Section II.

From this view of the prevalence and malignant effects of ignorance among

the people of the ancient world, both Jews and Gentiles, we may come

down, with a few brief notices in passing over the long subsequent

periods, towards our own times. For any attempt to prosecute the object

through the ages and regions of later heathenism, (with the infatuated

Judaism still more destructive to its subjects,) would be to lose

ourselves in a boundless scene of desolation, an immense amplitude of

darkness, frightfully alive throughout with the activity of all noxious

and hideous things.

But by this time we are become aware how continually we are driven upon

what will be in hazard of appearing an exaggerated phraseology; insomuch

that we are almost afraid of accepting the epithets of description and

aggravation which offer themselves as most appropriate to the subject.

There are some self-complacent persons whose minds are so unapt to

recognize the magnitude of a subject, or so averse perhaps to the

contemplation of it if it be of tragical aspect, that strong terms

accumulated to exhibit even what surpasses in its plain reality all the

powers of language, offend them as declamatory exaggeration. Let it then

be just observed, without one ambitious epithet, that since that period

when ancient history, strictly so named, left off describing the state of

mankind, more than a myriad of millions of our race have been on earth,

and quitted it without one ray of the knowledge the most important to

spirits sojourning here, and going hence.

But while any attempt to carry the representation of the fatal effects of

ignorance over the extent of so dreary a scene is declined, let it not be

forgotten that they have been an awful reality; that they have actually

existed, in time, and place, and number of victims; that there actually

_were_ the men, and so many men, who exemplified, and in so many ways, the

truth we are illustrating. And a truth which has its demonstration in

facts ought to come with the weight of all the facts that we believe ever

_did_ demonstrate it. When they are not presented in breadth and detail

prominently in our view, we are apt to lose the due effect of our knowing

them to have existed.

It will be enough to advert very briefly to the Mohammedan imposture,

though that is perhaps the most signal instance within all time, of a

malignant delusion maintained directly and immediately by ignorance, by an

absolute determination and even a fanatic zeal not to receive one new

idea. Tenets involving the most palpable impossibilities, and asserted in

self-contradictory terms, must stand inviolable to all question or

controversy; literature must be scouted as a profane folly; not a

principle of true philosophy is to be admitted; hardly is an application

of the plainest mechanics to improve a machine or implement to be

tolerated; or an infidel is to be only _pardoned_, through contempt, for a

successful obtrusion of science to render the most important service,--to

save, for instance, a Mussulman ship-with its proud, besotted commander

and crew from destruction, [Footnote: There is a very curious example of

this related in Dr Clarke's Travels.] lest an acknowledgment made to

science should allow one momentary surmise of imperfection to insult the

all-sufficiency and sanctity of the unalterable creed and institutes; lest

any diminutive crevice should be made on any side of the temple of the

vile superstition, for the passage of one glimpse of true light to annoy

the foul fiend that dwells there, invested "in the dunnest smoke of hell."

Not, however, that this is the policy of doubt and apprehension, the

evading and repelling caution of men who suspect themselves to be wrong

and dread being forced to meet the proof. For the subjects of this

execrable usurpation on the human understanding have, in general, the

firmest assurance that all things in the system are right: it has itself

secured them against _knowing_ anything that could discompose their sense

of certainty. No fell savage, or serpent, or monster, ever had a more

perfect instinct to avail itself of an impervious obscurity for its

lurking-place, than this imposture has shown to keep out all mental light

from its realm. The delusion is so strong and absolute in ignorance, is so

identified with it, and so systematically repels at all points the

approach of knowledge, that it is difficult to conceive a mode of its

extermination that shall not involve some fearful destruction, in the most

literal sense, of the people whom it possesses. And such a catastrophe it

is probable the great body of them, in the temper of mind prevailing among

them at this hour, would choose to incur by preference, we do not say to a

serious, patient consideration of the true religion, but even to the

admission among them of a system merely favoring knowledge in general, an

order of measures which should urge upon the adults, and peremptorily

enforce for the children, a discipline of intellectual improvement. There

would be little national hesitation of choice, (at least in the central

regions of the dominion of this hateful imposture,) between the

introduction of any general system of expedients for driving them from

their stupefaction into something like thinking and learning, and a

general plague, to rage as long as any remained for victims. [Footnote: In

the interval since this was written, some change has taken place in favor

of the admission of the elements of knowledge, in the capital, and in the

second city of the Mohammedan regions; but with very slight alterative

influence on the mass; and with respect to the faith, probably none at

all. Within this interval, also, the central power has been hastening

rapidly to its catastrophe.]

* * * * *

But let us now look, for a moment, at the intellectual state of the people

denominated Christian, during the ages preceding the Reformation. The best

of all the acquisitions by earth from heaven, Christianity, might have

seemed to bring with it an inevitable necessity of a great and permanent

difference soon to be effected, in regard to the competence of men's

knowledge to prevent their destruction. It was as if, in the physical

system, some one production, far more salutary to life than all the other

things furnished from the elements, had been reserved by the Creator to

spring up in a later age, after many generations of men had been

languishing through life, and prematurely dying, from the deficient virtue

of their sustenance and remedies. The image of the inestimable plant had

been shown to the prophets in their visions, but the reality was now given

to the world; it was of "wholly a right seed," "had the seed in itself,"

and claimed to be cultivated by the people, who in every land were

suffering the maladies which it had the properties to heal. But, while by

the greater part of mankind it was not accounted worth admission to a

place on their blasted, desolated soil, the manner in which its virtue was

frustrated among those who pretended to esteem it, as it was, the best

gift of the divine beneficence, is recorded in eternal reproach of the

Christian nations.

As the hostility of heathenism, in the direct endeavors to extirpate the

Christian religion, became evidently hopeless, in the nations within the

Roman empire, there was a grand change of the policy of evil; and all

manner of reprobate things, heathenism itself among them, rushed as by

general conspiracy into treacherous conjunction with Christianity,

retaining their own quality under the sanction of its name, and by a rapid

process reducing it to surrender almost everything distinctive of it but

that dishonored name: and all this under protection of the "gross darkness

covering the people." There were indeed in existence the inspired oracles,

and these could not be essentially falsified. But there was no lack of

expedients and pre-texts for keeping them in a great measure secreted. It

might be done under a pretence that reverence for their sanctity required

they should be secluded as within the recesses of a temple, nor be there

consulted but by consecrated personages; a pretence excellently contrived,

since it was its own security against exposure, the people being thus kept

unaware that the sacred writings themselves expressly invited popular

inspection, by declaring themselves addressed to mankind at large. The

deceivers were not worse off for the other facilities. In the progress of

translation, the holy Scriptures could be intercepted and stopped short in

a language but little less unintelligible than the original ones to the

bulk of the people, in order that this "profane vulgar" might never hear

the very words of God, but only such report as it should please certain

men, at their discretion, to give of what he had said; men, however, of

whom the majority were themselves too ignorant to cite it in even a

falsified import. But though the people had understood the language, in

the usage of social converse, there was a grand security against them in

keeping them so destitute of the knowledge of letters, that the Bible, if

such a rare thing ever could happen to fall into any of their hands, would

be no more to them than a scroll of hieroglyphics. When to this was added,

the great cost of a copy of so large a book before the invention of

printing, it remained perhaps just worth while, (and it would be a matter

of no difficulty or daring,) to make it, in the maturity of the system, an

offence, and sacrilegious invasion of sacerdotal privilege, to look into a

Bible. If it might seem hard thus to constitute a new sin, in addition to

the long list already denounced by the divine law, amends were made by

indulgently rescinding some articles in that list, and qualifying the

principles of obligation with respect to them all.

In this latency of the sacred authorities, withdrawn from all

communication with the human understanding, there were retained still many

of the terms and names belonging to religion. They remained, but they

remained only such as they could be when the departing spirit of that

religion was leaving them void of their import and solemnity, and so

rendered applicable to purposes of deception and mischief. They were as

holy vessels, in which the original contents might, as they were escaping,

be clandestinely replaced by the most malignant preparations. And as

crafty and wicked men had a direct interest in this substitution, the

pernicious operation went on incessantly; and with an ability, and to an

extent to evince that the utmost barbarism of the times cannot extinguish

genius, when it is iniquity that sets it on fire. How prolific was the

invention of the falsehoods and absurdities of notion, and of the vanities

and corruptions of practice, which it was devised to make the terms and

names of religion designate and sanction! while it was also managed, with

no less sedulity and success, that the inventors and propagators should be

held in submissive reverence by the community, as the oracular

depositaries of truth. That community had not knowledge enough of any

other kind, to create a resisting and defensive power against this

imposition in the concern of religion. A sound exercise of reason on

subjects out of that province, a moderate degree of instruction in

literature and science rightly so called, might have produced, in the

persons of superior native capacity, somewhat of a competency and a

disposition to question, to examine, to call for evidence, and to detect

some of the fallacies imposed for Christian faith. But in such

completeness of ignorance, the general mind was on all sides pressed and

borne down to its fate. All reaction ceased; and the people were reduced

to exist in one huge, unintelligent, monotonous substance, united by the

interfusion of a vile superstition, which permitted just enough mental

life in the mass to leave it capable of being actuated to all the purposes

of cheats, and tyrants,--a proper subject for the dominion of "our Lord

God the Pope," as he was sometimes denominated; and might have been

denominated without exciting indignation, in the hearing of millions of

beings bearing the form of men and the name of Christians.

Reflect that all this took place under the nominal ascendency of the best

and brightest economy of instruction from heaven. Reflect that it was in

nations where even the sovereign authority professed homage to the

religion of Christ, and adopted and enforced it as a grand national

institution, that the popular mass was thus reduced to a material fit for

all the bad uses to which priestcraft could wish to put the souls and

bodies of its slaves. And then consider what _should_ have been the

condition of this great aggregate, wherever Christianity was acknowledged

by all as the true religion. The people _should_ have consisted of so many

beings having each, in some degree, the independent, beneficial use of his

_mind_; all of them trained with a reference to the necessity of their

being apprized of their responsibility to their Creator, for the exercise

of their reason on the matters of belief and choice; all of them

capacitated for improvement by being furnished with the rudiments and

instrumental means of knowledge; and all having within their reach, in

their own language, the Scriptures of divine truth, some by immediate

possession, the rest by means of faithful readers, while the book existed

only in manuscript; all of them after it came to be printed.

Can any doubt arise, whether there were in the Christian states resources

competent, if so applied, to secure to all the people an elementary

instruction, and the possession of the printed Bible? Resources competent!

All nations, sufficiently raised above barbarism to exist as states, have

consumed, in uses the most foreign and pernicious to their welfare, an

infinitely greater amount of means than would have sufficed, after due

provision for comfortable physical subsistence, to afford a moderate share

of instruction to all the people. And in those popish ages, that

expenditure alone which went to ecclesiastical use would have been far

more than adequate to this beneficent purpose. Think of the boundless cost

for supporting the magnificence and satiating the rapacity of the

hierarchy, from its triple-crowned head, down through all the orders

branded with a consecration under that head to maintain the delusion and

share the spoil. Recollect the immense system of policy for jurisdiction

and intrigue, every agent of which was a devourer. Recollect the pomps and

pageants, for which the general resources were to be taxed: while the

general industry was injured by the interruption of useful employment, and

the diversion of the people to such dissipation as their condition

qualified and permitted them to indulge in. Think also of the incalculable

cost of ecclesiastical structures, the temples of idolatry as in truth

they were. One of the most striking situations for a religious and

reflective Protestant is, that of passing some solitary hour under the

lofty vault, among the superb arches and columns, of any one of the most

splendid of these edifices remaining at this day in our own country. If he

has sensibility and taste, the magnificence, the graceful union of so many

diverse inventions of art, the whole mighty creation of genius that

quitted the world without leaving even a name, will come with magical

impression on his mind, while it is contemplatively darkening into the awe

of antiquity. But he will be recalled--the sculptures, the inscriptions,

the sanctuaries enclosed off for the special benefit, after death, of

persons who had very different concerns during life from that of the care

of their salvation, and various other insignia of the original character

of the place, will help to recall him--to the thought, that these proud

piles were in fact raised to celebrate the conquest, and prolong the

dominion, of the Power of Darkness over the souls of the people. They were

as triumphal arches, erected in memorial of the extermination of that

truth which was given to be the life of men.

As he looks round, and looks upwards, on the prodigy of design, and skill,

and perseverance, and tributary wealth, he may image to himself the

multitudes that, during successive ages, frequented this fane in the

assured belief, that the idle ceremonies and impious superstitions, which

they there performed or witnessed, were a service acceptable to heaven,

and to be repaid in blessings to the offerers.

He may say to himself, Here, on this very floor, under that elevated and

decorated vault, in a "dim religious light" like this, but with the

darkness of the shadow of death in their souls, they prostrated themselves

to their saints, or their "queen of heaven;" nay, to painted images and

toys of wood or wax, to some ounce or two of bread and wine, to fragments

of old bones, and rags of cast-off vestments. Hither they came, when

conscience, in looking back or pointing forward, dismayed them, to

purchase remission with money or atoning penances, or to acquire the

privilege of sinning with impunity in a certain manner, or for a certain

time; and they went out at yonder door in the perfect confidence that the

priest had secured, in the one case the suspension, in the other the

satisfaction, of the divine law. Here they solemnly believed, as they were

taught, that, by donatives to the church, they delivered the souls of

their departed sinful relations from their state of punishment; and they

went out of that door resolved, such as had possessions, to bequeath some

portion of them, to operate in the same manner for themselves another day,

in the highly probable case of similar need. Here they were convened to

listen in reverence to some representative emissary from the Man of Sin,

with new dictates of blasphemy or iniquity promulgated in the name of the

Almighty: or to witness the trickery of some farce, devised to cheat or

frighten them out of whatever remainder the former impositions might have

left them of sense, conscience, or property. Here, in fine, there was

never presented to their understanding, from their childhood to their

death, a comprehensive, honest declaration of the laws of duty, and the

pure doctrines of salvation. To think! that they should have mistaken for

the house of God, and the very gate of heaven, a place where the Regent of

the nether world had so short a way to come from his dominions, and his

agents and purchased slaves so short a way to go thither. If we could

imagine a momentary visit from Him who once entered a fabric of sacred

denomination with a scourge, because it was made the resort of a common

traffic, with what aspect and voice, with what infliction but the "rebuke

with flames of fire," would he have entered this mart of iniquity,

assuming the name of his sanctuary, where the traffic was in delusions,

crimes, and the souls of men? It was even as if, to use the prophet's

language, the very "stone cried out of the wall, and the beam out of the

timber answered it," in denunciation; for a portion of the means of

building, in the case of some of these edifices, was obtained as the price

of dispensations and pardons. [Footnote: That most superb Salisbury

Cathedral, for example.]

In such a hideous light would the earlier history of one of these mighty

structures, pretendedly consecrated to Christianity, be presented to the

reflecting Protestant; and then would recur the idea of its cost, as

relative to what that expenditure might really have done for Christianity

and the people. It absorbed in the construction, sums sufficient to have

supplied, costly as they would have been, even manuscript Bibles, in the

people's own language, (as a priesthood of truly apostolic character would

have taken care the Scriptures should speak,) to all the families of a

province; and in the revenues appropriated to its ministration of

superstition, enough to have provided men to teach all those families to

read those Bibles.

In all this, and in the whole constitution of the Grand Apostasy,

involving innumerable forms of abuse and abomination, to which our object

does not require any allusion, how sad a spectacle is held forth of the

people destroyed for lack of knowledge. If, as one of their plagues, an

inferior one in itself, they were plundered as we have seen, of their

worldly goods, it was that the spoil might subserve to a still greater

wrong. What was lost to the accommodation of the body, was to be made to

contribute to the depravation of the spirit. It supplied means for

multiplying the powers of the grand ecclesiastical machinery, and

confirming the intellectual despotism of the usurpers of spiritual

authority. Those authorities enforced on the people, on pain of perdition,

an acquiescence in notions and ordinances which, in effect, precluded

their direct access to the Almighty, and the Saviour of the world;

interposing between them and the Divine Majesty a very extensive,

complicated, and heathenish mediation, which in a great measure

substituted itself for the real and exclusive mediation of Christ,

obscured by its vast creation of intercepting vanities the glory of the

Eternal Being, and thus almost extinguished the true worship. But how

calamitous was such a condition!--to be thus intercepted from direct

intercourse with the Supreme Spirit, and to have the solemn and elevating

sentiment of devotion flung downward, on objects to some of which even the

most superstitious could hardly pay homage without a sense of degradation.

It was, again, a disastrous thing to be under a directory of practical

life framed for the convenience of a corrupt system; a rule which enjoined

many things wrong, allowed a dispensation from nearly everything that was

right, and abrogated the essential principle and ground-work of true

morality. Still again, it was an unhappy thing, that the consolations in

sorrow and the view of death should either be too feeble to animate, or

should animate only by deluding. And it was the consummation of evil in

the state of the people of those dark ages, it was, emphatically to be

"destroyed," that the great doctrines of redemption should have been

essentially vitiated or formally supplanted, so that multitudes of people

were betrayed to rest their final hopes on a ground unauthorized by the

Judge of the world. In this most important matter, the spiritual

authorities might themselves be subjects of the fatal delusion in which

they held the community; and well they deserved to be so, in judicial

retribution of their wickedness in imposing on the people, deliberately

and on system, innumerable things which they knew to be false.

We have often mused, and felt a gloom and dreariness spreading over the

mind while musing, on descriptions of the aspect of a country after a

pestilence has left it in desolation, or of a region where the people are

perishing by famine. It has seemed a mournful thing to behold, in

contemplation, the multitude of lifeless? forms, occupying in silence the

same abodes in which they had lived, or scattered upon the gardens,

fields, and roads; and then to see the countenances of the beings yet

languishing in life, looking despair, and impressed with the signs of

approaching death. We have even sometimes had the vivid and horrid picture

offered to our imagination, of a number of human creatures shut up by

their fellow mortals in some strong hold, under an entire privation of

sustenance; and presenting each day their imploring, or infuriated, or

grimly sullen, or more calmly woful countenances, at the iron and

impregnable gates; each succeeding day more haggard, more perfect in the

image of despair; and after awhile appearing each day one fewer, till at

last all have sunk. Now shall we feel it as a _relief_ to turn in thought,

as to a sight of less portentous evil, from the inhabitants of a country,

or from those of such an accursed prison-house, thus pining away, to

behold the different spectacle of national tribes, or any more limited

portion of mankind, on whose _minds_ are displayed the full effects of

knowledge denied; who are under the process of whatever destruction it is,

that spirits can suffer from want of the vital aliment to the intelligent

nature, especially from "a famine of the words of the Lord?"

To bring the two to a close comparison, suppose the case, that some of the

persons thus doomed to perish in the tower were in the possession of the

genuine light and consolations of Christianity, perhaps even had actually

been adjudged to this fate, (no extravagant supposition,) for zealously

and persistingly endeavoring the restoration of the purity of that

religion to the deluded community. Let it be supposed that numbers of that

community, having conspired to obtain this ad-judgment, frequented the

precincts of the fortress, to see their victims gradually perishing. It

would be quite in the spirit of the popish superstition, that they should

believe themselves to have done God service, and be accordingly pleased at

the sight of the more and more deathlike aspect of the emaciated

countenances. The while, they might be themselves in the enjoyment of

"fulness of bread," We can imagine them making convivial appointments

within sight of the prison gates, and going from the spectacle to meet at

the banquet. Or they might delay the festivity, in order to have the

additional luxury of knowing that the tragedy was consummated; as Bishop

Gardiner would not dine till the martyrs were burnt.--Look at these two

contemporary situations, that of the persons with truth and immortal hope

in their spirits, enduring this slow and painful reduction of their bodies

to dissolution,--and that of those who, while their bodies fared

sumptuously, were thus miserably perishing in soul, through its being

surrendered to the curse of a delusion which envenomed it with such a

deadly malignity: and say which was the more calamitous predicament.

If we have no hesitation in pronouncing, let us consider whether we have

ever been grateful enough to God for the dashing in pieces so long since

in this land, of a system which maintains, to this hour, much of its

stability over the greater part of Christendom. If we regret that certain

fragments of it are still held in veneration here, and that so tedious a

length of ages should be required, to work out a complete mental rescue

from the infatuation which possessed our ancestors, let us at the same

time look at the various states of Europe, small and great, where this

superstition continues to hold the minds of the people in its odious

grasp; and verify to ourselves what we have to be thankful for, by

thinking what reception _our_ minds would give to an offer of subsistence

on their mummeries, masses, absolutions, legends, relics, mediation of

saints, and corruptions, even to complete reversal of the evangelic

doctrines.

* * * * *

It was, however, but very slowly that the people of our land realized the

benefits of the Reformation, glorious as that event was, regarded as to

its progressive and its ultimate consequences. Indeed, the thickness of

the preceding darkness was strikingly manifested by the deep shade which

still continued stretched over the nation, in spite of the newly risen

luminary, whose beams lost their brightness in pervading it to reach the

popular mind, and came with the faintness of an obscured and tedious dawn.

A long time there lingered enough of night for the evil spirit of popery

to be at large and in power, not abashed, as Milton represents the Evil

Angel on his being surprised by the guardians of paradise. Rather the case

was that the vindicator itself of truth and holiness, the true Lucifer,

shrunk at the rencounter and defiance of the old possessor of the gloomy

dominion. The Reformation was not empowered to speak with a voice like

that which said, "Let there be light--and there was light." Consider what,

on its avowed national adoption in our land, were its provisions for

acting on the community, and how slow and partial must have been their

efficacy, for either the dissipation of ignorance in general, or the

riddance of that worst part of it which had thickened round the Romish

delusion, as malignant a pestilence as ever walked in darkness. There was

an alteration of formularies, a curtailment of rites, a declaration of

renouncing, in the name of the church and state, the most palpable of the

absurdities; and a change, in some instances of the persons, but in very

many others of the professions merely, of the hierarchy. Such were the

appointments and instrumentality, for carrying an innovation of opinions

and practices through a nation in which the profoundest ignorance and the

most inveterate superstition fortified each other. And we may well imagine

how fast and how far they would be effective, to convey information and

conviction among a people whose reason had been just so much the worse,

with respect to religion at least, as it had not been totally dormant; and

who were too illiterate to be ever the wiser for the volume of inspiration

itself, had it been in their native language, in every house, instead of

being scarcely in one house in five thousand.

Doubtless some advantage was gained through this change of institutions,

by the abolition of so much of the authority of the spiritual despotism as

it possessed in virtue of being the imperative national establishment. And

if, under this relaxation of its grasp, a number of persons declined and

escaped into the new faith, they hardly knew how or why, it was happy to

make the transition on _any_ terms, with however little of the exercise of

reason, with however little competence to exercise it. Well was it to be

on the right ground, though a man had come thither like one conveyed while

partly asleep. To have grown to a state of mind in which he ceased and

refused to worship relics and wafers, to rest his confidence on penance

and priestly absolution, and to regard the Virgin and saints as in effect

the supreme regency of heaven, was a valuable alteration _though_ he could

not read, and _though_ he could not assign, and had not clearly

apprehended, the arguments which justified the change. Yes, this would be

an important thing gained; but not even thus much _was_ gained to the

passive slaves of popery but in an exceedingly limited extent, during a

long course of time after it was supplanted as a national institution. It

continued to maintain in the faith, feelings, and more private habits of

the people, a dominion little enfeebled by the necessity of dissimulation

in public observances. As far as to secure this exterior show of

submission and conformity, it was an excellent argument that the state had

decreed, and would resolutely enforce, a change in religion,--that is to

say, till it should be the sovereign pleasure of the next monarch, readily

seconded by a majority of the ecclesiastics, just to turn the whole affair

round to its former position.

But the argument would expend nearly its whole strength on this policy of

saving appearances. For what was there conveyed in it that could strike

inward to act upon the fixed tenets of the mind, to destroy there the

effect of the earliest and ten thousand subsequent impressions, of

inveterate habit and of ancient establishment? Was it to convince and

persuade by authority of the maxim, that the government in church and

state is wiser than the people, and therefore the best judge in every

matter? This, as asserted generally, was what the people firmly believed:

it has always, till lately, been the popular faith. But then, was the

benefit of this obsequious faith to go exclusively to the government of

just that particular time,--a government which, by its innovations and

demolitions, was exhibiting a contemptuous dissent from all past

government remembered in the land? Were the people not to hesitate a

moment to take this innovating government's word for it that all their

forefathers, up through a long series of ages, had been fools and dupes in

reverencing, in their time, the wisdom and authority of _their_ governors?

The most unthinking and submissive would feel that this was too much:

especially after they had proof that the government demanding so

prodigious a concession might, on the substitution of just one individual

for another at its head, revoke its own ordinances, and punish those who

should contumaciously continue to be ruled by them. You summon us, they

might have said to their governors, at your arbitrary dictate to renounce,

as what you are pleased to call idolatries and abominations, the faith and

rites held sacred by twenty generations of our ancestors and yours. We are

to do this on peril of your highest displeasure, and that of God, by whose

will you are professing to act; now who will ensure us that there may not

be, some time hence, a vindictive inquisition, to find who among us have

been the most ready of obedience to offer wicked insult to the Holy

Catholic Apostolic Church?

This deficiency of the moral power of the government, to promote the

progress of conviction in the mind of the nation, would be slenderly

supplied by the authority of the class next to the government in the claim

to deference, and even holding the precedence in actual influence,--that

is, the families of rank and consequence throughout the country. For the

people well knew, in their respective neighborhoods, that many of these

had never in reality forsaken the ancient religion, consulting only the

policy of a time-serving conformity; and that some of them hardly

attempted or wished to conceal from their inferiors that they preserved

their fidelity. And then the substituted religion, while it came with a

great diminution of the pomp which is always the delight of the ignorant,

acknowledged,--proclaimed as one of its chief merits,--a still more fatal

defect for attracting converts from among beings whose ignorance had never

been suffered to doubt, till then, that men in ecclesiastical garb could

modify, or suspend, or defeat for them the justice of God; it proclaimed

itself unable to give any exemptions or commutations in matters of

conscience.

When such were the recommendations which the new mode of religion _not_,

and when the recommendation which it _had_ was simply, (the royal

authority set out of the question,) an offer of evidence to the

understanding _that it was true_, no wonder that many of a generation so

insensate through ignorance should never become its proselytes. But even

as to those who did, while it was a happy deliverance, as we have said, to

escape almost any way from the utter grossness of popery, still they would

carry into their better faith much of the unhappy effect of that previous

mental debasement. How should a man in the rudeness of an intellect left

completely ignorant of truth in general, have a luminous apprehension of

its most important division? There could not be in men's minds a

phenomenon similar to what we image to ourselves of Goshen in the

preternatural night of Egypt, a space of perfect light, defined out by a

precise limit amidst the general darkness.

Only consider, that the new ideas admitted into the proselyte's

understanding as the true faith, were to take their situation there in

nearly those very same encompassing circumstances of internal barbarism

which had been so perfectly commodious to the superstition recently

dwelling there; and that which had been favorable and adapted in the

utmost degree, that which had afforded much of the sustenance of life, to

the false notions, could not but be most adverse to the development of the

true ones. These latter, so environed, would be in a condition too like

that of a candle in the mephitic air of a vault. The newly adopted

religion, therefore, of the uncultivated converts from popery, would be

far from exhibiting, as compared with the renounced superstition, a

magnitude of change, and force of contrast, duly corresponding to the

difference between the lying vanities of priestcraft and a communication

from the living God. The reign of ignorance combined with imposture had

fixed upon the common people of the age of the Reformation, and of several

generations downward, the doom of being incapable of admitting genuine

Christianity but with an excessively inadequate apprehension of its

attributes;--as in the patriarchal ages a man might have received with

only the honors appropriate to a saint or prophet, the visitant in whom he

was entertaining an angel unawares. Happy for both that ancient

entertainer of such a visitant, and the ignorant but honest adopter of the

reformed religion, when that which they entertained rewarded them

according to its own celestial quality, rather than in proportion to their

inadequate reception. We may believe that the Divine Being, in special

compassion to that ignorance to which barbarism and superstition had

condemned inevitably the greater number of the early converts to the

reformed religion, did render that faith beneficial to them beyond the

proportion of their narrow and still half superstitious conception of it.

And this is, in truth, the consideration the most consolatory in looking

back to that tenebrious period in which popery was slowly retiring, with a

protracted exertion of all the craft and strength of an able and veteran

tyrant contending to the last for prolonged dominion.

It is, however, no consideration of a portion of the people sincere,

inquiring, and emerging, though dimly enlightened, from the gloom of so

dreary a scene, that is most apt to occur to our thoughts in extenuation

of that gloom. Our unreflecting attention allows itself to be so engrossed

by far different circumstances of that period of our history, that we are

imposed upon by a spectacle the very opposite of mournful. For what is it

but a splendid and animating exhibition that we behold in looking back to

the age of Elizabeth?

And _was_ not that, it may be asked, an age of the highest glory to our

nation? Why repress our delight in contemplating it? How can we refuse to

indulge an inspiring sympathy with the energy of those times, an elation

of spirit at beholding the unparalleled allotment of her reign, of

statesmen, heroes, and literary geniuses, but for whom, indeed, "that

bright occidental star" would have left no such brilliant track of fame

behind her?

Permit us to answer by inquiring, What should the intellectual condition

of the _people_, properly so denominated, have been in order to correspond

in a due proportion to the magnificence of these their representative

chiefs, and complete the grand spectacle as that of a _nation_? Determine

that; and then inquire what actually _was_ the state of the people all

this while. There is evidence that it was, what the fatal blight and blast

of popery might be expected to have left it, generally and most wretchedly

degraded. What it was is shown by the facts, that it was found impossible,

even under the inspiring auspices of the learned Elizabeth, with her

constellation of geniuses, orators, scholars, to supply the churches

generally with officiating persons capable of going with decency through

the task of the public service, made ready, as every part of it was, to

their hands; and that to be able to read, was the very marked distinction

of here and there an individual. It requires little effort but that of

going low enough, to complete the general estimate in conformity to these

and similar facts.

And here we cannot help remarking what a deception we suffer to pass on us

from history. It celebrates some period in a nation's career, as

pre-eminently illustrious, for magnanimity, lofty enterprise, literature,

and original genius. There was, perhaps, a learned and vigorous monarch,

and there were Cecils and Walsinghams, and Shakspeares and Spensers, and

Sidneys and Raleighs, with many other powerful thinkers and actors, to

render it the proudest age of our national glory. And we thoughtlessly

admit on our imagination this splendid exhibition as in some manner

involving or implying the collective state of the people in that age! The

ethereal summits of a tract of the moral world are conspicuous and fair in

the lustre of heaven, and we take no thought of the immensely greater

proportion of it which is sunk in gloom and covered with fogs. The general

mass of the population, whose physical vigor, indeed, and courage, and

fidelity to the interests of the country, were of such admirable avail to

the purposes, and under the direction, of the mighty spirits that wielded

their rough agency,--this great assemblage was sunk in such mental

barbarism, as to be placed at about the same distance from their

illustrious intellectual chiefs, as the hordes of Scythia from the finest

spirits of Athens. It was nothing to this debased, countless multitude

spread over the country, existing in the coarsest habits, destitute, in

the proportion of thousands to one, of cultivation, and still in a great

degree enslaved by the popish superstition,--it was nothing to them, in

the way of direct influence to draw forth their minds into free exercise

and acquirement, that there were, within the circuit of the island, a

profound scholarship, a most disciplined and vigorous reason, a masculine

eloquence, and genius breathing enchantment. Both the actual possessors of

this mental opulence, and the part of society forming, around them, the

sphere immediately pervaded by the delight and instruction imparted by

them, might as well, for anything they diffused of this luxury and benefit

among the general multitude, have been a Brahminical caste, dissociated by

an imagined essential distinction of nature. While they were exulting in

this elevation and free excursiveness of mental existence, the prostrate

crowd were grovelling through a life on a level with the soil where they

were at last to find their graves. But this crowd it was that constituted

the substance of the _nation_; to which, nation, in the mass, the

historian applies the superb epithets, which a small proportion of the men

of that age claimed by a striking _exception_ to the general state of the

community. History too much consults our love of effect and pomp, to let

us see in a close and distinct manner anything

"On the low level of th' inglorious throng;"

and our attention is borne away to the intellectual splendor exhibited

among the most favored aspirants of the seats of learning, or in councils,

courts, and camps, in heroic and romantic enterprises, and in some

immortal works of genius. And thus we are gazing with delight at a fine

public bonfire, while, in all the cottages round, the people are shivering

for want of fuel.

Our history becomes very bright again with the intellectual and literary

riches of a much later period, often denominated a golden age,--that which

was illustrated by the talents of Addison, Pope, Swift, and their numerous

secondaries in fame; and could also boast its philosophers, statesmen, and

heroes. And in the lapse of four or five ages, according to the average

term of human life, since the earlier grand display of mind, what had been

effected toward such an advancement of intelligence in the community, that

when this next tribe of highly endowed spirits should appear, they would

stand in much loss opprobrious contrast to the main body of the nation,

and find a much larger portion of it qualified to receive their

intellectual effusions. By this time, the class of persons who sought

knowledge on a wider scale than what sufficed for the ordinary affairs of

life, who took an interest in literature, and constituted the _Authors'

Public_, had indeed extended a little, extremely little, beyond the people

of condition, the persons educated in learned institutions, and those

whose professions involved some necessity, and might create some taste for

reading. Still they _were a class_, and that with a limitation marked and

palpable, to a degree very difficult for us now to conceive. They were in

contact, on the one side, with the great thinkers, moralists, poets, and

wits, but very slightly in communication with the generality of the people

on the other. They received the emanations from the assemblage of talent

and knowledge, but did not serve as conductors to convey them down

indefinitely into the community. The national body, regarded in its

intellectual character, had an inspirited and vigorous superior part, as

constituted of these men of eminent talents and attainments, and this

small class of persons in a measure assimilated to them in thinking and

taste; but it was in a condition resembling that of a human frame in

which, (through an injury in the spinal marrow,) some of the most

important functions of vitality have terminated at some precise limit

downward, leaving the inferior extremities devoid of sensation and the

power of action.

It is on record, that works admirably adapted to find readers and to make

them, had but an extremely confined and slowly widening circulation,

according to _our_ standard of the popular success of the productions of

distinguished talents. Nor did the writers _reckon_ on any such popular

success. In the calculations of their literary ambition, it was a thing of

course that the people went for nothing. It is apparent in allusions to

the people occurring in these very works, that "the lower sort," "the

vulgar herd," "the canaille," "the mob," "the many-headed beast," "the

million," (and even these designations generally meant something short of

the lowest classes of all,) were no more thought of in any relation to a

state of cultivated intelligence than Turks or Tartars. The readers are

habitually recognized as a kind of select community, conversed with on

topics and in a language with which the vulgar have nothing at all to

do,--a converse the more gratifying on that account. And any casual

allusions to the bulk of the people are expressed in phrases unaffectedly

implying, that they are a herd of beings existing on quite other terms and

for essentially other ends, than we, fine writers, and you, our admiring

readers. It is evident in our literature of that age, (a feature still

more prominent in that of France, at the same and down to a much later

period,) that the main national population, accounted as creatures to

which souls and senses were given just to render their limbs mechanically

serviceable, were regarded by the intellectual aristocracy with hardly so

active a sentiment as contempt; they were not worth that; it was the easy

indifference toward what was seldom thought of as in existence.

Wickedly wrong as such a feeling was, there is no doubt that the actual

state of the people was quite such as would naturally cause it, in men

whose large and richly cultivated minds did not contain philanthropy or

Christian charity enough to regret and pity the popular debasement as a

calamity. For while they were indulging their pride in the elevation, and

their taste in all the luxuries and varieties, of that ampler higher range

of existence enjoyed by such men, in what light must they view the bulk of

a nation, that knew nothing of their wit, genius, or philosophy, could not

even read their writings, but as a coarse mass of living material, the

mere earthy substratum of humanity, not to be accounted of in any

comparison or even relation to what man is in his higher style? While they

of that higher style were revelling in their mental affluence, the vast

majority of the inhabitants of the island were subsisting, and had always

subsisted, on the most beggarly pittance on which mind could be barely

kept alive. Probably they had at that time still fewer ideas than the

people of the former age which we have been describing. For many of those

with which popery had occupied the faith and fancy of that earlier

generation, had now vanished from the popular mind, without being replaced

in equal number by better ideas, or by ideas of any kind. And then their

vices had the whole grossness of vice, and their favorite amusements were

at best rude and boisterous, and a large proportion of them savage and

cruel. So that when we look at the shining wits, poets, and philosophers,

of that age, they appear like gaudy flowers growing in a putrid marsh.

And to a much later period this deplorable ignorance, with all its

appropriate consequences, continued to be the dishonor and the plague of

the intellectual and moral condition of the inhabitants of England. Of

England! which had through many centuries made so great a figure in

Christendom; which has been so splendid in arms, liberty, legislation,

science, and all manner of literature: which has boasted its universities,

of ancient foundation and proudest fame, munificently endowed, and

possessing, in their accumulations of literary treasure, nearly the whole

results of all the strongest thinking there had been in the world: and

which has had also, through the charity of individuals, such a number of

minor institutions for education, that the persons intrusted to see them

administered have, in very numerous instances, not scrupled to divert

their resources to total different purposes, lest, perchance, the cause of

damage to the people should change from a lack of knowledge to a repletion

of it. Of England! so long after the Reformation, and all the while under

the superintendence and tuition of an ecclesiastical establishment for

both instruction and jurisdiction, co-extended with the entire nation, and

furnished for its ministry with men from the discipline of institutions

where everything the most important to be known was professed to be

taught. Thus endowed had England been, thus was she endowed at the period

under our review, (the former part of the last century,) with the

facilities, the provisions, the great intellectual apparatus, to be

wielded in any mode her wisdom might devise, and with whatever strength of

hand she chose to apply, for promoting her several millions of rational,

accountable, immortal beings, somewhat beyond a state of mere physical

existence. When therefore, notwithstanding all this, an awful proportion

of them were under the continual process of destruction for want of

knowledge, what a tremendous responsibility was borne by whatever part of

the community it was that stood, either by office and express vocation, or

by the general obligation inseparable from ability, in the relation of

guardianship to the rest.

But here the voice of that sort of patriotism which is in vogue as well in

England as in China, may perhaps interpose to protest against malicious

and exaggerated invective. As if it were a question of what might

beforehand be reasonably expected, instead of an account of what actually

exists, it may be alleged that surely it is a representation too much

against antecedent probability to be true, that a civilized, Christian,

magnanimous, and wealthy state like that of England, can have been so

careless and wicked as to tolerate, during the lapse of centuries, a

hideously gross and degraded condition of the people.

But besides that the fact is plainly so, it were vain to presume, in

confidence on any supposed consistency of character, that it _must_ be

otherwise. There is no saying _what_ a civilized and Christian nation, (so

called,) may not tolerate. Recollect the Slave Trade, which, with the

magnitude of a national concern, continued its abominations while one

generation after another of Englishmen passed away; their intelligence,

conscience, humanity, and refinement, as quietly accommodated to it, as if

one portion of the race had possessed an express warrant from Heaven to

capture, buy, sell, and drive another. This is but one of many mortifying

illustrations how much the constitution of our moral sentiments resembles

a Manichæan creation, how much of them is formed in passive submission to

the evil principle, acting through prevailing custom; which determines

that it shall but very partially depend on the real and most manifest

qualities of things present to us, whether we shall have any right

perception of their characters of good and evil. The agency which works

this malformation in our sentiments needs no greater triumph, than that

the true nature of things should be disguised to us by the very effect of

their being constantly kept in our sight. Could any malignant enchanter

wish for more than this,--to make us insensible to the odious quality of

things not only _though_ they stand constantly and directly in our view,

but _because_ they do so? And while they do so, there may also stand as

obviously in our view, and close by them, the truths which _expose_ their

real nature, and might be expected to make us instantly revolt from them;

and these truths shall be no other than some of the plainest principles of

reason and religion. It shall be as if men of wicked designs could be

compelled to wear labels on their breasts wherever they go, to announce

their character in conspicuous letters; or nightly assassins could be

forced to carry torches before them, to reveal the murder in their

visages; or, as if, according to a vulgar superstition, evil spirits could

not help betraying their dangerous presence by a tinge of brimstone in the

flame of the lamps. Thus evident, by the light of reason and religion,

shall have been the true nature of certain important facts in the policy

of a Christian nation; and nevertheless, even the cultivated part of that

nation, during a series of generations, having directly before their sight

an enormous nuisance and iniquity, shall yet never be struck with its

quality, never be made restless by its annoyance, never seriously think of

it. And so its odiousness shall never be decidedly apprehended till some

individual or two, as by the acquisition of a new moral sense, receive a

sudden intuition of its nature, a disclosure of its whole essence and

malignity,--the essence and malignity of that very thing which has been

exposing its quality, without the least reserve, by the most flagrant

signs, to millions of observers.

Thus it has been with respect to the barbarous ignorance under which

nine-tenths of the population of our country have continued, through a

number of ages subsequent to the Reformation, surrendered to everything

low, vicious, and wretched. This state of national debasement and dishonor

lay spread out, a wide scene of moral desolation, in the sight of

statesmen, of dignified and subordinate ecclesiastics, of magistrates, of

the philosophic speculators on human nature, and of all those whose rank

and opulence brought them hourly proofs what great influence they might

have, in any way in which, they should choose to exert it, on the people

below them. And still it was all right that the multitudes, constituting

the grand living agency through the realm, should remain in such a

condition that, when they died, the country should lose nothing but so

much animated body, with the quantum of vice which helped to keep it in

action. When at length some were beginning to apprehend and proclaim that

all this was wrong, these classes were exceedingly slow in their assent to

the reformed doctrine. A large proportion of them even declared, on

system, against the speculations and projects for giving the people, at

last, the use and value of their souls as well as their hands. The earnest

and sanguine philanthropists might be pardoned the simplicity of not

foreseeing such an opposition, though they ought, perhaps, to have known

better than to be surprised at the phenomenon. They were to be made wiser

by force, with respect to men's governing prejudices and motives. And from

credulity mortified is a short transit to suspicion. So ungracious a

manner of having the insight into motives sharpened, does not tend to make

its subsequent exercise indulgent, when it comes to inspect the altered

appearances assumed by persons and classes who have previously been in

decided opposition. What arguments have prevailed with you, (the question

might be,) since you have never frankly retracted your former contempt of

those which convinced _us_? May any sinister thought have occurred, that

you might defeat our ends by a certain way of managing the means? Or do

you hope to deter mine and limit to some subordinate purposes, what we

wish to prosecute for the most general good? Or would you rather impose on

yourselves the grievance of promoting an object which you dislike, than

that we should have the chief credit of promoting it? Do you sometimes

accompany your working in the vineyard with maledictions on those who have

reduced you to such a necessity? Would you have been glad to be saved the

unwelcome service by _their_ letting it alone?

Those friends of man and their country who were the earliest to combine

in schemes for enlightening the people, and who continue to prosecute the

object on the most liberal and comprehensive principle, have to

acknowledge surmises like these. Nevertheless, they are willing to forego

any shrewd investigation into the causes of the later silence and

apparent acquiescence of former opposers; and into the motives which have

induced some of them, though in no very amicable mood, to take a part in

measures tending in their general effect to the same end. Whatever were

their suspicion of those motives, they would be reminded of an example,

not altogether foreign to the nature of their business, and quite in

point to their duty,--that of the magnanimous principle through which the

great Apostle disappointed his adversaries, by finding his own triumph in

that of his cause, while he saw that cause availing itself of these foes

after the manner of some consummate general, who has had the art to make

those who have come into the field as but treacherous auxiliaries,

co-operate effectually in the battle which they never intended he should

gain. Some preached Christ of envy, and strife, and contention, supposing

to add affliction to his bonds; but, says he, What then? notwithstanding

every way, whether in pretence or truth, Christ is preached--_the thing

itself is done_--and I therein rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. When

animated by this high principle, this ambition absolutely _for the cause

itself_, its servant is a gainer, because _it_ is a gainer, by all things

convertible into tribute, whatever may be the temper or intention of the

officers, either as towards the cause or towards himself. He may say to

them, I am more pleased by what you are actually doing, be the motive

what it will, in advancement of the object to which I am devoted, than it

is possible for you to aggrieve me by letting me see that you would not

be sorry for the frustration of _my_ schemes and exertions for its

service; or even by betraying, though I should lament such a state of

your minds, that you would be content to sacrifice _it_ if that might be

the way to defeat _me_.

We revert but for a moment to the review of past times.--We said that long

after the brilliant show of talent, and the creation of literary supplies

for the national use, in the early part of the last century, the

deplorable mental condition of the people remained in no very great degree

altered. To pass from beholding that bright and sumptuous display, in

order to see what there was corresponding to it in the subsequent state of

the popular cultivation, is like going out from some magnificent apartment

with its lustres, music, refections, and assemblage of elegant personages,

to be beset by beggars in the gloom and cold of a winter night.

Take a few hours' indulgence in the literary luxuries of Addison, Pope,

and their secondaries, and then turn to some authentic plain

representation of the attainments and habits of the mass of the people, at

the time when Whitefield and Wesley commenced their invasion of the

barbarous community. But the benevolent reader, (or let him be a

patriotically proud one,) is quite reluctant to recognize his country, his

celebrated Christian nation, "the most enlightened in the world," (as song

and oratory have it,) in a populace for the far greater part as perfectly

estranged from the page of knowledge, as if printing, or even letters, had

never been invented; the younger part finding their supreme delight in

rough frolic and savage sports, the old sinking down into impenetrable

stupefaction with the decline of the vital principle.

If he would eagerly seek to fix on something as a counterbalance to this,

and endeavor to modify the estimate and relieve the feeling, by citing

perhaps the courage, and a certain rudimental capacity of good sense, in

which the people are deemed to have surpassed the neighboring nations, he

will be compelled to see how these native endowments were overrun and

befooled by a farrago of contemptible superstitions;--contemptible not

only for their stupid absurdity, but also as having in general nothing of

that pensive, solemn, and poetical character which superstition is capable

of assuming.--It is an exception to be made with respect to the

northernmost part of the island, that superstition did there partake of

this higher character. It seems to have had somewhat of the tone imitated,

but in a softer mode, in the poetry, denominated of Ossian.

As to religion, there is no hazard in saying, that several millions had

little further notion of it than that it was an occasional, or, in the

opinion of perhaps one in twenty, a regular appearance at church, hardly

taking into the account that they were to be taught anything there. And

what _were_ they taught--those of them who gave their attendance and

attention? What kind of notions it was that had settled in their minds

under such ministration, would be, so to speak, brought out, it would be

made apparent what they were or were not taught, when so strong and

general a sensation was produced by the irruption among them of the two

reformers just named, proclaiming, as they both did, (notwithstanding very

considerable differences of secondary order,) the principles which had

been authoritatively declared to be of the essence of Christianity, in

that model of doctrine which had been appointed to prescribe and conserve

the national faith. If such doctrine _had_ been imparted to a portion of

the popular mind, even though with somewhat less positive statement, less

copiousness of illustration, and less cogency of enforcement than it

ought; if it had been but in crude _substance_ fixed in the people's

understanding, by the ministry of the many thousand authorized

instructors, who were by their institute solemnly enjoined and pledged not

to teach a different sort of doctrine, and not to fail of teaching this;

if, we repeat, this faith, so conspicuously declared in the articles,

liturgy, and homilies, had been in any degree in possession of the people,

they would have recognized its main principles, or at least a similarity

of principles, in the addresses of these two new preachers. They would

have done so, notwithstanding a peculiarity of phraseology which

Whitefield and Wesley carried to excess; and notwithstanding certain

specialities which the latter did not, even supposing them to be truths,

keep duly subordinate in exhibiting the prominent essentials of

Christianity. The preaching, therefore, of these men was a test of what

the people had been previously taught or allowed to repose in as Christian

truth, under the tuition of their great religious guardian, the national

church. What it was or was not would be found, in their having a sense of

something like what they had been taught before, or something opposite to

it, or some thing altogether foreign and unknown, when they were hearing

those loud proclaimers of the old doctrines of the Reformation. Now then,

as carrying with them this quality of a test, how were those men received

in the community? Why, they were generally received, on account of the

import of what they said, still more than from their zealous manner of

saying it, with as strong an impression of novelty, strangeness, and

contrariety to everything hitherto heard of, as any of our voyagers and

travellers of discovery have been by the barbarous tribes who had never

before seen civilized man, or as the Spaniards on their arrival in Mexico

or Peru. They might, as the voyagers have clone, experience every local

difference of moral temperament, from that which hailed them with

acclamations, to that which often exploded in a volley of mud and stones;

but through all these varieties of greetings, there was a strong sense of

something then brought before them for the first time. "Thou bringest

certain strange things to our ears," was an expression not more

unaffectedly uttered by any hearer of an apostle, preaching in a heathen

city. And to many of the auditors, it was a matter of nearly as much

difficulty as it would to an inquisitive heathen, and required as new a

posture of the mind, to attain an understanding of the evangelical

doctrines, though they were the very same which had been held forth by the

fathers and martyrs of the English Church.

We have alluded to the violence, which sometimes encountered the endeavor

to restore these doctrines to the knowledge and faith of the people. And

if any one should have thought that, in the descriptions we have been

giving, too frequent and willing use has been made of the epithet

"barbarous," or similar words, as if we could have a perverse pleasure in

degrading our nation, we would request him to select for himself the

appropriate terms for characterizing that state of the people, in point of

sense and civilization, to say nothing of religion, which could admit such

a fact as this to stand in their history--namely, that, in a vast number

of instances and places, where some person unexceptionable in character as

far as known, and sometimes well known as a worthy man, has attempted to

address a number of the inhabitants, under a roof or under the sky, on

what it imported them beyond all things in the world to know and consider,

a multitude have rushed together, shouting and howling, raving and

cursing, and accompanying, in many of the instances, their furious cries

and yells with loathsome or dangerous missiles; dragging or driving the

preacher from his humble stand, forcing him, and the few that wished to

encourage and hear him, to flee for their lives, sometimes not without

serious injury before they could escape. And that such a history of the

people may show how deservedly their superiors were denominated their

"betters," it has to add, that these savage tumults were generally

instigated or abetted, sometimes under a little concealment, but often

avowedly, by persons of higher condition, and even by those consecrated to

the office of religious instruction; and this advantage of their station

was lent to defend the perpetrators against shame, or remorse, or just

punishment, for the outrage.

There would be no hazard in affirming, that since Wesley and Whitefield

began the conflict with the heathenism of the country, there have been in

it hundreds of occurrences answering in substance to this description.

From any one, therefore, who should be inclined to accuse us of harsh

language, we may well repeat the demand in what terms _he_ would think he

gave the true character of a mental and moral condition, manifested in

such uproars of savage violence as the Christian missionaries among

eastern idolaters never had the slightest cause to apprehend. These

outrages were so far from uncommon, or confined to any one part of the

country, some time before, and for a very long while after, the middle of

the last century, that they might be fairly taken as indicating the depth

at which the greatest part of the nation lay sunk in ignorance and

barbarism. Yet the good and zealous men whose lot it was to be thus set

upon by a depraved, infuriate rabble, the foremost of them active in

direct assault, and the rest venting their ferocious delight in a hideous

blending of ribaldry and execration, of joking and cursing, were taxed

with a canting hypocrisy, or a fanatical madness, for speaking of the

prevailing ignorance and barbarism in terms equivalent to our sentence

from the Prophet, "The people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," and

for deploring the hopelessness of any revolution in this empire of

darkness by means of the existing institutions, which seemed indeed to

have become themselves its strong-holds.

But they whom serious danger could not deter from renewing and

indefinitely repeating such attempts at all hazards, were little likely to

be appalled by these contumelies of speech. To the persons so abusing them

they might coolly reply, "Now really you are inconsiderately wasting your

labor. Don't you know, that on the account of this same business we have

sustained the battery of stones, brickbats, and the contents of the ditch?

And can you believe we can much care for mere _words_ of insult, after

that? Albeit the opprobrious phrases _have_ the fetid coarseness befitting

the bluster of property without education, or the more highly inspirited

tone of railing learnt in a college, they are quite another kind of thing

to be the mark for, than such assailments as have come from the brawny

arms of some of your peasants, set on probably by broad hints or plain

expressions how much you would be pleased with such exploits."--It is

gratifying to see thus exemplified, in the endurance of evil for a good

cause, that provision in our nature for economizing the expense of

feeling, through which the encountering of the greater creates a hardihood

which can despise the less.

* * * * *

That our descriptive observations do not exaggerate the popular

ignorance, with its natural concomitants, as prevailing at the middle of

the last century and far downward, many of the elderly persons among us

can readily confirm, from what they remember of the testimony of their

immediate ancestors. It will be recollected what pictures they gave of

the moral scene spread over the country when they were young. They could

convey lively images of the situations in which the vulgar notions and

manners had their free display, by representing the assemblages, and the

fashion of discourse and manners, at fairs, revels, and other rendezvous

of amusement; or in the field of rural employment, or on the village

green, or in front of the mechanic's workshop. They could recount various

anecdotes characteristic of the times; and repeat short dialogues, or

single sayings, which expressed the very essence of what was to the

population of the township or province instead of law and prophets, or

sages or apostles. They could describe how free from all sense of shame

whole families would seem to be, from grand-sires down to the third rude

reckless generation, for not being able to read; and how well content,

when there was some one individual in the neighborhood who could read an

advertisement, or ballad, or last dying speech of a malefactor, for the

benefit of the rest. They could describe the desolation of the land, with

respect to any enlightening and impressive religious instruction in the

places of worship; in the generality of which, indeed, the whole spirit

and manner of the service tended to what we just now described as the

fact--that religion, in its proper sense, was absolutely _a thing not

recognized at all_. To most of the persons there the forms attended to

were _representative_ of literally nothing--they were _themselves_ the

all. [Footnote: None of the anecdotes, that have come down in traditions

now fading away, are more illustrative of those times, than those which

show both people and priest satisfied with the observances at church as

_constituting_ religion, never thinking of them as but the means to

_teach_ and _inspire_ it. Such anecdotes must have been heard by every

one who has conversed much with such aged persons as remember the most of

former times. Some traditions of this kind may be recalled to mind,

through similarity of character, by hearing such an instance as the

following. A friend of the writer mentions, that he heard his father,

whose veracity was above all question, relate as one of the recollections

of the time when he was a young man, that in the parish church where he

attended, the service was one Sunday morning performed with a somewhat

unusual despatch, and every abbreviation that depended on the discretion

of the minister; who at the conclusion explained the circumstance

publicly, by saying, that as neighbor such-a-one (mentioning the name)

was going to bait his bull in the afternoon, he had been as short as

possible that the congregation might have good time for the sport.--It is

on the same principle that the Catholics on the continent, having

attended mass in the morning, never think of doubting their license for

every frivolity the rest of the day.] And as to those who really did in

the course of their attendance acquire something assignable as their

creed, our supposed reporters could tell what wretched and delusive

notions of religion, or rather instead of religion, they were permitted

and authorized, by their appointed spiritual guides, to carry with them

to their last hour. At which hour, some ceremonial form was to be a

passport to heaven: a little bread and wine, converted into a mysterious

object of superstition, by receiving an ecclesiastical name of unknown

import, accompanied with some sentences regarded much in the nature of an

incantation--and all was safe! The sinner expiring believed so, and the

sinners surviving were left to go on in their thoughtless way of life, on

a calculation of the same final resource.

Thus the past age has left an image of its character in the minds of the

generation now themselves grown old, received by immediate tradition from

persons who lived in it. Here and there, indeed, there still lingers, so

long after the departure of the great company to which he belonged, an

ancient who retains a trace of this image immediately from the reality, as

having become of an age to look at the world, and take a share in its

activities, about the middle of the last century. [Footnote: They are here

supposed to be looking back from about the year 1820.] And it might be an

employment of considerable though rather melancholy interest, for a person

visiting many parts of the land, to put in requisition, in each place, for

a day or two, the most faithful of the memories of the most narrative of

the oldest people, for materials toward forming an estimate of the mental

and moral state of the main body of the inhabitants, of town or country,

in the period of which they themselves saw the latter part, and remember

it in combination with what their progenitors related of the former. After

these few retainers of the original picture from the life shall have left

the world, it will be comparatively a faint conception that can be formed

of that age from written memorials, which exist but in a very imperfect

and scattered state.

But supposing the scene could be brought back to the mental eye, in full

verity and distinctness, as in a vision supernaturally imparted, are we

sure we should not have the mortification of perceiving that the change,

from the condition of the people then to their condition now, has been in

but poor proportion to the amount of the advantages, which we are apt to

be elated in recounting as the boast and happiness of later times? To

assume that we should _not_, is to impute to that former age still more

ignorance and debasement than appear in the above description. For what

could, what must that condition have been, if it was worse than the

present by anything near the difference made by what would be a tolerably

fair improvement of the additional means latterly afforded? An estimate

being made of the measure of intelligence and worth found among the

descendants, let so much be taken out as we would wish to attribute to the

effect of the additional means, and what will that remainder be which is

to represent the state of the ancestors, formed under a system of means

wanting all those which we are allowing ourselves to think important

enough to warrant the frequent expression, "This new era?"

The means wanting to the former generation, and that have sprung into

existence for the latter, may be briefly noted; and those of a religious

nature may be named first. It is the most obvious of public expedients,

that good men who wish to make others _so should preach_ to them. And

there has been a wonderful extension of this practice since the zealous

exertions of Whitefield, Wesley, and their co-operators awakened other

good men to a sense of their capacity and duty. The spirit actuating the

associated followers of the latter of those two great agitators, has

impelled forth their whole disposable force (to use a military phrase) to

this service; and they have sent preachers into many parts of the land

where preaching itself, in any fair sense of the term, was wholly a

novelty; and where there was roused as earnest a zeal to crush this

alarming innovation, as the people of Iceland are described to feel on the

occasion of the approach of a white bear to invade their folds or poorly

stocked pastures. [Footnote: The writer had just been reading that

description.] To a confederacy of Christians so well aware of their own

strength and progress, it may seem a superfluous testimony that they are

doing incalculable good among our population, more good probably than any

other religious sect. This tribute is paid not the less freely for a

material difference in theological opinion; nor for a wish, a quite

friendly one, that they may admit some little modification of a spirit

perhaps rather too sectarian in religion, and rather less than independent

in politics.

An immense augmentation has been brought to the sum of public instruction,

by the continually enlarging numbers of dissenters of other denominations.

Whatever may be thought of some of the consequences of the great extension

of dissent, it will hardly be considered as a circumstance tending to

prolong the reign of _ignorance_ that thus, within the last fifty years,

there have been put in activity to impart religious ideas to the people

not fewer (exclusively of the Wesleyans) than several thousand minds that

would, under a continuance of the former state of the nation, have been

doing no such service; that is to say, the service would not have been

done at all. Let it be considered, too, that the doctrines inculcated as

of the first importance, in the preaching of far the greatest number of

them, were exactly those which the Established Church avowed in its

formularies and disowned in its ministry,--one of the circumstances which

contributed the most to _make_ dissenters of the more seriously disposed

among the people.--It is to be added, that so much public activity in

religious instruction could not be unaccompanied by an increase of

exertion in the more private methods of imparting it.

It is another important accession to the enlarged system of operations

against religious ignorance, that a proportion of the Established Church

itself has been recovered to the spirit of its venerable founders, by the

progressive formation in it of a zealous evangelical ministry; dissenters

within their own community, if we may believe the constant loud

declarations of the bulk of that community, and especially of the most

dignified, learned, and powerful classes in it. But in spite of whatever

discredit they may suffer from being thus disowned, these worthy and

useful men have still, in their character of clergymen, a material

advantage above other faithful teachers, for influence on many of the

people, by being invested with the credentials of the ancient institution,

from which the popular mind has been slow and reluctant in withdrawing its

veneration; and for which that sentiment, when not quite extinct, is ready

to revive at any manifestation in it of the quickening spirit of the

Gospel. We say, if the sentiment be not quite extinct; for we are aware

what a very large proportion of the people are gone beyond the possibility

of feeling it any more. But still the number is great of those who

experience, at this new appearance, a reanimation of their affection for

the Church; and so fondly identify the partial change with the whole

institution, that they feel as if a parent, who had for a long while

neglected or deserted them, but for whom they could never cease to cherish

a filial regard, were beginning to be restored to them, with a renewal of

the benignant qualities and cares of the parental character.

* * * * *

Thus far the account of the means which England was not to furnish for its

people till the latter part of the eighteenth century, relates to their

better instruction in religion. This will not be thought beside the

purpose of an enumeration of expedients for lessening their _ignorance_,

by any one who can allow that religion, regarded as a subject of the

understanding, is the most important part of knowledge, and who has

observed the fact that religion, when it begins to _interest_ uncultivated

minds, works surprisingly in favor of the intellectual faculties; an

effect exactly the reverse of that of superstition, and produced by the

contrary operation; for while superstition represses, and even curses any

free action of the intellect, genuine religion both requires and excites

it. Though it is too true that the great Christian principles, when

embraced with conviction and seriousness by a very uneducated man, must

greatly partake, by contractedness of apprehension, the ill fortune which

has confined his mental growth, yet they will often do more than any other

thing within the same space of time to avenge him of it.

In addition to the great extension of instruction in a form specifically

religious, there have been various causes and means contributing to the

increase of knowledge among the people. After it had been seen for

centuries in what manner the children of the poor were suffered to spend

the Sunday, it struck one observer at last, that they might on that day

be taught to read!--a possibility which had never been suspected; a

disclosure as of some hitherto hidden power of nature. And then the

schools which taught the children to read made some of the parents so

much better pleased with their children for their first steps in so new

an attainment, that they could not be indifferent to the opening of other

schools of a humble order to continue that instruction through the week.

It was within the same period that there was a large circulation of

tracts, by some of which many who might be little desirous of

instruction, were beguiled into it by the amusing vehicle ingeniously

contrived to convey it; and the most popular of which will remain a

monument of the talent, knowledge, and benevolence, of that distinguished

benefactor of her country and age, Mrs. H. More, perhaps even pre-eminent

above her many excellent works in a higher strain. Later and continual

issues of this class of papers, of every diversity of composition, and

diffused by the activity of numberless hands, have solicited perhaps a

fourth part of the thoughtless beings in the nation to make at least one

short effort to think.

The enormous flight of periodical miscellanies, and of newspapers, must be

taken as both the indication and the cause that hundreds of thousands of

persons were giving some attention to the matters of general information,

where their grandfathers had been, during the intervals of time allowed by

their employments, prating, brawling, sleeping, or drinking their hours

away. [Footnote: Since this was written there has been a prodigious

augmentation of all such means of general excitement; and happily a

diversified multiplication of a class of them calculated to benefit the

inferior people, at once by giving them a new and enlarged range of ideas,

and by bringing them on some tracts of common ground with the liberally

educated; thus abating the former almost total incapacity, on the part of

those inferiors, for intelligent intercommunication.]

It is perhaps an item of some small value in the account, that a new class

of ideas was furnished by the many wonderful effects of science, in the

application of the elements and mechanical powers. The people saw human

intelligence so effectually inspiriting inanimate matter, as to create a

new and mighty order of agency, appearing in a certain degree independent

of man himself, and in its power immensely surpassing any simple immediate

exertion of _his_ power. They saw wood and iron, fire, water, and air,

actuated to the production of effects which might vie with what their rude

ancestors had been accustomed to believe, (those of them who had heard of

such beings,) of giants, magicians, alchymists, and monsters; effects, the

dream of which, if any one could so have dreamed, would have been scoffed

at by even the more intelligent of the former race.

It is true that very ignorant persons can wonder at such things without

deriving much instruction from them; and that much sooner than the more

cultivated ones they become so familiarized with them as not to think of

them. All _effects_, however astonishing, are apt, if they are but regular

in their recurrence, to become soon insignificant to those who have never

learnt to inquire into _causes_. But still, it would be some little

advantage to the people's understanding to see what prodigious effects

could be produced without any preternatural interference. Though not

comprehending the science employed, they could comprehend that what they

saw _was_ purely a matter of science, and that the cause and the effect

were natural and definite; unlike the present race of Egyptians, who not

long since regarded the very mechanics of an European as an operation of

magic; and were capable of suspecting that a machine constructed by a man

from England, for raising water from the Nile, should inundate the country

in an hour. These wonders of science and art must therefore have

contributed somewhat to rid our people of the impression of being at every

turn beset by occult powers, under the name perhaps of witchcraft, and to

expel the notions of a vague and capricious agency interfering and

sporting with events throughout the system around them. Their rationality

thus obtained an improvement, which may be set against the injury

undoubtedly done them through that diminished exercise of the

understanding which accompanied the progressive division of labor; an

alteration rendered inevitable, and in other respects so advantageous.

When we come down to a comparatively recent time, we see the Bible "going

up on the breadth of the land." In passing by any given number of houses

of the inferior class, we may presume there are in them four or five times

as many copies of that sacred book as there were in the same number thirty

or forty years since. And when we consider how many more persons in those

houses can read, and that in some of them the book may be _more_ read for

having come there as a novelty, than it is in many others where it has

been an old article of the furniture, we may fairly presume that the

increased reading is in a greater proportion than the increased number of

Bibles.--This late period has also brought into action a new expedient,

worthy to stand, in the province of education, parallel and rival to the

most useful modern inventions in the mechanical departments; an

organization for schools, by which, instead of one or two overlabored

agents upon a mass of reluctant subjects, that whole mass itself shall be

animated into a system of reciprocal agency. It has all the merit of a

contrivance which associates with mental labor a pleasure never known to

young learners before.

One more distinction of our times has been, that effect which missionary

and other philanthropic societies have had, to render familiar to common

knowledge, by means of their meetings and publications, a great number of

such interesting and important facts, in the state of other countries and

our own, as were formerly quite beyond the sphere of ordinary information.

In aid of all these means at work in the trial to raise the people from

the condition in which they had been so many ages sunk and immovable,

there has been of late years the unpretending but important ministration

of an incessant multifarious inventiveness in making almost every sort of

information offer itself in brief, familiar, and attractive forms, adapted

to youth or to adult ignorance; so that knowledge, which was formerly a

thing to be searched and dug for "as for hid treasures," has seemed at

last beginning to effloresce through the surface of the ground on all

sides of us.

The statement of what recent times have produced for effecting an

alteration among the people, must include the prodigious excitement in the

political world. It were absurd, it is true, to name this in the simple

character of a _cause_, when we speak of the rousing of the popular mind

from a long stagnation; it being itself a proof and result of some

preceding cause beginning to pervade and disturb that stagnation. But

whatever may be assigned as the true and sufficient explanation of its

origin, we have to look on the mighty operation of its progress, forcing a

restlessness, instability, and tendency to change, into almost every part

of the social economy. In the whole compass of time there has been no

train of events, that has within so short a period stirred to the very

bottom the mind of so vast a portion of the race. And the power of this

great commotion has less consisted in what may be termed its physical

energy, evinced in grand exploits and catastrophes, than in its being an

intense activity of _principles_. It was as different from other

convulsions in the moral world, as would be a tempest attributed to the

direct intervention of a mighty spirit, whether believed celestial or

infernal, from one raised in the elements by mere natural causes. The

people were not, as in other instances of battles, revolutions, and

striking alternations of fortune, gazing a at mere show of wonderful

events, but regarded these events as the course of a great practical

debate of questions affecting their own interests.

And now, when we have put all these things together, we may well pause to

indulge again our wonder what _could_ have been the mental situation of a

majority of the inhabitants of this country, antecedently to this creation

and conjunction of so many means and influences for awaking them to

something of an intelligent existence.