Part 32

Thomas Aikenhead, a student of eighteen, was hanged at Edinburgh, in 1697, for having uttered, says Macaulay, in his History, free opinions about the Trinity and some of the books of the Bible. His offense was construed as blasphemy under an old Scotch statute, which was strained for the purpose of convicting him. After his sentence he recanted, and begged a short respite to make his peace with God. This the privy council declined to grant, unless the Edinburgh clergy would intercede for him; but so far were they from seconding his petition, that they actually demanded that his execution should not be delayed. "Imagine, if you can," says Froude, in one of his essays, "a person being now put to death for a speculative theological opinion. You feel at once that, in the most bigoted country in the world, such a thing has become impossible; and the impossibility is the measure of the alteration which we have all undergone. The formulas remain as they were, on either side,--the very same formulas which were once supposed to require these detestable murders. But we have learned to know each other better. The cords which bind together the brotherhood of mankind are woven of a thousand strands. We do not any more fly apart or become enemies because, here and there, in one strand out of so many, there are still unsound places."

It was in the Star Chamber (during the reign of Charles I., after Christ, sixteen hundred and thirty-seven years) that Leighton, a clergyman, for coarse invectives against prelacy and prelates, received the sentence by which he was severely whipped in public, was put in the pillory, had one ear cut off, one side of his nose slit, and one cheek branded with the letters S. S., to denote that he was a sower of sedition. "On that day week," says Laud (then Archbishop of Canterbury), who instigated the prosecution, "the sores upon his back, ear, nose, and face being not cured, he was whipped again at the pillory, and there had the remainder of his sentence executed upon him, by cutting off the other ear, slitting the other side of his nose, and branding the other cheek." He was, in addition, degraded from his ministry, fined ten thousand pounds, and ordered to be retained in confinement for life.

"There is a violent zeal," says Fenelon, "that we must correct; it thinks it can change the whole world, it would reform everything, it would subject every one to its laws. The origin of this zeal is disgraceful. The defects of our neighbor interfere with our own; our vanity is wounded by that of another; our own haughtiness finds our neighbor's ridiculous and insupportable; our restlessness is rebuked by the sluggishness and indolence of this person; our gloom is disturbed by the gayety and frivolities of that person, and our heedlessness by the shrewdness and address of another. If we were faultless, we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neighbors' weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, and this alarms our vanity. We therefore make our weakness pass for strength, elevate it to a virtue and call it zeal; an imaginary and often hypocritical zeal. For is it not surprising to see how tranquil we are about the errors of others when they do not trouble us, and how soon this wonderful zeal kindles against those who excite our jealousy, or weary our patience?" "We reprove our friends' faults," said Wycherley, "more out of pride than love or charity; not so much to correct them as to make them believe we are ourselves without them." Simonides satirizes the same infirmity in a fable, to be found in the treasures of Athenaeus:--

With his claw the snake surprising, Thus the crab kept moralizing:-- "Out on sidelong turns and graces, Straight's the word for honest paces!"

It was Dean Swift who said, "We have just enough of religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another." "Your business," said Hunt, "is to preach love to your neighbor, to kick him to bits, and to thank God for the contradiction." "The falsehood that the tongue commits," said Landor, "is slight in comparison with what is conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at large, I quarrel day after day with my next neighbor; if, professing that the rich can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my household a talent monthly; if, professing to place so much confidence in his word, that, in regard to worldly weal, I need take no care for to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond what would be necessary though I quite distrusted both his providence and his veracity; if, professing that 'he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,' I question the Lord's security, and haggle with him about the amount of the loan; if, professing that I am their steward, I keep ninety-nine parts in the hundred as the emolument of my stewardship: how, when God hates liars, and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves and hypocrites, fare hereafter?" In one of his chapters on the Study of Sociology, Herbert Spencer remarks that "it would clear up our ideas about many things, if we distinctly recognized the truth that we have two religions." These two religions Mr. Spencer designates as the "religion of amity" and the "religion of enmity." "Of course," he says, "I don't mean that these are both called religions. Here I am not speaking of names; I am speaking simply of things. Nowadays men do not pay the same nominal homage to the religion of enmity that they do to the religion of amity--the religion of amity occupies the place of honor. But the real homage is paid in large measure, if not in the larger measure, to the religion of enmity. The religion of enmity nearly all men actually believe. The religion of amity most of them merely believe they believe." "The Church of Rome," said F. W. Robertson, in his sermon on The Tongue, "hurls her thunders against Protestants of every denomination; the Calvinist scarcely recognizes the Arminian as a Christian; he who considers himself as the true Anglican excludes from the church of Christ all but the adherents of his own orthodoxy; every minister and congregation has its small circle, beyond which all are heretics; nay, even among that sect which is most lax as to the dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unitarian of the old school denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising school. Sisters of Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be done by a Samaritan; ministers of the gospel fling the thunder-bolts of the Lord; ignorant hearers catch and exaggerate the spirit; boys, girls, and women shudder as one goes by, perhaps more holy than themselves, who adores the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same life-battle--and all this because they have been taught to look upon him as an enemy of God." "Particular churches and sects," says Sir Thomas Browne, "usurp the gates of heaven, and turn the keys against each other; and thus we go to heaven against each others' wills, conceits, and opinions." "The church of the future," in the opinion of Father Hyacinthe, "will know nothing of such divisions, such discordances, and she will uphold the freedom of theologies and the diversity of rites in the unity of one faith and of one worship." "As soon," said Goethe, "as the pure doctrine and love of Christ are comprehended in their true nature, and have become a vital principle, we shall feel ourselves as human beings, great and free, and not attach especial importance to a degree more or less in the outward forms of religion: besides, we shall all gradually advance from a Christianity of words and faith to a Christianity of feeling and action." "Could we," said Dean Young, "but once descend from our high pretenses of religion to the humility that only makes men religious, could we but once prefer Christianity itself before the several factions that bear its name, our differences would sink of themselves; and it would appear to us that there is more religion in not contending than there is in the matter we contend about." "Do you remember," asks the author of The Eclipse of Faith, "the passage in Woodstock, in which our old favorite represents the Episcopalian Rochecliffe and the Presbyterian Holdenough meeting unexpectedly in prison, after many years of separation, during which one had thought the other dead? How sincerely glad they were, and how pleasantly they talked; when, lo! an unhappy reference to 'the bishopric of Titus' gradually abated the fervor of their charity, and inflamed that of their zeal, even till they at last separated in mutual dudgeon, and sat glowering at each other in their distant corners with looks in which the 'Episcopalian' and 'Presbyterian' were much more evident than the 'Christian:' and so they persevered till the sudden summons to them and their fellow-prisoners, to prepare for instant execution, dissolved as with a charm the anger they had felt, and 'Forgive me, O my brother,' and 'I have sinned against thee, my brother,' broke from their lips as they took what they thought would be a last farewell." "I sometimes," says Froude, "in impatient moments, wish the laity would treat their controversial divines as two gentlemen once treated their seconds, when they found themselves forced into a duel without knowing what they were quarreling about. As the principals were being led up to their places, one of them whispered to the other, 'If you will shoot your second, I will shoot mine.'"

Benjamin Lay, a violent enthusiast and harsh reformer--contemporary with John Woolman--was, it is said, well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited him. Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three persons--himself and two other enthusiasts, assisted by Dr. Franklin. But on their first meeting at the doctor's house, the three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each other.

"Man," says Harrington, in his Political Aphorisms, "may rather be defined a religious than a rational creature, in regard that in other creatures there may be something of reason, but there is nothing of religion." "If you travel through the world well," says Plutarch, "you may find cities without walls, without literature, without kings, moneyless, and such as desire no coin; which know not what theatres or public halls of bodily exercise mean; but never was there, nor ever shall there be, any one city seen without temple, church, or chapel; without some god or other; which useth no prayers nor oaths, no prophecies and divinations, no sacrifices, either to obtain good blessings or to avert heavy curses and calamities. Nay, methinks a man should sooner find a city built in the air, without any plot of ground whereon it is seated, than that any commonwealth altogether void of religion and the opinion of the gods should either be first established, or afterward preserved and maintained in that estate. This is that containeth and holdeth together all human society; this is the foundation, prop, and stay of all."

The holy Nanac on the ground one day, Reclining with his feet toward Mecca, lay; A passing Moslem priest, offended, saw, And flaming for the honor of his law, Exclaimed: "Base infidel, thy prayers repeat! Toward Allah's house how dar'st thou turn thy feet?" Before the Moslem's shallow accents died, The pious but indignant Nanac cried: "And turn them, if thou canst, toward any spot, Wherein the awful house of God is not!"

"How striking a proof is it," says a writer on The Religions of India, "of the strength of the adoring principle in human nature--what an illustration of mankind's sense of dependence upon an unseen Supreme--that the grandest works which the nations have reared are those connected with religion! Were a spirit from some distant world to look down upon the surface of our planet as it spins round in the solar rays, his eye would be most attracted, as the morning light passed onward, by the glittering and painted pagodas of China, Borneo, and Japan; the richly ornamented temples and stupendous rock shrines of India; the dome-topped mosques and tall, slender minarets of Western Asia; the pyramids and vast temples of Egypt, with their mile-long avenues of gigantic statues and sphinxes; the graceful shrines of classic Greece; the basilicas of Rome and Byzantium; the semi-oriental church-domes of Moscow; the Gothic cathedrals of Western Europe: and as the day closed, the light would fall dimly upon the ruins of the grand sun-temples of Mexico and Peru, where, in the infancy of reason and humanity, human sacrifices were offered up, as if the All-Father were pleased with the agony of his creatures!"

"Moral rules," says Matthew Arnold, in his Essay on Marcus Aurelius, "apprehended as ideas first, and then rigorously followed as laws, are and must be for the sage only. The mass of mankind have neither force of intellect enough to apprehend them clearly as ideas, nor force of character enough to follow them strictly as laws. The mass of mankind can be carried along a course full of hardships for the natural man, can be borne over the thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet have borne it!... For the ordinary man, this sense of labor and sorrow constitutes an absolute disqualification; it paralyzes him; under the weight of it he cannot make way toward the goal at all. The paramount virtue of religion is that it has lighted up morality; that it has supplied the emotion and inspiration needful for carrying the sage along the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man along it at all. Even the religions with most dross in them have had something of this virtue; but the Christian religion manifests it with unexampled splendor." The Duke de Chaulnes once said to Dr. Johnson that "every religion had a certain degree of morality in it." "Ay, my lord," answered he, "but the Christian religion alone puts it on its proper basis." "It is Christianity alone," said Max Mueller, "which, as the religion of humanity, as the religion of no caste, of no chosen people, has taught us to respect the history of humanity as a whole, to discover the traces of a divine wisdom and love in the government of all the races of mankind, and to recognize, if possible, even in the lowest and crudest forms of religious belief, not the work of demoniacal agencies, but something that indicates a divine guidance, something that makes us perceive, with St. Peter, 'that God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.'" "There is a principle," said John Woolman--"the man who," it is said, "in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to the Divine pattern"--"there is a principle," said that Christian man, "which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names; it is, however, pure, and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become brethren."

"The turning-point," remarks Frances Power Cobbe, "between the old world and the new was the beginning of the Christian movement. The action upon human nature, which started on its new course, was the teaching and example of Christ. Christ was he who opened the age of endless progress. The old world grew from without, and was outwardly symmetric. The new one grows from within, and is not symmetric, nor ever will be; bearing in its heart the germ of an everlasting, unresting progress. The old world built its temples, hewed its statues, framed its philosophies, and wrote its glorious epics and dramas, so that nothing might evermore be added to them. The new world made its art, its philosophy, its poetry, all imperfect, yet instinct with a living spirit beyond the old. To the Parthenon not a stone could be added from the hour of its completion. To Milan and Cologne altar and chapel, statue and spire, will be added through the ages. Christ was not merely a moral reformer, inculcating pure ethics; not merely a religious reformer, clearing away old theological errors and teaching higher ideas of God. These things He was; but He might, for all we can tell, have been them both as fully, and yet have failed to be what He has actually been to our race. He might have taught the world better ethics and better theology, and yet have failed to infuse into it that new tide which has ever since coursed through its arteries and penetrated its minutest veins. What Christ has really done is beyond the kingdom of the intellect and its theologies; nay, even beyond the kingdom of the conscience and its recognition of duty. His work has been in that of the heart. He has transformed the law into the gospel. He has changed the bondage of the alien for the liberty of the sons of God. He has glorified virtue into holiness, religion into piety, and duty into love." His was "a religion," says Jeremy Taylor, "that taught men to be meek and humble, apt to receive injuries, but unapt to do any; a religion that gave countenance to the poor and pitiful, in a time when riches were adored, and ambition and pleasure had possessed the heart of all mankind; a religion that would change the face of things and the hearts of men, and break vile habits into gentleness and counsel." "Christianity has that in it," says Steele, in the Christian Hero, "which makes men pity, not scorn the wicked; and, by a beautiful kind of ignorance of themselves, think those wretches their equals." "Great and multiform," observes Lecky, in his History of European Morals,--summing up some of the results of Christianity,--"great and multiform have been the influences of Christian philanthropy. The high conception that has been formed of the sanctity of human life, the protection of infancy, the elevation and final emancipation of the slave classes, the suppression of barbarous games, the creation of a vast and multifarious organization of charity, and the education of the imagination by the Christian type, constituted together a movement of philanthropy which has never been paralleled or approached in the pagan world."

"If there be any good in thee," says the author of the Imitation, "believe that there is much more in others, that so thou mayest preserve humility. It hurteth thee not to submit to all men; but it hurteth thee most of all to prefer thyself even to one." Sir Henry Wotton being asked if he thought a Papist could be saved, replied, "You may be saved without knowing that." "Be assured," said Dean Young, "there can be but little honesty without thinking as well as possible of others; and there can be no safety without thinking humbly and distrustfully of ourselves." "It is easy," said Peterborough, in Imaginary Conversations, "to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty." "The character of a wise man," says Confucius, "consists in three things: to do himself what he tells others to do; to act on no occasion contrary to justice; and to bear with the weaknesses of those around him. Treat inferiors as if you might one day be in the hands of a master." "I recollect," says Saadi, "the verse which the elephant-driver rehearsed on the banks of the river Nile: 'If you are ignorant of the state of the ant under your foot, know that it resembles your own condition under the foot of the elephant.'" The stable of Confucius being burned down, when he was at court, on his return he said, "Has any man been hurt?" He did not ask about the horses. Of the death of Sir Roger de Coverley, his butler (Addison himself) wrote to The Spectator: "I am afraid he caught his death the last county-sessions, where he would go to see justice done to a poor widow woman, and her fatherless children, that had been wronged by a neighboring gentleman; for you know, sir, my good master was always the poor man's friend." Fenelon had a habit of bringing into his palace the wretched inhabitants of the country, whom the war had driven from their homes, and taking care of them, and feeding them at his own table. Seeing one day that one of these peasants eat nothing, he asked him the reason of his abstinence. "Alas! my lord," said the poor man, "in making my escape from my cottage, I had not time to bring off my cow, which was the support of my family. The enemy will drive her away, and I shall never find another so good." Fenelon, availing himself of his privilege of safe-conduct, immediately set out, accompanied by a servant, and drove the cow back himself to the peasant. A literary man, whose library was destroyed by fire, has been deservedly admired for saying, "I should have profited but little by my books, if they had not taught me how to bear the loss of them." The remark of Fenelon, who lost his in a similar way, is still more simple and touching. "I would much rather they were burnt than the cottage of a poor peasant." Lord Peterborough said of Fenelon, "He was a delicious creature. I was obliged to get away from him, or he would have made me pious." The influence of such a character brings to mind another passage from Saadi. "One day," he says, "as I was in the bath, a friend of mine put into my hand a piece of scented clay. I took it, and said to it, 'Art thou of heaven or earth? for I am charmed with thy delightful scent.' It answered, 'I was a despicable piece of clay; but I was some time in company of the rose: the sweet quality of my companion was communicated to me; otherwise I should have remained only what I appear to be, a bit of earth.'"

"If thou canst not make thyself such an one as thou wouldst," quoting the Imitation of Christ, "how canst thou expect to have another in all things to thy liking? We would willingly have others perfect, and yet we amend not our own faults. We would have others severely corrected, and will not be corrected ourselves. The large liberty of others displeaseth us; and yet we will not have our own desires denied us. We will have others kept under by strict laws; but in no sort will ourselves be restrained. And thus it appeareth how seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves." Recalling the apologue from Phaedrus, paraphrased by Bulwer:--

"From our necks, when life's journey begins, Two sacks, Jove, the Father, suspends, The one holds our own proper sins, The other the sins of our friends:

"The first, Man immediately throws Out of sight, out of mind, at his back; The last is so under his nose, He sees every grain in the sack."