FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS AND THEIR RESULTS.
As my readers will have seen before this, the changes in my views were
rather numerous, if not always of great importance. And the cases I have
given are but samples of many other changes. The fact is, I pared away
from my creed everything that was not plainly Scriptural. I threw aside
all human theories, all mere guesses about religious matters. I also
dismissed all forced or fanciful interpretations of Scripture passages.
I endeavored to free Christian doctrines from all corruptions,
perversions, or exaggerations, retaining only the pure and simple
teachings of Christ and the sacred writings. I accepted only those
interpretations of Scripture, which were in accordance with the object
and drift of the writer, with common sense, and with the general tenor
of the sacred volume. I paid special regard to the plainest and most
practical portions of Scripture. I paid no regard to doctrines grounded
on solitary passages, or on texts of doubtful meaning, while numerous
texts, with their meaning on their very faces, taught opposite
doctrines. I would accept nothing that seemed irrational from any
quarter, unless required to do so by the plain unquestionable oracles of
God. I could see no propriety in Christians encumbering their minds and
clogging religion with notions bearing plain and palpable marks of
inconsistency or absurdity. And if a doctrine presented itself in
different religious writers in a variety of forms, I always took the
form which seemed most in harmony with reason and the plainest teachings
of Scripture. Some writers seemed to take pleasure in presenting such
doctrines as the Trinity, the Atonement, Salvation by Faith, Eternal
Punishment, &c., in the most incredible and repulsive forms, straining
and wresting the Scriptures to justify their mischievous extravagances.
Other writers would say no more on those subjects than the Scriptures
said, and would put what the Scriptures said in such a light as to
render it "worthy of all acceptation." As a matter of course, the latter
kind of writers became my favorites. Indeed the Scriptures seemed always
to favor what appeared most rational in the various creeds. The
Scriptures and common sense seemed always in remarkable harmony. The
doctrines which clashed with reason seemed also to clash with Scripture:
and I felt that in rejecting such doctrines I was promoting the honor of
God and of Christ, and rendering a service to the Church and
Christianity.
I was sometimes rather tried by the unwarranted and inconsiderate
statements of my brother ministers. Take an instance. A preacher one
night, in a sermon to which I was listening, said, "How great is the
love of God to fallen man! Angels sinned, and were doomed at once to
everlasting damnation. No Saviour interposed to bring them back to
holiness and heaven. No ambassador was sent with offers of pardon to
beseech them to be reconciled to God. Man sins, and the Deity Himself
becomes incarnate. All the machinery of nature and all the resources of
Heaven are employed to save him from destruction. One sin shuts up in
everlasting despair millions of spiritual beings, while a thousand
transgressions are forgiven to man."
Now this doctrine, instead of reflecting peculiar glory on God, seemed
to me to savor of blasphemy. It is no honor to be partial or capricious;
it is a reproach. A father that should be tenderly indulgent to one of
his children, and rigidly severe to the rest, would be regarded with
indignation. The doctrine of Divine partiality shocks both our reason
and our moral feelings. And it is not scriptural. The Bible says nothing
about God dooming the rebellious angels to perdition for one sin,
without any attempt to bring them back to obedience; but it does say
that God is good to all, and that His tender mercies are over all His
works. I accordingly rejected the doctrine. There was quite a multitude
of _doctrines_ which entered into the sermons of many of my brother
ministers, which never found their way into mine. And there were
doctrines which entered into my discourses, which never found their way
into theirs. And the doctrines which we held and preached in common, we
often presented in very different forms, and put into very different
words. They could say a multitude of things which I could not say;
things which I could find no kind of warrant for saying. When we met
together after hearing each other preach, we had at times long talks
about our different views and ways of preaching. I was free in
expressing my thoughts and feelings, especially in the earlier years of
my ministry, and our conversations were often very animated.
In some circuits, I induced my colleagues to join me in establishing
weekly meetings for mutual improvement in religious knowledge. At each
meeting an essay was read, on some subject agreed upon at a former
meeting, and after the essay had been read we discussed the merits both
of the sentiments it embodied, and of the style in which it was
written. When it was my turn to prepare an essay, I generally introduced
one or more of the points on which I and my colleagues differed, for the
purpose of having them discussed. I stated my views with the utmost
freedom, and gave every encouragement to my colleagues to state theirs
with equal freedom in return. When my colleagues read their productions,
I pointed out what I thought erroneous or defective with great plainness
and fidelity. I was anxious both to learn and to teach, and it was my
delight, as it was my duty and business, to endeavor to do both. I was
not, however, so anxious to change the views of my friends as I was to
excite in them a thirst for knowledge. And indeed I did not consider it
of so much importance that a man should accept a certain number of
truths, or particular doctrines, as that he should have a sincere
desire, and make suitable endeavors to understand all truth. It was
idleness, indifference, a state of mental stagnation, a readiness
carelessly to accept whatever might come in the way without once trying
to test it by Scripture or reason, that I particularly disliked; and to
cure or abate this evil, I exerted myself to the utmost.
When I was stationed in Newcastle in 1831, I met with Foster's Essays,
which I read with a great deal of eagerness and pleasure. One of these
Essays is "On some of the Causes by which Evangelical Religion has been
Rendered Unacceptable to Persons of Cultivated Taste?" Among his remarks
on this subject, he has some to the following effect:--
1. Christianity is the religion of many weak, uncultivated and
little-minded people, and they, by their unwise ways of talking about
it, and by their various defects of character, make religion look weak,
and poor, and unreasonable. And many receive their impression or ideas
of the character of Christianity more from the exhibitions given of it
by the religious people with whom they come in contact, than from the
exhibition given of it in the life and teachings of its great Author, or
from the characters and writings of His Apostles. An intelligent and
cultivated man, for instance, falls into the company of Christians
who know little either of the teachings of Christ, or of the
wonderful facts which go to prove their truth and their infinite
excellency--Christians who never trouble themselves about such matters,
and who look on it as no good sign when people show a disposition to
inquire seriously into such subjects. He hears those Christians talk
about religion, but can find nothing in their conversation but strange
and, to him, unintelligible expressions. The speakers give proof enough
of excited feelings, but show no sign of mental enlightenment. If he
asks them for information on the great principles and bearings of
Christianity, they tell him they have nothing to do with vain
philosophy.
2. The man of taste and culture hears other Christians harping eternally
on two or three points, adopted perhaps from some dreamy author, and
denouncing all who question the correctness of their version of the
Gospel, as heretics or infidels, while all the time their notions have
little or no resemblance either to the Gospel or to common sense; but
are at best, only perversions or distortions of Christian doctrines,
which have no more likeness to the religion of Christ than a few broken
bricks have to a beautiful and magnificent palace.
3. In many cases the Christians with whom he meets have not only no
general knowledge of religious subjects, but no desire for such
knowledge. The Bible is their book, they say, and they want no other.
And they make but a pitiful use of that. They do not go to the Bible as
to a fountain of infinite knowledge, whose streams of truth blend
naturally with all the truths in the universe, but merely to refresh
their minds with a few misinterpreted passages, which ignorance and
bigotry are accustomed to use to support their misconceptions of
Christian doctrine. They use the book not to make them wise, but to keep
them ignorant. They dwell for ever on the same irrational fancies, and
repeat them for ever in the same outlandish jargon.
4. He meets with other Christians who read a little in other books
besides the Bible; but it is just those books that help to keep them
from understanding the meaning of the Bible. And the portions of the
books which they admire most and quote oftenest, are the silliest and
most erroneous portions. They put darkness for light, and light for
darkness. The man of culture speaks to them, but they cannot understand
him. His thoughts and style are alike out of their line, or beyond their
capacity. If at any time they catch a glimpse of his meaning, they are
frightened on perceiving that his thoughts are not an exact repetition
of their own.
5. Another cause which has tended to render Christianity less acceptable
to men of taste and culture, is the peculiar language adopted in the
discourses and writings of its _Teachers_. The style of some religious
teachers is low, vulgar. The style of a still greater number is
barbarous. Men soon feel the language of the _Law_ to be barbarous. They
would feel the language of theology to be as barbarous, if they were not
accustomed to hear it or read it so constantly. The way in which the
greater number of evangelical divines express themselves is quite
different from that in which men generally express themselves. Their
whole cast of phraseology is peculiar. You cannot hear five sentences
without feeling that you are listening to a dead or foreign language. To
put it into good current English you have to translate it, and the task
of translation is as hard, and requires as much study and practice, as
that of translating Greek or Hebrew. The language of the pulpit and of
religious books is a dialect to itself, and cannot be used in common
life or common affairs. If you try to apply it to anything but religion,
it becomes ridiculous, and a common kind of wit consists in speaking of
common things in pulpit phraseology. A foreign heathen might master our
language in its common and classical forms, and be able to understand
both our ordinary talk and our ablest authors, yet find himself quite at
a loss to understand an evangelical preacher or writer.
Even if our heathen understood religion in its simpler and more natural
forms, he would still be unable to understand the common run of
religious talkers and writers. If he had religion to learn from such
teachers and writers, he would have a double task, first, to get the
ideas, and then to learn the uncouth and unnatural language. This
peculiar dialect is quite unnecessary. The style of a preacher or a
religious writer might be, and, allowing for a few terms, _ought_ to be,
the same as that of a man talking about ordinary affairs, and matters of
common interest and duty. The want of this is one great cause of the
little success, both of our preachers at home, and of our missionaries
abroad. They hide beneath an unseemly veil, a beauty that should strike
all eyes, and win all hearts. Their style is just the opposite of
everything that can instruct, attract, command. And it is vain to expect
much improvement in the present generation of religious teachers. They
could not get a good style without a long and careful study of good
authors, and for this many of them have neither the taste nor the
needful industry. They would have to begin life anew, to be converted
and become as little children, before they could master the task. They
cannot _think_ of religion but in common words. They cannot think there
can be divine truth but in the old phrases. To discontinue them,
therefore, and use others, would in their view, be to become heretics or
infidels. In truth, many of them seem to have no ideas. Their phrases
are not vehicles of ideas, but substitutes for them. If they hear the
ideas which their phrases did once signify, expressed ever so plainly in
other language, they do not recognise them, and instantly suspect the
man who utters them of unsoundness in the faith, and apply to him all
the abusive terms of ecclesiastical reproach. For such the common pulpit
jargon is the convenient refuge of ignorance, idleness and prejudice.
6. Speaking of certain kinds of religious books, Mr. Foster calls them
an accumulation of bad writing, under which the evangelical theology has
been buried, and which has contributed to bring its principles into
disfavor. He adds: A large proportion of religious books may be
sentenced as bad on more accounts than their peculiarity of dialect. One
has to regret that their authors did not revere the dignity of their
religion too much to surround it and choke it with their works. There is
quite a multitude of books which form the perfect vulgar of religious
authorship,--a vast exhibition of the most inferior materials that can
be called thought, in language too grovelling to be called style. In
these books you are mortified to see how low religious thought and
expression _can_ sink; and you almost wonder how the grand ideas of God
and Providence, of redemption and eternity, the noblest ideas known, can
shine on a human mind, without imparting some small occasional degree of
dignity to its train of thought. You can make allowances for the great
defects of private Christians, but when men obtrude their infinite
littleness and folly on the public in books, you can hardly help
regarding them as inexcusable. True, many of those worthless and
mischievous books are evermore disappearing, but others as bad, or but
little better, take their places. Look where you will you will meet with
them. What estimate can a man have of Christianity who receives his
first impressions of it from such books?
7. There are other religious books that are tolerable as to style, but
which display no power or prominence of thought, no living vigor of
expression; they are flat and dry as a plain of sand. They tease you
with the thousandth repetition of common-places, causing a feeling of
unspeakable weariness. Though the author is surrounded with rich
immeasurable fields of truth and beauty, he treads for ever the same
narrow track already trodden into dust.
8. There is a smaller class of religious writers that may be called
mock-eloquent writers. They try at a superior style, but forget that
true eloquence resides essentially in the thought, the feeling, the
character, and that no words can make genuine eloquence out of that
which is of no worth or interest. They mistake a gaudy verbosity for
eloquence.
9. The moral and theological _materials_ of many religious books are as
faulty as their style, and the injury they do the Gospel is
incalculable. Here is a systematic writer in whose hands all the riches
and magnificence of revelation shrink into a meagre list of doctrinal
points, and not a single verse in the Bible is allowed to tell its
meaning, or even allowed to have one, till it has been forced under
torture to maintain one of his points. You are next confronted with a
prater about the invisible world, that makes you shrink away into
darkness; and then you are met with a grim zealot for such a revolting
theory of the Divine attributes and government, that he seems to delight
in representing the Deity as a dreadful king of furies, whose dominion
is overshadowed with vengeance, whose music is the cries of victims, and
whose glory requires to be illustrated by the ruin of His creation. One
cannot help deploring that the great mass of religious books were not
consigned to the flames before they were permitted to reach the eyes of
the public. Books which exhibit Christianity and its claims with
insipid feebleness, or which cramp its majesty into an artificial form
at once distorted and mean, must grievously injure its influence. An
intelligent Christian cannot look into such works without feeling
thankful that they were not the books from which he got his conceptions
of the Gospel. Nothing would induce him to put them into the hands of an
inquiring youth, and he would be sorry to see them on the table of an
infidel, or in the library of his children, or of a student for the
ministry.--_Foster's Essays._
These sentiments answered so astonishingly to my own thoughts, that I
read them with the greatest delight. I laid them, in substance, before
my brethren. I explained them. I illustrated them by quotations from
books and sermons. I gave them instances of the various faults pointed
out by Foster, taken from their favorite authors, and in some cases from
the discourses of living preachers. I wrote several essays on the causes
of the slow progress made by Christianity, in which I embodied and
illustrated many of Foster's views. I wrote essays on "_Preaching
Christ_," in which I embodied and illustrated Wesley's views on the
subject, including his condemnation of what, in his days, was falsely
called "_Gospel Preaching_." I wrote quite a large volume on these
subjects, and read the contents, so far as opportunity offered, to my
colleagues at our weekly meetings. I was badly requited for my pains. In
some cases my colleagues listened to me and stared at me with amazement.
They thought I "brought strange things to their ears." One, who is now
dead, said I should be really an excellent fellow, he believed, if I
could only get the cobwebs swept out of my upper stories. Everything
beyond his own poor standing common-places was cobwebs to him, poor
fellow. The remarks on this subject in the LIFE of the preacher
referred to, show that my ideas and plans at that time are not yet
understood by all his brethren.
Travel, they say, frees men from their prejudices. The more they see of
the wonders of other countries, and of the manners of other nations, the
more moderate becomes their estimate of the marvels, and of some of the
views and customs of their native land. And it is certain that the more
a man travels through good books by men of different Churches from his
own, the less important will some of the peculiarities of his own
denomination appear. As ignorance of the world is favorable to blind
patriotism and home idolatry, so ignorance of Churches, and systems, and
literatures different from our own, is favorable to bigotry and
sectarianism. And as free and extended intercourse with foreign nations
tends to enlarge and liberalize the mind; so the more extensive a
Christian's acquaintance is with different branches of the Church, and
with their customs, and writings, and manners, the more likely will his
sectarian bigotry and intolerance be to give place to liberal views and
to Christian moderation and charity.
But just in proportion as he becomes the subject of this blessed
transformation, will he be regarded with suspicion and dread by those
who still remain the slaves of ignorance and bigotry.
It was so in my case. I travelled through extensive regions of religious
literature different from that of my own Church, and I did so with an
earnest desire to learn what was true and good in all. The consequence
was the loss of many prejudices, and the modification of many more. I
lost my prejudices against all kinds of Christians. I could believe in
the salvation both of Quakers and Catholics, and of all between, if they
were well disposed, God-fearing, good-living men. I could believe in the
salvation of all, not excepting Jews, Turks, and Pagans, who lived
according to the light they had, and honestly and faithfully sought for
further light. I believed that in every nation he that feared God and
worked righteousness was accepted of Him. I believed that honest,
faithful souls among the pagans of old would be found at last among the
saved. I regarded the moral and spiritual light of the ancient pagans as
light from heaven, as divine revelation. I looked on all mankind as
equally objects of God's care and love, as His children, under His
tuition, though placed for a time in different schools, with different
teachers, and with different lesson-books. I came to believe that God
was as good as a good man, as good as the kindest and best of fathers,
and even better, and I felt assured that He would not permit any
well-disposed soul on earth to perish. I believed that some who were
first in privileges, would be among the last in blessedness; and that
some that were last in privileges would be among the first in
blessedness.
Yet I believed in missions. I believed that it was the duty of all to
share their blessings with others; to give to others the light that God
had bestowed on them,--that though _pagans_ might be saved without
Christian light, if they lived according to the light they had,
_Christians_ could not be saved if they did not, as they had
opportunity, _impart_ their superior light to the pagans.
I respected the good moral principles, and the portions of religious
truth that I found in the ancient Greek and Roman authors, just as I
lamented and condemned the moral and religious errors that I found in
Christian books.
"I seized on truth where'er 'twas found,
On Christian or on Heathen ground,"
and made it part of my creed: and I warred with error though entrenched
in the strong-holds of the Church. I respected what was true and good in
all denominations of Christians; and even in all denominations that
_called_ themselves Christians, whether they came near enough to Christ
to entitle them to that name or not. If I saw anything good in the
creeds or the characters of other denominations I accepted it, and tried
to embody it in my own creed and character.
And I did, as I thought, see good in every one that I did not see in
others. I could see things in some Protestants, which I thought
Catholics would do well to imitate; and I could see things among
Catholics, which I thought Protestants would do well to imitate. I could
see things in Quakerism, which it would have been to the honor and
advantage of other Christians to imitate; and I could see good things in
other Churches which Quakers would have done well to copy. I could see
even among Unitarians of the older and better class, an attention to
matters practical, a naturalness of style, and a freedom from certain
anti-christian expressions and notions, which it would have been well
for orthodox Churches to have made their own; and I could see where
Unitarians had both gone too far through their dislike of orthodox
error, and fallen short of truth and duty through dread of orthodox
weaknesses or imperfections. And I had an idea, that it would be well
in all Churches, instead of avoiding, or scolding, or abusing one
another, to study each other lovingly, with a view to find how much of
truth and goodness they could find in each other, that they could not
find in themselves, and how much of error and imperfection they could
find in themselves, that they did not find in others. I saw that no
Church had got all the truth, or all the goodness, and that no Church
was free from anti-christian errors and defects. I saw that to make a
perfect Christian creed, we should have to take something out of every
creed, and leave other things in every creed behind; and that to secure
a perfect exhibition of Christian virtue, and a perfect system of
Christian operations, we should have to borrow from each other habits,
customs, rules and machinery in the same way, and leave parts of our own
to fall into disuse.
And I was willing to act on this principle. I saw that Christ and
Christianity were more and better than all the Churches and all the
creeds on earth put together, and that all the Churches had errors and
faults or failings which Christ and Christianity had not; and I had an
idea that one of the grandest sights conceivable would be to set all the
disciples of Christ to work striving to get rid of everything
anti-christian, and to come as near to Christ, and to each other, as
possible, both in truth and virtue.
But to proceed with my story.
I frequently spoke on religious subjects with my colleagues when we met,
along with the leading laymen, at the houses of our friends. Some new
book, some particular sermon, or some article in the magazine, or
perhaps the fulness of one's own mind with the subjects of one's
studies, would turn the conversation on the state of the Church and the
ministry, and the need of improvement in the theological systems and
dialects of the day, and the manner of handling religious subjects
generally, both in the pulpit and through the press. Whatever the
subject under consideration might be, I expressed myself with the utmost
freedom. I stated my beliefs and disbeliefs, my doubts and my
convictions, without the least reserve. And I as readily gave my reasons
for my views. I was generally prepared with the passages of Scripture
bearing on the subjects introduced, and gave them, with my impressions
of their meaning. And I did my best to draw my colleagues and friends
into a thorough investigation of every point, in hopes that we might all
come as near as possible in our views to a full conformity to the
teachings of Christ. The results of these conversations, and of my other
labors, were in some cases, very satisfactory. Some were led to exercise
their minds on religious subjects who had never troubled themselves
about such matters before. Some that had been accustomed to think and
read a little were led to think and read more, and to better purpose.
Some that had been helplessly and miserably perplexed had their minds
put right, and were delivered from their distresses. Some had their
minds directed more seriously to the practical requirements of
Christianity, and labored more, and made more sacrifices, for the
prosperity of the Church and the salvation of their fellow-men. In
considerable numbers the standard of Christian knowledge and piety was
raised, and the general tone of the churches improved.
In other cases the results were of a very different character. During
the early years of my religious life I supposed that all professing
Christians, and especially all ministers of the Gospel, were anxious to
be as wise and good as possible, and that they would be delighted, as I
was myself, to get any new, or larger, or clearer views of truth and
duty. I judged of others by myself, and gave them credit for the same
desires and longings that swelled my own soul. I gave them credit too
for unlimited capacities to take in and appreciate the truth, and for
any amount of ability to use it, when received, in doing good to others.
I had seldom any difficulty in understanding _them_; and it never
entered my mind that they would have much difficulty in understanding
me. And I never felt myself even tempted, much less disposed, to
misrepresent the words or sentiments of my friends, or to take advantage
of the freedom with which they spoke, to injure them in the estimation
of their friends. I had no intolerance myself, so far as I can
recollect, and I had no disposition to cause intolerance in others
towards my brethren. How it was with my brethren I will not undertake to
say, but, as a person with any knowledge of human nature would have
anticipated, I was greatly misunderstood and misrepresented. Some of my
colleagues and friends were in a maze with regard to my views and
intentions. Shut up within the narrow confines of some old stereotyped
form of faith or fancy into which they had been born, or into which they
had been brought they knew not how, and afraid to change or modify one
_iota_ of their blind belief, investigation, search after truth,
enlargement of thought, or change of sentiment, was with them out of the
question. The very idea of anything differing from their own
traditionary or haphazard belief was, in the estimation of some of them,
no less than heresy, treason, or infidelity. Others, who were not so
much benighted, were afraid to venture on a free examination of
religious matters, or a careful comparison of their views with the
teachings of Scripture. Some trusted in their elders, and feared no
error so long as they kept in the track of their predecessors. I am not
certain that I should go too far if I were to say, that some were under
the influence of worldly and selfish motives, and were resolved to take
the course which promised to be most conducive to a quiet, easy,
self-indulgent life. There were some whose conversations left this
impression on my mind. One young minister, when I was pointing out to
him some inconsistency between a statement he had made and the teachings
of Christ, put an end to the conversation by saying, "I don't want to
hear anything about such matters; I know what is expected of a minister
of the Methodist New Connexion, and I am resolved to be one; and I shall
just hold the doctrines necessary to keep me in the office, and nothing
else." And I suppose he did not stand alone.
Some lacked the power to think. They were all but mindless. Whatever
they might be able to do in reference to worldly matters, they were
unable to think, to compare doctrine with doctrine, or to reason in any
respect whatever on religious matters. One young man, a candidate for
the ministry, told me that he never had thought matters over in his own
mind, but taken what came in his way in books or sermons, never
troubling himself, or finding himself able, to do more than to remember
and to repeat what he heard or read. He had not the faculty to compare
the sayings of men with the sayings of God; or the sayings of one man
with the sayings of another. He was a mere dealer in words and phrases,
and he aspired to nothing higher than to live by the ignoble occupation.
How many of those with whom I came in contact, and in whose society I
poured forth so freely the thoughts of my mind, were of the same stamp,
I do not know. I never tested any other person so thoroughly as I tested
him. There _were_ others, however, that had been fashioned in a similar
mould.
Others with whom I conversed _had thought_, and had embraced certain
views believing them to be true; but they had fallen under the influence
of teachers and books of a different cast from those by which my own
mind had been chiefly influenced. And they had been led to fix their
thoughts almost exclusively on one particular class of Scripture
passages, and to neglect or overlook other portions of the sacred
volume, though much more numerous, and much more clear in their meaning.
They had also been led to adopt certain interpretations of the passages
on which their attention had been specially fixed, which a consideration
of other passages of Scripture had led me to reject. Thus our minds had
run into different moulds, and taken different forms. We differed not
only on certain points of doctrine, but in our tastes, and in our rules
of judging. The consequence was, that we could never talk long on
religious subjects without getting into a dispute, or coming to a dead
stand. To make matters worse, this class of people had been led to
believe that their peculiar notions were the essential doctrines of the
Gospel, and that those who did not believe them could not be Christians.
When therefore they found that I looked upon their theories as erroneous
and unscriptural, they pronounced me at once an erratic and dangerous
man. I imagined, at first, that I could bring these people to see things
in a different light. I had such faith in the power of plain Scripture
passages, and in the force of common sense, and was so ignorant of the
power of prejudice, and of peculiarities of mental constitution, that I
conversed and reasoned with them with the greatest freedom and the
utmost confidence. But I found at length that my expectations were vain.
I was conversing once with a colleague who belonged to this class, on
man's natural proneness to evil. He was one of the best and most
enlightened of that school of theologians, and he regarded me at the
time with very kindly feelings. And we were agreed as to the _fact_ of
man's natural tendency to evil, but he had been led to rest his belief
in the doctrine on somewhat different grounds from those on which my
belief rested. And this was enough. He quoted the passage from Isaiah,
"The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint: from the crown of
the head, to the sole of the foot, there is no soundness, but wounds and
bruises and putrefying sores." "Do you think that the Prophet refers in
that passage to man's natural proneness to evil?" said I. "What can he
refer to else?" said he. "I have been accustomed to regard the words as
a figurative description of the miserable state of the Israelites under
the terrible judgments of God," I replied. He instantly became red in
the face, and said, "Do you mean to deny the natural depravity of man?"
I said, "The question is not about the doctrine, but only about the
meaning of that particular passage." But all was in vain. I had roused
his suspicions and his anger, and the conversation came at once to an
end, and he never afterwards regarded me with the same degree of
confidence and friendliness as before.
On another occasion a brother minister quoted, as proof that men in
their unregenerate state cannot do anything towards their own salvation,
the words of Jeremiah, already once referred to, "Can the Ethiopian
change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" "Do you really think," said
I, "that the Prophet is speaking, in those words, of men generally?"
"What else is he speaking of?" was the answer. "He seems to me to be
speaking of a particular class of men, who have been so long accustomed
to do wrong, that they have lost the power to do right--having made
themselves the helpless slaves of their evil habits. He is not, I think,
speaking of the state into which they were _born_; but of the state to
which they had _reduced_ themselves by long persistence in sin. Hence he
says at the conclusion of the passage, 'Then may ye, who are accustomed
to do evil, do well.'" "Oh! I suppose you deny the doctrine of natural
depravity." "No, I do not," said I. "It is no use saying that," he
replied, "when you explain away the passages of Scripture in which the
doctrine is taught."
Such encounters between me and my brethren were at one time by no means
uncommon. They took place at almost every meeting. The result was often
unpleasant. My brethren generally did not like to be disturbed in their
notions, or in their way of talking. But few, if any of them, were
prepared or disposed to enter on the investigations necessary to enable
them to ascertain what was the truth on the points on which we were
accustomed to converse. Some had not the power to revise their creeds
and their way of talking and preaching, and bring them into harmony with
Scripture and common sense. And people of this class were sure to look
on all who did not see things in the same light as themselves, as
dangerous or damnable heretics. They, of course, concluded that I was
not sound in the faith. They felt that I was a troublesome, and feared
that I was a lost and ruined man. The remarks which I made to them, they
repeated to their friends; and as they seldom succeeded in understanding
me properly, their reports were generally incorrect. In some cases my
statements were reported with important additions, and in others with
serious alterations, and in some cases their meaning was entirely
changed. And the change was seldom to my advantage. A difference of
expression between me and my brethren was mistaken for a difference of
belief; and the disuse of an unscriptural word, was mistaken for a
renunciation of a Christian doctrine. A dispute about the "eternal
sonship" was mistaken for a dispute about the divinity of Christ, and a
difference of opinion about the meaning of a passage of Scripture, came
to be reported as the denial of Christ's authority. In one case I gave
it as my judgment that there were really righteous people on earth when
Christ came into the world, and that it was to such that Christ
referred, when He said, He "came not to call the righteous, but sinners
to repentance." This was made into an assertion that the coming of
Christ was unnecessary. Inability to accept unauthorized definitions and
unscriptural theories of Scriptural doctrines, was construed into a
denial of those doctrines. My endeavor to strip religious subjects of
needless mystery, was represented as an attempt to substitute a vain
philosophy for the Gospel of Christ. An expression of dissatisfaction
with a grandiloquent but foolish and mischievous sermon on the "Cross
of Christ," was set down as a proof that my views on the sacrifice of
Christ were not evangelical. My endeavors to show that Christianity was
in harmony with reason, were mistaken for an attempt to substitute
reason for faith, and became the occasion of a rumor that I was running
into Pelagianism or Socinianism. My own conviction was, that I was
coming nearer to the simplicity, the purity, and the fulness of the
Gospel; and that is my conviction still. And those of my brethren in the
ministry who were in advance of the rest in point of intelligence and
piety, and who were least infected with foolish fear and jealousy,
expressed to me their satisfaction with my views and proceedings. And
the people listened to my discourses with the greatest delight. They
flocked to hear me in crowds; and the crowds continually increased. And
many were benefited under my ministry. Sinners were converted, and
believers were comforted, and stimulated to greater efforts in the cause
of God.
To those, however, who had come to believe that I was drifting towards
heresy, all this was the occasion of greater alarm, and my great success
and growing popularity led them to make increasing efforts to lessen my
influence, or silence me altogether. Their conduct caused me great
uneasiness, and it was this that first awakened in me unhappy feeling
towards them.