in our time. They represent, so to speak, the beat of the wave, where it touches the strong tide still running in favour of religion. But nothing appears more hopeless than to mix the two currents, to abandon the supernatural basis of religion, and yet to hold to religion in any sense in which it has hitherto been heldin which it has been to men a redeeming and controlling influence. The idea of the Supernatural has no doubt been degraded by popular religion, and miracles must be subjects of open criticism, like all other traditions of the past. But to repel a supernatural Order altogether, or to ignore any sphere of being beyond that of science or natural experience, leaves certainly no room for any form of the Christian religion, however vague and undogmatic. If there is no God as hitherto conceived, then religion as hitherto understood must disappear. We may substitute what we call religion, just as these writers speak of a Power they call God. But no arguments of language can identify "a religion of nature" with Christianity. The remaining essays are so essentially cognate that they fitly find a place in the same volume, although not so intimately connected with the main line of thought. The study of Kant appeared little more than a year ago in the Edinburgh Review'; and I have to express my special acknowledgments to Messrs Longman for permission to reprint it, as well as the majority of the other papers which appeared at intervals in the same review. The essay on the "Kantian Revival," 1 The paper on the "Author of "Thorndale'" appeared in the 'Contem as well as that on Professor Ferrier's Philosophy, carries the discussion of the subject back to the region of first principles, where it must always end. Even metaphysic can only be assailed by metaphysic, and the idea that modern any more than ancient empiricism can bar this door is a pretence which materialistic writers themselves are the first to contradict. The very pro blems of science cannot be exhausted in terms of matter, and all the deepest life of humanity roots itself in the Unseen. I had intended to close the papers by a somewhat elaborate analysis of Dr Newman's 'Grammar of Assent,'1 with the view of showing how untenable, as it appears to me, is the principle of religious certitude laid down in that work, as an escape from the assaults of the modern spirit of doubt. But the length to which the essays already mentioned have extended has prevented me including this paper; and the series is perhaps more compact in spirit, however desultory otherwise, without this addition. I need not say how greatly I admire with all others the fine spiritual genius and tender insight and faithfulness of the Parochial Sermons'; but to Dr Newman as a Christian thinker, I cannot claim to be in any degree indebted. I am, indeed, strongly repelled by both his logical and historical methods. An essential irrationality seems to me to underlie his whole temporary Review'; that on "Modern Scientific Materialism" in Blackwood's Magazine.' But the others, with the exception of the two mostly written afresh, were published in the Edinburgh Review.' 1 See Edinburgh Review, October 1870. ་ 6 argument in the Grammar of Assent,' just as an essential perversity of fact underlies all his historical treatment of Arianism in the fourth century. And an irrational religion, in a time like ours, is still less possible than a mere religion of nature. It is the withdrawal of men like Dr Newman and others from the open fields of reason and history-where the true battle of religion can alone be fought which has given to the naturalistic schools of our time their temporary triumph. Traditionalismor the acceptance of religious truth without reason— goes well with empiricism, and since the days of Hume they have even had something of respect for one another. But it is a respect which is not creditable to religion, and by which religion always suffers in the end. I am myself but a poor fighter in these open fields, to which the Anglican Church, from the days of Hooker to those of Dean Milman, Bishop Thirlwall, and Dean Stanley, has contributed so many noble champions. But these Essays may be useful to some minds to whom religion is a great subject affecting all relations of human wellbeing, and no mere affair of Churches or sects. They put plainly, I think, the 1 Dr Ward, whose Essays On the Philosophy of Theism' have just appeared as these papers are passing through the press, is a notable exception in the Roman Catholic Church; and there is another name not mentioned by me otherwise, which it would be unpardonable to omit -that of Dr James Martineau. There is no Christian thinker of our time who has seen with a clearer eye the essential questions between modern empiricism and spiritual philosophy, or who has more felicitously and powerfully, in many essays, maintained the cause of Christian theism. points at issue between Christianity and Naturalism; and, in such a contention, to see where the stress really lies may help to settle it. It is in this hope at least I have collected the Essays, and ventured thus briefly to trace the line of thought which connects them and gives them any value. ST ANDREWS, April 1884. |