I. Various Forms of Infidelity.— V^axson, in his ex- cellent prize essay on Infidelity, its A spects, Causes, and Agencies (Lond. 1860, 8vo), classifies the forms of modern intidehty as follows: 1. Atheism, or the denial of the divine existence; 2. Pantheism, or the denial of the di- vine personality; 3. Naturalism, or the denial of the divine government; 4. Spiritualism, or the denial of the divine redemption. To these may be added, what be- long more properly to practical than to theoretical in- fideUty, 5. Indifferentism, or the denial of man's re- sponsibility; and, 6. Formalism, or the denial of the power of godliness. Each of these will be found noticed in this Cyclopaedia under their proper heads. Riddle {Bampton Lecture for 1852) gives the following survey of the various phases of infidelity.
(1.) Rationalism.—'- Infidelity, scarcely fashioned, and perhaps hardly conscious of its own true character, but yet really existing and putting forth some degree of energy, appears in the form of a rationalistic rejection of Christian doctrine. In this form, having reference rather to the substance of the Gospel than to its proofs and evidences, infidelitj' is susceptible of such diversi- fied modifications, and assumes so many disguises, that it may sometimes escape detection, and is often in a dis- position to repel, with logical correctness, the charges which may be justly brought against it by those who perceive its real tendency and nature. The faintest, but still dangerous phase of this rationalistic spirit con- sists in the habit of making an arbitrary choice and se- lection of dogmas to be believed by those who profess- edly, and with more or less sincerity, accept the Chris- tian revelation as a whole. From this mihealthj- state
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of mind the transition is too easy to a systematic eleva- rion of reason above all the notices of revelation ; that is, to rationalism applied to the whole substance of the Gospel. This takes place when men systematically re- quire that revealed truth shall be, not only not contra- dictory to sound reason, which is justly to be expected, but that it shall be in accordance with the independent notions of reason or deductions of the understanding." With the class of thinkers who have this tendency most prominently affiliates Mr. Leckey, who has lately pub- lished a Histori) of Rationalism (London, 2 vols. 8vo). His aim, and that of his school, evidently is to reduce Christianity to a system of ethics, and deprive it of its supernatural character, holding that the contest be- tween the champions and the adversaries of religion is no longer to be fought, as it was in the 16th and 17th centuries, upon points of dogmatic theology, and that tlie dogmatic forms of the Protestant churches are no longer the efficient antagonists of the Church of Rome. Isor are the free-thinkers of the present day to be con- founded with those of the old Yoltairean school in France, or with the English Deists of the last century. Their system is no longer exclusively negative and destruc- tive, but, on the contrary, intensely positive, and, in its moral aspect, intensely Christian. It embraces a series of essentially Christian conceptions — equality, fraterni- ty, the suppression of war, the education of the poor, the abolition of slavery, the diifusion of liberty. It re- volves around the ideal of Christianity, and represents its spirit Avhhout its dogmatic system and its supernat- ural narratives. From both of these it unhesitatingly recoils, while deriving all its strength and nourishment from Christian ethics. Hardly conscious of its own character, as Mr. Kiddle tells us, modern Kationalists go forth under such leaders as Leckey, and declare that "the idolatry of dogmas will j^ass away," and that " Christianity, being rescued from sectarianism and in- tolerance that have defaced it, will shine by its own moral splendor, am!, sublimated above all the sphere of controversj', will assume its rightful position as an ideal, and not a system ; as a person, and not a creed." We see this great result, which 3Ir. Lecliey succeeds in jnc- tnrin;/, in a somewhat modified form, in the efforts of the free-thinkers of our land, especially since the last meeting of the "Free Religious Association," more par- ticularly in the abolition of the Sunday laws for certain purposes in the city of Boston, inaugurated first by the followers of Theodore Parker. See Kationalisji.
(2.) Spiritualism.—^'' But while Rationalism appears to have lost much of its former reputation, there is an- other method of arriving at the same end which finds acceptance in the minds of many persons at the present day. These men are not Rationalists ; they are so-call- ed Spiritualists. They do not deny the great truths which lie on the very surface of the sacred record ; nor do they disavow the fact of a divine revelation, and so leave man entirely to the dictates of his reason, and the conclusions of his understanding, with the additional aid to be derived from his fellow-creatures, all unin- spired like liimself. But their theory is this. There is, say they, a revelation made from God to man, but it is only subjective, inward, to the already existing spir- itual life, or religious consciousness of humanity: the ins])iration by which this life or consciousness is awak- ened is common to every man who will wait and seek for it; and as to religious truth, it is simply that which individuals, or the mass of humanity, so" far as their powers have been heightened by the divine afflatus, are able to apprehend. According to this system, we are not to suppose that the Gospel amiounces positive spir- itual facts, such, for example, as that whicli is usually understood by the atonement; but it jiropdunds ideas ■which may be differently received by different men, and will possess a power and value according to the spirit- ual mould into which they may be cast. Now, in this Spiritualism, let it be observed, there is nothing original or new. This system is, in substance, only one of those