encompassed with many injurious influences, and I know that he does not
always escape guiltless: I know that many vices are generated in
society, and nourished by its corruptions; that pride, both worldly and
religious, walks through life with anti-social heart and clouded brow,
wrapped up in its own miserable importance, exulting in vanities,
self-worshipping and self-enslaved; that covetousness, surfeited with
acquisition, still works on, and still cries “more;” that licentiousness
goes its way in darkness, and leaves destruction in its path; that envy
broods over its own solitary and unacknowledged malice, sickens at the
pleasure or the fame it cannot reach; that gospel charity is often slain
in the collision of creeds and passions, and Christian zeal heated into
bigotry; but these, I repeat again, are not our nature, and judgment
against it on such grounds is quite as unjust, as if we should seek out
the hospitals to test the health of a community, visit but prisons to
decide on its morals, and pass only through asylums for lunatics to form
an opinion of its intelligence. But even in its sins, humanity loses not
the evidence of its divine relationship. The image of God may be
darkened, but the impress is deep as ever. The capacity of sin equally
implies the capacity of holiness; transgression implies the knowledge of
a law, inspired or revealed; the violation, therefore, of moral
injunctions includes the high capability of moral perception. Whence but
from the greatness of our nature is the deep misery of sin—whence, I
might say, but from its holiness?—whence but from its adaptation to
goodness, are the ruin and the dislocation which guilt can work in our
whole inward frame and constitution? Thence it is, that it is that the
conscience, dethroned and humiliated, is torn by remorse, worse
incomparably than bodily torture: thence it is, that the affections
either become a total and disorganized wreck, or, wounded by a sense of
shame and lost dignity, bow down with sorrow or wither in despair.
Thence it is, that the good and pure are shunned, and the evil sought,
for the one cause a feeling of contrast too painful to be borne, the
other afford a refuge by their moral assimilation, and the spirit needs
support wherever it can be found. Thence it is, that when the guilty
have utterly lost their own respect, and the approbation of the
virtuous, that crime becomes desperation and remorse madness,—that
conscience is silenced in delirious self-defence, and that plunge after
plunge sinks them lower and lower in the gulf of spiritual perdition.
And yet human character is rarely ever such a wreck as not to have some
remnant to justify its origin and parentage; some embers of the sacred
fire smouldering in the sanctuary,—some gleams of affection,—some
dawnings of memory, that open to the weary spirit the quiet and
happiness of better days,—some touches of mercy that has yet a sigh for
wretchedness,—some visitings of compunction,—some unconscious desires to
be good once more,—some timid hopes of pardon,—some secret prayers to be
made better. The human soul is a great mystery, and so indeed is human
life; we observe a few palpable and external manifestations, but how
little know we of the secret and unseen workings! That the good in every
human being, even such as strikes us as the worst, preponderates over
the evil, is, I am persuaded, not the imagination of a fanciful charity,
but a fact and a reality.
But though more crime existed in actual life than has ever been alleged,
our doctrine would yet be true. We enter on no defence of man in the
whole of his conduct. We contend for his inherent capacities, and in
arguing for these, we are entitled to select our illustrations from the
highest specimens of nature, and not from the lowest. We contend for its
capacity to subjugate passion to principle—to sacrifice present desires
to progressive good—to resign selfish interests to human ones—to give
the spiritual and eternal a predominance over the sensual and the
temporal: and we contend for this, not as a thing possible, but a thing
proved: we contend for what has its evidence in abundance of examples.
If we could point to one patriot, to one philanthropist, to one martyr,
to one holy man, in each of these the fact would have sufficient
attestation: but humanity has its armies of patriots, and
philanthropists, and martyrs, and saints. With these the lowest of us
are united in a kindred nature, and dignified by a common brotherhood.
But passing from characters of this magnitude, come we to the ordinary
existence that is common to us all. Every life, from the palace to the
cottage, is one more or less of self-denial and labour—one in which we
must continually defer to others and work for them. Cast your
imagination over the vast throng of this busy world: consider the
countless modes in which they are all toiling with head and hand, from
the man of genius to the labourer of field or factory,—from the proudest
merchant to his meanest servant,—scarcely a movement in it all that has
not a reference to others beyond the agent,—scarcely a movement that has
not some connection with a human love or a human duty. Retire from the
crowd to their dwellings, and, except in cases of last degradation, they
are, on the whole, retreats of mutual kindness. If there be grief, there
is compassion,—if there be illness, there is unwearied tenderness,—if
there be death, there is sorrow. It will perhaps be said, that all this
may very well consist with a reprobate state. If so, it only proves that
no state is so reprobate, as not to be consistent with a great mass of
excellence. If to confer happiness and show mercy be not goodness, we
are at a loss to explain the goodness of God or of Christ. And as we
descend in the scale of society, we discover human nature with peculiar
trials, and also with peculiar virtues. Amongst the poor and laborious
classes we may find some grossness, but we find much goodness; and to a
considerate mind the wonder will be, that their grossness is not more,
and their goodness less. We behold them often patient under manifold
oppressions, forbearing against many wrongs; uncomplaining in the midst
of afflictions, toiling on from youth to age in the same routine of
laborious monotony; resigned in illness, though it takes that strength
from them which is their only refuge, merciful to each other, giving aid
to want out of want; all divine evidence that there is in humanity a
godlike spirit, which nothing can suppress, not sin, ignorance, poverty,
nor any ill of life.
I have spoken of our divine affinity chiefly in the goodness that unites
us to our species, but there is a tendency towards God himself in which
that affinity is still more clearly seen. It is made manifest in our
capacity to know God. God is a spirit, and must be spiritually
apprehended. We must therefore have some attributes in common. If there
be not some qualities in our souls corresponding to the nature of God,
he would be to us a nonentity, and we could neither know him nor love
him. The knowledge of God is a spiritual revelation, and by that which
is within us we interpret the revelation and give to it a meaning—his
power in the movement of our will—his intelligence in the rectitude of
our reason—his goodness in the sympathies of our affections—his holiness
in the law of our conscience. It is made manifest in our capacity to
imitate God. The apostle says, “Be ye followers of God as dear
children;” and our Saviour himself exhorts us to “be merciful even as he
is merciful,” and to be “perfect even as he is perfect.” To imitate any
being with whom we had no assimilation of nature, it requires no
argument to prove an utter impossibility. But this principle has a moral
value far beyond its theological import—in breaking down the distance
which we usually place between our hearts and God; in drawing him within
the circle of our nearest affections; in uniting us to him in a more
filial trust, in taking fear from our love and inspiring life in our
obedience—proving to us that God is verily and indeed our Father, as
Christ is our brother; that God our Father is imitable by his children;
that Christ our brother by a perfect conformity to his will has revealed
and proved its truth. That we have affinity with God is further made
manifest by our need of him. Consciously or unconsciously every man is
seeking after God, or after what God alone can give him. Whether blindly
or otherwise, we all feel the want of him in our souls, for in whatever
direction we turn our desires, we are yearning after the perfect and the
infinite: we have the proof of it in our disgust, our dissatisfactions,
and discontents. Who does not hear of the insufficiency of the world?
And what does that mean? The vanity of pleasure. But why is pleasure
vain? why does he who tries it in all its enchantments, weary at last
even to repugnance? The vexations of wealth? But why are riches
vexatious? Why do they disappoint the hope that longed so deeply for
them, and leave complaints still in all the fullness of success? The
fatigues of power? But, why again is power fatiguing, when no sacrifices
were too painful, and no toils too harrassing in the career for its
attainment? It is simply because pleasure, wealth, or power, can never
fully occupy the human soul, unlimited in capacity and desire,
perishable things bring it only chagrin, when in lavish expectation it
looks for complete fruition. Nor is it alone that we call the world,
which proves insufficient, but still higher, the pursuits of knowledge,
and the creations of genius; the greatest sage feels himself at last a
child, and the most inspired poet wishes for things more beautiful than
he has ever conceived, and scenes brighter than he has ever imagined.
Even in truest religion this sentiment may be discerned in operation, in
alternations between fear and faith, between despondency and hope. A
longing for the invisible and the boundless may be traced in all the
higher forms of superstition—in every effort to overcome the thraldom of
the body and to achieve the spiritual emancipation, from the ascetics
that in the first centuries peopled the deserts of Asia to the
flagellants that in the middle centuries overran the continent of
Europe; from the penitent that scorches himself on an Indian plain, to
the monk that lashes himself in a Spanish cloister. Now to what do all
these, some true and some mistaken, refer, to what do they point?
Evidently to something which the soul cannot find on earth, to God,
perfect and infinite, in whom at last it will attain repose and
fullness. And thus we have two great truths intimated at the same time;
for the conscious want that tells us of our need of God reveals also our
immortality, and the one is the glory of the other.
Now, in conclusion, let me ask to what purpose is all this blackening of
human nature? It cannot promote humility; for to be humble is not to be
degraded. If a sense of degradation corresponded with humility, we
should be more humble as we descended to the level of the brutes. It
cannot inspire a poignant sense of guilt, nor a true feeling of
confession, for as it takes away natural dignity it leaves nothing from
which a man can fall; and as it denies personal capacity, it must in the
same degree weaken the feeling of personal accountability. He whose
moral sorrow will ever lie most profoundly is one that has the
consciousness of having abused high and great capacities; of having, by
his own sins, become unworthy of his nature; of having done despite to
the spirit of God within him, the light that lighteneth every man that
cometh into the world; of having apostatised from his godlike destiny.
But to tell a man, as orthodoxy does, first that he is morally imbecile,
and then that he is personally guilty, is an absolute derangement and
confusion of all our moral ideas. It is well that essentially the
sources of our conduct in general, are beyond the reach of theology; or
doctrines like these, would stop all motives to exertion, would destroy
the hopes of the good, and strike dead the efforts of the penitent. As
it is they are not without great and serious evils. They take from
virtue that which is its most noble distinction. when rightly
understood, a sense of individual and independent action:—they attach a
slavish spirit to religion, which, to a great extent, stifles the free
and voluntary service of the heart. Yet worse still, to maintain an
extreme theory, men are driven to malign their nature, and to seek for
all manner of blame against it—to deny the excellence and reality of
virtues—of which an unsophisticated observer could not entertain a
doubt, to invent all motives for goodness but the true ones. It is a sad
necessity in which men place themselves when they are compelled to
violence to their own hearts, and injustice to those of others, when
their system forces them to repress their rising pleasure in the beauty
of virtue, and to change their unbidden admiration into qualified
condemnation. If the man called heretical, or one called unregenerate,
visit the sick, clothe the naked, do in fact every work of mercy, have a
heart of love and a hand of bounty—revere his God in all sincerity, and
worship him in truth, the evangelical moralist must assert, that it is
all worthless, and is, in fact, of the nature of sin. Though one who is
called regenerate should do no more, and to all evidence, not in a
better spirit, he is esteemed a most godly and pious Christian. The man
who cannot believe as the creeds or a party require, may do every work
which Christ will judge him by, and be refused his name; but if he has
the blessing of his master in heaven, he may care little for the
anathema of men upon earth. If Unitarianism delivered us from nothing
else than this spiritual injustice, it is a great redemption.
If I am asked, in turn, why I maintain the doctrine of human dignity, I
answer, first, because it raises my homage to God. I understand him no
otherwise than as he is emblemed in the human soul, exalted and
purified: without this creation is a blank to me, and the scripture a
dead letter. Regarding it also as his work, I revere him through his
work, the more profoundly, the more I believe it worthy of him. I cannot
conceive it an honour to God, that the only being here who has capacity
to know him, the only being who reflects his attributes, the only being
who admires his universe and discerns him in it, should be wholly
corrupt: I cannot think that such a doctrine gives him glory. I answer
secondly—because it teaches me to hope for man; teaches me to hope for
him in this world and the next: while I have faith in the capacity, I
can never lose hope in the developement, but if man be powerless as well
as depressed, I have no proper ground for expectation, and the
difficulties of the present are softened by no light from the future.
But as it is, believing that man has great inherent capabilities, for
knowledge, for liberty, for virtue, and for happiness—I lose not my
confidence, I observe him as in the struggle of discipline, and in
preparation for the period of redemption; and wherever I see ignorance,
or slavery, or vice, or misery, I do not despair of a time, when these
heavenly faculties shall have achieved their emancipation. I answer,
lastly, I maintain the doctrine because it teaches me to honour man. I
feel how necessary it is for us in this world of outward show, and where
outward show has so much power, that we should have some strong
sentiment by which to give our appreciation to those who have no
external dazzle with which to attach us: in this world of grades and
inequalities, where rank and wealth, and genius, so continually throw
their enchantments about us, we need a sentiment before which rank and
wealth and genius are nothing, in regarding those who have them not, and
also those who have: and no sentiment can be more powerful, more holy,
or more sublime than this, that they are the immortal children of God,
destined for his presence, and made after his likeness. Having this
faith, then, ignorance, sin, poverty, may come safely before us, without
any fear of that infidel contempt with which they are too often treated.
Show me then a man, and no matter what his condition, if I be true to
this faith, you point me to an object of most solemn interest. Show me
the red man of the American forests, or the black man of tropical
deserts, and untame and ferocious though he be, he has within him an
indelible title to my reverence. His rude and unclothed form enshrines a
soul in the image of God, as well as the most polished of his civilized
brethren. Show me the veriest serf or slave who seems chained to the
soil—the gospel which is equal to bond and free, tells me to behold in
him the heir of a glorious inheritance; his title is his nature; it
burns in his blood, and it is stamped upon his brow, its appeal is in
the fire or moisture of his eye—no power can efface it, for the hand of
God has impressed it:—show me even the criminal who seems all but lost
to every sense of duty, I am not justified in despairing, much less have
I any title to scorn. We dare not despise in the lowest state the child
whom God regards—we dare not cast off whom Christ has not rejected, nor
disown the brother for whom he died. If we be right-minded, and have any
sympathy with the spirit of Jesus, his moral wretchedness should be his
most eloquent appeal. We never know the whole power of Christianity
until we have interest in man as the child of God, and revere him as
God’s image, until we behold the throng around us in relation to their
mighty and improvable capacities—until we see in the lowest and the
worst, objects of hope and moral influence, with undying souls which no
vice or passion should conceal. In this faith the messenger of God may
go with confidence to guilt and suffering, and bring with him no mocking
offers of blessedness and peace: then may he call on souls to rejoice
which were ready to perish in despair, pour the dews of heaven on many a
closing hour, and silence the doubts of many a fearing spirit. Thus,
believing we should have trust unshaken, look forward to the
consummation, when that humanity which here has only its trials, shall
be hallowed with the infinity and eternity of its maker.
NOTES.
Note 1. See page 13.
Having in the Appendix of my former lecture stated from sources of
authority the doctrines of Calvinism on the nature of man, I here
enumerate some of the principal texts on which those doctrines are said
to be founded. The question, it is to be kept in mind, is not whether
man is or is not capable of great depravity, whether sin of various
degrees and extent has not existed in all ages, and does not exist at
present in all places. That sin has entered into the world is a fact
undisputed, no matter when or how; that sin is universal is a point
also, upon which we are on both sides agreed. The true subject of
dispute between us is, simply, this. Is human nature a nature of radical
and inherent depravity? or is not goodness more properly its
characteristic than evil? Now we maintain that all its essential
tendencies establish the latter question in the affirmative, and no
Scriptures prove the former. I shall take those quoted in the most
approved Calvinistic formularies.
Gen. iii. is alleged as giving an account of the origin of sin: “And the
Lord said to the woman, what is this thou hast done? And the woman said,
the serpent beguiled me and I did eat.” There we have the account of
Adam’s temptation and transgression, with the penalties pronounced upon
the beguiler and his dupes. Now in whatever light we regard this
passage, whether as a mythos, an allegory, or a literal narrative, it
implies nothing of the doctrine asserted, or the consequences attributed
to it; namely, the loss of all original righteousness, and entire
defilement in all the faculties and parts of the soul and body: the
imputation of their sin to mankind, burdened with the penalty of eternal
death. When we find these ideas extracted out of one obscure passage, we
may well ask is it Unitarianism or orthodoxy which adds to the
Scriptures? These ideas are not in the passage itself, nor in any other
supposed to be co-relative, nor in any number of passages fairly
conjoined and fairly interpreted.
Gen. vi. 5. “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.”
This states merely a general fact, that of an evil condition of society,
for which judgment of God is represented as poured out from heaven. But
it is alleged, that in the same connection we read “that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually.” This
clause only expresses the original idea with more impressive force. No
one in the worst state of an individual or a nation will attempt to
maintain that such words can have a rigid and literal application.
Besides, in that very time, Noah is made an express exception; for we
read that “the Lord said unto Noah, come thou and all thy house into the
ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.”[522]
But though the literal meaning were insisted on, it could but literally
extend to men of that time; and the rule of interpretation by which our
opponents define the character of man, we are entitled in the next verse
to apply to the character of God. “It _repented_ him,” we are told,
“that he had made man on the earth, and it _grieved_ him at his
heart.”[523] If on the literal principle we are to conclude man wicked
in every thought and imagination, on the same principle we are to
conclude that God can repent, and that he can be grieved at the heart.
Jer. xvii. 9. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately
wicked,” is an exaggeration of the same kind with that we are
considering. It was uttered when the Jewish nation was in a state of sad
corruption, and the prophet’s feelings were passionate against his
countrymen in grief and indignation. If we are to take all the prophet’s
words as coolly and deliberately uttered, then what shall we say to the
tremendous language in which he curses his existence and his birth.
Eccl. vii. 29. “God hath made man upright, but they have sought many
inventions.” This expression contains no matter of controversy; the
first part states our view, and the latter clause of the verse, by no
torture of criticism can be made to imply inherent and entire depravity.
Psalm li. 5. “Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me.” The import of this expression is to be judged of from the
general tone of the Psalm, which is most passionate and penetential,
inspired by the deepest spirit of remorse. David uttered these
complainings in profoundest self-accusation; but there would be little
for repentance to deplore, if he could remove the blame from himself to
his nature, and bury individual guilt in a corruption to which he was
subjected in common with all men. The force and meaning—the piercing and
eloquent deprecation of the whole composition, combine to show it is one
of individual experience, the idea of original sin leaves it vapid and
pointless, makes it, not the anguish of a convicted sinner, but the
sophistry of a deluded hypocrite; not a lamentation for vice, but an
excuse for it. These passages are the few which can be found in the Old
Testament that have any direct reference to a tenet said to be
inculcated throughout the whole of Scripture. If we turn to the New
Testament we find the evidence quite as scanty, and quite as
inconclusive. The texts advanced are commonly taken from the epistles,
principally from those of Paul, and of Paul’s, mostly from the Romans.
Few or none can be advanced from the gospel histories, and the
discourses of Christ have no reference to such a doctrine.
Rom. iii. 10. “There is none righteous, no not one: there is none that
understandeth,” &c., &c. Correspondent to this passage is the 14th
Psalm. Both David and Paul refer to the peculiar depravity of their
times. But, in the sense of absolute and guiltless perfection,
unquestionably, the general assertion may be made of all men.
Rom. v. 12-19, and 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 45, 49. The apostle, I apprehend,
institutes a comparison between the imperfect man, symbolized in Adam,
and the perfect man revealed in Christ; between the earthly and the
heavenly, the mortal and the immortal; death shown forth in the one—life
manifested in the other.
Rom. vii. 18. “For I know that in me, (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no
good thing; for to will is present with me, but how to perform that
which is good, I find not.” Ver. 25. “So then with my mind, I serve the
law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.” And the apostle had said
in the preceding verses, “I delight in the law of God after the inward
man; but I find a law in my members warring against the law of my mind,
and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members.” This is an eloquent and fervent out-pouring of individual
experience, no more intended as a universal description than any passage
in the journal of John Wesley or Thomas Scott. Involving as human nature
does, a twofold constitution, a struggle between desire and conscience
is a necessary condition of its moral existence. This is inevitable,
unless a being is above or beneath temptation; but the very struggle
implies the power of the moral sense; the possession of the moral sense
is an element of human dignity even in defeat, how much more in triumph.
Without the power of transgression or the danger of falling, there is of
course no trial, and in the human sense no virtue. But there are some
expressions of Paul’s more general and comprehensive, and to these I
shall devote one or two remarks.
Rom. viii. 7. “The carnal mind (τὸ φρονημα τῆς σαρκος—the mind of the
flesh) is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be.”