Part 4
But when, either by the refinements of rationalism—a gross misnomer—or by superstitious corruptions, the central facts of Christianity have become obscured, no middle ground remains between the apathy of formality and the extravagance of enthusiasm. The substance of religion is gone, and its ceremonial only remains—remains to disgust the intelligent, and to delude the simple. This momentous principle is strikingly displayed in the construction of the Romish worship. That false system assumes the great business of pardon and reconciliation with God to be a transaction that belongs only to priestly negotiation; and as forgiveness has its price, and the priest is at once the appraiser of the offence, and the receiver of the mulct, it would be an intrusion upon his function, an interference that must derange his balances, for the transgressor to act on his own behalf, or ever to inquire what passes between the authorized agent of mercy, and the court of heaven. No room, then, is left in this system for the great and central subject of all devotional exercises. The doctrine of pardon having been cut off from worship, worship becomes unsubstantial. The expiatory death and availing intercession of the Son of God are taken within the rail of sacerdotal usurpation; and of necessity, if Jesus Christ is at all to be set forth "crucified before the people," it can only be as an object of dramatic exhibition. This is the secret of the popish magnificence of worship. Music, and painting, and pantomime, and a tinsel declamation, must do their several parts to disguise the subduction of the essentials of devotion. The laity, having nothing to transact with God, must be amused and beguiled, "lest haply the gospel of his grace" should enter the heart, and so the trading intervention of the priest be superseded.
The great purpose of the Romish worship, which is to preclude all genuine feelings by substituting the enthusiasm of the imagination, is accomplished, it must be confessed, with consummate skill, and a just knowledge of the human mind. The end proposed will, manifestly, be best attained when the emotions which spring from the imagination are made to resemble as nearly as possible those that belong to the heart. The nicest imitation will be the most successful in this machinery of delusion. Hence it is, that while all those means of excitement are employed which quicken the physical sensibilities, the deeper sensibilities of the soul are also addressed, and yet always by the intervention of dramatic or poetic images. A plain and undisguised appeal to the heart is unknown to the system.
If it be for a moment forgotten, that in every bell, bowl, and vest of the Romish service there is hid a device against the liberty and welfare of mankind, and that its gold, and pearls, and fine linen are the deckings of eternal ruin; and if this apparatus of worship be compared with the impurities and the cruelties of the old polytheistic rites, great praise may seem due to its contrivers. Nothing in Christianity that might subserve the purposes of dramatic effect has been overlooked; and even the most difficult parts of the materials have been wrought into keeping. The humiliations and poverty which shroud the glory of the principal personage, and the horrors of his death; as well as the awful beauty and compassionate advocacy of the virgin mother, the queen of heaven; the stern dignity of the twelve; the marvels of miraculous power; the heroism of the martyrs; the mortifications of the saints; the punishment of the enemies of the church; the practices of devils; the intercession and tutelary cares of the blessed; the sorrows of the nether world, and the glories of the upper;—all these materials of poetic and scenic effect have been elaborated by the genius and taste of the Italian artists, until a spectacle has been got up which leaves the most splendid shows of the ancient idol-worship of Greece and Rome at a vast distance of inferiority.[2]
But of what avail is all this sumptuous apparatus in promoting either genuine piety or purity of manners? History and existing facts leave no obscurity on the question; for the atrocity of crime, and the foulness of licentiousness, have ever kept pace with the perfection of the Romish service. Those nations upon whose manners it has worked its proper influence with the fullest effect, have been the most irreligious and the most debauched. Splendid rites and odious vices have dwelt in peace under the same consecrated roofs; and the actors and spectators of these sacred pantomimes have been wont to rush together from the solemn pomps of worship, to the chambers of filthy sin.
* * * * *
The substitution of poetic enthusiasm for genuine piety may, however, take place apart from the decorations of the Romish service; but the means employed must be of a more intellectual cast: eloquence must take the labor on itself, and must subject the doctrines of Scripture to a process of refinement which shall deposit whatever is substantial and affecting, and retain only what is magnific, pathetic, or sublime. And yet the principles of protestantism, and, in some respects, the national temper, and certainly the style and spirit, of the devotional services of the English Church, all discourage the attempt to hold forth the subjects of evangelical teaching in the gorgeous colors of an artificial oratory. And if the evidence of facts were listened to, such attempts would never be made by those who honestly desire to discharge the momentous duties of the Christian ministry in the manner most conducive to the welfare of their hearers. A blaze of emotion, having the semblance of piety, may be kindled by descriptive and impassioned harangues, such as those that are heard, on festival days, from French and Italian pulpits; but it will be found that the Divine Spirit, without whose agency the heart is never permanently affected, refuses to become a party in any such theatric exercises; these emotions will therefore subside without leaving a vestige of salutary influence.
Yet is there perhaps a lawful, though limited range open, in the pulpit, to the powers of descriptive eloquence. The preacher may safely embellish all those subsidiary topics that are not included within the circle of the primary principles on which the religious affections are built; for in addressing the imagination on these accessory points, he does not incur the danger of founding piety altogether upon illusions. The great and beautiful in nature, and perhaps the natural attributes of the Deity, and the episodes of sacred history, and the diversities of human character, and the scenes of social life, and the secular interests of mankind, may, by their incidental connection with more important themes furnish the means of awakening attention, and of varying the sameness of theological discourse. Or even if no unquestionable plea of utility could be urged in recommendation of such divertisements, at the worst they are not chargeable with the desecration of fundamental doctrines; nor do they generate delusion where delusion must be fatal. But it is not so with the principal matters of the preacher's message to his fellow-men, which can hardly be touched by the pencil of poetic or dramatic eloquence without incurring a hazard of the highest kind, inasmuch as the excitement so engendered more often totally excludes than merely impairs genuine feelings.
If the taste of an audience be quickened and cultivated, nothing is more easy to the teacher, or more agreeable to the taught, than a transition from the sphere of spiritual feeling to the regions of poetic excitement. Intellect is put in movement by the change; conscience is lulled; the weight that may have rested on the heart is upborne, and a state of animal elasticity induced, which, so long as it continues, dispels the sadness of earthly cares. Let it be supposed that the subject of discourse is that one which, of all others, should be the most solemnly affecting to those who admit the truth of Christianity—the awful process of the last judgment. The speaker, we will believe, intends nothing but to inspire a salutary alarm; and with this view he essays his utmost command of language, while he describes the sudden waning of the morning sun, the blackening of the heavens, the decadence of the stars, the growing thunders of coming wrath, the clang of the trumpet, whose notes break the slumbers of the dead, the crash of the pillars of earth, the bursting forth of the treasures of fire, and the solving of all things in the fervent heat. Then the bright appearance of the Judge, encircled by the splendors of the court of heaven; the convoked assemblage of witnesses from all worlds, filling the concave of the skies. Then the dense masses of the family of man, crowding the area of the great tribunal; the separation of the multitude; the irreversible sentence, the departure of the doomed, the triumphant ascent of the ransomed.
Compared with themes like these, how poor were the subjects of ancient oratory! And such is their force, and such the freshness of their power, that, though a thousand times presented to the imagination, they may yet again, whenever skilfully managed, command breathless attention while the sands of the preacher's hour are running out. Nor ought it to be absolutely affirmed that excitements of this kind can never produce salutary impressions; or that such impressions never accompany the hearer beyond the threshhold of the church, or survive a day's contact with secular interests: peremptory assertions of this sort are unnecessary to our argument. The question to be answered is, whether this species of movement be not of the nature of mere enthusiasm, and whether it does not ordinarily rather exclude than promote religious feelings.
In reference to the illustration we have adduced, there might be room for the previous inquiry, whether, on sound principles of interpretation, the language of Scripture ought to be understood as giving any warrant whatever to those material images of terrible sublimity with which it is usual to invest the proceedings of the future day of retribution. But let it be granted that the customary representations of popular oratory are not erroneous; and that when the preacher thus accumulates the physical machinery of terror, he is truly picturing that last scene of the terrestrial history of man. Even then it were not difficult, by an effort of reasoning and of meditation, and by following out the emotions of our moral constitution, to realize the feelings which must fill the soul on that day when the secrets of all hearts shall be published; and these feelings may be imagined, on probable grounds of anticipation, to be such as must render all exterior perceptions dim and make even the most stupendous magnificence of the surrounding scene to fade from the sight. It is nothing but the present torpor of the moral sentiments that allows to material ideas so much power to occupy and overwhelm the mind; but when the soul shall be quickened from its lethargy, then good and evil will take that seat of influence which has been usurped by unsubstantial images of greatness, beauty, or terror. What are the thunderings of a thousand storms; what the clangor of the trumpet, or the crash of earth, or the universal blaze; what the dazzling front of the celestial array, or even the appalling apparatus of punishment, to the spirit that has become alive to the consciousness of its own moral condition, and is standing naked in the manifested presence of the High and Holy One. That time of judgment which is to dispel all disguises, and to drag sin from its coverts into the full light of heaven, will assuredly find no leisure for the discursive eye; one perception, one emotion, will doubtless rule exclusive in the soul.
No extravagance or groundless refinement is contained in the supposition that, in the great day of inquiry and award, the moral shall so overwhelm the physical, that when, by regular process of evidence, according to the forms of that perfect court, conviction has been obtained of even some minor offence against the eternal laws of purity or justice—an offence which, if confessed on earth, would hardly have brought a blush upon the cheek—the heart will be penetrated with an anguish of shame that shall preclude the perception of surrounding wonders:—on that day it will be sin, not a flaming world, that shall appall the soul.
If anticipations such as these approve themselves to reason, it follows that the humblest and the least adorned eloquence of a purely moral kind, of which the only topics are sin and holiness, guilt and pardon, takes incomparably a nearer and a safer road towards the attainment of the great object of Christian instruction than does the most overwhelming oratory that addresses itself chiefly to the imagination. Nay, it may be affirmed that such oratory, however artfully elaborated, and however well intended it may be, is nothing better than a curtain, finely wrought, indeed, with gorgeous colors, but serving to hide from men the substantial terrors of the day of retribution.
Nothing, then, can be more glaringly inequitable than the manner in which the imputation of enthusiasm is frequently advanced in relation to pulpit oratory. On the ground either of common sense or of philosophical analysis, the epithet should be assigned to him who, in neglect or contempt of the substance of his argument, draws an idle and profitless excitement from its adjuncts. And on the same ground we must exculpate from such a charge the speaker who, however intense may be his fervor, is himself moved, and labors to move others, by what is most solemn and momentous in his subject. Now to recur for a moment to the illustration already adduced. In the anticipations we may form of the day of judgment, there are combined two perfectly distinct classes of ideas; on the one side there are those images of physical grandeur and of dramatic effect which offer themselves to the imaginative orator as the proper materials of his art, and which, if skillfully managed, will not fail to produce the kind of excitement that is desired by both speaker and hearer. On the other side there are, in these anticipations, the forensic proceedings which form the very substance of the fearful scene; and these proceedings, though of infinite moment to every human being, tend rather to quell than to excite the imagination, and therefore afford the preacher no means of producing effect, or even of keeping alive attention, unless the conscience of the hearer be alarmed, and his heart opened to the salutary impressions of fear, shame, and hope. In looking then at these themes, so distinct in their qualities, we ask—Is he the enthusiast who concerns himself with the substance; or he who amuses himself and his hearers with the shadow? Yet is it common to hear an orator spoken of as a sound and sober divine, who, for maintaining his influence and popularity, depends exclusively, constantly, and avowedly, upon his power to affect the imagination and the passions by poetic or dramatic images, and who is perpetually laboring to invest the solemn doctrines of religion in a garb of attractive eloquence. Meanwhile a less accomplished speaker, who—perhaps with more of vehemence than of elegance—insists simply upon the momentous part of his message, is branded as an enthusiast, merely because his fervor rises some degrees above that of others. Ineffable folly! to designate as enthusiastical the intensity of genuine emotions, and to approve as rational mere deliriums of the fancy, which intercept the influence of momentous truths upon the heart. Yet such is the wisdom of the world!
* * * * *
It cannot be pretended that the distinction between genuine and enthusiastic piety turns upon a metaphysical nicety: nothing so important to all men must be imagined to await the determination of abstruse questions; and if the distinction which has been illustrated in the preceding pages is not perfectly intelligible, it may safely be rejected as of no practical value. But surely there can hardly be any one so little observant of his own consciousness as not to have learned that the feelings excited by what is beautiful or sublime, terrible or pathetic, differ essentially from those emotions that are kindled in the heart by the ideas of goodness and of purity, or of malignancy and pollution. And every one must know that virtue and piety have their range among feelings of the latter, not of the former class; and every one must perceive that if the former occupy the mind to the exclusion of the latter, the moral sentiments cannot fail to be impoverished or corrupted. It is, moreover, very evident that the great facts of Christianity possess, adjunctively, the means of exciting, in a powerful degree, the emotions that belong to the imagination, as well as those which affect the heart; it therefore follows that the former may, in whole or in part, supplant the latter; and thus a fictitious piety be engendered, which, while it produces much of the semblance of true religion, yields none of its substantial fruits. In this manner it may happen, not in rare instances, but in many, that if, in the history of an individual, a season of religious excitement has once taken place, though it had in it little or nothing of the elements of a change from evil to good, it may have been assumed as constituting a valid and inamissible initiation in the Christian life; and if subsequently the decencies of religion and of morality have been preserved, a strong supposition of sincerity is entertained to the last, even though all was illusory.
Yet these melancholy cases of self-deception are not to be remedied by mere explanations of the delusion; on the contrary, the practical use to be made of definitions and distinctions and descriptions in matters of religious feeling, is to exhibit the necessity and to enhance the value of more available tests of sincerity. Thus, for example, if it appear that, in times like the present, when religious profession undergoes no severe probation, the danger of substituting some species of enthusiasm for true piety is extreme, there will appear the greater need to have recourse to those means of proof which infallibly discriminate between truth and pretension. This means of proof is nothing else than the standard of morals and of temper exhibited in the Scriptures. No other method of determining the most momentous of all questions is given to us, and none other is needed. We can neither ascend into the heavens, there to inspect the book of life, nor satisfactorily descend into the depths of the heart to analyze the complex and occult varieties of its emotions. But we may instantly and certainly know whether we do the things which he whom we call Lord has commanded.
[1] The metaphysico-devotional "Confessions" of the good Bishop of Hippo may perhaps not unfairly be placed at the head of this very peculiar species of literature. The author is reluctant to name some modern works which he might deem liable to objection, on the ground of their giving encouragement to religious sentimentalism, lest he should put into the mouth of the irreligious a style of criticism which they would not fail to abuse. He is aware that he runs a hazard of this sort in advancing what he has above advanced. He can only say that he thinks the subject much too important in itself, and too intimately connected with the theme of this Essay, to be passed in silence. And he cautions the irreligious reader, if the book should fall into the hand of any such unhappy person, not to suppose that the author would either disparage the important duty of self-examination; or speak slightingly of those mental struggles which will ever attend the conflict between good and evil in the heart that has admitted the purifying influence of the Holy Spirit. What he pleads for, is, that self-examination should always have reference to tho Christian standard of temper and conduct; and that spiritual conflicts should consist of a resistance against evil dispositions or immoral practices. What he fears on the part of religious folks is, a forgetfulness of meekness, temperance, integrity, amid the illusions—now gloomy, now gaudy—of a diseased brain.
[2] Strictly speaking, the religion of Greece was not eminently a religion of ritual splendor: on the contrary, there reigned in the public services of the most intellectual of all nations, much of the simplicity of devout fervor, much of the chasteness of fine taste, and much of the archaic and unadorned solemnity that had descended to the Greeks from the patriarchal ages. Even in their theatres, and on their race-courses, there was far less of pomp and finery than is demanded on similar occasions by a modern European populace. The Romans carried the _sublime in decoration_ to a further point; and in the same degree exchanged reason and taste for colors, gildings, and draperies. Upon the Roman barbaric magnificence the corrupt church of the fifth and following centuries engrafted, in a confused medley, the gorgeous conceptions of the eastern nations—the terrible ideas of the northern hordes—the jugglings of Italian priests, and the sheer puerilities of monks and children. Such is the _Christian_ worship of Rome! Nevertheless, its elements comprise so much that is beautiful, or imposing, that its puerilities catch not the eye; and a man must be very rational who altogether repels the impression of its services.
SECTION III.
ENTHUSIASTIC PERVERSIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE INFLUENCE.
A sentiment natural to the human mind, leads it to entertain and to dwell with pleasure upon the belief of the stability and permanence of the material world. Whether we view the multiform ranks of organized and animated beings which cover the earth, or examine the occult processes of nature, or look upwards, and contemplate distant worlds, the regularity with which the great machine of the visible creation effects its revolutions inspires a deep emotion of delight. This feeling brings with it involuntarily the supposition of extended duration; nor is it without extreme difficulty that we can separate the idea of so vast a combination of causes and effects, moving forward with unfailing precision, from the thought, if not of eternity, yet of unnumbered ages gone by, and yet to come. While these natural impressions occupy the mind, a strange revulsion of feeling takes place, if suddenly it be recollected that the massy pillars of creation, with its towering superstructure, and its high-wrought embellishments, and its innumerable tenants, are absolutely destitute of intrinsic permanency, and that the stupendous frame, with its nice and mighty movements, is incessantly issued anew from the fount of being. Apart from the divine volition, perpetually active, there can be no title to existence; and in the moment which should succeed to the cessation of the efficient will of the First Cause, all creatures must fall back to utter dissolution.