Part 96

Now, I suppose there is nothing in the New Testament more clearly established by the Author of Christianity, than the appointment of a Christian ministry. The world was to be evangelized, was to be brought out of darkness into light, by the influences of the Christian religion, spread and propagated by the instrumentality of man. A Christian ministry was therefore appointed by the Author of the Christian religion himself, and it stands on the same authority as any other part of his religion. When the lost sheep of the house of Israel were to be brought to the knowledge of Christianity, the disciples were commanded to go forth into all the cities, and to preach "that the kingdom of heaven is at hand." It was added, that whosoever would not receive them, nor hear their words, it should be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha than for them. And after his resurrection, in the appointment of the great mission to the whole human race, the Author of Christianity commanded his disciples that they should "go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." This was one of his last commands; and one of his last promises was the assurance, "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world!" I say, therefore, there is nothing set forth more authentically in the New Testament than the appointment of a Christian ministry; and he who does not believe this does not and cannot believe the rest.

It is true that Christian ministers, in this age of the world, are selected in different ways and different modes by different sects and denominations. But there are, still, ministers of all sects and denominations. Why should we shut our eyes to the whole history of Christianity? Is it not the preaching of ministers of the Gospel that has evangelized the more civilized part of the world? Why do we at this day enjoy the lights and benefits of Christianity ourselves? Do we not owe it to the instrumentality of the Christian ministry? The ministers of Christianity, departing from Asia Minor, traversing Asia, Africa, and Europe, to Iceland, Greenland, and the poles of the earth, suffering all things, enduring all things, hoping all things, raising men everywhere from the ignorance of idol worship to the knowledge of the true God, and everywhere bringing life and immortality to light through the Gospel, have only been acting in obedience to the Divine instruction; they were commanded to go forth, and they have gone forth, and they still go forth. They have sought, and they still seek, to be able to preach the Gospel to every creature under the whole heaven. And where was Christianity ever received, where were its truths ever poured into the human heart, where did its waters, springing up into everlasting life, ever burst forth, except in the track of a Christian ministry? Did we ever hear of an instance, does history record an instance, of any part of the globe Christianized by lay preachers, or "lay teachers"? And, descending from kingdoms and empires to cities and countries, to parishes and villages, do we not all know, that wherever Christianity has been carried, and wherever it has been taught, by human agency, that agency was the agency of ministers of the Gospel? It is all idle, and a mockery, to pretend that any man has respect for the Christian religion who yet derides, reproaches, and stigmatizes all its ministers and teachers. It is all idle, it is a mockery, and an insult to common sense, to maintain that a school for the instruction of youth, from which Christian instruction by Christian teachers is sedulously and rigorously shut out, is not deistical and infidel both in its purpose and in its tendency. I insist, therefore, that this plan of education is, in this respect, derogatory to Christianity, in opposition to it, and calculated either to subvert or to supersede it.

In the next place, this scheme of education is derogatory to Christianity, because it proceeds upon the presumption that the Christian religion is not the only true foundation, or any necessary foundation, of morals. The ground taken is, that religion is not necessary to morality, that benevolence may be insured by habit, and that all the virtues may nourish, and be safely left to the chance of flourishing, without touching the waters of the living spring of religious responsibility. With him who thinks thus, what can be the value of the Christian revelation? So the Christian world has not thought; for by that Christian world, throughout its broadest extent, it has been, and is, held as a fundamental truth, that religion is the only solid basis of morals, and that moral instruction not resting on this basis is only a building upon sand. And at what age of the Christian era have those who professed to teach the Christian religion, or to believe in its authority and importance, not insisted on the absolute necessity of inculcating its principles and its precepts upon the minds of the young? In what age, by what sect, where, when, by whom, has religious truth been excluded from the education of youth? Nowhere; never. Everywhere, and at all times, it has been, and is, regarded as essential. It is of the essence, the vitality, of useful instruction. From all this Mr. Girard dissents. His plan denies the necessity and the propriety of religious instruction as a part of the education of youth. He dissents, not only from all the sentiments of Christian mankind, from all common conviction, and from the results of all experience, but he dissents also from still higher authority, the word of God itself. My learned friend has referred, with propriety, to one of the commands of the Decalogue; but there is another, a first commandment, and that is a precept of religion, and it is in subordination to this that the moral precepts of the Decalogue are proclaimed. This first great commandment teaches man that there is one, and only one, great First Cause, one, and only one, proper object of human worship. This is the great, the ever fresh, the overflowing fountain of all revealed truth. Without it, human life is a desert, of no known termination on any side, but shut in on all sides by a dark and impenetrable horizon. Without the light of this truth, man knows nothing of his origin, and nothing of his end. And when the Decalogue was delivered to the Jews, with this great announcement and command at its head, what said the inspired lawgiver? that it should be kept from children? that it should be reserved as a communication fit only for mature age? Far, far otherwise. "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."

There is an authority still more imposing and awful. When little children were brought into the presence of the Son of God, his disciples proposed to send them away; but he said, "Suffer little children to come unto me." Unto _me_; he did not send them first for lessons in morals to the schools of the Pharisees, or to the unbelieving Sadducees, nor to read the precepts and lessons _phylacteried_ on the garments of the Jewish priesthood; he said nothing of different creeds or clashing doctrines; but he opened at once to the youthful mind the everlasting fountain of living waters, the only source of eternal truths: "Suffer little children to come _unto me_." And that injunction is of perpetual obligation. It addresses itself to-day with the same earnestness and the same authority which attended its first utterance to the Christian world. It is of force everywhere, and at all times. It extends to the ends of the earth, it will reach to the end of time, always and everywhere sounding in the ears of men, with an emphasis which no repetition can weaken, and with an authority which nothing can supersede: "Suffer little children to come unto me."

And not only my heart and my judgment, my belief and my conscience, instruct me that this great precept should be obeyed, but the idea is so sacred, the solemn thoughts connected with it so crowd upon me, it is so utterly at variance with this system of philosophical _morality_ which we have heard advocated, that I stand and speak here in fear of being influenced by my feelings to exceed the proper line of my professional duty. Go thy way at this time, is the language of philosophical morality, and I will send for thee at a more convenient season. This is the language of Mr. Girard in his will. In this there is neither religion nor reason.

The earliest and the most urgent intellectual want of human nature is the knowledge of its origin, its duty, and its destiny. "Whence am I, what am I, and what is before me?" This is the cry of the human soul, so soon as it raises its contemplation above visible, material things.

When an intellectual being finds himself on this earth, as soon as the faculties of reason operate, one of the first inquiries of his mind is, "Shall I be here always?" "Shall I live here for ever?" And reasoning from what he sees daily occurring to others, he learns to a certainty that his state of being must one day be changed. I do not mean to deny, that it may be true that he is created with this consciousness; but whether it be consciousness, or the result of his reasoning faculties, man soon learns that he must die. And of all sentient beings, he alone, so far as we can judge, attains to this knowledge. His Maker has made him capable of learning this. Before he knows his origin and destiny, he knows that he is to die. Then comes that most urgent and solemn demand for light that ever proceeded, or can proceed, from the profound and anxious broodings of the human soul. It is stated, with wonderful force and beauty, in that incomparable composition, the book of Job: "For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease; that, through the scent of water, it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. _But if a man die, shall he live again?_" And that question nothing but God, and the religion of God, can solve. Religion does solve it, and teaches every man that he is to live again, and that the duties of this life have reference to the life which is to come. And hence, since the introduction of Christianity, it has been the duty, as it has been the effort, of the great and the good, to sanctify human knowledge, to bring it to the fount, and to baptize learning into Christianity; to gather up all its productions, its earliest and its latest, its blossoms and its fruits, and lay them all upon the altar of religion and virtue.

Another important point involved in this question is, What becomes of the Christian Sabbath, in a school thus established? I do not mean to say that this stands exactly on the same authority as the Christian religion, but I mean to say that the observance of the Sabbath is a part of Christianity in all its forms. All Christians admit the observance of the Sabbath. All admit that there is a Lord's day, although there may be a difference in the belief as to which is the right day to be observed. Now, I say that in this institution, under Mr. Girard's scheme, the ordinary observance of the Sabbath could not take place, because the ordinary means of observing it are excluded. I know that I shall be told here, also, that lay teachers would come in again; and I say again, in reply, that, where the ordinary means of attaining an end are excluded, the intention is to exclude the end itself. There can be no Sabbath in this college, there can be no religious observance of the Lord's day; for there are no means for attaining that end. It will be said, that the children would be permitted to go out. There is nothing seen of this permission in Mr. Girard's will. And I say again, that it would be just as much opposed to Mr. Girard's whole scheme to allow these children to go out and attend places of public worship on the Sabbath day, as it would be to have ministers of religion to preach to them within the walls; because, if they go out to hear preaching, they will hear just as much about religious controversies, and clashing doctrines, and more, than if appointed preachers officiated in the college. His object, as he states, was to keep their minds free from all religious doctrines and sects, and he would just as much defeat his ends by sending them out as by having religious instruction within. Where, then, are these little children to go? Where can they go to learn the truth, to reverence the Sabbath? They are far from their friends, they have no one to accompany them to any place of worship, no one to show them the right from the wrong course; their minds must be kept clear from all bias on the subject, and they are just as far from the ordinary observance of the Sabbath as if there were no Sabbath day at all. And where there is no observance of the Christian Sabbath there will of course be no public worship of God.

In connection with this subject I will observe, that there has been recently held a large convention of clergymen and laymen in Columbus, Ohio, to lead the minds of the Christian public to the importance of a more particular observance of the Christian Sabbath; and I will read, as part of my argument, an extract from their address, which bears with peculiar force upon this case.

"It is alike obvious that the Sabbath exerts its salutary power by making the population acquainted with the being, perfections, and laws of God; with our relations to him as his creatures, and our obligations to him as rational, accountable subjects, and with our character as sinners, for whom his mercy has provided a Saviour; under whose government we live to be restrained from sin and reconciled to God, and fitted by his word and spirit for the inheritance above."

"It is by the reiterated instruction and impression which the Sabbath imparts to the population of a nation, by the moral principle which it forms, by the conscience which it maintains, by the habits of method, cleanliness, and industry it creates, by the rest and renovated vigor it bestows on exhausted human nature, by the lengthened life and higher health it affords, by the holiness it inspires, and cheering hopes of heaven, and the protection and favor of God, which its observance insures, that the Sabbath is rendered the moral conservator of nations.

"The omnipresent influence the Sabbath exerts, however, by no secret charm or compendious action, upon masses of unthinking minds; but by arresting the stream of worldly thoughts, interests, and affections, stopping the din of business, unlading the mind of its cares and responsibilities, and the body of its burdens, while God speaks to men, and they attend, and hear, and fear, and learn to do his will.

"You might as well put out the sun, and think to enlighten the world with tapers, destroy the attraction of gravity, and think to wield the universe by human powers, as to extinguish the moral illumination of the Sabbath, and break this glorious main-spring of the moral government of God."

And I would ask, Would any Christian man consider it desirable for his orphan children, after his death, to find refuge within this asylum, under all the circumstances and influences which will necessarily surround its inmates? Are there, or will there be, any Christian parents who would desire that their children should be placed in this school, to be for twelve years exposed to the pernicious influences which must be brought to bear on their minds? I very much doubt if there is any Christian father who hears me this day, and I am quite sure that there is no Christian mother, who, if called upon to lie down on the bed of death, although sure to leave her children as poor as children can be left, who would not rather trust them, nevertheless, to the Christian charity of the world, however uncertain it has been said to be, than place them where their physical wants and comforts would be abundantly attended to, but away from the solaces and consolations, the hopes and the grace, of the Christian religion. She would rather trust them to the mercy and kindness of that spirit, which, when it has nothing else left, gives a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple; to that spirit which has its origin in the fountain of all good, and of which we have on record an example the most beautiful, the most touching, the most intensely affecting, that the world's history contains, I mean the offering of the poor widow, who threw her two mites into the treasury. "And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury; and he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all; for all these have, of their abundance, cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had." What more tender, more solemnly affecting, more profoundly pathetic, than this charity, this offering to God, of a farthing! We know nothing of her name, her family, or her tribe. We only know that she was a poor woman, and a widow, of whom there is nothing left upon record but this sublimely simple story, that, when the rich came to cast their proud offerings into the treasury, this poor woman came also, and cast in her two mites, which made a farthing! And that example, thus made the subject of divine commendation, has been read, and told, and gone abroad everywhere, and sunk deep into a hundred millions of hearts, since the commencement of the Christian era, and has done more good than could be accomplished by a thousand marble palaces, because it was charity mingled with true benevolence, given in the fear, the love, the service, and honor of God; because it was charity, that had its origin in religious feeling; because it was a gift to the honor of God!

Cases have come before the courts, of bequests, in last wills, made or given to God, without any more specific direction; and these bequests have been regarded as creating charitable uses. But can that be truly called a charity which flies in the face of all the laws of God and all the usages of Christian man? I arraign no man for mixing up a love of distinction and notoriety with his charities. I blame not Mr. Girard because he desired to raise a splendid marble palace in the neighborhood of a beautiful city, that should endure for ages, and transmit his name and fame to posterity. But his school of learning is not to be valued, because it has not the chastening influences of true religion; because it has no fragrance of the spirit of Christianity. It is not a charity, for it has not that which gives to a charity for education its chief value. It will, therefore, soothe the heart of no Christian parent, dying in poverty and distress, that those who owe to him their being may be led, and fed, and clothed by Mr. Girard's bounty, at the expense of being excluded from all the means of religious instruction afforded to other children, and shut up through the most interesting period of their lives in a seminary without religion, and with moral sentiments as cold as its own marble walls.

I now come to the consideration of the second part of this clause in the will, that is to say, the reasons assigned by Mr. Girard for making these restrictions with regard to the ministers of religion; and I say that these are much more derogatory to Christianity than the main provision itself, excluding them. He says that there are such a multitude of sects and such diversity of opinion, that he will exclude all religion and all its ministers, in order to keep the minds of the children free from clashing controversies. Now, does not this tend to subvert all belief in the utility of teaching the Christian religion to youth at all? Certainly, it is a broad and bold denial of such utility. To say that the evil resulting to youth from the differences of sects and creeds overbalances all the benefits which the best education can give them, what is this but to say that the branches of the tree of religious knowledge are so twisted, and twined, and commingled, and all run so much into and over each other, that there is therefore no remedy but to lay the axe at the root of the tree itself? It means that, and nothing less! Now, if there be any thing more derogatory to the Christian religion than this, I should like to know what it is. In all this we see the attack upon religion itself, made on its ministers, its institutions, and its diversities. And that is the objection urged by all the lower and more vulgar schools of infidelity throughout the world. In all these schools, called schools of Rationalism in Germany, Socialism in England, and by various other names in various countries which they infest, this is the universal cant. The first step of all these philosophical moralists and regenerators of the human race is to attack the agency through which religion and Christianity are administered to man. But in this there is nothing new or original. We find the same mode of attack and remark in Paine's "Age of Reason." At page 336 he says: "The Bramin, the follower of Zoroaster, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, the Protestant Church, split into several hundred contradictory sectaries, preaching, in some instances, damnation against each other, all cry out, 'Our holy religion!'"

We find the same view in Volney's "Ruins of Empires." Mr. Volney arrays in a sort of semicircle the different and conflicting religions of the world. "And first," says he, "surrounded by a group in various fantastic dresses, that confused mixture of violet, red, white, black, and speckled garments, with heads shaved, with tonsures, or with short hairs, with red hats, square bonnets, pointed mitres, or long beards, is the standard of the Roman Pontiff. On his right you see the Greek Pontiff, and on the left are the standards of two recent chiefs (Luther and Calvin), who, shaking off a yoke that had become tyrannical, had raised altar against altar in their reform, and wrested half of Europe from the Pope. Behind these are the subaltern sects, subdivided from the principal divisions. The Nestorians, Eutychians, Jacobites, Iconoclasts, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Wickliffites, Osiandrians, Manicheans, Pietists, Adamites, the Contemplatives, the Quakers, the Weepers, and a hundred others, all of distinct parties, persecuting when strong, tolerant when weak, hating each other in the name of the God of peace, forming such an exclusive heaven in a religion of universal charity, damning each other to pains without end in a future state, and realizing in this world the imaginary hell of the other."

Can it be doubted for an instant that sentiments like these are derogatory to the Christian religion? And yet on grounds and reasons _exactly these_, not _like_ these, but EXACTLY these, Mr. Girard founds his excuse for excluding Christianity and its ministers from his school. He is a tame copyist, and has only raised marble walls to perpetuate and disseminate the principles of Paine and of Volney. It has been said that Mr. Girard was in a difficulty; that he was the judge and disposer of his own property. We have nothing to do with his difficulties. It has been said that he must have done as he did do, because there could be no agreement otherwise. Agreement? among whom? about what? He was at liberty to do what he pleased with his own. He had to consult no one as to what he should do in the matter. And if he had wished to establish such a charity as might obtain the especial favor of the courts of law, he had only to frame it on principles not hostile to the religion of the country.