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 UNITED STATES OP AMERICA . f 
 
FUTURE 
 
 Religious Policy of America. 
 
 A DISCUSSION OF 
 
 Eleven Great Living Questions. 
 
 BY 
 
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 WILLIAM RILEY HALSTEAD. 
 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 HITCHCOCK AND WALDEN 
 
 1877. 
 
 ft 
 

 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by 
 
 W. R. HALSTEAD, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
®J0 
 
 Thomas Bowman, d. d., ll, d., 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 
 
 33s if)* autfior. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This volume is offered to the public without 
 apology. It goes out in search of readers. Its 
 pages discuss a variety of the greatest of living 
 questions, concerning which there is a wide differ- 
 ence of sentiment, and, as yet, no adjustment. The 
 reasonable reader will not look for a book of this 
 kind to be an array of universally accepted opinions. 
 Any class of inferences drawn from the related facts 
 of secular and religious history is likely to be more 
 or less contested. If the book helps to make better 
 Christians and better patriots of the people of this 
 country, the author's purpose is accomplished. 
 
 Terre Haute, April, 1877. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 -♦- 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. Correlations of Law and Providence, ... 9 
 II. Observations on the Religious Condition of the 
 
 World, 35 
 
 III. Protestantism — Its Nature and Needs, . .61 
 
 IV. Skeptical Thought, 88 
 
 V. Romanism, f 135 
 
 VI. The Unsolved Religious Problem, . . . 157 
 
 VII. Temperance, 173 
 
 VIII. Priesthood of the People, 180 
 
 IX. American Ministry, 186 
 
 X. Material Aids, 195 
 
 XI. Inner Church Life, 201 
 
Future Religious Policy of America. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 CORRELATIONS OF LAW AND PROVIDENCE. 
 
 WHEN this age shall write itself in history, it 
 will doubtless be seen, that our civilization 
 has not yet reached the divine ideal, and is therefore 
 hardly able to follow out its consequences. There 
 are foreign currents running through our complex 
 national life, which, for a period, may hold us in 
 bondage to ancient errors. A great task is reserved 
 until this time, that of using the past and the future 
 of history to place in their just relations the physical 
 wants and the spirit life of man. 
 
 There are principles of human foresight in the 
 nature and connection of events, and in the human 
 mind and heart, — principles in no way related to the 
 superstitions of the fortune-teller, or the jugglings 
 of the astrologer. An intimate knowledge of the 
 past will enable the sagacious mind to foretell events 
 with great precision. History has set up guide- 
 boards, showing the ways of prosperity and adver- 
 sity. The world to-day is standing on a vantage 
 ground of nearly six thousand years, from which it 
 
io Law and Providence. 
 
 is better able to see its surroundings and look further 
 into the future. Whoever has undertaken to solve 
 the vexed problem of American history may study 
 his lesson by the beautiful and constant light of anal- 
 ogy which has been thrown over the annals of 
 mankind. 
 
 The moral and civil convulsions of history have 
 been preceded by signs too plain to be mistaken. 
 Tacitus foretold the downfall of Rome, and the in- 
 vasion of the Barbarians. Charlemagne, when he 
 first saw the Normans invade his dominions, pre- 
 dicted the calamities which befell his empire for a 
 century afterward. Sir Walter Raleigh foresaw what 
 would come in consequence of the sectaries of the 
 English Church. Bishop Butler, in his sermon be- 
 fore the House of Lords, uttered a grand and true 
 prediction concerning the political disorders which 
 would arise from the atheistical principles of the 
 eighteenth century. The reflecting minds of Eng- 
 land predicted the independence of the American 
 colonies thirty years before it occurred. Coleridge 
 and Mazarin and Marshall and Mansfield and Burke 
 and Pitt and Rousseau were political predictors of 
 great sagacity. Statesmen of our own country, for 
 years preceding the great crisis which unmanacled 
 the black man of the South, foresaw that the popu- 
 lar mind was becoming ripe for something tragical. 
 Patriotism and dread, no doubt, time and again 
 kept back the prophecy from many lips. 
 
 In spite of the political antagonisms of Clay and 
 Webster and Calhoun, it often hung equally, like 
 an impending shadow upon their brows. The time 
 
Accident and Chance. ii 
 
 came nearer, and the political horizon gave signs 
 that a storm of civil discord was gathering to drench 
 our southern soil in blood. From its hurtlings in 
 the atmosphere, we not only believed, we felt there 
 would be war. So deep have been the presentiments 
 of those turbulent convulsions which have swept 
 nations to their graves, that in ancient times the 
 sympathy of nature was supposed to have brought 
 the warnings. On the other hand, those glimpses of 
 prosperity and peace which the nations have been 
 able to wrest from their favorable surroundings have 
 awakened the highest energies of the race, and have 
 led it with a throbbing life into the greatest glories. 
 This is not the work of fatalism or chance. The 
 world's progress and decline hinges forever on the 
 operation of free and contingent causes. Every fiber 
 of man's moral agency rises in rebellion against any 
 thing like a blind and inexorable decree. There 
 is no such thing as chance. Accidents never happen. 
 These words are found in our language expressing 
 ideas which appear on the surface of things, but 
 which have no foundation in reality. If any thing 
 could happen by chance, there would be no grounds 
 of dependence anywhere; the most dreadful uncer- 
 tainty would prevail, an irresponsible definition would 
 be given to the occurrences of life, and that gladness 
 which comes up out of the most unfortunate events 
 would be subverted and destroyed. 
 
 Law. — All nature indicates the existence of con- 
 trolling law. Proofs of its dominion are on every 
 hand. In the physical world, and in the moral 
 
12 Law and Providence. 
 
 world as well, an order and a system is discovered, 
 so extensive, so regular and uniform, that the shrewd- 
 est minds have been led into the belief that it is the 
 sole governor of the universe. Nature, with its 
 beauty and grandeur, the mote in the sunbeam, and 
 the vast sweep of the planets, with the hushed music 
 of their silence, all feel the tread of cosmic law. 
 Atoms and systems are alike under its control. It 
 quietly forges a chain of natural causes to engirdle 
 the globe. Its giant forces, in their vast extent, 
 have been toiling on for ages, with a profound order 
 which baffles conception. A universe of law is the 
 sublimest natural truth with which we are acquainted. 
 
 Certainty. — Law is invested with great certainty. 
 The sun has made his appearance in the zones at 
 known times, without a single variation for thousands 
 of years. The inclined plane of the earth's axis to 
 the plane of its orbit around the sun, invariably 
 causes the change in the seasons. 
 
 Gravitation operates according to known and es- 
 tablished principles through all space. With many 
 misgivings the mind may accept and memorize the 
 first statements in astronomy, but when it is led to 
 the calculation of an eclipse of the sun, wherein so 
 many data are used, so many sure principles are ap- 
 plied, the last shadows of incredulity take the wings 
 of the morning. Even the proposition that two 
 straight lines may forever approach each other yet 
 never meet, is divested of all uncertainty in the ap- 
 plication of mathematical laws. These are so many 
 evidences that law in itself is absolutely reliable. 
 
Nature of Law. 13 
 
 Relentless. — Law is stern and relentless in its oper- 
 ation. Fire burns. Cold freezes. A needle point 
 penetrating to the seat of life will invariably produce 
 death. The rifleman's bullet whistles through the air 
 with death on its wing, and sinks as fatally into the 
 heart of a comrade as if sent purposely in pursuit of 
 an enemy. The waves of the sea have overwhelmed 
 many a drowning saint. A solid stone wall will 
 not tumble down simply to break the head of a vil- 
 lain when he crouches in its shadow. To leap from 
 a precipice is to court known and fatal consequences. 
 As certainly as the atmospheric forces gather, and 
 the conditions are at hand, the whirlwind sweeps 
 down upon the city, devastating palaces and hovels 
 alike ; as regardless of the life of the child as the 
 robber. Law goes ringing relentlessly down the 
 changes of cause and effect like the car on its track; 
 and woe betide men or nations if they cross its path- 
 way. The only way to escape appalling disaster, or 
 enjoy protection, is to know and obey. There is no 
 concession, no compromise, no respect for moral 
 ends, in all its great dominion. For this reason wor- 
 shipers of law are generally fatalists and disbelievers 
 in the Christian system. 
 
 The exclusive investigation of material forces 
 tends to smother the emotions, to clip the wings of 
 faith, and make the moral man cry out for anguish. 
 
 Law and History. — There are knowable certainties 
 in the moral world. Ethical laws are as inexorable 
 as the law of atoms. They operate almost with the 
 certainty of an equation in geometry. In the world's 
 
14 Law and Providence. 
 
 economy, it is not only necessary that an orderly ar- 
 rangement be imposed on nature, but should be 
 manifested in the most intricate and mysterious rela- 
 tions of life. Hereon is reached the great high 
 ground of security in the regulation of human con- 
 duct. History, in a secondary sense, is but a strife 
 for man's ascendency over the material world. As 
 the conflict proceeds, the sternest physical forces are 
 subordinated, and as by the wand of the enchanter, 
 they are transmuted into laws for the social compact. 
 This is more especially true of the last thousand 
 years. The first ages were comparative strangers to 
 the economic sciences which have now become giant 
 sources of wealth and progress. Hoary kingdoms 
 grew up and passed away, in the fertile belts of the 
 Nile and Euphrates, and on the plains of inland Asia, 
 before the human race had learned to wrest from 
 nature the eternal secrets of a nation's greatest 
 power. We have inherited from antiquity her lan- 
 guages, her poetry, her fine arts, her philosophies, 
 and her religions. These come to us with unequaled 
 excellence. But the spirit of invention and discov- 
 ery, the omnipotence of agriculture, and this inter- 
 national network of commerce, are all our own. 
 Thus our legitimate pantheistic prayer is being an- 
 swered in the appliance of laws to work out results, 
 for which we have no examples in the past. And 
 yet, while these new enterprises may bring luster to 
 our name, while they may greatly modify and de- 
 velop, they will never make any radical change in 
 the ancient order of things. Draper's overdrawn 
 parallel between the life of the individual and the 
 
The Nation and the Individual. 15 
 
 nation has in it the elements of a great truth. Youth, 
 manhood, old age — this is the order. A nation's 
 virtue -may prolong this life ; a nation's infamy may 
 cut it short, but can never change it. 
 
 The child lives under a succession of unreal ap- 
 pearances. He views the world through a telescope 
 whose foundations are laid in the unsettled surface- 
 grounds of human experience, and* he gets a blurred 
 image. Volition stirs the leaf. The birds of the 
 air divine his intentions. He is fascinated by all 
 that he can not comprehend. Whatever is strange, 
 or powerful, or vast, impresses him with dread. 
 Youth is the mythological age of individual life. Its 
 vague fancies are characteristic. They are the scin- 
 tillations of an immortal fire within, soon to be re- 
 vealed in the steady blaze of manhood. The fruition 
 of knowledge can not be enjoyed in childhood. 
 The vigor of manhood can not be retained in the 
 sunset of life. These laws of man's being are inva- 
 riable, absolute. So with nations ; from rude begin- 
 nings development brings into the full tide of 
 strength; time advances, and if history is any crite- 
 rion, decrepitude and death ensue. Unless the Gos- 
 pel triumphs, or unless some new and strange light is 
 thrown over the annals of our time, the day is com- 
 ing when our metropolitan centers will stand in ruins, 
 and be visited by the curious, as men now marvel 
 at the desolations of Jerusalem and Nimroud. 
 
 The Fetich worship of Egypt began in an age of 
 myth. Her proud manhood begins with the building 
 of the pyramids, and extends through the line of her 
 Ptolemies. Her decrepitude may be dated from the 
 
1 6 Law and Providence. 
 
 destruction of Alexandria, and the burning of the 
 Serapion. 
 
 The Hebrews were children in their bondage, and 
 through the desert. A nucleus of strength begins 
 with the Judges, and culminates with Solomon. De- 
 crepitude is induced by the captivity, and the national 
 mission, save what prophecy reveals, ends in Christ. 
 
 The age of mythology in Greece gave rise to the 
 expedition of the Argonauts. It gave incident to 
 the lives of its fabulous heroes. It furnished mate- 
 rial for the songs of Homer. It developed those 
 ridiculous tales concerning the gods, which, in after 
 time, were polished into one of the most beautiful 
 and fascinating philosophies the world has ever 
 known. The Grecian age of reason was that of her 
 poets and rhetoricians and statesmen. The decline 
 of Grecian countries was contemporary with the rise 
 of the Roman Empire. 
 
 We are all acquainted with the impossible tales 
 of Romulus and Remus ; the romantic story of the 
 Sabian women; the Vestal fires, and the heroism of 
 Regulus. We read of fauns and nymphs and sirens 
 without number; and how all Italy was filled with 
 the mystic whisperings of a thousand sacred groves. 
 While the youth were being educated, some skep- 
 tical Roman had climbed the heights of Olympus, 
 without finding the dwelling-place of a single god. 
 The discovery of the deception, with a thousand 
 others in the ancient mythological worship, prepared 
 the people to be lifted forever above paganism. The 
 ingrafting of Christianity brought new r impulses into 
 the empire, and Rome's glory is now known as the 
 
Battle Ground of the Age. 17 
 
 theme of much eloquence and song. In course of 
 time, the nation's energies were paralyzed by corrup- 
 tion. Then began her decline ; through a long line 
 of events, extending over a period of nine hundred 
 years — a splendid architecture; fields once a gar- 
 den ; a grand civilization ; finally destroyed by the 
 ruthless Goth and Vandal. 
 
 These illustrations, in themselves, only approxi- 
 mate, yet they impress the meaning, and show how 
 the nations are being controlled by fixed and eternal 
 principles ; and how the same great causes of growth 
 and decay are operated all along, and are at work 
 now. Who does not believe that Spain is dying, or. 
 that France will never again become omnipotent 
 among the nations ? 
 
 If we can possibly discover the great virus of 
 death which has desolated countries in the past, we 
 may be able to shun it, and. lay hold on surer princi- 
 ples, such as will always bring with them the great- 
 est wealth of happiness. 
 
 Providence. — As all nature indicates the existence 
 of law, so all intelligence and reason add their testi- 
 mony to the existence of a superintending Provi- 
 dence over human affairs. We are now approaching 
 disputed ground. If infidelity can get rid of a di- 
 vine Providence, the stronghold of the Christian sys- 
 tem is taken ; the fatalism of law will rule the world. 
 
 Over the fact of God's intelligent government of 
 
 the world, the hosts of the Lord and of Antichrist 
 
 are struggling. All subordinate conflicts ultimately 
 
 relate to this one. 
 
 2 
 
1 8 Law and Providence. 
 
 The discussion upon which we are about to enter 
 will be easy or difficult, according to the kind of 
 proof expected. If a demonstration of the existence 
 of the Divine Supervision is demanded, we surrender 
 the task as hopeless. A moral truth can not be 
 demonstrated. We have to do, at present, not with 
 a conclusion, but a principle — one of the first of all 
 principles. It is a priori in itself. The highest de- 
 gree of probability should be satisfactory in its dis- 
 cussion. A satisfactory proof may perhaps be found 
 in the accumulative argument of the ages ; in the 
 general consent of the wisest and best of the nations. 
 If an opinion is shown to be world wide ; if it is 
 found on every page of sacred and profane history ; 
 if the world has prospered in its belief; if it addi- 
 tionally bears the stamp of reason on its face ; and 
 above all, if it appeals like an intuition to the soul, 
 the evidence in its favor is very strong. 
 
 The natural theologies of the world have always 
 given off about the same results. There is but very 
 little difference in the great under-currents of native 
 religious thought and feeling, the world over. The 
 hungerings of the race have led it to the unfolding of 
 about the same principles of truth every-where. A 
 substratum of fact underlies all pagan and Christian 
 systems alike ; in which have germinated ideas of the 
 Divine Being, known at present as the common 
 property of mankind. These ideas, so nearly the 
 same among all peoples, are not likely to be far from 
 right, unless there are contradictions in the human 
 character. This being true, the opinions of men in 
 all ages of the world concerning these universal 
 
Testimony. 19 
 
 notions, are valuable. The notion of a divine super- 
 vision is not the fruit of Christianity. It is the natu- 
 ral product of man's spirit nature, seeking the rela- 
 tion it holds to its Author. 
 
 The classic ages are full of the recognitions of a 
 Providence. The philosophical starting-point of Py- 
 thagoras was unity. Unity multiplies itself into all 
 phenomena ; is universally diffused, is the universal 
 harmonizer, the source of all being and truth. This 
 essence of things was celebrated as Deity ; and was 
 the foundation of a system intended to teach the or- 
 derly arrangement of things, leading to an end. 
 Unity was necessary to the soul's immortality; and 
 it placed man's whole life under the guidance of the 
 gods. Pindar, the lyric poet of Greece, was so im- 
 bued with a divine superintendency that success in 
 life was attributed to supernatural causes. Herodotus, 
 the father of profane history, declared that the struc- 
 ture of the world gave evidence of an intelligent au- 
 thor. .He says, "Divine Providence appears to be, 
 as one might expect beforehand, a wise contriver. " 
 ^Eschylus, the Greek Milton, fought at Marathon, 
 exulted with the victors, and ascribed the wonderful 
 deliverances to the gods. Cicero, the prince of ora- 
 tors, says, "If we everyway examine the universe, it 
 is apparent from the greatest reason, that the whole 
 is admirably governed by a Providence for the safety 
 and preservation of all beings.' ' 
 
 Livy, Rome's historian, ascribes the greatness of 
 the nation to the blessing of the gods, and the great- 
 ness of the city to the fates. The fates, in mythol- 
 ogy, imply influences akin to the intelligent operations 
 
20 Law and Providence. 
 
 of Providence with law. They are certainly not blind 
 necessities; as may be seen from the obvious con- 
 nection in which the word is often used, especially 
 in Virgil. Livy searches antiquity, and finds that 
 his own spirit is in sympathy with that which the 
 wisest should have cherished. Tacitus vibrates be- 
 tween skepticism and unbounded faith. When his 
 prophecies of punishment fail, he despairs ; but when 
 the lecherous corruption of his time meets its doom, 
 he speaks of divine interposition, as if no shadow of 
 a doubt had ever crossed his mind. In the lives of 
 Plutarch this idea almost reaches the magnitude of a 
 system. Seneca had a vivid conception of God's in- 
 telligent government. In praise of Jupiter, he says, 
 " Will you call him providence, with justice, for he 
 it is whose wisdom cares for the world, so that it 
 moves on without confusion to fill its task?" Epic- 
 tetus declares that any one thing in creation is suffi- 
 cient to a grateful mind to convince of a Providence. 
 Antoninus came to the conclusion that whatever was 
 ordained of God was full of wisdom and mercy. To 
 him, a God without benevolence, and intelligent care 
 was inconceivable. 
 
 Plautus, the Stoic philosopher, advocated a self- 
 surrender to the divine will. Apuleius, an African 
 by birth, and a lover of the Platonic philosophy, be- 
 lieved that an evil destiny might be averted, and that 
 the eye of the All-wise was ever attentive to the dis- 
 tress and sufferings of an innocent soul, involving the 
 necessity for events to be adapted according to 
 merit and justice. Al Ghazzali, the Mohammedan 
 philosopher, believed that human adversity was the 
 
Undercurrents of Idolatry. 21 
 
 bridle of God's love to draw his followers into the 
 paradise above. The vast aggregate of Oriental no- 
 tions bearing on this point presents but few distinc- 
 tions from Western conceptions before the Christian 
 era. There are no prominent variations in the creeds 
 of all peoples, even if traced back to the world's 
 great Spring-time. King Cyrus simply uttered the 
 religious belief of all Persia when he said, "The 
 gods watch over my safety, and warn me beforehand 
 of every danger." Eastern idolatrous belief, in the- 
 ory, harmonized with the Bible. The book of Job is 
 little more than a polished index of patriarchal belief 
 from the Nile country to the banks of the Indus. 
 Lactantius, though a Christian, was famed for his 
 extensive knowledge of heathen philosophies. He 
 vindicates the doctrine of a Providence with the argu- 
 ment that it was the accepted sentiment of the ages. 
 St. Ambrose likewise contends that the notion was 
 universal. 
 
 As idolatry, abstractly, enters as an element in 
 the proof of the universal religious nature of man; 
 as nearly all the more prominent pagan systems have 
 been invested with the idea of a sacrifice ; which is, 
 doubtless, a collateral truth in history, intended to 
 be the handmaid of prophecy, and speed the incep- 
 tion of the atonement ; so this element of truth, like 
 a vein of gold, has been found running through all 
 ethnic religions. It is shadowed in the mother of 
 the gods, in Vesta, in Minerva, in Diana, in the 
 Egyptian Isis, and a thousand other forms. Athena 
 was seen in the beauty of the morning dawn; Zeus 
 was seen in the sublimity of the deep blue sky; 
 
22 Law and Providence. 
 
 Hephaestos in the sun; Neptune in the sea; ^Eolus 
 in the wind; Jupiter in the roaring thunder; Bacchus 
 in the vine ; Ceres in the ripening corn. When an- 
 cient belief is pruned of its excrescence, nature be- 
 comes the living vesture of God ; the illuminated and 
 resplendent background, upon which the lights and 
 shadows of infinite thought are seen to play. In 
 human concerns, it was the same. Mercury was 
 recognized in the civilized arts. In music and in 
 poetry, Apollo was invoked. In the mechanism of 
 metals, Vulcan was the helper. In the sanguinary 
 billows of Greek or Trojan war, red-handed Mars 
 was always visible. These busy creations of the 
 brain show it to be the heart's best friend. These 
 are emblems of the divine, having a common origin 
 with Grecian oracle and Roman sibyline. They are 
 glimpses of the Infinite, coming up from the world's 
 dim twilight; faint echoes from the mystic border- 
 lands of the supernatural. The truth of a divine su- 
 pervision stands out as a bold factor in all mythol- 
 ogy, and proclaims itself to be as deep-seated as 
 man's moral nature. 
 
 Hence, it appears that revealed religion has only 
 taken this truth like it has taken the great moral laws 
 of the human heart ; it has more definitely defined, 
 has re-promulgated, has authoritatively announced 
 it. It comes neither from reason nor experience. 
 The gleamings of its light, just like the divine law 
 God wrote on the heart of the heathen, shines 
 out wherever souls have been born. It is as resplen- 
 dent in the life of the American Indian as in the 
 reasoning of Plato. It is often found like an unpol- 
 
The God Sense — Instinctive. 23 
 
 ished diamond in the rudest fetich worship. It is 
 not a matter of speculation; its most fitting and elo- 
 quent expressions are found in man's inner conscious- 
 ness. The belief is inwoven in the very fabric of his 
 being. It is one of those grand doctrines, in which 
 the impulses of the soul are led to overleap its the- 
 ories ; and which, in defiance of all opposing forces, 
 continually asserts itself in human history and human 
 life. There is one and the same reason for a Provi- 
 dence and the immortality of the soul. A thousand 
 death-blows may be aimed at its existence, and yet, 
 like the soul's thirsting for a higher and better being, 
 it still lives, with the impulsive beatings of an immor- 
 tal life that will never give over the ambition, that God 
 is somewhere near enough to see and understand. 
 
 Such is the wonderful fitness of this belief in the 
 human heart and mind that the most sanguinary and 
 desperate men reflect its nativity in those unfortun- 
 ate times when they cry out for help from a higher 
 power, hardly knowing what they say. There is 
 certainly in life an instinctive sense of dependence 
 and relation with the infinite. The heart's natural 
 aspirations for an infinite helper in the difficulties of 
 life have given birth, under the warpings of depravity, 
 to every false religious system of the globe. This is 
 the meaning of man's religious nature. That all 
 things work together for good to them that love God 
 was felt in the natural heart long before it found ex- 
 pression in the Book of Inspiration. 
 
 Look out on the theater of struggling genera- 
 tions, where vast multitudes of men have been 
 surging from the extreme grounds of barbarism 
 
24 Law and Providence. 
 
 and enlightenment, knowing little of the past, and 
 living only in the shadows of the present, having only 
 a possible conception of the great indefinite future; 
 above and over all may be heard the voice of that 
 universal prayer, "Qur Father," revealing in clearest 
 outline what God ought to be, just as he has been 
 shown to be in the Gospel of his Son. 
 
 As has been asserted, the doctrine of a Provi- 
 dence has not been relegated to the realms of bar- 
 barism and credulity ; it owes its highest develop- 
 ment to minds of culture. Men of learning and 
 refinement have investigated its claims, and found 
 them just. Lord Bacon, that universal genius, who 
 drove from the face of Europe the last long shadows 
 of the mediaeval age, says, "I had rather believe all 
 the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the 
 Alcoran than that this universal frame was without 
 a mind." From Bacon's time, and the intellectual 
 awakening which his philosophy produced, when a 
 new era of thought took hold on the world, the vig- 
 orous reflection of two centuries of development and 
 revolution has wrought a grand confirmation of the 
 belief of antiquity. 
 
 Relation. — The religious history of the world 
 shows very conclusively that there has been too 
 great stress laid on its supernatural and miraculous 
 phases. The remotest infractions of the natural 
 order have been magnified, have been carefully 
 garnered in the great storehouse of miracles, and 
 have been used as accumulative evidence against any 
 extensive influence of secondary causes. It may be 
 
A Natural Administration. 25 
 
 stated as a principle and method of the divine econ- 
 omy that supernatural agencies are never called into 
 requisition when natural agencies will answer the 
 purpose. Many illustrations might be given of this 
 truth. The most wonderful handiwork of the Al- 
 mighty may be seen outside the blaze of miracle. 
 Human instrumentalities, as they are ordinarily util- 
 ized through the ages to bring out the divine pur- 
 poses, are indeed lever arms in the world's salvation. 
 If this had always been remembered in ecclesiastical 
 history, the widening realm of scientific research had 
 not offered such a supposed paralyzing to religious 
 thought. 
 
 Let us confess the blunder, and as soon as pos- 
 sible acknowledge God as the natural administrator 
 of the material world, as the successful and intelli- 
 gent manager of social, civil, and religious forces. 
 The attempted shout of triumph with which the 
 skeptic greets the sentiments of the Christian phi- 
 losopher when he appeals to any natural system for 
 his arguments is not consistent. Christianity vies 
 with unbelief in the praise of nature's doings. All 
 known laws are but stepping-stones, enabling faith 
 to walk up and reach above them to the great Law- 
 giver. The sublimest deductions in material science 
 may enter as an element in Christian devotion. They 
 become the handmaids of religion because they give 
 broader and more comprehensive views to human 
 adoration. 
 
 A rocky mountain peak, thrown up by physical 
 convulsions, presents a dark picture of terrible sub- 
 limity. If flowers are planted in the moss of its 
 
26 Law and Providence. 
 
 crevices, if it is spread over with sunbeams, its 
 gloomy grandeur is dispelled. To establish the re- 
 lation of things is to bring a soul of unclouded good- 
 ness from them. From certain quarters the utter- 
 ance is being repeated over and over, This mountain 
 of law is immovable; the activities of nature are never 
 suspended; the relations of these activities are never 
 changed by any external influence whatever. No 
 mountain is to be removed, no law suspended, no 
 radical change is proposed, but to change some of the 
 unnatural relations of the race to these laws. The 
 sun in heaven never changes, but shines on in the 
 same eternal splendor. See him through all the 
 year the same sun, whether in the heat of Summer 
 or the frost of Winter, whether through the vapor 
 or through the mist, in the clear sky or hid in the 
 cloud, as rising in the morning or fading into night: 
 these varied relations do not change the sun ; they 
 add to human happiness, they change man. These 
 activities hold in themselves a moral purpose ; they 
 contain a dispensation of love to brook the malignity 
 of the adversary, who, in the world's harvest-field, has 
 been sowing tares ; they tend to make pure again the 
 river of life, so foul from the taint of human history. 
 The planets revolve on their axes, and are kept 
 in motion. The orderly arrangement of the celestial 
 orbs is their glory. A grand security is felt in that 
 the ages have pledged that there shall be no clashing, 
 no collision, no wandering worlds broken from their 
 restraints and rushing blindly through space to bring 
 chaos in the material world. But, after all, there 
 must have been some master hand to inaugurate 
 
Mystery no Objection. 27 
 
 these splendors; there must be some presiding intel- 
 ligence to bring out creation's purposes, and set the 
 coronet of glory on its brow. Law reveals con- 
 tinuity, providence reveals God. One needs intelli- 
 gence and love, the other an underlying method. 
 They are not mutually exclusive, because there have 
 been no encroachments, no ancient feuds to be set- 
 tled. There is no need of a reconciliation, for there 
 have never been any variances. 
 
 There are objections to this intelligent control of 
 things, because it is so uncertain, so checkered and mys- 
 terious. The same objection might be urged against 
 the intelligent and independent operations of the hu- 
 man mind. It is not so hard to see the hand of God 
 in great things, such as the prosperity of a nation, or 
 in calamities, such as the burning of a Boston or a 
 Chicago, as in minor affairs. The smaller and less 
 important events of life and history often have no 
 meaning when viewed separately. Put a hundred 
 events of life or a hundred years of history together, 
 and there are evidences of a wonderful design. The 
 visions of the sheaves and the stars will not explain 
 Joseph's incarceration, neither will the darkness of 
 his Egyptian dungeon throw any light on the visions. 
 It takes Pharaoh's dream and its results to drive 
 away the mystery of a life. Moses in the bulrushes, 
 with the eye of God on him as the future lawgiver 
 of Israel, has no significance in the human under- 
 standing- until it becomes a link in the chain of his 
 wonderful subsequent career. It is in this way that 
 the most adverse circumstances of individual and na- 
 tional life find a place in the divine economy. All 
 
28 Law and Providence. 
 
 history is adorned with such deliverances, and in 
 them God displays his infinitude. The Almighty 
 vindicates his sleepless guardianship in that he brings 
 moral discipline out of the world's disorders. 
 
 It may be said these are natural things. Cer- 
 tainly they are natural, intelligently natural. God 
 uses nature as the tool of his workmanship. What 
 else would he do with it? It is not only reason- 
 able but highly probable that God would rule the 
 world very greatly through the mediation of natural 
 forces. 
 
 The child reaches out its hand to take hold on 
 the flame of the lamp ; the mother interferes, and 
 saves the child from pain, or allows the hand to go 
 near enough to learn the nature of the flame. In 
 the child is seen life's inexperience. In the flame, 
 the blind force of law. In the mother, the protect- 
 ing hand of Providence. 
 
 In this and like illustrations may be found a re- 
 lational fact, which rises into the magnitude of a sys- 
 tem whose scope can alone be comprehended by the 
 reaches of an infinite mind. To keep in remem- 
 brance this fact is to know that the world's history 
 is not simply a chronological record. Beginning as 
 it does with the fair title-page of man's innocency, 
 and ending only with the last printed leaf of yester- 
 day, it is a very thoughtful volume. Its pages are 
 alternately covered with cheering lessons of prosper- 
 ity, and the most serious problems of ruin and de- 
 cay. The clock-strokes which ring out the spirit 
 hour of the present can never banish the perpetual 
 fact that the whole book has been inspired with an 
 
Vantage-Ground of the Present. 29 
 
 infinite purpose. Its words and letters are lit up with 
 the luster of a divine benevolence. 
 
 Nations have been wrecked on rocks that were 
 half-hidden to antiquity ; but wherever a nation has 
 gone down, Providence has built a light-house. 
 Thus the causes of every great calamity in the past 
 are generally marked and plain, and they become as 
 the voice of God, speaking with the authority of his 
 finger on the two tables of stone. The world grows 
 wiser as it grows older. As time rolls on, the bare 
 possibilities of to-day become the realities of to-mor- 
 row. Each succeeding generation of men stand on 
 the shoulders of the age preceding, and are able to 
 discover more minutely the springs of human action. 
 God covenanted with Abraham, and we have seen 
 fulfilled what Abraham only anticipated. In the de- 
 velopments of history, we not only see the operation 
 of unalterable laws, but we see where God interposes 
 his arm, and we learn where he is likely to reach it 
 out in the future. In this manner we may estimate 
 what both God and nature will bring out of events. 
 The world is now old enough to have laws of history, 
 and this age ought to be wise enough to apply them. 
 
 The purely natural course of events may be de- 
 termined more definitely than the providential, where 
 the mind is able to separate the two. That is, we 
 are measurably more certain of the operation of 
 God's laws than of God himself. The human mind 
 can calculate better upon physical causes than upon 
 divinely intelligent causes. 
 
 Yet, so far as they are known, they may be re- 
 lied on as producing results consistent for all time. 
 
30 Law and Providence. 
 
 The divine mind has control of the moral causes 
 which operate in society and the body politic. And 
 they are so operated as to bring about moral ends. 
 National rewards and punishments are apt to be 
 meted out in full in this world. Righteousness ex- 
 alteth a nation, as surely as the heat of Summer fol- 
 lows the directest rays of the sun. On the other 
 hand, to use the language of Watson, "In succes- 
 sion, every vicious nation has perished ; and always 
 by means so marked, and often so singular, as to 
 bear upon them a broad and legible punitive charac- 
 ter. " At the same time, while corruption may bring 
 punishment, while rebellion against the great laws 
 of human welfare has been followed by the direst 
 penalties, by the desolation of countries and the 
 burial of races ; above and over all may be seen sur- 
 mounting influences surviving revolutions, leading 
 on to some great end. In all the varied and diverse 
 aims of men, in all the ambitious schemes of rulers, 
 which in themselves are calculated to bring desola- 
 tion wherever they are wrought out, every thing 
 seems to move under the control of a wisdom which 
 keeps them from bringing utter woe to the world. 
 While Julius Caesar was building up the fortunes of 
 his career in Gaul and Britain ; while Augustus is 
 plundering the eastern territory to rebuild and beau- 
 tify Rome; while the barbarous Alaric is trampling 
 under foot the remains of Greek civilization, and is 
 asserting the supremacy of force over the dawdling 
 kings and corrupted Church of Italy, leaving the 
 world nothing but the crimson sign of rapine and 
 war ; while the inexorable logic of events is spreading 
 
Illustrations — Application. 31 
 
 the shroud of the dark ages over fallen empires; 
 while the frenzied hordes of Europe are rushing to 
 rescue the shrines of the devoted city, in all this 
 the student of history discerns the power of an 
 omnipotent arm shaping the world's policies, and 
 bringing from them the grandest and most exten- 
 sive results for the world's general welfare. While 
 the crossing of the Mohammedans from Constan- 
 tinople into Turkey, and from Gibraltar into Spain, 
 finally caused all Europe to cower before the sword 
 of the Saracen, other influences were at work 
 bringing from the dread invader a revival of letters 
 which is felt until this time, though with a tardy rec- 
 ognition. While the burning ambition of Napoleon 
 was drenching the kingdoms of Europe in blood, 
 another agency was utilizing his life-force in lifting the 
 European mind forever from the intellectual bondage 
 of Feudalism. These are star gleams of hope break- 
 ing across a very dark pathway. It is thus that the 
 gold and the ivory and the gems of this shattered 
 wall of humanity are carefully gathered up, and used 
 in the adornment of a more beautiful temple, whose 
 architecture is from the sky. 
 
 Finally, there can be no question of greater inter- 
 est to those who have been born and nurtured in this 
 free American air than that which asks for an insight 
 into our present national surroundings and for a pre- 
 vision of our ultimate destiny. What genius shall 
 preside in our deliberations? Shall the materialism 
 of money and secular concerns sway the helm of State, 
 and by legal enactments drive a recognition of the 
 divine from our borders? Shall Romanism be allowed 
 
32 Law and Providence. 
 
 to mold our plastic social life with methods which 
 have been disciplined for a thousand years, and lead 
 our land back over the per'lous ground of ecclesias- 
 tical history? Who shall be helmsman in guiding 
 our national ship over the shoals and by the break- 
 ers into the deep, peaceful waters? And if the storm 
 should gather over us, what great spirit shall stand on 
 the rock of truth, call to its aid the spirit of the age, 
 notice which way the wind is blowing, where the 
 waves are rolling, and, with a steady hand, reach out 
 and rescue whatever is adrift? There are forces at 
 work in the body politic, in the Church, and in soci- 
 ety, which have touched the moving springs of the 
 world's history. These forces are likely to bring 
 about greater results now than ever before, because 
 of their collective strength, and because of the mag- 
 nitude of the interests which have gathered around 
 them. From whence shall come our confidence in 
 the midst of these serious social problems? What is 
 it that will make our people cheerful in disaster, calm 
 in the hour of peril, or submissive in adversity? 
 What voice shall rebuke our corruptions, denounce 
 the evils of our civilization, and secure in place of 
 them honor and virtue? 
 
 The voice of the common people, coming up from 
 our homes and our schools, where the character is 
 formed, where the heart is trained under the impress 
 that God rules. This is the enkindling, complement- 
 ing power in society. There can be no permanent 
 social structure built on any other basis. It requires 
 an infinite motive to give full scope to the energies 
 of a nation's life. Hence those counselors who gain 
 
American Colleges. 33 
 
 a broad and deep insight into affairs advocate the 
 Bible in the public-schools as a matter of expediency. 
 Outside the fact of its inspiration, politically consid- 
 ered, it is the safeguard of the nation's existence, it 
 is the protecting shield of all free government. It is 
 the same in the higher departments of education. 
 Every thing should be complemented with a recog- 
 nition of the divine. As long as our college curric- 
 ulums lay hold on ancient thought and philosophy, 
 and open out through the languages those attractive 
 systems so fatally divorced from modern sentiment, 
 it is well to teach in comparison the evidences of 
 revealed truth, to show its superiority and fitness. 
 
 In this connection it is an inspiring fact that our 
 American university system has risen mostly from 
 the impulses of Christian benevolence. Its founders 
 have been men born of the noblest voluntary aims. 
 Our thoughtful and thorough educators seem to have 
 been expecting these serious times, and have given 
 great attention to the principles of the divine life. 
 The supreme importance of the moral sciences is being 
 recognized. Butler's Analogy is becoming the head- 
 light of learning. This age is calling for men, men 
 who are willing to surrender themselves to a disinter- 
 ested and unselfish labor, men who are to perpetu- 
 ate the heritage of our fathers, in the remembrance, 
 that behind our learning, behind our wealth, behind 
 our physical potencies, there is a power which will 
 not only speed us toward the promised aidenn, but 
 will mak'e the chariot wheels of our enemies drag 
 heavily. There is danger that, in the busy enterprises 
 of the next century, we may be induced to forget our 
 
34 Law and Providence. 
 
 colonial instincts. As well might the astronomer try 
 to pursue his investigations without the laws of Kep- 
 ler. Not only the Church, but the nation, from pri- 
 vate conviction co-operating with God, is clearly the 
 mission of the new age. 
 
Chapter II. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE 
 
 WORLD. 
 
 IT is not so hard to see wherein the past has blun- 
 dered as to profit by these blunders. The state- 
 ment is made good in the fact that, while a small part 
 of the territorial world has built its structures of 
 government with greater security from the old dan- 
 gers, vast portions have gone on, heedless of all 
 disaster, and are yet holding to old and fatal way- 
 marks, or they are giving way before incoming enter- 
 prises. It is no easy task to. study dispassionately, 
 and apply the religious influences of the present. 
 One is likely to mistake personal whims and prefer- 
 ences for the spirit of the age. There is danger of 
 being directed by false guides, of unconsciously fight- 
 ing against God and declaring, remotely, at least, in 
 favor of wrong. There is a tendency of self-seeking 
 in human nature giving undue, weight to the particular 
 influences under which it has been thrown, magnify- 
 ing very greatly the importance of whatever is of 
 most interest in religion, in family, or in country. 
 Then, again, the equilibrium can not always be known 
 in the vibrations of history. It may not always be 
 known on which side of the ship to throw one's 
 weight for a counterpoise. The first impulse is to 
 
 35 
 
36 Observations. 
 
 rush toward the center of gravity with the multitude. 
 In this investigation, whatever can not be seen and 
 corrected, it is proposed to commit to Him who is 
 always at the helm of life's great vessel; and then, 
 though the multitudes on deck may topple the ship 
 and go overboard into the sea, the ship will ride on 
 finding new cargoes until the voyage is ended. 
 
 On the face of the religious world new lights and 
 shadows are appearing every day. The age is hasten- 
 ing, the stream of thought and sentiment is flowing, 
 leaving such dim and varied impressions that it be- 
 comes difficult to assimilate and fix its marks on the 
 mind and heart. The soberest judgment is often at 
 a loss to know what elements to trust, what contro- 
 versy to shun. It will be impossible, from now on, 
 to confine either reasoning or speculation to sectional 
 or channeled interests. The world's views are grow- 
 ing broader. New means are being employed for the 
 interchange of thought and opinion. Peoples are be- 
 coming acquainted with each other on a grander scale 
 than ever before. As this acquaintance is extended 
 men enlarge and lift their views. 
 
 There is a disposition now among all classes, in 
 every civilized country, to look forward rather than 
 backward; to expect a future greater than the past; 
 to reach heights heretofore unattained. . The road to 
 these heights is now regarded as an open, free way. 
 All men and all nations are now challenged to the 
 fullest activity and the highest enterprise. The old 
 enthralling powers of will-force and absolutism are 
 not very well adapted to the multiplied and intelli- 
 gent energies of to-day. Thought-force and reason, 
 
The Faith of Modern Life. 37 
 
 coupled with the broadest freedom, instead, are re- 
 molding life and society. From this cause, perhaps, 
 more than any other, the world is taking a hopeful 
 view of itself. In all the miseries of our time, in all 
 the anxieties filling the souls of Christians, in all the 
 perplexities of conscience, in all our national dan- 
 gers, in the overwhelming issues which are to be de- 
 cided in the crisis of the next century, in all this 
 dying away of the principle of life, in all the inva- 
 sions of positive and threatening evils, there are but 
 few despairing views of the world; there is no great 
 uneasiness above that which is natural to human 
 endeavor. 
 
 This confidence in the future has been growing 
 stronger in all Christian countries since the hour of the 
 incarnation. Often when some dreadful and ruinous 
 hand was lifted over the Church men expected it to 
 die, but it lived. When dissension and rivalry in the 
 bosom of the Church often convulsed nations and 
 deluged continents in blood, men looked for the fair 
 name of Christianity to be buried in the blackness of 
 hatred and strife; but it lived. Time and again, when 
 selfish interests have been advanced under the sem- 
 blance of religion, the world has been smitten with 
 the divine wrath. Yet, after the smiting, God said: 
 "Cheer up, now; there is hope for the future.' ' 
 Hence the world is becoming settled in the assurance 
 that whatever God has undertaken will ultimately be 
 accomplished. There has been such abundant cause 
 for disaster in the past which, somehow or other, has 
 been averted. There have been a great many death- 
 blows given to the Church which, somehow or other, 
 
38 Observations. 
 
 have failed of their purpose. Deadly poisonous cur- 
 rents have touched the life of religion ; and men have 
 said, "Surely this is the fatal hour;" but, mysteri- 
 ously, some antidote has been applied, and death itself 
 has been vanquished. Time and again, when all ex- 
 pectation was lost, the quivering vitals of religion 
 have been known to become steady and strong, and 
 good has been brought out of adversity and danger. 
 
 The conviction is beginning to pervade the world 
 that the same hand which w T as at work in creation, 
 bringing order out of chaos, bringing life out of death, 
 bringing light out of darkness, bringing something out 
 of nothing, has been at work in history; bringing 
 comparative order out of the most untoward elements 
 of strife and commotion, bringing peace out of relent- 
 less war, clearing the mildew and death damps of ad- 
 versity from the face of decay, and permitting the air 
 of freedom and hope to fan its cheeks into health 
 again. This, at least, is the known tendency of things. 
 To those who have the care of souls or the burden of' 
 a nation's welfare to carry in life, it brings much solid 
 joy and rest. They may live and toil in the cheerful 
 hope that the sun of righteousness will finally light up 
 the dark places of the world, and all men will rejoice 
 in the perfect adjustments of intelligence, freedom, 
 and religious faith. 
 
 The Orient. — In the Eastern empires the human 
 mind has never been lifted from the slavery of an 
 iron despotism which holds all activity in abeyance, 
 and which presents a form of government little in 
 advance of Egypt under the Pharaohs. Start from 
 the harbor of San Francisco, go westward till you 
 
Eastern Countries — Their Condition. 39 
 
 reach the coast of China; then, from the Northern 
 to the Southern seas, and for five thousand miles in- 
 land lies a region of country, over the face of which 
 might be written, "Human stability, inhuman tyr- 
 anny." 
 
 There are whole nations, whose intellectual head 
 is the priesthood, whose animal body is the common 
 people. A human head, an animal body! What a 
 cheerless and sad symbol! 
 
 Since the gates of the Celestial Empire have been 
 thrown open to the influx of sacred truth and West- 
 ern thought, seeds are being planted, which are de- 
 signed to germinate into a new and better life. The 
 sun can not be said to have risen in those countries; 
 but there are streaks of light on the mountain-tops. 
 The flush and glow of the world's religion is beating 
 down upon its valleys, and illuminating its caverns of 
 wretchedness and woe. Old prejudices are wearing 
 away. The missionary and the sciences he takes 
 with him are no longer suspected. The indications 
 now are, that our Western forces Avill unmanacle the 
 enslaved energies of the people, and put an end to 
 her caste systems and her monarchies forever. 
 
 South-eastern Europe and Africa, — territories once 
 glorious under the brilliancy of the cross, are now 
 the most pitiable mission-fields on the face of the 
 globe. It is one of the marvelous things in the his- 
 tory of Christianity, that, after the lapse of two thou- 
 sand years, its birthplace should be missionary 
 ground. Those lands which first knew the Bible, 
 where it was first written, now ask for the Word. 
 The very countries where the plan of redemption 
 
40 Observations. 
 
 was wrought out, now need a religion. The Greek 
 Church, and the nominal followers of Christ in all 
 Western Asia, need to be taught the nature of relig- 
 ion. The cross must now undertake the conquest 
 of a land which was the seat of its ancient and most 
 glorious victories ; for the Prince of Darkness has 
 taken possession of it like the black tents of its Bed- 
 ouin Arabs. The mosque of the Moslem now dese- 
 crates the sacred hill of the devoted city. Western 
 Asia is the cradle of the race, and the nativity of re- 
 ligion. It is the earth's most memorable battle-field 
 of opinion. Now it must be reconquered in order 
 to take part in the coming conflict in which the issues 
 of a world are to be decided. 
 
 Southern and inland Africa present a problem for 
 solution. Noble attempts have been made to Chris- 
 tianize the continent, with little or no success. Mo- 
 hammedan missionaries have brought greater bless- 
 ings to Africa than all Christendom combined. 
 Islamism has gone as a civilizer to the very heart of 
 the continent, and claims nearly all the most power- 
 ful tribes of the interior. Our African missionary 
 movements need reconstruction, and they should be 
 aimed at the interior. Inland exploration is now at- 
 tracting the world's attention, and it is giving a val- 
 uable knowledge of regions which only a few years 
 ago were entirely unknown. The next hundred 
 years will make a new world of Africa. 
 
 South America, in its missions, has the advantage 
 of not having to build on the substratum of dead 
 races and civilizations. The native influences are 
 more hopeful than in many other mission-fields, in 
 
European States. 41 
 
 that the desperateness of Oriental thralldom does not 
 attain among the nations of the New World. South 
 American missionary enterprises are presenting every 
 year more cheerful aspects. 
 
 Europe is not entirely free from the ancient order 
 of things. The gorges of European society are not 
 yet lit up with the ascending light. The shadows of 
 the mediaeval time have indeed been lifted. The 
 songs of the troubadours are no longer heard. The 
 real romance of knight-errantry is gone; and Euro- 
 pean serfdom, powerless as it has seemed for a thou- 
 sand years, is rising into authority. The Reformation, 
 which went hand in hand with a revival of letters to 
 lift the nations into a new life, aimed at nothing 
 less than universal conquest. That life, however, 
 was born and nourished amid stormy times. Europe 
 is yet standing on the limits of an age sprinkled 
 with the blood of religious wars — an age made 
 odious with the sanguinary horrors of the Inqui- 
 sition. In the outgrowth of the blessings which 
 the world now enjoys, time and again Christ has 
 been crucified afresh. The rights of conscience, and 
 the humane tolerance of these times, have been 
 born amid many throes. For two hundred years, 
 history has labored to give them birth like a mother 
 reaching out in the dark and struggling with God 
 for a life. 
 
 Germany now stands head and shoulders above 
 her sister states of the continent in putting into prac- 
 tice every appliance of strength to her institutions. 
 Her sterling intellectual culture of the last fifty years 
 has been wrought into a thing of patriotism, and has 
 
42 Observations. 
 
 given glory to her banners. German society is 
 growing up into a new life. There are intimations 
 that it is slowly emerging from the lifeless rational- 
 ism which has been the chief item of its history 
 for the last century. Germany is at last fully alive 
 to the secular policies of Romanism. The old vexing 
 and vexed politico-religious questions have often of 
 late thrown the empire into commotion. The re- 
 sult is, Rome is foiled, and made to feel that there 
 are limitations to her ecclesiastical claims. 
 
 Italy lies low under the thunders of the Vatican, 
 even since she has learned that thunder never kills. 
 The present political freedom of Italy is likely to be 
 followed by a direct and powerful tendency toward 
 religious indifference. To counteract this the Ameri- 
 can Churches are bringing a zealous missionary force 
 to bear on the peninsula. 
 
 France, once the mistress of Europe, has now lost 
 her prestige. For the last few years she has been 
 paying dearly for her rank and notorious infidelity, 
 for her rebellion against the ten commandments. 
 The stronghold of Romanism is here. From fifty 
 thousand pulpits are proclaimed superstitions to rival 
 the dark ages. 
 
 Spain, poor Spain, is now a suffering invalid, un- 
 able to check the course of a long and terrible dis- 
 ease. The skeleton of death which began to grow 
 in the reign of Phillip II, is now visible to every eye. 
 Spain, to-day, illustrates how a death-blow may be 
 struck in times of prosperity, after which prostration 
 may be so slow that when death comes men may 
 have forgotten the cause. For two hundred years 
 
European States. 43 
 
 the gangrene of religious intolerance has been eating 
 away at the vitals of Spain, and she is now past re- 
 covery — almost a corpse among the nations ! An- 
 other victim slain ! Another sad lesson wrought out 
 by the secular ambitions of Ultramontanism ! 
 
 If England can have Premiers to keep her Arch- 
 bishops in check ; if she can have Whitefields and 
 Wesleys to rebuke her High-churchmen; if she can 
 find American grandchildren, like Moody and Sankey, 
 to give skepticism a contradiction when it boasts 
 that the slumbering religious faith of England can 
 never again be aroused ; if she is able to cut loose 
 from the fag-ends of Romanism, she will be a light 
 in the pathway of nations. 
 
 It may be said that a new era has been fully in- 
 augurated in European history. Yet there are dark 
 places in it. Some of the deepest shadows are cover- 
 ing the face of the immediate present. As far as 
 human eyes can see, it appears to be a slow and con- 
 stant dissolution of positive faith and Christian inter- 
 est. We can not assert to what extent this decline 
 in the inner life of Christianity is to be carried. We 
 only know that it exists as a question of awful and 
 living interest offering itself for solution. The bitter- 
 ness and the rivalry of sectarianism is working no evil 
 to be compared with it. Modern theology, tinctured 
 as it is so thoroughly with materialism, is sending a 
 chill through the sundry social questions of the con- 
 tinent. Rationalism has secured its advocacy from 
 many pulpits. The foes of the Church are nestling 
 in her bosom, are w r arming into activity around her 
 altar fires. 
 
44 Observations. 
 
 Unbelief and a tendency to be engaged in the 
 worldly and the sensual, in fact, practical materialism 
 in all its forms, seems to be spreading with frightful 
 rapidity. The result is a growing indifference to the 
 necessity of vital piety and a general neglect of eter- 
 nal concerns. The life and power of godliness which 
 carried the Church through the stormy times of the 
 Reformation is now gone, actually gone. Will Europe 
 retake for Christianity the place it once occupied? 
 Will it again become Christian as it was two hundred 
 years ago? Is the Church doomed to go down amidst 
 overwhelming difficulties of a social and political 
 nature, difficulties which have always come up from 
 the unsolved religious problem of the world? Will 
 Europe ever become once more vitally Christianized? 
 Her institutions are pre-eminently Christian, her civil- 
 ization is built on the granite rocks of the Gospel, but 
 the power of a personal religion, to deepen and apply 
 to good uses her best customs, is wanting. A fatal 
 divorce between Christianity and personal freedom 
 lies at the foundation of the antagonism which shake 
 European society. To obey Jesus Christ, without 
 becoming the slave of a priesthood, is the principal 
 point. Clearer and more definite boundaries between 
 the civil and the ecclesiastical are needed. A free 
 Church is greatly in demand, yet it is not practicable. 
 To throw the Churches upon their own resources, for 
 the present, would be profoundly revolutionary, and 
 would, doubtless, be followed by a disastrous letting 
 down of faith and confidence for the future. At the 
 same time, it is one of those dreadful measures which 
 might arouse and quicken into life. 
 
America. 45 
 
 American society, so easily changed in its customs, 
 bears no resemblance to the settled methods and ways 
 of transatlantic countries. Opinions do not take such 
 a deep hold on the character here as there. Vener- 
 ated customs, to which the people have been con- 
 formed for thousands of years, however unequal they 
 may be to modern exigencies, are not easily over- 
 thrown. That honored belief in the subordination of 
 the civil to the sacerdotal, claims the homage of so 
 great a number of European inhabitants that the true 
 relations of Church and State could not be brought 
 about short of a physical conflict. Yet this would be 
 better than the stagnation of all enterprises, and the 
 hopelessness of the conflicts which the present state 
 of things portends. 
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 Historic Forces. — In the busy whirl of our national 
 life it is a wise thing to stop and take observation. 
 The mariner may be sailing along swiftly and pleas- 
 antly, yet he watches the compass, he watches the 
 stars, those things which change not. To be sure 
 of the port, he determines his position, he finds out 
 where he is now. He may have kept his course un- 
 changed, yet he knows how an untoward wave may 
 change that course, and how, almost imperceptibly, 
 the wind may drive him away. 
 
 As the child must have a mother, so the present, in 
 a measure, is the offspring of the past. Many prin- 
 ciples and opinions which are being propagated now, 
 in this country, found their inception and nurture in 
 colonial soil. There has been occasion to present 
 
46 Observations. 
 
 already, in this volume, the resemblance between 
 natural bodies and bodies politic. The characteristic 
 traits of infancy and childhood are seen in old age. 
 Early impressions and beliefs stamp their influence 
 on the whole after-existence. The primary elements 
 of our social and religious life have in them some- 
 thing of the genesis and early development of the 
 country. It is a marvel that out of such heterogene- 
 ous elements there should come the comparative 
 unity we enjoy. Infinite wisdom has certainly been 
 at work reconciling the antagonisms. 
 
 Two things are to be deplored in the early settle- 
 ment of the American continent — the rigid intoler- 
 ance of Puritanism, and a religion of State patronage 
 in the Jamestown type of colonies. These relics of 
 religious tyranny had followed the colonists from the 
 old world, and for a time there was every prospect 
 that they would engraft themselves into the civil and 
 religious history of the country. In this the colonies 
 would only have been true in thought and sentiment 
 to European life. But soon after the settlements 
 were made permanent, mysteriously, affairs were 
 found reshaping themselves. The bitter, persecuting 
 spirit of New England was modified before long, and 
 the rights of conscience soon gained the supremacy. 
 From thenceforward the freest development of relig- 
 ious thought and experience was recognized as a 
 primary human right. 
 
 After this transforming work was done, two relig- 
 ious theories were left at work like leaven in colo- 
 nial history; and the subordination of one to the 
 growth of the other has given us our glory and made 
 
Two Colonial Forces. 47 
 
 Europe envious. One element advocated the crown 
 and its privileges; the other contended for popular 
 rights. One element was organized before it left the 
 old country; the other had its foundation in a simple 
 compact. One element had a religion of forms and 
 ceremonies, and an imposing ritual ; the other had its 
 only basis in the Bible. One element caused the 
 battle of liberty and conscience to be partially fought 
 over again on these shores; the other brought with 
 it the rich and immortal qualities of the Reformation, 
 the precious germ of human rights, and the true rela- 
 tion of the civil government to religion. One element 
 came with the " propagation of the Gospel" written 
 in its charters, and lived to learn that the spread of 
 Christ's kingdom under civil jurisdiction was a dis- 
 graceful failure. The other came to America under 
 the ban of the same failures in Europe, and wrought 
 out the type of our civilization ; and it has a rich fruit 
 for its reward. 
 
 The germs of religion were so deeply planted in fed- 
 eral soil that they could be safely trusted to spontane- 
 ous resources for cultivation. The lack of State sup- 
 port in those colonies which adopted the voluntary 
 system so early in the history of the country was found 
 to be a hinderance of less moment than the segregated 
 nature of religious forces. For a time there was little 
 connectional interest in the work of evangelism. These 
 sectional barriers, producing a spirit of offishness, 
 were not taken away until the revival of Whitefield, 
 with an overwhelming tide, swept all influences into a 
 soul of unity, and brought the people for the first 
 time under the power of one thought and one impulse. 
 
48 Observations. 
 
 From thenceforward there was an American peo- 
 ple, held by voluntary bonds, trusting in Christ, and 
 perpetuating the truths of the Bible under the im- 
 pulse of private conviction. Every great religious 
 awakening which has swept over the land, from 
 Whitefield's time to our own, has operated like a weld- 
 ing force in our historic life. These great movements, 
 taken together, reveal a depth of Christian sentiment 
 to which Europe has been a stranger since the out- 
 burst of the Reformation. Let us pray that this hope- 
 ful element may still pervade our national life, and 
 that it may mold and move society in the future. 
 But to make an estimate altogether from this cheer- 
 ful stand-point would, perhaps, lead to a mistaken 
 notion of our present religious condition. 
 
 In the intervals of revivals in this country, relig- 
 ion has been at a very low ebb, — so low that the 
 contagion of error has spread rapidly. Paine and 
 Cooper and Jefferson are representatives of a factor 
 in American thought. The student of our history 
 remembers with sadness the bold inroads of Uni- 
 tarianism and Universalism in the year 1800, as a re- 
 action against the gloomy scholastic theology of the 
 period. Twenty-four years afterwards, the communis- 
 tic socialism of Robert Owen made its appearance, 
 with its degeneracies of Fouerierism, and Free-love- 
 ism, and the diabolical spiritualism of the present day. 
 The flood tides of German philosophy began their 
 devastations in the year 1840, and the threaten- 
 ings now indicate that German rationalism will re- 
 peat itself on these shores. The preparative work is 
 being successfully done in many parts. Thousands 
 
Elements of Error. 49 
 
 of the simple and the credulous are being deluded 
 by those apostles of materialism calling themselves 
 phrenologists. The increase of wealth, the advance 
 of culture, the tendency to worldliness, together 
 with the evident weakening of religious faith in 
 many localities, are powerful conditions for the 
 growth of a rationalism as cold and cheerless as 
 the grave. 
 
 Our country in many respects presents a receptive 
 soil for these foreign forces of Antichrist. Of our- 
 selves we have never cursed humanity with a new 
 form of infidelity ; but we have gone off into super- 
 stitions, and we are given to aping Europe in skep- 
 tical thought. 
 
 The Present. — If we are living in the house whose 
 foundations our fathers laid, whose walls they saw 
 started, let us see, if we can, how this solid work 
 stands related to our present improvement and finish. 
 We are now on the transition ground from a period 
 of stern religious faith which is always inclined to 
 force the will of others into conformity, into a pe- 
 riod celebrated for its application of a boundless lib- 
 erty of 'thought, for its humanity and toleration ; 
 whose bright side is in its free and clear views of re- 
 ligion, and whose dark side consists in the dangerous 
 tendencies of an easy faith. Times of persecution 
 for opinion's sake, and times of early national devel- 
 opment, have been noted for deep religious feeling. 
 In our pioneer life faith was strong, and an undoubted 
 precedence was given to the Word of God and spirit- 
 ual things. All undertakings were linked in some 
 
 5 
 
5© Observations. 
 
 way or other with heaven. In the fading away of 
 these frontier elements ; in the increased comfort of 
 our surroundings; in our favorable earthly situations ; 
 in the glamour of prosperity, spiritual indifference is 
 likely to overtake our people, and without striving 
 against religion we are apt to become forgetful of its 
 claims. 
 
 The next step is into a lifeless formalism and an 
 absolute unconcern. When one of these periods 
 of torpid religious life arrives, thought begins to 
 make demands, and reason begins to make advances 
 in a way calculated to injure faith. Christianity 
 comes to be recognized as a social force rather than 
 a regenerating power. 
 
 With all the tendency toward religious indiffer- 
 ence in these times, when taken in connection with 
 other things, we can not desire to return to the good 
 old days. We should seek rather to be free from the 
 base element of the tides which move us. Modern 
 culture, with its mighty influences in the various de- 
 partments of life, can no more be hindered than the 
 resistless forces of Niagara. Our only way is to elim- 
 inate the evils. Europe, with all its skepticism and 
 slumbering religious fires, can not wish for the 
 golden age of Luther. Neither can we dream of ex- 
 changing what we enjoy now for the condition of 
 things fifty years ago. The stream of life never flows 
 backward, never stops. It can only be controlled as 
 it goes, changed without stopping. 
 
 There are many things leading the spiritual life of 
 the American people toward evil channels. 
 
 Religion nearly always becomes identified in the 
 
Defective Practices — Sentimentalism. 51 
 
 minds of men with the practices of the Churches, 
 with their obnoxious tenets, and with the daily lives 
 of hypocrites. In a failure of distinctions, the truth 
 is thrown overboard, out of repugnance to these 
 errors and imperfections. Christianity has never 
 been able to present untarnished truth in practice. 
 Private Christian life is generally below its immediate 
 possibilities. 
 
 There is a large class in every community mak- 
 king these discrepancies of life and doctrine the 
 fortress from which to drive away all obligation and 
 serious concern. Christian life is spoken of as af- 
 fording but few examples, and the whole of religion 
 is depreciated and shunned. Thus it is often the 
 case that undoubted Christian principle is robbed 
 of its rightful influence. From this source men 
 learn the arts of sacred satire. They are bold to 
 seek the indulgence of a silly wit, at the expense of 
 Bible truth. They purchase amusement at the ex- 
 pense of false renderings of Scripture texts. They 
 offer puns on the most solemn doctrines of revelation. 
 This degrades sacred truth, in that it begets a familiar 
 disrespect, and a carelessness with reference to its 
 teachings. Professors take the infection ; and at last 
 it produces the fruit of a low religious life, and all 
 serious thought and inward conflict is bartered for 
 that which is cheapest and easiest attained. 
 
 There is now no lack of reform in private Chris- 
 tian life, as well as in society. The advocacy of 
 higher attainments in grace is being rewarded with 
 success in many parts of the country. Some phases 
 of this movement, however, have degenerated into 
 
52 Observations. 
 
 sentimentalism. We are reminded of the perversions 
 of European pietism in the eighteenth century. 
 
 There is a distinction between religious feeling 
 and sentimentalism. Tenderness is healthy and nat- 
 ural ; sentimentalism is artificial and morbid, vain 
 and spoiled. It tries to hide a want of depth in 
 moral energy beneath a lauded and forced expression 
 of feeling. Strong and manly natures are by this 
 means thrown into the counter tendency of the intel- 
 lect and of doubt. 
 
 The Church life of this country holds an intimate 
 relation to its literature. Man's faculties are com- 
 plicated. His needs are manifold. In mastering the 
 resources which supply his physical wants, he is apt 
 to reshape all the relations of his many-sided nature. 
 He can not gratify his purely intellectual wants 
 without touching the moving -springs of his soul. 
 The various resources of man's earthly happiness are 
 not segregated. In the unbounded stores of pure 
 and high-toned literature, he gathers strength for 
 Christian progress, he develops the spirit-qualities of 
 his being, and becomes a better and a wiser man. 
 
 This is the world's golden age of letters. So far as 
 it is utilized for the truth, it is man's richest temporal 
 boon. When it is subordinated to passion, it is his 
 greatest curse. ■ While the sacred literature of this 
 country, comprising books and magazines and peri- 
 odicals, is vast in the aggregate, wielding an influ- 
 ence next to the pulpit, yet its anti-Christian and 
 immoral phases are positively alarming. 
 
 There appears to be a growing distaste for solidity 
 of thought. Our feverish young bloods are pampering 
 
Vicious Literature. 53 
 
 a vicious taste in the low and passionate literature 
 of the day, beyond which there is nothing more 
 potent to sear the conscience and to darken the soul, 
 to become the victim of the appetites and to prepare 
 it for the perpetration of crime. 
 
 A young girl takes up a dime novel. She reads 
 of some heroine of supernatural qualities, who was 
 "true to the last;" who ran hair-breadth escapes; 
 who was heedless of the counsels of friends, parents, 
 and many other sensible people ; and fled, like a bird 
 out of Egypt, to cleave to some hero with a marble 
 hand. Then she feels an emulation to go and do 
 likewise. 
 
 But the reading is for an insight into human na- 
 ture. The natures portrayed in sensational literature 
 contain the elements of all misery and crime. In 
 most novels the plot ends, the interest is lost, at the 
 marriage altar. It is well that this is so. Characters 
 of the ordinary novel type would not look well on 
 the rich canvas of domestic life. The nursery-home 
 of virtue and piety is too pure an atmosphere for the 
 lustful glamour that must be thrown around the novel 
 figure to make it attractive. 
 
 The vicious literature of America is the primary 
 cause of more sorrow than any other single influ- 
 ence. It is Satan's deepest, darkest, surest snare. 
 It often puts on the livery of religion, and stands, 
 Janus-faced, to decoy and entrap souls for drunken 
 graves and feasts of licentiousness. It awakens and 
 calls out the animalism of life, until it is stronger 
 than all the moral power of the soul. It pictures 
 the heroic and amorous under such relations as to 
 
54 Observations. 
 
 fire the brain with all that is false and overstrained. 
 When disappointment comes, it offers no balm. It 
 leaves its victims to pursue lives of drunkenness and 
 deathless infamy. Its ultimate is the very depth of 
 despair. According to the enormity of this evil 
 should be the immensity of Christian labor. 
 
 In the effects of these radical antagonisms to the 
 Christian faith there are appearances of disintegra- 
 tion. They have already reached an importance 
 which it is unwise to disregard. No genius of intui- 
 tion will ever check their force. The wisest coun- 
 selors are needed to invoke the spirit of the times, 
 and bring out agencies by which these dangerous 
 streams can be met by counter currents, until they 
 shall be sealed in their fountains. 
 
 In the attempted adjustment of Christian methods 
 there has been taken away much that had become 
 distasteful. There has been an effort to take all the 
 remaining gloom out of religion, and array it in 
 living adornments. In all Christian work method 
 has come to be considered a thing of expediency, 
 only bounded by the great laws of right, and it is 
 susceptible of the most radical changes. This has 
 become a necessity in the instrumentalities of relig- 
 ious labor. Such has been the development of our 
 activities in the last few decades, such has been the 
 speed of our growth, in temporal progress and new and 
 startling ideas, that the old order of things has neither 
 had time to assimilate itself nor die before the new 
 has offered its encroachments. There is now a kind 
 of religious and social conflict going on in this coun- 
 try between the old and the new, — a conflict between 
 
A New Order of Things. 55 
 
 parents and children, between representatives of the 
 generation past and candidates for the generation to 
 come, a conflict between the staid notions and whims 
 of old age, and the follies and extravagances of youth. 
 The voice of reason and prudence calls for frequent 
 changes when it has to do with this seeming hybrid 
 social state. This call is answered and measurably 
 illustrated by a remarkable change in the tone of the 
 pulpit. The constant old-time themes of sin, deprav- 
 ity, repentance, regeneration, and atonement, are in- 
 terspersed with living discourses on the general duties 
 of man, with discussions on the philosophy of Chris- 
 tian morals. Argument is taking the place of ex- 
 hortation. The finer distinctions of conscience are 
 calling for exposition. Polemical theology is giving 
 way before a legitimate utilitarianism. 
 
 Whoever is not disposed to accommodate himself 
 to this new order must stand out as a venerable anti- 
 quary. We offer the precaution that this practical 
 philanthropy be not lauded too highly, for its tenden- 
 cies are toward indifference, toward cultivating and 
 refining the feelings into an ideal affection and a super- 
 ficial labor. The old landmarks are the sources of 
 that piety which manifests itself in strong efforts and 
 constant sacrifices for humanity. 
 
 While there are shadows in our religious sky 
 which can not fail to bring their disparagements, seri- 
 ous and thoughtful minds are predicting near and 
 glorious triumphs for Christianity in the fact that the 
 unifying forces of Protestantism are becoming stronger 
 and more numerous. The Churches are beginning to 
 signify a willingness to shake hands over the chasm 
 
56 Observations. 
 
 of their differences. The blood-marked battle-grounds 
 of the past are now being brought under the richest 
 cultivation, and with promises of an abundant yield. 
 Only now and then some broken missile reveals itself, 
 like the harmless traces of an Indian encampment. 
 Here and there are the remains of breastworks; now 
 and then a small field-piece, rusted with neglect, 
 nothing more. 
 
 The unyielding and literal orthodoxy of fifty years 
 ago taught the American spirit to think ; it sharp- 
 ened the conceptions in the definition and proof of 
 doctrine; but it occasioned many revolts, and degen- 
 erated into endless quarrels, and very often into a 
 miserable religious pettifoggery. These old-time 
 phases of our religious history are being superseded 
 by broader, views of Christian life, and a charity 
 which is bringing a ready co-operation and a com- 
 munity of interests. The people are learning to dis- 
 tinguish between the pure flame of evangelical zeal 
 and the wild-fire of dogmatism. The genius of Prot- 
 estantism is rising superior to that endless contro- 
 versy which does no good. That deathless struggle 
 to reach concord by theological wrangling, and pre- 
 serve the life of religion in statements and formulas, 
 has been given over by the great majority. That 
 fierce theology which damns and predestinates be- 
 cause of minor doctrines is being buried without 
 hope of resurrection. Occasionally we find believers 
 who are ominously impressed that the foundations of 
 religion are giving way in this change; but wher- 
 ever the more 'charitable relations are taking hold on 
 the hearts of the people, in the place of polemical 
 
Theology and Jurisprudence. 57 
 
 theology, society moves, if not in a purer, certainlj 
 in a freer, religious atmosphere. 
 
 It has been in the sphere of Christian thought as 
 in the progress of jurisprudence. Starting with the 
 venerable year-books of English history, with their 
 pedantry and their nice distinctions, the common law 
 has grown out of them, as from a bundle of special- 
 ties, into a broad basis of principles; into more 
 enlarged and liberal interpretations; into a systematic 
 accuracy by rejecting anomalies and deciding cases 
 under the general test of principles. The pursuit of 
 jurisprudence now embraces those enlightened and 
 extensive researches which go to make up the finished 
 scholar or the devoted patriot, or which shed a benign 
 luster around the brow of the statesman. The stu- 
 dent of the law is now furnished with the resources 
 of knowledge and eloquence to advocate a pure mo- 
 rality, to defend and protect the liberty of the citizen, 
 to expound the doctrines which shall insure the per- 
 petuity of the nation, to drive back error and check 
 the march of anarchy, even at the expense of fame 
 and friendship. So in the field of theology. The age 
 of quaint and curious argument, of metaphysical pro- 
 blems, of scholastic subtleties, has gone by. The old 
 logical and crafty hair-splitting has been exchanged 
 for the more useful inductions of common sense. 
 Never was the desire for unity so universal and so 
 real. Mutual recognition was never before made a 
 matter of conscience; never before did it come up 
 from the great soul-life of religion. It is, furthermore, 
 being made vital in the great forces which are now 
 welding the Christian sentiment of the country. 
 
58 Observations. 
 
 There is now almost universal negotiation for union 
 among kindred branches of the Christian Church. The 
 reunion of the old and new school of American Pres- 
 byterianism is a realized demonstration. There are 
 intimations that the Presbyterian world will soon be 
 one. The Methodists of Canada are being brought 
 together. Fraternal relations have now been estab- 
 lished between Northern and Southern Methodism. 
 Without some unforeseen hinderance, the time is not 
 remote when there shall be an organic adjustment 
 and union of all, or nearly all, branches of Method- 
 ism in the United States. A striking indication of 
 the new tendency toward Christian fellowship is seen 
 in the British and American Episcopalian movement. 
 The free Churches in Europe are also being brought 
 nearer together every year. 
 
 The cure of social evils, a work which depends 
 largely on members of the Churches in this country, 
 is bringing them into personal intercourse, making 
 them acquainted with each other's religious methods, 
 banishing exclusiveness and building up a community 
 of feeling. Union revival efforts, now taking place in 
 many cities, towns, and villages, during the Winter 
 season, sometimes under the labors and direction of 
 lay evangelists; at other times through the plans of 
 the ministry, are bringing the people on a common 
 basis of belief and taking away all barriers. The 
 Sunday-school Union and the American Bible Society 
 have been powerful aids in promoting a better state 
 of feeling among denominations. The International 
 Sunday-school Lesson System has grown up like a 
 giant-force to bind and assimilate our American Sun- 
 
Unifying Forces. 59 
 
 day-schools, until they are swayed by one thought 
 and impulse. It puts in the reach of all classes, at 
 a nominal expense, the best opinions of history on 
 passages of Scripture. It enables Sabbath - school 
 workers to become mutual helpers. It calls the 
 attention of the world to Bible truth. It utilizes 
 the secular press in religious teaching. It gives in- 
 spiration to religious thought all over the world. 
 The system extends over nearly all Europe, to India, 
 Burmah, and China, to the Fiji Islands, Sandwich Isl- 
 ands, and to the Indians; and it labors to bring them 
 all under the unity of the faith. It is concentrating 
 the best talent of the Church on Biblical exegesis. 
 It develops the capability of the Church, and secures 
 for it a host of trained instructors for the future. 
 
 The Young Men's Christian Association, compris- 
 ing a vast army from all denominations, is bringing 
 the age under obligations. The divine mind gener- 
 ally finds a supply for the world's great needs. 
 When it became necessary that America should be 
 discovered, Columbus was brought up as God's 
 instrument. When it became needful that the art 
 of printing should supersede the scribe, there was a 
 love-sick swain of Europe to hit on the first sugges- 
 tion. It was not until the Church was about to be- 
 come tragical in corruption that Martin Luther was 
 born. When the world of science was to feel the 
 throbs of a revolution, Newton saw the apple fall. 
 When Christendom's children were to be taught the 
 Gospel, Robert Raikes was found giving the pattern 
 in 39 Catherine Street, Gloucester. When the world 
 was in danger of losing its apostolic fire, Wesley 
 
60 Observations. 
 
 and Whitefield thundered over the walls of the 
 Church of England, and shouted a pure Gospel to 
 the peasants and among the colliers. Among these 
 timely and providential needs are the unifying forces 
 just mentioned. They are calculated to shape the 
 religious element of modern civilization. 
 
 Akin to these, yet of greater significance to the 
 general Church, is the Evangelical Alliance ; whose 
 moral force in the world of religious thought is be- 
 yond all estimate. It was formally organized in 
 1846; and its conferences were held successively in 
 London in 185 ij in Paris in 1855, in Berlin in 1857, 
 in Geneva in 1861, in Amsterdam in 1867, in New 
 York in 1872. It has living branches in all the 
 principal cities of the world. Its object is to realize 
 to its members, and to exhibit to others, that a living 
 and everlasting union binds all true believers together 
 in the fellowship of the Church of Christ. 
 
 The last conference in New York awakened a 
 greater interest in Christian union in this country 
 than was ever before known. It touched a latent 
 chord in popular sentiment, which went vibrating the 
 length and breadth of the land. In this direction, 
 the dawning of a brighter day is near at hand. Gray 
 lines of light are coming over the horizon. It is for 
 Christian people to keep the vigils of the night. The 
 evidences are at hand by which we shall be assured 
 of the ultimate success of religion, by which the nation 
 will become jubilant with thanksgiving and praise. 
 
 In close connection with this great tendency, as 
 it partakes in the religious condition of the country, 
 are the discussions of the next chapter. 
 
Chapter III. 
 
 4 
 
 NATURE OF PROTESTANTISM, AND ITS NEEDS. 
 
 ONE of the distinctive features of Protestant 
 Christianity is its division into sects. Modern 
 Church life, to the casual observer, appears greatly 
 disintegrated. As roots of evil sometimes draw 
 sustenance and vitality from the soil of virtue, subor- 
 dinating that which in itself is good, so the present 
 condition of things is the outgrowth of subordinated 
 free thought. Sectarianism, in itself, is an evil. It 
 limits the progress of the kingdom. It will not be 
 known when Christian thought and practice shall 
 have ascended to their just claims on the heart of 
 man, or when the religious world shall have learned 
 to economize its forces. Yet the most hopeful ele- 
 ment of the Christian system is the very thing which 
 has been the occasion of these endless diversities of 
 form and doctrine. The discord which we see around 
 us, whatever ill it may have wrought, is a grand 
 testimony that Protestant Christianity has not been 
 indifferent to the truth. 
 
 In a study of the relative effects of the religions 
 of the world on the human character, Christianity is 
 known to present vital distinctions from all others, 
 in the extent of its influence on the individual life, 
 
62 Protestantism. 
 
 and in its power over society. The spirit of pagan- 
 ism has always been indulgent. It has never taken 
 a deep and lasting hold on the heart. Its principles 
 have always floated loosely in the popular mind. It 
 has never affected the morals of the people to any 
 extent. The worship of strange gods could be admit- 
 ted in its temples, for these gods themselves were 
 often supposed to be in conflict. Paganism never 
 quarreled about doctrine, because it had no fixed 
 belief. When there is a patroness for every art and 
 a presiding god for every pursuit, where every grotto 
 is made sacred in the presence of nymphs and sirens, 
 where there are mystic whisperings for every house- 
 hold, there could be no wrangling about belief, no 
 persecution for opinion's sake. Mutual indulgence 
 has marked the history of all mythologic religions. 
 The Christian religion has always been zealous for 
 the truth. It contends for the same system of duties, 
 for the same great central doctrines. The fulfillment 
 of its prophecies will bring all men to the same 
 level, will subordinate all theories to the same infalli- 
 ble revelation. It tampers with no sin, compromises 
 no principle. 
 
 When such a system as this engrosses the mind, 
 it is not strange that there should be martyrs to its 
 belief, and that persecution should find her uncon- 
 querable victims. Such earnestness, pervading the 
 whole life of Christianity, has all along stimulated 
 inquiry to the deepest investigations, leading to the 
 most diverse conclusions. While such variations of 
 Christian belief as find their occasion in the earnest- 
 ness with which revealed truth has always inspired 
 
Polemical Theology. 63 
 
 the heart are not to be deplored, but rather com- 
 mended as expressions of the deepest devotion, yet 
 we can not look upon the extremes of fanaticism into 
 which the Church has been led without many regrets. 
 
 The bitterness of theological dispute has passed 
 into a by-word. There are yet those among us who 
 believe that dissent from their peculiar views is worse 
 than are violations of the moral law. There are those 
 who would rather know that a man is a good dispu- 
 tant than to know that he kept the commandments. 
 The question is not, "Are you a Good Samaritan?" 
 but, "Can you argue Scripture?" 
 
 We confess, with shame, that men have thus often 
 put God's best and greatest gift to an evil use. If 
 the apostles or early fathers were to rise up among 
 us they would perhaps need instructions on some of 
 the questions now dividing our people. What would 
 Paul think to attend one of our country school-house 
 debates, where preachers of the same Gospel meet, 
 like opposing armies on a field of battle, to bring their 
 animosities to an issue; where they meet under all 
 the estrangement and jealousy likely to be engen- 
 dered in the face of an obstinate controversy; where 
 they meet in the excitement of a struggle to triumph 
 over an adversary, rather than to investigate and dis- 
 passionately make plain the truth; where they meet, 
 each urged on by a host of intractable followers who 
 have exagerated notions of the importance of the 
 question, and who often manifest an anxiety to see 
 their hero's opponent goaded to exasperation; where 
 they meet to wrangle over the very shreds of doc- 
 trine, contending as if heaven or hell hung on the 
 
64 Protestantism, 
 
 issue, now flushing up, now turning pale under the 
 worst passions of bullyism? Paul would certainly pro- 
 claim anew the "unknown God." Shame on such 
 performances and the men who engage in them ! If 
 they were ever called to preach "Jesus and the resur- 
 rection," they run risks of losing their commissions 
 in descending to a low and miserable controversy, 
 where the only result will be irreparable harm to the 
 progress of the Gospel. 
 
 The spirit which leads men to this theological 
 prize-fighting is akin to that of the braggadocio, and 
 deserves the denunciation of all Christian people. 
 Wherever we find these so-called students of polem- 
 ical divinity, they feed on the air and the empty 
 notions of an age gone by. They waste their time 
 in tying and untying Gordian knots which a true sol- 
 dier would settle with a single stroke of his sword, 
 ignoring its trifling mystery. A man may spend his 
 time thinking about nothing; he may trouble himself 
 and all around him about nothing, affect to be very 
 wise and learned about nothing, and go down to his 
 grave only having added fire to the feuds of life. 
 
 There was a time when the wearing of veils shook 
 the New England colonies to their foundations. The 
 saints of the Middle Ages discussed the questions, 
 "How many angels may dance on the point of a 
 cambric needle without jostling against each other?" 
 1 ' Do the angels, in going from one place to another, 
 pass through the intermediate space?" The school 
 of Gamaliel discussed the profound problems as to 
 whether we should say grace once or three times at 
 the table; or whether an animal wounded in the lip 
 
Radical Changes. 65 
 
 should be offered as a sacrifice. Men have descended 
 to great depths of credulity when they can look each 
 other in the face and seriously discuss the difference 
 between nothing and its next-door neighbor. Theo- 
 logical rancor leads to all such insane and trifling 
 gibberish. If the divine Spirit be our teacher, we 
 shall learn to avoid evil and be careful; and thus, 
 being ruled by its dictates, we will find more peace 
 of conscience and more skill in the Scriptures than 
 by all the angry disputations of a life-time. 
 
 If a man is led by the Spirit, he will know better 
 than to throw away his happiness and his hopes of 
 heaven for that which profits nothing after it is 
 gained. Truth does not require the advocacy of un- 
 holy influences, either for its defense or its advance- 
 ment. That fierce zeal for opinion's sake, which 
 magnifies itself into essential faith, is now confined to 
 those hot-headed gospelers who have supposed them- 
 selves the aristocracy of God, but who have never 
 been wise enough to know why they were born; who 
 may never know that they belong to a mediocre class 
 of men ; and yet may never be able to perpetuate any 
 extensive influence. The old theology of disputa- 
 tions has outlived its day. That formal orthodoxy 
 which actually threatened to ossify the revealed doc- 
 trines in the beginning of this century has been 
 mostly overthrown, and more attention is being given 
 to the industries of Christian life. Less stress is being 
 laid on peculiarities of doctrine than ever before. The 
 sharp and rugged forms of dogmatism are not so 
 much drawn in the general pulpit. There is an em- 
 ulation to meet on the common ground of truth. 
 
66 Protestantism. 
 
 Modern culture may not be deepening the religious 
 zeal of the people, but it is bringing into activity a 
 humane and charitable spirit which is gradually plac- 
 ing in the background all rigid and binding forms. 
 
 The cardinal doctrines of Scripture are almost uni- 
 versally believed. The first six Ecumenical Councils 
 expressed for the Protestant world its belief concern- 
 ing the nature of God and the person of Jesus Christ. 
 All believe in the perfect divinity and perfect human- 
 ity of Christ. He is recognized as our only Savior. 
 All believe in the doctrines of the Atonement, the 
 necessity of regeneration by the Spirit, the communion 
 of saints, the resurrection of the body, and future 
 rewards and punishments. They have been handed 
 down from apostolic times with but little controversy. 
 This unity of belief is strong enough to prevent dis- 
 integration in the diversity and conflict of subordi- 
 nate doctrines. This focalizing of essential truth 
 should overbalance all separating forces, and lift the 
 Church from the dust and keep it moving. Struggle 
 and conflict for ascendency may be toned down in its 
 asperities by recognizing the claims of Christian 
 courtesy. 
 
 The work of Protestantism for the future is not 
 only against sin from without, but for the adjustment 
 of internal differences. Now, since we are in less 
 danger of being scorched by red-hot polemical rheto- 
 ric; since theological training is laid in principles 
 rather than in dogmas ; since the tendency is to bind 
 up the open wounds of schism with bands of charity; 
 since even the deep-laid notion of sacramental exclu- 
 siveness is finding fewer advocates every year, and is 
 
Humanity Progressive. 67 
 
 about to give way before a love stronger than has 
 yet ruled the world, it becomes an urgent duty to 
 deepen Protestantism in the national consciousness. 
 The officialism of sects should accommodate itself to 
 this spiritual striving after unity, and so bring the 
 varied forces of American Church-life together, that 
 its differences in customs and doctrines and methods 
 may not hinder, but work out the divine ideal. 
 
 Reasons for Christian Unity. — The Creator has in- 
 vested man with capabilities of endless progression. 
 Development is the watchword of the race. One step 
 is only gained that another may be taken. There is 
 no stopping-place, no absolute perfectibility on earth, 
 none in heaven among God's creatures. It is said, 
 by a great thinker, that one of the fruits of Christi- 
 anity is the awakening of a spirit of discontent. 
 Man's religious aspirations are to lead him higher. 
 To be satisfied with the present is to stop short and 
 defeat the divine purpose. Now that the great 
 ground-truths of tolerance are standing unshaken 
 under the modern superstructure of free thought, 
 now that freedom of religious opinion and conscience 
 has been gladly accorded to all men, the next object 
 is to prevent the endless forms into which freedom 
 shapes itself from doing harm. 
 
 Protestantism has been three hundred years in 
 asserting its supremacy over Rome. The conflict has 
 been so relentless that little time and attention has 
 been devoted to its internal structure. Now that the 
 victory is gained in evangelistic labor, the body ought 
 to be put together, and its inherent weakness cured. 
 
68 Protestantism. 
 
 The present position of religious life is not assured 
 unless it is made the basis of higher attainment. If 
 there is rejoicing over the present favorable surround- 
 ings of Zion, it should be remembered that we are far 
 below Christ's ideal. The application of the revealed 
 word to human wants is progressive in its nature. It 
 is a work in which the individual may contribute to 
 its final triumph. As the present proud state of as- 
 tronomy has grown up from the rude notions of the 
 astrologer, through Copernicus and Kepler and New- 
 ton, so the adaptation of divine truth is continually 
 reaching higher results, bringing into operation new 
 methods, constantly awakening more potent impulses, 
 reaching toward the ideal that all shall "come in the 
 faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto 
 a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of 
 the fullness of Christ." 
 
 In the first place, the unity of all believers is 
 based on the union which exists between Christ and 
 his people. This union is a revealed fact. It lies 
 beyond all comprehension, and contains a great mys- 
 tery. The fact itself is as evident as any doctrine of 
 Scripture. Yet it is a thing into which the angels 
 desire to look. We were in him before the founda- 
 tion of the world, just as we w 7 ere in Adam before 
 we were born. This idea antedates all that is real in 
 human comprehension, and is a theme almost too 
 holy for mortals. Christ imparts the Spirit to his 
 people, and by the great chain of this Spirit they are 
 one. This union is illustrated in the Word, by the 
 vine and its branches, and by the relations between 
 the head and the body, and by the marriage relation. 
 
The Bond of Faith. 69 
 
 The mystic union between husband and wife, so 
 mysterious in its nature, so sacred in its character, 
 will not submit itself to the cold analyzings of the 
 mind. The strongest bond is an unconscious bond, 
 a feeling, a sentiment, a something that was never 
 spoken of, which is depended on without ever be- 
 coming the theme of thought. The Church is the 
 bride of Christ. All believers, constituting the 
 Church invisible, have, togetlier, a common life in 
 Christ, just as the infant rests in Christ uncon- 
 sciously. It is deeper than all conception, below all 
 feeling. What a high and holy theme ! 
 
 There is another bond of union, w T hich is clear 
 and evident as the noonday, and with which we may 
 come into the fullest sympathy. It is the living, 
 conscious bond of faith in Christ, as our Savior from 
 sin and its woeful consequences. It is only when the 
 soul first calls Jesus Lord that it becomes assured of 
 its relationship with him. Believers, therefore, are 
 members of Christ's mystical body, which is the 
 Church. Unity in Christ is based on this spirit. 
 Hence the proclamation, ''Ye are the body of Christ 
 and members in particular." It is not intended that 
 the individual shall be magnified in such a way as to 
 destroy the aggregate. The bricks are in a manner 
 useless, unless they form the walls of the building. 
 
 The communion of saints is necessary to the body 
 of Christ. Christian fellowship is an indispensable 
 factor in the redemption of the world. If it is ever 
 realized, it must be based on the common purposes 
 of the race, and on fellowship with Christ. 
 
 A Christian brotherhood is the highest earthly 
 
70 Protestantism. 
 
 state. The Millennial Age, with all its glory, is 
 nothing more than a brotherhood of interests, a 
 brotherhood of aims, of hopes, of desires, a brother- 
 hood of plans and of promises, of wants and of joys, 
 and, above all, a brotherhood of hearts, animated by 
 the same sympathies of being, thrilled with the same 
 immortal impulses, rejoicing in the same glorious 
 destiny. 
 
 The unity of the Church is not a thing to be 
 created. The oneness of Christ's kingdom is not a 
 fact to be instituted. It already exists. God's 
 people are one. Whoever partakes of Christ's life 
 is a Christian, and is a brother to every other par- 
 taker on earth. The invisible Church of God con- 
 stitutes one family. The requirement is, that its 
 members shall live in harmony with it, shall recog- 
 nize it by their conduct. 
 
 Nature of Christian Unity. — Protestantism is not a 
 failure because of its different methods of administra- 
 tion. The Holy Scriptures are not explicit on forms 
 of worship. No method of Church government is 
 clearly delineated. We are given great freedom in 
 these matters to adapt all forms and methods of work 
 on grounds of expediency. Denominational distinc- 
 tions are consistent with Christian unity. The necessi- 
 ties of constitutional liberty do not conflict with even 
 the highest ideal phases of militant Churchship. The 
 unbounded opportunities of error to propagate itself, 
 now offered in every direction, are not chargeable 
 with half such disaster as the suppression of it by 
 ecclesiastical force. Since men have been allowed to 
 
Policy, versus Polity. 71 
 
 think freely, and utter their sentiments without re- 
 straint, there have been fewer fatal divisions in Chris- 
 tendom than ever before. 
 
 There could be no sadder record of modern 
 Church history than a suppression of denominations 
 by a formal union. We need a policy, but no gen- 
 eral polity. We could not make use of a written 
 code, or a system of organic laws, if they were pre- 
 sented ever so perfect. The Churches of America 
 are not in need of union so much as unity. To un- 
 dertake to shape the religious opinions of the coun- 
 try by ecclesiastical canon would be called rash and 
 premature. Faith can not be cut and altered like a 
 garment, to suit the prevailing fashion. The growth 
 of opinion, to take upon itself higher forms, is nec- 
 essarily slow, and an attempt to coerce it into greater 
 speed is always fatal. The fate of Christianity does 
 not depend on absolute agreement in doctrinal for- 
 mulas ; nor does it depend on the ascendency of any 
 sect, to overshadow all others, and awe them into 
 conformity. These things the Gospel does not need 
 or require. 
 
 There are immaterial forces which come into play 
 when they are planted in man's nature by the power 
 of Christ, which will not permit themselves to be 
 made tangible, nor even to be comprehended, except 
 so far as an energy can be understood ; and yet they, 
 silently and unperceived, lead to results beyond the 
 dreams of the utilitarian. Perpetuity to the Gospel 
 is given through the organism of the Church ; yet 
 this organism does not thereby become the pledge 
 of its security and life. The existence of the Church 
 
72 Protestantism. 
 
 is insured by the life-giving, yet impalpable forces 
 which accompany the truth. The many forms which 
 it takes upon itself may exist as distinguished from 
 its vital unity. It is useless to expect from without 
 that which can only arise from within. Wherever 
 the germs of the Gospel are planted, though the 
 providence of God should scatter them in the winds 
 of heaven, if they find a receptive soil, they will 
 spring up and grow, and constitute a true Church. 
 This will be, under whatever reasonable methods 
 they may appear, though they may not have the 
 remotest organic connection with the infallible suc- 
 cessors of St. Peter, or with the traditional apos- 
 tolic line. 
 
 The Church is the occasion of the religion of 
 Christ, the receptacle and ordinary dispenser of its 
 spiritual forces, the vitalized monument of the world's 
 religious life ; but, abstractly, it has never had dele- 
 gated to it any of the miraculous graces. No priest- 
 hood or ministry has ever suborned the sacred vest- 
 ments of Jehovah. The religion of the Lord Jesus 
 is equipped with its own authority, and does not at 
 all times wait for the recognition of orders. Hence 
 unity does not depend on any formal sanction, but 
 comes from the depths of a sublime harmony within. 
 The Holy Ghost comes direct from God, out of 
 heaven, to give the inspiration of unity to the gen- 
 eral Church. It comes at right -angles in all the 
 earth, — not by way of Europe, or the Apostolic 
 See. The Biblical idea of a Church is, that believers 
 every-where are a band of brethren, children of the 
 same Father, equally sharing the parental blessings, 
 
Christ's Prayer. 73 
 
 united by the same spirit, having Christ for their 
 elder brother; thus being one in life, one in faith, one 
 in love, they call each other brethren, and are willing 
 to bear each other's burdens. This is the brother- 
 hood of heaven's kingdom, the mystical body of 
 Christ. Christian unity must bear testimony to the 
 world that it is real. It must be the product of an 
 unearthly power, whose bold and definite outlines are 
 embodied in the prayer of him who said: "Holy 
 Father, keep through thine own name those whom 
 thou hast given me, that they may be one as we 
 are, . . . that they all may be one, as thou 
 Father art in me and I in thee ; that they also may be 
 one in us ; that the world may believe that thou hast 
 sent me, and the glory which thou gavest me I have 
 given them; that they may be one even as we are 
 one; I in them and thou in me, that they may be 
 made perfect in one, and that the world may know 
 that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou 
 hast loved me." 
 
 Methods Promoting Unity. — What the precise out- 
 ward nature of that unity shall be, in order to fulfill 
 the sublime prayer of Christ, we are unable to know. 
 Its spiritual significance is more clearly discerned. 
 Into this deeper meaning we hope to grow, leaving 
 the outer form to shape itself to suit all newly ap 
 pearing exigencies. If the inner life is right we can 
 safely rely on circumstances for organic adjustment. 
 
 The finer lines of theory are always difficult to 
 keep in mind, more difficult to impress on the heart. 
 
 There have always been hinderances in the way of 
 
 7 
 
74 Protestantism. 
 
 the definite and practical impression of that truth 
 which must necessarily be drawn from the soul's holi- 
 est oratory. There is a love which goes hand in hand 
 with a faith that refuses to be moved ; a love which 
 may be active in winning others to its tenets, but 
 never stoops to compel the belief of others; a love 
 strong enough to endure persecution, and yet would 
 scorn to persecute; a love which goes beyond toler- 
 ation, and never lays offensive hands on that which is 
 sacred to others; a love which opposes that which 
 it thinks to be wrong in such a spirit, and with such 
 feelings of tenderness that an opponent may be won 
 by its candor; a love which unites the highest wis- 
 dom with the harmlessness of the dove, which tri- 
 umphs over false zeal and avoids indifference. 
 
 There is a tie of union for the Christian world 
 like that which binds the members of the family 
 together, — the bond of a common origin and parent- 
 age, and a common affection from natural relation- 
 ship. For each believer and partaker of the divine 
 nature to realize the common source of being, and 
 the common interest in Christ, with the destiny it 
 secures, is sufficient in itself to gladden the world 
 with a perfect fellowship. 
 
 There should be no attempt or desire to do away 
 with denominational lines, for the results of such a 
 procedure could not now be known. It is yet safest 
 to stay within old lines, being agreed that there is 
 nothing to warrant their continuance. As yet, there 
 can be no formulated settlings of doctrine; only a 
 compact without diplomacy, without concessions or 
 appeals to precedence. Questions of method will be 
 
• Individuality. 75 
 
 a factor in Christian work till the end of time. 
 Method has a rightful expediency for its guide. The 
 irresistible attractions of a common aim and purpose 
 will harmonize and make consistent all reasonable 
 agencies of religious labor. 
 
 We are constituted differently. We have differ- 
 ences of taste, of sympathy, of personal peculiarities, 
 arising from causes right in themselves. Our traits 
 of character are as numerous as the stars in heaven. 
 Our personal qualities are as varied as the days that 
 roll over our heads. Our individual peculiarities are 
 as infinite as are the resources of the God who gave 
 them. Man's power in society and in the Christian 
 life consists, in a great measure, in the multitude of 
 his affinities. 
 
 The endless variety of religious feeling has always 
 found its expression in the diversified forms of Prot- 
 estant faith. Only when this diversity of feeling is 
 intensified into division and separation does it pro- 
 duce harm. We can not hope for conformity in relig- 
 ious thought any more than we can bring all men 
 to our notions in other matters. The Churches are 
 to grow up into unity under the appliance of weld- 
 ing forces. 
 
 The great law of the spirit is, that Christians are 
 subject to each other as brethren, and through this 
 subjective relation they strive for the normal condi- 
 tion of unity. Efforts in this direction are always 
 revealing themselves, though adverse circumstances 
 may prevent the fullest desires. The spirit of relig- 
 ion is not disintegrating. The difficulty is in the 
 fact that men mistake the spirit's teaching. Ecumen- 
 
7 6 Protestantism. 
 
 ical Councils have been invoked in all ages. Codes 
 have been attempted to which all minor divisions 
 were expected to bow. Strife for external unity, 
 before the internal life was prepared for it, has given 
 rise to much heresy. This blunder has hindered the 
 true expression of Church-life, and has checked the 
 growth of religious reform; but it has never robbed 
 the Christian system of the tendency to consolidation. 
 Wherever the hinderances are removed the Spirit will 
 assert itself as naturally as the rain-drops mingle to 
 form the brooklet and the stream. 
 
 Man's spiritual life is the principal thing; though 
 it is often recognized as a kind of negative fact, as if 
 the inner nature was only found at the end of the 
 world of sense, and that its full and perfect develop- 
 ment depended on keeping the outward conditions in 
 order. The mistake is in acting as if the spiritual 
 depended on the earthly. The upper wall has been 
 simply adjusted when the foundations were unsteady. 
 To whitewash the sepulcher is not to bring life out 
 of death and decay. Church history reveals this mode 
 of procedure to be one of the consummate strokes of 
 depravity. Its only remedial is the grace of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. Ecclesiastical law may coerce 
 into conformity, may exert a vast physical potency, 
 cold and cheerless as the grave, but the warm glow 
 of love has never been known to keep it company. 
 One of the saddest errors of Church history has been 
 to keep men united externally when there was inter- 
 nal variance, — a policy which has always been fol- 
 lowed by hypocrisy and indifference to the truth on 
 one hand, and persecution on the other. The organic 
 
Uniformity and Unanimity. 77 
 
 union of the Churches of this country, at present, 
 would likely drive the life out of truth, would lead 
 to stagnation, and, through it, to great corruption. 
 Relative to this question, the liftings of Christian 
 thought, in the last ten decades, have produced won- 
 derful changes. For long periods of time the Church 
 has been found trying to shape Christian work into 
 an automaton, producing in every exertion about 
 the same result. 
 
 This machinery of ecclesiasticism has become so 
 rusty and worn that it is now abandoned, and pro- 
 nounced of no value, except to sway ignorance. 
 The soul of man, with its impulses, can not be 
 placed under the control of .machinery. The endless 
 variety with which God has adorned both life and 
 nature condemns with a high hand the ghastly 
 features of uniformity. 
 
 The intelligent world is also losing faith, not only 
 in the possibility, but in the desirableness of una- 
 nimity, or oneness of thinking. Unanimity in doc- 
 trinal belief has always been the companion of 
 ignorance. It is no misfortune that differences of 
 race and culture and surroundings lead to variety of 
 thought. It is not a very deep, but a very import- 
 ant, lesson, to learn how the supposed differences 
 around us may be recognized as the individualizing 
 of the same great truths. No one is sorry that 
 we can not believe alike. Independent thinking 
 gives richness to religious thought, and calls out the 
 many-sided phases of Christian experience. Una- 
 nimity is a blessing only when it is voluntary. Above 
 all, are we to deplore that insolent hushing of opinion 
 
78 Protestantism. 
 
 by fear of bulls and anathemas, and that hardly 
 less successful method of moral browbeating which 
 says to the initiate, " Eat what is set before you — 
 believe what is taught you — ask no questions." 
 Men who love the freedom of their own minds as 
 they love their lives, and are conscious of its re- 
 sponsibility, are banished from God's altars by these 
 methods. In a failure to distinguish between that 
 which is natural and that which is the result of 
 depravity, we attempt to bind that which God has 
 left free, except by the restraints of conscience. Dif- 
 ferences of thought and temperament and feeling are 
 put down as stubborn contradictions, as unmistaka- 
 ble marks of the lost paradise. 
 
 It is hardly expected that any one shall be sus- 
 ceptible of other feelings than his own, but it is 
 reasonable to ask a charity which will lay down all 
 deadly hostility to that which other thoughts and 
 feelings may produce. An elevated taste and per- 
 ception is needed, which will give a charm to our 
 variety of thought, and drive away the repulsiveness 
 of our peculiar views. A culture is needed which is 
 thorough and universal enough to grant full justice 
 to those whom we may think are in error ; a culture 
 which will give every system an honest examination, 
 before deciding on its truth or falsehood. Let our 
 people study other tenets than their own, and sooner 
 or later there will be a sifting of the truth from the 
 dross of error. There should be freedom of all 
 honest expression, controlled mostly by the respon- 
 sibility which attends it, and by that Christian 
 courtesy which should keep every believer from 
 
Christian Practice. 79 
 
 willingly judging others. When we stand personally 
 before the solemn bar of responsibility, conscious 
 that past prejudices have often kept us from the full 
 light of truth, knowing that narrowness and blind- 
 ness and passion have led us astray, we are sure to 
 become lenient and sparing of our denunciations of 
 that which w r e may believe to be erroneous. While 
 we may never hope to get rid of the fact of experi- 
 ence, that wherever men are in earnest about the 
 meaning of the Bible the greatest diversity will show 
 itself, we may pray to be kept from dissension, and 
 answer our own prayer in the remembrance that we 
 are responsible, and too greatly fallible to judge 
 others in their honest opinions. 
 
 There should be a new importance given to 
 Christian practice,, with less attention to mere dogma. 
 The Gospel should be impressed as the revelation of 
 a life more than a system of doctrines. The reason 
 is, Christian life can be harmonized, and the logical 
 inferences of men can not. Religious conduct can be 
 brought more definitely within our purview than 
 mere abstract opinion. If this course is pursued, 
 the Church will make its power felt more forcibly 
 on the national life. Secondly, the whole world will 
 see that Christianity is finding its actual unity on 
 grounds of conscience, and not in the adjustings of 
 history, w r here there are so many problems of pre- 
 cedence, and so many differences. 
 
 While it is a matter of great moment as to what 
 we believe, and while it is dangerous to depreciate 
 the importance of knowing the exact truth, it is 
 useless to attempt to accomplish any thing toward 
 
8 o Protestantism. 
 
 the unity of Christendom in the discussion of old, 
 unsettled questions. The difference of a single letter 
 in two Greek words has divided the Church, and 
 convulsed nations. The chasm of opinion is as broad 
 and deep to-day as ever before. Confessional ex- 
 tremes can seldom be brought together. The im- 
 pression of deeper religious convictions, and the 
 higher cultivation of the aesthetic feelings, will do as 
 much as all the fixing of theory toward the health- 
 ful commingling of diverse elements. The silent 
 work of the Spirit, which operates in a thousand 
 ways, and through instruments which appear weak, 
 often accomplishes more than the systematic and 
 faultless plans of the scholar. The great positive 
 power for which the future of Christianity is asking, 
 will not come from organized adjustments alone, 
 but from the potency and strength of an inwrought 
 spiritual understanding. The science of theology 
 needs to be lifted above the bondage of a contracted 
 dogmatism, into the regions of Christian fellowship 
 and love. All religious thought must have its root 
 in positive doctrine ; all spiritual growth must have 
 a basis in fixed belief: yet this does not involve the 
 necessity of always going down into the deep, cold 
 abysses of logic and abstraction. 
 
 The attention of the Protestant world needs to be 
 turned from debating matters, which are of some 
 importance, it is true, but not necessary to the sal- 
 vation of souls. The evangelical spirit should be 
 given pre-eminence over all others. There are so 
 many lands which idolatry and heathenism now 
 darken, that it becomes sacrilege to deprive the 
 
Religious and Social Life. 8i 
 
 Church of any strength which concerted action might 
 bring. No one should be required to lay down opin- 
 ion or zeal for the truth, but there are sentiments 
 which might be kept in the background at no sacrifice 
 of principle or honor. This is asking no more for 
 Christian unity than is required at our hands for the 
 social compact. Each member surrenders certain 
 liberties for the welfare of society. He tacitly agrees 
 to give over to society certain natural rights for the 
 protection he receives in return. Man's spiritual life 
 ought to lead him into as reasonable and humane 
 relations as his moral and social being. Every Chris- 
 tian ought to be willing to surrender his individual 
 privileges for the good of the general Church, if that 
 surrender does not require the giving over of an in- 
 alienable right. 
 
 The world's religious life needs to solve a problem 
 which civil society has already solved, that of the 
 rights of the individual as related to the rights of the 
 whole body. There are refractory members in society 
 who do not receive the punishment that justice de- 
 mands; yet for such a reason men do not refuse to 
 receive the protection of society. There are impor- 
 tant and diverse views concerning political methods ; 
 yet for this reason men do not claim that society is a 
 failure, and denounce the idea of a social compact 
 existing under such circumstances. Men universally 
 declare that the common benefits and purposes of 
 society are higher than these things. They place 
 confidence in the patriotism of a people who are not 
 willing to stoop to the destruction of society over 
 secondary conflicts. 
 
82 Protestantism. 
 
 Notwithstanding the manifestly imperfect arrange- 
 ments to be found in American Church-life, the uni- 
 versal patriotism of love to Christ ought to unite all 
 serious Christians into co-operation for the general 
 security and growth of the kingdom. Is it a Chris- 
 tian's bounden duty to constantly annoy the world 
 with his untamed religious hobbies? Does a preacher 
 lose his commission if he should fail to present the 
 dogmatics of his sect in every sermon ? Does silence 
 with reference to denominational views signify that 
 we have renounced them? Shall a bigoted vandalism 
 forever drive back the common courtesies of Christian 
 intercourse? An utter forgetfulness of a few thread- 
 bare doctrines would be a great blessing. The little 
 truth which might go down with them would pledge 
 its own resurrection, and would doubtless come up 
 brilliantly free from its present thralldom. 
 
 There is now an urgency that the broad banner 
 of established truth shall be elevated higher than our 
 regimental ensigns. The great struggle of principles 
 should overawe all petty and private variances. There 
 should be more generosity and less bitterness; more 
 charity and less debate ; more love and less of rash 
 judgment; more brotherhood and less mutual dis- 
 trust; more of the spirit of the Apostle Paul, who 
 would settle every thing without diplomacy, by point- 
 ing to the higher unity of all Christians in Jesus 
 Christ. May God forgive the man who is not willing 
 to extend the hand of fellowship to all who love 
 Christ, or in whose faces may be discovered any clear 
 traces of the old lineaments. A lesson may be learned 
 from the Waldensian Church of North Italy. While 
 
Recognition — Non-interference. 83 
 
 confident that her form of Church government was 
 evangelical, and that her confession of faith was ortho- 
 dox, she declared through her assembly of 1855 that 
 she would not Waldensianize, but simply evangelize, 
 Italy. The instruction given to her evangelists was: 
 "Go preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, be faithful to 
 the Master, and God bless you." This broad policy 
 had its response from the other free Churches of Italy, 
 who readily recognized the Waldensian Church as a 
 means of evangelizing the country. 
 
 For the denominations of America to formally 
 recognize each other as agencies in the conversion of 
 the country, would be a positive step toward better 
 relations. This is of prime importance now, espe- 
 cially the recognition of each others' sacraments and 
 ministry. A very pressing duty, at present, is inter- 
 communion. The time for the fencing of the Lord's 
 table has almost gone by in the popular mind. Peo- 
 ple of every name and order should meet in a com- 
 mon sacrament, and show forth the death of a common 
 Lord. It is as impossible for churchly authority to 
 hinder approach to the communion-table as to hinder 
 an acceptance of the terms of salvation. The fitness 
 is based on a personal examination, and is not under 
 the control of the ecclesiastic. 
 
 Non-interference would also promote Christian 
 unity, because it would deprecate all rivalry. The 
 field is the world, and there is certainly room enough 
 for all. As long as there is so much unoccupied ter- 
 ritory in this country, it is a breach of one of the 
 plainest principles of evangelical work to spend talent 
 and money in building up Churches where other de- 
 
84 Protestantism. 
 
 nominations are already established, and are affording 
 reasonable Gospel privileges. One of the saddest 
 effects of sectarianism is the conflict of rival Churches 
 in any one community or town. A village having as 
 many ministers as it can support is visited by a new 
 representative, with the proclamation that his prin- 
 ciples have a right to live as well as others, and before 
 long another Church and its ministry is added to the 
 already overburdened population. The division of 
 labor is an economic principle, but the extremes of 
 its application work harm. It impoverishes the min- 
 istry, and causes more money and labor to be ex- 
 pended in a single place than is justified, when so 
 many fields around are lying waste. 
 
 This sad feature of Protestantism has even tainted 
 its mission-work. There is no reason why the mis- 
 sionary work of. the Church should not present a 
 greater unity of effort. The fierce zeal and strife on 
 mission grounds have thrown the deepest shadows 
 over the cause of Christ. By what authority do peo- 
 ple waste the consecrated forces of God, contending 
 for a single spot when continents just as fertile are 
 left untouched? The dangers in the bitterness of the 
 missionary idea appear more plainly when we con- 
 sider the magnitude of the harm the sectarian spirit 
 would work in heathendom, as compared with its 
 results at home. As soon as available, let an inter- 
 national council of the Churches be called, and in the 
 spirit of reason let it lay down a few plain rules of 
 non-interference in Christian work. 
 
 Another duty, still higher in its nature, is co-oper- 
 ation. This is eminently a practical and successful 
 
Value of Primary Truths. 85 
 
 mode of promoting the utmost spiritual unity. In 
 our willingness to unite with others on all proper 
 occasions, we learn to distinguish them from their 
 doctrines, and learn to love them when we discover 
 any degree of candor. We are constantly coming in 
 contact with men with whom we can make but a 
 short journey together along the diverging paths of 
 human belief; yet this will not prevent us making 
 ourselves delightful and entertaining companions as 
 far as we do go together. We can thus bid each 
 other farewell, with more pleasant memories than if 
 w r e should have taken up the time of the journey in 
 thumping theological marbles, or in a battle of ortho- 
 doxy. Whenever the moral feelings of a people 
 lead them away from a cold, logical play of the 
 intellect; whenever they are brought face to face 
 with the thrilling themes of redemption — many 
 things which now separate and divide them will be 
 taken away. 
 
 In the religious history of this country there is a 
 growing distaste for the contentious and wrangling 
 spirit of dogmatism ; and we are fast approaching a 
 decision as to the result of the strife of Christian 
 thought. We are learning to trace the central spirit 
 of Christianity through its manifold expressions 
 around us, and offer only a Gospel of positive and 
 living meaning to the hungering thousands. Above 
 nearly all else do we need, now, to cling to the great 
 primary truths of the Christian system. This world, 
 with its vast physical proportions, with its won- 
 drous historic character, with its intelligences rife 
 with immortal impulses, rolls round the sun, under 
 
86 Protestantism. 
 
 the central idea that God rules and governs. Nearly 
 all of life's affairs originate and rest on fundamental 
 conceptions. 
 
 When the traveler goes to China, to become ac- 
 quainted with its people and its institutions, he is 
 impressed with the stability of things, — the same 
 laws, the same methods of government, the same 
 great caste system which existed two thousand years 
 ago, the same social customs, the same laws of com- 
 merce, the same channels of enterprise, the same 
 architecture, with but little variation from time im- 
 memorial, — a phenomenon of national life which is 
 not seen in the Western Hemisphere, where other 
 principles are at work. 
 
 In the East, the wonderful stagnation of things, 
 and such adamantine stability as is observable every- 
 where, has its origin in absolute monarchy and the 
 divine right of kings. In Western Europe and 
 America, a new set of elemental notions are exer- 
 cising their influence, and bringing about a new order 
 of things. These notions are embodied in the Magna 
 Charta, wrenched from King John in Runnymede : 
 I. The right of life; 2. The right of freedom; 3. 
 Popular government. These are the principles of 
 Western civilization ; and they underlie the political 
 and social and religious life of the age. First prin- 
 ciples of truth are not easily established; but, when 
 once made secure, they are sure to bring about 
 abiding results. The notions of liberty which make 
 up the substratum of civil life to-day have been a 
 thousand years in gaining ground ; but now, since 
 they are established, their potency is felt to the four 
 
Primary Truths. 87 
 
 quarters of the earth. This, to illustrate what is 
 meant by the assertion that the Christian system 
 can only achieve a speedy victory over the world 
 through the constant and conscious leadership of its 
 fundamental truths. 
 
Chapter IV. 
 
 SKEPTICAL THOUGHT. 
 
 THIS age is recognized by the universal right of 
 the individual to exercise an untrammeled 
 judgment in all things, and to look with his own 
 eyes into religion, as well as to override it with his 
 philosophy if he pleases. A bold and fearless spirit 
 of investigation has characterized the whole of Amer- 
 ican history. There is little reverence for established 
 opinion. The vigorous, stirring life of our people 
 has never given the staid customs and opinions of 
 the past time to become so deeply settled as to 
 wield any great influence from force of existence. 
 The logic of Aristotle, and the philosophy of Plato, 
 have but little value because of their age. A free 
 press, a free pulpit, and a free platform, are known 
 as the enemies of received opinion. The searching 
 scrutiny of this critical age beholds one hoary senti- 
 ment after another give way. The oldest supersti- 
 tions are buried without regret. Old methods are 
 thrown down, new ones take their place. The spirit 
 of free inquiry has brought about a new era, and 
 every department of life is reinvigorated. The rev- 
 erence for authority is broken, and many inroads 
 
 have been made on the established faith. There 
 88 
 
Doubt Succeeds Credulity. 89 
 
 is an immoderate freedom and daring in speaking 
 and writing of divine things. 
 
 The course of history is, that the boldest unbelief 
 dethrones superstition. As knowledge increases, as 
 the general mind is prepared to think for itself, the 
 conflict of truth is with doubt rather than credulity. 
 That the Bible should go down in the blaze of mod- 
 ern culture is impossible. That there are breakers 
 ahead no one can deny. There is danger from open 
 and defiant unbelief. There is danger from that large 
 class in society who are trying to forget their doubts 
 in the rush and roar of business life. The dark tide 
 is flowing on. It is not safe to wait. 
 
 Sources of Skepticism. — 1. One class of the causes 
 of American skepticism may be traced to the condi- 
 tion of the human mind itself. 2. Another class of 
 causes are objective in their nature, and arise from 
 the false exhibitions of Christianity. The first gives 
 rise to the legion of open and avowed foes around 
 us. The second confronts us with an indifferent and 
 credulous army of lookers-on. We may not be able 
 to decide whether professed friends or open foes have 
 most weakened the cause; whether one by their 
 faults and superstitions, or the other with their hatred 
 have most prolonged the conflict. 
 
 There is in the human heart an alienation of 
 thought and purpose from the purity of the revealed 
 doctrines, and from the burden of the divine precepts. 
 Under such a condition of things it is very easy for 
 men to grow up under adverse prejudices and pre- 
 dispositions on the side of unbelief. It takes the 
 
90 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 natural depravity of both mind and heart to suggest 
 the impossibility of a revelation from God, or to cause 
 the intelligence to stagger at its strangeness. An 
 inner alienation of disposition and sympathy often 
 leads men to seek satisfaction in other systems of 
 belief. It is no surprise, under the circumstances, 
 that men should turn back from a revelation which 
 makes the native propensities of the human heart so 
 uncomfortable with themselves, and which is calcu- 
 lated to probe afresh the depraved wound of sixty 
 centuries. It is not strange that there should be some 
 resentment to a system of laws which criminates man 
 in his history and threatens him for the future. The 
 whip-tiger in human nature repels that which rebukes 
 it. It is to be expected that men should rush into 
 the leniency of pantheism, because nature does not 
 awaken so vividly those immortal forebodings of the 
 unquenched fire and the undying worm. It is no 
 surprise that there should be apostles of materialism, 
 because it takes the soul out of the body and divests 
 it of responsibility. Man is so intensely earthly in 
 his disposition and character that it becomes very 
 easy for him to disbelieve the plainest truths of the 
 spiritual world. 
 
 The mind is more ready to grasp and retain im- 
 pressions of solid physical substances than of those 
 high and holy truths belonging immediately to the 
 divine perfections. It depends largely on the limita- 
 tions of material figures for whatever it understands 
 of spiritual things. The soul of man, limited by a 
 physical agent, can only approximate in its views 
 toward the perfection of Jehovah in connection with 
 
Enchantment of Physical Science. 91 
 
 a succession of such scenes as may be seen by the 
 aid of earthly figures. There is no sensible nearness 
 to the operations of Divinity but by the analogy of 
 that which is known. Jacob saw the road to heaven 
 in the vision of a ladder. Christianity and its effects 
 in the world are seen in the figure of a tree and its 
 fruits. We call Christ a rock, and we hold to the 
 glory of his personage in the shape of a crown with 
 stars in it. 
 
 The influence of the spirit we designate by fire 
 and light, and such other approximations as we may 
 find. The personal relation of the soul to Christ, for 
 our understanding, is illustrated in the Divine Word 
 by the vine and its brandies. There can be clearer 
 mental views of such terms as fire, earth, water, 
 wood, stone, than of such terms as mind, spirit, soul, 
 God. The Creator appreciates this defect, and speaks 
 to his children of earth in parables. He wraps his 
 truth in the silken folds of allegory, because the mind 
 can be more readily fixed on visible and tangible 
 things. They are more likely to absorb its powers. 
 
 Now, if to this natural propensity there be added 
 a thorough devotion to the investigation of physical 
 phenomena, the result will bring us to the source of 
 half the so-called scientific skepticism of the day. 
 There is no surer, swifter way to warp a man's life 
 and character than to shut him up in his chemical 
 laboratory, with pick and retort, or with philosophi- 
 cal apparatus and telescope to calculate by sines and 
 cosines, with no moral truth to move him, or no re- 
 ligious fire to warm his soul. The devil in science is 
 a subtle beast. He first attracts, then charms, then 
 
92 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 fascinates, then enchants, then ensnares. He busies 
 the brain with material forces until it has no time to 
 look out by faith toward the unseen world. He stops 
 the devotee at the very threshhold of the spiritual 
 temple. 
 
 It is not a difficult thing to become versed in any 
 single department of learning. An ordinary mind 
 can make grand attainments in any chosen and defin- 
 ite field of thought. In order to meet the require- 
 ments of higher education, it becomes necessary that 
 men devote their lives to some channel of investiga- 
 tion. And yet, without great care, these special 
 pursuits become ruinous to other sympathies and 
 faculties. An adjustment of acquisitions is most favor- 
 able to the development of character. An exclusive 
 interest in religious matters tends toward superstition. 
 Entire devotion to physical laws leads in the opposite 
 direction, to a disbelief in any influence outside of 
 natural phenomena. The history of the Church re- 
 veals that, in the neglect of learning, and in the denial 
 of the just influences of the natural world, religious 
 thought always drifts in sympathy toward credulity 
 and a love for the marvelous. The growth of scien- 
 tific research has shown that its greatest votaries have 
 sometimes turned worshipers. Living illustrations 
 might be given. The study of alternate pages of 
 nature and revelation would alleviate alike the super- 
 stition of the religionist, and the skepticism of the 
 scientist. 
 
 Another outward hinderance to the progress of 
 the Gospel in this country is ignorance of the revealed 
 plan, as such. There is an unbelief which has stumbled 
 
Salvation by Faith. 93 
 
 and fallen over the mysteries of the Christian system. 
 There is a class of so-called seekers after truth whose 
 stubborn requirement is that all may be made plain : 
 the Incarnation, the dual nature of Christ, the Trin- 
 ity, the divine chemistry of the soul's conversion, 
 the processes of the resurrection, and all the minutiae 
 of heaven. Oh, how many more ages shall the 
 world live before it learns that accepting Christianity 
 is like being cast naked into mid-ocean? Your feet 
 do not touch the bottom, your hands do not touch 
 either shore ; you are given swimming room for your 
 faith ! Here lies the supreme and perpetual value 
 of Christianity! Salvation by faith is the grandest 
 doctrine of the Bible! As many things in nature 
 are accepted as matters of fact, and are acted upon 
 when little or nothing is known of their nature, so 
 in religion, its mysteries are accepted as facts, though 
 the human mind may not be able to comprehend 
 their analytical significance. It is said that in the 
 wilds of Mesopotamia there are water sources known 
 to the wild gazelle, for which the Arabs have searched 
 in vain for ages. 
 
 The inherent tendency of sin is to open rejection 
 of the divine authority. The passions and the lusts 
 and the appetites of man are the abettors of unbe- 
 lief. Even the rightful propensities of the heart are 
 often found forfeiting their allegiance to God, and 
 are made to subserve a similar purpose. Human 
 pride offers a perpetual protest against the humbling 
 conditions of a Christian life. The Gospel reflects 
 on man's ability to help himself out of his spiritual 
 difficulty ; while, on the other hand, such has been 
 
94 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 the growth of art and science, and the development 
 of mind in the last five centuries, commercial enter- 
 prise has so wonderfully ameliorated man's physical 
 condition, the temptation is to believe that there are 
 inherent spiritual potencies in the race, and that the 
 time for an appeal to the revealed authority has 
 gone by. The fruits of the energies which have 
 been awakened by the Reformation have been mis- 
 directed into an argument to dispense with Chris- 
 tianity altogether. The material results of our system 
 are utilized into a denial of its spiritual truth. The 
 greatest impulses which it has awakened are turned 
 into arrows to drink its life-blood. 
 
 Objective Causes. — While the institutions of Chris- 
 tianity have given to the world the heritage of much 
 that it possesses, its exhibitions of life and doctrine 
 have not always been pure and commendable. The 
 history of Christianity contains the sad record of 
 superstitions revolting to human reason, and many 
 blunders in rashest fanaticism. In the narrowness 
 of patristic times came the destruction of the Sera- 
 pion. Millions of lives were sacrificed to the whims 
 of religious partisanship in the reign of Justinian. 
 Time and again, in the name of the Gospel of 
 Christ, temporal interests have been sustained at the 
 cost of bloodshed and the oppression of human 
 thought. The unfortunate circumstances of mediaeval 
 history made Church officialism the enemy of cul- 
 ture and progress and discovery. 
 
 From the slow movement of ideas in Europe, an 
 intellectual sluggishness follo.wed the Reformation, 
 
Spiritual Blemishes. 95 
 
 which handed down the generations many crude and 
 half- superstitious doctrines. Our misfortune is to 
 have inherited some of them. It is disagreeable to 
 see them explode in the face of our enlightenment. 
 It is never pleasant to have our enemies pointing out 
 our imperfections, when there is no other alternative 
 but to confess. There has been something of a 
 tendency to ignore what many honest minds have 
 known to be manifest superstitions. The enemies 
 of religion have stepped in, and have undertaken to 
 do for us what we should have been careful to do 
 for ourselves. And they have not been content with 
 an honest purging ; they have gone to the extrava- 
 gance of holding up a few untenable and secondary 
 facts as representatives of the system. They have 
 discovered theological tenets with defective modes 
 of proof. They have tried to rush Christianity into 
 the conflict, without its prestige, and without its 
 central evidences. It will be admitted, by every 
 honest thinker, that skepticism has been striking at 
 the excrescence of religious history with some 
 success. 
 
 This is one of the things which has darkened the 
 path of Christian progress, and has furnished the 
 occasion for those who have been bold enough to 
 offer their thrusts. By it many strong ones may 
 have become weak, many weak ones may have 
 fallen. The wonder is, the Church ever escaped 
 so free from fault, or lived at all. If the Church has 
 been endowed with an inherent and sacred life, to 
 wade through fire and blood, and over rack and guil- 
 lotine, and to survive the revolutions of society and 
 
g6 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 the fall of empires, and to brook the rage of infidelity 
 and devils, and come through so slightly tarnished, 
 so far as the weight of such an evidence will go, it 
 deserves to be recognized as the world's celestial 
 visitor. The Church has been traveling over perilous 
 ground. It has passed through the discipline of fires. 
 The experience is worth something, withal. 
 
 The fallibility of the Church can not reasonably 
 be made the scape-goat of unbelief. It has never 
 been the primary cause of doubt, or even the occa- 
 sion, except in its corruptions. Yet accumulated 
 slanders have resulted in much harm. The tenor of 
 Romanism, in repudiating the policy of every free 
 nation, has been adverse to the growth of Christian 
 principles in enlightened thought. Withholding the 
 Bible from the people is rendered into an acknowl- 
 edgment of a want of faith in its power to cope with 
 advancing knowledge. Many may be thrown into 
 unbelief, in the conviction that the world is about to 
 be driven into the dangerous citadel of Church infal- 
 libility. Every appeal to weak and silly miracles, 
 and all enmity to popular evidences, and all deifica- 
 tions of the priesthood, and all sale of indulgences, 
 are calculated to strengthen and encourage the hosts 
 of moral infidelity. Imposture, as it is discovered 
 around ecclesiastical altars, will cast its shadows over 
 all that is sacred in religious life. These things ap- 
 pear from no fault of the Church, as Christ estab- 
 lished it. They come up from a source lower than 
 themselves, from a race-degeneracy, which has suc- 
 ceeded, so far, in tainting alike all institutions of 
 time. 
 
Religionism. 97 
 
 The reality of religion in its power over the life 
 has no necessary connection with defective morals or 
 the malformation of doctrine. The difficulty is here : 
 in periods of sober reflection, man may be taught to 
 distinguish a religion of love and purity from its cor- 
 ruptions, but in times of individual excitement, or of 
 social revolution, the two are always blended. False 
 doctrines and scurvy professors have always been 
 stumbling-blocks. They are the outposts of infidelity. 
 They give the natural heart a chance to ward 
 off its obligations for the moment, and finally to 
 forget them. 
 
 Another phase of religious life, which often makes 
 sad work in the world, is the prevalence of an artifi- 
 cial faith, which leads to religionism rather than to 
 purity of heart and life. It might be called a strain- 
 ing of the religious faculties beyond that which the 
 life will permit them to go. It seldom stops short 
 of fanaticism, and will sooner or later cause the soul 
 to cast off all religious restraint. There are a great 
 many minds not given to sentimentalism, and to 
 whom a dawdling religiousness is repulsive, who are 
 thus repelled, and are driven into other fields of 
 inquiry. 
 
 The unsettled relations of Church and State in the 
 Old World has been one of the most fruitful sources 
 of skepticism. Men of political life are thrown into 
 antagonism with the clergy and the ecclesiastical 
 canon, and, failing to sift the truth from its misdirected 
 external organism, they find themselves, almost un- 
 awares, pitted against the most vital doctrines of 
 
 Scripture. The people of the United States are look- 
 
 9 
 
98 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 ing with the profoundest interest on the solution of 
 this problem in Europe. As the matter now stands, 
 she is the fruitful nursery of new forms of unbelief 
 very likely to cast their shadows on the religious life 
 of our own country. 
 
 Skepticism finds another occasion for its activity 
 in a protest against the unreasonable assumption that 
 the Church may impose her belief by authority. A 
 very just ground of complaint. There is not an un- 
 reasonable truth anywhere in revelation. Nothing 
 which may not be sustained to the limits of moral 
 reasoning. And yet science, so-called, is guilty of 
 that of which it complains. How many strange con- 
 jectures, how many wild chimeras, have gone forth 
 under the name of science. Geology has built more 
 air-castles under the patronage of science than per- 
 haps could be found in the history of the Church. 
 Materialism resolves all creation into a primary force, 
 and blandly calls it science. It is only a just require- 
 ment that the light of reason should shine on the 
 doctrines of the Christian system; but it is certainly 
 very unreasonable to require the full force of this 
 argument at the hands of every believer. A majority 
 of those who stand as living witnesses to the truth of 
 revelation accepted it primarily from popular con- 
 sent. They are not systematically learned in the 
 unanswerable arguments of the Christian apologist. 
 This being true, I can see no reason why a personal 
 testimony to regenerative grace should not be be- 
 lieved as the statement of a fact, as in any thing else ; 
 and why an aggregate of such testimony should not 
 carry with it a conclusive weight. 
 
Disorganized. 99 
 
 Nature of Skepticism. — The forces of American 
 infidelity are, in a measure, segregated. Like indi- 
 viduals at a soiree who have not been introduced, 
 there is a mutual recognition in the interests of the 
 hour, but no understanding, no intimate acquaint- 
 ance, no friendship. Skepticism in this country has 
 not yet risen to make a premeditated attack on the 
 institutions of Christianity. There is no concerted 
 action, no settled line of policy. There is not yet any 
 single, definite, and overmastering form of unbelief, 
 like the rationalism of Germany, under whose patron- 
 age all secondary phases of doubt may live. It is 
 marked rather by an array of comparatively inde- 
 pendent forces, carrying on a skirmish-battle under 
 the general brigandage of personal ambition. Skep- 
 tical thought evinces considerable strength and prow- 
 ess without giving off any thing remarkably new. 
 Old ideas are putting on new expressions, and are 
 propagated through different policies and methods, 
 requiring, in some measure, are adjustment of weapons 
 in the warfare against it. It wears a new garment, 
 so that it may not be known at first sight. If all 
 classes of men can be made to understand the relig- 
 ious conflicts of the times, there will not be such 
 great difficulty in selecting agencies, and in institut- 
 ing plans for the most favorable results. 
 
 There are two classes of errorists in this country. 
 One class believes that true science can not be ad- 
 vanced without clipping the wings of faith. The other 
 conceives that it renders God and the Bible a service 
 by depreciating knowledge and research. They are 
 represented by the extremes of intense human phi- 
 
ioo Skeptical Thought. 
 
 losophy and religious fanaticism. The light of the 
 first is like the fire-fly of the tropics, it illuminates 
 the darkness, but it fails to dispel the great night of 
 time. The other is like the volcano, flaming from 
 internal commotion, giving out fire and smoke and 
 vapor to darken the land and make it more hideous. 
 This is the rebellion, so called, between nature and 
 revelation, between science and the Bible. It is an 
 army of sky-rockets meeting an army of popguns, 
 marching to the music of a corn-stalk fiddle. 
 
 Other skeptical forces are not so bold and out- 
 spoken; they move with a cautious tread, hesitating 
 even to formulate into statement the conclusions 
 which wonderful exertions have been expended to 
 adduce. I. Of this kind is the far-reaching attempt 
 to undermine the doctrine of a Divine Providence. 2. 
 In accounting for all forms of life through natural 
 selection, or the survival of the fittest. 3. Explain- 
 ing all phases of human history in the correlation of 
 forces, or the reign of law. And, 4. An attempt to 
 find the ultimate of sentient life in vegetable matter, 
 and to base human thought itself in materialism. The 
 burning up of brain-cells produces thought. The 
 mind has no native power of its own. It can not 
 exist apart from the physical organ of the brain. All 
 intellectual activity finds its basis in the laws of 
 sensation. 
 
 If these claims can be sustained, of course there 
 is no need of the assertion that man has no soul, no 
 immortality, or that there is no God. 
 
 Through the mediation of the exact sciences, 
 there is an effort to counterwork a current of opinion 
 
Christianity Moss-covered. ioi 
 
 in opposition to the revealed doctrines of faith. To 
 sustain an opinion, fathered by a desire, that no rev- 
 elation from God to man is possible, the domains of 
 the metaphysical, the moral, and historical kingdoms 
 have been ransacked for material. 
 
 In this task, religion is often patronized as a good 
 thing. In fact, as it seems that man must have 
 some kind of religious belief, Christianity is to be 
 preferred above all others. It is the paragon of all 
 worldly systems. It appears very durable, and makes 
 a first-class foundation for our social and civil build- 
 ings. It is to be complimented for the good it has 
 wrought. The Bible is a respectable and high-toned 
 volume. It has taught the ages many sublime and 
 beautiful things. But it belongs to the world's great 
 Spring-time, and is hardly able to satisfy an age of 
 such fruition as this. The Bible ought to be revised. 
 A form of worship and a set of doctrines able to 
 gratify the religious wants of the savage, it is claimed, 
 are not able to satisfy the man of culture. The 
 progressive theory is, religion is a universal phenom- 
 enon of man's being, and its chief glory is the power 
 of taking on itself new forms and doctrines to suit 
 new popular sympathies. A swift - flowing age, 
 which has made useless nearly all that is old in 
 other departments of life, can not be expected to 
 take much interest in the teachings of a patriarchal 
 sheik, or Jewish Rabbi, or a wild old Prophet, or the 
 Nazarene Jesus. 
 
 Established facts of science have not so much 
 been brought into collision with these Oriental doc- 
 trines, which are mostly true; they have simply sup- 
 
102 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 planted them ; they have disrobed them of their 
 utility, like old roadsters turned into the common 
 through which runs the railroad. The victory is 
 already proclaimed. Christianity is a "century- 
 mossed system ;" "already passed away. " What a 
 pity ! Just now, as it is reaching out its arms to 
 embrace all nations. It appears a matter of surprise 
 to many that Christianity has not stepped aside and 
 taken its place among the debris and rubbish of 
 antiquity. It is fatal to the worshiper of law that 
 some things were not born to die, and surrender 
 their places to the newest thing out. 
 
 It is a matter of surprise to many that Christian- 
 ity should be able to verify itself anew, as occasion 
 may require. Sciolism is thunderstruck that the 
 marvelous discoveries of material nature have not 
 been able to whistle religion down the wind. The 
 religion of Christ is supposed to have inbred in itself 
 an inherent disorder, leading to its death. This new 
 method of metaphysical therapeutics proposes to 
 instruct the Christianity of the time in the gathered 
 wisdom of the ages. Alas . for the dignity of an 
 occasion where the pupil is older and wiser than its 
 teacher! It offers to cure its patient by cutting off 
 its limbs, and then prescribe a potion which has cost 
 the death of philosophy to administer more than 
 once in history. The Athenians sneered at Paul, 
 and Paul's religion burned a big hole in the Athe- 
 nian philosophy. That which is new is not necessa- 
 rily an improvement on the old. Governments of 
 antiquity may not have solved all problems in civil 
 law, yet they have given us a system of jurispru- 
 
^Esthetics in the Absolute. 103 
 
 dence deserving the gratitude of the latest ages. 
 The old Roman law has been a blessing beyond esti- 
 mate to modern civilization. The civil code of 
 Moses, in its spirit, will never find an equal. Grecian 
 and Roman philosophy and literature compare favor- 
 ably with any thing that the world has since pro- 
 duced. It is no objection to the Bible that God has 
 not cut and changed its doctrines to suit the fashion. 
 It is not the purpose of the revealed plan to present 
 something new and striking, but something truthful 
 and permanent. 
 
 Christianity is also being held up before the world 
 as unsavory and offensive to the high-toned culture, 
 to the aesthetic and refined feeling, of the age. This 
 feeling is perceived in a kind of chivalric revulsion 
 against the solemn doctrines of desolation and woe 
 pronounced on the sinner. The celestial sensibil- 
 ities of the natural man have sugared the devil, 
 and made him harmless, like a lamb. The most 
 solemn and dreadful of revealed truths are cast 
 aside, abrogated, under the pretense that the noblest 
 sympathies of mind and heart rebel against them. 
 
 This sentiment inheres in the spirit of the times, 
 and comes from a like source with that popular 
 craving which secular journalism feeds when it de- 
 preciates the virtues and magnifies the faults of those 
 who are in Church authority, and shows a sovereign 
 disrespect toward the most sacred truths of revela- 
 tion. From the same source, also, is the antagonism 
 to Christian institutions, now beginning to show itself 
 in political circles- and in halls of legislation. 
 
 A most noticeable feature of unbelief is its vacil- 
 
104 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 lating character. It has no fixed and permanent 
 plans. Its history reads like the history of all false- 
 hood : a series of advances and retreats, now desper- 
 ate and bold, now lurking and indecisive, now build- 
 ing great fortresses, now leaving them as in flight 
 from great danger. 
 
 The first attempt was to explain away the super- 
 natural things of Scripture, by giving a natural inter- 
 pretation wherever possible, and by referring every 
 thing else to the region of myth and tradition. The 
 narratives of Abram and Jacob and Joseph and 
 Moses, and the miracle-workers of the Bible, are 
 placed alongside the legends of Homer, and contem- 
 temporary mythologic heroes. 
 
 The next effort was to refer the writing of the 
 Gospels to some post-apostolic era, and thus inval- 
 idate their claims to credence. Historic criticism has 
 defeated each of these arguments. 
 
 A later assault has been made on the person of 
 Jesus Christ. The divinity of his nature has been 
 doubted. Low and unworthy views of his character 
 have been entertained. 
 
 Of this cast of skeptical thought is Renan's 
 "Life of Jesus." It is claimed that the exalted ideas 
 which strongly filled his mind in the earlier period 
 of his life were never realized; and, as soon as Christ 
 discovers that his purposes are failing, he surrenders 
 to the disappointment, suffers himself to become 
 embittered, and descends to the plane of a miracle- 
 worker. Martha and Mary put Lazarus in a grave, 
 while yet alive, and then send for Jesus to call him 
 forth! This is Renan's Jesus, — a man to whom he 
 
Channing and Parker. 105 
 
 attributes the highest degree of morality in other 
 parts of his work ! Only a degree less in blasphemy 
 is his wresting of Scripture in the "Life of Paul." 
 
 Skepticism has the advantage of being, in a gen- 
 eral sense, negative. Only in a few minds has it 
 attempted to meet the reasonable requirements of an 
 innovation. It presents itself in disguised sophis- 
 tries, and with a multitude of questions. It makes 
 thrusts, without telling why it does so. It has never 
 offered to fill the world with any thing higher and 
 better than Christianity. Its source of hatred and 
 activity is that common enmity which is always in 
 array against the world's overmastering and divine 
 influences. Many of the higher metaphysical doubts 
 make up a list of denials : 
 
 1. A denial of a personal cause. 
 
 2. A denial of the testimony of consciousness. 
 
 3. A denial of a providence. 
 
 4. A denial of all primary or intuitional truth. 
 
 5. A denial of all thought-power beyond the life- 
 chemistry of the brain. 
 
 6. A denial of all design in nature. 
 
 Under the belief that natural laws are able to 
 administer themselves, an infinite purpose is regarded 
 as useless, except to explain a few outlying facts; 
 and future investigation may even show these to 
 belong to the realms of the physical, and doubting 
 erudition may be able to dispense entirely with its 
 troublesome rival, an intelligent cosmos. We have 
 instances in our history of extensive revivals of neg- 
 ativism. Every intelligent American is acquainted 
 with the illustrious name of Channing, whose vigor- 
 
io6 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 ous thought and silvery eloquence led many away 
 into the dismal and arid regions of semi-materialistic 
 socinianism; yet he owes hundreds of his followers, 
 and very greatly his influence, to the social and the- 
 ological preparation which the stiff, century-dried 
 orthodoxy of Puritanism had given him. The tone 
 of religious thought at the time had fully prepared 
 many minds for the cold intensities of Channing. 
 
 A little later, there was given an opportunity for 
 whatever there was of revulsion in the spirit of the 
 time, against its lifeless formalism, to be attracted 
 and attach itself to the intuitional philosophy of 
 Theodore Parker. It would be unfair not to recog- 
 nize that the teachings of Parker led to the develop- 
 ment of many noble qualities of the natural man. 
 While he often declared his independence of all his- 
 tory, and broke the bounds of all custom and reason, 
 he brought the energies of a powerful intellect into 
 its fullest exertion, to arouse into a worship the 
 instinctive sympathies of the soul. What an inex- 
 haustible fountain from which to draw supplies for 
 his wonderful teaching! There was such a warmth 
 and glow of love about Parker's doctrines, such a 
 mystical strangeness, such a melting fervency, that it 
 won on many whose former religious lives had been 
 tempered like cold steel. 
 
 Channing and Parker are types of a few restless 
 spirits, whose influence on American thought is due 
 to the attention which genius always commands, and 
 to the appeals to some silent yet needful voice of 
 religious reform. They are little more than expo- 
 nents of a cast of thought which promises nothing 
 
Ephemeral Systems. 107 
 
 in the end, because it reaches no definite conclusions 
 other than those embraced in the Christian system. 
 While it claims to be led on by the promptings of a 
 boundless freedom in opinion, yet it appropriates 
 about all that divine truth teaches of the heart-life. 
 It writes a great many beautiful pages. It appears 
 like a Thesaurus of eloquent utterances. Drops of 
 water in a Summer shower form a beautiful bow 
 arching the heavens — a swift ephemeral vision. So 
 these air-castles of free thought, these ropes of sand, 
 might be commended for the few grains of truth they 
 contain, and for the amusement they afford. It is 
 unsafe to risk the destinies of the soul to their pro- 
 tection. An empty system can never last. When 
 its glamour is gone it must pass away. Every un- 
 common tendency which has been started by some 
 queer original of the world's brilliants is like fungus 
 on a great wall, collected during a night to be driven 
 away by the coming sun. Every thing of unnatural 
 growth in religious as well as in natural life either 
 finds itself arrayed in deadly antagonism with some 
 extraneous force or discovers in itself inherent ele- 
 ments of self-destruction. False philosophy is like a 
 huge wheel, turning on its axis, bringing with every 
 revolution the same methods of thought and inquiry, 
 and turning each time on an accumulated wealth of 
 refutation. 
 
 In the nature of skepticism, a w r ord may be given 
 to a new form of opposition now engaging the atten- 
 tion of scholars, supposed to be drawn from the 
 comparative study of religions. Man's religious na- 
 ture, in all parts of the world, has produced remark- 
 
108 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 able resemblances in its spiritual codes. This fact is 
 made the basis of the conclusion that all religions are 
 simply psychological phenomena. To show how 
 much Christianity has in common with other systems, 
 to point out its wonderful affinities and its astonish- 
 ing analogies, is to build up a plausible and ingenious 
 argument for those who are not familiar with the true 
 cause of this likeness. To find the Lord's Prayer in 
 the haunts of pre-christian magianism, or to discover 
 the golden rule tw T ice uttered negatively in the teach- 
 ings of Confucius, is taken as prima facie evidence 
 that Christ's spiritual building is not a new one, but 
 a patch-work of orientalism. 
 
 Max Muller has undertaken to show the parallel 
 between Brahminism descending to Buddhism, and 
 Judaism descending to Christianity. The parallel is 
 well put, and is rather remarkable ; but it is fortui- 
 tous, and can not be made complete. In the Old and 
 New Testaments we have such a network of purpose, 
 such a miraculous dovetailing, making one system 
 so unique in its character that history fails to show 
 any exact resemblance. The reasonable fact of the 
 unity of the human race will account for all likeness 
 of other religions to Christianity beyond that which 
 is not explained in the common propensities of mind 
 and heart. 
 
 The soul's hungerings are universal. Man is not 
 like the beast. The ox fills himself with the grass 
 of the pasture and is satisfied. The lion hides in the 
 jungle, seeks and devours his prey, then lies down 
 in his lair — his beastly appetites all gratified. Not so 
 with man. When all this is done he wants food for 
 
Man's Religious Nature. 109 
 
 the supply of another nature. He looks out into the 
 great unseen with yearnings and askings for the divine. 
 This spiritual thirsting is forever asserting itself until 
 fully supplied. False religions are but misdirected 
 impulses of the soul. The world's mythologies are 
 but busy creations of the brain, showing it to be the 
 heart's best friend. The thousands of forms in which 
 religious worship presents itself only reveal how great 
 has been the search for the bread of heaven. And 
 the points of resemblance are in universal and pri- 
 mary truths, such as are suggested by the natural 
 wants of the soul. This is what Paul would call a 
 "law unto itself." It is creative in its nature. This 
 is w r hy it may be asserted with assurance, that God's 
 purposes are in no danger of being overthrown. 
 
 We do not desire to leave the impression that 
 systematic unbelief holds, as yet, a very wide- spread 
 or dangerous influence in this country. In the strug- 
 gle of half a century it has gained a foothold. Dur- 
 ing the same time the progress of Christian thought 
 and experience is beyond computation. A belief in 
 Christian principles is so thoroughly infused in the 
 masses as to leave them little disturbed by metaphys- 
 ical doubts. There may be found in many commu- 
 nities individualists who, to appear original, or for the 
 sake of oddity, catch up the arguments of skeptical 
 thinkers, and use them as shifts of personal responsi- 
 bility. In the spread of enlightenment, which always 
 fosters a degree of independent reflection, these indi- 
 vidualists may be expected to multiply. To educate 
 the mind is to prepare it to think for itself and to 
 make inquiries. It is impossible to prevent these 
 
no Skeptical Thought. 
 
 inquiries reaching into the domains of religious life, 
 even if it were desirable. The great adversary sows 
 tares in the best cultivated ground. Germany and 
 all Europe has suffered severely in being unable to 
 check unbelief in its inceptive stages. Therefore the 
 times look critical. We fear no present, but an im- 
 pending danger. 
 
 The treachery of learned unbelief, so called, is 
 slowly gathering recruits, is silently taking hold on 
 popular thought. The powers of the air are on the 
 alert. They whisper no religion, no God, no heaven, 
 no hell, nothing around, above, beneath. An irre- 
 sponsible definition is given to life, and the grave is 
 the couch of an eternal sleep. This is no time to 
 fold our arms in the certainties of Scripture prophecy. 
 If the conquest of the world is retarded a single day 
 by our lethargy, the din of lost souls will be fearful 
 in the judgment. This is no time to slumber. We 
 are called to meet the requirements of the grandest 
 illumination the world has ever known. This is no 
 time for lax morality, for intrigue, and double deal- 
 ing. This generation is now almost too wicked to be 
 curbed by the restraints of vital godliness. It is 
 certain that the conflict of the future is of most pro- 
 found importance. New means are being discovered 
 by which the Gospel is assailed. Dimensions are 
 taken as never before known. The half-turbulent 
 stream is flowing on. "The day of the Lord is near 
 at hand in the valley of decision. " 
 
 Methods for its Overthrow, — In the first place, we 
 are to keep in mind that the struggle is not only 
 
Power of Satan. hi 
 
 against the arguments and the logic of other minds 
 honestly in search of truth, but the conflict is partly 
 with the unseen and evil powers; against whom, if 
 left unaided, human energies can be subordinated at 
 will, and the most dreadful consequences may ensue. 
 The truth in human history was not born for unhin- 
 dered progress. The world has always been under 
 the influence of opposing forces. The introduction 
 of sin into the world implied a long and arduous 
 struggle between truth and error, between light and 
 darkness. The contest has been maintained, stern, 
 hot, relentless. The past holds up its bloody hand, 
 and we turn pale before the evidences of so long and 
 cruel a conflict; and, when the present grapples the 
 same weapons so firmly, we shudder for the future. 
 The powers of evil are no mean rivals to the warrior 
 hosts of God. They are often able to lift the facul- 
 ties of the mind from their balance, and almost com- 
 pel the reluctant soul to do their bidding. This 
 world is yet subjected to the destructive energies of 
 hell. A wail of deathless souls in sin comes up 
 from every nation, and almost every fireside. 
 
 That great volume of human misery, whose title- 
 page is the sad story of Eden, has for its closing 
 sentence, if yet written, "All hail, futurity! The 
 accusing spirit, with a pen of fire, is ready to chron- 
 icle the dire events of another six thousand years." 
 Milton had a conception of the reality, when Ga- 
 briel asks : 
 
 " Why hast thou, Satan, broke the bounds prescribed 
 To thy transgressions?'"' 
 
ii2 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 Then Satan answers: 
 
 " Let him surer bar 
 His iron gates, if he intends our stay 
 In that dark durance." 
 
 In the conflict with unbelief, which may widen 
 and deepen to superhuman proportions, our chief 
 reliance is in the divine arm. As sure as there is a 
 God in heaven, universal harmony will at last prevail. 
 If, on account of sin, Christ was made to walk the 
 earth, weary, footsore, houseless, homeless, he is yet 
 the builder of a house not made with hands. In the 
 grandeur of his lowly mission, his power was not 
 half exerted. He is now able to stand on a loftier 
 summit than that of Tabor, able to walk on a 
 mightier sea than that of Galilee, able to withstand 
 the malice of a universe of such worlds as this. 
 Omnipotence and mercy are pledged that the condi- 
 tions of the great covenant shall be fulfilled. Sooner 
 or later, a strong hand will be laid on the hilt of 
 Satan's sword, with a demand that he shall not un- 
 sheathe it. Faith in the ultimate triumph of truth 
 may be embraced with all the possibilities of abso- 
 luteness. 
 
 While human confidence in supernal agencies 
 should be kept clearly in the foreground, there 
 should be great care taken to guard against the ex- 
 tremes of dogmatic assertion, which disdains to stoop 
 to the requirements of reason. The honest skeptics 
 of this country are often enlightened, and they can 
 not be successfully ruled as children under the supe- 
 rior wisdom of the Church. There is more or less 
 
Honest Skeptics. 113 
 
 of revolt against constituted authority in every fine 
 mind. No appliances of a dictational spirit will ever 
 wean these doubting Thomases from the error of 
 their ways. Every doctrine of Christianity which 
 comes at all under the cognizance, and within the 
 scope of the human faculties, will only wax more 
 lustrous in the severest tests of examination. Sadly, 
 there has been so much of the authoritative, and so 
 little of willingness to give evidence, even when it 
 was at hand, that the world's faith has been threat- 
 ened in the very foundations of religion. There are 
 thousands seriously troubled as to the reality of 
 religion. There are those who never had the evi- 
 dences of the truth of Christianity presented to their 
 minds, except in such degree as they have been able 
 to gather it themselves from the Bible, and from its 
 fruits in society and the world; and, in the growth 
 of broader and enlarged views in other affairs, these 
 evidences often become insufficient for a positive and 
 reliable spiritual resting-place. 
 
 That the mind should be so constituted that it 
 should need, every now and then, a stronger array 
 of systematic evidences, is no misfortune, since it 
 inheres in the Gospel of Christ to reassert itself in 
 the face of reason, whenever required. 
 
 There are two kinds of temptations ; one of body, 
 and another of mind. The latter always presents the 
 most insuperable difficulties. Individual doubters 
 may have been able, so far as the light has dawned 
 upon them, to curb and control every low and vicious 
 passion and desire, and they may be worthy exam- 
 ples of moral manhood; but they have been made 
 
 10 
 
ii4 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 to hesitate by the necessity of their surroundings. 
 Early life has been spent among scoffers, or among 
 unfortunate specimens of redeeming grace, or where 
 religion was at so low an ebb that its influences were 
 of small consequence. Such as have been shaken in 
 their belief by the inconsistencies of professional 
 Christian life should receive at the hands of the 
 Church the kindest consideration. To meet all rea- 
 sonable inquiries, is the task of the Christian world. 
 So commonplace does the Gospel become sometimes, 
 that many rational difficulties are left unsolved in the 
 popular mind. It is unfortunate when religious in- 
 structors of the people go on for years, without pre- 
 senting the external proofs that the Bible is the 
 inspired Word of God. 
 
 If it be claimed that these evidences can not be 
 presented except on the assumption of falsehood or 
 doubt, the reply is, it is better to recognize doubt, 
 as a fact, and meet its demands, especially when such 
 unanswerable arguments are at hand, than to ignore 
 it, and let it eat like a canker in the religious thought 
 of society. An ignorant faith may call this "fighting 
 the devil's battles, ,, but the zeal of all healthful 
 reasoning requires a candid statement of adverse 
 facts. Why should a people be chloroformed as to 
 so important a matter as the personal presence and 
 influence of Satan in the world? Why should there 
 be any attempt to cover up and hide from public 
 view any great hinderance to the growth and the 
 spread of Christian principles? An ever -recurring 
 question is, "Have w r e a revelation at all?" The 
 great doctrines of the atonement need repeating. 
 
The Sphere of Reason. 115 
 
 So do these primary discussions on the foundations 
 of our belief need to be rehearsed in the face of the 
 world. In the conflict with antichrist, the Church 
 should never shrink from apology. The life of the 
 Church in the first ages rested on its merits and its 
 truth, and very greatly on the ability of the fathers 
 to give a reason for the belief within them. As often 
 as duty may require, let the Church cheerfully under- 
 take the task of exposition, and, as in apostolic times, 
 the armory of truth will only be more complete after 
 the conflict. 
 
 But whenever the human understanding steps be- 
 yond its sphere, and lays under tribute man's religious 
 nature, with the claim that the intellect is absolute 
 sovereign over the whole man, holding the scepter 
 over the emotions and the soul's consciousness, it 
 goes beyond the reach of all argument for the truth 
 of the Gospel. If it is contended that every thing 
 which can not be brought within the cognizance of 
 the thought-faculty and the judgment is to be re- 
 solved into the unknowable, and repudiated, the first 
 thing is to show the fallacy of such a position by an 
 appeal to the immortal and unchangeable intuitions 
 of the soul. The profoundest convictions of life are 
 found emanating from man's spiritual nature; convic- 
 tions which are stronger than the intellect or the 
 will, and nothing but a plunge into the depths of 
 utter nihilism can ever silence them. Socrates, in his 
 appeals to the testimonies of consciousness, prepared 
 an argument for the overthrow of the philosophy of 
 Spinoza before it was born. As long as skepticism 
 clings to the notion that reason is arbiter of the uni- 
 
u6 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 verse, it may be necessary, not only to show that 
 reason has a place, but where that place is, and that 
 it has no controversy with religious faith. Within 
 the limits which God has assigned reason, it should 
 be the ultimate of all appeal. Its abuse brings dis- 
 grace more surely than to stop short of its limits and 
 dwell in the regions of superstition. 
 
 Every thing in the world has its appropriate 
 sphere. Each individual thing has its relation to 
 all others, and its notch in the universe as well. 
 The discords of life and history are for want of a 
 proper adjustment of principles. The world's redun- 
 dancies are not God-given. Every conflict of natural 
 influences finds its cause in human fault and inex- 
 perience. Nature itself makes no such blunders. 
 When the lark starts to meet the sun he is not likely 
 to have the bat for his companion. The owl knows 
 better than to go with the eagle when he pierces the 
 splendors of heaven. Human reason, whose home is 
 in the shadows of this world, need not expect to 
 eclipse the wings of faith. It is dazzled when it looks 
 in the face of the Son of Righteousness. The puny 
 arm of the intellect has never yet taken hold on the 
 ordinary mysteries of nature. The proudest scientific 
 research has never been able to tell how God tints 
 the petals of the rose. There is a mystery in the 
 moving of my pen over these pages which baffles all 
 the wisdom of man. Skeptical philosophy has for- 
 ever struggled to find the ultimatum of its principles. 
 With every attempt to get behind phenomena and 
 enter the realm of mystery, there has been a failure. 
 The unsanctified mind, in its blindness, reaches out 
 
Limits of Reason. 117 
 
 frantically, hoping to grasp the hand of God, and the 
 veil of an intolerable mystery drops down to put an 
 end to the struggle. The worshipful goddess of reason 
 has been trying all methods to prove her right to the 
 world's devotion, and with no success. When left to 
 her own resources, she appears with the inherited 
 misfortune of having no ultimate basis for human 
 activity. Her votaries are seen taking great excur- 
 sions through literature and history, then returning 
 with doubled assiduity to their studies in natural 
 science, with no results except such as will add new 
 luster to the Christian name. 
 
 All know r n relations of matter and force, all inves- 
 tigation in the material world, should be recognized 
 as having a value. Every now and then a nugget of 
 golden truth is dug from the rich mines of science. 
 The old philosophies are being presented anew, are 
 being polished until we admire their beauties. New 
 fires are kindled along the pathway of history. Yet 
 the revelation which has given man the impregnable 
 fortress of a first cause is rejected. The plain way 
 of the Gospel which robs man of the glory is refused 
 for the struggle to climb up some other way. Like 
 a bird in a cage, reason may fly from the bottom to 
 the top and cling to the wires, yet every struggle 
 exhibits its weakness. It shows that there are boun- 
 daries to its activities, a world without, which it is 
 not yet permitted to explore. Revelation alone adds 
 meaning to creation. ''Through faith we understand 
 the worlds were formed by God." Omnipotence 
 alone accounts for the origin of matter; and its won- 
 derful adjustments are only explained in an infinite 
 
n8 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 intelligence. Without the idea of a Creator, as im- 
 plied in the Bible, the idea of an intelligent moral 
 being is an enigma. These are gulfs which the human 
 mind, with all its natural powers, could never have 
 leaped. This argument should be kept in view 
 through the whole controversy. It is easy to use, 
 and for the purpose it serves is conclusive. 
 
 True philosophy is sure to aid the cause of Christ, 
 because it takes into consideration all the relations 
 of life. It deals not only with material facts, but 
 moral facts, and facts of faith. It wants to know not 
 only that Minerva came from the head of Jupiter, 
 but it seeks the final cause of such a procedure. If 
 the mountain labors and brings forth only a mouse, 
 philosophy repudiates the whole affair. True philos- 
 ophy never decides a case beforehand. It recognizes 
 a connection of thought which rests on the founda- 
 tion of faith. Philosophy, as a method of inquiry, 
 rests on facts. It calls to its aid a devout heart as 
 well as a clear head and a trenchant intellect. By 
 keeping this distinction in mind, endless controversies 
 may be avoided. 
 
 A disposition to repudiate every thing which 
 reaches out into the domains of faith has resulted, in 
 a great measure, from a misunderstanding of its 
 nature. In its primary significance, once and for all, 
 faith is simple trust. It is not an intellectual power. 
 It is not the conclusion of the mind's deductions. It 
 is not the acceptance of popular religious opinion. 
 It is not the granting of the truth of the redemptive 
 theory. It is the coming to Christ and accepting, 
 not his nature, but him as revealed in the experiences 
 
Nature of Faith. 119 
 
 of regeneration. To be hid with Christ in God 
 goes deeper than all theory; it is more conclusive 
 than all objective evidence; it goes beyond all 
 thought. It lays under tribute the whole life, de- 
 manding the exercise of the moral faculties, the affce- 
 tions, and the conscience, controlling the will, subor- 
 dinating the whole man. Faith, as such, has nothing 
 to do with philosophy or speculative thought ; yet 
 it depends on them for its existence and develop- 
 ment. The life of faith grows broader and deeper as 
 the grounds of human confidence become more firm. 
 To rob the heart of faith would be more sad than to 
 rob the mind of reason. Faith can not be coerced 
 or driven into terms. It is an act as free as the voli- 
 tions of the Almighty himself, yet no one lives a day 
 without it. In a temporal sense, it is necessary to 
 the existence of society under its present relations. 
 In a spiritual sense, it is necessary to the existence 
 of the soul's essence. 
 
 It will not be out of place to show how skeptical 
 philosophy receives its weapons from its professed 
 enemies. There is no way of estimating the benefits 
 of the Christian system. What streams of life it has 
 started flowing, what barren regions it has fertilized, 
 what multiplied influences for good it has started 
 vibrating through eternity, will only be revealed on 
 the sheen of the Judgment. Christianity has given 
 to the modern world its civilizations. It is so inti- 
 mately inwoven with American institutions as to be- 
 come the guarantee of every right they bequeath to 
 the individual, or to the State at large. In its polit- 
 ical force it has changed the entire aspect of the 
 
i2o Skeptical Thought. 
 
 globe. The energies which it has awakened have 
 lifted the nations from the shadows of ignorance. 
 Our children are rocked under its influence in their 
 cradles. They discover its traces in their school-books, 
 and in nearly every author of respectability. The 
 Christian system has brought to the present age un- 
 told opportunities of a social and political nature. 
 To go beyond its unconscious influences is to reach 
 the boundaries of barbarism. The American people 
 live under the constant elevation of its doctrines. 
 Our facilities for education and culture are its lasting 
 fruits. The impress of its plastic hand is seen in 
 every department of thought. It is probable that 
 skeptics sometimes owe a sublime morality of life to 
 the purity of character which it inculcates. Those 
 who denounce it are offering ingratitude to the fos- 
 tering mother of nearly all their blessings. 
 
 A constant appeal should be made to the deeper 
 needs of the soul, as they are made conscious in the 
 life. Wonderful adjustments of supply and demand 
 may be seen in nature. The eye gives utility to the 
 light, and at the same time, light is made necessary 
 to its healthful existence. For the purpose of hear- 
 ing, there are conditions in the atmosphere as neces- 
 sary as is the wonderful mechanism of the ear itself. 
 So with the lungs ; the atmosphere is perfectly 
 adapted to supply their need in the work of blood- 
 cleansing. The stomach wants food ; all nature rises 
 up to furnish the supply. Another marvelous illus- 
 tration may be seen in the relations of the animal and 
 plant kingdoms. The principal elements of air are ox- 
 ygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. In respiration, 
 
Nature's Law of Demand and Supply. 121 
 
 oxygen and nitrogen are taken up from the atmos- 
 phere ; and carbon and hydrogen are given off from 
 the lungs. Plants feed on one part of the atmosphere, 
 human tissue on another. Plants give off as debris 
 that which the animal body needs, and the animal 
 body gives off that which plants need. There is an 
 adjustment and a mutual dependence ; want on one 
 hand, supply on the other. This is God's natural 
 economy in the world of matter. But man is not 
 only a being with physical requirements. He has a 
 spirit nature, and is endowed with religious wants — 
 not acquired wants either, but real, inborn endow- 
 ments. 
 
 1. The soul needs a First Cause. To know the 
 source of all being and life, appeals like an intuition 
 to the consciousness. The cravings of the human 
 understanding are only completely satisfied when it 
 reads, "In the beginning, God. " 
 
 2. Man's universal thirsting for immortality is one 
 of his settled experiences. 
 
 3. With our first impressions of society comes 
 
 the conviction that there is something wrong. Its 
 
 sad disorders, its feverish excitements, its lusts, its 
 
 ambitions, its unrest, and its unsatisfied longings, lead 
 
 to the conclusion that the race is now suffering under 
 
 the effects of some great misfortune, is very greatly 
 
 under the control of malignant forces. In centers 
 
 of wealth and luxury, where every physical want is 
 
 gratified, there are haggard countenances, and knit 
 
 brows, and great burdensome anxieties, so deep and 
 
 real as to bring out on the canvas of human life, in 
 
 legible characters, the utterance of the Nazarene 
 
 11 
 
122 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 Jesus, "Man shall not live by bread alone." Ask 
 the man of wealth if the affluence he has gained sat- 
 isfies the cravings of his being. The acquisition of 
 wealth for its own sake never fails to intensify the 
 desire. Many are married to gold, and the cold, 
 bright thing never returns the affections that are lav- 
 ished upon it. Ask the man of ambition if the am- 
 aranth of fame ever brought him any permanent joy, 
 or if it satisfied his thirst for glory. Earthly plaudits 
 do not bring the desired satisfaction. They are like 
 tinseled butterflies crushed in the rude hand of a 
 giant. They have no power to assuage the soul's 
 consuming spirit, which devours its victim, like vul- 
 tures at the flesh of a bound Prometheus. 
 
 All history has been darkened with misdirected 
 impulses. Men pamper their bodies, give themselves 
 over to the pursuit of ambition or pleasure, and starve 
 their souls. We challenge unbelief to bring content- 
 ment to the deeper needs of our being. Has any 
 thing in the world satisfied these wants but Chris- 
 tianity? In the existence of these conscious and 
 natural demands of the human spirit materialism is 
 overthrown, because they imply a moral sentiment. 
 They confront any system which denies man's relig- 
 ious nature. 
 
 In the work of apology, there should be a dis- 
 tinction between what is essential to the existence 
 of Christianity and that which is only relatively im- 
 portant. It is not safe to hang the destinies of relig- 
 ion on narrow issues, when broad and indubitable 
 facts are at hand. Critical unbelief is always glad to 
 compare its small details with things of the same 
 
Science and Revelation. 123 
 
 kind in religion. A favorable comparison in this 
 respect is the fortress of skepticism. The Christian 
 Church should not be committed to points of detail. 
 The reason is obvious. Revelation begins with cen- 
 tral truths. From first principles it descends to indi- 
 vidual facts and phenomena. It has given a world of 
 inferences ; it has impressed unnumbered practical du- 
 ties. If the plainest doctrines are found covered with 
 dogmatism, if truth in practice becomes tarnished, 
 it is because they have come in contact with forces 
 adverse to their natural outworking. Science begins 
 with the particular, and ascends to the general. From 
 its items it deduces principles. Hence the minor facts 
 and specialties of science may be established, while 
 many of its generalizings may be radically wrong. 
 
 It would be the lamest logic to undertake to over- 
 throw the facts of science from its erroneous general- 
 ized conclusions. Neither will any investigator of 
 material facts stake his discoveries on the certainty 
 and the absoluteness of the conclusions he may draw 
 from them. The theoretical consequences of a thing 
 are very lame proofs for any thing it may be in itself. 
 To compare the results of one system, many of them 
 abnormal, with the foundations of another, is unfair. 
 Revelation is from God, and descends to be very 
 imperfectly voiced in the multiplied phases of Chris- 
 tian doctrine and practice. Science is from man, and, 
 with its multitude of data, it ascends toward revela- 
 tion and God. For this reason, if the minor eviden- 
 ces of Christianity are weighed against the finished 
 bulwarks of unbelief, a great disparity will always 
 appear. To give some supposed difficulty with his- 
 
124 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 tory or science the precedence over the whole mass 
 of evidence so closely related to the Christian life 
 itself, is to violate every law of reasoning. Any 
 attempt to defend secondary truth as absolute and 
 necessary to the religious system will result in harm. 
 To magnify unimportant matters, such as the dogmas 
 which separate the branches of the Church, or to in- 
 dulge in low controversy over things of small account, 
 only adds strength to that unbelief which began its 
 career by breaking with the traditions of the Church. 
 Just views of Scripture inspiration are becoming 
 more and more necessary. It is time to repudiate 
 the doctrine that transforms the sacred authors into 
 automatons. There are different styles of writing in 
 Scripture, as there is a difference between Milton and 
 Young, or between Bryant and Longfellow. The Pen- 
 tateuch and the prophecies are dissimilar in phrase- 
 ology. The utterances of Paul and the Seer of 
 Patmos are plainly distinguished. There can be no 
 other explanation for this fact than that the mind of 
 the Spirit was given by inspiration to these writers, 
 and that they were left greatly to their own resources 
 for words and figures of speech. The form of ex- 
 pression in which Holy Writ is embodied is simply 
 Oriental, and has no sacredness attached to it. The 
 linguistic peculiarities of the Divine Word are cir- 
 cumstantial and not necessary. They are not eviden- 
 ces of its inspiration. The Hebrew and Hellenis- 
 tic were not necessarily the chosen dialects of the 
 Almighty. Language, in itself, may be immortal; 
 but tongues and dialects are human. In course of 
 time they metamorphose and die. "We have this 
 
Revision of the Bible. 125 
 
 treasure in earthen vessels'' — easily marred, easily 
 broken, easily destroyed. Historical discrepancies 
 and chronological inaccuracies may be looked for 
 under the circumstances. I can see no reason why 
 they may not be corrected as fast as they are found. 
 There are very few reasons against a revision of the 
 Word. There are many forms of expression which 
 might be changed to suit the rightful sympathies of 
 the age without encroaching on the rigid meaning of 
 the text. In the historic parts of Scripture, and in 
 the prophecies, there is much that would seem inap- 
 propriate to use in public, because of the modes of 
 expression in which the thoughts are couched. Words 
 once used with evident propriety are now obsolete 
 and hardly suited to the popular ear. Many valuable 
 lessons of the inspired Book contain words which the 
 mutations of language have now relegated to the 
 realms of the low and vulgar. The Bible itself is not 
 responsible for this fact. Neither is it false modesty 
 to shun the terse reality of these ancient utterances. 
 Modifications are required, because, in many respects, 
 we speak a language different from our British fore- 
 fathers. We should not be zealous to perpetuate a 
 fault in the taste of the English public in the time of 
 King James and Shakespeare. 
 
 In comparative exegesis there will always be more 
 or less of special controversy. The settling of specific 
 objections, so far, in the history of the Church, has 
 necessarily been left to the few. A believer may go 
 deeper into the nature of things than is possible for 
 the skeptic. To make the path of Christian progress 
 smooth, to clear away the stumbling-stones, the 
 
126 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 Church needs men of consummate skill in dialectics. 
 The whole intellect of Zion should be utilized as well 
 as its moral graces. Ignorance can no longer be ex- 
 tolled as a virtue. The full force of infidel argument 
 is bound to come before the world sooner or later. 
 If it first appears with its full refutation, its evident 
 falsehood will check the glamour of its novelty. Chris- 
 tianity, through believers, should be able to justify 
 its claims in the face of every attack. There should 
 be a scientific vindication of the Bible. In this work, 
 it will not be necessary to show that it is a text-book 
 of science, or a manual of astronomy or geology. 
 This is not its purpose. The object of the Word is to 
 make known the divine will as it relates to man's 
 spiritual interests. Holy men spake as they were 
 moved by the Holy Ghost; and the burden of the 
 Spirit's revealing was of far more importance than any 
 earthly knowledge or any secular concern. Hence 
 the argument for the truth of revelation is indepen- 
 dent of its scientific accuracy. To vindicate the Scrip- 
 tures in the face of reason is to show their purpose. 
 The harmony which actually exists between the 
 Bible and the discoveries of science has often been 
 established in view of a supposed disagreement. Yet 
 this work is not necessary, and will not mitigate 
 against the conclusiveness of the argument for the 
 inspiration of the Scriptures, until the breach is actu- 
 ally shown. Learned unbelief is an innovation. It 
 is opposed to the ordinary convictions of the people. 
 Every law of logic and argument would, therefore, 
 require it to come with facts and data, stripped from all 
 vagaries. That the zeal of Biblical scholarship should 
 
Developed and Revealed Truth. 127 
 
 forestall every attempt in this direction, indicates the 
 danger to which all false theories expose themselves. 
 While the Scriptures may not be expected to show 
 evidences of a knowledge of all material facts, they 
 may be expected to add a meaning to them as fast as 
 science discovers. 
 
 Devout men have been known to utter prema- 
 ture lamentations, in the suspicion that the Bible 
 might meet some fact of experience which it could 
 not explain. Such a thing has never been known, 
 and need not be feared. On the other hand, those 
 who repudiate the Bible are thrown into a chaos of 
 inexplicable facts, such as the world might reasona- 
 bly expect to be solved. Man's religious nature, 
 the existence of sin, and similar facts of every -day 
 experience, become the everlasting enigmas of life, 
 in the absence of a recognized revelation. 
 
 It may be claimed, from the firmest principles, 
 that there is an eminent fitness in the human mind 
 for what is known as revealed truth. There are 
 traces of natural adaptability for it in human thought 
 and sentiment.* The history of the race universally 
 distinguishes developed from revealed truth. A lack 
 of natural light is recognized in almost a blind de- 
 pendence and submission to that which is believed to 
 be a revelation from heaven. That which claims to 
 be revealed always has a deeper hold on the lives of 
 men. Developed knowledge, or that which has been 
 discovered, is only relative. The compass, the art 
 of printing, electricity, etc., are valued greatly for 
 their utility. This is the measure of their value. 
 If new discoveries should supersede and make them 
 
128 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 useless, they could be exchanged for better appliances 
 without many regrets. Wherever any kind of relig- 
 ious convictions have become so deep and settled as 
 to influence the practice and the customs of a people, 
 they are not often laid down without great personal 
 struggles. Radical changes in religious views seldom 
 come short of a revolution. 
 
 The religions of the Orient have the revealed ele- 
 ment for their authority; and to-day, under the belief 
 that they are divine, one -third of the human race 
 bows in meek submission. 
 
 In one of the caves of Mount Hira, near Mecca, 
 Gabriel, the divine messenger, appeared to Moham- 
 med, exclaiming, " Prophet of God." Chadijah, his 
 wife, unveiled her face, and the figure disappeared. 
 "Glad tidings to thee, O Mohammed,' ' she said; "it 
 is a good angel. Thou art a prophet of God, and I 
 am thy first believer. " His son Ali was the second. 
 Thus Mohammedanism started, with the simple the- 
 ology, "There is one God, and Mohammed is his 
 prophet." Under the inspiration that his authority 
 was from on high, he became a preaching soldier. 
 Up to this time, over half a billion people have lived 
 and died in the belief that Mohammed was the 
 prophet of God. 
 
 These are illustrations of the power of an abiding 
 trust in revealed principles. We have met, here, a 
 world-wide tendency. It is apparent in all false 
 religions having any thing of the revealed element 
 about them. Revealed truth is the only absolute 
 truth known to the world, and is alone fit to ask the 
 confidence of eternal interests. The provisions of 
 
Inlaid Teachings of Paganism. 129 
 
 the Gospel of Jesus Christ are most wonderfully 
 adapted to the sympathies and needs of the soul. 
 This adaptation secures the perpetuity of our relig- 
 ion, without any uncertainty. 
 
 It now appears that the divine mind has been 
 making use of all religious systems in the firm and 
 triumphant planting of the Gospel. All the broader 
 observations of the times take into consideration the 
 divine economy in utilizing ethnic religions in the 
 mediatorial purposes of earth, They have a propae- 
 deutic office in preparing the world for the final vic- 
 tory of the cross. There is now a great opportunity 
 for the cultured friends of Christianity to throw up 
 an advance breastwork of great strength in the field 
 of comparative reflection. In the defense of the 
 Christian faith, our thought should reach out to a 
 thorough study of all kindred systems. The clogs 
 of narrowness which now bind us, and all prejudices, 
 should give way to the recognition of truth-germs, 
 wherever discovered. 
 
 The first elements of redemption are laid deep in 
 the teachings of nearly all paganism. Sooner or 
 later, there will be a mighty use made of these inlaid 
 principles. The tactics of Jehovah are outwitting 
 Satan, and confirming him a great blunderer. The 
 master-stroke in the sermon on Mars' Hill was to 
 turn the Athenian inscription, "To the Unknown 
 God," into a present use. So God works, using 
 false systems to fix the world's attention on impor- 
 tant truths necessary to be known. Take, for illus- 
 tration, the idea of a sacrifice and a priesthood. In 
 almost all religions, these two elements have attained 
 
130 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 to a degree of perfection. The worship of ancient 
 Rome, Greece, nearly all Asia, Turkey in Europe, 
 the barbarous Northmen, Africa, the Islands of the 
 sea, the Western World — all have had their sacrifices 
 in some form or other, through which they invoked 
 the divine favor, or appeased his wrath. Egypt and 
 Asia had their hoary priesthoods elevated into an 
 unapproachable caste thousands of years ago. The 
 Saxons and the Danes and the Vandals of the North 
 had their grim priestly characters, through whom 
 human victims were immolated on the altar. Druid 
 priests danced round their lurid fires, in the vain 
 hope that the Source of Being might accept the tor- 
 tured 'victim. The Indians of America have their 
 sorcerers, and their dim notions of mediation. The 
 Aztec civilization of Mexico reared up a grand and 
 powerful priesthood, who wielded the scepter of the 
 gods, and held human destiny in an uneven scale. 
 
 Under the force of such ideas the world is bound 
 by a mysterious chain. May we not conclude that 
 God's infinite care reaches out to all his creatures, 
 that he has a purpose running through the ages, and 
 that, somehow or other, the wandering nations have 
 nursed in their superstitions great and vital truths, 
 which will, sooner or later, enable them to grasp the 
 all-powerful provisions of the Gospel? 
 
 The office of a priest and the idea of a sacrifice 
 are generally understood over the earth. 
 
 When we remember that Christ has become at 
 the same time Priest, Altar, Victim, Mercy-seat, for 
 all who seek the pardon of sin, it may not be hard 
 to see how these tainted and marred superstitions 
 
Various Arguments. 131 
 
 of heathendom may contain germs of truth which will 
 grow and flourish when the noon blaze of the Gospel 
 arrives. Brethren of the ministry, here is an indis- 
 pensable field of inquiry. The Church, to stand, 
 must be in possession of a culture and a Biblical in- 
 telligence, so broad and deep that it may fearlessly 
 embrace the comparative study of religions. 
 
 There are other points, some of which, in range 
 of discussion, are too extensive for this volume, 
 which, when taken separately, may not be conclusive, 
 but collectively they constitute a very strong anti- 
 skeptical argument: 
 
 1. A comparison of the social effects of unbelief 
 with Christianity. 
 
 2. The worthlessness of unbelief in times of dan- 
 ger. In private or public calamities it affords no 
 balm, it offers no consolation. No gleam of hope 
 shines in anywhere to light up the dark regions of 
 infidelity. In contrast with this, the sterling value 
 of Christianity is illustrated in the last hours of life. 
 There has never been a phase of human adversity in 
 which it has not fulfilled every promise and gratified 
 the most sanguine hopes. 
 
 3. Science is not the best judge of things out of 
 its sphere. 
 
 4. Ask for an equal good in place of Christianity. 
 What system promises to bring such glorious and 
 lasting fruit? Suppose the Bible should be marked 
 with dotage and age and neglected by men. What 
 manual of duty so broad and imperative will take its 
 place? Where else will the circumstances of human 
 probationship be so grandly delineated? Where else 
 
132 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 such a combination of truths under holy precepts? 
 Where else .will be found a guide to the footsteps of 
 men so wide, so useful, so sublime, so profound, 
 yet so simple and plain? Where another book that 
 grasps at the immensity of human ills, and provides 
 for the difficulty by stretching its scepter over the 
 realms of death ? 
 
 5. Evangelical effort is a great antidote to un- 
 belief. The late revivals in England have shaken the 
 hoary doubts of fifty years. The vital power of 
 Christianity is able to repress the strongest skepti- 
 cism. The citadel of our faith is above all controversy. 
 The unequivocal preaching of the Word is not to be 
 neglected. It should be made first in importance. 
 No obstacle should be thrown in the way of the spe- 
 cific power of the Gospel. The argument from reason 
 will not depreciate or rob the infinite luster from 
 absolute theology. While there are imperative sec- 
 ondary duties; while many of the plainest teachings 
 of revelation are simply inferences, and are so clear 
 and unmistakable that, to become heedless of their 
 teachings is moral suicide; while w r e hope never to 
 grow weary in rearranging and supervising as ex- 
 igencies may require, we are to keep in mind that 
 direct battling with abstract infidelity is not our 
 chief business. Jesus Christ and him crucified is 
 to be shouted across the continent unaccompanied 
 by any suggestive doubts. Christianity is old and 
 time-worn, and to meet unbelief in logical conflict 
 is a subordinate duty after all. The upper regions 
 of our theology are full of gleaming thunder-bolts, 
 made up of the statutes of Jehovah. We labor 
 
Charity. 133 
 
 under the inspiration that unbelief shall not disturb 
 the foundations of our building. It may knock off 
 a cap-stone here and there, or tear away the weather- 
 cock on our steeple, so that we may not know which 
 w r ay the w r ind is blowing for a time. These dam- 
 ages can be repaired in the course of time. As long 
 as we are secure in our house, as long as we are 
 sheltered from the storm, as long as we are warmed 
 by our fire, it is not wise to listen to every fool who 
 may tell us that we have no house, that it affords no 
 protection or security, that our fire is an illusion. It 
 will hardly be necessary to take up and destroy our 
 foundation to show the dubious that it is really there. 
 
 6. In the clear understanding of Scripture the 
 spirit and temper of the investigation figure very 
 largely. We are required to approach with reverence 
 if we hope to understand much of his will or his ways, 
 or in any measure profit by them. It is a law of 
 chemistry that there are no affinities unless the con- 
 ditions are right. An egg or an acorn, under certain 
 conditions, shows the development of a germ. If 
 any oae disbelieved the existence of germs in the 
 egg and acorn, the evidence could not be given by 
 placing both under the same conditions. One would 
 require warmth, the other must be buried in the soil. 
 A refusal to grant these conditions would be unrea- 
 sonable. This law of conditions holds good in the 
 spirit-world. God has never yet stooped to have a 
 controversy or a quarrel with his creatures. 
 
 Lastly, the work should not be strictly controver- 
 sial; should not lack of sympathy for unbelievers. 
 Paul was once an unbeliever. He reflected and rea- 
 
134 Skeptical Thought. 
 
 soned, then doubted, and finally believed. Some of 
 the head-lights of the Church have hesitated for a 
 time. Honest doubt is the very soul of investigation, 
 for which an honest argument is nearly always con- 
 clusive. To accompany every endeavor for good with 
 charity is philosophical. Charity is the virgin gold 
 of our faith, which glitters though set in the world's 
 rubbish. 
 
Chapter V. 
 
 ROMANISM, 
 
 Historic Influences. — A breeze from the ocean 
 is always fresh and exhilarating. Its waters are 
 never stagnant. No dank and foul odors are ever 
 born of its currents or thrown shoreward by its trade 
 winds. The reason is, God has taken charge of the 
 ocean. It rocks to and fro in the immensity of its 
 activities, while its particular waves are the creatures 
 of his providence. Human perfidy can not taint it, 
 because he has charged himself with its keeping. 
 With the Church of Christ it is not quite so. Un- 
 washed and fallible hands have handled its precious 
 life until the tarnish of sin, time and again, has dis- 
 robed it of beauty. 
 
 Every student of history can recall the splendid 
 victories of the cross during the first three hundred 
 years of Gospel-preaching. How the Christian Church 
 started from a little upper room in Jerusalem to wade 
 through fire and blood, and over rack and gibbet, 
 until a peaceful home had been won through the 
 extent of Southern and Eastern Europe, over North 
 Africa, through Egypt and Asia, nearly to the banks 
 of the Ganges. The rage of infidelity and devils was 
 unable to check its force. The proudest orators 
 
 i35 
 
136 Romanism. 
 
 were found lending their power to the ministry of 
 Jesus Christ. Emperors were found worshiping at a 
 throne of Grace. Proud temples were built, rich 
 prebendaries were endowed. The prestige of great 
 virtues settled on the brow of Zion. But almost with 
 this glory came the glamour of prosperity to touch 
 all her borders, and stop all positive advances in the 
 restfulness of a false security. Then followed the 
 decay of Christian life, as swift and terrible as its 
 growth was glorious. In course of time the spir- 
 itual energies of the Church were gone. Her evan- 
 gelical fires went out, and she found herself re- 
 sistlessly drifting toward the vortex of universal 
 corruption. 
 
 The first lull in the conquering energies of the 
 Church was the saddest and the most deplorable. It 
 not only impeded for a thousand years the further 
 victories of the cross, but it left a history, both em- 
 barrassing in itself, and fraught with the most mis- 
 chievous consequences. The papal world found its 
 inception in the decline of vital evangelical Christian- 
 ity. From the innate forces of a dying orthodoxy it 
 was gradually developed. It crawled, serpent-like, 
 through the ages, to position and authority. It un- 
 dermined the hereditary freedom of the ancient repub- 
 lic by an untiring appeal for centuries. 
 
 Generations came up, and passed away, before 
 the force of an unearthly tribunal was able to sway 
 even a despotism of influence. The ecclesiastical 
 heads of the old Latin Church were at first subjects. 
 In the time of Constantine they found themselves 
 strong enough to resist his will. Theodosius suffered 
 
Cause of the Dark Ages. 137 
 
 a rebuke from St. Ambrose, and was compelled to 
 do penance. At last the pontifical foot found itself 
 on the neck of Rome's emperor. Roman patriotism 
 and Roman liberty died away, and there was erected 
 in its stead an imperialism of moral forces, so dread- 
 ful as to crush out even the hopeful individualism of 
 the old ethnic element, and leave nothing but a blank 
 on the face of Christendom, save the fiat of the scep- 
 ter of St. Peter. This silent and almost impercepti- 
 ble killing out of the Spirit, in course of time, hum- 
 bled a noble nation into the stupor of a wild despair. 
 There were a thousand years wherein Romanism 
 held universal empire over the religious thought of 
 Europe. And the whole realm of history gives no 
 utterance to a more fearful despotism, or to more 
 flagrant violations to the religious rights of man. 
 
 For this condition of things the hierarchy is not 
 responsible altogether, because other influences were 
 at work than those immediately religious; but it 
 is responsible for the dying away of Roman civili- 
 zation, and for the corruption which disabled the 
 Italian kings from resisting successfully the rude and 
 barbarous Northmen ; responsible, because it has 
 courted darkness and ignorance in the control of the 
 masses, since it first courted favor of the Saxon 
 kings ; responsible, because the doctrinal errors of 
 monasticism have been politic tools in the hands of 
 the mitered priest, and the gloomy monk in his cell, 
 to cut away every vestige of truth, untrammeled by 
 tradition, from the human mind ; responsible, be- 
 cause, previously, the doctrines of the confessional 
 
 and absolution had begun to hold the papal world 
 
 12 
 
138 Romanism. 
 
 in a tyranny so great as to weigh human destiny in 
 its uneven balance. In its claims to absolute empire 
 over the individual mind, it has been the persecutor 
 of free thought. It has always shown itself restless 
 under any other condition of things than that of irre- 
 sponsible individual servitude. 
 
 Jesuitism has always labored for the destruction 
 of personal freedom. Here is an excerpt from its 
 Constitution : ' ' Let each man firmly believe that 
 those who live under obedience ought to suffer them- 
 selves to be guided by divine providence, working 
 through their superiors, exactly as though they were 
 a corpse, which suffers itself to be turned about in 
 any direction, and treated in any manner you please ; 
 or like the staff of an aged man, which serves 
 every-where and in all things him who holds it in 
 his hand/' 
 
 In the entire ritualism and working of the Roman 
 Church, there is but little regard paid to the inherent 
 freedom of the human mind. There is an utter dis- 
 regard of any personal wish or thought. Rome, at 
 the present time, wields a practical moral coercive 
 power more perfect than is the exercise of any civil 
 rule on the face of the globe. Such a sway of moral 
 forces as was manifested in the silent submission to 
 the decretals of the last Vatican Council can only 
 be gained in the untiring work of centuries. Uncon- 
 ditional submission to ecclesiastical authority has 
 become a matter of habitual belief. Right or wrong, 
 no other calculation is ever made. The destiny of 
 the damned is the only alternative. Here lies a 
 potency, ineradicable, even in the face of the most 
 
Man's Personal Rights. 139 
 
 intelligent and serious thinking. Obedience to the 
 voice of the Church is the supremacy of all virtue; 
 and the glory of every adherent is to be a subject. 
 The wonder is, that the Romish Church can occupy 
 professedly the same ground with its whole history, 
 when that history reveals it to be the implacable 
 enemy of human liberty, and yet find sympathy from 
 any thing that adds life and vitality to modern civ- 
 ilization. A Church which relegates to itself the 
 innate and personal rights of man's being, which will 
 not permit the individual mind freely to reason or 
 reflect, whose genius is yet one with the old Egyp- 
 tian and Babylonian monarchies, may be suited to 
 some regions, may serve some purposes in the first 
 steps of human progress, but it is certainly in the 
 plainest antagonism with the spirit of this age, with 
 its tendencies toward the highest individual devel- 
 opment. 
 
 As vital religion has intensified modern civiliza- 
 tion a hundred-fold, so Protestant Christianity has 
 magnified the individual life, in so far that we can 
 now take the street waif, and make of it a great 
 character. The chief item of European history since 
 this spirit was born, has been a revulsion and a 
 struggle for deliverance from ecclesiastical thralldom. 
 It needed no prophet's ken to tell that Romanism 
 was becoming more and more the enemy of all free 
 institutions. Every enlightened nation on the face 
 of the globe has been made to feel that, sooner or 
 later, it would have hard work with Popery. 
 
 The signs, at present, are more hopeful in Euro- 
 pean countries. Germany, already, has virtually 
 
140 Romanism. 
 
 achieved a victory. Italy is politically free. Under 
 the very eyes of the Pope, the old foundations are 
 sliding away. Garibaldi is declaring that there is no 
 place on earth where the Pope is so little regarded 
 as in Rome. Popery is dwindling in all transalpine 
 countries. The government of Switzerland shows it 
 no forbearance. In Spain, the old concordat has 
 been repudiated, and the alternate permission and 
 denial of Protestant worship and schools, is evidence 
 that opinion is slowly changing. It has a forlorn 
 civil recognition in France. Other states of the Con- 
 tinent, not already free, are uneasy. The vigor of 
 Romanism in Europe, now, is only local. The great 
 center of former activities is giving way. The old 
 seat of empire is trembling to fall. The last bold 
 attempt to brace and strengthen it is not only a sin, 
 but a blunder. It set the current in the wrong direc- 
 tion. It threw the white horse of the Apocalypse 
 back on his haunches. 
 
 In the sufferings of self-defeat, she has turned her 
 eyes westward, and caught the glimpse of a magnifi- 
 cent prey. For the broken scepter to be repaired, 
 it is no hardship to wait a thousand years. The 
 vulture, from his aerie, looks quietly down on the 
 lamb in the fold, saying, "In my thirst for blood, 
 you are the victim." Poor lamb ! No, no! Under 
 the leering eyes of that vulture, the lamb has mar- 
 velously grown into a lion. 
 
 Romanism and the Common- schools. — A very re- 
 mote and philosophic purpose lies hidden in the 
 universal desire to educate its children in the privacy 
 
Our Common-School System. 141 
 
 of its own walls. The controllers of Roman Cath- 
 olic policy are shrewd in the knowledge that, side by- 
 side with the most thorough intellectual drill, the 
 human mind may be given almost any definite relig- 
 ious bias ; especially when the work is begun in 
 childhood. The highest philosophical attainments, 
 ordinarily, are not likely to overthrow preoccupied 
 and fixed religious notions. Religious faith and lit- 
 erary culture are apt to be harmonized in the matured 
 mind, when they are both acquired at the same time, 
 and are accepted as harmonies from the same source. 
 On this basis, principles may be perpetuated in the 
 plainest contrast with modern enlightenment. In 
 this way, human thought may be controlled when 
 the present generation has passed away. 
 
 Rome seeks its devotees in the cradle, and from 
 thence begins the work of moral deformity. A plan 
 which proposes to hold up the scepter of moral 
 forces by the ingraining of dogma on the plastic 
 mind of childhood is far-reaching; and, without 
 providential hinderances, is very sure in its conse- 
 quences. It can be relied on! Hence the relentless 
 opposition to our common-school system, where a 
 broad and liberal culture is given, where the mind is 
 simply ^developed and made strong, so that in both 
 secular and religious affairs it may act and decide 
 intelligently and wisely. Let the genius of our 
 common-school system become as sacred as the flag 
 of our liberties and the constitution of our country. 
 Let it be defended and protected as the dearest 
 heritage of our patriotism. 
 
142 Romanism. 
 
 Romanism and Progressive Christian Thought. — 
 The claims of the Papal Church in the last quarter 
 of a century, ought to put to shame the proposition 
 that it is not at war with modern thought. During 
 that time it has — 
 
 1. Denied the liberty of the press and of speech. 
 
 2. It has relegated to itself the privilege to decide 
 on the relative rights and provinces of Church and 
 state. It has maintained that, in every conflict be- 
 tween the civil and the ecclesiastical, the ecclesiastical 
 should prevail; that spiritual ends may be advanced 
 by civil agencies ; that force may be employed to 
 carry out any plan of the Church. There is as much 
 opposition from Roman authorities, to American 
 notions of this question, as there is to skeptical 
 science and infidelity. Rome recognizes no civil 
 allegiance. It is repeatedly, and in different coun- 
 tries, still making daring inroads on the civil sphere, 
 and in some cases without the shadow of permanent 
 or even temporary benefit. All this appears to be 
 in plain contrast with the religious and political free- 
 dom of the times. 
 
 3. The Romish Church has never relinquished its 
 notions about the persecution and coercion of schis- 
 matics. The spirit of the old doctrine, — for the sake 
 of uniformity heresy must be quenched, if even by 
 blood, — is still alive. 
 
 4. Rome always has been, and is to-day, the 
 advocate of a centralization dangerous alike to both 
 Church and state. 
 
 5. It has implanted in the minds of its youth 
 
Rome Fears Liberty. 143 
 
 servile doctrines respecting the sovereignty of a for- 
 eign spiritual potentate. 
 
 6. It offers in place of the free-flowing and buoy- 
 ant life of the present, a ghostly asceticism which 
 finds for itself a home under the cowl and in the 
 cloister. The history of the last fifty years has 
 brought about the conviction that personal godliness 
 may. feel perfectly at home in all the legitimate man- 
 ifestations of human life. All the normal activities 
 of man's being may be naturally adjusted to the 
 largest and richest Christian experiences. He may 
 partake of the labors and drink deep of the pleasures 
 of life without being contaminated with the world's 
 alloy. There is no necessity for a divorce of things 
 secular and sacred. 
 
 7. From the independent development of secular 
 affairs which has so extensively prevailed in both 
 Europe and America in the last hundred years, 
 Romanism has simply withdrawn itself to stand back 
 on its ancient prerogatives, manifesting very clearly 
 a conscious dread of all progression, except where it 
 is placed under the surveillance of churchly official- 
 ism. Popery fears liberty or any individual move; 
 and its aim is to crush every independent force whose 
 tendency is to let in the universal light of truth. The 
 private activities which have been awakened by com- 
 mercial enterprise and other influences in the last 
 three centuries have given Romanism great anxieties 
 and much trouble with some of its populations. The 
 light of the new illumination under which the world 
 is now moving has made it envious and hesitating 
 to gather its forces for a life and death struggle. 
 
144 Romanism. 
 
 If the right of life, the right of freedom, and popu- 
 lar government, three principles which underlie mod- 
 ern civilization, shall stand secure, I do not see how 
 Romanism can stand unless it shifts its tactics. If 
 the genius of our institutions is to live, it will finally 
 put an end to all dictatorship, and to all influences 
 which propose to sway the religious destiny of the 
 race by other than legitimate agencies. The owl and 
 the night-hawk may enjoy the twilight, but they must 
 hide themselves from the noonday splendors. The 
 masses of our people are no longer the grub of papal 
 darkness. In the face of the fact, the death of the 
 hierarchy seems imminent. As long as belief in the 
 Immaculate Conception is entertained, as long as a 
 market can be found for silly tales and miracles, the 
 scepter of St. Peter can be kept from falling. These 
 dangerous methods, however, are sure to lose their 
 efficiency in the presence of a free press and a free 
 pulpit. The later plans of the papal authorities are 
 nearly all political, and its methods are from policy. 
 The proclamation of the infallibility dogma was a 
 movement of desperation. It was an attempt to cork 
 and keep above the waves a sinking ship. The old 
 structure, with its freightage of souls, is yet afloat; 
 but it is not safe, it needs a new bottom. 
 
 The present attitude of the Roman Church has an 
 immediate connection with the world's future welfare, 
 and the coming issues of Christianity. Such a con- 
 nection, too, as well might awaken some public alarm. 
 If Papal authority should ever gain a supremacy in 
 the earth, it is very clear that Christian civilization, 
 as it is ordinarily understood, would perish forever. 
 
Rome's Learning. 145 
 
 The Hierarchy is condemned in its history. When 
 this seductive and magnificent scheme is viewed in 
 the passionless logic of events, when we see it as it 
 has passed through the slow and solemn ordeal of 
 centuries, we know that its claims are unreal, that 
 its promises have never been fulfilled. It has failed 
 in its boasted training of the masses. Instead of 
 educating, it crushes the faculties. Its fruit among 
 the nations has been anarchy and the most galling 
 despotism. 
 
 We do not charge Rome with illiteracy. Her 
 priesthood is intelligent, shrewd, and learned. Only 
 the hordes below it are ignorant and blindly serv- 
 ile. Her privileged classes are cultured in all the 
 arts of eloquence and rhetoric. They have explored 
 the avenues of wisdom and discovered her richest 
 treasures. Grant the first principles of their system, 
 and they lie intrenched behind an invulnerable logic. 
 As a class, they are men of matchless diplomacy. 
 They are able to touch the springs of human action. 
 They are able to look in on the human heart, and 
 read its divinest throbbings, and offer a lure for all its 
 desires. They can attract the wise and woo the cred- 
 ulous. They are pre-eminently fitted to sway a peo- 
 ple w r ho have been born and nurtured under their 
 politic instructions. Not only this, but they are able 
 to bring to bear on the yielding social life of Amer- 
 ica a great many skilled, practical appliances. In 
 this hot and hurried life of ours, in this ambition of 
 lust and greed, in this rush and glare of pleasure, in 
 all the anxieties of trade, they have a specious balm 
 for every wound. 
 
 13 
 
146 Romanism. 
 
 Romish Claims to Unity. — Romanism has always 
 claimed to be at peace with itself. Is this true? The 
 history of the Vatican Council reveals the fact that 
 this boasted unity exists only in opinion and name. 
 The notable quiet within its borders finds an expla- 
 nation either in a dread of Papal fulminations or in a 
 sacrifice of personal principle and the dearest rights 
 of independent thinking. Through the whole session 
 of the council there was a strong minority opposed 
 to the infallibility dogma. From this minority came 
 a petition against it, signed by many of the strongest 
 names of the Church. Among them was the present 
 Archbishop of Baltimore; Kenrick, of St. Louis; 
 Purcell, of Cincinnati ; and the present Cardinal of the 
 United States. The silent submission of such minds 
 has given the Church uniformity. They have united 
 in an error, and by their agreement have made it 
 lasting. That which these men did not believe, in 
 the honesty of their own convictions, has become a 
 damnable heresy to disbelieve. They now give recog- 
 nition and countenance to this error as it goes out 
 with its eternal consequences. They are now the 
 avowed and sworn advocates of a doctrine which, 
 before it was lobbied through the assembly, they 
 believed to be spurious. 
 
 Romish unity only appears in the shape of a vast 
 and lifeless uniformity. To enjoy the spirit of unity in 
 its borders, it will be required to pass through nearly 
 the same phases of history through which Protestant- 
 ism has passed in the last three hundred years. And 
 yet there is so little hope of reformation in a Church 
 whose head claims to be the infallible vicegerent of the 
 
Rome's Relation to Unbelief. 147 
 
 Almighty, himself. A close study and application of 
 the history of the Reformation would doubtless help 
 purify Romanism, and lead it toward the evangelical 
 ideal, toward a unity which must come of necessity 
 from a higher type of Christian character. Providence 
 has built light-houses on the hidden rocks of Latin 
 Church history for Protestant Christianity ; so in its 
 turn it might give back advantageous impulses ; for, 
 with all its rivalries and sectarian bitterness, it is 
 much nearer the conception of the Savior's prayer 
 for unity. 
 
 Romanism and Modern Unbelief. — The hierarchy 
 arrogates to itself a prime hatred for skeptical 
 thought. Its fulminations have been hurled against 
 the unnatural forces of religious history, with a zeal 
 worthy a power which had not been goading them to 
 their present position and influence by its own dark 
 history. There is nothing more patent to the ob- 
 server of events than the antithesis to Christian 
 thought, which consists, greatly, in a spirit of revul- 
 sion against the errors and superstitions, either be- 
 longing or immediately related to the Church in its 
 darker days. A good definition of German Ration- 
 alism would be, A supra-radical revolt of the under- 
 standing against the unwarranted supernaturalism of 
 mediaeval Church history. German education pro- 
 voked a spirit of inquiry, and called out the broadest 
 and freest observation. As soon as her brilliant 
 minds began to look back from the vantage-ground 
 of centuries, from the rise of monasticism, Romanism 
 appeared to them like a vast and masterful infatuation ! 
 
148 Romanism. 
 
 and, from Luther's time down, it was soon regarded 
 as little else than a splendid and imposing fallacy. 
 Behind a great drama of human folly, they were 
 unable to see a life which should not be strange to 
 any of us. 
 
 It is very easy for men with natural inclinations 
 against the strictures of a holy life to look on this 
 picture, with its sad consequences, and then turn 
 away from all the rightful obligations imposed by the 
 Christian system. If the Reformation had not thrown 
 a brilliant and splendid light in the face of these re- 
 pudiators of Church history, they would deserve no 
 great rebuke. They might be called the intellectual 
 troubadours of the modern age. The close attach- 
 ment which vital Christianity held to Roman Cathol- 
 icism in feudal times has been adverse to its claims 
 on all who have not been able to distinguish between 
 the true Church of Christ and its monstrous corrup- 
 tions. If the Papacy had repudiated any of its black 
 and shameful history, Christian apology, in the face 
 of unbelief, might appear with more convincing argu- 
 ment. That it has not done this may be abundantly 
 shown. 
 
 In the fourth chapter of Decrees may be found 
 the following: 
 
 "Neque enim fidei doctrina, quam Deus revelavit, 
 velut philosophicum inventum proposita est humanis 
 ingeniis proficienda, sed tanquam divinum depositum 
 Christi Sponsse tradita, fideliter custodienda et infal- 
 libiliter declaranda. Hinc sacrorum quoque dogma- 
 turn is sensus perpetuo est retinendus, quern semel 
 declaravit sancta mater Ecclesia, nee unquam ab eo 
 
Dogmatic Decrees. 149 
 
 sensu, altioris intelligentiae specie et nomine, rece- 
 dendum. Crescat igitur et multum vehementerque 
 proficiat, tarn singulorum, quam omnium, tarn unius 
 hominis, quam totius Ecclesiae, aetatem ac sseculorum 
 gradibus, intelligentia, scientia, sapientia; sed in suo 
 dumtaxat genere, in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem 
 sensu, eademque sententia. " 
 
 4 'For the doctrine of faith which God hath re- 
 vealed has not been proposed, like a philosophical 
 invention, to be perfected by human ingenuity, but 
 has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse 
 of Christ, to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. 
 Hence, also, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is 
 perpetually to be retained which our holy mother, 
 the Church, has once declared; nor is that meaning 
 ever to be departed from, under the pretense or pre- 
 text of a deeper comprehension of them. Let, 
 then, the intelligence, science, and wisdom of each 
 and all, of individuals and of the whole Church, in 
 all ages and all times, increase and flourish in abun- 
 dance and vigor ; but simply in its own proper kind, 
 that is to say, in one and the same doctrine, one and 
 the same sense, one and the same judgment." 
 
 This commits Rome to her whole history, and is 
 offered in confirmation of her most perverse and rad- 
 ically erroneous Scripture interpretations, * such as 
 would knock the underpinning from all science. 
 
 In the same decree, with a show of. tolerance in 
 the free use of scientific facts and principles, it is 
 understood that the Church is to hold over them the 
 infallible "thus far, and no farther." "Sed justam 
 hanc libertatem agnoscens, id sedulo caveat, ne divinae 
 
150 Romanism. 
 
 doctrinae repugnando errores in se suscipiant, aut 
 fines proprios transgressae, ea, quae sunt fidei, occu- 
 pent et purburbent;" "but, while recognizing this 
 just liberty, it stands watchfully on guard, lest sci- 
 ences, setting themselves against the divine teaching, 
 or transgressing their own limits, should invade and 
 disturb the domain of faith." If facts conflict with 
 Church tradition, so much the worse for the facts. 
 Conclusions of science, which present any antagonism 
 to this tradition, are not offered the respect of even 
 a reasonable refutation, but are unconditionally con- 
 demned without investigation. 
 
 This position in the Papal Church caused the 
 first break between religion and science. The friend- 
 ship was broken as soon as scientific research had 
 enough self-respect to repel Rome's infallible dictum. 
 
 The very status of Romanism to-day involves 
 skepticism. As a matter of faith, the masses of the 
 Church have no personal knowledge of the Bible. 
 As a matter of faith, the teachings of the priesthood 
 are accepted without question. There is no doctrine 
 held by the laity of that Church that is not held with 
 the understanding that it is to be believed simply 
 because the Pope gives it his sanction. 
 
 The common tide of Papal thought is simply 
 passive, like the waters of a great river. The teach- 
 ings of this monarch Church are not given because 
 of any inherent evidences of their truth, or because 
 there is an indubitable basis of resting either in 
 nature or revelation, for the mind of the receiver, 
 but simply through the will of the Pope. It takes 
 away all interest in the fact that truth may be known 
 
Political Designs. 151 
 
 in the common mind because of itself. If there be 
 such a thing as universal skepticism, this opens the 
 door-way. Thousands of restless and powerful spirits 
 of the present time consider themselves simply eman- 
 cipated from a great negation when they have repu- 
 diated the obligations of Romanism; and from this 
 step there is an easy descent to the abrogation of all 
 bonds, whether of sympathy or thought, with the 
 Christian system. The priest a juggler, and his pro- 
 fessed religion a fable, are stepping-stones to infidelity 
 already worn by the passing of thousands of sad souls 
 in search of truth. The condition of European soci- 
 ety is proof of this fact. Take out the Protestant 
 element, wherein a living faith mostly rests on a per- 
 sonal examination of the Word, and two classes will 
 comprise nearly the entire population: the adherents 
 of Rome and intelligent rationalistic infidels. 
 
 Political Ambitions — The guardians of American 
 liberty have due cause to keep a vigilant eye on the 
 powerful presence of Romanism. The Pope is yet 
 demanding the right to determine for himself the 
 sphere and province of his own activities; and the 
 whole Roman world, by the Vatican Council, has 
 been irrevocably pledged to support his decisions. 
 Suppose there be no present fears of this claim ; sup- 
 pose it is never granted under present surroundings. 
 It can yet be made the basis of the remotest political 
 purposes. There is evidently great hope in the Papal 
 Church of supremacy by secular diplomacy. Every 
 movement of the secret controllers of Roman Catholic 
 policy in the last twenty-five years has only set in 
 
152 Romanism. 
 
 letters of clearer light the hopes of re-establishing, if 
 even by physical force, the terrestrial scepter of St. 
 Peter. Their vain struggle with Germany, and their 
 stubborn yielding to all the States of Europe which 
 have attempted the assertion of any independent 
 civil rights, are intimations that they intend to cling 
 to the old thread-bare dogma of civil subordination 
 to the ecclesiastical. Else why contend in all these 
 desperate cases of later history. There is certainly 
 no hope of success for the present. 
 
 And yet this arrogance implies a conscious power. 
 The Papal authorities seem to be acting on the plan 
 that, if they should fail to gain their ends in a thou- 
 sand successive struggles, they intend to persevere in 
 the same vindictive assertion of rights, and in the 
 same stern contention for a necessary doctrine. Then, 
 if ever the way opens out, if ever the road to civil do- 
 minion becomes barely passable, the greatest author- 
 ity which may be assumed at such a time will be 
 entirely consistent with their history, and they can, 
 then, with a show of reason, maintain that the world 
 ought not complain. Rome's present status and be- 
 lief has prepared the world to accept the utmost 
 limits of its claims without astonishment, if it is ever 
 able to execute them. It is waiting, now, Micawber- 
 like, for new developments to bring their advantages, 
 for the civil and social changes of history to open out 
 ways and opportunities. It is, evidently, now aiming 
 at every balance of power, wedging into every breach, 
 patiently waiting with almost unbounded faith in the 
 future. The reconquering of Germany, the capture 
 of America, the reclaiming of Greek Christianity, the 
 
A Fearful Problem. 153 
 
 planting of the cross over the crescent of Mohammed, 
 the scepter of St. Peter over China, the submission 
 of South America, the downfall of all institutions 
 which are in any way opposing forces. Aye ! in this 
 faith is the full hiding of its power. 
 
 While making use of outward circumstances as 
 they appear, one after another, it is marshaling its 
 hosts, closing- up its ranks, preparing for an emer- 
 gency, though it knows not what that emergency will 
 be; having in remembrance that the heritage of pow T er 
 which it gathered to itself out of the womb of the 
 dark ages it is yet able to wield with almost a moral 
 omnipotence. This is more significant in connection 
 with the last bold act to deepen and drive home the 
 doctrine of unconditional submission to the will of 
 the Pope. It brings into view the possibilities of a 
 most fearful spiritual despotism. It is the measure 
 of a political force ready to be exerted at the oppor- 
 tune time to gratify an ambition as insatiable as the 
 grave. What else can it signify ? A problem is here 
 presented to American statesmanship, fraught at once 
 with great interest and great danger; for, as sure as 
 the sun shines, the open policy of Romanism is in 
 direct antagonism with American institutions and 
 American Church-life. It has never permitted liberty 
 to live for an hour where it could destroy it. It has 
 taken the side of despotism in all the revolutions of 
 Europe. The spirit of carnage, of anarchy and old 
 night, still hangs to its garments as when it shed the 
 blood of the reformative fathers. 
 
 The spiritual potencies of Romanism in civilized 
 Europe and America can never hope, by honest 
 
154 Romanism. 
 
 evangelism, to become comparatively more powerful 
 than at present. The irreligious element of the popu- 
 lation of the United States, particularly, is greatly 
 under the evangelical agencies of Protestantism. The 
 Papacy evinces no great concern about its spiritual 
 power lately. It has stepped down from a domain 
 of enduring power, and has become involved in poli- 
 tical strife, and brought upon itself the ill will of 
 nearly all civil governments. The priesthood has cast 
 the ultimatum of Papal supremacy in the uncertain 
 scale of human prowess. Our danger is not in its 
 religious teachings, but in the fact that these teach- 
 ings are made the stepping-stones of secular aggran- 
 dizement. 
 
 One of the bishops, lately writing to the Pope, 
 says: "Within twenty years this Protestant heresy 
 will come to an end. If we can secure the West and 
 the South, we can take care of New England. All 
 that is needed is money and priests to subjugate the 
 mock liberties of America. " The West! That means 
 the valley of the Mississippi. The region of country 
 from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, and 
 from the lake States almost to the gulf. The world's 
 garden, containing greater resources of wealth and 
 power than any other equal territory on earth. In- 
 habited by a people who are inspired with the her- 
 aldry of the plowshare, who love free thought and 
 liberty better than they love their lives, who only 
 need to become alive to the policies of a foe to put 
 an end to its designs forever. 
 
 The South! Many priests, with resources, have 
 gone to take possession of the black race. If Rome 
 
Church and State. 155 
 
 succeeds in her Southern policy, if the coveted prize 
 is ever gained, she will sway the destinies of this na- 
 tion. God pity us, and save us from our lethargy, 
 if we ever let this thing come to pass. Though a 
 remote and needless possibility, it will surely be fol- 
 lowed , by the downfall of our civilization, by the 
 burial of all freedom and all intelligence. We shall 
 be ruled by a religious absolutism powerless to save, 
 but mighty to drag us to the deepest degradation, 
 to the skepticism of despair. We shall find a Church 
 recognizing no relation to the state but that of sub- 
 jection on the part of the latter. A government 
 under ecclesiastical control is powerless to remold 
 life and society. The secular arm was never inter- 
 posed for spiritual support without being enervated, 
 and without degrading Christianity in the eyes of the 
 reasonable world. Rome has never committed her- 
 self to any legitimate channel of Christian labor, has 
 never agreed to keep her hands off the helm of state. 
 
 An excerpt from the Catholic World, of 1870, 
 shows plainly her theory of government : ' ' The 
 Church does not and can not in any degree favor 
 liberty, in the Protestant sense of liberty. 
 While the state has rights, she has them only in 
 virtue and by permission of the superior authority, 
 and that authority can only be represented through 
 the Church." 
 
 Now, then, let us be reasonable in our hopes and 
 our fears; neither idle in our self-confidence, nor 
 frightened over sporadic and abnormal phenomena 
 which do not affect the great laws of opinion and 
 progress. Romanism is likely to be defeated in its 
 
156 Romanism. 
 
 most insidious and matured plans. An imperial race 
 of freemen is organizing its intellect and religious 
 thought, and concentrating it in public life. 
 
 There are, now, a great many evidences of sta- 
 bility. We are fast approaching a great brotherhood 
 of interests, which is precipitating upon the Churches 
 the arduous work of unifying this great people, and 
 of keeping the altar-fires of pure and undefiled relig- 
 ion burning, like vigils, until the night is over. 
 
 At the same time, let us keep our eyes open 
 enough to see that a want of diligence in the Prot- 
 estant world will bring disaster and defeat. In these 
 times, it is not safe for Protestantism to trust to the 
 impetus it has gained, or to its recuperative force. 
 It is not safe to smile down or browbeat a threaten- 
 ing evil; but rather, in Christian love, to struggle 
 against it with heart and hand; exaggerating no evil, 
 preaching no despair, showing no ill-will, proclaiming 
 no persecution. Keeping on the safe side, rather, 
 becoming wise as serpents. 
 
Chapter VL 
 
 THE UNSOLVED RELIGIOUS PROBLEM. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY has been allied to the civil 
 authority almost from its inception. The organic 
 connection of the civil and the religious, with a few 
 exceptions, has been the invariable rule since the 
 third century. This state of things found its origin, 
 doubtless, in the old Jewish Theocracy. If, in the 
 only government over which the Almighty exercised 
 immediate and personal supervision, the civil and 
 the ecclesiastical codes were not only combined, but 
 made one for a final purpose, why should not the 
 nearest approximate to this caste of government be 
 most pleasing to God, and bring with it the greatest 
 wealth of human happiness. 
 
 This view is very plausible until a few distinctions 
 are made : 
 
 1. The Hebrew government, as an institution, was 
 not in the natural order of events. 
 
 2. It was not established for an ordinary purpose 
 and object. 
 
 3. The Jewish economy was a special interposi- 
 sition, intended to bring about such of the divine 
 plans as would probably fail if left to the operation 
 of free and contingent causes. 
 
 i57 
 
158 Unsolved Religious Problem. 
 
 4. The fundamental principle of the Jewish con- 
 stitution was purity of worship ; and only because 
 Jehovah was King, and in no danger of error, was it 
 guarded by penal statutes, 
 
 5. It was a divinely organized and divinely pros- 
 ecuted code; and has never been offered in the 
 revealed Word as the type or ideal of government 
 having ordinary ends in view. The Christian world 
 is in no way bound by its forms and its penal and 
 ecclesiastical relations. 
 
 Since the Christian era, there have been three 
 distinct phases in the history of the relations of 
 Church and state, in which the mind of the world 
 has been alternating. It is well known that there 
 was no organic connection in the apostolic age. For 
 nearly three hundred years state authority was the 
 implacable opposer of the growth of Christian prin- 
 ciples. There was a predisposition against religion, 
 strong enough to invoke the subduing force of em- 
 pires. The early disciples had no authority but that 
 of the lowly Nazarene, no civil power to protect, not 
 even civil justice to shield them. The Church came 
 down from heaven a stranger, with both opinion and 
 authority against it. That grand commission, " Go 
 ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every 
 creature," had certainly been of no avail unless he 
 had taught them the primary lesson, "The kingdom 
 of God is within you." You are poor and unlearned 
 and powerless, but the germ of a divine conquest is 
 among you. Rome will not relax its persecutions. 
 The wedded influences of idolatry and state authority 
 will struggle against you until they are converted. 
 
Growth of Romish Doctrines. 159 
 
 This impalpable force with which I have endowed 
 you, and all whom I shall commission to preach, 
 will sooner or later awe the world into the courtesy 
 of a recognition. The success of the CJmrcJi in the 
 first ages was due to the devout lives of the early 
 Christians. Godliness, deep seated in the heart of 
 every follower, gave the Church its triumph. It 
 ushered in what is known as the great age of evan- 
 gelical Christianity, which lived and gained a victory 
 because of a great conviction of its truth, and of its 
 ability as an agency to mitigate and destroy the woes 
 of humanity. 
 
 In course of time the Church saw darker days. 
 Human ambition transformed a successful and com- 
 paratively pure Church into the perversions and 
 falsehoods of a religious oligarchy. Sagacious and 
 unscrupulous men placed themselves in high ecclesi- 
 astical authority. Then it began to be. claimed for 
 the infallible keys of St. Peter, that they might un- 
 lock, for the kingdoms, the blessings they had sought 
 in vain for ages, By the slow magic of deception, 
 bishops were at last transmuted into the vicegerents 
 of God, and all things were declared subject to their 
 imperial diction. Local statutes, state laws, petty 
 kingdoms, empires, — all were made obedient serv- 
 ants of the Church in her plans and purposes. This 
 is the second phase which the relation of Church 
 and state took upon itself in history, an idea which 
 swayed the whole Christian world for a thousand 
 years. So deep a hold did it find in human opinion 
 that Rome, as late as 1852, felt safe in placing the 
 following in the infallible syllabus of errors: "Ecclesia 
 
160 Unsolved Religious Problem. 
 
 a statu, statusque ab Ecclesia sejungendus est;" "the 
 Church should be separated from the state, and the 
 state from the Church." 
 
 To the Romish notion of the ecclesiastico-political 
 problem may be charged much of the corruption of 
 the ancient Church, and the final weakness of the 
 Latin people, and the superstition and savage life 
 which followed, crushing out all existing civilizations. 
 It must answer, also, for that indifference which 
 allowed the rites of paganism to be transferred to 
 Christianity, which allowed the Bible to be hid from 
 the commonalty, which placed the gloomy monk in 
 his cell, rather than the zealous evangelist among 
 the people. 
 
 The hand of God was reaching out of heaven to 
 help the nations, when Luther took that old Bible 
 which was chained to his cloister wall, and taught its 
 contents to the people. From the valleys of Pied- 
 mont came an answering shout. The dayspring 
 from on high was heralded abroad, and it came, 
 welcome as the sun upon a Greenland night. A 
 reinvigorated life spread like flame in dry stubble. 
 The slumbering religious fires of four hundred years 
 were rekindled in the blowing of a heavenly atmos- 
 phere, and Christianity was about to be enrobed in a 
 vesture of gold. 
 
 In the beginning of the Reformation, the rights 
 of individual conscience were presented in strong 
 opposition to the hierarchy. Individual right was 
 magnified in all the tendencies of reformative thought. 
 This could not help but powerfully aim at the over- 
 throw of the ancient order of things, which never 
 
A New Order of Things. 161 
 
 took the individual man into question. An entire 
 disregard of personal right was the supremacy from 
 which the old spirit overshadowed and dwarfed soci- 
 ety. Luther's work was a private enterprise, and 
 the occasion from which the evangelical spirit of 
 religion gave promise of clear sailing by drifting be- 
 yond all breakers. But after the new movement had 
 gone on for a time, apparently free from all extrane- 
 ous forces, impressing its own inherent life on soci- 
 ety ; after Luther had accomplished his w 7 ork and 
 gone to the grave, — so severe was the struggle with 
 Popery, it seemed almost a necessity that Protestant 
 princes should take the Reformed Churches under 
 the protection of the state for security. Thus, in 
 the readjustment and resettling of opinion, the 
 organic relation of Church and state still remained; 
 yet it assumed a new form. As an outgrowth of 
 the Reformation, civil government was recognized as 
 the patroness of religion. One great duty of the 
 state was supposed to be the protection and advance- 
 ment of the Church. To take all religious interests 
 under its special control, to foster and provide for 
 the maintenance of the Church by special legislation, 
 was supposed to be the ideal of state loyalty to God. 
 A transfer of allegiance was made from the Pope to 
 the king. This theory, at present, is practically car- 
 ried out over nearly all Protestant Europe — present- 
 ing the third phase which the question of Church 
 and state has taken upon itself. 
 
 In America we have returned to the primitive 
 order of things. Church and state, in this country, 
 hold the same relation they did in Paul's time and 
 
 14 
 
162 Unsolved Religious Problem. 
 
 for two hundred years afterward, the ancient hostility 
 of state authority excepted. The Church, having to 
 do with spiritual things, has free course in all that 
 pertains to the kingdom of heaven; the state, having 
 to do with temporal things, as an inherent right, con- 
 trols all the functions that properly belong to civil 
 government. There is no conflict, no collision, no 
 antagonism. The boundaries of the civil and the 
 ecclesiastical powers are well defined; and are satis- 
 factory, in that we have been strangers to a thousand 
 perplexities to which Europe has been exposed in 
 the last century. 
 
 In the formative period of American history, the 
 transatlantic world was pervaded with the idea that 
 to take away the legalized connection between the 
 civil and the ecclesiastical powers would be little less 
 than blasphemy. Immigrants to this country inher- 
 ited mostly these prevailing notions. Consequently, 
 they were only ready to perpetuate the same order 
 of things on these shores. 
 
 While the Puritans were in search of religious 
 freedom, it could not be expected that they should 
 be free from all the intolerance and narrowness of 
 the age in which they lived. They knew of no other 
 way of supporting religion except from the public 
 treasury. They had very crude notions of what has 
 since been the inspiring ideal of our civilization. 
 
 The Jamestown colony was planted under the 
 conviction that the highest function of the English 
 government was to propagate the Gospel. A state 
 Church, according to the usages of the Church of 
 England, was established. The colonists knew nothing 
 
Effects of the Revolution. 163 
 
 else. Dissenters were obligated to help support the 
 establishment. Episcopal clergymen were the only 
 authorized ministers. Puritans and Quakers were 
 banished under penalty. There was no limit to the 
 authority of civil rulers either to foster or advance 
 special religious interests. A positive sanction was 
 given to the Bible as the revealed Word of God by 
 most, if not all, the American colonies. Thus the 
 debris of European thought drifted across the Atlantic, 
 and threatened to ingrain itself more deeply in colo- 
 nial opinion than were the ideas of dependence and 
 subjection to the mother country. 
 
 The Revolution, fortunately, accomplished more 
 than our independence. It gave freedom from the 
 religious agencies of Europe. It produced a strong 
 opposition to the English aristocracy, and to all 
 methods, religious or civil, which would likely pro- 
 duce such a privileged class in this country. It was 
 not simply a coincidence that opposition to the 
 organic relation of Church and state began with the 
 declaration of July. A providential blessing was 
 wrought here, second only to our liberties. The 
 direction in which the tide of feeling was flowing 
 became evident from the time the declaration was 
 issued. In the following November, Maryland made 
 a declaration of rights, intending to dissolve all civil 
 relation with the Church. In December a dissolution 
 was effected in Virginia. A separation was effected 
 soon after in the Carolinas, and several other colonies 
 where the Episcopal Church had been established. 
 Forty years afterward, the Episcopalians themselves ■ 
 united in a combination to overthrow the Congrega- 
 
164 ' Unsolved Religious Problem. 
 
 tional State Church of Connecticut. Other States in 
 succession adopted the voluntary system, and stepped 
 into the line of progress. Massachusetts at last cut 
 away the excrescence of state support which had 
 been hanging to her garments for so long, and we 
 are now in the apostolic succession. 
 
 There have been evils resulting from the policy 
 of the United States in religious matters. The evils 
 of sectarianism, of extreme division of labor, and such 
 as are incident to the starting of new Churches, per- 
 haps would not appear under the operation of Euro- 
 pean methods. Yet these unavoidable results have 
 often been turned to good account. The rivalry of 
 sects has had a tendency to keep Christian life pure. 
 The struggle of Churches in villages and towns and 
 pioneer regions has been favorable to the highest 
 development of Christian graces. At least there is 
 no desire to return to the state of things in our earlier 
 history. As our people become cultured they enjoy* 
 more and more the blessings which flow from the 
 boundless liberty of American Church-life, and they 
 see more clearly the evils either of ecclesiastical su- 
 premacy or immediate state support. It is a fact of 
 some importance that the attained result has been the 
 healthful outgrowth of Christian sentiment. It was 
 in no sense an "infidel or a skeptical movement. 
 Thomas Jefferson, as an enemy of Christianity, very 
 greatly aided the movement in Virginia, but he was 
 not the principal force in bringing the work to its 
 completion. American religious thought, casting 
 itself into political life, silently influencing and con- 
 trolling its spirit, has broken its own fetters, and has 
 
America's Mission. 165 
 
 given itself liberty and self-reliance. It has been the 
 mission of America to demonstrate that the highest 
 and purest type of religious life is consistent with the 
 highest and purest form of individual freedom. The 
 demonstration so clear and glorious is having a reflex 
 influence in transatlantic countries, and, sooner or 
 later, it may work a revolution. Many of the great- 
 est minds of Europe are now desiring an overthrow 
 of the old unnatural alliance. Germany is beating 
 back the romanistic phase, but is not yet settled as 
 to what is best. The eyes of the civilized world 
 are now watching the politico-ecclesiastical problem 
 through which she is passing. The result will be 
 important to the world, because with every modifica- 
 tion simply of the old order of things new difficulties 
 appear, and no adjustment has yet given satisfaction. 
 
 Extreme Views. — A political recognition of the 
 Christian religion in this country is of no great impor- 
 tance. It may not be advisable that Christianity, as dis- 
 tinguished from other systems, should be made the law 
 of the land. As good a plan as any is to keep in mind 
 the principles upon which we have acted in the past : 
 
 1. There are some things which must obtain in 
 every society, which are not proper for the govern- 
 ment to handle. 
 
 2. There are things with which the Church, as 
 such, can not rightfully have any thing to do ; not only 
 because experience has shown the sad consequences 
 of every violation, but because Christ has made it so 
 in his teachings, ''Give unto Caesar that which is 
 Caesar's." 
 
1 66 Unsolved Religious Problem. 
 
 Now, because there are separate and widely di- 
 verging channels of labor for the world's religious and 
 political potencies, is there any necessity, or is it 
 even possible, to sever all natural connection between 
 them? Because it was not designed they should 
 both live in the same establishment and under the 
 same roof, is no reason why they should not live side 
 by side on terms of intimacy and friendship. There 
 is a factor of American thought opposed to Sunday 
 laws, and chaplaincies in legislative halls and in the 
 army, and to the Bible in the public-schools. The 
 basis of the opposition is, we have proclaimed relig- 
 ious freedom; we have concluded to legislate neither 
 for or against or patronize any religious sect or party. 
 It is very true that Christianity, as an influence, has 
 placed its signet on many of our customs and our 
 legal and political proceedings. This state of things 
 is to be expected in a country whose thought and 
 sentiment is so decidedly Christian. Many deeply 
 religious men have occupied high places at the hands 
 of the people. The silent potencies of religion in 
 political life have lifted some of the brightest lights 
 of the Gospel into seats of authority, and very natu- 
 rally our laws and public practices would partake of 
 the Christian spirit. At the same time, it is almost 
 universally conceded that, whatever is taken from 
 the Bible and grafted into our civil code, does not 
 find its reason or authority in the fact that the Bible 
 is the Word of God, but on the basis of its moral 
 right and its natural utility to carry forward the pur. 
 poses of the social compact. Christian practices which 
 find their support from the civil arm, base their right 
 
Extreme Views. 167 
 
 of existence and enforcement on natural and not re- 
 vealed principles. The observance of the Sabbath is 
 a requirement of the civil law, because it has been 
 found best for man and beast that they should have 
 one day of rest in seven. The same day set apart by 
 the Christian people of the country is designated by 
 statute, I suppose, because it brings about a favor- 
 able coincidence, and enables the state to make use 
 of the moral influences of the Church to put into 
 operation what it considers an economic principle. 
 
 As to chaplaincies, the very spirit of devotion 
 entered into in the beginning of a public work, pre- 
 supposes a state of mind and heart the most favorable 
 and the most eminently adapted to the transaction 
 of the important and serious concerns of state. Our 
 chaplaincies are justifiable on legal and philosophical 
 principles. As to the Bible in the schools, the state 
 is under obligation to give that sort of culture and 
 training to its children which will produce the best 
 citizenship. A man is not apt to make a good citi- 
 zen if deprived of moral teaching in childhood. It is 
 the duty of the state, as a matter of self-protection, 
 not only to banish ignorance, but to teach its children 
 those elements of truth and justice, right and wrong, 
 to which they are expected to give obedience in 
 taking on themselves the responsibilities of citizen- 
 ship. Among all text-books for this purpose, the 
 Bible has been found to be the best. There is no 
 other manual of duty so broad and plain. To object 
 to this because the Bible additionally claims to be 
 the revealed will of Jehovah, is to carry the argument 
 too far. Besides, if the civil power does not choose 
 
1 68 Unsolved Religious Problem. 
 
 to enforce the truth in the name of its revealed 
 authority, the inherent right of the truth itself re- 
 mains, with its abundant and overwhelming demands. 
 It is unfortunate for a certain class of reasoners that 
 any good at all is found in the Bible. Shall we blot 
 from the statutes all laws relating to larceny because 
 the divine command is, "Thou shalt not steal ?" 
 Shall we cease to legislate on the high crime of mur- 
 der because there is a command, "Thou shalt not 
 kill?" These are primary principles of the law, writ- 
 ten in the world's great Spring-time, while our systems 
 of jurisprudence were yet lying in the womb of his- 
 tory. They controlled men long before the hydra- 
 head of infidel stateism was ever lifted. The finest 
 legalists of the country tell us that the Roman law 
 and the English common law and our statutory laws 
 all find a sufficient basis in the system promulgated 
 by Moses. Whence all this enmity? Do men sup- 
 pose they can live in the blaze of modern civilization 
 and yet free themselves from the teachings and the 
 influence of the Bible? Its teachings are so inwoven 
 with our institutions and our literature that it lays at 
 the foundation of every right we possess, and every 
 solid pleasure of life. If a man desires to cast him- 
 self beyond the majestic sweep of Bible thought, he 
 must reach the boundaries of civilization. If a man 
 would desire to deprive himself of the blessings which 
 the Bible brings him, he would tear down the house 
 in which he lives, he would remove from society the 
 great natural fountain of its laws, its moral necessities, 
 and its religious healings, and would turn the world 
 back on its hinges for a thousand years. The Bible 
 
Intimacy of the Civil and Religious. 169 
 
 is the granite support of American liberty. When 
 we have lost our reverence for it we have lost our 
 nation. Whoever hates it hates his own soul. 
 
 True Relation. — The growth of Church and state 
 in this country has been proportionate each to the 
 other. Charges and synods and conferences have 
 multiplied, and new States have been added to the 
 Union. While each has been attending to its own 
 affairs and advancing in its own way, undisturbed by 
 the encroachments of the other, there has been such 
 a near relationship, such a mutual dependence, that 
 every commotion or disturbance of the one has cor- 
 respondingly influenced the other. With different 
 spheres of operation and duty they have a common 
 mission and the same final purpose. The ecclesias- 
 tical and civil forces of the United States are comple- 
 ments each of the other. It has taken them both to 
 make us what we are. From their mutual depend- 
 ence has come our prosperity. At the same time, 
 men are not affected in their civil relations by their 
 religious views. Religion is neither fettered nor en- 
 dowed. With all the inducements of false zeal in 
 religion, there are none in the direction of asking 
 that it shall be upheld or propagated by the civil law 
 of the land in the name of its sole practical utility. 
 The American Church has undertaken to supply what 
 it once seemed to lack by taking the lead in all social 
 and humane enterprises, by evincing a deep concern 
 for the poor and downtrodden, lifting them up in 
 their humanity rather than leaving them to the feeble 
 
 helps and benevolences of the state. It has claimed 
 
 15 
 
170 Unsolved Religious Problem. 
 
 the respect and veneration of mankind in the private 
 and peaceful victories of the cross, and in the full 
 proof that it is the world's benefactor. It has 
 become the open and avowed enemy of all tyranny, 
 all slavery, and all wrong; the shield of liberty, of 
 freedom, and the fraternity of man. It has been 
 relying on moral and spiritual rather than on secular 
 and physical influences. It has shown itself able to 
 grapple with the intelligent activities of the age, and 
 has made them the conditions of success. It has been 
 able to plant almost every element of our prosperity 
 deep in the soil of religion. In order to see our social 
 corruptions fade from the face of the land, it has 
 sought to bring the sovereign people under the power 
 of the religion of Christ. It has acted on the prin- 
 ciple that, to give a man religion and intelligence, 
 the ballot is safe in his hands. Religion, propagated, 
 not by might or power or sword or authority, or 
 through worldly motives and prospects, or fraud and 
 craft, but by the silent and powerful influence of truth 
 itself, attested by the Holy Spirit. As it was in the 
 time of Christ and the apostles, the spirit-power of 
 Christianity, when relied on, has always given it a 
 superiority to survive earthly mutations and gain 
 victories over sin. . The cause is safe as long as there 
 is a reliance placed on the divine side above all that 
 is human. Our Lord and Savior never took any part 
 in politics. He proclaimed himself distinct from any 
 earthly ruler. He repudiates the use of force to ex- 
 tend his authority among men. He never made any 
 allusion to aid from the state. The Gospel was to 
 be preached to all people unconditionally. Neither 
 
State Authority. 171 
 
 the help nor the consent of civil rulers was taken into 
 account, but in the excellence of his life he taught 
 the world that the application of his system was 
 essential to all that was good or pure or exalted, as 
 the result of human energy. Religion can not be 
 made compulsory or enforced by all the legal statutes 
 under the sun. It is taught as a principle belonging 
 to the regions of the mind and heart and conscience, 
 and, as such, it was born free, and can not be coerced 
 or driven into terms. The policy of Philip with the 
 Moriscoes, and Charlemagne with the Saxons, might 
 produce extensive nominal results, but it would shake 
 a great many facts and overturn the firmest principles. 
 The authority of the state is limited strictly to 
 temporal affairs. Its work is to afford the same kind 
 of liberty to believers and unbelievers without dis- 
 tinction. Religious equality of citizenship is the only 
 available and practical theory in this country. The 
 end and aim of human government is to insure the 
 largest degree of liberty attainable by all. If any 
 religious sect or party is permitted to become a can- 
 didate for state favor, human government is fettered 
 in its endeavors. The highest liberty of the citizen 
 can be guaranteed without abating one jot or tittle of 
 the claim which God has upon a nation, and of its 
 responsibility to secure to the individual the utmost 
 freedom of conscience in religious affairs. The state 
 is not to offer and afford toleration simply, but relig- 
 ious freedom. It is the business of the state to pro- 
 tect every man in the measure of knowledge and 
 conviction to which he has attained, unless his notions 
 should conflict with the universal laws of morality. 
 
172 Unsolved Religious Problem. 
 
 External means, however, used to overthrow a spir- 
 itual power, have always shown themselves signally 
 impotent; and it is better, generally, to depend on 
 religious truth to break down religious falsehood. 
 This policy is that of the government toward Mor- 
 monism, and it is likely to be effectual. The Gospel 
 has found its highest triumph where investigation has 
 been unfettered, where thought has been free, and 
 where it has been permitted to depend on its own 
 divinely invested resources for success. Christianity, 
 in fact, lays the only true foundation for the highest 
 freedom. It advocates the brotherhood of man and 
 an equality of rights. It develops the highest type 
 of manhood. It ministers to the wants of the poor 
 and the distressed. It checks the ravages of ambition 
 by endowing the soul with the holiest motives. It 
 never despairs of lifting the great masses of earth from 
 the degradation into which they have fallen. The 
 religion of the Gospel is in perfect accord with what- 
 ever elevates or purifies or ennobles, and its sublimest 
 examples are to be found among the freest, most 
 civilized, and enlightened people of the globe. 
 
Chapter VII. 
 
 TEMPERANCE. 
 
 AS the organic Church of Christ is intimately 
 related to the morals of a people, wherever its 
 work has free course, it becomes, in a great measure, 
 responsible for the condition of society. The world 
 has come to regard the Church as a kind of physician, 
 invested with radical cures for the most enormous 
 social evils, and expects that it will at all times 
 throw its whole influence on the side of its own in- 
 spired teachings. Any plain question of right or 
 wrong involves its members in a responsibility to 
 accept and defend the better part. The ideal Church 
 is equal to all the exigencies of time; but the real 
 Church has often found itself powerless before the 
 tides of corruption coming up from the sea of human 
 life which it has undertaken to control. 
 
 There are always certain evils attending condi- 
 tions of culture which statesmen have designated as 
 evils of civilization. Monstrous corruptions have 
 often followed in the wake of science and art and 
 refinement. Intellectual development and material 
 progress, while they elevate, they open out facilities 
 for crime unknown to an age of barbarism. These 
 civilized evils are the most dangerous foes of the 
 human family. 
 
 i73 
 
174 Temperance. 
 
 Then, again, there are inherited vices following a 
 race from its first rude beginnings into the highest 
 path of its progress, refining with its refinement, and 
 settling down like a canker in its life. Intemperance 
 is a vice of this kind. It prevailed among our Anglo- 
 Saxon forefathers. There was a time when the ale- 
 houses among them were almost sacred. The grog- 
 gery is now known wherever the race is. The Medes 
 took advantage of this propensity more than two 
 thousand years ago, and gave them a defeat. From 
 the same cause, it is said, William of Normandy 
 gained the battle of Hastings. With this fact before 
 us, consider how great the reform. It is not the 
 part of true piety, however, to grow faint before the 
 immensity of the work. The reform has already 
 attained to national dimensions. The most serious 
 thought of the wise and considerate of the land is 
 being laid under tribute. 
 
 What shall be the influence of civil society in 
 enforcing temperance principles? How can individual 
 rights and the rights of property be secured, and, at 
 the same time, sustain moral truth? These questions 
 have been answered in the accepted principle that, 
 whatever may be the occasional loss to the individual, 
 society has a right to protect itself. Another ques- 
 tion has superseded these as of prime importance at 
 the present time. How shall society conserve its 
 influence, and present healthful features in the work 
 of moral reform ? The solution of this problem of 
 social ethics will demand the research of the maturest 
 wisdom. It has bewildered Christian statesmanship. 
 It can not be solved like a problem in mathematics 
 
Policy of the Church. 175 
 
 with a demonstrated result. Hence it is not strange 
 that a conflict of opinion should arise here, and 
 should give promise of becoming very serious in its 
 magnitude. Our whole people, however, are ear- 
 nestly deliberating, and we may trust them for a final 
 solution. In the mean time, the issue is of great mo- 
 ment to every lover of sobriety and virtue. The 
 best methods of reform are yet invested with uncer- 
 tainty. One thing, however, is certain, ready relief is 
 not permanent cure. While it is urgent, if possible, 
 to mitigate the immediate woes of intemperance, it 
 is not the part of true wisdom to suppose that the 
 fountain is thus sealed; it is not the part of true 
 faith to be content with such a momentary surcease 
 from its sorrows. 
 
 There is only one definite policy for the Church 
 of God in this, as in relation to all other social 
 evils. Proceed on the assumption that they come 
 up from adverse principles deeper than the evils 
 themselves ; that they all have an underlying basis in 
 a common race degeneracy. This will keep us to 
 the old way-marks, and help us to labor under the 
 inspiration that the world is to receive an infinite 
 purging before it is made pure. There are likely to 
 be dangerous issues in every moral reform movement. 
 A good many sordid and unscrupulous interests are 
 apt to gather around it. It is in danger of being 
 estimated as a political force, and of becoming a 
 factor in the calculations of the demagogue. Tem- 
 perance is purely a moral question. There is no 
 doubt concerning it. Universal morality recognizes it 
 as right in itself. For any set of men to declare in 
 
176 Temperance. 
 
 favor of inebriety, would be as radically wrong as to 
 declare in favor of theft and murder. Naturally, 
 temperance can have no political force except that 
 of an influence. There is danger and bad philosophy 
 in bringing moral questions into political life in any 
 other sense. Until truth is more deeply ingrained in 
 society, moral issues (issues in which evidence for 
 their right and existence is all on one side) should 
 never be hinged on the decisions of the ballot-box. 
 The ballot-box is only indirectly philanthropic. It is 
 not the immediate source of moral regeneration. It 
 is only the reflector, the mouth-piece of opinion. If 
 it had any higher authority, there would be less 
 danger in leaving to its decisions any question of 
 right or wrong. The ballot in the hands of the 
 people has given us great glory ; but it is not the 
 panacea for all ills. It has its appropriate sphere, 
 within which there is no more sacred right given to 
 man. A great many things can be accomplished by 
 the ballot — not every thing. The Gospel and human 
 experience teach the world the truth that society can 
 never be raised ab extra, can never legislate itself 
 into better morals. The civil law can never reform 
 society; it can only protect from the consequences 
 of sin. This is its object and aim. It holds in 
 check existing evils, until the proper influences can 
 be brought to bear for lifting society. Among these 
 influences, more than all others, is the religious ton- 
 ing of public virtue under the guidance of agencies 
 which Christianity alone inspires. The law meets 
 present exigencies ; it closes the hatches, keeps down 
 the fire — never puts it out. 
 
Danger of Separate Political Action. 177 
 
 Temperance should enter into the domains of 
 statesmanship, just as truth or liberty or justice en- 
 ters, and like them should be kept aloof from the 
 issues of the political campaign. Sad will be the 
 day when a party shall be found to espouse the neg- 
 ative, and make it an issue. A temperance party is 
 a moral monopolizer. It is about as foreign to the 
 political field as a Church members' party would be, 
 advocating a legislation to coerce men into its pales. 
 If a party should appear having Jesus and the resur- 
 rection for its central plank, and enter the lists for 
 official honors, men would stand aghast ! Yet it would 
 be but the violent phase of what the first is in tend- 
 ency. A moral virtue should never be brought into 
 favor through the success of partisanship, should 
 never be offered for the patronage of men, much 
 less their suffrage. To compromise truth in the 
 absolute is to send it begging, and rob it of its 
 potency. 
 
 The difficulty is not now greatest in the direction 
 of the law ; hence the conflict is not first in political 
 life. If the core of the fruit is rotten, it is but 
 child's play to pick the specks from the outside. 
 The harvest of human wishes seldom comes, except 
 as the result of adequate toil and sacrifice. Sin can 
 never be ultimately repressed by main force. Its 
 roots go deeper than the plowshare of human author- 
 ity. The law itself becomes corrupt before it reaches 
 the source of evil. We can not invent a machine to 
 do our work. The mighty task must be wrought 
 out through moral and religious influences. The 
 
178 Temperance. 
 
 burden must be borne by those who are never weary- 
 in well-doing. In the elevation of the race there is 
 no alchemy by which good, faithful souls can be 
 excused from the labor of love and the agony of 
 prayer. 
 
 Permanent reforms grow from within outward. 
 Society is never lifted momentarily from its thrall- 
 dom. The growth of better principles inheres from 
 constant and steady relations, which are slow, but 
 satisfactory. There is a kind of popular philan- 
 thropy abroad, which divests Christianity of specific 
 precepts. It comes with its heart full of virtue, 
 with the bounds of its affection extended and gen- 
 eralized for the common good. It becomes rapturous 
 over that definite and glorious object, man in the 
 abstract. ■ A beautiful theory ! A polished machine 
 of perpetual motion ! The only objection to it is, 
 it will not work. A reign of sobriety demands at 
 our hands the regal potencies of an individualizing 
 labor. God forbid that we should ever turn from it 
 to seek the hasty gilding of a momentary political 
 victory. 
 
 These late and easy ways of reforming society, 
 by the enactment of appropriate laws, are not very 
 satisfactory. They mistake effects for causes. The 
 wish could only be father to the thought that the 
 laws of a country primarily shape its opinions, 
 when directly the reverse is true. Generally, legis : 
 lation has kept pace with the progress of opinion in 
 this country ; and, as long as moral and Christian 
 convictions are voiced in the private ballot, the 
 
The Sovereign Remedy. 179 
 
 same state of things may be relied upon for the 
 future. Rather than have principles overturned, 
 and facts shaken, we can well forego a fleeting tri- 
 umph. Our first and greatest and lasting need is, 
 more faith in the power of Christianity to meet 
 every exigency in the social life of America. 
 
Chapter VIII. 
 
 PRIESTHOOD OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 IN the Jewish Temple worship there was an Outer 
 Court, for the Hebrew masses, a Holy Place, 
 where the priests only entered to offer the daily sac- 
 rifice, and then there was a Holy of Holies, where 
 the Ark of the Covenant rested, where the Shekinah 
 shone, and where Cherubim kept watch over thje 
 Mercy-seat. The veil of entrance to this holy place 
 was drawn aside once a year by the high-priest ; and 
 then only with the strictest observance, and with 
 trembling and awe, lest the dread majesty of Jehovah's 
 presence be insulted. The common people were never 
 permitted to enter the sacred inclosure. No unau- 
 thorized hand ever lifted the veil which hid from the 
 common eye the mysteries of the inner sanctuary. 
 But when Christ expired on the cross, the veil of the 
 Temple was rent in twain — a significant fact ! 
 
 As the coming of Christ put an end to the Jewish 
 economy; as he offered himself a sacrifice, once for 
 all, for the sins of the world; as he becomes to us, 
 in his mediatorial character, a priest and Savior, 
 thus requiring at our hands no human mediation,— 
 it is not a far-drawn inference that the torn Temple 
 
 veil should be the symbol of a world's free access to 
 1 80 
 
The Doctrine Stated. 181 
 
 a throne of grace. Christ, in his suffering and death 
 for the sins of men, besides making atonement for 
 sin, abolished the Levitical Order, took upon himself 
 the character and duties of high priest, and conferred 
 all subordinate work of the priestly office without 
 distinction upon the people at large. Hence we un- 
 derstand Peter when he says, "Ye, also, as lively 
 stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priest- 
 hood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God 
 by Jesus Christ." And, also, "Ye are a chosen 
 generation, a royal priesthood." In this connection 
 the ascription of St. John the Divine is likewise sig- 
 nificant: "Unto him that loved us and washed us 
 from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us 
 kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him 
 be glory and dominion forever and ever." Every 
 man his own priest, the builder of his own confes- 
 sional, is a true doctrine, because of the relation of 
 Christ to the individual. An intense individualism 
 pervaded the apostolic Church. 
 
 Salvation by faith and a priesthood of the people 
 were central thoughts in the Reformation. As soon 
 as Luther gave them a foothold the shackles of Popery 
 fell from an enslaved world. No minister is a priest 
 in any distinctive sense. There is no technical priest- 
 hood now. The Anglican family of Churches would 
 better deserve the name of Protestants if the reforma- 
 tion had been more thorough in their borders. A 
 ministering people, with Christ for a leader, is the 
 world's conquering force. All are called to live and 
 to work for God and his Church. In all the primitive 
 Churches outside of Syria, forms of Church govern- 
 
1 82 Priesthood of the People. 
 
 ment were only matters of expediency. They did 
 not hold themselves under obligation to the customs 
 of Jewish worship. Yet it is well known that every 
 pious Jew might teach. In the early Church all 
 capable believers might teach. Discipline belonged 
 to the people. The sacraments were not a monopoly. 
 The right of the laity to baptize was recognized. We 
 have St. Ambrose for authority that all taught, all 
 baptized. 
 
 But the time came when it was not right for all 
 to exercise their rights. As the apostolic Churches 
 grew in numbers and in influence, partial delegation 
 became necessary to orderly procedure. This partial 
 delegation did not renounce the inherent right. In 
 the divine economy it is just as necessary that things 
 be done decently and in order as that they be done 
 at all. It is here as in the social compact. The in- 
 dividual foregoes certain rights for the good of soci- 
 ety, and in return receives the blessings and protection 
 which society secures. Individual rights are held in 
 abeyance. In the Church, that which inheres in the 
 individual in the majority of cases is surrendered to 
 be exercised by the few, in order that the common 
 Church may not be torn by dissension or defeated in 
 its purposes by a confusion of elements. This is the 
 authority by which a holy Church may set apart a 
 holy ministry. The Spirit never violates this funda- 
 mental fact when He calls his workmen to the walls 
 of Zion. The people are not robbed of that with 
 which they were divinely invested. They are called 
 upon to make a voluntary dedication of authority, or, 
 in other words, to make a division of labor in view 
 
The Doctrine a Living Necessity. 183 
 
 of greater harmony and success. The setting apart 
 for a sacred work those whom the Spirit has desig- 
 nated is a moral obligation resting on every true 
 Church. On the other hand, this recognition of the 
 Cliurch ordinarily becomes a part of a true call to the 
 ministry. The only exceptions are where the great 
 laws of harmony will not be violated. 
 
 The modern error is in endowing the ministry 
 with an official sanctity, a kind of supernal sacred- 
 ness to which the laity has no right to aspire, when 
 there is no inherent ecclesiastical distinction whatever. 
 One great and blessed outgrowth of the Reformation 
 was the absolute parity of individual membership in 
 the Church. This implied the deliverance of the laity 
 from the enthralling rule of. the clergy. An unmeas- 
 ured advantage would speedily be gained if the broad- 
 est possible privileges should be granted to laymen 
 in the teaching of the Divine Word. 
 
 The regular ministry can not do the work neces- 
 sary to save this land from the flood-tides of immo- 
 rality and corruption sweeping over it. It has come 
 to pass that every ransomed talent must be brought 
 up to its utmost capability. The indwelling of grace 
 is not given for a selfish end. The Christian heart is 
 not only a depository of sweet influences, but a fount- 
 ain of running waters, sending forth a stream of spir- 
 itual refreshment. It inheres in man's nature to 
 become a positive force in every new relation of life. 
 Negative souls never reach the purposes of their 
 creation. Unless the positive impulses of our being 
 find vent in some form, life is a failure. Personal 
 Christian growth depends very greatly on a free and 
 
184 Priesthood of the People. 
 
 untrammeled exercise of every new-born desire for 
 the progress of the kingdom. For the same reason 
 that the Church should be aggressive, so should the 
 individual Christian. The teachings of political econ- 
 omy hold good in the spiritual realm. The policy 
 for securing new laborers is in the distribution of 
 what we have. The power of the Church might be 
 augmented almost infinitely if its private members 
 would study their own fitness for an appropriate work. 
 The departments of labor may be found as various 
 and multiplied as in any field of human activity. 
 
 In the adjusting of specific departments of labor, 
 the civil world has learned with greater aptness than 
 the religious. Only in the rudest stages of social 
 development do men combine in themselves all trades 
 and professions. The savage is his own tailor and 
 shoemaker, his own carpenter and blacksmith, his 
 own lawyer and physician. The first step toward 
 development and progress is toward adjusting these 
 occupations and pursuits to the individual in society 
 rather than confining them all to the solitary faculty 
 of a single man. The Church finds a difficulty in 
 applying this universal law of labor. If it could be 
 brought to its full force a thousand-fold would be 
 added to religious energies. It appears that the pri- 
 vate membership of the Church is not giving enough 
 attention to religious affairs. Many have a name to 
 live without being impressed with the personal respon- 
 sibilities of a Christian. They have no fixed notions, 
 no definite purpose. Their religious lives, with all 
 their relations, are simply generalized. They repre- 
 sent a desultory, drifting, shiftless sort of Christianity. 
 
A Layman's Life is Sacerdotal. 185 
 
 A hap-hazzard religious business always leads to 
 moral bankruptcy. A great potency for lifting Zion 
 from the dust lies wrapped up in our personal inac- 
 tivities and neglect of privileges. The divine ideal 
 of a perfect priesthood of the people is every man in 
 his own place, doing his own work, recognizing the 
 perpetual fact that God calls men to preach, and he 
 calls them to duty as well. The business of a layman 
 is sacerdotal. He is not of the world, but in it, 
 bearing wherever he goes a divine commission. He 
 is called equally with the highest ecclesiastic to ex- 
 emplify in his life, that most sacred of all practical 
 truths, "No man liveth to himself." 
 
 16 
 
Chapter IX. 
 
 AMERICAN MINISTRY. 
 
 A LIVING ministry is God's chosen instrumen- 
 tality for the evangelism of the world. Unless 
 the divine mind has blundered, the preaching of the 
 Gospel by living men will never be superseded by 
 any other agency. . The seeds of the Gospel are to 
 be planted and nurtured by the Gospel herald. A 
 consecrated ministry to save the world is what God 
 wanted when he said, "Go . . . preach the Gos- 
 pel to every creature." "Go proclaim the glad 
 tidings; go shout, like Jonah on the walls of Nineveh. 
 Tell to the nations the story of the cross, and leave it 
 with them. Go preach, regardless of results, and, 
 sooner or later, like the utterances of the babbler on 
 Mars' Hill, it will cause the parthenon of sin to trem- 
 ble and fall, and bury in its ruins the most brilliant of 
 human philosophies. " The foolishness of preaching 
 will kill every theory that opposes it. The sneer of 
 philosophy at the cry of the Gospel herald is its 
 death knell. The voice of a living man before a liv- 
 ing people has a potency about it unequaled by the 
 force of any other agency. 
 
 Men talk of the press superseding the necessity 
 
 of the preacher only when they are beside themselves. 
 1 86 
 
Tone of the Ministry. 187 
 
 Especially in this country, where we have the might- 
 iest ministry known to the world, made so under the 
 greatness of an unmeasured responsibility. Heroic 
 deeds are the measuring of heroic souls. The Amer- 
 ican ministry has kept pace with our great civil 
 system, so rife with intelligence and industrial enter- 
 prise. Liberty has been our battle-field. Truth has 
 found a receptive soil. Conditions have been favor- 
 able to the fostering of the purest faith. Under such 
 circumstances, preachers of the Word have been 
 prompted by the necessity of moral worth, and have 
 had opened to them channels through which their 
 influence has been felt in all classes of society. The 
 uncultured countryman and the man of letters stand 
 side by side and bear evidence to the same love. As 
 there is a great separation in the advantages of life, 
 so there is a great difference in the tone of the min- 
 istry by which men are brought to repentance. There 
 is a sharp form of thought by which the cultured are 
 attracted and led into the paths of peace. Then there 
 are direct and obvious arguments; there is a plain 
 statement of results commending itself to a sound 
 understanding, which attracts and wins great masses 
 of our people, where metaphysical and subtle dis- 
 tinctions of doctrine are gratuitous offerings, for they 
 are never appreciated. Faith in God, manifest in a 
 pious life, is about the whole of theology. 
 
 There have been men of talentand learning in the 
 Church. There have been utilized to a grand pur- 
 pose men without talent, and without learning, as 
 well. Both classes may reflect the light of the Spirit. 
 Thought and feeling are united in one case, feeling 
 
1 88 American Ministry. 
 
 and earnestness in the other. The Spirit's testimony 
 does not separate between the learned and the un- 
 learned, but between the believer and the unbeliever. 
 There are no castes in American society. There are 
 no aristocracies of rank or station that the masses are 
 willing to recognize; yet there are great distinctions 
 to be discovered. Our whole people are united by 
 general and not so much by personal bonds. There 
 is a kind of social friction between the East and the 
 West, between the North and the South, between 
 the town and the country. In the adaptation of our 
 ministry there should be due respect to these class 
 feelings. The peaceful homes of the country, and 
 the cottages of the poor, should not be sacrificed to 
 the whims of high life. The eagle is not fit to lead 
 a flock of wild ducks in their migrations through the 
 sky. The antelope of the prairie would not go up 
 and make its home with the ibex of the mountain. 
 An inhabitant of Venezuela would not make a good 
 missionary to the Laplanders. 
 
 While sudden and radical changes of social atmos- 
 phere may prevent the destruction of the homogene- 
 ous element in society, they often produce the most 
 extreme antagonisms. To borrow a figure, the min- 
 istry is an instrument of light to the world, just as 
 a window gives light into a room. Here is a pane, 
 without a flaw, admitting rays of light without any 
 change in direction, without destroying their inten- 
 sity. That is the polished preacher, a shining shaft 
 in the quiver of the Lord. Here is another pane; 
 the light of the sun through it is blurred with a 
 thousand aberrations. The rays cross each other in 
 
The Divine Adjustment. 189 
 
 confusion. It transmits nothing but light. This is 
 one of our rough, unhewn ministers, a man who has 
 had a preparation of grace for a mighty work, a 
 great, uncultured blunderer; but converted — on fire 
 with divine love. The light of the Holy Ghost 
 shines through him somehow or other; men see the 
 light, and are constrained to walk in it. 
 
 Where our teachers and professors and lawyers 
 and statesmen go to church, send our cultured men 
 of God, men who can adorn the depths of piety w T ith 
 the jewels of a polished rhetoric and with the sub- 
 limest eloquence. In more sparsely settled regions, 
 where society is yet in its formative state, send our 
 zealous sons of thunder, men whose enthusiasm and 
 pathos make their listeners weep. 
 
 As there is a sphere for every man in the world, 
 there is a notch for every preacher. As there has 
 been but little clashing of interests in the past, there 
 need be no serious conflict in the future. It is not 
 the name, but the work of the minister, that should 
 be perpetuated. "If the foot shall say, Because I 
 am not the hand, I am not of the body, is it there- 
 fore not of the body? . . . And the eye can 
 not say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor 
 again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. 
 Nay more, those members of the body which seem 
 to be more feeble are necessary." 
 
 The jaunty little evangelist who may be able to 
 sally forth and get up revivals, and start pioneer 
 societies, is not to be despised, for his work is of 
 God ; and he should not therefore assume that those 
 who have never engaged immediately in this work 
 
190 American Ministry. 
 
 have been failures. The Church in this country is 
 in no more need of new additions than a higher type 
 of piety. Men who are able to present the finer 
 distinctions of moral truth, who are prudent admin- 
 istrators of discipline, are doing a far more important 
 work than those who simply gather into the fold. 
 
 While God in his wonderful economy has utilized 
 men with but few opportunities of personal culture 
 in the past, it is not so much so now. Neither will 
 it be so in the future, because not necessaiy. Knowl- 
 edge is becoming wide-spread, creating a kind of in- 
 tolerance for superficial notions from the pulpit, and 
 a dislike for the hasty gilding of that which has 
 depth and power in it. Whatever God may have 
 wrought through illiterate men in the past, he is now 
 placing a reward on thorough scholarship. Whoever 
 would stand firm now must put himself to some 
 trouble in preparation, and prove his fitness. There 
 is now a great demand for men who are able to make 
 Christianity consistent with the new lights constantly 
 appearing in the canopy of knowledge, men able to 
 discern false analogies, and present arguments equal 
 in power to those of other professions. 
 
 The world is getting full of readers, in every 
 branch of learning, who are no longer to be enter- 
 tained and instructed with commonplaces from the 
 pulpit. Whoever feels called to the ministry of God 
 should keep in mind that there has a generation 
 grown up since our whole territory was dotted with 
 school-houses, like stars in the firmament. While 
 engaged in historical and Biblical research, he should 
 remember that there are millions of children in our 
 
Great Culture is Needed. 191 
 
 Sabbath-schools, who know as much theology at ten 
 years as our fathers and mothers at twenty ; also, that 
 the next generation will not likely tolerate ignorance 
 in the pulpit. A minister should not only be thor- 
 ough in his department, but should be versatile in all 
 that interests men in favor of the truth. Biblical 
 exegesis alone will not answer every demand now. 
 He must extend his researches, enlarge his opinions, 
 broaden his views, and aim at the highest things. 
 He shall not secularize the pulpit, nor draw it away 
 from its exclusive and specific mission, but intensify 
 its power. He shall not liberalize the Gospel, nor 
 extend its prerogatives beyond the divine charter, but 
 he shall utilize public opinion and human philoso- 
 phy, to speed the progress of a single idea, "Jesus 
 and the resurrection." 
 
 Unless this is done, piety and learning, heart and 
 head, will be divorced. Religion will be left to the 
 ignorant and superstitious, and learning will be turned 
 over to infidelity. 
 
 A minister, to be useful at this time, must iden- 
 tify himself with the interests of his fellow-men. It 
 will never do to get frightened at the world, or to 
 look solemn and supernaturally wise at all the nat- 
 ural joys of life. The swift -flowing Anglo-Saxon 
 blood in our veins is leading us into new relations 
 and surroundings, calling out new sympathies and 
 new phases of life, and causing the stiff Puritanism 
 of the time to stand aghast. Simply because there 
 are undue tendencies to this spirit, it is neither expe- 
 dient nor necessary to check its natural and harmless 
 outworkings. Religion is not hostile to any of the 
 
192 American Ministry. 
 
 legitimate manifestations of human life. God hates 
 nothing but sin. 
 
 Christian life is not bound by a set of juridical 
 statutes, to whose iron limits every act of life must 
 be chained. Many acts of life which are recognized 
 by the Divine Word, and which arise from the nat- 
 ural constitution, have no immediate moral or relig- 
 ious bearing. That rigid notion of life which sup- 
 poses that every thing which does not work an im- 
 mediate moral good must be wrong, and therefore 
 denounced, robs the human heart of all spontaneous 
 activity. Through these mistaken views there is 
 often an ugly and doleful shadow thrown over the 
 most sterling virtues, and the voice of religion is 
 made to sound like a voice from the sepulcher. The 
 free, bounding movement of mirth and tenderness is 
 not obliged to give a moral account of itself; it 
 needs no justification. The highest type of piety 
 brings with it the highest type of freedom. 
 
 Do not misunderstand. A preacher is not to 
 make the beauty of the humanities chief over the 
 beauty of holiness. Prevailing influences are not 
 always to mold his conduct. It will often become 
 necessary for him to set his face like flint against 
 them, consenting to perish in reputation that they 
 may be overthrown. There is no requirement that 
 he shall assimilate with every new thing that pre- 
 sents itself, and lose his individuality by absorption. 
 His own thought and judgment are not to be sur- 
 rendered until self is forgotten, but he should bring 
 all things into the estimate of his methods. He 
 should live and act in conscious harmony with all 
 
Purity is Demanded. 193 
 
 that is virtuous, or noble, or pure. As all the nor- 
 mal qualities of the natural man are brought out, as 
 the social instincts are developed and appropriately 
 gratified, man in society will become more perfectly 
 fitted to speed the benign mission of the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 The age is also demanding purity, as well as high 
 culture. It is no unfavorable sign that the people 
 are asking that the Gospel they receive shall be 
 backed by a pure and spotless life, a life compara- 
 tively faultless, and free from the ordinary defects of 
 our humanity. A little learning, a strong lung, and 
 a measure of piety will not satisfy the demand that 
 vital Christianity shall be exemplified in the charac- 
 ter of its advocate. An intellectual fitness, a gen- 
 eral culture, must be armed with the weapons of a 
 spiritual warfare, to become mighty through God to 
 the pulling down of strongholds. The successful ap- 
 peal is not made to the conscience with the intellect 
 and the judgment. To change opinion is not always 
 to change the heart and life. To teach a moral pre- 
 cept, and then violate it, is to rob it of its potency. 
 A consistent life constrains the world to love the 
 truth it knows. It inspires human endeavor to go 
 beyond the intelligence, and obey the holiest affec- 
 tions. The world's Exemplar repromulgated and 
 authoritatively announced the old Athenian doctrine 
 that the only true method of teaching was by pre- 
 cept and example. To separate them is always to 
 fail half-way. Preaching the Gospel is a holy work, 
 and should claim from a holy people its best mate- 
 rial. 
 
 17 
 
194 American Ministry. 
 
 I know of no more unfortunate thing for the 
 success of a Church than to be represented by any 
 one who will not measure with any force of character 
 among his fellow-men. A pure and steadfast life 
 can only purchase a character which will lend its 
 force to every word and sermon. The soundness 
 of a man's life, and his Christian excellence, can not 
 fail to impress the world. 
 
Chapter X 
 
 MATERIAL AIDS. 
 
 THE material interests of the Church in this 
 country seem to have reached a crisis. The 
 separation of Church and state compels the adoption 
 of what is known as the voluntary system. While 
 faith in God is strong, while the people are alive to 
 the vital interests of the Gospel, the voluntary sys- 
 tem is equal to every emergency; but the world has 
 never seen it brought to a test in times of general 
 indifference. Its effectiveness depends very greatly 
 on the living piety of the Church. Whether the 
 Churches of Europe would have survived, under its 
 operation in the last century, is an open question. 
 While the theory is a just one, and has its basis in 
 its own value and expediency, it yet partakes of the 
 nature of an experiment. 
 
 There are difficulties ahead. Modern tendencies 
 are toward religious indifference. If we are drifting 
 out of a period of stern and gloomy faith into a 
 broad and free religious atmosphere ; if we are get- 
 ting away from that peculiar type of obligation which 
 appeared stronger to wield men than the force of 
 civil authority, into the regions of a lax and accom- 
 modating morality, — it requires no prophet's vision 
 
 *95 
 
196 Material Aids. 
 
 to see what may come upon us. We already see 
 disastrous effects in individual cases. There is now 
 an urgent call for ecclesiastical action relating to the 
 monetary interests of the Churches. Discipline 
 should not be so lax as to screen miserly wealth in 
 the Church from its just tribute to God. 
 
 There is another difficulty. It appears that the 
 world does not yet understand the philosophy of 
 paper money. A history of its issues will sustain 
 the proposition. The history of circulating banks, 
 from the twelfth century down, shows that a species 
 of financial blindness has followed in their wake, and 
 time and again brought disaster on themselves and 
 all concerned. It is to be kept in mind that paper 
 money has generally been the child of necessity. 
 Such was the issue of the Bank of Venice in the 
 twelfth century, the Bank of England in 1694, and 
 the Bank of Austria in 18 16. The fact is also shown 
 in the organic relation of so many governments in 
 Europe to their banking systems. More paper 
 money has been issued to meet the urgent necessi- 
 ties of war than for all the combined commercial 
 objects of the world. In times of national peril, 
 immediate safety is consulted above every other 
 consideration. The issue of paper money, under the 
 auspices and on the credit of the government, is 
 likely to enliven business, and give a tone of cheer- 
 fulness and popular quietude unknown to any other 
 agency. But if this money is issued to carry on 
 war, which, in itself, is always a financial failure, 
 there is likely to follow a depression. 
 
 The exigencies of English military operations 
 
Our Financial Pressure. 197 
 
 called forth an extra issue of circulating notes through 
 the bank of England, and when this bank resumed 
 specie payment, in 1823, there followed a wide-spread 
 and painful disaster. The necessities of the Amer- 
 ican Revolution called out an issue which became 
 worthless in spite of the good credit of the govern- 
 ment. After the war of 18 12, the finances of the 
 country were in a terrible condition. The necessities 
 of the late war created our National Banks, which, 
 so far, have been successful. From now on may 
 appear the difficulty, as shown by all experience. It 
 may be that European history, in money matters, 
 will repeat itself on these shores. The monetary 
 condition of Europe, as compared with America, is 
 a general and permanent depression. As compared 
 with herself, the scarcity of money has simply brought 
 about a different order of things. There is no waste 
 of products. Every-where may be discovered the 
 strictest economy. The ordinary Englishman or Ger- 
 man knows the difference in the value of his small 
 change. Nearly all nations in Europe have passed 
 through phases of financial history which we have 
 not reached, but which we are about to enter — a 
 period of financial closeness. After we get into it or 
 through it we will count our cent pieces. The time 
 may come when it will be necessary to retrench in 
 all the departments of life. 
 
 Now, if these probabilities are justly founded, 
 what are the religious portents of the time? The 
 disposition will be to retrench, first of all, around the 
 altar of God. In view of the growth of Zion, and 
 the plain mission of the American Church, this would 
 
198 Material Aids. 
 
 be fatal. What shall we do then? Give up? No! 
 no! The demand is imperative for a greater sacri- 
 fice. We must teach our people that they hold their 
 earthly substance as they hold their lives, through 
 the will and in trust before God. It was intended in 
 the divine economy that there should be a close rela- 
 tion between wealth and religion. Religion is not 
 materialistic, but the most wonderful material results 
 have always followed in its wake. Religion opens 
 out the avenues of wealth, and wealth, in its turn, 
 gives facilities for the progress of religion. They are 
 mutual helpers. Wherever the Gospel is preached 
 the arts of civilization are soon found at work. It 
 has shown itself, indirectly, the greatest master of 
 material forces. It inspires the soul with desires for 
 a higher attainment and a better state, and awakens 
 the highest energies for every human enterprise. It 
 makes man in some measure dissatisfied with his 
 present state, and leads him on to new lights and new 
 achievements. These new advantages, in their turn, 
 are to be used as voluntary agencies in the spread of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 Wealth is a factor in the evangelism of the world. 
 The success of Christ's cause greatly depends upon 
 it. God loves money for the uses it may serve. His 
 creatures are to engage in the production of material 
 value as a duty, not for itself alone, but for moral 
 and philanthropic ends. That heavenly-mindedness 
 which affects to ignore earthly instrumentalities in 
 the propagation of divine truth of all superstitions 
 is the most pitiable. The man who adds no material 
 value to society is in some sense a pauper. The man 
 
Money-making — An Obligation. 199 
 
 who folds his arms to live oh inherited wealth falls in 
 the same category. It becomes every man's duty to 
 produce something, and use that production to an 
 honest purpose in the fear of God. The pursuit of 
 wealth is right; only the soul that seeks it needs to 
 be enlightened and sanctified.- Money can be made 
 the means of bettering and saving men. The more 
 the better. In the right use of it can it only bring 
 joy to the possessor. 
 
 Every man is under obligation to use his money 
 for benevolent purposes according to his ability, and 
 with the understanding that no man liveth to him- 
 self. He is responsible for how he uses it. There 
 is a sin of indiscriminate alms-giving. He is to give 
 where it will likely be productive. It would be safe 
 to give on economic principles ; in the light of a bar- 
 gain, bringing benefit to both parties; especially in 
 the work of education and the building up of spiritual 
 forces. The ordinary business man is apt to under- 
 rate the value of Christian influences. There are a 
 few men who are even blind to the benefits of civil- 
 ized society. They can not see how that property 
 or life would not be secure, nor how facilities for 
 money-making could not be great among a vicious, 
 immoral set of men. They are never willing to rec- 
 ognize the fact that the impalpable Christian influ- 
 ences of society contribute nearly every thing to 
 make men sober and industrious. While these influ- 
 ences make men thousands of dollars, they are not 
 induced to offer any support in return. They are 
 religious paupers. They receive that for which they 
 give nothing. They transmit the blessings of good 
 
200 Material Aids. 
 
 society into gold, and then refuse to support the 
 Gospel which gives good society. 
 
 There are two kinds of workers for Christ. Chris- 
 tian educators and preachers, and those who accumu- 
 late wealth. One are producers of moral values, the 
 other of material. Our teachers do not make money ; 
 they are simply consumers. But they give intellec- 
 tual training to our children, for which we are willing 
 to pay in money and think well of the bargain. So 
 with the true preacher. He is the producer of moral 
 and spiritual values which the business man makes 
 immediate use of, and upon which he depends in his 
 pursuit of wealth, and he ought to be as willing to 
 pay for this as any other. The man who gains knowl- 
 edge for selfish purposes is a miser. The voice of 
 God calls him to put his talent and learning to their 
 best uses. It is the same with him who accumulates 
 wealth. He is called to prove his fidelity to God. 
 In these times, if any thing, the money-maker is 
 engaged in the most urgent of all works. The most 
 pressing temporal need of the Church, at present, is 
 more means to carry out its enterprises. 
 
 Let the Church heed the shout of the sainted 
 Eddy, when he answered back from the coastings of 
 the shoreless ocean: "Forward is the word, no falling 
 back; we must take the world for Christ; say so to our 
 people ; God calls us louder than thunder in the heavens; 
 he strikes the hour; we must throw down our gold in the 
 presence of Godl" 
 
Chapter XI 
 
 INNER CHURCH LIFE. 
 
 THE great problem of Christian life at the present 
 time is, not how we shall explore the depths of 
 certain great doctrines, or how we shall magnify the 
 graces of some definite sphere of morals, but how we 
 shall equalize and adjust our doctrinal attainments 
 and our Christian duties. If the boatman simply 
 pulls one oar, he will not be apt to make any pro- 
 gress. If he pulls both oars, giving ten pounds more 
 weight to one than the other, his variation from the 
 straight course may not be so apparent, but he is yet 
 describing a circle only of larger dimensions. 
 
 It is the same in the agencies of Christian pro- 
 gress. One class of thinkers are impressed that God 
 is most wonderfully sovereign in all his works; that 
 man has very little to do in his salvation anyhow, 
 and it appears useless to make very much exertion. 
 Another class supposes that God has left the matter 
 pretty much in human hands; that he has given us a 
 kind of inherency of reformation, and that this refor- 
 mation contains, somehow or other, an inherency of 
 pardon, and from thence we ascend to the plane of a 
 Christian life. The truth is midway from either ex- 
 treme. It is evident that God uses both human and 
 
 201 
 
202 Inner Church Life. 
 
 divine agencies in redemption. If this fact is kept 
 clear, many difficulties may be avoided, many phe- 
 nomena may be explained which would otherwise 
 appear mysterious. There should be no clashing, no 
 discord between God's work and man's work in the 
 redemptive scheme. There should be no encroach- 
 ments one upon the other. Each has its sphere and 
 its relative importance. Human instrumentality is a 
 necessity of redemption, not of itself, but because 
 God has made it so. 
 
 Man, by nature, has been invested with certain 
 powers and affections, such as the natural faculties 
 of the mind, a conscience, and a moral nature. He 
 is endowed with the five senses, and a will of such 
 wonderful power and freedom as to be able to bring 
 these powers and affections into rebellion for all of 
 life ; yea, for all of eternity. These qualities belong 
 to him naturally. They are not directly gifts of the 
 atonement. God has made the success of the Church 
 to rest measurably on the exercise of these natural 
 faculties of man's being. Among other things, they 
 are made to amount to something. They are also 
 capable of great exertion and wonderful develop- 
 ment. There is no end to human progress. Man's 
 hand can always be kept busy in the perfection of 
 its mechanisms; his brain can always be employed 
 in new and great achievements. In some of its 
 reaches, it has already seemed to throw off the hin- 
 derances of time and sense, and look in on the 
 infinite. And yet, with all these strides of intellect 
 and human activity, it has been difficult to secure an 
 adjustment of redemptive agencies. Great streams 
 
Medleval Shadows. 203 
 
 of thought and opinion and energy are flowing on 
 toward the ocean of man's destiny, but they are for- 
 ever cutting for themselves independent and diverg- 
 ing channels. Humanity in the abstract has never 
 been able to gain very broad views of the divine 
 economy and purposes. More than in any thing 
 else is the finitude of human power illustrated in the 
 vain struggle for permanent and practical adjustments 
 of the human and the divine. Only for short periods 
 of time in the world's history has there been any 
 practical demonstration of their true relation. The 
 tendency is toward the extremes on either side. 
 
 Man has always been, more or less, a creature of 
 circumstances. In those dark times of the past, when 
 nearly all races of men were the subjects of rude igno- 
 rance and great physical disparagement, when semi- 
 barbarous surroundings made them more the creatures 
 of impulse than of reason, their ideas of God and of life 
 were greatly influenced by their surroundings. Pro- 
 portionate to the degree in which the stern hand of 
 necessity was laid upon them, in their inability to 
 subdue nature's forces, and in proportion to the 
 severity of the kingdoms and monarchies under 
 which they lived, were their notions of the divine 
 character likely to be tinged with elements of the 
 severe and the dreadful. Savage life is not noted 
 for its compassionate views of the Divine Being. 
 The w r orshipers of Jupiter felt glad if they could 
 simply escape his thunder-bolts. The Druids danced 
 round their lurid fires for little more than to appease 
 the gods. When the cruel hands of misfortune and 
 necessity are laid on human life in the mass, the 
 
204 Inner Church Life. 
 
 tendency is to give a false coloring and an absolute- 
 ness to the divine sovereignty which is not warranted 
 by Scripture. If the cold, cheerless views which 
 hyper-Calvinism entertains of the divine nature need 
 any palliation, it may be had in the remembrance 
 that Calvinism was born amid many throes, in the 
 stormy and fearful times of the Reformation. 
 
 Religious thought and sympathy are not flowing 
 in this direction at the present time. From the 
 frigid and shivering regions of the North Pole we 
 have moved southward, have been warmed by the 
 sun; and we are about to cross the Equator, and 
 start on our journey toward the cold, shivering re- 
 gions of the South Pole. 
 
 As has been intimated in this volume, in the last 
 few centuries there has been a wonderful enlargement 
 of the knowledges. Science and art and litera- 
 ture have brought with them ten thousand amelio- 
 rating forces. Through the discovery of the com- 
 pass, commercial enterprise has broken all boundaries, 
 and has claimed the whole world for its field. As a 
 result, at our meals we enjoy the products of every 
 continent. The art of printing has brought us books 
 and periodicals without number. The railroad and 
 the telegraph has given celerity to all our endeavors. 
 These impulses of the later age have greatly ad- 
 vanced the temporal condition of men. From the 
 original Englishman, who drove the great bear from 
 his den in the rocks, and made it a home for himself 
 and family, to the cultured Anglo-American, living 
 like a king in a skillful palace of wood or stone, 
 there is a wonderful material progress. Then, again, 
 
The Glamour of Prosperity. 205 
 
 this age has discovered so many errors in past opin- 
 ions. Exploding superstitions, vanishing myths, and 
 traditions, like will-o'-the-wisps before the day-dawn, 
 are seen on every hand. The stubborn bolts which 
 have held in secret so many treasures of the natural 
 world have been broken, and it looks now like human 
 energy, with its inborn forces, constitutes about all 
 there is of human life. 
 
 The history of the last three hundred years ap- 
 pears like a demonstration of the fact that the world 
 is now about able to shift for itself, without being 
 bothered with any life of faith, without believing in 
 any God, any heaven, or any hell. The Lord has 
 removed the American people so far from pinching 
 poverty and want, he has made them so easy and so 
 comfortable, he has given them such wonderful 
 blessings of life and freedom, that they are about 
 to give over the idea that he will ever again frown 
 on sin. The wholesome threatenings of the law are 
 disagreeable pulpit themes in many high places of 
 Zion. Our pious intentions are about to sugar the 
 devil, and make him harmless as a lamb. The gla- 
 mour of our prosperity is threatening to overwhelm 
 us. We are in danger of drifting away from the 
 stern faith of fifty years ago. The religious atmos- 
 phere of the future looks beclouded with the smoke 
 of a slumbering dilettanteism. We are facing the 
 issues of an age already drunken with the wine of 
 worldliness. God help the Church to stem the tides 
 just now, to gain a victory over the greed of w r ealth 
 and the lust of gold ! Then the world is safe. 
 
 We shall not be able to manage the Lord's 
 
2o6 Inner Church Life. 
 
 business on our own account. The success of the 
 Church does not rest upon exactly the same basis 
 with the success of an iron-furnace, or a manufac- 
 tory, or a railroad. The simple agencies which 
 make Odd - fellowship and Freemasonry successful 
 will not insure the perpetuity of the Church. While 
 the same measure of zeal and the same careful ad- 
 justings of ordinary appliances in worldly schemes 
 become necessary to a healthful Church life, they are 
 not alone necessary. There is an inner sanctuary in 
 the Church which makes it the world's celestial vis- 
 itor. Far above all mystic shrines and symbolisms 
 there is a fountain of cleansing, whose waters are 
 invested with regenerative properties. From this 
 fountain flows the healing stream of the Christian 
 religion. If any refuse to drink here, they have not 
 the life of the Church. The Finisher of our Faith 
 laid great stress on the definiteness of the agencies 
 by which his kingdom should be built upon earth. 
 Wherever these agencies have been utilized, the 
 Church has flourished. No accidental enthusiasm, 
 or work of chance, can ever successfully replace the 
 influence of the Comforter. The Spirit must do his 
 work. He must be recognized as the inspiration and 
 life of the Church through all ages, as the only surety 
 against all hinderances, the only hope of a steady and 
 unconquerable progress. 
 
 . The Church, to-day, is in the enjoyment of great 
 achievements. There was a time when persecution 
 and the rack were the fearful arguments of wicked- 
 ness; when the secular arm was interposed to check 
 the progress of Christianity; when the faithful had 
 
An Evident Danger. 207 
 
 to fly to the caves of the mountains, like foxes to 
 their dens, for safety ; when the sanguinary terrors of 
 the Inquisition threatened to overawe the defenders 
 of the faith ; when intolerance swept through the 
 Church, like the besom of destruction. These times 
 have gone by, it is to be hoped, forever. Civil gov- 
 ernments now, instead of spurning, draw their very 
 life-blood from Christianity. In the downfall of the 
 Church civil liberty, as it is at present constituted, 
 would perish forever. On its moral teachings the 
 state relies for good society. The steady light of 
 Christian fires now shines across the Continent, and 
 from the Lakes to the Gulf. It gleams into the 
 darkness of heathenism. It is about to enwrap all 
 tongues and peoples. The Church is flushed with the 
 hope of the speedy conquest of the world. In the midst 
 of these successes is a snare. The danger of a ship at 
 sea is not only when the storm is fiercest, but also when 
 the ocean is lulling to sleep. There is likewise dan- 
 ger when the sea has been calm for so long that the 
 sailors have lost from their memories the realities of 
 the tempest. If the storm should come upon them, 
 it might find them unprepared in the very greatness 
 of their preparations for a peaceful voyage. 
 
 The Church in our own country has passed 
 through the ordeal of incipiency. It has gathered 
 strength in its progress, until now a great moral 
 inertia is propelling its mighty machinery. The im- 
 petus which it has gathered in the sterling struggles 
 of the last century is sending it almost resistlessly 
 into the future. This accumulated strength is a con- 
 stant element of power. 
 
208 Inner Church Life. 
 
 The train whistles for the station. The engineer 
 cuts off the steam. There goes the train down the 
 track! See the almost resistless movement of that 
 engine, with the propelling power all taken away! 
 The force which it gathered coming down the track 
 still moves it. Yet by the time it reaches the depot 
 it has stopped, as resistless in its stillness as in its 
 motion before ! If religious forces were ever in- 
 tended to stop, there would be no danger in taking 
 away the moving force for a time; but they are 
 not — and they operate on nearly the same principle. 
 The perilous philosophy of ecclesiastical history has 
 been to depend upon the spiritual momentum of the 
 Church, as a kind of perpetual motion raised up to 
 release men from the faith and obligations of a 
 religious life. 
 
 This danger to the American people is not off 
 yonder. It is upon us. We are in danger of being 
 overwhelmed in the magnitude of the impulses we 
 have started. The earnest, devout lives of which we 
 boast are in danger of being touched with indiffer- 
 entism. Religious profession is likely to become a 
 convenience. A taste for the glowing and the dra- 
 matic is now being cultivated, over the vital and the 
 pure. Church attendance is decreasing wherever 
 talent does not draw. Wicked men see this, and 
 rejoice, looking forward to the time when a low type 
 of piety shall be the occasion to loose religion from 
 its persuasiveness and its power over the people. 
 Let the success of the Gospel in the salvation of 
 souls be laid like a burden on the Church, and that 
 time shall never come. 
 
Value of the Christian System. 209 
 
 Christian Philanthropy. — Vital piety becomes a 
 part of our national life, in that Christian philan- 
 thropy, in a distinctive sense, is the soul of our 
 greatest energies. The value of a system is known 
 by its fruits. Christianity now claims its right to the 
 credence and respect of man, because it has bettered 
 his condition. It has lifted him, under the pressure 
 of a great many philanthropic forces. Nearly all 
 classes of men are willing to recognize the material 
 advantages of our religious system, while they are 
 blind to its spiritual beauties. They avail themselves 
 of its blessings, and dispute its divine origin. They 
 gather from it the ability with which to assail it. 
 From the bow of the ambushed Indian the eagle 
 receives in its breast the arrow whose course was 
 directed by one of his own pinions. Men see hypo- 
 crites, or some sorry specimen of redeeming grace, 
 and they point to him and say, "Your system is 
 like that." 
 
 In these times, we are coming face to face with 
 the fact that men are occupying the strange position 
 of being in sympathy with all the philanthropic 
 results of Christianity, without being in sympathy 
 with its higher spiritual results. They are willing to 
 trace practical benevolence to its source in the Chris- 
 tian sentiments of the age. They are not willing to 
 trace these sentiments to their source. The Christian 
 system is a grand fact, a good thing; but not a re- 
 vealed truth, or a saving power. It brings men 
 nearer together, but does not bring them back to 
 God. In close relation with this idea, lies the dis- 
 tinction between moral and Christian philanthropy. 
 
 18 
 
210 Inner Church Life. 
 
 In the latter, the God sense has been superadded to 
 the natural or pathematic emotions, lifting them into 
 a more brilliant sphere of religious enterprise. The 
 distinction can be illustrated in a comparison of hu- 
 manitarian efforts before the Christian era with those 
 of the present. 
 
 Love to man is an original instinct. In its in- 
 tensity and clearer outlines it was blunted by the 
 Fall. The introduction of human selfishness simply 
 prescribed its boundaries. It yet exists as the wreck 
 of what it once was. It gives out an obscured light. 
 It is like a cheerful star-gleam shining into the night 
 between two brilliant days. Christian philanthropy 
 is the clear, the forcible, the absolute light of the 
 noonday. God himself measured out its extent to 
 us when he gave his " unspeakable gift." It looks 
 on man from the vantage-ground of the cross. Christ 
 says, "Love one another as I have loved you;" and, 
 again, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 The moral goodness of the human heart has never 
 led any race of people much beyond the law of re- 
 ciprocity; that is, the law of equal rights and priv- 
 ileges and mutual charities. It has always seemed 
 to expend itself in godd wishes and a few feeble 
 efforts for the welfare of mankind. It will help a 
 relative or a friend without hope of remuneration. 
 At the same time, it can remain contented and un- 
 disturbed in the midst of a great deal of suffering and 
 misery. China and India have not advanced the con- 
 dition of their masses for a thousand years. In these 
 countries purely moral forces have had a chance to 
 show what they can do. They have had every oppor- 
 
Condition of the Orient. 211 
 
 tunity to reveal the extent to which the natural im- 
 pulses of the heart may lead a people in the absence 
 of a perfect example and the leadings of an authori- 
 tative Spirit. The vastness of purely intellectual and 
 moral potencies find here their best showing. In 
 these countries, as in all others where the banner of 
 the cross has not been lifted, no great estimate has 
 ever been placed on the individual, and no great in- 
 terest has ever been taken in his condition. Conse- 
 quently the millions lie in wretchedness and want," 
 victims of human passion and oppression* with no 
 hand to help them. If the moral philanthropy of 
 the human heart is the home of such wonderful char- 
 ity; if it alone is the inspiration of European and 
 American benevolence, why has it not lifted Asia 
 from her thralldom? Her climes are as fair, her 
 valleys are as fertile, as ours. The God of nature has 
 blessed her with as lavish a hand, and yet there she 
 lies, holding half the population of the globe like a 
 dead weight. It may be said, her monarchies have 
 been so severe that the people have never been able 
 to disenthrall themselves. 
 
 But Europe was in the chains of as severe a thrall- 
 dom a thousand years ago. Something or other has 
 broken these chains. European monarchies have 
 been toned down, their severities have been taken 
 away, and a republic has been given to America. 
 What is this something? Here is the vital issue. 
 The moral teachings of Grecian and Roman philos- 
 ophy were often as sublime and truthful as any thing 
 in the revealed doctrines. Socrates and Plato and 
 Seneca reasoned eloquently from first principles, and 
 
212 Inner Church Life. 
 
 the people grew worse under their teachings. Such 
 has been the case with all ethnic systems. There is 
 no moral force at man's command by which he can 
 successfully and constantly counteract his innate tend- 
 encies toward the corruption of his own life and 
 that of society. As it has been in pagan systems, so 
 will the world grow worse under a Gospel splendid 
 in its theory and magnificence unless the principle 
 of the Spirit's work be kept alive as a strong under- 
 current of conviction pervading all thought and feeling 
 and action. 
 
 There are a great many forces at work in these 
 times which have not been estimated at their true 
 value until lately. It appears that the world is just 
 now beginning to reap the secondary and remote 
 benefits of Christianity. The mission and ministry 
 of Christ started a great under-current of influences 
 which are just now beginning to crop out and be 
 made available. The Savior's commission was, "Go 
 ye into all the zvorld and preach the Gospel.' ' A 
 strange commission in that age. Nothing like it was 
 ever heard of before. As the disciples had opportu- 
 nity they were to do good unto all men through the 
 love of Christ, which constraineth them. 
 
 From the beginning Christianity had in view the 
 conversion of the whole world. Such an idea, so far 
 as I know, does not belong to any pagan system. 
 Jupiter and Apollo and Mercury never had any mis- 
 sionaries in any distinctive sense. On the other 
 hand, the religion of the Bible gathered in its scope 
 the wide world, and it has not yet given over the 
 undertaking in all its magnitude. That same old love 
 
Philanthropic Influences. 213 
 
 is still in the bosom of the Church, whose source is 
 the fountain of that life, which came on the Day of 
 Pentecost to inbreathe its everlasting convictions into 
 the souls of men, and lift them from the twilight of 
 human love into its noonday splendors. 
 
 And now, what is it doing more than has ordina- 
 rily been done, in all ages ? It is calling into life a 
 combination of world-wide influences. 
 
 First. It magnifies the individual man, in giving 
 him an estimate and experience of his value before 
 God. This has led him to seek a recognition of his 
 personal rights in both Church and state. He be- 
 comes worthy to have the field of knowledge opened 
 to him, and he is now being educated. The com- 
 mon-school system of our country, which is so won- 
 derfully training the mind and lifting the masses of 
 the people into the highest planes of intelligence, 
 has been drawn from the great deep of Christian 
 philanthropy. 
 
 Second. In that ancient time, before the Christian 
 religion began to have its effects on civilization, more 
 than in giving to the state a few good citizens, such 
 things as asylums and orphan-homes and hospitals 
 were isolated facts. Now they are every -where, 
 supported in the most perfect system. They are 
 established in almost every county, and supported 
 from the public treasury, affording relief to the poor 
 and the unfortunate. 
 
 Third. The universal love of Christ's Gospel 
 silently brought about the liberation of Roman slaves 
 before it was fully under headway in the Latin world. 
 This same love created a sentiment against slavery in 
 
ii4 • Inner Church Life. 
 
 the United States, which finally resulted in its over- 
 throw. It has further put its powerful hand on the 
 slave-traffic of the world, and bids fair to stop it en- 
 tirely. The divine philanthropy of the Gospel has 
 gone to those countries where human slavery exists; 
 and, as sure as it can get a hold on society, the 
 shackles will fall of necessity. 
 
 Fourth. This love, in our own country, keeps 
 alive a system of benevolences such as no rule of 
 force could ever command. 
 
 Fifth. It is gradually fusing and blending the 
 forces of Protestantism, so that its collective agencies 
 can be used as never before. 
 
 Sixth. It is creating a sentiment against intem- 
 perance, which is destined to work its overthrow. 
 It inheres in Christian philanthropy alone to interdict 
 the liquor traffic, from the distillery down. 
 
 Seventh. Among the most important ameliorative 
 forces which the Gospel of Christ has invoked is the 
 science of international law. In ancient times na- 
 tions were either disrelated, or else they were likely 
 to be belligerent. No law governed their relations 
 but that of force. Strength meant dominion ; weak- 
 ness meant dependency. Instead of the survival of 
 the fittest, it was a survival of the strongest. The 
 right of conquest for dominion was recognized, — a 
 state of opinion and feeling which brought almost 
 constant warfare. We hazard the assertion, that 
 from the introduction of Christianity the popular 
 disrelish for war began to grow stronger. After a 
 while there were feeble attempts made at adjustment 
 and reconciliation. It was finally believed that a 
 
International Law. 215 
 
 nation might have honor, as well as a man. In 
 course of time treaties were made, and faithfully kept. 
 Then principles of law were laid down, regulating 
 national conduct. The probabilities of war between 
 the nations of Christendom were lessened. They 
 now look in the face of this international code, and 
 understand each other better. And the time appears 
 near when all difficulties may be amicably settled at 
 a national tribunal, prepared beforehand for the pur- 
 pose; when "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
 and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the 
 calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and 
 a little child shall lead them;" when swords shall 
 be beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning- 
 hooks, when "nation shall not lift up sword against 
 nation, neither shall they learn war any more." 
 
 These influences, with many others, are the felt 
 throbs of the great, living, beating heart of religion; 
 and they find their source in the "love wherewith he 
 loved us. " These are the secondary final causes for 
 which Christ came into the world. The grandest im- 
 pulses of this age are but the active agencies of the 
 Holy Ghost. They are but the sum of individual 
 impulses. The soul, converted, comes into a new 
 world. New lights, new feelings, new desires, new 
 influences, are thrown around it, — all awakened by 
 the Holy Spirit. Then, as drops form the ocean, as 
 rivulets form the stream, as atoms make up the uni- 
 verse, so this general life of goodness, of virtue, of 
 benevolence, has been given to society? Can specu- 
 lative philosophy show any such results? Will sci- 
 
216 Inner Church Life. 
 
 olism please show any such fruits of its systems? 
 It is now a truism that, wherever the Gospel goes, 
 there is life and enterprise and progress in every 
 thing. 
 
 In this grand work the only citadel to be guarded 
 is the inner life of the Church. Vital piety must be 
 kept in the popular heart. The power of the living 
 spirit must keep pace with these multiplied energies. 
 Then, we must be in earnest. It is not the flash of 
 the sword of the Spirit that cuts, but its edge. It is 
 not the sheet-lightning which tears the oak, but the 
 sharp and arrowy lines which come with the power 
 of the thunder-bolt. There is no demand now for 
 general indefinite religious impressions, but deep and 
 clear convictions that God is in Christ reconciling the 
 world, and that we are hid with him in God. We 
 must know experimentally that the doctrines of the 
 Gospel are true. A smothered and sleepy fantasy 
 can not be substituted for the stronger convictions 
 of faith. If the true fear of God and a sense of his 
 majesty and omnipotence dwell in the popular heart, 
 its morals and its laws will always be kept within 
 proper limits. We need a faith which unconsciously, 
 though more decidedly, influences the popular heart. 
 It is the aim of Christianity to inweave in society an 
 honest and settled sobriety of thought, which, with- 
 out organization or plan, will rebuke the evil and 
 sanction the right. 
 
 One of the positive hinderances to personal relig- 
 ious life at the present time is the great mania for 
 organizing. We must club together. We can do 
 
Religion. 217 
 
 hardly any thing without some associative prompt- 
 ing-. Our Christian benevolences and our charities 
 are nearly all according to "Constitution and By- 
 laws." We put a great estimate on the amount of 
 work done, to the neglect of what we are. Our 
 personal relations with God are lost sight of in our 
 zeal to become workers. Untold demoralizings are 
 the result of a failure to observe the great law of 
 fitness. Labor in the cause of Christ which is with- 
 out character will soon expend its force, and will 
 endanger the healthful influences of Christian labor, 
 and, very likely, cultivate an idea that religion is a 
 succession of good deeds, rather than a principle; a 
 collective and temporary impulse to do some good 
 thing, rather than a deep and real force, moving all 
 the faculties of the mind and all the affections of the 
 heart toward things divine. 
 
 Religion is something living, powerful, blessed. 
 It is not honesty, or morality, or virtue. These are 
 its fruits. It is the illumination of the soul with 
 the highest joys and impulses. It dislodges evil 
 desires and propensities, and demands of the indi- 
 vidual daily self-denial. It gives truth the empire 
 over the mind, and "Holiness to the Lord" is writ- 
 ten on the heart and life. It is not the knowledge 
 which satisfies the understanding, but the experi- 
 enced truth that purifies the inner man, that ele- 
 vates, ennobles, and sanctifies the whole nature. 
 Religion is yet practical ; it may be transmuted into 
 flesh and blood and brain and affection, and be sent 
 out like a brilliant light from the treasure of the 
 
 x 9 
 
218 Inner Church Life. 
 
 inward life. Religion enables a man to spiritualize 
 every thing he touches. 
 
 After all our apologies for Christianity, after all 
 our arguments for its truth, after every show of 
 learning and rhetoric in its defense, it needs to be 
 shown in the lives of Christians. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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