The Project Gutenberg EBook of No Refuge but in Truth, by Goldwin Smith

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Title: No Refuge but in Truth

Author: Goldwin Smith

Release Date: October 17, 2006 [EBook #19567]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH ***

Produced by Al Haines

NO REFUGE BUT IN TRUTH

BY

GOLDWIN SMITH

TORONTO

WM. TYRRELL & COMPANY

1908

COPYRIGHT, 1907-1908

BY THE

SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1906

BY

GOLDWIN SMITH

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

   I. Man and His Destiny
  II. New Faith Linked with Old
 III. The Scope of Evolution
  IV. The Limit of Evolution
   V. Explanations
  VI. The Immortality of the Soul
 VII. Is there to be a Revolution in Ethics?

The Religious Situation

[Transcriber's note: Because "The Religious Situation" had its own title and verso page, it was split into a separate e-book.]

PREFACE.

The letters collected in this volume appeared, with others, in the New York Sun, to the Editor of which the thanks of the writer for his courtesy are due.

Appended is a paper on the same subjects commenting on one by the late Mr. Chamberlain, since published in the North American Review. To the Editor of the North American Review also the writer's acknowledgments are due.

There appeared to be sufficient interest in the discussion to call for the publication of a small edition.

The age calls for religious truth. Nine thousand persons communicated their cravings to the Editor of the London Daily Telegraph. By their side the present writer places himself, not a teacher, but an inquirer, seeking for truth and open to conviction.

The position of the clergy, especially where tests are stringent, calls for our utmost consideration. But I submit that it would not be improved by any attempt, such as seems to be made in a work of great ability before me, to merge the theological in the social question. Benevolence may still be far below the Gospel mark, and the Christian faith may suffer from its default. But the increase of it and the multiplication of its monuments since the world has been comparatively at peace cannot be denied; while of the distress which still calls for an increase of Christian effort, not the whole is due to default on the part of the wealthier classes. Idleness, vice, intemperance, improvident marriage, play their part. Let us not be led away upon a false issue.

There is nothing for it but truth.

I.

MAN, AND HIS DESTINY.

Time has passed since I first sought access to the columns of The Sun, ranging myself with the nine thousand who in an English journal had craved for religious light. The movement which caused that craving has gone on. The Churches show their sense of it. Even in that of Rome there is a growth of "Modernism," as it is called by the Pope, who, having lost his mediaeval preservatives of unity, strives to quell Modernism by denunciation. Anglicanism resorts to a grand pageant of uniformity, beneath which, however, lurk Anglo-Catholicism, Evangelicism, and Liberalism, by no means uniform in faith. The Protestant Churches proper, their spirit being more emotional, feel the doctrinal movement less. But they are not unmoved, as they show by relaxation of tests and inclination to informal if not formal union, as well as by increasing the aesthetic and social attractions of their cult. Wild theosophic sects are born and die. But marked is the increase of scepticism, avowed and unavowed. It advances probably everywhere in the track of physical science. We are confronted with the vital question what the world would be without religion, without trust in Providence, without hope or fear of a hereafter. Social order is threatened. Classes which have hitherto acquiesced in their lot, believing that it was a divine ordinance and that there would be redress and recompense in a future state, are now demanding that conditions shall be levelled here. The nations quake with fear of change. The leaders of humanity, some think, may even find it necessary to make up by an increase of the powers of government for the lost influence of religion.

Belief in the Bible as inspired and God's revelation of himself to man seems hardly to linger in well-informed and open minds. Criticism, history, and science have conspired to put an end to it. The authorship of the greater part, including the most important books, is unknown. The morality of the Old Testament differs from that of the New, and though in advance of the world generally in those days, in more places than one, as in the case of the slaughter of the Canaanites, shocks us now. There are errors, too, in the Old Testament of a physical kind, such as those in the account of creation and the belief in the revolution of the sun. Of the New Testament the most important books, the first three Gospels, our main authorities for the life of Christ, are manifestly grafts upon a stock of unknown authorship and date. They betray a belief in diabolical possession, a local superstition from which the author of the Fourth Gospel, who evidently was not a Palestinian Jew, was free. There is discrepancy between the first three Gospels and the fourth, notably as to the day and consequent significance of Christ's celebration of the Passover. It is incredible that God in revealing himself to man should have allowed any mark of human error to appear in the revelation.

We have, moreover, to ask why that on which the world's salvation depended should have been withheld so long and communicated to so few.

There remains of the Old Testament, besides its vast historical interest, much that morally still impresses and exalts us. Of the New Testament there remains the moral ideal of Christ, our faith in which no uncertainty as to the authors of the narratives, or mistrust of them on account of the miraculous embellishment common in biographies of saints, need materially affect. The moral ideal of Christ conquered the ancient world when the Roman, mighty in character as well as in arms, was its master. It has lived through all these centuries, all their revolutions and convulsions, the usurpation, tyranny, and scandals of the Papacy. The most doubtful point of it, considered as a permanent exemplar, is its tendency, not to asceticism, for Christ came "eating and drinking," but to an excessive preference for poverty and antipathy to wealth which would arrest human progress and kill civilization. We have, however, a Nicodemus and a Joseph of Arimathea, as well as a Dives and a Lazarus. Nothing points to a Simeon Stylites. Self-denial, though not asceticism proper, is a necessary part of the life of a wandering preacher, which also precluded the exhibition of