A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

decade was partly due to the fact that by that time there had appeared a remarkable amount of modern freethinking literature of high literary and intellectual quality, and good "social" status. Down to 1870 the new literary names committed to the rejection of Christianity, apart from the men of science who kept to their own work, were the theists Hennell, F. W. Newman, W. E. Greg, R. W. Mackay, Buckle, and W. E. H. Lecky, all of them influential, but none of them at once recognized as a first-rate force. But with the appearance of Lecky's History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (1865), lacking though it was in clearness of thought, a new tone began to prevail; and his History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), equally readable and not more uncompromising, was soon followed by a series of powerful pronouncements of a more explicit kind. One of the first of the literary class to come forward with an express impeachment of Christianity was Moncure Daniel Conway, whose Earthward Pilgrimage (1870) was the artistic record of a gifted preacher's progress from Wesleyan Methodism, through Unitarianism, to a theism which was soon to pass into agnosticism. In 1871 appeared the remarkable work of Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man, wherein a rapid survey of ancient and medieval history, and of the growth of religion from savage beginnings, leads up to a definitely anti-theistic presentment of the future of human life with the claim to have shown "that the destruction of Christianity is essential to the interests of civilization." [1701] Some eighteen editions tell of the acceptance won by the book. Less vogue, but some startled notice, was won by the Duke of Somerset's Christian Theology and Modern Scepticism (1872), a work of moderate rationalism, but by a peer. In 1873 appeared Herbert Spencer's Introduction to the Study of Sociology, wherein the implicit anti-supernaturalism of that philosopher's First Principles was advanced upon, in the chapter on "The Theological Bias," by a mordant attack on that Christian creed. That attack had been preceded by Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma (1872), wherein the publicist who had censured Colenso for not writing in Latin described the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as "the fairy-tale of three Lord Shaftesburys." Much pleading for the recognition by unbelievers of the value of the Bible failed to convince Christians of the value of such a thinker's Christianity. A more important sensation was provided in 1873 by the posthumous publication of Mill's Autobiography, and, in the following year, by his Three Essays on Religion, which exhibited its esteemed author as not only not a Christian but as never having been one, although he formulated a species of limited liability theism, as unsatisfactory to the rationalists as to the orthodox. Still the fresh manifestations of freethinking multiplied. On the one hand the massive treatise entitled Supernatural Religion (1874), and on the other the freethinking essays of Prof. W. K. Clifford in the Fortnightly Review, the most vigorously outspoken ever yet written by an English academic, showed that the whole field of debate was being reopened with a new power and confidence. The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, by Leslie Stephen (1876), set up the same impression from another side; yet another social sensation was created by the appearance of Viscount Amberley's Analysis of Religious Belief (1877); and all the while the "Higher Criticism" proceeded within the pale of the Church. The literary situation was now so changed that, whereas from 1850 to 1880 the "sensations" in the religious world were those made by rationalistic attacks, thereafter they were those made by new defences. H. Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883), Mr. Balfour's Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879) and Foundations of Belief (1895), and Mr. Kidd's Social Evolution (1894), were successively welcomed as being declared to render such a service. It is doubtful whether they are to-day valued upon that score in any quarter.