that the authority of Christianity has been undermined, for most of those who in our day disown its claim. The moral revolt against some articles of the Christian creed might have found satisfaction, and has for many found ample satisfaction, in the modification of that creed. But others, like William Smith, who began from the moral difficulty, have been drawn by that stream to the river of scientific thought, and by this influence carried completely away from belief in an authoritative revelation. But for such minds there still remain the great topics of natural religion, man's moral nature, the existence and nature of God, and whatever grounds of achievement and aspiration and hope may exist for the human spirit. Say that there be no infallible oracle in these provinces of thought, none the less is it a possibility, a necessity, of the human mind to explore them. It is only the long habit of depending upon authoritative teaching that makes all religious knowledge and belief seem dependent on such a teacher. The whole progress of modern knowledge has been made under this condition, that man must not blindly follow authority, but must find out for himself. Just so is it with religious truth. The renunciation of authoritative Christianity brings a mind like William Smith's only to the threshold of its task. The men who have been named as his early associates or acquaintances - Maurice, Sterling, Grove, Lewes, and Mill fairly represent or suggest the principal tendencies of thought in the mind of the English-speaking people in the middle period of this century. Maurice became a leader of that Broad Church movement to which Coleridge and Dr. Arnold had given the impulse. Theyre Smith, too, was one of the progressive churchmen. (The High Church school has no representative in the group; neither has the Evangelical.) Sterling was the pupil of Coleridge, then of Carlyle, two representatives of the intuitional philosophy. Grove, author of "The Correla tion of Forces," well typifies the achievements of pure science. Lewes was a leader in that company of Positivists who addressed themselves to working out the concrete problems of society, abandoning all quest toward the divine as hopeless. Mill wrought vigorously in the philosophy which limits knowledge to the sphere of the visible and tangible, and in broad problems of society and politics.1 These various currents have agitated this century, as torrents swollen in spring-time stir into turmoil some mountain lake. Only when the tumult has abated does it appear that the tranquillized surface overlies a deeper volume. There have been some men whose minds were like the very meeting-points of the currents, and among such men were Arthur Hugh Clough and William Smith. 1 See Appendix. CHAPTER VIII. 66 GIVEN SELF, TO FIND GOD." THE two men just named had this as their common peculiarity, that, deeply religious by nature, they found themselves in the light of modern knowledge unable to accept Christianity as a supernatural revelation, and were absorbed in the effort to discern, apart from such revelation, an object for man's supreme allegiance, love, and trust. It is no wonder that men who gave themselves unreservedly to this quest should have been drawn far apart from the ordinary activities and associations of men. To those, on the one side of them, who were devoted to the pursuits of science or the positive philosophy, they seemed to be hopelessly wasting their time and strength. By the churchmen, on the other hand, they were likely to be regarded with a mixture of pity and aversion. That active religious life to which the churchman of the best type devotes himself has for its object the promotion of the highest virtue and the purest happiness. Now that field of inquiry whose doors were inexorably thrown open before such minds as Clough and William Smith, offers at the outset a vast tract of doubt, — vast, perhaps interminable! And doubt, so long as it possesses the mind, is the certain foe of happiness, and seems a menace to the fairest forms of virtue.. But what is the spirit of the unsparing truth-seeker? It is a spirit that has played no small part in our day: the interest in William Smith's personality is that he, like Clough, was a singularly pure type of it. Delicate as he appeared, — sensitive, fastidious, over-fine for practical uses, his spirit was under one consistent, unswerving, all-powerful sway, the search for truth. Choice it could hardly be called, and purpose is too weak a word for the passion of his life. The impartiality of his intellect equalled his singleness of aim. All truth was sacred to him; he must needs listen reverently to the churchman, to the man of science, to the metaphysician, to the mystic. To blend their various glimpses of reality into one clear, full disclosure, was the intense and constant effort of his nature. Yet, so long as the facts did not agree in their testimony, he would not and could not betake himself to any harmony gained by some suppression, some refusal to look. Such a quest carried with it conditions of severe privation. Heaviest privation of all was the withholding from the soul of that clear vision of a divine and perfect beauty which it thirsted to behold and to adore. There was the deprivation, too, of that organized social assistance in the highest life, which is a deep necessity of the religious man, and for which the church had made abundant provision,but on the basis of beliefs which to minds like these were no longer tenable. And there was laid upon them an inability to declare a positive and confident gospel to mankind, — a disqualification for that preaching of good tidings which is one of the highest joys and firmest supports of the human spirit. The religious inquirer, until his quest was satisfied, — and a lifetime might prove too short to satisfy it, had no clear message to give of inspiration, comfort, or triumph: he could only commune with his own heart and be still. Yet the men who stood thus alone, and seemingly aside from the splendid activities of the age, were taking a foremost part in the age's most vital work. They were learning the conditions under which was to be possible henceforth the noblest life of man, that life which is faithful - alike to the love of truth, the love of men, and the love of God. What is in a word the essential difficulty which confronts the man who is at once devout in spirit and candid in thought when he essays to worship? It is the presence of evil. The object of religious worship must be the supreme power of the universe. That power is disclosed to us by the facts of existence which we experience and observe. At the threshold of experience and observation, and on to their farthest earthly limit, we encounter some things which we can only call evil. The heart feels within itself, mixed with nobler qualities, elements of weakness, of sin, and of seeming chaos. The world of humanity, broadly surveyed, presents an appalling degree of misery and wrong, evils which man's noblest impulses bid him to seek to remove. How, in the presence of these facts of existence, is it possible to view the supreme author of existence with reverence or with trust? That is the old, old difficulty of the religious intellect. One answer after another has been offered, has satisfied for a while, and has at last failed to satisfy. Yet surviving all failures has been the impulse to revere, to trust, and to love the author of all. If now Christianity, too, shall fail as an answer to the problem, — if its philosophy of a fall and a redemption seem unworthy, if its credentials of a supernatural message appear untrustworthy, if its central figure prove but a human personality deified by loving imagination, — must, then, this old impulse to worship God be given up at last as outgrown childishness? Yes, said the churchman, that is the inevitable result; therefore hold fast to the supernatural revelation and the divine Christ, no matter what so-called science, history, and reason may allege. Yes, said the Positivist, with Christianity perishes all worship of divinity: therefore follow science, history, reason, and learn to live without a God! Said a few others, though through long years only in the silence of their |