CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST AND WITHOUT RITUAL.

"To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men,

but chosen of God, and precious; ye also, as lively stones, are

built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual

sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."--1 Peter ii. 4, 5.

The formation of human society, and the institution of priesthood,

must be referred to the same causes and the same date. The earliest

communities of the world appear to have had their origin and their

cement, not in any gregarious instinct, nor in mere social affections,

much less in any prudential regard to the advantages of co-operation,

but in a binding religious sentiment, submitting to the same guidance,

and expressing itself in the same worship. As no tie can be more

strong, so is none more primitive, than this agreement respecting what

is holy and divine. In simple and patriarchal ages, indeed, when the

feelings of veneration had not been set aside by analysis into a

little corner of the character, but spread themselves over the whole

of life, and mixed it up with daily wonder, this bond comprised all

the forces that can suppress the selfish and disorganizing passions,

and compact a multitude of men together. It was not, as at present, to

have simply the same _opinions_ (things of quite modern growth, the

brood of scepticism); but to have the same fathers, the same

tradition, the same speech, the same land, the same foes, the same

priest, the same God. Nothing did man fear, or trust, or love, or

desire, that did not belong, by some affinity, to his faith. Nor had

he any book to keep the precious deposit for him; and if he had, he

would never have thought of so frail a vehicle for so great a

treasure. It was more natural to put it into structures hollowed in

the fast mountain, or built of transplanted rocks which only a giant

age could stir; and to tenant these with mighty hierarchies, who

should guard their sanctity, and, by an undying memory, make their

mysteries eternal. Hence, the first humanizer of men was their

worship; the first leaders of nations, the sacerdotal caste; the first

triumph of art, the colossal temple; the first effort to preserve an

idea produced a record of something sacred; and the first civilization

was, as the last will be, the birth of religion.

The primitive aim of worship undoubtedly was, to act upon the

sentiments of God; at first, by such natural and intelligible means as

produce favorable impressions on the mind of a fellow-man,--by

presents and persuasion, and whatever is expressive of grateful and

reverential affections. Abel, the first shepherd, offered the produce

of his flock; Cain, the first farmer, the fruits of his land; and

while devotion was so simple in its modes, every one would be his own

pontiff, and have his own altar. But soon, the parent would inevitably

officiate for his family; the patriarch, for his tribe. With the

natural forms dictated by present feelings, traditional methods would

mingle their contributions from the past; postures and times, gestures

and localities, once indifferent, would become consecrated by

venerable habit; and so long as their origin was unforgotten, they

would add to the significance, while they lessened the simplicity, of

worship. Custom, however, being the growth of time, tends to a

tyrannous and bewildering complexity: forms, originally natural, then

symbolical, end in being arbitrary; suggestive of nothing, except to

the initiated; yet, if connected with religion, so sanctified by the

association, that it appears sacrilege to desist from their

employment; and when their meaning is lost, they assume their place,

not among empty gesticulations, but among the mystical signs by which

earth communes with heaven. The vivid picture-writing of the early

worship, filled with living attitudes, and sketched in the freshest

colors of emotion, explained itself to every eye, and was open to

every hand. To this succeeded a piety, which expressed itself in

symbolical figures, veiling it utterly from strangers, but

intelligible and impressive still to the soul of national tradition.

This, however, passed again into a language of arbitrary characters,

in which the herd of men saw sacredness without meaning; and the use

of which must be consigned to a class separated for its study. Hence

the origin of the priest and his profession; the conservator of a

worship no longer natural, but legendary and mystical; skilful enactor

of rites that spake with silent gesticulation to the heavens;

interpreter of the wants of men into the divine language of the gods.

Not till the powers above had ceased to hold familiar converse with

the earth, and in their distance had become deaf and dumb to the

common tongue of men, did the mediating priest arise;--needed then to

conduct the finger-speech of ceremony, whereby the desire of the

creature took shape before the eye of the Creator.

Observe, then, the true idea of PRIEST and RITUAL. The Priest is the

representative of men before God; commissioned on behalf of human

nature to intercede with the divine. He bears a message _upwards_,

from earth to heaven; his people being below, his influence above. He

takes the fears of the weak, and the cries of the perishing, and sets

them with availing supplication before Him that is able to help. He

takes the sins and remorse of the guilty, and leaves them with

expiating tribute at the feet of the averted Deity. He guards the

avenues that lead from the mortal to the immortal, and without his

interposition the creature is cut off from his Creator. Without his

mediation no transaction between them can take place, and the spirit

of a man must live as an outlaw from the world invisible and holy.

There are means of propitiation which he alone has authority to

employ; powers of persuasion conceded to no other; a mystic access to

the springs of divine benignity, by outward rites which his

manipulation must consecrate, or forms of speech which his lips must

recommend. These ceremonies are the implements of his office and the

sources of his power; the magic by which he is thought to gain

admission to the will above, and really wins rule over human counsels

below. As they are supposed to change the relation of God to man, not

by visible or natural operation, not (for example) by suggestion of

new thoughts, and excitement of new dispositions in the worshipper,

but by secret and mysterious agency, they are simply _spells_ of a

dignified order. Were we then to speak with severe exactitude, we

should say, a Ritual is a system of consecrated charms; and the

Priest, the great magician who dispenses them.

So long as any idea is retained of mystically efficacious rites,

consigned solely and authoritatively to certain hands, this definition

cannot be escaped. The ceremonies may have rational instruction and

natural worship appended to them; and these additional elements may

give them a title to true respect. The order of men appointed to

administer them may have other offices and nobler duties to perform,

rendering them, if faithful, worthy of a just and reverential

attachment. But _in so far_ as, by an exclusive and unnatural

efficacy, they bring about a changed relation between God and man, the

Ritual is an incantation, and the Priest is an enchanter.

To this sacerdotal devotion there necessarily attach certain

characteristic sentiments, both moral and religious, which give it a

distinctive influence on human character, and adapt it to particular

stages of civilization. It clearly severs the worshippers by one remove

from God. He is a Being, external to them, distant from them, personally

unapproachable by them; their thought must _travel_ to reach the

Almighty; they must look afar for the Most Holy; they dwell themselves

within the finite, and must ask a foreign introduction to the Infinite.

He is not with them as a private guide, but in the remoter watch-towers

of creation, as the public inspector of their life; not present for

perpetual communion, but to be visited in absence by stated messages of

form and prayer. And that God dwells in this cold and royal separation

induces the feeling, that man is too mean to touch him; that a

consecrated intervention is required, in order to part Deity from the

defiling contact of humanity. Why else am I restricted from unlimited

personal access to my Creator, and driven to another in my transactions

with him? And so, in this system, our nature appears in contrast, not in

alliance, with the divine, and those views of it are favored which make

the opposition strong; its puny dimensions, its swift decadence, its

poor self-flatteries, its degenerate virtues, its giant guilt, become

familiar to the thought and lips; and life, cut off from sympathy with

the godlike, falls towards the level of melancholy, or the sink of

epicurism, or the abjectness of vicarious reliance on the priest.

Worship, too, must have for its chief aim, to throw off the load of ill;

to rid the mind of sin and shame, and the lot of hardship and sorrow;

for principally to these disburdening offices do priests and rituals

profess themselves adapted;--and who, indeed, could pour forth the

privacy of love, and peace, and trust, through the cumbrousness of

ceremonies, and the pompousness of a sacred officer? The piety of such a

religion is thus a refuge for the weakness, not an outpouring of the

strength, of the soul: it takes away the incubus of darkness, without

shedding the light of heaven; lifts off the nightmare horrors of earth

and hell, without opening the vision of angels and of God. Nay, for the

spiritual bonds which connect men with the Father above, it substitutes

material ties, a genealogy of sacred fires, a succession of hallowed

buildings, or of priests having consecration by pedigree or by manual

transmission; so that qualities belonging to the soul alone are likened

to forces mechanical or chemical; sanctity becomes a physical property;

divine acceptance comes by bodily catenation; regeneration is degraded

into a species of electric shock, which one only method of experiment,

and the links of but one conductor, can convey. And, in fine, a priestly

system ever abjures all aim at any higher perfection; boasts of being

immutable and unimprovable; encourages no ambition, breathes no desire.

It holds the appointed methods of influencing Heaven, on which none may

presume to innovate; and its functions are ever the same, to employ and

preserve the ancient forms and legendary spells committed to its trust.

Hence all its veneration is antiquarian, not sympathetic or prospective;

it turns its back upon the living, and looks straight into departed

ages, bowing the head and bending the knee; as if all objects of love

and devotion were _there_, not here; in history, not in life; as if its

God were dead, or otherwise imprisoned in the Past, and had bequeathed

to its keeping such relics as might yield a perpetual benediction. Thus

does the administration of religion, in proportion as it possesses a

sacerdotal character, involve a distant Deity, a mean humanity, a

servile worship, a physical sanctity, and a retrospective reverence.

Let no one, however, imagine that there is no other idea or

administration of religion than this; that the priest is the only

person among men to whom it is given to stand between heaven and

earth. Even the Hebrew Scriptures introduce us to another class of

quite different order; to whom, indeed, those Scriptures owe their own

truth and power, and perpetuity of beauty: I mean the PROPHETS; whom

we shall very imperfectly understand, if we suppose them mere

historians, for whom God had turned time round the other way, so that

they spoke of things future as if past, and grew so dizzy in their use

of tenses, as greatly to incommode learned grammarians; or if we treat

their writings as scrap-books of Providence, with miscellaneous

contributions from various parts of duration, sketches taken

indifferently from any point of view within eternity, and put together

at random and without mark, on adjacent pages, for theological

memories to identify; first, a picture of an Assyrian battle, next, a

holy family; now, of the captives sitting by Euphrates, then, of Paul

preaching to the Gentiles; here, a flight of devouring locusts, and

there, the escape of the Christians from the destruction of Jerusalem;

a portrait of Hezekiah, and a view of Calvary; a march through the

desert, and John the Baptist by the Jordan; the day of Pentecost, and

the French Revolution; Nebuchadnezzar and Mahomet; Caligula and the

Pope,--following each other with picturesque neglect of every relation

of time and place. No, the Prophet and his work always indeed belong

to the future; but far otherwise than thus. Meanwhile, let us notice

how, in Israel, as elsewhere, he takes his natural station above the

priest. It was Moses the prophet who even _made_ Aaron the priest. And

who cares now for the sacerdotal books of the Old Testament, compared

with the rest? Who, having the strains of David, would pore over

Leviticus, or would weary himself with Chronicles, when he might catch

the inspiration of Isaiah? It was no priest that wrote, "Thou desirest

not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in

burnt-offering: the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken

and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." It was no

pontifical spirit that exclaimed, "Bring no more vain oblations;

incense is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the

calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the

solemn meeting: your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul

hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them." "Wash

you, make you clean." Whatever in these venerable Scriptures awes us

by its grandeur and pierces us by its truth, comes of the prophets,

not the priests; and from that part of their writings, too, in which

they are not concerned with historical prediction, but with some

utterance deeper and greater. I do not deny them this gift of

occasional intellectual foresight of events. And doubtless it was an

honor to be permitted to speak thus to a portion of the future, and of

local occurrences unrevealed to seers less privileged. But it is a

glory far higher to speak that which belongs to all time, and finds

its interpretation in every place; to penetrate to the everlasting

realities of things; to disclose, not when this or that man will

appear, but how and wherefore all men appear and quickly disappear; to

make it felt, not in what nook of duration such an incident will

happen, but from what all-embracing eternity the images of history

emerge and are swallowed up. In this highest faculty the Hebrew seers

belong to a class scattered over every nation and every period; which

Providence keeps ever extant for human good, and especially to furnish

an administration of religion quite anti-sacerdotal. This class we

must proceed to characterize.

The Prophet is the representative of God before men, commissioned from

the Divine nature to sanctify the human. He bears a message

_downwards_, from heaven to earth; his inspirer being above, his

influence below. He takes of the holiness of God, enters with it into

the souls of men, and heals therewith the wounds, and purifies the

taint, of sin. He is charged with the peace of God, and gives from it

rest to the weariness and solace to the griefs of men. Instead of

carrying the foulness of life to be cleansed in heaven, he brings the

purity of heaven to make life divine. Instead of interposing himself

and his mediation between humanity and Deity, he destroys the whole

distance between them; and only fulfils his mission, when he brings

the finite mind and the infinite into immediate and thrilling contact,

and leaves the creature consciously alone with the Creator. He is one

to whom the primitive and everlasting relations between God and man

have revealed themselves, stripped of every disguise, and bared of all

that is conventional; who is possessed by their simplicity, mastered

by their solemnity; who has found the secret of meeting the Holy

Spirit within, rather than without; and knows, but cannot tell, how,

in the strife of genuine duty, or in moments of true meditation, the

Divine immensity and love have touched and filled his naked soul; and

taught him by what fathomless Godhead he is folded round, and on what

adamantine manhood he must take his stand. So far from separating

others from the heavenly communion vouchsafed to himself, he

necessarily believes that all may have the same godlike consciousness;

burns to impart it to them; and by the vivid light of his own faith

speedily creates it in those who feel his influence, drawing out and

freshening the faded colors of the Divine image in their souls, till

they too become visibly the seers and the sons of God. His

instruments, like the objects of his mission, are human; not

mysteries, and mummeries, and such arbitrary things, by which others

may pretend to be talking with the skies; but the natural language

which interprets itself at once to every genuine man, and goes direct

to the living point of every heart. An earnest speech, a brave and

holy life, truth of sympathy, severity of conscience, freshness and

loftiness of faith,--these natural sanctities are his implements of

power; and if heaven be pleased to add any other gifts, still are they

weapons all,--not the mere tinsel of tradition and custom,--but forged

in the inner workshop of our nature, where the fire glows beneath the

breath of God, framing things of ethereal temper. Thus armed, he lays

undoubting siege to the world's conscience; tears down every outwork

of pretence; forces its strong-holds of delusion; humbles the vanities

at its centre, and proclaims it the citadel of God. The true prophet

of every age is no believer in the temple, but in the temple's Deity;

trusts, not rites and institutions, but the heart and soul that fill

or ought to fill them; if they speak the truth, no one so reveres

them; if a lie, they meet with no contempt like his. He sees no

indestructible sanctuary but the mind itself, wherein the Divine

Spirit ever loves to dwell; and whence it will be sure to go forth and

build such outward temple as may suit the season of Providence. He is

conscious that there is no devotion like that which comes

spontaneously from the secret places of our humanity, no orisons so

true as those which rise from the common platform of our life. He

desires only to throw himself in faith on the natural piety of the

heart. Give him but that, and he will find for man an everlasting

worship, and raise for God a cathedral worthy of his infinitude.

It is evident that one thoroughly possessed with this spirit could never

be, and could never make, a priest; nor frame a ritual for priests

already made. He is destitute of the ideas out of which alone these

things can be created. His mission is in the opposite direction: he

interprets and reveals God to men, instead of interceding for men with

God. In this office sacerdotal rites have no function and no place. I do

not say that he must necessarily disapprove and abjure them, or deny

that he may directly sanction them. If he does, however, it is not in

his capacity of prophet, but in conformity with feelings which his

proper office has left untouched. His tendency will be against

ceremonialism; and on his age and position will depend the extent to

which this tendency takes effect. Usually he will construct nothing

ritual, will destroy much, and leave behind great and growing ideas,

destructive of much more. But ere we quit our general conception of a

prophet, let us notice some characteristic sentiments, moral and

religious, which naturally connect themselves with his faith; comparing

them with those which belong to the sacerdotal influence.

In this faith, God is separated by nothing from his worshippers. He is

not simply in contact with them, but truly in the interior of their

nature; so that they may not only meet him in the outward providences

of life, but bear his spirit with them, when they go to toil and

conflict, and find it still, when they sit alone to think and pray. He

is not the far observer, but the very present help, of the faithful

will. No structure made with hands, nay, not even his own architecture

of the heaven of heavens, contains and confines his presence: were

there any dark recess whence these were hid, the blessed access would

be without hinderance still; and the soul would discern him near as

its own identity. No mean and ignoble conception can be entertained of

a mind which is thus the residence of Deity;--the shrine of the

Infinite must have somewhat that is infinite itself. Thus, in this

system, does our nature appear in alliance with the Divine, not in

contrast with it; inspired with a portion of its holiness, and free to

help forward the best issues of its providence. Human life, blessed by

this spirit, becomes a miniature of the work of the great Ruler: its

responsibilities, its difficulties, its temptations, become dignified

as the glorious theatre whereon we strive, by and with the good Spirit

of God, for the mastery over evil. Worship, issuing from a nature and

existence thus consecrated, is not the casting off of guilt and

terror, but the glad unburdening of love, and trust, and aspiration,

the simple speaking forth, as duty is the acting forth, of the divine

within us; not the prostration of the slave, but the embrace of the

child; not the plaint of the abject, but the anthem of the free. Is it

not private, individual? And may it not by silence say what it will,

and intimate the precise thing, and that only, which is at

heart?--whence there grows insensibly that firm root of excellence,

truth with one's own self. The priestly fancy of an hereditary or

lineal sacredness can have no place here. The soul and God stand

directly related, mind with mind, spirit with spirit: from our moral

fidelity to this relation, from the jealousy with which we guard it

from insult or neglect, does the only sanctity arise; and herein there

is none to help us, or give a vicarious consecration. And, finally,

the spirit of God's true prophet is earnestly prospective; more filled

with the conception of what the Creator _will_ make his world, than of

what he _has_ already made it: detecting great capacities, it glows

with great hopes; knowing that God lives, and will live, it turns from

the past, venerable as that may be, and reverences rather the promise

of the present, and the glories of the future. It esteems nothing

unimprovable, is replete with vast desires; and amid the shadows and

across the wilds of existence chases, not vainly, a bright image of

perfection. The golden age, which priests with their tradition put

into the past, the prophet, with his faith and truth, transfers into

the future; and while the former pines and muses, the latter toils and

prays. Thus does the administration of religion, in proportion as it

partakes of the prophetic or anti-sacerdotal character, involve the

ideas of an interior Deity, a noble humanity, a loving worship, an

individual holiness, and a prospective veneration.

We have found, then, two opposite views of religion: that of the

Priest with his Ritual, and that of the Prophet with his Faith. I

propose to show that the Church of England, in its doctrine of

sacraments, coincides with the former of these, and sanctions all its

objectionable sentiments; and that Christianity, in every relation,

even with respect to its reputed rites, coincides with the latter.

The general conformity of the Church of England with the ritual

conception of religion will not be denied by her own members. Their

denial will be limited to one point: they will protest that her formulas

of doctrine do not ascribe a _charmed efficacy_, or any operation upon

God, to the two sacraments. To avoid verbal disputes, let us consider

what we are to understand by a spell or charm. The name, I apprehend,

denotes any material object or outward act, the possession or use of

which is thought to confer safety or blessing, not by natural operation,

but by occult virtues inherent in it, or mystical effects appended to

it. A mere commemorative sign, therefore, is not a charm, nor need there

be any superstition in its employment: it simply stands for certain

ideas and memories in our minds; re-excites and freshens them, not

otherwise than speech audibly records them, except that it summons them

before us by sight and touch, instead of sound. The effect, whatever it

may be, is purely natural, by sequence of thought on thought, till the

complexion of the mind is changed, and haply suffused with a noble glow.

But in truth it is not fit to speak of commemorations, as things having

efficacy at all; as desirable observances, under whose action we should

put ourselves, in order to get up certain good dispositions in the

heart. As soon as we see them acquiesced in, with this dutiful

submission to a kind of spiritual operation, we may be sure they are

already empty and dead. An _expedient_ commemoration, deliberately

maintained on utilitarian principles, for the sake of warming cold

affections by artificial heat, is one of the foolish conceptions of this

mechanical and sceptical age. It is quite true, that such influence is

found to belong to rites of remembrance; but only so long as it is not

privately looked into, or greedily contemplated by the staring eye of

prudence, but simply and unconsciously received. No; commemorations must

be the spontaneous fruit and outburst of a love already kindled in the

soul, not the factitious contrivance for forcing it into existence. They

are not the lighted match applied to the fuel on an altar cold; but the

shapes in which the living flame aspires, or the fretted lights thrown

by that central love on the dark temple-walls of this material life.

It is not pretended that the sacraments are mere commemorative rites.

And nothing, I submit, remains, but that they should be pronounced

charms. It is of little purpose to urge, in denial of this, that the

Church insists upon the necessity of faith on the part of the

recipient, without which no benefit, but rather peril, will accrue.

This only limits the use of the charm to a certain class, and

establishes a prerequisite to its proper efficacy. It simply conjoins

the outward form with a certain state of mind, and gives to each of

these a participation in the effect. If the faith be insufficient

without the ceremony, then _some_ efficacy is due to the rite; and

this, being neither the natural operation of the material elements,

nor a simple suggestion of ideas and feelings to the mind, but

mystical and preternatural, is no other than a charmed efficacy.

Nor will the statement, that the effect is not upon God, but upon man,

bear examination. It is very true, that the _ultimate_ benefit of these

rites is a result reputed to fall upon the worshipper;--regeneration, in

the case of baptism; participation in the atonement, in the case of the

Lord's Supper. But by what steps do these blessings descend? Not by

those of visible or perceived causation; but through an express and

extraordinary volition of God, induced by the ceremonial form, or taking

occasion from it. The sacerdotal economy, therefore, is so arranged,

that, whenever the priest dispenses the water at the font, the Holy

Spirit follows, as in instantaneous compliance with a suggestion; and

whenever he spreads his hands over the elements at the communion, God

immediately establishes a preternatural relation, not subsisting the

moment before, between the substances on the table and the souls of the

faithful communicants: so that every partaker receives, either directly

or through supernatural increase of faith, some new share in the merits

of the cross. Whatever subtleties of language then may be employed, it

is evidently conceived that the first consequence of these forms takes

place in heaven; and that on this depends whatever benediction they may

bring: nor can a plain understanding frame any other idea of them than

this; first, they act upwards, and suggest something to the mind of God,

who then sends down an influence on the mind of the believer. From this

conception no figures of speech, no ingenious analogies, can deliver us.

Do you call the sacraments "pledges of grace"? A pledge means a promise;

and how a voluntary act of ours, or the priest's, can be a promise made

to us by the Divine Being, it is not easy to understand. Do you call

them "seals of God's covenant,"--the instrument by which he engages to

make over its blessings to the Christian, like the signature and

completion of a deed conveying an estate? It still perplexes us to think

of a service of our own as an assurance received by us from Heaven. And

one would imagine that the Divine promise, once given, were enough,

without this incessant binding by periodical legalities. If it be said,

"The renewal of the obligation is needful for us, and not for him"; then

call the rites at once and simply, our service of self-dedication, the

solemn memorial of our vows. And in spite of all metaphors, the question

recurs, Does the covenant stand without these seals, or are they

essential _to give possession_ of the privileges conveyed? Are they, by

means preternatural, procurers of salvation? Have they a mystical action

towards this end? If so, we return to the same point; they have a

charmed efficacy on the human soul.

In order to establish this, nothing more is requisite than a brief

reference to the language of the Articles and Liturgical services of

the Church respecting Baptism and the Communion.

Baptism is regarded, throughout the Book of Common Prayer, as the

instrument of regeneration: not simply as its sign, of which the

actual descent of the Holy Spirit is independent; but as itself and

essentially the means or indispensable occasion of the washing away of

sin. That this is regarded as a mystical and magical, not a natural

and spiritual effect, is evident from the alleged fact of its

occurrence in infants, to whom the rite can suggest nothing, and on

whom, in the course of nature, it can leave no impression. Yet it is

declared of the infant, after the use of the water, "Seeing now,

dearly beloved brethren, that _this child is regenerate_," &c.: at the

commencement of the service its aim is said to be that God may "grant

to this child that thing which by nature he cannot have,"--"would wash

him and sanctify him with the Holy Ghost," that he may be "delivered

from God's wrath." Nothing, indeed, is so striking in this office of

the national Church, as its audacious trifling with solemn names,

denoting qualities of the soul and will; the ascription of spiritual

and moral attributes, not only to the child in whom they can yet have

no development, but even to material substances; the frivolity with

which engagements with God are made by deputy, and without the consent

or even existence of the engaging will. Water is said to possess

_sanctity_, for "the mystical washing away of sin." Infants, destitute

of any idea of duty or obligation to be resisted or obeyed, are said

to obtain "_remission of their sins_";--to "renounce the Devil and all

his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world"; "steadfastly to

believe" in the Apostles' Creed, and to be desirous of "baptism into

this faith." Belief, desire, resolve, are acts of some one's mind: the

language of this service attributes them to the personality of the

infant (_I_ renounce, _I_ believe, _I_ desire); yet there they cannot

possibly exist. If they are to be understood as affirmed by the

godfathers and godmothers of themselves, the case is not improved: for

how can one person's state of faith and conscience be made the

condition of the regeneration of another? What intelligible meaning

can be attached to these phrases of sanctity applied to an age not

responsible? In what sense, and by what indication, are these children

_holier_ than others? And with what reason, if all this be

Christianity, can we blame the Pope for sprinkling holy water on the

horses? The service appears little better than a profane sacerdotal

jugglery, by which material things are impregnated with divine

virtues, moral and spiritual qualities of the mind are sported with,

the holy spirit of God is turned into a physical mystery, and the

solemnity of personal responsibility is insulted.

That a superstitious value is attributed to the details of the

baptismal form, in the Church of England, appears from certain parts

of the service for the private ministration of the rite. If a child

has been baptized by any other lawful minister than the minister of

the parish, strict inquiries are to be instituted by the latter

respecting the correctness with which the ceremony has been performed;

and should the prescribed rules have been neglected, the baptism is

invalid, and must be repeated. Yet great solicitude is manifested,

lest danger should be incurred by an unnecessary repetition of the

sacrament: to guard against which, the minister is to give the

following conditional invitation to the Holy Spirit; saying, in his

address to the child, "_If_ thou art not already baptized, I baptize

thee," &c. It is worthy of remark, that the Church mentions as one of

the _essentials_ of the service, the omission of which necessitates

its repetition, the use of the formula, "In the name of the Father,

and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." By this rule, every one of the

apostolic baptisms recorded in Scripture must be pronounced invalid;

and the Church of England, were it possible, would perform them again:

for in no instance does it appear that the Apostles employed either

this or even any equivalent form of words.

That this sacrament is regarded as an indispensable channel of grace,

and positively necessary to salvation, is clear from the provision of

a short and private form, to be used in cases of extreme danger. The

prayers, and faith, and obedience, and patient love, of parents and

friends,--the dedication and heart-felt surrender of their child to

God, the profound application of their anxieties and grief to their

conscience and inward life,--all this, we are told, will be of no

avail, without the water and the priest. Archbishop Laud says: "That

baptism is necessary to the salvation of infants (in the ordinary way

of the Church, without binding God to the use and means of that

sacrament, to which he hath bound us), is expressed in St. John iii.,

'Except a man be born of water,' &c. So, no baptism, no entrance; nor

can infants creep in, any other ordinary way."[3] Bishop Bramhall

says: "Wilful neglect of baptism we acknowledge to be a damnable sin;

and, without repentance and God's extraordinary mercy, to exclude a

man from all hope of salvation. But yet, if such a person, before his

death, shall repent and deplore his neglect of the means of grace,

from his heart, and desire with all his soul to be baptized, but is

debarred from it invincibly, we do not, we dare not, pass sentence of

condemnation upon him; not yet the Roman Catholics themselves. The

question then is, whether the want of baptism, upon invincible

necessity, do evermore infallibly exclude from heaven."[4] Singular

struggle here, between the merciless ritual of the priest, and the

relenting spirit of the man!

The office of Communion contains even stronger marks of the same

sacerdotal superstitions; and, notwithstanding the Protestant horror

entertained of the mass, approaches it so nearly, that no ingenuity

can exhibit them in contrast. Near doctrines, however, like near

neighbors, are known to quarrel most.

The idea of a physical sanctity, residing in solid and liquid

substances, is encouraged by this service. The priest _consecrates_

the elements, by laying his hand upon all the bread, and upon every

flagon containing the wine about to be dispensed. If an additional

quantity is required, this too must be consecrated before its

distribution. And the sacredness thus imparted is represented as

surviving the celebration of the Supper, and residing in the

substances as a permanent quality: for in the disposal of the bread

and wine that may remain at the close of the sacramental feast, a

distinction is made between the consecrated and the unconsecrated

portion of the elements; the former is not permitted to quit the

altar, but is to be reverently consumed by the priest and the

communicants; the latter is given to the curate. What the particular

change may be, which the prayer and manipulation of the minister are

thought to induce, it is by no means easy to determine; nor would the

discovery, perhaps, reward our pains. It is certainly conceived, that

they cease to be any longer mere bread and wine, and that with them

thenceforth co-exist, really and substantially, the body and blood of

Christ. Respecting this _Real Presence_ with the elements, there is no

dispute between the Romish and the English Church; both unequivocally

maintain it: and the only question is, respecting the _Real Absence_

of the original and culinary bread and wine; the Roman Catholic

believing that these substantially vanish, and are replaced by the

body and blood of Christ; the English Protestant conceiving that they

remain, but are united with the latter. The Lutheran, no less than the

British Reformed Church, has clung tenaciously to the doctrine of the

real presence in the Eucharist, Luther himself declares: "I would

rather retain, with the Romanists, _only_ the body and blood, than

adopt, with the Swiss, the bread and wine, _without_ the real body and

blood of Christ." The catechism of our Church affirms that "the body

and blood of Christ are _verily and indeed_ taken and received by the

faithful in the Lord's Supper." And this was not intended to be

figuratively understood, of the spiritual use and appropriation to

which the faith and piety of the receiver would mentally convert the

elements: for although here the body of Christ is only said to be

"_taken_" (making it the _act of the communicant_), yet one of the

Articles speaks of it as "_given_" (making it the _act of the

officiating priest_), and implying the real presence _before

participation_. However anxious, indeed, the clergy of the

"Evangelical" school may be to disguise the fact, it cannot be

doubted that their Church has always maintained a supernatural change

in the elements themselves, as well as in the mind of the receiver.

Cosin, Bishop of Durham, says, "We own the union between the body and

blood of Christ, and the elements, whose use and office we hold to be

changed from what it was before"; "we confess the necessity of a

supernatural and heavenly change, and that the signs cannot become

sacraments but by the infinite power of God."[5]

In consistency with this preparatory change, a charmed efficacy is

attributed to the subsequent participation in the elements. Even the

_body_ of the communicant is said to be under their influence: "Grant

us to eat the flesh of thy dear Son, and drink his blood, that our

sinful _bodies_ may be made clean through his body, and our _souls_

washed through his most precious blood"; and the unworthy recipients

are said "to provoke God to plague them with divers diseases and

sundry kinds of death." Lest the worshipper, by presenting himself in

an unqualified state, should "do nothing else than increase his

damnation," the unquiet conscience is directed to resort to the

priest, and receive the benefit of absolution before communicating.

Can we deny to the Oxford divines the merit (whatever it may be) of

consistency with the theology of their Church, when they applaud and

recommend, as they do, the administration of the Eucharist to infants,

and to persons dying and insensible? Indeed, it is difficult to

discover why infant Communion should be thought more irrational than

infant Baptism. If, as I have endeavored to show, the primary action

of these ceremonies is conceived to be on God, not on the mind of

their object, why should not the Divine blessing be induced upon the

young and the unconscious, as well as on the mature and capable soul?

And were any further evidence required than I have hitherto adduced,

to show _on whom_ the Communion is conceived to operate in the first

instance, it would surely be afforded by this clause in the Service:

by not partaking, "_Consider how great an injury ye do unto God._"

The only thing wanted to complete this sacerdotal system, is to obtain

for a certain class of men the corporate possession, and exclusive

administration, of these essential and holy mysteries. This our Church

accomplishes by its doctrine of Apostolical Succession; claiming for

its ministers a lineal official descent from the Apostles, which

invests them, and them alone within this realm, with divine authority

to pronounce absolution or excommunication, and to administer the

Sacraments. They are thus the sole guardians of the channels of the

Divine Spirit and its grace, and interpose themselves between a nation

and its God. "Receive the Holy Ghost," says the Service for Ordination

of Priests, "for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God,

now committed unto thee by the imposition of hands. Whose sins thou

dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they

are retained." "They only," says the present Bishop of Exeter, "can

claim to rule over the Lord's household, whom he has himself placed

over it; they only are able to minister the means of grace,--above

all, to present the great commemorative _sacrifice_,--whom Christ has

appointed, and whom he has in all generations appointed in unbroken

succession from those, and through those, whom he first ordained.

'Ambassadors from Christ' must, by the very force of the term, receive

credentials from Christ: 'stewards of the mysteries of God' must be

intrusted with those mysteries by him. Remind your people, that in the

Church only is the promise of forgiveness of sins; and though, to all

who truly repent, and sincerely believe, Christ mercifully grants

forgiveness, yet he has, in an especial manner, empowered his

ministers to declare and pronounce to his people the absolution and

remission of their sins: 'Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted

unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.' This

was the awful authority given to his first ministers, and in them, and

through them, to all their successors. This is the awful authority we

have received, and that we must never be ashamed nor afraid to tell

the people that we have received.

"Having shown to the people your commission, show to them how our own

Church has framed its services in accordance with that commission.

Show this to them not only in the Ordinal, but also in the Collects,

in the Communion Service, in the Office of the Visitation of the Sick;

show it, especially, in that which continually presents itself to

their notice, but is commonly little regarded by them; show it in the

very commencement of Morning and Evening Prayer, and make them

understand the full blessedness of that service, in which the Church

thus calls on them to join. Let them see that there the minister

authoritatively pronounces God's pardon and absolution to all them

that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe Christ's holy Gospel; that

he does this, even as the Apostles did, with the authority and by the

appointment of our Lord himself, who, in commissioning his Apostles,

gave this to be the never-failing assurance of his co-operation in

their ministry: 'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the

world'; a promise which, of its very nature, was not to be fulfilled

to the persons of those whom he addressed, but to their office, to

their successors therefore in that office, 'even unto the end of the

world.' Lastly, remind and warn them of the awful sanction with which

our Lord accompanied his mission, even of the second order of the

ministers whom he appointed: 'He that heareth you, heareth me; and he

that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth

him that sent me.'" That this high dignity may be clearly understood

to belong in this country only to the Church of England, the Bishop

proposes the question, "What, then, becomes of those who are not, or

continue not, members of that (visible) Church?" and replies to it by

saying, that though he "judges not them that are without," yet "he who

wilfully and in despite of due warning, or through recklessness and

worldly-mindedness, sets at naught its ordinances, and despises its

ministers, has no right to promise to himself any share in the grace

which they are appointed to convey."[6] "Why," says one of the Oxford

divines, who here undeniably speaks the genuine doctrine of his

Church,--"Why should we talk so much of an _Establishment_, and so

little of an APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION? Why should we not seriously

endeavor to impress our people with this plain truth, that, by

separating themselves from our communion, they separate themselves not

only from a decent, orderly, useful society, but from THE ONLY CHURCH

IN THIS REALM WHICH HAS A RIGHT TO BE QUITE SURE THAT SHE HAS THE

LORD'S BODY TO GIVE TO HIS PEOPLE?"[7]

Of course this divine authority has been received through the Church

of Rome, so abominable in the eyes of all Evangelical clergymen; and

through many an unworthy link in the broken chain. The Holy Spirit, it

is acknowledged, has _passed through_ many, on whom, apparently, it

was not pleased to rest; and the right to forgive sins been conferred

by those who seemed themselves to need forgiveness. A writer in the

Oxford Tracts observes: "Nor even though we may admit that many of

those who formed the connecting links of this holy chain were

themselves unworthy of the high charge reposed in them, can this

furnish us with any solid ground for doubting or denying their power

to exercise that legitimate authority with which they were duly

invested, of transmitting the sacred gift to worthier followers."[8]

In its doctrine of Sacraments, then, and in that of ecclesiastical

authority and succession, the Church of England is thoroughly imbued

with the sacerdotal character. It doubtless contains far better elements

and nobler conceptions than those which it has been my duty to exhibit

now; and solemnly insists on faith of heart, and truth of conscience,

and Christian devotedness of life, as well as on the observance of its

ritual; with the external it unites the internal condition of

sanctification. But insisting on the theory of a mystic efficacy in the

Christian rites, it necessarily fails to reconcile these with each

other: and hence the opposite parties within its pale; the one

magnifying faith and personal spirituality, the other exalting the

sacraments and ecclesiastical communion. They represent respectively the

two constituent and clashing powers, which met at the formation of the

English Church, and of which it effected the mere compromise, not the

reconciliation; I mean, the priestliness of Rome, and the prophetic

spirit of the Reformers. Never, since apostolic days, did Heaven bless

us with truer prophet than Martin Luther. It was his mission (no modern

man had ever greater) to substitute the idea of _personal faith_ for

that of _sacerdotal reliance_. And gloriously, with bravery and truth of

soul amid a thousand hinderances, did he achieve it. But though, ever

since, the priests have been down, and faith has been up, yet did the

hierarchy unavoidably remain, and insisted that _something_ should be

made of it, and at least some colorable terms proposed. Hence, every

reformed church exhibits a coalition between the new and the old ideas:

and combined views of religion, which must ultimately prove incompatible

with each other; the formal with the spiritual; the idea of worship as a

means of propitiating God, with the conception of it as an expression of

love in man; the notion of Church authority with that of individual

freedom; the admission of a license to think, with a prohibition of

thinking wrong. In our national Church the old spirit was ascendant over

the new, though long forced into quiescence by the temper of modern

times. Now it is attempting to reassert its power, not without strenuous

resistance. Indeed, the present age seems destined to end the compromise

between the two principles, from the union of which Protestantism

assumed its established forms. The truce seems everywhere breaking up: a

general disintegration of churches is visible; tradition is ransacking

the past for claims and dignities, and canvassing present timidity for

fresh authority, to withstand the wild forces born at the Reformation,

and hurrying us fast into an unknown future.

Let us now turn to the primitive Christianity; which, I submit, is

throughout wholly anti-sacerdotal.

Surely it must be admitted that the general spirit of our Lord's

personal life and ministry was that of the Prophet, not of the Priest;

tending directly to the disparagement of whatever priesthood existed

in his country, without visibly preparing the substitution of anything

at all analogous to it. The sacerdotal order felt it so; and, with the

infallible instinct of self-preservation, they watched, they hated,

they seized, they murdered him. The priest in every age has a natural

antipathy to the prophet, dreads him as kings dread revolution, and is

the first to detect his existence. The solemn moment and the gracious

words of Christ's first preaching in Nazareth, struck with fate the

temple in Jerusalem. To the old men of the village, to the neighbors

who knew his childhood, and companions who had shared its rambles and

its sports, he said, with the quiet flush of inspiration: "The Spirit

of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the

Gospel to the poor: he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to

preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the

blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the

acceptable year of the Lord." The Spirit of the Lord in Galilee!

speaking with the peasantry, dwelling in villages, and wandering loose

and where it listeth among the hills! This would never do, thought the

white-robed Levites of the Holy City; it would be as a train of

wildfire in the temple. And were they not right? When it was revealed

that sanctity is no thing of place and time, that a way is open from

earth to heaven, from every field or mountain trod by human feet, and

through every roof that shelters a human head; that, amid the crowd

and crush of life, each soul is in personal solitude with God, and by

speech or silence (be they but true and loving) may tell its cares and

find its peace; that a divine allegiance might _cost nothing_, but the

strife of a dutiful will and the patience of a filial heart,--how

could any priesthood hope to stand? See how Jesus himself, when the

temple was close at hand, and the sunshine dressed it in its splendor,

yet withdrew his prayers to the midnight of Mount Olivet. He entered

those courts to teach, rather than to worship; and when there, he is

felt to take no consecration, but to give it; to bring with him the

living spirit of God, and spread it throughout all the place. When

evening closes his teachings, and he returns late over the Mount to

Bethany, did he not feel that there was more of God in the

night-breeze on his brow, and the heaven above him, and the sad love

within him, than in the place called "Holy" which he had left? And

when he had knocked at the gate of Lazarus the risen and become his

guest,--when, after the labors of the day, he unburdened his spirit to

the affections of that family, and spake of things divine to the

sisters listening at his feet,--did they not feel, as they retired at

length, that the whole house was full of God, and that there is no

sanctuary like the shrine, not made with hands, within us all? In

childhood, he had once preferred the temple and its teachings to his

parents' home: now, to his deeper experience, the temple has lost its

truth; while the cottage and the walks of Nazareth, the daily voices

and constant duties of this life, seem covered with the purest

consecration. True, he vindicated the sanctity of the temple, when he

heard within its enclosure the hum of traffic and the chink of gain,

and would not have the house of prayer turned into a place of

merchandise: because in this there was imposture and a lie, and Mammon

and the Lord must ever dwell apart. In nothing must there be mockery

and falsehood; and while the temple stands, it must be a temple true.

Our Lord's whole ministry, then, (to which we may add that of his

Apostles,) was conceived in a spirit quite opposite to that of

priesthood. A missionary life, without fixed locality, without form,

without rites; with teaching free, occasional, and various, with

sympathies ever with the people, and a strain of speech never marked

by invective, except against the ruling sacerdotal influence;--all

these characters proclaim him, purely and emphatically, the Prophet

of the Lord. It deserves notice that, unless as the name of his

enemies, the _word_ "PRIEST" (ἱερευς) never occurs in either the

historical or epistolary writings of the New Testament, except in the

Epistle to the Hebrews. And _there_ its application is not a little

remarkable. It is applied to Christ alone; it is declared to belong to

him only after his ascension; it is said that, while on earth, he

neither was, nor could be, a priest; and if it is admitted that he

holds the office in heaven, this is only to satisfy the demand of the

Hebrew Christians for some sacerdotal ideas in their religion, and to

reconcile them to having no priest on earth. The writer acknowledges

one great pontiff in the world above, that the whole race may be

superseded in the world below; and banishes priesthood into

invisibility, that men may never see its shadow more. All the terms of

office which are given to the first preachers of the Gospel and

superintendents of churches,--as Deacon, Elder or Presbyter, Overseer

or Bishop,--are _lay terms_, belonging previously, not to

ecclesiastical, but to civil life; an indication, surely, that no

analogy was thought to exist between the Apostolic and the Sacerdotal

relations.[9] I shall, no doubt, be reminded of the words, in which

our Lord is supposed to have given their commission to his first

representatives: "Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in

heaven; and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven";

and shall be asked whether this does not convey to them and their

successors an official authority to forgive sins, and dispense the

decrees of the unseen world. I reply briefly:--

1st. That the power here granted does not relate to the dispensations

of the future life, but solely to what would be termed, in modern

language, the allotment of _church-membership_. The previous verse

proves this, furnishing as it does a particular case of the general

authority here assigned. It directs the Apostles under what

circumstances they are to remove an offender from a Christian society,

and treat him as an unconverted man, as a heathen man and a publican.

Having given them their rule, he freely trusts the application of it

to them: and being about to retire erelong from personal intervention

in the affairs of his kingdom, he assures them that their decisions

shall be his, and that he may be considered as adopting in heaven

their determinations upon earth. He simply "consigns to his Apostles

discretionary power to direct the affairs of his Church, and

superintend the diffusion of the glad tidings: they may bind and

loose, that is, open and shut the door of admission to their

community, as their judgment may determine; employing or rejecting

applicants for the missionary office; dissociating from their

assemblies obstinate delinquents; receiving with openness, or

dismissing with suspicion, each candidate for instruction, according

to their estimate of his qualifications and motives."

2dly. It is to be observed, that there is no appearance of any one

being in the contemplation of our Lord, beyond the persons immediately

addressed. Not a word is said of any official successor or any distant

age. No indication is afforded, that any idea of futurity was present

to the mind of Jesus: and a title of perpetual office, an instrument

creating and endowing an endless priesthood, ought, it will be

admitted, to be somewhat more explicit than this. But where the power

has been successfully claimed, the title is seldom difficult to prove.

The alleged RITUAL of Christianity, consisting of the sacraments of

Baptism and the Communion, will be found no less destitute of sanction

from the Scriptures. The former we shall see reason to regard as

simply an initiatory form, applicable only to Christian converts, and

limited therefore to adults; the latter as purely a commemoration:

neither therefore having any sacramental or mystical efficacy.

For baptism it is impossible to establish any supernatural origin. It is

admitted to have existed before the Christian era; and to have been

employed by the Jews on the admission of proselytes to their religion.

It is certain that it is not an enjoined rite in the Mosaic

dispensation; and, though prevalent before the period of the New

Testament, is nowhere enforced or recognized in the writings of the Old.

It arose therefore in the interval between the only two systems which

Christians acknowledged to be supernatural; and must be considered as of

natural and human origin, invested, thus far, with no higher authority

than its own appropriateness may confer. There seem to have been two

modes of construing the symbol: the one founded on the cleansing effect

of the water on the person of the baptized himself; the other, on the

appearance of his immersion (which was complete) to the eye of a

spectator. The former was an image of the heathen convert's purification

from a foul idolatry, and his transition to a stainless condition under

a divine and justifying law. The latter represented him, when he

vanished in the stream, as interred to this world, sunk utterly from its

sight; and when he reappeared, as emerging or born again to a better

state; the "old man" was "buried in baptism," and when he "rose again,"

he had altogether "become new."[10] The ceremony then was appropriately

used in any case of transition from a depressed and corrupt state of

existence to a hopeful and blessed one; from a false or imperfect

religion to one true and heavenly.

But it will be said, whatever the origin of baptism, it was employed and

sanctioned by our Lord, who commissioned his Apostles to go and baptize

all nations. True; but is there no difference between the adoption of a

practice already extant,--of a practice which was as much the mere

institutional dress of the Apostles' nation, as the sandals whose dust

they were to shake off against the faithless were the customary clothing

of the Apostles' feet,--and the authoritative appointment of a

sacrament? They were going forth to make converts: and why should they

not have recourse to the form familiarly associated with the act?

Familiar association recommended its adoption in that age and clime; and

the absence of such association elsewhere and in other times may be

thought to justify its disuse. At all events, a ceremony thus taken up

must be presumed to retain its acquired sense and its established extent

of application: and if so, baptism must be strictly limited to the

admission of proselytes from other faiths. This accords with the known

practice of the Apostles, who cannot be shown to have baptized any but

those whom they had personally, or by their missionaries, persuaded to

become Christians. Not a single case of the use of the rite with

children can be adduced from Scripture; and the only argument by which

such employment of it is ever justified is this: that a _household_ is

said to have been baptized, and _all nations_ were to receive the offer

of it; and that the household _may_, the nations _must_, have contained

children. It is evident that such reasoning could never have been

propounded, unless the practice had existed first, and the defence had

been found afterwards.

With the system of infant baptism vanish almost all the ideas which the

prevalent theology has put into the rite; and it becomes as intelligible

and expressive to one who believes in the good capacities of human

nature, as to those who esteem it originally depraved. "How unmeaning,"

say our Orthodox opponents, "is this ceremony in Unitarian hands,

denying, as they do, the doctrines which it represents! Of what

regeneration can they possibly suppose it the symbol, if not of the

washing away of that _hereditary sin_ which they refuse to acknowledge?

for when the infant is brought to the font, he can as yet have no other

guilt than this." I reply, the objection has no force except against the

use of _infant_ baptism in our churches,--which I am not anxious to

defend; but of course those Unitarians who employ it conceive it to be

the token, not of any sentiments which they reject, but of truths and

feelings which they hold dear. For myself, I believe, with our

opponents, that the _doctrine_ of original sin and the _practice_ of

infant baptism _do_ belong to each other, and must stand or fall

together; and therefore deem it a fact very significant of the Apostles'

theology, that no infant can be shown ever to have been "brought to the

font" by these first true missionaries of Christianity. And as to the

_new birth_ which baptism (i. e. recent and genuine discipleship to

Jesus) may give to the _maturely convinced_ Christian, he must have a

great deal to learn, not only of the Hebrew conceptions and language in

relation to the Messiah, but of the spirituality of the Gospel, and of

the fresh creations of character which it calls up, who can be much

puzzled about its meaning.

In Christian baptism, then, we have no sacrament with mystic power;

but an initiatory form, possibly of consuetudinary obligation only;

but if enjoined, applicable exclusively to proselytes, and misemployed

in the case of infants; a sign of conversion, not a means of

salvation; confided to no sacerdotal order, but open to every man

fitted to give it an appropriate use.

I turn to the Lord's Supper; with design to show what it is not, and

what it is. It is not a mystery, or a sacrament, any more than it is

an expiatory sacrifice. To persuade us that it has a ritual character,

we are first assured that it is clearly the successor in the Gospel to

the Passover under the Law. Well, even if it were so, it would still

be simply commemorative, and without any other efficacy than a

festival, filled with great remembrances, and inspired with religious

joy. Such was the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem; the annual gathering of

families and kindred, a sacred carnival under the spring sky and in

sight of unreaped fields, when the memory was recalled of national

deliverance, and the tale was told of traditional glories, and the

thoughts brought back of bondage reversed, of the desert pilgrimage

ended, of the promised land possessed. The Jewish festival was no more

than this; unless, with Archbishop Magee and others, we erroneously

conceive it to be a proper sacrifice. So that those who would

interpret the Lord's Supper by the Passover have their choice between

two views: that it is a simple commemoration; or that it is an

expiatory sacrifice: in the former case they quit the Church of

England; in the latter, they fall into the Church of Rome.

But, in truth, there is no propriety in applying the name "Christian

Passover" to the Communion. The notion rests entirely on this

circumstance: that the first three Evangelists describe the last

Supper as the Paschal Supper. But the _institutional_ part of that

meal was over before the cup was distributed, and the repetition of

the act enjoined. Nor is there the slightest trace, either in the

subsequent Scriptures, or in the earliest history of the Church, that

the Communion was thought to bear relation to the Passover. The time,

the frequency, the mode, of the two were altogether different. Indeed,

when we observe that not one of these particulars is prescribed and

determined by our Lord at all, when we notice the slight and transient

manner in which he drops his wish that they would "do this in

remembrance of" him, when we compare these features of the account

with the elaborate precision of Moses respecting hours, and materials,

and dates, and places, and modes in the establishment of the Hebrew

festivals, it is scarcely possible to avoid the impression, that we

are reading narrative, not law; an utterance of personal affection,

rather than the legislative enactment of an everlasting institution.

However this may be, no importance can be attached to the reported

coincidence in the time of that meal with the day of Passover; for the

Apostle John, who gives by far the fullest account of what happened at

that table (yet never mentions the institution of the Supper), states

that this was not the paschal meal at all, which did not occur, he

says, till the following day of crucifixion.

"But," it will be said, "the Gospels are not the only parts of Scripture

whence the nature of the Eucharist may be learned. Language is employed

by St. Paul in reference to it, which cannot be understood of a mere

memorial, and implies that awful consequences hung on the worthy or

unworthy participation in the rite. Does he not even say, that a man may

'eat and drink damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body'?"

The passage whence these words are cited certainly throws great light on

the institution of which we treat; but there must be a total disregard

to the whole context and the general course of the Apostle's reasoning

before it can be made to yield any argument for the mystical character

of the rite. It would appear that the Corinthian church was in the habit

of celebrating the Lord's Supper in a way which, even if it had never

been disgraced by any indecorum, must have struck a modern Christian

with wonder at its singularity. The members met together in one room or

church, each bringing his own supper, of such quantity and quality as

his opulence or poverty might allow. To this the Apostle does not

object, but apparently considers it a part of the established

arrangement. But these Christians were divided into factions, and had

not learned the true uniting spirit of their faith; nor do they seem to

have acquired that sobriety of habit and sanctity of mind which their

profession ought to have induced. When they entered the place of

meeting, they broke up into groups and parties, class apart from class,

and rich deserting poor: each set began its separate meal, some

indulging in luxury and excess, others with scarce the means of keeping

the commemoration at all; and, infamous to tell, the blessed Supper of

the Lord was sunk into a tavern meal. So gross and habitual had the

abuse become, that the excesses had affected the health and life of

these guilty and unworthy partakers. They had made no distinction

between the Communion and an ordinary repast, had lost all perception of

the memorial significance of their meeting, had not discriminated or

"discerned the Lord's body"; and so they had eaten and drunk judgment

(improperly rendered "_damnation_" in the English Version) to

themselves; and many were weak and sickly among them, and many even

slept. Well would it be, if they would look on this as a chastening of

the Lord; in which case they might take warning, and escape being cast

out of the Church, and driven to take their chance with the unbelieving

and heathen world. "When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord,

that we should not be condemned with the world."

In order to remedy all this corruption, St. Paul reminds them, that to

eat and drink under the same roof, in the church, does not constitute

proper Communion; that, to this end, they must not break up into

sections, and retain their property in the food, but all participate

seriously together. He directs that an absolute separation shall be

made between the occasions for satisfying hunger and thirst, and those

for observing this commemorative rite, discriminating carefully the

memorial of the Lord's body from everything else. He refers them all

to the original model of the institution, the parting meal of Christ

before his betrayal; and by this example, as a criterion, he would

have every man examine himself, and after that pattern eat of the

bread and drink of the cup. Hence it appears,--

That the unworthy partaker was the riotous Corinthian, who made no

distinction between the sacred Communion and a vulgar meal:

That the judgment or damnation which such brought on themselves, was

sickliness, weakness, and premature but natural death:

That the self-examination which the Apostle recommends to the

communicant is a comparison of his mode of keeping the rite with the

original model of the last Supper:

That in the Corinthian church there was no Priest, or officiating

dispenser of the elements; and that St. Paul did not contemplate or

recommend the appointment of any such person.

The Lord's Supper, then, I conclude, was and is a simple

commemoration. Am I asked: "_Of what_? Why, according to Unitarian

views, the death on the cross merits the memorial more than the

remaining features of our Lord's history,--more even than the death of

many a noble martyr, who has sealed his testimony to truth by like

self-sacrifice"? The answer will be found at length in the Lecture on

the Atonement, where the Scriptural conceptions of Christ's death are

expounded in detail. Meanwhile, it is sufficient to recall an idea,

which has more than once been thrown out during this course; that, if

Jesus had taken up his Messianic power without death, he would have

remained a Hebrew, and been limited to the people amid whom he was

born. He quitted his mortal personality, he left this fleshly

tabernacle of existence, and became immortal, that his nationality

might be destroyed, and all men drawn in as subjects of his reign. It

was the cross that opened to the nations the blessed ways of life, and

put us all in relations, not of law, but of love, to him and God.

Hence the memorial of his death celebrates the universality and

spirituality of the Gospel; declares the brotherhood of men, the

fatherhood of providence, the personal affinity of every soul with

God. That is no empty rite which overflows with these conceptions.

Christianity, then, I maintain, is without Priest and without Ritual.

It altogether coalesces with the prophetic idea of religion, and

repudiates the sacerdotal. Christ himself was transcendently THE

PROPHET. He brought down God to this our life, and left his spirit

amid its scenes. The Apostles were prophets; they carried that spirit

abroad, revealing everywhere to men the sanctity of their nature, and

the proximity of their heaven. Nor am I even unwilling to admit an

apostolic succession, never yet extinct, and never more to be

extinguished. But then it is by no means a rectilinear regiment of

incessant priests; but a broken, scattered, yet glorious race of

prophets; the genealogy of great and Christian souls, through whom the

primitive conceptions of Jesus have propagated themselves from age to

age; mind producing mind, courage giving birth to courage, truth

developing truth, and love ever nurturing love, so long as one good

and noble spirit shall act upon another. Luther surely was the child

of Paul; and what a noble offspring has risen to manhood from Luther's

soul, whom to enumerate were to tell the best triumphs of the modern

world. These are Christ's true ambassadors; and never did he mean any

follower of his to be called a priest. He has his genuine messenger,

wherever, in the Church or in the world, there toils any one of the

real prophets of our race; any one who can create the good and great

in other souls, whether by truth of word or deed, by the inspiration

of genuine speech, or the better power of a life merciful and holy.

* * * * *

And here, my friends, with my subject might my Lecture close, were it

not that we are assembled now to terminate this controversy; and that

a few remarks in reference to its whole course and spirit seem to be

required.

That the recent aggression upon the principles of Unitarian

Christianity was prompted by no unworthy motive, individual or

political, but by a zeal, Christian so far as its spirit is

disinterested, and unchristian only so far as it is exclusive, has

never been doubted or denied by my brother ministers or myself. That

much personal consideration and courtesy have been evinced towards us

during the controversy, it is so grateful to us to acknowledge, that

we must only regret the theological obstructions in the way of that

mutual knowledge which softens the prejudices and corrects the errors

of the closet. From such errors, the lot of our fallible nature, we

are deeply aware that we cannot be exempt, and profoundly wish that,

by others' aid or by our own, we could discover them. Meanwhile, we do

not feel that our opponents have been successful in the offer which

they have made, of help towards this end. They are too little

acquainted with our history and character, and have far too great a

horror of us, to succeed in a design demanding rather the benevolence

of sympathy and trust than that of antipathy and fear. Hence have

arisen certain complaints and charges against our system and its

tendencies, which, having been reiterated again and again in the

Christ Church Lectures, and scarcely noticed in our own, claim a

concluding observation or two now.

1. We are said to be infidels in disguise, and our system to be

drifting fast towards utter unbelief. At all events, it is said we

make great advances that way.

It is by no means unusual to dismiss this charge on a whirlwind of

declamation, designed to send it and the infidel to the greatest

possible distance. My friend who delivered the first Lecture noticed

it in a far different spirit; and in a discussion where truth and

wisdom had any chance, his reply would have prevented any recurrence

to the statement. Let me try to imitate him in the testimony which I

desire to add upon this point.

Every one, I presume, who disbelieves _anything_, is, with respect to

that thing, _an infidel_. Departure from any prevalent and established

ideas is inevitably an approach to infidelity; the extent of the

departure, not the reasonableness or propriety of it, is the sole

measure of the nearness of that approach; which, however wise and

sober, when estimated by a true and independent criterion, will

appear, to persons strongly possessed by the ascendant notions,

nothing less than alarming, amazing, awful. In short, the average

popular creed of the day is the mental standard, from which the stadia

are measured off towards that invisible, remote, nay, even imaginary

place, lodged somewhere within chaos, called utter unbelief.

Christianity at first was blank infidelity; and disciples, being of

course the atheists of their day, were thought a fit prey for the

wild beasts of the amphitheatre. Every rejection of tradition, again,

is unbelief with respect to it; and to those who hold its authority,

it is the denial of an essential. It is too evident to need proof,

that the average popular belief cannot be assumed, by any considerate

person, as a standard of truth. To make it an objection against any

class of men, that they depart from it, is to prove no error against

them; and no one, who is not willing to call in the passions of the

multitude in suffrage on the controversies of the few, will condescend

to enforce the charge.

But only observe how, in the present instance, the matter stands. In

the popular religion we discern, mixed up together, two constituent

portions: certain _peculiar_ doctrines which characterize the common

Orthodoxy; and certain _universal_ Christian truths remaining, when

these are subtracted. The infidel throws away both of these; we throw

away the former only; and thus far, no doubt, we partially agree with

him. But _on what grounds_ do we severally justify this rejection? In

answer to this question, compare the views, with respect both to the

_authority_ and to the _interpretation_ of Scripture, held by the

three parties, the Trinitarian, the Unbeliever, the Unitarian. The

Unbeliever does not usually find fault with the Orthodox

_interpretation_ of the Bible, but allows it to pass, as probably the

real meaning of the book, only he altogether denies the divine

character and authority of the whole religion; he therefore _agrees_

with the Trinitarian respecting interpretation, disagrees with him

respecting _authority_. The Unitarian, again, admits the divine

character of Christianity, but understands it differently from the

Trinitarian; he therefore reverses the former case, _agrees_ with the

Orthodox on the authority, _disagrees_ respecting interpretation. It

follows, that with the Unbeliever he agrees _in neither_, and is

therefore farther from him than his Trinitarian accuser.

I have given this explanation from regard simply to logical truth. I

have no desire to join in the outcry against even the deliberate

unbeliever in the Gospel, as if he must necessarily be a fiend.

Profoundly loving and trusting Christianity myself, I yet feel indignant

at the persecution which theology, policy, and law inflict on the many

who, with undeniable exercise of conscientiousness and patience of

research, are yet unable to satisfy themselves respecting its evidence.

The very word "_infidel_," implying not simply an intellectual judgment,

but bad moral qualities, conveys an unmerited insult, and ought to be

repudiated by every generous disputant. The more deeply we trust

Christianity, the more should we protest against its being defended by a

body-guard of passions, willing to do for it precisely the services

which they might equally render to the vulgarest imposture.

2. We were recently accused, amid acknowledgments of our _honesty_,

with want of _anxiety_ about spiritual truth; and the following

justification of the charge was offered: "The word of God has informed

us, that they who seek the truth shall find it; that they who ask for

holy wisdom shall receive it; but it must be a _really anxious

inquiry_,--a heart-felt desire for the blessing. 'If thou seekest her

as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou

understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.' Such

promises are express,--they cannot be broken,--God will give the

blessing to the _sincere_, _anxious_ inquirer. But the two qualities

must go together. A man may be sincere in his ignorance and spiritual

torpor; but let the full desire for God's favor, his pardoning mercy,

and his enlightening grace spring up in the heart, and we may rest

assured that the desire will soon be accomplished. Admitting, then,

the sincerity of Unitarians, we doubt their anxiety, for we are well

persuaded from God's promises, that, if they possessed both, they

would be delivered from their miserable system, and be brought to the

knowledge of the truth."[11]

The praise of our "_sincerity_," conveyed in these bland sentences, we

are anxious to decline: not that we undervalue the quality; but

because we find, on near inspection, that it has all been emptied out

of the word before its presentation, and the term comes to us hollow

and worthless. It affords a specimen of the mode in which alone our

opponents appear able to give any credit to heretics: many phrases of

approbation they freely apply to us; but they take care to draw off

the whole meaning first. We must reject these "Greek presents"; and we

are concerned that any Christian divine can so torture and desecrate

the names of virtue, as to make them instruments of disparagement and

injury. This play with words, which every conscience should hold

sacred, and every lip pronounce with reverence,--this careless and

unmeaning application of them in discourse,--indicates a loose

adhesion to the mind of the ideas denoted by them, which we regard

with unfeigned astonishment and grief. What, let me ask, can be the

"_sincerity_" of an inquirer, who is not "_anxious_" _about the

truth_? How can _he_ be "_sincerely_" persuaded that he sees, who

voluntarily shuts his eyes? Unless this word is to be degraded into a

synonyme for indolence and self-complacency, no professed seeker of

truth must have the praise of sincerity, who does not abandon all

worship of his own state of mind as already perfect, who is not ready

to listen to every calm doubt as to the voice of heaven,--to undertake

with gratitude the labor of reaching new knowledge,--to maintain his

faith and his profession in scrupulous accordance with his perception

of evidence; and, at any moment of awakening, to spring from his most

brilliant dreams into God's own morning light, with a matin hymn upon

his lips for his new birth from darkness and from sleep. The

earnestness implied in this state of mind is perhaps not precisely the

same as that with which our Trinitarian opponents seem to be familiar.

The "anxiety" which they appear to feel for themselves is, to keep

their existing state of belief: the "anxiety" which they feel for us

is, that we should have it. We are to hold ourselves ready for a

change; they are not to be expected to desire it. If a doubt of _our

opinions_ should occur _to us_, we are to foster it carefully, and

follow it out as a beckoning of the Holy Spirit: if a doubt of _their

sentiments_ should occur _to them_, they are to crush it on the spot,

as a reptile-thought sent of Satan to tempt them. "Our aim," says the

concluding Lecturer again, "has been to beget a deep spirit of

inquiry";[12] and so has ours, I would reply: only you and we have

severally prosecuted this aim in different ways. We have personally

listened, and personally inquired, and earnestly recommended all whom

our influence could reach, to do the same: and few indeed will be the

Unitarian libraries containing one of these series of Lectures that

will not exhibit the other by its side. You have entered this

controversy, evidently strange to our literature and history; and any

deficiency in such reading before, has not been compensated by anxiety

to listen now. Your people have been warned against us, and are taught

to regard the study of our publications as blasphemy at second hand;

and were they really so simple as to act upon your avowed wish "to

beget a deep spirit of inquiry," and plunge into the investigation of

Unitarian authors, and judge for themselves of Unitarian worship, they

would speedily hear the word of recall, and discover that they were

practically disappointing the whole object of this controversy.

Having said thus much respecting the unmeaning use of language in the

Lecturer's disparaging estimate of Unitarian "anxiety," we may

profitably direct a moment's attention to the _reasoning_ which it

involves. It presents us with the standing fallacy of intolerance,

which is sufficiently rebuked by being simply exhibited. Our opponents

reason thus:--

God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err:

The Unitarians _do_ fatally err:

Therefore, The Unitarians are not really anxious.

Now it is clear that we must conceive our opponents to be no less

mistaken than they suppose us to be. They are as far from us, as we

from them; and from either point, taken as a standard, the measure of

error must be the same. Moreover, we cannot but eagerly assent to the

principle of the Lecturer's first premise, that God will never let the

truly anxious fatally miss their way. So that there is nothing, in the

nature of the case, to prevent our turning this same syllogism, with a

change in the names of the parties, against our opponents. Yet we

should shrink, with severe self-reproach, from drawing any such

unfavorable conclusion respecting them, as they deduce of us.

Accordingly, we manage our reasoning thus:--

God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err:

The Trinitarians show themselves to be really anxious:

Therefore, The Trinitarians do not fatally err.

Our opponents are more sure that their judgment is in the right, than

that their neighbors' conscience is in earnest. They sacrifice other

men's characters to their own self-confidence: we would rather distrust

our self-confidence, and rely on the visible signs of a good and careful

mind. We honor other men's hearts, rather than our own heads. How can it

be just, to make the agreement between an opponent's opinion and our own

the criterion of his proper conduct of the inquiry? Every man feels the

injury the moment the rule is turned against himself; and every good man

should be ashamed to direct it against his brother.

3. Our reverend opponents affect to have labored under a great

disadvantage, from the absence of any recognized standard of Unitarian

belief. "We give you," they say, "our Articles and Creeds, which we

unanimously undertake to defend, and which expose a definite object to

all heretical attacks. In return, you can furnish us with no

authorized exposition of your system, but leave us to gather our

knowledge of it from individual writers, for whose opinions you refuse

to be responsible, and whose reasonings, when refuted by us, you can

conveniently disown."

Plausible as this complaint may appear, I venture to affirm, that it

is vastly easier to ascertain the common belief of Unitarians, than

that of the members of the Established Church; and for this plain

reason, that with us there really is such a thing as a common faith,

though defined in no confession; in the Anglican Church there is not,

though articles and creeds profess it. The characteristic tenets of

Unitarian Christianity are so simple and unambiguous, that little

scope exists for variety in their interpretation: to the propositions

expressing them all their professors attach _distinct and the same_

ideas;--so far, at least, as such accordance is possible in relation

to subjects inaccessible both to demonstration and to experience. But

the Trinitarian hypothesis, venturing with presumptuous analysis far

into the Divine psychology, presents us with ideas confessedly

inapprehensible; propounded in language which, if used in its ordinary

sense, is self-contradictory, and if not, is unmeaning, and ready in

its emptiness to be filled by any arbitrary interpretation;--and

actually understood so variously by those who subscribe to them, that

the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Tritheist and the Sabellian, unite

to praise them. Indeed, in the history of the English Church, so

visible is the sweep of the centre of Orthodoxy over the whole space

from the confines of Romanism to the verge of Unitarianism, that our

ecclesiastical chronology is measured by its oscillations. Our

respected opponents know full well, that it is not necessary to search

beyond the clergy of this town, or even beyond the morning and

afternoon preaching in one and the same church, in order to encounter

greater contrasts in theology, than could be found in a whole library

of Unitarian divinity. What mockery, then, to refer us to these

articles as expositions of clerical belief, when the moment we pass

beyond the words, and address ourselves to the sense, every shade of

contrariety appears; and no one definite conception can be adopted of

such a doctrine as that of the Trinity, without some church expositor

or other starting up to rebuke it as a misrepresentation! How poor the

pride of uniformity, which contents itself with lip-service to the

symbol, in the midst of heart-burnings about the reality!

In order to test the force of the objection to which I am referring,

let us advert, in detail, to the topics which exhibit the Unitarian

and Trinitarian theology in most direct opposition. It will appear

that the advantage of unity lies, in this instance, on the side of

heresy; and that, if multiformity be a prime characteristic of error,

there is a wide difference between orthodoxy and truth. There are four

great subjects comprised in the controversy between the Church and

ourselves: the nature of God; of Christ; of sin; of punishment. On

these several points (which, considered as involving on our part

denials of previous ideas, may be regarded as containing the

_negative_ elements of our belief) all our modern writers, without

material variation or exception, maintain the following doctrines:--

UNITARIAN DOCTRINES, _opposed to_ CHURCH DOCTRINES.