conduct is not influenced by such considerations as you have supposed.
It matters little what men may think about the _origin_ of their guilt,
if they make no mistake about its _consequences_: let them only be sure
that it will be punished in the end, and they may please themselves with
speculating about its beginning. Every one will fly an inevitable
suffering, whether self-incurred or induced by foreign causes: and if he
clearly sees the penal sentence, he will shun the sin, just as much when
he imagines that others have involved him in it, as when he conceives
that he alone has brought it on himself. In short, the will neither is
nor can be determined by anything but the prospect of pleasure or pain;
and so long as consequences of this kind depend on his decisions, a man
will feel himself accountable. The sense of responsibility can never be
weakened by any system which, like those just noticed, retain the
doctrine of future retribution.”
This statement assumes that self-regarding motives, promises of
happiness, and threats of misery, are the sole powers for operating on
human character.
(2.) In reply, I submit as a second distinguishing feature of practical
Christianity, that it makes no great, certainly no exclusive, appeal to
the _prudential feelings_, as instruments of duty; treats them as
morally incapable of so sacred a work; and relies, chiefly and
characteristically, on affections of the heart, which no motives of
reward and punishment can have the smallest tendency to excite.
The Gospel, indeed, like all things divine, is unsystematic and unbound
by technical distinctions, and makes no metaphysical separation between
the will and the affections. It is too profoundly adapted to our nature,
not to address itself copiously to both. The doctrine of retribution
being a solemn truth, appears with all its native force in the teachings
of Christ, and arms many of his appeals with a persuasion just and
terrible. But never was there a religion (containing these motives at
all) so frugal in the use of them; so able, on fit occasions, to
dispense with them: so rich in those inimitable touches of moral beauty,
and tones that penetrate the conscience, and generous trust in the
better sympathies, which distinguish a morality of the affections. In
Christ himself, where is there a trace of the obedience of pious
self-interest, computing its everlasting gains, and making out a case
for compensation, by submitting to infinite wisdom? In his character,
which is the impersonation of his religion, we surely have a perfect
image of spontaneous goodness, unhaunted by the idea of personal
enjoyment, and, like that of God, unbidden but by the intuitions of
conscience, and the impulses of love. And what teacher less divine ever
made such high and bold demands on our disinterestedness? To lend out
our virtue upon interest,—to “love them only who love us” he pronounced
to be the sinners’ morality; nor was the feeling of duty ever reached,
but by those who could “do good, hoping for _nothing_ again,” except
that greatest of rewards to a true and faithful heart, to be “the
children of the Highest” who “is kind unto the unthankful and the evil.”
In the view of Jesus, all dealings between God and men were not of
bargain, but of affection. We must surrender ourselves to him without
terms; must be ashamed to doubt him who feeds the birds of the air, and,
like the lily of the field, look up to him with a bright and loving eye;
and he, for our much love, will pity and forgive us. In his own
ministry, how much less did our Lord rely for disciples on the cogency
of mere proof, and the inducements of hope and fear, than on the power
of moral sympathy, by which every one that was of God naturally loved
him and heard his words;[568] by which the good shepherd knew his sheep,
and they listened to his voice, and followed him;[569] and without which
no man could come unto him, for no spirit of the Father drew him.[570]
No condition of discipleship did Christ impose, save that of “faith in
him;” absolute trust in the spirit of his mind; a desire of
self-abandonment to a love and fidelity like his, without tampering with
expediency, or hesitancy in peril, or shrinking from death.
There is, then, a wide variance between the genius of Christianity, and
that philosophy which teaches, that all men must be bought over to the
side of goodness and of God, by a price suited to their particular form
of selfishness and appetite for pleasure. Our religion is remarkable for
the large confidence it reposes on the disinterested affections, and the
vast proportion of the work of life it consigns to them. And in thus
seeking to subordinate and tranquillize the prudential feelings, Christ
manifested how well he knew what was in man. He recognized the truth,
which all experience declares, that in these emotions is nothing great,
nothing loveable, nothing powerful; that their energy is perpetually
found incapable of withstanding the impetuosity of passion; and that all
transcendant virtues, all that brings us to tremble or to kneel, all the
enterprises and conflicts which dignify history, and have stamped any
new feature on human life, have had their origin in the disinterested
region of the mind; in affections, unconsciously entranced by some
object sanctifying and divine. He knew, for it was his special mission
to make all men feel, that it is the office of true religion to cleanse
the sanctuary of the secret affections, and effect a regeneration of the
heart. And this is a task which no direct _nisus_ of the will can
possibly accomplish, and to which, therefore, all offers of reward and
punishment, operating only on the will, are quite inapplicable. The
single function of volition is _to act_; over the executive part of our
nature it is supreme; over the emotional it is powerless; and all the
wrestlings of desire for self-cure and self-elevation, are like the
struggles of a child to lift himself. He who is anxious to be a
philanthropist, is admiring benevolence, instead of loving men; and
whoever is labouring to warm his devotion, yearns after piety, not after
God. The mind can by no spasmodic bound seize on a new height of
emotion, or change the light in which objects appear before its view.
Persuade the judgment, bribe the self-interests, terrify the
expectations, as you will, you can neither dislodge a favourite, nor
enthrone a stranger, in the heart. Show me a child that flings an
affectionate arm around a parent, and lights up his eyes beneath her
face, and I know that there have been no lectures there upon filial
love; but that the mother, being loveable, has _of necessity_ been
loved; for to genial minds it is as impossible to withhold a pure
affection, when its object is presented, as for the flower to sulk
within the mould, and clasp itself tight within the bud, when the gentle
force of spring invites its petals to curl out into the warm light. As
you reverence all good affections of our nature, and desire to awaken
them, never call them duties, though they be so; for so doing, you
address yourself to the will; and by hard trying no attachment ever
entered the heart. Never preach on their great desirableness and
propriety; for so doing, you ask audience of the judgment; and by way of
the understanding no glow of noble passion ever came. Never, above all,
reckon up their balance of good and ill; for so doing, you exhort
self-interest; and by that soiled way no true love will consent to pass.
Nay, never talk of them, nor even gaze curiously at them; for if they be
of any worth and delicacy, they will be instantly looked out of
countenance and fly. Nothing worthy of human veneration will condescend
to be embraced, but for its own sake: grasp it for its excellent
results,—make but the faintest offer to use it as a tool, and it slips
away at the very conception of such insult. The functions of a healthy
body go on, not by knowledge of physiology, but by the instinctive
vigour of nature; and you will no more brace the spiritual faculties to
noble energy and true life, by study of the uses of every feeling, than
you can train an athlete for the race, by lectures on every muscle of
every limb. The mind is not voluntarily active in the acquisition of any
great idea, any new inspiration of faith; but passive, fixed on the
object which has dawned upon it, and filled it with fresh light.
If this be true, and if it be the object of practical Christianity, not
only to direct our hands aright, but to inspire our hearts; then can its
ends never be achieved by the mere force of reward and punishment; then
no system can prove its sufficiency, by showing that it retains the
doctrine of retribution, and must even be held convicted of moral
incompetency, if it trusts the conscience mainly to the prudential
feelings, without due provision for enlisting the co-operation of many a
disinterested affection.
To this objection must any scheme be liable, which represents the
Creator as having made choice of the instrumentality of evil. I freely
admit, that no one urges the _personal_ motives to duty with more
closeness and force than the Necessarian. Maintaining, with the utmost
strictness, the connexion of moral cause and effect, teaching the
alliance of happiness with excellence, and of misery with vice, by a law
inexorable as fate, he convinces us, that every concession to
temptation, every relaxation of conscientious effort, is an addition of
wretchedness to our future lot; that when the evil volition has once
passed, no fortuity can provide evasion, nor any mercy give us shelter;
that on the decisions of our will is suspended whatever can make our
everlasting destination blessed. But his doctrine goes on to assure us,
that it is only to ourselves that our sins create any clear increase of
suffering; they are a part of the best possible system, designed for the
general good; and shown, by their occurrence, to be clear benefits to
the world. No love of our fellow-man, then, can be engaged in behalf of
duty; let conscience say what it will, we hold no power, and incur no
risk, of creating injury to others; and our sympathies with them cannot
reasonably determine any moral choice. No love of God can tender help to
our feeble virtue: for he is not “grieved in our sins;” and whether, in
our conflicts, we succumb or conquer, the issue is well-pleasing in his
sight. He appears to sustain a relation, not of concern, but of
indifference, to our choice; and the idea of him, as spectator of the
strife, inspires no courage, and brings no victory. If it be urged, that
these considerations are of too high and abstract a kind to influence us
in practice, and that to us our misconduct must always appear injurious
to men, and offensive to God; what is this but to allow the unfitness of
the doctrine to our minds, and to say, that it is harmless, in
proportion as it remains unrealized? It is a poor plea for the value of
a system to exclaim, “Never mind its threatened mischiefs, conscience is
too strong for them.” The point at which the present argument rests is
this, that _in so far as the doctrine operates_, it dismisses all but
the prudential feelings from the service of duty.
Our conclusion is evident. The spirit of practical Christianity gives a
double suffrage against the scheme which makes moral evil the
_instrument_ of God; and bids us regard it as his _enemy_. Revelation
allies itself with the primitive religion of the conscience.
To the theoretic question, still urged by our wonder and solicitude,
“But _whence_ this foe?” it has been already said, that no answer can be
given. All the ingenuities of logic and of language, leave it a mystery
still: and it is better to stand within the darkness in the quietude of
faith, than vainly to search for its margin in the restlessness of
knowledge. Were we compelled, for relief of mind, to select _some_
definite method of representing the case to our apprehensions, I know
not any simpler or better conception than that of the ancient
Platonists;—that the process of creation consisted, not in the
origination of matter itself out of nothing, but in the production of
form, order, beauty, organization, life, sentiency, out of matter,—in
making it the residence of mind, the receptacle of experience, and the
servitor of souls: that the Divine hand has manifested illimitable
skill, and the Divine love infinite versatility, in the use and
application of the original material; but that, as it is the negative
opposite to his positive perfections, its unsusceptibility of life and
spirit has occasioned the portion of evil which deforms the universe,
and which, however varied and reduced, and, in the higher gradations of
being, attenuated to the verge of extinction, cannot be utterly
annihilated. From the large proportion of visible evil, natural and
moral, that is traceable to disorganization and its related changes,
this view is easily apprehended, and may indeed be detected, in many
common forms of thought and speech. If it be not true, no better
substitute for the truth is within our reach. It limits the power of God
no more than the rival scheme: for were we to say, that he became the
author of evil, as the _unavoidable_ means of ulterior benefits, we
should admit, that _only on these terms_ was the contemplated good
producible, even by him whom, in relation to all our measures of force,
we justly call Omnipotent. It is impossible to escape, and therefore
better to confront, the idea of a NECESSITY, restricting the conditions
within which the Divine goodness operates;—a necessity, mysterious, but
not dreadful; not great enough to be subversive of faith, nor trivial
enough to be reasoned out of sight. I know not why our thoughts should
not find a residence for this necessity, rather in the materials
awaiting the Creative hand, than in any immaterial laws, under the
mystic title of “the Nature of things,” or (in other words,) any dark
Fate behind the throne. But in saying this, I only propose to _state the
problem_ in the most salutary form, and by no means to offer a solution:
mere pretension to ideas, where truly we have none, only excludes us
from the benefits (which are many) of our allotted portion of ignorance.
I have no sympathy with the confident and dogmatic spirit, which
exclaims, “Let the counsel of the Holy One draw nigh, that we may know
it;” and would only protest against systems that “call evil good, and
good evil,” that “put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”
Sin, then, in the sight of God and all good men, is to be esteemed an
evil, absolutely and everlastingly. We may rally the _whole_ power of
our nature against it: for it destroys our personal security; it
irremediably wounds our brother; and it puts us in dreary alienation
from our Father and our Judge. We may let loose our aversion to all that
offends the conscience, and without metaphysical hesitancy, visit it
with uncompromising hate; for so doing, we are indignant with no
instrument of Deity; nor do we fall into any sentiment at variance with
his. We may yield, with entire self-precipitation, to the love of
whatever things are pure and true and good; never fearing that our
affections will become too exclusive for the enlightened children of the
Highest. When we look into the darker chambers of our soul, and discern,
asleep or awake, the powers of selfishness, malice, jealousy,—we see
therein no nursery of discipline, where God presides to train us
ultimately well; but the dreadful dwelling of our familiar fiend who
wrestles in apostacy with God;—the palace of the penal furies that at
once tempt and torture us, a place severed by a whole universe from
Heaven;—the inner Hell of our immortal nature, so plenteous in solitary
agonies, that the addition of outward flames populous with tormented
beings would only refresh us with pity for their woes. The fever of
desire, the fires of revenge, the gnawing of remorse, still busy in our
immortality; the shame of resuscitated memories; the passionate yearning
after strength with the prostrate consciousness of weakness; the
strangeness and desolation of empty minds and heated appetites carried
to the assemblage of the skies, and gazed on by the pitying eye of a
Divine but alienated purity,—Oh! what flames can burn into tenderer
seats of anguish than these? And so far from planning and willing the
lapse of any into such guilt and suffering, the Great Ruler never ceases
to resist to the last, all such delay of his benediction and frustration
of his desire. He dwells absolutely apart from all creative contact with
the evil which we are bound to abhor: he comes before us as a being
unambiguously Holy; not in any ultimate and scarce intelligible way, but
in our plain human sense. His name must be reserved as the exclusive
receptacle of all the excellence and beauty, the majesty and tenderness,
the purity and justice, of which our minds can gather together the
ideas. It is no figure of speech, that there is _joy in heaven_ over the
sinner that repenteth: that part at least of heaven that dwells below
and hides itself within our hearts, that portion of God that expresses
itself through the sanctities of our nature, yields to our moral
restoration not only a ready welcome, but a mysterious help. When fear
has performed its proper and only function on a responsible being,—which
is, not to create holiness, but to arrest guilt; when it has summoned
us, like the prodigal, to ourselves again; when it has brought the mad
career to halt, and left us weeping, humbled, prostrate in the dust,
crying, “Lord, help us, we perish;”—then the Divine Spirit dawns on the
gloom of our self-abasement, and refreshes us with the delicious light
of a new and purer love: instead of the vain strivings of an enervated
will, the restless beating of mere prudence against the iron bars of
corrupt desire, the gates of the soul are burst silently open by some
angel affection, and we are free! And shall we not, with most devout
allegiance, follow our Divine Emancipator? The great work, which his
holy energy is thus ready to carry on within us, he may be discerned
conducting every where without us. On the theatre of the universe he is
himself engaged to grapple eternally with Evil, and hurl it from the
higher portion of his abode. And so, he waits, with his inspiring
sympathy, to hail every victory of our free-will: and by all the filial
love we bear him, by the generous fear of estrangement from his spirit,
by the hope of growth in his similitude, we are summoned to enter the
field of moral conflict,—to stir up the noble courage of our hearts, and
in the Lord’s own might, do battle with the confederate fiends of guilt
and woe. There is not elsewhere a combat so glorious, or a trophy so
divine.
NOTES.
---------------------
A.
_Origin of the Doctrine of Two Principles._
The prominent place which the doctrine of two principles occupies in the
later theology of the Persians has procured for that people the
reputation of being the first to apprehend it; and for Zoroaster the
credit of assigning to it its due importance in the religious
reformation which he accomplished. So much doubt, however, exists,
respecting the age in which Zoroaster lived, the nature and extent of
the change which he introduced, and even on the question whether he
really taught the dualistic scheme at all, that he cannot justly deprive
the Ionian philosophers of a claim to originality in their resort to it.
If either before the Persian conquest of the Medes, or in the time of
Darius Hystaspes, this doctrine had been entrusted to the Magi, as
conservators of the national religion, it is difficult to account for
the omission of so fundamental a tenet in the account which Herodotus
gives of the Persian theology. The simple monotheism which the Father of
History describes, as seeking the mountain top in sacrifice, and calling
the whole circle of the heavens God,[571] can scarcely be the same with
the elaborate system of dualism, attributed by Plutarch to Zoroaster and
the Magi;[572] and the difference between the two accounts throws a
doubt on the antiquity of the latter doctrine in the East. Yet, on the
other hand, if we assign to it the most recent date of which the case
admits, we must allow that it formed part of the _popular belief_ in the
fourth century before Christ; in which case, it must have existed, at
least in its previous _philosophical_ _form_, in the fifth. A doctrine,
however, which had not yet assumed a mythological character, or drawn to
itself any external ceremonial, might easily escape the notice of
Herodotus. The Indian books, which contain the same tenet, are thought
by Friedrich von Schlegel to have borrowed it from Persia;[573] and
cannot therefore be adduced in separate proof of its high antiquity. On
the whole, there appears to be no evidence of its propagation among any
native Oriental people, before the brilliant period of art and
philosophy in the Greek cities of Asia Minor.
Even if it should be chronologically incorrect to affirm, that Ionian
speculation “anticipated” the oriental religions in their theological
and philosophical ideas, there is no sufficient reason to deny its
independence and originality. Though the Greek schools did not arise
till an opening intercourse with Egypt and the interior of Asia afforded
to their founders the _opportunity_ of borrowing from foreign sources,
it does not appear that they estimated this advantage highly enough to
avail themselves of it. Only a truly indigenous philosophy could have
left such distinct traces of a regular and progressive development,
beginning with the poetical cosmogonies of a purely mythological æra,
and growing, under the fostering care of successive teachers, into vast
speculative systems, bearing a relation, continually more obscure and
questionable, to the theology which gave them birth. Adverting to this
natural process, Mr. Thirlwall says: “It can excite no surprise that in
a period such as we are now reviewing, when thought and inquiry were
stimulated in so many new directions, some active minds should have been
attracted by the secrets of nature, and should have been led to grapple
with some of the great questions which the contemplation of the visible
universe suggests. There can therefore be no need of attempting to trace
the impulse by which the Greeks were now carried toward such researches,
to a foreign origin. But it is an opinion which has found many
advocates, that they were indebted to their widening intercourse with
other nations, particularly with Egypt, Phœnicia, and the interior of
Asia, for several of the views and doctrines which were fundamental or
prominent parts of their earlier philosophical systems. The result,
however, of the maturest investigation, seems to show that there is no
sufficient ground even for this conjecture.[574] On the other hand, it
is clear that the first philosophers were not wholly independent of the
earlier intellectual efforts of their own countrymen, and that, perhaps
unconsciously, they derived the form, if not, in part at least, the
substance of their speculations, from the old theogonies and
cosmogonies.[575]