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He will not be moved from his purposes by the uncritical attempts of rationalism to destroy the confidence of God's people in his revealed truth. We can move forward confidently in our work, knowing that nothing shall pass from his Word until all is fulfilled.
When Christianity began, pagan rationalism had arrived at the idea of a spiritual and directing power, organically identical with the universe. It was neither the Olympus of the common people, nor the Semitic Jehovah, but rather the conscious and inevitable order of nature.
Extreme opinions on either side were advanced. One party, repudiating all authority, whether human or divine, rejected alike the testimony of Scripture and the decrees of the Church, and, receiving only what was supposed to be in accordance with the dictates of Reason, sought to establish a scheme of Rationalism in connection with at least a nominal profession of Christianity.
Continuous persecutions, the establishment of the Ghettoes, the rise of the Kabbala and the opposition of the pietists and mystics to the rationalism of the philosophers all tended to the neglect of scientific study and to the concentration of all attention upon the Biblical, Rabbinic and mystical literature.
Only an enemy of philosophy can speak lightly of it. Rationalism starts from the idea of such a whole and builds downward. Movement and change are absorbed into its immutability as forms of mere appearance. When you accept this beatific vision of what is, in contrast with what goes on, you feel as if you had fulfilled an intellectual duty. 'Reality is not in its truest nature a process, Mr.
Empiricism, through its founder Bacon, had recommended induction in place of the barren syllogistic method, as the only method which would lead to new discoveries. It demands, above all things, the extension of knowledge. Rationalism, on the contrary, held fast to the deductive method, because the syllogism alone, in its view, furnishes knowledge valid for all rational beings.
But such rationalism was beyond the grasp of an ignorant age, and collections of stories of miracles, such as remain to us in the "Golden Legends" of Jacob de Voragine, a Dominican of the thirteenth century, fed the popular belief.
"That which is for the public welfare," he said, "is God's will"; and therein we have the root of that utilitarianism which, as Maine pointed out, is the real parent of all nineteenth century change. And with Locke, as with the Benthamites, his clear sense of what utilitarianism demanded led to an over-emphasis of human rationalism.
The following year, on the 17th of March, he addressed a brief to the bishops of the Austrian Empire, exhorting them to avail themselves of the spiritual independence which they had once more won, in order to guard their dioceses against the ravages of rationalism and indifference.
I murmured "Sometimes it rebels against the 'rationalism' of its rulers!" Just then Mr. Harland called me, and I hastened to join him and Captain Derrick.
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