THE MOTHER. It is enough! Faithful I do believe Thou wilt be to this sacred charge. I ask Shall come to part them. Brother, promise me! THE UNCLE. Edith, I promise thee! (BERTHA enters.) THE MOTHER. Now, Bertha, bring My children hither, ere I close mine eyes BERTHA (leading away the children). Will those sweet eyes, that never looked on me BELIEVING DOUBT. "O God, Father of mercies, save me from this hell within me! I acknowledge, I adore, I bless thee, whose throne is in heaven, with thy blessed Son and crucified Jesus, and thy Holy Spirit, and also, though thou slay me, yet I will trust in thee. But I cannot think that thou canst hate and reject a poor soul that desires to love thee and cleave to thee, so long as I can hold by the skirts of thy garment, until thou violently shake me off; which I am confident thou wouldst not do, because thou art love and goodness itself, and thy mercies endure for ever." LEIGHTON. At WE may let the commonplaces alone. A word, however, we must pronounce. at the outset, even at the risk of touching the vexed and weary topic. From the time of the Protestant Reformation, Christendom has presented two sections of feeling and thought, which may be designated as the believing and reverent, and as the sceptical and daring. Protestantism, as such, was characterized by the latter qualities. Its original assault on Rome and Pope seemed scarcely less audacious and infidel, than any assault in our times on what are deemed popular notions of Church and Bible. first it left doctrines unquestioned, seeking to overthrow despotism, not as despotism indeed, but as bulwark of what was believed to be idolatrous worship. Soon, however, the roused mind began to interrogate dogma; and the relentless inquisition has continued to this hour, bringing out all the motley creeds, from that of Calvin to that of Socinus or of Priestley, which appeal to the Bible for their support, and all the theories, from the religious Deism of Herbert to the sneering scepticisms of later times, which either put the Bible with other sacred books, or attack it as false and evil. These processes of thought, joined with others more purely intellectual or scientific, have issued in a peculiar position of the Church itself. Not the dogmas only have been abandoned by multitudes resolutely claiming to be Christians; but, as the Church before, so now the Bible is believed by them to be, not an authoritative Word proceeding from God, not even an infallible record of such Word spoken of old, but a collection of books in which error is mixed with truth, evil with good, whose elements must be severed by the reason and conscience of man, and the worth of each separate portion determined by searching investigation. A growing thought seeks out the spirit within the letter and the historical drapery, making the whole a radiant shrine of the indwelling God. Others, meantime, throw themselves back upon a dogma of inspiration, never Catholic, never Protestant, always held, when held at all, merely as opinion of those who avowed it, which makes every sentence, when correctly explained, an immediate dictate of God's Spirit: on this basis they labor to ground all doctrine and all faith. For none of these do we now write. They have chosen their respective sides, and, it may be expected, will for the most part hold to them, preparing their successors for the movements and questions still awaiting us. There is another class of minds, to which our attention is now directed. They cannot return to any form of external Catholicism; they have too strong an attachment to the central ideas and impulses of the Reformation for that: and yet they shrink with instinctive aversion from the bold, and, as they think, rash and irreverent speculations of the critical theology, so sincere, so deep, so native to them, a sympathy with all devotion and with the Church of the ages. The sects repel them, because they cannot accept the dogmatic formulas, or submit to the prescribed discipline or ritual: their hearts linger still amid the sweet and solemn communions of earlier hours. With those who have abandoned the sects they find but imperfect sympathy, for such have commonly dissolved in sterner feelings their old attachments; and while men of gentler mood feel at once that they cannot, at least cannot wholly, deny the charges which are advanced to justify the sternness which rebukes their yielding timidity, such it is misdeemed, they feel just as strongly the impossibility to themselves of following the hardier example: the heart and the head do not quite go together; or rather both heart and head are divided into segments, partial sympathies flowing out from each in the most opposite directions, nowhere finding undisturbed repose, everywhere meeting some repulsion. They are commanded imperiously, on the one side, to believe what, on the other, they hear denounced as impious, and satirized as exploded nonsense. The very Scripture which here they see invested with Divinity, raised to dominion over reason, over conscience, over all conscious insight of God, there they see shorn of its splendor and its sacredness; no longer a Divine Word, it is brought out under the arctic night of conjectural criticism, and spelled word by word in the cold glimmer: the genial heart shivers amidst frozen letters and sunless lights. If all knew each other better, the repulsions and antipathies might often disappear in attractive unions; as, if all understood better the doctrines of Christianity and the meaning of the Bible, their relations might be changed, and themselves brought to rest in a stronger and calmer faith. But this cannot be yet. And now for those, probably not a few, who feel the dreariness of that wide waste;- thirst in the soul, every seeming fountain perhaps an illusion; hunger for bread of life, each fair fruit perhaps filled with bitter ashes; weariness, the toil has been so long; to sleep or rest, perilling death; - what shall we say? Chide their unbelief? or ridicule their superstition? The soul of man is too sacred a thing for either; and this state of earnest doubt brings an added sacredness. The state itself may be set forth more briefly. Suppose the man conscious of it giving expression to his deepest consciousness: "I would believe, but I cannot. I cannot believe, for the simple reason that all the objects of faith lie before me, not fixed as truth, not luminous with celestial light, but scattered and tossed into conflicting waves, a dark uncertainty covering them all. The moment I think myself to have reached a firm ground, I am assured by some new explorer that the firm ground is but a floating island, if not a deceptive mist. Tell me to believe my own reason, not his word; but his word, addressed by reason to reason, demands of me further inquiry. So I am borne from wave to wave, struggling for a repose which drops beneath me so soon as I think it near. I can pray, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief! but the unbelief masters the belief, and drags the prayer down. What in this sea of doubt shall the swimmer for his life do?" Now to the soul sinking in these deep waters it is of little use to command him, or to press upon him, as is sometimes done, to believe; that is, to believe the accepted doctrine, the Christ of the Church, Christianity as interpreted by the prevalent systems, Evangelical or other. This is the very thing he cannot yet do. His real question is that ancient one, What is the Truth? And while he is asking that question, before the answer comes, we tell him, forsooth, to believe. Believe what? Believe how? That which he has not yet found true, and so virtually to believe what he has no right at present to believe, accepting what he does not understand, ignorantly assenting to what he does not perceive, substituting a wilful determination for an intellectual consciousness. Who shall dare to insult the majesty of Truth, by worshipping the image, before he knows whether it be the reality or a soulless idol? To believe without thought, may be no better than to disbelieve against reason. Let no man force belief. He does not so gain faith; he may become a bigot, while also his doctrine may be true in itself; but his soul is infidel, and his faith a mockery, both of himself and of Truth. Rather let him wait his life through, reverent and praying at the temple gate. There may be truer faith in religious doubt, than in unquestioning confidence; there certainly is more in calmly refusing to go beyond our present vision, than in boldly rushing into the holy place before it is opened. To believe the Truth, is the thing; not to persuade ourselves that we believe it, and persuade men, for the sake of the rest we fancy ourselves to |