CHAPTER II. RATIONALISM. 1-4. The anti-rationalistic and rationalistic principles: the latter in two forms. 5-9. Province of the understanding. 10-18. It cannot cure a fault which lies in the affections. 19. True statement of the question. 20, 21. Homogeneity required in the affections. 2237. Objection from the discrepancy between belief and practice. 38-42. The need of some access to man besides that through the understanding. 43-48. The existence of such other access illustrated from Scripture. 49-51. Without it doctrinal orthodoxy cannot be maintained. 52. Illustration in the Sacraments. 53, 54. Harmony and co-operation of the affections and the understanding. 55, 56. Summary. 1. IN conformity with the introductory sketch just given, it will be my endeavour in subsequent chapters to discuss the principle of the Sacraments, and to show the vital union and harmony of that principle with the doctrines of the visible Church, and of the Apostolical succession; and how all the three conduce to sustain, embody, exhibit, and impress the great truth that Christianity is, in its first, highest, and most essential character, a religion of influences which transcend, though they do not oppose, the understanding. But, to remove prejudices flowing naturally out of the spirit of the age as well as of human nature in general, I would first endeavour to show how perfectly reasonable and how thoroughly Scriptural is this line of argument and that they, in fact, are the true advocates of the legitimate use of the understanding, who seek to ascribe to it the honour which is its own aud not another's, by defining its appointed province: how essentially and necessarily the reception of Christianity implies an action over and above that of the understanding and consequently how that reception is rendered difficult, and finally impossible, if we transmute our system into one which claims and appeals to that faculty alone. : 2. First, let us consider what are the objections taken to rationalism in the popular sense; let us inquire whether they are sufficient to show that it is an improper, and therefore an irrational, method of religious inquiry and further, whether over and above the common forms in which it appears, still there be not an inner and more subtle form of the evil, liable to affect the mental habits in religion even of those who have offered to it, in its primary and popular aspect, a determined resistance. Now rationalism is commonly, at least in this country, taken to be the reduction of Christian doctrine to the standard and measure of the human understanding. The uniform consequence of the theory of rationalism thus understood is, as might be expected, a general depreciation of all other than preceptive teaching, as dealing chiefly with mere abstractions, as belonging to a region remote and impalpable: and accordingly there ensues an unnatural disruption of the strictly perceptive parts of the Gospel from those which can alone make them available for the restoration of human nature. Because Christianity in its results comes so imme diately home to every want and capability of our constitution, therefore forsooth, with aggravated ingratitude and presumption, we own and appropriate those portions of it which tell directly on our mutual intercourse and our personal advantage; rejecting alike the wonderful machinery by which alone they can be brought into activity, and the ulterior purposes which they themselves subserve in regulating the relations between our Creator and ourselves. 3. Now if the objectors to rationalism in the sense above stated would act upon the whole of their own argument, it would be found quite sufficient, as I believe, for every theological purpose. They object to the human understanding in its natural state, as the criterion of what purports to be revealed truth. In so doing, they stand upon the broadest ground of Scriptural authority. "The natural man," says St. Paul, in a very well-known text,* "receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." The rationalistic theory maintains the very reverse of the inspired declaration, and teaches that the natural man can know and does receive Divine truth; and so much so, that his reception or rejection of it is to be to the conscience the legitimate criterion of its reality. But among us who are agreed in the repudiation of this theory, is there no more hidden yet very influential division or distinction of sentiment? * 1 Cor. ii. 14. 4. It is a common opinion, and one respectable on account of the respectability of those persons by whom it is entertained, that where orthodox doctrines are held and in proportion as they are inculcated, the form of religion is to be considered spiritual. Such persons commonly argue that it is not enough to have the precepts of the Gospel taught without its doctrines. True indeed; but neither is it enough to have what are termed the doctrines along with the precepts, unless we also have the vital influence and powers of Christianity brought into action. If the term orthodox doctrine included fully the doctrine of Sacraments and positive institutions in Christianity, this might be sufficient; but I speak of orthodox doctrine in the common sense, which does not comprise any strong affirmative idea, or any prominent exhibition of the Sacraments and the Church; which scarcely recognises the Church as being an essential part of the Divine revelation, although it for the most part freely allows it to be fitly and rightly joined with it as a subaltern instrument for the accomplishment of its purposes. But orthodox doctrine, we must not overlook the fact, is, even in its less usual but more legitimate sense, wholly distinct from spiritual religion, although it be a preparation for it and an appointed instrument of its production; and although, further, spiritual religion can have no permanent hold where orthodox doctrine is denied, we have a partial recognition, even in popular phraseology, of the inefficiency of doctrine when standing singly for the purposes of religion, in the phrase "head knowledge," popularly used to describe one defective form of spiritual condition. But the use of this phrase merely throws incidental light upon a truth of which we are too little conscious, and of which I am about to attempt the exhibition. There is, it may be feared, an imperfectly developed form of rationalism, subtler than that heretofore indicated, in which it taints the reasonings and the views of many who are conscious only of honest aversion to that noxious principle. The grosser form is that according to which the natural understanding is the adequate and final judge of all matter purporting to be revealed. The finer form is betrayed in the opinion, which teaches that although the understanding requires correction, yet its concurrence is a necessary and uniform condition of the entrance of any vital influence of religion into the human being. This religious, and therefore also metaphysical, error it will now be endeavoured on metaphysical grounds to confute. 5. It is a great principle in all psychology, and therefore highly necessary to be remembered in theological investigations, that we must regard the nature of a man as a complex whole, whose parts have important and fixed relations and reciprocal influences. Ancient and modern schemes of philosophy have almost always been partial and faulty in this particular, looking at some single faculty, or some one tendency, of human nature, adjusting moral and metaphysical systems with an exclusive reference to it, and leaving the residue of the composition of the man without its proper |