THE ILLUSIVENESS OF MODERN THOUGHT

ARDINAL Newman held that modern thought C needed reforming in the light of the Christian revelation, not the Christian revelation in the light of modern thought. The opposite and Protestant view prevails with the greater number of our neighbours who profess a theism and do not disdain to be known as Christians.

But what is this ‘ modern thought,’ which daily with the steady destructiveness of an encroaching sea wears and crumbles the faith of Anglicans and free-church- men, and from time to time detaches Catholics from the household of faith? Whence comes i t? A new impression of the Hibbert Lectures on the Refor- mation,’ delivered by Dr. Beard-a nonconformist divine-rather more than forty years ago, prefaced by Dr. Ernest Barker, the distinguished Principal of King’s College, London, bids us place the begin- nings of modern thought in the break up of Christen- dom in the sixteenth century-in ‘ the specifically religious revolution which we call the Reformation.’ Dr. Beard, with the persuasive reasonableness of a good Victorian, is content to let modern thought whittle away all Christian dogma, believing that man- kind will thereby ‘penetrate more and more deeply into the glory and the wonder of God.’ Dr. Ernest Barker, maintaining that ‘ the fundamental meaning of the Reformation is a new theology’; and the new theology ‘ a purer revelation of God direct to each

‘The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Relation to Modern Thought and Knowwledge. Hibbert Lectures by Charles Beard, LL.D. (Constable; 10/6 net.)

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The lllusiveness of Modern Thought

Christian soul,’ hopes, with Dr. Beard, for ‘ a new kindling and a further brightening of its light.’

If we accept this account of the rise of modern thought, and perceive its origins in the Renaissance and Reformation, we are still in the dark when we try to get a definition of modern thought. In the pursuit of this illusive modern thought, much has to be dis- carded ; that is plain. The very idea of Catholic unity had first to be sacrificed. With contempt of the Papal supremacy-and Catholic unity is non-existent outside papal obedience-the Mass was repudiated, and with that repudiation went what Dr. Barker calls ‘ the theo- logy which assumed that the divine reality was a God communicating Himself to believers through the mys- tery of sacraments which depended for their efficacy on the power of the priest.’

Modern thought, rid of the Pope and the sacramen- tal system of the Catholic Church, was bound to go further and dissolve the relations of philosophy and theology. ‘ Luther’s rebellion was almost as much against the schoolmen and Aristotle as against the Pope,’ Dr. Beard decides; with notable conse- quences :-

a Modern European philosophy can show no development in the direction of fixed and widely-accepted results of speculation. The continuity of thought is indeed not diffi- cult to be traced : Descartes, Spinoza, Liebnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel-between any one of these great thinkers and the next in succession, the critic may discern not merely the logical but often the actual link. Can we say as much, now that a considerable part of educated Germany has made the transition to Scopenhauer and to Hartmann? So in our own country we can establish a line of succession from Lock to Hume, from Hume to Spencer, with many deviations of more or less importance, by the road ; but who can say in what direction the development tends or to what obvious goal it makes its way? Much more it seems to an outside critic that the motion of philo- sophy is rather in an orbit round a centre than in a direct line towards a mark : old problems continually recur : not

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even the solutions of them are always new : the pendulum swings between opposite poles of thought : a sensational philosophy now obtains, and now an intuitional : a nation is idealist in one generation and sceptical in the next.’

Dr, Beard arrived at these conclusions forty years ago. Is it any wonder that in the interval the philo- sophers of the pendulum have shrunk in our respect while the influence of St. Thomas has vastly in- creased? After all, the more responsible of mankind do aim at a mark and seek an end. And since modern philosophy is of no help when it comes to the purpose of life, and St. Thomas most assuredly is, we turn to St. Thomas: happily, to find him more modern than the moderns.

Modern thought has led the philosophers a wild goose chase; in its criticism of the Bible it has made havoc of the faiths of Anglicans and Lutherans, disintegrated the evangelicalism of the Protestant churches, and by attractiveness, fatal to certain types of mind, drawn individual Catholics to the quicksands where spiritual life is lost. Dr. Beard claims for the ‘ higher criticism ’ produced by modern thought a true descent from the Reformation. Deny the divine authority of the Christian revelation contained in the sacred scriptures, and sooner or later both the Chris- tian revelation and the sacred scriptures will be treated as the peculiar property of textual and other critics : mere literary matter to be experimented and com- mented upon even as Homer and Shakespear are criticised. (The higher critics have not yet tackled Dickens, but they will. It should not be difficult to prove by internal evidence that the author of Pickwick had very little to do with A Tale of Two Cities ; that ‘ Boz,’ a writer of Sketches, can hardly be identified with the pseudo-Dickens of -Hard Times).

The odd thing is people will deny the authority of an infallible Church and yet accept the word of some

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The lllmioeness of Mo&m Thought

critic of the Bible of whose credentials they really know nothing at all.

Some law there needs be other than the law Of our own wills ; happy is he who finds A law wherein his spirit is left free.

The freedom provided by modern thought, with its laws of textual criticism that impose the authority of university professors in place of the authority of Rome, bears witness to the credulity of mankind, to its natural submissiveness and desire to be ruled by others. In the name of modern thought we are bidden to refuse allegiance to the authority for the Christian revelation -for what authority is there for the truth of the Chris- tian revelation outside the Holy, Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church ?-and to obey authority for faith and morals elsewhere-in modern thought itself.

And still we seek, and in vain, to find what exactly is meant by modern thought. Definition evades the enquirer. The prophets of modern thought cry up their wares in contentious rivalry, shouting the odds with the energy of a book-maker on the race-course and the eloquence of the patent-medicine vendor in a country market place.

New thought, higher thought, spiritualism, theo- sophy, Christian science, gymnosophy--‘ every spe- cies 0’ gammon ’ in the profane but immortal words of Mr. Weller-is offered to us as the genuine modern thought.

Free play to the unruly wills and affections of sinful man is the motto of one school of modern thinkers. Not the Augustinian plea Ama, el fac p o d vis, is the argument of modern thought, for in the love of God and our neighbour we enter the service that is perfect freedom. Defeat the purposes of human and natural love, cries the modern thinker of the Malthusian school by preventing the fruit of love coming into ex-

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istence. Destroy that great achievement of mankind, that divine institution, the oldest religious vocation in the world-marriage-cries another school ; modern thought recommends no enduring union of husband and wife; it knows nothing of monogamy. Let every cohabitation make a marriage which shall last for a year, or a week, or a day, as it may seem suitable. Modern thought bids us turn, not indeed to the ant, of whose matrimonial arrangements we remain pro- foundly ignorant, knowing him only as an inveterate early riser, but to take example from the habits of the feline tribe. There never was a greater insult to the human intelligence than this impudent assertion of the modern thinkers of the divorce-made-easier school that mankind should abandon Christian marriage in favour of the easier virtue practised by the domestic cat. Doubtl'ess man may learn from the cat as from the ant ; recognising fidelity in the dog, patience in the ass, and other qualities not unknown in the human species. But when modern thought urges that be- cause marriage is hard-as it is, since the discipline in every vocation is hard-therefore let us set up something easier, it appeals basely to the craven to lower the standard of human endeavour, weakly to surrender a charter of ancient and honourable right.

Catholics, steadfast against all encroachments of modern thought that would violate family life, have alas! in other realms of social and economic order admitted the ravaging disturbance of modern business methods; methods that strike mortally at the family and the Christian life. It is modern thought that has taught Catholics that a Christian may live by lending money to his neighbour, that to draw dividends is a pleasant and comfortable means of livelihood, involv- ing neither responsibility nor toil of any kind. Modern thought has prevailed over St. Thomas and the great Pope Leo XI11 in persuading Catholics that the wages

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The Illusioeness of Moded Thought

of the labourer are not the first demand on the wealth produced by the industry of the labourer, that divi- dends for shareholders must come first and the living wage for the labourer need be paid only when profits have been secured for the investor.

In truth modern thought is, in business, but old avarice; as it is but old lechery when it agitates for the reconstruction of marriage and the prevention of child- ren bein born into the world.

In phi H osophy the modern thought that sprang from the Protestant Reformation is bankrupt. In morals it cuts a somewhat disreputable figure as the pro- pagandist of episodical cohabitation, which it calls *

divorce-made-easier, and birth prevention which it calls birth-control. In business, which it declares to be entirely outside the moral law, modern thought de- fends the hiring of great masses of men and women, at the lowest wage they can be driven to take, for the manufacture of ill-made articles that need serve no purpose save to gratify the lusts, vanities and hatreds of mankind. (The old-fashioned socialist, with his ideal of a co-operative commonwealth, from the first hopelessly out of touch with modern thought, was naturally superseded by practical social reformers with sound business instincts, and by revolutionary com- munists sufficiently modern to despise democracy. Modern thought, in politics, is very insistent on the failure of democracy, and its sanctions are for dictator- ships or soviets.)

So illusive is this modern thought, which, under various disguises, carries on the work of Luther and Melancthon, of Calvin and Thomas Cranmer-men trained in the schools of the Catholic Church-in ways never contemplated by protestant reformers.

‘Prisoner at the bar,’ once observed a famous judge, ‘ you have had a good education; instead of which you go about the country stealing ducks.’

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It all comes of trying to reform the Christian reve- lation in the light of modern thought and not perceiv- ing that modern thought in every age needs reforming in the light of the Christian revelation.

As far as one can judge at the present time, modern thought, unreformed in the light of the Christian reve- lation, is mainly concerned with bamboozling mankind with dogmas that sounds metaphysical, and spiritualist manifestations diabolic or fraudulent, with enslaving as many people as possible in the name of business, and with the construction of mechanical contrivances for the annihilation of distance. And for this the unity of Christendom was shattered in the sixteenth century.

The papacy-to quote Lord Acton-' that unique institution, the crown of the Catholic system, exhibits in its history the constant working of that law which is at the foundation of the life of the Church, the law of continuous organic development ' ; and in place of the papacy this shapeless, formless thing called modern thought is set up and we are bidden bow down to it. From the service which is perfect freedom-for it is certain we can at any time turn from it and go on strike-men and women following the Protestant re- formers in Anglican communions, Lutheran and other evangelical churches, Calvinist and presbyterian cate- chisms have departed, to establish within their hearts the rule of this undefined and undefinable mumbo jumbo, this unknown and unknowable deity called modern thought. Illusive and alluring-alluring to many by the very fact that it is vague, mysterious, without form, compatible with much nonsense, de- manding little of its worshippers save the abandon- ment of authority-this modern thought, this modern- ism, which can beckon Catholics from the sacraments, to lead its victims on a dance of death, till with pride broken and self-esteem at last extinguished they can but arise and return in penitence or fall stricken to

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lower depths, is arrayed in these Hibbert Lectures of forty years ago as the harvest of the Reformation. And the Principal of King’s College, London, whose name is endeared to generations of students in Ox- ford, still looks to the < new theology,’ emerging from the Protestantism of the Reformation to usher in modern thought, for ‘ a new kindling and a further brightening ’ of the light of that < purer revelation ’ vouchsafed by God (so Dr. Ernest Barker would have us believe) to the followers of Martin Luther in every land.

Well, if we do not hold with Newman that modern thought needs reforming in the light of the Christian revelation and not the Christian revelation in the light of modern thought, we must needs take the opposite view. There is ample accommodation in the tents and tabernacles of modern thought for all who are impa- tient of Catholic discipline, and would devise accom- modation in religion suitable to their particular wants.

The Principal of King’s College says the need for prophets has not passed away : in especial of the pro- phet who ‘ will speak a piercing and reconciling word.’ The west end of London is at present thick with these prophets, and from London their missionary zeal radi- ates in every university town. The labouring people do not make much of modern thought. It is too woolly and insubstantial for the makers of things. But it appeals to leisured classes and to persons of a certain degree of culture, ready and anxious to be a law unto themselves.

JOSEPH CLAYTON.

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