The Eclipse of Faith | Page 8

the first imperfect product of genuine Christianity, which is perfected

by a "development," though as to the direction of that development
they certainly do not agree. Both, if I may judge by some recent
speculations, recoil from the Bible even more than they do from one
another; and both would get rid of it,--one by locking it up, and the
other tearing it to tatters. Thus receding in opposite directions round the
circle, they are found placed side by side at the same extremity of a
diameter, at the other extremity of which is the--Bible. The
resemblances, in some instances, are so striking, that one is reminded
of that little animal, the fresh-water polype, whose external structure is
so absolutely a mere prolongation of the internal, that you may turn
him inside out, and all the functions of life go on just as well as before.
It is impossible to convey to you an adequate idea of the
bouleversement which has taken place in our religious relations, --even
in each man's little sphere. It is as if the religious world were a
masquerade, where you cease to feel surprise at finding some familiar
acquaintance disguised in the most fantastical costume. There is our old
friend W----, rigorously, as you know, educated in his old father's
Evangelical notions, ready to be a confessor for the two wax candies,
even though unlighted, and to be a martyr for them if but lighted. His
cousin in the opposite direction has found even the most meagre
naturalism too much for him, and avows himself a Pantheist. L----, the
son, you remember, of an independent minister, is ready to go nobly to
death in defence of the prerogatives of his "apostolic succession"; and
has not the slightest doubts that he can make out his spiritual genealogy,
without a broken link, from the first Bishop of Rome,
downwards!--though, poor fellow, it would puzzle him to say who was
his great-grandfather. E----, you are aware, has long since joined the
Church of Rome, and has disclosed such a bottomless abyss of "faith,"
that whole cart-loads of mediaeval fables, abandoned even by
Romanists (who, by the way, stand fairly aghast at his insatiable
appetite), have not been able to fill it. All the saints in the Roman
Hagiography cannot work miracles as fast as he can credit them. On the
other hand, his brother has signalized himself by an equal facility of
stripping himself, fragment by fragment, of his early creed, till at last
he walks through this bleak world in such a gossamer gauze of
transparent "spiritualism," that it makes you both shiver and blush to

look at him. Your old acquaintance P----, true to his youthful qualities
(which now have most abundant exercise), who has the "charity which
believeth all, things," though certainly not that which "bareth all
things," goes about apologizing for all religious systems, and finding
truth in every thing;--our beloved Harrington, on the other hand,
bewildered by all this confusion, finds truth--in nothing.
Yet you must not imagine that our religious maladies are at present
more than sporadic; or that the great bulk of our population are at
present affected by them: they still believe the Bible to be the revealed
Word God. Should these diseases ever become epidemic, they will
soon degenerate into a still worse type. Many apostles of Atheism and
Pantheism amongst our classes say (and perhaps truly), that this
modern "spiritualism" is but a transition state. In that case, you will
have to recall, with a deeper meaning, the song of Byron, which you
told me gave you such anguish, as you paced the deck on the evening
in which lost sight of Old England,--"My native land, night!"
I have sometimes mournfully asked myself, whether the world may not
yet want a few experiments as to whether it cannot get on better
without Christianity and the Bible; but I hope England is not destined
be the laboratory.
I almost envy your happier lot I picture to myself your unsophisticated
folks, just reclaimed from the grossest barbarism and idolatry,
receiving the simple Gospel (as it ought to be received) with grateful
wonder, as Heaven's own method of making man wise and happy;
reverencing the Bible as what it is,--an infallible guide through this
world to a better; "a light shining in a dark place." They listen with
unquestioning simplicity to its disclosures, which find an echo in their
own hearts, and with a reverence which is due to a volume which has
transformed them from savages into men, and from idolaters into
Christians. They are not troubled with doubts of its authenticity or its
divinity; with talk of various readings and discordant manuscripts; with
subtle theories for proving that its miracles are legends, or its history
myths, or with any other of