The periodical literature of the United States is of a very low order.

I know of no review where anything like impartial, enlightened criticism

is to be found. The North American Review had once some reputation in

England; but it has sunk at home and abroad, less from want of talent

than of principle. If it has any principle whatever at present, it seems

to be to praise every book it mentions, and to fall in as dexterously as

possible with popular prejudice. The American Quarterly, published at

Philadelphia, is uninteresting from the triteness of its morals, and a

general dearth of thought, amidst a good deal of cleverness. The

Southern Review, published at Charleston,--sometime ago discontinued,

but I believe lately renewed,--is the best specimen of periodical

literature that the country has afforded. After the large deductions

rendered necessary by the faults of southern temper, this Review

maintains its place above the rest; a rank which is, I believe,

undisputed.

I met with one gem in American literature, where I should have least

expected it:--in the Knickerbocker; a New York Monthly Magazine. Last

spring, a set of papers began to appear, called "Letters from

Palmyra,"[28] six numbers of which had been issued when I left the

country. I have been hitherto unable to obtain the rest: but if they

answer to the early portions, there can be no doubt of their being

shortly in everybody's hands, in both countries. These letters remain in

my mind, after repeated readings, as a fragment of lofty and tender

beauty. Zenobia, Longinus, and a long perspective of characters, live

and move in natural majesty; and the beauties of description and

sentiment appear to me as remarkable as the strong conception of

character, and of the age. If this anonymous fragment be not the work of

a true artist,--if the work, when entire, do not prove to be of a far

higher order than anything which has issued from the American

press,--its early admirers will feel yet more surprise than regret.

It is continually said, on both sides of the water, and with much truth,

that the bad state of the laws of literary property is answerable for

some of the depression of American literature. It is true that the

imperfection of these laws inflicts various discouragements on American

writers, while it is disgracefully injurious to foreign authors. It is

true that American booksellers will not remunerate native authors while

they can purloin the works of British writers: and that the American

public has a strong disposition to listen to the utterance of the

English in preference to the prophets of their own country. It is true

that in America, where every man must work for his living, it is a

discouragement to the pursuit of literature that a living cannot, except

in a few rare cases, be got by it. But all this is no solution of the

fact of the non-existence of literature in America: which fact is indeed

no mystery. The present state of the law, by which the works of English

authors are pirated, undefended against mutilation, and made to drive

native works out of the market, is so conspicuously bad, that there is

every prospect of a speedy alteration: but there is nothing in the abuse

which can silence genius, if genius is wanting to speak. It ought by

this time to be understood that there is no power on earth which can

repress mental force of the highest kinds; which can stifle the

utterance of a thoroughly-moved spirit: certainly no power which is held

by piratical booksellers under defective laws. Such discouragement is

unjust and harsh; but it cannot be fatal. If a native genius, of a far

higher order than any English, had been existing in America for the last

ten years, he would have made himself heard ere this, and won his way

into the general mind and heart through a host of bookselling harpies,

and a chaos of lawlessness: he would have done this, even if it had been

necessary to give his dinner for paper, and sell his bed to pay the

printer;--expedients which it is scarcely conceivable that any author in

that thriving land should be driven to. The absence of protection to

foreign literary property is injurious enough, without its being made

answerable for the deficiency of literary achievement. The causes lie

deeper, and will not have ceased to operate till long after the law

shall have been made just in this particular.

Some idea of the literary taste of the country may be arrived at through

a mention of what appeared to me to be the comparative popularity of

living or recent British authors.

I heard no name so often as Mrs. Hannah More's. She is much better known

in the country than Shakspeare. This is, of course, an indication of the

religious taste of the people; and the fact bears only a remote relation

to literature. Scott is idolised; and so is Miss Edgeworth; but I think

no one is so much read as Mr. Bulwer. I question whether it is possible

to pass half a day in general society without hearing him mentioned. He

is not worshipped with the dumb self-surrendering reverence with which

Miss Edgeworth is regarded: but his books are in every house; his

occasional democratic aspirations are in every one's mouth; and the

morality of his books is a constant theme of discussion, from among the

most sensitive of the clergy down to the "thinking, thoughtless

school-boy" and his chum. The next name is, decidedly, Mrs. Jameson's.

She is altogether a favourite; and her "Characteristics of Women" is

the book which has made her so. At a considerable distance follows Mrs.

Hemans. Byron is scarcely heard of. Wordsworth lies at the heart of the

people. His name may not be so often spoken as some others; but I have

little doubt that his influence is as powerful as that of any whom I

have mentioned. It is less diffused, but stronger. His works are not to

be had at every store; but within people's houses they lie under the

pillow, or open on the work-box, or they peep out of the coat-pocket:

they are marked, re-marked, and worn. Coleridge is the delight of a few.

So is Lamb; regarded, however, with a more tender love. I heard Mr.

Hallam's name seldom, but always in a tone of extraordinary respect, and

from those whose respect is most valuable.

No living writer, however, exercises so enviable a sway, as far as it

goes, as Mr. Carlyle. It is remarkable that an influence like his should

have been gained through scattered articles of review and speculation,

spread over a number of years and a variety of periodicals. The

Americans have his "Life of Schiller;" but it was not that. His articles

in the Edinburgh Review met the wants of several of the best minds in

the society of New England; minds weary of cant, and mechanical morals,

and seeking something truer to rest upon. The discipleship immediately

instituted is honourable to both. Mr. Carlyle's remarkable work, "Sartor

Resartus," issued piecemeal through Fraser's Magazine, has been

republished in America, and is exerting an influence proportioned to the

genuineness of the admiration it has excited. Perhaps this is the first

instance of the Americans having taken to their hearts an English work

which came to them anonymously, unsanctioned by any recommendation, and

even absolutely neglected at home. The book is acting upon them with

wonderful force. It has regenerated the preaching of more than one of

the clergy; and, I have reason to believe, the minds and lives of

several of the laity. It came as a benefactor to meet a pressing want;

how pressing, the benefited testify by the fervour of their gratitude.

I know of no method by which the Americans could be assisted to utter

what they may have in them so good as one which has been proposed, but

which is not yet, I believe, in course of trial. It has been proposed

that a publication should be established, open to the perfectly full and

free discussion of every side of every question, within a certain

department of inquiry;--Social Morals, for instance. There are

difficulties at present in the way of presenting the whole of any

subject to the public mind; difficulties arising from the unprincipled

partiality of the common run of newspapers, the cautious policy of

reviewers, the fear of opinion entertained by individual writers, and

the impediments thrown in the way of free publication by the state of

the laws relating to literary property. A publication devoted to the

object of presenting, without fear or favour, all that can be said on

any subject, without any restriction, except in the use of personalities

towards opponents, would be the best possible remedy, under the

circumstances, for the inconveniences complained of; the finest stimulus

to the ascertainment of truth; the best education in the art of free and

distinct utterance. A publication like this, under the editorship of

such a man as Dr. Follen, a man full of learning, philosophy, and that

devout love of truth which is a guarantee of impartiality, would be a

high honour to the country, and a good lesson to some older societies,

from which the fear of free discussion has not yet vanished. An editor

worthy of the work would decline the responsibility of suppressing any

views, coming within the range of subjects embraced. He would merely

weed out personalities; cherish the spirit of justice and charity; and

for the sake of these, strengthen the weaker side, where he saw that it

was inadequately defended. It may be said that editors who would thus

discharge their function are rare. They are so: but there is Dr. Follen;

a living reply to the objection.

I have not the apprehension which some entertain that such a publication

would be feared and rejected by the public. At first, it would excite

some surprise and perplexity; one-sidedness being so generally the

characteristic of periodicals in America, that it would take some time

to convey the idea of a consistent opposite practice. But the American

public has given no evidence of a dislike to be made acquainted with

truth; but quite the contrary. My own conviction is, that before two

years from its commencement, such a work would be in the houses of all

the honest thinkers and most principled doers in the country; and that

eloquent voices would, by its means, make themselves heard from many a

remote dwelling-place; using with delight their means of utterance; and

proving that the dearth of American literature is not owing to vacuity

of thought or deadness of feeling. At any rate, such an experiment would

ascertain whether the want is of means of utterance, or of something to

utter.

FOOTNOTE:

[28] "Letters of Lucius M. Piso, from Palmyra, to his friend Marcus

Curtius, at Rome: now first translated and published." They present a

picture of the state of the East in the reign of Aurelian; and are to

end, I suppose, with the fall of Palmyra.

PART IV.

CHAPTER I.

RELIGION.

"Der Grund aller Democratie; die höchste Thatsache der

Popularität."

_Novalis._

"The Christian Religion is the root of all democracy; the highest

fact in the Rights of Man."

Religion is the highest fact in the Rights of Man from its being the

most exclusively private and individual, while it is also a universal,

concern, of any in which man is interested. Religion is, in its widest

sense, "the tendency of human nature to the Infinite;" and its principle

is manifested in the pursuit of perfection in any direction whatever. It

is in this widest sense that some speculative atheists have been

religious men; religious in their efforts after self-perfection; though

unable to personify their conception of the Infinite. In a somewhat

narrower sense, religion is the relation which the highest human

sentiments bear towards an infinitely perfect Being.

There can be no further narrowing than this. Any account of religion

which restricts it within the boundaries of any system, which connects

it with any mode of belief, which implicates it with hope of reward or

fear of punishment, is low and injurious, and debases religion into

superstition.

The Christian religion is specified as being the highest fact in the

rights of man from its embodying (with all the rest) the principle of

natural religion--that religion is at once an individual, an universal,

and an equal concern. In it may be found a sanction of all just claims

of political and social equality; for it proclaims, now in music and now

in thunder,--it blazons, now in sunshine and now in lightning,--the fact

of the natural equality of men. In giving forth this as its grand

doctrine, it is indeed "the root of all democracy;" the root of the

maxim (among others) that among the inalienable rights of all men are

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The democracy of America is

planted down deep into the christian religion; into its principles,

which it has in common with natural religion, and which it vivifies and

illumines, but does not alter.

How does the existing state of religion accord with the promise of its

birth? In a country which professes to secure to every man the pursuit

of happiness in his own way, what is the state of his liberty in the

most private and individual of all concerns? How carefully are all men

and women left free from interference in following up their own

aspirations after the Infinite, in realising their own ideas of

perfection, in bringing into harmonious action the functions of their

spirits, as infinitely diversified as the expression of their features?

The absence of such diversity is the first striking fact which presents

itself on the institution of such an inquiry. If there were no

constraint,--no social reward or penalty,--such an approach to

uniformity of profession could not exist as is seen in the United

States. In a society where speculation and profession were left

perfectly free, as included among the inalienable rights of man, there

would be many speculative (though probably extremely few practical)

atheists: there would be an adoption by many of the principles of

natural religion, otherwise than in and through Christianity: and

Christianity would be adopted in modes as various as the minds by which

it would be recognised. Instead of this, we find laws framed against

speculative atheists: opprobrium directed upon such as embrace natural

religion otherwise than through Christianity: and a yet more bitter

oppression exercised by those who view Christianity in one way, over

those who regard it in another. A religious young christian legislator

was pitied, blamed, and traduced in Boston, last year, by clergymen,

lawyers, and professors of a college, for endeavouring to obtain a

repeal of the law under which the testimony of speculative atheists is

rejected in courts of justice: Quakers (calling themselves Friends)

excommunicate each other: Presbyterian clergymen preach hatred to

Catholics: a convent is burnt, and the nuns are banished from the

neighbourhood: and Episcopalian clergymen claim credit for admitting

Unitarians to sit in committees for public objects! As might be expected

under such an infringement of the principle of securing to every man the

pursuit of happiness in his own way, there is no such endless diversity

in the action of minds, and utterance of tongues, as nature and fidelity

to truth peremptorily demand. Truth is deprived of the irrefragable

testimony which would be afforded by whatever agreement might arise

amidst this diversity: religion is insulted and scandalised by nominal

adherence and hypocritical advocacy. There are many ways of professing

Christianity in the United States: but there are few, very few men,

whether speculative or thoughtless, whether studious or ignorant,

whether reverent or indifferent, whether sober or profligate, whether

disinterested or worldly, who do not carefully profess Christianity, in

some form or another. This, as men are made, is unnatural. Society

presents no faithful mirror of the religious perspective of the human

mind.

It may be asked whether this is not true of the Old World also. It is.

But the society of the Old World has not yet grasped in practice any one

fundamental democratic principle: and the few who govern the many have

not yet perceived that religion is "the root of all democracy:" they are

so far from it that they are still upholding an established form of

religion; in which a particular mode of belief is enforced upon minds by

the imposition of virtual rewards and punishments. The Americans have

long taken higher ground; repudiating establishments, and professing to

leave religion free. They must be judged by their own principles, and

not by the example of societies whose errors they have practically

denounced by their adoption of the Voluntary Principle.

The almost universal profession in America of the adoption of

Christianity,--this profession by many whose habits of thought, and

others whose habits of living forbid the supposition that it is the

religion of their individual intellects and affections, compels the

inquiry what sort of Christianity it is that is professed, and how it is

come by. There is no evading the conviction that it is to a vast extent

a monstrous superstition that is thus embraced by the tyrant, the

profligate, the worldling, the bigot, the coward, and the slave; a

superstition which offers little molestation to their vices, little

rectification to their errors; a superstition which is but the spurious

offspring of that divine Christianity which "is the root of all

democracy, the highest fact in the Rights of Man." That so many of the

meek, pure, disinterested, free, and brave, make the same profession,

proves only that they penetrate to religion through superstition; or

that they cast away unconsciously the superstition with which their

spirits have no affinity, and accept such truth as all superstition must

include in order to live.

The only test by which religion and superstition can be ultimately tried

is that with which they co-exist. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

The Presbyterian body is a very large one; the total number in

communion, according to the minutes of the General Assembly for 1834,

being then 247,964. New England contains a very small, and the south and

west a very large, proportion of the body. Some of the most noble of the

abolitionists of the north are Presbyterians; and from the lips and pens

of Presbyterians in the south, come some of the defences of slavery

which evince the deepest depravity of principle and feeling. This is

only another proof, added to the million, that religion comes out of

morals. In the words of a pure moralist,[29] "Morality is usually said

to depend upon religion; but this is said in that low sense in which

outward conduct is considered as morality. In that higher sense in which

morality denotes sentiment, it is more exactly true to say, that

religion depends on morality, and springs from it. Virtue is not the

conformity of outward actions to a rule; nor is religion the fear of

punishment, or the hope of reward. Virtue is the state of a just,

prudent, benevolent, firm, and temperate mind. Religion is the whole of

those sentiments which such a mind feels towards an infinitely perfect

being." With these views, we may account for the different morality of

the Presbyterians of the south from that of such of the friends of the

slave in the north as are of the same communion. Of the Presbyterian, as

well as other clergy of the south, some are even planters,

superintending the toils of their slaves, and making purchases, or

effecting sales in the slave-markets, during the week, and preaching on

Sundays whatever they can devise that is least contradictory to their

daily practice. I watched closely the preaching in the south,--that of

all denominations,--to see what could be made of Christianity, "the

highest fact in the Rights of Man," in such a region. I found the

stricter religionists preaching reward and punishment in connexion with

modes of belief, and hatred to the Catholics. I found the more

philosophical preaching for or against materialism, and diverging to

phrenology. I found the more quiet and "gentlemanly" preaching harmless

abstractions,--the four seasons, the attributes of the Deity, prosperity

and adversity, &c. I heard one clergyman, who always goes out of the

room when the subject of negro emancipation is mentioned, or when

slavery is found fault with, preach in a southern city against following

a multitude to do evil. I heard one noble religious discourse from the

Rev. Joel Parker, a Presbyterian clergyman, of New Orleans; but except

that one, I never heard any available reference made to the grand truths

of religion, or principles of morals. The great principles which regard

the three relations to God, man, and self,--striving after perfection,

mutual justice and charity, and christian liberty,--were never touched

upon.--Meantime, the clergy were pretending to find express sanctions of

slavery in the Bible; and putting words to this purpose into the mouths

of public men, who do not profess to remember the existence of the

Bible in any other connexion. The clergy were boasting at public

meetings, that there was not a periodical south of the Potomac which did

not advocate slavery; and some were even setting up a magazine, whose

"fundamental principle is, that man ought to be the property of man."

The clergy, who were to be sent as delegates to the General Assembly,

were receiving instructions to leave the room, if the subject of slavery

was mentioned; and to propose the cessation of the practice of praying

for slaves. At the same time, the wife of a clergyman called upon me to

admire the benevolent toils of a friend, who had been "putting up 4000

weight of pork" for her slave household: and another lady, kindly and

religiously disposed, told me what pains she took on Sunday mornings to

teach her slaves, by word of mouth, as much of Christianity as was good

for them. When I pressed her on the point as to why they were to have

Christianity and not the alphabet, and desired to know under what

authority she dared to keep from them knowledge, which God has shed

abroad for all, as freely as the the air and sunshine, I found that the

idea was wholly new to her: nothing that she had heard in church, or out

of it, from any of the Christians among whom she lived, had awakened the

suspicion that she was robbing her brethren of their birth-right. The

religion of the south strictly accords with the morals of the south.

There is much that is gentle, merciful, and generous: much among the

suffering women that is patient, heroic, and inspiring meek resignation.

Among these victims, there is faith, hope, and charity. But Christianity

is severed from its radical principles of justice and liberty; and it

will have to be cast out as a rotten branch.

A southern clergyman mentioned to me, obviously with difficulty and

pain, that though he was as happily placed as a minister could be,

treated with friendliness and generosity by his people, and so cherished

as to show that they were satisfied, he had one trouble. During all the

years of his ministry, no token had reached him that he had religiously

impressed their minds, more or less. They met regularly and decorously

on Sundays, and departed quietly, and there was an end. He did not know

that any one discourse had affected them more than any other; and no

opportunity was offered him of witnessing any religious emotion among

them whatever.--Another, an Unitarian clergyman of the south, was known

to lament the appearance of Dr. Channing's work on slavery, "the cause

was going on so well before!" "The cause going on!" exclaimed another

Unitarian clergyman in the north; "what should the ship go on for, when

they have thrown both captain and cargo overboard?"

What is to be said of the southern fruits of "the root of all

democracy?" Excluding the debased slaves, and the helpless, suffering

victims of the system, there remain the laity, who, as they do not

abolish slavery, must be concluded not to understand the religion with

whose principles it cannot coexist; and the acquiescing clergy, who, if

they do not understand its principles, are unfit to be clergymen: and if

they do, are unfit to be called Christians.

The Presbyterians of the south have reason to perceive that the

principles of christian liberty are not fully embraced by their brethren

of the north, though acted upon by some with a disinterested heroism in

the direction of abolition. Those who would exclude slave-holders from

the communion-table are usurping an authority which the principles of

their religion forbid. The hatred to the Catholics also approaches too

nearly in its irreligious character to the oppression of the negro. It

is pleaded by some who most mourn the persecution the Catholics are at

present undergoing in the United States, that there is a very prevalent

ignorance on the subject of the Catholic religion; and that dreadful

slanders are being circulated by a very few wicked, which deceive a

great many weak, persons. This is just the case: but there is that in

the true christian religion which should intercept the hatred, whatever

may be the ignorance. There is that in the true christian religion which

should give the lie to those slanders, in the absence of all outward

evidence of their untruth. There is that in true Christianity which

should chasten the imagination, allay faithless apprehensions, and

inspire a trust that, as heart answers to heart, no vast body of men can

ever bind themselves by the name of Jesus, to become all that is most

the reverse of holy, harmless, and undefiled. The question "where is thy

faith?" might reasonably have been put to the Presbyterian clergyman who

preached three long denunciations against the Catholics in Boston, the

Sunday before the burning of the Charlestown convent: and also to

parents, who can put into their children's hands, as religious books,

the foul libels against the Catholics which are circulated throughout

the country. In the west, I happened to find in the chamber of a very

young lady, the only child of an opulent and influential citizen, a book

of this kind, which no epithet but filthy will suit. It lay with her

Bible and Prayer-book; the secular part of her library being disposed

elsewhere. If religion springs from morals, those who put the book into

the hands of this young girl will be answerable, if her religion should

be as little like that which is "first pure, then peaceable," as their

own.

I was seriously told, by several persons in the south and west, that

the Catholics of America were employed by the Pope, in league with the

Emperor of Austria and the Irish, to explode the Union. The vast and

rapid spread of the Catholic faith in the United States has excited

observation, which grew into this rumour. I believe the truth to be

that, in consequence of the Pope's wish to keep the Catholics of America

a colonial church, and the Catholics of the country thinking themselves

now sufficiently numerous to be an American Catholic church, a great

stimulus has been given to proselytism. This has awakened fear and

persecution; which last has, again, been favourable to the increase of

the sect. While the Presbyterians preach a harsh, ascetic, persecuting

religion, the Catholics dispense a mild and indulgent one; and the

prodigious increase of their numbers is a necessary consequence. It is

found so impossible to supply the demand for priests, that the term of

education has been shortened by two years.--Those observers who have

made themselves familiar with the modes in which institutions, even of

the most definite character, adapt themselves to the wants of the time,

will not be made uneasy by the spread of a religion so flexible in its

forms as the Catholic, among a people so intelligent as the Americans.

The Catholic body is democratic in its politics, and made up from the

more independent kind of occupations. The Catholic religion is modified

by the spirit of the time in America; and its professors are not a set

of men who can be priest-ridden to any fatal extent. If they are let

alone, and treated on genuine republican principles, they may show us

how the true, in any old form of religion, may be separated from the

false, till, the eye being made clear, the whole body will be full of

light. If they cannot do this, their form of religion will decay, or at

least remain harmless; for it is assuredly too late now for a return of

the dark ages. At all events, every American is required by his

democratic principles to let every man alone about his religion. He may

do with the religion what seems to him good; study, controvert, adopt,

reject, speak, write, or preach, whatever he perceives and thinks about

its doctrines and its abuses: but with its professors he has nothing to

do, further than religiously to observe his fraternal relation to them;

suffering no variance of opinion to seduce him into a breach of the

republican and christian brotherhood to which he is pledged.

What other fruits are there of the superstition which pervades society,

comprehending under the term Christian many who know little of its

doctrine, and exhibit less of its spirit? The state and treatment of

infidelity are some of the worst.

There is in this respect a dreadful infringement on human rights

throughout the north; though a better spirit is being cherished and

extended by a few who see how contrary to all christian and all

democratic principles it is that a man should be the worse for his

opinions in society. I have seen enough to know how little chance

Christianity has in consequence of this infringement. I know that very

large numbers of people are secretly disinclined to cherish what is

imposed upon them, with perpetual and unvarying modes of observance,

from their childhood up; and how the disgust grows from the opprobrium

with which unbelief is visited. I know that there are minds in New

England, as everywhere else, which must, from their very structure, pass

through a state of scepticism on their way to stability; and that such

are surrounded with snares, such as no man should lay in his brother's

path; with temptations to hypocrisy, to recklessness, to despair; and to

an abdication of their human prerogative of reason, as well as

conscience. I know how women, in whom the very foundations of belief

have been ploughed up by the share of authority, go wearily to church,

Sunday after Sunday, to hear what they do not believe; lie down at night

full of self-reproach for a want of piety which they do not know how to

attain; and rise up in the morning hopelessly, seeing nothing in the day

before them but the misery of carrying their secret concealed from

parents, husband, sisters, friends. I know how young men are driven into

vice, by having only the alternative of conformity or opprobrium:

feeling it impossible to believe what is offered them; feeling it to be

no crime to disbelieve: but, seeing unbelief treated as crime, and

themselves under suspicion of it, losing faith in others and in

themselves, and falling in reality at last. All this, and very much

more, I know to be happening. I was told of one and another, with an air

of mystery, like that with which one is informed of any person being

insane, or intemperate, or insolvent, that so and so was thought to be

an unbeliever. I was always tempted to reply, "And so are you, in a

thousand things, to which this neighbour of yours adds one."--An

elderly, generally intelligent, benevolent gentleman told me that he

wanted to see regulations made by which deists should be excluded from

office, and moral men only admitted. Happily, the community is not

nearly so far gone in tyranny and folly as to entertain such a project

as this: but it must be a very superstitious society where such an idea

could be deliberately expressed by a sane man.

One circumstance struck me throughout the country. Almost as often as

the conversation between myself and any other person on religious

subjects became intimate and earnest, I was met by the supposition that

I was a convert. It was the same in other instances: wherever there was

a strong interest in the christian religion, conversion to a particular

profession of it was confidently supposed. This fact speaks volumes.

Happy influences are at work to enlighten and enlarge the mind of

society. One of the most powerful of these is the union of men and women

of all religions in pursuit of objects of common interest; particularly

in the abolition cause. Persons who were once ready to excommunicate

each other are now loving friends in their mutual obedience to the

weightier matters of the law. The churches in Boston, and even the other

public buildings, being guarded by the dragon of bigotry, so that even

faith, hope, and charity are turned back from the doors, a large

building is about to be erected for the use of all, deists not excepted,

who may desire to meet for purposes of free discussion. This is, at

least, an advance.

A reflecting and eminently religious person was speculating with me one

day, on the influences by which the human mind is the most commonly and

the most powerfully awakened to vivid and permanent religious

sensibility. We brought cases and suppositions of its being now strong

impressions of the beauty and grandeur of nature; now grief, and now

joy, and so on. My friend concluded that it was most frequently the

spectacle of moral beauty in an individual. I have no doubt it is so:

and if it be, what tremendous injury must be done to the highest parts

of man's nature by the unprincipled tyranny of the religious world in

the republic! Men declare by this very tyranny how essential they

consider belief to be. Belief is essential,--not only to safety, but to

existence. Every mind lives by belief, as the body lives by the

atmosphere: but the objects and modes of belief must be various; and it

is from disallowing this that superstition arises. If men must exercise

the mutual vigilance which their human affections prompt, it would be

well for religion and for themselves that they should note how much

their brethren believe, rather than what they disbelieve: the amount

would be found so vast as immeasurably to distance the deficiency. If

this were done, religion would be found to be so safe that the

proportions of sects, and the eccentricities of individuals would be

lost sight of in the presence of universal, living, and breathing faith.

I was told of a child who stood in the middle of a grass-plat, with its

arms by its sides, and listening with a countenance of intense

expectation, "to hear God's tramp on that high blue floor." Who would

care to know what christian sect this child belonged to; or whether to

any?--I was told of a father and mother, savages, who lost their only

child, and were overwhelmed with grief, under which the father soon

sank. From the moment of his death, the solitary survivor recovered her

cheerfulness. Being asked why, she said she had been miserable for her

child, lest he should be forlorn in the world of spirits: he had his

father with him now, and would be happy. Who would inquire for the creed

of this example of disinterested love?--I was told of a young girl,

brought up from the country by a selfish betrayer, refused the marriage

which had been promised, and turned out of doors by him on her being

seized with the cholera. She was picked up from a doorstep, and carried

to the hospital. In the midst of her dying agonies, no inducement could

prevail on her to tell the name of her betrayer; and she died faithful

to him, so that the secret of whose treachery we are abhorring is dead

with her. With such testimony that the very spirit of the gospel was in

this humble creature, none but those who would dare to cast her out for

her fall would feel any anxiety as to how she received the facts of the

gospel. Religion is safe, and would be seen to be so if we would set

ourselves to mark how universal are some few of men's convictions, and

the whole of man's affections. While men feel wonder, and the universe

is wonderful; while men love natural glory, and the heavens and the

earth are resplendent with it; while men revere holiness, and the beauty

of holiness beams at times upon the dimmest sight, religion is safe. For

the last reason, Christianity is also safe. If the beauty of its

holiness were never obscured by the defilements of human passion with

which it is insulted, it is scarcely conceivable that all men would not

be, in some sense or other, Christians.

Those who are certain that Christianity is safe, (and they are not a

few,) and who, therefore, beware of encroaching on their brother's

liberty of conscience, will be found to be the most principled

republicans, the firmest believers that Christianity is "the root of all

democracy: the highest fact in the Rights of Man."

FOOTNOTE:

[29] Sir James Mackintosh.

CHAPTER I.

SCIENCE OF RELIGION.

"And therefore the doctrine of the one (Christ) was never afraid of

universities, or endeavoured the banishment of learning like the

other (Mahomet.) And though Galen doth sometimes nibble at Moses,

and, beside the apostate Christian, some heathens have questioned

his philosophical part or treatise of the creation; yet there is

surely no reasonable Pagan that will not admire the rational and

well-grounded precepts of Christ, whose life, as it was conformable

unto his doctrine, so was that unto the highest rules of reason,

and must therefore flourish in the advancement of learning, and the

perfection of parts best able to comprehend it."

_Sir Thomas Browne._

Religion has suffered from nothing, throughout all Christendom, more

than from its science having been mixed up with its spirit and practice.

The spirit and practice of religion come out of morals; but its science

comes out of history also; with chronology, philology, and other

collateral kinds of knowledge. The spirit and practice of religion are

for all, since all bear the same relation to their Creator and to their

race, and are endowed with reason and with affections. But the high

science of religion is, at present at least, like all other science, for

the few. The time may come when all shall have the comprehension of mind

and range of knowledge which are requisite for investigating spiritual

relations, tracing the religious principle through all its

manifestations in individuals and societies, studying its records in

many languages, and testing the interpretations which have been put

upon them, from age to age. The time may possibly come when all may be

able thus to be scientific in theology: but that time has assuredly not

arrived. It is so far from being at hand, that by far the largest

portion of christian society seems to be ignorant of the distinction

between the science of theology and the practice of religion. The

scientific study and popular administration of religion have not only

been confided to the same persons, but actually mixed up and confounded

in the heads and hands of those persons. Contrary to all principle, and

to all practice in other departments, the student who enters upon this

science is warned beforehand what conclusions he must arrive at. The

results are given to him prior to investigation; and sanctioned by

reward and punishment. The first injury happens to the student, under a

method of pursuing science as barbarous as any by which the progress of

natural knowledge was retarded in ages gone by. The student, become an

administrator, next injures his flock in his turn, by mixing up portions

of his scholastic science with religious sentiment. He teaches

dogmatically that which bears no relation to duty and affection;

requiring assent where, for want of the requisite knowledge, true assent

is impossible; where there can be only passive reception or ignorant

rejection. The consequences are the corruptions of Christianity, which

grieve the spirit of those who see where and how the poison is mixed

with the bread of life.

The office of theological science is to preserve,--we must now say to

recover,--the primary simplicity of Christianity. It is a high and noble

office to penetrate to and test the opinions of ages, in order to trace

corruptions to their source, and separate them from the pure waters of

truth. It is a high and noble task to master the associations of the

elder time, and look again at the gospel to see it afresh in its native

light. It is a high and noble task to strip away false glosses, not only

of words but of ideas, that the true spirit of the gospel may shine

through the record. But these high and noble labours are but means to a

higher and nobler end. The dignity of theological study arises from its

being subservient to the administration of religion. The last was

Christ's own office; the highest which can be discharged by man: so high

as to indicate that when its dignity is fully understood, it will be

confided to the hands of no class of men. Theologians there will

probably always be; but no man will be a priest in those days to come

when every man will be a worshipper.

On some accounts it may seem desirable that the theologians of this age

should be the clergy. It was once desirable; for reasons analogous to

those which constituted priests once the judges, then the politicians,

then the literati of society. It has been, and is, the plea that those

who professed to clear Christianity from its corruptions, and to master

its history, were the fittest persons to present it to the popular mind.

If this were ever the case, the time seems to have passed by. The press

affords the means of placing the clear results of theological inquiry in

the hands of those whom they concern. There seems to be no other

relation between the theologian, as a theologian, and the worshipper,

which should constitute him the organ of their worship. The habits of

mind most favourable to the pursuit of theological study are not those

which qualify for a successful administration of religious influences.

This is proved by fact; by the limited efficacy of preaching, and by the

fatal confusion which has been caused by the clergy having given out

fragments of their studies from the pulpit, with annexations of promise

and threatening. It does not follow that the administrators should be

ignorant; only that their knowledge should be other than scholastic and

technical. The organ of a worshipping assembly should be furnished with

the clear results of theological study; and with such intellectual and

moral science as shall enable him, if his sympathies be warm enough, to

identify himself with the mind and heart of humanity. He must have that

knowledge of men's relations and interests in life which shall enable

him to look into infinity from their point of view; to give voice to

whatever sentiments are common to all; to appeal to whatever affections

and desires are stirring in all. For this purpose, he must be

practically engaged in the great moral questions of the time, carrying

the principles of religion into them with his whole experimental force;

and bringing out of them new light whereby to illustrate these

principles, new grounds on which to reason in behalf of duty, and new

forces with which to animate the convictions of his fellow-worshippers

into practice.

The fluctuations through which the Methodist body in America, as well as

elsewhere, is arriving at the true principle as to the ministering of

religion, are well known. First, they clearly saw the corruption of

christian doctrine and the deadness of religious service which must

follow from putting closet students into the pulpit: and, holding the

belief of immediate and special inspiration, they abjured human

learning. The mischiefs which have followed upon the ministry of

ignorant and fanatical clergy have converted large numbers to the

advocacy of human learning. It will probably yet be long before they can

put in practice the true method of having one set of men to be

theologians, and another to be preachers or other organs of worship.

The complaint of every denomination in the United States is of a

scarcity of ministers. This is so pressing that, as we have seen in the

case of the Catholics, the term of study is shortened. Now seems the

time, and America the place, for dispensing with the formalities which

restrict religious worship. It would be an incalculable injury to have

theological study brought to an end by every youth who devotes himself

to it being called away to preach, before he can possibly possess many

of the requisites for preaching. It would be far better to throw open

the office of administration to all who feel and can speak religiously,

and so as to be the genuine voice of the thoughts of others. Even if it

were necessary to reconstitute religious societies, making the meetings

for worship smaller, and the exercises varying with the nature of the

case, there could no evil arise so serious as the interruption of

theological study, and the deterioration of public worship. In the wild

west, where the people can no more live without religion than they can

anywhere else, the farmer's neighbours collect around him from within a

circuit of thirty miles, and he reads or speaks, and prays, and they are

refreshed. If this is not done, if it is not frequently done, the

settlers become liable to the insanity of camp-meetings and revivals. If

the national want can be thus naturally supplied in the heart of the

forest or prairie, why not also in the city? The city has the advantage

of a greater number of persons qualified to express the common desires,

and meet the common sympathies of the worshippers.

There are enlightened and religious persons who think it would be a

great advantage to religion if the present system of dogmatical

theological study in America were broken up. It might be so, if it were

sure to be reconstituted upon better principles, and if it were not done

for the purpose of supplying the pulpit with men who might be even less

fit for their office than they are now. But there is no prospect of such

a breaking up at present; and, I am afraid, as little of any great

improvement in the principles of research. Though there are differences

arising about creeds; though there are schisms within the walls of

churches and of colleges, and trials for heresy before synods and

assemblies, which promise a more or less speedy relaxation of the bonds

of creeds, and the tyranny of church government, there is no near

prospect of theological science being left as free as other kinds. There

is no near prospect of evidence on the most important of all subjects

being consigned to the heaven-made laws of the human mind. There is no

near prospect of inquiry being left to work out its results, without any

prior specification, under penalty, of what they must be. There is no

near prospect of the clergy having such faith in the religion they

profess as to leave it to the administration of Him who sent it, free

from their pernicious and arrogant protection.

If other science had its results mixed up with hope and fear, its

pursuit watched over by tyranny, and divergence from old opinions

punished by opprobrium, the world, instead of being "an immense

whispering gallery, where the faintest accent of science is heard

throughout every civilised country as soon as uttered," would be a

Babel; where all utterance would be vociferation, and life one

interminable quarrel. It would be an extreme exemplification of the

principle of making convictions the object of moral approbation and

disapprobation. As it is, though natural philosophers sometimes fall

out, yet there is a practical admission of the right of free research,

and of the innocence of arriving, by strict fidelity, at any conclusions

whatever, in natural science. The consequence is that, instead of men

being imprisoned for their discoveries, and made to do penance for the

benefits they confer on the community, science proceeds expeditiously

and joyously, under the hands of intent workers, mutually aiding and

congratulating, while society gratefully accepts the results, and adopts

the knowledge evolved, as it becomes necessarily and regularly

popularised.

Whenever moral science shall be undertaken, and religious science

emancipated, such will be the harmonious progress of each, and the

christian religion will be anew revealed to men. Meantime, the religious

world is in one aspect like an inquisition; in another, like a Babel.

The religious world: not by any means the intercourse of all religious

persons. Some of the most religious persons are quite out of the

religious world; voluntarily retreating from it that they may retain

their reverence; or driven from it, because they are faithful to

convictions which are prescribed to them only by God, without the

sanction of man.

Is it thus that religion should be followed and professed in a

democratic republic? Does it carry with it any dispensation from

democratic principles? any authority for despotism in this one

particular? any denial of human equality? any sanction of human

authority over reason and conscience? Is it not rather "the root of all

democracy; the highest fact in the Rights of Man?" America has left it

to the Old World to fortify Christianity by establishments, and has

triumphantly shown that a great nation may be trusted to its religious

instincts to provide for its religious wants. In order to the complete

following out of her principles, she must leave religious speculation

and pursuit of knowledge and peace as open as any other; and beware of

making the ascertainments of science an occasion for the oppression of a

single individual in fortune, name, or natural inheritance of spiritual

liberty.

CHAPTER II.

SPIRIT OF RELIGION.

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of

love, and of a sound mind."

_Paul the Apostle._

"Hands full of hearty labours: pains that pay

And prize themselves--do much that more they may.

No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keep

Crowned woes awake, as things too wise for sleep:

But reverend discipline, religious fear,

And soft obedience, find sweet biding here.

Silence, and sacred rest, peace and pure joys--

Kind loves keep house, lie close, and make no noise.

And room enough for monarchs, while none swells

Beyond the limits of contentful cells.

The self-remembering soul sweetly recovers

Her kindred with the stars: not basely hovers

Below--but meditates th' immortal way

Home to the source of light and intellectual day."

_Crashaw._

Society in America is as much in a transition state about religion as

France and England are about politics. The people are in advance of the

clergy in America, as the English are in advance of such of their

political institutions as are in dispute. Discouraging as the aspect of

religious profession in America is on a superficial survey, a closer

study will satisfy the observer that all will be well; that the most

democratic of nations is religious at heart; and that its superstitions

and offences against the spirit of Christianity are owing to temporary

influences.

In order to ascertain what the spirit of religion really is in the

country, we must not judge by the periodicals. Religious periodicals are

almost entirely in the hands of the clergy, who are in no country fair

representatives of the religion of the people. These periodicals are,

almost without exception, as far as my knowledge of them goes, extremely

bad. A very few have some literary and scientific merit; and many

advocate with zeal particular methods of charity, and certainly effect a

wide and beneficent co-operation for mutual help which could not be

otherwise so well secured. But arrogance and uncharitableness, cant,

exclusiveness, and an utter absence of sympathy with human interests and

affections, generally render this class of publications as distasteful

as the corresponding organs of religious bodies in the Old World. They

are too little human in their character, from the books of the Sunday

School Union to the most important of the religious reviews, to be by

any possibility a fair expression of the spiritual state of some

millions of persons. The acts of the laity, and especially of those who

are least under the influence of the clergy, must be looked to as the

only true manifestations.

If religion springs from morals, the religion must be most faulty where

the morals are so. The greatest fault in American morals is an excessive

regard to opinion. This is the reason of the want of liberality of which

unbelievers, and unusual believers, have so much reason to complain. But

the spirit of religion is already bursting through sectarian restraints.

Many powerful voices are raised, within the churches as well as out of

them, and even from a few pulpits, against the mechanical adoption and

practice of religion, and in favour of individuality of thought, and the

consequent spontaneousness of speech and action. Many indubitable

Christians are denouncing cant as strongly as those whom cant has

alienated from Christianity. The dislike of associations for religious

objects is spreading fast; and the eyes of multitudes are being opened

to the fact that there can be little faith at the bottom of that craving

for sympathy which prevents men and women from cheerfully doing their

duty to God and their neighbour unless sanctioned by a crowd. Some of

the clergy have done away with the forms of admission to their churches

which were formerly considered indispensable. There is a visible

reaction in the best part of society in favour of any man who stands

alone on any point of religious concern: and though such an one has the

more regularly drilled churches against him, he is usually cheered by

the grasp of some trusty right hand of fellowship.

The eagerness in pursuit of speculative truth is shown by the rapid sale

of every kind of heretical work. The clergy complain of the enormous

spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of

the miracle question, as sorrowfully as the most liberal members of

society lament the unlimited circulation of the false morals issued by

certain Religious Tract Societies. Both testify to the interest taken by

the people in religion. The love of truth is also shown by the outbreak

of heresy in all directions. There are schisms among all the more strict

of the religious bodies, and large secessions and new formations among

those which are bound together by slight forms. There are even a few

places to be found where Deists may come among Christians to worship

their common Father, without fear of insult to their feelings, and

mockery of their convictions.

I know also of one place, at least, and I believe there are now several,

where the people of colour are welcome to worship with the

whites,--actually intermingled with them, instead of being set apart in

a gallery appropriated to them. This is the last possible test of the

conviction of human equality entertained by the white worshippers. It is

such a test of this, their christian conviction, as no persons of any

rank in England are ever called upon to abide. I think it very probable

that the course of action which is common in America will be followed in

this instance. A battle for a principle is usually fought long, and

under discouragement: but the sure fruition is almost instantaneous,

when the principle is but once put into action. The people of colour do

actually, in one or more religious assemblies, sit among the whites, in

token that the principle of human brotherhood is fully admitted. It may

be anticipated that the example will spread from church to church--in

the rural districts of the north first, and then in the towns;[30] so

that the clergy will soon find themselves released from the necessity of

veiling, or qualifying, the most essential truth of the gospel, from the

pastoral consideration for the passions and prejudices of the white

portion of their flocks, which they at present plead in excuse of their

compromise.

The noble beneficence of the whole community shows that the spirit of

the gospel is in the midst of them, as it respects the condition of the

poor, ignorant, and afflicted. Of the generosity of society there can be

no question; and if it were only accompanied with the strict justice

which the same principles of christian charity require; if there were as

zealous a regard to the rights of intellect and conscience in all as to

the wants and sufferings of the helpless, such a realisation of high

morals would be seen as the world has not yet beheld. I have witnessed

sights which persuade me that the principle of charity will yet be

carried out to its full extent. It gave me pleasure to see the

provisions made for every class of unfortunates. It gave me more to see

young men and women devoting their evening and Sunday leisure to

fostering, in the most benignant manner, the minds of active and

trustful children. But nothing gave me so much delight as what was said

by a young physician to a young clergyman, on their entering a new

building prepared as a place of worship for children, and also as a kind

of school: as a place where religion might have its free course among

young and free minds. "Now," said the young physician, "here we are,

with these children dependent upon us. Never let us defile this place

with the smallest act of spiritual tyranny. Watch me, and I will watch

you, that we may not lay the weight of a hair upon these little minds.

If we impose one single opinion upon them, we bring a curse upon our

work. Here, in this one place, let minds be absolutely free." This is

the true spirit of reverence. He who spoke those words may be

considered, I believe and trust, as the organ of no few, who are aware

that reverence is as requisite to the faithful administration of

charity, as to the acceptable offering of prayer.

The asceticism which pervades large sections of society in America,

testifies to the existence of a strong interest in religion. Its effects

are most melancholy; but they exhibit only the perversion of that which

is, in itself, a great good.--The asceticism of America is much like

that of every other place. It brings religion down to be ceremonial,

constrained, anxious, and altogether divested of its free, generous, and

joyous character. It fosters timid selfishness in some; and in others a

precise proportion of reckless licentiousness. Its manifestations in

Boston are as remarkable as in the strictest of Scotch towns. Youths in

Boston, who work hard all the week, desire fresh air and exercise, and a

sight of the country, on Sundays. The country must be reached over the

long bridges before-mentioned, and the youths must ride to obtain their

object. They have been brought up to think it a sin to take a ride on

Sundays. Once having yielded, and being under a sense of transgression

for a wholly fictitious offence, they rarely stop there.[31] They next

join parties to smoke, and perhaps to drink, and so on. If they had but

been brought up to know that the Sabbath, like all times and seasons,

was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; that their religion is in

their state of mind, and not in the arrangement of their day, their

Sabbaths would most probably have been spent as innocently as any other

day; and the chances would have been much increased of their desiring

the means of improving their religious knowledge, and cherishing their

devotional affections, by social worship. I was struck by the fact that

at the Jefferson University, at Charlottesville, Virginia, where no

fundamental provision is made for worship, where not the slightest

authority is exercised over the students with regard to religious

observances, there is not only a most regular administration of

religion, but the fullest attendance upon it. Every one knows what a

burden and snare the public prayers are at our English Universities,

where the attendance is compulsory. At Charlottesville, where the matter

is left to the inclination of the students, the attendance is punctual,

quiet, and absolutely universal.[32]

The ascetic proscription of amusements extends to the clergy throughout

the country; and includes the whole of the religious world in New

England. As to the clergy, the superstition can scarcely endure long, it

is so destitute of all reason. I went to a large party at Philadelphia,

with a clergyman and other friends. Dancing presently began. I was asked

a question, which implied that my clerical friend had gone home. "There

he is," I replied. "O, I concluded that he went away when the dancing

began;" said the lady, in a tone which implied that she thought he ought

to have gone home. It was observed of this gentleman, that he could not

be a religious man, he was seen at so many parties during my visit to

his house. No clergyman ever enters the theatre, or touches a card. It

is even expected that he should go away when cards are introduced, as

from the ball-room. The exclusion from the theatre is of the least

consequence, as large portions of society have reasonable doubts about

the encouragement of an amusement which does seem to be vitiated there,

almost to the last degree. The Americans have little dramatic taste: and

the spirit of puritanism still rises up in such fierce opposition to the

stage, as to forbid the hope that this grand means of intellectual

exercise will ever be made the instrument of moral good to society there

that it might be made: and the proscribed race of dramatic artists is,

in talent and in morals, just what a proscribed and depressed class

might be expected to be. The attempt to raise their condition and their

art has been strenuously made by the manager of the Boston theatre, who

has sternly purified his establishment, excluding from his stage

everything that could well give offence even to Boston prudery. But it

is in vain. The uncongeniality is too great: and those who respect

dramatic entertainments the most highly, will be the most anxious that

the American theatres should be closed. I even know of more families

than one, unconnected with clergy, and not making any strict religious

profession, where Shakspeare is hidden, for prudish reasons. I need not

add, that among such persons there is not the remotest comprehension of

what the drama is. If a reader of Shakspeare occurs, here and there, it

usually turns out that he considers the plays as collections of

passages, descriptive, didactic, &c. &c. Such being the state of things,

it is no matter of surprise and regret that the clergy, among others,

abstain from the theatre. But, as to the dancing,--either dancing is

innocent, or it is not. If not, nobody should dance: if innocent, the

clergy should dance, like others, as they have the same kind of bodies

to be animated, and of minds to be exhilarated. Once admit any

distinction on account of their office, and there is no stopping short,

in reason, of the celibacy of the clergy, and the other gloomy

superstitions by which the free and genial spirit of Christianity has

been grieved.

This ascetic practice of taking care of one another's morals has gone to

such a length in Boston, as to excite the frequent satire of some of its

wisest citizens. This indicates that it will be broken through. When

there was talk of attempting to set up the Italian opera there, a

gentleman observed that it would never do: people would be afraid of the

very name. "O!" said another, "call it Lectures on Music, with

illustrations, and everybody will come."

Lectures abound in Boston: and I am glad of it; at least in the interval

before the opening of the public amusements which will certainly be

required, sooner or later. These lectures may not be of any great use in

conveying science and literature: lectures can seldom do more than

actuate to study at home. But in this case, they probably obviate

meetings for religious excitement, which are more hurtful than lectures

are beneficial. The spiritual dissipations indulged in by the religious

world, wherever asceticism prevails, are more injurious to sound morals

than any public amusements, as conducted in modern times, have ever been

proved to be. It is questionable whether even gross licentiousness is

not at least equally encouraged by the excitement of passionate

religious emotions, separate from action: and it is certain that rank

spiritual vices, pride, selfishness, tyranny, and superstition, spring

up luxuriantly in the hotbeds of religious meetings. The odiousness of

spiritual vices is apt to be lost sight of in the horror of sensual

transgressions. If a pure intelligence, however, had to decide between

the two, he would probably point out that the vices which arise from the

frailty of nature are less desperate and less revolting than those which

are mainly factitious, and which arise from a perversion of man's

highest relation. It is difficult to decide which set of vices (if

indeed the line can be drawn between them) spreads the most extensive

misery, and most completely ruins the unhappy subjects of them; but it

is certain that the sympathies of unsophisticated minds turn more

readily to the publicans and sinners, than to the pharisees of society:

and they have high authority for so doing.

Still, the asceticism shows that a strong religious feeling, a strong

sense of religious duty exists, which has only to be enlarged and

enlightened. A most liberal-minded clergyman, a man as democratic in his

religion, and as genial in his charity, as any layman in the land,

remarked to me one day on the existence of this strong religious

sensibility in the children of the Pilgrims, and asked me what I thought

should be done to cherish and enlarge it, we having been alarming each

other with the fear that it would be exasperated by the prevalent

superstition, and become transmuted, in the next generation, to

something very unlike religious sensibility. We proposed great changes

in domestic and social habits: less formal religious observance in

families, and more genial interest in the intellectual provinces of

religion: more rational promotion of health, by living according to the

laws of nature, which ordain bodily exercise and mental refreshment. We

proposed that new temptations to walking, driving, boating, &c. should

be prepared, and the delights of natural scenery laid open much more

freely than they are: that social amusements of every kind should be

encouraged, and all religious restraints upon speech and action removed:

in short, that spontaneousness should be reverenced and approved above

all things, whatever form it may take. Of course, this can only be done

by those who do approve and reverence spontaneousness: but I am

confident that there are enough of them, in the very heart of the most

ascetic society in America, to make it unreasonable that they should any

longer succumb to the priests and devotees of the community.

Symptoms of the breaking out of the true genial spirit of liberty were

continually delighting me. A Unitarian clergyman, complaining of the

superstition of the body to which he belonged, while they were

perpetually referring to their comparative freedom, observed, "We are so

bent on standing fast in our liberty, that we don't get on." Another

remarked upon an eulogy bestowed on some one as a man and a Christian:

"as if," said the speaker, "the Christian were the climax! as if it were

not much more to be a man than a Christian!"

The way in which religion is made an occupation by women, testifies not

only to the vacuity which must exist when such a mistake is fallen into,

but to the vigour with which the religious sentiment would probably be

carried into the great objects and occupations of life, if such were

permitted. I was perpetually struck with this when I saw women braving

hurricane, frost, and snow, to flit from preaching to preaching; and

laying out the whole day among visits for prayer and religious

excitement, among the poor and the sick. I was struck with this when I

saw them labouring at their New Testament, reading superstitiously a

daily portion of that which was already too familiar to the ear to leave

any genuine and lasting impression, thus read. Extraordinary instances

met my knowledge of both clergymen and ladies making the grossest

mistakes about conspicuous facts of the gospel history, while reading it

in daily portions for ever. It is not surprising that such a method of

perusal should obviate all real knowledge of the book: but it is

astonishing that those who feel it to be so should not change their

methods, and begin at length to learn that which they have all their

lives been vainly trusting that they knew.

The wife of a member of Congress, a conscientious and religious woman,

judges of persons by one rule,--whether they are "pious." I could never

learn how she applied this; nor what she comprehended under her phrase.

She told me that she wished her husband to leave Congress. He was no

longer a young man, and it was time he was thinking of saving his soul.

She could not, after long conversation on this subject, realise the idea

that religion is not an affair of occupation and circumstance, but of

principle and temper; and that, as there is no more important duty than

that of a member of Congress, there is no situation in which a man can

attain a higher religious elevation, if the spirit be in him.

The morality and religion of the people of the United States have

suffered much by their being, especially in New England, an ostensibly

religious community. There will be less that is ostensible and more that

is genuine, as they grow older. They are finding that it is the

possession of the spirit, and not the profession of the form, which

makes societies as well as individuals religious. All they have to do is

to assert their birth-right of liberty; to be free and natural. They

need have no fear of licence and irreligion. The spirit of their

forefathers is strong in them: and, if it were not, the spirit of

Humanity is in them; the very sanctum of religion. The idea of duty

(perverted or unperverted) is before them in all their lives; and the

love of their neighbour is in all their hearts. As surely then as they

live and love, they will be religious. What they have to look to is that

their religion be free and pure.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] When I visited the New York House of Refuge for the reformation of

juvenile delinquents, one of the officers showed me, with complacency,

that children of colour were sitting among the whites, in both the boys'

and girls' schools. On explaining to me afterwards the arrangements of

the chapel, he pointed out the division appropriated to the pupils of

colour. "Do you let them mix in school, and separate them at worship?" I

asked. He replied, with no little sharpness, "_We_ are not

amalgamationists, madam." The absurdity of the sudden wrath, and of the

fact of a distinction being made at worship (of all occasions) which was

not made elsewhere, was so palpable, that the whole of our large party

burst into irresistible laughter.

[31] The author of "Home" arranged the Sunday, in her book, somewhat

differently from the usual custom; describing the family whose home she

pictured as spending the Sunday afternoon on the water, after a

laborious week, and an attendance on public worship in the morning.

Religious conversation was described as going on throughout the day. So

much offence was taken at the idea of a Sunday sail, that the editor of

the book requested the author to alter the chapter; the first print

being proposed to be cancelled. I am sorry to say that she did alter it.

If she was converted to the popular superstition, (which could scarcely

be conceived,) no more is to be said. If not, it was a matter of

principle which she ought not to have yielded. If books are to be

altered, an author's convictions to be unrepresented, to avoid shocking

religious prejudices, there is a surrender, not only of the author's

noblest prerogative, but of his highest duty.

[32] Ministers of four denominations undertake the duty in rotation, in

terms of a year each. The invitation, and the discharge of the duty, are

as purely voluntary as the attendance upon the services.

CHAPTER III.

ADMINISTRATION OF RELIGION.

"What will they then

But force the spirit of grace itself, and bind

His consort Liberty? what but unbuild

His living temples, built by faith to stand,

Their own faith, not another's?"

_Milton._

"Truth shall spring out of the earth;

And righteousness shall look down from heaven."

_85th Psalm._

The inquiry concerning the working of the voluntary system in

America,--the only country where it operates without an establishment by

its side,--takes two directions. It is asked, first, whether religion is

administered sufficiently to the people: and, secondly, what is the

character of the clergy.

The first question is easily answered. The eagerness for religious

instruction and the means of social worship are so great that funds and

buildings are provided wherever society exists. Though the clergy bear a

larger proportion to men of other occupations, I believe, than is the

case anywhere, except perhaps in the Peninsula, they are too few for the

religious wants of the people. Men are wanting; but churches and funds

are sufficient. According to a general summary of religious

denominations,[33] made in 1835, the number of churches or

congregations was 15,477; the population being, exclusive of the slaves,

between fifteen and sixteen millions; and a not inconsiderable number

being settlers scattered in places too remote for the formation of

regular societies, with settled ministers. To these 15,477 churches

there were only 12,130 ministers. If to these settled clergy, there are

added the licentiates and candidates of the Presbyterian church, the

local preachers of the Methodists, the theological students, and quaker

administrators, it will be acknowledged that the number of religious

teachers bears an unusually large proportion to the population. Yet the

Baptist sect alone proclaims a want of above three thousand ministers to

supply the existing churches. Every exertion is made to meet the

religious wants of the people. The American Education Society has

assisted largely in sending forth young ministers: the Mission and Bible

Societies exhibit large results. In short, society in the United States

offers every conceivable testimony that the religious instincts of the

people may be trusted to supply their religious wants. It is only within

four or five years that this has been fully admitted even in the State

of Massachusetts. Up to 1834, every citizen of that State was obliged to

contribute something to the support of some sect or church. The

inconsistency of this obligation with true democratic principle was then

fully perceived, and religion left wholly to voluntary support. It is

needless to say that the event has fully justified the confidence of

those who have faith enough in Christianity to see that it needs no

protection from the State, but will commend itself to human hearts

better without.

As to the other particular of the inquiry,--the character of the

clergy,--more is to be said.

It is clear that there is no room under the voluntary system for some of

the worst characteristics which have disgraced all christian

priesthoods. In America, there can be no grasping after political power;

no gambling in a lottery of church livings; no worldly pomp and state.

These sins are precluded under a voluntary system, in the midst of a

republic. Instead of these things, we find the protestant clergy

generally belonging to the federal party, when they open their lips upon

politics at all. They belong to the apprehensive party; according to all

precedent. It would be called strange if it did not almost universally

happen, that (with the exception of the political churchmen of the Old

World) they who uphold a faith which shall remove mountains, who teach

that men are not to fear "them that kill the body, and afterwards have

no more that they can do," are the most timid class of society; the most

backward in all great conflicts of principles. They have ever rested

invisible in their tents, when any wrestling was going on between morals

and abuses. They have ever, as a body, belonged to the aristocratic and

fearing party. So it is in America, where the fearing party is

depressed; as it has ever been where the aristocratic party is

uppermost.

The clergy in America are not, as a body, seekers of wealth. It is so

generally out of their reach, that the adoption of the clerical

profession is usually an unequivocal testimony to their

disinterestedness about money. I say "usually," because there are

exceptions. The profession has been one of such high honour that it

rises to an equality with wealth. It is common, not to say usual, that

young clergymen, who are almost invariably from poor families, marry

ladies of fortune. Where there are several sisters in a rich family, it

seems to be regarded as a matter of course that one will marry a

clergyman. Amidst some good which arises out of this practice, there is

the enormous evil, not peculiar to America, that adventurers are tempted

into the profession. Not a few planters in the south began life as poor

clergymen, and obtained by marriage the means of becoming planters. Not

a few pastors in the north grow more sleek than they ever were saintly,

and go through two safe and quiet preachments on Sundays, as the price

of their week-day ease. But, as long as the salaries of ministers are so

moderate as they now are, it cannot be otherwise than that the greater

number of clergy enter upon their profession in full view of a life of

labour, with small pecuniary recompense. There can, I think, be no

question that the vocation is adopted from motives as pure as often

actuate men; and that the dangers to which the clergy succumb arise

afterwards out of their disadvantageous position.

It is to be wished that some alteration could be made in the mode of

remunerating the clergy. At present, they have usually small salaries

and large presents. Nothing is more natural than that grateful

individuals or flocks should like to testify their respect for their

pastor by adding to his comforts and luxuries: but, if all the

consequences were considered, I think the practice would be forborne,

and the salary increased instead. In the present state of morals, it

happens that instances are rare where one person can give pecuniary

benefit to another without injury to one or both. Sympathy, help, may be

given, with great mutual profit; but rarely money or money's worth.[34]

This arises from the false associations which have been gathered round

wealth, and have implicated it too extensively with mental and moral

independence. Any one may answer for himself the question whether it is

often possible to regard a person to whom he is under pecuniary

obligation with precisely the same freedom, from first to last, which

would otherwise exist. If among people of similar views, objects, and

interests, this is felt as a difficulty, it is aggravated into a great

moral danger when spiritual influences are to be dispensed by the aided

and obliged party. I see no safety in anything short of a strict rule on

the part of an honourable pastor to accept of no gift whatever. This

would require some self-denial on the part of his friends; but they

ought to be aware that giving gifts is the coarsest and lowest method of

testifying respect and affection. Many ways are open to them: first by

taking care that their pastor has such a fixed annual provision made for

him as will secure him from the too heavy pressure of family cares; and

then by yielding him that honest friendship, and plain-spoken sympathy,

(without any religious peculiarity,) which may animate him in his

studies and in his ministrations.

The American clergy being absolved from the common clerical vices of

ambition and cupidity, it remains to be seen whether they are free also

from that of the idolatry of opinion. They enter upon their office

generally with pious and benevolent views. Do they retain their moral

independence in it?--I cannot answer favourably.

The vices of any class are never to be imputed with the full force of

disgraces to individuals. The vices of a class must evidently, from

their extent, arise from some overpowering influences, under whose

operation individuals should be respectfully compassionated, while the

morbid influences are condemned. The American clergy are the most

backward and timid class in the society in which they live; self-exiled

from the great moral questions of the time; the least informed with true

knowledge; the least efficient in virtuous action; the least conscious

of that christian and republican freedom which, as the native atmosphere

of piety and holiness, it is their prime duty to cherish and diffuse.

The proximate causes of their degeneracy in this respect are easily

recognised.

It is not merely that the living of the clergy depends on the opinion of

those whom they serve. To all but the far and clear-sighted it appears

that the usefulness of their function does so. Ordinary men may be

excused for a willingness to seize on the precept about following after

the things that make for peace, without too close an inquiry into the

nature of that peace. Such a tendency may be excused, but not praised,

in ordinary men. It must be blamed in all pastors who believe that they

have grasped purer than ordinary principles of gospel freedom.

The first great mischief which arises from the disinclination of the

clergy to bring what may be disturbing questions before their people, is

that they themselves inevitably undergo a perversion of views about the

nature of their pastoral office. To take the most striking instance now

presented in the United States. The clergy have not yet begun to stir

upon the Anti-Slavery question. A very few Presbyterian clergymen have

nobly risked everything for it; some being members of Abolition

societies; and some professors in the Oberlin Institute and its

branches, where all prejudice of colour is discountenanced. But the bulk

of the Presbyterian clergy are as fierce as the slave-holders against

the abolitionists. I believe they would not object to have Mr.

Breckinridge considered a sample of their body. The episcopalian clergy

are generally silent on the subject of Human Rights, or give their

influence against the Abolitionists. Not to go over the whole list of

denominations, it is sufficient to mention that the ministers generally

are understood to be opposed to abolition, from the circumstances of

their silence in the pulpit, their conversation in society, and the

conduct of those who are most under their influence. I pass on to the

Unitarians, the religious body with which I am best acquainted, from my

being a Unitarian myself. The Unitarians believe that they are not

liable to many superstitions which cramp the minds and actions of other

religionists. They profess a religion of greater freedom; and declare

that Christianity, as they see it, has an affinity with all that is

free, genial, intrepid, and true in the human mind; and that it is meant

to be carried out into every social arrangement, every speculation of

thought, every act of the life. Clergymen who preach this live in a

crisis when a tremendous conflict of principles is taking place. On one

side is the oppressor, struggling to keep his power for the sake of his

gold; and with him the mercenary, the faithlessly timid, the ambitious,

and the weak. On the other side are the friends of the slave; and with

them those who, without possibility of recompense, are sacrificing their

reputations, their fortunes, their quiet, and risking their lives, for

the principle of freedom. What are the Unitarian clergy doing amidst

this war which admits of neither peace nor truce, but which must end in

the subjugation of the principle of freedom, or of oppression?

I believe Mr. May had the honour of being the first Unitarian pastor who

sided with the right. Whether he has sacrificed to his intrepidity one

christian grace; whether he has lost one charm of his piety,

gentleness, and charity, amidst the trials of insult which he has had to

undergo, I dare appeal to his worst enemy. Instead of this, his devotion

to a most difficult duty has called forth in him a force of character, a

strength of reason, of which his best friends were before unaware. It

filled me with shame for the weakness of men, in their noblest offices,

to hear the insolent compassion with which some of his priestly brethren

spoke of a man whom they have not light and courage enough to follow

through the thickets and deserts of duty, and upon whom they therefore

bestow their scornful pity from out of their shady bowers of

complacency.--Dr. Follen came next: and there is nothing in his power

that he has not done and sacrificed in identifying himself with the

cause of emancipation. I heard him, in a perilous time, pray in church

for the "miserable, degraded, insulted slave; in chains of iron, and

chains of gold." This is not the place in which to exhibit what his

sacrifices have really been.--Dr. Channing's later services are well

known. I know of two more of the Unitarian clergy who have made an open

and dangerous avowal of the right: and of one or two who have in private

resisted wrong in the cause. But this is all. As a body they must,

though disapproving slavery, be ranked as the enemies of the

abolitionists. Some have pleaded to me that it is a distasteful subject.

Some think it sufficient that they can see faults in individual

abolitionists. Some say that their pulpits are the property of their

people, who are not therefore to have their minds disturbed by what they

hear thence. Some say that the question is no business of theirs. Some

urge that they should be turned out of their pulpits before the next

Sunday, if they touched upon Human Rights. Some think the subject not

spiritual enough. The greater number excuse themselves on the ground of

a doctrine which, I cannot but think, has grown out of the

circumstances; that the duty of the clergy is to decide on how much

truth the people can bear, and to administer it accordingly.--So, while

society is going through the greatest of moral revolutions, casting out

its most vicious anomaly, and bringing its Christianity into its

politics and its social conduct, the clergy, even the Unitarian clergy,

are some pitying and some ridiculing the apostles of the revolution;

preaching spiritualism, learning, speculation; advocating third and

fourth-rate objects of human exertion and amelioration, and leaving it

to the laity to carry out the first and pressing moral reform of the

age. They are blind to their noble mission of enlightening and guiding

the moral sentiment of society in its greatest crisis. They not only

decline aiding the cause in weekdays by deed or pen, or spoken words;

but they agree in private to avoid the subject of Human Rights in the

pulpit till the crisis be past. No one asks them to harrow the feelings

of their hearers by sermons on slavery: but they avoid offering those

christian principles of faith and liberty with which slavery cannot

co-exist.

Seeing what I have seen, I can come to no other conclusion than that the

most guilty class of the community in regard to the slavery question at

present is, not the slave-holding, nor even the mercantile, but the

clerical: the most guilty, because not only are they not blinded by

life-long custom and prejudice, nor by pecuniary interest, but they

profess to spend their lives in the study of moral relations, and have

pledged themselves to declare the whole counsel of God.--Whenever the

day comes for the right principle to be established, let them not dare

to glory in the glory of their country. Now, in its martyr-age, they

shrink from being confessors. It will not be for them to march in to

the triumph with the "glorious army." Yet, if the clergy of America

follow the example of other rear-guards of society, they will be the

first to glory in the reformation which they have done their utmost to

retard.

The fearful and disgraceful mistake about the true nature of the

clerical office,--the supposition that it consists in adapting the truth

to the minds of the hearers,--is already producing its effect in

thinning the churches, and impelling the people to find an

administration of religion better suited to their need. The want of

faith in other men and in principles, and the superabundant faith in

themselves, shown in this notion of pastoral duty, (which has been

actually preached, as well as pleaded in private,) are so conspicuous,

as to need no further exposure. The history of priesthoods may be

referred to as an exhibition of its consequences. I was struck at first

with an advocacy of Ordinances among some of the Unitarian clergy, which

I was confident must go beyond their own belief. I was told that a great

point was made of them, (not as observances but as ordinances,) because

the public mind required them. I saw a minister using vehement and

unaccustomed action, (of course wholly inappropriate,) in a pulpit not

his own; and was told that that set of people required plenty of action

to be assured the preacher was in earnest. I was told that when

prejudices and interests have gathered round any point of morals, truth

ceases to be truth, and it becomes a minister's duty to avoid the topic

altogether. The consequences may be anticipated.--"What do you think,

sir, the people will do, as they discover the backwardness of their

clergy?" I heard a minister of one sect say to a minister of

another.--"I think, sir, they will soon require a better clergy," was

the reply. The people are requiring a better clergy. Even in Boston, so

far behind the country as that city is, a notable change has already

taken place. A strong man, full of enlarged sympathies, has not only

discerned the wants of the time, but set himself to do what one man may

to supply them. He invites to worship those who think and feel with him,

as to what their communion with the Father must be, to sustain their

principles and their cheer in this trying time. A multitude flocks round

him; the earnest spirits of the city and the day, whose full hearts and

worn spirits can find little ease and refreshment amidst the abstract

and inappropriate services of ministers who give them truth as they

judge they can receive it. Nothing but the whole truth will satisfy

those who are living and dying for it. The rising up of this new church

in Boston is an eloquent sign of the times.[35]

An extraordinary revelation of the state of the case between the clergy

and the people was made to me, most unconsciously, by a minister who, by

the way, acknowledges that he avoids, on principle, preaching on the

subjects which interest him most: he thinks he serves his people best,

by carrying into the pulpit subjects of secondary interest to himself.

This gentleman, shocked with the tidings of some social tyranny on the

anti-slavery question, exclaimed, "Such a revelation of the state of

people's minds as this, is enough to make one leave one's pulpit, and

set to work to mend society." What a volume do these few words disclose,

as to the relation of the clergy to the people and the time!

What the effect would be of the clergy carrying religion into what is

most practically important, and therefore most interesting, is shown as

often as opportunity occurs; which is all too seldom. When Dr. Channing

dropped, in a sermon last winter, that legislatures as well as

individuals were bound to do the will of God, every head in the church

was raised or turned; every eye waited upon him. When another minister

preached on being 'alone,' and showed how the noblest benefactors of the

race, the truest servants of God, must, in striking out into new regions

of thought and action, pass beyond the circle of common human

sympathies, and suffer accordingly, many a stout heart melted into

tears; many a rigid face crimsoned with emotion; and the sermon was

repeated and referred to, far and near, under the name of "the Garrison

sermon;" a name given to it, not by the preacher, but by the consciences

of some and the sympathies of others. Contrast with such an effect as

this the influence of preaching, irrelevant to minds and seasons. If

such sayings are admired or admitted at the moment, they are soon

forgotten, or remembered only in the general. "Don't you think," said a

gentleman to me, "that sermons are sadly useless things for the most

part? admonitions strung like bird's eggs on a string; so that they tell

pretty much the same, backwards or forwards, one way or another."

It appears to me that the one thing in which the clergy of every kind

are fatally deficient is faith: that faith which would lead them, first,

to appropriate all truth, fearlessly and unconditionally; and then to

give it as freely as they have received it. They are fond of apostolic

authority. What would Paul's ministry have been if he had preached on

everything but idolatry at Ephesus, and licentiousness at Corinth? There

were people whose silver shrines, whose prejudices, whose false moral

principles were in danger. There were people who were as unconscious of

the depth of their sin as the oppressors of the negro at the present

day. How would Paul have then finished his course? If he had stopped

short from the expediency of not dividing a household against itself, in

case such should be the consequence of giving true principles to the

air; if, dreading to break up the false peace of successful lucre and

overbearing profligacy, he had confined himself to speculations like

those with which he won the ear of the Athenians, carefully avoiding all

allusions to Diana at Ephesus, and to temperance and judgment to come at

Corinth, what kind of an apostle would he have been? Very like the

American christian clergy of the nineteenth century.

The next great mischief that arises from the fear of opinion which makes

the clergy keep aloof from the stirring questions of the time, is that

they are deprived of that influence, (the highest kind of all,) that men

exert by their individual characters and convictions. Their character is

comparatively uninfluential from its being supposed professional; and

their convictions, because they are concluded to be formed from

imperfect materials. A clergyman's opinions on politics, and on other

affairs of active life in which morals are most implicated, are attended

to precisely in proportion as he is secular in his habits and pursuits.

A minister preached, a few years ago, against discount, and high prices

in times of scarcity. The merchants of his flock went away laughing: and

the pastor has never got over it. The merchants speak of him as a very

holy man, and esteem his services highly for keeping their wives,

children, and domestics in strict religious order: but in preaching to

themselves he has been preaching to the winds ever since that day. A

liberal-minded, religious father of a family said to me, "Take care how

you receive the uncorroborated statements of clergymen about that;" (a

matter of social fact;) "they know nothing about it. They are not likely

to know anything about it." "Why?" "Because there is nobody to tell

them. You know the clergy are looked upon by all grown men as a sort of

people between men and women." In a republic, where politics afford the

discipline and means of expression of every man's morals, the clergy

withdraw from, not only all party movements, but all political

interests. Some barely vote: others do not even do this. Their plea is,

as usual, that public opinion will not bear that the clergy should be

upon the same footing as to worldly affairs as others. If this be true,

public opinion should not be allowed to dictate their private duty to

the moral teachers of society. A clergyman should discharge the duties

of a citizen all the more faithfully for the need which the public thus

show themselves to be in of his example. But, if it be true, whence

arises the objection of the public to the clergy discharging the

responsibilities of citizens, but from the popular belief that they are

unfitted for it? If the democracy see that the clergy are almost all

federalists, and the federalist merchants and lawyers consider the

clergy so little fit for common affairs as to call them a set of people

between men and women, it is easy to see whence arises the dislike to

their taking part in politics; if indeed the dislike really exists. The

statement should not, however, be taken on the word of the clergy alone;

for they are very apt to think that the people cannot yet bear many

things in which the flocks have already outstripped their pastors.

A third great mischief from the isolation of the clergy is that, while

it deprives them of the highest kind of influence which is the

prerogative of manhood, it gives them a lower kind:--an influence as

strong as it is pernicious to others, and dangerous to themselves;--an

influence confined to the weak members of society; women and

superstitious men. By such they are called "faithful guardians."

Guardians of what? A healthy person may guard a sick one: a sane man may

guard a lunatic: a grown person may guard a child: and, for social

purposes, an appointed watch may guard a criminal. But how can any man

guard his equal in spiritual matters, the most absolutely individual of

all? How can any man come between another's soul and the infinite to

which it tends? If it is said that they are guardians of truth, and not

of conscience, they may be asked for their warrant. God has given his

truth for all. Each is to lay hold of what he can receive of it; and he

sins if he devolves upon another the guardianship of what is given him

for himself. As to the fitness of the clergy to be guardians, it is

enough to mention what I know: that there is infidelity within the walls

of their churches of which they do not dream; and profligacy among their

flocks of which they will be the last to hear. Even in matters which are

esteemed their peculiar business, the state of faith and morals, they

are more in the dark than any other persons in society. Some of the most

religious and moral persons in the community are among those who never

enter their churches; while among the company who sit at the feet of the

pastor while he refines upon abstractions, and builds a moral structure

upon imperfect principles, or upon metaphysical impossibilities, there

are some in whom the very capacity of stedfast belief has been cruelly

destroyed; some who hide loose morals under a strict profession of

religion; and some if possible more lost still, who have arrived at

making their religion co-exist with their profligacy. Is there not here

something like the blind leading the blind?

Over those who consider the clergy "faithful guardians," their

influence, as far as it is professional, is bad; as far as it is that of

friendship or acquaintanceship, it is according to the characters of the

men. I am disposed to think ill of the effects of the practice of

parochial visiting, except in cases of poor and afflicted persons, who

have little other resource of human sympathy. I cannot enlarge upon the

disagreeable subject of the devotion of the ladies to the clergy. I

believe there is no liberal-minded minister who does not see, and too

sensibly feel, the evil of women being driven back upon religion as a

resource against vacuity; and of there being a professional class to

administer it. Some of the most sensible and religious elderly women I

know in America speak, with a strength which evinces strong conviction,

of the mischief to their sex of ministers entering the profession young

and poor, and with a great enthusiasm for parochial visiting. There is

no very wide difference between the auricular confession of the catholic

church, and the spiritual confidence reposed in ministers the most

devoted to visiting their flocks. Enough may be seen in the religious

periodicals of America about the help women give to young ministers by

the needle, by raising subscriptions, and by more toilsome labours than

they should be allowed to undergo in such a cause. If young men cannot

earn with their own hands the means of finishing their education, and

providing themselves with food and clothing, without the help of women,

they may safely conclude that their vocation is to get their bread

first; whether or not it may be to preach afterwards.[36] But this kind

of dependence is wholly unnecessary. There is more provision made for

the clergy than there are clergy to use it.

A young clergyman came home, one day, and complained to me that some of

his parochial visiting afflicted him much. He had been visiting and

exhorting a mother who had lost her infant; a sorrow which he always

found he could not reach. The mourner had sat still, and heard all he

had to say: but his impression was that he had not met any of her

feelings; that he had done nothing but harm. How should it be otherwise?

What should he know of the grief of a mother for her infant? He was sent

for, as a kind of charmer, to charm away the heart's pain. Such pain is

not sent to be charmed away. It could be made more endurable only by

sympathy, of all outward aids: and sympathy, of necessity, he had none;

but only a timid pain with which to aggravate hers. It was natural that

he should do nothing but harm.

My final impression is, that religion is best administered in America by

the personal character of the most virtuous members of society, out of

the theological profession: and next, by the acts and preachings of the

members of that profession who are the most secular in their habits of

mind and life. The exclusively clerical are the worst enemies of

Christianity, except the vicious.

The fault is not in the Voluntary System; for the case is equally bad on

both sides the Atlantic: and an Establishment like the English does

little more than superadd the danger of a careless, ambitious, worldly

clergy,[37] in the richer priests of the church, and an overworked and

ill-recompensed set of working clergy. The evil lies in a superstition

which no establishment can ever obviate; in the superstition, to use the

words of an American clergyman, "of believing that religion is something

else than goodness." From this it arises that an ecclesiastical

profession still exists; not for the study of theological science,

(which is quite reasonable,) but for the dispensing of goodness. From

this it arises that ecclesiastical goodness is practically separated

from active personal and social goodness. From this it arises that the

yeomanry of America, those who are ever in the presence of God's high

priest, Nature, and out of the worldly competitions of a society

sophisticated with superstition, are perpetually in advance of the rest

of the community on the great moral questions of the time, while the

clergy are in the rear.

What must be done? The machinery of administration must be changed. The

people have been brought up to suppose that they saw Christianity in

their ministers. The first consequence of this mistake was, that

Christianity was extensively misunderstood; as it still is. The trying

moral conflicts of the time are acting as a test. The people are rapidly

discovering that the supposed faithful mirror is a grossly refracting

medium; and the blessed consequence will be, that they will look at the

object for themselves, declining any medium at all. The clerical

profession is too hard and too perilous a one, too little justifiable on

the ground of principle, too much opposed to the spirit of the gospel,

to outlive long the individual research into religion, to which the

faults of the clergy are daily impelling the people.

To what then must we meantime trust for religion?--To the administration

of God, and the heart of man. Has not God his own ways, unlike our ways,

of teaching when man misteaches? It is worth travelling in the wild

west, away from churches and priests, to see how religion springs up in

the pleasant woods, and is nourished by the winds and the star-light.

The child on the grass is not alone in listening for God's tramp on the

floor of his creation. We are all children, ever so listening. Impulses

of religion arise wherever there is life and society; whenever hope is

rebuked, and fear relieved; wherever there is love to be cherished, and

age and childhood to be guarded. If it be true, as my friend and I

speculated, that religious sensibility is best awakened by the spectacle

of the beauty of holiness, religion is everywhere safe; for this beauty

is as prevalent, more or less perceptibly, as the light of human eyes.

It is safe as long as the gospel history is extant. The beauty of

holiness is there so resplendent, that, to those who look upon it with

their own eyes, it seems inconceivable that, if it were once brought

unveiled before the minds of men, every one would not adopt it into his

reason and his affections from that hour. It has been reorganising and

vivifying society from the day of its advent. It is carrying on this

very work now in the New World. The institutions of America are, as I

have said, planted down deep into Christianity. Its spirit must make an

effectual pilgrimage through a society, of which it may be called a

native; and no mistrust of its influences can for ever intercept that

spirit in its mission of denouncing anomalies, exposing hypocrisy,

rebuking faithlessness, raising and communing with the outcast, and

driving out sordidness from the circuit of this, the most glorious

temple of society that has ever yet been reared. The community will be

christian as sure as democracy is christian.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] This summary does not pretend to be complete, but it is the nearest

approximation to fact that can be obtained. According to it the

Episcopalian Methodists are the most numerous sect: then the Catholics,

Calvinistic Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Christians,

Episcopalians, and Quakers. The other denominations follow, down to the

Tunkers and Shakers, which are the smallest.

[34]

"It is a mortifying truth, that two men in any rank of society could

hardly be found virtuous enough to give money, and to take it, as a

necessary gift, without injury to the moral entireness of one or both.

But so stands the fact."

_Edinburgh Review_, xlviii. p. 303.

[35] See Appendix E, for a part of a discourse by Orestes A. Brownson on

the Wants of the Times. It is given as it fell from his lips, and not as

a specimen of his practice of composition. The reader, however, will

probably be no more disposed to remember anything about style in the

presence of this discourse, than Mr. Brownson's hearers are wont to be.

[36] See Appendix F.

[37] It is amusing to see how our aristocratic and ecclesiastical

institutions strike simple republicans. I was asked whether the English

Bishops were not a necessary intermediate aristocracy between the Lords

and the Commons.

CONCLUSION.

My book must come to an end; but I offer no conclusion of my subject. I

do not pretend to have formed any theory about American society or

prospects to which a finishing hand can be put in the last page.

American society itself constitutes but the first pages of a great book

of events, into whose progress we can see but a little way; and that but

dimly. It is too soon yet to theorise; much too soon to speak of

conclusions even as to the present entire state of this great nation.

Meantime, some prominent facts appear to stand out from their history

and condition, which it may be useful to recognise, while refusing to

pronounce upon their positive or comparative virtue and happiness.

By a happy coincidence of outward plenty with liberal institutions,

there is in America a smaller amount of crime, poverty, and mutual

injury of every kind, than has ever been known in any society. This is

not only a present blessing, but the best preparation for continued

fidelity to true democratic principles.

However the Americans may fall short, in practice, of the professed

principles of their association, they have realised many things for

which the rest of the civilised world is still struggling; and which

some portions are only beginning to intend. They are, to all intents and

purposes, self-governed. They have risen above all liability to a

hereditary aristocracy, a connexion between religion and the State, a

vicious or excessive taxation, and the irresponsibility of any class.

Whatever evils may remain or may arise, in either the legislative or

executive departments, the means of remedy are in the hands of the whole

people: and those people are in possession of the glorious certainty

that time and exertion will infallibly secure all wisely desired

objects.