Two attempts are now being simultaneously made, of different characters, although, of the same origin and tendency. Seriously minded men, who persist in believing and calling themselves Christians, are labouring to separate Christian morals from Christian dogmas, and although they make Jesus their moral idea of humanity, are stripping him of his miracles and divinity. Others, who declare openly that they are no Christians, endeavour to separate morality in the abstract from religion in the abstract, and place the source of morality, as well as its authority, in human nature, and in it alone. On the one side we find a Christian morality independent of Christian faith; on the other a Morality independent of all religious belief, either natural or revealed: these two doctrines are in our days proclaimed and propagated with ardour.
I frankly admit that their defenders are sincere in adopting and upholding them, and that they do so in the name of truth alone. In philosophy, as in politics, I believe error and honest intentions to be more general than falsehood and evil design. Moreover, who would discuss convictions, unless himself convinced that they are serious and earnest? Opinions founded on interested or hypocritical motives are not worth the honour of a discussion; they merit only to be attacked and unmasked. In the name of truth alone I combat the two doctrines to which I have alluded, and which some now strive to accredit.
The true cause of this twofold attempt is the incredulity and the scepticism which prevail with regard to religion. Non-Christians are numerous; few Deists are quite sure of their belief and of its efficacy. { 54} A necessity for morality is felt to exist; its right to regulate the actions of man is acknowledged; it is in order to preserve to it its integrity and its force that efforts are made to separate it from religion, from all religious creeds, all of which, it is here assumed, are either ruined or tottering. Thus, Independent Morality is, as it were, a raft, offered to the human soul, and to human society, to save their time-worn vessel from being wrecked.
The idea is false, the attempt of evil consequence. They who flatter themselves that they can leave Christian morality standing, after wrenching it from Christian dogmas,--and they who believe it possible to preserve morality, after detaching it from religion,--err alike, for they fail to recognise the essential facts of human nature and of human society.