To lose sight of this principle in estimating Christianity, and to
insist on judging it, not by its matured character in Christendom, not
by the _unconscious spirit_ of its founders, but by their personal
views and purposes, is to overlook the divine in it in order to fasten
on the human; to seek the winged creature of the air in the throbbing
chrysalis; and is like judging the place of the Hebrews in history by
the court and the proverbs of Solomon, or the value of Puritanism by
the sermon of a hill-preacher before the civil war. The primitive
Christianity was certainly _different_ from that of other ages; but
there is no reason for believing that it was _better_. The
representation often made of the early Church, as having only truth,
and feeling only love, and living in simple sanctity, is contradicted
by every page of the Christian records. The Epistles are entirely
occupied in driving back guilt and passion, or in correcting errors of
belief; nor is it _always_ possible to approve of the temper in which
they perform the one task, or to assent to the methods by which they
attempt the other. Principles and affections were indeed secreted in
the heart of the first disciples, which were to have a great future,
and to become the highest truth of the world. But it was precisely of
these that they rarely thought at all. The Apostles themselves speak
slightingly of them, as baby's food; and the great faith in God, the
need of repentant purity of heart, with the trust in immortality,--the
very doctrines which we should name as the permanent essence of
Christian faith,--are expressly declared by them to be the childish
rudiments of belief, on which the attention of the grown Christian
will disdain to dwell. And what did they prefer to these sublime
truths, as the nutriment of their life and the pride of their wisdom?
Allegories about Isaac and Ishmael, parallels between Christ and
Melchisedec, new readings of history and prophecy to suit the events
in Palestine, and a constant outlook for the end of all things. These
were the grand topics on which their minds eagerly worked, and on
which they labored to construct a consistent theory. These give the
form to their doctrine, the matter to their spirit. These are what you
will get, if you go indiscriminately to their writings for a creed:
and these are no more Christianity than the pretensions of Hildebrand
or the visions of Swedenborg. The true religion lies elsewhere, just
in the things that were _ever present with them, but never esteemed_.
Just as your friend may spend his anxiety on his station, his
usefulness, his appearance and repute, and fear lest he should show
nothing deserving your regard, while all the time you love him for the
pure graces, the native wild-flowers, of his heart; so do the
choicest servants of God ever think one thing of themselves, while
they are dear to him and revered by us for quite another. "The weak
things" in the Church not less than in "the world hath he chosen to
confound the mighty; the simple, to strike dumb the wise; and things
that are not, to supersede the things that are."
In rude ages, and amid feudal customs, it has perhaps been no unhappy
thing that this image of servitude has been transmitted into the
conceptions of faith: it may have touched with some sanctity an
inevitable submission, and mingled a sentiment of loyalty with
religion. But the _external relation_ of serf and lord is no type of
the _internal relation_ of spirit to spirit, which alone constitutes
religion to us. To God himself, with all his infinitude, we are not
_slaves_; we are not his _property_, but his children; he regards us,
not as _things_, but as _persons_; he does not so much command us, as
appeal to us; and in our obedience, it is not his _bidding_ that we
serve, but that divine Law of Right of which he makes us conscious as
the rule of His nature only more perfectly than of ours. To obey him
as _slaves_, in fear, and with an eye upon his power, is, with all our
punctuality and anxiety, simply and entirely to _disobey_ him; nor is
anything precious in his sight, except the free consent of heart with
which we apprehend what is holy to his thought and embrace what is in
harmony with his perfection. Still less can we be _slaves_ to Christ,
who is no autocrat to us, but our freely followed leader towards God;
the guide of our pilgrim troop in quest of a holy land; who gives us
no law from the mandates of his will, but only interprets for us, and
makes burn within us, in characters of fire, the law of our own
hearts; who has no power over us, except through the affections he
awakens and the aspirations he sets upon the watch. We have emerged
from the Religion of _Law_, whose only sentiment is that of _obedience
to sovereignty_; we have passed from the religion of _Salvation_,
whose life consists in _gratitude to a Deliverer_; and we are capable
only of a religion of _reverence_, which bows before the _authority of
Goodness_. And in the infinite ranks of excellence, from the highest
to the lowest, there are no lords and slaves; the dependence is ever
that of internal charm, not of external bond; the _authority_ is but
represented and impersonated in another and a better soul, but has its
living seat within our own; and in this true and elevating worship,
the more we are disposed of by another, the more do we feel that we
are our own. This is a relation which the political terms of the
expected theocracy are ill adapted to express; and if we have required
many centuries to grope our way to this clearest glory of religion, to
disengage it from the impure admixture of servile fear and revolting
presumption; if it has taken long for us to melt away in our
imagination the images of thrones and tribunals, of prize-givings and
prisons, of a police and assizes of the universe; if only at the
eleventh hour of our faith, the cloud has passed away, and shown us
the true angel-ladder that springs from earth to heaven, the pure
climax of souls whereon each below looks up and rises, yet each above
bends down and helps;--the discovery which brings such peace and
freedom to the heart, has been delayed by the mistaken identification
of the entire creed of the first age with the essence of Christianity.
Now that God has shown us so much more, has tried the divine seed of
the Gospel on so various a soil of history, and enabled us to
distinguish its fairest blossoms and its choicest fruits, a much
larger meaning than was possible at first must be given to the purpose
of his revelation. Even to Paul, Christ was mainly the great
representative of a theocratic idea; and was in no other sense an
object of _spiritual_ belief, than that he was not on earth and
mortal, but in heaven and immortal. That _faith_ in Christ, which then
prominently denoted belief in his appointed return, and _allegiance_
to him as God's viceroy in this world, is now transferred into quite a
different thing. It is altogether a moral and affectionate sentiment:
an acknowledgment of him as the highest impersonation of divine
excellence and inspired insight yet given to the world; a trust in him
as the only realized type of perfection that can mediate for us
between ourselves and God; a faithfulness to him, as making us
conscious of what we are and what God and our conscience would have us
to be. It is vain to pretend that revelation is a fixed and
stereotyped thing. It was born, as the divinest things must be, among
human conditions; and into it ever since human conditions have
perpetually flowed. The elements of Hebrew thought surrounded the
sacred centre at first, and have been erroneously identified with it
by all Unitarian churches in every age. The Hellenic intellect
afterwards streamed towards the fresh point of life and faith, and
gathered around it the metaphysical system of Trinitarian dogma in
which orthodox communions of all times have, with parallel error,
sought the essence of the Gospel. The true principle of the religion
has been _secreted in both, and consisted in neither_: it has lain
unnoticed in the midst, in the silent chamber of the heart, around
which the clamor of the disputatious intellect whirls without
entrance. The agency of Christ's mind as the expression of God's moral
nature and providence, and as the realized ideal of beauty and
excellence,--this is the power of God and the wisdom of God, which has
made vain the counsels of the world, and baffled the foolishness of
the Church. This is the Gospel's centre of stability,--"Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."
Few persons can be insensible to the sublimity of this expression upon
the relation between