RELIGIOUS MORALITY.--RELIGIOUS RIGHTS AND DUTIES.
SUMMARY.
Are there duties toward God?
=Duties toward God.--Analysis of the religious sentiment.=--Two
elements: 1, the sentiment of the infinite; 2, the need of hope and
consolation.
Can sentiment become a duty?
=Indirect duties toward God.=--Piety united with all the acts of life:
1, obedience; 2, resignation; 3, love of God united to that of man.
=The idea of God in morals.=--God the surety of the moral law.
=Religious society.=--Fenelon and Epictetus.
=Religious rights.=--Liberty of conscience: liberty of opinion, liberty
of worship, liberty of propagandism.
It is not our purpose to speak here of the different forms of religious
thought among men: this is the special domain of conscience; but among all
these forms, is there no common ground which may be said to belong to the
human soul, and which is found to be the same with the sages of pagan
antiquity and the modern philosophers, although they may not have adopted
any special form of worship? Yes. This common ground of all religion is
the idea of God.
=167. Are there any duties toward God?=--If, as we have seen in our first
book (Vol. I., last chapter), there is a God, that is to say, an author of
the physical and moral universe, and its preserver and protector and
father, it follows that man, as a part of this universe, and distinguished
from its other creatures by the fact that he knows himself to be a child
of God, is held to entertain toward this supreme father, sentiments of
gratitude and respect, and toward this supreme judge sentiments of fear
and hope, all of which gives rise to a whole class of duties.
Some doubts have been raised on this point by certain philosophers, and
the question has been asked whether man, so out of all proportion when
compared to God, could have any duties toward Him? It has been said,
moreover, that there could be no duty toward a being to whom we can do
neither good nor harm. God, the essence of all perfection and supreme
happiness, can have nothing added to nor taken from these by us. We are
therefore under no obligation to him whatsoever.
1. As for the absolute disproportion we imagine to exist between God and
man, this disproportion does not prevent my having an idea of God: why
should it prevent my loving him and putting myself in relation with him?
Fenelon justly said: "Nothing is so wonderful as the idea of God which I
carry within myself; it is the infinite contained within the finite. That
which is within me is infinitely beyond me. I do not understand how it
comes to be in my mind, and yet it is there, nevertheless. This indelible
and incomprehensible idea of the Divine Being is what, despite my
imperfection and weakness, makes me resemble him. As he infinitely knows
and loves himself, so do I, according to my power, know and love him. I
can love the infinite by no other means than by my finite knowledge, and
love it by no other than a love as finite as myself.... I wish my love
were as limitless as the perfection it loves. It is true, again, that this
knowledge and this love are not equally as perfect as their object, but
the man who knows and loves God according to his measure of knowledge and
love is incomparably more worthy of this perfect being than the man
without God in the world, caring neither to know nor to love him."[139]
Hence it can be concluded that the duties of man toward God are implied in
the knowledge he has of him.
2. As to the second difficulty, it consists in saying that God being
susceptible of neither benefits nor injuries, it is not quite clear what
acts we could perform in his behalf. But the question is precisely to know
whether we only owe duties to beings susceptible of benefits and injuries.
We have, for example, to perform duties of justice, love, respect toward
the dead, although we can do them neither good nor harm, since they are
dead; and although we have reason to think that the dead still exist under
another form, the duties we still owe them, are independent of this
consideration, and notwithstanding the doubt of the immortality of souls,
or their relations with the living, these duties still subsist: those
souls might be so happy, and in conditions so different from those of our
earthly life, that they might have become wholly indifferent to such, at
least to harm. A historian, for instance, would not be justified in
slandering his heroes under the pretext that, not believing in the
immortality of the soul, he knew he could do them no harm. Man, even in
this life, can, through patience and gentleness, so rise above all insults
as to become wholly insensible to them: which fact, however, does not
imply that the insults done him are innocent. The same man might be so
modest as to feel no need of any homage, which would make it no less a
duty of justice on the part of others to render him all the homage that is
due him. Wholly inward feelings, not evidenced by any outward act
whatsoever, cannot in reality do their object any good or harm; yet no one
will question their being duties. It may then be seen that duty is not
regulated by the good or evil which may outwardly be done, but by the
order of things which requires that every being be loved and respected
according to his merit. Now, from this standpoint, there can be no doubt
that God, who is supreme perfection and the principle of all order and
justice, is the legitimate object of the highest respect and the
profoundest love.
It may be said, perhaps, that these sentiments toward the Creator are
rather duties we owe ourselves than God, for it is for our own sakes that
we are bound to give to our sensibility and affection the highest object
they can have. Since the perfection and the dignity of the soul are
enhanced by religion, it is our duty to be religious.
Fenelon is quite right when he says that "the man who knows and loves God
is more _worthy_ of him than he who lives without him." Is it not the same
as to say that religion rendering man more like God, and bringing him
nearer to him, man owes it to himself to rise above himself through piety
and the love of God?
But it matters very little how we explain the nature of the duties toward
God, provided we recognize them. Whether they be considered a distinct
class, or whether we only see in them the highest degree of man's duties
toward himself; all this is but a useless speculation. We could say
conversely, and with equal justice, that our duties toward ourselves are
but a part of our duties toward God: for duty itself, in its highest
conception, being to reach after the highest possible perfection, we can
say, with Plato, that virtue is the imitation of God; that, consequently,
man owes it to himself to resemble God as much as possible, and that,
conversely, he owes God, as the type of supreme perfection, to draw ever
nearer to him through self-improvement. But how could he seek to draw
nearer to God's supreme perfection if he did not entertain for him the
feelings of love and respect, which constitute what we, in general, call
religious sentiment?
=168. Duties toward God.--Analysis of the religious sentiment.=--What is
called _duties toward God_ is nothing else than the different acts by
which we endeavor to bring about, cultivate, develop in us, or in others,
religious sentiment. When these acts are external, and take a certain
definite form, they constitute what is called _outward worship_, and are
consequent upon positive religions. When they are concentrated in the
soul, and confined to sentiments, they constitute what is called _inner
worship_. The virtue which corresponds to these inner acts and sentiments
is called _piety_.
The duties toward God being thus blended with religious sentiment we must,
in order to set them forth, first analyze this sentiment.
Religious sentiment is composed of two elements: one which may be called
_metaphysical_;[140] the other, _moral_. 1. Metaphysically, the love of
God is the sentiment of the infinite, the need of attaching ourselves to
the absolute, the eternal, the immutable, the true in itself--in one word,
to Being. The thinking man, and even the thoughtless man, looking at
himself, finds himself small, feeble, miserable. "Oh!" exclaims Bossuet,
"how much we are nothing!" "Man becomes vile to himself," says St.
Bernard. "Man feels that he is frail, that his life hangs but on a thread,
that he is constantly passing away. The goods of the world are perishable.
The fashion of this world passeth away. We neither know who we are, whence
we come, whither we are going, nor what sustains us during the short
period of our lives. We are suspended between heaven and earth: between
two infinities; we stand as on quicksands." All these strong expressions
of mystics and religious writers admirably express the need we stand in of
the absolute, the immutable, the perfect,--a need felt more particularly
by devout minds, but which all men, without exception, experience in some
degree or other, and which they endeavor to satisfy the best they can. All
our efforts to reach the absolute in science, in art, in politics even,
are but the forms in which this need of the absolute manifests itself. The
insatiable pursuit of the gratification of the passions even is, also,
under a vain appearance, the same need. It is this feeling of the eternal
and the infinite, which the greatest metaphysicians all regarded as the
ultimate foundation of morality. Plato, Plotinus, Malebranche, Spinoza,
all enjoin upon us to seek eternal, in preference to perishable, goods.
This sentiment, conscious of ever striving after the substance of good and
not its shadow, is the profoundest, nearest, and dearest element of
religious sentiment.
2. Thus much in regard to the metaphysical element of religion: next comes
the moral element. God does not only appear to the human soul as a being
infinite, inexhaustible, eternal. The soul wants him nearer, and in her
respectful boldness she calls him _Father_. Man is not only feeble and
imperfect; he is also a sinner and a sufferer; evil is his condition. The
frailty of our being and its narrow limits are already an evil; but these
are the least of evils; humanity suffers, furthermore, from a double evil
far more real and poignant: pain and sin. Against physical pain,
suffering, it has but the feeble resource of prudence; against moral evil
it has but one means of defense, very weak also--free-will. It would seem
that we are the masters of the universe; but experience shows, on the
contrary, that we are the feeblest among its creatures; often does the
will succumb; and Kant himself, despite his stoicism, asks whether indeed
a single act of virtue has ever been accomplished in the world. Life, on
the whole, notwithstanding its grand aspects and its few exquisite and
sublime joys, life is bad; all ends badly, and death, which puts an end to
all evils, is yet the greatest of evils. "The human soul," says Plato,
"like a bird, raises its eyes to heaven," and calls for a remedy, a help,
a deliverance. "Deliver us from evil," is the cry of every religion. God
is the liberator and comforter. We love what is good and we do what is
evil; we impatiently desire happiness, and meet with nothing but
wretchedness. Such is the contradiction Pascal points out with such
incisive eloquence. This contradiction must be removed. Hope and trust in
a supreme and benevolent Being must ransom us from pain and sin.
Many persons place the essence of religion in the belief in a future life,
or immortality of the soul. Who, without the hope of gaining paradise,
would think of God? But this is a contradiction in terms. Paradise, for
the true believer, is nothing; God, everything. If a future life is a
necessary consequence of the divine justice and bounty, we need not doubt
its existence; if not, we have nothing to ask; it does not concern us.
What especially concerns us is to know what we ought to do here below, and
to have the strength to do it with. "_Life is a meditation, not of death,
but of life_," said Spinoza. But in order to live, and live well, one must
believe in life, must believe in its healthy and holy significance,
believe that it is not mere play, a mere mystification, but that it was
given us by the principle of good for the success of good.
The essence of religion, then, is a belief in the goodness of God. A
German critic, Feuerbach, said with great effect, that religion consisted
in divinizing human attributes. Thus: God is good, means according to him:
goodness is divine. God is just, signifies: justice is divine. The
boldness of Christianity, its profound, pathetic beauty, its great moral
efficacy lie in the fact that it has divinized our miseries; and that,
instead of saying, pain is divine, death is divine, it has said: God has
suffered, God has died. In a word, according to the same author, God "is
the human heart divinized." Nothing could be more true and beautiful, only
in another sense than that in which the author takes it. If God himself
was not supreme goodness, the heart of man would then contain something
divine, and God would not himself be divine! The heart feels that it
exceeds all things, but, in order to believe in itself, it must know
itself coming from a higher and purer source than it is itself.
"In thinking of such a being (God), man experiences a sentiment which
is above all a religious sentiment. Every man, as we come into contact
with him, awakens in us a feeling of some kind, according to the
qualities we perceive in him, and should not He who possesses all
perfections excite in us the strongest of feelings? If we think of the
infinite essence of God, if we are thoroughly impressed by his
omnipotence, if we remember that the moral law expresses his will, and
that he has attached to the fulfillment and violation of this law,
rewards and punishments which he distributes with inflexible justice,
we must of necessity experience before such greatness emotions of
respect and fear. If next we come to consider that this omnipotent
being was pleased to create us, we, whom he had no need of, and that
in creating us he heaped upon us benefits of all kinds, that he has
given us this universe to enjoy its ever renewed beauties, that he has
given us society that our life may become enlarged in that of our
fellow-beings, that he has given us reason to think, a heart to love,
liberty to act, that same respect and fear will receive additional
strength from a still gentler sentiment, namely, that of love. Love,
when directed toward feeble and circumscribed beings, inspires us with
the desire to do them good: but, in itself, love does not especially
consider the advantage of the person beloved: we love a thing, good or
beautiful, simply because it is good or beautiful, and without thought
of benefiting it; or benefiting ourselves. How much more so when this
love is turned to God, as a pure homage to his perfections; when it is
the natural outpouring of the soul toward a being infinitely adorable.
"Adoration consists in respect and love. If man, however, sees in God
the omnipotent master of heaven and earth only, the source of all
justice and the avenger of all wrong, he will, in his weakness, be
crushed by the overwhelming weight of God's greatness: he will be
living a life of perpetual fear, from the uncertainty of the judgment
of God; he will conceive for this world and life, always so full of
misery, nothing but hatred. Read Pascal's _Thoughts_. Pascal, in his
superb humility, forgets two things: the dignity of man and the
goodness of God. If, on the other hand, man only sees in God a kind
and indulgent Father, he will run into a chimerical mysticism. In
substituting love for fear, there is danger of losing the awe which we
should have for him. God is then no longer a master, scarcely a father
even; for the idea of father carries with it, in a certain degree,
that of a respectful fear: he is nothing more than a friend. True
adoration does not sever love from respect: it is respect animated by
love.
"Adoration is a universal sentiment; it differs in degrees according
to the differences in human nature; it takes the greatest variety of
forms; it often does not even know itself; sometimes it betrays itself
by a sudden exclamation, a cry from the heart over the grand scenes of
nature and life; sometimes it rises silently in the deeply-moved and
dumb-stricken soul; it may in its expression mistake its aim; but
fundamentally it is always the same. It is a spontaneous and
irresistible yearning of the soul, which reason must declare just and
legitimate. What more just, in fact, than to fear the judgments of Him
who is holiness itself, who knows our actions and our intentions, and
who will judge them as it becomes supreme justice? What more just,
also, than to love perfect goodness and the source of all love?
Adoration is first a natural sentiment: reason makes of it a
_duty_."[141]
These two sentiments, love and respect, may, inasmuch as they relate to
God--that is to say, to an infinite being--be resolved into one, which we
call _veneration_. Veneration is the respect mixed with love which we feel
for our aged parents, for some exalted virtue, for devotion to a suffering
country; but it is only through extension we so understand it: its true
object, its proper domain, is the divinity;[142] and if there are other
objects to _be revered_ and venerated, it is because we detect in them
something august and sacred.
It will, perhaps, be said that _sentiments_ cannot be erected into
_duties_: for how can I force myself to feel what I do not feel? Acts can
be commanded, but not sentiments.
This is true; but the acts, in the first place, are nothing without the
sentiments, and if piety is not already in the heart, the most pious works
will have no virtue. Moreover, if it be true that it is impossible to
generate, either in one's self or in others, sentiments, the germs of
which do not exist in human nature, it is not true that sentiments in
conformity with this nature, and which, whilst we believe them completely
absent, may only be dormant, could not be excited, awakened, cultivated,
and developed. Now, it is enough to think of divine greatness, to
experience a feeling of fear and respect; it is enough to think of divine
perfection, to love this perfection, and seek to come nearer to it. Duty
here consists, then, in thinking of God, in giving this great thought a
part of our life, in uniting it with all the acts of that life: these
sentiments will, then, be generated and will expand of themselves.
=169. Piety united with all the acts of life: indirect duties toward
God.=--We have just said that the idea of God can be united with all the
acts of life. Every action being the fulfillment of the will of
Providence, can be both moral and religious. _He who works, prays_, says
the proverb; a life which strives to preserve itself pure and virtuous, is
a continuous prayer. In this sense, all our duties are _indirect duties_
toward God.
1. _Obedience to God_, manifested by obedience to moral law. I can obey
the moral law in two ways: on the one hand, because it is a duty, whatever
besides may be the reason of this duty, and next because this duty is in
unison with universal order, which is the work of divine wisdom. To
fulfill one's duty is, then, to co-operate in some respect with God in the
achievement of this order. It is thus that in ancient religions,
agriculture was regarded a religious act, because man took therein the
part of the creator.
2. _Resignation to the will of Providence._--Patience is unquestionably a
duty in itself. There is a lack of dignity in rebelling against evils
which cannot be prevented; but this is as yet a wholly negative virtue. It
becomes a religious virtue if we regard the ills of life in the light of
trials, and as the condition of a higher good, and expect to voluntarily
submit to them as being in the plan of Providence. It is thus the
Pythagoreans forbade suicide, saying that it was leaving the post in which
God had placed us.
It would, moreover, be interpreting this duty of resignation very falsely
to think that it commands us to bear trouble and make no effort to escape
it. This were confounding Providence with fatalism. On the contrary, God,
having given us free will, not only permits us thereby, but even
positively enjoins upon us, to use it in bettering our condition.
3. _Love of God conjoined with the love of man._--There is no real love of
God without love of neighbor; it is a false piety which thinks itself
obliged to sacrifice the love of men to the love of God: thence come
_fanaticism_, _intolerance_, _persecution_. To believe these to be
religious virtues is _impious_. We cannot please God by acts of hatred and
cruelty. Thus is the love of God nothing without the love of men.
But it can also be said that the love of men is incomplete if it does not
get its sustenance from a higher source, which is the love of God. We can,
in fact, love men in two ways: first, because they are men, because they
are like us, because there is between them and us a natural bond of
sympathy. But we can also love them because they are, like ourselves,
members of the universe of which God is the sovereign ruler, members of a
family of which God is the father, because, like ourselves, they reflect
some of the attributes of supreme perfection, because they ought, like us,
to strive after all perfection. We can then love men religiously, love
them in God in some respect. Thus conversely to love men will be loving
God.
=170. The idea of God in morals.=--We have, in a former course of lectures,
seen how the moral law is related to God: this law is certainly not
dependent on his will alone, but on his holiness and supreme perfection;
and it is still further related to him as to a supreme sanction. We have
to consider here only the _practical efficacy_ of the idea of God--that is
to say, the additional strength moral belief receives by a belief in
absolute justice and holiness. It is on this condition and from this
standpoint that Kant has called the existence of God the _postulate_[143]
of the moral law. The moral law, in fact, supposes the world able to
conform to this law; but how are we to believe in such a possibility if
this world were the effect of a blind and indifferent necessity? "Since it
is our duty," says Kant, "to work toward the realization of the supreme
good, it is not only a right, but a necessity flowing from this duty, to
suppose the possibility of this supreme good, which good is only possible
on the condition of God's existence"[144]....--"Suppose, for example," he
says elsewhere, "an honest man like Spinoza, firmly convinced that there
is no God and no future life. He will, without doubt, fulfill
disinterestedly the duty that holy law imposes on his activity; but his
efforts will be limited. If here and there he finds in nature accidental
co-operation, he can never expect of this co-operation to be in perfect
and constant accordance with the end he feels himself obliged to pursue.
Though honest, peaceful, benevolent himself, he will always be surrounded
by fraud, violence, envy; in vain do the good people he meets deserve to
be happy; nature has no regard for their goodness, and exposes them, like
all the rest of earth's animals, to disease and misery, to a premature
death, until one vast tomb--the gulf of blind matter from which they
issued--swallows them all up again. Thus would this righteous man be
obliged to give up as absolutely impossible the end which the law imposed
on him; or, if he wished to remain true to the inner voice of his moral
destiny, he will, from a practical point of view, be obliged to recognize
the existence of a moral cause in the world, namely, God." Thus, according
to Kant, is religion, namely, the belief in the existence of God,
required, not as a theoretical basis for morality, but as a practical
basis. "The righteous man can say: I _will_ that there be a God."[145]
It may be objected that moral law can dispense with outward success; that
it does not appear to be essential to the idea of that law; that the wise,
as far as their own happiness is concerned, need not consider it, can
ignore it. But what they are obliged to consider, and are not allowed to
ignore, is the happiness of others, and what is generally understood by
progress--the possible improvement of the race. If, as some pessimistic
and misanthropic philosophers seem to think, men will never be anything
more than monkeys or tigers given to the lowest and most ferocious
instincts, do you believe that any man, be he ever so well endowed
morally, ever so deeply convinced of the obligation of the law of duty,
could, if he believed such a thing, be able to continue doing his duty, a
duty followed by no appreciable or perceptible results? The first
condition for becoming or remaining virtuous, is to believe in virtue. But
to believe in virtue means to believe that virtue is a fact, that it
exists in the world, that it can do it good; in other words, it is to
believe that the human race was created for good; that nature is capable
of being transformed according to the law of good; it is, in short, to
believe that the universe obeys a principle of good, and not a principle
of evil--an Oromazes, not an Ahrimanes. As to believing in an indifferent
being, one that were neither good nor evil, we should not be any better
off; it would leave us just as uncertain in regard to the possible success
of our efforts, and just as doubtful about the worth of our moral beliefs.
In one word, and to conclude, if God were an illusion, why could not
virtue be an illusion also? In order that I may believe in the dignity and
excellence of my soul and that of other men, I must believe in a supreme
principle of dignity and excellence. Nothing comes from nothing. If there
is no being to love me and my fellow-men, why should I be held to love
them? If the world is not good, if it was not created for good, if good is
not its origin and end, what have I to do here in this world, and what
care I for that swarm of ants of which I am a part? Let them get along as
well as they can! Why should I take so much trouble to so little purpose?
Take any intelligent man, a friend of civil and political liberty, and
ready to suffer anything to procure these to his country, as long as he
believes the thing possible, both wisdom and virtue will command him to
devote himself wholly to it. But let experience prove to him that it is a
chimera, that his fellow-citizens are either too great cowards or too
vicious to be worthy and capable of the good he wishes to secure to them;
suppose he sees all around him nothing but cupidity, servility, unbridled
and abominable passions; suppose, finally, that he becomes convinced that
liberty among men, or at least among the people he lives with, is an
illusion, do you think he could, do you even think he should, continue
wasting his faculties in an impossible enterprise? Once more, I can forget
myself, and I ought; and I should leave to internal justice or divine
goodness the care to watch over my destinies; but that which I cannot
forget, that which cannot leave me indifferent, is the reign of justice
on earth. I must be able to say: _Let Thy kingdom come!_ How can I
co-operate with the Divine Idea if there is no God, who, in creating us
for the furthering of his kingdom, made it, at the same time, possible for
us? And how any I to believe that out of that great void whereto atheism
reduces us, there can come a reign of wills holy and just, bound to each
other by the laws of respect and love? Kant, the great stoic, without
borrowing from theology, has more strongly than any other, described the
necessity of this reign of law; but he fully understood that this abstract
and ideal order of things would remain but a pure conception, if there
were not conjoined with it what he justly calls "the practical, the moral
faith" in the existence of God.
=171. Religious rights.=--_Religious duties_ imply _religious rights_: for
if it is a duty to honor the Creator, it is also a right. Even those who
do not admit obligations toward God, ought to respect in those who do
admit them, their liberty to do so. The right of having a religion, and
practicing it, is what is called _liberty of conscience_.
"The first right I claim," says an eloquent writer, "is the right of
adopting a free belief touching the nature of God, my duties, my future;
it is a wholly interior right, which governs the relations of my will or
conscience alone. It is the liberty of conscience in its essence, its
first act, its indispensable basis. It is the _liberty to believe_, or
_faith_. Free in the innermost of my thought, shall I be confined to a
silent worship? Shall I not be allowed to express what I think? Faith is
communicative, and will make itself felt by others. I cannot control its
expressing itself without doing it violence, without offending God,
without rendering myself guilty of ingratitude. I cannot, moreover,
worship a God that is not my God. The freedom of belief, without the
freedom of prayer--that is to say, without free worship--is only a
delusion.
"Now, is prayer sufficient? Does this solitary expression of my faith, my
love, my ignorance, suffice the wants of my heart and my duties toward
God? Yes, if man were made to live alone; but not if he has brethren. I
am a social being; I have duties toward society as well as toward God; my
creed commands me to teach as well as to pray. My voice must be heard, and
I must, following my destiny, and according to the measure of my powers,
carry along with me all those who are inclined to follow me. This is the
liberty of promulgating one's creed, or, in other words, the _liberty of
propagandism_.
"Worship, then, means to believe, to pray, to teach. But, can I consider
myself a free believer, if praying in public be denied me; if by praying,
and teaching, and confessing my doctrine, I risk the loss of my rights as
man and citizen? There are other means for checking public worship and
apostleship than burning at the stake. It is obvious that, in order no
injustice be done to my particular creed, I should risk nothing by it;
that I be not deprived of any of my civil or political rights. All this is
included in the term _liberty_ of _conscience_: it is at the same time the
right to believe, the right to pray, and the right to exercise this triple
liberty without having to suffer any diminution in one's dignity as man
and citizen."[146]
=172. Religious society.=--Religious duties and rights give rise to what
may be called religious society. Fenelon has magnificently described the
ideal religious society where all would form but one family united by the
love of God and men.
"Do we not see," he says, "that the external worship follows
necessarily the internal worship of love? Give me a society of men
who, while on earth, would look upon each other as members of one and
the same family, whose Father is in heaven; give me men whose life was
sunk in this love for their heavenly Father, men who loved their
fellow-men and themselves only through love for Him; who were but one
heart, one soul: will not in so godly a society the mouth always speak
from the abundance of the heart? They will sing the praises of the
Most High, the Most Good spontaneously; they will bless Him for all
His bounties. They will not be content to love Him merely, they will
proclaim this love to all the nations of the world; they will wish to
correct and admonish their brethren when they see them tempted through
pride and low passions to forsake the Well-Beloved. They will lament
the least cooling of that love. They will cross the seas, go to the
uttermost parts of the earth, to teach the benighted nations who have
forgotten His greatness the knowledge and love of their common Father.
What do you call external worship if this be not it? God then would be
_all in all_; He would be the universal king, father, friend; He would
be the living law of all hearts. Truly, if a mortal king or head of a
family wins by his wisdom the esteem and confidence of his children,
if we see them at all times pay him the honors due him, need we ask
wherein consists his service, or whether any is due him? All that is
done in his honor, in obedience to him, in recognition of his
bounties, is a continuous worship, obvious to all eyes. What would it
be then if men were possessed with the love of God! Their society
would be in a state of continuous worship, like that described to us
of the blessed in heaven."[147]
The great ancient moralist, Epictetus, has as superbly as Fenelon
expressed the same sentiments:
"If we had any understanding," he says, "ought we not, both in public
and in private, incessantly to sing and praise the Deity, and rehearse
His benefits? Ought we not, whether we dig, or plough, or eat, to sing
this hymn to God? Great is God, who has supplied us with these
instruments to till the ground; great is God, who has given us hands
and organs of digestion; who has given us to grow insensibly, to
breathe in sleep. These things we ought forever to celebrate, and to
make it the theme of the greatest and divinest hymn that He has given
us the power to appreciate these gifts, and to use them well. But
because the most of you are blind and insensible there must be some
one to fill this station, and lead in behalf of all men the hymn to
God; for what else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God?
Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a
swan, the part of a swan. But since I am a reasonable creature it is
my duty to praise God. This is my business. I do it. Nor will I ever
desert this post, so long as it is permitted me; and I call on you to
join in the same song."[148]