It is an error not at all peculiar to the author of the "Eclipse of Faith," but is shared with him by many others, and by one who has treated me in a very different spirit, that Christians are able to use atheistic arguments against me without wounding Christianity. As I have written a rather ample book, called "Theism," expressly designed to establish against Atheists and Pantheists that moral Theism which Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans have in common, and which underlies every attempt of any of the three religions to establish its peculiar and supernatural claims; I have no need of entering on that argument here. It is not true, that, as a Theist, I evade the objections urged by real atheists or sceptics; on the contrary, I try to search them to the very bottom. It is only in arguing with Christians that I disown the obligation of reply; and that, because they are as much concerned as I to answer; and ought to be able to give me,on the ground of natural theology, good replies to every fundamental objection from the sceptic, if I have not got them myself. To declare the objections of our common adversaries valid against those first principles of religion which are older than Jesus or Moses, is certainly to surrender the cause of Christianity.
If this need more elucidation, let it be observed, that no Christian can take a single step in argument with a heathen, much less establish his claim of authority for the Bible, without presuming that the heathen will admit, on hearing them, those doctrines of moral Theism, which, it is pretended,Ican have no good reason for admitting. If the heathen sincerely retorts against the missionary such Pagan scepticism as is flung at me by Christians, the missionary's words are vain; nor is any success possible, unless (with me) he can lay apriorfoundation of moral Theism, independent of any assumption concerning the claims of the Bible. It avails nothing to preach repentance of sin and salvation from judgment to come, to minds which are truly empty of the belief that God has any care for morality. I of course do not say, and have never said, that the doctrine of the divine holiness, goodness, truth, must have been previously an active belief of the heathen hearer. To have stated a question clearly is often half the solution; and the teacher, who so states a high doctrine, gives a great aid to the learner's mind. But unless, after it has been affirmed that there is a Great Eternal Being pervading the universe, who disapproves of human evil and commands us to pursue the good, the conscience and intellect of the hearer gives assent, no argument of moral religion can have weight with him; therefore neither can any argument about miracles, nor any appeal to the "Bible" as authoritative. Of course the book has not as yet any influence over him, nor will its miracles, any more than its doctrines, be received on the ground of their being in the book. Thus a direct and independent discernment of the great truths of moral Theism is a postulate, to be proved or concededbeforethe Christian can begin the argument in favour of Biblical preternaturalism. I had thought it would have been avowed and maintained with a generous pride, that eminently in Christian literature we find the noblest, soundest, and fullest advocacy of moral Theism, as having its evidence in the heart of man within and nature without,independently of any postulates concerning the Bible. I certainly grew up for thirty years in that belief. Treatises on Natural Theology, which (with whatever success) endeavoured to trace—not only a constructive God in the outer world, but also a good God when that world is viewed in connexion with man; were among the text-books of our clergy and of our universities, and were in many ways crowned with honour. Bampton Lectures, Bridgewater Treatises, Burnet Prize Essays, have (at least till very recently in one case) been all, I rather think, in the same direction. And surely with excellent reason. To avow that the doctrines of Moral Theism have no foundation to one who sees nothing preternatural in the Bible, is in a Christian such a suicidal absurdity, that whenever an atheist advances it, it is met with indignant denial and contempt.
The argumentative strength of this Appendix, as a reply to those who call themselves "orthodox" Christians, is immensely increased by analysing their subsidiary doctrines, which pretend to relieve, while they prodigiously aggravate, the previous difficulties of Moral Theism; I mean the doctrine of the fall of man by the agency of a devil, and the eternal hell. But every man who dares to think will easily work out such thoughts for himself.
I here reproduce (merely that it may not be pretended that I silently withdraw it) the substance of an illustration which I offered in my 2nd edition, p. 184.
When I deny that History can be Religion or a part of Religion, I mean it exactly in the same sense, in which we say that history is not mathematics, though mathematics has a history. Religion undoubtedly comes to us by historical transmission: it has had a slow growth; but so is it with mathematics, so is it with all other sciences. (I refer to mathematics, not as peculiarly like to religion, but as peculiarly unlike; it is therefore andà fortioriargument. What is true of them as sciences, is true of all science.) No science can flourish, while it is received on authority. Science comes to usbyexternal transmission, but is not believedbecauseof that transmission. The history of the transmission is generally instructive, but is no proper part of the science itself. All this is true of Religion.
End of Project Gutenberg's Phases of Faith, by Francis William Newman