virulent dissolution in the biting acids of Voltairism." * Even the moral character of the Divine Founder of Christianity does not escape his acrid criticism. Thus does he take to task the late Mr. Mill for the tribute paid by that philosopher to the stainless perfection of Christ : We may, "This unconditional exaltation of the Christ of the Gospels as "the pattern of perfection for humanity," as "the ideal representative and guide," and so forth, can only be possible to such a moralist as Mr. Mill was, or as any enlightened person of our day must be, by means of a process of selection and arbitrary rejection. no doubt—and many of us do-construct an ideal figure out of the sayings, the life, and the character of the great figure of the Gospels. Mr. Mill's panegyric should remind us that we do this only on condition of shutting our eyes to about one-half of the portraits as drawn in the gospels. I mean that not merely are some essential elements of the highest morality omitted, but that there are positive injunctions and positive traits recorded which must detract in the highest degree from the justice of an unqualified eulogium. Mr. Mill allows in one place that the noble moralities of Christ are "mixed with some poetical exaggerations, and some maxims of which it is difficult to ascertain the precise object." This is far too moderate an account of the matter. There are sayings morally objectionable and superstitious in the highest degree, and we have no more right arbitrarily to shift the discredit of these on to the shoulders of the disciples or narrators than we have to deny to them all possibility of credit for what is admirable. This, however, is a side of the argument which it would perhaps do more harm than good to press. Even an excessive admiration for a benign and nobly pitiful character is so attractive and so wholesome, that one can have scanty satisfaction in searching for defective traits. That Mr. Mill should have committed himself to a position which calls for this deprecatory withdrawal from the critic, is one of the puzzles and perplexities of the book. It is astonishing that he *Voltaire, p. 220. should not have seen that his conception of the character of the Prophet of Nazareth was moulded in obedience to his own subjective requirement in the way of ethical beauty, and could only be made to correspond with the objective picture in the Gospel record by means of an arbitrary suppression of some of the most remarkable sayings and striking traits. It is a process in fashion. Human experience has widened; many narrow superstitions have dropped off; the notion of right and duty has been impregnated with new ingredients; the ideal has changed. Then we proceed to the anachronism of fastening the new ideal on our favourite figures of antique days, without regard either to obvious historic conditions or to the plain and unmistakable letter of the antique record. 'One of the hardest burdens,' as Mr. Mill says,. laid upon the other good influences of human nature has been that of improving religion itself.' Let us carefully abstain, then, from falsifying the history of the development of human nature by imputing, either to the religions of the past, or to their founders, perfections of which it is historically impossible that either one or the other should have been possessed. Let us not assume that Christ was so infinitely over the heads of his reporters,' to use Mr. Arnold's phrase, and then proceed to construct an arbitrary anthology of sayings which we choose to accept as Christ's on the strength of this assumption. It were surely more consonant with intelligence of method to content ourselves with tracing in Christ, as in the two or three other great teachers of the world, who are not beneath him in psychagogic efficacy, such words and traits as touch our spiritual sense and fit in with the later and more mature perceptions of the modern time. And why should we not do this without fretting against discords in act or speech that were only to be expected from the conditions; and still more, without straining our own intelligence, and coercing the record into yielding us a picture of transcendent and impossible faultlessness?"* These extracts will perhaps be sufficient to exhibit the real nature of the conflict between the Gospel of the first century and the Gospel of the eighteenth, * Fortnightly Review, vol. xxiii. p. 120. III.] TWO MOMENTOUS QUESTIONS. between Christianity and the Revolution. 79 Mr. Morley tersely sums the matter up: "Those who agree with the present writer, positively, absolutely, and without reserve, reject as false the whole system of objective propositions which make up the popular belief of the day, in one and all of its theological expressions." * Let us now sit at his feet awhile to learn some particulars of the new religion which he so fervently preaches, and see what he has to tell us of its faith and morals. Mr. Morley justly observes that "at the bottom of all the great discussions of modern society lie the two momentous questions: first, whether there is a God, and secondly, whether the soul is immortal."+ To both these questions the new gospel gives a negative answer. I do not mean to say that positive Atheism is of faith in the Revolutionary religion. Mr. Morley himself, whose orthodoxy is, I suppose, beyond question, does not profess it in express terms, although he manifests much admiration for its professors, as being, at all events, much more sensible than Theists. His own opinion seems to be that the existence of God is "an insoluble question." § *Compromise, p. 160. "The Atheists Ibid. p. 128. were, in effect, the teachers of public spirit and beneficence" (Diderot, vol. ii. p. 190). In vol. i. of this work, p. 130, he tells us that Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau were the true reformers of the Catholic creed. § Rousseau, vol. i. p. 316. And he has not the least sympathy with "the sentimental juvenilities of children crying for light." He intimates, not obscurely, that if there is any God, He cannot be, as Christianity teaches, Love; nay, that He cannot be benevolent, nor even ethical. Admirable master of language as he is, he appears to be at a loss for words adequate to the expression of his contempt for those fatuous persons who "find joy in meditating on the moral perfections of the omnipotent Being, for whose diversion the dismal panorama of all the evil work done under the sun was bidden to unfold itself, and who sees that it is very good." + And in criticising Mr. Mill, he writes as follows: "It is conceivable that the world may have been created by a Being who is not good, not pitiful, not benevolent, not just; a Being no more entitled to our homage or worship than Francesco Cenci was entitled to the filial piety of his unhappy children. Why not? Morality concerns the conduct and relations of human beings, and of them only. We cannot know, nor indeed does it seem easy to believe, that the principles which cover the facts of social relationship must therefore be adequate to guide or explain the motions of a Demiurgus, holding the universal ordering in the hollow of his hand. To insist on rejecting any theory of creation which forbids us to predicate anything of the Creator in terms of morality, seems * Voltaire, p. 69. I suppose the reference is to Lord Tennyson's noble lines: "So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light, Miscellanies, vol. iii. p. 84. III.] THE NEW GOSPEL ANTITHEISTIC. 81 as unphilosophical as to insist on rejecting the evolutionary theory of the origin of the human species on the ground that it robs man of his nobility and dignity. If any one feels bound to praise and worship the Creator he is bound to invest the object of his worship with praiseworthy attributes. But a philosopher is not bound to do anything except to explain the facts." * Mr. Morley's practical conclusion is, that sensible men will be content to be what St. Paul calls ἄθεοι ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, "without God in the world," and is thus expressed in a passage of his Rousseau : "Rousseau urged that Voltaire robbed men of their only solace. What Voltaire really did urge was that the solace derived from the attribution of humanity and justice to the Supreme Being, and from the metaphysical account of evil, rests on too narrow a base either to cover the facts, or to be a true solace to any man who thinks and observes. He ought to have gone on, if it had only been possible in those times, to persuade his readers that there is no solace attainable, except that of an energetic fortitude." † The Revolutionary religion, then, is devoid of any Theistic conception. And the place which God holds in the old Gospel is to be filled in the new by Man. The creed of the Revolution is, in point of fact, a kind of Positivism. "The coming modifica-` tion of religion," Mr. Morley tells us, "will undoubtedly rest upon the solidarity of mankind, as Comte said." And in the spirit of that philosopher he would have men "turn back to the history of their own kind, to the long chronicle of its manifold experiences, for an adequate system of life and an *Fortnightly Review, vol. xxiii. p. 122. † Rousseau, vol. i. p. 318. G Miscellanies, vol. iii. p. 50. |