History Of The Warfare Of Science With Theology In Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

  Hysterical as all this was, the Upper House was little more self-contained. Both Tait and Thirlwall, trying to make some headway against the swelling tide, were for a time beaten back by Wilberforce, who insisted on the duty of the Church to clear itself publicly from complicity with men who, as he said, "gave up God's Word, Creation, redemption, and the work of the Holy Ghost."

  The matter was brought to a curious issue by two prosecutions--one against the Rev. Dr. Williams by the Bishop of Salisbury, the other against the Rev. Mr. Wilson by one of his clerical brethren. The first result was that both these authors were sentenced to suspension from their offices for a year. At this the two condemned clergymen appealed to the Queen in Council. Upon the judicial committee to try the case in last resort sat the lord chancellor, the two archbishops, and the Bishop of London; and one occurrence now brought into especial relief the power of the older theological reasoning and ecclesiastical zeal to close the minds of the best of men to the simplest principles of right and justice. Among the men of his time most deservedly honoured for lofty character, thorough scholarship, and keen perception of right and justice was Dr. Pusey. No one doubted then, and no one doubts now, that he would have gone to the stake sooner than knowingly countenance wrong or injustice; and yet we find him at this time writing a series of long and earnest letters to the Bishop of London, who, as a judge, was hearing this case, which involved the livelihood and even the good name of the men on trial, pointing out to the bishop the evil consequences which must follow should the authors of Essays and Reviews be acquitted, and virtually beseeching the judges, on grounds of expediency, to convict them. Happily, Bishop Tait was too just a man to be thrown off his bearings by appeals such as this.

  The decision of the court, as finally rendered by the lord chancellor, virtually declared it to be no part of the duty of the tribunal to pronounce any opinion upon the book; that the court only had to do with certain extracts which had been presented. Among these was one adduced in support of a charge against Mr. Wilson--that he denied the doctrine of eternal punishment. On this the court decided that it did "not find in the formularies of the English Church any such distinct declaration upon the subject as to require it to punish the expression of a hope by a clergyman that even the ultimate pardon of the wicked who are condemned in the day of judgment may be consistent with the will of Almighty God." While the archbishops dissented from this judgment, Bishop Tait united in it with the lord chancellor and the lay judges.

  And now the panic broke out more severely than ever. Confusion became worse confounded. The earnest-minded insisted that the tribunal had virtually approved Essays and Reviews; the cynical remarked that it had "dismissed hell with costs." An alliance was made at once between the more zealous High and Low Church men, and Oxford became its headquarters: Dr. Pusey and Archdeacon Denison were among the leaders, and an impassioned declaration was posted to every clergyman in England and Ireland, with a letter begging him, "for the love of God," to sign it. Thus it was that in a very short time eleven thousand signatures were obtained. Besides this, deputations claiming to represent one hundred and thirty-seven thousand laymen waited on the archbishops to thank them for dissenting from the judgment. The Convocation of Canterbury also plunged into the fray, Bishop Wilberforce being the champion of the older orthodoxy, and Bishop Tait of the new. Caustic was the speech made by Bishop Thirlwall, in which he declared that he considered the eleven thousand names, headed by that of Pusey, attached to the Oxford declaration "in the light of a row of figures preceded by a decimal point, so that, however far the series may be advanced, it never can rise to the value of a single unit."

  In spite of all that could be done, the act of condemnation was carried in Convocation.

  The last main echo of this whole struggle against the newer mode of interpretation was heard when the chancellor, referring to the matter in the House of Lords, characterized the ecclesiastical act as "simply a series of well-lubricated terms--a sentence so oily and saponaceous that no one can grasp it; like an eel, it slips through your fingers, and is simply nothing."

  The word "saponaceous" necessarily elicited a bitter retort from Bishop Wilberforce; but perhaps the most valuable judgment on the whole matter was rendered by Bishop Tait, who declared, "These things have so effectually frightened the clergy that I think there is scarcely a bishop on the bench, unless it be the Bishop of St. David's [Thirlwall], that is not useless for the purpose of preventing the widespread alienation of intelligent men."

  During the whole controversy, and for some time afterward, the press was burdened with replies, ponderous and pithy, lurid and vapid, vitriolic and unctuous, but in the main bearing the inevitable characteristics of pleas for inherited opinions stimulated by ample endowments.

  The authors of the book seemed for a time likely to be swept out of the Church. One of the least daring but most eminent, finding himself apparently forsaken, seemed, though a man of very tough fibre, about to die of a broken heart; but sturdy English sense at last prevailed. The storm passed, and afterward came the still, small voice. Really sound thinkers throughout England, especially those who held no briefs for conventional orthodoxy, recognised the service rendered by the book. It was found that, after all, there existed even among churchmen a great mass of public opinion in favour of giving a full hearing to the reverent expression of honest thought, and inclined to distrust any cause which subjected fair play to zeal.

  The authors of the work not only remained in the Church of England, but some of them have since represented the broader views, though not always with their early courage, in the highest and most influential positions in the Anglican Church.[481]

  [481] For the origin of Essays and Reviews, see Edinburgh Review, April, 1861, p. 463. For the reception of the book, see the Westminster Review, October, 1860. For the attack on it by Bishop Wilberforce, see his article in the Quarterly Review, January, 1861; for additional facts, Edinburgh Review, April, 1861, pp. 461 et seq. For action on the book by Convocation, see Dublin Review, May, 1861, citing Jelf et al.; also Davidson's Life of Archbishop Tate, vol. i, chap. xii. For the Archepiscopal Letter, see Dublin Review, as above; also Life of Bishop Wilberforce, by his son, London, 1882, vol. iii, pp. 4,5; it is there stated that Wilberforce drew upon the letter. For curious inside views of the Essays and Reviews controversy, including the course of Bishop Hampden, Tait, et al., see Life of Bishop Wilberforce, by his son, as above, pp. 3-11; also pp. 141-149. For the denunciation of the present Bishop of London (Temple) as a "leper," etc., see ibid., pp. 319, 320. For general treatment of Temple, see Fraser's Magazine, December, 1869. For very interesting correspondence, see Davidson's Life of Archbishop Tait, as above. For Archdeacon Denison's speeches, see ibid, vol. i, p. 302. For Dr. Pusey's letter to Bishop Tait, urging conviction of the Essayists and Reviewers, ibid, p. 314. For the striking letters of Dr. Temple, ibid., pp. 290 et seq.; also The Life and Letters of Dean Stanley. For replies, see Charge of the Bishop of Oxford, 1863; also Replies to Essays and Reviews, Parker, London, with preface by Wilberforce; also Aids to Faith, edited by the Bishop of Gloucester, London, 1861; also those by Jelf, Burgon, et al. For the legal proceedings, see Quarterly Review, April, 1864; also Davidson, as above. For Bishop Thirlwall's speech, see Chronicle of Convocation, quoted in Life of Tait, vol. i, p. 320. For Tait's tribute to Thirlwall, see Life of Tait, vol. i, p. 325. For a remarkable able review, and in most charming form, of the ideas of Bishop Wilberforce and Lord Chancellor Westbury, see H. D. Traill, The New Lucian, first dialogue. For the cynical phrase referred to, see Nash, Life of Lord Westbury, vol. ii, p. 78, where the noted epitaph is given, as follows:

  "Richard Baron Westbury

  Lord High Chancellor of England,

  He was an eminent Christian,

  An energetic and merciful Statesman, And a still more eminent and merciful Judge. During his three years' tenure of office He abolished the ancient method of conveying land, The time-honoured institution of the Insolvent's Court,


  And

  The Eternity of Punishment. Toward the close of his early career, In the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,

  He dismissed Hell with costs, And took away from the Orthodox members of the

  Church of England Their last hope of everlasting damnation."

  IV. The Closing Struggle.

  The storm aroused by Essays and Reviews had not yet subsided when a far more serious tempest burst upon the English theological world.

  In 1862 appeared a work entitled The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined its author being Colenso, Anglican Bishop of Natal, in South Africa. He had formerly been highly esteemed as fellow and tutor at Cambridge, master at Harrow, author of various valuable text-books in mathematics; and as long as he exercised his powers within the limits of popular orthodoxy he was evidently in the way to the highest positions in the Church: but he chose another path. His treatment of his subject was reverent, but he had gradually come to those conclusions, then so daring, now so widespread among Christian scholars, that the Pentateuch, with much valuable historical matter, contains much that is unhistorical; that a large portion of it was the work of a comparatively late period in Jewish history; that many passages in Deuteronomy could only have been written after the Jews settled in Canaan; that the Mosaic law was not in force before the captivity; that the books of Chronicles were clearly written as an afterthought, to enforce the views of the priestly caste; and that in all the books there is much that is mythical and legendary.

  Very justly has a great German scholar recently adduced this work of a churchman relegated to the most petty of bishoprics in one of the most remote corners of the world, as a proof "that the problems of biblical criticism can no longer be suppressed; that they are in the air of our time, so that theology could not escape them even if it took the wings of the morning and dwelt in the uttermost parts of the sea."

  The bishop's statements, which now seem so moderate, then aroused horror. Especial wrath was caused by some of his arithmetical arguments, and among them those which showed that an army of six hundred thousand men could not have been mobilized in a single night; that three millions of people, with their flocks and herds, could neither have obtained food on so small and arid a desert as that over which they were said to have wandered during forty years, nor water from a single well; and that the butchery of two hundred thousand Midianites by twelve thousand Israelites, "exceeding infinitely in atrocity the tragedy at Cawnpore, had happily only been carried out on paper." There was nothing of the scoffer in him. While preserving his own independence, he had kept in touch with the most earnest thought both among European scholars and in the little flock intrusted to his care. He evidently remembered what had resulted from the attempt to hold the working classes in the towns of France, Germany, and Italy to outworn beliefs; he had found even the Zulus, whom he thought to convert, suspicious of the legendary features of the Old Testament, and with his clear practical mind he realized the danger which threatened the English Church and Christianity--the danger of tying its religion and morality to interpretations and conceptions of Scripture more and more widely seen and felt to be contrary to facts. He saw the especial peril of sham explanations, of covering up facts which must soon be known, and which, when revealed, must inevitably bring the plain people of England to regard their teachers, even the most deserving, as "solemnly constituted impostors"--ecclesiastics whose tenure depends on assertions which they know to be untrue. Therefore it was that, when his catechumens questioned him regarding some of the Old Testament legends, the bishop determined to tell the truth. He says: "My heart answered in the words of the prophet, `Shall a man speak lies in the name of the Lord?' I determined not to do so."

  But none of these considerations availed in his behalf at first.

  The outcry against the work was deafening: churchmen and dissenters rushed forward to attack it. Archdeacon Denison, chairman of the committee of Convocation appointed to examine it, uttered a noisy anathema. Convocation solemnly condemned it; and a zealous colonial bishop, relying upon a nominal supremacy, deposed and excommunicated its author, declaring him "given over to Satan." On both sides of the Atlantic the press groaned with "answers," some of these being especially injurious to the cause they were intended to serve, and none more so than sundry efforts by the bishops themselves. One of the points upon which they attacked him was his assertion that the reference in Leviticus to the hare chewing its cud contains an error. Upon this Prof. Hitzig, of Leipsic, one of the best Hebrew scholars of his time, remarked: "Your bishops are making themselves the laughing-stock of Europe. Every Hebraist knows that the animal mentioned in Leviticus is really the hare;. . . every zoologist knows that it does not chew the cud."[482]

  [482] For the citation referred to, see Pfleiderer, as above, book iv, chap. ii. For the passages referred to as provoking especial wrath, see Colenso, Lectures on the Pentateuch and the Moabite Stone, 1876, p. 217. For the episode regarding the hare chewing the cud, see Cox, Life of Colenso, vol. i, p. 240. The following epigram went the rounds:

  "The bishops all have sworn to shed their blood To prove 'tis true that the hare doth chew the cud. O bishops, doctors, and divines, beware-- Weak is the faith that hangs upon a hair!"

  On Colenso's return to Natal, where many of the clergy and laity who felt grateful for his years of devotion to them received him with signs of affection, an attempt was made to ruin these clergymen by depriving them of their little stipends, and to terrify the simple-minded laity by threatening them with the same "greater excommunication" which had been inflicted upon their bishop. To make the meaning of this more evident, the vicar-general of the Bishop of Cape Town met Colenso at the door of his own cathedral, and solemnly bade him "depart from the house of God as one who has been handed over to the Evil One." The sentence of excommunication was read before the assembled faithful, and they were enjoined to treat their bishop as "a heathen man and a publican." But these and a long series of other persecutions created a reaction in his favour.

  There remained to Colenso one bulwark which his enemies found stronger than they had imagined--the British courts of justice. The greatest efforts were now made to gain the day before these courts, to humiliate Colenso, and to reduce to beggary the clergy who remained faithful to him; and it is worthy of note that one of the leaders in preparing the legal plea of the com mittee against him was Mr. Gladstone.

  But this bulwark proved impregnable: both the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Rolls Court decided in Colenso's favour. Not only were his enemies thus forbidden to deprive him of his salary, but their excommunication of him was made null and void; it became, indeed, a subject of ridicule, and even a man so nurtured in religious sentiment as John Keble confessed and lamented that the English people no longer believed in excommunication. The bitterness of the defeated found vent in the utterances of the colonial metropolitan who had excommunicated Colenso--Bishop Gray, "the Lion of Cape Town"--who denounced the judgment as "awful and profane," and the Privy Council as "a masterpiece of Satan" and "the great dragon of the English Church." Even Wilberforce, careful as he was to avoid attacking anything established, alluded with deep regret to "the devotion of the English people to the law in matters of this sort."

  Their failure in the courts only seemed to increase the violence of the attacking party. The Anglican communion, both in England and America, was stirred to its depths against the heretic, and various dissenting bodies strove to show equal zeal. Great pains were taken to root out his reputation: it was declared that he had merely stolen the ideas of rationalists on the Continent by wholesale, and peddled them out in England at retail; the fact being that, while he used all the sources of information at his command, and was large-minded enough to put himself into relations with the best biblical scholarship of the Continent, he was singularly independent in his judgment, and that his investigations were of lasting value in modifying Continental thought. Kuenen, the most distinguished of all his contemp
oraries in this field, modified, as he himself declared, one of his own leading theories after reading Colenso's argument; and other Continental scholars scarcely less eminent acknowledged their great indebtedness to the English scholar for original suggestions.[483]

  [483] For interesting details of the Colenso persecution, see Davidson's Life of Tait, chaps. xii and xiv; also the Lives of Bishops Wilberforce and Gray. For full accounts of the struggle, see Cox, Life of Bishop Colenso, London, 1888, especially vol. i, chap. v. For the dramatic performance at Colenso's cathedral, see vol. ii, pp. 14-25. For a very impartial and appreciative statement regarding Colenso's work, see Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, London, 1893, chap. ix. For testimony to the originality and value of Colenso's contributions, see Kuenen, Origin and Composition of the Hexateuch, Introduction, pp. xx, as follows: "Colenso directed my attention to difficulties which I had hitherto failed to observe or adequately to reckon with; and as to the opinion of his labours current in Germany, I need only say that, inasmuch as Ewald, Bunsen, Bleek, and Knabel were every one of them logically forced to revise their theories in the light of the English bishop's research, there was small reason in the cry that his methods were antiquated and his objections stale." For a very brief but effective tribute to Colenso as an independent thinker whose merits are now acknowledged by Continental scholars, see Pfleiderer, Development of Theory, as above.

  But the zeal of the bishop's enemies did not end with calumny. He was socially ostracized--more completely even than Lyell had been after the publication of his Principles of Geology thirty years before. Even old friends left him, among them Frederick Denison Maurice, who, when himself under the ban of heresy, had been defended by Colenso. Nor was Maurice the only heretic who turned against him; Matthew Arnold attacked him, and set up, as a true ideal of the work needed to improve the English Church and people, of all books in the world, Spinoza's Tractatus. A large part of the English populace was led to regard him as an "infidel," a "traitor," an "apostate," and even as "an unclean being"; servants left his house in horror; "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart were let loose upon him"; and one of the favourite amusements of the period among men of petty wit and no convictions was the devising of light ribaldry against him.[484]