The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-21 00:00:00

WHAT IS THE REVOLUTION?"

(From the Westminster Gazette.)
More than one-half of the controversies which
take place in the world may be traced, it has been
well said, to a misconception of the point at issue.
In a like manner, we believe that more than half
the sympathy which is bestowed in England on the
Revolution arises from ignorance of its purport
and its nature. The Revolution is looked upon by
average Englishmen of the uneducated or half-
educated classes as a struggle for liberty. It is,
indeed, a struggle for liberty, but not for the
liberty which Englishmen admire, but liberty of
quite another sort. It is a struggle for emanci-
pation from the bonds of existing institutions,
political, social, and religious; a craving for the
independence of the human mind, from all control,
intellectual or moral; a revolt against all authority,
human or divine. The Revolution, which begins
by denying the divine origin of society, ends by
disbelieving in the existence of a personal God.
It is needless to refer in evidence of the natural
consequences of such a rebellion against divine
and human authority to the horrid blasphemies of
Voltairianism, or to the anti-social crimes of the
Reign of Terror ; what we wish to examine is : how
far Englishmen of the educated classes, who know
the real character and meaning of the Revolution,
sympathize with the principle which lies at the
bottom of the movement and gives it vitality and
force. Those who really look in their ignorance
upon Garibaldi, Mazzini, and the political and
religious disciples of Voltaire in France, Germany,
and Italy, as upholders of political and religious
truth, we must leave to be awakened by events
which will bring out the impious character of the
Revolution, so that even the intellectually or
morally blind cannot fail to discover its meaning.
But what we have now to deal with is the far
more serious question : How far has the Revolution
intellectually and morally penetrated into the mind
of the intellectual classes in England ?
By the Revolution we understand that radical
change in the European mind as to the relation of
man to God, which in the last century was com-
menced by the English Deists, which culminated
in the Voltairian philosophy that preceded and
caused the great French Revolution, and which
has since been perfected and reduced to system
by the sceptical intellect of Protestant Germany
and the Posivitist Philosophy of France. The
Revolution is not confined to mere political con-
vulsions, however disastrous in their effects ; it
touches upon the foundations of society, upon the
nature and authority of human reason, and upon
the attributes and existence of God. It aims at
building up society anew on modern principles ;
and as these principles are in direct antagonism to
Christianity, it seeks to overthrow Christianity
by attacking the principle of divine faith. For
this purpose, in politics, in morals, in science, and
in religion itself, it substitutes for the authority
of God the authority of human reason. Now,
how far during the lastfifteen or twenty years
German Pantheism, or the philosophy of Comte,
has made itself a home in the English mind, may
be easily seen by studying the character of scien-
tific, religious, and philosophical speculations in
England during that period. A more striking
evidence of the change which has taken place
among the educated classes, is the nature and the
tone of the religious discussions which arc carried
on in the intellectual press. No later than on last
Saturday, the Pall Mall Gazette made very serious
admissions ac to the extent of unbelief. It granted
that the vast majority of the clergy and laity of
the Church of England:accepted their creed as true
without knowing much about it beyond the fact
that it is believed by a very large number of wise
and good men who have had the opportunity of
studying the subject; but this argument, good as

far as it goes, is weakened, the Pall Mall Gazette
argues, by another fact which must no longer be
overlooked, " that a smaller number of men, neither
foolish nor wicked, who have also studied the sub-
ject, are Deists and Atheists." In the hope of pre
serving the existing system of public worship, the
Pall Mall Gazette agrees with Lord Lyttelton as
to the necessity of making modifications in the
creed of the national Church, but scouts the
modifications proposed by Lord Lyttelton, such as
the expunging of the damnatory clauses from the
Athanasian Creed, the alteration of the " too scho-
lastic language " of the articles, the doctrine of
baptismal regeneration, and other matters as utterly
insufficient. This writer recommends a modifica-
tion of a far deeper character, such as would re-
concile, not dissenters merely, but unbelieving and
worldly people. " Whoever undertakes this great
subject," he says, " And there is certainly not a
moment to be lost in grappling with it—will do no
good unless ho sets out with a steady:apprehen-
sion of the fact that neither the fundamental
doctrines of Christianity, nor the fundamental
doctrines of natural religion, can be regarded as
placed beyond contro'rersy. These doctrines have
been and are deliberately denied and asserted to
be either false or else mere guesses by men who
have studied the question in good faith. However
the fact may be regarded, it is one which can hardly
be denied. Its importance and extent, and the
way of dealing with it, are the only subjects on
which any question can be raised."

The Pall Mall Gazette further argues, with equal
force and justness, against the dishonesty of up-
holding formulas which do not express the real
belief of those who use them, of subscribing to
articles of religion which have to be explained
away, of preserving creeds, which those who recite
them do not believe. Of such dishonesty the
Pall Mull Gazette, writing on a former occasion,
states that several of the bishops of the Pan-
Anglican Synod are notoriously guilty. What is
wanted in the national Church, the writer urges,
is a creed which those who profess can believe to
be true. A limited creed is the only means to
obtain this desirable cud. how limited a creed
would be, such as would be accepted by the intel-
lectual classes, not as convenient but as true, the
Pall Mull Gazette knows better than ourselves ;
but of this, at least, we are sure, that it wound
not possess a remnant of primitive Christianity--
for without Christ there is no Christianity.
The work which has now to be done in Eng-
land, according to the opinion of writers who pass
for the representatives of English thought, is to
take up the dropped threads in the controversies
of the English Deists of the last century—dropped
but not broken, as has been too carelessly assumed
by the powerful weapons of such writers as Butler,
Berkeley, Warburton, Leland, and others—at :the
precise point at which these controversies were
interrupted by the excesses of the French Revolu-
tion, and the fears which it engendered in
England, aided by the popular enthusiasm excited
by the Methodists. But now it seems to the writer
in the Pall Mall Gazette that the necessity is come
to revert to the Deists of the last century ; but by
so doing, does the writer mean to blot out all that
has happened in the interim—to blot out the
philosophical refutations of the errors of Deism, as
well as the historical record of fearful moral re-
sults flowing from those errors ?
This attempt, on the part of the writer in the
Pall Mall Gazette, to give the go-by to the great
apologists of Christianity both in Catholic Germany,
France, and England, as well as to the terrible ex-
perience of the practical consequences of irreligion,
amounts to an acknowledgment that the intellectual
and moral victory, since the first violent outbreak
of Deism in the last century, has been on the side
of Christianity. We would only ask the Pall Mall
Gazette, in passing, whether it is fair to Christi-
anity to pass over such eminent defenders of
Christian faith as France alone has produced in
such men as Abbe Bergier, the Abbe Guenee, M.
de Bonald, and M. de Maistre, not to speak of the
conferences of Pere Lacordaire, or of that work in
defence of Christianity by the lawyer M. Nicolas.
But this subject is too large to be treatedof paren-
thetically, and we must defer its consideration for a
future occasion. For it is our present purpose not
so much to comment on the intellectual line which
the Pall Mall Gazette wishes to be taken up
against the positive truths of Christianity as to use
its evidence as a testimony to the growth of unbe-
lief in England at the present moment. This
unbelief is the first and most dangerous form of the
Revolution, for when Christianity is once com-
pletely overthrown society is in the most imminent
danger either of lapsing back into Paganism or of
falling into anarchy. In either case the social, in-
tellectual, and religious advantages of Christian
civilization would be lost. What terrible changes
a revived intellectual Paganism would bring about
in modern society, what intellectual darkness, what
moral corruption none can foretell. One thing is
certain, that it would only be able to interpose for
a time between anarchy and the dissolution of
society which is sure to follow the overthrow of
Christianity in a nation which was once Christian.
The Pall Mall Gazette is so impressed with the
character of the tremendous controversies in ques-
tion as to draw out the:inevitable alternative which
awaits the nation, should the friends of the Church
of England treat infidels and sceptics simply as
enemies, and say to them :

" We have nothing in common ; we ;have not
even common ground enough for the purposes of
discussion. When you ask us to reconsider and
do justice to the various arguments which have
been adduced against the truth of the facts stated
in the Apostles' Creed, and against the being and
attributes of God, you ask us to give up our whole
case, to commit a deadly sin, and to cease ipso
facto to have any intelligible standing ground at
all upon which we can justify the position which
we hold. We, the Christian Church, are the am-
bassadors of God. Take our message or leave it,
but when you ask us to consider calmly the ques-
tion whether it is a true message, and indeed the
question whether there is a God capable of giving
it, you ask us to proclaim ourselves cheats, and to
stultify our fundamental position. This, no doubt,
is perfectly clear and consistent, but it is open to
the fatal practical objection that the people who
really rest upon it are rapidly diminishing in num-
ber, and far more rapidly in intellectual power.
• • . . If the clergy of the Church of England,"
it continues, " elect to stand upon that ground, it
needs no ghost to foretell the result. The world
at large will more or less decorously shru gtheir
shoulders, the connection between Church and
State will gradually be dissolved, the Protestant
Episcopal Church will become a merely influential
sect like other sects, and one more great step will
have been made towards the polite shelving of all
existing religions by civil society."
The shelving of all existing religions by civil
society is the result which this writer in the Pull
Mall Gazette foresees from resistance to the
demands of infidels and sceptics. It is a melan-
choly conclusion to arrive at on the part of a writer
who is evidently too honest and too sincere a
thinker to put up with the outward semblance of a
faith which has lost all hold upon his mind. At the
same time it is no less a painful exhibition of the
lengths to which infidelity has spread among the
intellectual classes ; for no writer would publicly
exhibit such open unbelief unless he knew that large
numbers of men were in a like position themselves
and able to sympathize with his views. From writ-
ings such as these, and they arc to be found to no
inconsiderable extent in the periodical literature of
the day, we arc able too truly to detect the pre-
sence of the Revolution in England in its first and
most subtle form. When such causes are at work
in society, permeating with such rapidity the intel-
lect of the country, it would be sheer folly to
shut our eyes to the inevitable consequences.

C? 1

None can know whence the evil will Brat break
ont, what form it may tako, but all must feel mis-
,givings as to the stability of institutions
Tolitical, or social, in a society where such witusts
as we have enumerated are at work.