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ECLECTIC MAGAZINE OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.


New Series.       }      FEBRUARY, 1885.      {Old Series complete
Vol. XLI., No. 2. }                           {in 63 vols.




A FAITHLESS WORLD.


BY FRANCES POWER COBBE.

A little somnolence seems to have overtaken religious controversy
of late. We are either weary of it or have grown so tolerant of our
differences that we find it scarcely worth while to discuss them. By
dint of rubbing against each other in the pages of the Reviews, in the
clubs, and at dinner parties, the sharp angles of our opinions have
been smoothed down. Ideas remain in a fluid state in this temperate
season of sentiment, and do not, as in old days, crystallize into
sects. We have become almost as conciliatory respecting our views as
the Chinese whom Huc describes as carrying courtesy so far as to praise
the religion of their neighbors and depreciate their own. “You, honored
sir,” they were wont to say, “are of the noble and lofty religion of
Confucius. I am of the poor and insignificant religion of Lao-tze.”
Only now and then some fierce controversialist, hailing usually from
India or the colonies where London amenities seem not yet to have
penetrated, startles us by the desperate earnestness wherewith he
disproves what we had almost forgotten that anybody seriously believes.

As a result of the general “laissez _croire_” of our day, it has come
to pass that a question has been mooted which, to our fathers, would
have seemed preposterous: “Is it of any consequence what we believe,
or whether we believe anything? Suppose that by-and-by we all arrive
at the conclusion that Religion has been altogether a mistake, and
renounce with one accord the ideas of God and Heaven, having (as M.
Comte assures us) outgrown the theological stage of human progress;
what then? Will it make any serious difference to anybody?”

Hitherto, thinkers of Mr. Bradlaugh’s type have sung pæans of welcome
for the expected golden years of Atheism, when “faiths and empires” will

                            “Gleam
    Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.”

Christians and Theists of all schools, on the other hand, have
naturally deprecated with horror and dread such a cataclysm of faith
as sure to prove a veritable Ragnarok of universal ruin. In either
case it has been taken for granted that the change from a world of
little faith, like that in which we live, to a world wholly destitute
of faith, would be immensely great and far-reaching; and that at the
downfall of religion not only would the thrones and temples of the
earth, but every homestead in every land, be shaken to its foundation.
It is certainly a step beyond any yet taken in the direction of
scepticism to question this conclusion, and maintain that such a
revolution would be of trivial import, since things would go on with
mankind almost as well without a God as with one.

The man who, with characteristic downrightness, has blurted out most
openly this last doubt of all—the doubt whether doubt be an evil—is,
as my readers will have recognized, Mr. Justice Stephen. In the
concluding pages of one of his sledge-hammerings on the heads of his
adversaries, in the _Nineteenth Century_ for last June, he rung the
changes upon the idea (with some reservations, to be presently noted)
as follows:—

        “If human life is in the course of being fully
      described by science, I do not see what materials
      there are for any religion, or, indeed, what would be
      the use of one, or why it is wanted. We can get on
      very well without one, for though the view of life
      which science is opening to us gives us nothing to
      worship, it gives us an infinite number of things to
      enjoy.... The world seems to me a very good world,
      if it would only last. It is full of pleasant people
      and curious things, and I think that most men find
      no great difficulty in turning their minds away
      from its transient character. Love, friendship,
      ambition, science, literature, art, politics,
      commerce, professions, trades, and a thousand other
      matters, will go equally well, as far as I can see,
      whether there is, or is not, a God or a future
      state.”—