THE CHRISTIANITY REQUIRED BY Let this be set down then as fully granted, without any qualifying recurrence in what we have further to say. Man's WE his per E propose to describe in this paper original uprightness, his fall, his re igency of the times; and in a subsequent article to show, with less elaborateness than will necessarily be required in our present remarks, how Christianity can and must meet that exigency. We propound the subject with reference exclusively to its practical bearings. Substantive Christianity can admit no essential changes for the changes of "times and seasons;" nor can any substantive truth. We speak of the philosophy of an age, as if it were an essential product of that age, to be superseded by the development of a new phase of truth in a following period; and almost every age has, indeed, had its characteristic school of speculative science. Philosophy, however, has not been truth, for it has been self-contradictory. Its successive forms have been rather series of modes of inquiry after truth, than truth itself. The mode, not the truth, has been characteristic of its period. sonal moral renovation through that redemption, and his amenability to the future Judgment with its rewards and punishments, this is summarily the divine truth, the Christian philosophy which can admit no essential change. But this being granted, is not even this essential Christianity subject to external modifications? Does it not conform itself exteriorly to the characteristics of the times for good or for evil? And is it not one of its most important necessities that its defenders should comprehend what new adaptations the times demand of it? Down through all its ages,—“ Apostolic," "Patristic," the "Dark Ages," the Reformation, Puritanism, Methodism,—it has borne, with varied fortunes, but always in safety, the light of its essential truth as above defined, gleaming sometimes in the dark concealment of the catacombs as the Roman tomb-lamp, at others flickering on superb altars amidst meretricious pomps, at still others waving amidst darkness and delusions as a burning brand, and again gleaming genially as the household light of the people-"the candle on the candlestick which giveth light unto all that are in the house." What should it be nowwhat but the sun in mid-heavens ? And yet it cannot be denied that it is quite otherwise that many of the tendencies of the times are ominously against it. The cultivated mind of the day is swerving away from it with an altogether novel, we were about to say an appalling celerity Essential Christianity can know no other than incidental changes; nor can its historical basis admit of any important modifications. Chalmers did not err, in the fundamental importance which he attached to the historical assumptions of the system. Any important and clearly proved invalidity of historical Christianity, must invalidate the whole specific character of Christianity. Leigh Hunt once suggested to Shelley, in an Italian cathedral, that a feasible system of faith might be constructed of the ethics and simplest forms of Christianity, while its dogmas and the preternatural in its his--not merely the speculative, but the scitory could be rejected; the skeptic poet shook his head, and denied it. He saw at once that such a system could not be authoritative; that it would be but a return to natural religion-making philosophic theists of the learned, and virtual heathen of the masses. They are but shallow-headed thinkers who, rejecting the positive authority of dogmatic and historical Christianity, talk of new developments of the system, transcendental abstractions of its old positive ideas, and such a generalization, or rather etherealization, of its old practical injunctions as must render them ideal sentiments rather than plain actual duties. entific mind of the age. Its purely literary mind also, to which, notwithstanding its moral waywardness, religion has always been a source of inspiration and sentiment, follows headlong in the downward direction. What is the expedient course for Christianity in such circumstances? Not to argue-we answer; not to reproduce her old miscalled "Apologies," or regird herself for the old polemic combats. Those battles can never be better fought than they have been; and the great old writers of our language in defense of Christianity, with Butler at their head, will not soon be superseded by abler men. We need now a different mode of defense. It is a fact, however anomalous, that simultaneously with this skeptical mania of the learned world, science has been most abundantly pouring confirmatory light on Christianity. But before answering more specifically the question, let us examine more clearly the conditions of the alleged evil. The cause of this declension from the faith is moral rather than intellectual, though it characterizes chiefly the intellectual classes. It is more a sentiment than a conviction against Christianity; and the latter must resort more to its moral than its learned resources, for the means of self-protection. The growing unbelief of which we speak is thus described by a sensible writer: "With respect to the large mass of civilized communities, there can be no doubt that the Christian Church has lost the direction and censorship of both the private life and the public conduct of men. The science, the philosophy, the social organization, and the social passions of modern times are for the most part adverse to Christianity; yet we refuse to avail ourselves of the advantages which are turned against us, and refuse to change our tactics and strategy, when the enemy by a skillful change of front has turned our flank, and is marching unopposed as a conqueror over our domain. We perceive the universal spirit of resistance to all authority, resulting in anarchy; the substitution of petty aims in life for sentiments of duty; the degradation of all science into the mere instrument of pecuniary advancement, and the concomitant decline of science itself. The individual judgment is warped, betrayed, excited and blinded by the materialistic, sensual, pleasure-seeking, moneycraving, debasing tendencies of the age in which we live. Dr. Chalmers says:-'As things stand at present, our creeds and confessions have become effete, and the Bible a dead letter; and that orthodoxy, which was at one time our glory, by withering into the inert and lifeless, is now the shame and reproach of all our Churches.' Comte's Positive Philosophy is the last word of modern infidelity-its highest, most complete, and philosophic expression; it is the most undiluted development of the material, money-seeking, selfish, and self-suffi cient tendencies of the late centuries. A disposition to reject all restraint, to acknowledge no authority but individual passion or interest, to recognize the summum bonum in individual gratifications, to bow to no sovereign but human reason, and to adore human intellect with a base and beggarly worship, as corrupting as it is blind, has become the main characteristic of this nineteenth century, and has matured in anarchy, revolution, and social distress, its fatal fruits.”* These passages, too strongly expressed perhaps, indicate not only the character, but the source of our modern and fastspreading infidelity. It results from the engrossing materialistic dispositions of the age. The unbelief of no other period has resembled it. Under the old philosophers Pyrrhonism existed, but not extensively; the minds that swerved from the existing religions tended toward a better faith, rather than to the negation of faith. Socrates approached the didactic truth of Christianity; Plato approached near to its spiritualism, and the Church has ever and anon, especially in its periods of resuscitation, recurred to his philosophy as one of her best resources; Plutarch's spirit, and his ideas also, approximate so nearly to Christianity that we can hardly persuade ourselves that he did not hear its early teachers. During the middle ages infidelity scarcely had an indication except in the speculations of the Jew, Spinoza, or the rationalistic tendencies of Abelard. The whole mind of Christendom bowed before the altar with almost as absolute a faith in things invisible as in things visible. The individual aberrations from the common faith were the result rather of personal idiosyncrasies than any general tendency. The revival of learning liberated the spirit of inquiry, but that spirit took as yet no decidedly infidel direction; it only threw off the adventitious and oppressive errors which had accumulated upon the truth and upon the souls of men, during ages of superstition-it returned to the old and pure faith, and its legitimate authorities. Meanwhile, however, almost simultaneously, the enterprise of Europe, no longer absorbed in the religious wars of the Crusades and abandoning the semi Articles on Comte's Philosophy, Methodist Quarterly Review, 1852-papers of no small ability. religious pursuits of " chivalry," took a new direction. Navigation, the exploration of the globe, the discovery of the New World, these introduced a new moral as well as civil epoch into history. Materialistic interests were henceforth destined to dominate through the world, and characterize the new developments of civilization. Colonization, commerce, the practical arts as subservient to the material amelioration of the race, the development and organization of the natural sciences-almost all of them of modern date the detachment of religion more and more from its old relations to the State, these-all of them most salutary steps of progress in themselves-have nevertheless been abused to a deteriorating, a most visibly deteriorating influence on the religious temper of Christendom, sensualizing, materializing it; creating everywhere a demand for what is palpably rather than what is morally appreciable; leading to doubt respecting whatever is not attended with sensible evidence, and to a presumptuous dependence on physical rather than moral progress for the improvement of man. The degenerate temper thus engendered first revolts from the personal claims of Christianity chiefly, though not avowedly, because of their spiritual purity and rigor; next, it questions the preternatural assumptions of the system, especially what is preternatural in its historical claims, and thus strikes away the very basis of the structure; farther still does it go-admitting the ethical system of Christianity, (because, as we said in a former number, it absolutely cannot deny it*) glorifying it even, but with a diluted sentimentalism which dissolves out of it its real force, this new skepticism would separate the spirit of Christianity from the substance of truth and the strict form of conduct in which alone it has been able to subsist for any time, or with any vigor. The next and almost inevitable step of the progression, or rather of the retrogression, is theism; then comes the denial of a personal God, pantheism; and at last the denial of all spiritualism whatever-even of the Divine existence in any form-and the avowal of sheer materialism, as in the new and spreading school of Comte. See introduction to this Magazine, on Periodical Literature. In fine, this latest development of the civilized world, directing its energies so thoroughly toward material ends, is giving it a new moral phase-leading the learned to a downright materialistic skepticism, and the masses to an all-absorbing worldliness, the very temper of which is profound though vague disregard and discredit of the Christian faith. Some of the writers on the subject may have shown too much alarm, but it cannot be denied that the evil is of no doubtful character. We see its earliest evidences in the condition of Protestantism on the continent of Europe. Rationalism may be said, with little qualification, to be universal in the Protestant states of the continent; and it is little better, in many cases not as good, as Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar's Confession. Humboldt is said to be exemplary in his respect for the Protestantism of his country; but his recent great work-Cosmos-is a stupendous monument of the scientific and literary materialism of the age. It is a tower of Babel without a God in it—not even an idol god. No infidel perhaps ever sent forth a work on nature so utterly Godless-so destitute of allusion even, to the great First Cause. He is not, we suppose, a thorough skeptic; but, alas! it is not now fashionable in the learned world to recognize God—that would be an irrelevancy there, however appropriate in the church or the closet. The learned men of the Catholic states share this Protestant skepticism. The French savants and litterateurs are noted for it. Even Lamartine, with his interest for the moral salvation of the people, is evidently in theory a disciple of Rousseau. "His religious feeling," says Dumas, “is unquestionable, but not his religious faith." The infection has within a few years reached England, and is now breaking out among her literary men with the virulence of a pestilence. Sterling, of whom we have lately spoken more fully, was a living and dying example of it; Carlyle has now openly become its representative; the Westminster Review, with renewed ability, has become its organ; the Prospective Review is not far from the same track; Bailey, Leigh Hunt, Morrell, Mill, and Millman himself are examples of its influence; Harriet Martineau and her coterie are examples of its extreme result. Its prevalence in our own country is becoming more and more alarming. It is to be feared that most of our younger literary minds have lost their faith in Christianity. Emerson, Parker, Thoureau, Henry James, are the representatives of a numerous and constantly increasing class. Margaret Fuller's memoirs lift the vail of many a mind's history in our very midst. The book which we recently noticed "Vestiges of Civilization" | -one of the strongest examples of intellect which has come from the American press, avowedly takes its stand on the boldest position of Comte's materialistic "Positivism." Our The popular influence of this new form of infidelity is quite extensive in the old world, but it is likely to be more so here. From Germany come continually to our shores hordes of the people who, if we may judge from their American newspapers, are quite fallen from even German rationalism. In France, socialism, in its popular reception, is identified with religious unbelief, and France is transferring to our shores her socialist masses. own people, especially the youthful and cultivated mind of the country, is far more inquisitive, and far more under the materialistic influences we have noted; and it cannot be doubted that there is a widening revolt among such from the faith of our fathers. It has been our lot recently to be temporarily located amidst a circle of intelligent and ingenuous young men, who, full of generous aspirations and of sympathy for all physical and intellectual improvements of the people, have, nevertheless, to a great extent, outgrown their respect for anything preternatural in Christianity, and, while practicing blamelessly its social morality, have practically abandoned its ordinances and forms of worship. We have reason to know that they are but an example of an increasing tendency all through the land; in some places connected with new and preposterous "reforms," and even with ridiculous delusions, but substantially the same infidelity. All attempts to counteract this tendency by extreme efforts in the opposite direction have failed. The "Procession of the coat of Treves," which a century ago would have excited not much hostile remark in Europe, has led in our day to the revolt of tens of thousands of Catholics, not to Protestantism but to Rationalism. Puseyism, after the most diligent endeav ors, is now dying of sheer impotency. Its design, the restoration of the Anglican Church to some obsolete ideas and forms, has been a failure, though not without pernicious effects. The practical sense, the materialism of the age, has gone too far for such nonsense. If the reader will not tire, we will probe further the subject. Let us comprehend the evil, if we would answer justly the practical question respecting its remedy. This infidel spirit of the times, then, arising from the materialistic tendencies of our modern life, is not only revealing itself by a vague hostility to religion in the popular mind, and a direct hostility to it in the literature of the day, but it has within a few years been nullifying the old forms of speculative opinion in Europe, and taking itself a scientific form-one which is the more plausible, perhaps, and more in harmony with cotemporary predilections than any other which has ever appeared in the arena of speculation. The speculative systems of the Germans which, from Kant to Hegel, have passed through so many transformations of spiritualism, pantheism, and sensualism, are ceasing to be. Accustomed as we are to consider Germany the land, par excellence, of philosophical studies, the fact of the general declension of such studies there has hardly yet become known, even to the learned of other countries. For some ten or twelve years, however, a change in this respect, entitled to be called a revolution, has been in progress. German thinkers declare the fact, and ascribe it to the new materialistic epoch which, as we have shown, is intervening throughout Christendom, and, according to the Germans, not only debasing philosophy, but all abstract studies. A Berlin correspondent of the New-York Tribune devotes a long and very able letter to the subject.* He speaks of the "catastrophe of philosophy," and affirms that "philosophy, on which more than twenty centuries have now labored, has undergone the same catastrophe which has befallen constitutionalism;" that " philosophy, to which the Germans for the last eighty years have been devoted with their best powers, has collapsed;" that "the invasive power with which philosophy subjugated the separate sciences, moral as well as physical, to herself, has Tribune, July 27, 1852. been completely destroyed;" that "the reveries of stupid German professors, who still rejoice in the phrase of 'the legitimate influence of philosophy on the moral and physical sciences,' have become as childish and obsolete as the rodomontades of the present Bonapartean journals in Paris, which talk as if the Great Nation' still existed, which was bound to care for all Europe, and from which Europe waited orders, and expected the solution of the most vital problems;" that "the catastrophe of metaphysics is undeniable," and that "philosophical literature may be regarded as completely closed up-brought to an end." tending parties. But what can now be expected by a philosopher in the university? An empty lecture-room, when he wishes to present anything but what the hearers need for their civil examination. In the middle ages, metaphysics held the sovereignty of the world-a sovereignty which the Greek philosophers sought in vain to reach, and the ideal of which they sketched in their ambitious image of philosophers on the throne,—the philosophical teachers in universities now-a-days have no longer an idea to which the world is willing to give its attention. The man who has now attained the importance which in the middle ages belonged to the metaphysician, is the engineer. All the philosophers of Europe put together cannot dream of attaining any portion of the renown which has been won, for instance, by Paxton, the designer of the Crystal Palace, with a fortunate throw of the dice. The engineer, who conducts the erection of industrial establishments on new and effective principles, who improves the chemical laboratory of a manufactory, who conquers difficulties in the way of con out the line of a railroad on a large scale,— he is the man whom the people now make use of, and to whom they yield their con nature into complete subjection to themselves-but they cannot be helped in this by any philosopher with his system of nature. They wish, in order to come nearer together, to conquer time and space-but they have no longer any taste for listening to the disputes of philosophers on the abstract idea of time and "The universities,"-continues this writer," the universities, which formerly engaged all educated men with the struggles of their development, no longer attract general attention, and are now only preparatory seminaries for a special office. They still have their philosophical teachers, but not one of them has produced so much as a single new thought. While formerly, in the middle ages, the separation of the spiritual and secular order favored the exclusive occupation with sci-structing a bridge on a bold plan, or laying ence, and in the last century an interest in the destructive metaphysical systems was cherished by the aristocracy of all Europe, and even by the reigning princes, the uni-fidence. The people now wish to bring versal necessity, from which only some few capitalists are free, the struggle with daily misery, and the toil for the passing moment, have well nigh destroyed all inclination for general and comprehensive studies. While in the middle ages thousands from the whole west thronged the most renowned universities and teachersAbelard, for instance, often had ten thou-space. sand hearers-the number now frequenting the German universities diminishes every year, and is exclusively confined to those who are obliged to qualify themselves for civil office, by attending certain courses of lectures. In the middle ages, the historical flowering-time of metaphysics, an eminence in the scholastic philosophy either gave a certain guarantee of power, so long as it was in the hands of the spiritual, that is, the scholastically educated order, or when the two orders contended for supremacy, the secular seeking emancipation from the Papacy and founding its authority in the thirteenth century, metaphysical culture gave a valid claim to the high office of arbiter between the two con | "And the governments? They tolerate the teachers of the old metaphysics only at the universities, just as an old ruin is tolerated at the side of a new establishment, so long as there is as yet no time for its removal. 66 'Europe has entirely turned its back upon metaphysics the foundation of metaphysics has been forever destroyed by the German critical philosophy-no man will henceforth establish a metaphysical system, that is to say, one which will take any place in the history of cultivation,-quite as little as any one will be capable of composing a symphony after Beethoven, that is, an actual symphony of profound character, and of artistic value, |