The Religious Situation

The Religious Situation, by
Goldwin Smith

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Title: The Religious Situation
Author: Goldwin Smith
Release Date: October 17, 2006 [EBook #19568]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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The Religious Situation
BY
GOLDWIN SMITH

TORONTO
WM. TYRRELL & COMPANY
1908

COPYRIGHT, 1908
BY THE
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1908
BY
GOLDWIN SMITH

[Transcriber's note: This book was originally part of Smith's "No
Refuge but in Truth." It was split into a separate e-book because it had
its own title and verso page.]

THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION.
(From the North American Review.)
"I express myself," says Bishop Butler, "with caution, lest I should be
mistaken to vilify reason, which is, indeed, the only faculty which we
have to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself; or be
misunderstood to assert that a supposed revelation cannot be proved
false from internal characters." "The faculty of reason," he says, "is the
candle of the Lord within us against vilifying which we must be very

cautious."
What would the world be without religion? That is the dread question
which seems now to be everywhere presenting itself. Would even the
social fabric remain unshaken? Has not its stability partly depended on
the general belief that the dispensation, with all its inequalities, was the
ordinance of the Creator, and that for inequalities here there would be
compensation hereafter? The belief may not in common minds have
been very present; but it would seem to have had its influence.
Apparently, it is now departing. In some places it seems to have fled.
Scepticism, with social unrest, comes in its room.
What is now the position of the clergy? Keepers and ministers of truth,
as they are understood to be, they alone are debarred by ordination
vows and tests from the free quest of truth. They are ecclesiastically
bound not only to hold, but to teach and preach, as divinely revealed,
what many of them must feel to have been disproved or to have become
doubtful. Their uneasiness is shown by writings, such as "Lux Mundi,"
struggling to reconcile orthodoxy with free thought. It is shown by a
growing tendency on the part of pastors to slide from the office of
spiritual guide into that of leader of philanthropic effort and social
reform. It is seen, perhaps, even in the tendency to give increased
prominence to musical attraction in the service. Sermons grow more
secular.
Clerical biographies, such as that of Jowett, sometimes reveal private
misgivings. The writer has even seen the pastorate of a large parish
assumed by one who in private society was an evident rationalist and
must have satisfied his conscience by promising to himself that he
would do a great deal of social good. There is, no doubt, practically,
more latitude than there was; heresy trials seem to have ceased, and one
of the writers of "Essays and Reviews" became, without serious outcry,
Primate of the Church of England. But ordination vows remain; so does
the performance of a religious service which includes the repetition of
creeds and forms a practical confession of faith. Hollow profession
cannot fail to impair mental integrity, or, if generally suspected, to kill
confidence in our guides. Read Canon Farrar's "Life of Christ" and you

will see to what shifts orthodoxy puts a clerical writer who was, no
doubt, a sincere lover of truth.
The religious disturbance shows itself at the same time in the
prevalence of wild superstitions, such as Spiritualism, rising out of the
grave of religious faith, and attesting the lingering craving for the
supernatural, somewhat like the mysteries of Isis after the fall of
national religion at Rome.
The crisis has come on us rather suddenly, in consequence partly of
great physical discoveries. The writer as a young student heard
Buckland struggling to reconcile geology with Genesis. Now the
struggle is to reconcile Genesis with geology. Before this wonderful
advance of science and criticism combined, there had been
comparatively little of avowed, still less of popular, scepticism.
Rousseau was a sentimental theist; Voltaire erected a church to God.
This vast "Modernism," as the poor, quaking Pope rather happily calls
the ascendancy of science and criticism, has changed all. It is
conceivable that, now as on some former occasions, the range of
discovery may have been overrated and the pendulum of opinion may
consequently have swung too far. Evolution, apparently, has still a