The Growth of Thought as Affecting the Progress of Society Part 3

[If thou strangle him not high lifted in air, Fresh strength from the earth he continues to share.]

Thus we come to speak of present welfare, as dependent on the cultivation of the whole man--on a recognition of his immortality, his allegiance to his Maker, and his capacity for more disinterested sentiments, than self-love, however modified.

The influences thus accruing are a confirmation, from higher authority, of the conclusions approved by philosophy, ethics, the prudence which calculates how man should live with man, considered as but creatures of earth--a _re-binding_--a _re-ligation_ to what was _obligation_ before; and such precisely is the proper sense of the word _religion_.

That the promise of the life that now is attaches to G.o.dliness-the vivid recognition of a Father in heaven, with the union of reverence and love cherished by a dutiful child--and that naught else secures the possession, might be argued,--

1. First, as antic.i.p.ated from the nature of the case. If man is formed to own allegiance to his Maker, and to spend this life as preparatory and introductory to a coming existence, then, till these conditions are fulfilled, he must be expected, not to fill worthily his place, as possessor of the present life; but must, in important points, compare disadvantageously with the beasts that perish. If, like the inferior races, ours attained to a life which should be the full flourish of its demonstrable capacities, while immortality entered not into account, then would fail one argument to prove us destined to an hereafter. If the philosopher, from the examination of the chick eaglet in the sh.e.l.l, knowing naught else of the animal, could make out for it, within its narrow walls, a life answering to the indications of its organization; he might fitly question, whether it were destined to burst its prison, and soar aloft. And such embryo eaglet is man, considered only as to what this life realizes.

2. Historically, we are in little danger of being confounded on this argument. The evidence from fact is very plain and positive, that men have never become wise for the life that now is, but as they have first become wise for the life that is to come; that self-love never becomes a just prudence, till informed by the faith, hope, and charity of Jesus; in a word, that in Him is life, and only through the light derived from him is life realized to men.

Seeking the lowest form of worldly wisdom--political science applied as the agent for promoting general welfare--we may look in vain for a beginning thus to apply such science, in any nation unblest by revelation.

They on whom the light has shone, have generally so imperfectly comprehended it, that they have only attained to that vulgar love of liberty, which Guizot defines to be removed but a step from the love of power. Rather, we might say, that step is not--the two are but the same thing. Viewed on one side, it is the hatred of being domineered over; on the other, it is the love of domineering.

Only where the Christian account of human character has been taken for a sober reality, has been taken for a sober reality, has been practically understood the rule of dividing power equally, because so universal is the tendency to grasp it inordinately. Only (we may add) where, better still, some good deference has been paid to the charge, "Call no man master on earth, for one is your Master in heaven." If this is the instruction, after which one becomes a republican, and shapes his love liberty; the conclusion is equally obvious and inevitable-call no man slave or va.s.sal on earth, for One in heaven is the common Master of all.

Mistaking here, France has gone through a series of signal failures.

Her Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, still prove empty names; while want and oppression stare millions in the face, despite the promises of more than half a century's experimenting with revolutions. A vision of political blessedness mocks her sight, which, like fabled enchanted island, ever and anon seeming just within the grasp, still escapes, and flies the faster, the faster it is pursued. O my country! mercy spare thee from thus mistaking Heaven's high decree!

But if we should allow to some of the more enlightened Gentiles of antiquity, some degree of political wisdom; we might still look in vain for their progress in that estimation of temporal wealth, which reveals our community of interests, thus divesting self-love of its hatefulness, by training it to its best satisfaction. Historically, we every where find self-love too blind, freakish, springing upon immediate results, too envenomed with maliciousness to calculate prudently.

3. Religion affords altogether the readiest, shortest, directest way to the conclusion, that interest and duty most coincide. It brings the man of humblest intellectual attainments at once to the conclusion, which the prudent calculator may reach, after long research and extensive induction of particulars; namely, that he cannot add ultimately to his own stock of enjoyment, by detracting from another's share. What might seem prudence at the expense of justice and benevolence, may a.s.sume a contrary aspect, at the first flush of conviction, that another life shall rectify the inequalities of this.

Philosophy, having done its best at showing the interest of each in the welfare of all, and how much would redound to the happiness of all if all heartily concurred in thus regarding life, still labors at the question, as the world goes, how the individual will fare, who takes a course so different from the general current, as to devote his best zeal to bettering the condition of that world, which will be likely so little to appreciate his devotion. So that, as matter of fact, one is little likely to see first (in earnestness) the reign of righteousness, as the best security for the necessaries and conveniences of life, unless in the faith which apprehends, that "all these things shall be added" to those thus devoted to promoting the holy cause of humanity.

4. Again; to the great majority of mankind, religion is the best spur to the understanding, towards the conclusions of a just prudence. "The entrance of the word giveth understanding to the simple," says the Psalmist. How often have we found its so! How often the first impulse to intellectual activity is given by the man's religious interest! How often they, in whom a taste for reading could never be formed otherwise, begin to read for satisfying their spiritual wants, and so develop mental powers which else had ever lain dormant.

If we mark those extremes of social humanity, the ma.s.ses of Hindostan and the people of New England--the monotonous stagnation there, and the progressive enterprize here--we see a difference mainly attributable to a religion whose very spirit is, forgetting the things behind, and pressing onward to the things before. And, though this spirit may not always go forth in accordance with the teaching of that religion, it is none the less true, that such was its source; mind being awake, enterprising, on the track of improvement, only where a lively faith in Christianity has kindled the flame. Every where else, policy at best presses so hard on the subject individuals, as tolerably to restrain the pa.s.sions from breaking out of one against another. Only "where the spirit of the Lord is," ventured the experiment, of making the pressure on each so light, as to become the best security for his keeping in place.

5. Philosophy fails (once more), because it has no adequate malady for the moral malady under which our race labors. When we speak of men weighing fairly the present and the future, comparing impartially the substantial with the showy, the gross with the refined, and choosing after the decision of a fully informed prudence, we suppose what does not exist; "The good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do."

"The better seeing and approving, Towards the worse I still am moving:"

Such is the united testimony of Christian and heathen to that "law of sin and death," through whose tyranny the united decisions of reason, prudence and conscience are powerless, till what the law could not do, "in that it was weak through the flesh," the grace of the Gospel accomplishes; restoring reason and conscience to the throne, giving effect to the conviction, how fully coincident are interest and duty-- "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled by us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit."

Paul's account of this matter may have accommodated to it, what John says of the command to mutual Christian love; that it is an old history, and yet not an old but a new one. _Old_, in the sense, that, from what time by one man sin came into the world and death by sin, every one in earnest to fulfil the true end of his being, has found the dame impotence attached to good resolves; the same supremacy gained by the baser impulses, in the hour of trial; the same temptation to find an excuse in what seems so like a law unavoidable, as if it were no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, as if it were not the responsible _I_ that did wrong: this _I_ being controlled by sin, which is fancied as a foreign agent taking up a residence within, and controlling the man in spite of him. And, escaped from this and the like deceits, all have been brought to the stand, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!"--that species of self-despair, finis.h.i.+ng the preparation for that renewing influence, which "is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of G.o.d that showeth mercy." Thus the enemy is raised _in die Luften frei_, no more to receive fresh strength from mother Earth, to renew the contest successfully.

But this account, so old in one sense, is not so in another--in the sense of being obsolete, or out of date. It still retains the freshness of novelty, to answer to the last example of a man's ordering life, as, he knows, meets the approval of his Judge, and his own truest welfare.

6. But "the end of the commandment," or the result of the process by which the soul is put into condition to contend successfully with the powers of evil, "is charity." So religion preeminently rebinds men to the rule of not seeking their own advantage at the cost of others; because it implants a principle, which might dispense with the certainty of always calculating prudently in doing right. Charity seeketh not her own--not one's own welfare calculated on the largest scale, exclusively, or at the cost of the greatest good of the whole.

Thus it is essentially distinct from a prudence, however refined, and calculating its ends through eternity. It is called "the bond of perfectness," or a most perfect bond; because, if men were all devoted thus disinterestedly, each to the good of the whole, society would be perfectly held together, without other bond. All forms of civil compact and voluntary a.s.sociation might be dispensed with. Even prudence might fail to calculate, how the present sacrifice to general good is to be compensated; and charity would rebind the man to love his neighbor as himself, and do as he would receive again.

It is further called "the perfect law of liberty;" as by a simple rule it perfectly secures to individuals those immunities, which const.i.tutional provisions at best secure but imperfectly by complicated apparatus, and where philosophy halts at the perversities of human selfishness.

7. Faith alone is the sure foundation, whereto to add virtue [courage], and that for the further addition of knowledge. This courage is _du Coeur_--of the heart, and alone gives that simple love of truth, which, for _its_ sake, dares equally to be new and singular, or to be vulgar and common-place. Without that foundation, a.s.suming to be courageous enough to leave the beaten track, and reject received opinions, one does but attain to the bravery, which, in its efforts to dare danger or opposition, is sure to overact its part. Who holds an even balance in weighing evidence, equally guarded against rejecting the old, because it is old, or the new, because it is new? I know not, unless such as have apprehended the _urwahr_--the essential truth, which throws all temporal considerations into the shade.

There are two difficulties in the way of attempting changes in the existing state of things, with good prospect of improvement. The first arises from the force of habit, and a reluctance to try a new, it may be, hazardous course. The other form the little discrimination exercised, when men set about in earnest exchanging the old for the new--discrimination to avoid treating the old as necessarily antiquated, and the presumption of "laying again the foundation" of all things. And these difficulties will hardly be met successfully, except by men, in whom the fear of G.o.d has cast out other fear.

The intelligent part of the people of southern Europe have been, for many years, more thoroughly divested of reverence for the papacy, than was Luther in the days of his greatest vehemence. But they have quietly taken things as they are. They have wanted Luther's subst.i.tute for superst.i.tion--a fervently religious spirit. They have had only worldly and political motives, for wis.h.i.+ng to see the old imposition done away; and these have been powerless against natural apathy, and the fixedness of old establishment. Infidelity and indifferentism prove poor antagonists to superst.i.tion.

But when this apathy is one overcome, then the difficulty is, to temper with discretion the zeal for innovation. Throughout, such only as heartily prize the true, because it is true, will be likely to shun alike, rejecting the old for its antiquity, and the new for its novelty.

The first lesson is, to learn how much of human wisdom is but folly: the second, that it is not yet all folly, but a good deal of it genuine wisdom. And he will be most likely to unite these in the habit of thinking soberly, who first moderates his estimate of human power and wisdom, by marking how far their utmost flights had failed to antic.i.p.ate, what has proved the power of G.o.d and the wisdom of G.o.d to the world's renovation. Such is the best preparation for still learning, how much that wears the appearance of wisdom and science unsubstantial. This best teaches so to reason soberly and conscientiously, as not to run into licentiousness the liberty of thinking. Religious zeal indeed has. .h.i.therto been little enough tempered with discretion; but no other zeal has glowed so intensely, without still more disastrous consequences, in setting the world on fire.

It is yet a consideration in point, that, as in all undertakings hope of success best stimulates and sustains exertion; so the hope, that the world's disorders will yet be cured, is best furnished by the faith, which recognizes a Sovereign ordering and disposing all, bringing light out of darkness; making the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder thereof pledged to restrain. Judging from history and appearances, the philanthropist may often doubt, whether the race be not destined still to go a ceaseless round; ever exchanging one delusion for another, but no real progress.

As it was in character for the prophetess of Apollo, it complain: "My youth was by my tears corroded, My sole familiar was my pain; Each coming ill my heart foreboded, And felt at first--in vain."

So the philosophic prophet may lament, that he antic.i.p.ates so much more clearly, what _ought_ to be, than what _will_ be; that he finds the increase of knowledge, beyond the general sense of the age, to be but the increase of sorrow. But the religious insight into futurity saves from such anguish, by the hope which gilds and realizes the future: hope for the race, armed with a higher a.s.surance than philosophy can work out, that and right and peace shall reign triumphant; and personal hope, inasmuch as, however dark the prospect for earth's races may be, the individual has a future, whose joy is his strength.

9. And this habitual reference of the government of earth to its Supreme Ruler, is not more necessary to the hope, that sustains endurance, than to the patience which bides the time, in opposition to the indecent, pa.s.sionate haste, which defeats its own end. "He that believeth shall not make haste." There is much fruitless haste to bring the world to rights, for want of a lively belief in a sovereign controlling Power; whose wisdom, whose goodness, whose resources, whose interest, to bring the world to order and happiness, infinitely transcend ours. Thus is missed the conclusion, if He can endure to see the stream of evil flow on age after age; then discretion would set some bounds to our zeal, to see all evil rectified. And the clearer this conclusion is the result of faith, the surer the bounds will be just such, as to save from losing all by a headlong precipitancy.

In short, that habit of mind equally ready to accept the right and the true, whether it come with a suspicious air of novelty and singularity, or whether as old and vulgar it be scouted for being behind the age-- that habit which neither yields to discouragements, nor favors the fool-hardy haste, which calculates neither time nor its own strength; which discriminates, when to "contend earnestly," and when to "let them alone," the dogged adherents to falsehood and wrong, to the teachings of time and circ.u.mstances, their conscience and their G.o.d, till every plant which he hath not planted be rooted up by these mightier energies--the habit, realizing all the good of the radical, in proving all things, and all the glory of the conservative, in holding fast what is good;--this habit, so favorable to human progress, but involving so rare a combination of seemingly opposite qualities, as scarcely to be accounted for on all apparent influences, has been well described, as a "life hid with Christ in G.o.d." And truly has it been remarked, in view of the general result of ordinary tendencies and influences in forming one-sided characters, that _becoming as a little child_, expresses no less fittingly the conditions of entering the kingdom of nature, and thinking with the wise, than of entering the kingdom of heaven, and wors.h.i.+pping with the holy.

Of the spiritual more grievously than of the intellectual life is it true, that, "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." Here emphatically does the individual labor hardly, to digest into his life the conclusions of reason and conscience, in advance of the average understanding of the age. Professor Lyell, speaking of the Millerite phrenzy, and how some men of pretty sound mind were carried away with it, remarks to this effect: "Religious delusion is like a famine fever, which attacks first the hungry and emaciated, but in its progress cuts down many of the well-fed and robust."

So it is. So strong are our tendencies to one tone, that the Christian, in setting to his worldly desires the bounds which his religion exacts, feels to be exercising a self-denial--yielding the temporal to the eternal. He scarce seems to himself to be acting the part of true worldly wisdom. In reading the life of Dr. Payson, it is obviously manifest, that his deeply spiritual views were not inwrought harmoniously into his life's web, as would have been, if he had carried along with him a whole community.

The materialism of this age must pa.s.s away, as has pa.s.sed the quixotism of the crusades. Each has but expressed a stage in the progress of thought; and neither measures the mature life of the soul. It is not so certain to sight, what will be next grasped by this reaching onward to the things before; whether a better reconcilement of the life that now is with that which is to come, or whether a vaporing, misty sentimentalism is to be the spirit of the next age. There are not wanting indications, that the materialism of this age is to be followed by a dreamy spiritualism, raising men above the observance of vulgar duties, but not above the practice of the grossest vices. It is not uncharitable to mark such tendencies, where we see canonized Rousseau, the very embodiment of sensuality, egotism, and misanthropy; and progress _so_ taught to be the law of _individual_ man, that, whether going to commit his crimes at the brothel, or to expiate them on the gallows, his tendencies are still and forever upward.

We need better evidence than sight can afford, to say,--

"O no! a thousand cheerful omens give Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh: He who has tamed the elements, shall not live The slave of his own pa.s.sions; he whose eye Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, And in the abyss of brightness dares to span The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high, In G.o.d's magnificent works his will shall scan; And love and peace shall make their paradise with man."

*Bryant

Conclusion.

The matter of the preceding thoughts may be thus summed up.

A progressive movement has been going on towards the rule, that, self-love directed towards the material, the sensible, the showy, the distinguis.h.i.+ng, is so the ruling motive of human conduct, as to const.i.tute it the first requisite in adjusting the social relations, that private interests, and cla.s.s interests may not flourish best, short of the best attainable flourish of the whole. When this point shall be so thoroughly understood, that it shall be taken for no reproach of any cla.s.s of men to regard them practically as subject to the common influences which control human conduct; we may expect an effective move, for giving to the lawyer and to the physician a relation to society, a.n.a.logous to that sustained by the pastor among Protestants; instead of leaving their professions to find their best flourish, at about the vigor of intellectual and moral life, which just now we live.

But this idea loses its importance as another comes into appreciation, --namely, that the conflicts of self-love with self-love, suppose mistaken estimates of happiness to be uppermost; and, just in proportion as men rightly estimate life, and truly love themselves, they appreciate those strong, numberless, delicate, indissoluble ties, which bind the members of the social body to suffer, or to rejoice together.

And this idea again lessens in importance, as yet a third gains the ascendancy--the living conviction, that time is but the portal to eternity; the soul meanwhile tasting "the powers of the world to come;"

and knowing the persuasiveness of that strongest call to mutual endearment, "If G.o.d so loved us, we ought also to love one another."

And now the consideration of these three points is commended especially to the attention of those, who, in the execution of their office and ministry, have weekly access to the mind of the people. We mourn the waning influence of the American pulpit. Where the power thence emanating in the stirring days of trial to men's souls,--when its ministers stood on that commanding point, where they caught the first beams of rising day, and reflected the light in the face of the people?

At our Revolutionary period, ministers, in their earnestness to preach to the times, might have come short in preaching eternity. So far there was a mistake to be rectified; but they did well to preach to the times. It is among the reasons, why religious so tempered political zeal; and, accordingly, why, as our Revolution _was_ without a model, so it _remains_ without a rival. It is well that the struggle came, before the toad-eaters to capital's feed agents in legislative halls occupied the high seats of moral influence.

The true successors to the fathers are not the preachers of party politics, but they who aim to supply the lack of all parties, in that they fail to make liberty a means, valuable only as affording facilities to improvement.

We are exceedingly contracted in our notions of the Christian preacher's just province. If we confine it to administering directly to the soul's spiritual wants and everlasting interests, we stray wide from the example, which G.o.d himself sets, when he writes a revelation for man. The Bible is full of histories, maxims, laws, just as might be expected in a book, which ignored any other life, than that which now is. One half of it (within bounds) might remain as it is, on the supposition, that men have neither hopes nor duties, but such as pertain to them as joint tenants of this earthly life.

If we would keep people superior to the impulses of appet.i.te, and the solicitations of sensual pleasure, we must attempt _servitute corporis uti_ by _imperio animi_* [In Sall.u.s.t's well known sentence _servitute_ may be the object of _utimur_, _imperio_ the ablative of the means; or, reversing the construction, the sense may be, by keeping the body in subjection, we better maintain the mind's supremacy. Neither, I believe, is the common understanding of the pa.s.sage.]--by training the mind to know its capacities and powers. If this be neglected, purely spiritual influences, supposing them forthcoming, will hardly save the body from unduly controlling the man. Vulgar ambition is to be forestalled in the same way. _Imperium populi_ may be expected to be attractive, in proportion as _imperium animi_ is unstudied, unknown; and of course the full sense missed, in which knowledge is power. He who knows the greatness of the world within, hears nothing strange in the declaration-that "greater is he who ruleth his own spirit, than he who taketh a city." That the recipients of a (so called) liberal education so often become the votaries of vulgar ambition, and vulgar pleasure too, is to be accounted for on the three-fold consideration: first, that what pa.s.ses for a liberal education is often a very illiberal thing, doing very little to unfold the spirit to itself, and so impress the greatness of mastering its capabilities; secondly, that merely intellectual without moral influences, do not suffice; and thirdly, the law is supreme, which binds all to suffer, in their intellectual and spiritual life, from the mental and moral degradation of a part.