Very significant also is a change in the style of argument against the scientific view. Leading supporters of the older opinions see more and more clearly the worthlessness of rhetoric against ascertained fact: mere dogged resistance to cogent argument evidently avails less and less; and the readiness of the more prominent representatives of the older thought to consider opposing arguments, and to acknowledge any force they may have, is certainly of good omen. The concessions made in Lux Mundi regarding scriptural myths and legends have been already mentioned.
Significant also has been the increasing reprobation in the Church itself of the profound though doubtless unwitting immoralities of RECONCILERS. The castigation which followed the exploits of the greatest of these in our own time--Mr. Gladstone, at the hands of Prof.
Huxley--did much to complete a work in which such eminent churchmen as Stanley, Farrar, Sanday, Cheyne, Driver, and Sayce had rendered good service.
Typical among these evidences of a better spirit in controversy has been the treatment of the question regarding mistaken quotations from the Old Testament in the New, and especially regarding quotations by Christ himself. For a time this was apparently the most difficult of all matters dividing the two forces; but though here and there appear champions of tradition, like the Bishop of Gloucester, effectual resistance to the new view has virtually ceased; in one way or another the most conservative authorities have accepted the undoubted truth revealed by a simple scientific method. Their arguments have indeed been varied. While some have fallen back upon Le Clerc's contention that "Christ did not come to teach criticism to the Jews," and others upon Paley's argument that the Master shaped his statements in accordance with the ideas of his time, others have taken refuge in scholastic statements--among them that of Irenaeus regarding "a quiescence of the divine word," or the somewhat startling explanation by sundry recent theologians that "our Lord emptied himself of his Godhead."(504)
(504) For Matthew Arnold, see, besides his Literature and Dogma, his St.
Paul and Protestantism. As to the quotations in the New Testament from the Old, see Toy, Quotations in the New Testament, 1889, p. 72; also Kuenen, The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel. For Le Clerc's method of dealing with the argument regarding quotations from the Old Testament in the New, see earlier parts of the present chapter. For Paley's mode, see his Evidences, part iii, chapter iii. For the more scholastic expressions from Irenaeus and others, see Gore, Bampton Lectures, 1891, especially note on p. 267. For a striking passage on the general subject see B. W. Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, p. 33, ending with the words, "We must decline to stake the authority of Jesus Christ on a question of literary criticism."
Nor should there be omitted a tribute to the increasing courtesy shown in late years by leading supporters of the older view. During the last two decades of the present century there has been a most happy departure from the older method of resistance, first by plausibilities, next by epithets, and finally by persecution. To the bitterness of the attacks upon Darwin, the Essayists and Reviewers, and Bishop Colenso, have succeeded, among really eminent leaders, a far better method and tone. While Matthew Arnold no doubt did much in commending "sweet reasonableness" to theological controversialists, Mr. Gladstone, by his perfect courtesy to his opponents, even when smarting under their heaviest blows, has set a most valuable example. Nor should the spirit shown by Bishop Ellicott, leading a forlorn hope for the traditional view, pass without a tribute of respect. Truly pathetic is it to see this venerable and learned prelate, one of the most eminent representatives of the older biblical research, even when giving solemn warnings against the newer criticisms, and under all the temptations of ex cathedra utterance, remaining mild and gentle and just in the treatment of adversaries whose ideas he evidently abhors. Happily, he is comforted by the faith that Christianity will survive; and this faith his opponents fully share.(505)
(505) As an example of courtesy between theologic opponents may be cited the controversy between Mr. Gladstone and Prof. Huxley, Principal Gore's Bampton Lectures for 1891, and Bishop Ellicott's Charges, published in 1893.
To the fact that the suppression of personal convictions among "the enlightened" did not cease with the Medicean popes there are many testimonies. One especially curious was mentioned to the present writer by a most honoured diplomatist and scholar at Rome. While this gentleman was looking over the books of an eminent cardinal, recently deceased, he noticed a series of octavos bearing on their backs the title "Acta Apostolorum." Surprised at such an extension of the Acts of Apostles, he opened a volume and found the series to be the works of Voltaire. As to a similar condition of things in the Church of England may be cited the following from Froude's Erasmus: "I knew various persons of high reputation a few years ago who thought at the bottom very much as Bishop Colenso thought, who nevertheless turned and rent him to clear their own reputations--which they did not succeed in doing." See work cited, close of Lecture XI.
VI. RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM.
For all this dissolving away of traditional opinions regarding our sacred literature, there has been a cause far more general and powerful than any which has been given, for it is a cause surrounding and permeating all. This is simply the atmosphere of thought engendered by the development of all sciences during the last three centuries.
Vast masses of myth, legend, marvel, and dogmatic assertion, coming into this atmosphere, have been dissolved and are now dissolving quietly away like icebergs drifted into the Gulf Stream. In earlier days, when some critic in advance of his time insisted that Moses could not have written an account embracing the circumstances of his own death, it was sufficient to answer that Moses was a prophet; if attention was called to the fact that the great early prophets, by all which they did and did not do, showed that there could not have existed in their time any "Levitical code," a sufficient answer was "mystery"; and if the discrepancy was noted between the two accounts of creation in Genesis, or between the genealogies or the dates of the crucifixion in the Gospels, the cogent reply was "infidelity." But the thinking world has at last been borne by the general development of a scientific atmosphere beyond that kind of refutation.
If, in the atmosphere generated by the earlier developed sciences, the older growths of biblical interpretation have drooped and withered and are evidently perishing, new and better growths have arisen with roots running down into the newer sciences. Comparative Anthropology in general, by showing that various early stages of belief and observance, once supposed to be derived from direct revelation from heaven to the Hebrews, are still found as arrested developments among various savage and barbarous tribes; Comparative Mythology and Folklore, by showing that ideas and beliefs regarding the Supreme Power in the universe are progressive, and not less in Judea than in other parts of the world; Comparative Religion and Literature, by searching out and laying side by side those main facts in the upward struggle of humanity which show that the Israelites, like other gifted peoples, rose gradually, through ghost worship, fetichism, and polytheism, to higher theological levels; and that, as they thus rose, their conceptions and statements regarding the God they worshipped became nobler and better--all these sciences are giving a new solution to those problems which dogmatic theology has so long laboured in vain to solve. While researches in these sciences have established the fact that accounts formerly supposed to be special revelations to Jews and Christians are but repetitions of widespread legends dating from far earlier civilizations, and that beliefs formerly thought fundamental to Judaism and Christianity are simply based on ancient myths, they have also begun to impress upon the intellect and conscience of the thinking world the fact that the religious and moral truths thus disengaged from the old masses of myth and legend are all the more venerable and authoritative, and that all individual or national life of any value must be vitalized by them.(506)
(506) For plaintive lamentations over the influence of this atmosphere of scientific thought upon the most eminent contemporary Christian scholars, see the Christus Comprobator, by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, London, 1893, and the article in the Contemporary Review for May, 1892, by the Bishop of Colchester, passim. For some less known examples of sacred myths and legends inherited from ancient civilizations, see Lenormant, Les Origines de l'Histoire, passim, but especially chaps. ii, iv, v, vi; see also Goldziher.
If, then, modern science in general has acted powerfully to dissolve away the theories and dogmas of the older theologic interpretation, it has also been active in a reconstruction and recrystallization of truth; and very powerful in this reconstruction have been the evolution doctrines which have grown out of the thought and work of men like Darwin and Spencer.
In the light thus obtained the sacred text has been transformed: out of the old chaos has come order; out of the old welter of hopelessly conflicting statements in religion and morals has come, in obedience to this new conception of development, the idea of a sacred literature which mirrors the most striking evolution of morals and religion in the history of our race. Of all the sacred writings of the world, it shows us our own as the most beautiful and the most precious; exhibiting to us the most complete religious development to which humanity has attained, and holding before us the loftiest ideals which our race has known.
Thus it is that, with the keys furnished by this new race of biblical scholars, the way has been opened to treasures of thought which have been inaccessible to theologians for two thousand years.
As to the Divine Power in the universe: these interpreters have shown how, beginning with the tribal god of the Hebrews--one among many jealous, fitful, unseen, local sovereigns of Asia Minor--the higher races have been borne on to the idea of the just Ruler of the whole earth, as revealed by the later and greater prophets of Israel, and finally to the belief in the Universal Father, as best revealed in the New Testament. As to man: beginning with men after Jehovah's own heart--cruel, treacherous, revengeful--we are borne on to an ideal of men who do right for right's sake; who search and speak the truth for truth's sake; who love others as themselves. As to the world at large: the races dominant in religion and morals have been lifted from the idea of a "chosen people" stimulated and abetted by their tribal god in every sort of cruelty and injustice, to the conception of a vast community in which the fatherhood of God overarches all, and the brotherhood of man permeates all.
Thus, at last, out of the old conception of our Bible as a collection of oracles--a mass of entangling utterances, fruitful in wrangling interpretations, which have given to the world long and weary ages of "hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"; of fetichism, subtlety, and pomp; of tyranny bloodshed, and solemnly constituted imposture; of everything which the Lord Jesus Christ most abhorred--has been gradually developed through the centuries, by the labours, sacrifices, and even the martyrdom of a long succession of men of God, the conception of it as a sacred literature--a growth only possible under that divine light which the various orbs of science have done so much to bring into the mind and heart and soul of man--a revelation, not of the Fall of Man, but of the Ascent of Man--an exposition, not of temporary dogmas and observances, but of the Eternal Law of Righteousness--the one upward path for individuals and for nations. No longer an oracle, good for the "lower orders" to accept, but to be quietly sneered at by "the enlightened"--no longer a fetich, whose defenders must be persecutors, or reconcilers, or "apologists"; but a most fruitful fact, which religion and science may accept as a source of strength to both.