it as it is, determines this. I must
however explain what I mean more fully from another
point of view.
We meet, then, with mystery on every side. Directly
we begin to enquire we come upon ultimate facts we
cannot explain. If by means of science we can trace any
�6
Positive Religion.
particular process to the operation of some general law,
not only the general law hut the reason why that general
law gives rise to that process is unknown. The interpreta
tions and revelations of science only multiply the inexplic
able facts. Now, the law of our mind compels us to look
in every case for an explanation, an antecedent to what
we observe. The law has arisen out of our experience,
probably, and depends upon the association of ideas;
but it is not the less imperative and insisting than an
original law of the mind. We cannot escape from it,
and therefore are always asking, how or why these
primary facts exist, and what that is which determines
them to be. We cannot but look for that something ;
we cannot think of them coming to be without it; and
yet we cannot find it; we learn from experience, it lies
and must ever lie beyond our knowledge. But then
this discovery only makes the law more urgent and the
mystery more insistent. At all events, here we are
with the mystery ever before us, ever pressing upon us,
meeting us at every step, in every movement, the most
real, most unquestionable, the truest thing in life.
Speculative philosophers may raise doubts about our
own substantive existence, they may raise doubts about
the correspondence between the outer world and our
own sense presentations of it, every thing in the
universe may be made a subject of doubt, but this one,
the mystery of existence, the unknowableness of the
antecedent of all things, our ignorance of the determin
ing condition or cause of all conditions and causes.
The very doubts which men raise concerning other
things, bring this fact more urgently before us and
leave it an unquestionable reality. And observe, it is
not a mere negative fact, that is thus urged upon us.
It is not merely that we do not know; but that there
is a something we do not know, viz., the antecedent,
determining condition, cause, or source of these facts,
of this universe so mysterious to us. In assuming its
existence we are not transcending our experience j we
�Lecture 111.
7
are merely doing what every natural philosopher, and
indeed what every man or woman does when asking
after the antecedent conditions of any ordinary
phenomenon. We never suppose any phenomenon
comes into existence under any given form without
some pre-existing, determining conditions or cause. In
proportion to the activity of our intellect in every case
we enquire what were these pre-existing, determining
conditions or cause, and in asking of course assuming
the fact of their existence. We are only doing the'
same thing when we assume that there is a something
which determines the existence of the whole universe,
and each of its primary facts and consequents,
although we confess that something can never be
known to us.
Now, this mysterious, unknown, unknowable some
thing, the antecedent of all consequents, the primary
condition of the existence of all objects and their
relations, not only thus seems to us the truest and
most real of all things which occupy our thoughts, but
it fills us with that awe which has ever been considered
the very first element in religion, as nothing else in
the universe can do. All other things, however great
and sublime, however recondite and complicated, we
can hope by patient thought eventually to comprehend
and master. There is not a phenomenal power in the
universe but which we may ultimately comprehend, and
through the comprehension make subservient to our
purpose. But here, before the great mystery, we are
helpless : here is what we can never know, and before
which we must ever subserviently bow down; here is
the limit of both our understanding and our activity,
our knowledge and our action. We are surrounded
with its wonders, and can only exist as we can conform
ourselves to the conditions it has imposed. How
little, how insignificant, we feel before it 1 We are
filled with awe, with reverence, with wonder. Spon
taneously we humble ourselves and worship. What
�8
Positive Religion.
then, shall we call this unknown and unknowable,
determining condition of all existence? this hidden,
mysterious source of the universe ? this all-pervading,
all-comprehending, all-determining something, which,
we know must be, and yet ever eludes our grasp? Call
it! What signifies the name ? No term can name it.
God ! — Fate! —Causa-causarum ! — the All-in-All! —
every word has been abused; and every word therefore
fails to describe the awfulness, the reality of this ever
present mystery. But then, name it we must, and
since all names are insufficient, but some have been
rendered sacred by the use of ages, we will keep to the
sacred names, and call this unknown and unknowable
condition of the universe God and Lord.
But more important than to inquire after names, is
it for us to note that in those deep feelings already so
often enumerated, we have the exercise of the religion
appropriate to such an object of worship. That which
is unknown can in itself possibly call forth no other
feelings than those of wonder, awe, and the sense of
mystery; whatever else in any case is mingled with
these, must come from other and adventitious sources.
Accordingly, as I have before intimated, these feelings
are at the base of all the religions which have ever
existed in the world. Whatever has been superadded
to them, the great mystery of the universe, which has
originated all religions, has inspired only these.
This is very distinctly taught in F. W. Newman’s
book called “ The Soul,” where principles very different
from mine are inculcated. Mr Newman thinks we
have a distinct faculty which he calls the soul, whereby
we immediately apprehend God. In its rudest and
most uncultivated state it simply apprehends him as a
mysterious power which calls forth its wonder and awe.
As it learns more of nature, it rises gradually to the
perception of his wisdom, goodness, love, and holiness,
calling forth the feelings also of admiration, gratitude,
trust, the sense of sin and adoration. And those who
�Lecture 111.
9
are more orthodox than Mr Newman follow very nearly
the same order in their supposed development of the
religions of Jews and Christians through the special
revelations of God. By the side of these matured sys
tems, the simple feelings which constitute the whole
basis of the religion of the Unknowable must appear
very meagre and deficient. But a closer examination
will show us that those other feelings of admiration,
gratitude, trust, the sense of sin and adoration, arise
only by attributing to the object of worship qualities,
the knowledge of which is derived from his works.
Contemplating these works, they discern the order,
beauty, adaptation, and the beneficent results which
arise from them; and by the study of the nature and
history of man discern the moral character of the
system by which he is governed. All that is thus dis
cerned is then transferred to the object of worship, as
expressive of his nature and character, and the feelings
which are excited by it are directed towards him as the
embodiment and source of all which calls them forth.
Now, I do not deny that upon their principles this
process is allowable ; and I freely own that when you
have by such a process constructed a God, it must have
an immense influence over your life. The conception of
such a Being, when realized to the feelings, must wholly
control them and overwhelm the influence of every
other object. But, as we have seen, the principles or
method by which this process is conducted is altogether
false. It is purely subjective. It has no basis of fact
to rest upon. The object of worship is the pure creation
of the fancy. It is an idol in all the bad senses of the
word “idol.”
Nor, when we come to examine into the matter
closely, can we allow that the influence which such an
object has over the feelings and life is wholly good.
This we might, a prion, have expected, from the fact
that the object of worship is an idol. All error contains
within itself the germs of evil in some form. And there
�io
Positive Religion.
are several evils to which this error gives rise—1st,
There is the false trust a sense of personal relationship
to one so infinitely wise and good calls forth, leading to
a childish dependence upon his care, and diverting the
attention from, the study of the laws of Nature, and
from the self-government which is the duty and highest
prerogative of man; 2dly, There are the spurious affec
tions excited by the contemplation of such an object,
giving a transcendental tone to the whole character, and
making one’s nature, so far as they are operative, false
to itself and to all the real objects around it; and 3dly,
There are the efforts aroused to render oneself pleasing
and acceptable to so great a Being, which, being regu
lated by no rational principle, tend to become of a
frenzied and fanatical character, leading to an indiffer
ence towards the ordinary and proper duties and enjoy
ments of everyday life. I might mention other evils ;
but probably they all could be summed up in these,
which so obviously arise out of the belief in question,
that I need not stay to prove the fact.
But now, when we restrain our fancy and refuse to
follow those around us into these creations of an object
for worship, we not only avoid these evils but we do
not lose any of the real good, any of the solid comfort,
of the healthful stimulus to feeling which they suppose
themselves to find. For, as we have seen, they derive
their knowledge of the supposed qualities which call
forth the trust, love, and adoration, &c., from the
study of the works of nature. So that it is, in fact,
not the qualities considered abstractedly, but the works
of nature which elicit the feelings. Accordingly we
find that the pure and simple study of nature produces
the same feelings in us. But then there is this;
difference. They transferring the facts to their idol,
and investing him with them as attributes, they dare
not afterwards question their infinite perfection. We
regarding them simply as facts of nature, are at liberty
to note all the modifications and counteractions, and
�Lecture III.
11
regulate our feelings accordingly. Thus e.g., a study
of nature as a whole leads us to the perception of her
beneficent tendencies. Happiness and good are the
predominating results of her operations, and this
perception calls forth our trust and confidence in the
general issues of life and enables us to repose without
agitating care upon the general course of events. So
far then we are upon the same ground as those who amuse
themselves with the conception of an idol who brings
about these results in consequence of his personal
relationship to themselves. But from this point we
diverge. They are bound by the nature of their
conception of this idol to implicit and universal trust.
We, on the other hand, recognising merely the order of
phenomena, soon discern that there are many contra
dictions to this seeming beneficence. We observe in
the midst of the general good and happiness not a little
evil and suffering. We learn that the good and
happiness depend upon conditions which often are not
realized. We do not place, therefore, implicit trust in
the course of events, nor expect with absolute
certainty the issue of good. We anticipate the possi
bility of evil; our trust is associated with watchfulness;
we calculate on contingencies that will require resistance
and efforts of a painful character to surmount; we
prepare ourselves to meet possible sorrows, that when
they come they may not overwhelm us. Now, surely
everybody must own that it is better thus to moderate
our trust and confidence, since the real facts of life
require it, than to blindly confide in a power and find
in the issue our confidence misplaced.
But again, the contemplation of nature leads us to
the perception of its beauty, loveliness, and fitnesses;
and the contemplation of human nature especially
presents to us its moral and spiritual excellences and
beauty. This perception calls forth towards the whole,
feelings of complacency, delight, and admiring, adoring
affection; whilst towards human nature the more
�12
Positive Religion.
tender affections of appreciation, approbation, and
sympathising love flow forth. And in the exercise of
these feelings there are both joy and stimulus to our
higher sensibilities and powers. Now, I own these
feelings differ much in their character from those of
persons who embody the excellences and beauty of
nature in a personal being. But the difference is
wholly in favour of those who abj ure all but the actual
facts. For in their case the feelings are entirely real,
whilst in the other they are given to a fancied object
which, by the confused and conflicting elements that
are made to enter into its composition, and the mingling
of the infinite and finite, entirely falsifies them, and
gives them a fanatical bias. The love, the adoration,
and the joy in nature of a pure phenomenalist, ennoble
no less than they gladden his whole being; the love,
the adoration, and joy felt by the supernaturalist for
his idol are not indeed without spiritualizing excellences,
but in their highest condition are always based upon a
falsehood, and therefore must necessarily tend to a
degradation of the worshipper.
I think, then, it will appear from these considerations
that nothing is gained when theists proceed to add on
to the pure and ever-present mystery of the universe
which calls forth our wonder and awe, other qualities
of a personal character which call forth the more
personal feelings of trust, confidence, love, adoration,
and such like. On the contrary, by keeping ourselves
to the pure and rigid facts we are saved from an other
wise inevitable fanaticism, and the influence of our
religion in every respect becomes more ennobling and
purifying.
But this does not mean that we must not associate
all the processes of nature, all the facts, issues, and
tendencies we observe in her with that mysterious
unknown before which we adore. On the contrary,
they are necessarily associated with it. For, as I have
explained, and I presume, as we all feel, it is not alone
�Lecture III.
J3
the most generalized facts which suggest this sense of
mystery, but also each individual succession of phe
nomena. We not only feel unable to account for the
universe as a whole, but for each particular connection
between two events. The fire, e. g., burns my flesh and
causes pain. Upon enquiry, I find the following
phenomena explanatory of the fact:—The heat consists
of the motion of the infinitely small particles of the
atmosphere. These striking my flesh with an amazing
although calculable rapidity, like cannon balls striking
a wall, destroy the fine tissues of the skin, and by
exciting the nerves spread over them cause the pain.
Very well; this is the physical explanation so far as we
can carry it. But now, why do those infinitely small
particles cannonading the skin destroy its tissue 1
Why does the destruction so move the nerves as to
cause pain ?
We are absolutely ignorant.
You
observe, then, it is not merely that we cannot compre
hend these facts under more general ones, but each
particular fact, each succession of phenomena in itself
is incomprehensible and full of mystery, and so brings
us into the presence of that unknown something we
call God. In this way all the facts of existence, and
of co-relation, all the processes and laws of the
universe, so far as known to us, are associated with that
unknown condition or cause, and are derivable from it
as consequents. Whatever of order and organization,
whatever of beauty, and beneficence nature discovers
must ultimately be referred and ascribed to it. Nor is
there a single object that comes under our contempla
tion which does not immediately suggest it. And thus
we own, even with a fuller and more consistent mean
ing than the orthodox, that all things are related to,
and dependent upon God ; but we dare not follow
them in their rash inferences of what God must there
fore be. When, e.g., they and we contemplate the
complicated and yet beautiful conditions upon which
the eye is capable of seeing, we both refer them to God,
�14
Positive Religion.
the unknown antecedent of these existent conditions.
But then, they, taking as their guide the analogies of
human nature, proceed to attribute to their God the
human faculty of wisdom and will, in bringing these
conditions about; we, on the other hand, adhering to
our principle that we only can know phenomena, dare
not follow them in such inferences. We own that if
God be like men the organization of the eye would
prove his wisdom or skill in contrivance ; but then we
do not know that he is like men; we do not know
that any of his qualities are like human qualities at all.
We, therefore, would not be so presumptuous as to infer
he possesses anything like human wisdom. We merely
content ourselves with bowing down in wonder, awe,
and reverence, before the unknowable cause of that
wonderful work, the eye and its power of vision. For
all we know that cause may possess personality and all
the mental qualities possessed by man. But also, for
all we know, its qualities or modes, of existence may be
absolutely unlike ours. To attribute human qualities
to it may be as absurd as to attribute them to the
planets or the trees. Surely, therefore, it becomes us
to abstain from such attribution and simply to bow
down and adore.
But now, I know that to uncultivated persons this
abstinence from fancying qualities and modes of
existence to fill up the gaps in our ignorance will be
next to impossible. The undisciplined mind is the
most impatient of uncertainty and doubt. Where it
has not facts to constitute knowledge or to form a
judgment upon, it always precipitately creates them in
its fancy. It is only the cultured, the disciplined, the
matured mind that is capable of suspending its judg
ments, refraining from the formation of opinions, and
confessing its ignorance until it has before it sufficient
facts to justify its proceeding to a conclusion. And
then, in this special case respecting the mode of
the divine existence, the sentiments associated
�Lecture III.
*5
with it are apt to make men more impatient still.
They have so long been accustomed to indulge their
fancies without restraint, and have associated with
them so many of their dearest affections and the whole
system of their morality, that to renounce these fancies
and to own their ignorance, seems like rooting up all
that they esteem precious and good. And then, too,
certain supposed consequences frighten them into pre
cipitancy. “ If,” say they, “ God should after all possess
the same mental characteristics as man, only in infinite
perfection, what a fearful condition they will be in, who
have not recognised and owned them.’’ As if a being
even with human qualities in infinite perfection could
ever be displeased with his creatures for not recognising
what he has given them no faculty to discern ; or as if
he could be pleased by our stumbling upon truth even,
by the exaltation of our fancy over our reason, when
the constitution he has given us expressly requires that
reason should be supreme and that we should only
accept as true, what it can justify.
But however difficult the acquisition of the habit of
restraining our fancy and suspending our judgments may
be, every cultivated and disciplined mind will neces
sarily make the strongest efforts to acquire it. It is
essential to a rational life. By it alone can we escape
those superstitions which, based upon ignorance, are
constantly springing up into existence and carrying
away multitudes of deluded victims. And surely, of
all subjects that can solicit our judgment, none can
require such deliberation, such caution, such restraint
of fancy, such sober and solemn adherence to fact, as
that which concerns the existence of God. I call upon
you, therefore, as rational beings to ponder upon and
accurately examine the real facts of this great question.
Let neither intellectual impatience nor a maudlin
superstitious fear precipitate your conclusions or
prevent you from that calm and logical investigation
which it requires. Follow the truth and nothing but
�16
Positive Religion.
the truth; whithersoever it leads follow it, and that, in
the firm persuasion it can lead to nothing but good.
The positive principles I have set before you, have
been necessarily so mingled with references to other
doctrines that I will conclude by re-stating them in a
brief summary.
We are limited by our faculties to the knowledge of
phenomena in their relations of co-existence and succes
sion. In the study of these phenomena, however, we
instantly come to ultimate facts for which we cannot
account. This incapability fills us with wonder, awe,
and a sense of mystery. But although we cannot
account for them, we are persuaded there is a something
which accounts for them. We could no more suppose
them without an antecedent, a cause which accounts for
them, than any other fact. This unknown and un
knowable antecedent or cause is what we call God. It
pervades the whole universe, and is related to every
individual object inasmuch as the same mystery, the
same impotency, is developed in the whole and in every
object. But although this cause, condition, or ante
cedent is connected with every object, we can infer
nothing respecting its nature or attributes, excepting the
one attribute of anteceding or conditioning. In itself
it is unknown and unknowable excepting as the
unknown. The only devout feelings therefore appro
priate to it are those already named, wonder, awe, and
the sense of mystery. How worship, and especially
public worship, emerges out of this I shall show in the
next lecture.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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W/L03
ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL.
BY THE LATE
EEV. JAMES CEANBEOOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL.
HE existence of evil has constituted a problem which
men’s speculative intellect has attempted to solve
ever since speculation began. Throughout all the
world there are suffering, pain and death. The young,
the beautiful and the prosperous, no less than the aged,
deformed and poor, are subject to them. The brightest
prospects suddenly become clouded, the dearest hopes are
dashed to the ground, the intensest enjoyments suddenly
are turned into wormwood and gall, the most promising
career ends in disaster. And it is not the immoral
and irreligious alone that thus suffer; the virtuous and
pious are equally the victims.
The same thing
happeneth to the just and the unjust.
Nor can the evil always be traced to causes which
might have been avoided. It is sometimes inevitable,
at all events inevitable by us. The elements of nature
may combine against us—movements in society which
work the general good may produce our ruin—friends
may prove foes by their very friendliness. And even if
we could trace all suffering to our own moral defects it
would only be putting the question a step further back.
Whence these moral defects ? how came they into the
world ? how did they originate ? and why are they not
remedied ? It is perplexing and full of mystery.
I may have something to say upon the method in
which the question should be dealt with, towards the
conclusion, but for the present I wish to call your
attention to the way in which it was dealt with in
ancient times. And it is with the oriental method I
am now more concerned. Evil did not present itself
T
�6
On the Existence of Evil.
to the Greeks in those same despairing colours that it
appeared to the Orientals in. They lived in the enjoy
ment of the present, a free happy life; and nature
seemed to them full of beauty and gladness. When
the subject of evil came before them therefore, it came
in a tempered form, and they were calmer to answer it
than the Orientals were. Besides that, we know very
little of Grecian thought and speculation before the
scientific spirit had begun to dawn upon them. Con
sequently when their authentic history begins the
primitive beliefs are already modified and come before
us considerably toned down. Yet that they felt the
existence of evil a very mysterious problem their
tragedians very impressively testify. They resolved it,
however, all into the operations of a dark fatality, of
which there was none to give an account, and which lay
beyond the control alike of gods and men.
It was in later and more corrupt times that the
notion arose that evil comes from the envy of the gods
—a notion however, which could only arise out of a
sense of prevalent happiness. The authentic history
of the Hebrews begins about the time of the Babylonian
captivity, but we get some glimpses into their theo
logical conceptions before that time. So far as their
sacred books inform us, however, the subject of evil
does not seem to have weighed very heavily upon their
minds. The account given in Genesis of its introduc
tion into Paradise must have originated in very
primitive, that is barbarous times, and has very much
the appearance of being an importation from some
foreign source. None but the rudest people could have
imagined that tale about the serpent’s tempting Eve and
the curse subsequently pronounced upon the reptile.
And the account seems never to have made any very
deep impression on the Hebrew mind, or to have
recurred in their history until a much later period.
For we can hardly take the very contradictory myth of
Moses healing the children of Israel by a brazen serpent
�On the Existence of Evil.
7
as having any reference to the one in Paradise. And
yet this narrative in Genesis seems the only attempt to
explain the origin of evil until the period of the prophets,
if we can say an attempt was made then. But the
truth is, we know so little of the Jews during the inter
vening period that it is difficult to say what their
thoughts and speculations were. The book of Job
indeed is wholly composed for the purpose of discussing
this question of evil; but in the first place, it belongs
to the period of the Babylonian captivity and in the
second place it has been doubted whether it is Jewish
in its origin at all. My own opinion is in favour of its
late Chaldaic or Hebrew origin. For the introductory
part which is anti-Hebraic, giving that account about
Satan appearing before God and bringing evil upon Job,
is no integral part of the book, and it is most note
worthy that whilst in those introductory two chapters
all Job’s evils are directly attributed to Satan, in the
remaining forty chapters he and his doings are not once
referred to as offering any solution of the mystery of
evil, but the evil is directly and immediately, after the
Hebrew method, referred to God.
At the time of the Jewish captivity, however, a new
element was introduced into the Hebrew theology,—the
doctrine of evil spirits. I do not mean to deny that
they had some notions of their existence before; for
they naturally arise amongst nearly all barbarous people,
and it is difficult to suppose the Hebrews escaped.
But during the captivity and after, the doctrine became
elaborated, and henceforth formed a more and more
prominent feature in their theology. It is generally
said they derived these notions from the Persians. It
is certain they brought them from Babylon. Amongst
both Babylonians and Persians, and indeed the whole
of those nations lying round about the regions of the
Euphrates, these speculations concerning the source of
evil occupied a very large measure of thought. Natural
constitution and temperament acted on by climate,- and
�8
On the Existence of Evil.
the vicissitudes of their ever-changing fortune seem to
have forced them upon them. I can here only refer to
the doctrine by which the Persians attempted to solve
the mystery. Evil is so mingled with the good that the
only explanation seemed to them to be, that there are
two creators and rulers of the world, the one evil and the
other good; that these two rulers are perpetually at
strife with each other; that as the one prevails good
follows, as the other prevails evil follows ; and this
strife will go on until at last the good will prevail over
the evil, and the evil spirit will be held in eternal
bondage. I am not clear whether the notion of a yet
higher existence than these two creators whose inter
ference ultimately ends their strife, is of so early a date
as that I am now referring to ; but the probability, at
all events, is that it did not belong to the original
conception of the theory. Now each of these creative
spirits has caused to emanate from himself other spirits
through whom he carries on the government of the
world, the good spirit giving existence to angels, the
evil spirit giving existence to devils or demons.
Now it is clear the Hebrews could only embrace this
doctrine in a modified form, and probably the Chaldaeans only held it in a modified form, since, if we may
trust tradition, the doctrine of the divine unity came from
them. Be that however as it may, those who held, as
the Hebrews held, the strict doctrine of Monotheism,
could only hold the doctrine respecting the evil spirit
and his emanations in a very subordinate sense. The
evil spirit must be a creation of the Supreme, and
therefore if not originally good, he can at all events
have no power beyond what the Supreme permits him
to exercise. Only one passage in the Old and New
Testaments that I recollect refers to the fall of these
evil spirits from a primitively purer state; but the Jews
had determined their whole history long before the
canon of the New Testament closed. In First Chron.
chap. xxi. ver. 1, Satan is said to have stood up against
�On the Existence of Evil.
9.
Israel, and provoked David to number Israel. This
book of Chronicles belongs to the age after the
Babylonian captivity, and strikingly illustrates the
later growth of this doctrine of evil spirits ; for in
Second Samuel chap. xxiv. ver. 1, which is a more
early composition than that of Chronicles, God himself
is said to have been the instigator of David; and that
is much more in accordance with the purer Hebrew
idea. In the writings of the Apocrypha most of which
belongs to the centuries immediately preceding the
New Testament books, the doctrine. of evil spirits
comes out much more prominently, and you are enabled
by a careful study to trace its growth with tolerable
accuracy up to New Testament times.
I need not say how prominent the doctrine is made
in the New Testament. Satan is invested with all but
infinite powers, and all evil is traced up to his agency.
The account given us of the temptation of Christ at
the beginning of his ministry is one of the most
extraordinary and extravagant conceptions in the world,
and yet it is evident how deeply it laid hold of the
Hebrew mind from the repetition of it in the three books
of the evangelists. There, as you will recollect, Satan
appears in person, and not only tempts Christ, but
carries him sailing through the air to a pinnacle of the
temple, and then whirls him away to the top of an
exceeding high mountain, whence he shews him all the
kingdoms of the world in an instant, the Indian, Persian,
Roman, extending from the far east to the British Isles.
The rationalists say, this was only a vision; but that
shews, first, the rationalists will say anything to get
out of a difficulty; and secondly, their ignorance of
Jewish literature, which makes it plain that there
would be nothing extravagant in this narrative to the
Jewish mind. The Jews then could have believed
more absurd things than this, if any one could have
invented anything more absurd about the Devil. And
therefore when the plain and evident meaning is the
�io
On the Existence of Evil.
literal one, it is as immoral as it is unscientific to seek
for any other.
In the writings ascribed to St Paul, we find the
doctrine of evil spirits employed to account for nearly
all evil. The chief of these spirits is the “ prince of
the power of the air working in the children of dis
obedience,” “the God of this world, blinding the
minds of them which believe not,” and, with his hosts,
he constitutes the “ principalities and powers ” against
whom all spiritual warfare has to be maintained. All
not regenerated are “ the children of the devil,” and
“ his seed remaineth in them,” so that they cannot
cease from sin. Here you see is a trace of the old
Persian doctrine of Satan’s part in the creation of the
world. Wicked souls are created by the evil spirit—
and have their wickedness. The notions respecting
these evil spirits were taken up thus into the Christian
Church and developed there with the same absurdities
that we find amongst the later Jews. Some of the
Rabbi contended that they were created by God with
all their evil propensities, on the second day of the
work of creation at the same time that hell was created.
Others that their creation was on the sixth day, and
that God originally intended to provide them with
bodies, but that immediately on the creation of their
spirits the Sabbath commenced, so that there was no
time to complete this part of the work.
I must here make what may seem almost like a
digression to tell you a rabbinical story about Lilith,
but which also accounts for the origin of evil spirits.
Modern critics have noticed a contradiction between
the narrative given of the creation of woman in the
first and second chapters of Genesis. In the first she
appears to have been created at the same time with
Adam, and in the same way. In the second she is
created after him and out of his side. Now the Rabbi
saw the contradiction but explained it easily. They
are in fact the narratives of two distinct creations, said
�On the Existence of Evil.
11
they. First of all God did create a woman out of the
dust of the earth along with Adam. Her name was
Lilith. But as soon as created, she began, like some
modern ladies, to contend about her rights. Adam
said, It behoves thee to be obedient; I am to rule over
thee. Nay, said Lilith, we are on a perfect equality, for
we were both formed out of the same earth. So
neither would submit to the other. But Lilith finding
she was getting the worst of it, pronounced the Shemhamphorash—i.e., the forbidden name Jehovah.
Instantly she was carried away through the air and
became the mother of the evil spirits. God, to console
Adam, afterwards created Eve out of his rib.
Amongst all barbarous people that have any idea of
the supernatural at all the conception of evil spirits is
found. It seems to the barbarous mind the natural
counter-part of the notion of good spirits, and is as
necessary to explain existent evil as that of good spirits
is to explain existent good. Many of these nations pay
far more attention to the worship of the evil one than
they do to the worship of the good, because I presume
fear is a more predominant feeling with them than trust.
But now, it is a curious and not uninstructive
inquiry, how comes it to pass that so many people,
apparently quite independent of each other, conceived
this method of explaining the existence of evil, both
physical and moral? Nay, that many people, and some
of them those who are called well educated, in the
present day cling to this method still ? That even if
we grant the existence of evil spirits, it would be no
solution of the problem of evil, any thoughtful person
I should think can discern. It would only remove the
difficulties a step further back. For if evil spirits lead
men to evil, how came they to be allowed such a power,
and how came they to be evil ? The Persian doctrine
can be the only ultimate one in this direction, and
that cuts the knot of the difficulty but does not untie it.
Now, it seems to me easy enough to account for the
�12
On the Existence of Evil.
method, for it arises out of the same principle asfetishism, polytheism and all those animations of the
objects of nature which prevail in rude and barbarous
periods. The tendency of all uncultured minds is to
ascribe their own qualities to all the active powers in
nature. And hence every thing seems to them moved
by will, and is possessed of consciousness. By and
by a little culture slightly modifies this tendency.
As the natural object gives no sign of feeling, its
possession of volition begins also to be questioned.
Then comes the second, the polytheistic stage, when
the moving power, the will, and the consciousness are
supposed to reside not exactly in the natural objects
themselves but in genii or spirits belonging to them,
All nature is still instinct with life, but it is a life also
above and besides nature. It is at this period the
notion of evil spirits arises. Before, the natural object
that brought the evil was in men’s apprehension the
person who did it and was blamed. Now, it is the
spirit that moves the object for the purpose of inflicting
the evil. And when once the notion of an evil spirit,
above and beyond the object in nature which brings to
one evil is conceived, every terror, every calamity
multiplies the number and increases the dread of them.
Our great poet has supplied us with the illustration of'
this in the “ Midsummer Night’s Dream ” when Puck
frightens away the mechanics of Athens by introducing,
their companion with an ass’s head on his shoulder.
When they him spy,
As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun’s report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
So at his sight away his fellows fly :
And, at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls ;
He murther cries, and help from Athens calls.
Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus strong,.
Made senseless things begin to do them wrong ;
For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch ;
Some sleeves ; some hats ; from yielders
All
things catch.
�On the Existence of Evil.
*3
Now this is precisely the principle. Fear converts
the briers and thorns, catching their garments as they
flee, into spirits dwelling in the hnshes, overpowers
their senses, and drives them headlong before unseen
beings. And so before terrible calamities men became
overwhelmed with fear, and construed the calamities
as the work of evil spirits. It is the advance of science
which has expelled these evil spirits from the domain
of the physical world, and which is expelling them
from the domain of the mental world. In the physical
world the work is almost complete, so far as the Western
nations are concerned. What was formerly considered
the resrdt of the agency of good and bad spirits, angels
and demons, is now proved to be the effect of natural
forces acting according to fixed and unchanging laws.
Storms, plagues, earthquakes, and such like things are
now reduced to the categories of science, and the demons
are exorcised from them. A nation visited with
pestilence, and an old woman who has lost her cow, no
longer think it the work of the devil, but know it is
traceable to some natural cause.
The same cannot be said with the like extent of the
domain of mind. There are numbers, and some of
them so-called educated people, who not only believe in
the existence of evil spirits, but also that they have
power over the human mind to suggest evil thoughts,
and to arouse evil passions. The reason that the
notion lingers so much longer in the domain of mind
is quite evident. Thought and feeling have only of
late been made the objects of scientific enquiry, and
perceived to be subject to law. The metaphysicians
here have ruled with few to dispute their sway, and
whilst they have not been slow to admit the existence
of law in the order of the suggestion of thought and
the excitement of feeling, their dogmas concerning the
freedom of the will have overridden this law, and after
all made it a fitful uncertain thing. But the more
rigid investigations of modern biologists having reduced
�14
On the Existence of Evil.
thought, feeling, and will to the condition of functions
of animal life, have made them as severely subject to
natural law as any of the physical. functions are.
Thought and feeling originate in a definite order, and
by a force strictly correlated with nerve force. There is
no room left therefore for the play of evil spirits ; and
of necessity they become superannuated. But this
knowledge has not yet become widely spread, and those
ignorant of it are therefore left free to the play of their
fancies or the indulgence of their credulity. As soon
as fancy becomes chastened by knowledge they too will
lay aside such creations for facts.
But now, abandoning such a method of accounting
for evil, where are we ? What other shall we adopt ?
I shall not enter into the metaphysical explanations,
which are numerous. None of them can possibly
satisfy the mind, for they rest on no basis of fact, and
often seem nothing better than a cloud of obscure words
from which one cannot draw one ray of light. It avails
nothing to be told that “ evil is good in making,” that
it is “ the negation of good, and arises out of the
imperfection necessarily characterizing all finite things,”
and that it is “ the permitted means by which God
raises us to a higher condition.” Such phrases explain
nothing. They leave the facts only more obscured.
Bailing therefore all methods of explanation allow me
to urge upon you the only wise course left open to us.
And that is to give up all quest into the mystery, and
just deal with the facts as they are so as to remedy the
evil. All those teleological questions about the design
the creator had in this thing and in that; the questions
about the reasons of this and the other, are idle and
absurd. We know nothing of what lies beyond us, in
regions our senses cannot penetrate. We know nothing
of God’s mind, designs, or aims, beyond what is actually
done in nature. Let our theories therefore be ever so
well constructed upon mere ideas and fancies they
remain nothing but ideas and fancies still, and these
�On the Existence of Evil.
15
are not worth one moment’s care so long as they are not
tested by facts. And there would be no practical good,
even supposing it were possible, in solving such a
question as the origin and the reason of evil. It would
not make the pressure of the evil one whit the less. It
would not give us one particle of help towards removing
its pressure. What we really want to know is those
laws of nature by observing of which we may prevent
the evil, or if it come remedy it. And that, whether
we speak of physical or moral evil, we can only do by
the direct and careful study of nature—nature I mean
in her physical and moral aspects. And the long ages
that have been wasted in speculations about demons
and evil spirits, or in metaphysical fancies, are chiefly
to be regretted as so much time gone which might have
been devoted to the pursuit of this useful knowledge,
had men but cared more for facts than fancies, and
known how limited their powers are.
But their
absurdities and failures may teach us wisdom if we be
wisely inclined. Let us give up the foolish fanciful
pursuits of our fathers. Let us take the world as we
find it—let us study the order of its phenomena, and
the imposed conditions of human well-being and happi
ness. And then, although we may leave the mysteries
of evil unsolved, we shall daily become more free from
the evil.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS PRINTERS, EDINBURGH,
�
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On the existence of evil
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Cranbrook, James
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Evil
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Conway Tracts
Good and Evil
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�ON RESPONSIBILITY.
BY THE LATE
REV. JAMES CBANBROOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
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'' . i i* » •
ON RESPONSIBILITY.
HE doctrine of Responsibility is one that holds a
and
Tis most important place in all systems of morals,religion.
a mighty means of influence in all systems of
I purpose this evening to sift the idea as well as I am
able, and to separate the truth from the error mixed up
with it. Nothing is more common than to hear dis
cussions about the extent to which we are responsible for
this thing or that, and nothing more terrific sometimes
than the manner in which the consequences of our re
sponsibility to God is urged from the pulpit; and yet,
it is seldom the disputants and deciaimers pause to ask
themselves, or others, what the meaning of the word
is, and in what sense we are, or can be responsible/ to
God and man. And yet the clear and precise defini
tion of a word is the first and essential step towards the
satisfactory and conclusive discussion of the subject
which it involves. Let us ask ourselves, therefore,
what jf is we mean by the word responsibility. I
need scarcely say, that literally and etymologically the
word means to promise, pledge oneself, or answer in
return. It is out of this latter meaning it has acquired
its moral use. He who is responsible has to answer in
return to the questions put to him concerning his con
duct. . It is generally employed as a synonym for
accountable ; he who is responsible, is accountable for
his actions; i.e., must give an account of them, explain
them, justify them, be examined about them, by the
authority to which he is amenable. Properly speak-
�6
On Responsibility.
ing, the word denotes one able to respond, answer, or
give an account; but it is also used to denote one who
is under the necessity or obligation of responding or
answering. The use of this word in application to our
human relations is plain and simple enough. We are
responsible to the government under which we live for
the manner in which we obey its laws—i.e., we are
compelled, when called upon, to answer inquiries as
to that obedience, to give an account of ourselves, and
explain and justify our actions. In like manner, the
employed are responsible to their employers, servants
to their masters and mistresses, for the manner in
which they have done the work they have engaged to
do : they must answer and give an account of themselves
when called upon to answer and give an account. And
in like manner, children up to a certain age are' respon
sible to their parents, and all kinds of dependents to
those upon whom they depend. In all these cases,
you will observe there is involved the idea of a superior
power capable of insisting upon the answer, the account
being rendered, and of inflicting some penal conse
quences, if, when rendered, it be not satisfactory. The
government, by its superior power, can force its sub
jects to give an account of their doings, and punish
them for any infraction of the law, they discover when
the account is rendered ; parents in like, manner can
force their children to give an account, and so in
the other relations referred to, though these, for the
most part in the present day, can only inflict their
punishments through tbe medium o£ the government.
In former times, as we know, there was a much more
general power of inflicting summary punishments pos
sessed by private individuals than now. The lords
of the soil Were often the rulers and judges within
their own territories, and although they werq. nominally
responsible to the sovereign for their doings, the respon
sibility was very light in reality, and practically they
were all but absolute. Masters, too, in the towns had
■great power over their apprentices and workmen, and
�On Responsibility.
7
the system of responsibility generally was in every
respect more rigorous. Now, so long as God is regarded,
as a being like unto ourselves, and his government is
likened to earthly governments, it is natural to transfer
all these notions connected with responsibility to our
relations to him; and, accordingly, we are said to be
responsible to God in the same way as we are respon
sible to the government under which we live, or as our
children are responsible to us. Only then, it is not
merely for one particular class of actions that -we are
responsible, but for every one, each moment of our lives;
and God being omniscient, there can be no possible
escape or mistake through the defect of evidence or the
want of personal knowledge. And this responsibility
is generally considered, I think, to have reference to a
future day of judgment. God is acknowledged, indeed,
to administer some corrections and punishments in the
present life; but, for the most part, our account will
have to be given in at the last great assize, when, in a
manner more or less formal, and more or less'after the
style of our law courts, every action we have done, and
every word we have spoken, will be examined and in
quired into ; we. shall have to explain and account for
each one, and shall be judged according to our answers.
So that the. idea of our moral responsibility resolves
itself into this necessity of undergoing the judgment of
God, and of liability to reward or punishment accords
ing to the character of our conduct. This idea of responsibility, however, is now, I believe, generally
limited by two conditions, which again, seem to be
suggested by the analogies of dur responsibilities to
men.
•
'
*
First of-all, it is said, knowledge is essential to this
responsibility, and that it would be altogether unjust,
and so impossible, for God to make a man answerable
for an action concerning which he (Jid not know, or
could not know, whether it was good or bad. More
often, perhaps, it is the possibility of knowledge than
J
. . . *
*
�8
On Responsibility.
the actual possession of it which is insisted on. If
knowledge of good and evil be within one’s reach, and
one does not use the means to acquire that knowledge,
we are held to he equally responsible for the action
done in this voluntary ignorance as if it were done in
the full possession of the knowledge. This distinction,
however, is only considered of much importance with
regard to questions of religious life. Men living within
the reach of the means of grace—-that is, having a
church or chapel near to them, Bibles to be bought at
the Society’s depots, and ministers to be consulted—if
they neglect these means, are equally guilty for ne
glecting the Gospel, as though they used the means,
knew the truth, and yet rejected it. They have not
the knowledge indeed, but they have the means of
knowledge, which they neglect.
But whilst it is thought important to *note this dis
tinction for the sake of the positive institution of Chris
tianity, it is scarcely necessary in the case of morals.
For it is held that the moral law is written upon the
heart of all men alike, there is . an instinctive percep
tion of what is right and what is wrong, and so the
necessary knowledge is common to all, whether civilised
or uncivilised, Christian or heathen. And being so, all
are equally responsible to God. These- instincts may
indeed be obscured by the degraded condition into
which men have fallen; but still, there they are, and
if consulted and yielded to, would lead.to the perfect
knowledge of the will of God. All are thus brought
within the sphere of responsibility, so far as this con
dition of knowledge is concerned, and every one will
have to give an account of himself to God.
The second condition recognised amongst most moral
philosophers as essential to responsibility is freedom of
choice or will, as it used to be termed. It is said it
would be perfectly unjust, and therefore impossible, for
the righteous God to hold a man responsible and to
punish him for what he could not help, and did not
�On Responsibility.
9
freely choose of himself. And, therefore, all who are
responsible must be perfectly free to choose or reject
the actions for which they are responsible. That we
are so free, our own consciousness, it is said, clearly
testifies. We all feel that if we had chosen, we could
have refrained from any particular action, and that no
power could have compelled us to commit it against
our will. There has always been, however, considerable
difference between these theologians and philosophers
concerning the precise nature of this freedom, and as
to where it begins, and where it ends. One class
insists that all that is necessary to it is, that we are
able to do as we choose, without, i.e., regarding what
it is which causes us to choose this rather than that.
Whilst the other class contends that, besides this
power of doing as we choose, it is absolutely necessary
to perfect freedom, and so to moral responsibility, that
the choice itsllf be free—that we possess in ourselves a
self-determining power, capable of originating the choice
which should be made independently of, and unbiassed
by, all motives or anything of that kind. It would be
beside my purpose to-night to enter upon this contro
versy, but I must, say that, if I occupied the stand
point of these controversialists, and held their views
of God’s government, and of responsibility, I should be
compelled in sentiment to side with the latter class.
For nothing could be more monstrously wieked than to
suppose God had created men subject to a law of causa
tion, which determines absolutely whether they choose
this action or not, and yet that he is angry with
them when they do noi^ choose what he wishes, and
punishes them for it in the pains of an eternal hell.
It would be in vain to tell me that I am free to do.
what I choose, if I am under a law which compels me'
to choose this or that. The law and he who made and
sustains the law, are responsible for the result, and if
any one ought to be punished for the results of the
law’s operation, surely it is that law maker 1
�Io
On Responsibility.
It was the perception of this which led the late Sir
William Hamilton to accept the doctrine of the abso
lute freedom of the will, although it appeared to him
contradictory to facts. And nothing can be more as
tounding, and seem more revolting, than when the
pure and devout Jonathan Edwards, having in the
most logical piece of reasoning that ever was composed
in this world, proved the doctrine of necessity, that
is, that the will is subject to law, and so that our choice
is determined by certain conditions, without any notice
or reason assigned, excepting what arises out of his
religious feelings, plunges into the assumption that we
are responsible, and so that all which is necessary to
responsibility is freedom to do as we choose. Both
these parties, however, are alike agreed upon the re
sponsibility, and equally contend for it under the same
form.
But upon what evidence is belief in this form of
responsibility made to rest ? Of course, mere scripturalists quote texts of Scripture, but the more thought
ful endeavour to place it upon a wider basis. They
perceive that, if true, it must be a doctrine accessible
and patent to all antecedently to and independently of
any supernatural revelation. Accordingly, the basis
upon which this belief is almost universally made to rest,
is that of an asserted universal, uneradicable, instinc
tive conviction, feeling or persuasion, that we are re
sponsible. Every man, it is said, however evil or de
praved he may be, feels and knows within himself that
he is accountable to God for his actions, and that they
will bring him reward or punishment according as they
are good or bad.
And these universal convictions, persuasions, or in
stincts must be accepted as representing truth, and the
doctrines they deliver to us, must be therefore believed ;
of course, if there be a universal persuasion or convic
tion of anything, that persuasion or conviction must be
trusted. For the very universality of the persuasion
�On Responsibility.
11
implies that it is trusted, whilst the want of trust upon
the part of any would prove that it is not universal. It
is here, therefore, I join issue, and refuse to accept the
doctrine of responsibility as it is thus set forth. I
deny that there is a universal conviction that we are
responsible in the sense alleged. I myself have no
such conviction, and I meet with others that have
none. The conviction is false, founded upon a misin
terpretation of the real facts of our human nature.
The whole form which this doctrine is made to
assume, is evolved out of that most mischievous con
ception of God to which I have so often an occasion to
allude. I mean the conception which makes him such
a one as ourselves, and our relations to him similar to
our relations to one another. Directly you fall back
upon the fact that we have no right or pretence to set
forth God under such a conception, and that we know
nothing of him, but what he does, and through the
various forces of the universe, all that ground upon
which the common notions of responsibility rest, at
once disappears, and you are left to examine the facts
of life, and reconstruct the doctrine for yourselves. I
will not now occupy the time by showing the down
right barbarism of likening the judgment of God to the
judgment exercised in our law courts, with its assessors,
its witnesses and attendant officers, in the persons of
good and bad angels ; because the more enlightened
of even the strictly orthodox have given up such repre
sentations : but equally false and equally without justi
fication are the notions to which the most enlightened
amongst the orthodox cling, when they still represent
God’s judgment after the similitude of a parent sitting
in judgment on the actions of his child, and as main
taining somewhat similar forms, at least so far as the
questioning and answering between the infinite and the
finite spirit are concerned. All such representations
are purely gratuitous, and in the present case the em
ploying of them, even as mere figures of speech, tends
�12
On Responsibility.
to obscure instead of helping to illustrate the subject.
Rejecting all such methods, then, and falling back upon
the simple facts, what do we find presented for our
consideration ? We find that every action of both our
inner and outer life has attached to it certain conse
quences ; produces, i.e., certain effects ; these effects
leading to our wellbeing and happiness according to
the character of the action; and that this effect has
wrought itself more or less distinctly into the convic
tion of mankind, and constitutes whatever of truth
there is in the doctrine of responsibility. So that in
the popular doctrine, I discern two elements, a true and
a false one. The true element is this conviction, that
every man reaps the consequences of whatever he does.
The false element is that heap of fanciful notions which
represent these consequences as wrought out by God
after the manner in which parents or earthly govern
ments inflict the penalties of their violated laws.
The only evidence for this false element consists in
the fancies of man. The evidence for that true element
lies in facts open to the observation of every one. We
are responsible in the sense, that an action committed
is not done with—it produces certain effects • and these
effects tend to promote our happiness or misery accord
ing to the character of the action ; and this responsi
bility every one may discern for himself. When the
subject is put upon this ground, you will see that it at
once does away with those subtle distinctions and con
ditions, and those metaphysical discussions which I
have before pointed out as accompanying the popular
doctrine. For, in the first place, we do not find as a
matter of fact, that the consequences of actions depend
upon our knowledge of their moral character. Neither
knowledge nor the power of obtaining knowledge, influ
ences the effects they produce. The consequence follows
inevitably whether the action be looked upon as good or
bad. Aft hen a number of men combine amongst them
selves against others in order to secure their own per
�On Responsibility.
13
sonal interest, as, e.g., masters against their workmen,
or workmen against their masters, the action, of course,
is either morally good or had. But whether the com
biners look, upon it in this respect correctly or not, the
effects of the combination are precisely the same, so tar
as it affects the interests of those performing it. bo,
when people act unkindly to themselves, under whatever
light they look upon the act, the consequences inevit
ably follow. They may call the untruth a courteous
compliance with the world, a necessary yielding to
social opinion, a prudent consideration of one’s personal
interests, or by any other mild name, and may believe
it is nothing worse than the name implies; but the
effects of the untruth are not disturbed or interrupted
by their blindness, they follow sharp, and sure, and
inevitable. I do not mean by this, that the action
wrongly done against one’s convictions or knowledge,
does not produce consequences which the same action
done in ignorance would not give rise to.
But those consequences are apart from the action
itself, they are due to the additional element of know
ledge brought into the account. And, indeed, the best,
way of stating the fact would be, that all actions are
conditions and antecedents of certain fixed consequents
or effects which depend upon the character. of the
the actions ; when, to an action wrong in itself, is added
the knowledge that it is wrong, certain other consequents
are introduced besides those which simply follow
from the wrong action, consequents which arise out
of the fact that the action is known to be wrong.
And the same additional consequences follow although
the action be right in itself, if the agent suppose it to
be wrong. “ He that doubteth is punished if he eat,
(to quote an old saying), even though the eating be
perfectly right. He is punished in the injury done to
his moral nature by acting against, or not in accordance
with, his convictions.
But this you will see is quite a distinct thing from
�14
On Responsibility.
the popular doctrine which makes responsibility depend
upon our knowledge. Whether we know the wrong
ness of an action or not, facts show, that a wrong
action produces immediate evil, as a good action pro
duces good. And then this limitation of our notion of
responsibility to what we observe in facts, entirely
supersedes the discussion of that other question
about necessity or freedom of the will. Be the will
free or not, let us be able to understand even the con
ception of such freedom or not, the facts remain the
same, that good actions produce good, evil actions evil.
In fact, we entirely change our ground of observation,
and view the whole subject under entirely new aspects,
immediately we thus remove it from the region of meta
physical or semi-metaphysical speculation, and limit
ourselves to the actual knowledge we possess through
experience. Then, this doctrine of responsibility
becomes merely the expression of certain observed
phenomena occurring in our daily life, the declaration
of^certain connections between actions and their results.
W e do not, therefore, look forward to a future retribu
tion in which these actions shall bring upon us conse
quences which are now suspended and delayed ; but
we find an instant and a prompt result which begins
its development immediately the action is done. We
do not answer for what we have done as detected school
boys do under the rod of their master, or as detected
pickpockets do before the bench of magistrates, but we
answer in and through the effects which immediately
follow the action for which the answer is given.
And if you have taken in my meaning in its fullness,
you will see that the area of our responsibility under
this view is greatly extended beyond that which is
comprehended by the popular doctrine. Responsibility
under the popular doctrine is merely extended to actions
which concern our moral and religious life. Respon
sibility as interpreted by facts, comprehends the whole
sphere of our existence.
�On Responsibility.
*5
Every action of the most trivial character leads to
some consequence or the other, produces some effect or
the other, and for it we therefore are as truly respon
sible as for the most solemn and the most momentous.
All actions which produce effects on our wellbeing and
happiness, constitute a part of our responsibility, and
there is not an action we perform in our inner or outer
life, but what tends to do this. But then, again, this
does not mean that all actions affect our wellbeing and
happiness in the same degree. Experience shows that
they do not. There are some of so trivial a nature that
it requires the keenest eye to detect the consequences
which follow them. Others, again, are so momentous
and marked, that their effects have been recognised
from the most early times. Some produce their results
instantaneously and unmistakenly, others arrive at
them in an apparently roundabout way, and through
the least expected media.
But the great thing is to know, that there is not one,
whether we are observant of it or not, but what con
tributes to make up or diminish the sum which con
stitutes human happiness. And you will observe, it is
the reflex consequences of actions to which I am now
specially referring. For every action almost has this
twofold action—it goes forth and affects the external
world, and it returns, as it were, upon the person, the
mind and body, we may say, of him who does it, and
affects his next moment’s state and condition. You
utter a truth—the utterance has communicated some
thing to him who heard it, and has awakened a new
order and chain of thoughts and feelings in his mind ;
but the utterance has also affected the train of your
thoughts—the motives which influenced the utterance
have given strength or weakness to your moral charac
ter, and have brought peace or sorrow to your mind.
You utter by word or act a falsehood—-the utterance
misleads and betrays him who has received it; but it
tells still more upon yourself; it degrades your moral
�16
On Responsibility.
nature, it weakens your power of goodness, and leaves
you a prey to the repetition of the vice. And there is
even more than this ; for, in the constitution of nature
it comes about that the falsehood uttered generally
comes home again to the conviction of him who utters
it, bringing shame and confusion before his fellow-men.
So subtle are the workings of the mind, so close,
intimate, and minute are the bonds of society, so much
are all men one, that the truth or falsehood you utter,
and the good or evil you do, however much they may
seem to be separated from you, and to go travelling
about in the midst of society, somehow or the other,
constantly come home again, bringing you good or evil,
joy or vexation, according to their respective natures.
Just what the fable tells us happened to Jonah, when,
to avoid shame and disgrace, he fled from his duty,
constantly in life happens to all men ; and what there
is said to have been done by an absurd miracle, is done
by God’s constituted laws in nature,—that is, the very
wrong-doing is made to bring about the particular
vexation and sorrow, to avoid which the wrong was
done. Jonah, to avoid shame, took ship to go to
Tarshish. His taking to the ship, brought him, it is
said, into shame. And you need not believe this tale in
order to be convinced that that principle is widely true.
Open your eyes upon life, refer even to the experience
of your own life, and you will find the principle abun
dantly confirmed. You must flee from life itself if you
would escape these and the other consequences of all
your doings.
Now, the doctrine of responsibility as thus expound
ed, will enable us to solve many questions of a prac
tical character which have much perplexed those who
hold the popular doctrine. I will only mention two.
The one is that which often has been agitated, but
which, I remember, in quite my youth, attracted great
attention and discussion in Scotland and elsewhere, in
consequence of what was said by Lord Brougham in a
�On Responsibility.
T7
speech he delivered as Lord Rector of Glasgow Uni
versity. I mean the question of responsibility for one’s
belief. Lord Brougham, in a very startling antitheti
cal style, had answered this question decidedly in the
negative ; and, of course, had roused against him the
whole tribe of theologians and metaphysicians.
When one looks at the question from the popular
ground, all wonder that Lord Brougham should have
taken the negative side ceases. We know upon how
many accidental consequences the formation of belief
depends. Had we been all born in some parts of
India, at this hour we should have all been believers
in Brahma. Had we been born in Spain, we should
have been professed Roman Catholics.
When you come to minuter differences, you find
them constantly determined by consequences over which
men have no control,—birth, education, and a thousand
evident influences. And then we know what a vast
difference natural capacities, temperaments, and the
balance of the faculties make in the result. Who, then,
viewing these and other such things, can believe that
the beneficent father will reward a man eternally in
heaven, or punish him eternally in hell, in consequence
of his belief? In that sense surely, no man would
maintain the affirmative of the dogma. But when we
have abandoned that ground of pure fancies, and theo
logical speculation, and betake ourselves to facts, what
do we find? We find that a man’s real beliefs—not
his merely professed beliefs, but what he has thought
out, or at all events what he holds as real, living con
victions, do produce certain effects on his thoughts and
feelings, consequences follow that otherwise would
not exist. The Hindoo belief, e.g., in the metempsy
chosis, influences their food, which again influences their
physical condition and temperament. The Roman
Catholic belief in transubstantiation produces certain
feelings when they receive the Host in the sacrament;
and their belief in the power of the priest to pronounce
�18
On Responsibility.
absolution in connection with the sacrament of confes
sion, tends very much to keep Roman Catholic servants
honest. The Anglican belief in baptismal regeneration
has a powerful effect upon the feelings of mothers if their
children happen to die without baptism.
The belief that God is only known through his works,
has a powerful influence in producing reverence for,
and the study of, those works. In all these instances,
then, we see responsibility for one’s beliefs presented,
before us in facts. But then it is a responsibility
altogether unlike that which Lord Brougham justly
declaimed against; it is a responsibility which consists
merely in the connection of the thoughts with the feel• ings and actions to which they give rise.
The other question this simple view of the matter
helps us to solve, is that which relates to the age at
which children become responsible. I have heard that
most warmly debated under the popular notions of
responsibility. And I have known mothers who have
lost children when about six or seven years of age, be
come inconsolable under the fear that the children
were old enough to be responsible, and had gone to hell
because they had not personally accepted Christianity.
And the mothers were quite right, under those notions ;
for, on the one hand, it must always be a doubtful,
problematical thing, when a child knows enough to be
responsible, whilst, on the other hand, the asserted
consequences of that responsibility are most terrible.
But the question is determined immediately you recog
nise the simple doctrine of facts ; for then you clearly
see a child’s responsibility begins the moment it is born.
For then it begins actions which have consequences
attached to them affecting its wellbeing and happiness.
It takes its food, and that nourishes its body; it stretches
its limbs, and that developes its muscles; it utters
cries, and that promotes the growth of its lungs; it looks
around upon the room, and that trains the eye to judge
of distances and forms. Every action has some definite
�On Responsibility.
*9
consequence flowing from it, and therefore every action
constitutes responsibility. As it grows up, it begins to
think, to speak, and act. The speech and action truth
fully represent the thought and feeling within it or they
do not; the consequences attached immediately follow.
It is sent to school, and is idle or industrious, a waster
of time or studious ; fixed consequences follow the one
course or the other without fail.
The certainty of these consequences is what consti
tutes the responsibility. You cannot deny it, because
you cannot deny them. There they are. If the child
be idle and neglect his lessons, the most amiable temper
in the world will not save him from being an unmiti
gated dunce.
I hope, then, all understand what I mean by respon
sibility—it is the simple fact, that every action of mind
and body produces a definite effect upon our wellbeing
and happiness according to its character. And to my
mind, there is something much more serious and solemn
in this, than in that old fly-blown doctrine of the
popular theologies. That responsibility sits lightly
upon men now-a-days, because they cannot really be
lieve in it. It is absolutely incredible that God should
doom men to eternal perdition for actions over which
they have little or no control. It is absolutely in
credible, and purely barbarous, to believe that he would
doom them to eternal perdition for anything. But we
see that he has set to actions fixed results which in
evitably follow, and when an action is good, it pro
duces good, and when evil it produces sorrow. True
it is, this sorrow is disciplinal and intended to edu
cate and lead into a wiser course—to bring the wrong
doer to right doing. But not the less it is sorrow
whilst it lasts, and that w7e all seek to avoid. And
some actions bring a very deep sorrow, shame, and de
gradation to our whole nature. Only by welldoing can
we be sure of happiness and good.
Ought we not then to begird ourselves to search out
�20
On Responsibility.
what is right ? to watch .diligently and faithfully the
tendencies of actions ? to bring ourselves into confor
mity with all the laws of our being established by God,
both moral and physical, mental and bodily ? Surely
it is not wise when the laws of life are so fixed and
certain, to remain ignorant of, or to neglect them ! Let
us, then, my brothers and sisters, all become more ear
nest students of God’s ways of dealing with us, and
more obedient to his laws, and then shall we regard
the fact of our responsibility, not as a subject of super. stitious terror, but as it is in fact, a help to our well
being and our greatest blessing.
• • TURNBULL AND SPEAKS PRINTERS EDINBURGH.
�
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On responsibility
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Cranbrook, James
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Date of publication from KVK. Some ink stains.
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[1874]
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Conway Tracts
Responsibility
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PDF Text
Text
THE TENDENCIES
OF
MODERN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
BY THE LATE
EEV. JAMES CRANBROOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
�■j
I
�THE
TENDENCIES
OF
MODERN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.*
------- +-------
HERE can be no question, I suppose, that there is
a much
spread
Tearnestnessmore demonstrative and widely was some
in matters of religion than there
thirty years ago. In the more early part of the
century, the great wave of religious excitement which
had thrown up on its surface the Methodists, had
begun to retire, and the usual apathy and indifference
had succeeded amongst the masses, whilst routine and
formalism had taken possession of the sects it had
called forth. Here and there spasmodic efforts were
made to get up revivals; but they all failed, and what
the evangelicals called the Laodicean state seemed
all but universal. I say seemed, because I by no
means suppose that the want of a demonstration
which attracts attention and makes a great deal of
fussy noise is a real indication of a want of earnest
ness ; and, as a matter of fact, we know that whilst
this outward coldness prevailed there was a number
of thoughtful minds pursuing their course very
* This discourse was delivered by the late Mr. Cranbrook,
in the Hopetoun Rooms, Edinburgh, on the evening of Sunday,
February 24, 1S68.—one year after he had resigned connection
with the Independent Church. This explains the references
in the concluding paragraphs, which were specially addressed
to those of his audience who had left the church along
with him.
�2
The Tendencies of
earnestly, and to whose quiet, unostentatious labours
we owe very much of the greater zeal which charac
terises the present day. It was about the year 1830
that the first signs of a revived earnestness began to
•manifest themselves. A number of scholars connected
with the University of Oxford became alarmed at the
wide-spread influence of Dissent, and the prevalence
of Latitudinarian views within the Church of England.
They united together to stem and stop the adverse
current. They began to preach Christ, and in every
way within their power to propagate high-church
doctrines. Their teaching awakened antagonism in
the evangelical party within their church. It aroused
the opposition and indignation of the Dissenters, who
resented the denial that was given to the efficacy of
their sacraments, the ministerial character of their
pastors, and their right to be regarded as a part of
the Christian Church. The controversy called forth
the attention of the outer world. Statesmen, mer
chants, tradesmen paused in the middle of their secular
affairs to listen to the ecclesiastical din. The working
classes looked on sometimes with a sullen indifference
and sometimes with an intelligent contempt. The
questions debated became more' and more vital.
Philosophers and men of science began to mingle in
.the fray. The controversy passed from the learned
halls of Oxford, and the pulpits of Evangelical clergy
men and Dissenting ministers, from religious news
papers, magazines, and tracts, to the sphere of general
society and the. current literature of the day. We
are now living in the midst of it, but, I expect, shall
scarcely live long enough to see its close.
I have spoken of these manifestations of earnest
religious life as a controversy: They are so, inasmuch
as they assume the form of discussion, proof and
counter-proof, antagonism of thought and feeling,
divines railing against their brother divines, and
churches pitted against each other and divided in their
own midst. Yet the word controversy is insufficient,
�Modern Religious Thought.
3
defective, and unable to express the true character
of this great religious activity. For it affects the
whole life of men; brings out their deepest, inmost
thoughts and feelings—nay, is the coming out of their
inmost thoughts and feelings ; is the striving of man
in this our day to adjust his life, himself, to the great
facts of the universe revealed to him. It was not the
desire of Drs. Pusey, Newman, and the other Oxford
men to save their church which truly gave rise to it.
That was only an accidental, though most marked
expression of it under a form determined by special
circumstances. The real causes lay much deepei’ and
were more general. Nor is it the mere rivalries of
sects and parties which keep it alive. Its abiding
cause must be sought in the midst of the great changes
which the last few centuries have been producing in
society itself.
And I have no hesitation in saying that cause
consists almost entirely in the most wonderful progress
which has been made in physical science. Through
all the history of thought you will find that physical
science in past times exerted scarcely any influence
in determining any of the great questions of life.
Philosophy, comprehending within itself theology,
was the sole mistress of the human mind. And the
philosophy I mean was metaphysical, at the best
psychological. The physical sciences were deemed
poor, despised, beggarly elements, informing one of
nothing but a few facts relating to dead and inert
matter. Those who cultivated them were esteemed
as poor in spirit as were the sciences in their subjects.
No one cared to listen to them; no one honoured
them. If a man succeeded in making any great
discoveries which gave him a control over any of the
forces of nature, so much the worse for him; he did
it, not by research but by converse with the evil one,
and he might bless his fate if he had not to answer
before an ecclesiastical tribunal the charge of dealing
with the black arts. Within the last few centuries
�4
The Tendencies of
only has a change come over men’s notions in this
respect. By slow degrees at first, science won for
itself a hearing, then inquiry, then respect; within
the last hundred years it has made rapid progress,
and at last within our own day has obtained a position
which enables it to assert an equality to, if not a
superiority over, the philosophy which so long kept
it in the shade.
Now, this science affects modern thought in two
ways:—1st. By its actual discoveries it puts facts into
antagonism with many old and cherished opinions,
compelling those who are of a truth-loving nature to
give them up, and thus causes their whole system of
opinion to be shaken. Such, e.g., are the facts of
astronomy and geology, which no one can reconcile
with the explicit statements of the Bible; the facts
of ethnology and philology, to say. nothing of
criticism and history. Now these facts, established
by science, coming into direct collision with the long
cherished notions, compel men to re-examine and
seek to re-adjust their whole system of which these
notions are a part; and the process of re-adjustment
occasions the agitation and earnestness of religious
life in the present day.
But I have mentioned what I consider the weakest
influence of the physical sciences first; the second is
much more powerful, i.e., the method which physical
science pursues is directly opposed to the method of
the old philosophies with their theologies, and so far
as it prevails over the mind, must necessarily tend to
weaken the conclusions derived through their method.
The method of the old philosophies was subjective;
the method of physical science is objective. The
method of the first made clearness and consistency
of ideas the test of truth; the method of the second
depends entirely upon verification. Philosophy dares
to comprehend heaven as well as earth, the infinite
as well as the finite, within the range of its know
ledge ■ science modestly confines itself to the pheno
�Modern Religious Thought.
5
menal, and denies the possibility of all knowledge
beyond the sphere of experience. Now, I must not
stay to explain in full the antagonism thus created
between the older way of investigating truth and the
new; but you will all readily see how this scientific
method goes to the very roots of the long-cherished
philosophies and theologies and destroys them—
scatters all their beautiful ideas woven by fancy and
born of tender feelings; challenges to the proof of
their claims sentiments, opinions, and doctrines which
had been held as the most sacred verities.
And this antagonism, be it observed, is by no
means confined to religious questions, it pervades
the whole life. The scientific method is striving to
bring every thing under its control—politics, morals,
government in the family, education, all that comes
under the cognizance of man. That controversy,
e.g., just now agitated respecting the relations of
science and the study of the classical languages to
education is one form which it is taking. But, at
this time, we must confine ourselves to religious
aspects.
Now, it seems to me, in looking attentively upon
the manifestations of this newly-awakened religious
life, with its controversies and divisions, that there
are two, or perhaps I may say three, distinct ten
dencies clearly in action which will necessarily deter
mine the future; and if we can accurately ascertain
these tendencies we shall go far to foresee that future,
as well as to comprehend the present. I shall men
tion them successively :—
The first is a tendency which is purely and uncom
promisingly conservative. It falls back upon ancient
prestige and refuses to yield one iota to modern
innovations and methods. It finds its embodiment
in the Roman Catholic Church. The tendency is
seen in active operation all over the continent as
well as in England, and, if I am not forgetting,
the re-action which indicates its energy began in
�6
The Tendencies of
France before it was inaugurated at Oxford. Speak
ing, however, just now only of this country, the
number of conversions made within the last thirty
years to Roman Catholicism sufficiently proves to the
observer its strength. For, we must recollect whilst
a great number of the working classes (and of those
a large proportion was educated in Scotch Presby
terianism) have gone over to that Church, there have
also been converts made from the ranks of men of
great literary attainments and position, and of acute,
cultured, logical minds. And the tide is swelling
instead of diminishing, and I believe will go on
swelling for very many years to come.. Amongst
other evidences of it I might quote the great height
to which the High Church and ritualistic movement
in the Church of England has come. It is originated
by precisely the same cause, and is in precisely the
same direction; and merely seems to differ because
accidental limitations restrain an advance into the
Roman Catholic Church. I shall have to refer to this
again; but assuming the identity of tendency which
carries some into the extremes of High Church doc
trine and ritualism, and some others on into Roman
Catholicism, we cannot but recognise the great
strength of the tendency operating in all classes
alike and proved by the numbers borne along by it.
But now, what is the meaning of this tendency, its
soul, its real significance 1 It is easy to sneer and put
it all down to the love of millinery and parade,
childish . pomp and glare, as many do; and to de
nounce it all as hypocrisy and a love of priestly
power, as many of the evangelicals do; but it is
nothing of the kind. Doubtlessly some are brought
into sympathy with it through their sesthetical tastes.
They cannot believe that the eternal God who has
made this world so beautiful and full of delight is or
can properly be worshipped where the senses bear no
part, and everything which is beautiful and grand in
its sensuous effects is excluded. They turn, there
�Modern Religious Thought.
7
fore, with weariness from the cold, bare, abominably
ugly forms of the old Protestant worship to that
which, by the sweet perfumes of its incense, the rich
harmonies of its sublime old ecclesiastical tunes and
music, and by the gorgeousness of its ceremonial
satisfies the cravings of the taste, and reveals the
divineness of sense to the soul. And in thus turning
to what meets real wants of their nature, no one can
say that they are wrong.. The taste for art is re-awak
ened everywhere, and it would be strange if it did
not show itself under religious forms as well as others,
since art has always been allied with religion. It is
true that with much that is beautiful a great deal
which is absurd (to us) is mixed up in the Roman
Catholic forms ; but the earnest mind gets the knack
of disregarding the absurd and of.resting with joy in
the beautiful. Whether as the sesthetical tastes of
the country become more thoroughly developed and
cultivated something truer and more real than the
Roman Catholic forms will not be required, is a ques
tion I cannot now stay to discuss. But, at present, I
can have no doubt that the sesthetical culture which
has re-awakened the love of Art in this country is
bearing many along the path which leads to Roman
Catholic forms of worship.
Strong as this influence is, however, it is not the
principal one which is causing the great conservative
religious reaction. There is one which is affecting
the most earnest minds more powerfully still. I
mean the longing after intellectual certainty and rest in
those great questions which relate to God, the soul,
and eternity. The rise of the scientific spirit and
method having, as we have seen, undermined the
ground upon which men had rested their theological
beliefs, has compelled them to seek a more solid basis.
Many a one discovers that, after years of search, no
such solid basis is to be found, excepting in an
absolute submission of the intellect to divinely in
spired living authority, such as is presented only in
�8
The Tendencies of
the Roman Catholic Church. The attempt to make
the Bible such a basis entirely fails them, as it must
fail every one of logical and analytical habits of
thought. The evidences of its divine inspiration are
too imperfect to deceive persons of such habits. And
then the process of interpretation is too uncertain to
meet their wants. They are therefore shut up to the
alternative of renouncing all hope of obtaining a
basis for absolute beliefs, or of submitting their
intellect to the only church which pretends to have
authority from God to teach absolute, positive truth.
Several conditions determine them in embracing the
latter alternative. 1st. The assumption that absolute
certainty is necessary, and that God in himself, the
soul and its eternal destiny must be known. You
will find this most impressively illustrated in that
strangely painful and instructive book published a
few years since, the “ Apologia pro Vita sua,” by Dr
Newman. You there learn, that in the very beginning
of his career he started with the supposition that
absolute certainty in such solemn questions is essen
tial to the soul’s salvation, and that this supposition
inspired his inquiries to the end. At first he thought
he would find it in the Bible, but increasing know
ledge and the development of his reasoning faculties
undeceived him, and enabled him to see that certainty
is not to be had there. He then turned to the
Anglican church and hoped to discover in it a divine
authority which would meet his wants. But the
assaults of his opponents from the evangelical side
drove him back from one position to another, until
he found himself contending for principles which
demanded an unqualified surrender to the claims
of Roman Catholicism. His was too honest, -too
noble, too logical a mind not to make the surrender.
A few sentences have summed up his autobiography;
but it was a long process of heroic struggle, of
agonizing doubts and difficulties, of ardent efforts
and aspiration, towards the highest object that can
�Modern Religious Thought.
9
call forth the desires of man. No nobler, because no
more truth-loving soul of man has revealed itself to
us in this generation than is revealed in that book,
sacrificing itself to the conclusions of an irresistible
logic and abandoning all the fruits of its culture and
all the advantages of outward position because ab
solute certainty of faith can only be had upon such
terms. And Dr Newman represents a whole class of
minds which have gone through, or are going through,
a similar experience. They cry for certainty, and it
is nowhere offered to them with any show of con
sistency, excepting in connection with dogmas which
often at first horrify them—transubstantiation, the
immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, and such
like. But in proportion to the intensity of the cry,
and the logical consistency of their minds, will they
be compelled to modify their horror, and accept of
the only conditions upon which they can possibly find
the rest they seek.
But this is not all. There is another influence
besides this longing after intellectual certainty which
is leading men in the same direction. What I have
been saying applies for the most part only to the
most thoughtful minds; what I now refer to applies
rather to those of a deep emotional nature. I mean
the sense of sin as a something not belonging to one,
but which has yet taken possession of one's life, for
which an account must be given, and punishment
endured, unless pardon can be obtained from God.
It is true that this sense of sin is founded upon very
vague notions, but in some meditative religious
natures, it becomes the deepest and strongest passion
of the soul. Consequently all churches attempt to
deal with it, and to find for their disciples terms of
forgiveness. The protestant churches, by the necessity
of their theological principles, can only offer terms
which are purely subjective. To be delivered from
sin you must come into the condition of faith. But
how am I, wrestling, groaning, agonizing under the
�io
The Tendencies of
sense of my sin, to know whether I have come into
this condition ? By certain signs and marks which
it requires an analytical process of the intellect, to
ascertain j or by certain feelings of assurance which
can only arise when the internal struggles are over,
and having no authority but their own existence, may
to many appear all delusions and snares of the devil.
Both processes are purely subjective and can only
satisfy the mind in a certain stage of its culture.
But the tendency to objective thought, superinduced
by the influence of physical science, is drawing the
mind out of, and beyond this stage; and conse
quently is leaving the protestant churches without
the means of appeasing this sense of sin. In its deep
agonysof remorse and fear, therefore, the sin-conscious
soul is turning to the Roman Catholic church, which
claims to have received authority from its divine
head to forgive sins upon earth. Not by a subjective
process impossible to the sorrow-stricken soul, but
by a solemn declaration pronounced by the priest in
the name of his God, that church sends home its
penitents cleansed, forgiven, and in peace.
And thus we see, that two most powerful crav
ings of human nature are sustaining and intensi
fying daily the tendency which is leading people to
Roman Catholicism, namely the cravings for rest and
peace to both the intellect and the conscience.
The one craving characterises the more masculine
minds, the other the more feminine ; but both alike
lead to the one result, and swell that great conser
vative religious-reaction which is one of the greatest
tendencies and characteristics of the present day.
The second tendency at work in society which we
have to notice, is. carrying people in quite the
opposite direction, and seems to prognosticate a com
plete revolution in religious thought and feeling. It
originates in those influences of the physical sciences
and the method they have introduced to which I have
�Modern Religious Thought.
11
already referred. By rigidly insisting that every
hypothesis, every belief, shall be brought to the test
of fact, and that nothing shall be received as a part
of our knowledge which has not been verified, it
necessarily excludes a large portion of theological
dogmas from the field even of our enquiries and
places the rest upon a basis that gives them a
character in which they are scarcely recognised as
the same. In other words, it limits our knowledge
to the phenomenal, and pronounces all which lies
beyond to be nothing but the object of a vague faith
and altogether uncertain.
The first form in which this tendency of thought
reveals itself in connection with religion is generally
in the questioning and the renouncing the validity of
the Christian evidences. Employing its method of
rigid proof in the. construction of the rules of
historical criticism, and applying them to the evi
dences it pronounces them to be purely fabulous and
untrustworthy; and thus, at one stroke, overthrows
the whole system of Christianity and leaves those
needing a religion to find for it some other base.
But it does not rest even here. It must not be
concealed that the scientific method re-opens the
whole question concerning the divine existence, and
necessitates the grounding of one’s faith upon some
other reasons than those which sufficed men in former
days. It would be presumptuous in any one to say
that the devout recognition of a personal God is im
possible to those thoroughly imbued with the scientific
method, and when one who is so great an expon
ent of it, and possesses so acute a mind as J. S. Mill,
has seemed to pronounce the Argument from Design
conclusive; but most certainly if we cannot transcend
phenomena and have no knowledge beyond that
acquired by our experience, that recognition of God
is founded upon something which is distinct from
knowledge and can never become absolutely certain.
Accordingly it must be owned that a large number
�12
The Tendencies of
of those who follow this method set aside the divine
existence as a question lying altogether beyond the
reach of their faculties. They do not deny it; but
they say they cannot affirm it. They are not atheists,
but they are intellectual sceptics, whilst on the
other hand those of them who still cling to the
belief in God, justify their position in tones which
indicate they feel that their conclusions are not final.
I hope to show you in the course of lectures I shall
commence next Sunday night some real grounds for
this recognition; but to-night I am merely the
historian, and indicate what is passing around us.
Now that this scientific and revolutionary tendency
in matters of religion is already strong and powerful,
no one who knows anything of what is passing
around him will deny. That it will become stronger
and more powerful there are abundant reasons to
lead us to conclude. Evidently science is only just
beginning its successful career. We are only on
the threshold of its discoveries and its triumphs.
As it progresses it will take firmer hold of society
and bring more and more of the people under the
influence of its spirit. As people are brought under
the influence of its spirit they will apply its methods
to all the spheres of their thought. And thus
religion itself must come more and more under its
control.
There are then two great tendencies at work in
modern society leading to the consolidation of two
great parties. The one is conservative and finds its
full embodiment in the Roman Catholic church.
The other is revolutionary, and finds its representa
tives in the Comtists, the Positivists, the men of
scientific pursuits and studies, and all those who
make experience the only source of their knowledge.
The first demands the submission of your intellect;
the second offers you proofs. The watchword of the
first is, Authority; the watchword of the second is,
Verification.
�Modern Religious Thought.
13
But now, between these two parties lying on the
extreme right and the extreme left, there is another,
scarcely the embodiment of a tendency, but the
representative of a struggle—the party of compromise
that organises itself into the protestant churches.
Ever since the rise of protestantism its churches have
represented the spirit of compromise. Renouncing the
authority of the Roman Catholic church, they have
endeavoured to establish an authority of their own.
Conceding the right of private or individual judgment,
they have restricted its exercise by anathematising
those who did not affirm the orthodox conclusions.
The living energies of thought which gave rise to
protestantism have never long found shelter within
the pale of its churches, but have from time to time
been cast out as heretical and dangerous. These
living energies have never served any good purpose
within the churches but to create schisms, which
when created generally leave those cast out to settle
down as compromising and dogmatic as the churches
they have left. In the meanwhile the men of real
living thought withdraw outside the churches and
look on with indifference or scorning.
In the revived religious life sprung up of late years,
these churches have been true to themselves. To
recede to the old ground of Roman Catholicism
would be too humiliating after three centuries of
schism. To advance upon the free, scientific ground,
would be their utter destruction. So they attempt a
compromise. This attempt is openly avowed by the
more courageous and advanced (so called) Broad
Church party; but not less is it made by others.
Their chief difficulty is in dealing with scripture, and
reconciling not only its historical and scientific facts,
but its dogmas and morals with modern knowledge.
The strictly evangelical sections endeavour to get
over the difficulty by a disingenuous system of inter
pretation, in which, through a juggle of words, they
would fain make it appear that all along the teaching
�14
The Tendencies of
of scripture has anticipated modern discoveries and
methods of thought. The Broad Church section dis
tinctly owns that the science and history of the Bible
are inaccurate; and that it is only the religious ideas
which can be deemed inspired. But with this inspir
ation of religious ideas they associate the stupendous
dogma of the incarnation, and thus necessitate the
belief in a miracle which is the most repulsive and
incredible to be found in the whole Bible. And
what makes the position of this party the more un
tenable is that they endeavour to sustain it, not upon
the ground of objective proof, but by appeals to
sympathies and subjective religious experiences. The
criticism which they boldly apply to the historical
and scientific facts of the Bible they lay aside when
they come to deal with its religious and moral ideas;
and thus by an abandonment of the outworks of the
old system of belief, they hope to retain the citadel.
The hope, however, is fallacious. The system of
Christianity is one complete whole ; it was the growth
of many centuries, consolidated and established under
special conditions and forms of thought, which gave
a complete unity to its doctrines and facts, its
theology and history. No one can separate the one
part from the other, without the destruction of the
authority of both. The Broad Church party is, in
consequence, the weakest amongst all the parties into
which the Protestant churches are divided.. They
are impotent against the evangelicals, because they
dare not deny the incarnation and the supernatural
authority of Christ; they are impotent against the
sceptics, because they dare not affirm the accuracy of
the historical and scientific facts. Their existence
can only last for a day.
But, indeed, that must be the fate of all parties
participating in this compromising spirit, whether
they carry it out boldly or timidly,, consciously or
unconsciously. Eclecticism is only the refuge of
weaker minds that dare not adventure themselves
�Modern Religious Thought.
T5
upon the consequences of principles. It is tolerated
only so long as the period of indecision lasts.
Whilst controversy is raging and victory is undecided
many find comfort in adopting so much of the beliefs
of both sides that when transition has to be made to
the side finally victorious, it can be made without
difficulty and apparently without sacrifice. Instantly
however, that one side has gained the victory all such
eclecticism disappears. The victorious truth draws
all thought within its own circle and all minds
become subordinated to its influence. When therefore
the Protestant Churches in the very first period of
the Reformation gave themselves up to the spirit of
compromise, and endeavoured in sharply defined
creeds to amalgamate the old principle of authority
and the methods of the subjective theologies with the
new spirit of free enquiry and the method of objective
proof, they doomed themselves necessarily to a
temporary existence, and declared themselves incap
able of serving more than the wants of the day. It
is impossible they should last beyond the controversy
between the conservative religious reaction and the
revolutionary scientific spirit. These are so diametri
cally opposed to each other that there can be no final
compromise between them. The one must conquer
the other; and when such conquest comes, the
Protestant Churches will cease to be. And which of
the two great systems, between which the real strife
lies, will ultimately conquer, I need hardly say.
Those cravings of our human nature, that the system
of Roman Catholicism alone can meet, are not
necessary to us. They have been superinduced under
special forms of culture. They arise out of misconcep
tions originated in the days of man’s infancy,
ignorance, and superstition. There are no facts in
the universe known to us which justify them. They
are the pure creations of a mind which has abandoned
itself to its own subjectivity, and lost all power of
.distinguishing between its fancies and objective facts.
�16
The Tendencies of
On the other hand, the progress of the scientific
spirit is sure. Its advance is irresistible. It rests
solely on verified facts. Once verified they can
never become false. It can never, therefore, be com
pelled to recede from a position it has gained. Its
method, too, takes entire possession of the mind when
once it is understood, and imparts to it a culture
which becomes universal. Then, all subjects come
under its investigation, and every idea is subjected
to analysis, testing, and proof. This culture, which
the most urgent wants and principles of human
nature will cause to be generally diffused, will thus
gradually uproot those abnormal but powerful
cravings which lead men towards Roman Catholi
cism ; and the system which they necessitate and
sustain will then of itself expire. It may take very
many generations before the work is done; but the
end is sure.
Now, I trust it is no egotism for me to say on this,
the anniversary of the commencement of the services
in these rooms, that it is because the tendencies I
have described as at work in society have been
working powerfully in our minds, we find ourselves
occupying our present position here. In the midst
of the old churches we sought for certainty to
find out God’s existence, our own destiny. We
felt the pressure of sin ; the sense of its guilt wrung
our hearts with agony; we cried to the churches for
succour. And what did the churches for us ? They
endeavoured to satisfy us with metaphysical dogmas,
fancied facts, dreams of peace. But that would not
do. We had come under the influence of the
scientific method and spirit. We analysed their
dogmas, and found they had no substance or base.
We investigated the evidence of their facts and found
it invalid. We endeavoured to realise their peace,
and it vanished into nothingness, and only sorrow
was left behind. Roman Catholicism, Protestantism,
�Modern Religious Thought.
17
failed to help us to the truth and give us rest of
intellect and conscience. Unless we were to abandon
ourselves to absolute scepticism, nothing remained
but to boldly follow the path along which the
scientific spirit led, and accept of its conclusions
whatever they might be. The course was a trying one!
Prejudices and old associations had to be rooted up;
intense feelings had.to be suppressed; dear friends
wounded. But what could we do 1 We were
perishing for the want of the truth. We saw it lay
in that course or in none at all. We dare not give
up the hope and duty of attaining it—no, by our
soul’s life we dare not. We resolved, not in the spirit
of compromise, but in the spirit of holy daring, to follow
it whithersoever it led. But the old churches could
not tolerate this. Their superstitions became alarmed.
Our earnestness disturbed their peace. In return,
they troubled and vexed us sore. We had no heart
for such paltry strifes. They had nothing to offer us as
compensation for enduring such evils, so we left them
to their' fate and came hither.. If I were a Hebrew
of the olden time, this night would I raise an altar in
this room, and inscribe thereon Ebenezer. The year
has been to us one of happy progress. As soon as
the first excitement had gone off, the congregation
settled down in numbers far exceeding my expecta
tion. It has not diminished since. A few have left
us whose tardy steps could hardly keep apace with
our advance, and are seeking now, I presume, by a
futile compromise, to satisfy the want of their souls.
But their places have been filled by others, whose
sympathies are closer with us, and who, it may be
presumed, have counted the cost the truth will incur,
But our satisfaction arises not from those outward
things. The absolute freedom we here enjoy has
given an earnestness and a power to our enquiries we
had never known before. We seem to ourselves to
have been as travellers previously toiling with painful
steps and wounded feet up steep ascents, through
�i8
The Tendencies of
bramble and through marsh, shut in by high hills or
thick woods, and only here and there getting glimpses
of the land beyond. Now, we have come on the open
spaces and the rich plateaux; the light of Heaven
falls clearly; far and wide the horizon spreads on
every hand on closing scenes of God’s beauty and
goodness ; we advance rapidly, and every breath is
full of joy. Our essential principles, indeed, have
not changed since the day we entered these rooms.
But they have been wrought out to their conclusions.
We have left, too, far behind us the cant phrases, the
technical language, the accommodating forms of
speech, the unmeaning shibboleths of the churches.
We speak plainly the thoughts which are within us ;
and the thoughts in the new language sometimes
themselves seem new. But whatever may be the
form of truth to which we have attained, we do not
hold it as final. We have learned that to us all truth
is not absolute, but relative. As we ourselves grow,
the truth itself is modified, and assumes higher and
purer forms. And we hope, as long as life lasts, to
grow. We enter, therefore, upon the second year of
the services here simply in the attitude of scholars,
not satisfied with the past, but crying unto the
Great Fountain of light, More light, 0 God ! give to
our souls more light!
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The tendencies of modern religious thought
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Cranbrook, James
Description
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 18 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Date of publication from British Library catalogue.
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Thomas Scott
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1871
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RA1597
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CT209
CT154
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Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The tendencies of modern religious thought), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Conway Tracts
Religious thought-19th century
Religious Thought-Great Britain-19th Century
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/61c60540b38c520d795b33a71d5389ea.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=wCnsOK3lUM0GRGCHe717BQUcNv5dbxafj9xMgLf5xOfZs9KTAo0LZI4aGFsu-N0HWpapcd9tB%7ExfBZXyDuQbg2R3dg9PmpB%7ErFvEC7Cp-lyp2HjAUj6jabAJp0utdeDZKPL9YrimJPCWLDc7gt-%7EmbHJpPkvpQsDXhPbubk-nMH133TsPRV-bLbCqUDOSTYFRK5yKNged%7ESr-M--h96%7ETO3eSq1Cu%7EAFFiaWc8X44h%7EGWuUjY4BhUR941age-8nzeLfSGufUfUUQ43iJmUmUtX2mMOSMbB8o4ZltGv09vMuR%7EyF1cnAf3T-2qVKHNyOOfQmBQa4AnjmG5SZkdS%7E4EQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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Text
ON THE HINDRANCES
TO
PROGRESS IN THEOLOGY.
BY THE LATE
REV. JAMES CRANBROOK.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
��ON THE
HINDRANCES TO PROGRESS IN THEOLOGY.
HEN one considers the great amount of intelli
gence and active thought existing in modern
society, especially as compared with the past, one is
apt at first to be surprised that so little progress has
been made amongst people in general in religious, or
more properly speaking, in theological questions.
Those who venture upon such questions, to think for
themselves and to doubt, or in any very serious
degree to modify, the old and long received dogmas,
are still the easily numbered few ; whilst the
unreasoning, quiescent and bigoted recipients of the
orthodox beliefs are the overwhelming majority. It
may help to encourage those of you who are for mak
ing progress in theology as well as everything else,
and possibly to awaken profitable reflection in those
who have hitherto been indifferent in the matter, if
I offer you this evening some considerations serving to
account for the still great preponderance of the old
beliefs.
In the first place, then, notwithstanding the
admittedly wide-spread intelligence of the present
day, I think the comparatively slow progress of
theology is due to the very imperfect education which
has been and still is generally received. It must be
observed that the active intelligence amongst us is
not due to the education in the technical or scholastic
sense of the term. Whatever improvements have
been made in the methods and subject-matter of
W
�4
On the Hindrances to
teaching, have been made within the last fifteen or
twenty years, and such improvements have not
affected those who have advanced to the middle
stage of life, and whose thinking constitutes the char
acter of the present generation. When they were at
school scarcely a single step had been taken out of the
old rut along which scholastic education had dragged
its slow course for generations. There was nothing in
it to quicken the mind or to form those habits of
thought which alone constitute a liberal, broad and
national intelligence. Boys in the middle classes learn
ed a little Latin, less Greek, somewGeography, scraps of
naratives called History, under the designation of
Astronomy the names of stars they never were
taught to identify, and were in many cases pretty
well drilled in Arithmetic. Girls learned still less of
what was useful; in arithmetic seldom got beyond
reduction, and became prodigies if they reached the
rule of three (as it was called); but were thought to
make up for the deficiency by acquiring the power
of tinkling dance music and battles of Prague on the
piano, of drawing on paper straight lines which did
not lie evenly between extreme points, and circles
whose radii were anything but equal to one another,
and of making embroidery and other fancy articles
the taste of which was an offence to gods and men.
In all this education received by both boys and girls,
there was nothing to teach them observation,
analysis, reflection, comparison, reasoning, or any of
those intellectual processes which are essential to the
full exercise and development of our rational nature.
Of course there were exceptions to this. Here and
there were teachers far before their time, whose pupils,
if led through the same routine course, had breathed
into them a spirit of enquiry which has made them
assume a place amongst the most progressive of the
day. These, however, were the exceptional cases, and
education was for the most part such as I have
described it.
Fortunately, however, there were influences at work
�Progress in Theology.
5
in society ready to meet these boys as soon as they
left the school for the business of life, which were
calculated to do in part the work their school educa
tion ought to have done. The great discoveries of
science, applied to manufactures and commerce, had
already begun to change the whole aspect of social
life. The most active thought had become necessary
to conduct the ordinary affairs of business. Accurate
observation and reasoning had become as necessary
in the shops and the mercantile counting-house, as in
the study of the savant and the philosopher. Infor
mation became essential; the cheapening of the
newspapers supplied the want, and with the com
mercial information, they furnished other kinds of
intelligence. Thought thus became amazingly quick
ened, and the intellectual activity of the present day
has ensued.
But now, observe, this kind of intellectual activity,
thus superinduced, does not necessarily extend itself
to all subjects coming within its sphere. On the
contrary, being called forth for a specific purpose, it
is very apt to confine its activity to the purpose for
which it has been called forth. It does not assume
the character of a general habit of mind, but is merely
a particular instrument employed for a particular end.
It is analogous to the development of the physical
powers. The physical powers may be developed by
proper training altogether, so that whenever anything
has to be done by any, or all of them, it will be done
with the full and most perfectly developed powers;
but instead of this general education, we may develop
for a particular end some one or the other of these
powers alone, that of the arm for working, hammering,
&c., or of the legs for running, walking, or say, turning
a lathe. Just so is it with our thoughts—there are
the general and the special education; and the special
education may be very complete for its purposes and
yet leave the thoughts without those habits of general
application which are essential to the completely
rational man.
�6
Pt
On the Hindrances to
Now that is precisely what we find (with daily
increasing exceptions, however, thank God) to be the
effect of the training or education forced upon men
by the business pursuits of the present day. The
special training for business does not extend its
influences over the general habits of thought, and
consequently men may be found most intellectually
efficient within the sphere of their active life, who
beyond it shew no more rationality than children.
The want of early training affects the whole sphere
of their thought excepting in that one direction in
which the necessities of their circumstances have
compelled them to become rational. As I have said,
there is a great increasing number of exceptions to
this statement, where men of all classes and pursuits
are exercising rational habits of thought upon al]^
subjects coming under their notice j but still, I hay
described what up to this time has been the prevailing
fact. And the fact explains at once the slow progress
made amongst the majority of people in theology, or,
as it is generally termed, religion. They have received
their creed in the mass, there has been nothing in
their education to lead them to enquire into the truth
of either this doctrine and that, or of the system as a
whole. They listen to the teachings they receive from
Sunday to Sunday with absolute credulity, leaving all
their faculties of reasoning in abeyance; or if exer
cising them, exercising them upon the most insignifi
cant points. Or if they attempt to reason and enquire
upon the vital points, they never bring to bear upon
the subject the same acuteness of observation and
analysis, the same closeness of comparison and reason
ing, that they employ in their business concerns.
They treat religion as altogether a different kind of
thing, and indulge in all the loose habits of thought
their unsound education left untouched. And so,
when we consider all the other influences at work,
we cannot wonder that such men remain fixed in
their old superstitions, and become sometimes even
the bigoted opponents of progress. Their education
has determined their destiny.
�Progress in Theology.
7
And all I have said of men applies equally to the
case of those women whose household affairs are of
sufficient magnitude to require the exercise of much
attention and judgment. Indeed, such women are
often better situated than men for acquiring general
rational habits of thought, for the objects they
have to attend to are of a more miscellaneous char
acter, and less likely, therefore, to confine the appli
cation of the rational powers to one narrow and
specific line. But then, on the other hand, there are
other causes, chiefly arising out of the affections,
which counteract these more favourable circumstances,
and which nothing but an early training could in the
majority of cases correct. And thus it comes to pass
that amongst both men and women rational opinions
make but slow head-way, and only here and there are
found those, who, having risen above the education of
their youth, become rational in matters of religion.
The second cause I assign for the slow progress
of religious thought is fear—blind, unreasoning,
superstitiou-s fear—which extends its influence over
all persons not yet redeemed from, its curse. Fear
has- been the prime and most effective motive power
in nearly all, if not all, the religions of the world up
to the present time. In some of them its agency was
overwhelming. God, or the gods, were represented
in an awful aspect full of vindictiveness, revenge, and
cruelty. Men trembled at the thought of them.
Their religion became a mere effort to appease the
divine displeasure, or to purchase the divine favour.
Oriental speculations had considerably modified theseconceptions when Christianity arose and became (at
all events as presented by its founders) the gentlest,
form of faith the world then had known. The
teaching of both Christ and Paul, so far as it is ascer
tainable, presented the character of God in a benign
relation to the world, and encouraged trust and love
rather than fear. One dark and gloomy doctrine
however was still retained, which although neutralized
�8
On the Hindrances to
in the loving spirits and teaching of these noble men,
became developed into fearful forms under the influ
ence of the fiery and dark minds which succeeded
them. I refer, of course, to the doctrine of eternal
punishment. That doctrine I am compelled to own
both Paul and Christ distinctly taught. I should be
glad to think that the philanthropic apostle, and
.above all that the gentle, loving Jesus had given no
countenance to the immoral doctrine. But all honest
■criticism forbids me from doing so. The methods of
criticism adopted by those who hold the contrary
'conclusion seem to me altogether subversive of rational
interpretation, and would leave every document at
the mercy of the interpreter.
Now, the doctrine they sanctioned, and which -the
whole of the New Testament teaches or recognises,
has ever since been made more or less an efficient
instrument of terror. In the hands of the best men
of the church it has been used merely for the purpose
of restraining vice or stimulating faith. But the
darker spirits have used it with Satanic power to
mould men to their will. Especially has this been
the case in times of doubt, heresy, and schism. Then
with all the vehemence of eloquence, and with all the
invention of art, its awful, sulphurous terrors have
been drawn forth before the affrighted imaginations
of men, in the expectation that the fear of the horrible
torments of an endless life might preserve them
within the orthodox fold of Christ. In the present
day such representations are much modified, and the
fear arising out of them is consequently less active.
The genteel, tolerably-educated minister of your city
churches would not venture to deal out flames and
fiery darkness as his fathers did. It is only in some
■out of the way parish, situated at what seems the
world’s end, in some little conventicle where the
preacher is innocent of a day’s schooling, that you now
hear of eternal damnation in all the fulness of its
horrors.. Yet the influence if it has a strong hold of
men’s, and especially of women’s feelings.
�Progress in Theology.
9
Fear has always restrained enquiry.
The
anathemas of the church long held back the mind
of Europe from enquiry into the protestant dogmas.
“ What if the Church’s dogmas should prove to be
true ? The eternal perdition would be incurred by
the doubting of her creed.” The same fear virtually
operates now. “ One’s first concern is the salvation
of the soul. What if one exposed it to jeopardy by
pursuing these inquiries about the incarnation, the
atonement, the inspiration and authority of the
Bible ? Leave such questions alone, and tread not on
such dangerous ground.”
Such dangerous ground !—that is of course,
assuming, before the enquiry, that these orthodox
dogmas are true. But what if they be untrue ?
Which will be the dangerous ground then ? And
how can you tell whether they be true or untrue
until you have thoroughly investigated the matter ?
Should they prove to be untrue, and untrue I
thoroughly believe them to be, they must be working
intellectual and moral mischief in your souls. For
every lie entails intellectual and moral mischief.
But it is of no use to tell a large portion of the
orthodox this. The fear of losing the soul has so
taken possession of the feelings that it shuts out all
reason, all common sense, and leaves them the miserable
victims of their superstitious delusions. They turn
a deaf ear to all argument, evidence, and proof of
every kind, and see nothing but the hazard of eternal
woe in the questionings of reason. They have no con
fidence in the divine fatherhood that the gospel of
John tells them about ;•—no confidence that the God
of truth will guide aright the mind seeking to know
the truth, much less have they any confidence in the
rational faculties with which man is endowed, and in
the certainty that all honest enquiry must bring a
blessing of some kind with it. But that grim devil
the ignorance of barbarous times conjured into
existence, and those dreaded torments over which he
presides, frighten them out of their seven senses into
�IO
On the Hindrances to
the irrational act of clinging tenaciously, as if for
their life, to the unexamined dogmas of orthodoxy.
One grieves to see the gentle nature of women so
abused, but grows indignant when men, pretending
to a higher intellect and a stronger understanding,
show the same foolish weakness.
And yet all
around us the dark superstition is keeping both men
and women, parsons and people, from all thorough
going rational enquiry. It is as powerful in this
respect amongst large masses as ever ; and no doubt
it will require another generation before the multitude
arise above it.
In the third place, I think an ignominious love of
ease, comfort, or peace of mind, keeps a large number
from enquiry. There are very few who love truth for
its own sake. It is courted rather for the fortune it
brings, the blessings of a physical and spiritual kind.
Most seek some ulterior end, and above all ease,
comfort, peace of mind and great enjoyment. Now if
you do not harass your brains by entertaining doubts
and making enquiries, orthodoxy will furnish you
with these desired blessings. On cheap terms it will
assure you of the salvation of your soul and God’s
present and eternal favour, and in addition will
bring you the approbation, sympathy, and regard of
the respectable people around you. But if you once
set off upon the dangerous road of free enquiry,
instantly all these blessings disappear, and there is
no saying to where you will be led. Knowing this,
the majority of quiet well-to-do people are very care
ful to shun enquiry.
And the mischief feared lies in two directions :
first, in the dogmatical. When verities which have
been venerated for ages are once called into question
and doubt, their mind loses all its anchorage ground,
and seems to itself like a ship out at sea in the midst
of a storm. Whither it will be driven no one can
tell. And there are again two things which distress
it; the one is the uncertainty and suspension of faith
into which it is brought. Most minds rebel at this.
�Progress in Theology.
11
It requires thorough mental training and discipline
to be able to suspend one’s judgment without pain
during the examination of evidence. We become
impatient of it, and want to settle down on the one
side or the other. The mind wants rest; but as long
as enquiry lasts there can be no rest—no reposing
on assured truths—no drawing of comfort from
sweetly consolatory doctrines ! It is all hard work,
and moving on from point to point. And so rather
than embark upon such troubled waters, shoals of men
superstitiously keep the harbour of the old faiths.
There at least, so long as they do not doubt, they
find quiet and comfort.
And then the other thing which keeps them from
enquiry is that they find many are led when once
they loosen their moorings, lengths which seem to
them perfectly horrifying. Some who once were good,
sound, orthodox believers have become what these
people call perfect infidels; and mistrust of themselves,
apparently, or mistrust of the truth, leads them to
fear such if they once set out might become their
own fate. Some could go as far as Robertson of
Brighton, but it would be dreadful to get to the
length of Martineau! Some could go as far as
Carlyle, but it would be ruin to think like Stuart
Mill! Some could accept of the theism of Newman,
but the positivism of Comte would be perdition ! So
each and all have their several bugbears of infidelity
which terrify them from thought. It does not seem
to occur to such people that it is just possible that
those who have gone the lengths they fear to go,
may have reached the truth. They only think of the
consequences to which they presume it will lead.
“ Oh, say they, we could find no comfort, no ease, in
such horrible doctrines, however true they might
appear. All peace would be thrust from our souls
for ever.”
Well, and suppose it were so; did you come into
this world for ease and comfort, or to find the truth
and live by it ? Is blessedness to be had in a false
�12
On the Hindrances to
peace, or in the living facts of the universe ? Ease !
Comfort! For shame ! Go get you into a cradle and
call out some crazy beldame from the workhouse to
rock you your worthless life long. That is all such
drowsy souls are fit for. And yet although all reason
must condemn them, although they themselves must
for very shame be forced to own that in the pure and
perfect truth man’s supreme bliss can alone be found,
and that in this day of the disruption of parties and
the dissolution of churches each one must search out
that truth for himself, this bugbear of extreme
Infidelity keeps thousands, and will continue to keep
thousands, from all manly and honest enquiry. One
grieves over their weakness, but the remedy seems
far away.
The other disturbance to one’s comfort and peace
lies in the social direction. Men like to be at ease
when their professional or business engagements are
over. It is comfortable to get home, sit down by the
fireside, chat with one’s wife and children, read the
newspapers, or doze over a glass of wine. Besides,
these are acquaintances, perchance friends, amongst
whom one likes to spend a pleasant evening now and
then over a game at cards, or in conversation upon
the social and political gossip of the day. But now,
earnest religious enquiry is very apt to break in upon
all this, to make one’s home a scene of constant con
tention and tears, and to make one’s acquaintances
very shy and distant. If the wife have not the
intellect to enter into the questions with the
husband, or the husband with the wife, to what
bickerings, sometimes angry discussion and wordy
contentions, it leads. And then who can resist those
tears and those earnest appeals, “ if not for your own
sake, for the sake of the souls of our darling
children give up such wicked doubts!” And
then the good people, too, aid the home influence.
Who will associate with an infidel ? Who will have
anything to do with him who denies the verities of
the faith ? u My dear fellow, such notions are
�Progress in Theology.
T3
not respectable, and I can assure you if it became
known that you hold opinions so dangerous it will
materially affect your business. You have a young
family rising up, and cannot afford to indulge in such
speculations. Besides, I confess all your friends
concur with my own feeling in the matter, that is,
however much we respect you, we should not like it
to be known we associate with the companion of
infidels. You are all right, you know, but you will
be thrown amongst all sorts of vagabonds, and people
will suspect that you have fallen into the vices to
which Infidelity always leads. Give it up, my dear
fellow, give it up, if you do not wish every respectable
acquaintance to give you up.”
Who could withstand such arguments as that ?
So the poor fellow does give it up, dismisses his
doubts, henceforth walks demurely with his wife and
sweet babies every Sunday regularly to church, and
by and by gets held up by his minister as the very
type of “ That large and respectable class of intelli
gent men who amidst the doubts and scepticism of
a licentious age hold fast by the old faiths ! ”
Another reason just alluded to operates with some.
I referred to the low character imputed to those who
depart from the old beliefs. It is the common con
clusion of weak minds that he who doubts the accepted
dogmas is a bad man. And even what the world
calls respectable men and women, great professors of
religion, think it no shame to either create or pro
pagate all sorts of lying slanders against the infidels.
Now and then this is done unconsciously of the wrong,
the ignorant people not knowing that slander is a form
of immorality and that to speak evil of one another
without sufficient evidence is a crime. But generally
the evil is known, but committed under the palliating
thought that it does God service. Now the effect of
this is twofold : 1st, Ignorant people who do not
know the wickedness of which religious people can be
guilty, believe the slanderers, and shrink- very natu
rally from connecting themselves with such seemingly
�14
Hindrances to Progress in Theology.
disreputable parties. And 2dly, They are very apt to
conclude that bad men cannot have found the truth.
Of course the character of a person cannot affect the
truth or untruth, the validity or invalidity, of his
arguments and propositions. And a rational person
would judge of the doctrines by these alone. But in
matters of religion, as we have seen, the majority are
not. rational. And so these slanderers succeed in
their efforts to deter the weak-minded from enquiry,
and in God’s name effectually do the devil’s work.
Other reasons might be added to these to account
for the large number shunning all enquiry upon the
questions of religion; but these must at present suffice.
And they are sufficient to encourage our faith and
hope in the gradual progress of the truth. • That which
lies at the.root of them all, the want of a sound judg
ment, a disciplined mind habituated to exercise its
reason upon all things, must gradually give way
before the more enlightened system of education all
classes are feeling their way towards. And in time
it will affect women as well as men. Those tender
affections which now bind them to superstition will
not always, be so perverted. When woman receives
the education her nature requires, the intellect will
assert its proper supremacy. Already there are some
noble pioneers, the vanguard of the advancing race.
When the whole host has come forward, then divine,
bliss-giving, beauteous truth shall be our sovereign
mistress, and all men will dare to follow whithersoever
she may lead.
Turnbull and Spears, Printers, Edinburgh.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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On the hindrances to progress in theology
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cranbrook, James
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 14 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Date of publication from KVK.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Scott
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[1871]
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G5463
G5750
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Theology
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (On the hindrances to progress in theology), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Christian Education-Great Britain
Conway Tracts
Theology
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
PRICE TWOPENCE
THE
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
OF CHILDREN
BY THE LATE
Rev. JAMES CRANBROOK
(EDINBURGH)
[issued for the rationalist press association, ltd.]
London :
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1908
��THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF
CHILDREN
Religion is only a form of feeling. This needs to be dis
tinctly understood, or else we shall blunder at every step we
take. But I feel I have no occasion to go into any very
elaborate proof of it, as most rational thinkers have become
familiar with the arguments on which it rests. They know
that religion is not the observance of forms and ceremonies,
inasmuch as men may observe all these most punctiliously
and yet be mere hypocrites and pretenders to the religious
life. Nor is religion the belief of certain creeds, inasmuch
as men have held parts of every kind of orthodoxy, and yet
been most atrociously impious. But, as it is generally
expressed, it is a state of the heart, of the feelings, a state
of faith, reverence, awe, love, dependence, or fear, according
to the character of the divine object presented to the mind.
No distinction can be more important than that of this
modern one between theology and religion. It is necessary
to the interpretation of all the religious history of the past,
and to all intelligent religious action in the present. Religion
is the feeling which arises when a divine object is presented
to the mind ; theology is the explanation the intellect gives
of that object, its nature, character, and relations, the analysis
of the feeling itself, and the exposition of the forms of expres
sion or worship to which the feeling gives rise. So that it is
quite clear that religion must precede theology in the order of
time; the thing analysed and explained, ?>., must come
before the analysis and explanation. And it is further clear
that religion and theology may exist quite independently of
3
�4
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
each other—i.e., the intellectual process which explains is
quite a different thing from the emotional state which seeks
for the explanation. A man may feel deeply, and yet, through
defect of intellect, be entirely without the theological know
ledge ; or he may through his power of intellect understand
the whole question of the theology, and yet seldom or never
in the faintest degree be the subject of the religious feeling.
Bearing in mind, then, these distinctions, what is it we are
inquiring into when we propose to ourselves the subject of
a child’s religious education ?
By religious education do we mean the education of that
feeling which arises upon the perception of a divine object?
or do we mean the analysis and ascertaining of the truths or
facts respecting the divine object of the feeling—z.e., theo
logy? or do we mean both the education of the feeling and
of the intellectual process of its interpretation ? Now, if I
mistake not, the popular idea of religious education is wholly
limited to the second meaning—z.e., the learning of theology.
Hence, e.g\, you will see in the prospectuses of various
schools a long rigmarole about the great importance they
attach to religious education, and the pains they give to it ;
and then, when you come to look into the processes by which
they carry on this important work, you will find that it often
happens that the sole effort they make in this direction with
one class for a whole year is to instruct their pupils in the
question of the Christian evidences 1 Now, I admit to the
fullest extent the great importance of this question. It is
one of the great questions of the day. In matters of theo
logy, it is the great question. But it is not a question of
religion. It is a question of historical criticism. And
historical criticism is a science of recent times, and requires
more learning, hard and dry study, power of acute and
accurate reasoning, and maturity of judgment than any other
science of the same class. To set children, therefore, to the
study of the Christian evidences, and then to call this
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
5
proceeding their religious education, seems to me as egregious
a piece of blundering as ever was perpetrated, and at the
same time proves what I said—that in popular estimation
religious education means, for the most part, education in
theology.
I do not mean to say, however, that there is no religious
education. On the contrary, there is a great deal of it,
Sometimes too much, and out of all proportion. But it is
carried on, and especially by pious mothers, without any
idea that it is education, and, consequently, without any
thought or system. The only thing called and attended to
as education consists of theological doctrines. But, in the
sense in which I speak of religious education, it is the first
of those I named—z’.e., the education of that feeling or those
feelings which arise upon the presentation to the mind of a
divine object, or, in other words, on the contemplation of the
mystery of the universe—the education of the feelings of
wonder, awe, reverence, love, and dependence. It is not
forming our minds to the study of theological truth. That
may be used as a means of religious education indirectly ;
and we may see thereafter that it is a means. But the
religious education itself is the development, direction, and
promotion of the growth of the religious feeling, the
purifying it from gross superstitions and sensual elements,
and rendering it elevated and elevating, pure and purifying,
noble and ennobling. Now, by what process is this to be
effected ? I have already alluded to the means generally
employed. Pious parents feel it their duty at the very
earliest period to begin with teaching their children theology—
notions respecting God, the soul, eternity—and in instructing
them in the feelings they ought to cherish with regard to
these objects. As soon as they can lisp, they teach them to
say prayers ; as soon as they can repeat sentences like a
parrot, they teach them a catechism. Now, not only is this
most destructive to the intellect, by teaching the child to use
�6
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
words without a meaning, but it is creating in the child, so
far as it awakens religious feeling at all, a merely super
stitious religion founded on a false theology, which it will
afterwards have to correct. It is sad to reflect that in most
schools children receive to-day the same ideas in regard to
the universe and the destiny of man which their ancestors
entertained, and which are in direct contradiction to con
temporary knowledge.
Let us take as an illustration of what I mean the first two
questions of the simplest and the most generally used cate
chism for little children I know—Dr. Watts’s. I have known
it taught to children three years old, and, of course, before
they could read ; and have constantly heard it referred to as
the very model of a manual for the purpose. And most
certainly it represents the spirit—and very much of the letter
—of teaching children yet in their early years. It begins
with asking: “Can you tell me, child, who made you?”
The answer is: “The Great God who made heaven and
earth.” Now, here at the very outset are two notions
involving the most recondite and difficult ideas, which lie
utterly beyond a child’s comprehension. What idea can a
child have of God which is not utterly false ? Whatnotion
can the words convey but what is grossly superstitious? To
give the word “ God ” to a young child without explanation
is to teach him to use words without meaning—the greatest
curse of most people’s lives. To attempt to give him an
explanation is simply to call his creative fancy into play, by
means of which he will form for himself a most ridiculous
idol. If you awaken religion at all—i.e., feeling towards this
misconceived object, this idol—it will be a religion as super
stitious as ever was that of pagan nations. But then, in this
answer there is another notion besides that of God, and as
utterly incomprehensible to a child—that of a cosmogony—
the generation of a world, of the universe. What are you
going to say to a young child about God’s making the
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
7
heavens and the earth? Will you explain, supposing you
are able to do so? He could not comprehend. Would you
leave it unexplained, and let him form his own notions?
“ Oh,” you say ; “ who would think to teach a child your fine
scientific ideas ? I would leave him to the plain common
sense meaning of the words; every child knows what to make
means.” To be sure ! You are quite right. A child knows
what to make means, for he has seen your cook make pastry,
or he has made mud houses in the streets ; so he takes the
meaning of to make as thus learned—the only thing he can
do, according to the laws of thought—and applies the notion
to God’s making the heavens and the earth ! Is that, how
ever, the meaning you would have him take the words in ?
Do you think such a notion will produce in him any deep
religion—that is, reverence, wonder, love, dependence upon
him who has done for the heavens and the earth what the
child knows he has done for the mud house made in the
streets? It is all an absurdity together. If the child think
and feel about it at all, it will be false thought and feeling.
If he do not think and feel, he has learned to use words
without attending to the ideas they represent.
Let us now go on to the second question in the cate
chism, recollecting we quote it, not merely because it is very
generally used, but because it exactly expresses the spirit of
what is called “ religious ” education where it is not used.
That question is : “ What does this Great God do for you?”
“He keeps me from harm by night and by day, and is always
doing me good.” Now, the criticism upon this is very short
and very sharp. In the only sense in which a young child
could understand it, it is absolutely untrue. In the only
sense in which anybody could understand it, it is partially
untrue. God does not keep us from harm by night and by
day, and is not always doing us good. He sometimes lets
us get into a very great deal of harm, and sometimes does us
a great deal of evil. “Oh, but that is all for wise and
�8
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
gracious purposes.” But the catechism does not say so ;
and besides, whatever the purpose, harm is harm, evil is
evil ; and, in the sense of the catechism, God does not keep
us from the one and does inflict the other. What of truth
would there have been in the answer if those children who
lost their lives in the fire last week had repeated it before they
went to bed? “ He keeps me from harm by night and by day,
and is always doing me good ’’—and yet to wake up in the
agony of suffocation and a horrible death by fire ! “ Oh,
yes,” you say ; “ but those poor children may have been saved
from worse calamities by this premature death, agonising
and dreadful as it was.”
Ay ! but to die and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible, warm motion to become
A kneaded clod........... ’tis too horrible !
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
But, indeed, all the poets might be quoted in the same strain,
showing that our human nature shrinks from death as the
greatest of earthly evils ; nor could any sophistry persuade
one that it were better to die the agonising death of those
children than to live on in poverty. What I say, therefore,
is that that catechism does not teach truth when it teaches
“God keeps us,” etc. He may have higher and wiser pur
poses to serve than we could comprehend; but in our mortal
state harm is constantly happening to us, and we constantly
suffer evil. If, therefore, the child’s religion be founded upon
such teaching, it will be an erring, blind, superstitious reli
gion. It will trust God for what it will not get, depend upon
him for what he will not do ; and the consequence will be, if
the child ever become thoughtful, he will have to abandon,
and perhaps with agonising conflicts and doubts, all you
have ever taught.
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
9
Having thus prepared the way, the next step generally
taken in the child’s religious education is to introduce a
catechism of a more theologically recondite character. It
may be taught at school or at home. But, with any notion
of religion, the idea of training a child in it at school,
surrounded by a large and restless class, and all the want of
seriousness which belongs to children’s nature, is simply
preposterous. It is the work of home ; of solitude, if pos
sible ; of quiet, if not sombre ; but certainly serious
circumstances. However, that is of no consequence now.
Let the education be conducted at home or at school, it is
generally most pernicious. The catechism most commonly
used in this country (Scotland) is, as everyone knows, the
Assembly’s. Now, I do not speak yet of the truth or untruth
of what it teaches—I speak of the capacity of the child to
comprehend. And I know of no thoughtful person who
would pretend that a boy or girl between eight and sixteen
could comprehend the doctrines, philosophical, metaphysical,
and theological, it contains. Again, I will pass over the
intellectual injury done by teaching a child to handle words
which convey to him no distinct or clear idea ; and I simply
ask, What is the result? It is obvious throughout society.
Children so taught are not even grounded in theology—they
are simply furnished with theological words ; they, therefore,
MS they advance in life, easily become indoctrinated with that
weak, watery, and illogical form of evangelicalism which has
become popular in our pulpits during recent years, and which
is infinitely more detestable than the stern, consistent, daring
Calvinism of the catechism. The last is the system of men
of strong, trained, logical minds ; the first is pure fanaticism.
But, even supposing a child could understand, what would
you have gained in the way of religious education? What
could the knowledge of some 500 (as I have heard say there
are) difficult questions of metaphysics, physics, philosophy,
and theology do towards developing in his nature the feelings
�IO
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
of reverence, wonder, love, and dependence? Does feeling
spring forth from metaphysics ; emotion from philosophy ;
love from theology? Divine humanity, how thy history
shudders at the thought I No, it is other things than dry,
intellectual propositions which inspire feeling, and so long
as you are occupying the mind with the propositions of the
catechism you are necessarily keeping the attention from
those other things. And then, when you add to these
considerations the utter falsehood of the theology of the
catechism, the gross and wicked representations it contains
of the character and government of God, and the pernicious
effect this, so far as it is understood and heartily believed,
must have upon the whole character, one is forced to conclude
that the so-called “ religious ” education of the masses of
children in this country is altogether irreligious, and one
continued misnomer and mistake.
There is one other catechism used, upon which I need
here only make but a passing remark. I refer to the
catechism of the Church of England, used in this country
also, I believe, by the Episcopalians. As an epitome of
theology, it is altogether deficient. It has the advantage,
however, of being entirely practical in the body of it, and,
therefore, immeasurably superior to the Assembly’s as a
manual for a child. But then, on the other hand, it begins
and ends with the monstrous notions about the sacraments
which place the system bound up with them on a level with
the magic of the rain-makers of South Africa. I would
rather, however, that children were taught this than to think
of God under the awfully malignant aspects in which he is
represented in the Assembly’s catechism. I have already
referred to the additions which are made to the religious (!)
education of children in some schools by instruction in the
evidences of Christianity, and in the same connection may
be mentioned what is called Bible history. I have shown
you that teaching the evidences is not teaching religion, but
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
ii
the application of the science of historical criticism, and that,
if it be done thoroughly, it requires a knowledge and a
development of faculties no child can possess. And how
Bible history could be thought specially connected with
religion one would be at a loss to imagine, if it were not
for that doctrine of inspiration which is now becoming
rejected by all the more advanced of even the orthodox
school. It is true that Bible history refers all events to the
immediate and direct management of God ; but so do all the
histories of people in their ancient, barbarous state. In the
early histories of Greece and Rome, e.g., the gods were
always interfering as much as in the early history of the
Hebrews, and if this fact constitutes the Bible history
religious, all ancient histories are religious. And then,
while I grant that certain forms of religious feeling may be
excited by some of the facts and events of Bible history, I
must add, they are superstitious and erroneous forms, mostly
connected with that doctrine of a special providence against
which the whole experience of mankind protests. I do not say
anything now about the intellectual mischief done by teaching
Bible history as it stands ; because it is not greater than that
done by teaching the events of the siege of Troy, the
wanderings of Ulysses, and the stories of Romulus and
Remus as true history, excepting, indeed, that the sacred
element mingled with the Bible history renders it more
difficult to discern the purely mythical character of the
narrative.
Well, then, when I consider what religion is, and what is
the formal and systematic education given to a child to culti
vate the religion, I am forced to conclude there is little of a
directly systematic religious character in it; and that what
little there is is of an erroneous character, only leading to
mischief. Parents and teachers substitute theology for reli
gion, and indoctrinate with a theology which I deem utterly
false. But I do not mean that children therefore get no
�12
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
religious education. Nature has been to them too bountiful
for that, and begins their education in religion almost as soon
as it is begun in knowledge. She surrounds the child from
its earliest days with objects calling forth its reverence,
wonder, love, dependence, worship, and thus gradually
prepares it for the devout recognition of God. Spontane
ously, Nature furnishes the child with all that is necessary
for the culture of its religious life for many years. First of
all, just as in the Book of Exodus Jehovah is represented as
saying to Moses, “ Lo! I have made thee God unto Pharaoh ”
—z.e., by the miracles he enabled him to work—so Nature
makes the parent God to the child through the miracles of
power, wisdom, and goodness which the parent seems to the
child to display. The parent, if of ordinary attainments and
character, stands up before the child as a mysterious source
of knowledge, wisdom, supply, protection, and happiness—
incomprehensible to it, and calling forth all its wonder and
faith, all its devotion and love, all its reverence and depen
dence. The word of the parent is infallible ; the action of
the parent is necessarily right. He has a seeming omni
potence about him, an irresistible will. What is there a little
child thinks his father cannot do? What is there his mother
does not know? For what of love will he not trust her
wholly? Yes, a little child has nothing greater he could
imagine to make a God out of than the parent. Nothing he
could imagine (seeing it would be but an imagination) could
by any means call forth half the depth and intensity of reli
gious feeling the parent calls forth. Practically the parent is
the young child’s God ; he knows no other, can know no
other; and no other, simply by the knowing, could do him
any good. And when the mother, in her ignorance, takes
him upon her knee and strives to make him understand
about the God she imagines, and is ready, perhaps, to burst
into tears because her efforts are so much in vain, all the
while great Nature is developing the child’s deepest and
�1
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
13
truest religious life through the trust and love awakened in
his heart by the light and love which pour into his soul from
her eyes. By and by, however, as the child’s intellectual
nature is developed, the perception dawns upon him that the
parent is not quite so powerful and wise as he had thought.
There are things he cannot do, things he does not know ;
trust gets disappointed, dependence is shaken. Then a
higher object becomes necessary to call forth the perfect
reverence and trust the parent can no longer do ; and,
generally, that object is found in the teacher. I would not
speak with the same certainty with respect to the teachers of
large schools as with regard to those in smaller ones, where
the connection between master and pupil is more intimate.
But in a well-ordered school a boy looks up with profound
reverence and trust to his master, and regards him for long
years as the very embodiment of wisdom and knowledge.
Here again, then, is the provision made in nature for the
direct culture of the religious nature of the child—not by
means of a dogma, but by bringing the mind into contact
with real objects, which necessarily excite those feelings in
the exercise of which religion consists. After a while, how
ever, even the teacher’s wisdom is found sometimes to fail,
and his knowledge to have its soundings. Then the sceptical
period in the child’s mind is renewed. There are, however,
other provisions as useful as these, which, at this later
period, come into more active operation — I refer to the
grander object of Nature herself, ever appearing more grand
and glorious as our knowledge extends. From early years
such objects make some impression on the child, and they
would do more if he had judicious parents to guide his eye
sight. But it is in after years, when science has interpreted
the laws, the order, the forces of these objects to him, that
they make the deepest impression and excite the deepest
reverence, adoration, wonder, and dependence. It is then
that inquiry leads to the perception of the grand and awful
�i4
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN .
mystery which surrounds the whole universe ; and the mind
takes refuge from its exhausting, fruitless questionings in the
conception of an infinite, efficient, conscious force working in
all and by all. It is at this point religion and theology
mingle, and the latter becomes of any practical service to
the former. For when the active intellect has begun seriously
to inquire into the nature and origin of those deep feelings
which the great objects of the universe, its order, its mystery,
excite, its answers react upon these feelings according to the
attributes with which the answers clothe its conception of that
infinite, efficient Force into which it resolves the whole. If
that force be dealt with subjectively, and so have ascribed to it
human qualities and affections, there results an imagined
object which excites many other feelings besides those of
reverence, wonder, love, and dependence, and which may
degenerate into the lowest forms of superstition to which man
is liable. But if it be dealt with objectively, then it remains
the sublimely generalised conception of all the forces in the
universe, and is known, worshipped, and adored only as it
manifests itself in man and the outer world.
Now, this being the only form in which I can think of
God, the course of the child’s religious education seems to
me very simple. It merely consists in leading him face to
face with those objects which excite religious feeling. First,
as parents, by the development of his own nature to the
highest, preserving his reverence, wonder, love, and depen
dence until the last moment—which is natural ; then, as
teachers, securing his devotion by the real resources of
wisdom and knowledge we have treasured up in ourselves ;
and then, finally, when both these fail—and even concur
rently with them—ever lead him forth to gaze upon those
wondrous objects of which physical nature is full, and those
not less wondrous characters and events of which the history
of humanity is full. And as he gazes and marvels, the
deepest feelings of his being will be stirred, and he will
�THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
i5
begin to wonder and adore. But wonder and adore what?
At first blindly, and simply instinctively. But if this happen
before his knowledge is matured, he will soon construct for
himself a fetish. It is yours to stand by, and, by means of
clear, intellectual light, beat down the fetish. And so, in the
whole course of his progress, you must help him to destroy
all the false gods he will create for himself whilst attempting
to solve that mystery of Nature which makes him feel so
deeply, until, at last, he come to rest on the only thought
which remains for this and the coming age—a God who is
the all-in-all, ever immanent in all that is, the one absolute
force ; unknown in himself and unknowable, but recognised
and felt in the forces and order of universal Nature. To sum
up, then, I say : Never attempt to give a God to a child until
the child’s nature asks for one. And then your work will be
more destructive than positive—-the destruction of his idols as
he forms them. Leave theology as much as possible alone
until he learns it in history. If, in the meanwhile, you would
have his religious life be growing, reverence, adoration,
wonder, love, and dependence becoming deeper and more
habitual, you must not create for him imaginary beings by
the play of the metaphysical fancy, but you must lead him
to whatever is great, sublime, glorious, and divine in this
universe. To that direct his eye steadily, and by the act you
will place him under the influence of all that has power to
‘ inspire a pure, religious life.
WATTS AND CO., PRINTERS, 17, JOHNSON*S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
��
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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The religious education of children
Creator
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Cranbrook, James
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Published for the Rationalist Press Association. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Watts & Co.
Date
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1908
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N181
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POSITIVE RELIGION:
ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS.
LECTURE I.
BY THE LATE
REV. JAMES CRANBBOOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��LECTURE I.
N entering upon a course of lectures upon the basis
and characteristics of the only religion I conceive
to be possible for those partaking of the spirit of the
present day, I must bespeak your patient and very
candid attention. For I shall have many things to
say which I fear it will be very difficult for those who
do not approach the subject from my own point of
view, not to misunderstand and misrepresent. I will.
endeavour, however, to be as explicit and as clear as I
can, and I have no doubt, you in return, recognising
the importance of the subject, will endeavour to exclude
from my words all ideas they do not in themselves ex
press. For this, I apprehend, will constitute your prin
cipal difficulty in comprehending what I have to say—
the intrusion of other ideas into the words than those
which I mean to convey. Whenever an old subject
has to be re-discussed this difficulty is sure to arise.
People import into it the loose popular ideas that have
become associated with it j the mind listlessly allows
these ideas to interweave themselves with the new
forms of thought: and thus, an interpretation is
often given to these new forms of thought which is
quite foreign to them. I must ask you, therefore, not
to suppose that. I mean anything more than I say;
and I, upon my part, will promise to do my best to say
all I mean.
In attempting to lay a basis for a religion compatible
with the culture of the present day, I think it is
necessary to begin with a distinct recognition of what
I
�4
Positive Religion.
is somewhat unfortunately called the positive philo
sophy. I think it is unfortunately so called, because
there is an ambiguity about the word positive which
affords weak witlings an opportunity to make them
selves facetious in their small way over the negations
of the philosophy; and also because the term has
become so closely connected in the vulgar-literary mind
with the name of M. Comte that it is very hard for
one, avowing that he adopts the method of the
philosophy, to make people believe he does not also
adopt that great man’s entire system. Now, of course,
if the term were a necessary or even a particularly
descriptive one in itself, these would not be sufficient
reasons for giving it up. But the word positive itself
suggests a better. As it is used by the scientific school
it simply means that which can be affirmed ; the
positive philosophy concerns itself only with objects
concerning which one can make affirmations. Now,
all such objects are phenomenal. What is noumenal
lies beyond us, we can only make guesses, from fancies,
or constant hypothetical inferences, about it; and
consequently all affirmations concerning it are out of
the question. The positive philosophy is therefore the
phenomenal philosophy, and to call it so would be at
once to describe the limits of its enquiries and its
aims.
Whenever therefore I have to refer to the
philosophy distinctively in the course of these lectures
I shall call it, not the positive, but the phenomenal
philosophy. And I especially hope that by so doing
I shall at once guard you against supposing that the
system of religion I advocate has any direct relation or
resemblance to that of M. Comte. I say this, not
because I at all shrink from sharing in the stupid
odium attached to his name, but because I think his
religious system is so fanciful in its substance, and so
entirely French in its form, that it can never obtain
but the smallest acceptance with the Anglo-Saxon
race.
�Lecture I.
:>
Well, then, all attempts at ascertaining a basis for
the only religion possible in the present day must, as
I said, begin by recognising the phenomenal philosophy.
And I say so because I everywhere find this philosophy
becoming predominant over men’s thoughts. Even
those who eschew it in words, come unconsciously
more or less under its influence, and the most thorough
going metaphysician is seen wriggling and turning in
every direction to meet its demands. I believe the
time is coming when it will have become universal;
therefore no religion can become permanent which
does not recognise its claims.
Now this philosophy is distinguished from others by
two essential characteristics.
The first is the one
already referred to and which I have embodied in its
name, i.e. it limits the objects of its enquiries to the
phenomenal. It distinctly avows itself incapable of
searching out and knowing anything but phenomena,
in their relations of coexistence and succession. It
declares that Being, substance, noumenon in itself, lies
utterly beyond the reach of the human faculties, and
therefore, must ever be utterly unknown.
The second characteristic is its method. Confining
itself to ascertaining the coexistences and successions
of phenomena it rigidly insists that every fact asserted,
every inference deduced, every hypothesis formed in
explanation, shall be tested, analysed, brought under
the laws of experience, and so, thoroughly verified,
before it shall be accepted as true. No assumed facts,
however plausible ; no process of reasoning however
logical; no theory, however fully accounting for all the
known phenomena of a particular subject of enquiry
are allowed for one moment to become the substitute
for verification; knowledge consists of what has been
verified ; all else lies beyond in the regions of plausi
bility, conjecture, hypothesis, fancy and faith.
Now, in recognising this phenomenal philosophy
thus characterized as true, I think I am doing what both
�6
Positive Religion.
my knowledge of the character and strength of my
own faculties and the history of all attempts to obtain
knowledge through all the past ages compel me to do ;
for, in the first place, when I examine myself, I find
that I have no means of knowing anything but what
comes within the range of my outward senses, such as
seeing, hearing, &c., and what affects my inner sense,
such as objects remembered, pain, pleasure, and so on.
And all these objects so known are phenomenal merely.
They are the appearances of things, of substances, not
the substances themselves. At least I only know them
as- appearances,—I only know them as of a certain
colour, a certain form, a certain hardness and resist
ance, as producing a certain sensation of heat, &c.—all
else is hidden from me. And so, in like manner, I
only know the inner objects as appearances to my inner
sense; I only know objects in my memory as of the
same though fainter colour, form, &c., as they had in
my outer senses, or I know them as combined in new
arrangements, and shewing new relations. But the
body, the substance, the noumenon in which these appear
ances, both inner and outer, are supposed to inhere, I
know not, and have no faculty for knowing.
Nor do I suppose myself poorer than the rest of my
fellowmen in this respect, for when I look back upon
the whole history of the race, I find all attempts to
discover and know anything more than phenomena
ending in contradiction, confusion, fanciful absurdities,
and an empty jingle of words. Nothing is presented
but a constant succession of philosophers one after the
other, the latter only arising to declare the former in
error, himself to be denounced in turn by the next
coming after him. And the authentic history of these
futile attempts, leaving out of consideration those of the
Orientals, extends from the 636th year before our era
downwards over a space of more than 2500 years. Surely,
after such an unquestionable failure as this, one is
justified in pronouncing that their attempts were mis
�Lecture I.
7
directed, and the objects they sought beyond their
reach. Their failure warns us off the ground they
occupied. It teaches us that the knowledge of which
we are capable is limited to the coexistence and suc
cession of phenomena alone.
But now, the acceptance of the phenomenal philo
sophy as the only possible and true one, at once causes
a convulsion in our religious beliefs; for all these
beliefs are founded upon the supposed knowledge of
substance, being in itself God, the being of all beings,
the substance of all substances, the one and the all.
If we cannot know anything but phenomena, then we
cannot know God who transcends all phenomena; and
thus religion seems to become impossible. Nor is
there any possible escape from this conclusion. Ac
cordingly, it is admitted by all who adopt the philo
sophy, and is even tacitly admitted by those who come
only indirectly under its influence. Thus, e.g., many
who are quite orthodox in their religious opinions,
acknowledge that they cannot know God in himself,
but only through his works, and that revelation they
suppose he has given of himself in Jesus Christ. This,
however, you will observe, is not, strictly speaking,
a knowledge of God at all; it is only a knowledge of
certain phenomena which are supposed to represent
God. All which, in virtue of such representations, is
affirmed about God, is derived by a process of infer
ential reasoning, and expresses merely a conviction or
belief.
There are, however, many convictions or beliefs
which are just as powerful, and have just as much
practical hold of us as our knowledge has ; we must
not, therefore, disparage these convictions or beliefs
men have about God merely because they are such,
but must enquire into their validity by examining the
processes of reasoning through which they have been
obtained. To this examination I now therefore invite
your attention.
�8
Positive Religion.
And first of all, let us notice that which is so
popular in the present day—I mean the argument
based upon our asserted intuitions or religious instincts.
It is said that as soon as certain phenomena, or any pheno
mena, are presented to the mind, the idea of God, the
Infinite and Absolute, instantaneously springs up in or
flashes upon it also, and that the universality and invari
ableness of the idea prove its truthfulness and validity.
Now, there would be some force in this, if it could be
shown that this idea did thus invariably, universally,
and purely spontaneously, arise upon such occasions.
Indeed, all further discussion of the subject would be
at an end, because, upon the conditions supposed, those
who argued against would be as necessarily the subjects
of the idea as those who argued for it.
But, unfortunately, when we come to examine the
facts, every one of these supposed conditions is want
ing. First, it cannot be shown that the idea is
ever purely spontaneous. Those in whom it arises
have always been instructed in it. We have no case
of a human being, who had never been told of God, for
the first time gazing on phenomena and the idea
instantaneously springing up in his mind. That in
any case it would do so is therefore a gratuitous
assumption. For all we can tell, in every case the
idea may be the simple result of education, and its
apparent spontaneity the consequence of the strong
association of ideas.
Then, secondly, this so-called intuition, instinct or
law of the mind, is wanting in the essential character
of all instincts, invariableness. Its utterances differ
in different ages, and amongst different races. The
idea of God it presents is always changing. This is
not the case with real instincts. A bee always in all
countries and ages forms the honey-comb in the same
way. Young mammals always obtain their food by
the same movements. And the same may be said of
every other instinct. How then can we call that an
�Lecture I.
9
instinct, and class it with the rest, which differs in
such an essential ? Nor do I see that this difficulty is
in the least degree obviated by calling it a necessary
law of the mind instead of an instinct; for a necessary
—i.e., an inevitable—law must be as invariable as an
instinct. If it be subject to modifications and con
ditions, it is not inevitable or necessary, and its products
therefore become subject to the laws of evidence, to
which the products of all other laws are subject. We
can never, simply from its deliverances, establish the
truth of any conviction.
I do not, however, dwell upon this, for there is the
want to this so-called necessary law or instinct of a
yet more necessary characteristic still,—universality. It
is quite untrue that phenomena spontaneously call
forth the idea of God in all minds; for, on the one end
of the scale of civilization, there are whole tribes
without any notion of God; and on the other, there
are numbers of cultivated people who reject the idea
and declare that it is never suggested to them by
nature. I know that this has been disputed so far as
the non-belief of savage tribes is concerned ; but there
is no justifiable pretence whatsoever for doing so. I
have heard, both publicly and privately, Mr Moffat,
a Missionary who had resided for upwards of twenty
years amongst some of the tribes of South Africa,
declare that they had no idea whatsoever of God, and
no word in their language by which it could be
expressed. And this is the testimony not of a traveller
merely passing through the country in a few months,
but of one who had become so naturalised amongst
them that he had learned to think entirely in their
language, and when he made a speech in English had
to translate it to himself as he proceeded out of the
Bechuana tongue. Here then is a clearly proved case
of a people without the idea of God; and upon this
case, I deny the universality of the idea, and so show
the invalidity of the argument based upon it. The
�io
Positive Religion.
idea is not spontaneous, for here it has never sprung
up at all; neither is it invariable and universal. It
is therefore the result of conditions and not of an
original, necessary law. But if so, the conviction or
belief which rests upon it must seek some other basis
before it can be received as a ruling principle of our
life.
Turning then from this argument we meet with
another which, although not so fashionable as once it
was, is still considered of great force by some, and has
received recently the apparent sanction of one of the
greatest thinkers of the age. Mr John Stuart Mill
has written thus :—“ It has been remarked, with truth,
that there is not one of the received arguments in
support of either natural religion or revelation a formal
condemnation of which might not be extracted from the
writings of sincerely religious thinkers................ But
looking at the question as one of prudence, it would be
wise in them, whatever else they give up, not to part
company with the design argument.
For, in the
first place, it is the best; and besides, it is by far the
most persuasive. It would be difficult to find a
stronger argument in favour of Theism than that the
eye must be made by one that sees, and the ear by
one who hears.” Now, it has been alleged to me that
this does not necessarily commit Mr Mill to the
validity of the argument from Design ; for, it is said,
it may be the best of arguments none of which are
good, and the most persuasive where none can persuade.
But if Mr Mill merely meant that, he is very censur
able for a loose use of words. An argument is not
good, and not rationally persuasive at all, unless it be
logically correct.* To say therefore that it is the best
* “ One circumstance which has misled some persons into
the notion that there may be reasoning that is not
substantially syllogistic, is this ; that in a syllogism we see
the conclusion following certainly (or necessarily') from the
premises ; and again, in any apparent syllogism which on
�Lecture J.
11
and the most persuasive is to admit its logical correct
ness, unless it were meant it is the best to persuade
illogical, unwary, unreasoning minds. But Mr Mill’s
argument throughout the paragraph would not allow
one to suppose he meant that, and therefore we must
conclude, he gives his sanction to the argument of one
design.
It becomes us therefore to consider the
subject very thoroughly before we venture to question
its validity.
Notwithstanding this great authority, however, I
must confess that the more I think of it, the more
clearly I see the fallacy the argument involves. It
seems to me a pure petitio principii-—an assumption in
the premises of that which has to be proved. A very
few words will make this plain. Reducing it to the
syllogistical form the argument is stated thus : What
ever has marks of design must have had an intelligent
designer ; but the world has marks of design ; there
fore the world must have had an intelligent designer.
Now, what is meant by the word design ? Is it not
planning something by the mind to be wrought out
in deed 1 Is not mind an essential ingredient of it 1
In the new edition of Johnson’s Dictionary by Dr
Latham, the following are the only definitions given
of it :—“ 1st. Intention ; purpose ; scheme ; plan of
action. 2nd. Scheme formed to the detriment of
another. 3rd. Idea which an artist endeavours to
execute or express.” Each of these, you will see,
examination is found to be not a real one, the conclusion
does not follow at all. And yet we often hear of arguments
which have some weight, and yet are not quite decisive ; of
conclusions which are rendered probable, but not absolutely
certain, &c. And hence some are apt to imagine that the
conclusiveness of an argument admits of degrees ; and that
sometimes a conclusion may probably and partially, though
not certainly and completely, follow from its premises. [This
mistake arises from men’s forgetting that the premises them
selves will very often be doubtful; and then the conclusions
also will be doubtful.”—Whatley's Logic, Book II., Ch.
IH., §i.J
�12
Positive Religion.
directly involves the idea of mind. When therefore
the argument in its major premise says, whatever has
marks of design must have had an intelligent designer,
it merely affirms a truism ; and when it affirms in the
minor premise that the world has marks of design;
it quietly assumes all that has to be proved. For the
question is whether the world had a creator possessing
mind in our sense of the term mind, and to say that it
has marks of design is to affirm that it has marks of
such a mind’s operations since the term design
necessarily involves it. This therefore is to assume the
whole question in dispute and not to prove it.
Nor would anything be gained by changing the
term marks of design for “ indications of adaptation ”
or anything of that kind. They would all fall into
the same paralogism of assuming the conclusion in the
premises, and could not advance the cause one step.
But if in order to avoid this you simply assert the facts,
you form no basis whatsoever from which you can rise
to the truth one wishes to reach. You say, e.g., the
form and conditions of the eye enable it to see, the
form and conditions of the ear enable it to hear.
Well, and what then? What does that prove?
Absolutely nothing. It leaves perfectly untouched the
question, How came the eye into this state in which
it can see, and the ear into this state in which it can
hear ?
If any one reply by saying that it is impossible to
suppose, imagine, or conceive of such a thing as the
eye being able to see unless it had been made by a
wise, intelligent mind for the purpose of seeing, that
would be only affirming under another form the
question at issue. Why is it impossible to conceive
otherwise ? What is required of one making an asser
tion of that kind is to prove the impossibility. But
that no one could do, for there are many who conceive
otherwise. They think of the universe under different
modes from those of a creation. So that it is not true,
�Lecture 1.
L3
and can be no argument, to say that it is impossible to
suppose, imagine, or conceive of the universe except as
created by an intelligent mind. Besides, I should like
to know how any one can realize to himself a self
existing first cause, existing in the solitudes of his
being through all the past eternity, any more distinctly
than he can realize an eternally existing universe 1 The
one conception is quite as impossible as the other.
Mr Mill seems indeed to countenance this argument
when in the passage I have quoted from him he says :
“ It would be difficult to find a stronger argument in
favour of theism, than that the eye must have been
made by one that sees, and the ear by one who hears.”
But why mustl He does not tell us; and I can
imagine no other necessity than that which is supposed
to arise from this assumed powerlessness in thinking
or conceiving otherwise. Yet I feel sure Mr Mill
does not mean this, for there is no one who has so
thoroughly exposed the worthlessness of such an
argument. To me it seems most egregious presumption
to argue upon either side from the possibilities of our
knowledge, conceptions or imagination, there must be
an infinitely deal more in the universe than we can
form the remotest notion or fancy of. To say, there
fore, that such a thing must be so and not otherwise,
because we cannot conceive of it but as so is to be
guilty of the egregious folly and presumption of
making our ignorance the measure of all possible fact.
Men ought long before this to have learned the
worthlessness of such arguments ; for, the possibilities
of our thoughts are continually being modified. Things
once possible, in thought, have become impossible;
and things once impossible have become necessary
conceptions. If you had told an ancient philosopher
that bodies put into motion will move on for ever
in the same straight line, if there be nothing to
interrupt their course he would have laughed at you as a
fool. The thing not only would have contradicted his
�14
Positive Religion.
senses, but would have been absurd in its conception.
Now it has become a fundamental law in mechanics. And
many other things of the same kind might be named.
What, then, I say, is the power we have of conceiving
of this thing or that, of imagining this or the other to
be an explanation necessary and absolutely imposed by
the laws of thought, depends very much upon our
culture and can never be brought forward as a proof
that the thing is as we conceive it to be. So that when
theologians argue that because the world exists in such
and such a manner, and we cannot conceive of its so
existing unless by the creative act of an intelligent,
conscious mind, they are assuming what it is great pre
sumption to assume, i.e. that the conceptions of their
minds are to be taken as the standard of truth.
And I feel this argument from design all the more
fallacious as it is based entirely upon the analogies of
human experience. Paley opens his treatise with such
an analogy : “ If we find a watch we know there must
have been a watchmaker, if we find a world with
admirable fitnesses and appliances, we, in like manner,
infer an intelligent world-maker.” But why, in the
first case, do we infer a watchmaker ? Simply because
the watch is an instrument whose whole construction
has come under our observation. Paley says, if we
had never seen a watch made we should still infer a
watchmaker. But upon what ground should we infer
it ? Simply because we have a large experience of
what the undirected forces of nature alone produce, and
of what it requires the additional aid and direction of
man to produce, and the watch belongs to the latter
class of productions. But we have no such experience
with regard to the making of worlds. We are there
fore extending our experiences beyond the rational
limits, when we apply the analogies of watchmaking
to the explanation of worldmaking. Por all we know,
the application of such analogies may be a direct
reversal of the truth. Nay, that expression concedes
�Lecture I.
J5
too much. The application of such analogies must be
a falsifying of the facts, for, granting the act of creation
by an intelligent mind, the act must be altogether
unlike the mechanical working of man. The difference
in the nature and modes of the existence of the divine
and human creators, and the difference of their
relations to the materials would determine that. So
that the analogies are essentially false at least in one
direction, and all arguments based upon them necessarily
fall to the ground.
I repeat, therefore, the statement with which I set
out respecting this argument from design. As a proof,
it utterly fails to establish the doctrine of the Divine
existence. It begs the whole question at issue in its
very terms. It is founded upon presumptuous assump
tions concernings the powers of our knowledge. It is
constructed by the unwarranted application of analogies
derived from limited human experiences, and some
of which we know must, upon the principles of
those who contend for the argument, be false. If,
indeed, you can arrive at the belief in the Divine
existence by other means, then all the wonderful
apparent fitnesses and harmonious combinations we find
in the world may give strength by the appearance they
have of purposed adaptation and design to our convic
tions of God’s creative wisdom and power. For it is
one thing to say, these things prove that there is a
Creator, and quite another to say, they are all best
accounted for by the belief I have already received
that there is an infinitely wise and powerful intelligent
Creator, and therefore they confirm me in that belief.
I must, however, once more remind you that even
if these two arguments which I have criticised were
valid, they could not do more than establish grounds
of belief, of presumption, of hypothesis with those who
hold the phenomenal philosophy; they would not help
us to real knowledge. The method of that philosophy
would insist that the conclusions should be verified :
�16
Positive Religion.
and that, from the nature of the case, they could never
be. They would be regarded, therefore, merely as
establishing a hypothesis more or less probable. The
argument might seem so strong that the hypothesis
would possess the highest degree of probability, and
require us to act upon the assumption of its truth.
But still it would not be knowledge, and the feeling
would remain that any day it might possibly be proved
to be false.
There is one other fallacious argument I shall have
to call your attention to before I endeavour to lay the
basis of the religion I think to be possible ; but I must
reserve that for the commencement of the next lecture.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture I
Creator
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Cranbrook, James
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Date of publication from KVK. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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1874
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RA1599
G5746
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Positivism
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Conway Tracts
Positivism
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POSITIVE RELIGION:
ITS BASIS AND CHARACTERISTICS.
LECTURE II.
BY THE LATE
REV. JAMES CRANBROOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, EARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
��LECTURE II.
HE term “force” enters very largely into modern
science, and in philosophy seems very much to
occupy the position which “ secondary cause ” once
did. Thus, we are constantly hearing of the mechani
cal forces, chemical forces, electrical forces, vital forces,
the force of gravity, and so on. The word is a very
convenient one, and it would be hard if physicists had
to give it up; yet I sometimes fear that through the
misuse that is already being made of it, they will have
to do so. As the word is used by natural philosophers,
it simply denotes those conditions upon which certain
changes are effected in a substance. But, as the word
is taken up by a certain class of writers and as it is
used by the public it means very much more than
this, viz., a power, energy, or cause, which, by the
possession of certain inherent properties, is able to
compel the substance it acts upon, independently of all
circumstances, to undergo a certain indefinite change.
This metaphysical use of the word arises out of the
same experiences as those which led to the misuse of
the word “ cause.” Men transfer the sensations or
feelings arising within themselves when they perform
an action to external nature, and hence suppose there
are the same effort to produce and the same resistance
to undergo change that they find in relation to them
selves. Hence these forces seem to them energies,
powers, a something constraining the substances they
act upon to undergo change in spite of themselves.
The phenomena of human will gets transferred to the
T
�4
Positive Religion.
physical circumstances which condition every change ;
and hence the notion arises that there is something
corresponding to the human will amongst those con
ditioning physical circumstances.
Formerly men
would have looked for that something in the force
itself, or, as it would then have been called, the cause.
Now, such metaphysical entities are given up, hut it is
supposed to reside in one absolute, efficient cause,
pervading all nature. And out of the supposition an
argument is constructed, intended to prove the divine,
personal existence.
The argument may be stated thus: Everything,
every moment of time, is passing out of one state of
being into another, and all the phenomena by which
we are surrounded, are subject to constant changes.
These changes do not take place at hap-hazard and by
irregular order: constancy and law regulate them all.
The same antecedent is always followed by the same
consequent; the same conditions, without the shadow
of variableness, issue in the same results. Now, in
contemplating these facts, the question arises—Why
does the same consequent always follow the same
antecedent, or the same results the same conditions ?
It would be no answer to refer to some still higher or
more general physical process which explains the
lower, for what is asked for is the reason, cause, or
efficient condition of each step in the process. A stone
falls, e.g., to the earth. Why ? Because of the force
of gravity. What is the force of gravity ? That
which causes all bodies to tend to the centre of the
earth, according to a given law. What is that? We
know not. But although we know not, it is said that
we have a feeling, a conviction that there is a force, a
power, a something which causes or determines that
tendency. And so of every connection between all
phenomena, we ask after something more than physical
antecedents, we have a feeling that there is a some
thing more • we have the feeling or conviction that
�Lecture 11.
5
there is an efficient force, a power, a something which
determines absolutely each special antecedent to be
followed by its special consequent. Now this efficient
force, in virtue of which every event takes place and
every antecedent is followed by its own proper con
sequent, is God. God, the efficient force, the deter
mining power of the universe, are synonymous terms.
And out of the phenomenal, one’s belief in the Divine
existence emerges. I will not detain you by describing
the process through which from these elements his
personality and conscious intelligence are eliminated,
because my objection goes to the base of the argument,
and therefore criticism upon the superstructure would
he superfluous.
My objection, then, is this : it is constructed by a
transference, as I have already intimated, of the sensa
tions we experience in action to the phenomena of
outward nature, and that we are entirely unwarranted
in doing. As I showed you in the course of lectures
I recently delivered,* the idea of efficient force is purely
and simply derived from the sensation of muscular
resistance we experience whenever we act. Hence the
notion of striving, using energy or force, comes to be
associated with all the changes produced by such acts,
and we are apt to suppose the striving or energizing
an essential condition of the change. But we have no
ground whatsoever to transfer our experiences to out
ward nature, and infer there must be an equivalent to
the same striving or energizing in the changes we
witness going on around us. We know nothing but
the phenomena, i.e., the succession of events, the order
and constancy in antecedents and consequents, and all
supposed to exist besides, is due to a pure and gratui
tous assumption, and is the simple creation of our own
fancy.
Nor can I allow the plea which is sometimes put in,
* See “The Founders of Christianity,’’ p. 77- Triibner & Co.,
London.
�6
Positive Religion.
viz., that although the existence of an efficient force
cannot he logically proved yet that the feeling or con
viction of its existence almost universally springs up
when we look upon the processes of nature. For, in
the first place, the explanation I have given accounts
for the feeling and shews it arises out of a illicit pro
cess ; and secondly the feeling disappears as soon as
you begin to analyse what are the actual phenomena
presented by nature, for then you can discover nothing
but base facts, and their relations of co-existence and
succession.
I do not think therefore this argument from an
efficient force any more valuable than those from
design and intuition; not one of the three is logically
tenable. Belief in the divine existence cannot ration
ally come through them, and unless we can find some
other basis for it religion becomes impossible. Having
cleared the ground for our inquiries let us now proceed
to ascertain what of real, rational basis there is.
And I must begin by drawing your attention to
some facts of experience, which although they are
probably familiar to you I must, because of their
importance to the subject, dwell upon with some
detail.
Amongst the first of these I wish you to
notice, because they will enable you to understand
some of the rest better, are the feelings which arise
when one is in the midst of grand and sublime scenery.
I presume you and I are alike in that respect; besides
the sense of grandeur and sublimity a feeling of wonder
springs up, a wonder at the grandeur and sublimity, a
wonder at its power of affecting us as it does, a wonder
at its origin and what we do not understand about it.
And this wonder is not the less although we may have
a theory about the sublime which seems to explain
the other feelings excited; but the more full the
explanation the deeper the wonder grows. There is
so much the theory does not explain, so much which
lies beyond all explanation, nature as thus presenting
�Lecture II.
7
herself to us stands out so far beyond and above us
that we cannot but wonder and feel awed.
The same feeling arises when we gaze upon very
beautiful scenery. Beyond that sense of the beautiful
and the unspeakable happiness and joy it creates there
is also this feeling of wonder and mystery about it.
I have a theory of my own about the physical con
ditions (causes) of the sense of the beautiful which
would be regarded as of a very materialistic character
if I were now to explain it to you, but this theory
does not in the least degree prevent that feeling of
wonder at the surpassing beauty nature sometimes
reveals to me—nay it deepens it when I think of it
at the same time, for then I wonder at the existence of
those conditions there and at the peculiar effect they
are able to produce.
The same effect takes place when I look up at the
stars or upon the ocean in a contemplative mood, and
allow them to make what impression they can upon
my feelings. And the teachings of astronomy and of
physical geography when they expound to me the
order and constancy, the motions, and the causes of
the motions, the immense spaces and times and such
like things, make them seem more wonderful still and
have sometimes made me thrill with awe, at the
sense of the mystery lying all round about them.
But the object need not be upon a grand scale to
excite this feeling, or these feelings rather; what is
little and minute has the same effect. The other day
I was looking at the tiny flower of a small sprig of
heath. The exquisite beauty of its petals filled me
with an inexpressible sense of enjoyment. I began to
think of the process of its formation and the laws
which had determined its existence there in such
loveliness. But over all these thoughts and all those
feelings spread my sense of wonder—a wonder
intensified greatly by the recollection of the physio
logical laws and processes, and as I gazed upon the
�8
Positive Religion.
flower it became to me full of the deepest mystery.
And I suppose every one of you would have felt the
same.
Nor, as I have intimated, is it the pure objects of
nature alone which excite these feelings, but more
deeply still the expositions and revelations of science.
Science seems to me to extend and deepen the mystery
and the feeling of wonder, nature calls forth, instead
of diminishing it. The simplicity of the processes,
the unity of the methods, the constancy and order are
more mysterious, more wonderful to me than the bare
phenomena, however grand and imposing these latter
may be ; and that very phenomenal philosophy which
forbids an attempt to penetrate to the noumenon and
the infinite conducts me to the confines which separate
them where I find myself overwhelmed with awe as I
gaze into the darkness. Thus, e.g., science tells me
that the revolution of the planets around the sun is
produced by the two forces termed the centripetal and
the centrifugal. I ask an explanation and am informed
that it is found that when a body upon earth revolves
around another it has two tendencies, one to rush in a
straight line towards the centre of that around which
it revolves, and the other to go off each moment of
time in a straight line from the point of the circle it
occupies into a direction which would be away from
that centre. Now by the supposition of these same
tendencies or directions of motion acting in the planets
the form of their orbit is explained. Well, although
this supposition is established by most unquestionable
facts, and we all believe it to be true, the explanation
it gives is more wonderful than the motion of the
planets themselves. How wonderful, how mysterious
it is that a planet as well as a stone set in motion
should tend towards the centre of some other body
with a definite momentum. How strange, how won
derful that it should tend to move on in the same
straight line for ever ! How unspeakably strange and
�Lecture II.
9
wonderful that the course of the planets in their orbits
should be determined by the combination of two such
simple laws. Surely you cannot but feel as I do that
science makes this wondrous, mysterious universe more
wondrous and mysterious still!
Here, too, come in the various fitnesses, harmonies
and organizations, upon which has been built the
argument from design. Science points out to us how
all the great results in nature are obtained by the
combination of a few simple principles or processes.
The eye by means of a lens, a few muscles, and a nerve
or two, becomes capable of vision. The ear by con
struction upon the same principle as a musical
instrument for the reception and propagation of sound
becomes capable of hearing. Each organ of the body
is exactly fitted to perform its special function.
Wherever we turn, indeed, we find these fitnesses,
congruities, what some call adaptations and marks of
design. Now, we have seen that they afford no
argument by which we can prove the existence of an
intelligent, designing creator; but on that very account
they become the more wonderful and mysterious.
There they are, patent to every observer but unac
counted for, unexplained: suggesting ten thousand
speculations about their origin and determining
causes, but for ever by their silence mocking our
curiosity. How little, ignorant, and blind, they make
us feel ourselves to be ! How mysterious, great, and
supreme, they make us feel nature is ! With all our
advancing knowledge we can do nothing before such
final facts, but wonder and bow down in reverence.
Hitherto, I have principally referred to external
nature as the source of these feelings; but man himself
under some conditions, excites them equally within us.
Great and heroic actions, extraordinary virtue and
excellency, or indeed, the manifestation of great
individual power, and especially of great individual
mental power, will frequently call them forth. Extra
�io
Positive Religion.
ordinary beauty in a woman, which of course, as
opposed to mere prettiness depends upon intellectual,
aesthetical and moral qualities, and extraordinary
nobleness in a man will do it. Such persons excite
great wonder, reverence and a sense of mysteriousness
in us.
I must confess, however, that I do not
attribute so much influence to objects of this kind as
some writers are disposed to do. The habit of analys
ing every thing which one acquires in the present day
leads to the perception of too many imperfections even
in the highest and best, to allow of the possibility of
unrestrained hero worship.
On the other hand,
however, the more rigidly the formation of character is
brought under the operation of law, the more deeply
wonder at the powers of nature is excited, and the
more marvellous one feels her to be.
But it is when human beings are contemplated in
their history that these feelings of mystery, wonder,
and awe, are the most powerfully called into activity.
For it is then that we see that human life is not merely
an aggregation of individual existences thrown together
at haphazard upon this earth, but that it is a con
nected, organized whole, each part of which affects the
destiny of the rest Take any of the great epochs in
history and you will find illustrations of this fact.
Thus, e.g. in modern times, movements in Central Asia
led to the ascendency of the Saracens in the Moslem
empire, and the oppression of Christian pilgrims to the
Holy Land. The oppression aroused the romantic,
superstitious spirit of Europe, and organised the
crusades. The crusades brought the ignorant barbar
ous people of the west into contact with Arabian, and
other oriental scholars, and reintroduced the study of
Aristotle into the west.
The study of Aristotle
reawakened the scientific spirit, and gave rise to the
controversies between the realists and the nomenalists.
The spirit of free inquiry thus revived, became
greatly intensified by the taking of Constantinople by
�Lecture II.
11
the Turks in the 15th century, and the dispersion of
its classical scholars over Europe.* This spirit of free
inquiry of nomalism and of science influenced the
theological thinking, especially of the Teutonic nations,
and gave origin to the Reformation in the beginning
of the 16th century. Now, here is a strange combina
tion of independent events, determined by most remote
causes and yet leading to definite results affecting the
condition of the whole civilized world. No explanation
seems to offer itself but that of an overruling intelligent
power; and yet when you come to examine such an
explanation, you are not only encountered by the
logical difficulties, but the real mystery remains un
touched and the feelings of wonder and awe keep
possession of the mind.
Here then is the basis upon which I rest my religion.
I have enumerated a number of cases in which the
feelings of wonder, awe, and mystery are originated by
the objects presented in nature.
The enumerated
cases are not exhaustive of the whole, but only
specimens of the rest. Whenever or under whatever
aspects nature is gazed upon in a contemplative mood,
these feelings are awakened. Pick up a common stone
off the road, look at it, examine it, ask about its con
struction, the conditions or laws under which it came
to exist as you have found it, and the same feelings of
marvellousness, mystery, and awe, will be forced upon
you. If all nature do not encompass us with a sense
of its mystery and bow us down with feelings of
profoundest wonder, it is because we have not thought
sufficiently upon the facts it presents.
I have said, it is upon these feelings I base my
religion; I may add, it is upon the feelings thus
* The same original movements in Asia too, had led to the
establishment of the Moors in Spain, and through them to an
introduction of the study of Aristotle and of various sciences
from a different quarter, but all tending to augment the
same influences which came directly from the East.
�12
Positive Religion.
excited, all the theologies of the world have been con
structed. When men have been moved by nature in this
way, they have been aroused to ask for the explanation
of the mystery. Not content with knowing that
phenomena are as they are, they want to know the
cause of their being so, and to convert the feeling of
wonder they excite into the complacency which arises
from competent knowledge. Never doubting of their
power to transcend the phenomenal and ascertain the
noumenal cause, they have boldly speculated upon the
questions the feelings have aroused and arrived at
answers determined in all cases by the character of
their culture.
Accordingly we find them passing
through all the grades of fetishism, polytheism,
monotheism, pantheism, and atheism—projecting the
shadow of their own thoughts and feelings upon the
object they superinduced to explain the mysteries of
nature.
Amongst these various methods of explanation, the
monotheistic seems the only one which in any measure
meets the demands of the case. Pantheism only puts
the mystery and the questions one step further back;
or rather, I should say, Pantheism, in its usually
accepted sense, does so, for a force which only becomes
conscious and intelligent in such manifestations and
embodiments as man, seems itself to require to be
accounted for, and leaves the mystery of existence as
dark as ever. On the other hand, the Monotheistic
theory will account for the facts, if one be capable of
forming the conceptions the theory requires. But
there is the difficulty—a difficulty, if I mistake not,
becoming greater every day. And the principal,
although not the only cause of this increasing difficulty,
must be attributed to the progress of biological science.
That science daily more and more conclusively proves
that the phenomena of thought and feeling, as known
to us, arise entirely out of the processes of our nervous
organization ■ so that those who, are thoroughly
�Lecture II.
l3
abreast of the science find it no more possible to con
ceive of thought and feeling apart from such organiza
tion than an electrician could conceive of electricity in
a homogeneous substance of equal structure and tem
perature, or than a natural philosopher could conceive
of the existence of the prismatic colours apart from
rays of light. There is therefore no fact out of
which one can construct the Monotheistic theory, no
basis of any kind upon which one could form the con
ception of a Being possessing thought, feeling, and will
independent of organization; the conception is the
product of a fancy as wild and as worthless as ever
was created in our dreams.
But some will say, The formation of a hypothesis to
account for facts is perfectly legitimate; and if it
account for all the facts, it may be held as presumably
true until it is disproved. Thus, e.g., the hypothesis
that Nature abhors a vacuum to account for the rising
of water in a well, and the compression of the sides of
a cavern, &c., was as legitimate, until it was disproved,
as Newton’s theory of gravitation—the only difference
being, that in the latter case increased knowledge con
firmed it, and in the former case increased knowledge
proved it to be untrue. So in like manner we may
form and hold the hypothesis upon which Monotheism
is built until it is disproved. The illustration, how
ever, is founded upon a mistake. That Nature abhors
a vacuum was never a legitimate hypothesis, for there
never was any evidence that Nature possesses that
class of feelings of which abhorrence is one. To
assume it as a method of accounting for certain facts,
was therefore a wanton act of fancy, altogether un
known to the scientific method. When Newton
applied his theory of gravitation to account for the
movements of the heavenly bodies, he was merely
using known facts as the probable explanation of
other facts. He had found bodies upon earth moving
according to certain laws. He said, “Suppose the
�14.
Positive Religion.
same laws to regulate the heavenly bodies, it will
account for their movements.” “ Ah, but then,” said
some objectors, “such and such things would also
happen, and that is absurd.” “ Would they ? ” said
Newton’s disciples; “let us see then if they do.”
They examined, and found that they did. And every
discovery since has proved the truth of Newton’s
supposition.
Now, that is the only way of forming hypothesis
science can allow. It does not suffer you to weave
fancies at will, and then suppose their actual existence.
Your hypothesis must consist of some acknowledged
fact or law, which, when applied to the subject, accounts
also for its facts. But the theologians have no such
known and accepted facts to form the Monotheistic
hypothesis upon. They have nothing but a fancy as
wild as that of Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum.
Whether it account for all the facts or not, therefore,
it can never be allowed to do more than amuse the
idle hours of the intellect.
It seems to me, then, that none of the theological
methods of accounting for the facts I have referred to,
and answering the questions they suggest, are tenable;
they are all founded on erroneous conceptions and
mere fancies. We cannot accept of what does not rest
upon certain knowledge.
And equally, I think, you will see that the religious
system of A. Comte fails to meet the wants of the
case. It ignores the greater part of the facts alto
gether, and only offers to satisfy the feelings which
arise from the contemplation of man under a few
special aspects. It has nothing to say to that wonder
and deep sense of mystery all nature calls forth ;
nothing to say even to those feelings as called forth by
the contemplation of the history of man; it merely
encourages reverence and worship for humanity, as
ennobled in some few of the elect of its children ; for
although it is professedly humanity as a whole, the
�Lecture II.
15
great, the sublime Existence which it worships, it is
to special forms of it, men and women who have
done great and loving deeds to whom the homage is
paid. But religion must be wider, truer, more com
plete than that. It must take up into itself all the
mystery around us, all the wonder and awe in our
selves from whatever source they spring. It must
allow our feelings free play, whilst it satisfies every
demand of the intellect.
What form it must take to do this I next proceed
to show ; but I will not do tlie injustice to myself or
system of giving you a part of my doctrine to-night
and the rest next Sunday. You must have the whole
before you before you can judge of the parts. I there
fore shall delay until next Sunday the exposition of
the form I consider religion must adopt in the present
day.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
��
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Positive religion : its basis and characteristics. Lecture II
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Cranbrook, James
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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Conway Tracts
Positivism
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Text
ON THE
FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
BY THE LATE
EEV. JAMES CRANBROOK,
EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
��ON THE
FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
-----------------PURPOSE this evening to discourse to you upon
“The Formation of Religious Opinions.” The
subject is closely connected with, and arises out of
what I was saying last Sunday evening. I shall
therefore quote the same passage as a text, 1 Cor. x.
15, “I speak as unto wise men; judge ye what I say.”
But what I aim at to-night is to make some practical
observations that I think we are too apt to lose sight
of. Indeed, people seldom follow any principle or
rule in forming their opinions upon questions of
religion. They pick them up at hap-hazard; or
simply retain what they had been taught in their
youth. And even where they come to a resolution to
investigate the subject, and form a judgment for
themselves, they seldom go about it systematically.
One person recommends this book, another person
recommends that book. They read them, and adopt
the opinions which seem the more probable, or to
which particular circumstances incline them. But it
is very seldom they can give you a reason which will
bear strict scrutiny and investigation why they have
chosen one opinion rather than another.
The general spirit of one’s culture and mental
character has more to do with the adoption of
opinions in the majority of cases than anything else.
I
�4
The Formation of
Some men are naturally very narrow-minded, and the
education they have received has not tended to cor
rect the narrowness. They will incline, therefore, to
whatever is. narrow and bigoted. Others, again, are
generous, liberal, and free: whatever partakes of
their own generosity, liberality, and freedom will
therefore seem to them to have a preponderance of
evidence on its side. Some are learned in ancient
literature, and have thoroughly imbibed its spirit.
What harmonises with this will seem to them as
true. Others are addicted to metaphysical specula
tions, and can only discern truth in what presents
itself under the formulae sanctioned by their school.
Whilst others have the purely scientific spirit, and
require all religious opinions before they accept them
to be subjected to the tests of their special methods.
And thus it is each one has certain predilections
which very materially influence him when he thinks
about religious questions and endeavours to make
up his mind as to what is true. They look at
the questions subjectively, rather than objec
tively—study them in relation to their own
thoughts and feelings rather than as they are in
themselves, and resting on evidence which needs to
be examined simply according to its own merits.
And this will be the case with a large number for a
long time to come.
To form an independent rational opinion upon
any subject affecting the higher interests of life re
quires an amount of training and leisure few possess.
The majority must take their opinions at second
hand, and they will naturally take those which are
most in accordance with their own tastes, inclinations,
and culture. It is just the same, for example, in
questions of politics or legislation, as in questions of
religion. These questions depend upon a scientific
knowledge of human nature, its laws and tendencies,
upon a thorough knowledge of all the circumstances,
�Religious Opinions.
5
the conditions physical, intellectual, and moral of
the country, and a foreseeing sagacity capable of
calculating the effects of a given measure upon a
country in such a condition and in such circumstances,
the people of which are subject to those fixed laws of
human nature. Now, I suppose there are not fifty
members of the House of Commons who possess this
knowledge, or who attempt to study these questions
scientifically. Yet we all hold some opinion or
other about the questions. And the opinions we
hold are adopted just in the same way as the majority
adopt their religious opinions, i.e., according as they
agree, harmonise and are in accordance with our
tastes, inclinations, tendencies and general culture.
And opinions upon very many other subjects are
adopted by the mass of people in just the same way.
But you will see that there can properly be no cer
tainty about opinions so received. Their truth or
untruth will be a mere matter of chance, depending
upon accidental circumstances. And it is unworthy
of a man capable of thought and reasoning, not to
form his opinions upon a rational and trustworthy
method. It becomes, therefore, each one of us to seek
out the true method by which our religious opinions
may be formed.
The methods by which real students have formed
their religious opinions have always been the methods
they have followed in their philosophical enquiries—
indeed, religious opinions have never been anything
more than the outcoming of the various systems of
philosophy in this region of religious thought. It
was, for example, the imaginative philosophy of
Plato, modified by neo-Platonism and the Alexand
rian school which determined the theological or reli
gious opinions of the Church of the third, fourth, and
fifth centuries. The method of inquiry pursued by
the philosophers was the method adopted by the
theologians, and the resultant philosophy and theology
�6
The Formation of
were one harmonious whole. So again the special
philosophy which embodied itself in the writings of
Locke, found its religious expression in the theological
school of the English Deists, in the Unitarianism of
Priestley and Belsham, and in certain broad, or, as
they were then called, latitudinarian sections of the
reputed orthodox churches. So, once more, the
transcendental philosophy which Coleridge did so
much to bring into reputation, has furnished F. D.
Maurice and his school with their method and the
basis of their system, and is greatly influencing the
thinking and forms of religious opinion amongst
many who are striving hard to retain their orthodox
position. At the same time the severe method of
positivism is working in another direction and revo
lutionizing the religious opinions of all who come
under its influence.
These illustrations, then, will serve to show you
that the very first step for us to take, when seeking to
form our religious opinions, is to determine upon the
method by which our enquiries shall be conducted.
The method will inevitably determine the conclusions
at which we shall arrive.
But here a certain school interposes and claims for
its method an absolute control over our inquiries. It
says, “ God has given us a revelation in a book, and
the only method we ought to pursue is to take a
grammar and dictionary, ascertain the precise literal
meaning of the book, and accept that as the absolute
truth and rule.” But let us see if this method be as
conclusive as they seem to suppose. We will take a
precept, not a dogma, and that one spoken by the
highest, truest lips, Matt. v. 38, &c., “Ye have heard
that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth—(you will recollect that that is a law laid
down for the guidance of courts of justice, see Ex. xxi.
23, &c., so that Christ is here referring not to taking
personal vengeance, but to getting one who has injured
�Religious Opinions.
7
you punished by law): but I say unto you resist not
evil (by bringing him before the magistrate); but
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn
to him the other also. And if any man will sue
thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have
thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to
go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that
asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee
turn not thou away.”
Now, I ask respecting these precepts, as I have asked
before on frequent occasions, does any sensible per
son in the present day think they are to be obeyed?
Are we never to prosecute at law those doing us an
injury ? If any one prosecute us for an unjust claim
are we not to defend our cause ? Are we to give
to every beggar ? And are we never to refuse to
lend to those who want to borrow ? There can be
but one answer, and that answer will be in direct
contradiction to the precepts. I ask then upon what
ground, by what authority, these plain, simple and
direct precepts of Christ, spoken in unmistakeable
language, are modified or set on one side ? It will be
said, one's common sense sees they are inapplicable,
and would be unworkable in the present day in our
circumstances. Precisely so. But see what this in
volves. You apply your common sense, or reason, or
judgment, whatever you like to call it, to these pre
cepts and set them aside by its authority. Then you
apply your common sense, reason, or judgment to
other precepts, and by its authority pronounce them
still obligatory. You have left your grammar and
lexicon, and you are trying these precepts by tests
furnished by your own mind. Their authority really
rests therefore not upon the claims of him who
spoke them, but upon the judgments you have
formed respecting them. It is you who pronounce
them binding or not binding in virtue of some
test your judgment has supplied.
�8
The Formation of
. Now, what I say, and what the whole drift of this
discourse is intended to shew, is that it is of the
first importance that in selecting this test by which
moral precepts, doctrines and religious opinions of
all kinds are to be tried, you be guided by right and
rational principles or rules, in other words that
your method of enquiry be sound and good.
In searching for this method it is a fortunate thing
for us that we have the history and experience of up
wards of two thousand years to help us. For we are
thus enabled at all events to see where and how
others have failed, and to avoid the same blunders.
All the old systems of opinion have broken down
and failed to hold their ground against the advancing
tide of progress. Each one in turn has given place
to something fresh and has never revived excepting
under a new phase and with great modifications.
The system of St Augustine, for example, is said to
have been revived by Luther and other Reformers.
And without doubt the statement is partially true,
but no one who knows the writings of Augustine and
Luther would say the Augustine theology of the
sixteenth century is precisely the same as the
Augustine theology of the fourth. The questions are
looked at, argued, and concluded upon under different
phases, under different modes of culture. It is not
the theology of Augustine, it is the theology of
Augustine moulded, modified and permeated by the
spirit of the sixteenth century. The old questions
come up, but they come in a new dress, and they are
discussed from a different standing ground. And so
it has ever been, a constant flux of systems, succeed
ing and superseding each other, but the old questions
ever returning to be debated over again.
Now, how is it that all these discussions and
philosophies have failed to settle these questions or
to give us, at least, some points settled which should
be debateable no more for ever, and from which we
�Religious Opinions.
9
might set out upon fresh and more extended inquiries.
The answer appears to me quite plain. They failed
because their methods of inquiry were vicious from
the very beginning. They started upon untested
assumptions, and built up their theories by imagin
ative reasonings, the elements of which were furnished
by their fancies alone. Sometimes, indeed, they
would appeal to facts of consciousness or of man’s
history, i.e., facts of the inner or of the outer life ;
but when they did so, they interpreted them by
assumptions or fancies wholly gratuitous, and the
facts therefore became as worthless as their fancies.
Thus, as an example, the Semitic and Western con
ceptions of God assumed his similitude to man in
mind, while not also in body. Now, that assump
tion once made the remaining conceptions, and the
interpretations of his proceedings would legitimately
follow according to what men at the time being found
in themselves. Accordingly, at one time his govern
ment was represented as that of an arbitrary despot;
at another time, as that of a constitutional king, his
actions being limited by supposed principles of eternal
right and fitness; at another, as that of a still more
merciful sovereign striving to find a remedy against
the terrible mischief done by his too severe law; and
now recently as a father governing his family and
never chastening but in love. But each and all of
these representations are equally true for those who
have believed them, and equally founded upon a
purely gratuitous assumption, viz., that there is such
a resemblance between the mind of God and man
that you may reason from the principles, modes of
thought, and of action in the one, to the principles,
modes of thought, and of action in the other.
Now, I deny that there is the least pretence in
reason for this assumption. It is purely fanciful and
baseless. There are no means of proving that it is
true, if it be true. And therefore the whole system
�io
The Formation of
of the divine government built upon it is as worthless,
as uncertain, and as irrational as its base. But, say
those who make and rest upon this assumption, if
God be not like to man in his mental character and
principles of action, what is He like ? I answer, I
do not know. But say they, if you do not know,
what affections, dispositions, characteristics, will you
ascribe to him 1 I answer, I ascribe none. Then say
they, you are left in the hands of this terrible
almighty power, in total ignorance of his intentions
towards you. I reply, not so, I know many of
his intentions towards me with tolerable certainty.
I find that he always acts in the same way,
by the same laws, causing the same antecedents
to be followed by the same consequents, the same
causes by the same effects, the same conditions by the
same results. So far, therefore, as I know these
causes, conditions, laws (call them what you please),
I know precisely what God’s intentions are. His
intentions concerning me are, that whenever I come
under any one of these laws, conditions, or causes,
that the consequences he has attached to it in the
order of things shall inevitably follow. And that is
enough for me to know. I have no longing after the
impossible, the comprehension of the Infinite and
Absolute. . I know, as the late Sir William Hamilton .
expressed it, the length of my tether. I acquiesce in
my conditioned knowledge.
Now, this illustration has not been a digression
from our enquiry into the right method of forming
religious opinions. It has expounded it. It lias
shown how baseless, uncertain and fluctuating must
be all systems originated in mere speculative fancies
and assumptions. It has shewn there can be only
one method fixed, certain, and unchangeable—that,
namely, which is purely based upon facts, and brings
all its reasonings to the test of facts before it finally
accepts as true its conclusions. It is by this method
�Religious Opinions.
11
the whole advance in every kind of human knowledge
has been made. So far as it was pursued in ancient
times what was discovered by it, is as true to day as
it was then. Every great deliverance from human
ignorance and superstition has been wrought out by it.
There is not an enlightened conception of the divine
government but what may be traced to its influence
acting directly or indirectly upon the mind. From
its conclusions there can be no possible appeal. It
is the highest and ultimate test of all truth, of all
speculation, of all reasoning. What it ascertains
must be true as long as the world lasts, and its
judgments can never be set aside, excepting by
assumption into higher and more general truths. It
is the only method left to us in this nineteenth
century. But now, you say, where shall we find the
facts to which this method is to be applied, and upon
the study of which all our religious opinions are to be
formed ? I answer, in the whole experience of man,
in general, and in your own special experience in
particular, and this experience carries us out of
ourselves recollect, in virtue of the relations we
sustain to the external world. Whatever is evolved
in your religious experience constantly, under the
same conditions that is for you a religious fact, and
forms the basis of a true religious opinion—the basis
of a true religious opinion for you, recollect, not the
basis of a general religious opinion true for all men.
For our individual peculiarities and circumstances
constitute individual conditions which may lead to
results altogether untrue in the experience of other
men. Yet that these conditions may be true for you
cannot be questioned. It is an individual truth
affecting only yourself. You come into contact, for
example, with some great and sublime object in
nature which immediately produces in you feelings
of reverence and awe, and suggests the idea of a
present good and beneficent Creator calling forth
�12
The Formation of
your love and trust. That, therefore, is the fact of
your experience, and you found upon it the opinion
that it is the tendency of such objects to produce
such results. Now that opinion is true for you
individually. But you extend your inquiries to the
experience of other men, and then you find that
these results do not always follow. In some you find
there is the deep feeling produced by contemplating
the object, but no suggestion of the idea of God.
In others, the idea of God is suggested, but it is
accompanied by fear and terror. So that you correct
the conclusion of your personal experience by the
wider experience of mankind, and instead of
saying that the grand objects of nature tend to
suggest the idea of God and to produce love and
trust, you say these objects tend to produce these
effects under certain conditions only.
Your re
ligious. opinion is modified, generalized by a more
extensive observation of facts. The first opinion
founded upon your own experience is still true for
you, because your mind is in that condition under
which this love for and trust in God follow; but it is
not a general truth and your opinion has to be
modified accordingly.
But now, suppose you are not content to rest here.
You want to ascertain which is the normal, proper
and natural condition and result, that which ends, as
in your own mind, in love and trust, or that which
ends in terror and apprehension. Still you have
nothing but the facts to guide you. You begin
therefore by examining and scrutinizing more closely
the facts. You find in those in whom the terror is
excited some humanised conception of God which
clothes him with attributes which have a malignant
aspect towards man, and by examination you find
that this conception rests upon the baseless assumption
that God must be like man, and so like malignant
and fierce men. Or in other cases you find it has
�Religious Opinions.
13
been produced by some great calamity, which has
produced the impression that God delights in calamity,
an impression depending upon a few circumstances
and not upon general observation. On the other hand,
your own trust and love rest upon no such ground.
You do not pretend to know God as he is in himself;
but by extensive observation you find that upon the
whole his operations in nature are beneficent and
good, leading to human well being and happiness.
You observe that the calamities are the result of
conditions which may for the most part be controlled
and constitute a system of discipline which is benefi
cial and merciful. Seeing therefore that the real facts
call forth the love and trust, and that it is fancy or
an imperfect observation of a few facts that inspire
the mistrust and fear, you form the generalized
religious opinion that those conditions in which the
apprehensions of God’s presence call forth trust and
love, are the true, normal, and proper conditions of
man. Nor could anything possibly shake that opinion
but such an appeal to the facts as would shew you
had misconceived or misinterpreted them.
But possibly some one may say, this method will
answer very well in such a question as you have pro
posed, but will it apply to all, such as the peculiar
doctrines of Christianity for example1? Now, I have
already answered that question in effect. For leaving
out of consideration the evidences by which the
authority of Christianity has to be established,
involving as they do the questions of miracles, which
is purely one of facts, I remind you of what I have
already said about the interpretation. Every one
interprets by his system of philosophy formed by his
judgment according to certain methods. The ultimate
appeal in these questions of interpretation is not to
the grammar and lexicon, but to the principles held
by the interpreter. Hence the opposite conclusions
come to by men equally sincere, equally learned,
�14
Fhe Formation of
equally pious, and equally skilled in interpretation.
The Calvinists, for example, the older Unitarians, and
the Arminians equally believe in the divine authority
of the New Testament or of Christ. They equally
strive to find out the meaning of the text. They
come to opposite conclusions. Why1? Oh, the bigots
of each party would say, because the others do not
come with an open mind, but seek only their own
preconceived opinions. I have, however, nothing to
do with the bigots just now. The real cause is,
because each comes with his own system to the inter
pretation, and so arrives at different results. And
it could not from the nature of things be otherwise,
whether men know it or not. So that in reality the
ultimate appeal is to these judgments formed before
consulting the oracle, and all depends upon the method
by which those judgments are formed.
Take, for example, the doctrine of the atonement.
Now, the Calvinist holding certain views about
God’s justice, government &c., interprets the passages
speaking of Christ’s death in one way, and gives to the
atonement one meaning. The Arminian, holding
modified views of God’s justice and government, and
exalting higher his love, interprets the same passages
in another way, and gives to the atonement a modified
meaning. Whilst the older Unitarian, holding other
views of God’s character, apd exalting his love still
higher than the Arminian, interprets the passages in
quite another way, and does not hold the doctrine of
the atonement in the Calvinistic sense at all. Now
how can any one form an opinion upon these three
different modes of interpretation ? Only by determin
ing the truth or the untruth of the principles upon
which their system of interpretation is based; and that
must be done by the method I have explained. If
any one do not care for any of these systems, and
wishes to determine the question simply upon its
own merits, how can he do so but by a reference to
�Religious Opinions.
15
facts ? Do all those who believe in the atonement get
delivered, so far as we see, from the consequences of
their past sins 1 Would the drunkard, for example,
who has drunk himself into a state verging on
delirium tremens, get saved from the fit which was
coming upon him to-night, by a sudden conversion
experienced at twelve o'clock this morning ? And
secondly, do none but those who so believe, amend
their lives and reap all the good and happiness of
the amendment ? There can be but one answer to
such questions, and it is determined by matters of
fact easily ascertained, and from which there can be
no appeal.
I trust, then, I have said enough to explain the
method by which our religious opinions must be
formed. There is none other left to us amidst the
jarring controversies of the day. At all events, of
this we are quite sure, whatever we come short of,
through this method (for myself I do not think we
shall come short of any then) yet whatever we do
grasp will be unalterable and infallibly sure.
It
will rest on a basis of fact which cannot be
removed. In this method is certainty, and in this
alone. All others are a delusion and a snare.
But let me conclude with one caution. Above all
things, in the use of this method, do not too hastily
generalize your conclusions. See to it that you have
a sufficient number of facts to form your opinion upon.
There is no greater evidence of a philosophical ’mind
than the power of suspending one’s judgment until
all the evidence is before one; as there is no greater
proof of a weak mind than hesitancy after the con
clusions are formed. And herein doubtlessly lies the
danger to which those employing this method are
exposed. Too often they want to rise to certainty
by a leap. Most enquirers get impatient of delay.
After a rapid glance over a few facts, selected it may
be but from one class, age, or type, they rashly conclude
�16
The Formation of Religious Opinions.
that they have comprehended the universal law. They
mistake the individual and it may be accidental
process for the general, and therefore go blundering
on into all sorts of errors. The very first requisite
to the formation of true religious opinions, as of all
others, is patience, caution, suspension of judgment
until the whole field of facts is surveyed and nothing
left out that is essential to the result. Then the con
clusion, so far as it goes, will be as certain as the fact of
one’s own existence. And then recollect, as an
encouragement to this patience and suspension of
judgment, that religion may exist actively where the
opinions are yet in abeyance, for truthful, well
formed opinions are not necessary to religious feeling
and life; although on the other hand the opinions
once formed have a momentous result on the
religious life.
Be deliberate then, scrutinize, weigh, compare,
discount all fancies and all prejudices, earnestly
judge by the facts widely inducted, and God will
guide you into all truth.
TURNBULL AND SPEABS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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On the formation of religious opinions
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Cranbrook, James
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
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Thomas Scott
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[1871]
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G5742
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RA1602
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Rationalism
Religion
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Conway Tracts
Faith and Reason