human interests. Rationalism would be successful in establishing a new
interpretation of religion only after it had been successful in many
other fields. The arguments of the deists were never successfully
refuted. On the contrary, the striking thing is that their opponents,
the militant divines and writings of numberless volumes of 'Evidences
for Christianity,' had come to the same rational basis with the deists.
They referred even the most subtle questions to the pure reason, as no
one now would do. The deistical movement was not really defeated. It
largely compelled its opponents to adopt its methods. It left a deposit
which is more nearly rated at its worth at the present than it was in
its own time. But it ceased to command confidence, or even interest.
Samuel Johnson said, as to the publication of Bolingbroke's work by his
executor, three years after the author's death: 'It was a rusty old
blunderbuss, which he need not have been afraid to discharge himself,
instead of leaving a half-crown to a Scotchman to let it off after his
death.'

It is a great mistake, however, in describing the influence of
rationalism upon Christian thought to deal mainly with deism. English
deism made itself felt in France, as one may see in the case of
Voltaire. Kant was at one time deeply moved by some English writers who
would be assigned to this class. In a sense Kant showed traces of the
deistical view to the last. The centre of the rationalistic movement
had, however, long since passed from England to the Continent. The
religious problem was no longer its central problem. We quite fail to
appreciate what the nineteenth century owes to the eighteenth and to the
rationalist movement in general, unless we view this latter in a far
greater way.