(Leader, 20 September 1851)
ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM, effete as it seems in its ecclesiastical and sectarian forms, is manifesting the vitality of its roots in the vigorous and rapid growth of free religious inquiry among earnest men. The writers who are heading the present movement against dogmatic theology, are not mere speculators enamoured of theory, and careless of its practical results. Still less are they anti-religious zealots, who identify all faith with superstition. They are men at once devout and practical, who have been driven into antagonism with the dominant belief by the force of their moral, no less than of their intellectual nature, and who have been led to the avowal of that antagonism, not simply by the impulse of candour, but by an interest in the spiritual well-being of society. They know that to call dogmatic Christianity the popular creed is a misnomer; that the doctrines taught in our pulpits neither have, nor can have, any hold on the masses; and that if our population is to be Christianized, religious teaching must be conducted in a new spirit and on new principles. They protest against the current faith, because they would substitute for it one purer and more influential; they lay the axe to the old, only that there may be freer play for the energies which are ever tending to the development of the new and more perfect.
Among these pioneers of the New Reformation, Mr Greg is likely to be one of the most effective. Without any pretension to striking originality or extensive learning, his work perhaps all the more exhibits that sound, practical judgement, which discerns at once the hinge of a question, and it bears throughout the impress of an honesty, geniality, and refinement which imply a moral nature of a very high order. The absence of any very profound critical erudition, far from disqualifying Mr Greg for the task he has undertaken, is essential to the aim of this book – namely, to show at what conclusions concerning the Bible and Christianity a sensible, educated layman is likely to arrive, with such an amount of critical attainment as is compatible with the work that lies before him in daily life. If such conclusions must necessarily be unsound because they are formed in ignorance of the last new edition of every biblical critic, orthodox or heterodox, the right of private judgement is a nullity, and the unclerical mind must either dismiss the subject altogether, or surrender itself to a more consistent spiritual despotism than that of Protestant divines. The Creed of Christendom claims the attention of the theologian, not that it may teach him biblical criticism, but that it may render him more familiar with the impression made by the vexed questions of his science on an earnest, cultivated mind, cut off by no barrier of caste or prejudice from full sympathy and acquaintance with the spirit and wants of the age. Another class of readers to whom it is adapted, are those struggling towards free religious thought amidst the impediments of critical ignorance and early artificial associations. To such, Mr Greg’s book will be valuable, both as an introductory manual of biblical criticism and as a help in the consideration of certain moral questions.
In stating the reasons which urged him to publication, Mr Greg says: –
Much observation of the conversation and controversy of the religious world had wrought the conviction that the evil resulting from the received notions as to scriptural authority has been immensely underestimated. I was compelled to see that there is scarcely a low and dishonouring conception of God current among men, scarcely a narrow and malignant passion of the human heart, scarcely a moral obliquity, scarcely a political error or misdeed, which biblical texts are not, and may not be, without any violence to their obvious signification, adduced to countenance and justify. On the other hand I was compelled to see how many clear, honest, and aspiring minds have been hampered and baffled in their struggles after truth and light, how many tender, pure, and loving hearts have been hardened, perverted, and forced to a denial of their nobler nature and their better instincts, by the ruthless influence of some passages of Scripture which seemed in the clearest language to condemn the good and to denounce the true. No work contributed more than Mr Newman’s Phases of Faith,1 to force upon me the conviction that little progress can be hoped, either for religious science or charitable feeling, till the question of biblical authority shall have been placed upon a sounder footing, and viewed in a very different light.
Mr Greg sets out by examining the dogma of scriptural inspiration, which he justly regards as the keystone of Protestant orthodoxy. After considering separately each of the grounds on which it rests, he concludes that there is no valid foundation for believing the Hebrew and Christian canonical writings to be inspired, in the ordinary acceptation of the word – that is, dictated or suggested by God; that hence we must regard them ‘as records, not revelations; as histories, to be investigated like other histories; documents, of which the date, the authorship, the genuineness, the accuracy of the text, are to be ascertained by the same principles2 as we apply to other documents’. Having thus cleared away the dazzling haze with which the inspiration dogma invests the biblical writings, he proceeds to investigate the genuineness and authenticity of the Old Testament canon, and traces briefly but forcibly the chief results of modern criticism in relation to this subject; indicating such of the reasons on which they are founded as are readily appreciable by the general reader. According to these results, no longer held debatable by critics of high standing, the Pentateuch, instead of being, as is popularly supposed, the production of Moses, is a compilation from separate documents, the earliest of which must have been written as late as the time of Saul; while the whole book of Deuteronomy, and many parts of the preceding books, are irrefragably proved by the subsequent history of the Hebrews to have had no existence prior to the reign of Josiah. Mr Greg instances some of the straits to which English divines have been driven, in the effort to maintain the authority of the Old Testament in the face of scientific discovery; and dwells on the advantage which would accrue, not only to the truthfulness of divines, but to the real instructiveness of the Hebrew writings, if the latter were regarded as merely human narratives, traditions, and speculations. He next discusses the prophecies, and adduces many considerations tending to prove how far we are from posses sing that clear knowledge concerning them which alone could warrant the conclusions of orthodoxy. In his opinion, –
The Hebrew prophets were wise, gifted, earnest men, deeply conversant with the Past – looking far into the Future – shocked with the unrighteousness around them – sagacious to see impending evil – bold to denounce wickedness in high places – imbued, above all, with an unfailing faith, peculiarly strong among their people, that national delinquency and national virtue would alike meet with a temporal and inevitable retribution – and gifted ‘with the glorious faculty of poetic hope, exerted on human prospects, and presenting its results with the vividness of prophecy’ – but prophets in no stricter sense than this.
The Theism of the Hebrews, Mr Greg maintains, was impure and progressive; they arrived at their monotheism by the same stages that characterize the development of the human race in general, the Old Testament exhibiting strong evidence that the Hebrew deity was originally a family god, elevated by Moses to the dignity of a national god, and ultimately, owing to the influence of prophets and sages, and yet more to the contact of the Hebrews with other Oriental nations, expanded into the God of the Universe.
The claims of the New Testament on our credence are next considered. The chapters on the ‘Origin of the Gospels’ and the ‘Fidelity of the Gospel History’ contain no fresh contributions to biblical criticism, nor anything new to persons conversant with this class of subjects; but they are a well-arranged summary of salient facts and arguments, gathered chiefly from Strauss, Hug, Schleiermacher, and Hennell.3 The conclusions to which the writer is led are, that we have no certitude as to the Gospels conveying the testimony of eyewitnesses, while, on the other hand, there is the strongest evidence of their containing a large admixture of legend, and that we can trust them no further than as giving an outline of Christ’s life and teaching. Hence Mr Greg holds that dogmas founded on sayings attributed to Jesus, but discordant with the impression of his character conveyed by the general tenor of the Gospels, must be rejected; for example, the dogmas of the necessity of belief to salvation, the proper Deity of Christ, and the Atonement. We quote some of his reflections on these results: –
In fine, then, we arrive at this irresistible conclusion, that, knowing many passages in the Evangelists to be unauthentic, and having reason to suspect the authenticity of many others, and not being able with absolute certainty to point to any which are perfectly and indubitably authentic – the probability in favour of the fidelity of any of the texts relied on to prove the peculiar and perplexing doctrines of modern orthodoxy, is far inferior to the probability against the truth of those doctrines. A doctrine perplexing to our reason, and painful to our feelings, may be from God; but in this case the proof of its being from God must be proportionately clear and irrefragable; the assertion of it in a narrative, which does not scruple to attribute to God’s messenger words which he never uttered, is not only no proof, but does not even amount to a presumption. There is no text in the Evangelists, the Divine (or Christian) origin of which is sufficiently unquestionable to enable it to serve as the foundation of doctrines repugnant to natural feeling or to common sense.
But it will be objected, if these conclusions are sound, absolute uncertainty is thrown over the whole Gospel history, and over all Christ’s teaching. To this we reply, in limine, in the language of Algernon Sydney, ‘No consequence can destroy a truth’;4 the sole matter for consideration is, Are our arguments correct? – not, Do they lead to a result which is embarrassing and unwelcome?
But the inference is excessive; the premises do not reach so far. The uncertainty thrown is not over the main points of Christ’s history, which, after all retrenchments, still stands out an intelligible, though a skeleton account – not over the grand features, the pervading tone of his doctrines or his character, which still present to us a clear, consistent, and splendid delineation; but over those individual statements, passages, and discourses which mar this delineation – which break its unity – which destroy its consistency – which cloud its clearness – which tarnish its beauty. The gain to us seems immense.
It is true we have no longer absolute certainty with regard to any one especial text or scene; such is neither necessary nor attainable; it is true that, instead of passively accepting the whole heterogeneous and indigestible mass, we must, by the careful and conscientious exercise of those faculties with which we are endowed, by ratiocination and moral tact, separate what Christ did, from what he did not teach, as best we may. But the task will be difficult to those only who look in the Gospels for a minute, dogmatic, and sententious creed; not to those who seek only to learn Christ’s spirit that they may imbibe it, and to comprehend his views of virtue and of God, that they may draw strength and consolation from those fountains of living water.
In discussing the limits of apostolic wisdom and authority, Mr Greg’s prepossessions, perhaps, lead him to heighten the difference between the spirit and teaching of the Apostles and those of their Master; but for much that he maintains under this head, he has strictly critical grounds. His observations on the misapprehension of the Apostles and the early Church concerning the ‘gift of tongues’, are especially just and pointed. In the chapter on miracles, he treats the subject chiefly on a priori grounds, and only cursorily touches on the question whether the miraculous narratives in the Gospels bear the marks of credibility. He argues for the position, long ago strenuously maintained by Locke,5 and admitted by many even of our orthodox divines, that a miracle can never authenticate a doctrine; and he further shows, that miracles are not a safe foundation on which to rest the claims of Christianity, inasmuch as they are not susceptible of proof by documentary evidence. The crowning miracle of the Resurrection he considers separately, giving a condensed analysis of the evidence on which it rests. The conclusion that this evidence is insufficient is, he thinks, rendered needlessly painful by the undue doctrinal value assigned by theologians to the Resurrection of Christ, whether as a sanction of his doctrines, or as a type and pledge of our own resurrection; for, viewed in the one light it is superfluous, while in the other, it utterly fails of the supposed end, since a bodily resurrection after three days’ interment, can bear no resemblance to anything that awaits ourselves.
Even after the renunciation of implicit credence in the Gospel narratives and apostolic writings, and the rejection of all miraculous evidence, the question remains – Is Christianity a revealed religion? Since, however, the lustre of Christ’s life and teachings may have been obscured by the errors and limitations of his biographers and immediate disciples, it is still possible that he may have had a special divine mission. In seeking for an answer to this question, Mr Greg ‘finds no adequate reason for believing Jesus to be the son of God, nor his doctrines to be a direct and special revelation’. The following is his conception of Jesus: –
We do not believe that Christianity contains anything which a genius like Christ’s brought up and nourished as his had been, might not have disentangled for itself. We hold that God has so arranged matters in this beautiful and well-ordered but mysteriously governed universe, that one great mind after another will arise from time to time, as such are needed, to discover and flash forth before the eyes of men the truths that are wanted, and the amount of truth that can be borne. We conceive that this is effected by endowing them – or (for we pretend to no scholastic nicety of expression) by having arranged that nature and the course of events shall send them into the world endowed with that superior mental and moral organization, in which grand truths, sublime gleams of spiritual light, will spontaneously and inevitably arise. Such a one we believe was Jesus of Nazareth – the most exalted genius whom God ever sent upon earth; in himself an embodied revelation; humanity in its divinest phase – ‘God manifest in the flesh’, according to Eastern hyperbole; an exemplar vouchsafed, in an early age of the world, of what man may and should become, in the course of ages, in his progress towards the realization of his destiny; an individual gifted with a glorious intellect, a noble soul, a fine organization, and a perfectly balanced moral being; and who, by virtue of these endowments, saw further than all other men –
Beyond the verge of that blue sky,
Where God’s sublimest secrets lie;6
an earnest, not only of what humanity may be, but of what it will be, when the most perfected races shall bear the same relation to the finest minds of existing times, as these now bear to the Bushmen and the Esquimaux. He was, as Parker beautifully expresses it, ‘the possibility of the race made real’.7 He was a sublime poet, prophet, hero, and philosopher; and had the usual fate of such – misrepresented by his enemies, misconstrued by his friends; unhappy in this, that his nearest intimates and followers were not of a calibre to understand him; happy in this, that his words contained such undying seeds of truth as could survive even the media through which they passed. Like the wheat found in the Egyptian catacombs, they retain the power of germinating undiminished, whenever their appropriate soil is found. They have been preserved almost pure, notwithstanding the Judaic narrowness of Peter, the orthodox passions of John, and the metaphysical subtleties of Paul. Everything seems to us to confirm the conclusion that we have in the Christianity of Scripture a code of beautiful, simple, sublime, profound, but not perfect truth, obscured by having come down to us by the intervention of minds far inferior to that of its Author; narrowed by their uncultivation; marred by their misapprehensions; and tarnished by their foreign admixtures. It is a collection of grand truths transmitted to us by men who only half comprehended their grandeur, and imperfectly grasped their truth.
If Christianity be no longer regarded as a revelation, but as the conception of a fallible though transcendently gifted mind, it follows that only so much of it is to be accepted as harmonizes with the reason and conscience: Christianity becomes ‘Christian Eclecticism’. Mr Greg unhesitatingly receives many of Christ’s precepts as unsurpassable and unimprovable: for example, those which inculcate the worthlessness of ceremonial observance and the necessity of active virtue, purity of heart as the security for purity of life, universal philanthropy, forgiveness of injuries, self-sacrifice in the cause of duty, humility, and genuine sincerity. He regards as next in perfection the views which Christianity unfolds of God as a Father.
In the two great points essential to our practical life, viz., our feelings towards God and our conduct towards man, the Gospels contain little about which men can differ – little from which they can dissent. He is our Father, we are all brethren. This much lies open to the most ignorant and busy, as fully as to the most leisurely and learned. This needs no priest to teach it, no authority to endorse it. The rest is speculation; intensely interesting, indeed, but of no practical necessity.
Other tenets taught in the Christian Scriptures, however, Mr Greg thinks open to grave objections. He urges, for example, that the New Testament assigns an efficacy to prayer incompatible with any elevated conception of Deity; that it inculcates resignation, not as the result of a self-reasoning faith in the wisdom and justice of the supreme will, but on the narrow ground that sufferings are specially ordained for the benefit of the individual; and that it appeals to the selfish motives – the desire for recompense, rather than to the highest – the love of the good for its own sake. He holds that the conception of the pardon of sin, or repentance and conversion, tends to contravene the system on which man is trained and disciplined, and the entire scheme of God’s government – the conviction that every breach of the Divine law is attended with inexorable consequences, being essential to a healthy condition of the conscience and a just theory of Providence: –
Let any one look back upon his past career, look inward on his daily life, and then say what effect would be produced upon him, were the conviction once fixedly embedded in his soul, that everything done is done irrevocably, that even the omnipotence of God cannot uncommit a deed, cannot make that undone which has been done; that every act of his must bear its allotted fruit according to the everlasting laws – must remain for ever ineffaceably inscribed on the tablets of universal Nature. And, then, let him consider what would have been the result upon the moral condition of our race, had all men ever held this conviction.
Perhaps you have led a youth of dissipation and excess which has undermined and enfeebled your constitution, and you have transmitted this injured and enfeebled constitution to your children. They suffer, in consequence, through life; suffering is entailed upon them; your repentance, were it in sackcloth and ashes, cannot help you or them. Your punishment is tremendous, but it is legitimate and inevitable. You have broken Nature’s laws, or you have ignored them, and no one violates or neglects them with impunity. What a lesson for timely reflection and obedience is here!
Again – you have broken the seventh commandment. You grieve – you repent – you resolutely determine against any such weakness in future. It is well; but ‘you know that God is merciful – you feel that he will forgive you’. You are comforted. But no – there is no forgiveness of sins – the injured party may forgive you – your accomplice or victim may forgive you, according to the meaning of human language; but the deed is done, and all the powers of Nature, were they to conspire in your behalf, could not make it undone; the consequences to the body – the consequences to the soul – though no man may perceive them, are there – are written in the annals of the past, and must reverberate through all time.
But all this, let it be understood, in no degree militates against the value or the necessity of repentance. Repentance, contrition of soul, bears, like every other act, its own fruit – the fruit of purifying the heart, of amending the future: not as man has hitherto conceived – of effacing the past. The commission of sin is an irrevocable act, but it does not incapacitate the soul for virtue. Its consequences cannot be expunged, but the course need not be pursued. Sin, though it is ineffaceable, calls for no despair, but for efforts more energetic than before. Repentance is still as valid as ever; but it is valid to secure the future, not to obliterate the past.
The moral to be drawn from these reflections is this: – God has placed the lot of man – not, perhaps, altogether of the individual, but certainly of the race – in his own hands, by surrounding him with laws, on knowledge of which, and on conformity to which, his well-being depends. The study of these, and the principle of obedience to them, forms, therefore, the great aim of education, both of men and nations. They must be taught: –
1. The physical laws, on which God has made health to depend.
2. The moral laws, on which He has made happiness to depend.
3. The intellectual laws, on which He has made knowledge to depend.
4. The social and political laws, on which He has made national prosperity to depend.
5. The economic laws, on which He has made wealth to depend.
A true comprehension of all these, and of their unexceptional and unalterable nature, would ultimately rescue mankind from all their vice and nearly all their suffering, save casualties and sorrows.
Mr Greg also shows that Christianity teaches an ascetic and depreciating view of life, incompatible with that energetic devotion to the improvement of our races, and with that delight in the innocent adornment of our existence in this world, which are essential to a noble and well-balanced soul.
In the concluding chapter we have the author’s reflections on ‘the great enigma – the question of man’s future existence’. He applies himself, evidently with his utmost strength, to prove the invalidity and even futility of a conclusion which, after all, he himself holds. He labours to make clear that the belief in a future state is not demanded by any process of our intellect or any tendency of our moral nature, in order that he may fall back with the greater confidence on the assertion of his belief in it as an intuition on a par with our belief in the reality of an external world.
We have endeavoured to give our readers a faithful idea of Mr Greg’s work. Though far from setting our seal to all his opinions, we think that The Creed of Christendom sets forth very powerfully much truth of which society is in urgent need, while it opens to us an acquaintance with an individual mind possessing a strong moral and intellectual charm.
The deservedly respectful reception of Mr Greg’s work by the periodical press, compared with that given twelve years ago to a work of kindred character – Hennell’s Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity8 – is no slight indication of advancement, either in plain-speaking or in liberality of religious views. Though too distinct in their method, and to a considerable extent in their matter, for one to be regarded as superseding the other, both these works have the same object, to ascertain how far the popular idea of Christianity will sustain the test of impartial criticism; they are alike animated by a spirit of candour and reverence, and they have substantially the same result. Hennell, it is true, holds that Jesus shared the common theocratic hope of his nation, and thinks there is strong evidence that, at the commencement of his career, he expected the Divine attestation to his Messiahship to be given in such a general adhesion of the people to his cause as would enable him to free his nation from the Roman yoke by insurrection, and effect the political as well as the spiritual regeneration of Israel. He regards the character of Jesus as less exceptional than it appears under Mr Greg’s view; but he estimates very highly the power and beauty of his nature and the value of his moral teaching. The Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity is evidently the production of a mind which has brought to the independent study of the New Testament the rare combination of analytic acumen with breadth of conception. Its merit was at once recognized in Germany, where it was speedily translated. While in our own country it was welcomed by many distinguished minds, and has had an extensive, though latent, influence in promoting the intelligent study of the Christian Scriptures. That Mr Greg has found it a valuable aid is not only evidenced in his text, but avowed by frequent references in his notes, though, doubtless through a temporary forgetfulness, he speaks in his preface as if he had no predecessor among laymen in the path of free but reverent inquiry into the claims of Christianity.
Nevertheless, when Hennell’s work first appeared, the Reviews dared not acknowledge the merit which it was privately admitted to possess, and four years after the appearance of the second edition, it received, from a periodical which has recently bestowed elaborate praise on The Creed of Christendom,9 a rather contemptuous critique, the object of which was, obviously, to put down the book by no fairer means than that of presenting details, adduced by Hennell merely in the light of cumulative evidence, as if they formed the sole basis of his argument.
In this annus mirabilis of 1851, however, our reviewers have attained a higher standard of courage and fairness than could be ascribed to them in 1838, or even in 1845. ‘La terre tourne,’ says Pascal, ‘malgré qu’on le nie; et vous aussi, mes révérends pères, vous tournez avec elle’ – ‘The earth turns in spite of all denials; and you also, my reverend fathers, turn with it.’10