FOOTNOTE:[28]"Letters of Lucius M. Piso, from Palmyra, to his friend Marcus Curtius, at Rome: now first translated and published." They present a picture of the state of the East in the reign of Aurelian; and are to end, I suppose, with the fall of Palmyra.
[28]"Letters of Lucius M. Piso, from Palmyra, to his friend Marcus Curtius, at Rome: now first translated and published." They present a picture of the state of the East in the reign of Aurelian; and are to end, I suppose, with the fall of Palmyra.
[28]"Letters of Lucius M. Piso, from Palmyra, to his friend Marcus Curtius, at Rome: now first translated and published." They present a picture of the state of the East in the reign of Aurelian; and are to end, I suppose, with the fall of Palmyra.
"Der Grund aller Democratie; die höchste Thatsache der Popularität."Novalis."The Christian Religion is the root of all democracy; the highest fact in the Rights of Man."
"Der Grund aller Democratie; die höchste Thatsache der Popularität."
Novalis.
"The Christian Religion is the root of all democracy; the highest fact in the Rights of Man."
Religion is the highest fact in the Rights of Man from its being the most exclusively private and individual, while it is also a universal, concern, of any in which man is interested. Religion is, in its widest sense, "the tendency of human nature to the Infinite;" and its principle is manifested in the pursuit of perfection in any direction whatever. It is in this widest sense that some speculative atheists have been religious men; religious in their efforts after self-perfection; though unable to personify their conception of the Infinite. In a somewhat narrower sense, religion is the relation which the highest human sentiments bear towards an infinitely perfect Being.
There can be no further narrowing than this. Any account of religion which restricts it within the boundaries of any system, which connects it with any mode of belief, which implicates it with hope of reward or fear of punishment, is low and injurious, and debases religion into superstition.
The Christian religion is specified as being the highest fact in the rights of man from its embodying (with all the rest) the principle of natural religion—that religion is at once an individual, an universal, and an equal concern. In it may be found a sanction of all just claims of political and social equality; for it proclaims, now in music and now in thunder,—it blazons, now in sunshine and now in lightning,—the fact of the natural equality of men. In giving forth this as its grand doctrine, it is indeed "the root of all democracy;" the root of the maxim (among others) that among the inalienable rights of all men are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The democracy of America is planted down deep into the christian religion; into its principles, which it has in common with natural religion, and which it vivifies and illumines, but does not alter.
How does the existing state of religion accord with the promise of its birth? In a country which professes to secure to every man the pursuit of happiness in his own way, what is the state of his liberty in the most private and individual of all concerns? How carefully are all men and women left free from interference in following up their own aspirations after the Infinite, in realising their own ideas of perfection, in bringing into harmonious action the functions of their spirits, as infinitely diversified as the expression of their features?
The absence of such diversity is the first striking fact which presents itself on the institution of such an inquiry. If there were no constraint,—nosocial reward or penalty,—such an approach to uniformity of profession could not exist as is seen in the United States. In a society where speculation and profession were left perfectly free, as included among the inalienable rights of man, there would be many speculative (though probably extremely few practical) atheists: there would be an adoption by many of the principles of natural religion, otherwise than in and through Christianity: and Christianity would be adopted in modes as various as the minds by which it would be recognised. Instead of this, we find laws framed against speculative atheists: opprobrium directed upon such as embrace natural religion otherwise than through Christianity: and a yet more bitter oppression exercised by those who view Christianity in one way, over those who regard it in another. A religious young christian legislator was pitied, blamed, and traduced in Boston, last year, by clergymen, lawyers, and professors of a college, for endeavouring to obtain a repeal of the law under which the testimony of speculative atheists is rejected in courts of justice: Quakers (calling themselves Friends) excommunicate each other: Presbyterian clergymen preach hatred to Catholics: a convent is burnt, and the nuns are banished from the neighbourhood: and Episcopalian clergymen claim credit for admitting Unitarians to sit in committees for public objects! As might be expected under such an infringement of the principle of securing to every man the pursuit of happiness in his own way, there is no such endless diversity in the action of minds, and utterance of tongues, as nature and fidelity to truth peremptorily demand. Truth is deprived of the irrefragable testimony which would be afforded by whatever agreement might arise amidst this diversity: religion is insulted and scandalised by nominal adherence and hypocritical advocacy. There are many ways ofprofessing Christianity in the United States: but there are few, very few men, whether speculative or thoughtless, whether studious or ignorant, whether reverent or indifferent, whether sober or profligate, whether disinterested or worldly, who do not carefully profess Christianity, in some form or another. This, as men are made, is unnatural. Society presents no faithful mirror of the religious perspective of the human mind.
It may be asked whether this is not true of the Old World also. It is. But the society of the Old World has not yet grasped in practice any one fundamental democratic principle: and the few who govern the many have not yet perceived that religion is "the root of all democracy:" they are so far from it that they are still upholding an established form of religion; in which a particular mode of belief is enforced upon minds by the imposition of virtual rewards and punishments. The Americans have long taken higher ground; repudiating establishments, and professing to leave religion free. They must be judged by their own principles, and not by the example of societies whose errors they have practically denounced by their adoption of the Voluntary Principle.
The almost universal profession in America of the adoption of Christianity,—this profession by many whose habits of thought, and others whose habits of living forbid the supposition that it is the religion of their individual intellects and affections, compels the inquiry what sort of Christianity it is that is professed, and how it is come by. There is no evading the conviction that it is to a vast extent a monstrous superstition that is thus embraced by the tyrant, the profligate, the worldling, the bigot, the coward, and the slave; a superstition which offers little molestation to their vices, little rectification to their errors; a superstition which is butthe spurious offspring of that divine Christianity which "is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the Rights of Man." That so many of the meek, pure, disinterested, free, and brave, make the same profession, proves only that they penetrate to religion through superstition; or that they cast away unconsciously the superstition with which their spirits have no affinity, and accept such truth as all superstition must include in order to live.
The only test by which religion and superstition can be ultimately tried is that with which they co-exist. "By their fruits ye shall know them."
The Presbyterian body is a very large one; the total number in communion, according to the minutes of the General Assembly for 1834, being then 247,964. New England contains a very small, and the south and west a very large, proportion of the body. Some of the most noble of the abolitionists of the north are Presbyterians; and from the lips and pens of Presbyterians in the south, come some of the defences of slavery which evince the deepest depravity of principle and feeling. This is only another proof, added to the million, that religion comes out of morals. In the words of a pure moralist,[29]"Morality is usually said to depend upon religion; but this is said in that low sense in which outward conduct is considered as morality. In that higher sense in which morality denotes sentiment, it is more exactly true to say, that religion depends on morality, and springs from it. Virtue is not the conformity of outward actions to a rule; nor is religion the fear of punishment, or the hope of reward. Virtue is the state of a just, prudent, benevolent, firm, and temperate mind. Religion is the whole of those sentiments which such a mind feels towards aninfinitely perfect being." With these views, we may account for the different morality of the Presbyterians of the south from that of such of the friends of the slave in the north as are of the same communion. Of the Presbyterian, as well as other clergy of the south, some are even planters, superintending the toils of their slaves, and making purchases, or effecting sales in the slave-markets, during the week, and preaching on Sundays whatever they can devise that is least contradictory to their daily practice. I watched closely the preaching in the south,—that of all denominations,—to see what could be made of Christianity, "the highest fact in the Rights of Man," in such a region. I found the stricter religionists preaching reward and punishment in connexion with modes of belief, and hatred to the Catholics. I found the more philosophical preaching for or against materialism, and diverging to phrenology. I found the more quiet and "gentlemanly" preaching harmless abstractions,—the four seasons, the attributes of the Deity, prosperity and adversity, &c. I heard one clergyman, who always goes out of the room when the subject of negro emancipation is mentioned, or when slavery is found fault with, preach in a southern city against following a multitude to do evil. I heard one noble religious discourse from the Rev. Joel Parker, a Presbyterian clergyman, of New Orleans; but except that one, I never heard any available reference made to the grand truths of religion, or principles of morals. The great principles which regard the three relations to God, man, and self,—striving after perfection, mutual justice and charity, and christian liberty,—were never touched upon.—Meantime, the clergy were pretending to find express sanctions of slavery in the Bible; and putting words to this purpose into the mouths of public men, who do not profess toremember the existence of the Bible in any other connexion. The clergy were boasting at public meetings, that there was not a periodical south of the Potomac which did not advocate slavery; and some were even setting up a magazine, whose "fundamental principle is, that man ought to be the property of man." The clergy, who were to be sent as delegates to the General Assembly, were receiving instructions to leave the room, if the subject of slavery was mentioned; and to propose the cessation of the practice of praying for slaves. At the same time, the wife of a clergyman called upon me to admire the benevolent toils of a friend, who had been "putting up 4000 weight of pork" for her slave household: and another lady, kindly and religiously disposed, told me what pains she took on Sunday mornings to teach her slaves, by word of mouth, as much of Christianity as was good for them. When I pressed her on the point as to why they were to have Christianity and not the alphabet, and desired to know under what authority she dared to keep from them knowledge, which God has shed abroad for all, as freely as the the air and sunshine, I found that the idea was wholly new to her: nothing that she had heard in church, or out of it, from any of the Christians among whom she lived, had awakened the suspicion that she was robbing her brethren of their birth-right. The religion of the south strictly accords with the morals of the south. There is much that is gentle, merciful, and generous: much among the suffering women that is patient, heroic, and inspiring meek resignation. Among these victims, there is faith, hope, and charity. But Christianity is severed from its radical principles of justice and liberty; and it will have to be cast out as a rotten branch.
A southern clergyman mentioned to me,obviously with difficulty and pain, that though he was as happily placed as a minister could be, treated with friendliness and generosity by his people, and so cherished as to show that they were satisfied, he had one trouble. During all the years of his ministry, no token had reached him that he had religiously impressed their minds, more or less. They met regularly and decorously on Sundays, and departed quietly, and there was an end. He did not know that any one discourse had affected them more than any other; and no opportunity was offered him of witnessing any religious emotion among them whatever.—Another, an Unitarian clergyman of the south, was known to lament the appearance of Dr. Channing's work on slavery, "the cause was going on so well before!" "The cause going on!" exclaimed another Unitarian clergyman in the north; "what should the ship go on for, when they have thrown both captain and cargo overboard?"
What is to be said of the southern fruits of "the root of all democracy?" Excluding the debased slaves, and the helpless, suffering victims of the system, there remain the laity, who, as they do not abolish slavery, must be concluded not to understand the religion with whose principles it cannot coexist; and the acquiescing clergy, who, if they do not understand its principles, are unfit to be clergymen: and if they do, are unfit to be called Christians.
The Presbyterians of the south have reason to perceive that the principles of christian liberty are not fully embraced by their brethren of the north, though acted upon by some with a disinterested heroism in the direction of abolition. Those who would exclude slave-holders from the communion-table are usurping an authority which the principles of their religion forbid. The hatred to the Catholics also approaches too nearly in itsirreligious character to the oppression of the negro. It is pleaded by some who most mourn the persecution the Catholics are at present undergoing in the United States, that there is a very prevalent ignorance on the subject of the Catholic religion; and that dreadful slanders are being circulated by a very few wicked, which deceive a great many weak, persons. This is just the case: but there is that in the true christian religion which should intercept the hatred, whatever may be the ignorance. There is that in the true christian religion which should give the lie to those slanders, in the absence of all outward evidence of their untruth. There is that in true Christianity which should chasten the imagination, allay faithless apprehensions, and inspire a trust that, as heart answers to heart, no vast body of men can ever bind themselves by the name of Jesus, to become all that is most the reverse of holy, harmless, and undefiled. The question "where is thy faith?" might reasonably have been put to the Presbyterian clergyman who preached three long denunciations against the Catholics in Boston, the Sunday before the burning of the Charlestown convent: and also to parents, who can put into their children's hands, as religious books, the foul libels against the Catholics which are circulated throughout the country. In the west, I happened to find in the chamber of a very young lady, the only child of an opulent and influential citizen, a book of this kind, which no epithet but filthy will suit. It lay with her Bible and Prayer-book; the secular part of her library being disposed elsewhere. If religion springs from morals, those who put the book into the hands of this young girl will be answerable, if her religion should be as little like that which is "first pure, then peaceable," as their own.
I was seriously told, by several persons in thesouth and west, that the Catholics of America were employed by the Pope, in league with the Emperor of Austria and the Irish, to explode the Union. The vast and rapid spread of the Catholic faith in the United States has excited observation, which grew into this rumour. I believe the truth to be that, in consequence of the Pope's wish to keep the Catholics of America a colonial church, and the Catholics of the country thinking themselves now sufficiently numerous to be an American Catholic church, a great stimulus has been given to proselytism. This has awakened fear and persecution; which last has, again, been favourable to the increase of the sect. While the Presbyterians preach a harsh, ascetic, persecuting religion, the Catholics dispense a mild and indulgent one; and the prodigious increase of their numbers is a necessary consequence. It is found so impossible to supply the demand for priests, that the term of education has been shortened by two years.—Those observers who have made themselves familiar with the modes in which institutions, even of the most definite character, adapt themselves to the wants of the time, will not be made uneasy by the spread of a religion so flexible in its forms as the Catholic, among a people so intelligent as the Americans. The Catholic body is democratic in its politics, and made up from the more independent kind of occupations. The Catholic religion is modified by the spirit of the time in America; and its professors are not a set of men who can be priest-ridden to any fatal extent. If they are let alone, and treated on genuine republican principles, they may show us how the true, in any old form of religion, may be separated from the false, till, the eye being made clear, the whole body will be full of light. If they cannot do this, their form of religion will decay, or at least remain harmless; for it isassuredly too late now for a return of the dark ages. At all events, every American is required by his democratic principles to let every man alone about his religion. He may do with the religion what seems to him good; study, controvert, adopt, reject, speak, write, or preach, whatever he perceives and thinks about its doctrines and its abuses: but with its professors he has nothing to do, further than religiously to observe his fraternal relation to them; suffering no variance of opinion to seduce him into a breach of the republican and christian brotherhood to which he is pledged.
What other fruits are there of the superstition which pervades society, comprehending under the term Christian many who know little of its doctrine, and exhibit less of its spirit? The state and treatment of infidelity are some of the worst.
There is in this respect a dreadful infringement on human rights throughout the north; though a better spirit is being cherished and extended by a few who see how contrary to all christian and all democratic principles it is that a man should be the worse for his opinions in society. I have seen enough to know how little chance Christianity has in consequence of this infringement. I know that very large numbers of people are secretly disinclined to cherish what is imposed upon them, with perpetual and unvarying modes of observance, from their childhood up; and how the disgust grows from the opprobrium with which unbelief is visited. I know that there are minds in New England, as everywhere else, which must, from their very structure, pass through a state of scepticism on their way to stability; and that such are surrounded with snares, such as no man should lay in his brother's path; with temptations to hypocrisy, to recklessness, to despair; and to an abdication of their human prerogative of reason, as well asconscience. I know how women, in whom the very foundations of belief have been ploughed up by the share of authority, go wearily to church, Sunday after Sunday, to hear what they do not believe; lie down at night full of self-reproach for a want of piety which they do not know how to attain; and rise up in the morning hopelessly, seeing nothing in the day before them but the misery of carrying their secret concealed from parents, husband, sisters, friends. I know how young men are driven into vice, by having only the alternative of conformity or opprobrium: feeling it impossible to believe what is offered them; feeling it to be no crime to disbelieve: but, seeing unbelief treated as crime, and themselves under suspicion of it, losing faith in others and in themselves, and falling in reality at last. All this, and very much more, I know to be happening. I was told of one and another, with an air of mystery, like that with which one is informed of any person being insane, or intemperate, or insolvent, that so and so was thought to be an unbeliever. I was always tempted to reply, "And so are you, in a thousand things, to which this neighbour of yours adds one."—An elderly, generally intelligent, benevolent gentleman told me that he wanted to see regulations made by which deists should be excluded from office, and moral men only admitted. Happily, the community is not nearly so far gone in tyranny and folly as to entertain such a project as this: but it must be a very superstitious society where such an idea could be deliberately expressed by a sane man.
One circumstance struck me throughout the country. Almost as often as the conversation between myself and any other person on religious subjects became intimate and earnest, I was met by the supposition that I was a convert. It was the same in other instances: wherever there was a stronginterest in the christian religion, conversion to a particular profession of it was confidently supposed. This fact speaks volumes.
Happy influences are at work to enlighten and enlarge the mind of society. One of the most powerful of these is the union of men and women of all religions in pursuit of objects of common interest; particularly in the abolition cause. Persons who were once ready to excommunicate each other are now loving friends in their mutual obedience to the weightier matters of the law. The churches in Boston, and even the other public buildings, being guarded by the dragon of bigotry, so that even faith, hope, and charity are turned back from the doors, a large building is about to be erected for the use of all, deists not excepted, who may desire to meet for purposes of free discussion. This is, at least, an advance.
A reflecting and eminently religious person was speculating with me one day, on the influences by which the human mind is the most commonly and the most powerfully awakened to vivid and permanent religious sensibility. We brought cases and suppositions of its being now strong impressions of the beauty and grandeur of nature; now grief, and now joy, and so on. My friend concluded that it was most frequently the spectacle of moral beauty in an individual. I have no doubt it is so: and if it be, what tremendous injury must be done to the highest parts of man's nature by the unprincipled tyranny of the religious world in the republic! Men declare by this very tyranny how essential they consider belief to be. Belief is essential,—not only to safety, but to existence. Every mind lives by belief, as the body lives by the atmosphere: but the objects and modes of belief must be various; and it is from disallowing this that superstition arises. If men must exercise themutual vigilance which their human affections prompt, it would be well for religion and for themselves that they should note how much their brethren believe, rather than what they disbelieve: the amount would be found so vast as immeasurably to distance the deficiency. If this were done, religion would be found to be so safe that the proportions of sects, and the eccentricities of individuals would be lost sight of in the presence of universal, living, and breathing faith. I was told of a child who stood in the middle of a grass-plat, with its arms by its sides, and listening with a countenance of intense expectation, "to hear God's tramp on that high blue floor." Who would care to know what christian sect this child belonged to; or whether to any?—I was told of a father and mother, savages, who lost their only child, and were overwhelmed with grief, under which the father soon sank. From the moment of his death, the solitary survivor recovered her cheerfulness. Being asked why, she said she had been miserable for her child, lest he should be forlorn in the world of spirits: he had his father with him now, and would be happy. Who would inquire for the creed of this example of disinterested love?—I was told of a young girl, brought up from the country by a selfish betrayer, refused the marriage which had been promised, and turned out of doors by him on her being seized with the cholera. She was picked up from a doorstep, and carried to the hospital. In the midst of her dying agonies, no inducement could prevail on her to tell the name of her betrayer; and she died faithful to him, so that the secret of whose treachery we are abhorring is dead with her. With such testimony that the very spirit of the gospel was in this humble creature, none but those who would dare to cast her out for her fall would feel any anxiety as to how she received thefacts of the gospel. Religion is safe, and would be seen to be so if we would set ourselves to mark how universal are some few of men's convictions, and the whole of man's affections. While men feel wonder, and the universe is wonderful; while men love natural glory, and the heavens and the earth are resplendent with it; while men revere holiness, and the beauty of holiness beams at times upon the dimmest sight, religion is safe. For the last reason, Christianity is also safe. If the beauty of its holiness were never obscured by the defilements of human passion with which it is insulted, it is scarcely conceivable that all men would not be, in some sense or other, Christians.
Those who are certain that Christianity is safe, (and they are not a few,) and who, therefore, beware of encroaching on their brother's liberty of conscience, will be found to be the most principled republicans, the firmest believers that Christianity is "the root of all democracy: the highest fact in the Rights of Man."
FOOTNOTE:[29]Sir James Mackintosh.
[29]Sir James Mackintosh.
[29]Sir James Mackintosh.
"And therefore the doctrine of the one (Christ) was never afraid of universities, or endeavoured the banishment of learning like the other (Mahomet.) And though Galen doth sometimes nibble at Moses, and, beside the apostate Christian, some heathens have questioned his philosophical part or treatise of the creation; yet there is surely no reasonable Pagan that will not admire the rational and well-grounded precepts of Christ, whose life, as it was conformable unto his doctrine, so was that unto the highest rules of reason, and must therefore flourish in the advancement of learning, and the perfection of parts best able to comprehend it."Sir Thomas Browne.
"And therefore the doctrine of the one (Christ) was never afraid of universities, or endeavoured the banishment of learning like the other (Mahomet.) And though Galen doth sometimes nibble at Moses, and, beside the apostate Christian, some heathens have questioned his philosophical part or treatise of the creation; yet there is surely no reasonable Pagan that will not admire the rational and well-grounded precepts of Christ, whose life, as it was conformable unto his doctrine, so was that unto the highest rules of reason, and must therefore flourish in the advancement of learning, and the perfection of parts best able to comprehend it."
Sir Thomas Browne.
Religion has suffered from nothing, throughout all Christendom, more than from its science having been mixed up with its spirit and practice. The spirit and practice of religion come out of morals; but its science comes out of history also; with chronology, philology, and other collateral kinds of knowledge. The spirit and practice of religion are for all, since all bear the same relation to their Creator and to their race, and are endowed with reason and with affections. But the high science of religion is, at present at least, like all other science, for the few. The time may come when all shall have the comprehension of mind and range of knowledge which are requisite for investigating spiritual relations, tracing the religious principle through all its manifestations in individuals and societies, studying its records in manylanguages, and testing the interpretations which have been put upon them, from age to age. The time may possibly come when all may be able thus to be scientific in theology: but that time has assuredly not arrived. It is so far from being at hand, that by far the largest portion of christian society seems to be ignorant of the distinction between the science of theology and the practice of religion. The scientific study and popular administration of religion have not only been confided to the same persons, but actually mixed up and confounded in the heads and hands of those persons. Contrary to all principle, and to all practice in other departments, the student who enters upon this science is warned beforehand what conclusions he must arrive at. The results are given to him prior to investigation; and sanctioned by reward and punishment. The first injury happens to the student, under a method of pursuing science as barbarous as any by which the progress of natural knowledge was retarded in ages gone by. The student, become an administrator, next injures his flock in his turn, by mixing up portions of his scholastic science with religious sentiment. He teaches dogmatically that which bears no relation to duty and affection; requiring assent where, for want of the requisite knowledge, true assent is impossible; where there can be only passive reception or ignorant rejection. The consequences are the corruptions of Christianity, which grieve the spirit of those who see where and how the poison is mixed with the bread of life.
The office of theological science is to preserve,—we must now say to recover,—the primary simplicity of Christianity. It is a high and noble office to penetrate to and test the opinions of ages, in order to trace corruptions to their source, and separate them from the pure waters of truth. It is ahigh and noble task to master the associations of the elder time, and look again at the gospel to see it afresh in its native light. It is a high and noble task to strip away false glosses, not only of words but of ideas, that the true spirit of the gospel may shine through the record. But these high and noble labours are but means to a higher and nobler end. The dignity of theological study arises from its being subservient to the administration of religion. The last was Christ's own office; the highest which can be discharged by man: so high as to indicate that when its dignity is fully understood, it will be confided to the hands of no class of men. Theologians there will probably always be; but no man will be a priest in those days to come when every man will be a worshipper.
On some accounts it may seem desirable that the theologians of this age should be the clergy. It was once desirable; for reasons analogous to those which constituted priests once the judges, then the politicians, then the literati of society. It has been, and is, the plea that those who professed to clear Christianity from its corruptions, and to master its history, were the fittest persons to present it to the popular mind.
If this were ever the case, the time seems to have passed by. The press affords the means of placing the clear results of theological inquiry in the hands of those whom they concern. There seems to be no other relation between the theologian, as a theologian, and the worshipper, which should constitute him the organ of their worship. The habits of mind most favourable to the pursuit of theological study are not those which qualify for a successful administration of religious influences. This is proved by fact; by the limited efficacy of preaching, and by the fatal confusion which has been caused by the clergy having givenout fragments of their studies from the pulpit, with annexations of promise and threatening. It does not follow that the administrators should be ignorant; only that their knowledge should be other than scholastic and technical. The organ of a worshipping assembly should be furnished with the clear results of theological study; and with such intellectual and moral science as shall enable him, if his sympathies be warm enough, to identify himself with the mind and heart of humanity. He must have that knowledge of men's relations and interests in life which shall enable him to look into infinity from their point of view; to give voice to whatever sentiments are common to all; to appeal to whatever affections and desires are stirring in all. For this purpose, he must be practically engaged in the great moral questions of the time, carrying the principles of religion into them with his whole experimental force; and bringing out of them new light whereby to illustrate these principles, new grounds on which to reason in behalf of duty, and new forces with which to animate the convictions of his fellow-worshippers into practice.
The fluctuations through which the Methodist body in America, as well as elsewhere, is arriving at the true principle as to the ministering of religion, are well known. First, they clearly saw the corruption of christian doctrine and the deadness of religious service which must follow from putting closet students into the pulpit: and, holding the belief of immediate and special inspiration, they abjured human learning. The mischiefs which have followed upon the ministry of ignorant and fanatical clergy have converted large numbers to the advocacy of human learning. It will probably yet be long before they can put in practice the true method of having one set of men to be theologians, and another to be preachers or other organs of worship.The complaint of every denomination in the United States is of a scarcity of ministers. This is so pressing that, as we have seen in the case of the Catholics, the term of study is shortened. Now seems the time, and America the place, for dispensing with the formalities which restrict religious worship. It would be an incalculable injury to have theological study brought to an end by every youth who devotes himself to it being called away to preach, before he can possibly possess many of the requisites for preaching. It would be far better to throw open the office of administration to all who feel and can speak religiously, and so as to be the genuine voice of the thoughts of others. Even if it were necessary to reconstitute religious societies, making the meetings for worship smaller, and the exercises varying with the nature of the case, there could no evil arise so serious as the interruption of theological study, and the deterioration of public worship. In the wild west, where the people can no more live without religion than they can anywhere else, the farmer's neighbours collect around him from within a circuit of thirty miles, and he reads or speaks, and prays, and they are refreshed. If this is not done, if it is not frequently done, the settlers become liable to the insanity of camp-meetings and revivals. If the national want can be thus naturally supplied in the heart of the forest or prairie, why not also in the city? The city has the advantage of a greater number of persons qualified to express the common desires, and meet the common sympathies of the worshippers.
There are enlightened and religious persons who think it would be a great advantage to religion if the present system of dogmatical theological study in America were broken up. It might be so, if it were sure to be reconstituted upon better principles, and if it were not done for the purpose ofsupplying the pulpit with men who might be even less fit for their office than they are now. But there is no prospect of such a breaking up at present; and, I am afraid, as little of any great improvement in the principles of research. Though there are differences arising about creeds; though there are schisms within the walls of churches and of colleges, and trials for heresy before synods and assemblies, which promise a more or less speedy relaxation of the bonds of creeds, and the tyranny of church government, there is no near prospect of theological science being left as free as other kinds. There is no near prospect of evidence on the most important of all subjects being consigned to the heaven-made laws of the human mind. There is no near prospect of inquiry being left to work out its results, without any prior specification, under penalty, of what they must be. There is no near prospect of the clergy having such faith in the religion they profess as to leave it to the administration of Him who sent it, free from their pernicious and arrogant protection.
If other science had its results mixed up with hope and fear, its pursuit watched over by tyranny, and divergence from old opinions punished by opprobrium, the world, instead of being "an immense whispering gallery, where the faintest accent of science is heard throughout every civilised country as soon as uttered," would be a Babel; where all utterance would be vociferation, and life one interminable quarrel. It would be an extreme exemplification of the principle of making convictions the object of moral approbation and disapprobation. As it is, though natural philosophers sometimes fall out, yet there is a practical admission of the right of free research, and of the innocence of arriving, by strict fidelity, at any conclusions whatever, in natural science. The consequence is that, instead of men being imprisoned for their discoveries, andmade to do penance for the benefits they confer on the community, science proceeds expeditiously and joyously, under the hands of intent workers, mutually aiding and congratulating, while society gratefully accepts the results, and adopts the knowledge evolved, as it becomes necessarily and regularly popularised.
Whenever moral science shall be undertaken, and religious science emancipated, such will be the harmonious progress of each, and the christian religion will be anew revealed to men. Meantime, the religious world is in one aspect like an inquisition; in another, like a Babel. The religious world: not by any means the intercourse of all religious persons. Some of the most religious persons are quite out of the religious world; voluntarily retreating from it that they may retain their reverence; or driven from it, because they are faithful to convictions which are prescribed to them only by God, without the sanction of man.
Is it thus that religion should be followed and professed in a democratic republic? Does it carry with it any dispensation from democratic principles? any authority for despotism in this one particular? any denial of human equality? any sanction of human authority over reason and conscience? Is it not rather "the root of all democracy; the highest fact in the Rights of Man?" America has left it to the Old World to fortify Christianity by establishments, and has triumphantly shown that a great nation may be trusted to its religious instincts to provide for its religious wants. In order to the complete following out of her principles, she must leave religious speculation and pursuit of knowledge and peace as open as any other; and beware of making the ascertainments of science an occasion for the oppression of a single individual in fortune, name, or natural inheritance of spiritual liberty.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."Paul the Apostle.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
Paul the Apostle.
"Hands full of hearty labours: pains that payAnd prize themselves—do much that more they may.No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keepCrowned woes awake, as things too wise for sleep:But reverend discipline, religious fear,And soft obedience, find sweet biding here.Silence, and sacred rest, peace and pure joys—Kind loves keep house, lie close, and make no noise.And room enough for monarchs, while none swellsBeyond the limits of contentful cells.The self-remembering soul sweetly recoversHer kindred with the stars: not basely hoversBelow—but meditates th' immortal wayHome to the source of light and intellectual day."Crashaw.
"Hands full of hearty labours: pains that payAnd prize themselves—do much that more they may.No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keepCrowned woes awake, as things too wise for sleep:But reverend discipline, religious fear,And soft obedience, find sweet biding here.Silence, and sacred rest, peace and pure joys—Kind loves keep house, lie close, and make no noise.And room enough for monarchs, while none swellsBeyond the limits of contentful cells.The self-remembering soul sweetly recoversHer kindred with the stars: not basely hoversBelow—but meditates th' immortal wayHome to the source of light and intellectual day."Crashaw.
"Hands full of hearty labours: pains that payAnd prize themselves—do much that more they may.No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keepCrowned woes awake, as things too wise for sleep:But reverend discipline, religious fear,And soft obedience, find sweet biding here.Silence, and sacred rest, peace and pure joys—Kind loves keep house, lie close, and make no noise.And room enough for monarchs, while none swellsBeyond the limits of contentful cells.The self-remembering soul sweetly recoversHer kindred with the stars: not basely hoversBelow—but meditates th' immortal wayHome to the source of light and intellectual day."Crashaw.
"Hands full of hearty labours: pains that pay
And prize themselves—do much that more they may.
No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keep
Crowned woes awake, as things too wise for sleep:
But reverend discipline, religious fear,
And soft obedience, find sweet biding here.
Silence, and sacred rest, peace and pure joys—
Kind loves keep house, lie close, and make no noise.
And room enough for monarchs, while none swells
Beyond the limits of contentful cells.
The self-remembering soul sweetly recovers
Her kindred with the stars: not basely hovers
Below—but meditates th' immortal way
Home to the source of light and intellectual day."
Crashaw.
Society in America is as much in a transition state about religion as France and England are about politics. The people are in advance of the clergy in America, as the English are in advance of such of their political institutions as are in dispute. Discouraging as the aspect of religious profession in America is on a superficial survey, a closer study will satisfy the observer that all will be well; that the most democratic of nations is religious at heart; and that its superstitions and offences against the spirit of Christianity are owing to temporary influences.
In order to ascertain what the spirit of religionreally is in the country, we must not judge by the periodicals. Religious periodicals are almost entirely in the hands of the clergy, who are in no country fair representatives of the religion of the people. These periodicals are, almost without exception, as far as my knowledge of them goes, extremely bad. A very few have some literary and scientific merit; and many advocate with zeal particular methods of charity, and certainly effect a wide and beneficent co-operation for mutual help which could not be otherwise so well secured. But arrogance and uncharitableness, cant, exclusiveness, and an utter absence of sympathy with human interests and affections, generally render this class of publications as distasteful as the corresponding organs of religious bodies in the Old World. They are too little human in their character, from the books of the Sunday School Union to the most important of the religious reviews, to be by any possibility a fair expression of the spiritual state of some millions of persons. The acts of the laity, and especially of those who are least under the influence of the clergy, must be looked to as the only true manifestations.
If religion springs from morals, the religion must be most faulty where the morals are so. The greatest fault in American morals is an excessive regard to opinion. This is the reason of the want of liberality of which unbelievers, and unusual believers, have so much reason to complain. But the spirit of religion is already bursting through sectarian restraints. Many powerful voices are raised, within the churches as well as out of them, and even from a few pulpits, against the mechanical adoption and practice of religion, and in favour of individuality of thought, and the consequent spontaneousness of speech and action. Many indubitable Christians are denouncing cant as strongly asthose whom cant has alienated from Christianity. The dislike of associations for religious objects is spreading fast; and the eyes of multitudes are being opened to the fact that there can be little faith at the bottom of that craving for sympathy which prevents men and women from cheerfully doing their duty to God and their neighbour unless sanctioned by a crowd. Some of the clergy have done away with the forms of admission to their churches which were formerly considered indispensable. There is a visible reaction in the best part of society in favour of any man who stands alone on any point of religious concern: and though such an one has the more regularly drilled churches against him, he is usually cheered by the grasp of some trusty right hand of fellowship.
The eagerness in pursuit of speculative truth is shown by the rapid sale of every kind of heretical work. The clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question, as sorrowfully as the most liberal members of society lament the unlimited circulation of the false morals issued by certain Religious Tract Societies. Both testify to the interest taken by the people in religion. The love of truth is also shown by the outbreak of heresy in all directions. There are schisms among all the more strict of the religious bodies, and large secessions and new formations among those which are bound together by slight forms. There are even a few places to be found where Deists may come among Christians to worship their common Father, without fear of insult to their feelings, and mockery of their convictions.
I know also of one place, at least, and I believe there are now several, where the people of colour are welcome to worship with the whites,—actually intermingled with them, instead of being set apartin a gallery appropriated to them. This is the last possible test of the conviction of human equality entertained by the white worshippers. It is such a test of this, their christian conviction, as no persons of any rank in England are ever called upon to abide. I think it very probable that the course of action which is common in America will be followed in this instance. A battle for a principle is usually fought long, and under discouragement: but the sure fruition is almost instantaneous, when the principle is but once put into action. The people of colour do actually, in one or more religious assemblies, sit among the whites, in token that the principle of human brotherhood is fully admitted. It may be anticipated that the example will spread from church to church—in the rural districts of the north first, and then in the towns;[30]so that the clergy will soon find themselves released from the necessity of veiling, or qualifying, the most essential truth of the gospel, from the pastoral consideration for the passions and prejudices of the white portion of their flocks, which they at present plead in excuse of their compromise.
The noble beneficence of the whole community shows that the spirit of the gospel is in the midst of them, as it respects the condition of the poor, ignorant, and afflicted. Of the generosity of society there can be no question; and if it wereonly accompanied with the strict justice which the same principles of christian charity require; if there were as zealous a regard to the rights of intellect and conscience in all as to the wants and sufferings of the helpless, such a realisation of high morals would be seen as the world has not yet beheld. I have witnessed sights which persuade me that the principle of charity will yet be carried out to its full extent. It gave me pleasure to see the provisions made for every class of unfortunates. It gave me more to see young men and women devoting their evening and Sunday leisure to fostering, in the most benignant manner, the minds of active and trustful children. But nothing gave me so much delight as what was said by a young physician to a young clergyman, on their entering a new building prepared as a place of worship for children, and also as a kind of school: as a place where religion might have its free course among young and free minds. "Now," said the young physician, "here we are, with these children dependent upon us. Never let us defile this place with the smallest act of spiritual tyranny. Watch me, and I will watch you, that we may not lay the weight of a hair upon these little minds. If we impose one single opinion upon them, we bring a curse upon our work. Here, in this one place, let minds be absolutely free." This is the true spirit of reverence. He who spoke those words may be considered, I believe and trust, as the organ of no few, who are aware that reverence is as requisite to the faithful administration of charity, as to the acceptable offering of prayer.
The asceticism which pervades large sections of society in America, testifies to the existence of a strong interest in religion. Its effects are most melancholy; but they exhibit only the perversion of that which is, in itself, a great good.—Theasceticism of America is much like that of every other place. It brings religion down to be ceremonial, constrained, anxious, and altogether divested of its free, generous, and joyous character. It fosters timid selfishness in some; and in others a precise proportion of reckless licentiousness. Its manifestations in Boston are as remarkable as in the strictest of Scotch towns. Youths in Boston, who work hard all the week, desire fresh air and exercise, and a sight of the country, on Sundays. The country must be reached over the long bridges before-mentioned, and the youths must ride to obtain their object. They have been brought up to think it a sin to take a ride on Sundays. Once having yielded, and being under a sense of transgression for a wholly fictitious offence, they rarely stop there.[31]They next join parties to smoke, and perhaps to drink, and so on. If they had but been brought up to know that the Sabbath, like all times and seasons, was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; that their religion is in their state of mind, and not in the arrangement of their day, their Sabbaths would most probably have been spent as innocently as any other day; and the chances would have been much increased of their desiring the means of improving their religiousknowledge, and cherishing their devotional affections, by social worship. I was struck by the fact that at the Jefferson University, at Charlottesville, Virginia, where no fundamental provision is made for worship, where not the slightest authority is exercised over the students with regard to religious observances, there is not only a most regular administration of religion, but the fullest attendance upon it. Every one knows what a burden and snare the public prayers are at our English Universities, where the attendance is compulsory. At Charlottesville, where the matter is left to the inclination of the students, the attendance is punctual, quiet, and absolutely universal.[32]
The ascetic proscription of amusements extends to the clergy throughout the country; and includes the whole of the religious world in New England. As to the clergy, the superstition can scarcely endure long, it is so destitute of all reason. I went to a large party at Philadelphia, with a clergyman and other friends. Dancing presently began. I was asked a question, which implied that my clerical friend had gone home. "There he is," I replied. "O, I concluded that he went away when the dancing began;" said the lady, in a tone which implied that she thought he ought to have gone home. It was observed of this gentleman, that he could not be a religious man, he was seen at so many parties during my visit to his house. No clergyman ever enters the theatre, or touches a card. It is even expected that he should go away when cards are introduced, as from the ball-room. The exclusion from the theatre is of the least consequence, as large portions of society havereasonable doubts about the encouragement of an amusement which does seem to be vitiated there, almost to the last degree. The Americans have little dramatic taste: and the spirit of puritanism still rises up in such fierce opposition to the stage, as to forbid the hope that this grand means of intellectual exercise will ever be made the instrument of moral good to society there that it might be made: and the proscribed race of dramatic artists is, in talent and in morals, just what a proscribed and depressed class might be expected to be. The attempt to raise their condition and their art has been strenuously made by the manager of the Boston theatre, who has sternly purified his establishment, excluding from his stage everything that could well give offence even to Boston prudery. But it is in vain. The uncongeniality is too great: and those who respect dramatic entertainments the most highly, will be the most anxious that the American theatres should be closed. I even know of more families than one, unconnected with clergy, and not making any strict religious profession, where Shakspeare is hidden, for prudish reasons. I need not add, that among such persons there is not the remotest comprehension of what the drama is. If a reader of Shakspeare occurs, here and there, it usually turns out that he considers the plays as collections of passages, descriptive, didactic, &c. &c. Such being the state of things, it is no matter of surprise and regret that the clergy, among others, abstain from the theatre. But, as to the dancing,—either dancing is innocent, or it is not. If not, nobody should dance: if innocent, the clergy should dance, like others, as they have the same kind of bodies to be animated, and of minds to be exhilarated. Once admit any distinction on account of their office, and there is no stopping short, in reason, of the celibacy of the clergy, and theother gloomy superstitions by which the free and genial spirit of Christianity has been grieved.
This ascetic practice of taking care of one another's morals has gone to such a length in Boston, as to excite the frequent satire of some of its wisest citizens. This indicates that it will be broken through. When there was talk of attempting to set up the Italian opera there, a gentleman observed that it would never do: people would be afraid of the very name. "O!" said another, "call it Lectures on Music, with illustrations, and everybody will come."
Lectures abound in Boston: and I am glad of it; at least in the interval before the opening of the public amusements which will certainly be required, sooner or later. These lectures may not be of any great use in conveying science and literature: lectures can seldom do more than actuate to study at home. But in this case, they probably obviate meetings for religious excitement, which are more hurtful than lectures are beneficial. The spiritual dissipations indulged in by the religious world, wherever asceticism prevails, are more injurious to sound morals than any public amusements, as conducted in modern times, have ever been proved to be. It is questionable whether even gross licentiousness is not at least equally encouraged by the excitement of passionate religious emotions, separate from action: and it is certain that rank spiritual vices, pride, selfishness, tyranny, and superstition, spring up luxuriantly in the hotbeds of religious meetings. The odiousness of spiritual vices is apt to be lost sight of in the horror of sensual transgressions. If a pure intelligence, however, had to decide between the two, he would probably point out that the vices which arise from the frailty of nature are less desperate and less revolting than those which are mainly factitious, andwhich arise from a perversion of man's highest relation. It is difficult to decide which set of vices (if indeed the line can be drawn between them) spreads the most extensive misery, and most completely ruins the unhappy subjects of them; but it is certain that the sympathies of unsophisticated minds turn more readily to the publicans and sinners, than to the pharisees of society: and they have high authority for so doing.
Still, the asceticism shows that a strong religious feeling, a strong sense of religious duty exists, which has only to be enlarged and enlightened. A most liberal-minded clergyman, a man as democratic in his religion, and as genial in his charity, as any layman in the land, remarked to me one day on the existence of this strong religious sensibility in the children of the Pilgrims, and asked me what I thought should be done to cherish and enlarge it, we having been alarming each other with the fear that it would be exasperated by the prevalent superstition, and become transmuted, in the next generation, to something very unlike religious sensibility. We proposed great changes in domestic and social habits: less formal religious observance in families, and more genial interest in the intellectual provinces of religion: more rational promotion of health, by living according to the laws of nature, which ordain bodily exercise and mental refreshment. We proposed that new temptations to walking, driving, boating, &c. should be prepared, and the delights of natural scenery laid open much more freely than they are: that social amusements of every kind should be encouraged, and all religious restraints upon speech and action removed: in short, that spontaneousness should be reverenced and approved above all things, whatever form it may take. Of course, this can only be done by those who do approve and reverence spontaneousness: but I amconfident that there are enough of them, in the very heart of the most ascetic society in America, to make it unreasonable that they should any longer succumb to the priests and devotees of the community.
Symptoms of the breaking out of the true genial spirit of liberty were continually delighting me. A Unitarian clergyman, complaining of the superstition of the body to which he belonged, while they were perpetually referring to their comparative freedom, observed, "We are so bent on standing fast in our liberty, that we don't get on." Another remarked upon an eulogy bestowed on some one as a man and a Christian: "as if," said the speaker, "the Christian were the climax! as if it were not much more to be a man than a Christian!"
The way in which religion is made an occupation by women, testifies not only to the vacuity which must exist when such a mistake is fallen into, but to the vigour with which the religious sentiment would probably be carried into the great objects and occupations of life, if such were permitted. I was perpetually struck with this when I saw women braving hurricane, frost, and snow, to flit from preaching to preaching; and laying out the whole day among visits for prayer and religious excitement, among the poor and the sick. I was struck with this when I saw them labouring at their New Testament, reading superstitiously a daily portion of that which was already too familiar to the ear to leave any genuine and lasting impression, thus read. Extraordinary instances met my knowledge of both clergymen and ladies making the grossest mistakes about conspicuous facts of the gospel history, while reading it in daily portions for ever. It is not surprising that such a method of perusal should obviate all real knowledge of the book: but it is astonishing that those who feel itto be so should not change their methods, and begin at length to learn that which they have all their lives been vainly trusting that they knew.
The wife of a member of Congress, a conscientious and religious woman, judges of persons by one rule,—whether they are "pious." I could never learn how she applied this; nor what she comprehended under her phrase. She told me that she wished her husband to leave Congress. He was no longer a young man, and it was time he was thinking of saving his soul. She could not, after long conversation on this subject, realise the idea that religion is not an affair of occupation and circumstance, but of principle and temper; and that, as there is no more important duty than that of a member of Congress, there is no situation in which a man can attain a higher religious elevation, if the spirit be in him.
The morality and religion of the people of the United States have suffered much by their being, especially in New England, an ostensibly religious community. There will be less that is ostensible and more that is genuine, as they grow older. They are finding that it is the possession of the spirit, and not the profession of the form, which makes societies as well as individuals religious. All they have to do is to assert their birth-right of liberty; to be free and natural. They need have no fear of licence and irreligion. The spirit of their forefathers is strong in them: and, if it were not, the spirit of Humanity is in them; the very sanctum of religion. The idea of duty (perverted or unperverted) is before them in all their lives; and the love of their neighbour is in all their hearts. As surely then as they live and love, they will be religious. What they have to look to is that their religion be free and pure.