Nationalism as a Religion, II

...It is another interesting fact that in the sixteenth century, when doubt about Catholicism was rife, not only Protestantism appeared on the scene, but also that popular exaltation of the lay state, which a host of the intellectuals of the time—Machiavelli and Erastus, to name but two—proclaimed and idealized...

...for the first time, Christian intellectuals would abandon Christianity or subvert it wholly...

...the Progressives, who venerated progress as if it were a sailing vessel and who, by aid of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, were eager to go wherever the wind might blow them...

...And between the sect of the Naturalists and that of the Humanitarians, many another speedily arose...

...They were shared by wide circles so that the eighteenth century clearly witnessed a pronounced loosening of the hold of traditional Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, upon the intellectual classes of Europe...

...SCEPTICISM AND THE WORSHIP OF THE STATE By CARLTON J. H. HAYES OF ALL periods of religious scepticism and theological doubt, the most crucial in human history, at any rate for our present purpose, is the eighteenth century...

...more likely they may represent casual connections...

...and the Perfectabilists, who with eyes of faith and the gift of tongues saw and proclaimed the millennium—Eden and Paradise—on this earth just around the corner...

...They were logical—in their fashion...

...Perhaps these instances are mere coincidences...

...and eighteenth-century intellectuals managed somehow to develop quite a mysterious feeling about him...

...Miracles were ridiculed, and mysteries, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption, were rejected...

...They praised him with a voice so loud that he would have heard them if he could have heard anyone...

...Christian tradition and the Christian Bible were alike impugned...

...even some Christians, who exchanged their traditional God for Nature, went on styling themselves Christian and participating in Christian worship...

...It is an interesting fact that during the second and third centuries, when pagan scepticism was prevalent among Greek and Roman intellectuals, and when philosophers and mystics were toying with new cults, the deification of the Roman emperor was completed, and his worship widely and popularly indulged...

...It was the eighteenth century which witnessed in western Europe, especially in France, the mocking attacks of Voltaire and other "enlightened" litterateurs upon "supernatural" religion and ecclesiastical institutions...

...They would not be Christians...

...Let the masses and the classes unite to rear and dedicate a high altar to the state—the masses may then be suffered to bring a few flowers to the little sideshrines of their ancestral gods...

...Ecclesiastical authority was assailed...

...All the doubting and sceptical periods of which mention has already been made, have been characterized by another sort of worship—the worship of the Political State...

...In any event, the eighteenth century, which beheld a waning faith in Christianity, beheld a waxing faith in Deism, Nature, Law, Science, Reason, Progress, Perfectability, and Humanity...

...They might not and they would not express their religious sense in Christian worship...

...They have frequently been fearful of the unsettling effects of their own doubts upon the masses, and even willing on occasion that the masses, for the sake of social peace and general security, should go on indulging in belief and worship which to these intellectuals must seem superstitious...

...It beheld also the rise of various organizations, such as Freemasonry and Illuminism, all of which enshrined one or all of the cults of the day and began to spread internationally...

...Most of them got excited about a God of l^ature who started things which he could not stop, anfl who was so intent upon watching numberless worlds go round in their appointed orbits, and so transfixed by the operation of all the eternal immutable laws which he had invented, that he had no time or ear for the little entreaties of puny men upon a pigmy earth...

...Some discovered and paid obeisance to a mysterious force outside of themselves which they termed Science—though this Science, when duly capitalized, proved to be but a theological handmaid to the God of Nature...

...For the first time since the early vogue of Arianism, a large number of the influential adherents of Christianity had come openly to doubt the truth and worth of its most fundamental tenets...

...whilst the classes, in assured peace, can utilize the crypt for their novel rites and gradually impregnate the whole temple with the strange, sweet odors of their esoteric incense...

...Christianity was denounced as superstition, and its clergy as humbugs...

...he was only a fraction of the God of the Christians...

...And they showed it in many curious ways...

...It is, moreover, an arresting fact that the eighteenth century, which witnessed among the classes the growth of scepticism about Christianity, and simultaneously the rise of a novel faith in Deism, witnessed also for the masses, the enthronement of the National State—la patrie—as the central object of worship...

...and these were especially devout, perhaps because the deification of all humanity is fraught with infinitely greater mystery than the conception of a single God-Man or even a Triune God...

...Others found a hydraheaded monstrosity which they proceeded to worship under the title of Humanity...

...In the whole of the new syncretism, as well as in its component elements, the intellectual of the eighteenth century gave expression to his inherent sense of religion...

...and with a voice so awed that it betrayed the religious fervor which moved them...

...Nor were these opinions and judgments confined to a few philosophers...

...These were the Rationalists, who isolated a little bit of man's being and ascribed to it a most mysterious infallibility...

...some Naturalists adored reason...

...This God of Nature was obviously not much of a person and not much of a power...

...Many of the eighteenth-century intellectuals perceived in the Trinity, in the Godmade-Man, and in the Christian sacraments, only the vain imaginings of dupes or hypocrites...

...The God of Nature was not, of course, the only object of religious devotion on the part of eighteenthcentury intellectuals...

...At the same time, their very scepticism denies them any leadership in the preservation of the older popular religion, and their substituted faiths are usually so diverse and so abstract as to militate against the immediate and vulgar acceptance of any of them as a new popular religion...

...But he was outside of man...

...Some Humanitarians were devoted to Nature...

...But those same intellectuals of the eighteenth century did possess a religious sense...

...What is more natural, under these trying circumstances, than that the masses should be encouraged to transfer a large part of their inherent awe and reverence from a "supernatural" religion, which the classes deem superstitious if not degrading, to a political religion which has the twofold advantage of being obviously real and of having physical power sufficient to club the multitudes into some semblance of social harmony...

...They perceived nothing in the Christian Revelation, or for that matter, in any "supernaturalism," to which man could justifiably attach any devotion or reverence...

...some Rationalists worshiped at a side-altar to Perfectability or Progress or Humanity...

...Doubt about a particular popular religion begins with intellectuals, and intellectuals, as a class, are notoriously timid...

...As might be expected of any era of doubt and scepticism about popular religion, there was a good deal of syncretism among the cults of the eighteenth century...