From: The Dial, Vol. II No. IV (April 1842)
Author:
Published: E. P. Peabody 1842 Boston
German Anti-Supernaturalism. Six Lectures, on Strauss’s “Life of Jesus,” delivered at the Chapel in South Place, Finsbury. By Philip Harwood, &c. London. 1841. pp. viii. and 107.
Mr. Harwood’s design, as he tells us in the preface, “is to stimulate inquiry into a subject, which he regards as of first-rate importance on historical and moral speculation. Here, then, we have a clergyman, yes, a Unitarian clergyman, favorably known by a few stirring and pious sermons, setting forth, and in great measure accepting, the results of Mr. Strauss! He gives a brief, but fair and able synopsis of the celebrated “Life of Jesus,” and adds a few observations of his own. For our own part, we think Mr. Strauss is often mistaken; that he underrates the historical element, and sometimes comes hastily to his conclusions, which, therefore, cannot be all maintained, though long ago we believed he was doing a signal service to Christianity itself. Mr. Harwood, we think, accepts the conclusions of his author more entirely than reasonably, and like him is blinded by the myths, so that he does not always see the fact they cover and conceal.
The book may be regarded as the forerunner of a theological controversy, which, if once begun, will not be soon ended. It requires no divination to forsee the final result. It will lead thinking men to ask for the facts of the case, before they reason about the facts. But is it well judged to give the results of a book like Strauss’s, without the process by which the results were reached? Some will reply, yes; others, no. But the same thing is done in science and history; why not in historical theology? Again, it will be asked, is it wise to bring the case at once before the people? Some men love an historical answer, and here it is. Greater questions have been brought quite as directly before the people. In the day of Moses, the theological problem was to separate religion and morality from the Fetichism and Polytheism of Canaanites and Egyptians. What was his method? He said unto the people, Hear, oh Israel, the Lord your God is ONE LORD. He left the bull, Apis, and the consecrated cats to take care of themselves.
In the time of Christ, when the problem was to separate religion and morality from the Mosaic ritual, that world-stirring Nazarene addresses himself to the people. He tells a woman, “The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father; but the true worshippers shall worship him in spirit and in truth.” Is not salvation for the sick? This question has long enough been known to scholars, perhaps decided by scholars. It is the popular theology that requires reformation; and how shall this be effected, but by appeal to the people? We apprehend no danger is to be feared, at least no danger to religion and morality, nor to Christianity. When the work is tried by fire, why should not the “wood, hay, and stubble “ be burned up, that the precious stones may appear, and the foundation that is laid be discerned, that men may build thereon the temple that abideth ever? The old never passes away, till all the good of the thing gets transferred to the new.
We give Mr. Harwood’s conclusion in his own words.
“What are we to do with Christianity?—that wonderful faith, which has come so mysteriously into our world, and lived in it eighteen hundred years already, with such a wealth and fulness of life and living power; doing so much, and undoing so much; uprooting an old civilization, and planting a new one upon its ruins; doing so much, and in so many ways, both of good and evil; Christianity, the inspiration of the philanthropist, and the stalking -horse of the tyrant; the word of God in the heart of the reformer- prophet, and the lie on the lips of the bigot priest; the endurer and the inflicter of martyrdom for conscience-sake; Christianity, with all its ideas, moralities, and spiritual forces, working in countless ways, and through countless channels, upon literature, art, philosophy, legislation, and all the other interests of our social and moral being—what are we to do with this great enduring, all-pervading spirit or power of Christianity,—those of us who believe it to be simply a growth of nature and the human heart, with no other divinity, or divine authority, than its own truth, recognised by our own minds, and no other divine right or sanction, than what we infer from what we see of its nature and its history? What are we to do with Christianity?
“Perhaps some will say, We have nothing to do with it, we have already done away with it, by discarding its evidences in miracle: the miracles being false, it is without evidence, it is a false thing altogether, a dead thing, and we have nothing to do but bury it out of our sight, without more words.’ Hardly so, I think. Miracles do not make a religion, nor does the withdrawal of miracles unmake a religion. Miracles are not religion, but only a particular sort of machinery, by which a particular form of religion may or may not, at a given time and place, get room for itself in the world. The essence of a religion is never in its miracles, true or false; but in its ideas, its moralities, the phases of character, the modes of intellectual and moral being, which it calls into existence. The Jewish religion is not in the plagues of Egypt and the thunders of Sinai, but in the legislation, the ritual, and the morality of the Pentateuch. The Christian religion is not in the changing of water into wine, and feeding five thousand men at a cheap rate; not in violations of the law of gravitation, or of any other law; but in the ideas that were the spirit and power of Christ’s mind; in the spiritual impulses and influences that come from Christ’s mind to our minds; in the moral inspiration that breathes out from Christ’s heart into our hearts. The essence of a religion is in its ideas. Where else should it be? A religion is true or false, according as these are true or false, in accordance or in discordance with the ideal of human truth and good. It is not a question of miracles one way or the other. The presence of miracle could never make a false religion true, nor can the absence of miracle ever make a true religion false. The Christian religion may be a quite true religion,—the religion of brotherhood and immortality, the religion of the sermon on the mount, the religion of the good Samaritan, the religion of the well of Jacob and the lake of Galilee, the religion of the workshop of Nazareth,—may be a true religion, the truest of religions, though the whole of the miracles together come from the limbo of the vanities. The question still remains, then,—miracles or no miracles. What are we to do with Christianity?
“What are we to do with Christianity? What do we do with other religions, other doctrines and moralities, other philosophies of life, man and God? We simply accept them for what they are worth, as expositions, more or less authentic and complete, as a portion of spiritual reality; as parts, sustaining more or less important relations to the whole of humanity’s realized and garnered mental wealth; as indicating, by the very fact that here they are, something in human capability, tendency, and destination; as chapters in the volume of God’s book; as expressions of moral ideas, utterances of moral wants. We thus accept them all, and we test the worth and amount of the truth that is in each, by the joint standard of individual feeling, and of the world’s general experience; valuing each by the kind and degree of its influences, by its proved capability or incapability of enduring, by the forms of moral life which it expresses or creates. We accept each as true, according to the extent to which it has proved itself true by its works. We accept each and all for what they are severally worth, as emanations, more or less direct and pure, from that spirit of God in man, which is the great eternal soul of our human world,—the well-spring of all our prophesyings, gospels, moralities, religions. And why not Christianity?—Christianity, the divinest of them all; which has worked longer than most of them, worked the most variously, benignly, and powerfully of them all; which has done the most for human progress of them all, and which, in its connexions with the moral civilization of those nations which stand at the head of the human race, and furnish the best specimens of humanity in its best estate, may be taken as, on the whole, the most significant phenomenon in the history of our world, our trustiest and most intelligible expositor of what God is doing with our world.
“What shall we do, then, with Christianity? Why, accept it as the expression of truths, in human nature and human life, to which many ages and many nations have testified that they are truths : accept it, if not any longer as a creed having dogmatical truth, or as a history having historical truth, yet as a poem fraught with truth of a higher order than the dogmatic or historical—a poem, a divine parable: accept its ideal of human character and capability in that wonderful Man of Nazareth, in whom so glorious a strength blends with so gentle a repose,—Son of God and Son of Man, majestic as a prophet and meek as a little child accept its ideal of human destiny, in the history of that Man of Nazareth, born of God ( as we are all born of God, with two natures in us—children we are, like him, of an invisible Father and a visible Mother, God and Nature,) tempted in a wilderness, as we all are tempted, and of the very same devil or devils, struggling, suffering, triumphing, conquered by death, yet conquering over death:—accept this Christianity; accept its cross, the symbol of trial; its resurrection, the symbol of history; its millennium, or reign of saints, the symbol of our new moral world, with right and love for its only law; its heaven, the symbol of the blessedness which itself creates; its Father-God, the symbol of the great, mysterious, all -upholding, all-inspiring power, in which, and by which we live, move, and have our being. Accept Christianity, and these things in Christianity; that is, if we see them there. If not, so be it; perhaps we may see them more clearly somewhere else. There is no compulsion in the matter; no believing under penalties; no hell-fire.
“What shall we do with Christianity? Nothing artificial, nothing forced, nothing false; nothing that shall hinder the full, free development of mental and moral individuality. Not make a yoke of bondage of it: not make a labor-saving machine of it : not make a perceptive morality of it, to supersede the morality of principle and spirit not make a creed-theology of it, to supersede thought and philosophy : not make a hierarchical church of it, to supersede God’s order of prophets and seers not make a poor, formal, lip-worship of it, to trammel the freedom of the worship, which is in truth only when it is in spirit : do nothing with it that shall narrow the sympathies, enslave the will, enfeeble and sectarianize the intellect, impoverish the humanities, pervert or hinder our growth up to the fulness of the measure of the stature of perfect men.
“What shall we do with Christianity? Why, take its best principles, and do battle, in the strength of them, against its worst perversions. Take its law of love, its revelation of brotherhood and brotherly equality, its ideal of divine purpose and human destiny, its spirituality, its simplicity; and combat, strong in these, with all the frauds, falsehoods, conventionalisms, mummeries, quackeries, monopolies, tyrannies, sectarianisms, pharisaisms, that are practised in its name, and sanctified, with its sanctions,—the disgrace of churches, and the bane of states,—that even make it a question, with not unthinking men, whether on the whole Christianity has done more of good or of mischief in the world,—that make it no question at all, but that if Christ were to come again, he would be crucified again by the Chief Priests.
“What shall we do with Christianity? Why, if we can, improve upon it; improve upon Paul’s Christianity, as Paul improved upon Peter’s Christianity; develop it further, more widely, and variously, than it has ever been developed yet. Work out its great enduring principles the full length to which they will go as principles, in their varied applications to every department of human thought and life: enshrine its eternal spirit in new forms of beneficence and beauty, as the spirit of humanity itself rises to new heights, and tries its strength in new modes of being and action: work out by the light, and with the resources of our own day and generation, its grand idea of a kingdom of heaven and of God : carry its justice, its freedom, and its faith into our literature, our trade, our politics, and wherever else justice, freedom, and faith can find, or make a place for themselves: do all we can with this, and with every other genuine utterance of the spirit of humanity, that shall make us wiser, stronger, truer men,—bring us into nearer intelligence of the laws, and profounder sympathy with the spirit of the great world of God.”—pp. 105-107.
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