ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION.
The most formal and lifeless devotions, not less than the most fervent,
are mere enthusiasm, unless it can be ascertained, on satisfactory
grounds, that such exercises are indeed efficient means for promoting
our welfare. Prayer is impiety, and praise a folly, if the one be not a
real instrument of obtaining important benefits, and the other an
authorized and acceptable offering to the Giver of all good. But when
once these points are determined, and they are necessarily involved in
the truth of Christianity, then, whatever improprieties may be
chargeable upon the devout, an error of incomparably greater magnitude
rests with the undevout. To err in modes of prayer, may be
reprehensible; but not to pray, is mad. And when those whose temper is
abhorrent to religious services animadvert sarcastically upon the
follies, real or supposed, of religionists there is a sad inconsistency
in such criticisms, like that which is seen when the insane make ghastly
mirth of the manners or personal defects of their friends and keepers.
The doctrine of immortality, as revealed in the Scriptures, gives at
once reason and force to devotion; for if the interests of the present
life only, in which "one event happeneth to the just and to the unjust,"
were taken into calculation, the utility of prayer could scarcely be
proved, and never be made conspicuous, at least not to the profane. As a
matter of feeling, it is the expectation of a more direct and sensible
intercourse with the Supreme Being in a future life, that imparts depth
and energy to the sentiments which fill the mind in its approaches to
the throne of the heavenly majesty. But the man of earth who thinks
himself rich when he has enjoyed the delights of seventy summers, and
who deems the hope of eternity to be of less value than an hour of
riotous sensuality, can never desire to penetrate the veil of second
causes, or to "find out the Almighty." Glad to snatch the boons of the
present life, he covets no knowledge of the Giver.
Not so those into whose hearts the belief of a future life—of such a
future life as Christianity depicts—has entered. They feel that the
promised bliss cannot possibly spring from an atheistic satiety of
animal or even of intellectual pleasures; but that the substance of it
must consist in communion with him who is the source and centre of good.
This belief and expectation sheds vigor through the soul while engaged
in exercises of devotion; for such employments are known to be the
preparatives, and the foretastes, and the earnests, of the expected
"fulness of joy." The only idea which the human mind, under its present
limitations, can form of a pure and perpetual felicity, free from all
elements of decay and corruption, is that which it gathers and compounds
from devotional sentiments. In cherishing and expressing these
sentiments, it grasps, therefore, the substance of immortal delights,
and, by an affinity of the heart, holds fast the unutterable hope set
forth in the Scriptures. The Scriptures being admitted as the word of
God, this intensity of devotional feelings is exempted from blame or
suspicion; nor can it ever be shown that the very highest pitch of such
feelings is in itself excessive or unreasonable. The mischiefs of
enthusiasm arise, not from the force or fervor, but from the perversion
of the religious affections.
The very idea of addressing petitions to him who "worketh all things"
according to the counsel of his own eternal and unalterable will, and
the enjoined practice of clothing sentiments of piety in articulate
forms of language, though these sentiments, before they are invested in
words, are perfectly known to the Searcher of hearts, imply that, in the
terms and the mode of intercourse between God and man, no attempt is
made to lift the latter above his sphere of limited notions and
imperfect knowledge. The terms of devotional communion rest even on a
much lower ground than that which man, by efforts of reason and
imagination, would fain attain to. Prayer, in its very conditions,
supposes, not only a condescension of the divine nature to meet the
human, but a humbling of the human nature to a lower range than it might
reach. But the region of abstract conceptions, of lofty reasonings, of
magnificent images, has an atmosphere too subtile to support the health
of true piety; and in order that the warmth and vigor of life may be
maintained in the heart, the common level of the natural affections is
chosen as the scene of intercourse between heaven and earth. In
accordance with this plan of devotion, not only does the Supreme conceal
himself from our senses, but he reveals in his word barely a glimpse of
his essential glories. By some naked affirmations we are indeed secured
against false and grovelling notions of the divine nature; but these
hints are incidental, and so scanty that every excursive mind goes
beyond them in its conceptions of the infinite attributes.
Nor is it only the brightness of the eternal throne that is shrouded
from the view of those who are invited to draw near to him that "sitteth
thereon;" for the immeasurable distance that separates man from his
Maker is carefully veiled by the concealment of the intervening orders
of rational beings. Although the fact of such superior existences is
clearly affirmed, nothing more than the bare fact is imparted: nor can
we misunderstand the reason and necessity of so much reserve; for
without it, those free and kindly movements of the heart in which
genuine devotion consists, would be overborne by impressions of a kind
that belong to the imagination. Distance is known and measured only by
the perception of intermediate objects. The traveller who, with weary
steps, has passed from one extremity to the other of a continent, and
whose memory is fraught with the recollection of the various scenes of
the journey, is qualified to attach a distinct idea to the higher terms
of measurement; but the notion of extended space formed by those who
have never passed the boundary of their native province is vague and
unreal. Such are the notions which, with all the aids of astronomy and
arithmetic, we form of the distances even of the nearest of the heavenly
bodies. But if the traveller who has actually looked upon the ten
thousand successive landscapes that lie between the farthest west and
the remotest east could, with a sustained effort of memory and
imagination, hold all those scenes in recollection, and repeat the
voluminous idea with distinct reiteration until the millions of millions
were numbered that separate sun from sun; and if the notion thus
laboriously obtained could be vividly supported and transferred to the
pathless spaces of the universe, then that prospect of distant systems
which night opens before us, instead of exciting mild and pleasurable
emotions of admiration, would rather oppress the imagination under a
painful sense of the so measured interval. If the eye, when it fixes its
gaze upon the vault of heaven, could see, in fancy, a causeway arched
across the void, and bordered in long series with the hills and plains
of an earthly journey—repeated ten thousand and ten thousand times,
until ages were spent in the pilgrimage, then would he who possessed
such a power of vision hide himself in caverns rather than venture to
look up to the terrible magnitude of the starry skies, thus set out in
parts before him.
And yet the utmost distances of the material universe are finite; but
the disparity of nature which separates man from his Maker is infinite;
nor can the interval be filled up or brought under any process of
measurement. Nevertheless, in the view of our feeble conceptions, an
apparent measurement or filling up of the infinite void would take
place, and so the idea of immense separation would be painfully enhanced
if distinct vision were obtained of the towering hierarchy of
intelligences at the basement of which the human system is founded. Were
it indeed permitted to man to gaze upward from step to step, and from
range to range of the vast edifice of rational existences, and could his
eye attain its summit, and then perceive, at an infinite height beyond
that highest platform of created beings, the lowest beams of the eternal
throne, what liberty of heart would afterwards be left to him in drawing
near to the Father of spirits? How, after such a revelation of the upper
world, could the affectionate cheerfulness of earthly worship again take
place? Or how, while contemplating the measured vastness of the interval
between heaven and earth, could the dwellers thereon come familiarly, as
before, to the Hearer of prayer, bringing with them the small requests
of their petty interests of the present life? If introduction were had
to the society of those beings whose wisdom has accumulated during ages
which time forgets to number, and who have lived to see, once and again,
the mystery of the providence of God complete its cycles, would not the
impression of created superiority oppress the spirit, and obstruct its
access to the Being whose excellences are absolute and infinite? Or what
would be the feelings of the infirm child of earth, if, when about to
present his supplications, he found himself standing in the theatre of
heaven, and saw, ranged in a circle wider than the skies, the
congregation of immortals? These spectacles of greatness, if laid open
to perception, would present such an interminable perspective of glory,
and so set out the immeasurable distance between ourselves and the
Supreme Being with a long gradation of splendors, that we should
henceforward feel as if thrust down to an extreme remoteness from the
Divine notice; and it would be hard, or impossible, to retain, with any
comfortable conviction, the belief in the nearness of him who is
revealed as "a very present help in every time of trouble." But that our
feeble spirits may not thus be overborne, or our faith and confidence
baffled and perplexed, the Most High hides from our sight the ministries
of his court, and, dismissing his train, visits with infinite
condescension the lowly abodes of those who fear him, and dwells as a
Father in the homes of earth.
Every ambitious attempt to break through the humbling conditions on
which man may hold communion with God, must then fail of success; since
the Supreme has fixed the scene of worship and converse, not in the
skies, but on earth. The Scripture models of devotion, far from
encouraging vague and inarticulate contemplations, consist of such
utterances of desire, or hope, or love, as seem to suppose the existence
of correlative feelings, and indeed of every human sympathy in him to
whom they are addressed. And although reason and Scripture assure us
that he neither needs to be informed of our wants, nor waits to be moved
by our supplications, yet will he be approached with the eloquence of
importunate desire, and he demands, not only a sincere feeling of
indigence and dependence, but an undissembled zeal and diligence in
seeking the desired boons by persevering request. He is to be
supplicated with arguments, as one who needs to be swayed and moved, to
be wrought upon and influenced; nor is any alternative offered to those
who would present themselves at the throne of heavenly grace, or any
exception made in favor of superior spirits, whose more elevated notions
of the divine perfections may render this accommodated style
distasteful. As the hearer of prayer stoops to listen, so also must the
suppliant stoop from the heights of philosophical or meditative
abstraction, and either come in genuine simplicity of petition, as a son
to a father, or be utterly excluded from the friendship of his Maker.
This scriptural system of devotion stands opposed, then, to all those
false sublimities of an enthusiastic pietism which affect to lift man
into a middle region between heaven and earth, ere he may think himself
admitted to hold communion with God. While the inflated devotee is
soaring into he knows not what vagueness of upper space, he "whom the
heaven of heavens cannot contain," has come down, and, with benign
condescension, has placed himself in the centre of the little circle of
human ideas and affections. The man of imaginative, or of hyper-rational
piety, is gone in contemplation where God is not; or where man shall
never meet him: for "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,
whose name is holy, and who dwelleth in the high and holy place," when
he invites us to his friendship, holds the splendor of his natural
perfections in abeyance and proclaims that "he dwells with the man who
is of a humble and contrite spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble,
and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." Thus does the piety
taught in the Scriptures make provision against the vain exaggerations
of enthusiasm; and thus does it give free play to the affections of the
heart; while whatever might stimulate the imagination is enveloped in
the thickest covering of obscurity.
The outward forms and observances of worship are manifestly intended to
discourage and exclude the false refinements of an imaginative piety,
and to give to the religious affections a mundane, rather than a
transcendental character. The congregated worshippers come into "the
house of God," the hall or court of audience, on the intelligible terms
of human association; and they come by explicit invitation from him who
declares that "wheresoever two or three are gathered together in his
name, there he is" to meet them. And being so assembled, as in the
actual presence of the "King of saints" they give utterance to the
emotions of love, veneration, hope, joy, penitence, in all those modes
of outward expression which are at once proper to the constitution of
human nature and proper to be addressed to a being of kindred character
and sympathies. Worship is planned altogether in adaptation to the
limitations of the inferior party, not in proportion to the infinitude
of the superior; even the worship of heaven must be framed on the same
principle; for how high soever we ascend in the scale of created
intelligence, still the finite can never surmount its boundaries, or at
all adapt itself to the infinite. But the infinite may always bow to the
finite. Those, therefore, who, inflated by enthusiasm, contemn or
neglect the modes and style of worship proper to humanity, must find
that, though indulgence should be given to their affectation on earth,
no room can be allowed it in heaven.
* * * * *
The dispensations of the divine providence towards the pious have all
the same tendency to confine the devout affections within the circle of
terrestrial ideas, and to make religion an occupant of the homestead of
common feelings. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous," and
wherefore, but to bring his religious belief and emotions into close
contact with the humiliations of the natural life, and to necessitate
the use of prayer as a real and efficient means of obtaining needful
assistance in distress? If vague speculations or delicious illusions
have carried the Christian away from the realities of earth, some urgent
want or piercing sorrow presently arouses him from his dreams and
obliges him to come back to importunate prayer and to unaffected praise.
A strange incongruity may seem to present itself, when the sons of
God—the heirs of immortality, the destined princes of heaven—are seen to
be implicated in sordid cares, and vexed and oppressed by the
perplexities of a moment; but this incongruity strikes us only when the
great facts of religion are viewed in the false light of the
imagination; for the process of preparation, far from being incompatible
with these apparent degradations, requires them; and it is by such means
of humiliation that the hope of immortality, confined within the heart,
is prevented from floating in the region of material images.
* * * * *
We have said that when an important object is zealously pursued in the
use of means proper for its attainment, a mere intensity or fervor of
feeling does not constitute enthusiasm. If, therefore, prayer has a
lawful object, whether it be temporal or spiritual, and is used in
humble confidence of its efficiency, as a means of obtaining the desired
boon or some equivalent blessing, there is nothing unreal in the
employment; and therefore nothing enthusiastic. But there are devotional
exercises, which, though they assume the style and phrases of prayer,
appear to have no other object than to attain the immediate pleasures of
excitement. The devotee is not in truth a _petitioner_; for his prayers
terminate in themselves; and when he reaches the expected pitch of
transient emotion, he desires nothing more. This appetite for feverish
agitations naturally prompts a quest of whatever is exorbitant in
expression or sentiment, and as naturally inspires a dread of all those
subjects of meditation which tend to abate the pulse of the moral
system. If the language of humiliation is at all admitted into the
enthusiast's devotions, it must be so pointed with extravagance, and so
swollen with exaggerations, that it serves much more to tickle the fancy
than to affect the heart: it is a burlesque of penitence very proper to
amuse a mind that is destitute of real contrition. That such artificial
humiliations do not spring from the sorrow of repentance, is proved by
their bringing with them no lowliness of temper. Genuine humility would
shake the towering structure of this enthusiastic pietism; and,
therefore, in the place of Christian humbleness of mind, there are
cherished certain ineffable notions of self-annihilation, and
self-renunciation, and we know not what other attempts at metaphysical
suicide. If you will receive the enthusiast's description of himself, he
has become, in his own esteem, by continued force of divine
contemplation, infinitely less than an atom—a mere negative quantity—an
incalculable fraction of positive entity! meanwhile the whole of his
deportment betrays a self-importance that might be ample enough for a
god.
Minds of superior order, and when refined by culture, may be full
fraught with enthusiasm without exhibiting any very reprehensible
extravagances; for taste and intelligence avail to conceal the
offensiveness of error, as well as of vice. But it will not be so with
the gross and the uneducated. These, if they are taught to neglect the
substantial purposes of prayer, and are encouraged to seek chiefly the
gratifications of excitement, will hardly refrain from the utterance of
discontent, when they fail of success. Whatever physical or accidental
cause may oppress the animal spirits, and so frustrate the attempt to
reach the desired pitch of emotion, gives occasion to some sort of
querulous altercation with the Supreme Being; or to some disguised
imputation of caprice on the part of Him who is supposed to have
withheld the expected spiritual influence. Thus the divine condescension
in holding intercourse with man on the level of friendship, is abused in
this wantonness of irreverence; and the very same temper which impels a
man of vulgar manners, when disappointed in his suit, to turn upon his
superior with the language of rude opprobrium, is, in its degree,
indulged towards the Majesty of heaven. "Thou thoughtest that I was
altogether such an one as thyself," is a rebuke which belongs to those
who thus affront the Most High with the familiarities of common
companionship. We say not that flagrant abuses of this kind are of
frequent occurrence, even among the uneducated; yet neither are they
quite unknown. A perceptible tendency towards them always accompanies
the enthusiastic notion that the principal part of piety is excitement.
* * * * *
The substitution of the transient and unreal, for the real and enduring
objects of prayer, brings with it often that sort of ameliorated
mysticism which consists in a solicitous dissection of the changing
emotions of the religious life, and in a sickly sensitiveness, serving
only to divert attention from what is important in practical virtue.
There are anatomists of piety who destroy all the freshness and vigor of
faith, and hope, and charity, by immuring themselves night and day in
the infected atmosphere of their own bosoms. But now let a man of warm
heart, who is happily surrounded with the dear objects of the social
affections, try the effect of a parallel practice; let him institute
anxious scrutinies of his feelings towards those whom, hitherto, he has
believed himself to regard with unfeigned love; let him in these
inquiries have recourse to all the fine distinctions of a casuist, and
use all the profound analyses of a metaphysician, and spend hours daily
in pulling asunder every complex emotion of tenderness that has given
grace to the domestic life; and, moreover, let him journalize these
examinations, and note particularly, and with the scrupulosity of an
accomptant, how much of the mass of his kindly sentiments he has
ascertained to consist of genuine love, and how much was selfishness in
disguise; and let him from time to time solemnly resolve to be, in
future, more disinterested, and less hypocritical in his affections
towards his family! What, at the end of a year, would be the result of
such a process? What, but a wretched debility and dejection of the
heart, and a strangeness and a sadness of the manners, and a suspension
of the native expressions and ready offices of zealous affection?
Meanwhile the hesitations, and the musings, and the upbraidings of an
introverted sensibility absorb the thoughts. Is it then reasonable to
presume that similar practices in religion can have a tendency to
promote the healthful vigor of piety?
By the constitution of the human mind, its emotions are strengthened in
no other way than by exercise and utterance; nor does it appear that the
religious emotions are exempted from this general law. The Divine Being
is revealed to us in the Scriptures as the proper and supreme object of
reverence, of love, and of affectionate obedience; and the natural means
of exercising and of expressing these feelings are placed before us,
both in the offices of devotion and in the duties of life, just in the
same way that the opportunities of enhancing the domestic affections are
afforded in the constitution of social life. Why, then, should the
Christian turn aside from the course of nature, and divert his feelings
from their outgoings towards the supreme object of devotional sentiment,
by instituting curious researches into the quality, and quantity, and
composition of all his religious sensations? This spiritual
hypochondriasis enfeebles at once the animal, the intellectual, and the
moral life, and is usually found in conjunction with infirmity of
judgment, infelicity of temper, and inconsistency of conduct.
But it is alleged that the heart, even after it has undergone spiritual
renovation, is fraught with hidden evils, which mingle their influence
with every emotion of the new life, and that an often-renewed analysis
is necessary in order to detect and to separate the lurking mischiefs.
To know the evils of the heart is indeed indispensable to the humility
and the caution of true wisdom; and whoever is utterly untaught in this
dismal branch of learning is a fool. But to make it the chief object of
attention is not only unnecessary, but fatal to the health of the soul.
The motives of the social, not less than those of the religious life,
are open to corrupting mixtures which spoil their purity, and impair
their vigor. As, for example, the emotion of benevolence, which impels
us to go in quest of misery, and to labor and suffer for its relief, is
liable, in most men's minds, to be alloyed by some particles of the
desire of applause; indeed, there are nice and learned anatomists of the
heart, who assure us that benevolence, when placed in the focus of high
optic powers, exhibits nothing but a gay feathery coat of vanity, set
upon the flimsiness of selfish sensibility. Be it so—and let men of
small souls amuse themselves with these petty discoveries. But assuredly
the philanthropist who is followed through life by the blessings of
those "that were ready to perish," and whose memory goes down in the
fragrance of these blessings to distant ages, is not found to spend his
days and nights in pursuing any such subtile micrologies. Have the sons
of wretchedness been most holpen by Rochefoucaulds and Bruyeres, or by
Howards? If the philanthropist be a wise and Christian man, he will,
knowing as he does the evils and infirmities of the heart, endeavor to
expel and preclude the corrupting mischiefs that spring from within, by
giving yet larger play to the great motives by which exclusively he
desires to be impelled; he will, with new intentness, devote himself to
the service in which his better nature delights, and bring his soul into
still nearer contact with its chosen objects, and oblige himself to hold
more constant communion with the miserable; and he will spurn, with
renovated courage, the whispers of indolence and fear. Thus he pushes
forward on the course of action, where alone, by the unalterable laws of
human nature, the vigor of active virtue may be maintained and increased.
If, indeed, the heart be a dungeon of foul and vaporous poisons, if it
be "a cage of unclean birds," if "satyrs dance there," if the
"cockatrice" there hatch her eggs of mischief, let the vault of dark
impurity be thrown open to the purifying gales of heaven, and to the
bright shining of the sun; so shall the hated occupants leave their
haunts, and the noxious exhalations be exhausted, and the deathly chills
be dispelled. He surely need not want light and warmth who has the
glories of heaven before him; let these glories be contemplated with
constant and upward gaze, while the foot presses with energy the path of
hope, and the hand is busied in every office of charity. The Christian
who thus pursues his way, will rarely, if ever, be annoyed by the
spectres that haunt the regions of a saddened enthusiasm.
The moping sentimentalism which so often takes the place of Christian
motives is to be avoided, not merely because it holds up piety to the
view of the world under a deplorable disguise; nor merely because it
deprives its victims of their comfort; but chiefly because it ordinarily
produces inattention to the substantial matters of common morality. The
mind occupied from dawn of day till midnight with its own multifarious
ailments, and busied in studying its pathologies, utterly forgets, or
remissly discharges, the duties of social life: or the temper, oppressed
by vague solicitudes, falls into a state which makes it a nuisance in
the house. Or, while the rising and falling temperature of the spirit is
watched and recorded, the common principles of honor and integrity are
so completely lost sight of, that, without explicit ill-intention,
grievous delinquencies are fallen into, which fail not to bring a deluge
of reproach upon religion. These melancholy perversions of Christian
piety might seem not to belong, with strict propriety, to our subject;
but, in fact, religious despondency is the child of religious
enthusiasm. Exhaustion and dejection succeed to excitement, just as
debility follows fever. Yesterday the unballasted vessel was seen
hanging out all the gayety of its colors, and spreading wide its
indiscretion before a breeze; but the night came, the breeze
strengthened, and to-day the hapless bark rolls dismasted, without help
or hope, over the billows.
Amid the various topics touched upon by Paul, Peter, John, and James, we
scarcely find an allusion to those questions of spiritual nosology
which, in later periods, and especially since the days of Augustine,[1]
and very much in our own times, have filled a large space in religious
writings. The Apostles believed, with unclouded confidence, the
revelation committed to them, of judgment to come, of redemption from
wrath by Jesus Christ, and of eternal glory:—these great facts filled
their hearts, and governed their lives, and, in conjunction with the
precepts of morality, were the exclusive themes of their preaching and
writing. Evidently they found neither time nor occasion for entering
upon nice analyses of motives; or for indulging fine musings and
personal melancholies; nor did they ever think of resting the
all-important question of their own sincerity, and of their claim to a
part in the hope of the gospel, upon the abstruse dialectics which have
since been thought indispensable to the definition of a saving faith.
Assuredly the Christians of the first age did not suppose that volumes
of metaphysical distinctions must be written and read before the
genuineness of religious professions could be ascertained. The want, in
modern times, of a vivid conviction of the truth of Christianity, is
probably the occasional source of many of these idle and disheartening
subtleties; and it may be believed that a sudden enhancement of
faith—using the word in its unsophisticated meaning—throughout the
Christian community would dispel, in a moment, a thousand dismal and
profitless refinements, and impart to the feelings of Christians that
unvarying solidity which naturally belongs to the perception of facts so
immensely important as those revealed in the Scriptures.
In witnessing, first, the entreaties, and supplications, and tears of a
convicted, condemned, and repentant malefactor, prostrate at the feet of
his sovereign, and then the exuberance of his joy and gratitude in
receiving pardon and life, no one would so absurdly misuse language as
to call the intensity and fervor of the criminal's feelings
enthusiastical: for, however strong, or even ungovernable those emotions
may be, they are perfectly congruous with the occasion: they spring from
no illusion; but are fully justified by the momentous turn that has
taken place in his affairs: in the past hour he contemplated nothing but
the horrors of a violent, an ignominious, and a deserved death; but now
life, with its delights, is before him. It is true that all men in the
same circumstances would not undergo the same intensity of emotion: but
all, unless obdurate in wickedness, must experience feelings of the same
quality. And thus, so long are the real circumstances under which every
human being stands in the court of the Supreme Judge are clearly
understood, and duly felt, enthusiasm finds no place; all is real;
nothing illusory. But when once these unutterably important facts are
forgotten or obscured, then, by necessity every enhancement of religious
feeling is a step on the ascent of enthusiasm; and it becomes a matter
of very little practical consequence, whether the deluded pietist be the
worshipper of some system of abstract rationalism or of tawdry images
and rotten relics; though the latter error of the two is perhaps
preferable, inasmuch as a warm-hearted fervor is always better than
frozen pride.
* * * * *
One commanding subject pervades the Scriptures, and rises to view on
every page: this recurring theme, towards which all instructions and
histories tend, is the great and anxious question of condemnation or
acquittal at the bar of God, when the irreversible sentence shall come
to be pronounced. "How shall man be just with God?" is the inquiry ever
and again urged upon the conscience of him who reads the Bible with a
humble and teachable desire to find therein the way of life. In
subserviency to this leading intention, the themes which run through the
sacred writings, and which distinguish those writings by an immense
dissimilarity from all the remains of polytheistic literature, are those
of guilt, shame, contrition, love, joy, gratitude, and affectionate
obedience. And moreover, in conformity with this same intention, the
Divine Being is revealed—if not exclusively, yet chiefly—as the party in
the great controversy which sin has occasioned. The intercourse,
therefore, which is opened between heaven and earth is almost confined
to the momentous transactions of reconciliation and renewed friendship.
When the Hearer of prayer invites interlocution with man, it is not, as
perhaps in Eden, for the purposes of free and discursive converse, but
for conference on a special business. "Come now, let us reason together,
saith the Almighty, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white
as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."
The same speciality of purpose and limitation of subject is plainly
implied in the appointment of a Mediator and Advocate; for although the
establishment of this happy medium of approach authorizes and encourages
even a boldness of access to the throne of the heavenly grace, it not
less evidently imposes a restriction or peculiarity upon the intercourse
between God and man. As the Intercessor exercises his office to obtain
the bestowment of the benefits secured to mankind by his vicarious
sufferings, the suppliant must surely have those benefits especially in
view. The work and office of the Mediator, and the desires and petitions
of the client, are correlatives. "No man," said the Saviour, "cometh
unto the Father but by me." It follows then, naturally, that those who
thus come to the Father should keep in constant remembrance the great
intention of the mediatorial scheme, which is nothing else than to
reconcile transgressors to the offended Majesty of heaven. But this
unalterable condition of all devotional services contains a manifest and
efficacious provision against enthusiastical excitements; for the
emotions of shame and penitence, and of joy in receiving the assurance
of pardon, are not of the class with which the imagination has near
affinity, and, in a well-ordered mind, they may rise to their highest
pitch without either disturbing the powers of reason, or infringing the
most perfect inward serenity, or outward decorum. In a word, it may be
confidently affirmed that no man becomes an enthusiast in religion,
until he has forgotten that he is a transgressor—a transgressor
reconciled to God by mediation.
But when, either by the refinements of rationalism—a gross misnomer—or
by superstitious corruptions, the central facts of Christianity have
become obscured, no middle ground remains between the apathy of
formality and the extravagance of enthusiasm. The substance of religion
is gone, and its ceremonial only remains—remains to disgust the
intelligent, and to delude the simple. This momentous principle is
strikingly displayed in the construction of the Romish worship. That
false system assumes the great business of pardon and reconciliation
with God to be a transaction that belongs only to priestly negotiation;
and as forgiveness has its price, and the priest is at once the
appraiser of the offence, and the receiver of the mulct, it would be an
intrusion upon his function, an interference that must derange his
balances, for the transgressor to act on his own behalf, or ever to
inquire what passes between the authorized agent of mercy, and the court
of heaven. No room, then, is left in this system for the great and
central subject of all devotional exercises. The doctrine of pardon
having been cut off from worship, worship becomes unsubstantial. The
expiatory death and availing intercession of the Son of God are taken
within the rail of sacerdotal usurpation; and of necessity, if Jesus
Christ is at all to be set forth "crucified before the people," it can
only be as an object of dramatic exhibition. This is the secret of the
popish magnificence of worship. Music, and painting, and pantomime, and
a tinsel declamation, must do their several parts to disguise the
subduction of the essentials of devotion. The laity, having nothing to
transact with God, must be amused and beguiled, "lest haply the gospel
of his grace" should enter the heart, and so the trading intervention of
the priest be superseded.
The great purpose of the Romish worship, which is to preclude all
genuine feelings by substituting the enthusiasm of the imagination, is
accomplished, it must be confessed, with consummate skill, and a just
knowledge of the human mind. The end proposed will, manifestly, be best
attained when the emotions which spring from the imagination are made to
resemble as nearly as possible those that belong to the heart. The
nicest imitation will be the most successful in this machinery of
delusion. Hence it is, that while all those means of excitement are
employed which quicken the physical sensibilities, the deeper
sensibilities of the soul are also addressed, and yet always by the
intervention of dramatic or poetic images. A plain and undisguised
appeal to the heart is unknown to the system.
If it be for a moment forgotten, that in every bell, bowl, and vest of
the Romish service there is hid a device against the liberty and welfare
of mankind, and that its gold, and pearls, and fine linen are the
deckings of eternal ruin; and if this apparatus of worship be compared
with the impurities and the cruelties of the old polytheistic rites,
great praise may seem due to its contrivers. Nothing in Christianity
that might subserve the purposes of dramatic effect has been overlooked;
and even the most difficult parts of the materials have been wrought
into keeping. The humiliations and poverty which shroud the glory of the
principal personage, and the horrors of his death; as well as the awful
beauty and compassionate advocacy of the virgin mother, the queen of
heaven; the stern dignity of the twelve; the marvels of miraculous
power; the heroism of the martyrs; the mortifications of the saints; the
punishment of the enemies of the church; the practices of devils; the
intercession and tutelary cares of the blessed; the sorrows of the
nether world, and the glories of the upper;—all these materials of
poetic and scenic effect have been elaborated by the genius and taste of
the Italian artists, until a spectacle has been got up which leaves the
most splendid shows of the ancient idol-worship of Greece and Rome at a
vast distance of inferiority.[2]
But of what avail is all this sumptuous apparatus in promoting either
genuine piety or purity of manners? History and existing facts leave no
obscurity on the question; for the atrocity of crime, and the foulness
of licentiousness, have ever kept pace with the perfection of the Romish
service. Those nations upon whose manners it has worked its proper
influence with the fullest effect, have been the most irreligious and
the most debauched. Splendid rites and odious vices have dwelt in peace
under the same consecrated roofs; and the actors and spectators of these
sacred pantomimes have been wont to rush together from the solemn pomps
of worship, to the chambers of filthy sin.
* * * * *
The substitution of poetic enthusiasm for genuine piety may, however,
take place apart from the decorations of the Romish service; but the
means employed must be of a more intellectual cast: eloquence must take
the labor on itself, and must subject the doctrines of Scripture to a
process of refinement which shall deposit whatever is substantial and
affecting, and retain only what is magnific, pathetic, or sublime. And
yet the principles of protestantism, and, in some respects, the national
temper, and certainly the style and spirit, of the devotional services
of the English Church, all discourage the attempt to hold forth the
subjects of evangelical teaching in the gorgeous colors of an artificial
oratory. And if the evidence of facts were listened to, such attempts
would never be made by those who honestly desire to discharge the
momentous duties of the Christian ministry in the manner most conducive
to the welfare of their hearers. A blaze of emotion, having the
semblance of piety, may be kindled by descriptive and impassioned
harangues, such as those that are heard, on festival days, from French
and Italian pulpits; but it will be found that the Divine Spirit,
without whose agency the heart is never permanently affected, refuses to
become a party in any such theatric exercises; these emotions will
therefore subside without leaving a vestige of salutary influence.
Yet is there perhaps a lawful, though limited range open, in the pulpit,
to the powers of descriptive eloquence. The preacher may safely
embellish all those subsidiary topics that are not included within the
circle of the primary principles on which the religious affections are
built; for in addressing the imagination on these accessory points, he
does not incur the danger of founding piety altogether upon illusions.
The great and beautiful in nature, and perhaps the natural attributes of
the Deity, and the episodes of sacred history, and the diversities of
human character, and the scenes of social life, and the secular
interests of mankind, may, by their incidental connection with more
important themes furnish the means of awakening attention, and of
varying the sameness of theological discourse. Or even if no
unquestionable plea of utility could be urged in recommendation of such
divertisements, at the worst they are not chargeable with the
desecration of fundamental doctrines; nor do they generate delusion
where delusion must be fatal. But it is not so with the principal
matters of the preacher's message to his fellow-men, which can hardly be
touched by the pencil of poetic or dramatic eloquence without incurring
a hazard of the highest kind, inasmuch as the excitement so engendered
more often totally excludes than merely impairs genuine feelings.
If the taste of an audience be quickened and cultivated, nothing is more
easy to the teacher, or more agreeable to the taught, than a transition
from the sphere of spiritual feeling to the regions of poetic
excitement. Intellect is put in movement by the change; conscience is
lulled; the weight that may have rested on the heart is upborne, and a
state of animal elasticity induced, which, so long as it continues,
dispels the sadness of earthly cares. Let it be supposed that the
subject of discourse is that one which, of all others, should be the
most solemnly affecting to those who admit the truth of Christianity—the
awful process of the last judgment. The speaker, we will believe,
intends nothing but to inspire a salutary alarm; and with this view he
essays his utmost command of language, while he describes the sudden
waning of the morning sun, the blackening of the heavens, the decadence
of the stars, the growing thunders of coming wrath, the clang of the
trumpet, whose notes break the slumbers of the dead, the crash of the
pillars of earth, the bursting forth of the treasures of fire, and the
solving of all things in the fervent heat. Then the bright appearance of
the Judge, encircled by the splendors of the court of heaven; the
convoked assemblage of witnesses from all worlds, filling the concave of
the skies. Then the dense masses of the family of man, crowding the area
of the great tribunal; the separation of the multitude; the irreversible
sentence, the departure of the doomed, the triumphant ascent of the
ransomed.
Compared with themes like these, how poor were the subjects of ancient
oratory! And such is their force, and such the freshness of their power,
that, though a thousand times presented to the imagination, they may yet
again, whenever skilfully managed, command breathless attention while
the sands of the preacher's hour are running out. Nor ought it to be
absolutely affirmed that excitements of this kind can never produce
salutary impressions; or that such impressions never accompany the
hearer beyond the threshhold of the church, or survive a day's contact
with secular interests: peremptory assertions of this sort are
unnecessary to our argument. The question to be answered is, whether
this species of movement be not of the nature of mere enthusiasm, and
whether it does not ordinarily rather exclude than promote religious
feelings.
In reference to the illustration we have adduced, there might be
room for the previous inquiry, whether, on sound principles of
interpretation, the language of Scripture ought to be understood as
giving any warrant whatever to those material images of terrible
sublimity with which it is usual to invest the proceedings of the future
day of retribution. But let it be granted that the customary
representations of popular oratory are not erroneous; and that when the
preacher thus accumulates the physical machinery of terror, he is truly
picturing that last scene of the terrestrial history of man. Even then
it were not difficult, by an effort of reasoning and of meditation, and
by following out the emotions of our moral constitution, to realize the
feelings which must fill the soul on that day when the secrets of all
hearts shall be published; and these feelings may be imagined, on
probable grounds of anticipation, to be such as must render all exterior
perceptions dim and make even the most stupendous magnificence of the
surrounding scene to fade from the sight. It is nothing but the present
torpor of the moral sentiments that allows to material ideas so much
power to occupy and overwhelm the mind; but when the soul shall be
quickened from its lethargy, then good and evil will take that seat of
influence which has been usurped by unsubstantial images of greatness,
beauty, or terror. What are the thunderings of a thousand storms; what
the clangor of the trumpet, or the crash of earth, or the universal
blaze; what the dazzling front of the celestial array, or even the
appalling apparatus of punishment, to the spirit that has become alive
to the consciousness of its own moral condition, and is standing naked
in the manifested presence of the High and Holy One. That time of
judgment which is to dispel all disguises, and to drag sin from its
coverts into the full light of heaven, will assuredly find no leisure
for the discursive eye; one perception, one emotion, will doubtless rule
exclusive in the soul.
No extravagance or groundless refinement is contained in the supposition
that, in the great day of inquiry and award, the moral shall so
overwhelm the physical, that when, by regular process of evidence,
according to the forms of that perfect court, conviction has been
obtained of even some minor offence against the eternal laws of purity
or justice—an offence which, if confessed on earth, would hardly have
brought a blush upon the cheek—the heart will be penetrated with an
anguish of shame that shall preclude the perception of surrounding
wonders:—on that day it will be sin, not a flaming world, that shall
appall the soul.
If anticipations such as these approve themselves to reason, it follows
that the humblest and the least adorned eloquence of a purely moral
kind, of which the only topics are sin and holiness, guilt and pardon,
takes incomparably a nearer and a safer road towards the attainment of
the great object of Christian instruction than does the most
overwhelming oratory that addresses itself chiefly to the imagination.
Nay, it may be affirmed that such oratory, however artfully elaborated,
and however well intended it may be, is nothing better than a curtain,
finely wrought, indeed, with gorgeous colors, but serving to hide from
men the substantial terrors of the day of retribution.
Nothing, then, can be more glaringly inequitable than the manner in
which the imputation of enthusiasm is frequently advanced in relation to
pulpit oratory. On the ground either of common sense or of philosophical
analysis, the epithet should be assigned to him who, in neglect or
contempt of the substance of his argument, draws an idle and profitless
excitement from its adjuncts. And on the same ground we must exculpate
from such a charge the speaker who, however intense may be his fervor,
is himself moved, and labors to move others, by what is most solemn and
momentous in his subject. Now to recur for a moment to the illustration
already adduced. In the anticipations we may form of the day of
judgment, there are combined two perfectly distinct classes of ideas; on
the one side there are those images of physical grandeur and of dramatic
effect which offer themselves to the imaginative orator as the proper
materials of his art, and which, if skillfully managed, will not fail to
produce the kind of excitement that is desired by both speaker and
hearer. On the other side there are, in these anticipations, the
forensic proceedings which form the very substance of the fearful scene;
and these proceedings, though of infinite moment to every human being,
tend rather to quell than to excite the imagination, and therefore
afford the preacher no means of producing effect, or even of keeping
alive attention, unless the conscience of the hearer be alarmed, and his
heart opened to the salutary impressions of fear, shame, and hope. In
looking then at these themes, so distinct in their qualities, we ask—Is
he the enthusiast who concerns himself with the substance; or he who
amuses himself and his hearers with the shadow? Yet is it common to hear
an orator spoken of as a sound and sober divine, who, for maintaining
his influence and popularity, depends exclusively, constantly, and
avowedly, upon his power to affect the imagination and the passions by
poetic or dramatic images, and who is perpetually laboring to invest the
solemn doctrines of religion in a garb of attractive eloquence.
Meanwhile a less accomplished speaker, who—perhaps with more of
vehemence than of elegance—insists simply upon the momentous part of his
message, is branded as an enthusiast, merely because his fervor rises
some degrees above that of others. Ineffable folly! to designate as
enthusiastical the intensity of genuine emotions, and to approve as
rational mere deliriums of the fancy, which intercept the influence of
momentous truths upon the heart. Yet such is the wisdom of the world!
* * * * *
It cannot be pretended that the distinction between genuine and
enthusiastic piety turns upon a metaphysical nicety: nothing so
important to all men must be imagined to await the determination of
abstruse questions; and if the distinction which has been illustrated in
the preceding pages is not perfectly intelligible, it may safely be
rejected as of no practical value. But surely there can hardly be any
one so little observant of his own consciousness as not to have learned
that the feelings excited by what is beautiful or sublime, terrible or
pathetic, differ essentially from those emotions that are kindled in the
heart by the ideas of goodness and of purity, or of malignancy and
pollution. And every one must know that virtue and piety have their
range among feelings of the latter, not of the former class; and every
one must perceive that if the former occupy the mind to the exclusion of
the latter, the moral sentiments cannot fail to be impoverished or
corrupted. It is, moreover, very evident that the great facts of
Christianity possess, adjunctively, the means of exciting, in a powerful
degree, the emotions that belong to the imagination, as well as those
which affect the heart; it therefore follows that the former may, in
whole or in part, supplant the latter; and thus a fictitious piety be
engendered, which, while it produces much of the semblance of true
religion, yields none of its substantial fruits. In this manner it may
happen, not in rare instances, but in many, that if, in the history of
an individual, a season of religious excitement has once taken place,
though it had in it little or nothing of the elements of a change from
evil to good, it may have been assumed as constituting a valid and
inamissible initiation in the Christian life; and if subsequently the
decencies of religion and of morality have been preserved, a strong
supposition of sincerity is entertained to the last, even though all was
illusory.
Yet these melancholy cases of self-deception are not to be remedied by
mere explanations of the delusion; on the contrary, the practical use to
be made of definitions and distinctions and descriptions in matters of
religious feeling, is to exhibit the necessity and to enhance the value
of more available tests of sincerity. Thus, for example, if it appear
that, in times like the present, when religious profession undergoes no
severe probation, the danger of substituting some species of enthusiasm
for true piety is extreme, there will appear the greater need to have
recourse to those means of proof which infallibly discriminate between
truth and pretension. This means of proof is nothing else than the
standard of morals and of temper exhibited in the Scriptures. No other
method of determining the most momentous of all questions is given to
us, and none other is needed. We can neither ascend into the heavens,
there to inspect the book of life, nor satisfactorily descend into the
depths of the heart to analyze the complex and occult varieties of its
emotions. But we may instantly and certainly know whether we do the
things which he whom we call Lord has commanded.
[1] The metaphysico-devotional "Confessions" of the good Bishop of Hippo
may perhaps not unfairly be placed at the head of this very peculiar
species of literature. The author is reluctant to name some modern works
which he might deem liable to objection, on the ground of their giving
encouragement to religious sentimentalism, lest he should put into the
mouth of the irreligious a style of criticism which they would not fail
to abuse. He is aware that he runs a hazard of this sort in advancing
what he has above advanced. He can only say that he thinks the subject
much too important in itself, and too intimately connected with the
theme of this Essay, to be passed in silence. And he cautions the
irreligious reader, if the book should fall into the hand of any such
unhappy person, not to suppose that the author would either disparage
the important duty of self-examination; or speak slightingly of those
mental struggles which will ever attend the conflict between good and
evil in the heart that has admitted the purifying influence of the Holy
Spirit. What he pleads for, is, that self-examination should always have
reference to tho Christian standard of temper and conduct; and that
spiritual conflicts should consist of a resistance against evil
dispositions or immoral practices. What he fears on the part of
religious folks is, a forgetfulness of meekness, temperance, integrity,
amid the illusions—now gloomy, now gaudy—of a diseased brain.
[2] Strictly speaking, the religion of Greece was not eminently a
religion of ritual splendor: on the contrary, there reigned in the
public services of the most intellectual of all nations, much of the
simplicity of devout fervor, much of the chasteness of fine taste, and
much of the archaic and unadorned solemnity that had descended to the
Greeks from the patriarchal ages. Even in their theatres, and on their
race-courses, there was far less of pomp and finery than is demanded on
similar occasions by a modern European populace. The Romans carried the
_sublime in decoration_ to a further point; and in the same degree
exchanged reason and taste for colors, gildings, and draperies. Upon the
Roman barbaric magnificence the corrupt church of the fifth and
following centuries engrafted, in a confused medley, the gorgeous
conceptions of the eastern nations—the terrible ideas of the northern
hordes—the jugglings of Italian priests, and the sheer puerilities of
monks and children. Such is the _Christian_ worship of Rome!
Nevertheless, its elements comprise so much that is beautiful, or
imposing, that its puerilities catch not the eye; and a man must be very
rational who altogether repels the impression of its services.