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

sacred books made some progress in England, France, and America in the first half of the century; though for a time the attention even of the educated world was centred much more upon the Oxford "tractarian" religious reaction than upon the movement of rationalism. The reaction, associated mainly with the name of John Henry Newman, was rather against the political Erastianism and æsthetic apathy of the Whig type of Christian than against German or other criticism, of which Newman knew little. But against the attitude of those moderate Anglicans who were disposed to disestablish the Church in Ireland and to modernize the liturgy somewhat, the language of the "Tracts for the Times" is as authoritarian and anti-rationalistic as that of Catholics denouncing freethought. Such expressions as "the filth of heretical novelty" [1822] are meant to apply to anything in the nature of innovation; the causes at stake are ritual and precedent, the apostolic succession and the status of the priest, not the truth of revelation or the credibility of the scriptures. The third Tract appeals to the clergy to "resist the alteration of even one jot or tittle" of the liturgy; and concerning the burial service the line of argument is: "Do you pretend you can discriminate the wheat from the tares? Of course not." All attempts even to modify the ritual are an "abuse of reason"; and the true believer is adjured to stand fast in the ancient ways. [1823] At a pinch he is to "consider what Reason says; which surely, as well as Scripture, was given us for religious ends"; [1824] but the only "reason" thus recognized is one which accepts the whole apparatus of revelation. Previous to and alongside of this single-minded reversion to the ideals of the Dark Ages--a phenomenon not unconnected with the revival of romanticism by Scott and Chateaubriand--there was going on a movement of modernism, of which one of the overt traces is Milman's History of the Jews (1829), a work to-day regarded as harmless even by the orthodox, but sufficient in its time to let Newman see whither religious "Liberalism" was heading. Other and later researches dug much deeper into the problems of religious historiography. The Unitarian C. C. Hennell produced an Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (1838), so important for its time as to be thought worth translating into German by Strauss; and this found a considerable response from the educated English public of its day. In the preface to his second edition (1841) Hennell spoke very plainly of "the large and probably increasing amount of unbelief in all classes around us"; and made the then remarkably courageous declarations that in his experience "neither deism, pantheism, nor even atheism indicates modes of thought incompatible with uprightness and benevolence"; and that "the real or affected horror which it is still a prevailing custom to exhibit towards their names would be better reserved for those of the selfish, the cruel, the bigot, and other tormentors of mankind." It was in the circle of Hennell that Marian Evans, later to become famous as George Eliot, grew into a rationalist in despite of her religious temperament; and it was she who, when Hennell's bride gave up the task, undertook the toil of translating Strauss's Leben Jesu--though at many points she "thought him wrong." [1825] In the churches he had of course no overt acceptance. At this stage, English orthodoxy was of such a cast that the pious Tregelles, himself fiercely opposed to all forms of rationalism, had to complain that the most incontrovertible corrections of the current text of the New Testament were angrily denounced. [1826] In the next generation Theodore Parker in the United States, developing his critical faculty chiefly by study of the Germans, at the cost of much obloquy forced some knowledge of critical results and a measure of theistic or pantheistic rationalism on the attention of the orthodox world; promoting at the same time a semi-philosophic, semi-ethical reaction against the Calvinistic theology of Jonathan Edwards, theretofore prevalent among the orthodox of New England. In the old country a number of writers developed new movements of criticism from theistic points of view. F. W. Newman, the scholarly brother of John Henry, [1827] produced a book entitled The Soul (1849), and another, Phases of Faith (1853), which had much influence in promoting rationalism of a rather rigidly theistic cast. R. W. Mackay in the same period published two learned treatises, A Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Christianity (1854), notably scientific in method for its time; and The Progress of the Intellect as Exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews (1850), which won the admiration of Buckle; "George Eliot" translated Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity (1854) under her own name, Marian Evans; and W. R. Greg, one of the leading publicists of his day, put forth a rationalist study of The Creed of Christendom: Its Foundations Contrasted with its Superstructure (1850), which has gone through many editions and is still reprinted. In 1864 appeared The Prophet of Nazareth, by Evan Powell Meredith, who had been a Baptist minister in Wales. The book is a bulky prize essay on the theme of New Testament eschatology, which develops into a deistic attack on the central Christian dogma and on gospel ethics. Another zealous theist, Thomas Scott, whose pamphlet-propaganda on deistic lines had so wide an influence during many years, produced an English Life of Jesus (1871), which, though less important than the works of Strauss and less popular than those of Renan, played a considerable part in the disintegration of the traditional faith among English churchmen. Still the primacy in critical research on scholarly lines lay with the Germans; and it was the results of their work that were co-ordinated, from a theistic standpoint, [1828] in the anonymous work, Supernatural Religion (1874-77), a massive and decisive performance, too powerful to be disposed of by the episcopal and other attacks made upon it. [1829] Since its assimilation the orthodox or inspirationist view of the gospels has lost credit among competent scholars even within the churches. The battleground is now removed to the problem of the historicity of the ostensible origins of the cult; and scholarly orthodoxy takes for granted many positions which fifty years ago were typical of "German rationalism."