' ■ : ; . I ■ • ' ... • • iiliillltiiiiMiui Stem ff$e fetfirarg of (professor HWftam (ttttffer (pa;rfon, ©.©., ££.©. $regenfe$ (TVlrs. (Jparfott to f#e fetfirarg of (prtncefoit £0eofogtcaf JSemtnarg BT 701 .M472 Mercein, T. F. Randolph 1825 -1856. Natural goodness, or. Honour 4* ^ t.tVi A m KA rvAiiv ie 11 A — - — I * Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library X https://archive.org/details/naturalgoodnessoOOmerc NATURAL GOODNESS OR, HONOUR TO WHOM HONOUR IS DUE. SUGGESTIONS TOWARD AN APPRECIATIVE VIEW OF MORAL MEN, THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF MORALITY, AND THE RELATION OF NATURAL VIRTUE TO RELIGION. V BY KEY. T. F. RANDOLPH MEECEIN. “ His life was gentle, and the elements So mix’d in him, that nature might stand up, And say to aU the world—Behold a man!” PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PHILLIPS, 200 MULBERRY-STREET. 1854. Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1854, BY CARLTON & PHILLIPS, the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York. f x c f a c e. A book, like an implement, must be judged by its adaptation to its special design, how¬ ever unfit for any other end. This volume is designed to meet the peculiar difficulties of one class of thinkers, in regard to one aspect of religious truth. Its unfitness to meet other wants of other classes, is admitted in advance. It may be a vain hope that the circle of moral men who attend our churches regu¬ larly, who are penetrated with a Christian sentiment, and who without a scholastic training are disciplined and practical thinkers, may find in these pages a view of their posi- 4 PREFACE. tion and relation to religious experience more satisfactory than is given by the ordinary sermon, or the discussions of Systematic Theology. Different classes of men have different methods of thinking, as well as different points of view from which they see things. Standing upon separate terraces of the as¬ cending slope of talent and culture, each class looks out and sees Truth encircled by a new combination of difficulties. A teacher, then, must take their position, and from thence relieve their perplexities. And so each class has its own peculiar method of associating thoughts and framing arguments —has its own peculiar idiom of thinking— and in order to be easily and fully con¬ vinced, must he addressed in its own dialect of thought. None will expect, then, an exhaustive dis¬ cussion of our topics, but only a considera- PREFACE. 5 tion of such prominent points and occasional aspects as are of interest to the men for whom we write. Much may be said or left unsaid which, in view of any other class, would be of different propriety. Yet, although these essays are distinct, there is a logical connexion between them, and they suggest a general theory. So far as it varies from the common methods of explaining the natural virtues, the author can only ask that he may not be judged harshly, as he has only suggested, and with diffidence. Certainly no other view has yet satisfied the Church. Every sincere, al¬ though unsuccessful, attempt to open the lock of Truth is a benefit to mankind. As each new key of theory is found to fit one ward, and yet another, we gain a clearer idea of the key which will pass them all, and spring the bolt. The technical phrases employed to denote 6 PREFACE. certain experiences or doctrines have their value : they have for the Church a definite meaning, and are essential to accurate and brief expression : but to one without, even if they do not seem like cant, they are apt to convey a false meaning, or no meaning at all. A similar remark may be made in regard to the usual routine of argumenta¬ tion. Therefore we feel free to employ new terms and new forms of argument, not be¬ cause they are better in themselves, but be¬ cause they come free from the old prejudices. That there is increasing need of such books is certain: and if no more is accom¬ plished, this volume may incite abler pens to write a better. Cfmius, I. INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. II. THE GENERAL UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. III. THE TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. IY. THE COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE OF HUMAN CONDUCT. V. THE NATURAL VIRTUES. VL THE RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. VII. THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. VIII. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE —CONVICTION. IX. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE —REPENTANCE. X. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE —FAITH. XI. LOVE TO GOD, THE CRITERION OF VIRTUE. XII. INJURY DONE TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. Oiontmts. I. INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. Apparent contradiction between the life and feelings of moral men and the denunciations of Scripture—The effect of the discrep¬ ancy upon the Church and the world—Chalmers’s views—Protest of moral men in our congregations—Theology built upon the doc¬ trine of depravity of human nature—Summary of presumptions against the doctrine, afforded by common observation—Faith even in revealed truth made difficult by the spirit of philosophical in¬ vestigation—The fewer the unsolved problems the better—Natural resentment against wanton imputations of moral debasement— Progress of theories in regard to natural virtue—Candour and manly consideration due from the moral man to one who submits a respectful discussion of the facts. Page 13 n. THAT THE GENERAL UNCONSCIOUSNESS OE DEEP GUILT AF- PORDS NO PRESUMPTION AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF UTTER DEPRAVITY. Severe language of Scripture is not attested by the common con¬ science—Sin brings insensibility to itself—Analogy of moral sensi¬ bility to intellectual taste —Progress of crime and moral sensibility —Reverse experience of a heart renewed and growing purer. So, according to present constitution, depravity is as consistent with unconsciousness of sin as innocence itself—Reason for this suspen¬ sion of the connexion of remorse with sin—Full remorse would unfit the soul for a probation—Fallacy of heresies in regard to eternal punishment—Fatal effect of full anticipation of due pun¬ ishment—The gradual revelation of guilt in successive dispen¬ sations—Faith the only knowledge..... 31 10 CONTENTS. in. PRESUMPTION AGAINST IDEA OF DEEP GUILT AFFORDED BY GOD’S TEMPORAL BLESSINGS UPON NATURAL VIRTUE. Intuitive expectation of the connexion of virtue with happiness, and sin with misery—Personal feelings of the sovereign Disposer of events evidenced by distribution of his favours—National dispen¬ sations—Scripture promises—Different moralities, each inde¬ pendent of the others, and not implied by them—Their rewards equally separate and not implied by each other—A new morality and its reward would follow same law—Spiritual and eternal morality not implied by temporal moralities, nor its reward by theirs — Temporal blessings evince no estimate of our motives , yet they serve other essential ends—They show the moral char¬ acter of God’s government, and the principles of his final award — Afford a guide to an awakening conscience—They are further essential in carrying out the plan of redemption. Page 55 IV. PRESUMPTION AGAINST IDEA OF DEEP GUILT AFFORDED BY THE COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE OF HUMAN CONDUCT. The point conceded that in all the relations of private and of public life, there is a preponderance of right over wrong actions— Secondary motives to morality—Prudential considerations— Pride of character—Case in point—Such considerations regulate immense proportion of cases—The fact of a conscious repugnance to gross sins considered—Association of crime with its conse¬ quences—Less familiar forms—Social instinct against destructive vices—Social instinct not a moral sensibility. 81 V. THE NATURAL VIRTUES. Spontaneous and disinterested impulses of human nature—Neither angelic nor fiendlike—Benevolent institutions—Literature—Com¬ mon life—Virtues not due to culture or civilization—Chalmers’s view, and its defect—The test found in the uniformity with which CONTENTS. 11 a love of virtue would act—Magnetic bar—Natural.virtues un- symmetrical—No pervading purity of principle—If not religious, what are they?. Page 111 VI. RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. Principle of perfect holiness insures love to God and all right affec¬ tions toward man—A wrong principle would destroy both love to God and all virtuous relative affections—Chalmers’s view defect¬ ive—Portraiture of a world wholly depraved—Preliminaries essential to make a probation possible—Affectional instincts— Morality the “false-work” of redemption... 139 VII. THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. Spiritual capabilities. 1. Indestructible—Conscience as legislator and executive — Comprehension of pure sentiment and affec¬ tions—Perception of beauty of holiness. 2. Destructible and re¬ quiring renovation—Affections—Will—Measure of freedom given to qualify for a consent to receive the whole. True position of moral men... 165 VIII, PHASES OF CONVICTION. Consciousness of sin as varied by heathenism and by Christian privileges—As affected by familiarity—Constitutional tempera¬ ment — Sympathetic emotion—Personal circumstances — Gross crimes—Connexion with fear, &c.—Knowledge of our sin and want the only prerequisite to action. 1S9 IX. PHASES OF REPENTANCE. First resistance to evil—Widening circle of spiritual foes—Sense of intrinsic evil—Of utter depravity—Self-culture, its power and its inadequacy—Gradual reception of divine aid—Mental prayer— Singular cases—Absence of terror—Hatred to sin—Tropical and polar growth..... 211 12 CONTENTS X. FAITH. The penitent must take his true attitude of self-despair, and of positive reliance on God’s promises—The philosophy of atone¬ ment need not be comprehended—Faith of reliance—Of appre¬ hension—Negative power of unbelief—Effect of faith not a natu¬ ral result—Aid rendered by the temporary moral system of the world to the true work of faith. Page 231 XI. LOVE TO GOD THE TEST OF VIRTUE. Love to God, although but one part of religion, still an essential part—Love of qualities or attributes implies love to their pos¬ sessor—Tests of personal affection—Peculiar value of this crite¬ rion, arising from the presence of instinctive impulses, parallel to the relative virtues—Love to God has no substitute—Relation of the love of God to practical philanthropy. 253 XII. INJURY DONE TO RELIGION BY MORAL MEN. Moral men directly, in. virtue of their morality, do injure religion— Power of example—Confusion of morality with religion—Idea of sufficiency of morality to an inferior salvation—Responsibility for this influence—Objection anticipated—Conclusion of the work. 273 I. Injustice i)one to Btoral |$en. ‘‘Then gently scan your brother man; Still gentler, sister woman! Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human. One point must still be greatly dark, The moving, why they do it; And just as lamely can ye mark, How far, perhaps, they rue it.” Bukns. “ Yet Michael, the archangel, when contending with the devil, . . . durst not bring against him a railing accusation.” St. Jude. NATURAL GOODNESS. i. INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. The memory of one of the noblest spirits that ever breathed—whose threescore years of public integrity and benevolence were sealed by the loveliness of every domestic and social virtue, although unrestrained by the force of a strictly religious experience—has bound my heart to the whole class of men of whom he was the type; men whose career of uniform and steadfast vir¬ tue shames the inconsistency of many in the Church itself, and whose life and experience seem at once to give a dignified rebuke to the charge of deep depravity, and to deny the need of regeneration, as it is commonly understood; men upon whom, as Jesus looks, he loves them. Yet the added recollection that such a one, in the full maturity of all the mental and moral 16 NATURAL GOODNESS. excellencies which had adorned life’s meridian, was made, as its evening drew on, to feel the insufficiency of all such virtues, and sought and found pardon and renewal, as one who had utter need of both, has ever been to me the strongest confirmation of the necessity of such moral trans¬ formation for every heart, and has awakened the intensest desire that those who are honoured with his earlier experience may not die with¬ out his better hope. There appears to be a strange contradiction between some of the sterner, exclusive, and de¬ nunciatory doctrines of Scripture, and the facts of human life and consciousness, especially in the moral history of such men; and like the difficulties presented by science in its progress, such facts may not be either ignored or de¬ nounced. The cavils, indeed, which are ut¬ tered from among the stars, or echoed from the uncovered chambers, where, like the graven tiles of Xineveh, nature has piled strata upon strata, the archives of forgotten epochs, may only reach the learned and the speculative ear; but questionings that speak out from our own con¬ sciousness and experience, seem like a protest of our very being against these repulsive dog¬ mas, and are heard alike by all. Divines may INJUSTICE DONE TO MOKAL MEN. IT warn ns that revelation must claim onr faith, however it may perplex our natural reason. It may even be true that a heart, properly affected by the great truths of Scripture, might easily dissipate such gathering doubts by the beaming assurance that shines from its inmost soul. But the gospel is urging its claims upon those who, as yet, have not felt its “ demonstration of the Spiritand their perplexities demand relief. The Christian may see such objections as very small obstacles between him and the spiritual intuition, which, although they remain, yet like a sun pours around and over them its radiance. But to the doubting heart, that sun, far removed and lessened to a mere star, may be obscured by a petty obstacle near the eye. If such doubts sometimes harass even a Chris¬ tian’s faith; if some candid minds, from a too vivid apprehension of apparent contradictions presented by experience to Bible truths, reason backward to a false interpretation of the word itself; if, above all, in thousands who hold the truth, its power is neutralized by this under¬ thought of error, it must be an object worthy of deepest solicitude, to reconcile the apparent discrepancies, and avert the danger as we may. “There is a wav of maintaining' the utter de- 18 NATURAL GOODNESS. pravity of our nature, and of doing it in such a style of sweeping and vehement asseveration, as to render it not merely obnoxious to the taste, but obnoxious to the understanding. On this subj ect there is often a roundness and a temerity of announcement which any intelligent man, looking at the phenomena of human character with his owm eyes, cannot go along with. And thus it is that there are injudicious defenders of orthodoxy, who have summoned against it not merely a positive dislike, but a positive strength of observation and argument. Let the nature of man be a ruin, as it certainly is; it is obvious to the most common discernment, that it does not offer one unvaried and unalleviated mass of deformity. There are certain phases and cer¬ tain exhibitions of this nature which are more lovely than others—certain traits of character not due to the operation of Christianity at all, and yet calling forth our admiration and our tenderness—certain varieties of moral complex¬ ion, far more fair and more engaging than cer¬ tain other varieties; and to prove that the gos¬ pel may have had no share in the formation of them, they in fact stood out to the notice and respect of the world before the gospel was ever heard of. The classic page of antiquity INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 19 sparkles with repeated exemplifications of what is bright and beautiful in the character of man; nor do all its descriptions of external nature waken up such an enthusiasm of pleasure, as when it bears testimony to some graceful or ele¬ vated doing, out of the history of the species. And whether it be the kindliness of maternal affection, or the unweariedness of filial piety, or the constancy of tried and unalterable friend¬ ship, or the earnestness of devoted patriotism, or the rigour of unbending fidelity, or any other of the recorded virtues which shed a glory over the remembrance of Greece and of Rome,—we fully concede it to the admiring scholar, that they, one and all of them, were sometimes ex¬ emplified in those days of heathenism ; and that out of the materials of a period crowded, as it was, wfith moral abominations, there may also be gathered things which are pure and lovely, and true and just, and honest, and of good report.”* How startling and indignant the protest which at times comes from the ranks of estimable men, who gather around, although not within the Church, against those associated dogmas of total depravity, regeneration, and, by conse¬ quence, a vicarious atonement. They are asso- 0 Chalmers's Commercial Discourses, Sermon I. 20 NATURAL GOODNESS. dated doctrines, and stand or fall together. The remedies employed by a skilful physician must correspond to the disease; and if the disorder be slight, or easily remedied by diet and exer¬ cise, the idea of extreme medical treatment is absurd, because it has no correspondence with the malady to be relieved. They that never have died, need no power to call them from the sepulchre. The idea of a new birth, a new cre¬ ation, for a soul that needs only a slight retouch¬ ing from the almighty Sculptor’s hand to restore its finished beauty, is at once rejected. If hu¬ man nature, therefore, be not thus deeply de¬ praved, the remedial provision of the gospel in¬ volves no regeneration and no atonement. It is to human nature as exhibited in common life, and felt in common experience, that men turn instinctively to see if there is really a need of the remedy which is urged upon them. It is here that many a w x avering mind relinquishes its faith in the doctrine of the Bible as to his utter depravity by nature. From the general uncon¬ sciousness of sin, acquitting men of such enor¬ mous guilt—from the natural virtues, as they seem, which in every age and clime have had noble illustrations—from the minute care wfith which Heaven seems to seal each step of moral INJUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN. 21 rectitude with its providential reward, and its inward approval—from the deep repugnance to gross forms of sin, felt amid all human imperfec¬ tions—from the spontaneous admiration of the truthful and the pure—from the power of self- culture, apart from prayer and reliance upon divine aid, to strengthen and elevate these origi¬ nal gifts—-from the frecpient absence of any sudden transition, or a clear line of demarca¬ tion between the prior experience and an expe¬ rience admitted by all to be truly religious— there comes a voice of questioning which will make itself heard, and which must be an¬ swered. ksor is the spirit of such questionings altogether wrong. It is the spirit of the age, seeking to prove all things, and hold fast that which is true. The Baconian philosophy has taught us that in science a theory which fails to account for, and correspond to, a large proportion of evident facts, is thereby proven false and untenable. The days are gone by, wdien from a few general notions a philosophy could be woven which should bind the world’s faith, in spite of clearer observation of realities around it. One of God’s facts shat¬ ters all the crystalline spheres of human fancy. In the olden time, speculation, standing upon 22 NATURAL goodness. the shore of a broad stream of doubt, planned a bridge to cross the gulf, and insisted that each arch of reasoning would find a secure abutment of facts, although no facts could be seen to lend a foundation, and many were evidently waiting to lend support to some other effort of logical architecture. Modern criticism trusts no bridge of theory where it cannot see that each pier rests upon, and does not fall between, the facts. To this mode of criticism, a theory given by revelation is, of course, not liable. Human igno¬ rance is bound to believe that its dim vision, or the mystery that gathers around those facts on which the arch of truth rests, deceives the eye as to the true place and support of each. It must trust the all-wise Architect, despite its ignorance. Wliat it knows not now it may know hereafter. Yet certainly, the scientific scepticism thus in¬ duced, and proper, too, in investigating the merits of all other theories, renders less easy a faith in a revealed doctrine which is apparently at war with facts, even when the revelation is suffi¬ ciently attested from without. If, therefore, all mists cannot be cleared away, it is well if some may vanish : and if some things still seem unac¬ countable, their fewness will make it easier for a wavering faith to decide the scale against them. INJUSTICE DONE TO MOEAL MEN. 23 There is in any argument a satisfaction in de¬ fining exactly the limits of the difficulties which we cannot remove : for an indefinite amount of objection has the force almost of an infinite diffi¬ culty. When the moralist is assured that we do really appreciate the facts and the perplexities in regard to his case, he will feel that there must indeed be some unseen force in those other argu¬ ments, which may, notwithstanding all, leave our candid judgment against him. Above all, no man can be expected to admit imputations against his moral worth calmly, and as mere questions of curiosity, as he would re¬ ceive intimations of the unsoundness of a fruit- tree. It is a law of our mental constitution that we must resent injustice and slander. There is no emotion so quickly excited; and with all the energy of self-preservation it combines a sense of noble and sacred resistance to wrong. One false charge will generally destroy the force of the evidence of many true ones. The tide of indignation against the insult, quickly felt and clearly perceived, bears away with it not only the slander, but the associated charges and their evidence. A slight consideration of this familiar principle would save the waste of many a public lecture, and many a private rebuke. And thus 24 NATURAL GOODNESS. it has come to pass, that the class of men, which of all for whom Christ died are most endeared to our hearts, and for whom the transition into all that constitutes religion would seem the most natural, are left half-bewildered, lialf-indignant, at the undiscriminating invective that is poured upon them. Centuries ago, a theology that would not allow God’s Spirit even to touch a heart that was not to be finally saved by the atonement, wrote its severe proscriptions against all worth or loveli¬ ness in morality, before conversion. It adopted the theory in reference to the many, which infi¬ delity applied to all: that there was in them no disinterested virtue; but that a desire for self- gratification was the one element into which all impulses, how noble soever they seemed, were at last to be resolved. “Selfishness” was the comprehensive label placed on all that seemed “ true and lovely, and of good report.” Bishop Butler demonstrated for all time, that both good and evil impulses and affections were not mere motives of self-interest; but that there is in every heart a natural kindliness, and compassion, and gratitude, developed in different degrees, which, whatever might be their moral value before God, are as spontaneous and disinterested as an angel’s INJUSTICE DONE TO MOKAL MEN. 25 love—or as the love of God to man. In later years, the candid and generous mind of Chal¬ mers has acknowledged and honoured the “ his¬ torical virtues,” as the yet unfallen columns of our shattered nature. And M’Cosh has given the same idea a yet more systematic exposition. The violent reaction Aom the old extreme into an avowed Pelagianism—openly denying the fall, asserting the identity of natural goodness with religion, and setting forth human nature and history in its brightest aspects—has tended to modify the sentiment even of the Church. And finally the rapid enlargement of the truly evan¬ gelical Church, spreading from the centre like a circle of light, and surrounded by a still increas¬ ing belt, like a penumbra, of hearts not of it, yet unconsciously pervaded and tinged -with its spirit, is forcing these characters more and more upon our attention. The common broad and blunt de¬ nunciations fall harmlessly at their feet. They need a missile pointed more accurately, and with a more discriminating edge, to pierce the joints of their armour. Of many of them the pulpit and the Church are sorely puzzled what to think, and how to speak. Some of them, in all candour, are in doubt what to think of themselves. It will be seen that we use the word morality 26 NATUKAL GOODNESS. not in its philosophical signification, but in what is now its popular sense, to indicate those feel¬ ings and duties, which the voice, both of revela¬ tion and of nature, declares us to owe to ourselves and to others, independently of our duties to God: and at times, we shall include all sentiments and affections, all purposes or actions, possible to a soul which can be considered as yet unregenerate, in the common acceptation of that word. Honour, then, to whom honour is due. We call upon the Church to recognise all the noble deeds and lovely traits that humanity displays. We call upon her to concede their existence, not grudgingly, and with suspicion, but cordially and thankfully, as the providence of God, and the benefit of man. We summon nature’s noble¬ man to look upon his own virtues, and take their fullest gauge. We will exult in his princely honours. He shall feel that we at least are will¬ ing to take his virtues for what they are. If then, with a filial reverence and sorrow, we should express to the amiable and honoured moralist, a fear in his behalf, we have a claim upon him for a manly candour and a generous forbearance, as he has a claim on us for careful consideration of his dearest honours. We shall not blame him in that he shrinks from the sense LX JUSTICE DONE TO MORAL MEN 7 . 27 of shame; nor will we attribute this to the de¬ pravity which we lament. Self-respect is not pride; and humility, even in its Scriptural spirit¬ uality, implies no insensibility to the degrada¬ tion of moral pollution, nor a tame and apathetic submission to the charge of vileness. Humility, indeed, is willing to abide wherever the will of God may place us: but, conscious that moral depravity is not of his appointment, but a dese¬ cration of his purposes, humility can but feel the brand of guilt an insult if it be false, and a bitter humiliation if it be true. God, who made us in his imao-e, has his own felicitv in conscious holiness, and seeks a “hallowedname:” and that deep sense of the worth and glory of moral ex¬ cellence, is the essential mould in which every virtue is to be cast—the base and socket, from which everv column of moral beautv rears its t/ d majestic form. It is not all of pride, therefore, that a generous spirit should shrink from the consciousness of sin, or struo’o’le against the con- viction of his fi*uilt: it is the voice of his inde- O structible nature, against the sin itself. And he who has no sympathy with that unwilling and astonished soul; he who can lightly avow his 7 O «/ own depravity, or affix the stigma on a fellow- man—he has never vet been made to realize 28 NATURAL GOODNESS. the “ shamefulness of sin,*’ nor felt how godlike is God’s image. Yet, humiliating as is the consciousness of de¬ based affections, there is still that which amid the wreck has somewhat of dignity, and whose loss were a deeper degradation still. "Whatsoever we are, and whatever may await us, we need not be deceived as to our character or our fate, and add to the guilt of a transgressor the imbecility of a dupe. A manly spirit, even where igno¬ rance is bliss, will choose the woe of knowledge. That is indeed a pitiable weakness, which fears to face reality, and yields itself to be cajoled by a lie. Cowardice, as the strained vessel plunges like a dying monster, may break into the spirit- room, and drown all sense of danger in blank stupor, or in maniac exhilaration; but Manliness and Eeason stand upon the bow, and watch the nearing breakers on the reef of doom. It was a splendid dignity which graced the Homan sen¬ ate, when, as the barbaric hordes entered the very gates of the eternal city, the conscript fa¬ thers, smitten by no panic of useless flight, and roused to no frenzy of vain resistance, listened in calm silence in their curule chairs to the roar of approaching vengeance, and struck Destruc¬ tion as it burst into the Capitol, with momentary US'JUSTICE DONE TO MOKAE MEN. 29 awe. If the weak and the ignorant brand ns, we may let it pass unheeded in onr conscious worth. But if an oracle that cannot err de¬ nounce our doom, let us not stop our ears, nor resent the threatening. Let us hear it all. and weigh each separate charge, and make our strongest plea, and yield our hopes of refuge calmlv. if we must, and realize each comino; woe, and meet it at least unsurprised. TVe need not lose all manliness, though godliness p e £one. Let us be honest with ourselves ; let us know the truth, even though the searchino; lff-ht reveal every virtue and affection of the soul prostrate in the dust, and Jerusalem “ become a heap,’’ and the abomination of desolation stand in the holy place forever ! Much more : let us know the worst, and feel it, when amid the lingerie o; echoes of the prophecy that blasted, a voice of promise whispers of returning grace, and a re- builded ffLorv. C w II. (Senera! Suronsriansness of deep (Suilt. ✓ “No,” answers the just man; “I will not deny my sins, nor that I might be rightfully judged by my Superior — I might have committed greater faults than have actually occurred — but that I never could have become base, I know, as I know my own existence, for it is a part of my own existence, which is no mere transcendental, col¬ ourless ‘I AM." XiEr.rirp.’s Life asd Letters, Let cxxxiv. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Jee. svii, 9. n. GENERAL UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. The purpose of these pages is not to prove, from the letter of the Bible, that human nature is in part or altogether depraved; but to show that such a doctrine, if it is found in Scripture, is not really at variance and irreconcilable with the facts of common life and consciousness. In this essay we meet the objection which is the most universal and plausible. NIen, it is true, cannot help but feel that however criticism may explain away its language, yet the word of God does, with most appalling energy and precision, por¬ tray the utter evil of the human heart, exhaust¬ ing all the forms of rhetoric in its stern invective. It declares, negatively, that in the natural mind there dwelleth no good thing; and positively, that the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. It asserts specifically that there is none that doeth good—no, not one. It arraigns every sense as an inlet to corruption, and brands every member of the body as the 2 * 34 NATURAL GOODNESS. instrument of sin; and with fearful analysis, seiz¬ ing each separate faculty of thought, and each affection and moral capability, it exhibits every ingredient of human character as vile and hope¬ less. Yet, however we may be stunned and overwhelmed by the storm of denunciations thus hurled upon us, few have failed to realize that these fearful charges have not a corresponding witness within our own hearts. When men brand us, they generally appeal to our own con¬ sciousness of guilt, and to the common sentiment of mankind. God himself, in charging home particular transgressions upon men, has appealed to their own sense of duty, and guilt, and shame. But clearly as the Bible seems to speak, the human race, although conscious of much infirm¬ ity and of many faults, is certainly not smitten with the remorseful sense of such enormous guilt. That conscience which men have called the voice of God within us, seems to rebuke the so-called doctrines of the written word. The ancient prophet seemed to feel the inconsistency, when, before he declared the desperate wicked¬ ness of the heart, he observed that it was deceit¬ ful above all things; implying, perhaps, what we shall attempt to prove, that according to the present constitution of things, insensibility to sin- UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 35 fulness is a natural accompaniment of sinfulness itself, and grows with its growth. The uncon¬ sciousness of sin and guilt, therefore, cannot argue its absence; and the admitted fact in general experience does not invalidate the charge of revelation. As we wander amid the sublime scenes of nature, or gather around the beautiful creations of art, the spell of our enjoyment is too often broken by the presence of one who has no eye nor ear for their varied loveliness. In every com¬ munity many are conspicuous, whose dress and furniture, or architecture, or equipage, show an entire absence of that perception of the graceful and the beautiful, of propriety and fitness in things, which we familiarly call good taste. The incongruity would be less annoying, could they be made to feel their deficiency and correct their absurdities; but we feel the hopelessness of the attempt. They may have a generous yearning for the esteem of others, or a timid sensitiveness to inconsiderate ridicule; and these may lead them to sacrifice personal inclination, and to a servile imitation of prevailing modes and fashions. But however they may treasure up rules by which to adapt forms, and colours, and expressions, to the true standard of beauty 36 NATURAL GOODNESS. and propriety, yon can only teach them that they have not a sensibility which others seem to enjoy. You cannot create the personal con¬ sciousness of absurdity: that instinctive sense of the ludicrous and unfitting which others feel, and which would enable them to decide rightly in new cases, and which might bring the glow of shame when they transgressed its dictates, cannot be imparted. They may admit , but they cannot realize their absurdities. Just in propor¬ tion to the depravity of taste, are they insensible to the fact. They know it only by faith in the testimony of others. But if some malicious spirit could lay upon an entire continent the spell of such aesthetic stupor and blindness, the poor victims of ab¬ surdity would not only be increased in number, but their self-complacency would be hopelessly secure. Society would feel the folly of the transgressors as little as they feel their own. The only hope of imparting a knowledge of then’ deficiency would be, that some visitant from a more genial clime, which had somehow a prestige of infallibility in matters of taste, might come to instruct and counsel. But even if the very centre of taste should send its delegate to become their guide, how evident is it that they Os CONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 37 could not understand the justice of his plain censures. They would unite, perhaps, in be¬ lieving that, somehow, they were ridiculously at fault, but they would also unite in saying that they could not feel it. Only by restoring the taste itself, which might render rebukes unneces¬ sary, could you make them realize their force. Imagine, for a moment, that the round earth were thus bound by a Circean spell, and ob¬ viously no thought of the universal folly and degradation would disturb them. Were a mes- senger from heaven to announce their depravity in taste, he would be met by the same wonder, the same theoretical admission, the same inward unconsciousness of fault. In short, the deficien- cv miodit be held as a matter of faith, but never as a fact of experience or consciousness. klow we aver that, analogous to the operation of this facultv, which wakes the soul to the full power of all that is beautiful and harmonious in the material creation, and all that is inspiring in thought and in sentiment, is our experience of that moral taste, and sensibility to the beauty of holiness and the pollution of sin, which alone can guide us in the way of moral excellence. The laws which govern the one are analogous to the laws which regulate the other. The defective 38 NATURAL GOODNESS. or depraved moral taste, at each successive stage of deterioration, is attended by a corresponding insensibility to the change; and a total deprav¬ ity of moral taste would bring as complete un¬ consciousness of fault. The heart, beneath such a benumbing spell, may, through fear or favour, obey the law of right. It may theoretically ad¬ mit its deficiencies and practical errors; but the deep sense of its own true vileness it cannot have. And, by the same analogy, if a community, or a nation, or a world, were thus morally defective, there would be no fair appeal against the charge of personal guilt to the moral sentiment of that world at large. It would, of course, sustain itself in its own unconsciousness of its true position. Should a voice from amid the thunders of Sinai, or from the inmost heaven, declare the corrup¬ tion of the race, reason might demand submis¬ sion to the verdict, but the truth could not be realized by the depraved mind. It must be a conviction of faith, and not of feeling. W e are not saying how it may be in another sphere of existence, or in the life beyond the grave; but reasoning upon man as he is, under the present dispensation of things, certainly ob¬ servation justifies our conclusion. Sin brings its own insensibility. The most hardened criminal UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 39 who awaits the fatal hour, once shrunk from slight transgressions; but as step by step he ven¬ tured into crime, his sensibility grew dull, until, while there was much which he still felt to be crime indeed, yet he could perpetrate, with scarcely a thought of shame or fear, villanies that would once have palsied his arm. And now he knows indeed, theoretically, his sinful¬ ness ; and can discriminate abstractly, slight shades of wrong, according to principles of moral judgment learned in other days: but he has long since ceased to feel them. He can now carouse, and sin, and blaspheme, until all around him shiver with dread, and yet be calm, and think their scruples weakness or hypocrisy. His principles and his sensibility have declined to¬ gether. The illustration drawn thus from aesthetics may furnish further instruction, if we observe in those who have but little taste, the distinct ele¬ ments of a power to see the beautiful, and a de¬ sire for the beautiful; and that the perception of what is correct and fitting is far in advance, generally, of the real sensibility to its presence or absence. We meet many whose judgment is tolerably accurate, but their conformity is sel¬ dom so exact, even where no special hinderance 40 NATURAL GOODNESS. prevents it. We can easily imagine, tliat if to a spell-bound world some slight endowment of re¬ turning taste were given, then in a low degree its citizens might judge correctly of proprieties, and could understand the nature of a deficiency in taste, although they could not realize the full extent of their own defect. If by neglect or abuse they gradually lost the slight sensibility thus be¬ stowed, would it not be fair to argue that, just as their arrangements are now absurd, and would be felt so had they not lost the measure of taste they had; so, while they yet had this measure of true perception, at their best day, they may have been guilty of a thousand follies, which even then they had not taste enough to realize ? May we not say, then, that even if the Creator should give to such a world, utterly sunk in sin, some slight moral restoration, the analogy would still hold good ? Might we not expect the same limited discrimination in certain cases, or in cer¬ tain grades of moral obligations—the same dis¬ proportion between the abstract perception of moral beauty and the sensibility which is drawn toward it ? And might we not argue, as from the instance of a hardened criminal, that just as he cannot now feel the enormity of his crimes, yet he, as well as those around him, did once feel UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 41 their guilt; so lie and all of us, in our best days, may have been insensible to wrongs committed, and evil passions cherished, not because their guilt was not real and appalling, but because even then we were still so depraved that we could not feel it ? The argument which we have thus far drawn from the deadening influence of transgression on the moral sense, step by step, is yet more beau¬ tifully and forcibly illustrated by the reverse ex¬ perience of those who are renewed in the love of God. We appeal to the experience and to the testimony of the holiest, in every age. As they became more and more partakers of the divine nature, freed from the depravity which was once their felt nature, they realized with increasing vividness of apprehension how far they had fallen, how basely they transgressed, how fearfully they treasured up just wrath. Then they saw the exceeding sinfulness of sin; and when most conscious of salvation through grace, “quite on the verge of heaven,” they felt most fully how lost they were by nature, how near the verge of hell. ISTor are such experiences exceptions in the Church; but they are the com¬ mon heritage of her saints century after century, finding a response in myriads of retired and un- 42 NATURAL GOODNESS. published Christian lives. The brilliant intellect, the sober j udgment, the habitual self-denial, the practical energy, which have marked so many of the moral heroes of the Church, who thus breathe out their feeling, forbid the cavil that their heightened sense of guilt was the result of a blundering logic, or a morbid nervousness, or the pretence of hypocrisy. They leave us to reflect that if we had attained their piety, our purified vision might see things in the same strong light. And, O! when perfect purity of heart combines with perfect clearness of intellect in the world to come, who shall say that we may not fully coincide with the severe judgments passed by Him whose wisdom and purity is infi¬ nite? Then may we see the truthfulness of those strong charges of sin and guilt, and the justice of those penalties, which now to the best of us seem oftentimes so obscure. Let the esteemed reader remember, that the object of this chapter is not to prove the total depravity of the human heart, nor even to assert any degree of guilt, but only to show that under the constitution of things as we see them, the fact of unconsciousness of deep sin has no bear¬ ing at all upon the question of guilt or innocence. We may be innocent, and therefore unconscious UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 43 of guilt. But we should be as unconscious, con¬ stituted as we now are, if we were not innocent. Our moral character or position must be defined upon other authority than that of consciousness, either individual or general. If the sentence of Him whose judgment is according to truth, de¬ clare our innocence, “it is God that justifieth; and who is he that condemneth?” But if his plain and solemn verdict be of guilt, then it matters not how severe its denunciations, nor how humiliating its portraitures; we are not free to slight the solemn charge, because the moral palsy that has struck the soul benumbs it, as it dies. But this subject demands further attention. While we boldly assert that in this life , and in our present constitution , sin brings insensibility to its presence and its guilt, yet we frankly ad¬ mit that this is not what we should expect. Apart from any observation of facts, the in¬ stinctive moral judgment would be, that remorse must inseparably follow sin, and each deeper grade of evil bring its own sting, and each new crime an added self-contempt. Such, moreover, by general admission, is the law of retribution in the world to come—the fate of the wicked soul and the doom of the apostate angel. However NATURAL GOODNESS. 44 the facts and laws of our present constitution may be too obvious for dispute, and seemingly at variance with the great law of retribution, a brief investigation will show us that the present arrangement is but a temporary suspension of the eternal law, introduced to serve great pur¬ poses in the moral government of the world. For what would be the effect of the removal of such a suspension upon the world at large, with all its variety of moral character; upon its prospects of salvation, and its state of probation? Let one terrific flash disclose to every soul all its deformity and vileness—the meanness of its selfishness—the loathsomeness of its lusts—the emptiness of its generosity—the gangrene of its ingratitude—its hatred, at the core, of good! We know the experience of many who suddenly awake, in part, to a knowledge of themselves. Smitten with a consciousness of moral leprosy, they fain would fly from all contact with life, and groan in solitary shame: or, stung to fury by the humiliating exposure, they only rave in bitter blasphemy, and plunge into wanton crime. Unnerved and paralyzed, they have no heart for life’s duties, of labour or of kindness, and sink in lethargy; or else they seek in the hurricane of passion to distract their thoughts from the UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 45 intolerable sense of self-contempt. If in others they recognise a purer spirit, they quail before it, or dwell with jealousy on its superiority. If they meet a spirit like their own, they loathe and hate it with vindictive dread. Even though they are drawn by the Spirit of all love; although trained from childhood to expect forgiveness, and firm in faith of all the facts and principles of re¬ demption; although encircled by friends who themselves have tested and proven the faithful¬ ness of God, and who animate their fainting courage, yet how hardly can they credit the idea that they can be forgiven and saved. For all others the stricken spirit deems the promise free. The atonement and its ofier he deems universal with but one exception, and that one heart his own. It may have been that a possibility of salvation was once vouchsafed; but it is gone by forever. The sense of insulted justice and of personal responsibility is so pungent, that the idea of a love that would forgive, and above all, of a sacrificial death, with any reference to him, seems utterly incredible ; and long and wearily many an awakened sinner mourns before, amid all gospel privileges, he ventures a gospel faith. Yet this is the result of only a partial illumina¬ tion of only a few scattered individuals, who can 46 NATURAL GOODNESS. be taught and sustained by others. But what if upon earth’s whole population were shed at once that terrific glare, lighting up the loath¬ someness of the heart’s deepest caverns ? The sincerest offer of salvation to the remorseful hosts of hell would seem a mockery and a gibe; and even the forgiveness of man must be a fathomless mystery to Gehenna: a fact the inability to real¬ ize which, may alone sustain the hopes and energy of those who oppose the redemption of each suc¬ cessive penitent. It may be that the soul, once let to see its fullest guilt, would find it morally impossible to believe in offered pardon. And even if some did trust the promise, what would earth be with the presence of those who rej ected all ? So long as men do not realize their moral degradation, many a motive of merit, or pride, or generosity, may avail to check the outward crime; but the full exposure of a man’s worth lessness, if it lead him not to the cross, will goad him to a sevenfold frenzy. It is obvious, then, that the apparent exception to the law of remorse and sin is an actual fact; and that to preserve the order and the very being of society, to make salvation credible and probation a reality, there must be such a suspension of the association be¬ tween sin and the consciousness of guilt. So far, UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 47 then, is the general feeling of innocence, or slight sense of danger, from affording any presumption of human innocence, that it were to he antici¬ pated, no matter how depraved we are. These considerations are heightened by the connexion between the sense of guilt and the fear of punishment. Involved in remorse, yet dis¬ tinct from it, is the “ fearful looking for of fiery indignation,” which fills the future with terrible inflictions, as remorse shrouds the present and the past in anguish. Under the felt justice of God’s moral government, the conscience always demands and anticipates an exact proportion be¬ tween the degree of sin and the severity of the penalty; and so instinctively and of necessity does it abide by this rule, that any apparent dis¬ proportion in the threatened judgment compels a tacit, if not a definite rej ection of its truth. If the threatened penalty be too light, the slight¬ ness of its sentence brings no quiet, for more is felt to lie behind; if the penalty be too great, and especially if far beyond the guilt, the threat¬ ening is disbelieved, its practical influence is neutralized, and perhaps an indignant sense is roused, as of an oppression which cannot last for¬ ever. We dwell upon this point because, without 48 NATUKAL GOODNESS. doubt, it affords tlie explanation of many of tlie avowed heresies, and much of the silent scep¬ ticism of the present day, on the subj ect of future punishment. The diffused spirit of the gospel itself has deepened our aversion to the thought of pain, and our sympathy with others; and men, less accustomed than of old to think ar¬ bitrary power, or the revengeful caprice of old authority, a sufficient ground for human oppres¬ sion, reject also that idea of God which answers all questioning of his ways by a deference to his almighty will. Men who demand nothing more, demand at least justice from God. They feel that any excess of punishment over desert were a wrong toward the sufferer—a wanton out¬ rage of an eternal law, which the Deity cannot break. They demand, therefore, a punishment proportioned to the guilt; and here they are at fault. Where shall they find a standard of guilt and desert? Men cannot calculate moral evil and its due by mathematics; and any demonstration into which the finite mind attempts to bring the “infinite,” soon leads to confusion. Men judge by the instinctive feeling- of their own hearts. If their sense of human guilt demands not all that Scripture threatens, they will reject it: they may admit the plainness of its language, and the UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 49 clearness of its argument; but if the standard in their conscience is a sure measure of desert, then Scripture must be rejected or explained away. The question falls back, then, upon the previous point now under consideration in this chapter; and all their indignant eloquence, and all their fancied security is dashed by the fact, that our consciousness affords no measure of our true desert . Observation of human experience shows that remorse is not graduated according to our sin, but is dulled by deepening transgression; and we find that a depraved race under proba¬ tion, must be kept from realizing its full depravity. For, to resume our last argument, by the same necessity by which we reject all above the de¬ served threatening, the remorseful spirit needs no revelation to inform it of future woe, but, with an eye it cannot close, glares wildly out on its coming doom. "Within the awakened soul, that, like a bark, is swept down the foul stream of corruption, conscience stands with her up¬ lifted torch; and as the sickened spirit turns from the fetid billows of the past and present, the lurid glare lights up the dread abyss to which the tide is rushing on, and each brightening gleam flashes into view more frightful and ap¬ palling retributions. The sense of wrath to come 3 50 NATURAL GOODNESS. may well combine with a sense of sin, to form a powerful motive to repentance; but if its con¬ ceptions of judgment be too vivid, they blast all hopes and crush all energy. There have been instances where a vivid realization of these stern verities, unrelieved and unsupported by corre¬ sponding views of an atoning Saviour; or, it may be, pressing on a mind whose mortal frame was much enfeebled, has shattered with one stroke the intellect and the body, and laid the poor wreck in a maniac’s grave. Therefore is it that a race of beings so de- praved cannot be permitted to realize its guilt, nor its future; but must listen to the revelation which can inform, without overwhelming them. This strange insensibility of ours is like a shel¬ tering cloud, between us and the burning Eye above us; and in its tempered ray we may pur¬ sue the toils, and take the slumbers, and perform the kindly offices, which secure a long probation for ourselves, and for coming generations: and yet we may argue from the keenness of the muffled beam, the power of its naked stroke. But if the full fearfulness of the living God should burst forth with intensest blaze, all hu- man strength, and intellect, and energy, and hope, would sink and wither in that blight. Os CONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 51 Is it not clear, then, that to meet the very first condition of a probationary dispensation, the human race, if so deeply deprayed, must be kept from a due sense of sin and a just expectation of punishment, realized and perpetually oyer- whelming ? If a state of innocence would be attended by the absence of remorse, so also must *J * the state of eyil, while yet pardon and salyation are to be offered. The actual state of the human conscience, in regard to its moral position, is as accordant with the supposition of our guilt as with that of our innocence. And therefore the fact with which we started, and whose truth we still admit,—the fact that the strong language of Scripture is not corroborated by the voice of our own consciousness,—affords us no refuge; but we must belieye, and act upon, the terrible charges which we cannot feel. Faith in our own deep guilt, is the neces¬ sary precursor of faith in the atoning power of that Sacrifice which none can fully com- «/ prehend. It is not needful that the sufferer on the yerge of the graye shall be able to feel the death-chill creeping oyer every nerve, and comprehend just how the mortification, which is death-begun, is preying upon his vitals. It is not needful that he should comprehend the whole 52 NATURAL GOODNESS. philosophy of the remedy proposed. So that the physician comprehends it, and can give to him the sure results —the fact of mortal illness, and the fact of saving virtue in the remedy—the sinking man is hound to believe both his “ dan¬ ger and his remedy ’* to be as he who must know assures him they are. To realize the very pro¬ cess of mortality might overpower him; but to believe the fact may only fit him for energetic action. So the unerring Physician reveals to us the fact of our depravity, and the fact of the power of the atonement; and the highest reason receives and acts upon both by faith. This same principle, of revealing the true na¬ ture and results of sin only as mankind are able to bear it, will be found to have marked the whole course of God’s progressive revelation. The glimmering light of patriarchal days, with its obscure hints of the coming Sacrifice, threw its feeble ray only, or mainly, over the temporal and material rewards of transgression, and seems to have left a slight sense of sin. The clear and systematic thunderings of Sinai, graving the in¬ dexible moral law in rigid stone, and with terrific energy denouncing every temporal curse and heavier shadows of a future doom, were compen¬ sated and sustained by the pattern of all things UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF DEEP GUILT. 53 shown to Moses on the Mount,—the shadow of good things to come, the all-atoning sacrifices, and the prevailing intercession. And as the brighten¬ ing orb of revelation rose, until it culminated above the Mountain of Beatitudes, disclosing all the malignity and loathsomeness of sin, and all the vastitude of its spiritual and eternal retribution, its light shone with an equal ray upon the dying form on Calvary, whose “blood cleanseth from all unrighteousness.” The sinner’s real nature was not fully disclosed, until his shuddering and averted glance could rest on Jesus. It is the presentation of the sin and the law, in its full revelation, without the corresponding refuge, by which an apostate Church, in every age, has un¬ fitted her most sensitive and earnest souls for life’s common duties, and driven them to the cloister and self-torture. And it is by that mercy which spares a useless agony, that it is not until the Christian soul has had much expe¬ rience of the depth of a Father’s love, and clear vision of a Saviour’s everlasting priesthood, that God imparts that deepest sense of the sinfulness of sin, which breathes from the mournful but trusting hearts of his holiest children. But under each successive dispensation, and with all the varying sensibility of each indi- 54 NATURAL GOODNESS. vidual soul, the fact of man’s depravity and danger has been left to the authority of Jeho¬ vah’s word alone. We may act upon that au¬ thority—or perish. The criminal at the bar is judged, not by the voice of his own seared con¬ science, but by the unimpaired and disinterested sentiment of his jury and his judge. And he who, while yet a “ prisoner of hope,” derides his Maker’s verdict, will not be able to infect the Judge of all with the blindness of his own vision. If we yield to the testimony of God, and strive to act upon its verity, it will impress the soul with a motive which will urge it, without over¬ whelming it, to the cross. But know thou, O man! that tliy unconsciousness of guilt is not thy birthright: it is but the momentary pause, before the final j)aroxysm of remorse, that in this instant thou mayest take the cup of salva¬ tion, and avert it forever! III. C|e Cfmpral ^efoariis of ^lonliti). “Moral government consists not barely in rewarding and punishing men for their actions, which the most tyrannical person may do: but in rewarding the righteous and punish¬ ing the wicked — in rendering to men according to their actions, considered as good or evil. And the perfection of moral government consists in doing this, with regard to all intelligent creatures, in an exact proportion to their personal merits or demerits.” Butler's Analogy. “Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward.” Matt, vi, 2. in. THE TEMPORAL REWARDS OP MORALITY NO GUAR¬ ANTEE OF FUTURE BLESSEDNESS. The argument of tlie last chapter was purely negative—not designed to prove the depravity of human nature, hut only to silence one presump¬ tion against the idea of deep guilt. The testi¬ mony of consciousness was set aside. But there may be other presumptions which cannot he so easily disposed of. For instance, does not the Supreme Ruler of the world mark his approba¬ tion of the right, and his hatred of the wrong, by visible signs of favour or abhorrence ? If his threatened visitations of calamity give token of his wrath, must not his crowns of honour and blessing be taken as seals of his esteem and love? Does not God carefully, and with discrimination, reward each successive grade of virtuous action; and would he do it were all grades alike worthless and despised ? In brief, is not this constant and minute acknowledgment of the natural virtues and moralities an evidence that there is that in 3 * 58 NATURAL GOODNESS. them which awakes the love of God—a love which certainly is not affected by disrobement of the mortal vesture, and which therefore must continue, and shed its blessings on the life beyond the tomb ? Certainly this presumption has root in the deepest and most intuitive perceptions of our moral nature. The idea of holiness and that of happiness are not more instinctive and abiding than the recognition of their natural association. It is not merely a sense of poetic propriety—of a connexion which, however pleasing, may be lightly broken; but it has been the testimony of the human heart always and everywhere, that by an essential and eternal fitness of things, holi¬ ness and happiness ought to be inseparable, and the pure should be the blessed. Passion and self¬ ishness may have swayed men to oppression, even of the good; but the soul has borne fearful wit¬ ness against itself. When no conflict of self- interest prevails, men delight to honour virtue; they rejoice to guard it against suffering, and to multiply its sources of happiness; they exult in its providential accession to high honours and influ¬ ence ; and illustrious examples of goodness have disarmed the rapacity of the robber, and the recklessness of the assassin, and have been spared, TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 59 as exempt by right from the common lot and desert of men. And, on the other hand, how¬ ever averse the heart may be to the infliction of suffering, it finds a strange satisfaction in the retribution which befalls the wicked. The very constitution of human nature leads us to expect this correspondence between the moral character of our actions and their results. Again, if there is a Being who controls all the events of life, and who is at all interested in our actions and feelings, we may naturally suppose that, whatever may be the moral character of his purposes, he will dispense his blessing or his curse according to his personal favour or dislike toward each of his creatures. And if the prin¬ ciples of his administration be those same prin¬ ciples of reverence for moral purity which under¬ lie our own moral nature, we should expect the correspondence between reward and merit to be so constant that either might be inferred from the other: so that the visible tokens of God's blessing would intimate at once his own good¬ will, and the virtue of the human recipient of his benefits. Exceptions might appear; but where regular laws of administration distributed re¬ wards to whole classes of actions, we should seem assured that those actions, as a class, can- 60 NATURAL GOODNESS. not be the expression of a heart which the moral Governor abhors. Would He, who cannot be deceived by the mere semblance of virtue, be¬ stow upon that mere semblance the tokens of his favour ? So far as national and collective blessings and calamities are concerned, every age of the world, heathen or Christian, has recognised this princi¬ ple. Famine, War, and Pestilence; the storms that wreck our argosies, and the conflagrations that annihilate the wealth of cities, are all re¬ ceived as messengers of wrath from an avenging Deity, even when there is no natural connexion traceable between the national sin and its retri¬ bution : and of course, when the plague is stayed, and prosperity returns, it argues the returning favour of the Sovereign Disposer of events. In all God’s dealings with his early Church, these temporal blessings and curses were held out as the sure insignia of his favour or his wrath. “And all these blessings shall come upon thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in basket and in store; in all that thou settest thy hand unto. But if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, the Lord shall send upon thee cursing, and vexation and rebuke, in all that TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 61 thou settest thy hand for to do.” Deut. xxviii. Every woe that can befall the body or estate is threatened as the sure index of wrath. So in the decalogue there is the commandment with prom¬ ise—“ that tliy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” Rewards and punishments are constantly held up in the Scrip¬ tures, as the visible tokens of a present discrimi¬ nation between the pure and the vile. And, in fine, the idea of personal approval or condemna¬ tion has been so invariably associated with the consecpiences of individual actions or habits of action, that the ablest writers on Natural Theol¬ ogy appeal to the ordinary visitations of Provi¬ dence as the strongest proof, with all its anoma¬ lous cases, that the Governor of the universe hates sin and loves virtue. Surely, then, if we should observe the measure in which the just Ruler dispenses his rewards and his punishments to nations and to indi¬ viduals, we might appear to have a rule by which to measure his estimate of their actual virtue or vice; and his estimate must be correct. We certainly should find that, as a general rule, those who observe the moralities of life are at¬ tended with his blessing; that while the hours of acutest suffering may outnumber the hours 62 NATURAL GOODNESS. of ecstatic joy, yet the most of life is passed in a tempered state, where a sense of moderate peace and satisfaction predominates over care and pain of spirit. The man of high morality is seldom a really unhappy man. ITe does not loathe life. Days when social converse or hon- onrable pursuit cannot make him forget his trials, are very rare. Such men smile easily. The trials which they have may he tokens of imperfection; but the preponderance of blessing which they enjoy would seem to be a token of ascendant and progressive virtue, and accepta¬ bility before God. Those who charge upon all natural virtues and moralities an utter worth¬ lessness before God, should certainly be called upon to show why the seal of God’s favour is not designed to attest his aj^proval, or to say why he ordains such deceptive consequences as lull to sleep the conscience of the insincere and the unsafe. If the temporal rewards of morality are not the Inspector’s brand, marking its sound¬ ness, what are they ? These questions we propose to answer. We shall show,— That temporal consequences do not evince the moral character of the actor . TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 63 That they are designed to evince, nevertheless, the moral character of Jehovah. That they subserve further purposes in the plan of redemption, and are essential to it. And, as a preliminary argument, we shall show That, conceding for a moment that temporal rewards do witness the divine favour, they do not witness such favour as will avert eternal punishment. We may say with accuracy sufficient, that morality consists in the observance of those *J duties which a man owes to others and to him¬ self ; and which are announced to him either by the voice of revelation, or by the moral sense within him, in view of the relations in which he is placed. But it will give more definiteness to our present argument to analyze morality into its several departments, and to observe the nature and peculiar rewards of several of the separate moralities. There is, for instance, a physical morality. The word of God, in specific language, or in implied direction, commands a life of temper¬ ance in food and beverage, a strict restraint upon the licentious appetites, regular industry and labour, cleanliness of person and apparel, 64 NATURAL GOODNESS. and observance of frequent days of rest. The general moral sense of mankind has given to most of these rules an independent sanction. How, although the result of such physical mo¬ rality is not the sole object of its injunction in- Scripture, nor are all the consequences clearly foreseen, where the unaided moral sense enjoins it; yet the sure tendency of such observances is to bring the entire body to that state where all its parts of blood and bone and muscle, of sensi¬ tive nerve and organic functions, are fitted in their separate and mutual action to give the frame its highest power of strength and en¬ durance, and fitness for all the peculiar purposes of its existence: and in the mere physical con¬ sciousness of this healthful existence, there is a physical happiness. It is not merely the absence of pain and uneasiness, but a positive feeling of buoyancy and exhilaration. And just in pro¬ portion as those laws are not observed, there is a corresponding loss of their physical rewards, and a gradual sinking into positive suffering and disease. “Even as we walk the streets we meet with illustrations of each extreme. Here behold a patriarch, whose stock of vigour threescore years and ten seem hardly to have impaired. His erect form, his firm step, his elastic limbs, TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 65 and undimmed senses, are so many certificates of good conduct; or, rather, so many jewels and orders of nobility with which nature has hon- t/ oured him for his fidelity to her laws. His fair complexion shows that his blood has never been corrupted; his pure breath, that he has never yielded his digestive apparatus for a vintner’s cess-pool; his exact language and keen appre¬ hension, that his brain has never been drugged or stupified by the poisons of distiller or tobac¬ conist. Enjoying his powers to the highest, he has preserved the power of enjoying them. Despite the moral of the school-boy’s story, he has eaten his cake and still kept it. As he drains the cup of life, there are no lees at the bottom. His organs will reach the goal of existence to- gether. Painlessly as a candle burns down in its socket, so will he expire ; and a little imagin¬ ation would convert him into another Enoch, translated from earth to a better world without the sting of death. " But look at an opposite extreme, where an opposite history is recorded. What wreck so shocking to behold as the wreck of a dissolute man: the vigour of life exhausted, and yet the first steps in an honourable career not taken; in himself a lazar-house of diseases; dead, but by 66 NATURAL GOODNESS. a heathenish custom of society not buried! Rogues have had the initial letter of the title burnt into the palms of their hands. Even for murder, Cain was only branded on the forehead; but over the whole person of the debauchee, or the inebriate, the signatures of infamy are writ¬ ten. IIow nature brands him with stigma and opprobrium! How she hangs labels all over him, to testify her disgust at his existence, and to admonish others of his example! How she loosens all his joints, sends tremors along his muscles, and bends forward his frame, as if to bring him upon all-fours with kindred brutes, or to degrade him to the reptile’s crawling! How she disfigures his countenance, as if intent upon obliterating all traces of her own image, so that she may swear she never made him ! How she pours rheum over his eyes, sends foul spirits to inhabit his breath, and shrieks, as with a trumpet, from every pore of his body, 4 BE¬ HOLD A BEAST!”’* Such, then, are the rewards and the retribu- tions which sanction a physical morality. There is an intellectual morality—a morality not yet comprehended as such by society, and not specifically commanded in the word of God, ° Horace Mann’s “ Thoughts for a Young Man.” TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 67 because its full exercise or rejection is only pos¬ sible in those advanced stages of civilization and freedom upon which the race has scarcely en¬ tered ; but a morality destined yet to take its place beside the recognised duties of man, and urge its claims as forcibly, and with as palpable sanctions as even physical virtue. Careful ob¬ servation, sober thought, close application in study, truthfulness in argument, indulgence of the fancy only as it may sweep through space as the satellite of reason—these will be some of the injunctions in the decalogue of that new morality. And it will have its reward: the quick, clear perception, accurate and ready memory, sound judgment, clearness and reach of logic, and the chastened imagination that, like heaven’s light, tints with ethereal colouring the blade, and the ear, and the full corn of thought, with beauty. But there is a social morality, recognised from the beginning. The commandments of the sec¬ ond table of the decalogue, explained by the sermon on the mount; the dictates of that social justice which reverences the rights of others in person, or estate, or character, and the minuter and less definable duties, revealed by the diviner radiance that beams forth when Justice is trans- and crowns fertility 68 NATURAL GOODNESS. figured into Love; tlie palpable and direct ap¬ plications of these great principles, and the ob¬ servance of those legislative enactments, and conventional rules, which tend to secure the gen¬ eral peace and prosperity: such are the obliga¬ tions which social morality lays upon the citi¬ zen, the man of business, the philanthropist, and the friend. Its rewards are as generous as its retribution is terrible. Respectability, commer¬ cial credit, honour, the courtesies of life, sympa¬ thy in misfortune, kindness from those we love. Each moralist reaps a larger share of happiness than he individually gives. Each heart and life in a community, being like a burnished reflector, which, having its proper position and polish, gives its light to the common stock, but gathers a larger radiance from every other; and which, being displaced and tarnished, gives but little, and gathers less. The transgressor lives in a dark atmosphere of legal penalty and commer¬ cial distrust, of friendlessness and shame. There is also a domestic morality—of which we speak separately, because we find it, more than any other, exercised without reference to other duties. Conjugal fidelity, parental ten¬ derness, filial reverence and affection, and fra¬ ternal love—how human natiu*e has felt their TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 69 beauty and their sanctity, even where religion has not yet thrown over them her holier loveli¬ ness ! And they have their reward. Amid the sheltering care of the domestic circle, a sacred joy springs up, like a pure spring beneath the clustering palm-trees, an oasis green and cheer¬ ful, a retreat and compensation, amid all the heat and conflict of surrounding deserts. The music of happy voices encircling our firesides and our tables—the smile of greeting—the sympathy in sorrow—the nameless little kindnesses that spar¬ kle off from the altar of family affection'—the un¬ wearied watching of the sick chamber—and the soft arm of latest devotion, which soothes and sus¬ tains us, and aids us to lean securely upon the rod and the staff which now alone can comfort us through the shadow: all these are but the respon¬ sive blessings to that love, and care, and gentle¬ ness, which we have shown our households—the natural reward of a true domestic morality. Once more: we may speak of a morality of the passions, apart from actual intercourse and observation by others. It is a Scriptural duty to rule our own spirits, to cultivate the generous sentiments, to repress the malevolent impulses, and to check even the necessary instincts of re¬ sentment and justice within due moderation. 70 NATURAL GOODNESS. Now, apart from the fact that in a well-regu¬ lated social state, the gratification of the vindic¬ tive passions is most commonly debarred, and the evil affection suffers the pang of disappoint¬ ment, it has been clearly shown that as each generous and noble impulse, whether it shall succeed or not in its aims, has in itself a sweet¬ ness like the glow of a healthful frame, so the malignant passions, however they may be grati¬ fied, have a constitutional misery, as a frenzied drunkard grasps the cup amid the tortures of his delirium. “Anger, wrath, malice, envy,” like vipers nestling in the bosom, sting the breast that cherishes them, however shut in from out¬ ward victims. And, on the other hand, there is no loftier consciousness vouchsafed to the moral¬ ist, than to feel his mastery of himself—that his soul is not like a dismantled bark, borne away by every wind and current, but has in itself a controlling power, and, by an internal force, breasts them at its will. Now we have glanced thus hastily at these several moralities, not to see what they were in themselves, but to call attention to the fact of their independence of each other; and that, exist¬ ing thus separately, no one can be inferred from the existence of the other. You cannot judge TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 71 the social character from business habits, nor the intellectual culture from the comparative physical health, nor domestic virtue from public amenity. The hanker who never yet failed to discharge his obligations, even when financial ruin threat¬ ened, and all around were faithless, may go home to a wife, whose heart his coldness has broken, and to children, who, lost to all reverence, regard his life only as the obstacle to their enjoyment of his fortune. The most amiable and loving of parents, may have no integrity nor credit. In some cases, and to some extent, the moralities may be necessary to each other, and so be in¬ volved ; as when some physical laws may be ob¬ served, to secure mental vigour, or when public moralities are observed through love and con¬ sideration for those at home. But we shall be safe in laying down the general principle, that these moralities are independent, and therefore the existence of one cannot be argued from the presence of another; that, at all events, the higher cannot be inferred from the presence of the lower moralities; and that, as they may and do occur separately, their existence all together cannot argue any connexion of principle. And, as these moralities are distinct, so are their rewards separate. Each bears its own fruit, 72 NATURAL GOODNESS. and each fruit crocus its own tree. The reward of domestic morality is no evidence of public esteem and confidence. So far is physical tem¬ perance, and its results, from betokening social morality, that the robust frame thus produced may only call for heavier manacles, and a stronger gibbet. The rewards of all the lower excellences, therefore, cannot argue the exist¬ ence, nor the reward, of the highest. It is as though each virtue stood upon a separate pedes¬ tal, and was crowned with a separate wreath. All but one may stand erect, and their crown witness their approval by the Judge: yet neither these perfect statues, nor their crowns, prove that the noblest of them all may not lie beside them, prostrate and crownless in the dust. How, in view of these facts, may we not say, that if there should be added a new department of our being, or a new circle of relationship should gather around us, higher than any yet mentioned, so that there would be a new moral¬ ity, the same rules would hold ? Whether it in any way involved the lower moralities or not, they would not prove its existence, nor would their reward prove its reward. Just as all but one of the common moralities cannot imply that highest virtue which remains, so all earthly mo- TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 73 ralities would, not prove the existence of the added excellence and duties, nor all earthly blessings guarantee the new reward. Xow, we aver that there is such a distinct and loftier morality, with its distinct reward. The soul has relations to a God, as personal in being, as definite in his attributes, as any finite soul; and the duties due to him are as palpable as those of any earthly relationship. It needs no argument to prove the profusion and exuberance of his bestowments, the ceaselessness and mi¬ nuteness of his services, and the benevolence, the compassion, the forbearance, and the tenderness, of the great heart of God; nor need we dwell upon the responsive affection and services which we owe to him. If filial affection be a duty; if ingratitude is detestable; if reverence for the good be incumbent upon all; and if implicit obedience to law, which, with far-seeing wis¬ dom, provides for the common welfare, be indis¬ pensable to true morality; then do our relations to the great Father of all spirits, to the Bene¬ factor who makes both nature and human gener¬ osity to be but the almoners of his iarge bounty, to the Holy One and Just, to the Lawgiver whose unerring wisdom guides his perfect love— then do our relations to Him call for as ceaseless 4 74 NATURAL GOODNESS. reverence, and love, and gratitude, and for as ceaseless embodiment of those feelings in active service, as any earthly morality. The acknowl¬ edgment of our felt dependence and indebted¬ ness, in prayer and praise; the careful study of revelation, and of providential openings, as inti¬ mations of His command or wish; the glad con¬ secration of time, and thought, to the filial com¬ munion of spirit with Spirit; and the minute watchfulness over all that may meet his favour or rebuke—these constitute a distinct moralitv. Those classes -of obligations which we have be¬ fore discussed, regard the soul in its relations to the world, or to itself alone: this regards its rela¬ tions to God. Those human duties may seem to be demanded by conscience, even if there were no God : this higher morality, in all its essen¬ tial elements of feeling and expression, would abide, in imperious obligation, although all asso¬ ciated existence were blotted out, and but one heart was left alone with God in his universe. Lower duties regard man in his relations to ma¬ terial, visible, and changing circumstances, and may be called the temporal morality: this re¬ gards the soul in its relations to God the Spirit, and to the spiritual world, and may be termed the spiritual morality. How, its observance may TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 75 require the observance of the temporal, even as we saw physical morality to he practised for the sake of mental vigour; but as the physical does not prove the intellectual, nor the social the do¬ mestic virtues, nor all but the highest combined demonstrate the highest of the temporal morali¬ ties to exist; so they all, and much less a few of them, cannot demonstrate the presence of the distinct and superior spiritual morality. And as the moralities are distinct, so are their rewards. The earthly bring earthly blessings; the spiritual, a spiritual recompense. So far, of course, as the great morality implies the ob¬ servance of the lower, it secures their natural results; but its own peculiar benefits are dis¬ tinct, and not implied by them. The approving love of God, the sweet manifestation of his presence, his strength and consolations, the con¬ scious assimilation to his character—the fulness of exceeding great and precious promises, bring¬ ing a peace that passeth understanding, and a love that passeth knowledge—these are some of those spiritual benefits which yield the highest happiness of which human nature is capable. Aow, therefore, as all other moralities in no way imply this loftier excellence, neither do their rewards imply the guarantee of this loftier 76 NATURAL GOODNESS. recompense. When these earthly rewards, and their virtuous acts, and the relationships which called them forth, have passed away, the ques¬ tion of eternal morality and eternal rewards will stand, as it does to-day, alone—to be determined by its own evidences. Tims do we find ourselves led by this hasty glance at the common morality and its rewards, as seen everywhere around us, to the conclusion, that WHATEVER THE TEMPORAL BLESSING AND CURSE, WHICH ATTEND HUMAN ACTION MAY INDI¬ CATE, IT CERTAINLY DOES NOT INDICATE ANY SUCH REGARD FOR THE MORALIST AS SHALL SECURE HIM FROM ETERNAL PUNISHMENT IN THE FUTURE WORLD. The reader may doubt whether such a system c/ «/ of recompense can at all indicate God’s feeling toward the heart, which is assuredly the same in itself, however daily changes of time and place may call for different duties. Before a man, whom orphanage or other circumstances has left without a home for many years, shall find himself in domestic relations, is not his heart the same as when the gathering circle elicits its expression? When a man, long honoured for TEMPORAL REWARDS OF MORALITY. 77 business integrity, and long enj oying tlie reward of social morality, is by accident or disease shut in from the exercise of tliese virtues, and from their rewards, to a home that his transgression of domestic morality has made a torment, has that one accident to his body destroyed all God’s favour which before rewarded him, and left only the displeasure which afflicts him? Do we not feel, that too often the laws of health and mental vigour, and social morality to a great extent, are obeyed merely to accomplish some vile purpose ; and while society and God alike execrate the villain, yet the due recompense still has attended each obedience to law ? Must we not deny that the temporal blessing is a sure token of any divine benediction on the heart ? The mist that enshrouds the subject may dis¬ perse, if we fairly consider that, in order to indi¬ cate his approval of virtue, and his hatred of vice, it is not needful that God should in this life let his rewards and penalities correspond to the actual inward virtue of men. The con¬ viction must certainly be impressed on every subject of God’s moral government, that nothing but virtue itself, “ in spirit and in truth,” will satisfy his law; and that, in the end, his retribu¬ tions will have regard to the motive and inten- 78 NATURAL GOODNESS. tions alone. JBut it may not be needful that, at present, virtue slionld be rewarded as virtue, and vice as vice—in the heart. It is sufficient if God attach blessings to those acts which vir¬ tue would produce, and suffering to the conduct which would be the natural expression of a vicious heart. Man will soon see what conduct brings his chastisements, and what his honours: conscience, the moral intuition of our nature, will suggest and insist, that the feelings ought to correspond to the actions; that the heart should, in its jmre activity, be the source whence the life flows purely. And thus it was, that while the evident irregularity and inadequacy of the present system of retributions, to meet individual cases, was clearly felt by the ancient sages, and it was only by a future world that they could equalize the desert and the reward, yet conscience declared the necessity of virtue in the intention and affections of the heart; and these providential laws of retributions showed for what affections in their action, the blessing was originally prepared. Men felt that so-called virtuous action was rewarded, because the vir¬ tuous heart was presupposed in the original plan. Men felt that it might yet be, that a re¬ generated world would find in those same re- TEMPORAL, REWARDS OF MORALITY. 79 wards the proper recompense of its real feelings. In the mean while, even if individual justice was postponed, and rewards were strangely adminis¬ tered to classes of actions instead of virtues , the moral character of God’s administration was re¬ vealed, and the moral consciousness of mankind was aroused and directed. Let us pause, and raise a stone to mark the progress of our proposed investigation, and take a new point of departure for the remaining stage of the argument. We have shown that, accord¬ ing to the plan of administering rewards, which is observed during this life, no temporal bless¬ ings afford presumption that their possessor shall receive any reward in the life to come. We have shown that these temporal rewards are given to correct conduct, for the most part, with no reference to the inner motive of action. We see that, even where the feeling itself produces a reward, the feeling and its reward may stand alone, and are no indication of that pervading principle of virtue which alone can meet divine favour. We have pointed out the fact that this imperfect system of rewarding action instead of motive does, nevertheless, answer the purpose of revealing the moral character of God and his 80 NATURAL GOODNESS. government, and tlie moral duties and prospects of mankind. The reader will feel, then, that all presump¬ tion, which the preponderance of temporal bless¬ ings over temporal curses might suggest against the depravity of human nature, and against the absence of any true virtue in general conduct, falls to the ground, when it is considered that the question of the existence of a spiritual prin¬ ciple and of its peculiar reward, is entirely inde¬ pendent of the existence of the common morali¬ ties and their earthly consequences; and that a sufficient reason for thus bestowing blessings on human conduct is at hand, without supposing them to imply any approbation of our real character. We now proceed to show that this temporary system of rewarding conduct instead of virtue itself, however incredible it may seem, as a per¬ manent principle of government, is, nevertheless, an essential part of the only method conceivable, of carrying out the Plan of Redemption. IV. Cfjc Cmnjmratto 'llrctituiii' of |)itnrait Coukct. “Our elegant and amusing moralists no doubt copiously describe and censure the follies and vices of mankind; but many of these, they maintain, are accidental to the human character, rather than a disclosure of its intrinsic qualities. Others do indeed spring radically from the nature; but they are only the wild weeds of a virtuous soil. .. . The measure of virtue in the world vastly exceeds that of depravity; we should not indulge a fanatical rigour in our judgments of mankind; nor be always reverting to an ideal perfection.” Foster’s Essays. “For whosoever in one -point , he is shall keep the whole law, and yet offend guilty of all.” St. James. “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” IY. COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE OF HUMAN CONDUCT. That perfect Human life upon the soil of Pales¬ tine, two thousand years ago! How it trans- mitted and demonstrated the pure lustre of the perfect human soul! It was not merely that “ never man spake like this man.' ! It was not that “no man ever did the miracles which this man did.” Those who have neglected his pre¬ cepts, and disbelieved his miracles—Aloslem and Jew, infidel and heresiarch—all have paid hom¬ age to the unearthly beautv and dignity of the Scrip time portrait, and confessed, “Hever man lived like this man.” Action is the natural embodiment of feeling, and the life is the natural exponent of the heart. It is only as our principles and affections are called into action, that we can be conscious of them ourselves; and it is only as their free ex¬ pression is found in word and deed, that men can examine them. God, at the last, shall judge us, according to the deeds done in the body. His 7 G* d 84 NATURAL GOODNESS. righteous judgment, assigning to every act and word its significancy of the inward motive, shall mete out our doom. And even as the deeds are being wrought, human judgment, in its imper¬ fection, is not generally at loss. Like an angelic messenger who, unseen, has come, and watches above us, but at our invocation is revealed to our unsealed vision, so the heart, that, from the seclusion of inactivity, comes into the world of language and,action, is concealed no longer. The life is the visible soul. Look, then, upon human life, and say what is its expression! Has it the visage of a spirit utterly abandoned to evil ? Take the portrait as history has daguerreotyped it at each successive period, from the infancy of the race until now; and, making all allowance for deficiencies of knowl¬ edge and slow mechanical civilization, has the course of national and of private life been all deformity? If the rewards of morality have been unevenly distributed, and form no test of character, let us look at once to the actions them¬ selves. Human life, covering all ages, is like a great dial, upon which is marked the working of the machinery of human nature beneath it; and each separate life is like the second-hand, which, partaking of the general movement, COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 85 sweeps around a smaller circle. If, then, with many intermissions, it is true, some backward impulses, and much friction at times, yet still steadily, and with increasing regularity, the hands of action describe that circle of duty, will it not show that the machinery within is more right than wrong, and will move better as time rolls on ? If—and we concede the fact—if na¬ tional legislation and diplomacy, with all its fre¬ quent recklessness of right, has many instances of dignified respect to truth and virtue; and if in private life there has even been—as the fact that society still endures bears witness—a preva¬ lence of honest action, and accordance with the moral law, does it not prove that the machinery beneath the surface—the human nature and the single heart—cannot be all wrong, and indeed that it must be mainly right, and progressing? If crime is the exception, must not the spirit that produces crime be the exception also ? In ordinary clocks, when the presence of the weight, or of the spring, is removed, the entire movement is arrested, or retarded; but the great clock of our largest city has an arrangement for securing uninterrupted motion; and thus, when in winding it up the regular force is removed, this “ retaining power” as it is called, supplies 86 NATURAL GOODNESS. the requisite force. A spectator, looking at the dial at any one moment, and seeing the move¬ ment of the hands, could not say whether the moving power was the regular spring, or the temporary force. Now, if the human heart has no such accessary forces, then the active life is a sure test of the constancy of the original power, of the main-spring of holy devotion to the good. But if there are such forces, then it is only by estimating how strongly and how often they avail without the main-spring, that we may be sure of the unimpaired power of that pure motive. Now, we think that observation of our own hearts, and of the hearts of others, will make it clear, that there are such secondary motives brought to bear upon the human soul; and that when these influences are taken into the account, the revelations which a close observation of hu¬ man life affords, are far less favourable to our esti¬ mate of human virtue, than at first we thought. These secondary impulses are of two classes: first, those which result from prudential consid¬ erations, or, as they are sometimes termed, selfish motives; and, secondly, those impulses which are disinterested, and are commonly called the natural virtues, but which are not religious senti¬ ments. In this essay we shall consider, princi- COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 87 pally, the prudential motives, which produce rectitude of conduct. Let it be remembered that we are not ques¬ tioning the existence of a purer motive, nor do we now investigate its nature, but we only seek to know its strength. From the scale whose controlling weight sways the human will, we would take out, one by one, the other motives, and leave the love of rectitude to exert its soli¬ tary force. It may be that alone it has power sufficient to regulate society and home: it may be that its imperfection needs some slight assist¬ ance : it may be that the accessaries are every¬ thing, and its unaided power is nothing. We shall direct the reader’s attention to these lower motives: of their force, upon his own will, or upon society, let him judge. Hor would we be understood to brand the prudential or self-interested motives, appealing, as they generally do, to our fear of penalties, with any stigma on their intrinsic character. To shrink from suffering is the first, the last, the constitutional impulse of every conscious being, from the lowest up to God. The power of fore¬ sight and of the avoidance of calamity, is one of the most godlike faculties of man. The creative love which spoke into being the tribes of the 88 NATURAL GOODNESS. brute creation, with consistent benevolence ren¬ ders them liable to but few ills, and by a blind instinct urges the conduct which secures the pres¬ ent or the future good. But for man, richly en¬ dowed with sensibilities to pain or bliss, and liable to injury from a thousand evils, God has made no such provision. To him the Creator, in be¬ stowing his image, gave a portion of his own omniscience, enabling him at once to dwell by memory in the past, and to project his being through the future. With the power to foresee and avert evil, to anticipate and secure the good, Jehovah has thrown upon man the responsibility of his fate for time and for eternity. It is, then, a godlike thing to forecast the future, and secure our welfare in advance. In cases where no other moral principle may be involved, it is felt to be a duty of itself, that w r e should secure the great¬ est comfort and happiness both for ourselves and for others. Prudence is thus a religious duty, if it were not a natural instinct. And whether ca¬ lamity results from the natural course of things, or whether God shall arbitrarily affix suffering to certain transgressions, it is not inconsistent with manliness to estimate it, and to shrink back. It is indeed a puerile weakness, to sacrifice great future blessings through regard to a lesser pres- COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 89 *mt enjoyment. It is shameful to give way to obstacles and pains that we may summon our nobler energies to overcome; but it is never felt degrading for men to strike the balance of evils, and number their forces, and at once surrender to a power which cannot be questioned. It is indeed degrading to surrender to any power which commands us to sacrifice rectitude; for, in truth, it is felt that no such power can last, and the right will yet triumph and be rewarded. But when no moral principle is at stake, pru¬ dence has an honourable sway. If, in God’s economy, religion and interest attract us to the same conduct, it is no shame for a man to feel both the religious impulse and the prudential motive: if he have no religious motive, he may yet as honourably as ever feel the prudential. If he have principle, he may also have wisdom. If he is not a saint, it is honourable not to be a fool. Therefore, as we present the prudential motives which impel to rectitude of conduct, whether they be drawn from this world or from that to come, let no one feel ashamed, or hesitate to ad¬ mit their full influence on his conduct. Let him feel that it is not beneath him to consult his best interests, whether he has other motives to recti¬ tude or not. 90 NATURAL GOODNESS. To render our discussion more simple and defi¬ nite, we may leave the consideration of human life and character in the general, and dwell upon the conduct of separate individuals. The moral¬ ist may admit that his sense of innocence mo.y be pure insensibility of soul, and that the con¬ stant rewards of morality cannot be taken as t/ indicating the divine approval; but he may ap¬ peal to his actions themselves, his daily life. Here, he may say, is conformity to that law of God which is the very expression and embodi¬ ment of moral excellence. Here is conformity, not universal, indeed, in every slight particular, but strict enough in all important specifications. Here is a devotion to the law of right, which amply compensates its forgetfulness of some minutiae, by the deepest abhorrence of more im¬ portant violations. The primary fallacy of this appeal lies in its mistaken idea of the standard bv which obedi- t/ ence is to be tested, or a confusion of the two significations of the term, “The Law . 55 If we consider the law of God as a collection of distinct and independent commandments, of equal or varied obligation, each standing on a separate foundation, and involving its own obedience alone, then it will follow that obedience to the COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 91 law may be partial, although not complete. Then it will follow that compliance with a ma¬ jority of its injunctions argues a proportionate devotion, and moral character may be reckoned arithmetically, according to the number of invio¬ late or broken laws. Such is the view of many correct moralists. Seeming to themselves to keep all but a few commandments, they con¬ clude that their acceptability with God must be proportionate; and while claiming no perfection, they feel that the preponderance of good in the heart and life is so great, that he can but forgive the deficiencies, and Reward the obedience. But, in truth, there is but one law,—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart;” and as God is the very embodiment and personi¬ fication of holiness, this command is, “Thou shalt love the Holy One and Holiness with all thy heart.” This is the one commandment, and all others are only distinct applications of this one rule to the varied circumstances of outward life. This law is like a general direction as to the path of life ; and the commandments are like attendants, stationed along the path, at the cross-roads of temptation, saying, “ If you step aside here into theft, or there into lying, you will break the law.” But step off where you 92 NATURAL GOODNESS. will, the law is broken. The law is the compre¬ hensive warning,-—“ Thou slialt not strike thy ship upon the coast of sinand the command¬ ments are like beacons lit up on the more prominent headlands; and strike beneath any one of them, and you break the law completely. You have struck the beach and are wrecked, as surely as though you had dashed in elsewhere. Your own convenience, or the natural repulsive¬ ness of some sections of the beach, may have led you to shrink more from some points than from others—but you have invaded the coast, and broken the one law. It is evident that the authority of your master had not force to keep you back; and had no other motives entered, you would as soon have dashed on any other rock, so far as God’s will was concerned. Had the shore been equally inviting, and the roar of the breakers equally subdued, and the reef as well concealed, the shore would have witnessed your recklessness of law at any or every point. What is demanded is, a right action from a right motive. That same right motive wdiich rejects one sin would reject all other known transgres¬ sions of the divine command. Consider, for instance, that prudential con¬ sideration produced by the restraints of human COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 93 legislation. Tlie idea of human law is not to give to crime its just desert. The actual desert and fitness of punishment may lie at the basis of its inflictions, and make them j ust; but the object of human legislation is, to affix to trans¬ gression just so much of the penalty deserved as may make crime inexpedient. Thus the thief must lose more than his booty, and the murderer more than the gratification of his revenge or passion. Through all the long and intricate cal- dilations of covetousness, and malice, and lust, wherever there is a term of seeming advantage, law affixes a negative quantity of larger value,— an evil increasing with the tempting advan¬ tage,—so that the result of all combinations shall be worse than zero. The criminal code, incom¬ petent to judge the heart, but compelled con¬ tinually to devise new snares to catch the Pro¬ tean forms of vice, is an ever fresh witness of the inadequacy of better motives to virtue. "We concede freely that such criminal laws do not presuppose that all the community need their restraint, but only that some do need it. blow many do require the check of human law and penalty, is a question for close observation. For the present, we only ask the thoughtful reader how far he would dare to trust society at large 94 NATURAL GOODNESS. with his life, his fortune, and his sacred honour, if all penal laws were abolished at a stroke? AYe go further, and ask the calm and serious thinker, how far and how long he dare to trust himself ? But within the range of human actions lie many over which the law has no jurisdiction, and which cannot be specified in statutes. Yet are these actions influenced by a motive more powerful than physical suffering or imprison¬ ment. This motive it is which lends even to the common law and its penalities their most fearful sanction. That sanction is found in the unwrit¬ ten law, and the informal sentence, of public opinion. That tribunal, bound by no form of the letter, beguiled by no legal fictions, intrudes into haunts which fear no statutes, and condemns vices, and improprieties, and new forms of ag¬ gression, with scorn, with exclusion from social privileges, and depression from business facili¬ ties. Much of the penalty of social reprobation is not the rebuke of abstract evil, but merely a combination against conduct injurious to the general interests of society, and adjudged on that ground. bTow then, take away the restraint of law and the value of reputation, together; place a poor human soul where crime has no COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 05 punishment, and where all are compelled to ap¬ plaud or extenuate his vices, and how iong will you trust his integrity, chastity, or benevolence, amid temptation? "Why is history a catalogue of great crimes, except that it records the actions of courts and camps, above the reach of censure or correction? Why is Wealth proverbially a reveller and Power a tyrant, but that the one can buy and the other seize impunity? Why is a foreign tour, as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was said to be in other days, the severest test of virtue to the unrestrained wanderer ? How many fall abroad, who stand intact at home! But we admit, further, that in every experience there are instances of virtuous action not to be explained by any such inferences. Secret, or known only to those whose interest will secure silence and collusion, many an offence might be committed, and many an evil purpose cherished, which is rejected even at much sacrifice of nat¬ ural feeling. There is even a serious culture of correct life and sentiment which owns no fear of man. Is there never a slavish fear of God, and of future retribution ? Is there, indeed, not a reverence for the law of purity, but a dread of its penalty? This principle of action is simply an extension of common prudence into the future 96 NATURAL GOODNESS. world. Apart from the influence of Christianity, it brings a motive to almost every heart. But Christianity, while it seeks to introduce the one pure motive, has lent an added power to all the other motives. It has given to law its impartiality and steadfastness. It has created a public senti¬ ment around the Church, which rebukes vice with an energy and a discrimination before unknown. And it quickens the natural apprehension of con¬ science into a fearful looking-for of fiery indigna¬ tion. In a truly Christian community, this con¬ sciousness that the whole future destiny is in abey- ance, and all is to he lost or won by this life, pene¬ trates every heart, and, sometimes more vivid, sometimes less, whispers in privacy and earthly security, of the coming doom. But this desire to avert future calamity, wise and blameless as we saw it to he in itself, is, after all, hut the dread of retribution. It is only the fear of God, as he happens to he the avenger. Were God inactive, and Satan in the ascendant, and the threatener of the blow, it would he as effective. The mo¬ tive would be the same ; only, as the hand that held it forth was changed, it would be, not the fear of God, but the fear of the devil. Yet is this thought a most salutary restraint to every heart. In times of sickness, or of danger, it he- COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 9T comes almost overpowering, withering in its deadly blight the fairest temptations that sur¬ round us; and when health and safety reassure the heart, it falls back to a repressed, but con¬ stant influence. Xow, these three grand appliances, for the repression, severally, of flagrant crimes, and minor transgressions, and private sins, operate upon the one principle, before explained, of making vice unprofitable or impossible. If they cannot remove the fruit that tempts us, they try to turn its juices into bitterness, or hedge it safe in thorns. And here a most sin¬ gular phenomenon of consciousness occurs. As it is a law of volition that we cannot will to per¬ form what we know to be impossible, so the heart seldom yearns with much eagerness for new in- diligences, beyond its possible reach; and how¬ ever it may crave a pleasure, it identifies the thing with the aloes in which it is steeped, and loathes its very sight. These considerations have made many vices seem to us, amid laws and a Christianized social opinion, utterly out of the question; and as we neither taste of the evil ourselves, nor see others do it, we grow up in thoughtlessness and indifference, or with aver- sion to these bitter sins. We seem to feel no 98 NATURAL GOODNESS. need of legislation to restrain us; we glory in our spontaneous superiority to a gross abomina¬ tion. The beastly passions of the soul, hemmed in from infancy with bars of stern penalties, brush meekly along their cage, and take their temperate allowance with quiet satisfaction. There is no consciousness of the prey beyond its bounds, no yearning for the victim; and even should the bars be removed, the sense of im¬ punity might not at once be realized. But once let the tigers arouse to feel their liberty, once let them taste of human blood, and woe to the weak¬ ness or the innocence which invites the spring of those infuriated passions! There are several motives of another charac¬ ter, which are not without influence, esi^ecially upon those who are least sensitive to the power of fear. There is a pride of character, which must feed its arrogant complacency from some source. It may not dwell on equipage, or per¬ sonal beauty, or intellectual power; but con¬ scious of the involuntary or factitious character of such honours, it exalts the value of moral excel¬ lence, and glories in its rectitude. It would de¬ spise a moral wrong, and a foolish thing, on one and the same principle—they are beneath it. There is a pride which does not even care to COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 99 have its superiority acknowledged by others, so long as it feels it to be unquestionable; which exults in haughty secrecy over its elevation in the scale of beauty, or mind, or morals. Some¬ times, amid all its contempt for others less en¬ dowed with any of these accomplishments, this self-complacency imagines itself grateful to God for its morality, as it does for its high birth, or its features. It thanks God that it is not as other men are: and the man maintains his outward rec¬ titude, not from a lowly and affectionate rever¬ ence for the divine will, but as he keeps up the rest of his equipage. Or perhaps men dream that they can claim, of right, the approval and blessing of their Maker, and feel his respect for their virtues a most grate¬ ful tribute, as they do the homage of their fel¬ low-men. God’s general benefits toward them being all a thing of course and merit, his further consideration is certainly a flattering compliment. Their failures in action are passed lightly over; they reject any troublesome insinuations of spir¬ itual defects; and they find a satisfaction in the thought, not only that they have a mansion prom¬ ised above, but that heaven is theirs fee-sim¬ ple —they can afford it;—in short, they are on independent terms with God and man. They 100 NATURAL GOODNESS. mean, and trust, to be under as few obligations as possible to either. Perhaps no one case can exhibit the powerful and conscious operation of all these motives, and the unconsciousness of guilt of which we spoke. Imagine, however, that such a pirate as history tells us ravaged the equatorial seas within two centuries, should become so noted and detested, so closely pursued by the multiplying police of the ocean, that he should resolve to gather up his blood-bought treasures, and spend his re¬ maining life amid the unsuspected retreat of a civilized and Christian nation. Presence of mind, a strong self-control, and some natural social qualifications, facilitate the enterprise. Pespected as a stranger of business talent and resources, he passes on quietly, until his path is crossed. Upon his own ship he would have felled the intruder to the deck, however just the contradiction; but he is in a land of courts, and prisons, and gibbets, and the murderous purpose is restrained—he merely hates. Time was when every lust had unbridled indulgence; but now the restraints of a moral communitv are about t/ him, and, beneath the eye of public scrutiny, his habits are conformed to the general standard. He yields to custom and attends the sanctuary, COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 101 until, although his secret thoughts once knew no restraint, and while he feels secure from human justice, he trembles beneath the messages of God, and checks the private whispers and risings of his heart. As restraint and temperance be¬ come habitual and easier, his longings for for¬ bidden revelry or revenge grow less impatient, and subside—lie like the hungry lion, half-slum¬ bering, lialf-unconscious, waiting for its prey, lie is surprised to find how virtuous he has be¬ come ; he enjoys the sense of present rectitude, and deems himself too strong ever to stoop again to low appetite and crime. Soon his complacent soul thinks its compliance with the divine law so exact that God can claim no more; and as the past is past, the present must be accepted by Heaven. But now, tell me, viewed in a relig¬ ious light, has his character changed at all ? Let him be recognised, escape, stand again in secu¬ rity upon his own deck, find his temptations all around him without their penalties, and although some thoughts of future retribution might still haunt him, he would hurl them aside, and prove that circumstances, not himself, had altered. As for the love of God, the reverence for a holy law—where are they now? where were they then ? 102 NATURAL GOODNESS. Such, then, are some of the inferior motives which combine to produce the outward life, and the inward restraint of morality. Sum them up, and they are Fear and Pride. These are suffi- e/ cient to account for virtuous conduct in the great majority of cases, if not in all; and therefore this conduct cannot demonstrate the presence of any motive besides them, if they are known to operate. Of course there may be a better mo¬ tive. A man mav foresee a rich reward, who would have done duty as promptly if unre¬ warded. But the existence of this better im¬ pulse cannot be proved by the mere fact of a good action. It must, in the first place, be a matter of consciousness to the individual alone. Others, if thev see duty rigidly done, in those emergencies when all these motives fail, or are c; y turned to favour the opposing sin, will honour the integrity of pure principle. But if we find human virtue graduated very much by the as- pect of secondary consequences; if we learn by observation to expect that principle can hardly stand alone, or against inferior motives, then we may conclude that the good deeds are not at all products of good principle. Let the fearful ex¬ periment be tried, of the successive withdrawal of all restraint, legal or social, or future, and all COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 103 the force of pride, and who is there who would dare to dwell in that community, or trust his own soul? Take away the conscious, and also the unconscious influence of those motives, and how far would the solitary love of rectitude avail without them ? Must we not tremble to feel that the great secret of our comparative innocence lies only in our comparative temptation and re¬ straint ? Let the latter be removed, and what precept of the whole law would be safe ? Perhaps, however, the moralist who is thus driven in upon that inward sense of his own feelings which is the very citadel of his confi¬ dence, may honestly say that, all prudential con¬ siderations aside, he believes that in his heart, and in almost every heart, there is a deeper re¬ pugnance to some forms of sin than to others. His verv soul shudders at the thought of some iniquities, and in that revulsion from those deeper crimes is shown a comparative strength of virtue. Consider, in the first place, how prone we are to estimate the evil of disobedience by its con- sequences; and to hold it light or gross, as the results are good or evil. The child who, against c_> / O rebukes, throws a ball the fiftieth time and 104 NATUK.1L GOODNESS. breaks a window, is punished, although not really so guilty in the act, after evidence of pa¬ rental falsehood, as when he threw it the twen¬ tieth time. The press generally denounced the aggressions of England upon China some years since, until the harriers against commerce and Christianity were thrown down, and then the deed seemed sanctified. Undoubtedly the ten¬ dency of sin is, to destroy and curse; and the deeper the sin, the deadlier and wider, in the full result , will the curse be found. But the immediate and visible results of any one act of sin do not indicate the final sum of evil, and therefore cannot measure the sin. A sin, there¬ fore, with no visible consequences at all, may stand before God in its own intrinsic malignity. God does not judge human judgment: and if my lie, of no immediate injury to any one, is left in all its guilt, even though God calls out from it in the future great glory to his name, how can the slightly varying results which regu¬ larly follow here, alleviate or excuse transgres¬ sion ? Such was the estimate of the great Teacher. Hate is murder; lust is adultery ; and “ he that is unjust in that which is least, is unjust also in that which is much.” Here are the three great invasions of social morality, regarding life, chas* COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 105 tity, and property, resolved into principles which are declared the same, although the visible con¬ sequences are arrested. Yet how many deem the distinction very clear, and seem to shrink from the grosser forms of sin, and, therefore, claim comparative purity. But where God sees no essential difference, there can be none. It follows, therefore, that whatever discrimination of consequences, seen and felt, our aversion to any sin may indicate, that aversion does not indi¬ cate any difference in the intrinsic evil of trans- gressions, and, of course, cannot show any com¬ parative abhorrence of sin. And, that our natural repugnance to many sins lies not in any sense of their actually deeper guilt, may appear from the fact that this repug¬ nance varies according to the customs of differ¬ ent lands, and the prevalent temptations and consequent familiarity with vices in various com¬ munities and circles. There are countries where assassination and licentiousness scarcely awaken more repulsion in the accustomed soul than simple theft or falsehood. The history of duel¬ ling is a singular illustration of the power of custom and familiarity to pervert or to create repugnance to one sin, and remove it all from another. 106 NATURAL GOODNESS. But the true or fundamental ground of the discrimination which in every age men have made between various crimes, and of their shrink¬ ing from some vices more than from others, lies in the fact that the Creator, having anticipated our residence here amid this present constitu¬ tion of things, has implanted an instinct of self- preservation which warns us from many social errors, which are rapidly destructive, by an im¬ pulse as strong and as blind as that which guides the mere animal creation, without any reference at all to the moral character of the actions. This is the groundwork of the universal feeling. Acting upon this basis, and observing the differ¬ ent practical consequences of various crimes, society has made "a mutual compact for self- preservation, and sealed the voice of nature by the graduated sentences of the law. Thus the crimes which are naturally the most abhorred, are those which society visits most severely. God himself, when legislating as a temporal and national sovereign, availing himself of all tem¬ poral sanctions to secure temporal morality, made the same distinctions, only affixing un¬ usual penalties to some few vices which were peculiarly hurtful to his people at the time. Of necessity, all these things induce a very strong COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 107 aversion, and at tlie root, a constitutional aver¬ sion to many destructive sins. But a social in¬ stinct is not a moral perception ; and social penal¬ ties have regard, not to tlie individual guilt, hut to the general expediency. We find by observa¬ tion, that the identical principle which we loathe under one form, under another form is cherished. If, therefore, sin is to be measured by the heart’s relation to the will of God, as such, and to simple rectitude, then this constitutional, or educational, or prudential aversion to a comparatively large number of crimes argues no comparative aver¬ sion to sin , nor any comparative purity of heart. This remarkable provision"for the existence of societv is further illustrated in the fact, that there t i J are some vices which are naturally destructive, the temptation and the inclination to which are, providentially, excluded, until restraining social influences are called to hold the vices in check. It is remarkable that chastity and temperance are, ordinarily, found in savage life; and while there are no social restraints upon the indul¬ gence of licentiousness and drunkenness, the dis¬ position to them seems to be held in abeyance. It is only as civilization gradually progresses, and legislation guards against the consequences of excess, and a correct public opinion forms a 108 NATURAL GOODNESS. check, that the individual can invent his means of indulgence, or awakes to his long-unfelt temp¬ tations to lewdness or intemperance. The wis¬ dom of this provision by the Ruler of all is seen in those instances where nations, nominally Chris¬ tian— for only to those nations which claim to be restrained by the spirit of the gospel has God trusted the communication of high civiliza¬ tion to the savage—have introduced the obvious and easy vices of their civilization, without being able at the same time to introduce its restraints. The savage tribes melt away like snow beneath that glare of newly-roused passion. As the Cre¬ ator thus holds some temptations in abeyance, so he brings in a deep repugnance to check the force of others. As the unreasoning horse, with no moral perceptions, and although he never yet has witnessed death or bloodshed, snuffs the scent of blood or slaughtered flesh, and shrinks back in terror; so at all times, or varying according to circumstances, the Governor of our race im¬ parts a repugnance to those forms of vice which would destroy at once the existence and proba¬ tion of this world of sinners. Thus, let the reader observe that while we take human conduct in its most favourable aspect, yet COMPARATIVE RECTITUDE. 109 we see that other motives besides moral principle tend to make it what it is. We feel how terribly the common life of man would change, if the temporal reward of his actions, and their future penalties, did not restrain him, and keep him even from being aware of slumbering passions. We see how even the general repugnance to gross forms of sin proves, not a comparative repugnance to sin itself, but only an educational or instinctive aversion to those forms , implanted for a temporary purpose. We shall endeavour in our next essay to do full justice to those amia¬ ble and dignified impulses of the heart, which adorn the race, and which certainly are not at¬ tributable to any phase of self-love. We pass from the prudential motives to consider the nat¬ ural virtues of humanity. « I tTl)C Hatnral Virtues. “ And here the first thing to be considered, and which will at once remove a world of error, is, that this — the doctrine of the corrupt and sinful nature of the human will — is no tenet first introduced or proposed by Christianity, and which, should a man see reason to disclaim the authority of the gos¬ pel, would no longer have any claim on his attention. It is no perplexity that a man may get rid of by ceasing to be a Christian, and which has no existence for a philosophic deist. It is a fact, affirmed, indeed, in the Christian Scriptures alone with the force and frequency proportioned to its consummate importance; but a fact acknowledged in every religion that retains the least glimmering of the patriarchal faith in a God infinite, yet personal.” Coleridge. Spiritual Aphorism*. Y. THE NATURAL VIRTUES. There are times of depression and weariness of the frame, or of the Heart, when the brightest scenes of nature grow dim to our vision, and assume the sombre shadow of the spirit within us. And then again hours will come, when the unbur- dened soul looks out with a happier glance, and, like an evening sun, throws its own radiance over mountain, and sea, and desert, until the verv barrenness of nature grows gorgeous be- u o o o neath its gaze. So, under peculiar personal cir¬ cumstances, we look out upon the moral world— upon the character, and principles, and senti¬ ments of mankind. Sometimes, with sorrow and indignation, we turn awav and sav, “All men are liars .' 5 Sometimes, with a full heart, we muse upon the brighter scenes of life, and view it all adorned with noble thoughts, and holy aspirations, and godlike deeds; and we look up and say, “ Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, thou hast crowned him m NATURAE GOODNESS. with glory and honour.” But when the passing emotion is over, a candid observation will con¬ vince us that either view is extreme and unfair: not that the moral character of the human heart and life might not be radiant with perfect purity, or black with unalleviated putrefaction; but that neither of these possible extremes is realized in the actual state of things around us. Look upon human hearts, not poetically, not theologically, but as they strike you in every-day life,'—in busi¬ ness, in society, or at their homes,—and you feel that they are not altogether angelic; nor yet are they utterly fiendish. "We do not mean that hu¬ man nature presents one level mediocrity of vir¬ tue or vice; but that, scattered through commu¬ nities, and through families, nay, often in the same heart, virtues most noble and graceful are found side by side with gross vices and deficien¬ cies, like flowers which spring up together with rank weeds, that poison the very air around them. And these generous impulses, and right affec¬ tions, are truly disinterested. They are not the subtle and disguised promptings of self-love. After all the influences which spring from re¬ gard to law, or reputation, or the retributions of time and eternitv, and from the more delicate NATURAL VIRTUES. 115 and latent forces of pride, are taken into account, human action, and personal consciousness, attest our possession of spontaneous and independent yearnings to what is pure, and lovely, and of good report. And this, too, independently of religion, if religion implies any prayer and an- swering assistance from a higher power. Jus¬ tice, benevolence, gratitude, sympathy, are not poor wanderers from heart to heart, seeking en¬ trance and finding none. Thev do not wait even for religion to unbar the soul and let them in. Xever vet was there a human heart whose earli- d est'and growing consciousness did not recognise the presence of one or all. Let us dwell for a moment upon the numerous institutions for the relief of physical or mental suffering which adorn our cities, and with hum¬ ble architecture grace’ this broad country; and admitting that not until Christianity plead the cause was it fully appreciated, yet remember who have built and sustained them, generation after generation. Whose unpaid supervision holds their interests in trust ? Whose hearts have melted beneath the appeal of the advo¬ cate that pressed their claims? Whose generous hands have, year by year, replenished the ex¬ hausted treasuries? Xot the Clmrch-members 116 NATURAL GOODNESS. alone; but those who, seated by their side, have wept with their tears and given with their bene¬ factions. Nor are they reached through the Church, and by argumentation different from that which is brought to bear upon it. The ap¬ peal is made, and it is answered, directly, in vir¬ tue of the common sentiments of humanity. So literature bears testimony to the strength and delicacy of these principles, independently of religion. Comparatively few of the poets, or historians, or even moralists whose works form our permanent literature, have exhibited an ex¬ perience which would bear evangelical criticism; and yet their ifoble sentiment, and generous affec¬ tion, and high appreciation of the pure and the divine, are treasured even by the Church as a glorious heritage; and often has the pulpit pointed its invective or its appeal with their sen¬ tences, and the congregation breathed its thanks¬ giving through their verse. And even the fearful insidiousness with which the depraved novelist seduces the heart by pictures of gross vice half- veiled in the drapery of generous qualities, only proves his own ability to appreciate the good while he loves the evil; proves his sense of the necessity of propitiating the public sentiment which cannot bear unalleviated vice; and proves NATURAL VIRTUES. 117 that such union of qualities most dissimilar, how¬ ever unusual in the precise combination of the author, is not infrequent and unnatural. But we need not look abroad, when at our verv firesides these virtues dwell, and make for b ' us—a home. Here we can mark the blending: of those contrasted qualities in their first exhi¬ bition, and their earliest growth. Here, where as vet the temptations and fearful examples of the great world have never come; and where, on the other hand, no thought of policy or shame conceals the spontaneous thought, “ Heaven lies about us in our infancy / 7 and its tones and its pure light seem echoed in the tones of affection and reflected in the unsul¬ lied countenance. How quick and clear the ap¬ prehension of truth, and right, and love ! Amid the diversities of age, and temperament, and constitution, that mark the group which gathers at the parental board, the common affection that binds them to each other beams forth in a thou¬ sand acts of childish virtue, recorded only in a parent's heart, or remembered when one link of the golden chain is broken by death. Truth that endures the penalty rather than deny the wayward disobedience, and generous self-denial 118 NATURAL GOODNESS. that yields whole fortunes of infantile wealth to soothe a weeping playmate, and frank amend¬ ment made for passionate vehemence and free forgiveness reconciling the unkind invader of young prerogatives. How much has each to call out our admiration and our love, amid his own peculiar failings; some better trait, some lovelier impulse, some generous emotion, that more than grace of form or beauty of feature wins and seals the affection of our hearts. And in the growth of years, how these early traits mature and strengthen; and with all the passion, and recklessness, and irritability, and wantonness of youth, there glows a noble en¬ thusiasm, a generous self-denial, a delicate sen¬ sibility, and a constant affection. And there are characters in whom the few failings of childhood seem to vanish before the clearer recognition of the duties of life and the beauty of virtue, and the pure spirit, clothed with a form and expres¬ sion that is a fitting shrine for such a soul, dazzles with angelic loveliness, or in a lowlier vesture shows how “ Nature crescent does not grow in bulk Of thews and sinews only; but as this temple waxes, The inward service of the mind and soul Grows wide withal.” NATURAL VIRTUES. 119 Even although eacli may have deficiencies, yet has each his own excellences ; and in later years, amid all the confirmed evil, and habitual and conventional wrong, the false sentiment, and the blunted sensibility, the gloom is relieved by many an instance of stern integrity in business, of firm fidelity in friendship, of unexhausted lib¬ erality, and of the amiability and devotion which give the sweetness and the sanctity of home. Ivor let it be supposed, that to any peculiar development of civilization or religion, these virtues exclusively belong. Heathenism, in its classic pages, has recorded illustrations of all that is noble and. tender in human thought and feeling, and now points us to the millions that people her vast continents for examples of the same universal traits. It is not civilization that has gradually grafted them into the soul; for while barbarism has vices peculiarly its own, and repulsive in their nakedness, there are other virtues which stand with austere dignity amid the simplicity of savage life. ITnawed by the prevailing corruption,—stemming the tide of social degradation,'—history displays a chastity amid voluptuousness, a clemency in the midst of cruelty, a justice that silently rebuked the wantonness of impunity, and friendship stronger 120 NATURAL GOODNESS. than death. Ignorance could not blind them; slavery could not fetter them; poverty could not starve them. In the deepest recesses of the vilest hearts that men have execrated as they crushed them from off the earth like vipers, there has yet lingered some one relic of early virtue that would not die ; as if to prove that in human nature, in its utmost desolation, the very rocks and sand are not without some bubbling spring, some struggling blades of verdure, though as yet the desert may not blossom as the rose. Now, we dwell thus upon the universality and beauty of these natural virtues, because in speaking of that which was created in God’s image, however it may have fallen, we dare not slander it by reckless invective and railing accu¬ sation ; because we share the honour and the shame of the common nature, and every stigma upon the one great family recoils upon the shameless heart that taunts it; and because, by plain truth, we would disarm the indignant re¬ buke that has charged, too justly and too often, an orthodox theology with ignoring all that was good in humanity. “ So,” said the purest and most eloquent champion and eulogist of natural virtue, speaking of such a theology, “it exag¬ gerates the sins of men, that the need of an in- NATURAL VIRTUES. 121 finite atonement may be maintained. Some of the most affecting tokens of God’s love, within and around us, are obscured by this gloomy theology. The glorious faculties of the soul; its high aspirations ; its sensibility to the great and good in character; its sympathy with disinter¬ ested and suffering virtue; its benevolent and religious instincts; its thirst for a happiness not found on earth: these are overlooked and thrown into the shade, that they may not disturb the persuasion of man’s natural corruption. Inge¬ nuity is employed to disparage what is interest¬ ing in the human character. While the bursts of passion in the new r -born child are gravely urged as indications of a native rooted cor¬ ruption, its bursts of affection, its sweet smile, its innocent and irrepressible joy, its loveliness and beauty, are not listened to, though they plead more eloquently its alliance with higher natures. The sacred and tender affections of home; the unwearied watchings and cheerful sacrifices of parents; the reverential, grateful assiduity of children, smoothing an aged father’s or mother’s descent to the grave ; woman’s love, stronger than death; the friendship of brothers and sisters; the anxious affection which tends around the bed of sickness; the subdued voice 6 122 NATURAL GOODNESS. which breathes comfort into the mourner’s heart; all the endearing offices which shed a serene light through our dwellings : these are explained away, by the thorough advocates of this system, so as to include no real virtue—so as to consist with a natural aversion to goodness. Even the higher efforts of disinterested benevolence, and the most unaffected expressions of piety, if not connected with the true faith, are, by the most rigid disciples of the doctrine which I oppose, resolved into the passion for distinction, or some other working of ‘ unsanctified nature.’ ”* How far we are from throwing a veil over any human excellence, and how freely we admit the disinterestedness of these natural virtues, every page has witnessed. We are now discussing, not those moral actions which, however in ac¬ cordance with the law, are the compulsory ser¬ vices of a fearful spirit, but the moral virtues themselves, recognised and prized by universal consent. And certainly their existence is a fact to be accounted for. If to do justly, and to love mercy, and discharge the duties of our relations in life from the impulse of spontaneous feeling, be not religion, what is religion? If affections whose presence is commended as obligatory, and * Charming. NATURAL VIRTUES. 123 whose absence is rebuked as evidence of deepest sin, be not religious, wbat are they? What rela- j o J fJ tion do they bear to religious principles; and why, in God's economy, are they so universal and so inwoven, that crime and despair can scarcely tear them from our hearts ? The ordinary and most obvious method of meeting this question, and that which Chalmers, in his Commercial Discourses, has made most prominent, even while he elsewhere goes into a more philosophical criticism, is, to bring the claims of Jehovah before the complacent moral¬ ist, and bid him feel that, however his debt to man has been discharged, he is bankrupt toward God. “The way, then, to assert the depravity of man, is to fasten on the radical element of de¬ pravity, and to show how deeply it lies incorpo¬ rated with his moral constitution. It is not by an utterance of rash and sweeping totality to refuse to him the possession of what is kind in sympathy, or of what is dignified in principle—• for this were in the face of all observation. It is to charge him direct with his utter disloyalty to God. It is to convict him of treason against the Majesty of heaven. ±t is to press home upon him the impiety of not caring about God. It is to tell him that the hourly and habitual language 124 NATURAL GOODNESS. of Lis heart is, £ I will not Lave the Benrn who made me to rule over me.’ It is to go to the man of honour, and while we frankly award to him that his pulse beats high in the pride of in¬ tegrity—it is to tell him, that He who keeps it in living play, and who sustains the loftiness of its movements, and who, in one moment of time, could arrest it forever, is not in all his thoughts. It is to go to the man of soft and gentle emo¬ tions, and while we gaze in tenderness upon him—it is to read to him out of his own charac¬ ter, how the exquisite mechanism of feeling may be in full operation, while He who framed it is forgotten; while He who poured into his consti¬ tution the milk of human kindness, may never be adverted to with one single sentiment of ven¬ eration, or one single purpose of obedience; while He who gave him his gentler nature, who clothed him with all its adornments, and in virtue of whose appointment it is that, instead of an odious and revolting monster, he is the much-loved child of sensibility, may be utterly disowned by him. In a word, it is to go round among all that hu¬ manity has to offer in the shape of fair, and amiable, and engaging, and to prove how deeply humanity has revolted against that Being who has done so much to beautify and exalt her. It NATURAL VIRTUES. 125 is to prove that the carnal mind, under all its varied complexions of harshness, or of delicacy, is enmity against God. It is to prove that, let nature he as rich as she may in moral accom¬ plishments, and let the most favoured of her sons realize upon his own person the finest and fullest . assemblage of them—should he, at the moment of leaving this theatre of display, and bursting loose from the frame-work of mortality, stand in the presence of his Judge, and have the question put to him, ‘What hast thou done unto me?’ this man of constitutional virtue, with all the salutations he got upon earth, and all the rever¬ ence that he has left behind him, may, naked and defenceless before Him who sitteth on the throne, be left without a plea and without an argu¬ ment.”* How there is a weakness and incompleteness in this argument, thus brought out so promi¬ nently and alone, which will be felt w r here it is not understood. It appears to make religion to be merely a personal obligation to God, and the guilt of irreligion to consist only in the personal insult to Jehovah, and its penalties to be merely the vindictive resentments of a wounded personal Q Commercial Discourses, Sermon I. 126 NATURAL GOODNESS. feeling. It seems to overlook the claims of that eternal and immutable principle of rectitude, which the heart may acknowledge to pervade the divine nature and its decrees, but which is felt to have existence, not by virtue of his decree alone, but in its own absolute authority to con¬ stitute the very sanction of the Creator’s claims, and to leave its separate obligation upon all duties which that Creator has enjoined. Our duties of holy feeling toward God, and our duties of holy feeling toward man, may seem therefore to be only different expressions of the same great principle of purity and rectitude. Either the pure feelings toward man, or the pure feelings toward God, would seem to prove the presence of that one holy principle which is the root of both. It may be questioned how a heart whose genuine earthly virtues prove its devotion to the one great principle of duty and purity, can be destitute of all right devotion toward God. The unreserved praise which Chalmers at times accords to the earthly virtues of morality, while he only charges that one deficiency, of omitting the worship due to Heaven, may seem to admit a converse argument—a plea, that the principle of rectitude which must certainly dwell in the heart from which such virtues flow, can- NATURAL VIRTUES. 127 not lielp but affect us rightly toward God. If, therefore, there shall be found a sentiment of reverence, or of gratitude, or of admiration, to¬ ward Jehovah, in a heart so crowned with natu¬ ral virtues, albeit with no direct prayer for grace, then that sentiment must be taken as the satis¬ factory manifestation of the same religious prin¬ ciple which inspires the human moralities ; and anything beyond this is the recpiirement of super¬ stition or fanaticism. Every man is naturally and truly religious. “ There is, then,” says a well-known defender of the claims of natural goodness, u but one true principle in the mind, and that is the love of the true, the right, the holy. There is but one char¬ acter of the soul to w T hich God has given his approbation, and with which he has connected the certainty of happiness here and hereafter. There is something in the soul which is made the condition of its salvation, and that something is one thing, though it has many forms. It is sometimes called grace in the heart; sometimes holiness, righteousness, conformity to the charac¬ ter of God : but the term most familiar in popu¬ lar use is religion. The constant question is, when a man’s spiritual safety or well-being is the point for consideration, when he is going to die. 128 NATURAL GOODNESS. and men would know whether he is to he happy hereafter, £ Has he got religion ? or, has he been a religions man ? 5 I confess I do not like this use of the term. I am accustomed to consider religion as reverence and love toward God; and to consider it, therefore, as only one part of rec¬ titude or excellence. But you know that it com¬ monly stands for the whole character which God requires of us. How, what I am saying is, that this character is, in principle, one thing. It is, being right; and being right is but one thing. It has many forms, but only one essence. It may be the love of God , and then it is piety. It may be the love of men , and then it is philanthropy. But the love of God, and the love of man, as bearing his image, are in essence the same thing. Or, to discriminate with regard to this second table of the law, it may be a love of men’s hap¬ piness, and then it is the very image of God’s benevolence; or it may be the love of holiness in men—of their goodness, justice, truth, virtue— and then it is a love of the same things that form, when infinitely exalted, the character of God. All these forms of excellence, if they cannot be resolved into one principle, are certainly parts of one great consciousness, the consciousness of right: they at any rate have the strictest alliance; NATURAL VIRTUES. 129 they are inseparably bound together as parts of one whole ; the very nature of true excellence in one form , is a pledge for its existence in every other form”* Now we shall, for the time being, avoid the difficulty of an appeal to those personal claims of the Creator, which may either be but slightly apprehended by the reader, or which his natural sentiment of reverence and gratitude may seem to him to satisfy; and we shall fall back upon the consideration of that underlying principle of love to holiness and rectitude which is the foun¬ dation of all moral affections, both to God and to man. Religion, then, using the word in its widest and popular sense,—religion is the love of virtue, for its own sake—its intrinsic worth. We need not pause to define the nature of virtue :— the intuitive sense of every conscience appre¬ hends it. But we remark the familiar fact, that the love of a truth or a principle is something more than a mere sense of its worth and loveli¬ ness. It is a yearning to see it ever realized and embodied in action, and a painful struggle against its absence or its neglect. And so, of course, the love of virtue delights only in its ° Dewey’s Discourses. Identity of Religion with Goodness. Italics our own. 6* 130 NATURAL GOODNESS. presence and its embodiment, and revolts at all which contradicts and excludes it. But the important point upon which we con¬ centrate attention is, that such a love for holi¬ ness, such a taste for moral rectitude, will be symmetrical and universal in its attraction to the good. The musical ear, endowed with keen¬ est sensibility to harmony of sound, is not satis- tied with the accordances of one bar or tune alone, but demands it in every air, and is tor¬ tured by the least discordance. The artist’s eye, quickened to the perception of an ideal beauty in form and colouring, is patient before no de¬ formity of outline, and no false shade escapes him. The taste for beauty of sound or of form is uniform, and demands perfection everywhere. So the moral sensibility to the beauty of holiness and the discordancy of evil, will be uniform in its application to every duty and every affection. Its aim is, “being right—and being right is one thing. It has many forms, but only one essence.” “The very nature of true excellence in one form is a pledge for its existence in every other form and of course its absence, unregretted, unresisted, in any form, argues its absence in every other form, whatever there may be of its semblance. Now this argument is too clear and palpable NATURAL VIRTUES. 131 to need much illustration. If one should present a bar of iron, which he averred to be a magnet, and whose claims to that title were doubted, the most natural way of deciding the question would be by a reference to the action of that property which constitutes the magnet, by virtue of which it is invariably attracted to all pieces of pure iron, in any direction, and without regard to their shape. So that the metallic blocks were pure, and presented fairly and directly to the magnetic bar, it could not fail to cling alike to all. If it was drawn only to a few, and that with very variable and irregular attraction, it is plain that the attractive power, whatever it might be, could not be that true magnetic influence which draws to all alike; and therefore, whatever other prop¬ erties the vaunted bar might claim, and how well soever its peculiar power might serve some use¬ ful purposes, it surely is no magnet. So let the advocate of the religions character of the natural virtues, and of the demonstration which they would offer of the existence of the pure love of holiness in every form, abide by that principle, that if the heart be a true spirit¬ ual magnet, drawn by its attraction to moral rec- titnde, to embrace it and cleave to it, wherever and however it may manifest itself, then it will 132 NATURAL GOODNESS. cleave to every clearly recognised virtue that adorns our earthly intercourse, and yearn toward every duty and every pure affection. It will have no irregular and capricious attraction, se¬ lecting some virtues, rejecting others—cleaving with blind adhesion to one duty, and letting an¬ other go, unresistingly, under any outward force. If, amid virtues equally recognised, and of equal claims, it does reject one or more, cleaving in¬ stead to the very vices which are their opposites, then it acts not from a pure principle: all its constant and intense attraction toward a few cannot demonstrate its spiritual magnetism. By its want of accordance with that law of uniform attraction, the heart is proven utterly to lack that magnetic love of rectitude. What it may be , which thus attracts it in some directions, may he as yet unknown or unrevealed; but it is not the love of holiness. How many useful purposes it may serve, and how much beauty and reliev¬ ing light it may throw over the gloom of human life, is matter of deep thankfulness to God; but it concerns not the argument. It is not the love of rectitude; it is not religion ; it will not serve spiritual ends, nor secure spiritual rewards. JSTor will it avail anything in such a case to say that the magnetic force is but weah, or as NATURAL VIRTUES. 133 yet imperfectly developed, for its attraction would still be uniform in its weakness , and while it drew to none strongly, would draw to all alike. And so it is nothing to the purpose to sav that the religious element is as vet but weak, uncultured, undeveloped, when, instead of a faint attraction toward every clearly recognised virtue, the heart is drawn impulsively to some, and is all indifference or repulsion to the rest. Xow, we shall not urge upon any heart its want of attraction to that form of excellence and holi¬ ness which is highest of all. and charge its want of interest in its duties toward God personally; nor shall we denv that there are manv cases of t/ V conscience where the moral bearings of action cannot at once be calculated, and that there are modes of exercising every virtue which are only C tl c/ learned bv long observation or instruction from others, and therefore the apparent neglect of these duties mav result not from the want of re- c/ ligion, but from imperfect knowledge. But leav¬ ing unnoticed the lesser actions, and the tribu¬ tary feelings, let us look down upon the great mountain ranges of dutv, and the broad streams of moral affections, that stand out upon the sur¬ face of human life. Take the extreme cases, the boldest illustrations of character. Here are hearts 134 NATUKAL GOODNESS. tliat never swerved from tlieir business integrity, and could not sleep beneath the thought of com¬ mercial dishonour, who are yet deaf to all the appeals of benevolence or the suggestions of compassion. Here are men of tender sensibility, of wide philanthropy, and open to every private solicitation of poverty or affliction, upon whose word, nevertheless, you would not risk anything of value. Here are men full of gentleness and consideration, and noble self-denial for their do¬ mestic circle, who, beyond the enchanted ring, are, as we phrase it, not the same men. Listen to the utterance of a stranger’s name, and there is not one of the obvious and generally recog¬ nised of the so-called moral virtues, which you dare warrant him to have, and yet you are firmly convinced that in his character some one of them will be conspicuous. Take the names of six of the leading moral virtues which adorn the natural heart, and the names of the six corre¬ sponding vices of character, mix them together, and at random draw out six, virtues or vices, as they shall chance to come, and you have the elements of some character around you—some¬ times perhaps a solitary virtue among recognised moral deformities. And how are these moral vices borne by the heart thus conspicuous for NATURAL VIRTUES. 135 justice, or benevolence? Are they lamented, and repressed with heroic self-discipline, and ingenuous shame ? In ot at all! They are toler¬ ated, frankly admitted, laughed at, indulged, with the same composure or indifference as the virtues are exercised. In any den where the vicious have herded for crime, in any prison where the law gathers them for punishment, you shall see bright exemplifications of the sep¬ arate virtues, living and more glorious from the moral death that is around them. From the same eyes the angel and the fiend gleam out alternately. How, if it is clear that it is not the love of holiness, or rectitude, which lias thus sustained the redeeming cpiality of historical characters, who have “ Left a name to all succeeding times, Link’d with one virtue and a thousand crimes,” the case is made out. For although the contrast may be less striking in other characters, yet the spuriousness of the most conspicuous and plausi¬ ble of these natural virtues has been shown, and all the less conspicuous and less contrasted vir¬ tues have no claim on our confidence. The best samples of ore, and seemingly pure nuggets of 136 NATURAL GOODNESS. gold, liaving been assayed and found to be dross, the smaller fragments and less valuable ore is included in the investigation. If, then, integrity goes hand in hand with cru¬ elty, and compassion embraces lust, and affection can take sweet counsel with theft, it is clear that they are not that integrity, and that compassion, and that affection, which came out from God’s presence with his benediction, and may lead back the heart to him. They may wear the mask, but they have not the Spirit of heaven. If they should be discovered with only one of hell’s vices as a boon companion, that willing association detects and condemns them. If the case should occur that the accustomed vice is absent, or concealed, they cannot draw from the accidental circumstance a proof of their real sanctity. That it is not from any innate want of congeniality on their part that the vice is absent, their easy fellowship on other occasions has exhibited. In short, an examination of the natural virtues demonstrates that they have no root in the true principle of virtue. They may be useful, they may be beautiful; but they are not the affections and sentiments which a spirit¬ ual nature would present to view. They differ not in degree alone, but in kind. NATURAL VIRTUES. 137 Bare characters there are, of splendid combi¬ nation of all that is noble in such principles, and amiable in such sensibilities; men who seem to have inherited the virtues only of long ancestries, and to stand forth, from very childhood to the grave, as beings moulded expressly to display how grand a soul the common elements of hu¬ manity can form, of their unaided energy. Poor human nature! these are thy nobility, and thy kingly ones! And there is not a gem of all the brilliant qualities that flash from their coronet and proclaim their dignity, but it has been sepa¬ rately tested—and found spurious! Thus, without appealing to a consciousness of neglect or enmity toward God—leaving that question for the moment in abeyance—we have examined the natural virtues by themselves, and find in them a want of that symmetry, regularity, and uniformity, which is an invariable attendant on true love of rectitude—true holy principle. The natural virtues are not religious impulses. TVe have not yet asked what they really are, nor what purpose they serve. What they are , and why they are, we may not be able to say; yet we may say what they are not. The com¬ position of the spurious coin matters little, so the 138 NATURAL GOODNESS. assay proves it is not gold. Let ns go where we may receive that which will not deceive ns. And yet in a few pages we may be able to sug¬ gest the real nature of these natural virtues, and to show what part they are meant to work in the redemption of the soul. “ It seems that the Highest Good of the world pursues its course of increase and prosperity quite independently of all human virtues or vices, according to its own laws, through an invisible and unknown power—-just as the heavenly bodies run their appointed course independently of all human effort; and that this power carries forward, in its own great plan, all human intentions, good and bad, and, with superior power, employs for its own purpose that which was undertaken for other ends.” t’ichte. VI. / THE RELATION OE MORALITY TO RELIGION. There is no wide-spreacl and popular error but there is in it an element of truth, in virtue of which it has its hold on the mind ; and so there is a truth lodged within the popular notion of the identity of natural goodness with religion. Be¬ cause the mind cannot reject this truth that lies within it, the proof of its error, however logically made out, will not be appreciated until the truth and the error are separated, and the error is left alone in its falsity. Let us say, then, that it is a truth admitting of no demonstration, but an intuitively recog¬ nised fact, that when the love of rectitude is the sole principle of the heart, that heart will be filled with all holy sentiments and affections. True, pure love alone fills the soul that yields itself to the service of holiness; and this love is of the same deep-springing fountain, whether its stream flow toward the throne of God, or descend in rivulets of earthly moralities toward man. 142 NATURAL GOODNESS. Benevolence, compassion, justice—every virtue that can adorn this life—are only separate names for the same principle or affection, guided into a peculiar channel of circumstances, and varying only with the character of the objects among which it flows. That pure love which fills the heart is like the ocean, and as God’s attributes of solemn or softer character are more clearly presented to the consciousness, like a varying sky, that sea of love is tinged with solemn adora¬ tion, or the tenderness of filial trust; but all is love. And human relationships are like the broken shore about that ocean—lying in varied forms of deep sound or sheltered bay, or inland sea, con¬ nected with the one great sea; and from their forms and depths, taking different names, while yet the tide that fills them all is one. It flows among dark cliffs of sorrow, and becomes shad¬ owed into compassion: it flows amid insults and oppression, and their reflected and inverted forms mark its patience, long-suffering, and for¬ giveness : it glides into the regular and exact enclosures of obligation, and it becomes justice. “If there be any other commandment, it is briefly contained in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” And this second command is not only like the first, but requires the same iden- RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 143 tical affection; lie that lovetli God, loveth man —and he only. The ocean of holy love fills the adjoining gulfs of human affections. So a pure soul, new-created, and placed amid the re¬ lations of a finite existence, would at once feel the appropriate emotions awake within the heart as each new occasion was recognised. But what is more to the purpose of this argu¬ ment, the popular, and we might say, the intui¬ tive sense, is everywhere-—not only that a right principle secures both pure love to God, and pure affections in earthly relationship, but that a wrong principle will reverse the whole , and de¬ stroy at once not only love to God, but also every separate pure earthly affection. Every one feels that an unholy heart will not be filled with that pure spirit which constitutes the va¬ rious affections and qualities of human virtue; that a heart destitute of the principles of moral rectitude will not love God, and will not love man; that the same fatal enchantment which changes the great ocean of the heart into enmity against God, would of necessity change the na¬ ture of the tide that fills every bay and gulf of human affection. If charity, pure and unde¬ filed, fill the soul with meekness, gentleness, pa¬ tience, kindness, and compassion, justice and all 444 NATURAL GOODNESS. that is of good report, then will the heart whose charity is turned to gall he filled with envy, jealousy, hatred, wrath, blasphemies, and every evil affection and impulse. If being right is one thing, being wrong also is one thing; if be¬ ing right includes all religion, and philanthropy, and human virtues, being wrong includes ali irreligion, and unloveliness, and vicious affections. If a perfectly pure heart would fill every rela¬ tion of life with a perfect virtue and loveliness, then a totally depraved heart would fill every relation of life with vice, and discord, and terror. Such being the law of spiritual affection, be it good or evil, men feel instinctively that either a perfect purity or a perfect pollution of heart would produce a very different world of feeling and of action, from that which we see about us. And so it would. It is this one principle that destroys the force of the entire Chalmerian view of depravity. That system represents all the natural virtues and affections as being the unfallen columns of the ruined temple of our nature—it supposes them to have continued the same in nature as they were before the fall—and that the relative RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 145 virtues have in themselves no moral character at all, but as a religious principle is associated with them or not, they are considered religious or irreligious. Generosity, benevolence, sensibili¬ ty, are not the out-growth of a virtuous principle—dependent upon it for very exist¬ ence—dying when it dies—but are self-subsist¬ ing qualities and impulses, which, by mere con¬ tact with a virtuous principle, acquire a legal value. So that, as his own illustration imagines, a world of perfect beings in whom at one stroke the religious principle was swept away, might still continue in exercise of all the moral vir¬ tues—“ all that is dignified in principle, and all that is tender in sensibilitythe sole change being, that those moral affections were not G ' associated with a religious principle, and that the one moral affection toward God is wholly wanting. This last exception to the stability of these affections is singular, and ominous of a fatal in¬ consistency. If want of pure devotion to recti¬ tude may not destroy my disinterested affection toward an earthly parent, why must it destroy my love and sensibility to the character of the heavenly Parent? If we can obey, and rever¬ ence, and love a father, without doing it from 7 146 NATURAL GOODNESS. moral principle, why may we not serve and obey God, not from moral principle, but from the old, unaltered affection, although it is of no legal valuef Chalmers attempts to show that the consciousness of transgression and of God’s character, as moral governor and avenger—of the contradiction of his commands to many of the voices of the heart’s desires—creates disaf¬ fection toward God. But does observation sus¬ tain the theory? Is it by any such reasoning that the mind is thus gradually alienated from God—thus made insensible to his claims alone of all the universe-—thus roused into a desperate opposition to the rectoral authority ? Many men never realize this personal relation at all—they never feel the bitterness of danger, and attempt to suppress it; they simply have no sensibility in regard to the claims of God, as they have in regard to others. The absence of this affection is as original—as spontaneous—as natural—as the presence of any of the others. There are hearts which no hard usage, and no parental discipline, however severe, can alienate; whose love gives acknowledgment of the justice of every blow, and cleaves to the loved mother or father through all punishment and through every change: but where is found this devotion RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 14:7 to God—inspiring obedience, even in hearts that have no love to holiness, as such ? And so it is felt everywhere, that if “ being wrong” would not only destroy the legal value of love to God, but destroy the very being of love , and call its opposite vice into existence—then would it also destroy all the other moral affec¬ tions. In fact, as we said before, moral principle being taken from the heart, the entire ocean of its affection becomes polluted, and every indenture alone; the coast would feel the immediate stagna- tion. The purely animal appetites might be un¬ changed; and even these, being unrestrained bv the voice of conscience, would run to excess and ruin—but the moral affections, benevolence, justice, Ac., are at once destroyed. TThat, then, are these natural virtues, and how are they to be accounted for ? Let us, in contrast to the Chalmerian idea, conceive of a world in which, at one stroke, all true religious principle were struck away. Im¬ agine that this world in which we live, with all its advancement in civilization, all its mental culture, all its arrangements to secure the ob¬ vious welfare of society, were suddenly to sink into a state such as would result, according to the popular idea, if all moral principle were 148 NATURAL GOODNESS. extinct, and the race became—totally depraved! Commerce, and trade, and art, and all that sys¬ tem of connected labour which demands mutual confidence and integrity, would give way to the unchecked rapacity and faithlessness which no penalty of mere law could restrain. The social ties that bind men together would wither in the scorching breath of angry passion: home itself, as being the spot where all interests are brought most into contact,—if not of cooperation, of harsh collision,—would be the deepest sink of evil, as the purest flowers are fabled to putrefy the foul¬ est. The attraction that bound man to man, to kindred, to home, to wife and child, becomes the attraction of repulsion, that leaves each soul isolated, and selfish, and hating each intruding and unsubservient soul. Stung with a sense of guilt and self-contempt that makes the soul des¬ perate in its evil; crushed by the dread of wrath that soon must pour its lightning down in rain of fire; hopeless and reckless of relief or recov¬ ery; frenzied by passions that burst the frail vessel of mortality, or whirl the mind in torna¬ does of emotion ; filled with vindictive hate that knows no satiety but in the annihilation of its victim; the multitudes of earth, unless secured by a new gift of immortality, would fall in the RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 149 suicide of a frame too frail to hold the violence within it, or in mutual and rapid extermination the race would die out, ere the generation that is in its prime grew old. The gift of immortal¬ ity, indeed, might keep the present population on its surface; hut the conjugal relation, the maternal care, the provision for youth, would all be forgotten : and if new habitants were ushered into life, how terrible the fate ! Then would we feel it a feeble portrait of each soul that the apostle draws :— u Being filled with all unright¬ eousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, de¬ ceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without un¬ derstanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.” IIow would this very world of ours, with all its wonted love- liness of earth, and sky, and sea, and with the very beings who dwell peacefully upon it now, be turned at once, not figuratively, but literally, into a hell of fiends. How pause and think! How could a pur¬ pose of mercy and a plan of redemption through an atoning Saviour, be brought to bear upon such a race, and be in any sense a valid and 150 NATURAL GOODNESS. available offer? How, amid tlie remorse, and fearfulness, and desperation, and tumultuous pas¬ sion, could any thought be gained to a proposal of renewed allegiance, any faith be secured in its sincerity, any commencement given to the struggle against sin, and any practicable proba¬ tion afforded during a specified reprieve? Yain were it, when revengeful armies, amid the heat of battle, desperate with mutual hatred and de¬ struction, pause for a charge and onset yet more furious, for a meek messenger to come between, and speak of concessions and forgiveness and love. Yain, even, when a crew of revellers are heated with poisoned draughts, and fired to sensuality and brutal passions, to speak of tem¬ perance, and sober joys, and self-controlling mastery. But vainer still, upon this hell-struck world, for one of earth or heaven to speak of pardon and renewed submission, of a clean heart, and a right spirit, and a new probation. Is it not clear, that some preliminary steps are requisite before this practicable offer can be pre¬ sented ? In the first place, must not God, as we showed more fully in the chapter on the unconsciousness RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 151 of guilt, suspend in some way that law by which remorse is ever haunting sin, and pointing to a more fearful wrath ? Did we not see that if the consciousness of vileness comes too vividly to the mind, it crushes into hopeless self-despair and un¬ belief in mercy, or rouses into recklessness? Did we not see how that fearful looking-for of fiery indignation which sometimes glares upon the guilty soul, unfits it for every duty, and for all the offices that perpetuate and civilize the race: like poor Bunyan sitting on the horse-block list¬ lessly, day after day, the very sun that cheered all others seeming to him the burning eye of vengeance? And may we not now say at once, that an essential preliminary to probation would be to deaden this sensibility so far, that while remorse and fear might attest their presence, and teach their lessons, they should not overawe and paralyze the soul ? And then the violence, the sweep, the frenzy, of passion and emotion, must they not be checked ? Must not the heart be subdued to some kind of calmness, so that reflection, and a clear percep¬ tion of things, and a wise decision, could be pos¬ sible? Blot that the soul is to be repressed into a dead calm; but that a restraining influence should go forth over the heart, like oil upon the 152 NATURAL GOODNESS. tumultuous billows of passion, beneath which the measured swell still betokens the repressed fury of the element, and yet it may not wreck with its impulsiye rage eyeiy sober thought or better purpose, or human amelioration. So that we say, comparatiyely, the passions are to be repressed, equally with the sense of guilt and danger. But eyen then, while men stood calmly, and without yiolent repulsion of selfish passion, there would be no social attraction, no sentiment and affection, which, like the pure impulses lost by sin, might reconstitute society, and the family, and all the essential machinery of human im- t J proyement, cooperation, and deyelopment. And where are those affections to come from ? Tire soul has but two classes of affections possible—the eyil and the good: the good are yet unproduced; they are the end to be attained by this plan of redemption, and of course cannot be produced in adyance; the eyil impulses haye just been re¬ pressed. "What substitute for the soul’s true and pure affections yet remains ? Why, if the spiritual nature is thus deprayed, and the best that can be done with it is to let its outpouring affections be repressed, so that no really pure and generous emotions can proceed RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 153 outward from tlie essential and immortal element of the soul itself, there can he no resource, un¬ less God has power to impress upon the soul, for the time being , impulses which, having no neces¬ sary connexion with moral principle, being not the production of the soul itself, are yet capable of leading the will, blindly it may be, to the same outward conduct which would be secured by the intelligent action of pure affections. In short, the soul which cannot in strict truth have virtuous af¬ fections, must be impressed with parallel instincts. !Now, without saying that there is identity of character between these human impulses and those which constitute the instincts of the brute creation, we may remark that natural history furnishes us with a singular correspondence be¬ tween the acknowledged instinct of the brute, and the true and high affection which we con¬ ceive to be the natural production of a pure heart. There is hardly a quality which adorns the natural character, which has not a parallel in some mere animal characteristic. Poetry, seeking its analogies everywhere, has found them most obvious here; and even in sober prose, the epithets which are in common use to designate human character, lovely as well as repulsive, are taken most frequently from the 154 NATURAL GOODNESS. animal creation. Without comprehension of the virtue of truth and honesty, animals exhibit fidelity and candour, or faithlessness and craft; without realizing the moral beauty of benevo¬ lence, they are generous, or selfish; unconscious of the spiritual bearings of the sensibilities, they are yet amiable, patient, sympathizing, and for¬ giving, or the reverse. Utterly ignorant of those considerations of various interests and relation¬ ships which may be affected, and which from our point of consciousness throw such a poetic propriety and beauty around their instinctive ser¬ vices or resentments, they blindly yield to those amiable and truthful impulses which sustain the lower animate creation in existence and in enj oyment. Indeed, it is not sarcasm to say, that you might gather an instinctive quality from each of a variety of species, and combine them into a character of dignity and grace. And, provided that the intellectual being may see the beauty and the importance of the relations thus met, and duties thus discharged, this being, without a particle of a spiritual nature, with no real moral character at all — a mere intellectual brute — might go through life and maintain much of its principle and much of its amiability. Now, the difference between an affectional RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 155 instinct and a true affection, good or evil, is the same as that between the mechanical or migra¬ tory instincts and an intellectual and understand- V ing faculty. The intellect perceives the facts and principles, and reasoning from these it reaches its conclusions; the instinct blindly and mechanically urges the ant to store, and the bee to build its hectagons and the bird its nest. God does the brute’s intellectual work, and gives it the result; and the bare fact that it needs and has the instinct shows that it lacks the intel¬ lect. So the spiritual being, seeing the relations of things, and moved by that one spirit of love which is ready to express itself in all the various relations around it, has its moral affec¬ tions—springing from the one great moral affec¬ tion as their conscious root, and having regard to tire moral consequences of things; but the affectional instincts of the brute, its sympathy or its fidelity, are mere blind impulses, each in¬ dependent of the other. The bare fact that God gives the brute these affections or moral in¬ stincts, only shows its destitution of that effective spiritual nature which would understanding^ lead it to the same conduct. The moral in¬ stincts, like the mental instincts, are mere substitutes for the comprehending and intel- 156 NATURAL GOODNESS. ligent affections and reasoning powers of the soul. But is it doubted whether such affectional in¬ stincts could be impressed, independently of spiritual production? Do they seem so consti¬ tutional where they exist, and so bom with us, that they must cleave to us forever, as a part of our original being ? Can God add or withdraw them, and leave our spiritual affections, good or evil, alone, to act out their nature ? Consider, for a moment, that form of human affection which has ever been the least va¬ riable of all the better impulses that adorn our nature—a mother’s love. How, in every new aspect in which it is seen, it gathers new fitness and tender beauty! How every pecu¬ liarity of the maternal relation, and the infantile weakness, seems adapted to call out from a heart of holy love that very constancy and tenderness of affection which grace a mother’s love. That life to which she has given existence; that form which shall yet bear the likeness of her own features, and inherit the sufferings or the health¬ fulness of her own frame, and w T hose living soul—a spark smitten from her own—shall bum RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 15 7 • with the true or false lustre of her own peculiar passions; that helpless innocence which seeks its life’s nutriment still from her alone, and claims her for its guardian; that ignorance and undeveloped moral being which is yet to be moulded by example and by care to virtue or to vice: how do all these appeal to the pure sym¬ pathies and active energies of a holy heart! Yet the bird that cherishes her nestlings has no thought of these relationships; her warm and self-denying affection, toiling and defending day by day, is a blind affectional instinct— serving good purposes, and yielding much hap¬ piness—but a mere instinct still. When the young nestlings have grown to strength ade¬ quate for self-defence and support, the end is accomplished, and the maternal instinct dies away. So, while the same reasons of expe¬ diency which recpuired its strength to watch over infancy, requires its continuance as a social bond, yet is this human affection generally recog¬ nised as an instinct still. It is not based upon any perception of the relations that give it fitness and beauty. It is not removed when the most obvious inducements to parental care appear to be removed by the offer of another’s care, better advantages, and a safer future. In ignorance, 158 NATURAL GOODNESS. and poverty, and ignominy, and abandoned vice, yea, in imbecility and idiocy, that instinct— lives on. Now we do not say tliat this or other affec- tional instincts cannot be associated with a true and pure affection, if the soul itself be purified .and free: we do not say that there is not such spiritual affection associated with many a moth¬ er’s love. But we dwell upon it to show how, without any intelligent and spontaneous activity from within, the heart may be so drawn; to show how undistinguish able by consciousness that instinct maybe, from the true spiritual love; and how easily, if it stand not alone, this in¬ stinctive yearning blends with and strengthens the more ethereal affection, and so becomes in whole or in part its substitute. We do not specify, but we only suggest how far such affectional instincts of benevolence, or compas¬ sion, or fidelity, impressed upon the heart like a maternal tenderness, might, in the absence of true spiritual affections, accomplish the same social results. It may throw a fresh light over all we have said, and sum it all, to say, that if this earth be a sphere for the development and culture of a RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 159 spiritual character, and God designs that the race should he perpetuated, and that each suc¬ cessive generation should have an offer and a probation; it will be necessary that everything requisite for the safety, the life, and the general progress of man, shall be secured independently of the moral character of each individual; so that the whole shall move on, no matter how the spiritual life may vary in any soul who comes on or goes off the stage of action. "What further influence upon the soul may be required to fit it for probation, we do not now inquire ; but we are sure that a fair platform for further operations may be obtained by these three measures—a deadened consciousness of guilt, repressed passion, and the affectional instincts. These instincts, supported by the systems of rewards and punishments adminis¬ tered in this life, would preserve a true proba¬ tionary condition. Suppose that a small minority only of those who come upon the stage should embrace the proffered salvation, and be renewed with spirit¬ ual affections; yet the continued system of re¬ pression would be needed by them, so long as the spiritual life were not perfected, and would 160 NATURAL GOODNESS. be demanded in the majority who were rejected, to secure for the few who were chosen a possible field of exercise and discipline, that they may not at once be crushed by the vindictive passions of the incorrigible and rejecting. And so, if every soul that lives—the entire generation—be doomed, from its perverse rejec¬ tion of offered mercy, to perish; yet must a pro¬ longed life, and all the amenities and kind offices of life, be secured, in order that another genera¬ tion may arise, nurtured in infancy, instructed and trained to a fitness for their own succeeding probation and invitation to salvation. It is not necessary that every soul should be subjected to a complete repression of every evil passion, and be impressed with every moral in¬ stinct. Indeed, such universal concealment of the evil would lead men into error. So com¬ pletely do they confound their affectional in¬ stincts with true moral affections, that it is only as the virtuous instinct fails, and no moral affec¬ tion fills the void, that men feel the deficiency. If every tendency to rectitude of action were secured by an impulse from without, the inward energy of the awakening spiritual affection would have no struggle and no discipline. So that in every character we are to expect some absence RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 161 even of virtuous instincts—points on which the soul is left alone, to show its weakness and its evil; and by which others, who are not biased by the consciousness of personal dereliction in that especial vice, may see its naked deformity. If, for instance, one-fifth of the community lacked the instinct of justice or honesty, and so the true spiritual deficiency is made- apparent, yet the other four-fifths, secured from that vice by their more favoured impulse, will hold that minority in check by law, and shame, and social penal¬ ties against dishonesty. If another fifth be reck- less of all truth, yet the very moiety of thieves would join in keeping the liars in abeyance. And thus each vice might have its glaring ex¬ amples, and every character might reveal a de¬ formity, and the world might realize the enor¬ mity and danger of each form of evil, and the blackness of the moral depravity that can com¬ bine them all in complete malignity, and yet society would hold itself in check, and the world’s machinery go on the same ; all by the mere dis¬ tribution of these natural instincts among men, according to a law not more difficult to God, nor any more mysterious than that which balances the proportion of the sexes in the multitude of births. 162 NATURAL GOODNESS. Becall, now, tlie steps of this argument. In the last essay it was demonstrated that valua¬ ble and beautiful as these so-called natural vir¬ tues are—these forms of natural goodness—yet they are not religious affections, and do not spring from a love of rectitude. Yet it is felt that if a holy heart would produce all holy affections, an impure heart could produce only impure affec¬ tions. These natural virtues, then, demonstrated not to he affections of a pure nature, and yet not corresponding to the affections of a vicious soul, cannot have root in the spiritual nature at all, although they serve many of the same purposes in human life. But now the existence of such natural impulses is explained by the fact that they are necessary to the preservation of a state of things in which the spiritual nature may have a probation and development. And the possi¬ bility of such temporary impulses from without is shown by an observation of the instinctive affections of the brute creation, with some of the instincts which are admitted to exist temporarily in the human soul. And the conclusion to which Ave are driven is, that all these forms of natural goodness, with their attendant rewards and sup¬ ports, are only substituted and temporary in¬ stincts, into which the pure affections inay grow RELATION OF MORALITY TO RELIGION. 163 and strengthen, as the bud within the calyx, un¬ til life closes, and the instincts are withdrawn, and the pure heart, with its pure affections, needs no more support; or else the doomed reprobate, no longer repressed and stupified, wakes up to the full consciousness of remorse, and the full rage of vile affections. We have witnessed, along the course of a new railroad or aqueduct, the construction of an arch over a wide chasm. "We have seen a frame-work of timber and iron, laboriously constructed, and forming a perfect arch, and then above the heavy beams stone after stone was laid, until the key¬ stone was inserted, and the arch was done. Then th q false-work, as it is termed, was taken down, and the stone arch stood in strength to bear the burden of its heavy train or volmned waters. iSow, that false-work alone could not bear the burden that would test it; and yet that arch of strength could never have been laid but over that same false-work ; and if the true arch is not laid in season, or if it is, that false-work is re¬ moved as useless. So this temporary system of repression and instinctive impulses, and temporal rewards — this system, of human morality — is the false-work of the practical plan of redemp¬ tion ; the temporary arch, not strong enough to 164 NATURAL GOODNESS. bear spiritual tests, yet absolutely requisite to the formation of that true holiness of principle and affections, which may endure forever. This false-work stands till death; then it is taken down, and leaves, either the spiritual arch com¬ plete, or the blank emptiness of all good. The natural morality dies away—the spiritual nature is left in irrevocable and complete purity or vileness. VII. Ileligious (Element tit Unman ftatnre* “ I have all along gone on the principle, that a man has within him capacities of growth, which deserve and will reward intense, unrelaxing toil. I do not look on a human being as a machine, made to be kept in action by a foreign force, to accomplish an unvarying succession of motions, to do a fixed amount of work, and then to fall to pieces at death; but as a being of free spiritual powers. Chaining. Self-Culture. VII. THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. AktiS i's keep tlieir pictures from every eye but tbeir own, until the finished portrait can give the complete impression. The writer cannot so guard himself against a momentary prejudice; for the reader’s eye is on him, as chapter by chapter he furnishes the details of separate fea¬ tures, and seems to neglect others, or to use too strong a colouring. ATe have not, thus far, pre¬ sented a portraiture of human nature. AYe have only given the background and some shading of its lineaments. A further, and, to some extent, a more grateful task remains. The obj ect of the preceding chapters has been to set forth clearly the startling fact, that the moralities and virtues which adorn humanity at large can be accounted for without reference to any religious motives; and that they must be so accounted for, as they lack the invariable signs of religious principle. But we do not therefore deny that there is a re¬ ligious element in man, which may be nurtured 168 NATURAL GOODNESS. and corrected, beneath the shelter of those infe¬ rior qualities and motives. We have shown that men may, in the exercise of an intelligent pru¬ dence and of merely instinctive feelings, do much to preserve and adorn society; but man is not, therefore, merely a compound of intellect and instinct—a mere intellectual brute. He was created in the image of his Maker, afid his spiritual capabilities , however perverted, still dignify his character. If it has been a painful duty to brand as counterfeit nearly every sem¬ blance of virtue wdiich is common among men, it is now our privilege to point out the true re¬ ligious element; to show how far those of its capabilities, which are immortal as the soul itself, need only a right direction and culture, and how those powers, which may have been destroyed, can be replaced by divine energy. We wish to survey the whole progress of mo¬ rality, from the j:>oint where it is purely pruden¬ tial and instinctive, to the point where these lower impulses are lost in the growing strength of a pure religious principle. I. There are several elements in the religious constitution of man, which are commonly spoken of as indicating a degree of spiritual health and RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 169 rectitude of character. Spiritual death, it is sup¬ posed, would involve their absence. Their ex¬ istence is, therefore, held to show that mankind are not yet wholly lost; and the degree of their activity is held to indicate the comparative res¬ toration, or vet unforfeited and original virtue, of the race. But reflection will show us that these peculiar faculties of the soul are a paid of its indestructible constitution, not affected by sin , but remaining the same in purity or in guilt, in heaven or in hell. 1. Consider, for instance, the power of con¬ science. The perception of the distinction be¬ tween right and wrong, involving the approval of the good and the reprobation of the evil, is not only the basis of an angel’s moral nature, but is as fully the inheritance of the fiend himself. Conscience, as the faculty which not only per¬ ceives moral distinctions and the fitness and beauty of virtue, but also its absolute obligation, is not confined to heaven or earth, but lives un¬ silenced in the depths of hell. Conscience, es¬ pecially, as the executive authority, giving due reward to moral action, wields the scourge over the doomed spirit, as it crowns the blessed above. For, if there be not a clear perception of the moral quality of actions, there can be no clear 170 NATURAL GOODNESS. sense of obligation in regard to past or present duties. If there be no sense of obligation, there can be no sense of guilt. If there be no sense of guilt, no punishment can be felt to be deserved and just, and suffering can only be borne as ar¬ bitrary persecution by God. Remorse can have no existence except as it realizes sin. But to suppose that the lost angel or the ruined man, has thus lost not only his moral character, but his moral nature ; to suppose that if there is a retri¬ bution for the wicked, none of it can come through a sense of guilt and shame, but that the doomed soul is as unconscious of guilt as inno¬ cence itself could be, contradicts our first ideas of a moral being, and of retribution. It would entirely destroy the appropriateness of a penalty, either as strictly punitive, because then the wretch cannot comprehend its connexion with his sin; or as disciplinary, because it cannot awaken repentance for unconscious error. Con¬ science, then, is an indestructible element in our nature, destined to live on through every change of moral character. The sense of right and wrong; the prompt approval of the good, and the stern rebuke of the evil; the feeling of posi¬ tive obligation; the satisfaction in virtue, and the pain in sin: these are the main arteries of a RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 171 spiritual being, whose involuntary activity will share its immortality. Whether the action of these faculties shall send through that being a thrill of healthful joy, or of fevered anguish, depends upon circumstances apart from them¬ selves. Kow, in this plain statement of the indestruc¬ tibility of conscience, in all its offices, lies the explanation of much which has been thought to bear against the doctrine of human depravity. Men see that, under the present constitution of things this faculty is most quick and powerful in the holiest souls, and that, as a general rule, each act of resistance to its dictates deadens its sensi¬ bility and its authoritative power. Under such a system, the utterly lost soul would feel no pang and lose all discrimination. The existence of any conscience seems to them, therefore, a proof that man is not utterly fallen; and the high activity and force of this faculty in many, proves that they are far, very far, from total depravity. But we have shown above that this voice within us is really independent of our moral character; and that the most depraved, so far as our essen¬ tial nature is concerned, may feel as keenly as the holiest. We showed, in our second essay, that the fact that there is any variation of the 172 NATURAL GOODNESS. power of conscience, was only a temporary ar¬ rangement, and that otherwise all would realize their sin alike. We admit, then, that a veil is placed before the eye of conscience while we are yet on earth; and this veil grows thicker as men persevere in evil. But this variation of feeling only shows that the man has done a certain amount of sin since he began; but it does not declare how depraved he was at first, nor how depraved he is now. It only shows that the longer he remains in sin, during probation, the weaker are his restraints and his incentives to good. He may have been as constitutionally depraved all the while as now, and God may have still chosen to offer salvation, till at length he is left to insensibility. The sinner may be no worse in nature; only he may have persisted in choosing to perpetuate his state, and lost his sensibility to sin. The original perception of sinfulness which conscience has, to see sin as sin, and right as right, is an inalienable power, inde¬ pendent of character; and if th efull vision in a future state is compatible with the worst deprav¬ ity, these lower grades of perception, now exer¬ cised, cannot be inconsistent with it. Therefore, the existence and the power of conscience in men in general affords no measure at all of their RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 173 true moral character. Ho matter how clear their view of duty, how strong the sense of obliga¬ tion, how painful the self-reproach of transgres¬ sion, it cannot argue any religious position. ~SVe may he misled by thinking of the quickening of conscience as a result of God's spiritual and remedial operation. But howeyer other moral phenomena may show a creative and divine power; and however as men grow up into God's image, the power of this faculty is increasingly manifested, yet it is not by any new creation or awakening of a sense which the soul lias lost, that God operates. The Spirit that convinces the world of sin has only need to lift the mvs- t/ terious veil that He himself has, for the time being, thrown over the eye of conscience—that eye which in its very nature cannot help but see. For conscience, solemn thought! through all eternity, has a lidless eve. 2. In connexion with this fact, it is important also to notice another. The point may for a moment seem obscure, and demand attention; but it will easily be understood, and will save from much error. It is this—that in order to form an idea of any principle, or sentiment, or affection, it is not necessary that we should have 174 : NATURAL GOODNESS. experienced that sentiment or affection. It is enough if we have a capacity for those senti¬ ments and affections, and if we have experienced the opposite vices or virtues of feeling. Each right feeling or sentiment is the opposite of a wrong one, and can be understood and judged of by its opposite. Love implies hatred as an opposite sentiment; cruelty, compassion; and for¬ giveness, resentment. As the stamp or impres¬ sion is the exact reverse of the seal,—being hol¬ low where it is elevated, and concave where it is convex,—so each duty and each virtuous feeling gives the idea of the vice which is the reverse. Men who never felt the sway of any given affection or principle may clearly understand it in its moral claims, by their experience of a cor¬ responding affection or principle. And so soon as we have an idea of the ]3assion or sentiment, although we have never yet felt it, so soon its moral character and claims are seen, and it is approved or rebuked by the conscience. Thus a soul, pure and unfallen, may have a clear con¬ ception of sin, and of each particular evil passion or principle. So it may rightly estimate the character of others, and so it may intelligently be tempted itself. So the divine Man, Jesus, could comprehend sinfulness, and each separate RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 175 sin of evil feeling or principle, although he him¬ self had not the slightest personal experience of those sins. But, upon the same principle, a soul impure and disobedient may have similar ideas of the virtues which it does not feel nor exercise, which correspond to its own emptiness and sin. Blot out Satan’s memory of the past, and yet he may understand and appreciate duty and virtue, and every shade of obligation, even as Jesus comprehended each sin and its guilt. ISTow this point is of great importance to a true estimate of human nature. “All men,” says a distinguished Unitarian, “ know what God requires of them, what affec¬ tions, what virtues, what graces, what emotions of penitence and piety. All men have a ca¬ pacity for these affections, and some exercise of them, however slight and transient; and what God requires is, the culture, strengthening, and enlargement of these very affections. “For the defence of this view, I submit its reasonableness,—for, if men do not know what religion is, they do not know what is required of them. Again : we could not Jcnow what are the affections that are required of us, unless it were by some experience of them. It is philo¬ sophically impossible; it is in the nature of 176 NATURAL GOODNESS. things impossible that we should. dSTo words, no symbols, could teach us what moral and spiritual emotion is, unless we had, in ourselves, some feeling of what it is, any more than they could teach a deaf man what it is to hear, or a blind man what it is to see. Excellence, holi¬ ness, justice, disinterestedness, love, are words which never could have any meaning to us, if the originals , the germs of those qualities, were not within usff* If this were so, it would logically follow, that these germs are the religious character—the true religious principle—already formed within every heart. Human nature, therefore, could not be utterly depraved, indeed not depraved at all, only weak and to be developed. It needs no new creation of principle and affection, but only a culture of what is there already. But, now, if all these right principles and affections can be understood without any exercise of them—if, just as Jesus could comprehend the malignity of which he never had the slightest exercise, so an evil spirit may comprehend holy affections which it has never exercised—then the sinner mav comprehend the duties and the affections ° Dewey’s Discourses on 4> Human Life,” Ac. Italics our %/ own. RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 177 required of him, although he has not even the feeble exercise, “ the originals, the germs of those qualities,'" within him. It is a clear perception possessed, not only by a holy soul, but by any soul. Thus, then, the clearest conceptions of various spiritual affections imply no experience of them, and the highest sense of their moral obligation shows only that the lidless eye of conscience sees the truth. 3. The constitutional activity of conscience, and the power to recognise and conceive clearly principles and affections, however diverse they may be from our own moral character, involves another capability of human nature. Distinct from the obligation and authoritative power of virtue, is its moral beauty, its intrinsic loveli¬ ness. There is an excellence, a fitness, a corre¬ spondence to the highest demands of the soul, which commends itself at once to the heart. Even if duty were not duty, it would still be privilege. If all penalty were gone, and all moral constraint removed, still would the heart feel that purity alone is high and honourable, and worthy the enthusiasm of a noble soul: t * and accordance with its dictates not onlv leaves %j 178 NATURAL GOODNESS. a sense of satisfied and appeased law, but a glow of elevated delight. This moral beauty bears a relation to moral obligation similar to that which the grace and finish of an exquisite machine bear to its mathematical adaptation for utility. If it were not serviceable, it would yet be beautiful. And with a high reverence we may say that the perception and expression of this quality constitutes the poetry of virtue—the sentiment of religion. How, what we mean to say is, that this sense of the beauty of holiness does not require any moral purity, any love of holiness for its exer¬ cise. It is an involuntary, constitutional, and indestructible capacity, like the sense of the mere obligation of duty. It is the heritage alike of heaven and of hell. The pure angelic eye sees this moral loveliness resting like a glory on the sublime summits of heroic duties, and on every flower of feeling it hangs trembling like the dew. The irrecoverable soul feels not alone the stern condemnation of his sin ; but is sickened by a sense of unworthiness, and deformity, “ And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood.” "We are not speculating rashly. Every-day life presents illustrations that ask no flight of RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 179 fancy,—cases so clear and indisputable, that they cover all the more obscure instances beside them. They show that to perceive the worth and excel¬ lence of purity is not to love it, for to love it would be to seek its possession and to promote its growth. They prove that this poetic sensi¬ bility to moral beauty is an endowment given naturally, and in very different degrees to va¬ rious hearts; and that so far from indicating any love of purity, the sense of moral obligation is often strongest where there is least of this sense of loveliness, and the poetic rapture is often most exquisite where the moral sense of obliga¬ tion is least oppressive. The writings of genius are, indeed, filled with noble tributes to vir¬ tue. It has delighted to blazon her glories and to depict her struggles; to portray the splendid energy with which she repels the base insinuation—the meek endurance with which she bears oppression and destitution—the fear¬ ful crisis, when, forsaken, urged to evil, almost overcome, she yet rises, and triumphs, and wears a fadeless crown. Fiction and poetry have given splendid panegyrics, and then writers, and poets too, have shown how abstract their real admira¬ tion was, how reckless their actual tone of feel¬ ing. They have seemed to feel as though they 180 NATURAL GOODNESS. could gain their faithfulness of colouring only by witnessing the reality of her trials, and, like the old painter whose magic pencil sought to depict the writhings of Prometheus upon the rock, they hind living virtue to the rack; they watch her agonies, and dip their pencil in the blood, and tears, and death-dews that they picture. Think of Bulwer, and Shelley, and Byron, and the many of polluted genius, who have sent forth the praises of virtue, and many a holy strain, from dens of debauchery and blasphemy, and say, Had they a love for purity? Yet they saw and sp>oke the beauty of holiness. They gazed in the pause of passion, and admired and sung her chaste loveliness, and then turned to wanton with the deformed vices, that but now were so despised. It is not for such men that we are writing; but we allude to them to show conclusively that the highest poetic sensibility to the charms of rectitude may be purely constitutional; and that it indicates no earnest sensibility to the obliga¬ tion of virtue, and no love of rectitude at all. Yet the moral man, especially if highly cul¬ tured, and of a poetic sensibility to all beauty of nature, or sentiment, or morals, is apt to feel a peculiar satisfaction and sense of security in RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 181 this aesthetic feeling. He is apt to argue from it his advancement in virtuous character. He is prone to conclude that this feeling, clothing his acts of rectitude, proves them to be no com- lulsorv or interested duties. Alas, holiness is lovely! but its loveliness is not more clearly seen by the eye of that pure moralist, than by many an eye from which gleam out the passions that would make a hell on earth ! He needs a higher criterion to test his spiritual worth, and his acceptability to God. II. TTe proceed to notice the religious elements in human nature, which are not thus indestruc¬ tible ; which need the restoring energy of God to bring back their wonted action ; and whose vigour and perfection, therefore, do show the presence of true and efficient religion. 1. Ve notice briefly the moral sensibilities— all those affections and impulses which are felt to possess a virtuous or unholy attribute. And, according to the teaching of Scripture, there can be no doubt that all the unholy and impure sen¬ timents are attributed to the heart as it is by na¬ ture, and all pure and lovely principles and qualities are claimed as the exclusive products 182 NATURAL GOODNESS. of tlie Holy Gliost in its restoring power. We liave shown, in the first part of the last essay, that this association of pure earthly affections and sentiments with the one supreme love of holiness and of God, and this idea of the inva¬ riable connexion of the loss of that holy love with the loss of every pure relative affection, are sanctioned by the general sentiment of mankind, and by the philosophical relation of these senti¬ ments. We argued that the unholy soul could have no such virtues, as the holy soul must have them. We argued that the one underlying prin¬ ciple being rectified, all would be restored—as the purified and filtered stream that presses through the rock, far below the surface, will well up sweetly through a hundred various springs. And we say explicitly, that the various amiable and noble qualities which should adorn human nature never can adorn it, except by the power of renovating grace. For we proved that the natural qualities commonly called virtues, were mere spurious, substituted, temporary things,— mere bracings to uphold this life, until the true pillars of the soul should rise. And the growth of the true virtues, the holy branches of a holy love, is a consequence and a token of the regen¬ erating influence of grace upon the heart. RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 183 It may be worth while here to observe how the sentiments of the Church, or at least of prom¬ inent writers on this subject, have in modern times arisen and varied. Bishop Butler lived at a time when there was not only little religion, but hardly any morality. Even outward recti¬ tude was a plain separation from the world. Few experiences were there of that spiritual power, which infused new principles and affec¬ tions, and extirpated the evil. It seemed enough if a man could regulate his sentiments and de¬ sires, and repress the action of the passions. Every natural feeling was supposed to be part of the originally designed constitution of man. Regulation, that is, culture, became religion; and Butler’s theory has been very easily turned to Unitarian purposes. He held all natural sen¬ timents to have a religious value, if they were only in proper degree and cooperation. Dr. Chalmers lived under an outpouring of spiritual influences. He felt that the religious principle differed in kind from anything in the natural man; that it involved a love to God and to holiness which had no germ in the unregen¬ erate soul, but must be infused. However, there¬ fore, the natural sentiments might stand in due proportion, by nature or by culture, he felt that 1SI NATURAL GOODNESS. since tliey could exist without that infused prin¬ ciple, they had no religious nature. Chalmers rested on the idea that the historical virtues, although not religious, were nevertheless the orig¬ inal sentiments and principles of human nature. But at the present time, especially through the writings of those who would prove the true religious character of natural virtue, attention is directed to the fact that true piety to God, and true virtue toward man, can only proceed from the same principle, and are always found to¬ gether. If the tree be good, the fruit also will be good. If, therefore, these natural virtues are religious, there must be a religious principle at work. If there is no religious principle, but total depravity of principle, where is the natu¬ rally expected fruit of every vile sentiment and passion ? The question is serious, and demands an answer. We can only say, the evil is re¬ pressed , and show why; and then show also how these better traits are not our original and immortal qualities, but temporary instincts im¬ pressed on the soul. The true spiritual affec¬ tions and principles—true integrity, and benev¬ olence, and love—are to be a new creation, developed beneath the shelter of these instinc¬ tive virtues. RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 185 2. But the crowning element in the perfect moral nature is the moral freedom of the will, in its ability to choose the good and to reject the evil. IVe would avoid controversial expressions; but we may say that in a depraved nature, the will is so diseased, that it does not follow the clearest convictions of duty or of interest. It chooses evil, even when it perceives both its sin¬ fulness and its folly: and in a totally depraved heart it is safe to say, that there would not be the first impulse toward good, as good, which could be cultivated by the law of habit into a moral power. A will so strangely perverted, can be reached only by the mysterious and crea¬ tive energy of God. Xow it is this imbecility, and bias of the will to evil, which, with the corruption of the affec¬ tions, constitute the depravity, actual and total, of the human heart. It is the consciousness of this depravity of the will and the affections, in connexion with a consciousness of the obliga¬ tion and beauty of holiness, which renders the doomed soul wretched, and might “ make a hell of heaven.” There is perhaps no earthly suffer¬ ing more intense than that of the lunatic whose spells of criminal and debasing passion come on so violently as to override all sense of rectitude 186 NATURAL GOODNESS. or decency, and yet leave the wretched victim with an under-consciousness of the purity and goodness which he violates. Yet he may feel that it is but a temporary delirium—a physical derangement. But to wake up to the dread reality of intrinsic pollution and vileness—to realize the loveliness of virtue and the shame of vice, and yet feel the heart pressing onward to new defilement—to feel evermore the circling eddy carry us deeper and deeper into the mael¬ strom of moral shame, and yet look up to the clear heavens that smile on all above the dread vortex—this, this is the completed curse ! Therefore all the machinery of our probation¬ ary state would be useless, if the will were left to itself. There would be no spot on which to plant the lever of moral reformation. And therefore it is with the will, especially, of any human heart that the grace of God must deal, before it can avail itself of the provisions of the scheme of redemption. It is not that divine power should sway the will to holiness; but that once more it has the power to choose bondage, or to choose a perfect freedom. It is not need¬ ful to probation that the grace of God should give the will a power to overcome the greater evils and strongest temptations. If the rigour RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE. 187 of its bondage be so relaxed that it can even struggle in its chains, it is sufficient—if it can but seek help from God, it is enough. And thus far the grace of God appears, from reason and from Scripture, to be given to every man, so that he can resist the sin that overcomes him, and look up to a divine helper. In answer to his prayer help will come. To offer salvation to a soul without such preparatory grace, would be like holding out the cup of life to a corpse en¬ dowed with a consciousness of its death; it would be mockery to the stiffened form that could not take it: but Jesus touches the lips of each soul for whom he died with that cup of salvation, and the slight quickening enables the sinner to take the fulness of his offer, or, rejecting it, to sink back to irrecoverable death. We have thus reached a point from which we may form a full estimate of the position of moral men, as distinguished from religious men. They are beings entering upon existence with a de¬ praved moral nature, but entering upon a pro¬ bationary state, in which that nature may be purified for eternity. Their evil impulses are repressed and partially concealed. They have, for the present, instinctive sentiments and affec- 188 NATURAL GOODNESS. tions, which, in the absence of true and pure principles, may secure continued life, and oppor¬ tunities for thought and consideration of their great spiritual interests. The temporal blessings and trials of life are, for the present, distributed so as to lend added force to these good natural dispositions. While the sense of sin and danger is not permitted to overwhelm them, yet the indestructible conscience, with subdued tone, speaks of duty and of sin, of heaven and of hell, of the purity they may yet attain, and the moral beauty which may adorn them. Revelation comes in to let them know of the truths which it would destroy them to realize. God gives by his spiritual energy a power to seek his help— that the will may be free from its bondage, and the debased affections be made holy and blessed. Thus much God does for the moral man— without his own agency or his own consent. Whether he will become a religious man or not, depends upon himself. God will do nothing more for him—unless he seeks for more in God's appointed way. If he avail himself of his privi¬ leges, it is well; if not, the temporary restraints shall be removed, and he shall be left to unre¬ pressed, unveiled depravity forever. Till. %d i^io m s Cuprum— f| (Donbirtion. “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes/' Job xlii, 5, 6. Till. PECULIAR PHASES OE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE- CONVICTION. The grandest spectacle which, the universe affords is that of a ruined spirit reassuming its pristine purity and power. It is the resurrection of the soul—the moment when its corruptible puts on incorruption. Such a transition not only enlists the sympathies of a seraphic devotion, hut may well rivet the attention of any thoughtful mind. The purely scientific gaze which wanders through creation, watching with reverential enthusiasm the gradual development of material forces, from the faint glimmering of the floating star-dust, to the full beauty of an organized and furnished world, finding at each step the reward of some clearer reflection of Him in whom they live, and move, and have their being, cannot be insensi¬ ble to the breathless interest of that hour, when the denizen of one of the least of all these rolling orbs, outcast and reckless in his treason, is brought face to face with the Almighty, is forgiven and 192 NATURAL GOODNESS. transformed, and made a partaker of the divine nature. How thrilling to watch the momentary changes by which that spirit, under the benig¬ nant smile of reconciliation, loses the image of the earthly, and wears the image of the heav¬ enly ! But when we know that upon the promp¬ titude and completeness of that transformation in this brief life depends the destiny of all the undying future; when this fleeting hour concen¬ trates within itself all the eternal possibilities of blessing or of anguish; the history of the soul for that one hour is its history forever, and we can¬ not leave its slightest event unstudied and unap¬ preciated. ~W e would watch the processes of the new creation—the gradual glow and quivering of life upon the countenance of the corpse-like soul. And here again it is that the true character and relations of moral men in the higher stages of their experience acquire an absorbing interest. The well-defined extremes of character, in those who people the acknowledged realm of Satan, or dwell in the kingdom of God, awake less inter¬ est, as their fate is recognised at once ; but these dwellers upon neutral ground — these wander¬ ers on the border-land of heaven—swaying be¬ tween safety and perdition, awake the interest of suspense, and of many a baffled effort to alarm RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-CONVICTION. 193 them. Is there a point within the line which we have deemed the boundary of sin, where in truth they are secure of heaven—who would needlessly awaken their fears ? Are they unsafe—who would let them be deceived ? The phases, therefore, of an incipient and incomplete religious experience —the processes through which the new life is attained — the intermingling light and shade, which flicker along the horizon ere yet the day¬ spring from on high bursts on the benighted spirit—this is our theme. The earliest spiritual exercises which mark the entrance upon a definite religious experience, are the feelings which are awakened in view of the fact which lies at the basis of all religious effort— the fact of our own depravity. It can only be from a sense of its vileness, its guilt, and its weakness, that the startled spirit will ever seek for purity, and pardon, and divine assistance. However the prodigal may, all unconsciously to himself, have been strengthened for his home¬ ward journey, no returning step will bear him onward, until he “come to himself,” and feel sadly and wistfully the contrast between his dreary lot and the fulness of his father's house. Even among the nations upon whom the trum- 9 194 NATURAL GOODNESS. pet tones of revelation have not thundered the perfect law and its deepest curse, the smothered voice of conscience hears witness to the common doom. Yet, as we briefly illustrated in the earlier pages of this volume, it is only as the consciousness of sin can be relieved by the reve¬ lation of a satisfying atonement and a purifying spirit, that the full sense of evil and of its desert is imparted. The heathen world, therefore, has hut an imperfect and vague perception of the moral debasement which crushes it. Its relig¬ ious observances spring rather from an undefined apprehension of vengeance wreaked by an arbi¬ trary power, than from any recognition of the intrinsic “ sinfulness of sin.” Its millions suffer much from fear, hut little from remorse. The soul naturally recoils from the revelation of its own pollution, and fixes its resolute attention upon the less harrowing toils or follies of this life. So that where the institutions of revealed religion are not perpetually compelling reflec¬ tion, the habitually averted eye of conscience sees but dimly, if at all, the evils of the heart. The superstitions which have been created by this very wilfulness of self-deluding yet unsatis¬ fied consciousness serve hut to confirm the error, and destroy a true sense of moral guilt, by direct- RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-CONVICTION. 195 ing attention only to tlie outward act, or by proposing, as a propitiation, some easy offering which of itself atones. Yet still the literature of antiquity, and the missionary observations of the present, alike assure us that a sullen, brood¬ ing under-consciousness of sin, and guilt, and danger, gleaming out at times into clearer flashes of conviction, is the common inheritance of all men. But just in proportion as the light of revealed truth shines through a community, and a pure Christian example exhibits a lofty and spiritual virtue, and thus demonstrates its existence and attainability beyond cavil, the natural conscious¬ ness of evil, and of an obligation to perfect holi¬ ness, forces itself upon every heart. The clear in¬ tellectual conviction, at least, cannot be put awTiy. An evil heart, turning from unwelcome truths, and burying its thoughts in business or dissipa¬ ting them in pleasure, may not seem to believe the stern language of Scripture ; but the smoth¬ ered cries of conscience, the superstitious dread and self-condemnation which cowers beneath calamity as a just retribution, and that abject fear which dares not think on death, all bear wit¬ ness that the soul does know its guilt and dan¬ ger, and that it persists in sin and shuts out 196 NATURAL GOODNESS. clear conviction, only because it chooses to be defiled. Especially in the hearts of those who habitu¬ ally listen to the faithful declarations of the pul¬ pit, this sense of wickedness and exposure to a future curse becomes vivid and irrepressible. Sabbath after Sabbath it is deepened impercep¬ tibly ; and ever and anon some peculiar utter¬ ance of truth seizes the soul, and shoots through it a fearful, sinking, sickening consciousness of sin and peril. The Holy Spirit has left the heart thus partially sensitive, and at all times suscepti¬ ble to the varying influence of various truths and of changing circumstances. Sometimes it sud- O O denlv removes vet more of the lethargy which benumbs the soul; and multitudes who listened with but a subdued shame and purpose of amend¬ ment, at once awake to a new vividness of ap¬ prehension, and a new energy of resolution. The Holy Spirit is certainly not limited to any regular instrumentalities, nor to any peculiar manifestations, in his work of convincing men of sin, and of righteousness, and of a judgment to come. The wind bloweth where it listeth. And vet, amid all the endless varieties observable in fts / early religious experience, it may be that the self-same Spirit, which worketh all in all, ob- RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-CONVICTION. 197 serves some principle of uniformity in his opera¬ tion ; and a reverential attention to this per¬ vading unity cannot he improper. We may distinguish that which is essential in a true ex¬ perience from that which is purely adventitious. For, however the peculiarity of many divine manifestations to those whom the Spirit is lead¬ ing to redemption is felt to have no explanation, except in his own wise choice of action, apart from any influence of the means employed; yet the individual characteristics of temperament and habit, and the natural influence of varied circumstances are usually apparent. A consid¬ eration of these may explain many seeming anomalies in Christian experience, and may pre¬ vent us from forming a false standard of “ sensi¬ ble experiences,” either for ourselves or others. Consider, for instance, that law of our mental constitution which regulates the tide of emotion in its resistless flow, and in its subsiding gentleness, when any truth or fact appeals to the sensibili¬ ties. Observe the heart just startled by the shadow of some approaching calamity, bereave¬ ment, or disgrace, or utter destitution; or watch the fluctuating feelings when another’s sorrow appeals to sympathy, or another’s excellence awakes our admiration. In every case we recog- 198 NATURAL GOODNESS. nise this rule, that emotion is strongest when the truth is first seen in its f ull vividness , and that it dies away into a subdued sensibility when the first shock is over. Amid the horrors of a siege, or the protracted dangers of the plague, men speak calmly and stoically of fearful things ■whose first approach convulsed them with terror. Then, if the subdued emotion is to be again aroused, it must be by some more vivid presen¬ tation of the coming cruelties, or the heart must be riveted on some new feature of the great sor¬ row ; or, after having sunk beneath the strain of feeling until the w T eary heart had almost for¬ got its fate, it must wake up anew to see all it saw before. Thus it is only as a fresh appeal is made, and while yet it has the force of novelty, that deep emotion is to be expected. So also it may be that an emotion, entirely distinct from the one great feeling wdiich has been aroused and subdued, may be stirred by casual circum¬ stances; and the heart, thus approached from another side, and charmed into a tender mood, has a fresh sensibility to even the old appeal, which had seemed to lose its power. There is an analogy in the exercises of our hearts, in view of the great truths of sin and retri¬ bution. When, for the first time, the soul clearly RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-CONVICTION. 199 apprehends these tremendous truths, the natural probabilities are that the sudden shock of guilty shame and fear will be overwhelming; but when the solemn vision grows familiar, or when it has been gradually and by slow glimmerings disclosed to the instructed mind, the natural result will be a subdued, almost unnoticed feel¬ ing, while the clear conviction remains per¬ manently. In those notable instances in the history of wide-spread reformations where the general feeling has been most pungent, and the physical etfects of emotion most remarkable, is it not usually observable that a previous defi¬ ciency in religious instruction, or an imperfectly- exhibited orthodoxy, had left the general mind without familiarity with these great truths, and thus the earnest utterance of them flashed a new idea, like sheet-lightning, over men’s hearts ? But where the Church has trained up her con¬ gregations from childhood, and line upon line and precept upon precept have gradually dawned upon the mind, then, in the absence of any ad¬ ventitious, exciting influences, such overwhelm¬ ing emotions are not the rule. The same prin¬ ciple may be observed in the case of separate congregations, or even of individuals. The Sab¬ bath-breaker, who straggles into a church, may 200 NATURAL GOODNESS. be confounded at the utterance of truths to which, in all their freshness and force, his conscience bears witness; while those who habitually listen to those same utterances are not at all excited, however thoroughly convinced. hTor let it be imagined that thus the vicious have an advan¬ tage over those more observant of the means of grace; for the open neglecter is generally so sur¬ rounded bv evil associations difficult to break, that he needs a pungent and startling view to give him an equal vantage-ground with those to whom the form and opportunity of godliness are already familiar, and who need only to ask its acknowledged power. "We said also that the constitutional tempera¬ ment might vary the form of religious expe¬ rience. T Y e habitually see how, under the same circumstances, and beneath the pressure of the same motives, and even with the same ultimate action, men of different temperaments differ in the intensity of their emotions, in the vividness of their conception of the same truth, and in the method of their action. "While some are con¬ founded, frenzied, or convulsive, in their excited language or gesture, others are made sternly calm, and only speak in a more measured tone, and act with more deliberation. All may see RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-CONVICTION. 201 alike, may feel the same kind of appropriate sentiment, and take the same steps; but the intensity of feeling, the hurry and throng of rushing thoughts, and the vehemence of action, may be peculiar to a few. It is not fanaticism, nor a weak excitability, to be overwhelmed with appropriate emotion; nor is it a sign of a less true and availing sensibility, that a heart as quick to see, and as prompt to act, is not as oppressed with feeling. So is it, also, with the influence of the circum¬ stances under which, other things being equal, the same truths come home to us. There is an in¬ stinctive response of the heart to any expression of emotion in one who addresses us. Even in the quietude of ordinary intercourse, the heart reflects the varying hue of feeling in those around us; and it requires a mental effort to preserve, if we would, our independence of their presence. But when expression is given to the master pas^ sions of the soul, and its gathered emotions burst the restraints of conventionality and natural nJ reserve, the rushing tide, as it sweeps across our sluggish hearts, quickens them with its own im¬ petuosity, and turns, and directs, and bears on¬ ward every wave of feeling, until the collective emotions of a vast audience roll in one resistless 9 * 202 NATURAL GOODNESS. torrent. As by a mesmeric charm, the orator makes the multitude a part of his own individual being, and they see in his light, and thrill with his passions, and resolve with his will. And when the earnest words are the breathings of a burning piety, the natural power of eloquence is not lost. The emotions may appear to subside when the hour is over; the ripples of gentler emotion may soon vanish, or the great deep of the soul mav longer heave in tumultuous energy, and then grow still when the storm is past; but for that brief season the hopes, the fears, the remorse, the resolution of the hearer, are aroused and in¬ flamed by mere contact with a fervid eloquence. The association with others who are filled with deep emotion has a similar sympathetic influence upon the tone of our own feelings. There is a subtle consciousness of the prevailing sentiment throughout a large audience, or in private gath¬ erings, which none can wholly overcome; a contagion of sensibility which imparts a feeling scarcely to be called our own. Yet the subdued influence of such external sympathies may per¬ vade and modify our entire tone of sentiment. t/ Truths which come home to us amid such asso¬ ciations, come with all the peculiar cast of feel¬ ing appropriate to the circumstances. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-CONVICTION. 203 Briefly, too, we must notice the modifying power of personal circumstances upon our feel¬ ings, in view of religious truth. The hour of trial is proverbially an hour of religious sensi¬ bility. It is not only that the shadow of afflic- tion breaks the false glare of worldly enjoyment, and shows things in all their naked insufficiency; but the heart, thus subdued and chastened, is made more susceptible to any appeal to its nobler sentiments; and when its feelings are vibrating more quickly and sweetly to any touch, there is a peculiar sensibility to the touch of eternal truth. And whatever circumstances sug¬ gest, of themselves, the great truths of our mor¬ tality, our helplessness, or our need of divine communion, combine and blend their peculiar emotions with the power of the religious truth that may be presented with them. Xow, these natural feelings are not to be con¬ sidered as entirely religious emotions, yet relig¬ ious feeling is almost invariably associated with them. The excitement may afterward be proven to have been merely adventitious; or, as it dies away, the religious sensibility may be found but feeble in its independent strength: yet it is the Spirit of God which gives the heart, whose emo¬ tion is communicated to us, these same spiritual 204 NATURAL GOODNESS. emotions, and which has given to us some religious susceptibility; and that Spirit, acting through these natural instrumentalities, lends them a supernatural power. These emotional influences, even if they do die away, are not to be discredited or neglected, if they lead the heart to abiding spiritual impressions. Well, indeed, is it for us if, amid our heedlessness, a human sympathy and an earthly sorrow, as we open our hearts to receive them, may let the countenance of Him who long has stood at the door and knocked, meet our gaze, and his voice of rebuke and promise come, for the moment at least, with more persuasive power. It may be well also to notice the fact, that there is a great difference between a sense of the sinfulness of our nature and a sense of the guilt of actual crimes which we have done. We may all acknowledge the guilt of evil desires, of ma¬ licious passions, and of low motives; we may even be conscious that outward influences alone prevent indulgence in transgression; and yet, when outward freedom does give opportunity for action, and the deed is done, the startled soul is abashed and revolted by the very sin which it has long cherished. We allude to the fact only to illustrate the way in which the convictions of RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-CONVICTION. 205 those whose lives have been marked by open and definite crimes, are likely to be more sharp and vivid, when once aroused, than the convic¬ tions of men who, under the restraints of moral¬ ity, have sinned only in spirit and in negative transgression. The moralist cannot so fix his gaze on specific acts in which the whole sin of his life seems concentrated, and so he may be less agitated by remorse; but the clearer teach¬ ing, which is generally around him in his less disturbed life, may bring to him a more just con¬ viction of the pervading evil of his heart. The same influences which vary the intensity of emotion, may also affect the nature of the sentiment thus awakened by the convincing Spirit. Sometimes the sense of sin is the only or the chief thought which oppresses the soul; sometimes God brings a strange fearful¬ ness of vengeance, and from the trembling ap¬ prehension of the gathering storm, leads men to think upon the sin which soon will bid it burst upon them. Sometimes, through direct spirit¬ ual agency, or through the vivid portraitures of one who sees the “ terrors of the Lord,” and the helplessness of the guilty spirit, that spirit may be all absorbed by the one thought of escaping the wrath to come; and even when 206 NATURAL GOODNESS. its gaze is turned inward on tlie real evil of sin itself, and while it seeks purity for its own sake, still the vivid impression of the damnation that slumbereth not may so haunt it that, to the end, fear is an overwhelming emotion. In other ex¬ periences, the soul, directed first to the “ sinful¬ ness of sin,” may indeed feel the associated sense of danger, but the habitual expectation of final forgiveness, and the soothing influence of the Holy Spirit, who would use fear only as a step toward penitence, may keep the emotion of ter¬ ror subdued and almost unnoticed. It matters not, so that the calmer penitent forbear to charge it on his trembling brother, who shudders be¬ neath the uplifted stroke, that his prayer is the cry of fear alone; so that one who lias passed through terror into peace, impugn not the silent but bitter consciousness of one so filled with a sense of his crime, as he stands upon the scaffold of time, that he scarcely heeds the executioner, and pleads not so much to be unpunished as to be forgiven. W e have thus seen through what varied phases of experience God may bring the soul to see more clearly its need of salvation; either by an immediate impression of guilt, or by a con¬ viction in connexion with a dread of the judg- RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-CONVICTION. 207 ment to come. There is an experience less strongly marked, by which God leads thousands to the same point. Those stern convictions do, indeed, often break in harshly upon the business and amusements of a life which seems bright and satisfying, if only it were undisturbed by their intrusion. But sometimes they do not break in roughly. The heart, left to its idols, finds the pursuits of life grow unsatisfying and its pleasures pall upon the weary spirit, until in loneliness, and emptiness, and almost despair, it seeks a surer resting-place, and feels its need of a Father and a God, and sees its own unfitness to commune and be a child. There comes no thunder-cloud to scathe our paradise ; but, be¬ neath a serene sky the Eden fades, and wilts away, and we, looking wistfully upward to an inheritance that fadeth not, feel that we are of the earth, earthy, and cannot soar away. Friends die, or scatter, or grow cold; disease wastes the natural energy, and shuts us in from the common circle ; poverty comes round us ; early ambitions fail; the tinsel and the trickery of life are shown; we see ourselves! "W e ask, How long is this to last? We look deathward—and feel we need a change ere then. Sermon, and Bible, and inward moni¬ tions tell us of One “ who satisfieth the longing 208 NATURAL GOODNESS. soul.” We feel that we are separate from God. We feel more and more, that in his presence we dare not speak of any virtue. We are pene¬ trated with a sense of utter unworthiness. We are convinced of sin. The reader will now, we trust, understand that all these phases of experience are hut accidents, and that the only thing essential is, the 'knowl¬ edge of our sin and danger. To every heart that knowledge is given, and acting on that knowl¬ edge it may seek and find redemption. Let the reader remember that, while the Spirit may work upon his heart, even beyond ordinary rules, in the suddenness or energy of its power, yet he cannot rely upon any such special operation to rouse his sense of sin, for no promise of it is given. Let him not wait for the coming of those more vivid apprehensions and severe les¬ sons of which we have spoken : they may never come to him. He is convinced of his condition, however little he feels it. If ever he feel more deeply, it is well ;• but whether he shall feel or not, he may act upon his conviction. Action on that conviction will save him; and, if inactive, that conviction will damn him. We dwell upon this point, because, owing to causes similar to those alluded to above, a large RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-CONVICTION. 209 number of those cases of bright religious expe¬ rience which have attracted attention, especially in'some denominations, have been preceded by a sudden and new apprehension of sin and wrath, by intense emotions of fear and shame, by sudden conflict, bitter and brief. These boldly-outlined instances have been made a standard by their subjects and by others. Such emotions and vivid apprehension have been deemed an invariable accompaniment of any spiritual impressions, and an absolute prerequi- site to prayer for pardon. Meanwhile thousands have sought and found relief without any such marked emotional experience. Yet thousands are held back from prayer and duty, to await some convulsion of feeling. Let them know that there is not one single degree or peculiarity of experience attending conviction, from the merest intellectual conviction to the most over¬ whelming emotion, which has not been made the starting-point of a successful religious course, and may not be so again. The moral man especially, familiar from child¬ hood with eternal things, shielded by early nur¬ ture from outward vice, favoured with a genial temperament, listening, it may be, to pulpit addresses, earnest but not impassioned, contin- 210 • NATURAL GOODNESS. ually associating the idea of expected pardon with every thought of guilt—the moral man is of all men least likely to be surprised with sftd- den and violent convictions. Let him not he disheartened by their absence. Let him not excuse himself from diligent prayer and watch¬ ful effort against sin, as though these were use¬ less or less acceptable to God than if he had more of emotion. God has shown him life and death: God w T ill hear him if he will but pray. If he w T ill not seek the grace which he knows he may secure, God may justly let him perish. Note. —We must again remind the critical reader that we do not profess in these pages to present a systematic view of religious experience; we are speaking to men who are fa¬ miliar with the general subject; we only present such points as may relieve the usual perplexities, and facilitate the per¬ sonal experience, of the class of moral men for whom we write. 'il Hi out us € trjmime—ffrasos of ^fjtntt'ctitcc. “An evangelical repentance is a godly sorrow wrought in the heart of a sinful person by the word and Spirit of God, whereby, from a sense of his sin, as offensive to God, and defiling and endangering to his own soul, and from an appre¬ hension of the mercy of God in Christ, he with grief and hatred of all his known sins, turns from them to God, as his Saviour and Lord.” Richard "Watson. IX. PECULIAR PHASES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE- REPENTANCE. “ I WILL ARISE, AND GO UNTO MY FATHER.” -Bit¬ terly enough had he felt the successive degrada¬ tions, and realized the fate that closed around him; yet he sat motionless in his humiliation, and strove to banish thoughts that would not be dismissed. But that moment of resolution came—“ I will arise and go ! ” His face turned homeward: he took the first trembling step away from the land of exile: his father saw him—afar off. To every human soul which God has given to know its sin, God has given strength to forsake it. Whether amid the thunder and the whirl¬ wind, the still small voice has come; or, like a strange presentiment of danger, the conviction has grown upon it, the heart may look toward the cross of Christ, and say, “ I will arise and go.” Hot that by one effort of the will it can throw off its evil nature. But every one has power to 214 NATURAL GOODNESS. struggle against the act of sin, and, as he strug¬ gles, to pray. He may entirely fail at first. But his prayer will bring a larger power of resistance to evil, a deeper earnestness of prayer, and greater readiness for successive measures of spiritual aid; until he becomes conscious of a power not only to resist but to overcome the sinful impulse, and sensible also that in his evil nature itself a change from sinfulness to purity has begun, and thus there is less to overcome. In the spirit thus aroused, and gathering its energies for the struggle, the first moral effort is naturally directed to those particular sins which education or an instinctive horror have made most conspicuous, or into which the pecu¬ liarity of our temperament and temptations may have most frequently betrayed us. The rest of our conduct seems comparatively blameless, and the work of reformation is summed up in the resolute conflict with a few evil habits. The main positive duties also, which are seen to be involved in Christian character, and which have hitherto been neglected, are thenceforth observed with scrupulous care. But the self-reformer, with the pride of success mingling with his serious energy of purpose, soon starts to find that he has sadlv miscalculated the foes whom C.‘ RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-REPENTANCE. 215 lie lias challenged. He has laid prostrate the circle of transgressions which closed in most nearly and tauntingly around him; but their fall only leaves exposed to view other and larger ranks of sins, which had been undetected or but vaguely apprehended behind the more prominent evils. For the heart once resolutely deaf to the strongest claims of religious obligation, but now quickened, and practised to hear their solemn voice, thrills to the cries of a thousand duties trampled and crushed beneath the feet of victo¬ rious sins, and springs to the rescue. Again and again, yea, more and more as we struggle on, the light grows clearer, and conscience more sensitive, until not alone our more observable words and actions seem amenable to the law of rectitude, but all actions and all words, the imag¬ inations of the mind, the most familiar exercises of the heart, the light and fleeting impulses of the soul are clothed with a moral character, and are clearly right or wrong. The delicacy which we once thought but a morbid scrupulosity, a weak attention to petty distinctions, now is felt to be a sense of solemn truth. The smallest dia¬ mond, the minutest crystal that shows one facet from out a stone, or forms but half a grain of sand, shines when the sun beams on it, while the 216 NATURAL GOODNESS. atom of uncrystalline earth beside it reflects no ray: and so, the approving smile, which, like a sunlight, beams out from God’s holiness on all that is not sin, is reflected from the slightest actions and words, from half-formed feelings and unfinished thoughts. There is a great point gained when the soul thus realizes the religious character of all we think, and feel, and say, and do. Conspicuous duties could he done, and flagrant vices could be laid aside by the resolute action of the will; and when once the form is not visible, the heart may imagine that it has annihilated its evils. But when the entire previous life, even to mi¬ nutest action and feeling, assumes a moral char¬ acter, the self-will and the enmity which ap¬ peared to be all summed up in a few gross sins that, like great tumours, festered on the soul, now are seen in a thousand points, and the heart sickens to see itself covered with sins—covered with a general eruption of transgressions. A great point has been gained ; but a more solemn revelation is at hand. So long as only a few conspicuous violations of law were noticed, they seemed like isolated impulses, like mere local weaknesses or diseases, which, if not actually caused by the pressure of an outward tempta- RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-REPENTANCE. 217 tion, were peculiarly sensitive to its presence, while the rest of the moral being was in health. But as these points of actual sin multiply and overspread the soul, a sense of their countless¬ ness, and the difficulty of reducing them to purity and health, grows on us with deadly cer¬ tain! v. Then the great truth conies. It flashes on us, that these sins are not scattered and separate ailings, which can be removed by any separate treatment, however severe and long- continued ; but that the disease is in the blood, and the inmost nature of the soul is poisoned with the virus that breaks out in separate trans¬ gressions. Then self-despair begins. As long as separate sins could be numbered, the soul had corn-age to rally its healthful energies, and overcome them—but if the nature be infected, whence shall the restoring energy go forth ? A terrible conviction bursts upon the soul, as when of old a Hebrew invalid hopefully and patiently applied the most painful remedies as his malady assumed its various forms, till suddenly that fatal sign met his eye, and he cried out in agony, “ I AAI A LEPER.*’ Yet, during this solemn instruction in the completeness of his depravity, the repenting sinner may have really corrected his life with so in 218 NATURAL GOODNESS. much, success that few or none suspect him to be thus pained in secret. He may even find that as he avoids occasions of sin, and as refusal to indulge or to excite evil desires serves, after the first struggles, to allay the craving for sin, his heart itself is not so agitated by conflicting passions. He may repress the emotion of passion until even he himself cannot realize that the repressed principle still remains; and then the better impulses of his constitution, which have heretofore been sacrificed to the indulgence of baser passions, may now assert then* influence and adorn the character. Self-Culture is the watchword of a philoso¬ phy directly opposed to the doctrine of depravity or of regeneration by the Holy Spirit; and cer¬ tainly the power of self-culture to elevate and harmonize the character, by its own single force, apart from any divine aid given in answer to prayer, is a most interesting, as it is to many a most perplexing fact. A faculty adequate to such high achievements, demands a fair consid¬ eration and a just estimate of its claim. “ There are two powers of the human soul which make self-culture possible—the self- searching and the self-forming power. We have RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-REPENTANCE. 219 first the faculty of turning tlie mind on itself; of recalling its past and watching its present operations; of learning its various capacities and susceptibilities; wdiat it can do and bear— what it can enjoy and suffer; and of thus learn¬ ing in general, what our nature is, and what it was made for. It is worthy of observation, that we are able to discern not only what we already are, but what we may become; to see in our¬ selves germs and promises of a growth to which no bounds can be set; to dart beyond what we have actually gained, to the idea of perfection, as the end of our being. It is by this self-com¬ prehending power that we are distinguished from the brutes, which give no signs of looking into themselves. Without this there would be no self-culture, for we should not know the work to be done; and one reason why self-culture is so little proposed is, that so few penetrate their own nature. “ But self-culture is possible, not only because we can enter into and search ourselves. We have still a nobler power—that of acting on, de¬ termining, and forming ourselves. This is a fear¬ ful as well as glorious endowment; for it is the ground of human responsibility. We have the power not only of tracing our powers, but of 220 NATURAL GOODNESS. guiding and impelling tliem; not only of watch¬ ing our passions, but of controlling them; not only of seeing our faculties grow, hut of apply¬ ing to them means and influences to aid their growth. We can stay or change the current of thought. We can concentrate the intellect on objects which we wish to comprehend. We can fix our eyes on perfection, and make almost every¬ thing speed us toward it. This is indeed a noble prerogative of our nature.”* Noble prerogative indeed! and one by which humanity, as it came from the hand of the Creator, held within itself the power of infinite progression toward divine perfection, “ changing from glory unto glory.” Endowed with the germ and early blossoming of every virtue and every grace of character, it needed culture only to develop the perfect fruit. And even now the germ that is not blighted can be cultured still, and throw its beauty and its fragrance over human life; and grafted impulses, inserted for the time in the barren nature, may be developed into moment¬ ary luxuriance; but the blighted germs of spirit¬ ual affections and principles defy all power of culture. Not until again created as at first, by ° Ohanning’s Self-Culture. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-REPENTANCE. 221 tlie energy of the Holy Ghost, will the living germ of a spiritual life be there to admit of cul¬ ture. However specious, therefore, the achievements of a prayerless self-culture may appear—a cul¬ ture of those elements which are found in hu¬ manity without a divine implantation of new principles—they will be found upon examination to be exhausted in mere external reformation, in the strengthening or repression of those tempo¬ rary instincts which encase the soul, and in the delicacy given by exercise to those apprehen¬ sions of the obligation and beauty of perfect vir¬ tue, which are indestructible elements even in a depraved nature. That only can be cultivated which already has root in our nature. Let then those elements of moral and social character, upon which we have so long dwelt in former pages, have the highest culture; let the best combination of natural dispositions be encour¬ aged by all prudential restraints and a fostering education ; let the oppressive sense of the moral obligation of rectitude attend each action, and keep the future destiny in view; let a sense of the artistic beauty of virtue prompt to a mere sentimental desire for symmetry of character; let the Spirit, which is ever warning or alluring 222 NATURAL GOODNESS. the soul by its secret whispers, breathe sugges¬ tions of better things; and you may produce a character almost faultless to outward observa¬ tion, and presenting a strange similitude to re¬ ligious experience in men who never prayed nor felt their need of prayer, or pardon, or re¬ newal—who never yet felt that personal affec¬ tion toward the Holiest and Best, for which no general sentiment can be a compensation. Self-culture, in another sense, is indeed the life-work of the Christian; but it is the culture of a new element of character, implanted in an¬ swer to prayer, and cherished in a strength and wisdom sought and found out of himself. This true religious culture may indeed demand the same prudential avoidance of temptation, the same repression of manifestations of evil, the same culture of natural virtues, beneath the shelter of which true spiritual virtue may more easily grow up. But all this is felt to be but subservient and temporary—the careful strength¬ ening of th % false-work over which the arch of spiritual purity reaches its completeness. Thus far, then, we have been speaking of that which the soul may learn and do, by the action of its own conscience and its own will, quickened RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-REPENTANCE. 223 by that Holy Spirit which, unasked and unde¬ sired—yea, resisted and despised—still will not leave us, hut yet waits to be gracious more and more. There may have been no prayer; there may have been no distinct dependence upon divine aid. Seeing its sins, an honest heart un¬ dertakes to remove them; and its first success in relinquishing many forms of transgression leaves it no sense of weakness. As the multitude of the heart's imperfections comes out more clearly, the work appeal’s more arduous, but not imprac¬ ticable to energetic effort. Then, as self-disci¬ pline is turned to those expressions of desire or passion which are more spontaneous, less under the control of the will, and lying, if we may so express it, nearer to the heart itself, failure upon failure dispirits the first enthusiasm, and the spirit, sorely pressed, would fain have aid from heaven. Yet still the aid desired is only partial— a grant additional to previous endowments, and merely supplementary to native powers. But more and more seems needed as the conflict thickens, until as he, day by day, realizes more clearly that he is combating, not with the mere forms of evil but with the secret energy that is beneath them; and as at last he sees that this energy of sin is the pulsation of his very being, 224 NATURAL GOODNESS. the honest and humble spirit admits the fact that he can of himself do just nothing to the purpose, and God must work the whole salvation, if it he wrought at all. And here we feel hound, injustice to the pa¬ tient kindness of the Holy Spirit, to speak of an¬ other phase of repentance, which is not enough observed by the world or by the Church. We know that the natural expression of feeling is in language, and that a sense of personal depend¬ ence on another, and a desire for direct assist¬ ance, naturally leads to a direct expression and a formal application. Thus prayer is habitually spoken of in Scripture as a verbal and spe¬ cific expression of recognised wants, demand¬ ing for its full and concentrated power the privilege of definite time, and place, and utter¬ ance. Even the veteran Christian feels increas¬ ingly the necessity of those seasons of concen¬ trated and exclusive supplication, in order to sustain that clear sense of divine things, and those spontaneous aspirations, which pervade his momentary life. Perhaps few instances are known, in which, without that spoken prayer— in whispered tones it may be, or in broken utter¬ ance, but still the articulate utterance of an earnest heart—anv one has reached the full ex- RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE—REPENTANCE. 225 perience of a living Christianity. Few minds are so formed and trained that they could with¬ hold the utterance of deep feeling, and fewer still would do it without self-discipline and a set pur¬ pose. Yet it may be so, that, in the earlier stages of religious experience at least, the spirit of prayer may breathe out from the heart, although unclothed in words, and unrecognised as prayer by the soul itself. Deepening convictions of sin may grow upon the conscience, and resolute effort be put forth, and under the sense of weak¬ ness gained by instruction or by experience, the heart may feel its dependence upon God, and lean humbly and trustingly ujpon his aid as it struggles onward. Ask such a one, abruptly, if he prays, and he may start, and answer, “No.” Yet he does pray; not in that full expression, that minute specification, and that direct address which by a law of our constitution would deepen the uttered feelings as they are poured forth; but yet he prays in the spirit of humble trust for aid. Now, in the light of this observation, we see the true solution of a problem most difficult to those who recognise no transition stage between mere natural self-culture and that definite prayer- fulness which takes the open attitude of a peni- 10 * 226 NATURAL GOODNESS. tent. Often does the pastor’s eye rest upon honoured and amiable men and women, whose attentive gaze and serious spirit indicate their religious sensibility. Not only is there correct¬ ness in their life, and a careful culture of that symmetry and justness of sentiment which a re¬ fined and cultured mind may be expected to exhibit; but there is a solemn recognition of truth, a spiritual apprehension, a tone of depend¬ ence and of trust, which, even while some evils may yet visibly be indulged, do betoken a spirit in some degree moulded and taught of God. And it is, in very truth, an incipient Christian experience. It is not prudential, nor instinctive, nor aesthetic morality: it is not the energy of a soul with only the original measure of grace which sta/rted him on his probation. It is the experience of one taught his danger and his sin, who, in his effort to reform, feels the need of pardon and of grace, and does lean on God for help day by day. Such perhaps was that young man whom Jesus loved, although for a moment, as a new view of self-denial probed his nature to the quick, he shrank and went away sorrowful. Nature may not lime the credit of such charac¬ ters. Religion has begun to transform them with her light. The Spirit has breathed upon RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-REPENTANCE. 227 those hearts. They are not to be confused by mere denunciation, but to be welcomed as even now crossing the threshold of religion, and only to be led on to more decided and explicit action. In the process of gathering resolution which finally consents to yield all known transgression, however cherished and habitual, the heart some¬ times is perplexed to find its hardest struggle to be with sins to which it had scarcely realized a temptation before. Indulgences so trivial that one would have smiled at the idea of bondage to them, and which are even now despised, are yet the hardest and last to be sacrificed. It seems as though the evil spirit had not only re¬ linquished all the fortress beside, to entrench himself more strongly in one tower; but as if in mockery he made that point impregnable which we had thought of the least strength. Long may the heart pause before that little sin, so slight amid the larger sacrifices already made to duty, as to be scarcely seen. The unwilling spirit asks if He to whom all else is surrendered, will let a little thing like that destroy his favour. And we answer, Ho! God cares not for that petty sin; but around that trivial act the self- will of the heart is gathered. To disobey and to wound a friend, to break the law of right, 228 NATURAL GOODNESS. when temptation is overwhelming, might admit of palliation. But God counts those transgres¬ sions great, the inducements to which are so con¬ temptible. The sense of sin involves the consciousness of guilt and the desert of punishment. We said above that sometimes the fearful apprehension of wrath to come agitated the penitent, even through long seasons of contrition. But some¬ times the Holy Spirit, even in advance , gives to the heart that is pressing on toward its full re¬ demption, such a view of the atonement as breaks the terror while it leaves the shame. Hard is it for a high spirit to come humbly down and take mercy—as sheer mercy—which might have been withheld, and left him wretch¬ ed in defilement and fearful punishment. The heart must feel that it must be forgiven before it can be renewed / must come in disgrace and humiliation , and ask to be restored. And, finally, as the hour of deliverance draws near, the Holy Spirit breathes more and more into the heart a hatred to sin, as well as a fear of its penalties; and from its intrinsic vileness the spirit turns with loathing. It yields no longer to the seductive evil as to an enticement that it loves, though fearing the retribution which RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE—REPENTANCE, 229 must follow; it turns away no longer from a cherished though forbidden vice: it loathes its conquerors; it despises its master sins; it de¬ lights in the law of God after the inward man, and feels that it is carnal—sold under sin. Sickened, and oppressed by unwilling associa¬ tion of every thought and feeling with trans¬ gression, the weary soul cries out, “ O ! wretched man that I am S who shall deliver me from the bodv of this death i/ In thus presenting the successive phases of experience through which an earnest penitent may pass in his progress to peace and purity, we do not mean to assert that the process must be Ions:, and the lessons learned so gradually, as we have described them. In the rich, warm moisture of a river's bank beneath a tropical sky, a single day will suffice to raise with magic sud¬ denness the huge luxuriance of a majestic plant from the tiniest seed. In colder zones that growth would be the slow and gradual work of months. Yet the process of growth is identi¬ cal. The same chemical changes, and the same mechanical formation of cell and fibre, and blos¬ som and full fruit, go on in each : onlv in one the ' o / «/ stages are distinctly marked, while in the other they cannot be discriminated. Thus, under vary- 230 NATURAL GOODNESS. ing influences of the Holy Spirit, acting through varying circumstances around the soul, and with the varying cooperation of the sold itself, the transition and processes of Christian experience may be hastened or retarded, so that sometimes any eye may mark the successive stages, and sometimes they may be unperceived by the peni¬ tent himself. The slower movement affords an easier exhibition and analysis of the great pro¬ cesses of moral growth: and, generally, the moral man will pass through that more gradual transition. But wheresoever the reader may feel that he can recognise his heart’s position along the earlier stages which we have exemplified, let him hasten, by immediate prayer and resolu¬ tion, to reach a perfect experience. X X. lUli§ i o us rp e x'mxtt —JaitL “ To him that in thy Name believes, Eternal life with thee is given; Into himself he all receives,— Pardon, and holiness, and heaven. “The things unknown to feeble sense, Unseen by reason’s glimm’ring ray, With strong commanding evidence, Their heavenly origin display. “Faith lends its realizing light; The clouds disperse, the shadows fly; The’ Invisible appears in sight, And God is seen by mortal eye.” Charles Wesley. X. PECULIAR PHASES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE - FAITH. Conviction bears Her torch into the secret cham¬ bers of the soul, and it writhes beneath a sense of sin. Repentance speaks, and that soul rouses to a resistance to the evil, until in self-despair it can only pray. Faith utters, “I believe,” and lo! a “new cre¬ ation:” the sinner stands forgiven—purified—a child of God! AYhat is this faith ? Freely God will bestow pardon and renewal on any penitent seeker; but of course the gift must be received with a full understanding and acknowledgment of the circumstances under which it is given. Man must take his proper attitude before God and the universe, and he must own the true character of the act which saves him. Thoroughly depraved , the blessing which he seeks must not be mere strengthening 234 NATURAL GOODNESS. and aid, but a new nature—a regeneration—a life from tlie dead. Guilty in his pollution, he must seek favour not as mere benevolence, but as mercy, from a God whom he has personally wronged and insulted. Exposed to punishment, he must feel that his soul has no compensation which it can bring to atone for its past and pres¬ ent sin. So long as a soul shall refuse honestly to look its sins in the face, and feel their vileness, and meanness, and insult; so long as it would fain take God’s help rather as the faithful soldier’s regular rations, than as the reprieve given to a deserter; so long it will seek in vain. But the heart humbled and without a plea, may trust in God’s promise for present pardon and for present power. Thus, by resting solely on God’s mercy, the soul distinctly abjures any merit or power in itself, and so negatively recognises the true circumstances under which salvation is to be given. But, furthermore, it is clear that the gift may be free, and yet God may have chosen a special method of bestowing it. There may be some¬ thing in that method repulsive, or humiliating, or perplexing to the mind, and yet God has a right to demand that we take his gift, not only as his gift, but as coming through these particu- RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-FAITH. 235 lar circumstances and instrumentalities. If it lias pleased God to grant us salvation by the death of Christ as an atonement, we cannot leave out of sight this great fact, and say we will take the mercy direct from God, without reference to the views or the expedients which have weight upon his mind. We must take it as it really is—as God’s mercy shown to us in view of that sacri¬ ficial death. We must trust in God’s mercy, through Christ. It is not demanded that a penitent be able to solve all the deep problems which hang around the atonement. He may trust God’s word that the sufferings of Jesus are held as the substitute or equivalent for the penalties he merited, and yet he may not fathom the mystery, how God finds in them a reason and a means, without which he could not pardon. The unlettered orphan-boy, ignorant and of slow comprehension, may take the check handed him by a benefactor, and hearing that in view of, and for the sake of that check, his plea will be heard -by a banker, may never think or never know just how this banker is persuaded to give the money, or how he is compensated; but that poor boy may ask and receive the amount, not in view of his own claim, and not in view of any personal good-will alone 236 NATURAL GOODNESS. of tlie banker toward liis benefactor, but in view of that same check. So may a poor penitent soul, feel, that it is enough if God and Christ know, as perhaps they alone know fully, the compensations and the bearings of that atone¬ ment. It is enough that we never come to ask God’s blessings but through that medium, trust¬ ing, see we more or less clearly, in the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. W e dare present no prayer to God which Christ has not endorsed—and endorsed in his own blood of suffering. Thus, as by the abjuration of any merit or goodness in ourselves, faith admits, negatively, the circumstances under which pardon and re¬ newal are to be granted: so, by resting on the atonement, faith recognises, positively, the true medium of salvation. It need only to be added that this trust is for a present fulfilment, in an¬ swer to our present prayer. “Faith is a sure con¬ fidence, which a man hath in God, that through the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he reconciled to the favour of God.” But when an humble penitent, taking his true position before God, and yielding all other hope, does trust in God’s promise through that atone¬ ment, thereupon his sins are pardoned, and he is RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-FAITH. 237 held as guiltless; his enslaved will has power given unto it, not only to resist, but to overcome his besetments; he feels that instead of that strange opposition to God which lurked within, a hearty and cordial love for holiness and God has entered; and with the pure love toward God there come all pure affections toward man. blow, this reliance, this resting on God’s prom¬ ise for Jesus’s sake, is what is commonly called the act of faith; an act , we say, because it in¬ volves a special effo7't of the will. We all know how, when vears have trained us into habitual impression of another’s unkind feelings toward us, even when some circumstances which misled us are explained away, yet the habitual feeling so occupies the mind, that only a sense of justice leads us to say, “I knowhow false my prejudice has been; I know all is explained; I ought to confide in him, and I will” So the long unbe¬ lief of a heart unfits the soul to believe that God can, and will, and does forgive it; and with all the grace bestowed it recpiires an effort of the soul to rely, and say, I will trust his mercy through Christ. Thus the act of faith is simply “putting our trust” in the atonement. But there is also to be noticed a power of ap¬ prehending spiritual things, a power to realize 238 NATURAL GOODNESS. what has only been climly conceived before, which, because it does take cognizance of things beyond the range of the natural sight, is termed faith. This supernatural recognition of God’s presence and favour, and of our relations to him, and indeed of all eternal things previously re¬ vealed to the ear, but now brought home to the heart, brings up before the Christian a new world. More and more, as a part of his restored prerogatives, this faith of apprehension grows stronger and stronger from the moment of that first act of faith. And so clear and easy is this «/ spiritual vision of spiritual facts and truths, that the soul’s reliance upon God, which at first re¬ quired an effort, now becomes an easy and spon¬ taneous state of assurance. From the first prayer of the penitent, a low degree of this faith of apprehension is given; and as he perseveres in self-distrust and self- denial, it grows clearer still: he realizes the existence of the solemn interests at stake; he sees, albeit dimly, the fitness of the plan of re¬ demption ; and he has a foundation for that first act of faith, that resolution of putting his trust in Jesus. As he presses on in the Christian life, there may be long seasons of that clear appre¬ hension which makes trust an easy, almost a RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-FAITH. 239 spontaneous reliance. But not only when sin may have destroyed the Christian’s communion with the Father, and thrown him hack to his first position, hut sometimes under temptations, under peculiar circumstances, and in regard to particular points, that open vision and easy trust are withdrawn, and the soul has its reliance upon divine truth tested , and retains its title to the promises, only by a sustained act of faith, a dauntless resolution to believe and rest calmly, come what may. The distinction between the “ faith of reliance” and the “faith of spiritual apprehension,” is es¬ sential to any clear views of Scriptural expres¬ sions. The trust is faith, because it rests upon a promise, and upon an atonement unseen, and revealed only by God. The spiritual vision is faith, because it apprehends things which the natural eye hath not seen, nor the natural ear heard. But the difference is marked. God does indeed, by his own power, first unasked, and then prayed for, bring the heart to that point where it may believe, and so strengthen it that it can believe ; but in that strength the heart must of its own free-will act, and put its trust in the promise of God. Power to believe, is not ina¬ bility to disbelieve. God does not work that 240 NATURAL GOODNESS. faith of trust, irresistibly; he gives power to trust, and then calls upon the heart to do it. But the degree of spiritual vision of “things eternal and unseen,” depends solely upon the pleasure of the Mediator, who is guiding each child of God to perfection. The heart may in¬ deed trust more easilv when heaven seems V opened, and its glories are revealed ; but its true foundation of trust is the word of God, which abideth the same although the glorious vision passes away. The Christian is like one led to the top of the citadel of an impregnable fortress at midnight: he is required to enter and abide quietly amid all alarms, upon the simple assur¬ ance of his guide that he is safe. The glimmer¬ ing moonbeams, breaking through a cloud, may sometimes disclose the strength and outline of the fortress even to his view; yet his faith rests upon his guide : for when the clouds may again veil all from sight, his faith must be as firm. So the Christian relies on God’s promises of pardon, and adoption, and renewal, however his light and joyous apprehension of divine things may come and go—only looking to see that he does sincerely yield his will to God. We are saved by faith— that is, by trusting. If, then, God pleases, at the moment of an ap- RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-FAITH. 241 propriating faith, to let the great change he wrought, it is not for us to hesitate because we cannot see any merit or any power in the mere act of believing or trusting God. There is neither merit nor power in faith; the Holy Spirit chooses that moment to act—this is enough. Yet little as we can see in faith to bring the great change, we can see much in a want of faith—in unbelief—to arrest, or keep back a bestowment which otherwise would be given. In heaven no one thinks it any special virtue to believe and trust in God; it is a mere matter of course. It is evident that a created and finite mind must ever meet, in the dispensations of an infinite God, whose arrangements are on a scale beyond his scope of vision, much to perplex, and much perhaps which seems not only unwise but even unjust. The only basis of hearty obedience and cooperation for one thus perplexed, must be in a firm faith in the holiness and wisdom which assigns his duties, and promises his needed strength, and overrules all things. Perfect con¬ fidence in Jehovah, without any encouragement but his character and word, is the preliminary and fundamental principle of love and obedience, wherever created beings dwell—be it in heaven or on earth. In all the arrangements of the un- 11 242 NATURAL GOODNESS. fallen universe, it is taken for granted that there is this implicit confidence in the wisdom, holi¬ ness, love, and truth of the Father of spirits. It is presupposed in every promise which God makes to angel or to seraph, that they rely upon his truth. It is understood, we say, and need not he expressed. But should they look up, in a moment of need, for the new blessing promised to their prayer, and say, or think it, “I doubt the truth of God,” that doubt would cancel every promise, and hurl them aside as insulters of the Most High. Could they ever again come back, the very first condition must be a rejection of that insulting doubt—a readiness to trust them¬ selves and every interest upon the simple word of God. It is not that any merit or magical power would be in their believing, but that the hinderance of their unbelief is gone. So, when a ruined race is to be restored, and placed upon the same footing as the whole family of God, they are admitted to sonship upon resum¬ ing that simple state of “ trust,” which all must keep; and as God has promised pardon and re¬ newal, through the atonement, to them that for¬ sake sin, and any other hope of accejfiance, the first testing of a willing and resolute faith in God, is that promise of a present salvation which calls RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-FAITH. 243 for a trust, “ that I, even I, am a child of God.” Until the heart is prepared to trust God for this, it cannot trust him for that which will require faith afterward. This is only the first lesson and exercise of a faith which is to have a ceaseless exercise through eternity—to say, “I rest upon thy promise, and I am reconciled.” So deep is the conviction of guilt and depravity in most who with “ hearty repentance turn unto God," that, with all the strength imparted by the Holy Spirit, it requires a most intense effort to put our immediate trust in the atonement for a present salvation. The answering regeneration may come with as sudden and overpowering joy, and love, and vision of eternal things; hut not alwavs. The trust mav seem gradually to settle, and acquire full strength ; and gradually as the breaking dav, the light of reconciliation—the peace, the love of God—may dawn upon the confiding spirit. Here let us warn the intellectual reader to be¬ ware of an error by which a self-styled spiritual¬ ism has striven to parody the facts of Chris¬ tian experience with a mere sentimental reverie. The idea is, that the various changes of principle, of affection, and of emotion, which follow a true 214 NATURAL GOODNESS. act of faith, are not to be regarded as in any wise supernatural—the result of any direct energy of the Holy Spirit upon the heart—but that the regular laws of mental suggestion and succession, by which one thought or feeling produces an¬ other, will account for all the phenomena of Christian experience. The act of faith, there¬ fore, is not merely the occasion upon which God works the great change, but is in itself the cause of the succeeding change in the heart. Conver¬ sion is like any other operation of the mind. The foundation of the error lies in the fact, that the truths of the gospel ought to awaken within the heart all these feelings of love to God and devotion to holiness, and ought to stimulate to moral energy . In a heart properly sensitive , these feelings must arise when the truths are properly presented. When, therefore, standing amid these motives and truths, the heart is filled with appropriate emotion, the conjecture is that the effect is produced by a natural power, with¬ out a divine interposition. But the fallacy is in supposing that the heart is properly sensitive; for the very change to be produced is the restoration of the heart to a proper sensibility to spiritual motives and influ¬ ences. The mystery of the heart has been, that RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-—FAITH. 245 through long years it could have the great truths of redemption pressed upon it, and yet remain unaffected. It simply realizes that it ought to feel, and yet does not. And even when pene¬ trated with a sense of guilt, and earnest in prayer for renewal, the bitter consciousness is, that it rebels against a God whom it ought to love, and is overcome by a temptation which it ought to crush like a moth. When, after long waiting—in full view of all these truths and mo¬ tives—the heart sees no more clearly, and is no less dead to them than before, the same defect which renders all these truths powerless, would vitiate anv natural influence of a mere reliance t/ on the atonement. But when the penitent trusts, then God gives the new nature , and its new sen¬ sibility, and thus creates the love, and joy, and peace. After that , the various motives, acting on a soul now duly sensitive to their influence, will indeed deepen and animate the feelings which before they could not arouse. Had God chosen, as the occasion of his new creation, a condition of salvation in no way con¬ nected with the result, every one would have given to his interposing grace the honour of the work. But we must feel that although there may be in certain truths an adaptation to impress the 246 NATURAL GOODNESS. heart, yet that adaptation does not obviate the need of a direct interposition of the Holy Spirit. Iron may be heated to a certain degree in com¬ mon air, and with that given degree of heat may remain unconsumed, only tending to combustion; but if oxygen be poured around it, with the same heat applied, it burns with brilliant coruscations. So there may be a natural tendency in all the motives and views presented by the gospel, to awaken love and inspire a pure devotion, if only the heart were duly susceptible of their power; yet this tendency remains but a tendency, so long as the sorrow-stricken heart delays that act of faith; then, upon the new heart, the tendency becomes an actual power. This, then, is the act of regeneration on the part of God, following that act of reliance on the part of man, which is the condition of salvation. The separate particulars of that change wrought in the soul, we have already alluded to. The slavery of the will which had continued even amid penitence and prayer is in a moment, it may be, broken forever. It has a power given it to overcome its besetments, as it was of old overcome by them. Hot as a light labour may it be that all duties are done and all sin forsaken, but it is a mighty revolution which effects their RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE—FAITH. 247 performance at all. Tlie young Christian is half astonished at his own success. Yet if, by the strange power of choice inherent in his will, he shall turn back to any sin, that overcoming power will fail, and only by a fresh and penitent reliance on the atonement can it be regained. And so there is inwrought a new love to God— a love which gives itself away, and asks only to be loved—a love spontaneous in a nature now akin to the divine. The old principle of self- will and pride, which swept away all nobler thoughts, is supplanted by a pure and self-sacri¬ ficing affection which subdues all opposition. And yet self-will is not at once eradicated. Subdued and crushed beneath a conquering love, it yet may struggle as it dies; but it writhes in a perpetual defeat. For although conscious of some infiuence from unworthy motives, yet we feel that the nobler love prevails against them. We take that inferior principle daily before God in prayer; and as we recount his promises, and rest on liis atonement as the meritorious ground of their bestowment, we receive the grace wdiich yet more gives supremacy to love. And as the fountain is purified, the streams grow pure. Every pure affection and holy senti¬ ment springs up in the heart. They, too, pre- 248 NATURAL GOODNESS. vail, each over its own antagonistic vice, although these impure feelings still linger as long as the selfishness in which they all have root. No evil thought or feeling is tolerated now. All virtue is loved, all duties are sacred. Each low and selfish sentiment that rises to view is loathed and spurned as a foul intruder soon to he de¬ stroyed. Here is it that the Christian, rejoicing in conscious pardon and adoption, and assured of the glorious renovation already supreme within him, may yet experience the benefit of that same system of morality, with its prudential and in¬ stinctive motives, which were once everything to him. The common round of life affords a test and a temptation to every separate evil impulse of which the heart is capable. If a poor, imper¬ fect heart were thus assailed on every side, how perpetual would be the harassment of watching against so many and incessant assaults. Hardly could it be endured with our young and feeble energy. But when, by these natural dispositions to correct action, we are saved from the force of temptation on many points, the attention is left undistracted to guard those points where the natural evil of our hearts is not thus repressed. The Christian, whose temper has always been RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-—FAITH. 251 outward action, and even the accustomed tone; and yet a hard struggle may go on against the rising of the baser remnant of an evil nature. Thus, when the Searcher and the Befiner of hearts has led us to realize the depth and bitter¬ ness of our depravity, by those few desires and temptations which were never held back by an instinctive virtue, he seems to lead the soul through each separate department of its nature, and show it the entireness of its depravity. The pure feelings which came in where none had ever been before, were evidently created by the Spirit’s working in answer to the prayer of faith. From the first, the heart has felt that they are not its own, but momently received from the Mediator’s hand as a fresh bestowment. The other impulses, which we called our better nature, seemed like our own, apart from restoring grace. But the Christian is taught, as he can bear it, that God will let him claim no virtue as his by nature, and feel no exultation. He shall hold every power and capability of good, immediately and momently, as the gift of the inworking and sus¬ taining Spirit. "When the moral scaffolding of religion falls away, the momently-received life in the soul will stand the same. Through all eternity we hold our life by faith. 252 NATURAL GOODNESS. Thus, we are saved by faith. Not so much by the faith of apprehension, which opens to us more and more of the spiritual world; but by that simple resting upon Christ to do for us, and in us, what we cannot do ourselves. Consciously as a child, held and guided in the firm grasp of a father’s hand, the soul feels itself upheld by a supernatural strength. Consciously, as when an electric current thrills new energy through the frame, the soul feels the presence of an energy not its own. It comprehends the experience of the great apostle: “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I five, I live by faith in the Son of God.” RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE-FAITH, 249 repressed and concealed beneath a constitutional amiability, may be able to bear a severer con¬ flict with a less repressed impulse to covetousness, than if passion and avarice at once assailed him. The evils of the soul are like wrestlers who would hurl it to the dust: should all assail it, all at once, it might be bewildered and overcome; but if one or two only are permitted to task its energies, it may struggle hopefully, and yet learn how weak it is, and how strong those evils are. The heart may not realize its weakness in regard to those passions or vices, the disposition to which is repressed by God beneath an in¬ stinctive virtue; but from the strength of these few evils in which the depravity of its nature is clearly embodied, it can learn how intense that depravity is. And more than this: The Christian may be made to see his sinfulness, even beneath those natural virtues which have prompted and do prompt his noblest conduct. Lurking even within them he detects the opposite vices, whose existence he had never suspected before. There is nothing strange in the still lingering influence of passions which once had undisputed sway; but that Christians, as they grow in conscious power, should find vices of feeling, and a sensi- 11 * 250 NATURAL GOODNESS. bility to low motives, which they never felt be¬ fore , is strange indeed. Moralists who do rever¬ ence religious experience, must be sadly per¬ plexed in reading the biographies of men for whom nature had done wonders, and in whom grace wrought gloriously, to hear them accusing themselves of passions and motives which, even when unconverted, they never betrayed, and which were clearly substituted by noble senti¬ ments. Were these holy men morbid and unjust to their own natures? No ! but the evils which were repressed and concealed, for the general benefit, so long as no divine power was invoked to give a nobler principle, and which even in earlier stages of experience were hidden beneath the natural virtues, are revealed now that the will can overcome them, and our trust in the love of God can bear up our astonished hearts. Strange that men of mildest temper should find irritableness and anger springing up, even as some spiritual blessing proves their communion with God. Strange that what we have thought a generous nature should feel a selfish purpose rising through his generosity, like a deeper stratum of the soul jutting up through the peace¬ ful surface. The natural power of the instinctive sentiment may still continue, and secure the XI. LOVE TO GOD, THE CRITERION OF VIRTUE. We solicit the attention of the ingenuous student of his own heart, to a brief consideration of one point more, before he finally concludes the inter¬ pretation of its moral destiny. Religion is, in its broadest principle, the love of holiness; and we have all along conceded that the love of God is blit one manifestation of it. We avoided the embarrassment of considering religion merely as a personal reverence exacted by the Deity in virtue of his supremacy, without regard to the assiduity with which we discharge all other and more palpable duties. We have ap¬ pealed directly to that intuitive sense of rectitude which none dispute; and we have only demanded that disinterested devotion to the right which all feel to be the very essence of piety. In address¬ ing those who are tempted to bring forward their undeniable rectitude of conduct, and their many social virtues, as evidence of true piety, and as an offset against any want of evidence of love to 256 NATURAL GOODNESS. God, we have met them upon their own ground, and, admitting their virtues, have proven that, however beautiful they appeared, they were un¬ reliable, and might be altogether spurious. Yet certainly, however unreliable such a rare combination of instinctive dispositions may be , we have ourselves admitted that a truly harmo¬ nious character will be produced by a true prin¬ ciple ; and therefore such an exhibition may be genuine. If, therefore, any one shall claim that beneath a rare and well-balanced assemblage of spontaneous virtues, he has also a conscious def¬ erence for the principle of moral obligation, and a sentiment of pleasure in the advancement of all good, it will present to the analyst of human na¬ ture a problem of the deepest interest; especially when, as may be the case, there is nevertheless a positive aversion to what he may please to term the cant of religion, its definite exercises of wor¬ ship, and its vivid inward experiences. A sufficient solution of the question is found by an application of the same principle which appears, so far as all the virtues elicited by human relations are concerned, so perfectly to demonstrate the genuineness of his virtues: it is to be demanded that the same “ love of ex¬ cellence” which appears to manifest itself in XI. if one to