The Arena. Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891

IV

In few statesmen has it been seen so clearly as in the case of the Chancellor that no great man can make himself greater than a great idea. Opposed to the Germanic union in the commencement of its creative period, at the time of the revolution of ‘48, he accepted it much later, not so much of his own initiative and free will as in obedience to the teachings of unpleasant experiences. Between his anti-union and almost feudal speeches which softened the disaster of Olmutz, and his conversion, more than fourteen years ensued, the whole space of time which extended from the dawn of the revolution to the triumph of Italy. In that conversion lay the veritable glory of his life, and he proved therein, by successive and tardy gradations, that he could tenaciously avail himself of his courage, and lead up to the triumph of the newly created and loved project with marvellous art. The policy developed against Austria at Frankfort by its snares, by its traps, by its deceits, and by its tricks, exhibited him to history as a prodigy of cunning and foresight, in whom the enthusiasm of a living sentiment was associated with computations of consummate dexterity. His embassy to Paris and to St. Petersburg, where he united against Austria persons so opposed to concord as Napoleon and Alexander, each for his own part determined to do nothing which might increase the power of Germany, surpassed in cleverness everything ever achieved in celebrated combinations by such diplomats as Talleyrand and Metternich, the two illustrious models of political strategy. The inclusion of Austria in the incidents of the duchies of the River Elbe and the jugglery done with the territory acquired with its direct assent, in addition to the preparation of the final stroke for the presidency of the Germanic federation, by means of a war prepared with cunning stealth and carried out with rapid triumph, are among the greatest feats for which praises and deifications are due to him and which testify to his merit. I cannot forget that to his efforts we owe the ruin of Austrian despotism, and of Napoleonic Cæsarism; the re-establishment of Hungarian independence; the return of Italy’s long lost provinces to her bosom; the end of the Pope’s temporal power, and the fortunate occasion of the new birth of the republic in France. In his schemes Bismarck forwarded a higher ideal of progress and, consciously or unconsciously, he—than whom nobody was ever more inspired by motives and triumphant in his undertakings—has served the universal interests of the democracy. But he has achieved his undeniable victories by means and procedures which have not fitted him for the position of a German deputy, and do not lend him any force, either moral or material, for his new elective office. The whole of his great edifice is founded on a complete oblivion of parliamentary traditions, to-day courted lovingly by its most crafty enemy, whose inconstancy is extraordinary. Reservedness, dissimulation, secrecy, deceit, double meanings in words, what by analogy with the former we call duplicity of character, treaties made by stealth, midnight conspiracies, imposition of taxes not voted by parliament, levies arbitrarily decreed by the executive without authorization and even without consultation as in Asia, the right of conquest practised in the light of reason, violent annexations which dismembered one nation for the glory of another—such is the sum total of fatal traditions which Bismarck now solicits to be allowed to continue by means of free discussion, and in the bosom of open parliament. Palmerston and Gortchakoff cannot hop in the same bag. The minion of a Czar and the representative of a nation cannot be united in one and the same person. What programme can Bismarck develop to his colleagues which will have the moral character of necessary work? Moreover, the divine word called human eloquence descends only on the lips of that apostleship which redeems a nation from slavery and impels it forward. You could not understand Daniel defending the kings of Babylon, Demosthenes defending Philip, Cicero defending Mark Antony, O’Connell defending the landlords of Ireland, and Vergniaud or Mirabeau defending the absolute kings of France. If Bismarck accepts the liberal and tolerant policy of to-day, will he not thereby countenance the emperor who has ridiculed him and Caprivi who has audaciously seated himself in that exalted position from which Bismarck thought never to fall before his death? The great man is a poor appraiser of ideas, accepting them from every quarter whence they blow to him if only they will fill his sails and propel his bark; but he will never understand what mischief he could work to his enemies by opposing a programme of advanced democratic reform to the imperial programme whose fixity resembles the rigidity of death. But what liberty can he invoke—he who has disavowed and injured all liberties? Not personal liberty—abused and trampled on constantly by his menials; not commercial liberty, sold for thirty pieces of silver after the Germanic Zollverein had brought great wealth to Prussia; not religious liberty, placed in grave danger by complacency with anti-Jewish preachers and by the May laws; not scientific liberty, after having persecuted every department of science—even history—and invested the state with full power to enforce the teaching of official doctrines everywhere and by everybody; not industrial liberty, wasted away by the regulation of labor which has transformed the workshops into garrisons, and made of the workmen an army. What remains for him to do? He has absolutely no resource at his disposal with which to undertake a campaign of active opposition. In social questions nothing is more worn out and useless than his pontifical socialism. This species of abortion has lately resulted in advancing the parturition of increased aspirations of the laborers, and as every kind of abortion leaves the womb which bears it, has done so violently. His law for the insurance of workmen, though dating only from ‘82, is already tottering in almost decrepit decay. He even admitted himself that it needed perfecting by means of a law that should establish compulsory corporations, like the ancient guilds, which proposal was objected to by the workmen themselves, more inclined to Saxon individualism and revolutionary co-operation than to his socialism, in which he saw salvation, and which they regarded as pedantic and hybrid. Bismarck’s system had no justification and derogated all laws of ethics and justice. With his Utopian schemes the professors in their lecture-rooms endeavored to excite the Socialists, who, if they had listened and demanded their realization would have been exposed to be shot down in the streets by the soldiery, without anyone being able even to raise a protest against such indignities being possible in the country. Even his foreign policy can scarcely be justified; however skilful may have been the diplomatic and military preparations which led to his first triumph, it has proved a perplexed and confused policy since his final triumph. The Chancellor had no other alternative than to come to an agreement either with France and England against Russia, or else with Russia against France and England. To come to an arrangement with France against Russia necessitated the restitution of Alsace and Lorraine; to come to an understanding with Russia, it was necessary to permit the Russians to enter Constantinople. By these perplexities which shut out all hope of retaliation from France, thus exciting its colonial appetite, and which opened to Russia the path to the Bosphorus in a final eastern war, detaining her for a time in St. Stephens and preparing the two Bulgarias for an Austrian protectorate, Bismarck could have extricated himself from danger from both Russia and France when the bonds of the Triple Alliance were loosened at Rome by the fall of Crispi, and at Vienna by the Treaty of Commerce. We have not spoken of the Chancellor as an argonaut, of the Chancellor as a colonizer. All that he has been able to do, after having given occasion for enormous difficulties with Australia and England, with the United States and Spain, placing himself and placing us in danger of war for the Carolines, has been to break poor unlucky Emin Pasha’s backbone, and to barter the protectorate of Zanzibar for the sponge known as Heligoland. And may thanks be given to William II. and to Caprivi for having, at such small cost, got over the difficulties of the Socialist laws of his home policy, and the colonial entanglements of his foreign policy. Bismarck may believe an old admirer of his personality and of his genius, though an adversary of his policy, and of the government dependent on that policy. Society, like nature, devours everything that it does not need. The death of William I., the Cæsar; the death of Roon, the organizer; the death of Moltke, the strategist, all say to him that the species of men to which he belongs is fading out and becoming extinct. Modern science teaches that extinct species do not re-appear. Bossuet would say that the Eternal has destroyed the instrument of His providential work, because it is already useless. Remain, then, Bismarck, in retirement, and await, without neurotic impatience, the final judgment of God and of history.

THE DOUBTERS AND THE DOGMATISTS

BY PROF. JAMES T. BIXBY, PH.D

An eminent ecclesiastic of the Church of England not long ago characterized the present age as pre-eminently the age of doubt, and lamented that whether he took up book, or magazine, or sermon, he was confronted with some form of it.

This picture of our age is not an unjust one. The modern mind is thoroughly wide awake and has quite thrown off the leading-strings of ancient timidity. It looks all questions in the face and demands to be shown the real facts in every realm. All the traditions of history, the laws of science, the principles of morals are overhauled, and the foundations on which they rest relentlessly probed. And our modern curiosity can see no reason why it should cease its investigations when it comes to the frontiers of religion. It deems no dogma too old to be summoned before its bar; no council nor conclave too sacred to be asked for its credentials; no pope or Scripture too venerable to be put in the witness-box and cross-examined as to its accuracy or authority. In all the churches there is a spirit of inquiry abroad; almost every morning breeze brings us some new report of heresy, or the baying of the sleuth-hounds of orthodoxy, as they scent some new trail of infidelity; and the slogan of dogmatic controversy echoes from shore to shore.

As we look around the ecclesiastical horizon, we find agitation and controversy on all sides. In one denomination, it is the question of the salvation of the heathen; in another, that of the virgin birth of Christ and the apostolic succession; in a third, it is the invasion of doubt as to the eternal torment of the wicked; in a fourth, the evidential value of the miracles; in a fifth, the grand questions included under the higher criticism of the Scriptures and the relative authority of reason and the Bible. In Congregational, Episcopalian, Baptist, Universalist, and Presbyterian folds, it is the same, everywhere some heresy to be disciplined, some doubt to be suppressed, some doctrinal battle hotly waged.

To the greater part of the Church, this epidemic of scepticism is a subject of grave alarm. Unbelief seems to them, as to Mr. Moody, the worst of sins; and they consider the only proper thing to do with it, is to follow the advice of the Bishop of London, some years ago, and fling doubt away as you would a loaded shell. They apparently look upon Christianity as a huge powder magazine, which is likely to explode if a spark of candid inquiry comes near it.

Others, on the contrary, fold their arms indifferently and regard this new spirit of investigation as only an evanescent breeze, which can produce no serious result upon the citadel of faith. A third party hail it with exultation as the first trumpet blast of the theological Götterdæmerung, the downfall of all divine powers and the destruction of the Christian superstition, to give place to the naked facts of scientific materialism.

What estimate, then, shall we put on this tendency?

In the first place we must recognize that it is a serious condition; that it is no momentary eddy, but a permanent turn in the current of the human mind. Humanity is looking religion square in the face, without any band over its eyes, in a way it never has before; and when humanity once gets its eyes open to such questions,—it is in vain to try to close them, before the questions have been thoroughly examined. Certainly, Protestantism cannot call a halt upon this march. For it was Protestantism itself, proclaiming at the beginning of her struggle with Rome the right of private judgment, which started the modern mind upon this high quest; and Protestantism is therefore bound in logic and honor to see it through to the end, whatever that end may be.

And in the next place, I believe that quest will end in good. Why the champions of faith should regard doubt as devil-born, rather than a providential instrument in God’s hand, is something I do not understand. If doubt humbles the Church and acts as a thorn in its flesh, may not such chastening be providential, quite as much as the things which puff it up? As Luther well expressed it, “We say to our Lord, that if he will have his church, he must keep it, for we cannot. And if we could, we should be the proudest asses under heaven.” As Attila was the scourge of God to the Roman world, when God needed to clear that empire out of the way, as he built his new Christendom, so may not doubt be the scourge of God to the easy-going, sleepy, too credulous piety of to-day, which gulps down all the husks of faith so fast that it never gets a taste of the kernel?

Yes, doubt is often the needed preparation for obtaining truth. We must clear out the thorny thicket of superstition before we can begin to raise the sweet fruit of true religion.

There are times when careful investigation is rightly called for. When doubting Thomas demanded to see the print of the nails, and touch and handle the flesh of the risen Christ, before he would believe in the resurrection of his Lord, his demand for the most solid proof of the great marvel was a wise and commendable one; one for which all subsequent generations of Christians are deeply indebted to him. To believe without evidence, or to suppress doubt where it legitimately arises, is both fostering superstition and exposing ourselves to error and danger. What shall we say of the merchant who refuses to entertain any question about the seaworthiness of his vessel, but sends her off across the Atlantic undocked and unexamined, piously trusting her to the Lord? Shall we commend him? or not rather charge him with culpable negligence? And what we say of such a merchant seems to me just what we should say of the Christian who refuses to investigate the seaworthiness of that ship of faith which his ancestors have left him. In astronomy, in politics, in law, we demand what business the dead hand of the past has on our lip, our brain, our purse? Why should the dead hand of an Augustine or Calvin be exempt from giving its authority? Why should these mediæval glimpses of truth be given the right to close our eyes to-day from seeing what we ourselves can see and speaking forth what we can hear of heavenly truth?

In all other departments of knowledge, investigation has brought us up to a higher outlook, where we see the true relations of things better than before. In all other branches, God has given us new light, so that we discern things more as they really are. Science has risen by making a ladder of its earlier errors and by treading them under foot, reaching to higher truths. The Bible itself is the growth of ages; and Christian doctrine and Christian creeds have been the evolution of a still longer period. The dogmas of the churches are most manifold and conflicting. Is it not rather immodest and absurd for each church to claim infallibility for its present creed, and that wisdom died when the book of Revelation closed the Bible, or the Council of Trent or the Westminster Assembly adjourned its sitting? It seems to me that the churches ought, instead, to be willing and anxious to receive whatever new light God may grant them to-day, and with the potent clarifying processes of reason, separate the pure gold of religion from the dross and alloys of olden superstition and misguided judgment.

But to the modern devotees of dogma, any subjection of it to the cleansing of the reason seems shocking. The forefront of Dr. Briggs’ recent offending, for which he is about to be formally tried as a heretic, is that he admits errors in the Bible and gives reason (by which he means, as he explains, not merely the understanding, but also the conscience and the religious instinct in man), a conjoint place with the Bible and the Church in the work of salvation and the attainment of divine truth. To the modern dogmatist, these positions seem sceptical and pernicious. But to the philosopher, who knows the laws of human nature, to every scholar who knows the actual history of the Bible, these positions seem only self-evident. That in the Scriptures there are innumerable errors in science, mistakes in history, prophecies that were never fulfilled, contradictions and inconsistencies between different books and chapters,—these are facts of observation which every Biblical student knows full well. Granting, for the sake of the argument, that the Bible was given originally by infallible divine dictation, yet the men who wrote down the message were fallible; the men who copied it were fallible; the men who translated it (some of it twice over, first from Hebrew to Greek, and then from Greek to English) were fallible; and the editors, who from the scores of manuscripts, by their personal comparison and decisions between the conflicting readings, patched together our present text, were most fallible. And when thus a Bible reader has got his text before him, how can he understand it, except by using his own reason and judgment? Instruments, again, most fallible.

How is it possible, then, to get Bible-truth independently of the reason or in entire exemption from error? The only way would be to say, that not only was the Bible verbally inspired, but all its authors, copyists, editors, and pious readers were also infallibly inspired. As in the old Hindoo account of how the world was supported, the earth was said to be held up on pillars, and the pillars on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and when the defender of the faith was asked what, then, did the tortoise rest on, he sought to save himself in his quandary, by roundly asserting that “it was tortoise all the way down”;—so the defender of the infallibility of the Scripture has to take refuge in “inspiration all the way down.” But if this be so, ought not the modern scripture editors and revisers, translators and Biblical professors also to be inspired, as much as those of King James’ day or the printers at the Bible house? And thus we reach, as the reductio ad absurdum of this argument, this result: that Tischendorff, and Koenen, and the Hebrew professors, among whom Doctor Briggs is a foremost authority, while accused of heresy are really themselves the very channels of infallible inspiration.

The sincere investigators into the character of the Bible and the nature of Christ are charged with exalting human reason above the word of God. But as soon as the subject is investigated and a Professor Swing or a Mr. MacQueary corroborates his interpretation by the Scripture itself, or Doctor Briggs shows his views to be sustained by history, by philosophy, by a profounder study of both nature and the Bible, then the ground is shifted, and it is maintained that it is not a question whether the views are true, but whether they conform to the creed; that the Catechism is not to be judged by the Bible or the facts in the case, but Bible and facts are to be interpreted by the words of the Confession; and if they do not agree with this, then heresy and infidelity are made manifest. The question is not whether the water of truth be found, but whether it is drunk out of an orthodox bottle, with the Church’s label glued firmly upon it. The pretext for the charge of heresy against these eminent Biblical scholars is that they are undermining the Bible; but in conducting the trial, prosecutors themselves refuse to abide by the testimony of the Scriptures to decide the matter and erect above them soul creed or catechism.

But let us stop for a moment and ask whence came these creeds and catechisms themselves? What else was their origin than out of the reason of man; out of the brains of scholars, as they in former years criticised and interpreted the same Scripture, and nature, and laws of God? And these scholars of the past were quite as fallible, quite as partisan, and far less well informed than our scholars to-day. Thus it is the dogmatists themselves who exalt the reason of man above the word of God, forbidding us to listen to the more direct voice of God in our own soul; forbidding us to decipher the revelations which the Divine Hand has written on the rocks, and tree, and animal structure, and even frowning upon that profounder study of the Scripture called the higher criticism, but bidding us accept, in its stead, the man-made substitute of some council or assembly of former generations.

There have undoubtedly been periods when the doubt with which the Church had to deal was mainly frivolous or carnal; a passionate rebellion of the worldly nature, attacking the essential truths of religion. But such is not the nature of the doubt which is at present occupying the public eye; such is not the doubt most characteristic of our generation. It proceeds from serious motives. It is a doubt marked by essential reverence and loyalty to truth. It is a desire for more solid foundations; for the attainment of the naked realities of existence. It is a necessary incident of the great intellectual awakening of our century. As the modern intellect comes back on Sunday from its week-day explorations of the history of Rome, or the myths of Greece, or the religious ideas of Buddha or Zoroaster, it must return to the contemplation of the Christian dogmas under new influences. It will necessarily demand what better evidence the law of Moses or the creed of Nicea has than the law of Mana or the text of the Zendavesta? The scepticism of our age is not so much directed against the great truths of religion as against the man-made dogmas that have usurped the sacred seat. If irreverent, scoffing scepticism were to be found anywhere to-day, it would most likely be found manifested among the throng of young men gathered at our most progressive University,—Harvard. But Dr. Lyman Abbot, after several weeks’ association with the students there, and a careful study of their states of mind, not long ago testified, that “if they are sceptical, it is because they are too serious-minded and too true to accept convictions ready made, traditional creeds for personal beliefs, or church formularies for a life of devotion.” Now to call such a state of mind irreligious or infidel is most unjust. The irreligion lies rather with those who make a fetish of the Bible and substitute a few pet texts from it; that sustain their own private opinions, in place of that divine light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The real infidels are they who reject the revelation which God is making us continually in the widening light of modern knowledge, and by a species of ecclesiastical lynching, condemn, before trial, the sincere, painstaking, and careful scholars and reverent disciples of Christ, who are so earnestly seeking after truth, because the results of their learned researches do not agree with the prejudices of their anathematizers. It is with no less cogency of argument than nobility of feeling that Dr. Briggs replied to his assailants: “If it be heresy to say that rationalists, like Martineau, have found God in the reason, and Roman Catholics, like Newman, have found God in the Church, I rejoice in such heresy, and I do not hesitate to say that I have less doubt of the salvation of Martineau and Newman than I have of the modern Pharisees who would exclude such noble men,—so pure, so grand, the ornaments of Great Britain and the prophets of the age,—from the kingdom of God.”

Scepticism and religious questioning are, then, no sins; they are not irreligious. But surely they do vex the Church. What shall the Church do about them? In the first place, we should not try to suppress them. Nor should we tell religious inquirers to shut their eyes and put the poppy pillow of faith beneath their heads and go to sleep again, and dream. They have got their eyes wide open and they are determined to know whether those sweet visions which they had on faith’s pillow are any more than illusions. Nor will they be satisfied and cease to think, by having a creed of three hundred or fifteen hundred year’s antiquity recited to them. The modern intellects that have taken Homer to pieces, and excavated Agamemnon’s tomb, and unwound the mummy wrappings of the Pharaohs, that have weighed the stars and chained the lightnings, are not to be awed by any old-time sheepskin or any council of bishops. They demand the facts in the case; fresh manna to satisfy their heart hunger; the solid realities of personal experience. No. It is too late to-day for the churchmen to play the part of Mrs. Partington, and sweep back the Atlantic tide of modern thought with their little ecclesiastical broom. The old ramparts are broken through and we must give the flood its course. The only spirit to meet it in is that of frankness and friendliness. Let us not foster in these questioning minds the suspicion that there is any part of religion that we are afraid to have examined. We smile at the bigoted Buddhist who, when the European attempted to prove by the microscope that the monk’s scruples against eating animal food were futile (inasmuch as in every glass of water he drank he swallowed millions of little living creatures), smashed the microscope for answer, as if that altered at all the facts. But are not many of the heresy-hunters in Christendom quite as foolish in their efforts to smash the microscope of higher criticism, or the telescope of evolution, and suppress the testimony which nature, and reason, and scholarship every day present afresh?