obscurest, the loneliest sufferer, with one proviso,--that I know it is
His agency. I will love him, though he shed frost and darkness on every
way of mine.” The emphasis of that blessed doctrine lay in lowliness.
The new saint gloried in infirmities. Who or what was he? His rise and
his recovery were vicarious. He has fallen in another; he rises in
another.
We perish, and perish gladly, if the law remains. I hope it is
conceivable that a man may go to ruin gladly, if he see that thereby
no shade falls on that he loves and adores. We need not always be
stipulating for our clean shirt and roast joint _per diem_.
We do not believe the less in astronomy and vegetation, because we
are writhing and roaring in our beds with rheumatism. Cripples and
invalids, we doubt not there are bounding fawns in the forest, and
lilies with graceful, springing stem; so neither do we doubt or fail
to love the eternal law, of which we are such shabby practisers.
Truth gathers itself spotless and unhurt after all our surrenders and
concealments and partisanship--never hurt by the treachery or ruin
of its best defenders, whether Luther, or William Penn, or St. Paul.
We answer, when they tell us of the bad behavior of Luther or Paul:
“Well, what if he did? Who was more pained than Luther or Paul?”
Shall we attach ourselves violently to our teachers and historical
personalities, and think the foundation shaken if any fault is shown in
their record? But how is the truth hurt by their falling from it? The
law of gravity is not hurt by every accident, though our leg be broken.
No more is the law of justice by our departure from it.
We are to know that we are never without a pilot. When we know not how
to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows
the way, though we do not. When the stars and sun appear, when we have
conversed with navigators who know the coast, we may begin to put out
an oar and trim a sail. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not
accept a wooden rudder.
Have you said to yourself ever: ‘I abdicate all choice, I see it is not
for me to interfere. I see that I have been one of the crowd; that I
have been a pitiful person, because I have wished to be my own master,
and to dress and order my whole way and system of living. I thought I
managed it very well. I see that my neighbors think so. I have heard
prayers, I have prayed even, but I have never until now dreamed that
this undertaking the entire management of my own affairs was not
commendable. I have never seen, until now, that it dwarfed me. I have
not discovered, until this blessed ray flashed just now through my
soul, that there dwelt any power in Nature that would relieve me of my
load. But now I see.’
What is this intoxicating sentiment that allies this scrap of dust to
the whole of Nature and the whole of Fate,--that makes this doll a
dweller in ages, mocker at time, able to spurn all outward advantages,
peer and master of the elements? I am taught by it that what touches
any thread in the vast web of being touches me. I am representative of
the whole; and the good of the whole, or what I call the right, makes
me invulnerable.
How came this creation so magically woven that nothing can do me
mischief but myself,--that an invisible fence surrounds my being
which screens me from all harm that I will to resist? If I will stand
upright, the creation cannot bend me. But if I violate myself, if I
commit a crime, the lightning loiters by the speed of retribution,
and every act is not hereafter but instantaneously rewarded according
to its quality. Virtue is the adopting of this dictate of the
universal mind by the individual will. Character is the habit of this
obedience, and Religion is the accompanying emotion, the emotion of
reverence which the presence of the universal mind ever excites in the
individual.
We go to famous books for our examples of character, just as we send
to England for shrubs which grow as well in our own door-yards and
cow-pastures. Life is always rich, and spontaneous graces and forces
elevate it in every domestic circle, which are overlooked while we are
reading something less excellent in old authors. From the obscurity and
casualty of those which I know, I infer the obscurity and casualty of
the like balm and consolation and immortality in a thousand homes which
I do not know, all round the world. And I see not why to these simple
instincts, simple yet grand, all the heights and transcendencies of
virtue and of enthusiasm are not open. There is power enough in them
to move the world; and it is not any sterility or defect in ethics,
but our negligence of these fine monitors, of these world-embracing
sentiments, that makes religion cold and life low.
While the immense energy of the sentiment of duty and the awe of the
supernatural exert incomparable influence on the mind,--yet it is
often perverted, and the tradition received with awe, but without
correspondent action of the receiver. Then you find so many men
infatuated on that topic! Wise on all other, they lose their head the
moment they talk of religion. It is the sturdiest prejudice in the
public mind that religion is something by itself; a department distinct
from all other experiences, and to which the tests and judgment
men are ready enough to show on other things, do not apply. You may
sometimes talk with the gravest and best citizen, and the moment the
topic of religion is broached, he runs into a childish superstition.
His face looks infatuated, and his conversation is. When I talked with
an ardent missionary, and pointed out to him that his creed found no
support in my experience, he replied, “It is not so in your experience,
but is so in the other world.” I answer: Other world! there is no other
world. God is one and omnipresent; here or nowhere is the whole fact.
The one miracle which God works evermore is in Nature, and imparting
himself to the mind. When we ask simply, “What is true in thought?
what is just in action?” it is the yielding of the private heart to
the Divine mind, and all personal preferences, and all requiring of
wonders, are profane.
The word miracle, as it is used, only indicates the ignorance of
the devotee, staring with wonder to see water turned into wine, and
heedless of the stupendous fact of his own personality. Here he stands,
a lonely thought harmoniously organized into correspondence with the
universe of mind and matter. What narrative of wonders coming down from
a thousand years ought to charm his attention like this? Certainly
it is human to value a general consent, a fraternity of believers,
a crowded church; but as the sentiment purifies and rises, it leaves
crowds. It makes churches of two, churches of one. A fatal disservice
does this Swedenborg or other who offers to do my thinking for me. It
seems as if, when the Spirit of God speaks so plainly to each soul,
it were an impiety to be listening to one or another saint. Jesus was
better than others, because he refused to listen to others and listened
at home.
You are really interested in your thought. You have meditated in silent
wonder on your existence in this world. You have perceived in the first
fact of your conscious life here a miracle so astounding,--a miracle
comprehending all the universe of miracles to which your intelligent
life gives you access,--as to exhaust wonder, and leave you no need of
hunting here or there for any particular exhibitions of power. Then
up comes a man with a text of 1 John v. 7, or a knotty sentence from
St. Paul, which he considers as the axe at the root of your tree. You
cannot bring yourself to care for it. You say: “Cut away; my tree is
Ygdrasil--the tree of life.” He interrupts for the moment your peaceful
trust in the Divine Providence. Let him know by your security that your
conviction is clear and sufficient, and if he were Paul himself, you
also are here, and with your Creator.
We all give way to superstitions. The house in which we were born
is not quite mere timber and stone; is still haunted by parents and
progenitors. The creeds into which we were initiated in childhood and
youth no longer hold their old place in the minds of thoughtful men,
but they are not nothing to us, and we hate to have them treated with
contempt. There is so much that we do not know, that we give to these
suggestions the benefit of the doubt.
It is a necessity of the human mind that he who looks at one object
should look away from all other objects. He may throw himself upon some
sharp statement of one fact, some verbal creed, with such concentration
as to hide the universe from him: but the stars roll above; the sun
warms him. With patience and fidelity to truth he may work his way
through, if only by coming against somebody who believes more fables
than he does; and, in trying to dispel the illusions of his neighbor,
he opens his own eyes.
In the Christianity of this country there is wide difference of opinion
in regard to inspiration, prophecy, miracles, the future state of the
soul; every variety of opinion, and rapid revolution in opinions, in
the last half-century. It is simply impossible to read the old history
of the first century as it was read in the ninth; to do so you must
abolish in your mind the lessons of all the centuries from the ninth
to the nineteenth.
Shall I make the mistake of baptizing the daylight, and time, and
space, by the name of John or Joshua, in whose tent I chance to behold
daylight, and space, and time? What anthropomorphists we are in this,
that we cannot let moral distinctions be, but must mould them into
human shape! “Mere morality” means,--not put into a personal master of
morals. Our religion is geographical, belongs to our time and place;
respects and mythologizes some one time and place and person and
people. So it is occasional. It visits us only on some exceptional and
ceremonial occasion, on a wedding or a baptism, on a sick-bed, or at a
funeral, or perhaps on a sublime national victory or a peace. But that
be sure is not the religion of the universal unsleeping providence,
which lurks in trifles, in still, small voices, in the secrets of the
heart and our closest thoughts, as efficiently as in our proclamations
and successes.
Far be it from me to underrate the men or the churches that have fixed
the hearts of men and organized their devout impulses or oracles into
good institutions. The Church of Rome had its saints, and inspired the
conscience of Europe--St. Augustine, and Thomas à Kempis, and Fénelon;
the piety of the English Church in Cranmer, and Herbert, and Taylor;
the Reformed Church, Scougal; the mystics, Behmen and Swedenborg;
the Quakers, Fox and James Naylor. I confess our later generation
appears ungirt, frivolous, compared with the religions of the last
or Calvinistic age. There was in the last century a serious habitual
reference to the spiritual world, running through diaries, letters and
conversation--yes, and into wills and legal instruments also, compared
with which our liberation looks a little foppish and dapper.
The religion of seventy years ago was an iron belt to the mind, giving
it concentration and force. A rude people were kept respectable by
the determination of thought on the eternal world. Now men fall
abroad,--want polarity,--suffer in character and intellect. A sleep
creeps over the great functions of man. Enthusiasm goes out. In its
stead a low prudence seeks to hold society staunch, but its arms are
too short, cordage and machinery never supply the place of life.
Luther would cut his hand off sooner than write theses against the
pope if he suspected that he was bringing on with all his might the
pale negations of Boston Unitarianism. I will not now go into the
metaphysics of that reaction by which in history a period of belief
is followed by an age of criticism, in which wit takes the place of
faith in the leading spirits, and an excessive respect for forms out
of which the heart has departed becomes most obvious in the least
religious minds. I will not now explore the causes of the result, but
the fact must be conceded as of frequent recurrence, and never more
evident than in our American church. To a self-denying, ardent church,
delighting in rites and ordinances, has succeeded a cold, intellectual
race, who analyze the prayer and psalm of their forefathers, and the
more intellectual reject every yoke of authority and custom with a
petulance unprecedented. It is a sort of mark of probity and sincerity
to declare how little you believe, while the mass of the community
indolently follow the old forms with childish scrupulosity, and we have
punctuality for faith, and good taste for character.
But I hope the defect of faith with us is only apparent. We shall find
that freedom has its own guards, and, as soon as in the vulgar it runs
to license, sets all reasonable men on exploring those guards. I do
not think the summit of this age truly reached or expressed unless it
attain the height which religion and philosophy reached in any former
age. If I miss the inspiration of the saints of Calvinism, or of
Platonism, or Buddhism, our times are not up to theirs, or, more truly,
have not yet their own legitimate force.
Worship is the regard for what is above us. Men are respectable only
as they respect. We delight in children because of that religious eye
which belongs to them; because of their reverence for their seniors,
and for their objects of belief. The poor Irish laborer one sees with
respect, because he believes in something, in his church, and in his
employers. Superstitious persons we see with respect, because their
whole existence is not bounded by their hats and their shoes, but they
walk attended by pictures of the imagination, to which they pay homage.
You cannot impoverish man by taking away these objects above him
without ruin. It is very sad to see men who think their goodness made
of themselves; it is very grateful to see those who hold an opinion the
reverse of this.
All ages of belief have been great; all of unbelief have been mean.
The Orientals believe in Fate. That which shall befall them is written
on the iron leaf; they will not turn on their heel to avoid famine,
plague, or the sword of the enemy. That is great, and gives a great
air to the people. We in America are charged with a great deficiency
in worship; that reverence does not belong to our character; that
our institutions, our politics, and our trade, have fostered a
self-reliance which is small, liliputian, full of fuss and bustle;
we look at and will bear nothing above us in the state, and do
exceedingly applaud and admire ourselves, and believe in our senses
and understandings, while our imagination and our moral sentiment are
desolated. In religion too we want objects above; we are fast losing
or have already lost our old reverence; new views of inspiration, of
miracles, of the saints, have supplanted the old opinions, and it
is vain to bring them again. Revolutions never go backward, and in
all churches a certain decay of ancient piety is lamented, and all
threatens to lapse into apathy and indifferentism. It becomes us to
consider whether we cannot have a real faith and real objects in lieu
of these false ones. The human mind, when it is trusted, is never false
to itself. If there be sincerity and good meaning--if there be really
in us the wish to seek for our superiors, for that which is lawfully
above us, we shall not long look in vain.
Meantime there is great centrality, a centripetence equal to the
centrifugence. The mystic or theist is never scared by any startling
materialism. He knows the laws of gravitation and of repulsion are
deaf to French talkers, be they never so witty. If theology shows that
opinions are fast changing, it is not so with the convictions of men
with regard to conduct. These remain. The most daring heroism, the most
accomplished culture, or rapt holiness, never exhausted the claim of
these lowly duties,--never penetrated to their origin, or was able to
look behind their source. We cannot disenchant, we cannot impoverish
ourselves, by obedience; but by humility we rise, by obedience we
command, by poverty we are rich, by dying we live.
We are thrown back on rectitude forever and ever, only rectitude,--to
mend one; that is all we can do. But _that_ the zealot stigmatizes
as a sterile chimney-corner philosophy. Now the first position I
make is that natural religion supplies still all the facts which are
disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion
is steadily to its identity with morals.
How is the new generation to be edified? How should it not? The life
of those once omnipotent traditions was really not in the legend, but
in the moral sentiment and the metaphysical fact which the legends
enclosed--and these survive. A new Socrates, or Zeno, or Swedenborg, or
Pascal, or a new crop of geniuses like those of the Elizabethan age,
may be born in this age, and, with happy heart and a bias for theism,
bring asceticism, duty, and magnanimity into vogue again.
It is true that Stoicism, always attractive to the intellectual and
cultivated, has now no temples, no academy, no commanding Zeno or
Antoninus. It accuses us that it has none: that pure ethics is not
now formulated and concreted into a _cultus_, a fraternity with
assemblings and holy-days, with song and book, with brick and stone.
Why have not those who believe in it and love it left all for this,
and dedicated themselves to write out its scientific scriptures to
become its Vulgate for millions? I answer for one that the inspirations
we catch of this law are not continuous and technical, but joyful
sparkles, and are recorded for their beauty, for the delight they give,
not for their obligation; and that is their priceless good to men, that
they charm and uplift, not that they are imposed. It has not yet its
first hymn. But, that every line and word may be coals of true fire,
ages must roll, ere these casual wide-falling cinders can be gathered
into broad and steady altar-flame.
It does not yet appear what forms the religious feeling will take. It
prepares to rise out of all forms to an absolute justice and healthy
perception. Here is now a new feeling of humanity infused into public
action. Here is contribution of money on a more extended and systematic
scale than ever before to repair public disasters at a distance, and
of political support to oppressed parties. Then there are the new
conventions of social science, before which the questions of the rights
of women, the laws of trade, the treatment of crime, regulation of
labor, come for a hearing. If these are tokens of the steady currents
of thought and will in these directions, one might well anticipate a
new nation.
I know how delicate this principle is,--how difficult of adaptation
to practical and social arrangements. It cannot be profaned; it cannot
be forced; to draw it out of its natural current is to lose at once
all its power. Such experiments as we recall are those in which some
sect or dogma made the tie, and that was an artificial element, which
chilled and checked the union. But is it quite impossible to believe
that men should be drawn to each other by the simple respect which
each man feels for another in whom he discovers absolute honesty;
the respect he feels for one who thinks life is quite too coarse and
frivolous, and that he should like to lift it a little, should like
to be the friend of some man’s virtue? for another who, underneath
his compliances with artificial society, would dearly like to serve
somebody,--to test his own reality by making himself useful and
indispensable?
Man does not live by bread alone, but by faith, by admiration, by
sympathy. ’Tis very shallow to say that cotton, or iron, or silver and
gold are kings of the world; there are rulers that will at any moment
make these forgotten. Fear will. Love will. Character will. Men live by
their credence. Governments stand by it,--by the faith that the people
share,--whether it comes from the religion in which they were bred, or
from an original conscience in themselves, which the popular religion
echoes. If government could only stand by force, if the instinct of
the people was to resist the government, it is plain the government
must be two to one in order to be secure, and then it would not be safe
from desperate individuals. But no; the old commandment, “Thou shalt
not kill,” holds down New York, and London, and Paris, and not a police
or horse-guards.
The credence of men it is that moulds them, and creates at will one
or another surface. The mind as it opens transfers very fast its
choice from the circumstance to the cause; from courtesy to love,
from inventions to science, from London or Washington law, or public
opinion, to the self-revealing idea; from all that talent executes to
the sentiment that fills the heart and dictates the future of nations.
The commanding fact which I never do not see, is the sufficiency of
the moral sentiment. We buttress it up, in shallow hours or ages, with
legends, traditions and forms, each good for the one moment in which
it was a happy type or symbol of the Power, but the Power sends in the
next moment a new lesson, which we lose while our eyes are reverted and
striving to perpetuate the old.
America shall introduce a pure religion. Ethics are thought not to
satisfy affection. But all the religion we have is the ethics of one
or another holy person; as soon as character appears, be sure love
will, and veneration, and anecdotes, and fables about him, and delight
of good men and women in him. And what deeps of grandeur and beauty
are known to us in ethical truth, what divination or insight belongs
to it! For innocence is a wonderful electuary for purging the eyes to
search the nature of those souls that pass before it. What armor it is
to protect the good from outward or inward harm, and with what power it
converts evil accidents into benefits; the power of its countenance;
the power of its presence! To it alone comes true friendship; to it
come grandeur of situation and poetic perception, enriching all it
deals with.
Once men thought Spirit divine, and Matter diabolic; one Ormuzd, the
other Ahriman. Now science and philosophy recognize the parallelism,
the approximation, the unity of the two: how each reflects the other as
face answers to face in a glass: nay, how the laws of both are one, or
how one is the realization. We are learning not to fear truth.
The man of this age must be matriculated in the university of sciences
and tendencies flowing from all past periods. He must not be one
who can be surprised and shipwrecked by every bold or subtile word
which malignant and acute men may utter in his hearing, but should be
taught all skepticisms and unbeliefs, and made the destroyer of all
card-houses and paper walls, and the sifter of all opinions, by being
put face to face from his infancy with Reality.
A man who has accustomed himself to look at all his circumstances
as very mutable, to carry his possessions, his relations to persons,
and even his opinions, in his hand, and in all these to pierce to the
principle and moral law, and everywhere to find that,--has put himself
out of the reach of all skepticism; and it seems as if whatever is most
affecting and sublime in our intercourse, in our happiness, and in our
losses, tended steadily to uplift us to a life so extraordinary, and,
one might say, superhuman.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: Reprinted from the _North American Review_, of May,
1878.]
THE PREACHER.
ASCENDING thorough just degrees
To a consummate holiness,
As angel blind to trespass done,
And bleaching all souls like the sun.
THE PREACHER.[9]
IN the history of opinion, the pinch of falsehood shows itself first,
not in argument and formal protest, but in insincerity, indifference
and abandonment of the Church or the scientific or political or
economic institution for other better or worse forms.