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Changes of Theological Belief Caused by Exterior Influences.

THAT within the years of a generation very great changes have come over the beliefs and also the tempers of the Christian world, is a fact which we are sure no observing person would think of disputing. Even Catholicism, though anchored and held fixed by what are deemed infallible decrees, has by no means wholly escaped the contagion of dogmatic modification. But in Protestantism the transformation is very marked -in some instances it has been radical and revolutionary. The Evangelical thought of God, of man, of destiny, even of duty, is very far from being in 1887, what it was in 1837; and the Evangelical preacher of the present in disposition, catholicity, and outward bearing is so unlike even his immediate predecessor as to have almost the character of a distinct species. Nor will the candid and thoughtful Universalist or Unitarian hesitate to avow that the creed and animus he represents have likewise felt the transforming spirit of new forms of thought. In its distinguishing tenet-that of the final holiness and happiness of all souls Universalism is of course exactly the same at this date that it was in its earliest history: this indeed cannot be eren modified without Universalism NEW SERIES. VOL. XXIV

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eeasing to be. But in the methods of proving the doctrine, in the principles which accompany it, in the process whereby the great result of destiny is wrought out, Universalism, not less than the Evangelical faiths, has grown old only to improve certainly to change.

What has wrought the various theological modifications? To what efficient causes may we attribute the Christian beliefs of the present day in the particulars which make them unlike the beliefs having the same names a generation ago?

The question admits of an answer with many heads, with many divisions. In terms strictly generic the causes of change in the regards described will easily come under two heads: those which come directly as the result of a special and intentional testing of the particular beliefs which we will call Interior Causes; and those which have grown out of intellectual movements which in no regard took theological beliefs into the account, which did not even think of them, which operated on a line wholly aloof from them, but which by what we might almost call accidental, at least incidental, were found to be effective in compelling doctrinal changes not at all embraced in a conscious purpose which we will call Exterior Causes.

What we thus distinguish as Exterior and Interior causes or influences cannot, in every particular, be sharply separated. At certain points they intermingle-like two contiguous waters each surges into and mixes with the other. But in principle they separate by an abrupt line of demarkation, and practically their operations are, in commanding regards, so diverse that they may without confusion be treated as wholly dissimilar.

At the outset we must define. We recall a certain mill stream in a New England State, the owners of which, solely with a view to securing the spring waters for use in the summer months, constructed a dam which made of the low land near its source a vast reservoir. Beyond the economical preservation of the water given in the season of abundance, the mill-proprietors had no intent or thought. But it so happened

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-literally happened that a very sterile farm just above the new pond, percolated by the raised waters, was, as if by magic, made fertile and valuable. Plainly this was an instance in which a valuable result came from a cause purely exterior.

The distinction has a good illustration in a familiar example. Half a century ago, the belief was almost universal in the Biblical community, that the material world was created by the fiat of the Almighty in six successive days, each of twenty-four hours, the Creator literally resting on the day next succeeding, whereby the seventh day became hallowed by Divine example, all work thereupon not necessitated by urgent contingencies being sinful. Fifty years ago to dispute this belief in any part was to be an infidel. To-day all of the belief which pertains to the creative process in the six days of twenty-four hours, and the rest on the day which followed, is almost wholly discarded: it may be doubted if all New England at this date can produce a hundred persons of average information who retain the notion so current in the days of their fathers. By almost unanimous consent the six days of so many hours have given place to the widely dissimilar belief of six successive and sharply distinguished epochs of uncertain duration. What has produced the radical modification? We may suppose that Biblical students, on a careful study of the first chapter in Genesis, discovered that its words interpreted in the light of scientific exegesis, do not mean what their pious fathers thought they meant; that on the contrary the proper meaning, the one forced by the history of the words and by all the connexion, is that of epochs of indefinite length. Had the change been wrought in this way, it would, as all must see, have come under the head of an Interior Cause that is, its possibility would have been in the thought, purpose, plan of the particular scholars who in the result compelled it. As a matter of fact we know that the change was not wrought in any such manner.

So far as the joint product of several minds may by pre eminence be attributed to a single mind, the change was

brought about by a man who was not a theologian, who possi bly knew nothing of Biblical exegesis, who, for aught we learn to the contrary, never so much as read the first chapter of Genesis, who certainly did not have its possible meaning in his thought, who worked in a realm wholly apart from the Biblical records, and very likely in considerable indifference in regard to them. The man, who, more than any other has caused a new and very different exegesis of the first chapter of Genesis, was Sir Charles Lyell. This man did not study Scripture; he was a student of the crust of the earth of the changes wrought therein by forces still in operation. When his work was somewhat advanced, it appeared that his facts, scientifically tested and classified, were utterly and firmly subversive of the theory of creative days, each twenty-four hours long. Rapidly the theologians began to adjust their interpretations to the new and independent revelations, and now by a consent almost unanimous, indefinite epochs have taken the place of the day's. This result was not in the plan of the geologist. It was not purposed it happened. It was the incident of an independent line of research. It therefore comes under the head of Exterior causes.

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It would be an easy task to crowd a large book with facts and examples analogous to the example just given, attesting and exemplifying changes in the whole realm of theological opinion. For our present purpose two or three sample facts mast suffice.

A comprehensive statement may be ventured to the effect that the prodigious scientific energy of the last two decades, though operated in the physical realm, has by contagious force imparted its method to the ethical and exegetical realm. The time is not remote when theories of morals were substantially mechanical in the regard that they were shaped — literally shaped, not discovered with an eye to what were deemed the best results,- somewhat on the principle of locating harbors along the New England coast at the points where they would seem to be most serviceable to the navigator, instead of finding them just where it pleased the Creator to

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