household, and that is by direct material help in time of need. There is
the eternal distinction of the strong and the weak, which cannot be
changed. But as things now go there is another inequality not of God's
appointment, but of man's perversity, the distinction of rich and
poor--of men bloated by superfluous wealth and men starving and freezing
from want. You know and I know how often the strong abuse their
strength, exerting it solely for themselves and to the ruin of the weak;
we all know that such are reckoned great in the world, though they may
have grown rich solely by clutching at what others earned. In
Christianity, and before the God of justice, all men are brothers; the
strong are so that they may help the weak. As a nation chooses its
wisest men to manage its affairs for the nation's good, and not barely
their own, so God endows Charles or Samuel with great gifts that they
may also bless all men thereby. If they use those powers solely for
their pleasure then are they false before men; false before God. It is
said of the church of the Friends that no one of their number has ever
received the charity of an almshouse, or for a civil offence been shut
up in a jail. If the poor forsake a church, be sure that the church
forsook God long before.
* * * * *
But the church must have an action on others out of its pale. If a man
or a society of men have a truth, they hold it not for themselves alone,
but for all men. The solitary thinker, who in a moment of ecstatic
action in his closet at midnight discovers a truth, discovers it for all
the world and for eternity. A Christian church ought to love to see its
truths extend; so it should put them in contact with the opinions of the
world, not with excess of zeal or lack of charity.
A Christian church should be a means of reforming the world, of forming
it after the pattern of Christian ideas. It should therefore bring up
the sentiments of the times, the ideas of the times, and the actions of
the times, to judge them by the universal standard. In this way it will
learn much and be a living church, that grows with the advance of men's
sentiments, ideas and actions, and while it keeps the good of the past
will lose no brave spirit of the present day. It can teach much; now
moderating the fury of men, then quickening their sluggish steps. We
expect the sins of commerce to be winked at in the street; the sins of
the state to be applauded on election days and in a Congress, or on the
fourth of July; we are used to hear them called the righteousness of the
nation. There they are often measured by the avarice or the ambition of
greedy men. You expect them to be tried by passion, which looks only to
immediate results and partial ends. Here they are to be measured by
Conscience and Reason, which look to permanent results and universal
ends; to be looked at with reference to the Laws of God, the everlasting
ideas on which alone is based the welfare of the world. Here they are to
be examined in the light of Christianity itself. If the church be true,
many things which seem gainful in the street and expedient in the
senate-house, will here be set down as wrong, and all gain which comes
therefrom seen to be but a loss. If there be a public sin in the land,
if a lie invade the state, it is for the church to give the alarm; it is
here that it may war on lies and sins; the more widely they are believed
in and practised, the more are they deadly, the more to be opposed. Here
let no false idea or false action of the public go without exposure and
rebuke. But let no noble heroism of the times, no noble man pass by
without due honor. If it is a good thing to honor dead saints and the
heroism of our fathers; it is a better thing to honor the saints of
to-day, the live heroism of men who do the battle, when that battle is
all around us. I know a few such saints; here and there a hero of that
stamp, and I will not wait till they are dead and classic before I call
them so and honor them as such, for
"To side with truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they once denied;
For Humanity sweeps onward; where to-day the martyr stands,
On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his hands;
Far in front the cross stands ready, and the crackling fagots burn,
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn."
Do you not see that if a man have a new truth, it must be reformatory
and so create an outcry? It will seem destructive as the farmer's
plough; like that, it is so to tares and thistles, but the herald of the
harvest none the less. In this way a Christian church should be a
society for promoting true sentiments and ideas. If it would lead, it
must go before men; if it would be looked up to, it must stand high.
That is not all: it should be a society for the promotion of good works.
We are all beneath our idea, and therefore transgressors before God. Yet
He gives us the rain, the snow and the sun. It falls on me as well as on
the field of my neighbor, who is a far juster man. How can we repent,
cast our own sins behind us, outgrow and forget them better, than by
helping others to work out their salvation? We are all brothers before
God. Mutually needful we must be; mutually helpful we should be. Here
are the ignorant that ask our instruction, not with words only, but with
the prayer of their darkness, far more suppliant than speech. I never
see an ignorant man younger than myself, without a feeling of
self-reproach, for I ask: "What have I been doing to suffer him to grow
up in nakedness of mind?" Every man, born in New England, who does not
share the culture of this age, is a reproach to more than himself, and
will at last actively curse those who began by deserting him. The
Christian church should lead the movement for the public education of
the people.
Here are the needy who ask not so much your gold, your bread, or your
cloth, as they ask also your sympathy, respect and counsel; that you
assist them to help themselves, that they may have gold won by their
industry, not begged out of your benevolence. It is justice more than
charity they ask. Every beggar, every pauper, born and bred amongst us,
is a reproach to us, and condemns our civilization. For how has it come
to pass that in a land of abundance here are men, for no fault of their
own, born into want, living in want, and dying of want? and that, while
we pretend to a religion which says all men are brothers! There is a
horrid wrong somewhere.
Here too are the drunkard, the criminal, the abandoned person, sometimes
the foe of society, but far oftener the victim of society. Whence come
the tenants of our almshouses, jails, the victims of vice in all our
towns? Why, from the lowest rank of the people; from the poorest and
most ignorant! Say rather from the most neglected, and the public sin
is confessed, and the remedy hinted at. What have the strong been doing
all this while, that the weak have come to such a state? Let them answer
for themselves.
Now for all these ought a Christian church to toil. It should be a
church of good works; if it is a church of good faith it will be so.
Does not Christianity say the strong should help the weak? Does not that
mean something? It once did. Has the Christian fire faded out from those
words, once so marvellously bright? Look round you, in the streets of
your own Boston! See the ignorant, men and women with scarce more than
the stature of men and women; boys and girls growing up in ignorance and
the low civilization which comes thereof, the barbarians of Boston.
Their character will one day be a blot and a curse to the nation, and
who is to blame? Why, the ablest and best men, who might have had it
otherwise if they would. Look at the poor, men of small ability, weak by
nature, born into a weak position, therefore doubly weak; men whom the
strong use for their purpose, and then cast them off as we throw away
the rind of an orange after we have drunk its generous juice. Behold the
wicked, so we call the weak men that are publicly caught in the cobweb
of the law; ask why they became wicked; how we have aimed to reform
them; what we have done to make them respect themselves, to believe in
goodness, in man and God? and then say if there is not something for
Christian men to do, something for a Christian church to do! Every
almshouse in Massachusetts shows that the churches have not done their
duty, that the Christians lie lies when they call Jesus "master" and men
"brothers!" Every jail is a monument, on which it is writ in letters of
iron that we are still heathens, and the gallows, black and hideous, the
embodiment of death, the last argument a "Christian" State offers to the
poor wretches it trained up to be criminals, stands there, a sign of our
infamy, and while it lifts its horrid arm to crush the life out of some
miserable man, whose blood cries to God against Cain in the nineteenth
century, it lifts that same arm as an index of our shame.
Is that all? Oh, no! Did not Jesus say, resist not evil--with evil? Is
not war the worst form of that evil; and is there on earth a nation so
greedy of war; a nation more reckless of provoking it; one where the
war-horse so soon conducts his foolish rider into fame and power? The
"Heathen" Chinese might send their missionaries to America, and teach us
to love men! Is that all? Far from it. Did not Christ say, whatsoever
you would that men should do unto you, do you even so unto them; and are
there not three million brothers of yours and mine in bondage here, the
hopeless sufferers of a savage doom; debarred from the civilization of
our age, the barbarians of the nineteenth century; shut out from the
pretended religion of Christendom, the heathens of a Christian land;
chained down from the liberty unalienable in man, the slaves of a
Christian republic? Does not a cry of indignation ring out from every
legislature in the North; does not the press war with its million
throats, and a voice of indignation go up from East and West, out from
the hearts of freemen? Oh, no. There is none of that cry against the
mightiest sin of this age. The rock of Plymouth, sanctified by the feet
which led a nation's way to freedom's large estate, provokes no more
voice than the rottenest stone in all the mountains of the West. The few
that speak a manly word for truth and everlasting right, are called
fanatics; bid be still, lest they spoil the market! Great God! and has
it come to this, that men are silent over such a sin? 'Tis even so. Then
it must be that every church which dares assume the name of Christ, that
dearest name to men, thunders and lightens on this hideous wrong! That
is not so. The church is dumb, while the state is only silent; while the
servants of the people are only asleep, "God's ministers" are dead!
In the midst of all these wrongs and sins, the crimes of men, society
and the state, amid popular ignorance, pauperism, crime, and war, and
slavery too--is the church to say nothing, do nothing; nothing for the
good of such as feel the wrong, nothing to save them who do the wrong?
Men tell us so, in word and deed; that way alone is "safe!" If I thought
so, I would never enter the church but once again, and then to bow my
shoulders to their manliest work, to heave down its strong pillars, arch
and dome, and roof, and wall, steeple and tower, though like Samson I
buried myself under the ruins of that temple which profaned the worship
of God most high, of God most loved. I would do this in the name of man;
in the name of Christ I would do it; yes, in the dear and blessed name
of God.
It seems to me that a church which dares name itself Christian, the
Church of the Redeemer, which aspires to be a true church, must set
itself about all this business, and be not merely a church of theology,
but of religion; not of faith only, but of works; a just church by its
faith bringing works into life. It should not be a church termagant,
which only peevishly scolds at sin, in its anile way; but a church
militant against every form of evil, which not only censures, but writes
out on the walls of the world the brave example of a Christian life,
that all may take pattern therefrom. Thus only can it become the church
triumphant. If a church were to waste less time in building its palaces
of theological speculation, palaces mainly of straw, and based upon the
chaff, erecting air-castles and fighting battles to defend those palaces
of straw, it would surely have more time to use in the practical good
works of the day. If it thus made a city free from want and ignorance
and crime, I know I vent a heresy, I think it would be quite as
Christian an enterprise, as though it restored all the theology of the
dark ages; quite as pleasing to God. A good sermon is a good thing, no
doubt, but its end is not answered by its being preached; even by its
being listened to and applauded; only by its awakening a deeper life in
the hearers. But in the multitude of sermons there is danger lest the
bare hearing thereof be thought a religious duty, not a means, but an
end, and so our Christianity vanish in words. What if every Sunday
afternoon the most pious and manly of our number, who saw fit, resolved
themselves into a committee of the whole for practical religion, and
held not a formal meeting, but one more free, sometimes for the purpose
of devotion, the practical work of making ourselves better Christians,
nearer to one another, and sometimes that we might find means to help
such as needed help, the poor, the ignorant, the intemperate and the
wicked? Would it not be a work profitable to ourselves, and useful to
others weaker than we? For my own part I think there are no ordinances
of religion like good works; no day too sacred to help my brother in; no
Christianity like a practical love of God shown by a practical love of
men. Christ told us that if we had brought our gift to the very altar,
and there remembered our brother had cause of complaint against us, we
must leave the divine service, and pay the human service first! If my
brother be in slavery, in want, in ignorance, in sin, and I can aid him
and do not, he has much against me, and God can better wait for my
prayer than my brother for my help!
The saints of olden time perished at the stake; they hung on gibbets;
they agonized upon the rack; they died under the steel of the tormentor.
It was the heroism of our fathers' day that swam the unknown seas; froze
in the woods; starved with want and cold; fought battles with the red
right hand. It is the sainthood and heroism of our day that toils for
the ignorant, the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the wicked. Yes, it is
our saints and heroes who fight fighting; who contend for the slave, and
his master too, for the drunkard, the criminal; yes, for the wicked or
the weak in all their forms. It is they that with weapons of heavenly
proof fight the great battle for the souls of men. Though I detest war
in each particular fibre of my heart, yet I honor the heroes among our
fathers who fought with bloody hand; peace-makers in a savage way, they
were faithful to the light; the most inspired can be no more, and we,
with greater light, do, it may be, far less. I love and venerate the
saints of old; men who dared step in front of their age; accepted
Christianity when it cost something to be a Christian, because it meant
something; they applied Christianity, so far as they knew it, to the
lies and sins of their times, and won a sudden and a fiery death. But
the saints and the heroes of this day, who draw no sword, whose right
hand is never bloody, who burn in no fires of wood or sulphur, nor
languish briefly on the hasty cross; the saints and heroes who, in a
worldly world, dare to be men; in an age of conformity and selfishness,
speak for Truth and Man, living for noble aims; men who will swear to no
lies howsoever popular; who will honor no sins, though never so
profitable, respected and ancient; men who count Christ not their
master, but teacher, friend, brother, and strive like him to practise
all they pray; to incarnate and make real the Word of God, these men I
honor far more than the saints of old. I know their trials, I see their
dangers, I appreciate their sufferings, and since the day when the man
on Calvary bowed his head, bidding persecution farewell with his
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," I find no such
saints and heroes as live now! They win hard fare, and hard toil. They
lay up shame and obloquy. Theirs is the most painful of martyrdoms.
Racks and fagots soon waft the soul of God, stern messengers but swift.
A boy could bear that passage, the martyrdom of death. But the
temptation of a long life of neglect, and scorn, and obloquy, and shame,
and want, and desertion by false friends; to live blameless though
blamed, cut off from human sympathy, that is the martyrdom of to-day. I
shed no tears for such martyrs. I shout when I see one; I take courage
and thank God for the real saints, prophets and heroes of to-day. In
another age, men shall be proud of these puritans and pilgrims of this
day. Churches shall glory in their names and celebrate their praise in
sermon and in song. Yea, though now men would steal the rusty sword from
underneath the bones of a saint or hero long deceased, to smite off
therewith the head of a new prophet, that ancient hero's son; though
they would gladly crush the heart out of him with the tomb-stones they
piled up for great men, dead and honored now, yet in some future day,
that mob, penitent, baptized with a new spirit, like drunken men
returned to sanity once more, shall search through all this land for
marble white enough to build a monument to that prophet whom their
fathers slew; they shall seek through all the world for gold of fineness
fit to chronicle such names! I cannot wait; but I will honor such men
now, not adjourn the warning of their voice, and the glory of their
example, till another age! The church may cast out such men; burn them
with the torments of an age too refined in its cruelty to use coarse
fagots and the vulgar axe! It is no less to these men; but the ruin of
the church. I say the Christian church of the nineteenth century must
honor such men, if it would do a church's work; must take pains to make
such men as these, or it is a dead church, with no claim on us, except
that we bury it. A true church will always be the church of martyrs. The
ancients commenced every great work with a victim! We do not call it so;
but the sacrifice is demanded, got ready, and offered by unconscious
priests long ere the enterprise succeeds. Did not Christianity begin
with a martyrdom?
* * * * *
In this way, by gaining all the truth of the age in thought or action,
by trying public opinions with its own brave ideas, by promoting good
works, applying a new truth to an old error, and with unpopular
righteousness overcoming each popular sin, the Christian church should
lead the civilization of the age. The leader looks before, goes before,
and knows where he is going; knows the way thither. It is only on this
condition that he leads at all. If the church by looking after truth,
and receiving it when it comes, be in unison with God, it will be in
unison with all science, which is only the thought of God translated
from the facts of nature into the words of men. In such a case, the
church will not fear philosophy, nor in the face of modern science aim
to reestablish the dreams and fables of a ruder day. It will not lack
new truth, daring only to quote, nor be obliged to sneak behind the
inspired words of old saints as its only fortress, for it will have
words just as truly inspired, dropping from the golden mouths of saints
and prophets now. For leaders it will look not back, but forth; will fan
the first faint sparkles of that noble fire just newly kindled from the
skies; not smother them in the ashes of fires long spent; not quench
them with holy water from Jordan or the Nile. A church truly Christian,
professing Christ as its model-man, and aiming to stand in the relation
he stood, must lead the way in moral enterprises, in every work which
aims directly at the welfare of man. There was a time when the Christian
churches, as a whole, held that rank. Do they now? Not even the
Quakers--perhaps the last sect that abandoned it. A prophet, filled with
love of man and love of God, is not therein at home. I speak a sad
truth, and I say it in sorrow. But look at the churches of this city: do
they lead the Christian movements of this city--the temperance movement,
the peace movement, the movement for the freedom of men, for education,
the movement to make society more just, more wise and good, the great
religious movement of these times--for, hold down our eyelids as we
will, there is a religious movement at this day on foot, such as even
New England never saw before;--do they lead in these things? Oh, no, not
at all. That great Christian orator, one of the noblest men New England
has seen in this century, whose word has even now gone forth to the
nations beyond the sea, while his spirit has gone home to his Father,
when he turned his attention to the practical evils of our time and our
land, and our civilization, vigorously applying Christianity to life,
why he lost favor in his own little sect! They feared him, soon as his
spirit looked over their narrow walls, aspiring to lead men to a better
work. I know men can now make sectarian capital out of the great name of
Channing, so he is praised; perhaps praised loudest by the very men who
then cursed him by their gods. Ay, by their gods he was accursed! The
churches lead the Christian movements of these times?--why, has there
not just been driven out of this city, and out of this State, a man
conspicuous in all these movements, after five and twenty years of noble
toil; driven out because he was conspicuous in them! You know it is so,
and you know how and by whom he is thus driven out![1]
Christianity is humanity; Christ is the Son of man; the manliest of men;
humane as a woman; pious and hopeful as a prayer; but brave as man's
most daring thought. He has led the world in morals and religion for
eighteen hundred years, only because he was the manliest man in it; the
humanest and bravest man in it, and hence the divinest. He may lead it
eighteen hundred years more, for we are bid believe that God can never
make again a greater man; no, none so great. But the churches do not
lead men therein, for they have not his spirit; neither that womanliness
which wept over Jerusalem, nor that manliness which drew down fire
enough from heaven to light the world's altars for well-nigh two
thousand years.
There are many ways in which Christ may be denied:--one is that of the
bold blasphemer, who, out of a base and haughty heart mocks, scoffing at
that manly man, and spits upon the nobleness of Christ! There are few
such deniers: my heart mourns for them. But they do little harm.
Religion is so dear to men, no scoffing word can silence that, and the
brave soul of this young Nazarene has made itself so deeply felt that
scorn and mockery of him are but an icicle held up against the summer's
sun. There is another way to deny him, and that is:--to call him Lord,
and never do his bidding; to stifle free minds with his words; and with
the authority of his name to cloak, to mantle, screen and consecrate the
follies, errors, sins of men! From this we have much to fear.