I ASK attention now to a type of dualism for which human reason is the antagonist of the Deity.

That human reason, in the exercise of its proper functions, might become the enemy of God, is the last thing that would occur to one who holds the view of man's place in the universe which I have made the foundation of my argument for a providential order of the world. On that view man is the crown of the creative process, the key to the meaning of the process, and also to the nature of its Divine Author. But reason is an essential ingredient in the distinctively human, therefore a part of the image of God, a ray of the divine. How unlikely that it should prove to be inherently inaccessible to the knowledge of God, and unserviceable to the great purpose for which He made the creature whom He endowed with so noble a faculty! Ought not reason rather to be a source of the knowledge of God, a revelation of God in part, and also of the world: man rational revealing a rational God, and unfolding the meaning of a world interpretable to reason? Ought not this same faculty to be a willing instrument in the hand of God for furthering the moral evolution of humanity, bringing to full fruition the latent possibilities of human nature?

This genial view of reason's promise and potency has not by any means found universal acceptance. On the contrary, there has ever been a tendency, especially among theologians, to the vilification of reason. Concisely formulated, the depreciatory theory of man's rational faculty is this: it cannot find God; it is unwilling to receive a revelation of God coming to it from without; it is reluctant to serve God so revealed as an instrument for advancing His glory and the higher interests of humanity. It is a very dismal and depressing theory. The dualism considered in last Lecture is sombre enough. It finds in the lower stages of evolution manifold traces of an antigod counterworking the beneficent purposes of the Creator. But it does not leave the Creator without a witness at any stage in the world-process; even its most pessimistic exponent, John Stuart Mill, being compelled to own that some faint evidence of divine benevolence is discoverable. But suppose it were otherwise, suppose the sub-human world were without a ray of divine light, unmitigated diabolic darkness brooding over all, what a comfort if, on arriving at the human, we found that we had emerged at last out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light with reason and conscience for our celestial luminaries! Another type of dualism, however, deprives us of this comfort, telling us in effect that with reason we are not yet in the kingdom of light, but still in a godless region; that reason in truth is simply a faculty enabling its possessor more cleverly and successfully to counterwork the moral purpose of the Creator. The Ahriman, the Satan, of this new form of dualism is a human endowment which we had fondly imagined to be a link in the chain of filial affinity connecting man with God. This view, if accepted, upsets our whole doctrine of a providential order based on man's place in the cosmos; therefore it is our imperative duty to subject it to careful scrutiny.

The first step in the vilification of reason is the assertion that it cannot find God. This position, in itself, does not necessarily involve a depreciatory estimate of reason's capacity. Inability to find may conceivably be due, not to any fault in the searcher, but to lack of clues to the thing sought. Such lack of clues to God in nature is asserted by many, some of whom at least have no wish to disparage reason. In our time men of different schools, theological and philosophical, agree in this position. Thus an English Nonconformist minister, an adherent of the Ritschlian school of theology, expounding its views, writes: ‘If we will use words carefully, there is no revelation in nature.’1 From the opposite extreme of the ecclesiastical horizon comes the peremptory voice of Cardinal Newman, telling us that from the surface of the world can be gleaned only ‘some faint and fragmentary views of God,’ and that the fact can mean only one of two things: ‘either there is no Creator, or He has disowned His creatures.’2 A Transatlantic philosopher, who describes his philosophical position as that of radical empiricism, in harmony with these utterances declares that natural religion has suffered definitive bankruptcy in the opinion of a circle of persons, among whom he includes himself, and that for such persons ‘the physical order of nature, taken simply as science knows it, cannot be held to reveal any one harmonious spiritual intent.’3

These oracular verdicts on the nullity of natural theology are pronounced in different interests: the first in support of the thesis that Jesus Christ is the sole source of knowledge of God; the second with the view of making dependence on the Church for such knowledge as complete as possible;4 the third to inculcate the necessity of faith in an unseen supernatural order ‘in which the riddles of the natural order may be found explained.’5 The first-mentioned bias, that of the Ritschlians, possesses special interest and significance. It certainly means no disrespect to human reason. It denies not to reason an eye capable of discerning the light; it simply affirms that from the world, apart from Christ, no light is forthcoming. The Ritschlian is an Agnostic so far as natural theology is concerned, affirming that the course of nature supplies no sure traces of the being or the providence of God. Christ is for him ‘the one luminous smile upon the dark face of the world.’6 If reason, baffled in its quest after God, can recognise in that smile a light from heaven, her affinity for the divine is sufficiently vindicated.

It does not fall within the scope of this Lecture to criticise at length the Ritschlian programme: Outside Christ nothing but agnosticism. Suffice it, therefore, to remark that it seems to me to play into the hands of the absolute agnostic quite as effectually as the attitude of Cardinal Newman, whose watchword was: No knowledge of God except through the Church. To Newman the agnostic reply is this: Your position means that to follow reason lands in agnosticism as the only creed possible or rational for all outside the Catholic Church. Why, then, should we cease being agnostics and become Catholics? Those who maintain that no knowledge of God is possible save through Christ must be prepared for a similar response. ‘Why,’ it may be asked, ‘must we become theists at the bidding of Jesus, if there be nothing in the universe witnessing to God's being and benignity? If Jesus be in possession of the truth, how is he so isolated? Is the isolation not a proof that he was mistaken in his doctrine of a Divine Father who cares for those who, like himself, devote their lives to the doing of good?’

If Christ's doctrine of God be true, there ought to be something in the world to verify it. There can hardly be a real Divine Father in the Gospels if there be no traces of that Father outside the Gospels, in the universe. If God can be known by any means, it is presumable that He can be known by many means. It is intrinsically probable that some knowledge of God can be reached by more than one road. Why should we be so slow to believe that the Divine can be known? The bankruptcy of natural theology is a gratuitous proposition. The Apostle Paul expresses only the judgment of good sense when he indicates that there is ‘that which may be known of God’ even by Pagans, and charges the heathen world, not with incapacity to know God, but with unwillingness to retain God in their knowledge.7 This is the reasonable view still for men who walk in the light of modern science. In view of man's place in the cosmos, it is a priori credible that there is a revelation of God in nature, and that man in the exercise of his cognitive faculties is capable of deciphering it. Man being rational, the presumption is that God is rational, and that Divine Reason is immanent in the world. Man being moral, the presumption is that God is moral, and that traces of a moral order of the world will discover themselves to a discerning eye. These two positions being conceded, it results that we men are God's sons, and that God is our Father. Christ's doctrine is confirmed. The new light is the true light. By intuition Jesus saw and said what modern science seals.

Thus far of reason's power to find God in nature. We have next to consider its capacity to receive what it cannot by its own unaided effort find. Has reason an open eye for light coming from above?

To simplify the question, let us suppose the celestial light to be the teaching of Jesus as reported in the Synoptical Gospels.

Now, even absolute agnostics can so far accept that light as to recognise its beauty and its worthiness to be true. If they are constrained to regard it as the poetic dream of an exquisitely endowed mind, they can frankly admit that the dream is very lovely, and that it would be well for the world if the fair vision corresponded to the outward fact. It is with regret, not with pleasure, they find themselves compelled by observation to arrive at the conclusion that such correspondence does not exist. Their reason hesitates to accept the idea of a Divine Father as objectively true, not for lack of liking but for lack of evidence.

Christian agnostics advance beyond this position. They accept the doctrine of Jesus as not only beautiful but objectively true, the one ray of divine light in an otherwise dark, godless universe. In doing so they do not consider themselves to be performing an ultra-rational act of transcendental faith. Christ's teaching in their view possesses a quality of ‘sweet reasonableness’ towards which receptivity is the only rational attitude. Christ's light, like that of the sun, appears to them self-evidencing, needing no supernatural attestation by miracles,8 or enforcement by awful sanctions or compulsory imposition as a legal creed by ecclesiastical authority. The Christ of history can dispense with these aids of uncertain value, and stand upon His own merits, making His appeal directly from reason to reason, from soul to soul.

Not thus has the relation between reason and revelation been conceived by all. A hard antithesis has been set up between reason and faith, and men have been conceived as accepting revelation, so to speak, at the point of the bayonet, as if such acceptance could possibly have anything to do with either reason or faith. This has come about through two causes: an artificial view of the substance of revelation, and a disparaging view of human reason. As to the former, a notion long prevailed that revelation consists chiefly in a body of doctrines incomprehensible by reason, therefore unacceptable to reason, possessing no self-evidencing or self-commending power, needing therefore an elaborate apparatus of external evidences, chiefly miracles, to give them a chance of acceptance. This was the view generally adopted by the older apologists. One of its ablest and best-known exponents and advocates was Dean Mansel, who, in his Bampton Lectures on The Limits of Religious Thought, employed the Hamiltonian philosophy of the Conditioned for the defence of the Christian Faith. The position that philosophy led him to take up was something like this. Recognising that certain doctrines deduced by theologians from Scripture—such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, Eternal Punishment—were open to cavil from the point of view of reason, he interdicted criticism on the plea that the metaphysical and the moral nature of the absolute Being are both alike beyond human ken. The doctrines of atonement and eternal punishment, e.g., might appear very liable to objection on ethical grounds; but we must remember that the absolute morality of God must be very different from the relative morality of men, and that therefore we may not presume to comprehend or judge divine action, but with the meekness of an uncomprehending faith accept what from reason's point of view appears revolting. It was not to be expected that this way of silencing objectors by the bugbear of the Absolute would pass unchallenged. Troublesome questions were sure to be asked. There is, it seems, an absolute morality whose nature we cannot know. If we cannot know the nature of such morality, how do we know that it exists? By revelation? But how can we be sure that it is revelation? If the morality ascribed to God in the Bible presents itself to our moral nature as immorality, can we help rejecting it as a false representation? And if we are asked to distinguish between the aspect under which God is presented to us in Scripture and the real truth of His Being, between what He is in Himself and what He would have us think of Him, can this properly be called revelation? How much better to give up pretending to know God either through reason or through revelation, and settle down in the conviction that the Being philosophers call the Infinite and the Absolute is altogether unknowable! So the agnostic apologetic of Mansel was likely to end. So it did end. The relative agnosticism of the disciple of Hamilton landed in the absolute agnosticism of Herbert Spencer and Leslie Stephen, who employed the weapons put into their hands by the theologian to undermine and subvert the foundations of all possible theology. The sooner this spurious apologetic was swept away the better, for we are worse off with it than with the modicum of knowledge concerning God allowed us by the philosophy of Kant. While denying access to God to the theoretic reason, Kant held a Divine Moral Governor to be a necessary postulate of the practical reason. This view implies that God's moral nature is essentially the same as man's; that God is interested in righteousness in the sense in which we understand it, and will use His power to promote its ascendency. Mansel, on the contrary, represents our ideas of God even on the moral side as anthropomorphic and unreal. God's righteousness, for anything we know, may be something very like what we should account unrighteousness. Kant's view is decidedly the more wholesome and acceptable. With such knowledge as he allows concerning God we could be content to remain in ignorance as to His metaphysical nature. It is on the moral side that knowledge of God is urgently needed, and, if I have reason to believe that on that side God is like man, I know where I am and what I have to expect. The belief that the human and the divine are essentially one in the moral sphere is the very light of life. On the other hand, extend the shadow of the absolute into the moral world by proclaiming that morality is not the same thing in essence for God and for man, and you envelop human life in midnight darkness, and leave us without God and without hope. Faith in any so-called revealed truth which really implies the contrary is impossible. In such a case faith can only be feigning, make-believe.

The alleged antagonism between reason and faith is further based in part on disparagement of reason. The commonplaces here are: the pride of reason, its aversion to mystery, its reluctance to receive as truth whatever exceeds its comprehension. It is possible to quote with plausibility in support of such depreciatory reflections the Apostle Paul, as when he writes, ‘The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.’9 But the expression rendered the natural man does not mean the rational or reasonable man; it signifies the psychical man, the man, i.e. who is under the dominion of the lower animal soul, instead of the higher reasonable soul, the spirit. The natural man is one who is in bondage to passion, instead of being under the free guidance of enlightened reason. The contrast suggested is analogous to that indicated in another Pauline text: ‘With the mind I serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.’10 The mind that serves the law of God will not be shut to the truth of God. And this service to divine law, and this openness to divine truth, are in accordance with the true nature of man as a rational and moral being. The ‘psychical’ man is not man in his true normal nature. He is psychical because he is not man enough, because he is more of the brute than of the man. In so far as he is unspiritual, neither knowing nor valuing the things of the spirit, he is irrational. For, be it carefully noted, it is a purely arbitrary conception of reason which regards the ethical and the spiritual as lying wholly outside its sphere. Reason, morality, and religion are but different phases of the one essential nature of man—of that which constitutes the distinctively human. And these three are one; they imply each other and cannot exist separate from each other. ‘Thought,’ it has been well said, ‘may for certain purposes abstract rational intelligence from moral character. But, in fact, there is no such thing in human experience as rational intelligence by itself; rational intelligence that is not the intelligence of a moral person; that has not, therefore, inseparably from its rational existence and activity, a moral character. Neither can there exist any moral which has not also a rational aspect and character. There is no such thing as a non-moral rational. There is no such thing as a non-rational moral.’11 In the same way it may be maintained that spiritual insight and appreciation presuppose morality and rationality. It is the pure in heart that see God. And seeing means knowing, thinking true, wise, worthy thoughts of God—the highest function of the faculty of reason.

In the exercise of this function reason may become unduly elated. Divine philosophy may be lifted up with pride, and through pride fall into foolish presumption. But reason is not the only thing that is exposed to this danger. There is a pride of morality and a pride of spirituality as well as a pride of reason. The righteous man and the saint have need to be on their guard not less than the philosopher. Each, through pride, may be led into the devious paths of false judgment. The complacent righteous man despises his fellow-men; the ‘saint,’ in the proud consciousness of his spirituality, looks down with contempt on the world; the philosopher, in self-reliant arrogance, may be unduly agnostic, or unduly gnostic, either sceptically reducing that which may be known of God to zero, or presumptuously affirming that there is nothing which may not be known through and through, and that whatever cannot be so known has no reality. All mystery, or nothing mysterious: such are the two extremes.

Reason as such has no inherent inclination to assume so presumptuous an attitude. On the contrary, it is thoroughly reasonable to recognise limits to the ken of reason. And in regard to that which presents an aspect of mystery to human thought, reason may be divided in its sympathies. By the metaphysical side of the mystery it may be repelled, by the moral side it may be attracted. Take the idea of incarnation as an illustration. That idea is not wholly repugnant to philosophic reason. On the metaphysical side it may appear to involve an impossibility—the finite taking into itself the infinite. But on the moral side it offers compensating attractions: God not dwelling apart in solitary majesty, enjoying his own felicity indifferent to man's destiny, but sharing in the sorrows of humanity, a hero in the strife. In virtue of its innate affinity with morality, reason can appreciate that conception. The reason of the Aryan race especially takes kindly to it. It loves to think of God as immanent rather than as transcendent. Its tendency, as Professor Tiele in his Gifford Lectures has pointed out,12 is theanthropic, as distinct from that of the Semitic mind, which is theocratic; whence it comes that apotheosis and incarnation find frequent recognition and exemplification in Aryan religions.

In spite, however, of all that one may say in defence of reason against plausible but ill-founded charges, men will persist in ascribing to it, in reference to things divine, an intractableness analogous to that ascribed by ancient philosophers to matter. Reason on this view is one of the chief obstructives to the work of God as the Maker of the spiritual world. Its anti-divine bias is as inveterate as that of Satan. It cannot be converted; it can only be curbed and put in chains, so that its power for mischief may be as restricted as possible. And what are the chains by which it is to be bound? Miracles and fears of eternal loss have been tried, but the fetters most in fashion for the present are those of authority—the authority of the past or of custom, or the authority of the Church. There is a conspiracy on the part of many who underestimate reason's power to find God, and reduce to a minimum that which may be known of God independently of ecclesiastical illumination, to reinstate the Church in mediæval dominion in matters of faith and practice. In reference to this portentous reaction it has been well remarked: ‘It is devout agnosticism that to-day is becoming the mother of a menacing institutionalism that is exerting itself to instal over the religious mind extreme high-churchism. Let it be understood that the movement originates and derives all its vigour from the acknowledged incompetency of the moral reason of man to fix the object of his worship, and Protestants will see the alternative that divides the field against them with Atheism.’13

Now, with reference to the claims of Authority under all aspects, traditional, social, or ecclesiastical, let it be at once frankly admitted that much that is true, useful, and wholesome can be said by way of asserting its legitimacy, necessity, and vast extent. But care should be taken that it be not said to the prejudice of reason. When we find reason and authority pitted against each other, and the praise of authority descanted on in a manner that sets reason by contrast in an unfavourable light, our suspicions are awakened, and we cannot help feeling that an attempt is being made, doubtless in all good faith, to give to authority in religion a place and power to which it is not entitled, and which, if conceded, would bear disastrous fruit. A tendency in this direction may be discovered in all statements to the effect that the influence of reason in the production of belief is trifling compared with the ‘all-prevailing influence emanating from authority,’ and that the fact is no cause for regret, inasmuch as reason ‘is a force most apt to divide and disintegrate; and though division and disintegration may often be the necessary preliminaries of social development, still more necessary are the forces which bind and stiffen, without which there would be no society to develop.’14

Such language indicates heavy bias, and is very provocative of criticism. Take, e.g., the representation of the influence of reason, compared with that of authority, as insignificant. This is a very superficial judgment, all the more misleading that it wears an aspect of truth. It may with great plausibility be maintained that the great mass of our beliefs and actions rest on authority or custom. Yet, quite compatibly with the admission of this contention, it might be asserted that, after all, reason is the more important and even the mightier factor. Reason like the word or Logos of God, is ‘quick and powerful,’ as the tiny acorn out of which the great forest oak grows. The analogy of seed or of buds helps us to grasp the real significance of reason, as may be seen from the following sentences taken from a recent work by an American writer, entitled Evolution and Religion. ‘Seeds have not much bulk, but the potentialities of the world are in them. The buds of a tree are but a small portion of its entire mass, yet they alone are the significant parts. All has been built up in due order by them. The thoughts of men, as swayed by reason and reconstructed under it, are the intellectually vital points in the spiritual world. Here it is that human life takes on new forms, new powers, new promise. Reason leaves behind it a great deal of authority—as the succulent bud deposits woody fibre—but no authority goes before it. Evolution is always directing our attention to the next significant change; and that is sure to be, in the spiritual world, the fresh product of thought.’15

The reference to evolution in the last sentence of this extract reminds us of the part played in the evolutionary process by the complementary forces of variation and heredity. Both of these are alike necessary to the process, and no scientist would think of indulging in a one-sided partiality for either of them as against the other. We do not find in any scientific book such statements as this: ‘Variation is no doubt necessary, but much more necessary is heredity.’ Why, then, should we find in works on the foundations of religious beliefs such biassed observations as this: ‘Reason is doubtless needful, but still; more indispensable is authority’? Why not put them on a level, viewing reason as the analogue of variation, and authority as the analogue of heredity? Why set up between them an invidious antagonism? Why not rather conceive them as counterbalancing forces serving the same purpose in the spiritual world as the centrifugal and centripetal forces in the planetary system?

It may indeed be deemed a sufficient justification of prejudice against reason that its tendency is to divide and disintegrate. That fresh prophetic thought does always act more or less in this manner is not to be denied. But what if it has more of this work to do than there is any need for, just because of the prevalence in undue measure of an unreasoning partiality for authority and custom? ‘Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?’ No, and just on that account the rejected one came, in spite of himself, to send not peace but a sword. Do not throw all the blame on the prophetic thinker. Perhaps he is not to blame at all, but is simply the man who happens to see clearly the truth the time needs, and to have the sincerity and courage necessary for proclaiming it. In any case, do not lay the whole burden of blame on his shoulders; let him share it with the man who sets an overweening value on custom. It takes two to make a quarrel: the man who wishes the world to move on, and not less the man who wants the world to stand still.

It is when we look at the question at issue in the light of a great crisis like the birth of the Christian religion, that we see what a serious thing it may be to lean too heavily in our sympathies to the side of authority. If those who do this now, in our nineteenth century, possibly in lauded attempts to support the Christian faith as an established system of belief, had lived in the first, what would have been their attitude? Would they have been with Jesus or against Him? It might be invidious to offer a direct answer to this question; but something may be learned from the behaviour of the friends of authority among contemporary Jews. We may fail to see the moral, because Jesus is now for Christians the ultimate authority in religion. But Jesus did not, in His time, represent the principle of authority in the sense under discussion. He represented rather the principle of prophetic vision, of fresh religious intuition, of devout reason acting within the spiritual sphere. He spake with moral authority, not by authority of the legal, institutional, traditional type. He appealed from the schools to the human soul, and spake from the heart to the heart truth carrying its own credentials, and needing, as little as it enjoyed, backing from custom or Rabbinical opinion. The common people heard him gladly. Not so the supporters of authority. It is not their way to espouse any cause when it has nothing but reason, spiritual insight, and intrinsic truth on its side. They wait till the new has become old and customary, and the little flock a large influential community. Their patronage at that stage may in some ways be serviceable; but one cannot forget that, but for the existence of some who were open to other influences than those of authority, there never would have been any Christianity to patronise.

And what were these other influences? Does reason comprehend them all? Yes, if you take reason in a sufficiently, yet not unjustifiably, large sense. In the antithesis between reason and authority we are entitled to include under reason all that is usually found opposed to authority in critical periods, new eras, creative times, and gives to the prophet his opportunity of gaining disciples—healthy moral instincts, affinity for fundamental spiritual truth, openness to the inspirations of God. The antithesis, in short, is essentially identical with that taken by our Lord, in reference to Peter's faith, at Cæsarea Philippi, between ‘flesh and blood’ and the revelation of the Father in Heaven. It is therefore a hopelessly inadequate view of reason which reduces it to a faculty of reasoning having arguments as its sole instruments for producing conviction.16 It is before all things a faculty of seeing with the spiritual eye of an enlightened understanding,17 and of receiving truth seen with a pure heart. The Bible is the literary product and inestimable monument of this rare, precious gift. It is a divine protest against the domination of custom and authority in religion. Prophets and apostles were all in a state of revolt, in the interest of personal inspiration, against the brute force of a traditional belief at whose hands they all more or less suffered. Defences of Biblical religion by idolaters of authority are simply tombs built in honour of men whom kindred spirits in their lifetime persecuted and killed. If any one should be startled at the close affinity between human reason and divine inspiration implied in these statements, it may be well to remind him that the common antithesis between reason and faith is unknown to Scripture.18

We pass now to the third charge against reason, that, viz., of being a rebel against God's will conceived as having for its aim the moral and social progress of mankind. It was reserved for the author of Social Evolution to bring this charge in the most explicit and uncompromising terms. Mr. Kidd leaves us in no doubt as to his meaning, though it is difficult on a first reading of his book, or even a second, to make up one's mind that his statements are to be taken in earnest. His position, in short, is that reason cares only for the present interest of the individual, not at all for the interest of society or of the remote future. The teaching of reason to the individual must always, he thinks, be ‘that the present time and his own interests therein are all-important to him.’19 In startlingly strong language he describes reason as ‘the most profoundly individualistic, anti-social, and anti-evolutionary of all human qualities.’20 Thus it results that man, in so far as he is merely rational, is a selfish animal, who uses his reason as an instrument enabling him more cleverly than other animals to gratify his desires. Fortunately for the interests of society and of human progress, man is not merely rational; he is also religious. Religion supplies the antidote to the egoistic tendency of reason; it works for the good of society, making the religious man willing to sacrifice his own interest for the benefit of the community, in spite of reason's constant counsel to care solely for himself. It follows from this, of course, that religion and reason have nothing in common. They are necessarily antagonistic in nature as in tendency. Reason is irreligious, and religion is irrational. This also is plainly declared: ‘A rational religion,’ we are informed, ‘is a scientific impossibility, representing from the nature of the case an inherent contradiction of terms.’21 Religion has neither its source nor its sanction in reason; its doctrines are supernatural, and its sanctions ultra-rational. And these two powers are constantly at war with each other. The social organism is the scene of an incessant conflict between a disintegrating principle ‘represented by the rational self-assertiveness of the individual units,’ and an integrating principle ‘represented by a religious belief providing a sanction for social conduct which is always of necessity ultra-rational, and the function of which is to secure in the stress of evolution the continual subordination of the interest of the individual units to the larger interests of the longer-lived social organism to which they belong.’22

What a revolting, incredible account of human nature and of human society! Mr. Kidd's view is not caricatured when it is graphically depicted in these terms: ‘Reason a sort of more-than-animal cleverness, of purely selfish animal cunning; social morality, the demand upon individuals to sacrifice themselves and their reason for the sake of the community; and religion as a sort of non-rational bogey-policeman coming in to enforce the non-rational demand of society.’23 One would be justified in stubbornly refusing to surrender to such a libellous misrepresentation, even though he found himself unable to refute in detail the subtle and plausible argumentation based on false assumptions; saying as he laid down the book, ‘Very able, unanswerable at least by me for the moment, yet utterly unconvincing.’

This modern scheme of social evolution involves a veritable dualism—a double dualism indeed. There is first a psychological dualism, a constant deadly warfare in man between his reason and his religious instincts. This is a dualism unknown to Greek philosophers and Christian apostles, who knew of a conflict between flesh and spirit, but never dreamed of reason and religion being deadly foes. Plato and Paul would have said: the more rational the more religious, and the more religious the more rational. Then there is a latent theological dualism, an antagonism between the gods who are the objects of worship in the various religions and the reason of their worshippers. For the gods, at least the gods of religions which happen to have a wholesome, humane, ethical ideal, desire the moral and social progress of mankind, and use religion to promote that end. And reason constantly and strenuously resists the divine goodwill—resists with such persistency and passion that religion must be provided with the awful sanctions of eternal penalties to give it a chance of keeping reason in a due state of subordination.

As is usually the case with theories of the unanswerable yet unconvincing type, the weakness of Mr. Kidd's position lies in his initial assumptions, which are that reason is inherently selfish, and religion inherently non-rational. Neither of these assertions is true. Reason is not inherently selfish. Reason may indeed be used for selfish purposes by men in whose nature animal passion predominates. But that is not the proper function of reason free to work according to its own nature; it is the abuse of its powers when in a state of degradation and bondage. Man, in so far as he is rational, is also social. Sociality is not a thing imposed on man from without and reluctantly submitted to by his reason. It is an essential element of human nature, without which a man would not be a man, and reason readily acknowledges its claims. It is rational to care for others, and for this generation to care for future generations, as parents care that it may be well with their children after their decease. We do not need to be religious, still less to be under the influence of ultra-rational religious sanctions, to perceive the reasonableness of altruism or the nobleness of self-sacrifice. Heroism, self-devotion, is latent in every man. It has been truly said that ‘the service of society is not, as Mr. Kidd assumes, the sacrifice of the individual: it is his gratification and realisation. Though labour leaders and socialistic agitators usually appeal to selfishness, yet it is not the selfishness of the working men, it is their nobleness, their fidelity to what they believe to be a principle, their loyalty to their order or union, or class, which responds to these appeals, and gives to strikes and labour movements whatever strength they have. It is not individualism, but a new manifestation of the social spirit that is blindly struggling for expression in the labour movements of our day.’24

If reason as such is not selfish, as little is religion as such irrational. Only by taking Mediæval Christianity as the type can the contrary position be maintained with a show of plausibility. To form a sound judgment of the true relation of Christianity to reason, we must study it as it appears in the Gospels in the teaching of Jesus. Do we not all feel the ‘sweet reasonableness’ of that teaching—in its doctrine of God and of man, and in its ethical ideal? Does it need ultra-rational sanctions in the shape of miracles or eternal fears to commend to our reason the Father in heaven, our filial relation to that Father, and our fraternal obligations arising out of our common privilege as the sons of God? Is it not when our reason is eclipsed, and the baser part of our nature is in the ascendant, that the self-evidencing, self-commending power of these truths becomes obscured and the need for appeals to our superstitious fears arises?

Mr. Kidd's conception of religion is doubtless in harmony with a widely prevalent religious mood, manifesting itself in the portentous combination of agnosticism with traditionalism previously spoken of. This consideration only makes it more incumbent on every man to be fully persuaded in his own mind, and to speak out his mind with all possible plainness. My own view is this: Mediævalism, Sacerdotalism, is opposed to reason, but not true religion, not genuine Christianity. Mediævalism is a caricature of Christianity, as much so as Rabbinism was a caricature of the religion of the prophets. The power of Christianity lies not in the fear of hell, or even in the hope of heaven, but in the intrinsic credibility of the truths it teaches; in the words of wisdom and of grace spoken by Jesus, which, with Paul, we feel to be credible sayings and worthy of all acceptation. I trust what is before us in the future is not a return to the Middle Ages, but a better acquaintance with, and a growing appreciation of, the Galilæan gospel. Therein lies, I believe, the true ground of hope for social progress.

It is certainly hard to see how such a hope can be based on an external power brought to bear on man's nature forcing it into a line of action with which it has no affinity. This conception of compulsory goodness has nothing in common with the Biblical view of man's relation to divine influence. The Bible presents a sombre picture of man's natural condition as vitiated by a depraving process from which human reason has not been exempted. But nowhere do we meet with the idea that, purely by the constraining force of religion appealing to their fears, men can be compelled to seek the good of their fellows contrary to their own permanent inclination. Scriptural theology saves itself from this crudity by its doctrine of regeneration, or of a moral renewal bringing with it a new heart delighting to do God's will and a clarified reason in sympathy with the true and the good. Modern philosophers may have their own ideas as to the possibility of such a change; but it will not be denied that if the alleged renewal be possible it provides within man something to which religion, duty, social obligation can appeal and on which they can work, something akin to the moral law and the divine purpose —a mind approving the right, a heart loving to do it. The doctrine indeed implies that there is something of the kind even in irregenerate man, a germ of the divine, and of the humane, of what is now called altruism, dormant in the soul and capable of being quickened into active, vigorous life. And the very existence of the doctrine implies that, in the view of those who taught it, nothing can be made of man until his own rational and moral nature has been brought into a state of sympathy with the good, that he cannot be compelled into doing the right by threats or the most awful penal sanctions. This, indeed, as is well known, is the plain teaching of Scripture in both Testaments. It finds expression in Jeremiah's oracle of the New Covenant, with its great thought of the law written on the heart as distinct from the law written on stone tablets, and remaining a dead letter because written there alone. St. Paul caught up the prophetic idea and gave it a further development, teaching that the law without is worse than a dead letter, even an irritant to transgression, provoking into rebellious reaction, rather than restraining, the evil principle within.

Paradoxical as it may seem, the apostle's doctrine is no whimsical exaggeration but the statement of a fact. And if we put religion in the place of law the formula still holds. Religion with its penal sanctions, without, powerless to make men unselfish; rather, provocative of more violent manifestations of selfishness. Religion indeed, so conceived, is simply a law, as distinct from an inward spirit of life. Religion as it ought to be, as defined in the Bible, means: loving God with all the heart, and all the soul, and all the mind; in a word, with all that is within us. Religion, as the supposed driving-power of social evolution, is an outward commandment to be altruistic addressed to a stubbornly non-altruistic subject, with the whip of an ‘ultra-rational sanction’ held over his head to subdue his recalcitrant heart, soul, and mind into sullen submission. It is an affront to our common sense to ask us to see in such a slave-driving invention the sole and all-sufficient guarantee for social well-being. Its utmost achievement would be to induce moribund world-lings to bequeath part of their wealth for pious uses, in hope thereby to save their souls from perdition. It never could bind into a coherent social brotherhood a race of men devoid of a social nature. As Dr. Bascom puts it: ‘An altruism induced, as an irrational habit, on a spiritual nature alien to it, could never become the ground of permanent order. The inner conflict uncorrected would fret against the restraints put upon it, and might at any moment break out afresh. The Spiritual development, when it comes, must be supremely natural.’25

Perhaps, if the issue were thus clearly put before him, the author of Social Evolution would not care to meet the position so clearly stated with a direct negative. For it has to be borne in mind, in justice to Mr. Kidd, that he does not credit every religion with the power, through its sanctions, to compel men into involuntary altruism, but only such a religion as Christianity, which happens to have a humane spirit and an eminently social ethical ideal. This is indicated in the following sentences: ‘The Christian religion possessed from the outset two characteristics destined to render it an evolutionary force of the first magnitude. The first was the extraordinary strength of the ultra-rational sanction it provided… The second was the nature of the ethical system associated with it.’26 It is indeed an evil omen that he places the ultra-rational sanction first, as if his chief reliance were on its compulsory power. But one may hope that he would not deny to the second characteristic of Christianity, its humane ethical ideal, power to work on men after its own manner, that is, not as a mere outward commandment saying: this is the road along which you must go; but as an ideal, by its ‘sweet reasonableness’ commending itself to the human soul. Who can doubt that it has such power when he reflects whence that ideal came? It had its source in the mind or reason of Jesus. Altruism was not imposed on Him at least by ultra-rational sanctions. He was a friend of man by nature. His reason was not anti-social and individualist, but emphatically the reverse. Are we to hold that in this respect He was utterly isolated, the only man in the world who in any measure cared for others? How much more credible that in His spiritual nature was revealed the normal constitution of human nature generally; that He was what all men ought to be, what all men in some degree are, what every man is in proportion as he is rational! If this be true, then the ethical ideal of Christianity can, by its intrinsic reasonableness, work independently of all supposed ultra-rational sanctions. And it is the first motive-power, riot the second. The ideal takes precedence of the sanction, and can even dispense with its aid. Without the self-commending ethic, the sanction, however tremendous, is impotent; where the power of the ethic is felt the sanction is unnecessary. ‘The law is not made for a righteous man.’

Our main reliance, then, for social progress must be on ‘the law written on the heart,’ the law of love accepted by reason and enforced by conscience. Religion can reinforce the power of the moral ideal, but it does this, not chiefly by offers of future rewards and threats of future punishments, but by setting before men, as the object of faith and worship, a God whose inmost nature is love. And because God is love, and because man is truest to his own rational and moral nature when he cares not only for his own things, but for the things of others, the form of modern dualism which turns human reason into the enemy of God and of the social well-being ordained under His benignant Providence, may be treated as a bugbear having no terrors for those who walk in the daylight of truth. The unwelcome conception may be dismissed from the mind as the theoretic exaggeration of a powerful intellect rejoicing in its logical acumen, and accepting fearlessly the most startling results of bold ratiocination, without having sufficiently considered the premises from which the ultimate conclusions are drawn. As a theorist Mr. Kidd is chargeable with great inconsistency. He has made it his chief business to exhibit human reason to all who desire social well-being as an object of deadly distrust, and in performing this ungenial task he has put unlimited confidence in his own individual reason and its powers of argumentation. It would have been well if he had had a little less faith in his own logic, and a little more faith in the social instincts of average humanity.

• 1.

  P. T. Forsyth on ‘Revelation and the Person of Christ' in Faith and Criticism, p. 100.

• 2.

  Newman's Grammar of Assent, p. 392.

• 3.

  W. James, The Will to Believe, p. 52.

• 4.

  In his Apologia, p. 198, Newman lays down the position that there is no medium in true philosophy between Atheism and Catholicity. On his whole doctrine concerning the impotence of reason in religion vide Principal Fairbairn's Catholicism, Roman and Anglican, pp. 116-140, and pp. 205-236.

• 5.

  James, The Will to Believe, p. 51.

• 6.

  Forsyth in Faith and Criticism, p. 100.

• 7.

  Romans i. 19, 20, 28.

• 8.

  For the illustration of this attitude Mr. Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma may be consulted. Mr. Arnold, the agnostic, finds in Christ's doctrine a ‘sweet reasonableness’ which needs no miracle to win for it acceptance.

• 9.

  1 Corinthians ii. 14.

• 10.

  Romans vii: 25.

• 11.

  R. C. Moberly, Reason and Religion, p. 17.

• 12.

  Elements of the Science of Religion, part i. pp. 156, 166.

• 13.

  G. Gordon, Immortality and the New Theodicy (Boston, 1897), p. 69.

• 14.

  A. J. Balfour, The Foundations of Belief, pp. 228, 229.

• 15.

  John Bascom, Evolution and Religion, pp. 100, 101,

• 16.

  Mr. Balfour seems to take reason in this narrow sense. Vide The Foundations of Belief, p. 212.

• 17.

  Ephesians i. 18.

• 18.

  Vide Moberly, Reason and Religion, p. 85.

• 19.

  Social Evolution, p. 78.

• 20.

  Social Evolution, p. 293.

• 21.

  Vide Social Evolution, p. 101.

• 22.

  Vide Social Evolution, p. 102.

• 23.

  Moberly, Reason and Religion, p. 4.

• 24.

  W. De Witt Hyde, Outlines of Social Theology, p. 47. On the social nature of reason, vide Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics, by the late Professor Wallace, edited by the Master of Balliol College, Oxford (1899), p. 110.

• 25.

  Evolution and Religion, pp. 116, 117.

• 26.

  Social Evolution, p. 130.