The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎646r] (182/239)

NEWMAN.
FRANCIS WILLIAM
In his later, undogmatic days, Francis Newman once tried to
explain to Dr. Martineau the difference between his own religious
attitude and that of his eminent brother, the Cardinal. It is a
matter of faith,” he said. ‘‘ I have faith, and the Cardinal has
none. The Cardinal comes to a river, and believes that he cannot
possibly cross it unless he takes a particular boat with a particular
name painted on it. But I believe that I can swim. Re
reading Phases of Faith, one seems to hear Francis Newman
making his preparations for that confident adventure in deep
waters. He is rejecting, and even breaking up, the boats, one
after the other, amid the angry expostulations of the boatmen.
It is a faint sound, coming from far away ; but it is worth while
to strain one’s ears to listen to it. Nothing proves the progress
of the world so clearly as do the echoes of an old theological
disputation.
The progress in this case has been, broadly speaking, from a
rigid to a fluid Christianity. ‘‘What is Christianity?” our
modern divines have suddenly begun to ask; and the lay critic,
whose quest is not for a doctrine but for a definition, finds it
difficult to supply the answer. His method must be, therefore,
to collate the answers offered by the divines themselves, and see
what remains after respectful allowance has been made for all
the negations of all the various schools of Christian thought. But
this process eliminates a great deal, and discloses an astounding
latitude of belief, even within the borders of the churches.
Eternal punishment is not the only dogma, and the story of
Jonah and the Whale is not the only miracle that the Higher
Criticism of the day discards. It denies—or, at all events, some
of the higher critics deny—that Christ w T as born of a Virgin, and
that the Bible is inspired in any sense that makes it incumbent
upon us to accept any statement contained in it without inde
pendent corroboration ; while for the old Doctrine of the Atone
ment—once the sheet anchor of the faith—it substitutes a new
doctrine of an At-one-ment, which means something quite
different, if, indeed, it means anything at all. Fluid is indeed
the word for a Christianity which thus spreads itself over so much
of the territory once securely held by the sceptics; but when the
critic, casting about for that desiderated definition, seeks to lay
hold of the ‘‘ differentia” of Christianity, he finds that nothing