ATHENS OF THE NORTH:
THE ENLIGHTENMENT

‘Here I stand at what is called the [Mercat] Cross of Edinburgh, and can, in a few minutes, take fifty men of genius by the hand.’ (Mr Amyat, the King’s Chemist, 18th century)

The Reformation paved the way for enquiry, investigation and freedom of conscience and speech in Europe, out of which emerged great pioneer scientists, such as Kepler, Dalton, Newton, Pascal, Boyle, Ray, Herschel, Linnaeus, Euler and others, all of whom had a deep faith in the Creator and the Bible. But with this movement there also came freedom to enquire into alternative philosophies, and so humanism was born.

The original humanists, during and after the Reformation period, were usually radical Christian thinkers, but later humanism became associated with Deism (the belief that God started Creation but remained detached from it), and Atheism. A renaissance of ancient Greek philosophy took Europe by storm, and Edinburgh became known as the Athens of the North.

David Hume (1711-1776)

The father-figure of the Enlightenment Movement in Edinburgh was David Hume, a philosopher, historian and librarian. The execution of the first outspoken atheist, Thomas Aikenhead, a student from Edinburgh University in 1697, sowed seeds of discontent among many freethinkers. Coupled with this were the Church’s sometimes very rigid and dour non-biblical rules that banned, for instance, bathing in a river on the Sabbath.

There was also a fresh wind of alternative philosophies blowing on the continent, especially in France, and so Hume went there in 1734, and spent much time discussing ideas with such men as Voltaire, Rousseau and Comte de Buffon. Whilst there he wrote his Treatise of Human Nature (1736), in which he sought to reintroduce the scientific methods of Newton and Francis Bacon without any need of a God. As an atheist he believed that the world came into being on its own and wrote in his Treatise and in the Essays, Moral and Political:

1. All distinction betwixt virtue and vice is merely imaginary.
2. Justice has no foundation further than it contributes to public advantage.
3. Adultery is very lawful, but sometimes not expedient.
4. Religion and its ministers are prejudicial to mankind, and will always be found either to run into heights of superstition or enthusiasm.
5. Christianity has no evidence of its being a divine revelation.
6. Of all modes of Christianity Popery is the best, and the reformation from thence was only the work of madmen and enthusiasts.1

Such statements were bound to provoke a reaction from church leaders and he appeared before the General Assembly in 1754 on the charge of heresy. Some of the ministers claimed he should be excommunicated from the Church, but as he was an atheist, such an idea was nonsense! He was eventually dismissed from the Assembly and left with some liberal clergy and friends to found The Select Society, which met in the original Advocates’ Library off George IV Bridge. Everything could be discussed except for revealed religion, and this society led to many others being formed.

Other famous men of the Enlightenment

There were dozens of men who influenced the world from Edinburgh with their ideas. Adam Smith (1723–1790), was Hume’s best friend and a Professor of Philosophy at Glasgow University. He settled in Panmure House in the Canongate part of the Royal Mile. He is best known as the political economist who changed the world through his book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Indeed, his book became the ‘Capitalists’ Bible’.

Adam Ferguson (1723–1815) was a Professor of Philosophy at Edinburgh University and many regard him as the founder of evolutionary sociology.

James Hutton (1726–1797) was a geologist who pioneered uniformitarianism (the belief that the rocks were formed gradually over vast periods of time, rather than being laid down during the Creation and the biblical Flood). Charles Lyell, another Scotsman, developed his work and made it popular in 1830. William Cullen (1710–1790) was a Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh University and under his direction the University became the most advanced medical college in the world at that time.

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) held the chair at Edinburgh University for Moral Philosophy. He gave Edinburgh the name Athens of the North, because much of the Enlightenment was based upon the philosophy of the ancient Athenian Greeks, such as Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and Epicurus. Some scholars even consider that Adam Smith’s economic theory was based upon that of Xenophon from Athens.

William Smellie (1740–1790) pioneered a printing house in Anchor Close, just off the Royal Mile, and produced the many philosophical and scientific tomes of the Enlightenment Movement. He edited and printed the first Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as Buffon’s Natural History. He also anticipated the ideas of Freud and Jung in his book, On Dreams.

Freemason Lodges: Powerhouses of the Enlightenment

The oldest existing Freemason Lodge building in the world is on St John’s Street, off the Royal Mile. As in France, Edinburgh’s Freemason Lodges opened up their doors to spread the Enlightenment. Most of the key men from the Movement were Freemasons, such as Lord Kames, Lord Hailes, Lord Monboddo, Dugald Stewart, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns. Freemasonry has its modern roots in Scotland. The first record of Freemason Lodges is in 1598 when the King of Scotland commissioned William Schaw to establish them in a more organisational way, and Sir Francis Bacon gave spiritual insight.

Although Masonic Lodges might appear to be ‘Christian’, they are not; the spiritual roots are derived from ancient pagan mystery rites and Gnosticism, overlaid with Christian symbolism, with which Bacon was very familiar. Some people claim that Freemasonry evolved through a mixture of the Knights Templar, Rosicrucianism and Merchant Societies.

Much excitement has surrounded Rosslyn Chapel, built in 1446 by William Sinclair, allegedly a member of the Knights Templar. This chapel, situated only seven miles from Edinburgh, featured in the Dan Brown fantasy-fiction The Da Vinci Code.

During the Enlightenment Movement the Freemason John Robison, a Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University published a volume entitled Proofs of a Conspiracy (1798), in which he exposed The Illuminati. Professor Adam Weishaupt of Germany had founded this Order on 1st May, 1776, which heavily infiltrated Freemasonry in Europe.

It had as its goal the removal of Christianity, nationalism, royalty, privatism and the family unit, and sought to replace it with communistic ideals based on the occult. Robison’s book caused a sensation across Europe, as he claimed this secret Order was responsible for the French Revolution and had plans for world revolution and dominance.2

The Rise of Evolution

Usually people think of the Theory of Evolution as an idea discovered by Charles Darwin and made widely known through his book, The Origin of Species (1859). However, the idea had been growing in pace in Europe over a hundred years before him, and had its roots in the Greek philosophers centuries before Christ, and even in Hindu Vedantic philosophy long before that.3

Ancient Greek philosophy became fashionable in the Enlightenment period and so naturalistic explanations of the universe also became popular with many philosophers such as Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1776), Comte de Buffon, Lamarck and Laplace.

James Burnett (Lord Monboddo; 1714– 1799) a High Court Judge, Freemason and anthropologist from Edinburgh was obsessed with the ancient Greeks, and he used to run round his house and garden naked and have cold baths in all weathers.

Back in 1768 he was convinced that humans had evolved through a process of God-given natural laws from vegetation through to animals, and thence to orang-utans, and finally people.4

Lord Neaves of Edinburgh, another High Court Judge, penned the Scottish opinion about the true founder of Evolution in 1875 with the words:

'Though Darwin now proclaims the law
And spreads it far abroad, O!
The man that first the secret saw
Was honest old Monboddo.
The architect precedence takes
Of him that bears the hod, O!
So up and at them, Land of Cakes,
We'll vindicate Monboddo.'

Monboddo was, however, a religious person and argued with the atheists of the time. He claims that a beautiful woman appeared to him in a fever, and spoke to him in French about a philosophy that merged together the ideas of Aristotle, Newton and Evolution. In the preface of his mammoth work, Antient Metaphysics, he shows us the roots of his evolutionary thinking in Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras and the Egyptian religion.

Erasmus Darwin and his grandson Charles

Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, studied medicine at Edinburgh University (1753– 1754) and was a Freemason and philosopher. Influenced by Monboddo he wrote Zoonomia, Or the Laws of Organic Life, in 1803, in which he proposed an evolutionary model, and The Temple of Nature, a poem based on the pagan mystery religions, through which he also expounded the doctrine of Evolution. Hence, Charles Darwin, who also studied medicine at Edinburgh University, came from a line of evolutionary philosophers, and he naturally imbibed those ideas here before writing his famous book in 1859.

The Church's Reaction to the Enlightenment

Not surprisingly such a movement challenged the very existence of the Church in Europe and Edinburgh. It was rent asunder by a division between the Moderates and the High Flyers. The High Flyers were those in the Church who held on to traditional Christianity, and the Moderates were those who either became very liberal in their Christian understanding of biblical truth, or who held to a biblical position but sought to challenge the very strict religious straitjacket of the age.

Some of the clergy, led by the example of Rev. Professor William Robertson, Principal of Edinburgh University, who stated that ‘miracles are now ceased’, followed the fashion of the day and frequented the Enlightenment’s many philosophical societies, trying to compromise and become accepted. For them, quoting from Scripture from the pulpit seemed like heresy, whereas the philosophers were embraced with relish – much to the bewilderment of their parishioners! Into this confusion fell a mass of ordinary people, who, with absolute truth removed, shook off ‘Bible morality’.

According to contemporary statistics, divorce and separation dramatically increased, brothels multiplied by twenty times and the number of street prostitutes by one hundred times, and theft, house-breaking and crime sky-rocketed.5

Into this scene came Christians who preached and lived biblical morality but who shrugged off the Deism and Atheism of the humanists on the one hand, and the rigid regime of the High-Flyer clergy on the other. Even back in 1729, Rev. Robert Wallace had argued: 'We live in an Age so enlightened when weak arguments and bad reasonings will not pass so well as formerly.' 6 He called for intellectual Christians who would use their minds for God, and sought to promote science and the arts.

George Whitefield and John Wesley in Edinburgh

The Revd Alexander Webster decided to invite the Methodist preacher, George Whitefield, to Edinburgh. He came and preached 14 times (1741–1756) and shook the city with his message. It has been estimated that crowds of up to 20,000 (half the city then) gathered to hear him preach in Parliament Square, outside St Giles. Multitudes were converted and transformed.

John Wesley also came in this period and preached 22 times here (between 1751 and 1790), having a great effect on the populace. He said that the only danger he had was of being hugged to death by the grateful citizens of Edinburgh! Once, though, he had just been preaching up by the Castle, when two policemen arrested him on a charge of kidnapping someone! The confusion was cleared up and Wesley was set free from the Tolbooth Prison on the Royal Mile, and the slanderer was fined £1,000 (£400 Scottish) – a tidy sum in those days!