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On one occasion Armitstead had been pressing the favourite Christian dilemma Christianity or nothing. Inside Christianity, light and certainty; outside it, chaos. 'If it were not for the Gospels and the Church I should be a Positivist to-morrow. Your Theism is a mere arbitrary hypothesis, at the mercy of any rival philosophical theory.
It is just as in physical science, where, as our knowledge and grasp increase, and happy discoveries are made, wider generalizations are formed, which commonly comprehend, rather than destroy, the earlier and partial ones. Its theological synonym is Providence. Its application in particular is surrounded by similar insoluble difficulties; nevertheless, both are bound up with theism.
Theism is almost every where corrupted; it has by degrees given way to those superstitions, to those extravagant sects, to those prejudicial opinions with which the human species is degraded.
It was the ecclesiastic who pointed to the God-dictated phrase, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and the various precepts that have been enumerated in the preceding chapters. Surely sufficient evidence has been noted to convince a thinking being that reason is a better guide than theism.
Indeed, no occasion offered; for the writer was discussing evolution in its relations to theism, not to Biblical theology, and probably would not be disposed to intermix arguments so different in kind as those from natural science and those from revelation. To pursue each independently, according to its own method, and then to compare the results, is thought to be the better mode of proceeding.
The state of opinion on this Continent is, I fancy, pretty much that to which Robert Elsmere would bring us Theism, with Christ as a model of character, but without real belief in the miraculous part of Christianity. Churches are still being everywhere built, money is freely subscribed, young men are pressing into the clerical profession, and religion shows every sign of vitality.
Yet, although an inquiry into their soundness is thus plainly second in interest to none, it is not that in which I propose to engage at present, unless indirectly. My immediate concern is not with the strength of theism, but with the weakness of atheism, and the hollowness of the latter's dialectical pretensions.
The Brahmo Somaj, the most vital of all these reform movements, professed even to reconcile Hinduism with theism, though without importing into the new creed the belief in any personal God.
We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon. With such volatile elements to work in, 'tis no wonder if our estimates are loose and floating. We must work and affirm, but we have no guess of the value of what we say or do.
That "God" is one of the most popular of narcotics will be denied by none who study the psychology of the average man or woman. When not used as a narcotic, "God" is brought into an argument as though it stood for a term which carried a well defined and well understood meaning. In work after work dealing with theism one looks in vain for some definition of "God."
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