Jesus; and of a perception that to attempt to enforce a belief in them, on the part of the rising generation, will be either to alienate from the acceptance of those teachings many of the most cultured and most earnest young people of our time, or to reduce their minds to that state of unreasoning subservience to authority which finds its only logical basis in the Roman Catholic Church. And, moreover, I observe it to be among those, in various religious denominations, who are converging to the conclusion that the "authority" of Christianity most surely consists in the direct appeal it makes to the hearts and consciences of mankind, who most fully recognize in the life, teaching, and death of Christ, that manifestation of the Divine (ὰπανγασμα τῆς δόξης καὶ χαρακτὴρ τὴς νποστάσεως αντον[1]) which constitutes him their Master and Lord, and who most earnestly and constantly aim to fashion their own lives on the model of his—that there is the greatest readiness to admit that the records of that life are tinged by the prepossessions, and subject to the inaccuracies, to which all human testimony is liable.
It was nobly said thirty years ago[2] (I believe by Francis Newman) that "every fresh advance of certain knowledge apparently sweeps off a portion of (so-called) religious belief, but only to leave the true religious element more and more pure; and in proportion to its purity will he its influence for good, and for good only;" and that, "little as many are aware of it, faithlessness is often betrayed in the struggle to retain in the region of faith that which is already passing into the region of science, for it implies doubt of the value of truth." Thoroughly sympathizing with this view—in no spirit of hostility to what is commonly regarded as revealed truth—but with a desire to promote the discriminating search for what really constitutes revealed truth, I offer the following suggestions, arising out of the special studies which have occupied a large part of my life, to the consideration of such as may deem them worthy of attention.
That the whole tendency of recent scientific inquiry has been to strengthen the notion of "continuity" as opposed to "cataclysms" and "interruptions," and to substitute the idea of progressive "evolution" for that of "special creations," cannot but be obvious to every one who is familiar with the progress of inquiry in astronomy, physical geology, paleontology, and biology. But the scientific theist who regards the so-called "laws of Nature" as nothing else than man's expressions of so much of the divine order as it lies within his power to discern, and who looks at the uninterruptedness of this
- ↑ "The brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person."
- ↑ Prospective Review, vol. i., p. 53.
in the divine mind—as typified by the well-known illustration supplied by Mr. Babbage from his calculating-machine. But this obviously puts altogether on one side the notion of miracles as extraordinary interpositions, involving a more direct personal agency than the ordinary uniformity.
