The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-04-14

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among thinkers, and probably before yer,
long became the mask for profounde
skepticism in Protestant Europe, as II di
afterward in New England. We find !
| in England on the eve of the French Rev
olution. combined with science in Priest
ley and with mathematics and philosoph.
in Price.
Among the Apologize and defensive
| forces may be numbered the practica
| vindication of Christianity by certain
revival of piety in the Anglican Church
which produced Wilberforce, Cowper, ant
the Evangelcals, and still more by tn
religious crusade of John Wesley. Yves
ley's achievements however. were among
the poor and illiterate, and were conse
quently demonstrations of the power OF
| Christianity rather than of its truth. Hi.
Church had the advantage of being born
not Ike other Protestant Churches in doc
| trinal controversy but in evangelical re.
! action against the impiety and vice of the
! age. 1t was, however, not undogmatic
| besides what might be called the dogma
of sudden conversion, 1t implicitly accept
| ed. not only the literal inspiration OF
! Scripture, but the bulk of the Anglican
Articles, to which was afterward added
as an ordination text, general agreement
with the more important of Wesley's ser
mons.
The French Revolution brought on a
strong reaction against the free thought
which had been hideously travestied in
the blasphemous follies and sullied by the
crimes of the Jacobins In England the
library and laboratory of Priestley. Cole
ridge, who. like other young men OF INTEL
lect. had hailed the revolutionary dawn,
shared the reaction, and combining in a
curious way German metaphysic with
English orthodoxy and Establishmentar-
iantsm. produced religious system which
perhaps entities him to high place among
English theologians in the proper sense
of that term, as denoting a philosophic
enquirer into the nature of the Deity and
the relations between the Deity and man;
though. as his guiding light was philoso-
ply, not authority or tradition. he may in
that respect be numbered among the pro-
moters of free thought and OF the re-
suits to which it was ultimately to lead
Such free thinking as there was natur-
the repression. Tom Paine assaiIed ortho-
doxy not with freedom only but with en-
nifty the most virulent. Though far from
an attractive, he is by no means an I'M
important figure. His criticisms of the
credibility and morality of Scripture, I'M
learned and coarse as they were, went,
not over the heads of the people like the
high-fyins and metaphysical speculations,
but straight to their understandings and
their hearts. 1t was difficult for apollo
setio fencers to parry such home thrusts
The same sort of effect has been produced
by the irreverent frankness of Ingersoll
In our own day Shelley rushed from the
religion of Eldon into what he took for
Satanism; though his Satan is really the
power of good, while the God of Eldon,
as viewed by him. is the Devil
Wrecked. body and soul, by the Thirty
Years War, and afterward stihed under
a group of petty despotisms, Germany
vas for time lost TO intellectual prog
ress. Her churches and their clergy, the
Lutheran clergy at least. were In a very
low condition. When her intellect began
TO work again. it was in a recluse and
highly speculative way, the natural con-
sequence of its exclusion from politics and
other fields of action. together with the
complete severance Of the academical ele-
ment from the people. Hence from Leib-
nitz and Leasing onward, there was a
train OF metaphysical PHILOSOPHERS, each
of them protesting to find in our con-
seriousness key to the mystery of Being,
and an account of God, OF his counsels,
and of the relation between him and man.
In derision of such speculations it was
to the English the sea, to the Germans
the air. Essentially incapable of verif-
cation, these theories went on shifting in
nebulous succession and, with the excep-
ton of that Of Kant, may now be said
TO have vanished. leaving scarce a rack
behind. Even of the great Hegel little
Leibnitz. with his best of all
possible worlds hardly survived Can
dide." Still, we must speak with respect
and gratitude of these efforts of minds
powerful in their way and devoted to
ruth, to solve for us the great mystery
Speculation so free could not fail to pro-
mote general freedom of thought, and
the treatment by these thinkers of the
popular and established religion was as
as possible, though, with the
Of Feuerbach, all of them were
theists. BY Leasing much was done for
The recognition of all religions and the
promotion of universal liberation.
Presently, however. came direct criti-
,ism of tine Bible the way to which, long
before. had been lighted by Spinoza. 1t |
a strange form in the work of |
Paulus, who applied to the Gospel mira
eles solvent something like that which |
Suhemerus had applied to the Pagan Pan |
.heon, reducing them to natural occur |
rences turned into miracles by n devout |
ma gination. The miraculous fish with |
he coin in its mouth was fish which |
would sell for the coin. The miraculous |
'eeding OF the five thousand was brought |
within the compass OF belief by supposing |
hat they were not fasting but had only |
gone without regular meal. Christ's |
on the water was his holding
tut hand from the shore to Peter who
lad leaped into the water to ascertain
Walking on the shore.
Far more serious, and a startling blow
o orthodoxy, was the Life of Jesus" by
strauss. who undertook to explain the
Gospels on the mythical theory, showing
hat the reputed incidents of the life of
esus and his miracles were mythical full
llments of Old Testament prophecies and
SEPARATIONS. From this his first theory,
trauss afterward partly receded, and in
is second Life of Jesus" after critical
of the authorities. he comes
o the conclusion that few great men
ave existed of whose history we have
o unsatisfactory a knowledge as that