IN the opening words of a Lecture delivered in this city four years ago, I spoke of the desire and tendency of the present age to connect itself organically with preceding ages. The expression of this desire is not limited to the connection of the material organisms of to-day with those of the geologic past. It is equally manifested in the domain of mind. To this source, for example, may be traced the philosophical writings of Mr. Herbert Spencer. To it we are indebted for the series of learned works on "The Sources of Christianity," by M. Renan. To it we owe the researches of Professor Max Müller in comparative philology and mythology and the endeavor to found on these researches a science of religion." In this relation, Presidential Address to the Glasgow Sun day Society, delivered in St. Andrew's Hall, October 25, 1880. NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIII., No 1. moreover, the recent work of Principali Caird* is highly characteristic of the tendencies of the age. He has no words of vituperation for the older phases of faith. Throughout the ages he discerns a purpose and a growth, wherein the earlier and more imperfect religions constitute. the natural and necessary precursors of the later and more perfect ones. Even in the slough of ancient paganism, Principal Caird detects a power ever tending toward amelioration, ever working toward the advent of a better state, and finally emerging in the purer life of: Christianity. These changes in religious conceptions. and practices correspond to the changes wrought by augmented experience in the texture and contents of the human mind. Acquainted as we now are with this immeasurable.universe, and with the energies operant therein, the guises under which the sages of old presented the Maker and. Builder thereof seem to us to belong to the utter infancy of things. To point to illustrations drawn from the heathen world would be superfluous. We may mount higher, and still find qur assertion true. When, for example, Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy Elders of Israel are repre'sented as climbing Mount Sinai, and actually seeing there the God of Israel, we listen to language to which we can attach no significance. "There is in all this," says Principal Caird, "much which, even when religious feeling is absorbing the latent nutriment contained in it, is perceived [by the philosophic Christian of to-day] to belong to the domain of materialistic and figurative conception. The children of Israel received without idealization the statements of their great law-giver. them the tables of the law were true tablets of stone, prepared, engraved, broken, and re-engraved, while the graving tool which inscribed the law was held undoubtingly to be the finger of God. To us such conceptions are impossible. We may by habit use the words, but we attach to them no definite meaning. "As the religious education of the world advances," says Principal Caird, "it becomes impossible to attach any literal meaning to those representations of God, and his relations to mankind, which ascribe to Him human senses, appetites, passions, and the actions and experiences proper to man's lower and finite nature.' To first question is, not how they feel, but what they think and believe; not whether their religion manifests itself in emotions more or less vehement or enthusiastic, but what are the conceptions of God and divine things by which these emotions are called forth?" These conceptions" of God and divine things" were, it is admitted, once "materialistic and figurative," and therefore objectively untrue. Nor is their purer essence yet distilled; for the religious education of the world still "advances," and is, therefore, incomplete. Hence the essentially fluzional character of that objective counterpart to religious emotion to which Principal Caird attaches most importance. He, moreover, assumes that the emotion is called forth by the conception. We have doubtless action and reaction here; but it may be questioned whether the conception which is a construction of the human understanding, could be at all put together without materials drawn from the experience of the human heart.* The changes of conception here adverted to have not always been peacefully brought about. The "transmutation" of the old beliefs was often accompanied by conflict and suffering. It was conspicuously so during the passage from paganism to Christianity. In his work entitled "L'Eglise Chrétienne' Renan describes the sufferings of a group of Christians at Smyrna which may be taken as typical. The victims were cut up by the lash till the inner tissues of their bodies were laid bare. They were dragged naked over pointed shells. They were torn by lions; and finally, while still alive, were committed. to the flames. But all these tortures failed to extort from them a murmur or a cry. The fortitude of the early Christians gained many converts to their cause; still, when the evidential value of fortitude is considered, it must not be forgotten that almost every faith can Caird I was reminded more than once of the following passage in Renan's "Antéchrist :" "Et d'ailleurs, quel est l'homme vraiment religieux qui répudie complètement l'enseignement traditionnel à l'ombre duquel il sentit * While reading the volume of Principal d'abord l'idéal, qui ne cherche pas les concilia tions, souvent impossibles, entre sa vieille foi et celle à laquelle il est arrivé par le progrès de sa pensée ?" |