Chapter II: Part 2

1. "The Bible evidently contains more than belongs to Religion."

2. "That in this '_more_' the Bible is still infallible, is mere hypothesis."

3. "The letter is not the spirit, and the Bible is not the Religion."

4. "The objections therefore against the letter and against the Bible, are not on that account objections against the spirit and against the Religion."

5. "Moreover there was a religion ere there was a Bible."

6. "Christianity was in being before Evangelists and Apostles had written. Some time elapsed before the first of them wrote, and a very considerable time before the whole canon was constituted."

7. "However much, therefore, may depend on these writings, it is impossible that the whole truth of the Christian religion can rest upon them."

8. "If there was a period during which, diffused as the Christian religion already was, and many as were the souls filled already with its power, still not a letter had yet been written of the records which have come down to us; then it must be also possible for all the writings of Evangelists and Apostles to perish, yet the religion taught by them still to subsist."

9. "The religion is not true because Evangelists and Apostles taught it; but they taught it because it is true."

10. "Its interior truth must furnish the interpretation of the writings it has handed down; and no writings handed down can give it interior truth, if it has none."

In his controversy with Göze, he illustrates this distinction between the essence and the historical form of Christianity, by a parable to the following effect. A wise king of a great realm built a palace of immense size and very peculiar architecture. About this structure, there came from the very first a foolish strife to be carried on, especially among reputed connoisseurs, people, that is, who had least looked into the interior. This strife was not about the palace itself, but about various old ground-plans of it, and drawings of the same, very difficult to make out. Once, when the watchmen cried out "Fire," these connoisseurs, instead of running to help, snatched up their plans, and, instead of putting out the fire on the spot, kept standing with their plans in hand, making a hubbub all the while, and squabbling about whether this was the spot on fire, and that the place to put it out. Happily, the safety of the palace did not depend on these busy wranglers, for it was not on fire at all; the watchmen had been frightened by the Northern lights, and mistaken them for fire. It is impossible to convey by a clearer image Lessing's feeling, that a Christianity once incorporated in the very substance of history and civilization, seated deep in human sentiment and thought, and developed into literature, law, and life, subsists independently of critical questions, and is with us, not as the contingent vapor that a wind may rise to blow away, but as the cloud that has dropped its rain and mingled with the roots of things.

In immediate contrast with the foregoing application of a critical method to the historic documents of Christianity, it is beautiful to see the same genius turned with eager joy to a practical recommendation of the experimental life of Christianity.

THE REDEEMING LAW OF SYMPATHY.

It is quite true, that self-cure is of all things the most arduous; but that which is impossible _to the man within us_, may be altogether possible _to the God_. In truth, the denial of such changes, under the affectation of great knowledge of man, shows an incredible ignorance of men. Why, the history of every great religious revolution, such as the spread of Methodism, is made up of nothing else; the instances occurring in such number and variety, as to transform the character of whole districts and vast populations, and to put all scepticism at utter defiance. And if some more philosophic authority is needed for the fact, we may be content with the sanction of Lord Bacon, who observed that a man reforms his habits either altogether or not at all. Deterioration of mind is indeed always gradual; recovery usually sudden; for God, by a mystery of mercy, has established this distinction in our secret nature,--that, while we cannot, by one dark plunge, sympathize with guilt far beneath us, but gaze at it with recoil till intermediate shades have rendered the degradation tolerable, we are yet capable of sympathizing with moral excellence and beauty infinitely above us; so that, while the debased may shudder and sicken at even the true picture of themselves, they can feel the silent majesty of self-denying and disinterested duty. With a demon can no man feel complacency, though the demon be himself; but God can all spirits reverence, though his holiness be an infinite deep. And thus the soul, privately uneasy at its insincere state, is prepared, when vividly presented with some sublime object veiled before, to be pierced, as by a flash from heaven, with an instant veneration, sometimes intense enough to fuse the fetters of habit, and drop them to the earth whence they were forged. The mind is ready, like a liquid on the eve of crystallization, to yield up its state on the touch of the first sharp point, and dart, over its surface and in its depths, into brilliant and beautiful forms, and from being turbid and weak as water, to become clear as crystal, and solid as the rock.

One of the most elaborate and valuable productions from Mr. Martineau's pen, an article closely allied in all respects to the ensuing Studies of Christianity, is the one of some portions of which we herewith present an epitome.

THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MORAL EVIL.

The Divine sentiments towards right and wrong every man naturally believes to be a reflection of whatever is most pure and solemn in his own. We cannot be sincerely persuaded, that God looks with aversion on dispositions which we revere as good and noble; or that he regards with lax indifference the selfish and criminal passions which awaken our own disgust. We may well suppose, indeed, his scrutiny more searching, his estimate more severely true, his rebuking look more awful, than our self-examination and remorse can fitly represent; but we cannot doubt that our moral emotions, as far as they go, are in sympathy with his; that we know, by our own consciousness, the general direction of his approval and displeasure; and that, in proportion as our perceptions of duty are rendered clear, our judgment more nearly approaches the precision of the Omniscient award. Our own conscience is the window of heaven through which we gaze on God; and, as its colors perpetually change, his aspect changes too;--if they are bright and fair, he dwells as in the warm light of a rejoicing love; if they are dark and turbid, he hides himself in robes of cloud and storm. When you have lost your self-respect, you have never thought yourself an object of Divine complacency. In moments fresh from sin, flushed with the shame of an insulted mind, when you have broken another resolve, or turned your back upon a noble toil, or succumbed to a mean passion, or lapsed into the sickness of self-indulgence, could you ever turn a clear and open face to God, nor think it terrible to meet his eye? Could you imagine yourself in congeniality with him, when you gave yourself up to the voluble sophistry of self-excuse, and the loose hurry of forgetfulness? Or did you not discern him rather in your own accusing heart, and meet him in the silent anguish of full confession, and find in the recognition of your alienation the first hope of return? To all unperverted minds, the verdict of conscience sounds with a preternatural voice; it is not the homely talk of their own poor judgment, but an oracle of the sanctuary. There is something of anticipation in our remorse, as well as of retrospect; and we feel that it is not the mere survey of a gloomy past with the slow lamp of our understanding, but a momentary piercing of the future with the vivid lightning of the skies. Our moral nature, left to itself, intuitively believes that guilt is an estrangement from God,--an unqualified opposition to his will,--a literal service of the enemy; that he abhors it, and will give it no rest till it is driven from his presence, that is, into annihilation; that no part of our mind belongs to him but the pure, and just, and disinterested affections which he fosters, the faithful will which he strengthens, the virtue, often damped, whose smoking flax he will not quench, and the good resolves, ever frail, whose bruised reed he will not break; and that he has no relation but of displeasure, no contact but of resistance, with our selfishness and sin. In the simple faith of the conscience it is no figure of speech to say, that God "is angry with the wicked every day," and is "of purer eyes than to behold iniquity." So long as the natural religion of the heart is undisturbed, to sin is, in the plainest and most positive sense, to set up against Heaven, and frustrate its will.

Soon, however, the understanding disturbs the tranquillity of this belief, and constructs a rival creed. The primitive conception of God is acquired, I believe, without reasoning, and emerges from the affections; it is a transcript of our own emotions,--an investiture of them with external personality and infinite magnitude. But a secondary idea of Deity arises in the intellect, from its reasonings about causation. Curiosity is felt respecting the origin of things; and the order, beauty, and mechanism of external nature are too conspicuous not to force upon the observation the conviction of a great Architect of the universe, from whose designing reason its forces and its laws mysteriously sprung. Hence the _intellectual_ conception of _God the Creator_, which comes into inevitable collision with the _moral_ notion of _God the holy watch of virtue_. For if the system of creation is the production of his Omniscience; if he has constituted human nature as it is, and placed it in the scene whereon it acts; if the arrangements by which happiness is allotted, and character is formed, are the contrivance of his thought and the work of his hand,--then the sufferings and the guilt of every being were objects of his original contemplation, and the productions of his own design. The deed of crime must, in this case, be as much an integral part of his Providence, as the efforts and sacrifices of virtue; and the monsters of licentiousness and tyranny, whose images deform the scenery of history, are no less truly his appointed instruments, than the martyr and the sage. And though we remain convinced that he does not make choice of evil in his government for its own sake, but only for ultimate ends worthy of his perfections, still we can no longer see how he can truly hate that which he employs for the production of good. That which is his chosen instrument cannot be sincerely regarded as his everlasting enemy; and only figuratively can he be said to repudiate a power which he continually wields. There must be _some sense_ in which it appears, in the eye of Omniscience, to be eligible; some point of view at which its horrors vanish; and where the moral distinctions, which we feel ourselves impelled to venerate, disappear from the regards of God.

Here, then, is a fearful contradiction between the religion of conscience and the religion of the understanding; the one pronouncing evil to be the antagonist, the other to be the agent, of the Divine will. In every age has this difficulty laid a heavy weight upon the human heart; in every age has it pointed the sarcasm of the blasphemer, mingled an occasional sadness with the hopes of benevolence, and tinged the devotion of the thoughtful with a somewhat melancholy trust. The whole history of speculative religion is one prolonged effort of the human mind to destroy this contrariety; system after system has been born in the struggle to cast the oppression off,--with what result, it will be my object at present to explain. The question which we have to consider is this, "How should a Christian think of the origin and existence of evil?" I propose to advert, first, to the speculative; secondly, to the scriptural; thirdly, to the moral relations of the subject; to inquire what relief we can obtain from philosophical schemes, from biblical doctrine, and from practical Christianity.

* * * * *

Let us then, for final decision, consult the practical spirit of Christianity, and ascertain to what view of the origin of sin it awards the preference. Is it well for the consciences and characters of men, to consider God--either directly or through his dependant, Satan, either by his general laws or by vitiating the constitution of our first parents--as the primary source of moral evil? _or_, on the contrary, to regard it as in no sense whatever willed by the Supreme Mind, and absolutely inimical to his Providence? Are we most in harmony with the characteristic spirit of the Gospel when we call sin his instrument, or when we call it his enemy? For myself, I can never sit at the feet of Jesus, and yield up a reverential heart to his great lessons, without casting myself on the persuasion, that God and evil are everlasting foes; that never, and for no end, did he create it; that his will is utterly against it, nor ever touches it, but with annihilating force. Any other view appears to be injurious to the characteristic sentiments, and at variance with the distinguishing genius, of Christian morality.

(1.) Christianity is distinguished by the profound sentiment of _individual responsibility_ which pervades it. All the arbitrary forms, and sacerdotal interpositions, and hereditary rights, through which other systems seek the Divine favor, 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 recognized and revered.

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.

(2.) 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; by which the good shepherd knew his sheep, and they listened to his voice, and followed him; and without which no man could come unto him, for no spirit of the Father drew him. 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 lovable, nothing powerful; that their energy is perpetually found incapable of withstanding the impetuosity of passion; and that all transcendent 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 laboring to warm his devotions, 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 favorite, 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 lovable, 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 vigor 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.

We cannot refrain from affording those into whose hands this volume will go, the pleasure and the lofty encouragement which they must derive from the perusal of an extract on

THE TRANSMISSION OF SUPERIOR THOUGHTS.

It is a law of Providence in communities, that ideas shall be propagated downwards through the several gradations of minds. They have their origin in the suggestions of genius, and the meditations of philosophy; they are assimilated by those who can admire what is great and true, but cannot originate; and thence they are slowly infused into the popular mind. The rapidity of the process may vary in different times, with the facilities for the transmission of thought, but its order is constant. Temporary causes may shield the inferior ranks of intelligence from the influence of the superior; fanaticism may interpose for a while with success; a want of the true spirit of sympathy between the instructors and the instructed may check by a moral repulsion the natural radiation of intellect;--but, in the end, Providence will re-assert its rule; and the conceptions born in the quiet heights of contemplation will precipitate themselves on the busy multitudes below. This principle interprets history and presages futurity. It shows us in the popular feeling and traditions of one age, a reflection from the philosophy of a preceding; and from the prevailing style of sentiment and speculation among the cultivated classes now, it enables us to foresee the spirit of a coming age. Nor only to foresee it, but to exercise over it a power, in the use of which there is a grave responsibility. If we are far-sighted in our views of improvement; if we are ambitious less of immediate and superficial effects than of the final and deep-seated agency of generous and holy principles; if our love of opinions is a genuine expression of the disinterested love of truth;--we shall remember who are the teachers of futurity; we shall appeal to those, within whose closets God is already computing the destinies of remote generations,--men at once erudite and free, men who have the materials of knowledge with which to determine the great problems of morals and religion, and the genius to think and imagine and feel, without let or hinderance of hope or fear.

We linger over the pages from which the preceding selections have been made, unwilling to end our grateful task of love. But one quotation more must be the last. With it we commend these Studies of Christianity, these timely thoughts for religious thinkers, to the candid and affectionate inquirers within all sects, confident that, so far as the work obtains a fit reception, it will exert that purifying, liberalizing, and sanctifying power which is the genuine influence of Christ.

CHRISTIANITY AND SECTARIAN THEOLOGY.

The sectarian state of theology in this country cannot but be regarded as eminently unnatural. Its cold and hard ministrations are entirely alien to the wants of the popular mind, which, except under the discipline of artificial influences, is always most awake to generous impressions. Its malignant exclusiveness is a perversion of the natural veneration of the human heart, which, except where it is interfered with by narrow and selfish systems, pours itself out, not in hatred towards anything that lives, but in love to the invisible objects of trust and hope. Its disputatious trifling is an insult to the sanctity of conscience, which, except where it is betrayed into oblivion of its delicate and holy office, supplicates of religion, not a new ferocity of dogmatism, but an enlargement and refinement of its sense of right. It is the temper of sectarianism to seize on every deformity of every creed, and exhibit this caricature to the world's gaze and aversion. It is the spirit of the soul's natural piety to alight on whatever is beautiful and touching in every faith, and take there its secret draught of pure and fresh emotion. It is the passages of poetry and pathos in a system, which alone can lay a strong hold on the general mind and give them permanence; and even the wild fictions which have endeared Romanism to the hearts of so many centuries, possess their elements of tenderness and magnificence. The fundamental principle of one who would administer religion to the minds of his fellow-men should be, that all that has ever been extensively venerated must possess ingredients that are venerable. If, in the spirit of sectarianism, he sees nothing in it but absurdity, it only proves that he does not see it all; it must have an aspect, which he has not yet caught, that awes the imagination, or touches the affections, or moves the conscience; and those who receive it neither will nor should abandon it, till something is substituted, not only more consonant with the reason, but more awakening to these higher faculties of soul. Hence, a rigid accuracy and logical penetration of mind, the power of detecting and exposing error, are not the only qualities needed by the religious reformer; and in a deep and reverential sympathy with human feelings, a quick perception of the great and beautiful, a promptitude to cast himself into the minds of others, and gaze through their eyes at the objects which they love, he will find the instrument of the sublimest intellectual power. The precise logician may sit eternally in the centre of his own circle of correct ideas, and preach demonstrably the folly of the world's superstitions; yet he will never affect the thoughts of any but marble-minded beings like himself. He disregards the fine tissue of emotions that clings round the objects which he so harshly handles; and has yet to learn the art of preserving its fabric unimpaired, while he enfolds within it something more worthy for it to foster and adore.

As, then, it is to the moral and imaginative powers of the human mind that religion chiefly attaches itself, as it is by these that the want of it is most strongly felt, so is it to these that its ministrations should be, for the most part, addressed. While theologians are discussing the evidences of creeds, let teachers be conducting them to their applications. Let their respective resources of feeling and conception be unfolded before the soul of mankind; let it be tried what mental energy they can inspire, what purity of moral perception infuse, what dignity of principle erect, what toils of philanthropy sustain. Thus would arise a new criterion of judgment between differing systems; for that system must possess most truth which creates the most intelligence and virtue. Thus would the deeper devotional wants of society be no longer mocked by the privilege of choice among a few captious, verbal, and precise forms of belief. Thus, too, would the alienation which repels sect from sect give place to an incipient and growing sympathy; for when high intellect and excellence approach and stand in meek homage beneath the cross, how soon are the jarring voices of disputants hushed in the stillness of reverence! Who does not feel the refreshment, when some stream of pure poetry, like Heber's, winds into the desert of theology! when some flash of genius, like that of Chalmers, darts through its dull atmosphere! some strains of eloquence, like those of Channing, float from a distance on its heavy silence!

Such, then, are the objects which should be contemplated by those who, in the present times, aim at the reformation of religious sentiment;--first, the elevation of theology as an intellectual pursuit; secondly, the better application of religion as a moral influence. Both these objects are directly or indirectly promoted by the Association whose cause I am privileged to advocate. It aids the first, by the distribution of many a work, the production of such minds as must redeem theology from contempt. It advances the second, by establishing union and sympathy among those whose first principles are in direct contradiction to all that is sectarian, and who desire only to emancipate the understanding from all that enfeebles, and the heart from all that narrows it. The triumph of its doctrines would be, not the ascendency of one sect, but the harmony of all. Let but the diversities which separate Christians retire, and the truths which they all profess to love advance to prominence, and, whatever may become of party names, our aims are fulfilled, and our satisfaction is complete. When faith in the paternity of God shall have kindled an affectionate and lofty devotion; when the vision of immortality, imparted by Christ's resurrection, shall have created that spirit of duty which was the holiest inspiration of his life; when the sincere recognition of human brotherhood shall have supplanted all exclusive institutions, and banded society together under the vow of mutual aid and the hope of everlasting progress, our work will be done, our reward before us, and our little community of reformers lost in the wide fraternity of enlightened and benevolent men.

The day is yet distant, and can be won only by the toil of earnest and faithful minds. In the mean while, it is no light solace to see that the tendencies of Providence are towards its accelerated approach. And however dispiriting may sometimes be the variety and conflicts of human sentiment,--however remote the dissonance of controversy from that harmony of will which would seem essential to perfected society, it is through this very process that the great ends of improvement are to be attained. Hereafter it will be seen, much more clearly than we can see it now, that opinion generates knowledge. Like the ethereal waves, whose inconceivable rapidity and number are said to impart the sensation of vision, the undulations of opinion are speeding on to produce the perception of truth. They are the infinitely complex and delicate movements of that universal Human Mind, whose quiescence is darkness,--whose agitation, light.

To the fit and numerous readers whom we trust they will find, these papers are now submitted, in the earnest hope that the author will at no distant day follow them with some more systematic and rounded survey of the same great subject,--the components and developments of Christianity.

W. R. A.

STUDIES OF CHRISTIANITY.

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.

If unity be the character of truth, no generation was ever so far gone in errors as our own: nor is the weariness surprising, with which statesmen and philosophers turn away from the Babel of Divinity, and, in despair of scaling the heavens, apply themselves to found and adorn the politics of this world. But the confusion of tongues is too positive and obtrusive a fact to be escaped by mere retreat: it bids defiance to polite evasion: it pursues life into every public place and private haunt; invades the home, the school, the college, the court, the legislature; and, besides the problems which it fails to solve, constitutes in itself a new one, not undeserving the closest study and reflection. To the believers in doctrinal finality, who imagine the whole sacred economy to be settled by a documentary revelation, the reopening of every question, down to the very basis of religious faith, must be an appalling phenomenon, charging either failure on the presumed designs of God or a traitorous perversity on even the most gifted and upright of men. And not a whit better is the conclusion of a conceited illuminism, which, either boldly recalling the human mind to the sciences of induction, despises all faith as false alike; or, conscious at least of its own incompetency, pleases itself with a more indulgent scepticism, and accepts them all as true. If no better revenge can be taken on pious dogmatism than by falling into the cant of an eclectic neutrality or an impious despair, there is little encouragement for any high-minded man to take part against the bigotries of the present on behalf of sickly negations in the future. The world is better left in the hands of the poorest interpreter of Paul, and most degenerate heirs of Augustine and Pascal, than transferred to the dialectic of Proclus or the materialism of the living "_Fondateur de la Religion de l'Humanité_."[1] There are those, however, who deny that we are left to any such alternative; who cannot conceive that human aspirations after divine reality shall for ever pine and sigh in vain; who contend that objective truth in reference to morals and religion is attainable, and has been largely attained;--and who, accordingly, despairing of neither philosophy nor Christianity, require only the free intercommunion of the two to appreciate the contradictions of the present without foregoing the hope of greater unity in the future. The controversies of the hour are but ill understood by one who remains enclosed within them, and judges them only on their own assumptions. Like a village brawl, which, with only the sound of vulgar noise, may be the ripe fruit of oppression and the germ of revolution, they have an assigned place in the unfolding of modern civilization; and not till their place is computed in the life of the human race, and the law which brings them up in our age is observed, can their real significance be apprehended, and all anger at their clamorous littleness be lost in hope of their ulterior issues. Regarded from this higher point, the surface of religious belief in England, at first sight a mere troubled fermentation of struggling elements, betrays some organic principle of order, and many salient points of promise.

We hazard no theory of religion in saying that there is a natural correspondence between the genius of a people and the form of their belief. Each mood of mind brings its own wants and aspirations, colors its own ideal, and interprets best that part of life and the universe with which it is in sympathy. John Knox would have been misplaced in Athens, and Tanler could not have lived on the moralism of Kant. No doubt the ultimate seat of human faith lies deep down below the special propensities of individuals or tribes,--in a consciousness and faculty common to the race. But ere it comes to the surface, and disengages itself in a concrete shape, its type and color will be affected by the strata of thought and feeling through which it emerges into the light. Without pretending to an exhaustive classification, we find four chief temperaments of mind expressed in the theologies and scepticisms of civilized Europe: the quest of physical _order_, the sense of _right_, the instinct of _beauty_, and the consciousness of tempestuous _impulses_ carrying the will off its feet. Variously blended in the characters of average persons, these tendencies are liable to separate their intensities, and severally dominate almost alone in minds of great force and periods of special action or reaction. Were each left to itself to form its own unaided creed, the doctrine of mere Science would be _atheistic_; of Conscience, _theistic_; of Art, _pantheistic_; of Passion, _sacrificial_. The evidence of this distribution of tendencies is equally conclusive, whether we look to its rational ground or to its historical exemplification; and a few words on each head will suffice to clear and justify it.

Notwithstanding some occasional attempts to exhibit natural theology as a necessary extension of natural philosophy, it is plain that the maxims, which are ultimate for physical Science, stop short of contact with Religion; that the final appeal of the two is carried to different faculties; and that the scope and sphere of the one may be complete without borrowing any conception from the other. The assumption, for instance, that "we can know nothing but _phenomena_," directly excludes all permanent and eternal Being as the possible object of rational thought. And as "phenomena" are apprehensible only by the _observing_ faculties, whatever refuses to put in an appearance in _their_ court is nonsuited as an unreality. And again, physical knowledge has accomplished its aim, as soon as it can predict all the successions that lie within its field of time and space; and nowhere in this system of series, nor in the calculated forces which yield it to the view, does any divine _Person_ look in upon the mind. Whoever, by the restraints of a hypothetical necessity, detains his intellect _within_ nature, debars himself _ipso facto_ from any faith that _transcends_ nature, and recognizes no reserve of _super_natural possibilities, hidden in a Mind of which the actual universe is but the finite expression. We do not, of course, intend to affirm that scientific culture cannot coexist with religious belief;--so preposterous an assertion would be confuted by a manifold experience;--but only that, where the canons of inductive knowledge are invested with unconditional universality, and are logically carried out as valid for all thought, they shut the door upon the sources of faith. It is the old battle, of which history supplies such abundant illustration; which brought Parmenides and Protagoras upon the lists at opposite ends on the field of philosophy; which Bacon profoundly avoided by assigning separate empires, without common boundary, to science and religion; but which his modern disciples have rashly renewed, by invading the realm left sacred by him. Uneasy relations have always subsisted in Christendom between the investigators of nature and the trustees of the faith: the men of science rarely quitting, unless for signs of unequivocal aversion, the attitude of polite indifference to the Church; and in their turn watched with the jealous eye of sacerdotal vigilance. It is no untrue instinct that has hitherto maintained them in this posture of mutual suspicion: to exchange which for a hearty and intelligent reverence for each other is an achievement reserved for a higher philosophy than we yet possess.

As Science pays homage to the _force of nature_, so Conscience enthrones the _law of right_. The conscious subject of moral obligation feels himself under a rule neither self-imposed and fictitious, nor foreign and coercive;--neither a home invention nor an outward necessity;--a rule invisible, authoritative, awful; carrying with it an _alternative_ irreducible to the linear dynamics of the physical world; incapable of being felt but by a free mind, or of being given but by another. He is aware that his will follows a call of duty not at all as his body adapts itself to the force of gravitation; and as within him the conscientious obedience wholly differs from the corporeal, so in the universe of realities beyond him does the moral legislation differ from the natural, and express the will of a person, not a mere constitution of things. No ethical conceptions are possible at all,--except as floating shreds of unattached thought,--without a religious background; and the sense of responsibility, the agony of shame, the inner reverence for justice, first find their meaning and vindication in a supreme holiness that rules the world. Nor can any one be penetrated with the distinction between right and wrong, without recognizing it as valid for all free beings, and incapable of local or arbitrary change. His feeling insists on its permanent recognition and omnipresent sway; and this unity in the Moral Law carries him to the unity of the Divine Legislator. Theism is thus the indispensable postulate of conscience,--its objective counterpart and justification, without which its inspirations would be illusions, and its veracities themselves a lie. To adduce historical proofs of this conjunction is at once difficult and superfluous in a world whose theism is almost all of one stock. But it will not be forgotten that Socrates, in whom Greek religion culminated, avowedly based his reform on the substitution of moral for physical studies. It is undeniable too that, in spite of their fatalism, the monotheistic Mohammedans have been surpassed by few nations in their sense of truth and fidelity; and that wherever the same type of belief has been approached by Christian sects, the heresy has been said to arise from an exaggerated estimate of the moral law.

Art, we have said, is _pantheistic_. Its aim, often unconsciously present, is to read off the _expressiveness_ of things, and find what it is which they would speak with their silent look. To its perceptions, form, color, sound, motion, have a soul within them whose life and activity they represent: and even language, by flinging itself into the mould of rhythm and music, acquires, beyond its logical significance, a second meaning for the affections. As if waked up and tingling beneath the artist's loving gaze, matter lies dull and dead no more; opens on him a responding eye; communes with him from its steadfast brow; and becomes instinct with grace or majesty. Instead of being the drag-weight and opposite of spiritual energies, it becomes to him their pliant medium, the docile clay for the shapes of finest thought, the brilliant palette for the spread of inmost feeling. He melts the barrier away that hides from mere sense and intellect the interior sentiment--the formative idea--of all visible things; and his glance of sympathy changes them not less than a burst of amber sunrise changes a leaden landscape and picks out the freshest smiles. Thus he finds himself in a _living_ universe, ever striving to show him a divine beauty that lurks within and presses to the surface; and he stands before a curtain only half opaque, watching the lights and shadows thrown on it from behind by the ceaseless play of infinite thought. Not that the interpretation is by any means self-evident, or accessible except to the apprehensive instinct of sympathy. For it seems as though no form of being, no object in creation, could ever represent completely its own type: something is lost from its perfection in the realization; and the actual, falling short of the ideal, can give it only to one for whom a hint suffices. This conception of the world as an incarnate divineness does not, we are well aware, amount to pantheism, unless it become all-comprehensive, so as to take in not simply physical nature, but the human life and will; and there are numbers who are saved from this extreme, either by knowing where to draw the lines of philosophical distinction, or by the natural force of _moral_ conviction restraining the absolutism of imagination. But so far forth as the tendency operates, it substitutes for the theistic reverence for a Holy _Will_ the pantheistic recognition of a Creative _Beauty_, and presents God to the mind less as the prototype of Conscience than as the apotheosis of Genius. The spontaneity of poetic action is supposed to illustrate His procedure better than the preferential decisions of the moral sentiment; and the genesis of whatever is good and fair is referred not so much to deliberate plan as to the eternal interfusion and circulation, through the great whole, of a Divine Essence, which flings off the universe and its history as a mere natural language. That this is the religion of art, is proved by the literature of every creative period, Greek, Italian, or Teutonic; and negatively by the comparative absence of artistic feeling and production in ages and nations that have most intensified at once the Unity and the Personality of God. Beauty was the Bible of Athens; and Plato, its devoutest and most comprehensive expounder, shows everywhere, in his metaphysics, his morals, and his myths, the mould into which its faith inevitably falls.

In _passionate and impulsive_ natures there is a self-contradiction which makes their religious tendency peculiarly difficult to describe. They are not less conscious than others of moral distinctions, and own the sacred authority of the better invitation over the worse. Indeed, when surprised into a fall, their remorse shares the vehemence of all their emotions, and from the black shadow in which they sit, the sanctity of the law which they have violated looks ineffably bright; and they speak of its holy requirements, and of the infinite purity of the Divine Legislator, in such fervid tone, that whatever else they may endanger, the perfection of God's character, you feel assured, and the obligations of human morality, are secure of reverential maintenance. Yet the truth is precisely the reverse. At the very moment that the law of duty is thus loftily extolled, it is on the point of total subversion; lifted to a height precarious and unreal, it overbalances on the other side and disappears. For the very same stormy intensity which makes these men strong to feel the claim of good, makes them weak to obey it. Their personality wants solidity; and an atmosphere of tempestuous affections sweeps over it like a hurricane on water. They can do nothing from out of their own resolves, and are for ever drawn or driven from the fortress they were not to surrender. What remains for them, solicited thus by forces which are an overmatch for their just self-reliance? Is it surprising that they no sooner confess how they _ought_ to obey, than they declare that they _cannot_ obey? The thing is a contradiction; but it all the better for this expresses what _they_ are: with their centre of gravity in the wrong place, they cannot but hold the truth in unstable equilibrium. Repose on contradiction is, however, impossible; and the necessary result of these co-existent feelings of obligation and incapacity is a _substitute_ for obedience. The resort to _sacrifice_ which thus arose expressed no more, prior to the Christian era, than the sentiment, "Take this, O Lord, 't is all I have to give"; and afforded but a fictitious relief to the laboring spirit. It acknowledged and attested the incompetency of the will, but made no use of the excess of the emotions. It was the Pauline doctrine of faith which first turned this great power to account; and virtually said, "Are you in slavery because you cannot manage your affections? turn their trust and enthusiasm on Christ in heaven, and let them _manage_ you, and you shall be free." The soul that falls in love with immortal goodness rises above the region of ineffectual strife, and spontaneously offers what could never be extorted from the will by the lash of self-mortifying resolve. This is the truth which underlies the sacrificial doctrine in Christian times,--_the emancipating power of great trusts and high inspirations_; and its very nature indicates its birth from impassioned temperaments, and its affinity with their special wants. The vicarious sacrifice is a mere plea, an ideal point of attraction, for a profound allegiance of heart; which minds of this class would hardly yield without an intense appeal to their _gratitude_; but which, if really awakened by a clear and tranquil moral reverence, would no less triumph over the gravitation of self. The one needful condition for the redemption of these natures is the objective presence and action upon them of a divine person to lift them clear out of themselves, and render back on the healing breath of trust the strength that only pants itself away in feverish effort. Every doctrine of sacrifice necessarily contradicts its own premises; because for guilt, which is personal and inalienable, it offers a compensation which is foreign, and meets a moral ill with an unmoral remedy. True and sound as a mere confession of weakness, it runs off from that point into mere confusion and morbidness. But add to it the doctrine of faith, and it acquires its proper complement; balances its human disclaimer with a divine resource; and instead of sending its captive through dark labyrinths of vain experiment, opens a direct way from the chambers of humiliation to the prophet's watch-tower of prayer and vision. Without this complement, the doctrine created priesthoods; with it, destroys them. Without it, men are caught up in their moments of helplessness, and handed over to ritual quackeries; with it, they are seized in their hour of inspiration, and flung into the arms of God. The susceptibility for either treatment depends on the predominance of impulse and passion over breadth of imagination and strength of will. In short, there are minds whose power is shed, if we may say so, in _pro_tension, precipitated forwards in narrow channels with impetuous torrent. There are others whose affluence is in _ex_tension, and spreads out like a still lake to drink in light from the open sky, and reflect the look of wide-encircling hills. And there are others yet again, whose character is _in_tension, and that move on in full volume, and with steady stream of tendency, rising and falling little with the seasons, and holding to the limits within which they are to go. The faith of the first is _sacrificial_; of the second, _pantheistic_; of the third, _theistic_.