"NATURAL RELIGIONS 5 ! 5 



versally recognized as Professor Seeley, promised a supplementary 

 volume of applications of his theory. This has never appeared, and 

 we may look upon the present work as the fulfillment of his promise. 

 The wide difference between them must be ascribed to the progress 

 since made by liberal thought. Still, "Ecce Homo" was regarded 

 with fear and disgust in its day by the orthodox, among all sections 

 of Christianity, and at once provoked an eloquent and, from Professor 

 Seeley's point of view, unanswerable rejoinder in Dr. Liddon's Bamp- 

 ton Lectures " On the Divinity of Christ," delivered at Oxford in the 

 following year. 



We now come to the two celebrated years 1873 and 187-4 years 

 of open utterance on all sides, and which we may look upon as the 

 crisis of the revolution of thought. In these years appeared the first 

 two volumes of " Supernatural Religion," an elaborate investigation 

 from two points of view into the foundations of Christianity, and Mat- 

 thew Arnold's " Literature and Dogma," an attempt to rehabilitate 

 Christianity, while openly recognizing the futility of all attempts to 

 base it upon miracles or the supernatural. Christianity was to remain 

 in force, but without a personal God. At such a moment, Leslie 

 Stephen's direct question, "Are we Christians?" came home to us 

 with full force. It was anticipated, by one year, by the amusing bro- 

 chure entitled "Modern Christianity, a Civilized Heathenism." In 

 the same year Max Midler carried the critical spirit of science into 

 religion itself in his " Introduction to the Science of Religion." Mean- 

 wmile, there appeared a beautif id volume, carefully printed upon ex- 

 quisite paper, containing " Studies in the History of the Renaissance," 

 which their author, Mr. Pater, concluded with the following words : 

 " We are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says, ' Les liomm.es sont tous 

 condamnes d morte avec des siirsis indefines'' ; we have an interval, 

 and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in 

 listlessness, some in high passions, the wdsest in art and song. For 

 our one chance is in expanding that interval, in getting as many pul- 

 sations as possible into the given time. High passions give one this 

 quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, political or relig- 

 ious enthusiasms, or the ' enthusiasm of humanity.' Only, be sure it 

 is passion, that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied 

 consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, 

 the love of art for art's sake, has most ; for art comes to you profess- 

 ing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments 

 as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake." 



In 1874 appeared Green's " Short History of the English People," 

 of the importance of which I shall speak presently ; Mill's " Autobi- 

 ography," revealing the blameless life of a true humanitarian who 

 had lived without a God, in the ordinary acceptation of the term ; and 

 George Eliot's " Jubal, and other Poems." In this volume the relig- 

 ious aspirations of the new faith were thus given poetical expression : 



