Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/214

 192 ENGLISH DEISM. day every one will be rewarded according to his works. By proclaiming these doctrines, by carrying them out in his own pure life and typical death, and by founding religio- cthical associations on the principle of brotherly equality, Christ selected the means best fitted for the attainment of his purpose, the salvation of human souls. His aim was to assure men of future happiness (and of the eartlily happi- ness connected therewith), and to make them worthy of it ; and this happiness can only be attained when from free conviction we submit ourselves to the natural moral law, which is grounded on the moral fitness of things. Every- thing which leads to the illusion that the favor of God is attainable by any other means than by righteousness and repentance, is pernicious ; as, also, the confusion of Chris- tian societies with legal and civil societies, which pursue entirely different aims. Thomas Morgan {TJie Moral Philosopher, a Dialogue be- tweeji the Christian Deist, Philalethes, and the Christian Jew, Theophanes, 1737 seq^ stands on the same ground as his predecessors, by holding that the moral truth of things is the criterion of the divinity of a doctrine, that the Chris- tian religion is merely a restoration of natural religion, and that the apostles were not infallible. Peculiar to him are the application of the first of these principles to the Mosaic law, with the conclusion that this was not a revelation ; the complete separation of the New Testament from the Old (the Church of Christ and the expected kingdom of the Jewish Messiah are as opposed to each other as heaven and earth) ; and the endeavor to give a more exact explanation of the origin of superstition, the pre-Christian manifestations of which he traces back to the fall of the angels, and those since Christ to the intermixture of Jewish elements. He seeks to solve his problem by a detailed critique of Israelit- ish history, which is lacking in sympathy but not in spirit, and in which, introducing modern relations into the earliest times, he explains the Old Testament miracles in part as myths, in part as natural phenomena, and deprives the heroes of the Jews of their moral renown. The Jewish his- torians are ranked among the poets ; the God of Israel is reduced to a subordinate, local tutelary divinity ; the moral