Part 4

Here, then, is a fearful contradiction between the religion of conscience and the religion of the understanding; the one pronouncing evil to be the antagonist, the other to be the agent, of the Divine will. In every age has this difficulty laid a heavy weight upon the human heart; in every age has it pointed the sarcasm of the blasphemer, mingled an occasional sadness with the hopes of benevolence, and tinged the devotion of the thoughtful with a somewhat melancholy trust. The whole history of speculative religion is one prolonged effort of the human mind to destroy this contrariety; system after system has been born in the struggle to cast the oppression off,--with what result, it will be my object at present to explain. The question which we have to consider is this, "How should a Christian think of the origin and existence of evil?" I propose to advert, first, to the speculative; secondly, to the scriptural; thirdly, to the moral relations of the subject; to inquire what relief we can obtain from philosophical schemes, from biblical doctrine, and from practical Christianity.

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Let us then, for final decision, consult the practical spirit of Christianity, and ascertain to what view of the origin of sin it awards the preference. Is it well for the consciences and characters of men, to consider God--either directly or through his dependant, Satan, either by his general laws or by vitiating the constitution of our first parents--as the primary source of moral evil? _or_, on the contrary, to regard it as in no sense whatever willed by the Supreme Mind, and absolutely inimical to his Providence? Are we most in harmony with the characteristic spirit of the Gospel when we call sin his instrument, or when we call it his enemy? For myself, I can never sit at the feet of Jesus, and yield up a reverential heart to his great lessons, without casting myself on the persuasion, that God and evil are everlasting foes; that never, and for no end, did he create it; that his will is utterly against it, nor ever touches it, but with annihilating force. Any other view appears to be injurious to the characteristic sentiments, and at variance with the distinguishing genius, of Christian morality.

(1.) Christianity is distinguished by the profound sentiment of _individual responsibility_ which pervades it. All the arbitrary forms, and sacerdotal interpositions, and hereditary rights, through which other systems seek the Divine favor, are disowned by it. It is a religion eminently _personal_; establishing the most intimate and solitary dealings between God and every human soul. It is a religion eminently _natural_; eradicating no indigenous affection of our mind, distorting no primitive moral sentiment; but simply consecrating the obligations proper to our nature, and taking up with a divine voice the whispers, scarce articulate before, of the conscience within us. In this deep harmony with our inmost consciousness of duty resides the true power of our religion. It subdues and governs our hearts, as a wise conqueror rules the empire he has won; not by imposing a system of strange laws, but by arming with higher authority, and administering with more resolute precision, the laws already recognized and revered.

To trifle in any way with this plain and solemn principle, to invent forms of speech tending to conceal it, to apply to moral good and ill language which assimilates them to physical objects and exchangeable property, implies frivolous and irreverent ideas of sin and excellence. The whole weight of this charge evidently falls on the scheme which speaks of human guilt as an hereditary entail; a scheme which shocks and confounds our primary notion of right and wrong, and, by rendering them impersonal qualities, reduces them to empty names. No construction can be given to the system, which does not pass this insult on the conscience. In what sense do we share the guilt of our progenitor? His concession to temptation did not occur within our mind, or belong in any way to our history. And if, without participation in the _act_ of wrong, we are to have its _penalties_, crimes in the planet Saturn may be expected to shower curses on the earth; for why may not justice go astray in space, as reasonably as in time? If nothing more be meant, than that from our first parents we inherit a constitution _liable_ to intellectual error and moral transgression,--still it is evident that, _until_ this liability takes actual effect, no sin exists, but only its possibility; and _when_ it takes effect, there is just so much guilt, and no more, than might be committed by the individual's will: so that where there is _no_ volition, as in infancy, cruelty only could inflict punishment; and where there is _pure_ volition, as in many a good passage of the foulest life, equity itself could not withhold approval.

(2.) I submit as a second distinguishing feature of practical Christianity, that it makes no great, certainly no exclusive, appeal to the _prudential feelings_, as instruments of duty; treats them as morally incapable of so sacred a work; and relies, chiefly and characteristically, on affections of the heart, which no motives of reward and punishment can have the smallest tendency to excite.

The Gospel, indeed, like all things divine, is unsystematic and unbound by technical distinctions, and makes no metaphysical separation between the will and the affections. It is too profoundly adapted to our nature, not to address itself copiously to both. The doctrine of retribution, being a solemn truth, appears with all its native force in the teachings of Christ, and arms many of his appeals with a persuasion just and terrible. But never was there a religion (containing these motives at all) so frugal in the use of them; so able, on fit occasions, to dispense with them; so rich in those inimitable touches of moral beauty, and tones that penetrate the conscience, and generous trust in the better sympathies, which distinguish a morality of the affections. In Christ himself, where is there a trace of the obedience of pious self-interest, computing its everlasting gains, and making out a case for compensation, by submitting to infinite wisdom? In his character, which is the impersonation of his religion, we surely have a perfect image of spontaneous goodness, unhaunted by the idea of personal enjoyment, and, like that of God, unbidden but by the intuitions of conscience and the impulses of love. And what teacher less divine ever made such high and bold demands on our disinterestedness? To lend out our virtue upon interest, to "love them only who love us," he pronounced to be the sinners' morality; nor was the feeling of duty ever reached, but by those who could "do good, hoping for _nothing_ again," except that greatest of rewards to a true and faithful heart, to be "the children of the Highest," who "is kind unto the unthankful and the evil." In the view of Jesus, all dealings between God and men were not of bargain, but of affection. We must surrender ourselves to him without terms; must be ashamed to doubt him who feeds the birds of the air, and, like the lily of the field, look up to him with a bright and loving eye; and he, for our much love, will pity and forgive us. In his own ministry, how much less did our Lord rely for disciples on the cogency of mere proof, and the inducements of hope and fear, than on the power of moral sympathy, by which every one that was of God naturally loved him and heard his words; by which the good shepherd knew his sheep, and they listened to his voice, and followed him; and without which no man could come unto him, for no spirit of the Father drew him. No condition of discipleship did Christ impose, save that of "faith in him"; absolute trust in the spirit of his mind; a desire of self-abandonment to a love and fidelity like his, without tampering with expediency, or hesitancy in peril, or shrinking from death.

There is, then, a wide variance between the genius of Christianity, and that philosophy which teaches that all men must be bought over to the side of goodness and of God, by a price suited to their particular form of selfishness and appetite for pleasure. Our religion is remarkable for the large confidence it reposes on the disinterested affections, and the vast proportion of the work of life it consigns to them. And in thus seeking to subordinate and tranquillize the prudential feelings, Christ manifested how well he knew what was in man. He recognized the truth, which all experience declares, that in these emotions is nothing great, nothing lovable, nothing powerful; that their energy is perpetually found incapable of withstanding the impetuosity of passion; and that all transcendent virtues, all that brings us to tremble or to kneel, all the enterprises and conflicts which dignify history, and have stamped any new feature on human life, have had their origin in the disinterested region of the mind,--in affections unconsciously entranced by some object sanctifying and divine. He knew, for it was his special mission to make all men feel, that it is the office of true religion to cleanse the sanctuary of the secret affections, and effect a regeneration of the heart. And this is a task which no direct _nisus_ of the will can possibly accomplish, and to which, therefore, all offers of reward and punishment, operating only on the will, are quite inapplicable. The single function of volition is _to act_; over the executive part of our nature it is supreme, over the emotional it is powerless; and all the wrestlings of desire for self-cure and self-elevation, are like the struggles of a child to lift himself. He who is anxious to be a philanthropist, is admiring benevolence, instead of loving men; and whoever is laboring to warm his devotions, yearns after piety, not after God. The mind can by no spasmodic bound seize on a new height of emotion, or change the light in which objects appear before its view. Persuade the judgment, bribe the self-interests, terrify the expectations, as you will, you can neither dislodge a favorite, nor enthrone a stranger, in the heart. Show me a child that flings an affectionate arm around a parent, and lights up his eyes beneath her face, and I know that there have been no lectures there upon filial love; but that the mother, being lovable, has _of necessity_ been loved; for to genial minds it is as impossible to withhold a pure affection, when its object is presented, as for the flower to sulk within the mould, and clasp itself tight within the bud, when the gentle force of spring invites its petals to curl out into the warm light. As you reverence all good affections of our nature, and desire to awaken them, never call them duties, though they be so; for so doing, you address yourself to the will; and by hard trying no attachment ever entered the heart. Never preach on their great desirableness and propriety; for so doing, you ask audience of the judgment; and by way of the understanding no glow of noble passion ever came. Never, above all, reckon up their balance of good and ill; for so doing, you exhort self-interest; and by that soiled way no true love will consent to pass. Nay, never talk of them, nor even gaze curiously at them; for if they be of any worth and delicacy, they will be instantly looked out of countenance and fly. Nothing worthy of human veneration will condescend to be embraced, but for its own sake: grasp it for its excellent results,--make but the faintest offer to use it as a tool, and it slips away at the very conception of such insult. The functions of a healthy body go on, not by knowledge of physiology, but by the instinctive vigor of nature; and you will no more brace the spiritual faculties to noble energy and true life by study of the uses of every feeling, than you can train an athlete for the race by lectures on every muscle of every limb. The mind is not voluntarily active in the acquisition of any great idea, any new inspiration of faith; but passive, fixed on the object which has dawned upon it, and filled it with fresh light.

If this be true, and if it be the object of practical Christianity, not only to direct our hands aright, but to inspire our hearts, then can its ends never be achieved by the mere force of reward and punishment; then no system can prove its sufficiency by showing that it retains the doctrine of retribution, and must even be held convicted of moral incompetency, if it trusts the conscience mainly to the prudential feelings, without due provision for enlisting the co-operation of many a disinterested affection.

We cannot refrain from affording those into whose hands this volume will go, the pleasure and the lofty encouragement which they must derive from the perusal of an extract on

THE TRANSMISSION OF SUPERIOR THOUGHTS.

It is a law of Providence in communities, that ideas shall be propagated downwards through the several gradations of minds. They have their origin in the suggestions of genius, and the meditations of philosophy; they are assimilated by those who can admire what is great and true, but cannot originate; and thence they are slowly infused into the popular mind. The rapidity of the process may vary in different times, with the facilities for the transmission of thought, but its order is constant. Temporary causes may shield the inferior ranks of intelligence from the influence of the superior; fanaticism may interpose for a while with success; a want of the true spirit of sympathy between the instructors and the instructed may check by a moral repulsion the natural radiation of intellect;--but, in the end, Providence will re-assert its rule; and the conceptions born in the quiet heights of contemplation will precipitate themselves on the busy multitudes below. This principle interprets history and presages futurity. It shows us in the popular feeling and traditions of one age, a reflection from the philosophy of a preceding; and from the prevailing style of sentiment and speculation among the cultivated classes now, it enables us to foresee the spirit of a coming age. Nor only to foresee it, but to exercise over it a power, in the use of which there is a grave responsibility. If we are far-sighted in our views of improvement; if we are ambitious less of immediate and superficial effects than of the final and deep-seated agency of generous and holy principles; if our love of opinions is a genuine expression of the disinterested love of truth;--we shall remember who are the teachers of futurity; we shall appeal to those, within whose closets God is already computing the destinies of remote generations,--men at once erudite and free, men who have the materials of knowledge with which to determine the great problems of morals and religion, and the genius to think and imagine and feel, without let or hinderance of hope or fear.

We linger over the pages from which the preceding selections have been made, unwilling to end our grateful task of love. But one quotation more must be the last. With it we commend these Studies of Christianity, these timely thoughts for religious thinkers, to the candid and affectionate inquirers within all sects, confident that, so far as the work obtains a fit reception, it will exert that purifying, liberalizing, and sanctifying power which is the genuine influence of Christ.

CHRISTIANITY AND SECTARIAN THEOLOGY.

The sectarian state of theology in this country cannot but be regarded as eminently unnatural. Its cold and hard ministrations are entirely alien to the wants of the popular mind, which, except under the discipline of artificial influences, is always most awake to generous impressions. Its malignant exclusiveness is a perversion of the natural veneration of the human heart, which, except where it is interfered with by narrow and selfish systems, pours itself out, not in hatred towards anything that lives, but in love to the invisible objects of trust and hope. Its disputatious trifling is an insult to the sanctity of conscience, which, except where it is betrayed into oblivion of its delicate and holy office, supplicates of religion, not a new ferocity of dogmatism, but an enlargement and refinement of its sense of right. It is the temper of sectarianism to seize on every deformity of every creed, and exhibit this caricature to the world's gaze and aversion. It is the spirit of the soul's natural piety to alight on whatever is beautiful and touching in every faith, and take there its secret draught of pure and fresh emotion. It is the passages of poetry and pathos in a system, which alone can lay a strong hold on the general mind and give them permanence; and even the wild fictions which have endeared Romanism to the hearts of so many centuries, possess their elements of tenderness and magnificence. The fundamental principle of one who would administer religion to the minds of his fellow-men should be, that all that has ever been extensively venerated must possess ingredients that are venerable. If, in the spirit of sectarianism, he sees nothing in it but absurdity, it only proves that he does not see it all; it must have an aspect, which he has not yet caught, that awes the imagination, or touches the affections, or moves the conscience; and those who receive it neither will nor should abandon it, till something is substituted, not only more consonant with the reason, but more awakening to these higher faculties of soul. Hence, a rigid accuracy and logical penetration of mind, the power of detecting and exposing error, are not the only qualities needed by the religious reformer; and in a deep and reverential sympathy with human feelings, a quick perception of the great and beautiful, a promptitude to cast himself into the minds of others, and gaze through their eyes at the objects which they love, he will find the instrument of the sublimest intellectual power. The precise logician may sit eternally in the centre of his own circle of correct ideas, and preach demonstrably the folly of the world's superstitions; yet he will never affect the thoughts of any but marble-minded beings like himself. He disregards the fine tissue of emotions that clings round the objects which he so harshly handles; and has yet to learn the art of preserving its fabric unimpaired, while he enfolds within it something more worthy for it to foster and adore.

As, then, it is to the moral and imaginative powers of the human mind that religion chiefly attaches itself, as it is by these that the want of it is most strongly felt, so is it to these that its ministrations should be, for the most part, addressed. While theologians are discussing the evidences of creeds, let teachers be conducting them to their applications. Let their respective resources of feeling and conception be unfolded before the soul of mankind; let it be tried what mental energy they can inspire, what purity of moral perception infuse, what dignity of principle erect, what toils of philanthropy sustain. Thus would arise a new criterion of judgment between differing systems; for that system must possess most truth which creates the most intelligence and virtue. Thus would the deeper devotional wants of society be no longer mocked by the privilege of choice among a few captious, verbal, and precise forms of belief. Thus, too, would the alienation which repels sect from sect give place to an incipient and growing sympathy; for when high intellect and excellence approach and stand in meek homage beneath the cross, how soon are the jarring voices of disputants hushed in the stillness of reverence! Who does not feel the refreshment, when some stream of pure poetry, like Heber's, winds into the desert of theology! when some flash of genius, like that of Chalmers, darts through its dull atmosphere! some strains of eloquence, like those of Channing, float from a distance on its heavy silence!

Such, then, are the objects which should be contemplated by those who, in the present times, aim at the reformation of religious sentiment;--first, the elevation of theology as an intellectual pursuit; secondly, the better application of religion as a moral influence. Both these objects are directly or indirectly promoted by the Association whose cause I am privileged to advocate. It aids the first, by the distribution of many a work, the production of such minds as must redeem theology from contempt. It advances the second, by establishing union and sympathy among those whose first principles are in direct contradiction to all that is sectarian, and who desire only to emancipate the understanding from all that enfeebles, and the heart from all that narrows it. The triumph of its doctrines would be, not the ascendency of one sect, but the harmony of all. Let but the diversities which separate Christians retire, and the truths which they all profess to love advance to prominence, and, whatever may become of party names, our aims are fulfilled, and our satisfaction is complete. When faith in the paternity of God shall have kindled an affectionate and lofty devotion; when the vision of immortality, imparted by Christ's resurrection, shall have created that spirit of duty which was the holiest inspiration of his life; when the sincere recognition of human brotherhood shall have supplanted all exclusive institutions, and banded society together under the vow of mutual aid and the hope of everlasting progress, our work will be done, our reward before us, and our little community of reformers lost in the wide fraternity of enlightened and benevolent men.

The day is yet distant, and can be won only by the toil of earnest and faithful minds. In the mean while, it is no light solace to see that the tendencies of Providence are towards its accelerated approach. And however dispiriting may sometimes be the variety and conflicts of human sentiment,--however remote the dissonance of controversy from that harmony of will which would seem essential to perfected society, it is through this very process that the great ends of improvement are to be attained. Hereafter it will be seen, much more clearly than we can see it now, that opinion generates knowledge. Like the ethereal waves, whose inconceivable rapidity and number are said to impart the sensation of vision, the undulations of opinion are speeding on to produce the perception of truth. They are the infinitely complex and delicate movements of that universal Human Mind, whose quiescence is darkness,--whose agitation, light.

To the fit and numerous readers whom we trust they will find, these papers are now submitted, in the earnest hope that the author will at no distant day follow them with some more systematic and rounded survey of the same great subject,--the components and developments of Christianity.

W. R. A.

STUDIES OF CHRISTIANITY.

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.