The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religious Situation, by Goldwin Smith

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Religious Situation

Author: Goldwin Smith

Release Date: October 17, 2006 [EBook #19568]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION ***

Produced by Al Haines

The Religious Situation

BY

GOLDWIN SMITH

TORONTO

WM. TYRRELL & COMPANY

1908

COPYRIGHT, 1908

BY THE

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1908

BY

GOLDWIN SMITH

[Transcriber's note: This book was originally part of Smith's "No
Refuge but in Truth." It was split into a separate e-book because it
had its own title and verso page.]

THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION.

(From the _North American Review_.)

"I express myself," says Bishop Butler, "with caution, lest I should be
mistaken to vilify reason, which is, indeed, the only faculty which we
have to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself; or be
misunderstood to assert that a supposed revelation cannot be proved
false from internal characters." "The faculty of reason," he says, "is
the candle of the Lord within us against vilifying which we must be
very cautious."

What would the world be without religion? That is the dread question
which seems now to be everywhere presenting itself. Would even the
social fabric remain unshaken? Has not its stability partly depended
on the general belief that the dispensation, with all its inequalities,
was the ordinance of the Creator, and that for inequalities here there
would be compensation hereafter? The belief may not in common minds
have been very present; but it would seem to have had its influence.
Apparently, it is now departing. In some places it seems to have fled.
Scepticism, with social unrest, comes in its room.

What is now the position of the clergy? Keepers and ministers of
truth, as they are understood to be, they alone are debarred by
ordination vows and tests from the free quest of truth. They are
ecclesiastically bound not only to hold, but to teach and preach, as
divinely revealed, what many of them must feel to have be