The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 03/Discourse 06
A DISCOURSE OF THE FUNCTION OF A TEACHER OF RELIGION IN THESE TIMES.
If the inhabitants of this town were to engage a scientific man to come and dwell amongst you, as Superintendent of Agriculture, and teach you practical farming, it is plain what purpose you would set before him, for which he must point out the way and furnish the scientific means. You would say, "Show us how to obtain, continually, the richest crops; of the most valuable quality; in quantity, the greatest; with the least labour, in the shortest time. Show us the means to that end."
It is plain what you would expect of him. He must understand his business thoroughly; farming as a science—the philosophy of the thing—teaching by ideas, and showing the reason of the matter; farming, likewise, as an art—the practice of the thing—the application of his science to your soil—demonstrating by fact the truth of his words, and thus proving the expediency of his thought.
Of course he ought to know the soil and climate of the special place; what crops best suit the particular circumstances. He must become familiar with the prevalent mode of farming in the town and neighbourhood, and know its good and ill. He should understand the ancestral prejudices he has to encounter, which oppose his science and his art. It would be well for him to know the history of agriculture—general of the world, and special of this place—understanding what experiments have been already tried with profit, what with failure. He should keep his eye open to the agriculture of mankind; ever on the look-out for new animals, plants, roots, seeds, scions, and better varieties of the old stock; for richer fertilizers of the soil—no islands of guano too remote for him to think upon; for superior modes of tillage; and more effective tools, whereby man could do more human work with less human toil. He would naturally confer with other farmers about him and all round the world, men of science or of practice, analyzing soils, enriching farms, greatening the crops. He would stimulate his townsmen to think about their work, and to create new use and new beauty on their estates. He need not be very anxious that all should think just as their fathers had done, or plough and shovel with instruments of the old pattern.
But what if he were ignorant and knew no more than others about him, and was yet called "the Honourable Agricultural Superintendent," "the Reverend Professor of Farming," and had been "ordained with ancient ceremomies!" It is plain he could not teach what he did not know. If he knew only the theory, not also the practice, he would be only a half teacher.
What if he was lazy, and would not learn? or bigoted, and stuck in some old form of agriculture, and would never depart from it—the Hebrew, from the time when there was no blacksmith in Israel, and men filed them ploughshares out of lumps of cold iron? or the Catholic form, in the days of Gregory VII., or Innocent III.? or the Reformed agriculture, from Luther's and Calvin's time? or the Puritanic, from the age of New England Cotton and Davenport? What if he took some ancient heathen author, Cato, Varro, Virgil, or Columella, as an infallible guide, and insisted that no crop, however seemingly excellent, could be good for anything unless won from the earth in that old-fashioned way; or declared that no blessing would fall upon a man's field unless he were a professing follower of Elias the Tishbite, and broke up ground with a team not less than four and twenty oxen strong!
What if he were perverse and cowardly, and saw the great errors in the common mode of farming—the theory wrong, the practice imperfect— and knew how to correct them, doubling the harvest while halving the toil, but yet would never tell his better way lest he should hurt the feelings of the people, be thought "radical" and "revolutionary," a "free-thinker," and should lead men to doubt whether it were best to plough and sow at all; or lest they should deny that bread could feed men, or even be raised out of the ground? "What if he were silent for fear he should spoil the sale of acorns and beech nuts by introducing wheat and Indian corn? What if he knew a perfect cure for the disease which makes the potato gather blackness, but would not tell it lest the bountiful supply should hurt the market of some men who had whole acres of onions and cabbages looking up for a high price?
What if he knew of better breeds of swine, horses, and horned cattle; better grains, fruits, flowers, vegetables; of better tools to work with, superior barns and houses to store or to live in, and yet kept it all to himself, fearing that he should be called hard names by such farmers as preferred pounding their corn with pestle and mortar to grinding it in a water-mill?
What if he spent his time in abusing the soil, declaring it capable of no good thing, ruined, lost, depraved, declaring it was impossible to make any improvement in husbandry, that neither material nor human nature would admit of another step in that direction; and took pains to defend the worst faults of the popular agriculture, insisting that the poorest farms were actually the richest, that tares were indispensable to wheat, the field of. the sluggard the best symbol of good farming; and flamed out into elegant wrath against all who dared have better farms and larger crops than their fathers rejoiced in! What could you say to all that?
But on the other hand, what if your Superintendent of Farming went manfully to his work, studied the soil and put in fitting crops, pointed out improvements to be made in fencing, draining, ploughing, planting, harvesting; introduced better varieties of cattle and of plants; set the people to think about their work, and so made the head save the hands; taught the children to observe the magnificent beauty of New England flowers and trees, and taught them the great laws of agriculture, whereby "each bush doth put its glory on like a gemmed bride," and in three years' time had doubled the productions of the town!
You have asked this young man to superintend your spiritual culture, not the farming of your fields, but of yourself. He must attend to the highest of all husbandry, and rear the noblest crops of use and beauty. Out of the soil of human nature he is to produce great harvests of human character. He is to teach the Science of Humanity—the Art of Life. You say to him, "Oh, young man, come and show us how to become the noblest men and women, achieving the greatest amount of human character of the highest human kind, with the least waste of effort, in the shortest time. Show us the ideal character, the end we ought to reach; the ideal life, the means thereto. We take you for helper, friend, counsellor, teacher; not our master to command, not the slave of our pride and prejudice to be commanded; not our vicar, to be, to do, and to suffer in our place, for we do not wish to live by attorney, but each of us on his own account. Be our teacher, helping in the highest work of life. As we commit to you this highest trust, we expect your highest efforts, your noblest thoughts, the manly prayers of your quickened and ever greatening life."
Man is a spirit, organized in matter. In our being is f one element, which connects us consciously with God, the Cause and Providence of the universe, imminent in all and yet transcending all. It is an essential faculty of human nature, belonging to the ontology of man, and gives indications of its presence in all men above the rank of the idiot; the rudiments appear even in him. It acts in all stages of human history; in the mere wild-man, where it appears in only its instinctive form; in the savage, who I has no conception of a God, only of the Divine in nature, a mighty force, differing in kind from matter and from man; in the barbarian, who makes concrete Deities out of plants, and animals, and elements, and men; and in the most enlightened philosophers who compose the Academies of Science at Paris or Berlin.
It is also the strongest faculty in man, overmastering all the rest; easily excited, not soon put down, and often running to the wildest and most fanatical excess. In rude stages of human history it sometimes appears as a wild instinct, rushing with blind and headlong violence, a lust after God, a rage of barbaric devotion. Thus in the mythic tale it drives Abraham to sacrifice his only son, and in actual history it impels Cybele's priests and a whole nation of Jews to odious mutilation of the flesh ; or maddens Hebrew priests who call God Jehovah, to butcher their brother priests who named him Baal. Among civilized men, in its abnormal form of action, it can silence and subdue the most powerful human affection. In three-fourths of Christendom the most unnatural celibacy is counted a virtue; how it separates the lover from the one beloved, the husband from his wife, yea, the mother from her child! Its power is visibly written in the great buildings of ancient and modern Rome, of Greece, Palestine, India, Egypt, of all the world. Their pyramids and temples, catacombs and churches, are unmistakable monuments of its power. From old Byzantium to modern Dublin, from Cadiz to Archangel, all Europe is crossed with its sign-manual; the handwriting of humanity upon the world is dotted throughout with visible marks of this mighty yet most subtle force.
See what institutions it has built up—the most widely-extended in time and space. The plough passed over Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago; the temple of Solomon and his successors has gone to the ground; no family speak now the language of King David ; yet on every seventh day in Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Mexico, in all the great cities of the western world, the scattered Israelites assemble to keep the old religious law. Moses has been dead three thousand years, yet in the name of Jehovah his hand still circumcises every Hebrew boy. What hold the popular theology takes on Christendom! Empires are but waves in the sea of Buddhism, Christianity, or Islamism, which ripples into Popes, and Czars, and Sultans, or swells into kingdoms and commonwealths that last whole centuries : these perish, while the great religious institution, like the ocean of waters, still holds on. To-day, a hundred and fifty millions worship as Mohammed bids; two hundred and fifty millions count Jesus of Nazareth as God; while twice that number — so 'tis said—reckon Buddha as their heavenly Lord. Such great combinations of men have never been produced except by the religious element. Theological ideas override the distinctions of nations, nay of races, and the Mongolian Chinese accept the theologic thought of the Caucasian from Hindostan.
History and philosophy alike show that this is the master-element in man—designed for a high place in the administration of his affairs; for as a man is spirit as well as body, immortal not less than meant for time, and has a personal consciousness of his relation to the Cause and Providence of all, so it is obviously needful that this element which deals with eternity and God, should live upon the strongest and deepest root in human nature. The fact is plain; the meaning and the purpose not hard to see: it has only powers proportionate to its work.
But hitherto the religious element has been the tyrant over all the other faculties of man. None has made such great mistakes, run to such excesses, been accompanied with such cruelty, and caused such wide-spread desolation. All human development is accomplished through the help of experiments which fail. What errors do men make in their agriculture and mechanic arts ; how many unsuccessful attempts before they produce a loom, or an axe, simplest of tools! What mistakes in organizing the family! what errors in forming the state ! And even now how much suffering comes from the false political doctrines men adhere to! Look at the countries which are ruined by the bad governments established therein. Asia Minor was once the world's garden, now it is laid waste : what cities have perished there; what kingdoms gone to the ground; for a thousand years its soil has hardly borne a single great man—conspicuous for art, letters, science, commerce, or aught save cruelty in war, and rapacity in peace! In the land whence the ideas which now make green the world once went so gladly forth, camels and asses seem the only undegenerate production. Yet it once teemed with cities, full of wholesome life. But all these mistakes are slight compared with the wanderings of the religious faculty in its historical progress. Consider the human sacrifices, the mutilations of the body, or the spirit, which have been regarded as the highest acts of homage to God. What is the Russian's subjection to a Czar compared to a Christian's worship of a conception of God who creates millions of millions of men only for the pleasure of squelching them down in bottomless and eternal hell ! In the Crimea, just now, in a single night, the allies burned up a year's provisions for three-and-thirty thousand men—the bread of all Springfield and Worcester for a twelve-month; in fourteen months a quarter of a million Russian soldiers have perished; Moravia is yet black with the desolations of the Thirty Years' war, whose last battle was fought more than two hundred years ago. But what is all the waste of war, the destruction of property, the butchery of men; what are all the abominations of slavery, compared to the eternal torment of a single soul! Yet it is the common belief of Christendom that not one man, but millions of millions of men, are, with unmitigated agony, to be trod for ever runder the fiery foot of God and the Devil, partners in this Dance of the Second Death which never ends, and treads flown a majority of all that are!
A man may be mastered by his bodily lusts, the lowest appetites of the flesh, eaten up by his own dogs and swine, the victim of drunkenness and debauchery. All about us there are examples of this fate! But he may also be mastered by his religious instinct, become its slave, and equally ruined. The Spanish inquisitor, thinking he did God service in burning His children for their mode of worship, is a worse form of ruin than the drunkard! Which has most completely gone to waste, the poor uneducated harlot of the street, or the well-endowed minister in Boston, who in the name of God calls on his parish to kidnap a fugitive slave? Consider the millions of men, tormented by dreadful fear, who dare not think, lest God should overhear their doubt—for He is thought to be always eavesdropping, and ever on the watch at the keyhole of human consciousness, hearkening for the footfall of a wandering thought—stab at and run them through, and then impale them on his thunderbolt, fixed in the eternal flame? The evil caused by the perverted appetites of the body is truly vast; but it is nothing when compared to the wide-extending mischief which comes from the perversion of this deepest and strongest instinct of the soul. When a little stream in a country town overflows its banks, a few faggots are swept away from the farmers woodpile, a ground squirrel is drowned out of his hole, a log washed off from the saw mill, a lamb, perchance, or a straggling calf, in some lonely pasture, may perish by the flood ; next week the bowed grass erects itself, and the freshet is forgot. But when the Amazon breaks over its continental bounds, it sweeps great cities from the earth; it floods wide provinces with its nauseous deluge of slime, which reeks its miasma into the air, poisoning with pestilence one half the tropic land. It is as easy for a giant to strike in the wrong place, as for a girl, and the mischief must be proportionate to the strength of stroke. Look over Christendom, Heathendom, and see what ghastly evils come from these mistakes.
The function of a sectarian Priest is to minister to the perversion of this faculty, to perpetuate the error—sometimes he knows it, oftenest he knows it not, but is one of the tools wherewith mankind makes the faulty experiment. But the teacher of a true form of religion is to take this most powerful element, and direct it to its normal work; is to use this force in promoting the general development and elevation of mankind; to husband the periodical inundation of the Amazon, and therewith fertilize whole tropic realms, making the earth bring forth abundantly, not for seven years only, but for seventy times seven, yea, for ever. In that soil which hitherto has borne such flowers as the pyramids, temples, and churches of the world, with peaceful virtues in many a realm, such weeds as Popery and the false doctrines of the popular theology of Christendom, he is to rear the fairest and most useful plants of humanity, health, wisdom, justice, benevolence, piety, whole harvests of welfare for mankind.
Using the word Religion in its wide sense, in the religion of the enlightened man of these times, there are involved three things—Feelings, Ideas, Actions,—which follow in this historic and logical order. At first his religious faculty works instinctively, the result is emotional, a mere Feeling; the next result is reflexional, the intellect is busy, and thereby he becomes conscious of what instinctively went on, and the feeling leads to an Idea ; at length it is volitional, in consequence of the feeling and the idea he wills, and determines the inward phenomena to an outward Action, a deed. The teacher of religion is to deal with all these—to work in the plane of Feelings, the department of sentiment, where life is emotional ; in that of Ideas, the department of theology, where life is likewise speculative ; in that of Actions, the department of morality, where life is also practical. As he is to address the intellect, work with ideas, and by these to excite the feelings, and thereby stir men to action, let me begin with the department of theology and thence proceed.
I. Of the teacher of religion in relation to Ideas of theology. There is one great Bcheme of thought called "Christianity," or more properly, the " Christian theology." It is common to all sects in Christendom. Of this, the "liberal" have least, the illiberal most ; but they differ only quantitatively — in amount, not kind. This is the common soil of Cfa&tondom, whence grow such great trees as Catholicism and Protestantism, with the various offshoots from each. From this common inheritance the minister is to take what he thinks true and useful, to reject what he thinks useless, to remove out of his way what he finds baneful.
But he is not to draw merely from this well, he is to get all the theologic truth he can find in other schemes of theology, not disdaining to be taught by an enemy. For two thousand years France has cultivated the olive and the vine, but lately has translated to her soil Chinese treatises on this branch of husbandry, and found profit in the "Heathens' counsel." The early Christians held to the Scriptures of the hostile Jew before they thought of claiming "inspiration" for their own Gospels and Epistles. Nay, Paul of Tarsus did not disdain to quote heathen poets for authority that man is God's child—"for we also are his off-spring." The teacher of religion must not be limited to these ancient wells of knowledge, he must dig new springs filled from the Universal Source, the great Mountain of Truth. He is to take no church for master—Hebrew, Heathen, Mohammedan, or Christian, Protestant or Catholic; no man, no sect, no word; but all which can aid for helps. He is not to be content with the "Said so" of any man, however famous or great; only with the "It is so" of fact, or the "I find it so" of his own personal ex perience. He has no right to foreclose his mind against truth from any source.
In dealing with theological ideas his work will be two-fold; first, Negative and militant, destroying a false theology; next, Positive and constructant, building up a true theology. Look a moment at each.
1. Of the Negative and destructive work of theology. Here the teacher will have much to do— both general and special work.
For the popular theology, common to all Christendom, logically rests on this supposition: It is wholly impossible for man, by himself, to ascertain any moral or religous truth; he cannot know that the soul is immortal, that there is a God, that it is right to love men, and wrong to hate; he may have "opinions," but they will be "only whims," belief in immortality, "one guess among many;" there can be no knowledge of justice, no practice of charity and forgiveness. But God has made a miraculous communication of doctrines on matters pertaining to religion; these are complete, containing all the truth that man will ever need to know on religion; and perfect, having no error at all: man must accept these as ultimate authority in all that pertains to religion—to religous sentiments, ideas, and actions. The sum of these miraculous doctrines is called the " supernatural revelation;" it is the peculiar heritage of Christians, though part of it was designed originally for the Jews, and previously delivered to them, who were once the " peculiar people," "the Lord's own," but now in consequence of their refusing the new revelation, which repeals the old, are "cast off and rejected." The Catholic maintains that the Roman Church is the exclusive depository of this miraculous revelation, and the Protestant limits it to the Bible; but both, and all their manifold sects, claim to rest on this foundation—the Word of God, supernatural, miraculous, exclusive, and infallible. Hence their ministers profess to derive the "power to bind and loose," and claim to teach with an authority superior to reason, conscience, the heart and soul of man. Hence they call their doctrine "divine;" all else is only "human teaching," "founded in reason, but with no authority." Hence the ology is called "sacred," not because true, and so far as true—for then the truths which Thales, or which Plato, taught were also "sacred" and "divine;" but as miraculous in its origin, coming from a source which is outside of human consciousness, and above all the doubts of men. In virtue of this miraculous revelation, the meanest priest ever let loose from Rome, or the smallest possible minister ever brooded into motion at Oberlin or Princeton, is supposed to know more about God, man, and the relation between them, than Socrates and all the "uninspired" philosophers, from Aristotle of Stagyra down to Baur of Tubingen, could ever find out with all the thinking of their mighty heads.
Now in theology the teacher must show that there is no philosophic or historical foundation for this vast fiction, it is "such stuff as dreams are made of;" there is no supernatural, miraculous, or infallible revelation; the Roman Church has none such, the Protestant none; it is not in the Bible, but the universe is the only Scripture of God—material nature its Old Testament, human nature the New, and in both fresh leaves get written over every day. He must show that inspiration comes not super-naturally and exceptionally, by the miraculous act of God, but naturally and instantially, by the normal act of man, and is proportionate to the individual's powers and use thereof; that the test of inspiration is in the doctrine, not outside thereof; its truth the only proof that what man thinks is also thought by God ; that all truth is equally His word, and they who discover it are alike inspired—whether truth pertaining to astronomy or religion; that the highest authority for any doctrine is its agreement with fact—facts of observation, or of intuitive or demonstrative consciousness. Surely no man, no sect, no book, nor oracle is master to a single soul, for each man is born a new Adam—
"The world is all before him where to choose
His place of rest, and Providence his guide."
In this resistance to the pretended authority of an alleged miraculous revelation, there is much to do. The teacher must preach the disadvantages of such a revelation, as Luther preached against the "infallible" Pope and Roman Church, or as Jesus thundered and lightened against the vain pretensions of the ancient Pharisees. Who shall dare bind the spirit of man and say, "Thus far shalt thou, reason, but no farther, and here shall thy proud thoughts be stayed?" The smallest priest! But who can stay the movement of those orbs in the spiritual heaven? Only He, who in the constitution of our spirit, gave us that great charter which secures unbounded freedom of thought. A spoiled child, a little wayward-minded girl, idiotic even, may command a thousand adult persons, if they be but slaves! What if they are men?
Once the hierarchy of philosophers sought to shut men in the midland seas, between the two Hercules' Pillars of Aristotle and Ptolemy; none must sail forth with venturous keel into the wide ocean, seeking for scientific truth; man must only paddle about the shores, where the masters had named all the headlands and marked out the way. What honour do we pay to men who broke the spell that bound the race? Once kings forbid all thought and speech about the state, the subject must not doubt, but only answer and obey. Where will such tyrants go? Let future Cromwells say. In theology, such men are forbid to think, to doubt, to reason, and inquire. "Search the Scripture "is made to mean, accept it as an idol. So we see men chained by the neck to some post of authority, their heads also tied down to their feet, for ever hobbling, round and round, picking some trampled grass on the closely nibbled spot, yet counting their limping stumble as the divine march of the heavenly host, and the clanking of their chains as the music of the spheres, most grateful unto God. Now and then some minister comes down and moves off the human cattle, and ties them out to feed on some other bit of well-trod land, while all before us reaches out the heavenly pasture, for which we long, and faint, and die.
It is an amazing spectacle! Modern science has shown that the theological astronomy, geology, and geography are mixed with whims, which overlay their facts; that the theological history is false in its chief particulars, relating to the origin and development of mankind; that its meta-physics are often absurd; its chief premises false; that the whole tree is of gradual growth; and still men have the hardihood to pretend it is all divine, all true, and that every truth in the science and morals of our times, nay, any piety and benevolence in human consciousness, his come from the miraculous revelation, and this alone I Truly it is a teacher's duty to expose this claim, so groundless, so wicked, so absurd, and refer men to the perpetual revelation from God, in the facts of his world of matter and of man.
So much for the general basis on which the popular theology of Christendom is said to rest, a basis of fancy. Next, a word of some of its erroneous doctrines.
There are five doctrines common to the theology of Christendom, namely—the false idea of God, as imperfect in power, wisdom, justice, benevolence, and holiness; the false idea of man, as fallen, depraved, and by nature lost; the false idea of the relation between God and man—a relation of perpetual antagonism, man naturally hating God, and God hating "fallen" and "depraved" man; the false idea of inspiration, that it comes only by a miracle on God's part, not by normal action on man's; and the false idea of salvation, that it is from the "wrath of God," who is to a consuming fire "breaking out against "poor human nature," by the "atoning blood of Christ," that is, by the death of Jesus of Nazareth, which appeased the "wrath of God;" and on condition of belief in this popular theology, especially of these five false ideas.
I will not now dwell on these monstrous doctrines.[1] But this scheme of theology stands in the way of man's progressive improvement. It impedes human progress more than all the vices of passion, drunkenness, and debauchery; more than all the abominations of slavery, which puts the chains on every eighth man in this republican democracy ! Accordingly the teacher who wishes to secure a normal development of the religious faculties of men, and to direct their powers so as to produce the highest human welfare, must use all the weapons of science against the errors of this theology, opposing them as Luther opposed the Pope and Roman Church, as Paul and Jesus the polytheism and pharisaism of their time; yes, as Moses withstood the idolatry of Egypt—not with ill-nature, with abuse, but with all the weapons of fair argument.
I know it is sometimes said that a minister ought never to attempt to correct errors in the theology of his time; that must be left to the laity or outsiders, for "the Christian church is to be reformed, not from within, but only from without," and " the minister has no right to disturb the peace of the churches by pointing out their false doctrines or wicked practices." Such counsel have I had from men of ts high standing " in the Christian pulpit, who practise also what they preach. Let them follow their own advice. But alas, if the deceitful lead the blind!
This destruction and denial is always a painful work. It is the misfortune of the times that now so much of it must needs be done, but the other part will be full of delight.
2. Of the Positive and constructant work in theology.
In general he has to show that theology is a human science, whereof piety is the primordial sentiment, and morality the act. A religious life is the practice whereof a true theology is the science. Here, as elsewhere, man is master, and learns by his own experiment; no man is so great as mankind, no scheme of theology to be accepted as a finality; the past is subject to revision by the present, which must also give an account of itself to the future. A real theology must be made up from facts of consciousness and observation, and like all science is capable of demonstration.
In special the teacher must set forth the great positive doctrines of a scientific theology, which is founded on these facts. To follow the five-fold division above referred to, he is to teach the philosophic idea of God, of man, of the relation between the two, of inspiration, and of salvation.
Of the philosophic idea of God. If the teacher be able-minded, and fitly furnished with spiritual culture, starting from facts of consciousness in himself, of observation in the world of matter, aided by the history of the past and the achievements of the present, it is not difficult for him to set forth and establish the idea of God as infinitely perfect; philosophically from these materials he constructs the idea of the infinite God, the absolute Being, with no limitation. God must have all conceivable perfection—the perfection of Being, self-existence, eternity of duration, endless and without beginning; of power, all mightiness; of mind, all knowingness; of conscience, all righteousness; of affection, all lovingness ; of soul, all holiness, absolute fidelity to himself. These words describe the idea of God, and distinguish it from all others, but these qualities do not exhaust the perfections of God, only our present conception thereof. To one with more and greater faculties, other qualities must doubtless appear in his conception of the Infinite. Look up at the heavens and consider the worlds of matter, revolving there visible to the unarmed sight; multiply those dots of light by the function of the telescope, consider each but the centre of a system of other worlds all full of motion and of conscious life; with a microscope study a bit of Dover chalk, or slate-stone from Berlin, and see in a single inch the million-million tiny monuments of what once was life, its epitaph now published in such small print; close your eyes, and imagine those astral schemes of suns each as the centre of a planetary system, and every orb as full of life as this, but variant in character as in circumstance and condition, then ask if you can comprehend the consciousness of the Being who is the Cause and Providence of all this—ay, of the creator of a single drop of ink! What we can know of the infinite God is but a whisper from a world of harmony. Still, though inadequate, the idea may be free from contradiction, and contain no thought which does not represent a quality in God, as the fly on the dome of St Peter's, who sees but an inch, may yet see the nail he perches on. Thus conscious of the limited extent of human powers, I like not to call God personal, lest my idea be invested with the defect of human personality; or impersonal, lest the limits of matter be crowded about the idea of God. For certainly God's infinite consciousness must differ from our finite and dependent consciousness as the creative power of the universe differs from the instinct action of an unconscious baby grasping the finger of its twin-born mate. The quality and quantity of the infinite consciousness we cannot analyze and so exhaustingly comprehend. Still this positive fact remains to us — the infinitely perfect God. This I think the highest thought which mankind has yet reached, the grandest idea in the consciousness of humanity.
How different is this from the theological conception of God whereof the ethical character is as revolting as the Trinitarian arithmetic thereof is absurd. What a difference between the infinite God and the wrathful God of the popular theology—as He appears in the New England Primer—in Michael Angelo's last Judgment—in every "Christian Scheme of Divinity!"
Of the philosophic idea of man. Starting from indisputable facts it is easy to show what a noble nature there is in man, so endowed with vast capabilities. I wonder that any one can think meanly of this chief creation of God, can talk of "poor human nature;" why, in comparison with the instinctive aspiration of our nature the loftiest achievements of a Leibnitz or a Jesus seem low and little. What a history is there behind us ! Man began his career with no inheritance save what was covered with his skin; without material or spiritual property—no house, nor tool, nor garment, not a breakfast laid up for to-morrow, no science, law, literature, customs, habits, manners, or even language; out of him was material nature, in him rude human nature. See what has thence risen up in the thirty or forty thousand years of his probable existence. What a panorama of triumph lies there behind us! Surely the history of man is a continual victory, the triumph of what is spiritual over the merely animal, of conscious reflection over mere brute, instinctive, animal desire. It is the Infinite Providence which planned the campaign and guides the victorious march. Even the errors and follies of mankind—the experiments which fail—are steps forward, only not straight forward. The teacher ought to understand the historical development of mankind, that in the panorama of what has been done he may demonstrate the nobility of our nature, and show the certainty of our triumph at the last over all the transient evils of our condition.
He may take the body for his text, far more st wonder- fully made" than the Hebrew psalmist could conceive of three thousand years ago, but hopefully more than "fearfully." What masterly workmanship it is which puts these elements together—this "handful of enchanted dust," making an instrument so perfect for a purpose which is so grand! He can unfold and publish the body's laws, the celestial mechanics of this microcosm, as the astronomers disclose the mode of action of the forces in the sky. Every law of the body is a commandment from the most high God, who enacts geology in tables of stone, but in scriptures of flesh has writ the law of flesh.
He may take the part of man not material for his theme, and show the unity of spirit in such diversity of faculties—intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious—disclosing the natural function of each, all in their order combining to achieve the destination of mankind.
He can show that human nature, on the whole, is just what God meant it to be, no mistake of his careless hand, not damaged by the "Devil;" that it is God's perfect means for his perfect purpose; that the parts are also adequate to their several functions—the body exactly fitted to the body's work, the intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious faculties exactly suited to the duty they have to do. He can show this by metaphysical analysis, and demonstrate it all by deductions from the infinite perfection of God; or by the synthesis of actual history, show how all these continually work together for good. For the freedom of man—his power of self-rule, direct by his simple will, or mediate through outward helps of circumstance and condition—enlarges like his property and other power, from age to age; and the quantity of human virtue is ever on the increase. Human nature unfolds itself by trial, by experiment, wherein man makes as many mistakes as a child in learning to think, to speak, to walk, to read and write, yet learns by every error, yea, by every sin. The misstep of the individual or nation is but one incident of the universal human desire of perfection as end and progress as the means thereto; and as we prefer health, strength, and beauty before sickness and deformity, before pain and death, not less naturally does man, at last, reject all but truth in things intellectual, all save justice in things moral, and holds fast to holiness and love. Our history is not a retreat, it is a march forward. Mythology fancies a "fall;" history records an ascension. The tempting devil disappears—a theologic fancy of the younger age; the guiding! Providence remains a scientific fact. Nothing is more clearly demonstrated than the continual progress of humanity, I mean, the regular growth of every excellence. Let a man make a pictorial view of any special art—the trade of the smith, farmer, carpenter, clothier, sailor; or of any science—arithmetic, astronomy, chemistry; or of morality and religion; and since the historic age began, see what a continual progress there has been! Combine all these into one grand panorama of humanity, and lo, what a monument of our greatness, what a prophecy of our destination it affords! Man started with nothing; in one or two thousand generations see what he has done; this naked and penniless Adam turns out the thriftiest child of God. Behold his material and spiritual estate!
The religious teacher will set forth the ideal of what man should be; it is the prayer of human nature, through the imagination ascending from every human faculty, which longs for its complete and perfect development. What a future this ideal foretells, to be made by man, as the past has been, partly by his instinctive action outrunning his personal will, partly by his conscious calculation, setting the purpose, and thereto devising means! This is plain—there must be a destination proportionate to the nature of man, a fulfilment of the soul's desires. By the facts of the past and present, history shows that it is likely to be so, and by the facts of consciousness—intuitive and demonstrative—by deduction from the idea of a perfect God, human nature shows that it must be so and shall. Indeed the infinite perfection of God is collateral security for the promise, made in our nature itself, that normal desire shall ultimately have its satisfaction, and the ideal of man shall, one day, be the actual of humanity.
Man's immortality must be dwelt upon. This can be shown not by things outside of us, not at all by quoting stories which cannot be true, but by the development of facts given instinctively in the consciousness of all. How easy it is to show that an immortality of blessedness awaits the race and each individual thereof, wherefrom not even the wickedest of men shall ultimately be cut off. Surely the Infinite God must have made man so that humanity contains all the forces needful for the perfect realization of the ideal thereof.
The philosophic idea of man gathered up from common and notorious facts, how different ft is from the "poor human nature "we read of in theological books, and which so many ministers whine over in sermon and in prayer!
Of the philosophic idea of the relation between God and man. This must correspond to the character of God himself. In the world of man as the world of matter He must be a perfect Cause to create, a perfect Providence to direct; must create and provide from a perfect motive—the desire to bless; for a perfect purpose—for blessedness as end; and furnish perfect means, adequate to achieve the end. On God's part it must be a relation of love—an infinite desire to bless, attended with infinite power to bless. God is capable of nothing else. Of all possible worlds He must have made the best. The evil passions which the Christian theology ascribe to God are impossible. He a "jealous God;" he a "consuming fire;" he have "wrath." and keep it "for ever!" he torment men for his own delight of vengeance; his Wisdom mock when their fear cometh! He say to a single child of humanity, "Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlastiug fire prepared for the Devil and his angels; I never knew you! "Even the meanest of mortal mothers meets her son, all stained with blood which cries out against him, and at the foot of the gallows folds the felon in her arms, with "My son I my son! would to God that I could die for thee!" And do you believe that the Cause and Providence of yonder stars and of these little flowers will doom to endless hell a child of His! Shame on the worse than heathen thought! A savage might easily make the monstrous error, attributing his own love of vengeance to his God; overburthened with veneration for antiquity, even the noblest men might repeat the mistake; and celibate monks of the dark ages— victims of tie darker theology which ruled them with its whip of fear—might rejoice in the cruel, dreadful thought. Let us be just to all, gentle in our judgment of theologic as other wanderings—but let no thoughtful man do less than spurn the malignant doctrine far away. Suffering there is ; suffering there may be hereafter, must be, perhaps, but the present and the future misery must be overruled for the good of all, the good of each; it is God's medicine, not poison from a "Devil."
There are no types in human affairs to represent the relation of the Infinite God to man. The words of tenderest and most purely affectional human intimacy best convey the idea ; so let us call God our Father and our Mother too.
How different is this from the theological idea of the relation between God and man—the imperfect God and the depraved man—the antagonistic relation!
Of the philosophic idea of inspiration. The Infinite God is everywhere in the world of matter; its existence is a sign of Him, for infinite power is the background and condition of these particles of dust. Here is matter—take one step and there is God, it is not possible without him—the derived depending on the Original. Matter is manifest to the senses, God to the spirit. He acts where He is, not anywhere an idle God. The powers of matter are but modes of God's activity ; Nature lives in Him—without His continual active presence therein Nature were not. He
"Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent"
" To him no high, no low, no great, no small ;
He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all."
He is equally present in the world of man, the world of spirit: it also depends on Him; He lives in it, and it in Him. He is also active therein. God is nowhere idle. Human life as much depends on Him as the life of Nature. Just so far as any human faculty acts after its normal mode, it is inspired. Truth of thought is the test of intellectual inspiration; justice, of moral ; love, of affections! ; holiness, self reliant integrity, of religions inspiration.
All the world of matter is subject to law—constant modes of operation of the forces thereof, which of necessity are always kept. So there are modes of operation for the human spirit, whereto obedience is partly of free will; for while matter is wholly bound, man is partially free. When we act in obedience to these ideal laws, then God works with them, through them, in them ; we are inspired by him. So inspiration is not a transient fact, exceptional in the history of mankind, and depending on the arbitrary caprice of an imperfect Deity, but constant, instantial, and resulting from the laws which the Infinite God enacts in the constitution of man; its quality ever the same, its degree varying only with the original genius of each person, and the faithful use thereof. We grow and live thereon as the tree grows by the vegetative power residing in itself, and in the earth, the water, the air, and sun. Miraculous inspiration exists only as a dream, or a cheat; a fancy of the self-deceived, or a pretence of the deceivers. Normal inspiration is not limited to theological or religious men, but is the common heritage of all. The housewife in her kitchen, the smith in his shop, the philosopher, poet, statesman, trader, all may alike communicate with God, and receive liberal supply. Inspiration of this sort belongs to the nature of man's spirit, which depends on Infinite God as the flesh on finite matter; one may have much, another little, and the use and form thereof will be most exceedingly unlike—as vegetation differs in the forest, field, and garden, but all comes from the same elemental air and water, earth and sun. It is not limited to one age, but is diffused to all, its amount continually increasing with the higher forms of human life.
How much this differs from the theological idea of inspiration—miraculous, unnatural, and often "revealing" things absurd and monstrous!
Of the philosophic idea of salvation. To realize the ideal of human nature, that is, salvation ; to develope the body into its natural strength, health, and beauty; to educate the spirit, all its faculties at normal work, harmoniously acting together, all men attaining their natural discipline, development, and delight! Part of it we look for in the next world, and for that rely upon the infinite perfection of God; part of it we toil for here, and shall achieve it here. To do a man's best, to try to do his best, that is to be " acceptable to God," to " make our peace with Him," who is of all preserver and defence. There is no " wrath of God " to be saved from ; no " vicarious atonement " to be saved by; no miracle is wrought by God; He asks only normal service of man, and as He is infinitely perfect, so must He have arranged all things, that all shall work for good at last, mankind be saved, and no son of perdition e'er be lost. Suffering there is—there will be. I, at least, cannot show why it was needful in the world's great plan, nor see the steps by which this suffering will end, nor always see the special purpose that it serves—but with the certainty of such a God, the ultimate salvation of all is itself made sure.
How different is all this from the theological idea of salvation—"hard to be won, and only by a few!"
How much we need a theology like this—a natural theology, scientifically derived from the world of matter and of man, the product of religious feeling and philosophic thought! Such ideas of God, of man, of the relation between the two; of inspiration, of salvation—it is what mankind longs for, as painters long for artistic loveliness, and scholars for scientific truth; yea, as hungry men long for their daily bread. The philosopher wants a theology as comprehensive as his science—a God with wisdom and with power immanent in all the universe, and yet transcending that. The philanthropist wants it not less, a God who loves all men. Yea, men and women all throughout the land desire a theology like this, which shall legitimate the instinctive emotions of reverence, and love, and trust in God, that to their spirits, careful and troubled about many things, shall give the comfort and the hope and peace for which they sigh ! How much doubt there is in all the churches which the minister cannot appease; how much hunger he can never still, because he offers only that old barbaric theology which suited the rudeness of a savage age, and is rejected by the enlightened consciousness of this! How much truth is there outside of all the sects—how much justice and benevolence, and noblest piety, which they cannot bring in, because this popular theology, like a destroying angel armed with a flaming fiery sword, struts evermore before the church's gate, barring men off from beneath the Tree of Life, anxious to hew off the head of lofty men, and gash and frighten all such as be of gentle, holy heart.
So much for the teacher's relation to ideas, the instrument he is to work withal, and waken the religious feelings into life.
II. Of the teacher of religion in his relation to the feelings connected with religion.
With theological ideas of this scientific stamp it is easy to rouse the religious feelings, the great master emotions, and then rear up that whole brood of beautiful affections, whose nest such an idea of God broods over and warms to life. If God be preached to men as endowed with infinite perfection, He at once is felt as the object of desire for every spiritual faculty; to the mind, Infinite Wisdom—the author of all truth and beauty; to the conscience, Infinite Justice—the Creator of all right; to the affections, Infinite Love—the Father and Mother of all things which are; to the soul, Infinite Holiness—absolute fidelity. So here is presented to men the Infinite God—perfectly powerful, wise, just, loving, and holy, self-subsistent, self-reliant. Is any one an atheist to such a God? No, not one! Who can fail to love Him? the philosopher, who throughout all the world seeks truth, the science of things? the poet and the artist, who hunt the world of things and thoughts all through for shapes and images of beauty ? the moralist, who asks for ideal justice and rejoices to find it imperative in Nature and in man? the philanthropist, who would fold to his great heart pirates and murderers, and bless the abandoned harlot of the street, yea, have mercy on the "Christian" stealer of men, in Boston? the sentimentalist of piety, who loves devotion for itself, who would only lie low before the Divine as an anemone beneath the sky, and with no dissevering thought, in joyous prayer would mix and lose his personal being in mystic communion with the Infinite consciousness of God? Surely all these in the Infinite God will find more than the object which elsewhere they vainly seek. And the great mass of men and women, in our cares and sorrows, in our daily joys and not infrequent sins, we all cry out for the infinite perfection of God, and bless the feet of such a bring the idea upon their tongues revealing words peace! Love of God springs up at once, and strongly grows, what tranquillity follows, what youthful plav of all the faculties at first, at length, what manly work! What joyous and long-continued delight in God! We long then keep all the commandments He writes in Nature and man. When it is God's voice that speaks, how reverently shall we all listen for each oracle. How shall I respect my own body when I know it is a human Sinai, where more than ten commandments are given—writ on tables which no angry Moses ever breaks, kept eternally in the universe, which is the Ark of God's covenant, holding also the branch that buds for ever, and the memorial-bread of many a finished pilgrimage. From this mountain God never withdraws, no thundering trumpets forbid approach, but the Father's voice therein for ever speaks. Ajid how shall I reverence this spiritual essence which I call myself, where instinct and reflection for ever preach their Sermon on the Mount, full of beatitudes for whoso hears and heeds! How readily will all the generous feelings towards men spring up when such a Sun of Righteousness shines down from heaven with natural inspiration in her beams; not New England grass grows readier beneath the skies of June. How dutiful becomes instinctive desire; how desirable is conscious duty then! Is the way hard and steep to climb? the difficulty is lessened at the thought of God, and full of noblest aspirations, heartiest trust, the brave man sallies forth, victory perching on his banner.
What consolation will such ideas afford men in their, sorrows! Let me know that Infinite Wisdom planned all this world, a causal Providence, and perfect Love inspired the plan ; that it will all turn out triumphant at the last—not a soul lost in the eternal march, no suffering wasted, not a tear-drop without its compensation, not a sin but shall be overruled for good at last; that all has been foreseen and all provided for, and mankind furnished with powers quite adequate to achieve the end, for all, for each what a new motive have I for active toil! yea, what consolation in the worst defeat! I can gird my loins with strength, and go forth to any work; or defeated, wounded, conquered, I can fold my arms in triumph still, looking to the eternal victory.
The teacher of religion is with men in their joy and in their sorrow. Old age and youth pass under his eye; he is the patron saint of the crutch and the cradle, and with such ideas—the grandest weapon of this age—he can excite such pious emotions in the maiden and the youth as shall make all their life a glorious day, full of manly and womanly work, full of human victory; and in the experienced heart of age he can kindle such a flame of hope, and trust, and love, as shall adorn the evening with warm and tranquil glories—saffron and purple, green and gold—all round the peaceful sky, and draw down the sweet influence of heaven into that victorious consciousness, and while his mortal years become like the morning star, paling and waning its ineffectual fire, the immortal shall advance to all the triumphs of eternal day.
Hitherto priests and ministers of all forms of religion—I blame them not—have sought to waken emotions, mostly of fear before the God of their fancy, a dark and dreadful God. With such ideas of Him, they had no more which they could do. So the popular religion has been starved with fear, and with malignant emotions even worse. It is under this dreadful whip that men have builded up those pyramids, and mosques, and temples, and cathedrals, and formed those great institutions which outlast empires. Such things belong to the beginning of our pilgrimage. When man was a child he thought as a child. Now shall he put childish things away.
So much for the teacher's relation to the feelings connected with religion.
III. Of the teacher of religion in relation to acts of morality. Religion begins in feeling, the emotional germ; it goes on to thought, the intellectual blade, budding, leafing, and flowering forth prophetic ; it becomes an act, a deed, the moral fruit — full of bread of life for to-day, full of seeds of life for the unbounded future. Morality is keeping the natural laws written of God in the constitution of matter and of man. These we first feel by our instinctive emotions, and next know by the calculation of reflective thought, and at last practise by the will, making the ideal of emotion and of thought the actual of practice in daily life. The whole great field of morals belongs to the jurisdiction of the teacher of religion.
1. He must show the practical relation of man to the world of matter, the basis of all our endeavours. Here he must set forth the duty of industry, of thrift, of temperance—the normal use of what Nature affords, or industry and thrift provides. He is to learn the natural rule of conduct by studying the constitution of matter, the constitution of man, and then apply this law of God to human life. He can show what use man should make of his mastery over the material world, the function of property, the product of industry, in the development of the individual and the race, and explain the services which vassal matter may render to imperial man. He is to point out the conditions on which we depend for health, strength, long life, and beauty—all the perfections of the body—the way to live so as to keep a sound spirit in sound flesh—handsome and strong. These things belong to what may be called the material basis of morals.
2. He must also teach the true human morals, the rule of conduct which should govern man in regulating his own personal affairs, and in his dealings with mankind. Here, too, from the constitution of human nature he is to unfold the rule of conduct, the eternal right, and make the application thereof to all the forms of collective and of individual human life.
Here come the great morals which we call politics—the relation of state with state, and of the government with the people. This comes directly under the cognizance of the teacher of religion, especially in this country, where all the people are the government, and where such an intense interest is felt in political affairs, and so many take an active part in the practical business of making and administering the laws. If politicians commonly aim to provide for their own party, or at best only for their own nation, he must consult for the eternal right, which is the joint good of all the people, yea, of mankind also. They derive their rule of conduct from the expediency of to-day, nay, often only from the whim of the moment, he his from the justice of eternity; they consult only about measures, and defer to statutes of the realm, compacts, compromises, and the constitution of. the land, he communes with principles, and defers only to the laws of God, the constitution of the universe.
He must preach on politics, not as the representative of a party but of mankind, and report not the mean counsels of a political economy, which consults for one party or one nation, for one day alone, but declare the sublime oracles of political morality, which looks to the welfare of all parties, all nations, and throughout all time. He must know no race but the human, no class but men and women, no ultimate lawgiver but God, whose statute book is the world of matter and the world of men—justice the sole finality.
I know some men say "Religion has nothing to do with politics, and the minister should never preach on the political rights and duties of the citizens of democratic America!" They mean morality has nothing to do with -politics: that is, in making and administering the laws, no consideration is to be had of charity, truth, justice, or common honesty. Certainly they mean nothing else. On what other supposition can we be asked to support the fugitive slave bill and the decisions of kidnappers' courts! I know men in pulpits, "men fearfully and wonderfully made," who say "The minister should have nothing to do with politics"—except to vote and talk as his task-masters and owners imperatively command; that is, he should never preach in favour of good laws or against wicked ones, never set forth the great principles of morality which underlie the welfare of the state, nor point out measures to embody and apply mere principles; and never, never expose the false principles and wicked measures which would lead the community to ruin. "For Christianity has nothing to do with the politics of men; the minister's business is 'to preach the gospel,’ 'to save souls,’ he speaks 'as to dying men,’ who have here no continuing city, but only seek one which is to come; therefore is the Sunday left for preaching on what does not concern this world "Such ministers ought to have nothing to do with anything, and soon will have what they ought. The teacher of religion nothing to do with the political actions of the people, one whole department of conduct—which most intimately concerns the welfare and the character of every child—left out of the jurisdiction of morality and religion! Look at the conduct of the founders of the great world-sects! Had Mohammed nothing to do with politics? On the ruins of the idolatrous structures of old, out of Hebrew and Christian stones, cemented with his own wisdom and folly, he built up the commonwealth of Islam, wherein an hundred and fifty million men now find repose. Moses nothing to do with politics! As the poetic tale relates, he led two million men out of Egypt, and therefrom built up a new state with ideas of politics far in advance of his times. Jesus nothing to do with politics! In the fourth Gospel—not an historic document, but mainly a religious fiction—he says, "My kingdom is not of this world;" but in the more authentic documents, the first Gospel and the third, he promises that his twelve disciples "shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel!" and actually laid down the moral principles of political conduct, which, if applied according to his direction, would revolutionize every state, and make a Christian commonwealth of the world. Actually at this day the words of Mohammed, Moses, and Jesus are appealed to as the supreme law in Turkish, Hebrew, and Koman courts. What an intense irony it is when the professor of the gospel says, "Christianity has nothing to do with politics," and the professor of law tells his pupils "Christianity is part of the common law," "the Bible the I foundation of common jurisprudence!"
All the great Christian leaders were also men of politics, their word of religion became flesh in the state. Look at Augustine, at Ambrose of Milan, at the patriarchs of the Eastern churches, at the metropolitans of the West, at Gregory VII., at Innocent III., all men whose word became law ! Augustine was a Eoman organizer, filled with the ideas of Paul of Tarsus. What an influence he had in destroying the pagan state, and building what he esteemed the "City of God." Bernard, the monk of Clairvaux, made popes and unmade them, and out of his lap shook an army of crusaders upon the Holy Land. Bossuet had I as lasting an influence on France as the "grand mon arqne;" Louis claimed to be himself the state, but the priest was so more than the king. Luther controlled kingdoms; the word of powerful John Calvin became the constitution of Geneva, it moulded the Swiss cantons, and had a powerful political influence wherever thoughts of that great thinker went.
Look at the founders of the American churches—at Robinson, and Cotton, and Hooker, and Davenport, and Wilson; at Higginson and Roger Williams! Ask Edwards and Hopkins, ask Mayhew and Channing, if the minister should teach that politics have nothing to do with religion, and religion nothing to do with politics! You might as well say the sailor had nothing to do with the ocean, and New England manufacturers no concern with the Connecticut and the Merrimac, with wind, or water, or fire! Look at the actual politics of America, at the open denial of the higher law, at the politician's insolent mock against all religion, and see the need that the teacher should lay down the great moral principles of human nature, and apply them to the political measures of the day. It is only when the minister is a purchased slave that he tells men Christianity has nothing to do with political conduct, and praises the practical atheist as the "model Christian."
Then come the morals of society. Here the teacher must look at the dealings of men in their relations of industry and of charity, and set forth the mutual duty of the strong and the weak, the employer and the employed, the educated and the ignorant, the many and the few. Natural religion must be applied to life in all departments of industrial activity; farming, manufacturing, buying and selling, must all be conducted on the principles of the Christian religion, that is, of natural justice. The religious word must become religious flesh—great, wide, deep, universal religious life. The deceit and fraud of all kinds of business he must rebuke, and show the better way, deriving the rule of conduct from human nature itself.
I know there are men, yea, ministers, who think that "Christianity" has no more to do with "business" than with politics. It must not be applied to the liquor trade, or the money trade, or the slave trade, or to any of the practical dealings of man with man. It is not "works" but "faith" which "save" the soul. So the minister who preaches a "gospel" which has nothing to do with politics, preaches also a gospel which has nothing to do with buying and selling, with honesty and dishonesty, with any actual concern of practical life. Leave them and pass them by, not without blame, but yet with pity too. Look at the social life of man—see what waste of toil and the material it wins; here suffering from unearned excess, there from want not merited; here degradation from idleness, there from long-continued and unremitting drudgery. See the vices, the crimes, which come from the evil conditions in which we are born and bred! These things are not always' to continue. Defects in our social machinery are as much capable of a remedy as in our mills for corn or cotton. It is for the minister to make ready the materials with which better forms of society shall one day be made. If possible, he is to prepare the idea thereof; nay, to organize it if he can. What a service will the man render to humanity who shall improve the mechanism of society, as Fulton and Watt the mechanism of the shops, and organize men into a community, as they matter into mills. Yet it is all possible, and it is something to see the possibility.
Then come the morals of the family. Here are the domestic relations of man and woman—lover and beloved, husband and wife; of parent and child, of relatives, friends, members of the same household. Here, too, the teacher is to learn the rule of conduct from human nature itself and teach a real morality—applying religious emotions and theological ideas to domestic life. The family requires amendment not less than the community and state. There is an ill-concealed distrust of our present domestic relations, a scepticism much more profound than meets the ear or careless eye. The community is uneasy, yet knows not what to do. See, on the one hand, the great amount of unnatural celibacy, continually increasing; and on the other, the odious vice which so mars soul and body in an earthly hell. The two extremes lie plain before the thoughtful man, both unnatural, and one most wicked and brutal. Besides, the increase of divorces, the alteration of laws so as to facilitate the separation of man and wife, not for one offence alone, but for any which is a breach of wedlock, the fact that women so often seek divorce from their husbands—for drunkenness and other analogous causes—all show that a silent revolution is taking place in the old ideas of the family. Future good will doubtless come of this, but present evil and licentiousness is also to be looked for before we attain the normal state. Many European novels which are characteristic of this age bring to light the steps of this revolution.
The old theology subordinates woman to man. In the tenth commandment she is part of her husband's property, and so, for his sake, must not be "coveted." In the "divine" schedule of property she is put between the house and the man-slave ; not so valuable as the real estate, but first in the inventory of chattels personal. Natural religion will change all this. When woman is regarded as the equal of man, and the family is based on that idea, there will follow a revolution of which no one, as yet, knows the peaceful, blessed consequence not only to the family, but the community and the state.
Most important of all come the morals of the individual. The teacher of religion must seek to make all men noble. He is not to make any one after the likeness of another—in the image of Beecher or Channing, Calvin, Luther, Peter, Paul or Jesus, Moses or Mohammed, but to quicken, to guide, and help each man gain the highest form of human nature that he is capable of attaining to; to help each become a man, feeling, thinking, willing, living on his own account, faithful to his special individuality of soul. I wish men understood this, that their individuality is as sacred before God as that of Jesus or of Moses; and you are no more to sacrifice your manhood to them than they theirs to you. Respect for your manhood or womanhood, how small soever your gifts may be, is the first of all duties. As I defend my body against all outward attacks, and keep whole my limbs, so must I cherish the integrity of my spirit, take no man's mind or conscience, heart or soul, for my master—the helpful all for helps, for despots none. I am more important to myself than Moses, Jesus, all men, can be to me. Holiness, the fidelity to my own consciousness, is the first of manly and womanly duties; that kept, all others follow sure.
With such feelings of love to God, such ideas of God, of man, of their relation, of inspiration, of salvation—with such actions, it is easy to see what form a free church will take. It will be ail assembly of men seeking to help each other in their religious growth and development, wakening feelings of piety, attaining ideas of theology, doing deeds of morality, living a great, manly, religious life; attempting, also, to help the religious development of mankind. There must be no fetter on the free spirit of man. Let all men be welcome here — the believer and the unbeliever, the Calvinist with his absurd trinity of imperfect Godheads, the atheist with his absurdity of denial; diverse in creed, we are all brothers in humanity. Of course you will have such sacraments of help as shall prove helpful. To me, the ordinances of religion are piety and morality; others ask bread, and wine, and water; yet others, a hundred other things. Let each walk the human road, and take what crutch of support, what staff of ornament he will.
In these three departments the teacher of religion is to show the ideal of human conduct, derived from the constitution of man, by the help of the past and the present; and then point out the means which lead to such an end, persuading men to keep their nature's law, and to achieve its purpose. Nay, he must go before them with his life, and demonstrate by his character, his fact of life, what he sets forth as theory thereof; he cannot teach what he does not know. He only leads who goes before. A good farm is the best argument for good farming. A mean man can teach nobleness only as the frost makes fire. A low man in a pulpit—ignoble, lazy, bigoted, selfish, vulgar—what a curse he is to any town; an incubus, a nightmare, pressing the slumberous church! A lofty man, large minded, well trained, with a great conscience, a wide, rich heart, and above all things a great pious soul, who instinctively loves God with all his might—what a blessing to any town is a manly and womanly minister like that! Let him preach the absolute religion, the service of God by the normal use, discipline, development, and delight of every limb of the body, every faculty of the spirit, and all the powers we possess over matter and man ; let him set forth the five great ideas of a scientific theology, and what an affluence of good will rain down from him!
What a field is before the religious teacher, what work to be done, what opportunities to do it all I Here is a false theology to be destroyed; but so destroyed that even every good brick or nail shall be kept safe; nay, the old rubbish is to be shot into the deep to make firm land whereon to erect anew; out of the good of the past and present a scientific theology, with many a blessed institution, is to be builded up. Great vices are to be corrected—war between state and state; oppression of the government over the people; there is the slave to be set free—bound not less in the chain of "Christian theology" than with the constitution and the law. The American church is the great blood-hound which watches the plantations of the South, baying against freedom with most terrific howl. "Christian theology" never breaks a fetter, while Christian religion will set all men free ! Woman is to be treated as the equivalent of man, with the same natural, essential, equal, and unalienable rights; here is a reform which at once affects one half the human race, and then the other half. Here is drunkenness to be abolished; it is to the Free States what slavery is to the South. Poverty must be got rid of, and ignorance overcome; covetousness, fraud, violence, all the manifold forms of crime, vices of passion, the worser vices of calculation, these are the foes which he must face, rout, overcome. What noble institutions shall he help humanity build up!
The great obstacle in the way of true religion is the false ideas of the popular theology. It has oversloughed human life, has checked and drowned to death full many handsome excellence, and gendered the most noisome weeds. So have I seen a little dainty meadow, full of fair, sweet grass, where New England's water-nymph, the Arethusa, came in June—fresh as the morning star, itself the day-star of a summer on high—yea, many a blessed little flower bloomed out. But a butcher and a leather-dresser built beside the stream which fed the nymph, dis gorging therein a flood of pestilence, and soon in place of Arethusa and her fair-faced sister flowers, huge weeds came up from the rank slime, and flaunted their vulgar, ugly dresses all the summer long, and went to seed peopling the spot with worse than barrenness!
Man has made great mistakes in his religious history. Worse than in aught beside. The enforced singleness of monk and nun, the polygamous conjunction of a master and his purchased beasts of luxury at Constantinople or Jerusalem, or at New Orleans, or at Washington; the brutish vice of ancient cities, which swallows down woman quick, into an actual pit worse than that fabled which took in the Hebrew heretics and their strange fire; the political tyranny of Asia Minor and Siberia; the drunken intemperance which reels in' Boston and New York, companion of the wealth which loves the spectacle; all this is not a worse departure from the mutual love which should conjoin one woman and one man, from natural justice, from wholesome food and drink, than the theological idea of God is a departure from the actual God, whom you meet in Nature as the Cause and Providence of all the universe, and feel in your own heart as the Father and Mother of the soul! Let not this amaze you. The strongest boy goes most astray—furthest if not oftenest. It is little things man first learns how to use—a chip of stone before an axe of steel ; how long he rides on asses oefore he learns to yoke fire and water, and command the lightning to convey his thought!
How much this religious faculty has run to waste—rending its banks, pouring otev the dam, or turning the priest's loud clattering mill of vanity, not grinding corn for the toilsome, hungry world. Man sits on the bank, in mortars pounding his poor bread with many a groan, mourning over political oppression, the lies of great and the vanity of little men, over war and want, slavery, drunkenness, and many a vice, while the priest turns to private account this river of God, which is full of water! Will it always be so? Always! Once the streams of New England crept along their oozy beds, where only the water-lily lay in maiden loveliness, or leaped down rocks in wild majestic play. None looked thereon but the woods, which, shagged with moss, bent down and dipped therein the venerable beard; or the moose, who came with pliant lip to woo the lilies when sunrise wakened those snow-clad daughters of the idle stream; or the bear, slaking her thirst in the clean water, or swimming with her young across; or the red man, who speared a salmon there and gave the river a poetic name. Look now: the woods have withdrawn, and only frame the handsome fields; the moose and the bear have given place to herds and flocks; the river is a mechanic—sawing, planing, boring, spinning, weaving, forging, iron—more skilful than Tyrian Hiram, or Bezaleel and Aholiab, once called inspired, and clothes the people in more loveliness than Solomon, in all his glory, e'er put on; the red man, as idle as the stream which fed him, he is now three million civil-suited sons of New England, all nestled in their thousand towns, furnished with shop, and ship, and house, and church, and rich with works of thought.
It is the little streams we utilize at first. New England inherited the culture which a thousand generations slowly won; but it took her two hundred years to catch and tame the Merrimac, still serving its apprenticeship. It is chiefly the small selfishness of man we organize as yet, not the great overmastering powers; these wait for more experienced years. But the great river of religious emotion—the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, the Mississippi, the Amazon of each human continent, which, fed from tallest heaven-touching hills, has so often torn up the yielding soil, and in its torrent dashed the ruins of one country on the next, in a deluge of persecution, crusade, war—one day, a peaceful stream, will flow by the farm and garden which it gently feeds, turn the mills of science, art, literaure, trade, politics, law, morals; will pass by the cottage, he hamlet, the village, and the city, all full of peaceful men and women, industrious and wealthy, intelligent, moral, serving the Infinite God by keeping all His law. What an age will that be when the soul is minister not despot, and the church is of self-conscious humanity!
Do you want a teacher to do for you the noblest work that man can do for man; to tell you of the Infinite God, of the real man, not the fabulous, of the actual Divine Scriptures, of the live religion; to help waken it in you, and organize it out of you; engineering for the great religious enterprises of mankind, and leading the way in all the progressive movements of the race? Then encourage this young man in his best efforts, rebuke all meanness, cowardice, dishonesty, affectation, sloth, all anger, all hate, all manner of unfaithfulness. Cheer and bless him for every good quality; honour his piety and morality; reverence all self-reliant integrity, all self-denying zeal. Bid him spend freely his costliest virtue, 'twill only greaten in the spending. If he have nothing to say, let him say it alone; make no mockery of hearkening where ears catch only wind, and the audience get cold; give him empty room. But if he have truth to tell, listen and live!
Do you want such a minister as superintendent of the highest husbandry, the culture of your soul? or a parasite, a flunkey, who will lie lies in your very face, giving you all of religion except feelings, ideas, and actions; a man always quoting and never living; making your meanness meaner after it is baptized and admitted to the church, and stuffed with what once to noble men were sacraments! Then I will tell you where to find such "by the quantity," at wholesale. I will show you the factories where they are turned out for the market. Nay, give me any pattern of minister which you require, I will lead you to the agent, who will copy it exactly, and from dead wood now stored away in churches laid up to dry, in three years furnish the article, made to order as readily as shoemakers' lasts, and by a similar process, "warranted sound in the faith"—if not in that "once delivered to the saints," at least in that now kept by the sinners! There are towns in Virginia which breed slaves for the plantations and the bagnios of the South; and also northern towns which breed slaves for the churches. God forgive us for taking his name in vain!
I know some men think the minister must be a little mean man, with a little mind, and a little conscience, and a little heart, and a little small soul, with a little effeminate culture got by drivelling over the words of some of humanity's noblest men; who never shows himself on the highway of letters, morals, science, business, politics, where thought, well girt for toil, marches forth to more than kingly victory; but now and then creeps round in the parlours of society, and sneaks up and down the aisles- of a meeting-house, and crawls into the pulpit, lifting up his cowardly and devirilized face, and then with the words and example of Moses, and Samuel, and David, and Esaias, and Jesus, and Paul before him, under his eye, in a small voice whines out his worthless stuff which does but belittle the exiguity of soul which appropriately sleeps before him in the pews, not beneath him in spirit, only below him in space. I know men who want such a minister, that will "preach the Gospel," and never apply the Christian religion to politics, to business, to society, to the life of the family or the individual, not even to the church An admirable gospel for scribes, and pharisees, and hypocrites! Glad tidings of great joy is it to the hunkers and stealers of men: "Religion nothing to do with politics ; the morality of Jesus not to be applied to the dealings of man; the golden rule too precious for daily use I " Such a man will "save souls"—preserved in hypocrisy and kept on ice from youth to age I How he can call his idolatry even worshipping the Bible I know not; for you cannot open this Book anywhere, but from between its oldest or its newest leaves there rustles forth the most earnest human speech, words which burn even now when they are two or three thousand years old!
How much a real minister of religion may do! He deals with the most concerning of all concerns, what touches the deepest wants of all men. How a man in such a calling can be idle, or indifferent, or dull to himself, I see not. The covetous man may be weary of money, a voluptuary sicken with pleasures, and one ambitious and greedy of praise get tired of new access of power, and loathe his own good name; but how a minister of religion can ever tire of toil to bless mankind, is past my finding out. How much a real teacher of absolute religion may bring to pass! Earth had never so palpable a need of a five minister with living religion in him, I care not whether you call it Christianity or no—but the feelings, the ideas, and the actions of such a religion as human nature demands! The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers—where are they?
No man has so admirable an opportunity as the minister to communicate his best thoughts to the public. The politician has his place in the Senate, and speaks twice or thrice in a session, on the external interests of men, chiefly busying himself about measures of political economy, and seldom thinking it decorous or "statesmanlike" to appeal to principles of right, or address any faculty deeper than the understanding, or appeal to aught nobler than selfishness. The reformer, the philanthropist, finds it difficult to gather an audience; they come reluctantly, at rare intervals of business or pleasure. But every Sunday custom tolls the bell of time. In the ruts of ancient usage men ride to the meeting-house, seat them in venerable pews, while the holiest associations of time and place calm and pacify their spirit, else often careful and troubled about man things, and all are ready for the teacher of religion to address their deepest and their highest powers. Before him lies the Bible—an Old Testament, full of prophets and rich in psalm and history; a New Testament, crowded wit apostles and martyrs, and in the midst thereof stands that great Hebrew peasant, lifting up such a magnificent and manly face. The very hymn the people sing is old and rich with holy memories; the pious breath of father, mother, sister, or perhaps some one more tenderly beloved, is immanent therein; and the tune itself comes like the soft wind of summer which hangs over a pond full of lilies, and then wafts their fragrance to all the little town. Once every week, nay, twice a Sunday, his self-gathered audience come to listen and to learn, expecting to be made ashamed of every meanness, vanity, and sin ; asking for rebuke, and coveting to be lifted up towards the measure of a perfect man. It is of the loftiest themes he is to treat. Beside all this, the most tender confidence is reposed in him—the secrets of business, the joy of moral worth, the grief of wickedness, the privacy of man's and woman's love, and the heart's bitterness which else may no man know, often are made known to him. He joins the hands of maidens and lovers, teaching them how to marry each other; he watches over the little children, and in sickness and in sorrow is asked "to soothe, and heal, and bless." Prophets and apostles sought such avenues to men, for him they are already made. Surely if a man, in such a place, speaking Sunday by Sunday, year out, year in, makes no mark, he must be a fool!
There was never such an opportunity for a great man to do a great constructive work in religion as here and now. How rich the people are!—in all needed things, I mean—and so not forced to starve their soul that life may flutter round the flesh: how intelligent they are! no nation comes near us in this. The ablest mind finds whole audiences tall enough to reach up and take his greatest, fairest thought. There is unbounded freedom in the North; no law forbids thought, or speech, or normal religious life. How well educated the women are! A man, with all the advantages of these times—rapidity of motion from place to place, means of publishing his thought in print and swiftly spreading it by newspapers throughout the land, freedom to speak and act, the development of the people, their quick intelligence to appreciate and apply a truth—has far more power to bless the world religiously than the Gospels ascribe to Jesus of Nazareth with all his miracles! What was walking on the water compared to riding in a railroad car; what "speaking with tongues" to printing your thought in a wide-spread newspaper; and what all other feigned miracles to the swift contact of mind with thoughtful mind!
Close behind us are Puritans and Pilgrims, who founded New England, fathers of all the North. They died so little while ago that, lay down your ear to the ground, you may almost fancy that you hear their parting prayer, "Oh, Father, bless the seed we planted with our tears and blood. And be the people thine!" Still in our bosom burns the fathers' fire. Through all our cities sweeps on the great river of religious emotion; thereof little streams also run among the hills, fed from the same heaven of piety; yea, into all our souls descends the sweet influence of nature, and instinctively we love and trust. All these invite the scientific mind and the mechanic hand of the minister to organize this vast and wasted force into institutions which shall secure the welfare of the world. Shall we use the waters of New England hills, and not also the religious instincts of New England men P What if a new Jesus were to appear in some American Nazareth, in some Massachusetts Galilee of the Gentiles, and bear the same relation to the consciousness of this age as the other Jesus to his times, what greater opportunities with no miracle would he now possess than if invested with that fabled power to re store the wanting limb, or to bring back the dead to life!
The good word of a live minister will probably be welcomed first by some choice maiden or matron, the evening star of that Heaven which is soon to blaze with masculine glory all night long. What individuals he may raise up! What schools he may establish, and educate therein a generation of holy ones! If noble, how he may stamp his feeling and his ideas on the action of the age, and long after death will reappear—a glorious resurrection this—in the intelligence, the literature, the philanthropy; in the temperance, and purity, and piety of the place! How many towns in America thus keep the soul of some good minister, some farmer or mechanic, lawyer or doctor—oftenest of all, of some good religious woman, long after her tomb has become undistinguishable in the common soil of graves? And how do we honour such?
"Past days, past men—but present still;
Men who could meet the hours,
And so bore fruit for every age,
And amaranthine flowers;—
Who proved that noble deeds are faith,
And living words are deeds,
And left us dreams beyond their dreams,
And higher hopes and needs."
All things betoken better times to come. There was never so grand an age as this—how swiftly moves mankind! But how much better we can do! Religious emotion once flowed into the gothic architecture of Europe, the fairest flower of human art—little blossoms of painting and sculpture, philosophy, eloquence, and poetry, all hidden, and yet kept within this great compound posy of man's history. The Catholic Church has her great composers in stone, artists in speech, and actors in marble; the Protestant its great composers in philosophy and literature, with their melody of thought, their harmony of ideas. One day there must be a church of mankind, whose composers of humanity shall think men and women into life, and build with living stones ; their painting, their sculpture, their architecture, the manhood of the individual, the virtue of the family and community; their philosophy, their eloquence and song, the happiness of the nation, the peace and good will of all the world.
Oh, young man, gird your loins for this work; spare not yourself but greatly spend. And you who ask his help—how much you all can do! The world waits for you! a truth of religion, it will burn its way into history, not as thunder, to destroy, but as sunlight, to create and bless. The human author may be buzzed about in the whisperings of bigots and self-misguided men; rooks may caw and owls may hoot at him; the rats of the state may gnaw at his deeds, and the church's mice nibble at his feelings; nay, he may stand on the scaffold, be nailed to a cross—a thief on either hand—and mocking words be writ against his name; or he may mix his last prayer with the snapping of fagots. Resistance is all in vain: his soul, in its chariot of fire, goes up to the calm still heaven of holy men, and his word of truth burns in to the consciousness of the world, and where he went, bare and bleeding, with painful feet, shall mankind march to triumph and great joy!
It is amazing how much a single man may do for good. The transient touch of genius fertilizes the recipient soul. So in early autumn, the farmer goes forth afield, followed by his beast, bearing a few sacks of corn, and dragging an inverted harrow down the lane. All day long the farmer, the genius of the soil, scatters therein the seed, his horse harrowing the valleys after him; at night, he looks over the acres newly sown, the corn all smoothly covered in, puts up the bars behind him, speaks kindly words to his half-conscious fellow-labourer, "A good day's work well done, old friend!" and together they go home again, the beast with ears erect and quickened pace, as mindful of his well-deserved rack. For months the farmer sees it not again; but all the autumn long the seed is putting down its roots, and putting up its happy blade. All winter through it holds its own beneath the fostering snow. How green it is in spring! and while that genius of the soil has gone to other fields and pastures new, how the winds come and toss the growing wheat, and play at wave and billow in the green and fertile field! In the harvest time what a sea of golden grain has flowed from out that spring of seed he opened and let loose! So in the Christian mythology, Gabriel's transient salutation, "Hail, thou that art highly favoured amongst women," was in full time followed by a multitude of the heavenly host; singing "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men!"
- ↑ See "A Discourse of the Relation between the Ecclesiastical Institutions and the Religious Consciousness of the American People, delivered at Longwood, Chester County, Pennsylvania, May 19th, 1855," (New York, 1855,) and "Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology." (Boston, 1853.)