The doctrine of the future state offers, perhaps, the purest type of the transformation we speak of. The inspiration of its hope has been already alluded to, as the strength of the martyr-age of Christianity. Then came the dominion of its fear. "Men are more cogently governed by what they are forced to imagine, than by what they are allowed to know."* The working force of the medieval Church rested on the faith of men in the terrors of the world beyond the grave. Its discipline was purely in view of the future recompense; its grand profession, that, by an appointed ministration, it had actual control of the destiny of the soul in that unseen state. Its elaborate scheme of confession, ritual, and penance all bore on that. Its prodigious accumulation of wealth was (as that of the Romish Church still is) gained by plying aptly and diligently that lever, to move the conscience of dying men. Its worship, doctrine, and terrible judgments of fire were all symbolic of a more august and formidable order of facts, conceived as existing in the spiritual world. Its tremendous announcement of the damnation of aliens, heretics, and unbaptized infants was the dark base on which the corner-stone of its power reposed. And no single portion of its immense edifice but would sink and vanish, like Atlantis in the ocean waves, if that substructure of faith in the horrors of the invisible were undermined. Now it came about inevitably, as the gentler elements of human character were more developed under the softening influence of civilization, and as more accurate knowledge was gained of the principles and methods of the natural world, that the terror associated with the future state began to retreat more and more into the background, and to fade out from men's thought; while the element of trust and hope came to be more and more the characteristic of the Christian faith in immortality. Intellectual analysis and the moral sentiment did their work. And accordingly, for the past century at least, ever since the great deistical movement, which compelled the Christian apologists to fall back on sentiments of natural religion and justice, and to identify the Christian * Kinglake. scheme, so far as might be, with the instinctive longings and hopes of men, the idea of immortality has been in general held up as a purely animating and happy one, entirely aside from any particular apprehensions of its doom. Evidently, the truth of the doctrine must have been taken for granted, without inquiry, by the mass of men for many ages; since, as soon as Christianity was put in the attitude of apology, and had its defence to make before the intellect of the world, it waived the element of horror, and studiously represented the bare fact of immortality as the great and precious privilege, which, but for this religion, men should have had no knowledge of at all. If we wish to understand the spirit of the former type of belief, we must listen to the exhortations of those sects and preachers that hold forth the terrors of the law in congregations where not scepticism but sin is the fact they have to deal with. The helpless terror of the Middle Age at the drear prospect of futurity is pathetically shown in the mournful inscription copied by Michelet from a tombstone near Lucerne: "I am a child two years old; what a terrible thing for such an infant to go to judgment, and appear already before God!' A painful couplet in Mr. Lowell's "Legend of Brittany" expresses the same feeling, as shared by a mother in paradise, lamenting her unbaptized infant's doom : “Even here for grief could I lie down and die, The idea of perfect recompense and illimitable progress is now become the common sense of the subject; and it is only by an effort that we can conceive of a contrary idea as possible. Christendom was ruled, says Gfrörer,* for three centuries, by hope of the future state; then, by terror of the same state; and lastly, by habit. The slowly changing eschatology of the Church has been the underlying conception in its several schemss of doctrine; and the character of this has undergone the several well-marked modifications now detailed. It remains to speak briefly of the influence of the "positive," or scientific mode of thought, in the particular province * Urchristenthum, Vol. I., Preface. of theology. We do it because it must be evident to any reflecting mind that this, and not speculative dogmatism or "gnosis," must make the real postulate and the certain basis of our theory of the Divine government. We do it with a single purpose; not to speak of the attainments of science, as furnishing matter to be incorporated in our system of belief, but only to hint the working of the intellectual habit which it generates. First, science continually enlarges to our mental vision the domain of necessity, -i. e. of fixed and immutable fact. The prodigious influence it thus exerts upon the whole tone of our mind is sufficiently apparent. We speak of it as determining the type of the underlying religious thought. For necessity, like every other fundamental idea received and habitual in a religious mind, becomes a religious idea, though it should take even the terrible form of the Calvinist or Moslem fatalism. Our view of the Divine government necessarily undergoes some change as we come to understand better the courses of nature and the operations of the world around us. Vague awe becomes intelligent trust. What seemed capricious and arbitrary reduces itself to order and system and undeviating rule. We learn to trust the Divine care and watchfulness, not for its partial bounty to us, not for any favoritism we hope to win or merit, but precisely because it is strict, uniform, unchanging, and impartially extended over all. And, practically speaking, we cannot doubt that, when this once becomes the habit of the mind, it is as serene, resolute, and effectual a faith as that exercised by saints in the earlier periods of the Christian history. It is the peculiar province and continual effort of modern thought, to illustrate the laws of the universal Providence, which are but the acts of the universal God: and our own age, with its interpretation of other excellent qualities of the religious life, interprets afresh for us also this especial attribute of Trust. And next, we find in the scientific habit of mind a limit to sceptical tendencies, and ultimately their correction and cure. Many have, indeed, regarded it in precisely the contrary way; but this, we think, is only a relic of the ancient jealousy, stimulated by the uneasy consciousness that dogmatic theology is losing ground. Comte has stated it as the true final position of theism, that it "holds in reserve the possibility of arbitrary intervention, which may come at any moment to change in any respect the fundamental order." Excepting this, he thinks the religious view of nature has become wholly merged in the scientific. His statement is evidently so far true as this, that theism accepts as attributes or acts of the living God, what science announces as methods of the universe. The conception of a living Spirit is assumed as the ground of all phenomena. In assuming this, we wait for science to indicate the method of the Divine government; and what it fixes as everlasting verities, we accept as religious facts. But while their relation to the soul thus remains unchanged, their relation to the intellect is wholly new. There is no room for any possible cavil or doubt as to their reality or their essential character. As soon as we get beyond the blind absurdity of dogmatic atheism,* and begin to recognize the reason and method of the universe, we have already a great stock of religious ideas—at least, all needful preparation for them—given us outright in science. A law is made known to us to which our life is subject, ethically and socially as well as physically. And this is practically the same as if there were an almighty Lawgiver, a Ruler, a Parent, a Sovereign. This first step thus gives us, to all intents and purposes, whatever is essentially included in our idea of God, so far as concerns our outward relation and moral responsibility to him. A truer and more vivid conception of the "method of the Divine government," according to our notion of it, is given in a page of natural science, than in a volume of Augustinian theology, — only setting aside the far stronger appeal which this latter makes to the conscience and the personal sentiment of reverence. By thus refuting and rendering utterly impossible any radical and sweeping scepticism, we conceive that science most directly and serviceably ministers to faith. It is as defining the type of faith, and as rendering impossible any presumption in favor of dogmatic atheism, that the *"A superficial or malevolent judgment alone can confound with the Positive Philosophy a doctrine so completely negative [as Atheism], —one necessarily more transient than any other."― Comte, Philosophie Positive, Vol. VI. p. 846. 66 positive "order of thought concerns itself most nearly with our present argument. We need hardly add, that, by giving us a totally new conception of the universe, and familiarizing us with the stand-point of natural law, it opens in a new and most imposing form that question of rationalism, which from the first has more or less perplexed the intellect of the Church. The philosophy of the Christian Fathers, says Tennemann, rather vaguely, is "a supernaturalism more or less blended with rationalism." The question, then, is no new one; but the way of dealing with it must be new. And, without deciding on these facts of the supernatural order with which it has to deal, we may safely go as far as this: that the Church cannot hold dogmatically its position of supernaturalism, at least in the form in which it was generally presented a few years ago, as an indispensable condition of religious belief; and that any theory of miracles, to abide the test of the present analysis, must see in them, not a contradiction, but a revelation and enlargement of the domain of law, and must leave their reception free to the spontaneous reverence of the religious thinker. Belief in them will necessarily become henceforth not fundamental, but supplementary; and will remain (as in fact we practically find it), not as the stay of doubtful doctrine, but rather as a protest in favor of the free personality of the Deity, and as a check on the tendency to merge the paternal character of God in his abstract and universal attributes. Such belief will reside in the religious. heart, rather than in the speculative mind: the order of events it clings to we cannot insist on critically, for testimony; only accept, reverentially and gratefully, as fact. We do not enter now upon the discussion of those further points, whether pertaining to historical criticism or to individual and social ethics, which help define the type of the theology which is to be. Enough has been already said to show its essential diversity from anything in the dominant creeds of the past. There seems for the present no ground of compromise, — only for collision or transition, as the case may be; and it is quite apparent which of the two must yield. The bearing of the conflict we discern in the nature of the "aids" by which a declining faith is propped; in the obscure |