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JutfE 8, 1850.] Qtyt 3Lt&$tV+ ?57
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Newman's Phases Of Faith. Phases Of Fait...
" After I had turned the matter over often , and had become accustomed to the thought , this single instance at length had great force to give boldness to my mind ¦ within a very narrow range . I asked whether , if the chapter were now proved to be spurious , that would save the infallibility of the Bible . The reply was : not of the Bible as it is ; but only of ihe Bible when cleared of that and of all other spurious additions . If by independent methods , such as an examination of manuscripts , the spuriousness of the chapter could now be shown , this would verify the faculty of criticism which has already objected to its contents : thus it would justly encourage us to apply similar criticism to other passages . "
But what can human reason say to a system , which must be maintained only upon the understanding Jiat no one is to examine it ? It is daily becoming clearer that the least examination of the Scriptures by reason must end in the rejection of their authority ; but men are marvellously ingenious in eluding the consequences of their own logic and in making compromises between their traditional and acquired notions ; thus we see Dr . Arnold lightly stepping over the difficulty which startled Mr . Newman : —
" A new stimulus was after this given to my mind by two short conversations with the late excellent Dr . Arnold , at Rugby . I hati become aware of the difficulties encountered by physiologists in believing the whole human race to have proceeded in about 6000 years from a single Adam and Eve ; and that the longevity ( not miraculous , but ordinary ) attributed to the patriarchs ¦ was another stumbling-block . The geological difficulties of the Mosaic cosmogony were also at that time exciting much attention . To my surprise , Dr . Arnold treated all these questions as matters of indifference to religion : and did not hesitate to say , that the account of Noah ' s deluge was evidently mythical , and the history of Joseph a beautiful poem . ' I was staggered at this . If all were
not descended from Adam , what became of St . Paul s parallel between the first and second Adam , and the doctrine of Headship and Atonement founded on it ? If ihe world was not made in six days , how could we defend the Fourth Commandment as true , though said to have been written in stone by the very finger of God ? If Noah's deluge was a legend , we should at least have , to admit that Peter did not know this : what too would be said of Christ ' s allusion to it ? I was unable to admit Dr . Arnold ' s views ; but to see a vigorous mind , deeply imbued with Christian devoutness , so convinced , both reassured me that I need not fear moral mischiefs irom free inquiry , and indeed laid that inquiry upon me as a duty . "
Now , we suppose few of our readers will doubt that Dr . Arnold was correct in his belief that such things were perfectly indifferent to religion , for religion has foundations deeper and broader than any cosmological or physiological matters recorded in the Bible ; but no one can look the question steadily in the face and say that these matters arc indifferent to Christianity in the clerical and proper sense of that misused term : and Dr . Arnold , as a Christian minister ,
was bound to have looked this question steadily in the face as Mr . Newman did . Dr . Arnold raises up religion against Christianity—unconsciously we admit , but he does it nevertheless—because Christianity as a system is dependent for its existence upon its scriptural testimonies ; as a sentiment , as a doctrine , as a moral inspiration , it may , indeed , regard all scriptural evidence as unimportant , but therein it in
nowise differs from the doctrine of modern Spiritualism , which also calls itself Christianity . Dr . Vaughan ' s admirable pamphlet on Letter and Spirit , shows in the distinctest manner , that if you destroy the letter of Christianity , you destroy its special divinity , and make it no more than one of the many religions of mankind . He would by no means accept Dr . Arnold ' s evasion of the difficulty . But then he is consistent in his orthodoxy ; Dr . Arnold was not .
The notion that infallibility could not be predicated of the Scriptures , gained clearer and clearer consistency in Mr . Newman ' s mind : — " A fresh strain fell on the Scriptural infallibility in contemplating the origin of death . Geologists assured us that death went on in the animal creation many ages before the existence of man . The rocks formed of the shells of animals , testify that death is a phenomenon thousands of thousand years old : to refer the death of Miimals to the sin of Adam and live is evidently impossible . Yet if not , the analogies of the human to the brute form make it scarcrly credible that man ' s body can ever have been intended for immortality . Nay , when
we consider the conditions of birth and growth to which it is subject , the wear and tear ess ¦•• xitinl to life , the new generations intended to succeed and supplant the old , — so soon as the qiustiun is proposed as one of physiology , the leply is inevitable that death is no accident introduced by the perverse will of our first parents , nor any way connected with man ' s sinfulness : seeing that animals who are not sinful are liable to death , which is nothing but a riecessaty result of the conditions ot mutual lift ? . On the contrary , St . Paul rests most important conclusions on tho fact , that one man Adam by personal sin brought death upon all his posterity . If this was a fundamental error , religious doctrine also is shaken . " In various attempts at compromise , —6 uch as
conceding the Scriptural fallibility in human science , but maintaining its spiritual perfection , —I always found the division impracticable . At last it pressed on me , that if I admitted morals to rest on an independent basis , it was dishonest to shut my eyes to any apparent collisions of morality with the Scriptures . A very notorious and decisive instance is that of Jael . Sisera , when beaten in battle , fled to the tent of his friend Heber , and was there warmly welcomed by Jael , Heber ' s wife . After she had refreshed him with food , and lulled him to sleep , she killed him by driving a nail into his temples ; and for this deed ( which now-a-days would be called a perfidious
murder ) the prophetess Deborah , in an inspired psalm , pronounces Jael to be 'blessed above women , ' and glorifies her act by an elaborate description of its atrocity . As soon as I felt that I was bound to pass a moral judgment on this , I saw that as regards the Old Testament the battle was already lost . Many other tilings , indeed , instantly rose in full power upon me ; especially the command to Abraham to slay his son . Paul and James agree in extolling his obedience as a first-rate fruit of faith : yet if the voice of morality is allowed to be heard , Abraham was ( in heart and intentian , though not in actual performance ) not less guilty than those who sacrificed their children to Moloch .
" Thus at length it appeared , that I must choose between two courses . I must either blind ray moral sentiment , my powers of criticism , and my scientific knowledge ( such as they were ) , in order to accept the Scripture entire ; or I must encounter the problem , however arduous , of adjusting the relative claims of human knowledge and divine revelation . As to the former method , to name it was to condemn it ; for it would put every system of Paganism on a par with Christianity . If one system of religion may claim that we blind our hearts and eyes in its favour , so may another ; and there is precisely the same reason for becoming a Hindoo in
religion as a Christian . We cannot be both ; therefore the principle is demonstrably absurd . It is also , of course , morally horrible , and opposed to countless passages of the Scriptures themselves . Nor can the argument be evaded by talking of external evidences ; for these also are confessedly moral evidences , to be judged of by our moral faculties . Nay , according to all Christian advocates , they are God's test of our moral temper . To allege , therefore , that our moral faculties are not to judge , is to annihilate the evidences for Christianity . Thus finally I was lodged in three inevitable conclusions : —
" 1 . The moral and intellectual powers of man must be acknowledged as having a right and duty to criticise the contents of the Scripture . " 2 . When so exerted , they condemn portions of the Scripture as erroneous and immoral . " 3 . The ' assumed infallibility of the entire Scripture is a proved falsity , not merely as to physiology , and other scientific matters , but also as to morals ; and it remains for further inquiry , how to discriminate the trustworthy from the untrustworthy witnin the limits of the . Bible itself . " Having landed on such a position , he began to look around him and to recur to the prophecies of his old friends , who had said even at Oxford , " You will
become a Saeinian , " and later on , ' You will become an infidel . " That is the threat with which inquiry is too often checked . Do not examine , or you will become an infidel ! Believe , believe blindly , believe devoutly , believe thoroughly , do not believe at all but only assent , and it shall be well with you : you remain within the bosom of your Mother Church , and if you have a fine voice , a black whisker , sound views of the middleverb , and " powerful connections , " your career is secured ; a good " living " ( expressive word !) awaits you , the parish bows to you , the ignorant receive what you say with uninquiring
reverence , the free-thinking abstain in your presence from uttering heresies , and the gay careless men of the world episcopali / e their manner and conversation out of respect for your cloth . That is the programme of unhesitating belief . Examine , and you are lost . Think for yourself , take up with the preposterous notion that you have a soul , and that the solemn dictates of your soul insist upon your assenting only on conviction , and receiving conviction only from your own investigation , then your friends will threaten you with infidelity , and will exasperate you into what they threaten : —
" But the animus of such prophecies had always made me indignant , and I could not admit that there was any merit in sufh clearsightedness . What ? ( used I to say : ) will you shrink from truth , lest it load to error ? if fallowing truth must bring us to Socinianism , let u « by all means , become Socinians , or anything else . Surely we do not love our doctrines more than the truth , but because they are the truth ; " for thn truth ' s sake , which dwelleth in them . " Are we not exhorted to " prove all things , and hold fast that which is good ?"—But to my surprise , I generally found that this ( to me so convincing )
argument for feeling no alarm , only caused more and more alarm , and gloomier omens concerning me . On considering nil 1 his in leisurely retrospect , I began painfully to doubt , whether after all there is much love of truth oven among those who have an undeniable strength of religious feeling . I questioned with myself , whether love of truth is not a virtue demanding a robust mental cultivation ; whether mathematical or other abstract studies may not be practically needed for it ? But no ; for how then could it exist in some feminine natures ? how in rude and unphilosonhioal times ? On the
whole , I rather concluded , that there is in nearly all English education a positive repressing of a young person ' s truthfulness ; for I could distinctly see , that in my own case there was always need of defying authority and public opinion—nor to speak of more serious sacrificesif I was to follow truth . All society seemed so to hate novelties of thought , as to prefer the chances of error in the old . —Of course ! % yhy how could it be otherwise , while Test Articles were maintained ? "Yet , surely , if God is truth , none sincerely aspire to him who dread to lose their present opinions in exchange for others truer . —I had not then read a sentence of Coleridge , which is to this effect : ' If any one begins by loving
Christianity more than the truth , he will proceed to love his Church more than Christianity , and will end by loving his own opinions better than either . ' A dim conception of this was in my mind ; and I saw that the genuine love of God was essentially connected with loving truth as truth , and not truth as pur own accustomed thought , truth as our old prejudice ; and that the real saint can never be afraid to let God teach him , one lesson , more , or nnteach him one more error . Then I rejoiced to feel how right and sound had been our principle , that no creed can possibly be used as the touchstone of
spirituality : for man morally excels man , as far as creeds are concerned , not by assenting to true propositions , but by loving them because they are discerned to be true , and by possessing a faculty of discernment sharpened by the love of truth . Such are God ' s true apostles , differing enormously in attainment and elevation , but all born to ascend . For these to quarrel between themselves , because they do not agree in opinions , is monstrous . Sentiment surely , not opinion , is the bond of the Spirit ; and as the love of God , so the love of truth is a high and sacred sentiment , in comparison to which our creeds are
mean . " Mr . Newman ' s views were not only enlarged on this point , but also on another , and to him more personal and immediate point . He learnt to regret that error of his youth which made him condemn others on account of their creed , whom he had " virtually despised because they were not evangelical . " Nay » more : that elder brother , so long severed from him by religious differences , now rose up before his conscience as a reproach . ** Now God had taught me more largeness by bitter sorrow , toorking the peaceable fruit of righteousness . " He wrote to his brother a letter of contrition , and the painful severance was removed : they became brothers once more .
He rejected the infallibility of the Scriptures , did he also reject the inspiration ? By no means . He believed the writers to have been inspired , but that inasmuch as they were human and ignorant , their ignorance necessarily coexisted with the inspiration . " Those who believe that the Apostles might err in human science need not the less revere their moral
and spiritual wisdom . " This is substantially the same as the notion now adopted by the orthodox to elude the difficulties of geology , astronomy , physiologj ' , & c . It was first promulgated by Giordano Bruno in the fourth dialogue of La Cena dele Ceneri , and is certainly very ingenious , and disposes of some of the difficulties ; but there are others it does not touch . Thus : —
" About this-time the great phenomenon of these three gospels , —the casting out of devils , —pressed forcibly on my attention . I now dared to look full into ihe facts , and saw that the disorders described were perfectly similar to epilepsy , mania , catalepsy , and other known maladies . Nay , ihe deaf , the dumb , the hunchbacked , are spoken of as devil-ridden . I further knew that such diseases are still ascribed to evil genii in Mussulman countries : nay , a vicious horse is believed by the Arabs to be majnun , possessed by a Jin or Genie . Devils also
are cast out in Abyssinia to this day . Having fallen in with Farmer's Treatise on the Demoniacs , ' I carefully studied it ; and found it to prove unanswerably , that a belief in demoniacal possessions is a superstition not more respectable than that of witchcraft . But Farmer did not at all convince me that the three Evangelists do not share the vulgar error . Nay , the instant we believe that the imagined possessions were only various forms of disease , we are forced to draw conclusions of the utmost moment , most damaging to the credit of the narrators .
" Clearly , they are then convicted of mistating facts , under the influence of superstitious credulity . They represent demoniacs as having a supernatural acquaintance with Jesus , which , it now becomes manifest , they cannot have had . The devils cast out of two demoniacs ( or one ) are said to have entered into a herd of swine . This must have been a credulous fiction . Indeed , the easting out of devils is so very prominent a part of the miraculous agency ascribed to Jesus , as at first sight to impair our faith in his miracles altogether .
• ' I , however , took refuge in the consideration , that when Jesus wrouuiht one great miracle , popular credulity would inevitably nwignify itinto ten ; hence the discovery of foolish exaggerations is no disproof of a real miraculous agency : nay , perhaps the contrary . Are they not a Rort of false halo roun > l a disk of glory , —a halo so congenial lo hunvtn nature , that the absence of it mi ^ ht be even wielded as an objection ? Moreover John tells of no demoniacs : does not this show his freedom from .
popular excitement ? Observe the great miracles narrated by John , —the blind man , —and Lazurus , —how different in kind from those on demoniacs ! how incapable of having been mistaken ! how convincing ; His statements cannot be explained away : their whole tone moreover is peculiar . On the contrary , the three first
Jutfe 8, 1850.] Qtyt 3lt&$Tv+ ?57
JutfE 8 , 1850 . ] Qtyt 3 Lt & $ tV + ? 57
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 8, 1850, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08061850/page/17/
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