experience. There is one to whom reference is never made for testimony
to this doctrine, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ; and if such
doctrine were true, it is strange that he who needeth not that any
should testify of man, because he knew what was in man, did not reveal
it, and stamp it with all the solemnity of his authority. It may with
confidence be asserted that such a dogma as the inherent and universal
corruption of human nature is neither asserted nor justified by any
Scripture from Genesis to Revelations. The Bible, I admit to be a moral,
and also a providential history; and in this relation, I admit also,
that it contains many strong statements of human wickedness; but they
all refer to periods of peculiar degeneracy, and a fair study of the
context will plainly show they have defined limitations. In the appendix
to this lecture I will subjoin a list of texts usually pleaded for this
doctrine, the mere exhibition of which is sufficient to expose its utter
want of a Scriptural foundation.[519] On the present occasion I shall
confine my remarks to the proofs alleged from Paul to the Romans.
Stripping the subject of all the mysticism with which it has been
encumbered, and identifying ourselves with the mind and times of the
apostle, let us clearly see what was his object, and then we shall truly
apprehend the nature of his argument. Paul’s object was twofold: first,
to show that the Gospel was universal. This was opposed to the
circumscribed nationality of Judaism. Secondly, that it was inward and
spiritual. This was again opposed to the ritual and legal exactitude of
Judaism. The General course, therefore, of the argument is directed
against Jewish thoughts and Jewish prejudices, and to maintain the
admissibility of the Gentiles to the Christian church. He has then to
make good two propositions:—namely, “that God is impartially and equally
the God of all men; and that fidelity of heart is the essence of all
true religion.” We might sum up the whole system of the Apostle in two
simple sentences of his letter: “Is he the God of the Jews only? is he
not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also.” The other
assertion is, that “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.”
Proving these two principles, he utterly demolishes all Jewish claims.
The Apostle proceeds to open the new aspect which Jesus presented of the
character of God—that of grace or mercy. Moses proclaimed Jehovah as a
God of law, Jesus revealed him as a God of grace. Paul cautiously, but
with power, argues most convincingly that in this relation only can men
confidently approach him, but in this relation there is free access for
all. None have a claim from merit, for all are guilty. With remarkable
prudence, he takes, first, the case of the Gentile, and the state of the
world in his own time supplied him examples in melancholy abundance.
There was, therefore, no ground for Gentile exultation or Jewish
jealousy, for the gospel was offered to the Heathens, not as a thing of
merit but of favour, not as reward for their holiness, but as a remedy
for their sin. To the Jews, who looked with bitter contempt on all men
but themselves, who imagined every spiritual advantage was for them
alone, this would be most offensive. The next question which thence
arose was this:—As the Gentiles obviously were accepted before God, only
on the ground of his mercy, whether the Jews could claim acceptance on
any other ground? The Apostle had most convincingly shown that the
Gentiles had violated the sense of duty inscribed upon their hearts,
with equal force of reasoning he proves that the Jews had violated the
precepts written in their law; one, therefore, had no right to accuse
the other—both were guilty in the sight of God, and both had equal need
of his mercy.—But, the Jews were not only wrong in their ideas on the
extent of the Creator’s goodness, but also on the true nature of human
virtue. As they considered his special providence confined to
themselves, so they imagined the only acceptable obedience was in the
rigid observance of their own minute precepts and ceremonies. In
opposition to this Paul contends that justification is by faith, and not
by the works of the law—not a faith which implies a mere assent to a
series of scholastic propositions, but a faith which consists in a
trusting and confiding spirit. The Apostle places saving holiness, not
in outward and measured precepts, but in living and inward principles—in
allegiance to God and Christ, in the loyalty of a true and pure heart—in
the spirit that makes obedience more a life than a law. To say then that
God holds man sternly to a code of inevitable condemnation, to say that
any one transgression, however slight, sets at naught the whole tendency
of the character and life, not only leaves Paul’s reasoning without
force, but subverts the gospel to its very foundations. Our Lord in the
parable represents a master as thus addressing his unforgiving servant,
“O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou
desiredst me—shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy
fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?” The character of God as
described by orthodoxy is the contradictory of this. But we are informed
that God is a Judge, and, analogous to human judges, on the tribunal of
the universe, lays aside all private considerations. The assimilation is
at once low and false. God has no evidence to examine, no probabilities
to balance, no decision to arrive at, no formal sentence to
pronounce—there is no distinction in the case between God and man,
analogous to that between an earthly judge, and his accused
fellow-mortal; there is no such distinction with God as a personal
relation and a public one, for God is the same in all relations. His
dominion is in the spirit; there he rewards, and there he punishes;
there is no reward separate from the direct results of righteousness
itself issuing in blessedness, and no penalty separate from the results
of sin itself issuing suffering, and each in the proportion in which the
character is sanctified or depraved. Forgiveness of sin then, is peace
of conscience, springing from a regenerated heart, and when man with a
thoughtful and enlightened spirit can forgive himself, God forgives him.
We, at least those of us personally engaged in this controversy,
maintain no such doctrine as the pardon of sin on condition of
repentance—as if repentance were something offered and remission an
equivalent received instead. On the contrary, we see in repentance but
the painful revulsion of a soul from a moral state found by sad
experience to be unworthy of it: a struggle upward in many sighs and
fears to the high estate from which it has fallen, in repentance itself
we see but an additional instance of the anguish which sin never fails
to entail. We regard it not as a merit, but a penalty. We grant the
universality of sin, as fully as any can assert it. We know it is
written, “all men have sinned and come short of the glory of God”—and we
admit the truth of the assertion. Wherever man is, there will be sin,
for we expect in no place—no, not in heaven itself—to find in man the
perfection of a deity. It has been asserted, that every man has an ideal
in his soul above his actual conduct. This has been used for
condemnation of our nature, we take it as the glory of it—as an evidence
that the spirit of God is extinguished in no man. We are ready to
concede, not that the open transgressor comes short of the glory of God,
but the best men come far short of the glory of their own ideal, and the
sense of that short coming is acute, in the degree that their
apprehensions of moral loveliness are clear and purified. Every man with
his conscience in a right state laments with more heart-felt sorrow the
sins which are inward than those which are outward, not those which have
been exposed to the world, but those which only God has seen. We desire
in no sense to mitigate the deep injury of sinfulness; but when we are
told, that God, in vindication of his holy law, must subject man to an
unsparing standard of judgment, orthodoxy to be consistent should have
the unmitigated penalty inflicted on every personal transgressor. We are
unable to conceive how the righteousness of any law can be vindicated by
contriving an escape for the guilty by the suffering of the innocent. We
do not make void the law—nay, we establish it, for we hold, and we
preach it also, that transgression vindicates in the person of the
sinner the claims of holiness, righteously and completely, in anguish
and tribulation. I here close the polemical division of this lecture,
and now for the remaining time I shall dwell on views more positive.
II. Having elucidated two extreme and false systems of human nature, I
shall now adduce some of these essentials which properly entitle it to
be considered in the likeness of God. I shall pass over the faculties of
mere intellect and taste, for these are not denied. I do this for the
sake of brevity, for it would be easy to prove that without sense of
moral beauty in the soul, even these could have no high developement,
philosophy would lose its wisdom, science its uses, painting its glow,
architecture its majesty, sculpture its grace, poetry and eloquence
their inspiration. It would be easy, I maintain, to show, that without
conceptions of the divine, the true, the right, and the beautiful, there
would be neither power nor materials in human nature from which to
create a single great work of mind, nothing to evince the might of
genius or the immortality of thought. I shall, however, in all my
subsequent remarks, confine myself to what without dispute is strictly
moral. We contend not for an infallibility in man’s reason, neither do
we assert impeccability in his will; as we admit error in the one, we
can admit sin in the other. But when we speak of the moral nature of
man, we regard it not partially, but as a whole, not in its accidental
exceptions, but in its essential constitution. Of this constitution we
assert that virtue and goodness are the true and native attributes. For
the position that sin is not natural but unnatural, not in accordance
with humanity but contrary to it, we have the testimony of the great
bishop Butler.[520]—“Every work,” he says, “of nature and art is a
system; and as every particular thing, both natural and artificial, is
for some use or purpose, out of or beyond itself, one may add to what
has already been brought into the true idea of a system, its
conduciveness to this or more ends. Let us instance in a watch: Suppose
the several parts taken to pieces and placed apart from each other; let
a man have ever so exact a notion of these several parts, unless he
considers the respect and relations which they have to each other, he
will not have any thing like the idea of a watch. Suppose these several
parts brought together, and any how united, neither will he yet, be the
union ever so close, have an idea which will bear any resemblance to
that of a watch. But let him view these several parts put together, or
consider them as to be put together in the manner of a watch—let him
form a notion of the relation which these several parts have to each
other, all conducive in their several ways to this purpose, showing the
hour of the day,—and then he has the idea of a watch. Thus it is with
the inward nature of man. Appetites, passions, affections, and the
principle of reflection, conscience, considered severally as the inward
parts of our inward nature, do not at all give us an idea of the system
of this nature. And this our nature is adapted to virtue, as from the
idea of a watch it appears, that its nature, that is, constitution or
system, is adapted to measure time. What in fact commonly happens is
nothing to the question. Every work of art is apt to be out of order:
but this is so far from being according to its system, that let the
disorder increase, and it will destroy it.” The author then goes on to
say, that—“Nothing can possibly be more contrary to our nature than
vice, meaning by nature not only the several parts of our internal
frame, but also the constitution of it. Poverty and disgrace, tortures
and death, are not so contrary to it. Misery and injustice are indeed
equally contrary to some different parts of our nature taken singly, but
injustice is moreover contrary to the whole constitution of the nature.”
And here I will repeat a fine remark from the same noble thinker, used
already, in a note by one of my fellow-labourers in this discussion.—“We
should learn,” says the philosophical prelate, “to be cautious lest we
charge God foolishly, by ascribing that to him, or the nature he has
given us, which is wholly owing to its abuse. Men may speak of the
degeneracy and corruption of the world, according to the experience they
have had of it, but human nature considered as the divine workmanship
should, methinks, be treated as sacred: for in the image of God made he
man.”[521]
In human nature, under all its forms, we recognize two eternal moral
elements; which, though frequently perverted, can never be destroyed. I
mean sympathy and conscience, the feeling of a common nature, and the
sense of right and wrong. If we consider the truth, the power, and
extent of sympathy, though nothing else remained in man, this alone
would prove his assimilation to God; would prove, to use the language of
the Apostle, that he was still a partaker of the divine nature. In what
numberless forms is it manifested!—rising from instinct to godliness. We
see it in family affections. Wherever we meet a home, however rude the
beings that it shelters, whether it be scooped in the snow, or be a tent
on the desert, wherever the loves of parents and children, of brothers
and sisters, are interchanged within the sphere of its operation, we
have the spirit of a common heart. We see it also in love of country.
From those who surround him in his dwelling, man enlarges the compass of
his affections, until they embrace those who, with himself, tread the
same soil, and speak the same tongue. The general glory, honour, and
prosperity of his country, become dear to him; and from habits of loving
association, there, more than any where else, the heavens have a
brighter smile, and nature wears a kinder face. Every nation has had its
patriots; and, whether successful or not, whether victorious in the
field or bleeding on the scaffold, they evince the power with which the
sentiment of common good can overcome the force of selfish interests. We
see the strength of sympathy in the love of man generally, and
especially in that species of it which assumes the form of compassion.
Whence else the mass of goodness which proves that humanity, with all
its evils and its errors, is a most merciful nature. Misery, in any
form, is an appeal that is rarely disregarded. The stranger, whose face
we never saw before, if it be seamed and marred by suffering, in his
misfortune becomes a brother; and what is yet harder, our foe, in his
sorrow, seems once more a friend. Men find it hard to pardon a
prosperous enemy; but there are few so callous whom a fallen one would
not disarm of hatred. Hunger, thirst, cold, nakedness, desertion,
orphanage, imprisonment, sickness—every want that afflict the
wretched—have their provision in human mercy, not only from individual
hands, but from collective hearts. When man is maligned as utterly
corrupt—as at enmity with God and his kind, we may point to thousands
occupied in works of beneficence, and to refugees for misery in every
land, and claim as witnesses against the accusers. And we stop not with
the woes that fall directly under the senses;—sufferers who wasted their
sighs and their tears in darkness, have been thought of with grief by
those whom they knew not, and visited with glad tidings when they least
expected. The piercing supplication of wretchedness has been sometimes
wafted across continents and oceans without failing, or being weakened
by the distance; and the cry of anguish, uttered at one extreme of
earth, has fallen with power on human hearts at the other. We speak not
of bodily wants alone, but equally of the soul’s wants. The ignorant
have those who feel and work for them, and there are some who do not
scorn the most guilty; there are many pure souls who never themselves
knew contamination, who can turn with mercy to the despised, and bleed
with sorrow that the work of God should lie so deep in ruin. And,
whether with right or wrong principles, whether by right or wrong
agencies, whether in right or wrong methods, this sentiment can have no
illustration so sublime as the various exertions here, and throughout
the globe, for the religious regeneration of mankind. Is there, then,
nothing godlike in the spirit which gives unity and love to home;
nothing godlike in the spirit which, with unselfish devotion, causes a
man to sacrifice his own interests in his nation’s good; nothing godlike
in the spirit which makes the sufferer a brother, whether stranger or
enemy; which can pierce the haunts of loathsome want; which can feel for
the body and the soul, and draw near, in generous pity, both to distress
and crime; which dreams, with tortured imagination, of the unseen
tribulation of the dungeon, and rests not until the fresh breeze is on
the prisoner’s brow, and the bright and cheerful sunshine on his eye;
which stretches forth its ample charity to the utmost regions of earth;
and, wherever there is a complaint of physical or spiritual need, admits
it is a brother’s cry, and hears it not in vain?
The very passions, which might seemingly be urged against this
reasoning, are but so many confirmations of it. Men have sometimes tried
to be independent of others; they failed. Men have tried to live apart
from others, and to dispense with the general affections of life; they
failed. Men have tried to set opinion at defiance, and to disregard
esteem; they also failed. And, in the few rare and extreme cases in
which men have been more than usually sordid, selfish, and anti-social,
the isolation to which they have been abandoned evinced their conduct to
be averse to nature; and, whilst it proved their folly, inflicted their
chastisement. Emulation, envy, jealousy, vanity, ambition, and various
other passions, afford evidence to the same purpose: for, what is
emulation, but the struggle for the greatest share of appreciation; and
envy, but the malignity of disappointment; and jealousy, but the
suspicion of not possessing it,—perchance, of not deserving it; and
vanity, but the puny desire to attain, or the timid hope that it already
has it; and ambition, but the strong effort of a strong nature to have a
lasting life in the admiration and memory of men: all, in their several
ways, converging in evidence of one truth, namely, that community of
feeling is amongst the greatest distinctions of our nature. In truth, it
is only by this that man understands man. It is this that opens to man
the heart of man; that, from the first human being to the last, forms a
chain of common emotion, which indissolubly links mankind of all
generations into one brotherhood. Without this, history would be a dead
letter; laws and customs, but puzzles; arts, confused and shapeless;
past languages and literature, but empty babble; and by-gone religions
and philosophy, but unintelligible names. This common sympathy is that
by which we know the meaning of history; by which we know the force of
laws and customs; by which we know the beauty and immortality of art; by
which we are enabled to interpret language, literature, philosophy, and
religion; by which we are made one with our race, and identified in
kindred with all that have ever ennobled or adorned it.
A second characteristic I have mentioned, in man, is the sense of duty,
the sense of right and wrong. In this more than in any other quality he
bears the impress of his divine original. The sense of duty is an
essential part of human nature. A man might as well endeavour to lay
aside the consciousness of his rational existence as to get rid of the
idea of an immoveable distinction between good and evil, between virtue
and vice. I know that, in the operations of the moral sense, there have
been apparent contradictions; but if we were to deny it on this ground,
we should deny the existence even of reason itself, for many of its
conclusions are apparently contradictory. We assert the reality of the
rational faculty, but not its infallibility; in like manner, we assert
the reality of the moral faculty, but not its infallibility. I know that
it seems various in its operation, not only from national and religious
differences, but also from individual sophistries. Men pronounce just
judgment on the sins of others; but when they come to pass sentence on
their own, they invent a thousand excuses for justification or leniency:
but these excuses do not satisfy themselves. And when they are alone
with their own hearts, in silent and sober thought, the deception will
not bear to be scrutinized, and truth is justified by conscience. The
sense of duty is universal. Wherever we meet man, we meet one who, in
some way or other, is the creature of moral feeling; and although the
moral sentiment may be superstitiously or fanatically directed, there
are essential ideas in which it never changes. Wild actions and awful
evils may, I know, be perpetrated under a mistaken sense of duty, and
done with the fiercer zeal because they are considered to be duty. Under
its influence, men can not only sacrifice others but themselves: in one
age or country, a man can lacerate himself before an image or an idol,
or look calmly on the rack on which a tortured fellow creature shivers,
or he can come from his retreat of self-infliction to the place where he
persecutes; and, if the case compelled, he could go himself from that to
the stake of martyrdom. The sentiment is true to itself, and the
misdirection of it lies in other sources: yet with all its diversities,
justice, mercy, and truth, have ever the instinctive approval of
conscience, whilst wrong, cruelty, and falsehood, under whatever forms
disguised, are abhorrent to it. The sense of duty presents man to us in
the most glorious aspects of his nature; and that sentiment is not
always misdirected. By its power in the soul, we observe appetites
governed, passions subjected, and temptation overcome; by its
inspiration, when necessity calls, we observe men devoting themselves in
the spirit of martyrdom to truth and right, casting pleasure aside,
forsaking whatever was dear to them, and despising life itself. Whatever
change for good has occurred in the history of man, is a witness for the
force of duty, for it has been worked out in much travail and
self-denial; whatever we have most precious in our spiritual or social
blessings, whether our liberties or our religion, we owe to the spirit
of duty; it is enshrined in the memory of all our benefactors; it is
consecrated in the blood of martyrs. Signal instances of this kind may
strike more forcibly from their distinctness and saliency; but the
mightiest energy of duty is in the economy of general life. Go into the
open mart of the world, and, in all the astonishing complexities that
are spread over that wide scene, consider to what an extent man trusts
man, and is trusted in return, mutual confidence forming the immutable
foundation of the vast social structure. It is base injustice to human
nature to assert that all this is the effect of interest or fear;
without pervading conscience, mere interest or fear would be as
powerless to sustain society as the arm of man to move the orbs of
heaven; without conscience, human laws could either have no existence or
no power,—mere ropes of sand, that a touch could sever; passion would
have no scruple, desire no limit, but power; and selfishness no control,
but a superior opposing force: the strong would prostrate the weak by
violence, and the weak would in turn overreach the strong by guile,
deceit, and fraud.