Part 2

In rude ages, and amid feudal customs, it has perhaps been no unhappy thing that this image of servitude has been transmitted into the conceptions of faith: it may have touched with some sanctity an inevitable submission, and mingled a sentiment of loyalty with religion. But the _external relation_ of serf and lord is no type of the _internal relation_ of spirit to spirit, which alone constitutes religion to us. To God himself, with all his infinitude, we are not _slaves_; we are not his _property_, but his children; he regards us, not as _things_, but as _persons_; he does not so much command us, as appeal to us; and in our obedience, it is not his _bidding_ that we serve, but that divine Law of Right of which he makes us conscious as the rule of His nature only more perfectly than of ours. To obey him as _slaves_, in fear, and with an eye upon his power, is, with all our punctuality and anxiety, simply and entirely to _disobey_ him; nor is anything precious in his sight, except the free consent of heart with which we apprehend what is holy to his thought and embrace what is in harmony with his perfection. Still less can we be _slaves_ to Christ, who is no autocrat to us, but our freely followed leader towards God; the guide of our pilgrim troop in quest of a holy land; who gives us no law from the mandates of his will, but only interprets for us, and makes burn within us, in characters of fire, the law of our own hearts; who has no power over us, except through the affections he awakens and the aspirations he sets upon the watch. We have emerged from the Religion of _Law_, whose only sentiment is that of _obedience to sovereignty_; we have passed from the religion of _Salvation_, whose life consists in _gratitude to a Deliverer_; and we are capable only of a religion of _reverence_, which bows before the _authority of Goodness_. And in the infinite ranks of excellence, from the highest to the lowest, there are no lords and slaves; the dependence is ever that of internal charm, not of external bond; the _authority_ is but represented and impersonated in another and a better soul, but has its living seat within our own; and in this true and elevating worship, the more we are disposed of by another, the more do we feel that we are our own. This is a relation which the political terms of the expected theocracy are ill adapted to express; and if we have required many centuries to grope our way to this clearest glory of religion, to disengage it from the impure admixture of servile fear and revolting presumption; if it has taken long for us to melt away in our imagination the images of thrones and tribunals, of prize-givings and prisons, of a police and assizes of the universe; if only at the eleventh hour of our faith, the cloud has passed away, and shown us the true angel-ladder that springs from earth to heaven, the pure climax of souls whereon each below looks up and rises, yet each above bends down and helps;--the discovery which brings such peace and freedom to the heart, has been delayed by the mistaken identification of the entire creed of the first age with the essence of Christianity. Now that God has shown us so much more, has tried the divine seed of the Gospel on so various a soil of history, and enabled us to distinguish its fairest blossoms and its choicest fruits, a much larger meaning than was possible at first must be given to the purpose of his revelation. Even to Paul, Christ was mainly the great representative of a theocratic idea; and was in no other sense an object of _spiritual_ belief, than that he was not on earth and mortal, but in heaven and immortal. That _faith_ in Christ, which then prominently denoted belief in his appointed return, and _allegiance_ to him as God's viceroy in this world, is now transferred into quite a different thing. It is altogether a moral and affectionate sentiment: an acknowledgment of him as the highest impersonation of divine excellence and inspired insight yet given to the world; a trust in him as the only realized type of perfection that can mediate for us between ourselves and God; a faithfulness to him, as making us conscious of what we are and what God and our conscience would have us to be. It is vain to pretend that revelation is a fixed and stereotyped thing. It was born, as the divinest things must be, among human conditions; and into it ever since human conditions have perpetually flowed. The elements of Hebrew thought surrounded the sacred centre at first, and have been erroneously identified with it by all Unitarian churches in every age. The Hellenic intellect afterwards streamed towards the fresh point of life and faith, and gathered around it the metaphysical system of Trinitarian dogma in which orthodox communions of all times have, with parallel error, sought the essence of the Gospel. The true principle of the religion has been _secreted in both, and consisted in neither_: it has lain unnoticed in the midst, in the silent chamber of the heart, around which the clamor of the disputatious intellect whirls without entrance. The agency of Christ's mind as the expression of God's moral nature and providence, and as the realized ideal of beauty and excellence,--this is the power of God and the wisdom of God, which has made vain the counsels of the world, and baffled the foolishness of the Church. This is the Gospel's centre of stability,--"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."

Few persons can be insensible to the sublimity of this expression upon the relation between

CHRIST, NATURE, PROVIDENCE, AND GOD.

In conclusion, then, I revert, with freshened persuasion, to the statement with which I commenced. Jesus Christ of Nazareth, God hath presented to us simply in his inspired humanity. Him we accept, not indeed as very God, but as the true image of God, commissioned to show what no written doctrinal record could declare, the entire moral perfections of Deity. We accept, not indeed his body, not the struggles of his sensitive nature, not the travail of his soul, but his purity, his tenderness, his absolute devotion to the great idea of right, his patient and compassionate warfare against misery and guilt, as the most distinct and beautiful expression of the Divine mind. The peculiar office of Christ is to supply a new _moral_ image of Providence; and everything, therefore, except the _moral_ complexion of his mind, we leave behind as human and historical merely, and apply to no religious use. I have already stated in what way nature and the Gospel combine to bring before us the great object of our trust and worship. The universe gives us the scale of God, and Christ, his Spirit. We climb to the infinitude of his nature by the awful pathway of the stars, where whole forests of worlds silently quiver here and there, like a small leaf of light. We dive into his eternity, through the ocean waves of time, that roll and solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the wrecks of departed things upon our present globe. The scope of his intellect, and the majesty of his rule, are seen in the tranquil order and everlasting silence that reign through the fields of his volition. And the spirit that animates the whole is like that of the Prophet of Nazareth; the thoughts that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged with fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of One that passed no sorrow by. The government of this world, its mysterious allotments of good and ill, its successions of birth and death, its hopes of progress and of peace, each life of individual or nation, is under the administration of One, of whose rectitude and benevolence, whose sympathy with all the holiest aspirations of our virtue and our love, Christ is the appointed emblem. A faith that spreads around and within the mind a Deity thus sublime and holy, feeds the light of every pure affection, and presses with omnipotent power on the conscience; and our only prayer is, that we may walk as children of such light.

It seems as if no one capable of understanding could resist the convincing cogency of the following exhibition of

THE IDEA OF VICARIOUS JUSTICE.

It is only natural that the parable of the Prodigal Son should be no favorite with those who deny the unconditional mercy of God. The place which this divine tale occupies in the Unitarian theology appears to be filled, in the orthodox scheme, by the story of Zaleucus, king of the Locrians; which has been appealed to in the present controversy by both the lecturers on the Atonement, and seems to be the only endurable illustration presented, even by Pagan history, of the execution of vicarious punishment. This monarch had passed a law condemning adulterers to the loss of both eyes. His own son was convicted of the crime; and, to satisfy at once the claims of law and of clemency, the royal parent "commanded one of his own eyes to be pulled out, and one of his son's." Is it too bold a heresy to confess that there seems to me something heathenish in this example, and that, as an exponent of the Divine character, I more willingly revere the Father of the prodigal than the father of the adulterer?

Without entering, however, into any comparison between the Locrian and the Galilean parable, I would observe, that the vicarious theory receives no illustration from this fragment of ancient history. There is no analogy between the cases, except in the violation of truth and wisdom which both exhibit; and whatever we are instructed to admire in Zaleucus, will be found on close inspection to be absent from the orthodox representation of God. We pity the Grecian king, who had made a law without foresight of its application, and so sympathize with his desire to evade it, that any quibble which legal ingenuity can devise for this purpose passes with slight condemnation; casuistry refuses to be severe with a man implicated in such a difficulty. But the Creator and Legislator of the human race, having perfect knowledge of the future, can never be surprised into a similar perplexity; or ever pass a law at one time which at another he desires to evade. Even were it so, there would seem to be less that is unworthy of his moral perfection in saying plainly, with the ancient Hebrews, that he "repented of the evil he thought to do," and said, "It shall not be," than in ascribing to him a device for preserving consistency, in which no one capable of appreciating veracity can pretend to discern any sincere fulfilment of the law. However barbarous the idea of Divine "repentance," it is at least ingenuous. Nor does this incident of Zaleucus and his son present any parallel to the alleged relation between the Divine Father who receives, and the Divine Son who gives, the satisfaction for human guilt. The Locrian king took a part of the penalty himself, and left the remainder where it was due; but the Sovereign Lawgiver of Calvinism puts the whole upon another. To sustain the analogy, Zaleucus should have permitted an innocent son to have both his eyes put out, and the convicted adulterer to escape.

The doctrine of Atonement has introduced among Trinitarians a mode of speaking respecting God, which grates most painfully against the reverential affections due to him. His nature is dismembered into a number of attributes, foreign to each other, and preferring rival claims; the Divine tranquillity appears as the equilibrium of opposing pressures,--the Divine administration as a resultant from the collision of hostile forces. Goodness pleads for that which holiness forbids; and the Paternal God would do many a mercy, did the Sovereign God allow. The idea of a conflict or embarrassment in the Supreme Mind being thus introduced, and the believer being haunted by the feeling of some tremendous difficulty affecting the Infinite government, the vicarious economy is brought forward as the relief, the solution of the whole perplexity; the union, by a blessed compromise, of attributes that could never combine in any scheme before. The main business of theology is made to consist in stating the conditions and expounding the solution of this imaginary problem. The cardinal difficulty is thought to be the reconciliation of justice and mercy; and, as the one is represented under the image of a Sovereign, the other under that of a Father, the question assumes this form: How can the same being at every moment possess both these characters, without abandoning any function or feeling appropriate to either? how, especially, can the Judge remit?--it is beyond his power; yet how can the Parent punish to the uttermost?--it is contrary to his nature.

All this difficulty is merely fictitious, arising out of the determination to make out that God is both wholly Judge and wholly Father; from an anxiety, that is, to adhere to two metaphors, as applicable, in every particular, to the Divine Being. It is evident that both must be, to a great extent, inappropriate; and in nothing, surely, is the impropriety more manifest, than in the assertion that, as sovereign, God is naturally bound to execute laws which, nevertheless, it would be desirable to remit, or change in their operation. Whatever painful necessities the imperfection of human legislation and judicial procedure may impose, the Omniscient Ruler can make no law which he will not to all eternity, and with entire consent of his whole nature, deem it well to execute. This is the Unitarian answer to the constant question, "How can God forgive in defiance of his own law?" It is not in defiance of his laws: every one of which will be fulfilled to the uttermost, in conformity with his first intent; but nowhere has he declared that he would not forgive. All justice consists in treating moral agents according to their character; the inexorability of human law arises solely from the imperfection with which it can attain this end, and is not the essence, but the alloy, of equity; but God, who searches and controls the heart, exercises that perfect justice, which permits the penal suffering to depart only with the moral guilt; and pardons, not by cancelling any sentence, but by obeying his eternal purpose to meet the wanderer returning homeward, and give his blessing to the restored. Only by such restoration can any past guilt be effaced. The thoughts, emotions, and sufferings of sin, once committed, are woven into the fabric of the soul; and are as incapable of being absolutely obliterated thence and put back into non-existence, as moments of being struck from the past, or the parts of space from infinitude. Herein we behold alike "the goodness and the severity of God"; and adore in him, not the balance of contrary tendencies, but the harmony of consentaneous perfections. How plainly does experience show that, if his personal unity be given up, his moral unity cannot be preserved!

The author himself is the best exemplification of the man described in this account of the

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN APPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION.

The difference between the ordinary visual gaze upon the external universe, and the interpreting glance of science, is felt by every cultivated understanding to be immeasurable;--and the contrast is not less between that dull sense of what passes within him, which is forced upon a man by mere practical experience, and the exact consciousness, the discriminative perception, the easy comprehension of his own (and, so far as they are expressed by faithful symbols, of others') states and affections, possessed by the patient analyst of thought and emotion, and careful collector of their laws. The mighty mass of human achievement and human failure, in intellectual research, in moral endeavor, in social economy and government, lapses into order before him, and distributes itself among the provinces of determinate laws. The structure of a child's perplexity, and the fallacies of the most ambitious hypothesis, lie open to him as readily, as to the artisan a flaw in the fabric of his own craft. The creations of art fall before him into their elements; and, dissolving away their constituent _matter_, which is an accident of their age, leave upon his mind their permanent _form_ of beauty, as his guide to a true and noble criticism. The progress and the aberrations of human reason, in its quest of truth, are as clearly appreciated by him, as the passages of happy skill or ignorant roving in some voyage of discovery, when the outlines and relations of the sphere on which it is made become fully known. Discerning distinctly the different kinds of evidence appropriate to different departments of truth, and weighing the scientific value of every idea and method of thought, he is not at the mercy of each superficial impression and obtrusive phase presented to him by the subjects of his contemplation; but he attains a certain rational tact and graduated feeling of certainty in abstract matters of opinion, by which he escapes alike the miseries of undefined doubt, and the passions of unqualified dogmatism. In short, the great idea of Science is applied by him to the complicated workings of the mind of man; interprets the activities of his nature, and gives laws to the administration of his life; and, with wonderful analysis, investigates the properties, and establishes the equation, of their most labyrinthine curves.

What a rebuke upon dogmatic sciolists, what a glorious invitation to study, are conveyed in the genial, broad, mental hospitality of the succeeding paragraph!

NECESSITY OF LEARNING IN PHILOSOPHY.

If there is one department of knowledge more than another in which a contemptuous disregard of the meditations and theories of distant periods and nations is misplaced, it is in the philosophy of man,--which can have no adequate breadth of basis till it reposes on the consciousness and covers the mental experience of the universal race; and to construct which out of purely personal materials, is like attempting to lay down the curves and finish the theory of terrestrial magnetism on the strength of a few closet experiments. No man, however large-thoughted and composite his mind, can accept of _himself_ as the type of universal human nature. It will even be a great and rare endowment, if, with every aid of exact learning and unwearying patience, he is able to penetrate the atmosphere of others' understanding, and to observe the forms and colors which the objects of contemplation assume, when beheld through this peculiar medium. Simply to avail one's self of the experience of mankind, and know what it has really been, demands no little scope of imagination and versatility of intellectual sympathy. When these qualities are so deficient in a thinker that he cannot well achieve this knowledge, it is a great misfortune to his philosophy; when the want is such that he does not even desire it, it amounts to an absolute disqualification. Without, therefore, pledging ourselves to the eclectic principles which prevail in the present school of philosophy in France, we must beware of the intolerant dogmatism of Bentham in England, sanctioned, as we have seen, by one of the masters of the antagonist metaphysics in Germany. Indeed, it will be a chief purpose of all my lectures to enable you to profit by the light of other minds; in every province of the vast region which we shall explore together, to indicate the paths which they have traversed before, nor ever to turn away from their points of discovery, without raising some rude monument at least of honest and commemorative praise. To introduce you to the works, to interpret the difficulties, to do honor to the labors, to review the opinions, of the great masters of speculative thought in every age and in many lands, will be an indispensable portion of my duty;--a task most arduous indeed, but than which none can be more grateful to one who loves to trace, through all their affinities, the indestructible types of truth and beauty in the human mind; and to mark the natural laws, connecting together the most opposite continents and climes of thought, as parts, successively colonized and cultivated, of one great intellectual world. But in addition to the study of the several classes of psychological and moral doctrine as they present themselves in the _order of science_, it will be important to spread out the literature of philosophy before us in the _order of time_; to gain an insight into the natural development of successive modes of thought on speculative subjects; to notice the action and reaction of philosophy and practical life; to ascertain whether opinion on these abstract matters really advances into knowledge and has any determinate progression, or whether it oscillates for ever on either side of some fixed idea, or line of mental gravitation. In short, having surveyed our subject systematically, we shall go over it again chronologically; and call upon philosophy, when it has recited its creed, and revealed its wisdom, to finish all by writing its history.

The hints given in Mr. Martineau's frequent references to the bearing of scientific knowledge and laws upon theological speculations are very important. We adduce a single example.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND RELIGION.