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WORD OF THE SPIRIT
THE CHURCH.
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BOSTON :
WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY.
1859.
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BOSTON:
PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON,
22, School Street.
PREFACE.
This little volume proceeds from a design simply to preach
a sermon. Its substance has mostly been given in the form
of instruction at the West Church ; and, but for exceeding
the proper limits, was proposed also for a Thursday Lecture.
I do not connect my name with its title, because the book
itself contains only some hint of the sublime meaning such
a title suggests. But I write not anonymously, and disown
no just responsibility for whatever I may say. It were
needless to inform any reader, that my subject has been
suggested by the present state of the general mind upon
radical questions of religion ; and as I have alluded in one
passage to the topic of a discourse by Dr. Bellows, which,
beyond most of a similar kind, has succeeded to fame, I ask
leave here to say, that, in the whole drift of my thought, I
have projected an independent treatment of my theme. It
is in no opposition to that gentleman, my most dear friend,
that I could anywhere appear. If I take a different direction,
as seamen have diverse routes to the same ports in Europe
or the Indies, nevertheless I admire the way he has pursued
his ; and I by no means undervalue his course in present-
ing, in some sense, a humble counterpart. Seldom, indeed,
has the press of this country put forth matter, which, for
combination of intellectual power and rhetorical splendor,
with frank speech and a good spirit, can be compared with
his two recent productions. There is no abler advocate alive
4 PREFACE.
of any point in religion he may lay down ; and it may be
doubted if any technically Catholic author in the land has
argued the case of the church so finely, in its humane sig-
nificance as well as its logical force. Evidently, too, he has
done this with a motive disinterested, purged from all per-
sonal aims, and inducing the entire consecration of his ener-
gies to the work of relieving, nourishing, and cheering the
whole fellowship and body of Christ. As the Roman orator
consulted for the republic's safety, he has been anxious lest
the nobler commonwealth should receive harm.
Otherwise, though by necessity of conviction or nature I
may be constrained to speak, I have no regret, but only re-
joicing, in the masterly performance of his undertaken task.
Great good to the denomination of which he is a member, and
to the church at large, must result from the earnest debate he
has had the ability to move. Not from stir, but from sleep,
is our spiritual danger; and New-England men, therefore,
will thank for his work's sake the New-England's son now
their New-York missionary brother. Quite unimportant to
him is such open commendation or recognition. He will
care for the truth only, and welcome from friend or stranger
whatever least sign of its direct shining or faint-reflected
light. Yet is it of consequence to all persons in delicate
bonds of relationship, so far as they may, to keep the public
apprehension in conformity with private esteem. Let this
excuse references such as it is no wont of mine to make.
May He, whose being is the link of all our unions, lead us
into his perfect truth and love !
C. A. BARTOL.
THE
WORD OF THE SPIRIT
THE CHURCH.
T?VERY reader of the Bible must have no
ticed, in the Revelation, the solemn, seven-
fold arraigning of the seven churches in Asia by
the Voice of that wonderful vision described
as appearing to John. This supremacy of the
spiritual in religion over the ecclesiastical is
asserted or implied throughout the New Testa-
ment. In assuming it, however, I design no
contradiction of the plea, that Scripture is not
our only rule ; that the church pre-existing is a
co-ordinate power with the Holy Writ it pro-
duces. But I affirm the amenableness of both
book and body to the Spirit which is their com-
mon parent. Proposing no abstract, but a plain
l
b THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
and practical discussion, I shall speak of the doc-
trine of the Spirit as our only authority in its
Principle, its Abuse, and the Kemedy.
I. Let me treat of the Principle.
There is in every soul, awake to its wants, one
question, — On what authority, as to the things
I should believe and do and hope for, can I rest ?
Always a question, it has of late been agitated
among us with peculiar warmth. According as
it is by individuals for themselves decided one
way or another, what uprooting of the oldest
ties, changing of vital relations, and sudden tra-
versing by human creatures of the whole orbit
of their lives, and sphere of Christendom !
There are a great many answers to this ques-
tion, from all the churches and sects, and modes
of faith, in the world, — answers resolving them-
selves into this invitation from every party:
" Come with us ; we have the truth ; all doctrines
and forms beside ours are spurious." The answer
in the Bible, especially given by Jesus and his
apostles, and also spoken or echoed in the depths
of the soul itself, admits no authority but that
of the Spirit, Ecclesiastical authority, of one
TO THE CHUECH. i
church or another, of the church in part or
altogether, over the soul of man, does not exist.
The church anywhere, local or universal, is but
a creation and agent of the Spirit, useful only so
far as the Spirit is in it represented and obeyed,
accountable to the Spirit for its shortcomings
and misdemeanors. So the writer in the Reve-
lation indicts it at Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos,
Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, for
actual sins and declensions ; noting scarce a sin-
gle branch of it clean of spot, and none without
fearful danger. What a dread list is made out
of sins, — of idolatry, impurity, moral debility,
vanity, lying, lukewarmness, and failing love ;
yea, in the chosen synagogues of the Lord !
This fact, that the church itself is corruptible,
and liable to err, as universal history and expe-
rience indeed prove, blows all to pieces its pre-
tence of supreme authority as to truth, duty, or
destiny. Whence, indeed, comes its right to
stand between the soul and God? Where, in
any Romish, English, Episcopal, Congregational,
Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, or
Calvinistic establishment, does any perfect pu-
rity or wisdom show the warrant of its business
8 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
to command the mind or to order the conduct of
men ? The New Testament deals mostly w r ith
local churches ; and a church more or less local
is alone available to the soul as an authority in
the sense claimed. The church at large is, as
Paul writes to Timothy, the pillar and ground
of the truth. But the fortifying of truth in the
world differs from the inspiring of it in the soul ;
and this text empowers no church, authorizes no
concert, to rule the children of God. When the
people of any sect or denomination would make
proselytes of us, and have nothing better than to
say, " Come with us, and join our communion ;
we alone are Christian, with the warrant of God
and favor in heaven," — then let us reply by dis-
owning any such authority. Even Jesus, with
his disciples, insisted not on anybody's following
visibly in the same troop. He blamed some of
them for rebuking those who chose to do good
their own separate way. Let us, in turn, never
say to any one, " Come with us ; " but, " Go with
the Spirit, and come only so far as you can find it
here ! w Let us heed only such teachers as refer
us, not to their creed, their assembly, their style
or book of worship, as final or sufficient ; but to
TO THE CHURCH. 9
the Spirit of truth, beauty, goodness, — the uni-
versal, infinite, pure, and loving Spirit of God.
But how very vague, indefinite, and impracti-
cable to most persons, teaching such a generality
seems ! " You talk of the consciousness of God,"
said one to a preacher : " I cannot say I ever had
it, or that I even know what you mean." So
many will ask, " What is this Spirit of which
you speak ? We do not find it. Where and how
are we to get it ? When you present to us arti-
cles in a creed, forms of service in a church, to
strike the eye and ear, we can take hold of and
be affected by them. But Spirit, — invisible,
intangible, inaudible, — we are not reached or
touched by it ; and it will not suffice for our
instruction or salvation." I can only answer, Of
such lowest ground a rational creature can take,
let us beware. Unbelief in the Spirit is the
only essential infidelity. I know how men in
religion, as all other things, are moved by out-
ward sights and sounds. I know T how dim and
unreal to gross and carnal minds is internal
influence. Ah ! with what deep policy the an-
cient Catholicism has taken, not only affections
and faculties, but the Jive senses, under its
10 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
charge ! Touch of holy water, smell of incense,
taste of the wafer, sound of music, and sight of
all gorgeous things, are her recruiting sergeants,
sponsors for her votaries, and sentinels at her
gates. A late traveller, accustomed to our sim-
plest New-England worship, tells, what is plain
to every just observer, how, in a Romish cathe-
dral in Paris, it seemed to her the splendid and
noisy spectacle was contrived in every part to
draw the soul away from itself, so that it could
not dwell on the realities revealed within. I
will not undertake to say what proportion of
human beings are in so sensuous and irrational
a state, that such appeals of swinging censers,
choral voices, holy crossings, and solemn masses,
alone can win their sacred regard. Let us be at
least magnanimous enough to allow that the
same mode of religion cannot affect equally all
men. Some outward mode is in all cases neces-
sary for social man. The question, then, is not
of having any form, but of the sort and pro-
portion of form ; its relation to the Spirit ;
in short, whether our very forms shall, as
they may, be spiritual or not. There is such
a thing as a spiritual form. In the bread and
TO THE CHURCH. 11
wine of the Supper, Jesus meant to establish
such a one : for how earnestly he corrected his
disciples' first misapprehension, of eating his
flesh and drinking his blood, by declaring the
vital and spiritual sense of his words ; thus dis-
allowing and denouncing beforehand the Romish
superstition, so inveterate, of his bodily presence
in the Eucharist ! The form of a man, when the
man is intent on carnal pleasure, is a material
form indeed. But when it is lighted with
thought, and sublimed with holy love, while the
meanings of the heavenly world flash frequent
as an electric summer night in every expres-
sion, and are re-enforced with tones of inspira-
tion, how spiritual ! — transfigured as truly as
Christ's on the mountain.
The Spirit itself has necessary external chan-
nels, — temples, rites, and appointed days, — as
well as a secret apparition. All Christians prac-
tically own the need and value of some sensible
method and concerted order of praise, prayer, and
teaching, for united and affectionate devotion.
Nevertheless, we may consistently disown, and
discard from our practice, and resist, that impo-
sition of the pomp and excess of ritual which
12 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
eclipses the hidden Deity, and drowns his whis-
per in the heart. Indeed, my aim in this essay
is, against all lower judgments, to affirm the
existence of a great and growing number in
the community, for whom the plainest style of
adoration is the best. We, Independents, in
our dependency on God, deny that any more of
mechanism and repetition and symbolic dis-
play than we already possess and use is need-
ful or would be profitable for ourselves or our
children. Men are, indeed, still too gregarious.
I saw the foremost in a flock of sheep lately
sidle from the country road, and leap through a
ragged, uncomfortable gap in the wall ; and no
efforts of the drivers, with whips and exclama-
tions, could keep a single one of the hundred
from leaping through at the very same place.
It is astonishing how like a flock of sheep we,
with all our nobler humanity, still are, as we
rush, one vast, emulating, imitative crowd, to the
exhibition, the parade, the play, the new engine,
the balloon, or oration. Let us not overlook
signal advantages in this excitable sympathy,
but only be advised of the mischief it must work
if it hinder or over weigh our sublimer, solitary
NJ
TO THE CHURCH. 13
fellowship with God; and aver the legitimacy
of a host of religious believers, whose religion is
not to part with their personality in the closest
accordance of their prayers. They cannot sur-
render their position. They are far enough from
being the majority ; but they ask for room !
The question between the Church and the
Spirit is, whether corporate power shall have
undue ratio in religion. It was the very ques-
tion between Luther and the pope. Luther,
shocked with the iniquities of Eome, as John
was with those of the churches in Asia, cast off
her authority, and maintained the soul's privi-
lege of immediate access to God. The pope,
the cardinals, the councils, said, " No: the Church
is between the soul and God, vested with his
authority. You cannot come to it or have it by
yourself alone, or at all, save through our rule."
Here was the battle. It is very commonly sup-
posed and declared, that the German reformer
fought for the right of private judgment. This,
as the best scholars now appear to agree, is a
great mistake of his design. He hardly believed
in that, or was true to it if he did. Later than
his day was it politically vindicated, if not dis-
14 THE WOKD OF THE SPIRIT
covered. Even yet we grope after its nature
and limits.
But the sublimer principle, that the private
soul has an approach to its Author otherwise and
more direct than through the church-door, Lu-
ther did preach and exemplify, and conquer the
right to exemplify and preach ; as it is the posi-
tion on which, in every free body, as our Lord
requires, we stand and build. Is it said, " The
Holy Ghost does not visit the private soul " ?
I might reply, Certainly it does not most com-
placently visit the unloving soul, unconscious of
its dear ties with other members of the Father's
family, if I did not remember, that, though the
loving soul alone may receive it abundantly, it
alone can quicken the dead soul to love. But
to insist that it can enter these inner chambers
of the bosom only through the material courses
of our formal connection with, and obeisance to,
some external organization, is to revive the de-
spotic claim which all our spiritual ancestry, with
Jesus at the head, exploded ; and no coming
age, according as it is virtuous or enlightened,
can abide. We are Protestants in virtue of our
negative attitude to the tyranny that would pre-
TO THE CHURCH. 15
vent our positive communion with our Almighty
Source, and our share of all the riches of life
and love, self-sacrifice, toil for our race, and hope
of immortality, it imparts. A draught at the
fountain, instead of the lower, muddy stream, is
that for which we cry. What but private souls,
astir with the love of God and mankind, and so
refreshing their powers at the spring of all good-
ness, have been the redeemers of the church
and the world? In how many a single, burning,
prophetic breast God has chosen his peculiar
battery of power !
But will any one inquire again, if this postu-
late of the sole authority of the Spirit does not
vacate that of the Lord Jesus Christ ? I rejoin,
It is the very and only authority of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the exact authority he asserts and
enjoins. Though he had, as he said, the Spirit
without measure, he cites the Spirit as the only
sufficient supply for all. Before the glory and
infinity of the Spirit he himself how meekly re-
tires ! How he affirms his individuality to be
nothing before the grandeur of its revelation;
tells the disciples, the Spirit must be their in-
structor after he should vanish away; and de-
16 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
clares to the Pharisees the pardonableness of
speaking against him, but not against that Spirit,
which was the very power of the All-Holy and
Eternal One ! How his lesson for all the world is,
that to be born of that Spirit, whose only earthly
semblance is the strong and boundless wind, is
every mortal nature's urgent and inevitable need !
Theologians have disputed about the procession
of the Spirit, — ■ whether it be from the Father
only, or from the Father and the Son. He who
was the Son countenances no subtle reasoning
about what he takes for granted in its vital
force, its open privilege and universal oppor-
tunity, in the possible experience of every child
of Him who to each asker gives himself, in won-
derful communication, more freely than earthly
parents make their little presents of bread or
raiment or gold. The doctrine, that there is for
the soul no authority but the Spirit, is not my
doctrine, but that of Scripture and of Heaven,
and of him whose very name was the Word of
God ; he being, indeed, always what he saw and
said.
Undoubtedly there are ways and means, as
well as "a direct illumination, of the Spirit; but
TO THE CHURCH. 17
the Spirit is not to be limited to ways and means
of any name or kind or number. What the
procession of that Spirit is, when it began, how
far it goes, how many minds or ages it includes,
or where it shall end, who shall tell? Jesus
did not commence it ; historical Christianity did
not create it ; it is uncreated. All its prophets
have never been mentioned to us. To make us
more sensible of it is the office of our faith. I
can only, in a few poor words, indicate its pre-
sence or describe its work.
I beg you, my reader, to consider, then, that
there is something in you beside yourself. There
is something in the air around you, not of the
atmosphere, which the chemist cannot solve.
There is a light, not of the sun, lighting every
man that cometh into the world. There is a
voice beyond that of man or nature, gentler
than the softest whisper in counsel to us, and
louder than the rending thunder in our remorse.
There is a feeling of present divinity, of which
we are never quite rid. There is a being we
are conscious of above our own, ordaining, sup-
porting, commanding, awing, consoling, teach-
ing, blessing it. In our solitude there is another
18 THE WOED OF THE SPIRIT
with us ; and, in our society, One, invited or
uninvited, not counted in the list or written on
the cards. It is the Spirit. The flash of truth
in you, the path of honor pointed before you, the
impulse of justice to walk therein, your act of
goodness, your abstinent purity, — these are all
from it. Your thought of perfect kindness, may
God give it ! — your flame of holy love, may God
kindle it ! — your swifter than arrow's flight of
ascending prayer, — did you make these with
your cunning contrivance, your curious fingers,
and of your own potent will ? No : the Spirit
breathed them into you. Part and parcel of the
Spirit they are. They alone are intrinsic evi-
dence, that all your ideas of a great Father's
yearning, of a higher state for your departed
ones, as being dearer to him than to yourself,
are not vanity. I did not make my love : then a
higher Love made it, and will justify it for ever.
You did not create your own apprehensions of
Eternal Purity and Goodness : you, then, may
trust and hope in them, spite of sorrow and
death, to enliven and save and keep you world
without end. They are beams which, followed,
must bring you to the resplendent orb. They
TO THE CHURCH. 19
are the essential stuff of which the universe is
formed, without which there would be no uni-
verse ; and in them you are immortal and ever-
lasting.
Proofs and confessions of this abound. They
afford the most touching tales of all history.
Said a wise minister, giving to some younger
men his ordination-charge, " When an idea of
goodness rises in you, prize it beyond whole libra-
ries of learning.' 7 Such an idea is more worth
than all books and Bibles. Said a wife to her
husband, — a man of apocalyptic imagination,
like John's, he was, — a Why do you pace round
the room, muttering so to yourself?" — lL Be-
cause/' he humorously answered, " I like to talk
to a prudent person." But his conference may
have been with the Holy Ghost. For we are in-
deed in no closet or desert ever alone. There is
a second person always ; or, rather, each one of
us is second, and that first. If u one with God is a
majority," who may not be in the majority when-
ever he wall ; yea, though the people rage, his
friends forsake him, and public opinion crucify ?
Such communion is not always divine. A man
may move his lips thus in conference strangely,
20 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
when Satan, or some ill demon, is his consulting
advocate for the case in hand ; but the Spirit of
our Father in heaven offers itself for our compa-
nion and the mate of our mind. When we
accept it, it is the only authority in religion.
There is no contradiction between it and the
lustre of Holy Writ. Its accents are in unison,
as he assures us, with the word of our Lord.
All solemn, sincere exercises and authentic di-
vine records are but its remembrances and
signs and precious provocations. To refuse it
is alone to be faithless, hopeless, selfish, and
unforgiven.
But, do you say, " We are not single and sepa-
rate believers, after all : we are a church. It does
not signify in this matter what passes between a
man apart and his God. Perhaps there is no
road between God and a lonely man. Perhaps
we can travel into heaven only through each
other's hearts ! How does this Spirit manifest
itself, seek and solicit us in our union together ? "
Truly this is the question. " In no disorderly,
extemporaneous way," say a host of our fellow-
Christians, " but in a set style of worship and
fixed arrangement of words." Not thus alone or
TO THE CHUKCH. 21
chiefly, I reply. I will not deny that living water
can run in canals, or stand fresh for a w^hile in
reservoirs, like the huge granite one yonder, as
well as bubble from fountains and flow in streams.
But that it is any better water for its confine-
ment and standing, I am not disposed to admit.
That it may become stagnant, who does not
know ? That, in every basin and service-pipe
of meeting-house or missionary enterprise, ex-
cept for its mysterious and incalculable supply
from the cloudy pavilion of God, it would utterly
give out, and be dryer than the potsherd Job
scraped himself with, or than the ashes among
which in his soreness he sat down, what bigoted
formalist, save in utter stupidity, can deny ?
But it is alleged, that, among dissenters from
the Establishment, the tide of devotion is low, if
not, indeed, quite run out. Does not a noted
Unitarian, in a late letter from abroad, announce
it so among Unitarians ? Yes ; and how many
opponents echo and reduplicate the charge !
" Oh ! " say some to the free congregations, with
their spontaneous style, "you do not go to church
for worship at all, but to hear preaching, and see
what a man, called by courtesy a minister, can
2
22 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
invent with his genius, if he have any, and do by
himself.' 7 But must not a man or men, in some
sense, speak and do every thing, in whatsoever
convention ? Is the form or phrase of devotion,
by a man pronounced, in itself more holy, I won-
der, than the periods of a discourse ? What
rescript from the kingdom ever so declared it ?
Is not the Spirit at liberty, if it will, to take the
sermon, too, for its instrument, and pour its
treasures of celestial feeling and spotless pur-
pose through that into the hearers' minds ? Does
it not often flood the breast with love, humility,
and new resolve, in this very way ? Is it not
more likely to do so than through the long, mono-
tonous repetitions of the same supplicatory lan-
guage, against which Jesus warned us, so apt
to become mechanical and dead, or through
homilies more lifeless and uninspired? Is not
all speech of truth a lowly homage and bowing
before God? Does shutting one's eyes, or put-
ting a handkerchief to one's forehead, constitute
devoutness? Or does it consist in stating and
accepting the divine law ? Nay, did not Jesus
himself, the great example, preach to people,
earnestly and at length, a great deal more than
TO THE CHURCH. 23
he prayed among them? Are we to insult him
by alike rejecting his pattern and despising his
word? No; but to pour and welcome religious
affection, adoration, illumination, through hymn,
address, doxology, benediction, — every portion,
however administered, of this real drama of
knowledge and praise.
u But the minister does it all," it is scornfully
said and flung at the congregational style,
wherein there is no general reading and reciting
as in a monitorial school. Not so, I maintain,
need or should it be. Not so is it, unless to our
shame ! Silent as a worshipping assembly may
be in that living quiet, deep as the hush of
death, it is no solitary actor that is engaged in
conducting the service. Talk, of one or a mul-
titude, is not the only communion. Many a
mute listener is more active with God than
sometimes is the loud, swaying, perspiring
figure in the desk. Gesticulation and noise are
not activity of soul. Often, and most likely
when the magazines of heaven are open through
the minister's mind, ecstasy of consent and aspi-
ration removes every barrier of the pews. Be-
side the lips of one poor mortal man that are
24 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
moving, all are performing their part. Each
communicating soul in the attendant multitude
mingles its desires and confessions in the ascrip-
tion of homage, and receives the answer of
direction and comfort and peace.
The Spirit, then, is our only authority. If I
were going to name a church, it would not be
Church of the Trinity or Unity, of the Disciples
or the Episcopate, of Saints or Souls, nor even
of the Messiah or Saviour, dear unspeakably as
these titles may be ; but of the Spirit whence
Messiah and Saviour drew. Be we apart or to-
gether, let us mind the Spirit. Let us look and
listen for it. Let us meditate and pray till it
arrive, and unveil itself to cheer us. The rea-
son we do not hear and receive it more is the
tumult we are in of other things. Late at night,
some time ago, six miles off, I stood waiting near
the tower of a village-church. The clock struck.
The mellow vibration continued after the ham-
mer stopped, till I was amazed at its long dura-
tion. If other earthly noises are not allowed to
encroach too much, the Spirit, with sweeter
tone than of any instrument, will continue
sounding in our souls.
11 He that hath an ear," — that is, everybody, —
** let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the
churches." We all have an ear, deeper than of the
flesh, hearkening to something beneath all bells
and breezes, tongues or outward motions. It is
the dearest desire of my heart, if I know what it
is, that we Congregationalists should be a church
of the Spirit, in this finer hearing. Our service
is called bare and meagre. We must bear the
reproach. Doubtless the sonorous, priestly in-
toning and responding from sabbath to sabbath
of the same idolized words (is not the idolatry of
words as bad a violation of the command as that
of graven images ?) would, in the weakness of
human nature, win greater crowds, filling the
seats, and stir them to a more vivid superficial
delight. But would it be spiritual and profitable
to the soul ? I think not ; and I thank God, as
a Congregationalist, for our joint success, and
our hope still to prosper, without such alluring
accessories, not in the gospel, which might con-
vert people to us, and not to him. Let us trust
his Spirit. With combined and separate en-
treaty, let us beseech it. In our life, let us obey
it. For the building of our character, unseen
26 THE WOED OF THE SPIRIT
and mysterious as it is, let us rely on it. The
stout and aged woods grow from invisible gases
of earth and air. Breathing what we never saw
fashions and sustains our own fearful and won-
derful frame. To this city and Jerusalem of our
abode, wide acres yonder, pushing out the tide,
are added by a puff of transparent steam, turn-
ing the iron wheels that roll hills, interior and
out of sight, into sea-side, solid plains to hold
up streets and dwellings and courts of the Lord.
Could we open ourselves to the working of that
marvellous force, which exceeds all the elements
of nature and applications of art, there would be
a moral result transcending material growth
and human structures, as eternal glories shame
the triumphs of sense and of time.
IT. There is an Abuse to be considered.
I have stated the doctrine of Scripture and
reason, that the Spirit is the only authority in
religion. I have defined, and tried to vindicate,
our old ancestral position. Are we worthy the
position ? In the Old-Testament story, the ark
of the Lord was held by ungodly hands, and
the anger of the Lord smote the holder dead.
TO THE CHURCH. 27
So many professors of truth come short of the
glory of their trust. We pride ourselves in
being Liberal Christians. But there is a sort of
liberal Christian that ought to be disturbed.
We are hot in our liberality against rites and
creeds, especially exclusive dogmas of fanati-
cism, and forms of the High Church. • We call
ourselves spiritual. I am not insensible of the
graces of many of the spiritual school. In their
purity, piety, and humanity, they are among the
best of Christ's witnesses and God's children on
earth. But I have now to speak of the disloyal
or defective spiritualist, whose so-called spiritu-
ality is an abuse. He is a Liberal Christian,
graciously accepting the name, and, in the coun-
ter designation of Orthodoxy, recognizing only
errors from which he revolts ; yet he is of very
small credit to his own faith. He seems correct
on the negative side. He is shocked at such
notions as total depravity, moral inability, vica-
rious punishment, and everlasting woe. He is a
very intellectual man, and no one ever accused
him of a want of sense. He is a keen critic of
other people's mistakes, little as he applies the
knife, violently as he may resist its application,
28 THE WOED OF THE SPIEIT
to himself. He sees the truth as with a pro-
phet's vision. But there is no nerve running
from his eye to hand. He does scarce a trifle of
the truth he sees. He is a perfectly religious
man in theory. He acknowledges the beauty
and the bond of every divine sentiment and law.
But he wears his religion quite as uncomfortably
as a certain man I knew of did his cork-leg,
which he put on occasionally because it helped
him to get along to his office through the street ;
but took off whenever he could, because it made
him so uneasy, and did not feel like part of him-
self.
*Ah ! if we laid aside all the religion we use
simply to further us through this world, how
much should we have left ? Let us remember
the fate of the wood, hay, stubble. How tho-
roughly our gay and zealous friend of theolo-
gical progress manages to forget ! Indeed, this
advocate of the Spirit is a singular character.
He has no superstition, and no devotion either ;
he is no bigot and no enthusiast; he curses no-
body with his austerity, and blesses nobody with
his love ; he does not fear God, and does not
truly worship him. Very often he is a respecta-
TO THE CHURCH. 29
able man, no open sinner, commits no gross
excess, has no iron fist or brazen face ; but all
virtue and all vice alike seem with him to sink
and disappear in some vast, empty gulf — like
those dry pits that in some places deform the
earth's surface • — of actual indifference, spring-
ing from philosophic unconcern. u Am I that
name?" with ineffable tenderness, in the play,
asks Desdemona, when her real sanctity had
been so unfairly coupled with a vile term. We
have plenty of ignominious appellations for our
opponents, and many a grand and noble one for
ourselves. Witness our sermons, conversations,
newspapers, and reviews, in which so easily and
cheaply we can run our opponents down, and
exalt ourselves to the skies ! But, when we use
the generous title spiritual to describe our own
class of believers, how many careless and worldly
persons among us, nominally included in the
class, might very reasonably, in another w T ay,
inquire, " Are we that name ? " No ; not unless
the spirituality goes from your brain to your
heart, touches your countenance, enriches your
voice, and hallows every member of your body
and act of your life with the mighty and gentle
30 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
manners that mark the children of God. If you
be but a voter for the spiritual faith, a retained
lawyer in its cause, a professor of the heart, with
no warm heart under the profession, you carry
men forward no more than does a painted vehi-
cle, and praise God no more than the show-pipe
on the organ.
Therefore, when we thus hold forth the Spirit
as the only authority, we must not be surprised
if those who differ from and narrowly observe
us say, in scorn, "Oh! the Spirit, is it? That
can be quoted for any thing ! " Nor is it a
sufficient reply, though proverbially true, that
"the Bible can be quoted for any thing; as
even the Devil can, and in human shape does,
fetch Scripture to justify his ends." Let us
rather honestly confess there is a specious and
spurious as well as genuine spirituality. To
spirituality itself, in the highest point of new
thought and original excellence, no objection
should be made. Let us have the absolute reli-
gion of which so much is said. Of Transcendent-
alistSj for five and twenty years, we have been
hearing. Where are they? A Transcendentalist,
I suppose, ought to be a person who transcends,
TO THE CHURCH. 31
exceeds, other people in wisdom and virtue.
Let us have transcendental love and sanctity.
Alas ! the misery is, that our transcendentalists
are so many of them no transcendentalists, but
terribly fail to enact the superior mind and cha-
racter they preach. The famous spirituality of
many is only a proposition, not a fact.
In truth, Christianity itself is a religion far
more absolute than any other which, under such
a designation, has been proclaimed. Compare
the New Testament with the lectures and dis-
courses in these days delivered to supersede it,
and judge for yourselves ! Jesus Christ ivas
the wondrous truth and goodness of which he
told. In his disciples, thus far in the world's his-
tory, the manifesto has come nearest to a reality;
and no man has proved more manly or divine for
fancying he had outgrow T n the gospel. When
our neighbors propound something as better
than that, we at least ask the privilege, as law-
ful for systems as for articles of merchandise, of
inspecting. In the mock-auctions of a neighbor-
ing metropolitan city, articles of jewelry and
gold are every week struck off at what to the
purchaser seem wonderfully low prices, till he
\2 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
iearns that the precious metal of his glittering
new time-piece is pinchbeck, and the lustrous
gem cunning paste. Then, on his complaint,
lo ! what screams of remonstrance and denial to
the officers of justice from the detected auc-
tioneer ! So when, by some searching mind,
dealers in the counterfeits of moral principle are
exposed, how they resent the slander of their
reputation, and outrage on their sense of charac-
ter and self-respect ! Nevertheless is it needful
to guard against all the forms which the bad and
hollow spirituality of the day may put on.
At home and abroad, the cry is lifted, that
every thing in these times we eat or drink or
wear, or use any way for the convenience, com-
fort, or necessity of existence, — every thing is
adulterated. We talk of the order of the day.
Adulteration is the order of the day in our great
social parliament of trade. We walk by the
shop-window, and see in capital letters, on
boxes and jars, the unblushing pledge of a parti-
cular manufacture, — foreign importation from
London, Paris, Vienna, — the pretended genu-
ine composition of what is a base mixture, a
forgery, and a poison ; and the very dealers, in
TO THE CHURCH. 33
what to our children at least is one essential
part of our domestic diet, tell us now, at last,
that by no possible efforts of theirs can they
persuade their agents even to let us have the
small allowance of taking our milk and water
separate I It becomes a sober investigation
indeed, when we must withstand the worse
foisting-in of untrue types of spirituality.
Some of these I proceed to name.
The first is the negligent type, noticeable in
not a few, who, like old Gallio in Achaia, care
for none of these things. They thank God, and
sacredly swear to men, that they are emanci-
pated from the heavy, galling yoke of creeds
and forms. They have espoused, for their part,
the simpler, spontaneous, congregational, liberal
worship. But do they value and support the
very worship they have espoused ? How
much ? Two hours a week ? Ah ! — following
out that figure of espousal, — what woman
would be content with tokens of regard only
equal to those they pay to their own portion of
that church which is in Scripture called the
bride of Christ ! How constant is their attend-
ance, and how earnest their attention ? Do
34 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
they neglect even the simple means they pos-
sess ? How big a cloud in the sky does it take
to keep, not alone the sick and weak, but half
the congregation, away ? Truly, I fear that is a
problem it would cost the mathematical chair at
Cambridge, with all its world-renowned genius
in meteorology, too much labor to solve ! Why
do they absent themselves ? Because there is
no help for them in the sanctuary ? And mean-
while, too pious for these courts, are they in
their closets and on their knees ? Let them
answer before God ! What dress must they
wear, or other fashionable circumstance observe,
w T hen they appear? How much heart have
they, even on the spot, of fellowship with their
fellow-worshippers? Does it astonish and pain
to hear such interrogations from the lips, per-
haps, of one who is continually charged with
being too mild and softly exculpatory of every
sin in his discourse ? To put the interrogations
is greater pain ! Very pleasant was it to unfold
the principle of authority as being in the Spirit
alone, but a strange, unwelcome work to inquire
after our derelictions from it. Yet if any of us be
selfish individuals, disconnected particles of the
TO THE CHURCH. 35
common soul, united in no bonds of affectionate
communion, but rather like so many slippery mar-
bles, together only because of the bag or vessel
that holds them, and rolling each its own inde-
pendent way as soon as released, why then the
coldest ritualist we denounce is just as good as
we, and the revivalist, that copies the engineer
throwing pitch into his furnace, has more claim
to respect, sublime as may be the maxims of
freedom and knowledge and toleration, which,
as lights of the world, we set forth ! Little in
the judgment of God, very little at the door of
heaven, will it avail a worldly, miserly, and icy-
tempered man, that he cast in his lot with the
most enlightened and advanced denomination.
You who are anywhere, in village or city, called
a society j corporation, parish, churcli, ask your-
selves what mutual ties, strongly binding and
gladly owned, correspond to these names !
What vital relation, not to the place, the pulpit,
and the minister alone, but to each other, do
you sustain ?
But again : there is also the lax as well as the
negligent type of this spurious spirituality, of
which we should beware. It is no new thing for
36 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
those, thinking themselves saved by their own
faith or by grace from on high, to imagine
their morals no essential matter. " We need a
preacher yet to come/ 7 said one, " to inculcate
simple morals ! " What theories about the indul-
gence of the appetites, the relations of the sexes,
the obligations of the married state, and all the
show and luxury and pride of life, — yea, under
the color of a more elevated and spiritual condi-
tion, — prevail among many, who have adopted
the spiritual principle, in the sense at least of
throwing off all the bondage and law of the let-
ter ! Truly, by such, not only all bonds are dis-
owned, but all liberties taken.
Manifold are the demonstrations of this ini-
quity and disease. It is a grief to allude to the
flippant vanity with which, for example, shallow-
hearted persons, in print or talk, declaim against
faulty popular patterns of adoration and duty,
while they themselves, by no grand or lowly
trait, furnish the least recommendation of a finer
standard. Because they are free from some
groundless terrors and old slaveries of inherited
opinion, they conceive they are better than any
hero of an evangelical missionary or Catholic
TO THE CHURCH. 37
saint of the calendar, — any Judson or Fen^lon :
as though some smooth popinjay of a play-
thing should in its levity, as it makes little
noise, be praised up for a grander utensil than
the huge engine that creaks and groans with
its ancient service; or some new-painted plea-
sure-yacht of feasters on their trip down the
harbor be preferred to the ship, the ugly barna-
cles on whose bottom show her voyage through
distant deeps; or to the " Great Eastern/' because
an explosion, not shattering her bulk, has oc-
curred in part of her works ! To slough off the
dead skin of old habit may be well ; but for a
spiritual religion, I apprehend, real qualities are
required. If there were no life or beauty under
the skin, why need a creature be rid of it
at all?
It is a bitterness to the soul when educated
literary or scientific men fail of that bowing be-
fore the Supreme Being, and obeying of his law,
which is the only crown of other attainments,
however splendid. Without it, other attain-
ments are next to nought. It is almost a dis-
couragement to faith itself to read the page of
some English, German, American critic, and
3
38 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
have to say to him, u Your objections are well
put ; but where are the sweetness and humanity
which should wait on your views, so enlarged ?
Why this towering arrogance and jealous am-
bition instead ? You renounce the bad, and
acquire not the good ! w It would seem as if we
could have no leaders among us in this country
who are not egotists. It is alarming to see, in
any shape, that worst paradox and monster
chiefly generated, as the ethical geologist would
tell us, in the most recent periods, the unspiritual
spiritualist.
11 Are there any spirits present ? v is the ques-
tion regularly put in the circles of which we
hear so much. I will not say it is a question of
sheer nonsense and pure folly. Fbelieve spirits
of the departed, good or bad, may be present.
Whether they communicate or not in the way
supposed, is indeed another affair. Of that I am
yet to be convinced; although I would rather
credit the coarsest spiritualism thoughtful men
question and our wiseacres curse than be one of
those many Sadducees, believing in neither
angel nor spirit, who perhaps crowd so after the
best places and sweetest morsels of all earthly
TO THE CHURCH. 39
good, because they expect or possess no hea-
venly ! But certainly, without waiting at the
table for rapping or writing, for mysterious lights
or incomprehensible motions, to the question it-
self, " Are any spirits present ? " we may answer,
M Ay, the Spirit you perhaps little thought of,
the Spirit of God, is present ; and all spirits be-
side in the universe cannot eclipse it,, and should
not put it out of mind ! " That Spirit, glorious
in majesty, wondrous in praises, though not
grossly manifested, as it cannot be to mortal
sense, never goes. It abides to rebuke every
carnal way into which our shining premises
licentiously open, and to call us into paths of
purity, honor, and peace. I have no liking for
a long and rigid face of pietism. I account the
thought of God a cheerful and smiling thing.
But I say, better belong, like Saul before his
conversion, to the " most straitest sect " now of
our religion, than take a loose privilege of being
deaf to that Holy Spirit's word !
But of this pseudo-spiritualism one species
remains, that ought to be named distinctively
by itself: I mean the vindictive. This is the
proudest, most pretending, and plausible of all.
40 THE WOED OF THE SPIEIT
Nay, it begins with most sincerely attempting
the reform of every evil. But the mighty enter-
prise, through the mingling of unworthy human
passions, becomes gradually inflammatory and
inordinate in its steps. The vindictive spiritual-
ist not only scourges the sin : he denounces the
sinner; gives him no quarter; pursues him in
public as well as in private, by name, and in the
sharpest and most scorching terms. With out-
stretched, contemptuous finger, he points at
rents, which we all have, in the robes of his
fellow-creature, forgetting there may be in his
own, however handsome -looking coat, holes
larger and worse, if not the same ; and, though
he be free from the numerous transgressions he
lashes, his very lashing may, and, if without kind
affection of which he gives small proof, will,
become in the sight of God more odious than
them all. " You/ 7 said one to his friend, who dis-
claimed certain habits, — " you have, then, none
of these vices of smoking and drink?" — " No/ 7
was the reply ; " but that old Serpent, the
Devil, that crept into paradise, may creep into
my soul through some one large passage, as well
as through many smaller apertures."
TO THE CHUKCH. 41
A man's self-deception in his malignity and
revenge is space enough to let in the entire reti-
nue of the adversary. To stick knives or pins
into the flesh is not considered kind. Is it more
kind studiously to hurt and torment the feelings
of the mind ? No : this is a bad quality. It is
made up of conscience, conceit, and hate, with-
out divinity or love. This vindictive mood is
confined to no one party. Every one shows it
who does not love in his heart the very antago-
nist he blames. It does not signify whether it
is the conservative, who has sometimes declared
that he would like to drive the antislavery man,
the reformer, like a brute through the street,
and would not interfere, or throw him a rope, if
he were in the water, to save him from drown-
ing ; or the radical, who for ever girds at the
dead dissenter from his thought, or, with angry
voice and spiteful pen, insults gray heads that
are crowns of glory, if we have any on earth,
among the living. On both sides, it is anti-
spiritual, or, if spiritual at all, not after a hea-
venly sort, but that of the place otherwise
entitled and described. Speaking without per-
sonality, there is a combative character, liable
42 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
to its own sins. The American prize-fighter is
not the only bully ; the Italian, who sells his
dagger, is not the only bravo: there may be
duellists without swords or pistols, and an assas-
sin with no club or knife. I have seen one hunt
his adversary, m. full view of the common eye,
for a special foible or bad habit, till I thought
the vengeful pursuit of any crime or sin the
worst of all crimes and sins ; for if, imitating
the style of the naturalist, we should essay a
new classification of offences, we should have to
put, not sensuality or bribery, bad as they are,
but cruelty, that cuts coolly in two a fellow-
man's heart, at the head.
The self-appointed sheriff and volunteer exe-
cutioner in the spiritual world, like the Hebrew
avenger of blood, runs swift and eager after his
victim, with thrust and sneer, and laughter-
provoking gibes of no good-humored kind. But
he does not resemble the Christian. Oh ! how
far is he from the Christ ! God be thanked for
him, once in the flesh, and his image ever in the
world ! So sadly tender as well as awfully solemn
he was, even in what are called his denuncia-
tions ! But bitter and inhuman are the sentences
TO THE CHURCH. 43
on guilt of those Pharisees, ancient and modern,
for whom to be pleased is to persecute. God
save us from being of that vindictive class of
the falsely spiritual, whose pleasure is in their
satire ! God deliver me from any satisfaction,
God smite me with a holy distress, in portraying
their mistakes in periods I abbreviate as much
as I can ! God pardon us all our partaking of
such guilt ! We recoil at the theological conceit,
that the redeemed in glory find their comfort in
the torments of the lost. But I know not that
it is any better to enjoy tormenting the life or
maligning the repute of our fellow-men on earth,
than to delight in seeing their misery beyond
the grave. Surely nothing but the hope of
defending some against the abuse of this su-
preme doctrine, of the Spirit our only authority,
could have persuaded me to the scrutiny of
morbid symptoms I have made. May the Spirit
itself of God and our Father defend us, guide
and heal !
III. The Eemedy.
Be it said first, respecting the abuse of their
own doctrine in the spiritual school, it is all
44 THE WORD OP THE SPIRIT
told by themselves. However other orders of
Christians may disclose or conceal their trou-
bles, these people certainly make a clean breast.
Little they heed Napoleon's pithy proverb of
" doing our washing at home." Rather they point
to the soil on their garments, and ingenuously
describe every vain attempt at its removal.
Such confession is never a signal of the worst.
Even the self-imputation of a want of faith, into
which a brave brother articulates manifold whis-
pers of doubt, must be taken with this grain of a
salt that has not lost its savor. This quality of
the lowly and praying publican should never
discourage us. Good and saintly men will always
lament the coldness or decline of religion. The
world is to them ever half a ruin. Said a dis-
tinguished Baptist to me lately, " I consider
piety everywhere at a low ebb." Before the
glorious and soaring ideal, by which we are
tantalized and rebuked, our actual faith hangs
behind, as from its swift motion streams back
the comet's train of light.
The account of the evil is itself a great
exaggeration. It is a mistake for even sacred
sorrow to become excessive, inspire distrust of
TO THE CHURCH. 45
sound premises, and paralyze exertion by run-
ning into despair. A tender conscience always
overrates the evil in the world. The abso-
lute grief at transgression and defect may not
be inordinate, yet its relative statement may
miss the mark of general truth. Courage against
the world, the flesh, and the Devil with all his
hosts, is every sincere man's rightful and only
starting-point. " Fear," well said one, " is no
argument." What is it, even connected with
the ablest intellect, but Polyphemus in his cave,
— power without sight? Let us not suspect
the spiritual principle, whatever monster may
come pretending to be its child, nor compromise
it by confounding its legitimate operation with
its abuse. If a man issues a book, or makes a
speech, containing more gall than belongs to
a healthy system, and puts it on the spiritual
ground, let us not desert that ground, but in-
quire whether he fairly occupies it. Let nothing-
scare us from laying our emphasis still on the
Spirit. It is our only hope. It has sure healing
for every sickness of the soul. As to unbelief,
where does every test show its centre to be ?
Verily, not in the Protestant part of Christendom,
46 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
but in Rome ! The last dot of the telegraph tells
of its fearful spread among the youth of Italy.
The French About, with his essay on the Roman
question, is but one of a thousand witnesses.
Yet 7 at every hint of unsatisfied hunger on
the rationalist side, how the mother-church —
settled on her seven hills — lifts and a little flut-
ters her wings, as if to receive under them more
of her wayward brood ! She offers us her vote
in exchange, if we will give up our immediate
reliance on the grace of God. Let ns decline
the proxy !
For, next, let it be said to her, that unbelief
itself is not always bad or wrong. If, from the
midst of the scepticism that secretes itself under
her huge cover, she sneers at the doubts that go
along with our liberty, — as the Bible tells us
our liberty goes along with the Spirit of the
Lord, — let us reply, that these very doubts may
have a good, certainly not a quite melancholy,
account of themselves to give. The divinity-
student, who went to the elder Henry Ware
mournfully to own that he was troubled with
doubts, was astonished at the good man's reply,
that he had certainly made much progress if he
TO THE CHURCH. 47
had got so far as to doubt ! Of the very doubts
in question, incident in these days to the exer-
cise of our rational nature, we ask, Whence do
they arise ? In part, at least, from the sublime
process, in the light of growing science and
experience, not of dissolving, but enlarging,
the idea of God. This is to be the religious
glory of the coming age, — a better idea of God !
Our children's eyes will see it, if ours do not.
The old Hebrew Jehovah, sitting on a throne
of jealous power and favoring a particular race,
does not meet the need of an expanding hu-
manity. The invention of a threefold Deity, to
correct that ancient narrowness, jars on the
unity shining everywhere in the world and from
the human soul. The staggering of the mind, in
arriving, through its own upward motion, at the
conception Jesus preached of an infinite and
universal Father, must not be branded as dis-
belief. Even any temporary alienation of in-
telligence into atheism must be greatly laid to
the charge of superstition. If the scientific
understanding in some quarters of the world
wanders from the faith, theological bigotry in
other quarters debases it ; and who shall decide
48 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
which is worse ? How boldly Bacon says, u It is
better not to think of God at all, than to think ill
of him " ! Certainly, better think or speak of him
faintly than foully. If Humboldt is silent about
the Cause of all, it may be because he cannot
accept the popular divinity, and like Gothe in
the famous passage about the Deity, in " Faust/'
sees a glory he knows not how, or is too lowly,
to name.
Once more : be it observed that these remarks
are made, not from any wish to deny the abuse
of the doctrine of spiritual authority, but to
bespeak a just estimate and candid considera-
tion. We may deny any suspense of faith in
Christendom, especially in its Protestant part ;
we may question if faith ever did, or, on a great
scale, can suspend ; we may affirm that the Son
of man, coming now, would find it abundant
as never before on the earth ; yet, we must as
yet add, in what mixture of imperfection and
sin ! Too plainly we behold the evil not to be
anxious for a remedy. Alas ! thousand-fold is the
brood of speculative vagaries and practical mis-
chiefs named spiritual, and fathered upon God !
How extricate ourselves from this confusion, in
TO THE CHUECH. 49
which the banner of Heaven floats over its foes ?
When a vessel on the high seas is suspected of
sailing under a false flag, a speaking-trumpet, a
blank cartridge, a shotted gun, may bring her to.
How fetch to judgment the pirates of the land, —
suiting their several latitudes with as many sets
of colors as do the rovers of the sea ? It may
be answered in general, The Spirit itself is the
great detective of all forgeries of its speech.
" Diamond cut diamond/ 7 we say, with more
meaning in the words than we may apprehend.
The true diamond alone can expose the false.
Before the Spirit, only, no moral counterfeit can
stand. " The spiritual man judgeth all, and is
judged of none," how truly says Paul to this
very point ! We very soon see the spirit a man
is of, and successful deception is less common
than we suppose.
It may be said, " This is true for the private
soul ; but what is the remedy in the "church ? "
First, not formalism. It is a chief sign of
the times, how much ability, benevolence, and
knowledge move for relief in this direction of
more form in religion. But, alas ! how often to
how little purpose this direction has already
50 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
been taken ! The annals of the church, by
unhappy precedents, are put in the way of its
progress. Undoubtedly, its vital unity is to be
traced and maintained ; but of how many a
phase and incident in its course is made a bad
example ! what imperfection in the past con-
founds or retards perfection in the future ! and
how mean is the inspiration of history to that
of God ! When the traditionist points us to
some old judgment for a present argument, how
often we can hardly help saying, "What a pity he
is so learned ! M Scholarship itself is a hinder-
ance, if by it the Spirit is made secondary, or kept
out. Not what habitually the church has done or
the race has done, but what the Lord will have
us to do, is for ever the first question. True,
the majority of men are but partially amenable
to rational words : they must be taught by
pictures and ceremonies, whose veneration is
but one step from idols of wood and stone. But,
before the dawn of reason, the temple-scenery
dwindles and disappears. If retained, it becomes
pageantry and hypocrisy to thoughtful minds.
To return to it, as a medicine for the uncertainty
of enlightened men, is to offer to their wounds the
TO THE CHURCH. 51
very blocks over which they stumbled. u Fishers
of men," Jesus called his disciples ; but all men
are not to be taken in the same manner. From
the nets fitted to take some fish in the sea ; others
swim away ; and cultivated persons in this age
can rarely be caught in any ritual mesh. The
teachers of such must beware of overlooking
the illuminated quality of the constituency they
are born of and bound to lead. They must
maintain modest customs of worship, not as the
vital organs, of which they are but decent
robes.
Moreover, Jesus himself proposes no great
organization as factor or physician of his dis-
ciples. His church was no officered or official
corps, but a living fellowship of faith and love.
Every visible band in it is by him put, not in, but
under, authority. One great stream of power
behind, all else in the world is but reception,
instrument, and propagation. If it be said, "Au-
thority is not attributed to any little section, but
to the general church," we must reply, There
is, indeed, a general church ; but it is mostly
invisible. Its numerical suffrage is beyond our
reach : no creed or council ever gave it. Fifty
52 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
generations of it are in heaven. According to
its sanctification, it approaches to identity with
the mind of the Spirit. But its appliance to our
need is less appropriate and less accessible than
that of the Spirit itself, that waits and knocks,
and is ready to come in.
Certainly I propose no quarrel, for I have no
discontent, even with ijie High Church, in its
place. I would not unchurch, by unspiritualizing,
the church itself, or any part of it, further than
it is unspiritualized in fact. I know well, and
greatly honor, the numerous and often splendid
examples of Romish and Episcopal piety. Better
Christians have seldom been made than in those
communions. We should only oppose the as-
sumption, that any ecclesiastic ritual is more
than a local expedient, has any binding authority
for all, or is good beyond certain very strict
limits ; and let us do so, with regret, somewhat on
the ground of that liability to corruption which
so manifestly qualifies its value where it is used.
Alas ! how often its majestic line becomes a me-
chanical phrase ! so that one, hearkening in great
foreign cathedrals to the performer's tone of
mere memory stereotyped in his voice, sometimes
TO THE CHURCH. 53
sadly feels how little, in any touch of spontane-
ous emotion, it varies from the metallic note, in
which the bird called a mino salutes us with the
amiable, wearisome, and hundred-fold repetition,,
from the perch of his gilded cage. An eye-
witness tells me he saw in St. Petersburg little
children, taught to go through a manual of de-
votion of which they could have no sense, who,,
as they rose from the forced bodily conformity
of prayer, fell to playing with the silver and
malachite railing of the temple. Which was most
acceptable to God, — their ignorant homage, or
their innocent play ? We have been told that
the impersonal sort of utterance — after the
peculiar, well-known style of the set periods
of prayer — strains the voice itself more than
the natural tones of any preaching. What could
more decisively prove it vicious ? Doubtless,,
solemn recitation of hallowed texts and clauses,,
to some extent, especially on the recurrence
of great experiences of human life, may act r
like a galvanic series, to confirm, by multipli-
cation, the deepest feeling. It would, however,
seem almost as though the sentences them-
selves, when so perpetually brought forth after
4
54 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
uniformly equal periods of time, might complain,
like tired soldiers, of being too often put upon
duty '!
Of course, we must not deny the proportion
and choice of comparative good and evil from
opposite modes in this matter. The advocate of
the spiritual way should not blink the arguments
that still remain for a liturgy : its re-acting from
the people to the priest ; uniting all in the same
words ; with its easy-chair equalizing the clergy,
in their gifts or without gifts ; coming a precious
heirloom from the past, and spinning on the
thread of religious unity to new generations ;
familiarizing the young early to devout expres-
sion ; and being at least an alphabet of prayer
for the yet spiritually lisping majority of men.
But here is the point : that, for a large and most
important minority, it clearly will not answer or
serve ; not because they are blasphemers, but
because their devotions find in it no sufficient
aid. The attempt to join it with the free tones
of prayer is a failure : the liturgy eats up the
liberty, or the liberty the liturgy ; and whenever
the soul rises into transport of fellowship with the
Father, repetition of appointed periods will seem
TO THE CHURCH. 55
to it as impertinent as reading our love for
earthly kindred to them out of a book.
Besides, the liturgical is not our lawful, he-
reditary manner. Our Pilgrim sires, when they
broke from it, not only consulted their own
necessity, bflt prescribed, prophetically, for the
wants of a multitude of the best of mankind. In
some of our churches, and in our old University,
there seems, indeed, to be a receding from their
judgment, and a conscientious affecting of the
opposite style, as likely to reclaim the erratic
temper of the time. It is a course dubious of
reaching the result at which it aims ; and if, as
is pretended, spirits with significant tokens re-
appear, the ghosts of our ancestry may certainly
be expected to communicate on this point.
No effectual specific, then, can be found in
what were called " the ornaments of religion n
three hundred years ago, but have in them no
soul-penetrating virtue, and will never generally
be resumed by such as have once laid them
aside, and really tasted of better things. To
the ritual remedy, there is objection enough
in the very fact, that its emphasis is on the
church, above the Spirit. Where the church
56 THE WOKD OF THE SPIRIT
is the first word, or the most frequent, and
the Spirit second, and more seldom used, what
departure from both Scripture and reason could
be more wide and plain?
Nor, next, in places where the gospel has
been published and is regularly proclaimed, will
it do to rely on advertising our religion as a
remedy even for the neglect it suffers. By
advertising it, I mean wishing to let people
know how much we have of it, — affirming our
personal or denominational superiority in it.
Unpopular parties, alike with those greedy for
more popularity, are tempted to this resort. In
a community's stupid and stubborn ignorance
of what is for its good, it may seem justifiable.
The general advantages of advertising cannot
be denied. Of men in business it is said, u They
failed because they did not advertise." But
spiritual goods are of a peculiar and delicate
sort, rendering it for them a questionable means.
Especially painful is the conflict of invitations
from rival ostensible depositaries of that Holy
Ghost which has on earth no shop or permanent
receiver ; nor a less mournful sight, that of re-
ligious societies regarding the worship of God
TO THE CHURCH. 57
as a financial concern, and judging of their
prosperity by the fulness of their buildings and
sale of their pews. This fulness and sale may
be from reasons more or less religious. There
may be a drama or concert in the church, instead
of teaching or worship. The meeting-house, how-
ever, of which it can never be said, on particular
occasions, that " hundreds went away, unable to
obtain admission," seems, in this country, con-
sidered of an inferior sort.
Information of religious services and inten-
tions, if there be in it no ambition, may be
wanted and desirable ; but, mostly, quiet work
is best. Not with dogmatism, but diffidence, is
here offered to others a conviction, strong in
itself, affecting customs about which good men
disagree. But the continual printed list, to the
wistful eye of those in quest of a sensation,
of the notable, as contradistinguished from the
uncelebrated and less worthy, preaching of the
day, is one straw or trifle among many indica-
tions of a superficial quality in our religion. Of
the three dimensions philosophers designate, we
have more length and breadth than depth. There
is great want of cubic solidity in our piety and
58 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
virtue. The convention, the association, is good;
but yet more needful is a seeking to the Spirit
with earnest thought. There is a communion
without conversation or spoken word. Religion
is not a beggar, to be patronized ; but a prince.
So let it be shown and served, and its riches
and favor received.
Diverse are the manifestations of the error we
should shun. Vulgar appeals to publicity for
articles on hand, and stirring up temporary ex-
citements about religion as an interest separate
from life, alike lower the dignity of the pulpit.
Feverish heavings of the general heart, called
"revivals," — which set everybody running away
from his house and affairs, where his character
should be reared and disciplined, to look after
his insulated soul, — may be necessary to men
engrossed in the world, or dead in trespasses
and sins ; but, like rude shifts to get out of the
mire, should be thrown aside as soon as their
feet touch firm ground. When we read placards
of prayer, — " Come - in, stranger, five minutes,
ten, or fifteen," — how we think of him who
posted no such bill, rebuked the Pharisees' phy-
lacteries and street-devotions, and said, " When
TO THE CHURCH. 59
thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and shut the
door M ! The late unprecedented religious com-
motion in Ireland, whatever moral benefits may
attend it, has run so much into the form of a
bodily malady, that the physicians have had to
interfere.
Let us have less of talk and physical emotion,
— more of trust and peace. The great institutions
of society should, like ships of burden and deep
draught, move calmly on the tide of time ;
by their own gravity, and the weight of the in-
terests they foster and represent, drawing the
attention they deserve and will reward. Let
there be zeal in their behalf, if not fitful
and crackling, steady-burning and according to
knowledge. Let scholarship, genius, and elo-
quence enlist, indeed, in the cause of piety ;
and let the winds, after the law of moral
acoustics, blow what rumor thereof they will
abroad : but solicitation of regard for our par-
ticular conventicle looks too much like gasping
for breath, or desiring public pity for a precari-
ous enterprise. Let us not, even to keep out of
difficulty, advertise our piety or truth : let us
sink and vanish from the earth sooner ! It was
60 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
well intimated by that soul of singular insight,
P. W. Robertson, that self-advertisement is the
last resort of a feeble cause. The hypocrites of
old blew their trumpets before them, because
there was in them no strength of character, —
no march as of a celestial host. Troops on parade
are noisy ; but, as they go to battle, they are
still.
No doubt, there may be an assertion of our
claims consistent with humility, and for the sake
of the service of God. There are not wanting
ethical counsellors to assure us, on the highest
grounds, that we must be bold to take our place
and raise our voice, else of the greatest merit
there w T ill be no heed. The world, it is said,
will allow to us the position we seize. Truly a
morality after the Louis Napoleon kind ! We
cannot mistrust the motive with which a Euro-
pean teacher told an American seeker for wisdom,
" You friends of progress do not put yourselves
enough forward. People would flock to you, if
you more confidently assured them of the truth
and good you possess." But will not truth and
good be seen of themselves, without being so
carefully and wilfully bolstered ? How can the
TO THE CHURCH. 61
sun be hid in a corner ? u How," exclaimed
Plato, " can a man be concealed ? " All boasting
cheapens. Our most pithy proverbs teach, that,
where there is most exclamatory laudation, the
substance falls short. A man was seen, on the
last Fourth of July, at the edge of the Common,
beating a drum, and stoutly declaring his pur-
pose to summon all flesh ; but it was to a mise-
rable wax-figure exhibition. The grandeur of
nature, the beauty of truth, the glory of genius,
and the ecstasy of devotion, omit the drum ! Let
us rejoice in the mutual amity, in this land, of the
pulpit and the press, — the theocratic power and
the third estate ; and that neither has felt the
chains they wear in Italy and France, and so
widely through the earth. Let the pulpit and
the press honor and uphold each other ; but let
not the former ever come to the degradation of
being suspended on a paragraph, while the latter
maintains its independence of any ecclesiastical
behest.
This caution would not here be so insisted
on, but that it goes to the heart of all reality
and worth. A single aim is the rare excellence ;
and daily events show private honor the most
62 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
important and imperilled virtue. Where so
much, as in this country, is determined by the
popular voice, we are in danger of holding all
dependent on it, and of presenting every thing
to the popular eye. But supreme excellence is
not by hand-vote, and never a creature of the
majority. Much of the most conscientious and
durable work of the true architect is out of sight.
At the foundation of the edifice, and on the back
side of the pillar, in groins and arches of his
structure, he toils and carves as on the portal
and the shrine. So is it with the builder of the
spiritual temple of God in his own and others'
souls. Never with ostentation is a holy man's
effort. In religion, especially, let us be on our
guard against the self-blazonry which is the epi-
demic of the day. Let us have no reference, in
what we do or say, to the suffrage or the clap.
Let us never commit the old sin of numbering
the people who are with us. Let us toil, and
not tell of it. Let us pray like the saintly
woman, who, to the inquirer after her secret
prayers, had none to speak of. Let the doings
of our right hand be such as the left is not
acquainted with. As there were once professors
TO THE CHURCH. 63
of poverty, let us be lovers of obscurity ; and
we need not fear the Just One, God, will ever
throw away our deed.
We may, on this high spiritual basis, have
small congregations. But for small congrega-
tions something is to be said. That was a small
one in the upper chamber at Jerusalem ; a
small one of dispersed fugitives after the resur-
rection of Christ ; a small one — only about a
hundred and twenty — met to complete the
number of apostles made vacant by the traitor's
fall ; and a small one on the day of Pentecost,
till the noising abroad of the miracle brought
the multitude together. But what great con-
gregation, with its ephemeral, out-of-door admi-
ration of some stirring, declamatory word, ever
moved the world like these?
The conclusion, then, is, that, for all the cor-
ruptions incident to our religion in human
imperfection, there is no effectual remedy but
just to try the religion itself. Every thing, from
David's sling to the prophet's roll, must be
tried. Let us try our religion in its own authen-
tic, spiritual characteristics ; which are external
simplicity, social loyalty, and personal fidelity.
64 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
First, external simplicity. The great mistake
to which rational Christians are now exposed
is that of seeking an antidote to the ills of
their own constitution in imitating the complex
ways of other bodies. Is not the true wisdom,
instead of aping, rather to offset these with a
strict simplicity? What but this is the unde-
niable trait of the New Testament and of the
early disciples ? How poor and provisional
indeed, and in what low adaptation to the weak-
ness of human nature, is the reason, originally
and always, for any disfiguring or abnegation of
it! Authentic history informs us how, in the
times of that pope-king, Henry VIII., the forms
of the English Church were devised and copied
from the Romish, precisely on account of the
gross ignorance of the clergy. Ah ! what need
we more than the hounding persecution by
Henry's daughter, the Protestant Elizabeth, of
many of her subjects, for not Romanizing suffi-
ciently for her policy in their worship, to
dissuade us from all bondage to such forms,
even did we not recoil from the first low ground
of their practice ? Let us, at least, have dignity
enough to respect our antecedents and the root
TO THE CHURCH. 65
that has borne us ! Let us, in the line of the
Pilgrims, — which God grant may never be
broken or run out ! — worship in simplicity.
What and exactly how much appeal to the ima-
gination and taste, by architecture, music,
painting, and statuary, may consist with reli-
gious simplicity, we may not presume to decide :
only that none can do so, which overlays the
fundamental feeling ; nay, which is not quite sub-
ordinate and incidental to the grander spiritual
exercises of thought and love and homage in
the soul.
The tendencies of the age are irresistibly to
this very point. The interruption for centuries
now of the finest of all specimens of cathedral-
building at Cologne ; the unfinished state of
many a little modern edifice, vainly attempting
a splendor resembling that of more ancient tem-
ples ; the dependence on a precarious pilgrim-
age of St. Peter's itself for costs of repair ; with
many a sign beside, — indicate the age of the
magnificent structures of piety as passing or
past. On a fair consideration of the reasons
and issues of this, — in a finer development of
the soul come to its manlier estate, and, for
66 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
loftier motions of love and truth, putting com-
paratively childish things away, — we shall find
it no subject of bitter regret. It were a foolish
inference, that piety itself is therefore failing,
or ever going to die. It may have, with plain-
ness, exquisite proportion in its shrine : but it
does not, for its life or excitement, rely on aisles
or arches; on the sheafed pillars, like wheat-
bundles in the field, that support them ; on
sculpture bending from the niche ; or the
stained window, that lets in the discolored
light. Nay, even for the imagination, beside
this fine tuition, in a primary school of the
chisel and the brush, there is an inexpensive and
inestimable education, in the forms of nature,
in the course of Providence, and the wondrous
events of our faith.
We may lament the decay of sacred art ; Ave
may cry shame on the selfishness that lavishes
luxury on a private dwelling, and leaves bare
the holy walls ; we may think Ruskin's " lamp of
sacrifice w burns so fair, 'tis pity it could not be
lighted in all our sanctuaries : but, for some
generations now, the essentials of worship have
proved their independence of its show. Our
TO THE CHURCH. 67
Christianity is hereafter to be sought less in its
splendid isolations, and more in its unseen per-
vading of human life. Its temple and altar to
God are becoming such as
the famous doxology : —
" To Him whose tempi
Whose altar, earth, s<
Its spiritual simplicity must be asserted as one
of its chief attributes. Our thoughtful Chan-
ning gave, as the cause of his declining to
preach at a certain dedication, that he could
not express such interest in the fine build-
ing as might be desired. There is, indeed, a
higher concern ! Jesus Christ does not seem to
have expended much admiration on even the
goodly stones of the matchless edifice which he
declared must come down, and greater than
which he pronounced the divine humanity,
whose figure stood so mean under its glittering
height.
Great, indeed, is the struggle to which this
simplicity of the Master puts the follower's soul.
As it was said, only Jove could touch the thun-
der with his naked hand; so many will argue
68 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
that the lightnings of truth in the spiritual
world must be folded up, instead of being
received or wielded in their unmitigated, flash-
ing strength. But our Lord himself, while
using for the dull of heart many a parable,
plainly apprised his friends of his expectation,
that they, and all truly believing in him, should
hold letter and symbol in an ever-diminishing
proportion to his direct sense. The great argu-
ment of numbers will still long be on the other
side, and against such simplicity. But w T hat
Pagans, are we, if to that argument we yield !
The lesser number must be not only counted,
but weighed, or our sum is not proved.
Next, we must try our religion in its social
loyalty. What imports, is the communion of its
votaries, not the circumstances in which they
commune. If great principles bring them to-
gether, though only two or three, they are a
church, in a catacomb or a barn, or a cave on
a hill-side. An increase of common interest in
the objects of its association would augment the
prosperity of any local church, more than all
the lures of style and manner it could hang out
as banners to attract the public, and distance
TO THE CHURCH. 69
competitors in that race of popularity so univer-
sal in this land. It is indeed mournful to remark
the wide lack of this loyalty, to witness the
slight attachment of multitudes to the spot of
their fathers' labor and sacrifice, and to the seats
where the shadows of departed kindred still
linger, as if even the Indian virtue were not
ours ; and to note, in the easy strolling of crowds
from place to place, the proof how little many,
persons even imagine themselves united to
carry any purposes, or to be after aught more
than the temporary diversion of their minds..
More conspiring in every tribute of homage,,
more co-operation in every work of charity,,
verily we need.
In fine, and above all, our remedy is to try
our religion in its main attribute of personal
fidelity. The most beautiful and promising ar-
rangement without this is but a cloak, and not
the cure. " There is too much individuality j
there is not love and fellowship and social
intercourse enough," we hear it loudly com-
plained. Verily, strange terms of accusation !
As if individuality were disintegration and dis-
solution ! The more true individuality, the more
5
70 THE WORD OP THE SPIRIT
union. We do not find fault with the chemical
atoms, that they are too decided atoms : they
combine all the better. So the Broad, yea, the
Universal Church, when it comes, will be a com-
bination of souls, all the more fast together for
their separate sincerity and truth. There is, no
doubt, an ungracious individualism, the farthest
possible from true individual culture or perfec-
tion. But the great want is, not simply more
conspiring together in this or that design, —
wise or foolish, good or bad, — but better men
and women to conspire. May the Lord multiply
individuals of the right stamp, in all personal
faithfulness !
Individuality indeed ! Is not the love itself
that binds us to God and our fellows intrinsic
part of our genuine individual being? It w r ere
not worth offering to God or one another, unless
it were. Will a sacrament, without the senti-
ment, of brotherhood, make a Christian's love ?
No more than free papers, without freedom in
his heart, will make a slave's liberty. We must
beware of a delusion from names. Not they
who most mention sympathy may have it most.
Nominal saints are not seldom less lovely than
TO THE CHURCH. 71
confessed sinners. "Do not marry a philan-
thropist," said to her friend a woman who had
seen of the fraternity some that did not mani-
fest the feeling they professed. Of all things,
bring not the Spirit's effectiveness into doubt.
When its organs appear, no more plainly will a
hammer prove its office to drive nails, or an
engine its fitness to draw the train, than will
they vindicate its use.
What alone we should wait and look for is the
incarnation of the Spirit in the shape of living
men. Most significantly is the Incarnation a
great doctrine of our faith. But was it, as theo-
logians suppose, summed up, quite ended and
exhausted, in the Lord Jesus Christ ? No : per-
fect as it may have been only in him, it re-ap-
pears in every daily beautiful life. We are sure
of the virtue of no system till it has been tried.
The idealist is shocked at the offspring which,
from his own doctrines, human passions some-
times bring forth. But, wherever the Christian
Spirit is reproduced, the Christ himself is pre-
sent and lives on earth. Defiant, ungracious,
and warlike heralds in the name of the Spirit
may stand up, and hurl forth their message as a
72 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
missile ; but the Spirit disowns them. If the
Holy Dove offer to descend into their assembly,
how soon it averts its face, and flies from their
levelled gun !
Yet, without violence or wrath, this personal
fidelity must be evinced in trying the applica-
tion of religion to life. The old notion of the
supremacy of the pope to the king was the
shadow of a truth. All secular affairs should
obey the divine law. The church on earth is
valuable so far as it enacts and induces such a
result. This universal and unlimited obedience
it is the pulpit's business to hold forth and
require. It sometimes renounces it in part;
but it cannot be excused, anywhere or in any
thing, from this paramount task. It is some-
times blamed, and may be at fault and blame-
worthy, in its method of performing it. It is
reproached with preaching politics. If it vio-
late the decent neutrality of political parties, or
grieve the conscience of good citizens for their
honest opinions' sake, the reproach is deserved.
It does not belong to its province to take sides
with antagonist sets of hearers. Yet does it
not fall within its sphere to enjoin integrity,
TO THE CHUKCH. 73
veracity, and purity in civil life ? Does it break
any fair friendship or true honor in rebuking
falsehood, bloodshed, and bribery, and in depre-
cating the spread of inhumanity and slavery?
Nay, the servant of the Lord, who is dumb
when Iniquity stalks abroad, and Tyranny sets up
her standard in the guise of Freedom, and who
perad venture condemns other servants because
they speak, abdicates his office on the spot, and
subjects himself to impeachment at the final
bar. If there be certain departments of legis-
lation, society, and business, which are clean
outside the domain of religion, what little cor-
ner of this universe shall she find, like a muez-
zin crying to prayer, to announce in the ears
of men her commonplace generalities, — " Read
your Bible and say your prayers ; be good and
do good!" In this position, her privilege is
gone ; her voice is an abstraction ; her sphere,
a mystery ; her teaching, a scheme ; and her
utmost skill, while the earth is groaning and
travailing in pain for the manifestation of the
sons of God, to keep things as they are. Not
long could she live and abide on the earth, with
no other function but this. Nay, she were not
74 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
here, but long since extinguished in her blood,
had she discharged no other !
It is said, u The sacred desk should confine
itself to the themes of gospel-salvation, as Paul
and Jesus did." But what was it Paul and Jesus
did? They applied religion to life in Judaea,
and far and wide through the heathen world.
Were they alive now and here, would they but
refer to habits and theories once prevailing at
Jerusalem, Ephesus, and Corinth ? or apply reli-
gion to life in Boston, and wherever they should
go ? Ah ! religion, that with them was so vital
and real, has become too technical and tradi-
tional with us. It is, indeed, now soberly al-
leged, that our religion was completely made
for us and finished eighteen hundred years ago,
with a curse upon him who should add to or
diminish it by a tittle or jot. But was it con-
cluded verily in literal terms, and in so many
words ? Do we not read that the letter } even of
the Bible, killeth?
To the grand tradition of our religion let us
cling. But to hold fast to all the occurrences
and decisions of ecclesiastical annals from the
first, providential and saving as they may have
TO THE CHURCH. 75
been in their several times, would be like tack-
ing to any tool, instrument, or steam-apparatus,
all the rude beginnings of invention which im-
provement has, one after another, successively
displaced. Yet this is what the ecclesiastic
agents would have us do ! The immortality of
truth is in its new applications. They may be
sometimes hazardous at the outset, like those of
science to art, in the ship, the railway, the tele-
graph, and the balloon ; but they will be safe
and blessed in the end. What applications
among heathen fanes and idolatrous symbols,
under the edge of axes, before the shadows of
crosses, and at the gloomy mouths of dungeon-
doors, fronting the pagan splendor, were made
by the original Christians ! We need to re-
peruse the tale of those glorious old martyr-
doms, which a word of compromise, an act of
concession, a pinch of sweet dust on a flaming
shrine of Jupiter, a bending of the counte-
nance before a beauteous image on the wall,
or one assenting motion of lip or finger, might
have spared. But the sufferers could not afford
so much ! Thank God, and thank the sufferers,
that they could not ! It is not for us to vie
76 THE WOBD OF THE SPIRIT
with them after the very same fashion of cou-
rage and self-sacrifice ; but our own applications,
at every risk, and with all consecration and
denial of ourselves, let us make. Then, as the
cedar, though cut and sawed, and transported by
land and sea, loses not its savor, but salutes us
with its sweet fragrance even by the waysides of
business and across the dusty pavement, trodden
under foot, and ringing with the wheels of travel ;
so every act of our career shall be genuine, and
smell of the tree of life.
Whoever would be under authority, just, sav-
ing, and supreme, let him hearken, then, to the
Spirit. Everywhere, without us and within, to
the open ear eternally sounds its oracle. Its rule
is no easy one to live by, even for an hour. It
emancipates us into no license of personal folly.
It remands us to unfailing reverence for all it
has done through every instrument, and uttered
in any mouth, since the world began. It is its
own evidence, and has no witness but itself. It
can be caught in no system ever by theological
mechanics put together. It escapes the limit
of all forms and formulas. From the audience-
chamber of the breast, from the bosom of human-
TO THE CHURCH. 77
ity, from the fresh work and from the old word
of God, it speaks ; while truth, holiness, and
love are its invariable dictates. No new eccle-
siastic policy it issues, no modern sect bids us
join, to meet no ancient association does it order
us to wheel round ; but to be living branches of
the Christian vine we grew from, good members
of the race we are born in, and docile children
of Him by whom we are begotten. It asks not
who is orthodox, but, as in the case of Nathanael,
who is honest and without guile. It accepts
not the person of the Liberal, but of the loving
and the just ; demanding to what and to whom
we are liberal, what our liberality is, and whether
and how far it is to our own errors and sins, or
to other men's. At once it breathes new inspi-
ration, vivifies long-standing records, and brings
to remembrance the teaching and example of
every heavenly prophet and ascended saint.
Truly is its name and type the atmosphere.
Like that, it is not only in us ; we are in it : and
what the outer element is for a while to our
perishing body, from its boundless spread and
eternal purity, this finer air will be for ever to
our soul. In proportion as we breathe it, abuses
78 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
will disappear as diseases do, less from drugs
than from a healthy clime.
For the Spirit, then, be our prayer. It may
be said, " However well spirituality may be in
its place, we need ecclesiastical policy too, and a
social league, in order to any effect among man-
kind, and to draw us away from the hurtful
seclusion and impotence to which an over-spirit-
uality tends. 77 Let " honest arts " of plan and
contrivance certainly be employed as far as they
can avail. Let it not, however, be supposed that
the Spirit is not a worker hitherto, Sundays and
every day, and of all workers the chief. Out
of what solitudes, hermitages, and closets it
comes, in shapes such as Jesus from the wil-
derness of the Jordan, Paul from Arabia, and
Luther from the monastery, to disturb the minds
and manners of men, to revolutionize and uplift
the world ! How it burns up the wood, hay, and
stubble from heart, house, and street ! Institu-
tions that we talk so much of are its conse-
quence, not its cause. A man is sometimes —
in the world's annals has been ten thousand
times — more than a college, and, as an organ
of the Spirit, communicates better lessons than
TO THE CHURCH. 79
a library or a university to his race. In that
common supplication, sometimes appointed by
Christians for "an outpouring of the Spirit,"
let us first of all, and most of all, therefore
join.
This statement of the doctrine of the Spirit,
as the soul's only authority, disowns not, but
alone accommodates, the fact, power, and value
of the church in its subordinate place. The
church is itself a vehicle of the Spirit, but not
the only conveyance. It has no refusal of the
Spirit; no right to countermand its unofficial
appearance in any person, or to contradict its
inner and immediate gift. The use of discus-
sion is simply to set church and Spirit in proper
relative proportion, as ideas in our mind, and
forces in our life. To allow the church prece-
dence in our thought, till the Spirit becomes a
rare conception and unwonted influence, is no
more an offence to reason than it is a departure
from the Lord Jesus, who dates and derives
all from it for himself, while unto it he enjoins
his followers 7 main resort.
80 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
If it be said, u This direct access to God is
a barren notion, because, as Christians, we are
in and of the church, mere heirs of its property,
and, but for it, our pure individuality were a
spiritual nonentity," the reply is, Of course,
our approach to the Father is in the circum-
stances of his providence ; our ecclesiastical
fellowship, like our kindred blood and social
ties, is one of those circumstances; while all
things — birthplace and human friendship, and
the earthly personality of Jesus — must be con-
strued as but circumstances in comparison with
the sublime and matchless reality of our Divine
Source. Besides, one medium of grace as the
church may be, it is not as from a local and tem-
poral ruler that its own communication is most
vital and abundant. It is called an organization ;
but it is before and beyond what we call its or-
ganization. Doubtless it can and must organize
itself, or be organized by the Holy Spirit in its
members' hearts. When organized, truly what
multitudes and majorities of individual men lean
on it, drink from it, are attached and built into
it, like the thousands of marble statues that
adorn some of its edifices, and centre in its very
TO THE CHURCH. 81
shape their hopes of heaven ! But because of
ignorance is such stopping with it as a finality
for mankind. This is not the true state of the
soul. Practically necessary as it may be, it is
bare initiation of better things, which should be
earnestly asserted and predicted, and brought to
pass.
Is it, however, stigmatized as quite visionary
thus in general to esteem the soul, instead of
regarding the wants of actual men and women,
to whom the church will always be the way?
and is it alleged that so highly spiritual a doc-
trine overlooks the broad distinction between
ends and means? In religious matters, I an-
swer, this distinction holds but poorly and in
part. The ends of truth, goodness, and holiness,
are in their means, and inseparable from them.
In this lies the beautiful verity of Herbert's .
hymn : —
" In all I do, be Thou the way ;
In all, be Thou the end."
Will it be inquired if the doctrine I have main-
tained does not leave all to the mercy of private
judgments and the vagaries of individual opi-
82 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
nion ? I can only affirm, in reply, the existence
and operation and accessibleness of the Spirit
itself, above all these, to illuminate and correct.
Oh for more intuition of its light ! Behold
what mighty minds are, in their conceptions, so
under the laws of space and time, that they can
imagine heaven itself only as remote beyond
Saturn and the sun, instead of pervading the
world, and being the altered aspect of the uni-
verse to the disembodied soul ! Is it objected,
again, that the Spirit has been tried among us
so much, that it is at least timely to call atten-
tion to the important and neglected functions of
the church? Ah ! is it not precisely because
the Spirit has been tried so little, that the
church has so prevailed to eclipse it, as, with its
overweening and apparent size, the dull and
small moon does the splendid magnitude of the
sun, from which it borrows all its light?
Yet who will not cordially confess his obliga-
tions to the visible body of Christ, marred and
crucified like his own mortal body as it has
often been ? Verily it is that without which we
might have been left in the dark. If we can
have a more living and inspired church, how
TO THE CHURCH. 83
even the infallibility ascribed to it would be
approximated by the fact ! Meantime, let us
acknowledge and affirm our membership in it,
such as it is. We will not, indeed, give up to
it any advance of thought or criticism, character
or humanity. Where but in it, if not wholly or
always of it, have we made this advance ? We
do not return to it, because we have never
separated from it. We should as soon think of
returning to our kind ! We are branches, never
cut from the trunk which has grown out of the
seed Christ dropped in Judsea, any more than
from the stock of human nature. The church
is not an audibly praying and praising company
alone, within the walls of one or ten thousand
buildings ; but it is all Christian society and
civilization. Therefore James Martineau's late
letter on the Unitarian Position, although to
some it may seem to gain in words its distinc-
tion between church and society only by nar-
rowing the sense of things (for is not spreading
theological truth the proper business of man in
the church ? and do not men associated for such
an object truly accomplish church work ?), yet,
in its affirming the unsectarian character of the
84 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT
church itself, is admirably courageous, catholic,
and grand. We are born in the church. We
cannot be rid of it more than of our mother.
We did not make it : it has rather had a hand
in the making of us. Therefore we cannot, in
our debates, quite comprehend it, as we cannot
put any vital relation into our understanding;
and the vitality of every relation would cease if
we could. Let us assume our church-member-
ship, and look on all attempts to exclude us with
the innocent and extreme surprise with which
a distinguished American statesman, of world-
wide fame, regarded the attempt to thrust him
out of his political party.
Well will it be, if thus in some measure, as
well as by more mysterious agency, the life of
God be sustained in our breast ; well, if tech-
nical views of redemption give place to real.
Yet how recently, on a notable occasion, the
everlasting deliverance of a human soul was
imputed to an understanding of the " scheme "
of salvation ; and the terms of philosophy sub-
stituted for an incarnation of the truth, as the .
ground of acceptance with God ! Amid such
theoretic errors, which turn religion into an
TO THE CHURCH. 85
abstraction, what is our first business but to
insist, not on explaining or manipulating, so
much as living, the gospel ? Let us all, ministry
and laity, do our Christian duty where we are,
in our particular churches and communities, and
to every one that has with us, far or near, among
friends or down-trod outcasts, any tie. We
shall then find ourselves indeed in that fellow-
ship, not of the will of the flesh, which no man
can number, and from which no man can put
us out. We shall, under God, be unawares
creating the church in which we believe. We
shall not credit his possible failure to carry for-
ward his cause. Our faith will not fail; for
thinking it fails is the only failure to which it
can be exposed.
The Spirit before the church, in time and
thought, in order and power, — such is the sum
and conclusion. Especially in prayer is this
principle plain. The tones of voice, when many
sing together, may be natural ; but rarely when
they audibly pray together. Therefore is it
best that the spirits of all should ascend in one
utterance, which the Spirit may articulate or
accept. Of the Spirit, eternity is the attri-
6
86 THE WORD OF THE SPIRIT.
bute : immortality is that of the church. Our
idea of the Christian Church — that living
communion of faith and love which our Lord
established — will depend on our idea of him.
If we look on the importance which has been
assigned to him in the world as an accident,
impertinence, and illusion of the eye, we shall
endeavor ourselves, or expect some coming man,
to prick the overblown dimensions of the sphere
that still bears his figure through the space of
ages above all beside, and brings it meek and
lowly to every waiting soul. But if it seem a
more hopeful enterprise, by our little machinery
to cause the vast airy vessel of the solar system
to collapse on its way, then his will be to us, as
by the apostle it is called, an everlasting king-
dom, — the same that prophet foretold and
psalmist sung, and in which the Spirit is mani-
fested, though not spent.
THE END.
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