Religious Belief.

Evening Star, Issue 7301, 27 August 1887, Page 5 (Supplement)

Religious Belief.

At the recent meeting of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, Principal Rainy, the new moderator, delivered an address which has excited a great deal of interest throughout the Old Country. We quote the following passages in it from the ' Scotsman's' report : In our time the great world has shrunk into a compact and measurable dwellingplace, almost every corner of which is in instantaneous communication with every other. Mechanical forces have been brought into man's service with a rapidity which tho future may possibly outstrip, but with which the past has nothing to compare. Educational arrangements have undertaken no less a task than that of bringing the mass of each nation into one community of trained thought. And those nations that used to abide, mainly, each on its own ground, are now everywhere meeting, mixing, comparing, and communicating their impressions. Political change has, in most places, greatly altered the balance of power in the State, and some questions have been taken in hand, others are rising into view, which will test the capacity of the new holders of power. Meanwhile great enterprise and audacity have been evinced in reviewing the questions which for ever interest the mind of man with reference to the world of nature ant' of man, and the great possibilities which lie beyond, new points of view, new methods of research and of mental discourse, new modes of inquiring or crossquestioning—new, or such as claim to be new are everywhere entertained. In science, in- philosophy, in reference to religion as well as in reference to the social conditions of men, and the possibilities of human nature, fundamental questions are discussed with great frankness, In regard to religion in particular, while energetic eft'n-t on the part of churches, societies, individuals, has increased in an extraordinary degree, one recognises the varied utterance of denial, of doubt, of debate, and the multiplication of points of view, which must be described as modified, qualified, provisional. CHAXOKS IN* KKLIGIOUS BEMEK.

The changes thus connected with the movements of thought about religious belief are those which have, perhaps, the strongest claim on the attention and interest of churchmen. It is possible, for students especially, to ascribe to foroes of this kind an influence more exclusive and decisive than in point of fact theypossess, or in point of right they could claim. Intellectual debate is much, but it is not everything. Christ makes his appeal to men in many ways. Christ with the Gospel, which comes with him where he comes, has many au avenue to human hearts, and many a hold by which to retain them. The theory of belief which may have been revised according to the latest impressions about the valid method of thought, has its importance, and will not fail to have its influence. Hub there are multitudes to whose_ Bin and misery grace reveals its Divine fulness of salvation by a shorter method. And there are multitudes on whom the authority of the Gospel lays hold, just in virtue of the experience they have had of what it proved able to be and do in the case of friends and neighbors whom they have watched for years. That prepares them for the evidence that attends their own religious awakening. Many of our congregations—many, certainly, of the members of our congregations, are not very directly concerned in the eb!i and flow of the theoretical debates. Nevertheless, the movements of thought in this highest subject of thought exert an influence ultimately upon all; and sooner or later they must be reckoned with by every form of faith. When movement is so free and various, and often so negative, as it has been in our time, it is natural to watch it with some anxiety. And yet may one not ask this question, first, whether the general stirring of doubt and debate, even on the most fundamental questions, is in itself a thing of such purely evil omen ; and whether general acquiescence and reverential deference to the form of sound words is so certainly to be preferred. Is it always preferable ?

RKUGIOrS SEdATION.-*,

No doubt it is a sad thing for any mau to be held and mastered by religious negations. No doubt a time of outspoken debate on questions which concern the foundation of faith must throw up many things that grieve believing hearts, and must be accompanied by some special dangers for those whose opinions and impressions are in course of being formed. But may not such a time, prove to be exactly what the cause of God needs? Is it not a great thing-a very great thing—for any one truly to believe in God—truly to believe that Jesus Christ is indeed the son of God? We profess to hold it to be a great thing; our theology represents it as a great thing. And if such a time as I speak of, amid all the levity and shallowness and wantonness of utterance that may characterise it (not on one side of the debate alone), still has this for part of its meaning, that a number of persons are awakening to the consciousness of being without this great faith in God, in Christ—are finding that they know not how to justify to their minds such a faith, nor how to reach it—are resolving that in these circumstances they will pretend to have it ; may not this, bad as it seems, be better and more hopeful than the mood which cares too little for the subject to stir the question?— (Applause.) But while I make this remark, I am far from having in view, when I speak of the movements of religious thought, merely the more extreme forms of negation. Nor, perhaps, are those the phases of it which are most apt to embarrass and perplex. Extreme positions can usually be dealt with on tolerably plain principles. It is the variety of forms in whicH -positive and nega- I tive seem to combine in all conceivable proportions that at once fascinate and bewilder. In the years during which movement was going on which terminated in the Disruption, the condition of the general mind in this country in respect of doctrinal belief was free from serious complication. There was unbelief, of course, but men of religious earnestness, who did not lean in the direction of Rome, or of a Romanising Anglicanism, were generally united in a firm assertion of the great convictions of the Reformation. This was not a mere slavish reproduction of old dogmas. Rather the time wa3 marked by the freshness of phrase and the evangelical warmth of feeling with which the religious significance of those convictions was brought out. But there was a general agreement as to the main articles of belief in which the Scripture teaching should be summed up. If the seeds of other modes of thought were already sown (as no doubt they were), the growth was not yet very visible, nor very extensive. This state of things had, fcr our Church in particular, a remarkable effect in clearing the way towards the Disruption itself. Unembarrassed by debate or doubt as to the faith in which they were generally agreed, men had only to consider, and they had only to debate, how that faith bore on a given situation, and what it required of the Church placed iu that situation. But since then things have become far more complex. In the first place, as I have said, the great question of the truth and authority of Christianity as a revealed religion has been in hand, and has been canvassed with great determination and insistency. Perhaps, too, we may say that on both sides there has been exhibited in some notable degree, as compared with former conflicts, a deference to the conditions of fair and close argument. TIIK EFFECT OF THE APOLOOETIC POSITION ON CHRISTIAN TEACHING. In this connection the method of the argument has received fresh and special reconsideration. The fitness of the various

kinds of argument to sustain belief, and how much of belief they are each of them fitted or able to s-ustain, this has been examined and weighed perhaps more keenly thaii ever it was before. And .for the p're'serit yfrc have tliis result: that for some Christian minds the apologetic position propels an influence through all the questions about the Christian teaching. The question of apologetic—of the right to believe—is not left at the door as something now disposed of, as more commonly it used to be ; but it follows and haunts a good many inquirers into the very recesses of the Christian temple. That is to say, you have men who are believers—you are not entitled to put them in any other class, for they believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Saviour of the world—who' vary in all sorts of ways as to the amount of Christianity arid the kind of Christianity which they count themselves entitled to be sure of, and which they can confidently propound to others as fitted to command assent. Nor are they prepared to indicate definite tests or bases of argument by which their position, whatever it is, might be .tried. _ It is not as when a man either said " I hold by what the Bible says," or " I hold by what the Church says," or "I hold by what the Bible and the Church say together." The creed I now speak of, which, I repeat, must riot be stigmatised as insincere, rests on bases far more difficult to define or to identify ; and those beliefs are graduated according to the varying degree in which, as it appears to the student, evidence sufficiently cogent is attainable for each element and aspect of doctrine. It is correlative to this, being another side of the same thing, to say that an influence is allowed to the doubts of the age over all the area of theology. There is evidence to overcome some kinds and appli cations of doubts, but not enough to overcome others. In this way there is a constant readiness to take theology to pieces—to take the Bible, its representations, and its teaching to pieces, with a view to decide how much of it has the kind of evidence that should warrant and establish faith against doubt. In short, the procedure implies that there is a Divine revealer, there is a foundation for faith, there is an obligation to faith; but there is nothing you can fairly call a rule of faith. Only there are materials by which you can more or les3 firmly lead up an argument to sustain, more or less fully, the rights of each separate point that you believe.