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Class        JJS'S' 


I  KM  IK 


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I'K'I.SI   \  : 


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MISCELLANIES 


BY 


WILLIAM  R.  WILLIAMS. 


SECOND  EDITION 


NEW  YORK: 
EDWARD    H.   FLETCHER, 

141  NASSAU   STREET. 
1851. 


Etfs 


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Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1850, 

BY  EDWARD  H.  FLETCHER, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  for  the  Southern  District 
of  New  York. 


aift 

Beri  ram  Smith 
Mar  -934 


CO 


5 


PREFACE. 


The  Discourses,  Reviews,  and  Sermons,  composing  the  present  volume, 
have,  several  of  them,  been  already  issued  separately ;  and  of  the  opening 
article,  the  present  is  the  third  edition ;  others  of  them  appear  now  for  the 
first  time.  It  was  thought,  by  some  of  the  author's  friends,  that  the  book 
might  find  purchasers  ;  and  the  writer  will  have  been  recompensed,  should 
it  please  "  The  Great  Taskmaster"  to  give  to  the  desultory  pages  aught  of 
usefulness,  in  their  influence  on  the  minds  of  any  of  their  readers.  For  the 
Bake  of  its  publisher,  who  is  also  the  proprietor  of  the  copyright,  the  author 
would  hope  for  the  volume  sufficient  currency  to  save  him  from  loss  in  the 
venture  he  has  made.  W.  R.  W. 

New  York,  Nov.  1,  1849. 


CONTENTS. 


Page 
The  Conservative  Principle,    -------------      1 

Appendix  to  the  Conservative  Principle,     -*------    78 

Ministerial  Responsibility  ---------••••-91 

The  Prayers  of  the  Church  needed  for  her  rising  Ministry,     111 

The  Church  the  Home  and  Hope  of  the  Free,    ------  129 

The  Strong  Staff  and  the  Beautiful  Rod,      -------  143 

The  Jesuits  as  a  Missionary  Order,    ----------  i69 

The  Life  and  Times  of  Baxter,   ------------  194 

Christ  a  Home  Missionary,      -------------  220 

Publications  of  the  American  Tract  Society,      ------  241 

Increase  of  Faith  necessary  to  the  Success  of  Christian 

Missions,    ------------     -------  261 

The  Preaching  of  another  Gospel  accursed,    -------  283 

The  Sea  giving  up  its  Dead,   -------------  297 

The  Lessons  of  Calamity,    --------------  311 

The  Church,  a  School  for  Heaven,      ----------  337 

The  Prayer  of  the  Church  against  those  delighting  in  War,    367 

Appendix— The  Cagots  of  France, 383 


THE 

CONSERVATIVE  PRINCIPLE 

IN    OUR    LITERATURE. 

AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  LITERARY  SOCIETIES  OF  THE  HAM- 
ILTON LITERARY  AND  THEOLOGICAL  INSTITUTION,  MADISON  COUNTY,  N.  Y., 
ON   TUESDAY   EVENING,    JUNE    13,    1843. 


TO 

THE  REV.  JOHN  8.  MAGIMIS,  D.D., 

PROFESSOR  OF  BIBLICAL  THEOLOGY 
IN  THE 

HAMILTON   LITERARY   AND   THEOLOGICAL   INSTITUTION, 

IS,  AS  A  SLIGHT  MARK  OF  HIGH  ESTEEM  AND  AFFECTION, 

INSCRIBED 

BY   HIS   FRIEND. 

W.  R.  W. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION  OF 
THE    "CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE,"  &c. 

Other  engagements,  which  prevented  the  author  from  preparing  this  Address  for 
the  press,  and  for  a  time  banished  it  entirely  from  his  mind,  must  be,  in  part,  his  apol- 
ogy with  the  Societies  who  requested  its  publication,  for  its  late  appearance.  Yet  what 
of  truth  it  may  contain  is  not  less  true  now  than  at  the  time  of  its  delivery.  Some 
additions  made  at  the  commencement  of  the  Address,  with  regard  to  the  proper  defi- 
nition of  literature,  and  the  permanent  influence  which  may  belong  even  to  its  more 
transitory  productions,  will,  he  trusts,  not  be  found  alien  to  the  theme.  But  the  chief 
cause  of  delay  has  been  the  writer's  consciousness  how  far  his  treatment  of  the  subject 
fell  below  the  intrinsic  importance  of  the  topic.  This  consciousness,  had  he  not  bound 
himself  to  publish,  would  have  prevented  his  appearance  even  at  this  late  hour. 

To  prevent  misconstruction  he  would  add  the  remark,  that  a  full  review  of  our 
national  literature  in  all  its  aspects,  the  more  encouraging  as  well  as  the  more  gloomy^ 
was  no  part  of  his  design.  It  was  his  task  to  point  out  certain  of  the  perils,  and  to 
indicate  the  sufficient  and  sole  remedy. 


NOTE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 

This  Address,  originally  delivered  before  the  Adelphian  and  iEonian  Societies  of 
Hamilton  Literary  and  Theological  Institution,  has,  from  its  theme,  found  more  ac- 
ceptance than  the  author  had  at  all  anticipated.  In  preparing  a  second  edition,  he  has 
subjected  the  whole  to  such  hasty  revision  as  his  other  engagements  allowed,  and 
made  some  other  additions  both  to  the  text  and  notes. 

New  York,  1844. 


NOTE  TO  THE  THIRD  EDITION. 

The  present  edition  has  some  slight  revisions,  and  considerable  additions  have  been 
made  to  some  of  the  notes ;  but  these  additions  are,  from  want  of  leisure,  less  exten- 
sive than  the  writer  had  wished  to  make  them. 

New  York,  November,  1849. 


THE   CONSERVATIVE   PRINCIPLE  IN   OUR 
LITERATURE. 

Gentlemen  : — In  acceding  to  the  request  with  which 
you  have  honored  me,  and  which  brings  me  at  this  time 
before  you,  I  have  supposed  that  you  expected  it  of  the 
speaker  to  present  some  theme  relating  to  the  common- 
wealth of  literature  ;  that  commonwealth  in  which  every 
scholar  and  every  Christian  feels  naturally  so  strong  an 
interest.  The  studies  in  which  you  have  here  engaged,  and 
which  in  the  case  of  some  of  you  are  soon  to  terminate, 
have  taught  you  the  value  of  sound  learning  to  yourselves 
and  its  power  over  others.  That  love  of  country,  which  in 
the  bosoms  of  the  young  burns  with  a  flame  of  more  than 
ordinary  purity  and  intensity,  gives  you  an  additional  interest 
in  the  cause  of  letters  ;  for  as  you  well  know,  the  literature 
of  the  nation  must  exercise  a  powerful  influence  on  the 
national  destiny.  Acting  as  it  does  not  merely  on  the 
schools,  but  also  on  the  homes  of  a  land,  it  must  from  those 
fountains  send  out  its  waters  of  healing  or  of  bitterness,  of. 
blessing  or  of  strife,  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  our 
goodly  land.  You  know  that  it  is  not  mere  physical  advan- 
tages that  have  gained  or  that  can  retain  for  our  country  its 
political  privileges.  You  have  seen  how  the  physical  con- 
dition of  a  people  may  remain  unchanged,  whilst  the  moral 
condition  of  a  people  is  deteriorating  rapidly  and  fatally. 
You  remember  that  the  same  sun  shone  on  the  same  Mara- 
thon, when  it  was  the  heritage  and  the  battle-ground  of 
freemen  ;  and  when,  in  later  and  more  disastrous  days,  it 
re-echoed  to  the  footsteps  of  the  Greek  bondsman  and  his 
Ottoman  oppressor.  You  look  to  literature,  and  other 
moral  causes,  then,  as  determining  to  some  extent  the  future 
history  of  our  land.  You  are  aware  that  literature  is  not 
always  of  a  healthy  character,  nor  does  it  in  all  ages  exercise 
a  conservative  influence.      It  is  like  the  vegetation  of  our 


4  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

earth,  of  varied  nature.  Much  of  it  is  the  waving  harvest 
that  fills  our  garners  and  piles  our  boards  with  plenty;  and, 
alas,  much  of  it  has  been,  like  the  rank  ivy,  hastening  the 
decay  it  serves  to  hide,  and  crumbling  into  speedier  ruin  the 
edifice  it  seems  to  adorn  and  beautify.  As  lovers  of  your 
country,  you  must  therefore  feel  an  eager  anxiety  for  the 
moral  character  of  the  literature  that  country  is  to  cherish. 
And  of  your  number  most  are  looking  forward  to  the  work 
of  the  Christian  ministry  ;  and,  from  the  past  history  of  the 
world,  you  have  learned  in  what  mode  the  progress  of  liter- 
ature has  acted  upon  that  of  the  gospel,  and  been,  in  its  turn, 
acted  upon  ;  and  to  what  an  extent  the  pulpit  and  the  press 
have  sometimes  been  found  in  friendly  alliance,  and  at  others 
enlisted  in  fearful  antagonism.  How  shall  it  be  in  your 
times  ? 

By  the  literature  of  a  land,  we  mean,  it  is  here  perhaps 
the  place  to  say,  more  than  the  mere  issues  from  the  press 
of  a  nation.  The  term  is  generally  applied  to  describe  all 
the  knowledge,  feelings,  and  opinions  of  a  people  as  far  as 
they  are  reduced  to  writing,  or  published  abroad  by  the  art 
of  printing.  But  it  may  well  be  questioned  whether  the 
term  does  not  in  justice  require  a  wider  application.  Lan- 
guage, as  soon  as  it  is  made  the  subject  of  culture,  seems  to 
give  birth  to  literature.  And  such  culture  may  exist  where 
the  use  of  the  press  and  even  of  the  pen  are  as  yet  unknown. 
Savage  tribes  are  found  having  their  poetry  ere  they  have 
acquired  the  art  of  writing.  Such  were  the  Tonga  Islanders, 
as  Mariner  found  them.  The  melody  and  rhythm  of  their 
dialect  may  have  been  partially  developed,  and  their  bards, 
their  musicians,  and  their  orators  have  become  distinguished, 
ere  the  language  has  had  its  grammarians  or  its  historians. 
The  nation  has  thus,  in  some  sort,  its  literature,  ere  its 
Cadmus  has  appeared  to  give  it  an  alphabet.  The  old 
Gaelic  poetry,  on  which  Macpherson  founded  his  Ossianic 
forgeries,  was  a  part  of  the  nation's  literature  while  yet  un- 
written. And  if,  as  some  scholars  have  supposed,  the  poems 
of  Homer  were,  in  the  times  of  the  author,  preserved  by 
memory  and  not  by  writing,  it  would  be  idle  to  deny,  that, 
even  in  that  unwritten  state,  and  whilst  guarded  only  in  the 
recollection  of  travelling  minstrels,  they  were  a  glorious  and 
influential  literature  to  the  Greek  people,  a  KTri^a  e$  aei  to 
them,  and  to  the  civilization  of  Europe  for  all  ensuing  times. 
And  even  in  nations  having  the  use  of  letters,  there  is  much 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  5 

never  written  that  yet,  in  strictness,  must  be  regarded  as 
forming  part  of  the  literature  of  the  people.  The  unre- 
corded intercourse  of  a  community,  neither  transcribed  by 
the  pen,  nor  multiplied  by  the  press,  may  bear  no  inconsid- 
erable part  in  the  literary  culture  of  that  people,  and  form 
no  trivial  portion  of  their  literary  products.  Of  the  elo- 
quence of  Curran  and  Sheridan  much  was  never  reported, 
or  reported  most  imperfectly  ;  and  yet  in  its  effects  upon 
the  immediate  hearers  in  courts  of  justice  or  houses  of  Par- 
liament, deserved  the  name  and  honors  of  literature,  alike 
irom  the  literary  culture  it  displayed  on  the  part  of  the 
speaker,  and  from  the  literary  taste  it  formed  and  cherished, 
on  the  part  of  the  auditory.  Some  of  the  most  distinguished 
among  the*living  scholars  of  France  were,  whilst  professors 
in  her  colleges,  eminent  for  the  eloquence  of  their  unwritten 
lectures.  Were  not  even  such  of  those  lectures  of  Guizot, 
Villemain,  and  Cousin  as  never  reached  the  press,  yet  really 
and  most  effectively  contributions  to  the  literature  of  the 
land  ?  The  departed  Schleiermacher  of  Germany  had  the 
reputation  of  being  among  the  profoundest  thinkers  and  the 
most  eloquent  preachers  of  his  time.  His  sermons,  it  is 
said,  were  never  written  ;  nor  were  most  of  the  pulpit  dis- 
courses of  a  kindred  spirit,  Robert  Hall,  of  England.  Al- 
though many  have  been  published,  more  must  have  perished. 
Yet  were  not  those,  which  the  living  voice  but  published  to 
a  single  congregation,  truly  a  portion  of  German  and  British 
literature,  as  well  as  those  which  the  press  published  to  the 
entire  nation,  and  preserved  to  succeeding  times  1  Thus  the 
arguments  of  the  bar,  or  the  appeals  of  the  pulpit,  the  float- 
ing proverbs,  or  the  current  legends  of  the  nation,  and  the 
ballads,  and  even  the  jests,  which  no  antiquary  may  as  yet 
have  secured  aud  written  down,  are  expressions  of  the  pop- 
ular mind,  which  though  cast  only  upon  the  ear,  and  stored 
only  in  the  memory,  instead  of  receiving  the  surer  guardian- 
ship of  the  written  page,  may,  writh  some  show  of  reason, 
be  claimed  as  forming  no  small  and  no  uninfluential  part 
of  the  popular  literature.  In  this  sense,  the  literature  of  a 
land  embraces  the  whole  literary  intercourse  of  its  people, 
whether  that  intercourse  be  oral  or  written.  It  is  the  expo- 
nent of  the  national  intellect,  and  the  utterance  of  the  pop- 
ular passions.  The  term  thus  viewed,  comprises  all  the 
intellectual  products  of  a  nation,  from  the  encyclopedia  to 
the  newspaper  ;  from  the  body  of  divinity  to  the  primer  or 


6  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

the  nursery  rhyme — the  epic  poem  and  the  Sunday  School 
hymn — the  sermon  and  the  epigram — the  essay  and  the 
sonnet — the  oration  and  the  street  hallad — the  jest  or  the 
bye-word — all  that  represents,  awakens,  and  colors  the  pop- 
ular mind — all  that  interprets,  by  the  use  of  words,  the 
nation  to  themselves,  or  to  other  nations  of  the  earth. 

This  literature  not  only  displays  the  moral  and  intellectual 
advancement  of  the  people  at  the  time  of  its  production, 
but  it  exercises,  of  necessity,  a  powerful  influence  in  hasten- 
ing or  in  checking  that  advancement.  It  is  the  Nilometer 
on  whose  graded  scale  we  read  not  merely  the  height  to 
which  the  rushing  stream  of  the  nation's  intellect  has  risen, 
or  the  degree  to  which  it  has  sunk,  but  also  the  character 
and  extent  of  the  harvests  yet  to  be  reaped  in  coming 
months  along  the  whole  course  of  those  waters.  Thus  it 
registers  not  merely  the  inundations  of  the  present  time,  but 
presages  as  well  the  plenty  or  sterility  of  the  yet  distant 
future.  The  authors  of  a  nation's  literary  products  are  its 
teachers — in  truth  or  in  error ;  and  leave  behind  their  im- 
print and  their  memorial  in  the  virtues  or  vices  of  all  those 
whom  their  labors  may  have  reached.  The  errand  of  all 
language  is  to  create  sympathy ;  to  waft  from  one  human 
bosom  the  feelings  that  stir  it,  that  they  may  awaken  a  cor- 
responding response  in  other  hearts.  We  are  therefore  held 
responsible  for  our  words  because  they  affect  the  happiness 
and  virtue  of  others.  The  word  that  drops  from  our  lips 
takes  its  irrevocable  flight,  and  leaves  behind  its  indelible 
imprint.  It  is,  in  the  stern  language  of  the  apostle,  in  the 
case  of  some,  a  flame  "  set  on  fire  of  hell ;"  and  consuming 
wherever  it  alights,  it  "  setteth  on  fire  the  course  of  nature  ;" 
as,  in  the  happier  case  of  others,  that  word  is  a  message  of 
salvation,  "  ministering  grace  unto  the  hearers."  Reason 
and  Scripture  alike  make  it  idle  to  deny  the  power  of  speech 
over  social  order  and  morality  ;  and  literature  is  but  speech 
under  the  influence  of  art  and  talent.  And  a  wrritten  litera- 
ture is  but  speech  put  into  a  more  orderly  and  enduring  form 
than  it  usually  wears.  We  know  that  God  and  man  hold 
each  of  us  responsible  for  the  utterance  of  the  heart  by  the 
lips.  Human  tribunals  punish  the  slanderer  because  his 
words  affect  the  peace  of  society;  and  the  Last  Day  exacts 
its  reckoning  for  "  every  idle  word,"  because  that  word, 
however  lightly  uttered,  was  the  utterance  of  a  soul,  and 
went  out  to  influence,  for  good  or  for  evil,  the  souls  of  others. 


IN     OUR    LITERATURE.  7 

And  if  the  winged  words,  heedless  and  unpremeditated, 
of  a  man's  lips  are  thus  influential,  and  enter  into  the  matter 
of  his  final  account,  it  cannot  be  supposed  that  these  words, 
when  fixed  by  the  art  of  writing,  or  scattered  by  the  art  of 
printing,  either  have  less  power  over  human  society,  or  are 
in  the  eye  of  heaven  clothed  with  less  solemn  responsibili- 
ties. A  written  literature  embalms  the  perishable,  arrests 
the  progress  of  decay,  and  gives  to  our  words  a  longer  life 
and  a  wider  scope  of  influence.  Such  words,  so  preserved 
and  so  diffused,  are  the  results,  too,  of  more  than  ordinary 
deliberation.  If  malicious,  their  malice  is  malice  prepense. 
If  foolish,  their  folly  is  studied,  and  obstinate,  and  shame- 
less. The  babbler  sins  in  the  ears  of  a  few  friends,  and  in 
the  privacy  of  home.  The  frivolous  or  vicious  write!  sins, 
as  on  a  wider  theatre,  and  before  the  eyes  of  thousands, 
while  the  echoes  of  the  press  waft  his  words  to  distant  lands 
and  later  times.  And  because  much  of  this  literature  may 
be  hasty  and  heedless,  ludicrous  in  tone,  and  careless  in 
style,  soon  to  evaporate  and  disappear,  like  the  froth  on 
some  hurried  stream,  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  it  is  there- 
fore of  no  practical  influence.  The  English  stage,  in  the 
days  of  the  last  two  Stuarts,  was  of  a  reckless  character ; — 
the  child  of  mere  whim,  the  progeny  of  impulse  and  license. 
Many  of  its  productions  were  alike  regardless  of  all  moral 
and  literary  rules — the  light-hearted  utterance  of  a  depraved 
generation  :  full  of  merry  falsehoods  and  jesting  blasphemy, 
fantastic  and  barbarous  in  style,  as  well  as  irreligious  in  their 
spirit.  Yet  he  must  be  a  careless  reader  of  history,  who, 
because  of  its  reckless,  trivial,  and  profligate  character, 
assigns  to  it  but  a  limited  influence.  It  did,  in  fact,  gre- 
viously  aggravate  the  national  wickedness  whence  it  sprung. 

The  trivial  and  the  ephemeral  as  they  float  by,  in  glittering 
bubbles,  to  the  dull  waters  of  oblivion,  may  yet  work  irre- 
parable and  enduring  mischief  ere  their  brief  career  ends  ; 
and  the  result  may  continue,  vast  and  permanent,  when  the 
fleeting  causes  which  operated  have  long  gone  by.  Who 
now  reads  Eikon  Basilike,  the  forgery  of  Bishop  Gauden, 
ascribed  to  the  beheaded  Charles  I.  ?  Yet  that  counterfeited 
manual  of  devotion  is  thought  by  some  to  have  done  much 
in  bringing  back  the  house  of  Stuart  to  the  English  throne.* 

*  "  Many  have  not  scrupled  to  ascribe  to  that  book  the  subsequent  resto- 
ration of  the  royal  family.  Milton  compares  its  effects  to  those  which  were 
wrought  on  the  tumultuous  Romans  by  Antony's  reading  to  them  the  will 


8  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

Who  in  this  age  knows  the  words  of  Lillibullero  ?#  Yet  the 
author  of  that  street  ballad,  now  forgotten,  boasted  of  hav- 
ing rhymed,  by  his  song,  the  Stuarts  out  of  their  kingdom. 
Thus  a  forged  prayer-book  aided  to  restore  a  dynasty,  as  the 
ragged  rhymes  of  a  street  song  helped  to  overturn  it.  We 
err  grievously,  therefore,  if  we  suppose  that  the  frivolous  is 
necessarily  uninfluential,  and  that  when  the  word  passes,  its 
effects  also  pass  with  it.  According  to  Eastern  belief,  the 
plague  that  wastes  a  city  may  be  communicated  by  the  gift 
of  a  glove  or  a  riband.  The  spark  struck  from  the  iron 
heel  of  the  laborer  may  have  disappeared  ere  the  eye  could 
mark  its  transient  lustre,  yet  ere  it  expired  have  fired  the 
train  which  explodes  a  magazine,  lays  a  town  in  ruins,  and 
spreads  around  a  wide  circuit  alarm  and  lamentation,  be- 
reavement and  death.  Trifles  may  have  no  trivial  influence. 
What  is  called  the  lighter  literature  of  the  age  may  be  even 
thus  evanescent,  yet  not  inefficacious.  By  its  wide  and  rapid 
circulation  it  may  act  more  powerfully  on  society  than  do 
graver  and  abler  treatises,  and  its  authors,  if  unprincipled, 
may  thus  deserve  but  too  well  the  title  which  the  indignant 
Nicole  gave  to  the  comparatively  decorous  dramatists  and 
romance  writers  of  France,  in  his  own  time  ;  a  title  which 
his  pupil  Racine  at  first  so  warmly  resented,  that  of  "public 
poisoners." 

Of  literature,  therefore,  thus  understood,  thus  wide  in  its 
range  and  various  in  its  products,  thus  influential  even  where 
the  most  careless,  and  thus  clothed  with  most  solemn  re- 
sponsibilities because  of  its  influence,  it  is  our  purpose  now 
to  speak. 

You  perceive,  gentlemen,  that  amongst  ourselves,  as  a 
people,  literature  is  subject  to  certain  peculiar  influences, 
perhaps  nowhere  else  found  in  the  same  combination,  or 
operating  to  the  same  extent  as  in  our  own  land.  We  are  a 
young  nation,  inhabiting,  and  called  to  subdue,  a  wide  terri- 
tory. Youth  is  the  season  of  hope,  enterprise,  and  energy 
- — and  it  is  so  to  a  nation  as  well  as  an  individual.     Our 

of  Caesar.  The  Eikon  passed  through  fifty  editions  in  a  twelvemonth." — 
Hume. 

*  "It  may  not  be  unworthy  of  notice,  that  a  merry  ballad,  called  Lillibul- 
lero, being  at  that  time  published,  in  derision  of  the  papists  and  the  Irish,  it 
was  greedily  received  by  the  people,  and  was  sung  by  all  ranks  of  men,  even 
by  the  King's  army,  who  were  strongly  seized  with  the  national  spirit.  This 
incident  both  discovered,  and  served  to  increase  the  general  discontent  of 
the  kingdom." — Hume. 


IN     OUR     LITERATURE.  9 

literature  is  likely,  therefore,  to  be  ardent,  original,  and  at 
times  perhaps  boastful.  They  are  the  excellences  and  the 
foibles  of  youth.  We  entered,  as  by  right  of  inheritance, 
and  in  consequence  of  our  community  of  language,  upon 
the  possession  of  the  rich  and  ancient  literature  of  Britain, 
at  the  very  outset  of  our  national  career.  As  a  people  we 
enjoy,  again,  that  freedom  which  has  ever  been  the  indul- 
gent nurse  of  talent  in  all  times  and  in  all  lands.  The  peo- 
ple are  here  the  kings.  And  whilst  some  of  our  sovereigns 
are  toiling  in  the  field,  others  are  speaking  through  the  press. 
Our  authors  are  all  royal  by  political  right,  if  not  by  the 
birthright  of  genius.  Providence  has  blessed  us  with  the 
wide  diffusion  of  education,  and  the  school  travels,  in  many 
regions  of  our  land,  as  it  were,  to  every  man's  door.  It  is 
not  here,  if  it  may  elsewhere  be  the  case,  that  the  neglected 
children  of  genius  can  complain  that  "  chill  penury  repressed 
their  noble  rage."  In  addition  to  the  advantages  of  the 
common  school,  our  writers,  publishers,  and  instructors,  are 
sedulously  preparing  literature  for  the  use  of  the  masses. 
The  popular  lecturer  is  discussing  themes  of  grave  interest ; 
while  the  cheap  periodical  press  is  snowing  over  the  whole 
face  of  our  land  its  thick  and  incessant  storm  of  knowledge. 
This  knowledge,  it  is  true,  is  not  all  of  the  most  valuable 
kind.  The  wonders  of  steam  are  dragging  the  remoter  por- 
tions of  our  union  daily  into  closer  contact,  whilst  a  free  emi- 
gration is  bringing  us  the  denizens  of  other  lands,  and  the 
men  of  other  tongues,  until  the  whole  world  appears  about 
to  be  made  neighbors  and  kinsmen  to  America  ;  and  the 
nation  seems  daily  melting  into  a  new  and  strange  amalgam, 
in  consequence  of  the  addition  of  foreign  materials  from  with- 
out, to  the  heterogeneous  mass  already  found  fusing  within 
our  own  country. 

All  these  causes  are  operating,  and  must  operate  long  and 
steadily,  upon  the  character  of  American  literature.  It  be- 
comes an  important  inquiry  then,  what  moral  shape  this  lit- 
erature is  assuming  under  these  plastic  influences.  You 
ask,  as  change  succeeds  change,  and  as  one  omen  of  moral 
progress,  or  social  revolution,  follows  close  upon  another  : 
"  Watchman,  what  of  the  night  ?"  And  gazing  into  the 
deep  darkness  of  the  future,  you  would  fain  read  what  are 
the  coming  fortunes  of  our  people  and  their  literature.  Allow 
me  then  to  dwell  upon  some  of  the  evils  that  endanger  our 
rising  literature,  and  threaten  to  suffuse  the  bloom  of  its 
3 


10  CONSERVATIVE     PRINCIPLE 

youth  with  their  fatal  virus.  I  would  next  bring  before  you 
the  remedy  /which  as  scholars,  patriots,  and  Christians,  we 
are  bound  to  apply  to  these  evils,  and  to  which  we  must  look 
as  our  preservative  against  the  approaching  danger. 

Evils  to  be  found'  besetting  and  perilling  American  litera- 
ture, and  the  remedy  of  those  evils,  will  afford  our  present 
theme.  I  may  seem  to  dwell  for  a  time,  at  least,  upon  the 
darker  shades  of  a  picture,  that  may,  I  fear,  appear  to  some 
of  my  respected  hearers,  overcharged  in  its  gloom.  I  must 
also  from  the  nature  of  the  subject  enter  into  some  details, 
that  will,  I  must  expect,  severely  tax  the  patience  of  all  who 
are  listening.  I  can  only  cast  myself  upon  your  indulgence  ; 
find  an  apology  as  to  the  length  of  some  statements,  and  the 
denser  shade  cast  by  others,  in  the  wide  and  varied  nature 
of  the  subject,  and  its  mingled  difficulty,  delicacy,  and  im- 
portance ;  asking  the  aid  of  Him  whose  blessing  can  never 
fail  those  that  trust  in  Him,  the  author  of  all  knowledge,  and 
the  final  arbiter  who  will  bring  into  judgment  all  our  employ- 
ments, whether  literary  or  practical,  social  or  solitary. 

We  would  then  dwell  for  a  time,  on  some  of  the  dangers 
that  threaten  the  rising  literature  of  our  land.  If  the  fore- 
ground of  the  landscape  be  dark,  we  trust  to  show  in  the 
distance  the  sure  and  sufficient  remedy  of  these  dangers  ; 
and  though  night  be  spread  on  the  summits  of  the  nearer 
and  lower  mountains,  we  see  glittering  on  the  crest  of  the 
remoter  and  loftier  heights  beyond,  the  Star  of  Hope,  that 
portends  the  coming  day,  and  under  the  edge  of  the  darkest 
cloud  we  seem  to  discern  already  the  gleams  of  the  approach- 
ing sun.  Our  country  may  suffer  and  struggle,  but  we  trust 
it  is  not  the  purpose  of  Him  who  has  so  signally  blest  and 
so  long  defended  us,  that  she  should  suffer  long,  or  sink  far, 
much  less  sink  finally  and  for  ever. 

First  then  among  the  evil  tendencies  that  beset  our  youth- 
ful literature,  and  are  likely  to  thwart  and  mar  its  progress, 
we  would  name,  the  mechanical  and  utilitarian  spirit  of  the 
times.  We  are  as  a  nation  eminently  practical  in  our  char- 
acter. It  is  well  that  we  should  be  so.  But  this  trait  in  oui 
national  feelings  and  manners  has  its  excesses  and  its  con 
sequent  perils.  Placed  in  a  country  where  labor  and  integ- 
rity soon  acquire  wealth,  the  love  of  wealth  has  become  a 
passion  with  multitudes.  The  lust  of  gain  seems  at  times  a 
national  sin  easily  besetting  all  classes  of  society  amongst  us. 
Fierce  speculations  at  certain  intervals  of  years  engross  the 


IN     OUR     LITERATURE.  11 

hearts  of  the  community,  and  a  contagious  frenzy  sends  men 
from  all  walks  of  life  and  all  occupations  into  the  field  of 
traffic.  Fortunes  are  rapidly  made  and  as  rapidly  lost.  The 
nation  seems  to  be  lifted  up  as  on  a  rushing  tide  of  hope  and 
prosperity.  It  subsides  as  rapidly  as  it  had  risen  ;  and  on 
every  side  are  seen  strewn  the  wrecks  of  fortune,  credit, 
character,  and  principle.  All  this  affects  our  literature. 
We  are  in  the  influential  classes,  a  matter-of-fact  and  money- 
getting  race.  This  tends,  in  the  minds  of  many,  to  create  a 
distaste  for  all  truth  that  is  not  at  once  convertible  into 
wealth,  and  its  value  to  be  calculated  in  current  coin.  In 
the  clank  and  din  of  our  never-tiring  machinery,  the  voice 
of  wisdom  is  often  drowned,  and  the  most  momentous  and 
stirring  truths  are  little  esteemed  because  they  cannot  be 
rated  in  the  Price  Current  or  sold  on  the  Exchange.  We 
are  impatient  to  see  the  material  results  of  every  truth,  and 
to  have  its  profits  told  upon  our  fingers,  or  pressed  into  our 
palms.  So,  on  the  other  hand,  if  any  principle,  plan,  or  ex- 
pedient, be  it  true  or  be  it  false,  will  effect  our  purpose,  pro-  ' 
duce  a  needful  impression,  and  secure  an  end  that  we  deem 
desirable,  we  are  prone  to  think  it  allowable  because  it  is 
effective.  We  idolize  effect.  And  a  philosophy  of  expedi- 
ency thus  springs  up,  which  sacrifices  everything  to  imme- 
diate effects  and  to  mere  material  results — a  philosophy 
which,  in  practice,  if  not  in  theory,  is  driving  rapidly  against 
some  of  the  very  bulwarks  of  moral  principle  that  our  fathers 
believed,  and  believed  justly,  to  be  grounded  in  the  law,  and 
built  into  the  very  throne  of  God. 

Now  we  need  not  say  that  where  this  utilitarian  and 
mechanical  spirit  acquires  the  ascendancy  in  our  literature, 
it  must  operate  dangerously  on  the  state  and  the  church. 
The  prosperity  which  is  built  on  gain,  and  the  morality  that 
is  built  on  expediency,  will  save  no  nation.  Wo  to  that  na- 
tion in  which  Political  Economy  swallows  up  all  its  The- 
ology ;  and  the  law  of  self  is  the  basis  of  all  its  wisdomr 
The  declining  glories  of  Tyre  and  Holland,  each  in  her  day 
mistress  of  the  sea,  and  guardian  of  its  treasures,  may  read 
us  an  admonitory  lesson  as  to  the  fatal  blight  that  such  a 
spirit  breathes  over  the  freedom,  the  arts  and  the  learning 
of  a  land. 

We  are,  by  the  favoring  Providence  of  God,  placed  under 
political  institutions  which  more  readily  yield  to  and  reflect 
the  popular  will,  than  the  government  and  laws  of  other. 


12  CONSERVATIVE     PRINCIPLE 

lands.  The  literature  of  our  nation,  more  directly  than  that 
of  earlier  times,  or  of  older  countries,  moulds  the  political 
action  of  the  nation.  Let  but  the  spirit  of  expediency  and 
of  gain  sway  our  political  literature  in  the  thousand  journals 
of  our  country,  and  in  the  myriads  of  voters  whom  these 
journals  educate  and  govern  ;  let  the  same  spirit  possess  the 
great  parties  ever  to  be  found  in  a  free  nation,  and  the  aspir- 
ing leaders  who  are  the  champions  and  oracles  of  those  par- 
ties, and  what  would  soon  be  the  result?  A  peddling  policy, 
that,  disregarding  the  national  interest  and  honor,  would 
truckle  to  power  and  favor,  carry  its  principles  to  market, 
and  convert  statesmanship  into  a  trade.  The  country  would 
be  visited  by  an  impudent,  voluble,  and  mercenary  patriot- 
ism, that  shrinking  from  no  artifice,  and  blushing  at  no 
meanness,  would  systematize  the  various  arts  of  popularity 
into  a  new  science  of  selfishness.  The  legislation  of  the 
land  and  its  intercourse  with  foreign  nations  would  be  en- 
grossed by  trading  politicians  ;  huckstering  their  talents  and 
influence  to  the  party  or  the  measure  or  the  man,  that  should 
bid  in  the  shape  of  emolument  or  office,  the  highest  price  for 
the  commodities  which  they  vend.  The  expert  statesman 
would  then  be  he  who  consulted  most  assiduously  the 
weather-vane  of  popular  favor,  that  he  might  ascertain  to 
what  point  his  conscience  should  be  set.  And  should  such 
time  ever  come  over  our  beloved  land,  could  our  liberties 
endure  when  guarded  only  by  hands  so  faithless,  or  our  laws 
be  either  wise  or  just,  when  such  men  made  and  such  men 
administered  them  ? 

Let  the  same  love  of  selfish  gain  pervade  the  pulpits  of 
our  land  :  let  the  messengers  of  the  gospel  learn  to  prophesy 
smooth  things,  and  instead  of  the  "  word  in  season,"  let 
them  substitute  the  word  in  fashion — let  them  retail  doctrines 
that  admit  no  personal  application,  truths  that  wound  not  the 
conscience  and  pierce  not  the  heart,  and  morals  enforced  by 
no  motives  of  love  to  God,  but  by  mere  considerations  of 
gain  or  honor — let  them  compile  unoffending  truisms  and 
dexterous  sophisms,  and  put  these  in  place  of  unpalatable 
truths — let  them  listen  to  the  echoes  of  popular  opinion  ever- 
more, that  they  may  in  them  learn  their  lessons  of  duty  ; 
and  where  soon  is  the  gospel  so  administered,  and  where  is 
the  church,  if  left  but  to  such  instruction  ?  The  far-sighted 
law  of  righi,  as  God  ordained  and  administers  it,  would  be 
overthrown, that  in  its  stead  might  be  set  up  the  law  of  interest, 


IN     OUR     LITERATURE.  13 

as  short-sighted  man  expounds  it ;  and  a  creed  by  which 
the  world  is  to  be  humored,  flattered  and  adored,  would  be 
audaciously  preached  at  the  foot  of  a  cross  which  ransomed 
that  world  only  by  renouncing  and  only  by  defying  it.  No 
— gain  is  not  godliness. 

But  man  was  made  for  other  purposes  than  to  coin  or  ex- 
change dollars.  The  fable  of  Midas  pestered  with  his  riches, 
and  unable  to  eat  because  his  food  turned  to  gold,  is  full  of 
beneficial  instruction  in  such  times  as  ours.  Man  has  wants 
which  money  cannot  supply,  and  sorrows  which  lucre  can- 
not heal  ;  although  cupidity  may  teach  him  often  to  make 
expediency  or  immediate  utility  the  standard  of  his  code  of 
morals.  Conscience,  too,  will  utter  at  times  her  protest, 
slip  aside  the  gag,  and  declaim  loudly  against  practices  she 
cannot  approve,  however  they  may  for  the  time  profit.  A 
literature  merely  venal  will  not  then  meet  all  the  necessities 
of  man's  nature.  And  not  from  conscience  only  is  the  reign 
of  covetousness  threatened  and  made  insecure.  Mere  feel- 
ing and  passion  lead  men  often  to  look  to  other  than  their 
pecuniary  interests,  and  in  quest  of  yet  dearer  objects  they 
trample  on  gain,  and  sacrifice  the  mere  conveniences  to 
secure  the  higher  enjoyments  of  life.  But  here,  in  this  last 
named  fact,  is  found  the  source  of  yet  another  danger  to  our 
literature.  Passion  is  not  a  safer  moral  guide  to  a  people 
than  interest. 

2.  Let  us  dwell  on  this  new  inimical  influence  by  which 
our  literature  may  suffer.  Our  age  is  eminently,  in  some 
of  its  leading  minds,  an  age  of  passion.  It  is  seen  in  the 
character  of  much  of  the  most  popular  literature,  and  espe- 
cially the  poetry  of  our  day.  Much  of  this  has  been  the 
poetry  of  intense  passion,  it  mattered  little  how  unprincipled 
that  passion  might  be.  An  English  scholar  lately  gone  from 
this  world  (it  is  to  Southey  that  we  refer),  branded  this 
school  of  modern  literature,  in  the  person  of  its  great  and 
titled  leader,  as  the  Satanic  school.3    It  has  talent  and  genius, 

3  Another  English  scholar,  whose  writings  may  be  quoted  as  affording 
evidence  of  a  re-action  that  has  followed  the  influence  of  Byron,  holds  this 
language.  Speaking  of  the  heroes  of  Byron,  he  remarks:  "They  exhibit 
rather  passions  personified  than  persons  impassioned.  But  there  is  a  yet  worse 
defect ;  Lord  Byron's  conception  of  a  hero  is  an  evidence,  not  only  of  scanty 
materials  of  knowledge  from  which  to  construct  the  ideal  of  a  human  bang, 
but  also  of  a  want  of  perception  of  what  is  great  or  noble  in  our  nature.  His 
heroes  are  creatures  abandoned  to  their  passions,  and  essentially,  therefore, 
weak  of  mind.    They  must  be  perceived  to  be  beings  in  whom  there  is  no 


14  CONSERVATIVE     PRINCIPLE 

high  powers  of  imagination  and  language,  and  boiling  energy  ; 
but  it  is,  much  of  it,  the  energy  of  a  fallen  and  revolted 
angel,  with  no  regard  for  the  right,  no  vision  into  eternity, 
and  no  hold  on  Heaven.  We  would  not  declaim  against 
passion  when  employed  in  the  service  of  literature.  Inform- 
ed by  strong  feelings,  truth  becomes  more  awful  and  more 
lovely ;  and  some  of  the  ages  which  unfettered  the  passions 
of  a  nation,  have  given  birth  to  master-pieces  of  genius. 
But  Passion  divorced  from  Virtue  is  ultimately  among  the 
fellest  enemies  to  literary  excellence.  When  yoked  to  the 
car  of  duty,  and  reined  in  by  principle,  passion  is  in  its  ap- 
propriate place,  and  may  accomplish  a  mighty  service.  But 
when,  in  domestic  life,  or  political,  or  in  the  walks  of  litera- 
ture, passion  throws  off  these  restraints  and  exults  in  its  own 
uncontrolled  power,  it  is  as  useless  for  purposes  of  good,  and 
as  formidable  from  its  powers  of  evil,  as  a  car  whose  liery 
coursers  have  shaken  off  bit  and  rein,  and  trampled  under 
foot  their  charioteer.  The  Maker  of  man  made  conscience 
to  rule  his  other  faculties,  and  when  it  is  dethroned,  the 
result  is  ruin.     Far  as  the  literature  to  which  we  have  alluded 


strength,  except  that  of  their  intensely  selfish  passions — in  whom  all  is  vani- 
ty ;  their  exertions  being  for  vanity  under  the  name  of  love  or  revenge,  and 
their  sufferings  for  vanity  under  the  name  of  pride.  If  such  beings  as  these 
are  to  be  regarded  as  heroical,  where  in  human  nature  are  we  to  look  for 
what  is  low  in  sentiment  or  infirm  in  character?"  It  is  not  the  language 
of  theologians  we  are  now  quoting,  but  the  words  we  have  transcribed  are 
those  of  ua  prophet  of  their  own" — of  a  living  dramatic  poet — Henry  Tay- 
lor, the  author  of  "  Philip  Van  Artevelde."  Elsewhere  he  uses  the  aid  of 
verse  to  pronounce  a  similar  judgment. 

"Then  learned  I  to  despise  that  far-famed  school 

Who  place  in  wickedness  their  pride,  and  deem 
Power  chiefly  to  be  shown  where  passions  rule, 

And  not  where  they  are  ruled  ;  in  whose  new  scheme 

Of  heroism,  self-government  should  seem 
A  thing  left  out,  or  something  to  contemn — 

Whose  notions,  incoherent  as  a  dream, 
Make  strength  go  with  the  torrent,  and  not  stem, 
For  'wicked  and  thence  weak,'  is  not  a  creed  for  them. 

11 1  left  these  passionate  weaklings  :  I  perceived 

What  took  away  all  nobleness  from  pride, 
All  dignity  from  sorrow  ;  what  bereaved 

Even  genius  of  respect :  they  seemed  allied 

To  mendicants,  that  by  tin;  highway  side 
Expose  their  self-inflicted  wounds,  to  gain 

The  alms  of  sympathy — far  best  denied. 
I  heard  the  Borrowful  sensualist  complain. 
if  wilh  compassion,  not  without  disdain." 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  15 

spreads,  it  cherishes  an  insane  admiration  for  mere  talent  or 
mental  power.  It  substitutes  as  a  guide  in  morals,  sentiment 
for  conscience  ;  and  makes  blind  feeling  the  irresistible  fate, 
whose  will  none  may  dispute,  and  whose  doings  are  beyond 
the  jurisdiction  of  casuists  or  lawgivers.  It  has  much  of 
occasional  tenderness,  and  can  melt  at  times  into  floods  of 
sympathy :  but  this  softness  is  found  strangely  blended  with 
a  savage  violence.  Such  things  often  co-exist.  As  in  the 
case  cf  the  French  hangman,  who  in  the  time  of  their  great 
revolution  was  found,  fresh  from  his  gory  work  of  the  guil- 
lotine, sobbing  over  the  sorrows  of  Werther,  it  contrives  to 
ally  the  sanguinary  to  the  sentimental.  It  seems,  at  first 
sight,  much  such  an  ill-assorted  match  as  if  the  family  of 
Mr.  Wet-eyes  in  one  of  Bunyan's  matchless  allegories,  were 
wedded  to  that  of  Giant  Bloody-man  in  the  other.  But  it  is 
easily  explained.  It  has  been  found  so  in  all  times  when 
passion  has  been  made  to  take  the  place  of  reason  as  the 
guide  of  a  people,  and  conscience  has  been  thrust  from  the 
throne  to  be  succeeded  by  sentiment.  The  luxurious  and 
the  cruel,  the  fierce  and  the  voluptuous,  the  licentious  and 
the  relentless  readily  coalesce  ;  and  we  soon  are  made  to  per- 
ceive the  fitness  of  the  classic  fable  by  which,  in  the  old 
Greek  mythology,  Venus  was  seen  knitting  her  hands  with 
Mars,  the  goddess  of  sensuality  allying  herself  with  the  god 
of  slaughter.  We  say  much  of  the  literature  of  the 
present  and  the  last  generation  is  thus  the  caterer  of  passion 
— lawless,  fierce,  and  vindictive  passion.  And  if  a  retired 
Student  may  "  through  the  loopholes  of  retreat"  read  aright 
the  world  of  fashion,  passion  seems  at  times  acquiring  an  un- 
wonted ascendancy  in  the  popular  amusements  of  the  age. 
The  lewd  pantomime  and  dance,  from  which  the  less  refined 
fashion  of  other  times  would  have  turned  her  blushing  and 
indignant  face,  the  gorgeous  spectacle  and  the  shows  of  wild 
beasts,  and  even  the  sanguinary  pugilistic  combat,  that  some- 
times recals  the  gladiatorial  shows  of  old  Rome,  have  become, 
in  our  day,  the  favorite  recreations  of  some  classes  among 
the  lovers  of  pleasure.  These  are,  it  should  be  remembered, 
nearly  the  same  with  the  favorite  entertainments  of  the  later 
Greek  empire,  wThen,  plethoric  by  its  wealth,  and  enervated 
by  its  luxury,  that  power  was  about  to  be  trodden  down  by 
the  barbarian  invasions  of  the  north. 

It  is  possible  that  the  same  dangerous  ascendency  of  pas- 
sion may  be  fostered,  where  we  should  have  been  slow  to 


16  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

suspect  it,  by  the  ultraism  of  some  good  men  among  the 
social  reformers  of  our  time.  Wilberforce  was,  in  the  judg- 
ment of  Mackintosh,  the  very  model  of  a  reformer,  because 
he  united  an  earnestness  that  never  flagged  with  a  sweetness 
that  never  failed.  There  are  good  men  that  have  nothing  of 
this  last  trait.  Amid  the  best  intentions  there  is  occasionally, 
in  the  benevolent  projects  even  of  this  day,  a  species  of  Jack 
Cadeism,  if  we  may  be  allowed  the  expression,  enlisted  in 
the  service  of  reform.  It  seems  the  very  opposite  of  the 
character  of  Wilberforce,  nourishes  an  acridity  anu  violence 
of  temper  that  appears  to  delight  in  repelling,  and  seeks  to 
enkindle  feeling  by  wild  exaggeration  and  personal  denunci- 
ation ;  raves  in  behalf  of  good  with  the  very  spirit  of  evil, 
and  where  it  cannot  convince  assent,  would  extort  submis- 
sion. Even  truth  itself,  when  administered  at  a  scalding 
heat,  cannot  benefit  the  recipient ;  and  the  process  is  not  safe 
for  the  hands  of  the  administrator  himself. 

Far  be  it  from  us  to  decry  earnestness  when  shown  in  the 
cause  of  truth  and  justice,  or  to  forget  how  the  passion 
awakened  in  some  revolutionary  crisis  of  a  people's  history, 
has  often  infused  into  the  productions  of  genius  an  unwonted 
energy,  and  clothed  them  as  with  an  immortal  vigor.  But 
it  is  passion  yoked  to  the  chariot  of  reason,  and  curbed  by 
the  strong  hand  of  principle  ;  laboring  in  the  traces,  but  not 
grasping  the  reins.  But  set  aside  argument  and  truth,  and 
give  to  passion  its  unchecked  course,  and  the  effect  is  fatal. 
It  may  at  first  seem  to  clothe  a  literature  with  new  energy, 
but  it  is  the  mere  energy  of  intoxication,  soon  spent,  and  for 
which  there  speedily  comes  a  sure  and  bitter  reckoning. 
The  bonds  of  principle  are  loosened,  the  tastes  and  habits 
of  society  corrupted  ;  and  the  effects  are  soon  seen  extending 
themselves  to  the  very  form  and  style  of  a  literature  as  well 
as  to  the  morality  of  its  productions.  The  intense  is  substi- 
tuted for  the  natural  and  true.  What  is  effective  is  sought 
for  rather  than  what  is  exact.  Our  literature  therefore  has 
little,  in  such  portions  of  it,  of  the  high  finish  and  serene 
repose  of  the  master-pieces  of  classic  antiquity,  where  passion 
in  its  highest  flights  is  seen  wearing  gracefully  all  the  re- 
straining rules  of  art ;  and  power  toils  ever  as  under  the  ses- 
vere  eye  of  order. 

3.  A  kindred  evil,  the  natural  result  and  accompaniment 
of  that  to  which  we  have  last  adverted,  and  like  it  fatal  to 
the  best  interests  of  literature,  is  the  lawlessness,  unhappily 


IN     OUR    LITERATURE.  17 

but  too  rife  through  large  districts  of  our  territory,  and  in 
various  classes  of  its  inhabitants.  Authority  in  the  parent, 
the  magistrate  or  the  pastor,  seems  daily  to  be  held  by  a  less 
firm  tenure.  Obedience  seems  to  be  regarded  rather  as  a 
boon,  and  control  resented  as  usurpation.  The  restraints  of 
honesty  in  the  political  and  commercial  intercourse  of  society 
seem  more  feebly  felt.  In  those  intrusted  by  the  state  and 
by  public  corporations  with  the  control  of  funds,  the  charges 
of  embezzlement  and  defalcation  have  within  the  last  few 
years  multiplied  rapidly  in  number  and  swelled  fearfully  in 
amount ;  until,  catching  the  contagion  of  the  times,  sovereign 
states  are  found  questioning  the  obligations  of  their  own 
contracts,  and  repudiating  their  plighted  word  and  bond.  In 
the  matter  of  good  faith  between  man  and  man,  as  to  pecu- 
niary engagements,  the  wheels  of  the  social  machine  groan 
ominously,  as  if  they  were,  by  some  internal  dislocation  and 
collision,  ready  to  tear  asunder  the  fabric  of  society.  Pri- 
vate revenge  and  the  sudden  ebullitions  of  popular  violence, 
disregarding  all  delays  and  setting  aside  all  forms,  seem  in 
some  districts  ready  to  supplant  the  quiet  administration  of 
the  laws,  and  dispensing  alike  with  judges  and  prisons.  The 
laws  of  God,  too,  are  often  as  lightly  regarded  as  the  laws 
of  human  society.  In  the  growing  facility  of  divorce,  the 
statute  of  Heaven  intended  to  guard  the  purity  of  home,  and 
lying  at  the  foundation  of  all  society,  is  to  some  extent  in- 
fringed upon  :  while  our  railroads  and  canals  have  run  their 
lines  fearlessly  athwart  the  Sabbath  ;  and  it  seems  a  question 
whether  the  flaming  Sinai  should  be  allowed  to  stand  any 
longer  in  the  pathway  of  modern  improvement. 

And  amid  such  scenes  of  disorder  and  commotion,  it  is — 
scenes  illustrating  so  fearfully  the  depravity,  inveterate  and 
entire,  of  the  human  heart — it  is,  we  say,  amid  such  scenes 
that  men  are  rising  up  to  remodel  all  society.  In  some  of 
these  proposed  reforms  there  is  a  reckless  disorganization, 
and  in  most  of  them,  we  fear,  scarce  a  due  appreciation,  of 
God's  primitive  but  incomparable  institution  for  the  social 
happiness  of  the  race,  the  family  or  household.  In  its  sepa- 
rate interests,  its  seclusion  and  distinctness,  are  involved,  we 
cannot  but  think,  much  of  the  virtue,  the  tranquillity  and 
the  felicity  of  mankind. 

At  the  attempt  we  ought  not  perhaps  to  be  so  much  sur- 
prised, as  at  the  principles  on  which  it  proceeds.  On  these 
we  look  with  irrepressible  astonishment.     They  assume  the 

4 


18  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

natural  innocence  of  man,  and  trace  all  his  miseries  and  all 
his  crimes  to  bad  government,  to  false  views  of  society,  and 
to  ignorance  respecting  the  true  relations  of  man  to  man — - 
relations  which  after  the  lapse  of  so  many  centuries  they 
have  been  the  first  to  reveal.  They  would  not  merely  over- 
look, but  deny  that  melancholy  truth,  the  Fall  of  Man  from 
his  original  state,  and  his  consequent  native  depravity  ;  a 
truth  never  to  be  forgotten  by  all  that  would  exercise  a  true 
benevolence  to  their  brother  man,  and  by  all  that  would 
build  up  a  stable  government.  In  denying  this  truth,  they 
contradict  all  the  experience,  all  the  history,  and  shall  we 
not  add,  all  the  consciousness  of  our  race.  A  truth  which 
even  blinded  and  haughty  heathenism  mournfully  acknow- 
ledged— a  truth  which  Revelation  asserts  so  emphatically 
and  so  often,  cannot  with  impunity  be  forgotten  by  any  that 
would  attempt  the  reform  of  man's  condition.  Vague  and 
wild  in  principle,  and  comparatively  barren  of  results,  must 
all  reforms  be  that  would  make  all  their  improvements  from 
without,  and  feel  that  none  is  needed  within.  It  seems  to 
us,  in  the  moral  economy  of  society,  much  such  an  error 
as  it  would  be  in  medical  science  to  prescribe  to  the  symp- 
toms and  not  to  the  disease  ;  and  to  aim  at  relieving  the 
petty  details  and  discomforts  of  sickness,  while  unable  to 
discover  and  incompetent  to  treat  the  primal,  radical  evil, 
the  deep-seated  malady  out  of  which  these  external  symp- 
toms spring.  It  is  not  man's  condition  alone  that  needs 
bettering,  but  his  heart  much  more.  We  would  honor  even 
the  misguided  zeal  of  our  brethren  of  the  race  who  seek  in 
any  form  to  lessen  the  amount  of  human  misery  and  wrong  ; 
but  the  claims  of  our  Common  Father,  and  the  wrongs  He 
has  met  at  our  hands,  are  to  be  acknowledged  by  all  who 
would  pity,  with  an  effectual  compassion,  human  sorrow, 
and  remedy  with  an  enduring  relief,  social  disorder  and 
wretchedness.  To  forget  or  to  contradict  these  truths,  is  to 
reject  the  lessons  alike  of  history  and  scripture.  All  reform 
ho  based  is  itself  but  a  new,  though  it  may  be  unconscious, 
lawlessness. 

We  have  said  that  proposals  of  social  reform  are  not  causes 
of  wonder.  Already  human  life  is  less  secure  in  many  por- 
tions of  our  republic  than  under  some  of  the  European  mon- 
archies ;  and  frauds  and  embezzlements  are  less  surely  and 
less  severely  punished.  In  some  of  our  legislatures,  in  the 
very  halls,   and    under  the    awful    eye,  as  it  were,   of   the 


IN    OUR     LITERATURE.  19 

embodied  Justice  of  the  State,  brawls  and  murders  have  oc- 
curred, in  which  our  legislators  were  the  combatants  and  the 
victims.  And  yet  in  such  a  state  of  things,  when  human 
life  is  growing  daily  cheaper,  and  the  fact  of  assassination 
seems  to  awaken  scarce  a  tithe  of  the  sympathy,  horror  and 
inquiry,  which  it  provoked  in  our  fathers'  times — it  is  in  such 
a  state  of  things,  that  by  a  strange  paradox,  a  singular  clem- 
ency for  the  life  of  the  assassin  seems  to  be  springing  up. 
In  a  nation  lax  to  a  fault  in  the  vindication  of  human  life 
when  illegally  taken  away,  the  protest  is  made  most  pas- 
sionately against  its  being  taken  away  legally  ;  and  the  abo- 
lition of  Capital  Punishment  is  demanded  by  earnest  and 
able  agitators.  Would  that  the  picture  thus  dark  were  but 
the  sketch  of  Fancy ;  unhappily  its  gloomy  hues  are  but  the 
stern  coloring  of  Truth.  Can  the  patriot,  as  he  watches 
such  omens,  fail  to  see  the  coming  judgment?  Can  he  shut 
his  eyes  against  the  fact  so  broadly  printed  on  all  the  pages 
of  history,  that  anarchy  makes  despotism  necessary  ;  that 
men  who  are  left  lawless  soon  fly  for  refuge  even  to  a  scep- 
tre of  iron,  and  a  law  of  blood  ;  that  a  Robespierre  has  ever 
prepared  the  way  for  a  Bonaparte,  and  the  arts  of  the  reck- 
less demagogue,  like  Catiline,  have  smoothed  the  path  for 
the  violence  of  the  able  usurper,  like  Caesar?  Of  all  this, 
should  it  unhappily  continue  or  increase,  the  effects  must 
with  growing  rapidity  be  seen  in  the  injury  done  to  our  lite- 
rature. There  is  a  close  and  strange  connection  between 
moral  and  literary  integrity.  Not  only  does  social  confusion 
discourage  the  artist  and  the  scholar,  but  disjointed  and  anar- 
chical times  are  often  marked  by  a  want  of  laborious  truth, 
and  of  seriousness  and  earnestness  on  the  part  of  the  popu- 
lar writers.  A  passion  for  frivolity,  a  temper  that  snatches 
at  temporary  triumphs  by  flattering  the  whim  of  the  hour, 
and  a  science  of  agreeable,  heartless  trifling,  spring  up  in 
such  days  to  the  bane  alike  of  all  eloquence,  and  of  all  truth. 
4.  Another  of  the  perils  which  seem  to  us  lying  in  the 
way  of  our  rising  literature,  is  a  false  liberalism.  To  a 
manly  and  Christian  toleration  we  can  never  be  opposed. 
Something  of  this  toleration  is  required  by  our  free  inter- 
course with  many  lands.  The  wonders  of  steam  are  melting 
the  nations  most  highly  civilized  into  comparative  uniformity 
and  unity.  Our  colonists  are  the  emigrants  of  many  shores. 
In  this  audience  are  found  blended  the  blood  of  the  Celt  and 
the  Saxon,  the  Norman  and  the  Roman.     We  are  scions 


20  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

alike  from  the  stock  of  those  who  fought  beneath,  and  those 
who  warred  successively  against  the  eagles  of  the  old  Latin 
empire.  Our  varied  origin  seems  giving  to  America,  as  its 
varied  learning  has  given  to  Germany,  a  "  many-sided  mind ;" 
a  sympathy  at  many  points  with  mankind,  and  with  widely 
diversified  forms  of  society.  More  easily  than  the  English, 
the  ancestors  whom  many  of  us  claim,  we  adopt  the  pecu- 
liarities of  other  nations.  And  all  this  is  well.  But  when 
we  suffer  these  influences  to  foster  in  us  the  notion  that  all 
the  moral  peculiarities,  and  all  the  forms  of  faith,  marking 
the  various  tribes  from  which  our  country  is  supplied,  and 
with  which  our  commerce  connects  us,  are  alike  valuable  ; 
when,  instead  of  an  enlightened  love  of  truth  wherever  found, 
we  learn  indifference  to  all  truth,  and  call  this  new  feeling 
by  the  name  of  superiority  to  prejudice  ;  when  we  learn  to 
think  of  morals  as  if  they  were  little  more  than  a  conven- 
tional matter,  the  effect  of  habit  or  tradition,  or  the  results 
of  climate  or  of  the  physical  constitution  of  a  people,  we 
are  learning  lessons  alike  irrational,  and  perilous,  and  untrue.4 
The  spirit  of  Pope's  Universal  Prayer  seems  to  many,  in 
consequence  of  these  and  other  influences,  the  essence  of 
an  enlightened  Christian  charity.  They  cannot  endure  the 
anathemas  of  Paul  against  those  who  deny  his  Lord.  They 
would  classify  the  Koran  and  the  Shaster  with  the  Scrip- 
tures. Some  have  recently  discovered  a  truth  of  which 
those  writers  were  themselves  strangely  ignorant,  that  the 
Deistical  and  Atheistical  scholars  of  France,  the  Theorna- 


4  It  is  well  that  we  should  cherish  an  humble  sense  of  our  own  fallibility ; 
but  whatever  may  be  true  of  us,  God  and  Scripture  are  infallible.  The  Crea- 
tor, too,  so  constituted  his  universe,  that  there  is  truth  in  it,  and  throughout 
it;  and  he  has  so  constituted  man  as  to  thirst  with  an  inextinguishable 
longinsr  after  truth.  An  utter  despair  of  obtaining  it,  and  a  general  acknow- 
ledgment that  we  are  altogether  and  inevitably  in  the  wrong,  is  alike  a  state 
of  misery  to  man,  and  a  dishonor  done  to  God.  It  may  give  birth  to  a  sort 
of  toleration,  but  it  is  the  spurious  toleration  of  Pyrrhonism,  a  liberality  that 
patronizes  error,  but  that  can  be  fierce  against  the  truth  for  as  the  wise  and 
meek  Carey  complained,  skeptics  may  be  the  most  intolerant  of  mankind 
against  the  truth.  They  resent  naturally  that  strong  conviction  and  that 
ardenl  zeal,  which  they  hive  not  for  themselves,  but  which  the  consciousness 
of  truth  possessed,  and  the  benevolent  desire  of  its  general  diffusion,  natu- 
rally inspire  in  the  hi  liever.  They  envy  the  votaries  of  the  truth,  their  calm, 
immovable  assurance.  A  Christian  toleration  appreciates  the  innate  power 
of  truth  to  diffuse  and  protect  itself,  and  pities  error,  while  resisting  it.  The 
liberality  of  skepticism  denies  existence  to  truth,  and  canonizes  error  as  a 
sufficient  substitute,  and  sets  men  afloal  on  a  shoreless,  starless  ocean  of 
doubt.  Or  as  a  young  poet  of  England  has  not  infelicitously  described  it,  it 
prescribes  to  mankind  the  task  of  conjugating  falsehood  through  all  its  mooda, 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  21 

chists  who  prepared  the  way  for  its  revolution,  the  men  who 
loaded  the  Crucified  Nazarene  and  his  religion  with  all  out- 
rage, were  in  truth  Christians,  although  they  knew  it  not 
themselves.  Just  as  much,  it  seems  to  us,  as  Nero  was  an 
unconscious  Howard;  just  as  much  as  Catiline  was,  in  mo- 
dest ignorance  of  his  own  merits,  "  a  Washington,  who  had 
anticipated  his  time." 

It  is  worse  than  idle  thus  to  confound  all  moral  distinctions. 
To  suit  these  new  and  more  liberal  views  of  Christianity,  it 
has  become  of  course  necessary  to  revise  the  gospel,  and  to 
supersede  at  least  the  ancient  forms  of  the  Christian  religion. 
Thus  in  a  land,  the  literature  and  religion  of  which  are 
becoming  more  and  more  known  to  some  of  our  scholars, 
Strauss  has  eviscerated  the  New  Testament  of  all  its  facts, 
and  leaves  in  all  its  touching  and  miraculous  narrations  but 
the  fragments  of  a  popular  myth — intended  to  shadow  forth 
certain  truths  common  in  the  history  of  human  nature  in  all 
ages.  The  nation  to  which  he  belongs,  and  which  claims  to 
be  the  most  profound  in  metaphysical  speculation  and  in 
varied  learning,  of  all  the  nations  of  our  time,  is  reviving  in 
some  of  its  schools  an  undisguised  Pantheism,  which  makes 
the  universe  God  ;  and  thus,  in  effect,  gives  to  Job  and  the 
dunghill  on  which  he  sate,  the  ulcers  which  covered  him,  and 
the  potsherds  with  which  he  scraped  himself,  the  honor  of 
being  all,  parts  and  parcels  alike  of  the  same  all-pervading 
Deity.  And  this  is  the  wisdom,  vaunted  and  profound,  of 
our  times  ;  a  return,  in  fact,  to  those  discoveries  described 
of  old  in  a  venerable  volume  which  we  all  wot  of,  in  the 
brief  and  pithy  sentence — "  The  world  by  wisdom  knew  not 
God."  The  result  of  its  arrogant  self-confidence  was  blind- 
tenses,  and  cases,  and  teaches  them  mutual  forbearance  as  the  result  of  their 
common  infatuation. 

(  "  Let  them  alone,"  men  cry, 
"  I  lie,  thou  liest,  they  lie  : 
What  then?  Thy  neighbor's  folly  hurts  not  thee!" 
Error  is  Freedom  !  such  the  insensate  shout 
Of  crowds,  that  like  a  Paean,  hymn  a  doubt: 
Indifference  thus  the  world  calls  Charity. 
********* 
1 "  Battles  at  last  shall  cease." 

At  last,  not  now  :  we  are  not  yet  at  home. 
The  time  is  coming,  it  will  soon  be  come. 
When  those  who  dare  not  fight 
For  God,  or  for  the  right, 
Shall  fight  for  peace !' 

From  "  The  Waldenses,  and  other  Poems ;" 

by  Aubrey  de  Vere.    Oxford,  1842.    P.  127. 


22  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

ness  to  the  great  fact  blazing  on  the  whole  face  of  creation, 
and  deafness  to  the  dread  voice  that  speaks  out  of  all  history, 
the  truth  that  there  is  a  God.  And  hence,  not  so  much  from 
any  singular  cogency  in  his  reasoning,  as  from  the  palata- 
bleness  of  the  results  which  that  reasoning  reaches,  Baruch 
Spinoza,  the  Pantheist  Jew,  is,  after  a  long  lapse  of  years 
of  confutation  and  obscurity,  rising  again  in  the  view  of  some 
scholars  in  Germany,  Britain,  and  America,  to  the  rank  of 
a  guide  in  morals  and  a  master  of  religious  truth.5     When 

5  Of  the  system  of  Spinoza  it  has  been  said  by  the  acute  Bayle,  certainly 
no  bigoted  adherent  to  Christianity,  and  no  prejudiced  enemy  of  skepticism, 
that  "it  was  the  most  monstrous  scheme  imaginable;"  and  again,  that  "it 
has  been  fully  overthrown,  even  by  the  weakest  of  its  adversaries."  In  a 
similar  spirit,  Maclaurin,  the^celebrated  British  mathematician,  had  remarked, 
"  It  does  not,  indeed,  appear  possible  to  invent  another  system  equally  ab- 
surd." (Dugald  Stewart's  Progress  of  Metaphysical  Philosophy,  p.  116.  Am. 
Edition.)  Stewart  quotes  from  Colerus,  the  author  of  the  earliest  Life  of  Spi- 
noza, the  singular  anecdote,  that  "  one  of  the  amusements  with  which  he  was 
accustomed  to  unbend  his  mind,  was  that  of  entangling  flies  in  a  spider's 
web,  or  of  setting  spiders  to  fighting  with  each  other;  on  which  occasions 
(it  is  added),  he  would  observe  their  combats  with  so  much  interest  that  it 
was  not  unusual  for  him  to  be  seized  with  immoderate  fits  of  laughter." 
{Ibidem,  p.  351.)  Stewart,  we  think,  lays  too  much  stress  on  this  incident, 
when  he  finds  in  it  a  proof  of  Spinoza's  insanity.  It  was,  certainly,  not  the 
most  amiable  trait  in  the  character  of  a  philosopher  for  whom  his  disciples 
have  claimed  a  remarkable  blamelessness  and  even  piety.  We  cannot  ima- 
gine such  an  amusement  as  delighting  the  vacant  hours,  and  such  merriment 
as  gladdening  the  heart  of  a  Christian  philosopher  like  Bayle  or  Newton. 
Trivial  as  it  was,  it  betrayed  the  spirit,  and  furnished  no  unapt  emblem,  of 
the  system  he  elaborated  in  his  philosophy,  where  an  acute  mind  found  its 
amusement  in  entangling  to  their  ruin  its  hapless  victims  in  a  web  of  sophis- 
try, that  puzzled,  caught  and  destroyed  them;  and  grim  Blasphemy  lay 
waiting  to  devour  those  who  fluttered  in  the  snares  of  Falsehood. 

Yet  this  system,  the  product  of  such  a  mind,  has  been  recently,  with  loud 
panegyrics  of  its  author,  commended  anew  to  the  regard  of  mankind  on 
either  side  of  the  Atlantic.  Paulus,  the  celebrated  Neologian  divine  of  Ger- 
many, had  issued,  years  ago,  an  edition  of  his  works.  Amongst  ourselves 
and  the  scholars  of  England,  such  views  have  obtained  currency  mostly,  it 
is  probable,  from  the  admiration  professed  for  Spinoza  by  such  men  as  Goethe, 
and  others,  the  scholars  and  philosophers  of  Germany,  for  whom  we  have 
contracted  too  indiscriminating  a  reverence.  Goethe's  course  was  paradox- 
ical. Rejecting  revelation  as  impossible,  for  the  singular  reason  that  if  it 
came  from  God  it  must  be  unintelligible  to  men,  and  declaring  God  as  pre- 
sented in  the  teachings  of  Christ  Jesus,  to  be  an  imperfect  and  inadequate 
conception,  Goethe  held  that  the  Divinity  revealed  in  the  Bible  involved 
difficulties  which  must  drive  an  inquirer  to  despair,  unless  he  were  "great 
enough  to  rise  to  the  stand-point  of  a  higher  view ;"  in  other  words,  a  higher 
point  of  observation  than  that  occupied  by  Christ.  "Such  a  stand-point 
ductlic  early  found  in  Spinoza;  and  he  acknowledges  with  joy  how  truly 
the  views  of  that  great  thinker  answered  to  the  wants  of  his  youth.  In  him 
lie  found,  himself,  and  could  therefore  fortify  himself  with  Spinoza  to  the  best 
advantage."  These  are  the  words  of  Eckerman  (EcLerman's  Convers.  icitk 
Goethe.  Boston,  p.  37),  who  played  with  Goethe  the  part  that  James  Bosweli 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  23 

such  a  form  of  philosophy  becomes  prevalent,  all  forms  of 
religion  are  alike  true,  or  in  other  words,  are  alike  false  ; 
and  room  is  to  be  made  for  a  new  religion  by  which  man 
shall  worship  Nature  or  himself.  So  difficult  is  it  for  the 
gospel  to  suit  men's  waywardness.  It  was  the  objection  of 
the  old  Pagans  to  Christianity,  as  we  learn  from  Origen, 
that  it  was  too  universal  a  religion  ;  that  every  country 
should  of  right  be  allowed  a  religion  of  its  own ;  and  Chris- 
tianity was  arrogant  in  asking  to  be  received  as  the  one  faith 

acted  to  the  great  lexicographer  and  moralist,  of  England,  recording  as  an 
humble  admirer,  the  conversations  of  his  oracle.  Of  the  moral  character  of 
some  of  the  productions  of  Goethe  we  need  not  pause  to  remark.  There  are 
principles  developed  in  his  writings  that  needed  "fortifying."  We  would 
but  notice  a  difficulty  which  the  language  of  his  admirer  suggests.  Goethe 
is  made  to  speak  of  Spinoza  as  the  thinker  "in  whom  he  found  himself1 
To  us,  the  uninitiated,  it  seems  hard  to  reconcile  this  test  by  which  he 
recognized  and  adopted  his  master's  system,  with  his  passionate  words  else- 
where, recorded  by  the  same  admiring  Eckerman,  (p.  309.)  "  Man  is  a  dark- 
ened being ;  he  knows  not  whence  he  comes,  nor  whither  he  goes ;  he  knows 
little  of  the  world,  and  less  of  himself.  /  know  not  myself  and  may  God 
protect  me  from  it."  How  the  rule  of  the  old  Greek  wisdom,  "  know  thy- 
self," might  seem  folly  to  the  modern  German  we  can  conceive :  and  how 
the  view  of  his  own  heart  might  shock  and  appal  one  who  would  fain  idolize 
his  own  wisdom  and  virtue,  we  can,  with  as  little  difficulty,  imagine.  But 
how  one  who  shrunk  from  knowing  himself,  could,  by  knowing  himself, 
recognize  the  truth  of  a  system  of  Pantheism,  is  to  us  inconceivable.  A 
religion  that  begins  in  dogmatic  ignorance  as  to  our  own  nature,  and  ends 
in  dogmatic  omniscience  as  to  God's  nature,  does  not  commend  itself  to  our 
reason,  more  than  it  does  to  our  sympathies,  or  our  hopes. 

An  affecting  proof  may  be  gathered  from  the  same  volume  (pp.  405,  407), 
how  easily  the  Pantheism  of  the  schools  slides  into  the  Polytheism  of  the 
multitude.  Goethe  had  received  a  cast  of  a  piece  of  statuary.  A  model 
from  Myron's  cow  with  the  sucking  calf,  was  sent  him  by  a  young  artist. 
"Here,"  said  he,  "we  have  a  subject  of  the  highest  sort — the  nourishing 
principle  which  upholds  the  world,  and  pervades  all  nature,  is  brought  before 
our  eyes  by  this  beautiful  symbol.  This,  and  others  of  a  like  nature,  I  esteem 
the  true  symbols  of  the  omnipresence  of  God."  What  the  omnipresence  of  the 
Deity,  in  the  system  of  Pantheism  is,  we  need  not  linger  to  remark.  Skep- 
tics have  affected  to  wonder  at  the  unaccountable  perverseness  of  the  chil- 
dren of  Israel  forging  and  adoring  their  golden  calf  at  the  foot  of  Sinai ;  but 
here  we  have  the  practice  palliated  by  a  master-spirit  of  skepticism,  amid 
the  boasted  illumination  of  the  nineteenth  century.  A  cow  with  her  calf  is, 
according  to  Goethe,  "  the  true  symbol  ,"  of  the  all-pervading,  all-sustaining 
Divinity,  who  comprises,  and  himself  is,  the  universe.  Did  Pantheism  but 
rule  the  schools,  we  can  see  how  easily  idolatry  in  its  most  brutish  forms 
might  be  revived  among  the  populace ;  and  the  ox-gods  and  onion-gods  of 
Egypt  at  which  even  a  heathen  Juvenal  jeered,  might,  amid  all  our  vaunted 
advance  in  knowledge,  receive  again  the  worship  of  our  scholars.  Pantheism 
is  the  philosophy  of  Brahminism  with  all  its  hundred  thousand  graven  images, 
from  Ganeshu  with  his  elephant's  head  to  Doorga  with  her  necklace  of  hu- 
man skulls.  The  men  who  had  outgrown  the  Bible,  and  found  themselves 
wiser  than  the  Redeemer,  might,  under  the  auspices  of  Pantheism,  return  to 
the  worship  of  Apis,  and  adore  the  gods  of  the  dairy  and  the  stall,  as  they 


84  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

of  all  countries.  But  now  the  opposers  of  this  gospel  dis- 
cover that  it  has  the  defect  of  not  being  universal  enough  ; 
and  they  wish  a  wider  faith,  that  will  embrace  the  race,  let 
them  think  as  they  please,  and  worship  as  they  may.  Thus 
would  this  school  reconcile  all  religions  by  evaporating  them. 
In  Germany,  the  country  that  has  most  cultivated  this  hid- 
eous error,  it  has  as  yet,  we  believe,  prevailed  chiefly  among 
portions  of  the  literary  classes,  and  not  reached  the  peasant- 
ry;  and  the  nation  thus  affected  are  less  prone  to  reduce 
their  opinions  to  action,  and  are  both  more  speculative  and 
less  practical  than  ourselves.  But  let  such  a  doctrine  come 
amongst  us  and  grow  to  be  popular.  Let  it  pass  from  the 
libraries  of  a  few  dreaming  scholars  into  our  common  schools, 
our  workshops,  our  farm-houses,  and  our  homes.  Like  an 
active  poison  released  from  its  confinement  in  the  dim  labo- 
ratory of  the  chemist,  where  it  was  comparatively  unknown 
and  innocuous,  let  it  be  sprinkled  into  every  pipkin  simmer- 
ing upon  the  cottage  hearth  on  either  side  of  the  Allegha- 
nies  ;  let  our  newspapers  drop  the  doctrine,  as  a  manna  of 
death,  from  their  multitudinous  wings,  around  every  hamlet 
and  habitation  of  the  land,  and  what  were  the  result  1  Where, 
in  one  short  week,  were  our  freedom,  our  peace,  or  our 
morals?  all  a  buried  wreck,  submerged  beneath  a  weltering 
ocean  of  misery  and  sin.  The  soul  with  no  immortal  herit- 
age— crime  released  from  its  fears  of  the  avenger — and  sor- 
row stripped  of  its  hope  of  a  comforter;  the  world  without 
a  Governor,  and  the  race  left  fatherless,  with  the  fact  of  the 

stood  chewing  their  cud,  or  suckling  their  calves.  Then  the  science  and 
taste  of  the  nineteenth  century  would  be  required  to  take,  as  the  emblem  of 
their  aspirations,  the  craven  Hebrews  of  Ezekiel's  vision ;  "  men  with  their 
backs  towards  the  temple  of  the  Lord,  and  their  faces  towards  the  East." — 
(Eze.  viii.  16.)  The  Christian  missions  of  our  time,  assailing  eastern  heathen- 
ism, would  be  repaid  by  an  irruption  of  Oriental  Pantheism  into  our  schools 
of  philosophy;  the  Sufis  of  Persia  and  the  Brahmins  of  India  would  re- 
taliate on  the  native  lands  of  their  Christian  antagonists,  and  our  Careys  and 
our  Martyns  would  be  chargeable  with  having  assailed,  in  the  Pantheistic 
faith  they  found  in  the  East,  a  higher  truth  than  they  had  themselves 
brought  from  the  West.  A  living  German  historian,  whose  works  have 
found  translation  and  currency  in  England  (Schlosser),  in  his  History  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  has  intimated  broadly,  that  the  most  ancient  tradition 
makes  Pantheism  the  original  faith  of  the  world. 

Thus  does  the  philosophy  that  would  fain  soar  over  the  head  of  our  Saviour, 
to  a  higher  and  more  adequate  view  of  the  Divine  Nature,  find  itself  grovel- 
ling at  last  in  the  very  mire  of  beast-worship.  It  is,  with  no  impaired  rev- 
erence for  his  Bible,  that  the  Christian  student  turns  from  such  spectacles  of 
human  presumption  and  impiety,  to  muse  on  the  sovereignty  and  adore  the 
wisdom  of  Him,  who  thus  "  taketh  the  wise  in  their  own  craftiness." 


IN     OUR     LITERATURE.  25 

redemption  and  the  hope  of  the  resurrection  alike  blotted 
out ;  surely  these  are  doctrines  no  false  claims  of  liberality 
can  palliate.  And  yet  to  such  tremendous  results  is  tending 
much  of  the  miscalled  liberality  of  our  times. 

This  false  liberalism  is  aiding  the  lawlessness  of  which  we 
have  before  spoken,  in  rejecting  all  regard  to  precedent,  and 
all  reverence  for  antiquity. 

5.  But  in  the  natural  antagonism  of  the  human  mind  to 
such  excesses  as  these,  is  seen  rising  a  fifth  principle,  that 
of  Superstition ;  and  though  opposed  to  the  last  error,  yet 
in  its  own  way  preparing  injury,  from  still  another  side,  to 
the  literary  interests  of  our  nation.  It  may  seem  to  some 
idle  to  talk  of  superstition  as  a  peril  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
But  an  age  that  devours  so  eagerly  the  prodigies  of  Animal 
Magnetism,  is  not  quite  entitled  to  talk  superciliously  of  the 
superstition  of  their  forefathers  in  having  been  believers  in 
witchcraft.  Much  of  the  history  of  the  human  mind  is  but  a 
history  of  oscillations  between  opposite  extremes  of  error. 
There  is  naturally,  in  the  soul  of  man,  a  recoil  from  the 
narrowness  of  the  mechanical  and  utilitarian  spirit,  as  well 
as  from  the  lawlessness  and  the  false  liberalism  of  which  we 
have  already  spoken  as  evils  of  the  times ;  while  the  deifica- 
tion of  passion,  another  of  those  evils,  makes  welcome  a 
religion  of  absolutions  and  indulgences.  And  in  this  recoil, 
that  antiquity  which  these  former  influences  would  reject, 
this  new  principle  would  not  only  retain  but  idolize.  It  is 
difficult  to  cast  off  all  regard  for  those  who  have  preceded  us. 
It  is  not  easy  to  persuade  ourselves  that  we  are  men  and 
that  our  ancestors  were  but  brutes.  And  there  are,  conse- 
quently, several  indications  in  the  science,  literature,  and  art 
of  the  times,  of  a  current  setting  steadily  and  rapidly  towards 
reverence  for  the  past,  a  regard  for  the  imaginative  and  the 
venerable,  in  place  of  the  cold  idolatry  of  the  useful ;  a  drift- 
ing back  of  the  popular  mind  towards  the  times  when  the 
Roman  church  was  a  dominant  power  in  European  civiliza- 
tion. The  Dark  Ages  once  spoken  of  in  our  school-boy 
days,  are  now  more  respectfully  entitled  the  Middle  Ages. 
Their  schoolmen,  once  derided,  are  now  studied  by  some 
scholars,  and  quoted  by  more.  Cousin,  the  leading  meta- 
physician of  France,  has  edited  an  unpublished  work  of  Abe- 
lard,  as  some  of  the  Protestant  theologians  of  England  have 
been  republishing  treatises  of  Aquinas.  In  church  music  the 
ancient  chant  is  revived.    In  church  architecture,  the  Gothic, 

5 


26  CONSERVATIVE     PRINCIPLE 

but  a  few  years  since  thought  uncouth  and  cumbrous,  and 
almost  but  another  name  for  barbarous,  the  architecture  of 
the  old  time-worn  cathedral,  and  the  ruinous  abbey,  is  now 
regarded  as  the  very  perfection  of  beauty — "  the  frozen  mu- 
sic"6 of  the  art.  In  English  poetry,  the  classical  school  of 
Pope  has  given  place  to  the  romantic  school  of  Scott  and 
Byron,  in  which  the  customs  and  the  religious  opinions  of 
the  old  ages  of  chivalry  are  more  or  less  brought  again  to 
recollection ;  whilst  most  of  the  scholars  of  Britain  seem  in- 
clined to  transfer  the  honors  of  the  Augustan  age  of  their 
literature  from  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  to  the  elder  days 
of  Queen  Elizabeth.  A  powerful  party  in  its  Established 
Church  are  attempting  to  revive  the  doctrines  of  Laud,  San- 
croft,  and  the  school  of  the  Nonjurors ;  and  to  develop  the 
Catholic  element  in  their  church  polity  to  an  extent  which 
to  others  it  would  seem  must  render  union  with,  and 
subjection  to  Rome,  the  final  and  inevitable  result  of  the 
general  ascendency  of  the  party.  Indeed  the  practical  cha- 
racter of  the  English  mind,  and  their  disposition  to  reduce 
to  action  all  opinions,  would  seem  to  forbid  that  the  prose- 
lytes of  the  new  school  should  retain  a  foothold  on  the  steep 
declivity  where  their  teachers  contrive  to  stand,  by  the  aid 
of  subtle  distinctions.  The  nation  once  indoctrinated  must 
rush  down  to  Rome.  By  a  sort  of  moral  gravitation  inherent 
in  the  Catholic  system,  the  lesser  must  be  attracted  to  the 
larger  body,  and  the  more  recent  be  absorbed  in  the  more 
ancient.  All  attempts  to  stay  them,  on  such  a  system,  would 
be  like  arresting  an  avalanche,  mid-way  on  its  descent,  and 
securing  it  to  the  sides  of  the  Alps  by  strips  of  court-plaster. 
In  the  literature  of  France,  the  contest  a  few  years  since 
so  eagerly  waged  among  that  mercurial  people  between  the 
classical  and  the  romantic  schools,  would  seem  now  to  have 
been  decided  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter,  thus  attaching 
the  European  mind,  as  by  a  new  bond,  to  the  Mediaeval 
times.  In  some  of  the  French  historians,  and  the  French 
are  now  among  the  best  of  the  modern  writers  of  history,  a 
return  has  even  been  made  to  the  picturesque  style  of  the 
old  Mediaeval  chroniclers.  Much  of  this  may  be,  and  proba- 
bly is,  the  fleeting  fancy  of  the  season.  And  all  these  things 
may  seem  to  some  minds  but  fantasies  of  the  day,  and  fash- 
ions  that  are  soon  to  pass  ;   but  it  should  be  remembered 

6  Mad.  de  Slacl. 


IN     OUR     LITERATURE.  27 

that  such  fantasies  have  in  passing  shaken  thrones,  and  sub- 
verted dynasties  ;  and  that  such  fashions  of  feeling,  if  we 
call  them  so,  have  maddened  whole  nations,  and  in  the  days 
of  the  French  Revolution  armed  France,  almost  as  one  man, 
against  the  rest  of  Europe,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Crusades 
they  had  hurled  Europe,  in  one  embattled  mass,  upon  Asia. 
Favored  by  these,  among  other  influences,  the  Church, 
which  is  the  great  representative  of  superstition  in  Christen- 
dom— it  is  the  Romish  church  we  mean — is  rising  rapidly  to 
some  of  her  lost  eminence  and  influence.  She  is  multiplying 
amongst  us  her  colleges,  many  of  them  under  the  charge  of 
that  order,  the  Jesuits,  who  were  once  the  most  renowned 
instructors  of  Europe.  Upon  the  field  of  Foreign  Missions 
she  is  jostling  eagerly  each  successful  Protestant  Mission  in 
Asia,  in  Oceanica,  or  on  our  own  continent.  De  Smet,  a 
Jesuit  missionary,  boasts  of  the  hundreds  of  Indians  bap- 
tized near  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River,  far  beyond  the 
Rocky  Mountains ;  and  rumors  are  already  spread  that  the 
Papal  See  is  to  be  requested  to  constitute  Oregon  into  a 
Romish  bishopric.7  But  what  is  far  more  wondrous  is  the 
rejuvenescence  of  this  Church  in  the  old  strong-holds  of 
Protestantism  in  Europe.  Germany,  a  few  years  since,  saw 
scholars  like  the  Stolbergs  and  the  Schlegels  passing  over 
from  Protestantism  into  the  Papal  communion.  Scotland, 
over  whose  grey  mountains  seems  yet  brooding  the  stern 
and  solemn  earnestness  of  her  old  reformers — the  land  where 
Knox  destroyed  the  monasteries,  "dinging  down"  the  rook- 
eries that  the  rooks  might  not  return,  has  seen  of  late  her 
Romish  chapels  not  only,  but  her  Romish  nunneries,  erected, 
and  not  left  untenanted  by  votaries.  Geneva,  once  the 
Athens  of  the  Reformation,  is  itself  threatened  with  the  ca- 
lamity of  becoming  a  Romish  State.8     In  England,  the  bul- 

7  Since  created. 

8  Such  is  the  testimony  of  a  recent  traveller,  a  clergyman  of  Scotland,  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Heugh,  in  his  "  Notices  of  the  State  of  Religion  in  Geneva  and  Bd- 
gium,"  Glasgow,  1844,  pp.  205-210.  "In  the  Genevese  territory  itself,  the 
progress  of  Popery  is  rapid  beyond  all  precedent.  For  a  long  period  subse- 
quent to  the  Reformation,  there  could  have  been  few,  if  any,  resident  Catho- 
lics within  the  territory.  A  great  and  rapid  change  has  recently  taken  place. 
During  the  long  occupation  of  Geneva  by  the  French,  that  is  from  1798  to 
1814,  both  infidel  and  Popish  influence  made  alarming  progress.  In  the 
latter  year,  a  small  additional  territory  was  annexed,  by  treaty,  to  Geneva, 
and  being  taken  from  Savoy,  the  population  was  entirely  Catholic.  It  was 
at  this  period  that  the  Roman  Catholic  religion  won  the  support  of  the  State, 
equally  with  the  Protestant.    From  that  time,  the  activity  of  the  Popish 


88  CONSERVATIVE     PRINCIPLE 

wark  of  European  Protestantism,  the  progress  of  the  Romish 
Church  in  numbers,  wealth,  boldness,  and  influence,  within 
the  last  few  years,  has  been  most  rapid.  And  in  some  por- 
tions of  the  earth,  this  artful  and  versatile  power,  rich  in  the 
arts  of  centuries  of  diplomacy,  and  so  long  the  ally  of  Des- 
potism, and  herself  almost  an  incarnation  of  Oppression, 

clergy  and  their  party  has  been  unremitting ;  and  by  the  formation  of  schools, 
by  domiciliary  visitation,  by  public  processions,  by  preaching,  by  the  press, 
they  are  straining  every  nerve  to  reduce  long  rebellious  Geneva  to  her  ab- 
Ijured  allegiance  to  the  See  of  Rome.  Far  from  attempting  to  conceal  their 
efforts,  their  object,  and  their  confident  expectations,  they  glory  in  avowing 
them ;  they  already  exult  in  their  anticipated  success  ;  and  with  too  large  a 
proportion  of  such  a  population  as  they  have  to  do  with,  confidence  is  re- 
garded as  the  prestige  of  victory.  It  is  not  long  since  the  Popish  party 
modestly  requested  that  the  chief  church  in  Geneva,  Calvin's  church,  the 
cathedral  itself,  should  be  restored  to  them.  Except  when  the  eclat  of  a  com- 
munion attracts  a  throng  of  Unitarian  formalists,  the  cathedral,  we  have 
seen,  is  nearly  empty  at  the  usual  worship  of  the  Sabbath;  and  the  cold  of 
winter  is  such  an  overmatch  for  Unitarian  ardor,  that  during  that  season 
they  surrender  their  cathedral,  without  a  sigh,  to  the  undisturbed  possession 
of  the  fogs  and  frosts,  inviting  the  few  worshippers  who  are  not  quite  be- 
numbed, to  assemble  in  a  small  and  more  comfortable  place  adjoining.  The 
Roman  Catholics  sought  the  restoration  of  a  place  of  worship  for  which  the 
Protestants  appear  to  have  so  little  need,  accompanying  the  request  with  the 
sarcastic  intimation,  that  they  would  keep  the  cathedral  open  all  the  year 
round,  and  that  their  numbers  would  keep  it  warm  enough  even  during  the 
winter  s  cold.  The  clergy,  it  is  said,  avow  their  conviction,  that  the  question 
of  occupancy  is  but  a  question  of  time;  that  there  is  no  doubt  that  Geneva 
will  soon  be  their  own  again;  and  remark  with  good  humor,  that  the  Prot- 
estant motto  will  require  no  change,  and  will  soon  be  fulfilled  in  another 
sense  than  that  in  which  its  authors  meant  it — '  After  darkness,  light?*  The 
progress  of  the  Popish  population,  completes  the  danger.  By  the  annexation 
of  the  new  territory,  and  also  by  a  perpetual  immigration  of  poor  Savoyards, 
in  quest  of  the  comforts  of  Geneva  (like  Hibernianlmmigration  into  Britain), 
the  Roman  Catholics  have  now  upwards  of  27,000  out  of  a  population  rather 
under  60,000;  and  during  the  last  five  years,  the  Catholic  population  in- 
creased by  three  thousand,  while  that  of  the  Protestants  diminished  by 
two  hundred,  the  former  by  immigration  into  the  territory,  the  latter  by 
emigration  from  it.  That  advancing  minority  will  become,  and  probably 
will  soon  become,  an  actual  majority,  and  then,  suffrage  being  universal, 
Geneva  may,  by  the  vote  of  a  majority  of  her  citizens,  lose  her  rank  among 
Protestant  states,  renounce  by  open  profession  the  Protestantism  which  in 
fact  her  ministers  and  her  people  have  already  betrayed,  and  reannex  herself 
to  Rome.  ********** 

They  have  Unitarianism  established  already,  and  Catholicism  virtually  estab- 
lished along  with  it,  with  the  near  prospect  of  its  arriving  at  an  ascendency, 
possibly  an  exclusive  ascendency."  These  are  not  the  hasty  and  ill-advised 
opinions  of  a  foreign  visitant,  after  the  lapse  of  a  few  days  of  hurried  observa- 
tion. He  quotes  from  a  publication  of  the  distinguished  Merle  D'Aubign6, 
the  author  of  the  will-known  History- of  the  Reformation.  In  a  work  of  his, 
if  La  Question  dc  VEglise"  that  eminent  man,  himself  a  resident  of  Geneva, 
says:  "The  faith  of  our  fathers  made  Rome  tremble  at  the  name  of  Geneva  ; 
now,  alas !  Geneva  trembles  at  the  name  of  Rome.     *     *     *      Are  we  sure 

J  "  Fust  tcnebras,  lux,"  the  motto  on  the  escutcheon  and  coin  of  Geneva. 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  29 

seems  coquetting  with  Democracy,  and  courting  the  spirit 
of  Social  Progress.  It  reminds  one  of  the  prediction  of  the 
excellent  Bengel,  who,  with  all  his  errors  in  the  interpreta- 
tion of  Scripture  prophecy,  was  a  scholar  eminent  for  learn- 
ing, acuteness  and  profound  piety,  that  the  last  days  would 
witness  a  league  of  Socinianism  and  Romanism — the  spirit 
of  tradition  and  the  spirit  of  rationalism.9  In  fact  this  Apos- 
tate Church,  branded  as  the  Babylon  of  New  Testament 
prophecy,  seems  disguising  her  wrinkles,  and  painting  her 
face  until  it  is  rent10  again — rent,  we  mean,  with  some  un- 
seemly contradictions  of  her  old  principles.  Like  Jezebel, 
in  her  gay  old  age,  with  tired  head  and  lacquered  eyes,  she 
is  seen  looking  out  from  her  palace  windows,  not  like  the 
relict  of  Ahab,  to  upbraid,  but  to  soothe  and  to  allure  the 
Jehu  of  the  age — the  Spirit  of  Radicalism,  and  the  party  of 
the  movement,  as  with  glowing  axle,  it  drives  the  chariot 
wheels  of  innovation  over  every  obstacle.  And  literature 
must  feel,  and  is  already  feeling,  in  various  departments,  the 
weight  of  this  new  element,  the  element  of  superstition  amid 
the  conflicting  influences  of  our  age.  The  contributions,  for 
instance,  of  Romish  authors  to  English  literature,  have  both 
in  amount  and  ability  been  trebled,  probably,  within  the  last 
twenty  years.  As  to  the  cramping  and  degrading  power  of 
all  superstition  on  the  mind,  the  restraints  it  imposes  on  the 

that  Popery,  triumphant,  and  perched  upon  our  high  towers,  will  not  one 
day,  and  quickly,  mock  with  bitter  derision  the  blindness  of  our  citizens'? 
The  air  is  heavy,  the  atmosphere  is  choking,  the  night,  perhaps  the  tempest, 
approaches.  Let  us  enter  then  into  our  bosoms — let  us  reflect  in  that  inner 
temple,  and  raising  our  cry  to  heaven,  let  us  say,  O  God,  save  the  country, 
for  men  come  to  destroy  it.  *  *  *  *  *  Rome  cannot  change.  All 
around  us  she  advances.  She  builds  altar  after  altar  upon  the  banks  of 
our  lake.  The  progress  is  such  amongst  us,  from  the  facility  which  stran- 
gers have  in  acquiring  the  right  of  citizenship,  that  quickly  (every  one  ac- 
knowledges it)  the  Romish  population  will  exceed  the  Protestant  population 
of  Geneva.  *  *  *  *  Let  Rome  triumph  at  Rome,  it  is  natural.  Let 
Rome,  as  she  assures  herself,  triumph  at  Oxford ;  the  conquest  will  be  great. 
But  let  Rome  triumph  at  Geneva,  then  she  will  raise  a  cry  that  will  echo  to 
the  extremity  of  the  universe.  Genevese !  that  cry  will  announce  to  the 
world  the  death  of  your  country.''  It  is  the  quotation  and  translation  of  Dr. 
Heugh  that  we  here  have  used. 

9  "  In  the  last  times  Popery  and  the  Socinian  heresy  (a  denial  of  the  proper 
deity  of  Christ)  will  run  into  one  another." — Memoir  of  John  Alb.  Bengel  by 
John  C.  F.  Burk)  translated  from  the  German  by  Robert  F.  Walker^  London, 
1837,  p.  301. 

"  But  though  Socinianism  and  Popery  at  present  appear  virtually  aloof, 
they  will  in  process  of  time  form  a  mighty  confluence}  that  will  burst  all 
bounds  and  bring  every  thing  to  a  crisis." — Ibid.s  p.  322. 

i°  Jerem.  iv.  30. 


30  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

march  of  science,  and  its  violence  wrought  against  physical 
as  well  as  moral  truth,  let  the  story  of  Galileo  tell,  and  let 
the  records  of  Spain  and  her  Inquisition  attest. 

We  would  never  forget,  in  speaking  strongly  of  the  errors 
of  the  Romish  Church,  the  piety  and  genius  that  have  been 
found  in  members  of  her  communion.  The  memory  of  her 
Kempis,  her  Fenelon,  her  Pascal,  her  Arnaulds,  and  her 
Nicole,  must  ever  remain  dear  to  the  Christian.  But  we 
would  remember  that  to  some  of  the  best  of  these  her  chil- 
dren, she  was  but  a  harsh  and  persecuting  step-mother,  and 
that  she  cast  out  that  most  able  and  devout  body  of  men,  the 
Jansenists  of  France,  with  ignominious  cruelty — branding 
their  name,  suppressing  their  books,  and  sparing  not  their 
dead.  Nor,  while  we  cherish  with  the  tenderest  reverence 
and  affection,  the  names  of  some  among  her  saints  whose 
shoe-latchets  we  are  not  worthy  to  unloose,  can  we  forget 
the  wrongs  she  has  inflicted  upon  humanity,  and  her  blas- 
phemies against  God — can  we  blanch  the  long  and  dark 
catalogue  of  her  corruptions  and  errors,  or  dare  to  overlook 
the  sentence  of  prophecy,  branding  her  with  infamy,  and 
dooming  her  disastrous  splendor  to  a  fatal  eclipse,  and  her 
power  to  a  final  and  utter  overthrow. 

Here  then,  if  we  have  not  deceived  ourselves,  are  perils 
besetting  the  future  course  of  our  literature,  not  only  real 
but  formidable.  Many  of  the  details,  that  were  unavoidable, 
may  have  seemed  to  some  of  our  hearers  trivial,  but  in  our 
view  they  are  trivia],  only  as  are  the  weeds  which  float  in  the 
edge  of  the  Gulf-stream.  Light  and  valueless  in  themselves, 
they  yet  serve  to  remind  the  weary  navigator  what  coast  he 
is  nearing,  and  what  the  currents  whose  noiseless  power  is 
drifting  his  bark  away  from  her  appointed  course.  Did  any 
one  of  these  several  causes  operate  separately,  it  would  be 
more  easy  to  prognosticate  from  the  signs  of  the  times,  re- 
garding the  destinies  of  American  literature.  The  utilitarian 
and  mechanical  spirit  would  threaten  our  literary  glories  with 
the  fate  of  Holland,  whose  early  splendor  of  scholarship  was 
so  fatally  beclouded  by  her  subsequent  lust  of  gain.  The 
prevalence  of  passion  would  conform  us  to  the  imbecile,  lux- 
urious, trifling  and  vindictive  character  that  mars  so  much 
the  glory  of  modern  Italy.  The  reign  of  lawlessness  would 
revive  in  our  history  the  later  ages  of  Republican  Greece,  its 
anarchy,  violence  and  misery.  The  sway  of  a  false  lib- 
eralism would  renew  on  American  shores  the  crimes  and 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  31 

sufferings  of  the  reign  of  terror  in  France,  when  Anacharsis 
Clootz  led  his  motley  representatives  of  the  whole  human 
race  to  do  homage  to  the  French  Republic,  and  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Paris  abjured  Christianity  ;  as  the  victory  of  super- 
stition would  bring  us  into  a  resemblance  with  the  former 
condition  of  Spain,  when  rejoicing,  as  her  king  did,  in  the 
title  of  the  "  Most  Catholic"  among  the  subject  monarchs  of 
the  Romish  See,  the  country  saw  absolutism  filling  the  throne, 
and  the  Inquisition  filling  every  other  place.  Utilitarianism, 
the  first  of  these  evil  influences,  would  replace  the  Bible  by 
the  ledger,  the  Price  Current,  and  the  bank  note  list.  Pas- 
sion, the  second,  would  fill  our  hands  with  the  viol,  the  song- 
book,  and  the  stiletto,  or  perchance  the  bowie-knife.  The 
third,  or  lawlessness,  would  compel  every  man  to  put  on 
sword  and  pouch,  and  turn  robber  and  homicide  in  self-de- 
fence, snatching  what  he  could  and  standing  sentry  over  his 
spoils.  The  reign  of  a  liberalism,  such  as  we  have  seen  in 
Germany,  would  send  us  to  the  study  of  Polyglott  grammars, 
and  furnish  us  for  our  religious  reading  with  a  manual  of 
Pantheistic  Philosophy  ;  while  the  domination  of  the  fifth 
would  give  us  the  chaplet  of  beads,  and  the  Index  of  pro- 
hibited books  to  guide  our  prayers,  and  direct  our  studies  ; 
and  meanwhile  the  Inquisition  would  take  under  its  paternal 
charge  the  erring  and  refractory  press.  But  acting,  as  we 
have  said,  not  separately,  but  conjointly,  it  is  more  difficult 
to  predict  the  coming  history  of  our  literature.  The  several 
causes  we  have  indicated  will,  when  acting  as  antagonist 
forces,  hardly  neutralize,  although  they  may  often  exaspe- 
rate each  other ;  and  some  of  them  are  likely  ultimately  to 
acquire  the  ascendency  over  and  extinguish  the  others. 

The  influence  of  a  demoralized  and  demoralizing  literature 
it  is  scarce  possible  to  portray  in  too  gloomy  colors.  There 
were  days  in  the  history  of  revolutionary  France  when  it 
would  have  been  difficult  to  say  which  had  been  the  more 
destructive  engine,  the  press  as  worked  by  Marat,  or  the 
guillotine  as  managed  by  Robespierre.  If  the  one  was  reek- 
ing continually  with  fresh  blood,  and  heaped  up  its  hecatombs 
of  the  dead,  the  other  ran  with  a  more  deadly  venom,  that 
corroded  the  hearts  of  the  living.  Our  cheap  press,  from  its 
powers  of  diffusive  influence,  would  make  a  literature  that 
should  be  merely  frivolous,  and  not  flagrantly  vicious,  one 
of  no  little  harm  to  the  mental  soundness  of  the  nation.  A 
race  of  heroes,  such  as  Plutarch  portrays,  could  never  grow 


32  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

up  if  fed  only  on  the  spoonmeats  and  syllabubs  of  an  elegant 
literature,  and  finding  their  entertainment  in  the  lispings  and 
pulings  of  a  feeble  sentimentalism.  If  the  press  be  more 
than  frivolous,  if  it  have  become  licentious,  its  ravages  on  a 
reading  community,  and  in  a  free  country — and  such  a  com- 
munity and  country  God  has  made  ours — are  incalculable. 
For  character  and  private  peace,  for  honesty  and  morals,  for 
the  domestic  charities,  and  for  life  itself,  there  /emains  no 
asylum  on  earth,  when  such  a  press  is  allowed  to  run  a  muck 
against  the  victims  that  its  caprice,  its  interest  or  its  pique 
may  select.  There  have  been  newspapers  circulating  in 
Christian  America,  that  would  have  been  hailed  in  the  cities 
of  the  plain,  on  the  day  ere  the  avenging  fires  fell  from 
Heaven,  as  the  utterances  of  no  uncongenial  spirit,  the  work 
of  men  morally  acclimated  to  breathe  that  atmosphere  of 
putridity  and  death.  There  have  been  seen,  as  editors,  men 
whose  hearts  seem  to  have  become  first  ossified,  and  then 
carious,  in  the  exercise  of  their  vocation,  alike  hardened  in 
feeling  and  corrupted  in  principle,  men  who  had  no  mercy,  no 
conscience  and  no  shame.  And  such  men  have  been  not  only 
suffered  but  applauded,  courted  and  bribed,  while  "  a  reading 
public,"  to  use  a  phrase  of  the  times,  has  been  found  to 
gather  eagerly  around  the  moral  slaughter-houses,  over  which 
such  spirits  presided  ;  and  has  delighted  itself  in  snuffing  the 
fumes  of  each  fresh  sacrifice,  feeding  on  the  garbage,  and 
drenching  their  souls  in  the  puddles  there  supplied.  The 
extent  of  the  moral  taint  already  spread  from  such  foul 
sources  of  corruption,  who  can  estimate  ?  Were  such  to 
become  the  pervading  and  controlling  spirit  of  our  literature, 
that  literature,  and  the. society  which  sustains  it,  must  col- 
lapse and  perish,  a  loathsome  mass  of  festering  corruption. 

For  a  profligate  literature  destroys  itself  and  the  commu- 
nity who  patronize  it.  Let  literature  be  sold  into  bondage 
to  immorality,  and  its  days  are  thenceforward  numbered,  as 
well  by  the  very  nature  of  the  human  mind,  as  by  the  laws 
of  the  divine  government.  Genius,  when  grinding,  like  a 
blind  Samson,  in  the  prison-house  of  vice,  ultimately  per- 
ishes in  its  task,  and  leaves  no  heir.  It  may  not  so  seem  at 
first.  A  delirious  frenzy  may  appear  to  call  forth  fresh  elo- 
quence and  harmony,  and  every  Muse,  dissolute  and  shame- 
less, may  wave  aloft  the  thyrsus  of  a  mad  Bacchante.  Science 
and  art,  and  wit  and  eloquence,  have  thus  aided  in  the  erec- 
tion of  shrines  to  immorality  ;  but  they  have  languished  and 


IN    OUR     LITERATURE.  33 

died  amid  their  toils.  4»  profligate  people  soon  ceases  to  be 
intelligent,  and  their  literature  loses  all  living  power,  all 
ability  to  perpetuate  itself.  The  literature  of  the  dead  past 
is  soon  all  that  remains  to  a  vicious  community.  And  when 
the  proudest  monument  of  unprincipled  talent  and  perverted 
genius  has  been  completed,  and  stood  perfect  in  beauty,  its 
last  chapiter  -carved  and  fixed,  its  topmost  pinnacle  glittering 
on  high,  its  last  statue  polished  and  fitted  in  its  appointed 
niche,  the  nation  may  have  exulted  in  the  splendor  of  their  • 
immoral  poetry,  and  eloquence  and  art.  But  that  nation, 
even  in  the  hour  of  its  triumph,  stands  before  its  trophies, 
bereft  of  the  talents  that  had  aided  in  its  work,  desolate  and 
lone,  like  him  who  reared  from  its  ruins  the  city  of  palm- 
trees,  the  fated  city  over  which  hung  the  old  but  unslumber- 
ing  curse  of  Heaven.  His  children  fell  as  the  walls  of  his 
new  foundation  rose ;  and  he  stood  at  the  last  in  the  home 
he  had  reared,  a  solitary  man,  with  none  to  inherit  his  labors 
— "For  Hiel  the  Bethelite  in  those  days  built  Jericho.  He 
laid  the  foundations  thereof  in  Abiram,  his  first-born,  and 
set  up  the  gates  thereof  in  his  youngest  son  Segub."  Lite- 
rature slays  its  children,  when  building  under  God's  curse. 
Talent  prostituted  in  the  cause  of  vice  pines  amid  its  suc- 
cesses and  dies  ;  and  an  imbruted  community,  it  is  generally 
seen,  by  a  just  retribution  of  Providence,  soon  buries  in  ob- 
livion the  literature  that  has  corrupted  and  barbarized  it. 

Whether,  then,  we  love  the  cause  of  letters  or  of  religion, 
whether  our  country  or  its  honor,  whether  science  or  piety 
be  dear  to  us,  we  need  to  dread  a  depraved  literature,  and  we 
have  cause  with  jealousy  to  watch  every  influence  that  may 
threaten  to  work  such  corruption.  We  have  seen  that  perils 
of  this  kind  are  not  wanting  amongst  us. 

II.  But  where,  it  may  be  asked,  is  the  remedy  of  the  evils 
that  beset  us,  and  against  these  perils  is  it  in  our  power  to 
find  and  apply  any  preservative  ? 

Such  defence,  we  reply  then,  against  the  possible  corrup- 
tion of  our  literature  is  not,  amongst  us  at  least,  to  be  found 
in  legislation.  We  look  with  jealousy  on  every  thing  that 
seems  to  abridge  the  freedom  of  the  press.  And,  again, 
legislation  is  with  us  but  the  emanation  of  the  popular  taste. 
When  that  taste  has  itself  become  vitiated,  it  will  of  course 
hardly  seek  to  reform  itself,  or  submit  to  the  necessary  re- 
strictions. Nor  is  there  a  sufficient  guard  in  education.  Our 
newspapers  are  in  this  land  almost  an  integral  part  of  our 

6 


84  CONSERVATIVE     PRINCIPLE 

education,  and  no  process  that  reached  the  schools  only  and 
not  the  journals  of  the  land  would  be  sufficient.  And  our 
scholastic  education  is  itself  but  the  utterance  of  the  moral 
taste  and  fashion  of  the  times,  and  will  therefore  be  very- 
slow  to  detect  and  check  its  own  deficiencies.  Nor  is  there 
hope  for  us  in  philosophy.  That  never  yet  reached  the  masses, 
and  often  in  the  classes  it  has  reached,  it  has  been  like  the 
Epicurean  philosophy  in  Roman  society,  a  fermenting  prin- 
ciple that  hastened  the  decay  and  dissolution  of  the  common- 
wealth. Not  in  general  knowledge,  for  that  may  be  the 
knowledge  of  evil  quite  as  much  as  of  good,  and  the  intelli- 
gence that  stores  the  head  and  neglects  the  heart,  has  cursed 
many,  but  saved  none.  And  if  all  these  resources  are  insuf- 
ficient, what  have  we  left  ? 

The  remedy  that  shall  guard  and  purge,  and  invigorate 
and  fructify  our  literature,  must  have  power,  and  to  possess 
power  it  must  come  from  without ;  not  from  man,  not  from 
society — but  from  something  older,  higher  and  mightier  than 
society  or  man.  But  to  avail  with  us,  it  must  not  only  have 
power,  but  popular  power.  Our  government  is  a  govern- 
ment of  popular  opinion,  and  no  doctrine  that  confines  itself 
to  the  schools  or  to  certain  select  classes  in  society,  a  sacer- 
dotal or  an  aristocratic  class,  can  suffice.  It  must  also  have 
permanent  power,  and  be  beyond  the  reach  of  change  from 
the  changing  customs  and  fashions  of  the  time.  And  where 
shall  such  a  remedy  be  found  ;  rebuking  a  cold  utilitarianism, 
curbing  the  fierceness  of  passion,  awing  the  lawless,  enlight- 
ening and  shaming  the  falsely  liberal,  and  emancipating  the 
slave  of  superstition  ?  Looking  at  the  variety  and  complexity 
of  the  evils  to  be  overcome,  where,  it  may  be  asked,  shall  we 
seek  it?  Human  authority  is  insufficient,  and  mortal  wisdom 
is  dumb.  Yet  we  believe  that  such  a  principle  of  recovery 
and  conservatism  exists,  and  one  that  has  in  perfection  all 
the  several  elements  needed  to  success.  It  has  power ;  for 
it  comes  from  God  and  stretches  into  eternity — popular 
power ;  for  it  was  made  by  the  maker  of  man's  heart,  and 
has  in  all  ages  of  history  and  amid  all  varieties  of  culture 
proved  its  power  over  the  masses,  and  commended  itself  to 
the  hearts  of  the  people — -permanent  power ;  for  it  has  lasted 
while  empires  have  fallen,  and  sects  and  schools  of  philoso- 
phy have  risen,  vaunted,  flourished,  faded  and  been  forgotten. 
It  claims  all  times,  and  its  rewards  and  denunciations  are 
fetched  from  beyond  the  grave  and  lay  hold  upon  another 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE,  35 

world.  Is  it  again  asked :  Where  is  this  remedial  agent — 
this  branch  of  healing  for  the  bitter  waters,  the  Marah  foun- 
tains of  our  literature  ? 

We  answer :  It  is  the  cross  of  Christ.  Let  us  not  shrink 
to  say  it. 

The  Cross  of  Christ  is  the  only  Conservative 
Principle  of  our  Literature. 

Towards  this  point,  as  will  be  seen,  all  our  earlier  remarks 
have  tended  ;  and  it  will  furnish  the  theme  of  all  that  yet 
remain  to  be  made.  Nothing  else  can  save  our  literature. 
This  can — though  alone,  it  is  sufficient.  The  cross  of  Christ, 
we  say  it  again,  is  the  only  conservative  principle  of  our  lite- 
rature. Nor  let  any  be  startled.  Bacon  spoke  of  Theology 
as  the  haven  of  all  science.  It  was  said  by  a  highly  gifted 
woman,  Madame  de  Stael,  who  cannot  be  charged  as  a  pro- 
fessional or  prejudiced  witness  in  the  matter,  that  the  whole 
history  of  the  world  resolved  itself  naturally  into  two  great 
eras,  that  before  Christ's  coming,  and  that  which  has  followed 
his  advent.  And  we  find  John  von  Midler,  a  distinguished 
scholar  and  historian  of  Germany,  holding  this  language  as 
to  his  favorite  science,  in  which  he  had  made  such  eminent 
proficiency.  Animadverting  on  a  defect  of  Herder  in  his 
"Philosophy  of  History,"  "I  find,"  said  Mtiller,  "every 
thing  there  but  Christ,  and  what  is  the  history  of  the  world 
without  Christ?"11 

And  in  fact  the  whole  history  of  our  world  has  looked 
forward  or  backward  to  the  fatal  tree  reared  on  grim  Gol- 
gotha. The  oblation  there  made  had  the  promise  and  immu- 
table purpose  of  God  with  it  to  insure  its  efficacy  over  the 
whole  range  of  man's  history  antecedent  and  subsequent, 
and  along  the  whole  course  of  the  Mystery  of  Divine  Prov- 
idence, as  seen  in  the  government  of  the  world. 

Let  us,  we  entreat  you,  be  understood.  By  the  Cross  of 
Christ  we  do  not  mean  the  imaged  cross,  as  borne  on  the 
banners  of  the  Inquisition,  with  the  emblems  of  Judgment 
and  Mercy  floating  over  the  scenes  of  the  Auto  da  Fe,  where 
the  judgment  was  without  justice,  and  the  mercy  was  a  mere 
lie.12     Nor  the  Cross  as  borne  on  the  shoulder  of  the  cru- 


11  Tholuck  in  Princeton  Bibl.  Repertory,  vol.  iv.,  p.  229. 

12  A  rugged  and  knotty  cross,  with  the  sword  of  Justice  displayed  on  one 
side  and  the  olive  branch  of  Mercy  on  the  other,  was  the  device  borne  on  the 
banner  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition,  and  its  motto  was,  "  Arise,  O  Lord,  and 
plead  thine  own  cause."    Limborchi  Histor.  Znq.  Amstd.)  1692,  (p.  370.) 


36 


CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 


sader,  whilst,  pleading  the  name  of  Christ,  he  moved  through 
scenes  of  rapine  and  massacre  to  lay  his  bloody  hand  on  the 
Holy  Sepulchre.    Nor  do  we  mean  the  cross,  as,  carved  and 

The  inscription  on  that  of  the  Inquisition  at  Goa  was  "  Misericordia  et  Jus- 
titia,''  and  its  emblem  a  figure  of  St.  Dominic,  with  the  right  hand  proffering 
the  olive  branch  and  the  left  displaying  the  sword.     (Ibidem.) 

The  remark  in  the  text,  on  the  utter  falsehood  of  the  claims  made  by  the 
Inquisition  to  mercy,  refers  mainly  to  its  usual  forms  in  passing  judgment. 
As  the  canonical  law  forbids  ecclesiastics  from  shedding  blood,  the  clerical 
jvdgcs  of  that  tremendous  tribunal  were  accustomed  in  handing  over  the 
heretic  to  the  secular  courts  for  execution,  to  annex  the  earnest  recommen- 
dation that  he  should  be  treated  by  these  secular  judges  with  mercy,  and  not 
harmed  in  life  or  limb,  whilst  expecting  and  even  requiring  that  these  ex© 
cutioners  of  their  will  should  destroy  limbs  and  life  in  the  fire. 

Llorente,  in  his  history  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition,  animadverts  severely 
on  this  hollow  and  heartiess  mockery  of  Christian  tenderness.  It  appears  in 
a  very  prominent  manner  on  the  singular  records  which  Limboreh,  an  earlier 
and  Protestant  historian,  published  as  an  appendix  to  his  History,  containing 
the  sentences  of  the  Inquisition  established  at  Toulouse,  in  France,  and 
among  whose  victims  were  found  many  of  the  Albigenses  and  \\  aldenses. 
The  sentences  are  the  identical  records  of  the  Sacred  Office,  at.  Toulouse, 
from  1307  to  1323.  "They  deserved,"  is  the  remark  of  Gibbon  (Decline  and 
Fall,  chap,  liv.),  "a  more  learned  and  critical  editor."  The  elaborate  work 
of  Rev.  S.  R.  Maitland,  librarian  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  upon  the 
Waldensian  history,  entitled,  "  Facts  and  Documents  illustrative  of  the  His- 
tory, Doctrines,  and  Rites  of  the  ancient  Albigenses  and  Waldenses,  Lon- 
don, 1S32,"  lays  great  stress,  and  justly,  on  this  record,  which  it  describes, 
"as  less  known  than  it  deserves  to  be."  Speaking  of  other  documents, 
Maitland  remarks — "In  fact,  I  have  brought  forward  the  public  documents 
hitherto  noticed  very  principally  with  a  view  to  authenticate  and  illustrate 
this  one,  which  I  consider  to  be  the  fullest,  and  the  most  decisive.  Of  its 
genuineness,  I  believe  there  never  has  been,  and  never  can  be,  any  doubt." 
(P.  213-)* 

*  Although  we  do  not  remember  that  Maitland  alludes  to  the  fact,  the  MS.  of  these 
records  of  the  Toulouse  Inquisition  seems  to  have  passed  into  England.  In  a  work  ed- 
ited by  T.  Forster,  London.  1830,  and  entitled,  "  Original  L<(tir.<  of  L<>ck>.  Algernon 
Sidnt  y,  and  Ant  hotly.  Lord  Shaftesbury,"  a  manuscript  (evidently  that  which  Lim- 
boreh used),  is  described  as  forming  part  of  the  large  library  of  an  English  merchant 
Bottled  at  Rotterdam,  by  the  name  of  Benjamin  Furly.  In  a  catalogue  o\  his  library.  ;is 
sold  by  auction  in  1714,  the  parchment  volume  is  "spoken  of  as  being,  "of  all  rarest 
books  the  most  rare,  ana  beyond  valuation"  (Pref.  pp.  cxviii,  cxix.)  Having  been  at 
the  sale  bought  in  by  the  family,  a  son  of  Furly  sold  it  "  to  Archbishop  Seeker  for  the 
British  Museum,"  p.  cxix.  Furly,  its  proprietor, Was  one  of  the  early  Quakers,  a 
learned  man.  and  author,  with  Geome  Fox  and  Stubbs,  of  that  strange  and  erudite  attack 
on  the  complimentary  use  of  the  plural  you,  in  addressing  a  single  individual,  entitled 
u  A  Battledore/or  Teachers  and  Professors  to  learn  Singular  and  Plural ;"  and  was  in 
habits  of  intimacy  with  Locke,  when  in  Holland,  and  with  Le  Clerc  and  Limboreh. 
To  this  remarkable  Manuscript  and  its  contents.  Locke,  in  the  correspondence  pub- 
lished in  the  above  volume  of  Forster  (a  Catholic  descendant  of  the  Quaker  Furly), 
Beems  to  allude,  pp.  21,  26,  29.  30,  and  32.  On  the  publication  of  Limborch'8  volume, 
Locke  presented  copies  of  it  to  his  English  friends  (p.  54),  and  amongst  others  to  Kid- 
der. Bishop  of  Hath  and  Wells.  If  Seeker  were  the  purchaser,  it  would  seem  that  the 
library  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  rather  than  that  of  the  British  Museum,  would 
be  the  place  of  deposit  fortius  ancient  Register.  A  Manuscript  collection  of  similar 
Inquisitorial  Records  is  frequently  quoted  by  a  living  scholar  of  France.  C.  Schmidt, 
Theological  Professor  in  the  Protestant  Seminary  o\'  Strasburgh,  in  his  "  Histotre  des 
Cathares  ou  Albigeeie,  2  vote.  Paris,  1849."  It  is  the  great  Doat  Collection,  in  several 
folio  volumes  of  manuscript,  preserved  in  the  " Bioliotheque  NationaleJ1  at  Paris 
{Schmidt}vo\.  L,  pp.  viii,  and  382),  and  being  transcripts  made  in  1G69  by  Jean  de 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  37 

gilded,  it  is  seen  glittering  on  the  spires  of  a  cathedra],  or 
hung  in  jewels  and  gold  around  the  maiden's  neck,  or  em- 

Amongst  their  victims  was  John  Philibert,  a  priest  of  the  Romish  church, 
who  had,  after  having  been  sent  to  apprehend  a  fugitive  Waldensian,  become, 
himself,  a  convert  to  the  sect.  The  Church  "  having  nothing  more  in  her 
power  to  do  against  him  adequate  to  his  demerits"  {cum  ecclesia  ultra  non 
habeat  quid  facial  pro  tuis  demeritis  contra  te),  pronounced  sentence  of  degra- 
dation from  the  priesthood;  and,  upon  his  degradation,  that  he  should  be 
abandoned  to  the  judgment  of  the  secular  court,  at  the  same  time  "  affec- 
tionately beseeching  such  secular  court,  as  the  requirements  of  the  canon  law 
demand,  to  preserve  to  thee  life  and  limbs  unharmed"  (eandem  affecluose  ro- 
gaides  prout  suadent  canonical  sanctiones  ut  tibi  vitam  et  membra  ULibata  con- 
scrvct.)  Limborch,  p.  255.  Two  other  Waldensians  are,  with  the  same  gentle 
phraseology  and  earnest  entreaty,  committed  to  the  secular  court. — (p.  265.) 
In  the  recorded  degradation  of  Philibert  from  his  priestly  office  (p.  275),  the 
recommendation  of  mercy  is  repeated  with  new  emphasis.  The  seneschal 
of  Toulouse,  the  secular  judge  into  whose  hands  he  passes,  is  "earnestly 
required  and  entreated  to  moderate  his  sentence  regarding  the  heretic,  so 
that  it  extend  not  to  peril  of  death  or  mutilation  of  limb."  (Ipsum  tamen 
instanter  requirimus  et  rogamus  ut  citra  mortis  periculum  et  membri  mutita- 
tionem  suam  circa  te  sentcntiam  moderetur.)  A  husband  and  wife,  Walden- 
sians, are  again  committed  to  the  mercies  of  the  secular  tribunal  in  the  like 
select  and  chary  phrases  (p.  291).  A  similar  affectionate  entreaty  {affectuose 
rogantcs)  is  used  in  delivering  a  female  Waldensian  to  the  chief  judge  of  the 
king,  the  lieutenant  of  the  seneschal  of  Toulouse  (p.  381),  and  two  Beguins 
to  the  same  secular  judge  (p.  336),  and  yet  two  other  Beguins,  who  are  relin- 
quished into  the  same  hands  (p.  393). 

It  was,  then,  part  of  the  gracious  etiquette  of  the  Inquisitorial  tribunal,  like 
Pilate,  at  the  sentence  of  Christ,  to  wash  her  hands  clean  of  the  blood  of 
those  she  gave  up.  More  eager  than  Pilate,  she  insisted  on  the  penalty  she 
required  others  to  inflict.  But  chary  as  she  was  of  allowing  the  violent  death 
which  followed  to  appear  as  her  act,  or  to  stain  her  records,  the  truth  breaks 
out  in  several  places  on  the  same  records;  as  where  one  Petrus  Lucensis, 
who  abjured  his  errors,  speaks  of  some  earlier  victims  of  the  Inquisition  as 
having  been  condemned  by  the  inquisitors  and  prelates  of  the  Roman  church, 
and  "  left  to  the  secular  arm  and  burnt"  {condemnati  per  inquisitor es  et  pre- 
latos  ecclesiaz  Romano?)  et  relicti  seculari  brachio  et  combusti),  p.  360.  The 
formula  of  abandonment  to  the  secular  arm  was  followed  by  the  stake  as  its 
invariable  sequent — "  condemnati  et  per  sccularcm  curiam  combusti"  pp.  310, 
313,  319,  320,  323,  &c. 

And  the  inquisitors  not  only  expected -this  sequent,  but,  as  it  appears  from 
Llorente's  history  of  the  kindred  Inquisition  in  Spain,  they  required  and 
enforced  it.  It  is  from  the  second  edition  of  his  original  work,  as  published 
at  Paris,  in  1818,  in  4  vols.  8vo.,  and  not  from  the  American  re-print  of  his 
abridged  work,  that  we  quote.  The  sentence  of  the  Inquisition,  he  remarks, 
closes  with  a  prayer  to  the  judges  to  treat  the  sufferer  with  humanity  (I.  122)  ; 
but  there  were>  he  observes,  several  instances  in  which  the  secular  magis- 
trate, choosing  to  take  the  inquisitors  at  their  word,  and  to  suppose  their 

Doat,  Conseiller  du  roi,  from  the  registers  of  the  Inquisition  at  Alby,  Carcasonne, 
Toulouse,  Narbonne,  &c,  in  their  proceedings  against  the  Albigenses.  Schmidt  hoped 
that  the  triumph  of  freedom  In  Italy  would  soon  give  access  for  similar  researches  into 
the  mediseval  history  of  the  Inquisition  in  that  country.  A  re-issue  of  the  Toulouse 
MS.  in  England,  with  such  annotations  as  Gibbon  wished,  and  a  free  collation  of  the 
Doat  materials  in  France,  were  greatly  to  be  desired.  Schmidt,  whose  own  work  seems 
the  result  of  great  research,  seems  disposed  severely  to  criticise  the  cotemporary  treatise 
of  the  German  scholar  Halm,  on  the  kindred  theme  of  the  Heretics  of  the  Middle  Agos.j 


d»  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

broidered  on  the  slipper  of  a  pontiff.13  The  cross,  as  we 
understand  it,  has  no  sympathy  with  a  religion  of  shows  and 
spectacles,  of  mummeries  and  pageants,  of  incense  and  music, 
and  long-drawn  aisles,  and  painted  windows,  and  gorgeous 
pictures,  and  precious  statuary.  . 

language  sincere,  did  not  send  the  culprit  to  punishment,  and  the  judge  was, 
in  consequence,  arraigned  himself,  as  one  suspected  of  heresy  (I.  125).  "  The 
prayer,  then,"  it  is  his  language  that  we  use,  "was  but  a  vain  formality,  dic- 
tated by  hypocrisy."  (Ibid.)  So  again,  in  animadverting  on  the  case  of 
Marine  de  Guevara  (II.  253,  254),  he  exclaims,  "Who  would  not  be  moved 
with  indignation  to  see  this  act  of  the  tribunal  closing  with  a  recommenda- 
tion, on  the  part  of  the  inquisitors,  to  the  royal  judge  in  ordinary,  that  he 
should  use  with  the  accused,  gentleness  and  mercy,  whilst  they  were  not 
ignorant  as  to  what  was  to  ensue  7  *  *  *  If,  on  the  condemned  being 
placed  in  the  hands  of  the  corregidor,  this  officer  should  allow  himself  to 
sentence  the  victim  to  perpetual  imprisonment  in  some  fortress,  instead  of 
sentencing  to  capital  punishment,  they  would  have  carried  their  complaints 
to  the  king,  and  perhaps  even  have  launched,  their  censures  against  him,  and 
have  brought  him  to  judgment  as  one  guilty  of  having  opposed  himself  to 
the  measures  of  the  holy  office — of  having  violated  his  oath  to  lend  to  them 
aid  and  assistance,  and  of  being  a  favorer  of  heretics.  What,  then,  means 
this  hypocritical  affectation?  *  *  It  is  for  their  purposes  to  induce  the  belief 
that  they  have  no  share  in  the  death  of  the  accused,  who  is  their  neighbor, 
and  that  thus  they  have  not  incurred  the  penalties  of  ecclesiastical  irregu- 
larity, pronounced  against  those  priests  who  have  had  a  share  in  the  death 
of  any  person."  Llorente,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  a  Romanist;  had, 
himself,  been  for  years  an  officer  of  the  Inquisition  ;  and  wrote  with  its  re- 
cords before  him. 

Of  such  infamous  jugglery  with  truth  and  the  forms  of  Christian  kindness 
it  is  not,  then,  harsh  to  say,  that  "its  mercy  was  a  mere  lie." 

Several  of  the  victims  of  the  French  Inquisition  are  charged,  amongst 
other  offences,  with  confessing  their  sins  to  Waldensian  or  other  pastors, 
"who,  as  they  knew,  were  not  priests  ordained  by  any  bishop  of  the  Romish 
church."— Limborch,  pp.  264,  226,  230,  234,  236,  237,  238,  239,  240,  241,  242, 
290,  &c.  The  tenet  of  apostolic  succession,  as  coming  through  Rome,  and 
necessary  to  a  valid  ministry,  was  then  one  element  in  the  storm  of  wrath 
that  burst  upon  these  sufferers.  One  of  them,  Raymond  Dominic,  who 
seems  to  have  been  arraigned  in  1322,  is  charged,  amongst  other  errors,  with 
holding  that  "  the  baptism  of  water,  given  by  the  Church  to  boys,  was  of  no 
worth,  because  the  boys  consented  not,  but  rather  wept."  We  give  the  mis- 
spelt Latin  of  the  Inquisitorial  scribe :  "  Item  quod  baptismus  aquefacius  per 
ecclesiam  pueris  nichil  valebat,  quia  pueri  non  consenciebant  ymo  Jtcbant" — p. 
348.  He  and  his  wife  had  been  fugitives  for  eleven  years.  When  asked 
why,  at  his  first  citation,  he  had  not  appeared  and  confessed,  but  fled,  he 
replied,  it  was  from  pity  for  his  seven  children  of  either  sex,  for  whom  he 

13  "  The  Pope  is  present.  He  is  seated  on  a  throne  or  chair  of  state;  the 
cardinals,  in  succession,  approach  and  kiss  his  hand,  retire  one  step,  and 
make,  three  bows  or  nods:  one  to  him  in  front,  and  one  on  the  right  hand, 
and  another  on  the  left ;  which,  I  am  told,  are  intended  for  him  (as  the  per- 
sonification of  the  Father),  and  for  the  Son,  and  for  the  Holy  Ghost,  on 
either  side  of  him  ;  and  all  the  cardinals  having  gone  through  these  motions, 
and  the  interior  priests  having  kissed  his  toe — that  is,  the  cross  embroidered 
on  his  shoe— high  muss  begins." 

Rome  in  the  Nineteenth  Century, 

Harper's  Edition,  vol.  ii.,  pages  246,  %A7, 


IN     OUR     LITERATURE.  39 

r  But  by  this  title,  we  mean  the  cross,  naked,  rugged,  and 
desolate,  not  pictured,  save  on  the  eye  of  faith,  and  upon 
the  pages  of  scripture — not  graven  but  by  the  ringer  of  the 
Spirit  on  the  regenerate  heart ;  the  cross  as  Paul  preached 

feared  that  they  would  die  of  hunger  if  he  and  his  wife  had  been  then  im- 
prisoned, and  that  he  proposed  to  come  in  and  confess  when  his  children 
should  have  become  able»to  help  themselves. — p.  349.  So  also  his  wife,  being 
asked  the  reason  of  their  flight,  replied,  it  was  chiefly  from  love  and  pity  for 
their  little  boys — "propter  amor  em  et  compassionem  puerorum  suorum  par- 
vulorum" — who  would  perish  of  hunger. — p.  250.  Such  incidents  reveal 
some  of  the  scenes  of  domestic  anguish  this  ruthless  tribunal  created. 

The  same  records  of  the  Tribunal  at  Toulouse  may  throw  some  light  on  a 
question  lately  agitated — whether  the  oath  of  the  Romish  bishop,  taken  at 
his  consecration,  is  to  be  translated  as  requiring  of  him  the  persecution  of 
heretics.     In  the  proceedings  of  the  French  Inquisition  we  find  the  Latin 
word  in  question  occurring  in  the  oaths  taken  of  the  secular  magistrates  to 
aid  the  Inquisition  in  the  detection  and  suppression  of  heresy ;  in  the  pen- 
ances assigned  those  who  recanted  their  heresy  and  were  to  prove  their  sin- 
cerity by  informing  against  and  delivering  up  others;  in  the  forms  of  abjura- 
tion imposed  upon  penitents ;  and  in  the  complaints  of  the  sufferers  against 
the  Romish  church  for  its  treatment  of  them ;  and  again  in  the  stafement  by 
her  own  officers,  of  that  church's  conduct  towards  errorists.     On  page  1,  the 
secular  magistrates  of  Toulouse,  under  the  French  King,  are  sworn  to  defend 
the  faith  of  the  holy  Roman  Church,  and  to  "pursue  (or  persecute)  and  take, 
and  cause  to  be  taken,  accuse  and  denounce  to  the  church  and  inquisitors, 
heretics,  their  disciples,  favorers,  and  harborers — "hereticos  credentes,  J auto- 
res  et  receptalores  eorumdem  persequemur"  &c.     This  was  sworn  on  the 
Holy  Gospels  of  God,  and  a  similar  oath  was  taken  of  the  "  consules"  of  Tou- 
louse, p.  1.     Similar  oaths  may  be  found  imposed  on  the  secular  tribunals, 
in  pp.  292,  334,  &c.     So  those  admitted  to  penance,  on  recantation,  are 
charged,  "  Prceterea  persequamini  fiereticos  quibuscunque  nominibus  censean- 
tur  et  credentes  et  fautores  et  receptatores  et  defensor es  eorum"  to  persecute 
heretics,  by  whatever  names  they  be  designated,  and  their  disciples,  favorers, 
harborers  and  defenders,  p.  341 ;  and  a  similar  penance,  on  p.  347,  includes 
also  "  fugitives  for  heresy.3'     A  William  Garrick,  Professor  of  Laws,  admit- 
ted to  penance,  but  banished  from  the  kingdom  of  France,  in  the  year  1321, 
"swears  and  promises  to  the  best  of  his  power,  to  persecute  heretics  of  every 
condemned  sect,  and  those  whom  he  knows  or  believes  to  be  fugitives  for 
heresy,  and  to  cause  them,  to  the  best  of  his  power,  to  be  apprehended  and 
delivered  up  to  the  inquisitors  of  heretical  pravity.5' — p.  283.     Certain  offend- 
ers, condemned  to  imprisonment,   "abjure  heresy  and  swear  to  keep,  hold 
and  defend  the  orthodox  faith — to  persecute  heretics  and  their  favorers,  and 
to  disclose  and  reveal  them  wherever  known  to  be." — p.  202.     A  relapsed 
Waldensian  is  charged  with  falsifying  his  oath,  "par ere  mandatis  ecclesiae  et 
inquisitorum  et  persequi  Valdenses  et  alios  hereticos"  to  obey  the  mandates 
of  the  church  and  its  inquisitors,  and  persecute  Waldensians  and  other  here- 
tics, and  is  charged  with  thus  returning,  tanquam  canis  ad  vomitum. — p.  254. 
So  the  church,  describing  her  own  conduct,  uses  the  same  word.     Philibert, 
already  named,  one  of  their  own  priests,  whom  the  purer  faith  of  the  Wal- 
densians had  won  over,  is  charged  with  holding  these  Waldensians  to  be 
good  men  and  a  good  sect,  and  of  good  faith  in  which  men  might  be  saved, 
"  although  he  knew  that  the  Roman  Church  and  the  inquisitors  of  heretics  per- 
secuted and  condemned  them." — quamvis  sciret  quod  ecclesia  Romana  et 

INQUISITORES    HERETICORUM    PERSEQUERENTUR    IPSOS    ET    CONDEMrNARENT. 

Here  is  the  church  describing  herself.— p.  254,    John  Brayssan,  another  of 


40  CONSERVATIVE     PRINCIPLE 

it,  ami  the  first  Christians  receircd  it.  This  doctrine,  wo 
suppose  to  bare  two  aspects.     The  first,  Christ  crucified,  as 

becoming  our  free  and  full  justification  by  a  blood  that  pur- 
ges from  all  sin,  and  avails  tor  the  world.*    It  was   the   reas- 

theae  Waldensians,  is  charged  with  belonging  to  that  sect  of  Waldensians,  or 
Poor  Men  of  Lyons,  w  which  the  sacred  Romish  church,  mother  and  mistress 
of  all  (churches),  long  since  has  condemned  as  heretical,  and  the  same,  as 
being  truly  such,  j  tmsacrosancta  Romana  tcclesia 

nutter  omni:.  Etccftim  tanquam  kereticam  condtmpn 

TAHQl  am  vna:   r.vii'M  PSSSSQUITUS  BT  CONDEMPNAT.       p.  20#.     So,  tOO,  the 

complaints  of  tin'  Buflerers  use  the  same  word.  The  Waldensians  are  repre- 
sented as  asserting  rashly  [Umtrwrvt  oseertm/),  "that   the  sacred  Roman 

church  sins  and  deals  with  them  unlaw  fully  and  unjustly,  because  it 

p,  "JO  7. 
Another,  John  Chauoat,  of  the  same  hapless  sect,  is  charged,  amongst  his 
other  misdemeanors,  with  saying  and  asserting  {tUds  t  ass(  ris)r  "that  those 
who  persecute  these  same  ( w  .  s  ?),  to  wit,  the  prelates  of  the  Roman 
church  and  the  inquisitors  of  heretical  pravity,  act  unjustly,  and  in  unright- 
eously apprehending  them  and  detaining  them,  and  In  giving  up  to  the  secu- 
lar arm  those  who  will  nor  desert  that  sect."-  p,  263,  We  have  seen,  and 
the  martyrs  Of  the  valleys  felt,  what  the  inquisitors  eall  their  "eanonieal 
sanetions,"  which,  amongst  other  things,  required  the  use  of  a  heartless  form 
oi  mercy,  while  giving  up  the  victim  to  merciless  tortures  and  death.  We 
need  not  be  surprised  to  find,  though  the  Inquisitors  seem  to  regard  it  as 
unaccountable  temerity,  that  these  **  —  A  the  aforesaid  sect, 

wandering  from  the  right  path,  neither  receives  nor  regards  as  ot  any  worth, 
hut  spurns,  rejects,  and  contemns*1  {sptrnu\  ••,  pp.  263 

and  207.  Familiar  as  were  those  blessed  confessors  with  the  Bible,  they 
probably  recollected,  in  connexion^ with  at  least  this  portion  ot  the  venerable 
"  eanonieal  sanetions,"  the  language  of  the  Psalmist,  an  earlier  sufferer  :  "  His 
words  were  softer  than  oil.  yet  were  they  drawn  swords."    0>s-  Iv.  21.) 

If  the  Episcopal  oath  is,  then,  to  be  construed  by  the  analogy  o(  other 
ancient  usage  oi  the  word  on  the  part  oi'  the  same  ehnreh,  we  can  be  at  no 
loss  as  to  its  signification.  The  word,  "persecution"  is  become,  through  the 
tant  influence,  an  odious  term.  Many  excellent  Catholics, 
as  individuals,  repudiate  the  thing  itself,  Hut,  as  Bishop  Hopkins,  oi  Ver- 
mont, has  shown  in  his  9th  lecture  on  the  Reformation,  the  Roman  church 
has  authoritatively  established  persecution  as  her  duty.  Individuals  have  no 
right  to  create  or  decide  the  doctrine  o(  the  church.  She  claims  infallibility 
and  immutability  ;  and,  although  from  the  force  oi  public  opinion  and  the 
Stances,  she  may  allow  certain  doctrines  and  claims  to  re- 
main in  abeyance,  they  wait  but  the  fitting  season  to  revive  and  reclaim 
their  old  influence.  And  what  the  supreme  Pontiff;  himself,  judges  of  such 
individual  and  modem  modifications  of  the  old  doctrines  we  may  augur  from 
that  Encyclical  letter  issued  by  the  reigning  Pontiff  of  our  own  tim<  s 

\  \  I  .  in  • 

3).     Writing  the  Virgin  Mary, 

whose  aid  he  in\  >)  by  her  heavenly 

ation,  into  salutary  counsels  (p.  356),  he  reminds  the  bishops  and  dig- 
nitari  in  the  language  of  his  canonized  p  in  the 

fid  that 

< 

• 

;.     Rejecting,  therefore, 

Indignantly,  the  proposed  restoration  and  regeneration  suggested  by  some, 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  41 

sertion  of  this  doctrine  which  wrought  the  glorious  Refor- 
mation. The  second,  Christ  crucified,  as  the  principle  of 
our  sanctijication,  under  the  influences  of  the  renewing 
Spirit,  that  conforms  the  believer  to  his  Lord,  and  crucifies 

as  necessary  to  the  well-being  of  the  church  (p.  36S),  he  denounces  as  "  an 
absurd  and  erroneous  sentiment,  or  rather  the  ravings  of  delirium,  the  opinion, 
that,  for  everyone  whatever,  is  to  be  claimed  and  defended,  the,  liberty  of 
conscience." — p.  376  ;  "  to  which  most  pestilent  error  {peslilcntissimo  errori)," 
he  goes  on  to  remark,  "the  way  has  been  prepared  by  that  full  and  unbounded 
liberty  of  opinion  which  prevails  widely,  to  the  injury  of  the  church  and  the 
commonwealth  ;  some  with  extreme  impudence  pronouncing  that  from  it  are  to 
flow  advantages  to  religion." — p.  376.  Reading  history  by  lights  of  his  own, 
he  proceeds  to  declare  that  "experience  has  shown,  from  the  earliest  antiquity, 
tliat  States,  the  most  eminent  in  wealth,  power,  and  glory,  have  fallen  by  this 
one  evil,  the  ungoverned  freedom  of  opinion,  license  of  discourse,  and  the 
love  of  innovation ." — p.  376.  "To  the  same  class,"  he  proceeds,  "is  to  be 
referred  that  worst  and  never  enough  to  be  execrated,  and  detestable  (deterrima 
ac  nunqua?n  satis  exsccranda  et  detestabilis,)  liberty  of  the  press" 
{libertas  artis  libraries). — p.  378.  We  must  close  our  quotations,  but  such 
language  proves  distinctly  that  the  principles  of  toleration  and  freedom  that, 
in  our  country,  have  made  persecution  for  religion  unpopular,  are  not  yet 
the  principles  of  the  Romish  See.  Individuals  may  disavow  and  repudiate 
the  use  of  force  to  compel  religious  uniformity;  but,  with  such  declarations 
before  us,  from  the  head  of  the  Romish  Church,  the  very  "  Seat  of  Verity 
and  Unity,"  as  the  Romanists  term  it,  it  requires  great  heedlessness,  or 
singular  credulity,  to  suppose  that  Rome  has  changed  her  principles,  how- 
ever she  may  vary  her  policy  or  modify  her  tactics  to  the  emergencies  of  the 
time  and  the  scene. 

That  Rome  has  not  repented  of  the  blood  she  shed  in  former  centuries,  for 
the  suppression  of  heresy,  the  same  document  sufficiently  attests,  where,  in 
the  face  of  all  history,  and  in  spite  of  admissions  as  to  their  moral  excellence, 
made  by  such  high  Catholic  authority  as  Bossuet,  the  reigning  Pontiff  goes 
on  to  speak  of  the"  Waldensians,  and  other  sons  of  Belial  of  the  same  class" 
(aliorumque  hujusmodi  fliorum  Belial),  as  being  the  "filth  and  shame  of  the 
human  race"  (qui  humani  generis  sordes  ac  dedecora  mere),  and  "therefore 
deservedly  so  often  smitten  by  the  anathema  of  the  Seat  of  the  Apostles. — p.  388. 
It  is  not  for  any  man  to  use  such  language  of  such  confessors  of  Christ, 
and  especially  for  one  holding  the  seat  once  stained  by  Alexander  VI.,  to  talk 
so  unreservedly  of  "  the  filth  of  the  human  race." 

He  might  well  remember  that  the  connexion  of  his  own  Pontifical  line 
with  the  Borgias  of  the  one  sex,  and  the  Marozias  of  the  other,  is  a  fact 
much  later  and  surer,  as  to  the  evidence  establishing  it,  and  the  influence 
emanating  from  it — both  much  nearer  and  much  clearer,  than  the  Apocry- 
phal claim  that  line  has  set  up  of  apostolic  descent  and  authority.  To  an 
American  Christian  it  affords  but  little  evidence  of  the  possession  of  an 
"  apostolical  seat,"  or  the  inheritance  of  an  apostolical  spirit,  to  have  launched 
such  butchery  of  old,  and  to  scatter  such  Billingsgate  now,  upon 

"  O,  Lord,  thy  slaughtered  saints,  whose  bones 
Lie  scattered  on  the  Alpine  mountains,  cold ; 
E'en  them  who  kept  thy  truth  so  pure  of  old. 

*  *  *  * 

Who  were  thy  sheep,  and  in  their  ancient,  fold 
Slain  by  the  bloody  Piedmontese,  that  rolled 
Mother  with  infant  down  the  rocks." 

*  *  *  * 

7  Milton. 


42  CONSERVATIVE     PRINCIPLE 

his  evil  nature  within  him.  Thus  it  was  that  Christ  was  not 
only  crucified  himself,  but  required  a]so  every  disciple  to 
come  after  him,  taking  up  also  his  own  cross,  and  Paul 
speaks  of  himself  as  crucified  unto  the  world.  This  last 
aspect  of  the  doctrine  of  the  cross,  we  have  thought,  has 
been  rather  overlooked  by  some  of  the  Reformers,  in  their 
zeal  against  self-righteousness,  and  against  a  false  and  asce- 
tic piety.  Such  was  Cecil's  opinion,14  whom  none  can  sus- 
pect of  any  want  of  reverent  feeling  for  the  Reformers.    But 

14  "  Man  is  a  creature  of  extremes,  *  *  *  *  Popish  heresy  of  hu- 
man merit  in  Justification,  drove  Luther  on  the  other  side  into  most  unwar- 
rantable and  unscriptural  statements  of  that  doctrine." — CeciVs  Works, 
N.  Y.  1825.  Vol.  iii.,  p.  419. 

"  The  leading  defect  in  Christian  ministers  is  want  of  a  devotional 
habit.  The  Church  of  Rome  made  much  of  this  habit.  The  contest 
accompanying  and  following  the  Reformation,  with  something  of  an  indis- 
criminate enmity  against  some  of  the  good  of  that  Church,  as  well  as  the 
evil,  combined  to  repress  this  spirit  in  the  Protestant  writings ;  whereas  the 
mind  of  Christ  seems,  in  fact,  to  be  the  grand  end  of  Christianity  in  its 
operation  upon  man." — Ibid.,  p.  308. 

"  A  want  of  the  spirit  of  the  cross  in  its  professors  increases  the  offence  of 
the  cross — that  humility,  patience  and  love  to  souls,  which  animated  Christ 
when  he  offered  himself  on  the  cross  for  the  sins  of  the  world." — Ibid.. 
p.  381. 

The  works  of  an  Irish  clergyman,  the  Rev.  Henry  Woodward,  a  writer  of 
genius  and  piety,  an  original  thinker,  and  a  determined  Protestant,  contain 
some  remarks  to  the  same  effect.  -As  his  writings  are  little  known  in  the 
American  Churches,  we  shall  append  a  lengthened  extract.  It  is  made 
from  his  "  Essays  and  Sermons.  Fourth  edition  London,  1844."  (Vol.  i., 
pp.  5-14.) 

"Justification  by  faith,  or  that  free  forgiveness  which  is  offered,  without 
our  own  deservings,  through  the  righteousness  of  Christ,  has,  we  all  know, 
been  styled  by  a  great  authority  the  'articulus  stantis  vel  cadentis  ecclesice.' 
But,  profoundly  important  and  absolutely  essential  as  this  great  doctrine  is, 
still  it  may  be  questioned  whether  its  rank,  comparatively  with  other  doc- 
trines, is  not  higher  in  the  scale  of  Protestantism  than  in  that  of  the  Scrip- 
ture revelation  generally ;  whether  in  other  words,  it  does  not  occupy  a, 
more  prominent  part  in  the  system  of  Christianity,  as  opposed  to  Popery, 
than  in  the  system  of  Christianity,  considered  in  itself.  On  the  denial,  or  at 
least  on  the  practical  rejection  of  that  vital  doctrine,  the  fabric  of  Romanism 
was  built ;  and,  consequently,  its  vindication  and  re-establishment  were  felt 
by  the  reformers  as  no  less  than  '  life  from  the  dead.'  Like  the  man  who 
rejoices  over  his  one  lost  sheep  when  found,  more  than  over  the  ninety-and- 
nine  which  went  not  astray,  they  naturally  prized  this  article  of  the  faith 
once  delivered  to  the  saints,  as  if  Christianity  had  centred  in  that  alone. 
But,  assuredly,  if  the  first  Protestants  had  been  called  to  fight  their  battles 
With  a  church  which  oppugned,  not  only  justification  by  faith,  but  the  unity 
Of  the  Godhead — or  the  divinity  of  Christ — or  the  personality  and  inspiration 
of  the  Holy  Spirit — or  a  future  state  of  rewards  and  punishments — they 
would  not,  in  that  case,  have  suffered  their  zeal  to  run  so  exclusively  in  the 
channel  ofwh.it  is  termed,  emphatically,  evangelical  doctrine. 

"  However  this  may  be,  certain  it  is,  that  in  the  controversial  attitude  into 
Which  the  opposing  force  of  Popery  has  thrown  us,  we  take  our  stand,  as 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  43 

if  we  look  to  the  New  Testament,  it  is  very  evident  that 
both  were  blended  in  the  doctrine  as  the  early  Christians 
received  it  The  cross  was  not  only  their  confidence,  but 
the  model  of  their  conformity.  It  is,  we  have  supposed,  a 
defect  here — a  neglect  of  aiming  at  this  high  standard  of 
devotedness,  on  the  part  of  many  of  us  Protestants,  that  has 

Protestants,  in  an  especial  manner,  upon  the  impregnable  ground  of  justifi- 
cation by  faith  alone.  To  maintain  this  position,  we  know  that  no  weapon 
can  avail,  but  '  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  which  is  the  word  of  God  ;'  and,  in 
rightly  dividing  the  word  of  truth,  we  direct  against  the  advocates  of  human 
intercessors  and  human  merits  that  portion  of  the  sacred  canon  which  most 
clearly  states  the  terms  of  our  acceptance  with  God.  Hence  has  resulted 
the  pre-eminence  which  many  of  our  writers  have  given  to  the  epistles, 
above  even  the  gospels  themselves  :  a  station  which,  I  am  convinced,  they 
could  not  have  held,  but  for  the  relative  position  in  which  the  Protestant 
churches  are  placed.  And  hence,  also,  has  resulted  the  comparative  rank 
with  which  not  only  the  writings,  but  the  character  of  St.  Paul,  have  been 
generally  invested.  Amongst  mere  human  beings,  I  fully  grant,  that  none 
can,  deservedly,  be  placed  higher.  But  it  may,  perhaps,  be  questioned, 
whether  the  example  of  this  great  apostle  has  not  obtained  an  influence 
which  no  mere  man  should  exercise  over  a  large  proportion  of  the  Protestant 
mind.  It  is  my  firm  conviction,  that  many  of  our  religious  professors  shape 
their  habits  of  feeling  and  of  living  after  the  pattern,  rather  of  St.  Panl,  than 
of  the  blessed  Jesus. 

"  I  do  not.  mean  that  this  is  done  by  any,  consciously,  and  of  set  purpose : 
nor  do  I  charge  the  most  restless  spirit  which  stirs  in  the  religious  bustle  of 
the  day,  with  a  premeditated  design  to  set  the  disciple  above  his  Master,  or 
to  honor  the  creature  more  than  the  Creator.  But,  that  numbers  form  their 
tastes,  and  take  the  standard  of  their  duties,  from  the  life  of  St.  Paul, 
rather  than  from  the  life  of  Christ,  I  judge,  from  effects  and  fruits,  to  be 
accounted  for  on  no  other  principle.  The  present  state  of  the  religious  world 
is,  in  fact,  precisely  what  might  be  expected,  if  there  were  a  general  agree- 
ment to  erect  the  former,  instead  of  the  latter,  into  the  grand  exemplar.  The 
imitators  of  Christ,  and  the  imitators  of  St.  Paul,  be  it  observed,  must,  in 
one  respect,  bear  a  mutual  resemblance ;  they  must  both  fail  in  equalling  the 
model  at  which  they  aim.  In  the  one  instance,  it  would  be  blasphemy  to 
deny  it.  In  the  other,  the  event  is  no  less  certain  ;  because  those  that  look 
not  unto  Jesus  must  want  the  very  principle  which  made  the  apostle  of  the 
Gentiles  what  he  was.  We  can,  then,  but  compare  failure  with  failure. 
Nevertheless,  I  would  put  it  to  any  candid  and  intelligent  observer,  whether 
a  large  proportion  of  professors,  at  this  moment,  are  not  more  like  carica- 
tures of  St.  Paul,  than  the  faintest,  or  even  the  most  distorted  reflections  of 
the  mind  that  was  in  Christ  Jesus;  whether  the  spirit  that  animates  the 
religious  body  does  not  resemble  the  ardor,  the  energy,  and  the  impetuosity 
of  the  one,  rather  than  the  calmness,  the  composure,  and  the  serenity  of  the 
other. 

"  God  forbid  that  I  should  mean  to  throw  disparagement  upon  the  charac- 
ter of  the  great  apostle  here  alluded  to.  No  human  being,  I  believe,  ever 
trod  more  closely  in  the  steps  of  his  Divine  Master.  In  personal  holiness 
he  rose,  perhaps,  as  high  as  is  possible  to  man ;  and  in  the  wide  extent  of 
the  blessings  which  he  diffused  he  has  confessedly  no  rival.  Still,  St.  Paul 
was  but  a  man — but  one  individual  of  the  species.  And  as  such,  his  charac- 
ter, when  held  up  for  general  imitation,  cannot  fail  to  lead  his  followers— 
the  far  greater  part  at  least — in  a  wrong  direction. 


44  CONSERVATIVE   PRINCIPLE 

given  to  the  Oxford  Tractarian  movement,  and  to  the  present 
efforts  of  Romanism,  most  of  their  hold  upon  the  public 
mind.  Apparent  estrangement  from  the  world,  and  a  self- 
denial  that  rises  superior  to  the  ordinary  idols  of  society,  will 
commend  to  the  respect  of  mankind  even  much  error  in 
those  thus  estranged  and  self-denying.     It  throws  a  glister- 

"  This  must,  infallibly,  be  the  effect  of  every  human  model,  if  too  closely 
aimed  at.  In  common  life,  we  often  see  how  awkwardly  the  most  graceful 
peculiarities  of  one  man  sit  upon  another ;  how  that  which  appears  amiable 
and  natural  in  the  original,  degenerates  into  mere  affectation  in  the  copy. 
And  so  it  is  in  the  Church  of  Christ.  Though  all  the  members  of  one  body, 
*  yet  all  have  not  the  same  office :'  each  has  his  peculiar  temperament,  his 
distinctive  character,  his  appropriate  sphere.  Some  are  called  to  lead,  and 
others  to  follow  :  some  are  fitted  for  privacy  and  retirement,  others  for  public 
life  and  active  duty.  In  short,  the  shape  and  coloring  of  the  Christian  are 
as  endlessly  diversified,  as  are  the  cast  and  mould  of  our  natural  features. 
Hence  it  follows,  that  for  all  to  imitate  the  same  human  pattern,  is  to  run 
counter  to  the  course  of  Providence,  and  to  resist  the  operations  of  that 
Spirit  who  divideth  to  every  man,  severally,  as  he  will. 

"And  thus  it  is,  that  if  I  am  right  in  the  conjecture  which  I  have 
hazarded,  the  reason  is  at  once  explained,  why,  in  proportion  to  the  quantum 
of  religious  agency  now  at  work,  so  little  solid  and  genuine  fruit  appears. 
The  fault  lies  in  this,  that  all  are  striving  to  do  the  same  work  ;  and  thus, 
instead  of  having  an  organized  body,  we  have  a  multiplication  of  one  mem- 
ber. So  that  if  St.  Paul  were  to  descend  amongst  us,  and  repeat  his  well- 
known  question,  'Are  all  apostles?'  multitudes,  if  sincere,  must  rise  up  and 
say,  '  We  are — we  are,  at  least,  endeavoring  to  become  so.'  Nay,  are  there 
not  some  who  might  answer  him  in  his  own  words,  '  We  suppose  that  we 
are  not  a  whit  behind  the  very  chiefest  apostles  V 

"In  spite  of  all  our  errors,  there  is,  nevertheless,  I  trust  in  God,  much  of 
the  invaluable  material  of  solid  and  practical  religion  in  this  country.  And 
if  there  be,  partly,  at  least,  from  the  cause  assigned,  an  over-earnestness  and 
activity  in  our  system,  and  if  the  streams  that  flow  are  disproportioned  to 
the  fountain  that  should  feed  them,  the  remedy  is  near  at  hand.  Let  us 
leave  all  human  cisterns,  and  draw  at  once  from  the  fulness  of  Christ.  Let 
us  look  unto  Jesus,  and  set  the  Lord  always  before  us. 

"  And  here  I  would  introduce  an  observation,  in  my  mind,  of  no  small 
importance.  There  is,  I  conceive,  an  independent  proof  of  our  Saviour's 
divine  nature,  to  be  derived  from  the  universal  applicability  of  his  example. 
No  other  pattern  is  suitable  to  all ;  but  his,  like  a  master-key,  fits  every  lock. 
Human  examples  are  only  partial  exhibitions  of  Divine  grace.  They  are 
moulded  by  their  own  peculiar  circumstances,  and  fitted  for  the  special  de- 
partment they  have  to  fill.  They  are,  in  a  word,  like  streams  which  take 
their  direction,  and  pursue  their  several  windings,  in  a  course  tracked  out  for 
them,  and  for  them  alone.  And  hence,  it  is  impossible  for  one  man  impli- 
citly to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  another,  without  some  unnecessary  and 
unnatural  deviations  from  that  line  which  the  order  of  Providence  has  as- 
signed him.  But  Christ  is,  as  it  were,  an  exhaustless  fountain,  not  flowing 
in  one  channel,  but  overflowing  in  all  directions.  He  is  not,  if  I  may  so 
speak,  an  individual  character  :  but  all  characters  of  excellence  unite  in  him. 
In  imitating  Christ,  no  man  is  led  out  of  his  natural  sphere,  or  thrown  into 
a  forced  and  affected  attitude.  Every  movement  after  him  is  performed  with 
freedom,  and  his  likeness  sits  easily  and  becomingly  upon  all  that  bear  it. 
Tiie  liigh  and  low — the  rich  and  poor— the  gifted  and  the  ungifted — the  con- 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE,  45 

ing  veil  of  sanctity  even  over  the  gross  corruptions  of  Ro- 
manism ;  and  her  impostures  and  enormities  are  often  over- 
looked by  those  who  see  standing  in  her  shrines  her  martyrs 
of  charity,  her  Vincent  de  Pauls,  and  her  Francis  Xaviers. 
A  pining  recluse,  scourging  himself  in  sober  sadness,  as  the 
expression  of  his  deep  sense  of  sin,  may  be  a  pitiable  spec- 
tacle of  delusion ;  but  he  is  not  in  the  eyes  of  the  world 
generally,  as  odious  a  sight  as  that  presented  by  a  self-satis- 
fied, self-indulgent  professor  of  a  purer  creed,  living  in  all 
ease  and  pleasure,  conformed  to  the  world  in  all  its  follies, 

templative  and  the  active — all  classes  and  all  dispositions,  find,  in  the  exam- 
ple of  Jesus,  the  teaching  which  they  want ;  and  all  are  led,  by  looking  unto 
him,  precisely  in  the  path  most  suitable  for  them  to  walk  in.  We  see  at 
once,  in  that  comprehensive  model,  the  bright  contrast  to  whatever  we 
should  shun,  and  the  most  attractive  exhibition  of  all  that  we  should  aim  at, 
in  our  Christian  course.  Whatever  our  besetting  sins  may  be,  whether  of 
excess  or  of  defect,  they  stand  equally  condemned  by  a  comparison  with 
him.  Thus,  the  restless  and  over-active  spirit  is  calmed  by  the  contempla- 
tion of  his  nights  of  solitary  prayer  ;  and  the  indolent  are  stimulated  to  exer- 
tion by  his  ceaseless  labors  of  love.  The  high  and  lofty  are  brought  low, 
when  they  behold  their  Lord  and  Master  washing  his  disciples'  feet ;  and  the 
poor  in  this  world's  goods  are  taught  contentment  by  him  who  '  had  not 
where  to  lay  his  head.5  This  subject  could,  indeed,  be  endlessly  pursued. 
Enough  has,  I  trust,  been  said  to  prove  the  point  assumed,  namely,  that  a 
character  which  can  thus  adapt  itself,  in  the  way  of  example,  to  every  pos- 
sible variety  of  man;  which  can  pour  forth  a  healing  virtue,  equally  applica- 
ble to  the  most  opposite  extremes  ;  and  which  can  thus  spread  its  influence 
over  the  wide  extent  of  the  whole  human  race  ;  that  such  a  character  cannot 
be  bounded  within  the  narrow  circle  of  our  nature,  but  must  partake  of  the 
infinitude  of  God. 

"  Let  us,  then,  I  repeat  it,  prepare  for  the  impending  crisis  in  that  spirit 
which  alone  can  enable  us  to  meet  it.  Let  us  array  ourselves  in  the  whole 
armor  of  God.  Let  us  put  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  All  weapons  of  our 
own  forging  must  fail.  They  have  been  long  tried ;  and  they  have  been  tried 
in  vain.  If  we  go  forth  against  our  enemies,  in  dependence  on  an  arm  of 
flesh,  we  miscalculate  the  force  to  which  we  are  opposed.  For  in  that  case 
human  adversaries  are  but  instruments  :  the  real  controversy  is  with  God. 
Not  because  he  has  a  favor  to  our  enemies,  but  because  he  has  a  favor  unto 
us,  and  because  he  is  a  jealous  God  towards  those  who  professedly  maintain 
his  cause.  Persuaded  I  am,  that  until  we  throw  ourselves  unreservedly 
upon  him — till  we  fall  back  on  God,  and  take  up  our  position  on  the  Rock 
of  ages,  discomfiture  and  defeat  will  baffle  and  confound  us  in  every  effort. 

"  But  some  may  say,  '  We  grant  these  theories  to  be  true,  but  what  can 
individuals  do  ?  Where  is  the  controlling  and  disposing  mind,  to  combine 
their  movements  and  direct  them  to  a  common  point?'  To  this,  I  answer, 
that  there  is  an  all-disposing  Mind  on  high.  Let  us,  then,  do  our  own  part. 
Let  us  arm  ourselves  with  the  mind  that  was  in  Christ  Jesus.  Let  our  light 
shine  forth  in  the  triumphs  of  his  patience,  the  splendor  of  his  innocence, 
and  the  victorious  energy  of  his  love.  Let  us  stand  thus  equipped  as  Chris- 
tian soldiers,  and  we  shall  not  want  a  leader.  God  will  teach  our  hands  to 
war,  and  our  fingers  to  fight.  Our  cause  will  be  the  cause  of  Heaven  ;  and 
we  shall  go  forth  conquering  and  to  conquer." 


46  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

and  vaunting  of  a  doctrinal  orthodoxy  that  produces  no  emi- 
nence in  holiness.  Christians  must  live  more  upon  the  cross, 
seeing  in  it  not  only  the  principle  of  their  faith,  but  also  the 
pattern  of  their  obedience — the  cross  not  only  as  cancelling 
their  sin,  but  also  as  crucifying  their  lusts.  Such  is  the  two- 
fold aspect  of  the  great  truth,  the  basis  of  all  scriptural  doc- 
trine and  practice,  the  centre  of  all  its  mysteries  and  all  its 
morality — the  cross  of  Christ. 

Let  us  now,  for  a  moment,  turn  to  the  history  of  that 
cross,  in  order  that  we  may  perceive  more  clearly  its  strange 
elements  of  power.  Place  yourselves,  then,  in  imagination, 
amid  the  multitude,  that,  swayed  by  curiosity,  or  inflamed 
by  hate,  are  rushing  from  the  hall  of  judgment,  and  sweeping 
along  their  hurried  and  tumultuous  way  to  the  hill  of  cruci- 
fixion. Reeling  under  insults,  a  meek  sufferer,  whose  head 
is  bound  with  a  crown  of  thorns,  and  his  face  swollen  with 
blows  and  wet  with  the  spewings  of  the  mob,  is  threading, 
slowly  and  painfully,  his  way  through  that  exasperated 
crowd,  who  are  all  athirst  and  ravening  for  his  blood.  He 
has  reached  the  spot  selected  for  his  death.  There  he  stands 
faint,  but  mute  and  uncomplaining,  whilst  the  cruel  prepa- 
rations are  made  that  shall  consummate  the  sacrifice.  Amid 
shouts,  and  taunts,  and  fiercest  blasphemy,  he  is  nailed  and 
lifted  up.  As  the  cross  becomes  erect,  and  he  hangs  at  last 
before  that  excited  multitude,  methinks  I  see  exultation,  like 
a  rising  breeze,  ruffle  that  sea  of  upturned  faces.  And  there 
he  is  raised  on  high,  how  utterly  friendless  and  abject  to  the 
eye  of  man ;  for  even  the  thieves  upbraid  him,  that  hang 
and  writhe  beside  him. 

But  were  your  eyes  unsealed,  as  the  prophet  opened  those 
of  his  servant  at  Dothan,  you  would  discern,  beside  and 
above  that  howling  rabble,  a  more  august  gathering.  Le- 
gions, whose  feeblest  warrior  would  have  turned  to  paleness 
the  cheek  of  Caesar  at  the  head  of  all  his  hosts,  are  gazing 
there  ;  yet  withheld  by  some  dread  sentence,  they  do  not  in- 
terpose. Angels  that  excel  in  might  and  in  glory,  watch  that 
desolate  sufferer  with  adoring  interest.  That  much  outraged 
victim,  seemingly  rejected  of  man  and  abandoned  of  God, 
is  my  Maker.  In  that  lowly  form  is  veiled  the  incarnate 
Godhead.  The  angels  that  smote  Sennacherib's  host,  and 
slew  the  first-born  of  Egypt,  dispeopling  a  camp  and  decima- 
ting a  nation  in  a  night,  have  bowed  often  their  heads  to 
this  being,  as  their  Lord  and  their  Creator.     Excited  as  are 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  47 

his  enemies,  they  could  frame  no  consistent  accusation  against 
him  to  justify  their  enmity.  There,  under  reproach,  anguish 
and  cursing,  dies  the  only  one  of  Adam's  race  that  knew  no 
sin.  For  no  guilt  of  his  own  is  he  suffering,  but  to  cancel 
that  of  his  murderer,  man.  Thus  viewed,  what  elements 
of  grandeur  and  tenderness,  of  the  loftiest  splendor  and  the 
lowliest  condescension,  blend  in  that  dread  sacrifice  !  Do 
men  look  with  interest  on  greatness  in  misery !  It  is  here  : 
the  King  of  Glory  dying  as  a  malefactor.  Are  they  touched 
with  sympathy  for  distress  ?  How  deep  was  the  anguish 
even  of  his  patient  spirit,  when  he  cried  out,  invoking  a 
Father  who  had  hidden  his  face  !  Should  wisdom  attract, 
here  was  the  great  Teacher  whom  all  Judea  had  admired, 
speaking  as  never  man  spake — the  heavenly  Teacher  for 
whom  Socrates  had  taught  himself  and  his  scholars  to  hope. 
He  is  here  giving  his  lessons  on  the  cross.  The  good  man 
dying  ignominiously,  of  whom  Plato  had  glimpses,  is  here, 
the  exemplar  of  perfect  innocence,  enduring  the  treatment 
due  to  consummate  wickedness.  That  sacrifice  stirs  all 
worlds.  Hell  misses  its  expected  prey,  and  the  spell  of  oe- 
spair  over  the  accursed  earth  is  broken,  while  Heaven  stoops 
to  behold  its  King  incarnate  and  dying,  that  He  may  recon- 
quer to  his  allegiance  a  revolted  province  of  his  empire ;  in 
the  same  act  indulging  his  mercy,  and  satisfying  his  justice, 
whilst  his  expiring  breath  together  magnifies  his  law  and 
enunciates  his  gospel.  That  sacrifice  may  well  have  power 
with  man,  for  it  has  power  with  God.  To  the  human  mind, 
it  presents  in  the  closest  union  and  in  their  highest  energy, 
all  the  elements  of  sympathy,  awe  and  tenderness.  It  blends 
a  Divine  majesty  that  might  well  overawe  the  haughtiest, 
with  a  winning  gentleness  that  would  reassure  the  most 
desponding.  It  may  well  be,  at  the  same  time,  a  theme  for 
the  mind  of  an  angel  to  study,  without  grasping  all  its  vast- 
ness  ;  and  a  motive  for  the  mind  of  the  Sabbath-school  child 
to  feel,  without  being  repelled  by  its  loftiness.  It  has  pow- 
er, practical  power —  popular  power — permanent  power.  It 
is  God's  remedy  for  sin ;  and  with  the  accompanying  influ- 
ences of  his  Spirit,  it  can  avail  as  the  remedy  for  all  forms 
of  man's  sin,  as  that  sin  is  infused  into,  and  as  it  is  found 
envenoming  either  the  literature  of  the  world,  or  any  other 
product  of  the  human  mind.  Let  us  but  transcribe  that 
truth  into  the  heart,  and  illustrate  it  in  the  life,  or  rather  let 
the  renewing  grace  of  God's  Spirit  so  transfer  it  into  the 


48  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

soul  of  man,  let  me  be  enabled  to  believe  in  this  Divine  Suf 
ferer,  as  my  Saviour — to  feel  that  with  him  I  am  dying  to 
the  world,  and  that  with  him,  too,  I  shall  rise  again  from  the 
grave,  see  him  on  the  judgment  throne,  and  follow  him  into 
the  gates  of  Paradise  ;  and  with  these  truths  firmly  grasped 
by  the  mind,  what  has  the  world  left  wherewith  to  allure, 
wherewith  to  appal  me  ?  I  have  thrown  myself  loose  from 
the  trammels  of  earth.  Its  cords  have  perished  at  the  touch 
of  an  ethereal  fire.  Disengaged  from  its  entanglements,  its 
bonds  sundered,  and  its  snares  parted,  I  soar  aloft,  to  sit,  in 
the  language  of  Paul,  in  heavenly  places  in  Christ  Jesus.  I 
rise  yet  higher,  and  in  the  awful  language  of  Peter,  I,  the 
heir  of  corruption,  and  once  the  bondsman  of  death,  am 
made  "  a  partaker  of  the  divine  nature."     Here  is  power.15 

Let  that  power  of  the  cross  but  go  forth  in  its  appropriate 
channels,  in  a  holy,  devoted  ministry — in  the  more  elevated 
piety  of  the  church,  and  in  a  Christian  education  of  the 
young  given  by  the  church,  if  the  State  may  not  give  it : — 
let  that  power,  we  say,  but  go  forth  in  these  channels,  and 
with  God's  blessing  upon  it,  the  world  is  saved.  Carry  that 
truth  into  all  the  scenes  of  human  activity,  or  suffering — into 
the  market-place,  and  the  halls  of  legislation  ;  into  the  schools 
of  philosophy,  and  the  student's  cell,  and  the  editor's  desk, 
the  cabins  of  poverty  and  the  dungeons  of  crime  ;  let  it  fence 
the  cradle  and  watch  the  death-bed  ;  and  it  will  be  found 
equal  to  every  task,  competent  to   every  emergency,  and 

15  It  has  been  promised  at  times  that  the  removal  from  the  Christian 
system  of  its  old,  orthodox  doctrines,  as  to  the  Atonement  and  Deity  of  our 
Saviour,  would,  and  it  alone  could,  conciliate  the  favor  of  men  of  taste  and 
refinement.  The  language  of  Lessing,  himself  unhappily  a  sceptic,  but  a 
critic  of  the  highest  name  in  German  literature  for  taste  and  judgment, 
would  not  sustain  such  promises.  It  has  been  quoted  by  Pye  Smith,  in  his 
Scripture  Testimony  to  the  Messiah  (2d  ed.  Lond.  1829,  vol.  iii.,  p.  236), 
"  I  agree  with  you,  that  our  old  religious  system  is  false  ;  but  I  cannot  say, 
as  you  do,  that  it  is  a  botch-work  of  half-philosophy  and  smatterings  of 
knowledge.  I  know  nothing  in  the  world  that  more  drew  out  and  exercised 
a  fine  intellect.  A  botch-icork  of  smatterings  and  half-philosophy  is  that 
system  of  religion  which  people  now  want  to  set  up  in  the  place  of  the  old 
one;  and  with  far  more  invasion  upon  reason  and  philosophy  than  the  old 
one  ever  pretended  to.  If  Christ  is  not  the  true  God,  the  Mohammedan 
r  Ligion  is  indisputably  far  better  than  the  Christian,  and  Mohammed  himself 
was  incomparably  a  greater  and  more  honorable  man  than  Jesus  Christ;  for 
he  was  more  truth-telling,  more  circumspect  in  what  he  said,  and  more  zeal- 
ous lor  the  honor  of  the  one  and  only  God,  than  Christ  was,  who,  it"  he  did 
not  exncily  give  himself  out  for  God,  yet  at  least  said  a  hundred  two-meaning 
things  to  lead  simple  people  to  think  so;  while  Mohammed  could  never  be 
charged  with  a  single  instance  of  double-dealing  in  this  way." 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  49 

mighty  to  exorcise  every  evil  spirit.  The  earthly  miracles 
of  our  Lord  were  in  some  sense  but  anticipations  and  earnests 
of  the  moral  miracles  which  that  doctrine  of  the  cross  has 
wrought,  is  now  working  and  will  continue  to  work.  Yet, 
— yet,  does  this  Saviour  open  the  blinded  eyes  of  passion, 
and  breathe  strength  wherewith  to  obey  him  into  the  palsied 
will  of  the  sinner.  . 

1.  And  first  let  us  test  the  energy  of  the  cross,  in  its  ap- 
plication to  the  mechanical  and  utilitarian  spirit  of  the  age. 
It  meets  all  the  just  wants  of  that  spirit.  Utilitarians  demand 
the  practical,  and  this  is  a  doctrine  eminently  practical. 
Let  us  but  observe  this  trait  in  Christ's  own  history.  He 
might  have  theorized  brilliantly  and  perhaps  safely  to  him- 
self. He  might  have  been  the  Plato  or  the  Homer  of  his 
age,  a  Plato  far  more  profound,  a  Homer  far  more  sublime 
than  the  old  Grecians.  But  he  threw  aside  all  such  fame. 
He  furnished  the  substance  and  subject  of  the  most  glorious 
literature  the  world  has  seen,  but  he  left  it  for  others  to 
write  that  literature.  His  business  was  doing  good.  He 
was  a  practical  teacher,  and  a  practical  philanthropist.  And 
as  to  the  actual  working,  and  the  every-day  results  of  the 
doctrine  since  the  Saviour's  times,  it  is  seen  how  Commerce 
confesses  that  her  way  has  been  often  prepared  and  protected 
by  the  missionaries  of  this  cross  ;  and  how  the  statesman 
bears  witness  that  his  government  has  owed  the  stability, 
order  and  virtue  of  the  community  to  the  preaching  of  this 
cross  ;  and  how  the  scholar  attests  that  science  has  flourished 
best  under  the  peaceful  and  sober  influence  of  this  religion 
of  the  cross.  The  gospel  is  eminently  practical,  then,  and 
so  far,  it  conciliates  the  spirit  of  utilitarianism. 

But  the  doctrine  of  the  cross  is  not  sordid  and  selfish,  and, 
so  far,  it  corrects  the  mechanical,  utilitarian  tendency  of  our 
times.  Against  the  lust  of  gain,  it  sets,  in  strong  contrast, 
the  example  of  Christ's  voluntary  poverty,  and  in  solemn 
warning,  the  Saviour's  declaration  how  hardly  the  rich  man 
enters  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Against  the  disposition 
which  would  set  material  interests  above  all  others,  and  teach 
us  to  regard  the  tangible  goods  of  earth  as  the  only  real  or 
the  only  valuable  possessions,  the  gospel  shows  Christ  set- 
ting moral  far  above  all  material  interests — and  uttering  the 
brief  and  pithy  question,  before  which  avarice  turns  pale,  and 
ambition  drops  his  unfinished  task  :  "  What  shall  it  profit  a 
man  if  he  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul,  or 

8 


50  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

what  shall  a  man  give  in  exchange  for  his  soul?"  If,  as  the 
great  English  moralist  said,  that  which  exalts  the  future, 
and  disengages  man's  mind  from  being  engrossed  by  the 
present,  serves  to  elevate  man  to  the  true  dignity  of  his 
nature  ;  how  great  the  practical  value  of  a  faith,  in  whose 
far-reaching  visions,  time  dwindles  into  a  speck,  and  eternity 
becomes  the  paramount  object  of  man's  anxieties  and  hopes, 
where  Truth  is  made  more  valuable  than  all  things,  to  be 
bought  at  all  risks,  while  Truth  is  not  to  be  sold  for  the 
world. — And  the  prevalent  selfishness  which  lies  at  the  basis 
of  that  mechanical  and  utilitarian  spirit  of  which  we  have 
spoken,  is  sorely  rebuked  by  the  very  thought  of  a  Divine 
Redeemer,  who,  moved  by  no  selfish  aims,  but  in  disinterest- 
ed kindness,  compassionately  visits,  and  by  the  sacrifice 
of  himself  ransoms  his  envenomed  foes  ;  and  whose  gospel 
makes  all  mankind  my  brethren  in  a  common  sin,  doom, 
and  ransom  ;  and  bids  me  freely  give  to  my  fellow-man 
what  I  have  most  freely  received. 

Imbue,  then,  your  literature  with  that  spirit,  and  men 
learn  that  they  are  not  mere  calculating,  money-getting 
machines,  that  they  have  an  immortal  soul  within  them  ; — 
and  that  the  earth  which  they  till  and  parcel  out,  and  conquer 
and  govern,  is  but  the  lodge  of  their  few  wayfaring  years, 
as  they  are  journeying  to  their  home  in  the  far  eternity. 
Then  the  miser,  as  that  world,  revealed  by  the  cross,  heaves 
into  view,  unclutches  his  gold.  Then  the  manoeuvres  and 
tactics,  the  trickery  and  juggling  of  parties  in  the  church 
and  the  state,  show  in  their  native  meanness,  beside  the 
simple,  sublime  and  unselfish  scheme  of  the  Redeemer. 
The  views  of  eternity,  gained  at  the  foot  of  that  cross,  open 
a  wider  horizon  to  the  noblest  flights  of  science.  The  views 
of  duty  there  learned,  give  a  higher  finish  to  all  the  details 
of  industry  and  art.  Give  literature  thoroughly  to  feel  and 
diffuse  this  doctrine  of  the  cross,  and  while,  on  the  one 
hand,  it  is  saved  from  fruitless  speculations,  and  made  em- 
inently practical  ;  it  is,  on  the  other  hand,  effectually  snatch- 
ed from  under  the  wheels  of  a  mechanical  age,  and  saved 
from  being  trodden  into  the  mire  beneath  the  hoofs  of  a  sor- 
did selfishness.  Thus  the  human  mind,  in  its  pursuit  of  let- 
ters, is  made  practical,  but  not  mechanical  ;  and  while  taught 
to  aim  at  the  widest  usefulness,  is  raised  above  a  grovelling 
utilitarianism,  that  measures  all  good  by  selfish  advantages, 
and  the  standard  of  present  expediency. 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  51 

2.  Bring  again  this  doctrine  to  the  trial,  in  its  power 
over  passion.  We  have  remarked  its  effects  on  the  tyranny 
of  Mammon  ;  let  us  try  its  energies  on  the  prowling  spirit 
of  Belial.  In  the  death  of  the  Mediator  and  Propitiation,  it 
has  provided  for  the  free  forgiveness  of  the  most  aggravated 
sins.  To  those  who  have  become  the  slaves  of  their  un- 
bridled passions,  it  holds  out  therefore  the  prospect  of  re- 
covery, and  the  promise  of  a  pardon,  full  and  immediate. 
It  cheers  those  who  had  learned  to  despair  of  their  own 
moral  renovation.  It  announces  hope  for  the  world's  out- 
casts. Those  whom  human  society  had  shut  out  as  irrecov- 
erable, and  as  sunk  below  the  notice  and  sympathy  of  their 
fellows,  it  pursues  and  reclaims.  In  circumstances  the  most 
discouraging,  and  characters  the  most  hopeless,  it  delights  to 
work  its  miracles  of  mercy.  It  rears  the  flowers  and  fruits 
of  virtue  on  the  scarce  cooled  crust  of  the  flowing  lava  of 
passion,  that  but  lately  had  poured  forth  its  devastating  floods 
over  every  green  thing.  But  while  thus  welcoming  the  vilest, 
it  makes  no  peace  with  their  evil  passions.  It  exorcises 
the  fiercer,  to  foster  the  gentler  of  these  impulses  and  affec- 
tions of  man's  heart.  Of  this  religion,  the  Lamb  and  the 
Dove  are  the  chosen  emblems  ;  meekness  and  kindness,  the 
instruments  of  its  triumphs  ;  and  its  law  the  law  of  love. 

Hence  its  signal  power  to  humanize  and  civilize  when 
introduced  into  those  portions  of  society  where  it  had  before 
been  unknown.  See  how  it  has  tamed  the  rude,  uplifted 
the  degraded,  and  cleansed  the  polluted,  and  righted  the 
oppressed  in  the  islands  and  upon  the  continents  to  which 
the  missionary  has  carried  it.  It  has,  indeed,  much  yet  to 
accomplish  even  in  the  bounds  of  the  Christian  church. 
Bring  it  to  bear  more  fully  upon  the  habits  and  feelings  of 
the  church,  and  it  will  destroy  there  the  supremacy  of  mere 
emotion  and  excitement,  operating  as  they  sometimes  do  to 
produce  a  false  fire  not  from  Heaven.  It  substitutes  principle 
as  the  guide  of  life,  instead  of  that  treacherous  and  change- 
ful sympathy  which  is  often  made  the  rule  of  our  way.  It 
summons  the  disciple  to  view  his  Master's  journey,  Which 
kept  ever  its  unfaltering  gaze  on  the  cross  as  its  end,  and 
looked  steadily  onward  to  the  baptism  of  ignominy  and 
agony  that  was  to  crown  the  long  conflict ;  and  it  bids  him 
in  emulation  of  his  Master's  example,  to  lead  no  random 
life,  the  mere  sport  of  caprice  and  impulse.  It  rebukes 
those  Christians  who  may  be  described  as  living  by  jerks, 


52  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

and  whose  fitful  activity  has  all  the  contortions  of  the  ad- 
ventitious life  of  galvanism.  When  allowed  its  full  scope 
over  the  inner  world  of  the  heart,  see  its  power  to  produce 
high  and  symmetrical  excellence  in  Leighton  and  Doddridge 
and  Baxter  and  Pearce,  and,  why  should  we  hesitate  to  add, 
in  the  heavenly-minded  St.  Cyran  and  Fenelon  ?  See  the 
men  whom  it  has  thoroughly  possessed,  in  whom  it  operated, 
pervading  all  their  passions,  and  making  them  to  become 
like  Brainerd  or  Martyn  or  Xavier,  "living  burnt  sacrifices" 
on  the  altar  of  God.  We  see  no  lack  of  noble  feelings  and 
high  emotion  there.  It  is  no  painted  flame  that  shines  there  ; 
much  less  are  these  the  lurid  fires  of  a  malignant,  persecu- 
ting zeal.  The  victim  is  consumed  in  the  flames  of  a  heav- 
en-descended charity,  a  holocaust  to  God,  while  all  around  is 
made  radiant  with  the  golden  and  lambent  lustre  of  his  love. 

For  the  doctrine  of  the  cross  is  far  from  extirpating  pas- 
sion. It  but  regulates  it.  No  doctrine  like  it  awakens  and 
sustains  the  holier  passions.  All  is  purified  and  subordinated 
to  the  love  of  God,  and  man  returns  thus  to  the  likeness  of 
his  unfallen  self — to  bear  again  some  traces  of  his  original 
character  ere  sin  had  marred  his  nature,  or  sorrow  darkened 
his  path  ;  and  when  all  his  powers  and  passions  ministered  to 
virtue  and  contributed  to  his  happiness. 

Let  literature  then  become  but  the  handmaid  of  this  doc- 
trine of  the  cross,  and  it  can  no  longer  pander,  as  it  has  too 
long  done,  to  the  fiercer  or  baser  appetites  of  mankind. 
How  much  has  the  cultivated  talent  of  the  race,  in  its  va- 
rious literary  tasks,  set  itself  to  divide  and  destroy,  to  corrupt 
and  intoxicate  mankind  !  Genius  has  shouted  to  swell  the 
discord,  and  its  cry  has  exasperated  the  strifes  of  the  world, 
instead  of  being  their  peace-maker.  How  often  has  the 
scholar  yoked  himself  to  the  brazen  car  of  Moloch,  or  de- 
meaned himself  to  heighten  the  idolatrous  revel  in  the  groves 
of  the  wanton  Ashtoreth  !  How  much  of  literary  achieve- 
ment has  perished  in  consequence  of  the  corruption  that  so 
deeply  engrained  it,16   or  has  continued  and  lived  only  to 

16  It  is  a  remark  of  Sharon  Turner,  in  his  History  of  England  during  the 
Middle  Ages  (vol.  iv.,  p.  143,  note),  how  much  of  the  Greek  classical  poetry 
was  allowed  to  perish  or  destroyed  by  the  Eastern  Emperors,  because  of  its 
immorality.     And  some  of  the  authors  whose  productions  have  thus  disap- 

E\  were,  in  the  judgment  of  their  countrymen  and  contemporaries,  of 
i<;h  genius.  He  names,  among  the  writers  whose  remains  thus  perished 
wholly  or  in  great  part,  Menander,  Diphilus,  Apollodorus,  Philemon,  Alexis, 
Sappao,  Grinna,  Anacreon,  Miinnenuus,  Bion3  Alcman,  and  AIcujus. 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  53 

spread  around  moral  infection  !  Looking  back  over  the 
history  of  our  world,  as  preserved  by  those  who  knew  not, 
or  obeyed  not  this  gospel,  it  is  a  humiliating  record.  The 
tumult  and  rage  of  passion  seem  endless.  One  wide  and 
restless  sea  overspreads  the  scene.  But  when  the  gospel 
moves  over  this  waste,  dovelike  in  spirit,  it  comes  like  the 
dove  to  the  ark  of  our  diluvian  father,  bearing  the  message  of 
peace  and  the  omen  of  hope — the  leaf  that  betokens  the  assuag- 
ing of  the  waters,  the  cessation  of  the  storm,  and  the  re-appear- 
ance of  earth,  from  its  long  baptism  of  death,  all  radiant  in 
new-born  verdure  and  beauty. 

No  skill  in  negotiation  or  prowess  in  war  can  avail  like 
this  gospel  to  establish  peace  among  the  nations.  No  police, 
however  well-appointed  and  vigilant,  has  equal  power  to 
giv^e  order  and  security  to  the  nation  or  the  city  within  itself. 
No  principle  or  art,  no  degree  of  refinement  and  no  measure 
of  knowledge,  can  succeed  like  the  religion  of  the  cross  in 
giving  true  peace  to  the  household.  To  destroy,  in  all  these 
relations  of  society,  the  tyranny  of  the  vindictive  passions, 
no  power  is  like  that  of  the  gospel.  Its  efficacy  to  raise 
and  restore  the  slaves  of  the  baser  appetites  of  our  nature, 
we  have  already  seen.  A  literature,  then,  controlled  by 
this  gospel,  will  not  be  the  literature  of  mere  blind  passion. 
And  no  principle  is  so  likely  to  eject  from  our  literature  this 
unreasoning  vehemence  of  passion,  as  the  great  truth  of  Christ 
crucified,  iterated  and  reiterated  in  the  ears  of  our  people. 

3.  Apply  it  again,  as  a  conservative  principle,  to  counter- 
act the  lawlessness  of  our  times.  If  ever  it  appeared  as  if 
there  might  be  a  just  revolt  against  the  will  of  Providence, 
it  seemed  to  be  at  the  time  when  the  meek  Saviour,  inno- 
cent, lowly  and  loving,  was  sold  by  the  traitor,  deserted  of 
his  disciples,  assailed  by  the  false  accuser,  and  condemned  by 
the  unjust  judge,  whilst  a  race  of  malefactors  and  ingrates 
crowded  around  their  Deliverer,  howling  for  his  blood,  the 
blood  of  the  Holy  One.  But  though  the  cup  was  bitter,  it  was 
meekly  drunk,  for  it  had  been  the  Father's  will  to  mingle  it, 
and  his  was  the  hand  that  held  to  the  lips  of  the  Son  the 
deadly  draught.  Lawlessnesss  is  hushed  at  the  sight  of 
Gethsemane.  In  the  garden  and  at  the  cross  you  see  illus- 
trated the  sanctity  of  law  as  it  appears  nowhere  else.  It 
was  Mercy  indeed  that  was  forcing  her  way  to  the  sinner ; 
but  as  she  went,  she  was  seen  doing  homage  to  Justice,  and 
paying   the    debt,  ere  she  freed  the  captive.     That  dread 


54  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

transaction  proclaimed  the  truth  that  transgression  could 
never  in  God's  universe  occur  with  impunity  ;  and  that  if  one 
did  not  suffer,  another  must.  Tenderness  was  there  lavish- 
ed, such  as  the  heart  of  man  never  conceived  in  its  hour 
of  most  impassioned  and  concentrated  affection.  Yet  that 
tenderness  leaned  on  the  sternest  principle.  The  Father 
loved  the  Son  thus  sacrificed  as  his  well-beloved  one  ;  yet  it 
"pleased  the  Father  to  bruise  Him."  Surely  here  is  found 
no  precedent  for  the  lawless  tenderness. that  exonerates  the 
criminal  and  blames  the  law.  It  is  not  at  the  cross  of  Christ 
that  ministry  has  learned  its  lessons,  which  employs  itself 
in  weaving  silken  scabbards,  in  the  vain  hope  to  sheathe  the 
lightnings  of  God's  law  ;  or  which  is  full  of  dainty  contri- 
vances to  muffle  "  the  live,  leaping  thunders"  of  Sinai,  and 
make  them  no  longer  a  terror  to  the  evil-doer.  In  the  last 
scenes  of  the  Saviour's  life  that  law  was  not  contemned, 
but  "  magnified  and  made  honorable."  So  Christ  would 
have  it  be  ;  and  a  true  church  of  Christ  would  say  :  So 
let  it  be.  What  submission  is  here  taught  us  to  the  ap- 
pointments of  God — even  though  he  slay  us  !  Where  can 
self-denial,  that  rare  and  splendid  grace  of  the  Chris- 
tian, be  so  effectually  acquired,  as  in  watching  the  scene  of 
his  Master's  passion,  presented  beneath  the  olives  of  Geth- 
semane,  while  the  sod  beneath  is  wet  with  great  drops  of 
bloody  sweat,  and  the  leaves  above  are  stirred  with  the  sobs 
of  that  ascending  prayer,  "  not  my  will,  Father,  but  thine 
be  done."  Subjection  to  the  law  of  God  is  one  of  the  best 
preparatives  for  submission  to  all  the  just  laws  of  human 
society.  "  Paralytic  laws,"  as  Bentham  expressively  called 
those  statutes  of  the  Old  World,  which,  from  the  expensive- 
ness  of  the  courts  and  forms  of  justice,  are  inaccessible  to 
the  poor,  are  indeed  a  sore  evil.  But  it  may  well  be  ques- 
tioned whether  they  are  much  worse  than  epileptic  laws,  as 
we  may  style  those  convulsive  and  spasmodic  efforts  at  jus- 
tice, that  are  not  unknown  in  the  New  World ;  that  sum- 
mary resolution  of  the  legislative,  the  judiciary  and  the  execu- 
tive branches  of  government  into  the  sovereign  will  of  the 
multitude ;  the  legislation  which  a  mob  in  its  hot  haste 
enacts  and  executes  in  the  same  breath,  compressing  into 
one  single  act,  all  the  various  and  dilatory  tasks  of  the  law- 
maker, advocate,  judge,  jury,  jailor,  and  hangman.  Send 
the  spirit  of  Christ's  cross  through  a  land,  and  what  a  law- 
biding  community  would  it  become.     The  sanctity  of  law 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  55 

and  right  would  then  hedge  around  the  property,  character 
and  interests  of  each  member  of  society.  It  would  make  a 
latch  sufficient  protection  for  the  vaults  of  a  bank.  Men's 
word  would  be  their  bond.  Our  schools  and  colleges  would 
then  be  filled  with  youth,  docile  and  modest,  who  would 
not  begin  their  studies  by  undertaking  to  teach  their  instruc- 
tors, nor  consider  it  their  earliest  duty  to  exercise  a  pater- 
nal authority  and  supervision  over  the  Faculty  of  the  In- 
stitution, whose  instructors  they  deign  to  patronize  by  being 
there  matriculated.  Our  sanctuaries  would  present  the 
spectacle  of  Christians  united  in  affection,  bearing  one  an- 
other's burdens  and  so  fulfilling  the  law  of  love.  Far  as 
the  spirit  of  the  gospel  has  already  influenced  literature,  it 
has  beer  made  a  literature  friendly  to  public  order,  and  the 
ally  of  law,  thinning  where  our  popular  literature  too  often 
serves  but  to  multiply  the  tenants  of  our  jails  ;  and  teaching 
the  disciples  of  the  Crucified  to  render  honor  unto  whom 
honor  is  due,  and  fear  to  whom  fear. 

4.  Look,  next,  at  its  power  to  check  the  false  liberalism 
of  the  times,  in  its  wretched  effects  on  the  moral  integrity 
and  purity  of  our  literature.  This  form  of  evil  has  many 
shapes.  All  we  cannot  discuss.  We  would  but  enumerate 
its  strange  speculations  as  to  Scripture  ;  its  false  liberality 
as  to  religious  faith  ;  its  false  toleration  in  morals ;  and  lastly, 
its  demon  pride  setting  itself  up  to  supersede  Jehovah.  All 
these  how  sternly  does  the  cross  of  Christ  rebuke  and  re- 
pudiate. 

Trust  some  of  these  liberal  teachers,  and  all  the  old  truths 
of  Scripture  vanish.  Instead  of  its  solid  grounds  of  history, 
its  significant  prophecy,  and  all  its  varied,  unerring  inspira- 
tion ;  they  would  usher  us  into  a  mere  cloud-land  of  shifting 
speculations,  unsubstantial  and  formless  and  evanescent. 
They  would  disembowel  the  Bible  of  its  facts,  and  leave  be- 
hind a  few  cold  truths  of  Natural  Religion,  most  awkwardly 
told,  the  fragments  of  a  myth  about  the  development  of 
Human  Nature.  But  take  their  theory  to  the  cross.  Look 
up  at  that  sufferer.  Read  his  discourses  ;  follow  his  miracles  ; 
and  believe,  if  you  can,  that  this  is  not  a  history  of  facts. 
The  confession  of  the  infidel  Rousseau  bursts  to  your  lips  : 
"  If  this  be  a  fiction,  the  inventor  is  yet  more  wondrous 
even  than  the  hero  of  the  narrative."  You  have  the  fullest 
circumstantial  details  of  Christ's  life,  the  country  and  age 
in  which  he  lived,  the  cities  he  visited  and  the  persons  he 


56  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

met.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  a  fact,  if  you  throw 
aside  all  the  history  in  which  it  is  found  imbedded.  Its  ex- 
istence and  its  excellence  are  facts  inexplicable  rationally  on 
any  other  theory  than  that  of  the  truth  and  virtue  and  in- 
spiration of  the  Author.  Pilate  and  Herod  were  facts.  Je- 
rusalem was  a  fact.  Gethsemane  was  a  fact.  Calvary  was 
a  fact.  And  he  who  hung  there,  on  the  fatal  tree  of  anguish 
and  shame,  asserted  not  myths,  but  facts — wrought  not 
myths,  but  facts — loved  not  in  myth,  but  in  fact ;  and  the 
salvation  he  has  offered,  the  Heaven  which  he  has  opened, 
and  the  Hell  from  which  he  has  warned  us — all — all  are 
facts.  Wo  to  those  who  treat  all  as  myths,  until,  not  mythi- 
cally but  really,  they  for  ever  forfeit  the  one,  and  plunge 
irrevocably  into  the  other.  To  study  the  narrative  of  the 
gospels,  apart  from  the  prejudices  of  a  preconceived  system, 
and  believe  it  a  fiction,  is  impossible.  Then  were  all  history 
a  fable. 

Try  by  the  same  test  the  spirit  to  which  we  refer,  in  its 
false  liberality  as  to  religious  faith — its  chameleon  character, 
finding  true  piety  in  all  creeds  and  worships,  and  identifying, 
as  being  but  one  God,  Jehovah  the  God  of  the  Scriptures 
with  the  Baal  and  Moloch  whom  he  cursed,  with  Juggernaut, 
whose  worshippers  are  crushed  beneath  chariot-wheels,  and 
with  Kalee  even,  when  wearing  her  necklace  of  human 
skulls,  and  when  invoked  by  the  Thug,  ere  he  strangles  his 
victim.  No,  the  Bible  knows  no  such  toleration  and  liberal- 
ity as  this.  It  exclaims,  "Israel  hath  forgotten  his  Maker, 
and  buildeth  temples."17  A  man  may  be,  as  a  liberalist 
would  term  him,  religious,  and  rear  costly  shrines  from  his 
devotional  feeling,  and  yet  God  say  of  him  that  he  had  forgot- 
ten his  Maker,  and  his  religion  was  therefore  valueless. 
The  exclusive  character  of  Truth,  disdaining  all  compromise, 
was  apparent  in  all  Christ's  course.  He  did  not  blend  Sad- 
duceanism,  Pharisaism,  and  Herodianism,  and  Heathenism, 
into  one  religion,  a  mere  compost  of  creedless,  Pantheistic 
piety  ;  and  sanction  all  as  meaning  the  same  thing.  On  the 
contrary,  he  denounced  all,  provoked  all,  was  assailed  by  all, 
and  at  last  is  seen  dying  by  the  confederated  malice  and  hate 
of  all.  Truth  was  not,  on  his  lips,  a  motley  compound  of  all 
human  opinions,  an  eclecticism  from  all  varieties  of  human 

J7  Hosea  viii.  14. 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  57 

error,  but,  like  its  Divine  Author,  immutable  and  one,  sanc- 
tioning no  compromise  and  allowing  no  rival. 

Try  these  falsely  liberal  views,  as  to  the  toleration  to  be 
shown  in  questions  of  morals.  Literature  in  our  day  pro- 
fesses to  cultivate  a  sympathy  for  all  classes,  even  for  those 
who  trade  in  vice,  and  eat  the  bread  of  wickedness.  It  has 
discovered  that  highwaymen,  prostitutes  and  pickpockets 
have  their  literary  rights,  and  should  be  fully  represented  in 
their  own  fashion  in  the  great  commonwealth  of  letters.  A 
literature  of  felons  is  accordingly  written,  and  alas,  it  is  also 
read,  corrupting  our  language  with  the  slang  of  cut-throats, 
and  our  youth  with  their  contagious  immorality.  Was  this, 
now,  the  spirit  of  our  crucified  Lord  ?  He  was  indeed  the 
friend  of  sinners.  He  sate  in  the  publican's  house  as  a 
guest ;  he  frowned  not  from  his  feet  the  weeping  penitent, 
whose  very  presence  seemed  to  others  to  shed  contamination 
around  her.  But  although  thus  forgiving  to  the  sinner  when 
contrite,  he  never  dallied  with  sin  itself.  Paul  seems  to 
have  found  converts  to  the  cross  in  the  household  of  the 
atrocious  Nero;  but  he  never  improves  the  advantages  thus 
afforded  him,  to  draw  revolting  pictures  of  the  excesses  of 
Nero's  drunken  hours  ;  nor  has  he  recorded  what  to  our 
modern  novelists  would  have  been  invaluable,  the  confessions 
he  might  have  heard  from  the  criminals  who  were  wafted 
with  him  over  the  Mediterranean,  in  the  prison  ship  that 
bore  him  to  Rome.  There  were  things  of  which  Paul  says 
he  thought  it  a  shame  even  to  speak.  Well  had  it  been  for 
the  purity  of  our  literature  and  the  innocence  of  our  youth, 
had  the  writers  of  our  age  condescended  to  learn  wisdom  at 
the  feet  of  Paul,  the  apostle  of  the  Gentiles.  Peter,  another 
of  the  first  preachers  of  the  cross,  speaks  of  sinners  who 
had,  "  like  the  dog,  turned  to  their  own  vomit  again,  and  like 
the  sow  that  was  washed,  to  her  wallowing  in  the  mire." 
But  the  apostle  of  the  circumcision  never  stooped  to  picture 
the  loathsome  detail,  and  thus  in  effect  to  partake  the  ban- 
quet of  the  one,  and  share  the  bath  of  the  other.  Modern 
literature,  aye,  elegant  literature,  amid  all  the  vaunted  refine- 
ment of  the  nineteenth  century,  has  done  both,  in  order  to 
enlarge  our  knowledge  of  nature  and  life,  and  to  teach  us 
superiority  to  the  exclusiveness  of  vulgar  prejudices.  With 
such  forms  of  liberalism  the  cross  and  its  preachers  have  no 
sympathy. 

The  cross  repudiates  the  demon  pride  of  this  false  liber- 
9 


58  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

alism.  In  Eden,  Satan  but  ventured  to  promise  "  Ye  shall  be 
as  Gods,"  hinting  a  distant  likeness  to  God  as  the  reward  of 
sin.  Modern  Pantheism  has  renounced  the  qualifying  terms, 
laid  aside  all  hesitation,  and  converting  the  promise  of  future 
good  into  an  assertion  of  present  privilege,  it  exclaims  au- 
daciously, "Ye  are  God."  Hence,  at  the  funeral,  a  few 
years  since,  of  a  great  metaphysician  of  Germany,18  one  of 
the  leaders  of  this  philosophy,  it  is  said  that  some  of  his 
admirers  spoke  of  him  reverently  as  a  singular  incarnation 
of  God.  But  bring  such  dreams  of  pride  to  the  atoning 
cross.  He  who  hung  there  tasted  death  for  every  man. 
And  why?  We  had  all  sinned  :  he  died  the  just  for  the 
unjust ;  and  without  the  shedding  of  blood  there  is  no  re- 
mission. And  there  I  learn  my  desert.  In  the  fate  of  the 
second  Adam  I  read  the  character  of  the  first  Adam,  whose 
place  he  took,  and  whose  doom  he  averted.  I  am  a  doomed 
sinner,  by  nature  a  child  of  wrath.  The  taint  of  an  endless 
curse  is  on  my  soul.  The  blood  of  a  divine  atonement  was 
necessary  to  purge  me  from  fatal  blots.  Do  they  tell  me  of 
the  innate  innocence  of  man's  nature  ?  I  point  them  to 
virtue,  perfect,  peerless  and  divine,  as  it  was  incarnate  in 
Christ  Jesus.  But  that  excellence  was  not  welcomed  in  the 
world  it  came  to  redeem ;  but  on  the  contrary,  it  seemed  to 
be  the  more  fiercely  hated,  the  more  brightly  it  shone  ;  and 
it  was  revealed  before  the  eyes  of  the  race  only  to  be  ma- 
ligned, persecuted  and  slaughtered.  At  the  cross  of  Christ 
I  learn,  then,  that  I  must  come  down  into  the  dust  of  lowly 
penitence,  or  I  perish.  His  kingdom  is  for  the  poor  in 
spirit ;  and  his  most  diligent  followers  are  to  confess  them- 
selves but  unprofitable  servants.  Is  it  in  such  scenes,  and 
under  the  eyes  of  such  a  teacher,  I  am  to  claim  equality  and 
oneness  with  God?  No  !  such  thoughts,  every  where  ab- 
surdly impious,  are  there  most  offensively  absurd  and  most 
unpardonably  impious.  And,  as  with  a  battle-axe,  does  the 
cross  of  Christ  cleave  and  annihilate  these  arrogant  fictions 
of  that  liberalism  cherished  by  some  who  yet  call  themselves 
Christians. 

Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  gospel  meets  all  those  just 
claims  of  the  soul,  to  which  this  liberalism  has  addressed  its 
flatteries.  The  doctrine  of  the  cross,  with  a  true  liberality, 
allows  all  national  peculiarities  not  in  themselves  sinful.     It 

is  Hegel 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE,  59 

welcomes  the  savage  and  the  slave  into  the  brotherhood  of 
the  race,  and  is  prepared  in  the  most  degraded  and  forlorn 
of  all  the  tribes  of  the  earth,  to  eject  the  brute,  acknowledge 
the  man,  and  develope  the  saint.  It  lays  the  basis  of  a  true, 
universal,  Catholic  church  ; — not  the  local,  arrogant  and 
usurping  church  of  Rome,  which,  to  make  plausible  its  poor 
claim  to  universality,  must  anathematize  the  myriads  of  the 
Greek  and  Syrian  churches,  and  all  Protestant  Christendom ; 
but  that  one  church,  real  though  invisible,  which  comprises 
the  multitudes  no  man  can  number,  and  no  man  can  name  ; 
the  Christians  of  every  land,  age  and  sect,  that  hold  the 
Head,  and  love  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  sincerity.19  The 
idea  of  unity,  so  dear  to  the  liberalist,  the  cross  alone  truly 
reveals.     It  shows  a  unity  of  Providence  in  the  whole  history 

19  It  was  one  of  the  grave  offences  in  the  excellent  commentary  of  that 
devout  Jansenist,  Father  Quesnel,  on  the  New  Testament,  which  brought 
down  upon  him  and  his  work  the  fulminations  of  the  Vatican  in  the  famous 
Bull  Unigenitus,  that  he  had  wrongly  defined  the  Catholicity  of  the  Church. 
Two  of  the  one  hundred  and  one  heretical  propositions  selected  from  his  Ex- 
position, the  72d  and  76th,  are  these  :  "  It  is  a  mark  of  the  Christian  Church 
that  it  is  Catholic,  embracing  both  all  the  angels  of  heaven,  and  all  the  elect 
and  righteous  of  the  earth,  and  these  of  all  times."  And  again,  "Nothing  i8 
more  expansive  than  the  Church  of  God,  for  all  the  elect  and  all  the  righteous 
of  all  times  make  it  up." — (Magn.  Bullarium  Rom.,  Luxemb.,  1727,  torn. 
viii.)  It  can,  we  think,  be  shown  that  this  true  invisible  Church,  com- 
prising the  truly  righteous,  the  elect  of  all  times,  lands,  and  kindreds,  is  the 
only  Catholic  Church  known  to  the  Scriptures ;  the  only  Catholic  Church 
of  which  Christ  will  acknowledge  the  Headship ;  or  membership  in  which 
ensures  salvation.  Romanism  could  not,  however,  hold  her  power  if  such  a 
theory  of  Catholicism  were  to  prevail.  The  72d  Prop,  is  taken,  apparently, 
from  duesnel's  remarks  upon  Heb.  xii.  24  :  as  is  the  76th  from  his  Commen- 
tary at  the  20-22d  v.  of  Ephes.  ii.  His  observations  on  the  latter  passage,  by 
their  beauty,  tempt  us  to  a  longer  quotation.  " '  And  are  built  upon  the  found- 
ation of  the  Apostles  and  Prophets,  Jesus  Christ  himself  being  the  chief 
corner-stone ;  in  whom  all  the  building,  fitly  framed  together,  groweth  unto 
an  holy  temple  in  the  Lord :  in  whom  ye  also  are  builded  together  for  an 
habitation  of  God  through  the  Spirit.5  How  majestic  and  how  admirable, 
my  God,  is  thy  Church  !  How  worthy  the  work  of  its  builder  !  Nothing 
can  be  so  august,  for  it  is  thy  palace.  Nothing  so  holy,  for  it  is  thy  temple. 
Nothing  inspire  such  reverence,  for  it  is  thine  abode.  Nothing  is  so  ancient, 
for  patriarchs  and  prophets  have  labored  upon  it.  Nothing  is  so  immovable, 
for  Christ  is  its  foundation.  Nothing  is  more  compact  and  indivisible,  for 
He  is  its  corner-stone.  Nothing  more  lofty,  for  it  lifts  itself  to  the  skies,  and 
even  into  the  very  bosom  of  God.  Nothing  is  better  in  its  proportions,  or  better 
in  arrangement,  for  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  architect  here.  Nothing  is  more 
beauteous  or  more  variegated,  for  precious  stones  of  all  kinds  are  built  into 
it,  the  Jew  and  the  Gentile,  those  of  all  ages  and  countries,  of  either  sex  and 
of  all  conditions.  Nothing  is  so  expansive,  for  all  the  elect  and  all  the  right- 
eous of  all  ages  make  it  up.  Nothing  is  more  inviolable,  since  it  is  a  sanctu- 
ary consecrated  to  the  Lord.  Nothing  is  so  divine,  since  it  is  a  living  struc- 
ture, in  which  the  Holy  Ghost  has  his  dwelling,  which  He  vivifies — which 
He  sanctifies.    There  is  but  one  God,  one  Christ,  one  Church.    None  is  to 


60  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

of  the  world — a  unity  of  piety  in  all  dispensations  from  those 
days  ere  yet  the  ark  was  launched,  to  those  of  a  new  heaven 
and  a  new  earth,  when  there  shall  be  no  more  sea — a  unity 
of  origin,  in  the  common  descent  of  our  race — a  unity  of 
transgression  in  our  common  sin — a  unity  of  account  in 
our  gathering  before  Christ's  bar,  and  a  unity  of  brother- 
hood in  our  one  ransom  paid  at  Christ's  cross. 

Let  but  our  literature  be  saturated  with  this  doctrine  of 
the  cross,  and  it  will  conquer  all  miscalled  liberalism  by 
showing  the  source  of  its  errors  and  meeting  its  just  claims. 
It  will  set  up  the  truth,  and  require  the  renunciation  of  every 
error.  But  it  will  set  up  the  truth  in  love ;  and  there  will 
be  ultimately  one  Lord,  and  his  name  One  ;  and  He  will 
not  be  the  material  and  sinful  God  of  Pantheism,  but  the 
Everlasting  One,  uncreated,  impassible,  spiritual,  sinless  and 
supreme,  distinct  from  the  universe  he  made  and  governs — 
the  Creator,  and  not  the  creature. 

5.  And  lastly,  would  we  say,  the  cross  thus  mighty  to 
demolish  liberalism,  has  also  equal  energy  as  the  antagonist 
of  superstition,  which  was  spoken  of  as  the  last  of  the  evil 
influences  besetting  our  youthful  literature. 

Instead  of  forms  and  rites,  the  great  resource  of  supersti- 
tion, the  gospel  of  the  cross  requires  a  spiritual  worship,  and 
an  inward  conversion.  It  has  no  regard  for  mere  penances 
and  austerities  as  practised  for  their  own  sake,  or  from  a 
belief  in  their  intrinsic  merit.  The  doctrine  of  self-torture, 
so  dear  to  the  saints  of  Romish  legends,  is  unknown  to  the 
gospel.  Christ  did  not  hew  his  own  cross,  nor  was  he  his 
own  scourger,  as  have  been  many  saints  that  shine  in  the 
papal  calendar.  Instead  of  that  antiquity  of  ten  or  twelve 
or  fifteen  centuries,  of  which  Antichrist  vaunts  so  much, 
the  cross  reveals  a  more  ancient  antiquity  of  eighteen  cen- 
turies. Instead  of  its  hazy  and  dubious  traditions,  scripture 
verity  ;  and  instead  of  its  councils  and  fathers,  and  a  long 
succession  of  sinners  wearing  tiaras,  and  claiming  names  of 
blasphemy — a  primitive    Apostolic  church,  and   Christ  "  for 


be  adored  besides  the  God  whom  we  adore  in  three  Persons.  None  wor- 
ships Him  but  as  he  loves  Him,  and  none  worships  and  loves  Him  as  he 
should,  but  by  the  Spirit  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  but  in  his  body,  which  is  the 
Church."  Such  views  of  Catholicism  might  well,  for  their  spirituality,  their 
wisdom,  and  their  truth,  be  allowed  to  supplant  and  expel  the  arrogant  and 
carnal  dreams  of  a  visible  Catholic  Church,  that  have  been  too  prevalent 
even  beyond  the  precincts  of  Home. 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  61 

the  chief  Apostle  and  Bishop  of  our  profession,"  whose 
priesthood  is  the  unchangeable  priesthood  of  Melchisedec, 
and  whose  dominion  is  an  everlasting  dominion.  It  acknow- 
ledges no  religion  that  is  merely  a  religion  of  the  senses  or 
the  imagination.  The  feelings  that  stirred  Paul  at  Athens, 
as  he  stood  amid  its  altars  and  gazed  on  lines  of  images 
crowding  its  every  street,  would  have  sprung  up  as  naturally 
within  him,  had  he  stood  beneath  the  vaults  of  many  a  cathe- 
dral, with  its  "  dim  religious  light,"  and  rich  with  the  trophies 
of  the  pencil  and  the  chisel.  Against  the  idolatry  of  the 
material  image  of  the  cross  and  its  sculptured  burden,  as 
seen  in  the  Romish  reverence  of  the  crucifix — against  the 
idolatry  of  the  material  emblems  of  bread  and  wine  in  the 
sacrament,  as  they  are  deified  in  the  Romish  doctrine  of 
Transubstantiation — against  the  popular  idol  of  all  Romish 
countries,  the  earthly  parent  of  our  Saviour,  the  human  and 
sinful  mother,  to  whom  they  have  transferred  the  media- 
torial office  of  her  divine  and  sinless  Son — against  all  these 
aspects  of  the  worship  of  the  creature,  there  is  no  better 
remedy  than  the  faithful  and  full  presentation  of  the  true 
doctrine  of  Christ  and  Him  crucified,  the  world's  Creator, 
Redeemer  and  Lord.  As  Christ  gave  it,  and  as  Paul  dis- 
pensed it,  the  gospel  of  the  cross  is  the  grand  Iconoclast 
principle  of  the  age.  And  as  of  old  it  routed  the  gods  from 
the  summit  of  shadowy  Olympus,  and  in  later  days  drove 
into  darkness  all  the  deities  of  the  Valhalla ;  so  will  it  ul- 
timately abolish  all  the  idols  out  of  the  earth.  And  not 
the  graven  image  only  of  wood  and  of  stone,  but  the  idols 
also  of  which  Bacon  has  spoken,  the  idols  of  the  forum 
and  the  cavern,  the  prejudices  of  the  busy,  and  the  errors  of 
the  studious.20 

20  The  writer  has  long  believed,  and  elsewhere  remarked  years  since,  that 
in  the  inevitable  conflict  of  the  truth  with  Romanism  in  our  days,  we  need 
to  allow  and  to  emulate  more  than  some  Protestants  seem  disposed  to  do, 
the  excellences  of  individuals  and  of  individual  practices  in  that  anti-Chris- 
tian communion  :  and  that,  especially  in  the  field  of  missions  we  may  learn 
from  her  history  much  to  inspirit,  and  somewhat  to  instruct  us.  Since  the 
delivery  of  this  address  he  has  met  with  the  following  observations  from  a 
writer  on  missions,  whose  work  is  probably  in  the  hands  of  but  few  Ameri- 
can Christians.  Though  containing  incidental  expressions  the  present 
writer  might  not  have  preferred  to  employ  himself,  they  seem  so  admirable 
on  the  whole,  in  sentiment,  temper  and  style,  that  he  could  not  deny  himself 
the  gratification  of  copying  them.  They  are  from  the  French  of  M.  Bost. 
He  is  known  to  English  Christians  as  the  author  of  a  history  of  Moravian- 
ism,  published  by  the  London  Religious  Tract  Society,  and  of  a  life  and 
collection  of  the  letters  of  Felix  JXefi;  whose  intimate  friendship  he  enjoyed, 


62  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

To  bring  out  the  great  truth  to  the  cross,  in  one  of  its 
two-fold  aspects,  as  the  principle  of  sanctification  no  less 
than  of  justification,  Protestantism  may  learn  some  not  use- 
less lessons  even  from  the  Romish  church.  That  abnega- 
tion of  self,  that  deadness   to   the  world,  and  those  heroic 

and  whose  opposition  to  Romanism,  we  need  not  say  he  shares.  He  is  an 
active  and  efficient  laborer  in  the  revival  of  evangelical  truth  in  the  churches 
of  Switzerland.  He  published,  in  four  volumes,  a  French  version  of  the 
History  of  Christian  Missions,  written  by  the  excellent  Blumhardt,  formerly 
head  of  the  Mission  School  at  Basle,  which  has  sent  so  many  laborers  into 
most  quarters  of  the  earth.  Blumhardt1  s  death  left  the  work  incomplete.  In 
his  own  original  preface  to  his  French  translation  from  the  German,  M. 
Bost  has  these  observations  on  the  justice  to  be  rendered  the  Romish 
Church.  We  present  them  in  a  free  and  hasty  version  from  his  French 
original. 

"  But  here  I  reach  a  point  yet  more  important  than  any  that  has  preceded 
it.  It  is  one  upon  which  I  am  happy  to  find  my  sentiments  in  unison  with 
those  of  my  author  :*  as  they  will  also  prove  to  be,  I  think,  with  those  of 
every  man  who  has  studied  history  in  a  spirit  of  impartiality.  I  refer  to  the 
two-fold  judgment  to  which  the  facts  of  history  conduct  us,  as  to  the  good 
and  the  evil,  the  two  sides  that  are  found  in  the  Romish  Church,  whether  re- 
garded at  any  given  moment  in  her  existence,  or  at  different  eras  in  her 
career.     I  shall  dwell,  at  some  length,  on  this  grave  topic. 

"  If  all  that  were  required,  were  but  to  discuss  this  subject  in  generalities 
and  as  an  abstract  question,  the  affair  would  be  one  of  the  utmost  facility. 
History  presents  us  in  this  Church,  on  the  one  hand,  objects  so  grand  and 
lovely,  and  on  the  other,  those  so  atrocious,  that  it  becomes  impossible  to 
persist,  as  regards  this  community,  in  that  narrow  judgment  which  sees  in  her 
only  every  thing  divine,  or  only  every  thing  devilish.  On  the  contrary  we 
find  there  to  a  demonstration  a  decided  intermixture  of  God's  work  and  of  the 
work  of  Satan  ;  just  as  one  may  see  a  few  paces  from  the  spot  where  I  am  writ- 
ing, two  streams  that  flow  the  one  beside  the  other,  in  the  same  channel,  the 
one  all  turbid  and  discolored — the  other  blue  as  the  skies.t  A  little  farther  on 
they  intermingle,  but  even  yet  they  remain  distinct-  the  good  does  not 
destroy  the  evil — the  evil  does  not  destroy  the  good.  It  would  then  be  a 
matter  of  no  difficulty  to  decide  this  question  in  the  peaceful  study,  and  amid 
the  silence  of  our  retirement.  There  it  is  perfectly  simple,  and  admits  of  no 
dispute.  The  Romish  church  has  exhibited  in  all  ages,  just  as  she  con- 
tinues in  our  own  times  to  exhibit,  a  decided  alliance  of  evil  and  good  :  and 
of  these,  each  perhaps  is  carried  to  a  degree  in  which  it  surpasses  what  is  to 
be  found  any  where  else. 

"But  if  we  utter  this  judgment  before  the  public,  immediately  passions 
are  inflamed,  interests  are  wounded,  and  we  touch,  so  to  speak,  the  raw 
flesh.  In  fact,  the  papacy,  like  a  snake  bruised  beneath  the  wheels  of  a 
passing  chariot,  but  that  is  not  killed,  is  so  far  from  dead,  as  to  be  rising 
again,  and  beginning  anew  to  hiss  and  bare  its  fangs.  Powerless  as  it  will 
be  before  God,  whenever  God  shall  see  fit  to  command  it  again  into  the  pit, 
it  is  as  yet  more  powerful  than  man,  and  seems,  under  more  than  one  aspect, 
to  resemble  the  strong  man  armed  who  is  named  in  the  Gospel.  She  is  all 
the  stronger  and  better  armed,  from  the  fact  that  to  all  the  weapons  of  brute 
force,  she  knows  how  to  unite  those  of  artifice  and  restless  intrigue,  and  even 
to  associate  with  these,  in  many  cases,  the  influence  of  profound  piety.     By 

*  M.  Blumhardt.  > 

{  t  The  allusion  is  probably  to  the  confluence  of  the  Rhone  and  the  Arve  near  Geneva. 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  63 

sacrifices,  in  which  some  of  her  confessors  have  excelled, 
have  served  to  the  staunchest  Protestants  as  the  incentives 
of  a  holy  emulation.  Leighton  in  one  age,  and  Zinzendorf 
in  another,  were  supposed  to  have   enkindled  their  piety, 

turns,  with  clasped  hands,  with  eyes  raised  to  heaven,  and  clad  in  sackcloth, 
she  is  the  ardent  and  high-minded  missionary  ;  and  next  she  is  the  courtier, 
climbing,  flattering,  and  domineering ;  attacking,  by  the  arts  of  policy,  no 
less  than  by  the  aids  of  religion,  bearing  down  the  devout  by  appeals  to  his 
conscience,  and-holding  out  lures  to  the  ambition  of  the  diplomatist ;  caress- 
ing now  the  anarchist,  and  now  the  despot ;  the  foe  of  republics,  and  yet  the 
assassin  of  kings  ;  changing  her  hues  like  the  chameleon,  as  you  observe 
her  at  Dublin,  at  London,  at  Madrid,  or  at  Paris ;  winning  over  the  sterner 
spirits  by  her  Trappists,  and  the  libertines  by  her  Madonnas  ;  drawing  you 
heavenward  by  her  incense,  her  concerts  and  her  sacred  processions ,  and 
allowing  you  to  slide  into  hell  by  her  cheapened  absolutions,  and  by  pen- 
ances, that  exempt  you  from  the  repentance  of  the  heart ;  founding  schools 
in  Italy,  and  overturning  them  in  France  ;  by  turns,  O'Connell,  La  Mennais, 
Xavier,  Vincent  de  Paul,  Ravaiilac  and  Fenelon  ;  it  is  the  same  church 
who,  in  the  middle  ages,  copied  for  us  the  sacred  scriptures,  and  who,  in  our 
times,  is  burning  them.  At  the  present  time,  the  blows  which  are  aimed  at 
her  have  been  called  forth,  it  must  be  allowed,  rather  by  scepticism  than  by 
zeal  for  God.  And  although  we  may  know  what  will  be  her  last  end,  yet  we 
know  not  its  exact  moment;  and  above  all,  we  know  not  how  much  she 
may  yet  grasp,  before  she  sinks.  She  is  threatening  England.  She  is 
infiltrating  herself  into  all  parts  of  the  United  States.  She  is  rising  anew  in 
France ;  and  there  she  is  met  (and  this  is  the  observation  we  have  been 
desirous  thus  to  introduce),  by  a  spirit  of  partizanship  on  the  side  of  her 
adversaries,  which,  inclining  them  to  treat  her  as  enemies  are  usually  treated, 
with  blows,  blows  continually,  and  nothing  but  blows,  does  not  stop  to  ask, 
if  even  she  have  not,  in  some  points,  claims  upon  our  justice. 

"  And  yet,  it  is  to  Protestants  that  we  speak,  if  we  believe  that  on  our  side 
is  found  the  truth,  let  us  walk  in  the  truth,  as  did  the  Master  whom  we  claim 
to  follow.  Let  us,  in  consequence,  be  just  even  towards  the  most  unjust. 
Let  us  learn  to  guard  ourselves  against  that  absurd  and  heedless  vanity 
which  sees  in  its  own  ranks  but  splendid  virtues,  and  in  the  opponents  but 
faults  and  wrongs.  Let  us  recollect  that  injustice  never  yet  was  able  to 
found  an  enduring  structure; — that  the  disciple  of  Jesus  is  teachable  towards 
all,  ever  ready  to  learn,  prompt  in  humbling  himself,  eager  to  find  good 
wherever  it  is  to  be  met,  readily  and  with  joy  acknowledging  it,  and  above 
all,  having  sufficient  confidence  in  the  sacred  cause  of  Christ's  Gospel,  never 
to  fear  being  generous  to  any  party,  be  it  what  it  may.  Many  see  danger  in 
the  concessions  that  might  possibly  be  made.  But  in  what  concessions  l 
In  those  which  should  be  unjust  ?  We  ought  never  to  make  any  such  ;  not 
because  they  would  be  concessions,  but  because  they  would  be  errors.  In 
those  which  should  be  just?  We  ought  to  make  all  such,  and  to  make  them 
without  fear.  Without  fear,  did  I  say? — We  ought  to  tremble  lest  we 
should  leave  a  single  one  unmade — to  tremble,  lest  we  leave  to  our  enemy  a 
single  point  in  which  he  would  have  the  advantage  over  us;  a  single  virtue 
in  which  he  surpassed  us.  In  truth,  the  kingdom  of  God  is  a  combat  of 
holiness  against  sin,  much  more  than  it  is  a  conflict  of  opinions,  of  dogmas, 
or  of  hierarchies.  Let  this  rule,  then,  without  ceasing,  be  heard  resounding 
over  our  heads  :  '  By  their  fruits  shall  ye  know  themJ  And  let  us  not  say,  or 
rather  let  us  cease  saying,  as  it  often  has  been  done,  that  this  rule  is  a  vague 
one  ;  for  on  whom  does  our  censure  in  such  case  fall  ?  And  who  is  He  that 
gave  us  it,  but  the  Only  Wise,  the  friend  of  the  lowly  and  simple  in  heart,  who 
brings  down  questions  the  most  profound  and  the  most  abstract,  to  princi- 


64  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

and  formed  in  part  their  religious  character,  amid  the  Jan* 
senist  Catholics  of  France,  with  whom  each  had  mingled. 
Wesley,  in  his  admiration  of  the  character  and  graces  of 
some  of  that  communion,  and   in    his    endeavors    to  bring 


pies  the  most  popular  and  practical,  reducing  them  to  questions  of  obedi- 
ence, of  love,  and  of  lowliness  7 

"  Protestants  then  let  us  continue  to  be  ;  ,mt  let  us  be  humble.  Protest- 
ants let  us  be  ;  but  let  us  not  proceed,  from  an  apprehension  of  wronging  the 
doctrine  of  divine  grace,  to  fall  into  a  dread  of  good  works,  or  perhaps  to 
regard  as  good  works,  and  works  quite  sufficient,  the  style  of  doing  good, 
as  by  turning  a  crank,  adopted  in  certain  societies,  in  which  one  does  good 
with  his  neighbor's  money,  and  in  his  ambition  to  convert  the  world,  forgets 
too  often  his  own  proper  and  personal  sanctification.  Protestants  let  us  be  ; 
but  let  us  know  how  to  pardon  others  besides  St.  Paul,  if  they  mortify  their 
body,  and  keep  it  in  subjection,  through  fear  lest  having  preached  to  others, 
they  become  themselves  castaways.  Let  us  relinquish  those  vague  and  con- 
temptuous declamations  against  superstition,  which  better  become  the 
enemies  of  the  gospel  than  disciples  of  the  Saviour.  And  let  us  remember, 
that  if  it  be  wrong  to  build  on  a  good  foundation  '  hay,  wood  and  stubble,' 
we  must  yet,  at  the  same  time,  know  how  to  respect  that  laborer  who,  be- 
sides these  worthless  materials,  brings  gold  and  precious  stones,  and  this, 
perhaps,  in  greater  abundance  than  ourselves.  Let  us  not  fear  to  make  the 
declaration.  From  that  moment  in  which  the  Protestant  Church  shall  have 
imitated,  embraced  and  reverenced  all  that  there  is  of  excellence  and  super- 
iority in  the  Romish  communion,  from  that  moment  the  Romish  com- 
munion must  fall,  and  will  in  fact  fall,  because  of  the  crying  abuses  con- 
tained within  her ;  but  not  one  instant  sooner.  And  until  that  time,  she 
will,  on  the  contrary,  continue  to  exist,  for  the  purpose  of  humbling  us,  for 
the  purpose  of  holding  us  in  check,  for  the  purpose  of  counterpoising  us  in 
those  points  in  which  we  refuse  to  obey,  and  for  the  purpose  of  accomplish- 
ing a  sort  of  good  which  we  have  not  learned  to  do.  God  compensates  for 
one  extreme  by  allowing  another  ;  and  it  is  not  until  the  day  when  our  prin- 
ciples shall  no  longer  present  any  void  and  any  vacant  spot,  that  we  can  claim 
to  look  for  the  fall  of  a  system  which  will  then  oppose  to  us  nought  but  in- 
feriorities. Then  the  two  communions,  like  two  dark  clouds,  surcharged 
with  opposite  electricity,  will  approach  each  other  to  intermingle  and  become 
one  :  a  spark  from  the  higher  regions  will  produce  a  sudden  fusion,  and  a 
shower  of  grace  pouring  itself  upon  the  earth,  there  will  then  start  up  in 
abundance  new  harvests,  on  the  one  side  and  on  the  other. 

*{  But  it  is  not  the  mere  exactitude  of  doctrinal  orthodoxy,  that  will  be 
honored  to  bring  about  this  wondrous  result.  It  will  be  rather  the  sacred 
union  formed  between  Truth  and  Holiness ;  and  our  God  will  then  be  glo- 
rified, not  amid  some  of  his  people  only,  but  in  all  his  saints. 

"  Such  are  the  declarations  that  I  have  believed  myself  bound  to  make  in 
the  outset,  when  publishing  this  work  :  there  are,  I  believe,  some  readers 
that  will  need  them.  We  shall,  along  our  way,  and  this  long  before  the  six- 
teenth century,  find  many  Protestants,  it  is  true:  but  yet  we  shall  see,  too, 
that  God  glorified  himself  also  in  men  who  were  imbued  with  many  preju- 
dices; and  the  reader  must  have  little  Christian  feeling,  who  is  not  touched 
with  admiration,  and  softened  into  tenderness,  at  the  sight  of  a  multitude  of 
things  that  present  themselves  to  our  view,  even  in  those  ages  when  super- 
stition had  already  invaded  the  church. 

11  Finally,  when  all  this  shall  have  been  said  and  admitted,  it  is  yet  most 
true,  and  history  proves  it  to  demonstration,  that  in  proportion  as  Rome 
more  and  more  intermingled  herself  in  the  government  of  the  church,  in 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  65 

the  light  of  their  example  before  his  own  societies,  by  his 
publication  of  the  lives  of  Xavier,  De  Renti,  and  Gregory 
Lopez,  incurred  from  some  heedless  Protestants  of  his  age, 
the  imputation  of  covert  Romanism.  He  complains  thai 
he  had  thus  been  represented  by  one  of  our  own  Sten- 
netts,  as  but  a  disguised  Papist.  David  Brainerd,  too,  in 
the  earlier  years  of  his  heroic  mission,  found  himself  fol- 
lowed by  a  like  rumor,  that  he  was  but  a  concealed  Roman- 
ist. We  do  well  to  remember  in  our  conflict  with  error, 
that  a  prevalent  worldliness  is,  in  God's  eyes,  as  great  a 
practical  heresy  as  is  the  tenet  of  justification  by  works. 
And  a  worldly  orthodoxy  in  Protestantism  will  never  avail 
to  subdue  a  devout  superstition  in  Romanism,  because  it  is 
not  in  the  nature  of  Beelzebub  to  cast  out  Beelzebub,  as  our 
Saviour  has  told  us. 

In  the  collision,  not  only  impending  but  already  begun,  at 
so  many  points  of  the  foreign  missionary  field,  between  the 
Church  of  Rome  and  the  Churches  of  a  purer  faith,  God  is 
making  a  merciful  provision  to  strip  the  Churches  of  the 
Reformation  of  their  remaining  worldliness  and  errors,  to 
crush  in  them  all  self-dependence  and  all  vain-glorying,  and, 
shutting  them  up  to  a  simpler  faith  and  a  more  heroic  ardor, 
to  nail  them  more  closely,  as  by  a  blessed  necessity,  to  his 
own  cross  as  their  one  refuge  and  exemplar.  Rome  may, 
from  the  very  amount  of  superstition  she  brings  with  her, 
find  her  missionary  labors  in  the  lands  of  Pagan  superstition 
more  rapidly  crowned  with  success,  than  those  of  her  rivals, 
in  the  adhesion  of  nominal  proselytes  to  her  standard.  But 
her  victories  will  be  less  solid  and  enduring  than  the  slower 
conquests  of  Protestantism.  Where  resorting,  as  she  has 
so  often  done,  to  worldly  intrigue,  and  calling  to  her  aid 
the  arm  of  the  secular  power,  she  will  often  find  her  advan- 
tages but  short-lived,  from  the  original  sin  that  gave  their 
first    seeming  prosperity.     The   Sandwich  Islander,  for  in- 

that  same  proportion  also  did  the  Spirit  of  God  withdraw  from  it.  The 
safety  and  the  life  of  every  church  whatsoever  are  found  in  obedience  to  the 
laws  of  Christ. 

"  I  would  no  further  anticipate  the  details  contained  in  the  body  of  this 
work  ;  but  I  found  myself  compelled  to  defend,  as  in  advance,  those  views, 
and  as  I  may  emphatically  call  it  that  comprehensiveness  of  principle,  which 
it  has  seemed  to  me  are  demanded  alike  by  Christian  truth,  by  Christian 
wisdom,  and  by  Christian  humility." — A.  Bost. 

Histoire  de  l'etablissement  du  Christianisme, 

Geneva,  1838.  t.  I.    Preface  du  Traducteur,  pp.  viii— xiii 

10 


68  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

stance,  is  not  likely  soon  to  forget  that  the  missionary  of  the' 
chair  of  St.  Peter  came   to   his  islands  with  the  cannon  of 
Catholic  France  forming  the  van-guard,  whilst  the   crucifix 
and  the  brandy-flask  filled,  as  it  were,  the  two  hands  of  the 
intrusive  missionary  church. 

As  to  the  ultimate  influence  this  ambitious  and  versatile 
church  is  to  win  on  our  own  shores,  the  statesman  may  well 
have  his  doubts.  Never  let  Protestantism,  even  in  resisting 
Rome,  be  driven  to  adopt  measures  of  proscription  and 
persecution.  If  for  the  time,  here  and  in  other  lands,  Rome 
may  attempt  a  union  with  the  free  tendencies  of  the  age, 
and  seek  to  identify  herself  with  the  cause  of  Social  Pro- 
gress, it  yet  seems  but  little  likely  that  she  will  be  able  to 
maintain  a  very  firm  and  lasting  alliance  with  our  "  fierce 
democracy."  That  democracy  is  bent  upon  change  and 
impatient  of  control,  whilst  this  church  proclaims  change  in- 
compatible with  truth,  and  demands  control  as  necessary  to 
unity.  M.  de  Tocqueville  has  supposed  that  the  love  of  our 
people  for  unity  will  naturally,  and  most  powerfully,  com- 
mend to  them  the  church  holding  out  so  wide-spread  and 
magnificent  an  exhibition  of  it.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  is,  as  yet,  rife  amongst  us  a  passion  for  independence, 
and  our  institutions  generally  foster  a  free  and  early  de- 
velopment of  individual  character,  which  will  work  in  a  con- 
trary direction.  And  Rome,  again,  whatever  she  may  claim 
to  be  abroad,  is  essentially  a  secular  power  at  her  own 
proper  home.  By  her  own  hearth  she  is  an  autocrat,  the 
most  absolute.  In  her  forms  of  government  there,  in  her 
European  alliances,  and  in  well  nigh  all  the  recollections  of 
her  history,  she  is  essentially  a  petrifaction  of  despotism. 
It  will,  therefore,  be  difficult,  even  for  her  ingenuity,  to  weld 
together  the  old  tyrannies  of  the  East  and  the  new  liberties 
of  the  West.  Still,  it  is  not  in  such  considerations  that  we 
trust 

The  Christian,  looking  higher  than  the  mere  statesman, 
relies  for  his  country's  freedom,  as  well  as  for  the  purity 
of  his  country's  faith,  on  the  cross  of  Christ.  The  provi- 
dence of  God  has  abolished  here  all  religious  establishments, 
and  proclaimed  unlimited  toleration.  Puritanism  fled  hither 
for  a  refuge.  The  hierarchies  of  the  old  world  would  gladly 
find  here  a  new  and  rich  domain.  God  has  thus,  apparently, 
intended  to  make  our  land  an  arena  for  the  unfettered  con- 
flict of  the  crucifix  and  the  cross — an  open  field  for  the  con- 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  67 

test  between  the  idolatrous  materialism  and  the  divine  spiri- 
tualism of  the  doctrine  of  Christ  crucified.  If  the  American 
Churches  are  but  true  to  the  gospel,  they  need  not  fear.  If 
they  are  not  true  to  it,  God  will  find  another  people  who 
will  be.  Its  ultimate  and  universal  triumphs  are  sure  as  the 
flight  of  time.  We  read  in  the  unerring  volume  of  scripture, 
not  the  history  of  the  past  alone,  but  that  of  the  future  as 
well.  Prophecy  had  uttered,  and  sealed  up  to  the  times  of 
the  end,  the  doom  of  Romanism,  centuries  before  our  birth, 
even  when  it  was  yet  but  as  a  hidden  leaven,  working,  in 
concealment  and  darkness,  its  stealthy  way  to  the  hearts  of 
the  nations.  And  while  the  sceptre  of  the  universe  shall 
continue,  as  continue  it  will,  to  lie  in  the  hand  that  was 
pierced  for  us  and  nailed  to  the  tree  of  Golgotha — while 
Christ  reigns,  Antichrist  cannot.  Here  are  our  auguries  for 
our  country,  our  age,  and  our  race. 

Bring  up  all  forms  of  error,  and  we  say,  however  numer- 
ous and  however  venomous  the  viperous  brood,  the  heads 
of  all  are  yet  to  be  crushed  against  the  cross  of  Calvary. 
Produce  all  the  spiritual  diseases,  aggravated,  various  and 
loathsome,  that  have  made  earth  one  huge  lazar-house,  and 
we  lay  our  hand  upon  the  cross  and  say,  here  is  the  catholi- 
con,  the  sure  and  sufficient  remedy  for  all  the  countless 
maladies  of  the  soul.  Receive,  love,  diffuse  and  exemplify 
that  doctrine  ;  and  every  error  is  subverted,  and  every  truth 
is  ultimately  established. 

"  Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth,"  said  the  founder  of  Chris- 
tianity to  his  disciples.  They  were  the  conservators  of  the 
world's  knowledge,  virtue,  freedom  and  peace.  In  the 
Church  was  to  be  found  the  quickening  and  recuperative 
energy,  that  was  to  stay  each  moral  plague  of  society,  and 
preserve  its  masses  from  a  universal  corruption,  which 
would  else  allow  them  to  settle  down  into  an  utter  and 
putrid  deliquescence  of  the  social  elements.  The  followers 
of  Christ  were  thus  conservative,  not  from  their  talents  but 
from  their  principles,  not  by  their  personal  endowments  or 
worldly  rank,  so  much  as  by  their  relations  to  the  gospel 
and  God,  sending  up  their  intercessions  to  Heaven,  and 
holding  up  the  light  of  their  example  and  their  testimony 
before  man,  advocates  with  one  world  and  patterns  to  an- 
other. Their  faith  was  then  the  principle  of  their  spiritual 
vitality,  and  that  faith  centered  in  the  atoning  and  availing 
sacrifice  of  the  cross,  as  its  sole  trust  and  its  highest  model. 


08  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

In  our  examination,  therefore,  of  literature  and  its  depen- 
dence upon  the  cross,  we  have  been  but  appropriating  to  a 
narrower  field,  what  our  Saviour  said  of  the  wide  circuit  of 
the  world.  We  say  of  its  literature  what  He  said  in  the 
broadest  sense  of  all  its  interests.  And  if  any  should  deem 
our  claims  of  the  literary  power  of  the  gospel  unwarrant- 
ed or  exaggerated,  their  accusation,  it  will  be  seen,  rebounds 
from  us  as  a  reproach  on  the  wisdom  of  Him  who  "  spake 
as  never  man  spake." 

We  might  glance  at  the  effects  upon  the  interests  of 
literature,  of  the  resurrection  of  the  true  doctrine  of  the 
cross  at  the  era  of  the  Reformation.  We  might  look  to  the 
splendid  and  varied  literary  results  of  the  revival  of  this  doc- 
trine among  the  Jansenists  of  France,  when  the  literature 
of  the  nation,  in  logic  and  in  style,  in  sobriety  and  manly 
vigor  of  thought,  as  well  as  in  purity  of  moral  and  religious 
character,  was  so  rapidly  advanced  by  the  devout  Port  Roy- 
alists21— when  Tillemont  produced  the  erudite,  candid  and 
accurate  history  that  received  the  praises  of  Gibbon,  when 
Nicole  wrote  so  beautifully  on  Christian  morals,  Le  Maistre 
stood  at  the  head  of  the  French  bar,  De  Saci  furnished  to  the 
nation  what  remains  yet  their  best  version   of  the  Bible,22 

21  "  It  would  not  be  too  much  to  assert,  that  this  mass  of  men  of  high 
intellect,  and  filled  with  noble  objects,  who,  in  their  mutual  intercourse,  and 
by  their  original  and  unassisted  efforts,  gave  rise  to  a  new  tone  of  expression 
and  a  new  method  of  communicating  ideas,  had  a  most  remarkable  influ- 
ence on  the  whole  form  and  character  of  the  literature  of  France,  and  hence 
of  Europe ;  and  that  the  literary  splendor  of  the  age  of  Louis  XIV.  may  be 
in  part  ascribed  to  the  society  of  Port  Royal." 

Ranke's  History  of  the  Popes.    Thilad.  1841.    Vol.  ii.  p.  208. 

22  An  English  scholar,  James  Stephen,  Esq.,  the  nephew,  we  believe,  of 
Wilberforce,  in  a  brilliant  article  upon  the  Port  Royalists,  contributed  to  the 
Edinburgh  Review  in  the  year  1841,  has  pronounced  this  glowing  eulogy  on 
the  version  of  De  Saci.  "  In  those  hours  De  Saci  executed,  and  his  friend 
transcribed,  that  translation  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  which  to  this  moment 
is  regarded  in  France  as  the  most  perfect  version  in  their  own  or  in  any 
other  modern  tongue.  While  yet  under  the  charge  of  St.  Cyran,  the  study 
of  the  divine  oracles  was  the  ceaseless  task  of  De  Saci.  In  mature  life,  it 
had  been  his  continual  delight ;  in  the  absence  of  every  other  solace,  it  pos- 
sessed his  mind  with  all  the  energy  of  a  master  passion.  Of  the  ten  thou- 
sand chords  which  there  blend  together  in  harmony,  there  was  not  one 
which  did  not  awaken  a  responsive  note  in  the  heart  of  the  aged  prisoner. 
In  a  critical  knowledge  of  the  sacred  text,  he  may  have  had  many  superiors, 
but  not  in  that  exquisite  sensibility  to  the  grandeur,  the  pathos,  the  super- 
human wisdom,  and  the  awful  purity  of  the  divine  original,  without  which 
none  can  truly  apprehend,  of  accurately  render  into  another  idiom,  the  sense 
of  the  inspired  writers.  *  *  *  Protestants  may  with  justice  except  to  many 
a  passage  of  De  Saei'e  translation  ;  but  they  will,  we  fear,  search  their  own 
libraries  in  vain  for  any,  where  the  author's  unhesitating  assurance  of  t\w 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  09 

Lancelot  aided  by  his  grammars  the  progress  of  classical 
science,  Pascal  in  so  many  walks  displayed  such  rare  and 
varied  excellence,  while  Arnauld  thundered  as  the  doughtiest 
theologian  of  the  schools — when  Racine,  the  pupil  of  the 
community,  became  the  most  finished  of  French  poets, 
Boileau,  their  friend,  the  most  perfect  and  most  pure  of 
French  satirists,  and  Madame  de  Sevigne,  their  admirer,  the 
most  graceful  and  simple  of  French  letter-writers. 

The  cross  of  Christ  thoroughly  appreciated  and  ardently 
loved  is  an  adequate  remedy  for  all  the  evils  of  the  world, 
and  necessarily,  therefore,  for  all  the  evils  of  the  world's 
literature.  It  contains  the  only  elements  which  can  coun- 
teract all  the  perils  we  have  described,  satisfy  the  demands 
of  the  human  heart,  and  correct  the  wanderings  of  the  hu- 
man reason,  and  thus  remedy  the  evils,  be  they  literary  or 
political,  of  society,  by  supplying  those  wants  of  our  nature 
out  of  which  these  evils  have  sprung,  and  by  restraining  the 
excesses  to  which  these  wants  lead.  As  to  the  casuistry 
and  superstition,  the  fanaticism  and  persecution,  that  have 
sometimes  abused  the  name  of  the  cross  for  their  shelter,  we 
can  only  say  that  the  doctrine  is  no  more  chargeable  with 
these  its  perversions,  than  is  the  dread  Name  of  God  re- 
sponsible for  all  the  fearful  profanation  made  of  it,  when  it  is 
used  as  an  oath  to  give  sting  to  a  jest,  or  to  add  venom  to  a 
curse. 

But  some  feel,  and  others  have  intimated  that  the  cross  of 

real  sense  of  controverted  words  permits  his  style  to  flow  with  a  similar 
absence  of  constraint,  and  an  equal  warmth  and  glow  of  diction."  A  calmer 
critic,  and  one  more  versed  in  the  text  and  versions  of  the  scriptures,  Dr.  J. 
Pye  Smith,  unites  in  awarding  eminent  merit  to  the  translation  of  De  Saci. 
In  his  Four  Discourses  on  the  Sacrifice  and  Priesthood  of  Christ,  (Lond. 
1828,)  he  remarks  upon  the  advantage  of  studying  a  difficult  passage  with 
the  consultation  of  various  translators.  "  Eve»  translations  which  may,  as 
a  whole,  be  inferior,  will  often  exhibit  instances  of  successful  expression,  in 
single  words  and  clauses,  most  remarkably  bringing  out  the  beauty  and 
genuine  force  of  the  original.  Among  the  modern  versions  I  beg  leave  to 
point  out  the  extraordinary  excellence,  particularly  in  the  New  Testament, 
both  as  to  fidelity  of  sentiment,  and  felicity  of  expression,  which  distinguishes 
the  French  translation  of  Isaac  le  Maistre  de  Sacy,  one  of  the  illustrious 
society  of  Port  Royal,  and  a  noble  sufferer  for  truth  and  conscience."  (pp. 
273,  274.)  The  chief  defects  of  the  work  grew  out  of  its  being  founded  on 
the  Vulgate,  and  its  being  frequently  ra-ther  a  beautiful  paraphrase,  than  a 
literal  version.  It  is,  like  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  of  Bunyan,  the  Letters  of 
the  Marian  Martyrs  in  England,  the  letters  of  the  excellent  Samuel  Ruther- 
ford of  Scotland,  the  Latin  Psalms  of  Buchanan,  and  some  of  the  religious 
works  of  Grotius,  a  part  of  the  prison  literature  of  the  church,  having  em- 
ployed its  venerable  author  during  his  incarceration,  as  a  confessor  for  the 
truth,  under  the  dominant  influence  of  Jesuitism  at  the  French  court. 


70  CONSERVATIVE     PRINCIPLE 

Christ  has  been  tried,  and  has  failed.  The  church  has  tried 
substitutes  for  it  indeed,  and  these  have  ever  failed.  But 
the  cross  itself  has  not  yet  been  tried  by  the  church  contin- 
uously and  fully.  Protestantism  even  has  talked  too  much 
of  it  as  justifying  the  sinner,  but  shrunk  from  it  as  sancti- 
fying him.  As  to  its  failures,  when  really  tried,  they  have 
never  been  more  than  apparent.  In  the  hurry  and  cry  of 
the  conflict,  the  voice  of  evil  is  louder  than  that  of  good. 
When  most  seeming  to  fail,  the  cross  is  but  like  its  Founder, 
when  amid  the  growing  darkness  of  his  last  agony,  the 
Dragon  seemed  writhed  around  him,  and  the  fatal  sting  of 
death  was  transfixing  him.  For  a  time  the  race  of  mankind 
might  seem  to  have  lost  their  Redeemer,  and  the  gates  of 
Hope,  as  they  swung  slowly  back,  appeared  about  to  close 
for  ever  upon  a  sinking  world.  But  when  that  darkness 
was  past,  and  the  field  of  battle  was  again  seen,  it  was  the 
'Dragon  that  lay  outstretched  and  stiffened,  with  bruised 
head — all  feeble  and  still,  in  the  shadow  of  that  silent  cross  ; 
while  radiant  in  the  distance  were  the  open  portals  of 
heaven,  and  earth  Jay  bathed  in  the  lustrous  dawn  of  a  new 
Hope, 

"  For  the  gates  of  Paradise 
Open  stand  on  Calvary."* 

And  when  some  forty  days  have  passed,  there  is  seen  in 
the  glittering  air  over  the  summit  of  Olivet,  the  form  of  the 
unharmed  and  ascending  Redeemer.  As  victor  over  death 
and  hell,  he  is  leading  captivity  captive,  returning  to  his 
proper  and  native  glory,  and  going  before  to  prepare  a  royal 
mansion  and  a  crown  of  righteousness  for  all  his  cross-bear- 
ing followers.  Thus  was  seeming  failure  the  secret  and  the 
forerunner  of  real  victory.  So  has  it  since  been.  The  days 
of  the  French  revolution,  when  infidelity  was  ready  to  tri- 
umph, ushered  in  the  era  of  foreign  missions,  when  Satan's 
oldest  seats  underwent  a  new  invasion.  So  will  it  continue 
to  be.  Every  conflict,  sore  and  long  though  it  may  be,  will 
but  add  to  the  trophies  of  the  Redeemer's  cross,  till  around 
it  cluster,  as  votive  offerings,  the  wreaths  of  every  science 
and  the  palms  of  every  art — and  that  instrument  of  shame 
and  anguish  be  hailed  as  the  hinge  of  the  world's  history 
and  destiny,  the  theme  of  all  our  study,  and  the  central  sun 
of  all  our  hopes,  the  sanction  to  the  universe   of  all  God's 


Montgomery. 


IN    OUR    LITERATURE.  71 

laws,  and  the  seal  to  all  the  elect  of  our  race  of  an  endless 
redemption  from  the  belief,  power,  and  practice  of  all  evil. 
In  the  coming  years  of  the  world's  history,  the  presaging  eye 
may  look  forward  to  the  fierce  clash  of  opinions,  the  tumult 
of  parties,  and  the  collision  of  empires.  But  when  the 
waters  are  out,  and  one  barrier  after  another  is  overwhelmed, 
and  one  sea-mark  topples  and  disappears  after  another 
beneath  the  engulfing  flood,  God  is  but  overturning  what  man 
has  built.  The  foundation  of  his  own  hand  will  remain  un- 
shaken. The  floods  of  the  people  cannot  submerge  it ;  the 
gates  of  hell  cannot  prevail  against  its  quiet  might. 

We  feel  that  we  need  your  forgiveness  for  the  length  to 
which  we  have  pursued  this  topic.  But  the  subject,  in  its 
earlier  portion  at  least,  was  a  complex  one  ;  on  the  latter 
portion  of  it,  if  any  where,  the  Christian  loves  to  linger  ;  and 
dwelling  as  we  had  been  compelled  to  do  on  the  gloomier 
side  of  the  picture,  we  may  now  be  pardoned,  if  the  eye 
loves  to  rest  on  that  light  from  heaven,  and  those  radiant  and 
celestial  omens,  that  descend  upon  this  darkness  from  the 
cross  of  our  Lord. 

And  now,  in  conclusion,  will  you  allow,  gentlemen,  the 
stranger,  as  he  is  to  most  of  you,  who  addresses  you,  to  ap- 
peal to  you  as  students  ?  Your  studies  have  taught  you 
how  the  best  interests  of  the  nation  are  bound  up  with  those 
of  learning ;  and  we  have  endeavored  at  this  time  to  revive 
a  lesson  your  respected  and  beloved  instructors  have  often 
enforced,  that  the  interests  of  learning  are  bound  up  with 
those  of  the  gospel,  and  that  there  only  is  found  a  knowledge 
which  to  have  learned,  will  form  the  best  preparation  for 
rightly  improving  all  other  knowledge  ; — which  not  to  have 
learned,  will  render  all  other  learning  finally  nugatory  to  its 
possessor. 

Amid  the  various  and  multiform  evils  that  threaten  our 
literature,  the  cross  of  Christ  is  the  one  conservative  prin- 
ciple, and  it  needs  but  to  be  fully  presented,  to  prove  ever 
the  sufficient  remedy.  We  entreat  you  then,  for  yourselves, 
to  view  habitually  this  cross  in  either  of  its  aspects,  as  re- 
vealing the  way  of  the  sinner's  justification,  and  as  showing 
the  process  of  the  believer's  sanctification. 

Look  to  it  as  your  salvation.  You  need  to  be  transformed 
by  its  holy  influences.  There  learn  the  love  of  God  as 
poetry  cannot  paint  it — the  wisdom  of  God  as  philosophy 
in  her  boldest  flights  never  surmised  it — the  holiness  of  God, 


''73  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

as  not  even  Sinai  proclaimed  it.  Receive  this  crucified 
Christ  as  your  Saviour.  Say,  as  you  raise  your  eyes  to  this 
throne  of  suffering  mercy,  in  the  language  of  that  old 
monkish  verse  from  the  Dies  Irae,  which  Johnson,  stern  as 
was  his  rugged  nature,  could  never  repeat  without  bursting 
into  a  flood  of  tears — 

"  Q,ueerens  me  sedisti  lassus, 
Redemisti  crucem  passus ; 
Tantus  labor  non  sit  cassus  ! 23 

Again,  many  or  most  of  you  look  to  be  preachers  of  this 
gospel.  Be  the  cross  your  theme,  Christ,  as  there  lifted 
up,  will  draw  all  men  unto  him.  Do  not  yield  blindly  to 
the  rage  for  novelty.  There  are  those  who  cannot  be  satis- 
tied  with  any  thing  as  old  as  the  gospel,  and  as  unchange- 
able as  Christ.  Like  the  Israelites,  they  loathe  even  manna, 
when  made  their  daily  bread.  Remember,  this  appetite 
for  change  is  not  to  be  cured  by  indulging  it,  and  is  itself  a 
symptom  of  moral  disease.  With  all  skill  used  in  varying 
the  mode  of  its  presentation,  still  let  your  theme  be  one  ; 
and  shrink  not  from  the  censures  of  those  who  demand  some- 
thing newer  than  the  truth,  and  better  than  Jesus  Christ, 
*■*  the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and  forever."  And  the  more 
the  school  or  the  press  may  eject  this  doctrine,  but  the  more 
let.  the  pulpit  insist  upon,  reiterate,  and  thunder  it  forth,  in 
all  the  tongues  of  the  earth.  For  it  is  to  you  a  surer  pledge 
of  success  than  that  imaged  cross  which  Constantine  put 
into  the  labarum  of  the  empire,  was  of  victory  to  the  im- 
perial hosts  whom  it  so  often  guided  to  conquest.  Do  not 
crucify  that  Lord  "  afresh"  by  your  sins.  Nor  trust  to  your 
office  and  work  as  preserving  you  from  these.  See  in  Paul, 
the  distress  an  apostle  felt,  lest  having  preached  to  others 
he  himself  should  prove  a  cast-away.  The  anxieties  of 
such  a  hero  and  martyr,  lest  he  should  turn  and  perish,  may 
well  arouse  you  to  a  salutary  self-distrust.     The  pulsations 

23  **  Wearily  for  me  thou  soughtest, 

On  the  cross  my  soul  thou  boughtest, 
Lose  not  all  for  which  thou  wroughtest." 
It  is  to  Mrs.  Piozzi  that  we  owe  this  anecdote  of  Johnson.  "  When  he 
would  try  to  repeat  the  celebrated  Prosa  JEcclesiastica  pro  Mortuis.  as  it  is 
called,  beginning  Dies  Irai,  dies  ilia,  he  could  never  pass  the  stanza  ending 
thus,  Tantus  labor  non  sit  cassus,  without  bursting  into  a  flood  of  tears; 
which  sensibility  I  used  to  quote  against  him  when  he  would  inveigh 
against  devotional  poetry,  and  protest  that  all  religious  verses  were  cold  and 
feeble,  and  unworthy  the  subject." — Crokcr's  Boswcll,  London}  1839,  vol. 
ix.  p.  73.— (See  Appendix ,  Dies  Ira.) 


IN    OUR     LITERATURE.  73 

of  that  mighty  heart,  in  its  strong  apprehensions,  are  even 
now  to  be  felt,  as  after  the  lapse  of  centuries,  it  seems  yet 
to  throb  and  heave  under  the  pages  of  the  epistles.  Value 
not  any  professional  learning  apart  from  an  experimental 
knowledge  of  the  cross  of  Christ.  Remember  that  the  man 
mighty  in  prayer,  and  full  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  who  knows, 
as  a  preacher,  but  the  scriptures  in  his  own  vernacular 
tongue,  may  take  his  place,  as  a  theologian24  and  a  pastor, 

24  We  may  well  ponder  the  language  upon  this  subject  of  a  scholar  who 
is  not  liable  to  the  imputation  of  enthusiasm,  ignorance,  or  partiality. 
Speaking  of  the  Bereans  who  searched  the  Scriptures,  Bishop  Horsley,  in  his 
Nine  Sermons  on  the  Resurrection,  <$*c.  (New  York,  1816,  pp.  165,  166),  takes 
occasion  to  remark  upon  the  knowledge  that  may  be  gained  from  the  mere 
English  version,  by  a  collation,  diligent  and  prayerful,  of  its  parallel  passages. 
"It  is  incredible  to  any  one  who  has  not  in  some  degree  made  the  experi- 
ment, what  a  proficiency  may  be  made  in  that  knowledge,  which  maketh 
wise  unto  salvation,  by  studying  the  Scriptures  in  this  manner,  without  any 
other  commentary  or  exposition  than  what  the  different  parts  of  the  sacred 
volume  mutually  furnish  for  each  other.  I  will  not  scruple  to  assert  that 
the  most  illiterate  Christian,  if  he  can  but  read  his  English  Bible,  and  will 
take  the  pains  to  read  it  in  this  manner,  will  not  only  attain  all  that  practi- 
cal knowledge  which  is  necessary  to  his  salvation,  but  by  God's  blessing,  he 
will  become  learned  in  every  thing  relating  to  his  religion  in  such  degree, 
that  he  will  not  be  liable  to  be  misled,  either  by  the  refined  arguments,  or 
the  false  assertions  of  those  who  endeavor  to  ingraft  their  own  opinion  upon 
the  oracles  of  God.  He  may  safely  be  ignorant  of  all  philosophy  except  what 
is  to  be  learned  from  the  sacred  books ;  which  indeed  contain  the  highest 
philosophy  adapted  to  the  lowest  apprehensions.  He  may  safely  remain  ig- 
norant of  all  history,  except  so  much  of  the  history  of  the  first  ages  of  the 
Jewish  and  of  the  Christian  church,  as  is  to  be  gathered  from  the  canonical 
books  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament.  Let  him  study  these  in  the  manner 
I  recommend,  and  let  him  never  cease  to  pray  for  the  illumination  of  that 
Spirit  by  which  these  books  were  dictated,  and  the  whole  compass  of  ab- 
struse philosophy  and  recondite  history  shall  furnish  no  argument  with 
which  the  perverse  will  of  man  shall  be  able  to  shake  this  learned  Christian's 
faith." 

The  testimony  as  to  the  amount  of  theologicial  science  to  be  attained  from 
the  study  of  the  English  version,  has  the  more  force,  coming  as  it  does  from 
a  controversialist  of  the  highest  rank,  a  scholar  of  great  robustness  of  intel- 
lect, and  eminent  for  his  attainments  not  only  in  biblical  criticism,  but  also 
in  physical  science ;  and  who  was  known,  withal,  to  have  few  sympathies 
with  the  Methodists  and  the  Dissenters  of  England,  and  their  pious  but 
often  uneducated  ministry.  The  editor  of  the  works  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton, 
the  chaplain  of  Bishop  Lowth,  and  the  antagonist  of  Priestly,  was  no  vulgar 
scholar.  Orme  has  said  of  him,  that  he  "  never  wrote  what  did  not  deserve 
to  be  read,"  and  characterizes  him  as  "stern,  bold,  clear,  and  brilliant,  often 
elegant,  sometimes  argumentative,  and  always  original,  and  as  a  critic, 
learned  but  dogmatic."  (Bibliotheca  Biblica,  p.  249.)  Such  a  man  was 
little  likely  to  indulge  in  language  of  undue  disparagement  as  to  those  literary 
advantages  in  which  he  himself  so  abounded.  We  allude  here  to  his  testi- 
mony, only  for  the  sake  of  enforcing  a  protest  we  would,  here  and  elsewhere, 
now  and  at  all  times,  make  against  the  language  of  depreciation,  sometimes 
incautiously  used,  regarding  the  competency  as  theologians  of  some  of  our 
ministers  who  have  missed  the  advantages  of  a  classical  education}  but  who 

11 


74  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

far  above  you  with  all  your  knowledge  of  criticism  and  lan- 
guages, if  you  rely  on  that  learning  and  neglect  to  cultivate 
piety.  The  true  exegesis  of  the  Scriptures  is,  after  all,  that 
put  upon  them  by  the  Holy  Spirit  who  first  indited  them,  as  He 
unfolds  them  to  the  prayerful  student,  and  he  who  puts  him- 
self, with  few  earthly  helps,  under  that  teaching,  will  profit 
more  than  the  man  who  with  all  earthly  helps  neglects  that 
teaching.  Steep  then  all  your  attainments  in  prayer.  And 
never  so  far  forget  your  obligations  to  true  learning,  and 
your  vows  to  Christ,  as  to  speak  or  think  lightly  of  the  de- 
vout, though  less  learned  student  of  the  Scriptures,  who 
bears  meekly,  and  commends  earnestly  that  cross  it  is  your 
business  and  his,  in  common,  to  exemplify  and  extol  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world. 

Lastly,  let  that  cross  be  your  pattern.  Let  Christ  and 
him  crucified,  be  not  a  mere  phrase  or  profession,  but  a 
living  reality.  That  sacrifice  on  the  cross  was  the  embodi- 
ment of  all  true  glory,  and  the  concentration  of  all  moral 
excellence.  Be  prepared  to  suffer  in  the  school  of  Christ. 
"If  we  suffer,  we  shall  also  reign  with  him."  Such  is  the 
law  of  success  in  the  world  of  mind  and  of  eternity.  Learn 
the  mute  energy  of  meekness  daring  to  suffer,  persisting  to 
love,  and  scorning  to  complain,  as  illustrated  in  Christ  dy- 
ing for  his  murderers,  and  proffering  to  the  world  a  recon- 
ciliation bought  by  his  own  blood  for  those  who  had  shed 
that  blood  ;  and  extending  to  his  embittered  foes  pardon 
which  their  sins  alone  had  made  necessary,  and  which  his 
unparalleled  compassion  alone  made  possible.  Remember 
that  your  rest,  and  your  reward  and  your  record,  are  not 
here,  as  His  were  not  here.  It  was  not  that  you  might 
seek  a  snug  parish  and  a  fat  salary,  that  the  Master  en- 
listed you — not  that  you  might  gather  round  you  the  flat- 
teries, and  become  the  idol  of  an  attached  church  and  an 
admiring  congregation.  You  were  bought  by  the  agonies 
and  shame  of  Calvary  for  a  sterner  task.  You  are  not 
carpet-knights,  come  out  to  shiver  a  lance  in  sport ;  the 
actors  in  some  gay  tournament,  where  "  ladies'  eyes  rain 
influence."     Your  work  is  a  sad  reality  in  a  world  of  sin 

are  yet  vigorous  thinkers,  and  prayerful  and  most  diligent  students  of  the 
English  version.  We  must  record  our  humble  dissent  from  such  sweeping 
censure  and  depreciation,  and  while  the  name  and  memory  of  Andrew  Fuller 
remain,  we  scarce  need  to  quote  even  the  authority  of  Horsley  in  our  favor, 
who  with  all  his  stores  of  learning  and  his  vigorous  genius,  was  certainly 
not  a  sounder  or  abler  theologian  than  the  Kettering  pastor. 


IN     OUR     LITERATURE.  75 

and  wo,  where  you  are  called  to  a  continuous  and  perilousT 
onset,  fighting  against  principalities  and  powers,  and  spirit- 
ual wickedness  in  high  places  ;  and  the  field  around  you 
is  strewn  with  many  a  memorial  of  defeated  hope,  of  suc- 
cessful temptation,  and  exulting  wickedness.  You  will  not 
then  content  yourself  with  a  mere  decorous,  dozing  and 
perfunctory  discharge  of  your  weekly  task-work  in  the  pul- 
pit. You  are  a  man  of  the  cross — it  will  be  your  aim  to 
train  up  the  churches  to  the  same  standard  and  in  the  same 
spirit.  They  will  learn  that  the  charity  of  the  cross  is  one 
seeking  rather  to  enrich  others,  than  to  hoard  for  itself. 
When  the  churches  are  more  thoroughly  pervaded  by  this 
spirit,  there  will  be  no  longer  a  lack  of  funds  or  of  labors 
for  our  foreign  missions  ;  nor  will  the  nations  rush  by  myri- 
ads into  hell,  whilst  the  church  is  grudgingly  telling  out 
her  few  dollars  for  the  work  of  evangelization,  and  calcu- 
lating how  much  money  may  be  saved  from  the  expense  of 
the  world's  salvation,  not  economizing  for  the  cross,  so 
much  as  economizing  from  its  demands.25    You  will  remind 

25  The  resources  of  the  later  Christian  Church  for  the  general  diffusion  of 
their  faith  may  possibly  resemble,  in  character,  those  of  the  earlier  church. 
In  a  work,  from  the  preface  of  which  we  have  already  quoted  in  a  former 
note,  the  History  of  Missions  by  Blumhardt  in  its  French  version  by  M. 
Bost,  we  find  M.  Blumhardt  making  these  observations  on  the  missionary 
character  and  success  of  the  early  Christians.  He  is  reviewing,  at  the  close 
of  the  fourth  century,  the  fall  of  Heathenism  and  the  triumph  of  Christianity 
in  the  Roman  empire,  and  the  influences  that  produced  these  results.  (Livre 
II.  C.  V.  Vol.  i.,  pp.  203-215).  Having  observed  (p.  205),  "that  the  Church 
is  in  its  very  nature  an  institution  designed  to  form  men  into  Christians,  and 
not  merely  to  gather  together  those  who  have  already  become  such,"  and 
having  remarked  upon  the  various  powers  that  aided,  modified,  and  cor- 
rupted the  Christian  Church  in  its  action  on  Roman  Paganism,  he  holds 
this  language  as  to  the  arms  that  the  primitive  Christians  employed  in  the 
victories  they  won  (p.  209).  "We  may  perceive,  amid  this  train  of  events, 
the  law  of  perpetuation  which  was  pursued  by  the  messengers  of  salva- 
tion. All  their  preaching  they  grouped  around  the  one  figure  of  Christ  as 
the  Sovereign,  Saviour  and  Judge  of  the  human  race,  and  this  doctrine, 
again,  they  evermore  based  upon  the  Scriptures,  to  which  they  continually 
referred,  not  as  to  a  human  system,  to  which  other  systems  might  in  turn 
be  opposed,  but  as  to  a  direct  revelation  from  God.  This  course  supplied  to 
the  Church,  at  once,  the  basis,  the  standard,  and  the  unity  that  it  needed, 
and  also,  at  the  same  time,  what  was  its  most  powerful  means  of  conversion 
and  of  diffusion.  The  great  cause  of  the  success  of  the  gospel  was  to  be 
found  in  its  very  nature.  A  faith,  that  taught  men  their  reconciliation  with 
God,  brought  into  the  world  a  principle  of  life,  which  nothing  else  could 
rival,  and  for  which  nought  else  could  compensate.  This  it  is  which  gave 
to  the  Christians,  at  the  very  outset,  the  courage,  and  we  may  well  call  it, 
the  audacity,  with  which  they  always  facecl  their  adversaries.  One  might 
tremble  for  a  Tertullian,  had  we  not  known  the  strength  on  which  he 
leaned.    *    *    The  Christians  had  on  their  side  an  irresistible  might,  not  in 


76  CONSERVATIVE    PRINCIPLE 

the  churches  that  they  were  enlisted  beneath  the  gory  cross, 
the  badge  of  the  Master's  anguish  and  shame,  that,  as  far 
as  man  is  concerned,  they  might  rather  give  than  receive  ; — ■ 
that  no  vulgar  pangs  bought  their  peace  ;  and  it  was  no 
easy  task  for  their  Lord  to  purchase  for  them  their  hope 
of  Heaven.  If  impelled  and  permitted  yourselves  to  go 
forth  to  the  heathen,  you  will  look  to  Golgotha,  and  find 
there  motives  whose  impulsive  power  is  never  spent,  and  an 
example,  whose  self-sacrificing  benevolence  can  never  be 
rivalled.  It  is  one  of  the  traditions  of  the  age  of  chivalry, 
that  a  Scottish  king,  when  dying,  bequeathed  his  heart  to 
the  most  trusted  and  beloved  of  his  nobles  to  be  carried  to 
Palestine.  Enclosing  the  precious  deposit  in  a  golden  case, 
and  suspending  it  from  his  neck,  the  knight  went  out  with 
his  companions.  He  found  himself,  when  on  his  way  to 
Syria,  hard  pressed  in  battle  by  the  Moors  of  Spain.     To 

the  form  of  reasonings  so  much  as  of  facts.  l  That  which  we  have  seen  and 
heard,  and  our  hands  have  handled,  of  the  word  of  life,  declare  we  unto  you.1 
And  as  these  sacred  truths  from  the  beginning  had  been  preserved  in  au- 
thentic writings,  the  Christians  devoted  themselves  to  the  dissemination  of 
these  their  sacred  books,  and  to  the  translation  of  these  books  into  various 
languages,  with  a  zeal  that  had  no  parallel :  and  this  form  of  proselytism  was 
to  be  found  nowhere  else  than  in  Christianity."  *  *  *  *  Having  ad- 
verted to  the  secondary  causes,  as  found  in  the  existing  condition  of  society, 
that  favored  the  spread  of  the  gospel,  he  proceeds  (p.  211)  to  the  remark. 
"  But  it  was  above  all  the  love  that  was  diffused  among  the  believers,  that 
must  strike  and  win  the  hearts  of  the  pagans,  in  this  era  of  selfishness  and 
of  cruelty.  In  this  respect,  the  Church  presented  a  spectacle  such  as 
Paganism  had  never  beheld;  and  on  this  topic,  indeed,  nothing  stronger 
could  be  said,  than  was  afterwards  said  by  Julian  himself,  as  in  one  of  his 
edicts  he  addressed  his  Pagan  subjects  :  '  Is  there  not  reason  for  us  to  be 
ashamed  as  we  look  upon  others  ?  The  Jews  allow  not  one  of  their  number 
to  sink  into  beggary ;  and  the  accursed  Galileans  support  not  only  their  own 
adherents,  but  even  those  of  our  party  also?  We  alone  are  unable  to  point 
to  any  institution  of  a  kind  resembling  theirs.' 

"  Such,  then,  were  the  powerful  arms  of  which  the  faith  availed  itself  in 
this  memorable  epoch  in  its  history.  There  existed  no  missionary  societies 
properly  so  called  ;  it  was  the  entire  Church  of  Christ  Jesus  that  took  upon 
itself  the  task  of  proclaiming  the  gospel.  Nor  did  there  exist  missionary 
treasuries,  or  any.  provision  of  that  kind,  whether  it  were  that  missionaries 
then  had  little  or  no  use  for  money,  or  whether  it  were  that  each  member  of 
the  church,  rich  or  poor,  finding  his  own  happiness  in  the  aid  he  lent  to 
this  work,  found  also  with  ease  the  requisite  means.  All  the  institutions  of 
this  kind  that  have  been  seen  growing  up  in  our  times,  as  the  fruits  of  a 
growing  zeal,  have  their  place  only  as  the  day  has  not  yet  come,  when  each 
member  of  the  Church  shall  have  again  become  for  himself  a  zealous  servant 
of  the  SaViour."  We  append  to  these  remarks  of  Blumhardt  the  note 
annexed  to  the  concluding  sentences  above  quoted,  by  M.  Bost.  "It  is 
worthy  of*  remark,  that  all  this  was  written  by  the  presiding  officer  of  one 
of  our  best  missionary  institutions,  for  the  entire  paragraphias  been  trans- 
lated with  almost  literal  exactness." 


IN     OUR     LITERATURE.  77 

animate  himself  to  supernatural  efforts  as  it  were,  that  he 
might  break  through  his  thronging  foes,  he  snatched  the 
charge  entrusted  to  him  from  his  neck,  and  flinging  it  into 
the  midst  of  his  enemies,  exclaimed,  "  Forth,  heart  of  Bruce, 
as  thou  wast  wont,  and  Douglas  will  follow  thee  or  die  :" 
and  so  he  perished  in  the  endeavor  to  reclaim  it  from  the 
trampling  feet  of  the  infidels,  and  force  his  own  way  out. 
Even  such  will  you  feel  your  own  position  to  be  when  en- 
countering the  hosts  of  heathenism.  Your  Master's  heart 
has  flung  itself  in  advance  of  your  steps.  In  the  rushing 
crowds  that  withstand  you,  there  is  not  one  whom  that  heart 
has  not  cared  for  and  pitied,  however  hostile  and  debased, 
unlovely  and  vile.  It  is  your  business  to  follow  the  leadings 
of  His  heart,  to  pluck  it,  as  it  were,  from  beneath  the  feet 
of  those  who,  in  ignorance  and  enmity,  would  tread  it  into 
the  dust.  From  the  cross,  as  from  a  lofty  eminence,  it  has 
cast  itself  abroad  among  these  "  armies  of  the  aliens."  And 
not  like  Douglas,  is  it  yours  to  follow  it  and  die  ;  you  fol- 
low it  and  live.  You  follow  it,  and  the  heathen  live.  And 
whether  your  post  be  at  home  or  abroad,  among  the  des- 
titution of  the  West,  or  that  of  the  ancient  East,  whenever 
glory,  ease  or  wealth  may  seek  to  lure  you  aside  from  your 
work,  look  to  that  cross,  and  remember  him  who  hung  there 
in  agony  for  your  sins.  Let  the  look  which  broke  Peter's 
heart  check  your  first  infirmity  of  purpose,  recall  each  wan- 
dering thought  and  rally  anew  all  the  powers  of  your  faint- 
ing spirit.  Be  Paul's  determination  yours.  "  God  forbid 
that  i  should  glory  save  in  the  cross  of  our  lord 
Jesus  Christ,  by  which  26  the  world  is  crucified 
unto  me,  and  i   unto  the  world." 

May  we  all  believe  in,  and  bear  that  cross  here,  that  it 
may  bear  us  up  in  the  day  of  the  world's  doom  ! 

26  «  Whereby."     Versions  of  Tyndale,  Cranmer,  and  Geneva  i  and  not 
" by  whom"  as  the  Rhemish  and  the  English  Received  Version. 


APPENDIX. 


THE    "DIES    IR^." 

(Seepage  72.) 

A  small  volume,  not  without  interest,  might  be  compiled  from  the  literary 
history  of  the  Dies  Irae,  and  the  versions  it  has  received  into  various  Euro- 
pean languages,  and  from  examples  of  the  powerful  influence  it  has  exercised 
upon  the  feelings  and  course  of  individuals.     It  can  scarce  be  regarded  as  a 
waste  of  time  to  observe  and  analyze  the  power  this  hymn,  from  the  awful- 
ness  of  its  theme,  and  its  own  quaint,  antique,  and  massive  grandeur  of 
structure,  has  acquired  over  the  hearts  of  men.     Unlike  the  Stabat  Mater, 
another  hymn  of  the  Romish  service,  with  which  by  mere  critics  it  is  ordi- 
narily classed,  it  is  free  from  idolatry.     A  devout  Protestant  cannot  unite  in 
the  Stabat  Mater.     It  degrades  the  Redeemer  by  idolizing  his  earthly  pa- 
rent.    But  in  the  Dies  Iras,  salvation  is  represented  as  being  of  Christ  alone, 
and  as  being  of  mere  grace :  "  Qui  salvandos  salvas  gratis."     Combining 
somewhat  of  the  rhythm  of  classical  Latin,  with  the  rhymes  of  the  Mediaeval 
Latin,  treating  of  a  theme  full  of  awful  sublimity,  and  grouping  together  the 
most  startling  imagery  of  scripture,  as  to  the  last  judgment,  and  throwing 
this  into  yet  stronger  relief  by  the  barbaric  simplicity  of  the  style  in  which  it 
is  set,  and  adding  to  all  these  its  full  and  trumpet-like  cadences,  and  uniting 
with  the  impassioned  feelings  of  the  South  whence  it  emanated,  the  gravity 
of  the  North  whose  severer  style  it  adopted,  it  is  well  fitted  to  arouse  the 
hearer.     It  forms  a  part  of  the  Romish  service  for  the  dead.     Albert  Knapp, 
one  of  the  living  sacred  poets  of  Protestant  Germany,  and  the  compiler  of  a 
large  body  of  hymns,  the  Liederschatz,  has  inserted  a  German  version  of  it 
in  his  voluminous  collection.     (Evang.  Liederschatz.  Stuttgart,  1837.     Vol. 
ii.  p.  786,  Hymn  3475.)     He  compares  the  original  to  a  blast  from  the  trump 
of  the  resurrection,  and  while  himself  attempting  a  version  of  it,  declares  its 
original  power  inimitable  in  any  translation.     (Ibid.  p.  870.)    This  is  the 
judgment  of  a  man  not  to  be   contemned  as  a  critic  or  a  translator,  for 
Knapp  himself  is  called  by  a  recent  German  critic,  who  seems  far  removed 
from  any  sympathy  with  the  religious  school  to  which  Knapp  belongs,  "  un- 
questionably the  most  distinguished  religious  poet  of  the  day."     (jT/iimm's 
Literature  of  Germany,  Lond.  1844  ;  p.  260.)  Knapp  refers  to  other  versions  of 
it  made  by  the  distinguished  scholar,  Aug.  Wm.  Schlegel,  by  Claus  Harms, 
one  of  the  most  eminent  of  the  living  evangelical  preachers  of  Germany,  as 
well  as  by  J.  G.  Fichte,  by  A.  L.  Follen,  J.  G.  Von  Meyer,  and  the  Cheva- 
lier Bunsen,  the  friend  of  Niebuhr  and  of  the  late  Dr.  Arnold,  and  now  the 
Ambassador  of  Prussia  at  the  Court  of  St.  James.     The  translation  of 
Bunsen,  with  some  slight  variations,  is  appended  by  Tholuck  to  his  sermon 
on  the  Feast  day  of  the  Dead.     (Tholuck,  Predigten.    Hamburg,  1838,  vol.  I. 
pp.  28,  149.)    Professors  Edwards  and  Park,  in  their  Selections  from  German, 
Literature  (Andovcr,  1839),  quote  the  remark  of  Tholuck,  as  to  the  deep  sen- 
sation produced  by  the  singing  of  this  hymn  in  the  University  church  at 
Halle :     M  The  impression,  especially  that  which  was  made  by  the  last  words, 


APPENDIX.  79 

as  sung  by  the  University  choir  alone,  will  be  forgotten  by  no  one."  They 
introduce  also  the  words  of  an  American  clergyman,  present  on  the  occa- 
sion, who  says,  "It  was  impossible  to  refrain  from  tears,  when  at  the  seventh 
stanza,  all  the  trumpets  ceased,  and  the  choir,  accompanied  by  a  softened 
tone  of  the  organ,  sung  those  touching  lines,  "  Quid  sum  miser  tunc  dictu- 
rus"  &c.  Like  Knapp,  they  unite  in  the  judgment,  that  no  translation  has 
equalled,  or  can  equal  the  original  Latin.  (German  Selections,  p.  185.)  Dr.  H. 
A.  Daniel,  another  German  scholar,  in  his  Bliithenstrauss  alt-latein,  Kir- 
chenpoesie,  Halle,  1840,  has  inserted,  besides  the  original  Latin,  and  the  Ger- 
man version  of  Bunsen  (pp.  78  and  116),  another  version  of  his  own  (p.  110). 
Goethe  has  introduced  snatches  of  the  original  Latin  into  the  first  part  of  his 
Faust. 

The  larger  work  of  Daniel  on  the  Mediaeval  Hymns,  his  "Thesaurus  Hym- 
nologicus,"  has  not  come  into  our  hands.  Dr.  G.  A.  Konigsfeld,  in  his  Latei- 
ni-sche  Hymncn  und  Gesdnge  aus  dem  Mittelalter,  Bonn,  1847,"  has  given  (pp. 
155  and  264)  his  German  imitation  of  this  hymn,  with  some  interesting  notes 
upon  its  variations  and  history.  Together  with  Lisco,  hereafter  named,  he 
refers  to  an  earlier  Essay  by  G.  C.  P.  Mohnike,  in  his  Kirchen.  u.  lit.  hist. 
Studien,  \r  Band,  \s  Heft,  Stralsund,  1814,  as  having  very  thoroughly  dis- 
cussed the  origin  and  literary  fortunes  of  this  remarkable  composition.  This 
Essay  we  have  failed  to  find. 

With  the  thoroughness  that  distinguishes  the  scholars  of  his  nation,  a  liv- 
ing Protestant  theologian,  Dr.  Frederick  G.  Lisco,  preacher  at  the  church 
of  St.  Gertrude,  in  Berlin,  already  advantageously  known  to  British  and 
American  Christians,  from  his  work  on  the  Parables  of  our  Lord,  translated 
and  issued  in  the  Edinburgh  Biblical  Cabinet,  and  author  of  a  popular  com- 
mentary on  the  New  Testament,  has  prepared  and  issued  an  edition  of  the 
Dies  Irae  (Berlin,  1840),  containing  seventy  translations,  fragmentary  or  com- 
plete, of  this  magnificent  hymn,  mostly  into  German,  with  notes  of  much 
interest  and  research.  To  a  similar  work  on  the  Stabat  Mater  (Berlin,  1843), 
Lisco  subjoined  seventeen  additional  versions  of  the  Judgment  Hymn.  One 
of  these  is  a  translation  of  it  into  modern  Greek,  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hildner, 
a  Missionary  of  the  (English)  Church  Missionary  Society  at  Syra,  and  was 
sent  by  its  author  to  the  Litt.  Anzeiger  of  the  distinguished  Prof.  Tholuck. 
As  double  rhymes  in  Greek  may  be  a  curiosity  to  some  readers,  we  subjoin 
tne  verse  already  quoted,  in  the  modern  Greek  garb  given  it  by  Mr.  Hildner. 

'JUarOVV  (fc)  KSKOTT L01O /AMOS 
Ko7TOJ  jif]  fiaTCLl(i)IJL£VOS  1 

Hildner' s  remark  is  that,  dear  as  the  Hymn  had  always  been  to  him,  it  had 
ever  borne  a  higher  place  in  his  regard  after  having  heard  it  sung  in  the  cele- 
brated Sixtine  Chapel  at  Rome.  Lisco' s  Stabat  Mater  did  not  reach  the 
hands  of  the  present  writer  until  after  the  first  edition  of  this  address,  nor  did 
he  succeed  in  procuring  the  sight  of  his  Dies  Irce  until  after  the  second  edi- 
tion had  been  issued. 

Though  some  have  claimed  the  honor  of  the  authorship  for  the  eminent 
Bernard,  and  others  given  to  it  an  earlier  and  pontifical  parentage  in  assign- 
ing it  to  Gregory  the  Great,  Lisco  and  Mohnike  and  Gieseler  refer  it  to  Thomas 
de  Celano.  Lisco' s  main  reliance  in  this  seems,  that  it  is  explicitly  and  with- 
out hesitation  ascribed  to  him  by  Wadding,  in  his  two  works  on  the  His- 
tory and  the  Writers  of  the  Minorite  Order,  (Annates  Minorum,  Laigd.  1625, 
and  Scriptores  Ord.  Minorum,  Romce,  1650.)  These  German  scholars  seem 
fond  of  remarking  that  although  Celano  was  of  Italian  birth,  his  native  place 
being  the  town  of  that  name  in  the  Neapolitan  territory,  some  of  his  life  was 
spent  in  the  service  of  his  order,  on  the  banks  of  their  own  Rhine,  at  Co- 
logne, and  elsewhere. 

Lisco  refers  to  one  German,  Lecke,  who  wrote  and  published  twelve  sev- 
eral versions  of  the  Dies  Irae. 


80  APPENDIX. 

The  authorship  of  the  hymn  is  generally  ascribed  to  one  of  the  Franciscan 
order,  or  the  Minorites  as  they  are  also  called.  Thomas  de  Celano,  the  friend 
and  biographer  of  Francis  of  Assisi,  the  founder  of  this  order,  and  who  lived 
in  the  thirteenth  century,  is  generally  supposed  to  have  written  it  about  the 
year  1250.  (Gieseler's  Ch.  Hist.  1st  Am.  Ed.  II.  288.  Knapp,  Liederschatz  II. 
870.  Thohick  and  Daniel  ut  supra.)  Celano,  it  may  be  observed  by  the  way, 
is  one  of  those  on  whose  authority  is  made  to  rest  the  legend  that  Francis 
received  the  stigmata  or  miraculous  impressions  of  Christ's  wounds.  (Alban 
Butler,  Ldves  of  Saints.)  It  has  also  been  attributed  to  others  of  the  same 
order,  as  to  Matthew  of  Aquasparta,  a  general  of  the  Minorites,  who  died  with 
the  rank  of  Cardinal,  in  1302,  or  to  Frangipani,  the  Dominican,  who  died  in 
1294.  (Knapp,  Lisco,  ut  supra.)  Churton,  the  author  of  the  "  Early  English 
Church,"  would  give  it,  however,  a  much  earlier  origin,  or  he  has  fallen  into 
a  gross  anachronism  ;  for  he  places  it  in  the  lips  of  the  dying  Thurstan,  the 
Archbishop  of  York,  who  ended  his  course  in  the  year  il40,  a  full  century 
before  the  time  generally  fixed  for  its  composition  by  T.  de  Celano.  (Chur- 
ton, Am.  Ed.  p.  272.) 

Issuing,  as  it  certainly  did,  from  an  age  of  great  superstition  and  corrup- 
tion, it  is  remarkable  that  it  should  be  so  little  incrusted  with  the  prevalent 
errors  of  the  time.  The  lines  "  Quern  patronum  rogaturus  Cum  vix  Justus 
sit  securus  ?3i  seem  almost  a  renunciation  of  the  Romish  doctrine  of  the  ad- 
vocacy of  saints.  Like  the  Imitation  of  Christ  by  Thomas  a  Kempis,  it 
remains  as  a  monument  of  the  truth,  that  in  ages  of  general  declension,  God 
had  his  own  hidden  ones,  and  that  beneath  the  drifting  and  accumulating 
mass  of  heresies  and  human  inventions  and  traditions,  there  was  an  under- 
current of  simple  faith  in  Christ,  that  kept  alive  and  verdant  some  less 
noticed  portions  of  the  blighted  vineyard  of  the  church.  If  really  the  work 
of  the  historian  of  the  stigmata  of  the  fanatical  Francis  of  Assisi,  it  affords 
another  of  the  many  examples  that  show  how  much  excellence  and  how 
much  error  may  exist  together. 

The  Franciscan  order,  in  its  earlier  history,  would  seem  to  have  cultivated 
sacred  poetry.  Francis,  its  founder,  was  the  writer  of  some  Italian  verses, 
"  two  in  the  earliest  poetical  flights  in  the  language,"  (Eustace.  Classical 
Tour,  II.  148) ;  to  Thomas  de  Celano,  the  authorship  of  the  Dies  Irae  is 
generally  attributed ;  and  to  another  Franciscan,  Jacopone,  is  ascribed  by 
the  chief  authorities  the  composition  of  the  Stabat  Mater. 

The  received  Text  of  the  Judgment  Hymn,  as  incorporated  into  the  Church 
Service  in  the  Romish  Missal,  is  not  supposed  to  be  by  any  means  its  origi- 
nal shape.  The  revisions  of  devotional  poetry,  which  have  in  our  own  times 
awakened  loud  complaint,  as  if  they  were  modern  and  audacious  examples 
of  a  temerity  unknown  to  our  fathers,  were  practised  in  earlier  times ;  and, 
in  some  cases,  retrenchment  was  improvement.  The  earliest  forms  of  the 
Dies  Irae  are  thought  to  be  that  in  which  it  is  found  inscribed  upon  a  mar- 
ble slab  in  the  Church  of  St.  Francis,  at  Mantua,  and  that  in  which  it  is 
given  by  Felix  Malleolus  (Hammerlein).  In  the  Mantuan  text,  it  has  the 
aspect,  by  its  introduction,  of  a  devotional  and  solitary  meditation,  rather 
than  of  an  anthem  for  the  use  of  an  assembly ;  beginning  with  the  following 
verses,  the  entire  excision  of  which,  by  the  Romish  Missal,  leaves  in  the  fifth 
verse  (thus  made  the  first)  an  opening  peal  of  startling  majesty. 

1.  Cogita,  anima  fidelis, 
Ad  quid  respondcre  velis 

Christo  venturo  de  ccelis.  m 

2.  Cum  deposcet  rationem, 
Ob  boni  omissionem, 
Ob  mall  commissionem. 

3.  Dies  ilia,  dies  ine, 

Q,uam  conemur  praevenire, 
Obviamque  deo  irae. 


APPENDIX.  81 

4.  Seria  contritione, 
Gratias  apprehensione, 
Vitae  emendatione. 

Then  follow  the  first  sixteen  verses  of  the  present  received  Text ;  but,  in- 
stead of  the  17th  of  this,  "  Oro  supplex"  &c,  comes  as  the  conclusion  of  the 
Mantuan  text,  being,  (with  the  four  introductory  verses  above  given,)  the 
21st  verse, 

Consors  ut  beatitatis 

Vivam  cum  justiflcatis, 

In  aevum  asternitatis.    Amen. 

The  text  of  Hammerlein  has  the  .first  sixteen  verses  as  we  find  them  in  the 
Breviary,  with  some  verbal  variations ;  and  then  follow  eight  verses,  more  reg- 
ular in  structure  than  the  close  as  found  in  the  Received  Text,  and  contain- 
ing (which  the  latter  does  not)  an  idolatrous  reference  to  the  Virgin  Mary, 
as  herself,  instead  of  her  Son,  being  the  Root  and  Offspring  of  David.  The 
close,  as  found  in  the  popular  and  ecclesiastical  shape  of  the  Hymn,  seems 
an  irregular  and  fragmentary  condensation  of  these  verses — the  more  forcible 
from  its  greater  brevity,  and,  to  a  Protestant,  welcome  by  its  unaccountable 
omission  of  the  Mariolatry. 

17.  Oro  supplex  a  ruinis 

Cor  contritum  quasi  cinis; 
Gere  curam  mei  finis. 

18.  Lacrymosa  die  ilia, 
Cum  resurget  ex  favilla 
Tanquam  ignis  ex  scintilla, 

19.  Judicandus  homo  reus, — 
Huic  ergo  parce  Deus, 

Esto  semper  (tunc  ?)  adjutor  meus. 

20.  duando  coeli  sunt  movendi, 
Dies  adsunt  tunc  tremendi, 
Nullum  tempus  poenitendi. 

21.  Sed  salvatis  laeta  dies  ; 
Et  damnatis  nulla  quies, 
Sed  daemonum  effigies. 

22.  O  tu  Deus  majestatis, 
Alme  candor  Trinitatis, 
Nunc  conjunge  cum  beatis. 

23.  Vitam  meam  fac  felicem, 
Propter  tuam  genetricem, 
Jesse  florem  et  radicem. 

24.  Praesta  nobis  tunc  levamen, 
Dulce  nostrum  fac  certamen, 
Ut  clamemus  omnes.    Amen. 

Although  the  exact  relation  of  these  texts  to  each  other  is  a  matter  of ' 
doubt,  it  seems  the  more  probable  that  the  Received  Text  is  the  truncated 
remnant,  left  after  a  double  revision  ;  the  first  excision  having  removed  the 
introductory  stanzas,  as  found  on  the  marble  in  the  church  of  St.  Francis, 
and,  when  this  retrenched  text  was  elongated  by  additional  verses  at  the 
close,  as  in  the  text  of  Hammerlein,  a  second  revision  greatly  condensed 
these ;  and  each  excision  benefited  the  Hymn. 

A  French  scholar,  ia  an  article  contributed  to  the  Rcvuq  des  deux  Mondcs, 

12 


83  APPENDIX. 

Paris,  since  the  appearance  of  Lisco's  work,  but  in  which  wc  do  not  re-' 
member  any  reference  to  the  work  oi  the  German  scholar,  has  traced  what 

he  supposes  intimations  and  germs  oi  the  Dies  lra\  both  as  to  its  phrase- 
ology and  its  metre,  in  the  Latin  hymns  of  the  Romish  church,  in  the  cen- 
turies preceding  its  composition.  He  has  also  entered  at  much  length,  and 
it  would  seem  with  much  delicacy  and  justness  of  criticism,  into  the  char* 
acter  oi  the  music  that  some  of  the  most  distinguished  composers  of  Italy 
and  Germany  have  prepared  for  the  Dies  Inc. 

Upon  the  Dies  lra\  Mozart  has  founded  his  celebrated  Requiem,  the  latest 
and  not  the  least  celebrated  of  his  works.  The  excitement  of  his  feelings 
whilst  employed  on  this  musical  composition,  is  supposed  to  have  hastened 
his  end,  which  occurred,  indeed,  before  he  could  fully  complete  the  task. 
Among  the  great  names  who  have  sought  to  marry  its  poetry  to  immortal 
melody,  may  be  enumerated  Cherubini,  Haydn,  Jomelli,  Palastrina,  and 
Pergolesi. 

Of  tlie  various  versions  the  Hymn  lias  received  into  the  French  language, 
We  are  unable  to  speak.  Lisco  {D.  I.  116)  alludes  to  one  by  Gonon,  a  CYI- 
estine  monk,  in  the  beginning  oi  the  17th  century,  and  (in  his  App.  to  the 
St.  M.  -\S)  gives  another  oi  the  date  oi  1702,  apparently  from  a  Catholic 
prayer  book.  A  Jesuit  oi  France,  whose  work  we  have  seen,  issued,  some- 
where about  the  time  oi  the  first  great  Revolution  of  that  country,  in  a  vol- 
ume oi  Latin  poetry,  an  expansion  of  the  Judgment  Hymn,  in  oilier  metre, 
and  in  Latin  oi  more  classical  style,  in  each  change  betraying,  it  would 
seem  to  us.  a  want  of  discrimination  and  taste. 

Among  the  poets  of  England  the  Dies  lne  has  found  hosts  of  admirers, 
and  many  translators.  The  admiration  which  Sir  Walter  Scott  felt  for  it  is 
well  known.  He  has  introduced  an  English  version  of  a  few  oi  its  opening 
stanzas  into  the  Lay  oi  the  Last  Minstrel,  whence  Bishop  Heber  adopted 
it  into  his  Hymns  for  the  Church  Service.  They  are  too  few  to  give  any 
just  idea  oi  the  original,  and  the  measure  of  the  old  Hymn  is  not  as  well  re- 
tained as  in  the  best  German  versions.  Knapp,  Daniel  ami  Bunsen  all  pre- 
serve the  double  rhymes  of  the  Latin  original;  Scott  and  the  earlier  Eng- 
lish translators  have  given  but  a  single  rhymed  ending  to  their  verses,  fn 
this  respect  the  English  version  of  the  London  Christian  Observer  (Vol. 
xxvi.  p.  '26),  copied  by  Edwards  and  Park  (German  Selections,  p.  15),  also 
comes  short  oi  its  model,  as  Joes  that  oi  the  Rev.  Isaac  Williams,  one  of 
the  writers  oi  the  Oxford  Tracts,  and  who  contested  unsuccessfully  with 
the  Rev.  3lr.  Garbett,  the  election  to  the  Professorship  of  Poetry  in  Oxford, 
on  the  retirement  oi  Keble.  Williams1  version  may  be  found  in  his  Thoughts 
in  Pus!  \  ears  {Am.  erf.,  /'.  308).  The  school  of  Oxford  Tractarian  Theology, 
to  which  this  writer  belonged,  seem  to  have  been,  from  their  admiration  of 
the  Mediaeval  Church,  as  well  as  from  its  own  intrinsic  merits,  strongly  at- 
tracted to  the  Judgment  Hymn.  One  oi  their  number,  Rev.  E.  Caswafl,  who 
has  gone  over  to  Rome,  has  in  his  Lyra  Catholiea  (London,  1849),  a  version 
of  the  Hymns  oi  the  Breviary,  given  an  English  rendering  (p.  241),  that  may 
\  ie.  for  Closeness  and  felicity,  with  that  of  Trench,  named  hereafter.  Another 
Writer,  of  the  same  type  ill  doctrine  with  the  Oxford  Tractarian,  the  Rev. 
W.  J.  Irons,  has  published  [Dies  Ji\c,  by  \V.  J.  Irons,  London,  S.  Masters, 
1849)  a  version,  with  music,  described  as  retaining  the  metre  and  double 
rhyme  oi  the  original.     This  last  work  we  have  failed  to  meet 

A  writer  in  tin1  New- York  Evangelist  (October,  1841),  has  judiciously  re- 
tained the  double  rhyme,  but  the  reader  misses  the  antique  simplicity  and 
rugged  Btrength  of  the  original.  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  his  letter  to  a  brother 
poi  t,  Crabbe,  n  marks  i  "To  my  Gothic  car.  the  Ste  Mater,  the  Dies  Irce, 
and  BOme  oi  the  other  hymns  of  the  Catholic  chinch,  are  more  solemn  and 
afiecting  than  the  fme  classical  poetry  oi  Buchanan;  the  one  has  the  gloomy 
dignity  oi  a  Gothic  church,  and  reminds  us  constantly  of  the  worship  to 
w  mob  it  is  dedicated  ;  the  other  is  more  like  a  pagan  temple  recalling  to  our 
memory  the  classical  and  fabulous  deities.'1     (Locknari's  Lijc  of  Scott)  Phil" 


APPENDIX.  83 

t 
arJdpftla,  1838,  vol.  i.,  p.  430.)  In  his  last,  days  of  life  and  mason,  ho  was 
overheard  quoting  it  with  fragments  of  the  Bible,  and  the  old  Scotch  Psalms. 

"  Wo  very  often,'  says  his  kinsman  and  his  biographer,  "heard  distinctly  tho 
cadence  of  the  Dies  Ira*."  (/bid.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  734.)  Its  lines  haunted  in  liko 
manner  the  dying  hours  of  an  earlier  and  Inferior  poet,  the  Earl  of  Roscom- 
mon. He  was  the  author  of  an  English  version  of  the  hymn,  and,  as  wo 
learn  from  Johnson's  Lives  of  tin;  Poets,  he  Uttered,  in  the  moment  when 
he  expired,  with  great  energy  arid  devotion,  two  lines  of  his  own  translation 
Of  the  Dies  Iraj  : 

"My  God,  my  Father  and  my  Friend, 
Do  not  forsake  me  in  my  end." 

Another  nobleman,  on  the  Continent,  Count  von  Hcrnstofi;  a  native  of 
Denmark,  who  died  in  Berlin,  in  the  year  1835,  is  mentioned  by  Lisco  (D.  /., 
j>.  139),  as  having  produced  his  German  rendering  of  the  Judgment  Hymn, 
upon  his  death  bed.  Milman,  another  distinguished  name  in  English  po- 
etry, has,  in  his  History  of  Christianity,  rated  this  hymn  as  superior  to  any 
of  the  poetry  of  the  Christian  church  in  the  early  ages.  "  As  to  tin;  hymns 
(setting  aside  the  Te  Deum),  paradoxical  as  it  may  sound,  I  cannot  but  think 
the  latter  and  more  barbarous  the  best.  There  is  nothing,  in  my  judgment, 
to  be  compared  with  the  monkish  "  Dies  Jraj,  dies  i//a,"  or  even  the  fctabat 
Mater.  (Milmarii  (idlii^nanVs  Ed.  JJ.,  ]>.  330,  note).  Roscommon's  trans- 
lation, already  the  subject  of  reference,  is  said  by  Warton  to  be  largely  in- 
debted to  the  earlier  version  of  Crashaw,  a  sacred  poet  of  true  genius,  whoso 
rendering  Of  the  Dies  Jrcu  was,  in  the  judgment  of  Pope,  the  best  of  his  com- 
positions. (  WillmoLfs  Lives  of  Sacred  Poets,  Load.  1839,  vol.  i.,  p.  317.)  This 
work  of  Crashaw  may  be  found  in  Andersons  British, Potts  (vol.  iv.,  p.  745). 
Crashaw  was  one  of  the  clergymen  of  the  English  church,  who  during,  or  soon 
after  the  days  of  Laud,  and  probably  from  the  influence  of  that  school  whoso 
leader  and  martyr  Laud  was,  went  over,  as  by  a.  natural  progression,  into 
the  Romish  communion.  Drummond  of  llawthornden  has  also  imitated 
the  Dies  free.  (Anderson,  iv.  682.)  Evelyn,  the  author  of  the  Sylva,  and 
the  friend  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  seems  also  to  have  tested  his  strength  upon  tho 
same  task.  In  their  correspondence;  Taylor  asks  a  copy  of  his  friend's  ver- 
sion.    (Memoirs  of  Evelyn,  Vol..  1  V.  p.  26.) 

An  English  version  of  tin;  Hymn  has  been  given,  amongst  our  own  schol- 
ars, by  the  Rev.  J.  Newton  Brown  (Baptist  Memorial,  New  York,  October, 
1848),  now  one  of  the  .Secretaries  of  the  Baptist  Publication  Society  in  Phil- 
adelphia; and  another  rendering  of  the  Hymn,  the  most  successful  of  tho 
English  versions  in  double  rhyme,  appeared  in  the  Newark  Daily  Adverti- 
ser of  March  17,  1847.  In  that  Journal,  as  in  the  New  York  Observer,  it 
was  awarded  generous  and  just  commendation,  as  is  understood,  by  a  distin- 
guished pastor  and  professor,  whose  praise  is  true  honor.  Although  appearing 
anonymously,  the  version  in  the  Newark  Daily  Advertiser  was  by  Abraham 
Coles,  M.D.,  of  Newark,  N.  J.,  whose  friends  may  well  congratulate  him  on 
having  achieved  so  successfully  a  difficult  task,  in  which  so  many,  and  of 
eminent  name,  have  been  his  competitors. 

That  accomplished  Christian  nobleman,  Lord  Lyndsay,  in  his  Work  on 
Christian  Art  (Lond.,  1847,  vol.  I.,  pp.  ccvii.,  ceviii.),  has  contributed  another 
to  the  long  list  of  attempts  to  transfer  this  Hymn  into  our  own  tongue.  His 
version  has  but  the  single  rhyme.  He  remarks,  upon  the  tone  of  its  piety, 
"  as  expressive  of  the  feelings  of  dread,  and  almost  despair,  with  which  the 
Christians  of  the  middle  ages — taught  to  look  on  Christ  as  Jehovah,  rather 
than  the  merciful  Mediator,  through  whose  atoning  blood  and  all-sufficient 
merits  the  sinner  is  reconciled  to  his  Maker — looked  forward  to  the  awful 
consummation  of  all  things."  We  cannot  but  dissent,  in  some  measure, 
from  this  judgment.  Our  Lord's  own  picture  of  the  judgment,  in  the  Gos- 
pel of  Matthew,  is  equally  stern  and  terrific  i  and  the  Hymn  does  not,  as 


84  APPENDIX. 

much  as  most  offices  of  the  Romish  Church,  overlook  the  grace  of  Christ 
as  the  sinner's  only  plea. 

I  In  allusion  probably  to  its  antique  massiveness  and  majesty,  Lisco  quotes 
the  title  given  by  some  to  the  Dies  Irae,  "  a  Hymn  of  Giants,"  (p.  87.) 
Considering  the  character,  however,  which  the  Anakim  of  Holy  Writ,  and 
the  Titans  of  classic  mythology,  have  borne  for  piety,  the  appellation  seems 
infelicitously  chosen.  That  name  might,  it  appears  to  us,  be  more  fitly 
given  to  the  parodies  of  this  great  hymn,  in  which  sacred  themes,  and  the 
celestial  imagery  of  Revelation,  have  been  plundered  by  human  passion,  for 
the  purposes  of  passing  controversy  and  political  satire.  To  parodies,  in 
his  own  tongue,  of  this  class,  by  Ed.  Duller,  J.  H.  Voss,  and  E.  Ortlepp, 
Lisco  refers,  (D.  /.,  p.  139 ;  St.  M.,  p.  55.)  From  his  work  it  appears, 
also,  that  the  example  of  putting  to  such  baser  uses  holy  things  had  been 
long  before  set  by  the  clergy  of  the  Roman  Church.  He  quotes  (I).  /.,  pp. 
110,  &c.)  from  the  German  writings  of  Leibnitz,  a  Latin  parody  given  by 
that,  great  scholar,  as  the  work  of  some  Catholic  priest  about  the  year  1700. 
This  zealous  parodist,  from  the  union  of  the  French  and  Spanish  crowns  in 
the  Bourbon  family,  hoped  for  the  downfall  of  the  Protestant  Holland,  the 
conversion  of  England,  and,  in  consequence,  the  subversion  of  Lutheranism 
and  Calvinism  throughout  Europe. 
Of  Spain's  future  victories  in  the  fens  of  the  Netherlands,  he  sings : 

Quantus  tremor  est  futurus, 
Dum  Philippics  est  venturus, 
Has  paludes  aggressurus  i 
***** 
Hie  Rex  ergo  cum  sedebit, 
Vera  fides  refulgebit, 
Nil  Calvino  remanebit. 

Quid  sum  miser  tunc  dicturus, 
Quern  Patronum  rogaturus, 
Cum  nee  Anglus  sit  securus  ? 

The  great  monarch  of  France  he  thus  apostrophizes,  in  allusion  to  the 
lilies  on  his  armorial  shield. 

Magne  Rector  liliorum. 
Amor,  timor  populorum, 
Parce  terris  Batavorum. 
*  *  * 

To  the  anticipated  defeat  of  the  "  bald-headed "  William  of  Orange,  the 
political  hope  of  the  Protestant  interest  in  Europe,  and  to  the  restoration  of 
James  II.,  the  abdicated  king,  and  of  his  son  the  Pretender,  that,  in  their 
recovered  British  dominions,  they  might  plant  a  triumphant  Romanism,  he 
thus  dedicates  his  two  closing  stanzas. 

Confutatis  Caloi  brutis, 
Patre,  nato,  restitutio, 
Redde  mihi  spem  salutis ! 

Oro  supplex  et  acclinis 
Calvinismus fiat  cinis, 
Lacrymarum  ut  sit  finis  ! 

The  attempt  thus  to  hurl  the  thunderbolts  of  Providence,  and  to  predict 
the  glories  in  reserve  for  the  Catholic  Church,  proved  a  wretched  failure. 
Never  in  the  century  since,  has  the  cause  of  Rome  been,  in  contrast  with 
that  of  the  Reformation,  possessed  of  as  muck  even  of  comparative  strength, 
as  when  the  parodist  prophesied  :  far  less  has  she  increased  in  resources  and 
influence  to  the  extent  his  auguries  promised  ;  and  the  Stuart  dynasty,  in-, 
stead  of  the  promised  restoration,  has  met  its  extinction. 


APPENDIX.  85 

The  want  of  any  devout  feeling  that  pervades  this  parody,  whose  author 
certainly  wanted  not  either  talent  or  ingenuity,  in  singing  the  future  tri- 
umphs of  his  church,  is  most  painfully  apparent,  in  his  profane  distortion  of 
the  14th  stanza,  to  the  adulation  of  Louis  XIV. 

Preces  meae  non  sunt  dignae, 
Sed,  Rex  magne,  fac  benigne, 
Ne  bomborum  cremer  igne. 

Little  did  the  "  Grande  Monarque,"  or  his  flatterers  suspect,  that  his  own 
victories  and  glories,  and  those  of  his  family  after  him,  were  sowing  for  their 
country,  and  for  Europe,  the  seeds  of  that  stormy  retribution,  the  great  French 
Revolution,  in  which  neither  Catholic  France,  nor  Catholic  Spain,  nor  Cath- 
olic Italy  escaped  so  well  as  did  the  Holland  and  England  whose  degrada- 
tion and  ruin  they  had  plotted  and  promised. 

But  to  return  from  these  reckless  perversions,  a  Hymn,  such  as  the  Dies  Irae, 
which  has  wrought  so  strongly  on  the  graver  temperament  of  the  North, 
was  not,  although  Gothic  in  its  structure,  likely  to  remain  without  any  effect 
on  the  quicker  feelings  of  the  South.  Ancina,  at  that  time  a  professor  of 
medicine  in  the  University  of  Turin,  was  one  day  hearing  mass,  when  the 
Dies  Irae,  as  chanted  in  the  service  for  the  dead,  so  strongly  affected  him,  that 
he  determined  to  abandon  the  world.  He  afterwards  became  Bishop  of 
Saluzzo  ;  (Biogr.  Diet,  of  Soc.  Diff.  Use/.  KnowL,  "Ancina;").  and  in  that 
episcopal  charge,  St.  Francis  de  Sales  declared  of  him,  that  he  had  never 
known  one  of  more  apostolic  character.  (Lives  of  the  Companions  of  St. 
Philip  Neri,  London,  1849,  p.  8.) 

A  composition  that  has,  with  no  effort  at  elaboration  or  poetic  art,  so  long 
attracted  the  admiration  of  poets  like  Goethe  and  Scott,  distinguished  for 
their  skill  in  the  mere  art ;  and  yet  met  also  the  wants  and  won  the  sympa- 
thies of  men,  who,  disregarding  poetry,  looked  mainly  to  piety  of  sentiment — 
a  poem  that  has  thus  united  the  suffrages  of  religion  and  taste,  deserves 
some  study,  as  a  model,  in  that  walk  of  such  difficulty  and  dignity,  the  walk 
of  sacred  poetry. 

The  Latin  original  though  made  accessible  to  American  readers  in  Ed- 
wards and  Park's  German  selections,  p.  185;  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Amer- 
icana, (art.  Dies  Irce) ;  and  in  Isaac  Williams'  Thoughts  in  Past  Years,  (Am. 
Ed.  p.  309,)  may  be  here  given,  for  the  benefit  of  some  who  may  not  have  at 
hand  either  of  those  works. 

I. 

Dies  irae !  dies  ilia ! 
Solvet  saeclum  in  favilla ; 
Teste  David  cum  Sibylla. 

n. 

Quantus  tremor  est  futurus, 
Q,uando  Judex  est  venturus, 
Cuncta  stricte  discussurus, 

in. 
Tuba  mirum  spargens  sonum, 
Per  sepulchra  regionum, 
Coget  omnes  ante  thronum. 


Mors  stupebit  et  Natura, 
Cum  resurget  creatura, 
Judicanti  responsura. 


APPENDIX. 


Liber  scriptus  proferetur, 
In  quo  totum  continetur, 
Unde  mundus  judicetur. 


Judex  ergo  cum  sedebit, 
Quidquid  latet  apparebit, 
Nil  inultum  remanebit. 

VII. 

Quid  sum  miser  tunc  dicturus? 
Quern  patronum  rogaturus, 
Cum  vix  Justus  sit  securusl 

VIII. 

Rex  tremendae  majestatis ! 
Qui  salvandos  salvas  gratis, 
Salva  me,  fons  pietatis. 

IX. 

Recordare,  Jesu  pie, 
Quod  sum  causa  tuae  viae  : 
Ne  me  perdas  ilia  die. 


Quaerens  me  sedisti  lassus ; 
Redemisti  crucem  passus ; 
Tantus  labor  non  sit  cassus. 

XI. 

Juste  Judex  ultionis, 
Donum  fac  remissionis 
Ante  diem  rationis. 

XII. 

Ingemisco  tanquam  reus ; 
Culpa  rubet  vultus  meus  ; 
Supplicanti  parce,  Deus. 

XIII. 

Qui  Mariam  absolvisti, 
Et  latronem  exaudisti, 
Mini  quoque  spem  dedisti. 

XIV. 

Preces  meae  non  sunt  dignaa 
Sed  tu  bonus  fac  benigne, 
Ne  perenni  cremer  igne. 


Inter  oves  locum  praesta, 
Et  ab  haedis  me  sequestra, 
Statuens  in  parte  dextra. 


Confutatis  mnledictis, 
Flannnis  acribus  addictis 
Vocu  me  cum  bcnedictis. 


APPENDIX.  87 

XVII. 

Oro  supplex  et  acclinis, 
Cor  contritum  quasi  cinis, 
Gere  curam  mei  finis. 

XVIII. 

Lachrymosa  dies  ilia, 
Q,ua  resurget  ex  fa  villa, 
Judicandus  homo  reus  : 
Huic  ergo  parce,  Deus  ! 

The  readings  of  the  first  stanza  at  Rome  and  Paris  differ.  The  former  has 
as  the  second  line,  "  Cruets  expandens  vexilla"  in  allusion  to  the  old  Romish 
tradition  that  the  "  Sign  of  the  Son  of  Man,"  to  be  seen  in  the  heavens  on 
his  coming  to  judgment,  is  the  cross.  The  latter,  omitting  this  line,  has 
for  its  third  line,  "  Teste  David  cum  Sibylla"  a  reference  to  the  Sibylline  or- 
acles, whose  genuineness  as  Christian  prophecies  seems  never  in  the  Me- 
diaeval times  to  have  been  questioned,  and  whose  authority  Bishop  Horsley 
has  sought  to  revive.  (Journee  du  Chretien,  Paris,  1810,  pp.  82,  84.)  This 
seems  the  more  ancient,  and,  to  Protestants,  is  perhaps  the  less  objection- 
able reading.  The  closing  sentence,  "  Pie  Jesu  Domine,  Dona  eis  requiem, 
Amen"  is  a  prayer  for  the  dead ;  but  not  having  the  rhymes  of  the  rest,  we 
should  suppose  the  words  rather  a  part  of  the  burial  service  into  which  the 
hymn  is  inlaid,  than  a  portion  originally  of  the  hymn  itself. 

The  closest  of  the  English  versions  of  the  Dies  Irae,  that  has  fallen  under 
the  eye  of  the  present  writer,  is  that  of  the  Rev.  Richard  C.  Trench,  a  cler- 
gyman of  the  Established  Church  in  England,  author  of  two  admirable 
volumes,  the  one  on  the  Miracles  and  the  other  on  the  Parables  of  our  Lord, 
and  editor  of  "  Sacred  Latin  Poetry,55  which  latter  work  the  present  writer 
has  failed  to  see.  His  rendering  does  not  reach,  however,  the  flowing  free- 
dom or  full  cadences  of  the  original.    It  is  subjoined. 

DIES  IR.ZE. 

O  that  day,  that  day  of  ire, 
Told  of  Prophet,  when  in  fire, 
Shall  a  world  dissolved  expire  J 

O  what  terror  shall  be  then, 
When  the  Judge  shall  come  again, 
Strictly  searching  deeds  of  men  : 

When  a  trump  of  awful  tone, 
Thro'  the  caves  sepulchral  blown, 
Summons  all  before  the  throne. 

What  amazement  shall  o5ertake 
Nature,  when  the  dead  shall  wake, 
Answer  to  the  Judge  to  make. 

Open  then  the  book  shall  lie, 
All  o5erwrit  for  every  eye, 
With  a  world's  iniquity. 

When  the  Judge  his  place  has  ta'en, 
All  things  hid  shall  be  made  plain, 
Nothing  unavenged  remain. 

What  then,  wretched !  shall  I  speak, 

Or  what  intercession  seek, 

When  the  just  man's  cause  is  weak  1 


88  APPENDIX. 

Jesus,  Lord,  remember,  pray, 
I  the  cause  was  of  thy  way  ; 
Do  not  lose  me  on  that  day. 

King  of  awful  majesty, 

Who  the  saved  dost  freely  free ; 

Fount  of  mercy,  pity  me ! 

Tired  thou  satest,  seeking  me — 
Crucified,  to  set  me  free  ; 
Let  such  pain  not  fruitless  be. 

Terrible  Avenger,  make 

Of  thy  mercy  me  partake, 

E'er  that  day  of  vengeance  wake. 

As  a  criminal  I  groan, 
Blushing  deep  my  faults  1  own  ; 
Grace  be  to  a  suppliant  shown. 

Thou  who  Mary  didst  forgive, 
And  who  bad'st  the  robber  live, 
Hope  to  me  dost  also  give. 

Though  my  prayer  unworthy  be, 
Yet,  O  set  me  graciously 
From  the  fire  eternal  free. 

Mid  thy  sheep  my  place  command, 
From  the  goats  far  off  to  stand  ; 
Set  me,  Lord,  at  thy  right  hand ; 

And  when  them  who  scorned  thee  here 
Thou  hast  judged  to  doom  severe, 
Bid  me  with  thy  saved  draw  near. 

Lying  low  before  thy  throne, 
Crushed  my  heart  in  dust,  I  groan  ; 
Grace  be  to  a  suppliant  shown. 

Another  version,  earlier  than  that  of  Dr.  Coles,  which  has  been  the  subject 
of  a  reference  above,  is  here  for  the  first  time  published,  as  adding  another 
to  the  attempts,  in  English  comparatively  few,  to  preserve  the  double 
rhymes  of  the  original. 

DIES   IRE1. 

I. 

Day  of  wrath  !  that  day  dismaying ; — 
As  the  seers  of  old  are  saying, 
All  the  world  in  ashes  laying. 

ii. 
What  the  fear  !  and  what  the  quaking  ! 
When  the  Judge  his  way  is  taking, 
Strictest  search  in  all  things  making. 

in. 
When  the  trump,  with  blast  astounding, 
Through  the  tombs  of  earth  resounding, 
Bids  all  stand,  the  throne  surrounding. 


APPENDIX. 


Death  and  Nature  all  aghast  are, — 
While  the  dead  rise  fastT and  faster, 
Answering  to  their  Judge  and  Master. 

v. 
Forth  is  brought  the  record  solemn  ; 
See,  o'erwrit  in  each  dread  column, 
With  men's  deeds,  the  Doomsday  volume. 

VI. 

Now  the  Sovran  Judge  is  seated  : 
All,  long  hid,  is  loud  repeated  ; 
Nought  escapes  the  judgment  meted. 

VII. 

Ah  !  what  plea  shall  I  be  pleading  1 

Who  for  me  be  interceding, 

When  the  just  man  help  is  needing'? 


Oh,  thou  King  of  awful  splendor, 
Of  salvation  free  the  Sender, 
Grace  to  me,  all  gracious,  render ! 


Jesus,  Lord,  my  plea  let  this  be, 

Mine  the  wo  that  brought  from  bliss  Thee; 

On  that  day,  Lord,  wilt  Thou  miss  mel 


Wearily  for  me  thou  sough  test ; 

On  the  cross  my  soul  thou  boughtest ; 

Lose  not  all  for  which  thou  wroughtest ! 

XI. 

Vengeance,  Lord,  then  be  thy  mission : 
Now,  of  sin  grant  free  remission, 
Ere  that  day  of  inquisition. 


Low  in  shame  before  Thee  groaning ; 
Blushes  deep  my  sin  are  owning : 
Hear,  O  Lord,  my  suppliant  moaning!. 


Her  of  old  that  sinned  forgiving, 
And  the  dying  thief  receiving, 
Thou,  to  me  too,  hope  art  giving. 


In  my  prayer  though  sin  discerning, 
Yet,  good  Lord,  in  goodness  turning, 
Save  me  from  the  endless  burning  ! 


'Mid  thy  sheep  be  my  place  given  ; 
Far  the  goats  from  me  be  driven  ; 
At  thy  right  hand  fixed  in  heaven. 
13 


90  APPENDIX. 


XVI. 

When  the  cursed  are  confounded, 
With  devouring  flame  surrounded  ; 
With  the  blest  be  my  name  sounded. 

XVII. 


Bowed  and  prostrate  hear  me  crying 
Heart  in  dust  before  thee  lying  : 
Lord,  my  end,  O  be  thou  nigh  in  ! 


Ah  that  day !  that  day  of  weeping  , 
When,  in  dust  no  longer  sleeping, 
Man  to  God,  in  guilt  is  going : — 
Lord,  be}  then,  thy  mercy  showing ! 


MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY. 

(Delivered  before  the  Hudson  River  Baptist  Association,  June  16, 1835.) 
"  I   AM   PURE   FROM   THE   B.LOOD   OF  ALL  MEN." — Acts  XX.  26. 

No  writer  of  the  Bible  h$s  insisted  more  earnestly  than 
did  Paul  on  the  great  fact  of  the  Divine  sovereignty.  He 
saw  the  plan  of  Infinite  wisdom  perfect  in  all  its  parts,  and 
immutable  in  all  its  results,  stretching  away  over  the  whole 
field  of  his  labors  ;  reaching  over  every  country,  and  ex- 
tending through  all  ages,  the  unchanged  and  unchangeable 
counsel  of  God.  He  rejoiced  in  it.  He  rested  upon  it. 
Yet  it  did  not  at  all  lower  his  views  of  human  duty,  nor 
with  him  did  the  Divine  agency  supersede  the  workings  of 
an  inferior  and  mortal  instrumentality.  He  knew  that,  with 
all  his  counsel,  nothing  could  be  but  as  God  ordered  it ;  and 
with  all  his  labor,  nothing  could  prosper  but  as  God  wrought 
it.  And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  he  saw  that  the  command- 
ments of  God  to  man  were  part  of  his  counsels  for  man, 
and  that  one  of  the  modes  in  which  the  Most  High  would 
work  was  his  sending  man  to  work.  While  looking  at  the 
cause  of  his  Master  on  the  one  side,  he  was  therefore  seen 
soaring  away,  as  on  the  pinions  of  seraphim,  into  the  regions 
of  fathomless  wisdom,  and  his  theme  was  the  election  of 
God,  sure  and  indefeasible.  Looking  at  that  same  cause 
under  an  opposite  aspect,  he  saw  the  law  of  God  and  the 
duty  of  man,  rising  up  to  cast  their  shadow  as  over  the 
whole  breadth  of  the  earth.  He  then  felt  himself  a  debtor 
to  all,  and  intense  was  his  anxiety  lest  his  skirts  should  bear 
the  blood  of  any.  % 

Fathers  and  brethren,  permit  one  who  feels  deeply,  that 
in  holiness  and  usefulness,  as  in  the  number  of  years  and 
the  weight  of  experience,  he  is  far  surpassed  by  those  whom 
he  addresses — permit  him  yet,  to  lead  you  to  the  same  point 
of  view  at  which  the  great  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles  was  often 


92  MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY. 

found.  Like  him,  let  us  look  abroad  upon  the  field  of  duty 
as  in  the  light  of  eternity.  If  the  superiors  of  the  speaker, 
you  are  the  inferiors  of  that  Saviour  to  whose  feet  he  would 
summon,  and  in  whose  name,  as  brethren,  he  warns,  or  as 
fathers,  he  entreats  you.  Forgetting  therefore,  for  the  time, 
our  relative  position,  as  the  younger  and  the  older  ministers 
of  the  New  Testament,  let  us  gather  in  one  indiscriminate 
throng  around  the  seat  of  our  common  Lord,  and  hear  what 
He  hath  said  to  us  by  the  mouth  of  his  holy  apostle.  And 
give  to  me  your  prayers  that  the  Spirit  of  God  may  so 
replenish  and  aid  him  who  speaks,  that  he  may  be  saved 
from  bearing  the  blood  of  the  souls  that  now  surround 
him. 

Paul  appealed  to  the  Ephesian  pastors,  as  his  witnesses, 
that,  in  diligence  and  devotedness,  he  had  escaped  the  stain 
of  blood-guiltiness.  Such  stain  was  possible,  or  else  it  was 
idle  to  rejoice  before  God  in  having  avoided  a  danger  that 
never  existed.  His  words  imply  that  Christian  pastors  may 
be  guilty  of  the  blood  of  the  souls  that  perish  as  under  the 
shadow  of  their  sanctuaries.  Now  they  cannot  be  guilty 
where  they  have  not  first  been  responsible.  Let  us,  then, 
inquire  what  the  Scriptures  have  said  indicating  such  respon- 
sibility. And  if  the  fact  of  ministerial  accountability  for 
the  souls  of  their  hearers  be  found  written,  broadly  and 
vividly,  upon  the  pages  of  this  volume,  does  it  not  behoove 
us,  then,  to  inquire  the  modes,  in  which,  as  pastors  and 
evangelists,  ice  may  incur  this  tremendous  curse,  the  blood 
of  our  people  ?  And  since,  in  addressing  the  impenitent,  we 
are  wont  to  imitate  Paul,  and  derive  from  themes  of  the 
most  awful  character  our  appeals  to  the  human  heart,  and 
"  knowing  the  terrors  of  the  Lord"  so  to  "  persuade  men," 
let  us  in  the  same  spirit  school  ourselves  ;  and  allow  a  fel- 
low-laborer to  bring  before  you,  pastors  of  the  fold  of  Christ, 
the  fearf ulness  of  the  guilt  thus  incurred — the  overwhelm- 
ing horrors  of  standing  at  the  foot  of  the  throne,  with  the 
blood  of  souls  on  the  hand  and  on  the  head,  perjured  stew- 
ards, sentinels  false  to  our  trust,  and  pastors  who  have 
destrffyed  the  flock  of  our  charge. 

I.  To  understand  the  phrase  employed  by  the  apostle, 
here  in  his  intercourse  with  the  Christian  pastors  of  Ephe- 
sus,  and  at  an  earlier  period  in  his  reply  to  the  Jewish  blas- 
phemers of  Corinth,  it  is  necessary  to  refer  to  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures,  from  which  this  form  of  expression  was  borrowed. 


MINISTERIAL  RESPONSIBILITY.  93 

By  the  laws  of  Moses,  the  Israelite  who  reared  not  a  battle- 
ment upon  the  roof  of  his  house,  brought  upon  himself  the 
blood  of  the  incautious  stranger,  who  fell  and  perished  in 
consequence  of  his  neglect.  He  had  not  indeed  lifted  the 
murderous  weapon  ;  he  had  not  lain  in  ambush,  or  drugged 
the  cup  of  his  guest  with  poison  ;  nor  had  he  even  cherished 
a  revengeful  feeling  or  thought  of  anger.  Besides  all  this, 
the  stranger  himself  must  have  been  careless,  thus  to  perish. 
Yet  the  absence  of  any  overt  act,  and  even  of  any  thought 
of  crime  on  the  part  of  the  host,  and  the  want  of  due  cau- 
tion on  the  part  of  his  guest,  did  not  relieve  the  former  from 
blood-guiitiness,  where  he  had  neglected  an  enjoined  duty. 
So  when  the  murdered  traveller  was  found  on  the  way-side, 
felled  by  an  unknown  hand,  the  elders  of  the  nearest  city 
were  not  exonerated  from  guilt,  and  the  innocent  blood 
would  be  laid  to  the  charge  of  the  land,  unless,  washing 
their  hands  over  a  slaughtered  victim,  they  would  pray  to 
God,  and  solemnly  declare  that  their  hands  had  not  shed 
the  blood  of  the  hapless  stranger,  nor  had  their  eyes  seen  his 
fall.  Now  here  was  crime  which  not  only  was  not  com- 
mitted by  them,  but  the  commission  of  which  they  perhaps 
could  not  have  prevented  by  any  precaution  :  yet  was  the 
blood  upon  them  unless  they  thus  protested  against  the 
deed.  It  was  not  then  only  an  overt  act  of  murder  which 
condemned  them,  but  the  omission  of  due  care,  in  providing 
that  it  should  not  occur,  or  in  denouncing  it  when  it  had 
occurred,  would  also  make  them  chargeable  with  guilt  in 
the  eyes  of  God.  The  same  principle,  and  with  the  same 
phraseology  to  convey  it,  was  carried  out  into  the  teachings 
of  the  prophets.  Ezekiel  was  made  a  watchman.  He  was 
to  see  the  coining  vengeance,  and  lift  aloud  the  note  of 
warning.  If  he  did  it  not,  the  man  or  the  people  who 
offended,  perished  indeed  in  their  iniquity,  and  wrought  out 
their  own  ruin  ;  but  the  minister  of  God  found  upon  his 
head  also  the  blood  of  the  evil-doer  thus  cut  off  in  his  trans- 
gressions. 

The  apostle  takes  up  this  language  and  these  principles, 
as  being  fully  applicable  to  the  new  dispensation  under 
which  he  labored.  He  spoke  as  a  man  to  whom  had  been 
transferred  the  charge  received  by  the  prophet,  who  of  old 
had  seen  the  visions  of  God  by  the  river  Chebar.  It  was 
not  the  Jews  only  he  had  warned,  for  the  Ephesian  Church 
contained  the   Gentile  as  well,  and  from  the  blood  of  all 


94  MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY 

men  was  he  free,  arid  every  man  had  he  warned,  "  testify- 
ing," as  he  asserts,  "  both  to  Jews  and  to  Greeks."  It  was 
not  of  civil  war,  of  the  ruin  of  Jerusalem,  or  of  temporal 
death  that  he  warned  them  ;  but  as  he  earnestly  appeals  to 
them,  "  repentance  and  faith" — repentance  and  faith — had 
been  the  topics  of  his  warning  ;  among  them  he  had  gone 
"  preaching  the  kingdom  of  God,"  and  the  ministry  which 
he  had  received,  and  would  discharge  to  others  as  he  had 
done  it  to  them,  was  "  to  testify  of  the  Gospel  of  the  Grace 
of  God."  Grace  and  the  Gospel,  then,  were  not,  in  his 
view,  inconsistent  with  this  appalling  responsibility.  If  he 
had  unfaithfully  executed  his  apostolical  charge,  wo  was 
unto  him,  not  only  from  the  tortures  of  an  accusing  con- 
science, but  from  the  added  curses  of  a  world  betrayed  and 
ruined  by  his  neglect.  But  when  his  work  had  been  fear- 
lessly and  fully  done,  he  could  turn,  as  he  did  to  those  of 
his  own  nation  at  Corinth,  and  warn  them  that  their  blood 
was  on  their  own  head  ;  while,  shaking  his  raiment,  he  de- 
clared of  himself  that  he  was  "  clear"  from  the  clinging 
curse  of  their  destruction. 

Now  it  is  not  merely  the  number  of  passages  containing 
any  doctrine,  that  decides  its  certainty  ;  for  a  single  asser- 
tion of  the  Holy  Ghost  is  as  true,  as  if  it  were  thrice  repeat- 
ed. Had,  therefore,  the  Bible  contained  nothing  further  of 
explicit  testimony  to  this  effect,  it  seems  as  if  in  the  instances 
already  quoted,  we  shall  find  the  responsibility  of  the  Chris- 
tian ministry  for  the  souls  of  their  hearers  placed  beyond 
question.  But  there  is  other  evidence,  in  the  teachings  of 
human  reason,  as  to  the  extent  of  our  influence  over  each 
other,  in  the  language  of  the  Bible  with  regard  to  such  influ- 
ence, in  the  descriptions  employed  to  represent  the  charac- 
ter and  office  of  the  Christian  minister,  and  in  the  express 
testimony  of  the  apostolical  epistles,  that  the  pastor  owes  to 
God  an  account  of  the  flock,  which  he  was  appointed  to  fold 
and  to  tend. 

The  Bible,  in  the  words  already  cited,  only  recognizes  a 
great  truth,  of  which  even  unaided  reason  gives  us  testimony 
in  part,  we  mean,  the  influence  of  man  over  man,  and  his 
evident  accountability  for  the  character  of  the  influence  that 
he  is  thus  shedding  over  all  around  him.  The  world  is 
filled  with  the  countless  and  interlacing  filaments  of  influ- 
ence, that  spread  from  each  individual  over  the  whole  face 
and  frame-work  of  society.     The  infant  that  lies  wailing 


MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY.  95 

and  helpless  in  the  arms  of  his  mother,  is  already  wielding 
an  influence  felt  through  the  whole  household,  by  his  fret- 
fulness  disturbing,  or  by  his  serene  smiles  gladdening  that 
entire  home.  And  as,  with  added  years,  his  faculties  are 
expanded,  and  the  sphere  of  his  activity  widens  itself,  his 
influence  increases.  And  every  man  whom  he  meets,  much 
more  whom  he  moulds  and  governs,  becomes  the  more  hap- 
py or  the  more  wretched,  the  better  or  the  worse,  according 
to  the  character  of  his  spirit  and  example.  Nor  can  he  strip 
from  himself  this  influence.  If  he  flee  away  from  the  soci- 
ety of  his  fellows  to  dwell  alone  in  the  wilderness,  he  leaves 
behind  him  the  example  of  neglected  duty,  and  the  memory 
of  disregarded  love,  to  curse  the  family  he  has  abandoned. 
Even  in  the  pathless  desert  he  finds  his  own  feet  caught  in 
the  torn  and  entangled  web  of  influence,  that  bound  him  to 
society  ;  and  its  cords  remain  wherever  he  was  once  known, 
sending  home  to  the  hearts  that  twined  around  him,  sorrow 
and  pain.  Nor  can  the  possessor  of  it  expect  it  to  go  down 
into  the  grave  with  him.  The  sepulchre  may  have  closed 
in  silence  over  him,  and  his  name  may  have  perished  from 
among  men,  yet  his  influence,  nameless  as  it  is,  and  untrace- 
able by  human  eye,  is  floating  over  the  face  of  society.  As 
in  the  external  and  visible  world,  the  fall  of  a  pebble  agitates, 
not  perceptibly  indeed,  yet  really,  the  whole  mass  of  the 
earth,  thus  in  the  world  of  morals,  every  act  of  every  spirit 
is  telling  upon  the  whole  system  of  moral  beings  to  which 
God  has  bound  him.  No  man  leaves  the  world,  in  all  things, 
such  as  he  found  it.  The  habits  which  he  was  instrumental 
in  forming,  may  go  on  from  century  to  century,  an  heir-loom 
for  good  or  for  evil,  doing  their  work  of  misery  or  of  happi- 
ness, blasting  or  blessing  the  country  that  has  now  lost  all 
record  of  his  memory.  In  the  case  of  some,  this  influence 
is  most  sensible.  Every  age  beholds  and  owns  their  power. 
Such  men  have  lived.  And  thus  it  is,  that,  although  centu- 
ries have  rolled  their  intervening  tide  between  the  age  of 
their  birth  and  our  own,  and  the  empires  under  which  they 
flourished  have  long  since  mouldered  away  from  the  soil  i 
whence  they  sprung,  and  the  material  frame  of  the  author 
himself  has  been  trampled  down  into  the  undistinguished 
dust,  the  writers  of  classical  antiquity  are  yet  living  and 
laboring  in  our  midst.  The  glorious  dreams  of  Plato  are 
yet  floating  before  the  eye  of  the  metaphysician,  and  the 
genius  of  Homer  has  tinged  with  its  own  light  the  wholei 


96  MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY. 

firmament  of  modern  invention.  Nor,  unhappily,  is  this  all. 
Corruption  is  yet  oozing  out,  in  lessons  of  profligacy  and 
of  atheism,  from  the  pages  of  an  Ovid  and  a  Lucretius,  and 
as  from  their  graves  streams  forth  the  undecaying  rankness 
of  vice  and  of  falsehood,  though  the  dominion  of  the  world 
has  long  since  passed  from  the  halls  of  their  Ceesars,  and 
the  very  language  they  employed  has  died  away  from  the 
lips  of  the  nation.  The  Church  yet  feels,  throughout  all 
lands,  the  influence  of  the  thoughts  that  passed,  perhaps  in 
the  solitude  of  midnight,  through  the  bosom  of  Paul,  as  he 
sat  in  the  shadows  of  his  prison,  an  old  and  unbefriended 
man — thoughts  which,  lifting  his  manacled  hand,  he  spread 
in  his  epistles  before  the  eyes  of  men,  there  to  remain  for 
ever.  They  feel  yet  the  effect  of  the  pious  meditations  of 
David,  when  roaming  on  the  hill-side,  a  humble  shepherd 
lad,  of  the  family  piety  of  Abraham,  and  of  the  religious 
nurture  that  trained  up  the  infancy  of  Moses.  Every  nation 
is  affected  at  this  moment  by  the  moral  power  that  emanated 
from  the  despised  Noah,  as  that  preacher  of  righteousness 
sat  among  his  family,  perhaps  dejected  and  faint  with  un- 
successful toil,  teaching  them  to  call  upon  God,  when  all 
the  families  of  the  earth  beside  had  forgotten  him.  And  if 
the  mind,  taking  its  flight  from  the  narrow  precinct  of  these 
walls,  were  to  wander  abroad  along  the  peopled  highways, 
and  to  the  farthest  hamlets  of  our  own  land,  and,  passing  the 
seas,  to  traverse  distant  realms  and  barbarous  coasts,  every 
man  whom  its  travels  met — nay,  every  being  of  human 
mould  that  has  ever  trodden  this  earth  in  earlier  ages,  or 
that  is  now  to  be  found  among  its  moving  myriads,  has  felt, 
or  is  feeling,  the  influence  of  the  thoughts  of  a  solitary  wo- 
man, who,  centuries  since,  stood  debating  the  claims  of  con- 
science and  of  sin,  amid  the  verdant  glories  of  the  yet  unfor- 
feited  Paradise.  Nor  does  this  influence  end  with  time. 
The  shock  of  the  archangel's  trump  will  not  break  the  line 
of  its  power,  nor  the  gulf  of  eternity  swallow  up  its  steady 
stream.  It  travels  on  into  the  world  of  spirits.  And  the 
influence  of  the  pious  or  the  wicked  parent,  of  the  faithful  or 
unfaithful  pastor,  will  be  felt  through  all  the  bowers  of  hea- 
ven, and  course  its  way  into  all  the  caverns  of  hell.  The 
benighted  pagan,  who  has,  within  the  last  hour,  shuddered 
on  awaking  in  eternity  to  the  full  view  of  his  doings  and 
destiny,  will,  through  the  ceaseless  lapse  of  that  eternity, 
curse   the  moral  power  of  the  ancestors,  through   whose 


MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY.  97 

neglect  of  Divine  Revelation,  he  himself  was  born  amid  the 
starless  gloom  of  heathenism. 

Influence  is,  then,  mighty  and  enduring.  Now,  if,  as  all 
will  allow  who  believe  in  human  accountability,  man  be 
accountable  for  his  acts,  and  accountable  for  his  feelings, 
then  is  he  responsible  for  his  influence ;  for  his  acts  and 
his  feelings  are  the  elements  which  go  to  make  up  that  influ- 
ence. And,  in  proportion  to  his  station  and  his  opportuni- 
ties, his  influence  growing,  there  grows  with  it  a  correspond- 
ing responsibility.  And  if  the  ministry  occupy  an  eminent 
post,  and  cast  abroad  a  wide  influence,  as  its  enemies  and 
its  friends  alike  allege,  then  the  man  who  fills  it  stands 
answerable  to  his  God  and  his  race,  as  one  bound  by  high 
and  fearful  obligations,  the  cords  of  which  he  cannot  sever, 
and  the  burden  of  which  he  may  not  hope  to  transfer. 

And  are  not  these  views  taken  up  and  set  in  a  more  full 
and  appalling  light  in  the  Book  of  Scripture  ?  See  in  what 
terms  it  denounces  the  guilt  of  exercising  an  unholy  influ- 
ence. How  has  the  name  of  Jeroboam  been  branded  with 
reprobation  by  that  fearful  repetition — "he  made  Israel  to 
sin."  He  made  Israel  to  sin,  not  by  the  application  of  brute 
force,  not  that  they  ceased  to  be  voluntary  agents,  (for  every 
one  of  them  continued  accountable  for  his  individual  share 
in  the  national  sin,)  but  by  the  moral  power  of  his  example 
and  authority.  It  had  been  the  aggravation  of  their  guilt  in 
the  degenerate  sons  of  Eli,  that  through  their  misconduct, 
shedding  around  a  disastrous  influence,  "men  abhorred  the 
offering  of  the  Lord,"  and  therefore  was  their  "  sin  very 
great."  And  the  charge,  which  in  a  far  distant  day  Malachi 
brought  against  the  corrupted  and  corrupting  priesthood  of 
his  own  age,  was  that,  whilst  their  fathers  had  by  a  holier 
influence  "  turned  many  to  righteousness,"  they  themselves 
had  by  their  hypocrisy  and  scandals  "  caused  many  to  stum- 
ble at  the  law."  When  our  Saviour,  with  an  unfaltering 
hand,  tore  the  mask  from  the  Pharisees,  he  described  them 
as  blind  leaders  of  the  blind.  Others  fell  by  their  arts,  or 
their  negligence  ;  and  they  drew  in  the  sweeping  train  of 
their  influence  multitudes  into  ruin,  as  the  dragon  of  the 
Apocalyptic  vision  dragged  down  in  his  fall  to  the  earth  a 
third  part  of  the  stars  of  heaven.  Of  the  proselyte  whom 
they  made  with  such  zeal,  and  at  such  cost  of  effort,  our 
Lord  declared,  that  they  made  him  twofold  more  the  child 
of  hell  than  themselves.     Not  that  he  was  a  passive  mass  of 

14 


98  MINISTERIAL   RESPONSIBILITY. 

matter  to  their  plastic  touch.  But  the  strong  hand  of  their 
moral  influence  left  upon  him  the  imprint  of  a  hopeless 
hypocrisy.  He  bore  about  him  a  conscience  which  they  had 
aided  in  searing  as  with  a  hot  iron,  and  an  understanding 
■which  they  had  garrisoned  with  pride,  and  walled  about  with 
prejudices,  to  guard  it  from  the  very  access  of  truth.  It  is 
of  the  vast  range  and  power  of  man's  moral  influence  that 
Christ  spoke,  when  he   uttered  the   ominous  words,  "  Wo 

UNTO  THE    WORLD    BECAUSE    OF    OFFENCES."       It    is    of  OUr 

rigid  accounting  to  our  God  for  the  effects  of  that  influence 
that   he   testifies,  when   declaring,  "  But   wto   unto  that 

MAN    BY    WHOM    THE    OFFENCE    COMETH." 

But  in  addition  to  this  general  doctrine  of  influence,  the 
Bible  uses,  in  nearly  all  of  its  appellations  for  the  office  of 
the  Christian  ministry,  terms  which  imply  personal  respon- 
sibility for  the  individuals  intrusted  to,  or  operated  upon,  by 
the  Christian  teacher.  The  shepherd  answerable  for  his 
flock,  the  steward  accountable  for  his  lord's  goods,  the  hus- 
bandman laboring  and  receiving  wages  or  blame  according 
to  the  character  of  his  tillage,  the  leader  by  his  steps  guid- 
ing the  steps  of  others,  the  overseer  exercising  a  deputed 
authority  of  which  he  must  return  an  account  to  his  em- 
ployer, and  the  ruler  controlling  others,  and  responsible  for 
the  conduct  which  such  control  has  produced,  are  favorite 
titles  with  the  inspired  writers  for  the  Christian  pastor  and 
evangelist.  Now,  do  not  nearly  all  of  these  imply  account- 
ability of  a  very  high  order  as  to  the  souls  of  men  1  Would 
the  shepherd  be  allowed  to  cast  all  the  blame  of  his  deso- 
lated fold  upon  the  ravening  wolf,  or  the  silly  sheep  ;  or 
would  the  steward  be  permitted  to  refer  all  his  losses  to  the 
dishonesty  of  thieves  or  the  wastefulness  of  servants,  if  he 
himself  had  not  been  careful  ? 

As  if  to  end  all  doubt,  we  find  the  apostolic  epistles  ex- 
plicit in  their  testimony  upon  this  subject.  It  is  said  of 
ministers  by  Paul  in  his  letter  to  the  Hebrew  believers,  that 
they  watch  for  souls  as  those  that  must  give  account. 
They  hold  a  fearful  stewardship,  and  it  is  required  in  stew- 
ards that  a  man  be  found  faithful.  As  to  the  extent  of 
moral  influence,  he  himself  speaks  of  it  as  operating  upon 
all  whom  the  Christian  minister  met.  If  not  for  their  salva- 
tion, then  was  it  for  their  ruin — a  savor  of  death  unto  death  ; 
where  it  healed  not,  it  hardened,  and  where  it  could  not 
melt,  there  it  cauterized.     And  the  principle  in  its  broadest 


MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY.  99 

ground  he  has  adopted  in  an  allusion  to  ministerial  duty, 
where  he  bids  his  beloved  associate  not  to  become  "par- 
taker of  Other  men's  sins."  There  is  then  a  sense  in  which 
we  may  share  the  sins  of  others.  And  so,  the  death  eternal 
which  these  sins  produce,  may  be  in  some  sense  chargeable 
to  us.  As  the  vigilant  pastor  sates  himself  and  those  that 
hear  him,  even  thus  does  the  negligent  minister  destroy  not 
only  his  own  soul,  but  the  souls  intrusted  to  his  faithless 
hands. 

J)o  not  the  Scriptures,  then,  brethren,  fully  publish  the 
fact  of  ministerial  accountability  for  the  souls  of  their  hear- 
ers ?  The  Christian  teacher  stands  not  alone,  and  alone  he 
cannot  fall.  His  every  act,  his  internal  and  hidden  spirit, 
are  telling  day  by  day  on  three  worlds.  Heaven  has  sent 
forth  from  its  expanded  gates  angels  to  minister  to  his  on- 
ward career,  or  they  have  returned  thither  to  rejoice  over 
the  sinners  converted  by  his  instrumentality.  Hell  is  pour- 
ing out  her  hordes  to  thwart  and  to  seduce,  to  allure  and  to 
alarm.  And  this  earth,  the  great  scene  of  interest,  and  the 
field  of  conflict  for  the  two  worlds  of  light  and  of  darkness, 
is  benefited  or  harmed  by  every  step  that  he  takes,  as  with 
the  censer  of  intercession  in  his  hands,  he  rushes  forth  be- 
tween the  living  and  the  dead  :  to  stay  the  desolating  pesti- 
lence if  he  wave  that  censer  aright,  looking  upward  ;  and 
if  he  loiter  and  neglect  it,  then  standing  but  to  spread  the 
contagion  he  was  sent  to  rebuke.  Prayer  withheld,  or 
prayer  offered — labor  performed,  or  labor  neglected — faith 
in  vigorous  exercise,  or  faith  imprisoned  in  unrighteousness 
— a  heart  glowing  with  love  to  Christ,  or  a  heart  chilled 
with  worldliness — the  Spirit  of  God  grieved,  or  the  Spirit 
of  God  obeyed — these  make  up  the  history  of  every  wakeful 
hour  in  that  man's  life.  And  who  shall  say,  that  such  a 
man,  standing  in  a  relation  so  close  and  so  momentous  to 
this  and  other  worlds,  is  not  responsible  for  the  character  of 
each  hour,  and  for  the  workings  of  that  hour  upon  the  eter- 
nal interests  of  all  that  surround  him  % 

But  where,  then,  are  the  limits  of  this  influence?  Is  the 
sinner  responsible  for  nothing?  Is  the  guilt  of  his  impeni- 
tence and  ruin  solely  his  pastor's  ? — Not  so.  There  is  a 
sense  in  which  each  of  us  lives  for  himself,  dies  for  himself, 
for  himself  sins,  or  for  himself  believes.  There  is  another 
sense,  in  which  none  of  us  lives  for  himself,  dies  for  him- 
self, for  himself  alone  sins,  or  believes  only  for  himself. 


100  MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY. 

riing  to  the  first  of  the-  Sic  a :::ner  is  chargeable  with 
his  own  ruin,  nor  shall  our  unfaithful  ministration  be  any 
plea   at  the  bar  o:  unconTerted  he:.  your 

onences.     God    gai  ruce  and 

reason,  warnings  and  invitations.  You  perish  in  your  own 
iniquity.  But,  according  to  the  latter  sense,  if  you  hare 
been  left  unwarned  by  friend  or  teacher,  the  guilt  of  that 
iniquity  and  of  your  consequent  ruin  is  in  part  shared  by  the 
Christian  teacher  who  m  »u  not.     His   share  in  the 

and  the  punishment  makr  nr  portion  of  both  the 

or  the  lighter,  is  :..-  union  of  many  accomplices  in  a 

deed  of  blocl   lessens  not  their  individual  criminality,  but 

aggravates  i:.     But  it   may  still  be   asked,  if  sinners 

perish  at  all,  is  it  not  always  through  unfaithfulness  on  the 

part  of  the  Church  ? — We  believe  not,     C:         ~     vn  preach- 

-  ncere  and  full  as  it  was,  did  no:  :usa- 

The  sinner  may  be  warned  with  perfect  fidelity,  and 

Christian's  responsibility  be  fully  satisfied,  and  yet  the 
sinner  perish.  If  he  perish  warned  of  his  sin,  his  blood  is 
on  his  own  head.  But  if  the  ministry  have  not  been  faithful 
to  declare  to  him  the  whole  conn  d,  and  that  in  the 

right  spirit,  it  is  evident  that  the  C:  .cher  in  some 

sense  partake-  -.   and  may  share  the  doom  of  him 

whom  he  thus  neglects  or  : 

Nor  lei    b    ever  be  -  up  posed,  that,  by  thus  stating  the 
sponsibilities  and  the  influence  of  man,  we  forget  or  dispute 
the  great  doctrine  of  the  Divine  power  i:  tion.  and 

the  great  doctrine  of  the  Divir^  _nty  in  the  putting 

forth  of  that  power.  It  is  of  the  grace  of  God  that  any  are 
saved,  and  the  instrumentality  and  influence  of  man.  apart 
from  that  grace,  are  in  themselves  idle  as  the  voice  of  music 
to  the  stores.     It  i  _rneratethe   man.     But 

re  of  God  to  use  in  his  kingdom  human  instru- 
mentality, and  human  influence.  I  n  the  duty  of  man  to 
put  them  forth.  It  is  of  the  grace  of  God  to  bless  them 
when  put  forth.  It  is  of  one  only  of  these  truths  thai 
are  now  called  to  treat,  that  of  human  duty,  and  its  connec- 
tion in  the  order  of  the  Divine  purposes  with  the  salvation 
of  mankind.  As  the  human  eye  cannot  at  once  behold  the 
two  opp  of  the  object  it  confronts,  thus  is  it  diifi- 

cult  for  the   mind  to  bring  into  one  view  the  two  op] 
aspects  that  belong  to   every  great  doctrine  of  the   Bible, 
other  great  truths  to  which  we  have  alluded  stand  up 


MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY.  101 

in  the  volume  of  God  in  impregnable  strength.  Fully  re- 
ceiving them,  it  is  sufficient  now  to  remark,  brethren,  as  we 
pass,  that  human  agency  cannot  trench  upon  them,  or  pros- 
per without  them. 

II.  If  such  be  the  far-spreading  power  and  the  manifold 
and  fearful  responsibilities  of  our  office,  fathers  and  breth- 
ren, well  might  the  man,  who  uttered  the  words  before  us, 
years  after  admonish  the  Colossian  pastor  Archippus,  that 
he  should  take  heed  to  the  ministry  which  he  had  received 
of  the  Lord,  that  he  fulfil  it ;  and  well  might  he  bind  upon 
the  conscience  of  his  beloved  disciple  and  coadjutor  the  in- 
junction, that  he  should  make  full  proof  of  his  ministry. 
And  a  fittingr  termination  was  it  to  the  announcement  of 
such  a  truth,  that  he  should  proceed,  as  he  did,  to  admonish 
the  Ephesian  pastors  that  they  take  heed  therefore  to  them- 
selves* no  less  than  to  all  the  flock.  Wherein  have  we 
failed  to  make  this  fulfilment  and  full  proof  of  our  mini 
For  it  is  not  the  interests  of  others  alone  that  are  concerned  : 
let  us  look  to  ourselves,  for  the  responsibilities  of  our  office 
are  entwined  with  our  own  well-being  for  time,  and  through 
eternity.  We  pass,  therefore,  to  inquire  the  methods,  in 
which  we  may  by  remissness  have  drawn  upon  our  heads 
the  blood  of  the  sinners  we  may  have  failed  to  warn. 

Were  we  to  imagine  a  herald  sent  forth  to  the  peopled 
villages  of  a  revolted  province  with  the  proclamation  of  his 
prince,  charged  to  promise  a  free  pardon  to  all  who  might 
submit,  and  return  to  their  allegiance,  commissioned  to  de- 
nounce a  sure  and  overwhelming  vengeance  against  all  per- 
severing" in  their  mad  rebellion,  and  instructed  withal  to 
spread  far  and  wide  the  royal  edict,  and  to  distribute  it  to 
every  group  of  villagers  he  should  meet  by  the  way-side, 
and  to  every  traveller  who  shared  his  journeyings.  we  can 
readily  see  in  what  mode  his  duties  must  be  discharged,  or 
he  remain  guilty,  to  his  prince  of  unfaithfulness,  and  to  the 
revolter  of  a  murderous  treachery.  He  might  suppress  the 
document,  and  substitute  a  forgery  of  his  own  imagination  ; 
or  while  disclosing  it  in  part,  he  might  interpolate  and 
abridge,  erase,  and  amend,  suppressing  one  fact  and  distort- 
ing another,  until  the  proclamation,  as  read  to  the  crowds 
who  gathered  at  his  feet,  might  to  their  ears  bring  a  mean- 
ing utterly  alien  to  that  which  had  stirred  the  heart  of  the 
king  from  whom  it  emanated.  Or,  passing  to  another  hamlet, 
he  might  there,  without  marring  a  syllable  of  the  documeut, 


102  MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY. 

so  dispose  of  it  that  few  would  meet  it.  Wholly  over- 
looking the  general  dispersion  of  it  through  the  homes  of 
the  district,  he  might  content  himself  with  affixing  the  edict 
on  high  amid  other  and  ordinary  notices,  to  meet  perhaps 
the  gaze  of  a  diligent  inquirer,  but  scarce  perceptible  to  the 
casual  observer  ;  and  go  his  way,  without  further  effort  to 
bring  home  to  the  individuals  whom  he  met  their  danger 
and  their  duty,  or  inquiring,  as  he  passed,  who  had  read  and 
who  had  heeded  the  momentous  instrument.  And  when 
coming  to  yet  another  neighborhood,  planted  in  the  bosom 
of  some  quiet  valley,  we  might  see  hirn,  not  without  assidu- 
ity, gathering  together  from  its  shades  and  from  the  hills 
which  environed  it,  the  population  of  the  scattered  cottages, 
and  delivering  to  the  tumultuous  crowd  the  mandate,  alike 
unmutilated  and  incorrupt ;  but  yet  his  whole  statement 
might  be  marked  with  such  listlessness,  or  such  levity,  and 
be  uttered  so  heartlessly,  or  so  scornfully,  that  the  con 
temptuous  group  around  him  might  at  once  adjudge  him  in 
sincere,  and  declare  the  proclamation  he  bore  a  forgery  of 
no  value.  And  it  would  be  evident  that,  in  all  or  in  either 
of  these  ways,  the  very  intent  of  the  embassy  would  have 
been  frustrated,  and  a  wrong  would  have  been  done  to  the 
prince  thus  unfaithfully  served,  and  to  the  people  thus  un- 
faithfully warned.  And  in  every  battle-field  which  should 
afterwards  be  strewed  with  the  slain  of  the  unsuccessful  re- 
volters,  and  on  every  scaffold  on  which  others  of  them 
should  expiate  their  treason  with  their  blood,  he  would  be 
to  some  extent,  implicated  ;  and  the  blood  of  the  deluded 
villagers  would,  alike  by  their  kindred  and  their  ruler,  be 
asked  at  his  hands. 

Now  the  gospel  ministry  is  such  a  proclamation.  The 
preacher  derives  his  name  from  the  office  of  the  herald,  thus 
publishing  to  a  mingled  and  busy  population  the  laws  or  the 
news  of  the  day.  And,  in  any  one  of  the  modes  thus  indi- 
cated, the  Christian  minister  may  sin,  and  bring  down  upon 
his  head  the  curse  of  those  who  have  perished  through  his 
imbecile  and  faithless  demeanor.  In  the  substance  of  our 
message,  in  the  scene  and  manner  of  its  delivery,  and  above 
all,  in  the  spirit  that  marks  its  announcement,  we  may  be 
misleading  and  hardening  the  souls  we  were  sent  forth  to 
invite  again  to  their  God  and  ours.  And  such  a  three-fold 
fulfilment,  as  requisite  to  the  Christian  ministry,  seems  inti- 
mated  in   Paul's   description   of   his   own   course  :    "  By 


MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY.  103 

manifestation  of  the  truth,  commending  ourselves  to  every 
man's  conscience  as  in  the  sight  of  God."  The  manifested 
truth  described  the  substance  of  his  ministry  ;  its  commenda- 
tion to  every  man — the  manner  of  his  labor,  and  his  appeal 
to  the  conscience  of  the  hearer,  and  his  constant  sense  in 
his  own  conscience  that  God  was  observing  him,  indicated 
the  spirit  of  his  ministry. 

1.  In  the  substance  of  our  ministrations,  we  may  contract 
the  guilt  of  blood  by  delivering  error  in  the  stead  of  truth, 
and  substituting  the  traditions  of  men  for  the  testimonies 
and  law  of  God.  Or  giving  one  portion  of  the  truth,  we 
may  make  it  a  virtual  falsehood,  by  withholding  the  truth 
which  in  Scripture  accompanies  and  guards  it.  We  may 
preach  human  dependence  to  the  subversion  of  the  great 
truth  of  human  obligation,  or  we  may  so  insist  on  human 
duty  and  ability,  as  to  mar  the  glorious  truth  of  the  necessity 
of  the  Divine  influences.  We  may  preach  a  gospel  that 
crucifies  and  tramples  upon  the  law,  the  eternal  and  immu- 
table law,  that  Christ  came  expressly  to  magnify  :  or  we 
may  hold  up  the  law  till  it  hides  that  gospel  of  which  it  is 
but  the  precursor  and  the  inferior.  And  even  when  we 
bring  to  the  people  of  our  charge  the  truth  symmetrically, 
and  in  its  fair  proportions,  we  may  fail  to  bring  the  well- 
timed  truth  adapted  to  the  snares,  the  duties,  and  the  trials 
of  the  passing  day.  We  may  be  combating  heresies  they 
never  knew,  and  indoctrinating  a  church  who  are  already 
but  too  proud  of  their  orthodoxy,  and  too  neglectful  of  their 
morals  ;  or  we  may  be  preaching  practically  to  those  who 
are  yet  ignorant  of  the  first  motives,  the  seminal  principles 
of  the  Divine  life — principles  which  the  doctrines  of  the 
Bible,  and  those  doctrines  only,  can  minister.  And  we  may 
utter  truths  not  entirely  unseasonable,  yet  comparatively  of 
less  moment,  whilst  from  the  sides  of  our  desk,  from  our 
pews  and  our  hearths,  one  and  another  is  sliding  into  eter- 
nity, untaught  in  the  great  lessons  of  repentance  and  faith. ! 
We  may  give  an  undue  and  disproportionate  attention  to 
the  necessary,  but  the  minor  truths  of  the  Bible,  more  anxious  | 
to  make  men  partisans  than  Christians  ;  whilst  "  the  weight- 
ier matters"  of  its  testimony  are  scarce  ever  felt  by  our  peo- 
ple, pealing  over  their  heads,  as  with  a  voice  of  mighty 
thunderings,  the  shortness  of  life,  the  nearness  of  judgment, 
the  worth  of  the  soul,  the  value  of  the  atonement,  the  need 
of  regeneration,  and  the  promises  of  the  wonder-working, 


104  MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY, 

Spirit.  And  what  will  be  the  testimony  borne  against  us  by 
them,  as  they  awake  in  the  light  of  eternity  to  a  vivid  know- 
ledge of  the  whole  gospel  ?  Is  there  not,  herein,  guilt  upon 
us,  my  brethren  % 

2.  We  may  attract  the  displeasure  of  our  God  in  our  pas- 
toral character,  by  overlooking  the  extent  and  the  minute- 
ness of  the  duties  owed  to  the  church  in  the  personal  deliv- 
ery and  enforcement  of  truth,  or  in  the  scene  and  mode  of 
our  labors.  We  may  dispense  the  gospel  too  much  in  the 
generalizations  of  the  pulpit,  and  too  little  in  the  special 
applications  of  private  intercourse.  When  the  apostle 
vouched  his  own  exemption  from  the  curse  of  blood,  he 
declared  that  he  had  not  ceased  day  and  night  to  warn  eve- 
ry man,  and  with  many  tears,  and  from  house  to  house. 
Although  we  would  not  give  to  these  words  the  rigid  inter- 
pretation employed  by  some,  yet  is  it  not  but  too  probable, 
brethren,  that  we  are  all  deficient  in  the  faithful  and  earnest 
visitation  of  the  flock,  and  that  the  truth  is  too  little  urged 
home  within  the  bounds  of  the  family  ?  And  is  not  much 
of  the  remissness  and  worldliness  of  Christians  owing  to 
the  want  of  a  more  thorough  endeavor,  to  follow  home  the 
impressions  of  the  Sabbath  by  the  less  formal  and  more 
familiar  and  searching  intercourse  of  the  week  ?  In  the 
world,  is  not  our  ministry  defective,  by  resembling  too 
faintly  that  of  the  primitive  church,  in  its  aggressive  char- 
acter, against  the  mass  of  impenitent  and  unsanctified  mind, 
that  never  enters  our  sanctuaries,  and  which  must  be  sought 
out  and  assailed  in  its  own  lurking-places  ?  And  if  not  able 
ourselves  to  accomplish  the  work,  need  we  not  in  our 
churches  to  sustain  a  distinct  class  of  men  who  shall  thus 
go  forth  upon  the  world,  and  leave  no  home,  where  man  is 
wretched  and  man  is  sinful,  unvisited  by  that  gospel,  which 
reveals  the  only  remedy  of  his  wretchedness,  and  the  only 
hope  for  his  guiltiness  ?  Should  not  the  wonderful  success 
which  crowned  the  faithfulness,  in  this  work,  of  Baxter  at 
Kidderminster,  be  resounding  in  the  ears  of  us  all,  until  we 
had  attempted  a  similar  onset  upon  the  hearths  of  our  own 
neighborhoods  ?  And  is  there  not  in  our  churches  the  guilt 
of  blood,  in  our  failing  to  maintain  the  high  and  severe 
standard  of  primitive  discipline,  delivering  the  gospel  to 
the  world  anew  in  the  holy  lives  of  its  professed  disciples  ? 
Shall  not  the  blood  of  the  covetous,  and  formal,  and  sensual, 
the  drunkards,   extortioners,  and  revilers,  that  lurk  in  the 


MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY.  105 

church,  suspected  or  well  known,  but  not  warned  or  cen- 
sured, cry  out  against  us  ?  Hardened,  as  they  are,  by  im- 
punity, shall  not  that  impunity  be  loudly  pleading  against 
us  in  the  great  day  of  retribution  ?  We  preach  the  truth  ; 
is  it  enforced,  and  doled  out  anew  upon  the  world,  in  the 
discipline  of  our  churches  ?  Yet  again,  would  not  Paul 
have  been  guilty,  had  he,  in  teaching  the  Ephesians,  forgot- 
ten the  more  destitute  of  other  lands  ;  or  had  he  neglected 
to  inculcate  upon  the  converts  at  Ephesus  their  duty  in 
sending  the  gospel  to  the  lands  that  were  yet  unevangelized  ? 
Paul  and  the  Christians  whom  he  now  addressed,  would  not 
have  been  clear  of  the  blood  of  the  heathen,  had  they  for- 
gotten them  in  their  prayers,  and  confined  their  labors  ex- 
clusively to  the  narrow  province  of  their  own  home.  Illyr- 
icum,  and  Spain,  and  Britain,  were  probably  in  the  heart 
of  the  apostle,  while  his  hands  were  ministering  to  his  own 
wants  at  Ephesus.  The  gospel  he  preached  was  for  the 
world  ;  and  he  preached  it  in  blood-guiltiness,  if  he  did  not 
regard  and  teach  others  to  regard  it,  as  going  out  over  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  earth.  And  although  God  has 
blessed  the  Church  and  the  pastors  of  the  present  age,  with 
the  spirit  of  missionary  enterprise,  is  there  not  yet  a  defi- 
ciency ?  Are  not  the  garments  of  the  church  and  her  pas- 
torship yet  dripping  with  the  blood  of  pagan  nations,  acces- 
sible but  not  approached  by  the  word  of  God  ?  And  here 
again,  is  there  not  guilt,  the  guilt  of  blood  upon  us,  my 
brethren  ? 

3.  But  the  greatest  of  the  dangers,  as  we  believe,  to  which 
those  now  present  are  exposed,  regards  the  spirit  in  which 
we  utter  our  message.  We  may  deliver  the  true  proclama- 
tion in  hypocrisy,  and  an  angered  God  withhold  from  our 
labors  all  blessing.  Or,  by  formality  and  listlessness,  we 
may  contrive  to  throw  an  aspect  of  tameness  over  the  most 
momentous  and  thrilling  of  all  topics,  and  the  vast  realities 
of  eternity  may  dwindle  under  our  hands  into  a  thrice-told 
and  vapid  "  old  wives'  fable."  In  selfish  avarice  and  ambi- 
tion, we  may  be  coveting  with  an  evil  covetousness  to  set 
our  house  on  high,  and  build  up  our  personal  and  social 
interests  on  the  base  of  God's  own  church.  There  may  be 
bitter  envying  and  strife  amid  the  common  members  of  one 
mystical  body,  and  the  fellow-combatants  in  one  strenuous 
and  hard-fought  warfare.  We  may  grieve  in  secret  at  the 
fulness  of  the  net  which  our  own  hands  cast  not  abroad 

15 


106  MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY. 

upon  the  face  of  the  waters,  or  drew  not  to  the  shore.  We 
may  enact  again  the  contest  rebuked  by  Christ,  and  whisper 
to  ourselves,  "  Who  is  the  greatest?"  when  in  lowliness 
each  should  esteem  others  better  than  himself.  Vain-glory 
and  ostentation  may  be  our  companions  in  the  study,  and 
mount  with  us  into  the  sacred  desk  ;  and  while  the  famished 
church  is  weeping,  and  fiends  exult  over  the  world  rushing 
into  ruin  at  our  feet,  we  may  be  busily  employed  in  endea- 
voring to  carve  our  paltry  names  upon  the  rugged  front  of 
Christ's  own  cross.  We  may  preach  ourselves,  and  not  the 
Master.  While  bound  to  seek  out  acceptable  words,  we 
may  proceed  too  far,  and  harm  the  sword  of  the  Spirit  by 
gilding  and  blunting  its  edge.  Self-reliance  and  self-seek- 
ing may  palsy  our  spiritual  strength  ;  and  we  may  but  beat 
the  air,  and  labor  in  vain.  While  men  admire,  God  may  be 
writing  upon  us  his  fearful  curse  as  pronounced  by  his 
servant  Zechariah  :  "  Wo  to  the  idol  shepherd — the  sword 
shall  be  upon  his  arm,  and  upon  his  right  eye :  his  arm 
shall  be  clean  dried  up,  and  his  right  eye  shall  be  utterly 
darkened."  Spiritual  vigor  and  spiritual  discernment  may 
depart  from  us,  while  bowing  in  secret  at  the  shrine  of  van- 
ity. Or  carelessness,  and  frivolity,  and  worldliness,  may 
e  it  out  the  heart  of  our  strength,  and  we  may  lie  along  in 
the  church,  the  prostrate  and  rotting  cumberers  of  the  field 
we  should  have  shaded  with  o^r  foliage,  and  gladdened 
with  our  fruit.  How  difficult  is  it,  brethren,  to  guard  well 
our  own  hearts — to  act  ever  as  in  the  love  of  Christ — and 
to  preach  in  sight  of  the  bar  of  judgment.  And  even  where 
we  may  be  preserved  watching  and  praying  against  the 
evils  already  indicated,  how  far  may  our  piety  be  beneath 
the  high  standard  commanded  by  our  God,  and  attainable 
to  us.  How  little,  brethren,  is  our  profiting,  compared 
with  that  which  it  might  be,  did  we,  like  the  bride  of  the 
Apocalypse,  stand  before  the  churches  "  clothed  with  the 
sun" — were  there  seen  upon  our  example,  our  prayers,  and 
our  preaching,  the  lustre  of  a  dazzling  holiness,  derived 
from  intimate  communion  with  God,  and  sending  even  into 
the  eyes  of  the  scoffer  its  vivid  and  blinding  brightness. 
And  shall  we  not  be  judged  by  the  possible  and  attainable 
standard  which  was  before  us  ?  Look  to  the  wide  and  deep 
influence  which  has  been  gained  by  some  devoted  men  in 
all  ages,  who,  though  often  of  inferior  talents,  were  men 
mighty  in  prayer,  in  faith,  and  in  the  Holy  Ghost.     See 


MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY.  107 

how  the  hearts  of  the  world  and  the  church  melted  at  the 
opening  of  their  lips — how  the  Spirit  of  Glory  and  of  God 
tracked  all  their  steps  ;  and,  turning  from  the  sight,  let  us 
ask  : — Why  are  we  not  all  such  ?  We  need  a  deeper  piety, 
and  the  guilt  of  blood  is  upon  us — is  it  not,  brethren  ? — be- 
cause we  are  not  men  of  deeper  piety,  men  baptized  with 
the  Holy  Ghost,  and  testifying  to  the  churches  what  our 
own  eyes  have  seen,  and  our  own  hands  have  handled  of  the 
word  of  life. 

Are  we  accused  of  disparaging  our  vocation  ?  Our  reply 
may  be  in  the  quaint,  but  expressive  language  of  Baxter  : 
*'  Had  our  sins  been  only  in  Latin,  in  Latin  they  might 
have  been  rebuked  ;  but  if  our  transgressions  have  been 
wrought  before  the  people,  in  the  tongue,  and  before  the 
eyes  of  the  people  must  they  be  assailed  and  confessed." 
We  are  crying  out  against  the  dangers  of  the  church  from 
the  rampant  infidelity  of  the  age.  But,  alas,  it  is  not  the 
feathered  and  barbed  shaft  of  Voltaire,  the  refined  scepti- 
cism of  Hume  and  Gibbon,  or  the  coarser  blasphemies  of  a 
Paine,  a  Taylor,  or  a  Carlisle,  that  most  endanger  us.  Ra- 
ther need  we  fear  and  deprecate  the  infidelity  of  the  church, 
the  practical  scepticism  of  the  lukewarm  pastor,  the  effect- 
ive atheism  of  a  worldly,  and  a  time-serving,  a  vain-glorious, 
and  a  selfish  ministry.  It  is  not  the  most  specious  or  the 
most  active  of  the  speculative  heresies  of  the  day,  that  we 
have  cause,  brethren,  so  much  to  dread,  as  the  heresy  of 
heart  found  in  Christ's  own  church — the  want  of  a  purer 
love,  and  a  simpler  faith,  and  a  more  vigorous  hope.  We 
cannot  afford  the  time  requisite  to  decide  the  nicer  contro- 
versies of  the  day  among  true  brethren,  while  this,  the  great 
controversy  of  the  church  with  her  God,  remains  undecided. 
Our  sin  against  the  commandment  that  bids  us  love  our  God 
is  as  fearful  a  heresy  as  any  in  the  list  invented  and  propa- 
gated by  human  perverseness.  No,  brethren,  it  is  not  a 
fitting  season  for  the  church  to  be  compounding  unguents 
for  the  freckled  skin  of  a  fancied,  or  at  most,  a  frivolous 
heresy ;  while  the  plague  of  lukewarmness  is  sweeping  her 
streets,  and  the  bier  of  spiritual  death  is  passing  on  its  way 
from  door  to  door  of  her  habitations.  We  have  another 
and  a  sterner  quarrel  to  settle.  The  stain  of  blood — of  the 
blood  of  souls,  is  on  the  floor  of  our  deserted  and  untrodden 
closets — upon  our  pulpits — upon  our  communion  tables. 
It  is,  as  the  prophet  of  old  witnessed,  "not  found  by  secret 


108  MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY. 

search,  but  openly,  and  upon  all  these."  And  yet  we  feel 
it  not,  or  acknowledging  it,  we  do  not  aright  apprehend  and 
repent  of  the  evil  of  our  ways. 

III.  Lastly,  then,  let  us,  brethren,  endeavor  to  fasten  upon 
our  sluggish  hearts  the  sense  of  the  fearful  character  of  the 
guilt  thus  incurred.  We  may  learn  it  by  looking  to  the 
worth  of  the  soul.  Is  the  life  of  the  body,  though  so  soon 
to  terminate,  guarded  by  all  the  terrors  of  earthly  law — is 
the  murderer  so  sternly  hunted,  and  so  sorely  punished ; 
and  is  there  no  guilt  in  flinging  away,  or  in  aiding  others  to 
cast  away  the  life  of  the  soul,  its  happiness  and  well-being, 
not  for  threescore  years  only,  but  for  ages  multiplied  upon 
ages,  and  yet  making  no  unit  in  the  fearful  sum  of  its  eter- 
nity ?  Is  the  hand  of  the  lapidary  cautious  when  touching 
the  gem  whose  very  dust  is  precious  ?  Is  the  touch  of  the 
surgeon  most  delicate,  but  most  firm,  when  probing  or  sev- 
ering the  organs  of  our  bodily  frame  :  and  what  shall  not 
be  our  care  who  have  to  do  with  the  soul  of  man,  so  deli- 
cately framed,  so  easily  and  irremediably  injured — that  soul 
which  is  to  sparkle  as  a  gem  on  the  Mediator's  brow  through 
all  ages,  or  to  suffer  under  the  venom  of  unhealed  sin  in  the 
ever-growing  pangs  of  the  second  death?  The  worth  of 
the  gospel,  neutralized  by  unfaithfulness  in  the  ministry, 
that  gospel  which  angels  announced  with  songs  of  gratula- 
tion — which  was  sealed  with  the  blood  of  a  dying  God — 
and  which  bears  the  only  hope  of  life  for  the  world,  affords 
another  standard  by  which  to  test  the  character  of  our  guilt, 
if  we  fail  to  declare  it  in  its  whole  counsel.  The  high 
claims  of  the  church,  narrowed  and  famished,  and  degraded 
by  pastoral  infidelity,  bid  us  to  awake  ;  for  if  any  man  defile 
the  temple  of  God,  him  shall  God  destroy.  The  fearful 
dishonor  brought  upon  the  name  of  that  God,  who  will  be 
sanctified  in  all  them  that  come  nigh  him,  may  well  fill  us 
with  dread.  And  the  thought  of  the  wide-spread  influence 
we  are  to  exercise  through  all  time  and  through  eternity, 
may  well  cause  the  stoutest  heart  to  quail.  Another  argu- 
ment might  be  derived  from  the  brevity  of  the  life  we  waste, 
and  from  its  singleness.  We  have  but  one  life — it  is  soon 
spent,  and  suddenly  as  well  as  speedily  may  it  be  ended. 
The  dying  are  around  us.  They  fill  the  seats  of  our  sanc- 
tuaries. They  are  at  our  boards,  by  the  way  they  meet, 
and  in  the  house  they  surround  us.*  Riches,  and  fame, 
earthly  lore,  and  earthly  power — what  arc  they  to  the  dying 


MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY.  109 

man?  How  soon  will  all  earthly  distinctions  fade  away 
from  before  the  eye,  as  it  glazes  and  settles  in  the  last  strug- 
gle— and  mock  the  grasp  of  dying  agony.  We  are  from 
eternity.  For  it  we  live.  Of  it  we  testify.  To  it  we  pass. 
Into  that  world  of  waking  reality  this  life  of  dreams  and 
shadows  is  fast  bearing  us.  Our  kindred  are  there.  The 
former  occupants  of  our  pews  are  there.  Ears  that  once 
listened  to  the  voice  of  our  teachings  are  now  filled  with 
the  songs  of  the  seraphim,  or  tingle  with  the  cry  of  the  de- 
spairing and  the  lost.  Eyes  that  have  gazed  into  ours,  as 
we  have  looked  down  from  the  pulpit,  have  already  seen 
the  Judge  of  all  the  earth. 

What  yet  remains  for  them,  and  for  us  ? — Men  of  God,  I 
cite  you  to  his  bar.  Yet  a  little  while,  and  we  stand  before 
the  great  white  throne.  The  judgment  is  set.  The  books 
are  opened.  Heaven  and  earth  have  passed  away  before 
the  glance  that  is  transfixing  our  hearts.  The  history  of 
every  day,  the  motives  of  every  sermon,  the  morbid  anato- 
my of  the  soul,  are  bared  to  an  assembled  universe  ;  and 
we  with  all  the  dead,  stand  up  to  give  an  account  of  the 
deeds  done  in  the  body.  Who  would  then  take  the  fearful 
tiara  of  the  papacy,  lined  with  the  curses  of  its  deluded  mil- 
lions ?  Who  would  then  wear  the  earthly  honors  of  the 
faithless  pastor  ?  "  And  who  shall  live  when  God  doeth 
this  ?"  exclaimed  an  able  but  false-hearted  prophet  of  former 
times.  Who  of  us  shall  live  when  God  doeth  this,  may  we, 
taking  up  his  lament,  and  prolonging  it,  say,  for  who  may 
abide  the  day  of  his  coming,  and  who  shall  stand  when  he 
appeareth  ?  Blessed  be  his  name,  the  sentence  is  not  yet 
pronounced.  The  books  are  not  yet  written  out.  On  the 
leaf  yet  uninscribed,  and  perhaps  the  last,  let  us  write  our 
weeping  penitence.  For  yet  is  there  hope  in  Israel  con- 
cerning this  thing. 

Oh,  is  it  not  from  such  scenes  that  we  turn  with  deepest 
sensibility  to  the  Cross  of  Christ  ?  Were  it  not  for  the 
fountain  opened  in  the  house  of  David,  were  we  not,  breth- 
ren of  the  ministry,  of  all  men  most  miserable  ?  From  his 
multiplied  snares,  from  his  burdensome  sins,  how  delightful 
for  the  Christian  pastor  is  it  thither  to  flee,  and  to  plunge 
in  its  cleansing  and  quickening  streams.  How  vivid,  when 
viewed  after  such  contemplations,  how  vivid  in  beauty,  and 
how  vast  the  wealth  of  the  promises  which  assure  us  the 
aid  of  the  Spirit,  and  the  workings  of  that  Power  by  which 


110  MINISTERIAL    RESPONSIBILITY. 

the  weak  are  made  strong,  and  the  foolish  wise.  Upon  our 
Master  we  will  cast  ourselves.  Often  have  we  provoked 
him,  but  never  has  he  spurned  us.  For  the  sake  of  his 
goodness,  and  his  free  and  repeated  forgiveness  of  our  con- 
stant transgressions,  will  we  endeavor  to  preserve  our  gar- 
ments henceforth  unspotted.  Shall  we  loiter,  or  trifle,  or 
engage  in  petty  bickerings,  or  turn  aside  at  the  beck  of 
sense  or  of  pleasure  ?  God  helping  us,  brethren,  we  will 
not ;  for  behind  us  are  heard  the  steps  of  the  avenger  of 
blood,  before  us  gleam  the  crown  of  righteousness  and  the 
palm  of  victory,  and  the  pealing  anthems  of  the  blessed  are 
heard  in  the  distance.  No,  we  will  quit  the  plain  of  worldly 
strife,  of  sensual  and  secular  pursuits,  and  climb  the  rugged 
mount  of  communion  and  transfiguration.  We  will  relax 
our  grasp  of  the  polluting  and  perplexing  vanities  of  this 
life,  that  we  may  set  our  affection  on  things  above,  where 
Christ  sitteth  at  the  right  hand  of  God.  We  will  move 
onward  through  the  people  of  our  charge,  as  those  who  shall 
lead  or  follow  them  to  the  grave,  and  meet  them  again  in 
the  judgment.  We  will  pass  along,  intent  on  this  one 
thing,  the  glory  of  God  in  the  salvation  of  souls.  We  will 
be  the  men  of  one  book,  aiming  to  throw  over  the  literature 
and  the  arts  of  life,  over  the  scenes  of  business  and  retire- 
ment, over  man  in  all  stations  and  under  every  aspect,  its 
hallowed  light.  Our  eyes  have  seen  there  the  descending 
glories  of  an  opened  heaven.  We  have  looked  downward 
upon  a  world  sinking  into  the  flaming  abyss  of  hell.  We 
have  heard  the  commandment  that  we  pluck  men  out  of  the 
fiery  torrent.  Where  is  our  strength  ?  Conscious  of  our 
utter  weakness,  we  will  fling  ourselves  back  on  Him  who 
was  our  own  deliverer — we  will  ask  the  Spirit  of  God  in 
the  name  of  Christ,  and  girt  in  his  strength,  we  will  labor, 
praying  to  make  it,  with  holy  Paul,  our  dying  declaration  : 
I  have  fought  a  good  fight ;  I  have  finished  my  course  ; 
1  have  kept  the  faith.  Henceforth  there  is  laid  up  for  me 
a  crown  of  righteousness,  which  the  Lord,  the  Righteous 
Judge,  shall  give  me  in  that  day,  when  the  pure  in  heart 
and  the  clean  of  hands  shall  see  God. 


THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH  NEEDED  FOR 
HER  RISING  MINISTRY. 

(Delivered  before  the  N.  Y.  Baptist  Education  Society,  August  18,  1835.) 

"  Making  mention  of  you  in  my  prayers  ;  that  the  God  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Father  of  glory,  may  give  unto  you  the 
spirit  of  wisdom  and  revelation  in  the  knowledge  of  him  :  the  eyes 

OF  YOUR  UNDERSTANDING   BEING  ENLIGHTENED." — EpheSianS  L   16,    17,   18. 

Prayer  for  the  descent  of  the  Spirit  upon  the  Church 
had  been  among  the  last  employments  of  Paul's  Lord  and 
Master,  as  He  was  girding  himself  for  the  scenes  of  Geth- 
semane  and  Calvary.  Even  when  the  Holy  Ghost  had  come 
in  answer  to  the  requests  of  our  Great  Advocate,  the  inter- 
cessions of  the  saints  for  each  other  were  yet  needed  to  pro- 
long and  to  deepen  the  influences  of  the  Heavenly  Visitant. 
To  gain  these  intercessory  supplications  of  the  church  be- 
came then  an  object  of  high  moment.  How  earnestly  Paul 
besought  for  himself,  that  his  disciples  and  fellow-confessors 
should  remember  him  in  their  approaches  to  the  mercy-seat, 
is  apparent  on  the  most  cursory  reading  of  his  epistles.  In 
the  present  letter  to  the  Ephesian  saints,  in  each  of  those 
which  he  addressed  to  the  Thessalonian  church,  in  the  sec- 
ond of  his  epistles  to  the  Corinthians,  in  those  to  the  churches 
at  Colosse  and  Philippi,  in  his  private  letter  to  Philemon, 
and  his  general  one  to  the  Hebrew  believers,  the  same  re- 
quest for  their  prayers  is  urged  upon  various  grounds,  but 
in  all  these  eight  epistles  with  marked,  and,  at  times,  impor- 
tunate earnestness. 

What  he  asked  of  his  brethren  for  himself  he  was  ready 
in  turn  to  impart  for  their  benefit.  He  loved  prayer,  and 
practised  it  himself,  as  he  enjoined  it  upon  others,  "  without 
ceasing."  To  the  ministry  of  the  word  and  to  prayer  he 
had,  like  the  apostles  who  were  in  Christ  before  him,  given 
himself,  as  to  the  one  proper  employment  of  his  office,  and 
the  future  business  of  his  life.  The  evidence  of  his  conver- 
sion, by  which  our  Lord  reassured  the  suspicious  Ananias, 


112  THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

was,  "Behold  he  prayeth."  When  with  Silas  he  occupied 
the  dungeons  of  Philippi,  he  broke  the  silence  of  midnight 
with  the  voice  of  prayer  :  when  parting  on  a  former  occa- 
sion from  the  elders  of  this  same  Ephesian  church,  and  when 
bidding  farewell  to  the  disciples  at  Tyre,  prayer  lightened 
their  mutual  regrets,  and  gave  voice  to  their  mutual  affec- 
tion. When  himself  receiving  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem 
the  vision  of  his  Lord  that  sent  him  to  the  far  Gentiles,  and 
when  healing  the  father  of  Publius  at  Malta,  his  previous 
preparation  had  been  found  in  prayer.  And  to  the  last  days 
of  his  life  he  remained  in  this  exercise,  true  to  the  church 
and  to  her  great  Head,  even  as  he  was  seen  entering  the 
skirts  of  that  dark  storm,  which  seized  him  and  bore  him 
upward  to  his  heavenly  rest.  Amid  sorrow  and  loneliness 
he  breathes  neither  dejection  nor  misanthropy  ;  but  we  find 
him  assuring  his  beloved  scholar,  that  without  ceasing  he 
had  remembrance  of  him  in  his  prayers  night  and  day.  A 
like  touching  pledge  of  Christian  affection  he  had  already 
given  to  his  friend  Philemon,  to  the  Ephesian  and  the  Co- 
lossian  churches,  as  well  as  to  those  at  Philippi,  Thessalo- 
nica,  and  Rome,  to  all  of  whom  he  avers  a  similar  mindful- 
ness of  them  in  his  private  supplications.  Thus  it  was,  that 
even  from  the  chariot  of  bloody  triumph,  which  wafted  him 
to  his  Father's  house,  there  was  seen  falling  the  mantle  of 
his  example  and  his  prayers,  to  bless  that  militant  church,  in 
Avhose  sorrows  and  warfare  he  might  no  longer  share. 

And  upon  whom  did  the  great  apostle  of  the  uncircum- 
cision  here  invoke  the  descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  a  spirit 
of  wisdom  and  revelation  ?  Not  upon  those  who  knew  not 
God,  and  whose  eyes  had  not  yet  been  opened  to  discern 
the  glories  of  the  Saviour  ;  but  upon  men  whom  he  con- 
gratulated as  "  the  faithful  in  Christ  Jesus  "  and  "  the  saints 
which  were  at  Ephesus."  Nor  by  his  prayer  for  the  en- 
lightening of  their  understandings  did  he  impeach  their 
society  of  any  peculiar  imbecility  or  ignorance.  In  their 
libraries  had  been  found  volumes  of  unhallowed  and  magical 
lore,  amounting  in  value  to  fifty  thousand  pieces  of  silver. 
Their  ability  to  study  these  implied  some  general  knowledge, 
and  a  taste  for  such  researches  required  some  measure  of 
native  talent  and  sagacity  ;  and  it  rendered  probable  also 
the  possession  and  the  mastery  of  at  least  some  volumes  of 
a  sounder  literature.  Nor  was  it  for  a  crowd  of  rude  and 
untaught  converts,  the    ill-fed  flock  of  some  incompetent 


NEEDED    FOR    HER    RISING    MINISTRY.  113 

shepherd,  that  he  supplicated  the  heavenly  gift ;  but  for  a 
favored  church  who  had  long  profited  by  the  ministrations 
of  an  apostle,  and  whom  he  himself  had  for  the  space  of 
three  years  ceased  not  to  warn  night  and  day  with  tears — 
to  whom  he  had  given  alike  private  admonition  and  more 
public  instructions,  and  who  in  addition  to  his  personal 
addresses  were  now  receiving  his  written  counsels.  But 
though  thus  bred  in  heathen  scholarship,  and  taught  by  an 
apostolical  pastorship,  and  although .  thus  anxiously  and 
fondly  cared  for  by  these  the  "  labors  more  abundant  "  of 
an  inspired  teacher,  they  needed  still  the  aids  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  to  open  the  eyes  of  their  understanding.  It  had  not 
yet  become  a  needless  petition  to  be  offered  for  them,  that 
they  might  receive  the  spirit  of  wisdom  ;  nor  was  it  an  un- 
timely request  on  their  behalf,  that  to  them  might  be  more 
largely  given  the  spirit  of  revelation  in  the  knowledge  of 
Christ.  If  ever  there  were  a  splendid  exemplification  of 
the  fact  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Influences  does  not 
foster  indolence,  and  that,  again,  human  industry  does  not 
supersede  the  necessity  of  the  Spirit's  aids  and  agency,  it 
was  here,  in  a  church  so  ably  and  so  assiduously  taught,  yet 
the  objects  of  such  impassioned  prayer — for  whom  Paul 
labored  as  if  he  were  the  only  keeper  of  their  souls,  and  for 
whom  he  prayed  as  if  Providence  had  placed  the  charge  of 
their  souls  entirely  beyond  the  reach  of  his  personal  efforts. 
You  are  convened,  fathers  and  brethren,  as  the  friends  of 
ministerial  education.  It  were  needless  to  labor  in  proving 
its  necessity  to  men  who  have  already  decided  the  question 
in  their  own  minds,  and  whose  presence  in  these  scenes  may 
well  be  regarded  as  sufficient  warrant  for  supposing  them 
convinced  of  its  importance.  But  is  it  unseasonable  to  re- 
mind you,  brethren,  that  more  than  human  agency  is  needed 
in  the  education  of  the  ministry — that  the  great  work  of 
training  up  the  Christian  and  the  Christian  pastor  is  not 
confided  to  your  faltering  hands  alone — but  that  the  instruc- 
tion of  the  church  and  of  the  teachers  of  the  church  is  to  be 
commenced  and  consummated  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  a 
superior  agency  enveloping  and  making  effective  your  infe- 
rior instrumentality  1  With  all  your  wise  provision  for  dis- 
ciplining your  younger  brethren,  ere  they  go  forth  bearing 
the  banner  of  Christ,  the  trumpet  and  the  sword  of  the  gos- 
pel, into  the  field  of  battle,  you  will  not  forget  that  your 
interest  with  the  Great  Captain  of  the  Lord's  Host  is  yet 

16 


114  THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

more  needed  to  be  exerted  in  their  behalf.  For  him  who 
speaks,  then — for  your  own  churches — for  the  whole  family 
of  our  Lord  upon  earth — and,  especially,  at  the  present  time, 
for  this  school  of  the  prophets,  let  me  beseech  you,  like  the 
apostle  before  us,  to  implore  the  gifts  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Ask  the  counsellings  of  Divine  Wisdom,  and  the  illumina- 
tions of  the  Uncreated  Light.  And  to  this  end  bear  with 
me,  in  reminding  you  of  the  need  which  the  theological 
student  has  for  your  prayers,  first,  from  his  present  snares, 
and  next,  from  his  future  influence,  and  lastly,  in  urging 
upon  you  your  consequent  duty  to  continue  instant  in  your 
supplications  for  him. 

I.  While  exposed,  in  common  with  yourselves,  to  all  the 
other  temptations  that  belong  to  the  depravity  of  his  own 
heart,  the  character  of  the  evil  world  around  him,  and  of  the 
Evil  One  that  rules  it,  and  subjected  in  addition  to  the  pecu 
liar  besetments  of  his  youthful  age,  let  it  not  be  forgotten, 
that  in  his  very  studies,  necessary  as  they  may  be,  there  are 
found  perils  of  formidable  character.  Many  of  these  will  at 
once  suggest  themselves.  He  is  in  danger  of  converting  the 
season  of  leisure  and  the  scenes  of  retirement  here  allowed 
him  into  the  refuge  of  indolence.  Or,  if  studious  and  suc- 
cessful, he  may  be  infected  with  the  pride  of  learning,  and 
lose  the  docility  of  Christ's  disciple.  Or,  forgetting  the  dis- 
tinction between  knowledge  and  wisdom,  he  may  crowd  the 
chambers  of  the  soul  with  the  furniture  of  a  useless  or  frivo- 
lous learning,  until  the  mind  is  converted  into  a  magnificent 
lumber-room,  where  the  great  truths  of  Christian  faith  and 
duty  have  little  space  left  them  to  live  and  to  work.  By 
unskilfulness  in  the  discipline  of  the  mind,  he  may  walk 
forth  into  the  scene  of  strife  with  this  world  and  its  vanities, 
armed  without,  but  enfeebled  within — burdened  and  crippled 
by  the  ill- chosen  armor  in  which  he  has  been  pleased  to 
incase  himself,  and  felled  to  the  earth,  at  the  first  onset,,  by 
the  weight  of  his  own  ill-managed  lore.  Or  in  studies  well- 
selected  and  vigorously  pursued,  he  may  exert  himself  to 
purpose  ;  but  it  may  be,  that  all  is  done  from  an  unholy 
rivalry,  or  with  regard  to  earthly  lucre  or  earthly  honor. 
And  he  may  thus  go  forth  into  the  world,  crowned  with  the 
chaplet  of  academic  distinction,  while  from  every  leaf  of  that 
chaplet  the  mildew  of  Clod's  curse,  breathed  over  his  selfish- 
ness and  earthliness,  is  ("ailing,  and  blasting  the  labors  of  his 
hands   wherever   it  falls.      All  the  peculiar  snares  of    the 


NEEDED    FOR    HER    RISING    MINISTRY.  115 

student's  life  it  were  impossible  now  to  discuss  :  let  us  but 
advert  to  some  of  the  more  common,  though  often  unsus- 
pected, evils  that  beset  him. 

1.  The  first  of  these  to  which  we  would  now  allude,  as 
one  against  which  he  needs  to  be  guarded  by  your  prayers, 
is  that  of  losing  his  sympathy  with  ordinary  and  uneducated 
mind.  As  his  own  intellect  acquires  vigor  and  expansion, 
he  may  learn  to  pass  rapidly,  and  with  ease,  through  trains 
of  reasoning,  which  are  without  interest,  or  which  may  even 
be  unintelligible,  to  others  who  have  not  been  conducted 
through  the  same  routine  of  preparation.  And  forgetting 
this  fact,  while  pursuing  a  track  of  research,  which  to  his 
own  mind  teems  at  every  step  with  objects  of  interest,  and 
where  on  every  hand  breaks  out  some  new  and  delightful 
vision,  he  may  be  traversing  scenes  into  which  no  common 
auditory  can  follow  him,  and  whilst  he  hurries  on,  delighted 
himself,  and  confident  of  delighting  others,  his  hearers  may 
be  toiling  in  perplexity  far  behind  him,  wondering  at  the 
speed  of  his  course,  and  bewildered  as  to  the  object  and 
end  of  his  journeyings.  The  art  of  simplifying  his  know- 
ledge needs  perpetual  study.  As  in  his  subjects  of  thought, 
so  in  the  language  with  which  he  learns  to  invest  his  favorite 
themes,  he  may  unintentionally  and  insensibly  lose  sight  of 
the  people,  and,  forgetting  their  simpler  idioms,  mid  his 
thoughts  naturally  fall  into  terms  metaphysical  and  abstract, 
with  which  men  in  general  are  little  familial,  and  towards 
which  they  may  be  disposed  to  show  little  patience.  The 
same  estrangement  from  the  common  mind  may  be  gradually 
imbibed  from  the  spirit  of  much  of  the  literature  with  which 
he  becomes  conversant.  Much  of  Greek,  and  nearly  all  of 
Roman  letters,  breathes  a  proud  oblivion  or  contempt  of  the 
commonalty.  The  scornful  sentiment  of  one  of  the  most 
celebrated  of  Latin  poets,  "hate  for  the  profane  rabble,"  is 
but  too  faithfully  reflected  from  the  pages  of  ancient  schol- 
arship. Through  a  large  portion  of  the  literature  even  of 
Christian  lands,  the  same  feeling,  not  avowed  indeed,  yet 
but  too  evident,  lives  and  breathes.  And  by  a  gradual  as- 
similation to  the  models  of  classic  beauty,  a  student  may  find 
the  spirit  of  alienation  from  the  popular  intellect  diffusing 
itself  over  his  mind  and  labors,  even  while  preparing  to  pub- 
lish abroad  that  gospel,  of  which  it  was  once  the  high  boast 
and  the  heavenly  seal — that  it  was  preached  to  the  poor. 
.Visiting  the  lowly  and  the  ignorant,  it  told  them  in  the 


116  THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

simplest  words,  and  by  the  aid  of  the  most  familiar  imagery, 
of  glories  celestial  and  divine,  before  which  the  proudest 
splendors  of  pagan  morality  and  the  most  gorgeous  visions  of 
heathen  poetry  waned  and  grew  pale.  Against  this  tendency 
to  lose  his  hold  upon  the  common  mass  of  an  audience,  it  is 
no  small  part  of  a  wise  education  to  guard.  Yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  let  it  not  be  forgotten,  that  no  man  can  long 
profit  or  guide  the  minds  of  a  people,  who  is  not  himself  in 
mental  power  or  furniture  raised  above  them. 

2.  Another  of  the  evil  influences  which  often  engross  the 
mind  of  the  scholar  devoted  to  prolonged  and  solitary  study, 
is  the  love  of  fame.  Harshly  as  the  accusation  may  fall  on 
the  ears  of  some,  it  is  but  too  certain  that  the  mass  of  litera- 
ture, even  in  the  lands  now  most  thoroughly  evangelized,  is 
idolatrous  in  its  spirit  and  tendencies.  More  covert  indeed, 
but  not  less  impious,  than  the  paganism  which  defiles  the 
monuments  of  Greek  and  Roman  genius,  it  is  yet  but  idol- 
atry, a  decent  and  baptized  idolatry.  It  teaches  the  student 
principles  of  action  and  a  strain  of  feeling  essentially  hea- 
thenish. The  love  of  fame  for  its  own  sake  is  boastfully 
avowed  as  the  scholar's  great  incentive  :  to  live  in  the  mem- 
ories and  upon  the  tongues  of  other  ages,  is  the  guerdon  of 
his  toils  and  sacrifices.  As  the  great  motive  for  action,  this 
is  a  principle  as  sternly  rebuked  in  the  New  Testament,  as 
is  that  covetousness  which  bars  against  its  votary  the  gates 
of  heaven.  It  is  a  principle  of  which  our  Saviour  explicitly 
testified,  in  the  case  of  the  Pharisees,  that  because  they 
were  guided  by  it,  seeking  honor  one  of  another,  they  could 
not  believe,  and  therefore  could  not  be  saved. 

3.  Another  evil  of  that  literature  with  which  the  theologi- 
cal student  must  in  his  studies  become  more  or  less  intimate, 
is  the  blind  worship  of  genius,  as  an  object  of  admiration 
for  its  own  sake,  and  apart  from  the  moral  uses  to  which  it 
is  devoted.  This  is  a  leprosy  that  has  scarred  the  whole 
literature  of  the  present  age.  Mental  power,  though  em- 
ployed only  to  corrupt,  to  mislead,  or  to  oppress,  is  deified, 
with  as  much  reason  as  men  might  ascribe  divine  honors  to 
the  whirlwind  for  its  might,  or  to  the  volcano  for  its  powers 
of  wide-spread  desolation.  The  resplendent  skin  and  shin- 
ing crest  of  the  serpent  win  for  him  a  place  in  the  bosom, 
though  a  serpent  still  ;  and  the  polish  and  symmetry  of  the 
arrow  give  it  value  in  our  eyes,  though  its  point  is  known 
to  be  tipped  with  deadly  venom,  and  its  barbs  are  yet  red 


NEEDED    FOR    HER    RISING    MINISTRY.  117 

with  the  blood  of  former  victims.  This  should  not  be  so. 
To  him  that  seeks  the  welfare  of  his  country,  and  knows 
how  much  her  social  well-being  depends  upon  the  purpose 
and  purity  of  her  popular  literature,  it  is  indeed  matter  of 
sorrow  and  of  alarm  that  any  moral  obliquity  and  the  gross- 
est and  most  hideous  depravity  may  win  patient  and  admir- 
ing listeners,  if  it  only  come  playing  the  pander,  with  the 
voice  of  melody,  and  the  garb  and  air  of  refinement.  This 
insane  idolatry  of  genius  may  gradually  discolor  even  the 
views  of  the  youth  who  has  dedicated  himself  to  minister  at 
the  altar  of  God  ;  and  he  who  should  become  the  Aaron  of 
the  camp  may  be  its  Achan.  The  Babylonish  garment  and 
the  golden  wedge  may  be  secretly  pilfered  from  the  spoils 
devoted  by  God's  just  wrath  to  utter  destruction  and  obliv- 
ion ;  and  he  who  should  have  shown  himself  the  intercessor 
and  guardian  of  the  church,  may  prove,  like  Diotrephes  or 
Ahab,  the  troubler  of  Israel.  Before  the  tribunal  which 
awaits  us,  it  is  not  power,  but  the  rightful  use  of  power  ;  it 
is  not  wealth,  but  the  proper  employment  of  our  pittance  or 
our  opulence  ;  it  is  not  talent,  but  the  motives  with  which 
and  the  modes  in  which  talent  exerted  itself,  that  shall  bring 
honor  to  the  possessor.  Yet  a  little  while,  and  we  are  there. 
But  meanwhile,  how  many  myriads  may  be  lost  for  ever  by 
that  irrational  admiration  of  irreligious  genius,  and  that 
blind  love  of  human  applause,  which  are  as  the  plague-spots 
of  our  popular  literature. 

4.  Oppositions  of  science  falsely  so  called  became,  even 
under  the  eyes  of  an  apostle,  an  occasion  to  many  of  erring 
from  the  faith.  Akin  to  the  worship  of  great  names  in  lite- 
rature, and  often  found  resulting  from  it,  is  that  presumptu- 
ous and  unprofitable  speculation  which  has  at  times  invaded 
the  schools  of  the  church.  Dogmatizing  where  the  Scrip- 
ture was  silent,  or  running  into  perplexed  refinements  where 
the  Scripture  held  its  usual  tone  of  plain  and  practical  good 
sense,  men  have  introduced  error  upon  error  into  the  church 
of  former  ages,  and  our  own  may  not  hope  for  exemption. 
They  who  have  arisen  to  combat  the  new  delusion  have 
often,  with  the  natural  infirmity  of  the  human  mind,  done  so 
by  evoking  and  patronizing  some  opposite  error — the  an- 
tagonist indeed  of  the  first,  but  equally  fatal  with  it  to  the 
true  interests  of  religion.  And  learning  and  talent  have 
clustered  and  glowed  around  the  contending  theories,  until 
the   whole  heavens  were  illumined  by  the  lustre  of  two 


118  THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

contending  systems,  adverse  and  opposite  in  all  else,  save  in 
this — that  both  were  alike  lawless  and  eccentric  meteors, 
splendid  as  they  were  baleful,  gazed  upon  with  admiration 
by  the  upturned  eyes  of  wondering  multitudes,  yet  proving 
themselves  at  last  but  magnificent  heresies  and  wandering 
stars  to  which  was  reserved  the  blackness  of  darkness  for- 
ever. Into  the  shades  of  academic  retirement  such  errors 
may  yet  find  their  way.  And  in  the  endowments  furnished 
by  the  piety  and  liberality  of  one  age,  the  next  may  see  in- 
stalled heresies  which  the  original  founders  of  the  institution 
would  have  indignantly  denounced  as  the  foulest  blasphe- 
mies. To  preserve  alike  individuals  and  institutions  from 
this  eating  canker  of  unsound  doctrine,  creeds  will  not 
fully  avail,  nor  any  barrier  of  human  invention.  Anxious 
denunciation  will  not  avert  or  remedy  the  evil,  but  only  the 
Spirit  of  God,  sought  and  won  by  fervent  prayer.  Nor  can 
any  precautions  merely  human  check  the  growth  of  these 
evils.  They  are  not  the  proper  fruit  of  Theological  Semi- 
naries, although  those  schools  may  at  times  afford  a  favora- 
ble scene  for  their  development.  The  abolition  of  every 
Theological  Seminary  in  the  land  would  not  effect  the  ex- 
tinction of  errors.  They  would  still  spring  up  as  the  native 
growth  of  the  unsanctified  heart,  starting  in  irrepressible 
freshness  from  a  root  which  human  skill  cannot  reach,  and 
which  no  power  merely  of  earth  has  ever  succeeded  in  ex- 
tirpating. 

5.  But  perhaps  the  chief  danger  of  the  youthful  student  is 
to  be  feared,  not  so  much  in  the  infusion  of  positive  error 
into  his  doctrinal  system,  as  in  his  studying  the  truth  merely 
as  an  exercise  of  the  understanding,  without  securing  its  due 
influence  on  the  heart.  It  is  possible  for  us  to  investigate 
the  gospel — the  true  and  life-giving  gospel — merely  as  a 
science,  and  to  delude  ourselves,  and  to  curse  the  church 
with  that  heartless  form  of  sound  knowledge  which  may  be 
called  the  Religion  of  the  Intellect.  By  this  we  here  in- 
tend, not  merely  a  false  system,  wrought  out  by  the  self- 
coniidence  of  an  unsanctified  intellect,  neglecting  and  amend- 
ing the  Scriptures,  a  class  of  errors  which  the  term  might 
well  include  ;  but  we  intend,  at  present,  by  it  to  describe 
only  that  reception  of  the  truth  itself  which  gives  it  no  lodg- 
ment in  the  affections,  and  allows  it  no  control  over  the  life  ; 
which  examines  the  Scriptures  but  as  furnishing  a  system  to 
be  learned  and  defended,  and  comes  not  to  them  as  to  oracles 


NEEDED    FOR    HER    RISING    MINISTRY.  119 

claiming  our  obedience — as  to  promises  upholding,  and 
precepts  guiding,  and  penalties  guarding  the  spiritual  life 
of  the  inquirer  himself.  Now  it  is  possible  for  a  student  to 
attain  in  this  mode  a  full  and  correct  knowledge  of  the  great 
outlines  of  Christian  faith  ;  while  the  spirit  of  the  gospel  is 
an  utter  stranger  to  his  bosom,  and  of  its  great  mysteries  he 
has  no  practical  experience,  and  with  its  informing  life  he 
has  no  communion  or  sympathy.  The  distinction  which 
may  thus  exist  between  a  familiarity  with  the  external  forms 
of  any  science  and  its  actual  mastery,  may  be  illustrated  by 
a  reference  to  the  scenes  of  worldly  activity.  A  man  may 
discern  and  relish,  in  a  writing  which  he  peruses,  the  strength 
of  its  logic  and  the  ornaments  of  its  rhetoric,  and  yet  all  this 
delight  might  consist  in  his  mind  with  an  utter  indifference, 
or  a  hearty  distaste,  to  the  object  and  purport  of  the  writing. 
His  scholarship  might  give  him  an  intelligent  admiration  of 
the  vehicle  into  which  the  thought  had  been  cast,  while  his 
prejudices,  or  his  habits,  or  his  interest,  might  lead  him  to 
look  upon  the  cause  which  it  advocated  with  an  uncom- 
promising hostility.*  Thus,  to  illustrate  our  meaning,  might 
we  imagine  the  instrument  that  severed  our  people  from 
their  dependence  upon  the  mother-country,  and  asserted  our 
claims  to  a  separate  station  and  an  equal  rank  among  the 
nations  of  the  earth,  finding  its  way  on  its  first  promulgation, 
over  mountain  and  forest,  until  it  lighted  down  upon  some 
remote  hamlet,  where  it  was  seized  and  scanned  with  an 
eager  curiosity.  And  among  the  group,  who  were  gathered 
to  listen  to  that  portentous  instrument,  might  be  found  the 
teacher  of  the  neighboring  peasantry  ;  and  into  his  hands, 
with  one  consent,  that  Declaration  might  be  put,  that  he 
should  read  it  to  the  anxious  crowd  pressing  around  him. 
And  in  scholarship  he  might  be  the  only  one  of  the  number 
qualified  to  appreciate  the  literary  merit  of  that  great  instru- 
ment, or  the  moral  daring  of  the  attitude  in  which  it  placed 
our  country.  And  the  beauty  of  its  style  and  the  force  of 
its  sentiments  might  extort  the  man's  reluctant  applause, 
and  his  heart  might  yield  a  passing  homage  to  the  bold  mag- 
nanimity of  the  statesmen  who  had  planned  and  published 
it ;  whilst  the  whole  current  of  his  feelings  and  wishes  placed 
him  in  determined  and  deadly  opposition  to  the  cause  it 
represented.  And  at  the  side  of  this  man  so  competent  to 
estimate  the  document,  but  withal  so  set  in  heart  against  it, 
might  stand  some  illiterate  ploughman,  himself  unable  to 


120  THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

read  the  instrument  to  which  he  had  listened  with  a  breath- 
less interest,  and  still  less  qualified  to  descry  any  literary 
beauty  it  might  possess.  And  yet  the  man's  whole  soul 
might  be  seen  kindling  with  sympathy  for  its  spirit — in  his 
bosom  alone  it  might  have  met  with  congenial  elements  : 
and  while  others  are  staying  to  praise  its  sentiments,  or  to 
admire  its  phrases,  his  patriotism  might  have  borne  him 
homeward,  to  bid  a  hurried  farewell  to  the  inmates  of  his 
home ;  and  the  morrow,  while  it  found  his  neighbors  still 
busy  in  pondering  the  literature  of  the  act,  might  have 
dawned  upon  that  unlettered  patriot  upholding  the  act  itself 
in  the  tented  field,  and  prepared  to  pour  out  his  blood  in 
enforcement  of  a  document,  whose  words  he  could  not  have 
spelled  out  to  the  children  he  had  forsaken.  And  even  such 
may  be  the  difference  between  an  intimate  acquaintance  with 
the  literature  of  the  Bible,  and  an  honest,  but  withal,  an  un- 
lettered submission  to  the  Bible  as  the  charter  of  our  own 
personal  hope. 

Yet  such  is  the  infatuation  of  mankind  on  the  subject  of 
religion,  that  a  heartless  but  intelligent  admiration  of  the 
Scripture  literature  is  often  supposed  by  its  possessor  to  be 
proof  of  his  advancement  in  true  religion.  And  the  scholar, 
blinded  by  vain-glory,  may  go  on  flattering  himself  and 
astounding  his  age,  with  the  mass  and  splendor  of  his  criti- 
cal acquisitions  in  illustration  of  the  Scriptures,  while  he  is 
farther  from  any  real  knowledge  of  its  contents  than  the 
ignorant  slave,  whose  range  of  knowledge  never  extended 
to  the  reading  of  one  word  in  the  pages  of  that  volume,  but 
who  throws  himself  back  on  his  couch,  cheered  in  his  dying 
hour,  penetrated  to  the  heart,  and  sanctified,  and  saved,  by 
the  truths  of  that  Bible  which  was  known  to  him  only  from 
the  lips  of  others. 

Before  overvaluing,  as  we  are  too  prone  to  do,  the  results 
of  biblical  criticism,  let  us  remember  that  a  thorough  ac- 
quaintance with  the  original  dialect  of  an  evangelist,  and  a 
perfect  and  most  applauded  familiarity  with  the  customs  of 
the  age  and  its  phrases,  and  with  the  scenery  and  costume 
of  the  biblical  narrative,  if  we  may  so  speak,  can  after  all  do 
nothing  more,  than  bring  up  the  possessor  of  it  to  a  level, 
in  point  of  intelligence  and  endowments,  as  a  skilful  inter- 
preter, with  the  bigoted  Pharisee,  who  had  often  heard  our 
Saviour  himself  speak  :  yet  that  man,  learned  as  he  might 
be  in  his  own  national  Scriptures,  and  with  all  his  perfect 


NEEDED    FOR    HER    RISING    MINISTRY.  121 

I 

and  prompt  apprehension  as  to  our  Lord's  meaning,  seeing 
as  he  did  the  Saviour's  ideas  at  once,  and  without  the  aid 
of  glossary  or  grammar,  believed  not — heard  not  aright,  and 
in  truth  knew  not  the  gospel,  because  of  the  state  of  his 
heart,  which  made  him,  having  eyes,  to  see  not,  and,  having 
ears,  to  hear  not.  And  even  thus,  the  man  who  in  our  own 
times  should  pride  himself  on  advantages  confessed  to  be 
inferior  to  those  of  the  Hebrew  doctor,  and  who,  neglectful 
of  the  state  of  his  heart,  would  forsooth  impose  upon  all  oth- 
ers the  interpretation  given  by  his  own  transcendent  schol- 
arship, may  well  be  reminded,  that,  with  all  his  science  and 
with  all  his  talent,  he  may  be  as  ignorant  of  the  principles 
of  Christ's  gospel,  as  was  that  contented  and  ignorant  Phar- 
isee ;  and  before  allowing  him  to  take,  in  grave  dignity,  his 
seat  as  an  ermined  and  stalled  doctor  in  our  schools,  we  call 
on  him  to  show  that  he  has  reached  even  the  attainments  of 
those,  whom  Paul  styled  "  babes  in  Christ."  Let  it  not 
be  supposed  that  we  would  decry  learning,  or  underrate  its 
value  in  the  study  of  the  Scriptures.  We  seek  now  but  to 
bring  forward  the  cautionary  truth,  that  the  teachings  of  the 
Spirit  are  yet  more  necessary — that  they  are  indispensable. 
Another  and  varied  form  in  which  the  same  pitiable  delu- 
sion, the  mere  religion  of  the  intellect,  displays  itself,  is  in 
the  pride  of  orthodoxy.  A  man  may  have  succeeded  in  de- 
vising a  correct  system  of  theology,  guarded  by  apposite 
texts,  and  fenced  around  with  the  authority  of  great  names  ; 
and  may  deem  the  post  which  he  now  holds  to  be  the  very 
citadel  and  heart  of  religious  truth  :  and  yet  of  true  piety 
the  man  may  be  utterly  destitute.  The  delusion  is  found 
as  well  in  the  hearers  as  in  the  teachers  of  the  church ;  and 
many,  there  is  cause  to  fear,  content  themselves  thus  with 
the  truth  dissevered  from  the  love  and  the  life  of  the  truth. 
They  hold  the  verity  of  the  Scripture  indeed,  but  it  is  not 
the  living,  and  acting,  and  controlling  truth — the  laborious, 
self-denying,  and  heavenly-minded  truth,  as  it  is  in  Jesus, 
received  by  the  installation  of  Christ  himself  in  the  heart,  as 
inmate  and  master  of  it,  and  as  ruler  over  the  conduct.  It 
is  the  truth  preserved  as  by  Egyptian  art,  heartless  and  dis-  * 
embowelled — a  varnished  and  painted  mummy,  where  are 
the  lineaments  and  the  hues  of  life  ;  but  the  warmth,  the 
energy,  the  soul,  are  fled ;  and  the  true  votary  of  Christ 
finds  there  no  fellow-feeling,  and  to  the  out-gushings  of  his 
sanctified  affection  "  there  is  no  voice,  nor  any  that  answer," 

17 


122  THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

and  he  goes  his  way  saddened  from  the  voiceless  and  life- 
less image  of  his  Master.  With  such  mistaken  apprehen- 
sions of  religion,  it  is  possible  for  us  to  constitute  ourselves 
the  very  sentinels  of  orthodoxy,  descrying  and  denouncing 
the  first  stirrings  of  heresy,  as  it  peeps  and  mutters  from 
the  earth ;  while  the  heart  is  unhumbled  and  carnal,  our 
devotion  is  but  a  burdensome  form,  and  the  world  reigns 
supreme  in  our  affections.  And  thus  may  we,  proudly 
standing  before  the  churches,  like  the  scholastic  doctors  of 
the  dark  ages,  rejoice  in  the  title  of  the  Mallets  of  Heresy  ; 
whilst  before  God  we  stand  ourselves  impeached  of  hetero- 
doxy as  to  the  first  and  greatest  of  the  commandments — • 
practical  errorists  as  to  the  first  principles  of  the  Divine  Life. 

Into  this  false  form  of  religion  it  is  but  too  easy  for  the 
heedless  student  to  descend;  if  he  do  not,  according  to  the 
injunction  of  Jude,  praying  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  keep  him- 
self in  the  love  of  God. 

Yet  let  it  not  be  suggested  that  studies  so  rife  with  dan- 
ger might  wisely  be  omitted.  It  were  easy  to  show  that 
these  evils  are  the  growth  of  a  heart  which  in  any  situation 
will  find  the  occasions  of  stumbling,  and  minister  to  itself 
sources  of  temptation  in  every  scene.  We  might  show  the 
evils  which  beset  the  duty  of  pastoral  visitation,  and  how 
prone  the  ambassador  of  Heaven  may  there  be  to  sink  into 
a  mere  caterer  of  frivolous  gossip  and  petty  scandal  ; — we 
might  show  the  perils  of  ministerial  activity  in  behalf  of  the 
benevolent  enterprises  of  the  day,  and  how  easily  the  zeal 
of  the  pastor  thus  engaged  may  sink  into  a  calculating  and 
heartless  bustle  ; — we  might  discover  danger  even  in  the 
course  of  the  pastor,  who  rejoices  in  the  many  conversions 
that  attend  his  ministry,  and  how  the  affection  of  his  people 
may  become  to  him  the  incitement  of  vanity,  and  in  them 
an  idolatrous  forgetfulness  of  the  God  who  prepared  the  in- 
strument, and  gave  its  whole  success — until  it  would  be  seen, 
that  every  work  of  good,  and  even  the  elevations  of  heart 
found  in  the  closet  while  communing  with  God,  ministered 
temptation ;  and  that  the  man  who  had  been  caught  up  to 
the  third  heaven,  and  seen  the  visions  of  God,  needed  the 
buffetings  of  a  thorn  in  the  flesh,  lest  the  visions  should  un- 
duly exalt  him.  Yet  the  peril  accompanying  those  visions 
did  not  destroy  their  value.  No,  knowledge  is  to  be  sought, 
although  it  has  its  snares ;  and  religion  is  to  be  studied, 
although  the  student  needs  to  be  watchful  over  his  own 


NEEDED    FOR    HER    RISING    MINISTRY.  123 

spirit.  And  how,  by  the  grace  of  God,  scholarship  may  be 
combined  with  piety,  has  been  sufficiently  shown  in  the 
former  ages  of  the  church.  In  Owen  might  be  seen  an  in- 
stance of  varied  and  profound  attainments  united  with  the 
most  thorough  study  of  his  own  heart ;  and  the  man  who 
moved  into  the  field  of  polemic  theology  among  the  most 
formidable  of  combatants,  with  the  dust  of  many  libraries 
upon  him,  is  yet  found  holding  communion  in  his  practical 
writings  with  the  heart  of  the  unlettered  Christian ;  and  the 
delighted  reader  wonders  at  the  vivid  and  accurate  portrait- 
ure of  his  own  feelings,  drawn  by  one  whose  literary  pur- 
suits and  whose  political  activity  did  not  trench  on  his  habits 
of  private  devotion,  or  prevent  his  prayerful  examination  of 
his  own  heart  and  way.  In  Baxter  we  see  how  familiarity 
with  the  most  abstruse  researches  of  metaphysical  specula- 
tion may  yet  consist  with  eminent  devotedness  as  a  pastor 
and  surpassing  usefulness — and  a  style  which  in  his  practical 
writings  speaks  to  the  heart  of  all  classes,  as  with  a  burning 
vehemence.  Edwards  might  be  quoted  as  a  model  of  patient 
and  profound  investigation — the  mighty  taskings  of  a  mighty 
intellect,  united  with  childlike  humility,  great  holiness,  and 
the  widest  and  most  enduring  usefulness.  Of  Leighton  we 
might  speak  as  exhibiting  the  union  of  classical  refinement 
and  a  style  of  admirable  clearness  and  simplicity  with  an  an- 
gelic elevation  and  sweetness  of  sentiment,  that  seem  to  throw 
over  his  pages  the  very  spirit  of  the  Scriptures.  And  to  Pas- 
cal we  might  refer  as  a  sufficient  proof,  did  he  stand  alone  (and, 
thanks  be  to  God,  alone  he  does  not  stand),  how  science, 
and  genius,  and  literature,  may  become  the  meek  handmaids 
of  religion ;  and  how  an  intellect  of  the  very  highest  order, 
and  philosophical  attainments  which,  for  his  age,  and  under 
the  circumstances  of  their  acquirement,  lifted  him  above  most 
of  our  race,  may  be  united  to  a  childlike  docility  and  humility, 
and  an  earnest  and  spiritual  piety,  such  as  have  not  often 
blessed  the  world  apart  and  disconnected,  and  which  combin- 
ed, as  they  were  in  him,  proved  that  God  did  indeed  make 
man  but  a  little  lower  than  the  angels.  And  the  time  would 
fail  to  tell  the  lights  of  our  own  era — of  Henry  Martyn,  of 
our  own  Carey,  and  Hall,  and  Ryland,  and  Fuller,  and  of 
the  long  and  resplendent  line  of  witnesses,  whose  history 
shows  how  mind  may  be  tasked  and  stored,  while  it  is  sanc- 
tified ;  and  how  the  culture  of  the  heart  may  keep  equal 
pace  with  that  of  the  intellect. 


124  THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

No — these  examples  and  a  vast  cloud  of  like  witnesses 
admonish  us,  that  the  evils  already  alluded  to  are  not  the 
necessary  or  inseparable  results  of  knowledge,  and  that  the 
church  needs,  and  may  profit  by,  the  culture  of  the  mind  in 
her  pastors,  great  as  may  be  the  dangers  attending  that  cul- 
ture. 

II.  From  the  future  influence,  it  was  said,  as  well  as  from 
the  present  employments  of  the  rising  ministry,  we  might 
infer  the  need  of  prayer  in  their  behalf  for  the  outpourings 
of  the  Spirit.  How  large  an  amount  of  moral  power  is  to 
emanate  from  the  inmates  of  these  walls,  eternity  alone  can 
make  manifest.  But  much  has  already  been  done  by  this 
and  similar  institutions.  And  as  we  see  the  giant  strides 
of  our  nation  in  power,  and  arts,  and  wealth,  and  how  fast 
her  moral  needs  are  outstripping  the  preparations  for  her 
moral  culture,  and  how  rapidly  her  villages  and  settlements 
are  outgrowing  the  largest  efforts  of  the  church  in  their  be- 
half, we  have  reason  to  pray  that  the  resources  of  that 
church  may  be  increased.  We  have  cause  to  pray  for  the 
men  who  shall  arise  to  mould  and  guide  the  coming  age, 
that  they  may  be  of  high  spiritual  endowments,  and  trained 
by  habits  of  devotedness  and  energy  for  the  great  and  diffi- 
cult work  before  them.  The  young  men  here  taught  will 
bear  no  limited  sway  among  the  pastors  of  the  next  genera- 
tion. If  you  would  have  them  men  like  Samuel  Pearce, 
whose  holy  love  shall  burn  in  their  memory  upon  the 
hearts  of  the  churches,  you  must  have  them  men  who,  like 
Pearce,  shall  even  in  the  Theological  Seminary  be  marked 
by  eminent  prayerfulness.  Upon  them  in  part  will  it  de- 
pend, under  God,  whether  the  glorious  revivals  which  have 
distinguished  this  favored  nation  shall  go  on,  until  they  have 
overspread  and  sanctified  the  land.  Upon  them,  in  their 
station,  will  be  suspended  the  religious  welfare,  and  neces- 
sarily therefore  the  political  well-being,  in  no  small  degree, 
of  your  children — the  race  that  are  rising  to  occupy  your 
homes  and  your  sanctuaries.  It  will  be  for  them  to  aid  in 
determining  the  question,  of  such  fearful  importance  and 
now  in  the  course  of  solution,  whether  this  nation,  trained 
for  self-government  by  moral  and  religious  culture,  shall 
retain  unimpaired  the  liberty  it  has  inherited  ;  or,  whether 
it  shall  plunge  itself  into  the  most  cruel  of  all  slavery,  under 
the  deaf  and  bloody  despotism  of  the  mob.  Their  faithful- 
ness will  uphold  and  extend,  or  tbeir  treachery  embarrass 


NEEDED    FOR    HER    RISING    MINISTRY.  125 

I 

and  break  up,  the  great  instrumentalities,  the  moral  ma- 
chinery, now  at  work  in  this  nation  for  the  conversion  of 
the  world.  And  while  busied  in  thus  caring  for  distant 
nations,  it  will  be  for  them  to  see  to  it,  that  our  American 
Israel,  in  going  forth  against  the  more  remote  enemies  of 
the  Cross,  see  not,  like  the  men  of  Ai,  as  she  turns  back  to 
her  own  homes,  the  flames  arising  from  the  face  of  her  own 
land,  overspread  and  consuming  by  the  fires  of  superstition 
or  atheism.  From  within  these  walls  are  to  go  forth  a  por- 
tion of  the  needed  missionaries  to  heathen  lands,  and  of  the 
translators  who  shall  give  to  the  pagan  in  his  own  tongue 
the  Book  of  God.  To  some  of  them,  as  they  go  forth  pub- 
lishing to  all  the  Bible  given  for  all,  to  the  world  the  Savi- 
our who  died  for  the  world,  and  to  all  flesh  the  Spirit  that 
is  yet  to  be  poured  out  upon  all  flesh,  it  may  be  reserved  to 
win  in  the  perilous  onset  the  honors  of  an  early  grave,  and 
perhaps  of  a  cruel  martyrdom.  As  in  the  Pentecostal 
church  were  seen  gathered  the  representatives  of  many  and 
distant  lands,  even  thus  may  soon  be  assembled  within  these 
walls  the  representatives,  by  anticipation,  of  many  a  heathen 
tribe — the  heralds  who  shall  go  forth  to  regions  widely  re- 
mote, casting  over  the  broad  earth  the  one  band  of  the  gos- 
pel, and  knitting  around  all  its  tribes  the  ties  of  a  common 
brotherhood.  Certain  it  is,  that  the  doings  and  spirit  of 
each  one  here  will  have  an  influence  for  good  or  for  evil  on 
myriads  through  eternity.  May  God  by  his  Spirit  forbid, 
that  the  influence  thus  exerted  by  any  one  of  us  should  be 
that  of  the  insincere  or  the  loitering ! 

III.  Lastly,  let  us  for  a  moment  turn  your  thoughts  to  the 
consequent  duty  of  being  found  earnest  in  prayer  for  the 
rising  pastors  and  evangelists  of  your  churches.  To  qualify 
for  duties  so  vast,  and  to  guard  against  dangers  so  many  and 
great,  what  shall  avail  but  the  Spirit  in  its  sevenfold  energies? 
And  if  prayer  may  win  the  descent  of  that  Spirit,  how  evi- 
dently is  it  the  duty  of  all  to  be  found  offering  it!  Of  the 
unconverted  here  shall  we  ask  it.  Their  cry,  alas,  is  going 
up  with  fearful  accord  and  constancy,  that  God  and  his  Spirit 
should  depart  from  us ;  for  they  desire  not  the  knowledge  of 
his  ways.  And  your  prayer  may  be  heard  to  your  own 
undoing.  Neither  for  ourselves  nor  for  you  let  it  prevail ; 
and  would  that  it  were  no  longer  offered.  But  of  those  here 
who  have  hope  in  Christ,  are  we  not  entitled  to  expect  that 
they  will  not  be  found  wanting? 


126  THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH 

For  the  sake  of  the  church,  then,  we  beseech  not  of  min- 
isters alone  but  of  all  Christians,  their  prayers.  How  great 
is  the  power  upon  her  happiness,  and  honor,  and  increase, 
of  an  enlightened  and  spiritual  ministry.  Alas,  what  pastor 
shall  become  such,  or  continue  such,  if  his  brethren  sustain 
not  his  feeble  arms  by  their  own  hands  outstretched  heaven- 
wards? The  charge  of  barrenness  is  by  the  Christians  of 
our  own  age  made  to  bear  too  exclusively  upon  the  ministry. 
Know  ye  not,  brethren,  that  palsied  limbs  will  send  back 
chilled  and  sluggish  blood  to  the  heart?  You  would  have 
an  efficient  ministry — become  a  praying  people.  And  as 
you  value  your  own  growth  in  grace,  and  your  own  instruc- 
tion and  comfort ;  as  you  desire  the  conversion  of  your  chil- 
dren and  friends  ;  as  you  prize  the  union,  and  stability,  and 
prosperity,  of  your  churches,  be  more  faithful  in  the  secret 
and  devout  remembrance  of  your  rising  pastors  and  evange- 
lists. And  how  lovely  and  how  excellent  is  a  devoted  and 
holy  church  !  Thin  its  members  as  you  may — take  from  it 
worldly  influence,  and  wealth,  and  talent — but  leave  it  bright 
in  the  lustre  of  eminent  holiness  ;  and  does  it  not  become  a 
home  to  which  the  heart  of  the  Christian  turns  with  instinc- 
tive and  growing  affection  ?  How  solemn  the  rites— how  full 
of  quiet,  unpretending  power,  the  example  of  such  a  commu- 
nity— how  close  the  union,  and  how  celestial  the  peace  of 
believers  thus  distinguished  !  And  who  that  has  seen  such 
a  flock  "  through  quiet  valleys  led,"  in  which  the  pastor 
moved  as  a  father  or  brother  in  the  midst  of  the  united  family, 
and  there  was  the  oneness  of  interest,  the  ready  and  guile- 
less confidence,  of  some  rural  homestead,  inhabited  by  a 
numerous  and  affectionate  household,  but  has  felt  that  he  has 
seen  the  image  and  the  earnest  of  heaven  ?  Would,  brethren, 
that  every  church  represented  in  this  assembly  might  become 
such.  But  a  few  indolent  wishes,  a  few  fervent  prayers,  a 
few  passionate  vows,  will  not  effect  it.  Self-denial,  faith, 
love  to  Christ,  forbearance,  mutual  and  persevering  prayer 
can,  with  the  blessing  of  God,  effect  it.  All  these  are  the 
fruits  of  the  Spirit,  and  for  that  Spirit  as  descending  on  the 
churches  of  our  land,  and  on  their  ministry,  and  on  their 
schools  of  theology,  let  us  pray  diligently  and  habitually. 

Yet  another  reason  for  entreating  the  prayers  of  the  church 
in  behalf  of  her  pastors  and  guides,  is  that  the  honor  of 
Christ  is  involved  in  their  character.  Paul,  in  alluding  to 
the  messengers  of  the  churches,  has  without  hesitation  termed 


NEEDED    FOR    HER    RISING    MINISTRY.  127 

them  w  the  glory  of  Christ."  The  ministers  of  the  gospel, 
trained  or  training,  are  the  ambassadors  of  our  Saviour.  It 
is  for  the  honor  of  the  King  and  his  whole  kingdom  that 
they  be  men  of  Christian  skill  and  integrity — that  their 
embassy  be  successful,  and  their  persons  inviolate  of  the 
enemy.  They  bear  the  name,  they  represent  the  person, 
and  plead  the  cause  of  our  common  Redeemer.  For  his 
sake,  then,  and  the  love  of  Christ  constraining  you,  pray 
for  them.  The  petition  offered  in  secret  may  sustain  the 
Christian  faithfulness,  that  the  flattery  presented  to  your 
pastor  or  brother  would  only  wound:  the  infirmity  which 
your  censures  have  assailed  in  vain,  may  be  healed  by  your 
secret  intercessions.  And  the  gain  is  Christ's.  u  Inasmuch 
as  ye  have  done  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of  these,"  he  will 
say,  "  ye  have  done  it  unto  me."  How  delightful  would  it 
be  to  discover,  in  the  great  day  of  revelation  and  retribution, 
that  your  prayers,  unknown  of  men,  but  marked  by  your 
Father  who  seeth  in  secret,  had  given  new  strength  to  the 
servants  of  the  cross,  nerved  their  drooping  courage,  broken 
the  edge  of  difficulty,  bedimmed  the  glare  of  temptation, 
calmed  a  throbbing  heart,  and  restored  serenity  to  a  troubled 
bosom.  Delightful  indeed  will  it  be  to  find,  that  in  your 
closet  the  impulse  had  been  given  which  sent  new  force  and 
life  into  the  heart  of  your  pastorship.  But  far  more  delight- 
ful will  it  be,  to  learn  that  Christ  had  thus  been  honored — 
that  through  this  means  new  glories  had  been  gathered  around 
the  brow  that  is  yet  to  wear  the  many  crowns  of  earth ;  and 
that,  instead  of  wounding  your  Master  in  the  house  of  his 
friends,  you  had  been  honored  to  crown  him  in  the  persons 
of  his  ministers. 

And  how  vast  the  range  of  blessing  your  prayers  may  take  ! 
Who  can  tell  the  history  or  trace  the  wanderings  of  yon 
cloud  that  sails  in  light  and  glory  across  the  sky,  or  indicate 
from  what  source  its  bosom  was  filled  with  the  vapors  it  is 
yet  to  shed  back  upon  the  earth?  Perhaps,  though  now 
wandering  over  the  tilled  field  and  the  peopled  village,  its 
stores  were  drawn  from  some  shaded  fountain  in  the  deep 
forest,  where  the  eye  of  man  has  scarce  ever  penetrated. 
In  silent  obscurity  that  fountain  yielded  its  pittance,  and  did 
its  work  of  preparing  to  bless  the  far-off  lands  that  shall  yet 
be  glad  for  it.  And  even  thus  it  is  with  the  descending 
Spirit.  Little  do  we  know  often  of  the  secret  origin  of  the 
dews  of  blessing  that  descend  on  the  churches  of  God.     In 


128   THE  PRAYERS  OF  THE  CHURCH  NEEDED,  ETC. 

the  recesses  of  some  lowly  cottage,  in  the  depths  of  some 
humble  heart,  may  be  going  on  the  work  of  pious  interces- 
sion, in  answer  to  which  the  grace  of  Heaven  descends  on 
us  and  on  our  children,  on  the  labors  of  the  wondering  and 
joyful  pastor,  and  on  the  hearts  of  the  far  heathen,  until  the 
wilderness  and  the  solitary  place  are  glad  for  them.  The 
time  is  to  come  when  from  every  home,  brethren,  such  prayer 
shall  arise.  Let  us  sustain  and  swell,  in  our  day,  the  as- 
cending volume  of  supplication  that  is  yet  to  roll  around  the 
globe,  and  never  to  fail,  until  over  a  world  regenerated  and 
purified  the  morning  stars  shall  again  shout  for  joy,  and  the 
earth,  emerging  from  her  long  and  disastrous  eclipse  of  sin 
and  wrath,  shall  yet  again  walk  the  heavens  in  her  unsullied 
brightness — a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  wherein  dwelleth 
righteousness.  Till  then  we  have  no  reason,  no  right,  to 
intermit  our  supplications  ;  and  it  is  only  when,  in  the  final 
accomplishment  of  David's  prayer,  his  greater  Son  shall  have 
come  to  reign  king  over  all  lands,  and  to  have  dominion  from 
sea  to  sea — it  is  not  until  that  prayer  shall  have  been  made 
for  him  continually,  and  he  shall  daily  have  been  praised,  that 
the  believer  remaining  on  earth  will  be  warranted  to  adopt 
to  his  own  lips  the  touching  and  triumphant  close  appended 
to  the  supplications  of  the  crowned  Singer  of  Israel :  "  The 

PRAYERS  OF  DAVID  THE  SON  OF  JESSE  ARE  ENDED.'' 


THE   CHURCH   OF    CHRIST   THE   HOME   AND 
HOPE  OF  THE  FREE. 

(A  Discourse  preached  at  the  Recognition  of  the  South  Bap.  Church,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y., 
July  13,  1845.) 

USTAND  FAST,  THEREFORE,  IN  THE  LIBERTY  WHEREWITH  CHRIST  HATH 
MADE  US  FREE,  AND  BE  NOT  ENTANGLED  AGAIN  WITH  THE  YOKE  OF  BOND- 
AGE."—Gal.  V.   1. 

The  Jewish  church  had  been  a  state  of  preparation  for 
higher  privileges  and  larger  illumination,  that  were,  as  yet, 
beyond  them.  Paul  elsewhere,  therefore,  speaks  of  that  dis- 
pensation as  being  a  condition  of  pupilage,  such  as  the  heir 
undergoes  during  the  season  of  minority,  when,  though  the 
heir,  he  was  treated  but  as  a  servant,  and  was  kept  in  sub- 
jection. The  new  dispensation  ended  this,  and  the  burdens 
and  bonds  of  the  old  ceremonies  were  then  abrogated,  and 
the  people  of  God  were  welcomed  into  the  rights  and  free- 
dom of  adult  heirship.  But  Judaizing  teachers  wished  to 
undo  all  this.  Paul  resented  it,  and  protested  against  it. 
He  charged  the  disciples  in  the  Galatian  church,  to  guard 
with  all  tenacity,  firmness  and  jealousy,  this  glorious  free- 
dom which  Christ  had  won  for  them,  and  conferred  upon 
them.  It  was  a  gift  steeped  in  the  atoning  blood  of  their 
Divine  Liberator,  a  conquest  won  for  them  upon  the  high 
places  of  the  field  in  Gethsemane  and  Golgotha.  They 
were  to  be  meek  indeed ;  but  their  meekness  was  not  to 
show  itself  in  putting  their  necks  passively  under  a  burden, 
which,  as  Peter  himself,  the  great  apostle  of  the  circumcision, 
had  said,  "  Neither  our  fathers  nor  we  were  able  to  bear."* 
Nor  should  they,  in  deference  to  any  teachers,  or  precedents, 
or  traditions,  allow  themselves  to  "  be  entangled  again  with 
the  yoke  of  bondage."  The  Church  of  Christ  had,  by  her 
Sovereign  and  her  Saviour,  been  made  free,  and  it  was  but 

*  Acts  xv.  10. 
18 


130  THE    CHURCH    OF    CHRIST 

a  proof  of  due  fidelity  to  her  Head,  and  of  due  gratitude  to 
her  Deliverer,  that  she  should  remain  free.  Calvary  had 
bought  them,  not  only  exemption  from  the  curse  of  the  law, 
as  a  means  of  justification,  but  deliverance  from  the  entire 
ritual  of  Judaism.  We  come  not,  my  brethren,  into  the 
church  of  the  redeemed,  as  some  Jewish  Christians  in  the 
first  century  contended,  as  proselytes  to  the  Jew,  but  as  dis- 
ciples to  the  Nazarene.  Our  ministers  are  not  the  heirs  of 
Aaron,  nor  our  ordinances  the  mere  offshoots  of  Jewish  cere- 
monies. The  Saviour  had,  indeed,  been  the  trunk  and  the 
root  of  David,  in  all,  even  the  earliest  ages,  and  in  the  Pa- 
triarchal as  in  the  Levitical,  and  in  the  Levitical  as  in  the 
Christian  dispensation ;  and  when  the  local,  national,  and 
transient  church  of  Judaism  broke  itself  off  from  that  stem, 
like  a  branch  broken  off  from  its  parent  trunk — we  of  the 
new,  the  Gentile  church,  were  grafted  into  its  place  ;  but  we 
came  to  possess  privileges  it  never  knew,  and  to  inherit  and 
grasp  promises  which  it  had  only  beheld  at  a  vast  distance. 
The  Jewish  church  had  been  grafted  into  Christ,  under  the 
restrictions  of  an  infant  heirship  ;  the  Christian  church  are 
grafted  into  the  same  Christ,  with  the  liberties  of  an  adult 
heirship.  Thus  the  graft  was  made  a  new  branch,  with  new 
twigs  shooting  from  it,  and  other  foliage  and  other  fruit 
than  those  that  had  clothed  the  broken  and  fallen  branch  of 
the  Jewish  church. 

In  a  land  blest,  as  is  ours,  with  a  freedom  of  which  we 
are,  perhaps,  at  times  unwisely  boastful — having  seen,  but 
little  more  than  a  week  since,  the  anniversary  of  our  nation- 
al independence  celebrated  through  our  broad  land  by  one 
storm  of  joy,  and  living  as  we  do  in  an  age  of  democratic 
tendencies,  when  the  rising  surges  of  popular  power  are  swel- 
ling and  dashing  around  the  base  of  the  oldest  thrones  of  the 
old  world  ;  it  seems  not  unsuitable  or  unseasonable  to  think 
and  speak  together  of  Christian  liberty,  and  to  remember, 
amid  the  tumults,  and  plans,  and  fears  of  our  times,  how 
much  the  Church  of  Christ  has  to  do  in  realizing,  diffusing 
and  establishing  true  Freedom.  Let  us  remind  others,  and 
recall  to  our  own  recollection,  how  little  that  much  used  and 
much  abused,  that  idolized  and  blasphemed  name,  Liberty, 
is  really  understood  or  enjoyed  out  of  the  pale  of  the  Church 
of  the  Living  God. 

Let  us  now  consider 

I.  The  nature  of  true  Freedom. 


THE  HOME  AND  HOPE  OF  THE  FREE.        131 

II.  The  Church  of  Christ  as  the  Home  of  the  Free,  where 
alone,  Liberty  in  its  highest  sense  is  to  be  enjoyed. 

III.  The  Church  of  Christ  as  the  Hope  of  the  Free,  whence 
alone,  the  ultimate  and  universal  emancipation  of  the  race  is 
to  proceed. 

When  our  Saviour  spoke  of  this  matter  to  the  Jews,  they 
resented  it,  and  replied  with  more  zeal  than  truth,  that  they 
had  never  been  in  bondage  to  any  man.*  It  was  scarce  fit- 
ting language  for  the  men  whose  national  history  began  with 
the  long  and  hard  servitude  to  Egypt ;  whose  fathers  had 
hung  their  harps  on  the  willows  of  Babylon  during  a  tedious 
captivity  of  seventy  years  ;  who  had  been  peeled  and  scatter- 
ed by  the  tyranny  of  the  princes  of  the  royal  family  of  An- 
tiochus  ;  and  who  were,  at  the  very  hour  of  uttering  the  boast, 
licking  the  dust  beneath  the  kingly  feet  of  Herod,  the  Idu- 
mean,  and  fretting  and  biting,  like  prisoned  wolves,  at  the 
chain  of  the  Roman,  unable  to  break,  and  yet  most  loth  to 
bear  it.  And  it  is  so  in  our  day  :  men  may  talk  much  of 
freedom  that  are  as  yet  destitute  of  its  best  privileges,  and 
ignorant  of  its  first  principles.  What,  then,  is  true  free- 
dom 1 

I.  Freedom  is  the  absence  of  all  restraint.  A  mere  created 
and  dependent  being  cannot  enjoy  absolute  and  unqualified 
freedom,  because  his  finite  and  dependent  nature  necessarily 
imposes  certain  restraints  which  he  cannot  surmount  or 
escape.  Surrounded,  again,  as  we  are,  by  others  (our  fellow- 
creatures),  who  all  have  their  rights  and  wishes  as  well  as 
ourselves,  our  just  freedom  consists  in  the  absence  of  all 
such  restraints  as  are  not  necessary  to  prevent  our  doing 
wrong  to  the  happiness  and  rights  of  others  of  our  fellow- 
men.  The  owner  of  one  of  these  houses  is  free  to  make 
what  use  he  will  of  his  own  habitation,  that  does  not  render 
it  a  nuisance  and  injury  to  his  neighbors.  But  because  he 
is  free  to  use  his  own  property  at  will,  he  is  not  free  to  set 
it  on  tire,  and  thus  involve  an  entire  street  in  the  conflagra- 
tion. The  passenger  in  one  of  the  ships  lying  at  our  wharves, 
is  free  to  occupy  his  cabin,  and,  for  the  time,  it  is  his  castle ; 
but  he  is  not  free  to  scuttle  it,  and  sink  his  fellow-voyagers 
along  with  himself. 

Again,  we  are  beings  constituted  with  reason  and  con- 
science, and  our  freedom  cannot  be  called  rational  freedom, 

*  John  viii.  33. 


132  THE    CHURCH    OF    CHRIST 

if  employed  in  contravention  of  the  dictates  of  right  reason , 
or  in  known  disregard  of  truth,  which  is  to  be  the  standard 
by  which  reason  acts,  or  in  opposition  to  the  warnings  of 
conscience,  the  monitor  within  us.  We  are  not  as  much  free 
to  follow  error  as  to  follow  truth.  We  are  not  free  to  de- 
fend wrong  as  well  as  right.  It  is  putting  a  violence  on  our- 
selves, on  the  nature  within  us,  to  make  this  perverse  use  of 
our  freedom.  It  is  rather  the  ruin  of  liberty.  It  is  virtually 
enslaving  the  soul,  to  put  a  force  upon  right  reasor  and  an 
enlightened  conscience,  by  resisting  their  dictates. 

Nor  is  ours  a  desirable  freedom,  unless  when  used  to  ad- 
vance the  happiness  both  of  ourselves  and  our  neighbors. 
The  madman  left  to  hack  away  his  limbs,  or  to  destroy  his 
own  life  by  plunging  from  a  precipice,  or  to  scatter  fire- 
brands, arrows  and  death  upon  others,  and  say,  "  Am  I  not 
in  sport?"* — and  the  child,  left  in  uncurbed  freedom  to  its 
own  ignorance  and  waywardness,  to  glean  in  our  streets  and 
lanes  a  precocious  wickedness — neither  of  them  enjoys  a  lib- 
erty that  is  desirable,  because  in  both  cases  the  freedom  is 
used  to  ultimate  misery  instead  of  happiness.  Of  a  just,  ra- 
tional, and  desirable  freedom,  these  are  then  the  limits.  To 
be  truly  a  good,  freedom  must  be  guided  by  truth  as  its 
standard,  and  aim  at  real  happiness  as  its  end.  We  are  not, 
of  right,  free  either  to  follow  falsehood  or  to  speak  it.  We 
are  not  truly  free  to  work  out  our  own  or  another's  misery 
and  ruin. 

Liberty,  it  appears  then,  is  really  a  relative  thing.  It  must 
conform  to  truth  and  justice  as  its  rule,  and  conduce  to  hap- 
piness as  its  end.  Where  is  the  standard  of  the  truth  that 
must  guide  it,  and  where  the  source  and  measure  of  the  hap- 
piness at  which  it  must  aim  ?  We  answer,  both  are  found  in 
God.  His  will,  as  that  will  is  intimated  in  creation  around 
us,  as  it  is  developed  in  the  conscience  within  us,  and  as  it  is 
fully  disclosed  in  the  book  of  revelation  before  us — this,  the 
law  and  purpose  of  our  Maker,  is  the  one  perfect  standard  of 
truth,  and  therefore  the  limit  of  freedom.  His  favor  is  the 
only  happiness  any  of  his  creatures  can  know.  To  seek,  to 
learn,  to  serve,  to  see,  and  to  adore  Him,  is  the  bliss  toward 
which  all  nature  struggles  as  its  end,  the  source  of  its  true 
and  abiding  felicity.     And  nought,  therefore,  is  true  freedom, 

*  Prov.  xxvi.  18,  19. 


THE  HOME  AND  HOPE  OF  THE  FREE.       133 

that  does  not  tend  thitherward,  because  no  other  freedom  con- 
duces to  true  happiness. 

One  who  had  never  known  the  sorrows  of  vassalage  and 
captivity — in  youth  free  as  a  shepherd  lad,  and  in  age  enjoy- 
ing the  independence  of  an  absolute  prince,  yet  made  the  lib- 
erty in  which  he  rejoiced,  to  consist  in  subjection  to  God. 
"  And  I  will  walk  at  liberty,"  said  David  ;  "  for  I  seek  thy 
precepts."*  Instead  of  fettering  him,  the  laws  of  Jehovah 
constituted  the  freedom  of  his  soul.  Elsewhere,  therefore, 
he  said,  "When  thou  shalt  enlarge  my  heart,  I  will  run  Jie 
way  of  thy  commandments."!  The  emancipation  of  the  soul 
is  shown  by  its  making  haste  in  the  path  of  pious  obedience. 

Wishing  to  be  more  than  dependent  and  finite  creatures, 
and  aspiring  to  be  as  God,  our  race  lost  freedom,  when  they 
lost  also  truth  and  bliss  in  the  fall  of  Eden.  We  wished  to 
be  free  from  the  Creator,  dependence  on  whom  was  needful 
to  our  existence  and  enjoyment,  just  as  if  a  man  should  wish 
to  make  himself  free  from  and  independent  of  his  limbs,  by 
amputating  them,  and  were  to  proclaim  his  independence  of 
his  eyes  by  plucking  them  from  their  sockets.  Creation 
made  man  dependent  on  his  limbs  and  eyes,  and  still  more 
did  it  make  man  necessarily,  inevitably  and  eternally  depen- 
dent on  his  Creator.  Aiming  at  more  than  he  could  of  right 
claim,  or  could  by  any  possibility  attain,  man  lost  what  he 
already  had.  His  conscience  darkened,  his  passions  inflam- 
ed, his  reason  weakened  ;  he  who  had  scorned  to  be  the  child 
and  servant  of  God  became  the  bondsman  of  sin  and  death, 
the  child  of  wrath,  the  prey  of  Satan,  and  the  heir  of  Hell. 
Well  is  it  for  mankind  that  their  powers  do  not  equal  their  as- 
pirations, and  that  their  freedom  of  action  is  restrained.  Sin 
has,  indeed,  made  this  a  bad  and  sorrowful  world.  But  how 
much  worse,  even  than  it  is,  had  it  been,  were  it  not  for  God's 
restraints  upon  our  race.  The  book  of  history,  the  record 
of  man's  acts,  is  a  dark  volume.  But  the  book  of  man's  pur- 
poses, of  his  "imaginations,  only  evil,  and  that  continually" 
— the  pages  that  will  be  opened  in  the  day  of  judgment,  the 
dread  volume  of  conscience,  and  of  the  hidden  workings  of 
the  heart,  is  a  far  darker  one.  Had  no  God  checked,  and 
curbed  the  race,  the  world  would  have  been  made  a  mere 
hell,  and  human  kind  would  have  been  long  since  demonized, 
Those  unhappy  sufferers,  plagued  and  possessed  by  devils  in 

*  Ps.  cxix.  45.  t  Ps.  cxix.  32. 


134  THE    CHURCH    OF    CHRIST 

the  times  of  our  Saviour,  would  have  been,  not  as  now,  ex- 
ceptions to,  but  examples  of  the  general  rule,  as  to  the  char- 
acter and  condition,  the  tempers  and  the  prospects  of  our 
race.  Even  as  it  is,  the  Destroyer  and  the  Father  of  lies  ex- 
ercises a  fearful  influence  over  us.  The  Scripture  represents 
us  as  his  besotted  dupes,  led  captive  of  him  at  his  will,  danc- 
ing to  the  music  of  our  chains,  and  in  maniacal  delusion, 
working  out  merrily,  and  with  a  strong  hand  and  a  cheerful 
heart,  our  own  eternal  damnation.  Such  is  human  freedom, 
as  the  fall  left  it. 

But  what  Eden  lost,  Calvary  recovered.  When  the  strong 
man,  armed,  kept  his  goods  in  peace,  blessed  be  the  grace 
and  mercy  of  our  God,  a  stronger  than  he,  the  Lord  from 
Heaven,  came  to  disabuse  us  and  to  dispossess  him  ;  and  to 
make  us  free  from  the  tyranny  of  that  fearful  trinity,  self, 
earth,  and  Satan.  To  know  Christ,  is  to  be  restored  to  true 
liberty  and  happiness,  and  hence  he  said,  "  The  truth  shall 
make  you  free."  He  compared  his  own  work  of  human 
liberation  to  the  emancipation  of  a  slave  by  the  son  and  heir. 
"If  the  son,"  he  said,  "  make  you  free,  then  are  ye  free  in- 
deed." The  son  and  not  the  steward  has  the  right  and  the 
power  thus  to  rescue  and  set  at  liberty.  It  was  as  if  he  had 
said  to  the  Jews  :  Moses,  in  whom  ye  trust,  was  but  as  a 
servant  in  God's  house,  and  could  not  emancipate  from  the 
law  ;  but  I  rule  that  house  as  son,  heir  and  master. 

2.  The  worldling  is  not  free.  Can  he,  we  appeal  to  your 
own  hearts,  in  the  courts  and  presence  of  the  heart-searching 
God — can  he,  who  is  tossed  to  and  fro  by  vain  fears,  and 
hopes  as  vain,  the  sport  of  passions  he  can  neither  tame  nor 
satisfy — whose  conscience  is  burdened  with  sin,  whose  recol- 
lections are  haunted  by  busy  remorse — who  sees  the  vanity 
of  the  world  at  times,  and  yet  knows  nothing  better  to  grat- 
ify the  cravings  of  his  heart  as  it  yearns  for  happiness — who 
dreads  death,  and  yet  knows  it  to  be  inevitable — who  looks 
to  the  judgment,  and  feels  himself  unprepared  ;  can  such  a 
man  be  called  free  ?  No  blood  of  atonement  sprinkled  over 
his  aching  conscience — no  smile  of  fatherly  favor  from  the 
throne,  breaking  through  the  gloom  of  affliction,  and  beam- 
ing over  his  beclouded  and  uncertain  path — does  not  all  Na- 
ture and  all  Providence  cry  out  to  him,  as  of  old  the  avenger 
to  the  criminal :  "  What  hast  thou  to  do  with  peace  ?"  Look 
at  the  vaunting  infidel,  that  boasts  of  having  trampled  under 
his  feet  the  vain  terrors  of  revelation  and  eternity,  and  who 


THE  HOME  AND  HOPE  OF  THE  FREE.        135 

arrogates  to  himself  the  lofty  title  of  the  free  thinker — the 
man  whose  thoughts  soar  to  a  more  than  vulgar  freedom,  and 
rove  with  unfettered  wing — is  he  really  the  freeman  he 
claims  to  be  ?  Can  he  always  quench  conscience  and  stifle 
fear  ?  Do  his  blasphemies  annul  the  law,  or  annihilate  the 
lawgiver  and  the  judge  ?  Can  his  delusions  fill  up  the  fiery 
pit,  or  cause  the  Heaven  he  derides  and  neglects  to  vanish, 
as  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision  1  No  ;  he  prides  himself  in 
a  freedom  he  has  not  achieved — he  has  broken,  he  thinks, 
the  thrall  and  servitude  of  conscience  and  Christ,  and  an 
eternal  judgment.  But  it  is  all  the  delusion  of  a  drunken  in- 
fatuation— the  dream  of  a  sleeping  captive,  who  takes  stiong 
drink  when  ready  to  perish,  and  in  the  visions  of  the  night, 
his  prison,  fetters,  and  guards  are  gone  ;  and  he  wakes,  and 
behold  they  are  all  here  again.  A  fiery  gulf  envelopes  and 
awakes  the  sleeper,  and  ends  the  dream  for  ever. 

Look  at  the  free-liver,  the  gay  sensualist,  the  pert  trifler, 
the  wretched  and  misnamed  daughter  of  pleasure :  surely 
these  are  free  ?  Not  so.  They  forget  God,  but  it  is  only 
for  a  time,  and  their  misery  and  their  ruin  is,  that  God  will 
not,  cannot  forget  them.  Wafted  amid  all  their  frivolities 
continually  onward  toward  a  world  of  retribution,  unable  to 
stifle  all  reflection,  and  to  call  up  a  good  hope,  they  laugh, 
they  shout,  they  scheme,  they  build,  they  plant,  and  God  is 
not  in  all  their  thoughts  :  but  His  eye  observes  them,  His 
hand  envelopes  their  most  prolonged  and  reckless  wanderings, 
and  His  bar  gathers  them,  compels  their  submission,  and 
issues  their  irrevocable  and  inevitable  sentence. 

3.  Yet  man  is  so  constituted  that  freedom  he  must  desire. 
Look  at  the  blind  quest  and  gropings  of  our  race  after  free- 
dom— liberty  or  political  deliverance  for  the  state,  and  liberty 
for  the  soul  or  mental  emancipation.  Political  and  mental 
liberation  have  been  the  subject  of  the  most  earnest  aspira- 
tions, of  fierce  strugglings,  and  bloody  sacrifices.  As  be- 
tween man  and  man,  much  may  have  been  gained.  Far  be 
it  from  us  to  forget  or  dispute  these  temporal  blessings,  in 
the  train  of  social  and  spiritual  emancipation.  But  if  between 
man  and  his  God,  there  are  instituted  no  better  and  happier 
relations,  what  is  the  ultimate  gain  to  those  who  must  soon 
quit  the  world  and  its  governments  and  schools,  to  enter 
another  and  eternal  state,  where  these  governments  and 
schools  are  not  to  be  transferred  ?  If,  amid  our  political 
schemings  or  our  social  reforms,  we  seek  not  and  gain  not 


136  THE    CHURCH    OF    CHRIST 

the  liberty  wherewith  Christ  maketh  free,  of  what  avail  are 
the  brief  goods  of  earth,  when  we  miss  the  enduring  blisg 
of  eternity?  The  science  of  our  times  is,  indeed,  in  the 
hands  of  some  of  its  cultivators,  aiming  to  go  further.  It 
would  emancipate  us  of  our  fears  and  responsibilities.  It 
would  screw  God  into  the  laws  of  his  own  material  universe, 
shut  him  up  into  a  sort  of  blind  and  dumb,  physical,  unalter- 
able Fate,  and  make  all  events  and  beings  but  the  blind  de- 
velopment of  physical,  unconscious,  unconscientious  and  irre- 
sponsible laws  of  being.  Pinioned,  thus,  as  in  a  vice,  God  has, 
on  this  theory,  no  freedom  to  act,  apart  from  these  old  mate- 
rial laws.  He  grows  like  a  tree,  and  man  and  history  are  his 
bark  and  leaves.  Man  has  thus  no  individual  futurity,  and 
no  accountability  to  trouble  him,  But  meanwhile,  in  strip- 
ping us  of  our  fears,  these  philosophical  emancipators  have 
torn  from  us  our  hopes.  They  have  made  the  grave  darker 
than  it  was  before  their  philosophy  began  its  teachings,  and 
by  annihilating  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  abolishing 
Providence,  they  have  given  us  up  to  the  hard  servitude  of 
appetite,  license,  mortality  and  despair.  Little  is  there  de- 
sirable in  such  a  freedom  as  this,  that  thrusts  the  race  out 
of  the  immediate  and  paternal  keeping  of  God,  robs  them 
of  a  heaven,  and  assures  them  only  of  a  quiet  and  sleepless 
grave.  It  is  like  talking  of  the  blessed  freedom  of  an  un- 
fledged, unfeathered  nestling,  free  to  be  hurled  from  the  pa- 
rent nest,  free  to  flutter  and  fall  to  the  earth — and  unable  as 
it  is  to  feed,  guide,  and  defend  itself,  free  there  to  lie  and  rot 
into  the  undistinguished  dust.  Give  us  rather  the  freedom 
of  the  sheltering  home  where  God  cherishes  us,  the  free 
guidance  of  the  outstretched  and  parental  wings  fluttering 
over  us,  and  directing  our  upward  way.  Give  us  back  from 
the  yawning  abysses  of  your  vain  philosophy,  our  old  con- 
solations, 

*  *  *  Our  home, 
Our  God,  our  Heaven,  our  all. 

Your  nominal  freedom  from  Providence  is  but  an  insult  to 
the  intellect  and  an  outrage  on  the  heart. 

II.  The  Church  of  Christ  is  the  Home  of  the  Free. 
Here  is  found  the  freedom  sin  has  forfeited,  and  after  which 
governments  and  schools,  revolutions  and  philosophies,  have 
groped  in  vain. 

Now  the  Christian  Church  has  been,  by  many,  regarded  as 


THE    HOME    AND    HOPE    OF    THE    FREE.  137 

the  very  den  of  spiritual  tyranny.  But  as  we  have  already 
and  early  seen,  all  desirable  freedom  resolves  itself  into  that 
which  has  truth  for  its  standard  and  happiness  for  its  results. 
Now  that  gospel,  of  which  the  church  is  the  embodiment,  and 
the  guardian,  and  the  channel,  is  the  great  truth  requisite  to 
meet  the  wants,  solve  the  doubts,  and  heal  the  maladies  of 
our  nature.  It  is  this  gospel  that  secures  our  happiness  amid 
the  trials  of  time,  in  the  terrors  of  death,  and  through  the 
long  cycles  of  eternity.  But  it  may  be  asked,  does  it  not  im- 
pose hard,  unnatural  restraints  ?  It  gives  rather  new  impul- 
ses and  aspirations,  that  fight  with  the  corrupt  and  degrading 
tendencies  of  our  old  and  fallen  nature.  Its  restraints  are 
the  emancipating  struggles  of  a  successful  rebellion  against 
old  tyranny,  the  sacrifices  of  a  glorious  war  of  liberation  and 
revolution. 

1.  The  Church  of  the  Redeemer  is,  be  it  remembered,  of 
right  free,  for  it  is  a  voluntary  association.  Christ  establish- 
ed it.  He  enlists  as  its  members  "  a  people  made  willing  in 
the  day  of  His  power."  Men  are  not  born  into  it  by  birth  in 
a  Christian  nation — they  are  not  forced  into  it  by  pains  and 
penalties,  by  the  fires  of  the  Auto  da  Fe,  and  the  rack  and 
dungeon  of  the  Inquisition.  They  are  not  born  into  it  by  de- 
scent from  a  Christian  parent,  and  lineage  from  a  pious 
household.  To  them  that  believe  on  His  name  He  gives 
power  to  become  the  sons  of  God.  Belief  is  an  untransfera- 
ble, personal,  voluntary  act.  It  is  the  result  of  a  spiritual 
change,  that  turns  them  from  the  idols  of  the  world,  liberates 
them  from  their  old  fears  and  tyranny,  and  makes  them  grate- 
ful subjects  of  their  Liberator  and  Redeemer.  To  perfect 
this  glorious  recovery,  they  put  themselves  under  His  care 
and  guidance  as  their  Ruler.  His  presence  in  the  Church, 
and  the  perpetual  influences  of  the  omnipresent  and  omnipo- 
tent Spirit,  which  He  promised,  as  the  Comforter  and  Teach- 
er of  His  Church,  make  up  the  very  life  of  the  Christian 
Church. 

Much  has  been  said  of  a  visible  Church  on  earth,  contain- 
ing the  Christians  of  a  nation — or  all  nations.  But  in  Scrip- 
ture we  find  but  two  uses  for  the  word  Church.  The  one  de- 
scribes the  great  Invisible  Church,  comprising  all  the  saints 
of  all  dispensations  before  and  since  the  incarnation,  and  em- 
braces the  whole  sacramental  host  of  God's  elect  on  either 
side  the  stream  of  death — the  dead,  the  living,  and  those  yet 
unborn.     The  other,  a  Visible  Church,  is  described  in  the 

19 


138  THE    CHURCH   OF    CHRIST 

New  Testament  as  a  collection  of  individual  disciples,  who 
come  together  in  one  place  for  the  word  and  ordinances  of 
Christ.  Hence  the  Scriptures  do  not  speak  of  a  national 
Christian  Church  of  Judea,  or  of  Asia  Minor,  but  of  the 
Churches  of  Judea,  and  the  seven  Churches  of  Asia.  This 
new  and  unauthorized  notion  of  a  collective  visible  Church, 
made  up  of  the  several  congregations  of  a  land  or  nation,  is 
the  basis  on  which  rests  the  assumption  of  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic Church.  The  visible  Church  of  Scripture,  and  of  the 
earliest  fathers,  is  an  independent  and  single  congregation  of 
disciples. 

As  a  voluntary  association,  some  may  think  that  the 
Church  has  power  to  make  its  own  laws,  and  may  be  desert- 
ed at  will.  But  this  is  not  so.  He  who  enters  it  cheerfully 
does  homage  to  Christ,  as  the  lawgiver  of  his  Church,  who 
has  completed  and  closed  the  statute-book  of  the  body  he  has 
founded.  In  professing  himself  a  Christian,  he  has  made  a 
contract  to  which  there  are  three  parties — the  Church,  him- 
self, and  the  Saviour,  as  head  of  the  Church.  As  to  his 
power  of  quitting  it,  it  follows,  then,  that  the  congregation  he 
joins  cannot  at  will  relinquish  him  ;  for  if  they  could  release 
their  own  rights  over  him,  they  are  not  entitled  to  release 
Christ's  rights  over  his  professed  and  pledged  followers. 
Hence  it  will  be  seen,  that  they  err  who  think  that  they  have 
a  right  at  any  moment  to  desert  the  Church — and  that  the 
Church  ought  to  permit  them  to  withdraw  their  names  from 
the  Church  roll,  and  sink  into  the  world  unquestioned  and 
unrebuked.  It  is  for  Christ  to  release  you.  Should  he,  or 
will  he  do  it  ? 

2.  Let  us  look  again  at  the  adaptation  of  the  Church  to 
promote  human  happiness.  It  is  a  divine  invention  for  the 
diffusion  of  truth,  the  culture  of  piety,  and  the  increase  of  the 
order  and  enjoyment  of  the  saints.  It  is  not  a  nation,  but 
something  yet  more  extensive,  for  it  may  include  the  deni- 
zens of  every  clime  ;  and  yet  far  more  select,  for  it  takes 
none  by  mere  national  right ;  it  is  not  a  family,  but  some- 
thing more  expansive,  yet  equally  tender  in  its  bonds  of 
union.  It  is  not  a  caste,  for  it  despises  none,  and  rejects 
none,  yet  like  the  caste  it  preserves  amid  human  mortality, 
and  change,  and  revolution,  a  sacred  order,  not  of  ministers 
but  of  saints,  all  kings  and  all  priests  unto  God;  it  is  not  a 
secret  society,  for  it  makes  no  reserve  of  its  doctrines  or 
practices  from    the    world,  yet  in   secret  each  of    its   true 


THE  HOME  AND  HOPE  OF  THE  FREE.        139 

members  finds  in  the  communings  of  his  soul  with  God,  the 
sources  of  a  secret  and  hidden  life  from  heaven.  "  Your  life 
is  hidden  with  Christ  in  God."  Incurring  none,  then,  of  the 
drawbacks  and  defects  of  the  nation,  the  family,  the  caste,  or 
the  secret  society — it  unites  the  advantages  of  them  all. 

Those  who  are  spiritually  its  members  by  union  with  Christ 
and  the  Holy  Ghost,  are,  indeed,  freemen  ;  they  are  free  from 
the  dominion  of  sin,  free  from  the  curse  of  the  law,  free  from 
the  bondage  of  ancient  ritual  and  modern  tradition,  free  from 
the  world,  and  free  from  Satan.  This  liberty  is  not  license,  for  it 
is  the  just,  the  rational,  the  durable  freedom  that,  as  we  have 
already  endeavored  to  show,  is  the  only  one  adapted  to  our  na- 
ture and  wants.  They  are  not  free  from  Scripture — the  Spirit 
living  in  them  does  not  contradict  or  neutralize  his  own  ear- 
lier oracles  in  the  written  page,  because  He  cannot  contradict 
Himself.  They  are  not  free  from  conscience  ;  it  witnesses 
for  God,  but  not  as  of  old  and  in  their  unregenerate  state,  to 
condemn  them.  Sprinkled  now  with  the  appeasing  blood  of 
the  Mercy-seat,  it  has  peace,  and  preaches  grateful  homage, 
humility,  earnest  and  constant  service  to  the  Divine  bringer 
of  that  peace.  They  are  not  free  from  Christ.  They  would 
not  wish  it  more  than  the  patriot  would  wish  to  be  free  from 
the  bonds  of  the  country  he  loves,  as  he  loves  his  own  life — 
more  than  the  mother  would  yearn  to  be  free  from  the  chil- 
dren whom  she  cherishes  as  her  own  soul.  They  are  not 
free  from  the  love  of  the  brethren,  nor  do  they  desire  it ;  this 
brotherly  union  and  alliance  is  not  a  restraint  or  an  incum- 
brance, but  like  wings  to  the  bird,*  instead  of  burdening,  it  is 
an  aid  to  soar,  and  a  help  in  their  heavenward  way. 

3.  It  is  a  state  of  preparation  and  training  for  higher 
scenes.  They  are  fitting  to  become  at  last  members  of  the 
family  of  heaven.  The  employments  and  services  of  the 
earthly  church  are  maturing  and  meetening  them  for  the  in- 
heritance of  the  saints  in  light.  The  Sabbath,  as  it  comes, 
bringing  its  repose  from  toil,  and  its  respite  from  eating 
cares,  hushing  the  din,  and  stopping  the  noisy  wheels  of  bu- 
siness, reminds  them  of  an  endless  and  unbroken  Sabbath 
above.  They  bring  their  sorrows  to  the  sanctuary,  and  to 
their  brethren,  and  to  their  Elder  Brother,  and  are  consoled. 
The  snare  of  the  tempter  is  broken.  Age  is  lightened  amid 
its  clouds  of  infirmity,  and  youth  is  guided  along  its  steep 

*  Bernard. 


140  THE    CHURCH    OF    CHRIST 

and  slippery  way,  full  of  temptations.  They  look  to  the 
time  of  final  emancipation,  to  be  free  from  the  flesh,  and  from 
sin  and  the  tempter.  In  prayer  and  the  word,  and  the  break- 
ing of  bread,  and  in  their  alms  and  efforts,  they  commune 
with  the  saints  of  all  classes  and  climes,  with  the  churches  of 
other  lands.  And  the  brotherhood  of  the  race,  and  their 
heirship  with  angels,  come  into  view  as  nowhere  else,  to  the 
saints  of  God,  on  God's  day,  and  in  God's  house. 

4.  Yet  see  their  freedom,  in  the  relation  of  these  several 
bands  of  disciples  to  their  own  members,  to  one  another,  and 
to  the  governments  and  states  of  the  world.  In  themselves 
the  several  members  are  all  united  o  the  same  Christ,  and 
although  there  are  different  offices  aid  diversities  of  gifts  and 
graces,  authority  is  not  tyranny,  and  subjection  is  not  servi- 
tude. The  Church  is  not  a  mere  nest  of  anarchy,  nor  yet  is 
it  a  scene  of  spiritual  despotism,  where  a  Diotrephes  rules  in 
the  pastorate,  or  an  oligarchy  in  the  deaconship  crushes 
pastor  and  people  beneath  its  iron  rod.  Amongst  their  sister 
churches  they  are  related  by  sympathies  and  kind  offices,  but 
own  no  subjection,  and  acknowledge  no  dependence,  either 
on  cotemporary  churches  of  their  own  country,  or  upon  the 
churches  of  other  lands  or  other  times,  except  as  those 
churches  have  held  the  same  truth,  cling  to  the  same  Head, 
and  have  imbibed  the  same  spirit.  The  churches  of  the  con- 
gregational system  acknowledge  no  ecclesiastical  -power  in 
synods,  associations,  councils,  prelates  or  pontiffs. 

They  claim  to  hold  directly  of  the  ever-living,  Almighty, 
and  omnipresent  Spirit,  and  to  lean,  without  the  interposition 
of  chains  of  succession  and  lines  of  spiritual  lineage,  immedi- 
ately and  for  themselves,  on  the  bosom  and  the  heart  of  the 
Saviour,  who  pledged  his  presence  to  the  end  of  the  world, 
where  two  or  three  are  gathered  in  his  name.  To  all  pedi- 
grees of  a  spiritual  and  priestly  class  claimed  by  some  Chris- 
tians, therefore,  we  oppose  the  permanent  presence  and  in- 
defeasible priesthood  of  the  great  Melchisedec  of  our  profes- 
sion, without  beginning  of  days  or  end  of  years  ;  and  we 
claim  to  "  come  up  out  of  the  wilderness"  stayed  directly  on 
Christ,  and  "  leaning  on  our  beloved."  We  touch,  so  to 
speak,  his  bare  arm  as  our  stay,  without  the  intervention  of 
the  envelopes  of  any  favored  order,  or  virtue  running  through 
a  chain  of  spiritual  conductors.  Our  graces  are  not  trans- 
mitted, but  taken  direct  from  the  Redeemer's  own  hand. 
Nothing  short  of  a  personal  application  to  Christ,  we  suppose, 


THE    HOME    AND    HOPE    OF    THE    FREE.  141 

will  avail  us  in  conversion  ;  and  nothing  short  of  the  personal 
presence  of  Christ  will  sustain  us  in  the  dying  hour  :  and,  as 
churches,  we  judge  nothing  short  of  the  personal  presence  of 
the  Lord  can  give  energy  to  our  preaching,  validity  to  our 
ordinances,  or  life  to  our  worship.  If  we  have  this,  let  others 
find,  if  they  can,  something  better,  holier,  older,  newer,  and 
vaster.  We  know  it  not,  and  seek  it  not.  "  Where  the  Spirit 
of  the  Lord  is  there  is  liberty."  Each  visible  church  or  sin- 
gle congregation  is  a  visible  section  of  the  great  invisible  and 
Catholic  church  of  all  ages. 

As  to  our  relations  to  the  state,  we  suppose  that  a  church 
established  by  law  cannot,  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  be 
free.  Whether  it  be  a  republic  or  monarchy,  we  suppose  the 
state  to  have  no  prerogatives  over  the  church  of  the  redeem- 
ed. Caesar  and  Christ  have  different  spheres.  Christ  paid 
the  tribute-money,  during  his  incarnation,  as  a  citizen  of  the 
Roman  state,  and  a  subject  of  Caesar.  But  it  was  not  for 
Ccesar  to  come  into  the  church  as  a  patron  or  a  prince.  He 
could  not  dictate  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  It  was  not  for 
Pilate  to  prompt  the  parables,  or  for  Herod  to  originate  and 
regulate  the  miracles  of  our  Saviour,  arrange  his  resurrec- 
tion, or  fix  the  gifts  and  time,  and  scene  of  the  Pentecost 
and  its  effusions  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  And  if  the  worldly 
ruler  could  not  do  these,  he  has  no  right  as  a  legislator  in  the 
Christian  church.  The  only  competent  legislator  for  that 
church  is  the  potentate  so  endowed.  Hence,  while  as  citi- 
zens of  the  state  we  give,  and  gladly  give  tribute  to  whom 
tribute  is  due,  and  fear  to  whom  fear,  and  honor  to  whom 
honor,  when  these  limits  are  past  we  know  no  man  after  the 
flesh.  In  our  own  country  and  denomination,  and  with  our 
social  institutions,  the  intrusions  and  usurpations  of  the  world 
upon  the  church  are  most  likely  to  come  in  the  form  of  vol- 
untary societies,  attempting  to  control  and  use  the  churches 
for  their  own  purposes,  and  to  break  them  down,  and  their 
ministers  also,  when  they  prove  refractory  under  such  at- 
tempted intervention.  It  is  the  duty,  and  the  interest  of  the 
church  so  invaded,  to  stand  fast,  unmoved  by  the  shock  of 
the  onset,  unterrified  by  denunciations,  and  unbribed  by  pop- 
ular interest  and  favor.  Is  the  voluntary  society  of  man's 
organization,  entitled  to  prescribe  to  the  voluntary  society  of 
Christ's  organization  ?  Wre  question  it.  To  us  it  seems  but 
the  old  parable  of  Jotham  revived — the  thistle,  thorny  and 
low,  undertaking  to  rule  by  fire  the  cedar  in  Lebanon.     Let 


142  THE    CHURCH    OF    CHRIST 

us  as  churches  root  ourselves  in  the  reserved  rights  of  Christ 
Jesus,  and  repel  all  other  legislation. 

III.  Our  last  division  is  the  province  of  the  church,  in 
diffusing  the  true  freedom  of  the  race.  The  church  of  the 
living  God  is  the  Hope  of  the  Free.  The  true  lover  of  lib- 
erty wishes  it  extended  to  all.  The  Head  of  the  church  has 
assured  to  him,  from  the  Father,  universal  dominion.  Far, 
then,  as  the  sun  travels  over  our  earth,  we  expect  one  day  to 
see  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  diffusing  his  beams  and  swath- 
ing the  globe  with  the  brightness  of  his  light  as  with  a  gar- 
ment of  glory.  Wherever  the  rain  falls  or  the  dew  gathers, 
we  look  one  day  to  behold  the  early  and  the  latter  rain  of 
the  Holy  Ghost  diffusing  its  showers,  and  converting  the 
arid  wilderness  into  the  garden  of  the  Lord. 

1.  We  look,  then,  in  estimating  the  future  emancipatory 
influence  of  the  church,  to  what  it  has  done.  Receiving  a 
free  gospel,  and  having  been  commanded  what  it  had  freely 
received  freely  to  give,  it  has  preached  to  the  poor,  the  ne- 
glected, and  the  destitute.  In  our  times  it  is  preached  by  the 
new  engine  of  the  press.  The  Word  of  God  which,  as  the 
incarcerated  apostle  rejoiced  in  his  times  to  say,  "is  not 
bound,"  has  by  the  press,  as  the  missionary  has  employed  it, 
been  unbound  and  set  loose  in  strange  dialects,  till  the  lan- 
guages most  generally  spoken  by  our  race  have  now  all  the 
Bible  in  versions  of  their  own.  And  Christians  have  largely 
scattered  them.  From  the  gospel,  as  preached  by  some  of 
its  most  consistent  adherents,  has  sprung  the  chief  political 
freedom  of  our  times.  Even  Hume  saw  in  the  Puritans, 
whose  religious  and  political  principles  he  alike  hated,  the 
conservators  of  English  freedom.  And  American  freedom  is, 
in  a  great  measure,  the  harvest,  sprung  from  seed  sown  by 
the  Puritan  and  Pilgrim  Fathers  of  New  England.  As  to 
intellectual  emancipation  in  the  form  of  education,  the  best 
common  school  systems  of  the  old  and  new  world  have  been 
formed  and  matured  by  the  Protestantism  of  the  several 
countries,  where  such  schools  are  found.  Most  of  our  col- 
leges are  traceable  to  the  Church  of  Christ.  The  American 
Revolution  triumphed,  because  a  pure  religious  faith  had 
prepared  the  way,  by  training  a  people  disposed  and  capaci- 
tated for  freedom.  The  first  French  Revolution  failed,  be- 
cause it  had  no  such  basis  to  rest  upon ;  and  the  second 
French  Revolution,  that  of  our  own  times,  failing  to  find 
permanency  on  an  infidel  basis,  is  seeking  a  religious  support, 


THE  HOME  AND  HOPE  OF  THE  FREE.        143 

by  reviving  and  patronizing  the  once  decaying  Romanism  of 
France. 

Such  are  the  forms  of  freedom,  the  freedom  of  literature, 
government,  and  education,  man  most  desires  and  exults  in  ; 
and  for  all  how  much  has  the  church  done.  But  there  is  a 
higher  style  of  emancipation.  The  souls  freed  and  saved, 
and  ushered  into  heaven — these  more  glorious  trophies  of 
the  gospel — who  can  calculate  or  follow,  as,  free  from  the 
chains  of  sin  and  Satan,  and  from  the  low  dungeons  of  earth, 
the  Liberator  and  Redeemer  has  led  them  in,  to  the  rest,  the 
triumphs,  the  harpings,  and  the  endless  freedom  of  the  heav- 
enly world  ? 

2.  But  from  what  the  church  has  done,  let  us  look,  in 
estimating  its  prospective  power,  to  what  it  would  do.  It 
seeks  the  universal  illumination,  and  emancipation,  and  evan- 
gelization of  the  race.  Its  prayer  is,  Thy  kingdom  come  ; 
and  the  Messiah's  kingdom  is  but  another  name  for  the  lib- 
erty wherewith  Christ  maketh  free.  It  would  banish  war 
and  bondage,  and  intemperance,  and  ignorance,  and  oppres- 
sion— all  that  can  degrade,  all  that  can  exasperate,  divide,  or 
brutify  the  race.  The  truth  it  would  universally  diffuse  ; 
and  freedom,  as  we  have  seen,  leans  on  truth.  Happiness  it 
does  not  believe  in  as  being  rightfully  a  matter  of  monopoly. 
"  Freely  ye  have  received,  freely  give,"  is  the  motto  of  all 
its  spiritual  enjoyments.  Grace  is  their  name,  as  coming 
from  Divine  benignity — Grace,  as  commiserating  all  human 
misery.  Its  blessedness  is  enhanced  by  being  diffused.  Each 
new  heir  of  heavenly  joy  fills  the  courts  of  the  upper  world 
with  new  melody,  and  awakens  a  new  anthem  from  the 
seraphim  and  cherubim  that  circle  the  throne  of  light.  A 
religion  thus  vast  and  expansive  in  its  hopes,  and  plans,  and 
prayers,  is  the  religion  likely  to  attempt  what  the  race  needs. 

3.  But  does  it  accomplish  what  it  attempts  ?  This  brings 
us  to  our  last  remark.  We  have  seen  what  the  church  has 
done,  and  what  she  would  fain  do.  Let  us  now  inquire,  in 
conclusion,  what  she  can  do  ?  She  can  do  what  nothing  else 
can. 

(1.)  The  freedom  of  the  gospel,  we  observe,  in  the  first 
place  is  necessary  ;  for  it  alone  has  the  power  to  make  other 
and  inferior  forms  of  freedom  possible.  When  the  Church  of 
Christ  would  go  forth  to  evangelize  the  savage  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, philosophy  stepped  between  the  relief  and  the  wretch- 
edness, parting  the  barbarian  and  his  benefactor,  to  tell  the 


144  THE    CHURCH    OF    CHRIST 

Missionary  that  he  could  not  evangelize  until  the  savage  had 
been  first  civilized  ;  and  that  civilization  must  always  precede 
the  gospel.  The  Missionary  thus  rebuked,  was  not  repelled. 
He  went  on.  The  result  has  shown  the  folly  of  this  inter- 
meddling and  braggart  philosophy.  Instead  of  the  gospel  re- 
quiring civilization  as  a  pioneer,  it  was  civilization  that  could 
not  go  on  till  the  gospel  had  prepared  its  way.  It  was  the 
gospel  that  had  made  civilization  possible.  By  awakening  a 
soul  within  him,  and  revealing  a  heaven  and  *~ell  before  him, 
the  savage  was  aroused  to  discern  other  and  inferior  wants, 
and  civil  culture  travelled  in  the  train  of  Christian  truth — 
and  where  the  Bible,  and  the  Missionary,  and  the  Sunday 
School,  had  gone,  the  common  school,  constitutional  law,  art 
and  domestic  comfort  travelled  after.  But  a  similar  feeling, 
unhappily,  prevails  as  to  other  social  ameliorations.  It  is 
said  to  the  gospel  and  the  church,  "  Stand  back  until  educa- 
tion, until  a  better  system  of  relief  for  the  poor,  enfranchise- 
ment for  the  slave,  and  democratic  insurrections,  prepare 
your  way."  Our  reply  is,  "  Let  the  world  stand  back  for  the 
church,  and  the  church  sta?id  fast  in  the  vanguard,  where  it 
has  a  right  to  be."  It  is  the  Bible  and  the  church,  and  the 
Spirit  of  God,  that  must  make  most  of  these  social  ameliora- 
tions possible.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  policy  of  the  nation, 
as  Christ  has  made  it  the  policy  of  the  individual,  is  to  seek 
first  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  his  righteousness,  and  all  these 
things  shall  be  added*  Get  a  man  or  a  nation  converted,  and 
all  else  needful  will  come  in  its  time.  But  an  irreligious  and 
godless  nation  cannot  be  permanently  free,  cultivated,  order- 
ly, or  happy. 

There  are  blessings  of  the  highest  worth,  which  religion 
can  give  to  the  world  as  no  other  influence  can  give  them : 
and  yet  the  Church  of  Christ  cannot  bestow  them  directly 
without  swerving  from  her  appointed  course,  and  endanger- 
ing her  own  purity.  She  blesses  the  world  with  national 
wealth  and  household  comfort,  but  it  is  indirectly  by  the  in- 
dustry and  thrift  she  teaches.  If  she  sought  to  accumulate 
wealth,  in  her  corporate  character,  or  made  riches  a  term  of 
her  membership,  she  would  become  the  slave  of  Mammon, 
and  laying  up  her  treasures  on  earth,  be,  on  the  instant,  dis- 
owned of  Christ.  She  gives  the  world  political  emancipa- 
tion ;  but  it  is  indirectly,  for  if  she  directly  mingled  herself 
up  with  the  work  of  organizing  one  form  of  government, 
and  subverting  another,  she   would  be  false  to  her  supreme 


THE  HOME  AND  HOPE  OF  THE  FREE.        145 

allegiance  to  Christ,  by  making  his  kingdom  tributary  to  the 
republics  and  potentates  of  this  world.  She  is  to  advance  in 
the  world  the  cause  of  illumination  and  universal  education. 
But  this,  too,  is  done  indirectly.  If  she  did  it  directly,  and 
converted  her  pulpit  into  a  mere  desk  of  philosophy,  and 
made  admission  into  her  membership  and  ministry  dependent 
upon  a  certain  amount  of  literary  culture,  she  would  not  only 
wrong  the  Holy  Ghost,  but  retard  ultimately,  and  in  the  most 
important  quarters,  the  very  work  of  spiritual  enfranchise- 
ment for  the  race,  that  she  would  be  scheming  to  aid.  It  is 
the  genius  of  her  system,  the  law  of  her  organization,  to  push 
God's  claims  first,  and  let  man's  rights  follow ;  to  aim  at 
heaven,  and  bless  earth  by  the  way  ;  to  fasten  one  hand  on 
those  skies  where  her  King  is  throned,  and  her  own  crown  is 
reserved,  whilst  from  the  other  she  flings  around  as  inferior 
gifts,  the  earthly  and  indirect  benefits  of  her  influence,  just 
as  a  king,  on  the  day  of  his  coronation,  scatters  among  the 
crowd  on  his  way  gifts  of  price,  but  his  own  eye  is  on  the 
diadem  and  the  throne. 

(2.)  The  Church  of  God  is  needed  again,  for  it  alone  can 
make  other  freedom  valuable.  Leave  the  heart  under  the 
bondage  of  selfishness  and  depravity,  and  the  science  and  the 
freedom  of  earth  cannot  wash  the  Ethiop  white,  or  make  any 
change  of  circumstances  heal  the  private  and  social  miseries 
of  the  times.  There  may  be  political  freedom,  and  art,  and 
knowledge,  where  there  is  no  piety  found,  but  amid  them 
all,  man  will  groan,  like  Solomon,  exclaiming,  amid  his 
wealth,  while  his  heart  ached  under  the  royal  purple,  and  his 
head  throbbed  under  the  kingly  diadem  :  "  Vanity  of  vanities 
and  vexation  of  spirit."  With  a  conscience  that  cannot  be 
calmed,  and  passions  that  cannot  be  subdued — with  the  foot 
in  the  grave,  and  the  hand  stretching  forth  into  an  unknown 
eternity,  and  groping  in  uncertainty  to  find  some  clue  to 
life  and  hope  beyond  the  tomb — can  man  be  blest  until  the 
church  of  the  living  God  has  reached,  disenthralled,  enlight- 
ened, and  gladdened  him  %  What  is  political  equality  to  a 
dying  sinner,  and  what  your  own  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence to  a  soul,  that,  burdened  with  its  sins,  and  ignorant  of 
the  Cross  of  Christ,  asks  in  dismay,  "  How  can  man  be  just 
with  God  ?"  "  If  a  man  die  shall  he  live  again  ?"  No  ;  the 
church  must  make  all  other  and  earthly  blessings  worth  hav- 
ing. The  blood  of  Calvary  must  drop  into  the  cup  of  worldly 
freedom,  or  that  freedom  even  is  a  bitter  draught. 

20 


146  THE    CHURCH    OF    CHRIST 

(3.)  Lastly,  we  say,  the  Bible  and  the  Church,  and  the 
Spirit  of  God  only,  can  give  enduring  freedom.  Intelligent 
and  observing  statesmen  have  begun  to  see  that  bad  men 
may  rebel,  but  cannot  be  free.  There  are  certain  blessings, 
that,  if  given,  cannot  be  kept,  unless  there  be  a  certain  state 
of  preparation  for  them,  a  good  soil  in  which  they  may  be 
planted.  Solomon's  vines,  the  fruit  whereof  was  to  bring  a 
thousand  pieces  of  silver,  would  not  thrive  if  planted  on  the 
sea-shore,  and  flooded  by  the  salt  tide.  So  freedom,  to 
endure,  must  have  its  substratum  of  moral  culture  to  sustain 
it,  and  its  showers  of  Divine  grace  to  develop  it,  or  else 
it  takes  no  permanent  root,  and  brings  forth  no  perfect  fruit. 
Establish  to-day  universal  equality  and  universal  suffrage,  an 
agrarian  division  of  property,  and  universal  education ;  and 
men's  weakness,  their  difference  of  years,  inequality  of 
strength,  and  talents,  and  influence,  would  re-establish  dis- 
cord and  inequality  to-morrow.  Self-government  is  the  basis 
of  all  abiding  liberal  governments,  and  who,  but  the  Chris- 
tian, has  learned  to  govern  himself  in  truth  ?  Brotherly  love 
is  the  only  intelligible  and  practical  form  of  social  equality  ; 
and  a  pure  Christianity  has  the  secret  of  this.  Christianity 
is  the  true  citizenship  of  the  world  ;  and  universal  peace,  and 
the  free  exchange  by  all  lands  and  tribes  of  their  several  pe- 
culiar goods  and  gifts,  are  possible  only  as  all  are  grouped 
around,  and  united  by  the  Cross  of  a  common  Redeemer, 
and  the  hope  of  a  common  heaven. 

1.  We  live,  my  brethren,  in  eventful  times.  If  ever  the 
cry  needed  to  go  forth,  distinctly  and  repeatedly,  over  all  the 
battalions  of  the  sacramental  host,  "  Stand  fast  in  your  lib- 
erty as  Christ  gave  it,"  it  is  in  our  times.  There  are  theo- 
ries many  of  social  change,  and  nostrums  many  of  social 
relief,  that  undervalue  the  church,  decry  the  ministry,  and 
slight  the  paramount  claims  of  the  Bible.  But  regeneration 
and  personal  conversion  are  the  only  remedy  for  man's  great 
misery.  The  church  is  God's  organization,  for  the  true  dis- 
enthralment  of  the  world.  Betray  it  not,  improve  it  not,  by 
the  admixture  of  human  arts  and  inventions.  Surrender  it 
riot  to  the  philosopher  ;  nor  let  the  statesman  subsidize  it.  If, 
as  some  think,  the  death-grapple  of  truth  and  error  is  not  far 
oil',  it  is  the  church,  simple,  spiritual,  and  divine,  the  body  of 
Christ,  the  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  that  is  to  be  the  invinci- 
ble and  infrangible  battalion,  the  Immortal  Legion,  in  the  im- 
pending conflict.    Out  of  it,  we  see  her  coming,  "Fair  as  the 


THE  HOME  AND  HOPE  OF  THE  FREE.        147 

sun,  clear  as  the  moon,  and  terrible  as  an  army  with  ban- 
ners." In  the  strifes  and  storms  of  the  times  the  ship  of  the 
state  may  labor  and  break.  Unduly  lengthened,  some  fear, 
that  the  Union  may  part  amidships.  But  the  ship  of  the 
church  cannot  founder.  Her  Lord,  the  Almighty  One,  is 
embarked  in  her. 

2.  The  grand,  the  vital  question^*  all  remains.  Am  I 
free  ?  It  is  not  whether  I  be  a  proressor  of  religion.  But 
have  I  felt  the  power  of  the  gospel  to  subdue  sin,  cancel 
guilt,  and  breathe  peace  ?  Does  it  give  me  filial  freedom  be- 
fore God,  and  fraternal  freedom  before  man  ? 

"  He  is  a  freeman,  whom  the  truth  makes  free, 
And  all  are  slaves  beside." 

If  the  slave  of  Satan,  how  little  can  I,  the  prayerless  and 
the  God-hating,  and  the  God-forsaken,  be  an  available  bar- 
rier to  my  country  against  the  tide  of  evil  influences  that 
would  flood  her.  I  need  God's  freedom  to  give  and  sustain 
effectually  the  human  and  social  liberty  I  prize. 

Am  I  freed  by  the  grace  of  Christ  Jesus,  then  am  I  free 
to  pray — to  enter  with  holy  boldness  and  a  filial  frankness 
into  the  most  holy  place.  The  Bible  charges  the  wicked 
with  enlarging  their  desires  as  hell.  Surely,  it  is  the  strength 
and  honor  of  the  Christian  to  enlarge  his  desires  as  heaven — • 
to  ask  according  to  the  breadth  of  the  promises,  and  the 
greatness  of  the  great  King,  at  whose  feet  he  is  a  petitioner. 
"  He  that  spared  not  his  own  Son,  but  gave  him  up  for  us 
all,  how  shall  he  not  with  him  freely  give  us  all  things  ?" 
Thus  encouraged,  seek  blessings  for  the  race,  for  your  coun- 
try, your  city  and  yourself,  in  God's  order ;  salvation  the 
greatest  first,  and  all  else  the  lesser  benefits  in  its  train. 
"  Seek  first  the  kingdom  of  God,"  and  then  expect  that,  ul- 
timately, under  its  emancipating,  enlightening,  and  peaceful 
influences,  the  earth  will  become  the  suburbs  of  heaven. 
The  knowledge  and  freedom  of  the  upper  world  will  drop 
down  upon  this  lower  world  ;  and  man  will  breathe  even  in 
time  the  spirit  of  the  freedom  of  eternity,  and  anticipate  the 
joys  of  that  city,  described  by  the  same  apostle  in  this  same 
epistle,  as  the  Jerusalem  which  is  from  above,  which  is  free , 
"  which  is  the  mother  of  us  all."* 

*  Gal.  iv.  26. 


THE  STRONG  STi^F  AND  THE  BEAUTIFUL  HOD. 

(A  Discourse  preached  in  the  Amity  St.  Bap.  Church,  April  12, 1840,  on  occasion  of  the  death  of 
TIMOTHY  R.  GREEN,  ESQ.) 

C(  HOW  IS  THE  STRONG  STAFF  BROKEN,  AND  THE  BEAUTIFUL  ROD  !" 

Jer.  xlviii.  17. 

These  words  were  first  spoken  of  Moab.  But  the  imagery 
they  contain  is  used  in  Scripture  to  describe  the  benefactors 
as  well  as  the  oppressors  of  mankind.  The  staff  is  the  em- 
blem of  power,  whether  employed  in  kindness  or  in  tyranny, 
to  support  or  to  crush.  The  rod,  shooting  out  of  the  earth 
with  its  buds  clustering  thickly  upon  it,  seems  the  image  that 
nature  would  instinctively  select  as  the  fitting  emblem  of 
promise  and  hope.  The  surrounding  nations,  in  the  fall  of 
Moab,  saw  with  astonishment  that  sceptre  of  power  on 
which  they  had  long  looked  with  awe,  shattered,  and  the  rod 
of  beauty  cut  down.  And  still,  in  his  Providence,  God 
calls  us  to  look  with  mournful  surprise  upon  those  on  whom 
many  leaned,  and  from  whom  much  was  hoped — the  young, 
the  beloved,  and  the  useful,  laid  low  in  the  dust.  We  had 
counted  upon  their  long  life,  we  had  deemed  them  too  much 
needed  to  the  best  interests  of  the  world  and  the  church,  to 
be  early  removed — we  had  expected  their  influence  to  ex- 
tend and  strengthen  itself  with  the  slow  lapse  of  time,  and 
when  we  allowed  ourselves  to  think  of  their  death,  we  put 
far  off  the  evil  day,  and  thought  of  them  only  as  going  down 
to  the  grave  in  a  good  old  age,  laden  with  blessings  and  full 
of  honors  and  usefulness.  But,  ere  we  are  aware,  their 
course  is  ended,  in  the  full  flush  of  their  strength  and  of  our 
own  hopes.     Their  sun  goes  down  while  it  is  yet  noon. 

The  dispensation  to  which  our  remarks  at  this  time  will 
have  reference,  seems  a  mysterious  one.  We  mourn,  but 
it  is  in  submission.  We  are  not  forbidden  to  weep,  for 
Christ  himself  wept  at  the  grave  of  his  friend.  But  we  are 
forbidden  to  sorrow  as  those  who  are  without  hope,  and  our 


THE    STRONG    STAFF    AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.       149 

mourning  must  be  without  murmuring.  The  event  is  one 
that  has  saddened  many  hearts,  and  blighted  the  richest 
promises  of  general  usefulness  to  society,  and  the  fairest 
prospects  of  domestic  happiness.  We  see  a  Christian  widely 
known,  and  as  generally  beloved,  crowned  with  blossoming 
hopes  and  clustering  fruits,  struck  down  into  the  dust,  in  the 
strength  of  his  years.  We  see,  on  the  other  hand,  thousands 
spared  to  old  age,  who  seem  to  nourish  in  flaunting,  peren- 
nial barrenness,  from  whom  society  receives  no  good,  and 
who  are  the  mere  cumberers  of  the  earth.  Such  scenes  are 
strange,  yet  they  are  not  new.  They  were  seen  by  the 
prophets  in  their  times,  they  drew  tears  from  the  eyes  of  de- 
vout men  in  the  days  of  the  apostles.  The  Church  of  Christ 
in  the  earliest  ages  must  have  wondered  to  see  James,  one 
of  the  brothers  whom  Christ  had  hailed  as  the  Sons  of  Thun- 
der, falling  in  the  very  commencement  of  his  career,  while 
they  beheld  Simon  the  Sorcerer  remaining  to  be  the  curse 
and  snare  of  thousands.  The  devout  men  who  carried  Ste- 
phen to  his  burial  and  made  great  lamentation  over  him, 
must  have  had  their  sorrow  mixed  with  no  little  perplexity, 
when  they  looked  at  the  bruised  corpse  of  the  zealous  and 
youthful  evangelist,  and,  thinking  of  his  untimely  fate,  turned 
to  Annas,  the  high-priest.  They  must  have  found  their 
faith  tried  as  they  asked,  why  the  youthful  preacher  fell  and 
the  hoary -headed  persecutor  was  allowed  to  survive  ?  Yet 
God  did  it.  He  ruled  then  and  He  rules  now.  This  was 
their  consolation,  and  it  must  be  ours.  We  would  remem- 
ber this,  and  be  comforted.  And  may  th,e  God  of  all  wis- 
dom and  of  all  consolation  touch  the  lips  of  the  speaker  and 
the  heart  of  each  hearer,  as,  standing  beside  this  open  grave, 
we  ask  in  reverence — 

I.  The  purposes  of  our  Heavenly  Father  in  such  bereave- 
ments. 

II.  The  duties  to  which  we  are  at  such  seasons  called. 

I.  There  is  much  that  we  know  not  now,  and  that  can 
never  be  known  in  this  world  ;  but  this  we  know  assuredly, 
that  God  does  not  willingly  grieve  or  afflict  us.  Reluc- 
tantly does  he  wound  us,  and  only  because  it  is  indispensable 
to  our  sanctification,  and  our  sanctification  is  indispensable 
to  our  happiness. 

1.  And  one  great  and  known  purpose  of  our  Heavenly 
Father  in  such  overwhelming  bereavements  is,  to  teach  us 
that   we   should  not  misplace   our    trust.      Man   from   his 


150  THE    STRONG    STAFF 

weakness  must  necessarily  have,  without  and  beyond  himself, 
objects  on  which  to  rely  and  confide.  But  it  is  his  misery 
and  his  sin,  that  he  forgets  the  true  object  of  trust,  and  leans 
for  support  on  helpers  that  must  fail  him  in  the  hour  of  trial. 
Men  confiding  in  their  fellow-mortals,  are  but  like  vines, 
entwined  around  each  other,  and  which  thence  lie  rotting  on 
the  earth,  when  they  should  rather  with  their  tendrils  climb 
the  sides  of  the  Rock  of  Ages.  We  expect,  all  of  us,  from 
earth  what  earth  cannot  give.  We  lean  on  the  reed — it  is 
shattered  in  our  grasp  and  pierces  the  hand  that  clasped  it. 
The  disappointments  and  perplexities  of  earth  are  embittered 
by  our  expecting  constancy  and  permanent  aid  and  lasting 
sympathy  from  man — from  man,  the  mortal,  the  being  of 
yesterday,  whom  to-morrow  hides  in  the  tomb — from  man, 
the  fickle,  whose  purposes  change,  often  and  greatly,  even 
in  the  course  of  his  brief  life — from  man,  the  feeble,  whose 
power  is  limited  even  where  his  kindness  may  continue  un- 
abated. This  dislocation  of  our  faith,  this  misplaced  trust, 
is  the  mystery  of  the  world's  ruin.  What  but  this  misplaced 
reliance  is  it  that  makes  up  the  false  religions  of  the  world  ? 
One  idolizes  his  own  reason,  and  therefore  pours  contempt 
on  the  Creative  intellect,  because  it  rises  to  a  height  which 
his  tiny  glasses  cannot  bring  within  their  sweep,  or  sinks 
into  depths  which  his  scanty  lines  and  plummets  cannot 
fathom.  Another  trusts  in  tradition  because  he  dares  not 
trust  in  the  unguarded  Scripture.  Antichrist  himself  builds 
his  fearful  system  on  this  simple  basis — a  transfer  of  confi- 
dence from  Christ  J:o  the  Church — from  the  Redeemer  to  the 
redeemed — from  the  Sinless  to  the  sinful — from  the  Infalli- 
ble to  the  fallible — from  God  to  man.  Instead  of  finding  the 
One  only  Saviour,  men  are  taught  to  go  in  quest  of  the  one 
only  Church.  The  Church  rather  than  the  Christ,  is  to 
ensure  their  salvation,  and  protect  them  from  all  possibility 
of  error.  The  superstitious  and  the  sceptical,  the  idolater 
and  the  Atheist  all  agree,  widely  as  their  paths  may  after- 
wards diverge,  in  leaving  the  way  of  Truth  at  this  one  point 
- — they  trust  in  "  the  creature  more  than  in  the  Creator." 
And  doing  this,  they  inherit  the  curse  of  the  God  they  for- 
sake ;  for  "  cursed  is  the  man  that  trusteth  in  man  and 
maketh  flesh  his  arm,  and  whose  heart  departeth  from  the 
Lord.*"     And  what  is  the  process  of  the  sinner's  conversion 


*  J cr.  xvii.  5. 


AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.  151 

but  the  retracing  of  his  course  back  to  this  fatal  step,  and 
returning  at  this  point  to  the  way  of  truth,  and  making  the 
transfer  of  his  confidence  back  again  from  self  and  earth  to 
one  Saviour  and  God  ?  The  turning  point  of  our  eternal 
destiny  is  found  in  the  object  on  which  we  rely.  Faith  and 
unbelief  are  the  poles  on  which  the  eternal  world  revolves. 
Yet,  even  when  God  has  brought  us  to  renounce  alt  earthly 
confidences,  and  to  make  Him,  the  High  God,  our  Refuge 
and  our  Portion,  the  heart  is  continually  prone  to  relapse. 
The  Church  of  God  is  but  too  ready  to  prize  unduly  the 
helpers  of  her  faith  whom  God  has  raised  up  ;'  and  to  guard 
us  from  the  consequences  of  an  error  so  fatal,  the  Holy  One 
of  Israel  breaks  the  rods  in  whose  beauty  we  delighted,  and 
causes  the  props  on  which  we  have  leaned  to  crumble  be- 
neath us.  And  this  misplaced  confidence  in  earthly  friends 
is  found  but  too  compatible  with  a  neglect  rightly  to  employ 
the  blessings  we  so  value.  The  king  of  Israel  could  neglect 
that  prophet  in  his  life-time,  over  whose  death-bed  he  cried 
in  passionate  despair,  "  My  father,  my  father,  the  chariot 
of  Israel  and  the  horsemen  thereof."  He  could  weep  over 
the  expiring  prophet,  as  if  in  his  death  the  God  of  Israel  had 
perished,  and  the  fall  of  that  one  man  had  thrown  to  the 
earth  all  the  bulwarks  of  the  land  ;  and  yet  he  had  disre- 
garded that  holy  seer  of  the  Lord  in  the  days  of  his  health 
and  strength,  and  given  little  heed  to  his  instructions.  Thus 
it  is,  that  we  contrive  at  once  to  undervalue  the  blessing,  as 
to  any  actual  use  made  of  it ;  and  to  overvalue  it,  in  our 
expectations  of  the  advantages  it  is  to  ensure  us. 

2.  Another  great  and  avowed  design  of  our  Heavenly 
Father  in  such  dispensations,  is,  to  convince  us  of  our  sins, 
and  sever  us  from  them.  The  misplaced  confidence  already 
shown  to  be  so  habitually  our  feeling,  is  itself  a  sin ;  but  it 
is  not  the  only  sin  thus  visited.  All  transgression  requires 
some  mark  of  the  displeasure  of  the  God  against  whose  law 
it  offends,  and  the  beauty,  harmony  and  happiness  of  whose 
universe  it  mars.  Sin,  the  act  of  man  and  his  invention,  has 
caused  all  the  misery  that  darkens  our  world.  The  hand 
that  plucked  from  the  tree  in  Eden  the  forbidden  fruit,  aided, 
by  that  act,  in  tearing  up  every  goodly  plant  of  hope  and 
every  scion  of  promise  and  enjoyment,  over  whose  fall  man- 
kind have  since  wept.  Each  bereavement  that  makes  our 
homes  desolate  and  puts  out  the  light  of  our  tabernacles,  and 
that  clothes  our   sanctuaries  with  mourning — each  funeral 


152  THE    STRONG    STAFF 

threading  its  slow  way  through  our  busy  streets,  and  each 
sandy  ridge  in  our  crowded  church-yards,  eloquently  reminds 
us  of  sin.  It  was  through  that  gate  of  sin,  which  man's  own 
rash  hand  forced  open,  that  the  Avenger  Death  entered  the 
world,  and  Eden  became  a  place  of  graves,  and  the  Paradise 
of  God,  once  redolent  with  undying  beauty  and  glittering  in 
perennial  life,  became  what  the  sin  of  Israel  in  the  wilder- 
ness made  the  scene  of  their  enjoyments  to  them,  a  Kibroth 
Hattaavah.  It  is  thus  that  God  checks  not  only  our  per- 
sonal but  our  social  transgressions.  Paul  declares  that  many 
amongst  the  Corinthian  believers  slept  the  sleep  of  death, 
because  of  the  sins  that  infested  that  branch  of  the  Christian 
Church.  And  we,  my  dear  friends,  as  a  Church,  have 
doubtless  deserved  at  God's  hands  this  sore  and  bitter  be- 
reavement. Let  us  feel  it,  and  ask  wherefore  God  has  so 
heavily  afflicted  us?  Let  us  "be  zealous  and  repent." 
With  a  holy  indignation  let  us  examine  ourselves  for  the 
traitor  sins  that  have  provoked  this  chastisement,  and,  if 
God's  purpose  be  answered  in  thus  divorcing  us  from  our 
idols,  even  this  calamity  shall  work  for  our  good. 

3.  A  further  end  that  the  Providence  of  God  seems  to 
pursue  in  such  visitations,  is  the  teaching  us  His  own  inde- 
pendence of  the  instruments  He  employs.  It  seems  to  us 
unaccountable,  that  after  having  endowed  with  every  gift 
and  grace  thpse  whom  He  has  raised  up  to  be  the  benefactors 
of  their  age,  He  should  scatter  and  dissipate  His  own  gifts 
and  hide  the  treasures  He  has  thus  accumulated,  as  a  dark 
and  unused  hoard,  in  the  grave.  After  having  chosen  his 
servants,  conducted  the  process  of  their  education,  and  quali- 
fied them  by  trials  and  lessons  and  privileges  for  the  work  in 
which  death  surprised  them,  He  interrupts  them  often  at  the 
very  season  when  they  seem  most  useful,  and  when  their 
continuance  has  appeared  indispensable  to  the  interests  of 
the  family  gathered  around  them,  or  the  churches  with  whom 
they  walked.  We  wonder  that  a  Martyn,  a  Summerfield 
and  a  Pearce  are  but  shown  to  the  churches,  and  then  with- 
drawn. Now,  if  we  do  not  so  far  sin,  as  to  put  our  trust  in 
these  our  friends,  but  our  confidence  is  really  in  God  alone, 
we  may  yet  limit  too  much  the  Holy  One  of  Israel.  We 
may  suppose  that  He  is  able  to  bless  us  only  through  certain 
favorite  channels.  To  show  his  own  independence,  and 
that  "  He  will  send  by  whom  He  will  send,"  God  may  sum- 
mon  hence  his  most    useful    servants    by    what  seems    an 


AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.  153 

untimely  call,  that,  in  the  language  of  Paul,  "  the  excellency 
of  the  power  might  be  seen  to  be  of  God,  and  not  of  men." 
The  Sovereign  of  the  Universe  must  not  appear  even  to  re- 
semble those  earthly  monarchs  whose  aggrandizement  is 
owing  more  to  the  skill  of  their  statesmen  and  the  conduct 
of  their  generals,  than  to  their  own  policy  or  prowess.  It 
was  in  part,  perhaps,  for  such  reasons,  that,  in  bringing  the 
chosen  tribes  to  the  Land  of  Promise,  God  determined  to 
bury  their  leaders  in  the  way.  Had  these  entered  Canaan 
at  the  head  of  the  tribes,  Israel  might  have  thought  that  their 
God  could  bless  them  only  through  the  instrumentality  of 
Moses,  Aaron,  and  Miriam  ;  nor  had  they  then  asked  or 
received  their  Joshuas  and  their  Deborahs,  the  Samuel  and 
the  David  that  adorned  their  later  annals.  And  how  skill- 
fully does  God  contrive  to  show  his  independence  of  all  his 
instruments.  He  withdraws,  one  by  one,  each  individual 
thread  in  the  warp  and  in  the  woof  of  human  society.  It  is 
removed,  and  its  place  supplied  by  another,  and  yet  the 
whole  web  remains  unbroken.  Amid  perpetual  change,  the 
scheme  of  human  society  and  the  plan  of  the  Divine  govern- 
ment moves  on  in  unbroken  continuity. 

4.  And  even  were  we  able  to  trace  to  no  other  purpose  the 
origin  of  the  affliction  that  has  bowed  us  in  the  dust,  we  know 
that  there  is  one  errand  it  was  undoubtedly  intended  to  accom- 
plish. It  came  to  remind  us  of  the  Sovereignty  of  God. 
This  is  a  truth  which  even  the  most  pious  are  apt  to  forget. 
We  fail  to  remember  that  God  is  the  Great  Proprietor  of  the 
Universe,  and  that  we  ourselves,  and  our  friends,  our  health 
and  life,  and  all  that  we  have,  and  all  that  we  are,  belong  to 
Him,  as  the  possessions  which  He  may  arrange  and  remove 
at  his  pleasure.  We  do  not  wish  to  be  called  to  account  by 
a  stranger  for  the  use  of  what  is  our  own,  and  we  can  ex- 
claim at  such  intermeddling,  "  Is  it  not  mine  own?  Is  thine 
eye  evil  because  I  am  good?"  And  should  not  God  be  allowed 
the  same  right  ?  And  there  are  dispensations  of  Providence, 
the  great  errand  of  which  seems  to  be,  to  leave  on  our  hearts 
the  impression,  "  God  giveth  no  account  of  any  of  his  mat- 
ters."* We  wonder  and  we  suffer ;  but  we  feel,  that 
although  "  clouds  and  darkness  are  round  about  Him,  yet 
righteousness  and  judgment  are  the  habitation  of  his  throne. "f 
"  His  path  is  in  the  great  waters, "|  and  we   cannot  trace  it. 

*  Job  xxxiii.  13.  t  Psalm  xcvii.  2.  t  Psalm  lxxvii.  19. 

21 


154  THE    STRONG    STAFF 

But  though  in  those  waters  our  earthly  hopes  be  wrecked — « 
though  the  son,  the  brother  and  the  friend  may  be  buried  in 
their  abysses — though  "  deep  calleth  unto  deep,"  and  all 
"  his  waves  and  his  billows  go  over  us,"  we  know  assuredly, 
that  He  who  moves  amid  that  storm  is  Just,  and  the  foot- 
steps which  we  cannot  follow  are  those  of  a  Father,  moving 
in  a  right  way  towards  his  own  glorious  purpose.  And  this 
lesson  itself,  were  it  the  only  one,  is  worth  all  it  costs.  To 
know  that  God  rules,  that  He  is  supreme,  is,  to  every  mind 
which  feels  aright,  consolation  under  any  trial,  and  a  reply 
to  all  murmurings.  Each  bereavement  is  but  the  act  of  One 
who  gave  all  that  we  now  lose,  and  who  is  but  resuming  his 
own  boon.  If  He  try  our  faith  as  he  did  that  of  Abraham, 
by  asking  our  Isaacs,  let  us  remember  that  He  takes  but  to 
restore — that  the  "  brother "  whom  we  lose  "  shall  rise 
again  at  the  resurrection  in  the  last  day  " — and  above  all, 
let  us  reflect,  that  the  God  who  asks  such  sacrifices  from  us, 
has  made  a  greater  sacrifice  for  us,  when  He  gave  his  own 
Son,  a  sacrifice  for  a  world  of  sinners.  When  the  Isaac  of 
the  Heavenly  Father  was  bound,  there  was  no  angel  crying 
from  heaven  to  avert  the  descending  knife,  no  ram  caught  in 
the  thickets  became  a  substitute  for  that  costly  victim.  And 
having  so  loved  us  as  to  give  His  own  Son  to  become  the 
propitiation  for  our  sins,  may  we  not  freely  surrender  to  his 
disposal  each  lesser  good? 

5.  But  it  is  not  His  mere  power  that  He  would  have  us 
remember.  We  may  discern  traces  in  such  dispensations 
also  of  His  wise  and  watchful  benevolence.  There  are  per- 
haps designs  of  the  richest  mercy  to  the  surviving  Israel  of 
God,  in  making,  at  times,  the  removal  of  a  Christian  from 
earth  most  unexpected  ; — sudden  as  may  be  the  shock  thus 
produced,  and  wide  as  may  be  the  chasm  created  by  the  be- 
reavement. It  is  adding  to  the  happiness  of  Heaven,  which 
has  long  comprised  the  larger  portion  of  the  Church  Univer- 
sal, and  it  is,  by  adding  to  the  attractions  of  that,  "  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly  and  Church  of  the  first-born  "  above,  exciting 
the  upward  aspirations,  lessening  the  temptations,  and  loos- 
ening the  bonds  of  the  Church  yet  militant  upon  earta. 
"  I  go,"  said  the  Saviour,  when  about  to  quit  the  earth — 
"I  go  to  prepare  a  place  for  you."  His  creative  word  could 
have  framed  in  the  highest  heavens  all  that  was  needed, 
whilst  He  himself  should  have  remained  still  on  the  earth. 
Scenes  of  surpassing  magnificence  and  beauty  would  have 


AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.  155 

started  into  existence  at  his  bare  command  ;  nor  was  His 
personal  return  to  heaven  needed,  to  lay  the  foundations  of 
the  New  Jerusalem,  and  to  set  up  its  gates  of  pearl.  But 
the  Church  of  Christ  was  at  death  to  pass  within  the  vail 
into  an  untried  state,  and  its  very  obscurity  clothed  it  with 
an  awful  and  repulsive  aspect.  The  assurance  that  a  Friend 
of  infinite  tenderness  and  equal  power,  ever  living  and  ever 
faithful,  was  already  there,  would  disperse  much  of  this 
dread.  And  amid  all  their  uncertainty  as  to  the  scenes  and 
employments  of  the  heavenly  world,  they  thus  knew  some- 
thing of  its  society.  The  fact  that  Christ  was  there  was 
enough  to  make  it  a  better  land,  inviting  to  the  heart,  meet- 
ing their  largest  hopes,  and  quelling  all  their  fears.  But  He 
has  yet  other  modes  of  rendering  Heaven  less  an  object  of 
apprehension  and  more  one  of  desire.  Each  one  of  those 
known  to  us  whom  He  has  removed  thither  becomes  a  new 
incentive  to  seek  that  blessed  city,  and  a  new  evidence  of 
its  spiritual  opulence.  When  we  have  known  a  departed 
Christian  merely  from  his  biography,  or  by  his  written  labors, 
he  becomes  often  so  endeared  to  us,  and  we  so  interested  in 
his  character,  that  the  thought  of  meeting  him  and  pursuing 
the  acquaintance  thus  formed  with  him  adds  new  lustre  to 
our  conception  of  the  heavenly  state.  We  close  the  memoirs 
of  a  Halyburton,  a  Martyn,  or  a  Payson,  or  the  burning  pages 
of  a  Baxter  or  a  Leighton,  and  feel  as  if  we  had  lost  a  per- 
sonal friend,  when  the  grave  closes  upon  their  earthly  ca- 
reer, and  we  long  to  see  their  history  resumed,  and  to  behold 
their  character  yet  more  fully  and  beauteously  developed  in 
the  state  beyond  the  grave.  But  if  converse  with  a  man's 
works  and  memoirs  makes  him  thus  ours,  and  we  wish  to 
trace  and  regain  our  lost  friend  in  his  removal  to  other 
spheres  of  existence,  much  more  must  we  feel  this  for  the 
brother  with  whom  we  have  taken  sweet  counsel,  and  with 
whom  we  have  gone  up  to  the  house  of  God  in  company, 
whose  voice  has  led  in  our  devotions,  who  has  aided  us  by 
advice  and  kindness,  and  made  our  hearts  glad  by  the  ten- 
derness and  sympathy  of  friendship.  The  loss  of  such  a 
Christian  friend  and  kinsman  is  a  wise  provision  of  the  Elder 
Brother  to  prepare  the  heavenly  home  for  the  travellers  that 
yet  linger  on  their  way  through  the  wilderness.  It  makes 
heaven  more  attractive  and  more  familiar,  and  every  such 
death  is  adding  to  the  spiritual  furniture  of  the  Father's 
house  of  many  mansions,  enriching  it  with  inmates  whose2 


156  THE    STRONG    STAFF 

fellowship  we  would  fain  regain,  and  whose  example  comes 
to  us  recommended  by  affection  and  hallowed  by  death. 
And  may  we  not  say  without  irreverence,  that  each  one 
thus  departing  uses  to  us  the  language  of  his  dying  Redeem- 
er;  "1  go  to  prepare  a  place  for  you  ?"  The  tendencies  of 
earth  and  sense  are  most  strong  to  make  the  visible  and  the 
invisible  world  too  distant  from  each  other,  cutting  off  all 
sympathy  by  the  impassable  barriers  of  the  tomb.  But  by 
such  removals  God  makes  our  affections  bridge  the  chasm, 
and  fling  to  the  earth  all  intervening  barriers.  Our  bonds  of 
attachment  and  confidence  grow  over  the  yawning  gulf,  and 
shoot  onward  into  the  unseen  and  eternal  world.  We  feel  that, 
divided  as  we  may  be,  the  church  is  yet  one  ;  and  that  the 
stream  of  death  destroys  not  the  unity  of  the  Israel  of  Gocl. 
The  bands  that  are  yet  occupying  the  nearer  shores,  and  the 
larger  and  happier  host  that  have  passed  over  the  swellings 
of  Jordan  and  are  now  set  down  in  the  city  of  endless  rest, 
are  really  one.  One  banner — one  Captain — one  inheritance 
prove  their  indivisibility.  And  every  friend  who  has  reached 
the  farther  shore  becomes  a  helper  of  our  faith,  not  only  in 
the  example  left  behind,  by  his  earthly  career,  but  also  in  the 
incentive  supplied  by  that  higher  and  more  lasting  career  of 
existence  on  which  he  has  now  entered,  and  in  which  he  is 
looking  for  us  to  share. 

And  the  more  sudden  the  removal,  the  less  that  the  be- 
reavement has  been  expected,  the  more  closely  does  God 
seem  to  bring  into  visible  union  the  two  divisions  of  His 
sacramental  host.  When  the  Christian  dies  after  a  lingering 
illness  that  had  long  been  regarded  as  fatal,  or  sinks  slowly 
into  the  grave  beneath  the  burden  of  old  age,  we  feel  as  if 
"the  space  between  the  state  of  the  righteous  in  this  world 
and  that  of  their  disembodied  brethren  were  more  like  a  vast 
and  immeasurable  interval.  It  seems  as  if  the  long  period 
of  their  sickness  and  declining  age  was  needed  to  carry  them 
over  the  wide  chasm  intervening  between  the  world  of  active 
life  here  on  earth,  and  the  world  of  rest  there.  But  when 
death  snatches  them  from  our  sides  with  the  heat  of  the 
day  yet  moistening  their  brows,  and  the  burden  of  the  day 
yet  bowing  their  shoulders,  and  they  are  hurried  at  once 
into  that  world  of  repose,  the  separation  between  the  world 
of  the  senses  and  the  world  of  spirits  seems,  as  it  actually  is, 
most  slight.  We  feel  that  our  daily  steps  take  hold  upon  eter- 
nity, and  that  the  earthly  church  should  at  every  moment  be 


AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.  157 

ready  to  migrate  to  the  fellowship  of  the  church  above. 
Viewed  under  its  ordinary  aspects,  the  waters  of  death  to- 
wards which  our  feet  are  tending  seem  a  dark  ocean,  stretching 
away  into  the  shoreless  distance.  But  the  loss  of  the  young 
and  vigorous,  smitten  down  at  our  sides  in  the  midst  of  their 
tasks,  narrows  the  stream.  The  eye  glances  across  to  the 
farther  shores,  and  we  seem  to  catch  glimpses  of  the  unut- 
terable glories,  and  to  hear  the  harpings  of  the  innumerable 
company  of  harpers  before  the  throne.  We  know  that  he 
who  has  disappeared  from  our  view  has  made  his  entrance 
into  that  assembly,  and  our  thoughts  are  carried,  in  his  rapid 
transit,  with  unwonted  ease  to  the  new  scenes  he  inhabits  ; 
and  the  heart  of  the  survivor  almost  forgets  to  bleed,  when 
thus  wafted  suddenly  into  that  land  where  the  hand  of  an 
Almighty  Father  staunches  not  only  the  wounds  but  even 
the  tears  of  his  suffering  people.  Were  every  death  linger- 
ing and  long  expected,  the  heavenly  world  would  seem  more 
distant  than  it  actually  is.  But  the  sudden  translation  of 
the  believer  makes  us  feel  its  nearness.  We  think  no  more 
of  the  change  as  Ihe  voyage  of  many  weary  days  ;  but  feel 
how  easily  the  Redeemer  may  accomplish  the  promise  to 
bring  the  soul  this  day  to  be  with  him  in  Paradise. 

II.  Such  are  some  of  the  lessons  that  the  God  of  Provi- 
dence would  have  us  learn  ;  let  us  remember  also  the  duties 
to  which  we  are,  amid  such  scenes,  specially  called.  These 
are  submission,  improvement  and  confidence  in  God. 

1.  In  the  light  cast  by  the  word  of  God  upon  these  His 
dispensations,  we  are  to  exercise  submission.  He  does  not 
call  us  to  apathy.  He  expressly  warns  us  against  despising 
the  chastening  of  the  Lord,  and  to  display  a  frigid  insensi- 
bility were  to  despise  and  to  defy  His  chastenings.  But  yet 
we  are  not  to  faint  when  rebuked  of  Him.  We  are,  in  our 
weeping,  assured  that  Christ  himself  can  sympathize,  and 
that  the  Ruler  of  the  universe  has  not  forgotten  that  He  was 
once  the  Man  of  Sorrows.  But  we  may  not  in  selfish  grief 
refuse  to  be  comforted.  Remembering. our  many  mercies, 
blessing  God  that  what  we  have  lost  was  so  rich  a  blessing, 
and  was  so  long  continued  to  us,  counting  up  our  transgres- 
sions, and  feeling  how  little  proportion  the  severest  chas- 
tisement has  yet  borne  to  our  unworthiness,  we  shall  see 
that  submission  is  our  evident  duty.  But  while  the  intellect 
and  the  conscience  may  yield  their  prompt  acquiescence  to 
the  dealings  of  our  God,  the  affections  may  again  and  again 


158  THE    STRONG    STAFF 

renew  the  contest.  It  was  thus  with  Job.  When  the  trials 
that  were  appointed  him  came  fast  and  heavily,  he  at  first 
charged  not  God  foolishly,  accepted  the  chastisement,  and 
justified  the  chastiser,  and  both  in  his  language  and  his 
conduct  under  the  first  onset  of  his  calamities  "  he  sinned 
not."  But  although  his  judgment  was  thus  convinced,  his 
feelings  soon  rebelled.  He  rashly  challenged  God  to  ap- 
pear in  controversy  with  him  and  justify  His  severe  dispen- 
sations. Yet  at  last,  through  the  influences  of  the  Spirit,  the 
murmurer  was  silenced  and  the  mourner  comforted ;  and 
the  apostle,  when  alluding  to  that  remarkable  history,  be- 
seeches us  to  remember  "  the  end  of  the  Lord,"  and  that  He 
was  proved  by  the  issue  even  of  those  severe  and  multiplied 
afflictions,  "very  pitiful  and  of  tender  mercy." 

'2.  Another  duty  which  God  demands  from  all  who  share 
in  scenes  of  mourning  like  the  present,  is  our  personal  im- 
provement, and  that  we  profit  by  the  example  of  those  who 
have  "  died  in  the  Lord."  The  testimony  given  by  our 
friend  was  the  eloquent  testimony  of  a  life  of  Christian  con- 
sistency. I  feel  that,  in  attempting  to  sketch  the  character 
of  a  beloved  friend,  I  may  be  suspected  of  overcharging  the 
picture.  But  I  would  remember  that  the  place  I  here  occupy 
is  that  of  the  minister  of  Christ's  gospel,  and  that  not  the 
partial  eulogy  of  man,  but  the  truth  in  its  severe  simplicity 
is  all  that  is  permitted  by  the  Master  to  whom  I  stand  or  fall. 
We  know,  too,  that  our  departed  brother  would  have  rejected 
all  praise  that  placed  him  before  others  in  any  other  light 
than  that  in  which  he  had  long  rejoiced  to  stand  before  God, 
as  a  penitent  sinner  saved  by  grace.  But  that  grace  was  in 
him  so  winningly  manifested — there  was  in  him  so  much  to 
love,  and  so  much  to  admire,  that  it  seems  due  to  the  glory  • 
of  the  grace  of  God  which  made  him  what  he  was,  that  he  be 
not  left  to  sink  unnoticed  into  the  grave.  The  unexpected 
removal  of  his  father,  who  embarked  from  a  southern  port 
in  a  vessel  from  which  no  tidings  were  ever  received,  left 
him,  as  the  eldest  son  of  his  widowed  mother,  to  be  from  an 
early  age  the  hope  of  the  family.  He  was  often  told  by  his 
surviving  parent,  at  this  early  age,  how  much  depended  on 
his  bearing  and  conduct.  We  have  more  than  once  heard 
him  alluding  to  this,  and  describing  the  strong  influence  it 
had  exercised  on  his  feelings  and  character.  He  felt  that 
there  were  required  of  him  forethought  and  considerateness 
more  than  are  generally  found  at  his   years.     The  natural 


AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.  159 

sobriety  of  his  temperament,  and  his  innate  dignity  of  de- 
meanor, became  in  consequence  more  strongly  developed, 
perhaps,  than  they  would  otherwise  have  been.  His  classi- 
cal studies  were  pursued  under  the  direction  of  Daniel  H. 
Barnes,  that  most  enthusiastic  and  successful  teacher,  whose 
respect  and  esteem  he  secured  in  a  remarkable  degree,  and 
of  whose  delicate  kindness  he  always  preserved  a  grateful 
remembrance.  His  collegiate  course  he  completed  with 
honor  in  Columbia  College.  On  leaving  it  he  selected  for 
his  profession  that  which  had  been  also  the  employment  of 
his  father,  the  law.  He  had  been  but  little  more  than  a  year 
engaged  in  its  study  when  his  attention  was  drawn  to  the 
subject  of  religion.  He  had  thought  of  the  gospel  as  some- 
thing which  befitted  rather  the  other  sex,  but  which  would 
be  inimical  to  that  manliness  of  character  which  from  an 
early  period  it  had  been  his  ambition  to  cultivate.  The 
work  of  that  most  patient  and  profound  reasoner,  Butler,  on 
the  Analogy  of  Natural  and  Revealed  Religion,  taught  him 
that  in  neglecting  Christianity,  he  had  been  contemning  what 
he  had  not  understood.  In  the  study  of  the  scriptures,  and 
in  earnest  and  secret  prayer,  he  was  brought,  as  he  trusted, 
out  of  the  darkness  of  nature  into  the  glorious  light  of  the 
gospel,  and  was  made  to  rejoice  in  the  hope  of  the  children 
of  God.  Some  difficulty  made  in  the  Baptist  Church  to 
which  he  first  offered  himself  for  membership,  because  of  the 
sentiments  which  he  held  as  to  the  atonement  of  Christ  being 
made  for  the  whole  world,  prevented  his  union  there.  His 
views  of  religious  truth  were  those  generally  called  Calvin- 
istic,  although  he  did*  not,  with  many  who  would  claim  ex- 
clusively that  designation,  regard  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  as 
being  in  its  original  provision  made  only  for  those  who  are 
finally  saved  by  its  effects.  A  delay  of  some  months,  if  not 
years  intervened,  during  which  he  studied  the  Scriptures, 
and  the  views  of  several  evangelical  denominations. 

Shortly  before  or  after  the  completion  of  his  legal  studies, 
in  the  years  of  opening  manhood,  he  made  a  public  profes- 
sion of  religion  in  connexion  with  the  Oliver  Street  Baptist 
Church  in  this  city.  In  the  formation  of  the  Amity  Street 
Church,  an  offset  from  that,  he  took  an  early  and  active 
part.  How  great  his  usefulness  to  us  as  a  people,  the  value 
of  his  counsels,  influence,  and  example,  and  of  his  personal 
labors  in  the  Sabbath  School,  of  which  from  its  establishment 
lie  was  the  beloved  and  indefatigable  Superintendent,  I  need 


160  THE    STRONG    STAFF 

not  say  to  those  who  already  know  it  so  well,  and  feel  so 
deeply  the  loss  we  have  endured  by  his  removal. 

In  his  professional  career  and  in  his  influence  on  society 
he  seemed  marked  for  distinction  and  great  usefulness. 
Averse  from  principle  and  the  habitual  dignity  of  his  charac- 
ter to  all  that  chicanery  which  has  more  generally  than  justly 
been  ascribed  to  the  members  of  the  bar,  he  won  universal 
respect  and*confidence.  Well  read  in  his  profession,  known 
to  a  very  extended  circle  of  acquaintances,  and  universally 
esteemed,  the  blended  dignity  and  courtesy  of  his  manners, 
his  assiduous  devotion  to  business,  and  his  strong,  sound 
intellect,  seemed  to  promise  him  the  honors  and  emoluments 
of  his  profession  in  liberal  measure.  His  attention  to  his 
legal  studies  did  not  cramp  his  mind,  or  lead  him  to  shun  all 
other  reading.  With  great  refinement  of  taste  and  delicacy 
of  feeling,  and  a  judgment  of  remarkable  maturity  and  ripe- 
ness, there  was  an  unvarying  propriety  that  ran  through  his 
actions.  The  same  traits  made  him  an  adviser  of  great  value. 
Imagination,  though  richly  stored  with  classic  and  beautiful 
imagery,  was  not  with  him  an  active  faculty.  His  judgment 
had  too  overbearing  a  preponderance  to  allow  to  the  fancy 
its  full  scope.  Hence,  though  he  could  clothe  any  sentiment 
with  appropriate  and  graceful  illustrations,  they  were  rather 
the  acquisitions  won  by  reading  than  the  play  of  his  own 
imagination.  His  intellect  was  eminently  a  practical  one, 
and  he  showed  great  skill  in  seizing  on  two  or  three  of  the 
strong  points  of  any  question,  and  placing  these  in  a  clear 
light,  he  left  the  lesser  details  comparatively  to  care  for  them- 
selves. Yet,  though  practical,  his  mind  was  not  like  that 
of  many  practical  men,  narrowed  and  distorted  by  looking 
merely  at  a  few  obvious  and  common  facts  entirely  apart 
from  their  principles,  thus  neglecting  those  general  truths 
which  must  ultimately  sway  the  course  of  every  mind  pos- 
sessed of  any  power.  He  rose  invariably  and  of  choice  to 
the  contemplation  of  principles,  but  in  the  application  of 
them  he  allowed  quite  as  invariably  for  the  actual  state  of 
things  in  the  world  around  him.  In  temper  he  displayed  the 
greatest  calmness  and  sweetness,  and  united  happily  great 
frankness  of  bearing  with  much  caution.  The  reserve  some- 
times imputed  to  his  manners  was  rather  the  result  of  his 
signal  prudence,  and  of  a  refined  taste  that  shrunk  alike  from 
display  on  his  own  part  and  coarseness  on  the  part  of  others, 
than  of  any  coldness  of  feeling,     i'or  in  the  free  intercourse 


AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.  161 

of  friendship  none  ever  bore  a  warmer,  kinder  heart.  In 
the  retirement  of  home,  how  considerate,  how  amiable,  how 
estimable  and  exemplary  he  was,  they  only  can  tell  aright, 
who  feel  that  in  the  brother,  the  son  and  the  husband,  they 
have  been  bereaved  of  one  whose  loss  can  never  be  replaced. 
A  more  devoted  son  no  widowed  mother  ever  leaned  upon 
in  the  hour  of  trial,  and  the  testimony  of  all  who  have  ob- 
served him  nearly,  and  most  the  testimony  of  those  "  the 
light  of  whose  tabernacle  "  God  "  has  put  out  "  in  this  be- 
reavement, would  prove  how  few  have  ever  been  so  richly 
endowed  with  those  qualities  that  shed  around  the  little 
world  of  home  the  serene,  unbroken  sunshine  of  cheerfulness 
and  affection. 

But  it  is  chiefly  with  his  religious  character  that  we  have 
here  to  do.  And  religion  in  him  was  a  principle  so  con- 
stantly influencing  his  course,  suffused  over  his  whole  cha- 
racter, no  where  gathered  in  unseemly  blotches,  but  shedding 
every  where  the  hues  and  bloom  of  spiritual  life,  that  it  must 
have  attracted  the  notice  of  all  who  have  known  him.  No 
man  dreaded  or  disliked  more  all  appearance  of  ostentation, 
or  the  least  semblance  of  cant.  His  was  a  practical  religion, 
uniform,  steady  and  noiseless  as  the  light  of  day.  His  busi- 
ness habits,  and  the  peculiar  ripeness  of  judgment  already 
mentioned,  made  him  in  the  boards  of  the  Amer.  Bible  Soci- 
ety, the  American  Tract  Society,  and  the  American  Sunday 
School  Union,  an  adviser  greatly  valued  and  relied  upon. 
Of  the  Young  Men's  Bible  Society  of  this  city  he  had  been 
an  efficient  member  for  nearly  the  whole  period  of  his  Chris- 
tian profession,  and  he  was  at  the  time  of  his  death  its  Presi- 
dent. When  leading  in  the  prayers  of  the  conference  room, 
there  was  a  devout  and  subdued  earnestness  that  gave  to  his 
prayers  a  peculiar  character,  and  compelled  all  to  feel  when 
he  conducted  their  supplications,  that  he  was  entering  into 
the  presence  of  a  God  whom  he  adored  whilst  he  loved. 
Reverence  and  humility  seemed  breathing  in  the  tones  of 
his  voice,  while  his  language  was  tinged  with  that  rich,  an- 
tique simplicity  of  which  our  English  Bible  is  so  beautiful  a 
specimen.  Alas,  that  we  shall  hear  that  voice  no  more  !  In 
the  concerns  of  this  church  how  discriminating  a  mind  he 
ever  showed,  and  with  how  steady  a  hand  he  held  the  balance 
in  which  he  weighed  and  conciliated  opposing  opinions,  many 
here  have  remarked  with  admiration,  and  they  will  long 
remember  with  deep  regret  the  irretrievable  loss  we  have 


162  THE    STRONG    STAFF 

endured  in  his  departure.  Though  from  conviction  and 
study  he  preferred  the  denomination  to  which  he  belonged, 
his  feelings  were  eminently  catholic.  He  showed  it  in  all 
his  intercourse  with  Christians  known  by  other  names.  It 
was  manifest  in  his  reading.  He  could  relish  true  piety, 
whether  found  in  its  seraphic  fire  in  the  Lectures  of  Leigh- 
ton,  or  in  the  prayers,  tinged  with  superstition  as  they  are, 
of  Bishop  Andrews,  in  the  memoirs  of  Halyburton,  a  book 
which  he  prized  highly  for  its  close  anatomy  of  the  heart,  in 
the  history  of  that  most  devout  and  able  body  of  men,  the 
Port  Royalists,  or  in  the  story  of  the  missionary  toils  of  some 
of  the  earlier  and  purer  Jesuits.  The  refinement  and  polish 
of  his  manners,  his  intelligence  and  cheerfulness,  won  him 
the  respect  even  of  the  worldly,  without  betraying  him  into 
any  sacrifice  of  principle,  or  unworthy  concealment  of  his 
Christian  character. 

Such  he  was  ;  and  we  had  hoped  for  many  years  to  have 
rejoiced  in  his  light  and  been  strengthened  by  his  counsel. 
But  God  saw  fit  to  order  otherwise.  A  derangement  of  the 
digestive  system,  under  which  he  had  long  labored,  became 
more  severe  in  the  autumn  of  last  year.  His  whole  consti- 
tution seemed  greatly  enfeebled.  But  neither  his  friends 
nor  himself  apprehended  danger.  At  the  commencement 
of  the  present  year  he  suddenly  determined  on  a  voyage  to 
the  South,  hoping  for  benefit  chiefly  from  the  voyage,  and 
most  confidently  expecting  to  return  to  his  professional  en- 
gagements and  to  his  friends  here  after  the  lapse  of  some  four 
weeks.  The  voyage  instead  of  alleviating  seemed  to  exas- 
perate his  disorder,  and  left  him  among  his  friends  at  the 
South  so  greatly  exhausted  that  he  was  compelled  to  aban- 
don all  thoughts  of  an  immediate  return.  The  friends  to 
whose  home  he  was  most  kindly  and  tenderly  welcomed, 
feared  far  more  as  to  the  issue  of  his  disorder  than  he  him- 
self had  yet  learned  to  do.  Anticipations  of  possible  danger 
did  probably  pass  across  his  mind,  but  these  seem  to  have 
been  brief  and  at  long  intervals.  Yet  many  circumstances 
combine  to  show  that  the  retirement  of  the  sick-room  was 
employed  in  the  review  of  his  life  and  the  close  scrutiny  of 
his  heart.  Members  of  his  family  from  New  York,  alarmed 
and  distressed  at  the  unexpected  tidings  of  his  growing 
weakness,  set  out  to  join  him  at  the  South.  She  who  is 
now  his  afflicted  widow,  and  his  sister,  were  permitted  to 
reach  him  a   week  or   more  before  his  death.     Two  other 


AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.  163 

members  of  the  family  arrived  but  four  days  before  the  clos- 
ing scene.  Yet  to  the  last  they  and  he  could  not  but  cling 
to  the  hope  of  recovery,  persuaded  as  were  his  physicians 
that  there  was  no  disorder  other  than  a  derangement  of  the 
digestive  system,  and  that  the  chief  danger  was  from  the  ex- 
treme feebleness  produced  by  his  inability  to  receive  nourish- 
ment. To  Mrs.  Green,  before  she  was  willing  to  admit  those 
anticipations  of  his  probable  departure  to  which  he  some- 
times adverted,  he  remarked  that  he  had  been  looking  at  the 
character  of  God,  and  it  appeared  awfully  pure  and  holy, 
"  and  that  was  right ;"  he  looked  then  at  himself,  and  he  was 
unholy,  and  the  contrast  distressed  him.  Though  his  course 
had  been  in  the  eyes  of  his  friends  one  of  singular  consis- 
tency, and  his  character  as  a  disciple  of  Christ  had  been  pre- 
served in  the  eyes  of  the  world  unblemished,  he  yet  said  in 
the  course  of  another  conversation,  "  that  the  world  had 
doubtless  seen  much  in  him  to  disapprove,  but  they  had  not 
seen  his  deep  and  secret  repentings."  Language  of  this 
kind  from  one  whose  course  had  been  marked  by  such  beau- 
tiful moral  symmetry,  showed  how  deep  and  spiritual  were 
his  views  of  religion.  And  although  from  an  anxiety  to 
avoid  distressing  his  friends,  and  the  expectation  he  himself 
habitually  cherished  of  being  permitted  at  least  to  return  to 
his  home  in  this  city,  he  did  not  constantly  speak  of  death 
as  being  near,  there  were  yet  times  when  his  language  showed 
that  he  was  looking  forward  to  it  as  an  event  that  was  not 
improbable,  and  that  might  not  be  very  remote.  But  still, 
with  all  this,  the  last  summons  came  suddenly.  Being 
asked  on  the  last  day  of  his  life,  when  scarce  able  to  speak, 
if  he  found  the  Saviour  near,  and  if  he  could  in  his  strength 
enter  eternity,  he  replied  with  a  voice  so  low  as  to  be  well 
nigh  inaudible,  "  He  is  here."  The  expression  still  more 
faintly  uttered  some  little  time  after,  "  I  am  dying"  was  the 
last  intelligible  language  that  was  gathered  from  his  lips. 
But  when  he  had  lost  the  power  of  speech,  he  was  still  sen- 
sible, and  as  the  promises  of  Scripture  were  recited  in  his 
hearing,  and  he  was  asked  if  he  found  his  mind  peaceful  and 
calm  in  the  prospect  of  the  change  before  him,  to  signify  it 
by  closing  and  then  opening  his  eyes,  he  was  seen,  as  they 
who  stood  by  the  death-bed  were  watching  him  with  intent 
anxiety,  to  close  and  open  them,  and  then  closing  them  a 
second  time  to  open  them  again,  while  he  fixed  on  his  wife 
a  look  of  unspeakable  benignity.     His  lips  were  seen  moving 


164  THE    STRONG    STAFF 

as  if  in  prayer,  and  his  eyes  were  cast  heavenward.  Life 
went  out  gradually,  and  it  was  difficult  to  fix  the  time  of  his 
dismission.  His  death-bed  was  peace.  There  were  no  rap- 
tures. The  state  of  his  body,  attenuated  as  it  was  and  en- 
feebled to  the  utmost,  exercised  its  usual  influence  on  his 
mind.  But  there  was,  amid  all,  peace.  He  had  said,  ten  days 
before,  to  Mrs.  Green  at  a  time  when  she  was  unprepared 
to  believe  his  danger  so  imminent,  and  when  he  himself  at 
times  cherished  strong  hopes  of  recovery,  that  the  16th  of 
March  was  his  birth-day,  and  it  might  prove  the  day  of  his 
death.  And  such  it  was — the  day  of  his  emancipation  from 
earth,  and  his  birth-day,  we  humbly  trust,  into  the  glory  and 
bliss  of  the  heavenly  world. 

He  received  from  the  unwearied  kindness  of  the  relatives 
at  whose  residence  he  expired,  most  assiduous  and  devoted 
attentions.  He  enjoyed  the  visits  and  conversations  of  pious 
friends  from  the  vicinity,  and  amongst  others  of  the  Rev. 
Mr.  McGill,  a  Presbyterian  clergyman,  who  also  officiated 
at  his  funeral  services.  Several  of  his  family  were  permitted 
to  reach  his  dying  couch.  Yet  with  all  these  alleviations, 
and  they  were  many  and  merciful,  it  seemed  a  melancholy 
comment  on  the  uncertainty  of  all  human  calculations,  that 
he  who  went  to  pay  the  visit  of  a  fortnight,  remained  to  die, 
away  from  home,  and  far  from  some  of  his  nearest  kindred. 
It  seemed  mysterious  that  one  so  beloved  and  so  useful,  so 
needful  to  the  general  interests  of  religion  amongst  us,  and 
so  indispensable  to  the  family  who  leaned  on  him  in  confiding 
affection,  should  be  removed  so  unexpectedly.  Yet  we  know 
that  it  was  ordered  by  Infinite  kindness  and  unerring  wis- 
dom. We  trust  that  our  departed  brother  knew  this,  and 
that  he  found  the  sentiment  which  he  quoted  to  a  pious  vis- 
itor in  the  last  days  of  his  life,  the  habitual  language  of  his 
heart :  "  I  will  remember  the  years  of  the  right  hand  of  the 
Most  High." 

We  think  of  what  he  was,  and  we  think  of  what  he  prom- 
ised yet  to  become  ;  and  it  seems  difficult  to  acquiesce  in  the 
dispensation.  Yet  He  who  has  done  it,  loved  him  more  truly 
and  tenderly  than  we  could  ever  do.  He  made  him  what  he 
was  upon  earth,  and  has  now,  we  doubt  not,  made  him  a  far 
happier  and  holier  being  in  the  world  of  light  than  he  was  or 
could  ever  become  upon  our  dark  earth.  Let  us  not  then 
mourn  him  selfishly  in  wishing  that  our  gain  might  be  se- 
cured by  his  loss — restoring  him  to  earth  by  depriving  him 


AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.  165 

of  heaven  ; — let  us  not  mourn  him  sullenly,  in  chiding  with 
the  Father  who  gave  and  who  has  taken  him  ;  but  let  us 
mourn  him  meekly  and  wisely,  by  treading  in  his  steps,  and 
following  him  even  as  he  followed  Christ,  and  thus  hastening 
forward  to  the  reunions  of  Heaven  by  a  growing  meetness 
for  its  employments.  Were  he  here  again  he  would  see 
much  doubtless  to  be  amended  in  his  own  course — he  would 
perhaps  discern,  high  and  consistent  as  was  his  career,  how 
worldly  ambition  had  yet  dimmed  at  times  the  clear  vision 
of  his  faith ;  and  the  interests  of  time  usurped  more  than 
their  share  of  thought  and  labor,  in  comparison  w,th  the  in- 
terests of  eternity.  Let  us  mourn  him,  by  living  not  only  as 
he  lived,  but  as  he  would  live  were  his  career  to  be  again 
commenced. 

Especially  is  the  example  of  such  a  man  valuable  in  this 
day  of . contest  and  agitation.  Calm  and  reflecting,  with  a 
coolness  of  judgment  that  ever  guided  the  movements  of  a 
warm  heart,  he  was  not  to  be  swept  away  at  the  mercy  of 
every  current.  His  actions,  the  result  of  principle,  rather 
than  of  blind  impulse,  had  a  serene  steadiness.  You  knew 
where  to  find  him.  He  had  not  to  wait  until  he  could  com- 
pile his  creed  from  the  huzzas  of  the  multitude.  In  the  calm 
light  of  conscience  and  truth  he  studied  his  duty,  and  in  the 
broad  day-light  he  did  it. 

3.  It  is  the  voice  of  each  bereavement  like  the  present  that 
we  cease  from  man  and  put  our  trust  in  the  Lord  Jehovah, 
in  whom  is  everlasting  strength. 

The  young  men  here  present  see  in  the  character  of  our 
departed  brother  the  effects  of  such  a  faith.  They  are  taught 
by  a  noble  example  how  much  a  young  man  may  accomplish, 
how  strong  the  confidence  and  how  profound  the  respect  that 
may  be  won  even  for  that  age  which  is  generally  looked 
upon  rather  for  exertion  than  counsel,  for  glowing  impulses, 
than  for  the  lights  of  wisdom  and  meditation.  And  how 
rich  is  the  legacy  bequeathed  by  such  a  Christian  to  his 
fatherless  child  and  his  mourning  relatives,  compared  with 
the  legacy  many  a  young  man  leaves,  of  a  tarnished  name 
and  wasted  powers  and  a  lost  life.  His  was  not  a  lost  life. 
Many  of  his  plans  were  left  incomplete,  and  his  plough  was 
checked  by  death,  and  stood  still  in  the  middle  of  the  furrow, 
but  it  was  rightly  aimed,  and  well  had  it  been  driven,  and  he 
looked  not  back. 

This  bereaved  Church  are  called  to  confide  in  God.     Our 


166  THE    STRONG    STAFF 

lamented  brother  was  one  of  the  colony  originally  constitut- 
ing this  Church  ;  and  in  all  the  counsels,  labors  and  sacri- 
fices necessary  to  its  establishment,  he  has  borne  an  active 
part.  He  was  greatly  and  deservedly  beloved.  In  the 
Sabbath  School  he  united,  in  a  singular  degree,  the  power 
of  securing  the  respect,  with  that  of  conciliating  the  affections 
of  the  children.  He  was  absent  from  us.  We  hoped  for 
his  return.  We  hear  of  his  death.  Others  of  our  number 
have  been  cut  down  in  the  promise  and  strength  of  opening 
manhood.  Let  us  as  a  people  turn  to  Him  that  has  siLitten 
us,  and  by  the  united  and  augmented  efforts  of  many  aim  to 
supply  the  loss  of  one — but  that  one  so  variously  endowed 
and  so  greatly  useful.  And  although  we  may  scarce  in  the 
usual  course  of  God's  providence  expect  to  see  again  his 
like,  for  it  is  not  the  ordinary  dealing  of  God  to  bestow  two 
such  men  upon  a  church  in  one  generation,  yet  trusting  Him 
and  serving  Him,  He  will  not  fail  us.  Let  us  emulate  his 
piety,  not  intermittent  and  occasional  flashes,  but  a  broad, 
serene  and  steady  light.  And  if  his  loss  but  bring  nearer  to 
us  the  eternity  he  has  entered,  and  the  Saviour  and  the 
Spirit,  to  whose  influences  he  owed  all,  even  this  bereave- 
ment shall  be  for  our  good. 

To  the  bereaved  family  where  should  I  find  language  to 
address  myself  or  arguments  for  consolation,  could  I  not  bid 
them  also  trust  in  God?  How  wide  a  chasm  has  one  death 
occasioned,  from  the  mother  who  has  seen  the  son  that  was 
for  years  her  stay,  suddenly  removed,  to  the  child  yet  un- 
conscious of  the  vast  loss  he  has  endured,  and  the  widow 
whose  brimming  cup  of  happiness  God  has  dashed  to  the 
earth.  If  I  sought  to  point  you  to  earthly  topics  of  consola- 
tion, how  mean  and  petty  would  these  worldly  consolations 
seem.  But  in  the  remembrance  that  he  whom  you  have  lost 
is  now,  we  have  good  and  joyful  hope,  with  God — in  the 
hope  given  to  so  many  of  you,  that  you  are  journeying  to 
the  same  city  of  habitation,  and  that  death  is  the  gate  of  a 
blissful  and  endless  reunion  to  those  who  "  die  in  the  Lord" 
— there  are  thoughts  that  may  brighten  even  such  a  scene. 
When  a  pious  visitor  asked  our  dying  friend  for  what  he 
should  pray,  his  answer  was,  "  Sanctification."  And  if  this 
be  your  prayer  for  yourselves,  and  for  those  who  as  yet 
know  not  the  God  of  your  friend  and  brother — if  we  all  that 
loved  and  lament  him  could  but  be  persuaded  to  bury  in  his 
grave    all  worldliness    and   indifference,  how   glorious   and 


AND    THE    BEAUTIFUL    ROD.  167 

salutary  the  fruits  that  would  spring  even  from  this  bitter  be- 
reavement. And  although  Nature  will,  even  in  the  heirs  of 
promise,  murmur  at  a  trial  like  the  present,  yet,  the  anchor 
of  the  promise,  my  beloved  friends,  has  not  torn  itself  loose 
even  amid  this  storm  ;  and  this,  even  this  calamity  shall  work 
together  for  good  to  them  that  love  God  and  that  trust  Him. 
The  ark  may  be  tossed,  but  through  all  the  wild  and  sicken- 
ing commotion  it  shall  swing,  heavily  indeed,  but  safely,  its 
way  towards  the  haven  of  rest.  We  see,  in  every  death, 
God's  truth  as  executing  his  threats  pronounced  in  Eden. 
Let  the  fulfillment  of  the  curse  teach  us  that  the  same  truth 
is  pledged  to  the  accomplishment  of  the  promise. 

To  the  Sabbath  school  teacher  I  would  say,  Trust  more 
entirely  in  God.  Remember  how  sudden  may  be  your 
transfer  from  the  class  and  the  teachers'  meeting  to  the  pre- 
sence of  the  Judge  and  the  scenes  of  your  rest.  You  leave 
the  school-room,  perhaps,  as  it  was  left  by  your  beloved 
superintendent,  all  unconscious  that  your  eye  is  casting  its 
last  glance  on  the  walls,  and  your  feet  crossing  the  threshold 
never  to  return.  Oh,  the  light  that  such  events  let  in  upon 
old  and  familiar  truths  !  How,  by  the  grave  of  one  thus 
smitten  down  in  the  strength  of  manhood,  do  we  see  the  true 
purpose  of  life,  the  worth  of  the  soul,  the  majesty  of  the 
gospel,  the  glories  of  a  Saviour,  and  the  tremendous  import 
of  that  word— Eternity. 

To  us  all  it  remains,  as  the  one  duty,  the  first  and  the  last 
of  each  of  our  fallen  race,  to  renounce  our  trust  in  the  crea- 
ture for  a  simple  and  grateful  trust  in  the  Creator.  It  is 
affecting  to  observe  how  they  who  have  tried  Him  most 
closely  have  attested  his  unshaken  stability.  David  and 
Moses,  both  men  of  large  experience  in  the  most  active  and 
diversified  scenes  of  life,  are  found  in  their  last  hours  extol- 
ling God  under  this  one  aspect — the  Rock.  They  had  found 
man  as  treacherous  as  he  is  feeble,  and  earth  full  of  change, 
and  uncertainty,  and  instability.  The  one  had  heard  his 
own  followers  speak  of  stoning  him  at  Ziklag  ;  and  the  other 
had  caught  the  shoutings  of  idolatry  from  the  tribes,  chosen, 
and  led,  and  fed  by  miracles,  at  the  foot  of  the  burning  Si- 
nai ;  and  even  his  meekness  had  given  way  on  hearing  the 
contentions  of  the  people  at  Meribah.  The  one  had  felt 
the  murmurings  of  Miriam,  and  borne  the  envy  of  Korah. 
The  other  had  encountered  the  enmity  of  Saul,  the  malice 
of  Doeg,  the  craft  of  Ahithophel,  the  treachery  of  Absalom, 


168   THE  STRONG  STAFF  AND  THE  BEAUTIFUL  ROD. 

and  the  cursings  of  Shimei.  Pleasure,  and  wealth,  and 
honor  had  offered  their  aid  to  ensure  happiness,  and  to  estab- 
lish security :  but  from  them  all  these  men  returned,  declar- 
ing that  God  is  the  Rock.  Prove  Him,  then,  ye  sinners. 
For  He  stands,  amid  all  the  changes  of  the  world,  the  Endless 
and  the  Immutable  One.  The  strong  sceptre  which  His  hand 
grasps  is  not  shattered,  and  the  Rod  of  the  Stem  of  Jesse  is 
yet  to  rule  all  nations,  and  to  fill  the  world  with  its  fruit.  There 
was  an  hour  when  it  was  grasped  and  splintered  in  the  fierce 
onset  of  hell.  That  was  the  hour  and  power  of  darkness. 
But,  buried  in  the  earth,  that  Rod  blossomed  from  the  dust, 
and  sprung  up,  a  Shoot  of  Hope  for  all  the  earth — the  Plant 
of  Renown  and  of  Life  to  all  the  nations.  Believe  in  Him, 
and  your  reliance  shall  never  fail.  Neglect  Him,  and  not 
all  the  prosperity  He  may  permit,  or  that  earth  can  bestow, 
will  be  to  you  other  than  a  bruised  reed.  The  time  is  com- 
ing when  it  shall  fail  you — when  even  pious  friends,  and 
godly  parents,  and  Bibles,  and  sanctuaries  shall  not  save  you. 
How  wretched,  then,  will  be  your  lot  compared  with  that  of 
the  man,  who,  looking  round  on  the  dark  valley,  can  also 
look  upward  and  say,  "  I  will  fear  no  evil,  Thy  rod  and  Thy 
staff  they  shall  comfort  me."  Grasping  that  staff,  the  parting 
spirit  can  say  to  an  avenging  law,  an  opening  grave  and  a 
flaming  hell,  "He  is  here" — He,  the  Propitiation,  the 
Redeemer  and  the  Resurrection.  And  if  enabled  to  say  this 
truly  of  ourselves,  we  have  the  pledge  of  Christ's  presence 
wherever  we  wander.  If  called  to  take  the  wings  of  the 
morning,  and  to  travel  to  the  furthest  shores  of  the  universe  ; 
if,  tempting  an  untried  way,  we  pass  through  scenes  the  most 
perilous,  this  shall  remove  all  loneliness  and  ensure  all  hap- 
piness, that  everywhere  the  sinless  spirit  can  say  still,  "  He 
is  Acre,"  reposing  securely  in  His  Omnipresence,  and  resting 
content  in  His  All-sufficiency. 


THE  JESUITS,  AS  A  MISSIONARY  ORDER  * 

The  missionary  spirit  contributed  to  the  discovery  of  our 
continent.  "  The  man  who  gave  to  Castile  and  Leon  a  New 
World,"  was  full  of  high  religious  aspirations.  With  much 
of  the  superstition,  Columbus  had  more  than  the  piety  of  his 
age.  He  regarded  himself  as  commissioned  by  a  higher 
than  any  earthly  court,  in  the  great  enterprise  which  he  pur- 
sued with  such  calm  constancy.  On  reaching  the  shores  he 
had  long  sought,  his  first  act  was  to  kneel  in  devout  thanks- 
giving. If  his  chroniclers  have  truly  reported  his  prayer, 
he  blessed  the  God  who  had  deigned  to  use  his  humble  ser- 
vice in  preparing  the  way  that  his  own  sacred  name  might 
be  preached  in  this  new  portion  of  his  universe.  And  in  his 
last  will,  he  charges  it  upon  his  son  to  maintain  divines  who 
should  be  employed  in  striving  to  make  Christians  of  the 
natives,  declaring  this  a  work  in  which  "  no  expense  should 
be  thought  too  great.''9 

Little  knew  Columbus  of  the  trains  of  religious  influence 
that  came  in  the  wake  of  his  great  discovery.  In  those  weary 
days  and  nights  of  anxiety  and  watchfulness,  when  his  soli- 
tary courage  buffeted,  single-handed,  the  mutinous  remon- 
strances of  his  companions — when,  with  such  difficulty,  he 
kept  the  prow  of  his  vessel  turned  still  toward  the  West — if 
he  understood  little  the  peculiar  aspect  of  the  shores  he  was 
fast  nearing,  he  knew  quite  as  little  of  the  mysterious  instru- 
mentality, already  provided  in  the  Old  World,  to  grasp  and 
shape  the  New  Continent  as  it  emerged  from  its  concealment 
of  ages  in  the  recesses  of  ocean.     Had  he  been  asked,  on 


*  This  article  was  originally  prepared  as  an  address  before  the  Society  of 
Missionary  Inquiry  in  Brown  University,  before  whom  it  was  delivered  at 
their  anniversary  on  the  evening  of  Tuesday,  Sept.  3,  1839.  A  separate  pub- 
lication was  intended,  in  pursuance  of  the  request  of  the  Society.  Various 
causes  have  prevented  its  receiving  the  additions  and  changes  it  was  once 
the  writer's  wish  to  have  made,  and  have  delayed  its  appearance  to  the 
present  time.— Note  in  Christian  Review,  Boston,  1841,  p.  165, 

23 


170  THE    JESUITS, 

that  morning  of  triumph  when  his  eyes  first  beheld,  green, 
bright  and  fragrant,  the  shores  of  the  new-found  world,  who 
would  be  the  instruments  of  its  conversion  to  the  true  God, 
how  blindly  would  he  have  answered  !  For  its  religious  in- 
structors, he  would  have  looked  to  the  universities  of  the 
Spain  that  had  patronized  him,  or  of  the  England  or  the 
France  that  had  neglected  him  ;  or  he  would  have  turned  his 
eyes  to  his  own  native  Italy.  But  we,  to  whose  gaze  have 
been  revealed  those  leaves  in  the  volume  of  Providence  that 
no  mortal  eye  had  then  read,  have  learned  to  look  elsewhere 
for  the  religious  guides  already  training  for  the  new-found 
hemisphere.  Standing  in  fancy  by  the  side  of  the  great 
Genoese  navigator,  we  look  back  over  the  intervening  waste 
of  waters  to  the  Old  World.  But  our  eyes  turn  not  to  the 
points  that  attract  his  gaze.  Ours  wander  in  quest  of  Eise- 
nach, a  petty  town  in  Western  Germany.  In  the  band  of 
school-boys  that  go  from  door  to  door  through  its  streets, 
singing  their  hymns,  and  looking  for  their  dole  of  daily  bread, 
we  catch  sight  of  the  full,  ruddy  face  of  a  lad  now  some  nine 
years  old.  Those  cheerful  features  bear  the  mingling  im- 
press of  broad  humor,  vigorous  sense,  good-nature  the  most 
genial,  and  a  will  somewhat  of  the  sternest.  The  youth  is 
the  son  of  an  humble  miner.  His  father  has  sent  him  hither, 
some  three  years  ago,  that  the  boy  may  be  taught  Latin,  and 
receive  such  help  as  poor  scholars  in  Germany  thought  it  no 
shame  to  ask.  That  lad  is  Martin  Luther ;  a  name  soon  to 
ring  through  either  hemisphere,  the  antagonist  of  the  papacy, 
the  translator  of  the  Scriptures,  and  the  instrument  of  a 
spiritual  revolution,  that  is  to  impress  its  own  character,  not 
on  Northern  Europe  only,  but  also  on  the  larger  half  of  that 
continent,  of  whose  discovery  that  school-boy  will  soon  be 
told,  as  he  bends  over  his  grammar  or  bounds  through  the 
play-ground.  And  here  have  we  found  one  of  the  master- 
spirits, that  is  to  fix  the  religious  destiny  of  the  New  World. 
We  look  yet  again  for  the  rival  mind,  that  is  to  contest 
with  Luther's  the  honor  of  fashioning  American  character 
and  history.  Our  next  glance  is  at  Spain,  that  country  from 
whose  ports  had  been  fitted  out  the  little  armament  that  is 
riding  on  the  sea  before  us.  But  it  is  not  to  its  brilliant 
court,  or  to  its  universities,  then  famous  throughout  Europe, 
that  we  look  for  this  other  mind,  that  is  to  aid  in  casting  the 
spiritual  horoscope  of  our  continent.  On  the  northern  shores 
oi   the  country,  in  the  province  of  Biscay,  and  under  the 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  171 

shadow  of  the  Pyrenees,  stands  an  old  baronial  castle,  ten- 
anted by  a  Spanish  gentleman  of  ancient  and  noble  lineage. 
In  the  family  of  eleven  children  that  gladdens  his  hearth, 
the  youngest  born,  the  Benjamin  of  the  household,  is  now  a 
child  of  some  two  years  old.  That  tottering  infant,  as  he 
grows  up  to  manhood,  will  at  first  mistake  his  destiny. 
Smitten  with  the  chivalrous  spirit,  that  hangs  as  an  atmos- 
phere of  romance  over  the  Spain  of  that  age,  he  will  become 
a  courtly  knight,  delighting  in  feats  of  arms,  and  not  free 
from  the  soldier's  vices.  But  his  ultimate  history  will  be  of 
far  different  cast.  Wounded  at  the  siege  of  Pampeluna,  his 
shattered  limb  will  confine  him  to  a  couch,  where  his  waking 
hours  will  be  spent  in  reading  the  legends  of  saints,  and  from 
that  couch  of  pain  he  will  rise  an  altered  man.  For  this 
prattling  child  is  Ignatius  Loyola.  This  baby  hand  is  yet 
to  pen  the  "  Spiritual  Exercises,"  that  far-famed  volume, 
which  still  remains  the  manual  of  the  Jesuit  order,  the  book 
that  has  swayed  so  many  a  strong  intellect  for  this  life  and 
the  next,  and  shaken  some  minds  even  to  insanity.  He  is 
to  become  the  founder  of  a  religious  fraternity,  who  shall  be 
the  Janizaries  of  the  Romish  church,  its  stoutest  champions 
against  the  Reformation,  and  its  most  daring  emissaries 
around  the  globe.  Neither  Luther  nor  Loyola  ever  visited 
our  shores,  yet  no  two  of  the  contemporary  minds  of  Eu- 
rope so  signally  controlled  the  religious  history  of  this  con- 
tinent ;  and  both  were  in  their  boyhood,  the  one  at  a  Ger- 
man grammar-school,  the  other  romping  in  the  nursery  of 
an  old  Spanish  castle,  when  Columbus  planted  his  foot  on 
the  shores  of  St.  Salvador. 

The  institution,  which  Loyola  created,  early  wrapped 
itself  about  the  history  of  our  country  ;  fathers  of  the  Jesuit 
order  having,  both  in  the  northern  and  southern  portions  of 
the  continent,  borne  a  large  share  in  the  work  of  discovery 
and  civilization.  Had  the  efforts  of  France  been  but  crowned 
with  answering  success,  this  body  of  men  had  given  their 
own  religious  hue  to  our  territory.  Seven  years  before 
Plymouth  Rock  received  the  disembarking  colonists  from 
the  May-Flower,  and  twenty-three  before  Rhode  Island  had 
its  first  European  settlers,  "  France  and  the  Roman  religion 
had  established  themselves  in  Maine. "*  Still  sooner,  Jesu- 
its were  in  Nova   Scotia,  and  in   1625,  Jesuit  missionaries 

i. , - , i 1 

*  Bancroft,  vol.  I.,  p.  28. 


172  THE    JESUITS, 

were  laboring  on  the  banks  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  The  early 
governors  of  New  France  were  zealous  patrons  of  such  mis- 
sions, and  that  Champlain,  whose  name  is  yet  borne  by  one 
of  our  lakes,  declared  that  the  salvation  of  one  soul  is  worth 
more  than  the  conquest  of  an  empire,  and  that  the  object  of 
a  Christian  king,  in  extending  his  dominion  over  an  idola- 
trous country,  should  be  only  to  subdue  its  inhabitants  to 
the  sway  of  Jesus  Christ.*  Not  on  the  course  of  the  St. 
Lawrence  only,  but  in  the  remote  depths  of  our  wilderness, 
and  on  the  shores  of  our  great  western  lakes,  the  Jesuits  had 
early  planted  their  missions  and  gathered  their  converts 
from  the  Huron,  the  Algonquin,  the  Iroquois,  the  Illinois, 
and  other  tribes  of  Indians. 

It  has  been  the  boast  of  the  order,  that  Providence  made 
the  birth  of  their  own  Ignatius  Loyola  to  coincide  so  nearly 
with  that  of  Luther,  by  the  same  arrangement  of  divine  be- 
nevolence that  is  said  ever  to  provide  the  antidote  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  poison.  Their  writers  are  also  accustomed 
to  say,  that  in  bringing  so  closely  together  the  rise  of  their 
founder  and  the  discoveries  of  Columbus,  God  had  evidently 
pointed  their  way  to  those  missionary  labors  upon  our  con- 
tinent, in  which  they  engaged  so  early  and  successfully. f 
Well  may  the  Protestant,  and  especially  the  citizen  of  these 
United  States,  bless  in  his  turn  that  fatherly  care  of  divine 
Providence,  which  neither  allowed  the  era  of  American  col- 
onization to  be  hastened,  nor  that  of  the  Reformation  to  be 
deferred.  Had  these  events  been  differently  arranged — had 
Spanish  blood  and  not  English  flowed  in  the  veins  of  our 
first  settlers — or  had  the  May-Flower  borne  to  our  shores 
the  foundations  of  a  Catholic  colony,  and  had  our  own  Roger 
Williams  been  a  Jesuit  missionary — or  had  the  schemes  of 
French  conquest,  that  would  have  made  Canada  but  the 
starting-point  of  North  American  empire,  been  successful, 
how  different  had  been  the  annals,  not  of  this  State  alone, 
but  of  the  whole  country,  and  in  truth  of  our  entire  race. 
America  had  wanted  her  Washington.  The  impulse  of  mod- 
ern revolutions  had  remained  yet  to  be  given,  the  name  of 
Lexington  had  continued  still  a  common  and  unhonored 
sound,  and  the  dial  of  the  world  had  been  put  back  far  more 
than  the  ten  degrees,  by  which  at  the  prayer  of  Hezekiah 
the  sun  went  down  on  the  dial  of  Ahaz. 

*  Carncs,  p.  3G8.  t  Charlevoix,  Histoire  dc  Paraguay. 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  173 

The  Jesuits,  as  a  missionary  order,  furnish  then  a  theme 
in  which  we  have  a  national  interest ;  and  the  subject  may 
well  employ  for  a  passing  hour  the  thoughts  of  an  assembly 
of  American  Christians.  Odious  as  the  society  justly  became 
for  its  acts  and  its  crimes,  it  had  its  purer  era,  when  its 
emissaries  were  men,  not  only  of  singular  talent,  but  of 
burning  zeal,  and  in  some  cases  even  of  true  piety.  If  it 
has  had  its  Escobars,  it  has  also  been  honored  by  its  Xa- 
viers,  its  Riccis,  and  its  Nobregas.  Nor  is  it  just,  in  de- 
nouncing its  shameless  casuistry,  its  mendacious  miracles, 
its  remorseless  ambition,  and  its  crooked  policy,  to  overlook 
the  usefulness,  or  deny  the  virtues  that  have  adorned  some 
among  the  sons  of  Loyola.  Its  eight  hundred  martyrs  prove 
that  its  zeal  has  been  of  no  ordinary  kind.  Man  is  but  too 
prone  to  pour  over  the  checkered  good  and  evil  of  human 
character  the  sweeping  flood  of  indiscriminate  praise,  or  cen- 
sure as  unmitigated.  So  does  not  the  Judge  of  all  the 
earth.  His  tribunal  metes  out  a  more  exact  sentence.  And, 
in  his  Scriptures,  with  what  impartiality  does  he  detect  some 
good  thing  to  be  found  towards  the  Lord  God,  even  in  the 
house  of  Jeroboam,  the  corrupter  of  Israel.  Dark  as  was 
the  depravity  of  Ahab,  "  who  sold  himself  to  work  wicked- 
ness," inspiration  draws  no  veil  over  the  brief  interval  of 
light  in  his  history,  that  shot,  like  a  moment  of  unnatural 
sunshine,  across  the  depth  of  midnight  darkness.  And 
Christ  himself,  the  chiefest  missionary  of  the  church,  taught 
his  disciples  to  learn  wisdom  from  the  policy  of  the  fraudu- 
lent steward,  and  the  fears  of  the  unjust  judge.  Truth, 
then,  may  well  afford  to  be  just  even  to  error,  and  to  glean 
even  from  such  fields  lessons  of  wisdom.  No  missionary 
undertakings  have  embodied  a  greater  array  of  talent,  been 
arranged  with  more  masterly  skill,  displayed  more  illustri- 
ous proofs  of  courage  and  of  patience,  or  wielded  a  wider 
influence,  than  those  of  the  Society  of  Loyola.  Baxter  con- 
fessed that  their  labors  moved  him  to  emulation,  and  the 
Protestant  Leibnitz,  the  scholar,  the  jurist,  and  the  philoso- 
pher, the  rival  of  Newton,  has  been  their  fervent  eulogist. 

The  character  of  Loyola,  the  founder,  was  deeply  im- 
pressed on  this  order.  On  deserting  the  military  life,  he 
had  spent  a  year  in  the  most  revolting  austerities,  and  during 
this  period  composed  his  celebrated  treatise.  His  attention 
now  became  turned  to  the  salvation  of  his  neighbor ;  before, 
it  had  been  engrossed  by  care  for  his  own  soul.     To  profit 


174  THE    JESUITS, 

others,  he  must  relinquish  the  squalid  dress  and  some  of  the 
austere  penances  of  his  former  course,  and  he  felt  also  that 
he  must  remedy  the  defects  of  a  neglected  education.  Now 
in  the  prime  of  manhood,  he  set  himself  down,  nothing 
daunted  or  ashamed,  among  children,  to  learn  his  Latin 
grammar.  His  progress  was  slow  and  painful.  At  the  Uni- 
versity of  Paris  he  gathered  around  him  his  first  associates. 
Their  early  design  was  a  mission  to  Palestine.  War  frus- 
trated this.  They  offered  themselves  for  the  service  of  the 
supreme  pontiff,  at  their  own  charge,  in  whatever  part  of  the 
world  he  might  command.  This  offer  won  the  reluctant 
consent  of  the  Romish  see  to  their  establishment  in  1540. 
They  were  thus  missionaries  from  their  first  constitution. 
Long  a  soldier,  Loyola  had  felt  both  the  need  of  discipline 
and  its  power.  Reminiscences  of  his  military  course  appear 
in  the  whole  structure,  as  in  the  very  title,  of  his  Spiritual 
Exercises.  It  seems,  from  the  description  given  of  it,  to  be 
but  the  drill-book  of  a  spiritual  regiment.  The  treatise  is 
said  to  represent  the  world  as  divided  into  two  hosts,  the 
one  arrayed  under  the  banners  of  Christ,  and  the  other  up- 
lifting the  standard  of  Satan  ;  and,  inviting  the  reader  to 
enlist  with  his  Redeemer,  furnishes  marks  by  which  he  may 
judge  of  the  work  appointed  him,  and  rules  for  its  accom- 
plishment. Obedience,  incessant  and  implicit,  such  as  is 
elsewhere  scarce  found  out  of  a  camp,  was  Loyola's  favor- 
ite lesson.  It  was  in  his  order  the  subject  of  a  special  vow. 
They  swore  it  to  the  pope  and  to  their  superior,  called  their 
general,  who  was  elected  for  life,  and  clothed  with  absolute 
power.  Ignatius  was  accustomed  to  term  such  obedience 
the  most  sublime  of  virtues,  the  daughter  of  humility,  and 
the  nurse  of  charity,  a  guide  that  never  wandered,  and  the 
mark  that  was  to  distinguish  his  order  from  all  others.  Ex- 
acting it  most  rigidly  from  others,  he  displayed  it  himself,  in 
an  implicit  deference  to  his  physicians  and  his  confessor ; 
while  to  the  Roman  pontiff  so  profound  was  his  submission, 
that  he  was  accustomed  to  say,  at  the  command  of  the  pope 
he  would  embark  on  a  mission  for  any  shore  in  a  vessel 
without  rudder,  or  sails,  or  mast,  or  stores.  When  the  ob- 
jection was  made,  that  such  conduct  would  be  inconsistent 
with  ordinary  prudence,  his  reply  was,  that  prudence  was 
the  virtue  of  the  ruler,  not  of  the  ruled.  His  last  will,  as 
ho  termed  it,  was  but  an  unfinished  homily  on  obedience. 
Yet  in  all   this,  the  object  of  Ignatius  does  not  seem  to 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  175 

have  been  consciously,  his  own  personal  aggrandizement. 
Wealth,  fame,  and  even  power  he  seems  to  have  sought  less 
than  usefulness.  The  first  year  of  his  religious  course  had 
been  one  of  stormy  fanaticism  ;  the  rest  of  his  career  breathed 
a  high,  sustained  enthusiasm.  He  dreaded,  as  he  often  said, 
worldly  prosperity  for  his  order,  excluded  its  members  from 
episcopal  preferment,  and  by  earnest  remonstrances  pre- 
vented the  elevation  of  two  of  his  early  associates,  Lainez 
and  Borgia,  to  the  cardinalate.  He  spent  much  time  in 
prayer,  and  laid  more  stress  than  many  Roman  religionists 
on  the  prayer  of  the  heart,  while  Thomas  a  Kempis  was  his 
favorite  book  of  devotion.  Simple  and  severe  in  his  own 
personal  habits,  his  labors  never  remitted.  Lodging  in  hos- 
pitals, tending  their  sick,  catechizing  children,  seeking  the 
restoration  of  the  profligate,  wherever  he  went,  he  gave  him- 
self to  the  toils  of  benevolence. 

Seeing  that  the  emergencies  of  the  time  required  not  the 
retired  life — the  contemplative  one,  as  it  was  called,  of  the 
monastic  orders — he  desired  for  his  institute  a  life  of  active. 
piety.  The  three  great  duties  of  the  order  from  the  begin- 
ning were  announced,  as  being  the  education  of  youth,  con- 
troversy with  heretics,  and  the  conversion  of  the  heathen. 
They  were  to  be  men  of  the  world,  and  not  of  the  cloister. 
Hence  he  procured  them  exemption  from  the  chants  and 
choral  services  customary  with  many  Romish  fraternities. 
"  They  do  not  sing,"  said  the  enemies  of  the  Jesuits,  "birds 
of  prey  never  do."  Yet  to  maintain  their  devotional  feel- 
ings, there  were  many  provisions.  One  especially  was,  that, 
for  a  space  of  eight  days  in  each  year,  every  member  of  the 
order  should  make  "  a  retreat,"  as  it  was  called,  retiring 
from  the  world,  and  devoting  himself  to  the  study  of  his 
heart  and  way,  by  the  help  of  the  Spiritual  Exercises.  With 
the  zeal  of  Loyola  was  mingled  much  knowledge  of  the 
world.  With  the  merchant  he  spoke  of  traffic,  and  with  the 
scholar  of  books,  that  he  might  attract  both  to  religion ;  en- 
tering, as  he  described  it,  at  their  door,  that  he  might  leave 
at  his  own.  What  in  him,  however,  seems  to  have  been 
little  more  than  skilful  courtesy  not  inconsistent  with  real 
principle,  became,  in  the  latter  members  of  the  order,  a  sup- 
ple and  lithe  pliability,  alike  unprincipled  and  selfish. 

To  exercise  and  perfect  their  great  principle  of  obedience, 
the  rules  of  the  society  were  most  skilfully  framed.  Their 
colleges  gave  them  facilities  for  the  selection  of  the  most, 


176  THE    JESUITS, 

brilliant  talents.  A  long  novitiate  and  varied  trials  preceded 
admission  to  the  full  privileges  of  the  order.  Every  one  on 
entering  it  was  required  to  make  a  full  manifestation,  as  it 
was  termed,  of  his  conscience,  giving  the  minutest  and  most 
private  details  of  his  past  history  and  feelings.  This  was 
repeated  each  half  year.  Each  member  was  constituted  a 
spy  upon  his  fellow.  Regular  reports  of  every  incident  of 
moment,  and  of  the  character  and  deportment  of  each  mem- 
ber, were  made  to  the  provincial,  and  from  the  provincial 
were  transmitted  to  the  general  at  Rome,  to  be  transcribed 
into  the  archives  of  the  order.  From  the  will  of  this  gene- 
ral there  lay  no  appeal  ;  complaint  was  sin,  and  resistance 
ruin.  In  the  whole  society,  there  was  but  one  will,  but  one 
conscience,  and  it  was  in  the  bosom  of  the  general.  So  true 
a  despotism  Tiberius  never  attempted,  and  Machiavelli  him- 
self could  not  have  imagined.  Superstition  only  could  have 
made  men  its  willing  subjects.  The  individual  being  was 
lost  in  one  vast  machine,  all  the  parts  of  which  were  intelli- 
gent to  observe,  the  eyes  of  one  soul,  and  strong  to  obey, 
the  hands  of  one  will.  Limited  at  first  to  sixty  members, 
but  soon  left  without  such  restriction,  the  order  increased  in 
sixty  years  from  ten  to  10,000  members,  and  in  1710  the 
Jesuits  numbered  about  20,000  in  their  wide-spread  associa- 
tion. These,  scattered  through  all  countries,  men  of  the 
finest  talents  and  most  finished  education,  wearing  every 
garb,  and  speaking  every  language,  formed  a  body  that 
could  outwatch  Argus  with  his  hundred  eyes,  and  outwork 
Briareus  with  his  hundred  hands.  It  is  readily  seen  what 
tremendous  energies  such  a  system  wielded.  In  every  other 
combination  of  human  effort,  much  of  power  is  lost,  not 
only  by  the  resistance  to  be  overcome  in  the  world  without, 
but  by  the  discord  and  internal  weakness  of  the  combined 
parties  within  themselves,  and  the  lumbering  weight  of  the 
machinery  upon  which  the  motive  power  acts.  The  steeds 
may  be  the  fiery  coursers  of  the  sun,  with  power  flaming 
from  every  nostril,  but  where  is  the  mortal  hand  that  can 
rein  the  whole  into  one  path,  and  bring  the  might  of  all  their 
sinews  to  draw  in  one  onward  track  ?  It  was  not  so  in  this 
institution.  Here,  as  in  the  chariot  of  the  prophet's  vision, 
all  was  instinct  witli  one  will  ;  "  the  spirit  of  the  living  crea- 
tures was  in  the  wheels  ;  when  the  living  creatures  went, 
the  wheels  went  by  them,  when  those  stood,  these  stood  ; 
when  the   living  creatures   were  lifted  up,  the  wheels  were 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  177 

lifted  up  over  against  them,  and  their  rings  were  full  of  eyes 
round  about,  and  they  were  so  high  that  they  were  dread- 
ful. "  One  soul  swayed  the  vast  mass  ;  and  every  eog  and 
pin  in  the  machinery  consented  with  its  whole  power  to 
every  movement  of  the  one  central  conscience.  The  world 
never  had  seen  so  perfect  a  despotism  ;  yet  never  was  any 
government  so  ardently  loved  by  its  earlier  members.  "  If 
I  forget  thee,  O  Society  of  Jesus,"  exclaimed  Xavier  in 
India,  "  may  my  right  hand  forget  its  cunning." 

The  man,  who  thus  spoke,  is  their  greatest  name  ;  and 
he  would  not  have  felt  this  affection,  had  the  order  been 
originally  as  corrupt  as  it  afterwards  became.  Gladly,  did 
our  limits  permit,  would  we  dwell  on  his  history.  A  man 
of  higher  talent  than  Loyola,  a  ripe  scholar,  and  of  that 
commanding  courage  which  nothing  could  daunt,  there  were 
also  in  him  a  fervent  piety,  and  boundless  self-sacrificing 
benevolence,  that  all  the  errors  of  his  faith  could  not  obscure. 
On  the  Malabar  coast,  in  the  kingdom  of  Iravancore,  where 
he  gave  baptism  to  10,000  in  one  month  with  his  own  hand, 
in  the  Moluccas,  and  in  Ceylon,  he  labored  in  perils  immi- 
nent, and  amid  great  privations  and  difficulties,  but  never 
without  fruit.  His  chief  triumphs  were,  however,  in  Japan. 
Having  seen  the  principles  of  his  religion  spreading  rapidly 
through  that  empire,  he  longed  next  to  enter  China.  With 
the  assurance  that  it  was  at  the  risk  of  his  life,  he  bargained 
but  to  be  put  ashore  on  its  inhospitable  coast.  They  who 
were  to  have  done  this  failed  him  ;  and  in  sight  of  the  em- 
pire which  he  was  not  allowed  to  enter,  on  the  small  rocky 
island  of  Sancian,  he  breathed  his  last.  Dying  thus,  with 
his  last  and  greatest  enterprise  unachieved,  he  yet  laid  his 
body  thus  as  on  the  counterscarp,  leaving  to  the  ranks  be- 
hind, a  name  and  example  that  never  lost  their  rallying 
power,  until  these  ramparts  of  heathenism  were  scaled,  and 
China  too  was  entered  and  won.  In  Japan,  the  order  fol- 
lowed up  his  plans,  until  their  converts  had  reached  the 
number  of  200,000.  The  Jesuit  fathers  who  succeeded  in 
forcing  the  barriers  of  China — Ricci,  Scholl,  and  Verbiest — 
were  men  distinguished  in  science  and  talent.  The  manu- 
scripts left  by  some  of  them  are  said  to  show  too — written 
evidently  but  for  their  own  use — that  they  were  men  of 
piety.  Of  some  of  them  at  least,  Milne,  and  Morrison,  and 
other  Protestant  missionaries  have  thought  highly,  as  men 
of  real  devotedness  and  mistaken  piety.     At  one  time,  there 

24 


1?8  THE    JESUITS, 

seemed  reason  to  expect  that  the  Celestial  Empire  was  to 
become  Christian,  the  empress  herself  having  joined  the 
Christian  Church,  the  emperor  being  known  as  their  patron, 
and  Jesuit  fathers  filling  the  highest  posts  at  court,  and  dis- 
playing their  varied  attainments  as  geographers,  legislators, 
philosophers  and  astronomers,  and  even  as  cannon-founders. 
The  same  indefatigable  community  were  busily  assailing  the 
Fetichism  of  Africa  on  the  west  and  east,  and  its  Moham- 
medanism on  the  north.  They  had  their  missionary  enter- 
prises at  Congo  and  Loango,  at  Tripoli  and  Morocco,  and 
Monomotapa  and  Mozambique.  In  Abyssinia,  after  frequent 
repulses,  they  acquired  at  one  time  the  ascendency,  and  a 
Jesuit  was  made  the  patriarch  of  the  national  church  ;  but 
his  innovations  and  inquisitorial  cruelties  soon  wrought  the 
indignant  expulsion  of  the  religion  they  were  intended  to 
establish.  In  Egypt,  too,  their  laborers  were  early  found  ; 
and  in  Asia,  besides  the  points  already  enumerated,  they 
toiled  in  India  and  Persia.  In  Syria  and  Thibet,  the  sons 
of  Loyola  were  lifting  the  banners  of  the  Romish  church. 

On  our  own  shores,  their  missionaries,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  were  found  at  an  early  day.  They  followed  the  red 
man  to  his  haunts,  paddled  with  him  the  rude  canoe,  reared 
beside  his  their  hut,  and  displayed  a  patient  and  winning- 
sweetness,  that  disarmed  his  ferocity.  The  tribes  beside 
our  great  inland  seas  claimed  more  than  a  century  ago,  the 
care  of  the  Jesuit  fathers.  Sault  de  St.  Marie  and  Mackinaw 
were  sites  of  their  missions  ;  and  yet  beyond  these  places 
there  were  points  where  the  wandering  son  of  Loyola  reared 
his  wooden  crucifix,  and  built  his  bark  chapel,  in  regions 
that  even  in  our  own  late  day  the  westward  wave  of  emigra- 
tion has  not  yet  reached.  To  other  parts  of  North  America 
the  same  fraternity  had  expanded  their  establishments.  In 
the  peninsula  of  California,  they  gathered  villages  of  con- 
verted Indians  that  still  exist,  although  in  a  declining  state 
and  under  the  charge  since  of  other  religious  orders.  In 
Mexico,  also,  they  labored  for  the  conversion  of  the  Abori- 
gines. In  the  southern  portion  of  our  continent  were,  how- 
ever, the  scenes  of  their  greatest  toils  and  their  most  glori- 
ous triumphs.  They  labored  in  Peru  and  in  Chili.  Far 
more  repulsive  was  the  field  chosen,  however,  by  those  of 
the  Jesuit  fathers  who,  like  Ortega  and  Nobregas,  labored 
among  the  cannibals  of  Brazil.  Tribes,  with  whom  the  flesh 
of  their  captives  was  the  choicest  of  dainties,  and  whose  older 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  179 

women  bore  to  the  battle-field  the  vessels  in  which  the 
horrid  banquet  of  victory  was  to  be  prepared,  were  compel- 
led at  length  to  yield  to  the  dauntless  zeal  of  the  intrepid 
missionary  ;  and,  relinquishing  their  cannibalism,  learned 
gentleness  and  piety.  But  their  most  splendid  honors  were 
won  in  the  neighboring  country  of  Paraguay.  They  found 
its  wide  plains  traversed  by  numerous  but  divided  hordes, 
ignorant  of  the  simplest  arts,  impatient  of  restraint,  and 
prompt  to  deeds  of  blood.  Gathering  at  first  but  some  fifty 
families,  they  reared  at  last  a  community  which  was  esti- 
mated at  one  time  to  number  300,000  souls.  The  Indian 
was  instructed  in  agriculture  and  the  handicraft  arts,  in 
music,  and  even  in  painting.  Villages,  or  Reductions,  as 
they  were  called,  rose  rapidly,  where  an  Arcadian  purity 
of  manners  reigned  through  communities  of  thousands,  who 
had  but  recently  been  roving,  lawless  savages.  They  labor- 
ed for  a  common  stock,  and  subsisted  on  the  common  stores. 
Never,  probably,  has  the  experiment  of  a  community  of  pos- 
sessions been  so  long  tried,  and  so  successfully,  as  it  was 
there.  Yet,  beneficent  as  was  the  Jesuit  rule  over  these 
their  subjects,  it  was  so  absolute,  that  their  converts  might 
be  said  never  to  have  outgrown  the  state  of  nonage.  Theirs 
was  a  filial  servitude. 

In  all  these  their  missions,  the  order  displayed  an  indomi- 
table energy,  and  a  spirit  of  most  adventurous  enterprise. 
As  dauntless  as  they  were  versatile,  and  as  unwearied  as 
they  were  dauntless,  the  door  closed  against  them  was 
undermined,  if  it  could  not  be  opened,  and  stormed  where 
it  could  not  be  undermined.  Martyrdom  for  them  had  no 
terrors.  Did  the  news  return  to  their  colleges  in  Europe  of 
a  missionary  falling  riddled  by  the  arrows  of  the  Brazilian 
savage,  at  the  foot  of  the  crucifix  he  had  planted,  or  of 
scores  sent  into  the  depths  of  ocean  by  heretic  captors,  the 
names  of  the  fallen  were  inserted  on  the  rubrics  of  Jesuit 
martyrs  ;  and  not  the  students  only,  but  the  professors  of 
their  institutions  rushed  to  fill  the  ranks  that  had  been  thus 
thinned.  And,  turning  from  their  fields  of  missionary  en- 
terprise in  the  far  East,  and  in  the  remotest  West,  to  what 
they  had  accomplished  in  Europe,  there  was  much  at  this 
time  to  stir  the  Jesuit  to  self-gratulation.  Their  science, 
and  address,  and  renunciation  of  ecclesiastical  preferment 
had  made  members  of  their  order  confessors  to  some  of  the 
most  powerful  monarchs.     In  controversy,  they  had  given 


180  THE    JESUITS, 

to  the  Romish  church  Bellarmine,  the  ablest  of  her  defend- 
ers, and,  though  a  Jesuit,  perhaps  also  the  most  candid  of 
Romish  controversialists.  To  the  French  pulpit  they  had 
furnished  Bourdaloue,  among  its  great  names  no  weaker 
luminary,  and  perhaps  its  first  reasoner.  Their  divines,  ora- 
tors, poets,  historians  and  critics  were  well  nigh  numberless, 
the  order  claiming  to  have  produced  more  distinguished 
scholars  than  all  the  other  Romish  communities  together. 
In  education,  they  had  been  the  benefactors  of  the  world. 
Their  institutions  are  proposed  by  Bacon  as  the  best  of 
models,  and  Mackintosh  has  pronounced  the  strides  made  by 
the  society  in  the  work  of  instruction  the  greatest  ever  wit- 
nessed. But  in  missions  was  the  beginning  of  their  strength, 
and  the  excellency  of  their  glory.  The  character  of  Xavier 
gave  to  the  cause  of  evangelization  an  impulse  such  as  it  had 
not  received  for  seven  centuries  ;  and  to  this  day,  his  church 
looks  in  vain  for  one,  who,  to  his  dauntless  zeal  and  his  un- 
tiring patience,  has  united  the  splendor  of  his  talents,  and 
his  wide  influence,  that  went  overrunning  a  nation  like  some 
great  conflagration.  Through  all  these  fields  of  labor  they 
continued  to  diffuse  one  spirit,  not  spent  by  toil,  and  not 
diminished  by  distance  from  the  centre  of  power.  From  the 
man,  who  sat  in  a  gilded  confessional  with  a  monarch  for 
his  penitent,  amid  the  splendid  luxury  of  Versailles  or  Ma- 
drid, to  him  who  in  a  wigwam  of  bark  shared  the  rude  fare 
of  the  Canadian  Indian,  sleeping  on  the  skin  won  in  the 
chase,  and  lighted  by  the  blazing  pine-knot,  one  soul  pos- 
sessed the  entire  body.  From  East  to  West,  from  North  to 
South,  the  sons  of  Ignatius  were  pursuing  one  object  through 
a  thousand  mazy  channels.  The  motto  and  device  in  one 
of  their  earlier  histories  was  well  illustrated  in  their  conduct. 
That  device  was  a  mirror,  and  the  superscription  was  "  Om- 
nia omnibus,"  All  things  to  all  men.  But  what  in  Paul 
was  Christian  courtesy,  leaning  on  inflexible  principle  ;  and 
what  in  Loyola  himself  was  probably  wisdom,  but  slightly 
tinged  with  unwarrantable  policy,  became,  in  some  of  his 
disciples,  the  laxest  casuistry,  chameleon-like,  shifting  its 
hues  to  every  varying  shade  of  interest  or  fashion. 

There  was  much  in  the  nature  of  Romanism  itself  to  make 
the  work  of  proselytism  easy  and  rapid.  The  priest  went 
forth  a  solitary  man,  with  no  ties  to  any  spot,  with  few 
incumbrances,  moving  freely  and  at  little  cost  through  wide 
districts.     The  rites  that  he  celebrated   took  the  senses  of 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  181 

the  rude  barbarian  as  by  storm.  The  music,  the  incense, 
the  gorgeous  robe,  the  golden  vessels,  the  picture,  the  statue, 
and  the  crucifix  were  to  the  savage  most  imposing.  Again, 
no  change  of  heart  was  requisite  to  baptism.  No  long  fami- 
liarity with  Scripture  preceded  entrance  to  the  church.  The 
creed,  the  catechism,*  and  a  few  prayers  and  hymns  were  to 
be  translated,  and  a  nation  was  supplied  with  its  religious 
literature.  Submission  to  external  rites,  and  a  blind  defer- 
ence to  priestly  authority,  threw  open  the  doors  of  the  church 
as  to  the  rushing  feet  of  a  nation.  They  who  entered  it, 
found  it  was  not  the  holy  of  holies  they  had  reached.  We 
do  not  mean  to  say,  that  there  was  no  holy  fruit  in  their 
religion.  We  would  only  speak  of  the  low  form  of  Chris- 
tian character  they  had  proposed  for  their  converts.  Yet 
we  believe  the  morals  of  their  disciples  were  generally  higher 
than  those  of  the  converts  gained  by  other  orders  ;  and  the 
constancy,  with  which  such  multitudes  in  their  Japanese 
churches  endured  the  most  appalling  forms  of  martyrdom, 
allows  us  to  hope,  that  under  much  of  superstition  and  much 
of  ignorance,  there  was  also  something  of  love  to  Christ. 

Yet  from  this  height  of  success,  and  influence,  and  honors 
they  were  doomed  to  fall,  and  for  a  time  the  world  seemed 
to  shake  with  their  far-resounding  ruin.  In  Japan,  their 
200,000  converts,  exciting,  justly  or  unjustly,  apprehension, 
of  political  intrigue  in  the  mind  of  a  native  prince,  who  was 
consolidating  the  kingdoms  of  Japan  into  one  empire,  they 
were  exterminated  by  one  of  the  fiercest  persecutions  that 
Christianity  has  ever  experienced.  Multitudes  perished  in 
prison ;  some  were  buried  in  ditches,  others,  immersed  in 
freezing  water,  died  a  death  of  lingering  agony  ;  some  were 
crucified,  others  were  beheaded  ;  and  large  numbers  were 
thrown  into  one  of  the  volcanic  craters  of  the  country,  while 
the  crosses  of  the  Jesuit  pastors  studded  the  edges  of  the 
fearful  cavity  into  which  their  flocks  were  hurried.  That 
country  has  been  thenceforward  sealed  against  the  gospel 
more  closely  than  any  other  heathen  land  on  the  earth.  It 
was,  perhaps,  one  instance  of  those  fearful  retributions,  that, 
in  the  language  of  Bacon,  are  occasionally  written  by  the 
hand  of  Nemesis  along  the  highway  of  nations,  in  characters 
which  he  that  runneth  may  read,  that  the   Japanese  were 

*  Cotton  Mather,  in  his  Magnalia,  furnishes  a  curious  specimen  of  one  of  t 
the  Jesuit  catechisms,  used  among  our  American  Indians. 


182  THE    JESUITS, 

instigated,  in  this  extinction  of  the  Jesuit  churches,  by  the 
Dutch,  a  people  who  had  never  forgotten  the  butcheries  of 
the  ferocious  Alva,  and  thus  requited  on  the  rising  Romanism 
of  the  East  the  wrongs  that  religion  had  wrought  them  in  the 
West.  In  China,  contentions  with  other  Romish  orders 
thwarted  their  labors  ;  their  political  power  was  soon  lost, 
and  their  converts  were  driven  intc  concealment.  But  though 
denounced  by  edicts  of  the  empire,  and  on  pain  of  death  ex- 
pelled from  its  territories,  they  have  never  ceased  laboring 
there,  and  the  Catholic  Christians  at  this  hour  secreted  in 
the  bosom  of  that  nation,  are  calculated  by  Medhurst  at 
200,000.  In  Paraguay  and  in  California,  their  settlements 
have  been  transferred  to  the  charge  of  other  orders,  and 
themselves  were  exiled,  as  was  also  the  case  in  the  Philip- 
pine Islands.  Their  expulsion  from  the  fields  in  South  Amer- 
ica, watered  so  freely  with  the  wealth,  and  talents,  and  best 
blood  of  the  order,  grew  out  of  their  disgrace  in  Europe.  In 
France,  they  had  denounced  and  suppressed  Jansenism  ;  but 
received  in  their  conflict  with  that  body  of  most  able  and 
holy  men,  the  Port  Royalists,  a  death  ful  arrow  they  could 
never  extricate.  We  need  not  say  we  allude  to  the  Provin- 
cial Letters  of  Pascal,  a  work  whose  mingling  powers  of  wit, 
and  argument,  and  eloquence,  well  nigh  unrivalled  apart,  and 
in  their  union  unequalled,  fixed  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  Je- 
suit order.  They  stood  up,  too.  in  the  same  country,  in  the 
days  of  their  own  intellectual  decrepitude,  to  wrestle  against 
the  young  scepticism  of  the  Regency  and  of  the  days  of 
Louis  XV.  Voltaire,  and  Diderot,  and  D'Holbach,  and  Hel- 
vetius,  men  educated  in  their  own  colleges,  overwhelmed 
their  old  teachers  with  sarcasm,  and  irony,  and  wit,  the  more 
burning  in  its  severity  often,  because  it  was  the  language  of 
truth.  To  every  state  they  had  made  themselves  odious  by 
intermingling  themselves  with  political  affairs.  In  their  own 
church  they  found  the  bitterest  enemies,  in  the  worldly  who 
envied  their  power,  and  in  the  zealous,  who  detested  their 
lax  casuistry  and  their  erroneous  doctrine.  By  principles, 
which  if  not  their  own  invention,  were  at  least  their  favorite 
implements,  they  explained  away  all  obligation  ;  and  some  of 
their  doctors  seemed  scarce  to  have  left  faith  on  the  earth,  or 
justice  in  the  heavens.  In  short,  they  threw  conscience  into 
the  alembic,  and  drew  from  the  retort  a  mixture,  like  the 
aqua  Tofana  of  Italian  poisons,  clear  as  the  water  that  streams 
from  the  rock,  but  to  drink  of  which  was  lingering,  inevitable 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  183 

death.  This  laxity  of  moral  teaching  was  felt  to  be  the 
more  inexcusable,  in  a  body  who  had  constituted  themselves 
the  jealous  guardians  of  what  they  called  orthodoxy  in  doc- 
trine :  "  a  sort  of  men,"  as  said  the  Abbe  Boileau,  brother  of 
the  poet,  "who  set  themselves  to  lengthen  the  creed,  and 
abridge  the  commandments."  Casuistry  became  in  their 
hands,  as  Bayle  has  well  called  it,  "the  art  of  cavilling  with 
God."  But  men,  even  the  vilest,  cannot  long  respect  those 
who  pander  to  their  corruptions,  and  the  order  soon  fell  un- 
der the  ban  of  the  human  race.  Their  principles  in  morals, 
too,  reacted  upon  themselves.  Like  the  French  poisoner, 
who  perished  by  the  fall  of  his  mask,  inhaling  unexpectedly 
the  fumes  of  the  poison  he  was  compounding  for  others,  the 
order  could  not  retain  its  old  zeal,  and  the  life  of  its  early 
fanaticism,  while  propagating  such  sentiments.  Some,  even, 
of  the  Jesuit  missionaries  to  heathenism  were,  it  is  said,  in 
secret,  infidels.  At  Rome  itself,  they  had  become  tools  more 
convenient  than  reputable.  None  had  done  more  than  they 
to  uphold  the  staggering  power  of  that  see  ;  and  no  less  than 
ninety  bulls  issued  from  under  the  Fisherman's  Ring  had 
attested  the  esteem  in  which  the  Vatican  held  them,  and  its 
resolution  to  defend  them  against  their  embittered  foes.  But 
its  power  now  failed.  Catholic  France,  and  Portugal,  and 
Spain,  were  resolutely  bent  on  the  ruin  of  the  order.  The 
arts,  both  of  policy  and  force,  they  had  so  long  practised, 
were  now  turned  against  them.  With  a  secresy  they  had 
never  surpassed  in  their  own  movements,  the  measures  were 
concerted  for  their  expulsion  from  Spain  and  Portugal. 
Driven  from  their  colleges  and  possessions,  blackened  in 
character,  and  destitute,  and  many  of  them  aged,  they  were 
hurled  on  the  charities  of  a  world  they  had  not  propitiated 
by  their  former  conduct.  Never  slow,  in  the  day  of  their 
power,  to  use  the  arm  of  the  civil  government  for  the  purpose 
of  persecution,  they  now  felt  its  weight  upon  themselves. 
They  had  instigated  in  France  the  bloody  massacre  of  St. 
Bartholomew,  it  is  said,  and  had  most  certainly  shared  largely 
in  the  perfidy,  the  frauds,  and  the  revolting  dragoonades  that 
procured  and  followed  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantz. 
The  recompense  long  accumulating  now  descended.  Reluc- 
tantly, but  necessarily,  the  Roman  court  itself  withdrew  in 
terror  from  these  its  stanchest  servants,  and  pronounced  with 
faltering  lips,  the  dissolution  of  the  order. 

They  had  forgotten,  in  their  abuse  of  power,  and  talent. 


184  THE    JESUITS, 

and  influence,  that  there  was  on  high  One  mightier  tha  *11 
the  mighty  of  earth,  whom  they  had  subsidized,  or  flatt*  id, 
or  corrupted.  Providence,  an  element  upon  which  in  4  teir 
latter  days  they  had  forgotten  to  calculate,  was  now  me'  ting 
them  at  every  turn.  If  they  had  lost  sight  of  it,  never  had 
it  lost  sight  of  them.  It  used  no  confessors,  and  they  could 
not  guide  it ;  nor  did  it  wait  in  its  movements  for  the  shuf- 
fling of  the  pieces  on  the  checker-boards  of  earthly  cabinets, 
which  Jesuitism  watched  so  narrowly.  But  when  its  fulness 
of  times  was  come,  it  called,  and  every  stormy  passion  of 
human  nature  rushed  at  its  bidding,  eager  to  do  the  work  of 
retribution  ;  while,  unpitied,  Jesuitism  stood  to  bear,  in  its 
loneliness,  the  meeting  vengeance  of  earth  and  heaven. 

Never  had  Romanism  progeny  that  bore  more  periectly  its 
own  image,  or  embodied  its  grand  principles  so  faitlifully  as 
did  the  Jesuit  system.  The  principle  of  the  order  was  but  a 
reduction  to  its  simplest  essence  of  that  one  master  idea  of 
the  Romish  creed  —  implict  faith  —  unlimited  obedience. 
These  are,  in  justice,  due  only  to  a  Being  of  infinite  truth, 
and  underived,  and  unending  sovereignty.  Nothing  less  able 
or  less  wise,  nothing  short  of  the  divine  wisdom,  that  cannot 
mistake,  and  that  will  not  deceive,  is  entitled  to  demand  such 
subjection  and  confidence.  It  is  the  great  sin  of  the  Romish 
apostasy,  its  npwrov  ipsvSos,  that  it  has  here  arrogated  the  prero- 
gative of  the  Godhead,  and  in  the  seat  of  God  given  itself 
out  as  God  over  the  human  conscience  and  heart.  This  it  is 
that  constitutes  the  Antichrist,  the  rival  usurping  the  rights 
of  the  Christ.  For  that  Saviour,  who  created  and  ransomed 
the  soul,  whose  eye  pervades  its  depths  with  a  searching 
omniscience,  and  whose  hand  encompasses  it  in  all  its  wan- 
derings with  an  ever-present  almightiness,  is  entitled  to  the 
absolute  rule  and  dominion  of  that  soul.  Romanism  has, 
however,  demanded  this  power.  For  faith  in  Christ,  as  the 
one  condition  of  salvation,  it  has  substituted  faith  in  the 
church.  Jesuitism,  with  its  wonted  sagacity,  saw,  that  in 
this  claim  lay  the  strength  of  the  Romish  system.  It  rose  up 
to  preach  the  doctrine  to  a  world  whom  the  Reformation 
was  fast  alienating.  It  rose  up  to  exemplify  the  obedience, 
in  its  own  unreserved,  unquestioning  submission  to  its  own 
general,  and  through  him  to  the  Romish  see.  But  while  they 
thus  acquired  power,  they  were  also  sowing  the  seeds  of  de- 
cay. By  this  implicit  obedience,  the  individual  merged  his 
personal  rights   and  his  spiritual  existence  in  the  society. 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  185 

The  mass  had  a  conscience  ;  but  the  members  had  not.  But 
while  they  formed  thus  obedient  societies,  because  there  was 
no  individuality  of  opinion  or  will,  there  was  as  much  of  in- 
trinsic weakness,  as  there  was  of  quiet  in  the  body.  Remove 
the  head,  and  the  life  had  departed  from  an  entire  commu- 
nity. They  destroyed,  also,  by  this  same  process  the  higher 
order  of  talents,  which  act  only  in  a  state  of  comparative 
freedom.  Splendid  as  were  their  scholars  in  every  walk, 
yet,  as  Mackintosh  has  remarked,  through  two  centuries  of 
power  and  fame,  they  gave  to  Europe  no  genius  to  be  named 
with  Racine  and  Pascal,  men  who  sprung  from  the  Port 
Royalists,  in  the  career,  both  far  more  brief  and  far  more 
stormy,  of  that  persecuted  community. 

In  this,  his  distinctive  trait  of  character,  the  Jesuit  stood  as 
the  moral  antipodes  of  the  Puritan.  In  the  latter,  the  Re- 
formation presented  its  principle,  the  right  of  private  judg- 
ment, as  displayed  in  its  barest,  broadest  shape.  While,  in 
the  Jesuit,  the  man  was  nought,  and  the  community  was 
every  thing,  with  the  Puritan,  on  the  contrary,  the  society 
was  comparatively  nothing,  and  the  individual  all.  With  him 
religion  was,  in  its  highest  privileges,  and  its  profoundest 
mysteries,  a  personal  matter.  He  studied  his  Bible  for  him- 
self; to  aid  in  turning  its  pages  and  loosening  its  seal,  God 
the  Son,  the  Lion  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  stooped  over  him 
as  he  read ;  and  to  reveal  its  inner  lessons,  God  the  Spirit 
whispered  in  his  heart,  and  brooded  over  the  depths  of  his 
soul.  He  profited  by  the  prayers  and  teachings  of  his  pastor, 
gave  liberally  for  his  support,  and  received  reverently  at  his 
hands  the  sacramental  symbols  ;  but  he  believed  even  this 
his  beloved  guide,  companion  and  friend,  but  a  fellow-ser- 
vant, whose  help  could  not  supersede  his  own  private  studies, 
and  his  individual  faith.  He  valued  his  fellow-Christians, 
communed  with  them,  prayed  with  them,  shared  with  them 
his  last  loaf,  and  falling  into  their  ranks,  raised  with  them  the 
battle-cry,  "  The  sword  of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon  !"  But, 
away  from  pastor  and  from  fellow-Christian,  the  Puritan 
turned  in  the  trying  hour  to  his  God.  It  was  the  genius  of 
this  system  to  develop  the  individual ;  and  in  every  emergen- 
cy, to  throw  him  in  the  last  resort  upon  the  lonely  commu- 
nings of  his  own  soul  with  its  Creator.  It  taught  him  to 
make  religion,  in  the  affecting  language  of  one  of  the  later 
Platonists,  "  the  flight  of  one  alone  to  the  only  One."#   To  the 

*  Qvyrj  fjiovov  rrpos  Top  Moj/oy. 

25 


186  THE    JESUITS, 

place  of  audience  the  petitioner  went  by  no  deputy ;  but  the 
individual  man  was  brought  to  confront  for  himself  the  one 
Mediator,  and  to  hear  for  himself  the  response  of  Heaven  to 
the  prayer  of  faith.  When  mind  was  thus  thrown  upon  its 
individual  responsibility,  and  came  forth  from  its  solitary 
meditations  to  the  place  of  conference  and  action,  there  was 
frequent  dissonance  in-  opinion ;  and  a  collision  in  action,  of- 
ten more  apparent  than  real,  threatened  at  times  to  rend  the 
social  bonds,  to  break  up  all  concert,  and  to  destroy  all 
power.  Yet  conscientious  men  were  not  likely  to  differ 
widely  or  long.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  take  from  such  a 
community  its  spiritual  guides,  and  how  soon  were  they  re- 
placed. Persecute  them,  and  how  indomitable  was  their 
faith.  Scatter  them,  and  how  rapidly  were  they  propagated. 
Jesuitism  gathered  more  numerous  and  united  societies  ;  but 
they  were  societies  of  men  without  consciences  and  without  a 
will,  whose  judgments  and  souls  were  under  the  lock  of  the 
confessional,  or  were  carried  about  under  the  frock  of  their 
Jesuit  pastor.  Kind  he  might  be  and  faithful,  but  did  death 
remove  him,  or  persecution  exile  the  shepherd  and  disperse 
the  flock,  they  had  no  rallying  power.  Like  the  seeds  from 
which  the  industrious  ant  has  removed  the  germinating 
principle,  the  largest  hoard,  when  scattered,  brought  no  har- 
vest. 

It  were  a  curious  employment,  to  trace  the  unwitting 
adoption,  at  times  in  our  own  land,  of  this  great  principle  of 
Romanism,  of  which  the  Jesuit  order  was  the  embodiment 
and  incarnation,  as  if  it  were  one  of  the  radical  truths  of  de- 
mocracy— we  mean,  the  principle  of  the  absorption  of  the 
individual  conscience  into  that  of  the  mass.  It  is  to  some  au 
essential  law  of  democracy,  that  the  many  have  unlimited 
power  over  the  will  and  conscience  of  the  [ew.  Yet  it  would 
require  little  of  time  or  of  labor  to  show,  how  fatal  is  stich  a 
principle  to  the  rights  of  conscience,  and  the  interests  of 
truth.  God  made  man  apart.  Apart  he  is  regenerated. 
Apart  he  dies.  Apart  he  is  judged.  To  each  of  us  his 
Maker  gave  a  conscience,  but  to  none  of  us  did  he  assign  a 
conscience-keeper.  Man  was  not  made  for  society,  but  so- 
ciety was  made  for  man.  Back  of  its  first  institution,  lie 
some  of  his  inalienable  rights,  and  his  first  and  most  sacred 
duties.  Communities  of  men,  then,  cannot  receive,  and 
should  not  ask,  any  transfer  of  conscience.  Between  a 
man's  own  spirit  and  his  God,  neither  king,  nor  kaysar,  nor 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  181 

congress,  synod,  nor  pontiff,  voluntary  societies,  nor  compul- 
sory societies,  if  such  there  be,  may  lay  sceptre  or  crosier,  edict 
or  vote.  The  thing  is  a  grand  impertinence.  When  per- 
sonal duty  is  involved,  to  his  own  Master  the  man  stands  or 
falls.  We  mean  not  these  remarks  for  those  duties  which 
man  owes  to  society,  and  where  their  laws  may  rightfully 
control  and  punish  him.  We  speak  of  the  far  wider  field 
over  which  some  would  extend  those  laws,  and  where  they 
do  not  justly  come,  where  a  man  walks  accountable  to  his 
God  only,  and  where,  if  human  legislation  follow  him,  it  is 
usurpation  upon  the  rights  of  man,  and  impiety  against  his 
Maker.  We  know  how  irksome  to  many  is  all  noise  of  dis- 
sent and  all  free  expression  of  private  judgment.  To  remedy 
and  reform  all  this  dangerous  independence,  this  ominous 
revolt  against  parental  care,  was  the  high  attempt  of  Jesuit- 
ism. Let  those,  who  envy  to  that  society  their  fame  and  their 
late,  tread  in  their  steps,  breaking  down  the  individual  man 
to  build  up  the  man  social. 

Another  remarkable  feature  in  the  Jesuit  order,  illustrated 
in  the  history  of  all  their  missions,  was  their  fatal  principle 
of  accommodation — one  in  the  use  of  which  they  alternatety 
triumphed  and  fell.  The  gospel  is  to  be  presented  with  no 
needless  offence  given  to  the  prejudices  and  habits  of  the 
heathen,  but  the  gospel  itself  is  never  to  be  mutilated  or  dis- 
guised ;  nor  is  the  ministry  ever  to  stoop  to  compliances  in 
themselves  sinful.  The  Jesuit  mistook  or  forgot  this.  From 
a  very  early  period,  the  order  were  famed  for  the  art  with 
which  they  studied  to  accommodate  themselves  and  their  . 
religion  to  the  tastes  of  the  nation  they  would  evangelize. 
Iiicei,  on  entering  China,  found  the  bonzes,  the  priests  of 
the  nation  ;  and  to  secure  respect,  himself  and  his  associates 
adopted  the  habits  and  dress  of  the  bonzes.  But  a  short  ac- 
quaintance with  the  empire  taught  him,  that  the  whole  class 
of  the  priesthood  was  in  China  a  despised  one,  and  that  he 
had  been  only  attracting  gratuitous  odium  in  assuming  their 
garb.  He  therefore  relinquished  it  again,  to  take  that  of  the 
men  of  letters.  In  India,  some  of  their  number  adopted  the 
Braminical  dress,  and  others  conformed  to  the  disgusting 
habits  of  the  Fakeer  and  the  Yogee,  the  hermits  and  peni- 
tents of  the  Mohammedan  and  Hindoo  superstition.  Swartz 
met  a  catholic  missionary,  arrayed  in  the  style  of  the  Pagan 
priests,  wearing  their  yellow  robe,  and  having  like  them  a 
drum  beaten  before  him.    It  would  seem  upon  such  principles 


188  THE    JESUITS, 

of  action,  as  if  their  next  step  ought  to  have  been  the 
creation  of  a  Christian  Juggernaut ;  or  to  have  arranged  the 
Christian  suttee,  where  the  widow  might  burn  according  to 
the  forms  of  the  Romish  breviary ;  or  to  have  organized  a 
band  of  Romanist  Thugs,  strangling  in  the  name  of  the  vir- 
gin, as  did  their  Hindoo  brethren  for  the  honor  of  Kalee.  In 
South  America,  one  of  the  zealous  Jesuit  fathers,  finding  that 
the  Payernes,  as  the  sorcerers  and  priests  of  the  tribe  were 
called,  were  accustomed  to  dance  and  sing  in  giving  their 
religious  instructions,  put  his  preachments  into  metre,  and 
copied  the  movements  of  these  Pagan  priests,  that  he  might 
win  the  savage  by  the  forms  to  which  he  had  been  accus- 
tomed. In  China,  again,  they  found  the  worship  of  deceased 
ancestors  generally  prevailing.  Failing  to  supplant  the  prac- 
tice, they  proceeded  to  legitimate  it.  They  even  allowed 
worship  to  be  paid  to  Confucius,  the  atheistical  philosopher 
of  China,  provided  their  converts  would,  in  offering  the  wor- 
ship, conceal  upon  the  altar  a  crucifix  to  which  their  homage 
should  be  secretly  directed.  Finding  the  adoration  of  a  cru- 
cified Saviour  unpopular  among  that  self-sufficient  people, 
they  are  accused  by  their  own  Romanist  brethren  of  having 
suppressed  in  their  teachings  the  mystery  of  the  cross,  and 
preached  Christ  glorified,  but  not  Christ  in  his  humiliation, 
his  agony  and  his  death.  A  more  arrogant  act  than  this  the 
wisdom  of  this  world  has  seldom  perpetrated,  when  it  has 
undertaken  to  modify  and  adorn  the  gospel  of  the  crucified 
Nazarene. 

But  to  Robert  de  Nobilibus,  the  nephew  of  Bellarmine, 
and  the  near  kinsman  of  one  of  the  pontiffs,  a  man  of  distin- 
guished talent  and  zeal,  laboring  in  India,  it  was  reserved  to 
exhibit  one  of  the  worst  instances  of  this  fatal  spirit.  Find- 
ing the  Bramins  in  possession  of  the  spiritual  power,  he  pub- 
lished abroad  that  the  Bramins  of  Rome  were  the  kindred, 
but  the  seniors  and  the  superiors  of  those  of  India.  Enmity 
may  have  charged  him  falsely,  in  declaring  that  he  forged 
deeds,  in  which  a  direct  descent  was  claimed  for  these  West- 
ern Bramins  from  Brama  himself,  the  chief  god  of  Hindoo 
idolatry  ;  but  it  is  certain,  that  in  this  or  some  other  mode  he 
made  the  new  faith  so  popular,  that  twelve,  or  as  some  ac- 
counts state,  seventy  of  the  Indian  Bramins  became  his 
coadjutors  ;  and  after  his  death,  with  the  collusion  of  the  Portu- 
guese priests,  the  new  sect  went  on  still  triumphing.  But 
even  the  Romish  see  repudiated  such  conversions  as  these ; 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  189 

ond  a  bull  from  the  Vatican  extinguished  the  new  commu- 
nion. To  this  same  able  but  treacherous  laborer  belongs 
the  fame  of  another  kindred  achievement.  He  composed  in 
the  language  of  the  country  a  treatise  in  favor  of  Christianity. 
The  work  had  the  title  of  the  Ezour  Vedam.  It  was  intended 
to  sap  the  scepticism  of  the  East  ;  but  so  covertly,  though 
with  much  ability,  did  it  undertake  the  task,  that  having  been 
translated  and  reaching  France,  where  it  fell  into  the  hands 
of  Voltaire,  he  pounced  upon  it  as  an  ancient  Braminical 
treatise,  full  of  Oriental  wisdom,  and  proving  that  Christian- 
ity had  borrowed  its  chief  doctrines  from  Eastern  sources. 
Thus,  while  laboring  to  destroy  unbelief  in  India,  he  became 
in  the  next  century  instrumental  in  aiding  its  progress  in 
Europe.  The  Jesuit,  caught  in  his  own  snare,  was  made 
from  his  grave  to  lend  weapons  to  the  scoffer;  while  the 
arch-mocker,  the  patriarch  of  French  infidelity,  entangled  in 
the  toils  of  that  wilful  credulity  which  has  distinguished  so 
many  eminent  unbelievers,  quoted  the  work  of  modern  Je- 
suitism as  an  undoubted  monument  of  ancient  Braminism. 
Thus  are  the  wise  taken  in  their  own  craftiness,  when  in 
their  self-confidence  they  undertake  either  to  patronize  or  to 
impugn  the  gospel  of  the  Nazarene. 

We  need  scarcely  to  name  another  defect  of  the  Jesuit  mis- 
sions, which  must  have  occurred  to  all — their  fatal  neglect 
of  the. Scriptures.  Even  Xavier  translated  into  Japanese  but 
the  creed,  the  Lord's  prayer,  and  a  brief  catechism,  and  after- 
wards a  Life  of  the  Saviour  compliled  from  the  Gospels. 
The  Lives  of  the  Saints  afterwards  appeared  in  that  lan- 
guage. In  the  tongue  of  China  the  Jesuits  acquired  such 
proficiency  as  to  become  voluminous  authors,  writing,  it  is 
said,  hundreds  of  books;  but  although  they  translated  the 
ponderous  Sum  of  Theology  of  Thomas  Aquinas  into  Chi- 
nese, the  Scriptures  seem  to  have  been  thought  a  needless  or 
dangerous  book,  and  a  compend  of  the  gospel  history  was, 
we  believe,  their  chief  work  in  the  form  of  scriptural  transla- 
tion. With  no  religious  light  but  that  emanating  from  the 
altar  and  pulpit,  their  churches  were,  when  persecution  veil- 
ed these,  left  in  thick  darkness.  The  Jesuits,  anxious  to 
shut  up  their  converts  into  a  safe  and  orthodox  submission, 
seem  to  have  preferred  this  fearful  risk,  to  the  peril  of  leaving 
the  lively  oracles  to  beam  forth  their  living  brightness 
upon  the  minds  of  their  people.  Hence  the  Catholics,  linger- 
ing still  in  the  Celestial  Empire,  and  their  Indian  neophytes 


190  THE    JESUITS, 

in  Paraguay  and  California,  have  probably  never  known, 
scarce  even  by  name,  those  Scriptures  which  are  the  right- 
ful heritage  of  every  Christian.  Nor,  for  their  own  use, 
even,did  their  missionaries  prize  the  Bible  aright.  Does  the 
Jesuit  father  appear  in  the  midst  of  a  savage  tribe  to  harangue 
them  on  his  religion ;  or  is  he  dragged  by  them  a  daunt- 
less victim  to  the  stake ;  the  one  volume,  that  is  seen  sus- 
pended from  his  neck,  is  not  the  Bible,  but  his  breviary.  In 
all  this,  the  Jesuit  was  but  acting  with  other  Romanists. 
That  church  has  assumed  the  fearful  responsibility  of  shut- 
ting out  the  sunlight  of  divine  revelation  ;  undertaking,  in  its 
stead,  to  supply  the  reflected  light,  the  moonbeams  of  tradi- 
tion— a  gentler  brightness,  under  which  no  eye  will  be  daz- 
zled, by  which  no  mind  will  be  quickened  into  too  rapid  a 
vegetation — a  dubious  gloom,  favorable  alike  to  wonder,  to 
fear,  to  slumber,  and  to  fraud.  But  as  the  sun  will  shine,  so 
the  Scriptures  live  on.  They  who  preach  the  truth,  but  give 
not  the  Bible,  withhold  from  their  own  teachings  the  most 
authoritative  sanction.  Those,  on  the  contrary,  whose  doc- 
trine is  a  doctrine  of  falsehood,  contravening  and  supersed- 
ing the  Scriptures,  must  yet  one  day  meet  that  light  they 
would  have  obscured,  and  find  themselves  and  all  then- 
doings  tried  by  the  standard  they  would  have  fain  displaced. 

The  Jesuit  order  has  been  recently  revived.  Restored  in 
our  own  times  to  existence  by  that  see  for  which  they  con- 
tended so  valiantly  and  effectively,  it  remains  to  be  seen  how 
far  they  will  resume  their  ancient  fields,  and  with  what 
measure  of  their  first  zeal  and  success.  Were  they  to  throw 
themselves  into  the  current  of  the  age  with  the  sinewy  vigor 
and  lithe  pliability  of  former  times,  they  may  yet  prove  most 
formidable.  Their  power  of  attaching  the  heart  is,  by  all 
who  have  closely  observed  them,  confessed  to  be  great.  But 
the  age  is  one  far  different  from  that  in  which  they  began 
their  career,  more  impracticable,  less  liable  to  monopoly,  and 
less  patient  of  control. 

The  men  of  a  purer  faith  may  well  emulate  their  fearless 
heroism,  their  courtesy,  their  patience  and  industry.  Amid 
the  snows  of  Canada  and  on  the  fir-clad  shores  of  our  west- 
ern lakes,  along  the  wilds  where  Orellana 

"rolls  his  world  of  waters  to  the  sea," 

on  the  burning  margin  of  Africa,  in  the  sultry  Hindostan, 
amid  the  millions  of  China  and  Japan,  the  fathers  of  the 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  191 

order  of  Loyola  shrunk  not  from  pain,  or  toil,  or  want,  or 
death  itself.  When  the  plague  wasted,  and  thousands  were 
falling  before  it,  in  the  deep  pestilential  holds  of  the  galley 
where  their  Christian  charge  were  held  in  bonds  by  their 
Turkish  captors  ;  or  in  the  heathen  land  when  persecution 
had  unleashed  all  its  emissaries  of  terror  and  death,  the  Jesuit 
missionary  was  seen  manifesting  a  serene  courage,  his  stanch- 
est  accusers  might  well  envy.  Had  the  order  but  fixed  the 
cross  in  the  heart,  where  they  reared  the  crucifix  in  the 
market-place,  had  they  given  the  Scriptures  where  they  scat- 
tered legends,  and  labored  for  Christ  as  assiduously  and 
boldly  as  they  bled  for  the  delusions  of  Antichrist,  the  whole 
history  of  the  world  had  been  altered.  But  had  they  done  all 
this,  the  work  of  evangelizing  the  world  would  not  have  been 
left  to  become  as  it  is,  the  blessed  privilege  of  our  own  age. 
The  failures  of  others,  their  corruptions  and  their  deficien- 
cies, are  part  of  the  heritage  of  instruction  that  time  has 
been  accumulating  for  the  benefit  of  the  modern  laborer,  like 
the  brass  and  iron  of  vanquished  Syria,  which  David  pro- 
vided for  the  temple  that  was  to  be  reared  by  the  hand  of  his 
son,  the  favored  Solomon. 

The  institution,  on  whose  history  we  have  dwelt,  shows 
what  a  few  resolute  hearts  may  accomplish.  When  Ignatius 
with  his  first  companions  bound  themselves,  by  a  midnight 
vow,  at  Montmartre,  near  Paris,  on  the  15th  of  August,  1534, 
some  three  centuries  ago,  to  renounce  the  world  for  the  pur- 
pose of  preaching  the  gospel,  wherever  the  supreme  pontiff 
might  send  them,  the  engagement,  thus  ratified  in  darkness 
and  secrecy  beside  the  slumbering  capital  of  France,  was 
one  most  momentous  to  the  interests  of  our  entire  race. 
That  company  of  seven  poor  students,  with  but  zeal,  talent, 
arid  stout  hearts,  and  a  burning  enthusiasm,  formed  then  a 
bond  far  more  important  to  the  after  history  of  mankind  than 
most  of  the  leagues  made  by  kings  at  the  head  of  embattled 
squadrons.  We  doubt  if  Talleyrand  ever  schemed,  or  Na- 
poleon, in  his  highest  flights  of  victory,  ever  dictated  so  sig- 
nificant an  act.  In  its  moral  sublimity,  the  act  far  transcend- 
ed that  of  Cortez  and  Pizarro  receiving  the  mass  in  a  Spanish 
church,  upon  their  engagement  to  set  out  for  the  subversion 
of  an  American  empire.  In  the  shadows  of  that  subterranean 
chapel,  where  these  first  Jesuits  thus  bound  themselves,  fancy 
sees  Africa,  and  Asia,  and  our  own  America,  watching  intently 
a  transaction,  that  was  to  affect  so  deeply  their  subsequent 


192  THE    JESUITS, 

history.  It  remains  for  those  rejoicing  in  the  principles 
of  the  Reformation,  to  bring  the  devotedness  and  intre- 
pidity of  the  Jesuit  to  bear  upon  their  own  purer  system,  in 
the  missionary  field.  With  the  incorruptible  word  of  our 
God  for  our  chosen  weapon,  victories  impossible  to  them 
may  become  easy  to  us  ;  and  what  was  but  too  often  a  for- 
gotten motto,  on  the  surface  of  Jesuitism,  may  become  a 
principle  at  the  heart  of  the  Protestant  missionary,  "All  for 
the  greater  glory  of  God."* 

In  the  missionary  toils,  that  are  to  aid  in  ushering  in  this 
day,  do  we  expect  too  much  from  the  youthful  scholars  of 
our  country?  Are  not  its  colleges  already  sheltering  those 
who  are  destined  to  become  the  heralds  of  Christianity  to  the 
far  heathen  ?  On  this  theme,  we  would  quote  yet  again  from 
one  on  whose  own  history  we  should  gladly  have  lingered 
longer,  Francis  Xavier.  From  one  of  his  missions  in  Cochin 
China,  this  apostolic  man  wrote  to  the  university  of  the  Sor- 
bonne,  then  the  focus  of  theological  science  to  Catholic 
Europe,  in  language  much  of  which  we  doubt  not  a  Carey  or 
a  Martyn  would  not  have  hesitated  to  adopt.  "  I  have  often 
thought  to  run  over  all  the  universities  of  Europe,  and  espe- 
cially that  of  Paris,  and  to  cry  aloud  to  those  who  abound 
more  in  learning  than  in  charity,  O,  how  many  souls  are  lost 
to  heaven  through  your  neglect !  Many  would  be  moved. 
They  would  say,  Behold  me  in  readiness,  O  Lord  !  How 
much  more  happily  would  these  learned  men  then  live — 
with  how  much  more  assurance  die.  Millions  of  idolaters 
might  be  easily  converted,  if  there  were  more  preachers  who 
would  sincerely  mind  the  interests  of  Jesus  Christ  and  not 
their  own." 

The  letter  was  read,  admired  and  copied.  We  may  sup- 
pose there  were  those  who  applauded  and  transcribed  that 
letter,  but  failed  to  obey  its  summons  ;  to  whose  dying  pillow 
that  appeal  came  back,  and  sounded  through  the  depths  of 
the  soul  as  the  voice  of  neglected  duty.  May  no  such  regrets 
disturb  the  hour  of  our  dismission.  May  a  life,  instinct  with 
zeal  for  God  and  love  to  man,  and  crowded  with  effort,  make 
death,  whether  it  come  late  or  soon,  the  welcome  discharge 
of  a  laborer  found  toiling  at  his  post.  And,  my  young  breth- 
ren in  Christ,  permit  a  stranger  to  hope,  that  among  the 
honors  of  your  Alma  Mater,  and  especially  of  this  missionary 

*  "Adnuijorcm  Dei  gloriam"  the  motto  of  Loyola. 


AS    A    MISSIONARY    ORDER.  193 

association  gathered  amongst  her  sons,  it  may  yet  be  record- 
ed, that  hence  went  forth  men,  who,  on  the  stock  of  a  purer 
faith,  grafted  the  zeal  of  Francis  Xavier,  and,  emulating  his 
virtues,  won  a  success  more  durable,  because  the  means  they 
employed  were  more  scriptural — men,  who,  sitting  at  the 
Master's  feet,  and  reflecting  his  image,  and  breathing  his 
spirit,  were  recognized,  by  an  admiring  world  and  an  ex- 
ulting church,  as  those  who  had  been  much  with  Christ  and 
learned  of  him,  and  who  belonged  on  earth,  and  would  as- 
suredly, through  all  eternity,  continue  to  belong,  of  a  truth, 
and  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  words,  to  "  The  Society 
of  Jesus," 


2G 


LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF  BAXTER. 


Among  the  names  which  it  is  good  to  repeat,  we  know 
of  none  more  inspiriting,  as  an  example  of  ministerial  devo- 
tedness,  than  that  of  Richard  Baxter.  Known  to  the 
mass  of  society,  in  every  land  where  the  English  tongue  is 
spoken,  as  the  author  of  two  of  the  most  useful  volumes  in 
the  religious  literature  of  that  language,  rich  as  that  literature 
is,  he  deserves  to  be  remembered  by  the  youthful  pastor  as 
a  signal  example  of  ministerial  fidelity,  and  power,  and  suc- 
cess, even  had  he  never  written  the  Call  to  the  Unconverted, 
or  that  gem  of  devout  genius,  the  Saints'  Everlasting  Rest. 
And,  bequeathing,  as  he  did,  not  only  the  lustre  of  a  brilliant 
example,  but  the  rules  of  his  own  ministerial  career,  in  his 
treatise,  "  The  Reformed  Pastor,"  he  has  acquired  a  title  to 
be  among  those  first  named,  whenever  the  eyes  of  the  rising 
ministry  are  directed  to  the  earlier  worthies  of  the  church. 

There  is  much  in  the  character  of  the  age  to  which  he  be- 
longed to  make  it  deserving  of  profound  study.  Seasons  of 
revolution,  by  affording  the  requisite  emergencies,  and  open- 
ing a  freer  path  to  talent,  are  fertile  in  great  men.  His  was 
an  era  of  revolution,  alike  in  the  political  and  in  the  moral 
elements  of  society.  The  English  throne  was  overturned,  to 
be  replaced  by  a  republic,  itself  followed  by  the  Protectorate, 
which  gave  place  to  a  restoration  of  the  Stuarts,  soon  to  be 
expelled  by  the  revolution  of  1688.  In  science,  the  methods 
of  Bacon,  now  first  practically  applied,  were  working  momen- 
tous changes.  It  was  the  age  in  which  flourished  his  great 
disciple,  Boyle,  and  in  which  were  trained  up  Newton  and 
Locke,  who  attempted,  with  such  splendid  power,  to  carry 
out  the  principles  of  Bacon  into  the  world  of  matter  and  the 
world  of  mind.  Then,  too,  it  was  that  Milton  gave  to  the 
literature  of  England  his  great  epic,  yet  standing  in  unap- 
proached  and  unapproachable  grandeur. 

To  the  inhabitants  of  this  country  it  must  ever  seem  a 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  195 

momentous  era,  as  being  the  age  in  English  history,  out  of 
which  the  creative  hand  of  Divine  Providence  took  the  mass 
with  which  he  formed  the  elements  of  American  freedom, 
and  in  which  lay  the  germs  of  our  religious,  political,  and 
social  character.  The  England  of  those  times  was  the  Eden 
in  which  were  formed  the  Adam  and  Eve  of  the  New  Eng- 
land colonies.  And  as  matter,  not  of  self-gratulation,  but  of 
devout  gratitude,  it  deserves  to  be  remembered,  that  the 
national  mind  in  our  ancestral  land  was  never  of  such  sinewy 
manliness,  so  deeply  penetrated  by  conscientious  feeling,  and 
so  thoroughly  suffused  with  scriptural  knowledge,  so  racy 
and  so  pure,  as  in  this,  the  era  of  our  birth  as  a  people. 

To  the  Christian  scholar,  the  period  is  one  teeming  with 
interest.  In  the  church,  no  less  than  the  world,  it  was  an  era 
of  remarkable  men,  and  yet  more  remarkable  events.  In  the 
interval,  stretching  from  the  reign  of  the  First  to  that  of  the 
Second  James,  there  appeared  some  of  the  strongest  and  holi- 
est minds  of  the  modern  church.  Never  before  or  since,  it  is 
probable,  was  the  Bible  so  thoroughly  and  devoutly  studied 
by  the  British  nation,  as  during  that  time.  The  effect  was 
seen  in  the  talent,  and  principle,  and  prowess  of  the  states- 
men, the  scholars,  the  divines,  the  preachers,  and  the  heroes 
that  then  adorned  "  the  sea-girt  isle."  In  biblical  science,  it 
was  then  that  Walton  elaborated  his  Polyglott,  and  Lightfoot 
accumulated  his  stores  of  rabbinical  lore,  and  then,  that 
flourished  Castell  and  Pocock.  Usher,  and  Selden,  and 
Gataker,  and  Gale,  and  Pool,  the  giants  of  the  schools, 
were  in  the  pulpits,  aided  by  other  laborers,  whose  writings 
and  preachings  have  scarce  been  surpassed  in  power  over 
the  conscience  and  the  heart. 

In  the  bounds  of  the  English  Establishment,  a  memorable 
revolution  was  undergone,  not  less  entire  or  wondrous,  and 
more  lasting,  than  that  which  tore  up  the  foundations,  and 
for  a  time  altered  the  whole  frame-work  of  the  national 
government.  The  accession  of  James  I.  had  found  the  British 
church  divided  between  two  parties.  On  the  one  side  was 
the  body  of  the  high-churchmen,  of  whom  Laud  became  the 
head,  the  friends  of  arbitrary  power,  sticklers  for  order ;  in 
doctrine,  the  patrons  of  Arminianism,  lovers  of  ceremony, 
pomp  and  tradition,  laying  the  utmost  stress  upon  Episcopal 
ordination,  and  carrying  to  its  farthest  limits  the  Episcopal 
power,  and  accused,  not  without  specious  grounds,  of  a  strong 
leaning  to  Romanism.     With  them  were  the  court  and  the 


196  I<IFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER. 

star-chamber.  On  the  opposite  side  stood  the  Puritans, 
Calvinists  in  doctrine,  of  the  most  austere  morals,  and  the 
most  exemplary  pastors,  and  the  most  popular  preachers  of 
the  country  ;  many  of  them  friendly  to  ministerial  parity,  but 
all  more  strenuous  for  piety  of  heart,  than  any  external  con- 
formity to  the  rites  of  the  church  ;  and,  finally,  the  dauntless 
advocates  of  political  freedom,  to  whom  Hume  traces  its 
origin  in  the  English  Constitution.  With  these  were  the  body 
of  the  Parliament,  the  hearts  of  the  people,  and  the  grace  of 
God.  In  the  days  of  the  Commonwealth,  the  leaders  of  the 
high-church  party  lost  all  power.  Laud,  their  chief,  perished 
on  the  scaffold,  and  Episcopacy  itself  was  abrogated.  The 
Puritans,  those  of  them  at  least  who  favored  ministerial 
parity,  were  now  in  prosperity ;  but  shared  it  with  many 
new  communities,  that,  scattered  by  persecution  and  driven 
into  close  retirement  during  the  days  of  the  star-chamber, 
now  burst  into  notice,  and  won  rapidly  bOvh  numbers  and 
power.  The  Restoration  drove  the  mass  of  the  Puritans, 
with  these  other  sects,  into  nonconformity  ;  exiling  from 
the  Establishment  a  body  of  men  as  able  and  pious  as  it  has 
ever  possessed.  But  the  national  establishment  was  thus 
relieved  of  one  party,  only  to  receive  another  of  far  different 
character.  The  high-churchmen,  of  Laud's  spirit,  triumphed 
for  a  time  in  the  court  of  the  restored  Stuarts  ;  but  their  in- 
tolerance, and  bigotry,  and  general  inferiority  of  character, 
soon  yielded  to  the  superior  talents  and  reputation  of  a  body 
that  sprung  up  in  the  bosom  of  the  church  during  the  Com- 
monwealth, the  latitudinarian  divines,  ae  they  were  com- 
monly called.  The  growth  of  scepticism  led  them  to  study 
the  outworks  of  Christian  evidence.  Against  infidelity  and 
popery  they  did  good  service  in  the  cause  of  truth.  Their 
dread  of  enthusiasm  made  them  frigid,  and  their  mastery  of 
the  ancient  philosophy  made  them  profound.  Their  doc- 
trines were  generally  Arminian.  Their  notions  of  church 
power  were  less  rigid  than  those  of  the  rival  party,  and  they 
were  also  more  tolerant  of  difference  in  opinion.  But  in 
their  preaching  they  laid  the  whole  stress,  well  nigh,  of  their 
efforts  upon  morals,  to  the  neglect  of  doctrine  ;  and  in  the- 
ology, they  attributed  to  human  reason  a  strength  and  au- 
thority, which  gradually  opened  the  way  to  the  invasion  of 
the  gravest  heresies.  Of  generally  purer  character  than  their 
opponents,  they  were  also  abler  preachers.  But  while  valua- 
ble as  moral  treatises,  their  sermons  were  most  defective ; 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  197 

for  the  peculiar  doctrines  and  spirit  of  the  gospel  were 
evaporated.  Such  were  the  low-churchmen  of  this  time. 
The  revolution  under  William  threw  many  of  the  high- 
church  party  into  the  ranks  of  the  nonjurors,  from  their  at- 
tachment to  the  Stuart  family,  and  lost  them  their  posts  in 
the  church  ;  while  it  left  those  who  remained  still  in  the  na- 
tional Establishment,  a  weaker  and  a  discredited  party.  The 
latitudinarian  divines  gradually  rose  to  an  undisputed  ascen- 
dency, and  gave  to  the  whole  of  the  church  their  principles, 
until  Whitefield  and  Wesley  found  the  nation,  under  their  in- 
fluence, and  their  preaching  of  a  morality  well  nigh  dissev- 
ered from  the  gospel  of  the  cross,  rocked  into  insensibility, 
drenched  with  spiritual  lethargy,  and  threatened  by  a  wide- 
spreading  profligacy  and  the  rapid  growth  of  infidelity. 
Thus  it  was  that,  with  articles  and  formularies  remaining 
entirely  unchanged,  the  English  Establishment,  in  the  com- 
mencement of  Baxter's  day,  was  divided  between  the  high- 
churchmen  and  the  Puritans.  At  the  close  of  his  stormy 
career,  he  saw  it  still  divided  ;  but  the  combatants  were  now 
the  high-churchmen  and  their  latitudinarian  brethren.  At 
the  first  of  his  course,  the  church  had  been  rent  between 
order  and  piety ;  at  the  last,  the  controversy  was  between 
order  and  morality.  For,  excellent  as  were  many  of  the 
latitudinarian  divines — their  Burnets,  and  their  Tillotsons, 
and  their  Cudworths — they  all  resorted  too  often  to  the 
teachings  of  the  Mr.  Worldly  Wiseman,  the  Mr.  Legality, 
and  that  "  pretty  young  man,  his  son,"  Mr.  Civility,  who 
have  become  known  to  us  in  Bunyan's  matchless  allegory. 
The  low-churchman  of  the  first  period  was  then  a  very  dif- 
ferent being  from  the  low-churchman  of  the  second.  The 
former  quoted  the  Scriptures,  and  clung  to  the  Reformers, 
and  leaned  on  their  own  articles  and  liturgy  ;  the  latter  gave 
to  reason  undue  honor,  and  relied  too  blindly  on  the  aid  of 
philosophy.  The  revolution  thus  accomplished  in  the  church 
is  of  interest  on  many  accounts.  It  proves  how  little  power 
may  exist  in  the  boasted  uniformity  of  an  Establishment  and 
its  unchangeable  formularies.  It  is  a  study  of  interest,  too, 
in  our  days,  because  the  Oxford  theology,  now  so  deeply 
agitating  the  Christians  of  England,  is  but  a  re-appearance 
of  those  high-church  principles  that  culminated  under  Laud, 
Parker,  and  Sancroft,  but  waning  before  the  superior  bright- 
ness of  the  rival  school,  had  seemed,  for  almost  an  entire 
century,  lost  from  the  heavens,  and  vanished  not  to  return. 


198  LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF  BAXTER* 

There  were  other  revolutions  in  this  age  of  change,  of 
more  genial  influence  on  the  cause  of  freedom  and  human 
happiness.  The  most  important  of  these  was  the  discovery 
and  enunciation  of  that  great  truth,  the  right  of  religious 
freedom.  Religious  toleration,  promulgated,  and  to  a  cer- 
tain extent  practised,  under  the  republic  and  under  Crom- 
well, cruelly  restricted  under  the  Stuarts,  was  finally  estab- 
lished by  the  revolution  of  1688.  In  preparing  the  way  for 
this  momentous  change,  it  is  the  glory  of  our  own  denom- 
ination of  Christians  to  have  labored  most  efficiently.  They 
contended  for  what  was  then  deemed  a  portentous  heresy. 
Featly  himself,  a  man  of  piety,  but  of  bitter  zeal,  and  an 
inveterate  opponent  of  our  body,  published  that  the  Baptists 
were  laboring  for  the  utmost  freedom  of  the  press,  and  for 
unlimited  toleration — "damnable  doctrines,"  as  he  termed 
them,  for  which  he  would  have  them  "  exterminated  from 
the  kingdom." 

To  the  Baptist,  then,  the  age  of  Baxter  is  a  memorable 
one.  The  period  of  the  Commonwealth  and  the  Protector- 
ate was  the  season  in  which  our  distinguishing  sentiments, 
heretofore  the  hidden  treasures  of  a  few  solitary  confessors, 
became  the  property  of  the  people.  Through  weary  years 
they  had  been  held  by  a  few  in  deep  retirement,  and  at  the 
peril  of  their  lives  ;  now  they  began  rapidly  working  their 
way  and  openly  into  the  masses  of  society.  The  army  that 
won  for  Cromwell  his  "crowning  mercies,"  as  he  called 
those  splendid  victories  which  assured  the  power  of  the  Par- 
liament, became  deeply  tinged  with  our  views  of  Christian 
faith  and  order.  They  were  not,  as  military  bodies  have  so 
often  been,  a  band  of  mercenary  hirelings,  the  sweepings  of 
society,  gleaned  from  the  ale-house  and  the  kennel,  or 
snatched  from  the  jail  and  due  to  the  gallows  ;  but  they 
were  composed  chiefly  of  substantial  yeomanry,  men  who 
entered  the  ranks  from  principle  rather  than  for  gain,  and 
whose  chief  motive  for  enlistment  was,  that  they  believed 
the  impending  contest  one  for  religious  truth  and  for  the 
national  liberties — a  war  in  the  strictest  sense  pro  arts  et 
focis.  Clarendon  himself  allows  their  superiority,  in  mor- 
als and  character,  to  the  royalist  forces.  In  this  army  the 
officers  were  many  of  them  accustomed  to  preach  ;  and  both 
commanders  and  privates  were  continually  busied  in  search- 
ing the  Scriptures,  in  prayers,  and  in  Christian  conference. 
The  result  of  the  biblicai  studies  and  free  communings  of 


LIFE   AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  199 

these  intrepid,  high-principled  men,  was,  that  they  became, 
a  large  portion  of  them,  Baptists.  As  to  their  character, 
the  splendid  eulogy  they  won  from  Milton  may  counterbal- 
ance the  coarse  caricatures  of  poets  and  novelists,  who  saw 
them  less  closely,  and  disliked  their  piety  too  strongly,  to 
judge  dispassionately  their  merits. 

Major  General  Harrison,  one  of  their  most  distinguished 
leaders,  was  a  Baptist.  He  was  long  the  bosom  friend  of 
Cromwell ;  and  became  alienated  from  him  only  on  discov- 
ering that  the  Protector  sought  triumph,  not  so  much  for 
principle  as  for  his  own  personal  aggrandizement.  Favor- 
able to  liberty,  and  inaccessible  to  flattering  promises  of 
power,  he  became  the  object  of  suspicion  to  Cromwell,  ivho 
again  and  again  threw  him  into  prison.  On  the  return  of 
the  Stuarts,  his  share  in  the  death  of  Charles  I.,  among 
whose  judges  he  had  sat,  brought  him  to  the  scaffold  ;  where 
his  gallant  bearing  and  pious  triumph  formed  a  close  not  un- 
suitable to  the  career  he  had  run.  Others  of  the  king's  judges, 
and  of  the  eminent  officers  of  the  army,  belonged  to  the  same 
communion.  Some  of  these  sympathized  only,  it  is  true, 
with  their  views  of  freedom,  and  seem  not  to  have  embraced 
their  religious  sentiments.  Among  this  class  was  Ludlow,  a 
major-general  under  Cromwell,  an  ardent  republican,  and 
who,  being  of  the  regicides,  sought  a  refuge,  where  he  ended 
his  days,  in  Switzerland.  He  was  accounted  the  head,  at  one 
time,  of  the  Baptist  party  in  Ireland.  Such  was  their  interest, 
that  Baxter  complains,  that  many  of  the  soldiers  in  that  king- 
dom became  Baptists,  as  the  way  to  preferment.  (Orme,  I., 
135.)  The  chancellor  of  Ireland  under  Cromwell  was  also 
of  our  body  ;  Lilburne,  one  of  Cromwell's  colonels,  and  bro- 
ther of  the  restless  and  impracticable  John  Lilburne,  was  also 
of  their  number.  Overton,  the  friend  of  Milton,  whom  Crom- 
well in  1651  left  second  in  command  in  Scotland,  was  also 
ranked  as  acting  with  them,  as  also  Okey  and  Alured.  Col. 
Mason,  the  governor  of  Jersey,  belonged  to  the  Baptists,  and 
still  others  of  Cromwell's  officers.  Penn,  one  of  the  admirals 
of  the  English  navy,  but  now  better  known  as  the  father  of 
the  celebrated  Quaker,  was  a  Baptist.  Indeed,  in  Cromwell's 
own  family  their  influence  was  formidable  ;  and  Fleetwood, 
one  of  his  generals  and  his  son-in-law,  was  accused  of  leaning 
too  much  to  their  interests  as  a  political  party.*     The  English 

*  To  their  influence  as  a  political  party,  too,  Baxter  explicitly  attributes 
that  event  which  caused  shuddering  on  every  throne  of  Europe,  the  execu- 


200  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER. 

matron,  whose  memoirs  form  one  of  the  most  delightful  narra- 
tives of  that  stirring  time,  and  who  in  her  own  character  pre- 
sented one  of  the  loveliest  specimens  of  Christian  womanhood, 
Lucy  Hutchinson,  a  name  of  love  and  admiration  wherever 
known,  became  a  Baptist.  She  did  so,  together  with  her 
husband,  one  of  the  judges  of  Charles  I.  and  the  governor  of 
Nottingham  Castle  for  the  Parliament,  from  the  perusal  of 
the  Scriptures.  Of  no  inferior  rank  in  society,  for  Hutchin- 
son was  a  kinsman  of  the  Byrons  of  Nevvstead,  the  family 
whence  sprung  the  celebrated  poet,  their  talents,  and  patriot- 
ism, and  Christian  graces,  and  domestic  virtues,  throw  round 
that  pair  the  lustre  of  a  higher  nobility  than  heralds  can  con- 
fer, and  a  dignity,  compared  with  which  the  splendor  of 
royalty  and  the  trappings  of  victory  are  poor  indeed. 

The  ministry  of  our  denomination  comprised,  too,  men  of 
high  character  ;  some,  unhappily,  but  too  much  busied  in  the 
political  strifes  of  the  age,  but  others  whose  learning  and  ta- 
lent were  brought  to  bear  more  exclusively  on  their  appropri- 
ate work.  Tombes,  the  antagonist  of  Baxter,  Bampfield, 
Gosnold,  Knolles,  Denne  and  Jessey,  all  Baptist  preachers, 
had  held  priestly  orders  in  the  English  established  church ; 
Gosnold  being  one  of  the  most  popular  ministers  in  London, 
witli  a  congregation  of  3000  ;  and  Jessey,  a  Christian  whose 
acquirements  and  talents,  piety  and  liberality,  won  him  general 
respect.  Kiffin,  a  merchant  whose  wealth  and  the  excellence 
of  his  private  character  had  given  him  influence  among  the 
princely  traders  of  London,  and  introduced  him  to  the  court 
of  the  Stuarts,  was  pastor  of  a  Baptist  church  in  that  city. 
Cox,  another  of  our  ministers  at  this  time,  is  said  by  Baxter 
to  have  been  the  son  of  a  bishop  ;  and  Collins,  another  pastor 
among  us,  had  in  his  youth  been  a  pupil  of  Busby.  De  Veil, 
a  convert  from  Judaism,  who  had,  both  with  the  Romish 
church  of  France,  and  in  the  Episcopal  church  of  England, 
been  regarded  with  much  respect,  and,  in  the  former,  been 
applauded  by  no  less  a  man  than  the  eloquent  and  powerful 
Bossuet,  became  a  Baptist  preacher,  and  closed  his  life  and 
labors  in  the  bosom  of  our  communion.  Dell,  a  chaplain  of 
Lord  Fairfax,  and  who  was,  until  the  restoration,  head  of 
one  of  the  colleges  in  the  university  of  Cambridge,  was  also 
a   Baptist  minister.     Although    they   deemed    literature   no 

tion  of  Charles  I.,  the  monarch  whom  he  loved.  To  them  he  also  traces  tho 
invasion  of  Scotland;  in  short,  the  chief  events  which  hurried  on  the  sub- 
version of  monarchy  and  the  establishment  of  a  republic. 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  201 

indispensable  preparation  for  the  ministry  (nor  did  the  church 
of  the  first  centuries),  the  Baptists  under  Cromwell  and  the 
Stuarts,  were  not  destitute  of  educated  men.  Out  of  the 
bounds  of  England,  Vavasor  Powell,  the  Baptist,  was  evan- 
gelizing Wales  with  a  fearlessness  and  activity  that  have  won 
him,  at  times,  the  title  of  its  apostle  ;  and  on  our  own  shores, 
Roger  Williams,  another  Baptist,  was  founding  Rhode  Isl- 
and, giving  of  the  great  doctrine  gf.religious  liberty  a  visible 
type.  Our  sentiments  were  also  winning  deference  from 
minds  that  were  not  converted  to  our  views.  Milton,  with  a 
heresy  ever  to  be  deprecated  and  lamented,  had  adopted  most 
fully  our  principles  of  baptism.  Jeremy  Taylor,  a  name  of 
kindred  genius,  in  a  work  which  he  intended  but  as  the  apol- 
ogy of  toleration,  stated  so  strongly  the  arguments  for  our  dis- 
tinguishing views,  that  it  cost  himself  and  the  divines  of  his 
party  much  labor  to  counteract  the  influence  of  the  reasonings : 
while  Barlow,  afterwards  also  a  bishop,  and  celebrated  for  his 
share  in  the  liberation  of  Bunyan,  addressed  to  Tombes  a  let- 
ter strongly  in  favor  of  our  peculiarities.  Such  progress  in 
reputation  and  influence  was  not  observed  without  jealousy. 
Baxter  laments  that  those  who,  at  first,  were  but  a  few  in  the 
city  and  the  army,  had  within  two  or  three  years  grown  into 
a  multitude  (Works,  xx.,  297) ;  and  asserts  that  they  had  so 
far  got  into  power  as  to  seek  for  dominion,  and  to  expect, 
many  of  them,  that  the  baptized  saints  should  judge  the  world, 
and  the  millennium  come.  And  Baillie,  a  commissioner  from 
Scotland  to  the  Westminster  Assembly,  a  man  of  strong 
sense,  and  the  ardor  of  whose  piety  cannot  be  questioned, 
though  he  was  a  bitter  sectarian,  complained  that  the  Baptists 
were  growing  more  rapidly  than  any  sect  in  the  land ;  while 
Lightfoot's  diary  of  the  proceedings  of  the  same  Assembly 
proves  that  similar  complaints  were  brought  before  that 
venerable  body. 

Some  would  naturally,  as  in  the  history  of  the  early  Chris^ 
tians,  be  attracted  to  a  rising  sect,  who  were  themselves 
unprincipled  men.  Lord  Howard,  the  betrayer  of  the  patriot 
Russell,  was  said  to  have  been,  in  one  period  of  his  shifting 
and  reckless  course,  a  Baptist  preacher.  Another,  whose 
exact  character  it  is  difficult  to  ascertain,  perverting,  as  roy- 
alist prejudices  did,  even  his  name  for  the  purposes  of  ridicule, 
Barebones,  the  speaker  of  Cromwell's  parliament,  is  said  to 
have  been  a  Baptist  preacher  in  London.  Others,  again,  of 
the  body  were  tinged  with  extravagances  ;  some  joined  with 

27 


802  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER. 

other  Christians  of  the  time  in  the  confident  expectation  of 
what  they  termed  the  Fifth  Monarchy,  Christ's  personal 
reign  on  the  earth.  In  the  changes  of  the  day,  and  they 
were  many  and  wondrous,  they  saw  the  tokens  of  Christ's 
speedy  approach  to  found  a  universal  empire,  following  in 
the  train  of  the  four  great  monarchies  of  the  prophet's  vision. 
It  is  to  the  credit  of  Bunyan,  that  he  discerned  and  denounced 
the  error.  Then,  as  in  all  ages  of  the  church,  it  was  but  too 
common  for  the  interpreters  of  prophecy  to  become  prophets. 
Others,  again,  were  moved  from  their  steadfastness  by  Qua- 
kerism, which  then  commenced  its  course ;  while  others 
adopted  the  views  of  the  Seekers,  a  party  who  denied  the 
existence  of  any  pure  and  true  church,  and  were  waiting  its 
establishment  yet  to  come.  In  this  last  class  of  religionists 
was  the  younger  Sir  Henry  Vane,  the  illustrious  patriot  and 
statesman  so  beautifully  panegyrized  in  a  sonnet  of  Milton, 
and  from  his  talents  dreaded  alike  by  Cromwell  and  the  Stu- 
arts, and  the  friend  of  Roger  Williams.  The  founder  of 
Rhode  Island  seems  himself,  in  later  life,  to  have  imbibed 
similar  views. 

Yet  with  all  these  mingling  disadvantages,  and  they  are 
but  such  heresies  and  scandals  as  marked  the  earliest  and 
purest  times  of  Christianity,  that  era  in  our  history  is  one  to 
which  we  may  well  turn  with  devout  gratitude,  and  bless 
God  for  our  fathers.  In  literature,  it  is  honor  enough  that 
our  sentiments  were  held  by  the  two  men  who  displayed, 
beyond  all  comparison,  the  most  creative  genius  in  that  age 
of  English  literature,  Milton  and  Bunyan.  In  the  cause  of 
religious  and  political  freedom,  it  was  the  lot  of  our  commu- 
nity to  labor,  none  the  less  effectively  because  they  did  it 
obscurely,  with  Keach,  doomed  to  the  pillory,  or,  like  De- 
laune,  perishing  in  the  dungeon.  The  opinions,  as  to  religi- 
ous freedom,  then  professed  by  our  churches,  were  not  only 
denounced  by  statesmen  as  rebellion,  but  by  grave  divines 
as  the  most  fearful  heresy.  Through  evil  and  through  good 
report  they  persevered,  until  what  had  clothed  them  with 
obloquy  became,  in  the  hands  of  later  scholars  and  more  prac- 
tised writers,  as  Locke,  a  badge  of  honor  and  a  diadem  of 
glory.  Nor  should  it  be  forgotten,  that  these  views  were 
not  with  them,  as  with  some  others,  professed  in  the  time  of 
persecution,  and  virtually  retracted  when  power  had  been 
won.  Such  was,  alas,  the  course  of  names  no  less  illustrious 
than  StilJinglleet  and  Taylor.     But  the  day  of  prosperity  and 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  203 

political  influence  was,  with  our  churches,  the  day  for  their 
most  earnest  dissemination.  Their  share,  in  shoring  up  the 
falling  liberties  of  England,  and  in  infusing  new  vigor  and 
liberality  into  the  constitution  of  that  country,  is  not  yet 
generally  acknowledged.  It  is  scarce  even  known.  The 
dominant  party  in  the  church  and  the  state,  at  the  restoration, 
became  the  historians ;  and  "  when  the  man,  and  not  the 
lion,  was  thus  the  painter,"  it  was  easy  to  foretell  with  what 
party  all  the  virtues,  all  the  talents,  and  all  the  triumphs, 
would  be  found.  When  our  principles  shall  have  won  their 
way  to  more  general  acceptance,  the  share  of  Baptists  in  the 
achievements  of  that  day  will  be  disinterred,  like  many 
other  forgotten  truths,  from  the  ruins  of  history.  Then  it 
will,  we  believe,  be  found,  that  while  dross,  such  as  has 
alloyed  the  purest  churches  in  the  best  ages,  may  have  been 
found  in  some  of  our  denomination,  yet  the  body  was  com- 
posed of  pure  and  scriptural  Christians,  who  contended 
manfully,  some  with  bitter  sufferings,  for  the  rights  of  con- 
science, and  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus  :  that  to  them  English 
liberty  owes  a  debt  it  has  never  acknowledged  ;  and  that 
amongst  them  Christian  freedom  found  its  earliest  and  some 
of  its  stanchest,  its  most  consistent,  and  its  most  disinterested 
champions.  Had  they  continued  ascending  the  heights  of 
political  influence,  it  had  been  perhaps  disastrous  to  their 
spiritual  interests  ;  for  when  did  the  disciples  of  Christ  long 
enjoy  power  or  prosperity,  without  some  deterioration  of 
their  graces?  He  who,  as  we  maybe  allowed  to  hope,  loved 
them  with  an  everlasting  love,  and  watched  over  their  wel- 
fare with  a  sleepless  care,  threw  them  back,  in  the  subse- 
quent convulsions  of  the  age,  into  the  obscure  and  lowly 
stations  of  life,  because  in  such  scenes  he  had  himself  de- 
lighted to  walk,  and  in  these  retired  paths  it  has  ever  been 
his  wont  to  lead  his  flock. 

We  may  have  seemed  to  wander  far  from  our  topic  ;  but 
the  digression  may  be  forgiven,  as  illustrating  the  circum- 
stances of  Baxter's  time,  and  the  influences  to  which  he 
wTith  others  was  subjected  ;  the  conflicting  tides  along  which 
he  floated,  or  which  he  strenuously  buffeted  ;  while  showing 
also  why  to  the  Baptist  his  age  must  be  ever  full  of  interest. 
Let  us  pass  to  consider  the  man  himself. 

Born  in  the  year  1615,  of  a  father  who  was  a  respectable 
freeholder,  Baxter  found  in  the  piety  of  home  some  counter- 
poise to  the  profanity  of  the  neighborhood,  and  the  negligence 


204  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER. 

and  dissoluteness  that  infested  even  the  pulpits  of  the  sur- 
rounding district.  Although  he  showed  much  of  serious- 
ness in  early  life,  reproving  the  sins  of  other  children,  ho 
did  not  believe  himself  converted  until  attaining  the  age  of 
fifteen  ;  when  books,  to  which  he  elsewhere  declares  he 
owes  the  chief  advantages  of  his  life,  fixed  his  impressions. 
The  work  of  a  Jesuit,  revised  by  a  Puritan,  was  the  first  of 
these  treatises  ;  and  the  writings  also  of  Sibbes  greatly  ben- 
efited him.  His  early  education  was  irregular  ;  and,  though 
afterwards  prepared  for  the  university,  he  never  entered  it, 
owing  his  chief  attainments  to  the  resolute  application  of 
later  years.  Like  his  contemporary,  Bunyan,  he  met,  in  his 
opening  course  as  a  Christian,  one  of  the  severest  of  trials, 
in  the  apostacy  of  an  intimate  friend,  who  sank  back  into 
irreligion,  and  became  an  open  mocker  of  that  piety  he  had 
once  seemed  to  exemplify.  Just  at  the  date  of  his  conver- 
sion, he  was  offered  an  introduction  at  court ;  but  soon  for- 
sook an  atmosphere  little  congenial  to  his  feelings.  Failing 
health  and  the  expectation  of  early  death,  gave  to  all  the 
studies  in  which  he  now  plunged  a  practical  tendency.  It 
is  the  snare,  even  of  the  best  conducted  and  best  guarded 
forms  of  theological  education,  that  the  scholar  may  insen- 
sibly learn  to  fix  his  mind  but  on  the  theory  of  religion,  and, 
losing  its  spirit,  forfeit  its  blessings.  The  man  who  sees  the 
grave  at  his  feet  is  less  likely  thus  to  err.  Death  in  near 
view  gave  to  Baxter  a  conscientiousness  in  the  selection  of 
his  themes  of  study,  and  a  devout  earnestness  in  their  med- 
itation. Redemption  and  judgment  were  not  mere  theories 
to  a  man  who  looked  soon  to  swell  the  harpings  of  the  ran- 
somed, or  the  howlings  of  the  lost.  From  the  age  of  twen- 
ty-one to  twenty-three,  he  hardly  expected  to  survive  a 
single  year.  Still,  anxious  to  employ  the  little  fragment  of 
time  that  might  remain,  he  entered  the  ministry,  receiving 
Episcopal  ordination.  It  was  afterwards  his  regret,  that  he 
had  not  duly  studied  the  question  of  Episcopacy.  His  first 
labors  were  at  Dudley,  where,  for  a  year,  he  was  also  the 
schoolmaster,  and  where  his  studies  began  to  incline  him  to 
Nonconformity.  New  oaths,  imposed  on  the  clergy  to  re- 
press the  spirit  of  Puritanism,  yet  more  revolted  him.  At 
Bridgnorth  he  labored  with  applause,  but  without  fruit, 
among  a  people  already  hardened  by  a  faithful  ministry,  that 
had  not  profited  them.  He  soon  became,  however,  lecturer 
and  curate  at  Kidderminster,  with  a  people  rude  and  ignorant ; 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  205 

but  whom  he  preferred,  from  a  resolution  he  had  made 
never  to  settle  with  a  people  whose  conscience  had  been 
once  hardened  under  an  awakening  ministry.  In  this  field 
he  labored  at  first  but  two  years,  when  the  civil  war  broke 
out,  and  the  more  disorderly  of  his  hearers,  incensed  against 
him  for  his  faithfulness,  made  his  stay  at  Kidderminster 
dangerous  ;  for,  from  the  basest  slanders,  they  proceeded 
actually  to  attempt  his  life.  Thus  driven  from  a  station  which 
was  yet  to  become  memorable  as  the  parish  of  Baxter,  he 
labored  for  two  years  in  Coventry,  receiving  but  a  bare  sup- 
port. Here  he  disputed  strenuously  against  the  Baptists, 
then  making  proselytes.  Cox,  his  antagonist,  and  whom 
Baxter  describes  as  no  contemptible  scholar,  and  as  the  son 
of  a  bishop,  was  thrown  into  prison,  though  not  with  the  will 
of  Baxter.  The  result  of  this  unhappy  appeal  to  that  royal 
syllogism,  the  argument  from  compulsion,  was  the  planting 
of  a  Baptist  church  at  Coventry,  which  has  continued  to  our 
times.  Baxter  now  consulted  with  his  brethren  in  the  min- 
istry as  to  his  entering  the  army,  there  to  counteract  the 
sectarian  influence  that  was  rapidly  triumphing.  His  zeal, 
and  piety,  and  popular  eloquence,  and  powers  of  disputation, 
seem  to  have  made  him  already  eminent.  By  the  advice  of 
his  friends,  he  became  a  chaplain  in  the  regiment  of  Col. 
Whalley,  a  kinsman  of  Cromwell,  one  of  the  judges  on  the 
trial  of  the  king,  and  the  same  whose  flight  to  our  country, 
and  concealment  here,  forms  one  of  the  most  romantic  inci- 
dents in  the  early  history  of  New  England.  Cromwell,  who 
knew  Baxter's  dislike  to  his  views  of  general  toleration,  now 
looked  coolly  on  the  man  whom  he  had  once  admired,  and 
had  invited  in  earlier  years  to  become  the  chaplain  of  his 
own  regiment.  At  the  close  of  the  war,  Baxter  returned 
again  to  his  beloved  Kidderminster,  where  he  remained  now 
about  fourteen  years  ;  and,  by  a  series  of  pastoral  labors  of 
surpassing  faithfulness,  made  the  connection  between  his 
own  name  and  the  parish  an  inseparable  one  in  the  memory 
of  the  church.  Such  may  be  the  mighty  effects  of  a  few 
years  in  the  career  of  a  zealous  pastor  ;  for  the  whole  term 
spent  by  Baxter  in  this,  the  vineyard  of  his  affections,  com- 
prised little  more  than  a  fifth  of  his  lifetime.  His  memory 
is  yet  most  fragrant  there,  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  a 
century  ;  and  the  fruits  of  his  influence  are  said  to  be  yet 
traceable.  He  had  found  the  spot  a  moral  waste.  He  toil- 
ed, prayed,  wept,  gave  and  endured,  until  the  wilderness 


206  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER. 

blossomed  as  the  garden  of  the  Lord.  Profanity  and  irreli- 
gion  possessed  it  at  his  first  entrance.  In  the  civil  wars,  how- 
ever, the  same  brutish  herd  that  had  driven  their  pastor  from 
his  post,  nearly  all  perished  ;  and,  on  his  restoration  to  his 
parish,  these  former  obstacles  were  found  to  have  disap- 
peared. He  had  at  first  found  scarce  a  family  in  an  entire 
street,  who  were  accustomed  to  the  regular  worship  of  God 
in  the  home.  Ere  he  left,  there  were  many  streets  in  which 
not  one  family  was  without  its  altar  ;  and  the  passing  stran- 
ger heard  the  chorus  of  prayer  and  praise  swelling  on  either 
hand,  as  he  walked  past  the  threshold.  In  a  parish  of  eight 
hundred  families,  numbering  four  thousand  souls,  his  com- 
municants became  in  number  six  hundred;  of  whom  thee 
wrere,  he  declared,  scarce  twelve,  of  whose  conversion  he 
had  not  good  hope.  Incessant  and  systematic  visitation,  and 
the  catechetical  instruction  of  every  family,  whatever  their 
ages,  were  united  to  much  earnest  preaching.  His  labors 
were  amazing.  He  gave  himself  to  the  ministry  of  the  word, 
to  prayer,  and  to  fasting.  In  addition,  Baxter  ministered 
freely  to  the  wants  of  the  poor  among  his  flock  from  his  own 
substance  ;  while  of  his  small  stipend,  through  his  lenity  in 
exacting  his  legal  dues,  not  one  half  ever  reached  his  hands. 
He  educated,  too,  poorer  children  ;  and  some,  having  been 
thus  brought  by  him  through  the  university,  entered  for 
themselves  upon  the  ministry.  All  this  was  not  enough  to 
satisfy  his  heart  of  fire  and  occupy  his  iron  diligence.  For 
the  space  of  five  or  six  years  he  was  the  physician  of  his 
flock,  not  to  eke  out  by  its  revenues  a  scanty  stipend,  but 
from  mere  kindness  ;  for  his  advice  and  aid  were  alike  with- 
out charge.  When  he  looked  round  upon  his  congregation, 
he  saw  in  the  greater  part  those  who  had  owed  health,  and 
many  of  them  life,  to  his  assistance.  This  could  not  but 
endear  him  to  the  most  insensible.  He  was,  amid  all  this, 
a  writer  ;  and  of  each  of  his  smaller  works,  gave  one  copy 
to  every  family  of  his  charge  ;  while  each  poor  household, 
unable  themselves  to  obtain  it,  he  supplied  with  a  Bible. 
Nor  did  he  limit  his  labors  to  these  bounds.  He  preached 
with  the  neighboring  ministers  in  surrounding  districts  :  and> 
as  an  author,  he  became  famous  through  the  land  ;  while 
his  example  of  pastoral  fidelity  and  success  excited  many  to 
admire,  and  some  to  imitate,  his  methods.  Such  was  Rich- 
ard Baxter  amid  his  people  ;  and,  had  his  infirmities  been 
both  more,  and  more  aggravated  than  they  were,  devotedness 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  207 

so  rare  must  win  from  every  member  of  the  true  church, 
whatever  his  name  among  men,  an  earnest  and  emphatic 
blessing.  God  grant  to  every  evangelical  community  many 
in  his  likeness. 

During  the  Protectorate,  Baxter  never  disguised  his  ad- 
herence to  the  royal  family  ;  preached  against  Cromwell ; 
and,  when  once  admitted  to  an  interview  with  the  man  whose 
very  name  made  Mazarine  to  turn  pale,  and  whose  power 
awed  all  Europe,  Baxter  told  the  Protector,  with  his  usual 
intrepidity,  that  the  people  of  England  believed  their  ancient 
monarchy  a  blessing  ;  nor  did  they  know  what  they  had 
done  to  forfeit  its  advantages.  When  the  Restoration  was 
now  concerted,  Baxter  was  selected  to  preach  before  the 
Parliament,  when  preparing  for  the  act.  Upon  the  return 
of  Charles  II.,  he  was  appointed  a  chaplain  to  the  king,  and 
was  offered  a  mitre  in  the  establishment,  if  he  would  con- 
form. But  the  Episcopal  crozier  and  stall  had  no  tempta- 
tion to  such  a  spirit.  He  asked  but  for  the  privilege  of  re- 
turning to  his  beloved  Kidderminster  ;  and  when  this  was 
denied,  sued  for  permission  to  labor  there  without  a  stipend. 
But  it  was  in  vain  ;  and  this  man,  whose  loyalty  had  been 
so  eminent,  was  permitted  to  preach  but  twice  or  thrice  to 
these,  his  attached  and  beloved  flock.  Returning  now  to 
London,  he  continued  to  preach  as  he  obtained  opportu- 
nity. On  St.  Bartholomew's  day,  the  decree  of  stern  ex- 
clusion drove  from  the  communion  of  the  Established  Church 
two  thousand  of  her  worthiest  and  ablest  ministers. 

Their  altars  they  forego,  their  homes  they  quit, 

Fields  which  they  loved  and  paths  they  daily  trod, 

And  cast  the  future  upon  Providence.  Wordsworth. 

Among  these  confessors,  Baxter,  the  man  who  had  re- 
jected a  bishopric  for  conscience'  sake,  was  found  abandon- 
ing, what  he  prized  far  more  highly,  the  liberty  of  preaching 
the  gospel.  Removed  to  London,  he  still  continued  to 
publish  his  message  as  a  Christian  minister,  amid  continual 
risks  and  vexations,  watched  by  informers,  and  accused  of 
sedition.  Five  times  in  fifteen  years  thrown  into  prison,  his 
goods  distrained,  and  driven  from  one  residence  to  another, 
amid  weakness,  and  pain,  and  persecution,  Baxter  toiled  on, 
From  his  books,  of  which  he  says  in  language  of  simple 
pathos,  there  was  little"  he  valued  more  upon  earth,  he  was 
separated.     Compelled  first  to  conceal,  and  afterwards  to  sell 


208  LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF  BAXTER. 

them,  he  describes  himself  as  being  for  twelve  years  driven 
more  than  one  hundred  miles  from  his  library.  He  seemed 
to  regret  it,  even  when  drawing  near  the  end,  to  use  his  own 
words,  "  of  that  life  that  needeth  books."  The  times  in 
which  he  lived  were  full  of  gloomy  omens.  A  dissolute 
court,  where  the  royal  mistresses  rioted  in  scenes  of  the  most 
aggravated  profusion  and  profligacy ;  a  king  who,  while 
sworn  to  guard  the  liberties  of  Britain,  was  receiving  the  pay 
of  France,  and  while  presiding  at  the  head  of  a  Protestant 
establishment,  was,  in  truth,  long  since  united  to  the  Romish 
church  ;  a  divided  cabinet,  and  a  persecuting  hierarchy,  and  a 
most  debauched  nobility,  were  not  the  only  evils  that  sadden- 
ed the  heart  of  the  Christian  patriot.  The  judgments  of  God, 
signal  and  wide  spread,  had  fallen  on  the  chief  city  of  the 
empire  ;  and  plague  and  fire  seemed  commissioned  to  punish 
what  could  not  be  reformed.  When  a  measure  of  liberty 
was  given,  Baxter  procured  a  meeting-house  ;  but  was  again 
sued,  fined  and  cast  into  prison.  In  the  reign  of  James  II., 
he  was  selected  as  a  great  Nonconformist  leader,  to  become 
the  more  eminent  victim,  and  an  example  of  terror  to  the 
land.  His  Notes  on  the  New  Testament  were  searched  for 
passages  to  which  a  seditious  tendency  might  be  imputed. 
Bitter  might  well  be  the  language  in  which  he  there  occa- 
sionally spoke  of  Christian  dignitaries,  thus  restricting  from 
their  beloved  work  men,  their  equals  in  talent,  and  often  far 
their  superiors  in  piety  and  usefulness.  He  was  brought 
before  the  inhuman  Jeffreys,  one  of  the  most  brutal  judges 
that  ever  disgraced  the  English  bench,  even  in  that  day  of 
judicial  corruption  ;  a  man  of  coarse  strength  of  mind,  the 
vigorous  and  unscrupulous  tool  of  tyranny.  Threatened  and 
maligned  with  the  coarsest  virulence,  he  was  sentenced  to  a 
heavy  fine  ;  the  infuriated  Jeffreys  regretting  only  that  it  was 
not  in  his  power  to  hang  him.  Baxter  now  spent  about  two 
years  in  prison;  but  amid  sickness  and  pain,  and  the  gather- 
ing evils  of  age,  Baxter  was  a  laborer  still,  and  still  cheerful. 
"  What  could  I  desire  more  of  God,"  said  he  to  a  friend, 
"  than  having  served  him  to  my  utmost,  now  to  suffer  for 
him?"  A  change  in  the  measures  of  the  court,  opened  his 
prison  doors.  He  lived  to  see  the  revolution,  and  survived 
that  day  of  deliverance  to  the  Nonconformist  churches  three 
years  ;  having  reached,  through  sufferings,  perils  and  toils, 
the  age  of  seventy-six. 

Amid  the  anguish  of  complicated  disorders,  his  death-bed 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  209 

was  a  scene  of  serene  triumph.  When  asked  in  his  latter 
days,  as  his  strength  waned  and  the  hour  of  his  dismission 
drew  nigh,  how  he  found  himself,  his  usual  reply  was,  "  almost 
well."  He  had  lived  the  theme  of  many  tongues:  min- 
gled admiration,  contempt,  hate,  reverence  and  affection, 
were  lavished  upon  him.  But  multitudes,  even  of  other 
communions,  acknowledged  his  rare  worth.  Hale,  the  bright- 
est name  in  the  records  of  the  English  Themis,  was  his  friend, 
scarce  refraining  from  tears  when  told  of  his  imprisonment ; 
and  bequeathing  to  him  a  legacy,  trivial  in  amount,  but  valu- 
able, as  the  expression  of  esteem  and  love,  from  such  a  man. 
Usher,  the  most  learned  and  pious  prelate  of  his  age,  it  was, 
that  urged  Baxter  to  write  the  Call  to  the  Unconverted. 
"Wilkins,  also  of  the  Episcopal  bench,  declared  that  had 
Baxter  lived  in  primitive  times,  he  would  have  been  a  father 
of  the  church  ;  and  that  it  was  glory  enough  for  one  age  to 
have  produced  such  a  man.  Boyle,  the  devoutest,  as  he  was 
among  the  greatest  of  English  philosophers,  said  of  him, 
that  he  was  better  fitted  than  any  man  of  that  age  to  be  a 
casuist ;  for  he  feared  no  man's  displeasure,  and  sought  no 
man's  preferment.  And  Barrow,  whose  own  powers  as  a 
reasoner  and  prejudices  as  a  churchman  give  double  force  to 
his  testimony,  declared  of  him  that  his  practical  writings 
were  never  mended,  and  his  controversial  ones  seldom  con- 
futed. 

It  will  be  seen  that  his  life  was  no  long  dream  of  lettered 
ease,  spent  amid  the  quiet  of  a  settled  home,  and  all  the  aids 
of  academic  retirement.  His  was  a  troubled  course  ;  and, 
in  the  agitations  of  a  changeful  time,  when  the  foundations 
of  many  generations  were  upheaved  by  the  rising  tide  of 
revolution,  when  every  day  bore  the  news  of  recent,  or  the 
omen  of  coming  change,  busiest  among  the  busy,  Baxter 
seemed  the  sworn  foe  of  repose  ;  and,  in  the  spirit  of  old 
Arnauld,  the  great  champion  of  Jansenism,  to  have  ex- 
claimed, "  Shall  we  not  have  all  eternity  to  rest  in?"  Ac- 
tive by  constitution,  connected  with  the  political  parties  in 
power,  sometimes  their  adviser,  more  often  their  victim, 
Baxter  was  yet,  with  these  entangling  engagements  about 
him,  the  diligent  student  and  the  faithful  pastor.  He  was, 
too,  a  most  voluminous  writer.  His  practical  writings  alone 
fill  twenty  volumes.  Were  his  controversial  and  miscella- 
neous productions  added,  the  collection  would  extend  to 
sixty  goodly  octavos.     Many  a  minister,  we  fear,  lives  and 

28 


210  I'IFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER. 

dies  without  reading  as  many  pages  as  Baxter  wrote,  As  a 
casuist,  he  was  among  the  most  renowned  of  the  age.  For 
seven  years  he  had  stood  in  doubt  of  his  own  salvation 
(xxiii.,  p.  1,  and  xvii.,  p.  276) ;  and  his  anxious  scrutiny  of 
his  heart  and  way,  had  qualified  him  to  guide  others.  His 
Christian  Directory  remains  yet,  a  work  of  great  value,  enter- 
ing into  religious  duties  with  a  minuteness  of  detail,  a  fulness 
of  illustration,  and  a  niceness  of  discrimination,  that  leave  the 
reader  astonished  at  the  copious  resources  of  his  mind.  As 
a  controversialist,  his  pen  had  both  power  and  weight;  and, 
into  all  the  leading  questions  of  the  age,  he  brought  a  strength 
of  logic,  and  a  scholastic  acuteness,  that  made  him  to  the  most 
doughty  of  polemics  no  contemptible  foe.  Yet  withal  he  was 
earnest  for  conciliation  among  Christians,  anxious  to  find  a 
middle  way  for  contending  theologians,  and  to  effect  a  union 
among  jarring  sects  ;  declaring  often  that  he  would  as  freely 
be  a  martyr  for  charity,  as  for  any  article  in  the  creed.  He 
attempted  poetry,  not  that  he  sought  fame,  or  had  studied 
harmony  ;  but  because  he  loved  the  songs  of  the  sanctuary, 
declaring  that  he  knew  no  better  image  of  heaven,  than  a 
whole  congregation  heartily  singing  the  praises  of  God ; 
because,  too,  he  loved  God  with  an  ardent  affection,  and  his 
feelings  found  natural  vent  in  verse  more  pious  than  poetical. 
Two  of  his  lines  have,  however,  gained  a  currency,  they  are 
likely  never  to  lose.  They  are  those  in  which  he  describes 
himself, 

"Preaching  as  if  I  ne'er  should  preach  again, 
And  as  a  dying  man  to  dying  men." 

Blessed  the  pulpit  where  this  motto  shines  :  to  the  world  it 
will  be  as  an  echo  of  Mount  Sinai ;  .to  the  church,  a  tower 
on  the  heights  of  Mount  Zion. 

But  the  chief  distinction  of  Baxter  in  authorship  is  as  a 
practical  writer.  His  topics  were  themes  of  universal  con- 
cernment, such  as  he  advises  the  youthful  minister  to  select 
for  his  sermons  ;  themes  drawn  from  the  creed,  the  com- 
mandments, and  the  Lord's  prayer ;  or,  as  he  happily  ex- 
pressed it,  the  things  to  be  believed,  to  be  done,  and  to  be 
desired.  Such  are  the  subjects  that  must  "  come  home  to 
men's  business  and  bosoms."  Some  of  these  compositions 
stand  yet  unrivalled  for  energy  and  urgency.  The  writer 
hurls  himself  against  the  heart  of  the  reader  with  the  force 
and  directness  of  a  battering-ram.     Yet  some  were  written 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  211 

under  circumstances  that  would  have  sentenced  others  to 
helpless  inactivity,  and  been  pleaded  as  reasons  sufficient  for 
drawling  out  a  life  without  effort  or  purpose.  The  Saints' 
Everlasting  Rest  was  the  work  of  the  last  months  in  his 
military  career ;  with  the  noise  of  camps  yet  in  his  ears, 
separated  from  all  his  books,  his  health  apparently  fast  failing, 
and  eternity  rising  before  him.  But  if  ordinary  helps  were 
wanting,  other  and  higher  aid  was  not  withheld.  The  church 
has  few  volumes  written  like  that,  as  on  the  very  summit  of 
the  delectable  mountains,  where  the  eye  could  trace  the 
outlines  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  and  the  ear  already  caught 
the  thunder  of  the  harpings  of  its  many  harpers.  Fame  or 
protit  was  not  the  object  of  his  authorship.  His  course 
shows  the  sincerity  of  a  declaration  prefixed  to  one  of  his 
sermons,  that  he  would  rather  see  his  books  carried  in  ped- 
lars' packs  to  the  fairs  and  markets  of  the  country,  than 
standing  on  the  shelves  of  the  rich  man's  library. 

As  a  preacher  and  pastor,  it  is  scarcely  possible  for  the 
youthful  pastor  to  select  a  higher  model  in  the  modern  church. 
His  published  works  caused  Doddridge  to  call  him  the 
Demosthenes  of  the  English  pulpit.  There  is  much  in  his 
writings  to  redeem  the  epithet  from  extravagance,  whether 
we  look  to  the  vigorous  simplicity  of  style,  their  burning 
logic,  set  on  fire  by  strong  passion,  his  sustained  enthusiasm, 
or  the  tremendous  iterations  of  his  earnestness  in  dealing 
with  the  heart.  Before  Cromwell  or  the  national  parliament, 
the  judges  at  their  circuit,  or  the  simple  tradesman  of  his 
own  Kidderminster,  he  seemed  alike  raised  above  all  fear 
of  man;  elevated  by  the  responsibility  of  his  office  and  the 
view  of  his  final  audit  at  the  bar  of  Christ,  to  a  point,  where 
the  voice  of  fame  died  away  on  the  ear,  and  the  gauds  and 
toys  of  earth  showed  in  their  native  littleness.  He  was  not 
only  in  request  as  a  preacher,  but  as  a  disputant,  holding 
public  conferences  with  our  own  denomination,  with  the 
Quakers,  and  with  bishops  of  the  Establishment.  But  it  is 
as  a  pastor,  that  the  lesson  of  his  life  has  its  chief  value.  He 
brought  his  parish  into  a  regular  system  of  visitation  ;  himself 
and  his  assistant  visiting  fourteen  families  previously  desig- 
nated, in  each  week,  and  devoting,  every  week,  two  entire 
days  to  the  employment.  Prolonged  conversation  with  each 
individual,  and  the  catechetical  instruction  of  the  whole  fa- 
mily, were  the  exercises  in  which  the  time  was  spent.  He 
counted  his  visitations  greater  labor,  than  his  preparations 


212  LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF  BAXTER. 

for  the  pulpit.  Their  effects  were  remarkable.  To  the 
young  he  showed  special  care.  It  was  a  favorite  sentiment 
with  him,  that,  were  Christian  parents  but  faithful  to  their 
duties,  preaching  would  remain  no  longer  the  chief  instrument 
of  conversion.  He  saw  the  benefits  of  toil  bestowed  upon 
children,  in  its  reaction  upon  the  parents.  Some  of  his 
older  parishioners,  long  incorrigible  and  insensible,  were 
hopefully  converted  at  the  age,  in  some  cases,  even  of  eighty, 
in  consequence  of  beholding  the  effects  of  piety  in  their  chil- 
dren and  grandchildren.  In  the  Reformed  Pastor  he  has 
urged  the  duties  of  the  ministry  with  such  power,  that  some 
theological  instructors  have  recommended  a  yearly  perusal 
of  the  work  to  every  one  occupying  or  expecting  to  fill  the 
ministerial  office. 

Another  memorable  feature  in  his  history  is  the  manner  in 
which  he  threw  his  mind  into  various  channels  without  dissi- 
pating its  strength.  The  peculiar  circumstances  of  our  age 
seem  often  to  require  this  of  pastors.  Many  and  dissimilar  em- 
ployments must  be  mingled.  Was  it  that  his  devotion  gave 
tone  and  tension  to  his  mind,  such  as  no  other  discipline  than 
that  of  the  closet  could  have  supplied,  and  that,  basking  on 
the  loftiest  heights  of  divine  meditation,  he  came  down  to 
the  strifes  and  toils  of  the  plain  beneath  with  a  strength  which 
could  be  obtained  only  in  this  near  approach  to  the  throne, 
or  in  whatever  mode  we  account  for  it,  his  name  stands  high 
among  the  few,  who,  in  varied  fields,  have  in  most  been 
eminent,  and  in  none  contemptible.  Now  engaged  in  pre- 
paring for  the  nursery  the  "  Mother's  Catechism,"  or  putting 
on  the  shelf  of  the  cottager  the  "  Poor  Man's  Family  Book," 
he  was  seen  anon  issuing  some  ponderous  tome  of  theology 
or  polemics,  where  the  acuteness  of  a  schoolman  was  sustain- 
ed with  no  despicable  stores  of  knowledge,  and  no  vulgar 
eloquence.  He  blended  qualities  of  mind  and  heart  often 
deemed  incompatible,  because  so  seldom  found  in  union. 
With  much  metaphysical  subtlety,  he  used  the  simplest  and 
most  popular  language,  and  retained  his  power  of  holding  an 
audience  spell-bound  by  appeals  of  stirring  vigor  and  familiar 
illustrations.  Bunyan,  coming  up  from  the  shop,  and  the 
highway,  and  the  market-place,  into  the  pulpit,  could  not 
preach  more  plainly,  or  draw  to  his  aid  illustrations  more  apt 
or  homely.  Public  spirit  in  him  was  united  with  personal 
watchfulness  ;  and  his  continual  labors  for  others  had  not 
relaxed  his  attention  to  his  own  heart  and  way.     The  life  of 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.      •  213 

the  statesman,  the  traveller,  and  the  merchant,  is  sometimes 
thought  to  excuse,  from  its  peculiar  embarrassments,  a  lower 
standard  of  holiness  in  the  Christian  who  occupies  such  a 
place  in  society.  But  Baxter's  cares,  and  correspondence, 
and  labors,  might  have  wearied  many  a  merchant,  and  seemed 
too  intricate  for  a  cabinet  minister,  while  oft  he  found  himself 
with  no  certain  dwelling-place,  travelling  perforce  now  to 
regain  health,  and  now  to  escape  persecution;  yet  the 
retirement  of  the  closet  and  the  culture  of  the  heart  seem 
never  neglected.  He  was  like  Daniel,  who,  with  the  cares 
of  an  empire  resting  on  his  shoulders,  was  still,  in  his  cham- 
ber, the  man  greatly  beloved  of  Heaven;  and,  like  Nehemiah, 
when  amid  the  luxury  and  pomp  and  honor  of  his  station, 
his  eye  saw  through  the  gilded  lattices  of  Shushan,  not  the 
tufted  palm,  or  the  splendid  pillar,  or  the  fragrant  garden, 
but  one  object  still  arose,  dark  and  distant  before  his  eye, 
the  blackened  walls  of  the  distant  Jerusalem. 

It  enhances  yet  more  the  value  of  his  example  and  its 
singularity,  that  all  these  were  the  doings  of  an  invalid.  He 
belonged  to  that  class  from  which  some  would  expect  little 
of  energy  or  achievement,  whose  conversation  is  in  some 
cases  only  of  still  recurring  ailments,  and  their  care  is  still 
some  new  remedy  for  the  old  disease.  Scarce  could  this 
class  produce,  from  their  most  extreme  cases,  one  whose 
bodily  disorders  were  so  numerous,  distressing  and  long 
continued,  as  the  complicated  maladies  that  had  met  in  the 
shattered  tabernacle  which  housed  the  spirit  of  Baxter.  Like 
his  illustrious  contemporary,  when  remembering  his  blind- 
ness, he 

"  Bates  not  a  jot  of  heart  or  hope,  but  still 
Bears  up  and  steers  right  onward." — Milton. 

Entering  the  ministry  with  what  would  now  be  termed  the 
symptoms  of  a  confirmed  consumption,  Baxter  battled  right 
manfully  his  way  through  languor  and  pain,  until  he  had 
passed  the  usual  bound  of  threescore  years  and  ten,  allotted  to 
our  stay  on  the  earth.  When  others  would  have  quitted  the 
field  to  occupy  the  hospital,  and  when  many  would  have  dwin- 
dled away  into  shivering  and  selfish  valetudinarians,  the  im- 
pulse of  high  conscientiousness  and  sustaining  faith  carried 
this  man  on,  to  the  last,  an  efficient  laborer.  And  while,  with 
Paul,  he  knew  what  it  was  to  be  "in  deaths  oft,"  with  the 
apostle,  also,  could  he  claim  to  be  "  in  labors  more  abundant, '^ 


214  LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF  BAXTER. 

He  had  his  errors.  Many  he  detected,  and,  like  Augustine i 
in  all  candor,  retracted.  Others  he  knew  not  until  he  reach- 
ed that  land  where  all  the  followers  of  Christ  will  have  so 
much  to  learn,  as  well  as  so  much  to  enjoy.  Among  the 
imperfections  of  this  excellent  man,  some  may  be  palliated 
as  the  result  of  natural  temperament  or  bodily  weakness. 
Of  ardent  and  irritable  character,  his  vehemence  became  at 
times  undue  severity.  His  prejudices  were  strong,  and  his 
feelings  perhaps  often  tinged  with  bitterness  from  the  nuste- 
rity  of  his  life  and  his  frequent  sicknesses.  With  great 
metaphysical  acuteness  he  refined  and  distinguished,  until 
truth  was  perplexed,  and  error  found  shelter  under  heaps  of 
ingenious  distinctions.  He  confessed  that  he  had  an  early 
and  strong  love  of  controversy,  which  he  sought  to  restrain. 
But,  even  in  his  attempts  to  end,  he  sometimes  created  dis- 
putes, and  added  but  a  new  term  to  the  watchwords  of  theo- 
logical strife  already  too  numerous.  His  middle  path  became 
but  the  means  of  exciting  new  contentions,  or  forming  one 
more  sect.  Thus  Baxterianism,  as  others  have  called  it,  or 
the  system  by  which  he  would  harmonize  the  Calvinist  and 
the  Arminian,  became,  in  his  own  and  the  subsequent  gene- 
ration, but  the  occasion  of  a  new  and  embittered  controversy. 
Hence  he  complained,  late  in  life,  that  he  had  been  making 
his  bare  hand  a  wedge  to  part  the  gnarly  oaks  of  controversy, 
and  the  result  was,  where  he  would  have  separated  contend- 
ing parties,  they  closed  upon  the  hand  of  the  peace-maker ; 
united  in  endeavoring  to  crush  it,  if  disunited  in  all  else. 
Writing  rapidly  and  on  every  theme,  his  expressions  could 
not  always  have  been  duly  weighed,  and  often  clashed 
apparently  with  each  other.  This  was  a  charge  of  his  ene- 
mies, and  was  wittily  urged  against  him  by  L'Estrange,  who 
compiled  what  he  supposed  contradictions  from  Baxter's 
numerous  books,  and  entitled  the  work,  "The  Casuist  un- 
cased, or  a  dialogue  betwixt  Richard  and  Baxter,  with  a 
moderator  between  for  quietness'  sake."  He  was  also 
accused  of  egotism  ;  and  his  great  contemporary,  Owen,  has 
broadly  charged  him  with  this  fault.  But  it  seems  rather  the 
childlike  openness  of  a  mind  that  thought  aloud,  and  knew  no 
disguises,  than  the  fruit  of  conceit.  A  graver  fault  was  his 
dislike  of  toleration.  It  was,  however,  the  fault  of  his  age 
and  his  sect ;  for  the  Presbyterian  body  to  which  he  belonged, 
with  all  their  excellences,  and  they  were  many  and  rare, 
were,  as  a  denomination,  the  zealous  opponents  of  religious 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  215 

freedom,  and  incurred  for  this,  as  for  other  causes,  the  indig- 
nant satire  of  the  muse  of  Milton. 

In  this  and  other  questions,  nothing  is  more  common,  yet 
nothing  more  unjust,  than  to  try  the  men  of  former  ages  by 
the  light  of  our  own  times.  But  the  men  of  that  day  rea- 
soned thus.  Every  man  is  bound  to  use  his  influence  in  the 
extension  of  religion.  He  is  not  the  less  bound  to  do  so, 
because  he  wears  a  crown.  In  what  way  could  a  king  pat- 
ronize, but  by  paying,  its  ministry,  and  guarding  its  creed. 
They  read,  too,  in  the  Scriptures  that  kings  were  to  be  the 
nursing-fathers  of  the  church  ;  and  seeing,  in  the  Jewish 
dispensation,  that  God  had  united  the  civil  and  religious 
polity  of  his  own  people,  Scripture  and  reason  seemed  to 
unite  in  requiring  that  the  state  should  become  the  patron  of 
the  church.  In  addition,  the  practice  of  ages  was  with  the 
advocates  of  these  views.  Where  were  the  people,  Christian 
or  heathen,  in  whom  the  civil  government  and  the  priesthood 
did  not  recognize  a  mutual  dependence,  each  on  the  other, 
and  lend  alternate  aid  ?  They  who  forget  how  deeply  these 
prejudices  were  imbedded  in  the  minds  of  mankind,  and  who 
condemn  the  intolerance  of  the  Puritans  without  mercy,  act 
unjustly  ;  and  if  Baptists,  are  unjust  also  to  the  merit  of  their 
own  fathers,  whose  honor,  received  from  God,  it  was  to 
discover  a  truth  long  forgotten,  and  on  its  reappearance 
universally  suspected  ;  and  one  too,  not  at  first  sight  so  ob- 
vious, but  that  much  might  be  plausibly  urged  against  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  some  few  among  the  Baptists  of  the 
continent  and  England  early  held  that  all  magistracy  was 
sinful ;  that  no  Christian  could  accept  it.  They  argued  from 
the  declaration  of  him  who  said,  "  My  kingdom  is  not  of 
this  world  ;"  and  especially  they  relied  on  a  perverse  inter- 
pretation of  that  Scripture  still  so  often  misunderstood — like 
some  parts  of  the  ocean,  beautifully  clear,  yet  unfathomably 
deep — the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  These  arrived  at  a  true 
result,  that  religion  was  not  to  be  the  creature  of  the  state  ; 
but  it  was  by  a  most  erroneous  process.  The  argument  was 
that  all  states  and  governments  were  unlawful.  As  civil 
government  was  itself  sin,  Christ  could  not  accept  Belial  as  a 
coadjutor,  nor  the  church  the  aid  of  the  civil  power.  This 
was  liberty,  blundered  upon  by  the  gropings  of  falsehood. 
Others  of  the  Baptists  saw  the  truth,  that  civil  magistracy 
was  an  ordinance  of  God,  not  only  allowable,  but  necessary 
and  most  righteous,  if  justly  administered.     But  they  saw, 


216  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER. 

also,  that  the  Saviour's  rule  differed  from  that  of  earthly 
princes  in  its  subjects  and  in  its  laws  ;  in  short,  in  its  entire 
genius.  They  declared  that  to  blend  the  two  was  tyranny 
against  man,  and  it  was  treason  against  God.  When  this 
bold  truth  burst  to  light  from  the  lowly  walks  of  society,  its 
effect  was  most  startling.  Like  other  truths,  it  carried  to 
many  minds  its  own  evidence.  But  others  saw  in  it  the  seed 
of  all  license,  the  subversion  of  all  morality,  the  setting  up 
in  the  state  of  a  government  without  God,  and  in  the  church 
the  desertion  of  truth  to  perish,  an  unregarded  stranger  in 
the  streets.  Their  very  piety  made  them  the  more  strenuous 
in  opposition  ;  and  the  more  they  dreaded  and  abhorred  the 
heresies  to  which  they  supposed  it  would  give  universal 
currency,  the  more  did  they  labor,  and  argue,  and  pray 
against  an  unlimited  toleration.  We  may  see,  their  error, 
and  yet  respect,  and  even  revere  their  motives.  Of  this 
character  was  the  holy  man  who  gives  occasion  to  these 
remarks.  Seeing  the  Baptists  in  an  error,  as  he  deemed  it, 
and  especially  zealous  in  breaking  an  inlet  for  all  errors,  he 
did  perhaps,  in  some  of  his  works,  intemperately  excite  the 
magistrate  against  them.  But,  in  later  years,  we  rejoice  to 
believe,  that  further  acquaintance  with  some  of  their  excel- 
lent leaders  had  weakened  his  prejudices;  and,  towards  the 
close  of  his  course,  he  was  in  favor  of  a  very  restricted  tol- 
eration for  all  evangelical  sects,  in  which  he  would  now  in- 
clude even  the  Baptists.  It  was  not,  however,  until  he  en- 
tered heaven,  that  he  understood  that  great  truth — to  him 
so  hard,  to  us  so  simple — that  Christ,  the  potentate  of  the 
universe,  cannot  be  the  stipendiary  of  any  earthly  kingling  ; 
and  that  the  state,  which  assumes  to  patronize  Christianity, 
corrupts  it. 

It  were  an  interesting  task  to  remember  and  compare  some 
of  the  guiding  spirits  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  with  Bax- 
ter. He  brought  not  the  rich  erudition  of  many  of  his  coe- 
vals to  the  study  of  the  Bible.  He  could  not  boast  the 
powers  of  Chillingworth  as  a  reasoner  ;  he  did  not  emulate, 
and  perhaps  from  conscience  would  not  have  used,  the  gor- 
geous imagery  of  Jeremy  Taylor.  Owen  was  a  sounder 
theologian,  and  Howe  had  more  both  of  the  sublime  and  the 
profound  in  his  writings.  Yet  in  how  many  points  did  all 
these  men  stand  far  behind  the  pastor  of  Kidderminster ! 
In  style,  Barrow  was  not  more  nervous  than  he,  nor  was 
Tillotson  more  clear  on  any  practical  theme,    Milton  probably 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  217 

disliked  his  stern  Presbyterianism  ;  and  he  had  probably  as 
little  taste  as  the  mass  of  the  nation  in  that  age  for  the  mag- 
nificence of  Milton's  epic.  He  would  have  turned  in  prefer- 
ence to  his  own  favorite  George  Herbert,  with  quaintnesses 
innumerable,  but  withal,  a  deep,  heart-felt  piety,  that  would 
have  commended  to  Baxter  the  verses  of  a  bell-man.  With 
the  saintly  Leighton  he  seems  not  to  have  met :  their  paths 
did  not  cross,  until  both  had  terminated  in  heaven.  Of 
Bunyan  we  have  met  no  mention  in  his  writings  ,  nor  does 
the  honest  pastor  of  Bedford,  in  any  of  his  works,  refer  to 
Richard  Baxter.  Both  served  God  zealously  and  with  every 
faculty.  Both  contended  earnestly  for  a  union  among 
Christians,  more  desirable  than  practicable,  and  sought  it  by 
methods  that  were  unwise.  Both  were  confessors  for  truth 
in  the  dungeon  ;  and,  had  persecution  led  them  to  the  stake, 
neither  would  have  faltered  before  the  terrors  of  a  fiery 
martyrdom.  In  the  union  of  strong  reasoning  powers  with 
an  active  imagination,  the  tinker  of  Elstow  more  nearly  ap- 
proached Baxter  than  might  at  first  have  seemed  probable. 
And  in  Bunyan 's  sermons,  there  is  a  force  of  homely  illus- 
tration, a  mastery  of  the  vernacular  English,  and  a  terrific 
closeness  and  pungency  in  dealing  with  the  sinner's  con- 
science, as  well  as  a  high  standard  of  Christian  morality  urged 
upon  the  professed  disciple,  reminding  any  reader  of  Baxter's 
best  works.  Baxter  might  have  learned  to  advantage  from 
his  humble  contemporary  to  insist  more  than  he  did  on  the 
doctrines  of  grace,  as  the  only  ground  of  the  sinner's  hope, 
and  the  grand  motives  to  a  Christian  practice.  Both  have 
met  in  heaven,  and  rejoice  we  doubt  not,  continually  in  the 
multitudes  whom  their  labors  that  survived  them  have  already 
drawn,  and  are  each  day  attracting  thither,  to  swell  the  train 
of  the  ransomed,  and  the  glories  of  the  Redeemer. 

Contrasted  with  the  greatness  of  this  world,  how  does  the 
character  of  Baxter  rise  and  tower  in  surpassing  majesty, 
whether  we  consider  the  purity  of  his  motives,  or  the  high 
excellence  of  his  private  life,  the  nature  of  the  influence  he 
exerts,  the  labors  accomplished  by  him,  or  the  sufferings  by 
which  he  was  perfected.  Voltaire,  born  the  year  after  Bax- 
ter's death,  resembled  him  in  the  quenchless  fervor  of  his 
spirit,  his  promptitude  and  his  stirring  restlessness,  the  ver- 
satility of  his  powers,  and  their  continuous  exercise  through 
a  long  life.  But  when  the  effects  produced  on  the  human 
character,  and  on  the  happiness  of  the  individual,  and  the 

29 


218  LIFE  AND  TIMES  OF  BAXTER. 


family,  and  the  nation,  by  the  philosopher  of  Ferney,  and 
the  Kidderminster  pastor,  are  brought  into  view  together, 
how  is  the  lustre  of  infidel  genius  rebuked  !  The  gigantic 
sceptic  dwindles  and  wilts  before  the  holiness  that  inspired 
the  genius  of  Baxter,  like  Satan,  when  touched  by  the  spear 
of  Ithuriel,  cowering  in  deformity  and  shame.  To  sneer,  to 
chatter,  and  to  mock,  were  the  favorite  employments  of  the 
one,  flinging  filth  and  breathing  venom  on  every  side.  The 
other  was,  indeed,  imperfect ;  but  still  it  is  seen,  that  the 
mind  which  was  in  him  was  the  mind  that  was  in  Christ : 
and  beneficence,  and  truth,  and  purity,  piety  toward  God, 
and  justice  and  mercy  toward  mankind,  streamed  from  his 
heart,  his  lips,  and  his  eyes,  over  a  world  that  was  not  wor- 
thy of  him. 

Imagination  might  ask,  what  would  have  been  the  cho- 
sen pursuits  of  such  a  spirit  as  Baxter's,  had  his  lot  been 
cast  in  our  times,  and  his  home  been  fixed  upon  these  western 
shores.  Would  he  have  given  his  life  to  the  heathen  ?  He 
loved  them.  And  while  Owen,  his  gifted  compeer,  thought 
it  not  the  duty  of  the  church  to  undertake  missions  to  the 
heathen  without  some  new  call  from  heaven,  Baxter  judged 
more  rightly,  that  the  only  impediment  was  the  want  of 
the  requisite  love  and  faith  in  the  church.  When  silenced 
in  England,  he  declared  that  years  and  the  difficulties  of  a 
new  language  only  prevented  him  from  going  to  preach 
Christ  to  idolaters.  We  may  well  suppose,  that,  in  whatever 
field  he  had  been  fixed,  he  would  have  thrown  the  whole 
weight  of  his  energy  into  the  missionary  enterprise.  In  the 
labors  of  the  Tract  and  Bible  Society,  he  had  within  his 
parochial  limits  anticipated  the  schemes  of  our  day.  But 
with  the  widening  facilities  now  afforded  for  the  work,  how 
efficient  might  he  have  been,  and  how  effective  a  writer  of 
tracts  was  Baxter  qualified  to  become.  And  had  he  enjoyed 
the  light  of  those  truths,  now  the  common  heritage  of  the 
age,  but,  then,  hidden  from  some  of  the  ablest  and  best  of 
mankind — had  he  known  the  powers  of  an  emancipated 
church — had  he  understood  the  sanctity  of  conscience,  how 
much  of  misspent  labor  might  have  been  preserved  for  wiser 
nses.  But  here  as  elsewhere,  God,  who  would  not  have  the 
fathers  perfect  without  us,  had  reserved  for  us  some  better 
thing.  Rich  is  our  inheritance.  And  did  Richard  Baxter 
see  as  we  do,  a  country  opening  before  him,  not  a  narrow 
and  rock-bound  isle,  but  a  massy  continent,  soon  to  be  belted 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    BAXTER.  219 

by  our  republic — did  he  behold  what  our  eyes  witness,  the 
railroad  and  the  canal,  shooting  their  lines  of  electrical  com- 
munication across  the  face  of  our  broad  territory — did  he  see 
steam  yoking  itself  to  the  chariot,  and  urging  the  vessel  with 
a  speed  that  leaves  the  wildest  hopes  of  early  projectors 
lagging  far  behind — and  did  he  see  our  language,  his  own 
nervous  and  masculine  English,  spreading  itself  not  only 
through  Britain  and  America,  but  to  their  colonies  and  con- 
nections on  every  shore,  would  he  not  have  deemed  these 
redoubled  opportunities  of  influence  a  call  to  yet  redoubled 
zeal  ?  Yet  more,  had  he  seen  travel  and  history  bringing 
every  day  new  testimonies  to  swell  the  growing  mass  of 
prophesies  accomplished,  and  to  heighten  and  strengthen  the 
walls  of  Christian  evidence — did  he  hear  from  the  southern 
seas,  then  unknown,  the  cry  of  nations  turning  from  the  idols 
of  their  fathers,  would  not  even  his  zeal  have  received  a  new 
impulse,  and  the  trumpet  at  his  lips  have  blown  a  blast 
waxing  yet  louder  and  louder  ?  Whatever  was  his  duty,  is 
not  the  less  ours.  The  contemplation  of  such  an  example 
reproves  us  all.  But  the  Master's  promised  presence  and 
the  inexhaustible  graces  of  that  Spirit  which  has  been  the 
Teacher  of  the  church,  and  her  teachers  in  all  ages,  these 
may  well  stimulate  to  the  loftiest  aims,  and  revive  the  falter- 
ing hopes  of  the  faintest  heart.  Let  us  not  then,  in  beholding 
the  graces  that  have  adorned  the  former  servants  of  our 
common  Lord,  be  ready  to  deem  all  emulation  impossible. 
In  regarding  the  character  and  achievements  of  Baxter,  we 
may  not  hope  to  possess  his  singular  talents  ;  but  all  may 
imitate  his  holiness,  his  zeal,  his  resolute  patience,  his  dili- 
gence, and  his  flaming  charity.  And  if  ever  the  standard 
seem  too  elevated,  and  our  eyes  are  dazzled  as  we  look  at 
its  tall  summit,  bright  with  heaven's  own  light,  let  us  remem- 
ber, that  even  this  does  not  reach  the  full  height  of  our 
privileges  and  our  obligations.  For  it  was  no  disputable 
authority  that  spake,  and  in  no  dubious  language,  when  the 
Lawgiver  and  the  Redeemer  proclaimed  it  as  the  rule  of  his 
household,  "Be  ye  perfect,  as  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven 
is  perfect." 


CHRIST,  A  HOME  MISSIONARY. 

"And  he  said  unto  them.  Let  us  go  into  the  next  towns,  that  1 
may  preach  there  also  .*  for  therefore  came  i  forth. — mark  i.  38. 

It  is  ever  delightful  to  the  Christian,  that  he  can  trace,  in 
the  way  along  which  he  journeys,  the  footsteps  of  his  Sa- 
viour preceding  him.  The  labors,  the  sorrows  and  the  joys 
of  his  course  all  become  hallowed,  when  it  is  seen  that  the 
Master  has  first  partaken  of  them.  The  cup  of  affliction  is 
less  distasteful  to  the  believer,  because  our  Lord  has  himself 
drunk  of  its  bitterness,  and  left  on  the  brim  a  lingering  fra- 
grance. In  prayer,  he  approaches  to  God  with  greater  con- 
fidence, because  he  names  as  his  intercessor  one  who  him- 
self prayed  while  upon  earth,  with  strong  crying  and  tears, 
watched  all  night  in  supplication  on  the  lone  mountain  side,  and 
bowed  to  pray,  beneath  the  olives  of  Gethsemane,  with  the 
bloody  dews  of  anguish  on  his  brow.  And  the  preaching  of 
the  word  derives  its  highest  glory  from  the  fact,  that  He 
who  descended  into  the  world  to  become  its  ransom,  was 
himself  a  minister  of  that  Gospel  he  commissioned  others  to 
preach.  In  the  words  before  us  we  have  Christ's  own  testi- 
mony, that  the  very  purpose  of  his  coming  was  to  preach 
from  town  to  town  of  his  native  land.  Jesus  Christ  was, 
therefore,  a  Home  Missionary.  To  this  end,  blessed  Savi- 
our, "earnest  thou  forth."  To  thy  servants,  who  have  at 
this  time  for  the  like  purpose  gathered  themselves  together, 
wilt  thou  not  then  give  thy  presence  and  favor,  Head  of  thy 
Church  as  thou  art,  Master  of  all  her  assemblies,  and  the 
only  effectual  teacher  of  all  her  pastors  and  evangelists? 

Aid  me,  my  brethren,  with  your  prayers,  while  from  these 
words  I  would  commend  to  your  notice  the   resemblance 

BETWEEN   YOUR  OWN    LABORS,   AND    THE     PERSONAL    MINIS- 
TRY of  your  Lord  and  Saviour  as  performed  in  the 


CHRIST,    A   HOME    MISSIONARY.  221 

field  of  Home  Missions  ;  and  while  I  urge  the  conse- 
quent DUTY  OF  THE  CHURCH  TO  CONTINUE  AND  ABOUND 
IN  THE   LIKE   GOOD  WORK. 

I.  The  title  of  Missionary  denotes,  as  you  know,  one  sent 
forth,  and  especially  belongs  to  one  whose  errand  it  is  to 
propagate  religion.  You  need  not  to  be  reminded  how  often 
Christ  announced  to  his  hostile  countrymen  the  fact,  that  he 
was  sent  from  God,  to  declare  the  Father,  from  whose  bosom 
he  came  forth,  whom  no  man  had  seen  or  could  see.  The 
title  of  apostles,  by  which  he  saw  it  meet  to  designate  his 
twelve  chosen  disciples,  is,  as  you  are  aware,  but  the  render- 
ing into  Greek  of  the  same  idea,  which,  borrowing  the  word 
from  the  language  of  the  Romans,  we  express  by  the  term 
missionary ;  and  the  Saviour  himself  is  by  Paul  described  as 
the  great  Apostle  of  our  profession,  or  in  other  words,  the 
chiefest  Missionary  of  the  Church.  Now  the  field  cf  his 
labor  and  his  missionary  character  may  assume  different  as- 
pects, according  to  the  point  of  view  from  which  our  obser- 
vations are  made.  If  we  look  to  the  original  Godhead  of  the 
messenger,  and  to  the  glory  which  he  had  with  the  Father 
before  the  foundation  of  the  world,  his  mission  was  a  distant 
one.  To  bring  the  glad  message  to  our  earth  from  the  far 
Heavens,  he  emptied  himself  of  glory,  became  a  voluntary 
exile  from  the  society  of  the  pure  and  the  blessed,  and  taking 
on  him  the  nature  of  sinful  man,became  the  sharer  of  his  mis- 
eries, and  the  perpetual  witness  of  his  iniquities.  In  this 
sense  it  was  to  a  foreign  shore  that  he  came,  and  to  an  alien 
race  that  he  ministered ;  and  thus  considered,  his  labors  more 
nearly  resemble  those  of  the  foreign  missionary.  But  if  we 
confine  our  regard  to  the  mere  humanity  of  our  Lord,  his 
missionary  toils  assume  another  aspect.  His  personal  minis- 
try was  far  more  limited  and  national  in  its  character,  than 
was  his  message.  Although  in  his  relation  to  our  race  of 
every  kindred  and  of  all  lands,  he  is  the  second  Adam,  and 
the  nature  which  he  took  upon  him  was  that  common  to  our 
whole  kind,  he  was  yet  born  in  the  land  of  promise,  under 
the  law  given  to  Moses,  and  within  the  range  of  the  covenant 
made  with  Abraham.  By  these  bounds  his  personal  ministry 
was  for  the  most  part  limited. 

It  might  have  been  otherwise.  The  same  indwelling 
Deity,  that  enabled  him  at  an  early  age  to  confound  the  doc- 
tors of  his  nation,  beneath  the  shadow  of  their  own  proud 
temple,  might  have  been  displayed,  had  he  chosen  it,  at  a 


222  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY, 

still  earlier  year  of  his  life  ;  and  the  holy  child  might  have 
preached  the  gospel  to  that  heathenish  Egypt,  in  which  his 
infancy  sought  refuge.  The  Being,  before  whose  eye,  in  the 
wilderness  of  temptation,  were  brought  all  the  kingdoms  of 
this  world,  with  all  the  glory  of  them,  might,  had  he  so  willed 
it,  have  traversed  all  those  kingdoms  in  his  own  personal 
ministry.  Clothing  himself,  had  he  chosen  it,  with  those 
same  miraculous  gifts  which  he  reserved  for  his  kingly  ascen- 
sion, then  to  be  showered  down  on  his  Pentecostal  Church, 
he  might  have  visited  land  after  land,  declaring  to  every  tribe 
of  mankind,  in  their  own  dialect,  the  truths  he  came  to  re- 
veal. He  might  have  been  the  first  to  carry  the  gospel  to 
imperial  Rome,  and  hunting  the  hoary  profligate  and  dissem- 
bler Tiberius  to  his  guilty  retreat  at  Capreae,  he  might  have 
reasoned  before  the  crowned  ruler  of  the  world,  of  righteous- 
ness, temperance,  and  judgment  to  come,  until  he  too,  like  an 
inferior  ruler  in  after  times,  had  trembled  on  his  throne.  He 
might  have  anticipated  the  labors  of  his  servant  Paul,  by 
bearing  the  news  of  the  unknown  God,  and  the  resurrection, 
to  the  philosophers  of  Athens.  To  the  Roman  people  he 
might  have  declared  himself  as  that  great  Deliverer,  of  whom 
their  Virgil  had  already  sung ;  and  the  sages  of  Greece  might 
have  been  compelled  to  own  in  him  that  Heavenly  Teacher 
for  whom  their  Socrates  had  longed.  And  the  nations  of  the 
East  now  intently  looking  for  the  advent  of  a  king,  whose 
dominion  should  be  a  universal  one,  might  have  learned 
from  our  Lord's  own  lips,  the  spiritual  and  eternal  nature  of 
that  kingdom  they  justly  but  blindly  expected.  And  thus 
having  filled  the  whole  world  with  the  echo  of  his  fame,  as  a 
preacher  of  repentance  and  of  faith,  he  might  have  returned 
to  Jerusalem,  out  of  which  her  prophets  might  not  perish, 
there  to  consummate  the  atoning  sacrifice  of  which  he  had 
testified. 

We  say,  Jesus  Christ  might  thus  have  carried  abroad  the 
word  of  salvation  to  many  nations.  Instead,  however,  of 
doing  this,  he  confined  himself  in  his  personal  instructions  to 
the  bounds  of  Palestine,  one  visit  to  the  coast  of  Tyre  and 
Sidon  excepted,  and  even  of  this  it  is  most  probable  that  he 
taught  in  that  region  only  the  Jews  there  scattered.  In  his 
occasional  retirement  from  the  violence  of  his  enemies,  he 
neither  wandered  to  Arabia  and  its  roving  hordes  of  the  race 
of  Ishmael,  on  the  south  ;  nor  did  he  travel  into  the  country 
of  that  powerful  people,  whose  territories  skirted  Judea  on 


CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY.  223 

the  east,  the  Edomites,  who  were  the  kindred  of  Israel,  as 
being  the  posterity  of  Esau.  When  the  appeals  of  distress 
were  made  to  him  by  those  of  another  race,  he  himself  drew 
attention  to  this  restriction  as  being  laid  upon  his  own  minis- 
try, declaring  that  he  was  not  sent,  but  to  the  lost  sheep  of 
the  house  of  Israel  —  was  not  sent,  or  in  other  language,  his 
commission  as  a  missionary  preacher,  went  no  further.  To 
their  relief  he  confined  well  nigh  all  his  miracles.  With  the 
devotedness  of  a  true  patriot,  he  labored  for  the  good  of  his 
own,  although  his  own  received  him  not.  And  to  the  end  he 
persevered  in  this  course.  In  the  last  week  of  his  mortal 
career,  when  to  his  divine  prescience  the  awful  scenes  of  the 
betrayal,  the  mockery,  the  scourging,  and  the  crucifixion  were 
already  present,  as  a  vivid  reality — when,  seated  with  his  dis- 
ciples on  the  sides  of  Olivet,  he  looked,  with  them,  upon  the 
city  with  its  battlements  and  turrets,  its  long  drawn  terraces, 
and  its  gorgeous  temple,  spread  out  on  the  opposite  heights, 
•but  saw  what  their  eyes  could  not  see,  and  heard  what  their 
ears  could  not  hear  —  when,  in  the  garden  that  lay  at  his 
feet,  his  prophetic  eye  already  discerned  the  bloody  agony 
soon  to  bedew  it,  and  viewed  in  the  palaces  of  Herod  and 
Pilate  rising  before  him,  all  the  scenes  of  ignominy  and  tor- 
ture he  was  soon  there  to  encounter — when  along  the  streets, 
now  sending  up  but  the  hum  of  cheerful  industrjr,  his  pro- 
phetic ear  even  now  heard  resounding  the  yells  of  the  multi- 
tude, as  they  rushed  from  the  place  of  judgment  to  the  hill  of 
Golgotha  —  even  with  these  sights  and  sounds  around  him, 
from  the  thought  of  his  own  overwhelming  baptism  of  an- 
guish, he  could  turn  aside  to  weep  over  favored  but  guilty 
Jerusalem,  with  as  ardent  an  affection  as  had  ever  filled  the 
heart  of  a  Hebrew,  when  his  eye  caught  the  first  glance  of  its 
turrets  on  his  yearly  pilgrimage,  and  he  hailed  it  in  inspired 
song,  as  the  city  of  the  great  King,  seated  on  the  sides  of  the 
north,  beautiful  for  situation,  and  the  joy  of  the  whole  earth. 
And  after  he  had  wrought  out  the  great  work  of  redemption, 
and  gave  his  apostles,  before  his  ascension,  charge  to  bear  his 
gospel  among  all  nations,  however  remote,  and  however  bar- 
barous, he  yet  added  the  restriction,  that  their  labor  should 
begin  at  Jerusalem. 

We  are  ready  to  admit  that  all  this  was  needed  for  the 
accomplishment  of  the  prophecies  that  went  before  concern- 
ing him.  But  Christ  had,  it  should  be  remembered,  the 
ordering  of  those  very  prophecies,  for  his  was  the  Spirit  that 


224  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY. 

prompted  them.  To  refer  this  restriction  of  the  field  of 
Christ's  labors  to  prophecy,  is  then  only  to  make  his  plan  of 
Home  Missions  a  few  centuries  the  older,  and  leave  it  still 
the  work  of  his  mind.  Into  the  purposes  which  may  have 
guided  the  Saviour  in  thus  acting,  we  would  not  here  enter. 
Whatever  his  intent,  in  thus  narrowing  the  field  of  his  toils 
as  a  preacher,  the  fact  is  evident  that  to  the  land  of  Canaan, 
or  the  bounds  of  his  native  country,  his  ministerial  labors 
were  confined,  and  Jesus  Christ,  while  upon  earth,  was  a 
Home  Missionary.  Now  a  work  which  occupied  the  greatest 
of  preachers,  can  never  be  unimportant,  and  a  plan  of  benev- 
olent effort,  which  marked  the  first  ages  of  the  Church,  and 
was  commended  by  the  example  of  its  great  Head,  can  never 
become  obsolete. 

Nor  is  this,  beloved  brethren,  the  onV  point  of  contact 
between  the  ministerial  labors  of  Christ,  and  the  work  in 
which  you  are  engaged.  We  have  seen  how  far  resemblance 
to  him  may  be  claimed  by  your  society  in  the  scene  of  your 
labors.  Bear  with  me,  while  I  proceed  to  consider  the  com- 
mission under  which  he  acted,  the  message  he  bore,  the 
manner  in  which  he  published  it,  and  the  mode  in  which  his 
labors  were  sustained. 

2.  Of  the  commission  under  which  he  labored,  it  may  in- 
deed be  said,  that  it  was  peculiar  to  himself,  and  may  be 
claimed  by  none  others,  that  he  spoke  by  his  own  authority. 
It  was  the  natural  result  of  his  Deity  as  the  equal  Son  of  the 
Eternal  Father.  The  scribe  and  the  pharisee  quailed  before 
the  self-sustained  dignity  of  his  teachings.  Thus  your  Mis- 
sionaries may  not  teach.  They  may  promulgate  only  the 
things  His  word  contains,  and  in  no  other  name  than  his  are 
they  to  speak,  or  is  the  Church  to  receive  their  testimony. 
But  in  this  respect  they  may  claim  to  act  under  the  same 
commission  with  Christ,  that  they  are  embraced  within  its 
ample  provision  of  gifts  and  blessings  to  the  Church.  As 
the  Father  hath  sent  me,  said  he  to  his  disciples,  so  send  I 
you.  To  them  thus  sent  he  promised  his  own  perpetual 
presence  and  aid.  Lo  I  am  with  you  always,  even  unto  the 
end  of  the  world.  Again  in  the  mission  of  the  Saviour,  he 
inherited,  as  a  qualification  for  its  varied  tasks,  the  Spirit  with- 
out measure,  and  with  him  is  its  inexhaustible  residue.  Now 
of  this  Spirit,  in  its  due  and  needed  measure,  he  has  vouch- 
safed to  communicate  to  the  Church  and  its  teachers.  To 
communicate  it  to  his  apostles,  he  employed  forms  on  which 


CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY.  225 

the  Church  dared  never  venture,  and  which  well  betokened 
his  own  self-derived  and  incommunicable  right,  as  God,  to 
dispense  it.     The  apostles  were  wont,  by  the  imposition   of 
hands,  an  act  ever  accompanied  with   prayer,  to  confer  the 
gifts  of  the   Spirit,   acknowledging   thus  that   to*  God   they 
looked  up  for  the  blessing.     He,  on   the   contrary,  breathed 
on  the  twelve,  as  if  to  show  its  native  and  perpetual  in-dwell- 
ing within  him,  and  in  a  brief  sentence,  which,  were  he  not 
God,  would  be  condensed  and  inspissated  blasphemy,  said : 
"  Receive  ye  the  Holy  Ghost."     Although  not  thus   given, 
you  believe  that  the  same   Spirit  yet  remains  to  teach  and 
bless   the  Church.     Did  not  that  Spirit,  as  you  trust,  first 
endow  them,  your  Missionaries  would  not  have  been  accepted. 
Did  he  not  attend  them,  and  work  with  them,  they  could  not 
be  prospered.    May  it  not  then  without  irreverence  be  claimed, 
that  the  men  sustained  by  your  alms  in  the  mission   field,  go 
forth  under  the  same  commission  with  Christ ;  since  he  him- 
self construed  that  commission  as  including   the   subordinate 
laborers  of  all  times,  whom  he  should  raise  up — since  he 
has  himself  promised  his  personal   aid  and  presence  with 
these  to  the  end  of  time  —  since  the  Spirit  that  first  endowed, 
and  that  yet  prospers  them,  is  all  his  own  —  and  is  one  with 
that  Spirit  by  which  he  himself  was  anointed   for  his   great 
work,  under  the  commission  by  him  received  of  the  Father  1 
3.  As  to  the  message  which  he  bore,  its  great  burden  was 
repentance  and  faith,  as  ushered  into   the   kingdom  of  God. 
He  taught  this  truth  by  his  herald  and  forerunner  John,  and 
continually  reiterated  it  in  his  own  ministry.     He  veiled  it  in 
his  parables  —  he  mingled  it  with  his  miracles  of  mercy — 
he  spoke  it  in  the  ears  of  his  favored  apostles-—  he  published 
it  on  the  house-top  to  the  indiscriminate  multitude.     On  the 
mountain  side,  or  sitting  in  the  ship,  in  the  way  as  he  walked, 
or  leaning  in  weariness  on  the  brink  of  the  well,  in  the  home 
of   his    poorer   disciples,    or   the    banqueting    chambers    of 
some  richer  host,  still  this  was  his  theme.     And  what  other 
dare  your  missionaries   substitute  ?     Varied  as  may  be   the 
garb  into  which  it  is  thrown,  man's  corruption  and  condem- 
nation, the  need  of  repentance  and  faith,  that  faith  in   Christ 
as  a  King,  and  a  Redeemer  as  well — are  not  these   the  top- 
ics still  applicable  and  never  trite,  of  which  the  Church  shall 
not  have  exhausted  the  glories,  or  fathomed  the  mysteries, 
ages  after  the  world   shall  have  been  consumed,  and  all  its 
tribes  shall  have  been  adjudged  to  heaven  or  to  hell  for  ever? 

30 


226  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY. 

Your  laborers  then  in  the  far  West  are  yet  carrying  abroad 
the  same  gospel  which  Christ  bore  in  weariness  to  the  city 
of  Samaria,  and  scattered  along  the  shores  of  the  lake  Gen- 
nesareth,  and  published  as  he  walked  the  streets  of  Jerusa- 
lem, or  stood  and  cried  in  the  thronged  courts  of  the  temple. 
4.  But  in  the  manner,  too,  in  which  he  published  his  mes- 
sage, it  was  said  that  our  Lord  had  shown  himself  the  great 
exemplar  of  the  Home  Missionary.  In  this  single  feature, 
had  he  manifested  no  other  claim  to  a  divine  mission,  our 
Lord  proved  himself  endowed  with  superhuman  wisdom. 
We  refer  to  the  means  he  selected  for  propagating  his  reli- 
gion amongst  mankind.  There  had  lived  in  the  Gentile 
world  men  of  high  intellectual  endowments,  who  had  dis- 
cerned the  ignorance  and  corruption  of  their  age,  and  aspired 
to  become  its  reformers.  But  although  some  were  deified 
for  their  fancied  success,  futile  had  been  their  endeavors  ; 
and  most  cumbrous  yet  most  imbecile  the  instrumentalities, 
upon  which  they  had  chosen  to  rely.  Some  had  been  legis- 
lators, bequeathing  to  their  fellow-citizens  new  forms  of  gov- 
ernment ;  others,  warriors  appealing  to  brute  force,  and  im- 
posing by  the  strong  hand  of  power  their  improvements  upon 
the  feebler  race  whom  they  had  subdued  ;  others  resorted  to 
what  they  deemed  allowable  and  pious  frauds,  forging  proph 
ecies,  inventing  mysteries,  and  bribing  oracles  ;  others  phi 
losophized,  and  yet  others  employed  the  elegant  arts  to  soften 
and  to  better  the  human  character.  But  none  of  them  knew 
aright  the  might  of  the  Leviathan  they  affected  to  curb  and 
tame.  Man,  though  disguised  by  civilization,  and  adorned 
by  science  and  art,  was  still  the  same  selfish  and  godless 
savage  at  heart,  that  he  had  ever  been.  Mutually  wronged 
and  wronging,  the  race  was  yet,  as  Paul  too  truly  described 
them,  hateful  and  hating  one  another.  Of  the  depth  of  cor- 
ruption into  which  alike  the  Jew  who  boasted  of  a  law  he 
would  not  keep,  and  the  Gentile,  whom  he  scorned,  were 
sunk  at  the  time  of  Christ's  coming,  Paul  has  told  us  in  lan- 
guage of  fearful  significancy.  How  dreadfully  the  history  of 
the  world  filled  up  the  gloomy  outlines  that  master-hand  had 
drawn  in  the  opening  of  his  epistle  to  the  Romans,  I  need 
not  say  to  you.  And  yet  all  this  went  on,  in  spite  of  efforts 
the  most  earnest,  the  most  varied,  and  the  most  costly,  to 
check,  or  at  least  to  conceal  the  evil.  But  it  was  only  to 
varnish  putridity,  and  to  gild  over  decay,  that  these  earthly 
reformers  came.     Of  ever  profiting  the  vast  mass  of  the 


CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY,  227 

people,  the  most  intelligent  of  these  sages  despaired.  They  had 
no  hope  except  for  the  wise  and  the  lettered  portion  of  soci- 
ety. To  these  they  spoke  in  veiled  and  guarded  language. 
For  these,  their  select  hearers  able  to  bear  it,  they  had  an 
internal  or  esoteric  doctrine.  To  the  multitude  they  held 
out  doctrines  often  utterly  the  opposite  of  these  their  private 
teachings  ;  and  the  poor  and  the  ignorant  they  looked  upon 
as  an  inferior  kind,  like  the  "brute  beasts  made  to  be  taken 
and  destroyed;"  to  be  entrapped  by  error,  and  given  over  to 
unpitied  ruin.  As  the  larger  portion  of  mankind  will  ever 
be  found  in  the  classes  of  neglected  and  restricted  education, 
to  despair  of  the  poor  and  of  the  many,  was  virtually  to  de- 
spair of  the  well-being  of  the  race.* 

Another  obstacle,  which  these  reformers  felt  themselves 
incompetent  to  assail,  was  found  in  the  false  but  received 
religions.  To  change  the  religion  of  a  whole  nation,  when 
once  established,  was  deemed  an  impossibility.  Plato,  among 
the  wisest  of  Grecian  schemers,  makes  it  an  axiom  in  his 
celebrated  treatise  of  a  republic,  "  that  nothing  ought  to  be 
changed  by  the  legislator  in  the  religion  which  he  finds  al- 
ready established  ;  and  that  a  man  must  have  lost  his  under- 
standing to  think  of  such  a  project."  \  Yet  not  to  change 
the  religion  of  one  nation  only,  but  of  all  nations,  is  Jesus 
Christ  come.  Look  at  the  varied  forms  of  error  that  met 
him,  all  obstinate  by  the  force  of  ancient  and  inherited  pre- 
judices,  and  by  the  violence  of  the  passions  they  indulged 
and  sanctified,  and  made  venerable  in  the  eyes  of  the  people 
by  the  lapse  of  time.  In  his  own  nation  he  encountered 
truth  tenaciously  held,  but  held  perversely  and  partially,  and 
in  all  unrighteousness.     In  the  lettered  classes  of  the  Roman 


*  A  similar  feeling  with  regard  to  the  multitude,  the  reader  may  remember, 
has  marked  many  of  the  reformers  of  modern  times,  who  have  claimed  to  re- 
lease the  world  from  the  dominion  of  Christianity.  The  private  correspond- 
ence of  the  patriarch  of  French  infidelity — whom  his  disciples  were  accus- 
tomed to  hail,  in  language  borrowed  from  that  Bible  at  which  they  scoffed, 
as  their  "  Father  of  the  Faithful" — contains  the  following  passage.  It  is  in 
a  letter  to  his  fellow-laborer  D'Alembert,  and  when  congratulating  his  friend 
on  the  progress  of  their  principles  :  "  Let  us  bless  this  happy  revolution,  that 
has  within  the  last  fifteen  or  twenty  years  taken  place  in  the  minds  of  all 
respectable  people  (tous  les  honnetes  gens).  It  has  outrun  my  hopes.  As  to 
the  rabble,  I  meddle  not  with  them ;  tJie  rabble  they  will  always  remain.  I  am 
at  pains  to  cultivate  my  garden,  but  yet  it  will  have  its  toads  ;  they  should  not 
however  prevent  my  nightingales  from  singing"  Lettres  de  M.  de  Voltaire 
et  de  M.  d'Alembert,  211. 

t  Warburton's  Divine  Legation,  Book  iii.  §  6. 


228  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY. 

empire,  he  saw  a  band  of  learned  and  acute  triflers,  addicted 
to  a  heartless  and  endless  scepticism,  or  of  debauched  error- 
ists,  in  whose  mind  atheism  and  profligacy,  in  drunken  alli- 
ance, leaned  each  upon  the  other.  The  mass  of  the  nation 
were  the  corrupt  votaries  of  paganism,  in  its  most  corrupt 
forms  ;  sensual  and  sanguinary,  they  had  become  enervated 
by  luxury,  and  yet  were  ravening  for  blood.  Equally  fierce 
and  cruel,  if  not  alike  sensual,  were  the  superstitions  of  the 
savage  hordes  whom  they  held  in  check,  or  retained  in  their 
pay  on  the  borders  of  the  empire.  In  the  East  were  the 
worshippers  of  fire.  Arabia,  and  Persia,  and  India,  and 
Scythia,  and  Egypt,  all  had  their  national  idols.  The  in- 
quiry had  been  made  by  Jeremiah  six  centuries  before,  "  Pass 
over  the  isles  of  Chittim  and  see  ;  and  send  unto  Kedar  and 
consider  diligently  and  see  if  there  be  such  a  thing.  Hath 
a  nation  changed  their  gods,  which  yet  are  no  gods  ?"  And 
the  inquiry,  made  as  if  to  challenge  an  instance  of  its  occur- 
rence, had  remained  unanswered.  Yet  the  reputed  son  of  a 
carpenter,  a  man  of  Nazareth,  the  most  despised  city  of  the 
Jews,  the  most  despised  of  nations,  rises  up  to  make  the 
attempt.  And  what  are  his  resources  ?  Is  he  patronized  by 
kings  ?  Is  he  levying  armies,  and  equipping  fleets,  or  is  he 
compiling  new  codes  of  law,  or  dispatching  ambassadors  and 
forming  treaties  ?  None  of  all  these  things.  But  perhaps 
he  has  won  to  his  party  the  sophists  of  Greece,  and  the  schol- 
ars of  Athens,  the  learned,  and  acute,  and  eloquent  disciples 
of  Epicurus,  and  Zeno,  and  Plato,  are  retained  in  his  inter- 
ests, and  are  disseminating  his  peculiar  sentiments?  —  Not 
so.  The  wisdom  of  this  world  he  has  counted  foolishness, 
and  his  doctrine  teaches  that  the  most  labored  result  of 
human  intelligence  has  been  confirmed  ignorance,  as  to  the 
first  and  most  obvious  of  all  truths  —  that  the  wise  have  failed 
to  spell  out  the  handwriting  and  superscription  of  a  Creator, 
though  found  upon  all  his  works  —  and  the  world  by  wisdom 
knew  not  God.  But  he  has  converted,  perhaps,  the  Sanhe- 
drim, and  the  Rabbies  of  Israel ;  the  lights  of  the  law  and 
the  oracles  of  the  people  are  with  him?  No,  he  has  de- 
nounced them  with  fearless  severity,  and  they  are  plotting  his 
death.  But  Herod  is  in  his  favor,  and  Pilate  is  his  friend? 
No,  Herod  is  seeking  to  see  him,  in  vain,  dreading  in  him 
the  resurrection  of  the  Baptist  he  had  slain  ;  and  Pilate  is 
neither  concerned  nor  able  to  give  him  protection  from  the 
fury  of   his    own    nation.      But  the  Reformer  moves    on, 


CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY.  229 

nothing  daunted.  Unlike  all  others  who  despised  the  people,  or 
despaired  of  them,  he  addresses  himself  to  the  poor  and  the 
ignorant.  It  is  the  mass  of  the  nation  he  hopes  first  to  reach. 
But  what  are  his  arts  of  persuasion  with  the  people  ?  Does 
he  hold  out  the  lure  of  wealth,  or  earthly  honors,  or  pleasure  ? 
Is  he  slipping  the  leash  of  law  and  order  from  the  passions 
of  the  multitude,  and  cheering  them  on  to  the  prey  that  is 
before  them  in  the  possessions  of  the  wealthy  ?  He  honestly 
assures  his  auditory  that  they  must  expect  to  lose  all  in  fol- 
lowing him,  that  his  poorest  followers  must  become  yet 
poorer,  and  that  his  disciples  are  doomed  men,  bearing  their 
own  crosses  on  their  way  to  death.  He  writes  no  books. 
He  forms  no  plots.  He  meddles  not  with  political  strife  ; 
nor  interferes  with  religious  sects,  but  to  denounce  them  all, 
end  to  turn  their  combined  enmity  on  his  single  and  unshel- 
tered head.  And  the  weapon  by  which  he  is  to  foil  all  his 
enemies,  and  to  subdue  the  world  to  the  obedience  of  the 
faith,  is  —  hear  it,  O  heavens,  and  be  astonished,  O  earth!  — 
the  foolishness  of  preaching  —  the  plain  tale  of  man  to  his 
fellow-men  concerning  God  and  his  Christ.  By  the  preach- 
ing of  the  word,  and  especially  to  the  poor,  Christ  is  come 
to  change  the  face  of  society.  Jesus  Christ  was,  indeed,  the 
discoverer  of  these  two  great  truths,  that  all  reformations 
must  begin  with  the  lower  classes,  and  that  preaching  is  the 
grand  instrument  of  changing  the  opinions  of  a  nation.  The 
latter  had  indeed  been  used  in  the  older  dispensation,  but  its 
applicability  to  such  a  scheme  as  that  of  the  world's  conver- 
sion, had  never  been  suspected.  Yet  how  well  established 
are  both  now  become.  The  man,  who  in  endeavoring  to 
heat  a  mass  of  water,  should  build  his  fire  above  the  fluid, 
would  in  physics  be  but  as  absurdly  employed,  as  the  man 
who  in  morals  looks  to  the  highest  points  of  a  corrupt  society 
as  the  first  to  be  reformed.  As  in  the  heated  liquid,  the  lower 
stratum  when  warmed  passes  upward,  and  gives  place  to 
another  still  cold,  which  is  in  its  turn  penetrated  with  heat, 
and  then  displaced  by  the  descending  of  yet  another ;  so  in 
the  moral  world,  the  only  efficient  reforms  are  the  reforms 
that  begin  at  the  lower  portion  of  society,  and  work  upward. 
It  was  so  in  the  first  preaching  of  the  gospel.  It  was  so  in 
the  English  Reformation.  It  was  so  in  the  religious  influence 
that  followed  the  labors  of  Wesley  and  Whitefield.  And 
Jesus  Christ  first  discovered  and  first  applied  this  great  but 
simple  principle,   that  to  the  poor    the    gospel   should   be 


230  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY. 

preached.  Again  let  us  consider  the  character  of  the  instru- 
mentality he  selected.  It  was  the  cheapest  of  all  implements. 
And  where  the  many  were  to  be  reached  by  many  laborers, 
and  the  poor  by  the  poor,  its  cheapness  was  a  matter  of  no 
little  moment.  A  book  would  be  worn  out,  ere  it  had  taught 
a  thousand  readers,  or  travelled  a  hundred  miles.  The  liv- 
ing teacher  might  go  on  from  land  to  land,  and  instruct  myr- 
iads after  myriads.  If  the  book  were  unskilfully  composed, 
its  errors  must  remain  unchanged.  If  addressed  to  one  class 
originally,  one  class  only  it  continued  to  the  end  to  interest. 
The  living  evangelist  varied  his  message  and  form  of  address, 
as  varying  circumstances  required,  and  appealed  in  different 
modes  to  the  differing  habits  of  the  regions  and  classes  through 
which  he  passed.  The  book  might  meet  many  who  knew 
not  how  to  read,  but  all  might  hear  the  living  voice.  The 
book  could  not  solicit  the  careless  to  hear,  or  pursue  the 
wanderer  who  fled  from  reproof.  The  living  teacher  sought 
his  auditory  in  the  retreats  whither  they  betook  themselves. 
The  book  was  a  cold  and  unimpassioned  abstraction.  The 
preacher  was  a  living,  breathing  thing,  appealing  to  all  the 
sympathies  of  man's  nature.  His  countenance,  his  gestures, 
his  tones,  all  sought  and  won  him  the  attention  of  men. 
And  it  was  left  for  Jesus- Christ  to  discover  that  this  was  the 
great  instrumentality  for  correcting  the  popular  faith  of  a 
nation,  as  being  the  cheapest,  and  as  having  the  widest  range 
of  influence,  the  utmost  variety  in  its  applicability,  and  the 
greatest  power  and  life  in  its  appeals.  We  speak  consider- 
ately when  we  say,  that  the  institution  of  preaching  as  the 
great  means  of  national  illumination  and  conversion,  is  not 
one  of  the  least  among  the  evidences  of  the  Saviour's  super- 
human wisdom,  and  consequently  another  argument  for  his 
divine  mission. 

Now  while  the  stationary  pastor,  in  the  more  abundantly 
supplied  districts  of  a  Christian  land,  may  claim  to  labor  in 
this  our  Lord's  appointed  mode,  the  preaching  of  the  word, 
may  you  not  assume,  that  to  the  Home  Missionary  belongs 
eminently  the  honor  of  preaching  to  the  poor,  and  of  caring 
for  the  neglected  and  destitute,  the  class  to  whom  Christ 
himself  chiefly  addressed  his  gospel,  and  in  its  being  addressed 
to  whom,  he  bade  the  anxious  Baptist  and  his  disciples  re- 
cognize one  of  the  many  proofs  of  his  Messiahship  ?  The 
laborer  in  the  field  of  Home  Missions  is  applying  therefore 
the  favorite  instrumentality  of  his  Lord  in  his  Lord's  favorite. 


CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY.  231 

mode.  And  upon  this  instrumentality,  it  is  your  instruction 
to  them  that  they  chiefly  rely.  And  while  they  may  scatter 
the  tract,  and  gather  the  Sabbath  school,  and  use  every  other 
means  that  may  aid  man  in  the  knowledge  of  his  God,  their 
main  business,  and  your  great  charge  to  them  given,  is  that 
**  as  ye  go,  preach." 

5.  We  have  seen  that  in  the  manner  of  publishing  his 
message,  our  Lord  was  not  unlike  the  laborers  whom  you 
employ.  Let  us  lastly  observe  the  comparison  you  may  in- 
stitute with  the  ministry  of  our  Lord,  in  the  similar  means 
adopted  for  the  support  of  the  laborer.  Christ  did  not,  then, 
like  the  established  priesthood  of  Israel,  find  himself  sustained 
by  the  tithes  of  the  land.  No  State  furnished  from  her  rev- 
enues the  endowments  of  his  mission,  or  taxed  her  subjects 
to  secure  through  his  means  their  spiritual  good.  The  free 
contributions  of  those  whom  he  instructed,  enlightened  and 
saved,  were  the  only  revenues  to  wThich  he  looked.  And 
these,  you  will  observe,  were  given  not  to  sustain  him  in  his 
labors  for  the  donors,  so  much  as  to  aid  him  in  journeying 
omvard  to  benefit  others.  The  frugal  meal  and  the  shelter- 
ing roof  were  the  reward  that  poverty  gave  for  words  such 
as  never  man  spake.  Salvation  came  to  the  house  he  visited, 
and  when  he  parted,  his  blessing  was  left  with  its  inmates. 
But  in  addition,  he  seems  to  have  received,  from  time  to  time, 
of  the  free-will  offerings,  which,  from  their  abundance  or  their 
penury,  his  disciples  contributed,  to  meet  the  wants  of  the 
morrow,  when  he  should  have  reached  a  distant  hamlet,  and 
be  discoursing  to  a  new  auditory.  These  contributions  one 
of  the  apostles  bore,  and  dispensed  to  meet  the  necessities  of 
that  wayfaring  company.  Pious  women  followed  him  min- 
istering of  their  substance. 

Now  it  is  to  such  resources  that  your  enterprise  looks. 
You  have  not  been  subsidized  from  the  national  treasury. 
Nor  have  your  missionaries  been  empowered,  or  been  willing, 
to  sit  them  down  at  the  receipt  of  custom,  collecting  from  the 
traffic  of  the  land  a  stinted  tithe,  in  acknowledgment  of  the 
temporal  blessings  with  which  the  gospel  has  enriched  every 
walk  of  society.  To  the  free  gratuities  of  Christians,  them- 
selves benefited  by  the  gospel,  and  anxious  to  spread  before 
others  the  word  that  God  has  made  the  power  of  salvation 
to  their  own  souls  —  to  their  spontaneous  alms,  gathered 
unequally  and  rather  according  to  the  willingness  of  the  heart, 
than  the  fullness  of  the  hands,  you  have  been   compelled  to 


232  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY. 

look  as  your  only  treasures.  And  though  the  store  has  o  en 
seemed  well  nigh  spent,  ever  wasting,  it  has  been  ever  re- 
newing itself,  like  the  widow's  cruse,  still  as  it  was  emptied, 
still  by  the  goodness  of  Providence  mysteriously  replenished. 
And  the  relief  thus  given  has  resembled  that  which  sustained 
our  Lord's  own  personal  ministry,  in  the  fact,  that  it  was  not 
the  giver's  own  benefit  that  was  immediately  sought.  The 
Christian  supports  at  home  his  pastor  to  preach  to  himself 
and  to  his  children,  but  he  supports  the  Home  Missionary  to 
preach  to  his  destitute  neighbors.  It  was  in  this  way  that 
the  disciples  of  our  Saviour  sustained  their  master,  not  ex- 
pecting it  as  the  condition  of  their  gratuities,  that  he  should 
continue  day  after  day  to  bless  with  his  lengthened  stay  their 
own  hamlets  and  households,  but  that  he  might  journey  on- 
ward from  village  to  village,  and  city  to  city  of  their  native 
land. 

The  Redeemer,  then,  in  his  own  personal  efforts  as  an 
evangelist,  gave  himself  to  the  very  work  in  which  your 
Society  is  toiling,  the  supply  of  the  religious  destitutions  of 
your  own  land.  And  ere  we  pass,  let  it  be  remembered,  that 
upon  principles  unlike  the  timorous  and  stealthy  policy, 
which  his  church  in  the  days  of  persecution  adopted,  of 
choosing  rather  as  the  scene  of  her  labors,  the  retired  valley, 
and  the  remote  and  safe  wilderness,  Christ,  as  we  see  in  the 
words  of  our  text,*  and  in  the  whole  record  of  the  gospels, 
sought  to  plant  his  word,  though  in  the  face  of  fiercer  oppo- 
sition and  surer  and  greater  risk,  in  the  towns  and  cities  of 
the  land.  He  bade  his  disciples,  in  times  of  persecution  in 
one  city,  to  flee  indeed,  but  it  was  only  to  another  city  ;  and 
their  ministry  he  at  the  same  time  describes,  as  a  going  over 
the  cities  of  Israel.  He  chose  these  as  the  scenes  of  labor, 
for  his  work  was  with  men,  and  men  were  there  to  be  found 
in  the  greatest  number.  He  did  so,  because  his  hours  were 
few,  and  there  the  greatest  effects  might  be  wrought  in  the 
shortest  time.  He  did  so,  because  his  gospel  was  the  remedy 
of  human  depravity  and  misery,  and  in  the  crowded  dwellings 
of  man,  his  depravity  assumes  its  most  aggravated  forms,  and 


*  See  also  Luke  iv.  43.  How  rigidly  the  early  preachers  adhered  to  our 
Lord's  plan  in  the  dissemination  of  the  gospel,  appears  from  the  fact,  that  the 
inhabitants  of  the  cities  in  the  Roman  empire  had  become  nominally  Chris- 
tian, while  the  rural  population  remained  yet  plunged  in  idolatry,  and  the 
word  Pagan,  or  villager  Qmganus)  became  synonymous  with  heathen. 


CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY.  233 

his  sufferings  are  most  intense  and  distressing.  He  did  so, 
because  these  are  the  points  of  radiation,  around  which  the 
character  of  the  whole  nation  crystalizes  and  becomes  fixed, 
and  in  ancient  as  in  modern  times,  the  impress  of  the  metrop- 
olis is  to  some  extent  seen  upon  the  most  distant  and  rude 
of  the  rural  population.  Ever  then  may  it  be  the  prayer  and 
the  policy  of  this  Society,  acting  upon  the  like  principles,  to 
plant  its  missionaries  in  the  towns  and  cities  of  our  land,  till 
they  be  fully  supplied  with  the  preaching  of  the  gospel. 

Yet  let  it  not  be  supposed,  that  we  would  exalt  the  impor- 
tance of  Home  Missions  at  the  expense  of  the  foreign  field. 
We  believe  the  latter,  if  a  division  and  a  choice  were  admis- 
sible, (which  they  are  not,)  we  should  believe  the  latter,  the 
more  needful  work  of  the  church.  It  was  indeed  one  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  superiority  of  the  new  over  the  older 
dispensations,  that  it  looked  beyond  all  the  former  boundaries 
of  national  prejudice  and  selfishness,  and  taught  men  that  the 
field  of  benevolence  is  the  world.  Our  Saviour  himself, 
during  his  own  more  restricted  ministry,  alluded  to  these 
designs  of  mercy  for  the  Gentile.  In  his  discourses  at  Naz- 
areth he  called  his  hearers  to  observe,  that  the  Gentile  widow 
of  Zarephath  had  been  honored  by  entertaining  a  prophet  of 
God,  when  the  many  widows  of  Israel  were  passed  by,  and 
that  the  leprous  nobleman  of  heathenish  Syria  had  been 
miraculously  healed,  while  the  many  lepers  of  Israel  were 
left  unrelieved.  This  was  a  theme  the  Jews  could  least  of 
all  things  endure.  They  thrust  the  Saviour  from  their  city, 
and  would  have  killed  him,  just  as  in  succeeding  years,  their 
countrymen  at  Jerusalem  heard  Paul  patiently,  until  he 
mentioned  a  divine  mission  to  the  Gentiles,  when  they  ex- 
claimed, Away  with  him,  he  is  not  fit  to  live.  Christ  from 
the  beginning  contemplated  foreign  missions  as  the  field  of 
his  church  ;  but  his  own  was  a  Home  Mission.  And  while 
the  church,  from  his  teachings,  and  the  example  of  his  apos- 
tles, learns  to  regard  Foreign  Missions  as  her  chief  care,  she 
cannot  sever  it  from  the  work  of  Home  Missions.  They  are 
indissolubly  united,  and  each  needs  the  other — the  farther 
and  the  nearer  sides  of  the  same  great  net ;  the  fishers  of 
men  are  needed  alike,  to  bear  the  one  into  the  bosom  of  the 
deep,  and  to  guard  the  other  along  the  edge  of  the  shore. 
The  true  interests  of  each  are  necessarily  advanced  by  the 
growth  of  the  other. 

II.  We  have  seen  our  Lord  himself  devoting  the  years  of 
31 


234  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY.  # 

his  personal  ministry  to  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  through- 
out his  own  country.  With  such  a  sanction  of  your  endeav- 
ors, what  motives  are  needed  to  impel  you  ?  His  example 
to  guide,  His  presence  to  uphold,  and  His  Spirit  to  prosper 
you  —  if  the  Lord  be  thus  for  you  in  the  splendor  of  his  ex- 
ample, for  you  in  his  promises,  and  for  you  in  his  wonder- 
working Spirit,  who  can  be  against  you?  Whether  we  look 
to  the  advantages  which  our  nation  presents  for  such  labor, 
or  to  its  peculiar  necessities,  to  our  duty  as  Christians,  or 
our  interests  as  men  loving  their  country,  to  the  general  ob- 
ligations of  the  church,  or  our  own  personal  and  special 
privileges  and  responsibilities, — on  every  hand  are  teeming 
incitements  to  energy  and  liberality,  to  perseverance  and 
courageous  devotedness. 

1.  Do  we  speak  of  the  advantages,  which  our  wide-spread 
land  presents  for  labor  of  this  kind  ?  We  cannot  forget,  that 
here  are  none  of  the  impediments  of  an  adverse  government, 
and  an  alien  nation  suspicious  of  your  missionaries  as  foreign 
emissaries  —  impediments  with  which  the  laborer  abroad 
must  ever  contend.  From  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  and  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and 
yet  onward  to  the  coasts  of  the  Pacific,  a  broad  and  goodly 
land  is  open  or  opening  before  you,  —  not  the  land  of  stran- 
gers, but  your  own  native  soil,  blest  with  free  institutions, 
and  a  government  springing  from  and  accountable  to  the 
people.  Its  free  institutions  invite  the  free  and  glad  labors 
of  the  Missionary.  The  national  appetite  for  knowledge, 
and  the  many  endowments  and  appliances  for  the  diffusion 
of  knowledge,  promise  you  aid,  in  bringing  before  the  na- 
tional intellect  the  only  knowledge  that  is  of  unmingled  truth 
and  immutable  value.  The  land  is  inhabited  by  a  people, 
not  divided  and  isolated,  as  are  the  possessors  of  equal  spaces 
of  territory  in  the  old  world,  by  the  varieties  of  dialect  and 
languages,  which  make  man  seem  as  a  barbarian  to  his  neigh- 
bor, separated  from  him  but  by  a  river,  or  a  range  of  moun- 
tains. The  language  of  your  forefathers,  the  language  in 
which  your  household  bibles  are  written,  is  that  which  its 
cities,  and  its  hamlet,  and  its  farm-houses  alike  acknowledge  — 
which  its  colonists  are  carrying  into  the  depths  of  the  forest, 
and  the  seeds  of  which  its  adventurous  mariners  are  scatter- 
ing along  every  shore  smitten  by  their  keels.  To  make  yet 
more  plain  your  duties,  and  to  render  the  wise  and  beneficent 
purposes  of  his  Providence  yet  more   easy  of  translation  to 


CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY.  235 

the  reason  and  the  conscience  of  this  people,  God  has  made  their 
country  the  point  of  attraction  to  the  oppressed  or  the  needy 
of  other  lands,  and  the  eyes  of  many  and  distant  nations  are 
fixed  upon  you.  Our  Heavenly  Father  has  made  us  a  na- 
tional epistle  to  other  lands.  See  that  you  read  a  full  and 
impressive  comment  to  all  lands,  of  the  power  of  Christian 
principle,  and  of  the  expansive  and  self-sustaining  energies  of 
the  gospel,  when  left  unfettered  by  national  endowments,  and 
secular  alliances.  The  evangelical  character  of  our  land  is  to 
tell  upon  the  plans  and  destinies  of  other  nations.  See  to  it, 
that  the  men,  who  quote  your  democracy  and  your  enter- 
prise, your  energy  and  your  increase,  be  compelled  by  glar- 
ing evidence,  which  they  may  not  dispute,  and  cannot  conceal, 
to  add,  that  for  your  freedom  and  all  its  better  fruits,  you  are 
indebted  to  the  religion  of  the  Saviour  borne  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  your  land.  And  last  among  the  advan- 
tages with  which  God  has  endowed  you,  and  bound  you,  as 
it  were,  to  this  work,  let  me  name  the  amount  of  uneducated 
or  perverted  mind,  which  He  is  daily  quarrying  from  the 
mines  of  European  superstition,  and  from  the  place  where 
Satan's  seat  is,  and  casting  down  upon  our  shores  to  be  in- 
serted into  the  rising  walls  of  your  republic.  At  home  it 
was  comparatively  beyond  your  reach.  The  jealousy  of 
priestly  and  of  kingly  rule  guarded  it  from  your  approach. 
God  has  brought  it  disencumbered  to  your  shores.  Will  you 
meet  it  with  the  gospel? — will  you  follow  it  to  its  western 
homes  with  the  Missionary  ?  Your  prayers  have  ascended 
to  God  in  behalf  of  those  perishing  in  the  darkness  of  false 
religion  in  other  lands.  Your  prayers  have  been  answered, 
as  God  is  wont  to  answer  even  his  own  people,  in  the  mode 
and  the  hour  they  were  perhaps  least  prepared  to  expect  the 
boon ;  and  while  your  souls  thought  only  of  the  subjects  of 
your  petitions,  as  dwellers  on  a  foreign  shore,  He  has  in  his 
wondrous  working  made  them  already  the  denizens  of  your 
own  land,  and  the  crowds,  to  whom  you  had  hoped  to  send 
the  Foreign  Missionary,  have  already  besieged  your  doors 
to  ask  the  easier,  and  the  cheaper,  care  of  your  Home  Mis- 
sions. Their  souls  are  evidently  as  valuable  here,  as  they 
would  have  been  if  sought  out  by  your  messengers  on  their 
native  soil,  and  there  won  to  the  faith  of  Christ.  You  know 
not,  but  that,  although  transplanted  to  this  soil,  they  may 
still  retain  a  hold  so  strong  on  the  affections,  and  an  influence 
so  controlling  on  the  character  and  destinies  of  the  kindred 


236  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY. 

and  countrymen  they  have  left  behind,  that  converted  here 
by  the  labors  of  your  Home  Missions,  they  may  become  the 
allies,  or  the  channels,  or  themselves  the  chosen  instruments 
of  your  Foreign  Missions  to  the  lands  whence  they  came. 
It  was  thus  in  the  declining  ages  of  the  Roman  empire,  that 
the  hordes  of  Paganism,  disgorged  from  their  own  native 
seats  upon  the  imperial  territories,  became  themselves  chris- 
tianized by  the  nation  they  had  invaded,  and  evangelized  the 
paternal  tribes  they  had  quitted.  Let  us,  then,  regard  the 
emigrants  around  us,  not  as  invaders,  but  as  the  exiles  of  a 
country,  of  which  they  or  their  children  may  yet  become  the 
evangelists.  Let  us  count  wisely  and  gratefully  the  number 
of  the  deathless  spirits,  who  have  thus  been  ushered,  under 
the  most  favorable  circumstances,  into  our  borders.  Many 
of  them  have  been  the  nurslings  of  a  corrupt  or  careless 
hierarchy  ;  and  torn  from  the  breasts  of  European  error,  they 
are  now  committed  by  the  hand  of  Providence  to  the  foster- 
ing care  of  your  Sabbath  Schools,  and  Bible  classes,  and  the 
pioneer  churches  planted  and  watered  by  the  care  of  your 
Missionaries. 

2.  As  to  the  advantages,  so  to  the  necessities  of  our  case 
we  need  ever  to  look.  We  may  not  forget,  or  hold  negligently 
the  civil  privileges,  the  envied  but  the  fragile  inheritance 
which  our  fathers  have  bequeathed  us.  The  strangers  day 
by  day  wafted  to  your  shores  become  your  fellow  sovereigns. 
They  choose  with  you  the  law-makers.  They  interpret  and 
modify,  sustain  or  subvert  your  Constitution.  If  not  con- 
verted, under  God,  by  you  to  the  faith,  they  will  with  the 
characteristic  energy  of  evil,  sacrifice  your  dearest  earthly 
interests  to  their  passions,  their  superstitions  and  their  crimes. 
Your  written  constitutions,  your  declarations  of  right  and  of 
national  independence,  your  books  of  statute  law  and  of  pre- 
cedent, contain  in  themselves  no  inherent  principle  of  vitality. 
They  operate  and  have  life,  but  in  proportion  as  that  life  is 
infused  into  them  by  the  feelings  and  conscience  of  the  nation. 
The  reign  of  violence  has  passed  ;  men  talk  now  of  the  reign 
of  written  constitutions.  But  parchment  and  paper  cannot 
give  freedom,  or  uphold  it  when  given.  Ours  is  a  govern- 
ment of  public  opinion,  and  each  day  the  channels,  by  which 
that  public  opinion  may  act  upon  the  laws,  tribunals  and 
treaties  of  the  nation,  seem  shortening  and  widening,  turning 
each  day  a  fuller  and  more  direct  and  more  rapid  stream  upon 
the  ostensible  rulers,  and  the  written  laws  of  the  nation.     la 


CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY.  237 

the  formation  of  this  sovereign  principle  of  opinion,  your  new- 
found fellow-citizens  wish  to  share,  and  cannot  but  share, 
even  did  they  not  wish  it.  If  not  educated  and  sanctified, 
they  will  only  lower  and  dilute  the  tone  of  public  morals, 
already,  alas,  too  evidently  declining  ;  and  a  vitiated  public 
opinion  will  send  its  reeking  corruption  into  your  senate- 
chambers,  your  halls  of  justice,  your  schools,  your  ware- 
houses, and  your  homes,  until  licentiousness,  and  profaneness, 
and  violence,  like  the  curse  of  Egypt,  be  found  a  croaking 
and  slimy  plague  infesting  the  whole  land.  Nor  may  we 
hide  from  ourselves  the  fact,  that  unfriendly  influences  of  the 
most  seductive  character  are  busy  —  that  the  work  of  natural 
corruption  is  not  left  to  its  own  natural  course,  but  supersti- 
tions, which  have  in  other  lands  and  ages  held  the  widest 
sway,  are  assiduously  engaged  in  the  work  of  education  and 
proselytism  amongst  us  ; 

"  And  bold  with  joy, 
Forth  from  his  dark  and  lonely  hiding-place, 
(Portentous  sight,)  the  owlet  Atheism, 
Sailing  on  obscene  wings  athwart  the  noon, 
Drops  his  blue-fringed  lids,  and  holds  them  close, 
And  hooting  at  the  glorious  sun  in  heaven, 
Cries  out,  'r Where  is  it?"* 

And  yet  amid  these  dangers,  that  self-gratulation  "  which 
goeth  before  a  fall  "  as  surely  in  a  nation  as  in  the  individual, 
is  so  evident,  as  to  be  imputed  to  us  as  a  national  foible. 
Privileges,  singular  and  great,  we  indeed  have  ;  but  the  only 
light  in  which  it  is  safe  to  view  them,  is  that  of  the  corre- 
sponding obligations  they  impose.  Signal  mercies,  if  misused, 
must  provoke  judgments  as  signal ;  and  American  Christians, 
if  unfaithful  to  their  high  trust,  will  be  made  examples  of 
God's  sore  indignation.  And  among  the  difficulties  of  our 
situation,  felt  not  indeed  except  by  the  church,  let  us  remem- 
ber the  demands  of  the  Foreign  Mission  field,  each  day  in- 
creasing. To  meet  these,  the  Home  Mission  enterprise  must 
be  sustained  by  the  churches  at  home,  until  made  by  its  in- 
fluence united,  intelligent  and  devoted,  they  become  the 
camp  and  armory,  from  which  shall  be  sent  forth  yet  other 
and  more  numerous  levies  of  conscripts  for  the  foreign  service 
of  the  Church  of  Christ. 

3.  The  motives  which  urge  you  to  the  work,  in  view  of 
these  considerations,  will  naturally  suggest  themselves  to  all, 

*  Coleridge. 


238  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY. 

and  are  alike  varied  and  powerful.  Self-interest  and  the  love 
of  kindred  furnish  them.  The  more  aged  among  us  cannot 
but  desire  to  transmit  to  the  coming  generations,  unimpaired, 
the  immunities  and  blessings  they  received  themselves  from 
those  who  went  before.  To  the  young  men  of  our  churches, 
we  might  speak  of  the  peculiar  interest  which,  as  the  future 
inheritors  of  the  land,  they  have,  to  escape  the  evils  of  igno- 
rance and  irreligion,  and  to  avert,  if  it  may.  be,  the  storm 
that  will  descend  on  the  quiet  graves  of  their  fathers,  but  which 
they  still  surviving  must  buffet  for  themselves,  or  be  swept 
before  its  violence.  We  might  appeal  to  your  love  of  man 
as  such,  or  to  your  love  of  country,  and  ask  on  these  grounds 
your  alms  and  your  prayers  in  this  good  work.  But  if  the 
Roman  patriot  could  say  of  the  paramount  force  and  en- 
grossing character  of  that  high  motive — love  to  our  coun- 
try : — "  Dear  are  the  charities  of  home  ;  dear  are  parents, 
and  dear  are  our  children ;  but  our  one  country,  yet  dearer, 
combines  all  the  charities  of  us  all ;" — I  would  speak  to  you, 
brethren,  of  a  higher  love,  blending  with  and  absorbing  as 
well  this  as  all  minor  charities.  As  lovers  of  your  country  I 
might  urge,  and  as  lovers  of  your  kind  I  might  require  you  ; 
but  by  a  love  which  sanctifies,  and  itself  surpasses  all  others, 
I  beseech  you  ;  as  the  lovers  of  Christ,  or  rather  let  me  say 
as  the  beloved  of  Christ,  whom  he  has  loved  to  the  death, 
has  ransomed  and  is  sanctifying  ;  give  to  this  work  your 
prompt  aid,  your  prayers  and  your  efforts.  And  while  some 
give  of  their  substance,  and  some  add  their  counsel,  and  all 
their  prayers,  are  there  not  yet  others  here,  who  are  girding 
themselves  to  a  costlier  offering,  and'  who  are  prepared  to 
become  themselves  a  whole  burnt-offering  upon  the  altars  of 
the  church,  and  as  a  living  sacrifice  to  spend  and  be  spent, 
in  the  personal  labor  of  bearing  the  gospel  to  the  destitute  ? 
In  the  consuming  flames  of  divine  charity,  our  Lord  be- 
came himself  a  willing  victim,  and  the  zeal  of  his  Father's 
house  devoured  him.  To  reach  and  rescue  you,  he  shrunk 
from  no  sacrifice.  Requite  him  by  love  intense  and  absorb- 
ing, like  that  love  which  it  reflects.  And  to  those  here,  who 
are  themselves  honored  by  their  personal  engagements  as  the 
missionary  preachers  of  the  church,  let  me  say:  Brethren, 
remember  in  your  most  painful  sacrifices,  in  the  most  distress- 
ing repulses  that  your  efforts  may  encounter,  you  can  never 
know  the  peculiar  agony  of  soul  which  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
as  a  Home  Missionary,  endured.     Among  the  most  affecting 


CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY.  239 

pages  in  the  history  of  David  Brainerd,  is  the  journal  of  that 
Sabbath  which  he  spent  amid  the  idolatrous  revellings  of  the 
heathen,  who  had  refused  to  listen  to  his  teachings.  Desti- 
tute of  all  Christian  society,  he  had  retired  to  the  forest,  and 
there  in  desolate  loneliness  sat  him  down  with  his  Bible  in 
his  hand,  while  at  a  little  distance,  they  yelled  and  danced 
in  honor  of  their  demons.  Even  that  devoted  man  sunk  in 
the  trial,  and  describes  the  absence  of  all  sympathy  and 
Christian  society,  as  making  this  the  most  burdensome  Sab- 
bath he  had  ever  known.  Now  this  loneliness,  which  for 
the  time  crushed  even  the  spirit  of  a  Brainerd,  was  felt  by 
our  Lord,  as  none  else  could  feel  it.  There  was  no  heart 
even  among  his  disciples,  with  whom  he  could  have  true  and 
entire  communion.  Omniscient,  he  read  perpetually  the  evil 
in  the  breasts  of  all  that  surrounded  him.  All  was  naked 
and  opened  to  him.  The  ambition,  the  jealousy,  the  distrust, 
and  the  avarice  of  his  own  apostles,  the  malignant  hatred  to 
God  and  all  goodness  that  filled  the  souls  of  the  impenitent 
around  him,  were  necessarily  and  ever  present  to  his  view. 
And  he  himself  was  all  purity,  entirely  and  intensely  abhor- 
ring evil  in  its  slightest  stains.  This  healthful  and  sensitive 
purity  was  condemned  to  be  continually  jostled  by  our  de- 
pravity, and  how  harshly,  in  the  rude  collision,  must  it  have 
been  rasped  by  the  hard,  dry  scurf  of  our  moral  leprosy. 
His  was  indeed  a  peculiar  solitariness,  as  he  moved  a  sinless 
one  among  sinners.  The  anguish  of  this  loneliness,  this 
daily  death,  endured  by  our  Master,  we  may  never  know. 
But  of  these  the  sacrifices  of  his  love  we  do  well  often  to 
think,  that  our  own  may  be  rekindled. 

There  are  those  here,  who  giving  of  their  substance  and 
their  cares  to  the  good  wrork,  withhold  their  own  hearts. 
The  yoke  of  Christ,  which  is  easy,  their  necks  do  not  yet 
wear  ;  and  his  burden,  which  is  light,  they  refuse  to  assume. 
Dwelling  in  cities  each  one  of  whose  moving  multitudes  lives, 
moves,  and  has  his  being  in  God — or  the  tillers  of  fields 
which  He  only  has  blessed  with  fruitful  seasons,  filling  your 
hearts  with  food  and  gladness — in  the  enjoyment  of  a  plenty, 
a  freedom  and  a  peace  which  Christ's  providence  gave — in 
the  daily  hearing  of  his  commands,  and  with  his  sacrifice  for 
sin  hourly  before  your  view,  you  yield  him  no  love,  and  act 
as  if  you  owed  him  no  allegiance.  The  Giver  is  shut  out 
from  the  heart  by  barriers  which  his  own  gifts  have  been 
employed  to  form.     O,  remember  that  a  land  which  sends 


240  CHRIST,    A    HOME    MISSIONARY. 

forth  the  gospel  to  other  lands,  a  community  that  sustain  the 
missionary  to  labor  amid  their  own  and  foreign  destitution, 
as  they  are  the  most  favored,  so  they  may  be  also  the  most 
guilty  of  all  lands  and  of  all  communities.  Remember  the 
curse  of  Jerusalem,  and  the  plagues,  of  the  nation  whose  hills 
had  been  traversed  by  a  Saviour's  feet,  and  the  field  of  whose 
home  missions  a  Saviour's  own  tears  and  blood  had  watered. 
Christ's  word  and  Spirit  have  come  nigh  you — your  own 
kindred  and  friends  are  found  in  his  church.  And  God  grant 
that  the  Redeemer  who  has  thus  taught  in  your  streets,  and 
wrought  wonders  even  in  your  own  homes  and  households, 
stand  not  up  in  the  last  day,  an  incensed  and  inflexible  Judge, 
to  condemn  you  for  that  gospel  which  you  have  sent  U*  others 
but  rejected  for  yourselves. 


THE  PUBLICATIONS  OF  THE  AMERICAN  TRACT 
SOCIETY. 

The  Christian  Library,  45  vols.,  400  pages  each. — The  Evangelical 
Family  Library,  15  volumes. — The  Youth's  Christian  Library,  40 
volumes. 

The  American  Tract  Society  has  been  for  years  a  familiar 
and  cherished  name  with  our  churches.  But  many,  even  of 
intelligent  Christians,  have  probably  scarce  made  themselves 
conversant  with  its  varied  publications,  or  considered  duly 
the  influence  it  was  likely  to  wield  over  the  religious  litera- 
ture of  our  own  and  other  lands.  They  have  thought,  per- 
haps, of  the  Institution  as  furnishing  a  few  excellent  Tracts, 
in  the  form  of  loose  pamphlets,  and  suppose  these,  with  some 
children's  books,  to  constitute  the  entire  sum  of  its  issues  ; 
while  in  truth,  the  Society,  noiselessly  following  the  beckon- 
ing of  Divine  Providence,  has  been  led  to  undertake  the 
publication  of  volumes,  and  to  furnish  Libraries  for  Christian 
churches,  schools,  and  households.  These  heedless  observ- 
ers have  thought  of  it  mostly  in  connection  with  a  few 
favorite  Tracts  written  in  our  own  vernacular  language, 
while,  in  fact,  the  Society  has  come  to  be  engaged  in  the 
circulation  of  books  and  Tracts  in  more  tongues  than  the 
richest  Polyglott  comprises,  and  is  extending  its  operations 
through  lands  more  numerous  and  remote  than  any  one  pro- 
bably of  the  most  widely-travelled  of  its  readers  has  ever 
traversed.  The  moral  and  intellectual  character  of  the  relig- 
ious literature  thus  widely  diffused  deserves  some  thoughts.* 

The  various  publications  of  the  Society  in  our  own  land, 

*  It  was  made  recently  the  subject  of  examination.  At  a  special  meeting 
of  the  Society  and  its  friends,  convened  in  the  city  of  New  York  a  few  months 
since,  several  subjects  were  presented  for  consideration,  as  bearing  on  the 
character,  plans,  and  duties  of  the  Society.  Amongst  these  was  "  The  evan- 
gelical character  of  the  Publications  of  the  Society,  and  their  adaptation  to 
the  wants  of  the  present  generation  of  mankind,  at  home  and  abroad."  Upon 
the  subject  so  assigned  to  the  writer,  the  following  remarks  were  prepared. 

32 


242  THE    PUBLICATIONS    OF 

if  we  include  its  issues  of  every  form  and  size,  from  the 
handbill  and  the  broad-sheet,  up  to  the  bound  volume,  already 
number  one  thousand.  In  foreign  lands  it  aids  in  issuing 
nearly  twice  that  number,  written  in  some  one  hundred  of 
the  different  languages  and  dialects  of  the  earth.  Amongst 
ourselves,  in  the  seventeen  years  of  its  existence,  it  has  al- 
ready, by  sale  or  gift,  scattered  broadcast  over  the  whole  face 
of  the  land,  in  our  churches  and  Sabbath-schools,  through 
our  towns  and  villages,  among  the  neglected,  in  the  lanes 
of  our  large  cities,  where  misery  retires  to  die,  and  vice  to 
shelter  itself  from  the  eye  of  day  ;  and  amidst  the  destitute, 
sparsely  sprinkled  over  our  wide  frontiers,  where  the  min- 
istry has  scarce  followed,  and  the  church  can  scarce  gather 
the  scattered  inhabitants,  some  two  millions  of  books  and 
some  sixty  millions  of  Tracts.  This  is  no  ordinary  influence. 
It  must  find  its  way  into  nearly  every  vein  and  artery  of  the 
body  politic.  Whether  it  be  of  a  pure  and  healthful  charac- 
ter, is  an  inquiry  of  grave  moment  to  the  churches  who  sus- 
tain this  enterprise,  and  to  the  country,  which  receives  this 
literature.  If  baneful,  it  is  a  grievous  wrong  to  the  commu- 
nity ;  if  merely  inert  and  useless,  it  is  a  fraud  committed  upon 
the  benevolence  of  the  churches. 

I.  Whether  these  publications  deserve  the  confidence  of 
Christians,  may  be  ascertained  by  the  answer  which  is  given 
to  one  question  :  Do  they  preach  Jesus  Christ  and  him 
crucified?  He  must  be  the  theme  of  every  successful 
ministry,  whether  preaching  from  the  pulpit  or  through  the 
press.  The  blessing  of  God's  Spirit  is  promised  only  to  the 
exaltation  of  the  Son  of  God,  the  Saviour  of  the  world. 
44 1,  if  I  be  lifted  up,  will  draw  all  men  unto  me."  When 
Paul  describes  the  peculiarities  of  his  own  successful  minis- 
try— a  ministry  that  shook  the  nations — a  ministry  that  car- 
ried the  blazing  torch  of  its  testimony  from  Illyricum  to 
Spain,  he  compresses  these  into  a  very  brief  space.  He  was 
determined  to  know  nothing  but  Christ  Jesus  and  him  cru- 
cified. In  Christ  he  found  the  motive  which  stimulated  all 
his  fervid  and  untiring  activity,  and  the  model  upon  which 
was  moulded  every  excellence  of  his  character.  "  To  me  to 
live  is  Christ."  Only  so  far  as  the  issues  of  this  Society 
cherish  this  same  principle  does  it  ask,  and  only  so  far  can  it 
deserve  from  the  churches  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  that 
cordial  support  and  that  large  extension  of  its  labors  which 
it  solicits  at  the  hands  of  the  religious  community. 


THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY.  343 

And  not  only  is  it  necessary  to  the  success  of  such  ministry 
of  the  press,  that  it  should  make  the  crucified  Saviour  the 
great  theme  of  its  teachings  ;  it  should  also  present  this  theme, 
as  far  as  possible,  in  a  scriptural  manner.  By  this  we  mean, 
not  a  mere  iteration  of  the  words  of  sacred  writ,  but  that  the 
mind  of  the  writer  should  be  so  imbued  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Scripture,  and  so  possessed  by  its  doctrines,  and  so 
haunted  by  its  imagery  and  illustrations,  as  to  present,  natu- 
rally and  earnestly,  the  great  truths  of  the  scheme  of  salva- 
tion, in  that  proportion  and  with  those  accompaniments  which 
are  found  in  the  inspired  volume.  His  thoughts  must  all  be 
habited,  as  far  as  it  may  be,  in  the  garb,  and  breathe  the 
spirit  of  that  only  book  to  which  we  can  ascribe  unmingled 
truth. 

That  the  works  of  the  American  Tract  Society  are  thus 
evangelical  in  their  character,  would  seem  scarce  needing 
proof,  since  none,  as  far  as  we  know,  have  yet  questioned  it. 
Amid  the  fierce  and  imbittered  controversies,  from  which  the 
church  has  never  been  exempt — and  certainly  not  in  our  own 
times — we  know  not  that  any,  among  the  several  bodies  of 
Christians  generally  recognized  as  evangelical,  have  arisen  to 
impugn  in  this  respect  the  character  of  the  Society's  issues. 
This  has  not  been  because  these  books  have  been  secretly 
circulated.  They  have  been  found  every  where,  dropped  in 
the  highway  and  lodged  in  the  pastor's  study,  distributed  in 
the  nursery,  the  rail-car,  the  steamboat,  and  the  stage-coach, 
as  well  as  exposed  on  the  shelves  of  the  bookstore,  and  they 
have  challenged  the  investigation  of  all  into  whose  hands 
they  have  come.  Denominations  of  Christians,  divided  from 
each  other  by  varying  views  as  to  the  discipline  and  polity  of 
the  church  of  Christ,  and  even  holding  opposite  sentiments 
as  to  some  of  the  more  important  doctrines  of  the  Gospel, 
have  yet  agreed  in  recognizing  in  these  publications  the 
great  paramount  truths  of  that  Gospel,  and  have  co-operated 
long,  liberally,  and  harmoniously,  in  their  distribution  and 
use. 

The  names  of  the  authors  whose  volumes  are  found  in 
friendly  juxtaposition,  standing  side  by  side  on  the  shelves 
of  the  libraries  the  Society  has  provided  for  the  Christian 
household  and  school,  seem  to  furnish  another  strong  pledge 
to  the  same  effect.  Doddridge,  Baxter,  Edwards,  Owen, 
Flavel  and  Bunyan,  are  names  that  seem  to  belong  less  to 
any  one  division  of  the  Christian  host  than  to  the  whole 


244  THE    PUBLICATIONS    OF 

family  of  Christ.  They  are  the  current  coin  of  the  church, 
which  have  passed  so  freely  from  hand  to  hand,  that  the 
minuter  superscription  of  the  sects  to  which  they  may  have 
belonged,  the  denominational  imprint  seems  to  have  been 
worn  away  in  the  wide,  unquestioned  circulation  they  have 
received.  And  they  have  been  acknowledged  by  evangeli- 
cal believers,  wherever  the  English  language  and  literature 
have  gone,  as  faithful  and  most  powerful  preachers  of  the 
Gospel  of  Christ.  They ,  have  received  higher  attestation 
even  than  that  of  having  their  "praise"  thus  "in  all  the 
churches."  The  Head  of  the  church  has  not  withholden  his 
benediction  and  imprint.  The  influence  of  his  Spirit  has 
long  and  largely  rested  on  the  written  labors  of  these  his 
servants  ;  and,  while  the  authors  themselves  have  been  in 
the  grave,  their  works  are  yet  following  them  in  lengthening 
and  widening  trains  of  usefulness.  Multitudes  have  been 
converted,  and  thousands  of  others  have  traced  to  these  books 
their  own  growth  in  Christian  holiness.  Some  of  these 
writers  were,  while  upon  the  earth,' not  inactive  or  unsuc- 
cessful as  preachers  with  the  living  voice ;  yet  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  all  the  seals  of  their  living  ministry 
would  equal  the  tithe  of  the  seals  which  God  has  continued 
to  set  to  their  posthumous  ministry  in  the  volumes  they  have 
bequeathed  to  the  world  and  the  church. 

II.  But  how  far  are  they  adapted  to  the  wants  of  the 
present  generation  of  mankind?  We  know  that  in  the 
varying  tastes  and  habits  of  society,  and  its  ever-shifting  cur- 
rents of  feeling,  new  channels  of  thought  are  scooped  out, 
and  new  forms  of  expression  become  popular  ;  and  the  writer 
whose  compositions  present  not  these  forms  and  move  not 
in  these  channels,  may  find  himself  deserted  as  obsolete. 
His  works  are  consigned  to  the  unmolested  and  dusty  shelves 
of  the  antiquarian,  while  other  and  fresher  rivals  grasp  the 
sceptre  of  popularity  and  usefulness  that  has  passed  from  his 
hands.  New  conditions  of  society  and  new  institutions  also, 
may  require  another  style  of  address  and  another  train  of  in- 
struction than  those  which,  once  indeed,  were  most  salutary  and 
seasonable,  but  are  so  no  longer.  If  other  classes  of  litera- 
ture become  antiquated,  and  the  old  give  place  to  the  new, 
may  it  not  be  so  with  religious  literature  ;  may  it  not  be  so 
with  much  of  the  literature  from  which  the  American  Tract 
Society  is  seeking  to  supply  the  Christians  of  the  present 
age? 


THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY.  245 

1.  What,  then,  are  the  wants  of  the  present  age?  Re- 
ligion, it  should  be  remembered,  if  true,  must  be  in  its  great 
principles  unchangeable,  and  the  same  in  all  eras  of  the 
world's  history. 

"Can  length  of  years  on  God  himself  exact, 
And  make  that  fiction  which  was  once  a  fact." 

A  revelation,  from  its  source  and  the  nature  of  its  contents, 
possesses,  therefore,  a  fixedness  and  constancy  that  can  be* 
long  to  no  science  of  merely  human  origin.  The  Bible 
stands  apart  from  all  the  literature  of  man's  devising,  as  a 
book  never  to  be  superseded — susceptible  of  no  amendment, 
and  never  to  be  made  obsolete  whilst  the  world  stands.  The 
book  of  the  world's  Creator  and  the  world's  Governor,  the 
record  of  the  world's  history  and  the  world's  duty,  the  world's 
sin  and  the  world's  salvation,  it  will  endure  while  that  world 
lasts,  and  continue  to  claim  its  present  authority  long  as  that 
government  over  the  present  world  may  continue.  Religious 
works,  therefore,  the  more  profoundly  they  are  imbued  with 
the  spirit  of  the  Bible,  will  the  more  nearly  partake  of  its  in- 
destructibility. Hence  the  Confessions  of  Augustine,  written 
so  many  centuries  ago,  are  not  yet  an  obsolete  book,  nor  can 
be  while  the  human  heart  and  the  Christian  religion  continue 
the  same  that  they  now  are.  In  their  religious  literature, 
the  church  and  the  world  in  the  nineteenth  century  must, 
therefore,  in  most  respects,  have  the  same  wants  as  the 
church  and  the  world  in  earlier  ages. 

It  will  be  allowed,  however,  that  there  are  certain  pecu- 
liarities in  the  history  and  character  of  an  age  that  may  make 
one  form  of  address  and  one  style  of  discussion  much  more 
useful  and  reasonable  in  its  religious  literature  than  another. 
Has  our  country  at  this  period  any  such  peculiar  wants  ? 
We  might  refer  to  many  circumstances  in  its  government 
and  its  people,  their  pursuits  and  their  character,  which  dis- 
.  tinguish,  and,  as  it  were,  individualize  our  land  and  our  age. 
But  to  sum  them  all  in  one  word,  we  suppose  the  main  dis- 
tinction and  boast  of  our  people  is,  that  they  are  a  practical 
race.  Others  theorize  ;  they  act.  Visionary  reforms  and 
schemes  of  society,  that  might  in  other  regions  be  nursed  for 
centuries  in  the  brains  of  philosophers,  and  be  deemed  prac- 
ticable only  because  they  have  never  been  reduced  to  prac- 
tice, if  they  find  proselytes  amongst  us,  are  soon  brought  to 
the  test  of  actual  experiment ;  their  admirers  here  act  upon 


246  THE    PUBLICATIONS    OF 

the  theories,  which,  elsewhere,  are  but  reasoned  upon,  and 
the  system  exploding  in  the  trial,  refutes  itself.  Our  coun- 
trymen, the  colonists  of  a  wide  and  fertile  territory,  the 
mariners  whose  keels  vex  every  shore,  and  whose  sails 
whiten  the  remotest  seas,  inherit  the  solid  sense,  the  sober 
judgment,  the  energy,  daring,  and  perseverance  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  ;  and  their  political  institutions  and  the  broad 
territory  yet  to  be  subdued  and  peopled,  here  give  full  scope 
to  these  traits  of  character.  We  are  as  yet,  though  a  nation 
of  readers,  not  a  nation  of  students  ;  but  much  more  a  nation 
of  seamen,  farmers  and  traders.  Our  very  studies  are  prac- 
tical ;  and  the  cast  of  character  which  distinguished  the  Ro- 
man from  the  Greek  mind,  and  which  made  the  former  the 
masters  of  the  world — the  practical  character  of  the  mind 
and  its  pursuits — belongs,  in  all  climes  and  on  every  shore, 
to  the  Saxon  race.  If  we,  as  a  nation,  have  in  this  era  of 
our  history  specific  wants,  we  want,  then,  a  practical  litera- 
ture in  religion,  as  in  other  branches  of  knowledge — a  relig- 
ious literature,  adapted  with  practical  wisdom  to  the  peculiar 
duties  and  snares,  the  prevalent  errors,  and  the  popular  insti- 
tutions of  our  time.     Has  this  Society  furnished  such  ? 

That  portion  of  its  publications  which  are  of  American 
origin,  and  which  its  exertions  have  been  the  means  of  call- 
ing out,  or  of  diffusing  more  widely  where  they  already  existed, 
all  its  books  that  are  of  recent  and  domestic  origin,  may  be 
supposed  naturally  to  possess  some  tolerable  degree  of  adap- 
tation to  our  own  national  wants,  the  prevailing  sins  and 
follies  of  the  times,  and  the  peculiar  responsibilities  and  priv- 
ileges of  Christian  churches  in  the  United  States,  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  writers  are  of  us,  and  wrote  for 
us  ;  and  we  may  suppose  that  these  productions  at  least  are 
not  wanting  in  such  adaptation.  Their  currency  and  their 
usefulness,  the  souls  which,  by  the  blessing  of  God,  they 
have  converted,  and  their  influence  on  the  faith,  zeal,  and 
purity  of  the  churches,  afford  evidence  of  the  same  kind. 
Of  the  430  pamphlet  Tracts  in  the  English  language,  issued 
by  the  Society,  more  than  one  half  are  of  American  origin. 
It  was  not  so  in  the  earlier  years  of  the  Society's  history. 
Of  the  first  one  hundred  Tracts  on  the  lists  of  this  Society, 
more  than  two-thirds  were  republications  from  works  of  British 
Christians,  of  the  richest  character,  indeed,  but  they  were 
Ihe  siftings  of  a  rich  religious  literature  more  than  two  cen- 
turies old.     Of  the  last  one  hundred  of  these  430  Tracts,  on 


THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY.  247 

the  other  hand,  more  than  three-fourths  were  by  American 
Christians.  We  have  not  pursued  the  investigation  into  the 
bound  volumes  of  the  Society ;  but  we  suppose  that  there  a 
similar  result  would  be  reached,  although  the  proportion  of 
American  authorship  is  not  yet  as  large,  perhaps,  as  in  the 
pamphlet  Tracts.  Here  also  it  is  increasing,  however,  and 
one-third  of  the  volumes  may  be  regarded  as  of  domestic 
origin.  It  would  be  found,  we  suppose,  that  the  Societ)^ 
in  the  brief  period  of  seventeen  years,  has  done  much  to 
create  a  national  religious  literature. 

To  effect  any  literary  changes,  seventeen  years,  it  should 
be  remembered,  is  a  very  brief  period.  As  far,  then,  as 
adaptedness  to  the  special  wants  of  this  country  can  be  de- 
cided by  the  domestic  or  foreign  authorship  ofits  publications, 
it  would  appear  that  the  Society  has,  with  great  rapidity, 
exerted  a  most  perceptible  and  powerful  influence  on  the 
writers  and  readers  of  our  churches.  It  has  elicited  and  dif- 
fused a  literature  that  is  emphatically  for  us,  inasmuch  as  it 
is  from  ourselves.  The  intelligent  Christian  can  never  wish 
to  see  his  denomination  or  his  country  confining  its  sympa- 
thies and  its  studies  to  the  literature  of  the  sect  itself,  or  of 
that  one  country,  thus  shut  up  in  the  narrow  circle  of  its  own 
writers.  Christianity  is  free,  genial,  and  philanthropic — it 
loves  the  race.  Christianity  is  the  only  true  citizenship  of 
the  world,  and  it  hails  the  writings  and  the  history  of  all  lands 
and  all  kindreds,  when  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  com- 
mon Saviour.  But  yet  there  may  be  certain  evident  advan- 
tages in  having,  for  some  purposes  and  within  certain  limits, 
a  denominational  and  also  a  national  literature  in  our  churches. 
For  this  object  of  a  national  literature  the  American  Tract 
Society  may  claim  to  have  done  much,  and  to  have  done  it 
well.  They  have  furnished  a  body  of  Tracts,  popular  in 
style,  pungent  and  faithful,  pithy,  brief,  and  striking,  that 
are  singularly  adapted  to  the  moral  wants  of  our  community, 
and  many  of  which,  from  their  high  excellence,  would  bear 
transplantation  into  the  literature  of  almost  any  other  Chris- 
tian country. 

2.  As  to  the  adaptedness  for  usefulness  amongst  our 
churches  and  people  of  those  volumes  and  Tracts  which  the 
Society  has  derived  from  the  rich  Christian  literature  of 
Great  Britain,  it  may  be  deserving  of  remark,  that  the  more 
distinguished  of  these  works  are  derived  mainly  from  three 
memorable  eras  in  the  religious  history  of  that  country. 


248  THE    PUBLICATIONS    OF 

The  first  of  these  was  the  age  of  the  Puritans  and  Non- 
conformists. Into  the  merits  of  their  controversy  with  the 
Established  Church  of  England  it  is  no  part  of  our  design 
here  to  enter.  They  were,  by  the  admission  of  the  candid 
in  every  party,  men  of  powerful  intellect  and  ardent  piety, 
whose  principles  had  been  tried  and  strengthened  in  the  fierce 
collisions  of  their  age,  and  whose  character  received,  in  con- 
sequence, an  energy  it  might  else  have  wanted.  The  meas- 
ures of  government,  that  threw  the  Non-conformists  out  of 
their  pulpits,  were  fitted  to  produce  an  admirable  class  of 
writings,  such  as  the  church  has  not  often  enjoyed.  Many 
of  these  devout  men,  mighty  in  the  Scriptures  and  incessant 
in  prayer,  had  they  been  left  to  the  quiet  discharge  of  their 
pastoral  duties,  would  have  kept  the  noiseless  tenor  of  their 
way,  and  the  world  would  probably  have  heard  little  or 
naught  of  their  authorship.  Preaching  would  have  absorbed 
their  minds,  and  consumed  all  their  strength.  The  mere 
preacher  has  little  leisure,  and  often  little  fitness  to  be  a  suc- 
cessful writer.  Thus  the  published  remains  of  Whitefield 
are  of  little  value,  compared  with  the  writings  of  many  men 
far  his  inferiors  in  the  pulpit  and  in  its  immediate  results  of 
usefulness.  Had,  then,  the  edicts  and  policy  of  the  Stuarts 
left  the  Non-conformist  fathers  to  their  own  chosen  course, 
they  would,  many  of  them,  have  died  and  bequeathed  no 
literary  remains  ;  or  those  remains  would  have  been  com- 
paratively meagre  and  jejune,  from  the  want  of  leisure  in  a 
life  of  active  and  unremitted  pastoral  toil.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  had  the  rich  and  varied  writings  of  that  class  of  men, 
who,  from  the  prison  or  beside  its  very  gate,  sent  out  their 
treatises  to  their  peeled  and  scattered  churches,  been  com- 
posed by  mere  students,  men  of  the  lamp  and  the  closet,  they 
would  have  been  deficient  in  their  popular  style,  their  ear- 
nestness, and  their  apt  familiar  illustrations.  None  but  pas- 
tors, acquainted  with  the  people  and  familiar  with  the  popular 
modes  of  communicating  religious  truth,  could  thus  have 
informed  the  deepest  truths  of  theology  and  morals  with  a 
racy  vivacity,  and  surrounded  them  with  such  simple  and 
every-day  imagery. 

Thus,  only  men  who  had  been  bred  pastors  could  have 
written  some  of  these  works.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  had 
they  continued  pastors,  they  could  not  have  written  them 
for  want  of  leisure,  inclination,  and  even  perhaps  mental 
power.     But  when  the  prison  and  the  pillory  shut  them  in, 


THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY.  249 

and  the  pulpit  had  shut  them  out,  these  resolute  and  holy 
men  resorted  to  the  only  channel  left  them  for  communicating 
with  the  hearts  and  consciences  of  men.  It  was  the  press. 
Had  Baxter  been  a  mere  student  and  not  a  pastor,  he  would 
probably  have  made  all  his  writings  thorny,  abstruse,  and 
sterile,  as  the  works  of  those  schoolmen  whose  writings  he 
seems  so  fondly  to  have  loved  and  studied  so  closely.  And, 
in  that  case,  where  had  been  the  usefulness  of  the  Saints' 
Rest  and  the  Call  to  the  Unconverted  ?  Had  he  continued 
always  a  pastor,  he  would  have  preached  much  more  to  the 
men  of  the  17th  century  ;  but  it  is  very  questionable  whether 
he  would  have  preached  as  well  or  as  much  to  the  men  of  the 
19th  century  as  he  now  does.  Here,  then,  is  a  class  of 
writers  in  whose  history  God  seems  to  have  made  special 
provision  that  they  should  be  trained  to  become  effective  as 
the  practical  writers  of  the  church,  bringing  to  the  experience 
of  the  pastor  all  the  leisure  of  the  scholar,  and  grafting  upon 
the  meditations  of  the  study  all  the  unction,  the  simplicity, 
and  the  popular  tact  of  the  pulpit. 

In  addition  to  these  peculiar  preparations  for  general  use- 
fulness, the  writings  of  the  Puritans  and  Non-conformists 
come  to  us,  as  Americans,  commended  by  considerations  of 
singular  force.  The  fathers  of  New  England  were  of  that 
class  of  men.  The  Adam  and  Eve  of  those  regions  were 
fashioned  of  Puritan  clay  ;  and  many  of  our  peculiar  institu- 
tions and  our  distinctive  traits  of  national  character  may  be 
traced,  through  that  New  England  ancestry,  to  the  character 
of  the  Puritans  of  England.  We  have  a  hereditary  right  in 
their  works  and  memory.  Their  writings  are  moulded  by 
peculiar  influences,  that  have  yet  left  their  traces  upon  our 
mental  idiosyncrasy  as  a  people.  Connected  as  then  the 
Puritans  of  the  mother  country  were  with  our  progenitors 
by  every  tie  of  piety  and  blood,  their  voice  comes  upon  the 
ears  of  American  Christians  like  a  testimony  from  the  graves 
of  those  revered  forefathers,  who  planted  upon  our  rugged 
northern  shores  the  germs  of  our  freedom,  our  knowledge 
and  our  arts,  while  seeking  only  in  the  desert  a  refuge  from 
persecution,  and  freedom  to  worship  God  ;  but  who  left, 
where  they  sought  merely  a  shelter,  the  foundations  of  a  new 
empire,  stretching  its  territories  already  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific,  and  shedding  the  influence  of  its  commerce  and 
its  freedom  over  either  continent. 

The  second  of  these  eras,  which  have  contributed  to  the 
33 


250  THE    PUBLICATIONS    OF 

Christian  literature  of  this  Society,  is  that  of  the  great  revi- 
val of  religion,  under  the  labors  of  Whitefield  and  the 
Wesleys  in  England,  and  the  elder  Edwards  and  the  Ten- 
nants  in  our  own  country.  It  was  a  great  religious  move- 
ment, awakening  from  lethargy  and  recalling  from  perilous 
errors  a  portion  of  the  English  establishment,  infusing  a  new 
life  of  piety  into  the  English  dissenters,  as  in  our  country  it 
supplied  the  destitute  and  awakened  the  formal  from  Georgia 
to  New  Hampshire.  It  was  an  era,  both  here  and  in  the 
parent  country,  of  bitter  controversy.  The  truths,  recalled 
from  their  long  concealment  and  urged  with  new  zeal,  were 
to  be  defended  from  the  press,  as  well  as  from  the  pulpit  or 
the  open  field,  where  so  many  of  those  preachers  delivered 
their  testimony.  To  this  day  it  is  that  we  owe  the  works  of 
Doddridge  and  Edwards,  that  work  of  Venn  which  the  Society 
has  very  recently  republished,  and  the  memoir  of  Edwards' 
disciple  and  friend,  the  glowing,  suffering  David  Brainerd. 
In  the  necessities  of  that  time  we  see,  though  to  a  less  ex- 
tent, a  combination  of  the  same  causes  which  made  the  Non- 
conformists' writings  what  they  were.  The  preacher  was 
grafted  on  the  student.  Had  not  Edwards  had  the  experience 
of  those  glorious  revivals  God  permitted  him  to  witness  and 
to  record,  he  could,  perhaps,  still  have  written  the  work  "On 
the  Religious  Affections  ;"  but  it  would  have  been  a  very 
different  book.  Without  the  resources  of  his  rich  pastoral 
experience  it  might  have  been  as  profound  as  the  immortal 
Analogy  of  Butler,  and  as  little  fitted  as  that  work  to  be  gen- 
erally popular  with  the  great  mass  of  readers. 

The  third  of  these  memorable  eras  may  be  designated  as 
the  era  of  modern  Christian  enterprise.  We  know  no  fitter 
epithet  to  describe  its  varied  activity,  and  its  aggressive  action 
on  the  ignorance  of  nominal  Christendom  and  the  wide 
wastes  of  heathenism.  It  began  shortly  after  the  breaking 
out  of  the  French  Revolution.  It  was  an  age  when  God 
seemed  for  a  time  to  allow  a  new  "  hour  and  power  of  dark- 
ness"  akin  to  that  which  brooded  over  the  world  when  its 
Redeemer  was  about  to  suffer.  Then  boiled  up  from  the 
lower  deeps  of  the  human  heart  floods  of  corruption,  that,  in 
ordinary  ages,  slumber  on,  dark  and  unseen,  in  their  quiet 
concealment.  Then  steamed  up,  as  it  were  from  the  nether- 
most abysses  of  hell,  strange  and  hideous  errors,  that  gen- 
erally avoid  the  light  of  day,  and  the  world  was  aghast  at  the 
open  appearance   of  atheism,  and   the  rejection  by  a  great 


THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY.  251 

nation,  as  in  mass,  of  their  old  ancestral  faith.  But,  as  if  to 
illustrate  his  own  government  of  the  universe,  then,  to  meet 
this  revolt,  rose  up,  from  quarters  the  most  distant,  and  some 
of  them  the  most  obscure,  designs  for  good  and  enterprises 
of  benevolence,  of  which  the  world  had  long  seen  no  parallel. 
The  Foreign  Missions  of  the  Christian  church,  the  Sabbath- 
school,  the  Tract  Society  itself,  and  the  Bible  Society,  burst 
up,  as  in  quick  succession,  and  ere  the  carnival  of  the  pit  was 
ended,  and  while  Satan  seemed  yet  triumphing  in  his  antici- 
pated conquest  of  the  world  to  impiety,  the  Christian  faith 
received  a  fresh  impulse,  and  the  cause  of  the  Saviour  as- 
sumed an  aggressive  energy  it  has  never  since  lost.  To  this 
period  belonged  Buchanan  and  Pearce.  In  this  period  Wil- 
berforce  published  that  View  of  Religion  in  the  higher  classes, 
which  was,  in  the  judgment  of  the  commentator  Scott,  the 
noblest  protest  in  favor  of  the  Gospel  made  for  centuries — a 
book  that  consoled  and  delighted  that  eminent  statesman 
Burke  on  his  dying  bed,  and  that  gave  to  the  church  of  Christ 
the  lamented  and  beloved  author  of  that  immortal  Tract 
"The  Dairyman's  Daughter,"  Legh  Richmond.  Pelted  by 
Parr  with  learned  Greek,  and  assailed  by  the  Socinian  Bel- 
sham,  it  went  on  unimpeded,  and  did  its  work.  Its  influence 
was  most  decisive,  under  God,  in  aiding  the  great  work  of 
reform,  the  effects  of  which  are  visible  in  the  middle  and 
higher  classes  of  England.  Then,  too,  wrote  and  labored 
Hannah  More,  and  to  the  same  period  may  be  added  Henry 
Martyn. 

All  these  three  were  periods  of  conflict.  In  the  first  and 
in  the  third,  political  contentions  were  intermingled  with 
religious  controversies.  Wars  and  rumors  of  wars  exaspe- 
rated the  fierce  collisions  between  rival  sects,  or  the  strife 
that  was  waged  between  Christianity  and  those  who  cast  off 
all  fear,  and  mocked  to  his  face  their  Maker  and  Judge. 
The  second  was  indeed  exclusively  a  period  of  religious 
controversy;  but  the  points  at  issue  were  so  momentous, 
and  the  zeal  exhibited  so  ardent,  that  England  and  America 
were  filled  with  the  noise  of  inquiry  and  dispute,  as  the  Gos- 
pel went  on  winning  new  and  glorious  triumphs  amid  fierce 
opposition.  There  was,  as  in  the  apostolic  history,  a  wide 
door  opened,  and  there  were  also  "  many  opposers,"  and  both 
Whitefield  and  Wesley  were  more  than  once,  in  Christian 
Britain,  on  the  eve  of  a  summary  and  ferocious  martyrdom. 

All  these  three  eras  were  then  eras  of  moral  revolution* 


252  THE    PUBLICATIONS    OF 

It  is  a  familiar  fact  that  revolutions  produce  great  characters. 
Their  great  emergencies  awaken  feeling  and  develop  talent. 
Some  mighty  crisis  paralyzes  the  weaker  crowd,  and  sum- 
mons forth  the  master-spirit  who  can  meet  its  demands,  and 
reveals  thus  to  the  world  his  merits  and  his  powers.  And  it 
is  also  true,  that,  although  the  highest  works  of  science  do 
not  issue  from  such  times,  the  most  stirring  and  popular 
books  are  often  the  progeny  of  such  an  age  of  turmoil  and 
conflict.  These  orgasms  of  feeling,  that  shoot  through  the 
whole  frame  of  a  nation,  may  bring  out  much  that  is  crude 
and  extravagant,  but  they  also  lead  to  exertions  of  more  than 
wonted  power,  and  results  of  more  than  vulgar  splendor. 
The  best  efforts  of  the  best  writers  are  sometimes  traceable 
to  the  excitement  of  some  such  stirring  era.  Pascal's  Pro- 
vincial Letters,  in  which  wit,  argument,  and  eloquence  are 
so  splendidly  blended,  and,  leaning  on  each  other,  group 
themselves  around  the  cross  of  Christ,  could  not  have  been 
produced  in  the  holiday  leisure  of  some  peaceful  era.  It 
needed  the  fierce  controversies  in  which  Jansenism  lay  bleed- 
ing under  the  feet  of  triumphant  Jesuitism,  and  struggling 
as  for  its  life,  while  it  testified,  as  from  the  dust,  in  behalf 
of  many  of  the  great  truths  of  the  Gospel — it  needed,  we  say, 
such  a  conflict  and  such  a  peril  to  draw  out  a  production  so 
impassioned  and  so  powerful  even  from  the  mighty  heart  and 
the  massive  intellect  of  a  Pascal. 

There  are  works  that  seemingly  can  exist  only  as  the  birth 
of  the  throes  and  death-pangs  of  some  great  era  of  change 
and  moral  renovation.  Such  were  the  three  eras  to  which 
we  have  alluded,  and  their  character  was  imprinted  on  many 
of  the  works  they  produced,  and  which  this  Society  reprints 
and  disseminates.  No  other  age,  no  lighter  emergency 
could  have  called  forth  such  intellectual  strength  and  such 
depth  of  feeling,  and  made  the  volumes  so  well  fitted  as  they 
are  to  tell  upon  the  heart  of  an  entire  nation.  Works  then 
written  have  the  energy  of  the  conflict,  and  breathe  for  ever 
its  strong  passions.  Their  words  are  often  battles.  Had 
Bunyan  never  inhabited  a  dungeon,  we  question  whether  the 
Pilgrim's  Progress  would  have  had  its  beautiful  pictures  of 
the  land  of  Beulah,  a  land  of  freedom,  light,  and  beauty,  and 
we  doubt  whether  that  allegory  had  ever  existed.  Had  Bax- 
ter never  been  an  army  chaplain,  who  must  talk  strong  truths 
in  plain  terms,  we  question  whether  his  works  would  have 
had  all  their  passionate  energy  and  their  strong  simplicity. 


THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY.  253 

With  regard,  therefore,  to  those  portions  of  the  Society's 
publications  which  proceed  from  American  authors,  their 
origin  is  some  evidence  in  favor  of  their  adaptedness  to  our 
peculiar  wants.  With  regard  to  all  those  works  of  British 
origin  that  came  from  either  of  the  great  eras  upon  which 
we  have  remarked,  we  have  in  favor  of  their  influence  not 
only  the  character  of  the  writers,  but  the  character  of  the 
age  in  which  they  wrote  and  did  battle  for  the  truth  of  God 
as  they  believed  it. 

Taking  now  the  literature  of  the  Society,  as  prepared  for 
this  country  in  mass,  we  find  in  it  evidently  a  variety  and 
fulness  of  subjects  that  would  seem  to  meet  the  varied  de- 
mands of  the  church  and  the  nation.  For  missionary  litera- 
ture, it  has  the  memoirs  of  Brainerd,  Buchanan,  Schwartz, 
Henry  Martyn,  and  Harriet  Winslow.  Does  a  pastor  seek 
to  train  his  flock  to  higher  devotedness,  where  could  be  found 
a  better  manual  than  Baxter's  Saints'  Everlasting  Rest,  writ- 
ten, as  it  would  seem,  under  the  golden  sky  of  the  Delectable 
Mountains,  and  in  full  sight  of  the  Celestial  City  ?  Where 
better  companions  than  the  biographies  of  Leighton,  and 
Payson  and  Pearce,  and  J.  Brainerd  Taylor?  Against  infi- 
delity we  have  Bogue — the  work  that  was  read,  and  with 
some  considerable  impressions  of  mind,  by  Napoleon,  in  his 
last  days — and  Morison,  and  Keith,  and  the  treatises  of  Leslie 
and  Watson,  while  others,  on  the  same  subject  of  Christian 
evidences,  commend  themselves  as  the  works  of  writers  who 
were  themselves  recovered  from  infidelity,  as  the  writings 
of  Lyttelton,  West,  Jenyns,  and  our  countryman  Nelson. 
There  is  provision  for  every  age  :  for  the  child,  the  Society 
has  furnished  the  touching  biographies  of  Nathan  Dickerman, 
John  Mooney  Mead,  and  Mary  Lothrop,  with  the  juvenile 
works  of  Gallaudet,  and  some  of  those  by  the  Abbotts.  For 
those  who  love  profound  thought  it  has  Foster,  and  for  the 
lovers  of  brilliant  imagination  and  glowing  eloquence,  the 
German  Krummacher.  Of  the  Non-conformists  and  of  the 
contemporaries  of  Edwards,  we  have  already  spoken.  Few 
writers  of  our  time  have  caught  so  successfully,  on  some 
pages,  the  spirit  of  Baxter  as  J.  G.  Pike,  three  of  whose 
works  the  Society  republishes.  As  models  of  usefulness  in 
the  various  walks  of  life,  and  in  either  sex,  we  have  the  bi- 
ographies of  Normand  Smith,  the  example  of  the  Christian 
tradesman  ;  and  of  Harlan  Page,  the  private  church-member 
laboring  for  souls ;  of  Kiipin,  of  Hannah  Hobbie,  and  of 


254  THE    PUBLICATIONS    OF 

Caroline  Hyde.  The  child  just  tottering  from  its  cradle  is 
met  by  the  Society  with  the  half-cent  Scripture  Alphabet ; 
while,  for  the  last  stages  of  human  life,  they  have  Burder's 
Sermons  to  the  Aged,  printed  in  type  that  suits  it  to  the 
dimmer  eyes  of  old  age.  Furnished  at  every  variety  of  price, 
and  in  every  form  and  size,  as  are  the  Tracts  of  the  Society, 
the  Christian  traveller  who  would  scatter  the  seed  of  truth 
as  he  journeys,  and  the  Christian  father  who  would  furnish 
his  children  with  a  library  of  devout  and  wise  authors  ;  the 
Christian  minister  who  would  train  himself  and  others  to 
higher  devotedness  and  usefulness  ;  the  Christian  mother 
desiring  aid  to  order  her  useful  charge  aright,  and  the  young 
disciple  requiring  a  guide  to  the  formation  of  a  character  of 
intelligence  and  consistent  piety — all  find  their  wants  met. 
Against  Romanism  and  intemperance  the  Society  have  fur- 
nished a  quiver  of  polished  arrows  in  their  bound  volumes 
of  Tracts  on  each  subject,  in  addition  to  the  separate  volume 
of  Beecher  on  the  one,  and  of  the  lamented  Nevins  on  the 
other.  They  have  Mason's  Spiritual  Treasury  for  the  family 
altar  and  the  closet ;  and  for  the  pilgrim  gathering  up  his 
feet  into  his  couch  to  die,  they  have  the  Dying  Thoughts  of 
Baxter.  They  leave  behind,  after  the  funeral  ceremony  has 
been  performed,  the  Manual  of  Christian  Consolation,  by 
Flavel  the  Non-conformist,  and  Cecil  the  Churchman.  They 
instruct  the  active  Christian  with  Cotton  Mather's  "  Essays 
to  do  Good,"  the  book  that  won  the  praise  and  aided  to  form 
the  usefulness  of  our  own  Franklin.  They  assail  the  covet- 
ous and  hard-handed  professor  with  the  burning  energy  and 
eloquence  of  Harris'  Mammon.  But  the  time  fails  to  review 
separately  all  the  varied  themes  of  their  publications  and  the 
varied  channels  through  which  they  are  prepared  to  pour  the 
same  great  lesson  of  Christ  the  only  Saviour,  the  Sovereign 
and  the  Pattern  of  his  people. 

3.  But  what  evidence  have  we  that  these  volumes  are  fit- 
ted for  the  present  generation  of  men  in  other  lands  ? 
Many,  then,  of  this  class  of  publications  are  written  by  mis- 
sionaries abroad,  conversant  with  the  field  they  till,  and 
anxiously  and  prayerfully  addressing  themselves  to  its  wants. 
In  Burmah  and  Siam,  in  India  and  in  China,  the  Society  is 
thus  assailing  the  favorite  idols  and  delusions  of  the  heathen, 
in  the  manner  which  men  who  have  given  their  lives  to  the 
work  deem  most  suitable.  The  Society  is  thus,  at  the  same 
time,  proclaiming  the  Gospel  before  the  car  of  Juggernaut 


THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY.  255 

and  around  the  Areopagus  where  Paul  preached  ;  and  many 
of  their  Tracts  have  already  been  blessed,  to  the  conversion 
of  the  readers,  and  to  shake,  in  the  minds  of  thousands  be- 
sides, the  old  traditional  idolatry  received  from  their  fore- 
fathers. 

Others  of  these  compositions  are  translations  of  works 
written  in  England  or  America,  and  many  of  them  are  in  the 
number  of  the  Society's  English  publications.  It  may,  to 
some  minds,  seem  very  doubtful  that  any  work,  prepared 
originally  for  the  Christians  of  Great  Britain,  01  our  own 
land,  can,  by  any  possibility,  be  intelligible  or  useful  to  hea- 
then nations  trained  under  different  influences  and  strangers 
to  our  modes  of  thought  and  expression. 

But  it  should  be  remembered,  that  the  good  effects  of  some 
of  these  translations  have  been  put  beyond  doubt  by  the  tes- 
timony of  missionaries  as  to  the  interest  they  have  excited, 
and  even  by  the  conversion  of  some  of  the  heathen.  One 
of  the  works  of  Baxter — we  believe  it  was  his  Call — was 
translated  in  his  lifetime  by  our  own  Eliot  for  the  use  of  his 
Indian  converts  ;  and  a  youth,  the  son  of  one  of  their  chiefs, 
continued  reading  the  work  with  tears  on  his  death-bed. 
The  pastor  who  talked  to  the  carpet-weavers  of  Kiddermin- 
ster could,  it  seems,  speak  as  well  to  the  savage  hunters  and 
fishermen  of  Natick  and  of  Martha's  Vineyard.  The  Dairy- 
man's Daughter  was  early  translated  into  Russian  by  a  prin- 
cess of  that  country,  and  has  been  acceptable  and  useful. 
The  freeborn  English  maiden  that  lived  and  died  amid  the 
delightful  scenery  of  the  Isle  of  Wight  has  told  her  tale 
effectively  to  the  serfs  and  amid  the  snows  of  Russia.  Ful- 
ler's Great  Question  Answered,  another  of  the  Society's 
Tracts,  was  crowned  with  striking  success  in  a  Danish  ver- 
sion, and  it  was  found  that  the  pastor  of  the  inland  English 
village  of  Kettering  was  still  a  powerful  preacher  in  the  new 
garb  and  tongue  that  had  been  given  him  for  the  inhabitants 
of  Copenhagen.  Others  have  gone  yet  further.  We  name 
the  Pilgrim's  Progress  of  Bunyan  as  an  illustration,  because 
none  of  the  religious  works  of  Europe  has  been  so  widely 
translated.  In  English,  the  Society  has  printed  it  not  only 
in  the  ordinary  style,  but  in  the  raised  and  tangible  charac- 
ters used  by  the  blind.  Little  did  the  tinker  of  Elstow  ever 
dream  that  his  matchless  allegory  should  ever  be  translated 
into  the  tongue  of  the  false  prophet  Mahomet.  Yet  it  has 
appeared  in  Arabic  ;  and  Joseph  Wolff,  in  his  travels  in  Ye- 


256  THE    PUBLICATIONS    OF 

men,  distributed  copies  of  the  version  in  that  ancient  and 
widely-spoken  language.  In  seven  at  least,  if  not  in  more, 
of  the  dialects  of  India,  it  has  made  its  appearance  ;  in  the 
Oriya,  the  Tamul,  the  Hindustani  or  Urdu,  the  Mahrathi, 
the  Malay,  the  Bengali,  and  very  recently  in  the  Burman. 

Fears,  at  the  time  when  an  Indian  translation  was  first 
proposed,  that  its  European  ideas  and  imagery  would  be  un- 
intelligible to  the  native  of  the  East,  led  a  popular  female 
writer  to  prepare  in  its  stead  her  pilgrim  of  India,  with  its 
Hindoo  phrases  and  metaphors.  But  the  original  Pilgrim 
has  been  permitted  now  to  speak,  and  he  has  spoken  not  in 
vain.  The  number  of  the  London  Evangelical  Magazine  for 
the  present  month,  (Oct.  1842,)  contains  the  memoir  of 
Daniel,  a  Hindoo  convert,  written  by  himself.  From  this  it 
appears  that  the  work  of  Bunyan  was  a  powerful  instrument 
in  his  conversion  :  "  At  this  period  a  gentleman  put  into  my 
hand  a  book  called  the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  which  I  read. 
Partly  by  reading  this  book,  and  partly  by  the  remembrance 
of  all  the  labor  which  had  been  expended  on  me  at  Coimba- 
toor,  I  began  to  feel  that  the  Christian  religion  was  the  only 
true  religion,  and  that  Christ  was  the  only  sinless  Saviour." 
This  was,  probably,  the  Tamul  version. 

A  translation  was  made  by  the  British  missionaries  into 
the  Malagasy  language,  for  the  use  of  the  Christian  con- 
verts whom  God  granted  to  their  labors  in  the  island  of  Mad- 
agascar. Of  the  hold  which  the  volume  took  upon  their 
hearts,  we  may  judge  from  the  language  of  the  letters  ad- 
dressed by  some  of  these  converts  to  their  missionary  pastors 
when  expelled  from  the  island  :  "  We  are  impressed  and 
delighted  when  we  read  the  Pilgrim's  Progress."  And  at  a 
still  later  day,  when  the  storm  of  persecution  beat  yet  more 
heavily  upon  them,  and  some  were  executed  for  the  profes- 
sion of  their  faith,  it  is  said  that  while  awaiting  death  they 
felt  inexpressible  peace  and  joy,  and  said  one  to  another, 
"  Now  are  we  in  the  situation  of  Christian  and  Faithful, 
when  they  were  led  to  the  city  of  Vanity  Fair."  A  Euro- 
pean book,  thus  quoted  by  African  martyrs  when  about  to 
die,  must  be  of  singular  merit. 

The  same  book  has  been  translated  into  Finnish,  for  the 
use  of  the  region  verging  on  Lapland,  and  printed  in  Dutch, 
for  the  use  of  the  missions  in  South  Africa.  A  version  has 
been  made  into  Hawaiian  at  the  Sandwich  Islands ;  and  one 


THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY.  257 

in  Tahitian,  for  the  Society  Islands,  though  we  do  not  know 
that  the  latter  has  as  yet  been  published. 

A  book  which  could  thus  interest  the  fur-clad  peasantry  of 
the  frozen  North  in  their  smoky  huts,  and  the  tawny  Caffre 
or  Hottentot  in  the  midst  of  his  sandy,  sunburnt  plains  ; 
which  delights  in  the  cabins  of  our  own  West  and  in  the  far 
Hindustan,  must  have  some  elements  that  fit  it  for  use  every 
where.  The  nature  of  man  is  one  in  all  climes.  Conscience 
may  be  drugged  and  mutilated,  but  its  entire  extirpation  seems 
impossible,  and  it  lives  under  the  pressure  of  error  and  amid 
torpor,  to  witness  for  truth,  and  right,  and  God,  in  quarters 
where  our  unbelief  and  fear  would  expect  to  find  it,  if  not 
utterly  wanting,  at  least  utterly  inert.  The  same  heart  beats 
under  the  tattooed  skin  of  the  New  Zealander  as  under  the 
grease  and  ochre  with  which  the  Tambookie  of  South  Africa 
delights  to  adorn  his  person,  under  the  silks  of  the  Chinaman 
and  the  furs  of  the  Laplander.  It  has  every  where  the  same 
depravity,  that  no  grade  of  civilization  or  refinement  can  so 
adorn  as  to  lift  beyond  the  need  of  the  renewing  gospel,  and 
that  no  brutalism  can  so  degrade  as  to  put  below  the  reach 
of  the  same  efficacious  remedy.  Religion,  it  should  be  re- 
membered again,  is  not  mere  abstract  speculation  ;  it  is  also 
emotion.  With  the  heart  man  believeth.  Now  science  and 
literature,  strictly  so  called,  may  be  an  affair  of  certain  civ- 
ilized nations,  and  of  them  only  ;  but  poetry  and  passion  are 
of  all  lands  and  of  all  kindreds  of  the  earth.  And  how  largely 
do  these  enter  into  the  structure  of  the  Gospel,  of  the  book 
revealing  that  Gospel,  and  of  all  Christian  writings  modelled 
upon  that  Bible.  There  are,  it  must  be  allowed,  in  the  pro- 
duction of  Banyan's  genius,  excellences  and  peculiarities 
that  do  not  exist  to  an  equal  extent  in  many  of  the  other 
publications  of  the  Society,  adapting  it  to  interest  mankind 
in  every  grade  of  civilization  and  under  all  the  varieties  of 
custom  and  taste  that  culture  or  neglect,  error  or  truth  may 
have  produced.  Yet  it  will,  in  all  probability,  be  found, 
when  the  trial  shall  have  been  made  by  competent  transla- 
tors, that  many  other  of  the  favorite  books  of  British  and 
American  Christians  are  fitted  to  become  nearly  as  much  the 
favorites  of  the  converts  whom  the  grace  of  God  shall  gather 
in  the  ancient  East,  or  in  the  islands  of  the  sea. 

Our  hope,  that  much  of  the  literature  of  European  or 
American  origin  may  thus  become  at  once  available  for  the 
spiritual  wants  of  the  converts  from  heathenism,  rests  not  on 

34 


258  THE    PUBLICATIONS   OF 

the  peculiar  talent  of  the  works  so  much  as  on  their  subject 
and  structure.  Their  theme  is  Jesus  Christ,  the  character 
and  the  history  devised  by  infinite  wisdom,  with  the  express 
intention  of  winning  its  way  to  the  sympathies  of  man,  under 
all  the  varieties  of  complexion,  caste,  language,  laws  and  lit- 
erature. This  theme  has  proved  its  power  to  exorcise  super- 
stitions the  most  foul  and  inveterate,  and  to  raise  from  the 
deepest  and  most  hopeless  degradation.  Pervaded  and  sat- 
urated as  so  many  of  the  Society's  works  are  with  this  sub^ 
ject,  we  have  confidence  that  the  divine  grandeur  of  the  theme 
will,  to  some  extent,  compensate  for  the  defects  of  the  human 
authorship.  The  idols  of  all  lands  shall  totter  from  their 
shrines,  and  yet  be  broken  before  its  might ;  and  we  look 
for  the  shattering  of  all  by  the  faithful  and  full  presentation 
of  this  truth,  Christ  and  him  crucified — a  truth  that  is  to  be 
the  great  iconoclast  principle  of  the  age  ;  for  it  is  God's 
own  device,  and  carries  with  it  God's  own  promise  and  the 
irresistible  energy  of  his  benediction. 

We  have  reason,  again,  to  expect  the  adaptation  of  much 
of  the  religious  literature  of  our  own  country  and  Britain  to 
the  wants  of  the  foreign  missionary,  from  its  close  assimila- 
tion to  the  character  of  the  Scripture.  This  is  a  book  carry- 
ing one  of  the  evidences  of  its  divine  origin  upon  it,  in  its 
power  of  interesting  all  grades  of  society  and  all  ages  of 
mankind.  Far  as  any  religious  writer  becomes  penetrated 
by  its  spirit,  and  transfuses,  as  many  of  the  Society's  authors 
have  done,  its  imagery  and  train  of  thought  into  his  own 
compositions,  so  far  he  prepares  them  for  acceptableness  and 
favor  among  every  tribe  of  mankind.  If  the  Scriptures  look 
with  special  favor  on  any  class  of  our  race,  it  is  on  the  East- 
ern portion  of  the  world.  The  Bible  is  an  Oriental  book,  as 
far  as  it  is  the  book  of  any  one  region  or  race.  It  would 
have  been,  in  style  and  imagery,  a  very  different  volume  had 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  been  left  to  prepare  it.  And  as  far  as 
it  should  have  partaken  of  their  marked  peculiarities  it  would 
have  been  less  fitted  for  one  great  errand  it  has  in  this  age 
to  accomplish.  The  missions  of  our  times  are  pouring  back 
from  the  favored  West  and  from  the  tents  of  Japheth  the 
light  of  salvation  on  the  long-neglected  habitations  of  Shem, 
its  original  scats,  and  upon  the  millions  of  the  East.  It  is 
some  advantage,  then,  that  we  go  to  them  with  a  book  that, 
if  it  favor  any  class,  is  more  Eastern  than  Western  in  char- 
acter ;  and  that  we  carry  with  the  Bible  a  biblical   literature 


THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY.  259 

that,  from  the  book  on  which  it  has  been  founded,  has,  in 
many  of  its  specimens,  caught  a  tinge  of  similar  feelings,  and 
imagery,  and  style. 

In  that  body  of  religious  literature  whose  evangelical  and 
practical  character  we  have  thus  imperfectly  examined,  the 
Society  have  done  much.  But  it  would  be  doing  them  and 
their  objects  gross  injustice  to  suppose  that  they  present  it 
as  a  complete  body  of  religious  reading  for  all  the  wants  of 
the  age.  Its  publications  may  have  some  inequality  of  merit. 
What  collection  is  otherwise  ?  The  lingering  and  fltiul 
charities  of  the  churches  may  forbid  their  enlarging  it  as  they 
desire,  and  as  the  wants  of  our  own  and  foreign  lands  require. 
The  Non-conformist  literature  has  many  volumes  they  would 
gladly  add  to  their  existing  collection.  There  are  two  other 
great  eras  of  religious  conflict  and  effort,  from  the  literature 
of  which  the  London  Tract  Society  has  drawn  largely,  and 
this  institution  as  yet  not  at  all.  We  allude  to  the  era  of 
the  stormy  infancy  of  the  Scottish  National  Church,  and  the 
works  of  its  Rutherford,  its  Guthrie,  its  Binning,  its  Andrew 
Gray,  and  its  Durham.  The  other  greater  and  earlier  era 
is  that  of  the  English  Reformation.  Of  the  works  of  the 
English  reformers  our  British  brethren  have  published  sev- 
eral volumes.  As  to  the  present  availableness  of  this  latter 
literature,  we  are  aware  that  there  is  division  of  opinion  ;  but 
its  history  would  be  valuable,  if  not  its  remains. 

Nor  is  the  American  Tract  Society  to  be  judged  as  if  it 
had  completed  its  own  designs,  or  finished  its  mission  as 
respects  a  native  religious  literature.  Its  power  to  elicit 
works  drawn  up  with  peculiar  reference  to  our  position  and 
habits  as  a  people,  has  as  yet  been  shown  but  in  a  small  de- 
gree. The  churches  of  this  country  are  capable  of  much 
more,  and  need  much  more  ;  and  if  duly  sustained,  the  So- 
ciety may  proceed  in  this  work  to  a  point  far  beyond  the 
limit  of  its  present  attainments.  Will  the  churches  afford 
this  aid  ?  Here,  at  least,  they  will  have — if  they  choose,  by 
prayer,  and  effort,  and  liberality,  to  secure  it — they  will  have 
a  literature  all  that  they  can  wish,  as  to  its  national  adaptation. 

And  if  our  country  and  others  that  have  been  long  favored 
with  the  serene  and  pure  light  of  the  Gospel,  are  yet  to 
know  days  of  dark  and  stormy  controversy  with  error ;  if 
over  the  once  peaceful  encampments  of  our  churches  is 
spreading  the  hum  that  betokens  an  approaching  combat ; 
if,  as  some  fear,  we  are  entering,  in  our  times,  upon  a  stern 


260  THE    AMERICAN    TRACT    SOCIETY. 

and  close  conflict  with  Romanism  or  with  scepticism,  or  with 
both  ;  or  are  to  stand  up  for  our  national  morals  and  national 
existence  against  the  floods  of  a  frivolous  and  profligate  lit- 
erature, that  now  drowns  the  minds  of  our  youth  as  beneath 
a  rushing  deluge  of  inanity,  and  filth,  and  venom,  we  have| 
little  fear  as  to  the  result.  We  cannot  distrust  the  powers 
and  the  triumphs  of  Scripture,  the  safety  and  ultimate  vic- 
tories of  the  Church.  In  the  God  of  the  Bible  and  the  Head 
of  the  Church,  we  need  not  fear  to  place  the  most  unques- 
tioning and  imperturbable  confidence.  He  who  gave  the 
Bible  will  guard  the  gift ;  and  he  who  built  will  watch,  as 
with  a  wall  of  fire,  around  the  city  of  his  own  chosen  Jeru- 
salem. And,  from  all  the  past  history  of  the  Church,  we 
augur  that  out  of  this  or  any  other  conflict  that  maybe  await- 
ing us  in  the  interval  between  our  times  and  the  final  glory 
of  Christ's  kingdom,  there  may  grow  some  of  the  richest 
productions  of  that  literature  which  the  Church  is  yet  to 
enjoy ;  a  literature  as  yet  unwritten,  and  which  this  institu- 
tion, we  trust,  will,  with  others,  aid  in  educing,  diffusing,  and 
perpetuating.  Some  of  the  richest  legacies  which  sanctified 
genius  has  ever  bequeathed  to  the  Christian  church,  are  like 
that  more  cherished  portion  which  the  dying  patriarch  gave 
to  his  favorite  son,  his  Joseph  :  "  One  portion  above  thy 
brethren,  which  I  took  out  of  the  hand  of  the  Amorite  with 
my  sword  and  with  my  bow  ;"  the  spoils  plucked  as  out  of 
the  very  teeth  of  the  destroyer,  the  trophies  of  a  late  and 
hard-won  victory. 


INCREASE  OP  FAITH  NECESSARY  TO  THE  SUC- 
CESS OF  CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS. 

"But  having  hope,  when  your   faith    is   increased,  that    we 

bhall  be  enlarged   by  you  according   to   our  rule  abundantly,   to 
preach  the  gospel  in  the  regions  beyond  you." — 2  coi*.  x.  15,  16. 

The  language  of  the  Apostle  evidently  implies  a  gentle 
reprehension  of  the  Corinthian  church.  The  poverty  and 
imbecility  of  their  faith  embarrassed  him  in  his  ardent  aspi- 
rations after  more  extended  usefulness.  He  was  anxious  to 
enter  upon  a  new  field,  and  to  proclaim  the  Gospel  through- 
out other  and  more  destitute  regions.  But  he  must  await  in 
prayerful  hope  the  increase  of  their  faith,  and  at  their  hands 
expect  an  enlargement.  This  enlargement  might  be,  on 
their  part,  an  advancement  and  confirmation  in  Christian 
doctrine,  which  should  permit  him  to  transfer  the  charge  of 
these,  his  children  in  the  faith,  into  the  hands  of  less  skilful 
pastors  ;  or  a  rapid  growth  in  Christian  holiness,  which  should 
justify  the  Apostle  in  presenting  them  as  his  epistle,  to  be 
seen  and  read  of  all  men,  attesting  alike  the  power  of  the 
Gospel,  and  the  reality  of  his  mission.  Or  he  might  desire 
the  vindication  of  his  own  apostolical  character,  which  had 
been  cruelly  assailed  in  their  midst,  and  ask  the  transmission 
of  his  name,  with  its  well-won  honors,  to  the  neighboring 
heathen.  Or  it  had  been,  perhaps,  his  hope,  from  their  lib- 
erality and  wealth,  to  have  received  aid  in  his  missionary 
journeyings  ;  or  he  had  anticipated  from  their  position  in  a 
great  commercial  metropolis,  assistance  in  their  sending  the 
Gospel  to  other  havens  and  cities  of  the  empire.  Whether 
he  expected  from  their  increased  and  matured  faith,  any  one, 
or  the  union  of  all  these  advantages,  and  whatever  be  the 
decision  as  to  the  mode  in  which  enlargement  was  sought  by 
him,  one  fact  stands  forth  on  the  face  of  these  words,  mani- 
fest and  unquestionable.  He  was  now  fettered  in  his  plans 
of  benevolence,  and  it  was  from  the  Corinthian  disciples  that 


262  INCREASE    OF    FAITH    NECESSARY 

he  expected  his  release.  Either  from  their  confirmation  in 
the  truths  he  preached,  or  in  the  holiness  he  enjoined  and 
exemplified  ;  or  from  their  assertion  of  his  just  honors  as  an 
apostle  ;  from  the  bestowment  of  their  free  alms,  or  the  em- 
ployment of  their  mercantile  influence,  he  hoped  to  obtain  the 
removal  of  the  restraint  from  himself,  and  to  secure  for  their 
pagan  neighbors  blessings  untold  and  priceless.  The  ful- 
filment of  his  hope  depended  upon  their  progress  to  higher 
attainments  in  faith.  There  is  involved,  then,  in  these  words 
of  an  inspired  and  most  successful  missionary,  a  principle 
which  we  would  now  endeavor  to  bring  before  you,  that 

The  missionaries  of  the  church  require  at  her  hands,  for 
the  extension  and  success  of  their  efforts,  an  increase  of 
faith. 

Looking  to  the  divisions  and  scandals  he  had  so  sternly 
rebuked,  and  to  the  peculiar  temptations  of  the  infant  church, 
which  had  been  gathered  amid  the  luxury,  gayety,  and  profli- 
gacy of  the  licentious  Corinth,  we  might  have  expected,  from 
one  versed  as  was  Paul  in  the  weakness  of  our  nature,  and 
in  the  wiles  of  its  great  adversary,  that  he  would  have  chosen 
to  specify,  instead  of  the  one  evil  of  unbelief,  other  and  nu- 
merous impediments  to  his  success.  And  using  the  term 
here  employed  by  him,  as  we  too  often  do,  to  describe  a 
knowledge  merely  speculative  and  theoretical,  we  should 
have  supposed  that  in  a  community  indoctrinated  by  the  per- 
sonal labors  of  an  apostle,  as  well  as  in  the  churches  of  our 
own  age  and  land,  the  deficiencies  of  Christians  were  to  be 
sought,  rather  in  their  works  of  obedience,  than  in  the  amount 
of  their  faith.  Yet  such  was  not  the  fact  then.  Such  is  not 
the  root  of  the  evil  now.  It  is  in  faith  that  we  are  wanting. 
The  elder  and  parent  grace  is  maimed  and  infirm,  and  the 
whole  family  and  sisterhood  of  the  Christian  virtues  languish 
as  she  decays,  and  can  be  reanimated  only  by  her  restoration. 
Having  considered,  therefore, 

I.  The  nature  and  importance  of  true  faith, 

II.  The  intimate  connexion  between  its  higher  de- 
grees AND  THE  MISSIONARY  EFFORTS   OF  THE    CHURCH  Will 

naturally  follow  and  prepare  us  to  examine, 

III.  The  defective  faith  of  our  own   churches,  as 

INTERPOSING  A  HINDERANCE  TO  THE  TRIUMPHS  OF  THE  GOS- 
PEL  OVER  HEATHENISM. 

And  may  the  Father  of  lights,  by  His  own  Spirit  of  illu- 
mination and  power,  unfold  to  the  mind,  and  impress  upon 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  263 

the  heart,  the  humbling  but  the  salutary  truth  contained  in 
these  words. 

I.  The  importance  of  faith  may  be  discerned  from  the 
dignity  and  rank  assigned  it  throughout  the  New  Testament. 
In  the  commencement  and  at  the  close  of  our  Saviour's  min- 
istry ;  in  his  own  private  conference  with  the  anxious,  but 
irresolute  Nicodemus,  and  in  the  public  message  with  which 
his  apostles  were  charged,  as  he  sent  them  forth  to  the  evan- 
gelization of  the  world,  it  is  alike  represented  as  the  only 
mode — the  one  condition  of  salvation.  He  that  exercises  it 
is  not  condemned,  while  he  that  believeth  not  shall  be  damned. 
To  this  principle  is  ascribed  our  immunity  from  the  terrors 
of  the  law,  for  we  are  justified  by  faith.  As  a  shield,  it  re- 
pels the  fiery  darts  of  temptation  that  come  from  the  great 
adversary  of  God  and  man  ;  while  within,  it  purifies  the 
heart,  working  by  love  ;  and,  in  our  contest  with  the  ungodly 
precepts  and  example  of  our  fellow-men,  "  this  is  the  victory 
that  overcometh  the  world,  even  our  faith."  The  long  and 
glorious  list  of  its  strifes  and  its  trophies,  contained  in  the 
closing  portion  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  commences 
with  the  announcement  that  faith  is  the  substance  of  things 
hoped  for,  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen  ;  and  is  terminated 
with  the  triumphant  recapitulation  that  all  these,  the  worthies 
of  the  earlier  dispensations,  obtained  their  good  report  through 
the  same  simple,  but  mighty  principle — that  of  faith. 

And  although  the  world  are  accustomed  to  dispute  the 
necessity  of  this  principle,  when  exercised  respecting  the 
realities  of  a  world  as  yet  hidden  and  invisible,  they  are  per- 
petually employing  it  with  regard  to  the  visible  but  transient 
scenery  of  the  present  life.  Compelled  to  give  their  faith  to 
testimony  as  to  those  things  which  might  be  seen,  and  often 
giving  it  even  where  they  might  substitute  personal  observa- 
tion for  faith  in  the  evidence  of  others  ;  they  refuse  to  extend 
it  to  those  objects  which,  from  their  very  nature,  cannot  be- 
come the  subjects  of  immediate  vision  and  examination. 
Yielding  credence  to  the  testimony  of  their  fellow-mortals, 
though  the  witnesses  are  alike  fallible  and  perfidious,  they 
refuse  it  to  the  revelation  of  their  God.  Preferring  to  give 
it  where  it  is  often  not  required,  (did  they  choose  to  employ 
their  own  natural  faculties,)  they  withhold  it  where  it  is 
inevitably  necessary.  All  the  commerce  of  this  world  is 
predicated  on  the  faith  which  man  puts  in  the  skill,  integrity, 
and  diligence  of  his  fellow-man  ;  and  a  writing,  of  which  he 


264  INCREASE  OF  FAITH  NECESSARY 

never  saw  the  author,  shall  be  to  him  a  sufficient  warrant  for 
transmitting,  far  beyond  his  own  sight  and  control,  his  whole 
property.  By  the  exercise  of  a  just  and  sober  faith  in  the 
testimony  brought  into  her  halls,  the  national  jurisprudence 
administers  to  our  citizens  the  redress  of  their  wrongs,  and 
the  punishment  of  their  crimes.  The  learning  dispensed  in 
our  colleges  is,  by  the  mass  of  minds,  received  without  per- 
sonal examination,  upon  the  credit  given  to  the  ability  and 
honesty  of  previous  investigators.  And  all  education,  whether 
in  the  most  recondite  science,  or  in  the  most  humble  and 
handicraft  art,  proceeds  upon  the  faith  which  the  pupil  is 
required  to  exercise  in  the  superior  skill  of  his  instructor, 
and  in  the  value  of  the  knowledge  his  teacher  is  preparing 
to  communicate. 

It  is  only  by  the  confidence  they  have  learned  to  place  in 
the  narratives  of  the  traveller,  that  the  majority  of  society 
know  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  country,  of  which  they  are 
themselves  the  inhabitants ;  or  that  they  can  form  any  idea 
of  the  great  and  magnificent  cities,  the  goodly  prospects,  and 
the  splendid  wonders  that  adorn  some  foreign  and  unseen 
coast.  And  with  regard  to  the  facts  which  we  have  thus 
gathered,  we  feel  no  suspicion,  but  use  them  as  the  current 
coin  of  the  mind,  both  in  our  private  meditations  and  our 
social  intercourse,  without  fear  as  to  their  genuineness  and 
validity.  Even  the  sceptic,  loud  and  boisterous  in  his  rejec- 
tion of  all  faith,  as  being  an  invasion  of  the  province,  and  but 
a  usurpation  upon  the  rights  of  human  reason,  is  most  rigid 
and  constant  in  exacting  from  his  trembling  child  an  obedi- 
ence to  his  will,  and  a  subjection  to  his  opinions,  which  can 
rest  only  upon  the  faith,  the  tacit  but  implicit  faith,  which  he 
requires  his  family  to  exercise  in  his  superior  wisdom  and 
larger  experience. 

And  if  it  be  objected,  that  the  faith  of  the  gospel  diffeis 
widely  from  that  which  we  so  readily  and  commonly  render, 
in  that  it  brings  to  our  minds  deep  and  difficult  mysteries,  we 
answer  that  it  would  be  less  evidently  the  work  of  God,  if  it 
did  not  come,  contradicting  the  first  and  rasher  conclusions 
of  human  ignorance.  It  would  be  a  departure  from  the  an- 
alogy which  exists  among  all  the  works  of  our  God,  did  it 
only  reveal  what  man  had  previously  conjectured,  and  were 
Faith  employed  merely  to  endorse  and  register,  in  silent  ac- 
quiescence, the  rescripts  which  had  been  prepared  for  her 
by  human  reason.     And  even  in  the  sciences  of  this  world, 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  265 

narrow  and  near  as  is  the  field  of  their  labors,  there  are  the 
same  inscrutable  yet  inevitable  difficulties,  of  which  the  scep- 
tic complains  in  religion.  We  expect  it  of  a  cultivated  and 
advanced  science,  that  it  should  assail  and  overturn  many 
opinions,  which  to  the  first  glance  of  ignorant  presumption 
seem  indisputable  truths.  Contradicting  the  first  and  incom- 
plete testimony  of  our  senses  and  the  general  impressions  of 
mankind,  Geography  comes  back  from  her  voyages  of  dis- 
covery with  the  annunciation  that  the  earth  is  not  an  extended 
plain,  but  one  vast  sphere.  And  though  the  eye  sees  no 
motion,  and  the  foot  feels  no  unsteadiness,  and  no  Jarring  is 
perceived  within  or  around  us,  Astronomy  comes  back  to 
the  inquirer  with  the  startling  assurance,  that,  notwithstanding 
all  these  seeming  evidences  to  the  contrary,  the  earth  on 
which  he  reposes  is  ceaselessly  and  most  rapidly  whirling 
along  its  trackless  path  in  the  heavens ;  and  that,  moment 
by  moment,  he  is  borne  along  through  the  fields  of  space 
with  a  fearful  and  inconceivable  velocity.  And  when,  from 
further  wanderings,  but  on  better  testimony — when  from  a 
higher  and  stranger  world,  but  with  fuller  evidence  and  with 
more  indubitable  tokens  of  her  veracity,  Faith  comes  back, 
bringing  assurances  that  tally  not  in  all  things  with  our  pre- 
conceived conjectures,  shall  she  be  chidden  and  blasphemed 
for  the  difficulties  that  arise  from  our  own  ignorance  ?  Without 
the  mysteries  of.  the  Gospel,  revelation  would  be  unlike  all 
the  other  provinces  of  human  knowledge,  and  the  domains 
of  Faith  would  be  dissimilar  from  all  the  rest  of  the  handi- 
work of  God. 

But  although  the  importance  of  faith  is  thus  apparent  from 
the  rank  assigned  it  in  the  scriptures,  and  from  its  necessity 
even  in  the  petty  concernments  of  this  present  life,  we  shall 
learn  to  appreciate  true  belief  yet  more  highly,  when  we  see 
mankind,  by  a  heedless  but  perpetual  infatuation,  allowing 
themselves  in  errors  the  most  absurd  and  dangerous,  with 
regard  to  its  character  and  claims.  By  some  it  is  confounded 
with  a  blind  and  irrational  credulity,  although  evangelical 
faith  is  based  only  on  evidence  the  most  satisfactory  and  suf- 
ficient ;  and  although  the  book  of  God,  when  demanding  our 
credence,  proffers  to  the  inquirer  testimony,  not  merely  abun- 
dant, but  overwhelming,  as  to  the  nature  of  its  authorship. 
It  is  as  adverse  to  the  character  of  scriptural  faith  to  believe 
without  a  divine  warrant,  upon  authority  that  is  merely  tra- 
ditionary and  human,  as  to  refuse  the  assent  of  the  soul  where 

35 


266  L  INCREASE    OF    FAITH    NECESSARY 

God  has  spoken.  True  Faith  is  not  more  allied  to  supersti- 
tion than  she  is  to  scepticism  ;  and,  determined  as  he  is  to 
believe  all  that  God  has  testified,  the  Christian,  wherever 
the  oracle  is  silent,  suspends  his  decision,  and  anxiously  ex- 
cludes from  his  creed  all  the  inventions  of  man,  whether  they 
come  from  the  school,  the  synod,  or  the  council. 

Others  delight  to  speak  of  faith  in  the  religion  of  our  Lord, 
as  if  it  were  but  an  opinion,  and  the  religion  it  embraces  but 
a  hypothesis,  of  little  practical  moment  or  influence  :  while 
on  the  contrary,  the  faith  of  the  Gospel  is  as  rigid  and  exper- 
imental in  its  character  as  the  strictest  science  of  the  schools. 
It  makes  no  arbitrary  assumptions,  rests  on  no  disputed  axi- 
oms, but,  upon  the  foundation  of  facts  of  the  most  impressive 
and  varied  character,  it  builds  up,  patiently  and  surely,  its 
doctrines  and  its  precepts  ;  invites  the  most  searching  scrutiny 
into  the  testimonials  which  it  adduces  ;  and  having  by  them 
established  its  first  principles,  gives  not  only  for  its  funda- 
mental axioms,  but  for  its  every  inference,  and  for  each  sub- 
sequent deduction,  the  word  of  a  God.  As  well  might  we 
call  arithmetic  or  history  a  mere  theory,  as  to  apply  that  title 
to  the  religion  which  is  embraced  by  our  faith.  Do  the  self- 
satisfied  philosophers  of  this  world  tell  us  of  the  necessity  of 
facts  ?  We  answer,  the  incarnation,  the  personal  character, 
the  crucifixion  and  resurrection  of  the  Saviour,  are  facts  most 
fully  proved,  and  standing  alone,  would  be  in  themselves 
sufficient  to  prove  the  divinity  of  the  revelation  that  is  en- 
twined about  them,  and  of  which  they  constitute  the  central 
supports,  the  chief  and  favorite  theme.  And  every  convert, 
ransomed  by  the  power  of  this  faith  from  the  tyranny  of  evil 
habits,  affords  in  himself  a  new  fact,  augmenting  the  mass  of 
her  evidences,  and  swelling  her  far-spreading  and  splendid 
"cloud  of  witnesses." 

Nor  are  those  men  safer  or  wiser  than  the  undisguised 
scoffer,  who,  professing  to  receive  the  religion  of  the  Bible, 
flatter  themselves  that  a  mere  assent  of  the  understanding  to 
the  historical  portions  of  the  record,  constitutes  that  faith 
which  shall  justify  at  the  bar,  and  admit  them  to  the  heaven 
of  Jehovah.  The  Bible  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  whole,  and 
as  such  is  to  be  received  and  obeyed.  The  Gospel  is  a  code 
of  laws,  no  less  than  a  volume  of  annals.  It  has  not  only 
narratives,  but  precepts,  and  asks  the  consent  of  the  whole 
man,  and  his  entire  soul,  to  its  undivided  and  unmutihited 
Contents.     And  as  that  man  could  not  maintain  his  arrogant 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  267 

pretensions,  who  should  claim  the  honors  of  devoted  patriotism 
merely  because  he  had  studied  intently  the  annals  of  his 
country's  history,  whilst  he  was  trampling  upon  her  laws, 
and  imprinting  every  leaf  of  her  statute-book  with  the  hoof 
of  swinish  indulgence,  thus  must  the  man  fail  of  sustaining 
his  claim  to  the  character  of  Christ's  disciple,  who,  professing 
to  credit  and  revere  his  record,  treads  down  into  the  mire  his 
laws,  and  has  but  the  faith  of  historical  assent  for  the  narra- 
tive, without  the  faith  of  love  for  the  precepts,  and  the  faith 
of  affectionate  conformity  for  the  character  of  the  Saviour. 
The  Bible  contains  not  only  the  story  of  our  creation,  ruin, 
and  recovery,  but  it  includes  as  well  the  indictment  of  our 
crimes,  and  the  proclamation  of  our  pardon  ;  and  there  is  no 
tjue  reception  of  the  history,  unless  there  be  also,  personally, 
the  humble  confession  of  the  imputed  guiltiness,  and  the 
grateful  pleading  of  the  proffered  discharge. 

Equally  erroneous,  and  chargeable  with  a  kindred  folly,  is 
the  man,  who,  passing  beyond  the  vain  figment  of  a  faith 
merely  historical,  professes  to  receive  the  whole  system  of 
revelation,  in  its  doctrinal,  no  less  than  its  narrative  portions, 
and  triumphing  in  the  orthodoxy  of  his  tenets,  seems  anxious 
to  shelter  himself  from  the  practical  influence  of  faith,  by 
pleading  the  freeness  of  the  salvation  it  brings.  The  whole 
necessity  of  salvation  grew  out  of  the  practical  depravity  of 
man's  nature,  and  the  whole  errand  of  the  Bible  was  but  the 
restoration  of  practical  holiness.  For  this  end  prophets  and 
apostles  wrote  ;  for  this  it  was  that  a  Saviour  descended  and 
bled — rose,  and  reigns,  to  furnish,  to  bestow,  and  to  fulfil  that 
Bible.  And  until  this  effect  be  wrought,  nothing  is  gained  ; 
and  if  this  be  refused,  the  very  object  and  intention  of  the 
religion  is  rejected.  It  is  surely  vain  toil  to  implant  in  the 
mind  a  faith,  the  vital  germ  of  which  is  carefully  removed,  a 
dead  root,  which  shall  never  send  forth  the  springing  leaf,  or 
bear  the  ripened  fruit. 

An  error  now  popular,  and  not  less  fatal,  is  one  which  the 
sceptic  has  borrowed  from  the  armory  and  champions  of  the 
truth.  It  consists  in  a  perversion  of  the  great  scriptural  truth, 
that  it  is  God  who  worketh  in  us  to  will  and  to  do,  and  that 
all  our  thoughts  are  under  his  control.  Using  the  theological 
labors  of  Edwards  for  a  purpose,  which  that  holy  and  master 
mind  never  intended,  the  advocates  of  this  dangerous  error 
contend  that  our  belief  is  beyond  our  control,  that  faith  is  not 
voluntary,  and  unbelief  is  therefore  not  criminal :  forgetting, 


268  INCREASE    OF    FAITH    NECESSARY 

that,  though  a  gift  of  God,  faith  is  withal  an  act  or  habit  of 
the  human  mind  ;  that,  like  every  other  virtue,  it  is  on  the  one 
hand,  a  boon  of  heaven,  and  on  the  other,  the  exercise  of 
unfettered  human  agency — that  it  is  the  natural  result  of 
evidence  duly  and  impartially  considered,  and  that  no  man 
can  be  guiltless  who  wilfully  turns  away  from  the  contempla- 
tion of  that  evidence.  The  religion  of  God  asks  but  a  ver- 
dict according  to  the  weight  of  proof  which  she  brings.  To 
prevent  the  admission  of  that  evidence,  or  wilfully  to  pro- 
nounce a  decision  against  its  weighty  and  sufficient  testimony, 
would  not  be  deemed  guiltless  in  any  cause  that  should  be 
brought  before  an  earthly  tribunal ;  nor  shall  it  be  held  a 
venial  offence  at  the  bar,  and  by  the  laws  of  an  insulted 
Deity. 

From  the  errors  which  human  perverseness  has  invented 
to  obscure  the  character  of  faith,  we  turn  to  review  its  true 
nature  and  office.  It  is  most  simple,  as  much  so  as  the  con- 
fidence of  a  prattling  child  in  his  father's  kindness  and  wis- 
dom ;  yet  at  the  same  time  as  expansive  in  its  views,  as  the 
loftiest  science  that  ever  tasked  the  powers  of  a  created  intel- 
lect. It  is  but  a  hearty  assent  to  the  whole  testimony  of 
God — a  submission  of  the  entire  soul,  not  of  the  intellect 
only,  but  also  of  the  affections  and  the  imagination,  to  the 
testimony  of  God  ;  whether  that  testimony  be  employed  in 
prescribing  a  duty,  or  in  establishing  a  privilege.  It  is  the 
acknowledgment  of  human  ignorance,  united  with  the  pro- 
fession of  confidence  in  Divine  wisdom,  and  of  subjection  to 
Divine  authority.  Making  no  reservations,  prescribing  no 
terms  of  limitation,  claiming  no  power  of  revoking  or  abridg- 
ing its  grant,  it  is  a  surrender  of  the  intelligent  spirit  to  the 
word  of  God  as  its  rule  and  its  stay  ;  in  conformity  to  it  as 
the  one  standard  of  human  conduct,  and  in  dependence  upon 
it  as  the  only  fitting  nutriment  of  the  spiritual  life.  It  thus 
restores  again  the  communication  which  at  the  fall  was  sev-j 
ered.  In  his  temptation  Satan  persuaded  our  parents  to 
discredit  the  testimony  of  God  ;  and  the  consequent  inter- 
ruption of  faith  was  the  hewing  away  of  that  channel,  through 
which  they  had  heretofore  received  from  their  God  know- 
ledge, truth,  and  love.  The  human  mind  became  at  once  an 
exhausted  and  rifted  reservoir,  "  a  broken  cistern,"  into  which 
no  longer  welled  the  outgushing  streams  from  "  the  Foun- 
tain of  living  waters."  By  faith  the  communion  is  restored, 
and  man  is  again  the  dependent  and  pupil  of  his  God. 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  269 

It  is  his  natural  and  rightful  state,  not  for  this  life  only,  but 
forever.  The  apostle,  when  enumerating  the  graces  that 
abide,  has  spoken  of  faith  as  if  it  too  continued.  Indeed,  the 
very  nature  of  a  created  and  limited  intelligence,  involves  the 
necessity  of  continued  faith.  Long  as  we  are  not  omnipres- 
ent, and  cannot  perceive  with  our  own  eyes  what  is  every 
where  transacted — long  as  we  are  not  omniscient,  and  there 
are  portions  of  knowledge,  which  we  have  not  yet  acquired — ■ 
long  as  man  is  not  invested  with  the  attributes  of  the  Deity, 
so  long  must  we  depend  upon  His  testimony  for  the  truth  of 
that  which  He  has  seen  and  we  have  not  seen  ;  so  long  must 
\ve  learn  from  Him  the  nature  of  that  which  He  has  known, 
but  which  we  may  know  only  from  his  words.  The  perfec- 
tion of  the  heavenly  world  does  not  imply  illimitable  know- 
ledge, either  as  to  the  present  or  the  future  ;  and  as  to  all 
those  portions  of  God's  ways,  which  thus  remain  concealed 
from  our  personal  examination,  the  spirits  of  just  men  made 
perfect  will,  with  their  first-born  brethren,  the  angels  that 
have  kept  their  original  estate,  remain  the  pensioners  of 
faith,  dependent  upon  the  declarations  of  God  for  continual 
instruction. 

And  how  glorious  are  the  objects  which  faith  brings  into 
the  mind  of  man,  even  during  his  sojourn  here.  He  learns 
from  her  the  secret  of  his  own  misery  and  guiltinesss,  and  its 
remedy.  He  is  told  of  a  law  condemning  irrevocably  for  the 
first  offence,  yet  now  fully  satisfied  for  his  hourly  infraction 
of  its  precepts — a  Saviour  divine  to  redeem  and  human  to 
compassionate — a  salvation  not  of  his  own  procurement — ■ 
the  Spirit  of  God  descended  to  be  his  teacher  and  consoler — 
troubles  sanctified — snares  broken — and  an  eternity  of  purity 
and  blessedness  made  his  certain  inheritance  ;  and  are  not 
these  truths  of  surpassing  splendor  and  inestimable  worth  ? 
They  enter  into  the  soul,  not  so  much  destroying  as  be-dwarf- 
ing  its  former  ideas,  and  the  original  furniture  of  the  mind, 
which  it  has  obtained  from  the  knowledge  and  literature  of 
this  world.  Faith  has  suddenly  widened  the  mental  horizon, 
letting  in  the  vision  of  realities  before  present,  but  hitherto 
unseen.  Or  rather,  as  has  been  beautifully  said,  it  is  the 
floating  into  view  of  another  and  a  lovelier  world,  with  its 
glories  and  its  harmony  drowning  the  din  and  beclouding  the 
splendor  of  these  terrestrial  scenes. 

The  believer  judges  by  a  new  standard  ;  sees  by  a  new  and 
heaven-descended  light ;  and  lo,  in  the  change,  "  all  things 


270  INCREASE    OF    FAITH    NECESSARY 

have  become  new."     And  though  the  men  of  this  world  may 
question  and  deride  the  renovation,  because  the  man's  earthly 
condition,  and  the  powers  of  his  mind  remain  apparently  the 
same  ;  it  is  evident  to  those  who  will  reason,  that  the  man  is 
essentially  renewed  ;  for  his  views,  his   feelings,  his  hopes 
and  fears,  his  prospects  and   his  purposes,  his   conduct  and 
language,  have  undergone  a  marked  and  strange  modification. 
True  it  is,  the  man's  garb  is  still  coarse,  and  his  person  un- 
gainly, and  his  mind  is  not  graced  with  the  refinements   and 
adornments  of  education  ;  but  the  change  is  as  yet  merely 
initial.     Death   and   the   resurrection   shall    consummate   it. 
And  even  already  the  internal   process   is  to  his   own   mind 
alike  evident  and  delightful  ;  and  with  tears  of  gratitude  he 
receives  it  as  the  earnest  of  that  thorough  renovation,  which 
shall  transform  him,  body,  soul,  and  spirit,  into  the   likeness 
of  his  Lord.     Thus  might  we   imagine  an   aged  and  lonely 
cottager,  musing  at  nightfall  in  his  desolate  home  upon   the 
partner  of  his  bosom,  now  tenanting  the  grave,  and  his  chil- 
dren, who  have  long  since  wandered   from  his   hearth  to  a 
distant  land,  and  are  there  regardless  or  ignorant  of  the  sor- 
rows with  which  his  declining  years  are  darkened.     And  as 
he  cowers  over  his  scanty  fire,  the  unbidden  tear  will  fall,  and 
his  heart  is  full  of  the  bitterness  of  despair.     But  enter  with 
the  unexpected  tidings  that  his  children  live  ;  that,  prospered 
and  wealthy,  they  are  yet  affectionate  ;  that  their  hearts  still 
yearn  towards  their  early  home  and  the  parent  who  holds  it; 
that    they  are  even  now  on  their  way  to  soothe  and  gladden 
his  few  remaining  days  :   and   although   you  have  made   no 
immediate  change  in  the  man's  lot — although   the   hovel   is 
yet  dark  and  cold,  and  the  embers  emit  but  the  same  dull  and 
saddening  light  ;   the  whole  scene  is  changed  to  his  eyes,  and 
instead  of  its  former  desolateness,  it  has  become  radiant  with 
the  lustre  of  his   new-found   happiness.     A  new  element  is 
poured  into  his  mind,  and   the   faith  of  your  message  has 
changed  his  whole  soul.     Is  there  no  reality,  no  enjoyment 
in  this  translation  from  despondency  to  hope,  from  comfort- 
less and  unpitied   helplessness  to  the  glad  expectation  of  at- 
tached and  watchful  children?     Yes;  let  his  lot  remain  long 
but  what  it  had  been,  he  feels,  and  you  cannot  but  feel,  that 
the  credence   given  to  your  tidings   has  renewed   his   youth 
within  him,  and  thrown  a  new  coloring  over  the  whole  scene 
of  squalid  poverty  that  surrounds   him.     And,  if  you  deny 
not  the  reality  of  the  happiness  because  of  the  absence  or 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  271 

present  delay  of  any  outward  change,  should  you  dispute  the 
reality  of  the  believer's  peace,  because  as  yet  he  is  but  the  ex- 
pectant heir,  and  not  the  joyous  possessor,  of  a  heavenly 
mansion  ? 

Of  a  principle  thus  efficient  and  delightful,  what  shall  secure 
the  preservation  and  increase  ?  Divine  truth  is  its  aliment, 
and  the  Holy  Spirit  its  author  and  upholder.  In  the  lan- 
guage of  scripture  it  will  be  observed  that  the  term  faith,  (as 
in  the  instance  of  the  exhortation  to  contend  earnestly  for  it, 
as  it  was  once  delivered  to  the  saints,)  is  employed  not  only 
in  the  sense  above  given,  but  also  to  describe  a  system  of 
doctrines  ;  but  it  is  as  the  food  of  that  spiritual  principle 
which  we  have  endeavored  to  describe.  And  as  the  principle 
of  life,  and  the  mode  or  means  by  which  it  is  sustained,  may 
be,  and,  in  common  speech,  often  are  confounded  ;  so  is  the 
same  word  used  in  the  New  Testament  to  signify  both  the 
truth  received,  and  the  temper  or  habit  of  mind  receiving  it. 
But  the  two  dissimilar  ideas  are  not  to  be  blended  ;  nor  are 
we  to  suppose  that  the  form  of  sound  doctrine  will  necessarily 
insure  a  living  faith  in  the  heart.  The  experiment,  often  and 
anxiously  repeated,  has  ever  failed.  Creeds  and  confessions 
have  been  adjusted  and  balanced  with  the  utmost  nicety  of 
discrimination,  and  with  the  greatest  precision  of  language. 
But  in  the  church  at  Geneva,  planted  and  watered  by  the 
cares  of  Calvin  and  Beza,  and  in  the  English  Presbyterians, 
the  descendants  of  the  holy  non-conformists,  it  has  been  but 
too  fully  proved,  that  correct  symbols  of  faith  may  be  inher- 
ited from  a  pious  ancestry  and  for  a  time  be  retained  with 
great  reverence,  but  without  any  portion  of  the  indwelling 
spirit  which  once  framed  and  pervaded  them.  Indeed,  in  the 
history  of  Protestant  Germany,  it  has  been  found  that  the 
fallen  and  corrupted  fragments  of  a  traditionary  "  form  of 
sound  words,"  have  been  most  prolific  in  the  production  of 
heresies,  alike  strange  and  revolting.  The  fat  and  heavy  soil 
of  an  inert  and  "  dead  orthodoxy,"  was  to  that  national  church 
the  hot-bed  of  scepticism,  nurturing  errors  of  the  rankest 
growth,  and  the  most  deadly  nature.  The  stubble,  which  had 
well  sustained  the  former  and  the  proper  harvest,  but  served 
to  enrich  the  field  for  an  after-growth  of  weeds  the  most  nox- 
ious and  luxuriant.  However  useful  in  its  place,  (and,  pro- 
perly employed,  its  usefulness  is  great,)  the  most  correct  and 
scriptural  creed  is  but  the  outward  and  inanimate  portraiture 
of  an  inward  and  living  faith ;  and  it  is  as  idle  to  expect  that 


372  INCREASE    OF    FAITH    NECESSARY 

confessions  and  symbols,  alone  and  unaided,  should  create 
faith,  as  to  imagine  that  a  definition  of  honesty  and  benevo- 
lence, rigid  and  accurate,  should  of  itself  be  sufficient  to  re- 
form the  inmates  of  our  prisons. 

"  Leviathan  is  not  so  tamed." 

It  is  not  with  such  weapons  that  the  enemy  is  to  be  van- 
quished, or  a  living  faith  perpetuated  from  age  to  age.  The 
affections,  no  less  than  the  intellect,  must  be  reached  and 
won.  The  continual  interposition  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the 
renewed  and  personal  application  of  truth  to  the  human  con- 
science, are  requisite  to  attain  the  end.  And  it  is  only  from 
a  personal  faith,  in  all  her  members,  thus  produced — thus 
fostered — and  continually  increasing,  that  the  church  can 
expect  prosperity.  It  is  thus  that  she  is  to  be  prepared  for 
conflict  with  her  internal  foes,  and  for  the  subjugation  of  new 
territories  to  the  obedience  of  the  cross.  From  a  faith  thus 
established  and  made  general,  what  may  not  be  hoped — 
what  conquest  shall  seem  too  arduous,  and  what  peril  too 
fearful  ? 

We  have  seen  the  dignity  of  faith  and  its  simplicity  ;  the 
errors  which  misrepresent  and  assail  it ;  its  nature  ;  the  mag- 
nificence of  its  effects  ;  its  necessity  and  eternity  ;  and  the 
mode  of  its  preservation.     It  remains  now  to  examine, 

II.  The  intimate  connection  existing  between  this 

FAITH   AND  THE   MISSIONARY  EFFORTS  OF   THE   CHURCH. 

Having  observed  that  this  principle  is  the  source  of  know- 
ledge, and  the  parent  of  motives  and  feelings  to  the  Christian, 
it  is  at  once  evident  that  the  largeness  or  the  narrowness  of 
the  knowledge  thus  gained,  the  weakness  or  the  strength  of 
the  feelings  thus  excited,  and  of  the  motives  which  are  in  this 
mode  implanted,  will  constantly  affect  the  character  of  all 
the  Christian's  doings,  but  especially  those  which  depend  most 
upon  faith  for  their  inception  and  completion — his  doings  in 
behalf  of  his  impenitent  fellow-men.  \ 

Upon  the  enterprises  of  the  church,  it  is  immediately  ap- 
parent, whether  the  faith  of  the  believers  who  compose  that 
body  is  in  a  state  of  feebleness  and  declension,  or  of  energy 
and  growth,  lie  who  looks  much  to  the  parting  command- 
ment of  his  Lord  for  the  universal  proclamation  of  his  truth, 
and  much  to  the  repeated  assurance  of  his  Lord  that  his  truth 
shall  prove  itself  mighty,  and  his  word  not  return  void,  will 
be  prepared  to  hope  and  to  attempt  much,  in  obedience  to  the 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  273 

commandment  and  in  inheritance  of  the  promise.  He,  on 
the  contrary,  who  sees  eternity  but  indistinctly,  seldom  and 
afar,  and  whose  faith  takes  but  short  and  occasional  flights 
into  the  enduring  world  of  realities  that  surrounds  us,  will  be 
prone  to  exhibit  in  his  plans  timidity  and  despondency,  in 
his  efforts  remissness  and  apathy.  And  if  we  look  to  the 
period  when  the  limits  of  the  church  were  most  rapidly  and 
widely  extended,  it  will  be  found  not  the  era  when  the  world- 
ly power,  the  learning  and  the  wealth  of  the  church  were  at 
their  highest  elevation,  but  in  the  age  when,  though  lacking 
all  these,  by  the  energy  of  an  overmastering  faith,  she  rose 
superior  to  every  impediment,  and  destitute  of  all  earthly  aid 
and  encouragement,  dared  to  hope  in  God.  Wise  in  His 
wisdom,  and  strong  in  His  might,  she  devised  her  plans  of 
conquest  upon  the  broad  and  magnificent  basis  of  the  Sa- 
viour's promises,  and  then,  in  humility,  diligence,  and  simple 
devotion,  called  upon  the  Saviour's  faithfulness  to  accomplish 
the  plans  His  own  word  had  warranted,  and  His  own  Spirit 
incited.  And  in  most  of  the  great  revivals  of  faith  and  god- 
liness in  the  modern  church,  it  will  be  discovered  that  the 
rising  flood  of  religious  feeling  has  opened  anew,  or  found 
and  followed  the  already  open  channel  of  missionary  enter- 
prise. The  revival  of  religion  granted  to  the  early  labors  of 
the  Puritan  fathers  in  New  England,  saw  also  the  rise  of  Eliot 
and  the  Mayhews,  the  first  evangelists  of  our  Indians.  The 
energetic  faith  of  Wesley  sought  for  its  first  field  a  mission 
to  the  savages  of  our  southern  coast.  The  era  of  Edwards, 
when  the  faith  and  love  of  the  church  received  so  wide  and 
mighty  an  excitement,  was  also  the  era  of  Brainerd,  his  friend 
and  disciple,  a  missionary  of  the  rarest  endowments.  The 
revival  of  faith  in  Protestant  Germany  under  Francke,  Spener, 
and  the  Pietists,  founded  the  Orphan  House  at  Halle,  and 
saw  go  forth  from  its  walls  Swartz  and  others,  his  associates, 
to  labor  amid  the  heathenism  of  India.  The  accession  of 
strength  to  the  faith  of  the  Moravian  brethren,  by  the  labors 
of  Zinzendorf,  soon  found  an  outlet  in  missionary  enterprises 
of  apostolical  simplicity  and  successfulness.  The  established 
church  of  England,  in  her  recent  return  to  the  faith  of  her 
early  founders,  has  also  been  aroused  to  the  cause  of  missions, 
and  already  rejoices  in  the  record  of  her  Heber,  her  Bu- 
chanan, and  her  Martyn.  And  in  our  own  division  of  the 
Christian  host,  the  energetic  labors  of  the  elder  Hall,  Fuller, 
and  the  vouuger  Ryland,  to  restore  to  the  faith  of  our  churches 

36 


274  INCREASE    OF    FAITH    NECESSARY 

its  proper  and  practical  character,  were  soon  followed  by  the 
establishment  of  those  missions,  which  have  given,  as  we 
trust,  an  impulse  to  the  energies  of  the  church  that  shall  go 
on,  with  greater  extension  and  deepening  intensity,  until  the 
time  of  the  Messiah's  second  advent. 

The  same  increased  faith  which  excites  the  enterprise, 
serves  withal  to  multiply  the  resources  of  the  church  for  the 
successful  development  and  prosecution  of  the  plans  she  has 
formed.  Consecration  to  God  of  our  hearts  and  our  sub- 
stance will  produce  a  liberality  which  would,  to  a  lukewarm 
age,  seem  fanatical  and  extravagant.  Living  as  in  the  con- 
stant view  of  the  last  judgment ;  estranged  from  the  world, 
and  thus  exempted  from  the  various  and  costly  sacrifices  it 
requires  to  fashion,  to  pride,  and  to  luxury  ;  the  conscien- 
tious frugality  of  the  church  would  enable  the  poorest  and  the 
richest  members  to  unite  in  habitual  contribution.  A.  simple- 
hearted  faith  would  banish  also  from  the  confines  of  the  church 
that  pretended  spirituality  which  anxiously  excludes  religion 
from  the  scenes  of  business,  and  shuts  her  out  from  all  inter- 
ference with  pecuniary  matters,  under  the  pretext  of  guard- 
ing her  sanctity,  but  in  truth  for  the  protection  of  a  hidden 
covetousness.  In  the  better  and  happier  era  of  her  history 
it  is  found  that  religion  is  a  familiar  and  every-day  guest, 
visiting  not  the  chamber  of  social  or  secret  prayer  and  the 
sanctuary  only,  but  passing  through  all  the  scenes  of  human 
industry,  and  shedding  over  every  occupation  her  mild  and 
hallowing  influence.  Systematic  contribution  to  every  form 
of  religious  benevolence,  will  then  be  regarded  as  a  necessary 
mark  of  true  piety.  But  the  chief  treasures  of  the  church 
are  not  her  stores  of  silver  and  gold,  but  her  living  members, 
with  their  spiritual  endowments  of  varied  character  and 
grades.  And  how  greatly  would  a  revival  of  primitive  faith 
draw  upon  these  her  spiritual  resources,  for  the  supply  of 
the  perishing  heathen.  The  missionary  cause  would  not  be 
considered  as  making  well  nigh  its  exclusive  appeal  to  min- 
isters of  the  church  ;  but  the  merchant,  the  artisan,  and  the 
farmer,  each  anxious  to  give  himself  to  the  Lord's  service, 
would  present  not  a  stinted  tithe  of  his  earnings,  but  himself, 
his  personal  labors,  and  his  life,  as  an  offering  to  the  great 
work  of  evangelizing  the  heathen. 

How  evident  and  vast  the  increase  of  missionary  power 
given  to  the  church,  in  the  influence  of  a  purer  and  simpler 
faith  upon  her  doctrines.     We  have  viewed  incidentally  the 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  275 

errors  that  usurp  the  name  of  Christian  faith.  When  these 
should  have  been  outgrown  and  superseded  by  a  true  and 
hearty  acceptance  of  God's  whole  testimony,  how  immense 
the  amount  of  moral  power  thrown  into  benevolent  action. 
Again,  even  where  true  faith  exists,  it  is  now  embarrassed  in 
its  operations  by  its  union  with  more  or  less  of  error.  Every 
admixture  of  human  tradition,  and  each  addition  of  extrane- 
ous and  irrelevant  authority,  has  served  but  to  disfigure  and 
weaken  the  truth  it  was  intended  to  adorn.  When  these 
cumbrous  appendages  shall  be  relinquished,  and  the  oracles 
of  truth  shall  be  consulted  more  habitually  in  prayer  for  the 
teachings  of  the  Spirit,  what  may  not  be  hoped  from  the 
blessing  of  that  God  who  is  jealous  for  the  honor  of  His  own 
word  ?  What  may  not  be  hoped  from  the  temper  and  edge 
of  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  when  it  shall  have  been  disencum- 
bered of  the  scabbard,  that  has  so  long  served  only  to  conceal 
and  corrode  its  brightness  1 

The  transition  is  a  natural  one  from  the  doctrines  of  the 
Gospel  to  the  motives  which  they  suggest  and  sustain.  And 
much  aid  will  have  been  won  for  urging  onward  the  cause  of 
the  Saviour  in  heathen  lands,  when  a  higher  standard  of  faith 
shall  have  trained  up  the  church  in  greater  simplicity  of  pur- 
pose, and  in  pure  and  single-hearted  desire  for  the  glory  of 
God.  How  much  effort  is  now  lost  to  the  world  and  the 
church,  because  polluted  by  motives  which  God  cannot  deign 
to  bless.  When  this  transparency  of  purpose  shall  become 
prevalent,  how  strong  and  general  the  tendency  towards  a 
cordial  union  of  all  Christians  in  the  common  cause.  How 
much  of  the  time  and  strength  of  brethren  is  now  wasted  upon 
unbrotherly  divisions.  Bigotry  and  partizanship  are  dividing 
those  who  should  never  have  been  sundered.  And  how 
much  useful  and  needed  power  is  now  withholden,  because  its 
possessors  are  at  present  unwilling  to  bestow  it,  accompanied, 
as  it  would  be,  with  an  exposure  of  their  personal  inferiority. 
The  talent  being  but  one,  they  deem  it  but  Christian  modesty 
to  enwrap  and  inter  it.  A  faith  which  shall  purge  the  heart 
of  these  base  and  earth-born  feelings,  and  make  the  motives 
of  action  necessarily  more  powerful,  as  they  were  more  sim- 
ple and  pure,  would  evidently  strengthen  the  aggressive 
energies  of  the  church  for  her  inroads  upon  the  dominions  of 
spiritual  darkness. 

The  force  of  pious  example  in  the  Christian  church,  as 
influencing  the  world,  is  yet  but  scantily  developed.     But 


276  INCREASE    OF    FAITH    NECESSARY 

when  there  should  prevail  a  general  union  amongst  the  disci- 
ples of  our  Lord,  one  of  the  most  common  topics  of  reproach, 
employed  by  the  world,  would  be  taken  away.  Affecting, 
also,  as  an  increase  of  faith  would  do,  the  personal  character 
of  each  member  in  the  various  divisions  of  the  Christian 
church,  what  would  be  the  influence  of  the  resplendent  and 
consistent  holiness  thus  cherished,  upon  the  families  and  de- 
pendents, the  neighbors  and  friends  of  Christians  !  And 
this  influence  would  be  felt,  not  merely  inviting  their  co-op- 
eration in  the  missionary  alms  of  the  church,  but  attracting 
and  awakening  them  to  inquiry  and  repentance,  and  drawing 
them  into  the  same  bonds  of  tender  and  heavenly  brother- 
hood. How  much  of  the  reasoning  and  zeal  and  energy  of 
the  church  is  now  wasted,  because  counteracted  by  the  luke- 
warm remissness  or  the  undisguised  scandals  exhibited  in 
multitudes  wearing  the  Christian  name.  And  when  a  vigor- 
ous and  wholesome  faith  should  purify  our  churches  ;  when 
the  unhealthy  and  diseased  portions  should  be  seen  sloughing 
away  under  the  searching  influence  of  Christian  discipline, 
and  the  faithfulness  of  an  evangelical  ministry  ;  and  the 
church  should  shine  forth  in  the  healthful  beauty  and  symme- 
try of  holiness  ;  what  would  be  the  boldness  of  her  advocates, 
the  power  of  her  appeals,  and  the  confusion  of  her  enemies  ! 
And  all  these  would  be  felt  immediately  in  the  fields  of  mis- 
sionary labor  ;  the  Christian  mariner,  the  Christian  merchant, 
and  the  Christian  traveller,  would  strengthen  by  a  holy  ex- 
ample, in  the  sight  of  the  heathen,  the  hands  of  the  Christian 
missionary. 

But  the  most  important  advantage  thus  gained,  for  the 
cause  of  our  Lord  in  unevangelized  lands,  would  be  the  en- 
larged channel  for  the  communication  of  the  Divine  Influ- 
ences. Without  faith,  it  is  impossible  to  please  God.  Great 
faith  delights,  as  a  weak  and  narrow  faith  dishonors  and 
grieves  Him.  And  when  the  thousands  of  Israel  shall  go  up 
with  the  ardent  though  humble  expectation  of  receiving  an 
answer  to  their  prayers,  whilst  the  supplications  of  primitive 
faith  should  again  ascend,  who  shall  say  that  the  wonders  of 
the  early  church  may  not  return  ;  and  men,  in  the  spirit  and 
power  of  the  early  believers,  rise  up  to  become  the  heralds 
of  salvation  to  the  most  distant  and  most  brutified  tribes  of 
mankind  ?  Assuredly  those  who  shall  honor  Him  by  a  child- 
like dependence,  would  be  honored  of  Him.  Then,  as  the 
early  and  the  latter  rain  descended,  and  when  the  "  fountains 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  277 

of  the  great  deep"  of  moral  power  now  unemployed,  should 
be  broken  up  from  beneath  in  a  wrestling  church,  and  "  the 
windows  of  heaven  "  be  opened  from  above  by  a  favoring 
God  ;  how  rapidly  would  the  waters  of  salvation  rise  and 
swell  and  diffuse  themselves,  till  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord 
should  cover  the  earth, 

"  And  like  a  sea  of  glory, 
It  spread  from  pole  to  pole." 

III.  From  this  review  of  the  possible  and  legitimate  fruits 
of  Christian  faith,  let  us  turn  to  its  actual  results  in  our  midst, 
that  we  may  learn  the  deficiencies  in  our  faith  which 

RETARD  THE    TRIUMPHS     OF     CHRISTIAN     TRUTH     OVER     ITS 
ANTAGONIST  ERRORS. 

We  are  accustomed  to  look  abroad  to  the  mass  of  evil  with 
which  the  Christian  missionary  must  contend  in  heathen 
lands,  and  to  suppose  that  here  are  the  chief  obstacles  to  his 
success.  The  language  of  the  text  and  the  previous  consid- 
erations brought  before  you,  would  lead  to  the  conclusion 
that  this  is  not  the  truth.  Not  in  the  gorgeous  temples,  and 
the  costly  images,  and  all  the  imposing  pageantry  of  idolatry, 
by  which  he  is  environed  ;  not  in  the  wiles  and  violence  of 
an  organized  and  interested  priesthood  ;  not  in  the  deep  hold 
which  a  false  religion  has  taken  upon  the  arts,  and  customs, 
and  literature,  and  every  institution,  political  and  social,  of 
the  nation  ;  not  in  any  of  these,  nor  in  all  of  them  united,  is 
the  most  formidable  resistance  to  his  labors  to  be  found.  The 
stress  of  battle  is  in  a  remoter  and  unobserved  portion  of  the 
field.  His  foes  and  his  hinderances  are  rather  to  be  sought 
in  the  land  he  has  left,  and  in  the  very  bosom  of  the  church 
which  has  commissioned  and  dispatched  him.  It  is  because 
their  faith  is  not  increased  adequately  to  sustain  him,  that  his 
heart  languishes,  and  his  soul  is  faint  within  him  ;  and  while 
he  calls  upon  the  obstinate  and  besotted  pagan  before  him  to 
repent  of  his  unbelief,  he  sends  back  over  the  intervening 
ocean,  to  the  churches  of  his  native  land,  an  appeal  not  less 
earnest  and  yet  more  touching,  that  they  too  repent  of  the 
poverty  and  pettiness  of  their  faith,  and  that  they  enlarge 
him  in  his  labors  according  to  the  apostolic  rule,  and  upon 
the  primitive  model. 

The  existence  of  such  deficiencies  in  our  faith  is  painfully 
evident,  in  the  inadequacy  of  the  views  which  that  faith  min- 
isters, of  the  external  fruits  which  it  produces,  and  of  the^ 


273  INCREASE    OF    FAITH    NECESSARY 

internal  spirit  which  it  breathes  ;  or  in  its  influence  upon 
the  intellect,  the  conduct  and  the  affections. 

1.  The  views  with  which  their  faith  furnishes  the  majority 
of  those  attached  to  our  churches,  are  then  singularly  inade- 
quate with  regard  to  the  miseries  of  the  world.  Of  the  fear- 
ful condition  of  the  vast  mass  of  our  race,  the  hundreds  of 
millions  ignorant  or  neglectful  of  the  Gospel,  we  think  little 
and  inquire  still  less,  Of  temporal  suffering — of  the  anguish 
which  ignorance,  vice,  and  unrestrained  passion  are  working 
merely  for  this  life,  how  immense  is  the  amount ;  for  gross 
darkness  covers  the  nations,  and  the  dark  places  of  the  earth 
are  necessarily  and  ever  full  of  the  habitations  of  cruelty. 
How  fatal  is  the  influence  upon  human  happiness,  even  for 
the  few  days  of  our  earthly  career,  of  vice,  not  merely  legal- 
ized, but  sanctified  and  deified  in  the  national  idols,  as  we 
find  it  under  every  form  of  paganism.  But  what  is  even  this, 
compared  to  the  hopeless  and  unending  woe  into  which  death 
shall  hurl  the  tribes  of  heathenism.  And  yet  those,  who  thus, 
whilst  groaning  under  present  misery,  work  out  fiercer  suf- 
ferings for  eternity,  are  our  brethren,  like  us  fallen  and  vicious, 
but  like  us,  immortal  and  accountable.  Of  this  fearful  wretch- 
edness our  perception  is  indistinct  and  transient.  We  have 
no  deep  and  abiding  conviction  of  the  evil  of  sin,  and  the 
necessary  misery  of  its  captives. 

There  is  equal  deficiency  in  our  views  of  the  'promises  of 
Scripture.  How  large  a  portion  of  prophecy  is  given  to  the 
glories  of  the  Messiah's  kingdom  !  They  occupy  a  promi- 
nent room  and  large  space  in  the  brief  form  of  supplication 
given  by  our  Saviour  to  his  disciples.  Redolent  as  these 
promises  are  of  the  most  delightful  hopes,  how  seldom  do  we 
remember,  and  how  faintly  plead  them  ;  though  the  kingdoms 
of  the  world  shall  become  the  kingdoms  of  God's  Son,  the 
Gentiles  shall  be  his  inheritance,  and  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  earth  are  his  assured  possession. 

Come  then,  and,  added  to  thy  many  crowns, 
Receive  yet  one,  the  crown  of  all  the  earth, 
Thou  who  alone  art  worthy  ! — 
The  very  spirit  of  the  world  is  tired 
Of  its  own  taunting  question,  asked  so  long, 
"Where  is  the  promise  of  your  Lord's  approach 7" 
Come  then,  and,  added  to  thy  many  crowns, 
Receive  yet  one,  as  radiant  as  the  rest, 
Due  to  thy  last  and  most  effectual  work, 
Thy  word  fulfilled,  the  conquest  of  a  world. 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  279 

Nor  are  our  views  more  just  and  complete  as  to  our  own 
obligations  and  vows.  Although  our  entrance  upon  the 
course  of  Christian  profession  was  by  devoting  ourselves  to 
the  service  of  the  Lord,  and  having  given  ourselves  to  Him, 
we  gave  ourselves  into  the  church  by  His  will  ;  has  not  the 
dedication  been  forgotten,  or  practically  revoked  by  too  many 
of  our  number?  The  lights  of  the  earth — we  are  shedding 
around  but  a  dim,  flickering,  and  uncertain  lustre.  The  salt 
of  the  world — who  has  perceived  in  us  the  savor  of  Christian 
vitality  1 

But  especially  do  our  views  assume  the  appearance  of 
meagre  insufficiency,  in  the  estimate  they  afford  of  the  pecu- 
liar  opportunities  of  the  age  for  Christian  usefulness.  "Ye 
hypocrites,"  exclaimed  our  Lord,  iS  can  ye  not  discern  the 
signs  of  the  times?"  Are  the  larger  number  of  Christians 
at  all  awake  to  the  fact,  that  the  signs  of  our  times  call  upon 
the  believers  of  the  nineteenth  century  for  unprecedented 
exertions?  The  advance  of  popular  freedom  and  general 
education,  the  unrestrained  commercial  intercourse  of  nations, 
the  wide-spread  peace  now  enjoyed,  the  improved  speed  and 
lessened  expense  of  travelling,  the  newly-developed  powers 
of  the  press,  the  powers  each  day  more  apparent  of  voluntary 
associations,  the  extensive  and  daily  extending  use  of  the 
language  we  have  inherited  from  England,*  and  which  is  now 
becoming  intelligible  in  the  chief  maritime  ports  of  the  world 
• — all  require  at  the  hands  of  American  Christians  no  ordinary 
exertions.  The  daily  enlargements  of  the  mission  field,  and 
the  success  of  truth's  first  onset  upon  the  powers  of  darkness, 
are  summoning  us  most  impressively  to  action.  The  institu- 
tions of  Hindooism,  of  such  vaunted  antiquity,  and  rooted  in 
the  veneration  of  ages,  seem  already  tottering  to  their  over- 
throw, ere  the  generation  is  gone  from  the  earth  that  first 
sapped  their  base.  The  barrier  which  long  closed  the  vast 
empire  of  China  is  now  found  to  be  but  the  brittle  seal  of  an 
imperial  edict,  unsustained  by  the  national  feelings.  The 
word  of  God,  as  recently  translated  and  published  in  lan- 
guages never  before  taught  the  name  of  Jehovah,  is  calling 
for  the  living  preacher  to  scatter  and  to  interpret  it.  Amid 
ail  these  omens  of  good  and  incentives  to  diligence,  are  we 
found  awake  to  the  fact,  or  conscious  of  the  majesty  and 
splendor  of  the  scenes  now  opening  ?  On  the  contrary,  is 
not  the  church  protracting  her  slumbers,  while  the  whole 
heaven  above  her  is  reddening  with  the  dawn  of  that  day, 


280  INCREASE    OF    FAITH    NECESSARY 

which  shall  usher  in  her  restoration  and  the  redemption  of 
all  the  earth  ? 

But  the  most  afflictive  defect  in  our  views,  is  the  slight  and 
irreverent  estimate  we  form  of  our  Divine  Ally.  The  King 
of  kings  is  our  intercessor,  the  Omniscient  Spirit  is  our 
teacher  ;  and  we  are  invited  to  counsel  with  Divine  Wisdom, 
and  to  stay  ourselves  on  the  arm  of  Creative  Power.  Yet 
how  do  we  narrow  down  the  magnificence  of  the  Divine 
promises,  and  compress  the  hopes,  large  and  grand,  offered 
by  the  gospel,  into  some  petty  and  pitiful  request,  that,  as  we 
imagine,  bespeaks  Christian  humility,  but  in  truth  displays 
contemptuous  unbelief.  What !  when  God  is  for  us,  is  it  not 
most  guilty  to  hesitate  and  linger  in  minor  and  facile  enter- 
prises ?  What  would  have  been  thought  of  him  whose  mem- 
ory we  are  wont  to  hail  as  the  Father  of  his  country,  if,  when 
joined  by  the  fleets  and  army  of  our  foreign  ally,  he  had 
gathered  the  combined  host  to  the  siege  of  some  petty  bar- 
rack, garrisoned  by  a  few  disbanded  invalids  ?  The  great- 
ness of  the  God  we  serve,  demands  on  our  part  a  large  and 
manly,  a  far-sighted  and  far-reaching  faith. 

2.  The  same  odious  discrepancy  between  its  privileges  and 
doings,  its  powers  and  its  results,  is  seen  in  the  external 
fruits  of  our  faith,, or  its  influence  upon  the  conduct.  In  the 
prayers  of  the  church,  as  offered  in  her  solemn  assemblies, 
is  there  the  due  and  earnest  remembrance  of  the  missionary 
laborer,  who  has,  like  Jonathan  and  his  armor-bearer,  clam- 
bered up  into  the  high  places  of  heathenism,  and  finds  him- 
self alone  in  the  very  midst  of  the  enemy?  In  the  Monthly 
Concert,  that  touching  union  which  brings  the  Christians  of 
every  hue,  and  language,  and  kindred,  into  one  assembly,  and 
blends  their  hearts  in  the  utterance  of  one  petition,  is  the 
meeting  maintained  with  that  general  and  devout  attendance 
demanded  by  the  beauty  of  its  conception  and  the  grandeur 
of  its  object?  Of  the  alms  of  the  church — how  pitiful  the 
amount  compared  with  the  free  and  glad  sacrifices  made  on 
the  altars  of  dissipation  and  intemperance,  in  games  of  chance, 
in  fashionable  equipages,  furniture,  and  dress,  in  the  support 
of  the  theatre,  the  race-course,  and  the  lottery,  in  the  ex- 
travagance of  our  tables,  and  the  sumptuousness  of  our 
homes.  Of  that  which  is  given,  how  much  is  the  niggardly 
parings  of  a  plentiful  income.  We  have  begun  by  devoting 
to  God  the  choicest  of  the  herd  and  the  firstlings  of  the  flock  ; 
and  have  finished  by  laying  on  His  altars  but  the  offals  of  the 


TO    THE    SUCCESS    OF    CHRISTIAN    MISSIONS.  281 

victim.  In  our  labors  and  our  sacrifices  for  the  cause  of  God, 
how  rarely  is  found  the  noble  disinterestedness,  or  the  hum- 
ble and  retiring  generosity  that  distinguished  the  faith  of  the 
primitive  times.  But,  above  all,  is  there  not  need  of  a  wide 
and  deep  renovation  throughout  the  mass  of  our  churches, 
ere  the  standard  of  personal  holiness  can  be  deemed  at  all 
comparable  with  that  which  sprung  from  faith,  as  apostles 
preached  it,  and  as  its  first  confessors  received  it  ? 

3.  The  internal  spirit  which  it  breathes,  was  spoken  of  as 
betraying  a  deficiency  in  the  faith  of  modern  belie /ers.  If 
love  to  man  be  the  second  great  commandment  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, is  it  sufficiently  awakened  within  us,  and  in  proportion 
to  the  dignity  which  revelation  has  thus  assigned  it  ?  But  in 
love  to  God,  in  anxiety  for  continued  communion  with  Him, 
and  deepening  conformity  to  His  image,  in  desire  for  the 
honor  of  His  name,  are  we  not  verily  guilty  of  a  fearful  de- 
ficiency, and  needs  not  our  faith  immediate  renovation  and 
increase  ?  Have  we  that  intense  fear  and  abhorrence  of  sin 
which  a  lively  faith  ever  displays  ?  The  confidence  of  the 
faitaful  anciently  inspired  them  with  a  holy  and  dauntless 
courage,  as  they  faced  and  rebuked  the  world.  Is  ours  thus 
operative  ?  Theirs  was  a  humility,  which,  springing  from 
conscious  weakness,  clung  the  more  closely  to  God,  and  amid 
the  largest  success,  resigned  to  Him  the  undivided  glory  ;  is 
our  faith  thus  lowly  in  its  spirit  and  tendency  ?  The  voice 
of  inspiration  has  said,  "If  any  man  have  not  the  spirit  of 
Christ,  he  is  none  of  his."  Is  the  faith,  in  the  possession  of 
which  we  exult,  thus  attended  and  verified  ?  Have  we  been 
fashioned  into  his  likeness  and  imbibed  his  temper?  Is  ours 
the  life  of  cross-bearing  and  watchfulness  and  prayerfulness  ? 
if  not,  is  it  a  life  of  discipleship  to  Christ? — is  it  the  race  of 
faith,  swift,  direct,  and  onward  ?  and  shall  it  win  at  last  the 
crown  of  the  triumphant  believer  ? 

Church  of  the  living  God,  is  there  not  utterly  a  fault 
amongst  us  in  this  matter?  And  until  our  faith  increase,  can 
we  hope  that,  according  to  the  rule  of  Paul's  apostolic  labors, 
the  destitute  Gentiles  should  be  evangelized?  Is  not  an  en- 
largement  now  demanded  and  now  due  in  the  labors,  prayers, 
and  alms  that  go  to  sustain  the  cause  of  Christian  missions  \ 
and  what  but  the  renovation  of  faith  shall  work  that  enlarge- 
ment? Let  us  not  contrast  our  sacrifices  and  zeal  merely 
with  those  of  the  Master  whose  name  we  bear,  and  whom  we 
have  avouched  as  our  Great  Exemplar :  let  us  but  measure 

37 


282  INCREASE    OF   FAITH    NECESSARY. 

our  endeavors,  in  their  number,  and  in  the  prudence,  liberal- 
ity,  and  perseverance  that  mark  them,  with  the  efforts  and 
spirit  of  the  men  of  this  world,  who  are  without  hope  and 
without  God.  Yielding  up  the  comforts  of  home  and  the 
society  of  friends,  forswearing  ease,  periling  character,  lav- 
ishing life,  and  venturing  even  upon  eternal  ruin,  as  they  do, 
the  walks  of  this  world's  business  and  of  this  world's  pleas- 
ures are  strewed  with  the  voluntary  and  costly  sacrifices  of 
time,  property,  comfort,  life,  and  salvation.  But  we,  with  a 
soul  to  save,  a  heaven  to  lose  or  win,  a  Christ  to  publish, 
and  a  God  to  serve — how  shamefully  calm  are  we  found,  and 
timid  and  half-hearted  !  And  this,  while  the  world  is  rushing 
into  ruin,  and  bearing  on  its  swollen  and  rapid  stream  our 
friends,  our  neighbors,  and  our  children  ; — while  the  earth 
which  God  has  promised  to  bless,  (and  that  by  human  instru- 
mentality,) lies  as  yet,  prostrate  and  groaning,  under  the  curse 
poured  out  through  all  her  coasts.  The  time  is  coming,  and 
prophecy  has  foretold  it,  when  in  every  land  there  shall  be 
offered  to  God  a  pure  offering — when,  from  the  closet  and 
the  sanctuary,  from  the  hill-top,  the  field,  and  the  forest-side, 
where  the  children  of  God  shall,  like  Isaac,  walk  forth  at 
eventide  to  meditate,  the  voice  of  pious  supplication  shall 
ascend  in  one  continuous  stream  ;  until  our  globe,  as  it  rolls 
along  its  orbit,  shall  seem  but  a  censer  revolving  in  the  hand 
of  the  Great  High  Priest,  and  pouring  out  at  every  aperture 
a  cloud,  dense  and  rich,  of  incense,  fragrant  and  grateful  to 
God.  But,  as  yet,  the  ascending  cloud  is  one  of  far  other 
kind.  Its  skirts  are  dark  with  sullen  gloom,  and  its  bosom 
is  charged  with  indignation  and  vengeance.  Wailing  and 
blasphemy,  oppression  and  outrage,  pollution  and  falsehood, 
have  swollen  and  blackened  it ;  and  with  it,  a  cry  goes  up, 
like  that  from  the  cities  of  the  plain,  piercing  the  ear  of  God. 
Day  unto  day  uttereth  speech  of  human  wretchedness,  and 
night  unto  night  showeth  knowledge  of  human  wickedness. 
What  has  our  faith,  my  brethren,  done  for  its  relief?  What 
will  be  the  fruits  of  our  belief  in  the  alms  and  the  prayers 
now  demanded  ;  what  its  share  in  the  services  of  this  assem- 
bly ?  Shall  we  not  exclaim,  reviewing  the  greatness  of  the 
task,  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  the  greatness  of 
the  guilt  which  has  neglected  it,  as  did  the  apostles,  whilst 
their  Lord  was  enjoining  a  duty  alike  necessary  and  difficult, 
"Lord,  increase  our  faith?" 


THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL 
ACCURSED. 

"i  marvel  that  ye  are  so  soon  removed  from  him  that  called  you 
into  the  grace  of  christ  unto  another  grospel  :  which  is  not  ano- 
ther ;  but  there  be  some  that  trouble  you,  and  would  pervert  the 
Gospel  of  Christ.  But  though  we,  or  an  angel  from  heaven,  preach 
any  OTrfER  Gospel  unto  you  than  that  which  we  have  preached  unto 

YOU,  LET  HIM  BE  ACCURSED.  As  WE  SAID  BEFORE,  SO  SAY  I  NOW  AGAIN,  If 
ANY  MAN  PREACH  ANY  OTHER  GOSPEL  UNTO  YOU  THAN  THAT  YE  HAVE  RE- 
CEIVE^, let  him  be  accursed." — Galatians  i.  6-9. 

How  full  are  these  words  of  force  and  solemnity.  Let  us 
fix  the  mind  on  them  until  we  feel  their  significancy.  Is  it  a 
profane  blasphemer,  who  opens  his  mouth  only  to  pour  forth 
execrations,  who  has  "  clothed  himself  with  cursing  as  with  a 
garment,"  and  whose  malignant  feelings  towards  his  fellow- 
man  assume  the  awful  form  of  an  appeal  to  heaven  ?  No  ; 
it  is  one  who  delighted  rather  in  blessing ;  and  who,  cruelly 
as  he  was  hated  by  his  own  nation,  requited  their  enmity 
only  with  the  most  earnest  wishes  for  their  salvation,  though 
he  were  himself  accursed  to  obtain  it.  Is  it  the  hot  haste  of 
a  good  man  speaking  unadvisedly,  and  rather  according  to 
the  infirmity  of  the  man  than  the  sobriety  of  the  saint  ?  The 
very  form  into  which  it  is  cast,  and  the  calm,  firm  repetition 
of  its  tremendous  denunciations,  stamps  it  as  the  language  of 
deliberation.  Far  from  being  an  outburst  of  human  passion, 
the  language  is  that  of  one  full  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  of  one 
selected  and  sent  forth  by  Christ  to  be  an  authoritative  teach- 
er of  the  churches — an  inspired  apostle.  They  are  not  the 
words  of  human  infirmity,  but  the  utterances  of  a  holy  God 
and  a  true — his  unerring  and  "  lively  oracles."  May,  then, 
that  Spirit  which  spoke  in  Paul  hearken  in  us.  The  truth 
here  taught  us,  if  awful,  is  yet  a  salutary  and  timely  one. 
We  learn, 


284      THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED. 

I.  That  it  is  possible  to  ascertain  what  the  true  Gospel  is  ; 

II.  That  the  Gospel  is  unchangeable  ; 

III.  And  that  they  who  pervert  it  are  accursed. 

1.  It  is  possible  to  acquire  certainty  as  to  the  true  nature 
of  the  Gospel.  Paul's  language  throughout  the  epistle 
implies  this.  It  would  have  been  most  unreasonable  and 
most  cruel  thus  to  denounce  those  whose  doubts  as  to  the 
real  purport  of  the  Gospel  were  unavoidable  and  excusable. 
He  makes  no  exceptions  for  ignorance,  and  prejudice,  and 
heedlessness.  He  needed  to  make  none.  He  had  creden- 
tials, such  as  none  of  their  false  teachers  brought,  that  Christ 
had  sent  him  to  preach  the  Gospel.  Miracles,  prophecies, 
and  the  moral  results  of  his  preaching,  proclaimed  him  one 
commissioned  of  God.  As  to  the  doctrines  he  had  taught, 
they  could  be  left  in  no  doubt.  He  assumes  that  the  dis- 
tinction between  his  own  gospel  and  that  of  the  rival  teach- 
ers was  palpable  on  the  most  cursory  examination  ;  and  that 
his  rudest  hearers  were  competent  to  perceive  the  differ- 
ence between  the  opposing  doctrines,  and  were  bound  to 
make  the  requisite  discrimination.  He  had  spoken  clearly 
and  without  reserve ;  consistently  and  without  variation. 
He  had  in  Galatia,  as  every  where  else,  taught  that  men 
were  sinners  and  could  not  be  saved  by  their  own  good 
deeds;  but  that  Christ  "  gave  himself  for  us,"*  and  hav- 
ing died  as  the  sacrifice,  arose  as  the  High  Priest ;  and  that, 
repenting  and  believing,  men  might  be  justified  freely  in  his 
righteousness,  and  accepted  through  his  mediation.  He  had 
taught  that  by  nature  all  inherited  and  deserved  the  wrath 
of  God  ;  but  that  through  Jesus  the  Holy  Spirit  was  given, 
producing  a  change  of  heart.  He  had  taught  that  the  fruit 
of  the  Spirit  thus  given  would  be  necessarily  holiness  of  life 
in  each  true  convert.  Christ,  the  crucified  Redeemer,  the 
Holy  Spirit,  the  great  renewer  and  enlightener  of  the  world, 
were  the  theme  of  his  familiar  converse,  his  ministrations 
and  his  writings.  There  was  no  want  of  certainty,  then,  as 
to  what  he  had  taught,  and  what  they  should  believe. 

2.  But  we  find  men,  often  excusing  themselves  for  having 
spent  a  whole  lifetime  in  a  state  of  spiritual  irresolution,  or 
what  is  rather  indifference  to  all  religion,  sheltering  them- 
selves under  the  plea,  that  amid  contending  systems  and 
warring  pulpits  they  cannot  ascertain  what  the  Gospel  really 

*  Gulatians  i.  4. 


THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED.   285 

is.  Some,  calling  themselves  Christian  teachers,  assure 
them  that  there  is  no  hell,  but  that  death  is  to  every  man 
the  gate  of  heaven.  Others  contend  that  Christ  had  no  in- 
herent deity,  and  made  no  propitiatory  sacrifice.  He  was 
but  a  wise  and  good  teacher,  and  if  men  are  saved,  it  is  not 
by  his  atonement  or  by  any  other  substitute  sacrificed  in 
their  stead.  Others,  again,  teach  that  Christ  did  indeed  die 
for  our  salvation,  but  that  it  is  our  own  meritorious  conduct 
and  character  that  entitle  us  to  his  salvation,  or  in  other 
words,  we  are  saved  by  our  own  righteousness.  Amid  the 
teachers  who  thus  stand  contending  with  each  other,  and 
contradicting  the  testimony  of  the  great  body  of  Christians 
in  all  ages,  these  irresolute  men  profess  to  be  at  a  loss  what 
sentiments  to  receive.  And  sometimes  they  wish  that  they 
had  lived  in  the  primitive  ages  of  the  church,  and  could  have 
heard  the  Gospel  from  the  lips  of  the  apostles  themselves. 

Let  such  remember,  then,  that  in  the  apostles'  times  they 
would  have  been  subjected  to  the  same  perplexity  of  which 
they  complain  in  our  own.  Let  them  remember,  also,  that 
they  would  then  have  found  relief  only  from  the  same  sources 
to  which  they  are  directed  now.  If  they  are  distressed  by 
the  many  and  contradictory  teachings  of  human  guides,  the 
Galatians  were  exposed  to  the  same  trial.  While  the  apos- 
tles yet  lived,  the  churches  they  had  themselves  planted  and 
instructed  were  visited  by  those  who  taught  another  Gospel. 
Paul  had  taught  a  righteousness  by  faith  in  Christ  that  mag- 
nified the  cross.  These  false  teachers  taught  a  righteousness 
that  was  of  the  law,  making  void  the  cross  of  Christ.  In 
what  way  were  the  Galatians  to  know  the  truth  ?  The  apos- 
tle was  not  always  with  them.  They  had  his  teachings 
treasured  in  their  memory,  and  as  recorded  in  his  epistles. 
They  had  the  teachings  of  other  apostles,  and  of  uninspired 
teachers  known  to  accord  in  their  doctrines  with  the  inspired 
and  authoritative  guides  of  the  church.  And  they  had  the 
Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testament.  But  above  all  these  they 
had  unimpeded  access  to  God,  and  the  Spirit  of  God  was 
their  counsellor.  Under  what  process  of  teaching,  and  in 
what  type  of  doctrine  had  they  received  this  Spirit  ?  In 
that  teaching  and  doctrine  let  them  persevere.  That  Spirit, 
sought  in  prayer,  would  explain  the  Scriptures,  and  guide 
rightly  and  safely.  If  we  are  in  the  providence  of  God 
brought  into  similar  conflicts  from  the  opposing  dogmas  of 
men,  we  have   the   same  resort  in  the   Scriptures,  and   the 


286   THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED. 

like  refuge  in  the  Spirit  of  God.  The  volume  gives  no 
uncertain  response  ;  the  Holy  Ghost  is  no  tardy  or  inefficient 
instructor. 

3.  Now  is  it  not  most  irrational — we  appeal,  my  fellow- 
immortals,  to  your  own  consciences — is  it  not  most  irration- 
al to  stun  and  weary  your  ears  with  the  din  of  human 
controversies,  while  you  make  no  appeal  to  the  original 
authorities  ?  Are  you  sincerely  in  quest  of  truth  ?  Had 
you  been  told  of  an  estate  bequeathed  you  by  some  distant 
friend,  and  one  informant  spoke  of  it  as  small  in  amount, 
and  another  described  it  as  being  of  great  value,  and  you 
found  yourself  involved  in  a  whirlwind  of  contradictory  state- 
ments ;  would  you  compare  and  collate  the  rumors  on  every 
side,  and  form  your  opinion  from  them,  or  appeal  at  once  to 
the  written  will  and  the  surrogate  ?  If  you  were  told  that 
your  home  was  in  flames,  would  you  go  around  questioning 
those  who  had  left  the  scene  as  to  its  origin,  and  extent,  and 
ravages  ;  or  would  you  not  rather  cast  aside  all  other  en- 
gagements, and  rush  to  the  rescue  of  your  property  and 
your  family,  to  see  with  your  own  eyes,  and  toil  with  your 
own  hands  ?  And  are  salvation,  and  the  soul,  and  heaven 
worth  so  little  that  they  do  not  require  the  like  personal 
investigation,  the  like  decisive  appeal  to  the  ultimate  authori- 
ties? 

Prophets  and  apostles,  and  the  Lord  of  apostles  and  the 
Master  of  the  prophets,  hold  in  this  case  but  one  language. 
They  refer  you  to  the  record.  "  To  the  law  and  to  the  tes- 
timony," cried  the  prophets  ;  if  your  teachings — if  your 
teachers  speak  not  according  to  these,  it  is  because  "  there 
is  no  truth  in  them."  "  Search  the  Scriptures,"  is  the  com- 
mand of  Christ ;  "  which  are  able  to  make  you  wise  unto 
salvation,"  respond  the  glorious  company  of  the  apostles. 
Do  you  complain  of  dulness  and  weakness  of  mind?  they 
reply,  "  If  any  man  lack  wisdom  let  him  ask  of  God,  who 
giveth  liberally,  and  who  upbraideth  not ;"  and  a  louder  and 
sweeter  voice  than  theirs  is  heard,  continuing  the  strain — • 
"  The  Spirit  shall  lead  unto  all  truth  ;" — while  the  prophets, 
catching  and  re-echoing  the  invitation  thus  addressed  to  weak 
and  erring  man,  exclaim,  "  The  wayfaring  man,  though  a 
fool,  shall  not  err  therein." 

Until  the  Scriptures,  therefore,  are  abrogated,  and  until 
the  Spirit  of  God  has  abdicated  his  office  as  teacher  of  the 
church,  you  cannot  be  at  a  loss,  if  disposed,  in  a  candid  and 


TILE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED.      287 

docile  spirit,  to  learn  what  are  the  real  doctrines  of  the 
Gospel.  If  a  man  will  not  ask  that  Spirit,  indeed,  he  may 
have  the  ablest  of  human  teachings,  and  bring  to  the  book  an 
intellect  of  angelic  power,  and  yet  the  result  be  but  error 
and  darkness.  But  if  he  will  come  in  the  name  of  Jesus, 
imploring  the  Spirit,  idiocy  itself  shall  not  prevent  his  learn- 
ing the  way  of  salvation.  If  he  refuses  thus  to  come,  and 
will  not  study  the  book  of  God  in  God's  own  appointed  way, 
he  is  not  entitled  to  complain  of  uncertainty  as  to  his  reli- 
gious opinions,  much  less  to  dogmatize  in  his  scepticism. 
Let  us,  then,  in  this  matter  be  honest  to  our  own  souls,  for 
death  is  on  his  way  :  a  judge  is  even  now  at  the  door,  who 
will  not  stoop  to  answer  our  cavillings  ;  and  wretched  theit 
will  be  the  fate  of  that  man,  who,  with  the  open  Bible  before 
him,  and  the  hovering  dove  of  the  Spirit  above  him,  has 
neglected  the  one  and  repelled  the  other. 

Make  but  the  experiment  in  the  temper  of  a  little  child, 
and  a  certainty,  sure  and  unshaken  as  the  everlasting  hills, 
shall  possess  your  souls,  while  truth  darts  in  upon  the  dark- 
ened mind,  and  in  the  light  of  God  you  see  light — the 
uncreated,  undeclining  glory  of  God,  in  the  face  of  his  Son. 
Then  shall  you  know  that  Gospel  which  Paul  preached,  and 
whose  promises  he  is  now  inheriting. 

II.  But  again,  the  religion  of  which  we  may  thus  obtain  a 
certain  knowledge  is  unchangeable  in  its  character.  We 
hear  men,  sometimes,  in  forgetfulness  of  this  character  of 
Christianity,  exclaiming,  "  Shall  science  and  art  go  on,  from 
day  to  day  altering  their  forms  and  extending  their  bounda- 
ries, and  religion  alone  receive  and  admit  no  improvement?" 
If  they  mean  that  the  language  of  the  Bible  may  be  better 
understood,  and  that  new  researches  of  the  antiquarian  and 
traveller,  and  new  fulfilments  of  prophecy,  may  throw  new 
and  yet  increasing  light  on  the  pages  of  the  sacred  volume — 
if  they  mean  only,  that  in  days  of  higher  devotedness,  such 
as  the  church  is  yet  to  see,  there  may  be  a  more  thorough 
mastery  of  the  doctrines  and  a  more  resplendent  exhibition 
of  the  morals  of  Christianity — this  no  Christian  denies  ;  but 
that  the  facts  of  Christianity  can  be  modified,  its  morality  be 
amended,  or  its  doctrines  altered,  is  impossible.  Those  who 
suppose  it,  forget  that  the  Gospel  is  not  a  discovery  but  a 
revelation. 

2.  The  Gospel  is  not  a  discovery  but  a  revelation.  By  a 
discovery  we  mean  what  man's  intellect  has  found  out  by 


288   THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED. 

its  own  efforts  :  by  a  revelation,  what  God's  intellect  has 
communicated  to  man's  intellect,  and  what,  if  not  thus  aided, 
man  could  not  have  discovered  for  himself.  The  one  is  the 
fruit  of  man's  labor,  the  other  the  gift  of  God's  grace.  Now, 
what  man's  intellect  has  discovered,  man's  intellect  may 
investigate  more  thoroughly  and  understand  more  perfectly. 
But  what  man  has  learned  only  from  God's  disclosures,  he 
can  of  course  understand  no  further  than  he  finds  it  on  the 
face  of  those  disclosures.  He  cannot  go  up  to  the  original 
truths  themselves  upon  which  God  drew,  and  thus  improve 
on  the  Divine  communications.  Some  of  the  disclosures 
thus  made  are,  from  the  very  necessity  of  our  nature,  or 
from  a  wise  regard  to  our  present  interests  and  duties,  im- 
perfect revelations,  leaving  portions  of  the  subject  shrouded 
in  darkness.  These  imperfect  revelations  are  called  myste- 
ries. With  the  limits  set  by  the  Divine  mind  to  his  revela- 
tions, our  investigations  must  terminate  :  the  attempt  to  pass 
beyond  these  is  not  only  temerity,  it  is  folly  and  ruin.  The 
adventurer  dashes  himself  to  his  own  destruction  against  the 
impassable  barriers  of  the  human  intellect. 

When  Columbus  found  our  continent,  it  was  a  discovery. 
Where  one  man  had  gone,  other  men  might  follow,  and 
inquire  more  fully,  and  learn  more  correctly  than  did  the 
original  discoverer,  and  thus  our  knowledge  of  America  may 
be  destined  to  receive  daily  improvements.  But  when  Paul 
was  rapt  into  the  third  heaven,  and  saw  and  heard  what  it 
was  unlawful  to  utter,  it  was  a  revelation.  No  mortal  foot 
could  follow  him,  to  pursue  and  improve  his  account.  Now, 
had  it  been  permitted  Paul  to  describe  in  writing  the  celes- 
tial glories  thus  unveiled  to  him,  those  who  wished  to  un- 
derstand the  nature  of  that  upper  world  would  have  but  one 
course  left  for  them  to  pursue.  They  must  investigate 
Paul's  character  for  veracity,  and  the  evidences  he  adduced 
that  the  Most  High  had  conferred  on  him  so  transcendant  a 
favor  as  to  be  permitted  to  become  a  visitant  there.  When 
they  had  settled  these  questions,  all  that  their  philosophy 
could  do  would  be  but  to  explain  Paul's  language  as  they 
found  it  in  his  descriptions.  They  could  not  hope  for  fur- 
ther knowledge  of  the  world  described,  unless  God  should 
choose  to  make  a  fresh  revelation  to  another  Paul.  No  tel- 
escope could  read  what  his  vision  had  left  unread — no  crea- 
ted wing  could  bear  the  student  up  the  pathless  skies  to 
investigate  what  Paul  had  left  untold  :  no  stretch  of  human 


THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED.       289 

sagacity  could  add  to  the  record  as  the  apostle  left  it.  With 
the  first  discoverer  of  our  western  world  it  was  different  : 
his  account  sent  back  to  Europe  could  be  continually  amend- 
ed and  enlarged  ;  and  the  school-boy  of  our  times  may  know 
more  of  the  new  world  than  did  the  sagacious  navigator  who 
first  conjectured  and  then  established  its  existence. 

III.  Now,  the  Gospel  is  strictly  a  revelation.  It  tells  us 
of  a  world  which  we  can  enter  for  ourselves  only  by  dying  : 
it  tells  us  of  the  nature  and  will  of  our  God  what  none  but 
he  could  tell,  and  of  which  we  can  know  only  as  much  as 
he  has  chosen  to  tell.  As  the  human  intellect  did  not  dis- 
cover the  Gospel,  so  no  advancement  of  the  human  intellect 
can  amend  or  alter  it :  but  we  have  heard  and  read  of  men 
who  have  dared  to  say,  "  Christ  came  to  set  up  a  dispensa- 
tion ;  it  is  now  past ;  it  has  done  service  in  its  day,  but  its 
day  is  now  gone  by.  The  Gospel  needed  by  our  refined 
and  scientific  times  must  be  a  new  dispensation."  We 
shudder  at  the  profanity,  of  the  spirit  that  can  vent  itself  in 
language  of  such  impious  arrogance  ;  for  no  man  may  claim 
to  come  with  a  new  dispensation,  unless  he  comes  heralded 
by  such  prophecies  as  ushered  Christ's  way,  and  attended 
by  such  miracles  as  marked  the  whole  course  of  the  Re- 
deemer. We  say  to  the  sophists  and  dreamers  who  talk 
thus  madly  of  the  perfectibility  of  human  nature,  and  its 
need  of  a  new  and  amended  Gospel,  "  Produce  your  wit- 
nesses ;  let  the  winds  obey  your  bidding,  and  the  waves 
become  the  fixed  and  stable  pavement  of  your  feet ;  give 
eyes  to  the  blind,  and  call  the  dead  from  their  tombs  ;  speak, 
as  Christ  spoke,  the  words  of  Divine  wisdom  ;  and  read,  as 
did  he,  the  secrets  of  the  heart.  Die  as  Christ  died,  with 
the  earth  heaving  beneath,  and  the  heavens  darkened  above, 
to  attest  their  sympathy  with,  and  their  subjection  to,  the 
mighty  sufferer.  And  having  done  this,  you  have  but  half 
done  your  mission :  show  the  niche  in  ancient  prophecy 
reserved  for  your  coming.  When  Jesus  appeared,  he  came 
in  the  train  of  a  long  procession  of  prophets,  who  had  before 
witnessed  of  his  coming,  and  carried  the  line  of  their  testi- 
mony, in  unbroken  continuity,  from  Eden  up  to  Calvary. 
He  did,  indeed,  supersede  a  former  dispensation  ;  but  that 
very  dispensation  had  predicted  its  own  departure  and  de- 
scribed Christ's  advent.  Does  the  present  dispensation,  that 
of  Christ's  Gospel,  speak  of  itself  as  being  thus  transient 
and  temporary  ?     No,  it  claims  to  endure  till  yon  sun  shall 

38 


290      THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED. 

have  forsaken  his  station  :  the  Gospel  is  an  everlasting  Gos- 
pel. Does  Moses  or  does  Christ  foretell  your  new  Gospel  ? 
The  Bible  has  else  no  room  for  it.  Yes,  they  do  foretell  it ; 
but  it  is  in  the  language  of  Enoch ;  it  is  the  Gospel  which 
the  seventh  from  Adam  foretold — the  Gospel  s  of  hard 
speeches  which  ungodly  sinners  have  spoken  against  the 
Lord,'  and  of  which  the  Lord  'when  he  cometh  with  ten 
thousand  of  his  saints,'  shall  'convince  the  ungodly'  "* 
Mad  were  the  builders  of  Babel,  when  they  would  raise  the 
tower,  whose  foot  was  on  the  earth,  up  to  the  heavens  ;  but 
they  who  would,  by  human  discoveries,  build  up  a  new  and 
better  Gospel,  are  the  builders  yet  more  insane  of  a  Babel 
yet  more  impious. 

IV.  But  it  will  be  urged  that  there  have  been  men  cf  very 
considerable  austerity  of  morals,  and  of  high  pretensions  to 
wisdom,  who  have  taught  a  gospel  very  different  from  Paul's. 
"Were  it  not  uncharitable  to  condemn  them  ?  We  will  not 
undertake,  for  ourselves,  to  answer  this  question.  To  their 
own  Master  they  stand  or  fall ;  but  if  their  Master  have 
spoken,  in  his  own  oracles,  in  reply  to  this  question,  we 
must  not  suppress  or  condemn  the  response  that  has  been 
given.  By  his  Spirit,  then,  in  his  servant  Paul,  he  has 
replied,   and  his  language  is,    "  But  though   we,  or   an 

ANGEL  FROM  HEAVEN,  PREACH  ANY  OTHER  GOSPEL  UNTO 
YOU  THAN  THAT  WHICH  WE  HAVE  PREACHED  UNTO  YOU, 

let  him  be  accursed."  We  are  taught  in  the  Scriptures, 
by  men's  moral  fruits,  to  judge  whether  they  are  true  disci- 
ples of  the  true  doctrine  ;  but  we  are  not  allowed,  merely 
by  their  fruits,  to  judge  of  their  doctrine  itself.  We  must 
bring  this  to  the  test  of  the  Scriptures  as  well ;  and,  if  re- 
jected by  this  test,  whatever  the  comparative  excellence  of 
deportment  in  the  teachers,  they  and  their  doctrine  are  dis- 
allowed. The  apostle  puts  the  case,  in  favor  of  a  false 
teacher,  into  the  most  authoritative  form,  surrounding  him 
with  the  highest  splendor  of  moral  character  and  the  most 
plausible  show  of  a  heavenly  mission.  He  imagines  his 
own  appearance  as  the  promulgator  of  a  new  Gospel. 
Should  the  convert  whom  Christ's  glory  smote  down  on  the 
highway  to  Damascus — he  who  had  been  in  labors  more 
abundant,  and  in  deaths  oft,  whose  were  miraculous  tongues 
and    miraculous    works — should  he    bring    to  the    Galatian 

*  Jude  14,  15. 


THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED.       291 

"church  "  another  gospel,"  they  were  to  turn  from  it  and 
from  its  teacher  without  hesitation.  He  proceeds  further  : 
as  if  to  put  the  decision  into  the  strongest  possible  form,  he 
imagines  a  teacher,  possessing  not  merely  the  imperfect 
sanctity  of  erring  man,  but  one  invested  with  the  holiness 
of  an  angel  from  heaven.  His  words  do  not  describe  Satan 
corning  up  out  of  the  pit,  and  disguised  as  an  angel  of  light ; 
but  he  conceives  an  event  yet  more  dazzling  in  its  seduc- 
tions, yet  more  perplexing  and  ensnaring  to  the  mind  of  the 
learner.  Should  an  angel  from  heaven,  one  yet  recent  from 
those  glorious  courts,  and  with  the  brightness  of  its  moral 
splendor  and  its  "  beauty  of  holiness"  still  clinging  about 
him,  venture  to  sin,  and  commence  his  fall  by  preaching  to 
our  race  another  gospel,  let  him  be  accursed. 

V.  Paul  did  not  think  lightly  of  those  benign  and  blessed 
spirits  that  are  ministering  to  the  heirs  of  salvation.  They 
had  often  appeared  to  the  apostles,  and  interposed  effectually 
in  their  behalf.  Paul  knew  their  might  and  wisdom  ;  he 
admired  and  emulated  their  holiness,  their  zealous  obedience, 
their  untiring  diligence  ;  but,  in  comparison  with  Christ  and 
his  truth,  Paul  loved  not  even  angels.  One  of  these  beings 
had  appeared  to  Peter,  sleeping  in  the  inner  prison  and 
chained  between  two  soldiers,  and  rousing  him,  had  led  him 
forth  through  guards  and  barriers  to  liberty.  When  Paul 
was  himself  on  ship-board,  sailing  towards  Rome,  an  angel 
of  God  appeared  to  him,  promising  him  the  preservation  of 
his  own  life  and  the  lives  of  all  his  companions  ;  and  the 
promise  was  kept :  but  had  Peter's  deliverer,  on  their  way 
after  passing  through  "  the  iron  gate  that  led  into  the  city," 
commanded  him  to  preach  another  gospel  than  Christ's, 
Peter  would  have  rebuked  his  deliverer,  and  used  to  the 
tempter  the  rebuke  he  had  once  received  himself  from  his 
Master,  "Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan."  Had  the  minister- 
ing Spirit  who  cheered  Paul  on  his  voyage  stayed  to  preach 
to  Paul's  fellow-voyagers  another  gospel,  Paul  would  have 
denounced  the  new  system  as  a  doctrine  of  devils  :  for  no 
angel  appearing  from  heaven  could  bring  for  his  revelation 
the  force  of  evidence  we  have  for  Christ's  revelation,  in  its 
countless  miracles,  its  accomplished  prophecies,  and  the 
moral  renovations  wrought  by  its  influence.  And  no  angel 
has  been  promised  those  full  influences  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
that  were  assured  to  the  apostles  for  the  benefit  of  the  church. 
Were  it  possible,  then,  for  one  of  these  holy  beings  to  fall 


292      THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED. 

away  and  become  a  preacher  of  heresy,  great  as  might  have 
been  his  splendor  and  wisdom,  and  his  former  holiness,  Paul, 
the  sinner — Paul,  the  forgiven  persecutor,  would  have  with- 
stood and  cursed  him.  The  apostle  was  but  a  frail  man  ; 
his  body,  like  ours,  a  tabernacle  of  clay,  crushed  before  the 
moth  ;  yet,  in  all  his  weakness,  had  he  met  an  angel  of  the 
highest  rank  in  heaven,  one  of  those  "  that  excel  in  strength," 
returning  from  a  mission  like  that  to  Sennacherib's  camp, 
his  right  hand  yet  red  with  the  blood  of  a  hundred  thousand 
warriors,  and  had  that  angel  sought  to  turn  the  apostle  from 
the  truth  as  it  was  in  Jesus,  Paul  would  not  have  feared  to 
denounce  him  in  the  name  of  their  common  Lord,  and  dust 
and  ashes  would  have  confounded  the  archangel. 

What  cause  have  we  for  gratitude  that  angels  have  not 
endeavored  thus  to  subvert  our  faith.  They  have,  on  the 
contrary,  given  their  constant  attestation  and  subjection  to 
Christ.  They  with  songs  announced  his  birth  to  the  shep- 
herds of  Bethlehem.  They  ministered  to  him  in  the  wilder- 
ness of  temptation,  and  in  the  sorer  agony  of  Gethsemane. 
Had  he  but  summoned  them,  twelve  legions  had  flown  to  his 
side  ;  they  guarded  his  tomb,  and  when  it  was  visited  by  the 
weeping  disciples,  they  testified  his  resurrection.  When  he 
ascended  on  high,  they  attended  him  ;  and  when  he  shall 
return  to  judgment,  they  will  troop  around  him.  Mean- 
while the  mighty  angel  seen  by  John  flying  through  heaven, 
was  not  seen  denying,  but  publishing  the  everlasting  Gospel; 
and  such  is  their  attachment  to  our  Lord,  that  every  sinner 
believing  in  him  has  angels  to  rejoice  in  his  conversion,  and 
angels  to  minister  to  his  onward  course,  to  guard  his  depart- 
ing spirit  and  to  reclaim  his  deserted  clay  from  the  sepulchre. 
Their  testimony,  then,  is  ever  for  Christ :  they  enforce  the 
witness  of  apostles,  and  by  all  their  demeanor  they  bid  man 
do  what  they  have  themselves  done  at  the  bidding  of  the 
Father — worship  the  Son  ;  for,  "  when  he  bringeth  in  the 
first-begotten  into  the  world,  he  saith,  Let  all  the  angels  of 
God  worship  him."*  Rejecting  that  adoration  when  prof- 
fered to  themselves,  they  cheerfully  yield  it  to  the  Redeemer. 
He,  then,  that  substitutes  another  Gospel  for  that  of  Paul, 
cannot  plead  angelic  patronage  or  instruction.  They  adore 
where  he  blasphemes. 

If  true  at  all,  then  the  Gospel  is  unmingled  and  immutable 

*  Heb.  i.  6. 


THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED.       293 

truth  :  no  events  can  occur,  no  evidence  be  adduced,  author- 
izing us  to  modify  that  system  which  was  given  of  God,  and 
which  God  guards,  and  that,  like  its  Divine  author,  claims  a 
perfection  that  admits  neither  amendment  nor  decay,  the 
one  unchangeable  Gospel  "  which   is   not  another." 

VI.  Those  perverting  the  Gospel  are  accursed,  not  be- 
cause fallible  man  has  willed  it,  but  God  the  Holy  Ghost  has 
pronounced  the  curse  ;  and  who  may  annuL  or  dispute  it? 
The  fearful  doom  is  not  unmerited.  Whatever  the  external 
recommendations  of  any  such  system,  or  of  its  advocates, 
did  their  show  of  excellence  equal  that  of  an  angel,  as  yet 
but  in  the  first  hour  of  his  fall,  they  inherit  a  fearful  curse, 
because  of  the  crime  they  commit  and  the  mischief  they 
occasion. 

I.  Of  the  greatness  of  the  crime  we  form  but  inadequate 
conceptions,  from  the  blindness  produced  by  our  share  in  the 
guilt  of  our  race,  and  also  from  the  faint  and  remote  views 
we  have  of  God.  Yet  what  arrogance  is  it,  evidently,  to 
alter  the  teachings  of  the  Unerring  and  the  Omniscient,  the 
Holy  One  of  Israel — what  the  tearfulness  of  the  presumption, 
that  would  correct  infinite  wisdom  and  contradict  the  God 
of  truth  !  There  is  something  most  daring  and  portentous  in 
the  ingratitude  of  the  creature  that  would  dictate  and  pre- 
scribe to  the  Creator  who  has  made  him,  and  the  unwearied 
Benefactor  whose  sleepless  vigilance  protects  him  from 
destruction,  and  whose  untiring  bounty  is  daily  supplying 
him.  Ajid  how  aggravated  the  sin  of  rejecting,  on  any  pre- 
text, the  plans  and  the  gifts  of  that  Redeemer  who  has  died 
for  us,  and  of  grieving  that  Spirit  which  would  have  recon- 
ciled and  sanctified  us.  And  what  language  can  describe  the 
aggravated  cruelty  of  thus  counterworking  God's  designs  of 
mercy  in  the  Gospel  ?  It  is  a  revelation  of  grace,  in  which 
wrath  was  to  be  appeased,  that  mercy  might  have  its  free 
course  over  the  miseries  of  a  groaning  world.  They  who 
set  aside  this  Gospel,  remove  or  clog  the  channel  of  God's 
mercy,  that  his  vengeance  may  have  its  original  scope,  and 
roll  its  consuming  deluge  over  a  world  of  sin.  The  man 
who  would  cut  off  the  supplies  of  food  from  his  famished 
fellow-creatures  in  a  besieged  town — the  wretch  who  should 
in  wantonness  destroy  all  the  remedies  provided  for  a  hos- 
pital in  which  crowds  were  tossing  in  agony — agony  that, 
unrelieved,  must  issue  in  death,  but  which  these  remedies 
could  not  only  relieve  but  remove — such  a  destroyer,  such  a 


294       THE  PREAJI.ING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED. 

traitor  were  surely  not  as  cruel  as  the  man  who  sets  aside 
the  true  Gospel.  For  the  religion  of  Christ  is  the  food  of 
the  soul  and  the  bread  of  heaven  ;  and  the  atonement  of 
Christ,  as  Paul  preached  it,  is  the  one  remedy  for  the 
wretchedness  and  sin  of  our  race,  and  apart  from  it  there  is 
no  salvation  for  the  soul  to  all  eternity. 

2.  The  greatness  of  the  mischief  is  necessarily  incalcula- 
ble. For  all  earthly  powers  must  fail  to  span  and  to  gauge 
that  eternity,  into  which  death  ushers  us,  and  for  which  the 
Gospel  is  to  prepare  us.  To  pervert  that  Gospel  is  to  aid 
Satan  in  thrusting  down  our  race  to  misery  unremitting  and 
unimaginable.  What  is  a  conflagration  that  lay*  a  city  in 
ashes,  or  a  plague  sweeping  over  the  breadth  of  the  land — 
what  is  loss  of  freedom,  or  reputation,  or  life,  compared 
with  the  loss  of  the  soul  1  And  he  who  sets  aside  the  Gos- 
pel ruins  not  one  soul  but  many.  "  Their  word  will  eat  as 
doth  a  canker."  Error  is  contagious.  The  victim  of  delu- 
sion will  seek  to  quiet  his  conscience,  and  increase  the 
influence  of  his  system,  by  swelling  the  number  of  proselytes 
to  his  party  from  every  side.  Who  can  calculate  the  blind, 
led  by  the  blind,  that  have  already  entered  the  pit,  and  are 
now  even  rejoicing  on  their  way  thither?  To  have  any 
share  in  producing  such  mischief,  is  to  aid  in  feeding  the 
worm  that  never  dies,  and  to  heap  fuel  on  the  flame  that  is 
never  quenched.  May  the  mercy  of  God  save  us  from  such 
sin.  Better  were  it  to  beg  crumbs  with  Lazarus,  and  sit 
with  Job  on  the  dunghill,  than  to  share  riches,  honor  and 
power  here,  on  condition  of  preaching  another  gospel,  and 
prophesying  smooth  things,  and  crying  "peace,  peace," 
while  God's  own  voice  proclaims,  "  There  is  no  peace  to 
the  wicked." 

With  these  views,  then,  of  the  character  of  the  Gospel, 
let  us  ask  ourselves,  as  in  the  sight  of  God,  Have  we  the 
Gospel  that  Paul  preached,  or  do  we  receive  another?  If  we 
receive  that  which  he  preached,  do  we  obey  it  ?  If  it  be  our 
hope  and  guide,  let  us  hold  it  fast  with  an  unwavering  confi- 
dence, and  defend  it  by  a  fearless  profession,  though  man 
cavil  at,  or  an  angel  contradict  its  testimonies  ;  content  with 
the  assurance  that  what  the  Scriptures  teach  and  the  Spirit 
seals  shall  stand,  though  the  elements  melt  with  fervent  heat, 
and  the  heavens  pass  away  as  a  scroll  when  it  is  rolled  to- 
gether. 

1.  It  is  evidently  the  interest  and  duty  of  every  hearer  of 


THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED.      295 

the  Gospel  to  ascertain  that  he  is  receiving  that  system  of 
truth  which  the  apostles  taught.  The  word  of  God  allows 
not,  nor  will  his  bar  acquit  those  who  have  trusted  indo- 
lently in  the  numbers  attached  to  their  sect,  or  in  the  wisdom 
or  piety  of  their  teachers,  while  careless  a»  to  their  own 
personal  experience  of  religion,  and  neglect  the  earnest 
study  of  those  Scriptures  that  are  to  try  every  doctrine  and 
judge  every  spirit.  In  Paul's  time  the  Gospel  had  its 
opposers  among  the  Jews  who  sought  after  signs,  and  among 
the  Greeks  who  looked  for  wisdom.  And  men  now  reject 
or  modify  the  Gospel  for  the  same  causes.  Should  modern 
systems,  therefore,  demand  our  faith  and  claim  to  supplant 
the  Gospel  of  Paul,  either  because  of  the  signs  and  wonders 
that  attest  them  and  the  new  revelations  they  boast  to  have 
received,  on  the  one  hand,  or  because  of  the  superior  wis- 
dom, refinement  and  philosophy  of  those  who  defend  them, 
on  the  other  hand  ;  we  do  well  to  remember  that  we  receive 
such  systems  at  our  peril.  And  the  wo  that  smites  the 
teachers  of  these  errors  will  not  spare  their  followers. 

2.  Errors  in  religion  are  neither  rare  nor  harmless.  If 
even  in  apostolic  times  there  were  not  wanting  heresies  of 
the  most  fatal  character,  we  have  no  reason  to  expect  that 
they  should  become  less  numerous  or  less  fatal,  now  that  the 
age  of  miracles  is  past,  and  the  presence  of  inspired  and 
infallible  teachers  is  withdrawn.  And  if,  from  these  varied 
forms  of  religious  belief,  some  would  infer  the  harmlessness 
of  error,  and  teach  us  that  every  system,  calling  itself  Chris- 
tian, has  in  the  main  the  great  truths  necessary  to  piety  here 
and  happiness  hereafter,  we  need  but  bring  their  theory  to 
the  test  of  the  text  before  us.  The  teachers  opposing  Paul, 
those  at  least  in  Galatia,  preached  apparently  the  same  God 
and  the  same  judgment  and  eternal  retribution,  as  did  the 
apostle  ;  nor  is  there  any  evidence  that  they  disputed  the 
divine  mission  of  our  Saviour.  But  there  was  an  entire 
difference  of  statement  as  to  the  way  of  salvation.  How  did 
Paul  act  ?  Did  he  respect  the  independence  of  those  who 
thus  differed  from  him,  and  assert  their  essential  union  with 
himself  in  the  great  matters  of  the  faith?  The  course  that 
he  pursued  so  resolutely  himself,  and  so  impressively  urged 
upon  others,  was  far  different.  Instead  of  dwelling  on  the 
opinions  held  in  common,  as  furnishing  a  sufficient  basis  for 
concord,  and  acknowledging  in  the  truths  they  yet  retained 
the  basis  of  a  common  Christianity,  he  denounced,  without 


296   THE  PREACHING  OF  ANOTHER  GOSPEL  ACCURSED. 

compromise  or  qualification,  the  opposing  doctrine  as  being 
"another  gospel."  For  it  taught  error  as  to  the  fundamen- 
tal truth,  the  mode  of  a  sinner's  acceptance  with  God. 

3.  There  are  truths  in  religion  of  such  vital  importance 
that  departure  from  them  must  destroy  the  soul.  The  holi- 
ness that  the  Gospel  came  to  foster  is  the  effect  of  truth 
received  in  the  love  of  it.  And  this  truth  is  in  its  own 
nature  harmonious  and  one.  Truth  cannot  contradict  itself: 
nor  in  science  or  art  can  there  be  two  opposed  and  warring 
truths.  So  is  it  also  in  religion.  The  singleness  of  truth 
constitutes  the  basis  of  its  exclusiveness.  It  claims  for  itself, 
exclusively  and  without  rival,  the  faith  and  obedience  of 
mankind  ;  a  claim  that  is  exclusive  because  it  is  just,  and 
that  could  not  be  consistent  without  requiring  thus  the  rejec- 
tion of  all  error.  These  exclusive  claims  are  often  misrep- 
resented as  involving  the  most  odious  intolerance  and  illiber- 
ally. But  in  truth  there  is  no  more  a  possibility  of  the 
existence  of  several  true  religions,  than  there  is  of  the  exist- 
ence of  more  than  one  God.  From  the  one  Jehovah  there 
can  emanate  but  the  one  truth — developed,  indeed,  in  differ- 
ent degrees  at  different  ages,  in  Judaism  the  bud,  in  Chris- 
tianity the  expanded  flower — but  essentially,  and  in  all  ages, 
the  one  unchanged  and  unchangeable  religion,  revealing  for 
man  the  sinner,  salvation,  through  an  atonement  and  Medi- 
ator of  Divine  appointment.  Much  of  error  may  be  mingled 
with  this  truth  in  various  minds  ;  but  there  are  vital  errors 
which  the  word  of  God  has  doomed  as  the  seals  of  ruin  in 
those  who  retain  them.  It  recognizes  in  the  church  of  God 
one  head  and  one  foundation,  and  those  only  are  acknow- 
ledged as  the  heirs  of  life  who  build  on  this  foundation,  and 

"WHO    HOLD    THE    HEAD." 


THE   SEA   GIVING  UP   ITS   DEAD. 

(Delivered  at  the  time  of  a  Collection  made  for  the  American  Seamen's  Friend  Society.) 
"  And  the  sea  gave  up  the  dead  which  were  in  it." — Rev.  xx.  13. 

The  resurrection  was  a  favorite  theme  with  the  apostles. 
The  fact  of  Christ's  having  risen,  was  with  them  the  crowning 
miracle  of  his  earthly  course,  and  an  irrefragable  argument 
of  his  divine  mission.  The  resurrection  of  all  mankind  by 
Christ's  power,  to  be  judged  at  Christ's  bar,  was  one  of  the 
truths  upon  which  the.  first  ministers  of  the  gospel  sought  to 
turn  the  eyes  of  all  their  hearers.  Peter  preached  this  doc- 
trine to  the  scribes  of  Jerusalem,  and  Paul  proclaimed  it  amid 
the  philosophers  of  Athens.  And  what  thoughts  struggle 
within  us,  as  we  look  forward  to  such  a  change  !  These 
corruptible  bodies  shall  stand  again  in  the  closest  companion- 
ship with  the  souls  that  once  inhabited  them — that  at  death 
deserted  them,  but  which  now  have  resumed  them.  Accord- 
ing to  the  deeds  done  in  the  body,  men  are  to  be  judged. 
The  term  of  probation  closed  when  the  spirit  quitted  the 
body,  and  dropped  it  into  the  grave.  The  time  of  judgment 
begins  when  that  grave  is  opened  and  that  body  reanimated, 
"  that  every  one  may  receive  the  things  done  in  his  body."* 
We  are  prone,  perhaps,  to  think  too  much  of  these  perishable 
tabernacles  of  clay.  But  we  do  not,  my  beloved  hearers, 
think  enough  of  them,  unless  we  think  of  them  often  and 
vividly,  as  bodies  that  are  one  day  to  rise  again,  endued 
with  an  indestructible  existence,  and  capacitated  for  the  end- 
less bliss  of  heaven,  or  the  eternal  misery  of  hell. 

I.  This  great  doctrine,  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  seems 
yet  better  fitted  than  the  kindred  truth  of  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,  to  make  a  powerful  impression  on  the  mind  of  man, 
when  receiving  the  gospel  for  the  first  time.  The  heathen 
may  have  heard  of  the  existence  after  death  of  the  immaterial 


*  2  Cor.  v.  10. 

39 


298  THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD. 

spirit  within  him  ;  but  he  thinks  of  that  principle  as  some- 
thing impalpable  and  unearthly,  that  he  has  never  yet  seen, 
and  that  is  scarce  the  same  with  himself.  He  may  have 
heard  even  that  after  death  he  should  still  have  a  body.  He 
may  have  been  taught,  as  many  an  idolatrous  creed  teaches 
its  votaries,  that  the  soul  shall  pass  after  death  into  other  bo- 
dies of  the  higher  or  the  lower  orders  of  being.  But  this  doc- 
trine  of  the  transmigration  of  souls  cannot  take  the  same  hold 
on  his  mind  as  does  the  scriptural  truth,  teaching  him  the 
resurrection  of  the  existing  body.  The  thoughts  of  the  man, 
his  fears,  his  hopes,  and  his  plans,  have  had  reference  chiefly 
to  the  body.  Bring  him  to  look  upon  it  as  possible,  that 
this — the  material  frame-work  in  which  he  has  enjoyed  or 
suffered,  by  which  he  has  labored  and  acquired,  which  he 
has  clothed  and  fed,  and  in  which  he  has  sinned — this  body, 
which,  in  most  of  his  thoughts,  has  been  regarded  as  the 
whole  of  himself — is  to  live  again  beyond  the  grave,  and  he 
is  startled.  Talk  to  him  of  the  inward*  man  of  the  soul,  and 
he  listens,  as  if  you  spoke  of  a  stranger.  But  bring  your 
statements  home  to  the  outward  man  of  his  body,  and  he 
feels  that  it  is  he  himself,  who  is  to  be  happy  or  to  be  wretch- 
ed in  that  eternity  of  which  you  tell  him.  Hence  a  living 
missionary,  in  his  first  religious  instructions  to  the  king  of  a 
heathen  tribe  in  South  Africa,  found  him  indifferent  and  cal- 
lous to  all  his  statements  of  the  gospel,  until  this  truth  was 
announced.  It  aroused  in  the  barbarian  chief  the  wildest 
emotions,  and  excited  an  undisguised  alarm.  He  had  been 
a  warrior,  and  had  lifted  up  his  spear  against  multitudes  slain 
in  battle.  He  asked,  in  amazement,  if  these  his  foes  should 
all  live.  And  the  assurance  that  they  should  arise,  filled  him 
with  perplexity  and  dismay,  such  as  he  could  not  conceal. 
He  could  not  abide  the  thought.  A  lung  slumbering  con- 
science had  been  pierced  through  all  its  coverings.  Well 
do  such  incidents  illustrate  the  fact,  that  He  who  gave  the 
gospel  knew  what  was  in  man,  and  infused  into  the  leaven  of 
his  own  word  those  elements  that  are  mightiest  to  work  upon 
all  the  powers  of  man's  soul,  and  to  penetrate  with  their  in- 
fluence the  whole  mass  of  human  society.  And  in  our  an- 
nouncement of  that  gospel,  we  do  well  to  adhere  to  the  scrip- 
tural pattern  given  us  by  the  Author  of  the  gospel.  Many  ol 
the  other  doctrines  of  Christianity  are  almost  insensibly 
modified,  in  our  mode  of  presenting  them,  by  the  natural  re- 
ligion which  intimates,  if  it  docs  not  establish,  these  or  similar 


THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD.  m  299 

truths.  But  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body  is 
not  a  doctrine  of  natural  religion.  It  is  purely  a  doctrine 
of  revelation,  and  becomes  known  to  us  merely  from  the 
living  oracles  of  Scripture.  And  as  man's  reason  did  not 
discover  it,  it  is  not  for  man's  reason  to  alter  or  amend  the 
doctrine  according  to  his  caprices  and  prejudices. 

In  what  glorious  and  terrific  imagery  does  the  Scripture 
before  us  array  the  scenes  of  the  resurrection.  In  the  hea- 
vens, thronged  by  angels  in  all  their  glory,  is  seen  the  de- 
scending throne.  Upon  it,  in  his  own  and  his  Father's  glory, 
sits  the  Son  of  Man,  the  crucified  Nazarene,  now  the  judge 
of  quick  and  dead.  Before  him  the  material  heavens  are 
rolled  together  as  a  scroll,  and  the  elements  melt  with  fer- 
vent heat.  The  creation  cannot  abide  the  dread  presence 
of  its  Creator,  "  from  whose  face  the  earth  and  the  heavens 
fled  away  ;"  and  yet  they  cannot  escape  it :  "  and  there  was 
found  no  place  for  them."  His  bare  word  had  accomplished 
the  miracle  of  creation,  and  now,  by  a  kindred  act  of  power, 
his  mere  glance  shakes  the  world,  and  awes  it  into  prepara- 
tion for  the  judgment.  The  old  heathen  talked  of  their 
"  cloud-compelling  Jove,"  whose  eye  gathered  all  the  storms 
of  the  skies.  But  how  mean  is  all  this  to  the  scriptural  ima- 
gery of  a  world-compelling  Christ.  The  trumpet  sounds. 
The  earth  shakes  with  inward  commotions.  Its  dead — its 
ancient  dead — all  the  buried  of  forgotten  tribes,  and  of  ante- 
diluvian times,  are  coming ;  more  numerous  than  the  hosts 
ever  mustered  by  earthly  captain  to  the  battle,  yet  all  their 
numbers  infuse  into  them  no  courage  in  meeting  their  judge. 
They  have  no  thought  of  resisting  his  power.  Whatever 
the  gods  in  whom  they  trusted  once,  they  feel  now  the  pre- 
sence, and  await  the  fiat  of  the  one  true  God,  Maker  and 
Judge  of  heaven  and  earth.  The  patriarchs,  who  lived  when 
the  world  was  young,  and  the  coming  generations  to  be  born 
long  after  our  death,  who  shall  have  lived  when  that  world 
had  grown  old,  shall,  with  us,  stand  before  the  judgment 
seat.  From  this  tribunal  there  lies  no  appeal,  and  of  the 
sentence  now  to  be  uttered  there  can  be  no  reversal,  and  no 
revision. 

It  will  be  a  scene  of  solemn  interest,  not  only  as  the  meet- 
ing of  man  with  his  Redeemer  and  Judge,  but  from  the 
meeting  of  mankind  together.  The  scriptural  accounts  of 
the  judgment  represent  it  as  an  occasion  when  we  shall  know 
ourselves  at  least.     From  their  descriptions  of  that  day,  as 


300  THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD. 

a  day  of  disclosures,  when  the  secrets  of  all  hearts  shallbe 
made  manifest,  they  seem  also  to  imply  that  we  shall  know 
others,  and  be  known  by  them.  Without  our  consciousness 
of  our  own  identity,  there  could  evidently  be  no  sense  of 
guilt;  and  without  our  knowledge  of  the  identity  of  our  fel- 
low-sinners, it  seems  to  us,  there  could  be  no  disclosures, 
such  as  the  Bible  predicts.  Man  then,  in  that  gathering, 
will  not  only  know  himself,  and  know  his  God,  but  he  will 
know  his  race.  And  this,  to  the  sinner,  will  add  inconceiva- 
bly to  the  terrors  of  that  assembling.  The  ungodly  will 
meet  there  the  righteous,  who  warned  him  in  vain,  and  all 
whose  warnings  are  about  to  be  verified.  Long  forgotten 
emotions,  and  privileges  undervalued  and  misim proved,  will 
flash  upon  the  memory,  as  the  eye  glances  on  the  face  of 
some  dead  friend,  with  whom  those  feelings  and  opportunities 
were  associated.  The  unconverted  child  of  the  Sabbath 
schools  shall  face  his  faithful  teacher ;  and  parents  and  chil- 
dren, pastors  and  people,  all  the  connections  which  death 
had  for  a  time  sundered,  shall  there  recognize  each  other. 
It  will  be  to  some  a  fearful  meeting,  as  they  encounter  there 
for  the  first  time  those  whose  death  they  had  occasioned. 
The  murderer  will  confront  his  victim.  Cain  and  Abel,  who 
have  been,  perhaps,  parted  from  each  other  since  the  hour 
when  the  fratricide  fled  from  the  scene  of  his  crime,  and  the 
body  of  his  brother  lay  breathless  in  the  dust,  will  now  meet 
again.  The  body  which  sunk  beneath  that  murderous  blow, 
dealt  by  a  brother's  hand,  and  the  hand  which  inflicted  that 
blow,  will  be  there,  gathered  again  from  the  indiscriminate 
dust  over  which  the  world  has  trodden  for  scores  of  centuries. 
But  if  it  be  fearful  to  meet,  thus,  any  on  whom  we  may  have 
brought  temporal  death,  how  much  more  may  the  scene  be 
dreaded,  by  those  who  have  occasioned  the  spiritual  death  of 
others,  as  the  scene  of  their  meeting  with  the  proselytes  and 
admirers,  whose  souls  they  aided  in  ruining  for  ever.  It  will 
be  sad  for  Caiaphas  to  meet  the  innocent  Messiah  whom  he 
adjudged  to  death,  though  it  was  but  the  death  of  the  body  ; 
but  it  would  seem  almost  equally  sad  for  the  Jewish  High 
Priest  to  face  there  his  kindred  and  friends,  whose  unbelief 
his  arguments  sealed,  and  whose  impenitence  his  example 
served  to  render  obdurate  and  final,  for  upon  them  he  will 
have  brought  the  death  of  the  soul.  The  meetings  of  the 
resurrection  will  form,  then,  no  small  portion  of  its  terrors. 
This  is  the  truth,  upon  which  we  would  chiefly  insist,  from 


THE    SEA.    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD.  301 

the  part  of  Scripture  now  before  us.  We  have  considered, 
generally,  the  resurrection  of  the  dead.  Let  us  proceed  next 
to  consider  the  dead  of  the  sea,  who  are  in  our  text  distin- 
guished from  the  rest  of  the  dead ;  and  thence  let  us  pass  to 
the  effects  of  their  re-union  with  the  rest  of  mankind,  who 
ended  their  mortal  career  elsewhere  than  on  the  deep.  Our 
remaining  divisions  will  be,  therefore, 

II.  The  sea  giving  up  its  dead. 

III.  The  meeting  of  the  dead,  so  given  up  of  the  sea, 
with  the  dead  of  the  land. 

II.  The  sea  will  be  found  thickly  peopled  with  the  mortal 
remains  of  mankind.  In  the  earlier  ages  of  the  world,  when 
the  relations  of  the  various  nations  to  each  other  were  gene- 
rally those  of  bitter  hostility,  and  the  ties  of  a  common  bro- 
therhood were  little  felt,  the  sea,  in  consequence  of  their 
comparative  ignorance  of  navigation,  served  as  a  barrier, 
parting  the  tribes  of  opposite  shores,  who  might  else  have 
met  only  for  mutual  slaughter,  ending  in  extermination.  Now 
that  a  more  peaceful  spirit  prevails,  the  sea,  which  once  serv- 
ed to  preserve,  by  dividing  the  nations,  has,  in  the  progress 
of  art  and  discovery,  become  the  channel  of  easier  intercourse 
and  the  medium  of  uniting  the  nations.  It  is  the  great  high- 
way of  traffic,  a  highway  on  which  the  builder  cannot  en- 
croach, and  no  monarch  possesses  the  power  of  closing  the 
path,  or  engrossing  the  travel.  Thus  continually  traversed, 
the  ocean  has  become,  to  many  of  its  adventurous  voyagers, 
the  place  of  burial.  But  it  has  been  also  the  scene  of  battle, 
as  well  as  the  highway  of  commerce.  Upon  it  have  been 
decided  many  of  those  conflicts  which  determined  the  dynasty 
or  the  race,  to  whom  for  a  time  should  be  committed  the 
empire  of  the  world.  It  was  on  the  sea,  in  the  light  of  Sala- 
mis,  that  the  fleets  of  Greece  and  Persia  contended,  whether 
the  despotism  and  wealth  of  the  East  should  extend  their 
widening  sway  over  the  freedom  and  arts  of  the  West.  It 
was  in  the  sea-fight  of  Actium,  that  the  imperial  power  of 
Rome,  then  claiming  dominion  over  the  world,  was  assured 
to  Augustus  and  his  successors,  and  the  way  was  prepared 
for  the  universal  peace  that  reigned  at  our  Saviour's  birth. 
On  this  element  was  fought  the  battle  of  Lepanto,  where  the 
right  arm  of  the  Ottoman  was  broken.  And,  as  we  come  down 
to  our  own  times,  the  fights  of  Aboukir,  Trafalgar,  and  Na- 
varino,  all  contests  upon  the  sea,  were  battles  affecting  in  no 
slight  degree  the  destinies  of  all  Europe,  and  the  civilized 


302  THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD. 

world.  All  these  have  served  to  gorge  the  deep  with  the 
carcases  of  men.  It  has  had,  again,  its  shipwrecks.  Though 
man  may  talk  of  his  power  to  bridle  the  elements,  and  of  the 
triumphs  of  art,  compelling  all  nature  to  do  his  work,  yet 
there  are  scenes  on  the  sea  in  which  he  feels  his  proper 
impotence.  And  when  God  lets  loose  his  winds,  and  calls 
up  his  billows,  man  becomes  sensible  of  his  dependence. 
How  many  in  all  ages,  since  commerce  first  began  her  voy- 
ages of  profit  or  discovery,  have  perished  in  the  waters, 
foundering  in  the  midnight  storm,  driven  on  the  unsuspected 
rocks,  engulfed  by  the  whirlpool,  or  dashed  by  winds 
against  some  iron-bound  coast.  Even  in  our  own  times, 
with  all  our  improvements  in  the  art  of  navigation,  and  with 
all  the  expenditures  that  are  incurred  to  increase  the  mariner's 
security,  it  has  been  calculated  by  some,  that  each  year  one 
thousand  ships  are  lost  at  sea. 

The  sea,  then,  has  its  dead.  And  when  the  trump  is  blown, 
the  archangel's  summons  to  the  judgment,  the  sea  shall 
give  up  these  its  long-buried  treasures.  The  gold  and  the 
jewels  it  has  accumulated,  the  "buried  argosies,"  with  all 
the  rich  freight  which  it  has  swallowed  up,  will  be  permitted 
to  slumber  unreclaimed;  but  no  relic  that  has  formed  part 
of  the  corpse  of  a  child  of  Adam  will  be  left  unclaimed  or 
unsurrendered  in  that  hour.  The  invalid,  who,  in  quest  of 
health,  embarked  on  the  sea,  and  perished  on  the  voyage, 
committed  to  the  deep  with  the  solemn  ceremonies  of  reli- 
gion— the  pirate,  flung  into  the  waves  from  a  deck  which 
he  had  made  slippery  with  blood — the  emigrant's  child, 
whose  corpse  its  weeping  parents  surrendered  to  the  deep  on 
their  way  to  a  land  of  strangers — the  whaler,  going  down 
quick  into  death  midst  his  adventurous  employment — the 
wretched  slave,  perishing  amid  the  horrors  of  the  Middle 
Passage — the  sailor,  dropt  from  the  yard-arm  in  some  mid- 
night gale — the  wrecked,  and  the  dead  in  battle,  all  will  arise 
at  that  summons.  The  mariners  of  all  times,  who  have  died 
on  their  loved  element,  those  who  rowed  on  the  galleys  of 
Tyre  or  Carthage,  or  manned  the  swift  ships  of  Tarshish, 
will  be  there,  together  with  the  dead  of  our  own  days.  The 
idolater,  who  sunk  from  some  Chinese  junk  while  invoking 
his  graven  images ;  and  the  missionary  of  the  cross,  who, 
like  Coke,  perished  on  his  way  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the 
heathen,  or  who,  like  Chamberlain,  compelled  to  return  from 
the  field  of  missionary  toil,  with  shattered  health,  and  all 


THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD.  303 

wearied  and  spent  with  labors  for  Christ,  has  expired  on  his 
homeward  way — all,  all  shall  be  there.  As  these  shall  re- 
appear from  the  entombing  waters,  will  their  coming  have 
no  effect  upon  the  multitudes  who  died  on  the  shore,  and 
whose  bodies  also  the  cemeteries  and  sepulchres  of  earth 
shall  on  that  day  have  restored  ?  We  have  thus  reached  the 
last  division  of  our  subject. 

III.  The  meeting  of  the  dead  of  the  sea  with  the  dead  of 
the  land. 

1.  There  must  be,  then,  in  this  resurrection  from  the  sea, 
much  to  awaken  feeling  in  the  others  of  the  risen  dead,  from 
this,  if  from  no  other  cause  :  these,  the  dead  of  the  sea,  will 
be  the  kindred  and  near  connections  of  those  who  died  upon 
the  land.  Among  those  whom  the  waters  shall  in  that  day 
have  restored,  will  be  some  who  quitted  home  expecting  a 
speedy  return,  and  for  whose  coming  attached  kindred  and 
friends  looked  long,  but  looked  in  vain.  The  exact  mode, 
and  scene,  and  hour  of  their  deaths  have  remained  until  that 
day  unknown  to  the  rest  of  mankind.  And  can  it  be,  with- 
out feeling,  that  these  will  be  seen  again  by  those  who  loved 
them,  and  who  through  weary  years  longed  for  their  return, 
still  feeding  "  the  hope  that  keeps  alive  despair?"  The  dead 
of  ocean  will  be  the  children  and  pupils,  again,  of  the  dead 
of  the  land.  Their  moral  character  may  have  been  formed, 
and  their  eternal  interests  affected,  less  by  their  later  asso- 
ciates on  the  deep,  than  by  the  earlier  instructions  they 
received  on  shore.  They  may  have  exhibited  on  the  deck 
and  in  the  forecastle  only  the  examples  they  witnessed  in 
the  nursery,  ar.d  the  tempers  they  cherished,  and  the  habits 
they  formed  in  the  home.  When  these  are  restored,  they 
are  restored  to  witness  for  or  against  their  parents,  and  the 
associates  of  their  childhood  and  youth.  These  last  may 
have  died  on  shore,  but  by  their  influence  on  the  mariner, 
they  have  transmitted  their  own  spirit  and  moral  character 
over  the  wide  waste  of  waters,  to  remote  and  barbarous 
shores.  It  cannot,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  human  soul,  its 
memory,  its  affections,  and  its  conscience  remaining  what 
they  now  are — it  cannot  but  be  a  scene  of  solemn  interest, 
when  the  dead  of  the  land  shall  behold  their  kindred  dead  of 
the  sea. 

2.  Let  it  be  remembered,  again,  that  a  very  large  propor- 
tion of  those  who  have  thus  perished  on  the  ocean,  will 
appear  to  have  perished  in  the  service  of  the  landsman. 


304  THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD. 

The  mariner  will  appear  very  generally,  we  say,  to  have 
found  his  watery  grave  while  in  the  service  of  those  dwelling 
upon  shore.  Some  in  voyages  of  discovery,  despatched  on 
a  mission  to  enlarge  the  bounds  of  human  knowledge,  or  to 
discover  new  routes  for  commercial  enterprise,  and  new 
marts  for  traffic.  Thus  perished  the  French  navigator  La 
Peyrouse,  whose  fate  was  to  the  men  of  the  last  generation 
so  long  the  occasion  of  anxious  speculation.  Still  greater 
numbers  have  perished  in  the  service  of  commerce.  The 
looms  and  forges  of  Britain  could  not  continue  to  work,  and 
famine  would  stalk  through  her  cities,  did  not  her  ships  bear 
abroad  the  manufactures  of  her  artisans  to  every  clime.  It 
is  to  the  sailor  we  owe  it  that  the  cottons  of  Manchester,  and 
the  cutlery  of  Birmingham  reach  even  the  wigwams  of  our 
western  Indians.  Literature  employs  and  needs  the  seaman, 
and  the  scholar  beyond  the  Alleghanies  studies  books  that 
were  purchased  for  him  in  the  book-fairs  of  Germany,  and 
brought  across  the  sea  by  the  adventurous  mariner.  And 
look  to  the  home,  and  see  how  many  of  its  delicacies,  and 
luxuries,  and  adornments  are  brought  to  us  from  abroad  by  the 
sailor's  skill  and  enterprise.  And  our  agriculture  needs  his 
aid.  The  grains  of  the  North,  and  the  cotton  of  the  South 
would  find  little  vent,  were  not  the  swift  ships  ready  to  bear 
them  to  a  market.  They  have  served  the  church  also.  By 
them  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  reached  a  refuge  on  these  shores, 
and  four\d  a  home.  By  them  the  missionary  has  been  wafted 
to  his  station  in  the  heathen  world.  As  a  people  we  are 
under  special  obligations  to  the  art  and  enterprise  of  the 
navigator.  We  are  a  nation  of  emigrants.  The  land  we 
occupy  was  discovered  and  colonised  by  the  aid  of  the  mari- 
ner. The  seaman  has,  then,  been  employed  in  our  service. 
And  as  far  as  he  was  our  servant,  doing  our  work,  we  were 
bound  to  care  for  his  well-being;  and  if  he  perished  in  our 
service,  it  was  surely  our  duty  to  inquire  whether  he  perish- 
ed in  any  degree  by  our  fault.  The  ten  commandments 
.describe  the  duties  of  the  employer  as  well  as  those  of  the 
parent.  Care  for  the  servant  as  well  as  the  child  was  one  of 
the  lessons  of  Sinai.  And  though  literally  the  servant  named 
in  the  Decalogue  might  be  only  the  servant  of  the  household, 
not  he  who  docs  service  for  us  at  a  distance;  yet  the  spirit 
of  these  commandments  is  not  to  be  confined  by  so  close  and 
literal  an  interpretation.  When  our  Saviour  was  asked, 
'Who  is   my  neighbor  V    he  pointed  the  inquirer  to  the 


THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD.  305 

remote  and  alien  Samaritan.  All  whom  we  can  reach,  and 
all  whom  we  use  in  service,  mediate  or  immediate,  we  should 
seek  to  benefit,  as  far  as  our  power  and  influence  extend. 

3.  Others  of  those  buried  in  the  waters  have  lost  their  lives 
in  defence  of  those  upon  the  shore.  In  the  last  of  our  wars 
with  the  mother  country,  the  navy  was  regarded  as  the  right 
arm  of  our  defence,  under  God,  from  the  foreign  foe.  And 
so  it  has  been  with  other  lands.  Their  possessions,  their 
liberties,  their  families  and  homes,  have  been  protected  by 
the  deaths  of  those  whom  they  have  never  known,  but  who 
expired,  fighting  their  battles,  leagues  away,  on  the  deep  sea. 
Are  no  obligations  imposed  on  us,  in  behalf  of  those  who 
have  thus  befriended  us,  and  in  behalf  of  their  successors  and 
associates'?  Can  a  nation  claim  the  praise  of  common  hones- 
ty or  gratitude,  who  neglect  the  moral  and  spiritual  interests 
of  these  their  defenders? 

4.  Let  us  reflect,  also,  on  the  fact,  that  many  of  those  who 
have  perished  on  the  waters  will  be  found  to  have  perished 
through  the  neglect  of  those  living  on  shore.  We  allude 
not  merely  to  negligence  in  providing  the  necessary  helps 
for  the  navigator.  The  Government,  that  should  leave  the 
shoals  and  reefs  in  its  harbors  unmarked  by  buoys,  and  that, 
along  a  line  of  frequented  but  dangerous  sea-coast,  should 
rear  no  light-houses,  would  be  held  guilty  of  the  death  of  all 
shipwrecked  in  consequence.  But  may  there  not  be  other 
classes  of  neglect  equally  or  yet  more  fatal?  The  parent 
who  has  neglected  to  govern  and  instruct  his  child,  until  that 
child,  impatient  of  all  restraint,  rushes  away  to  the  sea  as  a 
last  refuge,  and  there  sinks,  a  victim  to  the  sailor's  sufferings 
or  the  sailor's  vices,  can  scarce  meet,  with  composure,  that 
child  in  the  day  when  the  sea  gives  up  its  dead.  Or  if,  as  a 
community,  or  as  churches,  we  shut  our  eyes  to  the  miseries 
of  the  sick  and  friendless  seaman,  or  to  the  vices  and  oppres- 
sions by  which  he  is  often  ruined  for  time  and  eternity,  shall 
we  be  clear  in  the  day  when  inquisition  is  made  for  blood? 
No,  unless  the  church  does  her  full  duty,  or  in  other  words, 
reaches  in  her  efforts  the  measure  of  her  full  ability,  for  the 
spiritual  benefit  of  the  seaman,  her  neglect  must  be  charge- 
able upon  her.  Now,  in  the  Saviour's  description  of  the 
condemnation  of  sinners  at  the  last  day,  it  will  be  observed, 
that  he  selects  instances,  not  of  sins  of  commission,  but  of 
sins  of  omission,  as  destroying  the  world.  "  In  as  much  as 
ye  did  it  not"  is   the   ground  of  the    doom  pronounced, 


306  THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD. 

May  not  the  perishing  sailor  take  up  most  of  the  items  of 
that  sentence,  and  charge  them  home  upon  many  of  the 
professed  disciples  of  Christ  1  Neither  by  influence,  nor 
prayers,  nor  alms,  did  they  relieve  his  temporal  and  spiritual 
destitution,  when  hungry,  or  thirsty,  or  sick,  or  naked,  or 
in  prison.  And  far  as  this  neglect  operated  to  form  the 
habits  that  hastened  his  death,  and  led,  perhaps,  to  his  eter- 
nal ruin,  so  far  it  cannot  be  desirable  to  think  of  meeting 
him  again,  among  those  who  shall  rise  in  the  last  day  from 
the  ocean  depths,  to  stand  with  us  before  the  judgment  seat. 
5.  Many,  we  remark  lastly,  of  the  dead  of  the  sea  will  be 
found  to  have  been  victims  to  the  sins  of  those  upon  shore. 
Those  who  have  perished  in  unjust  wars  waged  upon  that 
element,  will  they  have  no  quarrel  of  blood  against  the 
rulers  that  sent  them  forth  ?  The  statesmen,  the  blunders 
or  the  crimes  of  whose  policy  the  waters  have  long  con- 
cealed, must  one  day  face  those  who  have  been  slaughtered 
by  their  recklessness.  How  many  of  the  victims  over  whom 
the  dark  blue  sea  rolls  its  waters,  have  perished,  year  by 
year,  in  the  nefarious  slave  trade.  Such  is  the  large  propor- 
tion of  the  miserable  children  of  Africa  who. die  on  the  voy- 
age, that,  along  the  ordinary  course  of  the  slave  ship  from 
the  eastern  shores  of  Africa  to  our  own  continent,  the  deep 
must  be  strewn,  and  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  at  some  portions 
of  the  way,  paved  with  the  remains  of  those  who  have  been 
torn  from  their  country  and  home,  by  the  orders  or  conni- 
vance of  the  slave-trader,  to  perish  on  the  ocean.  In  the 
day  of  the  resurrection  that  galaxy  of  skeletons  will  rise; 
and  the  voice  of  wailing  and  accusation,  stilled  for  centuries 
beneath  the  waters,  will  be  lifted  up  to  be  stilled  no  more 
for  ever.  And  so  it  may  be  said  of  every  other  form  of  wick- 
edness, of  which  those  that  sail  in  our  ships  are  rendered  the 
instruments  or  the  victims.  The  keeper  of  the  dram  shop, 
or  the  brothel,  where  the  sailor  is  taught  to  forget  God  and 
harden  himself  in  iniquity,  will  not  find  it  a  light  thing,  in 
that  great  day  of  retribution,  to  encounter  those  whom  he 
made  his  prey.  The  seaman  may  not  have  died  on  the  pre- 
mises of  his  tempter,  in  drunken  riot;  but  out  upon  the  far 
ocean  he  may  have  carried  the  habits  there  acquired,  and 
died,  the  victim  of  intemperance,  or  profligacy,  in  a  climate 
far  removed  from  that  where  he  was  first  lessoned  in  the 
ways  of  ruin,  sinking  perhaps  in  a  shipwreck,  caused,  as  many 
shipwrecks   have  been  caused,  by  the  intoxication  of  the 


THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD.  307 

commander  or  his  crew.  But  the  sea  does  not  contain  all 
the  victims  among  its  sons,  who  have  thus  been  destroyed 
by  the  vices  learned  of  the  landsman.  Many  a  sailor  thus 
corrupted  has  perished  on  shore  in  a  drunken  broil,  or  pined 
away  in  some  foreign  hospital,  or  ended  his  days  in  a  prison. 
Human  laws  seized  not  on  those  who  first  ensnared  him  ; 
but  will  divine  laws  be  equally  indulgent,  or  equally  remiss  ? 
The  literature  of  the  shore  will  be  called  to  account  for  its 
influence  on  the  character  and  well-being  of  the  seaman. 
The  song  writer,  who,  perhaps,  a  hungry  and  unprincipled 
scribbler,  penned  his  doggrel  lines  in  some  garret,  little  careful 
except  as  to  the  compensation  he  should  earn,  the  dirty 
pence  that  were  to  pay  for  his  rhymes,  will  one  day  be  made 
to  answer  for  the  influence  that  went  forth  from  him  to  those 
who  shouted  his  verses,  in  the  night  watch,  on  the  far  sea, 
or  perchance  upon  some  heathen  shore.  The  infidel,  who 
may  have  sat  in  elegant  and  lettered  ease,  preparing  his 
attacks  upon  the  Bible  and  the  Saviour,  thought  little,  proba- 
bly, but  of  the  fame  and  influence  he  should  win  upon  the  shore. 
But  the  seeds  of  death  which  he  scattered  may  have  been 
wafted  whither  he  never  thought  to  trace  them.  And  in 
that  day  of  retribution,  he  may  be  made  to  lament  his  own 
influence  on  the  rude  seaman  whom  he  has  hardened  in  blas- 
phemy and  impiety;  and  who  has  sported  with  objections 
derived  by  him  at  the  second  hand  or  third  hand  from  such 
writers,  whilst  he  figured  amongst  his  illiterate  and  admiring 
companions,  as  the  tarred  Voltaire  or  Paine  of  the  forecastle 
and  the  round  top,  the  merriest  and  boldest  scoffer  of  the 
crew. 

The  meeting,  then,  of  the  dead  of  the  land  with  the  dead 
of  the  sea  will  be  one  of  dread  solemnity,  because  of  the  ties 
of  kindred  and  influence  that  bound  them  together — and 
because  multitudes  of  those  buried  in  the  deep  died  in  the 
service  of  the  landsman,  or  in  his  defence,  many  by  his  ne- 
glect, and  many  as  the  victims  of  the  varied  wickedness  in 
which  he  had  instructed,  hardened,  or  employed  them. 
Those  who  have  been  allied  in  sin,  and  accomplices  in  trans- 
gression, will  find  it  one  of  the  elements  of  their  future 
torment,  to  be  associated  together  in  the  scenes  of  the  last 
judgment,  and  in  those  scenes  which  lie  beyond  that  day. 
The  animosity,  revenge,  and  hate  of  the  unregenerate  heart, 
then  released  from  all  restraint,  and  exasperated  by  despair, 


308  THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD. 

will  find  vent,  and  rage  uncontrolled  through  the  sinner's 
long  eternity  of  wo. 

In  conclusion,  let  us  dwell  on  some  of  the  practical  results 
of  the  theme  we  have  considered. 

1.  The  dead  shall  rise,  all  shall  rise,  and  together.  From 
the  land  and  from  the  sea,  wherever  the  hand  of  violence, 
or  the  rage  of  the  elements  have  scattered  human  dust,  shall 
it  be  reclaimed.  And  we  rise  to  give  account.  We  rise  to 
be  judged.  If,  my  hearers,  we  would  anticipate  that  judg- 
ment, we  might,  as  the  apostle  assures  us,  escape  it,  "for  if 
we  would  judge  ourselves,  we  should  not  be  judged."*  If, 
feeling  our  sins,  we  do,  as  penitents,  confess  and  forsake 
them,  and  flee  to  Christ  and  implore  the  Spirit,  the  dawn  of 
that  day  will  bring  to  us  no  terrors,  and  the  sound  of  that 
trump  be  the  welcome  summons  to  a  higher  degree  of 
blessedness.  Cleansed  in  the  Saviour's  blood,  renewed  by 
the  Spirit,  and  arrayed  in  the  righteousness  of  Christ,  we 
may  in  that  day  stand  accepted,  confident,  and  fearless.  But, 
out  of  Christ,  judgment  will  be  damnation. 

2.  If  the  re-appearance  from  the  seas  of  the  sinner,  who 
perished  in  his  sins,  be  a  thought  full  of  terror;  is  there  not, 
on  the  other  hand,  joy  in  the  anticipation  of  greeting  those 
who  have  fallen  asleep  in  Christ,  but  whose  bones  found  no 
rest  beneath  the  clods  of  the  valley,  and  whose  remains  have 
been  reserved  under  the  waters  until  that  day,  while,  over 
their  undistinguished  resting-place,  old  ocean  with  all  its 
billows  has  for  centuries  pealed  its  stormy  anthem?  Then 
to  see  them  freed  from  decay,  and  restored  to  the  friends  in 
Christ  wfro  had  loved  and  bewailed  them — this  will  be  joy. 
Ensure,  Christian  parent,  the  conversion  of  your  sea-faring 
child,  and  then,  whatever  may  betide  him,  it  shall  be  well. 
His  body  may  rest  as  safely  amid  coral  and  sea-weed  as  in 
the  church-yard;  and  his  soul  fly  as  swiftly  to  the  bosom  of 
Christ  from  the  midst  of  engulfing  waters,  as  from  a  death- 
bed, attended  by  all  the  watchfulness  and  all  the  sympathy 
of  weeping  friends. 

3.  This  community  especially  owes  a  debt  to  that  class  of 
men,  who  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  and  do  business  in 
the  great  waters.  The  providence  of  God  seems  to  indicate 
that  our  city  is  yet  to  become  the  Tyre  of  this  western  world. 
Some  have  estimated  the  seamen  who  yearly  visit  our  port 

*  1  Cor.  xi.  31. 


THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD.  309 

at  more  than  seventy  thousand,  and  suppose  the  average 
number  constantly  in  our  harbor  to  be  from  three  to  five 
thousand.  Contributing  as  they  do  to  the  comforts  and  pros- 
perity of  every  home,  and  guarding,  as  in  time  of  war  they 
do,  this  commercial  metropolis,  do  they  not  demand  and 
deserve  a  still  increasing  share  in  our  sympathies  and  aid? 

4.  It  is,  again,  by  no  means  the  policy  of  the  church  to 
overlook  so  influential  a  class,  as  is  that  of  our  sea-faring 
brethren.  They  are  in  the  path  of  our  missionaries  to  the 
heathen.  If  converted,  they  might  be  amongst  their  most 
efficient  coadjutors,  as,  whilst  unconverted,  they  are  among 
the  most  embarrassing  hindrances  the  missionary  must  en- 
counter. They  have,  it  should  be  also  remembered,  in  their 
keeping,  the  highways  of  the  earth,  along  which  travel  its 
literature,  its  commerce,  and  its  freedom.  What  would  be 
thought  of  the  statesmanship  or  patriotism  of  the  man  who, 
in  time  of  war,  would  propose  surrendering  to  the  enemy 
all  the  roads  and  bridges  of  the  land,  in  hopes  of  retaining 
possession  of  the  rest  of  the  territory?  The  mere  proposal 
would  be  regarded  as  combining  folly  the  most  absurd,  and 
treason  the  most  disastrous.  Yet  what  else  is  the  church 
doing,  if  she  relinquish  the  sea-faring  class  to  the  influence 
of  sin  and  to  the  will  of  the  destroyer  of  souls  ?  She  would 
be  proposing  virtually  a  most  ruinous  truce  with  Satan,  when 
resigning  these  to  his  unresisted  control,  and  offering  to 
abandon  to  his  keeping  the  keepers  of  the  highways  of  the 
nations. 

5.  While  humbled  in  the  review  of  her  past  negligence, 
and  in  the  sense  of  present  deficiencies,  as  to  her  labors  for 
the  seaman,  the  church  has  yet  cause  for  devout  thankfulness 
in  the  much  that  has  recently  been  done  for  the  souls  of 
those  who  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  and  in  the  perceptible 
change  that  has  already  been  wrought  in  the  character  of 
this  long-neglected  class  of  our  fellow-citizens  and  fellow- 
immortals.  God  has  poured  out  his  Spirit  even  on  the  inci- 
pient and  uncertain  efforts  of  his  people  ;  and  from  many  a 
cabin  and  forecastle  the  voice  of  prayer  even  now  ascends, 
and  on  many  a  deck  the  words  of  this  salvation  are  read. 
"  Let  us  not  be  weary  in  well-doing." 

6.  And  now,  lastly,  we  ask  each  of  you  :   In  that  day, 
when  earth  and  sea  shall  meet   heaven  in  the  judgment, 
where  do  you  propose  to  stand  ?     Among  the  saved,  or  the 
lost — the  holy,  or  the  sinful — at  the  right  hand  of  the  Judge, 


310 


THE    SEA    GIVING    UP    ITS    DEAD. 


or  at  his  left?  Purposes  of  partial  reformation  or  of  future 
repentance  cannot  save  you.  Christ  is  now  waiting  to  be 
gracious.  He  who  will  at  last  appear  as  the  Judge,  now 
comes  as  the  Redeemer.  He  is  now  an  Advocate  ;  soon  he 
will  be  the  Avenger.  Heaven  stoops  to  win  you.  Hell 
rises  to  allure  and  destroy  you.  Oh,  yield  not  to  Satan. 
Reject  not  Christ;  for  the  Judge  is  at  the  door.  And  not 
this  soul  only  of  yours,  but  this  body  also  must  live — must 
live  for  ever  ;  and  can  you  wish  it  to  live  in  endless,  hopeless 
misery?  A  throbbing  brow,  or  an  aching  tooth,  are  now 
sufficient  to  embitter  all  the  enjoyments  of  life.  What  will 
it  be  when  the  whole  body  is  cast  into  torment?  Can  you 
desire  to  meet  your  impenitent  friends,  to  spend  an  eternity 
"together  in  growing  hate  and  mutual  recrimination — to  face 
your  pious  friends,  a  godly  father,  or  a  praying  mother,  and 
catch  your  last  glance  of  hope,  your  last  sight  of  happiness, 
as  you  see  them  mounting  to  glory,  whilst  you  sink  your- 
selves into  the  sea  of  fire — the  lake  that  burneth  with  fire 
and  brimstone  for  ever  and  ever  ? 


THE  LESSONS   OF  CALAMITY* 

11  Or  those  eighteen,  upon  whom  the  tower  of  Siloam  fell,  and 
slew  them,  think  ye  that  they  were  sinners  above  all  men  that 
dwelt  in  Jerusalem  7    I  tell  you.  Nay  ;    but,  except  ye  repent,  ye 

SHALL  ALL  LIKEWISE  PERISH." Luke  Xiii.  4,  5. 

It  was  one  of  the  characteristic  excellences  which  marked 
the  teachings  of  our  Saviour,  that  he  preached,  in  the  high- 
est and  best  sense  of  that  phrase,  to  the  times,  and  his  minis- 
try was  thus  a  word  in  season.  He  addressed  himself  to 
men's  present  duties,  and  their  present  sins  and  snares  ;  and 
the  passing  events  of  the  day,  or  the  scenery  of  the  spot 
where  he  taught,  furnished  him  with  ready  and  apposite  illus- 
trations. The  news  of  a  cruel  butchery,  or  a  melancholy 
calamity  ;  the  tidings  that  told  of  the  Galileans  slaughtered 
over  their  sacrifices  ;  or  of  the  unhappy  victims  in  Siloam, 
crushed  by  a  falling  tower — the  news  that  for  the  time  was 
the  burden  of  all  tongues,  and  made  all  ears  to  tingle,  was 
seized  by  him  as  affording  the  occasion  of  riveting  some  keen 
truth  upon  the  memory  and  conscience  of  the  multitude. 
And  thus  it  might  be,  and  ought  to  be,  with  us.  The  jour- 
nals of  the  day,  too  often  taken  up  but  in  the  gratification  of 
an  idle  curiosity,  that  seeks  ever  to  learn  and  tell  some  new 
thing,  might  preach  to  us  of  Providence  and  Eternity.  We 
might  consult  them  to  see,  in  the  changes  they  record,  how 
God  is  governing  his  own  world,  with  a  care  that  never  slum- 
bers, and  a  wisdom  that  never  falters.  For  all  that  occurs, 
from  the  fall  of  a  dying  sparrow  to  the  crash  of  an  empire 
overthrown,  is  but  as  He  bids  or  permits  it,  who  "  doeth 

*  A  Discourse,  on  occasion  of  the  explosion  in  the  (J.  S.  ship  of  war, 
Princeton,  near  Washington,  on  the  28th  of  February,  1844,  by  which  the 
Secretary  of  State,  and  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  with  others,  lost  their 
lives.  Delivered  before  the  Amity  Street  Baptist  Church,  Sabbath  morning, 
3d  March,  and  before  the  Oliver  Street  Baptist  Church.  Sabbath  evening. 
10th  March,  1844. 


312  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

according  to  his  will  in  the  army  of  heaven,  and  among  the 
inhabitants  of  the  earth."* 

An  event  such  as  that  upon  which  our  Redeemer  comment- 
ed, has  occurred  amongst  ourselves.     In  the  metropolis  of 
our  nation,  the  seat  of  our  government,  where  so  much  of  the 
intellect  of  the  nation  is  congregated,  and  whence  so  wide 
an  influence  goes  forth  to  the  ends  of  our  land,  death  has 
made  recently  its  fell  inroads.     The  shadows  of  the  sepulchre 
have  fallen,   as  in  sudden  and  disastrous   eclipse,  upon  the 
high  places  of   our  republic.     A  new  vessel  of    war,  built 
with  lavish  expenditure,  in  which  science  had  shown  her  terri- 
ble skill  in  inventing  new  engines  of  death  of  fearful  potency, 
had  become  to  that  city  the  theme  of  general  curiosity  and 
admiration.     Hundreds  of  guests  thronged  her  decks.     Some 
of  them  were  the  young,  the  gay,  and  the  fashionable  ;  others 
were  the  aged,  the  experienced  and  the  influential,  citizens 
distinguished  by  the  station  they  occupied,  or  the  talents  they 
had  displayed.     Little  did  that  stately  vessel,  beneath  a  bril- 
liant sky,  in  her  holiday  trim,  and  with  her  exulting  company, 
seem  the  fitting  scene  for  auguries  of  disaster,  or  the  intru- 
sion   of  distress.     Below,   all   was    merriment    and    gaiety, 
whilst  the  laugh,  the  jest,  and  the  song,  were  intermingled 
with  their  feastings.     The  spot  consecrated  in  the  hearts  of 
this  nation,  as  that  of  the  abode  and  last  resting-place  of  the 
Father  of  his  country,  was  near.    The  memory  of  the  mighty 
dead  was  not  forgotten  by  the  inmates  of  that  vessel  as  she 
floated  along.     But  alas  !  death  was  much  nearer  to  that  re- 
joicing throng,  than  in  the  tomb  where  reposed  the  mortal 
remains  of  Washington.     "  Couched  in  grim  repose,"  the  de- 
stroyer had  already  marked  fresh  and  nearer  prey.     Above, 
on  the  deck  of  that  majestic  ship,  preparations  are  made  to 
discharge  anew  the  piece  of  ordnance  already  so  famed  for 
its  destructive  power,  but  soon  to  obtain  yet  more  disastrous 
fame.     Men  eminent  in  station,  acting  some  of  them  in  the 
cabinet  of  our  Chief  Magistrate,  as  his  chosen  advisers,  and 
one  of  their  number  but  a  few  days  installed  in  his  high  trust, 
had  gathered  around.     The  discharge  took  place.  Amid  the 
smoke  and  din,  shrieks  were  heard.     When  that  smoke  had 
passed  away,  the  newly  invented  engine  of  destruction  was 
seen  itself  a  ruin,  after  having  made  that  deck  a  scene  of  des- 
olation and  carnage.     Two  of  the  ministers  of  our  govern- 

*  Daniel  iv.  35. 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  313 

merit,  the  Secretary  of  State,  and  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy, 
with  others  of  the  distinguished  visiters,  lay  on  that  blood- 
\>espattered  deck,  disfigured  and  mutilated,  either  breathless 
or  gasping  their  last.  How  startling  and  hideous  the  contrast 
between  the  scenes  which  but  the  narrow  breadth  of  that  deck 
then  separated  ;  the  mangled,  the  dying  and  the  dead,  who 
were  above  it,  and  their  nearest  relatives,  their  daughters  and 
their  wives,  who,  cheerful  and  unconscious,  were  gathered  in 
joyous  groups  below  it,  as  yet  utterly  ignorant  of  the  appall- 
ing reality.  Those  thus  suddenly  deprived  of  friends  had 
discerned,  in  the  shock  of  the  discharge,  no  unwonted  and 
foreboding  sounds,  nor  did  they  dream  of  the  irreparable  be- 
reavement that  one  brief  moment  had  brought  upon  its  wings 
of  doom.  Who  shall  paint  the  anguish  of  an  attached  wife, 
that  had  gone  forth  in  the  morning  radiant  in  happiness  and 
hope,  but  who  was  now  to  return  at  evening  to  a  desolate 
home  and  an  orphan  charge,  a  new-made  widow,  meeting  her 
fatherless  babes  with  the  cry  of  Naomi  in  her  heart :  "  Call 
me  Mara,  for  the  Almighty  hath  dealt  very  bitterly  with  me, 
for  I  went  out  full,  and  the  Lord  hath  brought  me  home  again 
empty  ;" — of  daughters  held  back  by  friendly  violence,  from 
the  sight  of  a  father's  mangled  remains — of  children  left  in 
an  instant  fatherless,  and  of  friends  who  had  gone  forth  to 
begin  together  a  day  of  rejoicing,  but  its  evening  closed  on 
the  survivor  mournfully  bringing  back  his  dead.  The  station 
of  several  of  the  victims,  the  presence  of  their  dearest  kin- 
dred, and  the  festive  occasion  that  had  assembled  them,  all 
heightened  the  horror  of  the  scene.  In  the  tumultuous  and 
irrepressible  distress  of  the  hour,  the  mercy  might  perhaps 
be  forgotten  that  was  yet  intermingled  with  the  calamity — 
the  guardian  care  that  had  given  to  the  multitude  endangered 
so  narrow  an  escape.  For  the  time,  dismay,  amazement  and 
horror,  filled  all  hearts.  Yet,  as  it  is  now  easy  to  see,  mercy 
had  watched  even  over  that  scene  of  ^carnage,  and  lightened 
the  weight  of  the  infliction,  or  how  easily  might  a  far  more 
sweeping  desolation  have  occurred  ;  and  of  the  hundreds 
there  embarked,  but  a  few  frenzied  survivors  only  might 
have  escaped  the  general  wreck,  each  ready  in  his  distraction 
to  deem  himself  alone  in  his  deliverance,  and  each  eager  to 
say  in  the  language  of  those  messengers  who  came  with 
heavy  tidings  to  the  patriarch  :  "  I  only  am  escaped  alone  to 
tell  thee." 

46  Hear  ye   the  rod,"  cried  the  prophet,  "  and  who  hath 
41 


314  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

appointed  it."  Such  is  the  command  of  our  God,  by  his  serv< 
ant  Micah,  to  the  community  thus  suddenly  and  sorely  visited, 
Does  calamity  befall  us,  it  is  not  voiceless.  It  was  no  blind 
chance  that  launched  the  bolt.  Trouble  springs  not  out  of 
the  dust,  nor  is  it  dumb.  The  Scriptures  give  speech  and 
articulate  utterance  as  it  were,  to  each  such  bereavement ; 
and,  as  the  tomb  opens  to  receive  its  new  tenants,  a  still, 
small  voice  is  heard  issuing  from  its  dim  chambers,  a  voice 
of  remonstrance  and  warning,  of  tender  expostulation  and 
compassionate  entreaty.  And  as  our  text  shows  us,  we  have 
not  only  the  warrant  of  our  Saviour's  example,  for  making 
such  seasons  the  occasion  of  religious  instruction  ;  but  we 
have  here,  in  the  records  of  the  evangelist,  the  exact  lessons 
wrhich  such  scenes  of  sudden  and  public  calamity  were  intend- 
ed to  illustrate  and  to  enforce.  May  His  Spirit  enable  us 
rightly  to  read,  and  honestly  to  apply  them. 

Some  of  the  judgments  of  the  Divine  Providence  need  no 
interpreter.  Sorrow  and  guilt  are,  in  the  natural  workings 
of  man's  conscience,  and  in  the  general  estimate  of  mankind, 
closely  conjoined.  And  there  are  times,  as  when  a  Nadab 
perishes  before  the  altar  he  has  desecrated,  or  an  Uzzah  is 
blasted  beside  the  ark — as  when  the  storm  of  fire  comes 
down  upon  the  cities  of  the  plain,  or  the  ark  of  Noah  rides 
on  the  whelming  waters  past  the  hapless  and  despairing  sin- 
ners who  had  derided  his  warnings — when  God's  judgments 
follow  so  closely  man's  transgressions,  that  he  who  runs 
may  read  the  purport  of  the  visitation,  and  see  in  the  pecu- 
liar guilt  of  the  sufferers,  the  reason  of  their  peculiar  fate. 
But  it  is  not  always  so.  Men  are,  in  our  days,  as  in  the 
times  of  the  Saviour  they  were,  prone,  on  hearing  of  some 
strange  and  sudden  calamity,  to  indulge  themselves  in  rash 
and  uncharitable  judgments.  They  think  of  the  suffer- 
ers as  more  careless  or  more  criminal  than  others,  and  sup- 
pose them  to  have  become  thus  the  victims  of  an  avenging 
Providence.  Judging  of  character  as  the  mass  of  mankind 
do,  merely  from  the  success  which  attends  it,  attributing 
excellence  when  they  see  prosperity,  and  imputing  guilt  or 
weakness  where  they  discover  the  presence  of  adversity,  they 
adopt  the  rule  on  which  Job's  friends  so  tenaciously  and 
cruelly  insisted,  that  calamity  is  proof  of  crime  ;  a  rule  that, 
in  the  use  of  it  by  those  misguided  patriarchs,  God  so  signally 
disavowed  and  rebuked.  It  was  on  this  same  false  principle 
that  the  Saviour  himself  was  judged  by  his  own  countrymen 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  315 

and  cotemporaries,  "  We,"  said  the  prophet,  speaking  by 
anticipation  in  the  name  of  his  people — "  we  did  esteem  him 
stricken,  smitten  of  God  and  afflicted."  And  was  he  not 
heavily  afflicted,  stricken  most  sorely,  and  was  it  not  God 
that  smote  and  bruised  him  ?  It  was  indeed  so  ;  but  not,  as 
they  supposed,  for  the  peculiar  sins  of  the  sufferer  himself. 
*'  The  Man  of  Sorrows,"  on  whom  all  griefs  centered,  was 
yet  "  holy,  harmless,  undefiled  and  separate  from  sinners." 
In  our  text,  the  Redeemer,  as  he  speaks  of  the  slaughtered 
Galileans,  and  of  the  falling  tower,  rebukes  this  spirit  of  rash 
judgment.  He  does  not  deny,  indeed,  that  sin  was  found 
in  Pilate's  victims,  and  in  those  who  died  at  Siloam  :  but  he 
asks  ;  "  Were  they  sinners  more  than  others  ?  Were  they 
more  deserving  this  fate  than  yo urselves  ?  Except  ye  repent, 
ye  shall  all  likewise  perish"  The  connection  which  the  mind 
of  man  traces,  instinctively  as  it  were,  between  sin  and  suf- 
fering, is  not  to  be  made  to  concentrate  upon  the  individual, 
but  rather  to  rebound  back  on  the  conscience  of  the  race  ; 
not  to  rest  on  the  head  of  the  stranger  who  perishes,  but 
rather  on  the  heart  of  the  survivor  who  witnesses  it,  and  who, 
were  God  but  strict  in  the  immediate  exaction  of  punish- 
ment, deserves  to  share  the  ruin  which  he  has  but  beheld. 

We  cannot,  then,  misinterpret  Providence,  when  we  have 
thus  the  comments  of  the  Lord  himself,  who  wields  the  scep- 
tre of  the  universe.  It  is  the  Legislator  of  the  world,  sitting 
to  interpret  his  own  statutes,  and  to  expound  the  reasons  of 
his  own  procedure.  He  teaches  us,  that  the  fate  of  one  is 
the  desert  of  all ;  that  as  sinners  we  all  merit  a  sudden  and 
violent  end,  and  that  except  we  repent,  we  ultimately  and 
universally  perish.  These  are  humbling  truths,  it  must  be 
confessed,  but  they  are  salutary.  Let  us  ponder  them,  in  the 
order  in  which  our  Saviour's  language  presents  them. 

I.  All  of  us  are  sinners. 

Christ's  hearers  were  such  as  well  as  the  Galileans,  the 
survivors  as  well  as  the  sufferers,  and  we  as  well  as  those 
whose  death  we  deplore. 

II.  All  of  us  are  liable  to  sudden  death. 

III.  Death  to  the  impenitent  sinner  is  destruction. 

IV.  Repentance  is  our  only  safeguard  from  eventual  ruin. 
I.  We  are  all  sinners.     "  Think  ye  they  were  sinners  above 

all  men  ?  I  tell  you,  Nay  :  but  except  ye  repent,  ye  shall  all 
likewise  perish." 

The  fact  of  man's  sinfulness  is  one  scarce  needing  to  be 


316  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

argued.  The  conscience  of  the  world  and  the  history  of  the 
world,  are  here  in  accord  with  the  Scriptures  of  the  world's 
Maker  and  Judge.  Our  own  observation  and  the  experience 
of  those  around  us,  who  have  been  most  and  longest  conver- 
sant with  Human  Nature,  and  our  complaints  against  our 
fellow-men,  attest  the  melancholy  truth  which  Scripture  ut- 
ters in  no  dubious  terms.  When  God  looked  down  from 
heaven  to  behold  the  children  of  men,  he  saw  "  none  good, 
no,  not  one."  We  are  each,  by  nature,  the  children  of  wrath, 
even  as  others.  We  may  dispute  the  statement  as  to  our- 
selves, and  a  few  select  favorites,  but  we  are  generally  prone 
not  only  to  admit  but  to  assert  it  of  the  mass  of  society. 
Our  complaints  of  governments  and  whole  classes  of  society 
and  entire  nations,  show  that  we  do  not  deem  the  multitude 
of  mankind  faultless.  What  page  of  the  world's  history  is 
not  blotted  with  tears  and  stained  with  blood — tears  which 
man's  misconduct  has  wrung  from  the  eyes  of  suffering 
weakness — blood  which  man's  violence  has  shed  ?  But  we 
need  not  go  to  men's  vices  to  prove  their  sinfulness;  it  is 
proved  too  sufficiently  by  their  very  virtues.  For  what  vir- 
tue save  that  exhibited  in  the  one  character  of  Christ,  is  per- 
fect, symmetrica],  stainless  ?  The  confessions  of  men,  like 
Daniel,  the  man  greatly  beloved  of  heaven,  under  the  old 
dispensation,  and  the  defects  of  John,  the  beloved  disciple 
of  Christ  under  the  new  dispensation,  are  decisive  as  to  the 
defective  and  imperfect  character  of  man  on  the  earth.  And 
if  not  sinners,  what  need,  again,  had  the  race  of  a  Redeem- 
er %  By  the  heights  of  glory  from  which  the  Ransomer 
needed  to  plunge  when  he  rescued  us,  I  may  gauge  the 
depths  of  debasement  and  guilt  into  which  the  ransomed  had 
sunk  ;  and  the  moral  demerit  of  the  first  Adam  may  be  in- 
ferred from  the  tremendous  sacrifice,  and  the  infinite  dignity 
demanded  in  the  second  Adam,  who  came  to  deliver  and  to 
save  him.  Let  us  remember  our  sinfulness,  that  we  may  know 
our  true  position  before  the  Holy  Ruler  of  the  universe. 
We  are  not  the  innocent  beings  which  He  at  first  made  us. 
We  were  formed  upright,  but  we  have  "  sought  out  many 
inventions,"  and  perverse  and  rebellious  inventions  they 
have  been.  The  guilt  is  our  own,  an  invention  of  mankind. 
Hence  it  is,  and  not  by  any  original  perversion  in  our  crea- 
tion, that  sorrow  and  anguish  have  entered  our  world,  and 
become  the  heritage  of  our  race.  Bereavement  and  death 
are  strangers,  who  have  intruded  into  God's  happy  universe, 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  317 

and  for  whose  admission  into  our  own  world,  our  own  hands 
have  torn  a  pathway.  The  very  presence  of  death  is  evi- 
dence of  sin.  "  Death"  entered  "  by  sin,  and  so  death  passed 
upon  all  men  for  that  all  men  have  sinned."*  And  when 
we  view  its  ravages  in  those  we  love,  or  but  read  its  record 
in  the  obituary  or  upon  the  gravestone,  we  are  admonished 
afresh  of  that  truth  uttered  beside  the  cross  of  the  world's 
Redeemer.  The  lips  of  the  dying  thief  then,  at  least,  spoke 
truly,  and  what  he  said  to  an  expiring  companion,  belongs 
as  justly  to  each  one  of  our  dying  race,  "  Thou  art  in  the 
same  condemnation."  Afflictions  and  bereavements,  the 
removal  of  our  friends,  the  calamities  witnessed  in  the  high 
places  of  our  land,  are  proofs  of  our  common  sinfulness. 

But  though  afflictions  prove  our  common  sinfulness,  they 
afford  in  this  world  no  test  as  to  our  comparative  sinfulness. 
The  man  less  afflicted  here  on  earth  is  not  therefore  more 
holy  than  his  neighbor  who  is  more  afflicted.  The  towers 
of  Siloam  fell,  while  turrets  in  more  guilty  districts  of  Jeru- 
salem stood  immovable.  The  hapless  Galilean  mingled  his 
blood  with  his  sacrifices  at  the  altar,  while  the  more  guilty 
Caiaphas  was  permitted  to  wear  undisturbed  his  pontifical 
tiara,  and  the  wretched  Judas  yet  possessed,  in  comparative 
security,  the  dignity  and  privileges  of  the  Apostleship.  But 
the  death  of  the  poor  peasants  from  the  shores  of  Gennesa- 
reth,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  lengthened  life  of  the  high 
priest,  and  of  the  false  apostle,  on  the  other  hand,  were  no 
proofs  that  the  earliest  victims  were  the  chiefest  sinners. 
Pilate,  who  had  commanded  the  massacre,  was  doubtless, 
in  the  sight  of  God,  although  still  surviving,  a  greater  of- 
fender than  those  men  whom  he  had  butchered.  When  our 
Heavenly  Father  singles  out  a  man,  as  the  subject  of  an 
afflictive  dispensation,  it  is  no  proof  that  he  is  peculiarly 
guilty  above  all  his  fellows. 

Again,  when  God  sends  a  sweeping  visitation  on  a  people, 
he  often  involves  the  righteous  and  the  wicked  in  an  indis- 
criminate death.  It  is  not,  indeed,  always  so  ;  at  times  God 
sees  fit  to  make  distinctions  even  in  this  life  in  behalf  of  his 
servants  that  fear  him.  This  it  was  for  which  Abraham 
pleaded  when  the  storm  was  gathering  over  the  devoted 
cities  of  the  plain.  "  To  slay  the  righteous  with  the  wicked 
— that  be  far  from  thee  :  shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth 

*  Romans  v..  12. 


318  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

do  right?"  This  it  was  in  which  the  Psalmist  trusted,  and 
in  which  he  exhorted  others  to  trust.  "  A  thousand  shall 
fall  at  thy  side,  and  ten  thousand  at  thy  right  hand  ;  but  it 
shall  not  come  nigh  thee."  And  thus  it  was  that  the  three 
Hebrew  children  walked  unharmed  in  the  heart  of  that  fur- 
nace, whose  fiery  mouth  destroyed  others  that  came  near 
only  to  feed  its  flames.  And  thus  it  was  that  Daniel  sat 
unharmed  amid  lions  who  brake  of  his  adversaries  every 
bone  in  their  body  ere  they  reached  the  bottom  of  the  den. 
God  may  specially  preserve  his  servants  from  afflictions  that 
destroy  others.  He  did  it,  perhaps,  more  under  the  Old 
Testament  dispensation  than  under  the  New,  because  the 
earlier  dispensation  was  especially  one  of  temporal  rewards 
and  deliverances,  and  of  prompt  punishments.  But  under 
either  economy,  God  often  has  seen  fit  to  make  the  righteous 
and  the  sinner  fall  indiscriminately  in  some  common  calam- 
ity. It  had  been  so  in  the  days  of  Solomon,  and  he  observ- 
ed it :  "  All  things  come  alike  to  all.  There  is  one  event 
to  the  righteous  and  to  the  wicked — to  him  that  sacrificeth, 
and  to  him  that  sacrificeth  not."*  He  observed  it,  we  say, 
and  not  yet  having  reached  the  conclusion  which  he  ulti- 
mately attained,  and  with  which  he  shuts  up  his  book,f  the 
bringing  of  every  work  in  eternity  to  a  just  judgment ;  not 
yet  having  found  (for  the  book  is  a  diary  of  doubts  ending 
in  certainty,  and  inquiries  that  grope  after  and  at  last  clutch 
the  truth) — not  yet  having  gained  the  clue  to  the  mystery, 
and  the  solution  of  his  difficulties,  a  clue  and  solution  which 
he  afterwards  found  in  the  retributions  of  the  last  judgment, 
he  for  the  time  exclaimed,  as  he  beheld  the  common  fate  of 
the  good  and  the  bad  :  "  This  is  an  evil  among  all  things 
that  are  done  under  the  sun,  that  there  is  one  event  unto 
all. "J  In  days  long  preceding  those  of  this  wise  monarch, 
the  same  fact  had  been  perceived  and  lamented.  Job  mourn- 
fully exclaimed,  that  in  times  of  sudden  and  general  calam- 
ity, the  righteous  perished  with  his  ungodly  neighbor.  "If 
the  scourge  slay  suddenly,  he  (it)  will  laugh  at  the  trial  of 
the  innocent.  "§  In  other  words,  when  the  instrument  of 
the  divine  vengeance  is  uplifted,  be  the  rod  what  it  may,  it 
makes  a  wide  and  fell  swoop,  and  it  scorns  to  linger  that  it 
may  draw  distinctions  between  the  innocent  and  the  guilty. 
The  distinction   is  left   to   the  eternal  world.     It  is  drawn 

*  Ecclcs.  ix.  2.        t  Eccles.  xii.  13,  14.        1  Ecules.  ix.  3.        §  Job  ix.  23. 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  319 

sufficiently  at  the  bar  of  Final  Judgment.  "  Then  shall  ye 
return  and  discern  between  the  righteous  and  the  wicked."* 
For  piety  in  the  best  is  no  safeguard  from  death,  or  from  a 
sudden,  a  violent,  a  painful,  or  a  shameful  end. 

Often,  in  fact,  the  guilt  of  a  sinful  community  may  fall 
most  heavily  on  the  heads  of  its  most  innocent  members. 
When  the  righteous  Josiah  fell  in  battle  with  the  king  of 
Egypt,  the  sins  of  the  guilty  Jews  lighted  on  the  head  of 
their  pious  monarch.  And  so  when  Naboth  perished  in  the 
days  of  Ahab,  and  Zachariah  was  stoned  between  the  porch 
and  the  altar,  and  James  the  Apostle  was  beheaded  by 
Herod  to  please  the  people  of  the  Jews,  each  of  the  victims 
was  taken  away,  in  fact,  not  so  much  because  of  his  own 
sins,  as  because  of  the  sins  of  others  who  survived  him. 
"  The  righteous  is  taken  from  the  evil  to  come."  The 
nation  is  left  with  an  intercessor  less  to  avert  the  coming 
vengeance  ;  and  often  with  one  enormity  more  to  swell  their 
coming  account.  One  more  twig  is  withdrawn  from  the 
lessening  dyke  that  as  yet  shuts  out  the  rising  flood  of  wrath 
and  ruin  from  a  guilty  land. 

A  similarity  of  fate  is  then  no  proof  of  an  equal  sinfulness. 
Go  with  me  to  the  camp  of  Israel  as  they  are  entering  the 
Promised  Land.  A  curse  from  God  has  retarded  the  ad- 
vance of  their  armies.  They  have  selected  one  individual 
as  the  cause  of  their  disasters.  And  they  are  stoning  him 
in  the  valley  of  Achor.  Let  us.  go  down  some  centuries 
later  in  the  stream  of  their  history.  Accompany  me  again, 
and  without  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  I  show  you  a  similar 
victim  enduring  the  like  fate.  But  the  resemblance  in  their 
fate  proves  no  similarity  in  their  character ;  for  the  one  of 
these  hapless  sufferers  is  Achan,  the  troubler  of  Israel,  and 
the  other  is  the  righteous  Stephen,  who  dies  with  his  face 
shining  like  that  of  an  angel,  blesses  with  parting  breath  his 
ferocious  murderers,  and  lifts  heavenwards  eyes  that  have 
been  already  purged  from  earthly  films,  to  discern  the  Son 
of  Man  standing  in  glory  and  power  at  the  right  hand  of  the 
Father,  a  Saviour  waiting  to  welcome  and  to  crown  the  pro- 
tomartyr  of  his  Church.  The  same  disaster  that  sweeps  one 
soul  away  to  the  horrors  of  eternal  despair,  may  waft  an- 
other to  the  endless  harpings  of  heaven  :  and  angels  and  de- 
mons may  hover  over  the  same  field  of  death,  commissioned 

*  Malachi  iii.  18. 


320*  THE    XESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

the  one  to  bear  their  exulting  charge  to  the  Father's  home, 
the  other  to  drag  their  despairing  prey  to  the  abodes  of  wail- 
ing, to  be  plunged  into  the  pit  of  unquenchable  fire. 

While  death,  then,  proves  us  all  sinful,  the  mode  of  our 
death  affords  no  standard  of  our  relative  sinfulness.  The 
murderer  may,  like  the  elder  Herod,  die  on  his  pillow,  while 
the  martyr  of  Christ  expires  on  the  rack.  And  the  same 
judgment  which  admits  one  of  its  victims  to  the  rest  of 
Paradise,  may  consign  another,  who  perished  at  his  side,  to 
the  flames  of  hell. 

If  any  of  my  hearers  are  slow  to  allow  their  own   sinful- 
ness, slow  to  feel  the  justice  of  the  Saviour's  warning  as  to 
their  own  case,  and  that,  except  they  repent,  they  shall  like- 
wise perish,  we  would  urge   upon   their  consideration   but 
one  more  fact  as  bearing  on  the  question  of  their  sinfulness. 
Your  dread   of  death,  that  instinctive  horror  of  the  grave 
which  all  feel,  what  is  it  but  an  implied   confession  of  un- 
worthiness  and  want  of  moral  fitness  for  the  change  dissolu- 
tion brings?     Man's  fear  of  death  is  itself,  we  say,  proof  of 
sin.     For  believing,  as  well  nigh  all  of  us  do,  that  death  will 
bring  us  nearer  to  God,  and  place  us  more  immediately  than 
before  in  his  presence,  we  must  also  acknowledge  that  He 
to  whom  death  thus  approximates  us  is  the  holiest,  and  best, 
and  happiest  of  beings.    To  enjoy  the  nearer  society  of  such 
a  Deing,  must  then  be  increased  felicity  to  all  the  good.     If 
we  were  really  holy,  would  not  the  anticipation  of  such  ad- 
mission to  the  presence  of  God  be  the  highest  solace  to  be 
found  amid  the  cares  and  conflicts  of  life  '!     Should  we  not 
long  for  the  day  of  our  introduction  to  the  presence-chamber 
oi    the   great  King ;    and,  in  the  language  of  the   poet  of 
Methodism,  should  we  not  "press  to  the  issues  of  death?" 
Should  we  not  habitually,  with  Paul,  long  to  depart?     But 
we  do,  in   fact,  dread  death.     And   that  we  do  thus  shrink 
from  it,  involving,  as  that  event  does,  a  nearer  approach  to 
God,  is  in  itself  an   impeachment  of  our  moral   character. 
To  have  a  disiike  of  God's  society  is  in  itself  a  sinful  state 
of  feeling.     It  is  a  confession,  on  our  part,  of  the  want  of 
holiness,  and  of  the  requisite  sympathy  with  pure  and  heav- 
enly beings.     This  dread  of  death  may  be  regarded   as  an 
unconscious  reminiscence  of  our  old   and   original  state  of 
sinlessness,  and  its  forfeited  privileges.     Then  the  presence 
of  God,  when  he  visited  the  garden  of  Eden,  was  the  delight 
and  glory  of  our  unfallen  parents.     But  soon  as  they  sinned 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  321 

His  presence  became  formidable.  It  was  that  of  the  detect- 
or and  the  avenger :  and  they  shrank  from  the  blaze  of  eyes 
too  pure  to  look  upon  iniquity.  Let  men  talk  as  they  may 
of  their  own  moral  blamelessness  before  God,  and  of  the 
moral  dignity  of  the  race,  the  general  dread  of  death  is  in 
itself  the  acknowledgment  of  a  state  of  heart  that  could  not 
exist  in  a  sinless  being.  It  is  this  sense  of  moral  defect  and 
demerit  that  arms  the  destroyer  with  his  terrors,  and  that 
points  and  envenoms  the  dart  with  which  he  threatens  us. 
The  sting  of  death  is  sin. 

II.  From  the  truth  of  our  common  sinfulness  we  pass  to 
one  of  its  consequences,  our  common  liability  to  a  death 
that  may  be  unexpected  and  violent.  We  are  all  liable  to 
sudden  death.  "Except  ye  repent,  ye  shall  all  likewise 
perish."     And  this  is  the  second  division  of  our  remarks. 

That  each  of  us  is  exposed  to  sudden  death  is  a  truth  none 
will  dispute,  yet,  like  other  undeniable  truths,  it  is  not  suf- 
ficiently remembered.  As  death  is  the  original  penalty  of 
sin,  and  the  iirst  existence  of  sin  in  us  incurred  that  dread 
punishment,  God  has  at  any  time,  and  however  suddenly,  a 
right  to  exact  from  us  the  penalty.  And  there  is  wisdom 
and  mercy  in  his  making  the  execution  sudden.  It  is  the 
more  startling  to  others,  our  fellow-offenders.  The  possi- 
bility of  it,  and  our  apprehension  of  it,  may  restrain  us  from 
many  a  sin  into  which  we  might  else  have  rushed,  had  we 
been  assured  of  any  long  term  of  impunity,  or  any  protract- 
ed interval  between  our  transgression  and  our  removal.  It 
is  kind,  we  say,  in  our  heavenly  Father,  by  these  sudden 
deaths,  to  set  up  mementoes,  as  it  were,  of  man's  mortality, 
in  all  our  scenes  of  business  and  amusement ;  that  we  may 
thus  in  no  spot  feel  ourselves  entitled  to  forget  him ;  and 
that  he  may  thus  hedge  up  the  way  of  the  transgressor  with 
salutary  terrors,  by  letting  in  upon  every  point  the  dread 
light  of  eternity,  and  making  each  eminence  along  the  path- 
way command  the  prospect  of  an  opening  grave. 

And  in  the  accomplishment  of  that  sentence  of  death 
which  man's  sin  has  provoked,  how  various  are  the  means 
employed.  Naught  is  so  trivial  but  that  God  can  make  it 
the  executioner  of  his  vengeance,  be  it  the  worm  that  smote 
the  pride  of  Herod,  or  the  smooth  pebble  of  the  brook  that 
cleft  the  brow  of  Goliah.  Naught  is  so  vast  and  unwieldy, 
but  that  it  readily  lends  itself  to  accomplish  suddenly  man's 
removal   into    eternity.     The  air,   with  all   the  winds   and 

42 


322  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

storms  that  store  its  arsenals,  the  waters,  and  the  solid  earth, 
are  ready  to  do  his  bidding,  and  avenge  his  quarrel  with  his 
creature,  man.  The  first  deluge  of  water,  and  the  last  del- 
uge of  fire,  either  serves,  at  his  pleasure,  to  purge  his  earth 
of  sinners.  But,  besides  these  more  stately  and  solemn 
messengers,  how  many  less  noticeable  emissaries  has  he  at 
his  command.  The  starting  of  a  horse,  the  obstructed  valve 
of  an  engine,  a  failing  plank  in  the  vessel's  side,  a  sunken 
rock  no  navigator  has  discovered  and  designated  on  no 
chart,  a  misplaced  step,  a  falling  tile — all  may  be  his  effec- 
tual messengers.  And  so  in  any  scene,  the  ball-room,  the 
theatre,  the  warehouse,  or  the  highway,  as  well  as  in  the 
home,  we  may  be  summoned.  Death  has  all  seasons  and 
all  scenes  for  his  own.  Invited  to  a  festive  excursion,  we 
nvay,  for  aught  that  we  know,  be  but  decking  ourselves  as 
smiling  and  garlanded  victims  for  the  place  of  sacrifice. 
Such  was  the  coming  of  the  last  messenger  to  those  whose 
death  has  cast  a  gloom  over  the  face  of  our  land. 

Now,  if  death  be  ever  terrible,  he  is  especially  so  when 
his  coming  is  sudden.  When,  instead  of  making  sickness 
and  slow  decay  his  forerunners,  he  dispenses  with  these 
harbingers  and  appears  unannounced,  his  coming  makes 
many  a  stout  heart  quail.  The  thread  we  had  looked  to  see 
slowly  attenuated  and  long  drawn  out,  is  snapped,  as  with  a 
stroke,  rudely  and  for  ever.  Life,  with  its  cares,  and  hopes, 
and  vanities,  and  eternity,  with  its  tremendous  retributions, 
are  brought  into  startling  proximity,  and  seem  the  more 
strongly  contrasted.  But  chiefly  is  sudden  death  terrible, 
because  many,  even  of  those  habitually  ready  for  another 
world,  feel  as  if  they  would  wish  some  interval  between  the 
secular  business  of  this  life  and  its  close,  some  span,  not  only 
to  set  their  house  in  order,  but  to  scrutinize  their  own  hopes 
for  eternity,  and  fit  the  soul  for  its  dread  change  as  it  hov- 
ers on  the  verge  of  another  world.  But  to  the  sinner  how 
awful  is  it  to  be  cut  off  from  his  cherished  hope  that  he  may 
be  allowed,  before  quitting  earth,  a  brief  preparation  ! 
This  great  work,  which  should  be  his  first  care,  he,  from  a 
desire  of  enjoying  the  world,  makes  his  last ;  and  defers  to 
the  hurry,  delirium,  and  feebleness  of  a  death-bed  the  great 
business  of  a  life-time.  To  cut  him  off  suddenly  is,  then,  to 
deprive  him  of  his  favorite  resort,  and  to  flood,  in  stern  ven- 
geance, that  refuge  of  lies  in  which  he  had  proposed  to  take 
a  final  shelter  from  the  wrath  of  God,  when  he  might  no 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  323 

longer  enjoy  his  idols.  He  had  purposed  to  give  to  the 
ways  of  sin  the  strength  of  his  faculties,  and  to  pour  on 
God's  altars  the  last  poor  dregs  of  the  wine-cup  of  life  :  to 
make  youth,  and  health,  and  zeal,  and  influence,  and  energy 
a  burnt-offering  to  Satan,  and  then  to  carry  the  poor  offals 
of  the  sacrifice,  age,  feebleness,  and  sickness,  to  Christ,  An 
unexpected  death  shuts  him  out  from  this  refuge,  where  he 
has  risked  and  lost  his  all. 

But  there  are  those  to  whom  death,  and  even  sudden 
death,  is  not  terrible.  Some,  like  the  British  Christian, 
whose  frequent  prayer,  answered  as  it  was  in  the  mode  of 
his  removal,  is  inscribed  on  his  tomb,  have  longed  for  an  in- 
stantaneous summons,  and  exclaimed,  "  Sudden  death,  sud- 
den glory."  To  them  the  King  of  Terrors  had  lost  his 
ghastliness,  and  seemed,  in  their  eyes,  but  the  angel  Death, 
commissioned  by  the  Father  to  release  them  from  cares  and 
sins,  enfranchise  them  from  all  the  assaults  of  temptation, 
and  admit  them,  introduced  by  the  hand  of  the  Mediator,  to 
all  the  glories  and  all  the  joys  of  the  beatific  vision. 

It  is  not  then  the  circumstances  of  our  death,  be  it  vio- 
lent and  disastrous,  or  otherwise — be  it  sudden  or  lingering, 
that  should  be  the  chief  question.  It  is  rather  the  character 
of  the  dying  man,  the  moral  image  he  carries  into  the  world 
of  spirits.  What  are  his  relations  to  God  ?  Let  me  die  the 
death  of  the  righteous,  be  it  violent  or  peaceful,  be  it  slow 
decay  or  some  sudden  stroke,  be  it  solitary  or  amid  compan- 
ions and  friends,  be  it  a  rude  and  agonizing  dislodgement  of 
the  soul  from  the  body,  or  a  gentle  and  noiseless  lapse,  as 
of  one  falling  asleep  in  Christ. 

III.  For,  and  this  is  the  third  division  of  our  remarks, 
death  to  the  sinner  is  destruction,  and  consequently  sudden 
death  is,  to  such,  but  sudden  damnation.  This  is  implied  in 
the  Saviour's  language:  "  Ye  shall  all  likewise  perish." 

Now,  this  could  not  mean  the  future  destruction  of  the 
Jewish  people  in  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  for  many  sinners 
among  his  hearers  died  in  their  beds  before  the  storm  of 
God's  wrath  burst  in  all  its  fierceness  upon  that  guilty  and 
doomed  city,  and  ere  there  were  seen  yet,  even  as  specks  in 
the  distant  horizon,  the  Roman  eagles  gathering  eagerly  to 
the  prey.  Nor  could  it  be  a  violent  death,  by  sword  or  fall- 
ing tower,  like  that  of  the  Galileans  or  the  people  of  Siloam  ; 
for  we  cannot  suppose,  with  any  show  of  reason,  that  all  the 
enemies  of  Christ  among  the  Jews,  who  did  not  perish  by 


324  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

the  Roman  war,  died  by  some  other  painful  end.  Nor  could 
it  be  any  mere  death  of  the  body  that  he  intended,  for  he 
speaks  of  it  as  something  which  repentance,  and  repentance 
alone,  could  enable  them  to  avoid.  Now,  from  the  death 
of  the  body,  repentance  does  not  save  the  man.  The  peni- 
tent must  enter  the  shroud  and  the  coffin  as  well  as  his  un- 
godly neighbor.  But  the  evil  from  which  repentance  does 
save  us,  is  eternal  destruction  ;  and  this,  therefore,  our  Sa- 
viour intends  when  he  uses  the  word  "perishing."  It  is 
the  eternal  ruin  that  awaits  the  dying  sinner. 

Death,  although  often  used  but  in  that  narrow  sense,  in- 
cludes more  than  the  corruption  and  decay  of  the  body. 
We  are  in  arrears  to  a  violated  law.  The  dissolution  of  the 
body  is  but  the  first  instalment  of  our  debt.  Death  is  often 
spoken  of  as  the  debt  of  nature.  More  justly  it  might  be 
termed  the  debt  of  sin  ;  for  our  nature,  while  sinless,  as  it 
came  from  the  Maker's  plastic  hand,  was  not  mortal.  The 
destruction  of  the  body,  then,  is  but  a  partial  satisfaction  of 
the  debt  which  sin  owes  to  the  justice  of  God.  And  if  you 
observe  the  margin  of  our  text,  you  will  perceive  that  a 
literal  rendering  of  the  word  is  :  "  W ere  they  debtors  more 
than  others?"  The  diseases  and  pains,  the  decay  and  disso- 
lution of  the  body,  are  but  the  earlier  instalments  of  the  vast 
penalty.  Behind  it  comes  the  loss  of  the  soul  when  in  the 
resurrection  the  body  has  been  revivified  and  re-united  to 
the  soul,  its  old  associate  in  sin,  and  both  are  cast  into  the 
lake  of  fire.  This  is  the  second  death,  and  with  it  eventu- 
ally sinners  "  perish  "  by  a  ruin  endless,  remediless,  and 
hopeless. 

The  death  of  the  body  is  but  a  transient  act,  the  portal 
through  which  we  pass  into  the  far  eternity  beyond.  It 
puts,  indeed,  an  indelible  imprint  on  a  man's  character.  It 
leaves  the  filthy  eternally  filthy,  and  the  holy  unalterably 
holy  ;  stripping  the  one  of  all  hope,  as  it  exempts  the  other 
from  air  fear  of  a  change.  It  snaps  for  ever  the  bond  that 
binds  the  believer  while  on  earth,  to  care,  and  temptation, 
and  conflict ;  and  it  also  sunders  the  ties  of  opportunity, 
mercy,  and  hope,  that  surrounded  and  held  up  the  unbe- 
liever, while  in  this  world  of  probation.  Death  is  not,  as 
the  journalist  too  often  in  the  case  of  the  suicide  terms  it, 
"a  termination  of  existence."  This  is  phraseology  said  to 
have  come   in    upon    us  with   the  Atheism  of  the   French 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  325 

Revolution.*  Man,  at  death,  it  may  rather  be  said,  but  be- 
gins to  exist,  in  the  highest  sense  of  that  word.  His  being 
is  developed,  and  he  has  higher  powers,  and  wider  know- 
ledge, and  keener  feelings,  when  made  a  disembodied  spirit. 
And  when  scepticism  would  write,  as  did  Revolutionary 
France,  over  the  gateway  of  the  cemetery,  the  inscription  : 
"  Death  is  an  eternal  sleep,"  the  saddened  eye  of  faith  reads, 
in  its  stead,  the  more  true  but  melancholy  sentence  over  the 
graves  of  those  who  have  lived  and  died  without  hope  and 
without  God  in  the  world  :  "  And  I  looked  and  beheld  a  pale 
horse  ;  and  his  name  that  sat  on  him  was  Death,  and  Hell 
followed  with  him."]  On  the  dissolution  of  the  body,  fol- 
lows, in  the  case  of  the  ungodly,  Hell  with  all  its  trooping 
terrors,  though  its  fulness  of  anguish  and  its  last  torments 
may  be  reserved  for  the  day  of  judgment. 

How  awful  is  the  exchange  which  the  sinner  makes  at 
death  !  "  In  that  very  day  his  thoughts  perish  ;"  his  vain 
expectations  of  worldly  enjoyments,  of  impunity  in  sin,  and 
of  a  final  season  and  space  for  repentance  ;  his  earthly  plans  ; 
and  all  his  rivalries,  hopes  and  fears,  which  regarded  exclu- 
sively the  life  that  then  suddenly  closed  its  gates  on  him  and 
closed  them  for  ever.  For  his  pleasures  he  has  endless  pain. 
During  life,  nothing  could  utterly  extinguish  hope  within 
him  ;  now,  during  eternity,  nothing  can  rekindle  it.  From 
a  world  of  religious  privileges,  and  sacred  times,  and  gra- 
cious invitations,  he  goes  to  a  world  that  has  no  Sabbaths, 
no  mercy-seat,  no  Advocate,  no  influences  of  the  Spirit,  not 
a  promise,  not  a  hope.  On  making  the  sad  exchange,  how 
must  his  forfeited  and  vanishing  blessings  brighten  in  his 
view,  as  they  take  their  everlasting  flight.  How  strangely 
contrasted,  though  drawn  by  the  same  hand,  would  be  the 
two  pictures  of  this  world  drawn  by  the  sinner's  spirit,  when 
as  yet  without,  and  again  when  passed  within,  the  veil  that 
hides  the  eternal  world.  While  yet  in  the  body,  and  on 
this  side  the  intervening  barrier  between  the  world  of  sense 
and  show,  and  the  world  of  reality,  sense  and  self  were  all ; 
time  was  as  eternity,  and  eternity  was  brief  and  valueless  as 
time.  But  now,  entered  on  the  further  world,  and  when 
both  are  known  by  experience,  eternity  appears  in  its  true 
infinitude,  and  time  shrinks  and  dwindles  into  its  proper 
littleness.     Now  Heaven   and  Hell   are   no   longer   dreams, 

*  President  DwighL  .     t  Rev.  vi.  8. 


326  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

and  Christ  is  recognized  as  really  a  Saviour,  King,  and  God  ; 
but  a  God  now  alienated,  a  King  defied  and  incensed,  whose 
power  pervades  all  space  and  permits  no  escape,  and  a  Sa- 
viour whose  favor  is  forfeited  irrecoverably  and  for  ever. 

Well  were  it  for  us  if  we  kept  these  consequences  of  death 
more  steadily  before  us.  For  this  purpose,  our  Heavenly 
Father  makes  the  lessons  of  our  mortality  so  frequent,  im- 
pressive, and  various.  The  dead  are  quietly  glancing  upon 
the  student  from  the  shelves  of  his  library.  History  is  but, 
in  a  great  measure,  spoils  won  from  the  grave,  or  a  compi- 
lation of  the  epitaphs  of  those  who  have  gone  before  us. 
Nor  is  it  literature  only  that  is  thus  redolent  of  the  tomb. 
Each  scene  of  retired  and  domestic  life  has  its  avenues  of 
memory  and  regret  that  lead  back  to  the  grave.  Every 
household  has  its  seat  by  the  table  and  the  hearth  now 
vacant,  where  once  was  seen  a  face  now  hidden  and  buried 
out  of  sight,  and  where  once  wTas  heard  a  voice  now  stilled 
in  the  silence  of  the  sepulchre.  Who  may  build  himself  a 
mansion,  however  stored  with  all  that  can  adorn  or  gladden 
life,  and  say,  Over  this  threshold  the  coffin  shall  not  pass  ? 
The  funeral  hearse  rolls  on  its  way  past  the  doors  of  the 
ball-room  and  the  theatre.  In  the  pulpit  and  at  the  bar,  in 
the  Senate  chamber  or  on  the  main-deck,  we  see  the  place 
of  the  departed,  or  the  scene,  it  may  even  be,  of  their  de- 
parture. Thus  "  Wisdom  crieth  without ;  she  uttereth  her 
voice  in  the  streets  ;  she  crieth  in  the  chief  place  of  con- 
course ;"*  and  death  is  made  to  unroll  its  solemn  commis- 
sion, and  publish  its  stern  testimony  in  our  thronged  thor- 
oughfares. Thus,  in  our  own  city,  the  most  populous  of 
our  grave-yards,  with  vegetation  all  rank,  and  a  soil  fattened 
by  the  accumulated  corpses  of  a  century,  draws  its  sad 
length  beside  our  most  crowded  street,  as  if  it  would  throw 
out  a  dyke  to  stem  the  torrent  of  frivolity  and  fashion,  each 
day  rushing  by ;  and  the  field  of  death  looks  down  from  its 
silent  eminence,  upon  the  long  line  of  banking-houses,  and 
the  street  of  our  busiest  trafficking,  as  if  a  skeleton  hand 
were  beckoning  from  the  spirit  land  to  our  merchant  princes, 
and  bidding  them  with  all  their  gettings  to  get  wisdom,  and 
to  consider  their  latter  end  that  they  may  be  really  wise. 
For  death  to  be   unprepared   is   the   shipwreck  of  all  hopes 


*  l'rov.  i.  20. 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  327 

and  the  destruction  of  all  happiness.  But  how  shall  we  be 
prepared  ? 

IV.  And  thus  we  reach  our  fourth  and  closing  division. 
Repentance  is  our  only  safeguard.  "Except  ye  repent,  ye 
shall  all  likewise  perish." 

To  prepare  for  death,  the  world  knows  no  fitter  method 
than  to  forget  what  cannot  be  evaded,  and  to  drown  all  se- 
rious reflection  in  the  din  of  business  and  amid  the  tumult 
of  revelry.  It  is  like  bandaging  the  eyes  to  screen  us  from 
an  exploding  battery.  The  less  we  reflect,  the  greater,  in 
fact,  our  danger  of  rushing  blindfolded  into  ruin.  It  is  such 
preparation  as  Joab  gave  Amasa  when  he  grasped  his  beard 
as  in  friendly  greeting,  and  asked  of  his  health,  whilst  seek- 
ing the  fatal  spot  where  a  single  stroke  would  be  sure  and 
speedy  death — a  preparation  it  is  that  disarms,  indeed,  of 
anxiety  and  suspicion,  and  relieves  us  of  intrusive  fears,  but 
that,  at  the  same  time,  robs  us  of  life  and  seals  us  to  ruin. 
Not  such  the  method  of  Scripture.  It  may  alarm,  but  it 
alarms  to  save.  It  bids  you  prepare  for  death  by  retreating 
for  protection  from  the  impending  destruction  to  that  im- 
pregnable refuge,  the  Saviour's  cross.  There  the  penitent 
finds  balm  for  his  wounds,  pardon  for  his  sins,  and  life,  eter- 
nal life,  for  his  death. 

For  "  the  sting  of  death  is  sin."  To  remove  sin  is,  there- 
fore, the  only  mode  of  depriving  the  grave  of  its  victory,  and 
rendering  the  King  of  Terrors  not  only  harmless  but  benefi- 
cent. How  shall  sin  be  removed  but  by  renouncing  it ;  and 
how  can  we  renounce  it  but  in  Christ's  strength  ;  or  how 
can  our  repentance  be  accepted  but  through  his  intercession, 
or  our  sins  be  forgiven  but  through  his  righteousness,  or  our 
bodies,  once  consigned  to  the  grave,  be  released  from  its 
prison,  but  as  his  resurrection  becomes  the  pledge  of  ours  ? 
A  true  repentance  grasps  the  cross. 

Death,  then,  preaches  repentance.  What  John  the  Bap- 
tist cried  in  the  wilderness,  and  Jesus  of  Nazareth  in  the 
streets  of  Jerusalem,  this  recent  visitation  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence is  proclaiming  throughout  our  land,  as  from  its  high 
places  of  dignity  and  influence  :  "  Repent  ye.  The  axe  is 
laid  at  the  root  of  the  trees.  Except  ye  repent,  ye  shall  all 
likewise  perish." 

Let  the  community  repent,  like  Nineveh  at  the  preaching 
of  Jonah,  and  she  may  escape  sore  and  impending  judg- 
ments.    What  woes  were  those  that  overtook   the  Jewish 


328  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

people  because  they  refused  the  command  and  repented  not? 
Let  a  nation  be  exalted  and  enriched,  as  is  our  own,  with 
physical  and  moral  advantages,  with  all  religious  and  civil 
privileges,  an  impenitent  and  godless  spirit  is  yet  sufficient 
to  squander  them  all,  and  leave  corruption,  disunion,  decay 
and  subjection,  as  her  final  heritage.  Let  her,  on  the  other 
hand,  however  afflicted  and  debased,  but  repent ;  and  God 
can  restore  her  from  the  deepest  degradation,  exalt  and  bless 
and  establish  her,  till  she  that  was  servant  of  servants  comes 
to  sit  as  a  queen  among  the  nations. 

Let  the  individual  sinner  repent.  It  is,  by  the  will  and 
the  oath  of  God,  his  only  hope  of  escaping  the  second  death 
and  evading  the  horrible  pit  of  hell,  on  whose  verge  his  un- 
happy step  already  wanders.  It  assures  him  of  his  ultimate 
deliverance,  not  only  from  the  fear  of  death,  but  from  all 
fears  and  all  care,  temptation  and  sin  ;  and  it  houses  the 
fugitive,  at  last,  in  the  bosom  of  God.  Does  he  ask  :  How 
am  I  to  repent?  We  answer:  Not  of  some  sins  only,  but 
of  all  sins.  Renounce  your  idols.  Turn  to  Christ  for  par- 
don. Resolve  in  his  strength.  Plead  his  merits  and  trust 
his  cross.  In  his  name  ask  for  light,  and  follow  it  when 
given.  And  not  only  clasp  but  wear  the  cross,  making  it 
your  badge  before  the  world,  as  well  as  your  plea  before 
God  ;  and  this  done,  the  earth  sinks  subjected  beneath  your 
feet,  hell  withdraws  baffled  of  its  aim  and  spoiled  of  its  prey, 
and  Heaven  comes  nearer  the  nearer  you  draw  to  the  inevi- 
table tomb. 

Are  you  a  penitent?  Then,  however  young  and  feeble 
and  obscure  you  may  be,  you  are  contributing  to  avert,  as 
the  impenitent  is  contributing  to  attract,  the  clouds  and  the 
resounding  tempests  of  God's  wrath.  Are  you  careless  ? 
Careless  amid  death  and  bereavement  and  danger  ?  Careless 
amid  Sabbaths  and  Bibles  and  the  Saviour's  invitations,  and 
the  Spirit's  stirrings  ?  Recollect  that  it  is  no  vain  word,  no 
braggart  threat,  but  the  stern  law  of  the  skies  :  "  He,  that 
being  often  reproved,  hardeneth  his  neck,  shall  suddenly  be 
destroyed,  and  that  without  remedy." 

Let  the  world  tell  you  what  it  will  of  natural  innocence, 
and  a  morality  of  your  own  with  which  God  cannot  be 
angry,  remember  the  world  is  not  the  law-giver  or  the  judge 
in  this  matter.  It  must  itself  bide  the  law  and  face  the 
Judge.  That  law  is  :  Turn  or  perish  ;  Repent  and  live.  It 
is  the  fiat  of  your  Creator,  Saviour  and  Judge.     Repent, 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  329 

then,  we  entreat  you,  and  be  saved  ;  for  it  is  mercy  that 
calls,  an  infinite  and  divine  forbearance  that  yet  waits,  and 
Heaven  itself  stoops  to  allure,  to  welcome  and  to  shelter 
you. 

Thus  have  we  reviewed  the  lessons  of  eternal  truth  our 
Saviour  has  annexed  to  such  dispensations  of  his  Provi- 
dence, as  that  which  we  are  now  remembering.  We  have 
seen  how  each  such  calamity  proclaims  man's  sinfulness, 
reminds  us  of  our  common  and  continual  exposure  to  an  end 
as  sudden,  bids  us  remember  the  destruction  that  waits  on 
the  death  of  the  impenitent,  and  commands  us  to  exercise 
that  repentance  which  alone  saves  from  Hell  and  fits  for 
death.  Each  such  dispensation  reveals  to  us,  as  by  a  sudden 
flash,  the  benighted  sea  of  life  which  we  are  traversing,  and 
the  dim  shores  of  the  eternity  we  are  nearing.  It  comes 
from  God  as  on  a  mission  to  man,  and  while  it  recalls  to  him 
his  sin  and  his  danger,  it  also  announces  his  one  hope  and 
saivation,  and  bids  the  penitent  see  in  the  cross  and  tomb  of 
his  Redeemer  the  gates  of  Paradise  opened  anew  on  Calvary, 
to  a  doomed  and  dying  race ;  while  to  the  impenitent,  it 
tells  of  a  death  of  despair,  and  shows  below  the  yawning 
tomb  a  lower  depth  and  the  lurid  fires  of  its  torments.  It 
compresses  our  business  in  one  world,  and  our  prospects 
for  the  next,  into  three  brief  words  :  Repent  or  Perish. 

In  conclusion,  we  would  remark  : 

1.  First,  on  the  sins  of  the  nation ;  for  each  such  visita- 
tion calls  us  to  remember  these.  Have  we  not,  in  many 
things,  declined  from  the  ways  of  our  forefathers  ?  Could 
any  candid  and  intelligent  observer  claim,  for  the  mass  of 
the  statesmen  of  this  country  in  our  times,  the  high  charac- 
ter for  integrity  and  moral  principle  accorded  to  the  fathers 
of  the  Revolution  ?  Virtue  and  talent  there  are  ;  but  is  the 
average  of  right  principle  in  our  great  political  parties  equal 
to  that  displayed  in  the  times  of  our  forefathers?  In  the 
growing  rapacity  and  corruption  of  public  servants  ;  in  the 
violence  o»f  party  discord  and  its  venality  ;  and  in  the  mad- 
ness of  passion  seen  disgracing  even  the  halls  of  national 
legislation  by  brawls  ;  are  there  auguries  for  good,  as  to  the 
destinies  of  the  nation  thus  guided,  and  of  the  rising  genera- 
tion, thus  to  be  trained  and  moulded?  The  desecration  of 
the  Sabbath  ;  our  national  eagerness  for  gain — our  growing 
luxury — the  character  of  our  widely  spread  and  cheaper  lit- 
erature, much  of  the  best  of  it  frivolous,  and  much  of  it 

43 


330  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

worse  than  frivolous,  "sensual  and  devilish  " — are  not  all 
these  causes  for  humiliation  and  alarm,  and  do  they  not 
afford  on  such  an  occasion  as  this,  materials  for  heart-search- 
ing inquiry  and  profound  and  penitent  meditation?  We 
have,  as  a  people,  many  and  rich  mercies,  but  they  are  re- 
viewed with  safety  when  regarded  as  heightening  our  re- 
sponsibility, and,  if  neglected  and  perverted,  as  enhancing 
the  more  the  darkness  of  our  guilt,  and  the  severity  of  our 
punishment.  We  are  a  young  nation,  and,  to  the  community 
as  to  the  individual,  youth  is  the  season  of  ardor,  hope,  and 
boastfulness.  If  there  has  been  justice  in  the  charge  other 
nations  have  made  against  us,  that  we  are  given  to  vaunting, 
has  not  God,  in  the  disaster  with  which  he  has  now  visited 
us,  occurring  as  it  did  in  the  Navy,  the  pride  of  the  nation, 
and  not  long  after  another  of  our  vessels  of  war  had  perished 
in  a  night  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mediterranean,  taught  us  how 
powerless  for  our  defence,  and  how  powerful  for  o.ur  ruin, 
he  may  make  our  very  armaments  and  ships  of  war  ? 

"They  trust  in  navies,  and  their  navies  fail, 
God's  curse  can  cast  away  ten  thousand  sail." 

In  the  anxiety  which  some  display  to  entangle  our  country 
in  war,  is  there  not  shown  a  recklessness  greatly  to  be 
deprecated  1  We  believe  government  endowed,  by  the  law 
of  God,  with  power  to  take  away  human  life — the  life  of  the 
individual  in  the  case  of  crime,  and  the  lives  of  multitudes 
in  the  case  of  a  just  war.  But  seeing  the  butchery,  profli- 
gacy and  wretchedness  which  war,  even  when  most  just, 
must  bring  in  its  train,  neither  humanity  nor  piety  allows  us, 
for  any  petty  cause,  to  employ  this  melancholy  and  last  re- 
sort. We  may  not  lightly  spread  through  our  borders  such 
scenes  as  God  has  lately  made  us  to  behold  on  the  deck  of 
the  Princeton.  To  rebuke  the  spirit  of  war  may  have  been 
one  merciful  design  of  the  recent  calamity.  It  may  be  easy 
to  unleash  the  hounds  of  war  and  give  them  course  over 
some  distant  territory,  by  issuing,  amid  the  quiet  scenes  of 
legislation  and  diplomacy,  the  act  that  exposes  leagues  of 
defenceless  coast  to  the  marauder,  or  consigns  some  obscure 
and  remote  home,  upon  our  frontiers,  to  pillage  and  slaugh- 
ter, and  all  the  tender  mercies  of  the  savage,  the  scalping- 
knife  and  the  firebrand.  It  is  not  as  easily  borne  to  see  the 
ruin  entering  our  own  habitations,  and  the  slaughter  spread 
around  and   upon  us.     And  now  that  God  has  permitted,  ill 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  331 

his  wisdom,  one  of  these  gory  and  hideous  spectacles,  that 
are  but  the  ordinary  accompaniments  of  battle,  to  be  pre- 
sented in  a  time  of  profound  peace,  and  almost  beneath  the 
shadow  of  our  Capitol,  let  us  pray  that  the  lesson  may  not 
be  lost  on  the  law-makers  gathered  in  those  halls,  but  that 
by  its  severe,  yet  salutary  schooling,  it  may  "  teach  our  sen- 
ators wisdom."*  We  believe  war,  in  a  just  cause,  not  inde- 
fensible :  but  it  may  not  be  lightly  undertaken.  It  is  in  no 
careless  mood,  and  for  no  trivial  reasons,  that  the  rulers  of 
this  people  may  bring  such  scenes  as  those  recently  witness- 
ed into  the  houses  and  the  peaceful  commercial  marine  of 
our  country  ; — make  multitudes  of  their  countrywomen  as 
suddenly  widows  ;  and  doom,  by  hundreds,  unconscious  and 
prattling  infants  thus  summarily  to  orphanage,  anc*  to  all 
the  multiform  sorrows  and  perils  that  beset  the  path  of  the 
fatherless. 

2.  Next,  let  us  not  forget  that  we  have,  as  a  nation,  re- 
ceived from  the  Most  High  loud  and  memorable  warnings. 
In  commercial  reverses,  has  not  God  checked  our  reckless 
love  of  gain  ?  In  the  death,  shortly  after  his  installation,  of 
a  former  Chief  Magistrate,  the  first  instance  in  the  history 
of  our  country  of  one  dying  while  administering  that  high 
office,  and  in  the  subsequent  removal  of  members  both  from 
the  executive  and  from  the  legislative  departments  of  our 
national  government,  and  now  again  in  this  startling  calami- 
ty, is  not  God  reading  to  us,  as  a  people,  lessons  of  humility, 
dependence,  and  penitence?  In  the  history  of  our  present 
Chief  Magistrate,  distinguished  as  he  has  been  by  the  fre- 
quent and  near  approach  of  mortality  to  his  person,  whilst 
he  himself  has  been  spared,  how  has  God  spoken  to  him, 
and  to  the  whole  land,  of  the  uncertainty  of  life,  and  that  a 
higher  power  than  man's  controls  the  affairs  of  the  world  ! 
Having  seen,  as  he  has  done,  death  vacating  the  Presidential 
chair  for  his  occupancy,  and  soon  after  vacating  again,  by 
the  death  of  the  statesman  who  took  it,  the  chair  of  the  Vice 
Presidency  he  had  quitted  ; — his  predecessor  in  the  first 
office  of  state  falling  on  his  right  hand,  his  successor  in  the 
second  station  of  dignity  in  the  land  falling  on  his  left  hand  ; — • 
bereaved,  as  he  has  been,  by  the  incursions  of  death  into  the 
circle  of  his  friends  ;  bereaved  in  his  home  of  a  consort, 
who,  from  sharing  his  exaltation,  passed  soon  to  the  tomb ; 

*Ps.  cv.22. 


332  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

and  bereaved  in  his  cabinet,  first,  of  Legare,  rich  in  promise, 
talents,  and  acquirements,  and  smitten  down  in  the  fullness 
of  his  strength  ;  and  now  of  Upshur  and  Gilmer,  his  personal 
as  well  as  political  friends,  men  of  principle  and  talent,  and 
possessed  of  the  confidence  of  the  people  ; — is  there  not 
much  to  awaken  in  his  behalf  the  sympathies  and  prayers  of 
the  churches  ?  Commanded  as  we  are  in  Scripture  to  pray 
for  them  that  are  in  authority,  should  not  the  wish  of  each 
Christian  patriot  be,  that  a  course  so  singularly  marked  may, 
by  the  grace  of  God,  be  sanctified  to  teach  him  who  has  run 
it,  the  uncertainty  of  all  earthly  honors,  held  as  they  are  by 
the  tenure  of  a  life  so  soon  spent,  and  often  so  suddenly  ter- 
minated ;  and  should*  not  our  prayer  be  that  he  who  has 
been,  like  Paul,  "  in  deaths  oft"  may  also,  with  the  Apos- 
tle, be  able  to  say,  as  he  reviews  the  course  and  purpose  of 
his  life,  "  to  me,  to  live  is  Christ,"  and  with  Paul  to  add, 
as  he  looks  fearlessly  towards  its  close,  "  and  to  die  is 
gain  ?"  For  difficult  as  is  ever  and  in  all  conditions  the 
Christian's  path,  and  glorious  as  is  his  triumph  over  the 
world  in  any  lot,  the  difficulty  and  the  glory  are  each  en- 
hanced in  the  case  of  exalted  station.  To  serve  God  and 
his  generation  faithfully,  not  in  the  less  embarrassed  walks 
of  private  life,  but  in  a  position  of  eminence,  amid  the  strife 
of  tongues,  the  collisions  and  wranglings  of  parties,  and  the 
thronging  snares,  the  incessant  and  wasting  cares,  and  the 
heavy  responsibilities  of  public  life,  needs  no  ordinary  meas- 
ure of  divine  grace.  And  happy,  as  rare,  is  the  worldly 
greatness  that  does  not,  in  consequence,  peril  the  soul  of  its 
possessor.  And  whether  tempted  unduly  to  envy  or  rashly 
to  blame  those  in  eminent  stations,  are  we  not  as  a  people 
warned,  by  so  many  deaths  in  the  high  places  of  our  land, 
when  not,  as  is  most  generally  the  case,  single  victims,  but 
whole  clusters  and  groups  are  reaped  for  the  grave — are 
we  not  warned  less  eagerly  to  covet  distinctions  death  so 
soon  levels,  and  more  habitually  to  trust,  and  more  faith- 
fully to  serve,  that  God  who  only  is  great,  for  he  is  the 
unchangeable  and  the  Almighty  one  "  who  only  hath  immor- 
tality?" 

3.  Again,  do  not  incidents  of  this  kind  loudly  call  upon 
the  Christians  of  the  land  to  know  their  rights  and  duties? 
Are  they  not  warned,  that  they  never,  amid  the  fierce  con- 
flicts of  party,  and  the  din  and  routine  of  business,  forget 
their  one  profession,  and   the  high  principles  it  involves "? 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  333 

Ever  is  the  Judge  at  hand.  His  coming  is  near  ;  and  that 
servant  labors  most  wisely  and  most  safely  who  does  it  con- 
tinually, as  under  his  Great  Taskmaster's  eye.  In  the  con- 
tentions of  the  day,  political  or  religious,  is  it  not  well  that 
the  image  of  death  should  often  interpose  itself,  casting  its 
chill  and  calming  shadow  over  the  feverish  strifes  of  the 
hour,  lest  we  cherish  against  those  who  oppose  us  such  feel- 
ings as  we  should  not  wish  to  recall  over  their  graves,  or  to 
be  surprised  by  the  summons  of  death  while  indulging?  It 
seems  but  too  evident  that  the  churches  of  our  day  can 
retain  their  hold  upon  some  great  and  vital  truths  only  at  the 
price  of  earnest  controversy.  Yet  inevitable  as  it  may  be, 
and  in  its  results  most  beneficial,  it  must  also  be  admitted, 
that  most  adverse  to  piety  and  happiness  are  the  feelings  it 
too  often  engenders.  How  harshly  do  the  censures  that 
political  antagonists  or  religious  controversialists  may  utter 
against  their  opponents,  sound  on  the  ear,  when  once  the 
subject  of  them  is  suddenly  entombed  ;  and  how  pitiable,  as 
we  now  look  back  upon  them,  the  exasperated  personal 
bickerings  of  writers,  housed  in  a  common  sepulchre.  It 
was  an  affecting  regret  of  an  eminent  scholar — it  is  Erasmus 
of  whom  we  speak — in  the  days  of  the  Revival  of  Letters, 
that  one  of  his  opponents  had  been  snatched  away  by  death, 
before  they  could  exchange  forgiveness  for  their  mutual 
offences  against  the  law  of  charity.  And  if  to  the  political 
contests,  ever  eager  and  rife  amongst  us,  must  in  this  age  be 
added  the  social  agitation,  produced  by  churches  "  contend- 
ing earnestly  for  the  faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints,"  it 
will  be,  as  in  the  near  prospect  of  the  grave,  and  as  in  con- 
stant preparation  for  a  sudden  departure,  that  Christians  will 
best  be  harnessed,  manfully  yet  meekly,  to  defend  the  truth 
a  Saviour  bequeathed  to  their  charge,  the  legacy  of  a  Master 
who  overcame  by  suffering,  and  who  built,  as  it  were,  out 
of  the  cross  upon  which  he  had  hung,  the  steps  of  that 
throne  where  he  sits  a  crowned  conqueror.  Above  all,  let 
Christians  remember  their  duties  to  their  country  in  the 
closet.  That  hand,  out  of  which  the  prophet  saw  streaming 
beams  of  glory,  where  are  the  hidings  of  Divine  Power,  is 
opened  in  blessings  to  the  believer  kneeling  in  his  retire- 
ment. And  when  the  churches  invoke  it,  that  hand  arms 
itself,  as  with  gauntlet  and  glaive,  for  the  defence  of  the 
land,  or,  as  the  Psalmist  prayed,  "takes  hold  of  shield  and 


334  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

buckler,  draws  out  also  the  spear,  and  stops  the  way  "#  of 
the  adversaries.  Thus  works  the  Almighty  where  men  are 
found  who  make  his  right  arm  their  reliance,  and  who,  like 
Daniel,  greatly  beloved  of  Heaven,  are,  like  him,  constant 
in  supplication  before  the  throne,  for  themselves,  and  for 
their  people,  and  for  the  Israel  of  God. 

4.  Death,  in  all  its  aspects,  is  formidable  to  man  the  sin- 
ner, except  as  it  is  viewed  in  its  relation  to  the  death  of 
Christ.  And  if,  from  all  the  scenes  of  worldly  pomp  and 
rejoicing,  from  earth's  high  places  of  coveted  dignity  and 
influence,  and  from  its  lowliest  nooks  of  retirement,  a  path 
is  ever  found  leading  to  the  grave  ;  so,  to  the  eye  of  the 
believer,  from  every  scene  in  life,  and  from  every  theme  in 
morals  or  religion,  there  is  opened  a  broad  and  direct  avenue 
to  the  grave  of  his  Saviour.  The  cross  of  Christ  is  the 
world's  hope.     He  who  became  the 

"Death  of  death,  and  Hell's  destruction," 

was  revealed  to  destroy  the  works  of  the  devil,  "  and  that 
through  death  he  might  destroy  him  that  had  the  power  of 
death ."f  To  know  him  is  life  ;  to  reject  him  is  the  seal  of 
the  second  death,  and  the  earnest  of  eternal  ruin.  Well, 
then,  may  Christ's  sacrifice  receive  the  prominence  given  it 
in  Scripture  and  in  the  scenes  of  the  eternal  world.  His 
death  was  the  theme,  as  Moses  the  receiver,  and  Elias  the 
reviver,  of  the  law,  talked  with  our  Lord,  on  the  mount, 
and  "  spake  of  his  decease  which  he  should  accomplish  at 
Jerusalem."|  It  is  the  glorying  of  the  ransomed  before  the 
throne  of  light.  When  heaven  visits  earth,  as  on  the  moun- 
tain of  transfiguration,  and  when  earth  visits  heaven,  as  in 
the  ascension  of  the  emancipated  and  glorified  spirit  to  the 
general  assembly  and  church  of  the  first-born,  this  one  event 
is  the  bond  of  their  common  fellowship,  and  the  death  upon 
Calvary  is  the  basis  of  their  common  happiness.  Exulting 
in  this,  the  saint  looks  forward  to  the  last  trial  as  but  brief, 
and  its  issue  as  sure  and  peaceful.  The  sinner,  rejecting 
the  benefits  of  this  sacrifice,  does  it  amid  a  world  which,  in 
spite  of  his  irreligion,  is  none  the  less  a  world  of  bereave- 
ment and  death  ;  and  on  the  verge  of  another  world,  in 
which,  because  of  his  irreligion,  death  can  never  be  unstung, 


*  Ps.  xxxv.  2,  3.  t  Heb.  ii.  14;  1  John  iii.  8.  X  Luke  ix.  31. 


THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY.  335 

whose  ruin  has  no  redemption,  and  on  whose  dark  and  heav- 
ing sea  of  woe  breaks  no  solitary  beam  of  hope. 

5.  It  is,  lastly,  the  wisdom  of  man,  born  as  he  is  the  heir 
of  mortality,  to  be  living  in  a  state  of  constant  preparation 
for  his  great  change.  It  was  said  by  that  sweet  singer  of 
our  modern  Israel,  Dr.  Watts,  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life, 
that  each  night  he  composed  himself  to  slumber,  little  anx- 
ious whether  he  awoke  in  time  or  in  eternity.  Of  that  orna- 
ment of  the  English  bench,  the  Christian  magistrate,  Sir 
Matthew  Hale,  it  is  said  that  he  was  once  administering  jus- 
tice, when  a  strange  darkness  overspreading  the  country, 
joined  with  some  idle  predictions  that  had  become  current, 
tilled  men's  minds  with  alarm,  as  if  the  end  of  the  world  had 
come.  The  devout  judge  proceeded  calmly  in  the  discharge 
of  his  office,  wishing,  if  the  world  ended,  to  be  found  in  the 
assiduous  fulfilment  of  his  duties.  A  habitual  preparation 
for  sudden  death  would  be  itself  a  sufficient  preparation,  and 
the  best,  for  that  judgment  which  some  of  our  erring  breth- 
ren announce  as  near. 

Are  there  any  scenes  or  employments  in  which  we  should 
not  wish  to  be  surprised  by  the  messenger  of  death  ?  It  is 
scar*ee  safe  to  be  employed  in  them  for  any  time,  however 
brief,  for  that  brief  hour  may  bring  the  close  of  our  days, 
and  seal  up  our  history  to  the  time  of  the  end.  Let  us  not 
indulge  in  those  things,  or  busy  ourselves  in  those  employ- 
ments, to  be  surprised  in  which  would  be  our  shame  and  our 
ruin  at  the  hour  of  death,  lest  we  be  like  "  the  wicked, 
driven  away  in  his  wickedness."  And  what  can  be  more 
tremendous  in  prospect  than  this  ?  Let  poverty  the 
most  grinding  afflict  me — let  me  be  racked  by  disease — 
let  helplessness,  exile,  and  shame  wait  around  my  death-bed ; 
but  let  not  sin,  unrepented  and  unforgiven  sin,  be  the  com- 
panion and  curse  of  my  dying  hours,  for  then  I  perish. 
The  trembling  Esther,  as  she  went,  in  peril  of  her  life,  to 
urge  her  request,  exclaimed,  "  If  I  perish,  I  perish,"  but 
perished  not.  The  timorous  disciples,  as  they  saw  the 
waters  tempestuous,  and  the  vessel  ready  to  be  filled,  ex- 
claimed to  their  Lord,  "  Master,  we  perish ;"  and  he  arose 
and  spoke,  and  the  waters  were  calmed,  and  the  disciples 
saved.  But  if  sin  be  my  master,  cherished,  trusted,  and 
idolized,  no  such  peradventure  as  encouraged  Esther  remains 
for  me.  I  perish  without  an  alternative,  inevitably,  and  for 
ever.     No  deliverance  like  that  which  rescued  the  Apostles 


336  THE    LESSONS    OF    CALAMITY. 

will  be  wrought  for  me.  For  if  sin  be  my  master,  it  is  a 
master  that  cannot  save.  And  the  God  of  heaven  and  earth 
will  say  to  the  impenitent  sinner  as  said  his  servant  Peter  to 
the  sorcerer  Simon,  "  Thy  money  " — thine  idol,  be  it  what 
it  may — "perish  with  thee"  Death  is  on  the  way,  and  hell 
following  with  it ;  and  if  sin  rule  in  us,  the  ruler  and  the 
ruled,  the  master  and  the  servant,  the  idol  and  the  idolator, 
must  sink  together  into  endless  perdition.  Now  by  lessons, 
therefore,  in  the  opening  leaves  of  the  volume  of  Providence, 
that  enforce  and  repeat  the  admonitions  of  the  volume  of 
Scripture  ;  and  now  by  lessons  in  Scripture  that  illustrate 
and  interpret,  in  their  turn,  the  visitations  of  Providence  ; 
by  the  mutual  and  reflected  light  of  inspiration  and  calamity, 
the  one  explaining  the  other ;  by  "  the  rod"  and  the  voice 
of  Him  "who  hath  appointed  it,"  as  He  wields  the  one  and 
utters  the  other — God  is  instructing  us  to  renounce  our  sins. 
He  who  rules,  and  who  is  soon  to  judge  the  world,  is  reiter- 
ating over  our  land  his  denunciations  against  sin,  his  warn- 
ings against  ruin,  and  his  demands  of  repentance.  Repent- 
ance is  alike  his  claim  and  our  duty.  Each  calamity  cries 
aloud,  and  this  is  its  message.  And  from  the  depths  of  our 
own  conscience,  in  our  hours  of  solitude  and  serious  reflec- 
tion, the  summons  is  re-echoed,  "  Repent  ye."  "Or  those 
eighteen,  upon  whom  the  tower  of  Siloam  fell,  and  slew 
them,  think  ye  that  they  were  sinners  above  all  men  that 
dwelt  in  Jerusalem  ?  I  tell  you,  Nay ;  but,  except  yc 
repent,  ye  shall  all  likewise  perish." 


THE  CHURCH,  A  SCHOOL  FOR  HEAVEN. 

(A  Discourse  preached  at  the  Recognition  of  the  Seminary  Baptist  Church  in  Hamilton,  Madi- 
son Co.,  N.  Y.,  Thursday  Evening,  Nov.  13,  1845.) 

"  Pastors  and  teachers  ;  for  the  perfecting  of  the  saints,  for  the 
work  of  the  ministry,  for  the  edifying  of  the  body  of  christ.  *  *  * 

"  That  we  henceforth  be  no  more  children,  tossed  to  and  fro,  and 
carried  about  with  every  wind  of  doctrine.      ******* 

*  *  "  The  head,  even  Christ,  from  whom  the  whole  body  fitly  join- 
ed TOGETHER,  AND  COMPACTED  BY  THAT  WHICH  EVERY  JOINT  SUPPLIETH,  AC- 
CORDING TO  THE  EFFECTUAL  WORKING  IN  THE  MEASURE  OF  EVERY  PART, 
MAKETH  INCREASE  OF  THE  BODY  UNTO  THE  EDIFYING  OF  ITSELF  IN  LOVE." 

Ephes.  iv.  11,  12,  14,  15,  16. 

The  scene,  and  the  occasion  of  our  assembling  at  this  time, 
both   deserve  notice.     The  place  where  we   are   gathered  is 
known  widely  in   our  own  land,  and  in  some   remote  and 
heathen  regions,  as  the  site  of  a  school  of  the  prophets,  where 
the  young  men  of  our  churches,  called  and  endowed  of  God's 
Spirit  to  the  Christian  ministry,  are  trained  for  their  largest 
usefulness.     The  occasion  that  calls  us  together,  within  these 
quiet  scenes  of  study  and  prayer,  is  the  public  recognition 
of  a  church  of  Christ,  not  confined,  indeed,  to  the  inmates 
of  this  Theological  Seminary,  but  seeking  nevertheless  their 
especial  benefit  as  one  main  object  of  its  constitution.     There 
are  those  of  us  who  might  not  be  prepared   to  counsel    the 
formation  of  a  church,  limited  to  one  class  of  society  in  its 
membership.     Believing  that  its  Divine  Founder  meant  that 
his  church  should  embrace  his  disciples  of  every  age,  and  of 
either  sex,  and  that  it  should  intermingle  all  classes  of  soci- 
ety for  their  mutual  benefit,  we  should  dread  the  establish- 
ment of  a  body,  that  would  isolate  instead  of  intermingling 
these  various  layers  of  human  society,  which  together  make 
up  the  field  of  the  world.     If  limited   exclusively  to  theolo- 
gical students,  it  would  include  the  zeal  of  youth  without  the 
ripe  experience  of  age,   and  receiving  the  energy  of  one 
sex  would  reject  the   gentleness  of  the  other,  and  gathering 
the  men  of  letters  would  have  little  room  for  the  practical 
sagacity  of  the  men  of  business  ;  and  thus  would  the  church, 
44 


338  THE    CHURCH, 

which,  from  the  genius  of  the  gospel  and  the  design  of  its 
Author,  was  to  be   free  as   the  air  and  wide  as  the  world  in 
its  invitations  and  consolations,  be  converted  into  the  narrow, 
self-conceited,  and  exclusive  caste.     It  would  again,  seek- 
ing its  own  edification  and  not  the  world's  conversion,  want 
one  main  element  of  success,  and  evade  one  great  errand  of 
the  church.    But  it  is  not,  as  we  suppose,  the  purpose  of  those 
who  have  come  together  in  the  new  church,  thus  to  circum- 
scribe their  membership,  and   narrow  the  pale  of  their  fel- 
lowship and   duties.     But,  whilst  wishing  to   admit   all  else 
who  may  desire  to  unite  in  its  services,  the  well-being  of  the 
youths  who  look  forward  to  the  Christian  ministry  will  be  a 
prominent  object.    It  has  been  thought,  that,  during  the  years 
which  our  younger  brethren  spend  within  these  walls,  sev- 
ered from  the  intimacies  and  removed  from  the  oversight  of 
the  churches,  which   received  their  baptismal  vows  and  en- 
couraged their  ministerial  aspirations,  it  was  but  fitting  that 
they  should  be  surrounded,  more  closely  than  has  heretofore 
been  possible,  with   the  privileges  and  guards  of  a   church 
organization.     Much  as   their  esteemed  instructors,  who  fill 
the  chairs  of  instruction  in  this  seminary,  may  have  accom- 
plished, under  God,  by  their  public  lectures  and  their  private 
influence,  it  was  felt  that  more  was  needed.     It  was  evident, 
that  the  men  who  were   to   become  the  pastors  of  churches 
should  not  in   the  best  years  of  their  youth   be  destitute  of 
the  privileges  and  sympathies  and  disciplinary  restraints  of  a 
church  ;  or  lack  entirely  all   personal  and   experimental  ac- 
quaintance with  the  practical  working  of  that  church  polity, 
which  as   pastors   they   were   hereafter   to  conduct.     It  was 
seen,  that  no  school  of  man's  devising  could  supply  the  ben- 
efits   or  supersede  the  necessity  of  that   school  of  Christ's 
devising,  the  Church  of  the  Living  God,  the  organization  that 
Infinite  Goodness  and  Infallible  Wisdom  had  framed,  for  the 
best  training  of  Christ's  servants  for  their  work  on  earth  and 
their  place  in  heaven. 

Education  is  the  art  of  urging  and  guiding  the  growth  of 
the  human  mind.  It  is  measured,  not  merely,  or  even 
mainly,  by  the  amount  of  knowledge  it  brings  in,  but  rather 
by  the  amount  of  power  that  it  brings  out.  It  educes  the 
hidden  energies  of  the  soul,  strengthens  them,  and  multiplies 
and  facilitates  their  application  to  the  various  tasks  of  life, 
as  the  air,  the  light,  the  water,  and  the  earth  educe  the  flower 
from  the  buried  seed,  and  evolve  from  the  acorn  the  sturdy 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  339 

boughs  and  the  massive  foliage  of  the  oak.     It  is  one  of  the 
characteristics  of  our  time,  that  this  duty  of  the  aged  to  the 
young,  this  good  service  due  from   the   generation   that  rule 
to  the  generation  that  shall  soon  replace  them,  is  awakening 
larger  interest ;  and  its  far-reaching  results  and  widely  varied 
relations  are  arousing  discussion,  and  even  inflaming  contro- 
versy.   It  is  felt,  that,  in  the  truest  sense  of  that  term,  educa- 
tion is  not  confined   to  the  town-school  or   the  college  ;  that 
it  begins  in  the  cradle  with  the  infant's  expanding  faculties, 
ere  the  school  has  snatched  him  from  the  nursery  ;  and  that 
it  continues  when  seminaries  and  colleges  have  dismissed  their 
pupil,  and  that  it  is  protracted  in  the  action  of  society  and  the 
endeavors  of  the  student,  and  the   influence  of  these   on  his 
character  and  powers,  until  he  enters  the   grave.     And  reli- 
gion, showing  as  it  does  that  this  life  is  but  the  outcourt  of 
eternity,  and  that  the   aims  and  duties  of  this  world  can  be 
ascertained   only  by  remembering   the  destinies  of  another 
world,  thus  shows  that  the  education  of  an  immortal  spirit  is 
a  work  never  to  pause  ;  and  that  the  enlargement  of  his  expe- 
rience, and  the  expansion  of  his  powers,  and  the  development 
of  his  moral  nature,  will  be,  through  the  long  cycles  of  eter- 
nity, the  necessary  and  the  inevitable  employment  of  each 
child  of  Adam.     It  is   seen,  therefore,  that  other  influences 
than  those  of  the  school,  technically  so  called,  are  at  work  in 
man's  education.    In  Ireland  and  in  France,  the  mingling  of 
the  religious  element  with  the  tasks  of  the  highest   schools 
or  colleges  of  the  nation,  is  at  this  very  time  the  theme  of 
bitter  controversy.     In  England,  and  in  some  parts  of  our 
own  Union,  the  intermingling  of  the  same  element  with  the 
lowest  or  primary  schools  of  the  country,  has  awakened  the 
like  eagerness  of  discussion.     It  is  well  that  the  relations  of 
Education  and  Religion  should  be  discussed. 

The  Christian  sees,  in  the  church  founded  by  his  Redeem- 
er, a  school  of  higher  endowments  and  loftier  aims  than  the 
best  appointed  universities  of  the  nations.  Even  the  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  religious  as  are  its  instructions,  and  spir- 
itual as  is  its  influence,  it  is  found,  cannot  supply  the  place  of 
the  Master's  own  simple,  sublime  organization,  the  Christian 
Church,  with  its  ordinances  and  discipline,  its  intermingling 
of  sympathies  and  ks  mutual  duties.  The  testimony  given  on 
this  spot,  and  by  these  present  services,  to  the  unrivalled  and 
indispensable  blessings  of  the  Christian  church,  leads  us  nat- 
urally to  the  selection  of  our  theme.     The  topic  of  those 


340  THE    CHURCH, 

remarks,  to  which  we  ask  your  patient  and  devout  attention,  is, 
the  Christian  Church,  a  School  for  Heaven.  And  may 
the  Spirit  of  all  truth,  promised  by  our  Saviour  as  the  Com- 
forter and  Guide  of  His  people,  be  invoked  and  received  by 
all  here  met.  May  His  living  Light  and  ineffable  Might 
unfold  to  us  the  lessons,  and  burn  in  upon  our  hearts  the  prin- 
ciples of  that  gospel  which  He  alone  indited,  which  He  alone 
effectually  interprets,  and  which  it  is  or  soon  will  be  the 
business  of  so  many  here  to  proclaim.  Soon  to  be  scattered, 
perhaps,  through  many  nations,  but  bearing  every  where  one 
message  ;  soon  to  be  gathered  to  remote  graves,  but  dying 
every  where  we  trust  in  one  confession,  and  finding  eveiy 
where  one  God,  witnessing  every  where  of  one  cross,  and 
summoning  to  one  throne,  let  us  meditate  on  the  character 
and  blessings  of  that  one  spiritual  church  which  we  should 
seek  every  where  to  plant  and  to  defend,  because  it  is  the 
one  Church  which  the  World's  one  Redeemer  and  Judge, 
as  we  understand  His  word,  devised  for  the  men  of  all 
climes  and  the  men  of  all  times. 

It  is  one  of  the  distinctions  between  the  works  of  God  and 
the  handiwork  of  man,  that  the  workmanship  of  human  skill 
is  unable  to  bear  close  scrutiny  or  the  stress  of  long  use.  It 
is  soon  worn  out,  and  on  one  side  or  other,  by  minute  and 
varied  examination,  is  found  imperfect,  awkward,  unfinished 
or  defective.  But  the  fabrics  of  the  Divine  Hand  are  found 
more  perfect,  the  more  varied  the  aspects  in  which  they 
are  viewed,  the  more  closely  they  are  scanned,  and  the  more 
thoroughly  they  are  tried.  It  is  so  with  the  Church.  Human 
societies,  and  governments,  and  philosophies,  are  found  in- 
efficient for  the  new  emergencies  and  the  enlarged  experi- 
ences of  society.  But  the  Church,  as  God  framed  it,  perpet- 
uates itself,  containing  the  elements  of  its  own  repair  and 
permanence  ;  and,  built  upon  Christ  the  Rock  of  Ages,  and 
endowed  with  the  graces  of  that  Divine  Spirit,  who  is  the 
treasury  of  all  wisdom  and  might,  it  goes  down  in  the  hands 
of  prayerful  and  faithful  men,  adequate  to  meet  the  conflicts 
of  every  age,  and  the  requirements  of  all  forms  and  condi- 
tions of  society.  Leave  it  but  as  Christ  left  it,  and  it  bears 
transplantation  to  tho  frozen  North  or  the  burning  South, 
thrives  under  the  sides  of  the  despot's  throne,  or  in  the  soil 
of  a  republic,  and  adapts  itself  to  all  grades  of  human  culture, 
from  the  races — forlorn,  fetid,  and  loathsome — that  seem  on 
the  verge  of  bare  brutalism,  up  to  those,  which,  refined,  ele- 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  341 

vated  and  intoxicated  by  successive  centuries  of  civilization, 
are  ready  with  Herod  to  deem  themselves  gods  upon  earth. 
The  Church  is  described  in  the  Scriptures  by  various 
imagery,  that  we  may  contemplate  its  adaptations  and  pur- 
poses on  various  sides.  It  is  called  now  the  husbandry,  now 
the  building,  here  the  house  and  there  the  temple  of  God, 
implying  His  continued  activity  upon  it,  and  His  presence 
within  it.  Now,  by  metaphors  derived  from  another  walk  of 
society,  it  is  called  the  flock  and  fold  of  Christ,  of  which 
he  is  the  chief  Shepherd,  implying  its  dependent  weakness 
and  His  directing  care.  Now  it  is  His  bride,  ransomed  by 
his  death,  adorned  with  the  jewels  of  his  glory,  and  sharing 
his  royalty.  This  is  the  metaphor  not  only  of  the  New 
Testament,  but  of  the  Old  in  some  of  the  Psa'ms  and  in  the 
book  of  Canticles — Psalms  quoted  and  indorsed,  in  that  inter- 
pretation of  them,  by  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the  epistle  to  the 
Hebrews.  And  as  marriage  in  the  eyes  of  the  old  common 
law  makes  those  it  has  united  one  person,  and  in  the  lan- 
guage of  Scripture  they  are  one  body,  there  is  no  violent 
transition  from  this  last  metaphor  to  another,  which  makes 
the  Church  the  Body  of  Christ.  This  last  is  the  reigning 
imagery  of  the  context,  in  that  portion  of  the  epistle  to  the 
Ephesians,  from  which  our  text  is  taken.  In  Paul's  first 
epistle  to  the  Corinthian  disciples,  the  same  illustration  is 
followed,  at  yet  greater  length.  In  our  text  the  apostle 
blends  the  similitude  of  a  body  of  which  Christ  is  the  head, 
with  the  imagery  of  a  school  having  "  teachers  "  some  of 
whose  pupils  remain  but  "  children"  or  novices,  when 
they  should  have  grown  up  to  adult  proficiency,  or  as  he 
elsewhere  phrases  it,  "  babes  inChrist"  needing  to  be  taught 
again  the  first  and  elementary  principles  of  the  faith  ;  or  as 
he  here  continues  the  illustration,  in  danger  of  being  "  car- 
ried away  with  every  wind  of  doctrine ,"  the  storms  of  every 
new  and  popular  teaching,  however  novel,  unauthenticated 
and  contradictory  such  teachings  may  be — winds  to  which 
the  immature  Christian  gives  too  easy  heed,  however  oppo- 
site the  points  from  which  they  blow,  and  however  awful  the 
gulfs  into  which  they  would  hurl  him.  To  have  brought  for- 
ward the  whole  unbroken  context,  would  involve  a  wider 
range  of  discussion  than  may  be  admissible.  We  have 
selected  those  portions  of  the  context,  which  bear  most 
directly  on  the  church  in  its  aspect  of  a  school,  representing 


342  THE    CHURCH, 

the  members  of  the  Christian  Church  as  learners,  who  should 
go  on  to  maturity  and  perfection. 

The  Christian  Church,  as  a  school,  is  an  image  familiar  to 
the  New  Testament.  Christ  Himself  had  called  His  follow- 
ers, disciples  or  scholars.  The  multitude  who  did  not  become 
such  learners,  yet  admired  the  Lord  in  His  character  of  an 
Instructor,  who  taught,  to  use  their  language,  is  one  having 
authority.  He  invited  the  weary  to  "  learn  of  Him,"  and 
urged  men  to  test  His  "doctrine,"  whether  it  were  not  of 
the  Father.  And  on  quitting  the  earth,  he  left  it  in  charge  of 
His  churches  to  disciple  all  nations,  or  to  call  all  mankind 
into  His  school.  In  the  times  of  the  apostles,  the  ministry 
are  often  described  as  "  the  teachers"  of  their  brethren, 
and  Paul  makes  it  a  qualification  for  the  office  that  a  man 
be  apt  to  teach.  The  private  member  he  elsewhere  de- 
scribes as  "  him  that  is  taught,"  and  enjoins  it  upon  him  to 
communicate  of  his  substance  "  unto  him  that  teacheth."  It 
may  be  said  that  in  his  letter  to  the  Galatians  the  same 
apostle  declares  that  we  are  "  no  more  under  a  schoolmas- 
ter,'' but  an  examination  of  the  context  shows  him  to  be  re- 
buking the  Jews  for  clinging  to  the  law  as  yet  their  instruc- 
tor, when  that  schoolmaster  had  already  brought  and  trans- 
ferred them  to  the  higher  form,  and  to  the  loftier  guidance 
of  Christ,  as  John  the  Baptist  sent  his  disciples  to  the  Sa- 
viour. In  saying  that  the  church  had  no  more  a  schoolmas- 
ter, Christ  was  certainly  excepted,  just  as  elsewhere  when 
the  Saviour  himself  forbade  his  people  to  call  any  man  Rabbi 
or  Master,  he  yet  included  not  Himself  in  the  prohibition, 
declaring  "  that  one  was  their  Master,"  and  that  Himself 
was  such  Master  and  Lord.  The  Church,  then,  is  a  school. 
It  trains  in  truth  and  in  holiness.  It  trains  for  eternity, 
for  Heaven  and  God.  Elsewhere,  and  quite  as  frequently, 
the  Church  is  designated  as  a  family,  all  named  from  their 
one  Elder  Brother  ;  and  still  more  frequently,  perhaps,  as 
a  kingdom,  all  governed  by  one  law,  and  one  sovereign  ; 
and  moving  onward  to  an  assured  conquest  and  a  com- 
mon throne.  So  it  is  a  host,  and  Christ  is  the  Captain  of  its 
salvation.  The  school,  as  we  have  said,  is  but  one  therefore 
of  the  many  sides,  on  which  the  Scriptures  view  that  great 
scheme  of  Divine  Wisdom  and  Love,  the  Church  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ.  It  is  that  side  of  this  spiritual  structure,  to 
the  contemplation  of  which,  the  spot  where  we  stand,  and  the 
occasion  that  has   assembled   us,   most  naturally   invite   us. 


A.    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  343 

As  such,  let  us  reverently  and  prayerfully,  since  every  school 
has  its  instructors,  its  manuals  and  pupils,  inquire, 

I.  Who  are  the  Teachers  in  this,  the  School  of  Heaven  ? 

II.  What  the  manuals,  which  they  employ  ? 

III.  And,  lastly,  who  are  the  learners  ? 

The  instructors,  the  text-books,  and  the  pupils,  form,  then, 
the  three  divisions  under  which  our  remarks  will  be  grouped. 

I.  The  Church,  is  a  term  used  in  the  New  Testament  in 
two  varying  senses,  to  describe  an  invisible  and  a  visible 
body.  So  its  teachers  are  of  two  classes,  the  invisible  and 
the  visible.  It  has  its  Divine  and  its  human  instructors.  We 
said  the  word  Church  in  the  language  of  inspiration  has  two 
meanings.  It  is  applied  to  describe  the  general  assembly 
of  all  saints,  those  who  were  once,  and  those  who  are,  and 
those  who  are  yet  to  be  on  the  earth,  as  all  now  foreseen, 
or  hereafter  met  and  made  perfect  in  heaven.  This  is  the 
general  assembly  and  church  of  the  First-born,  and  from  the 
very  necessity  of  our  condition,  is  therefore  to  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  earth  an  invisible  church.  This  church  excludes 
what  every  earthly  and  visible  church  probably  includes, 
errorists,  who  hold  not  the  Head,  formalists  and  hypocrites. 
It  is  composed  of  the  elect,  and  the  elect  alone.  The  word 
Church  is  used  in  another  and  more  limited  sense  of  the 
visible  assembly  of  saints,  real  or  supposed,  that  holding 
the  truth,  meet  for  worship  in  one  place.  This  is  the  visi- 
ble church  of  the  Bible,  and  is  from  its  nature  a  single  con- 
gregation. The  theologians  have  invented  and  made  cur- 
rent another  and  intermediate  use  of  the  word,  a  national 
visible  church,  which  they  describe,  as  made  up  of  several 
hundred  congregations,  or  even  of  the  entire  nation.  For 
this  the  Holy  Ghost  gives  no  warrant ;  and  yet  on  this 
unwarranted  assumption  rest  many  of  the  claims  of  prelacy 
and  the  papacy.  The  New  Testament  speaks  not  of  the 
church  of  Asia,  or  the  church  of  Judea,  as  this  theory  would 
have  required  it  to  do  ;  but  of  the  seven  churches  of 
Asia  and  the  churches  in  Judea,  showing  that  the  visible 
church  of  the  New  Testament  is  a  single  congregation. 
Each  such  congregation,  by  the  concurrent  testimony  of  the 
New  Testament  and  primitive  antiquity,  is  independent  of  its 
sister  churches.  Yet  each  such  visible  church,  far  as  it  dis- 
penses essentially  the  same  truth,  and  enjoys  the  same  Sa- 
viour's presence  and  the  same  Spirit's  influences,  is  a  section 
of  the  great  Catholic  Invisible  Church  ;  and  is  truly  apostolic, 


344  THE    CHURCH, 

for  it  has  union  with  the  apostles  now  before  the  throne  ; 
and  is  truly  Catholic,  for  it  is  one  in  spirit,  testimony  and 
heritage  with  the  godly  of  all  dispensations  and  all  ages.  As 
the  church  organization  is  then,  in  one  aspect,  a  visible  body, 
and  in  another  of  its  aspects  and  relations,  part  and  parcel 
of  what  is  as  yet  to  man  an  invisible  body,  seen  and  read 
only  of  God  ;  we  need  not  wonder  to  find  that  it  has  its  two 
classes  of  teachers,  the  seen  and  the  unseen  ;  answering  to  the 
two  worlds  which  it  unites,  to  that  visible  and  material  earth 
where  it  is,  in  its  sections,  for  the  time  planted,  and  to  those 
invisible  heavens,  whither  it  is  finally  to  be  transplanted,  in 
its  entirety,  and  to  find  its  better  and  eternal  home,  melting 
there  all  its  distinct  congregations  into  the  general  assembly 
and  church  of  the  First-born. 

1.  God  is,  then,  the  great  and  effectual  Teacher,  invisibly, 
of  this  school  of  saints.  He  is  the  Unseen  Instructor  of  the 
Church.  It  was  promised  even  under  the  old  dispensation, 
"  All  thy  children  shall  be  taught  of  God."*  Each  person 
in  the  adorable  Trinity  co-operates  in  this  work  of  spiritual 
education.  By  a  peculiarity  which  lifts  this  school  above 
all  those  of  human  origin  and  endowment,  its  true  and  effec- 
tual learners  are  all  changed  in  heart ;  a  lesson  is  set  them,  so 
wondrous  and  energetic,  that  they  are  by  it  renewed  as  to  the 
spirit  of  their  minds.  The  Bible  describes  this,  the  great 
crisis  in  the  science  of  salvation,  as  a  new  birth,  the  com- 
mencement of  a  higher  stage  and  a  worthier  mode  of  spiritual 
existence.  The  share  of  the  Father  in  this  work  we  learn 
from  the  lips  of  His  Son.  "  No  man  cometh  unto  me, 
except  the  Father  which  hath  sent  me  draw  him."t  Why 
some  are  thus  drawn  and  others  are  not  drawn,  who  may  say  ? 
Exercising  over  our  world  a  righteous  sovereignty,  of  which 
the  history  of  the  world  and  of  the  church  alike  attest  the 
reality,  but  of  which  the  united  wisdom  of  the  world  and 
the  church  would  alike  fail  to  fathom  all  the  mystery,  the 
Father  makes  some  his,  by  adopting  grace,  and  passes  over 
others.  The  general  call,  the  imperative  summons,  and  the 
gracious  invitations  and  expostulations  of  his  gospel,  are  hon- 
estly addressed  to  all  ;  but  he  makes  them  to  become  an 
effectual  calling,  only  in  the  case  of  His  own  elect.  As  to  the 
iSon's  share  in  this  instruction,  the  work  of  Christ  in  this 
teaching  is  spread  over  every  page,  almost,  of  the  New  Tes- 

*  Isaiah  liv.  13.  t  John  vi.  44. 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  345 

tament.  In  the  context  before  us,  he  is  made  the  Head  from 
which  the  entire  body  depends.  Elsewhere  he  is  said  to  be 
formed  in  the  hearts  of  the  regenerate,  as  the  hope  of  glory. 
They  are  the  sheep  that  hear  his  voice.  All  who  come  to 
the  Father  come  by  Him,  and  none  know  that  Father  but 
as  that  Son  reveals  Him.  Present,  to  the  end  of  the  world, 
in  the  humblest  assemblies  of  His  people,  and  aiding  the 
stammering  lips  of  the  feeblest  of  his  true  ministers,  this, 
His  pledged  presence,  is  the  secret  of  their  indefectibility. 
And,  as  in  the  days  of  Paul's  youth  he  sat  at  Gamaliel's  feet, 
and  as  in  the  days  of  Christ's  flesh  Mary  sat  at  that  Saviour's 
feet,  so  must,  now  and  forever,  every  true  learner  in  the 
school  of  Heaven  sit  at  the  feet  of  Jesus  the  Great  Teacher, 
and  learn  of  Him.  But  it  is  to  the  Holy  Ghost  that  especial 
prominence  is  given  by  the  New  Testament,  as  the  great 
Invisible  Teacher  and  Comforter  of  the  church,  He  opens 
the  sealed  eyes  and  unstops  the  ears  long  closed.  He  takes 
the  stores  of  wisdom  that  are  of  the  Father  and  of  the  Son, 
and  shows  them  unto  us.  By  Him  we  pray  acceptably,  and 
in  His  light  see  the  light  of  the  Scriptures.  He  not  only 
renews  and  sanctifies  each  private  member  of  the  church,  but 
His  alone  it  is  to  call,  and  endow,  and  prosper  the  pastors  or 
human  and  visible  teachers  of  the  Church.  Christ  gave  this 
Spirit,  in  all  his  varying  and  inexhaustible  influences,  as  the 
accompaniment  and  attestation  of  His  own  kingly  ascension, 
when  he  quitted  the  earth  to  regain  his  native  skies,  and 
to  resume  the  glory  which  He  had  for  the  time  relinquished. 
To  sin  wilfully  against  this  great  Invisible  but  indispensa- 
ble Agent,  is  the  unpardonable  sin  for  which  there  is  no  remis- 
sion. '  Grieve  Him  not,'  '  Quench  not  His  kindled  influ- 
ences,' is  the  loud  and  solemn  warning  of  Christ  and  Christ's 
apostles  to  the  churches.  Forgetfulness  of  His  rights  and  of 
His  incommunicable  prerogatives  is  the  secret  of  declension, 
heresy,  and  wide-spread  ruin,  to  the  churches  of  earth  in 
every  age.  As  the  glorious  reformation  was  traceable  to  a 
restoration  of  Christ  to  his  rightful  place  as  the  Mediator 
and  the  Righteousness  of  the  church  ;  so  we  suppose,  that  the 
melancholy  pause  and  reaction  which  was  seen  in  the  progress 
of  that  reformation,  was  traceable  to  a  neglect  on  the  part  of 
the  Churches,  to  give  to  the  Holy  Ghost  his  due  place  and 
honors  in  the  system  of  Christianity.  Men  trusted  in  the 
truth,  apart  from  Him,  the  Spirit  of  Truth.  They  relied  on 
the  graves  of  their  reformed  Fathers  instead  of  the  everlast- 


346  THE    CHURCH, 

ing  God  of  those  Fathers  ;  on  controversies  and  in  creeds, 
dissevered  from  prayer  for  the  influences  of  the  Paraclete. 
The  effect  was  that  the  chariot  of  salvation  faltered  in  its 
course,  and  its  wheels  drave  heavily,  and  the  banners  of 
Antichrist  turned  again  from  their  earlier  flight,  and  flouted 
anew  the  standards  of  a  purer  faith  ;  and  Christian  Europe 
saw  itself  like  the  victim  on  one  of  whose  sides  palsy  has 
laid  its  blight ;  the  half  had  sense  and  life,  and  half  struggled 
with  the  torpor  of  death. 

The  great  mission  of  our  own  denomination,  as  distin- 
guished from  other  sections  of  true  Christians,  is,  not  only  to 
proclaim,  with  them,  the  need  of  personal  and  individual  re- 
generation by  this  blessed  Spirit,  but  also  to  discriminate 
the  effectual  Spirit  from  the  emblematic  rite,  and  to  isolate 
the  individual, — apart  from  the  nation,  and  apart  from  the 
family, — shutting  him  up,  singly  and  alone,  to  the  need,  for 
himself,  personally  and  apart  from  all  hope  in  his  fellows, 
of  this  regenerating  Spirit,  for  himself  individually.  When 
Christians,  (even  wise,  and  good,  and  great  men,)  in  the  old 
world,  confound  the  Church  and  the  State  ;  when,  as  we 
suppose,  Christians  in  the  New  World,  of  undisputed  ex- 
cellence and  wisdom,  are  yet  chargeable  with  the  error  of 
confounding  the  Church  and  the  household,  thus  bringing  in 
the  carnal  and  unregenerate  element  into  the  constitution  of 
a  church  that  should  be  exclusively  spiritual  and  all  regen- 
erate, it  is  our  duty  to  declare  that  the  influences  of  this 
great  Invisible  Teacher  are  riot  transmissible,  as  a  material 
hereditament,  by  mere  right  of  descent.  Our  peculiar  voca- 
tion it  is  to  call  each  to  look  to  himself,  and  that  he  say  not, 
as  did  the  Jews  in  the  times  of  Christ's  forerunner  :  We  are 
the  seed  of  the  spiritual,  "  We  have  Abraham  to  our  father  ;" 
as  if  it  followed  thence,  by  an  inevitable  sequence,  that  they 
had  the  spirit  of  adoption,  and  could  legitimately  cry  to  Je- 
hovah :   «  Abba,  Father.' 

And  if  ever,  which  may  God  forbid,  the  inscription  of 
Ichabod,  the  memorial  of  departed  power  and  of  vanished 
glory,  the  mournful  sentence  that  has  been  inscribed  on  many 
a  Theological  Seminary  in  Europe  and  on  some  in  America, — 
Seminaries,  that,  reared  in  faith,  have  passed  over  into  the 
hands  of  formalism  and  heresy — if  that  dread  and  desolating 
inscription  be  ever  legible  on  these  walls,  reared  by  the  sac- 
rifices, and  fragrant  with  the  prayers  of  men  who  revered  and 
adored  the  Holy  Ghost,  it  will  be,  probably,  by  a  wrong  done 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  347 

to  this  Divine  Teacher,  that  the  work  of  desecration  will  have 
been  begun  : — the  neglect  of  the  Paraclete  will  be  the  abomin- 
ation that  maketh  desolate.  If,  against  the  examples,  and  the 
entreaties,  and  the  instructions  of  your  pious  teachers,  young 
men  of  this  Seminary,  the  hope  and  joy  of  the  Churches — let 
a  dying  sinner  say  to  his  fellow-heirs  of  mortality  and  of 
sin — if  you  substitute  learning  for  spirituality,  and  a  reli- 
ance on  intellect  for  trust  in  the  Divine  Teacher,  and  prefer 
speculation  to  prayer,  it  is  against  this,  the  pre-eminent  and 
Supreme  Teacher  of  the  Church,  that  you  will  be  sinning. 
And  the  city  of  Mansoul,  as  Bunyan  depicts  it,  beleaguered 
in  all  her  gates,  and  with  treason  busy  on  her  walls  and  in  her 
citadel,  while  this,  the  Lord  Secretary,  alienated  by  neglect, 
has  withdrawn  himself  in  disgust  from  an  oblivious  and  un- 
grateful people, — Mansoul,  we  say,  besieged  and  disheart- 
ened, famished  and  terrified,  and  deserted  of  her  Lord,  will 
becorne  but  the  feeble  image  of  the  Churches  to  which  you 
may  minister,  with  the  stores  of  an  unsanctified  learning,  and 
of  a  godless  and  self-deifying  intellect. 

2.  Subordinate  to  this  Divine  Teaching,  and  valueless 
without  it,  there  come,  next,  the  human  teachers,  the  ushers 
under  the  great  and  paramount  Teacher,  God.  They  are 
described  in  our  text  and  the  adjoining  sentences.  Some  of 
these  human  teachers  were  of  an  extraordinary  and  miracu- 
lous character,  given  to  apostolic  times,  but  not  continued 
in  later  ages  of  the  Church.  Of  this  kind,  are  the  three  first 
named  by  the  apostle,  among  these  visible  and  mortal  teachers 
of  Christ's  school :  apostles,  prophets,  and  evangelists.  By 
the  last  was  probably  intended  a  class  of  men  like  Timothy 
and  Titus,  who  might  best  be  described  by  a  name  which 
Rome  has  used  for  other  purposes,  as  apostolical  vicars,  act- 
ing in  an  apostle's  stead,  under  his  directions,  and  as  we  sup- 
pose, only  during  his  life-time.  Thus  Titus  traversed  Crete 
and  ordered  its  churches  with  a  delegated  share  of  Paul's 
power.  The  name,  evangelist,  is  now  often  given  to  breth- 
ren in  the  ministry  confined  to  no  pastoral  charge,  and  who 
are  devoted  mainly  to  labors,  for  the  revival  of  the  churches 
and  for  the  conversion  of  sinners,  over  a  wide  district.  We 
would  neither  deny  nor  disparage  the  eminent  usefulness 
and  graces  of  some  men  like  Whitfield  and  the  Wesleys 
and  the  Tennents,  who  have  been  thus  employed.  We 
believe  that  the  churches  need  true  revivals,  and  should 
pray  for  them  and  seek  them,  and  finding  them  from  God, 


348  THE    CHURCH, 

may  then  well  multiply  and  protract  their  religious  services. 
But,  that  this  text  recognizes  and  describes,  here,  preachers 
devoted  mainly  to  such  efforts,  as  to  their  one  work,  as  the 
class  it  intends  by  the  term  evangelists,  we  doubt.  Far  as 
such  laborers  for  God  rebuke  the  apathy  of  Christian  churches 
and  Christian  ministers,  and  turn  many  to  righteousness,  we 
would  rejoice  in  their  success  and  emulate  their  graces. 
But  far  as  such  examples,  on  the  other  hand,  are  pleaded 
as  authority,  and  they  have  unhappily  been  so  pleaded,  for 
measures  more  mechanical  than  spiritual,  and  for  modes  of 
worship  rather  dramatic  than  devotional ;  far  as  periodical 
excitements  have  been  made  to  discredit  and  replace  God's 
Sabbaths  and  the  appointed  and  permanent  preaching  of 
the  word  ;  and  far  as,  intentionally,  there  have  been  efforts 
to  break  down  the  pastoral  authority,  to  substitute  for  it,  a 
virtual  control  and  supervision  by  a  higher  class  of  laborers, 
who  should  themselves  be  bound  to  no  spot,  and  responsible 
to  no  church,  we  believe  the  pleas  so  made  unwarranted,  and 
the  results,  as  the  churches  have  already  proved,  may  be 
abundantly  disastrous.  The  church  is,  in  one  of  its  great 
uses,  as  a  nursery  and  school  for  the  children  of  God.  It  is 
dangerous  to  convert  it,  by  our  hot  haste,  into  a  Foundling 
Hospital,  crowded  with  those  of  dubious  or  spurious  parent- 
age. The  inmates  of  such  receptacles  in  Europe  are  known 
to  die,  the  larger  mass  of  them,  before  reaching  maturity. 
And  as  the  Foundling  Hospitals  of  the  old  world  have  not 
been  proved  to  favor  either  the  population  or  public  morals 
of  a  land ;  so  the  rapid  and  indiscriminate  admissions  to 
church  membership  advocated  by  some  indiscreet  laborers, — 
the  receiving  as  God's  children  those  who  give  scanty  evi- 
dence of  His  adoption, —  the  letting  in  upon  God's  heritage 
of  an  alien  seed, — the  giving,  as  Christ  said,  the  children's 
bread  to  dogs, — has  not  wrought  happily  on  the  purity  or 
prosperity  of  our  churches.  And  how  fatal  must  be  its  effect 
on  those  thus  baptized  into  an  unregenerate  hope,  and  who, 
if  they  but  maintain  an  ordinary  morality,  burden  our  church- 
es as  formalists  or  errorists — or  who,  if  casting  off  moral  re- 
straints, they  incur  exclusion,  generally  harden  into  infidels 
and  mockers.  Let  us  not  decry  protracted  meetings  :  let  us 
not  unduly  rely  on  their  aid.  Let  us  not  crowd  all  our  de- 
votion into  six  weeks  or  seven  of  the  fifty-two  that  make  up 
the  year,  more  than  the  merchant  would  crowd  all  his  hon- 
esty into  one  month  of  the  twelve.     Let  us  give  due  honor 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  349 

to  brethren,  to  whom  God  may  have  given  special  endow- 
ments for  awakening  the  impenitent  and  backslidden.  But 
let  us  not  claim  the  support  of  this  text  for  these  as  if  they* 
were  the  extraordinary  evangelists  of  apostolic  times,  tra- 
versing the  land  with  a  divine  commission,  to  set  up,  at  their 
pleasure,  or  to  put  down  pastors.  But  let  us  cling  tena- 
ciously to  God's  mechanism  for  the  world's  conversion  and 
for  the  sanctification  of  the  Church,  the  ordinary  ministry 
and  the  pastorate ;  and  let  us  expect  a  harvest-time  for 
souls  running  through  all  the  Sabbaths  of  the  year.  Let  us 
recollect  that,  in  all  communions,  we  are  in  danger  from 
the  error,  which  so  beguiled  and  enlarged  Rome.  She,  to 
make  religion  popular,  and  conversions  rapid  and  multitu- 
dinous, hewed  the  strait  gate  wider,  and  made  the  narrow 
way  broad  as  the  path  to  death.  Thus  has  she,  under  pre- 
tence of  evangelizing  the  nations,  carnalized  the  gospel  and 
secularized  the  church.  Instead  of  converting  the  nations, 
this  is  but  a  conversion  of  the  gospel  to  something  other 
and  more  and  worse  than  what   Christ  left  it. 

Of  the  details  of  the  pastor's  duty  we  have  not  now  time 
to  speak.  God  has  all  varieties  of  gifts  in  these  his  ministers. 
There  are  some  whose  minds  are  formed  for  patient  inquiry, 
and  others  for  impressive  statement  and  irresistible  appeal. 
One  man  shows  his  strength  in  his  prayers,  and  another  in  his 
sermons,  and  yet  another  in  his  pastoral  visits.  There  are 
some  whose  doctrine  distils  like  the  gathering  dew,  softly 
and  almost  imperceptibly  bathing  the  mind  of  a  hearer.  Oth- 
ers have  a  gentle  profusion  of  sentiment  and  language,  that 
like  the  speech  of  old  Nestor,  as  Homer  describes  it,  falls 
as  the  snow,  and  covers  all  with  its  light,  feathery  flakes. 
And  there  are  still  others,  whose  words,  slow,  ponderous,  and 
compact  with  compressed  meaning,  fall  like  the  hail-storm 
mentioned  in  the  Apocalyptic  vision,  where  each  stone  was  of 
a  talent's  weight,  and  crushed  when  it  struck.  A  dull  uni- 
formity in  the  gifts  of  the  pastorate,  would  not  conduce  to  gen- 
eral edification  ;  and  the  attempt,  sometimes  apparent,  to 
make  any  individual  teacher  the  standard,  to  whose  personal 
endowments  every  other  must  be  conformed,  or  suffer  re- 
jection, is  an  attempt  to  mend  God's  better  methods  of  using 
all  and  all  varieties  of  gifts  in  his  school.  Peter  could  nei- 
ther speak,  write,  nor  act  like  John  ;  and  John  was  incapable 
of  assuming  the  tone  and  port  of  Peter ;  and  neither  could 
dilate,  with  the  broad  magnificence,  or  dive  into  the  deep 


350  THE    CHURCH, 

mysteries  of  truth,  with  the  unfathomed  profundity  of  Paul : 
yet  Paul,  and  Peter,  and  John  were  all  servants  of  the  same 
Christ,  organs  and  channels  of  the  same  Holy  Spirit,  and  effi- 
cient servants  of  the  same  Church  of  the  Living  God.  Let 
pastor  and  student,  while  shunning  all  needless  eccentricity, 
cultivate  and  develope  fearlessly  their  own  individuality,  and 
occupy  the  talents,  few  or  many,  given  to  their  especial 
keeping.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  pastor  to  look  to  himself  and 
his  ministry  ;  to  study,  that  he  may  teach;  to  pray  much, 
that  he  may  have  much  of  the  Spirit's  influences  ;  and  to  vary 
his  appeals,  warnings,  and  instructions  to  the  varying  charac- 
acter,  and  needs,  and  state  of  the  souls  entrusted  to  his  charge. 

3.  Again,  the  Church,  collectively,  is  in  a  certain  sense 
to  teach.  All  Christians  bear,  in  their  measure,  part  in  the 
human  instructions,  due  from  the  Church.  In  this  school 
they  are  to.be  living  epistles  of  Christ,  seen  and  read  of  all 
men.  They  are  to  hold  forth  the  word  of  life.  The  Church 
is  to  grow,  as  our  context  shows,  by  that  which  "  every 
joint  supplieth."  When  there  is  a  failure  on  the  part  of  the 
several  members  of  this  church  to  feel  and  meet  this  obliga- 
tion, we  see  the  apostle's  command  to  the  churches  practi- 
cally read,  by  a  melancholy  travesty,  as  if  the  body  of  Christ, 
his  Church,  were  to  be,  instead  of  compacted,  "  dislocated  by 
that  which  every  joint  w ithholdeth,  according  to  the  inefficient 
working,  in  the  measure  of  every  part,  and  maketh  waste  of 
the  body,  unto  the  destruction  of  itself,  in  general  uncharita- 
bleness,  and  a  reigning  selfishness."  Such  churches  pine  un- 
der an  atrophy  of  Christian  graces  and  a  palsy  of  all  spiritual 
activity.  In  every  station  and  of  either  sex,  true  Christians 
may  in  their  appropriate  sphere  witness  for  Christ.  Thus 
even  in  the  sex  to  which  Paul  forbade  public  teaching  in  the 
church,  he  commands  that  in  the  seclusion  of  the  home  and 
in  the  associations  of  the  domestic  circle,  the  aged  women 
be  "  teachers  of  good  things." 

Thus  have  we  observed  how  the  divine  and  the  human,  the 
visible  and  the  invisible,  combine  as  the  appointed  teachers 
of  the  Church  as  it  is  God's  school :  the  mortal  usher  seen, 
but  the  Great  Master  by  whom  and  for  whom  he  works,  un- 
seen. 

II.  Let  us  now  pass,  in  the  second  place,  to  the  manuals, 
which  this  school  uses,  the  text-books  out  of  which  the  lessons 
are  to  be  furnished.  They  are  all  volumes  of  God's  inditing, 
the  first  and  the  last  marred  by  the  share  of  man  in  their 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  351 

transcription  ;  the  second  is  the  only  volume  to  which  strictly 
belongs  the  title  of  a  revelation. 

1.  The  book  of  man's  conscience,  is,  perhaps,  the  first  to  be 
named.  When  describing  the  work  of  the  great  Invisible 
Teacher  of  the  Church,  the  blessed  Spirit  of  God,  the  Saviour 
represents  Him,  as  unrolling  this  volume.  He  convinces,  or 
makes  to  be  read  in  the  inner  conscience  the  guilt  of  those  he 
teaches  ;  convicting  the  world  first  of  sin,  bringing  home  to 
the  human  spirit  the  sense  of  its  guilt,  and  haunting  it  with 
the  memory  of  its  long-buried  trespasses.  So  the  apostle, 
describing  the  heathen  who  enters  the  Christian  assembly  to 
meet  God  there,  represents  him  as  having  the  secrets  of  his 
heart  made  manifest,  and  then  falling  down  with  the  confes- 
sion that  God  is  indeed  in  the  midst  of  the  church.  So  Sol- 
omon, in  the  ancient  dispensation,  calls  the  acceptable  sup- 
pliant of  God's  courts  the  man  who  knows  the  plague  of  his 
own  heart.  So  Paul  depicts  the  faithful  preacher  of  the 
gospel,  as  commending  himself  to  every  man's  conscience  in 
the  sight  of  God.  This  is  one  of  the  books  that  will  be  open- 
ed in  the  day  of  judgment:  and  it  is,  even  now,  the  business  of 
the  human  teacher  of  the  church,  instrument  ally,  and  the 
prerogative  of  the  Divine  Teacher  of  the  church,  effectually, 
to  turn  the  leaves  of  this  dread  text-book,  and  show  to  men 
what  they  are  and  what  they  need,  the  guilt  they  have  in- 
curred and  the  mercy  they  require.  So  the  Christian  is  to 
try  his  heart  and  way,  keeping  with  all  diligence  that  heart 
out  of  which  are  the  issues  of  the  life,  and  whence,  in  the 
case  of  the  renewed  man,  springs  a  well  of  water  unto  life 
everlasting. 

2.  The  second  is  the  volume  of  God's  Scriptures.  Where 
is  this  revelation  of  God  to  be  found  1  Is  it  within  the  lids 
of  the  volume  of  the  written  word;  or  in  the  depths  of  the 
human  intellect,  which  in  the  first  writers  originated  that 
word,  and  in  each  of  its  readers,  is  to  try  that  word ;  or  is 
it  in  the  traditions  of  the  Church,  at  whose  hands  we  are  to 
take  this  word,  and  from  whose  lips  tojiave  it  interpreted 
and  amplified?  For  our  churches,  and  the  evangelical  sects 
of  Protestantism,  there  is  no  hesitation,  in  choosing  the  pro- 
per definition,  and  the  true  seat  of  Revelation.  To  us  the 
Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament  are  the  ultimate 
and  complete  revelation  of  God.  Before  the  canon  of  the 
New  Testament  was  finished,  and  whilst  apostles,  having 
plenary  inspiration,  yet  guided  the  Church,  their  teachings 


352  THE    CHURCH, 

orally  had,  with  the  Christian  disciples,  the  authority  now 
due  to  their  written  testimonies.  The  revelation  of  that  age 
was  in  their  lips.  Their  writings  gathered  and  fixed  revela- 
tion ;  and  gave  it  a  local  habitation  in  the  Bible.  Just,  as 
philosophers  tell  us,  as  the  light  existed  before  the  creation  of 
the  sun,  floating  in  irregular  masses  ;  so  was  it  with  revela- 
tion in  the  first  century.  Until  apostles,  by  their  writings, 
compiled,  and  by  their  death  closed  the  canon  of  the  New 
Testament,  this,  the  light  of  Heaven  for  the  human  soul, 
was  floating  in  the  oral  instructions  of  the  teachers,  and  in 
the  memories  of  their  converts.  The  formation  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  the  departure  of  inspired  apostles,  gathered, 
and  fixed,  and  limited  Divine  Revelation,  in  an  embodiment, 
from  which,  now,  nothing  may  be  taken,  and  to  which  no- 
thing may  be  added. 

To  this  book,  however,  exception  is  taken,  from  opposite 
quarters.  The  votaries  of  tradition  represent  the  volume  as 
incomplete,  needing  theit  traditions,  as  its  appendix  and  its 
exposition.  The  disciples  of  rationalism  regard  it  as  inexact, 
and  needing  to  be  corrected  and  amended,  by  the  better 
judgment  of  each  reader,  and  the  rising  lights  of  each  new 
and  wiser  generation.  Widely,  then,  as  these  two  opposing 
errors  diverge  from  each  other,  they  yet  converge  together, 
in  the  one  principle,  that  Scripture  is  defective.  Our  church- 
es deny  all  such  alleged  defect,  and  recognize,  in  the  Book, 
a  type  of  the  Wisdom  of  its  Author,  as  a  record  omitting 
nought  that  is  needful  for  its  purposes,  and  retaining 
nought  that  is  needless.  We  recognize  the  rights  of  human 
reason,  in  its  own  legitimate  sphere,  and  within  the  narrow 
scope  of  its  feeble  powers,  to  examine,  with  patient  thorough- 
ness, all  the  evidences  of  the  Divine  origin  of  the  document, 
and  carefully  to  settle  the  exact  text  of  the  document ;  but, 
these  done,  it  is  bound  meekly  to  receive  much  that  may  be 
mysterious,  believing  that  what  God  has  said,  is  and  must 
be  true,  and  that  the  weakness  of  God  is  stronger  than  man, 
and  the  foolishness  of  God  wiser  than  man. 

The  God,  who  educes  good  out  of  evil,  may,  we  believe, 
bring  to  his  Church  profit  and  edification,  even  out  of  the 
results  of  the  most  lawless  rationalism,  as  exhibited  in  those 
German  scholars,  who  seem  to  graft  a  Sadducean  temerity, 
as  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Bible,  upon  a  Pharisaic  precise- 
ness,  as  to  the  text  of  the  Bible.  The  churches  may  be 
called  to  bless  God,  for  the  siftings  to  which  German  Neol- 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  353 

ogy  has  subjected  the  text  of  the  New  Testament,  as  they 
do  for  the  bigoted  strictness  of  the  ancient  Pharisee,  as  to 
the  text  of  the  Old  Testament :  and  yet  our  churches  may 
as  little  sympathize  with  the  principles  of  the  German  exe- 
gete  as  with  those  of  the  ancient  Scribes. 

As  to  the  attempt  to  make  tradition  an  indispensable  sup- 
plement to  Scripture,  and  to  prove  that  Revelation  is  to  be 
compiled,  and  a  system  of  religious  truth  selected,  out  of 
the  Fathers,  Councils  and  Decretals,  it  seems  to  us,  on  its 
face,  as  absurd,  as  would  be  the  proposal,  that  we  should 
set  ourselves  to  compile  and  complete  the  Paradise  Lost  of 
Milton,  a  book  of  the  seventeenth  century,  out  of  the  news- 
papers and  general  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century.  We 
might  better  content  ourselves  with  the  copy  as  it  stands,  in 
its  original  integrity.  If  we  are  to  go  out  of  it,  we  may  find 
in  the  floating  sheets  of  our  time,  all  the  words  of  Milton's 
poem,  covered  by  myriads  of  other  words,  and  destitute  of 
all  order  and  cohesion.  But  the  task  of  disentanglino;,  iden- 
tifying  and  arranging  these  "  scattered  members  "  of  the 
poet,  would  involve  a  toil  quite  as  difficult  for  our  incompe- 
tency as  the  writing  of  a  new  and  rival  Paradise  Lost.  And 
so,  in  the  traditions  of  the  Church,  and  the  teachings  of  the 
Fathers,  tortuous,  and  contradictory,  and  confused  as  they 
are,  Inspiration  and  Omniscience  would  be  quite  as  much 
needed  to  disentangle  truth  from  error,  as  to  write  any  gos- 
pel or  epistle  in  all  the  New  Testament.  The  inspired  se- 
lection of  the  true  tradition  would  need,  too,  as  much  mira- 
culous evidence  to  warrant  the  claim,  as  was  vouchsafed  to 
the  inspired  dictation  of  the  canonical  Scriptures. 

But  it  is  said,  by  the  advocates  of  Patristic  lore  ;  you  do 
not  know  the  canonical  Scriptures,  except  by  the  testimony 
of  the  early  fathers  ;  and  if  they,  it  is,  who  give  you  the 
Testament,  you  are  bound  to  take  with  it  their  interpreta- 
tion. We  do  not  admit  this.  The  early  Christians  are  but 
as  the  postman,  who  brings  to  us  a  letter  from  some  friend, 
the  resident  of  a  distant  city.  The  epistle  is  authenticated, 
in  part  indeed,  by  the  postmark  and  the  carrier.  But,  be- 
sides and  above  the  evidence  thus  supplied,  the  letter  itself, 
and  its  contents,  as  tallving  with  the  known  character  and 
earlier  correspondence  of  our  distant  friend,  are  evidences 
also  :  and  if  these  last  be  wanting,  the  others  would  be  un- 
availing. In  his  place  the  carrier  does  good  service,  and 
bears  availing  testimony :  but  if,  because  he  is  the  postman, 

46 


354  THE    CHURCH, 

he  claims  to  open  for  us,  and  to  interpret  to  us,  the  epistle 
he  brings,  he  grossly  exaggerates  his  own  prerogatives. 
Even  so  is  it  with  the  early  churches.  As  the  bearers,  in 
Divine  Providence,  to  us  of  our  Father's  letters  missive,  they 
may  legitimately  testify  to  certain  facts  within  their  know- 
ledge, that  certain  compositions  were  written  by  apostles 
and  apostolic  men  whom  the  apostles  explicitly  authorized 
thereto.  This  is  a  fact  of  history.  They  are  the  masters 
of  the  post  where  the  letter  was  mailed,  and  their  mark 
fixes  its  origin  at  such  place  and  at  such  date.  But  there 
are  other  historical  witnesses  besides  them.  The  very  oppo- 
nents of  the  gospel,  in  earlier  ages,  give  similar  testimony. 
Julian  the  apostate  is  himself,  then,  one  of  the  postmen. 
But,  even  traditionists  would  not  contend  that  he  is  there- 
fore an  interpreter  of  the  document,  which  he  aids  in  authen- 
ticating and  forwarding. 

But  are  we  told,  by  the  men  of  reason,  on  the  other  hand, 
that,  if  we  admit  man's  intellect  to  sit  in  judgment  on  the 
historical  and  other  evidences  of  the  Divine  origin  of  the 
document,  and  on  the  just  letter  and  text  of  the  document, 
then,  we  must,  of  necessity,  hold  that  intellect  competent  to 
judge  the  substance,  as  well  as  the  text  of  the  document, 
and  to  alter  and  amend  this,  to  the  requirements  of  the  cul- 
tivated reason  ?  We  answer  :  the  claim,  though  urged  by 
those  who  call  themselves  rationalists,  seems  the  embodi- 
ment of  all  that  is  irrational,  as  well  as  irreverent.  If-rea- 
son  can  thus  make  and  remake  a  revelation,  it  certainly  does 
not  need  one  :  if,  confessedly,  it  needs  one,  then  it  cannot 
make  one.  The  principle  of  such  an  exegesis  is,  that  we 
first  reason  out  by  our  own  native  powers,  a  system  of  doc- 
trine or  morals,  and  that  we  then  hew  and  crush  God's 
scripture  into  harmony  with  this  our  preconceived  standard. 
If  this  system  leaves  Scripture  any  place,  it  is  that  of  being 
the  stuttering  interpreter  of  Reason,  by  an  enunciation, 
awkward,  quaint,  and  obscure,  bringing  out  what  Reason 
herself  states  more  clearly,  more  systematically,  and  more 
forcibly.  The  Bible  is,  then,  a  Moses,  of  stammering  lips  : 
whilst  Reason  is  the  Aaron,  the  eloquent  speaker.  On  this 
principle,  Revelation  is  seen,  stumbling  on  crutches;  whilst 
Reason  moves  before  it,  like  some  parent  bird  before  its  un- 
fledged offspring,  poised  on  airy  wings.  The  Bible,  and 
Conscience,  and  man's  own  honest,  and  unintoxicated  Rea- 
son, coincide  in  reversing  this  imaginary  relation ;   and  as- 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  355 

cribe  the  real  ownership  of  the  crutches  to  Reason,  and  of 
the  wings  to  Revelation. 

Instead  of  being  outgrown,  as  some  intimate,  by  the  grow- 
ing civilization  of  the  race,  the  Scriptures,  with  the  infinite 
wisdom  they  derive  from  their  Divine  Author,  are  found, 
age  after  age,  developing  still  new  glories  with  each  deeper 
investigation.  No  past  age  has  exhausted  all  the  lodes  and 
veins  of  truth  these  mines  contain.  The  gospel  is  as  inex- 
haustible, as  man's  wants,  and  life's  changes,  and  God's 
grace.  Until  the  breathing  of  these  troops  of  students  shall 
have  stript  these  hills  of  their  keen  and  bracing  air, — until 
the  lungs  of  the  race  shall  have  exhausted  the  atmosphere 
of  our  globe, — until  your  thirst  shall  have  drained  the  seas, 
and  your  eyes  have  beggared  sun  and  stars  of  all  their  light, 
you  need  not  fear,  brethren  in  the  Christian  ministry,  that 
your  studies  and  your  sermons  will  have  drawn  dry  the 
fountain  of  God's  oracles.  The  only  concern  we  need  to 
feel  is,  that,  as  in  Jonathan  Edwards,  and  Andrew  Fuller, 
and  Henry  Martyn,  study  and  piety  should  keep  pace  ;  and 
that  the  results  of  our  profoundest  thinking  should  be  used 
to  feed  the  flames  of  a  seraphic  devotion  ;  and  that,  like  the 
warrior  psalmist  of  Israel,  vigor  and  valor  in  the  outer  battle- 
field of  the  world,  should  never  be  regarded  as  a  dispensa- 
tion from  lowly  and  lonely  adoration,  within  the  curtains  of 
the  tabernacle. 

A  portion  of  this  book  of  Revelation  is  prophetic.  It 
limns,  with  more  or  less  of  distinctness,  the  shape  of  the 
times  that  are  to  pass  over  the  churches  and  the  nations. 
"If  (said  the  apostle  to  Timothy)  thou  put  the  brethren  in 
remembrance  of  these  things,  thou  shalt  be  a  good  minister 
of  Jesus  Christ  "  (1  Tim.  iv.  6).  Look  to  the  context  of 
that  saying,  and  it  is  found  that  these  things,  thus  commended 
as  the  theme  of  pastoral  admonition,  are  the  difficult,  con- 
troverted and  mysterious  lessons  of  prophecy ;  but  practical, 
in  all  their  mystery,  for  they  forewarn  of  an  impending, 
gradual  and  general  apostasy,  and  this  as  growing,  in  part, 
out  of  a  practical  mistake,  false  views  of  Christian  holiness. 
Prophecy  had  bidden  the  churches  discern  the  gatherings  of 
that  cloud,  which  burst  in  a  storm  of  delusion  upon  Chris- 
tendom, and  continued  for  successive  centuries.  We  do  not 
say  that  prophecy  is  to  be  the  one  staple  of  the  pulpit,  that 
it  is  to  be  the  exclusive,  or  even  the  paramount  subject  of 
study  to  the  churches.     The  milk  which  befits  the  babes  in 


356  THE    CHURCH, 

Christian  grace,  and  the  simple  bread  for  which  the  poor  of 
the  Lord  hunger,  are  not  to  be  sought,  mainly,  in  gauging 
the  apocalyptic  vials.  Sinai,  and  the  Mount  of  Beatitudes, 
and  Calvary,  have  their  right  to  be  heeded,  as  well  as  those 
dread  blasts  which  issue  from  the  trumpets  of  the  apocalyptic 
vision.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  what  God  thought  it  neces- 
sary to  write,  the  Church  may  not  safely  think  it  unnecessary 
to  read  :  and  whilst  it  is  our  folly  to  be  wise  above  what  is 
written,  it  is  our  privilege  to  be  wise  up  to  what  God  has  so 
written.  Do  we  shrink  from  controversy  ?  It  is  often  in- 
evitable, to  pass  safely  the  ordeal  of  some  popular  error. 
Does  prophecy,  as  a  study,  seem  wanting  in  practical  uses  ? 
Certainly,  in  the  text  already  indicated  from  Paul's  letters 
to  his  son  in  the  faith,  the  essence  of  Christian  practice,  the 
true  nature  of  holiness,  is  represented  in  the  prophecy,  as 
being  widely  mistaken  within  the  nominal  Church.  Without 
pondering  this,  and  similar  predictions,  we  are  not  sure  that 
we  set  out,  with  just  principles,  in  our  elementary  views  of 
Christian  graces,  and  of  practical  holiness.  And,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  prophetic  portions  of  the  Bible  were,  in  the 
hands  of  the  early  reformers,  most  potent  weapons,  of  daily 
use,  against  Rome.  It  is  a  remarkable  and  significant  fact 
of  our  times,  that  whilst  Rome,  as  in  dread  of  their  power, 
has  sought  to  turn  from  herself  the  evangelical  descriptions 
of  Antichrist  which  the  reformers  quoted  against  her,  there 
should  be,  at  two  remote  points,  having  little  intercourse  or 
sympathy,  the  Oxford  Tractarians  of  Britain,  on  the  one. 
side,  and  some  esteemed  expositors  of  our  own  land,  on  the 
other,  a  disposition  to  pass  to  the  Romanist  system  of  inter- 
pretation, thus  surrendering  an  outwork  held,  both  long  be- 
fore and  long  after  the  Reformation,  by  those  who  have  wit- 
nessed against  that  apostate  Church.  A  return  to  the  views 
of  our  fathers,  is,  in  this  matter,  we  believe,  demanded  by 
the  harmony  of  Scripture,  and  indispensable  to  the  triumphs 
of  the  Gospel.  With  them,  we  must  hold  Pontifical  Rome 
to  be  the  mystical  Babylon  of  the  New  Testament.  As 
Babylon  of  the  Chaldees  held  Israel  captive  by  the  Euphra- 
tes, so  has  this  fallen  Church,  beside  the  streams  of  her 
Tiber,  wielded  a  more  cruel  tyranny,  over  a  wider  region, 
and  for  a  far  longer  term.  Prophetic  exposition,  as  one  of 
the  weapons  of  the  Reformation  against  her,  has  not  yet 
lost  its  temper,  and  may  not  be  spared  from  the  armory  of 
the  soldiers  of  truth. 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  357 

Scripture,  then,  in  its  fulness  and  its  sufficiency — in  its 
morals,  and  its  mysteries,  and  its  prophecies  also,  must  be, 
and  remain,  the  chief  text-book  and  manual,  in  the  School, 
where  God  trains  the  children  of  Adam  for  the  employments 
and  associations  of  Heaven. 

3.  But  besides  the  manuals  of  man's  conscience  and  God's 
Scriptures,  there  is  another  book  to  be  studied  in  the  church. 
The  third  is  the  volume  of  God's  providence.  God  is  ruling 
the  world.  His  dealings  are  full  of  instruction.  "  Whoso 
is  wise,"  said  the  Psalmist,  "  and  will  observe  these  things, 
even  they  shall  understand  the  loving-kindness  of  the  Lord."* 
That  portion  of  the  volume  of  Scripture  to  which  we  have" 
last  alluded,  and  which  contains  God's  prophecies  of  the  fu- 
ture, is  to  be  interpreted  by  collation  with  this  other  and  cor- 
responding volume  of  His  providence.  This  forms  the  chief 
value  of  Church  History.  It  illustrates  the  reasonableness 
and  justice  of  the  warnings  of  inspired  men,  the  value  of 
their  doctrines  to  holiness,  and  shows  the  effect  of  all  at- 
tempts to  improve  their  doctrines  by  a  higher  sanctity,  to  be 
eventually  the  fostering  of  unholiness.  It  shows  impressive- 
ly the  unity  of  the  Divine  Spirit,  and  of  the  Saviour's  image, 
in  true  Christians  of  all  ages  and  all  communions.  One 
great  excellence  of  the  labors  of  the  devout  and  eminent 
Neander,  is  the  mode  in  which  he  thus  analyzes  and  recog- 
nizes the  elements  of  true  piety,  wherever  found  ;  and  de- 
tects the  unity  of  the  true  members  of  Christ's  Church  amid 
all  the  varieties  of  discipline,  and  customs,  and  nations.  The 
church  history  may  be  accessible  to  few  :  but  the  book  of 
God's  providence  has  other  pages  that  are  accessible  to  all. 
And  how  impressive  may  a  Christian  find  this  volume,  as  it 
contains,  not  the  history  of  past  centuries  merely,  but  as  it  in- 
cludes his  own  career  and  that  of  his  fellow-disciples  person- 
ally known  and  dear  to  him.  How  much  light  is  reflected 
back,  from  those  pages  of  his  personal  experience  and  his 
own  observation  of  God's  dealings,  upon  the  volume  of  Scrip- 
ture ;  and  how  are  the  promises,  the  warnings,  and  the  re- 
bukes of  Scripture,  shown  under  a  new  aspect.  And  not 
the  history  of  the  Church  only,  but  the  annals  of  the  world 
become  intelligible  and  profitable,  only  when  studied  as  the 
book  of  God  and  of  his  Christ.  Jesus,  the  Messiah,  is  the 
being  whose  advent  and  work  knit  together  the  raveled  and 

*  Psalm  cvii.  43. 


358  THE    CHURCH, 

tangled  web  of  the  world's  history  ;  and  give  it  symmetry  and 
aim,  a  meaning  and  a  plan.  The  first  successful  attempt  to 
write  a  Universal  History,  as  even  irreligious  critics  allow, 
was  that  which  was  made  on  Christian  principles,  by  Bos- 
suet,  and  all  subsequent  attempts  to  substitute  a  secular  for  a 
spiritual  point  of  view,  in  a  general  history  of  the  race, — to 
look  at  God's  government  of  the  world  from  the  footstool  and 
not  from  the  throne, — from  the  plans  of  the  creature,  over- 
ruled and  frustrated,  and  not  from  the  plan  of  the  Creator, 
overruling  all  and  not  to  be  frustrated  by  any  ; — all  attempts 
to  delineate  the  school  of  God's  Providence,  as  seen  from 
the  forms  of  the  scholar  and  not  as  beheld  from  the  seat  of 
the  great  Teacher — all  such  earth-born  schemes  of  writing 
a  symmetrical  history  of  man  and  of  his  earth,  have  failed  and 
will  fail.  It  is  God's  book  :  and  to  overlook  Him  and  His 
purposes  in  it,  is  to  tear  out  the  title-page,  and  preface  and 
index,  from  the  volume. 

As  geometry  must  be  studied  with  diagrams,  and  as  the 
readers  of  our  age  delight  in  a  literature  rich  with  pictorial 
illustrations,  so  has  God  enriched  and  illustrated,  so  to  speak, 
the  volume  of  his  Scriptures  with  the  pictured  scenes  of  the 
volume  of  Providence.  The  problems  and  demonstrations 
of  the  one  book,  are  made  more  plain  by  consulting  the  dia- 
grams of  the  other. 

Thus  out  of  His  volumes,  as  inscribed  on  man's  memory 
and  heart  ; — as  written  upon  the  page  of  Scripture  ; — and  as 
delineated  upon  the  pictured  page  of  Providence,  has  the 
Great  Teacher  of  this  school  for  Heaven  furnished  manuals, 
to  be  pondered  and  collated  by  the  human  teachers  and  pu- 
pils of  His  church.  These  are  our  text-books  in  the  school 
of  Christ.  We  study  any  or  all  to  profit,  only  under  the  eye 
of  the  great,  Divine,  and  Invisible  Teacher,  the  Holy  Ghost. 

III.  Lastly,  let  us  dwell  on  the  character  of  the  learners 
in  this,  the  academy  that  trains  for  heaven  the  children  of 
earth. 

1.  The  universal  race,  the  unawakened  world  of  mankind 
are,  then,  to  be  invited  to  these  studies.  The  books  tell — 
Scripture  distinctly — conscience  and  Providence  by  implica- 
tion— the  destiny  of  the  race.  This  Bible  is  the  record  of 
their  Judge  and  their  Redeemer.  The  Church  is,  of  right 
and  from  Christ's  organization,  a  missionary  body,  baptizing 
her  converts  under  a  missionary  charter,  and  enlisting  their 
services  for  a  war  of  holy  aggression,  on  a  world  lying  prone 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  359 

and  captive  in  the  bonds  of  the  wicked  one,  and  in  the  prac- 
tice of  all  wickedness.  "  Go  ye  into  all  nations"  is  the  voice 
yet  ringing  over  all  the  forms  of  this  school,  from  its  pre- 
sent Saviour  ;  and  breathed  oft  by  the  whisperings  of  the 
unseen  Spirit  into  the  ear  of  the  missionary  teacher.  That 
it  is  little  heeded  and  so  scantily  obeyed,  this  it  is  thatrcon- 
stitutes  the  guilt  and  shame  of  the  Christian  church.  The 
feast  was  spread  indeed  for  guests,  many  of  whom,  though 
bidden,  would  not  come.  But  how  sad  the  thought  of  the 
myriads  never  bidden  by  the  Church.  The  school  was 
opened  for  many  who  have  refused  to  become  learners  there, 
yet  what  countless  myriads  have  never  heard  even  the  Great 
Teacher's  name,  or  seen  one  leaf,  or  read  one  line  of  the 
volume  of  His  Scripture. 

2.  But  besides  the  world,  all  invited  to  be  learners,  the 
body  of  private  members  of  the  Church  are,  again,  evidently 
learners  in  the  school  of  Christ.  They  will  profit,  only  as 
they  reduce  what  they  learn  to  practice,  try  the  human  teach- 
er by  the  Scripture,  and  compare  the  scriptural  page  with  the 
books  of  Conscience  and  of  Providence,  and  pray  that  upon 
themselves  and  their  earthly  instructors  may  ever  rest  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Divine  Teacher,  the  Paraclete.  Thus  prayer- 
ful and  heedful,  every  visit  to  the  sanctuary,  every  interview 
with  a  fellow-disciple,  every  Sabbath  and  every  sermon  be- 
come the  means  of  edification,  and  minister  to  the  daily 
growth  of  the  Christian.  His  mind  is  educed  and  evolved. 
It  unfolds  like  the  flower,  it  towers  like  the  oak.  They  shall 
grow  as  the  lily,  and  cast  forth  their  roots  as  Lebanon.  He 
profits  and  is  profited.  The  joy  and  crown  of  his  pastor's 
rejoicing,  he  is  the  counsellor  and  friend  and  pattern  of  his 
fellow-members.  The  world  is  abashed  before  his  transpa- 
rent sincerity  and  his  unruffled  meekness  ;  and,  going  from 
strength  to  strength,  he  appears  at  last  before  God,  removed 
from  the  lower  forms  of  earth  to  the  higher  level  and  the 
wider  vision  of  the  heavenly  world.  Seeing,  here,  through  a 
glass  darkly,  and  knowing  but  in  part,  there  he  knows  even 
as  he  is  known. 

3.  But  these  are  not  the  only  learners.  Pastors  as  well  as 
their  people  learn.  The  earthly  and  visible  teachers  of  the 
church  are  not  released  from  the  duty  of  continuing  pupils 
in  the  school.  Their  profiting  should  appear  to  all  men, 
and  even  the  feeblest  of  their  fellow-disciples,  and  the  most 
inconsistent  of  their  fellow-professors,  may  aid  their  spirit- 


360  THE    CHURCH, 

ual  education.  As  the  birth  of  an  infant  into  a  household, 
and  the  claims  it  brings  on  the  sympathies  and  cares  of  the 
elder  children,  train  them  to  an  affection  and  thoughtfulness 
before  unknown  ;  so,  the  feeble  and  infirm  of  the  flock  may- 
augment  the  graces  of  their  stronger  brethren  on  whom 
they  lean.  The  eye,  the  hand,  and  the  foot,  exchange  mu- 
tual aid.  If  the  eye  now  guides  the  hand,  the  hand  at  other 
times  tears  down  the  barriers  that  obstruct  the  vision  of  the 
eye.  If  the  eye  now  directs  the  climbing  foot,  the  foot  it  is 
that  gains  the  mountain  top,  and  gives  to  the  eye  the  range 
of  a  wider  horizon.  At  the  bed-side  of  a  dying  child,  or  of 
an  ignorant  but  godly  Christian,  what  pastor  has  not  had  his 
religious  attainments  enlarged  ?  Even  heresies  may  profit. 
They  must  be,  said  the  apostle,  that  those  who  are  approved 
may  be  made  manifest.  The  fall  of  Peter  in  the  high  priest's 
hall,  and  his  rebuke,  in  after  days  by  Paul,  for  the  want  of 
Christian  simplicity,  served  as  a  warning  to  each  apostle  who 
heard  them.  So  even  from  the  infirmities,  divisions,  and 
scandals  of  the  churches,  the  spiritual  man  may  extract  les- 
sons of  good. 

4.  But  beyond  the  world,  and  the  private  Christian,  and 
the  ministers  of  Christ's  gospel,  there  is  still  another  rank 
of  learners,  who  gaze  upon  the  lessons  of  this  school.  Faith 
sees,  towering  over  the  seats  of  the  sanctuary,  another  rank 
of  learners,  all  attent,  and  all  believing.  The  Christian 
Church  is  a  study  to  angels,  so  Paul  asserts.  "  To  the  in- 
tent that  now  unto  the  principalities  and  powers  in  heavenly 
places  might  be  known  by  the  Church  the  manifold  wisdom 
of  God."*  They  gain,  by  the  Spirit's  government  of  the 
Church,  new  views  of  the  evil  of  sin  and  the  dangers  of 
error ;  and  loftier  conceptions  of  the  extent  of  the  Divine 
Love  and  the  range  of  the  Divine  Wisdom.  Jesus,  the  great 
Head  of  the  Church,  was  "  seen  of  angels."  As  of  old 
their  golden  resemblances,  the  cherubim  of  the  mercy-seat, 
bowed  over  the  mystic  contents  of  the  ark,  where  the  law  of 
inflexible  justice  was  resting  beneath  the  lids  of  the  mercy- 
seat  on  which  was  enthroned  a  God  of  forgiveness,  so  do 
these  angels,  not  emblematically  but  really,  )^et  desire  to 
"  look  into  these  things ;"  and  watch,  with  interest  and  sym- 
pathy, the  course  of  those  human  spirits,  once  the  children 
of  wrath,  whom  grace  has  made  the  children  of  God, — once, 

*  Ephcsians  iii.  10. 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  361 

with  Adam,  learners,  in  the  school  of  sin,  of  the  fatal  know- 
ledge of  good  and  evil,  and  now,  under  the  second  Adam, 
learners  of  the  knowledge  of  good,  good  only  and  ever- 
more. They  rejoiced  before  the  throne  over  the  sinner's 
conversion.  They  minister  to  the  onward  course  of  the 
struggling  saint.  We  forget  this.  Kneeling  in  feebleness, 
and  gloom,  and  loneliness,  in  his  secluded  closet,  the  tempt- 
ed disciple  seeing  for  the  time  but  the  visible,  and  forgetting 
the  invisible,  deems  himself  the  unnoticed  and  solitary  wres- 
tler, that  is  but  "  beating  the  air."  He  seems  to  urge  an 
unheard  plea,  and  hardly  to  maintain  an  unavailing  strife. 
But,  in  truth,  he  is  visible  to  those  who  are  to  him  invisible. 
That  solitary  wrestler  of  the  secluded  closet  is,  in  fact,  the 
victorious  athlete  on  whom  is  gathered  the  gaze  of  a  vast,  and 
thronged,  and  resplendent  amphitheatre.  He  is  watched 
by  a  great  cloud  of  witnesses.  "We  are  made,"  said  the 
apostle,  "  a  spectacle  to  angels  and  to  men."  And,  above 
all,  there  rests  upon  him,  evermore,  the  eye  of  his  Father 
who  seeth  in  secret  and  will  reward  him  openly. 

Such  are  the  instructors,  lessons,  and  learners  of  the  school 
God's  grace  has  opened  in  the  church  of  the  redeemed. 

1.  May  not  the  recollections  of  the  invisible  and  spiritual 
church,  furnish  the  most  availing  counterpoise  to  the  claims 
of  Antichrist  ?  If,  at  first  view,  this  imagery  of  a  great  Cath- 
olic and  visible  church,  having  wide  nations  in  its  communion, 
a  visible  head,  and  a  long  succession  of  such  heads,  enchant 
and  overpower  the  imagination  ;  how  do  these  dwindle  and 
shrivel,  beside  the  spiritual  views  the  Scripture  presents,  of 
a  great  catholic,  invisible  church,  of  the  elect  of  all  times, 
now  invisible  but  one  day  to  be  manifested,  having  an  infalli- 
ble and  sinless  High  Priest,  Christ  Jesus,  really  present  unto 
all  his  worshippers,  and  a  King  who  only  hath  immortality. 
To  traditions,  contradictory  and  obscure,  locked  up  in  de- 
cretals and  acts  of  councils,  and  collections  of  papal  bulls  ; 
let  us  oppose  the  Eternal  and  Unerring  Spirit,  leading  into 
all  truth,  accessible  every  where  to  prayer,  and  dwelling  in 
the  believer's  heart — not  to  be  sought  at  Rome  by  voyage 
and  pilgrimage,  but  near  as  his  word,  in  our  mouth  and  our 
heart.  The  plea  of  private  judgment,  which  some  make  the 
exclusive,  and  most  the  prominent  point  of  resistance  to  the 
Roman  argument,  seems  really  liable  to  the  objection  Roman- 
ists adduce  against  it,  of  leading  into  wild  and  impious  ration- 
alism. It  is  so  liable,  whenever  severed  from  the  recognition 
47 


362  THE    CHURCH, 


of  our  continual  dependence  on  the  Divine  Spirit,  and  sev- 
ered from  his  infallible  faithfulness  to  our  appeals,  when  that 
dependence  is  but  acknowledged.  Take  these  truths  with 
it,  and  place  them  before  it ;  and  the  right  of  private  judg- 
ment is  impregnable.  But  sever  them ;  and  the  claims  of 
antiquity,  authority,  and  an  infallible  church,  as  the  inter- 
preter of  Scripture,  become  to  some  minds  irresistible. 

2.  Honor  to  the  Divine  Teacher  is,  then,  the  safeguard  and 
glory  of  the  Church,  of  the  Theological  school,  of  our  pul- 
pits, and  of  our  professorial  chairs.  Separate  the  visible  and 
the  invisible,  exaggerate  the  sufficiency  and  power  of  the 
first,  depreciate  and  forget  the  sovereignty  of  the  last;  let  the 
usher  affect  independence  of  the  Master,  and  let  the  minis- 
try, the  human  teachers  of  this  school,  overlook  the  Divine 
teachings  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  divorce  the  desk  from  the 
closet ;  attempt  to  read  the  written  page  of  Scripture,  and  the 
pictured  page  of  Providence,  and  the  blotted  page  of  Con- 
science, apart  from  the  Divine  Interpreter  of  them  all :  and 
your  pastorate  becomes  fruitless,  your  churches  barren,  and 
your  students  heretical.  Puny  sciolism  is  earth's  best  schol- 
arship, when  it  affects  independence  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  Let 
eloquence  adorn,  and  science  strengthen,  the  teachings  thus 
opposed  to  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  work  and  the  workman  are 
something  worse  than  worthless  :  they  are  accursed.  The 
frosts  of  the  second  death  will  seal  those  fluent  lips.  The 
fires  of  the  burning  throne  will  smite  the  man  thus  faith- 
less as  a  shepherd  of  Christ's  flock,  and  thus  dishonest  as 
the  steward  of  the  Divine  mysteries,  and  who  preaches  re- 
ligious falsehood  in  the  chair  of  spiritual  verity. 

3.  If  the  Church  be  indeed,  in  one  of  its  multiform  aspects, 
a  school  for  Heaven,  a  device  of  Infinite  Wisdom  to  urge 
and  guide  the  powers  of  the  soul  in  their  onward  and  upward 
aspirations,  it  is  manifestly  the  duty  of  the  youthful  student, 
who  looks,  as  pastor  or  missionary,  to  aid  and  extend  the 
Churches  of  Christ,  to  seek  for  himself,  in  the  progress  of  his 
scholastic  education,  the  benefits  of  this  spiritual  education, 
and  to  acquire  a  personal  experience  of  the  workings  of 
church  order,  and  the  advantages  of  church  fellowship.  Not, 
as  if  it  were  to  put  himself  under  irksome  restraints,  but  as 
a  matter  of  delight  and  advantage  to  his  own  soul,  and  as  a 
token  of  his  own  deference  to  that  Great  Teacher  whom 
he  is  about  to  commend  to  others,  he  must  value  the  Church 
which  his  Lord  and  Saviour  organized  ;   and  place  himself 


A.    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  363 

under  the  cherishing  and  stimulating,  the  guardian  and  the 
impulsive  influences  of  that  school  which  Christ  devised. 
Not  that  students  should  necessarily,  or  generally,  even,  be- 
come full  members.  But  if,  the  desire  to  keep  unbroken 
the  ties  of  union  to  the  Church  of  their  original  member- 
ship, seem  to  render  their  full  dismission  undesirable  ;  and 
the  loss  of  all  their  licentiates  for  the  ministry  were,  on 
the  other  hand,  no  inconsiderable  and  no  safe  sacrifice,  to  be 
made  by  the  Churches  abroad  :  this  sundering  of  old  ties  and 
surrender  of  youthful  licentiates  might  perhaps  be  avoided, 
and  the  end  desired  might  yet  be  secured,  if  the  churches 
abroad,  instead  of  giving  to  these  students  the  ordinary 
letter  of  recommendation,  indefinite  in  extent  of  duration 
and  vague  in  its  address,  as  being  intended  for  all  churches 
alike,  should  give  a  special  letter  of  recommendation,  in  the 
case  of  their  students  at  the  Theological  Seminary.  This 
peculiar  letter  of  commendation  might  recommend  them,  for 
certain  years  of  their  studies,  to  the  peculiar  church  of  that 
Seminary,  as  subjects  of  its  special  care  and  recipients  of  all 
its  advantages.  There  would,  thus,  be  given  to  the  church 
of  the  Seminary  its  special  right  to  expect  the  communion 
in  its  ordinances,  and  the  aid  in  its  services  of  the  young  stu- 
dent, while  leaving  to  the  original  church  all  rights  of  final 
discipline  and  entire  dismission.  Thus  the  church,  at  the 
scene  of  their  studies,  would  serve  as  the  trustee,  with  lim- 
ited and  defined  powers,  of  the  church  of  their  proper  mem- 
bership ;  and  the  youthful  scholar  would  not,  amid  his 
books  and  lectures,  want  this  education,  an  education  equally 
valuable  with  books  and  lectures,  and  that  the  church  affords 
in  its  various  services,  and  its  mutual  sympathies  and  cares. 
4.  If  God,  the  Highest,  comes  down  to  the  minds  of  the 
feeble  and  the  ignorant  who  sit  in  His  school,  the  Church, 
surely  it  should  be  the  joy  of  the  Christian  scholar  to  bring 
down  his  highest  attainments  to  the  aid  of  the  least  and  of 
the  least  esteemed  in  Christ's  Church.  The  beam  that  drops 
out  of  the  side  of  the  sun  into  the  heart  of  the  violet,  paint- 
ing it  with  its  rich  hues,  has  travelled  myriads  of  miles  with 
the  utmost  speed,  and,  past  stars  and  systems,  it  shot  along  its 
undiverted  way,  to  reach  that  lowly  end,  and  to  do  this  its  ap- 
pointed errand — So  let  the  youthful  servants  of  the  cross,  in 
fetching  like  Elihu  their  knowledge  from  afar,*  delight  glad- 

*  Job  xxxvi.  3. 


364  THE    CHURCH, 

ly  to  distil  its  results  into  the  lowliest  offices  of  the  pastorate, 
and  instead  of  seeking  after  high  things,  condescend  to  men 
of  low  estate,  as  the  true  ministers  of  a  Teacher,  who  hum- 
bled himself,  coming  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to  min* 
ister,  and  who  had  fishermen  for  his  apostles. 

We  trust,   there  are   none  such  among  the   youthful  stu- 
dents of  this   Institution  ;  but,   to   an  evil,  in  some  quarters 
betraying  itself,  it  is  fitting  to  allude  in  the  modes   its  vota- 
ries will  best  understand.     If  an  affectation  of  gentility  be  the 
highest  aim  of  any  misguided  youth,  who  has  condescended 
to  patronize  the  religirm  of  that   Carpenter's   Son,  who  de- 
meaned   Himself  so   far   even,    as    to   die  the    malefactors' 
death  ;  why  should   such  an  aspirau    cling  to  the  ministra- 
tions of  a  faith,  which  must  be,  to  his  first  principles  of  con- 
duct, so  uncongenial  and  repulsive  ?     Let  him  rather  '  sacri- 
fice   to  the   Graces,'   and    restore  that    elegant  Polytheism, 
whose  fall   Gibbon   deplored.     Seeking,   first  and  evermore, 
the  honor   that  cometh  from   man,  he   is  likely  to  become 
more  versed  in  the  gospel  according  to  Chesterfield,  than  in 
either  of  the  four  evangelists.     Conscious,  although   he  may 
have   little   claim  to  talent,  attainments,  or  piety,  that  he  is 
clothed  with  what  to  him   seem  far  higher  endowments  than 
are  these,  why   should   he   sully  his    exquisite  nature  with 
preaching  a  Gospel,  which  its  Founder  gave  especially  for 
the  poor?    Can  any  good  thing  come  out  of  Nazareth  ?    How 
can  the  elegant  youth  consent  to  put  the  mark  of  his    distin- 
guished  approbation   upon   the    Bible,   on  learning    that    it 
actually  contains  the  awkward  and   astounding  fact,  that  an- 
gels from  heaven  once  were   seen  rendering  lowly  service 
to  a  dead  beggar?     And  this,  too,  when  by  continuing  their 
progress  but  a  few  paces  farther,  they  might  have  been  hon- 
ored with  the  hospitalities  of  a  member  of  '  good  society,'  who 
was  clothed  in  purple  and  fine  linen,  and  fared  sumptuously 
every  day.     On  learning,  from  some    devouter  friend,  that 
the    New  Testament  actually  contained  the  unaccountable 
recital,  and  on  ascertaining,  from  some  more  studious  asso- 
ciate, that  German  criticism  has  not  pronounced  the  strange 
narrative    an  interpolation,    how  could    the  refined  and  es- 
senced  candidate  for    the    Christian  ministry  explain,  with 
courtly  dignity,  so  much  neglect  of  those  within  the  pale  of 
refined  society,  and  such  undue  familiarity  toward  one  with- 
out that  dread  enclosure?     If  he  did  not,  with  indignation, 
repudiate  the  volume,  the  best  apology  his  ingenuity  could 


A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN.  365 

construct  for  intelligences  so  regardless  of  all  social  distinc* 
tions,  must  be,  that  all  this  occurred  before  the  manuals  of 
politeness,  now  so  valuable  and  so  common,  were  published, 
and  that  perhaps  it  was  not  the  felicity  of  angels,  even  in 
these  later  times,  to  be  intimately  acquainted  with  Chester- 
field. The  delicate  youth  must  hope,  that  the  society,  which 
in  the  high  festivals  of  heaven  recline  near  the  bosom  of 
Abraham,  have  become  of  late  years  more  select  than  when 
they  admitted  Lazarus  :  else  can  they  expect  to  be  honored 
by  the  accession  to  their  number  of  a  well-bred  pastor  and 
his  well-bred  converts,  who,  while  extending  a  proper  patron- 
age to  the  Bible,  feel,  with  a  more  lively  faith,  the  all-suffi- 
ciency of  Fashion,  that  capricious  and  despotic  deity? 

Brethren,  we  are  persuaded  better  things  of  you,  though 
we  thus  speak.  We  trust,  that  you  would  emulate  the 
spirit  of  that  apostle,  courteous  indeed,  and  magnanimous, 
if  ever  man  was  ;  but  who  said  :  If  I  yet  pleased  men,  I 
should  not  be  the  servant  of  Christ.*  Let  others  forge  anew 
the  golden  calf,  and  dance  around  it,  even  at  the  foot  of  the 
quaking  Sinai.  Fix  your  eye  on  the  smoking  summit ;  and 
let  the  thunder  of  its  oracles  drown,  in  your  ears,  the  tink- 
ling of  their  cymbals  ;  and  count  yourself  more  honored  than 
annoyed,  by  the  scorn  they  may  lavish  on  you,  for  the  re- 
fusal to  share  their  adorations.  The  Christian  preacher  is 
not  the  man  of  any  caste :  in  lowliness,  he  is  to  deem  him- 
self beneath  the  meanest ;  but,  in  the  dignity  of  his  mission, 
and  in  the  authority  of  his  Master,  he  is  entitled  to  look 
down  on  the  loftiest  and  mightiest  of  earth's  transgressors. 

5.  Education,  for  the  judgment  day  and  for  eternity,  is  the 
first  and  last  business  of  this  life.  Are  we  thus  educated 
ourselves,  and  educating  others?  It  is  this,  the  invisible 
and  the  endless,  that  must  give  due  authority  to  our  mes- 
sage, and  effect  to  our  testimony.  Soon,  brethren  in  the 
pastorate,  the  invisible  realities  of  eternity  will  have  become 
visible.  As  the  dreams  of  the  sleeper  vanish,  when  the 
films  of  sleep  melt  from  his  eyes  ;  and  the  real  world,  unseen 
during  his  slumbers,  floats  in  upon  his  awaking  : — so,  breth- 
ren in  the  ministry,  will  it  soon  be  with  us  and  writh  our 
hearers.  The  day — that  day — will  try  our  work,  of  what 
sort  it  is.  The  dreams  and  phantoms,  that  now  occupy  man- 
kind, will  disappear,  when  the  night  is   once  past ;  and  the 

*  Galat.  i.  10. 


366  THE    CHURCH,  A    SCHOOL    FOR    HEAVEN. 

dread,  or  the  glorious  realities  of  eternity,  of  which  we  tes- 
tify, will  take  their  place.  The  Invisible  God,  of  our  sanc- 
tuaries and  our  closets,  will  become  the  Visible  God,  of  the 
judgment-seat.  Let  us,  like  Moses,  now,  by  faith,  "  discern 
Him,  the  Invisible."  Let  us  remember,  that,  when  Daniel 
stood  before  Belshazzar,  the  monarch  and  his  appalled  court- 
iers quaked,  not  so  much  before  the  visible  and  human  pro- 
phet, as  before  that  prophet's  Invisible  Master,  whose  hand 
only  was  seen,  tracing  on  the  wall  the  dread  characters  of 
doom.  There  might  well  have  been,  in  that  court,  many  a 
more  august  visage,  and  a  sterner  voice,  than  were  Daniel's ; 
but  behind  the  human  messenger  loomed  the  dread  majesty  of 
that  Almighty  Avenger,  for  whom  he  spake.  So  must  it  be 
with  us.  Let  our  churches,  and  congregations,  be  compelled 
to  recognize,  behind  the  mortal  pastor,  who  is  but  the  human 
and  visible  usher  in  Christ's  school ;  looming  in  Divine  Ma- 
jesty, the  Invisible  and  Almighty  Teacher  of  the  Church, 
and  Sovereign  of  the  world.  Thus  only,  shall  we  benefit 
both.  The  churches,  honoring  Him,  will  be  compacted  into 
unity,  and  developed  into  symmetry.  The  body  of  Christ 
will  grow  evermore,  in  his  likeness.  For  the  students  in 
the  school  of  Christ  never  graduate.  Throughout  all  eter- 
nity, theirs  is  a  growing  expansion  of  intellect,  and  a  widen- 
ing range  of  intelligence  ;  and  as  death  puts  no  end  to  their 
spiritual  being,  so  the  universe  interposes  no  barrier  to  their 
endless  advancement.  Thus,  too,  shall  we  benefit  the  uncon- 
verted as  well  ;  and  startle  a  doomed  world,  to  a  salutary 
fear,  and  a  saving  faith,  as  they  shall  see  the  pulpit  itself,  but 
in  the  foreground,  and  rising  awfully,  in  the  distance  be- 
hind, the  Great  White  Throne.  "The  things  which 
are  seen  are  temporal,  but  the  things  which  are  not  seen  are 
eternal." 


THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH  AGAINST  THOSE 
DELIGHTING  IN   WAR.     ' 

(A  Discourse  delivered  on  the  first  Sabbath  of  the  year  1847.) 

"  SCATTER   THOU   THE   PEOPLE   THAT    DELIGHT    IN   WAR." — Psalm  lxviU.  30. 

It  was  said  by  the  Queen  Regent  of  Scotland,  when  speak- 
ing of  the  great  Reformer  of  that  country,  whose  principles 
she  hated,  whilst  she  was  awed  by  his  piety,  that  "  she 
dreaded  the  prayers  of  John  Knox  more  than  an  army  of  ten 
thousand  men."  And  better  and  safer  were  it,  my  beloved 
hearers,  to  face  a  cloud  of  hurtling  spears,  and  to  bear  the  iron 
rain  of  arrow  and  javelin,  and  a  wiser  venture  were  it  to  walk 
up  to  the  park  of  artillery,  pealing  from  its  mouth  a  fiery 
sleet  of  death,  than  to  encounter  the  prayers  of  God's  saints 
united  with  resistless  urgency,  and  darting  with  invisible 
potency  against  ue  and  our  cause.  We  have  here  the  Zion 
of  the  Most  High,  lifting  up,  as  by  the  single  but  inspired 
voice  of  David,  their  protest,  their  supplication,  and  their 
adjuration  against  all  who  find  pleasure  in  scenes  of  carnage 
and  reckless  devastation.  Now  the  prayers  which  our  Heav- 
enly Father  has  taught  to  His  people,  reveal  the  principles 
upon  which  He  administers  His  government  of  the  nations. 
The  God-given  supplications  of  the  Church,  by  implication, 
teach  the  statutes  of  the  Head  of  the  Church.  The  prayer 
which  inspiration  has  furnished,  Providence  will  accomplish. 
What  He  bids  us  ask  Him  to  do,  we  may  be  assured,  He 
means  Himself  to  do.  The  petitions  He  indites,  and  the 
edicts  He  promulgates,  are  identical  in  their  tenor. 

Our  country  is  at  this  time  engaged  in  war  against  a  neigh- 
boring nation.  It  is  impossible  but  that  the  question  of  the 
lawfulness  of  this  present  contest,  and  indeed  of  all  war, 
should  be  agitated.  It  is,  in  no  sense,  our  intention,  nor  is  it 
our  province,  to  prostitute  the  influence  of  the  pulpit  to  the 
uses  of  political  partisanship.     But  we  hold  that  a  religious 


368  THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH 

teacher  may  state  what  he  believes  to  be  the  teachings  of  the 
Bible  on  the  rights  and  the  wrongs,  the  duties  and  the  sins 
of  his  times.  He  is  not  to  shrink  from  rebuking  sin  in  the 
powerful,  more  than  in  the  obscure  and  the  poor ;  in  the 
many  more  than  in  the  few ;  in  the  sovereign,  more  than  in 
the  subject.  Thus  Nathan  discharged  his  office,  unavved  by 
the  station,  the  power,  or  the  feelings  of  David,  the  writer 
of  this  Psalm  ;  thus  Ahab,  though  a  sovereign,  found  a  re- 
prover in  his  subject  Elijah  ;  and  thus  Herod  quailed  before 
the  stern  fidelity  of  John  the  Baptist ;  and  thus,  too,  Paul 
the  apostle,  before  a  magistrate  whose  enmity  it  was,  in  his 
condition  as  a  prisoner,  peculiarly  dangerous  to  incur,  and 
whose  character  was  neither  marked  by  righteousness  nor 
temperance,  nor  fears  of  judgment  in  this  world  or  the  next, 
chose  to  testify  of  the  virtues  in  which  his  judge  was  deficient, 
and  dared  to  remind  him  of  a  tribunal  where  he,  with  his 
meanest  victim,  must  stand  equally  amenable.  Sin,  then, 
wherever  found,  as  it  is  God's  enemy,  is  the  fair  quarry  and 
mark  of  the  preacher  to  whom  God  has  said,  as  to  his  pro- 
phet of  old,  "  Preach  the  preaching  that  I  bid  thee."* 

With  us  the  people  hold  the  sovereignty.  It  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  gospel  that  "  he  that  ruleth  "  should  do  it  "  with 
diligence"] — or  know  his  responsibilities,  and  strenuously 
aim  to  meet  them.  The  people,  like  all  other  sovereigns, 
owe  allegiance  to  the  "  Blessed  and  only  Potentate  "J  above, 
and  may  well  study,  therefore,  His  oracles  for  their  guidance, 
implore  His  favor  in  the  ways  of  obedience,  as  the  only  con- 
dition of  perfect  and  permanent  safety,  and  deprecate  His 
wrath,  as  involving  sure  and  remediless  ruin  to  the  stormy 
and  multitudinous  democracy,  no  less  than  to  the  solitary 
despot.  The  pulpit  may  then  censure  national  as  well  as 
individual  sins,  and  bring  up  the  great  principles  which  con- 
trol or  should  control  the  movement  of  the  masses,  as  well 
as  the  precepts  that  require  the  obedience  of  individuals  in 
private  life. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  minister  of  the  gospel  may 
not  be  a  mere  politician.  He  may  see  in  all  political  organi- 
zations too  much  of  inconsistency  and  corruption,  to  attach 
himself  blindly  to  the  guidance  of  any.  He  sees  sins  in 
the  men  of  all  forms  of  government,  and  in  the  members 
of  all  political  confederations  ;  and   he   sees  also  in  men  of 

*  Jonah  iii.  2.  t  Rom.  xii.  8.  I  1  Tim.  vi.  15. 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  369 

every  class,  and  tribe,  and  country,  the  abject,  the  hostile 
and  the  criminal,  souls  infinitely  precious.  His  Master  has 
proclaimed  that  His  "  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world."  The 
Church  of  Christ  may  not  then  become  the  drudge  and 
tool  of  any  ruler,  or  people,  much  less  of  any  section  of  a 
people.  The  conversion  of  a  soul  is  to  the  true  pastor,  in 
his  better  hours,  of  more  moment  than  the  political  interests 
of  an  empire.  Never  then  may  questions  of  government 
become  with  him  paramount  to  the  great  truths  of  the  gos- 
pel, sin  and  Hell,  conversion  and  Heaven,  an  eternal  salva- 
tion and  an  everlasting  perdition,  the  atoning  Redeemer, 
and  the  renewing,  sanctifying  Spirit.  When,  losing  these 
views,  the  pulpit  becomes  the  mere  channel  of  political  con- 
troversy, it  damages  the  Church  without  benefiting  the 
State.  Jesuitism  gave  to  kings  and  courts  its  own  confess- 
ors, thus  pouring  through  the  ears  of  a  monarch  its  own 
principles  into  the  counsels  of  his  cabinet.  Protestantism 
would  not  be  more  wisely  or  honorably  employed,  were  it  to 
send  its  ministers  to  crowd  the  antichambers  or  climb  the 
backstairs  of  rulers,  or  to  edit  for  the  sovereign  nation  their 
political  journals.  A  teacher  of  Christ's  gospel  has  higher, 
better  work,  than  that  of  the  mere  politician,  though  the  poli- 
tician is  not  beyond  the  purview  of  the  great  principles  which 
the  Christian  minister  is  to  expound  and  enforce.  And,  on 
the  other  hand,  as  we  have  sought  to  show,  the  minister  of 
Christ  may  preach  of  national  sins,  where  nations  do  sin, 
and  announce  from  the  exhaustless  and  unerring  oracles  of 
the  Universal  Sovereign,  the  great  elementary  laws  of  na- 
tional duty.  In  doing  this,  he  may  for  the  time  be  claimed 
by  one  party,  or  branded  by  another,  as  doing  a  work  of 
political  partisanship.  Imputations  of  a  similar  kind  are  in 
his  path,  in  the  discharge  of  many  other  duties.  He  cannot 
interfere  in  healing  private  grievances,  or  re-uniting  brethren 
that  contend,  or  in  administering  the  discipline  of  the  Church, 
but  at  the  price  of  similar  misconstructions.  Misconception 
and  reproach  are  to  some  extent  inevitable.  His  duty,  it 
would  seem  to  us,  is  to  lay  down  great  principles — to  avoid, 
as  far  as  possible,  all  interference  with  personal  and  political 
details,  and  eyeing  God's  truth  as  his  law,  to  commend  his 
work  to  God's  judgment,  indifferent  to  man's  praise  or  blame, 
so  he  have  but  testified  for  God,  and  before  Him — for  God, 
the  truth, — before  God,  that  truth  in  sincerity. 

These  remarks  may  have  seemed  tedious.     They  appeared 
48 


370  THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH 

to  us  necessary,  as  vindicating  and  explaining  what  we  sup- 
pose are  the  rights  of  the  Christian  ministry  in  such  matters. 
We  entreat,  now,  your  attention  and  patient  consideration, 
and  the  aid  of  your  prayers,  that  the  All-ruling  and  All-en- 
lightening God  may  give  us  to  know  and  say,  see  and  obey 
His  own  Truth,  as  we  examine  the  lesson  of  the  Psalmist's 
prayer. 

Our  text  presents  a  great  principle  in  the  Divine  govern- 
ment. He  will,  as  his  Church  prays  that  he  would,  "  scatter 
the  people  that  delight  in  war."  His  Providence  has  re- 
echoed and  interpreted  His  Scripture  in  this  respect. 

In  the  secluded  valleys  of  the  Pyrenees  in  southern  France, 
have  been  found  for  centuries  an  outcast  and  scattered  race, 
generally  maimed,  covered  with  tatters  and  vermin,  and  the 
victims  of  scrofula  and  leprosy,  who  are  called-  the  Cagots. 
They  have  for  centuries  been  a  separate  people  from  the 
peasants  around,  the  objects  of  contempt,  hatred  and  per- 
secution ;  the  vilest  offences  have  been  imputed  to  them  ; 
and  most  trades  and  professions  barred  against  them.  They 
were,  in  earlier  centuries,  required  to  wear  on  their  clothes 
some  mark  to  distinguish  them  from  others,  were  permit- 
ted to  enter  the  church  only  by  a  separate  door,  long  were 
denied  sepulture  in  the  ordinary  burial  grounds,  and  the 
priests  refused  to  admit  them  to  confession  ;  they  wandered 
about  without  fire  in  winter,  with  no  settled  habitation,  re- 
tiring at  night  to  barns  and  hovels.  In  ancient  times,  the 
testimony  of  seven  of  them  was  held  equivalent  to  the  evi- 
dence of  one  freeman.  The  antiquaries  of  France  have  been 
divided  and  perplexed  as  to  the  origin  of  these  people,  and 
of  that  envenomed  hostility  and  prejudice  which  bayed  and 
snarled  at  their  feet,  wherever  they  wandered,  an  abject  and 
outcast  race.  The  most  plausible  opinion  is  that  they  are  the 
remains  of  a  race  once  an  invading  and  powerful  one,  since 
subjugated  and  scattered,  and  that  the  remembrance  of  their 
old  cruelties  is  the  origin  of  those  long  centuries  of  cruel  op- 
pression they  have  undergone.  Some  find  in  their  very 
name  traces  of  their  descent  from  those  mighty  and  valiant 
Goths  who  in  earlier  centuries  rolled  their  successive  billows 
of  desolation  over  so  many  kingdoms  of  Europe.*  If  this  be 
so,  here  have  we,  in  the  Providence  of  God,  such  reply  to 
and  confirmation  of  the  voice  of  Scripture  as  we  have  already 

*  See  Appendix. 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  371 

described.  But  whether  the  "  scattered  "  and  peeled,  the 
pale,  timid  and  abject  Cagot,  be  or  be  not  the  descendant  of 
the  bold  and  warlike  Goth,  "  delighting  in  war,"  the  princi- 
ple of  our  text  stands  not  on  the  right  or  wrong  interpreta- 
tion of  that  dark  and  difficult  page  in  European  history.  The 
whole  volume  of  history  establishes  the  truth,  in  instances 
not  dubious,  not  few,  and  not  remote.  War,  loved  for  its 
own  sake,  ultimately  "scatters"  the  nation  thus  sanguinary 
in  their  tastes.  Those  taking  the  sword  with  bloodthirsty 
carelessness,  perish  by  it. 

But  is  all  war  thus  visited  and  thus  condemned  as  displeas- 
ing to  God?  We  do  not  see  the  scriptural  evidence  that 
it  is. 

I.  We  would  then,  first,  examine  the  question,  Is  all  war 
sinful  ? 

II.  Next  we  would  consider  the  class  undoubtedly  sinful, 
and  here  denounced,  "who  delight  in  war." 

III.  And  in  the  last  place,  we  would  return  to  the  punish- 
ment here  invoked  upon  such  from  God  :  that  they  should 
be  dispersed  and  reduced:  "  scattered  "  by  the  whirlwind 
they  have  loved  to  raise  and  to  ride. 

I.  We  cannot,  then,  with  some  Christians,  believe  that  all 
war  is  forbidden  by  the  gospel.  Private  revenge  is  undoubt- 
edly forbidden,  but  so  is  not  Divine  vengeance.  It  is  be- 
yond all  question,  we  think,  prohibited  to  unite  the  Church 
with  the  State,  and  so  make  Christ's  kingdom  of  this  world  ; 
but  although  the  Christian  faith  is  forbidden  to  seek  the  aid 
and  endowment  of  government,  government  itself  is  not  made 
an  unlawful  and  unchristian  thing.  They  who  from  the  law 
in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  where  private  quarrels  are 
discouraged  by  the  command  to  turn,  when  smitten  on  the 
one  cheek,  the  other  also,  educe  the  sweeping  inference,  that 
the  magistrate  and  the  soldier  are  usurpers,  ought,  in  con- 
sistency, to  give  the  same  broad  interpretation  to  another 
command  in  the  same  discourse,  that  we  give  to  all  asking, 
and  turn  not  from  the  borrower  ;  and  then  if  the  first  pre- 
cept forbids  forcible  government  and  war,  the  second  pro- 
hibits all  claim  of  private  property.  For  what  is  war  but  for- 
cible government — physical  might  sustaining  moral  right? 
Now  Paul  expressly  taught  that  the  magistrate  was  not  to  bear 
the  sword  in  vain.  What  is  the  sword?  An  instrument 
forged  for  the  single  and  express  purpose  of  taking  away,  not 
brutal,  but  human  life,     Paul  teaches,  then  (or  rather  Paul's 


372  THE    PRAYER    OF    THE    CHURCH 

Master,  Christ,  and  the  inspiring  and  unerring  Holy  Ghost, 
teach  by  him),  that  the  magistrate  may  take  man's  life.  Val- 
uable as  human  life  may  be,  right  and  order  are  yet  dearer ; 
and  to  maintain  the  last,  the  just  and  pious  governor  may  take 
away  the  first.  In  the  case  of  a  single  wrong-doer,  this  is  capi- 
tal punishment.  When  several  wrong-doers  combine,  when  the 
offenders  are  more  than  a  mob, — a  disorganized  and  revolted 
province, — or  a  hostile  and  wrong-doing  nation,  this  is  war — ■ 
and  such  violent  wrong  maybe  resisted  on  Christian  principles 
by  physical  force.  But  it  is  urged,  is  not  the  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity to  abolish,  in  the  last  days,  war,  and  .o  convert  the 
sword  into  the  plowshare  1  We  allow  this,  but  the  Scripture 
represents  the  gospel  as  abolishing  war,  just  as  it  abolishes 
aw-suits,  not  by  rendering  the  one  or  the  other  unlawful 
or  unchristian,  but  by  abating  and  suppressing  men's  wrong 
feelings,  and  thus  exterminating  those  acts  which  make  the 
suit  before  a  tribunal,  or  the  appeal  to  arms,  necessary  for 
the  vindication  of  right.  Judges  are  not  unlawful,  although 
so  much  of  litigation  is  unreasonable  and  wicked.  War  is  not 
unscriptural,  although  existing  wars  so  often  be  most  unjust. 
But,  is  it  urged  that  it  is  not  consistent  with  the  spiritual 
character  of  Christ's  new  and  blessed  dispensation,  to  uphold 
moral  right  with  animal,  physical  force?  We  answer,  God's 
whole  government  proceeds  on  the  principle  of  doing  so. 
He  plagues  the  sinner  with  bodily  disease.  Outward  trouble 
visited  the  sin  of  Uzziah,  and  brought  to  Manasseh  spiritual 
healing.  He  vexes  the  guilty  inhabitants  of  earth  with  fam- 
ine and  pestilence,  and  with  physical  destruction  from  the 
earthquake  and  volcano  ;  and  He  calls  them  to  recognize 
His  equity  and  His  spirituality  and  His  wisdom  in  these 
physical  inflictions,  as  well  as  in  the  moral  influences  of  His 
word  and  His  Spirit.  What  is  the  voice  of  the  fiery  pit  of 
wo  ?  Is  not  its  anguish  in  part  a  physical  anguish,  as  de- 
scribed by  the  Judge  himself,  our  Lord  Jesus,  when  he  de- 
clares that  both  soul  and  body  are  cast  into  hell  ? 

And  it  should  be  observed,  that  after  those  times  of  spirit- 
ual reformation,  when  peace  shall  long  prevail  over  the  whole 
earth,  and  the  Millennial  rest  be  enjoyed,  the  Bible  seems  to 
represent  the  return  of  a  time  when  there  shall  be  war  again 
between  the  saints  of  God's  Church  and  the  enemies  of  that 
Church.  God's  people  are  not  depicted  as  passive  victims, 
but  as  strenuous  combatants  in  that  conflict.  The  triumph 
of  the  gospel,  through  Earth's  long  Sabbath,  had  not  made 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  373 

\rar  unlawful,  but  only  for  one  thousand  years  unnecessary. 
If  war,  as  some  represent  it,  were  in  all  cases  but  promiscu- 
ous butchery  and  murder  multiplied,  would  it  ever  have  been 
said,  as  it  is  in  the  imagery  of  the  Apocalypse,  that  there  was 
"  war  in  Heaven,"  and  would  it  have  been  proclaimed,  as  it 
is  of  the  Lord  Jesus  himself,  in  that  book,  that  in  "faithful- 
ness he  doth  judge  and  make  war?"  Is  this  tantamount 
to  the  declaration  (as  some  ultraists  in  the  advocacy  of 
peace  define  war)  in  reference  to  the  Saviour  Jesus,  that 
in  faithfulness  he  murders?  Forbid  the  blasphemy!  No. 
But  it  teaches  the  great  truth  already  indicated,  that  the  faith- 
fulness of  Jesus  Christ  as  universal  Governor,  wTill  be  mani- 
fested in  "  judging  "  those  who  acknowledge,  and  in  "  war- 
ring "  against  those  who  defy  his  sway.  He  will  dispense 
his  enactments  and  instructions  as  a  judge,  and  if  to  some 
these  avail  not,  he  will  resort  to  force,  physical  force,  as  the 
Just  Governor  of  the  Universe,  making  war  upon  and  sub- 
duing  its   criminals  and  revolters. 

And  when  Christ  came  himself  into  the  world,  neither  he 
nor  his  immediate  forerunner,  the  Baptist,  nor  his  followers 
the  Apostles,  though  under  plenary  inspiration,  taught  that 
the  profession  of  arms  was  unlawful  and  murderous.  John 
the  Baptist  instructed  soldiers  to  be  content  with  their  wages. 
If  he  had  regarded  these  wages  as  but  the  price  of  blood, 
would  such  have  been  the  lessons  of  a  Reformer,  come  in  the 
spirit  and  power  of  Elias,  to  denounce  all  sin,  and  to  require 
a  general  and  prayerful  repentance  ?  So  the  Acts  of  the  Apos- 
tles contain  not  the  slightest  intimation,  that  Cornelius  the 
Roman  centurion,  a  chief  of  soldiers,  was  required  by  the 
Holy  Spirit  which  he  received  to  abandon  his  post ;  nor  that 
Sergius  Paulus,  the  Governor,  was  commanded  to  relinquish 
his  connection  with  the  central  government  at  Rome,  essen- 
tially and  in  all  its  relations  a  military  and  war-making  power. 
The  description  given  of  the  attendant  of  Cornelius,  seems 
unaccountable,  if  the  views  of  some  Christians  against  all 
war  were  correct.  "  A  devout  soldier,"  on  these  principles, 
is  as  great  an  anomaly  as  a  religious  assassin  or  a  seraphic 
poisoner. 

But  it  is  said  that  the  early  Christians  held  war  unlawful. 
This  we  deny  on  the  authority  of  Neander,  one  of  the  high- 
est authorities  in  such   a   question.*     There   seem  to  have 

*  In  his  "  Denkwurdigkeiten,"  and  his  Church  History. 


374  THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH 

been  those  in  the  second  and  third  centuries  among  them 
doubting  its  propriety  ;  but  that  it  was  not  with  the  early 
Christians  a  prevalent  sentiment,  appears  sufficiently  from 
the  boast  of  Tertullian,  when  he  represents  Christians  as  fill- 
ing the  Roman  camps  as  well  as  forums.  Their  conversion 
to  Christ  had  not  driven  them  from  the  standards  of  their 
country. 

God  has  authority,  it  will  be  allowed,  to  take  away  life. 
He  may  grant  it  to  human  governments.  It  seems  to  us  a 
plain  teaching  of  Scripture  that  he  has  done  so.  Force  may 
sustain  Right.  This,  against  a  single  wrong-doer,  becomes 
imprisonment,  and  may  become  capital  punishment — against 
a  multitude  of  wrong-doers  it  becomes  war.  Dear  as  human 
life  may  be,  the  sentiment  of  every  heart  is  that  there  are 
blessings  that  should  be  yet  dearer.  The  martyr  relinquishes 
his  life  rather  than  forego  the  truth,  because  truth  should  be 
dearer  than  life.  The  criminal  forfeits  his  life  to  justice, 
because  justice  is  and  should  be  dearer  than  life.  And  God, 
in  the  case  of  the  occupation  of  Canaan  by  Israel,  explicitly 
required  war,  and  that  a  war  of  devastation.  Its  Hittites  and 
Perizzites  were  criminals  of  an  aggravated  turpitude  and 
audacious  hardihood  in  crime.  He  was  their  magistrate. 
The  Jew  was  his  commissioned  executioner. 

And  whilst  we  allow  that  in  war  all  forms  of  wickedness 
are  generally  rife,  and  that  war  is  always  a  calamity,  and 
generally  an  enormous  crime  on  the  one  side  or  the  other, 
or  perhaps  occasionally  on  both,  we  cannot  but  think  that 
the  voice  of  conscience  and  history,  and  the  common  senti- 
ment of  mankind  testify,  that  in  the  terrible  conflicts  of  war 
have  also  been  seen  specimens  of  the  high  and  heroic  devel- 
opment of  our  nature.  Joshua,  and  David,  and  the  noble 
Jonathan,  all  warriors,  were  they  not  men  of  the  highest 
excellence  ?  Was  not  Abraham,  the  father  of  the  faithful, 
blessed  by  Melchisedec,  the  holy  prince  of  Salem,  as  he 
returned  from  a  warlike  foray  and  rescue?  Can  the  heart 
think  coldly  of  Leonidas,  holding  with  his  brave  band  the  nar- 
row strait  against  the  dense  masses  of  his  country's  invaders  ; 
or  of  Arnold  de  Winkelreid,  the  Swiss  worthy,  making  a  prac- 
ticable breach  for  his  compatriots  in  the  spear-bearing  and  ser-' 
ried  ranks  of  the  enemy  by  gathering  "  a  sheaf  of  their  spears" 
into  his  single  breast?  And  Christian  virtue,  too,  has  been 
found,  and  that  of  a  high  order,  amid  the  din  and  carnage  of 
the  camp.     Baxter  was  an  army  chaplain  when  he  wrote  the 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  375 

Saint's  Everlasting  Rest.  Hampden,  we  believe,  died  the 
death  of  a  Christian  as  well  as  a  patriot,  when  mortally 
wounded  in  defence  of  his  country's  liberties,  unjustly  and 
tyrannically  assailed  by  the  First  Charles.  Col.  Hutchinson, 
one  of  the  converts  to  the  views  of  the  Baptists  in  the  times 
of  the  Commonwealth,  was  a  soldier  as  well  as  a  Christian  ; 
and  so  was  the  upright,  ardent,  and  indomitable  Harrison, 
another  Baptist  of  the  Commonwealth,  who  in  the  Restora- 
tion suffered  death  as  one  of  the  judges  of  Charles.  Col. 
Blackadder,  a  Scotch  officer,  was  eminent  for  piety  among 
the  officers,  as  John  Haimes,  one  of  Wesley's  exhorters,  was 
among  the  privates  of  the  English  armies  in  Flanders  ;  and 
by  the  labors  of  the  last,  the  work  of  conversion  went  on 
amid  battles  and  sieges.  Col.  Gardiner,  we  doubt  not,  be- 
lieved himself  as  really  serving  God  when,  fighting  against 
the  return  of  the  Stuarts,  and  with  them  of  Romanism,  to 
the  throne  of  England,  he  perished  by  Highland  claymores 
on  the  field  of  Preston  Pans,  as  when  a  few  hours  before  he 
had  been  bowing  the  knee  in  private  devotion  to  his  God. 

It  is,  we  suppose,  a  plain  teaching  of  Scripture  that  war 
is  not  in  all  cases  unlawful.  It  is  a  principle  with  God, 
that  when  Reason  and  Conscience  will  not  restrain  wrong, 
then  Might,  physical  Might,  shall.  He  acts  upon  it  Himself. 
He  authorizes  government  to  act  upon  it.  Indeed,  it  is  a 
right  necessary  to  the  very  existence  of  government,  and 
government  we  suppose  necessary  to  the  continued  existence 
of  the  race,  as  it  certainly  is  to  their  well-being.  The  ruler 
may  not  only  advise  and  entreat,  he  may,  and  if  it  be  neces- 
sary, he  must  also  coerce. 

II.  But  it  may  be  asked,  if  war  be  allowable,  is  not  "  de- 
light in  war  "  also  allowable  ?  We  answer,  this  by  no  means 
follows.  Brutus  believed  that  justice  required  it  of  him  to 
condemn  his  own  sons  to  death.  But  whilst  this  was  patriot- 
ism, it  would  have  been  brutality  had  he  "  delighted  "  in  the 
terrible  sacrifice.  Abraham  honored  God  when,  at  his  re- 
quirement, he  lifted  the  knife  against  the  white,  soft  neck  of 
his  only,  his  promised  child  Isaac  ;  but  he  would  have  dis- 
honored himself  and  his  God,  had  he  gloated  with  "delight" 
over  the  prospect  of  seeing  soon  the  severed  veins,  the  spout- 
ing blood,  and  the  writhing  limbs  of  his  darling  son.  The 
officer  who  for  just  cause  inflicts  the  last  sanction  of  the  law 
on  some  foul  murderer,  may  but  do  his  duty.  But  the  spec- 
tator, who  has  what  some  men  have  shown  a  perverted  taste, 


3?6  THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH 

relishing  executions,  and  who  loves  the  sight  of  a  dying  wretch 
in  his  last  agonies,  is  not  to  be  respected  or  excused.  The 
distinction  between  "  warring  "  and  delighting  in  war," 
is  a  broad  one.  It  is  the  same  in  principle  as  that  which 
separates  the  parent  who  chastises  his  child  reluctantly,  and 
from  a  sense  of  duty,  and  the  hardened  and  unnatural  father, 
who  delights  to  worry  and  torture  his  offspring,  and  beats 
from  his  delight  in  the  infliction  of  pain.  It  is  the  difference 
between  the  surgeon  who  amputates  to  lessen  suffering,  and 
the  Indian  tormenting  his  captive  in  every  mode  that  a  fierce 
ingenuity  can  devise  to  heighten  pain  into  intolerable  intensity. 

We  may  do,  and  rightfully  do,  acts  in  which  we  have  no 
right  to  delight.  A  wise  teacher  will  not  delight  in  rebuke, 
yet  rebuke  may  be  at  times  inevitable  and  profitable.  A 
Church  of  Christ  may  be  compelled  to  exscind  an  offending 
member,  but  they  can  never  delight  in  it ;  however,  it  may 
be  not  only  lawful,  but  even  demanded  of  them,  so  that  the 
neglect  of  it  would  be  unlawful  and  criminal. 

When  we  remember  the  misery  and  devastation,  the  rapine 
and  conflagration,  the  violence  and  carnage,  the  privations 
and  bereavements,  the  orphanage  and  widowhood,  the  muti- 
lations and  butcheries  that  war  involves,  and  the  bitter  feuds 
between  conterminous  nations,  which  have  been  transmitted 
to  successive  generations  by  its  means,  we  must  see  that  it 
is,  even  wThen  most  mercifully  managed,  a  tremendous  evil, 
a  last  and  terrible  resort.  It  is  only  as  the  inevitable  and 
just  defence  of  Right  that  it  is  itself  defensible  or  even  tole- 
rable. When  pushed  beyond  the  limits  which  the  vindication 
of  a  momentous  right  requires,  or  when  itself  founded  on 
Wrong,  it  is  a  crime  of  huge  and  indescribable  enormity,  an 
offence  alike  against  the  Earth  whose  peace  it  disturbs,  and 
the  Heaven  whose  justice  it  defies.  But  there  are  those 
who,  without  respect  to  the  justice  or  injustice,  the  right  or 
wrong  of  a  war,  seem  to  find  pleasure  in  its  excitement, 
its  perils,  the  honors  it  wins  for  the  victor,  or  the  plunder 
with  which  it  enriches  or  the  power  wherewith  it  invests  him. 
David  seems  to  have  warred  generally  from  a  regard  to  the 
rights  of  his  people.  His  kinsman  and  general,  Joab,  brave 
but  unprincipled  and  sanguinary,  seems  to  have  delighted  in 
the  game  of  battle  for  its  own  sake. 

1.  Very  many,  then,  it  is  to  be  feared,  of  those  who  fight 
the  battles  of  a  country,  come  within  the  range  of  the  impre- 
cation here  uttered.     The  private  soldier  is  often  one  who 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  377 

looks  to  scenes  of  lawless  riot  and  easy  plunder  as  the  chief 
inducements  to  enlist  under  the  standards  of  his  country;  as 
the  officer  who  commands  him  may  often  be  careless  of  the 
waste  of  life,  if  it  but  minister  to  his  promotion  and  gain. 

2.  The  classes  who  sustain  war  are  often  involved  in  the 
same  condemnation.  The  army  contractor,  who  accumulates 
wealth  easily  and  rapidly,  at  the  expense  of  the  lives  of  an 
invading  host,  and  the  butchery  and  plunder  of  an  invaded 
nation,  does  not  he,  with  a  cruel  and  bloody  love  of  lucre, 
"delight  in  war?"  The  farmers  of  England,  from  the  rise 
in  the  price  of  agricultural  products  occasioned  by  the  needs 
of  their  large  armies,  became  wealthy  in  their  long  wars 
with  France,  and  delighted  in  contests  that  thus  enhanced 
their  gains  ;  though  in  later  years,  among  the  bones  imported 
from  Continental  battle-fields  to  manure  the  lands  of  Eng- 
land, some  of  these  same  men  probably  received  the  remains 
of  their  own  sons,  killed  in  battle,  and  by  the  strange  retribu- 
tions of  Providence,  now  returned  to  fatten  the  paternal 
acres.  Any  portion  of  our  own  territory  benefited  by  the 
demand  for  provisions  which  war  would  create,  but  not  ex- 
posed by  maritime  position,  or  other  causes,  to  the  invasions 
it  provokes,  would  be  likely  to  furnish  a  similar  class,  reck- 
lessly rejoicing  in  what  ruined  others  to  enrich  them. 

3.  The  rulers  who  wage  war  too  often  incur  this  condem- 
nation. History  has  greatly  and  generally  belied  kings,  if 
they  have  not  plunged  their  people  into  most  causeless,  cruel, 
and  protracted  conflicts  upon  the  most  frivolous  pretexts,  or 
with  the  most  crying  injustice.  Territory,  or  glory,  or  plun- 
der, has  been  the  object.  Lives  they  have  estimated  as  the 
vile  price,  cheaply  paid  for  the  coveted  prize.  When  the 
Supreme  Governor  "  shall  make  inquisition  for  blood,"  who 
will  envy  their  fame,  rank,  or  power  ?  Nor  are  such  un- 
worthy motives  unknown  in  other  than  monarchical  govern- 
ments. Ambition  may  render  the  demagogue  as  sanguinary 
in  his  heartless  recklessness  as  the  despot.  The  froth  and 
foam  of  a  speech  enkindling  every  bad  passion  may  cost  the 
blood  of  hapless  hundreds.  Reports  drafted  in  the  quiet 
peace  of  a  cabinet,  may  to  the  presaging  eye  seem  dripping 
with  more  of  gore  than  all  that  any  one  bayonet  ever  shed. 
The  desire  of  personal  distinction,  or  the  eagerness  for  party 
triumph,  may  induce  men  to  carve,  as  it  were,  the  whitened 
bones  of  their  fellow-citizens  into  dice  for  the  gamblings 
of  political   strife.     A    Syrian    Pacha,   under  the  Ottoman 

49 


378  THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH 

Porte,  in  the  last  generation,  gloried  in  the  epithet  of  Djezzar 
or  butcher,  that  his  remorseless  murders  had  won  him.  The 
political  aspirants,  and  orators,  and  statesmen,  that  bring  on, 
for  selfish  purposes,  a  needless  or  an  unjust  war — what  are. 
they  but  the  Djezzars  of  a  republic  ?  The  tears  of  the 
widow  and  of  the  fatherless  orphan  may  run  unstaunched  for 
weary  years,  if  they  but  drench  and  freshen  the  laurels  of 
these  votaries  of  glory.  The  wealth  of  the  merchant  may 
be  confiscated,  and  the  gains  of  the  industrious  artisan,  to 
swell  the  prize-money  of  the  privateersman,  thence  to  run 
speedily  into  the  exchequer  of  the  dram-shop  and  the  bro- 
thel— scenes  of  riot  and  debauch,  that  are  like  the  miry 
places  of  the  prophet's  vision,  the  moral  quagmires  of  the 
state. 

4.  The  literary  classes  of  a  nation  may  have  their  share 
in  the  woes  of  our  text.  The  true  rulers  of  a  people  are 
often,  less  the  men  recognized  as  magistrates  and  monarchs 
by  the  ensigns  of  office,  and  rather  the  popular  authors  Avho 
give  coloring  to  the  tastes  and  sentiments,  and  shape  to  the 
principles  of  their  times.  Wearing  no  tiara,  wielding  no 
sceptre,  they  are  yet  often  really  throned  as  rulers  in  the 
mind  of  the  nation  and  the  age.  When  these,  as  such  in 
authority,  feed  a  taste  for  war,  reckless  of  right,  and  greedy 
only  of  glory  and  plunder,  they  sin,  and  God  holds  them 
answerable  for  the  homes  from  which  they  lure  the  adven- 
turous son  or  husband  enlisting  for  a  soldier's  perils — and  an- 
swerable for  the  darker  desolation  of  the  abodes  into  which 
war  carries  pollution  and  remorseless  carnage.  Poetry  has 
too  much  made  the  fray,  and  the  banner,  and  nodding 
plume,  the  resounding  march,  and  the  murderous  volley,  its 
favorite  themes,  careless  of  the  right  or  wrong  of  the  quarrel. 
And  one  of  the  many  causes  of  contention  that  Virtue  and 
Piety  have  with  the  drama,  especially  in  modern  times,  is  its 
love  of  slaughter,  and  the  insane  profusion  with  which  it  as- 
sumes to  expend  human  life  like  water,  and  gluts  and  fires 
an  admiring  crowd  with  its  spectacles  of  imaged  suicide  and 
murder.  Into  these  things  a  God  of  justice  will  search.  They 
have  helped  to  make  fallen  man,  like  the  tiger,  raven  for 
blood.  When  our  own  Robert  Hall  urged  the  volunteers  of 
his  country  to  contend  against  foreign  invasion,  he  did  not 
unwisely  or  wrongly.  But  he  who,  irrespective  of  the  justice 
of  the  contest,  delights  in  blood  shedding,  (if  left  to  have 
his  own  solitary  and  undisputed  influence,)  would  convert 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  379 

society  into  a  shambles,  and  quench  freedom,  industry,  and 
knowledge  in  a  Red  Sea  of  blood. 

5.  A  nation  itself  may  become  passionately  enamored  of 
war.  Intoxicated  by  glory,  and  swollen  with  plunder,  rich 
and  easily  won,  how  many  a  people,  in  the  history  of  the 
race,  originally  simple,  free,  and  comparatively  happy,  have 
become  drunk  with  blood.  For  a  time,  God  made  them  his 
terrible  scourges,  but  the  time  of  retribution  always  came. 
No  nation  delighting  in  war  for  its  own  sake,  but  has  had, 
in  time,  the  poisonous  chalice  pressed  to  its  own  loathing 
lips,  and  the  spoiler  has  been  in  his  turn  the  spoiled,  and  the 
terrible  of  one  age  has  become  the  contemptible  of  the  next. 
In  a  government  constituted  like  our  own,  the  acts  of  the 
rulers  are,  more  than  with  most  other  people,  the  acts  of  the 
entire  nation.  If  we  have  as  a  people  been,  as  some  con- 
tend, driven  by  the  misconduct  of  an  enemy  into  our  present 
contest,  well  will  it  be  for  our  rulers  and  ourselves,  in  the 
day  of  unerring  scrutiny  and  final  decision.  But  if,  as  others 
insist,  we  have  transcended  a  known  and  rightful  boundary, 
to  provoke  war,  "  removing  the  land-mark,"  which,  a  sin  as 
God  has  made  it  in  the  individual,  is  not  less  sin  surely  in  a 
nation  ;  or  if  we  have  rushed  into  a  war  for  which  there 
might  be  some  provocation,  without  exhausting  all  possible 
efforts  to  avoid  this  melancholy  alternative,  they  who  have 
caused,  and  who  continue,  and  who  uphold  the  conflict, 
must  answer  it  to  One,  whose  rules  of  judgment  were  not 
learned  in  earthly  cabinets,  and  whose  statutes  may  not  be 
set  aside  by  protocols  and  proclamations. 

III.  We  have  now  reached  the  third  and  last  division  of 
our  subject — the  prayer  that  God  would  scatter  those  who 
thus  love  the  bloody  game  of  war.  It  is  the  prayer  of  the 
groaning  conscience,  sick  of  the  horrors  of  a  needless  and 
unrighteous  contest — the  prayer  of  the  outraged  affections 
stung  into  keenest  sympathy  in  the  view  of  mourning  fami- 
lies, and  weeping  and  fatherless  children,  and  bleeding  afresh 
with  each  new  incident  of  massacre  and  desolation  brought 
in  the  journals  of  the  contest — the  prayer  of  Industry,  driven 
from  its  wonted  tasks,  and  taxed  for  aid  it  is  loth  to  give — 
and  the  prayer  of  Humanity,  acknowledging  in  the  foe, 
plundered,  and  defeated,  and  dying,  a  man  and  brother. 
But  it  is  above  all  the  prayer  of  Christianity,  anxious  that  as 
war  was  hushed  at  the  Saviour's  birth,  to  give  to  the  new 
message  of  peace  with  Heaven  a  free  course  over  the  quiet 


380  THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH 

nations,  so  now  the  cause  of  Missions  may  be  no  longer 
hindered  by  the  outbreak  of  war,  and  the  tumult  of  battle, 
but  universal  peace  make  ready  the  way  of  the  Lord  ;  and 
that  instead  of  a  strife  as  to  strength,  and  a  rivalry  in  the 
infliction  and  endurance  of  injury,  the  only  contest  may  be 
the  emulation  of  brothers,  in  the  manifestation  of  mutual 
kindness,  and  in  the  service  of  a  common  father — a  common 
Brother  and  Redeemer.  Mute  Nature,  speechless  as  she  is 
before  man,  is  not  so  before  her  Maker  in  this  quarrel. 
The  earth,  from  which  cried  the  blood  of  the  first-slain  Abel, 
has  it  ceased  to  cry,  as  fresh  victims  watered  it  with  their 
opened  veins  ?  No  ;  Earth,  "  the  creation  made  subject  unto 
vanity  not  willingly,"  cries,  "Lord,  how  long?"  And  the 
Church  cries,  Scatter,  O  Lord,  the  nations  and  the  hosts, 
the  parties  and  the  cabinets  that  delight  in  war. 

2.  The  prayer  has  been  in  times  past  fulfilled.  We  have 
seen  how,  if  the  Cagots  of  France  be  indeed,  as  some  anti- 
quarians believe  them,  the  relics  of  the  old  and  valiant  and 
terrible  Goths,  they  illustrate  the  tremendous  significance  of 
the  text.  Based  as  the  prayer  is  on  a  recognized  principle 
of  the  Divine  government,  that  existed  ere  the  Psalm  was 
inspired,  we  see  that  principle  ere  the  Psalmist's  days,  an- 
nounced in  God's  treatment  of  some  of  the  ancestors  of  that 
Psalmist's  nation,  Simeon  and  Levi.  They  had  recourse  to 
treacherous  butchery  for  the  avenging  of  a  domestic  wrong, 
and  as  their  dying  father,  in  denouncing  their  conduct,  said, 
"  Cursed  be  their  anger  for  it  was  fierce,  and  their  wrath 
for  it  was  cruel :"  and  he  added  in  the  name  of  his  God,  "  I 
will  divide  them  in  Jacob  and  scatter  them  in,  Israel."* 
Read  the  fortunes  of  Egypt.  In  ancient  days  her  Sesos- 
tris  led  the  pride  and  prowess  of  Mizraim  in  triumphant 
invasion  into  distant  lands.  Now  beside  the  lofty  walls  yet 
brilliantly  commemorating  those  conquests,  and  painting  the 
victor,  and  his  car,  and  his  triumphal  train,  cowers  the  mod- 
ern Copt,  a  craven  and  timorous  slave,  building  his  hut  of 
mud  beside  the  ruinous  palace  of  his  fathers,  whilst  the 
country  has  sunk  for  centuries  to  the  level  which  prophecy 
assigned  it,  of  "  the  basest  of  kingdoms."  Contrast  the  pages 
of  ancient  history  and  their  picture  of  Babylon  as  she  was  in 
her  days  of  conquest,  and  the  pages  of  modern  travel  and 
their  picture  of  Babylon  as  she  is,  "  swept  with  the  besom 

*  Gen.  xlix.  7. 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  381 

of  desolation."  Look  at  the  Persian  as  he  was,  and  the  Per- 
sian as  he  is  ;  the  valorous  and  terrible  Turk  of  other  cen- 
turies, and  the  effete  and  dependent  Turk  of  our  times.  See 
the  memorials  of  the  far-travelled  and  victorious  legions  of 
ancient  Rome  in  the  days  of  her  republican  might  and  her 
imperial  pride — then  turn  to  trace,  if  you  can,  the  features 
of  that  terrible  nation,  who  so  excelled  and  so  delighted  in 
war,  in  the  effeminate,  treacherous  and  vindictive  Italian, 
who  has  passion  without  power,  and  feeling  without  princi- 
ple, his  animal  sensibilities,  as  nurtured  amid  the  nudities 
of  exquisite  statuary  and  matchless  painting  to  a  refined 
delicacy  of  taste,  educated  until  they  have  outgrown  the 
moral,  and  left  behind  no  delicacy  whatever  of  moral  feel- 
ings. Their  Virgil  boasted  once,  in  the  days  of  warlike 
power,  that  other  people  might  better  carve  and  better  paint, 
but  Romans  were  born  to  rule.  The  curse  of  Providence 
on  the  mad  love  of  military  rapine  has  inverted  the  boast 
of  their  poet.  The  modern  Roman  carves  and  paints,  but 
rule  he  cannot,  himself  or  others.  The  bayonets  of  Austria 
govern  him,  and  the  Swiss  mercenaries  are  the  guards  of  his 
Pontiff.  The  assassin  has  replaced  the  warrior,  the  fiddler 
the  statesman,  and  for  the  severe  virtue  of  her  Cato  and  the 
simple  patriotism  of  her  Cincinnatus,  you  see  a  nation  with- 
out conscience,  without  dignity,  and  without  power,  getting 
up  melo-dramatic  conspiracies  and  sanguinary  outbreaks,  but 
without  the  pith  and  manhood  to  recover  their  freedom.* 
They  who  delighted  in  war,  how  are  they  scattered,  al- 
though the  arches  and  the  pillars  yet  stand  that  tell  of  their 
old  manhood,  and  enterprise,  and  renown  ;  and  under  the 
shadow  of  Trajan's  column  and  the  arch  of  Titus  clamors 
Ihe  mendicant  and  lurks  the  assassin.  The  old  Sclavi,  once 
a  formidable  people,  whose  name  in  their  own  language  sig- 
nified "glory,"  were  at  first  terrible  in  their  brave,  fierce 
invasions,  but  became  in  their  time  and  turn  vanquished  and 
captives  ;  and  now  their  national  name  is  in  our  own  and 
several  European  languages  the  term  to  describe  the  bond- 
man, the  man  not  only  who  has  lost  peace,  but  who  has  lost 
freedom  also.  Yes,  our  very  word  "  slave"  is  a  standing 
memorial  of  the  great  retributive  law  of  our  text — "  The 
scatterer  scattered,"  the  prowler  preyed  upon,  the   troubler 


*  Written  in  1847,  and  ere  the  struggles  of  1849  had  developed3  in  the  char- 
acter of  some  of  the  Italians,  new  and  nobler  elements. 


382  THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH 

caught  in  the  pitfall  he  has  dug.  So,  turn  to  the  European 
ancestors  of  the  race  with  whom  is  waged  our  present  con- 
test. So,  see  Spain,  once  the  mightiest  and  bravest  nation 
of  Europe,  now  at  home  poor,  though  her  universal  exche- 
quer once  was  gorged  with  the  wealth  of  both  the  Indies  ; 
and  in  her  colonies,  once  the  scene  of  the  valor  of  a  Pizarro 
and  a  Cortez,  see  her  race  now  how  spent  and  abject.  In 
times  nearer  our  own,  how  dreadfully  were  the  invasions  of 
Revolutionary  and  Imperial  France  requited  in  her  own  cap- 
ital twice  entered  by  an  enemy,  and  in  the  fate  of  her  own 
great  Captain,  coming  at  first,  as  it  was  predicted  of  Cyrus, 
"  upon  princes  as  upon  mortar,  and  as  the  potter  treadeth 
clay,"  afterwards  fretting  himself  to  death  within  the  circuit 
of  his  narrow  island  prison — how  did  God  seem  reading  a 
fresh  comment  for  a  new  and  forgetful  generation,  on  this 
old  and  forgotten  law  of  his  Providence. 

3.  If  it  be  asked,  Why  is  this  so  ?  we  answer,  Because 
God  wills  it ;  and  because  also,  from  the  very  nature  of  war 
and  of  man's  mind  and  heart,  such  must  be  the  ultimate 
results  even  of  successful  war,  on  those  who  delight  in  it,  as 
a  gainful  trade  and  a  pleasant  recreation.  It  inflates  pride, 
and  Earth  and  Heaven  delight  in  abasing  pride.  It  fosters 
a  spirit  of  reckless  violence  and  aggression,  that  must  ulti- 
mately provoke  an  opposition  too  strong  and  general  to  be 
surmounted,  and  a  revenge  that  will  spare  no  humiliation  of 
its  old  oppressor.  It  undermines  quiet  industry  and  self- 
reliance  to  substitute  gains  that,  though  large  and  easily 
won,  yet,  like  those  of  the  robber,  are  soon  wasted  and  little 
satisfactory  while  possessed.  It  sets  up  in  the  nation  a 
false  standard  of  honor,  and  the  strong  will  that  makes  its 
passions  triumph  over  other  men's  wills,  is  counted  great, 
rather  than  the  magnanimity  that  bows  its  own  and  other 
men's  passions  to  the  simple,  silent  majesty  of  the  laws. 
Seldom,  therefore,  has  liberty  or  law  long  stood  before  mili- 
tary glory  and  power.  The  secret  of  military  success  is, 
again,  unreflecting,  implicit  submission  to  the  leader's  will. 
The  secret  of  permanent  liberty  is  the  trial  of  the  leader's 
will  by  the  general  conscience  and  reason  of  the  people. 
Jesuitism  organized  its  terrible  compactness,  its  lithe  and 
mighty  unity,  by  the  adoption  of  military  principles  of  im- 
plicit and  entire  submission.  Its  founder  was  a  soldier,  and 
brought  to  his  task  military  reminiscences.  But  as  con- 
science was  crushed  under  the  law  of  obedience  by  that 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  383 

system,  so  is  it  in  its  measure  in  all  other  systems  of  power 
and  grandeur,  built  upon  the  warlike  basis.  Our  country 
and  its  institutions,  if  preserved  in  their  original  entireness 
and  purity,  need  the  education  and  development,  not  the 
suppression  and  extinction  of  the  national  conscience.  And 
war  and  its  military  training  go  to  strain  and  break  that 
conscience,  instead  of  training  it. 

4.  God  has  set  before  us  as  a  people  a  magnificent  task. 
To  unite  in  the  bonds  of  a  common  piety  and  freedom  the 
various  people  from  whom  our  colonists  are  drawn  ;  to  prove 
to  less  free  nations  in  the  old  world,  how  with  popular  free- 
dom may  consist  popular  self-restraint,  and  how  they  who 
rule  themselves  may  be  a  law-abiding  and  God-fearing  peo- 
ple ; — this  is  the  labor  and  the  prize  set  before  us.  But  if 
we  become  a  rapacious  and  unscrupulous  nation,  scornful 
of  laws,  aggressive  and  unjust,  we  travesty  our  own  most 
solemn  professions,  we  aid  the  cause  of  despotism  in  the 
Eastern  world,  and  prepare  the  path  and  the  necessity  for 
the  rise  of  a  military  despotism  among  ourselves  on  these 
Western  shores.  God  is  not  mocked  by  republics  more 
safely  than  by  churches,  by  statesmen  than  by  religionists. 
The  unjust  cannot  long  be  free,  the  violent  are  never  event- 
ually safe. 

Thus  have  we  wished  to  bring  out  of  our  text  the  great 
lessons  it  teaches.  We  have  sought  to  show  that  war  is  not 
in  all  circumstances  unlawful  even  under  the  gospel,  but 
that  it  is,  yet,  always  a  calamity,  and  generally  an  enormous 
crime.  We  have  sought  to  show  how  delighting  in  war  was 
sinful,  and  what  the  classes  were  thus  guilty.  We  have  seen 
how,  in  ancient  and  modern  history,  God  has  governed  the 
world  on  the  principle  which  the  prayer  of  our  text  invokes. 

We  have  sought  to  shun  all  needless  and  controversial 
details.  It  is  not  long  since  the  leaders  of  the  two  great  and 
rival  parties  of  the  nation  united  in  declaring  that  the  an- 
nexation of  Texas  would  involve  our  Union  in  a  war.  The 
friends  of  the  measure  of  annexation  denied  this.  The 
province  was  annexed.     The  war  has  ensued. 

Is  it  our  duty  to  raise  the  cry  in  such  circumstances,  "  Our 
country,  right  or  wrong?"  In  the  days  of  the  Commonwealth 
and  Protectorate,  Blake,  a  religious  man,  the  brave  English 
admiral  who  first  began  the  long  course  of  England's  naval 
triumphs,  did  not  in  all  things  fully  sympathize  with  the 
ruling  powers  at  home.     But  he  was  accustomed  to  say  that 


384  THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH 

the  seaman  must  leave  the  powers  at  home  to  settle  the 
affairs  of  the  nation — it  was  his  business  to  see  that  foreign- 
ers did  not  wrong  the  country  abroad.  Now,  if  the  wars 
abroad  were  not  unjust  (and  such  they  were  not),  we  sup- 
pose the  principle  that  good  and  brave  man  announced  as 
his  rule  not  an  untenable  one.  But  to  a  distinguished  naval 
warrior  of  our  own  country  is  assigned  a  sentiment  more 
sweeping,  often  quoted  and  highly  lauded,  "  Our  country, 
right  or  wrong"  Now,  there  may  be  questions  as  to  right 
and  wrong  in  the  policy  and  course  of  a  country,  where 
good  men  and  able  are  nearly  equally  divided.  A  man  in 
doubt,  after  his  own  best  efforts  to  decide  the  question, 
may,  perhaps,  safely  leave  such  difficult  and  intricate  ques- 
tions to  others,  and  do  the  work  of  his  station.  But  a 
man,  who,  after  the  first  investigation,  believes  clearly  his 
country  engaged  in  a  wrong  course,  may  and  should,  by  all 
proper  means,  protest  against  the  wrong-doing,  not  only  for 
his  own  sake,  and  to  clear  his  own  soul,  but  for  the  benefit 
of  his  country.  God's  right  over  man  is  older  than  that  of 
the  country  or  the  family  even.  If  this  principle  on  which 
we  comment  were  true  in  morals  and  patriotism — if  our 
country,  irrespective  of  the  justice  of  her  claims,  should  be 
sustained — then  in  those  countries  whose  government  is  des- 
potic, and  where  the  king  says  virtually,  like  the  royal  Bour- 
bon, "I  am  the  State" — this  maxim,  "the  country  right 
or  wrong,"  is  tantamount  to  saying,  Let  the  will  of  the 
prince,  whether  vicious  or  good,  be  my  supreme  law.  And 
if  that  will  not  only  justifies  but  demands  my  obedience 
as  a  patriot — if  to  be  true  to  her  and  her  government,  I 
must  close  my  eyes  and  leave  conscience  in  abeyance — then 
the  elders  of  Jezreel  were  blameless  before  God  for  obey- 
ing the  signet  of  Ahab  and  the  letter  of  Jezebel,  and  shed- 
ding the  innocent  blood  of  Naboth  to  obtain  the  confisca- 
tion of  his  vineyard.  Then  John  was  a  traitor  for  not  leav- 
ing uncensured  the  domestic  relations  of  his  sovereign  He- 
rod. Then  the  inhabitants  of  Madagascar  are  bound,  by  our 
laws  of  patriotism,  since  such  is  their  queen's  will,  to  perse- 
cute in   our  days  Christians  to  the  death. 

If,  as  some  wish,  all  discussion  were  treasonable,  soon  as  a 
war  had  been  provoked,  no  matter  how  regularly  and  how 
justly,  or  how  irregularly  and  how  unjustly  ;  and  if  thence- 
forward to  discuss  its  origin  and  character  were  unlawful,  it 
were  virtually  a  proclamation  of  martial  law  over  the  land 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  385 

— it  were  the  enunciation  by  political  power  of  a  pontifical 
interdict  upon  the  nation's  conscience,  forbidding,  as  did  the 
rash  edict  of  Darius  the  Mede,  all  prayer  to  God,  as  a  Judge,' 
till  the  quarrel  were  ended.  The  patriotism  of  Daniel  was 
best  shown,  by  refusing  calmly  to  abide  any  such  interdict, 
usurping  on  the  rights  alike  of  conscience,  and  of  the  Lord 
of  conscience.  No,  our  country — be  her  sovereign  one  or  her 
rulers  many,  be  she  a  democracy  or  a  despotism — our  coun- 
try and  its  government  may  never  dispense  us  from  oui 
primary  allegiance  to  God's  eternal  and  immutable  law  of 
right.  No,  as  we  love  God  and  fear  his  anger,  let  right  stand 
ever  before  either  country  or  home.  God  and  right  are  to 
the  truly  religious  man,  the  patriot  of  scriptural  principles, 
dearer  than  his  country.  So  Jeremiah  loved  his  country, 
and  sacrificed  popularity  and  perilled  life,  in  counselling  Zed- 
ekiah  and  his  nobles  against  a  war  that  began  by  the  break- 
ing of  a  solemn  treaty.  Or  rather,  the  enlightened  believer 
knows  that  his  country  can  be  safe  but  as  brought  right ;  and 
loves  her  true  and  permanent  interests  too  well,  to  wish  her 
transient,  and  deceptive,  and  ruinous  success,  in  a  course  of. 
wrong-doing.  ' 

Much  is  said  of  the  destinies  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  and 
of  their  irresistible  development.  May  our  God  make  that  de- 
velopment in  science  and  art,  in  integrity  and  influence,  more 
than  its  loudest  eulogist  has  dared  to  promise.  But  a  slight 
glance  at  the  past  history  of  the  world  suffices  to  discover, 
that  in  races  as  in  individuals,  pride  goeth  before  destruc- 
tion, and  is  the  first  symptom  of  internal  decay  in  the  power 
of  which  it  vaunts.  The  core  and  pith  of  a  nation's  manhood 
soon  becomes  rotten,  when  the  outer  rind  and  enamel  of  its 
conscience  and  self-control  and  honesty  scales  off.  And 
when  men  claim,  in  the  development  of  their  talents  and 
might,  to  go  beyond  God's  ordinary  law  of  morals,  God  is 
accustomed  to  transcend  His  ordinary  laws  of  Providence 
for  their  punishment.  The  antediluvian  and  gigantic  races 
of  the  old  world  arrogated  to  themselves  to  transcend  vulgar 
laws  of  justice  and  religion;  and  God,  to  meet  with  condign 
retribution  their  hardihood,  gave  to  Nature  to  develope  laws 
and  powers  before  unknown.  The  cisterns  of  heaven  and  the 
fountains  of  the  great  deep  were  allowed  to  break  their  old 
statutes,  and  spurn  their  original  restraints,  and  the  deluge 
came  to  assert  the  supremacy  of  Right  over  Might.  Mon- 
strosities of  crime  provoke  miracles  of  vengeance.     These 

50 


386  THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  CHURCH 

may  come  from  quarters  remote  and  opposite  to  those  whence 
clanger  alone  was  dreaded.  But  come  when  it  may  or  whence 
it  may,  it  must  come  ultimately,  and  come  the  heavier  from 
the  delay  in  its  movements  and  the  distance  it  has  traversed — 
an  avalanche  that  has  gathered  in  mass  every  moment  it 
lingered,  and  every  fathom  it  travelled  of  the  wide  interval. 

The  man  or  the  people  would  be  far  out  of  their  course, 
who  should  claim  a  development  that  had  outgrown  the 
Decalogue  as  God's  own  voice  proclaimed  it  on  Sinai,  and 
who  should  boast  of  a  patent  to  possess  the  earth  by  virtue 
of  a  physical  and  mental  superiority  that  reverses,  in  their 
case,  the  eighth  and  tenth  commandments,  and  converts  the 
prohibition  into  a  charter,  which  says,  in  effect,  to  them, 
"  Thou  shalt  covet  (because  of  his  inferior  numbers  and  cul- 
ture, his  lower  grade  of  piety  and  powers)  thy  neighbor's 
possessions  ;"  and  "  Thou  shalt  steal  (because  of  his  wretched 
misgovernment)  thy  neighbor's  land."  Jehovah  never  re- 
cognized the  right,  either  of  an  infallible  pontiff  or  of  a  sov- 
ereign people,  to  proclaim  a  dispensation  from  the  obligations 
of  his  immutable  statutes,  by  the  development  of  their  pow- 
ers or  because  of  their  national  greatness. 

There  is  no  successful  warring  against  the  Lord  of  Hosts. 
His  will  is  Fate,  his  might  the  quiet  irresistibility  of  Omnip- 
otence. Neither  nations  nor  individuals  can  contend  with 
Him.  And  now,  dismissing  all  questions  of  social  interest, 
let  us  individually  inquire,  whether  we  are  serving  or  rebel- 
ling against  Him  ?  Look  round  the  scarred  and  ruinous 
earth :  look  up  to  heaven  spoiled  of  Lucifer  and  the  host 
whom  he  trailed  after  him,  partners  of  his  revolt  and  fall. 
Look  to  the  hell  where  he  writhes.  See  his  conflicts  with 
Christ  in  the  days  of  His  incarnation.  See  the  Church  of 
God  often  assailed,  but  the  gates  of  hell  not  prevailing. 
Look  to  sinners  on  their  death-beds.  Look  into  your  own 
consciences,  in  your  more  sober  and  wiser  hours,  and  see, 
my  fellow-sinners,  if  it  be  safe  to  war  and  to  delight  in  war- 
ring against  a  Holy  and  Almighty  God  ?  Then  think  of 
the  treachery  and  ingratitude  of  fighting  a  friend,  a  Deliver- 
er, and  see  what  reasons  you  can  find  for  beginning  another 
year  with  a  continued  quarrel  against  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
the  Saviour,  who  bought  you  with  His  own  blood?  If  you 
war  against  the  redeeming  cross,  will  not,  must  not  the  Last 
Judgment  scatter  your  hopes  for  ever,  and  hurl  your  souls 
into  endless  perdition  ? 


AGAINST    THOSE    DELIGHTING    IN    WAR.  387 

The  universe  is  one  great  battle-field.  The  founder  of 
the  Jesuit  order  wisely  and  truly  represented  all  mankind  as 
making  up  but  two  great  camps,  the  one  under  the  banners 
of  Satan  the  Destroyer,  the  other  grouped  around  the  stand- 
ard of  Christ  the  Redeemer.  There  is  no  debatable  ground 
between  the  hosts.  No  neutrality  is  possible  in  this  war. 
He  that  gathereth  not  with  Christ  scattereth  abroad,  and 
shall  himself  be  scattered  in  the  sifting  blasts  of  the  Last 
Judgment.  He  that  is  not  with  us  is  against  us.  With 
whom,  then,  are  you  choosing  your  sides  ?  Each  new  year, 
each  pause  in  the  procession  to  eternity,  each  stile  you  cross, 
and  each  milestone  along  the  highway  and  in  the  pilgrimage 
of  life,  invites  you  to  review  your  march  and  inquire  your 
prospects.  Are  you  still  bent  on  rejecting  Christ,  and  re- 
sisting God  and  defying  heaven  ?  How  mad  the  war  you  wage ; 
it  is  one  of  disinheriting  for  yourself, — of  expatriation,  endless 
and  hopeless,  from  the  heavenly  mansion  and  home.  Against 
you  are  angels,  and  saints,  and  God,  and  all  holy  beings, 
the  prayers  of  the  Church,  and  the  statutes  of  Omnipotence. 
With  you  are  the  wicked,  and  the  lawless,  and  the  abomina- 
ble, earth's  burden  now,  and  soon  to  be  the  fuel  of  the  pit. 
O,  why  fight  for  death,  and  for  damnation,  and  for  endless 
despair  ? 


388  THE  CAGOTS  OF  FRANCE. 


APPENDIX. 


THE  CAGOTS  OF  FRANCE. 

From  the  travels,  which,  under  the  assumed  name  of  Derwent  Conway, 
and  with  the  title  of  "  Switzerland,  the  South  of  France,  and  the  Pyrenees, 
in  mdcccxxx,"  were  issued  in  Constable's  Miscellany,  as  volumes  lxvi.  and 
lxvii.,  of  that  work,  by  R.  D.  Inglis,  Esq.,  a  lineal  descendant,  we  believe,  Df 
the  excellent  Col.  Gardiner,  we  take  the  following  extract,  relative  to  this 
peculiar  race.  Inglis  published,  under  his  own  name,  several  volumes  of  tra- 
vels, marked  with  much  acuteness  of  observation,  strong  sense,  and  felici- 
tous description. 

"In  speaking  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Pyrenees,  I  must  not  overlook  that 
extraordinary  race,  which  has  baffled  the  historian  in  his  vain  endeavors  to 
account  for  its  origin,  and  which  has  furnished  matter  of  interest  both  to  the 
novelist  and  the  traveller.  It  is  probable,  that  many  readers  of  this  volume 
may  never  have  heard  of  the  Cagots,  and  that  others  may  know  only  of  the 
existence  of  such  a  race  ;  and  although,  in  presenting  some  details  respecting 
this  extraordinary  people,  I  disclaim  any  pretension  to  novelty  or  original 
elucidation,  yet,  having  travelled  among  their  valleys,  and  seen  their  huts 
and  themselves,  I  feel  that  it  would  be  an  unpardonable  omission,  were  I  to 
omit  availing  myself  of  even  the  common  sources  of  information,  in  order 
that  I  may  include,  in  this  volume,  a  short  account  of  the  Cagots. 

"The  Cagots  are  found  in  several  of  the  more  secluded  valleys  of  the 
Pyrenees,  particularly  in  the  lateral  valleys  that  branch  from  the  valley  of 
Bareges,  Luchon,  and  Aure.  So  sedulously  do  the  Cagots  keep  apart  from 
the  rest  of  their  fellow-men,  that  one  might  travel  through  the  Pyrenees 
without  seeing  an  individual  of  the  race,  unless  inquiry  were  specially  direct- 
ed towards  them.  It  was  not  until  I  expressed  a  desire  to  the  guide  who  at- 
tended me  in  my  excursions  from  St.  Sauveur,  to  see  one  of  the  race  of  Ca- 
gots, that  my  curiosity  was  gratified.  This  was  in  one  of  the  lateral  valleys 
that  runs  to  the  right,  between  Bareges  and  the  Tourmalet,  a  valley  traversed 
by  no  road,  and  which  only  leads  to  the  lac  d? escaibous.  The  Cagot  is  known 
by  his  sallow  and  unhealthy  countenance — his  expression  of  stupidity — his 
want  of  vigor,  and  relaxed  appearance — his  imperfect  articulation — and,  in 
many  cases,  his  disposition  to  goitres.  If  we  were  to  credit  the  assertion  of 
the  novelist,  we  should  reject  one  of  these  characteristics,  or  at  least  say,  that 
the  stupidity  of  the  Cagot  is  only  apparent.  It  is  possible,  that  a  knowledge  of 
his  degraded  condition,  and  the  contempt,  if  not  aversion,  with  which  he  is 
regarded,  as  well  as  the  total  seclusion  in  which  the  family  of  the  Cagot  lives, 
may  have  their  effect  in  impressing  upon  his  countenance  an  expression  of 
humility,  distrust,  and  timidity,  that  might  be  mistaken  for  intellectual  defi- 
ciency. But  the  observation  of  all  those  who  have  studied  with  the  greatest 
advantages  the  peculiarities  of  this  race,  concur  in  allotting  to  the  Cagot  an 
inferior  share  of  mental  capacity. 

"The  days  of  Cagol  persecution  have  passed  away  ;  but  tradition  has  pre- 
served a  recollection  of  the  degradation  and  sufferings  of  the  race,  and  has 


THE  CAGOTS  OF  FRANCE.  389 

even,  in  some  small  degree,  handed  down,  along  with  the  history  of  these 
persecutions,  some  vestiges  of  the  prejudices  which  gave  rise  to  it.  From 
time  immemorial,  the  Cagot  families  have  inhabited  the  most  retired  valleys, 
and  the  most  miserable  habitations.  The  race  has  always  been  regarded  as 
infamous,  and  the  individuals  of  it  outcasts  from  the  family  of  mankind. 
They  were  excluded  from  all  rights  of  citizens ;  they  were  not  permitted  to 
have  arms,  or  to  exercise  any  other  trade  than  that  of  wood-cutters :  and,  in 
more  remote  times,  they  were  obliged  to  bear  upon  their  breast  a  red  mark, 
the  sign  of  their  degradation.  So  far,  indeed,  was  aversion  towards  this  un- 
fortunate people  carried,  that  they  entered  the  churches  by  a  separate  door, 
and  occupied  seats  allotted  to  the  rejected  caste.  The  persecutions  have  long 
ceased ;  and  time  and  its  attendant  improvements  have  diminished  the  pre- 
judices, and  weakened  the  feelings  of  aversion  with  which  they  were  formerly 
regarded.  But  they  are  still  the  race  of  Cagots — still  a  separate  family — still 
outcasts — still  a  people  who  are  evidently  no  kindred  of  those  who  live  around 
them,  but  the  remnant  of  a  different  and  more  ancient  family. 

"It  is  impossible  for  the  traveller,  still  less  the  philosopher,  to  know  of  the 
existence  of  this  caste,  without  endeavoring  to  pierce  the  clouds  that  hang 
over  its  origin,  and  the  causes  of  its  persecution.  But  it  is  at  least  doubtful, 
whether  any  of  these  inquiries  have  thrown  true  light  upon  the  subject. 
History,  indeed,  records  the  peculiar  persecutions  of  which  they  were  the 
subjects  ;  and  proves,  that  these  persecutions,  pursuing  a  despised  and  hated 
race,  were  directed  against  the  same  people,  whether  found  in  Brittany,  La 
Vendee,  Auvergne,  or  the  Pyrenees.  We  find  the  Parliament  of  Rennes  in- 
terfering in  their  favor,  to  obtain  them  the  right  of  sepulture.  In  the  elev- 
enth century,  we  find  the  Cagots  of  Beam  disposed  of  by  testament  as  slaves. 
The  priests  would  not  admit  them  to  confession  ;  and,  by  an  ancient  act  of 
Beam,  it  was  resolved  that  the  testimony  of  seven  of  them  should  be  equiva- 
lent to  the  evidence  of  one  free  citizen ;  and  even  so  late  as  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, they  were  forbidden  to  walk  the  streets  barefooted,  in  case  of  infection 
being  communicated  to  the  stones ;  and  upon  their  clothes  was  impressed 
the  foot  of  a  goose.  Yet  all  these  marks  of  .hatred  are  unaccounted  for.  No 
record  has  descended  to  us,  by  which  the  cause  of  this  persecution  may  be 
explained  ;  and  we  are  left  to  guess  at  the  origin  of  that  reprobation  which 
has  followed  this  reje-cted  people  from  the  earliest  times,  and  in  whatever 
country  they  have  been  found. 

"M.  Ramond,  in  his  disquisition  upon  this  subject,  says,  'The  Cagots  of 
all  France  have  a  common  origin.  The  same  event  has  confined  them  all 
in  the  most  remote  and  desert  spots ;  and,  whatever  this  event  may  be,  it 
must  be  such  as  will  account  for  every  thing— it  must  be  great  and  general — 
must  have  impressed  at  once  upon  the  whole  of  France  the  same  sentiments 
of  hatred — have  marked  its  victims  with  the  seal  of  the  same  reprobation — 
and  have  disgraced  the  race,  and  all  its  subdivisions,  with  the  opprobrium  of 
a  name  which  every  where  awakened  the  same  ideas  of  horror  and  con- 
tempt.' This  is  just  reasoning;  but  we  are  as  far  as  ever  from  the  event 
which  has  fixed  hatred  and  opprobrium  upon  the  dispersed  race  of  Cagots. 
Some  have  held,  that  they  are  descendants  of  lepers,  and,  as  such,  exiled 
from  the  society  of  others ;  but  to  this,  M.  Ramond  replies,  that  although 
lepers  have  been  exiled  or  confined,  there  is  no  record  of  their  having  ever 
been  sold  or  disposed  of  by  testament.  Others  have  contended,  that  the  Ca- 
gots are  the  descendants  of  the  ancient  Gauls,  brought  into  a  state  of  slavery 
by  the  people  who  drove  out  the  Romans  ;  but  to  this  hypothesis,  also,  M. 
Ramond  answers,  that  under  the  dominion  of  the  Goths,  the  Gaul  and  the 
Roman  were  never  reduced  to  a  state  of  slavery ;  and  he  rightly  adds,  that 
the  tyranny  merely  of  a  conqueror  enslaving  the  vanquished,  would  not  ac- 
count for  the  origin  of  the  Cagot ;  because  the  feeling  with  which  the  Cagot 
has  been  regarded,  has  not  been  merely  that  of  .contempt,  but  of  aversion,  and 
even  horror.    But  the  explanation  attempted  by  M.  Ramond  seems  to  me 


390  THE    CAGOTS    OF    FRANCE. 

to  be  alike  inefficient  to  explain  the  origin  of  this  hatred  and  persecution. 
He  says,  '  Such  victory  as  may  have  terminated  the  conflict  of  two  nations 
equally  ferocious  and  inflamed  against  each  other  by.  a  long  train  of  rivalry 
■ — the  invasion  of  one  barbarian  punished  by  another  barbarian — the  reaction 
of  the  oppressed  against  the  oppressor — at  last  completely  disarmed — bloody 
combats — disastrous  defeats — such  only  could  have  been  the  sources  of  the 
hatred  and  fury  which  could  have  given  rise  to  miseries  like  those  which  we 
behold.'  But  it  appears  to  me,  that  such  events  as  M.  Ramond  supposes, 
would  lead  only  to  oppression,  and  perhaps  slavery,  but  not  to  aversion  or 
horror ;  and  that  even  the  deadliest  feelings  of  hatred,  engendered  from  such 
causes,  would  not  have  outlived  the  generation  which  first  imbibed  them. 
But  even  the  explanation  of  M.  Ramond,  if  satisfactory,  would  still  leave  the 
origin  of  Cagots  and  Cagot  persecution  as  dark  as  ever ;  for,  among  the  nu- 
merous hordes  of  barbarians  who  pushed  one  another  from  their  conquests, 
and  among  the  endless  and  confused  strife  of  battles  which  destroyed,  min- 
gled, and  separated  the  different  races,  how  can  we  determine,  whether 
Alans,  or  Suevi,  or  Vandals,  or  Huns,  or  Goths,  or  Francs,  or  Moors,  or 
Saracens,  were  that  peculiar  race,  whose  remnant  has  descended  to  these 
days  with  the  mark  of  persecution  and  hatred  stamped  upon  it  1 

"It  would  prove  to  most  readers  an  uninteresting  detail,  were  I  to  go  over 
the  arguments  of  M.  de  Gebelin,  who  contends  that  the  Cagots  are  the  re- 
mains of  the  Alans ;  or  of  M.  Ramond,  who  believes  them  to  be  a  remnant 
of  the  Goths.  Nothing  approaching  to  certainty, -scarcely  even  bordering 
upon  probability,  appears  in  the  reasoning  of  either.  The  Cagots  may  have 
been  Alans,  or  they  may  have  been  Goths;  but  there  seems  to  be  nearly  the 
same  reason  for  believing  them  the  remnant  of  the  one  as  of  the  other  people. 
If  this  miserable  and  proscribed  race  should,  indeed,  be  all  that  remains 
of  the  Gothic  conquerors  of  half  the  world,  what  a  lesson  for  pride  is  there  ! 

"  I  cannot  conclude  this  hasty  sketch  better  than  in  the  words  of  M.  Ra- 
mond, who,  whatever  his  philosophical  powers  may  be,  is  evidently  a  kind- 
hearted  and  an  observing  man,  and  who  possessed  the  best  of  all  opportuni- 
ties forjudging  of  the  people  which  were  the  object  of  his  inquiry. 

" 1 1  have  seen,'  says  he,  '  some  families  of  these  unfortunate  creatures. 
They  are  gradually  approaching  the  villages  from  which  prejudice  has  ban- 
ished them.  The  side-doors  by  which  they  were  formerly  obliged  to  enter 
the  churches  are  useless  (M.  Ramond  might  have  said  shut  up,  for  so  they 
are  in  general),  and  some  degree  of  pity  mingles,  at  length,  with  the  contempt 
and  aversion  which  they  formerly  inspired  ;  yet  I  have  been  in  some  of 
their  retreats,  where  they  still  fear  the  insults  of  prejudice,  and  await  the- 
visits  of  the  compassionate.  I  have  found  among  them  the  poorest  be- 
ings perhaps  that  exist  upon  the  face  of  the  earth.  I  have  met  with  brothers, 
who  loved  each  other  with  that  tenderness  which  is  the  most  pressing  want 
of  isolated  men.  I  have  seen  among  them  women,  whose  affection  had  a 
somewhat  in  it  of  that  submission  and  devotion  which  are  inspired  by  feeble- 
ness and  misfortune.  And  never,  in  this  half  annihilation  of  those  beings  of 
my  species,  could  I  recognize,  without  shuddering,  the  extent  of  the  power 
which  we  may  exercise  over  the  existence  of  our  fellow — the  narrow  circle 
of  knowledge  and  of  enjoyment  within  which  we  may  confine  him— the 
smallness  of  the  sphere  to  which  we  may  reduce  his  usefulness.'  " — Consta- 
bles Miscellany,  vol.  lxvii.,  pp.  123 — 134. 

The  Breton  antiquarians,  who  find  in  their  own  portion  of  France  the 
same  race,  have  seemed  inclined  to  trace  them  no  farther  back  than  to  the 
lepers  of  the  media3val  times,  victims  as  they  suppose  of  a  disease  brought 
back  into  Europe  by  the  Crusaders.  But  the  allusions  to  this  remarkable 
people  run  back  to  a  far  earlier  era  than  that  of  the  first  crusade.  Michelet. 
the  historian,  leaves  undetermined  (he  origin  of  these  "  Pariahs  of  the  West," 
as  he  calls  them.  The  recent  erudite  and  elaborate  work  of  F.  Michel,  (His- 
toire  des  Races  Maudites  de  la  France  etde  l'Espagne.  Paris,  1847,  2  tomes,) 


THE    CAGOTS    OF    FRANCE.  391 

who  has  devoted  the  first  volume  of  his  treatise  to  the  Cagots,  accepts,  in 
the  main,  as  true,  the  ancient  tradition  that  they  are  chiefly,  though  not  ex- 
clusively, descendants  of  the  Goths,  and  sustains  the  derivation  of  the  name 
supported  by  Scaliger,  Canis  Gothics,  (or  that,  in  token  of  the  popular  hate 
and  scorn,  they  were  styled  Dogs  of  Goths,)  (Michel,  I.  355.)  He  assigns  as 
the  era  of  their  settlement  in  southern  France,  the  disastrous  return  of  Char- 
lemagne, from  his  expedition  into  Spain,  about  the  close  of  the  eighth  cen- 
tury, when  the  residents  of  Spain,  Gothic  and  Arabian,  who  had  adhered  to 
hisbanners,  sought,  on  his  retreat,  safety  from  their  Moorish  masters,  by  re- 
tiring into  Charlemagne's  dominions,  though  meeting  there  the  hereditary  and 
invincible  dislike  of  his  earlier  subjects  already  settled  in  the  regions  where 
he  fixed  these  new  colonists.  The  work  of  Michel  furnishes  the  most  cu- 
rious details,  as  to  the  popular  enmity,  and  social  disadvantages,  and  en- 
venomed contempt,  of  which  the  Cagots  were  for  ten  centuries  the  victims ; 
their  advent  into  France,  according  to  his  theory,  going  back  to  the  times  of 
the  battle  of  Roncesvalles,  so  celebrated  in  the  fables  of  chivalry,  when  Ro- 
land, the  nephew  of  Charlemagne,  and  the  Orlando  of  mediaeval  romance, 
perished,  in  fighting  the  Saracens.