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Moral Character of the Eighteenth Century.

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mass of the people, and of the prevailing tendencies alike in Church and State. As to the character of these, history leaves little room for dispute. Whether we read it in the charming pages of Green, the more massive work of Lecky, or the sharp and sarcastic descriptions of Leslie Stephen; whether we go to the more highly-coloured, because more deeply felt and realised, descriptions given by the spiritual men then living, or to the histories of spiritual men of to-day, who tell the story of that age, we meet with one and the same account. Brilliant genius allied with dissolute manners; great political influence gained by most unworthy means and supported by flagrant abuse alike of office and authority. Along with this, intellectual ability in the pulpit, sometimes of a high order, but often using a style of argument too much like vituperation ever to have produced any deep moral impression; sermons too, of great intellectual worth, but frigid as the pole; argument upon argument to prove what no one doubted, and to confute what few cared to believe. Mr. Leslie Stephen speaks of sermons the only classification of which is " dull, duller, dullest," and of people whom he more graphically than politely terms "ponderous, well-fed, animated masses of beefsteak"!! Such a state of things would be little likely either to disturb or retard the progress of Unbelief; under such conditions the Deist's creed would really be the form of belief most attractive to the human mind. We have no space for confirmation of such an estimate by more detailed and realistic descriptions; few familiar with this portion of English history require much further illustration. The age of Marlborough was not wanting in a certain kind of greatness. Englishmen may be proud

of the military genius of the great soldier; they cannot look upon the moral effect of his ascendency as anything but corrupt and corrupting. Walpole may have been a great minister; he was anything but a great man. We must regard him as a foe to public morals and a corrupter of public men. What must have been the spiritual tone of the nation when

1 See Lecky's two volumes for abundant confirmation of all the statements made in the text; also Leslie Stephen's History, or Green's History of the English People.

There are some good remarks in Dr. Rigg's Discourses, recently published, on the same theme. Any Life of Wesley or Whitefield will furnish materials in proof.

its Prime Minister could unblushingly use the patronage of the Crown for mere party purposes, when all public support had its price, and when political parties were kept together by wholesale bribery! Worse still: what but unbelief could be expected in a community where a Prime Minister was not ashamed to "appear at the play with his mistress;" when bishops boasted that they had never seen their Sees; or when Lord Chesterfield was the fashionable guide and teacher of young men !

Speaking of Walpole, Lecky says: "That he lived for many years in open adultery, and indulged to excess in the pleasures of the table, were facts which, in the early part of the eighteenth century, were in themselves not likely to excite much attention"!! Surely this is proof sufficient that unbelief had in those days a most congenial soil, and very favourable atmospheric conditions. Speaking of a later period, Mr. Stephen says that "men had lost their interest in the deepest problems." Hence the little stir caused by the sceptical writings of Hume. How could a deep interest in either philosophy or theology exist along with the corrupt lives of State ministers, the intellectual coldness and worldliness of bishops, and the coarse manners of large numbers even of the upper classes of society? The Church, and by this term we do not mean the Church of England alone, was largely responsible for the prevailing indifference. Its teachers and pastors forgot their function as ambassadors of Christ, and laboured chiefly to commend a kind of prudential morality to the dull reason of the people. In seeking for the

moral causes of Deism these conditions must not be overlooked. Intellectual causes there doubtless were as well. The great literary revival might act partly to the injury of spiritual fervour. The discoveries of science, and the new world opened up by Newton and others, might disturb the equilibrium of many who had little real spiritual stability in themselves, just as the stories of rich lands brought by the sailors of an earlier age excited the cupidity of traders, and led to disastrous commercial results. As Dr. Cairns well 1 ideally considered, there is no opposition between

says,

1 Lectures, p. 35. See some profound remarks on a cognate subject in Mozley's Essay on Blanco White, Essays, vol. ii.

The Preaching of the Century.

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culture and spiritual religion, but it is, nevertheless, historically true that the world has never seen great alliances between these two forces without some detriment to religion. The Reformation doctrine did not long commend itself to the so-called Humanists; nor did the Humanist help when given to reformers always add to the spiritual progress of the Reformation. So, in the eighteenth century, while there might thus be causes of unbelief connected with the relation of the intellectual to the spiritual domains of life, the chief causes. will be found in the moral and spiritual life of that age. no small extent is it true that the very preaching tended to unbelief. The great preachers harped so constantly on one string, and that not the one whose vibrations touch most deeply the heart of humanity, that they rather fostered than counteracted the Deistic tendency. Both attack and defence agreed in one thing: Christianity must be shown to be reasonable. The "reasonableness of Christianity," Locke's theory, it has been well said, was really the text from which all preached. "The clergy," says the clear-sighted and profoundly evangelical Dorner, "no longer regarded themselves as the ambassadors of Christ commissioned in His name to offer salvation to the world; but as orators, whose office it was eloquently to recommend to their flocks Christian, or for the most part merely moral, truths, as the surest means of happiness both in this world and the next. . . . Orthodoxy contented itself, for the most part, with a defence of the outworks, while, so far as the contents of Christianity were concerned, it was itself only too nearly assimilated to a moderate kind of Deism; morality and not religion having become the centre on which it turned." Unquestionably, Dorner here puts his finger on the weak point alike in the preaching and apologetics of the eighteenth century. It is said, with what truth we are unable to judge, that at one time in Boston (U.S.), Unitarianism was so strong that it gave the tone to the preaching of Trinitarians; that men thought more of commending their teachings to Unitarians, or of defending themselves from the attacks of Unitarians, than of commending the gospel of Christ to the consciences of their hearers. If such was the case, we venture to say that

1 Dorner's History of Protestant Theology, vol. ii. p. 77, etc.

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not Trinitarian, but Unitarian, doctrine, would be the gainer by such a policy. So in connection with the "moral" and "reasonable" preaching of the eighteenth century. It would promote neither morality nor religion. The moment the preacher substitutes for the authority of Christ's Gospel-the message of his Master, delivered for the obedience of himself and his hearers--his own reasonings, however logical, or his own speculations, however interesting, that moment he takes a lower place, weakening both his own influence and the authority of his Master. The first preachers had to deal with a reason-seeking age-the "Greeks seek after wisdom :" we do not read that they made the chief feature of their teaching the essential reasonableness of the Gospel of Christ. They no doubt believed profoundly in the rational character of Christianity-men do not die for what they think irrational; but this is not the ground on which they appeal to men. They appear as ambassadors, regard themselves as men intrusted with a message whose meaning and urgency they themselves felt most intensely; they delivered their message simply, earnestly, and boldly. Hence the results.

If any modern preacher thinks he can convince the world. by reasoning out, a-priori-wise, the Gospel of Christ—if he thinks he can bring the world back to righteousness by constantly insisting on the importance of a good moral life,—let him study the philosophy, theology, and morality of the early part of the eighteenth century. There he will find convincing proof that deeper work is needed, and that only as the preacher honours Christ by delivering His message of mercy to sinful man, in His name and by His authority, can he hope to convince the gainsayers, reform the social, and quicken the spiritual, life of men.1

We would not for one moment be understood as saying a word against the honest attempt to meet argument by argument, or to show that Christianity is a rational system. "Wherever we can, by fair and legitimate interpretation, harmonise Scripture with history, with philosophy, with science,

1 We have confined our attention exclusively to English thought and life. The same lesson is taught by a study of Scottish " Moderatism," as it has been termed. Sermons after Blair's model, while they might have a certain finish about them, converted no souls, and the Moderate, while constantly teaching morality, did not promote righteousness.

Defective teaching of Apologists, etc.

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we are not only warranted but bound to do so, since all truth is one, and God requires us to display it unbroken." 1 But we shall never really commend Christianity to the reason until we have asserted or vindicated its authority over the conscience and spiritual nature of man; nor shall we manifest the reasonableness of the Gospel, unless we go deeper than the deistic reasoning, and unfold to man his own sinfulness, thus preparing him to welcome God's great mercy, of which the Gospel is the expression.2

Hence, while we do not " groan" with Mr. Maurice over the low standard of Butler, we must in fairness remember that man's deepest life requires another guide than mere "probability." The Analogy was more than an answer to the shallow reasoning of Deism; it is less than an answer to some of the deeper questions of our time. We may admire much the clearness of Paley, and also admit the validity of his arguments as against the objectors of his time; we may also see how little real satisfaction there was for the heart of men in his philosophy of life. "Virtue" might indeed be "the doing of good to mankind in obedience to the will of God, for the sake of everlasting happiness;" but, as Professor Blackie well remarks, "the definition characterises the man, the book, the age, the country, and the profession to which he belonged."

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While we do honour to the apologists of the eighteenth century, especially to the noble and thought-inspiring Butler, while we fully appreciate their intellectual force and moral earnestness, we must confess that their work did not deliver

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England from Deism. "From its own point of view," their argument" might be conclusive, as Mr. Mill confessed; it might triumphantly vanquish Deism, regarded as an intellectual system; it could not deliver men from the chilling influence of indifference and negation. Other men must do this work. Perhaps this is one of the permanent lessons taught by the history of Deism in the eighteenth century.

Much has been said about the causes that led to the failure of Deism. As we have before remarked, Deism did not die 1 Cairns, Lectures, p. 281.

2 Even Tennyson reminds us that, before we can show men God's mercy, we must teach them "all the sin."

3 Dr. Matheson, in his Baird Lecture for 1881, has some suggestive remarks on Butler's place and work, p. 10.

Blackie's Four Phases of Morals; "Utilitarianism.”

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