ENTHUSIASTIC PERVERSIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE INFLUENCE.
A sentiment natural to the human mind, leads it to entertain and to
dwell with pleasure upon the belief of the stability and permanence of
the material world. Whether we view the multiform ranks of organized and
animated beings which cover the earth, or examine the occult processes
of nature, or look upwards, and contemplate distant worlds, the
regularity with which the great machine of the visible creation effects
its revolutions inspires a deep emotion of delight. This feeling brings
with it involuntarily the supposition of extended duration; nor is it
without extreme difficulty that we can separate the idea of so vast a
combination of causes and effects, moving forward with unfailing
precision, from the thought, if not of eternity, yet of unnumbered ages
gone by, and yet to come. While these natural impressions occupy the
mind, a strange revulsion of feeling takes place, if suddenly it be
recollected that the massy pillars of creation, with its towering
superstructure, and its high-wrought embellishments, and its innumerable
tenants, are absolutely destitute of intrinsic permanency, and that the
stupendous frame, with its nice and mighty movements, is incessantly
issued anew from the fount of being. Apart from the divine volition,
perpetually active, there can be no title to existence; and in the
moment which should succeed to the cessation of the efficient will of
the First Cause, all creatures must fall back to utter dissolution.
Reason as well as faith justifies this doctrine, and demands that we
deny independency to whatever is created; devoutly confessing that God
is "all in all." In him by whom they were formed, "all things consist:"
in him all "live and move and have their being." He is the author and
giver of life; and in the strictest sense it may be affirmed that every
day is a day of creation, not less than that on which "the morning
stars" uttered their earliest shout of joyous wonder: every moment
during the lapse of ages, the word of power is pronounced from the
height of the Eternal Throne—"Let there be light" and life. This belief
constitutes the basement-principle of all religion, and is the sentiment
from which piety must take its spring. The notion of independency and of
eternity, suggested by the regular movements of nature, are thus thrown
off from the surface of the visible world, and go to enhance our
impressions of the glories of him who alone is eternal, unchangeable and
independent.
But it is certain that the conditions of existence, not less than its
matter and form, are from God. In truth, the notions of being, and of
well-being, are not to be distinguished in reference to the divine
causation; for each of his works is perfect, both in model and in
movement. There can be therefore no particle of virtue or of happiness
in the universe, any more than of bare existence, of which God is not
the author. Neither Scripture nor philosophy permits exceptions or
distinctions to be made; for if we attribute to the Creator the organ,
we must also attribute to him its functions, and its health too, which
is only the perfection of its functions. And thus also, if the soul,
with its complex apparatus of reason, and moral sentiment, and appetite,
be the handiwork of God, so is its healthful action. But the healthful
action of the soul consists in love to God, and free subjection to his
will. Virtue is nothing else in its substance, nothing else in its
cause. As in him we live and move and have our being, so also it is he
who "worketh in us to will and to do" whatever is pleasing to himself.
Whether we take the safe and ready method of acquiescing in the obvious
sense of a multitude of Scriptures, or pursue the laborious deductions
of abstract reasoning, the same conclusion is attained, that, in the
present world, and in every other where virtue and happiness are found,
virtue and happiness are emanations of the divine blessedness and purity.
But if this efflux of the divine nature belongs to the original
constitution of intelligent beings, and is the permanent and only source
of all goodness and felicity, it must be intimately fitted to the
movements of mind, and must harmonize perfectly with its mechanism; just
as perfectly as the creative influence harmonizes with the mechanism and
movements of animal life.
Whatever is vigorous and healthful in the one kind of existence, or holy
and happy in the other, is of God, whose power and goodness are,
throughout the universe, the natural, not the supernatural cause of
whatever is not evil. It were then a strange supposition to imagine that
this impartation of virtue and happiness may be perceptible to the
subject of it, like the access of a foreign and extraordinary influence;
or that while the creative agency is altogether undistinguishable amid
the movements of animal and intellectual life, the spiritual agency
which conveys the warmth and activity of virtue to the soul, is
otherwise than inscrutable in its mode of operation. As the one kind of
divine energy does not display its presence by convulsive or capricious
irregularities, but by the unnoticed vigor and promptitude of the
functions of life; so the other energy cannot, without irreverence, be
thought of as making itself felt by præter-natural impulses, or sensible
shocks upon the intellectual system; but must rather be imagined as an
equable pulse of life, throbbing from within, and diffusing softness,
sensibility and force through the soul.
It is indeed true that if death or torpor has long held the moral powers
in a state of suspended action, the returning principle of life, while
working its way in contrariety to such a derangement of the system, may
make itself felt otherwise than where no similar obstruction has to be
overcome; yet will it only be perceived by its collision with the evils
that have usurped the heart; not by its own spontaneous movements. These
are, in truth, the foreign and disturbing influences; it is these that
make themselves known by their abrupt and capricious activity, by their
convulsive or feverish force. Meanwhile the heavenly emanation which
heals, cleanses, and blesses the spirit is still, and constant, and
transparent, as "a well of water springing up unto eternal life."
Nevertheless, from the accidents of the position in which we are placed,
the divine influence may appear under an aspect immensely unlike that in
which we should view it if our prospect of the intelligent universe were
more extended than it is. Thus the sad tenant of a dungeon, who has
spent the days of many years alive in the darkness of the tomb, thinks
far otherwise of the light of the sun, as he watches the pencil ray that
traverses his prison wall, than those do who walk abroad amid the
splendors of the summer's noon. Or we may imagine a world of once
animated beings to be lying in the coldness and corruption of death, and
we may suppose that the creative power returns and reanimates some among
the dead, restoring them instantaneously to the warmth, and vigor, and
enjoyments of life. The spectator of this partial resurrection, who had
long contemplated nothing but the dismal stillness and corruption of the
universal death, might, in his glad amazement, forget that the death of
so many, not the life of the few, is anomalous, and strange, and
contrary to the order of nature. The miracle, if so he will term it, is
nothing more—nothing else, than what is every instant taking place
throughout the wide realms of happy existence. The life-giving energy
whose beams of expansive beneficence had been for a while, and in this
world of death, intercepted or withdrawn, has returned with a kindling
revulsion to its wonted channel; and now moves on in copious
tranquillity. The dead may indeed still outnumber the living;
nevertheless it is the condition of the former, not that of the latter,
that is extraordinary; and the return to life, how amazing soever it may
seem, could with no propriety be called supernatural.
The language of Scripture, when it asserts the momentous doctrine of the
renovation of the soul by the immediate agency of the Spirit of God,
employs figurative terms which, while they give the utmost possible
force to the truth so conveyed, indicate clearly the congruity of the
change so effected with the original construction of human nature. The
return to virtue and happiness is termed a resurrection to life; or it
is a new birth; or it is the opening of the eyes of the blind, or the
unstopping the ears of the deaf; or it is the springing up of a fountain
of purity; or it is a gale of heaven, neither seen nor known but by its
effects; or it is the growth and fructification of the grain; or it is
the abode of a guest in the home of a friend, or the residence of the
Deity in his temple. Each of these emblems, and all others used in the
Scriptures in reference to the same subject, combines the double idea of
a change—great, definite, and absolute—and of a change from disorder,
corruption, derangement, to a natural and permanent condition: they are
all manifestly chosen with the intention of excluding the idea of a
miraculous or semi-miraculous intervention of power. On the one hand, it
is evident that a change of moral dispositions, so entire as to be
properly symbolized by calling it a new birth, or a resurrection to
life, must be much more than a self-effected reformation; for if it were
nothing more, these figures would be preposterous, unnecessary, and
delusive. But on the other hand, this change must be perfectly in
harmony with the physical and intellectual constitution of human nature,
or the same figures would be devoid of propriety and significance.
But a doctrine of divine influence like this, though so full of promise
and of comfort to the aspirant after true virtue, offers nothing to
those who desire transitory excitements, and who look for visible
displays of supernatural power; and therefore it does not satisfy the
religious enthusiast. Not content to be the recipient of an invigorating
and purifying emanation, which, unseen and unperceived, elevates the
debased affections, and fixes them on the Supreme Excellence; nor
satisfied to know that, under this healing influence, the inveteracy of
evil dispositions is broken up, and a real advance made in virtue, he
asks some sensible evidence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and
would fain so dissect his own consciousness as to bring the presence of
the Divine agent under palpable examination. Or he seeks for some such
extraordinary turbulence of emotion as may seem unquestionably to
surpass the powers and course of nature. Fraught with these wishes, he
continually gazes upon the variable surface of his own feelings, in
unquiet expectation of a supernatural troubling of the waters. The
silent rise of the wellspring of purity and peace he neither heeds nor
values; for nothing less than the eddies and sallies of religious
passion can assure him that he is, "born from above."
A delusive notion of this kind at once diverts attention from the
cultivation and practice of the virtues, and becomes a fermenting
principle of frothy agitations, that either work themselves off in the
sourness of an uncharitable temper, or are followed by physical
melancholies; or perhaps by such a relaxation of the moral sentiments as
leaves the heart exposed to the seductions of vicious pleasure. Thus the
religious life, instead of being a sunshine of augmenting peace and
hope, is made up of an alternation of ecstasies and despondencies; or
worse, of devotional fervors and of sensual indulgences. The same error
naturally brings with it a habit of referring to other, and to much less
satisfactory tests of Christian character than the influence of religion
upon the temper and conduct. So it happens that practical morality, from
being slighted as the only valid credential of profession, comes, too
often, to be thought of as something which, though it may be well in its
way, is a separable adjunct of true piety.
The rate of general feeling that exists at any time in a community
measures the height to which the exorbitances of enthusiasm may attain;
thus in times of peculiar excitement a perverted notion of Divine
influence is seen to ripen into the most fearful excesses. In such
seasons it is not enough that the presence of the Holy Spirit should be
indicated by unusual commotions of the mind; but convulsions of the body
also are demanded in proof of the heavenly agency. Extravagance becomes
gluttonous of marvels; religion is transmuted into pantomime; delirium
and hypocrisy, often found to be good friends, take their turns of
triumph; while humility, meekness, and sincerity, are trodden down in
the rout of impious confusion. Deplorable excesses of this kind happily
are infrequent, and never of long continuance; but it has happened more
than once in the history of Christianity that the habit of grimace in
religion, having established itself in an hour of fanatical agitation,
and become associated, perhaps, with momentous truths, as well as with
the distinguishing tenets of a sect, has long survived the warmth of
feeling in which it originated, and whence it might derive some apology,
and has passed down from father to son, a hideous mask of formality,
worshipped by the weak, and loathed, though not discarded, by the
sincere. Meanwhile an hereditary or a studied agitation of the voice and
muscles, ludicrous, if it were not distressing to be seen, is made to
represent before the world the sacred and solemn truth, a truth
essential to Christianity, that the Spirit of God dwells in the hearts
of Christians! Whatever special interpretation may be given to our
Lord's awful announcement concerning the sin against the Holy Ghost, an
announcement which stands out as an anomaly in the midst of his
declarations of mercy, every devout mind must regard it as shedding, if
we might say so, a penumbra of warning around the doctrine of divine
influence, and will admit an apprehension lest he should, by any
perversion of that doctrine, approach the precincts of so tremendous a
guilt, or become liable to the charge of giving occasion in others to
unpardonable blasphemies.
* * * * *
If it be true that the agency of the Holy Spirit in renovating the heart
is perfectly congruous with the natural movements of the mind, both in
its animal and intellectual constitution, it is implied that whatever
natural means of suasion, or of rational conviction, are proper to
rectify the motives of mankind, will be employed as concomitant, or
second causes of the change. These exterior and ordinary means of
amendment are, in fact, only certain parts of the entire machinery of
human nature; nor can it be believed that its Author holds in light
esteem his own wisdom of contrivance; or is at any time obliged to break
up or to contemn the mechanism which he has pronounced to be "very
good." That there actually exists no such intention and no such
necessity, is declared by the very mode and form of revealed religion;
for this revelation consists of the common materials of moral
influence—argument, history, poetry, eloquence. The same divine
authentication of the natural modes of influence, is contained in the
establishment of the Christian ministry, and in the warrant given to
parental instruction. These institutions concur to proclaim the great
law of the spiritual world, that the heavenly grace which reforms the
soul operates constantly in conjunction with second causes and ordinary
means. In an accommodated, yet legitimate sense of the words, it may be
affirmed of every such cause, that the "powers that be are of God;"
there is no power but of his ordaining; and "whosoever resisteth (or
would supersede) the power, resisteth the ordinance of God."
No one can doubt the possibility, abstractedly, of the immediate agency
of the Omnipotent Spirit of Grace, without the intervention of means;
nor does any one doubt the power of God to support human life without
aliment; for "man liveth not by bread alone." But in neither case does
he adopt this mode of independent operation: on the contrary, the Divine
conduct, wherever we can trace it, is seen to approve much more the
settled arrangements of wisdom, than the bare exertions of power. The
treasures of that wisdom are surely never exhausted, nor can a case
arise in which an immediate effort of Omnipotence becomes necessary
merely to supply the lack of instruments. Nor does the vindication of
the honors of Sovereign Grace need any such interpositions; for the
absolute necessity of an efficient power above that which resides in the
natural means of suasion is abundantly proved, on the one hand, by the
frequent inefficacy of these means, when employed under the most
favorable circumstances; and on the other, by the efficacy, as frequent,
of means apparently inadequate to the production of the happy changes
which result from them. It is not only affirmed by Scripture, but
established by experience, that "neither he that planteth, nor he that
watereth, is anything;" and at the same time it is affirmed by the one,
and established by the other, that, apart from the planting and the
watering of the husbandman, God, ordinarily, giveth no increase.
No persuasion or instruction, we are assured, can of itself, in any one
instance, avail to penetrate the deathlike indifference of the human
mind towards spiritual objects; but when once this torpor is removed by
inscrutable grace, then the very feeblest and most inadequate means are
sufficient for effecting the renovation of the heart. A single phrase,
speaking of judgment to come, lisped by a child, has proved itself of
power to awaken the soul from the slumber of the sensual life, if, when
the sound falls on the ear, the spirit has been quickened from above. In
such a case it were an error to affirm that the change of character was
effected independently of external means; for though they were disguised
under a semblance of extreme feebleness, and were such as might be
easily overlooked or forgotten, they had in themselves the substantial
powers of the highest eloquence; and what might have been added to the
momentous truth, so feebly announced, would have been little more than
embellishment; like the embroideries and embossments of the warrior's
garniture, which add nothing to the vigor of his arm.
Two causes seem to have operated in maintaining the notion that divine
influence is often dissociated from concurrent means of suasion; the
first of these is an ill-judged but excusable jealousy on the part of
pious persons for the honor of Sovereign Grace; and is a mere reaction
upon orthodoxy, from the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies such
persons have thought it necessary, for the safety of a most important
doctrine, not merely to assert the supremacy of the ultimate agent; but
to disparage, as much as possible, all intermediate instruments. The
second of these causes is the imaginary difficulty felt by those who,
having unadvisedly plunged into the depths of metaphysical theology,
when they should have busied themselves only with the plain things of
religion, fail in every attempt to adjust their notions of divine aid
and human responsibility; and, therefore, if they would be zealous for
the honor due to the first, think themselves obliged almost to nullify
the second. If any such difficulty actually exists, it should be made to
rest upon the operations of nature, where it meets us not less than in
the precincts of theology; and the husbandman should desist from his
toils until schoolmen have demonstrated to him the _rationale_ of the
combined operations of first and second causes. Or if such a
demonstration must not be waited for, and if the husbandman is to commit
the precious grain to the earth, and to use all his skill and industry
in favoring the inscrutable process of nature, then let the theologian
pursue a parallel course, content to know, that while the Scriptures
affirm in the clearest manner whatever may enhance our ideas of the
necessity and sovereignty of divine grace, they nowhere give intimation
of a suspended or halved responsibility on the part of man; but, on the
contrary, use, without scruple, language which implies that the
spiritual welfare of those who are taught depends on the zeal and labors
of the teacher, as truly as the temporal welfare of children depends on
the industry of a father. The practical consequences of such speculative
confusions are seen in the frightful apathy and culpable negligence of
some instructors and parents, who, because a metaphysical problem, which
ought never to have been heard of beyond the walls of colleges,
obstructs their understandings, have acquired the habit of gazing with
indifference upon the profaneness and immoralities of those whom their
diligence might have retained in the path of piety and virtue.
Another capital perversion remains to complete the enthusiastic abuse of
the doctrine of divine influence; and this is the supposition that those
heavenly communications to the soul which form a permanent constituent
of the Christian dispensation, are not always confined to the matter or
to the rule of Scripture, and that the favored subject of this teaching,
at least when he has made considerable advances in the divine life, is
led on a higher path of instruction, where the written revelation of the
will of God may be neglected or scorned. This bold delusion assumes two
forms: the first is that of the tranquil contemplatist, the whole of
whose religion is inarticulate and vague, and who neglects or rejects
the Scripture, not so much because he is averse to its truths, as
because the mistiness of his sentiments abhors whatever is distinct, and
definite, and fixed. To read a plain narrative of intelligible facts,
and to derive practical instruction therefrom, implies a state of mind
essentially different from that which he finds it necessary to his
factitious happiness to maintain: before he can thus read his Bible in
childlike simplicity he must forsake the religion of dreams, and open
his eyes to the world of realities; in a word he must cease to be an
enthusiast.
The other form of this delusion should excite pity rather than provoke
rebuke; and calls for the skill of the physician, more than for the
instructions of the theologian. The limits of insanity have not yet been
ascertained; perhaps it has none; and certainly there are facts that
favor the belief that the interval between common weakness of judgment
and outrageous madness is filled up by an insensible gradation of
absurdity, nowhere admitting of a line of absolute separation. Where,
for example, shall we pause, and separate the sane from the insane,
among those who believe themselves to be favored perpetually with
special, particular, and ultra-scriptural revelations from heaven? The
most modest enthusiast of this class, and the most daring visionary,
stand together on the same ground of outlawry from common sense and
scriptural authority; and though their several offences against truth
and sobriety may be of greater or less amount, they must both be dealt
with on the same principle; for both have alike excluded themselves from
the benefit of appeal to the only authorities known among the sane part
of mankind, namely, reason and Scripture: those who reject both,
surrender themselves over to pity—or compulsion.
It would manifestly be better that men should be left to the darkness
and wanderings of unassisted reason, than that they should receive the
immediate instructions of heaven, unless they possess at the same time a
public and fixed rule to which all such supernatural instructions are to
be conformed, and by which they are to be discriminated; for the errors
of reason, how great soever they may be, carry with them no weight of
divine authority; but if the doctrine of divine communications be
admitted, and admitted without reference to a public and permanent
standard of truth, then every extravagance of impiety may claim a
heavenly origin; and who shall venture to rebuke even the most pestilent
error; for how shall the reprover assure himself that he is not fighting
against God?
It has already been affirmed that enthusiasm, far from being necessarily
or invariably connected with fervor or feeling, is often seen to exist,
in its wildest excesses, conjoined with the most frigid style of
religious sentiment. Thus, for example, the three egregious perversions
of the doctrine of divine influence, which have been described in the
preceding pages, are maintained, and have been professed and defended
during several generations, by a sect remarkable, if not for the
chilliness, at least for the stillness of its piety, and its contempt of
the natural expressions of devotional feeling; and even for a peculiar
shrewdness of good sense in matters of worldly interest. But the
incongruities of human nature are immense and incalculable; or it would
not be seen that general intelligence, and amiable manners, and
Christian benevolence, are often linked with errors which, if viewed
abstractedly, might seem as if they could belong only to minds that were
lost to wisdom and piety.