The native Virginian. [volume] (Orange Court House, Va.) 1867-187?, 1869-09-10
MODERN FAITH.

mOOG1N hA1n.
An Extract from The Contemporary
Review.
1t has been muth the fashion with
the intense school OF writer's, headed
by Mr.. Carlyle, to disparage the eigh-
teenth century; to denounce its want
Of faith; to call it mechanical, prosiac,
atheistic; and to bewail the faithless
condition in which LiT has left us of a
younger time.
s"rhe sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's
shore
Lay like the folds of bright girdle furled;
but now only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
OF the night-wind down the vast edges
drear
And naked shingles of the worldp
This is MIR. Matthew Arnold's very
beautiful poetic version of what Mr..
Carlyle has been telling us in vehement
prose for twenty years. But, with the
deference due TO genius so powerful as
Mr.. Carlyle's and so refined as Mr..
Arnold's, it may be maintained that
vehemence and intensity are neither
the sole nor the necessary, neither the
highest nor the most characteristic,
concomitantS of true faith. 1t would
now be generally admitted by thought
ful men that Mr.. Carlyle's vehemence
has blinded him to important aspects of
truth, to important though unobtrusive
facts. The softer touches in nature S
landscapes, the nalf-lights, the suggest
ed forms. the reserve, the qualification
the shade, are apt to escape his impa-
tient glance. He will hear of no faith
which has companionship with doubt.
He breaks the bruised reed and quench-
es the smoking flax. Reflection, how
ever, will teach us that faith, in order
to he sincere, need not be intense, and
that i'll a time of inquiry, speculation
culture, it can hardly be an intelligent
faith unless it has known something of
doubt. Mental composure, deliberate
weighing ofevldence, distinct conscious
ness of difficulties on both sides, calm
decision in favor OF that side which ap-
pears to be on the whole best support
ed, are not incompatible with strong
faith. Candid faith, tolerant faith,
sympathetic faith, need not be weak
faith; fanatical faith, superstitious faith
blind faith, is not necessarily the best
faith. In the eighteenth century
truths and errors, fervently believed
and precipltately acted on in preceding
times, were alike subjected to careful
examination. Contemplating the re-
suit, we are astonished to find how
much we owe to the q quiet, circumspect
unimpassloned age which went imme-
diately before our own. When we
compare the knowledge practically re-
allied by the most advanced peoples oil
Europe at the close of tile two jangling,
warning centuries, when the theolO-
gians had it all their own way, with
that which had worked itself into the
habitudes of men in the early part OF
the present century, our enthusiasm
for the centuries of faith is sure to be
tempered, our contempt for the century
OF reflection is likely to be checked
Poring over their Bible with breathless
earnestness, the theologiaEs of the six
teenth and seventeenth centuries did
not happen to discover in it the doc
trine that Christians are,not to kill men
for being defec ctive Christians, or for re-
fusing to be Christians at all. They
did not make out from it that old wo-
men, called witches, were not to be
burned alive. They seem scarcely to
have had an idea that gentleness, kind
ness, the infinite of compassion and oi
tenderness, were of the essence of the
Gospel of Christ. Worahipplng theil
graphe theopneustoS, celebrating from il
system after system OF dogmatic theol-
ogy, they seem hardly to have observ-
ed in the New Testament tnat which
for us CLEANS from its whole surface
like DEVELOPS or a meadow at sunrise.
The leaders of opinion in the eighteenth
century forced upon the attention oi
theologians other writings, also Divine;
characters inscribed by God on the
golden tablets of the human heart, in
stincts OF mercy and tenderness, III
stincts of justice and 7eracity, much
overlooked in systems of theology, but
which, when compared with the words
of Christ, shine out in radiant unison
with them; laws, moreover, written by
God in the pEsy ical world, laws OF
beneflcence and of power, with which
no witch or devil could interfere, and
| which no priest or presbyter was need
ed to protect. The theolog!aLs were
| led to see shat there is more in heaven
and earth than had been dreamed of in
their theology; that the grdphe theopneu-
toS is many leaved as the forest, wide
as the starred azure of God; that truth
| is a beam gathered from many sources
nature, conscience, reason, revelation
focused in the human soul. We, OF
the nineteenth century, familiar with
the idea and accustomed to tie practice
of federation, have difficulty in forming
distinct apprehension of state Of
mind and of society from which both
were absent, and will find it salutary
if somewhat humiliating, thought, that
Christians did not discover them in the
New Testament until told to look fol
7 L. -i,,.ra
ligio0sly execrate. When the voice
which, in all Europe spoke most loud
loudly and most effectively for mercy
to the oppressed, was the voice OF Vol.
taire, Christian divines might begin, to
suspect that their study SE tssg better
had been killing.
lP The last rose of Sunnsef--get
| fiuor nut Of ho1 tho ~ ct NJ AunuGt