[PALL MALL GAZETTE.]
Mr. Froude has republished the remarkable address recently delivered by him at St. Andrews, and it is certainly well worth studying. It is admirably written, and full of genuine eloquence applied to questions which all thoughtful men are asking at the present day. Its form, indeed, is historical; but there is throughout a reference to modern problems which can be understood without much skill of interpretation. Mr. Froude inquires what is the true meaning of Calvinism. Why did the doctrine which at the present day is generally denounced as harsh and unreasonable appeal so forcibly to some of the greatest men that ever lived ? If, as we are sometimes told, it is an immoral and a slavish creed, why was its first influence to restore the moral law to its rightful preeminence, and to sustain the greatest of all revolts against unjust authority? Calvinism, he says, when all other systems have failed, "has borne over an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint than to bend before violence or melt under enervating temptation." How was this? The answer, so far as we can summarise Mr. Froude's remarks in a very contracted form, would be somewhat to this effect. At all times reasoning men have been perplexed by the dark enigma of the world — by the difficulty of detecting the supreme order and purpose beneath the apparent confusion which lies on the surface. The most superficial observation shows pain and misery inflicted alike upon the wicked and the righteous; and the ever-recurring problems of the origin of evil and the nature of man's responsibility present themselves in various forms to successive generations of mankind. The " better sort of men," however, cling to two primary convictions: the first, "that there is over all things an unsleeping, inflexible, all-ordering, just power;" the second, " that this power governs the world by laws which can be seen in their effects, and on the obedience to which, and on nothing else, human welfare depends." The history of great religious movements is the history of attempts to put these truths into a form which may practically influence the consciences and aspirations of mankind. For, unluckily, the better sort of men by no means have things their own way. Great reformers arise at intervals when the times are ripe, and pronounce the doom of the falsehoods which have been corrupting society. The intervals are periods of religious decay, during which the formulæ which served to express vital truths are being perverted into the service of error and used as a makeshift compromise between the love of good and of evil. The moral law is superseded by a ceremonial law. Duty comes to mean the observance of certain rites, and is dissociated from its influence upon practical life. This is the essence of idolatry — the formation of a system, which would be very pleasant to everybody if only it would work. Priests are exalted, and laymen are allowed to gain favor with God while in no way hindered from their ordinary occupations and engagements. Gradually, however, the rule of hypocrisy and mendacity becomes intolerable ; and some fresh warfare breaks out against the lies and iniquities that are flourishing in high places. Such, says Mr. Froude, passing in review some of the main religious movements of the world, was the history of the Jewish revolt against Egypt. The Egyptian monarchy was rich and luxurious, with its exclusive castes of priests and nobles, and its proletariat of slaves. The Egyptians, indeed, believed in a future state of punishments and retributions as clearly as we can do. They were an " eminently religious people." The priests claimed supernatural powers and the keys of the sacred mysteries. They knew that the question which would be asked at the final tribunal would not be whether a man had been " just and true and merciful, but whether he had believed what he was told to believe, and had duly paid the fees to the temple." The slave races toiled on, their masters being controlled by no fear of retribution ; and when there was a danger that they would multiply too fast, their children were thrown to the crocodiles. One of these races at last revolted, not against tyranny, but against mendacity and hypocrisy. They dropped out of sight, though they did not explicitly relinquish the belief in a life to come which had been corrupted for priestly purposes. They became the soldiers of a purer creed and, in spite of many errors, left their mark for all time on the history of the human race. Such, again, was the history of Zoroaster and his Persians, and such essentially, though their principles were embodied in a far loftier faith, was the great protest of St. Paul and the fishermen of Gennesaret against the corruption of the Roman empire. Men had neglected the laws of their Maker, and the world could only be saved by forcing them back to their allegiance. Christianity itself may be corrupted, and the Eastern Empire had fallen into the same degradation which prepared older revolutions, when St. Clement describes the fine Alexandrian lady ascending the steps of her basilica, " to which she was going for what she called her prayers, with a page lifting up her train. He paints her as she walks along the street, her petticoats projecting behind with some horse-hair arrangement, and the street boys jeering at her as she passes. Mohammedanism was the rebuke to the evil principle then dominant ; though doomed to speedy decay from its inherent vices, it owed its power to its recognition of a Supreme Spirit, Maker and Ruler of all things. And finally, when Western Christianity had sunk into a similar corruption, Luther and Calvin spoke out once more and shook the spiritual organisation of Europe to its centre. "Lutheranism when Luther himself was gone, and the thing which we in England know as Anglicanism, were inclined to temporising and half-measures." But half-measures were insufficient "to quench the bonfires of Philip of Spain or raise men in France or Scotland who would meet crest to crest the princes of the House of Lorraine." Calvin was the man for the times ; and his grimness and hardness were necessary qualifications for struggling against the mighty powers of tyranny opposed to him. If the Calvinists seemed to value the Old Testament too highly in comparison with the New, it was because they believed that in the Old Testament was to be found a Divine example of national government carrying out the laws which men are bound externally to obey. If they were fanatical and dogmatic, it was because they had to meet unrelenting persecution, and abhorred, in a degree which no body of men ever exceeded, all mendacity, impurity, and moral wrong. They did their work ; and their belief, too, has become corrupt. The acceptance of a system of belief instead of obedience to duty has become the condition of salvation ; and people are apt to understand by religion a system of devices for saving the individual soul of the believer. The Calvinism which "purged England and Scotland, for a time at least, of lies and charlatanry," is dead; but "unless God be a delusion, and man be as the beasts that perish," it must reappear in some new incarnation, as the spirit which from time to time rises in revolt against untruth. We have glanced in the briefest way possible at topics which Mr. Froude himself can, of course, only touch in passing. The inference, not directly expressed, is plain enough. We have sunk again under the dominion of lies, and fallen into the corruption which is its necessary consequence. The Alexandrian lady is not without her counterpart in London streets. The Egyptian priests may find a feeble reflection in Mr. Purchas and his friends ; the noble caste and their proletariat have representatives in our modern civilisation. Some protest will come in time. We shall have our Calvin, our Mo-hammed, or our Moses, and great will be the crash of existing systems. Who will the new preacher be ? Is he already among us? or are we only in the dark hour which precedes the dawn ? These are wide questions, and they, as well as many others suggested by Mr. Froude's remarks, must be left to our readers. On one point only we will say a word or two. Mr. Froude is rather fond of giving side-strokes at modern science. Not long ago, he says, Scotchmen believed in witchcraft ; and "at this very hour the ablest of living natural philosophers is looking gravely to the courtship of moths and butterflies to solve the problem of the origin of man, and prove his descent from an African baboon." Surely there is some confusion of ideas when a belief in witchcraft is coupled with a method of scientific inquiry. The philosophy which despises investigation into the most trifling natural phenomena is out of place at the present day, and would involve the abandonment of our most valuable knowledge. Mr. Froude takes a more intelligible and worthy position when he says that religion is not really interested in such problems as those investigated by Mr. Darwin. If, he says, we are descended from a glutinous jelly, he cares not. Duty will still be the same, and we may equally believe in the imperishable nature of the intellectual spirit. That is very true in some sense, and very important. Yet Mr. Froude's contempt for natural philosophers leads him to neglect another truth which deserves consideration. These philosophers are in one respect the legitimate representatives of Calvin. They, that is, are honest seekers for truth at any price, and haters of every variety or imposture, if anywhere we are to find the means for a revolt against the tyranny of mendacity, it will be among men who have been trained in the school of rigid inquiry, and who are accustomed to yield conviction to reason, and to reason only. Nor is it true that such inquiries have no more direct influence upon religion. Every religion must give us some theory of the world, and some explanation of man's position in it. It matters little in one sense whether man is or is not descended from an African ape ; he is a man now, and that is the essential fact. But it is impossible that such a belief should be generally accepted, with all its consequences, without profoundly modifying our views of the world and of morality. It would, so to speak, alter our whole perspective, and teach us to look at many things from a different point of view. But, also, it would tend to give a fresh significance to that belief in the evolution of all things in obedience to certain fixed laws to which Mr. Froude himself attaches so much importance. Religion in the best sense has nothing to fear from such speculations ; for the instincts for which it provides expression will remain, however their existence may be explained. But it is impossible to suppose that the expression would not be profoundly modified, or that our imagination would not be powerfully impressed, by receiving these novel conceptions of the world. Indeed, we believe is would be truer to say that the great changes which are going an are essentially the adaptation of our religious creed to the new ideas imparted by scientific observers, than to say that those ideas are irrelevant to the main question. To mention nothing else, their acceptance would involve a very important modification of Mr. Froude's theory that the "moral law is inherent in eternity." Those words would cease to have much meaning if we suppose that the moral sense is the result of hereditary instincts, moulded in certain ways by the external conditions of life. But we will not go further into a controversy which could easily be spread beyond all limits. We are content to say that, whatever view is taken of the merits of his arguments, Mr. Froude's essay is very eloquent and interesting.
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* "Calvinism An Address delivered at St. Andrew's " By James Anthony Froude. (London ; Longmans and Co. 1871.)
Age (Melbourne, Vic.), Monday 26 June 1871, page 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/203008991
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