the burden of successive revolutions. It has been made the pretext for administrative changes, and thus complicated with political interests; at one time for resisting democratic tendencies; at another as the enemy of all political absolutism.' It has alternately been held to be the friend or foe of freedom of thought; the ally or enemy of philosophical opinion; as fearing or welcoming the vast and ever-progressing influences of industrial Periods of development. But through all it has worked on; and worked after its own kind. There have indeed been times when, exhausted by its struggles for existence and for toleration, its spiritual powers lay dormant, and might seem well-nigh extinct.' During long periods the secularism of court intrigues, the heats of metaphysical controversies, the atheistic intolerance of the French Revolution,3 appeared to have expelled all interest in the dormancy or reac tion 1 See Lecky, Hist. Rat., II. 182-186. The internecine struggles of Catholicism and the Reformed Faith in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, may justly be claimed as testimonies to the power of the Religion which was held to be at stake.-Cf. Dorner, II. 3. 2 Mr. Herbert Spencer, First Princ., p. 331, well observes that "Religion, beside its occasional revivals of smaller magnitude, has its long periods of exaltation and depression; generations of belief and selfsacrifice following generations of indifference and laxity. . . . . When from corruptions accumulated around them, national creeds have fallen into general discredit, ending in indifferentism or positive denial; there has always by-and-by arisen a re-assertion of them, if not the same in form, still the same in essence." See Dorner's remarks on the permanence of the Christian Faith through all assaults of philosophical Deism in England, France, and Germany.-Hist. Prot. Th., I. 207; II. 45, 392. 3 See Buckle, H. Civ., II. 254. He admits that its leaders committed what he thinks was an involuntary error: "In attacking the message and prospects of Christianity. Yet the instincts of Religion (and, we may fairly add, the virtue of its specific doctrines,) prevailed. Successive revivals of the missionary spirit super- followed vened on eras of religious indifference; and the vals. truth of Christian teaching has been both vigorously defended and confirmed by actual results. by revi ments of introduced formation. § 3. The question of the direction and degree in New elewhich the prospects of Christianity have been progress affected by its history since the Reformation may by the Rebe narrowed to the inquiry as to what fresh elements have been introduced into the circumstances attending its progress and with what results. These may be briefly summarized as the principle, or rather the fact, of the Renaissance in sentiment, philosophy, and art; of Positivism in material knowledge; the substitution of inquiry for traditional authority; the doctrines of religious liberty and toleration, including the freedom of the press and the disappearance of religious disabilities; the gradual divorce of religion from politics, with its effects upon the alliance of Churches and States. What is the tendency of These still clergy, they lost their respect for religion. In their determination to weaken ecclesiastical power, they attempted to undermine the foundations of Christianity." Isaac Taylor, Hist. Enthus., p. 269, has some fine and just remarks on the triumph of the Christian Religion at this period. 1 It will be understood that these are, as Gibbon remarks, the consequences, not the design, of the Reformation. in move ment, whether adverse to Christianity. The classical or ment in modern civilization these changes in opinion and practice, changes which are still ripening into action on every side through the length and breadth of Europe? If there be contained within them nothing really and essentially unfavourable to the growth and well-being of Christianity, there is no ground on this account at least to augur the decline of the Religion. If, indeed, they tend in harmony with its doctrines towards the spread of a simpler and more tolerant Christianity, there is rather reason to infer a larger and lasting measure of success for its tenets. It becomes necessary, then, to enter, although but briefly, on some consideration of their several characters and operation. §4. By some the Reformation has been altogether human ele- traced to the importation of the classical or purely human element into Western Europe,' which was the result in the first instance of the impact of Mahommedanism upon Christianity, and of the fall of Constantinople. Philosophy and taste were revolutionized by contact with the independence of 1 See Ranke, Hist. of Popes, I. ii. § 3, and Gieseler, Vol. V., § 154, who assigns to this element its due share of result. Herder almost couples Ulric v. Hutten with Luther in the work of Reformation. See Hallam, Lit. E., I. 290-7. At first the progress of literature seemed checked and Erasmus writes (1528), “Ubicunque regnat Lutheranismus, ibi literarum est interitus." At an earlier stage he had made similar complaints of the Catholic party. "Hæresis est politè loqui: hæresis Græcè scire." See Sir W. Hamilton, Disc., p. 209. Socinianism may be rightly regarded as the issue of the Reformation in Italy, where philosophic and æsthetic culture gained the ascendency over the ethical and religious elements. See Dorner, Hist. Prot. Th., II. 427. and em ancient modes of thought and feeling: and quickly sought new outlets of expression. Hence the influence of the so-called Humanists on the direction and character of the Reformation, the success of which was in many minds identified with the progress of classical literature. The proof of so wide an assertion must certainly remain doubtful. For our present purpose the admission is sufficient that the presence of "the new learning" was a fact contemporaneous with the tendencies towards a reformation in religion. The relations of an increased recognized acquaintance with the original tongues to the doctri- ployed by nal interpretation of the Scriptures are immediately formers apparent; and their value was accordingly substantially acknowledged by some of the leading Reformers to whom, both in Germany and England, the improvement, and in some cases the foundation, of public schools is due. The wider influence of classical models in framing new standards of literary, philosophical, and moral conceptions, in not loosening the shackles of traditional dogmatism, in to Christransforming religious sentiments by the instru- dencies, mentality of art, may be differently estimated, but In 1525 Luther addressed a Treatise to the Councillors of every town in Germany, "that they ought to institute and maintain Christian schools," i. e. national schools. Melancthon and Camerarius laboured at the establishment of classical schools, Lycea, and Gymnasia. Melancthon himself kept for many years a schola privata. See Dorner, H. Prot. Th., I. 261-270. Hallam, Lit. of E., 1. 330. For England, comp. Seebohm's Oxford Reformers, sc. Colet, Linacre, More, &c. Sec further Whewell, Ind. Phil., Bk. XII., ix. the Re dangerous tian ten repre senting an truth, : will hardly be denied. It would, however, be but a narrow view which regards the tendencies of Classicism as essentially irreligious or un-Christian.' Rather may we see in this period of European civilization the introduction to a permanent synaspect of thesis of two differing sides of human nature and human history of the natural with the spiritual: of reason with religion of an æsthetical apprehension of the Beautiful with the higher aspirations of Christian devotion: a synthesis ever in process of completion yet unfulfilled. Christianity which in its origin had successfully contended with heathen Philosophy and Art in their decline, was inevitably destined, at some future stage of human necessary culture, to encounter the elements of Truth which comple- they they enshrined, to adopt them into its own theory of reality, and mould them after its own to their tion. 1 A recent historian (Lecky, II. 322) has endeavoured to trace the influences of Rationalism upon Art, "a chief organ of religious sentiments;" and shows how in the course of secularization the ideal of piety was exchanged for that of beauty; more especially in Painting and Architecture, following the intellectual condition of the times. Ib., I. 263–286. There can be no question as to the immediate and, in some respects, lasting effect of the introduction of classic models, and of the sense of freedom gained at the era of the Reformation. Nothing, however, is proved by it as to the declension of Christian influence. In Architecture, the Gothic style, a conception which, if any, is the creation of the Church of Christ, is once more in the ascendant: and there are indications of a similar tendency in the Poetry of the time. Of Painting I need hardly speak. Schlegel remarks that, of the sister arts, Painting is the most truly spiritual, and, together with Music, has in modern Christendom been most employed to exhibit or suggest the mysteries of Divine Love. Sculpture, and to some extent Architecture, as its attendant, occupied with the development of organic form, attained even in heathen times their richest cultivation. |