The Canton advocate. [volume] (Canton, D.T. [S.D.]) 1877-1897, 1880-11-11
Religions Drift.
From the n. Y. Times, October ]


dull, quiescent, hopelessly bent upon
routine, and again it brightens and
flashes with unwonted glow and FIRE.
The: religious life is hardly slower OF
less active than the secular life of men,
though it is less demonstrative. 1t is
undergoing rapid transformations, not
changes in its essential character, be.
cause human life is essentially the
same from age to age, but changes of
base, changes to what points stand out
with most prominence, changes to what
the age or the hour most affects. The
possible danger is that these changes as
to what has been regarded as essential
to the statement of religious truth shall
not be understood in the right sense. 1t
would be cruel to call men in6dels to-
day because they doubt the validity of
this or that religious truth in the terms
of its present statement; it is hardly
less cruel to call them agnostics when,
for lack of definite instruction in Chris
tan truth, they halt at the gateway to
strong and vigorous belief Neither in
fidelity nor agnosticism to-day is the
same that it may have been in the last
century. It has neither the old tenn
per of fight nor wholly the air of indif-
ference. 1t is a peculiar phase of "a
tionalism which has grown out OF many
antecedent conditions, and is largely
based upon the desire to find better
reasons for believing in Christianity
than those which used to be assigned
by religious teachers in sermons and
books of evidence. Not all the unbelief
of our times can thus be accounted
for, but large part is thus explained,
and by following along these lines of
inquiry, to a great extent, the causes Of
unbelief can be laid at the doors of the
Christian church, to the natural con-
servatism of religious institutions, to
the preference of the letter TO the spirit,
to the neglect to interpret Christianity
in terms of intelligence to those who
are trained in the atmosphere of mod
ern thought. Christianity has seemed
at times to 60 down before the impend-
ing crisis when the gnns of some old
citadel have been spiked; many of the
ways in which Christian temper used to
be gagged do not now answer the pur-
pose; church-going and all that pertains
to Sunday observance do not mean
what they once did; the same law Of
change, in the direction of seeming
laxity, is further manifesting itself in a
thousand ways. But it may be seri-
Ously questioned whether in any pre-
vious section of this century thorough
ly religious books have been more read
and studied, or whether the bottom
facts of Christianity have ever been
more thoroughly sifted. If earnest
men doubt, they doubt in the desire to
know the truth; if they try the natural
before they venture the supernatural,
it is not because they have exclusive
regard for science. At least, out of
the surging chaos of beliefs and opin-
ions, this much may be gathered as the
brighter aspect of the hour.
1t is in the opening of a situation
like this that the opportunity Of the
christian church comes, and it appears
to have come at the very moment when
it seemed as if its leaders were singing
the old songs of Zion utterly regardless
of the new songs with the old thoughts
in them which men are longing to sing
now. The question has been, what re-
Spouse will come to the unbelief of the
hour from the authorized guardians of
christianity, and these responses within
few months, even within the weeks
that one can count on the fingers ofone
hand, have been notable almost be-
yond precedent. Firt came Leo XIII.
remanding Roman Catholic students
back to st. Thomas Aquinas, who
held the questions growing out of free
thought as in the hollow of his hand.
Then the archbishop Of Canterbury,
than whom no Englishman better I'M
derstands modern thought, devoted
the bulk of his charge to a vigorous
conspectus of the present field Of re-
ligious thought, and drew his infer
ences, in broad common-sense fash
ion, to the end that, whatever danger
there might be of diminution of the
catholic faith on which all forms of
christianity depend if they contain the
breath Of life, the higher instincts of
the age, whether gathered from sci
ence or religion, were in favor of what
was yesterday, is to-day, and has the
power to live forever He did not see
that any forms of doubt We're more
than the temporary struggles of men to
reach out to the permanent truths
always Endorsed by right reason.
DR.. TAFT spoke as the representative
of the English church i'll this matter,
but Or. Robert Flint, whose "Philoso-
ply of History" entities every
thing he may say Oh the subject to the
highest consideration, at the recent Pan
Presbyterian council, spoke with the
same large-minded confidence in the
power of Christianity to adapt its truths
in the hands Of living teachers, to the
demands of present thought, blaming
the church for the prevailing ignorance
Of the proper reasons for religious be-
lief, and holding that religion iii every