LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
SACERDOT17 D SCIENCE. c(1,0THIO EDAIT0.--BISOFM AND
SPACITLTOL1
Stu,—If the Sacerdotalists are turning the worship of God into the worship of an idol, and the parish parson into the emis- sary of an organised conspiracy against the Church of England, what are they doing for theology,—for the Christian faith, in its relation to science ? From the days of the Reformation to our own, Protestants, with few exceptions, have upheld the Bible- " the written Word "—as the final authority in matters of faith and doctrine, when duly interpreted,—an authority supposed to possess that infallibility which they denied to the Church of Rome. But in the present day, every man who reads and thinks, or even thinks without much knowledge of the thoughts of others, knows that he has no such infallible guide in the Bible. Not only all the beliefs and doctrines which have been built up on the
Bible, but those of the Bible itself, and the historical authenticity of the records in which it sets them forth, must be submitted, like every other stibject of human thought and knowledge, to that scientific method of investigation which is one in principle, though it may be variously applied to its various subject-matters. We may smile at the shallow enthusiasm of the Agnostic who—whether he call himself a Corutist or no—believes, like Comte, that the whole question has already been settled by the supercession of " l'ancien Dieu "by the ",God- dess of Humanity " ; but it is not the less certain that not only must the Bible be criticieed like other books, and the results ac- cepted, whatever they be, but also that every doctrine of our Christian faith must be submitted to the like scientific or posi- tive examination, before we can again hold that faith with the honest confidence in its reality which our fathers had. Never was a time in which we laymen had more need of guides and teachers who can show us how we are to follow the Apostle's injunction, and to faith add knowledge. And what are the stones which our clergy are offering us for bread I They claim the power to make truth out of the traditions of the Church, just as they claim to make God out of a wafer. What Truth is, and that faith must in the last resort be in accordance with truth, are conceptions wholly outside and incomprehensible to the sacerdotal mind. The priestly caste, in virtue of an authority which remains the same, in spite of the conceit, or ignorance, or any other mental in- capacity of him who possesses it, claims to declare what it calls the truth in all these matters : and it is for us, the laity, to bow our intellects to this authority, however foolish our reason tells us that it is, just as we should prostrate our bodies before the idol of bread. They cannot see that what they call truth is no more what we mean by truth than that vestments, and incense, and incantations are the worship of God. I do not mean that this insensibility to truth is char- acteristic of the Sacerdotalists alone. Almost all our orthodox theologians and Biblical critics exhibit it, more or less. In the last great work of moderate as well as learned orthodoxy, the "Speaker's Cortiinentary," no writer seems ever to have asked himself, Is this true ?' but only, How can the latest learning be employed to dress up the old traditions with a plausible appearance of authority ?' But what I do lament and complain of in the Sacerdotalists is that they are reducing theology to a system which absolutely excludes the discovery of truth by the God-illuminated reason of man, and making it the manufacture of a caste who claim to have a God-given monopoly of that manufacture. Every thinking man knows well that our Christian faith is entering into a shadow almost dark and deep as death, and which often compels him to say,—
" If I must perish, I thy will obey,
But let me perish in the light of day."
It is the light of truth which is the first necessity of our very being, and now here is an ever more compact and powerful caste forming out of those whose proper calling is to be our guides to light and truth, and who make it their business to assure us that there is no truth, nor need of truth or of light, except it be the lurid glare from the decomposing remains of the medimval superstitions which they are digging up from the old
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