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 Park, Edwards 
 
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 1900. 
 
 
 
 
 Memorial 
 
 collection 
 
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 sermons 
 
 
 
 
MEMORIAL COLLECTION OF SERMONS 
 
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 PROFESSOR PARK AT ABOUT 70 
 
MEMORIAL COLLECTION 
 
 OF 
 
 Sermone 
 
 BY 
 
 Edwards A. Park, D. D., LL. D., 
 
 Professor in Andover Theological Seminary for Sixty-four Years 
 
 COMPILED BY HIS DAUGHTER 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ^be ipilgrim presa 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
Copyright, 1902 
 By Agnes Park 
 
 Pressfof J. J. Arakelyan 
 
 21)5 Congress St 
 
 Boston 
 
The sermons on " The Indebtedness of the State to 
 the Clergy," and "All the Moral Attributes of God Are 
 Comprehended in His Love," are taken by permission from 
 a collection of sermons by Professor Park, entitled, " Dis- 
 courses on Some Theological Doctrines as Related to the 
 Religious Character," published by W. F. Draper, Andover. 
 The collection contains fourteen sermons, which may be had 
 by ordering of the publisher. 
 
The Relation of Professor Park's The- 
 ology TO His Sermons 
 
 By Albert H. Plumb, d.d. 
 
 It were a worthy aim in an introduction to a book of sermons to 
 show, if possible, how and why such sermons came to be preached. 
 Indeed, an effort to point out the causes which have contributed to 
 the production of any great service rendered to humanity is an in- 
 teresting endeavor. It involves, however, a consideration of the 
 difficult question concerning the relative power of the divine and 
 the human forces which have conspired to secure the result. For 
 all the commanding figures in the history of the Church of God 
 have owed their especial power in promoting his kingdom to the in- 
 fluence of the Holy Spirit, taking advantage of their personal pe- 
 culiarities and their surroundings, and using them for the advance- 
 ment of his own ends. 
 
 To trace the working of this divine superintendence has always 
 been a fascinating study. Of late, however, there has been a pas- 
 sion for exalting the natural influence of a man's temperament 
 and environment to account for the power of his life, almost to 
 the exclusion of any special supernatural interposition. Many 
 writers, with unwearied industry and great ingenuity are continually 
 constructing, out of the slenderest resources, numerous fanciful and 
 conflicting theories concerning the tendencies of even the most dis- 
 tant times in which certain great and good men lived in order to 
 explain their career and sometimes to depreciate their work. Christ 
 however, teaches that the life of every true man of God receives its 
 first impulse not only but its controlling guidance also from the 
 
6 MEMORIAL SERMONS 
 
 working of the Holy Spirit within and around the man, and in a 
 way that is not true of any unregenerate life. 
 
 The proper use, therefore, of the interesting and valuable por- 
 traitures which have been drawn of the men and the times and the 
 prevailing schools of thought which shared in shaping the career 
 of the author of this volume of discourses is to look with reverence 
 and awe upon the Divine Presence, manifesting his power in over- 
 ruling all these human influences to qualify his chosen servant to 
 fulfill the peculiar ministry for which he had separated him. 
 
 Professor Park's great ministry was to teach theology, to set 
 forth divine truths in their orderly relationship in a harmonious sys- 
 tem of thought. He has been called by eminent men the greatest 
 theologian of his time, the greatest American theologian since Jona- 
 than Edwards. To fit him for this work and to guide him in it, to 
 his large and acknowledged success, there was one prime factor 
 made use of by his Divine Preceptor, the influence of which it is 
 not difficult to recognize, and which it is most instructive to bear 
 in mind : It was his high estimate of the function of preaching in 
 the scheme of redemption. To learn what that estimate was, how he 
 came by it, and what it did for his theology and for his sermons 
 would greatly enlighten inquirers concerning the divine plan of his 
 life, and the part he played among the generations of men. 
 
 It is believed that this volume containing some of his most char- 
 acteristic sermons may aid in attaining this end. For a controlling 
 motive in all his work came from his idea of the mutual relationship 
 between teaching and preaching. He was led to feel that he must 
 first of all have and teach a theology which could be successfully 
 preached; for the great object of teaching men theology he believed 
 was to fit them to be successful preachers of the gospel of redemption, 
 to help them fulfill Christ's injunction to the typical preacher, send- 
 ing him, as he said, to turn men "from darkness to light, and from 
 the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of 
 sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that 
 is in me." 
 
RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO SERMONS 7 
 
 Professor Park was in the warmest sympathy with his personal 
 friend and valued co-laborer, the late Professor Henry B. Smith, 
 of the Union Theological Seminary, New^ York, and with his mem- 
 orable generalization : "The great fact of obj ective Christianity is 
 Incarnation in order to Atonement. The great fact of subjective 
 Christianity is Union with Christ whereby we receive the Atone- 
 ment." 
 
 To secure this personal union with Christ by faith is the main aim 
 of preaching, for "it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching 
 to save them that believe." 
 
 It was a frequent remark of Professor Park to his pupils that 
 the divine origin of the religion of Christ was proved by the wisdom 
 evinced in the choice of so simple an agency for so vast a result. 
 Its philosophical adaptation to the end desired, revealed a higher 
 than human discernment. 
 
 Thus, he was fond of stating, was fulfilled the saying: "The 
 kingdom of God cometh not with observation;" for Christ had no 
 academy of learned philosophers pledged to promote his religion 
 after his death. No great hierarchy stood sponsor for it. No pow- 
 erful government was ready by force of arms to shield it from as- 
 sault. Its Founder left the world without having committed his 
 teachings to writing, and as the only record of his writing at all 
 was when he once stooped down and wrote with his finger on the 
 ground, it may be said he might as well have written his gospel on 
 the shifting sand as to have entrusted it to the unassisted memory 
 of the humble men who were his immediate disciples. The ordi- 
 nary means for revolutionizing the world by a new religion he neg- 
 lected, because he had two extraordinary agencies on which he 
 relied: one was the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit promised 
 to all his disciples, and soon to be given in copious effusion on the 
 day of Pentecost, to bring to the remembrance of his followers all 
 things that he had spoken to them, and to guide them into all truth, 
 showing them the things of Christ. 
 
 The other reliance, and the chief human instrumentality, was the 
 
8 MEMORIAL SERMONS 
 
 public proclamation of his gospel, in oral address to the masses, as 
 recorded by his inspired followers. A thousand other instrumental- 
 ities are helpful, but this is chief. 
 
 Professor Park held that all true preachers could say with Paul, 
 this is "the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in 
 Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their tres- 
 passes unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of recon- 
 ciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God 
 did beseech you by us : we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye recon- 
 ciled to God." 
 
 It is easy to see how Professor Park's ideas of the function of this 
 ministry of preaching were confirmed by its earlier and later suc- 
 cesses. 
 
 When the first exercise of this ministry by the apostles clearly 
 demonstrated its efficiency, the enemies of the gospel, alarmed, re- 
 solved to suppress it altogether, and the authorities commanded the 
 preachers not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. And 
 when Peter and John persisted, they were cast into prison. But the 
 plan of Him who said, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
 gospel to every creature," could not thus be frustrated at the start. 
 And so, it is recorded : "The angel of the Lord by night opened the 
 prison doors, and brought them forth, and said, 'Go, stand and 
 speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.'" 
 The words of this Life, of this Way, of this Way of Life, as 
 set forth in the first four discourses of the apostles after they had 
 received the gift of the Holy Spirit, embody a theology that can be 
 preached, that was successfully preached. This momentous fact 
 Professor Park never forgot. 
 
 Three leading essentials of this gospel are exhibited in this 
 divinely directed and divinely attested preaching. It takes for 
 granted, and reaffirms, that which nature and experience show, 
 man's ruin in sin, and his consequent need of pardon and renewing 
 grace in order to attain eternal life. It declares that the sole ground 
 on which God can grant pardon and renewing grace to the penitent 
 
RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO SERMONS 9 
 
 is furnished by the sufferings and death of Christ in our behalf; and 
 it affirms that the sole condition on which God, for Christ's sake, 
 will bestow pardon and renewing grace upon sinners is their sincere 
 penitence, and the exercise of a loving and truthful spirit towards 
 God, sympathizing with his aims, and striving to promote his plans. 
 
 And in Professor Park's view, in all the great conquests of the 
 truth, down through the ages since the day of Pentecost, those 
 preachers who have most faithfully preached the theology underlying 
 the first and most successful preaching of the gospel have been seen 
 foremost among all others and towering above all. And so must it 
 be to the end, he was persuaded, for "Christ crucified is the power 
 of God and the wisdom of God ;" infinite power and infinite wisdom 
 can no further go in supplying motives to turn men from sin. 
 
 Here is the explanation of the fact, to which multitudinous testi- 
 monies have been given, and which the readers of this volume can 
 verify for themselves, that Professor Park's preaching had a most 
 relentless grasp on the consciences of his hearers. This explanation, 
 however, is incomplete, unless it is remembered that this great 
 preacher, like another, could not only say: "We believe and there- 
 fore speak," but also, like him, knew that "with the heart man be- 
 lieveth unto righteousness." These great truths which he preached 
 to others were the veritable "sword of the Spirit" piercing his own 
 heart. His favorite hymn, "When I survey the wondrous cross," 
 always awakened the tenderest emotions, and in his own religious 
 experience to the end of life the great facts of redemption stirred his 
 soul to its deepest depths. 
 
 A memorable confirmation of this fact is the personal use he 
 made of the following passage from the works of the late "wonder- 
 ful John Duncan," Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature, 
 Edinburgh. In a letter to the present writer in 1888 Professor Park 
 said : "I suppose I have read it forty times. I shall probably read it 
 many times more. It has a great effect upon my mind :" 
 
 "Methought that the Lord showed me a heart into which He had 
 
10 MEMORIAL SERMONS 
 
 put a new song. Where the heart was, I do not know ; but I heard it 
 singing about the middle of its song. It had been singing : 'What prof- 
 it is there in my blood when I go down to the pit?' It had been sing- 
 ing the Fifty first Psalm, and Jehovah had now put a new song into 
 its mouth. He had done it; and the heart was trying to sing, — I 
 heard it in the middle of its song. It had been reading the fifth 
 chapter of Revelation, and trying to sing some of its numbers; and 
 now it was at these words : 'For thou wast slain,' and oh, how the 
 heart was sobbing and breaking! how it was melting with a joyous 
 grief and a grievous joy! Oh, how it faltered when it tried to sing, 
 'and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood'! It was the song of one 
 to whom much had been forgiven, and who therefore loved much, 
 but it was the song of the chief of sinners, to whom most had been 
 forgiven, and who, therefore, loved most. Yet it faltered and made 
 wrong music: it jarred and there was discord; and it grated on 
 its own ear and pained it; and God was listening to the song — God 
 who knoweth all things. But the song was presented to Him through 
 and by the Mediator: and if there was discord, it was removed by 
 grace in atoning blood, by the sweet accents of intercession; for it 
 came up as music in Jehovah's ear, melody to the Lord. It was not 
 discord in heaven. I would know, O God, whose soul that is. O 
 God, let that soul be mine." 
 
Tribute by Dr. Richard Salter Storrs 
 
 The funeral of Professor Park was held June 8, 1900, his death having occurred four 
 days before, at the advanced age of ninety-one. 
 
 A memorial address was read, prepared ten years before by Rev. Richard S. Storrs, 
 D.D., LL.D. It acquired an added pathos from the fact that its author lay dead in 
 his own church in Brooklyn, and being dead, spoke as only he could, in honor of the 
 Andover theologian who had gone on but a day before him into the world of light and 
 love. 
 
 The following passages from that address give Dr. Storrs' estimate of the in- 
 struction and example of Professor Park as a preacher. 
 
 "They [Professor Park's criticisms of sermons to his classes in the 
 seminary] magnified the preparation of sermons into one of the 
 greatest, as it is, of human works. They showed eloquence in the 
 pulpit the noblest of the fine arts ; nobler than printing, architecture, 
 music; nobler than literature; nobler than forensic eloquence; re- 
 quiring a powerful enthusiasm in the soul, contemplating the ex- 
 hibition of loftiest themes, directed to the securing of immortal re- 
 sults, requiring for success the utmost diligence in training all 
 forces of body and of mind, of heart and spirit, discipline of style, 
 discipline of manner and voice, large familiarity with the best au- 
 thors, devout piety, human sympathy, vivid and inspiring apprehen- 
 sions of Christ, intense belief." 
 
 "I have no conceivable motive for exaggerating the power of 
 these discourses, but I can honestly say, after many years of fa- 
 miliarity with the American pulpit, that as a preacher to students, 
 Professor Park was, at the time I was permitted to hear him, 
 the very greatest that New England has produced; I think, be- 
 yond doubt the greatest that the country has known." 
 
 "He was attractive, impressive, justly famous, wherever he 
 preached." 
 
12 MEMORIAL SERMONS 
 
 "Almost none, I am sure, went from any of his congregations with- 
 out feeling the extraordinary power of the man, the immense im- 
 pressiveness of the theme which he presented, the urgency of his pres- 
 sure towards righteousness and God. But to students, especially, 
 above all to theological students, he was and before their minds he 
 remains, the very prince and king among preachers. His mere 
 presence in the pulpit was majestic and fascinating, in the weird 
 abstraction, concentration, solemnity of face, voice, mien, and man- 
 ner." 
 
 "He believed in a deep sense of sin as a condition of Christian 
 effort and attainment; in strong doctrines, commanding the judg- 
 ment, arousing the conscience, and lifting up the heart toward God. 
 He looked for strong emotion, powerful and effective practical 
 purpose, a jubilant sense of victorious hope; and any preaching 
 not tending to this issue seemed to him the unfruitful sound of one 
 playing on a human instrument, not of one bringing a mighty and 
 transforming message from God." 
 
 "Into and through the sermon from first to last, went the really 
 tremendous force of his intense and determined personality." 
 
 "None of his published discourses, careful, thoughtful, eloquent, 
 and finished as many of them are, can possibly give to those who 
 read them a fair impression, not to say a full one, of those amazing 
 magisterial discourses to which we here listened more than fifty 
 years ago, the rumor of the approach of which filled the old chapel 
 to the utmost doorways; on which we hung with an attention that 
 could hardly have been surpassed if trumpets of angels had been 
 sounding above us, and from which we went astonished, humiliated, 
 with excitement in our minds, and shivers along our whole sys- 
 tem of nerves, but determined at least to do our own feeble best in 
 that great office whose most illustrious living representative we 
 felt ourselves to have heard and seen. It is impossible to overstate 
 the impression which those sermons made." 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 Peter's Denials of his Lord 15 ^ 
 
 Judas 43 v 
 
 The Theology of the Intellect and that of the Feelings . yz 
 
 The Indebtedness of the State to the Clergy .... 125 - 
 
 Moses Stuart 177 v 
 
 The Dividing Line 219 - 
 
 Not Far from the Kingdom of God 241 v 
 
 All the Moral Attributes of God are Comprehended in 
 
 HIS Love 263 ' 
 
f 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
The sermons on Peter and Judas were written during Dr. Park's 
 short pastorate in Braintree. Dr. R. S. Storrs in his funeral sermon 
 says of them, "During the two years of his ministry there, he gave a 
 large part of his time to the careful preparation of about thirty ser- 
 mons on the closing scenes in the life of Christ; reading widely in 
 preparation for them, meditating their themes with profoundest at- 
 tention and clearest insight, and putting them into form with heroic 
 patience and elaborate care. The completed series of thirty ser- 
 mons was in his trunk as he was crossing the Hudson River on 
 the ice, in a public sleigh, in the winter of 1835. The ice broke, the 
 sleigh went down, the passengers were saved but the trunk lay at 
 the bottom of the river. When it was recovered the manuscripts 
 had been so saturated with water that they could not be restored or 
 even be read, except in two instances. Those who heard, in after 
 years, the two sermons on Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot, will 
 know something of what a blow fell on our friend, and what a loss 
 on sermonic literature in the destruction of the others." 
 
SERMONS 
 
 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 "But he began to curse and to swear, saying, I knozv not this 
 man of whom ye speak." — Mark 14: 71. 
 
 It was of a Thursday evening in the beginning of May, 
 about eighteen hundred years ago, that Jesus sat down with 
 his disciples at his last sad supper. "'Twas on that dark, 
 that doleful night," says Watts, but in reality it was a bright, 
 moonlight evening. On the next morning Christ was to 
 be crucified, but the disciples did not dream of such a catas- 
 trophe. "Whither I go, ye cannot come," he says to them, 
 but conveys no idea save that of a terrestrial journey. 
 "Lord, where are you going," says Peter. "Whither I go, 
 ye cannot follow me now; but ye shall hereafter." "But 
 why not now?" rejoins Peter; "I am sure I am willing to 
 lay down my life for you." "Willing to lay down your life ! 
 All my disciples shall this very night desert me." "Though 
 all men," Peter replies, "shall commit this sin, yet will not 
 I." "Simon ! Simon !" Here, observe, Christ does not call 
 him Peter, Peter the rock, as he does elsewhere. "Behold, 
 Satan hath desired to torment you with great trials; but I 
 have prayed for you that you may not; irreclaimably apos- 
 tatize." "I am ready to go with you anywhere," exclaims 
 the bold man, "anywhere, to prison, to death." "Verily, 
 
i8 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 I say unto you, Simon, before three o'clock to-night you 
 shall deny me three times." "That I never will do^ ! Never 
 will I deny you ! My steadfastness may cost me my life, 
 but steadfast I will be." 
 
 The same profession made all the eleven, but in less than 
 three hours they all disgraced it. No sooner was their 
 Friend seized and bound by the police of the Sanhedrin 
 than they all forsook him and fled. At the very hour when 
 he most needed their sympathy, they demonstrated the 
 hollowness of their pretensions. The stout-hearted Peter 
 ran like a panic-stricken boy. But he could not run far. 
 The remembrance of his confident professions worked upon 
 his spirit, and checked his flight. He turned about and 
 followed the temple guard and their sacred prisoner. He 
 took care, however, to keep at a safe distance from the 
 police, lest himself, his bold self, should be taken to prison 
 and to death. This resolute, sturdy disciple followed Jesus 
 afar off! 
 
 It is dangerous for a man, even if he follow the Saviour, 
 to follow him afar off. Evil results ensued in the case of 
 Peter, and they will in our case, from walking even in a 
 right way afar off from Him who only can hold us up. 
 
 This fear-stricken disciple did not go further than to the 
 court of Caiaphas. He dared not enter that court. Not 
 three hours ago he had exposed himself in the garden of 
 Gethsemane by cutting off an ear of one of the police, and 
 that severed ear was still haunting his imagination, and he 
 was afraid to be seen inside the illuminated palace. Still 
 he dared not go aivay more than he dared to go in. He 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 19 
 
 remembered his boasts. "Though I should die with thee, 
 I am ready to follow thee to prison and to death; I, of all 
 men;" and in face of such expressions, he could not 
 abscond. 
 
 How, then, does he dispose of himself? He stands out 
 by the door in front of the palace, at dead of night, shiver- 
 ing in the cold, all alone ! And that is Simon Peter. "And 
 upon this rock I will build my church ; and the gates of hell 
 shall not prevail against it." "Behold that rock," says Cal- 
 vin; "behold that specimen of human stoutness! It is all 
 smoke, whatever of strength and courage appears in the 
 best of men." 
 
 It is probable that Peter would have found some diffi- 
 culty in gaining admittance into the court had he attempted 
 it, for the Jews were careful to admit to such a trial no 
 spectators who would in any way obstruct their proceed- 
 ings. They therefore fastened the front entrance into the 
 palace, and appointed a female doorkeeper to guard it. 
 John, however, by his acquaintance with the high priest, 
 having obtained admission into the palace, felt desirous of 
 Peter's admission. He therefore went out of the court, 
 through the porch to the door; interceded successfully with 
 the janitress in behalf of his brother disciple ; and then 
 assured his trembling friend that he might without jeop- 
 ardy hear the trial. "John meant," says Thomas Fuller, 
 "to let him [Peter] out of the cold and not to let him into 
 a temptation; but his [John's] courtesy in intention 
 proved a mischief in event." Under the auspices of 
 John, Peter comes into the court. John was very young. 
 
20 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 the youngest of the Twelve ; Peter was old, one of the 
 oldest of the Twelve. Think now of that stern and hardy 
 laborer, in all the strength and manliness of mature life, 
 hiding under the wings of the mild, amiable and modest 
 young man and daring to move only as that youth moved. 
 First, the impetuous man is apt to be inconsiderate; even 
 the bold man pleads when death stares at him suddenly ; 
 the positive man is often an inconsistent one. Who would 
 have thought that Peter, who had just pretended to such 
 constancy of adherence, would have been willing to be a 
 hanger-on at the door, and at last fall into the arms of that 
 younger, feebler disciple who had just now been leaning on 
 Jesus' breast! Why did not Peter take the precedence? 
 Why not try to rush into the palace, as he once tried to 
 walk on the sea? When this same Peter and this same John 
 on the following Sunday visited the sepulchre, the other 
 disciple, we are told, did outrun Peter. And why? Be- 
 cause he was so much younger and sprightlier; and he 
 arrived first at the grave; but the sensitive youth stooped 
 down, and looked in, yet went he not in. And why? Be- 
 cause he was too modest, and delicate, and refined. "Then 
 Cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sep- 
 ulchre," without stooping or looking, for he was all bold- 
 ness and fire, and in! — in! — he must go! In he went; caring 
 not what men might say or think. Why on this night is 
 the scene reversed? Why was Peter so childlike and fickle? 
 Why not pursue some straightforward course? Why not 
 either take a stand for Christ, or else take care of his own 
 life? — act for his Master or else for himself. 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 21 
 
 "The man that fears to drown, will break through flames; 
 
 Or, in his dread of flames, will plunge in waves. 
 
 When eagles are in view, the screaming doves 
 
 Will cower beneath the feet of man for safety." 
 
 — Cibber. 
 
 At the upper end of the court was a platform elevated 
 above the common floor, distinguished by the insignia of 
 authority. On this elevation, like the elevation around this 
 pnlpit, were the priests and elders, wrapped about in their 
 venerable, flowing robes, and sitting or reclining on carpets 
 or splendid cushions. In front of them was their meek 
 prisoner. In that part of the court nearest the porch, where 
 there was no platform, on the common floor of the area, 
 corresponding with that part of this church nearest the 
 porch, stood the guard, and the servants of the Sanhedrin. 
 In that distant part of the court was a vessel of burning 
 coals, around which stood the police, who had chilled them- 
 selves in their midnight search for Jesus. Peter, with a 
 hesitating heart, placed himself in that circle around the 
 fire. He loved the prisoner at the bar, and was hearkening 
 with anxiety lest he should hear the judges pronounce a 
 verdict against him. At the same time, he was, mortified 
 at the pitiable prospects of the Messiah's kingdom, and 
 trembling lest some one should recognize him as a member 
 of that kingdom. He was well-nigh distracted with these 
 conflicting passions. He seems to have been too uneasy 
 for remaining still, and to have been constantly changing his 
 posture — one minute standing up, the next sitting down, 
 the next walking about. His countenance doubtless be- 
 trayed his feelings ; for such a man as Peter, if we may use 
 
22 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 the common phrase, carried' his heart in his face. He was 
 unfortunately constituted to be a spy in an enemy's en- 
 closure. It was a very suspicious circumstance that a man 
 looking as Peter looked, should have entered the palace 
 under the patronage of a known friend of Jesus. All can- 
 not be right, thought the doorkeeper, and she now comes 
 into the court and gazes steadfastly at Peter's countenance. 
 There can be no mistake. Those quivering muscles, that 
 quick-moving eye, and agonized expression, and nervous 
 restlessness of the whole system had a meaning not to be 
 misunderstood. ''Are not you one of the disciples who 
 were with this impostor?" There it is out — out, the whole 
 of it ! The officers are near him ; he is afraid their atten- 
 tion will be roused ; he will be imprisoned as an accomplice ; 
 will be doomed to die. And the question comes suddenly ; 
 no time to guard himself. And yet he must say something, 
 and say it in an instant. To remain speechless is to plead 
 g-uilty. "/, woman, / one of them with Jesus ! That I am 
 not. I do not know what you mean by saying 'them with 
 Jesus ;' I am not acquainted with this Jesus." O Peter, 
 who art by name rocklike, why didst thou shrink back from 
 this question of the doorkeeper? The question did not 
 come from the band of soldiers, but from one of the maid- 
 servants. Was there indeed no way for a full-grown man 
 to hold his ground against this woman? Simon Peter, what 
 an omen is this for thy future career ! If thou hast run with 
 the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst 
 thou contend with horses? If in the land of peace, wherein 
 thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in 
 the swellings of Jordan? 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 23 
 
 In an instant after Peter's falsehood, he went in trouble 
 from the court into the porch. Here he hoped to be alone. 
 No sooner had he entered the porch than the cock crew. 
 It was the signal for midnight. His retirement, however, 
 from the court did not relieve him from his remorse. 
 Nearly two hours, certainly more than one hour, he re- 
 mained in the porch, the prey of his own corroding 
 thoughts. Must there not be some peculiar reason for his 
 withdrawing with a wan countenance from so interesting 
 a trial? This question forced itself upon one of the priest's 
 servants, and she says to some of the bystanders, "I verily 
 believe that this man was with Jesus of Nazareth after all." 
 Not wishing to utter another falsehood if he could help it, 
 Peter made her no reply, and, to aid the evasions, turned 
 his face and went back to the court. The doorkeeper who 
 first accused him was confident that unless the accusation 
 were true, he would not be so shy. Therefore she followed 
 him into the hall, and said in an undertone (probably the 
 undertone must have been used lest the trial should be 
 disturbed) to the group around the fire: "This man was 
 indeed a disciple!" The men heard her; one of them joined 
 with her, "Yes, 't is true, you did belong to the company." 
 ^'Certainly,'' they all cry out, "you are one of his disciples." 
 What now can the terrified man do? Can he silently steal 
 back to the porch, as he had just now evaded the woman? 
 It is not so easy to rid himself of a company of men. Shall 
 he confess the truth? But he has once denied it, and if he 
 now confesses it he will prove himself to be not only a 
 disciple but also a deceiver. He has committed himself, 
 
24 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 you see. One lie requires ten more to make it good, and 
 if the lie is doubted it must be confirmed by an oath, and 
 the bold man must not only persist in his falsehood, but 
 also swear that it is the truth. Into a deep ditch, indeed, 
 had Peter fallen. But silence will not answer — something 
 must be said outright. "It is false ; I am not one of his 
 disciples. I do' not know the man whom you call Jesus of 
 Nazareth. I will take my oath upon it — I appeal to God. 
 The direst ends I call down upon myself if I know anything 
 about this prisoner." 
 
 The officers and servants noticing the violence of Peter's 
 gestures, and the boldness of his asseveration, could not 
 believe that he was swearing to a falsehood, and they 
 seem to have remained in quietness a little more than 
 an hour. But could Peter be quiet? Was he not all this 
 time straining painfully to overhear what was said, and 
 tossed about with anxiety lest suspicion should again rise 
 against him? Did not the occasional glances at the meek 
 prisoner and at the pitiful countenance of John, work up 
 his sensibilities to painful excitement? Indeed — indeed 
 this must have been a long hour of dismal foreboding. It 
 must have seemed to him as if the time would never pass 
 away. His conscience made an hour a symbol of eternity. 
 Every person whom he saw seemed an informer against 
 him. The merest whisper agitated him. But though his 
 heart was fluttering, he put on as much of an air of courage 
 as he could, and appears to have been so imprudent as to 
 have taken some part in the conversation around the fire. 
 
 But here presented itself a new difdciilty. As he was a 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 25 
 
 native of Bethsaida, in Galilee, he spoke in a provincial 
 style, as different from the style at Jerusalem as the brogue 
 of Yorkshire is from the accent of the Londoner. "The 
 Bethsaidans pronounced the Aramean vowels," says Micha- 
 elis, "confusedly, and accented the penultimate of their 
 words." They were also distinguished fromj the natives of 
 the capital by their inability to sound at all three letters of 
 their alphabet, and also, according to Tholuck, by a flat 
 enunciation. 
 
 One of the bystanders, recognizing Peter's provincial- 
 isms, exclaimed with an air of confidence, "Truly you are a 
 disciple of the impostor ; for you are Galilean, and nearly all 
 the disciples are Galileans." "Your speech shows you to 
 be a Galilean," cried others ; "there is no such thing as con- 
 cealing it ; you must be guilty." "Did I not see you in the 
 garden with him?" asked a relative of Malchus, whose ear 
 Peter had cut off in the garden of Gethsemane. "Did I 
 not see you m the garden with him?" This allusion to 
 the garden where Peter had so unfortunately signalized 
 himself, seemed to intimate that the smiting of Malchus 
 was to be a means of identifying the smiter. A cousin of 
 the wounded man was present ; and, what is worse, the po- 
 lice were present also ! He knows not what to say. But he 
 Ihas gone too far to retrace his steps. Irritated at the im- 
 portunity of the bystanders, he is quiet ini his reply. "On 
 my oath, I tell yon the truth. I am not acquainted with 
 Christ Jesus. I do not know zvhat you mean by your ques- 
 tions about him." Then began he not only to swear but 
 also to curse. He probably raised his voice louder than 
 
26 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 usual. He certainly spoke in a rage, and in the midst of 
 his tumultuous asseverations the cock crew. It was a sig- 
 nal for the hour of three. In fear he now turns his eye up to 
 Jesus. The persecuted prisoner had been standing with 
 his back to the disciple, but the uncommon loudness of 
 the third denial reached his ear. The most fearful denial 
 of the three ; the one which, with its oaths and blasphemies, 
 would have been most gladly concealed, was heard by him 
 more distinctly than any other; perhaps was the only one 
 which was heard at all. Peter sees what he has done, and 
 with the most harrowing solicitude keeps his streaming 
 eyes fixed on the man whom he "did not know." The poor 
 sinner has suddenly forgotten that he did not know Jesus 
 of Nazareth. He has forgotten to remember that he never 
 saw the Man of sorrows. He has become all at once most 
 unfortunately honest. With a witness he is now detected. 
 Murder will out. Truth will out. Here stands the prisoner, 
 mild, solemn, unruffled. There stands the profane disciple, 
 trembling, restless, terrified, his eye fixed upon Christ, asi,.^ 
 the eye of a servant upon the master's uplifted rod. What 
 a contrast in the countenances of these two men ! As much 
 difference as between innocence and guilt ; between the 
 sufferer and the doer of wrong ; between an afflicted spirit, 
 comforted from above, and a sinning one goaded on by 
 influences from beneath. This handcuffed prisoner was by 
 his virtue free as the mountain air, but that disciple, free 
 though he seemed, was yet the only prisoner, manacled and 
 fettered by his crime, and thrust through and through by 
 the spear of conscience. Conscience had given to the 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 27 
 
 bound man the liberty of the angels, and had made the un- 
 bound man the very slave of himself, of sin, of torture. Just 
 so it is. Conscience is the master of a man after all. This, 
 this makes the difference between the placid and the 
 wretched — this the difference between a heaven and a hell. 
 It is touchingly recorded that at this moment Jesus 
 turned round and looked after Peter. The most cunning 
 artists have tried to express on canvas the effect of this 
 look of Christ ; but they have laid down their pencil in 
 despair. The sacred historians dared not attempt to de- 
 scribe the look, but simply said that Jesus turned and 
 looked upon Peter. That simple look darted into Peter's 
 memory the scorned prediction, "Before the cock crow, 
 thou shalt deny me thrice." The look was beyond the en- 
 durance of the vociferous sinner. Though the hands of 
 Christ were tied, and he could make no rebuking gesture, 
 yet that eye which had once disconcerted the whole com- 
 pany of the Nazarenes on the brow of the hill ; that eye 
 which had once unmanned and confounded the money- 
 changers and marketmen of the temple-porch ; that eye 
 which had, a few hours ago, disheartened and prostrated 
 the constables in Gethsemane ; that eye which we have rea- 
 son to believe was at times more energetic than any other 
 human eye, wilts down all the apostle's hope. He goes 
 out of the court with quick and violent steps, in despair. 
 He wept; was softened; he wept bitterly, with peni- 
 tence proportioned to his sin. He went out and wept ; 
 for he chose a secret place, aloof from his evil com- 
 pany, where he might mourn and pray alone. As 
 
2d> PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 the doves of the valleys fly to- the mountains, all of them 
 mourning, it was the language of his heart, "Oh that I 
 had wings like a dove ! that I might fly away, and bewail 
 my transgression." From three o'clock until sunrise, he 
 probably spent in astonishment at his guilt. The stillness 
 of the night and the dark shadows of the morn tended only 
 to excite his conscience the more. "Not six hours ago" 
 (such must have been thq substance of his soliloquy), "not 
 six hours ago, I partook of Christ's body and his blood 
 from his own hand. I have committed my sin fresh, fresh 
 from the communion-table. My words spoken can never 
 be recalled. I have made a ruinous impression on im- 
 mortal souls. I have wounded the heart of Jesus. I have 
 pierced his side. It is done. It cannot be undone. I have 
 done it." Turn which way the apostle would he could 
 not make his escape from that eye which had just flung 
 its glance upon him. Like the eye of a good portrait it 
 followed him, and, if he does turn away his head, it still 
 follows him, and lives and burns before him. The eye was 
 constantly speaking to him, "Simon, son of Jonas, you who 
 would never forsake me, much less deny me, when you 
 ought to be with the judges as a witness in my favor, are 
 you afraid to acknowledge me before the servants? Do 
 you not know me, Simon? Did you never know me? Alas, 
 unhappy disciple, Satan has desired to have you that he 
 may sift you as wheat ! I knew it long ago. I wished you 
 to know your danger. I told you of it again and again. 
 You insisted that I was in the wrong and you in the right, 
 and yet, Peter, I will pray for you. In all my present 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 29 
 
 troubles, I will intercede for you. On my cross I will make 
 entreaty for you, and when I am dead and you are con- 
 verted, strengthen, the brethren by the experience of this 
 hour." 
 
 Oh, that eye, that speaking eye of the Redeemer! No 
 wonder that it will one day cause the kingdoms of the 
 earth to wail by its glance. Oh, that, whenever we sin, 
 the same eye may turn upon us, in the same way as it 
 turned upon our brother in guilt ! In the hour of Christ's 
 dismal gloom he retained his erring disciple, and will he 
 not much more in the days of his triumphant reign restore 
 the modern backslider? Will he not move toward us while 
 we, as Peter, remain unmoved, and persuade our reluctant 
 hearts to love him, because he first loved us? Behold the 
 goodness and the severity of God! Severity how kind! Be- 
 hold how awful goodness is! 
 
 The sin of Peter suggests a few remarks : — 
 First, it teaches us the necessity of avoiding temptation. 
 It is probable that Peter had never believed until the event 
 occurred that our Lord would be imprisoned, and his mind 
 became confused by the sudden dissipation of his hopes. 
 He was expecting his own imprisonment and death, and 
 resorted to his falsehood on the principle of self-preserva- 
 tion. Some have supposed that we have a right to utter 
 falsehood in self-defense, and have justified Peter's crime 
 because the meddlesome persons who asked him about his 
 discipleship had no right to ply him with such queries. 
 But no man is justified in any circumstances in order to 
 secure any good, to violate the law of veracity. And yet 
 
30 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 we can see at once how strong must have been Peter's 
 inducement, while in the splendid palace of the hierarch, 
 and surrounded by the proud enemies of the Messiah, to 
 fawn for their favor and to struggle against their resent- 
 ment. Just so certainly as he went among the officers he 
 would fall. He ought to have remembered that he had 
 been a sailor, and that sailors are apt to use profane lan- 
 guage, and that his old habit of hearing, and perhaps of 
 uttering oaths would predispose him to swear if he became 
 excited; to swear without thinking, as familiar words will 
 spring out before we know they are coming. He ought, 
 therefore, to have anticipated the mysterious influence of 
 temptation, especially to wonted sins, to have said with 
 David, "I have hated the congregation of evil doers ; and 
 will not sit with the wicked." How appropriate was our 
 Lord's repeated injunction to Peter, "Watch ye and pray, 
 lest ye enter into temptation." We are not only for- 
 bidden to commit sin, but forbidden to expose ourselves 
 to it. Evil companions are more dangerous in the high 
 priest's palace than in the debauchee's fiovel. Wealth, 
 splendor and power lend attractions to wickedness, and 
 it is no more safe to associate for pleasure A\ath ungodly 
 men in high places than to put fire into our bosoms. Not 
 at all uncommon is it for pretended friends of Christ when 
 in converse with fascinating sinners, especially when in 
 prospect of obtaining from them some selfish good, to say 
 by their actions as loud as Peter said by his words, " We 
 do not know Jesus of Nazareth; neither his doctrine nor 
 his spirit." They fear to press his commands, to stand 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 31 
 
 upright for his truth. They even blush when their reUgious 
 
 calhng is alluded to by such men as Caiaphas the judge and 
 
 Pilate the governor. The sin of denying Christ before men 
 
 whom we respect or fear is the prevailing sin of the present 
 
 day ; and yet we are lavish in our condemnation of Peter, 
 
 who denied not for popularity alone but for safety, for 
 
 life — not deliberately, as we, but under a pressure of 
 
 strong temptation. Beware of such temptation. Repress 
 
 your love of popular applause. Is there any fascinating 
 
 sinner among you? Shun him except to do him good. 
 
 Go not into his society for the pleasure of it. That pleasure 
 
 allures unto devious ways. Put a millstone around your 
 
 neck, and go down into the bottom of the sea, rather than 
 
 seek your repose and comfort among men who may tempt 
 
 you to a selfish and unfaithful life. 
 
 Secondly, the denial of Peter illustrates the folly and 
 
 danger of self-confidence. When this apostle, speaking 
 
 of his beloved brother Paul, says that in his epistle are 
 
 some things hard to be understood, he probably had no 
 
 reference to what Paul said about him that thinketh he 
 
 standeth, that he should take heed lest he fall. This was 
 
 all plain to Simon Peter. If the erring disciple had not 
 
 felt, at first, that he was a rock, and could never be moved, 
 
 he would not have ventured without precautionary thought 
 
 into the circle of dignified sinners, nor hazarded his life 
 
 without imploring help to sacrifice it for his duty. Says Dr. 
 
 Young : 
 
 "Temptations seize when fear is laid asleep, 
 And ill, foreboded, is our strongest guard." 
 
 Point to any man who feels that he is in no danger of 
 
32 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 sinning, and he is in so much the greater peril for the very 
 thought. He is walking on the utmost verge of a preci- 
 pice, and dreams that he is walking on a wide plain. He 
 is less guarded than if he were afraid; uses fewer means 
 of security, falls the sooner. He has never disciplined him- 
 self to encounter perils by bringing them into clear view. 
 He is bold in regard to distant evils, but yields to them as 
 they approach. Are we stronger men than David and Peter ? 
 Have they not been held up to us as monuments of human 
 frailty, as beacons to guard us against trusting in ourselves? 
 Why may not we lapse as they did? Why not the most 
 conscientious of us be left to falsehood, to perjury and blas- 
 phemy and murder? Do you think, my hearers, that you 
 could ever reach a depth of sin equal to that of the tempted 
 disdiple? No, you say, and Peter said No before you, 
 just as decisively as you. Is thy servant a dog that he 
 should do this great thing? Yes, yes, my friend. In your- 
 self nothing better, with all your talents, with all your 
 strength, with all your accomplishments, whosoever you 
 may be, your character is written on your forehead, a worm 
 and no man. So far as you and I are concerned, there is 
 no faith to be reposed in us, bereft of the grace of God, but 
 that this day we shall commit a sin which will bring re- 
 proach upon ourselves and disgrace upon the church. 
 God alone must be exalted and every man abased in that 
 day. 
 
 Thirdly, we may learn from Peter's denial the impor- 
 tance of preserving a habitual sensitiveness to the turpi- 
 tude of sin. Our danger arises from the sudden onset of 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 33 
 
 temptation. Almost every disciple who lapses into gross 
 transgressions, says : " If there had been a longer time for 
 me to reflect, I should not have been beguiled." His con- 
 science was asleep ; then temptation surprised him. His 
 resolution was unnerved ; he had but few, too few moments 
 to nerve it up. Ere his fleeting, unstable piety could be 
 summoned to resistance, the deed was done. 
 
 If he had reflected habitually on the baseness of sin, he 
 would have been prepared for the sudden emergency. He 
 would have had less temptation, and more power to resist 
 what he had. As the enemy, intent on sacking a city, fly 
 with the greatest eagerness to the open gate, the forsaken 
 tower, the weak breastwork, rather than to the places 
 strongly barred, fortified and manned, so our arch enemy 
 chooses to assail us in our most defenceless state, and to 
 finish his work upon us before we collect our scattered ar- 
 mor, and mend our broken shields. The first denial of 
 Peter, that one unpremeditated sin, led him into a labyrinth 
 of other crimes, from which he was not relieved until Jesus 
 turned and looked upon him. Had he thought, had he at 
 first taken into view the evil of falsehood, he would not 
 have lifted up the flood-gate ; in one moment he lifted it, 
 and then for hours the torrents poured through. 
 
 A nice regard to truth, especially in little things, will save 
 us from ten thousand little deviations, which will wind 
 us into inextricable mazes. No sin is so prolific as that of 
 the tongue. One falsehood is the precursor of crimes 
 which seem to have no connection with it. More than any 
 other sin, falsehood should be resisted in its beginnings. 
 
34 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 Those little falsehoods, those unmeaning, complimentary, 
 polite Hes, they deaden the sensibility, they benumb the 
 conscience, they sink the soul into the meanest obliquities. 
 The parent should make his child vow against the smallest 
 
 (equivocation, what Amilcar made young Hannibal swear 
 against the Romans, perpetual hatred. This is the lesson 
 which Simon Peter should have learned before his fall, and 
 he did learn after it, and therefore in the lapse of a few 
 weeks he asked a mendacious man, "Why hath Satan filled 
 thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" and then three hours 
 afterward he said to the woman, "Behold the feet of them 
 which have buried thy husband are at the door." 
 
 Fourthly, the sin of one who pretends to be a disciple of 
 Christ brings an especial dishonor upon Christ himself. In 
 the estimation of the world, Peter was identified with his 
 Master. His actions were representative of the deeds of 
 Christ. His words were a specimen of the sayings of Christ. 
 His example was the best means men had of determining 
 the Saviour's merits. When he rushed out to weep, he let 
 all the bystanders know that it was the mention of the truth 
 alone which had made him blaspheme. If then the scholar 
 be so passionate, how must the teacher be regarded ! This 
 was the most eminent of the disciples. Is not that a de- 
 moralizing school where the most forward pupil is so pro- 
 fane? Reasoning thus, it may be that some around the pal- 
 ace fire that night were permanently influenced against 
 Christianity by the angry look of the blasphemer, and while 
 he is in heaven their souls may be enduring the conse- 
 quences of his blasphemy. Doubtless Christ was in some 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 35 
 
 respects more grieved at the baseness of Peter's denials 
 than at all the impudence and cruelty of Caiaphas. And he 
 is, in some respects, more affected now by the inconsis- 
 tencies of those who pretend to represent him than by the 
 scandals of those who know him not. It is our unfaithful- 
 ness, my brethren, that creates for the impenitent their 
 most specious excuses and gives them the opiate that lulls 
 them into a spiritual sleep, which may never know a wak- 
 ing. Should we expect that He would be wounded in the 
 house of his friends? Could we suppose that after having 
 eaten of thei bread and drunk of the cup, we should so soon 
 crucify him afresh? For this, for nothing more than this, 
 does Christ utter the inviting words, My body, eat ye of it; 
 my blood, drink of it; yea, eat and) drink, without money 
 and without price. Is this repeated denial of him all the re- 
 ward which is due for his amazing love? 
 
 Fifthly, the sin of Peter, like that of every other man, 
 was conformed to his constitutional temperament. His 
 temperament, like that of every other man, had its peculiar 
 advantages and its peculiar evils. It allured him to a par- 
 ticular class of sins, and aided him in a particular class of 
 duties. Whenever he is mentioned in the Gospels, it is in 
 connection with somewhat marked and unique. All his 
 acts were those of Simon Peter, son of Jonas. Is Jesus 
 walking on the sea? Peter must walk in the same way, 
 while his comrades remain in the boat. Is Jesus on the 
 shore? Peter must gird his fisher's coat about him, and 
 cast himself into the water. When Christ is transfigured 
 on the mountain, all the disciples are amazed, but Peter 
 
36 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 must needs cry out, "Lord, ... let us make three taber- 
 nacles ; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias." 
 What did the man mean by this strange request? What did 
 he mean? "Not knowing," saith the historian, "what he 
 said ;" "for he wist not," said another, "what to say ; because 
 he was sore afraid." But he is Simon Peter : he must be for- 
 ward ; he must say something. When Christ is assaulted in 
 the garden, all the other disciples are affrighted, but Peter 
 draws a sword and attempts to pierce the head itself of a 
 soldier, but in his haste, he only smites off an ear. Rash 
 man ! It is to be expected that he will be rash also in his 
 sins ; that he will do something startling ; something unique, 
 something altogether his own. Not one of the converted 
 eleven was so boastful as he, that he never would forsake 
 his Lord ; and in six hours afterwards, he was the only one 
 of the converted eleven bold enough to venture on so sin- 
 gular a denial. The truth is that his energetic soul, always 
 full of some one subject, was now full of a curiosity to see 
 the end of the trial. The passion for seeing the end ab- 
 sorbed all his attention, and prevented him from seeing his 
 own danger. And when this danger had at last engulfed 
 him, the violence of his desire to see the end gave way toi an 
 equal violence of remorse, as a few moments before he 
 was blinded to all things but that of seeing the end. So, 
 now, he can think of nothing but his crime ! his crime ! He 
 weeps, not as other men weep, but bitterly. In a few min- 
 utes and he could see the end, but he has now lost his de- 
 sire, and he rushes out from the palace, enveloped in sorrow 
 for his sin, not a persevering sin, but one which in six hours 
 after its commission he forsakes and abhors 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 37 
 
 "The needle which in the shaken compass flew hither and thither, 
 At last, .long quivering, poises to the north." 
 
 So the heart of the disciple, after its trembling and os- 
 cillating turned promptly to his Lord. No one can tell 
 the distress, the aching of the heart, the pain of the 
 bones, the wringing of the whole system in anguish 
 which the penitent endured. He then felt as a hum- 
 ble preacher has since declared of himself, that his 
 very repentance needed to be repented of, and his very 
 tears needed to be washed in some sacrificial blood. 
 He had no excuse to plead. He did not say, as would some 
 modern transgressors, "It was foretold that I should deny 
 Christ ; therefore it was certain, therefore it was decreed, 
 and therefore I am not blamable for having accomplished 
 a decree." Neither did he palliate his crime by pointing to 
 the good results, the admonitory lessons coming from it to 
 himself and to the Church — lessons that may come to us 
 this day, and to all men in all time. He thinks of only one 
 thing, the exceeding sinfulness of his sin. We can almost 
 hear him use the strong phraseology of his epistle, which 
 some suppose was suggested to him by the perils of that 
 night: "I am a dog, returned again to my vomit; like a 
 swine that was washed, I have gone back again to my wal- 
 lowing in the mire." It is reported by some of the ancients 
 that from this evening until his dying day, Peter never heard 
 the crowing of a cock without bursting into tears. True or 
 false, it is a good representation of the strength of his 
 agony. 
 
 And yet, after he had sunk as low as possible into the dust, 
 
38 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 he rose again with his native elasticity. In less than forty- 
 days we hear the question, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou 
 me?" "I trust that I do ; it is very hard to know one's own 
 heart. I hope, I have a humble hope that I do." This is 
 not his blushing reply as he hangs his head before the man 
 whom he did not know. He is grieved that the question 
 should be asked him. "Lovest thou me?" "Yes! yes! Lord, 
 thou knowest all things, and of course thou knowest that I 
 love thee." Nor was he afraid of publicly defending the 
 man whom he did not know, and did not know whom men 
 meant when they spake of him. Instead of slinking back 
 into a corner — I have now brought such a reproach upon 
 the cause of Christ that it is imprudent for me to preach — 
 he bated not a jot or tittle of heart or hope. He 
 went forward straightway and uttered the anathemas of 
 the gospel against all gainsayers. In less than two 
 months we find him in Jerusalem lifting up his voice 
 to men out of every nation under the heaven, and pro- 
 claiming to them intrepidly : "Ye men of Israel, hear these 
 words. (Hear them from me ; I have indeed been unfaith- 
 ful ; but that is no reason why you should remain rebel- 
 lious.) Jesus of Nazareth, being delivered up (but the fact 
 that he was delivered up is no reason why you should take 
 him sinfully, and do to him what your malice prompted), 
 being delivered up by the determinate counsel ... of God 
 (but such a determinate counsel as left you free to avoid the 
 sin, if you chose to avoid it), (you with wicked hands), I 
 have done a shameful wrong with my tongue, and you with 
 wicked hands have crucified and slain the Holy One. Say 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 39 
 
 not to me, Physician, heal thyself, for I am going to heal 
 myself, and I charge you in the name of the Hig*hest to 
 make yourselves pure from the blood of this righteous man. 
 Say not to me. Cast the beam out of thine own eye. I have 
 cast it out through grace ; and because my vision has been 
 disordered, that were a miserable reason why your vision 
 should continue to be disordered. True, I have done one 
 grievous wrong, but that were a wretched apology for my 
 doing a second grievous wrong, in refusing to exhort you 
 to do right." 
 
 And when they were pricked in their heart, and asked, 
 "What shall we do?" the bold man answered as if he had 
 never exposed himself to the least suspicion of a fault, "Save 
 yourselves from this untoward generation. What if I have 
 been untoward, save yourselves from this untoward gener- 
 ation." Soon after this, we find him before the whole Jewish 
 council, and though he once cowered and quailed before 
 their maid-servants, he now, in severe rebuke, cuts the whole 
 Sanhedrin to the heart. Do his former comrades write 
 epistles? He writes also and fills them with denunciation 
 against sin and incitement to fidelity. His crime he did not 
 hesitate to confess and publish to the world. It is the testi- 
 mony of some of the ancients that Mark wrote his Gospel 
 from the things which had been rehearsed by Peter ; that he 
 submitted his Gospel before it was published to Peter's re- 
 visal, secured the apostle's approbation of it, and thereby 
 made Peter endorse the Gospel so as to warrant some in 
 calling it "The Gospel according to Peter." Yet Mark is 
 more circumstantial than any in recording the apostle's dis- 
 
40 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 grace. The guilty man himself employed Mark as an aman- 
 uensis to make this mournful story known to all men, to the 
 latest age. And yet this same transgressor, in his epistles 
 which he knew would go bound up with his gospel to the 
 future times, hesitates not to exclaim, These men, natural 
 brute beasts — spots and blemishes — wells without water, 
 clouds carried with a tempest — that speak great swelling 
 words of vanity — if they are entangled and overcome — bet- 
 ter for them not to have known the way of righteousness. 
 
 And Peter, Abdias relates, approaching the cross on 
 which he was to be martyred, asked that he might be fixed 
 upon it with his feet turned upward. St. Chrysostom is in 
 ecstasy when he records this fact. "Rejoice," he cries out, 
 "rejoice, O Peter, for you have now tasted the cross, and 
 you could not aspire to the honor of doing it as your Sav- 
 iour did, in an erect posture, but rather turned upon your 
 head, with your feet aloft, as if you were to walk from earth 
 up to the skies. Behold the man, Simon Peter, the bold 
 sinner, the bolder saint !" 
 
 Behold him, as the great painters have shown him, with 
 his head inverted, surcharged with blood, his feet nailed to 
 the top of the cross, his hands to the base. He is just enter- 
 ing heaven. Behold the man ! — forward to the last in duty, 
 peculiar to the last in self-denial — ^that is the man ; nobody 
 else ; his individuality secure ; Simon Peter, son of Jonas, 
 going into heaven as none ever went before, and none, save 
 his own imitators, ever went after him. And when that suf- 
 ferer passed through the door of Paradise, turning as it did 
 on golden hinges, was he not received, think you, by his 
 
PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 41 
 
 fellow saints with an enthusiasm altogether novel? He was 
 the rock on which the Church had been built. He had held 
 the keys of life and death. He had been a leader of the 
 brave band of Christians on earth ; had been a valiant, a vic- 
 torious soldier of the cross ; a pioneer in Christian martyr- 
 dom ; had given up his all, the mighty energies of his body, 
 the restless untamable vigor of his feelings, all for the de- 
 spised Nazarene. 
 
 On the Sabbath morning when that Nazarene was raised 
 from his tomb one of the angels said, '"'Go. . . . tell his dis- 
 ciples and Peter, that he goeth before you into Galilee." Pe- 
 ter was one of his disciples, but it is the disciples and Peter 
 who are reunited in Paradise. There he is, this morning, a 
 bright spirit, his eye beaming with celestial luster, un- 
 wonted even in that brilliant circle ; his voice swelling in a 
 melody (and a loudness even) above the other voices which 
 are all a choral symphony, harmonious numbers sweet. He 
 presses up round the throne nearer than others, for he is 
 Simon Peter. He leaps in ecstasy more joyous than others, 
 for he is Simon Peter. He no longer wraps his fisher's coat 
 about him, for he has exchanged it for a white robe. No 
 more does he sit, mending his ragged net, for he was long 
 ago made a fisher of men, women and children. No longer 
 does he sail on a terrestrial sea, but walks as aj king and a 
 priest by the crystal river, that floweth hard by the throne 
 of God. No more disputes now with his brother apostles. 
 He was once at variance wuth some of them, but now he 
 has done with his disputation. 'T withstood him to the 
 face," says Paul of him, "because he was to be blamed." 
 
42 PETER'S DENIALS OF HIS LORD 
 
 But Paul no longer withstands him — Peter is no longer to 
 be blamed. The reprover and the reproved now face to 
 face smile on each other as two yokefellows, different in 
 disposition and yet one, who have passed through great 
 tribulation and their souls escaped as a bird out of the snare 
 of the fowler. 
 
 Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Christ? No more of 
 these suspicions ! No more grief in that ardent soul. We 
 love, we love that noble apostle ! Interesting even in his 
 foibles ; majestic, sublime in his virtues. God grant that 
 his mantle may fall on us, and that we may strike hands 
 with him in the home of the redeemed ! Whenever we are 
 weeping bitterly for our sins, then may Jesus turn and look 
 upon us in his mild, forgiving love, and at last may he join 
 us to that glorious company of his apostles, the noble army 
 of his martyrs, and crown both us and them with everlast- 
 ing crowns ! 
 
JUDAS 
 
See introduction to previous sermon, "Peter's Denials of his Lord." 
 
JUDAS 
 
 "The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: hut woe unto that 
 man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that 
 man if he had not been born." — Matt. 26 : 24. 
 
 There is a superhuman element in the history of our 
 Lord during the six days preceding his death. On Sat- 
 urday he took his Sabbath day's journey to the small vil- 
 lage where he was to spend five nights of that sorrow- 
 ful week. On Sunday he made his triumphal entrance 
 into the city where he was to hang between two thieves. 
 On Monday, as if he were a prince, he purified the temple, 
 and on Tuesday he delivered in it one of the most impres- 
 sive of his discourses. After he had predicted the final 
 judgment, and then commented on the architecture of the 
 temple edifice, he took his usual afternoon's walk to Beth- 
 any, and on his way uttered such a lament over Jerusalem 
 as has arrested the attention of rhetoricians, and they have 
 pronounced it a model of pathetic eloquence. On Tuesday 
 evening after these afflictive scenes, we find him at a feast 
 in the house of Simon the leper. If you ever visit Beth- 
 any you will be told of the very spot where was the house 
 in which he partook of that feast. You may not believe 
 you are standing on the identical spot, but you will be cer- 
 tain that you are standing very near it. Here a multitude of 
 thoughts will throng your mind. Here was entertained the 
 
46 JUDAS 
 
 young man who was to be executed after two days as it 
 were on a gallows ; and yet who was confidently foretelling 
 his own glories on earth. Here he uttered one sentence, 
 which proves that even in view of his disgrace on the cross, 
 he cherished a regard for the fame of himself and his 
 friends. On or near this identical spot, in this humble vil- 
 lage, the young man, as if he were a lawgiver, pronounced 
 one sentence which was to afifect the progress of the fine 
 arts among the most cultivated nations of the earth. Even 
 in 1874 the question presents itself to philanthropists : Shall 
 we regulate our pecuniary expenses according to the stand- 
 ard of our physical needs, or shall we use our money in 
 cultivating our taste for the beautiful? In 1874 men are 
 suffering for want of food, for want of clothing, for want 
 of that knowledge which may save their souls. Shall we, 
 then, indulge ourselves in expenditures for the fine arts? 
 Close for a moment the volume of history, and imagine that 
 the young man who, so near his cross, might be pardoned 
 for taking gloomy views of life, had uttered the imagined 
 sentence in favor of spending all our money in relieving 
 the immediate necessities of the soul. That one sentence 
 would have prevented the erection of Michael Angelo's 
 cathedrals, the fashioning of Canova's eloquent statues, the 
 painting of Raphael's breathing pictures, the composing of 
 Handel's oratorios which are like the chorus of angels. 
 That one sentence pronounced on the little hill of Bethany, 
 would have denuded our houses of their pictures and speak- 
 ing marbles and we should have lived the prosaic life of 
 men who spend nothing for what they can live without. 
 
JUDAS 47 
 
 Did the young man in the gloom of that depressing week 
 utter that one sentence which was to be the rule of the 
 strictest economy? Did he? Open now the volume of his- 
 tory. When Simon the leper made his memorable feast, 
 it was fitting for him to invite Lazarus, Martha and Mary, 
 three neighbors of Simon, and special friends of Jesus. The 
 etiquette of that day, as of this, required that the family 
 with which a guest was sojourning be called to the enter- 
 tainment which was given for him, Mary brought to the 
 feast an alabaster vase, sealed with wax, and filled with the 
 richest of all aromatic substances, the nard. Judas Iscariot, 
 who well understood the prices of such articles, estimated 
 this vase of nard to be worth forty-five dollars. It was the 
 kind of ointment with which the most opulent Orientals 
 were accustomed to anoint the head of a distinguished 
 guest. Mary poured it upon the feet of her guest. The 
 wealthy princes used it sparingly ; she used it profusely. 
 They diluted it ; she presented it unadulterated. She 
 might have wiped the feet with a towel near at hand, but 
 she chose to wipe them with the hair of her head. It was 
 humility and love indeed ! Her brother Lazarus had lain 
 dead four days, but she remembered — and gratitude is the 
 memory of her heart — how at his grave Jesus wept ; and 
 how he said, "Lazarus, come forth." 
 
 Hers was a noble sentiment, that Christ as the Messiah 
 should be honored generously, and as a friend should be 
 gratified with all that may regale a pure spirit. Her theory 
 was that silver and gold must be sacrificed to the expres- 
 sion of esteem for worth, and luxuries are duties when thev 
 
48 JUDAS 
 
 are needed in the overflowing of a thankful virtue. The 
 disciples of Christ, however, could not understand this 
 philosophy at that time. When the room was filled with 
 the fragrance of the nard they were troubled. It seemed 
 to them an extravagant waste of money. That oil from the 
 Indies could neither be eaten nor drunk ; nor would it min- 
 ister to any pressing need. Judas was particularly grieved 
 that so much money should be expended without any cry- 
 ing want. lie could see no^ meaning in the generous unc- 
 tion. He calculated its value, but could not calculate its in- 
 fluence on the finer feelings of the soul. Having figured 
 out the price of the spikenard, he would have advised to 
 sell it, (with him everything was to be sold) ; to sell it 
 for five and forty dollars, three hundred pence. To sell 
 it was his plan — not from any avaricious motive, as he 
 would have it thought ; and perhaps his reason and con- 
 science approved of the plan to sell it and give the avails 
 to the poor. And are there not some zealous Christians 
 who would censure the imprudence of a man for giving 
 away so large a proportion of his income as was given by 
 this generous woman? Are there not also many seeming 
 philanthropists who sneer at the missionary outfit as some- 
 thing which might have been sold for much and given to 
 the poor of our own land? They regard their course as 
 the only judicious one, and would regard you as merely 
 censorious if you should intimate that they were prompted 
 by Judas Iscariot's love to the poor in refusing the pres- 
 ent charity, and preferring some other charity, in some 
 different way, at some future time — which time too often 
 
JUDAS 49 
 
 comes with tardy wheels. This is never avarice. This — 
 avarice? This is but a sorry remnant of Judas Iscariot's 
 love for the poor. 
 
 Jesus Christ would gather up the fragments that noth- 
 ing be lost. Yet he was no utilitarian in his religion. Not 
 more sweetly did the balsam perfume the feast room, than 
 did the character of her who poured it ; he made it redo- 
 lent of all that is noble. He condemned the starveling 
 economy of Judas, and showed that whatever elicits one 
 noble feeling, or soothes one broken spirit, or calms one 
 rufifled temper, or lightens up in smiles one downcast face; 
 whatever honors the Messiah, and glorifies God, and makes 
 religion venerable, that is the highest style of usefulness. 
 Therefore the one sentence which our Lord pronounced 
 in the house of Simon the leper was: "Let her alone; why 
 trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. . . . 
 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be 
 preached throughout the, whole world, this also that she 
 hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her." By 
 this commendation he gave that woman's name in charge 
 to the sweet lyre ; and the historic muse, glad of the treas- 
 ure, will mardh with that name down to the end of time ; 
 and sculpture, in her turn, will give bonds in stone and ever- 
 during brass to guard that name and to immortalize her 
 trust. 
 
 The truth seems to be that Iscariot had his private rea- 
 sons for opposing this waste of the spikenard. He would 
 fain trade with it. He loved the handling of money, even 
 when it was not his own. But the apostle John, with all 
 
50 JUDAS 
 
 his mildness, intimates that the treasurer of the disciples 
 was in the habit of purloining for his individual use the con- 
 tents of the common purse. The loss of the nard, which 
 was worth so much, was therefore a personal loss to this 
 pretended friend of the poor. He seems to have reasoned 
 thus with himself: "When I became a disciple of the Mes- 
 siah, I expected that he would assume a temporal throne 
 and that he would raise me tO' the wealth of a prince at his 
 right hand. Having waited three long years, I now learn 
 that his kingdom is not of this world, but is a kingdom 
 of mere spirituality, and this spirituality will yield me but 
 a meager living. Can I not make more money than by 
 remaining the treasurer of this beggarly band, of whom 
 the Master says — land how weary I am of hearing those 
 words repeated and reiterated again and again! — 'Ye have 
 the poor always with you'? As well as not I might have 
 put into my purse these three hundred silver denarii, which 
 were wasted on my Master; for he might have sup- 
 ported himself without them. But he applauded the woman 
 for her lavish bounty, and rebuked me as if my care for 
 the poor was but the greed of a miser. And I cannot for- 
 get that question which he asked more than a year ago, 
 and which he pointed at me. I could never get away from 
 the suspicion that he pointed at me those sharp words: 
 'Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?' " 
 These were sharp words. The words of the wise are 
 as goads, and faithful are the wounds of a friend. And If 
 the avarice of Judas had not contracted his mind into a 
 petty jealousy, he would have thanked his reprover for 
 
JUDAS 51 
 
 those sharp words; but he cherished a retaliatory spirit. 
 Is it strange that he was revengeful? Any one sin brings 
 a thousand in its train. He had nurtured a love of money, 
 and this, like every individual sin, germinates into others. 
 Is it strange that he is prepared now for a desperate crime? 
 He had been educating himself for that crime. He pilfered 
 first a farthing; then a denarius; then a shekel; then a 
 pound. "My Master will never miss the money. He seems 
 too spiritual to concern himself about my treasury; and 
 besides, when he is in need of silver, he has but tO' speak 
 the word and a fish of the sea will surrender the desired 
 coin. What harm, then, if I take a silver piece to-day and 
 a gold piece to-morrow?" What harm? For Judas was a 
 calculator of consequences! But amid all his calculations 
 he forgot the consequences of a single sin upon a grow- 
 ing soul. By little and little had he become great in infamy. 
 Never was the great sinner made such in a day. Step by 
 step do we hourly rise or sink in holiness or guilt. If we 
 are ever to commit a gigantic crime, Judas foretells us the 
 reason of it. We are, or are to be schooling ourselves for 
 that crime. The child who tells something that is almost 
 a lie, and yet not quite, there is danger of him that he will 
 be a liar at the last. The youth who takes a farthing's 
 worth of another's property, and almost means to steal, 
 and yet not quite, for he means to return it, there is dan- 
 ger of him that he will end his career as a thief. If you 
 nurture a venial sin to-day, and a venial sin to-morrow, and 
 a venial sin the third day, you will soon be prepared for 
 Iscariot'b crime, and will learn that there is no venial sin. 
 
52 JUDAS 
 
 but every sin is fearful in its guilt, for, if unchecked, it 
 must be fatal in its influence. 
 
 Perhaps on Tuesday nig-ht, certainly as early as Wednes- 
 day, the traitor had contrived a plan by which he might both 
 gratify his irritated spirit and gain money. Wednesday^ was 
 the day on which the Jewish Sanhedrin met. They as- 
 sembled on Mt. Zion, at the house of Joseph Caiaphas. 
 They perceived themselves to be involved in a dilemma. 
 They had already advertised for Jesus without effect. 
 Therefore, if he be apprehended at all, their own 
 officers must perform the work. But they cannot 
 apprehend him in public ; for he has too great a throng 
 of friends who will fight for him. And they can- 
 not apprehend him in private until the expiration of 
 the seven feast days. Next Thursday evening the na- 
 tional passover commences ; between this time and that 
 less than forty hours intervene; the city is crowded with 
 strangers ; no man is so popular with them as Jesus is ; and 
 an assault upon him during these holidays will make an 
 uproar among the people. But how can the Sanhedrin 
 enjoy the festival while the numerous visitants at the capi- 
 tal are frequenting the by-places of this attractive teacher, 
 and are this week preparing themselves to disseminate his 
 influence as they go next week from Jerusalem through all 
 the hamlets of Judaea? In their perplexity and chagrin the 
 priests are accosted by a stranger with the significant 
 words: "What will ye give me?" No introduction, no 
 apology ; these are the first words — dollars and cents. What 
 
 *Dr. Robinson supposes that this scene was on Wednesday morning. 
 
JUDAS • 53 
 
 will you give me, and I will deliver up to you the foe whom 
 you dread? Nothing could be more timely. No need now 
 of a week's delay. Before the passover commences the foe 
 may be put under Roman custody, and the name of Rome 
 will overawe the insurrection. When the dignitaries heard 
 it, says Luke, they were glad. With an electric impulse 
 they turn to their new ally. What do they offer? Pre- 
 ferment in church or state? Do they promise: "Whereso- 
 ever the story of Jesus shall be told throughout the whole 
 world, there shall thy deed be spoken of as a memorial of 
 thee"? There are some deeds to which the love of hpnor 
 is no allurement. There are some men who do not sin for 
 the love of fame. Judas seems to have been a man of some 
 ambition, but of more avarice. So they covenanted with 
 him for the sum of $18.00; according to another but less 
 accurate calculation, for the sum of $14.70 ; at any rate the 
 same amount which the Jewish law prescribed as the price 
 of a common slave — less than one-half of the sum which 
 in the view of Judas was wasted on the preceding day 
 by her who anointed the Master for his burial. What shall 
 I render unto the Lord? was her magnanimous query; but, 
 What will you give me for my Lord? was the question of 
 the mercenary disciple. Thirty shekels of silver is the price 
 for the man who gave up all the riches of heaven for this 
 ungrateful world. He is to be bought and sold who re- 
 deemed us not with earthly treasures, but by his own blood. 
 He did become a root out of a dry ground, no form, no 
 comeliness, no beauty! He had a meaning when he ex- 
 claimed in prophetic story: "I am a worm, and no man; 
 a reproach of men, and despised of the people." 
 
54 JUDAS 
 
 It is a striking fact that notwithstanding the shrewd dis- 
 ciple had been intimate with Jesus for three long years, he 
 brought no charge against him. If the Messiah had been 
 guilty of deception or manoeuvre, this eagle-eyed man 
 would have been the first to detect it. For quicker than 
 the steel to the magnet had he been attracted to sinful ar- 
 tifice ; but so far as intimating that his Master was guilty, 
 he distinctly declared that Christ was innocent. To live 
 for thirty-six months with a sharp-sighted spy, in such a 
 way as to give that spy no ground of reproach or even sus- 
 picion, is peculiar to Him who lived as our model. It is a 
 maxim of some that we should never do anything before 
 our most intimate friends, which would injure our char- 
 acter if those friends should become foes : but we are told 
 by other moralists that we need not obey such a maxim. 
 It would freeze up our social aflfections, and bind as with 
 an iron fetter our intercourse of friendship. We must some- 
 times drop an expression that we would fain hold back 
 from the ear and the tongue and the laugh of a foe. 
 Who then could live with so provoking a man as 
 Judas, without an occasional ruffling of a placid tem- 
 per? Could you repress your disdain of the small 
 chafTerings and greedy appetences and splenetic words 
 that were always thrusting themselves before the fam- 
 ily? Wherever you looked, as you walked your room, 
 or sat at your fireside, or ate at your table, these 
 disgusting and degrading littlenesses would be leaping 
 into notice like the frogs into Pharaoh's kneading-troughs ; 
 and yet your Master loved that mean disciple. He knew 
 
JUDAS 55 
 
 the contracted thoughts and the low aims of the traitor, 
 and still he not only bore with the man, but melted in ten- 
 derness over him. In everything was the disciple who kept 
 the bag an exact antipode of Jesus ; in intellect, in heart, 
 in manners doubtless, and in countenance; but after all, in 
 the Redeemer's mind was not one moment's irritation, not 
 one single breath of petulance. All was calm as the lake 
 after it heard his soothing voice, "Peace, be still." Ad- 
 mirable example of family virtue ! Beautiful specimen of 
 that social forbearance which sufifereth long and is kind! 
 Hard lot it was to leave the softness and the delicacy and 
 the nobleness of the angelic choir, and bind himself to the 
 roughness and coarseness and narrowness of a sordid mi- 
 ser. Spring and summer came and went, autumn and win- 
 ter drew along their slow days and nights while he ate and 
 drank, and journeyed and conversed, with one whose very 
 name is a synonym for a hard and vulgar mind. How truly 
 was he a man of sorrows, when the fine fibers of his soul 
 were swept so rudely by the selfish companion of his walk 
 and his table ! Tempted in all points as we are, and yet 
 without sin ! As the demoniacs were sent on purpose to 
 illustrate the power of Christ, so Judas was sent on pur- 
 pose to illustrate the patience of Him who lived as our mod- 
 el. It was meet that he should be yoked with some un- 
 pleasant associate, that he may be touched with the feel- 
 ing of our infirmities. He qualified himself by his dark 
 experience to be compassionate as our high priest. He 
 knoweth now our social frame. He remembereth that in 
 our family life we are but dust. 
 
y 
 
 56 JUDAS 
 
 On Thursday eve we find the treasurer lying down at 
 meat with his fellow disciples. He was partaking for the 
 last time of the paschal feast. The Master of the feast was 
 solemn, for in less than twenty hours he was to be in his 
 grave. Sorrowfully he rises from the table and washes 
 one by one the feet of each disciple. It is a menial service ; 
 it is the seal of his condescension and his love. He, the 
 future Judge of all the earth, washes the feet even of Judas 
 Iscariot. He resumes his place at the table ; his counte- 
 nance becomes more and more dejected ; there is one 
 thought weighing down his spirit ; he can restrain his grief 
 no longer. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, one of you shall 
 deliver me to my murderers." The disciples are startled. 
 "Is it I?" one ventures to ask, and then another, with fear- 
 ful foreboding, "Is it I?" Wishing to disburden the ami- 
 able men who, in this way, so peculiar to the pious, dis- 
 trusted each one himself and no one his neighbor, Jesus 
 at once relieves all who are farthest from him at the table, 
 and says, "It is one of the three or four who are nearest 
 to me." But this augments the anguish of two, at least, 
 among those three or four. One of them is John ; another 
 seems to have been Peter, for he was especially agitated. 
 He must know which one of the three or four the criminal 
 is. He sees that John who was lying within a few inches 
 of Jesus had now moved his head upon the Master's bosom; 
 and it was of course the most convenient for the peculiar 
 favorite of Jesus, while leaning so near the face of his Lord 
 to obtain a secret designation of the traitorous disciple. 
 Peter therefore makes a sign for John to ask the question. 
 
JUDAS 57 
 
 The yielding disciple asks it probably in a whisper; and 
 Jesus whispers back, "The traitor is the man to whom I 
 shall hand a morsel of bread when I shall have dipped it 
 in the harrosheth." This harrosheth was a rich condiment 
 made up of dates, figs, raisins and similar fruits. The bread 
 was dipped into it to be made the more palatable. Mr. 
 Jowett, describing an Oriental meal, says : "Whenever the 
 master of the feast found any delicious morsel, he took it 
 up in his fingers and applied it to my mouth." This fashion 
 of feeding a guest is true Oriental courtesy and hospital- 
 ity. It is an emblem of kindness. Christ used it not merely 
 as a sign tO' John, but as a symbol of love to Judas. "If 
 thine enemy hunger, feed him ;" the Saviour did feed him. 
 In three hours Jesus was to be betrayed and yet he must 
 try once more to soften down his betrayer and win him 
 back to virtue. Even to the last he longed to sweeten that 
 ascetic spirit. He always will display the magnanimity of 
 a friend toward his thankless foes. Never will he be angry 
 as men count anger, even while he deals the bread of per- 
 dition to his enemies. And at the final day, while he utters 
 that dread sentence, "Depart from me, ye cursed," it shall 
 be whispered from one saint to another: "Behold how he 
 loved even them !" And while he does his strange work, 
 frowning away the wicked into ruin, it shall be said again, 
 "Behold how he loved them even to the end !" True, it 
 will be the justice of God uprising against the incorrigible 
 sinner, yet it will be love, almighty love, pointing that jus- 
 tice, and making the sinner speechless. 
 
 If the traitor had felt no remorse, he would have been 
 
58 JUDAS 
 
 pleased with this mark of kindness at the Messiah's hand. 
 He did not know it was designed to point him out 
 as the criminal. But he was too coarse to see the beauty 
 of his Lord's tenderness to him. He ate the sweetened 
 bread, for Judjas Iscariot was not the man to waste any- 
 thing, and, says John, the mildest of the evangeHsts, "After 
 the sop Satan entered into him." 
 
 The Redeemer sees that his magnanimity only exasper- 
 ates Iscariot, and exclaims, "That thou doest, do quickly." 
 It was a command full of meaning. It was the act of in- 
 choate church discipline. The mild Prince of peace, on the 
 last evening of his mild life, was neither ashamed nor afraid 
 to excommunicate an unfaithful pretender. The hidden 
 prophetic force of his words was, 'T am now to institute 
 my Church in form ; to celebrate my first and standard 
 sacrament : shall a transgressor who is never to be saved 
 partake of the pledge of salvation? Shall he who is now 
 under contract with my murderers eat of my body and drink 
 of my blood? It cannot be fit that my infant Church be 
 stained with so impure a communicant. Judas, I am not 
 deceived by your professions ; my hour has come ; I am 
 ready to die. What thou art to do thou knowest. What 
 thou art to do I know ; go and do it quickly. I charge thee 
 stay no longer here ; put no dishonor upon this ever-to-be- 
 remembered and ever-to-be-imitated sacrament of my dy- 
 ing love." 
 
 But how unsuspicious were nearly all the eleven of the 
 traitor's insincerity ! They, probably nine of them, had not 
 heard the previous whispering, and when the laconic order, 
 
JUDAS 59 
 
 "That thou doest, do quickly," burst upon their ears, they 
 thought that the treasurer was ordered to buy provisions 
 for the rest of the feast-week, or else disburse the usual 
 charities to the poor. So beautifully did these simple- 
 hearted men let out the incidental proof that Jesus was 
 in the habit of relieving the poor. The fox had a hole, the 
 bird of the air had a nest, but Jesus had not where to lay his 
 head ; and yet he gave away ; his entire life was a life of 
 giving away ; he died giving away ; he reigns giving away. 
 
 Judas, however, did not so misunderstand the mandate. 
 He had a seat of honor at the table. He was near his 
 Lord. Now, for the first time, he saw that he was detected, 
 and his honor was gone. He lifts up his eyes from the dish 
 and asks, as if equally blameless with those who had asked 
 long ago, "Master, is it I?" "You have said it," is the Sav- 
 iour's dignified response. And the traitor, as soon as ex- 
 posed, left the disciples. 
 
 While they were partaking of their first eucharistic com- 
 munion, Judas walked more than a mile, late in the evening, 
 to the house of Joseph Caiaphas. Gresswell says it was the 
 temple. Eager to gratify his ire and earn his money, he 
 offers to conduct the police straightway to the Messiah's 
 lodgings. The temple guard start forth on the expedition, 
 led on by their prefect who himself walked with Judas. 
 But how shall the police, when they find the twelve, distin- 
 guish the Messiah from his disciples, one of whom is said 
 (and so represented by the painters) to have borne a strong 
 resemblance to Christ? Judas proposes an ingenious 
 scheme. I have been absent two hours or more from my 
 
6o JUDAS 
 
 Master; it will, therefore, be an unsuspicious act, nothing 
 more than common politeness, for me to salute him with a 
 kiss. Whomsoever, therefore, I shall treat with the usual 
 mark of civility, seize him ; he has been known to make 
 surprising escapes ; therefore hold him fast. You are re- 
 sponsible, not I, for leading him away safely. 
 
 In our own day it is not uncommon for American trav- 
 elers to spend the evening of the Jewish passover in the 
 garden of Gethsemane, and to keep there the anniversary 
 of their Redeemer's sorrows. Four years ago, at eleven 
 o'clock at night there was seen from this garden a band 
 of men wending their way to it, having just left the grounds 
 of the ancient temple, some of them bearing arms, some 
 of them bearing torches. It was a thrilling spectacle. 
 Eighteen hundred years ago, from this very garden, Jesus 
 may have watched the band of his captors as they came 
 down that hill, with swords and staves and lanterns. While 
 he was watching them he may have been preparing himself 
 to meet them. For various reasons it seems probable that 
 these armed men, when they came near the garden halted, 
 and the traitor walked forward alone to meet Jesus. For 
 the same reasons it seems probable that Jesus left his dis- 
 ciples in the rear and walked forward alone to meet the 
 man whom he had called the son of perdition. Never be- 
 fore or since was there a similar meeting of two men. 
 Historians describe the sublimity of the scene when two 
 hostile armies draw near to their battle-ground ; a cloud of 
 dust from the north, betokening the approach of one army 
 — a cloud of dust from the south indicating the tread of 
 
JUDAS 6i 
 
 the opposing host. All the evil passions of the traitor were 
 like a battalion of evil spirits surrounding him. All the 
 virtues of the Redeemer were like legions of angels hover- 
 ing over him. In the stillness of the night, these two rep- 
 resentatives of principalities and powers stood before each 
 other face to face. "Hail, master !" was the first word which 
 broke the silence of the scene. "Betrayest thou the Son 
 of man with a kiss?" was the final word of that noiseless 
 encounter. There is no man so lofty but that he is some- 
 times brought low in affliction. There is no man so low 
 but that he is sometimes raised up in triumph. The vender 
 of his Lord has achieved his end. The Redeemer is 
 seized by the police ; his hands are bound behind him and 
 he w'ho had just been strengthened by an angel of God is 
 a manacled prisoner. As the towers of Mount Moriah are 
 reflecting the moonbeams in somber magnificence, the 
 police march back to the Sanhedrin. Judas goes with 
 them. He is going now for his fee. "So they weighed for 
 his price," said an old prophet five hundred years before, 
 and thus they proved the truth of inspiration, "So they 
 weighed for his price thirty pieces of silver." Judas took 
 them and went his way. Where he spent that night no- 
 body knows. How he spent it we may presume. He had 
 harbored probably a vague impression that the prisoner, 
 after all, would circumvent the police or foil the court. But 
 when he learned that Jesus had been harassed all night long 
 with a tedious and insolent trial, exhausted by the mock- 
 ing and insults of the court and mob ; that he had been led 
 handcuffed to the Roman fortress, and after a merciless 
 
62 JUDAS 
 
 scourging, had been condemned by the Roman judge, and 
 was now delivered over, tired and bleeding, to the iron- 
 hearted executioner, the miser was convulsed with fear. 
 He had always noticed something majestic and mysterious 
 in the look and speech and entire life of his Master, and 
 therefore he knew not what sudden vengeance might fall 
 upon his own head. Such men as Judas are subject to sud- 
 den paroxysms. The violence of his anger prepared the 
 way for violence of grief. He was a man of strong mind 
 and strong passions. He had fostered a malignant spirit, 
 but had not exterminated his conscience. An old divine 
 says : "There is no man breathing but carries [about him] 
 a sleeping lion in his bosom, which God can and may, when 
 he pleases, rouse up and let loose upon the man, so as to 
 tear and worry him, to that degree that he shall be glad to 
 take sanctuary in a quiet grave." We may naturally sup- 
 pose the traitor to have conversed with himself thus : "How 
 troubled in spirit was my Master, what an imploring glance 
 he flung upon me, when he uttered those last words, the 
 last which I ever did or ever can hear from him in this 
 world, 'Betrayest thou the Son of man with a mark of 
 friendship?' Had it not been for me, he would have es- 
 caped his brutal trial. Had it not been for me, his life of 
 kindness would have been crowned with honor. I am 
 worse than the priests, worse than Pilate. I remember the 
 day when he said, and perhaps his foresight led him to aim 
 at me his words, 'What shall it profit a man, if he shall 
 gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' I remem- 
 ber many such words ; and now I have' lost my office, I 
 
JUDAS 63 
 
 Ijave lost my means of living ; I have lost my good name ; 
 I have lost my soul, and what have I gained by my treach- 
 ery ! Not the whole world — no, no, not the whole, but 
 thirty shekels of silver. What will you give me? has been 
 my first proposal. I might have bought the truth and sold 
 it not. I had every means of laying up for myself those 
 durable riches of which I heard the Master say that the 
 moth shall not corrupt them ; but I have spent my life in 
 asking. What will ye give me? and at length I have bartered 
 away my birthright for oh, how small a portion of filthy 
 lucre ! My money burns in my purse. It will weigh me 
 down to Hades. What shall I do to be eased of my an- 
 guish? I will flee to the ministers of God ; I will not exten- 
 uate my guilt, it is too great ; I will not censure my employ- 
 ers. If you had not, if you had not tempted me, I had not 
 been so ungrateful to my Lord. I am too guilty to accuse 
 my confederates thus ; but I will give my thirty silver pieces 
 to the ministers of the Lord. I will offer my basely earned 
 coin to the treasury of the Church. Will not the Most 
 High be propitiated if all the contents of my purse be used 
 in his service? for the worship in his temple?" The remorse- 
 ful man hurries to the priests. "I have sinned. Here in 
 the temple I bear my witness that Jesus has not sinned. 
 It is I who' have sinned." "What is it to us that you have 
 sinned? Attend to that business yourself." So did the 
 priests answer him. Last night when they had something 
 to gain by him they treated him with an eager kindness, 
 they were glad ; but this morning they have finished their 
 use of him as their instrument, and now they thrust him 
 aside as a broken tool. 
 
64 JUDAS 
 
 The friendship of the world is said to be enmity to God. 
 It is enmity to the friends themselves. The fashionable 
 corrupter will never condole with his ruined victim. He 
 smiles — it is but to devour. Thrice wretched is that youth 
 who has forsaken the tried friends of his innocence for the 
 ensnaring companionship of evil men in high places. 
 When troubled by clamors of conscience, his enticing com- 
 panions will utter words which will be as daggers to his 
 soul. I used to think that if at last I perished in my sin, 
 my pain would be assuaged by the comrades who hand in 
 hand had trod with me sin's flowery way, for I had read 
 that even devil with devil damned firm concord holds. 
 But no. There shall be no such sympathy in hell; Dreary 
 shall be the alliance of them who were allies on earth. 
 Not a reprobate was ever decoyed by friends whom he 
 loved but has already found annoyance in that love, and 
 accusers in those friends. No wonder that Dives begged 
 and begged that his five brethren might not join him in 
 woe. Their reproaches would make pain itself more pain- 
 ful, and though now he was in the lowest depth, yet when 
 they came a lower deep would open to devour him. It is 
 eternal wailing. See thou to that. Alas ! he has seen ; 
 what is that to us? he yet sees ; he will ever see to it. 
 
 No sooner had the priesthood sneered at the grief of Ju- 
 das than he threw his eighteen dollars upon the sanctuary 
 floor and rushed out of the porch. His old friends abhorring 
 him, his new friends despising him, his money gone, his of- 
 fice gone, he is weary of life. To allay the anguish of re- 
 morse he resolves to plunge into the depths of that remorse 
 
JUDAS 65 
 
 which never knows an end. To escape from the flame he 
 means now to cast himself into the fire. So wretched is this 
 ruined sinner that he seeks reUef in hell. 
 
 He walks from the temple in a southerly direction to 
 the vale of Hinnom. At the same time the mob led Jesus 
 from the same place in an easterly direction to the mount 
 of Calvary. Behold the two' men, both going to death at 
 the same hour. With the cross upon his shoulder and with 
 Judaea's daughters weeping around him, Jesus cries: 
 "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me." With a nope 
 in his hand, but without seeing one tear of sympathy for 
 him, Judas hurries away, and says not a word to the crowd 
 whom he meets thronging on toward Golgotha. What a 
 contrast also appears at this time between Judas and Pe- 
 ter! Peter is all alone weeping for his sins — not for one 
 sin but for all his sins — not because they were injurious, 
 but because they were vile. He not only weeps for them 
 but forsakes them — not only forsakes them but brings forth 
 fruits meet for repentance ; and after all his good aims, he 
 prays that his life of guilt may be pardoned through grace. 
 But we do not read that Judas wept. His was not that re- 
 morse which melts itself into tears. His was not that de- 
 spair which casts itself upon the mercy of God. He is not 
 humble, but mortified ; not penitent, but sorry ; not mourn- 
 ing because he is a selfish man, but chagrined because he 
 has done a ruinous deed. He confesses his crime, but to 
 men only, not to God ; and not the whole of his crime, but 
 merely that item which had been already exposed. He 
 says not, "I confess my avarice, my revenge, my hidden 
 
66 JUDAS 
 
 dishonesty," but, "I confess my treason." Nor had he con- 
 fessed his treason if Jesus had triumphed over it. But, 
 says Matthew, when the poor calculator saw the conse- 
 quences of his kiss he trembled. Without one prayer to 
 God he confesses, "I have sinned," and went straightway 
 to sin more boldly than ever. His cheek was pale with 
 fear, and yet he feared not to face the Eternal — but un- 
 called' for. As if to show that he could not be bold enough 
 on earth, he rushed to the bar of his God. No, that poor 
 man had all the anguish of a convicted soul without one 
 solace of a penitent. He held himself up to the world 
 as a spectacle of remorse and crime even in death. His 
 pain, like that of every incorrigible man, was equal to his 
 selfishness. His selfishness, like that of every persever- 
 ing sinner, was the source of that strange pain ; for the 
 pain of conscience is a strange pain, hankering to augment 
 itself. 
 
 Having walked, as we may suppose, more than a hundred 
 rods from Mt. Moriah, and passed the city wall through 
 one of its southern gates, Judas arrived at a patch of 
 rough ground from which the potter who owned it pro- 
 cured the clay for his bricks. "One of the most rude and 
 rugged spots here, and one which is close to the valley of 
 Tophet is still pointed out as the Potter's Field. Here 
 Judas is said to have been buried. Here are trees stand- 
 ing near the brink of huge clififs and precipices." We may 
 suppose that it was a tree growing near the verge of one 
 such cliff that Judas selected for his use. He may have tied 
 his rope to a bough which leaned over the precipice and 
 
JUDAS 67 
 
 which if it should break would let him fall upon the sharp 
 rocks at the bottom. Having tied the other end of the rope 
 around his neck, he has nothing to do but to swing over 
 the edge of the abyss, and his entire weight will hang upon 
 the bough. He swings. But perhaps the bough was too 
 fragile ; perhaps the rope was too weak ; perhaps he was too 
 deeply agitated with remorse to adjust anything aright: 
 at any rate, by some mismanagement he lost his hold upon 
 the tree. He fell down the precipice; he struck upon the 
 sharp rocks. Luke, who was a physician, and was care- 
 ful in noting the phenomena within the scope of his pro- 
 fession, describes the fall as resulting in the most violent 
 contusions of the body, and in an evisceration from which 
 we turn away our eyes instinctively for relief. 
 
 And whither shall we turn our eyes instinctively for re- 
 lief? From the mangled body to the soul? Have you not 
 heard how some believe that Judas at the instant of his 
 body's fracture rose as a happy spirit toi Paradise, and left 
 his comrades, because they were faithful, to struggle on for 
 years in persecution and pain? Have you not heard how 
 some believe that he spent three hours amid the pure ser- 
 aphs above while his Redeemer was sighing out these three 
 hours on the cross, amid the enemies who were mocking 
 him? Have you not heard how some believe all this? But 
 have you not read that when Judas fell, he did not rise, but 
 fell from his apostleship to "his own place"? 
 
 It has been asked what are the most momentous hours 
 that have elapsed since the creation. I do not know what 
 they were, unless we select the five hours from eleven till 
 
68 JUDAS 
 
 four on that memorable Friday. On earth what a moment 
 was this of the traitor's death ! In a very short time the 
 entire heaven was clouded over, and remained so, from 
 the sixth hour to the ninth — for then the Son of God was 
 nailed to the tree and that was the most thrilling thing ever 
 done by man. In heaven, also, what a moment! It was 
 known there, doubtless, that the portals of death would be 
 opened for Jesus to pass through on his mysterious visit 
 after his expiring breath on the cross — that brief as well 
 as wonderful visit lasting only from Friday noon until Sab- 
 bath morning, very early in the morning. And were not 
 the sainted spirits gazing silently at that door and wait- 
 ing for the coming in of their favorite? But lo! an intruder, 
 unbidden, opens the gates of death at that hour when the 
 principalities of heaven stood waiting. He is hastening 
 away from his only probation, even while the making of 
 the atonement is in actual progress on Calvary. Four- 
 teen hours ago he met the Son of God in the garden and 
 kissed him. Now he meets God himself. "Hail Master," 
 does he say? To see God in this world is one thing; to 
 see him in eternity, that is the event at which every mouth 
 shall be stopped. 
 
 And in hell what a moment was this of Judas' death ! 
 Now is your hour, said Jesus, your hour of triumph. They 
 were all absorbed then in the crucifixion, and did they not 
 watch the iron gate, anxious and eager for the first glimpse 
 of Him who was soon to be relieved from the nails and the 
 crown of thorns? But the betrayer gets the start of the 
 betrayed, and shows himself abruptly to that dark cloud 
 
JUDAS 69 
 
 of witnesses. He comes down loaded with remorse. 
 "What is your remorse to us? see thou to that." He finds 
 he has made a sad exchange from earth to hell. In a mo- 
 ment, in the twinkling of an eye, he pants to avert his sec- 
 ond death by a second suicide. One hour ago he longed 
 to undo his treachery, now he longs to undo his self-mur- 
 der. In a few moments Jesus exclaims from the cross: "I 
 thirst ;" and then Judas cries : "Give me also one drop of 
 water ; for I am tormented in this flame of remorse." In 
 a few moments, Jesus prays, "Father, forgive them ;" and 
 then Judas cries, "Yea, forgive them, lest they who hired 
 me come hither to augment my pains." John, his fellow 
 disciple, and Mary who wasted the ointment, are, at this 
 very minute, around the cross. Oh, could Judas go back 
 again, and stand with that amiable disciple, and with that 
 woman who wasted the ointment, he would give, yea, that 
 miser would give oceans of his once loved shekels ! But 
 no, he was to be forever craving, as on earth craving for sil- 
 ver, so now craving for one moment of rest. In vain he longs 
 that the rock on which he fell and was bruised might now 
 fall on him and hide him from the glance of that mild Prince 
 who was just moving through the air from his cross 
 to his throne. Oh, how changed that man of sorrows, now 
 riding home to glory with loud acclaim ! Which way soever 
 that poor disciple turns his eyes, he reads the same words : 
 "Eternity, eternity! What will ye give me? Eternity, eter- 
 nity ! Thirty pieces of silver ! Eternity, eternity ! What 
 shall it profit a man though he gain his silver, and lose his 
 eternity! Oh, eternity!" And when ages heaped on 
 
70 JUDAS 
 
 ages shall have rolled away, the forlorn disciple, like the 
 Babylonian monarch whose knees smote together, shall 
 see a mysterious hand writing on the walls those expres- 
 sive words, "The love of money is the root of all evil." And 
 you and I, my friend, remaining sorrowless for any sin, 
 shall one day leave our mirth and our employments, and 
 make our bed with Judas Iscariot. Here we select our 
 own companions, but hereafter one by one shall we be 
 gathered to his side, and wrap the drapery of his couch 
 about us, and lie down to his hard embrace. No wonder, 
 no wonder that Jesus was troubled in spirit and groaned 
 forth the words of our text : "It had been good for that 
 man if he had not been born" ! 
 
 Good were it for him, doubtless ; but from the fact that 
 he was born, some good has come to the universe. He 
 meant not so, neither did his heart think so, but he, as every 
 man, must either use his talents for good or else be used 
 for good by Him who overruleth even the selfishness of 
 men for the common welfare. Judas was a drudge, and he 
 carried the bag, and did the drudgery of his nobler fellows. 
 His character serves as the background of the picture on 
 which the mellow hues of redeeming love are painted ; and 
 that love shines forth the richer in the foreground because 
 it is in contrast; with a cloud so dark and dismal behind it. 
 The traitor did succeed in giving up his Master to the foe ; 
 but the very death of Jesus has been turned into a means 
 of life to all who will accept it. The guilty man fell from 
 his apostleship ; but marvel not, my brethren, when I say 
 imto you, that he is an apostle even yet. He was once or- 
 
JUDAS 71 
 
 dained as a preacher, and his ordination is not cancelled. 
 Listen now to the words which are spoken and emphasized 
 by his life and death and punishment. The worst man that 
 lives is the man who sins under the garb of piety. His pre- 
 tence to be a good man is the kiss, and sin is the treason, 
 and every pretended Christian when he sins is the traitor. 
 The prototype of hypocrites gave up Christ's body to be 
 bruised ; the hypocrite of our day gives over Christ's feel- 
 ings to be wounded. Without Iscariot's sin, the enemies 
 of Jesus had been held at bay ; without the sin of the Church 
 these enemies would find few excuses for impenitence. 
 Jesus could overlook the barbarity of Caiaphas and Pilate, 
 and the quaternion who nailed his limbs ; but when he 
 thinks of Judas, he exclaims : "It was not an enemy that 
 reproached me ; then I could have borne it : . , . . but it was 
 thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance." 
 And to-day he can endure the ingratitude of the men who 
 never sat at his table ; he says in grief, Mine own familiar 
 friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath 
 risen up against me in rebellion. 
 
 Is there or is there not some Judas Iscariot in this 
 church? There are to be found many Judases at the last — 
 is there one of them here? Are you unsuspected in your 
 Christian walk? So was Iscariot honored and trusted until 
 that evening when the generous woman wasted the oint- 
 ment. Is the question going around the seats, Who then is 
 the faithless disciple ? Let us determine who it is. He who 
 like Judas at the paschal supper is the slowest to suspect 
 himself, and the last to inquire "Is it I?" — that man is to be 
 
72 JUDAS 
 
 feared. He who restraineth prayer before God, and causeth 
 the impenitent to say that religion is a dream — ^there is 
 reason to suspect that man. He who cherishes one habit- 
 ual sin, be it sloth, or anger, or levity or acrimony, or av- 
 arice, or ambition, or envy, or pride, even spiritual pride, 
 to that man perhaps the Saviour says : Thou art Judas. 
 Wilt thou persevere in thy sin unto the bitter end? 
 "Good for that man if he had not been born." 
 
PROFESSOR PARK AT 40 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT AND 
 THAT OF THE FEELINGS 
 
 A Discourse delivered before the Convention of the Congregational 
 Ministers of Massachusetts, in Brattle Street Meeting-house, Boston 
 May 30, 1850. 
 
The Boston Courier said of this discourse : "Professor Park has 
 the honor of doing what has not been done for a long time before, 
 on a similar occasion, namely, the filling to overflowing, yesterday 
 forenoon, the Brattle Street Church. 
 
 "Every aisle, above and below, was crowded with gentlemen and 
 ladies who stood during the whole services, though the time was 
 nearly two hours. His topic was the theology of the intellect and 
 the affections in their mental action upon one another. Rarely has 
 a discourse, so brilliant in thought and illustration, so comprehen- 
 sive and clear, been delivered in this city. But one opinion has been 
 expressed in this matter, and it is to be hoped that it will soon be 
 published and widely circulated. The elocution of the speaker ma- 
 terially assisted the performance, and the effect in some passages 
 where his fertility of illustration and aptness of remark made clear 
 and prominent some important truth frequently seen under a cloud, 
 was almost overpowering. Metaphysical discernment and a luxu- 
 riant imagination united to make the sermon exceedingly inter- 
 esting to cultivated minds, and the practical bearing of the whole 
 discourse on doctrinal belief and religious literature, made it a 
 timely and useful disquisitfbn." 
 
 Dr. J. W. Wellman who heard this sermon writes : — 
 "The old Brattle Street Church was crowded to suffocation. Dr. 
 Samuel K. Lothrop, the pastor of the church, was in the pulpit, 
 sitting at the left of Dr. Park. During the introductory services 
 all the intimate friends of the Professor in the audience must have 
 seen that he was under the influence of intense thought and feeling. 
 At length he rose to speak, and there was such an electric tone in 
 his voice, such intense passion in his marvelous eye, and, indeed, 
 in every movement and gesture, and in his whole powerful person- 
 ality, that the attention of every person in the vast audience was 
 arrested by the. first word of the oration, and chained to him to 
 his last word ; and then instantly, in their relief from long over- 
 wrought feeling, every listener, with flushed face, drew a long 
 breath which was audible in every part of the church." 
 
 "Dear Sir: — 
 
 "I am indebted to the Rev. S B for sending me a copy of 
 
 your sermon, before the Convention of Congi'egational Ministers ; 
 and cannot resist writing this note, to say how highly I esteem it. 
 I have read it with interest, and much instruction. You have been, 
 I think, particularly happy, in shewing how Biblical expressions, 
 apparently contradictory, are yet consistent; and how sensibility and 
 religious emotion may be excited without violence to philosophi- 
 cal truth. This is rendering a real service, not only to all Biblical 
 students, but to all Christians. 
 
 "With great regard 
 
 "Your ob. servt. 
 
 "Daniel Webster." 
 Washington, June 20, 1850. 
 
THE THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT AND 
 THAT OF THE FEELINGS' 
 
 "The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, 
 that he should repent." — i Sam. 15 : 29. 
 
 "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, 
 and it grieved him at his heart." — Gen. 6 : 6. 
 
 I have heard of a father who endeavored to teach his 
 children a system of astronomy in precise philosophical lan- 
 guage, and although he uttered nothing but the truth, they 
 learned from him nothing but falsehood. I have also heard 
 of a mother who, with a woman's tact, so exhibited the gen- 
 eral features of astronomical science that although her state- 
 ments were technically erroneous, they still made upon her 
 children a better impression, and one more nearly right 
 than would have been made by a more accurate style. For 
 the same reason many a punctilious divine, preaching the 
 exact truth in its scientific method, has actually imparted 
 to the understanding of his hearers either no idea at all or 
 a wrong one ; while many a pulpit orator, using words which 
 tire the patience of the scholastic theologian, and which in 
 
 ' When the author began to prepare the ensuing discourse, he in- 
 tended to avoid all trains of remark adverse to the doctrinal views 
 of any party or school belonging to the Convention. But, contrary to 
 his anticipations, he was led into a course of thought which he was 
 aware that some clergymen of Massachusetts would not adopt as 
 their own, and for the utterance of which he was obliged to rely on 
 their liberal and generous feeling. Although it is in bad taste for a 
 
76 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 their literal import are false, has yet lodged in the hearts of 
 his people the main substance of truth. John Foster says, 
 that whenever a man prays aright he forgets the philosophy 
 of prayer; and in more guarded phrase we may say that 
 when men are deeply affected by any theme, they are apt to 
 disturb some of its logical proportions, and when preachers 
 aim to rouse the sympathies of a populace, they often give a 
 brighter coloring or a bolder prominence to some linea- 
 ments of a doctrine than can be given to them in a well com- 
 pacted science. 
 
 There are two forms of theology, of which the two pas- 
 sages in my text are selected as individual specimens, the 
 one declaring that God never repents, the other that he 
 does repent. For the want of a better name these two forms 
 inay be termed, the theology of the intellect, and the the- 
 ology of feeling. Sometimes, indeed, both the mind and 
 the heart are suited by the same modes of thought, but of- 
 ten they require dissimilar methods, and the object of the 
 present discourse is, to state some of the differences be- 
 tween the theology of the intellect and that of feeHng, and 
 also some of the influences which they exert upon each 
 other. 
 
 What, then, are some of the differences between these 
 two kinds of representation? 
 
 The theology of the intellect conforms to the laws, sub- 
 preacher, on such an occasion, to take any undue advantage of the 
 kindness of his hearers, yet perhaps it is not dishonorable for him, 
 confiding in their proverbial charity, to venture on the free expres- 
 sion of thoughts which he cannot repress without an injurious con- 
 straint upon himself. 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT y-j 
 
 serves the wants and secures the approval of our intuitive 
 and deductive powers. It includes the decisions of the judg- 
 ment, of the perceptive part of conscience and taste, indeed, 
 of all the faculties which are essential to the reasoning proc- 
 ess. It is the theology of speculation, and therefore com- 
 prehends the truth just as it is, unmodified by excitements 
 of feeling. It is received as accurate not in its spirit only, 
 but in its letter also. Of course it demands evidence, either 
 internal or extraneous, for all its propositions. These prop- 
 ositions, whether or not they be inferences from antecedent, 
 are well fitted to be premises for subsequent trains of proof. 
 This intellectual theology, therefore, prefers general to in- 
 dividual statements, the abstract to the concrete, the literal 
 to the figurative. In the creed of a Trinitarian it affirms 
 that He who united in his person a human body, a human 
 I soul and a divine spirit, expired on the cross, but it does not 
 \ originate the phrase that his soul expired, nor that "God 
 ' the mighty Maker died." Its aim is not to be impressive, 
 but intelligible and defensible. Hence it insists on the nice 
 proportions of doctrine, and on preciseness both of thought 
 and style. Its words are so exactly defined, its adjustments 
 are so accurate, that no caviller can detect an ambiguous, 
 mystical or incoherent sentence. It is, therefore, in entire 
 harmony w4th itself, abhorring a contradiction as nature 
 abhors a vacuum. Left to its own guidance, for example, 
 it would never suggest the unqualified remark that Christ 
 has fully paid the debt of sinners, for it declares that this 
 debt may justly be claimed from them ; nor that he has suf- 
 fered the whole punishment which they deserve, for it 
 
78 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 teaches that this punishment may still be righteously in- 
 flicted on themselves ; nor that he has entirely satisfied the 
 law, for it insists that the demands of the law are yet in 
 force. If it should allow those as logical premises, it would 
 also allow the salvation of all men as a logical inference, but 
 it rejects this inference and accordingly, being self-consist- 
 ent, must reject those when viewed as literal premises.' It 
 is adapted to the soul in her inquisitive moods, 
 but fails to satisfy her craving for excitement. In order 
 to express the definite idea that we are exposed to evil 
 in consequence of Adam's sin, it does not employ the 
 passionate phrase, "we are guilty of his sin." It searches 
 for the proprieties of representation, for seemliness and 
 decorum. It gives origin to no statements which re- 
 quire an apology or essential modification ; no meta- 
 phor, for example, so bold and so liable to disfigure our 
 idea of the divine equity, as that heaven imputes the crime 
 of one man to millions of his descendants, and then imputes 
 their myriad sins to Him who was harmless and undefiled. 
 As it 'avoids the dashes of an imaginative style, as it qualifies 
 and subdues the remark which the passions would make still 
 more intense, it seems dry, tame to the mass of men. It 
 awakens but little interest in favor of its old arrangements ; 
 its new distinctions are easily introduced, to be as speedily 
 forgotten. As we might infer, it is suited not for eloquent 
 j appeals, but for calm controversial treatises and bodies of 
 ; divinity ; not so well for the hymn-book as for the cate- 
 i chism ; not so well for the liturgy as for the creed. 
 
 ^ Note I, in Appendix. 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 79 
 
 In some respects, but not in all, the theology of feeling 
 differs from that of intellect. It is the form of belief which 
 is suggested by, and adapted to the wants of the well- 
 trained heart. It is embraced as involving the substance of 
 truth, although, when literally interpreted, it may or may 
 not be false. It studies not the exact proportions of doc- 
 trine, but gives especial prominence to those features of it 
 which are and ought to be most grateful to the sensibilities. 
 It insists not on dialectical argument, but receives whatever 
 the healthy affections crave. It chooses particular rather 
 than general statements ; teaching, for example, the divine 
 omnipotence by an individual instance of it ; saying, not 
 that God can do all things which are' objects of power, but 
 that he spake and it was done. It sacrifices abstract re- 
 marks to visible and tangible images ; choosing the lovely 
 phrase that "the children of men put their trust under the 
 shadow of Jehovah's wings," rather than the logical one that 
 his providence comprehendeth all events. It is satisfied 
 with vague, indefinite representations. It is too buoyant, 
 too earnest for a moral result, to compress itself into sharp- 
 ly-drawn angles. It is often the more forceful because of 
 the looseness of its style, herein being the hiding of its 
 power. It is sublime in its obscure picture of the Sovereign 
 who maketh darkness his pavilion, dark waters and thick 
 clouds of the sky. Instead of measuring the exact dimen- 
 sions of a spirit, it says, "I could not discern the form there- 
 of : an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I 
 heard a voice ;" and in the haziness of this vision lies its fit- 
 ness to stir up the soul. Of course, the theology of feeling 
 
8o THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 aims to be impressive, whether it be or be not minutely ac- 
 curate. Often it bursts away from dogmatic restraints, forces 
 its passage through or over rules of logic, and presses for- 
 ward to expend itself first and foremost in afTecting the sen- 
 sibilities. For this end, instead of being comprehensive, it 
 is elastic ; avoiding monotony, it is ever pertinent to the oc- 
 casion ; it brings out into bold relief now one feature of a 
 doctrine and then a different feature, and assumes as great 
 a variety of shapes as the wants -of the heart are various. 
 In order to hold the Jews back from the foul, cruel vices of 
 their neighbors, the Tyrian, Moabite, Ammonite, Egyptian, 
 Philistine, Babylonian ; in order to stop their indulgence in 
 the degrading worship of Moloch, Dagon, Baal, Tammuz, 
 they were plied with a stern theology, well fitted by its ter- 
 rible denunciations to save them from the crime which was 
 still more terrible. They were told of the jealousy and an- 
 ger of the Lord, of his breastplate, helmet, bow, arrows, 
 spear, sword, glittering sword, and raiment stained with 
 blood. This fearful anthropomorphism enstamped a truth 
 upon their hearts ; but when they needed a soothing influ- 
 ence, they were assured! that the Lord "shall feed his flock 
 like a shepherd : he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and 
 carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that 
 are with young." Thus does the theology of feeling indi- 
 vidualize the single parts of a doctrine ; and, so it can make 
 them intense and impressive, it cares not to make them har- 
 monious with each other. When it has one end in view, it 
 represents Christians as united with their Lord ; now, they 
 being branches and he the vine-stock; again, they being 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 8i 
 
 members and he the body ; still again, they being the body 
 and he the head ; and once more, they being the spouse and 
 he the bridegroom. But it does not mean to have these en- 
 dearing words metamorphosed into an intellectual theory 
 of our oneness or identification with Christ; for with an- 
 other end in view it contradicts this theory, and teaches that 
 he is distinct from us, even as separate as the sun or morn- 
 ing star from those who are gladdened by its beams ; the 
 door or way from those who pass through or over it, the 
 captain from his soldiers, the forerunner from the follower, 
 the judge from those arrayed before him, the king from 
 those who bow the knee to him. In order to make us feel 
 the strength of God's aversion to sin, it declares that he has 
 repented of having made our race, has been grieved at his 
 heart for transgressors, weary of them, vexed with them. 
 But it does not mean that these expressions which, as in- 
 flected by times and circumstances, impress a truth upon 
 the soul, be stereotyped into the principle that Jehovah has 
 ever parted with his infinite blessedness ; for in order to 
 make us confide in his stability, it denies that he ever re- 
 pents, and declares that he is without even the shadow of 
 turning. It assumes these discordant forms, so as to meet 
 the afifections in their conflicting moods. Its aim is not to 
 facilitate the inferences of logic, but to arrest attention, to 
 grapple with the wayward desires, to satisfy the longings 
 of the pious heart. And in order to reach all the hiding- 
 places of emotion, it now and then strains a word to its ut- 
 most significancy, even into a variance with some other 
 phrase and a disproportion with the remaining parts of the 
 
I 
 
 82 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 system. We often hear that every great divine, hke Jona- 
 than Edwards, will contradict himself. If this be so, it is 
 because he is a reasoner and something more ; because he 
 is not a mere mathematician, but gives his feelings a full, 
 an easy and a various play ; because he does not exhibit his 
 faith always in the same form, straight like a needle, sharp- 
 pointed and one-eyed. 
 
 The free theology of the feelings is ill-fitted for didactic 
 or controversial treatises or doctrinal standards. Martin 
 Luther and the church Fathers, who used it so often, be- 
 came thereby unsafe polemics. Anything, everything, can 
 be proved from them ; for they were ever inditing sentences 
 congenial with an excited heart, but false as expressions of 
 deliberate opinion. But this emotive theology is adapted 
 to the persuasive sermon, to the pleadings of the liturgy, to 
 the songs of Zion. By no means can it be termed mere 
 poetry, in the sense of a playful fiction. It is no play, but 
 solemn earnestness. It is no mere fiction, but an outpour- 
 ing of sentiments too deep, or too mellow, or too impetuous 
 to be suited with the stifif language of the intellect. Neither 
 can its words be called merely figurative, in the sense of ar- 
 bitrary or unsubstantial. They are the earliest, and if one 
 may use a comparison, the most natural utterances of a soul 
 instinct with religious life. They are forms of language 
 which circumscribe a substance of doctrine, a substance 
 which, fashioned as it may be, the intellect grasps and holds 
 fast ; a substance which arrests the more attention and pro- 
 longs the deeper interest by the figures which bound it. 
 This form of theology, then, is far from being fitly repre- 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 83 
 
 sented by the term imaginative, still farther by the term \ 
 fanciful, and farther yet by the word capricious. It goes 
 deeper ; it is the theology both of and for our sensitive na- 
 ture ; of and for the normal emotion, affection, passion. It 
 may be called poetry, however, if this word be used, as it 
 should be, to include the constitutional developments of a 
 heart moved to its depths by the truth. And as in its es- 
 sence it is poetical, with this meaning of the epithet, so it 
 avails itself of a poetic license, and indulges in a style of 
 remark which for sober prose would be unbecoming, or 
 even, when associated in certain ways, irreverent. All warm 
 affection, be it love or hatred, overleaps at times the pro- 
 prieties of a didactic style. Does not the Bible make this ob- 
 vious? There are words in the Canticles and in the impre- 
 catory Psalms, which are to be justified as the utterances of 
 a feeling too pure, too unsuspicious, too earnest to guard 
 itself against evil surmises. There are appearances of rea- 
 soning in the Bible, which the mere dialectician has de- 
 nounced as puerile sophisms. But some of them may never 
 have been intended for logical proof; they may have been 
 designed for passionate appeals and figured into the shape 
 of argument, not to convince the reason but to carry the 
 heart by a strong assault, in a day when the kingdom of 
 heaven suffered violence and the violent took it by force. 
 In one of his lofty flights of inspiration, the Psalmist cries, 
 "Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?" and Martin Luther, 
 roused more than man is wont to be by this example, prayed 
 at the Diet of Worms, in language which we fear to repeat, 
 "Hearest thou not, my God ; art thou dead?" And a favor- 
 
84 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 ite English minstrel sings of the "dying God," of the "sharp 
 distress," the "sore complaints" of God, his "last groans," 
 his "dying blood ;" of his throne, also, as once a "burning 
 throne," a "seat of dreadful wrath" ; but now "sprinkled 
 over" by "the rich drops" of blood "that calmed his frown- 
 ing face." It is the very nature of a theology framed for en- 
 kindling the imagination and thereby inflaming the heart, 
 to pour itself out, when a striking emergency calls for them, 
 in words that burn ; words that excite no congenial glow in 
 technical students, viewing all truth in its dry light, and dis- 
 daining all figures which would offend the decorum of a 
 philosophical or didactic style, but words which wake the 
 deepest sympathies of quick-moving, wide-hearted, many- 
 sided men, who look through a superficial impropriety and 
 discern under it a truth which the nice language of prose is 
 too frail to convey into the heart, and breaks down in the at- 
 tempt. 
 
 Hence it is another criterion of this emotive theology that, 
 when once received, it is not easily discarded. The essence 
 of it remains the same, while its forms are changed ; and 
 these forms, although varied to meet the varying exigencies 
 of feeling, are not abandoned so as never to be restored ; 
 for the same exigencies appeair and reappear from time to 
 time, and therefore the same diversified representations are 
 repeated again and again. Of the ancient philosophy the 
 greater part is lost ; the remnant is chiefly useful as a his- 
 torical phenomenon. Not a single treatise, except the ge- 
 ometry of Euclid, continues to be used by the majority of 
 students for its original purpose. But the poetry of those 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 85 
 
 early days remains fresh as in the morning of its birth. It 
 will always preserve its youthful glow, for it appeals not to 
 any existing standard of mental acquisition, but to a broad 
 and common nature which never becomes obsolete. So in 
 
 / the theology of reason, the progress of science has antiquated 
 
 some, and will continue to modify other refinements ; theory 
 
 has chased theory into the shades ; but the theology of the 
 
 heart, letting the minor accuracies go for the sake of hold- 
 
 I ing strongly upon the substance of doctrine, need not al- 
 
 I ways accommodate itself to scientific changes, but may of- 
 ten use its old statements, even if, when literally understood, 
 they be incorrect, and it thus abides as permanent as are the 
 main impressions of the truth. While the lines of specula- 
 tion may be easily erased, those of emotion are furrowed 
 into the soul, and can be smoothed away only by long-con- 
 tinued friction. What its abettors feel, they feel and cling 
 to, and think they know, and even when vanquished they 
 can argue still ; or, rather, as their sentiments do not come 
 of reasoning, neither do they flee before it. Hence the 
 permanent authority of certain tones of voice which express 
 a certain class of feelings. Hence, too, the delicacy and the 
 peril of any endeavor to improve the style of a hymn-book 
 or liturgy, to amend one phrase in the Common Version of 
 the Bible, or to rectify any theological terms, however in- 
 convenient, which have once found their home in the alTec- 
 tions of good men. The heart loves its old friends, and so 
 much the more if they be lame and blind. Hence the fervid 
 heat of a controversy when it is provoked by an assault 
 upon the words, not the truths but the words, which have 
 
86 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 been embosomed in the love of the Church. Hence the Pil- 
 grim of Bunyan travels and sings from land to land, and 
 will be, as he has been, welcome around the hearthstone of 
 every devout household from age to age ; while Edwards on 
 
 /the Will and Cudworth on Immutable Morality, knock at 
 many a good man's door, only to be turned away shaking 
 the dust from off their feet/ 
 
 Having considered some of the differences between the 
 intellectual and the emotive theology, let us now glance, as 
 was proposed, at some of the influences which one exerts on 
 the other. 
 
 And first, the theology of the intellect illustrates and vivi- 
 fies itself by that of feeling. As man is compounded of soul 
 \\j and body, and his inward sensibilities are expressed by his 
 
 outward features, so his faith combines ideas logically ac- 
 curate with conceptions merely illustrative and impressive. 
 Our tendency to unite corporeal forms with mental views, 
 may be a premonition that we are destined to exist here- 
 after in a union of two natures, one of them being spirit, 
 and the other so expressive of spirit as to be called a spirit- 
 ual body. We lose the influence of literal truth upon the 
 sensibilities, if we persevere in refusing it an appropriate 
 / image. We must add a body to the soul of a doctrine, 
 ' whenever we would make it palpable and enlivening. It is 
 brought, as it were, into our presence by its symbols, as a 
 strong passion is exhibited to us by a gesture, as the idea 
 of dignity is made almost visible in the Apollo Belvedere. 
 A picture may, in itself, be superficial ; but it expresses the 
 substantial reality. What though some of the representa- 
 
 ^ Note 2, in Appendix. 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 87 
 
 tions which feeHng demands be a mere exponent of the 
 exact truth ; they are, as it were, that very truth. What 
 though our conceptions be only the most expressive signs 
 of the actual verity, they are as if the actual verity itself. 
 They are substantially accurate when not literally so ; moral 
 truth, when not historical. The whole reality is at least as 
 good, as solid as they represent it, and our most vivid idea 
 of it is in their phases. 
 
 The whole doctrine, for example, of the spiritual world, 
 is one that requires to be made tangible by an embodiment. 
 We have an intellectual belief that a spirit has no shape, 
 and occupies no space ; that a human soul, so soon as it is 
 dismissed from the earth, receives more decisive tokens than 
 had been previously given it of its Maker's complacency or 
 displeasure, has a clearer knowledge of him, a larger love 
 or a sterner hostility to him, a more delightful or a more 
 painful experience of his control, and at a period yet to 
 come will be conjoined with a body unlike the earthly one, 
 yet having a kind of identity with it, and furnishing inlets 
 for new and peculiar joys or woes. It is the judgment of 
 some that the popular tract and the sermons of such men 
 as Baxter and Whitefield ought to exhibit no other than 
 this intellectual view of our future state. But such an in- 
 tellectual view is too general to be embraced by the feelings. 
 They are balked with the notion of a spaceless, formless ex- 
 istence, continuing between death and the resurrection. 
 They regard the soul as turned out of being when despoiled 
 of shape and extension. They represent the converted is- 
 lander of the Atlantic as rising, when he leaves the earth, to 
 
88 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 the place where God sitteth upon his throne, and also the 
 renewed islander of the Pacific as ascending, at death, from 
 the world to the same prescribed spot. When pressed with 
 the query, how two antipodes can both rise up, in opposite 
 directions, to one locality, they have nothing to reply. They 
 are not careful to answer any objection, but only speak right 
 on. They crave a reality for the soul, for its coming joys 
 or woes, and will not be defrauded of this solid existence by 
 any subtilized theory. So tame and cold is the common idea 
 of an intangible, inaudible, invisible world, that few will as- 
 pire for the rewards, and many will imagine themselves able 
 to endure the punishments which are thus rarified into the 
 results of mere thought. Now a doctrine of the intellect 
 need not, and should not empty itself of its substance in the 
 view of men because it is too delicate for their gross appre- 
 hension. "God giveth" to his doctrine "a body as it hath 
 pleased him," and it should avail itself of this corporeal man- 
 ifestation for the sake of retaining its felt reality. If it let 
 this Scriptural body go, all is gone in the popular conscious- 
 ness. It is not enough for the intellect to prove that at the 
 resurrection a new nature will be incorporated with the soul, 
 and will open avenues to new bliss or woe; it must vivify 
 the conception of this mysterious nature and its mysterious 
 experiences by the picture of a palm-branch, a harp, a robe, 
 a crown, or of that visible enginery of death which, in the 
 common view, gives a substance to the penalties of the law. 
 Our demonstrable ideas of the judgment are so abstract, 
 that they will seemingly evaporate unless we illustrate them 
 by one individual day of the grand assize, by the particular 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 89 
 
 questionings and answerings, the opened book, and other 
 minute formahties of the court. The emotions of a delicate 
 taste are, of course, not to be disregarded ; but it is a canon 
 of criticism — is it not? — that we should express all the truth 
 which our hearers need, and express it in the words which 
 they will most appropriately feel. The doctrine of the resur- 
 rection also seems often to vanish into thin air by an over- 
 scrupulous refinement of philosophical terminology. The 
 intellect allows the belief that our future bodies will be iden- 
 tical with our present, just as really as it allows a belief that 
 our present bodies are the same with those of our childhood, 
 or that our bodies ever feel pleasure or pain, or that the 
 grass is green or the sky blue, the fire warm or the ice cold, 
 or that the sun rises or sets. The philosopher may reply, 
 The sun does not rise nor set, the grass is not green nor the 
 sky blue, the fire is not warm nor the ice cold, and our phys- 
 ical nature in itself is not sensitive. The man responds, 
 They are so for all that concerns me. The philosopher may 
 affirm that our present bodies are not precisely identical 
 with those of our childhood ; the man answers. They are so 
 to all intents and purposes ; and when we practically aban- 
 don our belief in our physical sameness here, then we may 
 modify our faith in our resumed physical identity at the res- 
 urrection. But while man remains man upon earth, he will 
 not give up the forms of belief which he feels to be true. 
 He must vivify his abstractions by images which quicken 
 his faith ; and even if these images should lose their histori- 
 cal life, they shall have a resurrection in spiritual realities. 
 Through our external existence, the Biblical exhibitions of 
 
90 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 our future state will be found to have a deeper a:nd deeper 
 significance. They will be found to be literal truth itself, 
 or else the best possible symbols by which that truth can 
 be shadowed forth to men incapable of reaching either its 
 height or its depth. In the Bible is a profound philosophy 
 ^ which no man has fully searched out. As this volume ex- 
 plains the essence of virtue by the particular commands of 
 the law, the sinfulness of our race by incidents in the bi- 
 ography of Adam, the character of Jehovah by the historical 
 examples of his love, and especially by portraying God 
 manifest in the flesh ; so, with the intent of still further 
 adapting truth to our dull apprehension, it condescends to 
 step over and beyond the domain of literal history, and to 
 use the imagination in exciting the soul to spiritual re- 
 search ; it enrobes itself in fabrics woven from the mate- 
 rial world, which seems as if it were formed for elucidating 
 spiritual truth ; it incarnates all doctrine, that the way- 
 faring man, though a fool, need not err, and that all flesh 
 may see the salvation of God.' 
 
 But the sensitive part of our nature not only quickens the 
 percipient, by requiring and suggesting expressive illus- 
 trations, it alsoi furnishes principles from which the reason- 
 ing faculty deduces important inferences. I, therefore, re- 
 mark in the second place : 
 
 The theology of the intellect enlarges and improves that 
 of the feelings, and is also enlarged and improved by it. 
 The more extensive and accurate are our views of literal 
 truth, so much the more numerous and salutary are the 
 
 ^ Note 3, in Appendix. 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 91 
 
 forms which it may assume for enHsting the affections. A 
 system of doctrines logically drawn out, not only makes its 
 own appeal to the heart, but also provides materials for the 
 imagination to clothe so as to allure the otherwise dormant 
 sensibility. The perceptive power looks right forward to 
 the truth (for this end was it made) ; from it turns to neither 
 side for utihtarian purposes, but presses straight forward to 
 its object ; yet every doctrine which it discovers is in reality 
 practical, calling forth some emotion, and this emotion ani- 
 mates the sensitive nature which is not diseased, deepen- 
 ing its love of knowledge, elevating and widening the re- 
 ligious system which is to satisfy it. Every new article of 
 the good man's belief elicits love or hatred, and this love or 
 hatred so modifies the train and phasis of his meditations, 
 as to augment and improve the volume of his heart's the- 
 ology. 
 
 It is a tendency of pietism to undervalue the human intel- 
 lect for the sake of exalting the affections ; as if sin had less 
 to do with the feelings than with the intelligence; as if a 
 deceived heart had never turned men aside ; as if the reason 
 had fallen deeper than the will. Rather has the will fallen 
 from the intellectual powers, while they remain truer than 
 any other to their office. It cannot be a pious act to under- 
 rate those powers, given as they were by Him who made the 
 soul in his image. Our speculative tendencies are original, 
 legitimate parts of the constitution which it is irreverent to 
 censure. We must speculate. We must define, distinguish, 
 infer, arrange our inferences in a system. Our spiritual one- 
 ness, completeness, progress, require it. We lose our civili- 
 
92 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 zation, so far forth as we depreciate a philosophy truly so 
 called. Our faith becomes a wild or weak sentimentalism if 
 we despise logic. God has written upon our minds the in- 
 effaceable law that they search after the truth, whatever, 
 wherever it be, however arduous the toil for it, whitherso- 
 ever it may lead. Let it come. Even if it should promise 
 nothing to the utilitarian, there are yet within us the 
 mirabiles amoves to find it out. A sound heart is alive with 
 this curiosity, and will not retain its health while its aspira- 
 tions are rebuffed. It gives no unbroken peace to the man 
 who thwarts his reasoning instincts ; for amid all its con- 
 flicting demands, it is at times importunate for a reasonable 
 belief. When it is famished by an idle intellect, it loses its 
 tone, becomes bigoted rather than inquisitive, and takes up 
 vvdth theological fancies which reduce it still lower. When 
 it is fed by an inquiring mind it is enlivened, and reaches out 
 for an expanded faith. If the intellect of the Church be re- 
 pressed, that of the world will not be, and the schools will 
 urge forward an unsanctified philosophy which good men 
 will be too feeble to resist, and under the influence of which 
 the emotions will be suited with forms of belief more and 
 more unworthy, narrow, debasing. 
 
 But the theology of reason not only amends and amplifies 
 that of the affections, it is also improved and enlarged by it. 
 ■ One tendency of rationalism is, tO' undervalue the heart for 
 the sake of putting the crown upon the head. This is a 
 good tendency when appUed to those feelings which are 
 wayward and deceptive, but an irrational one when applied 
 to those which are unavoidable and therefore innocent, still 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 93 
 
 more to those which are holy and therefore entitled to our 
 reverence. Whenever a feeling is constitutional and cannot 
 be expelled, whenever it is pious and cannot but be approved, 
 then such of its impulses as are uniform, self-consistent and 
 persevering are data on which the intellect may safely rea- 
 son, and by means of which it may add new materials to 
 its dogmatic system. Our instinctive feelings in favor of 
 the truth, that all men in the future life will be judged, re- 
 warded or punished by an all-wise Lawgiver, are logical 
 premises from which this truth is an inference regular in 
 mood and figure. Every man, atheist even, has certain 
 constitutional impulses to call on the name of some divinity ; 
 and these impulses give evidence that he ought to pray, 
 just as the convolutions of a vine's tendrils and their reach- 
 ing out to grasp the trellis, signify that in order to attain 
 its full growth the vine must cling to a support. The wing 
 or the web-foot of an animal is no more conclusive proof 
 of its having been made with the design that it should fly 
 or swim, than the instinctive cravings of the soul for a posi- 
 tive, a historical, a miraculously attested religion, with its 
 Sabbaths and its ministry, are arguments that the soul was 
 intended for the enjoyment of such a religion. If the Bible 
 could be proved to be a myth, it would still be a divine 
 myth ; for a narrative so wonderfully fitted for penetrating 
 through all the different avenues to the different sensibili- 
 ties of the soul, must have a moral if not a literal truth. And 
 so it appears to me, that the doctrines which concenter in 
 and around a vicarious atonement are so fitted to the appe- 
 tences of a sanctified heart, as to gain the favor of a logician, 
 
94 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 precisely as the coincidence of some geological or astronom- 
 ical theories with the phenomena of the earth or sky, is 
 a part of the syllogism which has these theories for its con- 
 clusion. Has man been created with irresistible instincts 
 which impel him to believe in a falsehood? Or has the 
 Christian been inspired with holy emotions which allure 
 him to an essentially erroneous faith? Is God the author of 
 confusion ; — in his Word revealing one doctrine and by his 
 Spirit persuading his saints to reject it? If it be a fact that 
 the faithful of past ages, after having longed and sighed and 
 wrestled and prayed for the truth as it is in Jesus, have at 
 length found their aspirations rewarded by any one sub- 
 stance of belief, does not their unanimity indicate the cor- 
 rectness of their cherished faith, as the agreement of many 
 witnesses presupposes the verity of the narration in which 
 they coincide? In its minute philosophical forms, it may 
 not be the truth for which they yearned, but in its central 
 principles have they one and all been deceived? Then have 
 they asked in tears for the food of the soul, and a prayer- 
 hearing Father has given them a stone for bread. 
 
 Decidedly as we resist the pretension that the Church is 
 infallible, there is one sense in which this pretension is well 
 founded. Her metaphysicians, as such, are not free from 
 error, nor her philologists, nor any of her scholars, nor her 
 ministers, nor councils. She is not infallible in her bodies of 
 divinity, nor her creeds, nor catechisms, nor any logical 
 formulae; but underneath all her intellectual refinements 
 Hes a broad substance of doctrine, around which the feel- 
 ings of all renewed men cling ever and everywhere, into 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 95 
 
 which they penetrate and take root, and this substance must 
 be right, for it is precisely adjusted to the soul, and the soul 
 was made for it. 
 
 These universal feelings provide us with a test for our 
 own faith. Whenever we find, my brethren, that the words 
 which we proclaim do not strike a responsive chord in the 
 hearts of the choice men and women who look up to us for 
 consolation, when they do not stir the depths of our own 
 souls, reach down to our hidden wants, and evoke sensibili- 
 ties which otherwise had lain buried under the cares of 
 time ; or when they make an abiding impression that the 
 divine government is harsh, pitiless, insincere, oppressive, 
 devoid of sympathy with our most refined sentiments, reck- 
 less of even the most delicate emotion of the tenderest na- 
 ture, then we may infer that we have left out of our theology 
 some element which we should have inserted, or have 
 brought into it some element which we should have dis- 
 carded. Somewhere it must be wrong. If it leave the sensi- 
 bilities torpid, it needs a larger infusion of those words 
 which Christ defined by saying, they are spirit, they are life. 
 If it merely charm the ear like a placid song, it is not the 
 identical essence which is likened to the fire and the ham- 
 mer. Our sensitive nature is sometimes a kind of instinct 
 which anticipates many truths, incites the mind to search 
 for them, intimates the process of the investigation, and re- 
 mains unsatisfied, restive, so long as it is held back from the 
 object toward which it gropes its way, even as a plant bends 
 itself forward to the light and warmth of the sun.^ 
 
 ' Note 4, in Appendix. 
 
:^ 
 
 96 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 But while the theology of reason derives aid from the im- 
 pulses of emotion, it maintains its ascendency over them. 
 In all investigations for truth, the intellect must be the 
 authoritative power, employing the sensibilities as indices 
 of right doctrine, but surveying and superintending them 
 from its commanding elevation. It may be roughly com- 
 pared to the pilot of a ship, who intelligently directs and 
 turns the rudder, although himself and the entire vessel are 
 also turned by it. We are told that a wise man's eyes are 
 in his head ; now although they cannot say to the hand or 
 the foot, we have no need of you, it is yet their prerogative 
 to determine whither the hand or foot shall move. The in- 
 tellectual theology will indeed reform itself by suggestions 
 derived from the heart, for its law is to exclude every dogma 
 which does not harmonize with the well-ordered sensibili- 
 ties of the soul. It regards a want of concinnity in a sys- 
 tem, as a token of some false principle. And as it will mod- 
 ify itself in order to avoid the error involved in a contradic- 
 tion, so and for the same reason it has authority in the last 
 resort to rectify the statements which are often congenial 
 with excited emotion. I, therefore, remark in the third 
 place : 
 
 The theology of the intellect explains that of feeling into 
 an essential agreement with all the constitutional demands 
 of the soul. It does this by collating the discordant repre- 
 sentations which the heart allows, and eliciting the one self- 
 consistent principle which underlies them. It places side by 
 side the contradictory statements which receive, at different 
 times, the sympathies of a spirit as it is moved by different 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 97 
 
 impulses. It exposes the impossibility of believing all these 
 statements, without qualifying some of them so as to pre- 
 vent their subverting each other. In order to qualify them 
 in the right way, it details their origin, reveals their intent, 
 unfolds their influence, and by such means eliminates the 
 principle in which they all agree for substance of doctrine. 
 When this principle has been once detected and disengaged 
 from its conflicting representations, it reacts upon them, 
 explains, modifies, harmonizes their meaning. Thus are 
 the mutually repellent forces set over against each other, so 
 as to neutralize their opposition and to combine in produc- 
 ing one and the same movement. « 
 
 Seizing strongly upon some elements of a comprehensive 
 doctrine, the Bible paints the unrenewed heart as a stone 
 needing to be exchanged for flesh ; and again, not as a 
 stone, but as flesh needing to be turned into spirit ; and yet 
 again, neither as a stone nor as flesh, but as a darkened spirit 
 needing to be illumined with the light of knowledge. Tak- 
 ing a vigorous hold of yet other elements in the same 
 doctrine, the Bible portrays this heart not as ignorant and 
 needing to be enlightened, but as dead and needing to be 
 made alive ; and further, not as dead but as living and need- 
 ing to die, to be crucified, and buried ; and further still, not 
 as in need of a resurrection or of a crucifixion, but of a new 
 creation ; and once more, as requiring neither to be slain, 
 nor raised from death, nor created anew, but to be born 
 again. For the sake of vividly describing other features of 
 the same truth, the heart is exhibited as needing to be called 
 or drawn to God, or to be enlarged or circumcised or puri- 
 
98 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 fied or inscribed with a new law, or endued with new 
 graces. And for the purpose of awakening interest in a dis- 
 tinct phase of this truth, all the preceding forms are inverted 
 and man is summoned to make himself a new heart, or to 
 give up his old one, or to become a little child, or to cleanse 
 himself, or to unstop his deaf ears and hear, or to open his 
 blinded eyes and see, or to awake from sleep, or rise from 
 death. Literally understood, these expressions are disso- 
 nant from each other. Their dissonance adds to their em- 
 phasis. Their emphasis fastens our attention upon the 
 principle in which they all agree. This principle is too vast 
 to be vividly uttered in a single formula, and therefore 
 branches out into various parts, and the lively exhibition 
 of one part contravenes an equally impressive statement of 
 a difierent one. The intellect educes light from the collision 
 of these repugnant phrases, and then modifies and recon- 
 ciles them into the doctrine, that the character of our race 
 needs an essential transformation by an interposed influence 
 from God. But how soon would this doctrine lose its vi- 
 vacity, if it were not revealed in these dissimilar forms, all 
 jutting up like the hills of a landscape from a common sub- 
 stratum ! 
 
 We may instance another set of the heart's phrases 
 which, instead of coalescing with each other in a dull same- 
 ness, engage our curiosity by their disagreement, and exer- 
 cise the analytic power in unloosing and laying bare the one 
 principle which forms their basis. Bowed down under the 
 experience of his evil tendencies, which long years of pain- 
 ful resistance have not subdued, trembling before the ever 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 99 
 
 recurring fascinations which have so often enticed him into 
 crime, the man of God longs to abase himself, and exclaims 
 without one modifying word : "I am too frail for my re- 
 sponsibilities, and have no power to do what is required of 
 me." But in a brighter moment, admiring the exuberance 
 of divine generosity, thankful for the large gifts which his 
 munificent Father has lavished upon him, elevated with 
 adoring views of the equitable One who never reaps where 
 he has not sown, the same man of God offers his unqualified 
 thanksgiving: "I know thee that thou art not an hard 
 master, exacting of me duties which I have no power to dis- 
 charge, but thou attemperest thy law to my strength, and 
 at no time imposest upon me a heavier burden than thou at 
 that very time makest me able to bear." In a diflferent 
 mood, when this same man is thinking of the future, fore- 
 seeing his temptations to an easily-besetting sin, shuddering 
 at the danger of committing it, dreading the results of a 
 proud reliance on his own virtue, he becomes importunate 
 for aid from above, and pours out his entreaty, with not one 
 abating clause: "I am nothing and less than nothing; I 
 have no power to refrain from the sin which tempts me: 
 help, Lord, help ; for thou increasest strength to him who 
 hath no might." But in still another mood, when the same 
 man is thinking of the past, weeping over the fact that he 
 has now indulged in the very crime which he feared, resist- 
 ing every inducement to apologize for it, blaming himself, 
 himself alone, himself deeply for so ungrateful, unreason- 
 able, inexcusable an act, he makes the unmitigated confes- 
 sion, with his hand upon his heart ; he dares not qualify his 
 
lOO THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 acknowledgment: "I could have avoided that sin which I 
 preferred to commit ; woe is me, for I have not done as well 
 as I might have done ; if I had been as holy as I had power 
 to be, than had I been perfect ; and if I say I have been per- 
 fect, that shall prove me perverse." Thus, when looking 
 backward, the sensitive Christian insists upon his compe- 
 tency to perform an act, and fears that a denial of it would 
 bsnish his penitence for transgression; but when looking 
 forward, he insists upon his incompetency to perform the 
 same act, and fears that a denial of this would weaken his 
 feeling of dependence on God. Without a syllable of abate- 
 ment, he now makes a profession, and then recalls it as thus 
 unqualified, afterward reiterates his once recalled avowal, 
 and again retracts what he had once and again repeated. It 
 is the oscillating language of the emotions which, like the 
 strings of an ^olian harp, vibrate in unison with the vary- 
 ing winds. It is nature in her childlike simplicity, that 
 prompts the soul when swayed in opposing directions by 
 dissimilar thoughts, to vent itself in these antagonistic 
 phrases, awakening the intenser interest by their very an- 
 tagonism. What if they do, when unmodified, contradict 
 each other? An impassioned heart recoils from a contradic- 
 tion no more than the war-horse of Job starts back from 
 the battle-field. 
 
 The reason, however, being that circumspect power 
 which looks before and after and to either side, does not 
 allow that of these conflicting statements, each can be true 
 save in a qualified sense. It, therefore, seeks out some prin- 
 ciple which will combine these two extremes, as a magnet 
 
 A'y 
 
 ►o 
 
 k"" 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT loi 
 
 its opposite poles ; some principle which will rectify one of 
 these discrepant expressions by explaining it into an es- 
 sential agreement with the other. And the principle, I 
 / think, which restores this harmony, is the comprehensive 
 1 one, that man with no extraordinary aid from divine grace 
 is obstinate, undeviating, unrelenting, persevering, dogged, 
 fully set in those wayward preferences which are an abuse 
 of his freedom. His unvaried wrong choices imply a full, 
 / unremitted, natural power of choosing right. The emotive 
 theology therefore, when it affirms this power, is correct 
 both in matter and style ; but when it denies this power, it 
 uses the language of emphasis, of impression, of intensity ; 
 it means the certainty of wrong preference by declaring the 
 inability of right ; and in its vivid use of cannot for will not 
 is accurate in its substance though not in its form. Yet 
 even here it is no more at variance' with the intellectual 
 theology than with itself, and the discordance, being one of 
 letter rather than of spirit, is removed by an explanation 
 which makes the eloquent style of the feelings at one with 
 the more definite style of the reason.^ 
 
 But I am asked, "Do you not thus explain away the lan- 
 guage of the emotions?" No. The contradictoriness, the lit- 
 eral absurdity is explained out of it, but the language is not 
 explained away ; for even when dissonant with the precise 
 truth, it has a significancy more profound than can be 
 pressed home upon the heart by any exact definitions. "Do 
 you not make it a mere flourish of rhetoric?" I am asked 
 again. It is no flourish ; it is the utterance that comes well- 
 
 ^ Note 5, in Appendix. 
 
I02 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 ing up from the depths of our moral nature, and is too ear- 
 nest to wait for the niceties of logic. It is the breathing out 
 of an emotion which will not stop for the accurate measure- 
 ment of its words, but leaves themi to be qualified by the 
 good sense of men. 
 
 "If, however, this language be not exactly true," I am fur- 
 ther asked, ''how can it move the heart?" We are so made as 
 to be moved by it. It is an ultimate law of our being, that 
 a vivid conception affects us by inspiring a momentary be- 
 lief in the thing which is conceived. "But," the objector con- 
 tinues, "can the soul be favorably influenced by that which 
 it regards as hyperbohcal?" Hyperbolical! What is hyper- 
 bolical? Who calls this language an exaggeration of the 
 truth? If interpreted by the letter, it does indeed transcend 
 the proper bounds : but if interpreted as it is meant, as it is 
 felt, it falls far short of them. To the eye of a child the 
 moon's image in the diorama may appear larger than the 
 real moon in the heavens, but not to the mind of a philos- 
 opher. The literal doctrines of theology are too vast for 
 complete expression by man, and our intensest words are 
 but a distant approximation to that language which forms 
 the new song that the redeemed in heaven sing; language 
 which is unutterable in this infantile state of our being, and 
 in comparison with which our so-called extravagances are 
 but feeble and tame diminutives. 
 
 Astronomers have recommended, that in order to feel 
 the grandeur of the stellary system we mentally reduce the 
 scale on which it is made ; that we imagine our earth to be 
 only a mile in diameter, and the other globes to be proper- 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 103 
 
 tionally lessened in their size and in their distances from 
 each other ; for the real greatness of the heavens discourages 
 our very attempt to impress our hearts by them, and we are 
 the more affected by sometimes narrowing our conceptions 
 of what we cannot at the best comprehend. On the same 
 principle, Christian moralists have advised us not always to 
 dilate our minds in reaching after the extreme boundaries 
 of a doctrine, but often to draw in our contemplations, to 
 lower the doctrine for a time, to bring our intellect down 
 in order to discern the practical truth more clearly, to 
 humble our views in order that they may be at last exalted, 
 to stoop low in order to pick up the keys of knowledge ; — 
 and is this a way of exaggerating the truth? We do err, not 
 knozving the Scriptures nor the poiver of God, if we imagine 
 that when, for example, he says, the enemies that touch his 
 saints touch "the apple of his eye," and "he will lift up an 
 ensign to the nations from far, and wall hiss unto them from 
 the end of the earth," he uses a mere hyperbole. No. Such 
 anthropopathical words are the most expressive which the 
 debilitated heart of his Oriental people would appreciate, 
 but they fail of making a full disclosure ; they are only the 
 foreshadowings of the truths which He behind them. These 
 refined, spiritual truths, the intellect goes round about and 
 surveys, but is too faint for graphically delineating, and it 
 gives up the attempt to the imagination, and this many- 
 sided faculty multiplies symbol after symbol, bringing one 
 image for one feature, and another image for another feat- 
 ure, and hovers over the feeble emotions of the heart, and 
 strives to win them out from their dull repose even as "an 
 
I04 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, 
 spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them 
 on her wings." Into more susceptible natures than ours 
 the literal verities of God will penetrate far deeper than, 
 even when shaped in their most pungent forms, they will 
 pierce into our obdurate hearts. So lethargic are we, that 
 we often yield no answering sensibilities to intellectual 
 statements of doctrine; so weak are we, that such pas- 
 sionate appeals as are best accommodated to our phlegmat- 
 ic temper are after all no more than dilutions of the truth, 
 as "seen of angels ;" and still so fond are we of harmony 
 with ourselves, that we must explain these diluted repre- 
 sentations into unison with the intellectual statements 
 which, however unimpressive, are yet the most authorita- 
 tive.' 
 
 We are now prepared for our fourth remark : — The the- 
 ology of the intellect and that of feeling tend to keep each 
 other within the sphere for which they were respectively 
 designed, and in which they are fitted to improve the char- 
 acter. Both of them have precisely the same sphere with re- 
 gard to many truths, but not with regard to all. When an 
 intellectual statement is transferred to the province of emo- 
 tion, it often appears chilling, lifeless ; and when a passion- 
 ate phrase is transferred to the dogmatic province, it often 
 appears grotesque, unintelligible, absurd. Many expres- 
 sions of sentiment are what they ought to be, if kept where 
 they ought to be ; but a narrow creed displaces and thus 
 spoils them. It often becomes licentious or barbarous, by 
 
 ^ Note 6, in Appendix. 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 105 
 
 stiffening into prosaic statements the free descriptions 
 which the Bible gives of the kindliness or the wrath of God. 
 The very same words are allowed in one relation, but con- 
 demned in a different one, because in the former they do, 
 but in the latter do not, harmonize with the sensibilities 
 which are at the time predominant. When we are enthusi- 
 astic in extolling the generosity of divine love, we feel no 
 need of modifying our proclamation that God desires all 
 men to be saved, and in these uninquisitive moods we have 
 no patience with the query which occupies our more studi- 
 ous hours, "whether he desire this good all things, or only 
 itself considered." Often, though not in every instance, the 
 solid philosophy of doctrine, descending into an exhorta- 
 tion, makes it cumbrous and heavy ; and as often the pas- 
 sionate forms of appeal, when they claim to be literal truth, 
 embarrass the intellect until they are repelled by it into 
 the circle distinctively allotted them. 
 
 At the time when the words were uttered, there could not 
 be a more melting address than, "If I then, your Lord and 
 Master, have washed your feet ; ye also ought to wash one 
 another's feet ; " but when this touching sentiment is inter- 
 preted as a legal exaction, an argument for a Moravian or 
 Romish ceremony, its poetic elegance is petrified into a pro- 
 saic blunder. There are moments in the stillness of our 
 communion service, when we feel that our Lord is with us, 
 when the bread and the wine so enliven our conceptions of 
 his body and blood as, according to the law of vivid concep- 
 tion, to bring them into our ideal presence, and to make us 
 demand the saying, as more pertinent and fit than any other, 
 
io6 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 "This is my body, this is my blood." But no sooner are these 
 phrases transmuted from hearty utterances into intellectual 
 judgments, than they merge their beautiful rhetoric into 
 an absurd logic, and are at once repulsed by a sound mind 
 into their pristine sphere. So there is a depth of significance 
 which our superficial powers do not fathom, in the lamenta- 
 tion: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my 
 mother conceive me." This will always remain the passage 
 for the outflow of his grief, whose fountains of penitence are 
 broken up. The channel is worn too deep into the affec- 
 tions to be easily changed. Let the schools reason about it 
 just as, and as long as, they please. Let them condemn it 
 as indecorous, or false, or absurd, and the man who utters it 
 as unreasonable, fanatical, bigoted. Let them challenge him 
 for his meaning, and insist with the rigidness of the judge 
 of Shylock, that he weigh out the import of every word,, 
 every syllable, no more, no less : — they do not move him 
 one hair's breadth. He stands where he stood before, and 
 where he will stand until disenthralled from the body. "My 
 meaning," he says, "is exact enough for me, too exact for 
 my repose of conscience ; and I care just now for no proof 
 clearer than this : 'Behold, I zvas shapen in iniquity ; and 
 in sin did my mother conceive me.' Here, on my heart, the 
 burden lies, and I fed that I am vile, a man of unclean lips, 
 and dwell amid a people of unclean lips, and I went astray 
 as soon as I was born, and am of a perverse, rebellious 
 race, and there is a tide swelling within me and around 
 me, and moving me on to actual trangression, and it is 
 stayed by none of my unaided efforts, and all its billows roll 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 107 
 
 over me, and I am so troubled that I cannot speak ; and I 
 am not content with merely saying that I am a transgres- 
 sor ; I long to heap infinite upon infinite, and crowd to- 
 gether all forms of self-reproach, for I am clad in sin as with 
 a garment, I devour it as a sweet morsel, I breathe it, I live 
 it, I am sin. My hands are stained with it, my feet are swift 
 in it, all my bones are out of joint with it, my whole body is 
 of tainted origin, and of death in its influence and end ; and 
 here is my definition and here is my proof, and, definition or 
 no definition, proof or no proof, here I plant myself, and 
 here I stay, for this is my feeling, and it comes up from the 
 depths of an overflowing heart : 'Behold, I was shapen in 
 iniquity: and in sin did my mother conceive me.' " But when a 
 theorist seizes at such living words as these, and puts them 
 into his vice, and straightens or crooks them into the dog- 
 ma, that man is blamable before he chooses to do wrong; 
 deserving of punishment for the involuntary nature which 
 he has never consented to gratify ; really sinful before he 
 actually sins, then the language of emotion, forced from its 
 right place and treated as if it were a part of a nicely meas- 
 ured syllogism, hampers and confuses his reasonings, until 
 it is given back to the use for which it was first intended, 
 and from which it never ought to have been diverted/ 
 When men thus lose their sensitiveness to the discrimina- 
 tions between the style of judgment and that of feeling, and 
 when they force the latter into the province of the former, 
 they become prone to undervalue the conscience, and to be 
 afraid of philosophy, and to shudder at the axioms of com- 
 
 ^ Note 7, in Appendix. 
 
io8 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 mon sense, and to divorce faith from reason, to rely on 
 church government rather than on fraternal discussion. 
 
 It is this crossing of one kind of theology into the prov- 
 ince of another kind differing from the first mainly in fash- 
 ion and contour, which mars either the eloquence or else the 
 doctrine of the pulpit. The massive speculations of the 
 metaphysician sink down into his expressions of feeling and 
 make him appear cold-hearted, while the enthusiasm of the 
 impulsive divine ascends and effervesces into his reasonings 
 and causes him both to appear, and to be, what our Saxon 
 idiom so reprovingly styles him, hot-headed. There are 
 intellectual critics ready to exclude from our psalms and 
 hymns all such stanzas as are not accurate expressions of 
 dogmatic truth. Forgetting that the effort at precision of- 
 ten mars the freeness of song, they would condemn the 
 simple-hearted bard to joint his metaphors into a syllogism, 
 and to sing as a logician tries to sing. In the same spirit, 
 they would expurgate the Paradise Lost of all phrases 
 which are not in keeping with our chemical or geological 
 , discoveries. But it is against the laws of our sensitive na- 
 i ture to square the effusions of poesy by the scales, compasses 
 and plumb-lines of the intellect. The imagination is not to 
 be used as a dray-horse for carrying the lumber of the 
 schools through the gardens of the Muses. There are also 
 poetical critics who imagine that the childHke breathings of 
 our psalmody are the exact measures, the literal exponents 
 of truth, and that every doctrine is false which cannot be 
 transported with its present bodily shape into a sacred lyric. 
 But this is as shallow an idea of theology as it is a mechani- 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 109 
 
 cal, spiritless, vapid conception of poetry. If this be true, 
 then my real belief is, that "God came from Teman and the 
 Holy One from Mount Paran ; that he did ride upon his 
 horses and chariots of salvation ; the mountains saw him and 
 they trembled ; the sun and the moon stood still ; at the 
 light of his arrows they went and the shining of his glitter- 
 ing spear ; he did march through the land in indignation, he 
 did thresh the heathen in anger." And if this be the lan- 
 guage of a creed, then not only is the suggestion of Dr. Ar- 
 nold' a right one that "in public worship a symbol of faith 
 should be used as a triumphal hymn of thanksgiving, and 
 be chanted rather than read," but such is the original and 
 proper use of such a symbol at all times. And if this be 
 true, then I shall not demur at phrases in a Confession of 
 Faith, over which, in my deliberate perusal, I stagger and 
 am at my wits' end. Wrap me in mediaeval robes ; place me 
 under the wide-spreading arches of a cathedral ; let the tide 
 of melody from the organ float along the columns that 
 branch out like the trees of the forest over my head ; then 
 bring to me a creed written in illuminated letters, its history 
 redolent of venerable associations, its words fragrant with 
 tiie devotion of my fatherc, who lived and died familiar with 
 them ; its syllables all of solemn and goodly sound, and bid 
 me cantilate its phrases to the inspired notes of minstrelsy, 
 iny eye in a fine frenzy rolling, and I ask no questions for 
 conscience' sake. I am ready to believe what is placed be- 
 fore me. I look beyond the antique words, to the spirit of 
 some great truth that lingers somewhere around them ; and 
 
 ^ Life, p. 102, First Am. Ed. 
 
no THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 in this nebulous view, I believe the creed with my heart. I 
 may be even so rapt in enthusiasm as to believe it because it 
 asserts what is impossible. Ask me not to prove it, — I am 
 in no mood for proof. Try not to reason me out of it, — rea- 
 soning does me no good. Call not for my precise meaning, 
 — I have not viewed it in that light. I have not taken the 
 creed so much as the creed has taken me, and carried me 
 away in my feelings to mingle with the piety of bygone 
 generations. 
 
 But can it be that this is the only, or the prim- 
 itive, or the right idea of a symbol of faith? For this 
 have logicians exhausted their subtleties, and martyrs 
 yielded up the ghost, disputing and dying for a song? No. 
 A creed, if true to its original end, should be in sober prose, 
 should be understood as ft means, and should mean what it 
 says, should be drawn out with a discriminating, balancing 
 judgment, so as to need no allowance for its freedom, no 
 abatement of its force, and should not be expressed in an- 
 tiquated terms lest men regard its spirit as likewise obsolete. 
 It belongs to the province of the analyzing, comparing, rea- 
 soning intellect ; and if it leave this province for the sake of 
 intermingling the phrases of an impassioned heart, it con- 
 fuses the soul, it awakens the fancy and the feelings to dis- 
 turb the judgment, it sets a believer at variance with himself 
 by perplexing his reason with metaphors andi his imagina- 
 tion with logic ; it raises feuds in the church by crossing the 
 temperaments of men, and taxing one party to demonstrate 
 similes, another to feel inspired by abstractions. Hence the 
 logomachy which has always characterized the defense of 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT iii 
 
 such creeds. The intellect, no less than the heart, being out 
 of its element, wanders through dry places, seeking rest and 
 finding none. Men are thus made uneasy with themselves 
 and therefore acrimonious against each other; the imagi- 
 native zealot does not apprehend the philosophical explana- 
 tion, and the philosopher does not sympathize with the 
 imaginative style of the symbol ; and as they misunderstand 
 each other, they feel their weakness, and "to be weak is 
 miserable," and misery not only loves but also makes com- 
 pany, and thus they sink their controversy into a contention 
 and their dispute into a quarrel ; nor will they ever find 
 peace until they confine their intellect to its rightful sphere 
 and understand it according to what it says, and their feel- 
 ing to its province and interpret its language according to 
 what it means, rendering unto poetry the things that are 
 designed for poetry, and unto prose what belongs to prose. 
 The last clause of our fourth proposition is, that the the- 
 ology of intellect and that of feeling tend to keep each other 
 within the sphere in which they are fitted to improve the 
 character/ So far as any statement is hurtful, it parts with 
 one sign of its truth. In itself or in its relations it must be 
 inaccurate, whenever it is not congenial with the feelings 
 awakened by the Divine Spirit. The practical utility, then, 
 of any theological representations is one criterion of their 
 propriety. Judged by this test, many fashionable forms of 
 statement will sooner or later be condemned. Half of the 
 truth is often a falsehood as it is impressed on the feelings ; 
 not always, however, for sometimes it has the good, the 
 
 ^ In consequence of the length of the Discourse, this paragraph 
 and that which followsi it, were omitted in the delivery. 
 
112 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 right influence, and is craved by the sensibilities which can 
 bear no more. The heart of man is contracted, therefore 
 loves individual views, dreads the labor of that long-con- 
 tinued expansion which is needed for embracing the com- 
 prehensive system. Hence its individualizing processes 
 must be superintended by the judgment and conscience, 
 which forbid that the attention be absorbed by any one as- 
 pect of a doctrine at the time when another aspect would be 
 more useful. If the wrong half of a truth be applied instead 
 of the right, or if either be mistaken for the whole, the sen- 
 sibilities are maltreated, and they endure an evil of which 
 the musician's rude and unskilful handling of his harp 
 gives but a faint echo. The soul may be compared to a 
 complicated instrument which becomes vocal in praise of its 
 Maker when it is plied with varying powers, now with a 
 gradual and then with a sudden contact, here with a deli- 
 cate stroke and there with a hard assault ; but when the 
 rough blow comes where should have been the gentle touch, 
 the equipoise of its parts is destroyed, and the harp of a thou- 
 sand strings, all meant for harmony, wounds the ear with a 
 harsh and grating sound. The dissonance of pious feeling, 
 with the mere generalities of speculation or with any mis- 
 applied fragments of truth, tends to confine them within 
 their appropriate, which is their useful, sphere. In this light, 
 we discern the necessity of right feeling as a guide to the 
 right proportions of faith. Here we see our responsibility 
 for our religious belief. Here we are impressed by the fact, 
 that much of our probation relates to our mode of shaping 
 and coloring the doctrines of theology. Here also we learn 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 113 
 
 the value of the Bible in unfolding the suitable adaptations 
 of truth, and in illustrating their utility, which is, on the 
 whole, so decisive a touchstone of their correctness. When 
 our earthly hopes are too buoyant, we are reminded "that 
 one event happeneth to them all," and "that a man hath no 
 preeminence above a beast ;" but such a repressing part of a 
 comprehensive fact is not suited to the sensual and sluggish 
 man who needs rather, as he is directed, to see his "life and 
 immortality brought to light." When we are elated with 
 pride we are told that "man is a worm ;" but this abasing 
 part of a great doctrine should not engross the mind of him 
 who despises his race, and who is therefore bidden to think 
 of man as "crowned with glory and honor." If tempted to 
 make idols of our friends, we are met by the requisition to 
 "hate a brother, sister, father and mother ;" but these are not 
 the most fitting words for him who loves to persecute his 
 opposers, and who requires rather to be asked, "He that 
 loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love 
 God whom he hath not seen?" In one state of feeling we are 
 stimulated to "work out our own salvation with fear and 
 trembling," but in a different state we are encouraged to be 
 neither anxious nor fearful, but to "rejoice in the Lord al- 
 way." I believe in the "final perseverance" of all who have 
 been once renewed, for not only does the generalizing intel- 
 lect gather up this doctrine from an induction of various in- 
 spired words, but the heart also is comforted by it in the 
 hour of dismal foreboding. Yet when I wrest this truth 
 from its designed adjustments, and misuse it in quieting the 
 fears of men who are instigated to count "the blood of the 
 
114 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 covenant, wherewith they were sanctified, an unholy thing," 
 I am startled by the threat that "if they shall fall away, it 
 will be impossible to renew them again unto repentance." 
 This threat was not designed, like the promise of preserving 
 grace, to console the disconsolate, nor was that promise de- 
 signed, like this threat, to alarm the presumptuous. Let not 
 the two appeals cross each other. My judgment, and, in 
 some lofty views in which I need to be held up by the Di- 
 vine Spirit lest I fall, my feelings also are unsatisfied with- 
 out the Biblical announcement that "the Lord hardened 
 Pharaoh's heart ;" but at my incipient inclination to pervert 
 these words into an excuse for sin, or a denial of my entire 
 freedom, or of my Maker's justice or tenderness, I regard 
 them as a "form of sound words" from which my depravity 
 has expelled their spirit, and I flee for safety to the other 
 v/ords, which are a complement to the first, that "Pharaoh 
 hardened his own heart." When even a Puritan bishop is 
 inflated with his vain conceits, it is perilous for him to con- 
 centrate his feelings upon the keys with which he is to open 
 or shut the door of heaven. Such a man should oftener 
 tremble lest having been a servant of servants here, he be 
 cast away hereafter. But with a melancholic though faith- 
 ful pastor, this application of Scriptures may be reversed. 
 We delight in the thought, that he who hath made every- 
 thing beautiful in its season, who sendeth dew upon the 
 earth when it has been heated by the sun, — and again, when 
 it has been parched by drought, sendeth rain ; who draweth 
 the curtains of darkness around us when the eye is tired of 
 the bright heavens, and irradiates the vision when the night 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 115 
 
 has become wearisome ; who intermingleth calm with tem- 
 pest and parteth the clouds of an April day for the passage 
 of the sun's rays, — hath also adopted a free, exuberant, re- 
 freshing method of imparting truth to the soul ; giving us 
 a series of revelations flexile and pliant, flitting across the 
 mental vision with changeful hues, ever new, ever appro- 
 priate, not one of its words retaining its entire usefulness 
 when removed from its fit junctions, not one of them being 
 susceptible of a change for the better in the exigency when 
 it was uttered, but each being "a word spoken in due sea- 
 son, how good is it." 
 
 There is a kind of conjectural doctrine, which in the 
 Swedenborgian and Millenarian fancies is carried to a ruin- 
 ous excess, but which within, not beyond the limit of its 
 practical utility may be either justified or excused. Our 
 feelings, for example, impel us to believe that we are com- 
 passed about with some kind of superior and ever wakeful 
 intelligence. To meet this demand of the heart, Paganism 
 has filled the air with divinities, but a wiser forecast has re- 
 vealed to us the omnipresence of an all-comprehending 
 mind. Still our restless desires would be sometimes grati- 
 fied by a livelier representation of the spiritual existence 
 around us, and accordingly, in the more than paternal com- 
 passion of Jehovah, he maketh his angels ministering spirits, 
 sent forth to attend upon the heirs of salvation, and to ani- 
 mate our spiritual atmosphere with a quick movement. But 
 even yet, there are times when the heart of man would be 
 glad of something more than even these cheering revela- 
 tions. We are comforted with the thought that our de- 
 
ii6 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 ceased companions still mingle with us, and aid us in our 
 struggles to gain their purity, and that, after we have left 
 the world to which thus far we have been so unprofitable, 
 we shall be qualified by our hard discipline here, for more 
 effective ministries to those who will remain in this scene 
 of toil. Such a belief, however, is not one which the reason, 
 left to itself, would fortify by other than the slightest hints. 
 It is a belief prompted by the afifections, and the indulgence 
 in it is allowed by the intellectual powers no farther than it 
 consoles and enlivens the spirit which is wearied with its 
 earthly strifes. If we begin to think more of friends 
 who visit us from heaven than of Him who always abideth 
 faithful around and over and within us, if we begin to search 
 out witty inventions and to invoke the aid of patronizing 
 saints, if we imagine that she who once kept all her child's 
 sayings in her heart will now lay up in her motherly remem- 
 brance the Ave Marias of all who bless her image, then we 
 push an innocent conjecture into the sphere of a harm- 
 ful falsehood. The intellectual theology recognizes our felt 
 need of a tenderness in the supervision which is exercised 
 over us, but instead of meeting this necessity by picturing 
 forth the love of one who after all may forget her very in- 
 fant, it proves that we are ever enveloped in the sympathies 
 of Him who will not give away to his saints the glory of 
 answering our feeble prayers. The intellectual theology 
 does indeed recognize our felt want of a Mediator, through 
 whose friendly ofifices we may gain access to the pure, in- 
 visible, sovereign, strict Lawgiver. But instead of an un- 
 earthly being canonized for his austere virtues, it gives us 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 117 
 
 Him who ate with sinners, who called around him fishermen 
 rather than princes, and lodged with a tax-gatherer instead 
 of the Roman governor, so as to remind us that he is not 
 ashamed to call us brethren. Where men looked for a 
 taper, it gives a light shining as the day, and hides the stars 
 by the effulgence of the sun ; where they looked for a friend 
 it gives a Redeemer, where for a helper, a Saviour, where for 
 hope, faith. It takes away in order to add more, thwarts a 
 desire so as to give a fruition. It not so much unclothes as 
 clothes upon, and swallows up our wish for patron saints 
 in the brotherly sympathies of Him who ever liveth to make 
 intercession for us. 
 
 In conclusion, allow me to observe, that in some aspects 
 our theme suggests a melancholy, in others a cheering train 
 of thought. It grieves us by disclosing the ease with which 
 we may slide into grave errors. Such errors have arisen 
 from so simple a cause as that of confounding poetry with 
 prose. Men whose reasoning instinct has absorbed their 
 delicacy of taste, have treated the language of a sensitive 
 heart as if it were the guarded and wary style of the intel- 
 lect. Intent on the sign more than on the thing signified, 
 they have transubstantiated the living, spiritual truth into 
 the very emblems which were designed to portray it. In 
 /■ the Bible there are pleasing hints of many things which 
 1 were never designed to be doctrines, such as the literal and 
 ' proper necessity of the will, passive and physical sin, bap- 
 \ tismal regeneration, clerical absolution, the literal imputa- 
 tion of guilt to the innocent, transubstantiation, eternal gen- 
 eration and procession. In that graceful volume, these met- 
 
ii8 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 aphors bloom as the flowers of the field ; there they toil not 
 neither doi they spin. But the schoolman has transplanted 
 them to the rude exposure of logic ; here they are frozen up, 
 their fragrance is gone, their juices evaporated, and their 
 withered leaves are preserved as specimens of that which in 
 its rightful place surpassed the glory of the wisest sage. 
 Or, if I may change the illustration, I would say that these 
 ideas, as presented in the Bible, are like Oriental kings and 
 nobles, moving about in their free, flowing robes, but in 
 many a scholastic system they are like the embalmed bodies 
 of those ancient lords, their spirits fled, their eyes, which 
 once had speculation in them, now lack luster ; they are dry 
 bones, exceeding dry. Not a few technical terms in theol- 
 ogy are rhetorical beauties stiffened into logical perplexi- 
 ties ; the exquisite growths of the imagination pressed and 
 dried into the matter of a syllogism in Barbara. Many who 
 discard their literal meaning retain the words out of rever- 
 ence to antique fashions, out of an amiable fondness for 
 keeping the nomenclature of science unbroken, just as the 
 modern astronomer continues to classify the sweet stars of 
 heaven under the constellations of the Dragon and the 
 Great Bear.' 
 In this and in still other aspects our theme opens into 
 , more cheering views. It reveals the identity in the essence 
 of many systems which are run in scientific or aesthetic 
 moulds unlike each other. The full influence of it would 
 do more than any World's Convention, in appeasing the 
 jealousies of those good men who build their faith on Jesus 
 
 * Note 8, in Appendix. 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT iig 
 
 Christ as the chief corner-stone, and yet are induced, by un- 
 equal measures of genius and culture, to give different 
 shapes to structures of the same material. There are indeed 
 kinds of theology which cannot be reconciled with each 
 other. There is a life, a soul, a vitalizing spirit of truth, 
 which must never be relinquished for the sake of peace even 
 with an angel. There is (I know that you will allow me to 
 express my opinion) a line of separation which cannot be 
 : crossed between those systems which insert, and those 
 which omit the doctrine of justification by faith in the sacri- 
 fice of Jesus. This is the doctrine which blends in itself the 
 theology of intellect and that of feeling, and which can no 
 more be struck out from the moral, than the sun from the 
 planetary system. Here the mind and the heart, like jus- 
 tice and mercy, meet and embrace each other; and here is 
 found the specific and ineffaceable difference between the 
 gospel and every other system. But among those who ad- 
 mit the atoning death of Christ as the organific principle of 
 faith, there are differences, some of them more important, 
 but many far less important, than they seem to be. One 
 man prefers a theology of the judgment ; a second, that of 
 the imagination ; a third, that of the heart ; one adjusts his 
 faith to a lymphatic, another to a sanguine, and still another 
 to a choleric temperament. Yet the subject matter of these 
 heterogeneous configurations may often be one and the 
 same, having for its nucleus the same cross, with the forma- 
 tive influence of which all is safe. Sometimes the intellect- 
 ual divine has been denounced as unfeeling by the rude and 
 coarse preacher, who in his turn has been condemned as 
 
I20 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 vulgar or perhaps irreverent by the intellectual divine ; while 
 the one has meant to insinuate into the select few who lis- 
 tened to him, the very substance of the doctrine which the 
 other has stoutly and almost literally inculcated into the 
 multitudes by which he was throngel. The hard polemic 
 has shown us only his visor and his coat of mail, while be- 
 neath his iron armor has been often cherished a theology of 
 the gentle and humane affections. Dogmas of the most re- 
 volting shape have no sooner been cast into the alembic of 
 a regenerated heart, than their more jagged angles have 
 been melted away. We are cheered with a belief, that in 
 the darkest ages hundreds and thousands of unlettered men 
 felt an influence which they could not explain, the influence 
 of love attracting to itself the particles of truth that lay 
 scattered along the symbols and scholastic forms of the 
 Church. The great mass of believers have never embraced 
 the metaphysical refinements of creeds, useful as these re- 
 finements are ; but have singled out and fastened upon and 
 held firm those cardinal truths, which the Bible has lifted 
 up and turned over in so many different lights, as to make 
 them the more conspicuous by their very alternations of 
 figure and hue. The true history of doctrine is to be studied 
 not in the technics, but in the spirit of the Church. In un- 
 numbered cases, the real faith of Christians has been purer 
 than their written statements of it. Men, women and 
 children have often decided aright when doctors have dis- 
 agreed, and doctors themselves have often felt aright when 
 they have reasoned amiss. "In my heart," said a tearful 
 German, 'T am a Christian, while in my head I am a philos- 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 121 
 
 opher." Many who now dispute for an erroneous creed 
 have, we trust, a richer belief imbedded in their inmost love. 
 There are discrepant systems of philosophy pervading the 
 sermons of different evangelical ministers, but often the rays 
 of light which escape from these systems are so reflected 
 and refracted, while passing through the atmosphere be- 
 tween the pulpit and the pews, as to end in producing about 
 the same image upon the retina of every eye. Not seldom 
 are the leaders of sects in a real variance when the people, 
 who fill up the sects, know not why they are cut off from 
 their brethren, and the people may strive in words while 
 they agree in the thing, and their judgments may differ in 
 the thing while their hearts are at one. 
 
 Thus divided against itself, thus introverting itself, thus 
 nuiltiform in its conceptions, so quick to seize at a truth as 
 held up in one way, and spurn at it as held up in another, 
 so marvelous in its tact for decomposing its honest belief, 
 disowning with the intellect what it embraces with the af- 
 fections, so much more versatile in regarding its merely in- 
 ward processes than in directing the motions of an equilib- 
 rist, thus endued with an elastic energy more than Pro- 
 tean, — thus great is the sr j1, for the immense capabiHties of 
 which Christ died, j^^'-ge-minded, then, and large-hearted 
 must be the minister, having all the sensibility of a woman 
 without becoming womanish, and all the perspicacity of a 
 logician without being merely logical, having that philoso- 
 phy which detects the substantial import of the heart's 
 phrases, and having that emotion which invests philosophy 
 with its proper life, — so wise and so good must the minister 
 
122 THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 be, who applies to a soul of these variegated sensibiHties the 
 truth, which may wind itself into them all, as through a 
 thousand pores ; that truth, which God himself has matched 
 to our nicest and most delicate springs of action, and which^ 
 so highly does he honor our nature, he has interposed by 
 miracles for the sake of revealing in his written Word ; that 
 Word, which by its interchange of styles all unfolding the 
 same idea, by its liberal construction of forms all enclosing 
 the same spirit, prompts us to argue more for the broad 
 central principles, and to wrangle less for the side, the party 
 aspects of truth ; that Word, which ever pleases in order to 
 instruct, and instructs in such divers ways in order to im- 
 press divers minds, and by all means to save some. Through 
 the influence of such a Bible upon such a soul, and under 
 the guidance of Him who gave the one and made the other, 
 we do hope and believe, that the intellect will yet be en- 
 larged so as to gather up all the discordant representations 
 of the heart and employ them as the complements, or em- 
 bellishments, or emphases of the whole truth ; that the heart 
 will be so expanded and refined as to sympathize with the 
 most subtle abstractions of the intellect ; that many various 
 forms of faith will yet be blended into a consistent knowl- 
 edge, like the colors in a single ray ; and thus will be ush- 
 ered in the reign of the Prince of peace, when the lion shall 
 lie down with the lamb, when the body shall no more hang 
 as a weight upon the soul, and the soul no longer wear up- 
 on its material framework, when the fancy shall wait upon 
 rather than trifle with the judgment, and the judgment shall 
 not be called as now to restrain the fancy, when the passions 
 
THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT 123 
 
 shall clarify rather than darken the reasoning powers, and 
 the conscience shall not be summoned as now to curb the 
 passions, when the intellect shall believe, not without the 
 heart, nor against the heart, but with the heart unto salva- 
 tion; and the soul, being one with itself, shall also be one 
 with all the saints, in adoring one Lord, cherishing one 
 faith, and being buried in one baptism ; and when we who 
 are united unto Christ on earth, he dwelling in us and we in 
 him, shall, in answer to his last prayer for us, be made per- 
 fect with him in God. 
 
PROFESSOR PARK AT 50 
 
THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE STATE TO 
 THE CLERGY 
 
The election sermon was preached before His Excellency Geo. 
 N. Briggs, Governor, His Honor John Reed, Lieutenant Governor, 
 the Honorable Council, and the Legislature of Massachusetts, at 
 the Annual Election January 2, 1851. The services were held in the 
 Old South Church, to which "the State Government" was escorted 
 by the Independent Cadets of Boston. The "Traveler" says of the 
 sermon : "We have carefully read this sermon and find it to be 
 just what might have been expected from the well-known ability 
 of its author — clear, logical and to the point." 
 
THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE STATE TO 
 THE CLERGY 
 
 "Nozv there teas found in it a poor wise man, and he by his zvis- 
 dom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man." 
 — Eccl. 9: 15. 
 
 IN the kingdom of nature the greatest effects are pro- 
 duced by occult forces. Magnetism and electricity had 
 been working out their mightiest results for ages before 
 their existence was recognized. Gravitation is a latent pow- 
 er which worlds obey in silence. Throughout the sphere of 
 mind, also, energies are felt when not acknowledged. By 
 the force of an idea, one man will move a whole community, 
 and he will be forgotten while his idea lives on. There is 
 a class of persons who, in some States of our Union, are de- 
 barred by law from all civil office and among whom a rich 
 man is a phenomenon. The spirit of their profession and 
 their habits of thought disincline or perhaps incapacitate 
 them for pecuniary speculation. They ^re persons whose 
 rightful influence comes from their good thoughts and good 
 character. These are their wisdom, and by it, through the 
 aid of heaven, they deliver the State from many an evil. 
 Still, the results of their labor are often delicate, refined, ' 
 and therefore unnoticed. The consequence is, that no^ one 
 who limits his view to tangible benefits remembereth these 
 same poor men. 
 
128 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 It may be thought a singular and forced process by 
 which this description can be appHed to clergymen. They 
 have often dwelt in ceiled houses ; they have been the first 
 officers in the realm, and have held their foot on the neck of 
 kings. And as they have not been always poor, neither, by 
 any means, have they been always wise ; for it has been 
 said by one who has, however, overstated the truth, "that 
 the surest sign of the divine authority of our religion is, 
 that it has not yet been exterminated by those who have 
 essayed to preach it." In lieu of delivering the State from 
 harm, the State has often prayed to be delivered from them ; 
 and, so far from not being remembered, it is impossible for 
 the millions who have suffered by them ever to forget them. 
 
 For the faults of the clergy we have no time now to 
 apologize. It were as unsafe to condemn them in a mass 
 as to extol them in a mass. Their ranks have included 
 some of the worst, and some of the best men whom the 
 world has ever seen. We may consider them, however, not 
 as they have uniformly been in fact, but as we may reason- 
 ably expect them to be ; as complying with the tendencies 
 of their office; as representatives of a doctrinal system 
 which is better than they are themselves ; as faithful, in 
 some good measure, to their professions ; as identifying 
 their own history with much of the history of the gospel ; 
 as "living epistles," imperfect, indeed, but yet fairly expres- 
 sive of the truth. We may consider them as they have 
 usually appeared among the various sects of this Common- 
 wealth ; and, not dilating on their highest usefulness to the 
 spiritual and eternal interests of men, we may take a nar- 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 129 
 
 rower view of their function, and in this grave presence 
 may consider, I trust, without any unfitness, 
 
 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE STATE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 We might illustrate this indebtedness by describing the 
 effort which would be needed for undoing the good already 
 done through clerical influence, and by describing the 
 scenes which would ensue if this influence should now en- 
 tirely cease. Bvit, pursuing a more direct method, we may 
 remark, that 
 
 I. The State is indebted to the clergy for their influ- 
 ence in promoting the comfort of the people. Other things 
 being equal, that nation is the most secure whose citizens 
 are the most happy, and the citizens are the most happy 
 when their natural sensibilities have at once the freest and 
 most healthful play. Hence it is one aim of the Common- 
 wealth to satisfy, where it wisely can, the instinctive im- 
 pulses of the people. It provides a fit gratification for the 
 sense of honor, the spirit of liberty, the love of enter- 
 prise, of repose, of amusement even. Sometimes it regu- 
 lates prices, forbids dangerous sports, encourages the fine 
 arts, increases the facilities of locomotion, with the pri- 
 mary intent of diffusing good cheer which wins men to 
 good citizenship. More than one government has been 
 convulsed with revolutions, merely because it did not ap- 
 pease the appetite of hunger among the populace. Now, 
 there is in man a religious sentiment, sometimes noiseless 
 because it is deep, and sometimes the deepest when par- 
 tially repressed, which must be gratified, or man becomes 
 
I30 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 restive, querulous, tumultuous, ungovernable. It is a com- 
 plex feeling, not always nor in general involving a holy pref- 
 erence, but including some necessary processes of our very 
 constitution. Much of it consists in man's natural tendency 
 to look upward, to revere a power above him, to feel his 
 dependence upon it, an involuntary thankfulness toward 
 it, a moral accountability to it, a hope of being rewarded by 
 it for virtues, a fear of being punished by it for vices, a 
 dread of it as just, a complacency in it as bounteous and 
 loving. This religious sentiment will and m.ust be ex- 
 pressed. Here it resembles, not the fire in the flint, which 
 is struck out by concussion, but the light of a lamp, which 
 is itself radiant. For one mode of its expression, it insists 
 on having a consecrated order of men who- shall be an em- 
 bodiment of the religious idea. It demands either the 
 priest or the minister as an organ of communication be- 
 tween earth and heaven, — an organ through which the feel- 
 ings of the people may be uttered to God, and the richest 
 favors of God may be transmitted to the people. It is a 
 dictate of nature, that such an organ be required by men for 
 expressing their devotedness to a superior power, because 
 themselves being disturbed by the turmoils of life, they con- 
 fide so much the more in a selected band who dwell amid 
 the stillness of the temple, and are imagined to have the 
 spirit, as they are seen to have the marks, of peculiar sanc- 
 tity. On the same principle, it is an impulse of nature that 
 men desire a special organ for receiving their choicest g^fts 
 from heaven ; because, immersed as men are in the cares 
 of life, they need a class of teachers from whom they may 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 1311 
 
 gain spiritual wisdom. They have a faith in the teaching 
 and example of those who devote their life to the mysteries 
 of religion, as they have a faith in the instructions of pro- 
 fessed mechanicians, or philosophers, or jurists. It is 
 sometimes asked whether the ministry be a divine or mere- 
 ly human institution. It is divine as the religious sentiment 
 itself. It is divine as the human soul. It was no more 
 devised by man than his constitutional instincts were de- 
 vised by him. Mr. Hume says,' that priests may "justly 
 be regarded as an invention of a timorous and abject super- 
 stition; " but it is a superstition which cannot be reasoned 
 down, nor flattered down, nor awed down, nor sneered 
 down. It is no more timorous than our very conscience, 
 no more abject than is our filial afifection. It pervades 
 the wide world. Every tribe of men has its sacred orders. 
 They are in the pagoda, the mosque, the cathedral, the 
 meeting-house. The rites of worship have not been mul- 
 tiplied by the gospel, but rather diminished, — made less 
 instead of more imposing; yet we might as soon find a 
 musical people without professed musicians, and a sea- 
 faring people without an order of captains, and a martial 
 people without a rank of head men, as a nation who 
 receives the gospel and disowns its Sabbaths and its 
 teachers. With us, the alternative is between the Chris- 
 tian religion and no religion at all ; and therefore, as we 
 accept Christianity, so we must take with it some form 
 of its ministry. This ministry has indeed a positive, which 
 is of itself a sure basis, but this basis overlies a moral 
 
 ' Essay X. 
 
132 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 groundwork. The adaptation of the office to the very- 
 make of the soul, is a signature of its divine origin, and 
 is ahke the cause and the proof of its irrepressible influence. 
 When men are forcibly deprived of their religious coun- 
 sellors, they refuse to be comforted. Hence, the Grego- 
 ries and the Innocents have regulated their government 
 by the principle, that the masses of men, who can bear 
 all things else, will never long endure an interdict on 
 their ministers, and therefore a monarch can be punished 
 most effectively by silencing, on his account, the priest- 
 hood in his kingdom. For his people.', if shut out from 
 their sanctuaries, will be as uneasy as if barred from the 
 free air, and sooner or later will trample on the throne 
 and rush over it to the altar, or else will persuade their 
 king to make concessions, any concessions, to purchase, 
 to beg a resumption of those soothing offices with which 
 the fondest affections of men, women and children are 
 intertwined. 
 
 When in the gloom of night death comes to the first- 
 born of a mother, it is in her very nature to listen for the 
 voice of the man of God who may say, "It is well with the 
 child." To the mourners who bend over the bier, and take 
 their farewell of the friend whom they are tO' see no more, 
 there is a meaning which they must feel, for they are 
 so made as to feel it either for good or ill, in the words of 
 their Comforter in heaven, who speaks to them through his 
 anointed servants on earth. As the human sensibilities are, 
 the best reliefs for the afflicted will not, even if they can, be 
 enjoyed where there is no order of men distinctively and 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 133 
 
 divinely set apart to administer them. Although the name 
 of a pastor is seldom mentioned by an historian,' yet the 
 real unwritten history of the race is not, in the main, made 
 up of wars and of diplomatic maneuvers, but of those do- 
 mestic griefs which the pastor assuages, and of those pri- 
 vate joys which he hallows. He supplies a want too pro- 
 found to be reached by mere civil enactments, too deli- 
 cate to be touched by armed magistrates, too radical, to 
 be left without the care of philanthropists especially de- 
 voted to it. The clergy, then, instead of being, as they are 
 sometimes regarded, mere goads and stings to the public 
 conscience, made for teasing and annoying a quiet popula- 
 tion, are the ministers of solace, and of that peace which 
 no political economy can give or take away. They earn 
 more thanks than they receive from the government for co- 
 operating with it in multiplying the satisfactions of life and 
 for insinuating a happy influence into those recesses of the 
 soul, which are closed against all other than spiritual ap- 
 pliances. 
 
 n. The State is indebted to the clergy for their influence 
 in educating the people. Every land should have its native 
 literature, and especially our land, which is overspread 
 with writings foreign to us alike in origin and spirit. Now, 
 the religious is the most durable part of our national litera- 
 ture, and this should be in harmony with the genius of our 
 institutions. The larger portion of our sacred lore is in the 
 
 ^ There is too much truth in the remark of Dr. Channing, that his- 
 tory "has not a place even in the margin for the minister and the 
 schoolmistress." 
 
134 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 products of the pulpit. If the sermons preached in our land 
 during a single year were all printed, they would fill a hun- 
 dred and twenty million octavo pages. Many of these ser- 
 mons are, indeed, specimens of human weakness ; but the 
 frailest vase may hold roots that will far outgrow its own 
 dimensions. The themes of the dullest preacher may ger- 
 minate into a quickening life. The mind is so framed as to 
 be stimulated by the queries, "Who am I? Of what king- 
 dom am I a spiritual citizen? Am I to live forever? If so, 
 in what realm, in what condition, with what companions, 
 under what laws? The Judge from whom there is no ap- 
 peal, the Monarch whose sway over me will be without 
 end^ — how can I gain his favor?" Now, the church is the 
 people's university for the study of such questions. The 
 minister, therefore, is a teacher of science, — the science of 
 the human soul, in which every cautious man feels a per- 
 sonal interest, — the science of that great Spirit whose at- 
 tributes either alarm or delight men, and in, either case 
 touch their deepest sympathies. This is the science for 
 which man was made, for which he was made inquisitive ; 
 which has already, more than any other object, tasked the 
 ingenuity of thinkers, and waked up the sensibilities of men 
 otherwise lethargic. It arouses the religious principle ; and 
 this, when started, sets all the wheels of mental activity in 
 motion.' It feels after the truth, if haply it may find it. It 
 
 ^ The celebrated infidel, D'Alembert, speaking of the Protestant 
 Reformation, says: "The new doctrines of the reformers, defended 
 on one side and attacked on the other with that ardor which the 
 cause of God, well or ill understood, is alone able to inspire, equally 
 obliged their defenders and their opponents to acquire instruction. 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 135 
 
 expands the character. It is this principle which made our 
 forefathers great and trustworthy men. Many a pastor has 
 noticed that a renewal of Christian faith is often combined 
 with a renovation of the intellectual life. And the minister 
 teaches not in the listless way of writing books, but with 
 the living voice ; with those tones and emphases which, in an 
 orator like our own Stillman, are themselves almost a doc- 
 trine; not with the voice alone, but with the hand, which 
 opens in order to give out the truth ; with the eye, which 
 radiates a thought unutterable by the lips ; with the whole 
 person, which bodies forth what is concealed within.^ And 
 instead of writing on this science for here and there an 
 insulated reader, the minister preaches to a sympathizing 
 congregation, to fathers and mothers surrounded by their 
 offspring in comely attire. With this animating influence 
 of a multitude upon each other, he combines the influence 
 of a consecrated day, when business is stilled so as to make 
 his whisper audible. He speaks, too, in the temple which 
 men feel to be sacred, and in which the pulpit is raised in 
 dignity above the pews. All these incidents, making his 
 
 Emulation, animated by this powerful motive, increased all kinds of 
 knowledge, and light, raised from amidst error and dissension, was 
 cast upon all objects, even such as appeared most foreign to those in 
 dispute." 
 
 ' When John Adams was informed, in a letter from a parish com- 
 mittee, that the church-pew which he had then recently selected for 
 himself was, by means of an intervening pillar, badly situated for his 
 seeing the preacher, he returned the following laconic reply: "Faith 
 cometh by hearing." But in the department of oratory, men hear 
 with their eyes as well as ears. The full hearing of the truth in- 
 volves a vision of the man who expresses it. 
 
136 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 hearers the more susceptible, make his words the more 
 impressive. He preaches, also, not to those alone who 
 can educate themselves, but to the masses of men, who de- 
 pend on him for their moral instruction ; who, being near 
 the basis, form, the support of the political system ; who are 
 continually sending up both men and influences to invigo- 
 rate the higher classes of society. It is one seal of the di- 
 vine wisdom in our religion, that truth so disciplinary 
 should be made known in a method so quickening, to the 
 class of men who are in such peculiar need of being trained 
 in this peculiar way. And here lies the eloquence in 
 the climax of Him who spake as never man spake, and 
 who specifies, as the signs of his mission, that "the blind 
 receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are 
 cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and" 
 (more than all these physical blessings) "the poor have the 
 gospel preached to them." 
 
 It is not, then, to any unusual genius possessed by cler- 
 gymen, — for often their character is disfigured by no such 
 excrescence, — nor tO' any magical arts which they practise, 
 that we must ascribe the enlivening influence of their 
 words ; but we impute it to the adaptations of their office, 
 to the inherent fitnesses of their message, to the attendant 
 influences of Him who blends his own power with the truth 
 which he has revealed. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton says :' 
 "A man must preach very well indeed, before he conveys 
 such a lesson of the greatness of God, and the unworthiness 
 of man, as a view of the heavens discloses." This is well 
 
 ^ Memoir, p. 203. 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 137 
 
 said ; but if any minister has the soul of a minister, and be- 
 lieves the pure gospel, and feels what he believes, and 
 speaks what he feels, he preaches very well indeed ; for the 
 truths which he utters are more radiant than the stars of 
 the sky, and his soul, if duly enlarged by those truths, is 
 greater than the expanse of the heavens, and the shining 
 forth of such truths from such a soul awakens and enlight- 
 ens men who would sleep under the starry heavens without 
 once dreaming of their Author. And the same noble bar- 
 onet who has now been named, and' who has, perhaps, 
 achieved as good a work for the imprisoned and the enJ" 
 slaved as any man of the last century says,' near the 
 close of his beneficent career : "Whatever I have done in 
 my life for Africa, the seeds of it were sown in my heart in 
 Wheeler-Street Chapel." "It was much, and of vast moment, 
 that I there learned from" the minister of that sanctuary. 
 And what and where is Wheeler-Street Chapel? The world 
 has never heard of Wheeler-Street Chapel, but the world 
 has heard of Sir Powell Buxton ; and the chain of the slave 
 loosens at the mention of his name, and Ethiopia stretches 
 out her hands to welcome him to her fond embrace ; and 
 the children of her schools which were founded by his care, 
 have learned his history by heart, and will engrave it on 
 bracelets of gold around their wrists. Yet the eloquence 
 with which he instructed the British senate, the skill with 
 which he gained the sympathies of his countrymen, and the 
 vigor with which he broke the bands of the West India 
 slave, he traced back to the educating influences of a pulpit 
 
 ^ Memoir, p. 46. 
 
138 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 in a small, weather-beaten chapel of Spitalfields ; for from 
 that pulpit he learned those truths that touch the most elas- 
 tic springs of intellectual as well as moral enterprise, — that 
 are subtle enough to reach, as nothing else can, the hiding- 
 places of the conscience, and to make it familiar with great 
 thoughts which make the mind great, and so to regulate 
 the association of ideas that one may find "sermons in 
 stones, books in running brooks," and religious lessons in 
 the starry heavens that preach so well. 
 
 The strictly religious truths of the Bible must, from their 
 intellectual spirit, have an affinity with all knowledge. He 
 who is curious to learn them is the more easily interested in 
 everything which can illustrate them. The sciences per- 
 taining to the works of God, are involved in the science 
 pertaining tO' his character. Not a few; mechanical inven- 
 tions, even, have been made by clergymen. The world has 
 been enriched by the chemical researches of Priestley ; but 
 he indulged himself in these as an aid to his theological, 
 Vvhich were his main, studies. Many minds have been ex- 
 panded by the astronomical discourses of Chalmers ; but he 
 studied the stars of heaven as moral lights to guide him in 
 his pilgrimage through this dark world. Much of the ethi- 
 cal philosophy now taught in our learned schools, is bor- 
 rowed from the sermons of Bishop Butler, The sensibilities 
 of men have been ennobled by the architecture of the cathe- 
 dral ; but the sublimer principles of this architecture have 
 been discovered by the priests in their aim to image forth 
 an inward by an outward grandeur. The public taste has 
 been refined by the music of the choir; but many of the 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 139 
 
 ■most solemn harmonies have been composed by the minis- 
 ters of the altar. It is the religious sentiment which has 
 suggested the costliest products of the chisel and the pen- 
 cil ; for whatever is grand or beautiful is afifianced to re- 
 ligious truth. More than one Lord Chancellor has com- 
 mitted to memory the sermons of more than one Dr. Bar- 
 row, merely for their inevitable words which come from a 
 hearty faith. We infer the conduct of men from their in- 
 terests, and the interests of a clergyman require him to 
 disseminate as well as to gain intelligence. "Because the 
 preacher was wise," says Ecclesiastes, "he still taught 
 the people knowledge." He discourses with a freer and 
 manlier spirit, when the minds of his hearers have been 
 raised up to an interest in the lofty discussions pertain- 
 ing to Him before whom the mountains flow down. We 
 confess with shame that the preacher has not always un- 
 derstood his interests. He has often been afraid to learn, 
 and still oftener afraid to teach. But this was the abuse, 
 not the use, of his ofhce. In the darkest ages, how- 
 ever, he made "the benefit of the clergy" arise from an 
 erudition superior to that of most other men. In those 
 cold ages, the Church, at immense cost and pains, fondly 
 preserved the literature of the world, even as the mother 
 who lay freezing on the snow wrapped her own tat- 
 tered garments around her babe which she warmed and 
 cherished in her bosom. There was darkness in the world 
 at those times, because the messengers of heaven forgot 
 their errand to preach the gospel. They deemed the truths 
 of religion so stimulating as to be dangerous for the com- 
 
I40 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 mon mind. Still, even then they betrayed the affinities of 
 their office : they were the jurists, the arithmeticians, the 
 rhetoricians of the world; they comprehended all the sci- 
 ences and even the arts in theology, and some of them 
 must, even now, be regarded as prodigies of learning. The 
 best universities of the Old World have been founded by 
 clerical influence. Nearly all our own colleges, as those at 
 Waterville, Middlebury, Hanover, Providence, New Haven, 
 Princeton, were organized by ministers, for the main pur- 
 pose of disseminating the religious truth which loves to 
 find and to make men intelligent. When Boston contained 
 no more than thirty houses, and Massachusetts no more 
 than twenty-five civilized towns, the pastors devised the 
 plan of Harvard College, with the primary intent of mak- 
 ing worthy preachers and fit hearers of the truth, which is 
 the life of the soul. It is interesting to notice the degree in 
 which divines like our Mayhews and Chauncys labored to 
 make plain the very rudiments of popular instruction. 
 And, at the present day, no small part of the minister's en- 
 ergy is spent in aiding the teachers, animating the pupils, 
 preserving the order and inspecting the progress, of our 
 common schools.^ Without his genial interest, these 
 
 ^ Professor Stowe, who has held an important official connection 
 with the public schools of Ohio, says : "My experience has taught 
 me to despair of establishing, with any permanency, even a good dis- 
 trict school, where there is not a good church and an intelligent min- 
 istry to watch over and sustain it." President Sears, once the inde- 
 fatigable Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, says : 
 "The efficient coadjutors which I have had the happiness to find in 
 all parts of the State, vi'hile engaged in my official duties, belong to 
 no one profession or class of men. It may, however, be said, with- 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 141 
 
 schools had never been, as they now are, the treasures of 
 our State. Our clergy and our schoolmasters have long 
 been in communion, so that one of our own native poets 
 has said of our Commonwealth, that she never 
 
 "Dreads the skeptic's puny hands, 
 While near her school the church-spire stands, 
 Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule. 
 While near her church-spire stands a school." 
 
 There are a thousand other avenues through which the 
 learning of a clergyman, who is what he ought to be, flows 
 into the very hearts of his people. The fact that he is a 
 scholar adds a power, and the fact that he is known to be a 
 scholar adds an authority, to even his common words. 
 From such a man as Owen, or Bates, or Calamy, or Poole, 
 or Flavel, each of whom wrote his scholastic folios amid the 
 pressure of parochial care, there went forth, — it could not 
 be otherwise, — there stole forth from his very attitude and 
 mien as he strolled along the byways of his parish, — there 
 breathed itself forth an influence which raised the aims and 
 refined the thoughts of young men. Amid the multitude of 
 brighter names which have adorned the pulpit, we seldom 
 hear of Robert. Bolton, whoi published five theological 
 quartos, translated the whole of Homer, and commented on 
 the whole of Aquinas, and studied the Fathers as if he 
 cared nothing for his contemporaries ; yet this same divine 
 associated with his contemporaries as if he cared nothing 
 
 out any injustice to others, that the clergy, of every name, in the 
 Commonwealth, have been second to no other men in respect to an 
 enlightened policy and energetic action promoting the education of 
 the people." 
 
142 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 for the Fathers, andi in his daily walks through the lanes 
 of his precinct, he bore the results of his multifarious learn- 
 ing to the doors of the humblest peasantry. On one page 
 in the life of Baxter we read of his toiling, amid pains and 
 faintness, over the last of the hundred and sixty-six trea- 
 tises which he wrote for the press; and on another page we 
 read of him laden with the fruits of his erudition, and dif- 
 fusing the influence of it among the inmates of a hovel at 
 Kidderminster. It is told of an ancient astronomer, that 
 when reproved for his want of patriotism, he defended him- 
 self by pleading, "My country is in the heavens." But we 
 read of Jonathan Edwards writing at one hour of the day, 
 which he calls his leisure hour, that Treatise on the Will 
 which David Hume and Dugald Stewart and Sir James 
 Mackintosh ranked with the works of Locke and Leibnitz ; 
 and at another, which was his business hour, mingling as a 
 father with the untutored Indians of his neighborhood, 
 preaching once in a week to the Mohawks, and once in a 
 week to the Housatunnucks, and often catechizing their 
 vagrant children. His country, too, w^s in the heavens ; 
 but it was pleasant for him to walk thither hand in hand 
 with the poor pilgrims, who might otherwise wander far 
 away from the home of the Great Spirit. 
 
 I know that men like these do not appear every day and 
 everywhere, but the difiference is often in degree, not in 
 kind ; for in many a New England hamlet there is now a 
 parsonage where the gems of sacred lore are, treasured up, 
 where the spirit of the patriarch is refined by a patient and 
 liberal culture ; but while the world is running out in search 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 143 
 
 of noisy captains who boast themselves to be patriots, and 
 escorting them in long" processions, ''all the while sonorous 
 metal" breathing martial sounds, this man, whose inward 
 worth is equal to his freedom from outward display, and 
 who might have been famed in the senate had he not 
 chosen to minister unto the necessities of the saints, is now 
 living as the educator of a retired parish, speaking a word 
 in season to herdsmen's boys, and imitating while he serves 
 the great Teacher who said, "Suffer the little children to 
 come unto me, and forbid them not;" but from the circle of 
 hardy youths who enjoy his counsel there will come forth 
 robust and earnest scholars, who will invigorate the litera- 
 ture of their country, and gather to themselves the honors 
 of the State, while no one remembereth the poor wise man 
 who delivered them from their ignorance ; but he toils on, 
 willing to be obscure, so he may humbly serve his genera- 
 tion, and waiting with a resigned and pensive spirit for the 
 day when he shall be borne by a few devout men to his 
 burial, and when he who hath been faithful over a few 
 things shall be made ruler over many things, and' shall en- 
 ter with loud acclaim into the joy of his Lord. 
 
 IIL The State is indebted to the clergy for their influ- 
 ence in promoting the political virtues. So gentle and 
 well-nigh domestic is the pastor's vocation, as in the view 
 of some to steal away his manly energy. Yet the very men 
 who are most inclined to smile at what they term his ef- 
 feminate manners, are the most sensitive to his interference 
 with politics. They cannot forgive it unless it be what 
 they significantly call, "on the right side." The reason is. 
 
144 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 that his words, homely as they may seem, come with a 
 power pecuhar to his ofBce, and therefore go down into the 
 recesses of the soul, made as it is for religious appeal/ 
 Hence he is suspected of unfairness, when he gives up to a 
 party what is required for the common good. He should 
 be wise, then, in setting bounds to his political activity. 
 He should be careful that his political influence not only 
 be, but also seem to be, in behalf of virtue. He should be 
 and appear to be solicitous, not so much for the outward 
 forms as for the moral spirit of politics. Hence he should 
 never be vociferous in civil affairs, so as to let the minister 
 be lost sight of in the politician. His influence on those 
 affairs will be greater and better if he make them secondary 
 to his more spiritual duties. He loses his political influence 
 if he think tooi much of it. He must never contend in such 
 a way for the interests of this world as to mar the felicity 
 of his pleading for the interests of another. His general 
 rule should be, to make the Sabbath a day of rest, and the 
 sanctuary a place of rest, for friends and foes who are wea- 
 ried with their earthly strifes. His habits and his sympa- 
 thies disqualify him for the personal details of politics. 
 When he goes far beyond the discussion of principles into a 
 mere partisanship for men,^ he is out of his sphere, and 
 that simplicity which is and ought to be his most amiable 
 
 ^ "Many [State] constitutions exclude the clergy from voting, be- 
 cause their influence, always great, is feared if they interfere with 
 politics." Lieber's Political Ethics, Part II., p. 268. 
 
 " There is an obvious difference between the discussion of politi- 
 cal principles on the one hand, and the meddling with politics on the 
 other. 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 145 
 
 virtue, is the means of his being deceived into wrong 
 estimates of character. Still he is a man, a citizen, a 
 teacher, a moral guide, and as such he must utter many 
 truths relating to our civil duties. He must, for example, 
 exhort his hearers to "owe no man anything," even if he 
 should be suspected of looking toward some laws about 
 fraudulent bankruptcy and repudiation. As the theology 
 of the pulpit is linked with all sciences, so is its religion 
 with all virtues. Politics cannot be sealed up hermeti- 
 cally against moral influence. Like the air of heaven, this 
 influence pervades every sphere of life. Welcomed or op- 
 posed it must be met.^ Religion will either refine poli- 
 tics, or politics will contaminate religion. In self-de- 
 fence, therefore, as well as in fealty to the State, the min- 
 ister pleads for the duties of good citizenship. It is one 
 divine signature of his religion, that the same virtues 
 which it demands without reasoning and merely as en- 
 joined by God, are reasoned out by the physiologist to be 
 promotive of health, and by the statesman to be needed for 
 the national growth. The germs of political ethics are thus 
 in the Bible. By a train of religious sentiment, Fenelon 
 unfolded the essential principles which Adam Smith after- 
 wards erected into the new science of Political Economy. 
 In an indirect way, the minister is a politician when he ex- 
 plains and enforces, as he does so often, the duties of 
 
 ^ "To be a real patriot, a man must consider his countrymen as 
 God's creatures, and himself as accountable for his acting towards 
 them. If pro aris et focis be the life of patriotism, he who hath no 
 religion and no home, makes a suspected patriot." — Berkeley's Max- 
 ims concerning Patriotism. 
 
146 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 parents and children ; for these duties are essential to the 
 order of the family ; this order, as it represents in minia- 
 ture, SO' it facilitates the government of, a nation. A fam- 
 ily is the cement of the political system ; and unless it be 
 carefully watched, the Commonwealth will not be peace- 
 fully ruled. But all history proves that the virtues of the 
 household will not be long preserved, where they are not 
 fostered by those ministers of the church who, in their low- 
 ly services, are among the. best ministers of the State. At 
 the commencement of the last half cemury, some islands 
 of the sea were sunk in the deepest barbarism, but now send 
 their ambassadors to the courts of Europe. A few preach- 
 ers from New England carried to them the story of that re- 
 markable Personage who came to be a model for the child 
 and the parent, the scholar and the teacher, the layman 
 and the priest, the fellow citizen and the judge, the servant 
 and the lawgiver, the subject and the king, the vanquished 
 and the conqueror ; — and that story makes men think of 
 political maxims which it does not expressly mention, and 
 gives men one link which draws after it the whole chain of 
 political virtues.^ 
 
 One of these virtues, which the clergy are inclined by the 
 very genius of their office to encourage, is that of sustaining 
 the laws and government of the land. A church-going are 
 apt to be a law-abiding people. Their pastor has a profes- 
 sional regard for law. He loves its moral influence. He 
 esteems a good statute as a sermon and obedience to it as 
 
 ^ The Sandwich Islanders have more than once forwarded money 
 to the United States, in aid of our national charities. 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 147 
 
 a preparative for acquiescence in the divine will. Pie repre- 
 sents religion as consisting in this acquiescence, and he 
 fears that men who love tO' disobey the ruler whom they 
 have seen, will also disobey the Sovereign whom they have 
 not seen. His ofifice is to prove that the true submission to 
 government involves a benevolent regard to the common 
 good ; that it is therefore not pusillanimous but a noble 
 virtue; and as men must love the law of God in order to 
 acquiesce in the gospel, so they must obey the laws of man 
 in order to enjoy true freedom. 
 
 He teaches, indeed, on the principles of natural reason, 
 that civil government is of divine origin; not merely be- 
 cause it exists in the providence of God, for sin itself exists 
 in the same providence, without having God for its author. 
 But civil government is of divine origin, because and so far 
 forth as, it is prompted by those normal instincts within us 
 which are of divine workmanship. Our Maker has given us 
 a tendency to revere and obey magistrates. Speaking 
 through our constitution, then, he has ordained them. And 
 as government comes thus from a divine impulse, so it has 
 a divine right ; not merely because it is providentially so 
 strong that it cannot be resisted, and therefore ought to be 
 welcomed, for a pestilence or an inundation may be prov- 
 identially irresistible and still not desirable ; but government 
 is of divine right, because and so far forth, as it is adapted 
 to our natural and fitting wants. These wants are from God ; 
 they indicate the supply which is needed for them ; this 
 supply is political government ; this government, then, as 
 it is suited by nature to a demand existing by nature, must 
 
148 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 be sanctioned by the Author of that nature. He loves to 
 promote our welfare; our welfare is advanced by the in- 
 stitutions which are fitted to the structure of our minds ; 
 these beneficent institutions, therefore, are authorized as 
 well as originated by Him who has incited us to devise, by 
 causing us to demand them. Thus we claim a divine au- 
 thority for the marriage relation land for the family regimen, 
 because they are not only a result of sensibilities which God 
 has implanted in the soul, but also a means of the happi- 
 ness and virtue which he has made the end of our being. 
 Desiring this end, he has required these means. The the- 
 ory that government derives its claims from the social com- 
 pact, is, in the main, a fictitious mode of expressing the 
 idea that government is congenial with our sensibilities and 
 interests, and therefore may be presumed to secure a prom- 
 ise of obedience from us, and hence must be pleasing to 
 God, who chooses that we observe the covenants which him- 
 self has predisposed us to make. The theory that govern- 
 ment demands our homage on account of its venerable and 
 ancestral associations, resolves itself into the truth, that a 
 reverence for old systems was implanted within us by the 
 Ancient of Days, and he desires that this graceful sentiment 
 be cherished in every form and degree which can harmonize 
 with the paramount law of virtuous progress. In fine, the 
 element of truth existing in all theories of civil government 
 is enveloped in the Christian doctrine, that such govern- 
 ment has a divine authority, and this doctrine is essential to 
 the highest influence of those theories. There are masses 
 of men who care little for abstractions. It has been said 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 149 
 
 of them, they "cannot see, but they can feel ;'" at least, 
 they do not see sO' far as tO' ultimate utilities, nor so far 
 around as to general results. But they love or fear a per- 
 sonal God, who superadds his own sanction toi the threat- 
 enings of human law, who gives a new sacredness to life as 
 connected with an immortal existence, and to property as a 
 means of spiritual culture; a new meaning to an oath, a 
 religious value to a ballot, a deep solemnity tO' an office ; 
 and who invests the very forms of justice with a distinct 
 majesty.' Not in an abstract way, but by living men, his 
 ministers, has the authority of the great Lawgiver been as- 
 sociated with human jurisprudence. Hence have these 
 ministers been summoned, either by the wisdom or con- 
 science or policy of rulers, to stand forth as the representa- 
 tives of the divine will in behalf of human legislation. They 
 have administered the holy sacrament to the king as he has 
 assumed the diadem. They have chanted the Te Deum be- 
 fore the army as it has marched forth into the battle-field. 
 In the dignified simplicity of the gospel they have invoked 
 the aid of the Most High on our legislative councils. They 
 have, in various forms, clothed the polity of man with that 
 honor which cometh from nothing but an association with 
 the King of kings.' 
 
 ^ Harrington's Political Aphorisms. 
 
 " "Many barbarian tribes, as the Goths, believe their kings to have 
 descended from their divinities and thus to be worthy of especial 
 reverence; as Homer's heroes were the reputed issue of gods or 
 demigods, and thereby became the objects of religious homage." See 
 Guizot's Hist. European Civilization, p. 223. 
 
 ^ In his speech (pp. 47, 48) on the Girard Will Case, Mr. Webster 
 
150 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 There are some laws, perhaps, which, unless ennobled by 
 this alliance with the religion of the pulpit, would be re- 
 garded as too severe to be sustained. Had not the New 
 
 says: "At the meeting of the first Congress there was a doubt in the 
 minds of many about the propriety of opening the session with 
 prayer ; and the reason assigned was, as here, the great diversity of 
 opinion and religious behef : — until at last Mr. Samuel Adams, with 
 his gray hairs hanging about his shoulders, and with an impressive 
 venerableness now seldom to be met with (I suppose, owing to the 
 difference of habits), rose in that assembly, and with the air of a 
 perfect Puritan, said, it did not become men professing to be Chris- 
 tian men, who had come together for solemn deliberation in the hour 
 of their extremity, to say that there was so wide a difference in their 
 religious belief that they could not, as one man, bow the knee in 
 prayer to the Almighty, whose advice and assistance they hoped to 
 obtain. And independent as he was, and an enemy to all prelacy as 
 he was known to be, he moved that the Rev. Mr. Dushe, of the Epis- 
 copal Church, should address the Throne of Grace in prayer. And 
 John Adams, in his letter to his wife, says that he never saw a more 
 moving spectacle. Mr. Dushe read the Episcopal service of the 
 Church of England, and then, as if moved by the occasion, he broke 
 out into extemporaneous prayer. And those men who were then 
 about to resort to force to obtain their rights, were moved to tears; 
 and iioods of tears, he says, ran down the cheeks of the pacific 
 Quakers who formed part of that most interesting assembly."— In the 
 Convention of 1787, which framed the Constitution of the United 
 States, Dr. Franklin made, and Roger Sherman seconded, the mo- 
 tion, that "henceforth prayers, imploring the assistance of heaven and 
 its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every 
 morning." This motion, however, was not made until tlie 28th of 
 June, when the Convention had been more than four weeks in session, 
 and then "Mr. Hamilton and several others expressed apprehensions, 
 that however proper such a resolution might have been at the begin- 
 ning of the Convention, it might, at this late day, bring on it some 
 disagreeable animadversions, etc. Dr. Franklin and Mr. Sherman 
 answered that the past omission of a duty could not justify a further 
 omission, etc. Mr. Williamson observed that the true cause of the 
 omission could not be mistaken. The Convention had no funds. 
 Mr. Randolph proposed, in order to give a favorable aspect to the 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 151 
 
 Testament unfolded the nature of justice as including in it- 
 self the tenderest care for the general peace, there might be 
 a reason for modifying the application of the old com- 
 mand, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his 
 blood be shed." The executioner would be deterred from 
 pressing the fatal spring, did not the gospel, which wins 
 our love by its mildness, illustrate the benevolence of the 
 penal code, framed not for paining the guilty so much as for 
 relieving the innocent ; not for grieving a small circle of 
 friends, but for securing the comfort and the virtue of an 
 entire nation. Had not the people of our Commonwealth 
 been saved from a one-sided philanthropy by the compre- 
 hensive spirit of the New Testament, which utters a more 
 subduing threat as well as a more cheering promise than 
 the Old ; had they not been taught by Him who came to 
 be our pattern of gentleness, that civilization is something 
 higher than a poetic sentimentalism ; that true compassion 
 reaches beyond the man who has abused his race, and 
 guards also the race from being still further abused ; that 
 religion is the love of right, and therefore involves the 
 hatred of wrong ; aims to bless men, and therefore frowns 
 on all that injures them; pities the sordid temper of the 
 criminal, and therefore watches with the kindlier sympathy 
 over the children and mothers, the timorous and the frail, 
 
 measure, that a sermon be preached, at the request of the Conven- 
 tion, on the 4th of July, and thenceforward prayers. Dr. Franklin 
 seconded this motion." It was not carried, however, and the origi- 
 nal motion of Dr. Franklin was lost by a very decisive vote. It is 
 pleasing to reflect that this omission is an anomaly in our highest leg- 
 islative proceedings. See Spark's Life of Franklin, Vols. I., pp. 514, 
 515 and v., pp. 153-155; and Mr. Madison's Journal, in loco. 
 
152 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 who tremble by day and by night in fear of that criminal ; 
 had not our fathers been inspired with this conservative 
 spirit of Christianity, still permeating our civil institutions, 
 — we had not seen, and the world had not admired, the 
 majestic march of justice through our Commonwealth dur- 
 ing the past year; the manliness and dignity of our judges ; 
 the firm, cautious, and lofty spirit of our councillors, sus- 
 taining the law which is made so fearful for the sake of pre- 
 venting a sin yet more sinful ; listening with parental ten- 
 derness to- every plea of the sufiferer, but hearkening also 
 to the voice of God as he says, through the instinctive sen- 
 timents of our race, that the penalty which men are so 
 framed as to dread most of all, the last of all, is the fit dis- 
 suasive from that last and most appalling of crimes, which 
 hardens the heart against all gentler motives/ 
 
 Clergymen have been accused, some of them justly, but 
 others unjustly, of pressing the claims of government too 
 far, and of degrading themselves into the mere parasites of 
 the men who happen to be in power." The more trust- 
 worthy divines, however, have not been content with ad- 
 vocating the virtue of allegiance ; they have enjoined a sec- 
 
 ^ Allusion is here made to the execution of Professor John W. 
 Webster, August 30, 1850, for the murder of Dr. George Parkman; 
 and to the steadfastness with which all efforts for the pardon of 
 Prof. Webster were resisted by the government. 
 
 ^ Mr. Hume says, Essay IX., in language altogether too unguarded : 
 "All princes that have aimed at despotic power, have known of what 
 importance it was to gain the established clergy; as the clergy, on 
 their part, have shown a great facility in entering into the views of 
 such princes. Gustavus Vasa was, perhaps, the only ambitious 
 monarch that ever depressed the Church at the same time that he dis- 
 couraged liberty. But the exorbitant power of the bishops in Swe- 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 153 
 
 ond duty, — that of ameliorating the lazvs and government of 
 the land. They have recommended this duty in various 
 ways and widely different degrees. 
 
 Breathing the spirit of his office, a clergyman is reluctant 
 to think ill of civil enactments, for they need to be revered. 
 Still he has often aided in correcting, when he has not seen, 
 their faults. His teachings have been more useful than 
 his observation has been exact. When advocating an in- 
 jurious law, he has enforced principles which resulted in 
 amending it. 
 
 And when his charity which thinketh no evil has been 
 compelled to recognize the maladministration of lawgivers, 
 he has been slow to condemn them in his public speech ; 
 for it is written, "Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of 
 thy people."^ Still, without reproaching he has often bene- 
 fited them, for he has unfolded a system of divine legislation 
 which in its gradual working assimilates the government 
 of earth tO' that of heaven. Immoral codes have sometimes 
 been submitted to him for revision, as when the laws of the 
 Visigoths were humanized by the Councils of Toledo. 
 
 But when the malfeasance of rulers passes a certain line, 
 he cannot but speak out. He dreads the influence of cor- 
 
 den, who at that time overtopped the crown itself, together with their 
 attachment to a foreign family, was the reason of his embracing such 
 an unusual system of politics." 
 
 ' Much is said, and wisely, at the present day, against disobedience 
 to rulers. But the spirit of unrighteous disobedience to them is 
 fostered by the practice of unwarranted slander against them. A 
 faithful preacher dissuades men from "speaking evil of dignities," 
 as well as from refusing subjection to them; and when the disposi- 
 tion is so rife, as in our land, to calumniate the civil authorities, we 
 
154 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 rupt magistrates as preachers of heresy, as men who' will 
 nullify the laws which he is commissioned to proclaim. 
 Therefore, if he live under a government susceptible of 
 peaceful changes, he is required to plead for a reform of 
 statutes that miseducate the soul, benumb the conscience, 
 deaden the sentiment of pity or honor or generosity, and 
 weaken the very basis of government by vitiating the moral 
 principles on which every good government rests. It is 
 sometimes said, that "it is immaterial what civil polity we 
 have, provided that the people are honest and intelligent ;" 
 but unless we have the right polity, there is danger that 
 the people will never be honest and intelligent. 
 
 Still, the true pastor is far from sanctioning the rule that 
 every injurious statute be of course disobeyed; for it may 
 be so compacted with beneficent laws that they will stand or 
 fall with it, and the one unsightly stone of an arch must not 
 be pried out from the other stones which depend upon it for 
 their form and pressure. Neither does he sustain the rule 
 that every government, corrupt on the whole, be disobeyed ; 
 for often he has reason to believe that it would be made 
 only the more corrupt by being opposed, and even if over- 
 thrown, would give place to a new structure built of the 
 same materials in a worse form. Bad laws and bad rulers 
 are frequently less bad than any which would be at once 
 substituted for them ; and while they cannot claim obedi- 
 
 must expect the consequent disposition to resist them. The fact 
 that our rulers may not belong to our own party, is no excuse for the 
 desire or the practice of saying more against them than the welfare 
 of the State obviously and urgently demands. The careless or un- 
 necessary disparagement of them is one of the worst species of de- 
 traction, and has in all ages been condemned by the pulpit. 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 155 
 
 ence for their own merits, we may be required to yield obe- 
 dience for our own usefulness. We only confuse ourselves 
 when we imagine that obedience to a wrong law must nec- 
 essarily be, or always is in itself sinful. Although a govern- 
 ment has no right to command when we have no right to 
 obey, yet we are often under obligation to obey mandates 
 which the government ought not to have imposed. For 
 resistance to these mandates may not always be necessary 
 in order to avoid sin, and it may moreover be useless, and if 
 useless it is hurtful, and if hurtful it is offensive to our best 
 Friend, for he forbids us to waste our probation in efforts 
 which threaten evil when they do not promise good, and he 
 often gives a divine right to obedience when he gives none 
 to the government obeyed. It is true, however, singular as 
 it may seem, that the interests of men coincide so far with 
 their duty as to make the larger part of human statutes 
 coincident with the law of God, and to make them, there- 
 fore, his laws. In agreement with these principles, the 
 preacher has insisted on the general rule, that men obey the 
 law of the land; not merely that they obey, if they deem 
 the- law expedient, but that they obey ; not merely if they 
 approve it, but that they approve of obedience to it; not 
 that they make the wisdom of a particular statute the 
 condition of their compliance with it, but that they 
 believe in the wisdom of their compliance with it so 
 long as it is a statute. The general rule of the "wise 
 man" is to reverence law because it is good, or else to 
 obey it because it is law; and in such a land as our 
 own, where the legislation is founded on Christian prin- 
 
156 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 ciples, we must presume a statute to be right, unless 
 we have palpable evidence that it is wrong. And even 
 when there is such evidence, the act which the law requires 
 of us may not be wrong like the law which requires it. 
 This act may; be unfortunately so complicated with the af- 
 fairs of a useful government, that, although it may be in- 
 jurious to a few individuals, yet the omission of it may 
 compromit the safety of the government, and may thus 
 be still more injurious to a larger number of individuals. 
 This is an outward act, and although the same moral 
 choice must be either good or bad, ever the same, yet 
 many an external deed may vary in its character, become 
 right here and now, although it was wrong there and then. 
 If not commanded, it would be unfit and hurtful, but when 
 it is commanded, it may be less unfit and less hurtful than 
 would be the disobedience to the statute. It is a principle 
 of mere fanaticism, that if an external deed is proper in 
 one relation, therefore it may be performed in all relations ; 
 and if improper in some circumstances, therefore it must 
 be performed in no circumstances, even "though the heav- 
 ens fall.'" 
 
 But the human mind is Hke a pendulum swinging from 
 one extreme to the other, and reaching that other because 
 it had been first at the one. It is an extreme view, and 
 therefore a dangerous view (because an ultraism on one side 
 repels into an ultraism on the other, and it is hostile to the 
 genius of the gospel, and of its true ministers, to advocate 
 
 ^The well-known proverbs are "Fiat justitia; mat coelum," and 
 "Fiat justitia et pereat mundus." 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 157 
 
 any, and of course this, extravagance), that the general rule 
 of conformity to human law will never allow an exception/ 
 There is a certain line beyond which the minister who rep- 
 resents the gospel cannot, and for the good of the State 
 should not pass, in defending the active compliance with 
 law. He has long insisted on the distinction between ac- 
 
 ' It is one characteristic of a "wise man," that he knows when and 
 where to make exceptions to a general rule. By forcing the rule of 
 obedience so far as to shut out the rightfulness of any exception what- 
 ever, we prejudice men against the rule; while, on the contrary, by 
 making exceptions too easy and too numerous, and by undervaluing 
 the strong antecedent presumptions in favor of the existing law, we 
 drive men into the opposite extreme of denying the rightfulness of 
 any exception whatever. "If there be a danger on the one hand," 
 says Dr. Campbell, "of tying the knot of allegiance which binds the 
 subject to the sovereign too hard, there is no less danger on the other 
 of making it too loose." Many clergymen of England, receiving too 
 much aid from Usher, Sanderson, Ken, South and Berkeley, have 
 contended that the general rule of obedience is also a universal one. 
 Some of these divines have, as Mr. Macaulay says, "delighted to 
 exhibit the doctrines of non-resistance in a form so exaggerated as 
 to shock common sense and humanity." But nearly all the British 
 divines on whose judgment our countrymen are most apt to rely, 
 have sustained the old doctrine of the Church Fathers, that the gen- 
 eral rule of obedience is to be urged strenuously, but still not so 
 blindly as to exclude all exceptions. This has been the doctrine of 
 Jewell, Hooker, Bilson, Bedell, Burnet, Jeremy Taylor, Chilling- 
 with, Hoadley, King, Conybeare, Paley; — of nearly all the dissent- 
 ing, and also the Scottish theologians. It has also been the doctrine of 
 standard jurists. "Upon these two foundations, the law of nature 
 and the law of revelation, depend all human laws ; for being coeval 
 with mankind, and dictated by God himself, they are of course su- 
 perior in obligation to any other, and are binding all over the globe, 
 in all countries and all times ; no human laws, therefore, are of any 
 validity if contrary to these; and such of them as are valid derive 
 all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from 
 this original." — Law Grammar, Chap. II. Sect. 3. 
 
158 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 tive and passive obedience, and between disobedience to 
 the perceptive part of law and resistance to the retrib- 
 utive part of it/ While he has dissuaded men from re- 
 belling against an unworthy statute, he has, in some rare 
 instances, counselled their quietly submitting to its sanc- 
 tions as a less serious evil than their performing its requi- 
 sitions. The wise preacher has given this counsel when, and 
 only when, the statute has required citizens toi violate the 
 clear decisions of a well-trained conscience and the plain will 
 of God ; the clear decisions of conscience, for this faculty 
 leads us to infer that if there be any doubt, the govern- 
 ment is ordained of heaven to have the benefit of that 
 doubt ; the decisions of a zucll-trained conscience, for this is 
 a faculty Which decides aright only when treated aright, 
 when carefully enlightened, when free from the sinister in- 
 fluence of passion, when combined with an earnest desire 
 and all possible efforts to learn the good way ; the plain will 
 of God, for he wills us to act on the presumption that human 
 laws are just, and that they are his ordinances, unless it be 
 obvious that they violate other ordinances which are more 
 obviously and imperatively his. Men who seek to be in- 
 structed by him will be guided into a knowledge of his stat- 
 utes, and will cleave to them, whether they do or do not 
 sanction the statutes of men. Such is the consistent pas- 
 tor's faith in the divine providence, that he believes it salu- 
 tary^ as well as proper, to illustrate the wrongfulness of an 
 evidently immoral and demoralizing law by a specimen of 
 its grievous results, and he doubts not that a prudent leg- 
 
 ' AHud est non parere quam resistere. — Beza. 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 159 
 
 islature will reform such an enactment rather than multiply 
 fines and pains upon the very men whose moral principles 
 are at once the richest treasure and the best preservative of 
 the State, and who honor the law in general by patiently en- 
 during the penalties which ought never to have been 
 threatened. The divine has aimed to be, and has been, a 
 patriot in allowing no expectation that he would advocate 
 a policy which must displease the Author of all national 
 blessings, and must undermine the prosperity by impairing 
 the virtue of the people. His hope has been to raise the 
 tone of morals both in the high and low places of the land, 
 by teaching that we are subjects of Jehovah before, and 
 while, and after we are under the dominion of men, and 
 therefore the plain laws of heaven bind us more thoroughly 
 and deeply than any enactments which may contravene 
 them ; for they bind us in the motive as well as in the deed, 
 by a regard for the soul as well as the body, for time, and 
 forever. When the prophets and apostles chose, at the ex- 
 pense of hfe and hberty, to obey God rather than man; 
 when the martyrs of the ancient Church welcomed their 
 pains as a reward for not abandoning their rights of wor- 
 ship ; when the Reformers of Germany, the Huguenot 
 clergy of France, the Covenanting divines of Scotland, the 
 Protestant bishops and Puritan ministers of England, took 
 joyfully the spoiling of their goods as a recompense for not 
 transgressing the decisive mandates of heaven, and not 
 yielding a principle which they knew, and we all know, 
 that God required them to maintain, — they were not rebels 
 nor revolutionists ; they did not love their country less as 
 
i6o THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 it was, but more as through their example it was to be ; 
 they offered their treasure and their blood as a sacrifice, not 
 for their own land alone, but also for the world, in their 
 time and in all time. And we, above all men, see and feel 
 the results of their patriotism ; and if we, who are free-born 
 through their influence, are ready to charge the noble army 
 of martyrs, whose very names are hallowed by our prayers, 
 with sedition and treason and insurrection, then we are 
 ready to exhume their bones and scatter their ashes to the 
 winds. 
 
 If a deputy should enjoin what was not permitted by the 
 magistrate who deputed him, or if a m.agistrate should or- 
 der what was not allowed by the province which appointed 
 him, or if that province should command what the national 
 government had forbidden, or if the national government 
 should enact what the Constitution had prohibited, or if the 
 Constitution should require what is expressly interdicted 
 by Jehovah, in every such case of conflicting laws, the true 
 interests of a State forbid that the higher injunctions be 
 contravened for the sake of compliance with the lower.^ 
 The general truth is that the higher sustain the lower, and 
 the command of obedience to the lower presupposes that 
 they will demand no transgression of the higher ; and when 
 this supposition fails, the maxim of Ben Sirach is to be ap- 
 
 ^ "A constable may a thousand times more excusably pretend 
 authority against the king, or independent of him, than a king can 
 claim authority against God, or independent of him." — Richard Bax- 
 tei-'s Holy Commonwealth. "Obedience to man's laws is not neces- 
 sary, when the matter is forbidden us by God's laws, or when they 
 are laws without power, that is, such as men have no authority to 
 make." — Baxter's End of Controversy, p. 286. 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY i6i 
 
 plied, "Let not the reverence for any man cause thee to 
 sin." The Christian divine urges upon citizens the apostol- 
 ic rule, "Submit yourselves tO' every ordinance of man for 
 the Lord's sake." So he urges upon children the rule, 
 "Obey your parents in all things." So he urges upon serv- 
 ants the rule, "Obey in all things your masters."^ In the 
 same revealed sentence which contains the injunction to 
 obey magistrates, is another injunction to "speak evil of no 
 man." But the wise preacher saves his hearers from fa- 
 naticism by proving, that many inspired mandates are 
 expressed in general terms, so as to devolve on man the 
 duty of affixing the requisite limitations. They often exact 
 a service in unqualified language, so that they may exercise 
 and improve the moral judgment of man in defining the ex- 
 tent of the service. He who aims to guide himself by the 
 general spirit of Christianity, will receive wisdom enough 
 
 ' "Yet I believe no Christian will urge, that there would be an ob- 
 ligation to obedience from this precept, should a parent command 
 his child, or a master command his servant to steal." "Onr Lord 
 has given us this express prohibition, Resist not evil, and that with- 
 out any restriction whatever. Yet if this were to be understood by- 
 Christians as admitting no exception, it would, among them, abolish 
 m.agistracy itself. For what is magistracy but, if I may be allowed 
 the expression, a bulwark erected for the defence of the society, and 
 consequently for the purpose of resisting evil?" These remarks are 
 from a sermon of Dr. George Campbell, "preached at Aberdeen, Dec. 
 12, 1776, being the Fast Day appointed by the King on account of the 
 Rebellion in America." This celebrated critic stigmatizes the "ring- 
 leaders of the American Revolt, the members of their Congress," as 
 inconsiderate and dishonest men, deserving both pity and blame ; but 
 still contends "that no man is bound to yield an active obedience to 
 a human law, which, either from the light of nature or from revela- 
 tion, he is persuaded to be contrary to the divine law." See Camp- 
 bell's Dissertation, Sermons and Tracts, Vol. II., pp. 136-154. 
 
i62 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 to modify the commands which are not designed for being 
 pressed to the letter. A consistent theologian, beheving in 
 the divine right of rulers, cannot believe in their right 
 "divine of doing wrong." They forfeit their heavenly claim 
 so far forth as they plainly transgress the will of heaven. 
 "The powers that be are ordained of God," says the first 
 preacher to the Gentiles, "/or rulers are not a terror to 
 good works, but to the evil." Not in all particulars, then, 
 but in those particulars in which these powers become a ter- 
 ror, not to evil works, but to good, the reason for the divin- 
 ity of their government fails. They have a divine right 
 when they do no wrong, but have no right at all to require 
 a sinful compliance. The heavenly signet of their office 
 bears the inscription, "for [the ruler] is the minister of God 
 to thee for good," for he is "a revenger to execute wrath 
 upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be sub- 
 ject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake." But 
 this ruler loses his divine signet and the divinity of his of- 
 fice, not in all respects, but to the extent in which he be- 
 comes the minister of evil instead of good ; and in which 
 men cannot obey, either for conscience' sake, because an 
 enlightened conscience requires them to obey an opposite 
 command of heaven ; or for wrath's sake, because they will 
 endure a sorer punishment for disobeying God in compli- 
 ance with a human law, than for obeying him in opposition 
 to it. 
 
 But there is another line, still more remote and still more 
 fearful, where the wise minister ceases tO' recommend even 
 passive obedience, and advocates a forcible opposition to 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 163 
 
 the government which has abused its trust. In these ex- 
 treme cases, when forcible resistance is a smaller evil than 
 the tyranny otherwise endured ; when it is the necessary 
 and the only means of avoiding an oppression too grievous 
 to be borne ; when it, and it alone, promises to be success- 
 ful in securing the rights of the citizen, whenever submis- 
 sion to' tyrants is evidently treason against God, — then the 
 representative of the gospel has served the State by encour- 
 aging its patriots in a revolution. If the stone should cry 
 out of the wall and the beam out of the timber should an- 
 swer it, they would tell of many a Sabbath appeal with which 
 this sanctuary^ once resounded in favor of our fathers 
 struggling to escape from bondage. On the sixth of De- 
 cember, seventeen hundred and seventy-four, our Pro- 
 vincial Congress addressed a circular letter to every clergy- 
 man in the colony, for the purpose of securing the influence 
 of his office against the encroachments of the royal power." 
 
 ^ Old South Meeting-house. 
 
 " The following is the letter, as found in Dr. Gordon's History of 
 the American Revolution, Vol. I. pp. 417, 418: "Rev. Sir, — We can- 
 not but acknowledge the goodness of Heaven, in constantly supply- 
 ing us with preachers Ovf the gospel, whose concern has been the tem- 
 poral and spiritual happiness of this people. In a day like this, when 
 all the friends of civil and religious liberty are exerting themselves 
 to deliver this country from its present calamities, we cannot but 
 place great hopes in an order of men who have ever distinguished 
 themselves in their country's cause; and do therefore recommend to 
 the ministers of the gospel, in the several towns and other places in 
 this colony, that they assist 11s in avoiding that dreadful slavery with 
 which we are now threatened." It was natural that the people who 
 had long revered John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, as fathers to the 
 State as well as the Church, should in the times of the Revolution 
 look up to the clergy as not only spiritual but also political advisers. 
 
i64 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 Our Revolutionary generals often entreated the minister's 
 aid. He welcomed the rising army, blessed them as they 
 girded on their weapons of defence, emboldened them with 
 the thought, which always stirs the soul like a trumpet, that 
 they were in a religious war, and fought, like the Jews of 
 old, for their altars, and the God of the armies of Israel 
 would go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire 
 by night ; and it is rational to suppose that if the frequent 
 prayer of the sanctuary had not been sent up to heaven in 
 behalf of our forlorn troops, they had fainted under the pro- 
 longed severity of their contest. 
 
 But the solemn question arises. Who jshall judge wheth- 
 er a law be so extremely injurious as to be fitly unobeyed in 
 its precept, or even resisted in its sanctions? Whoi shall 
 determine when a statute has passed that line of abuse be- 
 yond which it cannot be complied with, safely and rightly? 
 This inquiry has various meanings. Is it asked whether 
 every citizen may examine the merits of a law? A State — 
 above all, a Republic — is a school for this invigorating 
 study. Is it inquired whether every citizen may judge of a 
 law, as if he were nO' less competent to do so than the civil 
 authorities? He should feel an habitual deference toward 
 them ; the pulpit admonishes him to be modest and rever- 
 ent ; but in deciding to obey them against his previous 
 judgment, he does and must decide for himself. Is it asked 
 whether every citizen may pronounce sentence against a law. 
 
 The influence of such divines as Mayhew, Cooper and Witherspoon, 
 of the Election preachers of Massachusetts, is noticed in Gordon's 
 History, Vol. I. pp. 418-420; Grahame's Colonial History, Vol. H. 
 pp. 394, 412, 419, 445, 463. 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 165 
 
 without consulting the wise and good of the past or pres- 
 ent times? He should humbly reverence their decision, but 
 in yielding to it and obeying the law on account of it and 
 against his previous judgment, he does and must decide for 
 himself. Is it asked, whether a citizen may disobey any law 
 without solemn and pious meditation? He must take a large 
 and broad view of disobedience in all its extended results, 
 many of them so disastrous, and he is a rash man if he dare 
 to disobey until he has learned wisdom from communing 
 with the great Ruler. Shall a man judge hastily? No. 
 Shall he judge in a passion? No. Shall he follow a per- 
 verted conscience? He should not have a perverted con- 
 science which he can follow. He should have no conscience 
 but a good one, one that is fit to be followed, and one that 
 is worthy to punish him if he do not follow it. He was 
 made soi that he may have, and he ought to have, and not 
 only to have but also to obey, this accurate conscience. Of 
 course he ought to do what, at the time of his deed, after 
 having adopted all possible means of learning his duty, he 
 thinks to be right, or else what he thinks to be wrong; and 
 to affirm that a man ought to do what, at the time of doing 
 it, he thinks to be wrong, is a solecism in morals.^ Is it 
 then inquired whether in the last resort every citizen must 
 
 ^ The patriots of our land have been trained to a high reverence 
 for their moral faculty. John Adams, writing to his son John 
 Quincy Adams, at St. Petersburg, in 1782, says : "Your conscience 
 is the minister plenipotentiary of God Almighty in your breast. 
 See to it that this minister never negotiates in vain. Attend to him 
 in opposition to all the courts in the vi^orld." — Letters of Mrs. Adams, 
 p. 427, 4th edition. 
 
i66 The indebtedness of the 
 
 judge of his political duty? He must judge of it, provided 
 that he is to be judged for it at the last day. He must de- 
 cide for himself, unless some magistrate is to stand as a 
 daysman between him and the King of kings at the dread 
 account. A man must determine for himself his religious 
 faith, with a view of its everlasting consequences, and he is 
 also summoned to determine his poHtical conduct with a 
 view of life or death, honor or infamy, as its result. This is 
 the condition of our free agency. Herein is the dignity and 
 grandeur of the soul. Here is the solemnity of a life on 
 which depends the life to come ; and here do we find a new 
 and a prominent reason why the God of nations has appoint- 
 ed a class of ethical advisers who may, with his help, train 
 men to make and to- keep their conscience pure, to educate 
 it, to rectify it, to preserve it as a safe guide, to obey it 
 when it is, as it always may and should be thus safe, to cher- 
 ish that spirit which has the promise of leading men into 
 the truth, to suspect their own decision when opposed to 
 that of their lawgivers, to judge of "the powers that be" 
 with a devout and humble temper, and never to venture on 
 disobedience to them save in the last and most dismal emer- 
 gency ; to give up for them everything which does not for- 
 feit the favor of Him whose favor is" life to the nation, and 
 "if it be possible, as much as lieth in them, to live peaceably 
 with all men," and above all with thosei men who bear the 
 sword not in vain. 
 
 But is there not peril in these private decisions? Peril! 
 Where is there not peril on this earth, spread all over with 
 snares and pitfalls, as the signs and results of transgression? 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 167 
 
 Peril ! If we take the wings of the morning, and fly any- 
 where within the confines of probation, we shall find peril. 
 He who made us meant to try us, and danger is our trial. 
 There is danger in enslaving the conscience. There is dan- 
 ger in subduing men into peace by benumbing the vitality 
 of their individual judgment. A State will never thrive by 
 counseling its citizens to undervalue their moral nature, 
 to brave as womanish their fears of sinning, to become pa- 
 triotic by becoming indifferent to their conscientious scru- 
 ples, to sacrifice a general to a mere incidental expediency. 
 A political party will sooner or later lose its dominion, un- 
 less it associate with itself the religious sentiment of the 
 people. For, while the interests of men vary, and favor 
 now this party and then another, the religious sentiment 
 holds on and holds out, oscillating sometimes like the 
 needle, but sure to come back again at last, and point to 
 the star which lingers over the abode of justice and of truth. 
 In certain individuals this sentiment is diseased. There is 
 danger here as well as elsewhere, and indeed everywhere. 
 A morbid conscientiousness makes good men discern evils 
 which do not exist. There is danger that men mistake a 
 diseased imagination for a moral sense ; and it was well 
 said by Napoleon Bonaparte, that there is no class of men 
 so difficult to be managed in a State as those whose inten- 
 tions are honest, but whose consciences are bewitched.^ 
 And, when the religious sentiment becomes fanatical, you 
 
 ' "No such instrument to carry on a refined and welhvoven re- 
 bellion as a tender conscience and a sturdy heart. He who rebels 
 conscientiously, rebels heartily." — Dr. South. 
 
i68 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 cannot repress it by threatening. It laughs at the shaking of 
 a spear. You cannot silence it by mere calculations of ex- 
 pediency. You might as well put a bridle on the north 
 wind as forcibly bridle the tongue of either man or woman 
 who is goaded on by a conscience made too sharp in its 
 friction against common sense. This irritated feeling is 
 calmed quietly, if at all; by gentle appliances, if by any; 
 and these are the appliances of the gospel. And here, again, 
 we see a reason, and a good and a great reason, why the min- 
 isters of this gospel are needed by the State ; for their busi- 
 ness is to assuage a false zeal by a true one, to call up one 
 religious sentiment which may modify another, to qualify 
 fervor by Christian prudence, to restore the equilibrium of 
 the feeling, to intreat the aid of Him who maketh his chil- 
 dren wise, and thus to prevent men from being martyrs by 
 mistake, and from making imprisonment the conclusion of 
 the syllogism of which ignorance and fanaticism are the 
 major and the minor premises. And there is one sentiment, 
 which is a religious one, and which the minister may often 
 evoke for the allying of unwholesome excitements against 
 the law. 
 
 I therefore remark, that a third political virtue which the 
 pastor favors is a love of country. Tlie names of Luther and 
 Melancthon give to the Saxon and the Prussian a new inter- 
 est in their fatherland. Her Bossuets and Fenelons bright- 
 en the glory of France to the eye of her citizens, and the 
 I.atimers and Jeremy Taylors of England invest v^th a 
 singular charm their old homes and mother tongue. It is 
 natural that the fondness of parishioners for their minister 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 169 
 
 should diffuse itself so far as to embrace the country which 
 he loves and serves. The nature of his office is peculiarly- 
 congenial with our republican institutions. Even when it 
 was most perverted, and when other high functions lay 
 under an hereditary caste, this office remained open to^ all, 
 and was the only avenue of the poor to places of influence 
 and trust. So the duties of the office are eminently re- 
 publican.' Scholars and civilians have longed in vain to 
 hear the eloquent conversation of Robert Hall ; but the 
 framework-knitters of Leicestershire were sought out by 
 him, and were comforted by the words which would have 
 been written in the books of more learned hearers. Philoso- 
 phers have made a pilgrimage to Berlin for an interview 
 with Schleiermacher, and have found him conversing with 
 the children of peasants in the streets. One aim of the 
 Christian ministry is to develop the importance of every in- 
 dividual soul, to give a consciousness of their own worth to 
 the lower classes, to bring together both the rich and the 
 poor before the Maker of them all, and thus to prevent the 
 evils, if not the existence, of pauperism. Just such is the 
 genius of our republican institutions. A wise clergyman — 
 but every clergyman is not wise — will love a republic, for 
 it stimulates the mind to an enterprise which will one day 
 become a Christian zeal. Its citizens are not joyous, nor so 
 contented even, as are many subjects of a monarch, but 
 ^ "They demand that the minister be of no particular caste, but that 
 he be a bond of union between all castes; that he be neither a pa- 
 trician solely, nor a plebeian solely, but that he move from the palace 
 to the cottage, and from the cottage to the palace, as a man who is 
 at home wherever he can commune with a human soul." — Chalmers' 
 Life, Vol. II. p. 550. 
 
I70 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 they are trained to think more, to know more, to possess 
 more of character, of real manhood. Hereby are they fitted 
 to love more, to be more vigorous philanthropists, to be 
 more capacious of godly thoughts, to have more of that in- 
 dividuality which is the basis of rich spiritual gifts." A wise 
 minister will love this repubhc, for Christian sympathies 
 gave the first impulse to it," and it is in its spirit a humane, 
 considerate and Christian republic, and it has been, is now, 
 and — he trusts in God — is long to be, an asylum for the per- 
 secuted church. It is the habit of his religion to take the 
 form of patriotism. His professional style does not allow 
 him to say so much as others of our "eagle, stars and stripes, 
 the beat of our drum, and the thunder of our cannon," but 
 he feels inspired by their influence so far forth as they are 
 expressions of a self-respect which may add to the dignity 
 of Christian freemen. The pulpit is no place for him to 
 boast of our shores bounding either ocean ; still, his 
 heart is expanded by the thought of them, as of lines 
 of light which are to illumine the East and the West, 
 Africa and Japan. He expects to dig for no treasures 
 
 "In a recent lecture of the Earl of Carlisle (Lord Morpeth), he 
 says of our countrymen : "One of their able public men made an ob- 
 servation to me which struck me as pungent, and perhaps tmo, that 
 [theirs is] probably the country in which there is less misery and less 
 happiness than in any other of the world." But in no other coun- 
 try is there so much of tact, shrewdness, common sense, energy, and 
 consequent capability of exploits. This is not the world for happi- 
 ness, but for exertion; and therefore a philanthropist who sees the 
 need of enterprise and toil for the moral education of the race, must 
 feel a peculiar interest in a country which, like our own, trains men 
 for high efforts. 
 
 'John Cotton has been called the founder of Massachusetts; 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 171 
 
 along the Sacramento, for he is, and is to be, a "poor 
 wise man ;" but he has a faith that the pillars of 
 learned schools are yet to be laid in these mines opened 
 by human science, and that in these schools religion is 
 yet to sit enthroned and "girded round about with a gold- 
 en girdle." His pious sympathies are bound up with the 
 union of our States ; for in that union are blended the inter- 
 ests of free thought and free speech. While he loves his 
 country he is not unmindful of its sins, and in laboring to 
 purify it from evil he gains a clearer view of its capabilities 
 for good. He loves it for these capabilities. He loves it 
 because its place in the geography of the world and in the 
 history of the world gives it an influence over the eastern 
 and the western nations, over the old dynasties and the new 
 republics. Never does he inscribe on his banner: "Our 
 country right or wrong," but his motto is : "Our country 
 for the right, and against the wrong." He remembers the 
 apostle who, while rebuking his fellow Israelites, breathed 
 the self-denying spirit of a patriot, saying: "I could wish 
 that myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren. . . 
 zvhose are the fathers." To the earlier ministers of the gos- 
 pel the spirit of true patriotism was commended by Him 
 who having been condemned to suffer in Jerusalem charged 
 his disciples tO' perform their work of love "among all na- 
 tions, beginning at Jerusalem." ^ 
 
 Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut; Roger Williams, the 
 founder of Rhode Island, etc. Our own clergymen, too, — Hopkins, 
 Mills, Finley, Ashmun, — gave the first impulse to the Republic of 
 Liberia. Other American preachers have planted and are still plant- 
 ing the germs of other Republics, 
 ^ For testimonies to the good influence of clergymen in the early 
 
172 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 IV. The Statei is indebted to the clergy for their efforts 
 in promoting Christian benevolence. Such benevolence is 
 something more and higher than the religious sentiment 
 and the natural virtues. It quickens, regulates, beautifies, 
 hallows them. It involves a holy love of self, relatives, 
 friends, strangers, enemies ; of one's country, one's race, 
 the world; of all in fit proportion to each other, of God 
 more than all ; of all in their relation, their due subordina- 
 tion to God. The life of many a pastor who cannot calcu- 
 late on living for two years in his own hired house, but is 
 sent from town to town by the caprice of fickle majorities, 
 and who, without any certain dwelling-place for himself, 
 submits to the expectation of leaving his widow and 
 orphan children homeless and penniless, and who still 
 perseveres in storing his mind with good thoughts 
 that he may comfort the sick and sorrowing, is an 
 example of this benevolence. Often, at least, he was 
 prompted by this virtue to enter an office convention- 
 ally excluding him from some recreations which add 
 vigor to other men, and> wasting his health by a 
 continuous and peculiar tax on his sensibilities ; an office, 
 in preparing for which he has anticipated a meager and ill- 
 paid income' so needful for the supply of his intellectual 
 days of our republic, see the Address of President AVashington to 
 the Synod of the Reformed Dutch Church of North America. He 
 quotes and endorses the expression of the Synod, that "while just 
 government protects all in their religious rights, true religion afJords 
 to government its surest support."— Sparks's Writings of Washing- 
 ton, Vol. XII. pp. 167, 405. See also the Letter to Washington from 
 General Lincoln acknowledging the good and "very great influence 
 of the clergy." — Sparks's Washington, Vol. IX. p. 330. 
 
 ^ A small salary would be a less inadequate recompense for the 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 173 
 
 wants, and in prosecuting which he is often humbled by the 
 deprivation of even the conveniences of Hfe ; and still he 
 magnifies this ofBce by the cheerful discharge of its phil- 
 anthropic duties. It is the diffusive influence of this virtue 
 that exalteth a nation. The Germans gained the means of 
 their mental supremacy from Saint Boniface, when he car- 
 ried to them the gospel of love. We may trace the preem- 
 inence of our Anglo-Saxon fathers to the mission of Saint 
 Austin, who commended to them that godliness which is 
 profitable unto all things. Designing to speak with a sneer, 
 men have denominated the clergy a "spiritual police," ^ em- 
 ployed for preventing the crimes which the civil police 
 would punish with carnal weapons. But in the sneer lies a 
 pleasant truth. Degrading as the phrase may seem, true 
 religion has an economical value. It was given for the 
 
 labor of clergymen, if the customs of society and their own mental 
 tendencies allowed them to employ those economical expedients 
 which are proper for men of a less spiritual vocation. "We have 
 took," says Dr. South, "all ways to affright and discourage scholars 
 from looking towards this sacred calling; for will men lay out their 
 wit and judgment upon, that employment for the undertaking of 
 which both will be questioned ?" — Sermon on i Kings 13 : 33, 34. 
 One of the modern Romish fathers, earning his daily bread by teach- 
 ing the Oriental languages and working as a compositor in a print- 
 ing-office, had for his motto: "Tribulations are my distinction, and 
 poverty my glory." A clergyman who has a world-wide reputation 
 remarked in his extreme old age: "If I live three years longer I shall 
 not have enough property left to pay for my coffin." But he had 
 preached so often against the love of filthy lucre that he was not 
 suspected of feeling an acute pain in view of his penniless old age. 
 
 ^ A similar title has been sometimes given to them, without any 
 intention of undervaluing their office. In the Prussian laws they are 
 called Staats-beamten. Dr. Inglis calls the clergy a "moral con- 
 stabulary." "If there was not a minister in every parish," says Dr. 
 
174 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 State as well as for individuals, and in the reciprocity of 
 benefits the State was by its first Author designed for re- 
 ligion. Men have organized civil society with a primary 
 intent of securing physical good, as, for example, "undis- 
 turbed rest within unbarred doors," But sleep is not the 
 final good ; it is a mere preparative for another and higher 
 good. Men have formed the State with an immediate aim 
 to cultivate the mind ; but an active intellect is a means to 
 an end, and is less noble than the end. Men have devised 
 the State with a primary design of augmenting their social 
 pleasures, but He who- made the State necessary for these 
 pleasures, contrived them as the allurements to that love 
 which is the fulfilling of the law. The State was instituted 
 by men with the direct purpose of multiplying the arts of 
 life and increasing the facilities of commerce ; but the finest 
 of the arts have their chief value as persuasives to the 
 beauty of holiness, and commerce was designed of heaven 
 to encourage the circumnavigations of charity ; for what 
 shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and have 
 none of that benevolence which is the life of the soul? 
 Some of our fathers erred in supposing that political gov- 
 ernment was intended to be the servitor of a specified visible 
 church.^ No visible church is pure enough to receive such 
 a service. None is strong enough to retain its benevolence 
 
 South, on I Kings 13: 33, 34, "you would quickly find cause to in- 
 crease the number of constables; and if the churches were not em- 
 ployed to be places to hear God's law, there would be need of them 
 to be prisons for the breakers of the laws of men." 
 
 ^ See a Discourse about Civil Government in a Plantation whose 
 Design is Religion; by John Cotton, 1663. 
 
STATE TO THE CLERGY 175 
 
 which involves its meekness, when it looks upon the State 
 as its handmaid. We must confess the humiliating fact, 
 that the only church fit to be thus honored by rulers is the 
 Invisible. The clergy lose their official life when they find 
 it amid the honors of State patronage. Such honors in- 
 fiame their ambition or their envy; and clerical am- 
 bition and clerical envy, taking hold of the eternal 
 world and refining themselves with the truth, which, 
 even when perverted, is instinct with power, consume the 
 best sympathies of the soul, and burn to the lowest depths. 
 The pride of the world is superficial when compared with 
 that of a priesthood, flattered with the temptation of wield- 
 ing the strong arm of a civil government in the enforcement 
 of their own creed. The human soul is too weak to bear a 
 union of the temporal with the spiritual authority. But 
 there is a purer church, invisible, composed of all men of 
 all sects who love Jehovah with the whole soul and their 
 neighbors as themselves, who love their country because it 
 belongeth to him, and love him the more because among 
 other and richer gifts he has given them such a country, 
 who obey magistrates "for the Lord's sake," and worship 
 the Lord in sustaining the "ordinances of man," who have 
 that benevolence which comprehends in itself all that is 
 most amiable in character, and on which hang all the law 
 and the prophets. Now, it is to enlarge the number and to 
 augment the excellence of such men, that He who doeth all 
 things for eternity hath ordained the State. And it is with 
 the same loving aim that He hath also ordained the minis- 
 ters of the Church. These ministers, then, serve the State 
 
176 THE INDEBTEDNESS OF THE 
 
 in fulfilling its last and noblest destiny, and "they shall 
 bring the glory and honor of the nations into" ' the king- 
 dom of heaven ; while the State aids the ministers in per- 
 mitting them to think what they please and to preach what 
 they think. The clergy favor the Commonwealth by con- 
 fining themselves to their rightful sphere and pleading the 
 cause of virtue, while the Commonwealth favors the clergy 
 by confining itself to its own department, and securing to 
 all citizens that mental and moral liberty which is a means 
 of spiritual discipline. The government provides a system 
 of elementary instruction for the people, and thus furnishes 
 worthy minds for the influence of the pulpit ; while in their 
 turn the clergy hallow the government as the Lord's anoint- 
 ed, and foster those habits of pious allegiance which are the 
 protection of even the law itself. The servants of the State 
 cut the cedar trees and the fir trees and the algum trees out 
 of Lebanon, and with such materials the servants of the 
 Church build the temple, without the sound of a hammer or 
 axe or any tool of iron, and in that temple ofifer the prayers 
 of the people for all who are in authority." 
 
 ^ Rev. 21 : 26. 
 
 ^ Note 9, in Appendix. 
 
PROFESSOR PARK AT 51 
 
MOSES STUART 
 
The "Register" of that day had the following : — 
 
 "Professor Moses Stuart died at his house in Andover, where he 
 had lived for more than forty years, on the evening of Sunday, 
 Jan. 4th, and was buried from the Chapel of the Seminary, in which 
 he had so long worshiped and taught, on Thursday, Jan. 8th. The 
 services of the occasion were attended by a numerous concourse of 
 pupils, professional brethren, neighbors and friends and were in 
 a marked degree impressive and instructive. They were introduced 
 with prayer and appropriate selections of Scripture by Rev. Pro- 
 fessor Stowe of Brunswick. The general prayer was offered by 
 Rev. Dr. Emerson of Andover, Professor of Ecclesiastical History; 
 and after a hymn, the funeral discourse was preached by the Rev. 
 Professor Park, of Andover." 
 
 Dr. Lyman Beecher, writing to a friend, says of this discourse: 
 "The reading of the funeral sermon at the interment of Brother 
 Stuart has made this a forenoon of tender reminiscences. It has 
 made the grave where Jesus slept for me less dreary, and heaven, 
 where he reigns, more glorious than any visions of the past. . . The 
 sermon was, perhaps, written in haste, but so much the better. 
 It is sublimely superlative in its tenderness and fullness of feeling 
 and majesty of just eulogy, and honest impartiality in the recog- 
 nition of defects, which, while they depress, do raise him immeas- 
 urably higher. That such a one should have done so great and 
 noble a work, renders him a benefactor of his country and the 
 world." 
 
MOSES STUART 
 
 r ■ 
 
 "Them that honor me I will honor." — i Sam. 2 : 30. 
 
 "God only is great." He sitteth on his throne independ- 
 ent, and needeth not the homage of the angels even. When 
 Solomon had builded "an house unto the name of the Lord," 
 he was overcome by the thought of having ventured to pro- 
 vide a resting-place for Him who filleth immensity; and 
 with a subdued feeling he exclaimed: "Will God indeed 
 dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of 
 heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house 
 that I have builded?" So wonderful is the structure of 
 mind, so mysterious are the sympathies between the Great 
 Spirit and the intelligences which he hath made, that he 
 is said to inhabit their praises, and he declares, "Whoso 
 offereth praise glorifieth me." 
 
 How shall we understand this mystery? In what way 
 can a child of the dust honor that lofty One before whom 
 the heavens are unclean? 
 
 A heathen sage has said, that to know God is to glorify 
 him. So majestic are the attributes of Jehovah, that a 
 mind perceiving must admire, even if it hate them. The 
 conscience of a fallen spirit approves of the virtue which 
 the will (rejects. God is exalted by the lost minds who 
 believe and tremble. 
 
 Much more is he honored by men who piously seek to 
 know, in order to love him. When the idea of his excel- 
 
i8o MOSES STUART 
 
 lence is followed by the becoming affection, when every 
 thought of his ways elicits the appropriate confidence, when 
 the knowledge of his truth blooms into reverence for it, 
 and bears the fruit of peace and good will, then is the 
 P'ather glorified. One sigh of a penitent child is a nobler 
 tribute to the divine praise, than is the largest knowledge 
 of a seraph even. How complete, then, is the honor which 
 God receives from the most capacious intelligence, sancti- 
 fied by the fullest love ; when every idea concerning him is 
 enriched with an appropriate emotion, and every new 
 thought occasions new and holier joys! 
 
 As Jehovah is honored by the mere fact of our intelli- 
 gence respecting him, even if it call forth a reluctant hom- 
 age, and still more by our free-will offering, that answers 
 to the claims of our intelligence, so is he glorified by our 
 endeavors to diffuse among other minds a like knowledge, 
 with its corresponding love. A Christian scholar, contend- 
 ing with the infirmities of an emaciated body, leaving his 
 sleepless couch that he may discipline himself for the 
 studies of an anxious day, and closing his volume at even- 
 ing, that he may gain some intermittent sleep for the relief 
 of his wearied frame ; eating the bread of carefulness, that 
 he may have a clear mind for interpreting the sacred page, 
 keeping aloof from the busy haunts of men, that he may 
 search out new motives for winning them to a life of godli- 
 ness — such a scholar offers his soul and his body as a burnt- 
 offering to the Lord, and by the sacrifice of his own ease 
 he persuades others to walk in the ways of pleasantness 
 and peace. When a Biblical teacher allures young men to 
 
MOSES STUART 
 
 i«i 
 
 become, themselves, the instructors of the community ; 
 when he inspires them with a love of the gospel, qualifies 
 them to translate it into other tongues, instils into them 
 an earnest desire to open this treasure before their wonder- 
 ing fellow men ; when he sends them forth, year after year, 
 to the east and the west, the north and the south, earnest 
 to make known what they have learned from him, such a 
 teacher of teachers is himself a missionary, perambulating 
 among the dark places of the earth, going from the wig- 
 wams of the West to the city of Constantine, and in a kind 
 of moral ubiquity unfolding the varied truths which he has 
 gathered up in his still retreat. On one and the same Sab- 
 bath, through a hundred ministers, to Parthians and Medes, 
 and the dwellers in Mesopotamia and in Judaea and Cappa- 
 docia, in Pontus and Asia ; to the strangers of Rome, Jews 
 and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, he is speaking in their 
 own tongues the wonderful works of God. 
 
 The principles of the gospel are disseminated among 
 men, not more by argument, than by the authority of per- 
 sonal character. Hence a child of the dust may honor the 
 King of kings, by associating religion and religious truth 
 with those qualities which command the respect of the 
 world. 
 
 There is a style of intellect which may be in itself no 
 worthier than other styles, but it dazzles the observers; it 
 strikes their imagination; it enforces homage. A man of 
 marked subtlety and acuteness of powers, of accurate dis- 
 tinctions, and a scrupulous nicety of expression, is not 
 fitted to carry captive the multitude; but they are surprised 
 
i82 MOSES STUART 
 
 and borne onward by the comprehensive mind that gen- 
 eralizes extensively, and calls up illustrations from a mul- 
 tifarious reading ; by the mind that takes a wide range over 
 all sciences, and sweeps through a literature in various and 
 strange languages, and holds together the spoils of a vast 
 learning within the grasp of a giant memory. When this 
 man consecrates his genius to the cause of the Nazarene, 
 many troubled souls are comforted; the timid grow valiant 
 in the cause of virtue, and praise their Maker for giving 
 them a strong staff on which they may lean. "Not many 
 wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, 
 are called : but God hath chosen the foolish things of the 
 world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak 
 things of the world to confound the things which are 
 mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are 
 despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, 
 to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should 
 glory in his presence." Still, it pleaseth him to give here 
 and there a sovereign demonstration that all the riches of 
 the spiritual world are his; that at his behest lie the re- 
 sources of the most versatile intelligence, and he holds in 
 his hand the hearts of the kings in the realm of mind, and 
 turneth them whithersoever he will. 
 
 Nor is our Sovereign honored by the authoritative char- 
 acter of the intellect alone, which he consecrates to himself. 
 There is a peculiar style of moral excellence, which, though 
 it may have no more intrinsic value than other styles, is 
 more fitted to attract the admiration of men to itself and 
 to its great Author. There is a virtue in duly caring for 
 
MOSES STUART 183 
 
 the body; but the sympathies of the world will rather go 
 with him who makes the animal give way to the spiritual 
 nature, and is not afraid to use, while he does not abuse 
 his health, and perseveres in weariness and painfulness, in 
 watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in 
 cold and nakedness, to labor for the moral improvement of 
 the churches. There is a virtue in frugality, but the mul- 
 titude will kindle into the higher enthusiasm for a generous 
 temper, and in their view the crown of a public servant is, 
 that after a hard life he died poor. There is a virtue in 
 a fitting deference to the opinions of the community ; but 
 the masses of the people will raise their loudest shout for 
 the man who braves public opinion in what he deems a 
 good cause. Sooner or later, they bow before him who 
 has a positive character, and who assails a favorite error 
 or vice in high places; who rushes forward amid obloquy, 
 in defiance of a general ill will, and is earnest for a seeming 
 truth or grace, be it generally despised; and is fearless of 
 all who may resist him, and hears their reproaches and goes 
 forward with his eye single on one mark, and when cir- 
 cumvented by their snares, forces his passage through 
 them and gains the prize. There is a virtue in discreetness 
 and prudent reserve; but the hearts of men will open most 
 readily to him who is frank and ingenuous ; who will rather 
 lose his cause than spring a mine upon his adversary and 
 will be ensnared into the loss of his estate or his fame, 
 sooner than be guilty of one mean evasion; who will re- 
 tract his errors as guilelessly as he made them, and will 
 expose all his foibles, and lay open the recesses of his soul 
 
i84 MOSES STUART 
 
 gladly, rather than deceive the lowest of his race. When 
 a man of such noble impulses blends his own name with 
 that of true godliness, he is a jewel in the Redeemer's 
 crown. He wins a large community to a devout life. He 
 makes men feel that lowly Christians are the world's nobil- 
 ity. They honor God for himi. He honors God through 
 them. It may be that Simon Peter had no truer love than 
 Bartholomew or James the Less, but he has associated 
 religion with an intrepid spirit, and identified real piety 
 with real courage; and all times will pay obeisance to a 
 manly boldness, and to the genius of the gospel, which 
 makes the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but makes 
 the righteous bold as a lion. 
 
 "Them that honor me I will honor." God exalts them, 
 in causing them to glorify him. Nothing can glorify that 
 august Being, save what is itself noble, and by everything 
 which is truly dignified he is exalted, as the Great Spirit 
 from whom cometh down every perfect gift. The chief 
 greatness of man is summed up in his virtue, and this vir- 
 tue is itself an honor, and the virtuous man has obtained 
 this honor from the Father of Lights, and is ennobled by 
 the mere reception of that which, proverbially, is its own 
 reward. 
 
 As we honor the Most High by a love of his truth, so 
 he will crown that love with his blessing. It is one office 
 of the Holy Spirit, to make fresh disclosures of his will to 
 the earnest and trustful seeker. He is pleased by our 
 honest search after all that pertains to his attributes. No 
 man has a character that will bear to be thoroughly exam- 
 
MOSES STUART 185 
 
 ined. The great distinction of God is, that all new discov- 
 eries of his ways will be discoveries of new excellence, and 
 we praise him by our assured faith that the deeper we 
 descend into the mine of Christian doctrine, so much the 
 richer will be the gold and the precious stones found in 
 those depths. His will is, that himself be known, not be 
 hidden from observation. They who strive to know him, 
 then, coincide with his will ; and, seeking, shall find the 
 wisdom which he gives in recompense of their toils. There 
 is a sympathy between an inquiring spirit and every re- 
 ligious idea. That idea is like a magnet, drawing to itself 
 the mind that inclines to learn of it. The appetences of 
 a Christian scholar after larger and higher attainments in 
 revealed truth, are a commendation of that truth; as the 
 bended branches of a house-plant toward the window, illus- 
 trate the worth of the light of day. Nothing can satisfy 
 a true divine but the Word of God. In his extreme age 
 his zeal remains fresh for this Word. As he walks the 
 streets he is old; but he becomes young again when he 
 opens this volume, for this renews the strength of the faint. 
 Amid the depressing maladies of a student's life, he finds 
 his chief comfort in exploring these pages, for these are 
 a medicine to the sick. The world is dark to him, but the 
 Bible lies before him in illuminated letters. Foes rise up 
 against him, but he loses himself in the contemplation of 
 God. He is enveloped in the truth. This is his protection. 
 And the very fact that the Scriptures have this variety of 
 appeal to his varied sensibiHties, that they are his defence 
 amid peril, his lamp in the darkness, his companion when 
 
i86 MOSES STUART 
 
 lonely, his staff when he is languid; the fact that they are 
 everything to him in every want, is an encomium upon 
 their value, as it proves them to be the word ever in season. 
 Such a man, free from personal interests, superior to par- 
 tisan schemes, sacrificing his old prejudices to the great 
 Teacher, will be elevated into the true knowledge. He 
 may err in an individual argument. He may mistake a 
 minor interpretation. But we may rely upon the general 
 tendencies of his mind. The great principles of the gospel 
 he will understand. This understanding is an appropriate 
 reward for a hearty search. He who gives a healthful air 
 to the lungs panting for it, and provides a fit satisfaction 
 for every instinct made by him, also "giveth to a man that 
 is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy ;" and 
 has established it as an ordinance, that if an inquirer have 
 a pure love for the truth, he shall be honored with a grow- 
 ing knowledge of it. 
 
 To a man of these generous aspirations after the highest 
 wisdom, will be vouchsafed a good name among his fellow 
 men. Even in this gross world, God will honor him for 
 his spiritual tastes. Amid the ruins of the fall, there is still 
 preserved in the race a respect for truth, and for those who 
 seek the truth with a full heart. Men who hate the search, 
 will gaze and admire. Deep-seated in the human soul, 
 among its ineradicable instincts, is a reverence for an 
 honest man, who studies to know God in order to become 
 like him, and who becomes assimilated to him in order to 
 know him yet more perfectly. Men may oppose such an 
 inquirer; they may calumniate him, but the best part of 
 
MOSES STUART 187 
 
 their natures yields a homag"e to him, and they will garnish 
 his sepulcher when he is no more. Even if the letters of 
 his name be forgotten, his character will be venerated. 
 The reverence which is paid to a clear mind animated by 
 pure desires, is paid to him in reality, though not in form, 
 after his titles and even his residence have ceased to be 
 recognized. The thoughts which he started into life will 
 live on, and at last will find him out and pay him tribute. 
 No literature is so permanent as the religious ; for none 
 is so intertwined with the enduring sensibilities of man. 
 No poetry, no paintings, no sculptures keep their hold on 
 the affections of the race so long as those which are con- 
 secrated to Him who made our souls for rehgion. To this 
 end are we born, that we may know and do the will of God. 
 He, therefore, who enlarges our comprehension of that 
 will, furthers the end of our being; and as men become 
 the more mindful of their high vocation, they will be the 
 more grateful to every one who has quickened their moral 
 growth. The exile at St. Helena complained, that in a 
 few ages all his mighty deeds would be honored with only 
 a few sentences of the historian. But the histories which 
 will be read in the millennium, will portray the character 
 and the influence of Augustine and Luther, with the vivid- 
 ness of a present reality. Long buried reminiscences of 
 the good will then be revived. Then will be the first resur- 
 rection of those who have signally honored God. While 
 the fame of the wicked shall be as the snow upon the river, 
 the deeds of the righteous shall be held in everlasting 
 remembrance. 
 
i88 MOSES STUART 
 
 But the highest honor of those who adorn the Church 
 of the Redeemer, is reserved for a nobler sphere. "They 
 that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; 
 and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for 
 ever and ever." He that hungereth and thirsteth for 
 divine knowledge, shall sit down at last to a perennial 
 feast. He who has the most spiritual mind, is the best 
 prepared for the world of spirits. There is a temple, where 
 the fathers of the Church are assembled as devout learners. 
 There is a school, where great philosophers stand in ador- 
 ing council. There is an arena, where the captains and the 
 mighty men of the Church militant rest from their warfare, 
 and cast the crowns of their victory at the feet of the 
 Prince of peace. The elect minds of the Church, the ven- 
 erable doctors of divine science are collected there in a 
 magnificent array, and have become like unto their great 
 Teacher, for they see him as he is. Owen and Baxter are 
 there ; and strive together no more. Toplady and Wesley 
 are there; and, forgetting their old contentions, unite in 
 each other's hymns of praise. Heaven has long been at- 
 tracting to itself, and continues still to draw up within its 
 alluring walls, whatever is majestic and vigorous and 
 graceful in the Church below. The clouds do not roll up 
 the mountain and vanish out of our sight into the pure 
 skies above us more surely, or by a firmer law, than our 
 good men who honor their Lord, rise from our view to be 
 honored by him. 
 
 When the Most High endueth any of his servants with 
 rich and costly gifts he requireth us to take note of them, 
 
MOSES STUART 189 
 
 and to say with the prophet : "Blessed be the name of God 
 for ever and ever : for wisdom and might are his : and he 
 chang-eth the times and the seasons : he removeth kings, 
 and setteth up kings : he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and 
 knowledge to them that know understanding." Let us 
 now strive to gain a deeper reverence for his name, while 
 we glance at the favors which he lavished upon the man 
 whose form, on its passage to the grave, is for a brief hour 
 detained in the sanctuary. 
 
 Moses Stuart was born in the town of Wilton, State of 
 Connecticut, on the twenty-sixth of March, 1780. Like 
 the majority of our clergymen, he was a farmer's son; and, 
 tmtil he was fourteen years old, had no intention of pursu- 
 ing any but a farmer's hfe. His early field labors, although 
 they did not give him health, were one means of prolong- 
 ing his days. He looked back upon the farm as one of his 
 best schools, where were nurtured some of his most health- 
 ful tastes. In his extreme age, he remembered the eager- 
 ness with which, when but four years old, he read a book 
 of popular ballads. At that early period, he had a fondness, 
 which never forsook him, for the creations of an imagina- 
 tive genius. When a lad of but twelve years, he became 
 absorbed in the perusal of Edwards on the Will. In his 
 fifteenth year, he was sent to an academy in Norwalk, Con- 
 necticut, merely for the purpose of perfecting his English 
 education. His preceptor was quick to recognize in him 
 the signs of a masculine intellect, and urged him to pre- 
 pare for a collegiate course. He began his Latin gram- 
 
190 MOSES STUART 
 
 mar with a characteristic impetus. In one evening he 
 learned the four conjugations of verbs. In another even- 
 ing he mastered the sixty rules of syntax. In three days 
 the principles of the whole grammar were in his mind, 
 and he found himself a member of a class who had devoted 
 several months to the language. While pursuing the Latin 
 and the Greek, he attended also to the French classics. 
 Several of his elder schoolmates had devoted many weeks 
 to the reading of Telemachus. They ridiculed him for his 
 attempt to recite with them at the very beginning ^f his 
 study. He remained with them a day and a half, and was 
 then transferred to a higher class. 
 
 In May, 1797, having been under the careful tuition of 
 Roger Minot Sherman, he entered the sophomore class of 
 Yale College. At this period, his tastes were preeminently 
 for the mathematics ; but his thirst for all learning was 
 intense. His physical system proved then, as ever after- 
 ward, unable to sustain the full action of his mind. One 
 of his honored classmates describes "the identity of the 
 youth of seventeen with the old man of seventy," and says : 
 "The first composition which I heard him read, was in the 
 same style, in its leading characteristics, as his last publi- 
 cation from the press. ... At our commencement in 1799 
 he had the salutatory oration, which was considered at that 
 time the iirst appointment, and I do not suppose that a 
 single individual of the class thought this distinction un- 
 merited." Thus early in life he had a marked, positive, de- 
 termined character. 
 
 During the year after his graduation, he taught an acad- 
 
MOSES STUART 191 
 
 emy in North Fairfield, Connecticut ; and dtiring a part of 
 the following year, he was the principal of a high school 
 in Danbury, Connecticut. Here he commenced the study 
 of the law. He soon left the school and devoted himself 
 entirely to this study, in the office of Judge Chapman or 
 Judge Edmonds, at Newtown. He was admitted to the 
 bar in 1802, at Danbury. 
 
 In the legal profession, a brilliant career opened before 
 him. In many respects, he seemed made for an advocate. 
 He had a memory quick to seize the minutest facts of every 
 case, and strong to retain the old precedents relating to 
 them. He had a rare vividness of conception, by which 
 he could bring himself and his auditors into the ideal pres- 
 ence of any scene. He had a fertility of illustration, and 
 could present a single idea in so many different lights and 
 shades, as to make the dullest mind both see and feel it. 
 He had a singular readiness of utterance, and a quickness 
 of repartee, and a forceful, authoritative manner which 
 would have held a mastery over the jurors, and baffled 
 most of his antagonists.^ His legal studies exerted an 
 obvious influence on his whole subsequent life. He ever 
 delighted in examining points of jurisprudence. Thus was 
 
 ^ The power of Mr. Stuart's elocution is not readily understood 
 by those who heard him in his advanced life only. An eminent critic, 
 familiar with him in his youth, says that his Master's oration spoken 
 at Yale College in 1802, was requested for the press and published by 
 the editor of the United States Gazette, in Philadelphia, and adds : 
 "This was an honor unusual at that time. I must say, however, that 
 the oration owed its success in part to the manner in which it was 
 pronounced. No man whom I have ever known, has appeared to me 
 his equal in the faculty of saying even common things so as to give 
 them the air of novelties." 
 
192 MOSES STUART 
 
 he led to cherish such an interest in politics as was enough 
 to absorb an ordinary mind. He continued through life 
 to preserve some familiarity with the decisions of the Eng- 
 lish courts ; with the movements of the French and Ger- 
 man parties, and was as conversant with the political 
 details of our own country, as if he had been constantly in 
 civil office. During the last few weeks of his continuance 
 among us, he examined our relations to the Magyars, with 
 as lively an interest as if he had been responsible to our 
 national cabinet for his opinion. It was a singular felicity 
 with which, in the professor's chair, he often referred to 
 the principles of human legislation, for the purpose of il- 
 lustrating the divine. He acquired a certain manliness and 
 versatility of style from his perusal of the forensic orators, 
 and he often advised men to study the noble science of 
 the law, as preparative for the nobler one of divinity. 
 
 A few weeks before his admission to the bar, he was 
 called to a tutorship in Yale College. "My love of study," 
 he writes, "induced me to accept the office." He continued 
 to perform its duties from the autumn of 1802 to that of 
 1804. A teacher of large experience, who was then asso- 
 ciated with him in the college faculty, has said of Mr. 
 Stuart: "He excelled all men whom I have ever known in 
 the same employment, for enkindling among his pupils an 
 ardent zeal in their literary pursuits; although his instruc- 
 tion, perhaps, was not better than that of some others. . . . 
 His great power was, in making a class feel that something 
 was to be done. Even Dr. Dwight, whose influence in this 
 way was wonderful, did not in this particular surpass Mr. 
 
MOSES STUART 193 
 
 Stuart." During the earlier part of his tutorship, the 
 science of the law was ever in his mind. "I well remem- 
 ber," says one of his associates in office, "that he would 
 often speak to me of some discovery he had made with 
 regard to the origin of a legal formula, or of some mode 
 of proceeding in the courts ; or he would mention some new 
 decision of which he had learned, and which he considered 
 as settHng some important legal principle." 
 
 But soon a change came over the spirit of his conversa- 
 tion. He felt, probably, the influence of that religious 
 movement which had so recently made the collegiate year 
 of 1801-2 so memorable in the annals of New Haven. Of 
 two hundred and thirty students, about one-third, and 
 among them the philanthropic Evarts, had become inter- 
 ested in the claims of the gospel. One day, desirous of 
 procuring some appropriate book for the Sabbath, Mr. 
 Stuart borrowed of the president a volume of Macknight 
 on the Epistles. That volume opened before the future 
 philologist a new field of inquiry. At first his interest in 
 it seemed to be a mere literary inquisitiveness; soon he 
 became absorbed in religious contemplation. His feelings 
 were deeply moved. For a long time he resisted the new 
 influence, but at last bowed his heart before God. There 
 was great joy among the disciples, when so promising a 
 mind yielded its prospective honors to the Redeemer. In 
 the early part of 1803 he connected himself with the church 
 in Yale College. 
 
 Under the direction of President Dwight, who enter- 
 tained for him a high esteem, he now began to prepare 
 
194 MOSES STUART 
 
 himself for the work of a preacher. "After readingf," he 
 says, "Dr. Hopkins' System of Divinity, a number of 
 President Edwards' Treatises, several of Andrew Fuller's, 
 a part of Ridgley's Body of Divinity, and some of Mo- 
 sheim's Ecclesiastical History, and a part of Prideaux's 
 Connection, I was examined and licensed to preach, by 
 the neighboring Association of Ministers." Thus narrow 
 was the ordinary course of theological study in that day! 
 Its present expansion is a result, in no small degree, of his 
 own efforts. 
 
 In the autumn of 1804 he journeyed for his health 
 among the Green Mountains; and having preached several 
 Sabbaths at Middlebury, Vermont, was invited to take the 
 pastoral care of the Congregational church in that town. 
 Having declined this call, he spent several weeks in sup- 
 plying the pulpit of Rev. Dr. James Dana, in New Haven; 
 and, subsequently, of Rev. Dr. John Rodgers, in New 
 York. "Soon after I had begun to preach in New Haven," 
 he says, "the people made a movement to obtain the con- 
 sent of their pastor that I should be settled as a colleague 
 with him; but when he had heard me preach several times, 
 he strenuously opposed" the movement. Dr. Dana had 
 been long known as an opposer of the Edwardses, Bel- 
 lamy, and Hopkins. But he could not resist the deter- 
 mination of his people to enjoy the services of Mr. Stuart. 
 He was dismissed from his pastoral office. Mr. Stuart 
 was chosen his successor with only five dissenting votes, 
 and was ordained on the fifth of March, 1806. "His short 
 ministry in New Haven marks an era in the history of 
 
MOSES STUART 195 
 
 the church which he served as pastor. We might almost 
 define his settlement as the date of a revolution. The old 
 petrified order of things which had come down through 
 the ministry of at least three successive pastors, and which 
 was sanctified by the traditions of more than a century, 
 was rapidly and effectually disturbed. Meetings for prayer 
 and free religious conference, which before had been 
 hardly known — meetings in the evening by candlelight, 
 which before had been reckoned little better than a scandal, 
 became frequent. A new religious vitality began to be 
 developed in the church; a new seriousness spread itself 
 over the congregation at large." So writes the present 
 minister of that church,^ and he adds that, during the three 
 years and ten months of Mr. Stuart's pastorate, two hun- 
 dred persons were admitted into full communion in the 
 church, of whom only twenty-eight were received by letter 
 from other ecclesiastical bodies. Well-nigh the whole min- 
 istry of this zealous man was passed amid scenes of special 
 religious interest. They fitted him for his literary life. He 
 had, indeed, a rare combination of excellences for a pulpit 
 orator. His voice, deep, sonorous, solemn, was like that 
 of a prophet. His commanding and impassioned manner 
 gave to his spoken words a power which they lost on the 
 printed page. His language was copious, his illustrations 
 were distinct, his vivacity of thought awakened men, his 
 energy of feeling bore them onward. He seized a subject 
 in its strong points, and held it up, simple, clear, promi- 
 nent, until it affected his hearers as it obviously affected 
 ^ Rev. Leonard Bacon, d. d. 
 
T96 MOSES STUART 
 
 himself. He loved his work. His interest in preaching 
 rose to enthusiasm. In despite of all his zeal for books, 
 he devoted each afternoon of every week to the duties of 
 a pastor.^ Had he remained in the pastoral life, he would 
 have been what is now provincially termed a "revival 
 preacher." Thousands in our cities would have continued 
 to hang, as they once did, upon his lips. The common people 
 heard him gladly. Dr. Porter of this seminary, on listen- 
 ing to one of his sermons, almost forgot his usual care for 
 the proprieties of the occasion, and had no sooner passed 
 the threshold of the sanctuary, than he exclaimed aloud: 
 "This is preaching the glorious gospel of the blessed God!" 
 The life of our friend's discourses was, Christ and him 
 crucified. On the communion Sabbath, at the sacramental 
 table, his emotions often choked his utterance, and he ex- 
 pressed his sympathies in silent tears. Many of his ad- 
 mirers, after maturest deliberation, deemed it unwise 
 for him to leave the sphere of a parish minister. But his 
 field was the world. When his removal to Andover was 
 proposed by Dr. Samuel Spring, President Dwight replied, 
 "We cannot spare him." Dr. Spring rejoined, "We want 
 no man who can be spared." 
 
 On the 28th of February, 1810, Mr. Stuart was inaugu- 
 rated Professor of Sacred Literature, in Andover Theologi- 
 
 ^ Speaking of a negro, once purchased as a slave by President 
 Stiles, Mr. Stuart was wont to remark : "That negro was the sexton 
 of my church, and the most happy man on account of his piety whom 
 I ever knew. I used to call on him oftener than on any man in my 
 congregation, and it did me more good to hear Iiiin converse on his 
 religious experience, than any other man." 
 
MOSES STUART 197 
 
 cal Seminary. 'T came here," he says, "with Httle more than 
 a knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet, and the power of 
 making out, after a poor fashion, too, the bare translation 
 of some [five or six] chapters in Genesis and a few psalms, 
 by aid of Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon, and without the 
 vowel-points. I had not, and never have had, the aid of 
 any teacher in my Biblical studies. Alas, for our country 
 at that time (A. D. 1810); there was scarcely a man in it, 
 unless by accident some one who had been educated 
 abroad, that had such a knowledge of Hebrew as was 
 requisite in order to be an instructor." ' The youthful pro- 
 fessor's acquaintance with the Greek language was far in- 
 ferior to that now obtained in our universities. He was 
 to be a self-made man. In about two years, amid all the 
 heterogeneous cares of a new office and a new seminary, 
 he prepared a Hebrew grammar, without the points, for 
 the immediate use of his pupils. They were obliged to 
 copy it, day by day, from his written sheets. In the third 
 year, he published it at his own expense. To print a 
 Hebrew grammar was then a strange work. He was com- 
 pelled to set up the types for about half the paradigms of 
 verbs, with his own hands. He taught the printers their 
 art. Is he not fitly termed the father of Biblical philology 
 in our land? Eight years afterwards, he printed his larger 
 Hebrew grammar. This he soon remodelled with great 
 painstaking, and published it in a second edition, two 
 years after the first. Not satisfied with it, he reexamined 
 all its principles anew, wrote "some of it three, four, and 
 ' Christian Review, Vol. VI, p. 448. 
 
198 MOSES STUART 
 
 a small part seven or eight times over," ' and published the 
 third edition five years after the second. Professor Lee, 
 of the University in Cambridge, England, while speaking 
 of this edition, says, "The industry of its author is new 
 matter for my admiration of him." ' When called to pre- 
 pare a seventh edition of this work, on which he had al- 
 ready expended labor enough to fill up half the life of an 
 ordinary man, he preferred to introduce the amended sys- 
 tem of younger grammarians, and therefore, in his sixty- 
 seventh year, he translated the grammar of Gesenius as 
 improved by Roediger. As early as 1821, his enterprise 
 had procured ' for the seminary a Hebrew press, then un- 
 rivalled in this land; and as early as 1829, he had at his 
 command fonts of type for eleven Oriental languages and 
 dialects. The works which he sent forth from this press, 
 gained the notice of scholars who had previously looked 
 upon our literature with indifference, if not with disdain. 
 He awakened a scientific interest in Biblical theology. 
 
 When he began his course in the seminary, he often 
 consulted Schleusner's Lexicon, and was troubled by the 
 German terms occasionally introduced into that work. No 
 one could explain their meaning to him. His curiosity 
 was thorouglily roused. At an exorbitant price he ob- 
 tained the apparatus for German study, and in a single 
 fortnight had read the entire Gospel of John in that lan- 
 
 ^ See Preface to Hebrew Grammar, 1828. 
 
 ^ See North American Review, Vol. XXXVII, p. 295, and Ameri- 
 can Biblical Repository, Vol. I, pp. 776-786. 
 
 * Through the generosity of Rev. John Codman, d. d., of Dorchester, 
 Mass., donor of the Codman press. 
 
MOSES STUART 199 
 
 guage. A friend presented himi with Seiler's Biblische 
 Hermeneutik, and this work introduced him to the wide 
 range of German Hterature. He felt himself to be in a new 
 world. It was the suggestions and references of that one 
 volume, which enabled him, through the liberal aid of the 
 trustees of the institution, to fill our library with the rich- 
 est German treatises then in the land. "Before I obtained 
 Seller," he writes, "I did not know enough to believe that 
 I yet knew nothing in sacred criticism." ' For ten years 
 he performed the rugged work of a pioneer; and in his 
 maturer life he often said that he did not know how to 
 begin the study of the Bible until he was forty years old. 
 For forty years he had been in the wilderness. He entered 
 late in life upon the promised possession. 
 
 Nor was he merely alone, in the efforts of the first ten 
 years of his professorship. To have been simply friendless 
 would have been to him a relief. But the anxieties of good 
 men were awakened with regard to the results of his Ger- 
 man study. He endured the whisperings of his brethren. 
 Many of them met him with an averted face. "Solitary," 
 he says of himself, "unsupported, without sympathy, sus- 
 pected, the whole country either inclined to take part 
 against me, or else to look with pity on the supposed ill- 
 judged direction of my studies," "admonished by my 
 bosom friends," "warned of my approaching ruin," "very 
 sensitive on the point of character," "many a sleepless 
 night have I passed, and many a dark and distressing day, 
 when some new eflfusion of suspicion or reproof had been 
 ^ Christian Review, Vol. VI, p. 449. 
 
200 MOSES STUART 
 
 poured upon me." ^ Morning after morning he sallied 
 forth from his house at five o'clock, through rain, hail, 
 snow, storm, and as his attenuated figure breasted the 
 winds of our cold winters, it seemed a type of his spirit, 
 encountering manfully the opposition not of foes only — 
 this were easily borne — but of friends. Night after night 
 he repeated the sentiment which at the age of threescore 
 years he expressed in a public prayer, and which many an 
 ingenuous youth will hereafter read with a tearful eye: 
 "God in mercy keep me, by thy Spirit, from falling — from 
 denying the Lord that bought me, and from refusing to 
 glory in the cross of Christ! A poor, dying sinner has 
 no other hope or refuge but this; and to forsake his last 
 and only hope, when he is approaching the verge of eter- 
 nity — would be dreadful indeed !" ' 
 
 The time at length arrived for developing the influence 
 of his communion with the Teutonic mind. The Unitarian 
 faith had acquired a dominant influence in our common- 
 wealth. Buckminster and Channing had commended it 
 by the graces of their style, and by the beauties of their 
 character. The celebrated Baltimore sermon had begun 
 to attract a general admiration. At this crisis. Professor 
 Stuart published his Letters to Dr. Channing. The first 
 edition was exhausted in a single week. Two other edi- 
 tions rapidly followed. Four or five were soon printed in 
 England, with the highest commendation. His opponents 
 acknowledged and admired his learning. His friends con- 
 
 ^ Christian Review, Vol. VI. pp. 455, 456. 
 ' Ibid, p. 460. 
 
MOSES STUART 201 
 
 fessed their error in resisting his German progress. They 
 felt the importance of it for the Church. "No," said the 
 venerated Porter to him, "you could not have written 
 that volume without your German aid. You are in the 
 right in this matter, and your friends are in the wrong; 
 take your own way for the future." ' Before this contest 
 of the intrepid student, scarcely one of our divines was 
 acquainted with German literature. He has made it com- 
 mon. With a great sum he obtained for us this freedom. 
 For it he endured a great fight of afiflictions. But he 
 fought a good fight ; and he kept the faith. He came off 
 a conqueror and more than a conqueror, through Him 
 that loved him. Thousands of trembling Christians now 
 triumphed in their strong deliverance. They honored him 
 who had honored Christ. At this time he entered upon 
 a career of popularity as a scholar, which was perhaps 
 unexampled in our religious annals. He disapproved of 
 the adulation that was offered him. Such encomiums 
 ought not to be pronounced upon a mortal. 
 
 Flatteries, however, more than frowns did not deter him 
 from his studies. In a few years he published his Com- 
 mentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. At once this 
 work was honored in the high places of letters, where so 
 few of our theoloigical treatises had been previously no- 
 ticed. The most eminent scholars of Great Britain have 
 confessed their obligations to it. The North American Re- 
 view predicted that it would be translated into the German 
 
 ^ Christian Review, Vol. VI, p. 458. 
 
202 MOSES STUART 
 
 language.^ It was lauded, as an American treatise has sel- 
 dom been, in the German periodicals." Within five years 
 the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans followed 
 that on the Hebrews, and awakened a still deeper interest, 
 not only among critics, but also' among metaphysicians. It 
 is unwonted for a treatise to touch so many salient points 
 in the creeds, and to stir up so many classes of men. It 
 reached the hidden springs of intellectual and of moral life. 
 If some expositions of this epistle be more accurate than 
 his, are many of them more learned? If some be more 
 learned than his, are many of them more accurate? In 
 originality of thought and feeling, it excels those by which 
 it is surpassed in logical order and chaste style. It exhibits 
 no more of piquant idiom, nor of good sense, nor of pious 
 feeling than are to be found in some other commentaries, 
 but it exhibits an unusual combination of these excellences 
 — of thoughts which are to be remembered, with phrases 
 which are to be quoted. The erudite and pious Tholuck 
 commended it to the "learned Germans," and said : "In 
 preparing this work its author was able to avail himself of 
 a rich exegetical literature ; he himself examined every 
 point independently and carefully ; his remarks bear testi- 
 mony to a keen and practiced judgment ; he is particularly 
 careful in deciding the most important doctrinal points of 
 the epistle ; and what is in the highest degree attractive, is 
 the Christian mildness and moderation which he every- 
 
 ^ North American Review, Vol. XXVIII, p. 150. 
 
 ^ Although the preparation of this commentary cost its author 
 years of toil, yet he formed the plan of it in fifteen minutes, and 
 wrote the entire first volume with a single quill. 
 
MOSES STUART 203 
 
 where manifests ; as also the expression of his warm Chris- 
 tian feehng which here and there breaks through." ' 
 
 No sooner had our departed friend completed his Expo- 
 sition of the Romans, than he began his Exposition of the 
 Apocalypse. With what enthusiasm he searched into the 
 dark sayings uttered on Patmos, his exhilarated pupils 
 know right well. Never shall I forget the tones almost of 
 inspiration with which he exclaimed: "Oh, that I might 
 have seen Michael Angelo or Guido, and besought them 
 to transfer to the canvas three or four scenes which John 
 has suggested to my mind. I am on the point of writing 
 to Washington Allston and proposing to him these sub- 
 jects for his pencil." So large were the conceptions, so 
 vast the plans of our many-sided critic ! Whether the de- 
 tails of this, which he regarded as his most elaborate com- 
 mentary, be true or false, it will effect a revolution in our 
 mode of interpreting the prophetical style. Many will re- 
 sort tO' it for information, if they will not admit it as an 
 authority. Many a finished treatise will be cut out from it, 
 as a statue from a marble block. It is a pyramid of labor. 
 One of its most eminent opposers has said, that "if it were 
 compressed into two-thirds its present bulk, it alone would 
 bear the name of its author to a distant age." In rapid 
 succession followed this veteran's commentaries on Daniel 
 and Ecclesiastes ; both of them abounding with hints and 
 references of rare worth. On his seventy-second birthday 
 he began his Exposition of the Proverbs. In four months 
 it was prepared for the press. Five weeks before his death 
 
 ^ Literarischer Anzeiger, 1834, No. 22. S. 170. 
 
204 MOSES STUART 
 
 he fractured his arm by a fall upon the snow, but he per- 
 severed a full month in correcting, with his lame hand, the 
 proof-sheets of this his final work, and sent the last pages 
 of it to the press two days before he died. During his 
 life he printed more than twenty volumes, and car- 
 ried several of them throug'h the second and third edi- 
 tions ; and whenever he republished any one of his writings, 
 he verified anew its accumulated references to other works. 
 His pamphlets and periodical essays occupy more than two 
 thousand octavo pages. ' All the labor immediately con- 
 nected with these voluminous publications has been per- 
 formed, amid physical pain, during three, or at most, three 
 and a half hours of each day. He has never allowed him- 
 self to engage in what he called study, for a longer portion 
 of the twenty-four hours. These were his golden hours. 
 No mortal man was allowed to interrupt them. They were 
 his sacred hours. He was wont to commence them with 
 secret, but sometimes audible prayer, and occasionally 
 with chanting a psalm of David in the original Hebrew. 
 While in his study, his mind moved Hke a swift ship. He 
 bounded over the waves. It required a long time each day 
 to repair his dismantled frame, his exhausted energies. He 
 made all his pecuniary interests, all his plans for personal 
 comfort, all his social enjoyments, tributary to his main 
 business, that of investigating the divine Word."" 
 
 ^ Note 10 in Appendix. 
 
 * During a large part of his professional life at Andover, he would 
 not allow himself to sit in his study chamber, after eleven and a half 
 o'clock in the morning. At the stated minute, even if he were at the 
 height of his interest in a theme, he would leave a sentence unfin- 
 ished, drop his book or manuscript, and go to his physical exercise. 
 
MOSES STUART 205 
 
 But although his writings have been read on the banks 
 of the Mississippi and of the Danube, it is not by them that 
 he has achieved his greatest triumphs. He Hves in the 
 souls of his pupils. He has stamped an image upon them. 
 He has engraved deep lines on the character of the 
 churches through them. Many a professor in our colleges 
 has reiterated the saying, "I first learned to think under 
 the inspiration of Mr. Stuart. He first taught me how to 
 use my mind." The excellence of a teacher does not con- 
 sist in his lodging his own ideas safely in the remembrance 
 of his pupils, but in arousing their individual powers to in- 
 dependent action, in giving them vitality, hope, fervor, 
 courage ; in dispelling their drowsiness and spurring them 
 onward to self-improvement. The vivacity of Mr. Stuart 
 when he met his pupils, his exuberance of anecdote, his 
 cjuick-thronging illustrations, his alifluent, racy diction, his 
 vivid portraiture of the prominent features of a theme, as- 
 
 He was once invited to perform the marriage ceremony for two 
 friends, who had long enjoyed his esteem. He desired to gratify 
 them, and consented to do so, on condition of their having the cere- 
 mony after half past eleven of the forenoon. They urged him to 
 perform it at ten. "But that is in my study-hours!" was his reply, 
 and. of course, another clergyman was called to the service. It 
 will not be surmised that Mr. Stuart was divorced from books dur- 
 ing the afternoon and evening of each day. His pupils were early 
 familiarized to his distinction between "reading" and "studying." 
 For his mental relaxation, he was daily pursuing books of geography, 
 history, biography, literary criticism, etc. Among the works which 
 he "read" in his parlor, were such as Brown's Philosophy of the 
 Mind, Brown on Cause and Effect, Bishop Butler's Sermons. He 
 interdicted all "study" during his seminary vacations, but in the five 
 weeks' recess of 1841, he read thirty volumes through. He exem- 
 plified the law, that change of mental action is mental rest. The ir- 
 repressible instincts of his mind for progress in knowledge, illustrated 
 the reasoning of the old philosophers for the immortality of the soul. 
 
2o6 MOSES STUART 
 
 tonished his class, and animated their literary zeal. If all 
 his writings had been burned in manuscript, the prepara- 
 tion of them in his own mind would have been a sufificient 
 publication of them, through the minds of his scholars. By 
 his enthusiasm in elaborating them, he disciplined himself 
 for his oral instruction. Daily he went from the scene of 
 their influence to his class-room. His words in the after- 
 noon betokened his morning struggles, and quick was the 
 sympathy which they awakened. He verified the adage, 
 that instructors must be learners, and they cease to impart 
 when they cease to acquire. The fresh, versatile, easy, open- 
 hearted way in which he discoursed before his scholars on 
 'every science and every art, raised their admiration of him 
 often to an excess. Some of them almost looked upon him 
 as a being from a higher world. The hour when they first 
 saw him was a kind of epoch in their history. "Never shall 
 I forget my first interview with him," has been said by hun- 
 dreds of young men. No teacher in the land ever attracted 
 to himself so many theological pupils. The number of our 
 alumni is eleven hundred and eleven. But the number of 
 his scholars has been more than fifteen hundred. Men 
 came to him from the Canadas, from Georgia, and the 
 farthest West. Members of eight dififering sects congre- 
 gated around him, and did one ever suspect him of a prose- 
 lyting spirit? They loved his freedom in dissenting from 
 their views, but perhaps no man who knew him ever stig- 
 matized him as a sectarian. More than seventy of his pu- 
 pils have been the presidents or professors of our highest 
 literary institutions ; and in their persons he has given an 
 
MOSES STUART 207 
 
 impulse to classical study among the colleges of our land. 
 Nowhere is he more gratefully remembered than in our 
 halls of science/ More than a hundred of his disciples 
 have been missionaries to the heathen ; about thirty of 
 them have been engaged in translating the Bible into for- 
 eign languages, and have borne the results of his grammat- 
 ical study to men who are to be civilized by means of it. 
 It cheered his declining years to reflect that he had been 
 preaching the gospel, through his missionary pupils, in 
 ancient Nineveh and under the shadow of Ararat, as well 
 as amid the wilds of Oregon, and on the islands of the 
 sea. 
 
 The great work of Mr. Stuart may be summed up in a 
 few words. He found theology under the dominion of an 
 iron-handed metaphysics. For ages had the old scholastic 
 philosophy pressed down the free meaning of inspiration. 
 His first and last aim was, to disenthrall the Word of life 
 from its slavery to an artificial logic. He made no words 
 more familiar to his pupils than: "The Bible is the only and 
 sufficient rule of faith and practice." In his creed the Bible 
 was first, midst, last, highest, deepest, broadest. He spoke 
 sometimes in terms too disparaging of theological systems. 
 But it was for the sake of exalting above them the doc- 
 trines of John and Paul. He read the scholastic divines, 
 but he studied the prophets and apostles. He introduced 
 among us a new era of Biblical interpretation. The Puri- 
 tan fathers of New England were familiar with the Greek 
 and Hebrew tongues ; but they never devoted themselves 
 
 ^ Note II, in Appendix. 
 
2o8 MOSES STUART 
 
 to the original Scriptures with that freshness of interest 
 which he exhibited, that vividness of biographical and geo^ 
 graphical detail, that sympathy with the personal and do- 
 mestic life of inspired men, that ideal presence of the scenes 
 once honored by our Redeemer, that freedom from the 
 trammels of a prescriptive philosophy or immemorial cus- 
 tom. Because he has done so much and suffered so much, 
 in persuading men to interpret the Bible, not according to 
 the letter, but the spirit, not in subjection to human stand- 
 ards, but in compliance with its own analogies, not by con- 
 jectures of what it ought to mean, but by grammatical and 
 historical proofs of what it does mean, he has received and 
 deserved the name of our patriarch in sacred philology. 
 Several weeks before he was publicly named for the pro- 
 fessorship which he afterwards adorned, a sagacious ob- 
 server remarked to him incidentally : "You, of all men 
 whom I know, are just the man for that professorship. 
 Biblical Literature is now at a low ebb throughout the coun- 
 try, but if you were to teach it at Andover, you would make 
 the students there believe, in three months, that Sacred 
 Criticism is as necessary to the successful progress of a the- 
 ologian, as air is to the support of animal life." For more 
 than forty years, the man who uttered this prophecy has 
 been an instructor in one of our most enterprising col- 
 leges, and he is, perhaps, more familiar than any living man 
 with the history of our philological literature, and he now 
 writes : "No one has rejoiced more heartily than myself at 
 the success which has attended Mr. Stuart in his ofifice at 
 Andover. He has done a work there, and in the whole of 
 
MOSES STUART 209 
 
 our country, which no other man, as I beheve, could have 
 accompHshed. Those who have come forward as theologi- 
 cal students within the last thirty-five or forty years, can 
 form but a very imperfect idea of the difficulties which he 
 had to encounter at first. But he seemed not to regard 
 them, and they disappeared." 
 
 As it was the aim of Mr. Stuart to present theology in 
 a Biblical form, so it was one of his chief aims to exalt the 
 doctrine of a Saviour's atoning death. One of his review- 
 ers, the devout and quick-sighted Tholuck, has said of him : 
 "In respect of his theological views, he believes in all the 
 fundamental doctrines of the Christian Church of the Re- 
 formed [Calvinistic] confession. In these his extensive 
 study of German literature has in no degree shaken his 
 faith ; though it should seem to have exercised an influence 
 upon his method of establishing them. He forsakes the 
 ways prescribed by those of the same faith, and the dog- 
 matic interpreters of his own church, and seeks new paths ; 
 being led to this sometimes because scruples have occurred 
 to him, which were unknown to them." ^ In a new path, 
 however, or in a beaten one, he never went away from the 
 scene where his Lord was crucified. Lutheran or Re- 
 formed, either, or both, or neither, he was determined to 
 know nothing among men, save Jesus Christ and him cru- 
 cified. Firm, indeed, was his faith in the sovereignty, the 
 decrees, the universal providence of Jehovah. But these 
 were not the heart of his theology. In his view, all other 
 truths clustered around the doctrine of redemption. To 
 
 ^ Literarischer Anzeiger, 1834, Ko. 22. S. 169. 
 
2IO MOSES STUART 
 
 make this doctrine prominent, he would depress any for- 
 mula invented by man. Around the cross he gathered all 
 his learning. At the foot of the cross he strewed his many 
 honors. Here his quick-moving, his indomitable spirit 
 lingered in a childlike peace. If men trusted in the Re- 
 deemer, they were welcomed to his sympathy, let them err 
 as they might on the metaphysical theories of religion. 
 And when he uttered censures, too severe perhaps, upon 
 the abstractions of our divines, it seemed to be not that he 
 loved philosophy less, for he aspired after a true philos- 
 ophy, but that he loved Jesus more. 
 
 Several years ago, I heard him say incidentally : "No 
 greater injury can be done me, than to hold me up as fault- 
 less in my mode of thinking and living." The thought 
 never occurred to my own mind, until three days algo, that 
 I should be called to heed this admonition while standing 
 over his bier. He was not faultless. The sun never shone 
 on all parts of the same body at one and the same time. 
 If it illumine one side, it must leave, the other shaded. But 
 the frailties of our revered friend were intimately combined 
 with his excellences. The former suggest the latter. If he 
 made minor mistakes, it was because he gazed too stead- 
 fastly at the great principles of things. In the celerity of 
 his thought, he was sometimes led to overlook important 
 incidents. Did he commit errors which he had the power 
 to avoid? It was because he seized upon pressing exigen- 
 cies, and hurried forward to^ meet the demands of the peo- 
 ple. He launched his vessel when the tide was up. It is 
 one characteristic of true genius to find out, and then to 
 
MOSES STUART 211 
 
 meet the crisis ; to put forth the influence which is de- 
 manded, and when it is demanded by the occasion. Mr. 
 Stuart was always at the post of danger. When the Educa- 
 tion Society was attacked, he was at once upon the ground. 
 When the cause of temperance was assailed, he was speed- 
 ily in the field. When the laws of hygiene were discussed, 
 his essays were in the newspapers forthwith. Did he make 
 more inaccurate statements than some other men? And 
 did he not utter many more truths than most other men? 
 The most luxuriant tree needs most to be pruned. Habit- 
 ually was his mind on useful themes. Sometimes this, 
 sometimes that, but always one important idea was re- 
 volving before him. When the missionary Judson, on his 
 recent visit to this place, came out from the chamber of 
 our departed friend, he said, with a full emphasis, what has 
 been repeated by many a pilgrim on the threshold of that 
 same chamber : 'T feel that I have been conversing with a 
 great man." In Mr. Stuart's conversation with a farmer, 
 he imparted new ideas on the implements of husbandry. To 
 the mechanic, he often seemed to have learned the trades. 
 To the merchant, he gave instruction on political economy. 
 To the philanthropist, he proposed new schemes of benefi- 
 cence. Medical men were often surprised at the extent of 
 his reading in their own department. If there were better 
 metaphysicians than he, more accurate classical scholars, 
 more correct historians, more profound statesmen — as 
 there doubtless were — still, where is the man who knew 
 so much of philology and philosophy mid history and prac- 
 tical life, all combined — who had so many knowledges of 
 
212 MOSES STUART 
 
 such multifarious things, and appHed them all to a better 
 purpose? If there be such a man (and there may be such), 
 I am too ignorant to have learned his name. 
 
 We look for no perfect one on earth ; and had the master 
 who is taken from our head to-day, been more punctiliously- 
 accurate, he would have been less impulsive ; and had he 
 been less impulsive, he would not have stirred up the mind 
 of the clergy; and had he not aroused men to Biblical 
 studies, he would not have fulfilled his mission; for his 
 mission was to be a pioneer, to break up a hard soil, to do 
 a rough work, to introduce other laborers into the vine- 
 yard which he had made ready. If, then, he lapsed here 
 and there in sacred literature, who are the men among us 
 that correct him? Chiefly, the men who are in some way 
 indebted to him for the power to make the correction. 
 Chiefly, the men who have received from him the impul- 
 ses by which they have learned to criticize him. Chiefly, 
 the men who would have remained on the dead level 
 of an empirical philology, had they not been quickened 
 to an upward progress by his early enthusiasm. If the 
 eagle in his flight toward the sun, be wounded by the 
 archer, the arrow that is aimed at him is guided by a feather 
 from the eagle's own broad wing. 
 
 He who now lies before us had faults of character. But 
 he might have concealed them, if he had possessed more 
 cunning and less frankness. He was ready to acknowledge 
 his errors. Had he been adroit in hiding them, he would 
 not have been a man of progress, nor that transparent, 
 open-hearted man who won to himself the general love. 
 
MOSES STUART 213 
 
 Spreading himself out over various departments, he was 
 free in his speech upon them all. Had he not been thus ad- 
 venturous, he would not have roused so many classes of 
 minds to such diversified activity. He wore a glass before 
 his heart. He spoke what he felt. We know, and the world 
 knows the worst of him ! and this is his highest praise. He 
 had no hidden mine of iniquity. His foibles do not lie 
 buried beneath our soundings. But it is no common virtue 
 which is honored in every farmer's cottage of the town 
 where he has lived for two and forty years, and which is 
 venerated by missionaries of the cross on Lebanon and at 
 Damascus. I have heard him praised by Tholuck, and Ne- 
 ander, and Henderson, and Chalmers, and by an Irish la- 
 borer, and a servant boy and by the families before whose 
 windows he has taken his daily walks for almost half a cen- 
 tury. His influence as a divine is to be widened and pro- 
 longed by the fact that on the hills and in the valleys around 
 his dwelling, there is neither man nor woman nor child, who 
 has known him, and does not feel that an honest Christian 
 rests from his labors, — an Israelite indeed, in whom was no 
 guile. 
 
 The old age of Mr. Stuart honored God in illustrating 
 the wealth of the inspired Word. In his sixty-seventh year, 
 he read all the tragedies of .^'^schylus, for the sake of detect- 
 ing idioms and allusions explanatory of the Bible. There 
 were three hours in every day, when he forgot all the pains 
 of advancing years, and all the turmoils of the world. More 
 than once, with his wonted vivacity, has he repeated the sen- 
 timent of Heinsius : 'T no sooner come into my library, than 
 
214 MOSES STUART 
 
 I bolt the door after me, excluding ambition, avarice, and 
 all such vices, and in the very lap of eternity, amidst so 
 many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and 
 such sweet content, that I pity all the great and rich who 
 know not this happiness." A few years ago, when he made 
 a certain discovery with regard to the book of Job, he could 
 not sleep for more than thirty-six hours. They were hours 
 of a grateful interest in the wonders of the Bible. At his 
 death, he had formed the plan for several commentaries 
 which would have engrossed three years of his time.' His 
 solace was in the Book of books. It never tired him. Not 
 seldom was it his meditation all the night. It presented to 
 him exhaustless stores. Near the end of his life he ex- 
 pressed a religious gratitude that the Hebrew language had 
 become to him like his mother tongue, and that the simple 
 reading of the Hebrew text opened the sense of passages 
 which had before been closed against him. When asked 
 whether he retained his confidence in the great system of 
 truths which he had defended, he answered with a strong 
 emphasis : "Yes." Have you any doubts with regard to 
 your former principles ? was the question ; and the energetic 
 answer was given at once, "No." As he approached the 
 grave, he became more and more hopeful that these prin- 
 ciples would soon triumph over all opposition. "I have 
 long since learned," he said, "that feelings in religious ex- 
 perience are deceptive. I look mainly to my life for my 
 
 ^ He intended to write soon a second exposition of the book of 
 Proverbs. It was to be popular in its character. Its plan was ad- 
 mirable. He recently collected the materials for an exposition of the 
 book of Jonah, and also for the book of Job. He left written notes 
 on the Epistles to the Corinthians. 
 
MOSES STUART 215 
 
 evidence. I think that my first aim in life has been to glo- 
 rify God, and that I have been ready to labor and suffer for 
 him." When afflicted with severe pains, he loved to repeat 
 the words, "Wearisome days and nights hast Thou ap- 
 pointed unto me." He had thought of death long and care- 
 fully. He was familiar with it. He was ready for it. It was 
 less to him than a Sabbath day's journey. "This is the be- 
 ginning of the end," was his placid remark with regard to 
 his broken arm, and after alluding to the pains which it 
 caused him, he added : "Such troubles make the peaceful 
 asylum of the narrow house look very inviting." When he 
 heard the hope expressed that his last sickness would be 
 unto life and not unto death, he replied, "Unto the glory of 
 God, but unto death ... I am prepared to die. O God, my 
 spirit is in thy hand ! Have mercy, but thy will be done." 
 On the first Sabbath of the New Year, when the storm 
 was howling around his dwelling, he fell asleep. Peaceful, 
 as to a night's repose, he entered on his long rest.^ 
 
 Hearing of a severe personal affliction, he once said, in 
 the language of Beza after the death of Calvin : "Now is life 
 less sweet and death less bitter." So may that venerable 
 matron say, now that the companion of her youth has been 
 taken up out of her sight. Let her honor God, that she has 
 been allowed to alleviate the cares of one, who has enabled 
 so many missionaries of the cross to translate the Bible for 
 the untutored Indian, and the learned Brahmin. Let her 
 be thankful that she has been permitted so to order her 
 house, that light has radiated from it upon the banks of the 
 
 * Note 12, in Appendix. 
 
2i6 MOSES STUART 
 
 Ilissus and the Euphrates. Some of the most important 
 volumes which the disciples of her husband have given to 
 the world, are prefaced with the significant and amiable an- 
 nouncement, that they were written in the bosom of his 
 family.^ Her domestic cares have been for the Church. 
 Her household arrangements have been made for the cul- 
 ture of mind. They have ministered to the comfort of one 
 who has now, as we suppose, been welcomed to the school 
 of the prophets and the apostles by more than two hundred 
 of his ascended pupils. Then let her exclaim, as she has 
 often heard her departed husband exclaim in this sacred 
 place : "Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto 
 him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for 
 ever and ever." 
 
 And the children of our deceased father will mourn most 
 of all, because they have lost their opportunities for easing 
 the toils of him who delighted in toiling for them. They 
 cannot weep for the dead. They know his fitness for that 
 world where his active spirit has found a congenial element, 
 and where all his activity is rest. They have often wit- 
 nessed his aspirations to see the old prophets, on whose 
 words he had lingered so long. They have often observed 
 his exultation at the thought of meeting Isaiah and Jere- 
 miah, of conversing with Paul on the depth and the height, 
 the length and the breadth ; and of beholding the face of 
 
 ^ A volume of meaning is beautifully compressed in Dr. Robin- 
 son's dedication of his Biblical Researches : "To the Rev. Moses 
 Stuart, Professor of Sacred Literature in the Andover Theological 
 Seminary, these volumes, the fruits of studies begun in the bosom 
 of his family, are respectfully inscribed, as a token of grateful 
 acknowledgment on the part of a pupil and friend." 
 
MOSES STUART 217 
 
 John, whom he had almost seen in vision here below. Let 
 them be thankful for his present communion with the Man 
 of sorrows, whom he has longed to see face to face, and in 
 whose presence he has hoped to enjoy eternal health. 
 
 And while we unite our prayers for the children of our 
 revered friend, we must remember his spiritual sons, who 
 are scattered throughout the wide world, from the prairies 
 of Wisconsin to the shores of the Bosphorus. In Canton 
 and under Table Mountain, in Ceylon and at Jerusalem, 
 they will feel that they have lost a father. We are the be- 
 reaved children of a scattered family. We have received 
 impulses from him, which will afifect us through our eternal 
 life. Then let us honor him by a new love to that Volume 
 which he prized more and more unto his dying hour, and 
 by remembering with a new affection those words of his 
 which we have all read : "When I behold the glory of the 
 Saviour, as revealed in the gospel, I am constrained to cry 
 out with the believing apostle. My Lord and my God ! And 
 when my departing spirit shall quit these mortal scenes, and 
 wing its way to the world unknown, with my latest breath, 
 I desire to pray, as the expiring martyr did. Lord Jesus, 
 receive my spirit," ' 'T ask for no other privilege on earth, 
 but to make known the efficacy of his death ; and none in 
 heaven, but to be associated with those who ascribe salva- 
 tion to his blood. Amen." * 
 
 * Conclusion of his Letters to Channing. 
 
 ' Conclusion of his Two Sermons on the Atonement. 
 
PROP^ESSOR I'ARK AT 50 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things 
 ■which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. 
 
 "For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a 
 trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every 
 side, 
 
 "And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within 
 thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because 
 thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." — Luke 19 : 42-44, 
 
 When a seaman crosses the equator, he is as listless as 
 if he were crossing any other line on the ocean, and knows 
 not that he has moved suddenly out of the northern into 
 the southern hemisphere. Men pass over the tropic of Can- 
 cer or the tropic of Capricorn and discern no mark distin- 
 guishing the one side from the other. Could we go to the 
 Arctic or the Antarctic pole, we should perceive no monu- 
 ment of the spot, and should walk or sail over it as if it 
 were any common point on land or the sea. The beginnings 
 of all things are in darkness, in time as well as in space. We 
 can easily determine whether it be near noon or whether it 
 be near midnight ; but not when the first dawn of day arises, 
 nor whether the first shade of night has fallen. The tide 
 flows, and we have no doubt that it is rising ; it ebbs, and we 
 have no doubt that it is falling, but we are in doubt with 
 regard to the precise line which divides the flowing from the 
 ebbing tide. 
 
222 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 This action of the waters is an emblem of our own secular 
 
 pursuits. 
 
 "There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; 
 Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
 Is bound in shallows and in miseries." 
 
 But the boundary point between the coming in and the 
 going out of this tide is imperceptible. The boy leaves his 
 rural home, struggles through his clerkship in the city store, 
 breasts the adverse waves of business life, and while remain- 
 ing without a reputation, without credit, without friends, he 
 consumes his days in anxiety, and his nights are restless ; 
 but as soon as he doubles a certain cape, the tide and breeze 
 favor him. He knows about where, but not exactly where, 
 that cape lies. It is lost in the fog. 
 
 The statesman often speaks of the turn in his. fortune. 
 For a long period he rose, and could not tell why ; he wea- 
 ried himself to detect the precise hour at which his star 
 ceased to be in the ascendant ; he only knows that about this 
 hour, or about that hour, he began to move downward, and 
 then all things conspired to hasten his fall. Napoleon at St. 
 Helena remarked that fortune smiled upon him up to about 
 the time of his divorce from Josephine, and somewhere near 
 that event his star grew pale, and the very men who had 
 favored him so long as he was moving upward, turned 
 against him just so soon as he began to move downward. 
 We have often seen an allegory of human Hfe as we have 
 traveled over a mountain range ; we could not be certain 
 that we had found the very spot of the watershed, and we 
 thought that we had entered on our descending course be- 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 223 
 
 fore we had really attained the highest point, or, on the 
 other hand, it seemed as if Alps o'er Alps were rising above 
 us after we had passed the summit of the range. Three 
 years ago, a traveler among the White Mountains, sur- 
 prised by the coming on of night, attempted to reach the 
 house on the summit of Mount Washington ; he groped 
 his way along the path which lies a few rods from the cot- 
 tage; the windows were lighted, but he could not discern 
 them through the fog, and he passed along unheeding, and 
 suddenly he perceived that he had gone one-third of the 
 way down the mountain from the quiet house where he 
 hoped to enjoy a night's repose. 
 
 The time of the beginning of our latest disease is gen- 
 erally hidden from us. It is the ceaseless mystery of life 
 that we may be every day and every hour walking on the 
 edge of some disorder which is sure to end in death. With- 
 out any suspicion of it, we step over that edge ; we cannot 
 discern that anything unusual has occurred, yet our doom 
 for this world is sealed. Often men imagine themselves to 
 have acquired new vigor, when they have only received a 
 new excitement, which is soon to waste them away. There 
 is a flush of the cheek and a sparkling of the eye, looking 
 like the signs of rosy health. The leaves of the rose look 
 fresh long after the fibers underground have begun to de- 
 cay. The disease of the root is hidden in the earth, and 
 the buds come out too soon, for the reason that the plant 
 is soon to wither. There is a particular degree of expo- 
 sure to the snow and the storm which invigorates the ani- 
 mal system. If that degree be not reached, the body is 
 
224 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 frail, and will ere long break down. If that degree be 
 exceeded one iota, the stoutest frame becomes like the 
 flower, which the wind passeth ovier and it is gone. In 
 September, 1839, ^ "^^^ ^^ Mount Vernon Major Lewis, 
 a nephew of General Washington. Forty, years before, 
 in December, 1799, he visited the general at Mount Ver- 
 non, and wrote concerning him : "The clear and healthy 
 blush on his cheek and his sprightly manner brought the 
 remark from both myself and my friend, 'We had never 
 seen the general look so well.'" A very few days after 
 jthis promise of long life, on the twelfth of that same 
 December the ex-President started forth, at ten in the 
 morning, to ride over his farm. "About one o'clock," 
 he coolly remarks in his diary, "it began to snow, soon 
 after to hail, and then turned to a settled cold rain." Dur- 
 ing the two hours Jrom about one o'clock to about three, 
 the sturdy warrior remained in this exposure to the storm. 
 After he had left the saddle and entered his mansion, his 
 secretary, perceiving that the snow was clinging to his hair 
 behind, expressed a fear that his neck must be wet. He 
 said, "It is not." And what if it had been? He was the hero 
 of many a battle-field and had braved many a storm in 
 the open camp. There was no danger, he supposed. He 
 did not know that at some one moment during those 
 last two hours he had let into his system a disease which 
 would never go out. He did not know that in less than 
 three days his widow was to exclaim: "All is over now; 
 I shall soon follow him!" Five hours before his death 
 he said: "I believed from the first attack that I should 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 225 
 
 not survive it." But he did not know when his first attack 
 commenced; five hours before what he termed his first at- 
 tack, while he was sitting- erect upon his steed, he went over 
 the mysterious Hne which he could never recross. 
 
 There is a particular degree of repose which gives health 
 to the body, and a certain degree of amusement which fits 
 it for redoubled labor. If that degree be not attained, the 
 body wilts like the grass that groweth up in the morning; 
 if that degree be passed one hair's breadth the seeds of dis- 
 ease may be sown in the system ; they grow in silence until 
 of a sudden they bring forth death in their fruit. Precisely 
 what, precisely where this degree is, is not known to 
 the jocund youth who beguiles the evening in the dance, 
 and amid the cheer of laughter and song, and afterward 
 steps out into the cold night air. The complexion becomes 
 delicate ; the friends wonder why the fingers become taper- 
 ing; the friends ascribe it to this cause and that cause, and 
 do not dream that when the threshold of the festive hall 
 was crossed, then was crossed the boundary of that pathw,ay 
 which leads straight down to the grave. 
 
 While in seeming health a youth is surprised by a pain- 
 ful item of intelligence ; he knows that he is sad, but does 
 not imagine that in the hearing of those grievous words he 
 crosses the fatal line. He reads a sentence in the newspa- 
 per ; he is startled, but does not regard himself as very sor- 
 rowful ; still at the moment of his sudden grief he stealthily 
 passes the crisis of his life. The neighbors ascribe his mal- 
 ady to an imprudent exposure. No. The malady stole in 
 with the sudden and secret grief. Many a mother has 
 
226 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 looked upon her child fading away in the very blooming 
 time of youth, and has sighed out the words: "If thou hadst 
 known when thy disease was gathering itself up to assail 
 thee ! but the moment was hidden from thine eyes, and: now 
 the day has come for thy going from me, — because thou 
 knewest not the time of thy visitation." 
 
 On the thirteenth of July at 12 o'clock in the year 1842, 
 the duke of Orleans, the man on whom the destinies of 
 France depended, was to leave Paris for St. Omer in a four- 
 wheeled carriage, drawn by two horses. Before he entered 
 his carriage, he partook of what he supposed to be an in- 
 nocent repast with his family friends. He was a temperate 
 man, was probably never intoxicated, and now had no 
 thought of exhilarating himself beyond the line of discre- 
 tion ; but he drank a few drops more of the wine than was 
 consistent with his entire self-possession. In about a half 
 hour afterward, when the horses took fright and the pos- 
 tilion became unable to master them, the prince, more ani- 
 mated than prudent, "put his foot on the step which was 
 near the ground," and leaped from the cabriolet. Had not 
 his pulse been unduly quickened by those few supernumer- 
 ary drops of wine, he would have taken a safer counsel and 
 remained in the carriage. In leaping from it, he fell ; was 
 instantly insensible; and at half after four o'clock on that 
 afternoon expired in the arms of Louis Philippe, his father. 
 At that genial repast he went beyond the edge of safety, 
 and knew not that he had entered the pathway to his tomb. 
 And I presume that there is some one in this audience who 
 daily walks around in seeming health, but the fixtures for 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 227 
 
 his burial are lying, waiting, and no man knoweth that they 
 lie waiting for him. Thy final disease, my friend, will be 
 ascribed to a sudden cold ; but no ; the sly enemy is already 
 lurking within thy veins, only to spring upon thee when that 
 sudden cold shall furnish the occasion. Thou hast passed 
 over the mysterious line. The cause of thy death is already 
 at work : the occasion of it may be this or that trifling oc- 
 currence. 
 
 "On what a slender thread 
 
 Hang everlasting things; 
 The eternal state of ajl the dead 
 
 Upon Hfe's feeble strings !" 
 
 If thou hadst known in this thy day ; if thou hadst known 
 the time of thy visitation : but now it is hidden from thine 
 eyes, and all the medicaments of the earth and the sea can 
 never remove the cause which is in secret working out thy 
 death. God adopts ever and anon a most costly expedient 
 to show men how liable they are every moment to leave the 
 world of probation for the world of retribution. How sud- 
 denly during the last winter was our favorite orator, Ed- 
 ward Everett, summoned away from us ! and how graphic- 
 ally did Mr. Everett in his memoirs of Washington de- 
 scribe the death of that hero! 
 
 One fortnight ago to-day it was a bright Sabbath, and 
 we were on the eve of a brilliant victory, and Monday was 
 a day of jubilee, for the capital city of the foe was taken. 
 One week ago to-day Mt was a bright Sabbath, and we 
 gained a crowning victory, and at midnight bonfires were 
 lighted, and cannon discharged, and the bells rang merry 
 peals, for the chief captain of the rebel hosts had been taken. 
 
228 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 We did not dream that we were walking on the edge of a 
 great sorrow. Four years ago our President had gone 
 through Baltimore, unharmed by the mob that sought his 
 life. Often during the last four years had he walked 
 through the streets of Washington at dead of night, and 
 had been kept safe as in the hollow of the hand of God. Re- 
 cently had he walked through the streets of Richmond, and 
 not a hand was uplifted against him. He seemed to be the 
 special favorite of Providence. We thanked the Lord for 
 him. We anticip^ated an illustrious career for him. Thirty- 
 six hours ago he sat gladsome amid scenes of amusement, 
 but quick as the snapping of a pistol he crossed the line. 
 Yesterday morning the nation woke to joy and triumph; 
 but in a brief hour the nation crossed the line, and changed 
 its laughter into weeping. As individuals and as a people 
 we are walking ever on the boundary of affliction, and one 
 moment may bring us from the heights of exultation to the 
 depths of wailing. At the very hour when we are preparing 
 to raise the flag of a nation's pride, at the very hour when 
 we are preparing to illuminate our houses in joy, we are 
 startled and stunned by the most appalling act which ever 
 occurred in our history, or perhaps in any history. While 
 we are rejoicing that right has become triumphant, and 
 moral principle has prevailed over treason, suddenly the 
 honest man and the good man fell down ;'and you and I and 
 all of us fell down, and treachery seemed to triumph over us. 
 If forty-eight hours ago, if we had known the things which 
 belonged to our peace ! But all this was hid from our eyes ; 
 for we knew not the time of our visitation. 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 229 
 
 A like unsuspected line is drawn through our spiritual re- 
 lations. When a man perceives the truths of the gospel 
 with a particular degree of clearness, and puts forth only a 
 particular degree of resistance to them, these truths subdue 
 that resistance, and the man through grace becomes a new 
 man. What that degree of mental illumination is, what that 
 degree of resistance is, we cannot divine. We know our 
 duty. This is revealed to us by God. We are to repent of 
 sin ; then we shall be saved. This is clear. We are to trust 
 in Christ ; then we shall be saved. This is plain. Our duties 
 belong to us. Therefore are they made known to us. The 
 conditions with which we are to comply in order to gain 
 heaven are so evident, that as we read in Isaiah, "The way- 
 faring men, though fools, shall not err" in regard to them. 
 But there are occasions on which God acts, which are dis- 
 tinct from the duties required of us. These occasions are 
 not revealed to us, because they do not belong to us. 
 
 Our all-wise Sovereign has selected certain conjunctures 
 at which he will interpose and renew men. He has his own 
 reasons for selecting these opportunities. When we would 
 pry into his reasons, and when we would search out the 
 exact place or time of these junctures, we learn the truth of 
 the proverb : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing." 
 He has lifted up the veil, however, so far as to let us glance 
 at this fact ; that there is a particular line on one side of 
 which if a man stand there is reason to hope that he will be 
 renewed. God has intimated the existence of this shadowy 
 line in one item of intelligence given us with regard to the 
 inhabitants of ancient Tyre. They had received a particular 
 
230 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 degree of mental illumination, and had resisted it with a 
 particular degree of stubbornness. The degree of their 
 knowledge did not overpower the degree of their resistance. 
 But if the degree of their knowledge had been increased so 
 as to equal the knowledge given to the people of Chorazin, 
 and if the degree of their resistance had not been propor- 
 tionally increased, we have reason to believe that the Spirit 
 of God would have converted the Tyrians. There was a 
 certain ratio between the amount of motive on the one 
 hand, alluring them to repent ; and the amount of opposition 
 on the other hand to that motive : with this proportion, the 
 Tyrians remained impenitent. Now if they had not allowed 
 their resistance to rise above that line of proportion, and if 
 the amount of motive addressed to them had risen above 
 that line, then we have reason to believe that God, "who 
 commanded the light to shine out of darkness," would have 
 shined into their hearts "to give the light of the knowledge 
 of the glory of God." Again, there was a certain ratio be- 
 tween the knowledge enjoyed by the ancient Sidonians, and 
 the resistance cherished by them against that knowledge: 
 the motive came up to a definite amount ; the opposition 
 came up to a definite amount. The motive did not over- 
 power the opposition. God did not convert the Sidonians; 
 but we have reason to believe that he would have con- 
 verted them if their knowledge had risen above that definite 
 amount, and if their resistance had not proportionally risen 
 above its former boundary. Acting as a sovereign, God 
 watches and regards that line of proportion. He gave to 
 Chorazin a degree of knowledge which would through 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 231 
 
 grace have converted Tyre ; he gave to the Bethsaidans an 
 amount of motive which would through grace have re- 
 newed the Sidonians, but this degree of allurement did not 
 prevail with the men of Chorazin, nor with the men of Betli- 
 saida. Why did it not prevail with these men? They did 
 not allow their resistance to remain at its former line. They 
 met new truth by augmented antagonism. They came 
 into contact with the Captain of their salvation as if he were 
 their armed foe ; when he advanced with one power of mo- 
 tive they called out five powers to oppose him, and when 
 he again advanced with ten powers of persuasion, they sum- 
 moned one hundred powers to check and thwart him. If 
 they had not built new fortresses he would have captured 
 their city. If they had not encased themselves in new coats 
 of mail, his arrows would have reached their hearts ; and 
 his arrows wound in order that they may heal. Therefore 
 "began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty 
 works were done, because they repented not. Woe unto 
 thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the 
 mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in 
 Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sack- 
 cloth and ashes. . . And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted 
 unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the 
 mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done 
 in Sodom, it would have remained until this day." Sodom 
 would have remained if ten of her citizens had yielded to 
 the grace of God, and these ten men would have yielded if 
 they had received the winning appeal which was made to 
 Capernaum, and if they had not summoned an unwonted 
 
232 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 force to withstand the unwonted allurement. "Father, for- 
 give them ; for they know not what they do" was the prayer 
 of the expiring Redeemer. But his murderers had some 
 knowledge of their duty. If their knowledge had risen up 
 to a certain line and if then they had chosen to slay the 
 Prince of life, they might have gone beyond the precinct of 
 forgiving grace, and even the Redeemer could not have 
 prayed forgive them "for they know not what they 
 do." Where does this territory of grace end? Where is 
 this appalling boundary? God knoweth. "The secret things 
 belong unto the Lord our God." Why should we know? 
 "Fear God, and keep his commandments : for this is the 
 whole duty of man." This duty is simple, therefore it is re- 
 vealed and belongs to us, and to our children forever, that 
 we may do all the words of this law. 
 
 We have now seen, that if men will not rise in rebellion 
 above a certain boundary, we may hope that they will be 
 converted when they receive an increase of motive from 
 God who renews men by his truth. We are now prepared 
 to see, that if men do rise in rebellion beyond a certain 
 boundary we have reason to believe that they will not be 
 converted even if they should receive an increase of motive 
 from God. The Tyrians and the Sidonians had not pushed 
 their sin beyond the reach of hope. It could not be said 
 of them: "They will never repent, come what may. They 
 will never repent, even if miracles be wrought before them." 
 But there have been men of whom it could be affirmed: 
 they have pressed their rebellion so far that they will not 
 yield come what may ; not yield even if miracles be wrought 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 233 
 
 before their eyes. We read of five brethren : a prayer was 
 offered for them that a messenger from the grave might be 
 sent to them, and might present to them motives alluring 
 them away from sin. But "they have Moses and the 
 prophets ;" let them submit to Moses and the prophets. 
 "Nay, father Abraham : but if one went unto them from the 
 dead, they will repent." The response follows : "If they hear 
 not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, 
 though one rose from the dead." They had resisted Moses 
 who spake of Christ. They had resisted the prophets who 
 foretold Christ ; they had despised the whole sacrificial sys- 
 tem which was the type of the one sacrifice upon Golgotha. 
 They had seen and hated the glory of the gospel as it shone 
 in the temple which prefigured the temple of the Lord's 
 body. They had gone over the line beyond which even the 
 grace of Jesus will not stretch itself. Tyre and Sidon and 
 Sodom would have repented if they had seen the mighty 
 works done in Capernaum, but these five brethren might 
 have witnessed the miracle of the raising of Lazarus, and 
 would remain obdurate. When, where did they cross the 
 line? They did not know exactly when, nor exactly where. 
 It did not belong to them to know. It belonged to them to 
 hear Moses and the prophets. Had they obeyed this com- 
 mand, they would have been safe. But when they put forth 
 a certain degree of resistance to this command that was the 
 degree beyond which there was no redemption. But what 
 is the degree? Where is it? It is the mysterious line ; nar- 
 row, and, therefore, we cannot trace it ; a point drawn out 
 through the darkness and, therefore, we cannot discern it. 
 
234 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 "But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee ; and the 
 fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee : or speak to the 
 earth, and it shall teach thee : and the fishes of the sea shall 
 declare unto thee." Declare to thee what? Not the times 
 and the seasons which God keepeth in his own power. Not 
 precisely when, not precisely where God has determined to 
 withdraw his Spirit, but that he who obeys God and he 
 only is secure ; he who does his duty and he only is beyond 
 the reach of harm. 
 
 Thus are we prompted to inquire : Why does God draw 
 through our spiritual relations such a line, that if men 
 stand on one side we have reason to hope that he will con- 
 vert them, but, if they stand on the other side of it, he will 
 not convert, but may abandon them forever? The answer 
 is obvious. He does it in order to awaken within us the 
 spirit of obedience. This is his aim in all his arrangements 
 with us. Why does he appoint any probation at all? In 
 order to stimulate us in duty our eternal happiness is made 
 to depend on a brief period. If during this short interval 
 we be holy, we shall be glorified forever. If we will not 
 obey him during the narrow interim between birth and 
 death, we must be lost. What ! can we not watch with him 
 one hour? If we started in existence without a probation- 
 ary appeal we should lose a stimulus to duty. If the pro- 
 bation were drawn out through a million ages the power 
 of the incentive would be lessened. It would be expanded 
 in time to be weakened in strength. But when the trial is 
 compressed into a span, who will hesitate to endure the 
 trial well? May we not hope to persevere during a hand- 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 235 
 
 breadth of time if then we may enjoy an everlasting rest? 
 Shall we expect that men will barter away their whole 
 eternity for*that period which is a dream, a vapor? Now, 
 as endless reward crowns a brief interval of obedience, and 
 as endless punishment follows hard upon a refusal to spend 
 a short time for our Redeemer, so our prospect of being 
 converted depends, under God, upon our not allowing sin 
 to pass a certain line of proportion to knowledge. If it 
 goes beyond that proportion, he will never interfere to save 
 us. As we are startled by the fact that we are favored with 
 a narrow interval, and if we repent during this interval of 
 life, we shall enter heaven, so are we aroused by the fact, 
 that if we allow our sin to rise beyond a certain degree we 
 shall never repent, but there remaineth for us nought but 
 a fearful looking for judgment. If we dally with tempta- 
 tion beyond a particular line, the door of repentance is shut 
 against us forever. So have we probation within probation ; 
 every moment may be our crisis ; and although we shall not 
 fall over the cataract until our final hour, yet we may at 
 any minute enter that sweep and whirl of the waters which 
 will bear us on to the fatal plunge. For all the purposes of 
 salvation our life may terminate long before we cease to 
 breathe. There may be many a man living in high health, 
 but so far as any prospect of heaven is concerned he may 
 be just as dead as if we had attended his funeral. In the 
 year 1852, I read an obituary notice of a man who was 
 frozen to death on the fourteenth of February, in Buflfalo, 
 Wisconsin, in sight of his house, to which he was return- 
 ing after a short journey. That man had taken his final 
 
236 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 farewell of his friends, yet he was hurrying back to greet 
 them once more. He was in joyous hope, but he had al- 
 ready seen them for the last time forever. He catches the 
 cheering view of his cottage ; but as to the reunion with 
 his household, he might as well have been already in his 
 grave. And many a sinner is looking forward to the man- 
 sions in the skies and hopes that he will reach them. Too 
 late ! too late ! He has frozen himself in sin. Months ago 
 he stepped over the edge of safety, and he knows it not. It 
 is iall over with him. So far as repentance is concerned, he 
 might as well be in the eternal world. Be watchful, there- 
 fore, lest thou pass over the hidden line. Take care lest 
 thou stand on the verge of the precipice ; for it is hard to 
 stand on the boundary without falling into the abyss. There 
 is a path on which you have room to walk ; be wise then 
 and do not attempt to walk along the outmost verge of the 
 aby^ss; for says the greatest philosopher which the world 
 has ever knov/n : "For as in the days that were before the 
 flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving 
 in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 
 and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away ; 
 so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. . . . Watch 
 therefore : for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. 
 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known 
 in what watch the thief would come, he would have 
 watched, and would not have suffered his house to be 
 broken up. Therefore be ye also ready : for in such an hour 
 as ye think not the Son of man cometh." 
 We are prompted to inquire again, Why does God con- 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 237 
 
 ceal the exact line on one side of which if men stand we 
 have reason to think they will be converted, and on the other 
 side there is no hope for them? There is more hope of a 
 fool than of them. God leaves this line invisible in order to 
 promote our constant activity. We are in danger of fatally 
 crossing the line ; therefore we must be alert. We may 
 cross it before we see it ; therefore, we must be continually 
 alert. We know that we must die ; hence we must prepare 
 for the change : we do not know when we must die ; hence 
 we must every moment prepare for the change. 
 
 A laborer sometimes desists from his toil just before the 
 moment when he would have succeeded if he had perse- 
 vered. He aims to cleave asunder a rock, and strikes with 
 his hammer ninety-nine times in the same place ; and the 
 rock does not open, and he lays his sledge down and goes 
 home discouraged. Had he struck once more, the rock 
 would have been in twain. There is many a Christian who 
 continues for weeks faithful to an impenitent friend, and at 
 length suspends his efforts, because he discerns no sign of 
 a good result. Had he spoken one word more, had he 
 persevered in his good example one hour longer, the rocky 
 heart would have broken. But he ceased from duty just 
 before he had reached the line. 
 
 It was a pointed remark of Rabbi Eliezer, "Turn to God 
 one day before death." His disciples asked him : "How can 
 a man know when this one day before death comes?" He 
 answered them, "Therefore you should turn to God to-day 
 — perhaps you may die to-morrow." But there is a death 
 before death. There is a certain degree of sin which you 
 
238 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 must avoid, or the Holy Spirit will declare: "Let him alone, 
 he is joined to his idols." Now the rule is : repent one day 
 before you reach that degree. But how can we ascertain 
 when that day will come? Repent to-day; for to-morrow 
 there may be no hope. Avoid every degree of sin; then you 
 will be sure of avoiding the fatal degree. Do not go near 
 the line ; keep at the greatest possible distance from it. But 
 I do not see it ; how shall I know that I am far from it? He 
 that wills to do the will of God, he shall know that he is on 
 the right side of the line. But will you allow me to sin up 
 to that line? Turn to God one day before you reach that 
 line ; one hour before, one minute 'before. Perhaps you 
 have already come to that minute. Perhaps your next 
 sin may be the going beyond the bourne from which no 
 traveler returns to the path of safety. Choose once more 
 to grieve the Holy Spirit, and it may be said of you in a 
 double sense : "He found no place of repentance, though he 
 sought it carefully with tears." But the line! the line! 
 "Where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of 
 understanding" that I may discern this coming crisis? Wis- 
 dom — to detect the mysterious line ! "The depth saith, It is 
 not in me : and the sea saith, It is not with me." Whence 
 then cometh wisdom, that I may discern the culminating 
 point? and where is the place of understanding, seeing it is 
 hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls 
 of the air? "Destruction and death say. We have heard the 
 fame thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way 
 thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof. . . . The fear of 
 the Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart at once from evil 
 
THE DIVIDING LINE 239 
 
 that is understanding." Perhaps the recording angel has 
 already taken his pen to draw the mark which terminates 
 the day of hope for some impenitent man who now care- 
 lessly hears these words. Oh, could we persuade that silent 
 recorder to stay his hand until the close of this Sabbath, 
 and until the dead of night when all the earth sitteth still 
 and is at rest ! But we cannot hold back the hand that is 
 to move the pen and draw the fearful line. There will be 
 no tolling of a bell in heaven to let us know when the line 
 is drawn ; but we know this, that when the mysterious pen 
 shall make its awful movement, that idle hearer, so far as 
 any prospect of his salvation is concerned, might as well 
 be in hell. 
 
 "There is a line, we know not when, 
 
 A point, we know not where. 
 That marks the destiny of men 
 
 To glory or despair. 
 
 There is a line by us unseen, 
 
 That crosses every path; 
 The hidden boundary between 
 
 God's patience and his wrath. 
 
 To pass that limit is to die, 
 
 To die as if by stealth, 
 It does not quench the beaming eye, 
 
 Or pale the glow of health. 
 
 The conscience may be still at ease. 
 
 The spirits light and gay; 
 That which is pleasing still may please. 
 
 And care be thrust away. 
 
 But on that forehead God has set. 
 
 Indelibly a mark 
 Unseen by man, — for man as yet 
 
 Is blind and in the dark. 
 
240 THE DIVIDING LINE 
 
 And yet the doomed man's path below 
 May bloom as Eden bloomed. 
 
 He did not, does not, will not know 
 Or feel that he is doomed. 
 
 He knows, he feels that all is well, 
 And every fear is calmed; 
 
 He lives, he dies and wakes in hell 
 Not only doomed but damned. 
 
 Oh, where is this mysterious bourne 
 By which our path is crossed? 
 
 Beyond which God himself hath sworn 
 That he who goes is lost. 
 
 How far may we go on in sin? 
 
 How long will God forbear? 
 Where does hope end, and where begin 
 
 The confines of despair? 
 
 The answer from the skies is sent : 
 Ye that from God depart. 
 
 While it is called to-day repent, — 
 And harden not your heart." 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." — Mark 12: 34. 
 
 The phrase "kingdom of God" has in the Bible various 
 significations. Sometimes it signifies the whole universe ; 
 for of the whole universe, Jehovah is the rightful King. 
 Sometimes it signifies heaven ; for of heaven God is not 
 only the rightful, but also the acknowledged and peculiar 
 King. Sometimes it signifies the Church on earth ; for the 
 Church on earth will soon be the Church in heaven, and is 
 now, as it ever will be, loyal to its Sovereign. Sometimes 
 it signifies that state of heart which is essential to admis- 
 sion into the church. It denotes that preparative feeling 
 by the figure of the cause for the effect, the antecedent for 
 the consequent. When Christ says to the scribe, "Thou art 
 not far from the kingdom of God," he means, Thou hast but 
 few obstacles to overcome in order to be my true disciple ; 
 thy state of heart is not that of the Christian, but is very 
 near it ; thou art almost qualified to unite with my Church, 
 but not altogether. There are persons in this house who 
 are like the scribe in the text, nearly prepared to be dis- 
 ciples of Christ. Some imagine themselves to be really 
 Christians, being misled by the fact that they are almost 
 persuaded to be such. Their nearness deceives them. The 
 counterfeit money is almost exactly like the true coin. 
 Some are living without hope, and have been and are now 
 
244 NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOxM OF GOD 
 
 but a single step removed from piety. They have been so 
 in times of pecuHar religious interest, and in their own 
 private solicitude in the circle of religious friends, and in 
 the stillness of their closet. 
 
 It becomes, therefore, an important inquiry. What is the 
 distinctive character of those sinners who are nearly Chris- 
 tians? 
 
 In the first place, they have correct ideas of divine truth. 
 Men who deny the essentials of Christianity have much to 
 do before they will be converted. Tliey reject doctrines 
 which are the wisdom and power of God unto salvation. 
 As the heart is converted by the instrumentality of truth so 
 it is converted by the instrumentality of truth believed. 
 This truth is like the sun shining in the firmament of the 
 soul. But so long as the man excludes this truth he shuts 
 out the rays that illumine and fertilize his mind, and religion 
 will not grow up in his cold and darkened heart. He must 
 come under the influence of Christ's doctrine, or he will 
 never be converted. Yet here is another obstacle to his 
 change. Those false theories which are excluding him from 
 heaven he loves. He considers himself pledged to sustain 
 them. He clings to them as the madman will sometimes 
 cling to his chains. If you attempt to force the errors from 
 his close grasp, you must force them inch by inch. To give 
 up the pillow on which he has slept so long and so sweetly ; 
 to leave the couch which has supported him through many 
 a happy dream, is like the giving up of the ghost. The act 
 of all acts most essential to his peace is the one which of all 
 is the most painful. 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 245 
 
 But they who have correct ideas of doctrine may become 
 Christians with comparatively little self-denial. They are 
 already prepared for the operation of divine truth. Their 
 hearts are cleared from the weeds and thorns of skepticism 
 choking the word in the mind of their neighbors. The dew 
 from heaven may fall at once upon them ; the rays of the 
 sun may come into immediate contact with them, and the 
 plants of religion may spring up unobstructed by the op- 
 pressive weight of error. Having already enlightened their 
 minds, they have nothing to do but yield their hearts. They 
 are almost ready to become disciples of their Lord ; for they 
 are ready in all things except their will. They are like the 
 man who has escaped from the darkness of the dungeon, 
 and the light is shining on all parts of his body except the 
 retina of his eye, for that part he will not open to the sun's 
 rays. 
 
 In the second place, those sinners who are nearly Chris- 
 tians are amiable and correct in their natural sensibilities 
 and their external conduct. 
 
 The victim of vice has much to do before he will become 
 a child of God. He is wedded to his immoralities, nor will 
 he tear himself from them. They have grown with his 
 growth and become almost incorporated with his constitu- 
 tion. They are like the vine upon the tree ; entwined around 
 every branch, clinging to every twig, firmly grasping the 
 root, nor will it ever die until the tree itself is hewn down. 
 So important does he regard his vicious indulgences, that 
 he is bold to pronounce them essential to his life ; the only 
 threads which hold him from the grave. Deprive me, he 
 
246 NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 cries, of my present sinful habits and I lose my health. Se- 
 clude me from my cups, and my whole system will decline 
 instantly ; I cannot survive the change of habit. Miserable 
 man that he is, nothing but a single cord holds him up from 
 hell, and that cord nothing but sin ! 
 
 Whenever the victim of fashionable vices is induced to 
 think of religion he thinks of it as the enemy of his joys. 
 Religion and his indulgences cannot coexist, and he will 
 not for untried pleasures abandon those long tried and 
 fondly cherished. The gambler asks. Shall I love God? 
 The question is tantamount to the mournful one, Shall I 
 abandon my profession? The miser asks. Shall I prefer 
 heaven to earth? The question is equivalent to the offen- 
 sive one, Shall I come to beggary? The scoffer asks, Shall 
 I venerate the Spirit of God? The question is identical with 
 the chilling one. Shall I cut myself ofif from the only society 
 in which I can find delight? Religion comes to the profli- 
 gate man, not as a friend with an olive branch and a smile, 
 but as a warrior with a sword and a frown, and a lifted front. 
 
 But the man who preserves a correct external demeanor 
 finds no obstacles like these. Already is he an intimate of 
 the society of Christians and can therefore change his heart 
 without changing his friends. Already is he regular in his 
 attention to the Bible and to the hour of prayer and to the 
 house of God, and therefore can turn from hatred to love, 
 without turning from the second nature of external habit. 
 Already does he pursue an honorable and useful occupation, 
 and therefore may reform his life without subjecting him- 
 self to poverty. Thus is he free from many obstacles which 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 247 
 
 disreputable customs throw into the path toward paradise. 
 Divine grace has freed him, and has made his visible de- 
 portment so similar to that of the pious, that he is some- 
 times mistaken for one who is pious. Often does the ob- 
 server of mere externals think that the correct and moral 
 sinner is a true disciple. He is a great transgressor and yet 
 his visible deportment is that of a faithful Christian ; a dar- 
 ing rebel and yet almost a child of God ; for, having a clear 
 view of the divine character, he puts forth a kind of love to 
 it, but withholds his supreme love ; having a clear view of 
 sin he cherishes a kind of sorrow for it, but refuses to cher- 
 ish true penitence ; having a clear view of the atonement he 
 has a kind of trust in it, but will not exercise self-denying 
 faith. He does love the divine' attributes, not because there 
 is holiness in them, but because a personal gain may be ex- 
 pected from them. He does grieve over his sins, not be- 
 cause they are sins against a pure law, but because they 
 will be followed by personal loss. He does believe in the 
 Redeemer, not because there is a spiritual loveliness in the 
 Redeemer's character, but because there are crowns of 
 gold at the Redeemer's disposal; not on account of Christ 
 crucified, but on account of Christ glorified. The man who 
 is almost a Christian does confess that he is morally de- 
 praved; he has sent for the medicines; they are within 
 reach; they are at his very lips — but he wdll not open his 
 lips, nor comply with the only condition on which he can 
 be healed. He is like the drowning mariner not at the very 
 bottom of the sea but risen up near to the surface, but he 
 no more breathes the air of heaven while a single ell below 
 
248 NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 the surface than if he were almost out and yet entirely in 
 the vast caverns of the deep. 
 
 In the third place, those sinners who are nearly Christians 
 are accustomed to candid and solemn contemplation on 
 their eternal prospects. They know the right course, that 
 it tends to heaven and that they have not yet commenced 
 their walk in it. They know the wrong course, that it tends 
 to despair everlasting. They know and they feel that they 
 deserve this despair. They feel that they ought to escape 
 from it. Many a solemn hour do they spend in silent medi- 
 tation on the justice of the final judge. Many a silent tear 
 do they let fall when they think that they must soon and 
 may suddenly die, and yet are entirely unprepared. Many 
 a drooping of the heart do they feel when the Sabbath 
 closes, and they leave the sanctuary where they had hoped 
 (they had never divulged, but they had secretly cherished, 
 while they were half ashamed of the hope) that they should 
 find peace, but they do find that they are still forlorn in sin. 
 In the recesses of their soul they long (they dare not reveal 
 their longing), but it is a kind of anxious though selfish de- 
 sire to be cleansed from their defilement and presented 
 pure and spotless before the Father. Have there not been 
 moments when you, my friend, have desired that your 
 Christian friends would converse with you more frequently 
 than they had done — pray over you more earnestly, and 
 labor with more zeal for your conversion? Have you not 
 often painted before your eyes the dark picture of futurity? 
 thought of all the scenes through which you must pass in 
 the land to which you are hastening? been filled with gloom 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 249 
 
 as you have reflected on your final separation from all your 
 pious friends, and your banishment from all joy? And in 
 the midst of all this gloom, have you not longed for the 
 creative energies of the Holy Ghost, and have you not said, 
 when no man could hear your w^hispers to yourself : Oh, 
 that I were a Christian! At those moments you were dis- 
 tant from heaven only the breadth of your heart. You rea- 
 soned well about your future prospects and just as sadly as 
 well. Your anguish in view of retribution was wise and had 
 it not been for the simple pride of your feelings, it would 
 have resulted in true peace. You had been led to over- 
 come the thoughtlessness, the indolence, and the vanity of 
 the mind; you had even wept for your sin, so cruel to 
 your soul, and been made to surmount all obstacles to your 
 conversation, save that simple pride of heart. That simple 
 pride is the only wall which keeps you from Paradise. Oth- 
 er walls were battered down. That one wall you might 
 have overleaped, but you would not. 
 
 There were two classmates at Yale college, who esteemed 
 and loved each other, and each confidentially informed the 
 other of his special interest in religion. While walking near 
 the house of President Dwight, they inquired whether they 
 should not accept the President's invitation and visit him 
 for his religious counsel. They stopped at his door and 
 hesitated. One says, "I will go in." The other says, "I 
 think Twill not to-day." The one was Dr. Taylor of New 
 Haven : he went in ; conversed with his spiritual counsellor; 
 became a devout man, and after communing with the 
 Church on earth went to commune with the angels in 
 
250 NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 heaven. The other devoted himself to the world ; struggled 
 for its honors, was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared 
 sumptuously every day. But at last he died and was buried ; 
 and we fear joined that immense company who intended 
 to begin a religious life, — who intended to — but not to-day. 
 When those two amiable and sedate young men stood at 
 the door of President Dwight, they were both not far from 
 the kingdom of heaven. But then and there they went 
 from each other — one into the kingdom, the other away 
 from it; and this afternoon they may be still going from 
 each other ; the one rising higher and higher ; the other 
 sinking lower and lower. Many a youthful scholar has 
 parted from his friend at the door of a pious classmate or 
 instructor; then and there they separated spiritually and 
 will never meet. The door of the house where youthful 
 Christians meet for prayer and praise is often the gate of 
 heaven. 
 
 Having now considered the distinctive character of those 
 sinners who are nearly Christians, let us proceed to con- 
 sider their peculiar condition. And in the first place, they 
 are in a state of peculiar obligation to enter the kingdom of 
 God. Obligation to perform a duty is proportioned to the 
 ease of performing duty. The man who can with the great- 
 est facility accommodate his neighbor or serve his govern- 
 ment is under the strongest obligation to render those serv- 
 ices. Now, 'all that God requires of man is easy if men 
 would not make it hard. When God requires of sinners to 
 repent he imposes no heavy burden and binds no galling 
 yoke upon them, but they throw difficulties in their own 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 251 
 
 way, and if they could, would cancel all their obligations. 
 But escape from the pressing force of duty they cannot. 
 Still, the fewer the difficulties so much the stronger are the 
 obligations, and as those who are already nearer the true 
 kingdom have fewer obstacles than those who are further 
 from it, they are bound with peculiar firmness to the duty 
 of becoming not only almost but altogether obedient to the 
 commands of heaven. 
 
 Obligation, too, is proportioned to knowledge. Of him 
 to whom much is committed, much will be required. "If ye 
 were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We 
 see ; therefore your sin remaineth." "If I had not come 
 and spoken unto them, they had not had sin : but now they 
 have no cloak for their sin." "That servant, which knew 
 his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did accord- 
 ing to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." The 
 inhabitants of New Orleans are bound to repent, yet not 
 so firmly bound as the inhabitants of this place, for they 
 have not so clear ideas of God. All in this house are re- 
 quired to be holy, yet some are required more imperatively 
 than others. Though the burden of duty resting on each 
 individual is immense, and without repentance will weigh 
 each down into despair, yet is it a peculiar burden that rests 
 on him who has been the most thoughtful and enlightened. 
 Thou child of many prayers and of much early instruction 
 and of frequent personal anxieties, a voice of uncommon 
 power calls thee to repent. Thou man of gray locks, every 
 year of thy long life has added to thine obligations and these 
 are now sufficient to bend down thy head to the grave. 
 
252 NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 Thou considerate sinner, who hast attended the meeting 
 for inquiry, hast read the Bible often, and wept much over 
 thy sins, thy long study of divine truth has imposed upon 
 thee the most fearful obligations. If any man on earth is 
 required to be a Christian, thou art the man. Thou art not 
 required, like the merchant in a demoralizing traffic, to re- 
 linquish the contraband article; nor like the votary of 
 fashion to abandon thy whole retinue of vanities. All im- 
 pediments to your conversion are removed — save one. The 
 external barriers have been displaced. One solitary parti- 
 tion now remains. With you it is an emphatic truth : one 
 thing is needful. You are hard by the kingdom of God, 
 It is all in full sight. Most distinctly do you see your own 
 relations and the ease of changing them, but this distinct- 
 ness of the perception and this ease of the performance are 
 the very things that bind you to your duty, a hundred — 
 yea, a thousandfold. 
 
 In the second place, the man who is nearly a Christian 
 is in a state of peculiar guilt. I say peculiar guilt. I do 
 not say that in all respects the guilt of one who is almost a 
 Christian is greater than that of everybody else. We can- 
 not always measure the comparative ill-desert of man. We 
 cannot always say that one sinner who is immoral in his 
 life, is on the whole more guilty than another sinner who 
 is moral. We know that he is more ill-deserving in some 
 particulars. The same is true if we invert the proposition. 
 We cannot affirm that every sinner who is near the point of 
 conversion is more ill-deserving than some transgressor 
 who is far removed from this point, but he is more ill-de- 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 253 
 
 serving in some relations ; his guilt is different from that of 
 others; it is a peculiar guilt. 
 
 Obligation, as we have seen, is proportioned to knowl- 
 edge, and to ease of discharging duty ; so guilt is propor- 
 tioned to resisted obligation ; and when obligation and 
 ease are both peculiar, the guilt of resisted obligation is 
 peculiar. At the day of judgment the guilt of one who 
 has been nearly a Christian will be very different from 
 that of a heathen. God has never pleaded with a hea- 
 then as he has with you, my friend. He has never been 
 so importunate with them, waited for them so long, sent 
 his Spirit to them so often. Great rebels they, but their 
 rebellion is against feebler remonstrances of conscience 
 than you have had. There are many flagitious sinners 
 around you. I tremble when I think of their guilt, but 
 it is very certain that their guilt is in some respects 
 less than yours ; and it is possible that in all respects 
 they will be qualified to rise up against you and condemn 
 you at the last day. It is possible that their ingratitude 
 may be as nothing compared with yours ; their privi- 
 leges have not been sufficient to enable them to be so un- 
 grateful as you can be. It is possible that their hatred of 
 the truth has been as nothing when compared with yours. 
 Their instruction in the truth has not been sufficient to en- 
 able them to be so stubborn against it as you can be. Your 
 guilt must be peculiar because you are enjoying so rich and 
 diversified means of grace. Besides, your sobriety of char- 
 acter gives you an influence, and you throw your influence 
 into the scale of wickedness. You are so correct in your 
 outward conduct that your companions are secretly plead- 
 
254 NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 ing your example for their continuance in sin. We need 
 not repent, they say ; for there is an impenitent man, candid, 
 kind and scrupulously moral. Everybody speaks of him as 
 a good man and yet he neglects religion. We may be good 
 men and yet neglect religion. He is more exemplary than 
 many in the church. We may be exemplary and yet de- 
 spise the church. Scarcely any one has so much character 
 as he, and yet he is without piety. If we can bear the same 
 character we shall be satisfied and yet without piety. He 
 is safe and does not deny himself; we will be safe like him 
 and happy too. Were we confined to the companionship of 
 the drunkard and debauchee we should struggle for religion 
 which would disenthral us from the mortification of such 
 society ; but honored as we are with the companionship of 
 this model of propriety, what need we more? Belonging to 
 the same class with him, our destiny is linked with his — 
 how, how can we be unsafe? Ah, you who are almost a 
 Christian, you perhaps seldom think of this, but it is a most 
 solemn truth ! Your guilt is enhanced by the security which 
 your character gives to impenitence, and your descent into 
 ruin will be made the lower by the crowd of sinners who 
 are hanging like millstones on your skirts. Is it not enough, 
 is it not enough for a man to fall into the pit by his own 
 weight? Must he be dragged down deeper by men who are 
 clinging to him for support, and adding the burden of their 
 own iniquities to the immense burden of his? Not content 
 with ruining himself, must he ruin others? Not satisfied 
 with the society of Satan and his angels in despair, must 
 he gather around him his friends and neighbors and rcla- 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 255 
 
 tives, and live forever amid their reproaches for his example, 
 their execrations upon him for contaminating them, for 
 smoothing their path to woe, for quieting their conscience 
 in rebellion, for leaguing them with him in this world as his 
 admirers, and in the world to come as his most obnoxious 
 tormentors? Guilt, guilt altogether peculiar, the guilt of 
 light resisted, of mercy despised, of strong rebelHon, of bad 
 example peculiarly seductive, of souls hardened and un- 
 done, undone forever — all this guilt clings and will cling to 
 the amiable sinner who is after all not far from the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 In the third place, those sinners who are nearly Chris- 
 tians are in a condition of peculiar misery. The abandoned 
 man thinks that he has joys. He boasts of his mirth and 
 his sports of revelry. He has burst away so far from God 
 and God's law, and said tO' himself so fearlessly, "Soul, take 
 thine ease," that he dreams of happiness even in his debase- 
 ment. The Christian has real joy. He is a partaker at the 
 feast of divine love. He delights in his converse with Je- 
 hovah and his hope of glory. But the poor sinner who is 
 nearly a Christian is destitute of all joys. He cannot wallow 
 with the debauchee ; he will not soar with the child of God. 
 He finds no satisfaction in the world and goes mourning 
 all the day because he finds none in Christ. He cannot 
 sport with the profane and will not pray with the pious. 
 He has not enough of heaven to make that a delight, nor 
 enough of the world to make that a comfort — too much 
 conscience to be happy in sin, too much sin to be happy in 
 religion. Oh, the misery of living dissevered both from 
 
256 NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 earth and heaven ! He sits between two feasts ; the one a 
 feast of death, of wasting wine and sugared poisons ; the 
 other a feast of the bread of heaven and calm, undying joy. 
 He sits between and looks to his right hand and his left ; and 
 still he sits and looks again to his right hand and his left, 
 and sits, and sits, and sits, and famishes his soul and expects 
 naught but eternal hunger and pining and famishing away. 
 A traveler is allured on one of the stormy nights of winter 
 into a circle of noisy sinners. He mingles in their hilarity 
 and joins in their profane songs ; but when he thinks of his 
 own quiet dwelling far away from the scene of his sports, 
 and of his once happy but now anxious family, he stops his 
 jovial conversation and puts aside his bowl, and hastens to 
 his home. His heart beating with concern he climbs over 
 many a hill and presses through many a brake. Often a 
 bank of snow intercepts his progress, but exhausting labor 
 surmounts the difficulty. He quickens his footsteps over 
 the pathless fields, sometimes losing his direction, and 
 sometimes driven backward by the wind. Nature is already 
 spent, yet still he longs to reach his happy abode and faints 
 and longs and travels on, until at length he can behold his 
 dwelling all lighted to receive him. He can even see his 
 wife and children around the lire, all waiting for his return ; 
 and now he rouses his jaded body to an almost hopeful ef- 
 fort and utters one faint shriek and heaves one sigh, and then 
 falling to the ground dies in his own garden. He had worn 
 out his system that he might almost regain his cheerful fire- 
 side ; he had tired his nature that he might almost receive 
 the greetings of his children. Alas, nor wife, nor children 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 257 
 
 more shall he behold, nor friends, nor sacred home. He 
 tarried too long- with the circle of sinners, and then took 
 his mournful journey only to die in full view of his lost 
 joys. He fatigued his body only to die the sooner. And thou 
 who art nearly a Christian, thou art pursuing the same 
 journey and in danger of spending thy strength for the same 
 end, and falling at last into perdition from the very garden 
 of the Lord. How many harrowing thoughts, how many 
 anxieties, how many tears, how many painful attempts to 
 pray, how many severe resolutions to abandon the world! 
 And yet after all these troubles and sighs and groans, you 
 are still without hope, still bending under the burden of 
 your solicitudes, and perhaps will sink under their weight 
 into eternal, unappeased conviction. 
 
 Such a man, says John Howe, takes great pains to perish ; 
 such a man tries to perish just as sadly as he can. 
 
 In the fourth place, they who are almost Christians are 
 in a state of peculiar danger. They are in danger of trust- 
 ing in their seriousness and morality. They believe and 
 tremble ; therefore they expect to be saved. But they be- 
 lieve less firmly and they tremble less anxiously than a lost 
 soul, and will he be saved? They hope to attract the pity 
 of Jehovah because they are in continued grief. Yet there 
 is a world where there is weeping and wailing, and no pity 
 of God reaches that world. They think to gain the favor of 
 Jehovah by their correct outward demeanor when it is re- 
 vealed that a camel might have gone through a needle's 
 eye sooner than a young man with mere outward obedience 
 would have entered heaven. 
 
258 NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 They are in peculiar danger from another source. The 
 Holy Spirit may abandon them. Their power in sinning is 
 fearfully illustrated by the command, "Quench not the 
 Spirit." They who abuse most flagrantly the grace that is 
 proffered, they who have been warned most frequently of 
 their danger, and entreated most constantly to repent are 
 the men whom the long-suffering Comforter gives up at 
 length to their continued obstinacy. Thou art not far from 
 the kingdom of God, but thou canst not expect so long a 
 period of his striving as thou hast enjoyed. Thou hast re- 
 ceived already, I fear, the greatest part of thy good things ; 
 and "Let him alone" may soon be uttered against thy un- 
 grateful soul. When this is uttered there is an end of hope. 
 No sooner does the Holy Ghost abandon any sinner than 
 that sinner's sentence is not only written but sealed. What- 
 ever he can do, he will do nothing without the Spirit's aid, 
 but sin and only sin, and that continually and forever. But 
 those who are nearly Christians are in a danger the most 
 peculiar, because their threatened punishment is peculiarly 
 fearful. You have thought more than your neighbor about 
 God ; in this you have done wisely, but yet in this very act 
 of your wisdom, you have sinned against him the more. 
 You have thought more about heaven : you have thus re- 
 fused it more frequently. You have thought more about 
 hell and been more willing on the whole to endure its hor- 
 rors. After all your deliberations you have preferred on 
 the great whole to perish rather than submit. God will 
 recompense you accordingly. He treats all men in corre- 
 spondence with their prevailing choice. This is the prin- 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 259 
 
 ciple of the divine administration, tO' give heaven to those 
 who choose heaven rather than sin ; but when men choose 
 sin rather than heaven they shall have what they choose. 
 No man prefers misery, but every sinner chooses it rather 
 than submission, and he who perseveres in sin shall have 
 the misery that is intimately connected with it. It is so in 
 the nature of things. He who is nearly a Christian will 
 have remembrances, for example, that none other can have. 
 1 he heathen that perishes will have no Sabbath bell to be 
 recalled to his memory when he shall have lain down in 
 despair, no voice of the man of God, no pulpit from which 
 he heard warnings to repent, no Bibles, nor sermons which 
 had once awakened his attention, but had been abused and 
 trampled upon. But the serious sinner will feel with pe- 
 culiar keenness his loss of the Bible, of Christian counsel- 
 lors, of God's house, of all religious addresses, of all the 
 means of grace, of all prospect of conversion, of all hope of 
 pardon. All the influence which he had in this world will 
 be like a burden piled upon him in despair. All the souls 
 whom he had injured here will be there so many tormentors. 
 Strangers might have come down to the rich man in his 
 abode of woe and he might have borne it, but "my five 
 brethren" whom I have almost ruined ! — send Lazarus to my 
 five brethren lest they come hither to heap reproaches upon 
 me and add to my torment in this flame of remembrance. 
 The heavier the body is, the more painful the fall ; and the 
 serious sinner is laden with a ponderous weight of obliga- 
 tion, that if he do fall the blow will be as severe as the obH- 
 gation was ponderous. He rises high toward heaven that 
 
26o NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 if he do sink he may sink as low ; his descent must be just 
 as deep as his ascent was lofty ; he is almost a Christian that 
 if he continue in sin he may be almost a demon ; well-nigh 
 to the top of heaven that if he fall he may fall well-nigh to 
 the bottom of hell. Oh, how near he now is to Paradise ! 
 and the very nearness will be the instrument of his agony. 
 He had only one step to take and fell before he took it. 
 Oh, that one step ! He will think of it again and again. 
 That one step ! He will roll the thought of it over and over 
 in his mind — that one step ! only one step ! and he fell be- 
 fore he took it. He had gone to the threshhold of heaven, 
 and was almost determined to step over it, now that he had 
 come close to it. Almost there was joy among the angels 
 because he had almost consented to come among them. 
 Almost were they in the very act of clothing him with the 
 best robe, and putting the crown upon his head. They were 
 bending over the walls of heaven, and whispering. Let no 
 man take thy crown; put on thy new robe! They were 
 stretching out their arms almost near enough to take his 
 hand, and were quick in the entreaty. Just raise thy hand ! 
 raise it now ! raise it before it is too late ! only raise it ! But 
 he lingered and delayed, and deliberated and pondered, and 
 said. Not yet, not yet, until on a sudden it was too late. 
 The patience which had been so long abused, was now clean 
 gone forever, and he fell from the very door of heaven, and 
 there was no joy among the angels as they looked at the 
 robe almost adorning him, and the crown almost upon his 
 head, and drew in their extended arms, and turned away 
 their eyes from his deep damnation, and cried aloud: 
 
NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD 261 
 
 Fallen ! He is fallen from the heights of Zion, and as 
 he falls, he passes many a transgressor whom the world 
 thought more guilty than himself ; he falls to his own place 
 — that place peculiar to the sinner who is almost a Christian. 
 My friend, you who are near the kingdom of God, within 
 an inch of heaven, within a hand's breadth of hell, what do 
 you mean? So near the gate of Paradise, why do you not 
 enter? Only one step removed, why linger in taking that 
 one step? Nothing to do but to knock at the door, how 
 can you forbear to lift your hand? Already having weath- 
 ered so many storms, why will you carelessly wreck your 
 vessel just as it arrives in port? What will it avail you to 
 have been nearly saved, if you are entirely lost? What avail 
 to have been almost in heaven, if you are altogether in hell? 
 What does it profit the imprisoned malefactor to know that 
 the door of his dungeon is but one inch thick? It is an iron 
 door and never will be opened. Christ is near you ; he is 
 holding out the pardon to you. Take the pardon, he says, 
 giving me your heart. Take the pardon, trusting in me 
 as your friend. Come unto me, all ye that are weary. Ho, 
 every one that thirsteth! "And the Spirit and the bride 
 say, Come. And let him that heareth say. Come. . . . And 
 whosoever will, let him take the water of life" — "without 
 money and without price." 
 
PROFESSOR PARK AT 06 
 
 Bust by Jackson, of Florence, Italy, from sittings given in Itoston in 1S74, and now 
 in the library of Andover Theological Seminary 
 
ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD ARE 
 COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 
 
ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 
 
 "God is love." — / John 4: 16. 
 
 What is the character of Jehovah? No other query can 
 be so interesting- as this. We are inquisitive to learn what 
 were the traits of our ancestors ; but our dependence on an 
 earthly progenitor, when compared with our dependence 
 on our Father in heaven, is as nothing-. We are eager to in- 
 quire what is the disposition of our rulers ; but Jehovah is 
 the Potentate on whom we rely for our very breath. We 
 are restless to ascertain what are the qualities of the com- 
 panion with whom we must be associated during a protract- 
 ed journey or voyage ; but life is the real journey, the real 
 voyage, and God is the Being with whom we must remain 
 in ceaseless contiguity. Sickness will not separate us from 
 him. Death will augment our nearness to him. Eternity 
 will be spent in his immediate vision. His smile or frown 
 we shall see always. His voice we shall hear without a 
 pause. Who, then, and what, is this Being, so much more 
 intimately conjoined with us than is any ancestor, so much 
 more powerful over us than is any human governor, so 
 much nearer to us than is any earthly companion? Our anx- 
 
266 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 ieties are relieved by the answer given to this question by 
 our text. There is a solace in the very words of it. Not in 
 our whole langu,age are three syllables more affluent in 
 meaning. All our associations with the word "God" are 
 fitted to awaken reverence. All our associations with the 
 word "love" call forth a tenderness of interest ; and when 
 the awe elicited by the name of Jehovah is combined with 
 the reciprocated affection elicited by the idea of benevo- 
 lence, — when we read that God is love, — we are amazed 
 as well as gladdened by the enunciation, and we inquire 
 for the definite meaning and the practical results of it. 
 
 I. Our first impulse is to ascertain the precise import of 
 the words in our text. We do not read in the sacred vol- 
 ume that Gabriel is benevolence, nor that Michael is be- 
 nevolence, nor that Abraham, David, Jeremiah, Paul, or 
 even John, is benevolence; but we do read the emphatic 
 utterance, "God is love." Inspiration does not inform us 
 that Jehovah is all power or all knowledge, that he is un- 
 changeableness or eternity, but he is love. Not merely 
 are we assured that he has benevolence, that this is one 
 among other feelings which he puts forth, that it is a virtue 
 which appert,ains to him even as we read that "power be- 
 longeth unto God," but he is benevolence itself. Of course, 
 he possesses natural attributes, such as omnipotence and 
 omniscience; but our text implies that these are controlled 
 by the moral choice of the universal well-being. Of course, 
 he feels indignation against the malice of his enemies, and 
 an infinite disapproval of their sin in every form of it ; but 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 267 
 
 these are constitutional sentiments, and our text implies that 
 they are subservient to, and governed by, a wise preference 
 for the welfare of the universe. We should render but little 
 glory to his power or knowledge were it not guided by a 
 benignant spirit. We should recoil from his eternity and 
 immutability were they not a ceaseless duration of a love 
 which comprehends all the virtues, and knows not the shad- 
 ow of a change. While, then, our text implies indirectly 
 that all the natural attributes and involuntary sentiments of 
 Jehovah are controlled and ennobled by his good will, it 
 implies also that all his moral choice is the choice of the 
 general rather than the private welfare of sentient beings ; 
 it is the elective preference for the greater above the 
 smaller, for the higher above the lower, the welfare of all 
 beings who have a capacity for either holiness or happiness. 
 This choice or elective preference is put forth on the ground 
 of, and in proportion to, the worth or value of those 
 beings. In the Biblical language it is called love, and thus 
 by a figure substituting the act for the agent, God is love, 
 
 11. Having thus explained the meaning of the text, let us 
 proceed, in the second place, to prove its main doctrine, 
 that all the free chorees of the Most High are comprehend- 
 ed in a single, continuous preference for the largest and 
 highest well-being of the universe. 
 
 I. One proof is derived from the fact that all goodness 
 of heart is by the inspired writers summed up in love. They 
 require of us nothing more or less than to be perfect, as 
 our Father in heaven is perfect, and they affirm that all the 
 
268 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 law is fulfilled in one word : "Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
 as thyself." The law is a transcript of the divine perfec- 
 tions ; by learning" what his commands are, we learn what 
 God is ; yet "he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." 
 So says an apostle, and he elsewhere teaches that love is 
 the fulfilling of the law — the very law which requires all 
 our duties, and is "exceeding broad." We are assured 
 that all gifts of tongues and of prophecy, all knowledge and 
 faith, all outward virtues are nothing, and profit nothing, 
 without love. They may be the body of virtue, but love is 
 the soul of it. They may be the concomitants of virtue, but 
 love is its essence. We are informed that the end of the 
 commandment — its final purpose, its ultimate design, to 
 which all the parts of it aim and point — is love, not by 
 any means an involuntary kindness, but a free, loving 
 choice. The most spiritual expounder of the divine law 
 has taught us that "this is the first and great com- 
 mandment: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; 
 and the second is like unto it : Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang 
 all the law and the prophets." Where there is no 
 comprehensive love, no benignant election of the gen- 
 eral welfare, there may be amiable instincts, beautiful 
 sentiments, but there is no true moral goodness. It is 
 the first and the last teaching of the Bible, — on the surface 
 of it and in the depths of it, — that the highest of all virtues 
 is the choice of God as our supreme object of regard ; and 
 if there be any other commandment, it is briefly compre- 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 269 
 
 hended in this saying: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself." 
 
 2. An examination of the nature of God's moral attri- 
 butes gives a second proof that they are all involved in the 
 choice of the general welfare. What are these attributes? 
 One of them is a voluntary regard for the happiness of be- 
 ings considered as merely sentient. This is unmodified be- 
 nevolence. Another moral perfection still more attractive 
 is a love for the happiness of beings considered as miser- 
 able. This is mercy and this is benevolence combined with 
 constitutional pity, and the holiness of it lies in the volun- 
 tary good will rather than in the mere natural compassion. 
 A yet brighter moral attribute of God is a regard for the 
 welfare of beings considered as evil-doers. This is grace, 
 and this is benevolence associated with a natural disappro- 
 bation of wrong, and the holiness of it consists in the free 
 benevolence, rather than in the disapproving act of con- 
 science. 
 
 One adorable moral attribute of Jehovah is holiness 
 viewed as love toward all that is morally right and as ha- 
 tred toward all that is morally wrong; viewed as love 
 toward benevolence not merely because benevolence is 
 connected with happiness, but also because it is a good in its 
 own nature ; viewed as hatred toward malevolence not 
 merely because malevolence is adverse to happiness, but 
 also because it is an evil in its own nature. Now the benevo- 
 lence of Jehovah comprehends a love for all that is good, 
 and benevolence is itself a good, — its very name is moral 
 goodness. The benevolence of Jehovah comprehends a ha- 
 
270 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 tred of all that is evil, and malevolence is itself an evil, — its 
 very name is moral evil. As the love exercised by Jehovah 
 is a choice of the general rather than of a private good, so 
 its alternate form is a rejection of the private rather than of 
 the general good. His hatred of sin is in its essence the 
 same virtue as his preference for the greater above the 
 smaller well-being of the universe, himself included in the 
 universe. His hatred of wrong is the same virtue with, and 
 is only the alternate form of, his love of right ; and right 
 though connected with happiness is distinct from and nobler 
 than mere happiness, as wrong though connected with mis- 
 ery is distinct from and worse than simple misery. Thus 
 the holiness of God is a form of benevolence. 
 
 Another of his moral attributes is justice. Is this a form 
 of love? As the benevolence of God is an elective prefer- 
 ence for the higher above the lower kind, and for the 
 larger above the smaller amount, of the general well-being,^ 
 so in its very nature it involves a choice to bestow a reward 
 upon all who strictly deserve and can fitly claim to be re- 
 warded for exercising the same kind of preference, and it 
 also involves a choice to inflict a punishment upon all who 
 remain under law, and who deserve to be punished for ex- 
 
 ^ Some writers appear to make a distinction between "welfare" 
 and "well-being" ; to use "welfare" as generic, including both happi- 
 ness which they term "well-being" and also moral goodness which 
 they term "well-doing." The distinction is convenient and deserves 
 to be considered, but it is not adopted generally. The happiness is 
 so indissolubly connected with the moral "well-doing," and the high- 
 est form of happiness is so inextricably involved in the process of 
 this "well-doing," that the two conditions are both expressed by the 
 word "well-being" as synonymous with the word "welfare." 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 271 
 
 ercising the contrary preference. As the love of right has 
 for its alternate form a hatred of wrong, so the choice to 
 bestow a reward upon those who strictly deserve and can 
 justly claim to be rewarded has for its alternate form a 
 choice to inflict a punishment upon those who while under 
 law deserve to be punished. It is very true that God does 
 not look upon our holiness as entitled on the ground of its 
 own merit to the recompense of happiness. If he did look 
 upon it as having this merit of condignity, his will to be- 
 stow the deserved recompense would be comprehended in 
 good-will to the universe. But he does look upon our sin 
 as in its own nature deserving the recompense of pain ; his 
 will to inflict this merited recompense is not ill will to the 
 universe; it is good will. The volition to inflict a just pen- 
 alty on a foe to the common good has the same nature with 
 a volition to bestow a strictly just reward on a friend to the 
 common good. The two volitions are the positive and neg- 
 ative poles of one comprehensive choice. Thus our Ruler is 
 comprehensively benevolent in being just. He is just, not 
 in despite of, but on account of, his benevolence. His will 
 to punish transgressors according to their demerit is at- 
 tended with displacency and indignation toward moral evil ; 
 but these sentiments are the guard and the outward maj- 
 esty, rather than the essence, of the virtue that is ad- 
 mired in the justice/ 
 
 Yet another moral attribute of the Most High is veracity. 
 And is this love? It is a choice to promote the natural or 
 moral welfare of beings by using the signs of thought in 
 
 ^ Note 13 in Appendix. 
 
272 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 exact conformity with the thought itself. What, then, is 
 this attribute more than a preference for the dignity and 
 virtue of all beings capable of dignity and virtue ; the pref- 
 erence being associated with and adorned by an involun- 
 tary, and therefore not a moral, sense of fitness? 
 
 These are the divine attributes which consist in the re- 
 sponsible exercise of free will. They are modifications of 
 one generic choice animating the different sensibilities as- 
 sociated with it. 
 
 3. The past history of God's dispensations gives a third 
 proof that all his moral excellences are comprehended in 
 his choice of the general well-being. His entire character 
 is indicated when the omnipotent Monarch converses with 
 Moses like a friend, becomes as intimate with David as if 
 he were only an equal to a shepherd boy, dries up the tears 
 of Jeremiah, and as a mother tends her children so does he 
 fold all the prophets in his embrace. There are acts of God 
 which, because they have other natural elements, appear to 
 have some other moral element than that of good will. The 
 sensibilities connected with his affection for men when 
 they do right are different from the sensibilities connected 
 with his aversion to them when they do wrong; but the 
 moral principle in both exercises is the same. It was pri- 
 marily because he yearned with an infinite kindness over 
 the antediluvian world that, in the simple language of in- 
 spiration, the sight of human depravity made him repent 
 that he had created man, and grieved him at his heart. It 
 was originally because he cherished a pure love for those 
 transgressors that he hated their waste of probationary 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 273 
 
 time in eating and drinking, without care or thought of 
 spiritual truth. It was first because he dehghted in the 
 spiritual peace of society that he abhorred the race by 
 whom the earth was filled with violence. It was because 
 his benevolence prompted him to check the tide of their 
 corruption that he poured the flood upon them, and made 
 their sudden overthrow a motive to deter future genera- 
 tions from their imbruted life. The retributions which he 
 sent upon Sodom and Gomorrah were effluences of his 
 choice to promote the highest welfare of his universe. Had 
 he not preferred their well-being, he would not have 
 loathed their belittling usages; and had he not chosen to 
 prevent the contagion of their sin, he would not have burned 
 up their cities, even as a pest-house is consumed when its 
 very atmosphere becomes infectious. And with what signs 
 of tenderness is all this needful discipline relieved! "Shall 
 I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" said the kind 
 Father, who would never have raised his hand against his 
 children unless their sin against him had been very griev- 
 ous. And does not the confiding language of Abraham at- 
 test his intimate conviction that the just Judge is even be- 
 nignant? For with what a childlike trust does the patri- 
 arch intercede with his Maker: "Wilt thou destroy the 
 righteous with the wicked?. . . That be far from thee to do 
 after this manner. . . . Peradventure there shall lack five of 
 the fifty righteous : wilt thou destroy all the city for the lack 
 of five?" And He to whom punishment is a strange work 
 reveals his character in the reply: "If there be ten righteous 
 found in the city, I will not destroy it for ten's sake." So 
 
274 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 generous are the compassions of the Lord, that when he 
 threatened the men of Nineveh with dire ruin, he was 
 quick to pardon them at their incipient reformation. In- 
 imitable was the sympathy which flowed from him as he 
 pleaded with the unyielding prophet in behalf of these 
 guilty men, and justified his readiness to forgive their sins 
 and relieve their terrors : "And should I not spare that 
 great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand per- 
 sons that cannot discern between their right hand and their 
 left hand; and also much cattle?" He hesitates to over- 
 throw the magnificent palaces inhabited by transgressors 
 whose hearts are harder than the marble in which they live, 
 because round about those palaces are the mute animals 
 which his love has called into life, and in his love they all 
 live and breathe. Manifold are the developments of divine 
 justice, some of which have caused the ears of the men who 
 heard them to tingle; but the spirit of them all is illustrated 
 in that one deed of the Holy and Just One, who "so loved 
 the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that who- 
 soever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever- 
 lasting life." Herein is love, — justice also, but justice in- 
 volving the moral element of love, — not that we loved God, 
 but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation 
 for our sins, with which sins he is most fully displeased, but 
 over which he chooses that his grace reign triumphant. 
 
 III. Having now considered the meaning of our text 
 and the proof of the doctrine involved in it, let us, thirdly, 
 consider some of the practical truths which result from it. 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 275 
 
 I. The doctrine suggests the unity of God's character 
 and government. All the varying tones of an anthem de- 
 light us, when we catch the one sentiment which vivifies 
 them. We are charmed with the cathedral, whose choir, 
 nave, turrets have such fitnesses to each other as to make an 
 undivided impression. The planetary system we admire for 
 the simple force which controls its movements. All the 
 works of the great Architect afiford a symbol of the unity 
 which exists in himself. One great principle permeates the 
 phenomena of the suns and the stars, just as a single moral 
 feeling is expressed in the countless acts of Him who de- 
 velops his unity even in his material creations. Much more 
 does he exhibit a oneness in his law. Beautiful is the sim- 
 pHcity of all his commandments. As he requires that we 
 love sentient beings, so he is consistent with himself, and 
 requires a special love for his own offspring, who are the 
 objects of his kind care, and who are made in his image, a 
 part of which they still retain. There is a wise proportion in 
 the mandate. With all thy heart shalt thou love the Infinite 
 One, who encloses the universe in his affection, and as thy- 
 self shalt thou love thy neighbor, who is finite, and has no 
 claim on all thy heart and soul and mind and strength, but 
 is presumed to be thine equal in merit, and is accordingly 
 to be loved as thyself. The harmony which pervades the 
 character of God moves him to call for our repentance. For 
 what is repentance? It is a hatred for our sin, and involves 
 a sorrow for it. And what has been our sin? It has been a 
 choice of something other than the highest good. Our 
 voluntary hatred of this choice, then, is but another form of 
 
276 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 our love to the highest good ; and this is our benevolence, as 
 well as our repentance, and is in beautiful agreement with 
 the character of Him who hateth all opposition to the so- 
 cial and moral improvement of the universe. If we mourn 
 over our iniquities, we must rely for our eternal life on Him 
 who died for them. But this reliance is mere presumption, 
 unless it be prompted by love, and commingled with it. Ac- 
 cordingly, God requires faith, — not the faith which is a 
 tinkling cymbal, being devoid of charity, but the faith which 
 clings with affection to the atoning Sacrifice; the affection- 
 ateness of the faith embracing that moral principle which 
 in the Biblical style is called love, and in the style of some 
 divines is called a supreme choice of God, of his character, 
 of his moral government. Being commanded to believe in 
 Christ, we are also commanded to exercise fortitude, cour- 
 age, submission, patience, perseverance; not merely to 
 feel the sentiments which fit us to encounter and endure 
 pain, — these are cherished by savages, by unrenewed, ob- 
 durate transgressors, — but to put forth the moral prefer- 
 ences which fit us to do and bear all things so that we may 
 please Him whom we love because He hath first loved us. 
 And as our one Sovereign has thus prescribed for us a 
 symmetrical code of precepts, so has he oflfered heaven to 
 us on conditions congruous with one another. He tries 
 every inducement in varying the phases of the one prin- 
 ciple that he who believeth shall be saved. He proffers 
 heaven to us on the condition that we visit the fatherless 
 and the widow in their affliction, that we relieve the solitude 
 of the prisoner, put garments on the unclothed, welcome 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 277 
 
 the stranger to our fireside, supply the hungry with bread, 
 reach out the cup of cold water to one who is athirst, — all 
 these charities being performed with such a love for the 
 destitute as is proportioned to their worth, and such a love 
 for their Maker as agrees with his supreme claims. Who- 
 soever shall keep the least of the commandments shall 
 not lose his reward, even as he who offends in one point vi- 
 olates the whole law. Not more obvious is it that one vital 
 force extends through every nerve, vein, artery, of the body 
 than is the fact that one principle vitalizes the entire law 
 and the entire gospel. 
 
 It is in consequence of this one principle that all the con- 
 ditions on which our eternal welfare are suspended may be 
 easily understood. Each one explains every other. Chil- 
 dren, who learn the meaning of a hard word by its con- 
 nection with a plain one, catch the significance of a recon- 
 dite part of the law by its union with the single element of 
 love which pervades the entire law. The wayfaring man, 
 though a fool, need not err in regard to the way of sal- 
 vation: for whatever might be dark if insulated borrows 
 light from its adjuncts — they all shining in the radiance of 
 love. 
 
 Heartily, then, do we rejoice in the assurance not only 
 that there is one God, but that God is one in his moral at- 
 tributes. Our mind is like a sea, whose waters are restless 
 even in their lowest depths. We have tendencies in our 
 inferior nature warring against the higher principles of our 
 being. Our life is a struggle, a wrestle, a fight of affliction. 
 We crucify ourselves in the combat with our inward foes, 
 
278 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 but we rejoice that there is a mind free from the complexi- 
 ties and discrepancies that mar our character; having no 
 inward strife to quell, no intestine contradictions to rec- 
 oncile, no disparities nor inaptitudes to subdue. We are 
 calmed by the announcement, "/ am that I am;" for this 
 indicates an elevation above all inward fears ; and the heav- 
 enly rest begins in our hearts when we drink in the full, 
 conciliating, alluring words, "God is love." 
 
 2. The fact that all the moral attributes of Jehovah are 
 comprised in benevolence shows that he is amiable amid 
 his severest dispensations. Men have imagined that his be- 
 nignity is incompatible with the infliction of pain. They 
 have supposed his love to be an easiness of spirit, an unintel- 
 ligent aversion to all forms of distress. Will a sensitive 
 father, it is asked, consign his own offspring to perpetual 
 agony? Can a mother endure, will she willingly allow, the 
 sufferings of her babe? To God, his creatures are dearer 
 than are children to an earthly parent, and will he afflict 
 them? But the benevolence of our spiritual parent is not 
 an irrational partiality for our race. It were degraded by 
 confounding it with an instinctive liking, a constitutional, 
 sympathetic fondness. It is a remark of Leighton: "God 
 governs the world as a father, not as a mother." His love is 
 an intelligent affection, not for one man, not for one family 
 or tribe or race or world, but for all beings who can think 
 or feel; a preference for the system above a small part 
 thereof; for the general happiness above an individual's 
 pleasure ; for the common holiness above the universal 
 enjoyment. High as the heavens above the earth is the be- 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 279^ 
 
 nevolence of God above an indifference to the virtue of men 
 — above a willingness that they seek first their own comfort 
 even if they must find it in selfish aims. What though a 
 doting parent connives at the transgressions of his children 
 rather than discompose their spirits which ought to be dis- 
 turbed in their guilty course? The government of our 
 heavenly Father is more extended than that of a family on 
 earth; it reaches the bounds of the universe; it therefore re- 
 quires more care in preventing sin ; it extends to the heart ; 
 it is a deep moral government; it has access to all sources 
 of evidence; it is able to adapt its penalties to all forms of 
 evil; then it is not to be debased by accommodating it 
 to the superficial, outward, ephemeral policy of a narrow 
 household, or of a nation. 
 
 Besides, imperfect and shallow as are the principles of 
 domestic and civil government, a wise benevolence does not 
 allow that even this government pass by, with an easy good 
 nature, the crimes which it can detect. It is no true friend- 
 ship for society to dipense with penal enactments. What 
 chaos reigns in a family, where the sons prove vile, and the 
 father restrains them not! What havoc would overspread 
 our land, if our laws with their righteous penalties did not 
 stay the irruption of crime ! Not a street but assassins would 
 infest it, not a dwelling but incendiaries would bury its 
 sleeping inmates under its ashes — if the strong arm of the 
 magistrate were not raised in kindness to the widow and the 
 orphan, protecting them and their possessions from the as- 
 sault, shielding also their spirits from fear of vagabonds 
 and marauders. All this is but a crude symbol of the be- 
 
28o ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 neficence which lifts up the standard of law for the universe. 
 If the petty sovereignties of the earth must raise walls of 
 protection around the homes of men and guard the sick and 
 the weak from the knife of the freebooter, how much more 
 imperative is the need that a vigilant dominion be estab- 
 lished over the entire system of moral agents; that merited 
 penalties be held out for the transgressors in our world, so 
 as to secure the innocence of nobler spirits in higher worlds ; 
 that incorrigible sinners now existing be punished as they 
 deserve in order to accumulate new persuasives to holiness 
 upon the minds which are to exist in all future duration! 
 Even if the contracted and external institutions of men 
 could be safely left to the principles of non-resistance — de- 
 bilitating principles, enervating, emasculating, — still the 
 larger and spiritual dominion of the Universal Monarch de- 
 mands that the wicked shall by no means go unpunished. 
 Therefore it is the benevolence of Jehovah which leads him 
 to be severe. Penalties he must threaten in order to ar- 
 rest the inroads of sin, for sin is ruin; and what he threat- 
 ens he must inflict, for he is veracious, and his inflictions 
 will secure the tempted from the guilt into which they 
 would otherwise plunge. To the right hand, further than 
 the imagination can wander; to the left hand, beyond the 
 reach of the quickest and most extended thought, above us 
 and below us, behind us and before us, through all time and 
 eternity, do the influences of his government penetrate. 
 His laws affect all spirits that have been, are, or are to be. 
 If a single edict should be repealed, or a single penalty mit- 
 igated, he foresees the havoc which would ensue, and his 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 281 
 
 kindness forbids the abrogation of a single iota of his com- 
 mands. He is touched with pity for his frail children, who 
 need all allowable motives to deter them from apostasy. 
 He will afiflict his enemies because he chooses to defend the 
 cause of virtue against their machinations, and he will ban- 
 ish them from his presence, so that the good and the kind, 
 who will be the real majority of his universe, may be at 
 peace. There shall nothing hurt the conscience or destroy 
 the spirit of repose in the heavenly Jerusalem; but all shall 
 be serene, and he who is love shall reign in the affection of 
 all the wise. 
 
 3. The concentration of all God's moral attributes in 
 love illustrates the guilt and misery of incorrigible trans- 
 gressors. In modern as well as ancient poetry, we read of 
 the human conscience as unpitying, unrelenting, cruel, 
 revengeful, tormenting the malefactor with a scorpion lash. 
 Of all such epithets we say that they are poetry; they have 
 a deep meaning ; they imply that the conscience is just, is 
 our highest inward authority, deserves our obedience, our 
 homage. The epithets are so strong because the moral 
 sense is so important and exalted. It is our best friend; 
 and faithful are the wounds of a friend. Men do not lose 
 their veneration for the moral faculty because the poets ar- 
 ray it in robes of terror. Why then should they lose their 
 confidence in God because the inspired poets tell us of his 
 fury, jealousy, vengeance, the fierceness of his wrath; his 
 sword, arrows; his laughing at his adversaries? As we 
 know that bold figures of speech are employed for express- 
 ing the reproofs of our inward monitor which is a cor- 
 
282 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 relate to the divine justice, why do we wonder that bold 
 figures are employed for expressing the normal activity 
 of the justice itself? These figures impress upon us two 
 momentous truths. One is that Jehovah has the con- 
 stitutional sentiment of indignation against sin; another is 
 that he opposes iniquity by such manifestations of his ab- 
 horrence as cannot be intimated in literal speech. Human 
 language is inadequate to indicate the depth of his love 
 for the right and his hatred of the wrong. He is said 
 to be angry as he is said to repent. The words have 
 an unutterable meaning. Perhaps no others would be 
 so impressive upon the human race as a whole. They sug- 
 gest what no tongue can possibly express. We must re- 
 member that even in our best descriptions of the Most High 
 
 "Thought is deeper than all speech, 
 Feeling deeper than all thought." 
 
 Our text assures us, however, that no unhallowed, no 
 bitter feeling ever rises in the divine mind. That mind is 
 love. That mind, however, has enemies. These enemies 
 demean themselves as if their Ruler were tyrannical and 
 cruel. A stranger to them would not imagine that they 
 were resisting a benefactor, a friend faithful in their need, 
 an ever-watchful guardian, more than a parent, very pitiful, 
 and of tender mercy. The aggravation of their guilt is that 
 they are in conflict with goodness itself; they are in direct 
 antagonism to the impersonation of all pure friendship; 
 they recoil from a being who not only loves them but is 
 the sum of love. They reject him not only while he is be- 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 283 
 
 nevolence, but because he is impartial benevolence. If he 
 would love the few more than the many, and if they them- 
 selves were among these few, they would not reject him. 
 If he would sacrifice the general welfare to their own sinis- 
 ter aims, they would not rebel against him. But he pre- 
 fers the higher to the lower interests, the welfare of the 
 many to that of the few; he chooses to promote the holy 
 bliss of heaven, and of the inhabitants of the stars of heaven, 
 than to accommodate the narrow policy of selfish men; 
 therefore selhsh men discard him. If we had not known 
 him to be love itself, we had been comparatively without sin; 
 but now we have seen and known both him and his Son, 
 who is the express image of the Father's love, and hence 
 our sin remaineth. The demerit of it he has measured. He 
 has declared that unending punishment is the fit exponent 
 of the sinner's ill-desert. He hateth nothing which he hath 
 made. He doth not afflict willingly. He heareth the young 
 ravens when they are in want. He counteth the tears that 
 are to flow from men. He is unwilling that any of his crea- 
 tures should heave a sigh. He is slow to elicit one groan. 
 He hath no pleasure in the death of an enemy. He chooseth 
 that all come to him and dwell in bliss. But with all these 
 yearnings of a Father's heart, he avers that the demerit of 
 sin cannot be fully manifested except by setting over 
 against it the pain- which is never to end. In his grace and 
 longsuffering he has forewarned us of our peril ; he has not 
 taken us by surprise; in his equity he has held out before 
 us the balances in which our sin is laid, — in one scale a re- 
 jection of his love; in the other, an eternity of woe, — the 
 
284 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 very woe which he, of all other beings, is the most unwil- 
 ling to inflict, — unwilling because he is love; and still he 
 does inflict it because he is impartial, wise, just love. 
 
 Here, then, is the divine estimate of our blameworthiness. 
 We may underrate it, but the Omniscient Judge has gauged 
 it accurately. We are partial to our own character, but his 
 affection even for us transcends our own self-love. He then 
 cannot exaggerate our turpitude ; and the estimate which 
 has been formed of it by his boundless wisdom is one which 
 his boundless compassion is slow to express, for punishment 
 is his last work; at the day of judgment the condemning 
 sentence is the last sentence. If he were literally revengeful, 
 his punitive sentence might be borne. If he delighted in 
 the misery of his offspring, they would buoy themselves up 
 against him, and their sense of right would alleviate their 
 distress. But it is not an enemy that afflicts them, and this 
 is the emphasis of their grief. Their sorrows come from 
 him who has cried: How shall I give thee up? why will ye 
 die? I have no pleasure in your loss. 
 
 This is the depressing thought ever weighing down the 
 soul of the condemned: "We are punished by Him who had 
 never disturbed our peace but for the universal well-being. 
 We are in heaviness of heart, because He who once bare 
 long with us could endure our rebellion no longer. Our 
 weariness cometh from the displeasure of One who is never 
 displeased save by evil. Our own reason is our first accuser. 
 Our own conscience is our first avenger. Here is the proof 
 of our vileness: we have caused our own troubles, and our 
 Friend who is ever compassionate is not allowed by his in- 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 285 
 
 finite g-oodness to relieve us from them, and his reason for 
 continuing to inflict them is, that he is watching for the wel- 
 fare of his system." The Omniscient Mind expresses the 
 wonderfulness of our disregard for the welfare of this sys- 
 tem when he says: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O 
 earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and 
 brought up children, and they have rebelled against me." 
 "Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly 
 afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. For my people 
 have committed two evils: they have forsaken me the foun- 
 tain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken 
 cisterns, that can hold no water." ^ 
 
 4. The fact that all the moral attributes of God are con- 
 centrated in his love, quickens, strengthens and deepens our 
 confidence in his government. One class of men have com- 
 plained of his government as it is seen in the sphere of na- 
 ture. They have described the myriads of animals which 
 have preyed upon each other, and have been at last de- 
 voured by their antagonists. They have portrayed the mul- 
 titude of diseases which have afflicted us and our progeni- 
 tors, and which have made it fearful to live, while it has 
 been more fearful to die. Another class of men have com- 
 plained of the divine administration as it is exhibited in the 
 Bible. They have stigmatized some Biblical doctrines as 
 hard and harsh. They have criticized certain sentiments of 
 the psalmists and the prophets, of the apostles also, and 
 even of our blessed Lord, as implying that the divine gov- 
 ernment is arbitrary or unkind. No more plausible, no 
 
 ^ Isa 1:2; Jer. 2 : 12, 13. 
 
286 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 less plausible, objection has been made against the natural, 
 than against the supernatural, government of God. Every 
 one of these objections, however, loses its force just so far 
 as we have proof that the doctrine of our text is true. 
 Whatever attribute God possesses he possesses in an in- 
 finite degree; and if we are truly rational we shall adore 
 the ways of infinite love, even when they are past finding 
 out. 
 
 We may imagine an animalcule spending its entire life in 
 traversing a pillar of a cathedral. It is too short-sighted 
 to see the other pillars of the edifice, too short-lived to 
 climb so far as to the arches connecting them. It has no 
 conception of the arches as upheld by the pillars and as 
 upholding the roof; not the slightest apprehension of the 
 cathedral as a whole, or of the one idea embodied in its 
 nave, transepts and spires. We may imagine this animal- 
 cule criticizing the marble on which it creeps; carping at 
 the mountains upon it so difficult to ascend, at the ravines 
 and precipices so dangerous to the traveler; fretting 
 against the maker of the marble because he throws needless 
 obstructions into the path of the insect which has but a 
 single day to live, and spends that day in complaining. 
 Because we are superior to the animalcule we find it hard 
 to comprehend its criticisms. We look upon the stone of 
 the cathedral as smooth and polished; we find it difficult 
 to imagine how there can appear to be hills and valleys in 
 the marble; we delight in the pillars and arches as har- 
 monizing with each other and with the spires; we are 
 charmed with the spires as emphasizing the idea which the 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 287 
 
 entire edifice expresses — the idea of aspiration toward the 
 heavens. 
 
 Whenever we hear the infidel inveighing against the doc- 
 trines which are built into the temple of divine truth, we are 
 reminded of animalcules finding fault with the cathedral. 
 In his childhood he looked at the stars as they seemed to be 
 scattered abroad in the heavens, and he did not discern their 
 relation to each other, their order, their mutual harmonies, 
 — satellite balancing satellite, constellation set over against 
 constellation, one retinue of globes exactly adjusted to an- 
 other retinue. He did not deem himself qualified to con- 
 demn the mechanism of the heavens. When, however, he 
 arrives at man's estate he does not shrink from criticizing 
 the doctrines of the Bible as if he comprehended all their 
 vast relations. He discovers mountains of difficulty, just as 
 the ephemera discovers them in the poHshed stone. He 
 confines his view to one or another doctrine which seems 
 to be centrifugal, and does not expand his vision to the cen- 
 tripetal truth which holds all the other truths revolving in 
 harmony around it. This central truth is that God is love 
 — love signally manifest in God incarnate, preeminently 
 manifest in the Incarnate One at the hour when he was lift- 
 ed up so as to draw all men unto him. At that hour of his 
 sacrifice he drew all the truths of religion around him. We 
 need not deny, we should rather admit, that there are deep 
 and dark mysteries in the works and in the Word of God. 
 His world was not made as we should have made it, and his 
 Word was not written as we should have written it. If they 
 were not mysterious in many of their aspects they would not 
 
288 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 be his works or his Word. There is, however, a Hght shining 
 around and above the mysteries. There is such prepon- 
 derating evidence for his goodness that we should explain 
 all opposing signs in conformity with it. We should inter- 
 pret the obscure by the plain, and not the plain by the ob- 
 scure. The dark events of the world, the dark statements 
 of the Bible, will be illumined by the radiance of his smile 
 when we are admitted into the presence of Him who is in- 
 finite love. 
 
 5. The fact that all God's moral attributes are com- 
 prised in his benevolence is rich in its allurements to a phil- 
 anthropic and pious life. We have already attended to the 
 inspired words which represent sin as wonderful.' It is won- 
 derful because the incentives to holiness are so powerful. 
 Regarding these incentives alone, we should presume that 
 men will love Him from whom cometh down every perfect 
 gift. It is the normal tendency of love to insure a recipro- 
 cated attachment. If you wish men to weep, you must shed 
 tears in their presence; if you desire their gratitude, you 
 must bestow favors upon them; if you love them, you ex- 
 pect that they will love you, for even the publicans and sin- 
 ners return the afifection which they receive from their fel- 
 low men. Depraved as we are, we still retain certain con- 
 stitutional principles prompting us to reciprocate the love of 
 God toward us. Nothing but obdurate and entire sinful- 
 ness can altogether resist the action of these principles. 
 Conscience commands and urges us to comply with them. 
 It promises a reward for obeying them; it threatens a pun- 
 
 ' See p. 285 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 289 
 
 ishment for disobeying them; it discerns an attractive 
 beauty in every line and feature of the divine character. 
 Our judgment advises that we consecrate ourselves to the 
 service of Him who is the source from which our feebler in- 
 telligence is derived, and the pattern after which it is formed. 
 Self-interest impels to the union with the Potentate from 
 whom if we separate ourselves we are punished from the 
 presence of the Lord and the glory of his power. 
 
 Various qualities have been prescribed as essential to 
 the character of a true friend. He must be one whom we 
 respect ; for love will not be firm unless on the basis of 
 esteem. But our supreme love for God is favored by his 
 worthiness, not of our mere respect, nor of our mere rev- 
 erence, but of our adoration. A friend must be one whose 
 attachment is not fickle, capricious, vacillating, but fit for 
 our steady, undeviating reliance. The perfection of God's 
 love is that it endures from everlasting to everlasting. Its 
 radiance is the more cheering when our enemies would en- 
 velop us in darkness. In our desertion this friend draweth 
 the nearer to us. In our sorrow he smileth upon us the 
 more cheeringly. Winning, therefore, are our motives to 
 make him our chief joy. 
 
 But to love him is to be like him. It is to love his chil- 
 dren. If we love not our brother whom we have seen, how 
 can we love God whom we have not seen? To be a true 
 philanthropist is to intercede with God in behalf of our suf- 
 fering race ; to become their servant for Jesus' sake ; to copy 
 the example of Him who went about doing good — who 
 was not content to forgive his enemies, but he labored, suf- 
 
290 ALL THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 
 
 fered even unto death for them. If we love God we must 
 love men when we know them to be undeserving of our love, 
 for he is kind to the unthankful ; we must have an affection, 
 strong, firmly grounded, established on principle, for ene- 
 mies as well as friends. The choice of Jehovah as our su- 
 preme good connects us not only with our own race, but 
 with all orders of holy intelligences ; for they are all eman- 
 ations from Him who is our chief joy. We and they are all 
 members of one family, looking up in union to our Father 
 which is in heaven. 
 
 There is grandeur in many scenes in nature. Our 
 thoughts are elevated by the contemplation of the worlds 
 revolving around one central luminary, receiving from it 
 light and warmth, and seeming to yield a glad obeisance to 
 it in their quick revolutions. But all they who love the 
 Lord are like the stars of the firmament, and shall shine for- 
 ever and ever, he irradiating them with his own effulgence, 
 and shedding a warmth over and around them from his 
 own centralizing and ever-flowing kindness. Evermore shall 
 we joy in reflecting the brightness of his glory. Evermore 
 shall we surround his throne, shining in his grace. Here 
 is a new incentive to a life harmonizing with his love. They 
 who harmonize with it in this world are sure of their bless- 
 edness in the world to come ; and the certainty of this bless- 
 edness allures them to diligence in preparing for it. We 
 have an instinctive tendency to believe that at last truth will 
 prevail, and especially that love will triumph over its ene- 
 mies. Once the perfect love was humiliated; once it ap- 
 
ARE COMPREHENDED IN HIS LOVE 291 
 
 peared to have been conquered ; but its seeming defeat was 
 the ground of its ultimate victory. For we read that "He 
 who was in the form of God did not regard it as a prize to 
 be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, and took 
 the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, 
 even the death of the cross ; and for this reason God highly 
 exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above 
 every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should 
 bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to 
 the glory of God the Father/ On the cross our Redeemer 
 exercised his atoning love ; his future reign is the result 
 of his atoning death; this atoning death is the great fact 
 of the divine government; it is the ground on which the 
 sacrifices of the old dispensation were prescribed, and on 
 which the glories of the new dispensation are to be per- 
 fected ; thus it is the central fact of history and the central 
 truth of the gospel. If here we are coworkers with our 
 Redeemer, if we suffer with him, we shall reign with him 
 hereafter. His reign is to be the unending honor of love. 
 His character is an ocean of love in which we are to bathe, 
 an atmosphere of love which we are to breathe. What 
 manner of persons, then, ought we to be, in all holy living 
 and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the com- 
 ing of the day of God, — looking for the new heavens and 
 the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness?"' 
 
 'Phil. 2: 5-11; Heb. 2: 9 sq. 
 
 "2 Pet. 3; 11-13; I Cor. i: 7-9; Titus 2: 11-13. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Notes on Sermon on The Theology of the Intellect 
 
 Note i, p. 78. This reasoning is valid only on the suppo- 
 sition that our Saviour died for all men. — One of Mr. Syming- 
 ton's arguments for the doctrine that Christ made his atonement 
 for a part only, not the whole of the race, is derived, singular as 
 it may appear, from the "rectitude of the divine character." 
 He says in his Treatise on the Atonement, Part I, Sect. 
 XL Sect. II. 2: "The supreme Being gives to every one his due. 
 This principle cannot be violated in a single instance. He can- 
 not, according to this, either remit sin without satisfaction, or 
 punish sin where satisfaction for it has been received. The 
 one is as inconsistent with perfect equity as the other. If the pun- 
 ishment for sin has been borne, the remission of the offence 
 follows of course. The principles of rectitude suppose this, nay 
 peremptorily demand it; justice could not be satisfied without it. 
 Agreeably to this reasoning, it follows that the death of Christ 
 being a legal satisfaction for sin, all for whom he died must enjoy 
 the remission of their offences. It is as much at variance with strict 
 justice or equity that any for whom Christ has given satisfaction 
 should continue under condemnation, as that they should have been 
 delivered from guilt without a satisfaction being given for them 
 at all. But it is admitted that all are not delivered from the punish- 
 ment of sin, that there are many who perish in final condemnation. 
 We are therefore compelled to infer, that for such no satisfaction 
 has been given to the claims of infinite justice — no atonement has 
 been made. If this is denied, the monstrous impossibility must be 
 maintained, that the infallible Judge refuses to remit the punishment 
 of some for whose offences he has received a full compensation; that 
 he finally condemns some, the price of whose deliverance from con- 
 demnation has been paid to him; that, with regard to the sins of 
 some of mankind, he seeks satisfaction in their personal punishment 
 
296 APPENDIX 
 
 after having obtained satisfaction for them in the sufferings of 
 Christ; that is to say, that an infinitely righteous God takes double 
 payment for the same debt, double satisfaction for the same offence, 
 first from the surety, and then from those for whom the surety 
 stood bound. It is needless to add that these conclusions are re- 
 volting to every right feeling of equity, and must be totally inappli- 
 cable to the procedure of Him who 'loveth righteousness and hateth 
 luickedness.' " 
 
 Mr. Symington's inferences in this paragraph are correct, if his 
 premises are to be understood as intellectual statements of the truth. 
 But Dr. Jonathan Edwards (in his Works, Vol. II. p. 26) teaches 
 us that "Christ has not in the literal and proper sense paid the debt 
 for us ;" that this expression and others similar to it are "meta- 
 phorical expressions, and therefore not literally and exactly true." 
 He says further (Works, Vol. II. p. 48) concerning distributive jus- 
 tice, that it "is not at all satisfied by the death of Christ. But 
 general justice to the Deity and to the universe is satisfied." A 
 similar remark he appends with regard to the satisfaction of the 
 law. See also Andrew Fuller's Works, Vol. IV. pp. 92-100. ist Am. 
 Ed. 
 
 A true representation seems to be, that although Christ has not 
 literally paid the debt of sinners, nor literally borne their punishment, 
 nor satisfied the legislative or the remunerative justice of God in any 
 such sense or degree as itself to make it obligatory on him to save 
 any sinners ; yet the atonement has such a relation to the whole 
 moral government of God, as to make it consistent with the honor of 
 his legislative and retributive justice to save all men, and to make 
 it essential to the highest honor of his benevolence or general justice 
 to renew and save some. Therefore it satisfies the law and justice 
 of God so far and in such a sense as to render it proper for him 
 not only to give many temporal favors, but also to offer salvation to 
 all men, bestow it upon all who will accept it, and cause those to 
 accept it for whom the interests of the universe allow him to in- 
 terpose his regenerating grace. 
 
 Note 2, p. 86. It has already been explained that the theol- 
 ogy of the intellect is the system which recommends itself to a dis- 
 passionate and unprejudiced mind as true, and the present dis- 
 course has no direct and prominent reference to the various forms 
 of intellectual theology which, in the view of such a mind, are 
 
APPENDIX 297 
 
 false. It has also been explained that the theology of the heart 
 is the collection of statements which recommend themselves to 
 the healthy and moral feelings as right, and the present dis- 
 course has no direct and prominent reference to the various 
 forms of representation which are suggested by and suited to the 
 diseased, the perverted moral feelings. One of the most graphic 
 descriptions of a theology which is neither of a sound intellect nor 
 sound heartj but is alike impervious to argument, reckless of con- 
 sequences, and dependent on an ill-balanced state of the sensibilities, 
 may be found in the following Letter to Dr. Henry Ware, Jr. That 
 calm reasoner had published a sermon in opposition to some injurious 
 sentiments which had been recently propounded at Cambridge, and 
 acknowledging the receipt of the sermon, the advocate of those sen- 
 timents replied : — If your discourse "assails any doctrines of mine, — 
 perhaps I am not so quick to see it as writers generally, — certainly 
 I did not feel any disposition to depart from my habitual content- 
 ment, that you should say your thought, whilst I say mine. 
 
 "I believe I must tell you what I think of my new position. It 
 strikes me very oddly, that good and wise men at Cambridge and 
 Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I 
 have always been, — from my very incapacity of methodical writing, — 
 'a chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail, — lucky when 
 I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to 
 the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the mas- 
 ters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advan- 
 tages of my position ; for I well know, that there is no scholar less 
 willing or less able to be a polemic. I could not give account of my- 
 self if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the 'argu- 
 ments' you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands. 
 For I do not know what arguments mean, in reference to any ex- 
 pression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think ; but if you 
 ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am tlie most helpless 
 of mortal men. I do not even see, that either of these questions ad- 
 mits of an answer. So that, in the present droll posture of my 
 affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance of a 
 heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of 
 such a personage, who is to make good his thesis against all comers. 
 
 "I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other 
 good men write, as I have always done, — glad when you speak my 
 thoughts, and skipping the page that has nothing for me. I shall go 
 
^98 APPENDIX 
 
 on, just as before, seeing whatever I can, and telling what I see ; and, 
 I suppose, with the same fortune that has hitherto attended me; the 
 joy of finding, that my abler and better brothers, who work with the 
 sympathy of society, loving and beloved, do now and then unex- 
 pectedly confirm my perceptions, and find my nonsense is only their 
 own thought in motley. And so I am your affectionate servant, 
 
 R. W. Emerson." 
 
 One of the amazing maladjustments in human life, is that in 
 which a pious man has such idiosyncrasies, or has been so misedu- 
 cated as to believe in a false intellectual system, and to feel an impul- 
 sive attachment to it. He is of all men the most incorrigible. Argument 
 is wasted uport him, and his prejudices are the more unyielding be- 
 cause fortified by conscience. He is also an unhappy man, for his 
 erroneous views do not harmonize entirely or easily with his pious 
 feelings. Hence he often becomes a schismatic, a disorganizer, a 
 crossed and uncomfortable member of society, a public phenomenon. 
 
 Note 3, p. 90. The censure frequently pronounced upon the 
 style in which writers like Baxter, Bunyan and Davies describe 
 the punishment of the lost, is no further merited than this style 
 can be shown to be unfaithful to the truth, or to the imperative 
 necessities of the minds to which it was addressed. If the publica- 
 tions of the American Tract Society, which are designed not for 
 philosophical criticism but for practical impression, should, as 
 some would have them, describe the future state of the lost as it 
 is described by a merely scientific theologian, they would forfeit 
 their popular influence, and perhaps would convey error instead 
 of truth to the mass of their readers. That all uninspired vol- 
 umes are imperfect in delineating "the terrors of the Lord," is 
 doubtless true. Their imperfection, however, does not consist 
 in their using the Biblical forms of statement, but in their de- 
 viating from or else misapplying these forms. Our Saviour 
 adopted a different phraseology from that of the prophets before him, 
 and that of the apostles after him ; and a wise preacher would not 
 exhort a Newton and a Leibnitz in the same terms, although he 
 would use the same great ideas which he would employ in address- 
 ing little children, or in expostulating with the rudest and coarsest 
 of malefactors. The Biblical impression of the particular incidents 
 in the eternal punishment of some and the eternal blessedness of 
 
APPENDIX 299 
 
 others, is of course the best impression which can be made upon the 
 heart; but the mental eye hath not seen, nor ear heard of the exact, 
 precise instruments which God hath prepared for the retribution of 
 those who hate, or of those who love him. 
 
 Note 4, p. 95. It is on the principles indicated in the pre- 
 ceding topic, that the aphorism of Pascal (Thoughts, ch. III.) 
 may be explained : God "has chosen that" divine truths "should 
 enter from the heart into the mind, and not from the mind into 
 the heart, in order to humble that proud power of reasoning which 
 pretends it should be the judge of things which the will chooses, 
 and to reform that infirm will which is wholly corrupt through its 
 unworthy inclinations. And hence, instead of saying, as men do 
 when speaking of human things, that we must know them before 
 we can love them, which has passed into a proverb, the saints, 
 when speaking of divine things, say, that we must love them in 
 order to know them, and that we receive the truth only by love ; — 
 which is one of their most useful maxims." These words mean, 
 not that the heart ever perceives, for the intellect only is per- 
 cipient, but that holy feelings prompt the intellect to new discoveries, 
 furnish it with new materials for examination and inference, and 
 regulate it in its mode of combining and expressing what it has dis- 
 cerned. An affection of the heart toward a truth develops a new 
 relation of that truth, and the intellect perceives the relation thus 
 suggested by the feeling. On the same principles may we interpret 
 the celebrated paradox of Anselm, of Canterbury: "I do not seek to 
 understand a truth in order that I may believe it, but I believe it in 
 order that I may understand it." This remark may be made to ap- 
 pear rational by the paraphrase : I first have some idea of a doctrine ; 
 I then cordially believe all that I have an idea of; next, by the love in- 
 volved in this hearty faith I am inspirited to form still more definite 
 ideas of that which I had before perceived clearly enough to believe 
 it affectionately; and at last, by the relation which is thus developed 
 between the doctrine and my feelings, I obtain yet more distinct and 
 extended ideas of it, so that I may be said to understand it. 
 
 Note 5, p. loi. The preceding illustration suggests some, not all, 
 of the causes why the doctrine that men are unable to be more 
 virtuous than they really are, becomes less injurious as it is taught 
 by pious divines than as it is taught by infidel philosophers. 
 
500 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 One generic cause is, that the earnest preacher often contradicts 
 in his exhortation what he has seemed to advocate in his discussion: 
 but the intellectual deist has not the heart to modify his denial of 
 human freedom ; he retains in all exigencies the unbending theory, 
 that man has no power to be better than he is. 
 
 A second subordinate cause, really included in the first, is, that the 
 Christian points this doctrine chiefly to the present or the future, 
 but the infidel extends it equally to the past. The pious necessarian 
 has a good moral purpose in declaring that the present and future ob- 
 ligations of men, do and will exceed their power ; he designs to foster 
 thus a spirit of dependence on God ; but, for another good moral 
 purpose, he shrinks from informing men that their past obligations 
 exceeded their power. The reckless fatalist, however, is as willing to 
 assert that men have obeyed the law heretofore to the extent of their 
 ability, as that men will have no ability, without supernatural aid, to 
 obey the law hereafter. He is ready to stiffe remorse by assuring 
 the convicts of a penitentiary that they have possessed no more 
 power than they have exercised to choose aright; that is, their 
 choices have been as benevolent as they could have been. It is doubt- 
 less true, that in precisely the same sense in which a man is or 
 will be unable to perform his duty, in that sense he has performed 
 his duty as well as he was able to perform it, has done all the good 
 which was possible for him to do. But the best feelings of a Chris- 
 tian forbid his use of such language in regard to the past, favor his 
 use of the opposite, and thus induce him to mitigate the evils of as- 
 serting without qualification that man's power is less than his duty. 
 
 A third reason why the necessarianism of Christian divines becomes 
 less injurious than the fatalism of infidel philosophers is, that the 
 most trustworthy of these divines acknowledge their necessarian 
 doctrine to be expressed in the language of the emotions, while the 
 fatalist contends for the intellectual exactness of his phraseology. 
 The wise preacher believes in only a moral, the fatalist in a natural 
 impotence. In Andrew Fuller's Apparent Contradictions Reconciled 
 (Works, Vol. VIII. pp. Si-SS, First Am. Ed.), his fourth proposition 
 is, "The depravity of human nature is such that no man, of his own 
 accord, will come to Christ for life ;" and his fifth proposition is, 
 "The degree of this depravity is such, as that, figuratively speaking, 
 men cannot come to Christ for life." The younger Pres. Edwards 
 says (Works, Vol. I. p. 307), "Dr. Clarke, in his Remarks on Collins 
 (p. 16), gives a true account of moral necessity: 'By moral necessity 
 
APPENDIX 301 
 
 consistent writers never mean any more than to express in a figura- 
 tive manner the certainty of such an event.' " Dr. Day (on the Will, 
 p. 107) remarks, "We are not justified in pronouncing this figura- 
 tive use to be wholly improper" (inadmissible). The elder Pres. 
 Edwards, although he may not have applied the epithet figurative to 
 the necessarian terminology which he employs, yet often applies to it 
 the epithet improper, which means in this connection not inadmis- 
 sible but figurative. "No inability whatsoever," he says (on the 
 Will, Part III. Sect. IV.), "which is merely moral, is properly called 
 by the name of inability." Natural inability "alone is properly called 
 inability." "I have largely declared," he says in his Letter against the 
 literal necessarianism of Lord Kames (Works, Vol. II. pp. 293, 294, 
 Ed. 1829), "that the connection between antecedent things and con- 
 sequent ones which takes place with regard to the acts of men's 
 wills which is called moral necessity is called by the name of ne- 
 cessity improperly; and that all such terms as must, cannot, impos- 
 sible, unable, irresistible, unavoidable, invincible, etc., when applied 
 here, are not applied in their proper signification, and are either used 
 nonsensically and with perfect insignificance, or in a sense quite di- 
 verse from their original and proper meaning, and their use in com- 
 mon speech ; and that such a necessity as attends the acts of men's 
 will is more properly called certainty than necessity; it being no 
 other than the certain connection between the subject and predicate 
 of the proposition which affirms their existence." 
 
 So sure is it that man with his unrenewed nature will sin, and 
 only sin in his moral acts, and so important is it that this infallible 
 certainty be felt to be true, that our hearts often incline us to desig- 
 nate it by the most forcible epithets. These epithets often make 
 the truth appear obvious to those whom pride has removed to a 
 distance from it, just as the colossal proportions of a statue raised 
 above the capital of a pillar, make the statue appear like the exact 
 image of a man to those who look up to it from the remote valle)^ 
 But if we infer from the literal meaning of necessity, that our so- 
 called necessary choices are in fact inevitable, we commit the same 
 mistake as if we should infer from the colossal dimensions of the 
 statue, that the individual represented by it is a giant. It is easy 
 to see, that the language of feeling in which divines may and do 
 occasionally express the certainty of wrong choice, must be different 
 in its influence from the language of the intellect in which fatalists 
 invariably express their doctrine of the necessity of all choice. The 
 
302 APPENDIX 
 
 demands of a soul which loves to invoke from heaven, are met 
 by a faithful description of that certainty which, in the words of 
 Pres. Day (Examination of Edwards, p. 167), is a "necessity falsely 
 so called." The truth is mournful, humbling, well fitted to awaken 
 a spirit of prayer, that man left to himself will invariably, surely sin, 
 but it gives no sanction to the demoralizing falsehood that, in the 
 literal and proper sense, he must inevitably sin. 
 
 That the terms of feeling and of common life should have been 
 adopted as the scientific nomenclature on the subject of the will, has 
 been submissively regretted by our best theologians. He must be a 
 strong man who can bear up under this cumbrous nomenclature 
 without lapsing sometimes into its literal, which is not its technical 
 meaning ; and many a Samson having been overpowered by its heavi- 
 ness, has been compelled to "grind in the prison-house" of Gaza. 
 In one of his most eloquent passages, Pres. Edwards thus laments 
 the deceptive influence of these "terms of art;" "Nothing that I 
 maintain supposes that men are at all hindered by any fatal necessity, 
 from doing and even willing and choosing as they please, with full 
 freedom; yea, with the highest degree of liberty that ever was 
 thought of, or that could possibly enter into the heart of any 
 man to conceive. I know it is in vain to endeavor to make some 
 persons believe this, or at least fully and steadily to believe it ; for if 
 it be demonstrated to them, still the old prejudice remains, which has 
 been long fixed by the use of the terms necessary, must, cannot, im- 
 possible, etc. ; the association with these terms of certain ideas incon- 
 sistent with liberty, is not broken; and the judgment is powerfully 
 warped by it; as a thing that has been long bent and grown stiff, 
 if it be straightened, will return to its former curvity again and 
 again." (Works, Vol. II. pp. 293, 294. Ed. 1829.) 
 
 Note 6, p. 104. We have a safeguard against the dreams 
 of visionaries in the two principles already stated, that rea- 
 son has an ultimate, rightful authority over the sensibilities, 
 and that it will sanction not only all pious feelings, but likewise 
 all those which are essential developments of our original con- 
 stitution. As the head is placed above the heart in the body, so 
 the faith which is sustained by good argument, should control 
 rather than be controlled by those emotions which receive no ap- 
 proval from the judgment. The perfection of our faith is, that 
 it combine in its favor the logic of the understanding with the 
 
APPENDIX 303 
 
 rhetoric of the feelings, and that it exclude all those puerilities 
 and extravagances, which have nothing to recommend them but the 
 pretended inspirations of the fanatic. Whenever a discrepancy ex- 
 ists between a creed and an expression of devotional feeling, as for 
 example between the "Thirty-nine Articles" and the "Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer," the symbol of faith ought to be in a style so prosaic 
 and definite as to form the decisive standard of appeal, and to ex- 
 plain, rather than be explained by the liturgical, which are apt to be 
 fervid utterances. 
 
 Note 7, p. 107. The fallen, evil nature, which precedes and 
 certainly occasions a man's first actual sin, is, like all other evil, 
 odious, loathsome. So prolific is it in results which are so mel- 
 ancholy that, while we are trembling at its power, we are roused 
 up to stigmatize it as "sinful." We may thus earnestly reprobate 
 it, if we do not insist that the word "sinful" shall be interpreted, 
 in scientific language, to mean that quality which is itself worthy 
 of punishment. In our abhorrence of this disordered state of 
 our sensibilities, we may call it "blamable," if we do not insist 
 that a man is to be blamed for being involuntarily in this calami- 
 tous state; we may call it "guilty," if we mean by this word 
 "intimately connected with guilt," or "exposing us to suffering," 
 for this diseased nature leads to sin, and thereby to its most pain- 
 ful consequences. We may in fact apply any epithet whatever to 
 our inborn, involuntary corruption, provided that this epithet ex- 
 press our dread or hatred of it, and do not require the belief that 
 a passive condition, previous to all active disobedience, is itself 
 deserving of punishment. As there was much that was amiable in 
 the young man who possessed nothing holy, so there is much that is 
 unamiable, and still not properly sinful, in every man. But although in 
 our fervid diaries we may often pour these unmeasured reproaches 
 upon our corrupt nature, yet in a scientific treatise we embarrass our- 
 selves by using the emotional, as if it were didactic language; by 
 applying the loose terms of the heart to themes where the sharpest 
 discrimination is needed ; by speaking, as many do, of a kind of sin 
 for which the man who is charged with it does not, in the view of 
 conscience, deserve to be punished ; by reasoning about a state for 
 which the child involuntarily subjected to it is "guilty," but not him- 
 self properly blamable. The well-schooled divine may, although he 
 seldom does escape the confusing influence of this ambiguous 
 
304 APPENDIX 
 
 nomenclature; but men who are conversant with only the "English 
 undefiled" of our literature, are led by such a peculiar, when used as 
 a dogmatic, phraseology, into serious, perhaps fatal prejudices against 
 the truth. When these terms, often allowable for the heart, are used 
 for the intellect, they change their character, and although meant for 
 "the lights of science," they fail of their artificial purpose, and be- 
 come "in many instances the shades of religion." 
 
 Is it said, however, that a passive nature, existing antecedently to 
 all free action, is itself, strictly, literally sinful? Then we must have 
 a new language, and speak, in prose, of moral patients as well as 
 moral agents, of men besinned as well as sinners, (for ex vi ter- 
 mini sinners as well as runners must be active) ; we must have a 
 new conscience which can decide on the moral character of dormant 
 conditions, as well as of elective preferences; a new law, prescribing 
 the very make of the soul as well as the way in which this soul, 
 when made, shall act; and a law which we transgress (for sin is "a 
 transgression of the law") in being before birth passively misshapen; 
 we must also have a new Bible, delineating a judgment scene in 
 which some will be condemned, not only on account of the deeds 
 which they have done in the body, but also for having been born with 
 an involuntary proclivity to sin, and others will be rewarded not only 
 for their conscientious love to Christ, but also for a blind nature in- 
 ducing that love; we must, in fine, have an entirely different class 
 of moral sentiments, and have them disciplined by inspiration in an 
 entirely different manner from the present ; for now the feelings of 
 all true men revolt from the assertion, that a poor infant dying, if 
 we may suppose it to die, before its first wrong preference, merits for 
 its unavoidable nature, that eternal punishment, which is threatened, 
 and justly, against even the smallest real sin. Although it may seem 
 paradoxical to affirm that "a man may believe a proposition which he 
 knows to be false," it is yet charitable to say that whatever any man 
 may suppose himself to believe, he has in fact an inward conviction, 
 that "all sin consists in sinning." There is comparatively little dis- 
 pute on the nature of moral evil, when the words relating to it are 
 fully understood. 
 
 Note 8, p. ii8. It is a noted remark of John Foster, that 
 
 many technical terms of theology, instead of being the signs, are the 
 
 monuments of the ideas which they were first intended to signify. 
 
 Now it is natural for men to garnish the sepulcher of one whom, 
 
 when living, they would condemn. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 305 
 
 When it is said in palliation for certain technics of theology, that 
 they are no more uncouth or equivocal than are the technics of some 
 physical sciences, we may reply, that the sacred science above all 
 others should, where it fairly can, be so presented as to allure rather 
 than repel men of classical taste, and not superadd factitious offences 
 to the natural "offence of the cross." True, we may be deceived by 
 the figurative terms of mineralogy or botany, but we are less liable 
 to mistake the meaning of words which refer to material phenomena, 
 than the meaning of those which refer to spiritual, and then an error 
 in physics is far less baneful than one in religion. If chemical sub- 
 stances were denoted by words borrowed from moral science, if one 
 acid were figuratively called "sanctification," and one alkali were 
 termed "depravity," and one solution were denominated "eternal 
 punishment," we should weep over the sad results of such a pro- 
 fane style, even if it were well intended. And on a similar principle, 
 when we read of "the vindictive j ustice of God," although we revere 
 the authors who use the term in its technical sense, we mourn over 
 the ruinous impression that will be made by such a piously meant 
 phrase. Doubtless it may be needful for us to refer occasionally to 
 the obnoxious technics which were once in such authoritative use, 
 but if we make them prominent, or if, in employing them, we 
 neglect to explain their peculiar meaning, we unwittingly convey 
 false and pernicious ideas to men who are wont to call things by 
 their right names. 
 
 It is against some first principles of rhetoric to say, that we may 
 safely regulate our scientific nomenclature by the figurative expres- 
 sions of the Bible. These expressions are easily understood in the 
 spirit which prompted them, but are less easily understood in the 
 spirit of the schools. If all the Biblical figures were arranged into 
 a system, and if, when thus classified, they were reasoned upon as 
 literal and dogmatic truths, we should have, on an extended scale, 
 the same allegorical logic, which we now have on a scale so limited 
 as to conceal many of its injurious effects. Perhaps we should then 
 begin to shape the Copernican and Newtonian philosophy in the 
 mould of the passage, "The Lord maketh the earth empty, and 
 maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down." Some errors are most 
 easily refuted by carrying them out to their entire length with all 
 possible consistency. An extreme view of them develops their es- 
 sential nature. What is a large part of Quakerism, and even Swe- 
 denborgianism, but a collection of fancies, interesting as such, but 
 now flattend into theories? 
 
3o6 APPENDIX 
 
 Conclusion of the Sermon on The Indebtedness of the State 
 TO THE Clergy 
 
 Note 9, pp. 127-176. The conclusion of this discourse as orig- 
 inally delivered is here omitted. It consisted of Addresses to (i) the 
 Governor, (2) the Lieutenant Governor, (3) the Council and Legis- 
 lature (see Preface, p. 126). In the place of these Addresses the fol- 
 lowing remarks are inserted on the direct and indirect influence of the 
 clergy in educating the people. 
 
 The direct influence of British divines on the higher education of 
 their land may be recognized in many facts not mentioned in the 
 preceding pages. In his "Law Studies," Sects. 153, 154, 160, Mr. 
 Warren recommends to young barristers the writings of William 
 Chillingworth, and says : "Chillingwortli is the writer, whose works 
 are recommended for the exercitations of the student. Lord Mans- 
 field, than whom there could not be a more competent authority, pro- 
 nounced him to be a perfect model of argumentation. Archbishop 
 Tillotson calls him 'incomparable, the glory of his age and nation.' 
 Locke proposes 'for the cttainment of right reasoning the constant 
 reading of Chillingworth ; who by his example,' he adds, 'will teach 
 both perspicuity and the way of right reasoning, better than any 
 book that I know; and therefore will deserve to be read upon that 
 account over and over again; not to say anything of his arguments.' 
 Lord Clarendon, also, who was particularly intimate with him, thus 
 celebrates his rare talents as a disputant: 'Mr. Chillingworth was a 
 man of so great subtilty of understanding, and of so rare a temper 
 in debate, that as it was impossible to provoke him into any passion, 
 so it was very difficult to keep a man's self from being a little dis- 
 composed by his sharpness and quickness of argument and instances, 
 in which he had a rare facility and a great advantage over all the 
 men I ever knew. He had spent all his younger time in disputation ; 
 and had arrived at so great a mastery, as he was inferior to no man 
 in these skirmishes.'— 'Chillingworth has been named, for the reason? 
 above assigned, as eminently calculated to subserve the purposes of 
 mental discipline for the student. He need not, however, be the 
 only one. The subtile and profound reasonings of Bishop Butler, 
 the pellucid writings of Paley, the simplicity, strength, and perspi- 
 cuity of Tillotson, may all be advantageously resorted to by the 
 student anxious about the cultivation of his reasoning faculties.' " 
 The influence of a preacher on the popular vocabulary is often 
 
APPENDIX 307 
 
 overlooked, and is not always the same; but he often virtually stands 
 at the parish gate to let in one book and keep out another; to ad- 
 mit certain words and to exclude certain phrases, and to introduce 
 or discard barbarisms, solecisms, impropriety and looseness of speech. 
 The sermons of Leighton, South, Howe, Bates, Attterbury, and Paley 
 show somewhat of the extent to which the literature of England is 
 indebted to her priesthood. When Lord Chatham was asked the 
 secret of his dignified and eloquent style, he replied that he had 
 read twice from beginning to end Bayley's Dictionary, and had 
 perused some of Dr. Barrow's sermons so often that he had learned 
 them by heart. Other statesmen have made a similar remark in re- 
 gard to the "unfair" preacher. Dryden "attributed his own accurate 
 knowledge of prose writing to the frequent perusal of Tillotson's 
 works." "Addison regarded them as the chief standard of our lan- 
 guage, and actually projected an English dictionary to be il- 
 lustrated with particular phrases to be selected from Tillotson's ser- 
 mons." "There is a living writer," said Dugald Stewart, "who com- 
 bines the beauties of Johnson, Addison, and Burke without their im- 
 perfections. It is a dissenting minister of Cambridge, the Rev. Rob- 
 ert Hall. Whoever wishes to see the English language in its per- 
 fection, must read his writings." No one can be familiar with the 
 style of Jeremy Taylor and that of several British essayists, without 
 recognizing his influence upon them. The tincture of his phraseol- 
 ogy is discernible in the expressions of Charles Lamb even. The 
 character of Herbert's writings is stamped upon those of Izaak Wal- 
 ton, and the insinuating power of Walton upon the English lan- 
 guage has not been, nor will it be, inconsiderable. 
 
 Similar in kind are many statements which may be made in regard 
 to American divines. A late professor in one of our universities, 
 who has been famed throughout the land for his effective eloquence 
 at the bar. and on the floor of Congress, says that he first learned 
 how to reason while hearing the sermons of a New England pastor, 
 who began to preach before he had studied a single treatise on style 
 or speaking; and two or three erudite jurists, who dislike the theo- 
 logical opinions of this divine, have recommended his sermons to law 
 students as models of logical argument and affording a kind of gym- 
 nastic exercise of the mind. Judge Sedgwick, Judge Story, Judge 
 Shaw, Judge Metcalf, and other New England j urists, have acknowl- 
 edged their intellectual indebtedness to the sermons which they 
 heard in their early days. It is said that those sermons were often 
 
3o8 APPENDIX 
 
 above the comprehension of their hearers. It must be remembered, 
 however, that in the olden time there was an intellectual aristocracy 
 in many a rural township where now there is none. A select circle, 
 including several families of culture, gathered round the clergyman, 
 and they did much in diffusing the influence of his sermons among 
 their less enlightened townsmen. Men learned that the truths of re- 
 ligion were linked with each other, and if one fell out a second and a 
 third would fall out also ; that the whole system was to be preserved 
 in its integrity, and that the welfare of the nation as well as of the 
 church depended upon the truths of the gospel, all interlinked with 
 each other. When Dr. Stephen West was pastor at Stockbridge, 
 Mass., six of his parishioners were judges of Massachusetts courts. 
 Rev. Dr. Timothy Woodbridge, one of his parishioners, writes : 
 "When I was a very young man, I used to attend a meeting for de- 
 bate in which were from ten to twenty persons liberally educated and 
 residing in the parish. Some of them were law students, and some 
 theological students. Our pastor interested the students of law as 
 well as the students of divinity." His educating influence was highly 
 prized by Theodore Sedgwick, John Thornton Kirkland and other 
 eminent men. 
 
 By the influence which a minister's own mind receives from the 
 habit of sermonizing he often excites the youth in his society to a 
 course of liberal education. By the same influence he has often been 
 induced to become the instructor of a training school. Very much 
 through the instrumentality of a single clergyman living in a retired 
 part of Massachusetts, thirty young men of his parish were trained 
 for professional life. More than this number have gone to our col- 
 leges from a single religious society in New Hampshire. The Rev. 
 Moses Hallock, of Plainfield, Mass., prepared about a hundred youth 
 for college; Dr. Wood, of Boscawen, New Hampshire, prepared the 
 same number, and among them his two parishioners, Ezekiel and 
 Daniel Webster. A hundred and sixty-two young men were edu- 
 cated by a plain pastor in the neighborhood of Boscawen, and about 
 thirty of them became members of the learned professions. Each of 
 these clergymen will long live in his pupils, and, whatever may have 
 been his own literary attainments, will produce, and has produced, 
 a visible effect on the literary character of multitudes. This effect 
 was not indeed produced by sermons altogether, but in some degree; 
 not merely by their direct influence upon the auditor, but also by their 
 reflex operation upon the preacher himself. His appropriate work 
 inspires and prepares him for subordinate literary labors. 
 
APPENDIX 309 
 
 It was not the design of the preceding sermon to state the facts 
 which illustrate the indirect influence of a preacher upon the intel- 
 lectual character of man. This influence may be illustrated not mere- 
 ly by insulated facts, but also by connected chains of facts. His 
 great work has been accomplished in cherishing the graces of the 
 heart ; but in cherishing these graces he has performed a subordinate 
 work upon the mind. Men seldom speak of John Newton as an in- 
 tellectual benefactor of his race ; but we are now feeling his influ- 
 ence in the hymns and letters of Cowper, who was in some degree 
 moulded by John Newton; in the writings of Buchanan, who owed 
 his religious character to the instrumentality of the same divine, — 
 writings which are said to have first awakened the missionary spirit 
 of our own Judson ; in the works of Dr. Scott, another monument 
 of Newton's fidelity, and a spiritual guide to hundreds of preachers 
 and thousands of laymen; in the words and deeds of Wilberforce, 
 who ascribed a large share of his own usefulness to the example and 
 counsels of the same spiritual father. Edmund Burke on his death- 
 bed sent an expression of thanks to Mr. Wilberforce for writing the 
 Practical Christianity, a treatise which Burke spent the last two days 
 of his life in perusing, and from which he confessed himself to have 
 derived much profit ; a treatise which has reclaimed hundreds of edu- 
 cated men from irreligion, but which would probably never have been 
 what it now is, had not its author been favored with Newton's ad- 
 vice and sympathy. 
 
 George Whitefield made so little pretension to scholarship that men 
 often smile when he is called a pioneer of a great improvement in the 
 literature of England and America. They overlook the masculine 
 and transforming energy of the religious principle when stirred up, 
 as it was, by his preaching against the pride and indulgences and sel- 
 fishness of men. His eighteen thousand addresses from the pulpit 
 gave an impulse to the mental activity of friends and foes of evan- 
 gelical religion. His power was felt by Hume, Bolingbroke, Foote, 
 Chesterfield, Garrick, Rittenhouse, Franklin, Erskine, and Edwards ; 
 by the miners and colliers and fishermen of England, the paupers and 
 slaves and Indians of America. "Had Whitefield never been at 
 Cambuslang, Buchanan, humanly speaking, might never have been at 
 Malabar." We may add that if Whitefield had never been at North- 
 ampton, Bethlehem, Exeter, and Newburyport, the Andover Theologi- 
 cal Seminary might never have existed. His influence has been re- 
 cently traced, percolating through various agents until it reached the 
 men who started that institution. 
 
310 APPENDIX 
 
 So we may believe that the college at Princeton was affected in 
 no small measure by the influence of David Brainerd. His intelli- 
 gence and zeal gave a perceptible impulse to the cause of education 
 in the state of New Jersey. He exerted an obvious power on the 
 men who founded the celebrated "Log College," and on the men 
 who afterwards established Nassau Hall. Rev. Dr. David Dudley 
 Field in his work, entitled "The Genealogy of the Brainerd Family," 
 says : "I once heard the Hon. John Dickinson, chief Judge of the 
 Middlesex County Court, Connecticut, and son of Rev. Mr. 
 Dickinson of Norwalk, say, 'that the establishment of Princeton Col- 
 lege was owing to the sympathy felt for David Brainerd, because 
 the authorities of Yale College would not give him his degree, and 
 that the plan of the college was drawn up in his father's house.' " 
 (pp. 265, 266.) We need not insist that the College owed its exist- 
 ence to the mere sympathy with Brainerd in his expulsion from Yale ; 
 but we may believe that it owed a large share of its early prosperity 
 to the power of Brainerd's life and labors. — See Dr. Archibald Alex- 
 ander's work, entitled "The Log College," p. 127; also Dr. John Mc- 
 Lean's History of the College of New Jersey, pp. 55-57- 
 
 Notes to Discourse on Moses Stuart 
 
 As the author was called unexpectedly to preach at the interment 
 of Mr. Stuart, and was obliged to prepare hastily for the sad occa- 
 sion, he has deemed it not improper to make various additions to the 
 sermon then delivered. He has not pretended, as the limits of a 
 single pamphlet forbid the attempt, to give a full portraiture of his 
 teacher's character and life. 
 
 Note 10, p. 204. It is to be regretted that a complete list of Mr. 
 Stuart's published writings cannot be made out at present. The 
 following is an imperfect catalogue of them : — 
 
 Two Sermons, preached at New Haven, one immediately before, 
 another soon after, his resignation of his pastoral office, 1810. 
 
 Grammar of the Hebrew Language, without points, 1813. 
 
 Sermon before the Salem Female Charitable Society, 1815. 
 
 Sermon at the Ordination of the Missionaries Fiske, Spaulding, 
 Winslow and Woodward, 1819. 
 
APPENDIX 311 
 
 Letters to Dr. Charming on the Divinity of Christ, 1819. Fourth 
 
 American edition in 1846. 
 Sermon at the completion of Bartlet Hall, Andover, 1821. 
 Grammar of the Hebrew Language, with points, 1821. Sixth edi- 
 tion in 1838. 
 Letters to Dr. Miller on the Eternal Generation of the Son of God, 
 
 1822. 
 Two Discourses on the Atonement, 1824. Four editions. 
 Winer's Greek Grammar of the New Testament. Translated by 
 
 Professors Stuart and Robinson, 1825. 
 Christianity a Distinct Religion, 1826. A Sermon. Two editions. 
 Elementary Principles of Interpretation. From the Latin of Ernesti. 
 
 Fourth edition in 1842. 
 Election Sermon. 1827. 
 Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 2 vols. 1827-8. Second 
 
 edition in one volume, 1833. 
 Hebrew Chrestomathy, 1829. Second edition, 1832. 
 Practical Rules for Greek Accents, 1829. 
 Sermon at the Funeral of Mrs. Adams, 1829. 
 Course of Hebrew Study, 1830. 
 Letters to Dr. Channing on the subject of Religious Liberty, 1830. 
 
 Second edition with Notes, 1846. 
 Prize Essay respecting the Use of Spirituous Liquors, 1830. 
 The Conversion of the Jews : A Sermon at the Ordination of Rev. 
 
 Wm. G. Schauffler, 1831. Two editions. 
 Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 2 vols. 1832. Second 
 
 edition, in one volume, 1835. 
 Grammar of the New Testament Dialect. Second edition improved, 
 
 1834. 
 Notes to Hug's Introduction to the New Testament, 1836. 
 Cicero on the Immortality of the Soul, 1833. 
 Hints on the Prophecies. Second edition, 1842. 
 Commentary on the Apocalypse, 1845. 2 vols. ; pages 1008. This, 
 
 and five of his other most important works, have been reprinted 
 
 in Europe. 
 Critical History and Defence of the Old Testament Canon, 1845. 
 Sermon on the Lamb of God, 1846. 
 Translation of Roediger's Gesenius, 1846. 
 Sermon at the Funeral of Mrs. Woods, 1846. 
 Scriptural View of the Wine Question, 1848. 
 
312 APPENDIX 
 
 Commentary on Daniel, 1850. ' 
 Conscience and the Constitution, 1850. 
 Commentary on Ecclesiastes, 1851. 
 Commentary on Proverbs, 1852. 
 
 Several of the preceding v^rorks were republished in a volume of 
 Miscellanies, in 1846. Among the anonymous Essays written by Mr. 
 Stuart, are twenty or twenty-five in the Panoplist, the Christian 
 Spectator, and the Spirit of the Pilgrims. Among his articles for 
 the American Quarterly Register, are one on the Study of the He- 
 brew, and one on the Study of the Classics, in 1828; one on Sacred 
 and Classical Studies in 1831, and an Examination of Strictures upon 
 the American Education Society, and a Postscript to the Examina- 
 tion, in 1829. Among his Articles for the North American Review, 
 are a Review of Roy's Hebrew Lexicon, in 1838 ; of Robinson's Greek 
 Lexicon, in 1851 ; of Gilfillan's Bards of the Bible, in 1851. In 1851 
 he also published two Essays in the Quarterly Review of the Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church, South, on the Traits of History and Doctrine 
 peculiar to Christianity. The larger part of his Essays for Periodi- 
 cals, however, he published in the Biblical Repository and the Bib- 
 liotheca Sacra. The following is an incomplete list of them. His 
 anonymous and his briefer articles are omitted : 
 
 Biblical Repository 
 
 1831. Interpretation of Psalm xvi. ; pages 59. — Remarks on Hahn's 
 Definition of Interpretation, and some topics connected with it ; pages 
 49. — Creed of Arminius, with a Sketch of his Life and Times ; pages 
 83. — Interpretation of Romans 8 : 18-25 ; pages 44. — Meaning of 
 KYPI02 in the New Testament, particularly as employed by Paul ; 
 pages 43. — Remarks on the Internal Evidence respecting the various 
 Readings in i Tim. 3- ^6', pages 23. 
 
 1832. Are the same Principles of Interpretation to be applied to 
 the Bible as to other Books? pages 14.— Notice of Rosenmuelleri 
 Scholia in V. T., in Compendium redacta; pages 5. — On the alleged 
 Obscurity of Prophecy; pages 29. — Hints on the Study of the Greek 
 Language; pages 20. — Samaritan Pentateuch and Literature; pages 
 
 43. 
 
 1833. Hints respecting Commentaries upon the Scriptures ; pages 
 50. — Is the Manner of Christian Baptism prescribed in the New Tes- 
 tament? pages 103- 
 
APPENDIX 313 
 
 1834. Hints and Cautions respecting the Greek Article; pages 51. 
 
 1835. On the Discrepancy between the Sabellian and Athanasian 
 Method of representing the Doctrine of the Trinity : Translated from 
 Schleiermacher, with Notes and Illustrations; pages 88. — Second 
 Article on the same; pages 116. [Both of these articles were after- 
 wards republished in a distinct volume.] — How are Designations of 
 Time in the Apocalypse to be understood? pages 50. — On the use 
 of the Particle Iva in the New Testament : Translated from the 
 Latin of Professor Tittmann of Leipsic, with Notes; pages 28. 
 
 1836. What has Paul taught respecting the obedience of Christ? 
 Translated from the Latin of Tittmann, with Notes and Remarks; 
 pages 88. — On the meaning of the word TrXrjpoifjux. in the New Tes- 
 tament; and particularly on the meaning of the passage in which it 
 occurs in Col. 2:9; pages 56. — Hebrew Lexicography; pages 46. 
 
 1837. Critical Examination of some Passages in Genesis i. ; with 
 Remarks on Difficulties that attend some of the Present Modes of 
 Geological Reasoning; pages 60. — Have the Sacred Writers anywhere 
 asserted that the Sin or Righteousness of one is Imputed to another ? 
 pages 89. 
 
 1838. The Hebrew Tenses : Translation from Ewald, with Re- 
 marks ; pages 43. — Review of Prof. Norton's Evidences of the Gen- 
 uineness of the Gospels ; pages 78. — Inquiry respecting the Original 
 Language of Matthew's Gospel, and the Genuineness of the first two 
 chapters of the same; with particular reference to Prof. Norton's 
 "Genuineness," etc. ; pages 44. — Second Article on the same; pages 41. 
 
 1839. Genuineness of several texts in the Gospels; pages 26. — 
 What is Sin? pages 34. — Second Article on the same; pages 45. 
 
 1840. Christology of the Book of Enoch; pages 52. — Future Pun- 
 ishment as exhibited in the Book of Enoch ; pages 34. 
 
 1841. Correspondence with Dr. Nordheimer on the Hebrew Ar- 
 ticle ; pages 8. 
 
 1842. Examination of Rev. A. Barnes's Remarks on Hebrews 9: 
 16-18; pages 26. 
 
 Bibliotheca Sacra 
 
 1843. Sketches of Angelology in the Old and New Testament; 
 pages 66. — On the Manuscripts and Editions of the Greek New Tes- 
 tament ; pages 28. — The Number of the Beast in the Apocalypse ; 
 pages 28. — The White Stone of the Apocalypse : Exegesis of Rev. 2 : 
 17 ; pages 16. — The Lord's Supper in the Corinthian Church : Re- 
 marks on I Cor. II : 17-34; pages 32. 
 
314 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 1844. Patristical and Exegetical Investigation of the Question re- 
 specting the real Bodily Presence of Christ in the Elements of the 
 Lord's Supper; pages 42. — A Second Article on the same theme; 
 pages 55- 
 
 1848. De Wette's Commentary on Rom. s : 12-19 ; pages 20. 
 
 1850. Exegetical and Theological Examination of John i: 1-18; 
 pages 41. — A Second Article on the same theme; pages 47. — Doc- 
 trine respecting the Person of Christ : Translated from the German 
 of Dr. and Prof. J. A. Dorner, with remarks ; pages 27. 
 
 1852. Observations on Matthew 24: 29-31, and the Parallel Pas- 
 sages in Mark and Luke, with Remarks on the Double Sense; Re- 
 view of Mornings among the Jesuits at Rome. 
 
 Note ii, p. 207. The sentiments of grateful regard which are 
 cherished toward Mr. Stuart, by those of his pupils who have de- 
 voted their life to collegiate instruction, are faithfully expressed in 
 the following letter, dated Jan. 20, 1852, from Rev. Francis Wayland, 
 D.D., President of Brown University: "I entered the Seminary," says 
 the President, "I think, in the year 1816, and remained there a year, 
 being under Professor Stuart's instructions during the whole time. 
 I have never known any man who had so great power of enkindling 
 enthusiasm for study, in a class. It mattered not what was the 
 subject of investigation, the moment he touched upon it, it assumed 
 an absorbing interest in the eyes of all of us. A Sheva or a Qamets, 
 if it affected ever so slightly the meaning of a word in the oracles of 
 God, became at once a matter of the greatest importance. I do not 
 think that there was one of us who would not have chosen to fast 
 for a day rather than to lose one of his lectures. There was also 
 a tone of perfect candor, and a sincere love of truth in all his teach- 
 ings, which wrought most powerfully in developing the intellect of 
 his pupils. He was rigid in his requirements. He expected us all 
 to do our duty, and was sometimes severe if he observed the ap- 
 pearance of negligence ; but I do not know that he ever administered a 
 reproof which did not carry with it the judgment of the class. Al- 
 though so many years have elapsed, I at this moment recall with de- 
 lightful interest the hours passed in his lecture-room, as among the 
 most pleasant and profitable portions of my life. 
 
 "He had a genuine liberality of sentiment. When I entered Ando- 
 ver, but few Baptists had ever been connected with the Seminary. 
 From the commencement of our acquaintance, he treated me with a 
 
APPENDIX 315 
 
 degree of confidence, and I may almost say affection, that won my 
 whole heart. From that moment I have never ceased to love and 
 honor him, to delight in his reputation, and to look upon him with 
 almost filial reverence. Nor am I alone in these sentiments. I be- 
 lieve that among those who cherish his memory with the most en- 
 thusiastic regard, at least an equal proportion will be found in the 
 ranks of those who belong to sects different from his own. With 
 some of his later views, I am unable to coincide; but this difference 
 of opinion does not, in any manner, diminish the debt of gratitude 
 which I shall always owe to the instructor of my youth, and the un- 
 deviating friend of my maturer years. 
 
 "A monument should be erected to his memory by his pupils. I 
 hope that the subject will receive immediate attention. The father 
 of sacred literature in this country, deserves this tribute at our 
 hands." 
 
 Note 12, p. 215. Professor Stuart died at ten minutes before 
 twelve o'clock on Sabbath night, January 4, 1852, aged seventy-one 
 years, nine months, and nine days. He had been a preacher of the 
 gospel forty-seven years, a teacher of youth forty-one years, a pro- 
 fessor in the Theological Seminary thirty-eight years. His death was 
 so sudden and tranquil, that but few of his family were apprised of 
 it before the morning. The tolling of the chapel, and of the village 
 bells on Monday, announced the sad event to his townsmen, many 
 of whom did not know that he had been dangerously sick. His dis- 
 ease was the influenza, accompanied with a typhoid fever. His fu- 
 neral was attended on Thursday afternoon, January 8, 1852, by a large 
 concourse of clergymen, pupils, and friends. Rev. Prof. Stowe, of 
 Bowdoin College, introduced the exercises with an invocation and 
 the reading of select passages from the Bible. Rev. Prof. Emerson 
 of Andover offered the funeral prayer. The choir then sang the 
 four hundred and fifty-fourth hymn of the Church Psalmody : — 
 
 "Thine earthly Sabbaths, Lord, we love." 
 
 This was a favorite hymn with the deceased, and one which he had 
 sung on every Sabbath of the past two years. After the sermon, the 
 choir sang the last three stanzas of the seventeenth Psalm, Long 
 Metre, Third Part, in the Church Psalmody : — 
 
 "This life's a dream, an empty show." 
 
3i6 APPENDIX 
 
 These were also favorite stanzas with Mr. Stuart. On the Sabbath 
 after his interment, many clergymen of various sects and in distant 
 parts of New England, noticed his death in their pulpits. 
 
 Notes on Sermon on All The Moral Attributes of God 
 ARE Comprehended in His Love 
 
 Note 13, p. 271. The preceding sermon, like others in the present 
 volume, will be regarded as here too strict and there not strict 
 enough in adhering to a scientific nomenclature. The writer has in- 
 tended to diversify his terminology, and adopt sometimes the more 
 philosophical and sometimes the more popular forms of speech. As 
 the doctrine of the sermon is intimately connected with other doc- 
 trines, — for example, those of future punishment and vicarious atone- 
 ment, — and as the views of the writer are not exactly the same with 
 those of other writers whose main principle he adopts, he has en- 
 deavored in the present Note, and at the risk of much repetition, to 
 explain his views and his language more fully than he felt authorized 
 to explain them in the sermon. 
 
 There is a retributive sentiment, which is identified by some with 
 the demand of conscience that right and wrong acts when viewed 
 merely as right and well-deserving, or as wrong and ill-deserving, 
 be recompensed according to their desert. The choice that they be 
 thus recompensed on the ground of their merit or demerit alone is 
 in harmony with this retributive sentiment. It is a choice to com- 
 ply with this sentiment. Both the choice and the sentiment may be 
 said to be united in one complex act. This act is called retributive 
 or distributive justice. We speak sometimes of legislative justice, 
 sometimes of general justice; but when we speak of justice without 
 any distinguishing epithet we mean retributive justice. It has been 
 maintained by some that if we suppose the moral element in this 
 form of justice to be a form of benevolence we must also suppose 
 that punishment is to be inflicted not at all on account of its being 
 deserved, but altogether on account of its being useful. It is re- 
 ported that an English judge, when pronouncing sentence upon a 
 man convicted of theft, said to him : "You are transported not be- 
 cause you have stolen these goods, but in order that goods may not 
 be stolen." So it is thought that if retributive justice, so far as it is 
 a moral attribute, be resolved into benevolence, all sin is to be pun- 
 
APPENDIX 317 
 
 ished not in any degree because it is sin, but entirely because it is 
 hurtful ; not in any degree because the punishment is deserved, but 
 entirely because it tends to prevent the future recurrence of sin. 
 The following remarks may show that this utilitarian interpretation 
 of the theory is correct. 
 
 Happiness is a natural, but not a moral good. The choice in favor 
 of the general happiness on the ground of and in proportion to its 
 worth is a higher good. It is a moral one. It is the virtue of simple 
 benevolence. The choice in favor of this virtue on the ground of 
 and in proportion to its worth is a choice in favor of happiness, and 
 also in favor of virtue, which is a nobler good than mere happiness. 
 This choice in favor of virtue and in opposition to sin is termed com- 
 placential benevolence. In the exercise of it a moral agent loves, 
 i.e. has an elective preference for virtue, not primarily because he cal- 
 culates that his love will be useful, but primarily because he has an 
 intuition that virtue has a normal claim to be loved, i.e. to be elective- 
 ly preferred. His complacential love of virtue develops itself into, 
 or is complemented by, his justice. This justice is a benevolent 
 choice that virtue be rewarded; and the just man puts forth this 
 choice not because he calculates that the reward will be useful, but 
 because he perceives intuitively that the reward is deserved. His 
 choice in favor of virtue is a consistent one, and becomes a choice of 
 all that normally belongs to virtue. Now the deserved recompense 
 belongs to it, and thus his choice in favor of the virtue becomes a 
 benevolent choice in favor of its deserved recompense. 
 
 The moral principle involved in punishment is the same with the 
 moral principle involved in reward. A holy man hates, i.e. volun- 
 tarily rejects, sin, not originally because he calculates that his hatred 
 will exert a beneficial influence, but originally because he has an in- 
 tuition that sin deserves to be hated, i.e. voluntarily refused, on the 
 ground of its intrinsic evil. His choice in favor of virtue is a choice 
 in opposition to sin, and as the former is termed complacential love, 
 so the latter is termed displacential hatred. This hatred of sin de- 
 velops itself into, or is complemented by, retributive justice. In the 
 exercise of this justice, and under a government of mere law, a friend 
 of the law chooses that sin be punished, and his choice results not 
 originally from his calculation that the punishment will exert a 
 beneficial influence, but originally from his intuition that the punish- 
 ment is deserved and ought to be inflicted. Before he reflects on the 
 mischievous tendencies of sin, or on the beneficent tendencies of its 
 
3i8 APPENDIX 
 
 punishment, his conscience demands the punishment, and his elective 
 preference is united with that demand. In exercising this preference 
 he limits his view to sin as ill-deserving, and to the punishment as 
 strictly deserved. He enters into no calculation of consequences. 
 
 Thus in the case of both reward and punishment the hatred of sin 
 overflows into justice; the moral character of the former merges 
 itself into the latter; the two forms of virtue differ in the constitu- 
 tional sentiments united with them, but not in the benevolence which 
 is the essence of them. The choice to reward virtue on the ground 
 of its merit has for its alternate form the choice to punish sin on the 
 ground of its demerit. Each is good-will. Each is resolvable into 
 the choice of good and the refusal of evil. Each is called retributive 
 justice. 
 
 We now come to a different form of justice. The reward of the 
 virtuous is deserved, but an additional reason for bestowing it is its 
 fitness to do good. The punishment of the wicked is deserved, but 
 an additional reason for inflicting it is its fitness to do good. The 
 merit of the virtue is not the mere condition, but is the ground of the 
 usefulness of rewarding it, and the demerit of the sin is not the 
 mere condition, but is the ground of the usefulness of punishing it. 
 The choice to bestow the merited reward on the virtuous for the 
 sake of the benign influences flowing from the reward, and to inflict 
 the merited punishment on sin for the sake of the benign influences 
 flowing from the punishment is a distinct form of benevolence as well 
 as a distinct form of justice. 
 
 The good-will which regards the good effects of reward and pun- 
 ishment is comprehended under the name of general benevolence or 
 general justice. The same good-will takes different names accord- 
 ing to the different constitutional emotions with which it is united 
 and according to the different aspects in which its object is viewed. 
 As retributive or distributive justice is a name of the good-will which 
 is united with the retributive sentiment, and has regard to virtue as 
 well-deserving and sin as ill-deserving, so general justice or general 
 benevolence is a name of the good-will which is united with all the 
 sensibilities harmonizing in the best scheme of government and is 
 exercised in regard to virtue and sin in all their relations ; virtue as 
 not only well-deserving, but also beneficial in its influence; sin as 
 not only ill-deserving, but also hurtful in its influence ; the appropriate 
 rewards and punishments as not only merited, but also beneficial. 
 For example : our Redeemer is now rewarded for his atoning work. 
 
APPENDIX 319 
 
 His merit for this work is the merit of condignity. Conscience, or 
 the retributive sentiment, demands the reward viewed merely as 
 merited. The divine benevolence uniting with this demand confers 
 the merited reward. This divine benevolence in union with the re- 
 tributive sentiment is retributive justice. But the bestowal of the re- 
 ward conduces to the welfare of the universe. The divine benevo- 
 lence, uniting not merely with one, but with all of the normal sensi- 
 bilities, confers the reward on the ground of its being merited and 
 on the condition of its promoting the general welfare. This form of 
 benevolence is general justice or general benevolence. 
 
 As it is benevolence which recompenses the righteous, so it is benev- 
 olence which recompenses the wicked. The fallen angels deserve 
 the penalty which they are now suffering. The demand of conscience 
 or of the retributive sentiment is that they suffer what they deserve, 
 and on the ground of their deserving it. The divine benevolence 
 unites with this demand and inflicts the punishment viewed as simply 
 merited. This benevolence, forming with the retributive sentiment 
 one complex act, is retributive justice. The voluntary act 
 in favor of all that is merited by virtue has the same moral 
 nature with the voluntary act in favor of all that is merited by 
 sin. If "God is love," so "God is a consuming fire." But the 
 punishment of the fallen angels will be useful in preventing sin 
 and securing the safety of the tempted. The divine benevolence 
 uniting not simply with one, but also with all of the constitu- 
 tional sensibilities which harmonize in the best scheme of gov- 
 ernment, inflicts the penalty not alone on the ground of its being 
 deserved, but also on the condition of its being useful. Punishment 
 regarded merely as deserved must be inflicted in the exercise of 
 retributive justice; regarded as both deserved and necessary for the 
 general good it must and will be inflicted in the exercise of general 
 justice; regarded in its relation to the atonement it will be remitted 
 to him who exercises a holy trust in that atonement. Conscience 
 demands the penalty for sin in one aspect of the penalty, and ap- 
 proves the forgiveness of sin in one aspect of the forgiveness. 
 
 The comprehensive truth may be stated thus : Our benevolent 
 Father does not administer his moral government under the influence 
 of a limited attribute alone; not under the influence of mercy or 
 grace, or distributive justice without any regard to the general wel- 
 fare ; not under the influence of a choice of the general welfare with- 
 out any regard to the demands of retributive justice or the pleadings 
 
320 APPENDIX 
 
 of mercy or grace; but he administers his moral government under 
 the influence of a general attribute looking at sin and at pardon in 
 all their relations, and providing for the greatest and highest welfare 
 of the universe. Under the influence of this general attribute our 
 benevolent Father resists the plea of mercy and of grace when the 
 safety of the universe requires him to resist it; he yields to the de- 
 mand of distributive justice when the general good requires him to 
 comply with it; his distributive justice holds the scales and his gen- 
 eral justice holds the sword; the former urges its claims and the 
 latter complies with them on the ground of their rectitude and on the 
 condition of their necessity for the general welfare. The punishment 
 which our Father inflicts is useful, but its usefulness rests on the 
 ground of its being deserved; the justice of it comes first, the useful- 
 ness comes afterward; the punishment cannot be useful unless it be 
 just, and it must be useful if it is just, unless an atonement intervene. 
 The fact that punishment is deserved rests on the ground that sin is 
 intrinsically evil ; the intrinsic evil of sin consists in the fact that it is 
 a preference for the inferior above the superior good, — it is a love of 
 self or the world rather than of Him who comprehends in his own 
 being the welfare, not of the world only, but of the universe also; 
 it is opposition to general benevolence, to general justice, to Him of 
 whom our text affirms : "God is love." 
 
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