An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant | Page 7

cherished religious convictions, that of the
publication of his _Leben Jesu_, 1835. This movement has supported with abundant
evidence the insight of the philosophers as to the nature of revelation. It has shown that
that which we actually have in the Scriptures is just that which Kant, with his reverence
for the freedom of the human mind, had indicated that we must have, if revelation is to be
believed in at all. With this changed view has come an altered attitude toward many
statements which devout men had held that they must accept as true, because these were
found in Scripture. With this changed view the whole history, whether of the Jewish
people or of Jesus and the origins of the Christian Church, has been set in a new light.
In the third place, we shall have to deal with the influence of the sciences of nature and of
society, as these have been developed throughout the whole course of the nineteenth
century. If one must have a date for an outstanding event in this portion of the history,
perhaps that of the publication of Darwin's _Origin of Species_, 1859, would serve as
well as any other. The principles of these sciences have come to underlie in a great
measure all the reflection of cultivated men in our time. In amazing degree they have
percolated, through elementary instruction, through popular literature, and through the
newspapers, to the masses of mankind. They are recognised as the basis of a triumphant
material civilisation, which has made everything pertaining to the inner and spiritual life
seem remote. Through the social sciences there has come an impulse to the transfer of
emphasis from the individual to society, the disposition to see everything in its social
bearing, to do everything in the light of its social antecedents and of its social
consequences. Here again we have to note the profoundest influence upon religious
conceptions. The very notion connected with the words redemption and salvation appears
to have been changed.
In the case of each of these particular movements the church, as the organ of Christianity,
has passed through a period of antagonism to these influences, of fear of their
consequences, of resistance to their progress. In large portions of the church at the present
moment the protest is renewed. The substance of these modern teachings, which yet seem
to be the very warp and woof of the intellectual life of the modern man, is repudiated and

denounced. It is held to imperil the salvation of the soul. It is pronounced impossible of
combination with belief in a divinely revealed truth concerning the universe and a saving
faith for men. In other churches, outside the churches, the forms in which men hold their
Christianity have been in large measure adjusted to the results of these great movements
of thought. They have, as these men themselves believe, been immensely strengthened
and made sure by those very influences which were once considered dangerous.
In connection with this indication of the nature of our materials, we have sought to say
something of the time of emergence of the salient elements. It may be in point also to
give some intimation of the place of their origins, that is to say, of the participation of the
various nationalities in this common task of the modern Christian world. That
international quality of scholarship which seems to us natural, is a thing of very recent
date. That a discovery should within a reasonable interval become the property of all
educated men, that scholars of one nation should profit by that which the learned of
another land have done, appears to us a thing to be assumed. It has not always been so,
especially not in matters of religious faith. The Roman Church and the Latin language
gave to medieval Christian thought a certain international character. Again the
Renaissance and Reformation had a certain world wide quality. The relations of the
English Church in the reigns of the last Tudors to Germany, Switzerland, and France are
not to be forgotten. But the life of the Protestant national churches in the eighteenth
century shows little of this trait. The barriers of language counted for something. The
provincialism of national churches and denominational predilections counted for more.
In the philosophical movement we must begin with the Germans. The movement of
English thought known as deism was a distinct forerunner of the rationalist movement,
within the particular area of the discussion of religion. However, it ran into the sand. The
rationalist movement, considered in its other aspects, never attained in England in the
eighteenth century the proportions which it assumed in France and Germany. In France
that movement ran its full course, both among the learned and, equally, as a radical and
revolutionary influence among the unlearned.