APPENDIX.

ON THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY OF UNBELIEF.

I

AM induced, by some very recent publications and movements, to revert, in the present shape, to a subject which has mainly occupied three or four of the Discourses in the earlier part of this volume. Some may think that too much has been already urged and re-urged upon a matter almost too abstruse for the pulpit but they, who entertain this notion, can scarcely be aware of the productions with which the press abounds; of the lectures and discussions held in the metropolis and our other principal towns; of the various assaults which are made upon what is termed 'popular Theology;' or of the peculiar character of modern Scepticism, its philosophical pretensions, and the sweeping destructiveness of its aims. Indeed, that some warning of this kind is not superfluous or unseasonable, we have evidences every where around us to demonstrate ;— facts, which are daily acquiring additional magnitude and importance. As there is, happily, more of Christian conviction and Christian earnestness, so there is also a more comprehensive and systematic negation of all theological creeds'. Men are anxious to arrive at

1 Other works, English, Continental, and American, might be mentioned but the publications here specially had in view are, the Quarterly Series, projected by Mr John Chapman, beginning with the

B. S.

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the first principles of things; and the main problems of our being are to be once more stirred from their foundations. Intermediate opinions being almost absorbed, and other forms of traditionary or historical religion almost swept away, as when the decks are cleared for battle, the great essential differences seem rushing, like hostile armaments, to some decisive and final conflict. The three broad alternatives stand out, in the presence of mankind and of each other, Atheism, Theism, Christianity. Indeed some persons, who would affect to be the standard-bearers of enlightenment and the vanguard of human intelligence, would rather put the entire question in this shape: Are we to recognize a God of the Universe, or the Universe as God?' Nor is it a matter void of significance, that, since these Sermons were preached, and for the most part printed, two fresh versions of the philosophy of Auguste Comte have been almost simultaneously advertised; and studious attempts are made to familiarize the English mind with this author and his writings; to bring him forward as the first thinker, or master-spirit, of the age. While some would build up virtue without religion, others would do what appears to be even more strange and incomprehensible, namely, give us 'religion without theology. Upon this theory, men are sparks struck off from the Infinite Existence; the Etre Suprême' is 'the

Theism, Atheism, and Popular Theology of Theodore Parker; Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences, by Mr G. H. Lewes; and Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development; the sequel to which, I presume, is to be Miss Martineau's announced Translation of Comte. Any detailed criticism is here of course impossible: but it may be stated that the scope of Mr Parker's book is to enthrone Deism in the place of Christianity: that the spirit of the other two is, in fact, Atheistical; and that their object is to uproot from the earth all that has hitherto been regarded as Religion.

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sum total of material things;' or the collective life of humanity,' or, at most, the collective life of the Universe and religion is to consist of some absolute faith, invested with the catholicity of nature,' and having its sublime' cultus' of the great whole in the cathedral of immensity. Now, if these pompous and turgid phrases had the same meaning with the good old-fashioned expressions, that we are the creatures of God; that God exercises at every instant over his creation a protecting and sustaining care; and that we therefore owe to God. all worship, and all allegiance; in that case we should gain nothing but as it is far more probable that they mean something very different, we should incur, by accepting them, a loss which we have no arithmetic to compute. In truth, there can be no doubt that men are called, at this day, either entirely to exclude the conception of Deity from their thoughts and calculations; to regard it as an antiquated thing, which belonged to ruder ages, and is now to pass away with the belief in ghosts and witches: or, to take in exchange for that Gospel which has transformed millions, and brought them to salvation, an abstract, ideal religion, which to say nothing here of its speculative difficulties has never, practically, been able to cope with the poorest superstitions; has never trained or leavened the mass of any people; has never seriously or profoundly influenced the average understanding, and the common heart of mankind; has never turned any community into a church; has never made any nation devout; has never, perhaps, in any period or place, really changed and converted the soul of a single individual.

These themes, however, are manifestly too vast to be treated in a mere brief Appendix. But I am anxious

to indicate, as distinctly as I can, the tendencies of the age in their religious aspect; and the special phase, which that cardinal question, always the turning-point of man's character and destiny, is assuming in our own times. I conceive it to be two-fold;-first, whether we are to suppose a Creation,' or only an Evolution,' of the world; whether One, to whom we are responsible, is, or is not, to be acknowledged and adored as the great Creator, and the great Evolver of all being; in other words, whether the Universe exists of itself, by an intrinsic necessity, in which all its laws and operations have their origin, or is the production of a Personal God: secondly, whether the religion, which is fittest for man, and which man is capable of receiving, is to be derived from a divine communication, in addition to the lights of reason and nature; or to be entirely invented or excogitated by man himself. It is at once satisfactory and mournful, while it must surely be instructive, to observe, that the opponents of Christianity at this hour, if left to settle the dispute by their own intellectual resources, can hardly make a nearer approach to the determination of these capital points, than Lucretius and Epicurus, Pythagoras and Plato. A collection of passages might be cited from books published not five years ago, not one year ago, which would prove that the enemies of the Gospel, in modern Europe and America, have as little arrived at harmony and unanimity, and are as much at strife one with another, as the ancient philosophers some centuries before the Christian æra;that on the first and most vital problem they are separated by a yawning and impassable chasm, across which no bridge can be thrown. As one party is busy in constructing a religion of nature, the other insists that the primary axiom in all sound philosophy is to assert the