Untitled - Electric Scotland

276 LIKL OK ARCHBISHOP TAIT [en. xn.
be taught of God, I cannot myself fear that he will be beguiled
and would-be intel
by the dangerous temptations of a sceptical
lectual age. . . . But let him beware in his early days how he
trifles with intellectualism, lest his whole nature be corrupted, and
a shallow half-belief come to be all that he has to offer, either to
his people or his own soul, instead of deep-rooted love and
faith." 1
This was the position he maintained from first to last
during the stormy controversies of the next few years.
But it was a position taken, at that time, by comparatively
few. The science of reverent Biblical criticism was, to
most people, absolutely unknown, and it is difficult now,
a quarter of a century afterwards, to realise the vague
terror with which much of what is to-day the general
belief of Christian men was lumped together as Ration
alism, and thereupon condemned as an abomination.
The mob who in their jealousy for Protestantism hooted
and reviled the Ritualists at St. George s in the East,
although more ignorant and noisy, were scarcely more
violent in
spirit than many of the earnest and well-mean
ing men and women who, week after week, cried aloud for
vengeance against
4
the traitorous *
Rationalists who held
free-thinking ideas about the six days of Creation, or
expressed an honest doubt whether the Deluge covered
the Himalayas. But, as in the analogous case, the outcry
was not all unreasonable. If the one found occasional
justification in the fact that a good many Ritualists joined
the Church of Rome, the other was able to point out with
truth that the school of free inquiry led some of its
scholars into sheer negation and unbelief. In no con
troversy was there graver need for a calm sobriety of
judgment on the Church.
part of the rulers and leaders of the
1
Charge of 1858, pp. 66-67.