IT is a common complaint against the Rationalistic school of thought that they can destroy but cannot construct; that they tear down, but do not build up; that they are armed only with the axe and with the sword, and not with the trowel and the mason's line. "We have had enough of negations," is a common cry; "give us something positive." Much of this feeling is foolish and unreasonable; the negation of error, where error is supreme, is necessary before the assertion of truth can become possible. Before a piece of ground can be sown with wheat, it must be cleared of the weeds which infest it; before a solid house can be built in the place of a crumbling ruin, the ancient rubbish must be carried off, and the rotten walls must be thoroughly pulled down. Destructive criticism is necessary and wholesome; the heavy battering-ram of science must thunder against the walls of the churches; the swift arrows of logic must rain on the black-robed army; the keen lance-points of irony must pierce through the leather jerkin of superstition. But the destruction of orthodox Christianity being accomplished, there remains for the Rationalist much more to do. He has to frame a code which shall rule in the place of the code of Moses and of Jesus; he has to found a morality which shall replace the morality of the Bible; he has to construct an ideal which shall be as attractive as the ideal of the Churches; he has to proclaim laws which shall supersede revelation: in a word, he has to build up the religion of humanity.
As the Rationalist looks abroad over the contending armies of faith and of reason, he gradually recognises the fact that his new religion, if it is to serve as a bond of union, must stand on stable ground, apart from the warring hosts. Round the idea of God rages the hottest din of the battle. The old, popular, and traditional belief is wounded to the death, and is slowly breathing out its life. The philosophical subtleties of the metaphysician are beyond the grasp of folk busied chiefly with common work. The new school of Theists, believers in a "spiritual personal God," stands on a slippery incline, whereon is no firm foothold. It simply spreads over the abysses of thought a sentimental veil of poetical imaginings, and bows down before a beatified and celestial man, whose image it has sculptured out of the thought-marble of its sublimest aspirations. If the idea of God be thus warred over, thus changing, thus uncertain, it is plain that the new religion cannot find its foundation on this shifting and disputed ground. While theologians are wrangling about God, plain men are looking wistfully over the shattered idols to find the ideal to which they can cling. The new religion, then, studying the varying phases of the God-idea, seizes on its one permanent element, its idealised resemblance to man, its embodiment of the highest humanity; and, grasping this thought, it turns to men and says, "In loving God you are only loving your own highest selves; in conforming yourselves to the Divine image you are only conforming yourselves to your own highest ideals; the unknown God whom you ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you; in serving your family, your neighbours, your country, you serve this unknown God; this God is Humanity, the race to which you belong; this is the veiled God whom all generations have worshipped in heaven, while he trod the world around them in every human form; this is the only God, the God who is manifest in the flesh: "--
