Chapter II (6)

"Not in those words, of course, nor with that collocation of thoughts; but all that I have said you will find either in his _Suspense of Faith_, or in the volume of sermons published under the title of _Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine_, (New York, 1860.) I have represented, as fairly as possible, the vagueness of his aspirations and the inconsistency of his principles. It is only clear that he wanted to be a Protestant and a Catholic at the same time. He was shocked at the results of his own centripetalism, and he longed for a visible church, with a tangible creed and a set form of worship; only he wanted to make the church himself; not to be the founder of a new sect--he disclaimed that, and was unwilling even to change the form of service in his own congregation--but to dream about it, to speculate upon what it ought to be, to mould and influence opinion, until, by a seemingly spontaneous movement, the new church should arise from the midst of the people. Poor man! He sees, by this time, that nobody feels the want of this new church, and nobody believes in it; and he hates the true church, partly because it is a continual reproach to him, bringing to mind a duty unfulfilled and a happiness unappreciated, and partly because it continually revives his disappointment."

"I have serious doubts, however, whether Dr. Bellows ever comprehended the beauty of the Catholic religion half so well as many people supposed that he did. Read his books with a little care, and you will see that he never took but the most superficial view of religion: he never got at the core of it. Religion to him--as to how many others!--was a thin philosophy which amused his intellect, a sentimental poetry which tickled his aesthetic instincts; it was not a _life_. Of that vital Christianity which comprehends the whole relationship between God and man, which is both a creed, a worship, and the very essence of devout life, his heart seems to have been void."

"Yes, he says something almost equivalent to this in his sermon on 'Spiritual Discernment.'[Footnote 178]

[Footnote 178: _Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine_.]

'All the triumphs of Protestantism,' he declares, 'the universal improvement of private and public morality, of public education, respect for the individual, have grown out of the increasing care to keep the church and the world apart--religion and other interests distinct subjects of thought and attention.' And the word 'world' here he does not use in its bad sense, but merely as synonymous with secular affairs. Again he says, that 'the Catholic Church succeeded wonderfully in blending life and religion together, faith and daily usage, pleasure and worship, philosophy and the Gospel;' and this, he thinks, was its great fault, while the great merit of Protestantism was, that it carefully separated what the church had so carefully melted together. That gives you the real old Puritan idea of piety--a something to be put on at stated times, and then put off again, like the long faces which old-fashioned Protestants pull for Sunday wear; to have no intimate connection with daily life, but to be kept carefully apart, like the best coat which our ancestors used to lay by in lavender leaves, to be worn on days of ceremony. What is the good of a religion which does not blend with work-a-day life? of a faith which is not felt in daily usage? of a worship which must be kept apart from our pleasures, from our business, from any of our honest pursuits? {585} Why, the very beauty of religion is, that it shall be in man's heart at all times and in all places. If it cannot accompany us everywhere, if it can only live in the artificial atmosphere of Sunday meetings, it is not worth having. The danger against which we have most to guard is not, Dr. Bellows thinks, that of forgetting our religion, but that of growing too familiar with it. His God is an awful rather than a loving God, and our sin against him is not that we go so far away from him, but that we bring him so near to us. In effect he tells us to fetch out our piety once a week or so, on stated occasions, but not to let it interfere with our daily walk and conversation, for that would be sacrilege."

"All this shows, as you say, that he has no comprehension as yet of the true nature of religion; and shall I tell you why he is so slow to acquire it? I believe that he is not really in sympathy with Christianity."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh! he is nominally a Christian, of course. He would be horrified if you told him he was not. But he has no sympathy with the religion of Christ. Our Saviour, in his opinion, was only the expounder of a system of ethics, and, to tell the truth, it is not clear to me wherein the Christ of Unitarianism is essentially superior to Socrates or Benjamin Franklin. The worship of our Lord Dr. Bellows emphatically denounces as rank 'idolatry.' We may only reverence him as a creature specially favored by the Almighty, and a teacher to whose word we owe the most profound respect. Take away from your religious system the idea of God in the person of his divine Son perpetually present with the faithful, and helping them to bear the burdens of humanity which he himself has borne, and it is but a cold, cheerless, fallacious belief which is left you. It is no longer religion; it is only a false philosophy. Devotion vanishes; faith, hope, and love are exchanged for a code of rules of behavior; and God withdraws from the world into the impenetrable mystery of the heavens, where the voice of prayer indeed may reach him, but his presence is never felt by man, and his love never fills the heart. He is no longer the dear Lord of the Christian saints, but the Allah of the Moslems."

"You have hit it exactly; and now let me tell you that ever since Dr. Bellows set out on the foreign tour in which he is still occupied, I have watched for the record of his impressions of Oriental life, feeling certain, from what I knew of him, that he would find an attraction in Mohammedanism which he never saw in Christianity. I was not mistaken. He is not a polygamist: he has no taste for a sensual heaven; I don't suppose he prefers the Koran to the Bible; and I never heard of his keeping the inordinate fasts of Ramadan; still, the creed of Islam seems, in its main features, to have caught his fancy, and he loads it with indirect praises, which he never thought of bestowing upon any form of Christianity. Let me read you an extract from one of his recent letters to _The Liberal Christian_:

"'These people,' he says, referring to the Egyptians, 'know
nothing of Christianity which ought to give it any superiority
in their eyes over Mohammedanism. When the Arabian prophet
commenced his marvellous work, there is little doubt that he
was animated by the sincere enthusiasm of a religious reformer.
Mohammed recognized both dispensations, the Mosaic and the
Christian; and his intelligent followers to this day speak
reverently of the Christ. They evade the authority and use of
our Scriptures, by asserting that they have been thoroughly
corrupted in their text. A learned Mohammedan in India,
however, has just written the introduction to a new Commentary
on our Bible, in which he ably refutes the Mussulman charge of
general corruptness, and adduces all the passages quoted out of
the Old and New Testaments in the Koran.
{586}
But what have Mussulmans seen of Christianity to commend it
greatly above their own faith? Is it alleged that Mohammedanism
has owed its triumphs and progress to the sword? Is it the
fault of Christians if the Cross has not advanced by the same
weapon? What infidel rage of the Crescent has ever exceeded the
fanatical soldiering of the Crusades, and what has Coeur de
Lion to boast over Saladin in enlightenment or appreciation of
the Christian spirit? And if we come to bowing, and fasting,
and washing, and external forms, _I confess that the
degrading prostrations, and crossings, and mummeries of the
Greek and Catholic churches, with the gaudy trappings of robes
and jewels, the worship of saints and images, and the
deification of a humble Jewish woman, appear to me to have
nothing in the presence of which Mussulmans could feel the
lesser reasonableness, purity, or dignity, or the lesser
credibility of their own unadorned and simpler
superstition._ Compared with Catholic and Greek legends, the
Koran is a model of purity and elegance of style, and _its
worst superstitions do not much exceed in grossness the popular
interpretation given to monkish fables._ As it respects
ecclesiastical interference and tyranny, Mohammedanism is a
whole world in advance of Romanism or the Greek Church. It is
essentially without priest or ritual, in any Catholic sense.
The Mussulman is his own priest. He finds Allah everywhere, and
he has only to turn toward Mecca, and bow in prayer, and his
field, his boat, the desert, is as good an altar as the mosque.
It is truly affecting to see the fidelity of the common people
to their faith, the apparent heedlessness of observation, the
absorption in their prayers, the careful memory of their hours
of devotion.'

"And, speaking of the absence of symbols and rites in the mosques, he adds: 'Surely there is something grand in this simplicity, _and something vital in a faith which, aided by so little external appliance, has survived in full vigor twelve hundred years'_"

"Why don't he admire the vitality of the devil? Satan has survived in full vigor a good deal more than twelve hundred years."

"That would be about as logical. But is it not melancholy to see how far a man whom we would like to respect can be carried by his uncontrolled vagaries! He demanded a 'historical church:' there is only one in Christendom, and that he will not have; and now it almost seems as if he felt an occasional temptation to search for one _outside_ of Christendom. Protestantism, he finds, has run its course. Catholicism he will have nothing to do with. What, then, is left him, if he will be a religious man at all? That seems to be the question which perplexes him and the small but intelligent school of thinkers of whom he is the representative. As the Jews are still waiting for the Christ they crucified eighteen hundred years ago, so the Bellows school are watching for the coming of that Christianity which they have already rejected. And both, it seems to me, are sick at heart with hope long deferred."

"Yes; we hear little now of the confident prophetic tone in which Dr. Bellows some years ago discoursed of the glories of the new religion of humanity, and predicted a resettlement of worn-out creeds and a revival of suspended faith. He writes now rather of the desolation of the present than of brightness which he discerns in the future. And this brings us back to the point from which we started. While Protestant theologians in general are discarding vituperation, there are certain of our opponents who show us a bitterness to which they were not formerly accustomed, because they have been disappointed in their own religious aspirations, and have a vague, half-conscious, and wholly unwelcome impression that the Catholic Church alone is capable of satisfying them. Dr. Bellows, for instance, travels through Europe and finds that Protestantism is everywhere lifeless. He is bold enough to say so; but he takes his revenge in the next breath by trying to show that the Catholic Church is no better. {587} He is powerless to arrest the decay which is destroying his own organization, but he seems to find a melancholy compensation in attacking Catholicism. He reminds me of what the boy said when he was thrashed by a school-fellow: 'If I can't whip you, I can make faces at your sister.' He visits Paris, and confesses that 'Protestantism makes next to no headway' in France, and is torn by internal dissensions. He goes to the heart of Protestant Germany, and finds the general aspect 'one of painful decay in the faith and spirituality of the people.' All over the continent, he observes that where the Catholic faith has died out, 'nothing vigorous has shot up in its place,' and the masses of the population are 'without aspiration, devoutness, or faith in the invisible.' 'Protestantism, as it appears here, is a chilled, repulsive, ungrowing thing, entering very little into the national or the social and domestic life, and apparently not destined in any of its present forms to animate the passions or win and shape the hearts and lives of the middle classes. ... _Out of the present elements of faith and worship in Germany I see no prospects of any healthy and contagious religious life arising.'_ Nay, what is worse than all, the peculiar form of Protestantism upon which, if upon any. Dr. Bellows would rely for the regeneration of Europe, is in no better way than the others. 'It does not appear,' he says, 'that the liberal element in the Protestantism of Germany, I mean that branch of its Protestantism which we should consider 'most in sympathy with Unitarianism, is very earnest or creative. It seems still rather a negation of orthodoxy than an affirmation of the positive truths of Christianity. ... Forced to take positive ground, I fear that a large part of this extensive body _would be compelled to abandon Christian territory altogether._' From Berlin he writes that 'the whole life of the national church is sickly and discouraging;' from Strasburg, that Protestantism 'must learn some new ways before it will become the religion of the people of France, Italy, or even Germany;' from Vienna, that the Protestantism of Austria is 'essentially torpid and unprogressive, presenting nothing attractive or promising.' These passages, and many more of similar purport, we may take as equivalent to the little boy's confession that he could not whip his antagonist. When it comes to the other part, the making faces at his sister, I am bound to say that Dr. Bellows shows more temper than strength. In Vienna, he deplored the lukewarmness of the Catholic people all through Germany, yet, in several previous letters, he had contrasted their zeal in church-going with the indifference of the Protestants. He accuses the clergy of avarice, though in Rome he compliments the priests for their personal merits, their 'seriousness, decorum, and fair intelligence.' He declares that 'the Catholic Church is an artful substitute for anything that a human soul ought to desire;' that she is 'the chief hinderance to progress;' that she has 'glorified the blessed Mother into the Almighty;' that she 'mutters spells and practises necromancy at her altars,' and all that kind of thing, which I need not repeat, because we have heard it in almost the very same words scores of times before. But the most curious of all his angry attacks was made--where, think you? Why, on a steamer in the Levant, where there was nothing whatever to provoke him: where the onslaught was so perfectly gratuitous that it burst upon the calm flow of his letter like a thunderbolt rending the summer sky. Here it is:

{588}

"'Roman Catholicism, weak in every member, is prodigious in its
total effectiveness, because it is a unit. It is quietly
seizing America, piece by piece, state by state, city by city.
In a new state like Wisconsin, for instance, it has the oldest
college, the largest theological school, the best hospitals and
charities, the finest churches; and what is true of Wisconsin
is equally true of many other Western states. Protestantism,
with a hundred times the wealth, intelligence, public spirit,
and administrative ability, by reason of its sectarian
jealousies and divisions can have no parallel successes, and is
losing rapidly its place in legislative grants and in public
policy. The Irish Catholics spot the members of state
legislatures who vote against the appropriations they call for,
and are able in our close elections to defeat their return.
Representatives become servile and pliable, and Romanism
flourishes. A Quaker gentleman of wealth, in the West, (the
story is exactly true,) married a Vermont girl who had become a
Catholic in a nunnery where she was sent for her education. It
was agreed that, if children were given them, the boys should
be reared in the faith of their father, the girls in that of
their mother. _The Vermont mother gave her husband ten girls,
but never a son!_ Eight of them grew up Catholics, married
influential men, and brought up their children Catholics, and
in some cases brought over their husbands, and so the Roman
Church was recruited with Protestant wealth and Quaker blood to
a vast extent. So much for sending Protestant girls to Roman
Catholic seminaries, and then complaining that so many
Protestants are lost to the superstitions of Romanism! There is
an apathy about the Roman Catholic advances in the United
States among American Protestants, which will finally receive a
terrible shock. There is no influence at work in America so
hostile to our future peace as the Roman Catholic Church. The
next American war will, I fear, be a religious war--of all
kinds the worst. If we wish to avert it, _we must take
immediate steps to organize Protestantism more efficiently_,
and on less sectarian ground.'

"Well, upon my word, the conduct of that Vermont girl was abominable. I suppose Dr. Bellows thinks she never would have been artful enough to swindle her husband out of all his expected boys if she had not been brought up in a convent. 'So much for sending Protestant girls to Roman Catholic seminaries!' I should think so, indeed!"

"The story is very ridiculous; but the moral Dr. Bellows draws from it is worse than ridiculous. If we wish to avert a religious war, he says, 'we must take immediate steps to organize Protestantism more efficiently, and on less sectarian ground.' That means that Protestantism must maintain an overwhelming preponderance in this country by fair means or foul. If it cannot convert the papists with the Bible, it ought to knock them on the head with a bludgeon. And the same atrocious sentiment is still more plainly expressed by an Irish writer in _The Liberal Christian_ of Feb. 29th, who says, 'Popery and Fenianism are Siamese curses, withering every noble and humane feeling wherever they exist. ... _They deserve no toleration; they should receive no mercy._' There's a 'liberal' Christian for you, with a vengeance!"

"Well, we can afford to ridicule such fears and threats; but it is very sad. Here, where nearly all honest people seem to have made up their minds to reform their bad language, and be as polite in discussing sacred questions as in talking over secular affairs, a sect which professes toleration and fairness beyond all others goes back to the old style of polemical blackguardism. I can appreciate the unfortunate position of the liberal Christians, when, having pushed ahead so far, they find that there is 'no more road' in that direction, and can understand that only one of two courses may seem open to them, either to berate the Catholics or to join them; but the instruction which the barrister received from his attorney when the law and the facts were both against him, 'Abuse the other side,' does not apply so well to religion as to jury trials. We must have a different style of argument if anybody is to be converted or improved by the discussion.

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{589}

Nellie Netterville.