IN my youth I read religious books--books about God, about the
atonement--about salvation by faith, and about the other worlds. I
became familiar with the commentators--with Adam Clark, who thought that
the serpent seduced our mother Eve, and was in fact the father of Cain.
He also believed that the animals, while in the ark, had their natures'
changed to that degree that they devoured straw together and enjoyed
each other's society--thus prefiguring the blessed millennium. I read
Scott, who was such a natural theologian that he really thought
the story of Phaeton--of the wild steeds dashing across the
sky--corroborated the story of Joshua having stopped the sun and moon.
So, I read Henry and MacKnight and found that God so loved the world
that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race. I
read Cruden, who made the great Concordance, and made the miracles as
small and probable as he could.
I remember that he explained the miracle of feeding the wandering Jews
with quails, by saying that even at this day immense numbers of quails
crossed the Red Sea, and that sometimes when tired, they settled on
ships that sank beneath their weight. The fact that the explanation
was as hard to believe as the miracle made no difference to the devout
Cruden.
To while away the time I read Calvin's Institutes, a book calculated to
produce, in any natural mind, considerable respect for the Devil.
I read Paley's Evidences and found that the evidence of ingenuity in
producing the evil, in contriving the hurtful, was at least equal to the
evidence tending to show the use of intelligence in the creation of what
we call good.
You know the watch argument was Paley's greatest effort. A man finds a
watch and it is so wonderful that he concludes that it must have had
a maker. He finds the maker and he is so much more wonderful than the
watch that he says he must have had a maker. Then he finds God, the
maker of the man, and he is so much more wonderful than the man that he
could _not_ have had a maker. This is what the lawyers call a departure
in pleading.
According to Paley there can be no design without a designer--but there
can be a designer without a design. The wonder of the watch suggested
the watchmaker, and the wonder of the watchmaker, suggested the creator,
and the wonder of the creator demonstrated that he was not created--but
was uncaused and eternal.
We had Edwards on The Will, in which the reverend author shows that
necessity has no effect on accountability--and that when God creates a
human being, and at the same time determines and decrees exactly what
that being shall do and be, the human being is responsible, and God in
his justice and mercy has the right to torture the soul of that human
being forever. Yet Edwards said that he loved God.
The fact is that if you believe in an infinite God, and also in eternal
punishment, then you must admit that Edwards and Calvin were absolutely
right. There is no escape from their conclusions if you admit their
premises. They were infinitely cruel, their premises infinitely absurd,
their God infinitely fiendish, and their logic perfect.
And yet I have kindness and candor enough to say that Calvin and Edwards
were both insane.
We had plenty of theological literature. There was Jenkyn on the
Atonement, who demonstrated the wisdom of God in devising a way in which
the sufferings of innocence could justify the guilty. He tried to show
that children could justly be punished for the sins of their ancestors,
and that men could, if they had faith, be justly credited with the
virtues of others. Nothing could be more devout, orthodox, and idiotic.
But all of our theology was not in prose. We had Milton with his
celestial militia--with his great and blundering God, his proud
and cunning Devil--his wars between immortals, and all the sublime
absurdities that religion wrought within the blind man's brain.
The theology taught by Milton was dear to the Puritan heart. It was
accepted by New England, and it poisoned the souls and ruined the lives
of thousands. The genius of Shakespeare could not make the theology of
Milton poetic. In the literature of the world there is nothing, outside
of the "sacred books," more perfectly absurd.
We had Young's Night Thoughts, and I supposed that the author was an
exceedingly devout and loving follower of the Lord. Yet Young had a
great desire to be a bishop, and to accomplish that end he electioneered
with the king's mistress. In other words, he was a fine old hypocrite.
In the "Night Thoughts" there is scarcely a genuinely honest, natural
line. It is pretence from beginning to end. He did not write what he
felt, but what he thought he ought to feel.
We had Pollok's Course of Time, with its worm that never dies, its
quenchless flames, its endless pangs, its leering devils, and its
gloating God. This frightful poem should have been written in a
madhouse. In it you find all the cries and groans and shrieks of
maniacs, when they tear and rend each other's flesh. It is as heartless,
as hideous, as hellish as the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy.
We all know the beautiful hymn commencing with the cheerful line:
"Hark from the tombs, a doleful sound." Nothing could have been more
appropriate for children. It is well to put a coffin where it can be
seen from the cradle. When a mother nurses her child, an open grave
should be at her feet. This would tend to make the babe serious,
reflective, religious and miserable.
God hates laughter and despises mirth. To feel free, untrammeled,
irresponsible, joyous,--to forget care and death--to be flooded with
sunshine without a fear of night--to forget the past, to have no thought
of the future, no dream of God, or heaven, or hell--to be intoxicated
with the present--to be conscious only of the clasp and kiss of the one
you love--this is the sin against the Holy Ghost.
But we had Cowper's poems. Cowper was sincere. He was the opposite
of Young. He had an observing eye, a gentle heart and a sense of the
artistic. He sympathized with all who suffered--with the imprisoned,
the enslaved, the outcasts. He loved the beautiful. No wonder that the
belief in eternal punishment made this loving soul insane. No wonder
that the "tidings of great joy" quenched Hope's great star and left his
broken heart in the darkness of despair.
We had many volumes of orthodox sermons, filled with wrath and the
terrors of the judgment to come--sermons that had been delivered by
savage saints.
We had the Book of Martyrs, showing that Christians had for many
centuries imitated the God they worshiped.
W|e had the history of the Waldenses--of the Reformation of the Church.
We had Pilgrim's Progress, Baxter's Call and Butler's Analogy.
To use a Western phrase or saying, I found that Bishop Butler dug
up more snakes than he killed--suggested more difficulties than he
explained--more doubts than he dispelled.