BOSTON REVIEW. VOL. IV. MAY, 1864.-No. 21. ARTICLE I. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EDUCATED MEN TO THREE cabalistic letters from the Greek long signified, but only to the initiated, a motto designed to characterize a learned society of the most distinguished undergraduates and alumni of our leading colleges. The veil of secrecy is now removed; the interpretation of the mystic symbol is given to the world; and the society of the Phi Beta Kappa openly affirms that " Philosophy is the guide of life." This remarkable profession may have been innocently made at the outset, and its involved mistake propagated, traditionally, like other fallacies which are ultimately traceable only to "the spirit of the power of the air." But that it is a fallacy, however unintentionally admitted, or superstitiously handed down, or now reverently maintained, no considerate Christian will question, though he may be forward to excuse it. Nor will its injurious tendency be denied by any who appreciate the subtle influence of a characteristic sign, and the mental associations which it awakens, when made the representative of a false idea. We make this reference not invidiously, but because, having been ourselves at fault, in this respect, we would now stand corrected before the world. We would do no dishonor to a venerable society. We could not if we would, and we would not if we could, put it at any disadvantage wherein this single criticism does not apply. But we are bound, as Christian journalists, to maintain that not philosophy, but Christianity, is the guide of life, and to do it now the rather, more discriminately and earnestly, because philosophy, throughout the world, is ambitiously exercising the injurious prerogative which our Christian institutions have incautiously conceded, and which it is becoming so difficult to countervail. If the human reason be a pure, universal essence, divine, or an outgoing of divinity, and every individual reason, or the reason of a few great men, be the ultima ratio, the higher law, from which no appeal can be taken even to a miraculous revelation, we would accept, not the least, its last pantheistic development, and go on, under the guidance of its new lights, to assist its boasted consummation of the perfectibility of man, and its already heralded introduction of a golden age. But that is just the presumption which we deny. We stand by the Logos, the Word made flesh, divinely proclaimed, supernaturally attested, and authoritatively signified by the descent of the Mystic Dove. Christianity is from God, and is absolute. Philosophy is a product of the human reason, and is conditioned. God himself accordingly distinguishes between them. The one is "the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation"; the other is "vain imaginations," "craftiness" and "foolishness." Yet reason has its province. That we discuss not now. It is not material to our purpose. But the reason, whatever be its province, no consistent Christian will deny to be the property of a finite, fallen and sinful being. From whatever causes, it is limited, infirm, irregular, perverse, the servant of depraved affections, and therefore not a proper interpreter of the will of heaven. The subjects which most concern us lie wholly beyond its reach. Nothing that it reaches can be fully comprehended. Within its natural sphere it betrays, through the idol-loves that continually seduce us. A great master has well described them as they figured in his day. But taller idols of the speculative reason, reproduced from that remarkable philosophic period when Paul denounced them in the Areopagus, have largely cap tivated society, and multiplied its confusions, since the time of Bacon. In the hand of illuminated philosophers and politicians, the very certainties of abstract science are now made to bewilder and delude us. The wanton imagination sways the calculus itself, in its applications to questions of life and death; and society, consequently, in its heedless traverses, is swallowed in the whirlpools, or shattered on the rocks. One could, with less scruple, accept philosophy as the guide of life, if its various types could be reduced to a common measure, or a common denominator. But all the spheres might as easily be brought to one diameter, or all the types of men to the same figure and complexion. No master of speculation would now meet, in any learned or popular assembly, an undivided or unqualified response. It would be questioned whether he were not unduly exalting a favorite study, a distinguished school, an ambitious theorist; or whether he sought not to justify his partisan or sectional peculiarities, or disparage the different or opposite peculiarities of other men. And the most eminent would lack the proper sanctions of authority. One coolly affirms, "I am God"; another, "I am the organ and interpreter of God"; and a third, "that it belongs but to two or three in any age or country to be the representatives of true wisdom to the generality." But yet no cloven tongues as of fire appear to them; the dead come not out of the graves at their call. Jordan is not divided; and the New Jerusalem comes not down from heaven. Wherefore, we profess not philosophy, but Christianity, as the guide of life; we ask the attention of our readers to the peculiar responsibility which it puts upon educated men. We assume that Christianity is a divine revelation, special and supernatural. For, if its stated evidences do not so prove it, nothing could be proved, and we are afloat on a wild sea of hypothesis and conjecture, where all the hopes of man must necessarily perish. But, if it be a divine revelation, then it is an ultimate criterion of knowledge, wisdom and virtue; for there can be nothing before, or behind, or above God. The abstract ideas of right and wrong which some affect to put before God, and to which they make God subordinate, we owe to the mental and moral constitution which he has given us. Oth erwise they are nothing. Our concrete ideas, as of virtue and vice, guilt and innocence, pertain only to the relations which he has constituted and appointed for our moral trial. Christianity refers us to this divine constitution of a moral nature which makes us susceptible of a character, and to the relations in which character is acquired. It claims to be set, accordingly, as the infallible critic of all beings and all subjects within its range. Some things, indeed, it discusses not. It leaves them for the better probation of the natural faculties under their appropriate natural laws. But it is related to the whole system of things which are open to human inquiry, to the cause in which they subsist, the means by which they consist, and the ends for which they exist. "Of him, and through him, and to him are all things." It is accordingly so and so far a discerner and judge of all things, that no art, science, government, policy, or other variety of learning which leaves it out of reckoning, or refuses to be tested by it wherein its test naturally applies, can be true, or safe for the ordering of affairs. It is an authoritative regulator of our thoughts and judgments, if not necessarily in reference to the qualities, modes and laws of the phenomena about us, or within us, yet of their common dependence on the infinite mind, the care of a divine providence over them, and their common relation to moral government. The probation under which it places us, in respect to them all, corresponds, of course, to our respective abilities and culture. How mankind in general, or any part of them, behave in this probation, is a mere question of fact. Christianity itself asserts our common failure. History is no less decisive. They who have attained to knowledge, wisdom, or virtue, in any considerable degree, agreeably to this authoritative standard, have constituted but a small fraction of mankind. It is probable that the greater part of its professed teachers have been its worst corrupters, and applied it to the most unworthy ends. Hence the judicial overthrow of its older historic nations. Hence also the Protestant revolutions. They produced reform. Yet Protestantism attained not to primitive simplicity. Wiclif fell short of Peter, and Luther fell short of Paul. Protestantism, in its best periods, has no more warranty against corruption and de cline than had Judaism, or primitive Christianity. It is as likely to refer us for doctrine, not to the oracle, but the traditions of the elders, and to beguile us in proportion to the greater intellectual activity it has awakened. No adversary of God is said to have so wide or malignant control over men as the Antichrist of the New Testament embodied in historic systems of unbelief. And the state of things, under all the dispensations, simply corresponds, in this respect, to the facts under God's natural government; for the ordinary gifts of providence have been, for the most part, stimulants to our vagrant fancies, or unruly passions. Pride and luxury have been, to a great extent, but as a synonym of riches, tyranny of power, licentiousness of liberty, and destructiveness of reform. Out of the successive revolutions men have risen to higher levels, to more refined and dignified civilizations, but often to be cast down into barbarian rudeness, a paralytic decrepitude. Wherefore the strongest reason exists, during the whole of the present probationary state of the earth and man, and now more than ever, for enforcing the responsibility which Christianity imposes upon educated men. It were idle to imagine that we have outlived our dangers. It is certainly possible that while we imagine ourselves nearest to perfection, we should be nearest to our casting down, as it has been in all ages and countries from the beginning. First: We remark this responsibility under Christianity as a vital religion. And we mean by Christianity the whole of it, historic and prophetic, from the promise of "the seed of the woman" to the final kingdom and coming of our Lord. We mean it in its absoluteness, in distinction from all schools, sects, parties, modes, formularies, creeds, that bear its name and affect to be its representatives, though not necessarily in opposition to them. The Bible has been well called the only book of realities. We assert the real, as written there, in distinction from the apparent, the form or account of it, as given in man's judgments or opinions. We acknowledge an organic, visible church; for the living truth takes to itself a body. But we distinguish between the organism that is mechanical, and the moving principle that is vital, the Christ in ordinances, theories and systems, and Christ within us, the hope of glory. We re |