Page images
PDF
EPUB

exposing the true character of Christianity. My qualification here is that for many years I was as firmly bound to the system as any of its most devout adherents, and that as no one can more absolutely than myself have thrown off its shackles, in favour of what I believe to be the only true basis of religious faith and confidence, I am able to trace for others the grounds upon which they may possibly make the same progress that I have done, out of the bondage of a humanly constructed creed, to the liberty and the satisfaction to mind and conscience obtainable only by reliance on a real and natural foundation. My doctrine, to express it in a few words, is the all-sufficiency of the Almighty, certainly avowed in other creeds, and among them in that of the Christians, but practically denied by the conditions, devised, and to be realized, through which alone, it is conceived, the divine action in our favour is maintainable. Am I to sacrifice to him as in ancient days, or to plead a sacrifice enacted for me? Then is my sacrifice my prime support, and the Almighty stands only as a purchased or acquired ulterior refuge. Have I to use a mediator in order to approach and secure acceptance by him? Then is this mediator my first friend, and the Almighty becomes relegated to a more remote and secondary position. It is vain to estimate the conditional props and appliances as of imperative necessity, and then to claim the expected end as the work of an independent and all-sufficient agent.

The ordinary course of criticism exercised upon the Christian scheme has been directed to ascertaining, as well as circumstances may permit, the authenticity and era of the several canonical scriptures and of the writings of those who are accounted the early fathers. In the pre

sent work I venture to extend the inquiry to the solution of the question, when Christianity itself may first have had being. It will be understood that I object to draw my facts from the canonical scriptures themselves when these facts are of a character, as assuredly is the case in the present instance, to be established by their own actualities. Directly Christianity became an accepted creed, avowed by multitudes, the circumstance must have attracted attention, and have left its impress on the records of the day. I object to acknowledge the existence of the fact until its necessary impress may be fairly observable, and in prosecuting my task must claim freedom from the bonds of concessions which I feel have been improperly made in the course of these inquiries by one writer unguardedly adopting what others have been led to say before him. Our aim should be to judge of all things as they really are, and not merely as they may be imagined or wished to be.

The conclusion to which I have come is that there is

a very decided gap between the occurrence of Christianity, and the era asserted for the facts alleged as those on which the system has its foundations. It follows that the facts themselves, so bound in an historical expression of them at a particular period, cannot have been enacted, and that the creed has otherwise to be accounted for.

It will be asked, can this possibly have been so? Can the great circumstances attaching to Christianity have been asserted and believed in while destitute of any true reality?

That a religious movement based upon the allegation of superhuman agency and divine revelation, but in truth wanting in such supports, may take effect, we

have seen illustrated in our own days by the uprise and growth of Mormonism. If Joseph Smith, by means of a declared angelic visitation, and a miraculously provided record, and so lately as in the year 1844, could operate upon multitudes with his newly-devised religious scheme, it may be readily understood that a similar feat, without much difficulty, may have been performed in the remote and ignorant days of the occurrence of Christianity. At this very moment we have before us the strange pretensions of Mrs Girling, the declared bride of Jesus, influencing, in serious action, the New Forest Shakers she has gathered around her, on the allegation of the personal revelations and divine associations to which she lays claim. The body, it is true, is not considerable in number, but it is in its infancy, and it more than equals that asserted for the first gathering of Christians (Acts i. 15). We can also point backward, and still some centuries on this side of the Christian era, to the sudden institution of that powerfully constituted and wide-spread persuasion introduced by Mahomed, for which also a divine authorization is claimed; and in centuries beyond Christianity, but yet within the historic period, to the equally potent religious system founded by Buddha, in like manner declared to have been drawn from a superhuman source. About the same time Confucius launched in China his ethical teachings, which have ever since satisfied the religious wants of an extensive portion of that empire; and still further back, at some unknown period, we can discern the work among the Persians of Zoroaster, who claimed for his revelations direct communication from the Most High. These are operations in behalf of new

or reformed religions among mankind, to the supercession often of those creeds which existed before them, the success of which, through mere missionary efforts, without supernatural agency, amply suffices to account for the introduction and prevalence of such a system as Christianity, (whatever the wonderments asserted for its basis), through precisely similar natural means.

Another feature which I examine is the growth of Christianity from stage to stage in its distinguishable phases of doctrine. Such variations of an already established system are even more readily effected than the propagation of a new faith from its foundations. Their progressive occurrence serves also to enable us to understand the culmination and exhibition of the faith in its matured form.

Christianity, while aiming at religious unity round a declared divinely endowed centre, presents the aspect of hopeless disunion. The divisions are not few, but countless, and are continually on the increase. They prove the impossibility of concurrent thought and belief when exercised over the constituents of an artificial, complicated, and exacting faith. Recently there have been Congresses held of various sorts for the purpose of discussing difficulties and promoting union. A remarkable attempt of the kind has been made at the Bonn Conference. The parties engaged represented the Greek Church, the Old Catholics, and the Anglicans, all governed by allied principles, and apparently sincerely desirous of coming to a mutual understanding on points of difference. But the result on the reporter's mind was that if even the semblance of union was to be secured, it could only be by the parties engaged casting a cloak of

charity over their diverging opinions, with an agreement to differ, not upon non-essentials only, but upon essentials (Contemporary Review for Nov. 1874, pp. 891, 892). But this cloak of charity practically does not and cannot exist. No earnest mind, holding to what is felt to be truth important to observe, can think lightly of, or hold consistent fellowship with, those who repudiate any serious portion of his creed, and maintain themselves with other props or standards. Differences of creed must inevitably insure differences of ecclesiastical standing and practice. The various sections into which Christians are divided, represent, consequently, distinct bodies, holding defined positions in protest against every other segment of Christianity but their own. With these, ordinarily, there is no pretence of being influenced by the so-called bonds of charity, but all seriously outside the pale of their persuasion are to them as dissenters, heretics, or apostates. Some openly unchristianize their supposed erring brethren. And as these distinctive bodies have ascertained and taken up their positions, they assume the attitude of orthodoxy, and shelve all who have gone before them as heterodox. I will point to two such parties who lie at the extremes of Christianity, and who have assumed their peculiar doctrinal postures in our day. These are the Ultramontane Catholics, and that section of the Plymouth Brethren owning Mr Darby for their leader, and known as Exclusives. The Ultramontanes are distinguished by holding to the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary and the infallibility of the Pope. These are positions which have hitherto been afloat in Catholicism, but have only recently been made authoritative. They

« PreviousContinue »