Broken Lights: An Inquiry Into the Present Condition and Future Prospects of Religious Faith

By FRANCES POWER COBBE.

AMONG the countless errors of faith which have misled mankind, there is none more dangerous, or more common, than that of confounding the forms of religion with religion itself. Too often, alike to believer and unbeliever, this has proved the one fatal mistake. Many an honest and earnest soul, feeling the deep needs of a spiritual life, but unable to separate those things which the heart would accept from those against which the reason revolts, has rejected all together, and turned away sorrowful, if not scoffing. On the other hand, the state of that man, who, because his mind has settled down upon certain externals of religion, deems that he has secured its essentials also, is worse than that of the skeptic. The freezing traveller, who is driven by the rocks (of hard doctrine) and the thorns (of doubt) to keep his limbs in motion, stands a far better chance of finding his way out of tire wilderness than he who lies down on the softest bed. of snow, flatters himself that all is well, and dreams of home, whilst the deadly torpor creeps over him.

If help and guidance and good cheer tor all such be not found in this little volume, it is certainly no fault of the writer’s intention. She brings to her task the power of profound conviction, inspiring a devout wish to lead others into the way of truth. Beneath the multiform systems ot theology she finds generally the same firm foundations of faith,— “faith in the existence of a righteous God, faith in the eternal Law of Morality, faith in an Immortal Life.” None enjoys a monopoly of truth, although all are based upon it. Each is a lighthouse, more or less lofty, and more or less illumined bv the glory that burns within ; yet their purest rays arc only “broken lights.” The glory itself is infinite: it is only through human narrowness and imperfection that it appears narrow and imperfect. The lighthouse is good in its place: it beckons home, with its “wheeling arms of dark and bright,” many a benighted voyager; but we must remember that tt is a structure made with hands, and not confound the stone and iron of human contrivance with the great Source and Fountain of Light.

The writer does not grope with uncertain purpose among these imperfect rays, and she is never confused by them. To each she freely gives credit tor what it is or has been; but all fade at last before the unspeakable brightness of the rising sun. She discerns the dawn of that day when all our little candles may be safely extinguished : for it is not in any church, nor in any creed, nor yet in anv book, that all of God’s law is contained; but the light of His countenance shines primarily on the souls of men, out of which all religions have proceeded, and into which we must look for the ever new and ever vital faith, which is to the unclouded conscience what the sunshine is to sight.

Such is the conclusion the author arrives at through an array of arguments of which we shall not attempt a summary. It is not necessary to admit what these are designed to prove, in order to derive refreshment and benefit from the pure tone of morality, the fervent piety, and the noble views of practical religion which animate her pages. It is not a book to be afraid of. No violent hand is here laid upon the temple ; but only the scaffoldings, which, as she perceives, obscure the beauty of the temple, arc taken away. Not only those who have rejected religion because they could not receive its dogmas, but all who have struggled with their doubts and mastered them, or thought they mastered them, nay, any sincere seeker for the truth, will find Miss Cobbe’s unpretending treatise exceedingly valuable and suggestive ; while to any one interested in modern theological discussions we would recommend it as containmg the latest, and perhaps the clearest and most condensed, statement of the questions at issue which these discussions have called out.

The spirit of the book is admirable. Both the skeptic who sneers and the bigot who denounces might learn a beautiful lesson from its calm, yet earnest pages. It is tree from the brilliant shallowness of Renan, and the bitterness which sometimes marred the teachings of Parker. It is a generous, tender, noble book, — enjoying, indeed, over most works of its class a peculiar advantage ; for, while its logic has everywhere a masculine strength and clearness, there glows through all an element too long wanting to our hard systems of theology, —an element which only woman’s heart can supply.

Yet, notwithstanding the lofty reason, the fmc intuition, the philanthropy and hope, which inspire its pages, we close the book with a sense of something wanting. The author points out the danger there always is of a faith which is intellectually demonstrable becoming, with many, a faith of the intellect merely, — and frankly avows that “there is a cause why Theism, even in warmer and better natures, too often fails to draw out that fervent piety” which is characteristic of narrower and intenser beliefs. This cause she traces to the neglect of prayer, and the consequent removal afar off, to vague confines of consciousness, of the Personality and Fatherhood of God. Her observations on this important subject arc worthy of serious consideration, from those rationalists especially whose cold theories do not admit anything so “ unphilosophieal ” as prayer. Yet we find in the book itself a want. The author — like nearly all writers from her point of view — ignores the power of miracle. Because physical impossibilities, or what seem such, have been so readily accepted as facts owing their origin to divine interposition, they fall to the opposite extreme of denying the occurrence of any events out of the common course of Nature’s operations. Of the positive and powerful ministration of angels in human affairs they make no account whatever, or accept it as a pleasing dream ; and they forget that what we call a miracle may be as truly an offspring of immutable law as the dew and the sunshine, — failing to learn of the loadstone, which attracts to itself splinters of steel contrary to all the Commonly observed laws of gravitation, the simple truth that man also may become a magnet, and, by the power of the divine currents passing through him, do many things astonishing to every-day experience. The feats of a vulgar thaumaturgy, designed to make the ignorant stare, may well be dispensed with. But the fact that “spiritualism,” with all its crudities of doctrine and of practice, has spread over Christendom with a rapidity to which the history of religious beliefs affords no parallel, shows that the realization of supernatural influences is an absolute need of the human heart. The soul of the earlier forms of worship dies out of them, as this faith dies out, or becomes merely traditional; and no new system can look to fill their places without it.