Victorian Doubt in God

Doubt in God was a prevalent theme among Victorian writers. “In Characteristics”, Thomas Carlyle discusses the same doubt in God that Tennyson feels in In Memoriam 82, a doubt that characteristically reflects religion in England under the reign of Queen Victoria. Carlyle doubts man’s beliefs because he understands man’s insignificance in the realm of things and thus wonders how any of man’s answers to any questions of the world could be right. He …

…sacrificed in the Temple at Jerusalem, both of which atoned for man’s sins, and Aaron, God’s pr! iests, are types. Tennyson closes his elegy with the now calm assurance that Hallam “was a noble type”. In Memoriam resolves the crisis of faith precipitated by Hallam’s death by presenting him doubly as a type, because he foreshadowed both the second appearance of Christ and the coming higher race of human beings. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**