ἐπιθυμεῖ κατα του πνευματος) and the spirit against the flesh; and these
are contrary the one to the other.” The scriptural use of the word
“flesh” (σαρξ) implies two meanings; first, the excess of the inferior
desires, which is in reality contrary to God, and therefore sin; for
God, though he has implanted these subordinate desires, has subjected
them to certain laws, beyond which they are at variance with his will
and with his providence. In this view the carnal mind is properly at
enmity with God, and is not subject to the law of God. Secondly, the
inferior desires, parenthetically not actually sin, but in general the
causes of sin. When St. Paul says money is the root of all evil, we do
not surely understand him to mean that the pursuit of gain is in all
cases a root of wickedness; for we may conceive innumerable instances in
which the struggle for money is connected with the sublimest of virtues.
We merely conclude that it is a very dangerous desire, and liable to
very dangerous abuses. Under the designation, therefore, of earthly or
fleshly, may be classed three orders of desire—that of gain, that of
pleasure, and that of power. These are essentially evil in themselves or
they are not. If we conclude they are, we must then charge the fault on
God who has given them, or we must become Manachees, and suppose the
existence of two principles, one good, and the other evil; if they are
not, the sin is in their abuse, and not in their existence, and though
the criminal be condemned the nature is absolved. I shall mention but a
very few more texts advanced in favour of this doctrine.
Eph. ii. 1-3. “And you hath he quickened,” &c. A mere description this,
of the age, answerable both to Jews and Gentiles: and to the same
purpose is the passage from the same epistle, (c. ix. v. 18.) “having
the understanding darkened—being alienated from the life of God through
the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their
hearts.” Such is the scriptural evidence for one of the most appalling
and destructive doctrines that ever clouded humanity; a doctrine which
impugns the best and truest affections, and destroys at one fell stroke
the idea of spontaneous virtue,—which is compelled to classify the most
beautiful and most base, if devoid of certain doctrinal distinctions,
under one appellative,—which debases human nature—gives man the vileness
of a slave, but does not honour God with the glory of a sovereign. To
exhort man to have the perfection of an angel, and to tell him he has
the nature of a fiend, to tell him that he is “utterly indisposed,
disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all
evil,” amidst absurd pranks of theology, is surely the most absurd. And
between believing this, or rejecting it, the only alternative left us,
is to be at one side or the other of the gulf which separated Lazarus
from Abraham.
See Drummond’s excellent Essay on Original Sin, and a very admirable
tract on the same subject, by the late Dr. Cogan, entitled “A Layman’s
Letters to Mr. Wilberforce.”
Note 2. See page 19.
There is no writer in modern times to whom we owe so much for a true and
elevated Philosophy on Human nature as to Bishop Butler, the most
profound and accurate analyst of the moral faculties of man that has
ever illustrated the principles of Christian ethics. He was not a man to
take wholesale assertions; he subjected our moral nature to the exact
and rigid test of philosophical anatomy, and one deliberate sentence of
his, is worth ten thousand disquisitions from traditional theologians,
who, parrot-like, repeat and repeat again the jargon, that has grown as
stale from mouth to mouth, as the starling’s “let me out, let me
out”—many of whom have no other reason than that they have heard it so
cried out before them. Bishop Butler has examined human nature, and he
has given testimony in its favour—he has vindicated its dignity, and he
has by a deep philosophy, which seemed to be little comprehended by
those who would debase humanity demonstrated its essential excellence.
He has proved by irrefutable arguments, its natural disinterestedness,
its goodness, its necessary conformity with truth and virtue. These are
to be sure but its general tendencies, with many exceptions—yet, why
such a line of argument should be deemed insufficient in moral
philosophy, and be admitted as cogent in natural theology, it is
difficult to conceive.—Take for instance—in the body the case of the eye
or the ear: no one questions, that the eye is admirably adapted for
seeing, and the ear for hearing; and though the one may grow dim or the
other become deaf, it is never asserted that the constitution or nature
of each—on the whole—is contradictory to that for which it was intended.
There are, it is true, various evil manifestations in human nature; but
there are others good—at least, in _seeming_. Cynical Philosophers and
Calvinistic Theologians concur in making the evil substantial, and the
good factitious. The answer which this profound reasoner gives to the
philosophical opponents of human nature will be a sufficient reply to
both. “Suppose,” he says, “a man of learning to be writing a grave book
upon human nature—and to show in several parts of it, that he had an
insight into the subject he was considering. Amongst other things the
following one would require to be accounted for; the appearance of
benevolence or good-will in men towards each other in the instances of
natural relation and in others. Cautious of being deceived with outward
show, he retires within himself, to see exactly what that is in the mind
of man from whence this appearance proceeds; and upon deep reflection
asserts the principle in the mind to be only the love of power and
delight in the exercise of it. Would not everybody think here was a
mistake of one word for another? That the philosopher was contemplating
and accounting for some other human actions, some other behaviour of man
to man? And could any one be thoroughly satisfied, that what is commonly
called benevolence or good-will was really the affection meant, but only
by being made to understand that this learned person had a general
hypothesis, to which the appearance of good-will could no otherwise be
reconciled? That what has this appearance is often nothing but ambition;
that delight in superiority—often (suppose always) mixes itself with
benevolence, only makes it more specious to call it ambition than hunger
of the two; but in reality that passion does no more account for the
whole appearances of good-will, than this appetite does. Is there not
often the appearance of one man’s wishing that good to another, which he
knows himself unable to procure him; and rejoicing in it, though
procured by a third person? And, can love of power any way possibly come
into account for this desire or delight? Is there not often the
appearance of men’s distinguishing between two or more persons,
preferring one before another, to do good to, in cases where the love of
power cannot in the least account for the distinction or preference? For
this principle can no otherwise distinguish between objects, than as it
is a greater instance and exertion of power to do good to one rather
than to another. Again, suppose good-will in the mind of man be nothing
but delight in the exercise of power; men might indeed be restrained by
distant and accidental considerations, but these restraints being
removed, they would have a disposition to, and a delight in mischief as
an exercise and proof of power; and this disposition and delight would
arise from the same principle in the mind, as a disposition to, and a
delight in charity. Thus cruelty as distinct from resentment, would be
exactly the same in the mind of man as good-will; that one tends to the
happiness, the other to the misery of our fellow-creatures, is, it
seems, merely an accidental circumstance, which the mind has not the
least regard to. These are absurdities which even men of capacity run
into, when they have occasion to belie their nature; and will perversely
disclaim that image of God which was originally stamped upon it: the
traces of which, however faint, are plainly discernible upon the mind of
man.” Many passages might be quoted from this great writer in
vindication of humanity, but I shall adduce but one other: it is from
the same discourse, (The first sermon on Human Nature,) as that I have
already extracted—and much to the same purpose. “Mankind,” he says,
“have ungoverned passions, which they will gratify at any rate, as well
to the injury of others as in contradiction to known private interests,
but as there is no such thing as self-hatred, so neither is there any
such thing as ill-will in one man towards another, emulation or
resentment being away: whereas there is plainly benevolence or
good-will: there is no such thing as love of injustice, oppression,
treachery, ingratitude; but only eager desire after such and such
external goods, which, according to a very ancient observation, the most
abandoned would choose to obtain by innocent means, if they were as easy
and effectual to their end: even emulation and resentment by any who
will consider what these passions really are in nature, will be found
nothing to the purpose of this objection, and the principles and
passions in the mind of man which are distinct both from self-love and
benevolence, primarily and most directly lead to right behaviour with
regard to others as well as to himself, and only secondarily and
accidentally to what is evil. Thus though men to avoid the shame of one
villany are often guilty of a greater, yet it is easy to see that the
original tendency of shame is to prevent the doing of shameful actions;
and its leading men to conceal such actions when done, is only the
consequence of their being done, that is, of the passions not having
answered its first end.”—(See also the acute and original Essay of Mr.
Hazlitt’s, on The Principles of Human Actions, in which the leading idea
of Butler’s Philosophy is rigidly examined and illustrated.)
* * * * *
Pascal vindicates the dignity of Human nature in some of his most
beautiful thoughts. Those who are acquainted with the theology of Pascal
(and who are not?) will scarcely suspect him of leaning too partially to
the brighter side of our nature. I quote a few passages from his
writings, as much for the pleasure of copying them, as for the support
they afford to my general argument.
“L’homme est si grand,” he observes, “que, sa grandeur parait même en ce
qu’il se connaît misérable. Un arbre ne se connaît pas misérable: il est
vrai que c’est être misérable que de se connaître, qu’on misérable; mais
aussi c’est grand que de connaître qu’on est misérable. Ainsi toutes
misères prouvent sa grandeur:—ce sont miseres de grand seigneur, miseres
d’un roi dépossédé.
“Nous avons si grande idée de l’ame de l’homme que nous ne pouvons
souffrir d’en être méprisé, et d’ n’être pas dans l’esteme d’une âme: et
toute la félicité des hommes consiste dans cette estime.
“Si d’un côté cette fausse gloire que les hommes cherchent est une
grande marque de leur misère et de leur bassesse, c’en une aussi de leur
excellence; car quelque possessions qu’il ait sur la terre, de quelque
santé et commodité essentielle qu’il jouisse il n’est pas satisfait,
s’il n’est pas dans l’estime des hommes. Il estime si grande la raison
de l’homme que quelque avantage, qu’il ait dans le monde, il se croit
malheureux s’il n’est placé aussi avantegeusement dans la raison de
l’homme c’est la plus belle place du monde: rien ne peut le détourner de
ce désir, et c’est la qualité la plus ineffacable du cœur de l’homme:
jusque-là que ceux que méprisent le plus les hommes, et qui les égalent
aux bêtes veulent encore en être admirés, et contradisent á eux-mêmes
par leur propre sentiment: la nature, qui est plus puisante que toute
leur raison, les convainquant plus fortement de la grandeur de l’homme
que la raison ne les convainc de sa baissesse.”—“L’homme n’est qu’un
roseau le plus faíble de la nature; mais c’est un roseau pensant. Il ne
faut pas que l’univers entier s’arme pour l’écraser. Une vapeur, une
goutte d’eau suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l’univers l’écraserait,
l’homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu’il sait
qu’il meurt, et l’avantage que l’univers a sur lui, l’univers n’en sait
rien. Ainsi toute notre dignité consiste dans la pensée c’est de la
qu’il faut nous relever, non de l’espace et de la durée.” “Il est
dangereux de trop voir l’homme combien il est égal aux bêtes sans lui
montrer sa grandeur. Il est encore dangereux de lui fair trop voir sa
grandeur sans sa bassesse. Il est plus dangereux de lui laisser ignorer
l’un et l’autre: mais est tres avantegeux de lui representer l’un et
l’autre.” (Pensées de Pascal.)
I have adduced the testimony of Bishop Butler as to the soundness of our
views on human nature: I shall here transcribe a few passages from a
writer, in whose language a kindred philosophy becomes most eloquent and
inspiring—I mean Doctor Channing.—“I repeat it,” he says, “showing the
moral power of faith in the divine capacities of man, to resemble our
Maker we need not quarrel with our nature or our lot. Our present state,
made up as it is, of aids and trials, is worthy of God, and may be used
throughout to assimilate us to him. For example: our domestic ties, the
relations of neighbourhood and country, the daily interchanges of
thoughts and feelings, the daily occasions of kindness, the daily claims
of want and suffering, these and other circumstances of our social
state, form the best sphere and school for that benevolence which is
God’s brightest attribute; and we should make a sad exchange by
substituting for these natural aids any self-invented artificial means
of sanctity. Christianity, our great guide to God, never leads us away
from the path of nature, and never wars with the unsophisticated
dictates of conscience. We approach our Creator by every right exercise
of the powers he gives us. Whenever we invigorate the understanding by
honestly and resolutely seeking truth, and by withstanding whatever
might warp the judgment; whenever we invigorate the conscience by
following it in opposition to the passions; whenever we receive a
blessing gratefully, bear a trial patiently, or encounter peril or scorn
with moral courage; whenever we perform a disinterested deed; whenever
we lift up the heart in true adoration to God; whenever we war against a
habit or desire which is strengthening itself against our higher
principles; whenever we think, speak or act with moral energy, and
devotion to duty, be the occasion ever so humble or familiar; then the
divinity is growing within us, and we are ascending towards our Author.
The religion thus blends with common life. We thus draw nigh to God
without forsaking men. We are thus without parting with our human
nature, to clothe ourselves with the divine.” (Discourse at the
ordination of the Rev. F. A. Farley.) Honour is due to all men on the
ground of the worth and dignity of their nature, and of this the
eloquent writer shows Christianity a proof and an illustration. “The
whole of this religion is a testimony to the worth of man in the sight
of God—to the importance of human nature—to the infinite purposes for
which we were framed. God is there set forth as sending, to the succour
of his human family, his beloved Son, the bright image and
representative of his own perfections; and sending him, not simply to
roll away a burden of pain and punishment, (for this, however magnified
in systems of theology is not his highest work) but to create man after
that divine image which he himself bears, to purify the soul from every
stain, to communicate to it new power over evil, and to open before it
immortality as its aim and destination—immortality by which we are to
understand, not merely a perpetual, but an ever-improving and celestial
being. Such are the views of Christianity. And these blessings it
proffers, not to a few, not to the educated, not to the eminent, but to
all human beings, to the poorest and the most fallen; and we know that
through the power of its promises, it has, in not a few instances,
raised the fallen to true greatness, and given them in their present
virtue and peace, an earnest of the heaven which it unfolds. Such is
Christianity. Men viewed in the light of this religion, are beings cared
for by God, to whom he has given his Son, on whom he pours forth his
spirit; and whom he has created for the highest good in the universe,
the participation of his own perfections and happiness. Such is
Christianity. Our scepticism in our own nature cannot quench the bright
light which religion sheds on the soul and on the prospects of mankind;
and just so far as we receive its truth we shall honour all men.”
(Discourse on “Honour due to All Men.”)
“Theologians,” remarks a powerful writer, “say, that the very infant
comes into the world under the wrath and curse of the Deity. They never
learned that by observing the glory of God in the face of Christ. No
such withering frown ever sat on his benignant countenance. Think of
Christ’s wrath with a child! Think of Christ cursing a child! I must
read in the Gospel that he did so, before I believe that God does so,
and that the Calvinistic doctrine of original sin is true. In the strong
horror of the human heart at the monstrous combination of such a person
with such an action, I read the condemnation of that gloomiest article
of a gloomy creed; and if it be a foul calumny on Christ, it must,
exalted as he was, be a yet fouler calumny on God. I would sooner
believe the one than the other. I would sooner imagine some Jesus of
Nazareth encountering some fond father and fonder mother, in the first
freshness of their parental feelings, as they pass beneath ‘the gate of
the temple which was called the Beautiful;’ less beautiful in the
sculptured forms of marble on which its gorgeous architecture rested
than in the living human group which were there bearing the babe to the
altar to dedicate it to the God of its fathers; and encountering them
with that solemn malediction which would sink into their souls and
corrode their lives; than I would imagine Omniscience, which witnesses
each man’s birth, life, and death, to be in all earth’s scenes of
parental anxiousness and fondness over helpless infancy, the
all-pervading presence of an Almighty curse. Yet this is the doctrine
into which thousands upon thousands of children are catechised. Why will
not parents and teachers lead them, not to Calvin, but to Christ? So
should they receive a blessing, even as did those children,
notwithstanding that there were not wanting, even then, erring disciples
to intercept their approach and forbid their coming. As his blessing was
on them, so is that of his and our God. His doctrine, his conduct.
‘Their angels,’ he says, ‘do always behold the face of my Father which
is in heaven;’ they are the peculiar objects of the providential care
which, by the number, and swiftness, and power of those supposed winged
messengers, was pictorial typified; and again, ‘Suffer little children,
and forbid them not, to come to me, for of such is the kingdom of
heaven!’”—_Christ and Christianity_, a series of Sermons, by the Rev. W.
J. Fox: which for energy of thought, richness and beauty of imagery,
truth of moral analysis and description, force and eloquence of
language, may be placed in the very highest class of pulpit oratory, and
even in that class be ranged with its rarest specimens. The taint of
heresy has robbed them of their due fame, for in those days, without the
proper admixture of orthodoxy, logic only beats the air, and eloquence
speaks to the deaf adder that will not hear the voice of the charmer,
charm he never so sweetly.
I quote with great pleasure one or two passages from Mr. Dewey, as
illustrative of our common doctrine on human nature:
“The theologian says that human nature is bad and corrupt. Now taking
this language in the practical and popular sense, I find no difficulty
in agreeing with the theologian. And indeed, if he would confine
himself—leaving vague and general declamation and technical
phraseology—if he would confine himself to facts; if he would confine
himself to a description of actual bad qualities and dispositions in
men, I think he could not well go too far. Nay more, I am not certain
that any theologian’s description, so far as it is of this nature, has
gone deep enough into the frightful mass of human depravity. For it
requires an acute perception that is rarely possessed, and a higher and
holier conscience, perhaps than belongs to any, to discover and declare
_how_ bad, and degraded, and unworthy a being _a bad man_ is. I confess
that nothing would beget in me a higher respect for man, a real—not a
theological and factitious—but a real and deep sense of human sinfulness
and unworthiness—of the mighty wrong which man does to himself, to his
religion, and his God, when he yields to the evil and accursed
inclinations that find place in him. This moral indignation is not half
strong enough in those who profess to talk the most about human
depravity. And the objection to them is, not that they feel too much or
speak too strongly, the actual wickedness, the actual and distinct sins
of the wicked; but they speak too vaguely and generally of human
wickedness; that they speak with too little discrimination to every man
as if he were a murderer or a monster; that they speak, in fine, too
argumentatively, and too much (if I may say so) with a sort of
argumentative satisfaction, as if they were glad that they could make
this point so strong.”
The next extract is in advocacy of human nature, eloquently pleading for
it in a low and guilty condition.
“The very pirate that dyes the ocean wave with the blood of his
fellow-beings; that meets his defenceless victims in some lonely sea
where no cry for help can be heard, and plunges his dagger to the heart
that is pleading for life, which is calling upon him by all means of
kindred, of children, and of home, to spare—yes, the very pirate is such
a man as you or I might have been. Orphanage and childhood; an
unfriended youth; an evil companion; a resort to sinful pleasure;
familiarity with vice; a scorned and blighted name; seared and crushed
affections; desperate fortunes—these are the steps that might have led
any one amongst us to unfurl on the high seas the bloody flag of
universal defiance; to have waged war with our kind; to have put on the
terrific attributes; to have done the dreadful deeds; and to have died
the awful death of the ocean robber. How many affecting relationships of
humanity plead with us to pity him! That head that is doomed to pay the
price of blood once rested upon a mother’s bosom. The hand that did that
accursed work, and shall soon be stretched cold and nerveless in the
felon’s grave, was once taken and cherished by a father’s hand, and led
in the ways of sportive childhood and innocent pleasure. The dreaded
monster of crime has once been the object of sisterly love and all
domestic endearment. Pity him, then. Pity his blighted hope and his
crushed heart. It is a wholesome sensibility, it is meet for frail and
sinning creatures like us to cherish. It forgoes no moral
discrimination. It feels the crime, but feels it as a weak, tempted, and
rescued creature should. It imitates the great Master; and looks with
indignation upon the offender, and yet is grieved for him.”—_Dewey._
_Additional Remarks, &c._