good thing to go there when the way of improvement leads through it;
when you are made wiser and better by being there. I am pained to see a
man spend the whole of a Sunday in going to church,--and forgetting
himself in getting acquainted with the words of the preachers. I think
most intelligent hearers, and most intelligent and Christian preachers,
will confess that two sermons are better than three, and one is better
than two. One need only look at the afternoon face of a congregation in
the city, to be satisfied of this. If one half the day were devoted to
public worship, the other half might be free for private studies of men
at home, for private devotion, for social relaxation, for intercourse
with one's own family and friends. Then Sunday afternoon and evening
would afford an excellent opportunity for meetings for the promotion of
the great humane movements of the day, which some would think not
evangelical enough to be treated of in the morning. Would it be
inconsistent with the great purposes of the day, inconsistent with
Christianity, to have lectures on science, literature, and similar
subjects delivered then? I do not believe the Catholic custom of
spending the Sunday afternoon in England, before the Reformation, was a
good one. It diverted men from the higher end to the lower. I cannot
think that here and now we need amusement so much as society,
instruction, refinement, and devotion. Yet it seems to me unwise to
restrain the innocent sports of children of a Sunday, to the same degree
that our fathers did; to make Sunday to them a day of gloom and sadness.
Thoughtful parents are now much troubled in this matter; they cannot
enforce the old discipline, so disastrous to themselves; they fear to
trust their own sense of what is right;--so, perhaps, get the ill of
both schemes, and the good of neither. There are in Boston about thirty
thousand Catholics, twenty-five thousand of them, probably, too ignorant
to read with pleasure or profit any book. At home, amusement formed a
part of their Sunday service; it was a part of their religion to make a
festive use of Sunday afternoon. What shall they do? Is it Christian in
us by statute to interdict them from their recreation? With the
exception of children and these most ignorant persons, it does not
appear that there is any class amongst us who need any part of the
Sunday for sport.
I am not one of those who wish "to give up the Sunday;" indeed there are
few such men amongst us; I would make it yet more useful and profitable.
I would remove from it the superstition and the bigotry which have so
long been connected with it; I would use it freely, as a Christian not
enslaved by the letter of Judaism, but made free by an obedience to the
law of the spirit of life. I would use the Sunday for religion in the
wide sense of that word; use it to promote piety and goodness, for
humanity, for science, for letters, for society. I would not abuse it
by impudent license on the one hand, nor by slavish superstition on the
other. We can easily escape the evils which come of the old abuse; can
make the Sunday ten times more valuable than it is even now; can employ
it for all the highest interests of mankind, and fear no reaction into
libertinism.
The Sunday is made for man, as are all other days; not man for the
Sunday. Let us use it, then, not consuming its hours in a Jewish
observance; not devote it to the lower necessities of life, but the
higher; not squander it in idleness, sloth, frivolity, or sleep; let us
use it for the body's rest, for the mind's culture, for head and heart
and soul.
Men and women, you have received the Sunday from your fathers, as a day
to be devoted to the highest interests of man. It has done great service
for them and for you. But it has come down accompanied with superstition
which robs it of half its value. It is easy for you to make the day far
more profitable to yourselves than it ever was to your fathers; easy to
divest it of all bigotry, to free it from all oldness of the letter;
easy to leave it for your children an institution which shall bless them
for ages yet to come: or it is easy to bind on their necks unnatural
restraints; to impose on their conscience and understanding absurdities
which at last they must repel with scorn and contempt. It is in your
hands to make the Sunday Jewish or Christian.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] These celebrated commandments have come down to us in three distinct
forms; namely, in Exodus xx., in Exodus xxxiv., and in Deut. v. The
differences between these several codes are quite remarkable and
significant.
[4] 2 Chron. 36:21.
[5] John 5:1-18, and 7:19-24.
[6] Matthew 23:1-3.
[7] Rev. 21:14.
[8] Coloss. 2:16.
[9] Galat. 1:5.
[10] Justinian, _Cod._ Lib. iii. Tit. xii. l. 3.
[11] _Cod._, Lib. iii. Tit. xii. l. 2. See also, l. 3 and 11.
III.
A SERMON OF IMMORTAL LIFE.--PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY,
SEPTEMBER 20, 1846.
WISDOM OF SOLOMON III. 1, 4.
The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God: their
hope is full of immortality.
It is the belief of mankind that we shall all live forever. This is not
a doctrine of Christianity alone. It belongs to the human race. You may
find nations so rude that they live houseless, in caverns of the earth;
nations that have no letters, not knowing the use of bows and arrows,
fire or even clothes, but no nation without a belief in immortal life.
The form of that belief is often grotesque and absurd; the mode of proof
ridiculous; the expectations of what the future life is to be are often
childish and silly. But notwithstanding all that, the fact still
remains, the belief that the soul of a man never dies.
How did mankind come by this opinion? "By a miraculous revelation," says
one. But according to the common theory of miraculous revelations, the
race could not have obtained it in this way, for according to that
theory the heathen had no such revelations; yet we find this doctrine
the settled belief of the whole heathen world. The Greeks and Romans
believed it long before Christ; the Chaldees, with no pretence to
miraculous inspiration, taught the idea of immortality; while the Jews,
spite of their alleged revelations, rested only in the dim sentiment
thereof.
It was not arrived at by reasoning. It requires a good deal of hard
thinking to reason out and prove this matter. Yet you find this belief
among nations not capable as yet of that art of thinking and to that
degree, nations who never tried to prove it, and yet believe it as
confidently as we. The human race did not sit down and think it out;
never waited till they could prove it by logic and metaphysics; did not
delay their belief till a miraculous revelation came to confirm it. It
came to mankind by intuition; by instinctive belief, the belief which
comes unavoidably from the nature of man. In this same way came the
belief in God; the love of man; the sentiment of justice. Men could see,
and knew they could see, before they proved it; before they had theories
of vision; without waiting for a miraculous revelation to come and tell
them they had eyes, and might see if they would look. Some faculties of
the body act spontaneously at first--so others of the spirit.
Immortality is a fact of man's nature, so it is a part of the universe,
just as the sun is a fact in the heavens and a part of the universe.
Both are writings from God's hand; each therefore a revelation from Him,
and of Him; only not miraculous, but natural, regular, normal. Yet each
is just as much a revelation from Him as if the great Soul of all had
spoken in English speech to one of us and said, "There is a sun there in
the heavens, and thou shalt live for ever." Yes, the fact is more
certain than such speech would make it, for this fact speaks always--a
perpetual revelation, and no words can make it more certain.
As a man attains consciousness of himself, he attains consciousness of
his immortality. At first he asks proof no more of his eternal existence
than of his present life; instinctively he believes both. Nay, he does
not separate the two; this life is one link in that golden and electric
chain of immortality; the next life another and more bright, but in the
same chain. Immortality is what philosophers call an ontological fact;
it belongs essentially to the being of man, just as the eye is a
physiological fact and belongs to the body of man. To my mind this is
the great proof of immortality: the fact that it is written in human
nature; written there so plain that the rudest nations have not failed
to find it, to know it; written just as much as form is written on the
circle, and extension on matter in general. It comes to our
consciousness as naturally as the notions of time and space. We feel it
as a desire; we feel it as a fact. What is thus in man is writ there of
God who writes no lies. To suppose that this universal desire has no
corresponding gratification, is to represent Him, not as the father of
all but as only a deceiver. I feel the longing after immortality, a
desire essential to my nature, deep as the foundation of my being; I
find the same desire in all men. I feel conscious of immortality; that I
am not to die; no, never to die, though often to change. I cannot
believe this desire and consciousness are felt only to mislead, to
beguile, to deceive me. I know God is my father, and the father of the
nations. Can the Almighty deceive his children? For my own part, I can
conceive of nothing which shall make me more certain of my immortality.
I ask no argument from learned lips. No miracle could make me more sure;
no, not if the sheeted dead burst cerement and shroud, and rising forth
from their honored tombs stood here before me, the disenchanted dust
once more enchanted with that fiery life; no, not if the souls of all my
sires since time began came thronging round, and with miraculous speech
told me they lived and I should also live. I could only say, "I knew all
this before, why waste your heavenly speech!" I have now indubitable
certainty of eternal life. Death removing me to the next state, can give
me infallible certainty.
But there are men who doubt of immortality. They say they are conscious
of the want, not of the fact. They need a proof. The exception here
proves the rule. You do not doubt your personal and conscious existence
now; you ask no proof of that; you would laugh at me should I try to
convince you that you are alive and self-conscious. Yet one of the
leaders of modern philosophy wanted a proof of his as a basis for his
science, and said,--"I am because I think." But his thought required
proof as much as his being; yes, logically more, for being is the ground
of thinking, not thinking of being. At this day there are sound men who
deny the existence of this outward world, declaring it only a
dreamworld. This ground, they say, and yonder sun have being but in
fancy, like the sun and ground you perchance dreamed of last night whose
being was only a being-dreamed. These are exceptional men, and help
prove the common rule, that man trusts his senses and believes an
outward world. Yet such are more common amongst philosophers than men
who doubt of their immortal life. You cannot easily reason those men out
of their philosophy and into their senses, nor by your own philosophy
perhaps convince them that there is an outward world.
I think few of you came to your belief in everlasting life through
reasoning. Your belief grew out of your general state of mind and heart.
You could not help it. Perhaps few of you ever sat down and weighed the
arguments for and against it, and so made up your mind. Perhaps those
who have the firmest consciousness of the fact are least familiar with
the arguments which confirm that consciousness. If a man disbelieves it,
if he denies it, his opinion is not often to be changed immediately or
directly by argument. His special conviction has grown out of his
general state of mind and heart, and is only to be removed by a change
in his whole philosophy. I am not honoring men for their belief, nor
blaming men who doubt or deny. I do not believe any one ever willingly
doubted this; ever purposely reasoned himself into the denial thereof.
Men doubt because they cannot help it; not because they will, but must.
There are a great many things true which no man as yet can prove true;
some things so true that nothing can make them plainer, or more plainly
true. I think it is so with this doctrine, and therefore, for myself,
ask no argument. With my views of man, of God, of the relation between
the two, I want no proof, satisfied with my own consciousness of
immortality. Yet there are arguments which are fair, logical, just,
which satisfy the mind, and may, perhaps, help persuade some men who
doubt, if such men there are amongst you. I think that immortality is a
fact of consciousness; a fact given in the constitution of man:
therefore a matter of sentiment. But it requires thought to pick it out
from amongst the other facts of consciousness. Though at first merely a
feeling, a matter of sentiment, on examination it becomes an idea--a
matter of thought. It will bear being looked at in the sharpest and
dryest light of logic. Truth never flinches before reason. It is so with
our consciousness of God; that is an ontological fact, a fact given in
the nature of man. At first it is a feeling, a matter of sentiment. By
thought we abstract this fact from other facts; we find an idea of God.
That is a matter of philosophy, and the analyzing mind legitimates the
idea and at length demonstrates the existence of God, which we first
learned without analysis, and by intuition. A great deal has been
written to prove the existence of God, and that by the ablest men; yet I
cannot believe that any one was ever reasoned directly into a belief in
God, by all those able men, nor directly out of it by all the skeptics
and scoffers. Indirectly such works affect men, change their philosophy
and modes of thought, and so help them to one or the other conclusion.
The idea of immortality, like the idea of God, in a certain sense, is
born in us, and fast as we come to consciousness of ourselves we come to
consciousness of God, and of ourselves as immortal. The higher we
advance in wisdom, goodness, piety, the larger place do God and
immortality hold in our experience and inward life. I think that is the
regular and natural process of a man's development. Doubt of either
seems to me an exception, an irregularity. Causes that remove the doubt
must be general more than special.
* * * * *
However, in order to have a basis of thought and reasoning, as well as
of intuition and reason, let me mention some of the arguments for
everlasting life.
I. The first is drawn from the general belief of mankind. The greatest
philosophers and the most profound and persuasive religious teachers of
the whole world have taught this. That is an important fact, for these
men represent the consciousness of mankind in the highest development it
has yet reached, and in such points are the truest representatives of
man. What is more, the human race believes it, not merely as a thing
given by miraculous revelation, not as a matter proven by science, not
as a thing of tradition resting on some man's authority, but believes it
instinctively, not knowing and not asking why, or how; believes it as a
fact of consciousness. Now in a matter of this sort the opinion of the
human race is worth considering. I do not value very much the opinion of
a priesthood in Rome or Judea, or elsewhere on this point, or any other,
for they may have designs adverse to the truth. But the general
sentiment of the human race in a matter like this is of the greatest
importance. This general sentiment of mankind is a quite different thing
from public opinion, which favors freedom in one country and slavery in
another; this sentiment of mankind relates to what is a matter of
feeling with most men. It is only a few thinkers that have made it a
matter of thought. The opinion of mankind, so far as we know, has not
changed on this point for four thousand years. Since the dawn of
history, man's belief in immortality has continually been developing and
getting deeper fixed.
Still more, this belief is very dear to mankind. Let me prove that. If
it were true that one human soul was immortal and yet was to be
eternally damned, getting only more clotted with crime and deeper bit by
agony as the ages went slowly by, then immortality were a curse, not to
that man only, but to all mankind--for no amount of happiness, merited
or undeserved, could ever atone or make up for the horrid wrong done to
that one most miserable man. Who of you is there that could relish
Heaven, or even bear it for a moment, knowing that a brother was doomed
to smart with ever greatening agony, while year on year, and age on age,
the endless chain of eternity continued to coil round the flying wheels
of hell? I say the thought of one such man would fill even Heaven with
misery, and the best man of men would scorn the joys of everlasting
bliss, would spurn at Heaven and say, "Give me my brother's place; for
me there is no Heaven while he is there!" Now it has been popularly
taught, that not one man alone, but the vast majority of all mankind,
are thus to be condemned; immortal only to be everlastingly wretched.
That is the popular doctrine now in this land. It has been so taught in
the Christian churches these sixteen centuries and more--taught in the
name of Christ! Such an immortality would be a curse to men, to every
man; as much so to the "saved" as to the "lost;" for who would willingly
stay in Heaven, and on such terms? Surely not he who wept with weeping
men! Yet in spite of this vile doctrine drawn over the world to come,
mankind religiously believes that each shall live for ever. This shows
how strong is the instinct which can lift up such a foul and hateful
doctrine and still live on. Tell me not that scoffers and critics shall
take away man's faith in endless life: it has stood a harder test than
can ever come again.
* * * * *
II. The next argument is drawn from the nature of man.
1. All men desire to be immortal. This desire is instinctive, natural,
universal. In God's world such a desire implies the satisfaction thereof
equally natural and universal. It cannot be that God has given man this
universal desire of immortality, this belief in it, and yet made it all
a mockery. Man loves truth; tells it; rests only in it; how much more
God who is the trueness of truth. Bodily senses imply their objects--the
eye light, the ear sound; the touch, the taste, the smell, things
relative thereto. Spiritual senses likewise foretell their object,--are
silent prophecies of endless life. The love of justice, beauty, truth,
of man and God, points to realities unseen as yet. We are ever hungering
after noblest things, and what we feed on makes us hunger more. The
senses are satisfied, but the soul never.
2. Then, too, while this composite body unavoidably decays, this simple
soul which is my life decays not. Reason, the affections, all the powers
that make the man, decay not. True, the organs by which they act become
impaired. But there is no cause for thinking that love, conscience,
reason, will, ever become weaker in man; but cause for thinking that all
these continually become more strong. Was the mind of Newton gone when
his frame, long over-tasked, refused its wonted work?
3. Here on earth, every thing in its place and time matures. The acorn
and the chestnut, things natural to this climate, ripen every year. A
longer season would make them no better nor bigger. It is so with our
body--that, under proper conditions, becomes mature. It is so with all
the things of earth. But man is not fully grown as the acorn and the
chestnut; never gets mature. Take the best man and the greatest--all his
faculties are not developed, fully grown and matured. He is not complete
in the qualities of a man; nay, often half his qualities lie all unused.
Shall we conclude these are never to obtain development and do their
work? The analogy of nature tells us that man, the new-born plant, is
but removed by death to another soil, where he shall grow complete and
become mature.
4. Then, too, each other thing under its proper conditions not only
ripens but is perfect also after its kind. Each clover-seed is perfect
as a star. Every lion, as a general rule, is a common representation of
all lionhood; the ideal of his race made real in him, a thousand years
of life would not make him more. But where is the Adamitic man; the type
and representative of his race, who makes actual its idea? Even Jesus
bids you not call him good; no man has all the manhood of mankind. Yes,
there are rudiments of greatness in us all, but abortive, incomplete,
and stopped in embryo. Now all these elements of manhood point as
directly to another state as the unfinished walls of yonder rising
church intimate that the work is not complete, that the artist here
intends a roof, a window there, here a tower, and over all a
heaven-piercing spire. All men are abortions, our failure pointing to
the real success. Nay, we are all waiting to be born, our whole nature
looking to another world, and dimly presaging what that world shall be.
Death, however we misname him, seasonable or out of time, is the
birth-angel, that alone.
5. Besides, the presence of injustice, of wrong, points the same way.
The fact that one man goes out of this life in childhood, in manhood, at
any time before the natural measure of his days is full; the fact that
any one is by circumstances made wretched; that he is hindered from his
proper growth and has not here his natural due--all intimates to me his
future life. I know that God is just. I know His justice too shall make
all things right, for He must have the power, the wish, the will
therefor, to speak in human speech. I see the injustice in this city,
its pauperism, suffering, and crime, men smarting all their life, and by
no fault of theirs. I know there must be another hemisphere to balance
this; another life, wherein justice shall come to all and for all. Else
God were unjust; and an unjust God to me is no God at all, but a
wretched chimera which my soul rejects with scorn. I see the autumn
prefigured in the spring. The flowers of May-day foretold the harvest,
its rosy apples and its yellow ears of corn. As the bud now lying cold
and close upon the bark of every tree throughout our northern clime is a
silent prophecy of yet another spring and other summers, and harvests
too; so this instinctive love of justice scantly budding here and nipped
by adverse fate, silently but clearly tells of a kingdom of heaven. I
take some miserable child here in this city, squalid in dress and look,
ignorant and wicked too as most men judge of vagrant vice, made so by
circumstances over which that child had no control; I turn off with a
shudder at the public wrong we have done and still are doing; but in
that child I see proof of another world, yes, Heaven glittering from
behind those saddened eyes. I know that child has a man's nature in him,
perhaps a Channing's trusting piety; perhaps a Newton's mind; has surely
rudiments of more than these; for what were Channing, Newton, both of
them, but embryo men? I turn off with a shudder at the public wrong, but
a faith in God's justice, in that child's eternal life, which nothing
can ever shake.
* * * * *
III. A third argument is drawn from the nature of God. He, as the
infinite, the unconditioned, the absolute, is all-powerful, all-wise,
all-good. Therefore he must wish the best of all possible things; must
know the best of all possible things; must will the best of all possible
things, and so bring it to pass. Life is a possible thing; eternal life
is possible. Neither implies a contradiction; yes, to me they seem
necessary, more than possible. Now, then, as life, serene and happy
life, is better than non-existence, so immortality is better than
perpetual death. God must know that, wish that, will that, and so bring
that about. Man, therefore, must be immortal. This argument is brief
indeed, but I see not how it can be withstood.
I do not know that one of you doubts of eternal life. If any does, I
know not if these thoughts will ever affect his doubt. Still, I think
each argument is powerful; to one that thinks, reasons, balances, and
then decides, exceeding powerful. All put together form a mass of
argument which, as it seems to me, no logic can resist. Yet I beg you to
understand that I do not rest immortality on any reasoning of mine, but
on reason itself; not on these logical arguments, but on man's
consciousness, and the instinctive belief which is common to the human
race. I believed my immortality before I proved it; believed it just as
strongly then as now. Nay, could some doubter rise, and, to my thinking,
vanquish all these arguments, I should still hold fast my native faith,
nor fear the doubter's arms. The simple consciousness of men is stronger
than all forms of proof. Still, if men want arguments--why, there they
are.
* * * * *