CHAPTER II.

THE DECAY OF BELIEF.

OPINIONS and systems of thought as well as institutions which enjoy a considerable lease of life in the world, have many of the characteristics of organisms, or at least of organs belonging to animated beings. The fact that they came into existence and survived during a longer or shorter period, proves that they discharged a function of more or less utility; that they were in harmony with the surrounding conditions, and hence, found both exercise and nourishment for their support. If in time they gradually cease to discharge a useful function, become atrophied and disappear, their case is almost exactly parallel to the rudimentary organs found in so many animals, which, having ceased to be of use, become shrunken and meaningless, and only persist in an abortive form by virtue of the law of heredity. Such organs in the body politic resemble these analogues in the body natural, in that they

often continue to exist long after their presence has ceased to subserve any useful purpose of life. The common trait of rudimentary organs belonging to either category, biological or sociological, is that they survive their use, that they are nourished and live at the expense of the organism in which they exist, and long after they have ceased to make any return for the support they obtain. In the animal world, rudimentary organs may or may not be noxious to the organism in which they inhere : in the social organism they unquestionably are so, especially by their occupying the room and preventing the development of active and efficient organs which would succeed and replace them.

That the Christian religion is rapidly approaching, if it has not already reached, this position, is a part of the thesis maintained in these pages. The decay of belief now general over Christendom, may be regarded from two points of view, and traced up to two distinct causes, one rational, the other moral. The current faith has come increasingly into conflict with science in proportion as the latter has extended in depth and area. The isolated points of collision of former days have been so multiplied, that the shock now is along the whole conterminous line between science and theology; and it would not be easy to name a department

of inquiry which has not, in some measure, contributed aid to the forces arrayed against the popular belief. More important still is the changed tone of feeling with regard to this subject. Time was, and even a recent time, when the prestige of Christianity was so great, that even its opponents were overawed by it. But now men are ready to openly avow that they find a great deal in the Christian scheme which is morally shocking; and in the estimation of many minds nowadays, probably the moral difficulties outweigh the intellectual.

Nothing is more common than the assertion that any objections now made to Christianity are worn out sophisms, which have been answered and disposed of over and over again by previous apologists. Sometimes we are told that the objections are as old as the time of Celsus, and were refuted by Origen; but, generally, Bishop Butler is the favourite champion who is credited with a preordained victory over all opponents, past, present, and future. Butler was so great a man, and his work, considered as a reply to the shallow deism of his day, was in many respects so successful, that it argues a certain irreverence for his character to load him with false praise and unmerited laurels. But these claims, often made for Butler and others, have their interesting and instructive side. They show how little apt

the theological mind is to see the real points at issue, and to recognize the full gravity of the present crisis. To suppose that arguments directed against such disputants as Toland, Collins, or Tindal -pertinent as they might be, and, indeed, for the most part were-are equally potent when directed against the methods and results of modern science, implies a complete misconception of the true bearings of the question under discussion. In the early eighteenth century, the light of science had hardly got beyond the first glimmerings of dawn. Mathematics and astronomy were the only sciences which had passed into the positive and final stage. Chemistry, geology, biology, historical criticism, were not yet in a position to speak with authority even on subjects in their own province, and were far from being in possession of vast stores of verified truth obtained by rigorous application of correct methods, such as now impose respect on the most ignorant and careless. The deists were, to say the least, as unscientific as the theologians. Their fancies about the "light of Nature," which was to replace the Christian religion, were as arbitrary and absurd as any mythological legend. Tindal declared the light of Nature to be "a clear and certain light which enlightened all men," and from this fact he inferred that "our duty both to God

and man must, from the beginning of the world to the end, remain unalterable, be always alike plain and perspicuous;" a doctrine which had the serious defect of being contradicted by the total experience of the human race. Butler had no difficulty in showing that to advance such opinions, was to "talk wildly and at random." No blame attaches to the deists, able and worthy men most of them, for not transcending the knowledge of the age. They attempted prematurely to solve a problem, before the means of solution were at hand. What they would have liked to do was to give a rational explanation of Christianity as an historical phenomenon; but they had neither the historical nor the scientific knowledge requisite for such an undertaking. They consequently fell back on such vague metaphysical conceptions as the "light of Nature," and essayed to show that Christianity was mysterious, or that it was as old as the creation— mere sophisms which they probably believed, but which were quite incapable of scientific proof.

It is not a little surprising that apologists in the present day should be able to deceive themselves as to the immeasurable distance which separates arguments of this kind from the inferences unfavourable to theology deduced from science. The object of science is not to supply hostile data for the