_individual responsibility_ which pervades it. All the arbitrary forms,
and sacerdotal interpositions, and hereditary rights, through which
other systems seek the divine favour, are disowned by it. It is a
religion eminently _personal_; establishing the most intimate and
solitary dealings between God and every human soul. It is a religion
eminently _natural_; eradicating no indigenous affection of our mind,
distorting no primitive moral sentiment; but simply consecrating the
obligations proper to our nature, and taking up with a divine voice the
whispers, scarce articulate before, of the conscience within us. In this
deep harmony with our inmost consciousness of duty, resides the true
power of our religion. It subdues and governs our hearts, as a wise
conqueror rules the empire he has won; not by imposing a system of
strange laws, but by arming with higher authority, and administering
with more resolute precision, the laws already recognised and revered.
This sense of individual accountability,—notwithstanding the ingenuities
of orthodox divines on the one hand, and necessarian philosophers on the
other,—is impaired by all reference of the evil that is in us to _any
source beyond ourselves_. To look for a remoter cause than our own
guilty wills,—to contemplate it as a Providential instrument, whether we
trace it to Adam, to Satan, or directly to God, bewilders the simple
perceptions of conscience, and throws doubt on its distinct and solemn
judgments. The injury may be different in character, according to the
particular system we adopt: but _any_ theory which provides the
individual moral agent with participating causes of his guilt, offends
and weakens some one of the feelings essential to the consciousness of
responsibility.
There is no persuasion, for example, more indispensable to this state of
mind, and, consequently, no impression which Christianity more
profoundly leaves upon the heart, than that of the _personal origin and
personal identity of sin_,—its individual, incommunicable character. Our
own secret souls, and that divine gospel which confirms all their
sincere decisions, alike declare that _my_ sin cannot be _your_ sin;
that by no compact, even by no miracle, can any exchange of
responsibilities, or transfer of moral qualities, be effected. What
indeed is guilt in its very nature, but a violation of some venerated
rule of action,—a contravention of our own sentiments of equity, truth,
purity, or generosity? and what is the guilty mind, but a system or
habit of desire, which successfully resists the control of reason and
conscience? That mind which is the seat of the delinquent will,—which
hears the remonstrances of right, and heeds them not,—is the sole
proprietor of the sin, deriving it from none, imparting it to none: its
dwelling is in his volition; and unless that can cease to be his, the
criminality can admit of no alienation. He may have accomplices indeed:
but they are so many additional agents, each with his separate amount of
guilt, and not partners among whom his one act of free-will is
distributed. The trains of thought and emotion, the adjustment of tastes
and affections, are different in every soul: each has its own moral
complexion; each, its separate moral relations; each, its distinct
responsibility in the sight of God. In no sense is the gift or transfer
of character more possible, than a barter of genius, or an interchange
of sensation. God may call new life into existence, and determine what
its consciousness shall be: he may annihilate life, and plunge its
memory and experience into nothing: but to shift the feelings and aims
which constitute the identity of one being into the personality of
another, is no more possible, than to alter the properties of a circle,
or to cancel departed time.
To trifle in any way with this plain and solemn principle, to invent
forms of speech tending to conceal it, to apply to moral good and ill,
language which assimilates them to physical objects and exchangeable
property, implies frivolous and irreverent ideas of sin and excellence.
The whole weight of this charge evidently falls on the scheme, which
speaks of human guilt as an hereditary entail; a scheme which shocks and
confounds our primary notion of right and wrong, and, by rendering them
impersonal qualities, reduces them to empty names. No construction can
be given to the system, which does not pass this insult on the
conscience. In what sense do we share the guilt of our progenitor? His
concession to temptation did not occur within our mind, or belong in any
way to our history. And if, without participation in the _act_ of wrong,
we are to have its _penalties_,—crimes in the planet Saturn may be
expected to shower curses on the earth; for why may not justice go
astray in space, as reasonably as in time? If nothing more be meant,
than that from our first parents we inherit a constitution _liable_ to
intellectual error and moral transgression;—still, it is evident, that,
_until_ this liability takes actual effect, no sin exists, but only its
possibility; and _when_ it takes effect, there is just so much guilt and
no more, than might be committed by the individual’s will: so that where
there is _no_ volition, as in infancy, cruelty only could inflict
punishment; and where there is _pure_ volition, as in many a good
passage of the foulest life, equity itself could not withhold approval.
In whatever way, then, you define this hypothesis, it directly denies
the personal character and personal identity of sin, and thus enfeebles
the most essential element comprehended in the sentiment of
responsibility. The practical result will inevitably be, a system of
false views and fictitious feelings, with respect both to our own
characters, and to those of our fellow-men. That which can be
vicariously incurred, or vicariously removed, cannot be guilt; cannot
therefore, be sincerely felt as such; can awaken no true shame and
self-reproach, and draw forth no burning tears when we meet the eye of
God. It is a shocking mockery to call sorrow for an ancestor’s sin by
the name of penitence, and to confound the perception (or, as it is
termed, ‘application,’) of Christ’s holiness with the personal peace of
conscience: the one can be nothing else than moral disapprobation,
attended by the sense of personal injury; the other, moral approval,
attended by the sense of personal benefit: and mean and confused must be
the sentiments of duty in a mind which can mistake these for the private
griefs of contrition, and the serenity of a self-forgetful will. Only
counterfeit emotions, and self-judgments half sincere, can consistently
arise from a faith which mystifies the primitive ideas of moral
excellence, and destroys all distinct perception of its nature. It is
always with danger that we turn away from the _natural_ hand-writing of
God upon the conscience: from heedless eyes the divine symbols fade
away; unless, indeed, in some preternatural awakening of our sight, they
blaze forth once again, to tell us that the kingdom of true greatness
hath departed from us. Let each consider his own life as an indivisible
unit of responsibility, no less complete, no less free, no less invested
with solemn and solitary power, than if he dwelt, and always had dwelt,
in the universe alone with God. There is confided to him, the sole rule
of a vast and immortal world within; whose order can be preserved or
violated, whose peace secured or sacrificed, by no foreign influence. We
cannot, by ancestral or historical relations, renounce our own
free-will, or escape one iota of its awful trusts. No faith which fails
to keep this truth distinct and prominent, no faith which shuffles with
the sinner’s moral identity, contains the requisites of a “doctrine
according to godliness.” It must pervert, moreover, our estimates of
others’ characters, no less than of our own. If guilt can be
hereditary,—guilt meriting infinite and indiscriminate punishment,—it
must be universal: and whether we see it or not, we must believe it to
exist, with no appreciable variation of degree, in every human heart.
Thus it becomes a prime duty to regard every thing in life, except its
wretchedness, every thing in human nature, except its displays of
foulness and of ruin, as a delusion and a cheat. We strongly protest
against this miserable distrust of our best and truest perceptions. We
maintain the intelligible and appreciable character of all moral
qualities, in opposition to all schemes which make distinction between
natural and theological excellence, and which propose imaginary
standards of right, different from those that recommend themselves to a
discerning conscience. Sin is no mysterious thing, no physical poison,
no taint in the blood, which may lurk venomously within us, giving no
symptom, and exciting no consciousness, of its presence. However
insidious in its approaches, and subtle in its manifestations, vigilance
only is needed to detect it: its stealthiness affords, indeed, a sound
reason for circumspection; but not for superstitious horror at its
possible existence, without discoverable trace, in ourselves or others.
To look on the spectacle of vice, and not feel abhorrence, indicates a
depraved state of sentiment:—to look on the spectacle of virtue, and
believe it sin, to witness all the outward expressions of goodness and
suspect interior corruption, to be invited by natural emotion to moral
admiration, and, by theological stimulants, to galvanise the heart into
loathing (or even “pity”) instead, implies a falsehood of conscience no
less malignant. Let me not be told that, in thus speaking, we assign too
high a value to mere external moralities, which are but treacherous
indications of character, and may be the visible fruit of various and
dubious motives. We never cease to teach, that no Epicurean
respectabilities, no conformity with conventional rules of order, can
satisfy the claims, or afford any of the peace of duty, unless they be
the native growth of a perceptive, devout, and loving heart:—that it is
not in the hand which executes, but in the soul which devises and
aspires, in the secret will which makes sacrifice of self, in the
conscience which grapples with temptations and overmasters fears, that
true and immortal virtue dwells; since acts are evanescent, while the
affections are eternal. But it is monstrous to infer from this
superficial character of outward morality, that there is probably no
substratum of genuine goodness. Nay, it is a mean and degrading
scepticism which distrusts, without assignable cause, the reality of any
of the symptoms of excellence; is tempted by theories of divinity to
insinuate that they are an empty semblance; and plies its pious
ingenuity to blacken the great human heart. He that is pledged to make
out a case against mankind at large, must find of difficult attainment
that charity that “hopeth all things and believeth all things.” How
blunted must be the delicacy of moral perception, where the gradations
of excellence are swept away into the dark abyss of universal depravity!
and to effect this reduction of all minds to the same level, what
vehement distortion, what wretched sophistries, what devotional scandal
and romance, must become habitual! How much less place for delusion and
insincerity is there, when we maintain a reverential faith in the
natural moral sentiments, repress no generous admiration, disbelieve no
genuine expression of disinterestedness and integrity, and instead of
whining over guilt, dare to bless God with a manly voice, for all
varieties of noble virtue!
Thus does the habit of tracing sin beyond the individual will to a
progenitor, spread confusion over the moral perceptions, by mystifying
the nature of guilt, and destroying that feeling of its personal
character and identity which belongs to the Christian sentiment of
responsibility.
By a different and directer method the same tendency operates, when we
refer our temptations to the agency of the Devil, rather than to our
descent from Adam. An invisible power, foreign to ourselves, is held
chargeable, to an undefined extent, with the evil of our own wills; and
the conscience can as ill bear the present distribution, as the past
transmission of its guilt. It is said indeed, that man is not “less
culpable, because Satan seduces him, and blinds his mind” since there is
no power on earth or hell to _compel_ him to transgress; that he is a
willing captive, and no more to be excused than when a human accomplice
entices him to crime, without (it is admitted) relieving him of any
portion of his criminality.[566] But the cases are obviously not
parallel. Man stands up before his fellow man, equal with equal; his
weapons are fairly measured against his danger, by the great Arbiter
himself; and therefore is he summoned to close with his temptations, and
condemned as a traitor if he yields or flies. And should it ever be
otherwise,—should the feeble-minded and inexperienced be misled by the
cunning of the strong-headed and practised seducer, the instinctive
justice of mankind mitigates its sentence, and commiserates the fall.
With how much greater force, then, must this palliation be felt, when
the Tempter is admitted to be “possessed of capacity and power immensely
surpassing ours,”[567]—a “master-spirit” of majestic intellect, with
whom we are as an infant in the giant’s grasp! With such a being, the
broken energy, the purblind vigilance, of a fallen man, can hardly be
expected to cope; at least they will be induced, in so plausible a case,
to _esteem themselves_ unfairly matched against so exalted a competitor.
While it were earnestly to be desired that the wretched conscience
should be allowed no evasion, and for awhile no alleviation, under the
condemning sentence of its memory and its God,—this doctrine calls up,
inevitably and reasonably, the feeling of a divided criminality, of
which the weaker nature has the smaller share.
These tendencies, so far as they have been truly stated, must continue
to act, so long as we trace the evil that is in us to _any_ foreign
agent. Hence it appears impossible to defend the doctrine of
Philosophical Necessity,—which presents God to us as the author of sin
and suffering,—from the same charge of invading the sense of personal
responsibility. Not that we are for a moment to sanction the vulgar
error which confounds this scheme, in its theoretical structure and
practical effects, with the system of fatalism; or to imagine, that an
abdication of all free-will, and a total indifference to moral
distinctions, would be its proper and consistent results. Though,
however, it leaves room for individual pursuit, and motive to individual
perfection, one of its chief and most vaunted features undoubtedly is,
the encouragement which it affords to the _passive virtues_: and it will
be found, I greatly fear, that it is their _passiveness_, more than
their _virtuousness_, which puts them under the protection of this
doctrine. Doubtless, he who can look on all men as the instruments of
heaven, and recognize in their mutual injuries and crimes the chosen
methods of the Divine government, must learn submission to many a
triumph of wrong, and consider anger against the profligate and
oppressor as insubordination against God. He who is haunted by the
immutability of things, and feels himself locked in with the universal
mechanism, will chafe himself with no rash spirit of resistance, nor
vainly thrust his hand against the fly-wheel of nature. He who believes
that all things are right, that absolute evil does not exist, that
whatever men may be, and whatever they may do, nothing could possibly be
better, must needs discover that his own wishes are no criterion of
good, and look with a contented eye over the whole surface of the past,
as well as a serene trust on the prospect of the future. Nor can there
be any self-exaggeration in a mind conscious of possessing but an
infinitesimal fraction of the universal power,—and even that little
wielded and directed by an uncontrollable sovereignty, that turns the
hearts of men whithersoever it pleaseth. Complacency with every lot,
resignation to all events, forbearance under injury, an equal tenderness
for all men, and the lowliest attitude before God, are the
unquestionable results of this religious philosophy. But all this is
attained by a process which, I would submit, the moralist is bound to
regard as illegitimate;—by an appeal to external mechanical necessity,
rendering any thing but these states of mind intellectually improper;
not by any considerations of _duty_, or any perception of their
_intrinsic obligation_. The whole efficacy of the system is negative,
not positive. It prostrates and destroys the turbulent elements of our
nature, and its quietude is the residue left by their exhaustion: it
crumbles beneath us the heights of passion, and deposits us upon a
placid level beneath the infinite expanse. Its characteristic
dispositions are reached by the sacrifice of the feelings which are
distinctively _moral_:—the feelings, that is, of which right and wrong
acts and propensities are the appropriate objects;—the feelings of
approbation and aversion, which recognize merit and demerit, and impel
to praise and blame. The Necessarian sees, neither in himself nor
others, any good or ill desert to justify such feelings: he regards
natural and moral qualities in the same light,—contemplating benevolence
as a species of health, and selfishness as akin to disease: if he utters
censure or applause, it is not _from_ an impulse in himself, but _for_
an effect upon their object. In his love to men moral distinctions have
no place; for as their sins justify no alienation, their virtues give no
claim to admiration: he loves them apart from the perceptions of
conscience,—without veneration,—without praise,—by the mere force of the
sympathies which take interest in sentient beings as capable of
happiness and misery:—loves them, may we not say, because there is no
cause for hate; resentment, impatience, disgust, being out of place
towards creatures who are what they were meant to be, nothing remains
but to include them in his complacency. Nor does the _humility_ which
this system inculcates, bear the true and Christian stamp. It is not the
irrepressible aspiration after moral perfection, the pursuit of an image
in the conscience infinitely beautiful and great, the devoted worship of
the holy, good, and true, which draw forth tears of contrition for the
past, and dwarf the attainments of the present, though reckoning their
thousand victories; but it is rather a sense of physical and mental
insignificance, which annihilates all worth except such as we may derive
from sharing the regards of God: it is not a perception of want of merit
in our character, but a consciousness of incapacity for it in our
nature.
And who could fairly realize the fundamental idea of this scheme,
without losing all confidence in his own moral convictions, and
constantly distrusting his best feelings as delusions? For does he not
believe, that whatever is brought to pass is absolutely right and best,
and that any different view of it is an illusion incident to our human
point of sight? The optimist casts his eye over the past, and can see no
blot upon the retrospect: yet does it contain innumerable things,—woes
and crimes the most deplorable,—which, ere they happened, were repugnant
to his worthiest desires, and to be encountered by the most strenuous
resistance of duty. Is he then to look at these objects, up to the last
moment of the present, as utterly evil; and from the first moment of the
past, as indisputably best? Is he to set up a two-faced sentiment,
gazing with mutable and discriminative expression on things approaching,
but with unvaried complacency on things departed? Is it possible, that
actions and characters can change their complexion by mere migration in
time? or was it altogether a mistake to think so ill of the iniquities
which, having been summoned into existence, must always have appeared
eligible in the view of God? These perplexities must perpetually arise
to a mind which uses _two_ standards of good; the _moral_, which
approves the _right_; and the _eventual_, which reveres the _past_. The
latter incessantly contradicts the former, and insinuates that it is a
blind guide, aiming at that which the All-wise will refuses to achieve.
And thus our theorist, _in so far as he is true to his principles_,
would lapse into scepticism of his moral judgments; into a hesitating
veneration for the oracles of duty; a suspicion that they may inculcate
provisional superstitions, rather than eternal truths. It must be
difficult to unite pious acquiescence in the guilt of others, with
uncompromising resistance to our own.
In short, the contemplations presented by this doctrine do not appear to
be favourable to _active_ excellence: rising too far, and embracing too
much, they quit the contact of this green earth, and lose sight of the
interval between the quiet vales where virtue walks, and the giddy
heights it may not tread. The soul, rendered conscious more of the
immensity around it, than of the obligations upon it, lies still,
without a passion, without a fear,—venturing an approach to the
benignity more than to the energy of God. Perhaps it is the tendency of
all systems which most amply spread forth the Divine Infinitude, to be
less occupied with the conception of the Divine Holiness: perhaps the
mind intensely occupied with the idea of one solitary Power, absorbing
all subordinate agencies, and willing every change that renders space or
time perceptible, has all its strongest impulses, both moral and
sympathetic, suppressed in the abyss of mystery; and the distinction
between different beings and different acts appears, in so vast a view,
too trivial to be worthy of deep emotion and resolute volition. Certain
it is, that the oriental religions which have encouraged this sublimity
of devotion and self-annihilation in the Deity, have not been remarkable
for the formation of a sound and vigorous type of moral character.
Indeed we have seen that God himself, the supreme centre of reverence,
no longer remains, under the Necessarian representation, a really _holy_
object of thought. If we are to admit no possibility of resisting his
will, and proclaiming him the Only Cause, to drown all other powers in
his immensity, it becomes impossible to feel that he has any paramount
regard to moral distinctions: he cannot share our feelings towards human
guilt, for it is his work: he objects to no amount of vice, provided it
issues in enjoyment: and not one libertine, or traitor, or murderer,
could his purposes have spared. To reconcile us to this dreadful
thought, we are reminded of his benevolence, which will bring all things
to a glorious result. But how can we discern any sanctity in a
benevolence so indiscriminating in its instruments? Must all our various
apprehensions of God, the supremely good and supremely fair, shrink into
this one, of ultimate-happiness Maker, by no means fastidious in his
application of means, but secure of producing the end? Must the harmony
of the Divine perfections lapse into this dull monotone? It can hardly
be well for our conscience to worship a Being whom we could not imitate
without guilt: or, if it be said, that we may imitate his ultimate aim,
though not his intermediate methods,—what is this but to admit that our
moral sympathies with him must be postponed to the end of time?
This system, then, like others which trace sin to causes beyond the
individual will, does not appear to foster that deep reverence for moral
distinctions, and sense of personal responsibility, which eminently
characterize practical Christianity. It is favourable indeed to the
passive virtues, which occupy their due place in the morality of the
Gospel: but in producing them, appeals to considerations discouraging to
the active spirit of moral resistance and moral aggression.