CHAPTER XXI. THE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT OF THE NINETEENTH The functions of history. CENTURY. THE writer who undertakes to relate a nation's progress is necessarily compelled to detail the events which attract attention during the period which he is describing. But, if he has confined himself to this duty, he ought to be the first to acknowledge that his work is imperfect, and that, after all his labours, he has been merely collecting annals instead of writing history. However faithfully he may have discharged his task, however useful his work may prove to other students, he has failed to accomplish the historian's highest object. He has merely described events in their order; he has omitted to analyse the causes which produced them or the consequences which have proceeded from them. Yet history, in the only sense in which it is worth serious study, is not a mere bundle of well-arranged annals. It is a science which illustrates the gradual progress of society, and the causes which have either assisted or retarded its growth. Some philosophic writers, indeed, contend that man is a mere automaton, whose minutest movements have been predetermined, or, at any rate, inevitably fixed from eternity; and that his independence or free-will in regulating them is only one of the many conditions which were foreseen, or which existed, in the remote past. Whether this doctrine, which the Church calls predestination, and which science calls necessitarianism, commend itself or not to the student, the historian will at least admit that the events of any age may be always referred to pre-existing causes, and that the true function 236 of history is not the mere description of events, but an analysis of their causes and of the progress of the human family. Regard for these considerations induced the writer of the present history to devote more than 300 pages of prefatory matter to an analysis of the causes which were at work in the eighteenth century, and which have determined the progress of England in the nineteenth century. It has led him since at regular intervals to stop his narrative in order that he might have the opportunity of describing the social condition of the people at different periods. These precautions, these digressions, may have seemed purposeless to some of his readers who themselves remember the periods with which he is dealing. Memory, however, can rarely be trusted on recent events. "L'histoire d'avant-hier," wrote Guizot, "est la moins connue, on peut dire la plus oubliée du public d'aujour-d'hui." The sufferings of yesterday are readily forgotten amidst the pleasures of to-day. Nothing is so difficult as to imagine that the heroic measures which statesmen have originated within our own recollection are not the mere outcome of their own opinions, but the links of a continuous chain, extending from a prehistoric past to an invisible future. This work, however, would be still incomplete if the writer satisfied himself with tracing the causes which have made England a prosperous, contented, and autonomous nation. The progress of society is an infinitely more important matter than the progress of events. But the progress of society, in the ordinary sense of the term, important as it is, is not the chief matter for the consideration of an historian. "The history of every civilised society," wrote Buckle, "is the history of its intellectual development."2 Without absolutely assenting to Buckle's dictum, every competent critic will admit that the progress of society is both of less interest and of less importance than the progress of thought. The history of human thought is the most comprehensive and most difficult subject which can occupy the attention of 1 Guizot's Memoires, vol. viii. p. 515. 2 History of Civilisation, vol. i. p. 387. the student. The history of thought. But few writers of the history of nations have ever ventured to load their pages with any careful account of it. It is a common habit, indeed, of the writers of history to devote a chapter to the analysis of contemporary literature, and the interest which attaches to any literary review perhaps justifies their doing so. One branch of literature, moreover, helps to illustrate their narrative. The manners of every age are studied with most advantage in the contemporary memoirs, letters, and novels. But the graver works of literary men have little or no influence on the generation in which they are written, and have no real place in its history. The thought of the foremost thinkers is rarely communicated to more than a limited circle. It is the disciples who in succeeding generations disseminate the doctrines which they have received from their master. Like the pebble which is thrown into the water, the thought in the first instance agitates a narrow circle. But the wave, which it sets in motion, in its turn creates other waves, till the remotest verges of the pond feel the influence of the original of the nine impression. Adam Smith completed his work, Bentham commenced his labours, in the eighteenth pre-existing century. Neither of them made any effectual impression on politics till the first quarter of the nineteenth century was over. The great religious movement for which the nineteenth century is memorable is distinctly referable to causes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the reaction against the thought of the foremost thinkers of those centuries. It is incomprehensible to any one who has no acquaintance with the previous history of thought. The religious movement teenth century referable to causes. The effects of the Reformation It would perhaps be possible to show, if the limits of this chapter enabled the task to be undertaken, that the Reformation of the sixteenth century was followed comparable by many of the consequences which ensued from the conversion of Constantine. While Constantine was still fluctuating between the old faith and the new gospel, he sanctioned universal tolerance by the Edict of Milan. When Christianity became the with the effects of Constan tine's conversion. religion of the State, heresy was assailed and toleration was forgotten.1 An attack upon heresy has always been accompanied by a propagation of error by authority. The conversion of Constantine was the signal for a renewed controversy on the Trinity. The fourth century saw the Homoousion imported into the Christian faith. The fifth century gave birth to the famous creed which owes its name to Athanasius, but which was not composed for at least a hundred years after Athanasius' death. The three witnesses were imported into the text of St. John to support the decision of authority. Similar consequences resulted from the conversion of Henry VIII. While the king still hesitated between the old and the new faith, toleration was permitted. When the Reformation was once adopted, heresy was stamped out by persecution. For nearly two centuries authority declined to allow the existence of free thought, and during the whole period, while punishing. heresy, it was shaping creeds and writing homilies. The Reformers, though they lopped away some of the errors which had been engrafted on the Christian faith, jealously retained the principal doctrines which had owed their origin to the Athanasian school. They rejected the Roman tenet of transubstantiation, but they made predestination the "absolute and essential" condition of salvation. They removed one difficulty but preserved another obstacle. For, in the words. of the great author who has already been quoted, "Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant." 3 ism. In consequence of the retention of some, and of the introduction of other, superstitions, the idea of God which existed among the followers of the Reformers differed little Christianity from the idea of God which authority had propa- and pagan. gated before the Reformation. It has been frequently remarked that Christianity, in conquering Rome, adopted the machinery of polytheism, and that "the victors 1 Gibbon, vol. iii. pp. 244, 307. 2 Or perhaps for some centuries later. See Stanley's Eastern Church, p. 235, and Encyclopædia Britannica, ad verb. Creeds. 3 Gibbon, vol. x. p. 190. 1 themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals." The Protestant would probably scornfully reject the notion that he embraced the superstitions of the ancient world, yet many a Protestant derives his idea of the Deity from either Milton or Bunyan; and the God of Bunyan and Milton bears a closer resemblance to the Jupiter of Homer than to the Jehovah of Job. It is worth while, however, at the cost of a slight digression, to show how closely the ideas of Milton, on the highest subjects, correspond with those of the great Grecian epic. The machinery of "Paradise Lost" is of course almost identical with that of the Iliad and Odyssey. In Milton, as in Homer, the earth is the centre of the universe :— Milton and "Terrestial heaven, danc'd round by other heavens, In Milton, as in Homer, heaven is the home of the gods and goddesses, or the angels and the archangels; hell is the infernal region in which Pluto in one poem, Homer. Satan in the other, holds undisputed dominion.3 Jehovah in one poem, Jupiter in the other, despatches his messengers on terrestrial missions. In Homer the gates of heaven fly open before the chariot of Juno, in Milton the gates of hell fly open before Satan. In Homer the gods and goddesses, in Milton the angels and archangels, are wounded, bleed, and suffer pain. The gods and goddesses of Homer laugh at Vulcan panting in their service. The God of Milton is moved to laughter at the "quaint opinions wide" of the great astronomer of the world. These are a few of the well 1 Gibbon., vol. v. p. 136. Cf. Draper's Conflict of Religion and Science, where the whole subject is admirably worked out in ch. ii. 2 Paradise Lost, bk. ix. L. 103. The same idea exists in other passages; cf. (e.g.) bk. iv. 1. 66г. 3 Cf. Here we may reign secure" in Paradise Lost, bk. i. 1. 260, with τρίτατος δ' Αίδης ἐνέροισιν ἀνάσσων in lliad, xv. 1. 188. Venus, in the Iliad, bleeds as gods bleed who neither eat corn nor drink wine (Iliad, v. 1. 341); and cf. Satan's bleeding a stream, "sanguine, such as celestial spirits may bleed," Paradise Lost, in bk. vi. l. 333. 5 Paradise Lost, bk. viii. 1. 78; cf. Iliad, bk. i. l. 593. |