on the Church of Scotland, "the minister of the parish of Anworth was
the famous Samuel Rutherford, the great religious oracle of the
Covenanters and their adherents. It was, as all readers of his letters
will remember, the spot which he most loved on earth. The very swallows
and sparrows which found their nests in the church of Anworth were, when
far away, the objects of his affectionate envy. Its hills and valleys
were the witnesses of his ardent devotion when living; they still retain
his memory with unshaken fidelity. It is one of the traditions thus
cherished on the spot, that on a Saturday evening, at one of those
family gatherings whence, in the language of the good Scottish poet,--
'Old Scotia's grandeur springs,'
when Rutherford was catechising his children and servants, that a
stranger knocked at the door of the manse, and begged shelter for the
night. The minister kindly received him, and asked him to take his place
amongst the family and assist at their religious exercises. It so
happened that the question in the catechism which came to the stranger's
turn was that which asks, 'How many commandments are there?' He
answered, 'Eleven.' 'Eleven!' exclaimed Rutherford; 'I am surprised that
a man of your age and appearance should not know better. What do you
mean?' And he answered, 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love
one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this
shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to
another.' Rutherford was much impressed by the answer, and they retired
to rest. The next morning he rose early to meditate on the services of
the day. The old manse of Anworth stood--its place is still pointed
out--in the corner of a field, under the hill-side, and thence a long,
winding, wooded path, still called Rutherford's Walk, leads to the
church. Through this glen he passed, and, as he threaded his way through
the thicket, he heard amongst the trees the voice of the stranger at his
morning devotions. The elevation of the sentiments and of the
expressions convinced him that it was no common man. He accosted him,
and the traveler confessed to him that he was no other than the great
divine and scholar, Archbishop Usher, the Primate of the Church of
Ireland, one of the best and most learned men of his age, who well
fulfilled that new commandment in the love which he won and which he
bore to others; one of the few links of Christian charity between the
fierce contending factions of that time, devoted to King Charles I. in
his life-time, and honored in his grave by the Protector Cromwell. He it
was who, attracted by Rutherford's fame, had thus come in disguise to
see him in the privacy of his own home. The stern Covenanter welcomed
the stranger prelate; side by side they pursued their way along
Rutherford's Walk to the little church, of which the ruins still remain;
and in that small Presbyterian sanctuary, from Rutherford's rustic
pulpit, the archbishop preached to the people of Anworth on the words
which had so startled his host the evening before: 'A new commandment I
give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye
also love one another.'"
In a legend which St. Jerome has recorded, and which, says the same
writer, in his Essays on the Apostolic Age, is not the less impressive
because so familiar to us, we see the aged Apostle (John) borne in the
arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating
over and over again the same saying, "Little children, love one
another;" till, when asked why he said this and nothing else, he replied
in those well-known words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of the
beloved disciple, "Because this is our Lord's command, and if you
fulfill this, nothing else is needed."
"An acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout Christendom for a
season," says Emerson, "would bring the felon and the outcast to our
side in tears, with the devotion of his faculties to our service. Love
would put a new face on this weary old world, in which we dwell as
pagans and enemies too long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast
the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies and navies and
lines of defense, would be superseded by this unarmed child." We do not
believe, or we forget, that "the Holy Ghost came down, not in the shape
of a vulture, but in the form of a dove."
Rogers' stories of children, of which he told many, were very pretty.
The prettiest was of a little girl who was a great favorite of every one
who knew her. "Why does everybody love you so much?" She answered, "I
think it is because I love everybody so much."
"A strong argument," thought Poe, "for the religion of Christ is
this--that offenses against charity are about the only ones which men on
their death-beds can be made--not to understand--but to feel--as crime."
"Tell me, gentle traveler, who hast wandered through the world, and seen
the sweetest roses blow, and brightest gliding rivers, of all thine eyes
have seen, which is the fairest land?" "Child, shall I tell thee where
nature is most blest and fair? It is where those we love abide. Though
that space be small, ample is it above kingdoms; though it be a desert,
through it runs the river of paradise, and there are the enchanted
bowers."
"We ought," says the author of Ecce Homo, "to be just as tolerant of an
imperfect creed as we are of an imperfect practice. Everything which can
be urged in excuse for the latter may also be pleaded for the former. If
the way to Christian action is beset by corrupt habits and misleading
passions, the path to Christian truth is overgrown with prejudices, and
strewn with fallen theories and rotting systems which hide it from our
view. It is quite as hard to think rightly as to act rightly, or even to
feel rightly. And as all allow that an error is a less culpable thing
than a crime or a vicious passion, it is monstrous that it should be
more severely punished; it is monstrous that Christ, who was called the
friend of publicans and sinners, should be represented as the pitiless
enemy of bewildered seekers of truth. How could men have been guilty of
such an inconsistency? By speaking of what they do not understand. Men
in general do not understand or appreciate the difficulty of finding
truth. All men must act, and therefore all men learn in some degree how
difficult it is to act rightly. The consequence is that all men can make
excuse for those who fail to act rightly. But all men are not compelled
to make an independent search for truth, and those who voluntarily
undertake to do so are always few. To the world at large it seems quite
easy to find truth, and inexcusable to miss it. And no wonder! For by
finding truth they mean only learning by rote the maxims current among
them." "Maxims and first principles," says Pascal, "are subject to
revolutions; and we are to go to chronology for the epochs of right and
wrong. A very humorsome justice this, which is bounded by a river or a
mountain: orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the
other." "Let there," begs the Spanish President Castelar, "be no more
accursed races on the earth. Let every one act according to his
conscience, and communicate freely with his God. Let thought be only
corrected by the contradiction of thought. Let error be an infirmity,
and not a crime. Let us agree in acknowledging that opinions sometimes
take possession of our understandings quite independent of our will or
desire. Let us be so just as to be enabled to see even to what degree
each race has contributed to the universal education of humanity."
"Every new idea," says a writer in The Quarterly Review, "creates an
enthusiasm in the minds of those who have first grasped it, which
renders them incapable of viewing it in its true proportions to the sum
total of knowledge. It is in their eyes no new denizen of the world of
facts, but a heaven-sent ruler of it, to which all previously recognized
truths must be made to bow. As time goes on, truer views obtain. The new
principle ceases to be regarded either as a pestilent delusion or as a
key to all mysteries. Its application comes to be better defined and its
value more reasonably appreciated, when both idolators and iconoclasts
have passed away, and a new generation begins to take stock of its
intellectual inheritance."
"The truth," said Goethe, "must be repeated over and over again, because
error is repeatedly preached among us, not only by individuals, but by
the masses. In periodicals and cyclopedias, in schools and universities,
everywhere, in fact, error prevails, and is quite easy in the feeling
that it has quite a majority on its side." "Public opinion, of which we
hear so much," said a writer in Blackwood, long ago, "is never anything
else than the reecho of the thought of a few great men half a century
before. It takes that time for ideas to flow down from the elevated to
the inferior level. The great never adopt, they only originate. Their
chief efforts are always made in opposition to the prevailing opinions
by which they are surrounded. Thence it is that a powerful mind is
always uneasy when it is not in the minority on any subject which
excites general attention." "If you discover a truth," says an unknown
author, "you are persecuted by an infinite number of people who gain
their living from the error you oppose, saying that this error itself is
the truth, and that the greatest error is that which tends to destroy
it." "There arose no small stir" at Ephesus on account of Paul's
preaching. "For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made
silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; whom
he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs,
ye know that by this craft we have our wealth: moreover, ye see and
hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this
Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no
gods which are made with hands. So that not only this our craft is in
danger to be set at naught; but also that the temple of the great
goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be
destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. And when they heard
these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is
Diana of the Ephesians."
Thomas Aikenhead, a student of eighteen, was hanged at Edinburgh, in
1697, for having uttered, says Macaulay, in his History, free opinions
about the Trinity and some of the books of the Bible. His offense was
construed as blasphemy under an old Scotch statute, which was strained
for the purpose of convicting him. After his sentence he recanted, and
begged a short respite to make his peace with God. This the privy
council declined to grant, unless the Edinburgh clergy would intercede
for him; but so far were they from seconding his petition, that they
actually demanded that his execution should not be delayed. "Imagine,
if you can," says Froude, in one of his essays, "a person being now put
to death for a speculative theological opinion. You feel at once that,
in the most bigoted country in the world, such a thing has become
impossible; and the impossibility is the measure of the alteration which
we have all undergone. The formulas remain as they were, on either
side,--the very same formulas which were once supposed to require these
detestable murders. But we have learned to know each other better. The
cords which bind together the brotherhood of mankind are woven of a
thousand strands. We do not any more fly apart or become enemies
because, here and there, in one strand out of so many, there are still
unsound places."
It was in the Star Chamber (during the reign of Charles I., after
Christ, sixteen hundred and thirty-seven years) that Leighton, a
clergyman, for coarse invectives against prelacy and prelates, received
the sentence by which he was severely whipped in public, was put in the
pillory, had one ear cut off, one side of his nose slit, and one cheek
branded with the letters S. S., to denote that he was a sower of
sedition. "On that day week," says Laud (then Archbishop of Canterbury),
who instigated the prosecution, "the sores upon his back, ear, nose, and
face being not cured, he was whipped again at the pillory, and there had
the remainder of his sentence executed upon him, by cutting off the
other ear, slitting the other side of his nose, and branding the other
cheek." He was, in addition, degraded from his ministry, fined ten
thousand pounds, and ordered to be retained in confinement for life.
"There is a violent zeal," says Fenelon, "that we must correct; it
thinks it can change the whole world, it would reform everything, it
would subject every one to its laws. The origin of this zeal is
disgraceful. The defects of our neighbor interfere with our own; our
vanity is wounded by that of another; our own haughtiness finds our
neighbor's ridiculous and insupportable; our restlessness is rebuked by
the sluggishness and indolence of this person; our gloom is disturbed by
the gayety and frivolities of that person, and our heedlessness by the
shrewdness and address of another. If we were faultless, we should not
be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we
were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear
patiently with our neighbors' weaknesses, we should show our own
imperfection, and this alarms our vanity. We therefore make our weakness
pass for strength, elevate it to a virtue and call it zeal; an imaginary
and often hypocritical zeal. For is it not surprising to see how
tranquil we are about the errors of others when they do not trouble us,
and how soon this wonderful zeal kindles against those who excite our
jealousy, or weary our patience?" "We reprove our friends' faults," said
Wycherley, "more out of pride than love or charity; not so much to
correct them as to make them believe we are ourselves without them."
Simonides satirizes the same infirmity in a fable, to be found in the
treasures of Athenaeus:--
With his claw the snake surprising,
Thus the crab kept moralizing:--
"Out on sidelong turns and graces,
Straight's the word for honest paces!"
It was Dean Swift who said, "We have just enough of religion to make us
hate, but not enough to make us love, one another." "Your business,"
said Hunt, "is to preach love to your neighbor, to kick him to bits, and
to thank God for the contradiction." "The falsehood that the tongue
commits," said Landor, "is slight in comparison with what is conceived
by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout life. If,
professing love and charity to the human race at large, I quarrel day
after day with my next neighbor; if, professing that the rich can never
see God, I spend in the luxuries of my household a talent monthly; if,
professing to place so much confidence in his word, that, in regard to
worldly weal, I need take no care for to-morrow, I accumulate stores
even beyond what would be necessary though I quite distrusted both his
providence and his veracity; if, professing that 'he who giveth to the
poor lendeth to the Lord,' I question the Lord's security, and haggle
with him about the amount of the loan; if, professing that I am their
steward, I keep ninety-nine parts in the hundred as the emolument of my
stewardship: how, when God hates liars, and punishes defrauders, shall
I, and other such thieves and hypocrites, fare hereafter?" In one of his
chapters on the Study of Sociology, Herbert Spencer remarks that "it
would clear up our ideas about many things, if we distinctly recognized
the truth that we have two religions." These two religions Mr. Spencer
designates as the "religion of amity" and the "religion of enmity." "Of
course," he says, "I don't mean that these are both called religions.
Here I am not speaking of names; I am speaking simply of things.
Nowadays men do not pay the same nominal homage to the religion of
enmity that they do to the religion of amity--the religion of amity
occupies the place of honor. But the real homage is paid in large
measure, if not in the larger measure, to the religion of enmity. The
religion of enmity nearly all men actually believe. The religion of
amity most of them merely believe they believe." "The Church of Rome,"
said F. W. Robertson, in his sermon on The Tongue, "hurls her thunders
against Protestants of every denomination; the Calvinist scarcely
recognizes the Arminian as a Christian; he who considers himself as the
true Anglican excludes from the church of Christ all but the adherents
of his own orthodoxy; every minister and congregation has its small
circle, beyond which all are heretics; nay, even among that sect which
is most lax as to the dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Unitarian of
the old school denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising school.
Sisters of Charity refuse to permit an act of charity to be done by a
Samaritan; ministers of the gospel fling the thunder-bolts of the Lord;
ignorant hearers catch and exaggerate the spirit; boys, girls, and women
shudder as one goes by, perhaps more holy than themselves, who adores
the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, struggles in the same
life-battle--and all this because they have been taught to look upon him
as an enemy of God." "Particular churches and sects," says Sir Thomas
Browne, "usurp the gates of heaven, and turn the keys against each
other; and thus we go to heaven against each others' wills, conceits,
and opinions." "The church of the future," in the opinion of Father
Hyacinthe, "will know nothing of such divisions, such discordances, and
she will uphold the freedom of theologies and the diversity of rites in
the unity of one faith and of one worship." "As soon," said Goethe, "as
the pure doctrine and love of Christ are comprehended in their true
nature, and have become a vital principle, we shall feel ourselves as
human beings, great and free, and not attach especial importance to a
degree more or less in the outward forms of religion: besides, we shall
all gradually advance from a Christianity of words and faith to a
Christianity of feeling and action." "Could we," said Dean Young, "but
once descend from our high pretenses of religion to the humility that
only makes men religious, could we but once prefer Christianity itself
before the several factions that bear its name, our differences would
sink of themselves; and it would appear to us that there is more
religion in not contending than there is in the matter we contend
about." "Do you remember," asks the author of The Eclipse of Faith, "the
passage in Woodstock, in which our old favorite represents the
Episcopalian Rochecliffe and the Presbyterian Holdenough meeting
unexpectedly in prison, after many years of separation, during which one
had thought the other dead? How sincerely glad they were, and how
pleasantly they talked; when, lo! an unhappy reference to 'the bishopric
of Titus' gradually abated the fervor of their charity, and inflamed
that of their zeal, even till they at last separated in mutual dudgeon,
and sat glowering at each other in their distant corners with looks in
which the 'Episcopalian' and 'Presbyterian' were much more evident than
the 'Christian:' and so they persevered till the sudden summons to them
and their fellow-prisoners, to prepare for instant execution, dissolved
as with a charm the anger they had felt, and 'Forgive me, O my brother,'
and 'I have sinned against thee, my brother,' broke from their lips as
they took what they thought would be a last farewell." "I sometimes,"
says Froude, "in impatient moments, wish the laity would treat their
controversial divines as two gentlemen once treated their seconds, when
they found themselves forced into a duel without knowing what they were
quarreling about. As the principals were being led up to their places,
one of them whispered to the other, 'If you will shoot your second, I
will shoot mine.'"
Benjamin Lay, a violent enthusiast and harsh reformer--contemporary with
John Woolman--was, it is said, well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who
sometimes visited him. Among other schemes of reform he entertained the
idea of converting all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by
three persons--himself and two other enthusiasts, assisted by Dr.
Franklin. But on their first meeting at the doctor's house, the three
"chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of doctrine,
and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been an amused
listener, advised the three sages to give up the project of converting
the world until they had learned to tolerate each other.
"Man," says Harrington, in his Political Aphorisms, "may rather be
defined a religious than a rational creature, in regard that in other
creatures there may be something of reason, but there is nothing of
religion." "If you travel through the world well," says Plutarch, "you
may find cities without walls, without literature, without kings,
moneyless, and such as desire no coin; which know not what theatres or
public halls of bodily exercise mean; but never was there, nor ever
shall there be, any one city seen without temple, church, or chapel;
without some god or other; which useth no prayers nor oaths, no
prophecies and divinations, no sacrifices, either to obtain good
blessings or to avert heavy curses and calamities. Nay, methinks a man
should sooner find a city built in the air, without any plot of ground
whereon it is seated, than that any commonwealth altogether void of
religion and the opinion of the gods should either be first established,
or afterward preserved and maintained in that estate. This is that
containeth and holdeth together all human society; this is the
foundation, prop, and stay of all."
The holy Nanac on the ground one day,
Reclining with his feet toward Mecca, lay;
A passing Moslem priest, offended, saw,
And flaming for the honor of his law,
Exclaimed: "Base infidel, thy prayers repeat!
Toward Allah's house how dar'st thou turn thy feet?"
Before the Moslem's shallow accents died,
The pious but indignant Nanac cried:
"And turn them, if thou canst, toward any spot,
Wherein the awful house of God is not!"
"How striking a proof is it," says a writer on The Religions of India,
"of the strength of the adoring principle in human nature--what an
illustration of mankind's sense of dependence upon an unseen
Supreme--that the grandest works which the nations have reared are those
connected with religion! Were a spirit from some distant world to look
down upon the surface of our planet as it spins round in the solar rays,
his eye would be most attracted, as the morning light passed onward, by
the glittering and painted pagodas of China, Borneo, and Japan; the
richly ornamented temples and stupendous rock shrines of India; the
dome-topped mosques and tall, slender minarets of Western Asia; the
pyramids and vast temples of Egypt, with their mile-long avenues of
gigantic statues and sphinxes; the graceful shrines of classic Greece;
the basilicas of Rome and Byzantium; the semi-oriental church-domes of
Moscow; the Gothic cathedrals of Western Europe: and as the day closed,
the light would fall dimly upon the ruins of the grand sun-temples of
Mexico and Peru, where, in the infancy of reason and humanity, human
sacrifices were offered up, as if the All-Father were pleased with the
agony of his creatures!"