Part 17
Whether the religion for which the reformers suffered, "was from heaven or of men," is not our question; but whether it is not a religion of robust constitution, framed to endure, and to spread, and to vanquish the hearts of men? With the history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in view, it is asked if Christianity be a system that must always lean upon ignorance, and craft, and despotism, and which, when those rotten stays are removed, must fail and be seen no more?
Yet another species of trial was in store to give proof of the indestructibility and victorious power of Christianity. It remained to be seen whether, when the agitations, political and moral, that were consequent upon the great schism which had taken place in Europe had subsided, and when the season of slumber and exhaustion came on, and when human reason, strengthened and refined by physical science, and elegant literature, should awake fully to the consciousness of its powers; whether then the religion of the Bible could retain its hold of the nations; or at least of those of them that enjoyed, without limit, the happy influences of political liberty, and intellectual light. This was a sort of probation which Christianity had never before passed through.
And what were the omens under which it entered upon the new trial of its strength? Were the friends of Christianity at that moment of portentous conflict awake, and vigilant, and stout-hearted, and thoroughly armed to repel assaults? The very reverse was the fact; for at the instant when the atheistical conspiracy made its long-concerted, well-advised and consentaneous attack, there was scarcely a pulse of life left in the Christian body, in any one of the Protestant states. The old superstitions had crawled back into many of their ancient corners. In other quarters the spirit of protestation against those superstitions had breathed itself away in trivial wranglings, or had given place to infidelity—infidelity aggravated by stalled hypocrisy. The Church of England, the chief prop of modern Christianity, was then, to a great extent, torpid, and fainting under the incubus, either of false doctrine, or of a secular spirit; at least it seemed incapable of the effort which the peril of the time demanded: few indeed of her sons were panoplied, and sound-hearted, as champions in such a cause should be. Within a part only of a small body of Dissenters, (for a part was smitten with the plague of heresy) and that part in great measure disqualified from free and energetic action by rigidities, and scruples, and divisions, was contained almost all the religious life and fervor anywhere to be found in Christendom.
Meanwhile the infidel machinators had chosen their ground at leisure, and were wrought to the highest pitch of energy by a confident, and, as it might seem, a well-founded hope of success. They were backed by the secret wishes, or the undissembled cheerings of almost the entire body of educated men throughout Europe. They used the only language then common to the civilized world, and a language which might be imagined to have been framed and finished designedly to accomplish the demolition of whatever was grave and venerated; a language, beyond any other, of raillery, of insinuation, and of sophistry; a language of polished missiles, whose temper could penetrate not only the cloak of imposture, but the shield of truth.
At the same portentous moment the shocks and upheavings of political commotion opened a thousand fissures in the ancient structure of moral and religious sentiment; and the enemies of Christianity, surprised by unexpected success, rushed forward to achieve, as they thought, an easy triumph. The firmest and the wisest friends of old opinions desponded, and many believed that a few years would see Atheism the universal doctrine of the western nations, as well as military despotism the only form of government.
It is difficult to imagine a single advantage that was lacking to the promoters of infidelity, or a single circumstance of peril and ill-omen that was not present to deepen the gloom of the friends of religion. The actual issue of that signal crisis is before our eyes in the freshness of a recent event. Christianity—we ask not whether for the benefit or the injury of the world—has triumphed; the mere fact is all that concerns our argument. But shall it be said, or if said, believed, that the late resurrection of the religion of the Bible has been managed in the cabinets of monarchs? Have kings and emperors given this turn to public opinion, which now compels infidelity to hide its shame behind the very mask of hypocrisy that it had so lately torn from the face of the priest? To come home to facts with which all must be familiar: Has there not been heard, within the last few years, from the most enlightened, the most sober-minded, and the freest people of Europe, a firm, articulate, spontaneous, and cordial expression of preference, and of enhanced veneration towards Christianity? Again, then, we ask—not if this religion be true, but if it have not, even beneath our own observation, given proof of indestructible vigor?
The spread of the English stock, and language, and literature, over the North American continent, has afforded a distinct and very significant indication of the power of Christianity to retain its hold of the human mind, and of its aptness to run hand-in-hand with civilization, even when unaided by those secular succors to which its enemies in malice, and some of its friends in over-caution, are prone to attribute too much importance. The tendency of republicanism, which obviously has some strong affinity with infidelity, and the connection of the colonies, at the moment of their revolt, with France, and the prevalence of a peculiarly eager and uncorrected commercial temper, and the absence of every sort and semblance of restraint upon opinion, were concurrent circumstances, belonging to the infancy of the American Union, of a kind which put to the severest test the instrinsic power of Christianity, in retaining its hold of the human mind. Could infidel experimenters have wished for conditions more equitable, under which to try the respective forces of the opposing systems?
And what has been the issue? It is true that infidelity holds still its ground in the United States, as in Europe; and there, as in Europe, keeps company with whatever is debauched, sordid, oppressive, reckless, ruffian-like. But at the same time Christianity, has gained rather than lost ground, and shows itself there in a style of as much fervor and zeal as in England; and perhaps, even it has the advantage in these respects. Wherever, on that continent, good order and intelligence are spreading, there also the religion of the Bible spreads. And if it be probable that the English race, and language, and institutions, will, in a century, pervade its deserts, all appearances favor the belief that the edifices of Christian worship will bless every landscape of the present wilderness that shall then "blossom as the rose."
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Before, in pursuing this method of frigid calculation, the Christian doctrine be weighed against the several systems with which it must contend ere it wins its universal triumph, it is proper to inquire—what is the probability that a collision will actually take place. To estimate fairly this probability, those who are but slenderly acquainted with the religious world, in the British Islands, in America, and in the Protestant states of the continent, must understand, much better than generally they do, the precise nature of the remarkable revolution that has, within the last thirty years, been effected in the sentiments of Christians on the subject of the diffusion of their religion. Such slenderly-informed persons may very naturally imagine that the prodigious efforts that have of late been made to diffuse Christianity through the world have sprung simply from a heat and excitement, in its nature transient, and which, therefore, must be expected soon to subside. But this supposition will be found to be incomplete and erroneous. A stir and kindling of feeling has no doubt happened; but this feeling, and the activities which followed from it, have given occasion to the resurrection, so to speak, of a capital article of Christian morals, which, after lying almost latent for centuries, stands forth in undisputed and prominent authority in the modern code of religious duty. This recovered principle is now constantly recognized and enforced; and it is seen to exert its influence, not merely within the circles of central movement, but even in the remotest orbits of religious feeling, where warmth and energy are manifestly not excessive.
The founder of Christianity left with his disciples the unlimited injunction to go forth into all the world, and to preach the Gospel to every creature. This command, corroborated by others of equivalent import, and enforced by the very nature of the Christian doctrine, and by the spirit of Christian charity, is now understood and acknowledged, in a manner new to the church, to be of universal obligation, so that no Christian, how obscure soever may be his station, or small his talents, or limited his means, can be held to stand altogether excused from the duty of fulfilling, in some way, the last mandate of his Lord. Thus understood, this command makes every believer a preacher and a missionary; or at least obliges him to see to it, so far as his ability extends, that the labors of diffusive evangelization are actually performed by a substitute.
Before the commencement of the recent missionary efforts, there had been missions to the heathen. But these, if carried on with anything more than a perfunctory assiduity, were anomalous to the general feeling of Christians, and sprung from the exemplary zeal of individuals. But the modern missions are maintained neither by the zeal of the few, nor by the mere zeal of the many; but rather by the deep-seated impulsive power of a grave conviction, pressing on the conscience even of the inert and the selfish—and much more on the hearts of the fervent and devoted—that a Christian has no more liberty to withhold his aid and service from these evangelizing associations than he has to abandon the duties of common life; and that, for a man to profess hope in Christ, and to deny what he might spare to promote the diffusion of the Gospel, is the most egregious of all practical solecisms.
Those who are ignorant of this remarkable revolution of sentiment, or who may be sceptical concerning it, would do well to take up, at hazard, any dozen of the discourses, and reports, and tracts, that are yearly, and monthly, and weekly, flowing from the religious press, and among which they will hardly find one that does not assume this as an admitted principle, and as the ultimate motive of every hortatory appeal. And if, among these ephemera, there are any, and such are not seldom to be found, that bear the stamp of superior intelligence, it will be seen almost invariably, that the reasoner summons all the force of his mind, not so much to prove that every Christian is bound to promote the diffusion of scriptural knowledge, as by some new ingenuity of illustration to place the acknowledged duty in a stronger light, or to show in what manner it bears upon the specific object for which he pleads. And it is to be noted that these popular addresses exhibit, for the most part, much more of the gravity and calmness which naturally belong to the style of those who feel that they are standing upon undisputed ground, than of the solicitude, or the inflammatory verbosity and turgidness of writers who are laboring to fan a decaying blaze of indefensible enthusiasm.
Or again: it may well be inferred that the modern missionary zeal springs from motives of a substantial and permanent kind, since they affect, without exception, every body of Christians (holding the doctrines of the Reformation) and are felt in the same manner by the Christians of every Protestant community of Europe. And moreover the feeling has not declined, but has sensibly increased since the first years of its activity; and it has endured the trial, in some instances, of severe and long-continued discomfitures, or of partial success. These are indications of a spring of action far more sedate and enduring than any feverish excitement can ever supply.
But if the extent, and the power, and the promise of the existing missionary zeal are to be duly estimated, the inquirer should visit the homes of our religious folks; or enter the schools in which their children are trained, and there learn what is the doctrine inculcated upon those who are rising up to take their place on the arena of life: or let him listen to the hymns they lisp, and examine the tracts they read, and he will meet the same great principle in a thousand manners enforced, namely—That it is the duty of every Christian, young or old, rich or poor, to take part in sending the Gospel to all nations. Or let the observer notice the Missionary Box, in the school-room, in the nursery, in the shop-parlor, in the farm-house kitchen, in the cottage, of the religious; and let him mark the multiform contrivances for swelling the amount of the revenues of Christian charity, devised, and zealously persisted in, by youths and by little ones, whose parents, at the same age, thought of nothing but of cakes and sports.
And does all this steady movement, this wide-spreading and closely-compacted system of united effort, this mechanism in which infancy as well as maturity takes its part, indicate nothing for futurity? Shall it all have passed away and be forgotten with the present generation? If indeed it were confined to a sect, or to a province, or to a country, it might, though that were unlikely; but not if it be the common style of Christian feeling in every part of the world where spiritual Christianity exists at all. Particular associations may be dissolved, and particular schemes may be broken up; and standard-bearers in the sacred cause may faint; and the zeal of certain communities may fade; or political disasters may here and there bring ruin upon pious labors; but unless devastation universal sweeps over the face of the civilized world, the doctrine of missionary zeal, which has been broad-cast over Christendom, in the present day, will not fail of coming to its harvest. And now, if there are any who wish ill to Christianity, let them hasten to prevent the measures of its friends, let them teach their babes to hate the Gospel; for those who love it are taking such means to insure its future triumph as can hardly fail of success, and such as, on common grounds of calculation, make it likely that even the sons and the daughters of the present race of infidels may be involved in the approaching conquests of the Son of David; and that they shall actually join in the loud hosanna, announcing his accession to the throne of universal empire.
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It is then more than barely probable—it is almost certain—that the attempt to offer Christianity to all nations, will not soon be abandoned. The next question is this—whether, on grounds of frigid calculation, such attempts are recommended by any fair promise of success.
When the term calculation is used in reference to the diffusion of Christianity, a use of the word which perhaps may offend the ear of piety, an important distinction must be kept in view between that cordial admission of the Gospel which renovates the hearts of men individually, and that change of opinion and profession which may be brought about among a people by means that fall short of possessing efficiency to produce repentance and faith. And while the former must everywhere, at home or abroad, be the great object aimed at and desired by the Christian ministry, the latter is both in itself, even if nothing more were done, and as a preliminary, and a probable means conducing to the production of genuine piety, a most desirable and happy revolution. It is moreover a revolution which may be reckoned to lie within the range of human agency, when judiciously and perseveringly applied. For Christianity is a species of knowledge, in its nature communicable; and, as a system of opinions, or as a code of morals, it possesses a manifest superiority, if fairly brought into comparison with any existing religious system. And if it may reasonably be asked concerning any people—how shall they believe without a preacher? the converse question might, with little less confidence be put—how shall they not believe with one?
Pagan and Mohammedan nations ought to be thought of by a Christian people just as the master of a numerous household, if he be wise and benevolent, thinks of the untutored members of his family; for although no actual subjection is owned on the one side, or can be exercised on the other, there exists, virtually, the relationship and the responsibilities of that domination which is ever possessed by knowledge, intelligence, and virtue, over ignorance and degradation. Now, as the master of a family may, to a greater or less extent, infallibly succeed by zeal, affection, skill, and patience, in dispelling the superstitions and the ignorance which have happened to come under his roof; so, with zeal, affection, skill, and patience, proportioned to the greatness of the work, may the Christian nations at length effect a cleansing of the earth from the cruelties and impurities of polytheism.
Nothing inconsistent with the humblest and most devout dependence upon the divine agency is implied in this supposition, any more than in the belief that our children and servants may be trained in the knowledge of God, and in the decencies of Christian worship. Is there not reason to think that an inattention to this plain principle has prevented, in some measure, the adoption of those vigorous and extended operations which common sense prescribes as the proper and probable means of diffusing at once civilization and religion through the world?
The probability of a change of religion on the part of an entire people may, it is true, be argued on the adverse, as well as on the favorable side, and with great appearance of reason. The obstinacy of the human mind in adhering to the worse, even when the better is presented to its choice, seems not seldom to possess the invincibility of a physical law; and it has been found as impracticable to reform an absurd usage, as to remodel the national physiognomy. How often have both reason and despotism been baffled in their endeavors to effect even a trivial alteration in ancient usages or costumes; and there has been room to suppose, that the tenacity of life belonging to customs or opinions, bears direct proportion always to their absurdity and their mischievous consequence. The high antiquity, and the still unbroken force of the Asiatic idolatries, in themselves so hideous, so burdensome, and so sanguinary, stand forth as appalling confirmations of the truth, that whatever has once gained for itself the sanction of time, may boldly defy the assaults of reason. And then, when religious opinions and practices are to question, we have not merely to break through the iron law of immemorial usage, but to encounter the living opposition of the priesthood, already firmly seated in the cloud-girt throne of supposed supernatural power, and interested as deeply as men can be who have at stake their civil existence, and their credit, and their means of luxurious idleness. Again, in most instances, ancient religious opinions have sent down their roots through the solid structure of the civil institutions of the people:—the old superstition is an oak that was sown by the builder of the state, and has actually pervaded the entire foundations, and forms now the living bond-timber, to remove which would be to bring to the ground the whole tottering masonry of the social system.
When this side of the question has been long and exclusively contemplated, the schemes of missionary zeal may seem to be utterly chimerical; or if not chimerical—dangerous. But the friends of mankind do not forget that the very same objects may be viewed in another light. Even before particular facts are appealed to, an hypothesis of an opposite kind may plausibly be advanced. It may be alleged that Opinion—the invisible power that rules the world—is a name without substance, which, though omnipotent so long as it is thought to be so, vanishes quicker than a mist, when once suspected to be impotent. It might also with great appearance of reason be affirmed as a universal law of the moral world, that the better, when fairly brought into collision with the worse, possesses an infallible certainty of ultimate prevalence.
On this same principle, it is common to affirm that the improved mechanical processes of a scientific people will at length necessarily supplant the operose, and wasteful, and inefficient methods practised by half-civilized nations. And thus probably will the ruinous and depopulating usages of despotism give way before the wealth-giving maxims of legal government. And thus also may it be hoped that a pure theology, and a pure morality, shall, if zealously diffused, prevail till they have removed all superstitions, with all their corruptions. Even on the lowest principles of natural theology, some such meditative power may be presumed to have been imparted to the human system, as a provision against the progress of utter moral dissolution.
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But while an argument of this sort is at issue, the simple method of appealing to such facts as may seem to bear conclusively upon the question, will assuredly not be neglected; and it will be asked, whether there are on record any instances which give a peremptory negative to the assertion that a national change of religion ought to be thought of as an event in the last degree improbable. And why should not the spread and triumph of Christianity in the first ages of its promulgation be accepted as an instance absolutely conclusive, and in the fullest sense analogous to the problem that is to be solved. To whatever causes that first prevalence of the religion of the Bible may be attributed, it is still an unquestioned fact that entire nations—not one or two, but many, and in every stage of advancement on the course of civilization—were actually brought to abandon their ancient superstitions, and to profess the Gospel.
These amazing revolutions took place under almost every imaginable variety of circumstances, and they occupied a period of not more than three centuries, and the change had been wrought, to a great extent, before the aid of political succor came in; and even in the front of political opposition. People after people fell away from their idolatries, and assumed (with how much or how little of cordial feeling matters not) the Christian name and code.