Page:Modern Rationalism (1897).djvu/150

150 of the independent tradition it once was. If the seal of divinity be removed from it in the popular esteem, there are many who think that there is no authority adequate to enforce its dictates. This apprehension was openly expressed by the Coleridgean school, as we have seen. The Church, to them, was an institution for the purification of life and the enforcement of moral discipline, and they sought to defend it on that ground only. Philosophical sceptics, from Kant to A. Balfour, have clung to Theism on the same principle. They think that the moral law would survive in the minds of a few grave and high-principled scholars, but would soon be trampled under the feet of the multitude if the supernatural halo were to depart from it. Kant himself, of course, cannot be placed in the same category with the later sceptics. He did not profess to establish a theism on the assumed evil consequences of Agnosticism, but to pass, by direct reasoning, from moral phenomena to a moral legislator and a necessary sanction in immortality, though there are many who accept Heine's version of the matter, which would put Kant in the same position as later moralists. How ever, there are several writers of the present day who take their stand definitely on the supposed moral or immoral consequences of Rationalism. Balfour and Mallock, for instance, evince a thorough scepticism on all speculative Theistic defence, yet advocate the retention of Theistic belief on the ground that its rejection would have serious practical consequences. The more advanced Broad-Churchmen—Dr. Momerie, A. Craufurd, etc.—are evidently in the same predicament. The large number of clergy men and professors who accept Kantism or Hegelianism, or that interesting combination of the two which is some times called Transcendentalism, must join on the same issue. In fact, it is not too much to say that the main issue between Theists and Agnostics is now an ethical issue. There are few, indeed, at the present day who would venture to support Theistic belief by direct meta physical arguments; between empiricism and transcendentalism metaphysics has been wholly discredited. A certain number still find a divine glow on the universe at large, marks of design and wisdom, etc.; but their perception is only capable, apparently, of being thrown into the form