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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
There are minor differences between the titles of sections
and those given in the Table of Contents. A reference to two
notes, at the end of the book, has been inserted in the table.
NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM.
by
ISAAC TAYLOR
... δύο ἐστὶ, τὸ μὲν ἀρετὴ φυσικὴ, τὸ δ' ἡ κυρία.
From the Ninth London Edition.
New York:
Robert Carter & Brothers
No. 530 Broadway
1859.
ADVERTISEMENT.
The belief that a bright era of renovation, union, and extension,
presently awaits the Christian Church, seems to be very generally
entertained. The writer of this volume participates in the cheering
hope; and it has impelled him to undertake the difficult task of
describing, under its various forms, that FICTITIOUS PIETY which
hitherto has never failed to appear in times of unusual religious
excitement, and which may be anticipated as the probable attendant of a
new development of the powers of Christianity.
But while it has been the writer's principal aim to present to the
Christian reader, in as distinct a manner as possible, the characters of
that specious illusion which too often supplants genuine piety, he has
also endeavored so to fix the sense of the term Enthusiasm as to wrest
it from those who misuse it to their own infinite damage.
The author would say a word in explanation of his choice of a term in
this instance; and of the extent of meaning he has assigned to it. The
best that can be done, when matters of mind are under discussion, is to
select, from the stores of familiar language, a word which, in its usual
sense, approximates more nearly than any other to the abstraction spoken
of. To require from an ethical writer more than this, would be to demand
that, before he enters upon his subject, he should both renovate the
science of mind, and reform his mother tongue: for when things not yet
scientifically defined are to be spoken of, it must needs happen that,
in proportion to the accuracy with which they are described, there will
be apparent occasion for taking exception against the sense imputed to
the term employed.
The author proposed it to himself, as his task, to depict, under its
principal forms, FICTITIOUS SENTIMENT in matters of religion, including,
of course, a consideration of those opinions which seem to be either the
parents or the offspring of such artificial sentiments. Having this
object before him, he would have thought it a very inauspicious, as well
as cumbrous method, to have constructed a many-syllabled phrase of
definition, to be used on every page of his essay. Instead of attempting
any such laborious accuracy, he has boldly chosen his single
term—Enthusiasm; confiding in the good sense and candor of his readers
for allowing him a span or two of latitude when employing it in
different instances, which seem to come under the same general class.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
SECTION I.
Enthusiasm, Secular and Religious, 7
SECTION II.
Enthusiasm in Devotion, 27
SECTION III.
Enthusiastic Perversions of the Doctrine of Divine Influence, 62
SECTION IV.
Enthusiasm the Source of Heresy, 79
SECTION V.
Enthusiasm of Prophetic Interpretation, 96
SECTION VI.
Enthusiastic Abuses of the Doctrine of a Particular
Providence, 120
SECTION VII.
Enthusiasm of Philanthropy, 153
SECTION VIII.
Sketch of the Enthusiasm of the Ancient Church, 177
SECTION IX.
The same Subject.—Ingredients of the Ancient Monachism, 201
SECTION X.
Hints on the probable Spread of Christianity, submitted to
those who misuse the term—Enthusiasm, 238
NOTES
Section VIII 292
Section IX 294
NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM.
SECTION I.
ENTHUSIASM, SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS.
Some form of beauty, engendered by the imagination, or some semblance of
dignity or grace, invests almost every object that excites desire. These
illusions, if indeed they ought so to be called, serve the purpose of
blending the incongruous materials of human nature, and by mediating
between body and spirit, reconcile the animal and intellectual
propensities, and give dignity and harmony to the character of man. By
these unsubstantial impressions it is that the social affections are
enriched and enlivened; by these, not less than by the superiority of
the reasoning faculties, mankind is elevated above the brute; and it is
these that, as the germinating principles of all improvement and
refinement, distinguish civilized from savage life.
The constitutional difference between one man and another is to be
traced, in great measure, to the quality and vigor of the imagination.
Thus it will be found that eminently active and energetic spirits are
peculiarly susceptible to those natural exaggerations by which the mind
enhances the value of whatever it pursues. At the same time an efficient
energy implies always the power of control over such impressions. Yet it
is enough that these creations of fancy should be under the command of
reason; for good sense by no means demands a rigid scrutiny into the
composition or mechanism of common motives, or asks that whatever is not
absolutely substantial in the objects of desire should be spurned. He
who is not too wise to be happy, leaves the machinery of human nature to
accomplish its revolutions unexplored, and is content to hold the
mastery over its movements. Whoever, instead of simply repressing the
irregularities of the imagination, and forbidding its predominance,
would altogether exclude its influence, must either sink far below the
common level of humanity, or rise much above it.
* * * * *
The excesses of the imagination are of two kinds; the first is when,
within its proper sphere, it gains so great a power that every other
affection and motive belonging to human nature is overborne and
excluded. It is thus that intellectual or professional pursuits seems
sometimes to annihilate all sympathy with the common interests of life,
and to render man a mere phantom, except within the particular circle of
his favorite objects.
The second kind of excess (one species of which forms the subject of the
present work) is of much more evil tendency, and consists in a trespass
of the imagination upon ground where it should have little or no
influence, and where it can only prevent or disturb the operation of
reason and right feeling. Thus, not seldom, it is seen that, on the
walks of common life, the sobrieties of good sense, and the counsels of
experience, and the obvious motives of interest, and perhaps even the
dictates of rectitude, are set at naught by some fiction of an
exorbitant imagination, which, overstepping its proper function, invests
even the most ordinary objects, either with preposterous charms or with
unreal deformities.
Very few minds seem to be altogether free from such constitutional
errors of the intellectual sight, which, to a greater or less extent,
intercept our view of things as they are. And from the same cause it is
that we so greatly miscalculate the amount of happiness or of suffering
that belongs to the lot of those around us; which happens, not so much
because their actual circumstances are unknown, as because the habitual
illusions are not perceived by us amidst which they live. And if the
coloring medium through which every man contemplates his own condition
were exposed to the eyes of others, the victims of calamity might
sometimes be envied; and still oftener would the favorites of fortune
become the objects of pity. Or if every one were in a moment to be
disenchanted of whatever is ideal in his permanent sensations, every one
would think himself at once much less happy, and much more so, than he
had hitherto supposed.
The force and extravagance of the imagination is in some constitutions
so great, that it admits of no correction from even the severest lessons
of experience, much less from the advices of wisdom: the enthusiast
passes through life in a sort of happy somnambulency—smiling and
dreaming as he goes, unconscious of whatever is real, and busy with
whatever is fantastic: now he treads with naked foot on thorns; now
plunges through depths; now verges the precipice, and always preserves
the same impassible serenity, and displays the same reckless hardihood.
But if the predominance of the imagination do not approach quite so near
to the limits of insanity, and if it admit of correction, then the many
checks and reverses which belong to the common course of human life
usually fray it away from present scenes, and either send it back in
pensive recollections of past pleasures, or forwards in anticipation of
a bright futurity. The former is, of the two, the safer kind of
constitutional error; for as the objects upon which the imagination
fixes its gaze, in this case, remain always unchanged, they impart a
sort of tranquillity to the mind, and even favor its converse with
wisdom; but the visions of hope being variable, and altogether under the
command of the inventive faculty, bring with them perpetual agitations,
and continually create new excitements. Besides; as these egregious
hopes come in their turn to be dispelled by realities, the pensioner
upon futurity lives amid the vexations of one who believes himself
always plundered; for each day as it comes robs him of what he had
fondly called his own. Thus the real ills of life pierce the heart with
a double edge.
The propensity of a disordered imagination to find, or to create, some
region of fictitious happiness, leads not a few to betake themselves to
the fields of intellectual enjoyment, where they may be exempt from the
annoyances that infest the lower world. Hence it is that the walks of
natural philosophy or abstract science, and of literature, and
especially of poetry and the fine arts, are frequented by many who
addict themselves to pursuits of this kind, not so much from a genuine
impulse of native genius or taste, as from a yearning desire to discover
some paradise of delights, where no croaking voice of disappointment is
heard, and where adversity has no range or leave of entrance. These
intruders upon the realms of philosophy—these _refugees_ from the
vexations of common life, as they are in quest merely of solace and
diversion, do not often become effective laborers in the departments
upon which they enter: their motive possesses not the vigor necessary
for continued and productive toil. Or if a degree of ambition happens to
be conjoined with the feeble ardor of the mind, it renders them empirics
in science, or schemers in mechanics; or they essay their ineptitude
upon some gaudy extravagance of verse or picture; or perhaps spend their
days in loading folios, shelves, and glass cases with curious lumber of
whatever kind most completely unites the qualities of rarity and
worthlessness.
Nature has furnished each of the active faculties with a sensibility to
pleasure in its own exercise: this sensibility is the spring of
spontaneous exertion; and if the intellectual constitution be robust, it
serves to stimulate labor, and yet itself observes a modest sobriety,
leaving the forces of the mind to do their part without embarrassment.
The pleasurable emotion is always subordinate and subservient, never
predominant or importunate. But in minds of a less healthy temperament,
the emotion of pleasure, and the consequent excitement, is
disproportionate to the strength of the faculties. The efficient power
of the understanding is therefore overborne, and left in the rear; there
is more of commotion than of action; more of movement than of progress;
more of enterprise than of achievement.
* * * * *
Such, then, are those who, in due regard both to the essential
differences of character, and to the proprieties of language, should be
termed Enthusiasts. To apply an epithet which carries with it an idea of
folly, of weakness, and of extravagance, to a vigorous mind, efficiently
as well as ardently engaged in the pursuit of any substantial and
important object, is not merely to misuse a word, but to introduce
confusion among our notions, and to put contempt upon what is deserving
of respect. Where there is no error of imagination, no misjudging of
realities, no calculation which reason condemns, there is no enthusiasm,
even though the soul may be on fire with the velocity of its movement in
pursuit of its chosen object. If once we abandon this distinction,
language will want a term for a well-known and very common vice of the
mind; and, from a wasteful perversion of phrases, we must be reduced to
speak of qualities most noble and most infirm by the very same
designation. If the objects which excite the ardor of the mind are
substantial, and if the mode of pursuit be truly conducive to their
attainment; if, in a word, all be real and genuine, then it is not one
degree more, or even many degrees more, of intensity of feeling that can
alter the character of the emotion. Enthusiasm is not a term of
_measurement_, but of _quality_.
When it is said that enthusiasm is the fault of infirm constitutions, a
seeming exception must be made in behalf of a few high-tempered spirits,
distinguished by their indefatigable energy, and destined to achieve
arduous and hazardous enterprises. That such spirits often exhibit the
characters of enthusiasm cannot be denied; for the imagination spurns
restraint, and rejects all the sober measurements and calculations of
reason, whenever its chosen object is in view; and a tinge, often more
than a tinge, of extravagance belongs to every word and action. And yet
the exception is only apparent; for although these giants of human
nature greatly surpass other men in force of mind, courage, and
activity, still the heroic extravagance, and the irregular and
ungovernable power which enables them to dare and to do so much, is, in
fact, nothing more than a partial accumulation of strength, necessary
because the utmost energies of human nature are so small, that, if
equally distributed through the system, they would be inadequate to
arduous labors. The very same task, which the human hero achieves in the
fury and fever of a half-mad enthusiasm, would be performed by a seraph
in the perfect serenity of reason. Although, therefore, these vigorous
minds are strong when placed in comparison with others, their enthusiasm
is in itself a weakness;—a weakness of the species, if not of the
individual.
* * * * *
Unless a perpetual miracle were to intercept the natural operation of
common causes, religion, not less than philosophy or poetry, will draw
enthusiasts within its precincts. Nor, if we recollect on the one hand
the fitness of the vast objects revealed in the Scriptures to affect the
imagination, and on the other, the wide diffusion of religious ideas,
can it seem strange if it be found, in fact, that religious enthusiasts
outnumber any other class. It is also quite natural that enthusiastic
and genuine religious emotions should be intermingled with peculiar
intricacy; since the revelations which give them scope combine, in a
peculiar manner, elements of grandeur, of power, and of sublimity
(fitted to kindle the imagination), with those ideas that furnish
excitement to the moral sentiments.
The religion of the heart, it is manifest, may be supplanted by a
religion of the imagination, just in the same way that the social
affections are often dislodged or corrupted by factitious sensibilities.
Every one knows that an artificial excitement of the kind and tender
emotions of our nature may take place through the medium of the
imagination. Hence the power of poetry and the drama. But every one must
also know that these feelings, how vivid soever and seemingly pure and
salutary they may be, and however nearly they may resemble the genuine
workings of the soul, are so far from producing the same softening
effect upon the character, that they tend rather to indurate the heart.
Whenever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly as a source of
luxurious pleasure, then, instead of expanding the bosom with beneficent
energy, instead of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness,
instead of shedding the softness and warmth of generous love through the
moral system, they become a freezing centre of solitary and unsocial
indulgence; and at length displace every emotion that deserves to be
called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is, in fact, more impenetrable
than that which usually envelops a pampered imagination. The reality of
woe is the very circumstance that paralyses sympathy; and the eye that
can pour forth its flood of commiseration for the sorrows of the romance
or the drama, grudges a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the
unhappy. Much more often than not, this kind of luxurious sensitiveness
to fiction is conjoined with a callousness that enables the subject of
it to pass through the affecting occasions of domestic life in immovable
apathy:—the heart has become, like that of leviathan, "firm as a stone,
yea, hard as a piece of the nether millstone."
This process of perversion and of induration may as readily have place
among the religious emotions as among those of any other class; for the
laws of human nature are uniform, whatever may be the immediate cause
which puts them in action; and a fictitious piety corrupts or petrifies
the heart not less certainly than does a romantic sentimentality. The
danger attending enthusiasm in religion is not, then, of a trivial sort;
and whoever disaffects the substantial matters of Christianity, and
seeks to derive from it merely, or chiefly, the gratifications of
excited feeling; whoever combines from its materials a paradise of
abstract contemplation, or of poetic imagery, where he may take refuge
from the annoyances and the importunate claims of common life; whoever
thus delights himself with dreams, and is insensible to realities, lives
in peril of awaking from his illusions when truth comes too late. The
religious idealist sincerely believes himself, perhaps, to be eminently
devout; and those who witness his abstraction, his elevation, his
enjoyments, may reverence his piety; meanwhile, this fictitious
happiness creeps as a lethargy through the moral system, and is
rendering him, continually, less and less susceptible of those emotions
in which true religion consists.
Nor is this always the limit of the evil; for though religious
enthusiasm may sometimes seem a harmless delusion, compatible with
amiable feelings and virtuous conduct, it more often allies itself with
the malign passions, and then produces the virulent mischiefs of
fanaticism. Opportunity may be wanting, and habit may be wanting, but
intrinsic qualification for the perpetration of the worst crimes is not
wanting to the man whose bosom heaves with religious enthusiasm,
inflamed by malignancy. If checks are removed, if incitements are
presented, if the momentum of action and custom is acquired, he will
soon learn to contemn every emotion of kindness or of pity, as if it
were a treason against heaven, and will make it his ambition to rival
the achievements, not of heroes, but of fiends. The amenities that have
been diffused through society in modern times forbid the overt acts and
excesses of fanatical feeling; but the venom still lurks in the vicinity
of enthusiasm, and may be quickened in a moment meantime, while
smothered and repressed, it gives edge and spirit to those hundred
religious differences which are still the opprobrium of Christianity.
Whoever, then, admits into his bosom the artificial fire of an
imaginative piety, ought first to assure himself that his heart harbors
no particle of the poison of ill-will.
* * * * *
The reproach so eagerly propagated by those who make no religious
pretensions, against those who do—that their godliness serves them as a
cloak of immorality, is, to a great extent, calumnious: it is also, in
some measure, founded upon facts, which, though misunderstood and
exaggerated, give color to the charge. When professors of religion are
suddenly found to be wanting in common integrity, or in personal virtue,
no other supposition is admitted by the world than that the delinquent
was always a hypocrite; and this supposition is, no doubt, sometimes not
erroneous. But much more often his fall has surprised himself not less
than others; and is, in fact, nothing more than the natural issue of a
fictitious piety, which, though it might hold itself entire under
ordinary circumstances, gave way necessarily in the hour of unusual
trial. An artificial religion not only fails to impart to the mind the
vigor and consistency of true virtue, but withdraws attention from those
common principles of honor and integrity which carry worldly men with
credit through difficult occasions. The enthusiast is, therefore, of all
men, the one who is the worst prepared to withstand peculiar seductions.
He possesses neither the heavenly armor of virtue, nor the earthly.
It were an affront to reason, as well as to theology, to suppose that
true and universal virtue can rest on any other foundation than the fear
and love of God. The enthusiast, therefore, whose piety is fictitious,
has only a choice of immoralities, to be determined by his temperament
and circumstances. He may become, perhaps, nothing worse than a
recluse—an indolent contemplatist, and intellectual voluptuary, shut up
from his fellows in the circle of profitless spiritual delights and
conflicts. The times are, indeed, gone by when persons of this class
might, in contempt of their species, and in idolatry of themselves,
withdraw to dens, and hold society only with bats, and make the supreme
wisdom to consist in the possession of a long beard, a filthy blanket,
and a taste for raw herbs: but the same tastes, animated by the same
principles, fail not still to find place of indulgence, even amid the
crowds of a city: and the recluse who lives in the world will probably
be more sour in temper than the anchoret of the wilderness. An ardent
temperament converts the enthusiast into a zealot, who, while he is
laborious in winning proselytes, discharges common duties very remissly,
and is found to be a more punctilious observer of his creed than of his
word. Or, if his imagination be fertile, he becomes a visionary, who
lives on better terms with angels and with seraphs than with his
children, servants, and neighbors: or he is one who, while he reverences
the "thrones, dominions, and powers" of the invisible world, vents his
spleen in railing at all "dignities and powers" of earth.
Superstition—the creature of guilt and fear—is an evil almost as ancient
as the human family. But Enthusiasm—the child of hope—hardly appeared on
earth until after the time when life and immortality had been brought to
light by Christianity. Hitherto, a cloud of the thickest gloom had
stretched itself out before the eye of man as he trod the sad path to
the grave; and though poetry supplied its fictions, and philosophy its
surmises, the one possessed little force, and the other could claim no
authentication; neither, therefore, had power to awaken the soul. But
the Christian revelation not only shed a sudden splendor upon the awful
futurity, but brought its revelations to bear upon the minds of men,
with all the pressure and intensity of palpable facts. The long
slumbering sentiment of immortal hope—a sentiment natural to the human
constitution, and chief among its passions—instead of being deluded, as
heretofore, by dreams, was thoroughly aroused by the hand and voice of
reality; and human nature exhibited a new development of the higher
faculties. When therefore, in the second century of the Christian era,
various and vigorous forms of an enthusiasm, such as the world had
hitherto never known, are seen to start forth on the stage of history,
we behold the indications of the presence of Truth, giving an impulse to
the human mind both for the better and the worse, which no fictions of
sages or poets had ever imparted.
In proportion as the influence of scriptural religion faded, the elder
and the younger vice—Superstition and Enthusiasm, joined their forces to
deform every principle and practice of Christianity, and in the course
of four or five centuries, under their united operations, a faint
semblance only of its primeval beauty survived; another period of five
hundred years saw Superstition prevail, almost to the extinction, not
only of true religion, but of Enthusiasm also; and mankind fell back
into a gloom as thick as that of the ancient polytheism. But at length
the breath of life returned to the prostrate church, and the accumulated
and consolidated evils of many ages were thrown off in a day. Yet as
Superstition more than Enthusiasm had spoiled Christianity, she chiefly
was recognized as the enemy of religion; and the latter, rather than the
former, was allowed to hold a place in the sanctuary after its
cleansing. Since that happy period of refreshment and renovation, both
vices have had their seasons of recovered influence; but both have been
held in check, and their prevalence prevented. At the present time
(1828)—we speak of protestant Christendom—the power of superstition is
exceedingly small; for the diffusion of general knowledge, and the
prevalence of true religion, and not less the influence of the infidel
spirit, forbid the advances of an error which must always lean for
support on ignorance and fear. Nor, on the other hand, can it be fairly
affirmed that ours is eminently or conspicuously an age of religious
enthusiasm. Yet, as there are superstitions which still maintain a
feeble existence under favor of the respect naturally paid to antiquity,
so are there also among us enthusiastic principles and practices, which,
having been generated in a period of greater excitement than our own,
are preserved as they were received from the fathers; and seem to be in
safe course of transmission to the next generation.
* * * * *
But even if it should appear that—excepting individual instances of
constitutional extravagance, which it would be absurd, because useless,
to make the subject of serious animadversion—enthusiasm is not now
justly chargeable upon any body of Christians, there would still be a
very sufficient reason for attempting to fix the true import of the
term, so long as it is vaguely and contumeliously applied by many to
every degree of fervor in religion which seems to condemn their own
indifference. Not, indeed, as if there were ground to hope that even the
most exact and unexceptionable analysis, or the clearest definitions,
would ever avail so to distinguish genuine from spurious piety as should
compel irreligious men to acknowledge that the difference is real; for
such persons feel it to be indispensable to the slumber of conscience to
confound the one with the other; and although a thousand times refuted,
they will again, when pressed by truth and reason, run to the old and
crazy sophism which pretends that, because Christianity is sometimes
disfigured by enthusiasts and fanatics, therefore there is neither
retribution nor immortality for man. It is the infatuation of persons of
a certain character, to live always at variance with wisdom, on account
of other men's follies; and this is the deplorable error of those who
will see nothing in religion but its corruptions. Nevertheless Truth
owes always a vindication of herself to her friends, if not to her
enemies; and her sincere friends will not wish to screen their own
errors, when this vindication requires them to be exposed.
* * * * *
If, as is implied in some common modes of speaking, enthusiasm were only
an error in _degree_, or a mere fault by excess, then the attempt to
establish a definite distinction between what is blameworthy and what is
commendable in the religious affections—between the _maximum_ and
_minimum_ of emotion which sobriety approves, must be both hopeless and
fruitless; inasmuch as we should need a scale adapted to every man's
constitution; for the very same amount of fervor which may be only
natural and proper to one mind, could not be attained by another without
delirium or insanity. If this notion were just, every one would be
entitled to repel the charge of either apathy or enthusiasm; and while
one might maintain, that if he were to admit into his bosom a single
degree more of religious fervor than he actually feels, _he_ should
become an enthusiast, another might offer an equally reasonable apology
for the wildest extravagances. At this rate the real offenders against
sober piety could never be convicted of their fault; and in allowing
such a principle we should only authenticate the scorn with which
indifference loves to look upon sincerity.
That the error of the enthusiast does not consist in an _excess_ merely
of the religious emotions, might be argued conclusively on the ground
that the Scriptures, our only safe guide on such points, while they are
replete with the language of impassioned devotion, and while they
contain a multitude of urgent and explicit exhortations, tending to
stimulate the fervency of prayer, offer no cautions against any such
supposed excesses of piety.
But, as matter of fact, nothing is more common than to meet with
religionists whose opinions and language are manifestly deformed by
enthusiasm, while their devotional feelings are barely tepid: languor,
relaxation, apathy, not less than extravagance, characterize their style
of piety; and it were quite a ludicrous mistake to warn such persons of
the danger of being "religious overmuch." Yet it must be granted that
those extremes, in matters of opinion or practice, which sometimes
render even torpor conspicuous by its absurdities, have always
originated with minds susceptible of high excitement. Enthusiasm, in a
concrete form, is the child of vivacious temperaments; but when once
produced, it spreads almost as readily through inert, as through active
masses, and shows itself to be altogether separable from the ardor or
turbulence whence it sprang.
To depict the character of those who are enthusiasts by physical
temperament is then a matter of much less importance than to define the
errors which such persons propagate; for, in the first place, the
originators of enthusiasm are few, and the parties infected by it many;
and, in the second, the evil with the latter is incidental, and
therefore may be remedied; while with the former, as it is
constitutional, it is hardly in any degree susceptible of correction.
The examination of a few principal points will make it evident that a
very intelligible distinction may, without difficulty, be established
between what is genuine and what is spurious in religious feeling; and
when an object so important is before us, we ought not to heed the
injudicious, and perhaps sinister, delicacy of some persons who had
rather that truth should remain forever sullied by corruptions, and
exposed to the contempt of worldlings, than that themselves should be
disturbed in their narrow and long-cherished modes of thinking. And yet
there may be some lesser misconceptions, perhaps, which it will be more
wise to leave untouched than to attempt to correct them at the cost of
breaking up habits of thought and modes of speaking connected
indissolubly with truths of vital importance. It should also be granted,
that, when those explanations or illustrations of momentous doctrines
which an exposure of the error of the enthusiast may lead us to propound
seem at all to endanger the simplicity of our reliance upon the
inartificial declarations of Scripture, they are much better abandoned
at once, although in themselves, perhaps, justifiable, than maintained;
if in doing so we are seduced from the direct light of revelation into
the dim regions of philosophical abstraction.
Christianity has in some short periods of its history been entirely
dissociated from philosophical modes of thought and expression; and
assuredly it has prospered in such periods. At other times it has
scarcely been seen at all, except in the garb of metaphysical
discussion, and then it has lost all its vigor and glory. In the present
state of the world the primitive insulation of religious truth from the
philosophical style is scarcely practicable; nor indeed does it seem so
desirable while, happily, we are in no danger of seeing the light of
revelation again immured in colleges. But although it is inevitable, and
perhaps not to be regretted, that religious subjects, both doctrinal and
practical, should, especially in books, admit such generalities, every
sober-minded writer will remember that it is not by an intrinsic and
permanent necessity, but by a temporary concession to the spirit of the
age, that this style is used and allowed. He will moreover bear in mind
that the concession leans towards a side of danger, and will therefore
always hold himself ready to break off from even the most pleasing or
plausible speculation when his Christian instincts, if the phrase may be
permitted, give him warning that he is going remote from the vital
atmosphere of scriptural truth. Whatever is practically important in
religion or morals, may at all times be advanced and argued in the
simplest terms of colloquial expression. From the pulpit, perhaps, no
other style should at any time be heard; for the pulpit belongs to the
poor and to the uninstructed. But the press is not bound by the same
conditions, for it is an instrument of knowledge foreign to the
authenticated means of Christian instruction. A writer and a layman is
no recognized functionary in the Church; he may, therefore, choose his
style without violating any rules or proprieties of office.