The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

If the latter be a correct estimate of the place religion occupies in man’s nature, it furnishes a reply to one of the objections to Agnostic propaganda—the objection that, before we discard an existing belief, we must be prepared to substitute a new belief in its place. It is this objection that has given rise to those speculative philosophies which the common sense of the vast majority has rightly decided are unsatisfactory; a decision that the Church has not unnaturally seized upon as a triumphant vindication of the truth of Christianity.

Against this objection to militant Rationalism, this plea for silence, I may be permitted to enter my protest in the weighty words of a well-known writer. “It is alleged,” says the author of Supernatural Religion, “that, before existing belief is disturbed, the iconoclast is bound to provide a substitute for the shattered idol. To this we may reply that speech or silence does not alter the reality of things. The recognition of truth cannot be made dependent on consequences, or be trammelled by considerations of spurious expediency. Its declaration in a serious and suitable manner to those who are capable of judging can never be premature. Its suppression cannot be effectual, and is only a humiliating compromise with conscious imposture. In so far as morality is concerned, belief in a system of future rewards and punishments, although of an intensely degraded character, may, to a certain extent, have promoted observance of the letter of the law in darker ages, and even in our own times; but it may, we think, be shown that education and civilisation have done infinitely more to enforce its spirit. How far Christianity has promoted education and civilisation we shall not here venture adequately to discuss. We may emphatically assert, however, that whatever beneficial effect Christianity has produced has been due, not to its supernatural dogmas, but to its simple morality. Dogmatic theology, on the contrary, has retarded education and impeded science.... Even now the friction of theological resistance is a constant waste of intellectual power....

The choice of a noble life is no longer a theological question, and ecclesiastical patents of truth and uprightness have finally expired. Morality, which has ever changed its complexion and modified its injunctions according to social requirements, will necessarily be enforced as part of human evolution, and is not dependent on religious terrorism or superstitious persuasion. If we are disposed to say: Cui bono? and only practise morality, or be ruled by right principles, to gain a heaven or escape a hell, there is nothing lost, for such a grudging and calculated morality is merely a spurious imitation which can as well be produced by social compulsion.”49 “If,” as George Eliot once pithily remarked, “you feel no motive to common morality but a criminal bar in heaven, you are decidedly a man for the police on earth to keep their eye upon.”