it is no better. In 1667, Mr. Wilson, who had "A singular gift in the
practice of discipline," on his death-bed declared, that "God would
judge the people for their rebellion and self-willed spirit, for their
contempt of civil and ecclesiastical rulers, and for their luxury and
sloth," and before that he said, "People rise up as Corah, against their
ministers." "And for our neglect of baptizing the children of the
church,... I think God is provoked by it. Another sin I take to be the
making light ... of the authority of the Synods." John Norton, whose
piety was said to be "Grace, grafted on a crab-stock," in 1660, growled,
after his wont, on account of the "Heart of New England, rent with the
blasphemies of this generation." John Cotton, the ablest man in New
England, who "Liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin, before
he went to sleep," and was so pious that another could not swear while
he was under the roof, mourned at "The condition of the churches;" and,
in 1652, on his death-bed, after bestowing his blessing on the President
of Harvard College, who had begged it of him, exhorted the elders to
"Increase their watch against those declensions, which he saw the
professors of religion falling into."[2] In 1641, such was the condition
of piety in Boston, that it was thought necessary to banish a man,
because he did not believe in original sin. In 1639, a fast was
appointed, "To deplore the prevalence of the small-pox, the want of zeal
in the professors of religion, and the general decay of piety." "The
church of God had not been long in this wilderness," thus complains a
minister, one hundred and fifty years ago, "before the dragon cast
forth several floods to devour it; but not the least of these floods was
one of the Antinomian and familistical heresies." "It is incredible what
alienations of mind, and what a very calenture the devil raised in the
country upon this odd occasion." "The sectaries" "began usually to
seduce women into their notions, and by these women, like their first
mother, they soon hooked in the husbands also." So, in 1637, the Synod
of Cambridge was convened, to despatch "The apostate serpent:" one woman
was duly convicted of holding "About thirty monstrous opinions," and
subsequently, by the civil authorities, banished from the colony. The
synod, after much time was "spent in ventilation and emptying of private
passions," condemned eighty-two opinions, then prevalent in the colony,
as erroneous, and decided to "Refer doubts to be resolved by the great
God." Even in 1636, John Wilson lamented "The dark and distracted
condition of the churches of New England."
"The good old times," when piety was in a thriving state, and the
churches successful and contented, lay as far behind the "Famous Johns,"
as it now does behind their successors in office and lamentation. Then,
as now, the complaint had the same foundation: ministers and other good
men could not see that new piety will not be put into the old forms,
neither the old forms of thought, nor the old forms of action. In the
days of Wilson, Cotton, and Norton, there was a gradual growth of
piety; in the days of the Mathers, of Colman, and Willard, and from that
time to this, there has been a steady improvement of the community, in
intellectual, moral, and religious culture. Some men could not see the
progress two hundred years ago, because they believed in no piety,
except as it was manifested in their conventional forms. It is so now.
Mankind advances by the irresistible law of God, under the guidance of a
few men of large discourse, who look before and after, but amid the
wailing of many who think each advance is a retreat, and every stride a
stumble.
Now-a-days nobody complains at "The ungodly custom of wearing long
hair;" no dandy is dealt with by the church, for his dress; the weakest
brother is not offended by "Regular singing,"--so it be regular,--"by
organs and the like;" nobody laments at "The reading of Scripture
lessons," or "The use of the Lord's Prayer" in public religious
services, or is offended, because a clergyman makes a prayer at a
funeral, and solemnizes a marriage,--though these are "prelatical
customs," and were detested by our fathers. Yet, other things, now as
much dreaded, and thought "of a bad and dangerous tendency," will one
day prove themselves as innocent, though now as much mourned over. Many
an old doctrine will fade out, and though some think a star has fallen
out of heaven, a new truth will rise up and take its place. It is to be
expected that ministers will often complain of "The general decay of
religion." The position of a clergyman, fortunate in many things, is
unhappy in this: he seldom sees the result of his labors, except in the
conventional form mentioned above. The lawyer, the doctor, the merchant
and mechanic, the statesman and the farmer, all have visible and
palpable results of their work, while the minister can only see that he
has baptized men, and admitted them to his church; the visible and
quotable tokens of his success, are a large audience, respectable and
attentive, a thriving Sunday school, or a considerable body of
communicants. If these signs fail, or become less than formerly, he
thinks he has labored in vain; that piety is on the decline, for it is
only by this form that he commonly tests and measures piety itself.
Hence, a sincere and earnest minister, with the limitations which he so
easily gets from his profession and social position, is always prone to
think ill of the times, to undervalue the new wine which refuses to be
kept in the old bottles, but rends them asunder; hence he bewails the
decline of religion, and looks longingly back to the days of his
fathers.
But you will ask, Why does not a minister demand piety in its natural
form? Blame him not; unconsciously he fulfils his contract, and does
what he is taught, ordained, and paid for doing. It is safe for a
minister to demand piety of his parish, in the conventional form; not
safe to demand it in the form of morality--eminent piety, in the form
of philanthropy: it would be an innovation; it would "Hurt men's
feelings;" it might disturb some branches of business; at the North, it
would interfere with the liquor-trade; at the South, with the
slave-trade; everywhere it would demand what many men do not like to
give. If a man asks piety in the form of bodily attendance at church, on
the only idle day in the week, when business and amusement must be
refrained from; in the form of belief in doctrines which are commonly
accepted by the denomination, and compliance with its forms,--that is
customary; it hurts nobody's feelings; it does not disturb the
liquor-trade, nor the slave-trade; it interferes with nothing, not even
with respectable sleep in a comfortable pew. A minister, like others
loves to be surrounded by able and respectable men; he seeks, therefore,
a congregation of such. If he is himself an able man, it is well; but
there are few in any calling, whom we designate as able. Our weak man
cannot instruct his parishioners; he soon learns this, and ceases to
give them counsel on matters of importance. They would not suffer it,
for the larger includes the less, not the less the larger. He is not
strong by nature; their position overlooks and commands his. He must
speak and give some counsel; he wisely limits himself to things of but
little practical interest, and his parishioners are not offended: "That
is my sentiment exactly," says the most worldly man in the church,
"Religion is too pure to be mixed up with the practical business of the
street." The original and effectual preaching in such cases, is not from
the pulpit down upon the pews, but from the pews up to the pulpit, which
only echoes, consciously or otherwise, but does not speak.
In a solar system, the central sun, not barely powerful from its
position, is the most weighty body; heavier than all the rest put
together; so with even swing they all revolve about it. Our little
ministerial sun was ambitious of being amongst large satellites; he is
there, but the law of gravitation amongst men is as certain as in
matter; he cannot poise and swing the system; he is not the sun thereof,
not even a primary planet, only a little satellite revolving with many
nutations round some primary, in an orbit that is oblique, complicated,
and difficult to calculate; now waxing in a "Revival," now waning in a
"Decline of piety," now totally eclipsed by his primary that comes
between him and the light which lighteth every man. Put one of the cold
thin moons of Saturn into the centre of the solar system,--would the
universe revolve about that little dot? Loyal matter with irresistible
fealty gravitates towards the sun, and wheels around the balance-point
of the world's weight, be it where it may, called by whatever name.
While ministers insist unduly on the conventional manifestation of
piety, it is not a thing unheard of for a layman to resolve to go to
heaven by the ecclesiastical road, yet omit resolving to be a good man
before he gets there. Such a man finds the ordinary forms of piety very
convenient, and not at all burdensome; they do not interfere with his
daily practice of injustice and meanness of soul; they seem a substitute
for real and manly goodness; they offer a royal road to saintship here
and heaven hereafter. Is the man in arrears with virtue, having long
practised wickedness and become insolvent? This form is a new bankrupt
law of the spirit, he pays off his old debts in the ecclesiastical
currency--a pennyworth of form for a pound of substantial goodness. This
bankrupt sinner, cleared by the ecclesiastical chancery, is a solvent
saint; he exhorts at meetings, strains at every gnat, and mourns over
"The general decay of piety," and teaches other men the way in which
they should go--to the same end.
"So morning insects that in muck begun,
Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the evening sun."
I honor the founders of New England; they were pious men--their lives
proved it; but domineered over by false opinions in theology, they put
their piety into very unnatural and perverted forms. They had ideas
which transcended their age; they came here to make those ideas into
institutions. That they had great faults, bigotry, intolerance, and
superstition, is now generally conceded. They were picked men, "wheat
sifted out of three kingdoms," to plant a new world withal. They have
left their mark very deep and very distinct in this town, which was
their prayer and their pride. It may seem unjust to ourselves to compare
a whole community like our own with such a company as filled Boston in
the first half century of its existence,--men selected for their
spiritual hardihood; but here and now, in the midst of Boston, are men
quite as eminent for piety who as far transcend this age, as the
Puritans and the pilgrims surpassed their time. The Puritan put his
religion into the ecclesiastical form; not into the form of the Roman or
the English Church, but into a new one of his own. His descendant,
inheriting his father's faith in God, and stern self-denial, but
sometimes without his bigotry, intolerance, and superstition, with
little fear but with more love of God, and consequently with more love
of man, puts his piety into a new form. It is not the form of the old
Church; the Church of the Puritans is to him often what the Church of
the Pope and the prelates was to his ungentle sire. He puts his piety
into the form of goodness; eminent piety becomes philanthropy, and takes
the shape of reform. In such men, in many of their followers, I see the
same trust in God, the same scorn of compromising right and truth, the
same unfaltering allegiance to the eternal Father, which shone in the
pilgrims who founded this new world, which fired the reformers of the
Church; yes, which burned in the hearts of Paul and John. Piety has not
failed and gone out; each age has its own forms thereof; the old and
passing can never understand the new, nor can they consent to decrease
with the increase of the new. Once, men put their piety into a church,
Catholic or Protestant; they made creeds and believed them; they devised
rites and symbols, which helped their faith. It was well; but we cannot
believe those creeds, nor be aided by such symbols and such rites. Why
pretend to drag a weighty crutch about because it helped your father
once, wandering alone and in the dark, sounding on his dim and perilous
way? Once earthen roads were the best we knew, and horses' feet had
shoes of swiftness; now we need not, out of reverence, refuse the iron
road, the chariot and the steed of flame; nor out of irreverence need we
spurn the path our fathers trod; sorely bested and hunted after,
tear-bedewed and travel-stained, they journeyed there, passing on to
their God. If the mother that bore us were never so rude, and to our
eyes might seem never so graceless now, still she was our mother, and
without her we should not have been born. Wives and children may men
have, and manifold; each has but one mother. The great institution we
call the Christian Church has been the mother of us all; and though in
her own dotage she deny our piety, and call us infidel, far be it from
me to withhold the richly earned respect. Behind a decent veil, then,
let us hide our mother's weakness, and ourselves pass on. Once piety
built up a theocracy, and men say it was divine; now piety, everywhere
in Christendom, builds up democracies; it is a diviner work.
* * * * *
The piety of this age must manifest itself in Morality, and appear in a
church where the priests are men of active mind and active hand; men of
ideas, who commune with God and man through faith and works, finding no
truth is hostile to their creed, no goodness foreign to their litany, no
piety discordant with their psalm. The man who once would have built a
convent and been its rigorous chief, now founds a temperance society,
contends against war, toils for the pauper, the criminal, the madman,
and the slave, for men bereft of senses and of sense. The synod of Dort
and of Cambridge, the assembly of divines at Westminster, did what they
could with what piety they had; they put it into decrees and platforms,
into catechisms and creeds. But the various conventions for reform put
their piety into resolves and then into philanthropic works. I do not
believe there has ever been an age when piety bore so large a place in
the whole being of New England as at this day, or attendance on
church-forms so small a part. The attempts made and making for a better
education of the people, the lectures on science and literature
abundantly attended in this town, the increased fondness for reading,
the better class of books which are read--all these indicate an
increased love of truth, the intellectual part of piety; societies for
reform and for charity show an increase of the moral and affectional
parts of piety; the better, the lovelier idea of God which all sects are
embracing, is a sign of increased love of God. Thus all parts of piety
are proving their existence by their work. The very absence from the
churches, the disbelief of the old sour theologies, the very neglect of
outward forms and ceremonies of religion, the decline of the ministry
itself, under the present circumstances, shows an increase of piety. The
baby-clothes were well and wide for the baby; now, the fact that he
cannot get them on, shows plainly that he has outgrown them, is a boy
and no longer a baby.
Once Piety fled to the Church as the only sanctuary in the waste wide
world, and was fondly welcomed there, fed and fostered. When power fled
off from the Church--"Wilt thou also go away?" said she; "Lord," said
Piety, "to whom shall we go? Thou only hast the words of everlasting
life." Once convents and cathedrals were what the world needed as
shelter for this fair child of God; then she dwelt in the grim edifice
that our fathers built, and for a time counted herself "lodged in a
lodging where good things are." Now is she grown able to wander forth
fearless and free, lodging where the night overtakes her, and doing what
her hands find to do, not unattended by the Providence which hitherto
has watched over and blessed her. I respect piety in the Hebrew saints,
prophets, and bards, who spoke the fiery speech, or sung their sweet and
soul-inspiring psalm:
"Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old."
I honor piety among the saints of Greece, clad in the form of
philanthropy and art, speaking still in dramas, in philosophies, and
song, and in the temple and the statue too:
"Not from a vain and shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought."
I admire at the piety of the Middle Ages, which founded the monastic
tribes of men, which wrote the theologies, scholastic and mystic both,
still speaking to the mind of men, or in poetic legends insinuated
truth; which built that heroic architecture, overmastering therewith the
sense and soul of man:
"The passive master lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o'er him planned:
And the same Power that reared the shrine,
Bestrode the tribes that knelt therein."
But the piety which I find now, in this age, here in our own land, I
respect, honor, and admire yet more; I find it in the form of moral
life; that is the piety I love, piety in her own loveliness. Would I
could find poetic strains as fit to sing of her--but yet such
"Loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is, when unadorned, adorned the most."
Let me do no dishonor to other days, to Hebrew or to Grecian saints.
Unlike and hostile though they were, they jointly fed my soul in
earliest days. I would not underrate the mediaeval saints, whose words
and works have been my study in a manlier age; yet I love best the fair
and vigorous piety of our own day. It is beautiful, amid the strong,
rank life of the nineteenth century, amid the steam-mills and the
telegraphs which talk by lightning, amid the far-reaching enterprises of
our time, and 'mid the fierce democracies, it is beautiful to find this
fragrant piety growing up in unwonted forms, in places where men say no
seed of heaven can lodge and germinate. So in a June meadow, when a boy,
and looking for the cranberries of another year, faded and tasteless,
amid the pale but coarse rank grass, and discontented that I found them
not, so I have seen the crimson arethusa or the cymbidium shedding an
unexpected loveliness o'er all the watery soil and all the pale and
coarse rank grass, a prophecy of summer near at hand. So in October,
when the fields are brown with frost, the blue and fringed gentian meets
your eye, filling with thankful tears.
There is no decline of piety, but an increase of it; a good deal has
been done in two hundred years, in one hundred years, yes, in fifty
years. Let us admit, with thankfulness of heart, that piety is in
greater proportion to all our activity now than ever before: but then
compare ourselves with the ideal of human nature, our piety with the
ideal piety, and we must confess that we are little and very low. Boston
is the most active city in the world, the most enterprising. In no place
is it so easy to obtain men's ears and their purses for any good word
and work. But think of the evils we know of and tolerate; think of an
ideal Christian city, then think of Boston; of a Christian man, aye of
Christ himself, and then think of you and me, and we are filled with
shame. If there were a true, manly piety in this town, in due proportion
to our numbers, wealth, and enterprise, how long would the vices of this
city last? How long would men complain of a dead body of divinity and a
dead church, and a ministry that was dead? How long would intemperance
continue, and pauperism, in Boston; how long slavery in this land?
* * * * *
Last Sunday, in the name of the poor, I asked you for your charity.
To-day I ask for dearer alms: I ask you to contribute your piety. It
will help the town more than the little money all of us can give. Your
money will soon be spent; it feeds one man once; we cannot give it
twice, though the blessing thereof may linger long in the hand which
gave. Few of us can give much money to the poor; some of us none at all.
This we can all give: the inspiration of a man with a man's piety in his
heart, living it out in a man's life. Your money may be ill spent, your
charity misapplied, but your piety never. After all, there is nothing
you can give which men will so readily take and so long remember as
this. Mothers can give it to their daughters and their sons; men, after
spending thereof profusely at home, can coin their inexhausted store
into industry, patience, integrity, temperance, justice, humanity, a
practical love of man. A thousand years ago, it was easy to excuse men
if they chiefly showed religion in the conventional pattern of the
church. Forms then were helps, and the nun has been mother to much of
the charity of our times. It is easy to excuse our fathers for their
superstitious reverence for rites and forms. But now, in an age which
has its eyes a little open, a practical and a handy age, we are without
excuse if our piety appears not in a manly life, our faith in works. To
give this piety to cheer and bless mankind, you must have it first, be
cheered and blessed thereby yourself. Have it, then, in your own way;
put it into your own form. Do men tell you, "This is a degenerate age,"
and "Religion is dying out?" tell them that when those stars have faded
out of the sky from very age, when other stars have come up to take
their place, and they too have grown dim and hollow-eyed and old, that
religion will still live in man's heart, the primal, everlasting light
of all our being. Do they tell you that you must put piety into their
forms; put it there if it be your place; if not, in your place. Let men
see the divinity that is in you by the humanity that comes out from you.
If they will not see it, cannot, God can and will. Take courage from the
past, not its counsel; fear not now to be a man. You may find a new Eden
where you go, a river of God in it, and a tree of life, an angel to
guard it; not the warning angel to repel, but the guiding angel to
welcome and to bless.
* * * * *
It was four years yesterday since I first came here to speak to you; I
came hesitatingly, reluctant, with much diffidence as to my power to do
what it seemed to me was demanded. I did not come merely to pull down,
but to build up, though it is plain much theological error must be
demolished before any great reform of man's condition can be brought
about. I came not to contend against any man, or sect, or party, but to
speak a word for truth and religion in the name of man and God. I was in
bondage to no sect; you in bondage to none. When a boy I learned that
there is but one religion though many theologies. I have found it in
Christians and in Jews, in Quakers and in Catholics. I hope we are all
ready to honor what is good in each sect, and in rejecting its evil not
to forget our love and wisdom in our zeal.
When I came I certainly did not expect to become a popular man, or
acceptable to many. I had done much which in all countries brings odium
on a man, though perhaps less in Boston than in any other part of the
world. I had rejected the popular theology of Christendom. I had exposed
the low morals of society, had complained of the want of piety in its
natural form. I had fatally offended the sect, small in numbers, but
respectable for intelligence and goodness, in which I was brought up. I
came to look at the signs of the times from an independent point of
view, and to speak on the most important of all themes. I thought a
house much smaller than this would be much too large for us. I knew
there would be fit audience; I thought it would be few, and the few
would soon have heard enough and go their ways.