The Collapse of the Faith [pp. 339-360]

THE COLLAPSE OF FAiTH.
welcome it in the form of the hope of a heaven of established
holiness and the fear of a hell of matured and energetic depravity.
We do not contend that there is any general or formal
abandonment of either the pantheistic or the deistic theories of
the universe. We are also aware that the preoccupation of so
many of the active-minded thinkers of the time with physical
theories of society and history have had something to do
with the ebbing tide of pantheistic and deistic theologies. We
do not contend that the one class of these theories is greatly to
be preferred to the other. But we find evidence that the logic
of neither is invincible if men of similar gifts and culture so
readily exchange the one for the other. We find also reason to
believe that the truths which have satisfied the speculative and
practical wants of many generations will gain a more favorable
hearing and a kindlier reception so soon as the tide shall begin
to ebb, as it surely will, from an atheistic science and philosophy.
The clearness and severity of the processes which are enjoined
in the physical sciences, the exactness of definition, the severity
of crucial experiments, and the demand for general consistency
with the experiences and observations of common life, are rapidly disciplining the present generation to habits of judgment
and reasoning which are favorable to a philosophy which finds
room for personality in man and the deity, and with personality
opens the way for personal worship and communion between
living men and the living God.
IV. But let all this be conceded, and let us assume that the
old faith in God's personality and providence may resume its old
place in the schools of philosophy and science-what shall we
say of the old faith in the supernatural of the Christian Scriptures
and the Christian Churcl? Is not faith in the supernatural and
even in the providential of actual history becoming weaker and
more vacillating than ever? Has not the new historical criticism given such deadly blows to the naive confidence of men in
the miraculous element of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
that it must needs fall into a fatal collapse from which it can
never again revive? Is it not as obvious as it is true, that from
the days of Lessing to the days of Kuenen the traditional con
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