Studies of Christianity; Or, Timely Thoughts for Religious Thinkers Part 17

Religion--revealed or unrevealed--is no production of the systematizing intellect,--inspired or uninspired. The workings of constructive thought follow, not lead it. Their function is not creative, but simply adaptive;--to find a settlement and orderly method of being and growing for some new principle of divine life, or for some old principle in an altered scene; to ward off from it uncongenial elements, remove dead matter that chokes it, and surround it with conditions whence it may weave its organism around it and send deep roots into the mellowed soil of humanity. Divine truth is the coming of G.o.d to man, pathless and traceless: theologic thought is the retrogressive search of man after G.o.d, not by "_His_ ways which are past finding out," and invisible as night, but necessarily by such tracks as the age has opened and another age may close or change.

The manifestation of supernatural realities to the human soul involves so much which is mysterious and unique, that only under great qualification can we compare it with the known mental processes. But were we to conceive of it less by the a.n.a.logy of scientific discovery, and more by that of artistic apprehension, many an embarra.s.sment would be saved. In a work of high art, you give a Phidias or a Raffaelle _his subject_; he necessarily takes it from that which stirs the heart of his time, and has a solemnity for his own and you do not find fault that there is mythology in the group, or Mariolatry in the picture.

Through the conceptions of one time there speaks a feeling for all; and the representation may be immortal, when the thing represented has long been historical. Nor is it that it only reflects honor on its author's name. It springs from an inner harmony with the very heart of things, and it gives a new expressiveness to life and nature, and leaves behind a self-luminous spot in the world, where there was "gross darkness" before. Hence it looks into the eyes, and finds the soul of one generation after another; and, amid the change of materials and the succession of schools, keeps alive the very sense by which alone "materials" can be wielded and "schools" exist. With just the same result do the accidental and temporary media fall away from early Christianity; disengaging a residuary spirit that takes up the life of all times, touches a consciousness else unreached, and breathes upon the face of things, till the meanings writ there with invisible ink come into clearness before the eye. If it pleases G.o.d, instead of spreading at our feet the things to be seen, rather to quicken our vision till we see them where they are, it is revelation all the same, only deeper and more various; not an incident of position, but a power that can migrate in place and time, and read the Providential perspective everywhere. This profounder insight into divine relations it has been the especial office of St. Paul to awaken; and none the less that the flashes by which he gives it are incidental, and do not proceed from the Rabbinic lamp which he holds up to his apocalyptic pictures. Indeed, it is he, in great measure, that has carried Christendom into regions other than his own. His thought is everywhere penetrated with an intense heat, leavened with lightning, that fuses the ma.s.s containing it, and runs off alive for other media to hold it. The revelation to him of Christ in heaven set in action all the resources of his nature, and gave them a preternatural tension. The sentiments which found satisfaction, the intimations which came into expression, in his form of doctrine, are now for ever _human_, fixed in the self-knowledge of men by his faithful words, and sure to transmigrate into other forms, when their first embodiment will hold them no more. And so much is the Apostle's later exposition of his hope divested of what is special to himself, that to all ages since it has struck upon the ear of mourners along with the very toll of the funeral bell; and though often indistinct to their mind, it has jarred with no falsehood on their heart, but sounded like an anthem in the dark,--great music and dim words. It needed only time and events to trans.m.u.te the doctrine into that of a future life. For it included--in order to meet the case of those who had "fallen asleep"--the conception of a path, through death before the time, "to depart and be with Christ"; only that this was the minor provision, the by-path of the early few. Reopened, however, as it always was when a disciple pa.s.sed away, it became an evermore familiar track; and experience had but to negative the opposite direction by leaving it untraced, in order that the upward track should become the _via sacra_ of human faith. And can any one doubt what the justification by faith means, when construed into the language of universal experience? It means that G.o.d wants more from us, and also less, than the anxious will can do; more, because he wants ourselves; less, because he does not want our niceties of work. It means that we are called to spiritual heights we strive in vain to climb; that the most patient feet, step after step upon the ground, will but stand upon the earthly mountains after all; and it is the fiery chariot of love and trust that must bear us into heaven. It means that there is an affectionateness in G.o.d that looks to what we are, rather than what we do, and more readily speaks to us of communion than of obedience.

True, this is but another way of saying what our religion elsewhere more ethically expresses, that G.o.d requires our perfect service, and yet has forgiveness for what is imperfect. But this statement, though it means also that heaven is open to the pure, intent, and single heart, touches a spring less deep and strong. It divides the integral and living fact, even in regard to G.o.d, by describing it as a demand of the whole, and then a subtraction of a part; and so exhibiting it rather as a dissolution of justice, than as truth and wholeness of love. And the Pauline doctrine appeals with far more immediate power to human consciousness, especially to that third of mankind whom a fervid enthusiastic mind renders little accessible to the cold solemnities of duty. And, finally, if we are insensible to the grandeur of St. Paul's teaching as to the universality of the Gospel, it is not more because it is entangled with the question of Jew and Gentile, than because the sentiment has become the common atmosphere of Christendom, and we feel not its freshness, because it blows not on us as a breeze, but _only_ as our breath of life. Let Mr. Jowett remove from us the spell of our indifference.

"Let us turn aside for a moment to consider how great this thought was in that age and country; a thought which the wisest of men had never before uttered, which even at the present hour we imperfectly realize, which is still leavening the world, and shall do so until the whole is leavened, and the differences of races, of nations, of castes, of religions, of languages, are fully done away. Nothing could seem a less natural or obvious lesson in the then state of the world; nothing could be more at variance with experience, or more difficult to carry out into practice. Even to us it is hard to imagine that the islander of the South Seas, the pariah of India, the African in his worst estate, is equally with ourselves G.o.d's creature. But in the age of St. Paul, how great must have been the difficulty of conceiving barbarian and Scythian, bond and free,--all colors, forms, races, and languages,--alike and equal in the presence of G.o.d who made them! The origin of the human race was veiled in a deeper mystery to the ancient world, and the lines which separated mankind were harder and stronger; yet the 'love of Christ constraining' bound together in its cords those most separated by time or distance; those who were the types of the most extreme differences of which the human race is capable.

"The thought of this brotherhood of all mankind, the great family on earth, not only implies that all men have certain rights and claims at our hands; it is also a thought of peace and comfort. First, it leads us to rest in G.o.d, not as selecting us because he had a favor unto us, but as infinitely just to all mankind. To think of ourselves, or our Church, or our age, as the particular exceptions of his mercy, is not a thought of comfort, but of perplexity. Secondly, it links our fortunes with those of men in general, and gives us the same support in reference to our eternal destiny, that we receive from each other in a narrow sphere in the concerns of daily life. Thirdly, it relieves us from all anxiety about the condition of other men, of friends departed, of those ignorant of the Gospel, of those of a different form of faith from our own, knowing that G.o.d, who has thus far lifted up the veil, 'will justify the circ.u.mcision through faith, and the uncirc.u.mcision by faith'; the Jew who fulfils the law, and the Gentile who does by nature the things contained in the law."--Vol. II. p. 126.

What the doctrine of universality in the Divine government was to that age,--as new and transporting,--is in our own "the clear perception of the moral nature of G.o.d, and of his infinite truth and justice." This is one of the many deep sayings, sad and wise, quietly dropped by our author in a series of disquisitions, that show, among other things, how well he understands its scope. Everywhere his care is to disengage Christianity from the theological conceptions fastened on it by a coa.r.s.er age; and, having restored the purity of its moral vision, to enlarge its horizon to the whole extent of modern knowledge and experience. Penetrating beneath the figures natural to St. Paul, the very changes of which show them to _be_ figures, he finds that nothing can be more abhorrent from the Apostle's thought than the doctrine of "satisfaction," which is hunted down, in every form, with exhaustive and indignant logic; that even the a.n.a.logy of sacrifice "rather shows us what the death of Christ was not, than what it was"; and that to draw us into union with Christ, to fix our eye on his pure self-renunciation as "the greatest moral act ever done in this world,"

to keep us in a mood that harmonizes our trust in G.o.d with our distrust of ourselves, and to suggest more than it can explain of hope and peace to a reconciled world, are the real functions, as of his death, so of all the stages of his existence. This pure type of faith emerges, we venture to affirm, without straining the rights of the interpreter. The rest and freedom it gives to the mind is singularly evident in the fine essay on Natural Religion. The author sets forth from the Christian centre, and, consciously marking where he pa.s.ses the boundary of the apostolic view, surveys and brings to its religious place the whole outlying realm of nature, history, and life, that was unknown to Scripture, but is fact to us. The great Gentile religions, now discriminated and interpreted, and ascertained to follow certain laws of development; the breadth in philosophies, purer and brighter as history pa.s.sed on; the Natural Religion, which is the counterpart of these in Christian times, and holds its place by the side of revelation; and the ordinary state of character in morally good but unspiritual persons, (state of "nature" rather than of "grace,")--are reviewed and estimated with a breadth of observation and a delicacy of reflection singularly impressive. Indeed, the literature of religious philosophy affords few n.o.bler productions than this essay. With how true a hand and bright a touch is the following picture drawn! We will but hang it up in our reader's imagination, and leave him to commune with it alone.

"It is impossible not to observe that innumerable persons,--may we not say the majority of mankind?--who have a belief in G.o.d and immortality, have nevertheless hardly any consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. They seem to live aloof from them in the routine of business or of pleasure, 'the common life of all men,' not without a sense of right, and a rule of truth and honesty, yet insensible to what our Saviour meant by taking up the cross and following him, or what St. Paul meant by 'being one with Christ.' They die without any great fear or lively hope; to the last more interested about the least concerns of this world than about the greatest of another. They have never in their whole lives experienced the love of G.o.d, or the sense of sin, or the need of forgiveness. Often they are remarkable for the purity of their morals; many of them have strong and disinterested attachments, and quick human sympathies; sometimes a stoical feeling of uprightness, or a peculiar sensitiveness to dishonor. It would be a mistake to say they are without religion. They join in its public acts; they are offended at profaneness or impiety; they are thankful for the blessings of life, and do not rebel against its misfortunes. Such men meet us at every turn.

They are those whom we know and a.s.sociate with; honest in their dealings, respectable in their lives, decent in their conversation. The Scripture speaks to us of two cla.s.ses, represented by the Church and the world, the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, the friends and enemies of G.o.d. We cannot say in which of the two divisions we should find a place for them.

"The picture is a true one, and, if we change the light by which we look at it, may be a resemblance of ourselves no less than of other men.

Others will include most of us in the same circle in which we are including them. What shall we say to such a state, common as it is to both us and them? The fact that we are considering is not the evil of the world, but the neutrality of the world, the indifference of the world, the inertness of the world. There are mult.i.tudes of men and women everywhere who have no peculiarly Christian feelings, to whom, except for the indirect influence of Christian inst.i.tutions, the fact that Christ died on the cross for their sins has made no difference; and who have, nevertheless, the common sense of truth and right almost equally with true Christians. You cannot say of them, 'There is none that doeth good; no, not one.' The other tone of St. Paul is more suitable: 'When the Gentiles that know not the law do by nature the things contained in the law, these not knowing the law are a law unto themselves.' So of what we commonly term the world, as opposed to those who make a profession of Christianity, we must not shrink from saying, 'When men of the world do by nature whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, these, not being conscious of the grace of G.o.d, do by nature what can only be done by his grace.' Why should we make them out worse than they are? We must cease to speak evil of them ere they will judge fairly of the characters of religious men. That, with so little recognition of His personal relation to them, G.o.d has not cast them off, is a ground of hope rather than of fear,--of thankfulness, not of regret."--Vol. II. p. 416.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] Acts xviii. 24; xix. 7.

[59] Acts vii. 44-49.

[60] Acts viii. 1.

[61] See especially the Notes on Paley's Horae Paulinae, Vol. I. pp.

349, 252. We subjoin in this connection a just and striking remark of Mr. Jowett's. In inquiries of this sort, it is often supposed that, if the evidence of the genuineness of a single book of Scripture be weakened, or the credit of a single chapter shaken, a deep and irreparable injury is inflicted on Christian truth, and may afford a rest to the mind to consider that, if but one discourse of Christ, one Epistle of Paul, had come down to us, still more than half would have been preserved. Coleridge has remarked, that out of a single play of Shakespeare the whole of English literature might be restored. Much more true is it that in short portions or single verses of Scripture the whole spirit of Christianity is contained. Vol. I. p. 352.

[62] Was it in reference to this mere _family-t.i.tle_ to a _spiritual_ authority that Paul says of the Jerusalem Apostles, "Whatever they were, it maketh no matter to me; G.o.d accepteth _no man's person_"?

(Gal. iii. 6.)

[63] Ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. II. 23.

[64] In proof of an essential unity of teaching, Mr. Jowett quotes Paul as declaring that what they preached against him was "_not another_" gospel, "for there was not, could not, be another." (I.

340.) But far from bearing this conciliatory turn, which is out of character with the whole context, Gal. i. 6 affirms that what his opponents have been preaching _is_ (1.) another gospel; and yet (2.) _not_ another gospel, (not so good even as that,) but mere disturbance and perversion, the negation of a gospel.

[65] Compare also Rom. xiv. 10; Phil. i. 6; 2 Tim. iv. 1. Nay, the very pa.s.sage in which he renounces the "knowing of Christ according to the flesh," contains the doctrine (2 Cor. v. 10).

[66] With a curious inconsistency Mr. Stanley fixes _at the Apostle's conversion_ the date after which he would no longer "know Christ according to the flesh"; yet in the very next note declares, that this state of mind must be referred to a more recent period than the conversion.

"ap? t?? ???, from _the time of my conversion_." It is to be presumed that this is also Mr. Stanley's interpretation of the ??? ???et? of the next clause, which only repeats specifically of "Christ" what has just been said universally.

"e? ?a? e????ae? ?ata sa??a ???st??, even though I have known; granting that I have known." ????s??e?, i. e. ?ata sa??a, "henceforth we know him no longer.... The words lead us to infer that something of this kind had once been [prior, surely, to the "_henceforth_"] his own state of mind, _not only_ in the time before his conversion, ... _but since_!"

How then can the "_henceforth_" serve as the _terminus a quo_, if the same state lies on both sides of it?

[67] Jowett, II. 142.

SIN: WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT IS NOT.

"Now the end of the commandment is Charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."--1 Timothy i. 5.

The Apostle gives us here a very simple formula of Christian perfection.

He was not fond of long lists of the virtues, such as the moral philosophers draw up; and though he does sometimes pa.s.s through a series, it is with a peculiar result. Look at any book upon human ethics, and you are astonished at the number of qualities that go to make up a good man: the ramifications of duty seem never to terminate: you scarcely know how a soul like ours can hold so much: the further the author proceeds in his enumeration, the less does he seem able to stop,--his divisions breaking into subdivisions, and the subdivisions opening new varieties,--till life appears to pulverize itself under his definitions, and become an infinite complexity of moral detail. St.

Paul's enumerations, on the contrary, instead of running down into mult.i.tude, run up into unity; each term is apt to be larger than its predecessor; he seems impatient of scattering his exhortations, as if each had a business of its own, and rather forces them as he proceeds into denser compression, till he flings out some term of power that holds them all. The graces with him do not present themselves apart, like garden plants that may be tended and watered one by one; but all on the same organism, as the leaves and the blossoms of a single shrub. He felt that in reality the virtues do not add themselves up and subscribe to the final result of a holy soul: but the one simple soul lives itself out into the direction of all the virtues; and there is a certain mood, a temper, a climate of the soul, which grows everything beautiful at once, and without which, while one adornment is elaborately nursed, the rest will be apt to droop and die. This blessed and productive mood, felt to be _one thing_, ought to have _one name_: and the Apostle calls it _Charity_ or _Love_; and presents it sometimes as the greatest of graces, sometimes as the unity of them all.

But this simple grace is to have a _triple source_. In the midst of the garden of the Lord the Apostle plants but a solitary tree of life,--his divine and fruitful Charity. Only it must be nursed by the threefold root, of which should any part be wanting, the beauty of the form and the healing of the leaves will soon be gone. "Charity out of a pure heart,--and a good conscience,--and faith unfeigned." The Heart, the Conscience, the Faith, must all be right; and it is no Pauline Charity that is not sustained by concurrence of them all. And, observe _the order_. In the centre, striking its fibres deepest down into the substance of our world, is the _Conscience_, the _Moral_ element of life; and on either side, held to their due balance by its intermediate power, we find the _Heart_,--the fresh _human affections_,--and the Faith,--the _heavenly trust and aspirations_,--of our nature. Tenderness and pity on the one hand, devotion and hope on the other, are to hold on to the sense of duty in the midst; and there only will a n.o.ble and majestic Love arise, casting no baneful shade upon the earth, and in its branches giving no shelter but to birds that sing the songs of heaven. A charity, therefore, that flows _only_ from the genial heart, that looks with kindly complacency on all things and persons, and with a sort of animal sympathy licks every sore of humanity that lies at its gate;--this is not the "end of the commandment";--for it has in it no moral, no religious element: it condemns nothing; it wors.h.i.+ps nothing: its eye neither flashes in rebuke, nor lifts itself in prayer: it is sensitive to suffering, not to sin: and, if it can but wipe out pain, will do it even upon guilty terms, and charm away a G.o.d-sent remorse as freely as it would an anguish of the innocent. And, on the other hand, a charity that flows only from the sincerity of faith, and limits itself to the fellows.h.i.+p of belief; that feels perhaps _for_ many, but only _with_ a few; whose warmest sympathies are little else than a partners.h.i.+p of antipathies; that transfers to the infinite G.o.d the narrowness of its own consecrated circle, reduces the universe to a temple of orthodoxy, and turns the Heaven of Immortals into the May-meeting of a sect;--this also misses "the end of the commandment": for it abuses the true power of religion over life, and flings in the branch of faith only to embitter, instead of sweeten, the waters of natural affection; it blinds and bewilders the moral discernment, overlooks undeniable n.o.bleness, and glorifies not a little meanness; and, applying its perverted admiration to the past as well as the present, crowds the statue-gallery of history with ill-favored and questionable saints, whose features have so grown to the mould and pressure of a creed, that they look like casts of an abstract theology, more than emblems of a living humanity. Take away the wisdom of Conscience; and Charity, surrendered to mere affection, will fail to see sin where _it is_; or, constricted by Faith, will suppose it where _it is not_. Both errors will shape themselves into deliberate doctrines, deviating on either side from the simple creed of our moral nature and of Christ. Let us look for a few moments at the central truth on this matter; and then glance from it at the lateral heresies.

The central truth may be described under the phrase, _The Personal nature of sin_. In affirming this, I mean both that _each man is a person, and not a thing_; and that _his sin is his own, and not another's_. If there is anything within the compa.s.s of heaven and earth which we can be said to know from ourselves, and to have no need that another should tell us, it is the nature of sin. There is no arrogance,--there is only sorrowful confession,--in protesting that _this_ is a matter on which we cannot be mistaken. It is the nearest of all things to us; the shadow that follows us where we go, and stays with us when we sit; the clinging presence that penetrates the very folds of our nature, and is known only from within, where its fibres strike and draw their nutriment. No external observer, though he have the divination of a prophet or the glance of an archangel, can add one iota to our insight into this sad fact, unless by sharpening our sensibility to feel and interpret it better for ourselves; or by any testimony, any miracle, take one line away of the handwriting of G.o.d that burns and flashes on the inner walls of the soul. Here at least our apprehensions are first-hand; and to trust them, to cast out as Satan what tampers with them or contradicts them, is not scepticism, but faith,--not infidelity, but faithfulness to the ever-living Word of G.o.d.

What the finger of Heaven has written, neither the tapestries of ancient theology nor the varnish of the newest philosophy can permanently hide; the light is alive, and will eat through, clearing its everlasting warning and consuming our perishable work.

What then does this first and last revelation declare human sin to be?

In the moments when we know it best,--when we cover our face because we can hide our transgression no more,--when we cannot bear the placid silence of things, and cry in our agony, "Smite us, O Lord, but tell us what we have done,"--does He not answer us, "You have abused your trust; I showed you a better, and you have taken the worse; I drew you by a secret reverence to the n.o.bler, and you have sunk by inclination to the baser; I gave you a will in the image of my own, free to realize the good, and you have yielded yourself captive to the evil; therefore have you a burden now to bear, that none can lift off,--a burden which you will feel it more faithful and wholesome to carry than to lose." This is surely the tone in which the voice of G.o.d's Holy Spirit speaks to us when we have grieved it: and if we believe it not, I know not whither we should go; it is the highest oracle of truth below the skies, having authority more positive even than the eye that a.s.sures us of the sun above us, and the feet that tell us of the earth beneath.

According to this oracle, then, the essence of the sin lies in the _conscious free choice of the worse in presence of a better no less possible_. And to make us guilty in its commission three conditions are required;--(1.) Our mind must be solicited by at least two competing propensities; (2.) We must be aware that of these one is worthy and has a claim upon us, and the other not; (3.) It must be left to us to determine ourselves to either of these, and we must not be delivered over by foreign causes to the one or to the other. Take away any of these conditions, and guilt becomes impossible. If the mind has _not_ the option of two propensities, but is possessed of only one, that single impulse, being its entire stock and const.i.tuting its only possibility, affords no scope for good or ill, and leaves the being a mere creature of instinct. Or if, while rival pa.s.sions struggle at his heart, he knows no difference among them, or only this, that some are _pleasanter_ than others, then also he is blameless, though he takes only what he likes. If, finally, while he is drawn by conflicting tendencies and taught to regard _some_ as his temptations, and solemnly set in the midst to choose, the whole appearance of option turns out a semblance and a pretence, and the matter is long ago determined outside of him and now only performs the ceremony of _pa.s.sing through_ him,--then, as before, he is irreproachable: the strife within him is the illusion of mimic pa.s.sions wrestling for a dreamer's soul; and while the tragic agony goes on within,--a dance of fiends, a rescue of angels,--he is stretched all the while sleeping on the bed of nature, and cannot wake but to find remorse and responsibility a dream.

Accordingly, whenever we want to make excuse for our wrong-doing, the false plea takes the form of a denial of one of these conditions.

"Blame me not," we say, "for _I knew of no other_ course"; or, "I did not _think it signified_ which I did"; or, "I saw it all, but _I could not help it_." Often the gnawings of self-reproach are felt upon the heart at the very instant that these excuses escape the lips. But sometimes they are the suggestions of _sincere_ self-deception, and proceed from men who are their own dupes; and whenever this is the case, the sense of responsibility is entirely dissipated; remorse is extinguished; the confession of guilt is turned into complaint of a misfortune; and the offender considers himself rather as the injured of nature than the insurgent against G.o.d. These excuses then must be wholly excluded, if the sanct.i.ty of the moral life is to be preserved.

They are the various forms under which the personal nature of sin may be denied. They all a.s.sert that the _person_ either did not contain within him the requisite conditions, or was hemmed in by natural preventives, of true obligation. Whoever offers us such pleas is justly regarded as self-condemned, and indeed as presenting a sadder spectacle in his defence than in his transgression. Nor are they improved in their character when they are expanded from excuses of individuals into doctrines of churches; for they explain away the essence of sin, and leave us without intelligible faith in anything holy in heaven or on earth. Thus:--

Whoever maintains that the human heart is invariably wicked, and can think no thought and prompt no act, except such as are odious to G.o.d, mistakes the whole nature of moral obligation, and virtually excludes it from the entire system of things. Confront this a.s.sertion with the facts of life, and ask what it really means. Do you mean, I would say to its defender, that, whenever two principles contend for the mastery in a man's mind, he always abandons himself to the lower?--that no one, in short, was ever known to resist a temptation? Such a position is surely too bold for the paradox of cynicism itself, in a world where there are many in want that do not steal, and in suffering that do not complain; where a Pericles could administer the revenues of a state, yet die without having added to his little patrimony; and a Socrates could live pure amid corruption, and truthful amid lies, and die the martyr of injustice rather than offend his reverence for law; where not a school nor a family can be found that has not its annals and anecdotes of conscience. You allow, therefore, that victors there have been in many a temptation. Did it make then no difference to the sentiments of G.o.d respecting them whether they were victors or vanquished? Was it neutral to him whether they n.o.bly held their post, or basely betrayed it? Then you simply deny the holiness of G.o.d; for you allow the greatest contrasts of character on earth, with no responsive feeling, no variety of estimate, in heaven; and make our human discernment, our natural admirations, more susceptible as moral barometers than the Omniscient Perception. Or will you say that, although men differ in moral effort, and withstand temptation in various degrees, and the Infinite Eye sees through the whole history with unerring exact.i.tude, yet the entire scale of human character lies below the point of Divine acceptableness, and in the view of perfect purity is equivalent to mere variety of guilt? Then do you deny again, only with a change of form, the personal nature of sin; for you try the soul by the law of _another_ nature, and not her own,--by a law beyond her ken or beyond her power; and while she is striving to be faithful to her best thought against the seductions of the worse,--in which alone the essence of all goodness dwells,--you tell her that her G.o.d despises a conflict so far down, and that "this people that knoweth not his law," however true to their own, "is cursed." What is this but to make Moral Excellence something quite different in heaven and on earth?--not veracity, not justice, not purity of thought, not self-sacrificing love; nothing that here makes our hearts burn within us as we look at the dear face of long-tried friends or saintly strangers, or leaving the Jerusalem of the noisy present pace the quiet road of history, talking by the way with the saviours of nations and the prophets of a world;--not this, but some hidden charm that finds neither place nor answer in our souls; so that the G.o.d who loves it leaves us herein without a point of sympathy with him, or a possibility of approach. In that case, he is a Being without moral perfection; for, however you may apply to him a circle of holy _names_, the things you denote by them are a set of unknown quant.i.ties bearing no relation to our types of thought. Or, finally, do you allege that the distinctions of character are not entirely different in heaven and on earth; only that through all their varieties in the natural man there is interfused a certain invariable taint, an irremovable tinge of guilt,--a stain of _self_, a thought of _pride_, a want of _faith_? Even were it so, still, if this be the constant coloring of the soul, pervading it by nature and not personally incurred, it is but a sad condition under which it is given us to work out our problem, and not any unfaithfulness in dealing with it as it comes: it is an inherent incapacity, which, however unlike the beauty of G.o.d's holiness, he can no more regard with penal disapproval, than he can hate the deformed or persecute the blind.

Again, whoever teaches that men are, through and through, the creatures of circ.u.mstance, with no more voice as to their character than as to their birth, but are the predestined products of nature, working partly within them and partly without,--no less surely insults all moral convictions, and denies the reality of duty. For he abolishes entirely the distinction between a person and a thing; and conceives of every man as a mere _growth_ or _development_ from the physiology of the universe, no more responsible for his place in the scale of excellence, than the plant which, according to its seed and soil, becomes the hyssop of the wall, the lily of the field, or the stately cedar of Lebanon. All moral ideas vanish instantly at the touch of this doctrine; and the solemn language on which Law and Conscience have stamped their venerable impress, and ruled among the nations "by the grace of G.o.d," is defaced in the revolutionary mint of fatalism, and made current with the superscription of a pretended equality where all are low, and liberty where none is free. It is quite clear, that, if the soul has no originating causality, but in every step she takes is simply _disposed of_ and bespoken by agencies provided and set in train, without any question asked of her, she can have no _duties_, she can win no _deserts_; she can incur no _guilt_, merit no _punishment_; she is deluded in her _remorse_, and suffers a vain torture in esteeming herself an _alien from G.o.d_. All that remains is this: that by natural laws there may be pain consequent, and known to be consequent, on some of the directions which we may take; and it is at our peril that we enter on these paths. But so is it at our peril if we go up in a balloon, or put to sea in a small boat to save a drowning crew. You can get nothing out of this consideration but more or less of _Prudence_; hope of happiness, fear of suffering, can consecrate nothing as a _Duty_, but only present it as _interest_; and if a man chooses to disregard his interest and risk the result, I know not who, in heaven or earth, can tell him with authority that he has no right to do it, or can say more to him than that he is a fool in his folly. Who on these terms could cast himself, in tears of penitence, upon the bosom of Infinite Mercy, and sob out his prayer that he might be reconciled to G.o.d? Who would ever tremble beneath the lash of a fiery reproach, and own, as it quivered over him, that there was justice in the terror of its look? Rather must the sinner feel himself the victim of a cruel doom; whom it is as little suitable to punish, as to chastise the patient in fever, or torture the cripple in the street. A doctrine which reduces duty to interest, retribution to discipline, guilt to disease, holiness to symmetry and good health, and G.o.d to the neutral source of all things good and ill;--which frightens us with fears we may defy, but awes us with no authority we can revere; which pities iniquity and smiles on goodness, but only in order to patronize enjoyment;--whose faith in human nature is a reliance on the ultimate docility of the wild animal man; and whose wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d is taken, like a morning walk, for the sake of exercise;--is so alien from the whole spirit of religion, and such an affront to the first instincts of conscience, that it can only escape indignant condemnation by withdrawing altogether into the sphere of natural history, and quitting as a foreign province the domain--whose language it corrupts--of Morals and of Faith.

Finally, those who teach that guilt and merit, with their penalties and rewards, can be transferred, deny in the directest way the personal nature of Sin. That men should find a foreign _remedy_ for their perpetrated wickedness, is not less shocking than that they should trace it to a foreign _source_. If they know what it is at all, they feel it to be inalienably their own; which none could give them and which none can take away. And nothing is more amazing than that good Christians, who seem truly cast down in humiliation, oppressed with the sense of their short-comings, penetrated with the sadness of baffled aspiration,--and who therefore, one would think, must really have a consciousness of the personality of sin, and know how it is chargeable only on their individual will,--can yet obtain relief by flying, as it is said, to the cross, and persuading themselves that the evil has been stayed and cured by transactions wholly outside themselves, and belonging to the history of another being. What can possibly be meant by the statement that Christ has borne the punishment, some eighteen hundred years ago, of your sins and mine,--of people non-existent then, and therefore non-sinful? Can the punishment precede the sin? Can it be inflicted and gone through before it is even determined whether the sin will be perpetrated at all? Or can merely _potential_ sin, which may never become actual, be dealt with at ages distant, and its accounts be settled ere it arise?

If so, what is the death of Christ but the provisory acc.u.mulation of a fund beforehand, ready to be drawn upon as the everlasting "treasure of the Church," for the free discharge of guilty debts and the release of divine obligations? And in what respect does this differ from the Roman Catholic doctrine,--except that the treasure is at the discretion of no chartered sacerdotal company, but is open on more popular and looser terms?

Moral relations, by their very nature, exclude all vicarious agency; you cannot fall, you cannot recover, by deputy: the ill that haunts you is the insult you have put on the divine spirit in your heart, and it is as if you were alone with G.o.d. An interposing medium can as little divert the retribution, as it can intercept the complacency of the Infinite and Holy Mind. What more fearful charge could you bring against any government, than to say that its penalties may be bought off? A judge who accepts the voluntary sufferings of innocence in acquittance of the liabilities of guilt, shocks every sentiment of justice, and does that which the worst judicial caprice would never dare to imitate. A law that does not care whether the right persons feel its retribution, provided it gets an equivalent suffering elsewhere, is an affront to the most elementary notions of right. And an offender who can welcome his escape by such device, permits his moral perceptions to be blinded by personal grat.i.tude, and is content to profit by a transaction which it would fill him with remorse to repeat upon his own children.

A Mediator may do much indeed to reconcile my alienated mind to G.o.d.

He may personally rise before me with a purity and greatness so unique as to give me faith in diviner things than I had known before, and by his higher image turn my eye towards the Highest of all. He may show me how, in the sublimest natures, sanct.i.ty and tenderness ever blend, and so touch the springs of inward reverence that, in my returning sympathy with goodness, all abject and deterring fears are swept away.

He may direct upon me, from the hall of trial or the cross of self-sacrifice, the loving look that prostrates the impulses of pa.s.sion and the power of self, and awakens the repentant enthusiasm of n.o.bler affections. He may renew my future; but he cannot change my past. He may sprinkle my immediate soul with the wave of regeneration; but he cannot drown the deeds that are gone. From _present sinfulness_ he may recover me; but the _perpetrated sins_--though he be G.o.d himself in power, unless he be other than G.o.d in holiness--he cannot redeem. These have become realized facts; and none can cut off the entail of their consequences: whatever the Divine Law has avowedly annexed to them will develop itself from them with infallible certainty. The outward sufferings by which G.o.d has stamped into the nature of things his disapprobation of sin, and made it grievous here and hereafter, stand irrevocably fast, clinging to guilt as shadow to body, as effect to cause. This debt of natural penalty is one which must be paid to the utmost farthing; by penitent and impenitent, by the reconciled and the unreconciled alike: miracle cannot cancel, nor mediator discharge it. In this sense,--of rescue from the penal laws of G.o.d,--I know of no remission of sins; nor would Christians have retained so heathenish a notion, had they not frightfully exaggerated, in the first instance, the retributions of G.o.d by making them an _eternal vengeance_; and so created a necessity for again rescinding the fierce enactments of their fancy, that hope and return might not be quite shut out. It is only in man, however, and not in G.o.d, thus to do and undo. His word, whether of warning or of promise, is Yea and Amen; and his great realities will march serenely on, and, heedless of our pa.s.sionate deprecations and fict.i.tious triumphs, rebuke our unbelief of their veracity.

But while the past can never be as though it were not, the present may lie in the shelter of reconciliation, and the future in the light of boundless hope. The outer burden we have incurred we may still have to bear; but once brought by Divine conversion to an inner sympathy with G.o.d, and seeing by his light rather than our own, we can suffer our wounds with a patient shame, and scarcely feel their anguish more. The averted face of the Infinite has turned round upon us again; and the pure eyes look into us with a mild and loving gaze, which we can meet with answering glance, and feel that we are at one with the universe and reconciled with G.o.d.

PEACE IN DIVISION: THE DUTIES OF CHRISTIANS IN AN AGE OF CONTROVERSY.

"Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay, but rather division."--Luke xii. 51.

Such was the account which the Saviour himself gave of a religion whose promise was hailed by angels as an occasion, not only of "glory to G.o.d in the highest," but of "peace on earth, and good-will to men." The contradiction between the two pa.s.sages is so obviously merely of a verbal nature, that it can perplex only the blind interpreter who penetrates no further than the letter of the sacred volume. I should only be giving utterance to your own spontaneous reflections, my friends, were I to tell you that my text speaks, not of the design, but of the consequence, of the dissemination of the Gospel; and that it indicates no more than a prophetic knowledge on the part of Christ of the diversities of sentiment and feeling which would spring from the diffusion of his religion. This prophetic knowledge, however, it does clearly indicate; and this is a fact of no mean importance. The unbeliever objects to Christianity, and the Roman Catholic to Protestantism, the endless catalogue of discordant opinions which have resulted from their prevalence; and to both we are furnished with one reply. This infinite diversity indicates no failure in our system; it is not an unexpected effect which startles and alarms us; it was foreseen by the Author of our religion, and announced by him as the necessary consequence of the genuine preaching of his Apostles. And though he had this evil (if such it be) full in view, he did not retreat from the office he had a.s.sumed, nor feel it at variance with his deep and tender philanthropy, to implant among mankind a faith that should break up their united ma.s.s into a thousand repulsive groups.