The Churches and Modern Thought

Vivian Phelips

Philip Vivian

The Churches and Modern Thought / An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour

TO MY WIFE AND CHILDREN

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

What does a man seek when he examines his religious creed? To this question Canon Liddon replies as follows:—“He seeks intellectual satisfaction and moral support. His intellect asks for reliable information upon certain subjects of the most momentous importance. How does he come here? Whither is he going? What is the purpose and drift of the various forms of existence around him? Above all, what is the nature, what are the attributes and dispositions, of that Being to whom the highest yearnings of his inmost self constantly point as the true object of his existence? In asking that the answers to these questions shall be definite, that what is certain shall be affirmed as certain, what is doubtful as doubtful, what is false as false, he is only asking that his religious information shall be presented in as clear and practical a shape as his information on other subjects. In no department of human knowledge is haziness deemed a merit; by nothing is an educated mind more distinguished than by a resolute effort to mark the exact frontiers of its knowledge and its ignorance; to hesitate only when hesitation is necessary; to despair of knowledge only when knowledge is ascertainably out of reach. Surely on the highest and most momentous of all subjects this same precision may be asked for with reverence and in reason; surely the human mind is not bound to forget its noblest instincts when it approaches the throne and presence of its Maker?” (Some Elements of Religion, p. 24).

Again, in his New Year’s message for 1905, the Archbishop of Canterbury condemns indifference to truth as a vice, and “drifting along the current of popular opinion” as a sin. He invites and persuades us to use “the sadly-neglected powers and privileges of rational thought and common sense.”

The duty of thinking, therefore, is now recognised by the Church—it was not formerly. But what will be the result of this thinking? In his book, The Hearts of Men, Mr. Fielding tells us that “no man has ever sat down calmly unbiassed to reason out his religion, and not ended by rejecting it.” Mr. Fielding adds: “The great men, who have been always religious, do not invalidate what I say.... There is no assumption more fallacious than that, because a man is a keen reasoner on one subject, he is also on another. Men who are strictly religious, who believe in their faith, whatever their faith may be, consider it above proof, beyond argument.... It is emotion, not reason; feeling, not induction.” (The Hearts of Men, pp. 142–3.)

Does not this deep and sympathetic writer furnish us with a true picture of men’s hearts? What if, after exercising their privileges of rational thought and common sense, the majority of men find that Christianity no longer gives them either intellectual satisfaction or moral support? What if they finally arrive at the conclusion that Christianity and all supernatural beliefs are but the survival of primitive superstitions which can no longer bear the light of modern knowledge? These are the grave questions which now confront us.

A man may enter, and generally does enter, upon his inquiry biassed in favour of religious belief of some kind. He approaches the subject in a reverent frame of mind. In his private prayers to his God he does not neglect to ask for heavenly guidance. He evinces precisely the spirit which a divine would consider becoming. But as his inquiry proceeds there comes a time when his religious bias disappears—when he can no longer feel what he could honestly call reverence. He discovers that what he thought was known, and had actually been revealed, is unknown. How can he believe in and worship the Unknown? More than ever he feels his own insignificance and ignorance; but the feeling thus excited, while akin to awe, is divested of reverence. Pursuing his search far enough, he succeed