Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect."

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many seem to be too little alive to the fact, that works have recently issued from the British press, and are obtaining extensive circulation in certain circles of cultivated society, whose avowed object is to extirpate all faith in the supernatural; to account for the origin of every form of religion, not excepting Christianity itself, on purely natural principles; to undermine all creeds, and overthrow every existing form of worship; and to substitute for them either the simplest and most practical code of utilitarian morals, or the vague and mystic generalities of Pantheism. These works are widely different, too, from the spawn of vulgar infidelity which came forth after the first French Revolution, and which carried along with them their own antidote, at least to minds of refined culture, in their pervading grossness and scurrility, so offensive to good taste; they are generally the productions of men who have received a polite education; who are well versed in classical literature, and not ignorant of modern science; who have acquired a style, characterized, in some cases, by vigour and out-spoken plainness, in others, by a seductive and semi-poetic sweetness, and in almost all, by a freshness and perspicuity which can hardly fail to attract and interest that larger class of readers who are intent only on something that is new and exciting. There is reason to believe that, in some quarters, they have already exerted a most pernicious influence; and that their attractive titles have obtained for them a too easy admission into circles where they would never have been admitted, and still less allowed to pass without warning into the hands of the young and inexperienced, had their real character been known.

This must be our apology for introducing to the notice of our readers a class of works which we deem peculiarly dangerous, but whose existence we cannot, as journalists, altogether ignore.

The first work on our list is, "THE PROGRESS OF THE INTELLECT, as exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews," by Robert William Mackay.

When we rose from the perusal of this elaborate and somewhat heavy work, we found ourselves asking in sorrow, if not in anger :-What! is it really come to this-that Christianity must fight over again her old battle with Paganism, and that too on the soil of England, and in the light of the 19th century? Not that Mr. Robert William Mackay is a Pagan; for he makes no such profession, and beyond what he is pleased to tell us, we know nothing about his religious views; but he is evidently, in so far as concerns a supernatural revelation and the special claims of Christianity, a thorough infidel; and has much less faith in the inspired oracles of God, than in the allegorical in

terpretations of ancient heathenism, by which the earliest philosophical antagonists of Christianity attempted to retrieve a falling cause, and to arrest the progress of the new religion.

The aim of his work is to account for the origin of the various forms of religion, including the Jewish and the Christian, on purely natural principles, without the recognition of any supernatural Revelation, and even, perhaps, of any supernatural Being. He attempts to do so by applying the theory of myths alike to the systems of Polytheism and the Scriptures of Truth; all mythology being, in his estimation," but the exaggerated reflection of our own intellectual habits." The Polytheism of the Greeks and the Christianity of the New Testament, were equally the products or creations of the human mind; and each of the two may be satisfactorily accounted for by the same natural law or tendency which leads mankind everywhere and in all circumstances to give form and body to their ideal conceptions, to personify abstractions, and to endow these imaginary beings with attributes akin to their own. In attempting to develop this fundamental idea, he not only compares the mythology of the Greeks with the mythology of the Hebrews, as contained in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, but he places both on precisely the same level, and ascribes them to a common origin. This mixture of things sacred and profane; this elaborate comparison of the follies of Polytheism and the horrors of Pagan idolatry with the sublime doctrines of Revelation and the pure rites of Christian worship, is one of the most revolting features of the work, and one of the worst symptoms also of the author's state of mind. We can conceive nothing more offensive than any attempt to represent Jehovah the God of the Bible, as bearing a resemblance either to Zeus, "the Moral God of the Greeks, or to Moloch "the revengeful God of the Ammonites ;" and yet this writer does not hesitate to say "that the stern and revengeful Deity of the Old Testament, who is acknowledged author of evil as well as good, is in many respects similar to the arbitrary monarch of Olympus, guarded by the children of Styx, Force, and Jealousy, and parent of Ate, the genius of infatuation and its direful results." And this is only a specimen of innumerable comparisons of a similar kind, which are as groundless in respect of truth as they are offensive in point of taste.

To review the work and to refute it at length, were an irksome and perhaps unprofitable task. We shall merely indicate the general outline of the hypothesis, and advert to a few points at which it comes into direct collision with the great principles both of Natural and Revealed Religion.

The author proceeds on the assumption that all religion, of whatever kind, is and can only be a form of SYMBOLISM; since

"to rude men, deficient in precision of language as of ideas, abstract conceptions could be conveyed only by physical representations and visible forms"-hence "symbols became the almost universal language of ancient theology" and "poetry, or the articulate expression of this silent but universal symbolism, was accounted the language of the gods, and of divinely inspired men." And hence, too, "the patriarchs and their attendants assigned a visible form to the Almighty; they saw and spoke to him, and believed him to be present in images and stones."

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This natural symbolism gave birth to the various forms of idolatry; for "although the religious sentiment is essentially one," yet those representative forms and symbols which constitute the external investiture of every religion, make its forms as various as the possible modes of its expression, branching into an infinite diversity of creeds and rites."

But the same symbolism which at first gave birth to idolatry produced, at a later stage in the process of human development, a pantheon of personal gods, each possessing a certain character, and invested with an historic interest. This was the proper product of mythology; for "there was a wide interval between the use of a metaphorical symbolism, and the formation of an abstract theology; the intermediate space in the history of intellectual development is occupied by mythology. This venerable deposit of the oldest thoughts arose when facts and opinions were wholly unsevered, when notions assumed unquestioned the disguise of existences and deeds, and when all abstract speculation fell naturally into the form of narrative."

As yet we seem far removed from the simplest monotheism, and still farther from the sublime scheme of Christian theism; but these will follow each in its own turn. For "nature was deified before man," but in due time "man deified himself," by personifying his own abstract idea of reason, or intelligence, or order; for the last stage of religious development is the matured consciousness of intellectuality, when, convinced that the internal faculty of thought must be something more subtle than even the most subtle elements, he transfers his new conception to the object of his worship, and deifies a mental principle instead of a physical one. He is, however, unable to remain long in the regions of abstraction, and being experimentally acquainted with no spiritual existences distinct from his fellowmen, his imagination cannot picture anything more exalted than a being similar to, though more perfect than himself. It has accordingly been remarked, that instead of "God making man," we ought to read, " man made God after his own image.' Still

* We omit the blasphemous allusion to "the ideal of some eminent University professor."

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this is only a new form of symbolism, nay, of idolatry, for spiritualism itself is only a higher form of personification," "and the idea of deity has a natural tendency to assume that noblest form of symbolism-personification." "We often hear complacent self-congratulations on the recognition of a personal God, as being the conception most suited to human sympathies, and exempt from the mystifications of pantheism. But the divinity remains still a mystery, notwithstanding all the devices which symbolism, either from the organic or inorganic creation, can supply, and personification is a symbol liable to misapprehension, as much, if not more so, than any other." "Every man worships a conception of his own mind," and "all idolatry," says Carlyle, "is only comparative: the worst idolatry is only more idolatrous."

Thus Symbolism, giving birth in the first instance to material idolatry, and then passing through mythology into polytheism, rises at length into its highest form, the recognition of a personal God, which is still, however, only a new product of the same natural tendency, a later result of the same intellectual law.

Is there, then, any supernatural being? or any form of religion that is more true than another? The one universal religion, of which all varieties of creed and worship were only so many modifications, was PANTHEISM. Nature was deified before man, and man was deified as a part of nature. "Pantheism includes many varieties of refinement; it may blend God with nature, or raise nature to God; it may be materialism or idealism, spiritualism or personification. For personification, if not immediately present at the origin of religion, is at least closely connected with it, the mind requiring the imagery of the senses in order to develop its conceptions, and the symbol of man himself being one of the most obvious and satisfactory means of doing so.' "Theological philosophy is perhaps only another name for pantheism." "Nature-worship, in its thousand forms, retains its ancient claim to equal and unequivocal respect. Of these varied forms one of the most memorable is that which it assumed in the early history of the Hebrews (!)" "Objections to Pantheism imply ignorance on the part of the Christian objector as to the nature of his own creed."—(Acts xvii. 28.)!

Of course when both Judaism and Christianity are declared to be mere forms of Symbolism, or varieties of Pantheism, all belief in the supernatural is at an end, and the whole history, both of the Old and New Testaments, must be explained as a mere series of Myths. The authenticity of the books of Scripture must be assailed, their inspiration denied, and even ridiculed, the non-reality and absolute impossibility of miracles affirmed, and prophecy so explained and applied as to invalidate

Mr. Mackay not original.

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its evidence. All this is attempted by Mr. Robert William Mackay, in a style of daring hardihood such as has been seldom exemplified of late years in this Christian land.

There is no originality in his views. He is indebted for most of his arguments to the writings of Dr. Strauss and Auguste Comte; but they are reproduced with the accompaniment of a vast array of miscellaneous learning. He is equally indebted to older infidels than these; for it struck us forcibly that he has adopted the arguments by which Porphyry and Jamblichus sought to defend Polytheism against the primitive apologists for Christianity; and that he has adopted also that method of explaining Old Testament prophecy, to which the rabbinical writers had recourse in opposition to the Messianic interpretation of it. His theory of relative as opposed to absolute truth, and his doctrine of natural laws, as applied in disproof of the possibility of miracles and the efficacy of prayer, are derived from the more modern schools of infidelity, which are too philosophical to believe, even on the authority of Scripture, what was held to be perfectly consistent with reason by the profounder intellects of Bacon, and Boyle, and Butler. But we greatly err if he has not been indebted most of all to the "ORIGINE de tous les Cultes, ou Religion Universelle," by DUPUIS;* a work which proceeds on the idea that the universe is the only God, and that every particular form of religion may be accounted for by ascribing them all to the same origin,-viz., to the observed course of the sun, in its relation to the seasons of the year and the labours of agriculture; the twelve patriarchs and the twelve apostles being equally representative of the twelve "Signs of the Zodiac!" Dr. Priestley himself, although assuredly no fanatic, could say of the "Origine des Cultes," as we are disposed to say of "The Progress of Intellect," that " a work bearing more marks of deep erudition, more ingenuity, or more labour, though accompanied with little judgment, has hardly ever appeared. But I am inclined to think with Festus concerning Paul, that much learning has made him mad, and deprived him of the use of his reasoning powers. This must either be his case, or that of all the world besides, and whether he be right or wrong he will be outvoted. We must either adopt this hypothesis, or say that his work is a mere jeu-d'esprit, that he was not in earnest in writing it, but wished to make an experiment, how far confident assertion, and an appearance of deep learning accompanied with ingenuity, could go in imposing on the world. But this work is too large and too dull to be a jeu-d'esprit.

* Paris. In 3 vols. 4to, with a supplementary volume of plates. "L'an III. de la République, une et indivisible, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”