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The Religious Situation By: Goldwin Smith (1823-1910) |
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BY GOLDWIN SMITH
TORONTO WM. TYRRELL & COMPANY 1908
COPYRIGHT, 1908 BY THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1908 BY GOLDWIN SMITH
[Transcriber's note: This book was originally part of Smith's "No
Refuge but in Truth." It was split into a separate e book because it
had its own title and verso page.]
THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. (From the North American Review .)
"I express myself," says Bishop Butler, "with caution, lest I should be
mistaken to vilify reason, which is, indeed, the only faculty which we
have to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself; or be
misunderstood to assert that a supposed revelation cannot be proved
false from internal characters." "The faculty of reason," he says, "is
the candle of the Lord within us against vilifying which we must be
very cautious." What would the world be without religion? That is the dread question
which seems now to be everywhere presenting itself. Would even the
social fabric remain unshaken? Has not its stability partly depended
on the general belief that the dispensation, with all its inequalities,
was the ordinance of the Creator, and that for inequalities here there
would be compensation hereafter? The belief may not in common minds
have been very present; but it would seem to have had its influence.
Apparently, it is now departing. In some places it seems to have fled.
Scepticism, with social unrest, comes in its room. What is now the position of the clergy? Keepers and ministers of
truth, as they are understood to be, they alone are debarred by
ordination vows and tests from the free quest of truth. They are
ecclesiastically bound not only to hold, but to teach and preach, as
divinely revealed, what many of them must feel to have been disproved
or to have become doubtful. Their uneasiness is shown by writings,
such as "Lux Mundi," struggling to reconcile orthodoxy with free
thought. It is shown by a growing tendency on the part of pastors to
slide from the office of spiritual guide into that of leader of
philanthropic effort and social reform. It is seen, perhaps, even in
the tendency to give increased prominence to musical attraction in the
service. Sermons grow more secular. Clerical biographies, such as that of Jowett, sometimes reveal private
misgivings. The writer has even seen the pastorate of a large parish
assumed by one who in private society was an evident rationalist and
must have satisfied his conscience by promising to himself that he
would do a great deal of social good. There is, no doubt, practically,
more latitude than there was; heresy trials seem to have ceased, and
one of the writers of "Essays and Reviews" became, without serious
outcry, Primate of the Church of England. But ordination vows remain;
so does the performance of a religious service which includes the
repetition of creeds and forms a practical confession of faith. Hollow
profession cannot fail to impair mental integrity, or, if generally
suspected, to kill confidence in our guides. Read Canon Farrar's "Life
of Christ" and you will see to what shifts orthodoxy puts a clerical
writer who was, no doubt, a sincere lover of truth. The religious disturbance shows itself at the same time in the
prevalence of wild superstitions, such as Spiritualism, rising out of
the grave of religious faith, and attesting the lingering craving for
the supernatural, somewhat like the mysteries of Isis after the fall of
national religion at Rome. The crisis has come on us rather suddenly, in consequence partly of
great physical discoveries. The writer as a young student heard
Buckland struggling to reconcile geology with Genesis. Now the
struggle is to reconcile Genesis with geology. Before this wonderful
advance of science and criticism combined, there had been comparatively
little of avowed, still less of popular, scepticism. Rousseau was a
sentimental theist; Voltaire erected a church to God. This vast
"Modernism," as the poor, quaking Pope rather happily calls the
ascendancy of science and criticism, has changed all... Continue reading book >>
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