Welfare as Dependent on Religion.
But in all our attempts to educate self-love into harmony with
Universal benevolence, we contend with the enemy, somewhat as Hercules
wrestled with Antaeus:--
Und erstickst du ihn nicht in den Luften frei,
Stets wachst ihm die Kraft anf der Erde neu.*
[If thou strangle him not high lifted in air,
Fresh strength from the earth he continues to share.]
Thus we come to speak of present welfare, as dependent on the
cultivation of the whole man--on a recognition of his immortality, his
allegiance to his Maker, and his capacity for more disinterested
sentiments, than self-love, however modified.
The influences thus accruing are a confirmation, from higher authority,
of the conclusions approved by philosophy, ethics, the prudence which
calculates how man should live with man, considered as but creatures of
earth--a _re-binding_--a _re-ligation_ to what was _obligation_ before;
and such precisely is the proper sense of the word _religion_.
That the promise of the life that now is attaches to godliness-the
vivid recognition of a Father in heaven, with the union of reverence
and love cherished by a dutiful child--and that naught else secures the
possession, might be argued,--
1. First, as anticipated from the nature of the case. If man is
formed to own allegiance to his Maker, and to spend this life as
preparatory and introductory to a coming existence, then, till these
conditions are fulfilled, he must be expected, not to fill worthily his
place, as possessor of the present life; but must, in important points,
compare disadvantageously with the beasts that perish. If, like the
inferior races, ours attained to a life which should be the full
flourish of its demonstrable capacities, while immortality entered not
into account, then would fail one argument to prove us destined to an
hereafter. If the philosopher, from the examination of the chick
eaglet in the shell, knowing naught else of the animal, could make out
for it, within its narrow walls, a life answering to the indications of
its organization; he might fitly question, whether it were destined to
burst its prison, and soar aloft. And such embryo eaglet is man,
considered only as to what this life realizes.
2. Historically, we are in little danger of being confounded on this
argument. The evidence from fact is very plain and positive, that men
have never become wise for the life that now is, but as they have first
become wise for the life that is to come; that self-love never becomes
a just prudence, till informed by the faith, hope, and charity of
Jesus; in a word, that in Him is life, and only through the light
derived from him is life realized to men.
Seeking the lowest form of worldly wisdom--political science applied as
the agent for promoting general welfare--we may look in vain for a
beginning thus to apply such science, in any nation unblest by
revelation.
They on whom the light has shone, have generally so imperfectly
comprehended it, that they have only attained to that vulgar love of
liberty, which Guizot defines to be removed but a step from the love of
power. Rather, we might say, that step is not--the two are but the
same thing. Viewed on one side, it is the hatred of being domineered
over; on the other, it is the love of domineering.
Only where the Christian account of human character has been taken for
a sober reality, has been taken for a sober reality, has been
practically understood the rule of dividing power equally, because so
universal is the tendency to grasp it inordinately. Only (we may add)
where, better still, some good deference has been paid to the charge,
"Call no man master on earth, for one is your Master in heaven." If
this is the instruction, after which one becomes a republican, and
shapes his love liberty; the conclusion is equally obvious and
inevitable-call no man slave or vassal on earth, for One in heaven
is the common Master of all.
Mistaking here, France has gone through a series of signal failures.
Her Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, still prove empty names; while want
and oppression stare millions in the face, despite the promises of more
than half a century's experimenting with revolutions. A vision of
political blessedness mocks her sight, which, like fabled enchanted
island, ever and anon seeming just within the grasp, still escapes, and
flies the faster, the faster it is pursued. O my country! mercy spare
thee from thus mistaking Heaven's high decree!
But if we should allow to some of the more enlightened Gentiles of
antiquity, some degree of political wisdom; we might still look in vain
for their progress in that estimation of temporal wealth, which reveals
our community of interests, thus divesting self-love of its
hatefulness, by training it to its best satisfaction. Historically, we
every where find self-love too blind, freakish, springing upon
immediate results, too envenomed with maliciousness to calculate
prudently.
3. Religion affords altogether the readiest, shortest, directest way
to the conclusion, that interest and duty most coincide. It brings the
man of humblest intellectual attainments at once to the conclusion,
which the prudent calculator may reach, after long research and
extensive induction of particulars; namely, that he cannot add
ultimately to his own stock of enjoyment, by detracting from another's
share. What might seem prudence at the expense of justice and
benevolence, may assume a contrary aspect, at the first flush of
conviction, that another life shall rectify the inequalities of this.
Philosophy, having done its best at showing the interest of each in the
welfare of all, and how much would redound to the happiness of all if
all heartily concurred in thus regarding life, still labors at the
question, as the world goes, how the individual will fare, who takes a
course so different from the general current, as to devote his best
zeal to bettering the condition of that world, which will be likely so
little to appreciate his devotion. So that, as matter of fact, one is
little likely to see first (in earnestness) the reign of righteousness,
as the best security for the necessaries and conveniences of life,
unless in the faith which apprehends, that "all these things shall be
added" to those thus devoted to promoting the holy cause of humanity.
4. Again; to the great majority of mankind, religion is the best spur
to the understanding, towards the conclusions of a just prudence. "The
entrance of the word giveth understanding to the simple," says the
Psalmist. How often have we found its so! How often the first impulse
to intellectual activity is given by the man's religious interest! How
often they, in whom a taste for reading could never be formed
otherwise, begin to read for satisfying their spiritual wants, and so
develop mental powers which else had ever lain dormant.
If we mark those extremes of social humanity, the masses of Hindostan
and the people of New England--the monotonous stagnation there, and the
progressive enterprize here--we see a difference mainly attributable to
a religion whose very spirit is, forgetting the things behind, and
pressing onward to the things before. And, though this spirit may not
always go forth in accordance with the teaching of that religion, it is
none the less true, that such was its source; mind being awake,
enterprising, on the track of improvement, only where a lively faith in
Christianity has kindled the flame. Every where else, policy at best
presses so hard on the subject individuals, as tolerably to restrain
the passions from breaking out of one against another. Only "where the
spirit of the Lord is," ventured the experiment, of making the pressure
on each so light, as to become the best security for his keeping in
place.
5. Philosophy fails (once more), because it has no adequate malady for
the moral malady under which our race labors. When we speak of men
weighing fairly the present and the future, comparing impartially the
substantial with the showy, the gross with the refined, and choosing
after the decision of a fully informed prudence, we suppose what does
not exist; "The good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would
not, that I do."
"The better seeing and approving,
Towards the worse I still am moving:"
Such is the united testimony of Christian and heathen to that "law of
sin and death," through whose tyranny the united decisions of reason,
prudence and conscience are powerless, till what the law could not do,
"in that it was weak through the flesh," the grace of the Gospel
accomplishes; restoring reason and conscience to the throne, giving
effect to the conviction, how fully coincident are interest and duty--
"that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled by us, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the spirit."
Paul's account of this matter may have accommodated to it, what John
says of the command to mutual Christian love; that it is an old
history, and yet not an old but a new one. _Old_, in the sense, that,
from what time by one man sin came into the world and death by sin,
every one in earnest to fulfil the true end of his being, has found the
dame impotence attached to good resolves; the same supremacy gained by
the baser impulses, in the hour of trial; the same temptation to find
an excuse in what seems so like a law unavoidable, as if it were no
more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, as if it were not the
responsible _I_ that did wrong: this _I_ being controlled by sin, which
is fancied as a foreign agent taking up a residence within, and
controlling the man in spite of him. And, escaped from this and the
like deceits, all have been brought to the stand, "O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!"--that species
of self-despair, finishing the preparation for that renewing influence,
which "is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God
that showeth mercy." Thus the enemy is raised _in die Luften frei_, no
more to receive fresh strength from mother Earth, to renew the contest
successfully.
But this account, so old in one sense, is not so in another--in the
sense of being obsolete, or out of date. It still retains the
freshness of novelty, to answer to the last example of a man's ordering
life, as, he knows, meets the approval of his Judge, and his own truest
welfare.
6. But "the end of the commandment," or the result of the process by
which the soul is put into condition to contend successfully with the
powers of evil, "is charity." So religion preeminently rebinds men to
the rule of not seeking their own advantage at the cost of others;
because it implants a principle, which might dispense with the
certainty of always calculating prudently in doing right. Charity
seeketh not her own--not one's own welfare calculated on the largest
scale, exclusively, or at the cost of the greatest good of the whole.
Thus it is essentially distinct from a prudence, however refined, and
calculating its ends through eternity. It is called "the bond of
perfectness," or a most perfect bond; because, if men were all devoted
thus disinterestedly, each to the good of the whole, society would be
perfectly held together, without other bond. All forms of civil
compact and voluntary association might be dispensed with. Even
prudence might fail to calculate, how the present sacrifice to general
good is to be compensated; and charity would rebind the man to love his
neighbor as himself, and do as he would receive again.
It is further called "the perfect law of liberty;" as by a simple rule
it perfectly secures to individuals those immunities, which
constitutional provisions at best secure but imperfectly by complicated
apparatus, and where philosophy halts at the perversities of human
selfishness.
7. Faith alone is the sure foundation, whereto to add virtue
[courage], and that for the further addition of knowledge. This
courage is _du Coeur_--of the heart, and alone gives that simple love
of truth, which, for _its_ sake, dares equally to be new and singular,
or to be vulgar and common-place. Without that foundation, assuming to
be courageous enough to leave the beaten track, and reject received
opinions, one does but attain to the bravery, which, in its efforts to
dare danger or opposition, is sure to overact its part. Who holds an
even balance in weighing evidence, equally guarded against rejecting
the old, because it is old, or the new, because it is new? I know not,
unless such as have apprehended the _urwahr_--the essential truth,
which throws all temporal considerations into the shade.
There are two difficulties in the way of attempting changes in the
existing state of things, with good prospect of improvement. The first
arises from the force of habit, and a reluctance to try a new, it may
be, hazardous course. The other form the little discrimination
exercised, when men set about in earnest exchanging the old for the
new--discrimination to avoid treating the old as necessarily
antiquated, and the presumption of "laying again the foundation" of
all things. And these difficulties will hardly be met successfully,
except by men, in whom the fear of God has cast out other fear.
The intelligent part of the people of southern Europe have been, for
many years, more thoroughly divested of reverence for the papacy, than
was Luther in the days of his greatest vehemence. But they have
quietly taken things as they are. They have wanted Luther's substitute
for superstition--a fervently religious spirit. They have had only
worldly and political motives, for wishing to see the old imposition
done away; and these have been powerless against natural apathy, and
the fixedness of old establishment. Infidelity and indifferentism
prove poor antagonists to superstition.
But when this apathy is one overcome, then the difficulty is, to temper
with discretion the zeal for innovation. Throughout, such only as
heartily prize the true, because it is true, will be likely to shun
alike, rejecting the old for its antiquity, and the new for its
novelty.
The first lesson is, to learn how much of human wisdom is but folly:
the second, that it is not yet all folly, but a good deal of it genuine
wisdom. And he will be most likely to unite these in the habit of
thinking soberly, who first moderates his estimate of human power and
wisdom, by marking how far their utmost flights had failed to
anticipate, what has proved the power of God and the wisdom of God to
the world's renovation. Such is the best preparation for still
learning, how much that wears the appearance of wisdom and science
unsubstantial. This best teaches so to reason soberly and
conscientiously, as not to run into licentiousness the liberty of
thinking. Religious zeal indeed has hitherto been little enough
tempered with discretion; but no other zeal has glowed so intensely,
without still more disastrous consequences, in setting the world on
fire.
It is yet a consideration in point, that, as in all undertakings hope
of success best stimulates and sustains exertion; so the hope, that the
world's disorders will yet be cured, is best furnished by the faith,
which recognizes a Sovereign ordering and disposing all, bringing light
out of darkness; making the wrath of man to praise him, and the
remainder thereof pledged to restrain. Judging from history and
appearances, the philanthropist may often doubt, whether the race be
not destined still to go a ceaseless round; ever exchanging one
delusion for another, but no real progress.
As it was in character for the prophetess of Apollo, it complain:
"My youth was by my tears corroded,
My sole familiar was my pain;
Each coming ill my heart foreboded,
And felt at first--in vain."
So the philosophic prophet may lament, that he anticipates so much more
clearly, what _ought_ to be, than what _will_ be; that he finds the
increase of knowledge, beyond the general sense of the age, to be but
the increase of sorrow. But the religious insight into futurity saves
from such anguish, by the hope which gilds and realizes the future:
hope for the race, armed with a higher assurance than philosophy can
work out, that and right and peace shall reign triumphant; and personal
hope, inasmuch as, however dark the prospect for earth's races may be,
the individual has a future, whose joy is his strength.
9. And this habitual reference of the government of earth to its
Supreme Ruler, is not more necessary to the hope, that sustains
endurance, than to the patience which bides the time, in opposition to
the indecent, passionate haste, which defeats its own end. "He that
believeth shall not make haste." There is much fruitless haste to
bring the world to rights, for want of a lively belief in a sovereign
controlling Power; whose wisdom, whose goodness, whose resources, whose
interest, to bring the world to order and happiness, infinitely
transcend ours. Thus is missed the conclusion, if He can endure to see
the stream of evil flow on age after age; then discretion would set
some bounds to our zeal, to see all evil rectified. And the clearer
this conclusion is the result of faith, the surer the bounds will be
just such, as to save from losing all by a headlong precipitancy.
In short, that habit of mind equally ready to accept the right and the
true, whether it come with a suspicious air of novelty and singularity,
or whether as old and vulgar it be scouted for being behind the age--
that habit which neither yields to discouragements, nor favors the
fool-hardy haste, which calculates neither time nor its own strength;
which discriminates, when to "contend earnestly," and when to "let them
alone," the dogged adherents to falsehood and wrong, to the teachings
of time and circumstances, their conscience and their God, till every
plant which he hath not planted be rooted up by these mightier
energies--the habit, realizing all the good of the radical, in proving
all things, and all the glory of the conservative, in holding fast what
is good;--this habit, so favorable to human progress, but involving so
rare a combination of seemingly opposite qualities, as scarcely to be
accounted for on all apparent influences, has been well described, as a
"life hid with Christ in God." And truly has it been remarked, in view
of the general result of ordinary tendencies and influences in forming
one-sided characters, that _becoming as a little child_, expresses no
less fittingly the conditions of entering the kingdom of nature, and
thinking with the wise, than of entering the kingdom of heaven, and
worshipping with the holy.
Of the spiritual more grievously than of the intellectual life is it
true, that, "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with
it." Here emphatically does the individual labor hardly, to digest
into his life the conclusions of reason and conscience, in advance of
the average understanding of the age. Professor Lyell, speaking of the
Millerite phrenzy, and how some men of pretty sound mind were carried
away with it, remarks to this effect: "Religious delusion is like a
famine fever, which attacks first the hungry and emaciated, but in its
progress cuts down many of the well-fed and robust."
So it is. So strong are our tendencies to one tone, that the
Christian, in setting to his worldly desires the bounds which his
religion exacts, feels to be exercising a self-denial--yielding the
temporal to the eternal. He scarce seems to himself to be acting the
part of true worldly wisdom. In reading the life of Dr. Payson, it is
obviously manifest, that his deeply spiritual views were not inwrought
harmoniously into his life's web, as would have been, if he had carried
along with him a whole community.
The materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the quixotism
of the crusades. Each has but expressed a stage in the progress of
thought; and neither measures the mature life of the soul. It is not
so certain to sight, what will be next grasped by this reaching onward
to the things before; whether a better reconcilement of the life that
now is with that which is to come, or whether a vaporing, misty
sentimentalism is to be the spirit of the next age. There are not
wanting indications, that the materialism of this age is to be followed
by a dreamy spiritualism, raising men above the observance of vulgar
duties, but not above the practice of the grossest vices. It is not
uncharitable to mark such tendencies, where we see canonized Rousseau,
the very embodiment of sensuality, egotism, and misanthropy; and
progress _so_ taught to be the law of _individual_ man, that, whether
going to commit his crimes at the brothel, or to expiate them on the
gallows, his tendencies are still and forever upward.
We need better evidence than sight can afford, to say,--
"O no! a thousand cheerful omens give
Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh:
He who has tamed the elements, shall not live
The slave of his own passions; he whose eye
Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky,
And in the abyss of brightness dares to span
The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high,
In God's magnificent works his will shall scan;
And love and peace shall make their paradise with man."
*Bryant
Conclusion.
The matter of the preceding thoughts may be thus summed up.
A progressive movement has been going on towards the rule, that,
self-love directed towards the material, the sensible, the showy, the
distinguishing, is so the ruling motive of human conduct, as to
constitute it the first requisite in adjusting the social relations,
that private interests, and class interests may not flourish best,
short of the best attainable flourish of the whole. When this point
shall be so thoroughly understood, that it shall be taken for no
reproach of any class of men to regard them practically as subject to
the common influences which control human conduct; we may expect an
effective move, for giving to the lawyer and to the physician a
relation to society, analogous to that sustained by the pastor among
Protestants; instead of leaving their professions to find their best
flourish, at about the vigor of intellectual and moral life, which just
now we live.
But this idea loses its importance as another comes into appreciation,
--namely, that the conflicts of self-love with self-love, suppose
mistaken estimates of happiness to be uppermost; and, just in
proportion as men rightly estimate life, and truly love themselves,
they appreciate those strong, numberless, delicate, indissoluble ties,
which bind the members of the social body to suffer, or to rejoice
together.
And this idea again lessens in importance, as yet a third gains the
ascendancy--the living conviction, that time is but the portal to
eternity; the soul meanwhile tasting "the powers of the world to come;"
and knowing the persuasiveness of that strongest call to mutual
endearment, "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
And now the consideration of these three points is commended especially
to the attention of those, who, in the execution of their office and
ministry, have weekly access to the mind of the people. We mourn the
waning influence of the American pulpit. Where the power thence
emanating in the stirring days of trial to men's souls,--when its
ministers stood on that commanding point, where they caught the first
beams of rising day, and reflected the light in the face of the people?
At our Revolutionary period, ministers, in their earnestness to preach
to the times, might have come short in preaching eternity. So far
there was a mistake to be rectified; but they did well to preach to the
times. It is among the reasons, why religious so tempered political
zeal; and, accordingly, why, as our Revolution _was_ without a model,
so it _remains_ without a rival. It is well that the struggle came,
before the toad-eaters to capital's feed agents in legislative halls
occupied the high seats of moral influence.
The true successors to the fathers are not the preachers of party
politics, but they who aim to supply the lack of all parties, in that
they fail to make liberty a means, valuable only as affording
facilities to improvement.
We are exceedingly contracted in our notions of the Christian
preacher's just province. If we confine it to administering directly
to the soul's spiritual wants and everlasting interests, we stray wide
from the example, which God himself sets, when he writes a revelation
for man. The Bible is full of histories, maxims, laws, just as might
be expected in a book, which ignored any other life, than that which
now is. One half of it (within bounds) might remain as it is, on the
supposition, that men have neither hopes nor duties, but such as
pertain to them as joint tenants of this earthly life.
If we would keep people superior to the impulses of appetite, and the
solicitations of sensual pleasure, we must attempt _servitute corporis
uti_ by _imperio animi_* [In Sallust's well known sentence _servitute_
may be the object of _utimur_, _imperio_ the ablative of the means; or,
reversing the construction, the sense may be, by keeping the body in
subjection, we better maintain the mind's supremacy. Neither, I
believe, is the common understanding of the passage.]--by training the
mind to know its capacities and powers. If this be neglected, purely
spiritual influences, supposing them forthcoming, will hardly save the
body from unduly controlling the man. Vulgar ambition is to be
forestalled in the same way. _Imperium populi_ may be expected to be
attractive, in proportion as _imperium animi_ is unstudied, unknown;
and of course the full sense missed, in which knowledge is power. He
who knows the greatness of the world within, hears nothing strange in
the declaration-that "greater is he who ruleth his own spirit, than he
who taketh a city." That the recipients of a (so called) liberal
education so often become the votaries of vulgar ambition, and vulgar
pleasure too, is to be accounted for on the three-fold consideration:
first, that what passes for a liberal education is often a very
illiberal thing, doing very little to unfold the spirit to itself,
and so impress the greatness of mastering its capabilities; secondly,
that merely intellectual without moral influences, do not suffice; and
thirdly, the law is supreme, which binds all to suffer, in their
intellectual and spiritual life, from the mental and moral degradation
of a part.
Jesus thought it not beneath the dignity of his office, nor the
sacredness of the Sabbath, nor the proprieties of the synagogue, to
discourse to people on politeness and good breeding; nor to enforce
attention to decorum, by the comparatively low consideration, "Then
shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with
thee." Unworthy alike, both the lesson and the motive, would cry a
false spirituality, if the example of such preaching were set by any
lower authority. A false spirituality it is, for it originates in
missing the close connection between the temporal and the spiritual,
the outward and the inward, the life that now is, and that which is to
come.
In faithfully delivering the whole counsel of God, we may encounter
something like the wrath of the ruler of the synagogue, whose
spirituality was offended at the restoration of a withered hand on the
Sabbath. We may find, that we have cast pearls before swine. We may
be referred to Paul's determination to know nothing among the
Corinthians, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And, if we
minister to a people who, like the Corinthians, need to be fed with
milk and not meat; like them carnal, factious, party-spirited, and if
we would delicately hint to them their character--let us do it
indirectly, following Paul's example, when he put restraint on the
fullness of matter within, and discoursed only on the elements of
Christian doctrine. But shall the strong man be confined to a
milk diet, because the careful nurse ventures to supply nothing else to
the tender infant? If when for the time our people ought to be
teachers, they need to be taught again the first principles of the
oracle of God, we may reserve pearls for a worthier reception. But, if
they are well-grounded in the elements, let us lead them on to
perfection.
Society's pillars, the temple's three P.s,
Philosophy, Policy, Piety--these
I commend to your notice. My labor is done:
May we meet in that city where temple is none,
Nor sun supervenes on the shadows of night;
Jehovah--the Lamb--are its temple and light.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Growth of Thought, by William Withington