be referred to the same causes and the same date. The earliest
communities of the world appear to have had their origin and their
cement, not in any gregarious instinct, nor in mere social affections,
much less in any prudential regard to the advantages of co-operation,
but in a binding religious sentiment, submitting to the same guidance,
and expressing itself in the same worship. As no tie can be more strong,
so is none more primitive, than this agreement respecting what is holy
and divine. In simple and patriarchal ages indeed, when the feelings of
veneration had not been set aside by analysis into a little corner of
the character, but spread themselves over the whole of life, and mixed
it up with daily wonder, this bond comprised all the forces that can
suppress the selfish and disorganizing passions, and compact a multitude
of men together. It was not, as at present, to have simply the same
_opinions_ (things of quite modern growth, the brood of scepticism); but
to have the same Fathers, the same Tradition, the same Speech, the same
Land, the same Foes, the same Priest, the same God. Nothing did man
fear, or trust, or love, or desire, that did not belong, by some
affinity, to his faith. Nor had he any book to keep the precious deposit
for him; and if he had, he would never have thought of so frail a
vehicle for so great a treasure. It was more natural to put it into
structures hollowed in the fast mountain, or built of transplanted rocks
which only a giant age could stir; and to tenant these with mighty
hierarchies, who should guard their sanctity, and, by an undying memory,
make their mysteries eternal. Hence, the first humanizer of men was
their worship; the first leaders of nations, the sacerdotal caste; the
first triumph of art, the colossal temple; the first effort to preserve
an idea, produced a record of something sacred; and the first
civilization was, as the last will be, the birth of religion.
The primitive aim of worship undoubtedly was, to act upon the sentiments
of God; at first, by such natural and intelligible means, as produce
favourable impressions on the mind of a fellow man;—by presents and
persuasion, and whatever is expressive of grateful and reverential
affections. Abel, the first shepherd, offered the produce of his flock;
Cain, the first farmer, the fruits of his land; and while devotion was
so simple in its modes, every one would be his own pontiff, and have his
own altar. But soon, the parent would inevitably officiate for his
family; the patriarch, for his tribe. With the natural forms dictated by
present feelings, traditional methods would mingle their contributions
from the past; postures and times, gestures and localities, once
indifferent, would become consecrated by venerable habit; and so long as
their origin was unforgotten, they would add to the significance, while
they lessened the simplicity of worship. Custom, however, being the
growth of time, tends to a tyrannous and bewildering complexity: forms,
originally natural, then symbolical, end in being arbitrary; suggestive
of nothing, except to the initiated; yet, if connected with religion, so
sanctified by the association, that it appears sacrilege to desist from
their employment; and when their meaning is lost, they assume their
place, not among empty gesticulations, but among the mystical signs by
which earth communes with heaven. The vivid picture-writing of the early
worship, filled with living attitudes, and sketched in the freshest
colours of emotion, explained itself to every eye, and was open to every
hand. To this succeeded a piety, which expressed itself in symbolical
figures, veiling it utterly from strangers, but intelligible and
impressive still to the soul of national tradition. This, however,
passed again into a language of arbitrary characters, in which the herd
of men saw sacredness without meaning; and the use of which must be
consigned to a class separated for its study. Hence the origin of the
priest and his profession; the conservator of a worship no longer
natural, but legendary and mystical; skilful enactor of rites that spake
with silent gesticulation to the heavens; interpreter of the wants of
men into the divine language of the gods. Not till the powers above had
ceased to hold familiar converse with the earth, and in their distance
had become deaf and dumb to the common tongue of men, did the mediating
priest arise;—needed then to conduct the finger-speech of ceremony,
whereby the desire of the creature took shape before the eye of the
Creator.
Observe then the true idea of PRIEST and RITUAL. The Priest is the
representative of men before God; commissioned on behalf of human nature
to intercede with the divine. He bears a message _upwards_, from earth
to heaven; his people being below, his influence above. He takes the
fears of the weak, and the cries of the perishing, and sets them with
availing supplication before him that is able to help. He takes the sins
and remorse of the guilty, and leaves them with expiating tribute at the
feet of the averted Deity. He guards the avenues that lead from the
mortal to the immortal, and without his interposition the creature is
cut off from his Creator. Without his mediation, no transaction between
them can take place, and the spirit of a man must live as an outlaw from
the world invisible and holy. There are means of propitiation which he
alone has authority to employ; powers of persuasion conceded to no
other; a mystic access to the springs of divine benignity, by outward
rites which his manipulation must consecrate, or forms of speech which
his lips must recommend. These ceremonies are the implements of his
office, and the sources of his power; the magic by which he is thought
to gain admission to the will above, and really wins rule over human
counsels below. As they are supposed to change the relation of God to
man, not by visible or natural operation, not (for example) by
suggestion of new thoughts, and excitement of new dispositions in the
worshipper, but by secret and mysterious agency, they are simply
_spells_ of a dignified order. Were we then to speak with severe
exactitude, we should say, a Ritual is a system of consecrated charms;
and the Priest, the great magician who dispenses them.
So long as any idea is retained, of mystically efficacious rites,
consigned solely and authoritatively to certain hands, this definition
cannot be escaped. The ceremonies may have rational instruction and
natural worship appended to them; and these additional elements may give
them a title to true respect. The order of men appointed to administer
them, may have other offices and nobler duties to perform, rendering
them, if faithful, worthy of a just and reverential attachment. But _in
so far_ as, by an exclusive and unnatural efficacy, they bring about a
changed relation between God and man, the Ritual is an incantation, and
the Priest is an enchanter.
To this sacerdotal devotion, there necessarily attach certain
characteristic sentiments, both moral and religious, which give it a
distinctive influence on human character, and adapt it to particular
stages of civilization. It clearly severs the worshippers by one remove
from God. He is a Being, external to them, distant from them, personally
unapproachable by them; their thought must _travel_ to reach the
Almighty; they must look afar for the Most Holy; they dwell themselves
within the finite, and must ask a foreign introduction to the Infinite.
He is not with them as a private guide, but in the remoter watch-towers
of creation, as the public inspector of their life; not present for
perpetual communion, but to be visited in absence by stated messages of
form and prayer. And that God dwells in this cold and royal separation,
induces the feeling that man is too mean to touch him; that a
consecrated intervention is required, in order to part Deity from the
defiling contact of humanity. Why else am I restricted from unlimited
personal access to my Creator, and driven to another in my transactions
with him? And so, in this system, our nature appears in contrast, not in
alliance, with the divine, and those views of it are favoured which make
the opposition strong; its puny dimensions, its swift decadence, its
poor self-flatteries, its degenerate virtues, its giant guilt, become
familiar to the thought and lips; and life, cut off from sympathy with
the godlike, falls towards the level of melancholy, or the sink of
epicurism, or the abjectness of vicarious reliance on the priest.
Worship, too, must have for its chief aim, to throw off the load of ill;
to rid the mind of sin and shame, and the lot of hardship and sorrow;
for principally to these disburthening offices do priests and rituals
profess themselves adapted:—and who, indeed, could pour forth the
privacy of love, and peace, and trust, through the cumbrousness of
ceremonies, and the pompousness of a sacred officer? The piety of such a
religion is thus a refuge for the weakness, not an outpouring of the
strength of the soul: it takes away the incubus of darkness, without
shedding the light of heaven; lifts off the nightmare horrors of earth
and hell, without opening the vision of angels and of God. Nay, for the
spiritual bonds which connect men with the Father above, it substitutes
material ties, a genealogy of sacred fires, a succession of hallowed
buildings, or of priests having consecration by pedigree or by manual
transmission; so that qualities belonging to the soul alone, are likened
to forces mechanical or chemical; sanctity becomes a physical property:
divine acceptance comes by bodily catenation; regeneration is degraded
into a species of electric shock, which one only method of experiment,
and the links of but one conductor, can convey. And, in fine, a priestly
system ever abjures all aim at any higher perfection; boasts of being
immutable and unimprovable; encourages no ambition, breathes no desire.
It holds the appointed methods of influencing heaven, on which none may
presume to innovate; and its functions are ever the same, to employ and
preserve the ancient forms and legendary spells committed to its trust.
Hence all its veneration is antiquarian, not sympathetic or prospective;
it turns its back upon the living, and looks straight into departed
ages, bowing the head and bending the knee; as if all objects of love
and devotion were _there_, not here; in history, not in life; as if its
God were dead, or otherwise imprisoned in the Past, and had bequeathed
to its keeping such relics as might yield a perpetual benediction. Thus
does the administration of religion, in proportion as it possesses a
sacerdotal character, involve a distant Deity, a mean humanity, a
servile worship, a physical sanctity, and a retrospective reverence.
Let no one, however, imagine, that there is no other idea or
administration of religion than this; that the priest is the only person
among men, to whom it is given to stand between heaven and earth. Even
the Hebrew Scriptures introduce us to another class of quite different
order; to whom, indeed, those Scriptures owe their own truth and power,
and perpetuity of beauty; I mean the PROPHETS; whom we shall very
imperfectly understand, if we suppose them mere historians, for whom God
had turned time round the other way, so that they spoke of things future
as if past, and grew so dizzy in their use of tenses, as greatly to
incommode learned grammarians; or if we treat their writings as
scrap-books of Providence, with miscellaneous contributions from various
parts of duration, sketches taken indifferently from any point of view
within eternity, and put together at random and without mark, on
adjacent pages, for theological memories to identify; first, a picture
of an Assyrian battle, next, a holy family; now of the captives sitting
by Euphrates, then, of Paul preaching to the Gentiles; here, a flight of
devouring locusts, and there, the escape of the Christians from the
destruction of Jerusalem; a portrait of Hezekiah, and a view of Calvary;
a march through the desert, and John the Baptist by the Jordan; the day
of Pentecost, and the French Revolution; Nebuchadnezzar and Mahomet;
Caligula and the Pope,—following each other with picturesque neglect of
every relation of time and place. No, the Prophet and his work always
indeed belong to the future; but far otherwise than thus. Meanwhile, let
us notice how, in Israel, as elsewhere, he takes his natural station
above the priest. It was Moses the prophet who even _made_ Aaron the
priest. And who cares now for the sacerdotal books of the Old Testament,
compared with the rest? Who, having the strains of David, would pore
over Leviticus, or would weary himself with Chronicles, when he might
catch the inspiration of Isaiah! It was no priest that wrote, “Thou
desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in
burnt offering: the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and
a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”[607] It was no
pontifical spirit that exclaimed, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense
is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of
assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting:
your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a
trouble unto me: I am weary to bear them.” “Wash you, make you
clean.”[608] Whatever, in these venerable scriptures, awes us by its
grandeur, and pierces us by its truth, comes of the prophets, not the
priests; and from that part of their writings too, in which they are not
concerned with historical prediction, but with some utterance deeper and
greater. I do not deny them this gift of occasional intellectual
foresight of events. And doubtless it was an honour, to be permitted to
speak thus to a portion of the future, and of local occurrences
unrevealed to seers less privileged. But it is a glory far higher, to
speak that which belongs to all time, and finds its interpretation in
every place; to penetrate to the everlasting realities of things; to
disclose, not when this or that man will appear, but how and wherefore
all men appear and quickly disappear; to make it felt, not in what nook
of duration such an incident will happen, but from what all-embracing
eternity the images of history emerge and are swallowed up. In this
highest faculty, the Hebrew seers belong to a class, scattered over
every nation and every period; which Providence keeps ever extant for
human good, and especially to furnish an administration of religion
quite anti-sacerdotal. This class we must proceed to characterize.
The Prophet is the representative of God before men, commissioned from
the Divine nature to sanctify the human. He bears a message _downwards_,
from heaven to earth; his inspirer being above, his influence below. He
takes of the holiness of God, enters with it into the souls of men, and
heals therewith the wounds, and purifies the taint, of sin. He is
charged with the peace of God, and gives from it rest to the weariness,
and solace to the griefs of men. Instead of carrying the foulness of
life to be cleansed in Heaven, he brings the purity of Heaven to make
life divine. Instead of interposing himself and his mediation between
humanity and Deity, he destroys the whole distance between them; and
only fulfils his mission, when he brings the finite mind and the
infinite into immediate and thrilling contact, and leaves the creature
consciously alone with the Creator. He is one to whom the primitive and
everlasting relations between God and man have revealed themselves,
stripped of every disguise, and bared of all that is conventional; who
is possessed by their simplicity, mastered by their solemnity; who has
found the secret of meeting the Holy Spirit within, rather than without;
and knows, but cannot tell, how in the strife of genuine duty, or in
moments of true meditation, the divine immensity and love have touched
and filled his naked soul; and taught him by what fathomless Godhead he
is folded round, and on what adamantine manhood he must take his stand.
So far from separating others from the heavenly communion vouchsafed to
himself, he necessarily believes that all may have the same godlike
consciousness; burns to impart it to them; and by the vivid light of his
own faith, speedily creates it in those who feel his influence; drawing
out and freshening the faded colours of the divine image in their souls,
till they too become visibly the seers and the sons of God. His
instruments, like the objects of his mission, are human; not mysteries,
and mummeries, and such arbitrary things, by which others may pretend to
be talking with the skies; but the natural language which interprets
itself at once to every genuine man, and goes direct to the living point
of every heart. An earnest speech, a brave and holy life, truth of
sympathy, severity of conscience, freshness and loftiness of
faith,—these natural sanctities are his implements of power: and if
heaven be pleased to add any other gifts, still are they weapons
all,—not the mere tinsel of tradition and custom,—but forged in the
inner workshop of our nature, where the fire glows beneath the breath of
God, framing things of etherial temper. Thus armed, he lays undoubting
siege to the world’s conscience; tears down every outwork of pretence;
forces its strongholds of delusion; humbles the vanities at its centre,
and proclaims it the citadel of God. The true prophet of every age is no
believer in the temple, but in the temple’s Deity; trusts, not rites and
institutions, but the heart and soul that fill or ought to fill them; if
they speak the truth, no one so reveres them; if a lie, they meet with
no contempt like his. He sees no indestructible sanctuary but the mind
itself, wherein the Divine Spirit ever loves to dwell; and whence it
will be sure to go forth and build such outward temple as may suit the
season of Providence. He is conscious that there is no devotion like
that which comes spontaneously from the secret places of our humanity,
no orisons so true as those which rise from the common platform of our
life. He desires only to throw himself in faith on the natural piety of
the heart. Give him but that; and he will find for man an everlasting
worship, and raise for God a cathedral worthy of his infinitude.
It is evident that one thoroughly possessed with this spirit could never
be, and could never make, a priest: nor frame a ritual for priests
already made. He is destitute of the ideas, out of which alone these
things can be created. His mission is in the opposite direction: he
interprets and reveals God to men, instead of interceding for men with
God. In this office sacerdotal rites have no function and no place. I do
not say that he must necessarily disapprove and abjure them, or deny
that he may directly sanction them. If he does however, it is not in his
capacity of prophet, but in conformity with feelings which his proper
office has left untouched. His tendency will be against ceremonialism:
and on his age and position will depend the extent to which this
tendency takes effect. Usually, he will construct nothing ritual, will
destroy much, and leave behind great and growing ideas, destructive of
much more. But ere we quit our general conception of a prophet, let us
notice some characteristic sentiments, moral and religious, which
naturally connect themselves with his faith; comparing them with those
which belong to the sacerdotal influence.
In this faith, God is separated by nothing from his worshippers. He is
not simply in contact with them, but truly in the interior of their
nature: so that they may not only meet him in the outward providences of
life, but bear his spirit with them, when they go to toil and conflict,
and find it still, when they sit alone to think and pray. He is not the
far observer, but the very present help, of the faithful will. No
structure made with hands, nay, not even his own architecture of the
heaven of heavens, contains and confines his presence: were there any
dark recess whence these were hid, the blessed access would be without
hindrance still; and the soul would discern him near as its own
identity. No mean and ignoble conception can be entertained of a mind,
which is thus the residence of Deity;—the shrine of the Infinite must
have somewhat that is infinite itself. Thus, in this system, does our
nature appear in alliance with the Divine, not in contrast with it;
inspired with a portion of its holiness, and free to help forward the
best issues of its Providence. Human life, blessed by this spirit,
becomes a miniature of the work of the great Ruler: its
responsibilities, its difficulties, its temptations, become dignified as
the glorious theatre whereon we strive, by and with the good Spirit of
God, for the mastery over evil. Worship, issuing from a nature and
existence thus consecrated, is not the casting off of guilt and terror,
but the glad unburthening of love, and trust, and aspiration, the simple
speaking forth, as duty is the acting forth, of the divine within us;
not the prostration of the slave, but the embrace of the child; not the
plaint of the abject, but the anthem of the free. Is it not private,
individual? And may it not by silence say what it will, and intimate the
precise thing, and that only, which is at heart?—whence there grows
insensibly that firm root of excellence, truth with one’s own self. The
priestly fancy of an hereditary or lineal sacredness can have no place
here. The soul and God stand directly related, mind with mind, spirit
with spirit: from our moral fidelity to this relation, from the jealousy
with which we guard it from insult or neglect, does the only sanctity
arise; and herein there is none to help us, or give a vicarious
consecration. And finally, the spirit of God’s true prophet is earnestly
prospective; more filled with the conception of what the Creator _will_
make his world, than of what he _has_ already made it: detecting great
capacities, it glows with great hopes; knowing that God lives, and will
live, it turns from the past, venerable as that may be, and reverences
rather the promise of the present, and the glories of the future. It
esteems nothing unimproveable, is replete with vast desires; and amid
the shadows and across the wilds of existence chases, not vainly, a
bright image of perfection. The golden age, which priests with their
tradition put into the past, the prophet, with his faith and truth,
transfers into the future: and while the former pines and muses, the
latter toils and prays. Thus does the administration of religion, in
proportion as it partakes of the prophetic or anti-sacerdotal character,
involve the ideas of an interior Deity, a noble humanity, a loving
worship, an individual holiness, and a prospective veneration.
We have found, then, two opposite views of religion; that of the Priest
with his Ritual; and that of the Prophet with his Faith. I propose to
show that the Church of England, in its doctrine of sacraments,
coincides with the former of these, and sanctions all its objectionable
sentiments: and that Christianity, in every relation, even with respect
to its reputed rites, coincides with the latter.
The general conformity of the Church of England with the ritual
conception of religion, will not be denied by her own members. Their
denial will be limited to one point: they will protest that her formulas
of doctrine do not ascribe a _charmed efficacy_, or any operation upon
God, to the two sacraments. To avoid verbal disputes, let us consider
what we are to understand by a spell or charm. The name, I apprehend,
denotes any material object or outward act, the possession or use of
which is thought to confer safety or blessing, not by natural operation,
but by occult virtues, inherent in it, or mystical effects appended to
it. A mere commemorative sign, therefore, is not a charm, nor need there
be any superstition in its employment: it simply stands for certain
ideas and memories in our minds; re-excites and freshens them, not
otherwise than speech audibly records them, except that it summons them
before us by sight and touch, instead of sound. The effect, whatever it
may be, is purely natural, by sequence of thought on thought, till the
complexion of the mind is changed, and haply suffused with a noble glow.
But in truth it is not fit to speak of commemorations, as things having
efficacy at all; as desirable observances, under whose action we should
put ourselves, in order to get up certain good dispositions in the
heart. As soon as we see them acquiesced in, with this dutiful
submission to a kind of spiritual operation, we may be sure they are
already empty and dead. An _expedient_ commemoration, deliberately
maintained on utilitarian principles, for the sake of warming cold
affections by artificial heat, is one of the foolish conceptions of this
mechanical and sceptical age. It is quite true, that such influence is
found to belong to rites of remembrance; but only so long as it is not
privately looked into, or greedily contemplated by the staring eye of
prudence, but simply and unconsciously received. No; commemorations must
be the spontaneous fruit and outburst of a love already kindled in the
soul, not the factitious contrivance for forcing it into existence. They
are not the lighted match applied to the fuel on an altar cold: but the
shapes in which the living flame aspires, or the fretted lights thrown
by that central love on the dark temple-walls of this material life.