1 Memoir of Sydney Smith, by his daughter, Lady Holland, ed. 1869, p. 49. Lady Holland remarks on the same page that her father’s religion had in it “nothing intolerant.” ↑
2 Memoir of Sydney Smith, p. 142. ↑
3 Julien Luchaire, Essai sur l’évolution intellectuelle de l’Italie, 1906, pp. 5–7. ↑
4 Dr. Ramage, Nooks and Byeways of Italy, 1868, pp. 76, 105–13. Ramage describes the helplessness of the better minds before 1830. ↑
7 Doblado (Blanco White), Letters from Spain, 1822. p. 358. ↑
8 Thus the traveller and belletrist J. G. Seume, a zealous deist and opponent of atheism, and a no less zealous patriot, penned many fiercely freethinking maxims, as: “Where were the most so-called positive religions, there was always the least morality”; “Grotius and the Bible are the best supports of despotism”; “Heaven has lost us the earth”; “The best apostles of despotism and slavery are the mystics.” Apokryphen, 1806–1807, in Sämmtliche Werke, 1839, iv, 157, 173, 177, 219. ↑
9 C. H. Cottrell, Religious Movements of Germany, 1849, p. 12 sq. ↑
10 Cp. the author’s Evolution of States, pp. 138–39. ↑
11 When I thus planned the treatment of the nineteenth century in the first edition of this book, it was known to me that Mr. Alfred W. Benn had in hand a work on The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century; and the knowledge made me the more resolved to keep my own record condensed. Duly published in 1906 (Longmans, 2 vols.), Mr. Benn’s book amply fulfilled expectations; and to it I would refer every reader who seeks a fuller survey than the present. Its freshness of thought and vigour of execution will more than repay him. Even Mr. Benn’s copious work, however—devoting as it does a large amount of space to a preliminary survey of the eighteenth century—leaves room for various English monographs on the nineteenth, to say nothing of the culture history of a dozen other countries. ↑
12 Lecky, Hist. of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. 1892, iii, 382. ↑
13 Cp. Conway’s Life of Paine, ii, 252–53. ↑
14 This translation, issued by “Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, Paternoster Row, and all booksellers,” purports to be “with additions.” The translation, however, has altered d’Holbach’s atheism to deism. ↑
15 By W. Huttman. The book is “embellished with a head of Jesus”—a conventional religious picture. Huttman’s opinions may be divined from the last sentence of his preface, alluding to “the high pretentions and inflated stile of the lives of Christ which issue periodically from the English press.” ↑
16 Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 208–209. ↑
17 See Harriet Martineau’s History of the Peace, ed. 1877, ii, 87, and Mrs. Carlile Campbell’s The Battle of the Press (Bonner, 1899), passim, as to the treatment of those who acted as Carlile’s shopmen. Women were imprisoned as well as men—e.g. Susanna Wright, as to whom see Wheeler’s Dictionary, and last ref. Carlile’s wife and sister were likewise imprisoned with him; and over twenty volunteer shopmen in all went to jail. ↑
18 Hone’s most important service to popular culture was his issue of the Apocryphal New Testament, which, by co-ordinating work of the same kind, gave a fresh scientific basis to the popular criticism of the gospel history. As to his famous trial for blasphemy on the score of his having published certain parodies, political in intention, see bk. i, ch. x (by Knight) of Harriet Martineau’s History of the Peace. ↑
19 Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator’s Life, i, 109–10. See p. 111 as to other cases. ↑
20 Art. by Holyoake in Dict. of Nat. Biog. Cp. Sixty Years, per index. ↑
21 Articles in Dict. of Nat. Biog. ↑
22 Holyoake, Sixty Years, i, 47. ↑
23 Kirkup, History of Socialism, 1892, p. 64. ↑
24 “From an early age he had lost all belief in the prevailing forms of religion” (Kirkup, p. 59). ↑
25 Reformers of almost all schools, indeed, from the first regarded Owen with more or less genial incredulity, some criticizing him acutely without any ill-will. See Podmore’s Robert Owen, 1906, i, 238–42. Southey was one of the first to detect his lack of religious belief. Id. p. 222, n. ↑
29 “Extraordinary self-complacency,” “autocratic action,” “arrogance,” are among the expressions used of him by his ablest biographer. (Podmore, ii, 641.) Of him might be said, as of Emerson by himself, “the children of the Gods do not argue”—the faculty being absent. ↑
30 Pamphlet sold at 1½d., and “to be had of all the Booksellers.” ↑
31 Of George Combe’s Constitution of Man (1828), a deistic work, over 50,000 copies were sold in Britain within twelve years, and 10,000 in America. Advt. to 4th ed. 1839. Combe avows that his impulse came from the phrenologist Spurzheim. ↑
32 See the details in his Last Trial by Jury for Atheism in England. ↑
33 The Gospel its Own Witness, 1799. rep. in Bohn’s ed. of The Principal Works and Remains of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 1852, pp. 136–37. ↑
34 See Prof. Flint’s tribute to the reasoning power of Bradlaugh and Holyoake in his Anti-Theistic Theories, 4th ed. pp. 518–19. ↑
35 See Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner’s Charles Bradlaugh, i, 149, 288–89. ↑
36 For a full record see Part II of Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner’s Charles Bradlaugh. ↑
37 After Bradlaugh had secured his seat, the noble lord even sought his acquaintance. ↑
38 Though young Conservative members, after 1886, privately professed sympathy. ↑
40 Coquerel, Essai sur l’histoire générale du christianisme, 1828, préf. ↑
41 Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Diary in France, 1845, pp. 75–77. ↑
42 “The miserable and deistical principle of the equality of all religions” (id. p. 188). Cp. pp. 151, 153. ↑
43 Id. pp. 15, 37, 45, 181, 185, 190. ↑
44 Id. pp. 157–61. As to the general vogue of rationalism in France at that period, see pp. 35, 204: and compare Saisset, Essais sur la philosophie et la religion, 1845; The Progress of Religious Thought as illustrated in the Protestant Church of France, by Dr. J. R. Beard, 1861; and Wilson’s article in Essays and Reviews. As to Switzerland and Holland, see Pearson, Infidelity, its Aspects, etc., 1853, pp. 560–64, 575–84. ↑
45 Louis Philippe sought to suppress this book, of which many editions had appeared before 1830. See Blanco White’s Life, 1845, ii. 168. ↑
46 Prof. E. Lavisse, Un Ministre: Victor Duruy, 1895 (rep. of art. in Revue de Paris, Janv. 15 and Mars 1, 1895), p. 117. ↑
50 Llorente, Hist. crit. de l’Inquisition de l’Espagne, 2e édit, iv, 153. ↑
51 Rapport of Ch. Fulpius in the Almanach de Libre Pensée, 1906. ↑
52 Squier, Notes on Central America, 1856, p. 227. ↑
53 Before 1840 the popular freethought propaganda had been partly carried on under cover of Radicalism, as in Carlile’s Republican, and Lion, and in various publications of William Hone. Cp. H. B. Wilson’s article “The National Church,” in Essays and Reviews, 9th ed. p. 152. ↑
54 Described as “our chief atheistic organ” by the late F. W. Newman “because Dr. James Martineau declined to continue writing for it, because it interpolated atheistical articles between his theistic articles” (Contributions ... to the early history of the late Cardinal Newman, 1891, p. 103). The review was for a time edited by J. S. Mill, and for long after him by Dr. John Chapman. It lasted into the twentieth century, under the editorship of Dr. Chapman’s widow, and kept a free platform to the end. ↑
55 Pastor W. Baur, Hamburg, Religious Life in Germany during the Wars of Independence, Eng. tr. 1872, p. 41. H. J. Rose and Pusey, in their controversy as to the causes of German rationalism, were substantially at one on this point of fact. Rose, Letter to the Bishop of London, 1829, pp. 19, 150, 161. ↑
57 Ueber die Religion: Reden an die gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern. These are discussed hereinafter. ↑
58 Lichtenberger, Hist. of Ger. Theol. in the Nineteenth Cent. Eng. tr. 1889, pp. 122–23. ↑
59 See the same volume, passim. ↑
60 Karl von Raumer, Contrib. to the Hist. of the German Universities, Eng. tr. 1859, p. 79. The intellectual tone of W. Baur and K. von Raumer certainly protects them from any charge of “enlightenment.” ↑
61 Laing, Notes of a Traveller, 1842, p. 181. ↑
62 C. H. Cotterill, Relig. Movements of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, 1849, pp. 39–40. ↑
64 Cp. Laing, as cited, pp. 206–207, 211. ↑
65 Cotterill, as cited, p. 84. ↑
66 Cotterill. as cited, pp. 43–47. ↑
67 Rapport de Ida Altmann, in Almanach de Libre Pensée, 1906, p. 20. ↑
68 The principal have been: Das freie Wort and Frankfurter Zeitung, Frankfort-on-Main; Der Freidenker, Friedrichshagen, near Berlin; Das freireligiöse Sonntagsblatt, Breslau; Die freie Gemeinde, Magdeburg; Der Atheist, Nuremberg; Menschentum, Gotha; Vossische Zeitung, Berlin; Berliner Volkszeitung, Berlin; Vorwärts (Socialist), Berlin; Weser Zeitung, Bremen; Hartungsche Zeitung, Königsberg; Kölnische Zeitung, Cologne. ↑
69 Studemund, Der moderne Unglaube in den unteren Ständen, 1901, p. 14. ↑
71 A. D. McLaren, An Australian in Germany, 1911, pp. 181, 184. ↑
72 Studemund, Der moderne Unglaube in den unteren Ständen, 1901, pp. 17, 21. ↑
73 Glossen zu Yves Guyot’s und Sigismund Lacroix’s “Die wahre Gestalt des Christentums.” ↑
78 Id. pp. 40–42. Cp. p. 43. Pastor Studemund cites other inquirers, notably Rade, Gebhardt, Lorenz, and Dietzgen, all to the same effect. ↑
79 E.g. Pastor A. Kalthoff’s Was wissen wir von Jesus? 1901. Since that date the opinion has found new and powerful supporters in Germany. ↑
80 “The people in the country do not read; in the towns they read little. The journals are little circulated. In Russia one never sees a cabman, an artisan, a labourer reading a newspaper” (Ivan Strannik, La pensée russe contemporaine, 1903, p. 5). ↑
81 Cp. E. Lavigne, Introduction à l’histoire du nihilisme russe, 1880, pp. 149, 161, 224; Arnaudo, Le Nihilisme, French trans. pp. 37, 58, 61, 63, 77, 86, etc.; Tikhomirov, La Russie, p. 290. ↑
82 Tikhomirov, La Russie, pp. 325–26, 338–39. ↑
83 Cp. Priestley, Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd ed. 1771, pp. 257–61, and Conway’s Centenary History of South Place, pp. 63, 77, 80. ↑
84 See Rev. Joseph Hunter, An Historical Defence of the Trustees of Lady Henley’s Foundations, 1834; The History, Opinions, and Present Legal Position of the English Presbyterians (official), 1834; An Examination and Defence of the Principles of Protestant Dissent, by the Rev. W. Hamilton Drummond, of Dublin, 1842. ↑
85 Conway, Autobiography, 1905, i, 123. ↑
86 So Prof. William James, The Will to Believe, etc., 1897, p. 133. ↑
87 Conway, Emerson at Home and Abroad, 1883, ch. vii. ↑
88 Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, 1848, ii, 422. Rationalism seems to have spread soonest in the canton of Zürich. Id. ii, 427. ↑
89 Grote, Seven Letters concerning the Politics of Switzerland, pp. 34–35. Hagenbach (Kirchengeschichte, ii, 427–28) shows no shame over the insurrection at Zürich. But cp. Beard, in Voices of the Church in Reply to Dr. Strauss, 1845, pp. 17–18. ↑
90 Cp. the rapport of Ch. Fulpius in the Almanach de Libre Pensée, 1906. ↑
91 G. M. Theal, South Africa (“Story of the Nations” series), pp. 340, 345. Mr. Theal’s view of the mental processes of the Boers is somewhat à priori, and his explanation seems in part inconsistent with his own narrative. ↑
92 An English acquaintance of my own at Cape Town, who before the war not only was an orthodox believer, but found his chief weekly pleasure in attending church, was so astounded by the general attitude of the clergy on the war that he severed his connection, once for all. Thousands did the same in England. ↑
93 I write on the strength of personal testimonies spontaneously given to me in South Africa, some of them by clergymen of the Dutch Reformed Church. ↑
94 See the evidence collected in the pamphlet The Churches and the War, by Alfred Marks. New Age Office, 1905. ↑
95 For the survey here reduced to outline I am indebted to two Swedish friends. ↑
96 Cp. Lamon’s Life of Lincoln, and J. B. Remsburg’s Abraham Lincoln: Was he a Christian? (New York, 1893.) ↑
100 Of these the New York Truthseeker has been the most energetic and successful. ↑
102 White, Warfare, i, 84, 86, 314, 317, 318. ↑
103 This view is not inconsistent with the fact that popular forms of credulity are also found specially flourishing in the West. Cp. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 3rd ed. ii, 832–33. ↑
104 As to the absolute predominance of rationalistic unbelief (in the orthodox sense of the word) in educated Germany in the first third of the century, see the Memoirs of F. Perthes, Eng. tr. 2nd ed. ii, 240–45, 255, 266–75. Despite the various reactions claimed by Perthes and others, it is clear that the tables have never since been turned. Cp. Pearson, Infidelity, pp. 554–59, 569–74. Schleiermacher was charged on his own side with making fatal concessions. Kahnis, Internal Hist. of German Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856, pp. 210–11; Robins, A Defence of the Faith, 1862, i, 181; and Quinet as there cited. ↑
105 Aus Schleiermachers Leben: In Briefen, 1860, i, 42, 84. The father’s letters, with their unctuous rhetoric, are a revelation of the power of declamatory habit to eliminate sincere thought. ↑
107 See Kabnis, p. 214, and refs. as to his relations with Frau Grunow. “He belonged to the circle of Prince Louis, in which intellect and art, but not morality,” reigned. Ib. Compare the sympathetic Lichtenberger, Hist. of Ger. Theol. in the Nineteenth Cent. Eng. tr. 1889, pp. 103–104. It was of course his clerical character that disadvantaged Schleiermacher in such matters. ↑
108 Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 87. ↑
109 Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 89. ↑
114 Strauss, Die Halben und die Ganzen, 1865, p. 18. ↑
115 For estimates of his work cp. Baur, Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrh., p. 45; Kahnis, as last cited; Pfleiderer, Development of Theology in Germany, 1893, bk. i, ch. iii; bk. ii, ch. ii; Lichtenberger, as cited; and art. by Rev. F. J. Smith in Theol. Review, July, 1869. ↑
116 Reuss, History of the Canon, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 387. Cp. Strauss, Einleitung in Das Leben Jesu, § 10. ↑
117 See a good account of the development in Strauss’s Introductions to his two Lives of Jesus. ↑
118 In a volume entitled Offenbarung und Mythologie. ↑
119 Hebräische Mythologie des alten und neuen Testaments. ↑
120 Evangeliencommentar, 1800–1804; Leben Jesu, 1828. ↑
121 Probabilia de Evangelii et Epistolarum Joannis Apostoli indole et origine. ↑
122 It is thus inaccurate—Strauss himself being the witness—to say, as does Dr. Conybeare (Hist. of N. T. Crit. p. 107), that Strauss was the first German writer to discern the unhistoricity of the Fourth Gospel. ↑
123 Das Leben Jesu, pref. to first ed. end. ↑
124 Hausrath, David Friedrich Strauss und die Theologie seiner Zeit, 1878, ii, 233–34. ↑
125 Pref. to work cited. Eng. tr. 1875, i, 86, 89. ↑
126 Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 391. ↑
127 Kritik der evang. Gesch. der Synoptiker, ed. 1846, Vorrede, pp. v–xiii. ↑
128 Baur, Kirchengesch. des 19ten Jahrh., pp. 388–89. ↑
129 Gesch. der Politik, Kultur, und Aufklärung des 18ten Jahrh. 4 Bde. 1843–45; Gesch. der französ. Revolution, 3 Bde. 1847. ↑
130 Russland und das Germanenthum, 1847. ↑
132 Philo, Strauss, Renan, und das Urchristenthum, 1874; Christus und die Cäsaren, 1877. ↑
133 Das Christenthum und die chr. Kirche, 1854, p. 34. ↑
134 Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet, § 41, 3te Aufl. p. 254, 1st par. ↑
136 Cp. Christianity and Mythology, pt. iii, div. ii, § 6. ↑
137 Pref. to second Leben Jesu, ed. cited, p. xv. ↑
138 Zeller, David Friedrich Strauss, 2te Aufl. p. 113. ↑
139 Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, 1893, p. 16. Eichhorn seems to have known Astruc’s work only at second-hand, yet, without him, it might be contended, Astruc’s work would have been completely lost to science. (Id. p. 23.) ↑
140 See Dr. Cheyne’s surveys, which are those of a liberal ecclesiastic—a point of view on which he has since notably advanced. ↑
142 Kuenen, The Hexateuch, Eng. tr. introd. pp. xiv–xvii. ↑
143 Dr. Beard, in Voices of the Church in Reply to Strauss, 1845, pp. 16–17. ↑
144 Zeller, D. F. Strauss, Eng. tr. 1879, p. 56. ↑
145 See Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments, 1903, pp. 1–2, note. ↑
146 Mythen der alten Perser als Quellen christlicher Glaubenslehren, 1835; Der Mystagog, oder Deutung der Geheimenlehren, Symbole und Feste der christlichen Kirche, 1838; Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen zu neutestamentlichen Schriftstellen, 1839; Biblische Mythologie des alten und neuen Testaments, 1842; Der Festkalender, 1847, etc. ↑
147 Der Mystagog, 1838, p. vii, note, and p. 241. ↑
148 See Nork’s preamble on Hr. Fr. Daumer, ein kurzweiliger Molochsfänger, in his Biblische Mythologie, Bd. i. ↑
149 After being acquitted in 1880. The first charge was founded on his Britannica article “Bible”; the second on the article “Hebrew Language and Literature,” which appeared after the acquittal. ↑
150 These utterances were noted for their “vigour and independence” by Kuenen, and also by Dr. Cheyne, who remarks that the earlier work of Kalisch on Exodus (1855) was somewhat behind the critical standpoint of contemporary investigators on the Continent. (Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 207.) ↑
151 See his Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament, pref. “It is the spirit of compromise that I chiefly dread for our younger students,” wrote Dr. Cheyne in 1893 (Founders, p. 247). His courteous criticism of Dr. Driver does not fail to point the moral in that writer’s direction. ↑
152 Conrad, The German Universities for the Last Fifty Years, Eng. tr. 1885, p. 74. See p. 100 as to the financial measures taken; and p. 105 as to the essentially financial nature of the “reaction.” ↑
155 Id. p. 112. See pp. 118–19 as to Austria. ↑
157 White, Warfare, i, 239. In February, 1914, on a given Sunday, out of a Protestant population of over two millions, only 35,000 persons attended church in Berlin. Art. on “Creeds, Heresy-Hunting, and Secession in German Protestantism To-day,” in Hibbert Journal for July, 1914, p. 722. ↑
158 See Haeckel’s Freedom in Science and Teaching, Eng. tr. with pref. by Huxley, 1879, pp. xix, xxv, xxvii, 89–90; and Clifford. ↑
159 Büchner, for straightforwardly renouncing his connection with the State Church a generation ago, was blamed by many who held his philosophic opinions. In our own day, there has arisen a considerable Austrittsbewegung, or “Withdrawal Movement”; while creedless clerics strive to remain inside a Church bent on ejecting them. A. D. McLaren, in Hibbert Journal for July, 1914, art. cited. ↑
160 Tracts for the Times, vol. ii, ed. 1839; Records of the Church, No. xxiv. ↑
161 Tracts for the Times, No. 3. ↑
163 Cross’s Life, 1-vol. ed. p. 79. ↑
164 Account of the Printed Text of the Greek N. T., 1854, pref. and pp. 47, 112–13, 266. ↑
165 A third brother, Charles Robert, became an atheist. This, as well as his psychic infirmity, insures him sufficiently severe treatment at the hands of his theistic brother in the introduction to the latter’s Contributions Chiefly to the Early History of the late Cardinal Newman, 1891. ↑