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.The humanism of the Renaissance was a case of culture carried to excess.As such it was abnormal,and its exponents failed to see life steadily and whole.This tendency is a frequent infirmity of thephilosophic mind.The Deists mark a stage of progress in mental evolution.They were the first thinkersto realize that a problem existed; they noted for the first time the unique character of Christianity, andon the other side they reached a firmer recognition of the uniformity of nature.The evidence availablewas not, however, sufficient to enable them to solve the religious problem.The attack of the Frenchsceptics was less scientific, but had some justification in political history.Priestly imposture led them tomistake the abuse of a function for the use of it, and even for the origin.It may be said that they firstrealized the existence of a political problem, but they confused it with the religious.We now know thatreligion exists in primitive peoples before the rise of a priesthood.Again, Hume s axioms on the questionof miracles are rendered beside the point by the comparative evidence, which shows that the problem tobe explained is not the occurrence of miracles, but the mental phenomena which cause them to bedemanded and believed.Apologists themselves have gradually come to see not that Christianity is to bebelieved because of the miracles, but the miracles because of Christianity.Their view, however, requiresconsiderable qualification and explanation of terms.It is analogous to the opinion frequently held, asagainst the charge of anthropomorphism, that the real point is not the anthropomorphic nature of God,but the theomorphic possibilities of man.Here anthropology comes to our aid, showing that to theprimitive religious mind, as to the early Christian, a miracle is not, as it is now, a breach of the laws ofnature, but merely a work of power (as indeed is implied in the Biblical view), intended to illustrate thegreatness of a divine person.Much of the modern objection to the Christian miracles is due to thisunconscious change in the meaning of the term.The serious mind, when contemplating some irresistiblenatural force, is in exactly the same case as the disciple who saw his Master perform a mighty work. It46 is one of the most noticeable of the discrepancies in the Gospel narratives that Christ consistently refusedto give a sign, while his reporters tell us of so many.As to the scientific errors of the Bible, no one would now venture to maintain the literal scientificaccuracy of the Mosaic account of Creation, or of the Deluge and of similar narratives.The arguments ofHuxley and Laing in this matter can no longer be resisted.It is doubtful, however, whether the work thuscompleted was at all necessary; thoughtful believers would have come to the same conclusion in favourof science by a natural process, and the religious instinct, with its clear grasp of what is essential, wouldnot have been led, as in many cases it has been led, to lose faith in the Bible as a whole.As it is, thescientific critics of the Bible have misled many by the fallacy that the discrediting of a part is thediscrediting of the whole.The obvious truth, however, is coming to be more and more clearly recognized,that the Bible teaches not science, but religion; and the religious authority of the Bible has not beenweakened by the purely scientific attack.Further, we may observe that the critical method of Huxley,Laing, and Haeckel is really pre-scientific; it is criticism of that early type, which, as Jowett says, consistsalmost entirely in adapting the past to the present, in obtruding the notions of a later age upon an earlierone. It may, in fact, be said that the exponents of evolution neglect to apply evolutionary principles to thesubject of their attack.They would doubtless reply that their aim is to expedite progress and to furtherhuman development by getting rid of obsolete survivals.The survival theory of religion therefore claimssome notice here.It is one of the first results to appear upon the application of the comparative method,and is commonly put somewhat in this way: we find in modern culture beliefs and customs and eveninstitutions, which are evidently not of a piece with the civilization characteristic of the age, and areactually proved to have flourished in primitive times.They are now, therefore, practically meaninglessanachronisms, and are only kept up by the inertia of familiarity and by a fear of changing the luck. Nowthis view is itself a survival of the legal method of historical inquiry, according to which institutions wereestablished in the early ages, either by Revelation, fortuitous circumstance, or social compact, and theirsubsequent existence was thus, as it were, secured by charter.A notion of the depravity of human naturecoincided with legalist prejudice to produce a complete neglect of the possibility that the institutioncorresponds to some permanent need of human nature.Thus, in the case of marriage, the institution wassupposed to have been organized by primitive legislators with the purpose of counteracting the evil effectsof promiscuity, and to have continued to subsist, not because human nature needs and demands it inevery generation and in every stage of culture, but because it was once made the law.It is further impliedthat the history of the institution has been a continued struggle on the part of the law-abiding to preserveit, and on the part of the more primitive members of society to break the bonds and return to communisticunions.Similarly, the institution of government was supposed to have been brought about by definitelegislation in some far distant age.Mankind agreed to delegate their natural rights by a form of socialcontract.Since then government has continued, not because it is an essential expression of humannature, but because it was once instituted.These last vestiges of Rousseauism are brushed from the pathby the plain evidence of comparative psychology, and it may be finally asserted that nothing which has todo with human needs ever survives as a mere survival.It is necessary, lastly, to discuss a question which idealist and evolutionist thinkers, whether friendsor enemies, are apt to pass over, while the average Christian, with a truer instinct, unconsciously feels itsimportance.This is the question, firstly, of the historicity, and secondly, of the character of Jesus Christ.Whether in attack or defence, the idealist holds that his personality though it may be unhistorical is yetideally true; the evolutionist ignores it in either aspect, amid tendencies and organic processes whereindividuals do not count; but the ordinary believer, naively but justly, requires that Christianity shall beliterally true, and its Founder both God and Man
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