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BUILDING ERAS IN 
 RELIGION 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE BUSHNELL 
 
 Literary Varieties 
 III 
 
 Centenary E&itfon 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1903 
 

 . of CONGRESS 
 Two Cooies Received 
 
 MAR 10 1809 
 
 Copyri^.it intry 
 CLASS <X. XXC, No 
 
 Copyright, 1881, By 
 MARY A. BUSHNEIvI, 
 
 Copyright, 1909, by 
 MARY B. CHENEY 
 
EDITORS PREFACE TO THE 
 EDITION OF 1881 
 
 Of the three volumes by Dr. Bushnell now produced 
 under the general title of "Literary Varieties" two 
 have long been out of print and one is new. The lat- 
 ter, "Building Eras in Religion/ 7 consists of various 
 articles and addresses which have been printed in some 
 fugitive form, and which Dr. Bushnell himself desig- 
 nated under the heading of Reliquiae as the material 
 for a book to be published after his death. Grouping 
 these three books together now as a collection of his 
 miscellaneous writings, we would emphasize the dis- 
 tinction between these and his theological works, these 
 "the spontaneous overplus and literary by-play of a 
 laborious profession," the latter the embodiment of that 
 profession itself. They so richly represent and, as it 
 were, personify the varied interests of his life as to form 
 in themselves, if rightly interpreted, a biography neces- 
 sary to the completeness of any which has been or could 
 be written. As an aid to such interpretation, a few facts 
 and thoughts may here be fitly presented. 
 
 The oration on Work and Play, often spoken of as 
 the supreme literary product of his life, followed closely 
 upon a profound private religious experience and was 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 
 
 written and delivered in that year of theolo-gie tempest 
 which threatened to overwhelm him as a heretic. But 
 its atmosphere is serene, the high tenor of its literary 
 inspiration unbroken by a note of strife. His ideal of 
 a literary era painted in its closing pages seems to be 
 that it shall emerge from a period of struggle under 
 a religious impulse, as his own had done. The same 
 thought is conveyed with equal force and beauty in his 
 address on "Our Obligations to the Dead," in the vol- 
 ume on "Building Eras in Religion," wherein he de- 
 picts the future literary age for which the great strug- 
 gle of our war has, he thinks, furnished fit training and 
 noble subjects, religion being still "the only sufficient 
 fertilizer of genius as it is the only real emancipator of 
 man." 
 
 In the first volume, Work and Play, we have the 
 "Age of Homespun," which contains the scenery and 
 the dramatis personw of his childhood; "The Growth 
 of Law," in which we find the impress of his law stud- 
 ies; "The Founders Great in their Unconsciousness," 
 wherein the strength of his own hereditary Puritan 
 consciousness is revealed ; "The Day of Roads," the di- 
 rect product of his European journey; "City Plans," 
 so closely connected with his work for Hartford and its 
 Park ; and "Religious Music," whose melodious thought 
 and rhythmical style seem to date back to that time 
 when, as a boy, he taught himself by a reverse process 
 from his mother's song how to read music. One address 
 on "Agriculture at the East" has been withdrawn, as 
 superseded by the progress of history, and in its place 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 
 
 we have now that on "Barbarism the First Danger," 
 the first public address by which he became widely 
 known. Its truths were unpopular truths — needed, but 
 unwelcome to the sensitiveness of new communities. As 
 long as we have a frontier the article may be useful. 
 
 These articles, taken all together, evince a large 
 amount of reading and study. Apart from the refer- 
 ences to historical works, many of which were consulted 
 in preparation for certain subjects, we find everywhere 
 evidences that his mind was keenly alive to the inspira- 
 tions of the great thought-makers, from Plato and 
 Epictetus down to Bacon and Shakespeare. Books of 
 systematized thought were less attractive to him than 
 those in which thought is offered in free and fluent 
 forms, capable of transmutation. The works of scien- 
 tists and travelers, whose subject-matter is necessarily 
 in the concrete, had special value to his mind as offer- 
 ing food for thought. He read more than is commonly 
 believed, largely of books by the few master-minds, but 
 also freely of the best present writers, — very little of 
 metaphysical or philosophical books. 
 
 The volume on the "Moral Uses of Dark Things" 
 is not, as might be supposed, a logical treatise designed 
 to solve the enigmas of life, but a series of observations 
 made in a curious and inquiring spirit upon some of 
 the strange and mysterious provisions of creation. It 
 was as early as the year 1846 that Dr. Bushnell first 
 had his attention called to some of these morally unac- 
 countable aspects of human life and nature, and he then 
 preached sermons on the uses of deformity and of phys- 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1881 
 
 ical danger. From time to time he observed new phases 
 of the same riddle, and tore the disguise of a curse from 
 many a blessing. At last he consolidated the fruit of his 
 observations in our second volume, a subtle and curious 
 contribution to the thought of the time, but one so un- 
 pretending of system as to be properly classified with 
 his "Literary Varieties." 
 
 In the fact that the material of the third volume, 
 entitled "Building Eras in Religion," was selected by 
 Dr. Bushnell himself as that which he was willing to 
 have stand when he was gone, we have his indorsement 
 of it as being not inconsistent with his ripest thought. 
 Notwithstanding this the articles were some of them 
 among his earliest, as the date given with each will 
 show. 
 
 It is through these three volumes that he will be best 
 known to the world in his personality as a man. They 
 are both flower and fruit, and not only illustrate but are 
 the growth, the ceaseless activity, the ever-varying form 
 of life in one of the most living of men. 
 
 Editor. 
 1881. 
 
 Since the above was written another book, " The Spirit 
 in Man," has been published (1903), a book which also 
 contains much of miscellaneous material. 
 
 Editor. 
 
 1903. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 I. Building Eras in Religion 9 
 
 II. The New Education 35 
 
 III. Common Schools 71 
 
 IV. The Christian Trinity, a Practical Truth 106 
 
 V. Spiritual Economy of Revivals op Re- 
 ligion 150 
 
 VI. Pulpit Talent 182 
 
 VII. Training for the Pulpit Manward . . .221 
 
 VIII. Our Gospel a Gift to the Imagination . 249 
 
 IX. Popular Government by Divine Right . 286 
 
 X. Our Obligations to the Dead 319 
 
 XI. Letter to His Holiness, Pope Gregory 
 
 XVI 356 
 
 XII. Christian Comprehensiveness 386 
 
I 
 
 BUILDING EEAS IN RELIGION* 
 
 The greatest buildings of the world are not palaces, 
 or forums, or amphitheatres, but temples. It may be 
 that the Coliseum, able to hold and even to seat a 
 hundred thousand people, was a more capacious build- 
 ing than was ever erected for the uses of any kind of 
 worship, still it was not so much a genuine product of 
 architecture as a prodigious freak of royal barbarity. 
 And we are therefore none the less permitted to say 
 that men do their greatest things for religion. Neither 
 is anything better understood than that every relig- 
 ion, which has power to get historic place in the world, 
 comes to the flower, sooner or later, by asserting visi- 
 bility and permanence in stone. It builds, and by that 
 token challenges a right to stay, and be known for 
 the ages to come ; only it sometimes happens that the 
 structures built, like empty shells found strewed upon 
 the shore, remain, after both the builders and their 
 religions arc forgotten. 
 
 Thus we have the vast temple-works of Central 
 
 * Contributed to the Hours at Home in 1868, Vol. VII. Deliv- 
 ered on the occasion of the Consecration of Park Chnrch, Hart- 
 ford, Friday evening, r.'arch '29, 1SGT. 
 
10 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 America, built by we know not whom, or for what 
 god. The temple of Karnac, most stupendous of all 
 structures, — who was the god, and what the religion, 
 we do not know. The Druids of England built the 
 prodigious fence of their religion called Stonehenge, 
 we know not when, and can only discover that there 
 was force enough in their religion to build gigantically. 
 The Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico kept 
 themselves in remembrance chiefly by their temple of 
 the Sun, and their altar pile of Cholula, though their 
 religions themselves and their very gods are forgot. 
 The Buddhist cultus set up its grand masonries all over 
 the East, in times so long gone by, that its people 
 have now lost the measures of their ancestors, and 
 cannot believe in them ; ascribing the stupendous art 
 and magnificence of their own Boro-Budor to some 
 unknown, giant race. The fanes of the Greeks and 
 Romans, and of the later people of Islam, are famil- 
 iarly known. So it is that every religion, above the 
 rank of mere fetichism, is fated to become, at some 
 time, a builder ; matching its ideas and ideal inspira- 
 tions by its masonries. 
 
 So it is to be with the ancient Jehovah religion. 
 Xine whole centuries must pass before the great 
 building day arrives, but it will finally come. Down 
 to that late time, there has never anything been built 
 for the Jehovah worship, but a tent and a box. So 
 long will it take for the great, everlasting ideas of the 
 religion to settle the roving or fugacious habit of the 
 people, and make them want a temple. History grinds 
 slowlv even when it grinds for God. 
 
BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 11 
 
 First of all Abraham comes out of the far East as 
 a colonist, leading his train of flocks and servants, 
 and they go a-gypsying, as all shepherd races do, from 
 place to place, making no settlement during his life- 
 time. Before three generations are passed, his pos- 
 terity become a bond-slave people in Egypt, making 
 brick there for hundreds of years, but building noth- 
 ing. Then they take a turn of forty years in a cara- 
 van state under Moses. Next follows the dark middle 
 age of anarchy under the Judges, lasting five hun- 
 dred years ; out of which they emerge with scarcely 
 a religion left, saying nothing of building for religion. 
 Under the wise magistracy and prophet statesman- 
 ship of Samuel, the Jewish Washington, they settle 
 at last into order. David, who is the most honored 
 king and first poet of his country, very soon obtains 
 the kingdom. By his great military and civil admin- 
 istration, he enlarges rapidly the empire of his nation, 
 consolidates their industry, opens a new and great 
 commerce, and makes them a first-class power. Mean- 
 time, by his religious music, and his religious poetry, 
 he kindles a glorious new frame of inspiration in their 
 feeling, and lifts them into such conscious preemi- 
 nence above all contemporary peoples as properly 
 belongs to their religion. Approaching, in this man- 
 ner, the close of his reign, a great thought dawns in 
 him more and more distinctly, and presses him at last 
 quite urgently ; viz., that his work is not complete 
 without building, or at least preparing to build, a tem- 
 ple for his God ; for he does not propose to execute 
 
12 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 the work himself, but only to get everything ready 
 for his son. He says : " I will make preparation for 
 it ; " and right royal is the preparation made. He 
 has, in fact, so great an inspiration for it, that the 
 very designs and patterns he prepares appear to be 
 given him by the Spirit, as chief architect. Yast 
 quantities of stone and timber are gathered, including 
 precious stones and marbles. And withal there is laid 
 up in the treasury gold and silver enough, obtained 
 just then in great abundance by the new eastern com- 
 merce, to pay off our national debt about sixteen times 
 over. For he says : " the house that is to be builded 
 for the Lord must be exceeding magnifical, of fame 
 and glory throughout all countries." It must be a 
 temple, in other words, such as may be worthy of 
 monotheism ; that is, of the God of all gods, the Lord 
 and Creator of the world. 
 
 Solomon takes the plans and supplies, and for 
 seven years and a half the holy hill-top swarms with 
 its many thousand workmen, even as the bees at their 
 hive. The work is done, and the great building era 
 of the Jews' religion is passed ; for the two temples 
 afterwards built, under Zerubbabel and Herod, were 
 only feeble attempts at restoration on a diminished 
 scale. We have no drawings of the first temple and its 
 architecture that can be relied on, but as the propor- 
 tions were divinely given, it must have had merits 
 transcendently high. Covered, as we know it was, 
 with plates of gold on every part, and glittering like 
 the sun from afar, it was certainly a structure of in- 
 
BUILDING ERAS IX RELIGION. 13 
 
 comparable splendor. It must have been a prodig- 
 iously vast structure also, when taking in the courts, 
 which were Integral parts of it considered as a whole, 
 and a single one of which covered more than fourteen 
 acres of ground. 
 
 Descending now through twenty centuries, we come 
 upon a second era, commonly regarded as the consum- 
 mate building time of Christianity. I speak of the 
 Cathedral age. It was even a building cycle, lasting 
 three whole centuries ; and was most remarkable for 
 the number, and beauty, and architectural originality 
 and grandeur of the structures erected. 
 
 It was long before the new religion could think 
 much of building. For a time it had the synagogues of 
 the old religion ; small modest houses erected for Scrip- 
 ture-reading, exposition, and a common Sabbath wor- 
 ship. Driven out of these, it betook itself to the 
 quadrangles of courts, and to caves, and catacombs 
 underground. Then, by and by, it became a distinctly 
 state religion, and was let into the vacated temples of 
 the false gods, which it partially remodeled, remod- 
 eling itself also to meet the Pagan ideas. 
 
 There was no building as yet, save in a few isolated 
 cases. Panic, desolation, poverty, — the barbarians 
 of the North pouring, all the while, down across the 
 Christian confines, — gave religion a chance for noth- 
 ing but faith, and fortitude, and tears. By and by, 
 when the vials of this wrath were spent, the barbar- 
 ous irruptions, now in the ascendant, were found to 
 
14 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 have created a new form of society, based in the feudal 
 relations and the semi-Christian state of chivalry. For 
 the feudal chiefs converted must somehow get a more 
 superlative style in the church than the common herd 
 of their serfs. Their forward soldiers accordingly 
 were made a knightly order about them and took their 
 vows of knighthood in ceremonies before the altars ; 
 where they swore fealty, (1) to God, (2) to the baron 
 or prince they served, and (3) by a volunteer addition, 
 to some fair one whose name they relied on to give 
 the heroic inspiration. To redeem these rather airy 
 pledges was to be their impulse to prowess in arms. 
 And this knightly character gave a certain fascinating 
 cast to society. True courage, honor, courtesy, all 
 high sentiment were in it, and it had withal as great 
 inspirations from religion as it well could have, in a 
 way so romantic, or so nearly fantastic. It created 
 thus a new romantic literature and, partly by help of 
 that, a new church militant age. So that, when the 
 supreme call of religion was heard, demanding in 
 Christ's name the rescue of the holy land from the 
 infidels, crusade after crusade followed, in as many 
 great waves of enthusiasm. It was very dear enthu- 
 siasm, and yet was worth, it may be, all it cost. The 
 surviving heroes straggled home, bringing new ideas 
 and new germs of life. A great commerce with the 
 East followed, and a vast wealth was shortly gathered 
 in the coffers of the abbeys and cathedral chapters. 
 And now the old heroics of sentiment, the romance, 
 the church fervor, took fire in the thought of building 
 
BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 15 
 
 for religion, and began to throw itself up in stone as 
 by a olivine call. All at once building was everywhere. 
 Geometry brought back from the Arab schools was 
 put to work in a recomposing and cruciforming, as 
 for Christ, of the Arabic elements of architecture. 
 Masonry was now the great art, and masons were 
 trailing from province to province, or nation to nation, 
 according as this or that new structure might require 
 their skill and labor. For mutual security and certifi- 
 cate, they formed themselves into guilds and societies 
 perpetuated even to this day in fraternities of " ac- 
 cepted masons," — accepted that is for association's 
 sake ; though not understood to be masons at all. 
 Out of this immense constructive bee-work, all over 
 Christendom, sprang the cathedrals, and the people 
 became cathedral-builders about as distinctly as bees 
 are wax-builders. Thus went up the magnificent 
 Minster of York, the grandly-studied pile of Antwerp, 
 the gossamer web of Strasburg, the sublime incipiency 
 of Cologne, the mountain peak of St. Stephen's of 
 Vienna, and the immortal beauty and unmatched 
 miracle of St. Ouen ; not to name well-nigh a hundred 
 other celebrated structures, all over Germany, Bel- 
 gium, France, and England. David's temple may 
 have cost more in the weight of the gold than 
 they all, — it probably did, — but gold in that day was 
 scarcely a precious metal in comparison. The archi- 
 tectural merit meantime of the temple must have been 
 vastly inferior ; because, apart from the courts, and 
 the external breadth and magnificence added by their 
 
16 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 circumjection, it was a comparatively small structure. 
 It had really no interior but a kind of sanctuary cell, 
 whereas the cathedrals open vast heights and spaces 
 within, under vaulted skies of stone, — chambers of 
 worship for immense gatherings of people, and halls 
 of ornament more august than were ever before seen. 
 No forest knew how to grow as high, or pillar its 
 arches as gracefully. It was as if the stone itself, 
 bedded in cruciform lines of foundation, had shot up 
 into peaks, and pinnacles, and pointed forms, and 
 sprung its flying buttresses across in air, by some up- 
 lifting sense, or quickened aspiration. 
 
 What now shall we say ? Do we stop here ? After 
 these two building eras, one under the old religion, 
 the other under the new, is there to be no other ? The 
 architects will answer, No ; because the capacities and 
 combinations of lines are now exhausted. The high- 
 going ritualists will say, No ; because the cathedrals 
 represent the ideal age of the Church and religion 
 beyond which nothing more advanced is possible. 
 The plain people will say, No, for humility's sake ; 
 imagining that all high building slurs the spirituali- 
 ties ; not observing that our truest littleness consists 
 in doing our greatest things for God. The last-days' 
 people will say, No ; because the end is at hand, and 
 there is no time left for any building era to come. 
 Another class will say, No, more argumentatively ; 
 alleging that a worship for the eyes, as in the lifting 
 of the host before vast multitudes of people, must give 
 
BUILDING Kit AS IN RELIGION. 17 
 
 way henceforth to a preaching and hearing exercise, 
 and accordingly that only small edifices will hereafter 
 he wanted ; such as may be called audience rooms and 
 used as stands for preaching. 
 
 Encountering, at the outset, so many kinds of nega- 
 tives, we must consent, perhaps, to part company with 
 a good many of our readers, in conceiving the possi- 
 bility, or probable fact, of any building era more mag- 
 nificent hereafter to appear. A great many people, 
 a whole major class indeed of the world, are ready 
 always to judge that nothing ever can be, which is 
 not. What can be more visionary, in fact, than to 
 imagine that what has not been ever will be ; that 
 what is admired will pass by ; that what is done will 
 be outdone ! Sometimes they are greatly delighted 
 by the confidence of progress and of some great day 
 to come, but that progress can do anything more than 
 to just continue and extend the present is quite incredi- 
 ble ; they have never carried their mind so far as to 
 imagine anything farther. They are going to convert 
 the world, and liberate the world, and make all things 
 luminous, and completely redintegrate society, but 
 how can they imagine that greater men are to be 
 seen, and more of them, and greater assemblies gath- 
 ered, and new modes of worship and fellowship gener- 
 ated, such as will demand structures of another typo 
 and vaster dimensions! And how, above all, can any 
 but some inveterate dreamer imagine, that architect- 
 ure will hereafter puss into new forms, and take body 
 in proportions more august ! Had these people of 
 
18 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 progress without expectation lived in the days when 
 the Coliseum was founded, they would have laughed at 
 the idea thai*' anything could ever be done in the Greek 
 lines of architecture, which had not already been done. 
 And yet here is an edifice drawn out in ellipse, com- 
 bining in three stories the three Greek orders, with 
 walls a hundred feet high and no roof, and vast 
 enough to contain more people than all the Greek 
 temples of the world together. True, the architecture 
 is not very wonderful in its beauty ; no matter for 
 that, it was actually built, and was quite as finely con- 
 ceived as the barbarous and abominable uses could 
 any way fitly inspire. Twenty years before, there was 
 never to be any such great superstructure, and the 
 man who should suggest the possibility would be 
 mocked by the whole world's laughter ! And yet 
 now, here it is, just because an emperor has risen 
 barbarous enough in his taste and surrounded by a 
 people barbarous enough in their servility, to delight 
 in the scenes which this hell of inhumanity is to 
 exhibit ! Why then should it be thought impossible 
 that the regenerative, out-spreading, all -transforming 
 power of our gospel, should sometime be able, in the 
 glorious instinct of its fellowship, to do as great a 
 thing also as it may want, whenever it is wanted ? If 
 we do not believe that other Coliseums are yet to be 
 built on a much grander scale, why should they not, 
 save that we so confidently hope the world will not be 
 wicked enough and coarse enough to want them ? 
 After allfit is the particular fault of our great expect- 
 
BUILDING Ell AS IN RELIGION. 19 
 
 I 
 
 biicies, that we do not expect anythingJ Without 
 knowing it, we tacitly assume that nothing is to appear 
 beyond our scale, and that our machine is really to 
 run but a short time longer, finishing off at last in 
 the ordinary ! On the contrary, just everything indi- 
 cates, it seems to me, that these present times are 
 God's beginnings, and we almost see with our eyes 
 that the world is but an egg unhatched as yet ; prep- 
 aration, possibility, nothing more. It will take a long 
 time yet to finish the plan, — ages upon ages, " world 
 without end," as the doxology sings, — for it is not go- 
 ing to be a losing plan, as it would be if it were to be 
 ended now. It will yet go on, we may believe, propa- 
 gating salvation, character, saintship, brotherhood, in- 
 telligence, and glory, not for some hundreds, but more 
 probably for some hundred thousands of years, till the 
 populations of the redeemed souls preponderate so 
 vastly as to throw all computations of loss out of 
 mind. Great things in this view are yet to be done 
 here, and we must not too soon conclude that nothing 
 is to appear, transcending what is or has been. 
 
 There has never before been a time, we may see 
 at a glance, when such vast assemblies could be gath- 
 ered at single points as now, if there were any occa- 
 sion for it. Our railroad circulations could hurl in, 
 almost any day, on the great centres, a hundred or 
 five hundred thousand people. Structures too can be 
 raised, if they are wanted, large enough to shelter 
 and contain them all, and if we ask what they can do 
 by coining together in such multitudes, and how they 
 
20 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 can be wielded in a manner to answer any practical 
 purpose, it may, or may not be easy to specify the par- 
 ticular object and way beforehand. But it is a remark- 
 able fact that a particular invention, just now com- 
 pleted, organizes a brain, or sensorium, for the whole 
 living world, and can much more easily do it for 
 whole acres of living assembly. We can even set 
 all choirs and organs, in every part of our State, or 
 nation, upon a perfect chime of time-beat, in any 
 given anthem, at any given hour of night or day ; 
 and who can say what uses may yet be served in as- 
 semblies by these courier threads of wire in the long 
 grand future before us ? If Holiness to the Lord is 
 to be written on the bells of the horses, why not on 
 these wires, which are so much closer to intelligence ? 
 We know very little, as yet, what is to come of these 
 and such like instrumentations. God no doubt has 
 some very grand chapters of advance to be revealed 
 in their religious uses, such as our slow-going imagin- 
 ations are not likely at once to overtake. 
 
 This one thing, meantime, is clear as it need be, 
 that we are going to have resources for building, if 
 building is wanted, that have never yet been devoted 
 to any such purpose. We have more wealth now in our 
 roadways, measured in creative industry, than Solo- 
 mon put into his temple, and it is not money spent as 
 with him, but money invested for a larger production. 
 The powers we have now at work are creating untold 
 wealth, such as was never before seen, and is not now 
 conceived. Becoming less airy and pretentious too, as 
 
BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 21 
 
 it becomes more common, wealth will be entered more 
 
 easily into the finest perceptions and loftiest ideals of 
 religion. It will have its inspirations, and will join 
 itself to the brotherhood of the saints in all the grand 
 purposes and fervors of their advancing cause. 
 Wealth has a new grand chapter thus to write; and 
 having all utmost ability, it will as certainly become 
 a great builder, as there is found to be any Christian 
 occasion for it. And it will be strange, if resources 
 so immensely great do not sometime appear in struc- 
 tures that, for magnitude and majesty, are unequaled. 
 And we need not be afraid lest the art of building 
 should be found to have come to its limit. There is 
 a beautifully artless art in sanctified souls, raising 
 them, age upon age, into higher capacities of form, 
 because their perception is holier and closer to eternal 
 truth*/ Supposing then, that no new forms and orders 
 are ever to be added, any least inventive bigot of 
 routine can see, that putting down a Greek cross for 
 the centre, and drawing out the four limbs into four 
 Latin crosses, a most perfect five-fold whole can be 
 constructed of any conceivable extent. There is also 
 a kind of architectural effect proposed by Ezekiel, in 
 his mystic temple, that has never yet been exhausted ; 
 it has not, in fact, been tried, save in a very limited 
 way in a few of the most picturesque Middle Age 
 structures. It proposes a cutting into the walls ol 
 the structure, built immensely thick, of open corridors 
 and open stairways, to be used in processions that shall 
 be seen moving onward and back, and up and down, 
 
22 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 all over the structure, without and within, and mak- 
 ing it alive with marching hosts of praise. As 
 describing it, the prophet says : " And the side-cham- 
 bers (galleries, corridors) were three, one over an- 
 other, and thirty in order ; and they entered into the 
 wall. * * * And there was an enlarging and a 
 winding about still upward to the side-chambers ; for 
 the winding about of the house went still upward 
 round about the house." * In this way, as it will be 
 seen, the vast stone pile was to be made alive as if it 
 were some ant-hill of worship, and have the living 
 multitudes of the people for its ornamentation. And 
 who shall say that new ideas and forms shall not here- 
 after be invented ? Is it possible, — can we be so weak 
 as to think it, — that these immeasurable ages to come 
 are never to go beyond the present alphabet of archi- 
 tecture and its elements ? What have we done by 
 our geologic explorations, but set open the temple of 
 the creation, showing how the several tiers and stories 
 rise upon each other, and how it is garnished by the 
 wondrous living creatures that have bedded their fig- 
 ures in the stone ; all which, in some age of holy and 
 believing science yet to come, may suggest, we know 
 not what new combinations of constructive art ? And 
 when the great new-creation day, or day of the Spirit, 
 which we all look for, arrives, will it not be the day 
 of the Dove, in symbols and constructions that pre 
 
 sent the spiritualities hovering now above and through 
 
 . ■ < 
 
 *Ezek. xli, 6, 7 
 
BUI LI) IXC ERAS IN RELIGION. 23 
 
 all cruciform order and structure, as the Pentecost 
 hovers in the sky of Calvary ? We stammer, of 
 course, in all such half-discerning suggestions. Our 
 guesses are weak. But new-born fact, when it comes, 
 will show us something not weak. 
 
 So far, we arc looking at the ways and means and 
 possibilities of another building age or ages. Let us 
 look here for a moment, into what wants may be ris- 
 ing to require it. After all, this cathedral age that 
 we so commonly copy and praise, and sometimes idol- 
 ize, is a great way off from being completely and gen- 
 uinely Christian. Knighthood and grim war flavor 
 all the grace there is in it. The worship too, is to be 
 altar-worship ; not as commemorating the offering 
 once for all, but before and around the grand altar 
 set in the focal point of the edifice, where priests are 
 to be waving their incense, and offering always Christ's 
 new-created body for the people to Avorship. They 
 come as to an offertory therefore, and not as to the 
 hospitality of a " table." Meantime, the structure it- 
 self is called a cathedral, because the bishop is con- 
 ceived to be sitting in cathedra there, as presiding 
 in the functions of his spiritual lordship. The prepar- 
 tions of the place, grand as they are in their forms, 
 have a look that is partly alien ; representing the 
 swollen pomp of authority, and back of all, a power 
 that deals with religion specially, as being patron to 
 it, and having it in charge. 
 
 Now it is not difficult to see, that something differ- 
 ent from this, and more advanced, and built upon a 
 
24 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 larger scale, is yet to be demanded. We are to look, 
 in particular, for something more nearly in the type 
 of the Pentecost, and the new brotherly communion 
 there displayed. Had there been thrown up there, on 
 the instant, a structure vast enough to accommodate 
 the uses of the many thousand converts, it would not 
 have been a cathedral, or bishop' s-seat edifice, but it 
 would have been something more fitly called a Koino- 
 nial, or House of Communion. Or it might have been 
 called the House of the Dove, or, tipped with Spirit- 
 fire on all the summits without, the House of Flame. 
 No matter what the name, if only we distinguish the 
 thing ; a temple for the communion of saints, and 
 their worship in the Spirit, vast enough to take in all 
 the immense crowds of pilgrims there gathered; "Par- 
 tisans, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in 
 Mesopotamia, and Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus 
 and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the 
 parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews 
 and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians," — all brothers 
 now in the brotherhood of Christ begun, — breaking 
 bread together, and joining in the solid unity of their 
 worship with all gladness and singleness of heart. In 
 the first two crops of converts harvested here at the 
 beginning, we have a count of five thousand souls, 
 who, instead of going from house to house in the 
 breaking of bread, would have rushed in, by the in- 
 stinct of their love, to fill any common temple large 
 enough to receive them. 
 
 And in just the same way admitting, as we proba 
 
BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 25 
 
 bly should, that our people arc to be trained or disci- 
 pled in small bodies and hearing assemblies, there will 
 almost certainly be, as there always have been, occa- 
 sions where vaster assemblies will desire to be gath- 
 ered and have their brotherhood,tobeheldinalarger 
 bond of communion. Within a few years past there 
 has been a Sunday-school gathering in England, which 
 probably no one of their cathedrals would have con- 
 tained. 
 
 If our Baptist friends are right in assuming that 
 the whole church of God is coming to their practice 
 at last, they ought to expect that in some of the great 
 cities Baptisteries may be wanted vast enough to be 
 canopied only by the sky, like the Coliseum. We are 
 having great crowds gathered in the name of our 
 Christian Association, and shall probably have still 
 greater in the years to come, such as can be assembled 
 only in some vast koinonial structure, nowhere now to 
 be found. Within a very few days past there has 
 been held in the Crystal Palace, a grand commemora- 
 tion of Handel, where a choir of three thousand gath- 
 ered an audience of twenty thousand. It would not 
 be more strange than some other things which have 
 happened, that within a ten years' time, the Evangeli- 
 cal Alliance, raised to the higher pitch and more 
 catholic scope of its calling, should be gathering 
 assemblies of saints, as it were by nations ; such as 
 will require more space than any Hall of Exposition, 
 or Crystal Palace, would be able to afford them. 
 
 Besides we are not to forget that great movements, 
 
26 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 now beginning all over the world, foretoken vast 
 assemblages of believers flowing together in a sublime 
 concourse of brotherhood. The eternal Spirit is hov- 
 ering over the nations and setting them in upon closer 
 and closer bonds of amity, such as must be finally 
 sealed by the Christian inspirations. " Lift up thine 
 eyes round about and see ; all these gather themselves 
 together, and come to thee ; " Catholic, and Greek, 
 and Protestant, all as one. The abundance of the sea, 
 all the forces of the Gentiles, from China round, will 
 as certainly come into the circuit of one love, as into 
 that of commerce and diplomacy, and it will result 
 that, in these vast new confluences, there will be great 
 assemblages gathered, wanting structures where they 
 may be. Besides, in that great day which we think 
 the Spirit is preparing, we can see, at a glance, that 
 changes will be coming to pass that will demand great 
 feasts and anthems of koinonial worship, such as our 
 world-brotherhood has never yet imagined. 
 
 We have been split up, for example, by many thous- 
 and debates, trying to settle bases of unity by the set- 
 tlement of opinions. But these notional points or 
 entities breed, as we find, only sects and sub-divisions 
 without end, and all our longings after the complete 
 fellowship are disappointed. But when these nits, of 
 opinion are all hatched, these dissidences all worn out, 
 and the " one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God 
 and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
 and in all," begin to be felt as the uppermost fact 
 and grandest faith, before which all opinions are to be 
 
BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 27 
 
 schooled into their places, by that time we sink as it 
 were in final gravitation downward on the state of 
 unity. We si uill flow together, most likely, with an 
 ardor of brotherhood now inconceivable. The road- 
 ways will be rivers of men, crowding downwards on 
 the centres of appointed fellowship, and the assemblies 
 gathered will not be satisfied with anthems that are 
 not as the waves of the sea. f 
 
 And so again it will be, when the immense impos- 
 ture of the Popehood ,goes down. When that priest- 
 hood and all priesthood goes down, letting God's 
 armies of believers forth into the enlarged liberties of 
 his kingdom, it will be the new grand birth-day morn- 
 ing of Christian brotherhood. Protestant is no more, 
 Catholic is no more, but Christ is all, and there will 
 be no cathedrals large enough to be more than side 
 chapels of the Grand Houses of Unity now required. 
 St. Peter's will now dwindle to a toy, and the great 
 koinonials, if so we please to call them, — cathedrals 
 they will not be, — will so far have their place. There 
 will here be no pulpits, it may be, or preaching-stands ; 
 no altar, for the sacrifice is ended, gone by for ever ; 
 no priest or priestly vestments, for Christ the only 
 and last priest is gone up on high ; there will be no 
 dividing screen behind which, in their choir, the 
 canons are heard chanting out of sight in male voice 
 only : but the whole wide space within, crowded from 
 wall to wall with its many thousand worshipers, will 
 be itself the choir, canons all themselves, male and 
 female, lifting their own grand hymn, or Hallelujah 
 
28 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 together ; so that, as the gospel itself is not a salva* 
 tion for half the world but for all, the glorious sopranos 
 will now have their part, floating clear above and 
 fluting heavenly sanctities on the top of so great 
 masses of sound. 
 
 There is also yet another change to be anticipated, 
 when the promised day of the Spirit arrives, that will 
 naturally bring together immense conventicles of a 
 kind more severely grand, because of the stupendous 
 intellectual consolidation supposed. I refer to the 
 final reconciliation of science and religion. There is 
 no real discord between them. The natural and the 
 supernatural, science and faith, have a unity of rela- 
 tion as complete as any right and left hand. And 
 yet it has not hitherto been easily discovered ; for we 
 have just now a large dissent on hand that disallows 
 all miracle, takes away the possibility of prayer, and 
 weakens and chills, in a thousand ways, the faith of 
 religion itself. It is partly the fault of a narrow- 
 minded way in the disciples and professed champions 
 of religion, and partly the fault of an over hasty and 
 falsely tempered intellectual conceit, in the forward 
 teachers and expounders of nature. The schism is an 
 old one, really as old as the world ; viz., a conflict be- 
 tween thinking and believing ; only the strife is now 
 being drawn closer as the system of science and the 
 habit of thinking in the terms of causes are more 
 stringently set. Many are greatly concerned lest all 
 faith and all supernatural truth should be subsiding 
 now into final contempt. Christianity they fear has 
 
BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 29 
 
 come to its limit and is ready to die. Far from that 
 as possible. On the contrary this fearful closing in 
 of the conflict is but a convergence towards the set- 
 tlement of it. The point of comprehension is now 
 being reached, where it shall be seen that nature and 
 the supernatural are joint factors, ab eterno, in God's 
 kingdom, complementary one to the other and not 
 contrary. And when the conclusion is fully estab- 
 lished, entered into the mind both of science and 
 religion, they will be forever atoned and reconciled to 
 each other in a solid and compact unity. They will 
 now be forward to recognize each other in the great 
 fraternity of God, and will want occasions where they 
 may say, u all hail," to each other, and set forth their 
 common revelations. No fact ever took place in the 
 world at all comparable to this reconciliation of science 
 and religion, save the reconciliation of the great world- 
 schism made by sin itself; and indeed this other 
 reconciliation is never completed and set in the dignity 
 of reason, without the other. Faith henceforth will 
 not be timorous any more, for it is now become the 
 congener of all reason. It will even be scientific 
 to believe, and there will be a vaster, broader 
 enthusiasm kindled for the great brotherhood of 
 religion, than has ever yet been conceived. / It will be 
 the Creator-worship and Redeemer-worship joined, 
 and the assemblies will want spaces and symbols in 
 which the brotherhood of all fact and truth may be 
 fitly acknowledged. _y / 
 
 What occasions there may be for great assemblies, 
 
30 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 and what vaster structures may be wanted for their 
 use, appear to be now sufficiently shown. If any 
 should ask at this point, by what precise uses, or modes 
 of use, these structures will be occupied, we shall be 
 much at fault of course. I have already suggested a 
 possible use of the telegraphic instrumentation, throw- 
 ing out sentiments in printed forms which the vastest 
 conceivable assemblies may respond to in thunders of 
 assent ; petitions of prayer set forth to which the 
 common Amen will make answer as by the sound of 
 many waters; anthems, and chants, and hymns, and pub- 
 lic te deums, that will command the common voice of as 
 many organs and choirs as will be wanted for whole 
 acres of assembly. Holy processions too may be timed 
 by hymns and marches in the galleries of walls that 
 are alive with worship. We know nothing of all this. 
 It is not for us to appoint these matters. We only 
 see that there will be great movements of brother- 
 hood, and great feeling wanting expression, and the 
 men of the times will know how to find it without 
 help from us. Enough to know that there are great 
 days yet to come ! Would that we could see them ! 
 — and perhaps we shall. 
 
 Since now it will seem to some of you, as already 
 anticipated, that I have been venturesome or vision- 
 ary in these suggestions, let it be remembered that 
 what is written in the Scripture is far more visionary 
 in its way, and promises more. In the last chapters 
 of Ezekiel and of John, we have I know not what 
 revelations of a great building era to come. Both 
 
BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 31 
 
 describe and give, as by definite measurements, the 
 proportions of a vast oew city. The name of the 
 city, according to one, is, The Lord is Th r< . The 
 other calls it, Th- New Jerusalem. According to one, 
 there is to be a temple in the city ; according to the 
 other, no temple at all, but a throne of universal wor- 
 ship : which comes back very nearly to the same 
 thing. If it should be imagined that these archi- 
 tectural pictures relate to the perfect state of the 
 blessed hereafter, that may be true: but it will be 
 true only as a glorious kind of city life in God has 
 been first produced here, flowing into that by transi- 
 tion. In one of the cities, a healing stream is seen 
 flowing out from under the threshold of the temple, 
 which symbolizes, of course, the universal healing of 
 the gospel. In the other, the very city itself is to be 
 seen descending out of heaven from God, and all the 
 glory and honor of the nations are represented as be- 
 ing gathered into it. All which indicates, it will be 
 seen, a great moral regeneration here below. And if 
 I have been right, exactly this moral and spiritual 
 regeneration is going to require a great building age 
 for its uses, which, again, appears to be shown us in 
 these prophetic pictures. However much they are 
 spiritualized, it will be very difficult to give them any 
 construction that does not imply the actual building 
 of something transcendency vast and impressive. It 
 may not be true that any city will be built that is lit- 
 erally three hundred and seventy-five miles square 
 and three hundred and seventy-five miles high, as in 
 
32 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 John's description. But these definite measures, and 
 all the twelves of the foundations and the gates, repre- 
 senting the twelve apostles of the Lamb, show at 
 least that a very exactly finished, cubically squared 
 society is understood, which exactness will be some- 
 how represented in the definitely composed forms of 
 their constructions. How too could it happen, if these 
 prophecies are to be sublimated into merely moral 
 significances, that one of them even thinks out a 
 scheme of ornamentation perfectly original, hitherto 
 scarcely used at all, yet having scope enough to create a 
 new order of architecture, and the grandest, most soul- 
 quickening spectacle of composition ever conceived ? 
 
 We see then, — for this is the sum of all we have 
 been saying, — that the Holy Spirit organizes, himself, 
 the communion of saints, and will as certainly make 
 places or build houses for it in his times. Building 
 for religion is no such carnal thing, in this view, as 
 many think ; and if we build well, what else should 
 we do, when we are building for God ? We so far 
 put ourselves in connection with a great instinct of 
 religion, and with eras to come, when the grandest 
 doxologies, and most hallowed prayers, and widest 
 human brotherhoods, will be mounting into stone by 
 the upward lift of their affinities. Far be it from us 
 to reflect, in the suggestions here offered, on the dig- 
 nity of our common audience chambers, or preaching- 
 stands, called churches. Still farther be it from us to 
 stir up any puffy conceit ; as if, in the building of 
 
BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 33 
 
 these, we were doing something very magnificent, 
 such as belongs to the last great day and final glory 
 of our religion. We need, first of all, to understand 
 that this is the day of small things, and not despise 
 the day of small things because a greater is to come. 
 Probably never, in the most advanced age of religion, 
 will our small structures, called churches, be dis- 
 pensed with. They are, and are always to be, our 
 synagogues, standing in the succession of the syna- 
 gogues, and not in the succession of the temple, as 
 many are forward without right to assume. These 
 had no priesthood and no altar. They were the peo- 
 ple-houses of religion, where they came together every 
 Sabbath, to read the word, and offer their interpreta- 
 tions, and blend their prayers. And these synagogues 
 were the really interesting places of the old religion, 
 far more interesting, in most respects, than the tem- 
 ple. Who can ever think, without profoundest respect 
 and tenderness, of the dear old synagogue of Nazareth, 
 where Christ attended, " as his custom was," and 
 where he began his ministry, standing up to read, and 
 saying when he had done : " This day is this Scrip- 
 ture fulfilled in your ears" ? What scenes took place 
 too in one synagogue or another, almost every Sab- 
 bath, under Christ's ministry ; in Capernaum, in all 
 the synagogues of the country towns, in all the four 
 hundred and more of Jerusalem ! And then after- 
 ward, wherever the apostles went to preach Christ in 
 foreign cities, — in Damascus, in Antioch, in Alexan- 
 dria, in Corinth and Philippi, — here it was that they 
 
34 BUILDING ERAS IN RELIGION. 
 
 found a place and freedom for their testimony. 
 Hither, in like manner, we mnst come for all high 
 schooling in the faith. Here we are to get our in- 
 citements, corrections, reproofs, consolations, sacra- 
 mental food, and dearest helps of brotherhood ; for as 
 these were always, so they are always to be, our 
 schools of godliness. 
 
 And } r et it cannot be less than immensely import- 
 ant, as we cast our eye forward, and take our auguries 
 of the future, that we do not cram it with people and 
 things in our own petty measures. As we expect a 
 great future, so we must expect to have something 
 great done in it. And I know not anything that will 
 fire us with higher thoughts and tone our energies for 
 a loftier key, than to see just what our prophets saw 
 with so great triumph, glorious ages of building for 
 God, such as never were beheld before ; a city of God, 
 or it may be many, complete in all grandeur and 
 beauty, and representing fitly the great ideas, and 
 glorious populations, and high creative powers of a 
 universal Christian age. 
 
II. 
 
 THE NEW EDUCATION." 
 
 We agree, in common speech, to call educated men, 
 " men of letters" understanding by the term such as 
 have been trained in the classics and the literatures of 
 the Greek and Latin peoples. For the time was, at 
 the revival of learning so-called, when there was noth- 
 ing else to begin at and learn from. Plato, Aristotle, 
 Greek and Latin poems, histories and orations, were 
 the general stock of the world's mental furniture. It 
 was letters then or nothing. And a glorious quicken- 
 ing of mind began thus at the study of letters, whence 
 alone it could. So by a kind of scholarly prescription, 
 we fell into the opinion, for a time, that letters are 
 and must be the staple matter of all high education. 
 
 But there was a day of things to come, as of letters ; 
 for when things arrive at knowledge in the discov- 
 eries of science, they too will claim the right to be 
 educators, taking the place, or sharing the place, of 
 letters. And as letters are the mind-stock furnished 
 by men, so things will be the stock of endowment 
 
 * Delivered at New Haven before the Sheffield Scientific School, 
 at Commencement, 1870. 
 
 (35) 
 
6b THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 bodied in God's own works. Their revelations, so 
 long hidden from discovery, will come out now as in 
 fresh glory, setting mind aglow with new intelli- 
 gence. And they will uncover such new ranges of 
 thought, and such worlds-full of meaning, in a method 
 so exactly, gloriously, conformed to mind, that if the 
 great human teachers, such as Plato and Aristotle, 
 had but caught the sense of them, it is even doubtful 
 whether they would have been able to think of any- 
 thing else. Who of us indeed will not be set on fire 
 himself, if once it occurs to him to ask how it must 
 have gone with either of these two, — Plato, for exam- 
 ple, — had he been allowed to spread his great soul 
 suddenly out on things and grasp their science as we 
 do to-day ? His name would have been Plato still, 
 and might possibly have come down to us ; but the 
 man, the character that filled that name, must have 
 been wholly another, glorious enough doubtless, but 
 yet with another sort of glory. Finding how, in that 
 strangely gifted moment, to untwist the threads and 
 score the angles and velocities of light ; flashing in 
 telescopic vision across the abysses, and formulating 
 the forces and times of the sky ; questioning and get- 
 ting answer from the clouds, whence they rise, and 
 how they carry their loads of thunder and rain ; 
 unyoking analytically the atoms of the world, and be- 
 holding the rush of their attractions, moving all in 
 regimental count and squadrons of formulae ; finding- 
 how color is magically hid in the colorless white beam 
 of the day ; and having opened to his inspection the 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 37 
 
 miraculous gcometrizings of the crystal growths ; dis- 
 tinguishing the layers and times of the rocks below, 
 and reading, so to speak, in their tables of stone, the 
 autograph record of innumerable populations, dead 
 and gone before the stone itself was made ; able also, 
 canvassing mere upper surface, where agriculture digs 
 and delves for bread, to hear exactly what the soils 
 ask for to put them in fertility, and set their deserts 
 blooming in fresh growths ; and yet, once more, and 
 what is more than all, if he could have gotten full 
 note of the forces unheard, trooping through the 
 masses and affinities of substance, — light, heat, at- 
 traction, magnetism, — conceiving the innumerable 
 engines and machineries that will sometime put them 
 in harness for the draught, to plough through even 
 wide oceans against the tides and storms, to whirl 
 across whole continents in journeys that are races, to 
 leap even thousands of miles through gulfs miles deep, 
 and come out in swift couriership and dry, with mes- 
 sages rushed through the paths of the sea ; — if, I say, 
 great Plato could have sent his thought through these 
 and other such-like stupendous revelations of science, 
 in some brief time, and come out with any breath 
 left in him, what would have been his first word to 
 the young men of his Academy, and what would he 
 have bid them study but these new, fresh-born, all- 
 wondrous things ! " Here, behold ! is true high argu- 
 ment for you, such as neither I, nor Socrates, nor all 
 sages and poets could ever think before." 
 
 And what now of the Dialogues, what of the Ita 
 
38 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 public, what of all the fine papers he was going to 
 write for us ? Ah, I fear he would -have dropped them 
 incontinently out of mind, made a full end of them ! 
 And glad enough truly we have a right to be, that no 
 such stunning revelation befell him ; for the loss of 
 these would have been even the more irreparable that 
 we could never have known it. 
 
 Now any one of us who has barely swept over the 
 field of modern science, in this rapid way of mental 
 excursion, must clearly see, I think, that in such new 
 arrival of things, a new education, in some good sense 
 of the terms, must also have arrived. The world itself 
 is now become God's classic, a book that is perfect in 
 the method, grand in the subject, and full of all deep- 
 est insight; having more language for mind in it, 
 more idea, meaning, music, logical endowment, inter- 
 penetration of beauty and force, many times more to 
 raise intelligence, and be the ensouling both of order 
 and flame, than there is or possibly can be in all the 
 contributions of letters or of classic genius in all the 
 past ages ; — dwarfed, of course, by man's infantile 
 quantities, and flawed by mortal blemish. Sorry 
 match enough all books of man, for God's book writ- 
 ten in things. 
 
 Since the world then, set forth by science, is become, 
 as it were, a new intelligible congener at all points to 
 mind, something like a new education, it is plain be- 
 forehand, must result ; and a large debate is now 
 going on as to what the change shall be. Some will 
 only modernize the academic courses in the manner of 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 8 ( J 
 
 our American colleges, adding new studies as new 
 sciences arrive. Some will vote the classics dead and 
 lei them go. Others will only include them in a list 
 of optionals, made up in no unity of reason, but hete- 
 rogenic as the caprices of choice may be, making 
 thus no proper university, but a proper omnibus rather 
 on a four years' trip, with any such inside as will take 
 the passage. I cannot undertake to discuss this very 
 heavy matter here, and happily I need not, because it 
 is already decided. Enough that on this ground there 
 are to be two organizations : first, the old Academic 
 College, working for all ages by essentially the same 
 gymnastic plan ; and secondly, a new College of Prac- 
 tical Science that belongs more particularly to the 
 present age and its wants. I only suggest, with a 
 certain feeling of satisfaction that there is a distribu- 
 tion of nature which very nearly corresponds, a dis- 
 tribution, that is, of studies for what is inherent and 
 for what is in use, of the pure mathematics and the 
 applied, of theoretic science and practical science, of 
 skill in the classic tongues and of skill in this or that 
 spoken language. If it should be our opinion that 
 as good classics are written now in our modern lan- 
 guages as are brought us in the ancient, still our 
 tongue itself dates from their dead motherhood, and 
 to that we must go, alivays and forever, to master it. 
 That is the distinctively elegant learning, because it 
 is the only kind of learning that takes us back to the 
 word of our mother, and the first principles of our 
 own tongue. 
 
40 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 What I propose then, at the present time, is to 
 have such debate as we may, on the office and place 
 of the scientific school ; providing a shorter course of 
 study for such as have only shorter means ; a course 
 better adapted, apart from all consideration of means, 
 for the best advance of a certain class of minds ; and 
 especially a course that will prepare a new great age 
 of business faculty, such as notoriously the college 
 training does not. The school of practical science, 
 added to the fixed courses of the college plan, pro- 
 poses, in fact, a universalizing of the university idea ; 
 that as we have schools of theology and law and 
 medicine, with military schools outside, to serve the 
 military uses, so we are to have as many schools of 
 applied science as there are kinds of arts to be scien- 
 tifically shaped and helped. 
 
 All along, in our scientific gestation period, we have 
 been moving on this issue, unawares to ourselves, and 
 now at last the day of birth is come. For here, 
 exactly, is the place and office which our Connecticut 
 Scientific School, the Sheffield, is engaged to fill, 
 wherein it is entitled to a degree of consideration, 
 which it has by no means received as yet from 
 our people. Most of them have heard that such 
 a school exists, and is somehow engaged to give 
 scientific help to agriculture, mining, metallurgy, en- 
 gineering, and the right application of the mechani- 
 cal forces : but by what strides of progress, almost 
 transcending belief, it is moving forward on a great 
 future they do not know. Having only such endow- 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 41 
 
 nient as sufficed for the stale of infancy, it has al- 
 ready outgrown both the endowment and the infancy, 
 gathering in a large corps of teachers, resolute men, 
 gifted with all highest qualifications, and above all, 
 able to find much bread in their enthusiasm. By the 
 unwonted force of that, backed by their formerly 
 single benefactor, who is now being joined by others ; 
 having also a small agricultural fund in the public 
 lands, they have gotten their halls and laboratories 
 and cabinets and all best kinds of apparatus, and 
 have gathered in. by their successes in teaching, a 
 larger and larger following of pupils, till now, at last, 
 they count as many on the ground as one hundred 
 and forty, putting their institution far in advance 
 of all other like institutions in the country, un- 
 less West Point be taken as an exception. Having 
 won for it such precedence, almost gratis, they have 
 certainly won a right also to live and have their en- 
 dowment solidly made up to them ; for they, plainly 
 enough, cannot live on their enthusiasm always. And 
 this, exactly, is getting to be the opinion of many, as 
 we see by the growing additions made to their funds ; 
 for since they bear the flag so well, we are learning 
 to have it as the point of honor to send them bravely 
 on with cheers. 
 
 But I am not here to speak as their advocate, partly 
 because they do not ask it, and partly because they 
 can do it for themselves much better than I can do it for 
 them. What I am going to say. therefore, will not be 
 for this particular school, but for the general subject. 
 
42 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 It does not appear to have been observed, as it very 
 well might be, that the progress of natural science 
 must finally bring on just the crisis which has now 
 arrived ; placing every people or nation that expects 
 to have a forward position in the world, under a fixed 
 necessity of culture in the uses of science. What 
 immense strides have been made in all works of en- 
 terprise and arts of production, under the new-dis- 
 covered laws and principles, is sufficiently observed 
 and is even a stale kind of story. But the end is not 
 yet ; the story is only begun. 
 
 The one single science of chemistry, for example, 
 what has it not done ? See the old dead-matter world, 
 dead and impotent all through, even as omnipotent 
 steam is dead in the quiet inefficiency of water, quick- 
 ened, so to speak, in every dullest atom, and leaping 
 out in fiery potency to stir whatever stirs for it ; gases 
 innumerable, new creatures altogether, getting free, 
 to be known as the ghost-world of matter ; new 
 metals, new salts, solvents, colors, oils, pigments ; 
 old quantities inert made thunders of ; navigation 
 re-created and oceans reduced to ponds ; whole months 
 of old-fashioned time condensed into single days ; 
 freights, bulletins, populations, thoughts, put whirl- 
 ing as in mazes of new celerity ; fires, forges, wheels, 
 laboratories innumerable, and shops that are populous 
 towns, — where shall we stop recounting only what this 
 single science has done ? 
 
 And yet all this we seem to think, because the 
 science new-born has so far applied itself. What need 
 
T ii E NEW EDUCATION. 43 
 
 then have we of schools to conduct such applications ? 
 All the greater need, I answer, that so many wider, 
 vaster applications are not made, but are only ready 
 to be. See how it goes with iron and steel. What 
 have Ave better known, since even Tubal-cain's day, 
 than how to make them, work them and get a great 
 part of our civilization out of them ? And yet our 
 processes have been so changed within a very few 
 years that we seem to have known just nothing about 
 chem. Our chemists showed us first how steel is differed 
 from iron by the union of carbon. We enjoyed the 
 really important discovery for a long time, when by 
 and by the further discovery followed that pig-iron 
 only contained too much carbon. Whereupon Besse- 
 mer puts himself to burning out a part of the carbon, 
 so as to leave what before was pig-iron, steel, instead 
 of roasting carbon into iron already decarbonized. 
 He succeeded, but found on trial that he could not 
 stop the burning-out process accurately enough to 
 make the new method work evenly, as it must to be 
 available. Not to be defeated so, he took his lesson 
 at first principles again, and began once more, pro- 
 posing now to burn out all the carbon in his principal 
 retort, having another slung by its side, with just 
 enough in it, by weight, of the supercarbonized pig 
 not burned but only melted, to give the needed stock 
 of carbon for all. Thus at every step of his invention 
 he was feeling after steel in pig-iron by strict laws of 
 chemistry, till finally he came down square upon it. 
 His problem was triumphantly and heroically finished. 
 
44 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 So that now, by one of the grandest strides ever made 
 in the arts, he is girdling the world with cast-steel in 
 a way that makes it only a little more expensive kind 
 of iron. 
 
 The same story exactly is just now ready in respect 
 to coal. Did Ave not know all about it, and how to 
 get the heat of it, a long time ago ? But the new 
 Siemens furnace, utilizing it by first turning it into 
 gas and burning that in a blast of hot air, abstracting 
 also the heat as it is used, and storing it in bricks to 
 be used a dozen times over, saving a whole four-fifths 
 of the expense, — what is this profoundly cunning fetch 
 of economy but au application, yesterday, of principles 
 of science well known long ago, and waiting to be thus 
 applied ? 
 
 So of all the other sciences ; our application of them 
 is yet scant and imperfect. Of the $2,000,000,000 
 already expended for railroads in our country, what 
 do they tell us but that 20 per cent, at least, — $400,- 
 000,000, — has been thrown away by bad engineering, 
 such as more and better science would have avoided. 
 And what do we hear, but that our own young 
 school of science has already saved money enough to 
 the State, by simply exposing the worthlessness of 
 worthless manures, to endow it ten times over more 
 sufficiently than it can ever hope to be endowed ? 
 
 It could not be more plain, in short, that as a peo- 
 ple we have interests of growth and production de- 
 pending on a more scientific equipment in our processes, 
 than many of us are vet able to conceive. We are a 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 45 
 
 proverbially sharp-witted people, and we make a great 
 many lucky hits of invention, because our wits are 
 nimbled for almost anything by our ambitious but 
 rather light and thin education. But thriving thus by 
 our wits and by lucky accidents and conditions will 
 not hold us long. Solid endowments are indispensa- 
 ble in the long run. And how much does it signify 
 that we probably have not any two men, in all our 
 shops and superintendencies, who, without more 
 science, could ever have discovered the cast-steeling 
 process of Bessemer or the heating process of Siemen ! 
 Down to the time of the Great Exhibition of London, 
 the British people, having such advantages in their 
 supplies of coal and iron, felt sure of an easy prece- 
 dence in all the arts depending on these two staples. 
 Meantime the great French iron-mongering, machine- 
 building establishments of Creusot, every day enlarg- 
 ing, are becoming schools of monitorial instruction, 
 so to speak, where their designers and workmen are 
 being trained in eye and hand, in scientific adjust- 
 ments and the propagations of forces, in the study of 
 forms and the sciences and graces of mechanical 
 movement, and behold it comes out, in the Great 
 Exposition at Paris, that the shops of British art are 
 ignominiously beaten at every point ! Their designs 
 are coarse and clumsy ; their engines are so badly con- 
 structed, as respects the saving of heat and of iron and 
 also of friction, as to virtually put them out of the market. 
 And it has actually resulted since, that the English 
 railroads are importing locomotive engines largely from 
 
46 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 France. It would even be amusing, if it were a little 
 less sad, to hear the four great committees of English- 
 men, comprising the aristocracy of the realm at one 
 end, and the skilled workmen at the other, returning 
 from the French Exposition, testifying in reports that 
 have the minor key and the sound almost of a cry, 
 that England must have schools of applied science, or 
 else go down utterly in the arts of production. 
 
 Shortly after, so great is the concern excited by 
 this discomfiture, that J. Scott Russell, of " Great 
 Eastern " celebrity, a man of the highest capacity and 
 a thoroughly trained scholar, hastens or is hastened 
 off to the Continent to re-examine the schools of tech- 
 nical science, with which he was already acquainted, 
 and make his report of them. He comes back, telling 
 his people very frankly that they are the worst edu- 
 cated nation of Europe. He spreads out the grand 
 scheme of technical training in Prussia. He describes 
 the magnificent Polytechnicum of little Switzerland, 
 at Zurich, showing how it is already drawing off some 
 of the finest, daintiest kinds of manufacture both from 
 England and France, giving to this poor little people, 
 having neither coal nor iron, a fair large part of the 
 world's most productive industries. He spreads out 
 in particular the art education map of the little duchy 
 of Wiirtemberg, comprising 1,700,000 people, showing- 
 how everything is taught scientifically, as respects the 
 principal arts of life, even down to the shoeing of 
 horses, and tells his countrymen that if they were to 
 provide instruction according to the same ratio of 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 47 
 
 supply, they would have 11 universities of applied 
 science, with 49 professors each, and more than 5,000 
 students ; 11 subordinate trade schools or colleges, 
 with 26 professors each, and 6,500 students ; and sub- 
 ordinate to these, in towns and villages, 1,180 schools, 
 having 425 masters and more than 8,000 pupils; 
 whereas, in place of all these, they have now almost 
 nothing to show but a high university education, which 
 rises to its summit in classical and logical studies, — 
 dead the first by time, and dead the second by nature, 
 because it is too dry to be alive ; both having only the 
 least relation possible to uses in life's productive 
 works. 
 
 The point, then, at which we arrive in this economic 
 exposition, is briefly this : that a new crisis now is 
 pending for the nations, pending for us as truly as for 
 any ; for whatever nations or peoples get most for- 
 ward practically in science, we now begin to see, must 
 bring all others under. And this is just as true for the 
 most isolated and separate nations as for any. We 
 ourselves are in the battle and cannot escape it, and 
 nothing is left us but to strip to it and go in for the 
 completest and best scientific education possible. 
 
 At this point we encounter too a new issue, made 
 up for culture itself, that has possibly a greater sig- 
 nificance than any mere culture in letters can ever be 
 supposed to have. In these applications of science, 
 the problem is to inaugurate in fact a new creatorship ; 
 and creatorship is a type of advancement that reaches 
 far. Hitherto we have been occupied mainly with 
 
48 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 the promise made of economic benefits. But these 
 are only rude beginnings ; better and higher things 
 are to come after. What else do we now see in 
 some of the facts just referred to, but that we are 
 come already to a point where beauty of design, ele- 
 gance of form, felicity and grace of composition, are 
 more and more distinctly proved to be the sine qua 
 non of success ? And here it is that the true creative 
 ability is to meet the final test ; a test that is rigidly 
 mental, requiring the sharpest and most subtle per- 
 ceptions, tastes the most delicate, adjustments in 
 the nicest skill and a piercing insight of nature's laws 
 and properties, such as no mind, which has not 
 somehow come into the eternal beauty, can ever 
 hope to attain. And whether this kind of culture is 
 not going some time even to exceed the classic refine- 
 ment, is certainly no absurd question. The German 
 people are a people admitted to be not surpassed in 
 the accomplishments of letters and elegant scholar- 
 ship ; but there is a clear possibility that their new 
 creatorship, begun in the applications of science, will 
 sometime bring them to the flower in a more various- 
 ly, multifariously creative beauty ; even as God's own 
 beauty flowered in the colors, the shapes, the articu- 
 lated functions and the wondrously composed inter- 
 play of parts in the constitutive order of his work. 
 Besides, there is a robustness of quality in this matter 
 of creatorship that far exceeds the thin, second-hand 
 way of classic imitation. It goes out among things, 
 down into their subtleties, up along their heights, and 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 49 
 
 reads them through and through, as by some force of 
 personal co-attainment. And then, as it is given to 
 man for his highest distinction to be the new creator 
 of the world, any people farthest advanced in creator- 
 ship will have the highest consciousness and know 
 their fit honor as being in the completest form of life. 
 Having nature, so to speak, in dominion, they will 
 have the genuine exaltation of power ; great sentiments 
 too, that are not born of scholarship, and are only the 
 better enunciated without classic quotations. And 
 yet, being in affinity with all ornament, they will have 
 the classics also ; asking for more dead languages, not 
 fewer, willing even to go back on the Sanscrit, if they 
 may but know more perfectly the timbers and articu- 
 lations of their own living tongue. 
 
 We come upon a question thus which is difficult, 
 viz., what the schools or colleges of practical science 
 are going to do for the training of mind ? 
 
 And here I willingly yield, at the outset, the im- 
 mense distinction between equipment and education, 
 between the outfit of a worker among causes, and 
 the education of a mind for power over mind. Educa- 
 tion is confessedly what educes or draws out mind ; 
 hence the word. The colleges undertake to do it 
 gymnastically ; that is by a training in the ancient 
 classics and the pure mathematics ; adding a few 
 branches of experimental science just to make a begin- 
 ning of general intelligence. Study for study's sake 
 is their law, and this kind of education they call lib- 
 
50 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 eral, I suppose, because the pupil is not haruessed iu it 
 to any of life's labors. Having no thought as yet of 
 ends or destinations, he is to be separated thus from 
 the vulgar prejudices of the shop and the market and 
 allowed to have his growth in a way more close to his 
 own nature. And so, educated for no particular ends, 
 he will be the better educated for all ends. Thus 
 only, it is claimed, will the great scholars and elegant 
 writers and the men most able to discuss learned 
 questions be trained. All the universalized minds 
 must have, it is said, this universalizing motherhood. 
 No full round man can be educated in particular to 
 this or that, and full round men we do amazingly want 
 in all the walks of life. 
 
 But granting, as we may, the argument, it does not 
 follow that if we propose something short of this we 
 propose anything contrary to it. If we seem to pro- 
 pose an equipment and not an education, that equip- 
 ment will be education, just according to the strain 
 of mind-labor it has cost ; and the imagining, think- 
 ing, combining power of the man may be drawn out 
 even more energetically and effectually, than it would 
 be by twice as many years of routine study. What 
 gymnast, whether of body or mind, ever wrestles in 
 such fierce application, as he that is in throes of labor 
 to make out his great invention ? 
 
 After all there is no patent way of making a mind, 
 or preparing the out-birth of a great soul's power. It 
 will grow by a pine-knot candle as well as by the clas- 
 sic lamp of a college. If it cannot be born out of 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 51 
 
 the highest advantages, then it will be out of such as 
 it can have. We propose, in fact, a less complete and 
 so far inferior course, in the school of practical science, 
 because it will carry some really superior effects, be- 
 getting more precise ideas of things, giving the man- 
 ege of nature's causes more perfectly, and. letting the 
 •pupil farther in among them. As the term is to be 
 shorter and. more sharply set, we expect to work 
 faster, and we have no doubt that a vast number oi 
 minds will be sprung for a great and grand history, 
 that would otherwise never break fetter at all. It 
 would not be strange if some of the very best profes- 
 sors of Latin and Greek should be darted forth out of 
 these limited studies into just those improved methods 
 of study which their own necessities have compelled, 
 and for which all these ages have been waiting. We 
 can never tell what a soul is going to break into, when 
 it is once really started into action. It may even 
 break into theology, asking leave of nobody ! 
 
 But there is a way of speaking, on the part of cer- 
 tain adhesionists of the college method and the col- 
 lege ideas, that does not allow us even the modified 
 indulgence here claimed. They speak, oftener than 
 we like to hear them, even slightingly or contemptu- 
 ously of studies that are for uses, as if these were the 
 going after knowledge as a trade or to get a living by 
 it. They do not consider how very close upon exactly 
 this are the studies of the learned professions. Arc 
 they therefore sordid studies ? Or are they culmina- 
 tions rather, where the young man, trained by lessons, 
 
52 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 goes above them or beyond them, to find the uses 
 in which their value lies ? Besides, if it is a matter 
 in point to make studies look contemptible, what 
 is easier than to put the stupidest possible face on 
 the college method by just calling it the dumb-bell 
 method ? For, what are we told, but that education is 
 to make the mind's arms supple before the battle of 
 life begins, by training them gymnastically, that is 
 by studies for the study's sake, and what is that but 
 the dumb-bell method ? 
 
 Now all such arts of derogation are only tricks of 
 speech and not arguments. At any rate, I undertake, 
 in simple disregard of the first, to make downright 
 assertion of the honors of practical science. Which 
 in fact is nobler, grander to thought, and more god- 
 like, science that beholds a use, or science that is only 
 science ? What in fact is the true honor of science 
 itself, if it is not in the power it has to multiply good ; 
 to create wealth, to arm, and re-endow, and recom- 
 pose, and re-create the world, making gods of men ? 
 And where has the world made heroes of a nobler 
 kind, more bloodless, higher in achievement, con- 
 querors in a grander key ? Just the thing, indeed, 
 to be admired in practical science, is that it is prac- 
 tical. And we want even great institutions endowed 
 for it, simply because they will come bringing uses, 
 even God's intended uses, when he put things into 
 their laws, and laws into things. 
 
 In statements like these it will be seen that, while 
 I give in readily to the superior advantages of the old 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 53 
 
 education as related to certain modes of culture, I 
 am not afraid to claim for the new certain other 
 advantages that, looking only to culture itself, weigh 
 heavily in the scale. Let me take my liberty in trac- 
 ing a little way some of these comparisons. And if 
 I seem to speak one-sidedly, as an advocate, it will 
 only be that I am righting up an equilibrium not yet 
 adjusted. 
 
 The students of the college method are commonly 
 entered at an early age, when they have as yet no 
 conception formed of what they are going to be. The 
 rich father has declared that his son Hopeful shall 
 have the very best education money will buy. And 
 then the problem of the college is, — alas ! there is no 
 problem in the high mathematics half as difficult, — 
 how to give the boy such best education, when he does 
 not himself care a fig whether it is good or bad. He 
 is here, in fact, just because he could not as well be 
 anywhere else. All such are going, of course, into 
 prescribed studies, if any ; and then we shall hear it 
 as their fine distinction, that they are given to study 
 only for the study's sake. Whereas, if they could 
 speak for themselves, they would say how often, No, 
 not for the study's sake, but for the dogged lesson's 
 sake ! These now are the drones of the college, and 
 are going to be the graduated dullards and do-nothings 
 of the liberal education. College life and society are 
 largely infested by these insignificants, and the at- 
 mosphere is more or less untoned by them as regards 
 everything in the nature of true application. In the 
 
54 THE NEW EDUCATION. , 
 
 school of applied science there is no place for such. 
 If they come into it, as flies into a trap, because ex- 
 periment looks more tempting than study, they will 
 scarcely dare to light, lest such drill of experiment 
 should be the death of them. Young men coming in 
 hither will be generally such as come with a meaning, 
 and whoever has the grace to mean something is very 
 likely to be something ; having always a matter in 
 hand to be done, by whatever study, industry, and 
 close tension of faculty are needed. 
 
 The college course is oftenest commended, because 
 it covers so great length of time, — ten years, at least, 
 when the preparatory and subsequent professional 
 studies are included, — but the commendation, gen- 
 erally good, is, I verily believe, a matter of real dis- 
 advantage to many. Short work is commonly sharp 
 work, and long work is commonly dull. Kept so long 
 out of life too, and trained so nearly in the cloister 
 habit, the pupil's living nature is partly extirpated. 
 So much study for study's sake, apart from life's 
 feeling, and subject to the overweening authority of 
 books and teachers, unnerves the will and dries away 
 the juices and moist natural sympathies, which are 
 often the really best talent a man has, leaving him a 
 kind of manikin or lay-figure only of learning. He 
 is educated partly out of his wits in being educated 
 into them. His education is incubus, making all in- 
 spiration, all abandon of action, all fervors of high 
 engagement forever after impossible. Certain high, 
 strong, masculine natures will bear this half-age of 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 55 
 
 discipline and keep their mettle rising. Certain dry 
 souls too, will go through this baking proeess of years, 
 without becoming at all more dry. But the less posi- 
 tive and freer natures will, how often, be subjugated, 
 or even stifled by it. A great many such, it costs 
 nothing to believe, would do better trained by a shorter 
 process ; better in the pulpit, better at the law ; even as 
 some of our old-time Methodist preachers, trained in the 
 saddle, saved their natural quantities to substitute 
 their education, pouring them out full flood, till by and 
 by they had learned gloriously how ; or as lawyers, 
 beginning partly with a knack instead of a brief, go 
 in to gain their causes by being causes themselves. In 
 these scantier methods, the souls untrammeled take 
 inspirations more easily, and are moved all the more 
 nimbly and naturally that they qualify as experts, 
 and not by indoctrination. And if they seem, for a 
 time, to be too little polished by letters, they will com- 
 monly be polished afterwards by the rub of their en- 
 gagements, and will learn, as Bunyan did, the uses of 
 words by seeking words for their uses. They will, 
 probably, have as much more impetus too, as they are 
 educated closer to life's feeling and the concerns of 
 the hour. 
 
 It was formerly a large defect in the academic 
 method, and I fear it may be now, that it gave so 
 little attention to the training of the senses and the 
 sense-perceptions. It kept the pupil wholly at the 
 book lesson-drill to give him the handle of his 
 mind, and left him too often a good deal less able than 
 
56 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 he should be to handle his hands. He has no practised 
 eye. All his faculties worldward work confusedly 
 still, as if they had nothing to do with his mind. 
 Trained to no dashing out in chalk of plants, animals, 
 organs, rock-formations and the like, he has no close 
 observation of anything. He acquires dexterity and 
 precision of motion from no closely exact adjustments 
 of cameras and microscopes, and from no critically 
 nice manipulations in chemistry, such as will save his 
 experiments and his clothes. He probably writes a 
 bad hand, and graduates a clumsy fumbler, left-handed 
 in both hands, and scarcely more dexterous in his 
 head ; for no matter how good a scholar one may be 
 in the classics, or the mathematics, if still he has no 
 proper sense of colors, lines, and shapes, and no pre- 
 cise art of handling, or of touch, he will just so far be 
 wanting in a genuine mental eye ; and the fault will 
 come out somewhere, in his law-point, or his deed of 
 amputation, or it may be in his sermons. 
 
 Again, it will be found that the teaching of science 
 in mere class-lessons, apart from experiment by the 
 pupil, where that is possible, and apart from all uses 
 of application, is the very worst method as respects 
 the distinctness and real intelligence of the impress- 
 ions given. The pure mathematics can be taught in 
 that manner ; for these, if learned at all, can only be 
 accurately thought ; but the science of things must be 
 gotten out of things themselves ; that is, by asking 
 what they are for, what they are doing or will do ? 
 Besides, there is a large class of pupils whose nature 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 57 
 
 it is to be looking always most keenly after the uses 
 of things, and who can only drop into utter listlessncss 
 and disappointment when put to the learning of them 
 by routine lessons. Pupils of a different habit might 
 take to such abstractive lessons more naturally, and 
 might get a certain kind of knowledge by rote, but the 
 more inquisitive practical sort will get distinctly noth- 
 ing. In the beautiful science of chemistry, for exam- 
 ple, illustrated by the most fascinatingly brilliant ex- 
 periments, and quickening to thought as to the solid 
 matter of the world itself, it is even mournful to see, 
 from the answers of the college examinations, how 
 little science mere spectatorship has taught. Muddle, 
 — muddle only ! No insight of ideas and laws, no 
 science at all ! Even bright, high-working minds get, 
 how often, nothing but the lingo of it for diverting uses 
 in the college yard. Science that it is of the mind 
 under foot, most potentializing of all sciences in the 
 causes it reveals, showing the atoms leaping to their 
 laws and rushing as in fiery fervors of intelligence 
 after their mates, how commonly is nothing gotten 
 from it still for the mind's endowment ! I speak the 
 more properly thus, and with the better right, that my 
 own experience in the matter testifies only of the 
 truest personal advantage. For it happened that, Avith 
 two or three others in a large class, I was taken by 
 the science enough to get hold of the keys, and it has 
 been with me ever since, meeting me at almost every 
 turn, bringing new refreshments of example and dear 
 suggestion, and pouring in more copious riches on me 
 
58 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 than all the other more gymnastic studies of my 
 course together. Indeed, I seem to have had these 
 imponderable entities, these atomic yearnings, these 
 inorganic half mystical forces keeping me company, 
 and to have gone along, as it were, socially among 
 them, where some other of my friends, better educated 
 and more gifted, have been seeming only to see, but 
 to get no sign. Most sad loss do they make who have 
 gotten what they call the liberal accomplishments of 
 classic study and missed the magic, world-transform- 
 ing wealth of this one study. 
 
 They need not miss obtaining a very good knowl- 
 edge of the science in the college course, and yet how 
 commonly will they, when it is taught by no labora- 
 tory practice, and no manipulations of experiment 
 conducted by themselves. Here their mind would be 
 set to more than holding their eyes for a lecture, more 
 than passing in a lesson, — to the harnessing of a 
 power, and the discovering of things by their laws 
 accurately enough to know what they will do, or what 
 can be done with them and by them. And this girds 
 them in so closely that their faculty is put in stress 
 for exact comprehension, and their mental education, 
 if we speak of that, is most solidly, soberly advanced ; 
 and the matters learned do not now go into mind to be 
 lodged there as dead quantities that, being learned, 
 are there entombed and done with, but as forces of 
 onward impulsion and expectant vigor. It will be as 
 if the steam power, the electric celerity, the fierce 
 oxygen, the iron, were putting their strong nature into 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 59 
 
 the boy or the man, to be endowment and momentum 
 for his works and character. 
 
 As in chemistry, so in mining, mineralogy, geology, 
 engine-building, engineering, — these and all other 
 sciences, between astronomy on one side and entomol- 
 ogy on the other, will be studied best, most effectually 
 felt out and sounded, in their uses and applications. 
 They will not be shammed in this manner, and the 
 students, going after them with appetite, will not have 
 their minds debauched in them. And it will be a 
 considerable advantage too, afterward, when they go 
 out into life, that having been thus practically trained, 
 they will not be laughed at as incapable s of learning, 
 but will be accepted as the true Magistri Artium, in the 
 original and living sense of the degree. 
 
 And now, having spoken thus freely of points where 
 the old education has its disadvantages, and the new 
 its better advantages, will it be imagined or inferred 
 by some that I am willing to take down the honors 
 thus of the fuller, more protracted, and, in some 
 possible respects, more fertilizing courses of the col- 
 leges heretofore in use ? Far be it. I accept no such 
 construction as that. I can think of it only as absurd. 
 No, a true classic culture can never be antiquated, and 
 if I seem to raise a crusade for the shorter methods 
 of applied science, I do it in the clear understanding 
 that such shorter methods are wanted, and that I am 
 doing nothing against, but everything for the advance- 
 ment of the old methods. For if we push the new 
 education to its utmost efficiency, and far enough to 
 
60 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 practically fill the whole tier of life for which it is 
 organized, making every walk of industry and enter- 
 prise, every farm-house, factory, mine, trade, road, 
 every shop of handicraft, every humblest toil, even 
 down to the knife-grinder's lathe and fisherman's bar- 
 row, to feel its quickening touch of intelligence, the 
 classic culture will only be as much more largely 
 sought, and its courses as much more frequented, as 
 the general underlift of mind is higher than it was 
 before. And then as now, and now as then, Mater 
 Alma esto perpetua. 
 
 But misgivings will be felt as regards still another 
 department of life ; viz., that of morals and religion. 
 
 And first of all, many alarmists will apprehend the 
 incoming here of a new age of materialism. What, 
 in fact, are we preparing here, they will ask, but to 
 have the new age educated into materialism as com- 
 pletely as possible ? As if the getting a science of 
 matter were a coming under matter, and not the 
 getting up of matter into mind, where it shall reveal 
 its ideas and laws and prove itself a thought-born 
 creature. True, there is a certain looking here, in 
 these proposed studies, to matter, and that with more 
 or less expectation. But if living in such expectation 
 is the same thing as being materialized, it ought to 
 have been fatally done a long time ago. What is mat- 
 ter for but to be used in ways of advantage ? Do we 
 not live in it ? Are we not fastened to it as we are 
 to our bodies, nay to our heads and faces ? And what 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 61 
 
 has poor, pious agriculture been looking to, and dig- 
 ging in, from the first day till now ? And what is 
 land itself, — the vast land-wealth, outmcasuring all 
 other properties together, — but a property in matter ? 
 What, in short, by the sentence of nature, do we use, 
 occupy, wear, spend our life in, get our nutriment 
 from, and bow down ourselves upon, but the matter- 
 •world we are put here to inhabit ? Nay, we are here 
 in matter too, for religion's sake ; only never to be 
 materialized by it, till we are buried and dissolved 
 in it. 
 
 See again, distinctly, what high furniture of mind 
 and spirit is coming up out of these material things. 
 For what are words in their first stage, but names of 
 material images, whether acts or objects, that meet 
 us in the senses ? Dropping thus our very thoughts 
 into matter to be named, are we not going to be 
 fatally sunk in it ? So it would seem. No ! for look 
 again, and we shall see that the matter-born words 
 have all a second sense related to mind, a power of 
 expression by figure that makes them God-given sym- 
 bols of thought and spirit and all the invisible things 
 of invisible worlds. So forthwith we shoot them up 
 into a higher tier of meanings for all mind-work, all 
 truth and religion. The underpinning thus of the 
 general fabric of words is matter, but it culminates 
 airily in pinnacles of meaning that are the more 
 grandly spiritual for the solid sense-work under them. 
 
 And what, again, do we now see as science advances, 
 but that, as our single words were significant origi- 
 
62 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 nally, because the stamps of God's intelligence were 
 in their faces, so they are now going to be threaded 
 and strung in the unity of reason, as the things them- 
 selves are threaded and strung by the laws going 
 through them. Thus it would almost make up, even 
 now, a new dictionary, to simply gather up the law- 
 words of science that are getting a higher second 
 sense as words of thought and spirit, drawn towards 
 unity by the analogies of their own system ; gravita- 
 tion, for example, orbit, focus, centripetal and centri- 
 fugal, apogee and perigee, reflection and refraction, 
 magnetic, electric, photographic, telegraphic, conduc- 
 tion, bipolar affinity, latent heat, static equilibrium, 
 system, order, kosmos and a full thousand others used 
 for the expression of supernatural ideas. Thus we 
 speak of the bipolarities of subjects ; or of the neu- 
 tral salts of feeling, quiet as nitre till the fires of 
 provocation touch them ; or of geologic layers in civ- 
 ilization ; or of souls that are exogenous or endoge- 
 nous in their growth, blooming only in their own 
 order. Now by all such words of law we are unify- 
 ing more or less perceptibly the ideas and thoughts of 
 mind they are used to express, approximating always 
 that complete whole of intelligence in which they will 
 be configured to, and accurately tempered by, each 
 other. And what forbids that we thus form, at last, 
 by the simple growth of language itself, untrammeled 
 by logic and speculative art, a complete mind-system, 
 answering to the system discovered in things ? Is this 
 the materializing of man, or is it rather the spiritual- 
 izing of the world ? 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 63 
 
 Dismissing this, we pass on to another objection, 
 viz., that in making so much of things and their 
 scientific uses, we shall fall into a remorseless and 
 dry rationalism, and even lose out the faculty of im- 
 agination itself. We shall educate ourselves out of 
 poetry, out of all finest capacities of literature, and 
 even out of religion. Xo, the matters of science are 
 no dry bodiment of fact and speculative reason, such 
 as the objection supposes. There is, in fact, no school- 
 ing for the imagination at all comparable, as regards 
 richness and stimulating efficacy, save in religion it- 
 self. I once heard a commencement orator dealing 
 heavy blows on the stupid and stupefying nurture 
 given to children in books of natural history, and 
 saying, in what seemed to him a brilliant sally : 
 "Teach your children fairies rather, hobgoblins, sprites, 
 good-fellows, put them in the Arabian Nights and 
 bring them up no more among the beasts." That he 
 thought would raise the true poetry in them, and pre- 
 pare them even to believe in miracles ! Whereas, if 
 I am right, there is a far higher wonder-working and 
 a sweeter magic in the spells of the life-power, grow- 
 ing matter into beasts and trees, and birds and 
 flowers, out of germs so little like them, than in all 
 the pretty nonsense of such fables ; and that with 
 the advantage that these more than romantic wonders 
 are yet literally true. There is, in fact, more poetry 
 and more to quicken the imagination, more mystery 
 and rhythm and soul-quickening inspiration in the 
 magic feats of organic chemistry, imposing its own 
 
64 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 will on matter, as no human chemist can, — more, I 
 say, in this one department o£ science, than in all the 
 books of Homer together. There is no hymn for all 
 the gods that has the music of this. And so it is just 
 now beginning to appear in our later poets, that the 
 deepest thoughts and freshest beauty and grandest 
 inspiration of song are contributions, at bottom, from 
 the revelations of science. And if it be science to 
 think the thoughts of God and set them chiming in 
 productive work, what else should be the result ? 
 
 But we are proposing here to give a much larger 
 place to science, relatively speaking, in the education 
 of the coming age ; and what is this, as things are 
 looking now, some will ask, but to put the coining 
 age at school in ways of unbelief ? It is much to be 
 regretted, certainly, if science is making issue with 
 religion more frequently than it was ; but for one, I 
 have no least concern for the result. If there is no 
 truth in religion, it must die of course, and may as 
 well die soon. If there is truth in it, there is most 
 assuredly no other truth in conflict with it. Besides, 
 if there is any possibility of science in things, there 
 is, by supposition, mind in things ; for science is but 
 intelligence discovering intelligence, mind rethinking 
 the thoughts of mind everywhere present. To be 
 thinkable they must have ends, uses, adaptations, 
 geometries in their masses, arithmetic in their atoms, 
 proportions, orbits, laws, otherwise they are but chro- 
 nonJiotonthologos, and there is no science of that. But 
 since they are threaded with mentality all through, 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 65 
 
 and science is but finding tlie threads, since ilicy arc 
 covered all over with stamps of intelligence, which 
 means divine intelligence or nothing, it may as well 
 be expected that the tides of the sea, swept out with 
 a broom, will not return, as that religion will not, when 
 thrust away by science. Let there be no feeble depre- 
 cation then of conflict or collision between science 
 and religion, such as we sometimes hear on both 
 sides. The braver way is better and more rational. 
 No, let come what must : as long as there is matter of 
 conflict, let conflict be : let the two grapple in the 
 close interlock and wrestle together ; and let the two 
 get just what belongs to them as the battle edge 
 divides to each. 
 
 Meantime I take a most particular pleasure in the 
 advocacy of a way of education specially devoted to 
 the applications of science, because of the conviction I 
 feel, that our schools of application will be the best 
 and most certain rectifiers possible of the unbelieving 
 tendencies of science itself. The real fact is that our 
 unbelievers and deniers in science prove their infirmity 
 sometimes in the loss of their equilibrium. They are 
 dazzled by their own splendors, just about to be, if not 
 already, won. So much authority so long deferred 
 to oversets the balance of their brain : and they think 
 they can settle anything by their pronouncement, as 
 other tyrants do, who have outgrown their measures ; 
 pitching in their authority thus on the great religious 
 questions of ontology, soul-force, immateriality of 
 spirit, freedom of the will, and the like, where theolo- 
 5 
 
66 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 gians and metaphysicians have been toiling thousands 
 of years ; having no suspicion that they are become 
 theologians and metaphysicians themselves, without 
 even knowing the alphabet of the subjects. They get 
 lifted also into moods of flightiness by their premature 
 soaring on the wings of hypothesis, or the unripe 
 guesses they propound as facts. As they multiply in 
 numbers, they become hurried by their races with each 
 other, thrusting out hypotheses that are occurrent, not 
 established. In their zeal for precedence they quite 
 forestall the honors it brings, setting up their flag on 
 islands a little before they are discovered. Living 
 thus in a kind of fire-work element, where opinions, 
 conjectures, guesses, and brilliant hypotheses are 
 bursting into flame all around the sky, the premature 
 births of their discovery make more noise than the 
 full-born truths. 
 
 Saying nothing, in this view, of the shallow sensa- 
 tion-mongers who are bolting out their discoveries } T et 
 unborn^ and storming them in our faces just because 
 they shake the faith of religion, let it waken no sur- 
 prise if I say that of all the fifty or more points, where 
 science is supposed to be most distinctly pitted against 
 religion, I know not one where the matter advanced 
 has come to be any matter of science at all, excepting 
 only two or three where the constructions of religion 
 have been easily accommodated already to the ad- 
 mitted discoveries. And it is exactly here, in this 
 corrective sobering of hypotheses, that applied science, 
 largely endeavored in our schools, will be adding just 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 67 
 
 the counterweights demanded. Applied science must 
 be science, for anything in the nature of hypothesis, 
 not verified by discovery, is but chaff as regards ap- 
 plications and uses. There is no romancing or vapor- 
 ing here. Conjectures, unripe guesses, cannot turn a 
 mill, or color a flower, or kindle auroral fires about 
 the point of a magnet. Hydraulics for the imagina- 
 tion will not answer for water. Geologic theories, if 
 that is all, will do no good work in the mines. Assays 
 that are going to roast gold out of gunpowder will 
 probably get something else. Not even clairvoyant 
 revelations will be as good as telegraphic cables. All 
 teaching here is held within the sober limits of dis- 
 covery. What instruction is going to apply it must 
 first solidly know, and the study of the pupil will be 
 to find what is, not what possibly can be. The whole 
 training here is practically bent, and the habit created 
 is a habit of respect to what is practically established. 
 And from that kind of habit, in the forward operative 
 men of the future age, religion will have nothing to 
 fear. Or if it be said that such limited courses of 
 study, in the schools of applied science, will have a 
 peril of their own, gendering a conceit the more mis- 
 chievous because of its limitations ; if we are reminded 
 that a " little knowledge is a dangerous thing ; " it is 
 enough to reply that a great deal of knowledge which 
 is not come to knowledge is a great deal more dan- 
 gerous. A grand practical sobriety will get footing in 
 this manner, and when it comes to rule in all the great 
 affairs of industry and creative production, it will have 
 
68 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 weight and body enough to sober the over-zealous 
 nights of the discoverers. Assuming to be more sci- 
 entific, they will begin to think they are less so ; and 
 it will be strange, if the men of applied science do 
 not often equal them in the matter of discovery itself. 
 For what can better prepare discovery than a fixed 
 respect to facts, and a stringent attention to their 
 uses ? On this ground we are even to expect, not 
 better inventions only and uses, but a more vigorous 
 growth in science itself. And withal it will add as 
 much vigor to religion as it does to common life and 
 science. 
 
 On the whole, I know not anything in this training 
 of practical science that can well discourage faith in 
 its moral and religious tendencies, unless it be, where 
 that is true, that it proposes no moral supervision of 
 the pupils, and no religious observances. And what, 
 in this view, can afford a better compensation, or 
 more effectually meet a most real want of the age 
 itself, than to have a professorship added on the ap- 
 plications of science to religion ? It must be filled by 
 a man capable of such high themes, and why not have 
 him lecture on them every Sunday, connecting with 
 his lecture some fit observance of worship, and a free 
 questioning or debate of all the students and profes- 
 sors on all the questions put in issue ? What is the 
 world now waiting for, but just this scientific confi- 
 dence in religion, and this always truth-confirming, 
 liquidating power ? 
 
 I have only to add now, in closing, a few words 
 
THE NEW EDUCATION. 69 
 
 concerning the advantages added to character, in its 
 most ennobled forms, by the proposed training in 
 practical science. The very thing studied is to bring- 
 all nature under power, and by that means to double, 
 or quadruple, or even to twenty fold the quantity of 
 being in the men. Hitherto we have had small men 
 living in small character, partly because they have 
 had no grand dominion of property in the world, such 
 as belongs to them. But when they get all causes 
 under, they will have a towering property in their 
 functions, and may have a like towering stature in 
 their virtues. For it happens that what is thus a 
 training into power is a training also into order, the 
 order of law and of things in law. Order is next thing 
 to principle ; and scientific order, by a hidden law of 
 sympathy, favors all virtue : character, in fact, is only 
 order in mind. And again, order in mind will link 
 itself with a perpetual assent to law, breeding rever- 
 ence to all most fixed convictions of right, even as to 
 the fixed laws applied by science itself. The classics 
 are controvertible and variable in whatever stamp is 
 gotten from them, because they are human ; and we 
 may therefore well enough admit that a classical 
 training can work finer tastes and finishes, a little 
 way off from the severities of principle, producing a 
 freer abandon and a more gracefully captivating, alto- 
 gether human play ; but for just that reason they can 
 never endow a true great soul in the noblest quanti- 
 ties of power, and the inflexible majesty of right. 
 Only science and the scientific order can set merit 
 
70 THE NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 first, and make ornament the garnish of merit ; only 
 these can truly enthrone the sober laws of use, turning 
 politics into statesmanship, ruling out cabal and fac- 
 tion, rebuilding society thus in terms of order and 
 truth, sanctified by justice and crowned by religion. 
 This, if I am right, is character ; and having thus all 
 works and workmen headed by the supervision of 
 character, a new great age of character only can re- 
 sult ; a consummation that may fitly gladden the 
 expectant eyes of all good men. 
 
III. 
 
 COMMON SCHOOLS.* 
 
 Lev. 24- 22. Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the 
 stranger, as for one of your own country : for I am the Lord 
 your God. 
 
 It is my very uncommon privilege and pleasure to 
 speak to you, for once, from a text already fulfilled, 
 and more than fulfilled, in the observance. For we, 
 as a people or nation, have not only abstained from 
 passing laws that are unequal, or hard upon strangers, 
 which is what the rule of the text forbids, but we 
 have invited them to become fellow-citizens with us 
 in our privileges, and bestowed upon them all the 
 rights and immunities of citizens. We have said to 
 the strangers from Germany, France, Switzerland, 
 Norway, Ireland, and indeed of every land : " Come 
 and be Americans with us, you and your children ; 
 and whatsoever right or benefit we have, in our free 
 institutions and our vast and fertile domain, shall be 
 yours." 
 
 Thus invited, thus admitted to an equal footing 
 
 * Delivered in the North Church, Hartford, as a Fast Day Dis 
 course, March 25, 1853. 
 
72 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 with us, they are not content, but are just now return- 
 ing our generosity by insisting that we must excuse 
 them and their children from being wholly and 
 properly American. They will not have one law for 
 us and for themselves, but they demand immunities 
 that are peculiar to themselves, and before unheard 
 of by us ; or else that we wholly give up institutions 
 for their sake that are the dearest privileges of our 
 birthright. They accept the common rights of the 
 law, the common powers of voting, the common terms 
 of property, a common privilege in the new lands and 
 the mines of gold, but when they come to the matter 
 of common schools, they will not be common with us 
 there ; they require of us, instead, either to give up 
 our common schools, or else, which in fact amounts 
 to the same thing, to hand over their proportion of 
 the public money and let them use it for such kind 
 of schools, as they happen to like best ; ecclesiastical 
 schools, whether German, French, or Irish ; any kind 
 of schools but such as are American and will make 
 Americans of their children. 
 
 It has been clear for some years past, from the 
 demonstrations of our Catholic clergy and their peo- 
 ple, but particularly of the clergy, that they were 
 preparing for an assault upon the common school 
 system, hitherto in so great favor with our country- 
 men ; complaining, first, of the Bible as a sectarian 
 book in the schools, and then, as their complaints 
 have begun to be accommodated by modifications that 
 amount to a discontinuance, more or less complete, of 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 73 
 
 religious instruction itself, of our " godless scheme of 
 education ; " to which (as godless only as they have 
 required it to be,) they say they cannot surrender 
 their children without a virtual sacrifice of all relig- 
 ion. Growing more hopeful of their ability, by the 
 heavy vote they can wield, to turn the scale of an 
 election one way or the other between opposing par- 
 ties, and counting on the sway they can thus exert 
 over the popular leaders and candidates, they have 
 lately attempted a revolution of the school system of 
 Michigan, and are now memorializing the legislatures 
 of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and urging it on the peo- 
 ple of these States to allow a change or modification 
 of theirs that amounts to a real discontinuance ; viz., 
 to make a distribution of the public school money to 
 all existing schools, of whatever description, accord- 
 ing to the number of their scholars ; and the moment 
 this is done, plainly nothing will be left of the com- 
 mon school system but a common fund, gathered by 
 a common tax on property, to support private schools. 
 Evidently the time has now come, and the issue of 
 life or death to common schools is joined for trial. 
 The ground is taken, the flag is raised, and there is to 
 be no cessation till the question is forever decided 
 whether we are to have common schools in our coun- 
 try or not. And accordingly, it is time for us all, 
 citizens, public men, and Christians, to be finding the 
 ground on which we expect and may be able to stand. 
 In one view the question is wholly a religious ques- 
 tion ; in another it is more immediatelv a civil or 
 
74 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 political question. And yet the lines cross each other 
 in so many ways that any proper discussion of the 
 topic must cover both aspects or departments, the 
 religious and the political. I take up the question at 
 this early period, before it has become, in any sense, 
 a party question, that I may have the advantage of 
 greater freedom, and that I may suffer no imputation 
 of a party bias to detain me from saying anything 
 which pertains to a complete view of the subject. 
 
 As this day of fasting is itself a civil appointment, 
 I have always made it a point to occupy the day, in 
 part, with some subject that pertains to the public 
 duties and religious concerns of the State or nation. 
 I propose, therefore, now to anticipate, as it were, the 
 pressure of this great subject, and discharge myself, 
 once for all, of my whole duty concerning it ; and I 
 hope to speak of it under that sense of responsibility, 
 as well as in that freedom from prejudice, which one 
 of the greatest and most serious of all American sub- 
 jects requires. I wish I might also speak in a manner 
 to exclude any narrow and partial or sectarian views 
 of it, such as time and the further consideration of 
 years might induce a wish to qualify or amend. 
 
 I will now undertake to say that our Catholic friends 
 have, in no case, any just reason for uneasiness or 
 complaint. A great many persons and even com- 
 munities will very naturally act, for a time, as power 
 is able to act, and will rather take counsel of their 
 prejudices than of reason, or of the great principles 
 that underlie our American institutions. Considera- 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 75 
 
 tion, as a rectifying power, is often tardy in its com- 
 ing, and of course there will be something unrati- 
 fied, for so long a time, in the matter that waits for 
 its arrival. 
 
 Meantime the subject itself is one of some inherent 
 difficulty, and cannot be expected to settle itself upon 
 its right foundation, without some delay or some agi- 
 tation, more or less protracted, of its opposing inter- 
 ests and reasons. We began our history in all but 
 the single colony of Baltimore, as Protestant com- 
 munities ; and in those especially of New England, 
 we have had the common school as a fundamental 
 institution from the first, — in our view a Protestant 
 institution, — associated with all our religious con- 
 victions, opinions, and the public sentiment of our 
 Protestant society. We are still, as Americans, a 
 Protestant people, and many are entirely ignorant as 
 yet of the fact that we are not still Protestant States 
 also, as at the first ; Protestant, that is, in our civil 
 order and the political fabric of our government. And 
 yet we very plainly are not. We have made a great 
 transition ; made it silently and imperceptibly, and 
 scarcely know as yet that it is made. Occupied 
 wholly with a historic view of the case, considering 
 how the country and its institutions are historically 
 speaking ours ; the liberality and kindness we have 
 shown to those who have come more recently to join 
 us, and are even now heard speaking in a foreign 
 accent among us ; the asylum we have generously 
 opened for them and their children : the immense 
 
76 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 political trust we have committed to them, in setting 
 them on a common footing, as voters, with ourselves ; 
 and that now we offer to give a free education to their 
 children, at the public expense, or by a tax on all the 
 property of the state, — considering all this, and that 
 we and our fathers are Protestants, it seems to be 
 quite natural and right, or even a matter of course, 
 that our common schools should remain Protestant 
 and retain their ancient footing undisturbed. 
 
 But we shall find, on a second consideration, that 
 we have really agreed for something different, and 
 that now we have none to complain of but ourselves, 
 if we have engaged for more than it is altogether 
 pleasant to yield. Our engagement, in the large view 
 of it, is to make the state or political order a plat- 
 form of equal right to all sects and denominations of 
 Christians. We have slid off, imperceptibly, from the 
 old Puritan, upon an American basis, and have under- 
 taken to inaugurate a form of political order that 
 holds no formal church connection. The properly 
 Puritan common school is already quite gone by ; the 
 intermixture of Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians, Epis- 
 copalians, and diverse other names of Christians 
 called Protestants, has burst the capsule of Puritan- 
 ism, and as far as the schools are concerned it is 
 quite passed away ; even the Westminster catechism is 
 gone by, to be taught in the schools no more. In 
 precisely the same manner, have we undertaken also 
 to loosen the bonds of Protestantism in the schools, 
 when the time demanding it arrives. To this we are 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 77 
 
 mortgaged by our greal American doctrine itself, and 
 there is no way to escape the obligation but to renounce 
 the doctrine, and resume, if we can, the forms and 
 lost prerogatives of a state religion. 
 
 But there is one thing, and a very great thing, that 
 we have not lost, nor agreed to yield; viz., Common 
 Schools. Here we may take our stand, and upon this 
 we may insist as being a great American institution ; 
 one that has its beginnings with our history itself ; 
 one that is inseparably joined to the fortunes of the 
 republic ; and one that can never wax old, or be dis- 
 continued in its rights and reasons, till the pillars of 
 the state are themselves cloven down forever. We 
 cannot have Puritan common schools ; these are gone 
 already. We cannot have Protestant common schools, 
 or those which are distinctively so. But we can have 
 common schools, and these we must agree to have 
 and maintain till the last or latest day of our liber- 
 ties. These are American, as our liberties themselves 
 are American ; and whoever requires of us, whether 
 directly or by implication, to give them up, requires 
 what is more than our bond promises, and what is, in 
 fact, a real affront to our name and birthright as a 
 people. 
 
 I mean, of course, by common schools, when I thus 
 speak, schools for the children of all classes, sects, 
 and denominations of the people ; so far perfected in 
 their range of culture and mental and moral disci- 
 pline, that it shall be the interest of all to attend, as 
 being the best schools which can be found ; clear too 
 
78 COMMON SCHOOLS, 
 
 of any such objections as may furnish a just ground 
 of offense to the conscience or the religious scruples 
 of any Christian body of our people. 1 mean, too, 
 schools that are established by the public law of the 
 state, supported at the public expense, organized and 
 superintended by public authority. Of course it is 
 implied that the schools shall be under laws that are 
 general, in the same way as the laws of roads, records, 
 and military service ; that no distribution shall be 
 made, in a way of exception, to schools that are pri- 
 vate, ecclesiastical or parochial ; that whatever ac- 
 commodations are made to different forms of religion, 
 shall be so made as to be equally available to all ; that 
 the right of separate religious instruction, the super- 
 vision, the choice of teachers, the selection of books, 
 shall be provided for under fixed conditions, and so as 
 to maintain the fixed rule of majorities, in all ques- 
 tions left for the decision of districts. The schools, 
 in other words, shall be common, in just the same 
 sense that all the laws are common, so that the ex- 
 perience of families and of children under them shall 
 be an experience of the great republican rule of 
 majorities ; an exercise for majorities of obedience to 
 fixed statutes, and of moderation and impartial re- 
 spect to the rights and feelings of minorities ; an 
 exercise for minorities of patience and of loyal as- 
 sent to the will of majorities ; a schooling, in that 
 manner, which begins at the earliest moment possible, 
 in the rules of American law and the duties of an 
 American citizen. 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 79 
 
 And this, 1 undertake to say, is the institution 
 which we are not for any reason to surrender, but to 
 
 hold fast as being a necessary and Fixed element of 
 the public order, one without which our American 
 laws and liberties are scarcely American longer; or, 
 if we call them by that name, have no ground longer 
 of security and consolidated public unity. 
 
 In the first place, it will be found, if we closely in- 
 spect our institutions, that the common school is, in 
 fact, an integral part of the civil order. It is no 
 eleemosynary institution, erected outside of the state, 
 but is itself a part of the public law, as truly so as 
 the legislatures and judicial courts. The school- 
 houses are a public property, the district committees 
 are civil officers, the teachers are as truly function- 
 aries of the law as the constables, prison-keepers, in- 
 spectors, and coroners. We perceive then, if we 
 understand the question rightly, that an application 
 against common schools, is so far an application for 
 the dismemberment and reorganization of the civil 
 order of the state. Certain religionists appear, in 
 the name of religion, demanding that the state shall 
 be otherwise constructed. Or if it be said that they 
 do not ask for the discontinuance of the common 
 schools, but only to have a part of the funds bestowed 
 upon their ecclesiastical schools, the case is not mended 
 but rather made worse by the qualification ; for in 
 that view they are asking that a part of the funds 
 which belong to the civil organization shall be paid 
 
80 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 over to their religion, or to the imperium in imperio 
 which their religion so far substitutes for the civil order. 
 It is as if they were to ask that the health-wardens 
 should so far be substituted bj their church-wardens, 
 or the coroner's inquest by their confessional, and 
 that the state, acknowledging their right to the sub- 
 stitution demanded, should fee the church-wardens 
 and confessors in their behalf. If an application that 
 infringes on the civil polity of our States, in a man- 
 ner so odious, is to be heard, the civil order may as 
 well be disbanded, and the people given over to their 
 ecclesiastics, to be ruled by them in as many clans of 
 religion as they see fit to make. Are we ready, as 
 Americans, to yield our institutions up in this man- 
 ner, or to make them paymasters to a sect who will 
 so far dismember their integrity ? 
 
 This great institution too, of common schools, is 
 not only a part of the state, but is imperiously wanted 
 as such, for the common training of so many classes 
 and conditions of people. There needs to be some 
 place where, in early childhood, they may be brought 
 together and made acquainted with each other ; thus 
 to wear away the sense of distance, otherwise certain 
 to become an established animosity of orders ; to 
 form friendships ; to be exercised together on a com- 
 mon footing of ingenuous rivalry ; the children of the 
 rich to feel the power and do honor to the struggles 
 of merit in the lowly, when it rises above them ; the 
 children of the poor to learn the force of merit and 
 feel the benign encouragement yielded by its blame- 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 81 
 
 Less victories. Indeed, no child can be said to be well 
 trained, especially no male child, who has not met the 
 people as they are, above him or below, in the seat- 
 ings, plays, and studies of the common school. With- 
 out this he can never be a fully qualified citizen, or 
 prepared to act his part wisely as a citizen. Confined 
 to a select school, where only the children of wealth 
 and distinction are gathered, he will not know 
 the merit there is in the real virtues of the poor, 
 or the power that slumbers in their talent. He 
 will take his better dress as a token of his better 
 quality, look down upon the children of the lowly 
 with an educated contempt, prepare to take on lofty 
 airs of confidence and presumption afterward ; finally, 
 to make the discovery when it is too late, that poverty 
 has been the sturdy nurse of talent in some unhonored 
 youth who comes up to affront him by an equal, or 
 mortify and crush him by an overmastering, force. So 
 also the children of the poor and lowly, if they should 
 be privately educated in some inferior degree by the 
 honest and faithful exertion of their parents ; secreted, 
 as it were, in some back alley or obscure corner of the 
 town, will either grow up in a fierce, inbred hatred of 
 the wealthier classes, or else in a mind cowed by 
 undue modesty, as being of another and inferior 
 quality, unable therefore to fight the great battle of 
 life hopefully, and counting it a kind of presumption 
 to think that they can force their way upward, even by 
 merit itself. 
 
 Without common schools, the disadvantage falls 
 6 
 
82 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 both ways in about equal degrees, and the disadvan 
 tage that accrues to the state, in the loss of so much 
 character and so many cross ties of mutual respect 
 and generous appreciation, the embittering so fatally 
 of all outward distinctions, and the propagation of so 
 many misunderstandings, righted only by the immense 
 public mischiefs that follow 7 , — this, I say, is greater 
 even than the disadvantages accruing to the classes 
 themselves ; a disadvantage that weakens immensely 
 the security of the state and even of its liberties. 
 Indeed, I seriously doubt whether any system of popu- 
 lar government can stand the shock, for any length 
 of time, of that fierce animosity that is certain to be 
 gendered where the children are trained up wholly in 
 their classes, and never brought together to feel, un- 
 derstand, appreciate, and respect each other, on the 
 common footing of merit and of native talent, in a 
 common school. Falling back thus on the test of 
 merit and of native force, at an early period of life, 
 moderates immensely their valuation of mere conven- 
 tionalities and of the accidents of fortune, and puts them 
 in a way of deference that is genuine as well as neces- 
 sary to their common peace in the state. Common 
 schools are nurseries thus of a free republic ; private 
 schools, of factions, cabals, agrarian laws, and contests 
 of force. Therefore, I say, we must have common 
 schools ; they are American, indispensable to our 
 American institutions, and must not be yielded for 
 any consideration smaller than the price of our liber- 
 ties. 
 

 COMMON SCHOOLS. 83 
 
 Nor is it only in this manner that they are seen i<> 
 be necessary. The same argument holds, with even 
 greater force, when applied to the religious distinct- 
 ions of our country. It is very plain that we cannot 
 have common schools for the purposes above named, 
 if we make distributions, whether of schools or of 
 funds, under sectarian or ecclesiastical distinctions. 
 At that moment the charm and very much of the 
 reality of common schools vanish. Besides, the eccle- 
 siastical distinctions are themselves distinctions also 
 of classes, in another form, and such too as are much 
 more dangerous than any distinctions of wealth. Let 
 the Catholic children, for example, be driven out of 
 our schools by unjust trespasses on their religion, or 
 be withdrawn for mere pretexts that have no founda- 
 tion, and just there commences a training in religious 
 antipathies bitter as the grave. Never brought close 
 enough to know each other, the children, subject to 
 the great well-known principle that whatever is un- 
 known is magnified by the darkness it is under, have 
 all their prejudices and repugnances magnified a thou- 
 sand fold. They grow up in the conviction that there 
 is nothing but evil in each other, and close to that lies 
 the inference that they are right in doing what evil to 
 each other they please. I complain not of the fact 
 that they are not assimilated, but of what is far more 
 dishonest and wicked, that they are not allowed to 
 understand each other. They are brought up, in fact, 
 for misunderstanding ; separated that they may misun- 
 derstand each other ; kept apart, walled up to heaven 
 
84 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 in the inclosures of their sects, that they may be as 
 ignorant of each other, as inimical, as incapable of 
 love and cordial good citizenship as possible. The 
 arrangement is not only unchristian, but it is thor- 
 oughly un-American, hostile at every point to our 
 institutions themselves. Xo bitterness is so bitter, no 
 seed of faction so rank, no division so irreconcilable, 
 as that which grows out of religious distinctions 
 sharpened to religious animosities, and softened by no 
 terms of intercourse ; the more bitter when it begins 
 with childhood ; and yet more bitter when it is exas- 
 perated also by distinctions of property and social life 
 that correspond ; and yet more bitter still, when it is 
 aggravated also by distinctions of stock or nation. 
 
 In this latter view, the withdrawing of our Catholic 
 children from the common schools, unless for some 
 real breach upon their religion, and the distribution 
 demanded of public moneys to them in schools apart 
 by themselves, is a bitter cruelty to the children and 
 a very unjust affront to our institutions. We bid 
 them welcome as they come, and open to their free 
 possession all the rights of our American citizenship. 
 They, in return, forbid their children to be Americans, 
 pen them as foreigners to keep them so, and train 
 them up in the speech of Ashdod among us. And 
 then, to complete the affront, they come to our legis- 
 latures demanding it as their right to share in funds 
 collected by a taxing of the whole people, and to have 
 these funds applied to the purpose of keeping their 
 children from being Americans. 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 85 
 
 Our only answer to such demands is : " No ! take 
 your place with us in our common schools, and con- 
 sent to be Americans, or else go back to Turkey, 
 where Mohammedans, Greeks, Armenians, Jews are 
 walled up by the laws themselves, forbidding them 
 ever to pass over or to change their superstitions ; 
 there to take your chances of liberty, such as a people 
 are capable of when they are trained up, as regards 
 each other, to be foreigners for all coming time in 
 blood and religion." I said, go back to Turkey : that 
 is unnecessary. If we do not soon prepare a state of 
 Turkish order and felicity here, by separating and 
 folding our children thus, in the stringent limits of 
 religious non-acquaintance and consequent animosity, 
 it will be because the laws of human nature and soci- 
 ety have failed. 
 
 Besides, there are other consequences of such a 
 breach upon the common school system, implied in 
 yielding this demand, which are not to be suffered. 
 A very great part of the children, thus educated, will 
 have very inferior advantages. They will be shut up 
 in schools that do not teach them what, as Americans, 
 they most of all need to know, the political geography 
 and political history of the world, the rights of human- 
 ity, the struggles by which those rights are vindicated 
 and the glorious rewards of liberty and social advance- 
 ment that follow. They will be instructed mainly 
 into the foreign prejudices and superstitions of their 
 fathers, and the state, which proposes to be clear of 
 all sectarian affinities in religion, will pay the bills ! 
 
00 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 It will also be demanded, next, that the state shall 
 hold the purse for the followers of Tom Paine and 
 all other infidels, discharging the bills of schools where 
 Paine' s Age of Reason, or the Mormon Bible, or Da- 
 vis's Revelations are the reading books of the children. 
 
 The old school Presbyterian church took ground, 
 six years ago, in their General Assembly, at the crisis 
 of their high church zeal, against common and in 
 favor of parochial schools. Hitherto their agitation 
 has yielded little more than a degree of discourage- 
 ment and disrespect to the schools of their country ; 
 but if the Catholics prevail in their attempt, they also 
 will be forward in demanding the same rights, upon 
 the same grounds, and their claim also must be 
 granted. By that time the whole system of common 
 schools is fatally shaken. For since education is 
 thrown thus far upon the care of individual parents, 
 still another result is certain to follow in close prox- 
 imity, viz., the discontinuance of all common schools 
 and of all public care of education ; and then we shall 
 have large masses of children growing up in neglect, 
 with no school at all provided to which they can be 
 sent ; ignorant, hopeless, and debased creatures ; 
 banditti of the street ; wild men of anarchy, waiting 
 for their leaders and the guerilla practice of the 
 mountains : at first the pest of society, and finally 
 its end or overthrow. This result will be further 
 expedited by the fact that many children, now in our 
 public schools, will .be gathered into schools of an 
 atheistic or half pagan character, where they will be 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 87 
 
 educated in a contempt of all order and decency, to 
 be leaders of the ignorance and brutality supplied by 
 the uneducated. How different the picture from that 
 which is now presented by our beautiful system of 
 common schools, — every child provided with a good 
 school, all classes and conditions brought together on 
 an equal footing of respect and merit, the state their 
 foster-mother, all property a willing and glad contrib- 
 utor for their outfit in life and their success in the 
 ways of intelligence and virtue ! 
 
 Take it then for a point established, that common 
 schools are to remain as common schools, and that 
 these are to be maintained by the state as carefully as 
 the arsenals and armed defenses of the country ; these 
 and no other. Just here, then, comes the difficult 
 question, what are we to do, how to accommodate the 
 religious distinctions of the people, so as to make 
 their union in any common system of schools possi- 
 ble ? How the Catholics, in particular, are to be 
 accommodated in their religion, in those societies 
 and districts where Protestants are the majority ; 
 how Protestants, where Catholics are the majority ? 
 
 The question, how Pagans, Mohammedans, and 
 Atheists are to be accommodated, is in my view a 
 different question, and one, I think, which is to be 
 answered in a different manner. They are to be 
 tolerated or suffered, but in no case to be assisted or 
 accommodated by acts of public conformity. I can 
 not agree to the sentiment sometimes advanced, that 
 
00 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 we are not a Christian nation in distinction from a 
 Pagan, Mohammedan, or Infidel. Indeed I will go 
 further; assuming the fact of God's existence, I will 
 say that no government can write a legitimate enact- 
 ment or pass a valid decree of separation from God. 
 Still, after the act is done, God exists. God is the 
 only foundation it has of public right or authority. 
 The state, indeed, is a fiction, a lie. and no state, save 
 as it stands in him. And then as Christianity is only 
 the complete revelation of God, otherwise only par- 
 tially revealed, it follows that the state cannot be less 
 than a Christian state, cannot any more disown or 
 throw off its obligations to be Christian than an indi- 
 vidual can. Nor in fact has our government ever at- 
 tempted to shake off Christianity, but has always, 
 from the first day till now. taken the attitude and 
 character of a Christian commonwealth ; accepting 
 the Christian Sabbath, appointing fasts and thanks- 
 givings, employing military and legislative chaplains, 
 and acknowledging God by manifold other tokens. 
 Accordingly our schools are, to the same extent, and 
 are to be, Christian schools. This is the American 
 principle, and as we have never disowned God and 
 Christ, as a point of liberty in the state or to accom- 
 modate unbelievers, so we are required by no principle 
 of American right or law to make our schools unchris- 
 tian, to accommodate Turks and Pagans, or rejecters 
 and infidels. 
 
 Common schools, then, are to be Christian schools. 
 How Christian ? In the same sense, I answer, that 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 89 
 
 Catholics and Protestants arc Christians, in the same 
 sense that our government is Christian, in the same 
 sense that Christendom is Christian, that is, in the rec- 
 ognition of God and Christ and providence and the 
 Bible. I fully agree with our Catholic friends regard- 
 ing what they say in deprecation of a godless system of 
 education. Dr. Chalmers, engaged in a society to estab- 
 lish Catholic schools in Glasgow, went so far as to say, 
 that if he had not been able to obtain " favorable 
 terms from the priest, that is, the liberty of making 
 the Bible a school-book," he would still have perse- 
 vered, " on the principle that a Catholic population, 
 with the capacity of reading, are a more hopeful sub- 
 ject than without it." Perhaps he was right, but the 
 statistics reported in France, a few years ago, showing 
 that public crimes, in the different departments, were 
 very nearly in the ratio of education, increasing too 
 in the ratio of the increase of education, are sufficient 
 to throw a heavy shade of doubt on the value of all 
 attempts to educate, that increase the power of men 
 and add no regulative force of principle and charac- 
 ter. It is, to say the least, a most perilous kind of 
 beneficence. The chances are far too great that 
 knowledge, without principle, will turn out to be only 
 the equipment of knaves and felons. 
 
 The greater reason is there that our Catholic fel- 
 low-citizens should not do what they can to separate 
 all the schools of the nation from Christian truth and 
 influence, by requiring a surrender of everything 
 Christian in the schools, to accommodate their secta- 
 
90 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 rian position. Or if they reply that they would wholly 
 supplant the common schools, leaving only parochial 
 and sectarian schools in their place, on the ground 
 that our government cannot, without some infringe- 
 ment on religion, be made to coalesce with anything 
 Christian, then is it seen they are endeavoring to make 
 the state " godless " in order to make the school Chris- 
 tian. Exactly this, indeed, one of their most distin- 
 guished and capable teachers in Pennsylvania is just 
 now engaged to effect ; insisting that the civil state 
 has no right to educate children at all ; not only con- 
 troverting a constituent element of our civil order, 
 but claiming it as a Christian right that the state 
 shall exercise no Christian function. Which then is 
 better, a godless government or a godless school ? 
 And if his own church will not suffer a godless 
 school, what has it more earnestly insisted on than 
 the horrible impiety of a state separated from God 
 and religion, and the consequent duty of all kings 
 and magistrates to be servants and defenders of the 
 church ? The Catholic doctrine is plainly in a dilemma 
 here, and can noway be accommodated. If the state 
 is godless, then it should as certainly withdraw from 
 that as from the school, which, if it persists in doing, 
 it as certainly does what it can, under the pretext of 
 religion, to empty both the state and the schools of 
 all religion. 
 
 The true ideal state manifestly is, one school and 
 one Christianity. But it does not follow that we are 
 to have as many schools as we have distinct views of 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 91 
 
 Christianity, because we have not so many distinct 
 Christianities. Nor is anything more cruel and abomi- 
 nable than to take the little children apart, whom 
 Christ embraced so freely, and make them parties to 
 all our grown-up discords, whom Christ made one with 
 himself and each other in their lovelier and, God 
 forgive us if perchance it also be, their wiser age. 
 Let us draw near rather to the common Christ we pro- 
 fess, doing it through them and for their sake, and 
 see if we cannot find how to set them together under 
 Christ as his common flock. 
 
 In most of our American communities, especially 
 those which are older and more homogeneous, we have 
 no difficulty in retaining the Bible in the schools and 
 doing everything necessary to a sound Christian train- 
 ing. Nor, in the larger cities and the more recent 
 settlements, where the population is partly Catholic, 
 is there any the least difficulty in arranging a plan so 
 as to yield the accommodation they need, if only 
 there were a real disposition on both sides to have the 
 arrangement. And precisely here, I suspect, is the 
 main difficulty. There may have been a want of con- 
 sideration sometimes manifested on the Protestant 
 side, or a willingness to thrust our own forms of re- 
 ligious teaching on the children of Catholics. Wherever 
 we have insisted on retaining the Protestant Bible as 
 a school book, and making the use of it by the chil- 
 dren of Catholic families compulsory, there has been 
 good reason for complaining of our intolerance. But 
 there is a much greater difficulty, I fear, and more in 
 
92 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 vincible, on the other side. In New York, the Catho- 
 lics complained of the reading of the Protestant 
 Scriptures in the schools, and of the text-books em- 
 ployed, some of which contained hard expressions 
 against the Catholic church. The Bible was accord- 
 ingly withdrawn from the schools and all religious in- 
 struction discontinued. The text-books of the schools 
 were sent directly to Archbishop Hughes in person, 
 to receive exactly such expurgations as he and his 
 clergy would direct. They declined the offer by a 
 very slender evasion, and it was afterward found that 
 some of the books complained of were in actual use 
 in their own church schools, though already removed 
 from the schools of the city. Meantime, the immense 
 and very questionable sacrifice thus made, to accom- 
 modate the complaints of the Catholics, resulted in 
 no discontinuance of their schools, neither in any im- 
 portant accession to the common schools of the city 
 from the children of Catholic families. On the con- 
 trary, the priests now change their note and begin to 
 complain that the schools are " godless " or " athe- 
 istical " ; just as they have required them to be. In 
 facts like these, fortified by the fact that some of the 
 priests are even denying, in public lectures, the right 
 of the state to educate children at all, we seem to dis- 
 cover an absolute determination that the children 
 shall be withdrawn, at whatever cost, and that no 
 terms of accommodation shall be satisfactory. It is 
 not that satisfaction is impossible, but that there is 
 really no desire for it. Were there any desire, the 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 93 
 
 ways in which it may be accomplished arc many and 
 various. 
 
 1. Make the use of the Bible in the Protestant or 
 Douay version optional. 
 
 2. Compile a book of Scripture reading lessons by 
 agreement from both versions. 
 
 3. Provide for religious instruction, at given hours 
 or on a given day, by the clergy or by qualified teachers 
 such as the parents may choose. 
 
 4. Prepare a book of Christian morality, distinct 
 from a doctrine of religion or a faith, which shall be 
 taught indiscriminately to all the scholars.* 
 
 *I am not aware of any attempt that has hitherto been made to 
 adjust an agreement on the basis of this distinction. The follow- 
 ing beautiful card, prepared by Archbishop Whately, to be con- 
 spicuously printed and hung in the Irish schools, was accepted by 
 the whole Board, including the Catholic Archbishop ; in which 
 we have, at once, an example of what I mean by the distinction 
 stated, and also a proof that, so far at least, the distinction is 
 available as a basis of agreement. 
 
 "Christians should endeavor, as the Apostle Paul commands 
 them, to ' live peaceably with all men ' (Rom. ch. xii, v. 18), even 
 with those of a different religious persuasion." 
 
 "Our Saviour Christ commanded his disciples 'to love one 
 another.' He taught them to love even their enemies, to bless 
 those that cursed them, and pray for those that persecuted them. 
 He himself prayed for his murderers. " 
 
 "Many men hold erroneous doctrines; but we ought not to 
 hate or persecute them. We ought to seek for the truth, and to 
 hold fast what we are convinced is the truth ; but not to treat 
 harshly those who are in error. Jesus Christ did not intend his 
 religion to be forced on men by violent means. He would not al- 
 low his disciples to fight for him," 
 
94 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 3ut of these and other elements like these it is not 
 difficult to construct, by agreement, such a plan as 
 
 "If any persons treat us unkindly, we must not do the same to 
 them, for Christ and his apostles have taught us not to return evil 
 for evil. If we would obey Christ, we must do to others, not as 
 they do to us, but as we would wish them to do to us." 
 
 " Quarreling with our neighbors, and abusing them, is not the 
 way to convince them that we are in the right and they in the 
 wrong. It is more likely to convince them that we have not a 
 Christian spirit." 
 
 ' ' We ought to show ourselves followers of Christ, who ' when 
 he was reviled, reviled not again,' (1 Pet. ch. ii, v. 23,) by behaving 
 gently and kindly to every one. " 
 
 If I rightly understand, it is over Christianity as a faith, a 
 divine mystery, that the Catholic Church claims a more especial 
 jurisdiction, and not over the preceptive rules of conduct on the 
 common footing of intercourse and society. Otherwise it must 
 also assume a jurisdiction over many things in the province even 
 of the common law, such as theft, perjury, slander, and all moral 
 definitions that turn upon the question of "malice aforethought." 
 And if it can not submit to any common teaching on these points, 
 how can it submit to the jurisdiction of the state itself without an 
 equal infringement of its prerogative? Is it then impossible to 
 prepare a volume, in the manner of the above card, which, without 
 entering into any matter that pertains to Christianity as a faith, or 
 a grace of salvation, will yet comprise everything that pertains to 
 the relative conditions of life, and even to God's authority con- 
 cerning them ; — the Christian rules of forgiveness, gentleness, for- 
 bearance, docility, modesty, charity, truth, justice, temperance, 
 industry, reverence toward God, drawn out in chapters, and form 
 ally developed; large extracts from the preceptive parts of the 
 Bible, and its moral teachings; from the Proverbs of Solomon, 
 from the histories of Joseph and Haman, from the history of Jesus 
 in his trial and crucifixion taken as an example of conduct, from 
 the moral teachings also of his sermon on the mount, the parable 
 of the good Samaritan, the rule of the lowest seat, and other like 
 
COMMONSCHOOLS. 95 
 
 will be Christian, and will not infringe, in the least, 
 upon the tenets of either party, the Protestant or the 
 Catholic. It has been done in Holland and, where it 
 was much more difficult, in Ireland. The British 
 government, undertaking at last, in good faith, to 
 construct a plan of national education for Ireland, 
 appointed Archbishop Whately and the Catholic Arch- 
 bishop of Dublin with five others, one a Presbyterian 
 and one a Unitarian, to be a board or committee of 
 superintendence. They agreed upon a selection of 
 reading lessons from both translations of the Script- 
 ures, and, by means of a system of restrictions and 
 qualifications carefully arranged, providing for distinct 
 methods and times of religious instruction, they were 
 able to construct a union, not godless or negative, but 
 thoroughly Christian in its character, and so to draw 
 as many as 500,000 of the children into the public 
 schools ; conferring thus upon the poor, neglected, and 
 hitherto oppressed Irish, greater benefits than they 
 have before received from any and all public measures 
 since the Conquest. 
 
 I can not go into the particulars of this adjust- 
 
 expositions ; enlivened also by those picturesque representations of 
 Scripture that display the manner of human nature in matters of 
 moral conduct, such as the parable of Jotham, the story of the 
 ewe lamb, and the judgment of Solomon? In this way Christianity 
 would have a clear and well-ascertained place in the schools. A 
 Christian conscience would be formed, and a habit of religious 
 reverence. And though we could wish for something more, we 
 might safely leave the higher mysteries of faith and salvation to 
 be taught elsewhere. 
 
96 COMMON SCHOOLS, 
 
 ment, neither is it necessary. Whoever will take 
 pains to trace out the particular features of the plan, 
 will see that such an adjustment is possible. Enough 
 is it for the present to say that what has been can be, 
 and that if there is a real and true desire in the two 
 parties to this coming controversy, to settle any plan 
 that will unite and satisfy them both, it will be done. 
 It may never be done in such a manner as to silence 
 all opposition or attack from the ultra-Protestant 
 party on one side, and the ultra-Catholic on the other. 
 Bigotry will have its way and will assuredly act in 
 character here, as it has in all ages past and does in 
 Ireland now. The cry will be raised on one side, that 
 the Bible is given up because it is read only at the 
 option of the parents, or because only extracts from it 
 are read, though the extracts amount to nearly the 
 whole book, or because they are, some of them, made 
 from the Catholic and some from the Protestant ver- 
 sion ; whereas, if only this or that catechism were 
 taught, with not a word of Scripture, no complaint of 
 a loss of the Bible would be heard of; or if the 
 Psalter translation were read, instead of the Psalms, 
 it would be regarded as no subject of complaint at all. 
 On the other, the Catholic side, it will be insisted that 
 the church authority is given up, though every word 
 and teaching is by and from it, or that religion itself 
 is corrupted by the profane mixtures of a Protestant 
 proximity and intercourse. Probably the bigots, on 
 both sides, will have much to say in deprecation of 
 the " godless system of education," and yet there will 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 97 
 
 6e more religious teaching and more impression made 
 of true religion, by that cordial and Christian adjust- 
 ment of differences which brings the children of two 
 hostile bands together in this manner, than by whole 
 days and weeks of drill and catechism in separate 
 schools. 
 
 There is a great deal of cant in this complaint of 
 godless education, or the defect of religious instruction 
 in schools, as Baptist Noel, Dr. Vaughan and other dis- 
 tinguished English writers have abundantly shown. It 
 is not, of course, religious instruction for a child to be 
 drilled, year upon year, in spelling out the words of 
 the Bible, as a reading book ; it may be only an exercise 
 that answers the problem how to dull the mind most 
 effectually to all sense of the Scripture words, and 
 communicate least of their meaning. Nay, if the 
 Scriptures were entirely excluded from the schools, 
 and all formal teaching of religious doctrine, I would 
 yet undertake, if I could have my liberty as a teacher, 
 to communicate more of real Christian truth to a 
 Catholic and a Protestant boy, seated side by side, in 
 the regulation of their treatment of each other, as 
 related in terms of justice and charity, and their gov- 
 ernment as members of the school community, where 
 truth, order, industry, and obedience are duties laid 
 upon the conscience under God, than they will ever 
 draw from any catechism or have worn into their 
 brain by the dull and stammering exercise of a Script- 
 ure reading lessom The Irish schools have a distinct 
 Christian character, only not as distinctly sectarian 
 
98 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 as if they were wholly Protestant or wholly Catholic. 
 They are Christian schools, such as ours may be and 
 ought to be, and, I trust, will be to the latest genera- 
 tions, nor any the less so that they are common schools. 
 Neither is it to be imagined or felt that religion has 
 lost its place in the scheme of education, because the 
 Scriptures are not read as a stated and compulsory 
 exercise, or because the higher mysteries of Christian- 
 ity as a faith or doctrine of salvation are not gener- 
 ally taught, but only the Christian rules of conduct, as 
 pertaining to the common relations of duty under 
 God. What is wanting may still be provided for, only 
 less adequately, in other places ; at home, in the 
 church, or in lessons given by the clergy. It is not 
 as when children are committed to a given school, 
 like the Girard College, for example, there to receive 
 their whole training, and where, if it excludes religion, 
 they have no religious training at all. 
 
 I do then take the ground, and upon this I insist, as 
 the true American ground, that we are to have com- 
 mon schools, and never to give them up for any pur- 
 pose, or in obedience to any demand whatever ; never 
 to give them up, either by formal surrender, or by 
 implication, as by a distribution of moneys to ecclesi- 
 astical and sectarian schools. The state can not dis- 
 tribute funds, in this manner, without renouncing even 
 a first principle of our American institutions, and be- 
 coming the supporter of a sect in religion. It may as 
 well support the priests of a church, as support the 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 09 
 
 schools of a church, separated from other schools, for 
 the very purpose of being subjected to the priests. 
 
 But while we are firm in this attitude and hold it 
 as a point immovable, we must, for that very reason, 
 be the more ready to do justice to the religious con- 
 victions of all parties or sects, and to yield them such 
 concessions, or enter into such arrangements as will 
 accommodate their peculiar principles and clear them 
 of any infringement. 
 
 But it will be objected by some, that while this 
 should be done, provided there were any thing to hope 
 from it, there is really no hope that our concessions or 
 modifications will be of any avail, and therefore that 
 they should not be made at all ; for they will only so 
 far abridge the value of our schools without yielding 
 any recompense for the loss. Nevertheless let us offer 
 the modifications, offer any terms of union that can be 
 offered without a virtual destruction or renunciation 
 of the system ; and then if they are not accepted it 
 will not be our fault. I very much fear they will not 
 be, that an absolute separation of the Catholic child- 
 ren from our schools is already determined, and that 
 no revision of the sentence can be had. Still it is 
 much for us to take away every excuse for such a 
 determination, and every complaint or pretext by 
 which it is justified. 
 
 Then, having done it, we can take the ground ex- 
 plicitly and clear of all ambiguity, that they who 
 exclude themselves are not Americans, and are not 
 acting in their complaints or agitations on any prin- 
 
100 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 ciple that meets the tenor of our American institu- 
 tions. Nothing will be more evident, and they should 
 be made to bear the whole odium of it. If to keep 
 their people apart from the dreaded influence of 
 Protestant Christianity they were to buy townships of 
 land or large quarters in our cities, to be occupied 
 only by Catholics, walled in by their own by-laws, and 
 allowing no Protestant family or tradesman or pub- 
 lican to reside in the precinct, no one to enter it 
 without a pass ; and then to come before our legisla- 
 tures in petition that we will distribute moneys to sup- 
 port their roads, and pay their constables and gate- 
 keepers ; they would scarcely do a greater insult to 
 our American society than they do in these separa- 
 tions from our common schools, and the petitions they 
 are offering to be justified and rewarded in the sepa- 
 ration. 
 
 But we tax them, it will be said, for the support of 
 the common schools, and then, receiving no benefit 
 from the tax they pay, they are obliged to tax them- 
 selves again for schools of their own. It is even so, 
 and for one, apart from all resentment, I rejoice in it ; 
 unless they have grievances put upon them by the 
 organization of our schools, such as justify their with- 
 drawal. We tax the Quakers for defect of military 
 service and bachelors who have no children, and we 
 ought, much more, to tax the refractory un-American 
 position taken by these Catholic strangers, after we 
 have greeted them with so great hospitality and loaded 
 them with so many American privileges. If now 
 they will not enter into the great American institu- 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 101 
 
 tion, so fundamental to our very laws and liberties, 
 let them pay for it and measure their deserts by their 
 dissatisfactions. If they will be foreigners still 
 among our people, let them have remembrances that 
 interpret their conduct to them in a way of just em- 
 phasis. 
 
 Meantime let us be sure also of this, that a day is 
 at hand when they will weary of this kind of separa- 
 tion, and will visit on their priests, who have required 
 it, a just retribution. One generation, or possibly two, 
 may bear this separation, this burden of double taxa- 
 tion, this withdrawal of their children from society 
 and its higher advantages, to be shut up or penned as 
 foreign tribes in the state, thus to save the prejudices 
 of a discarded and worthless nationality ; but another 
 generation is to come who will have drunk more 
 deeply into the spirit of our institutions and attained 
 to a more sufficient understanding of the hard lot put 
 upon them, in this manner, by a jealous and over- 
 bearing priesthood. Then comes a reaction both 
 against them and their religion ; then a flocking back 
 to the schools to reap their advantages. And it will 
 be strange if the very measure now counted on as the 
 means of preserving this class of our citizens in the 
 Catholic faith does not, of itself, become one of the 
 strongest reasons for the alienation of their children 
 from it. Of this we may be quite sure, and it ought 
 not to be any secret to them, that their children of the 
 coming time will at last find a way to be Americans ; 
 if not under the Pope and by the altars, then without 
 <&iem. 
 
102 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 Neither let it be said that this is a matter which 
 lies at the disposal of politics, and that our political 
 demagogues will sell anything, even our birthright as 
 a people, to cany the vote of a campaign. The ex- 
 periment has just been tried in Detroit with a most 
 signal and disastrous failure. In cases where the 
 issue touches no religious interest or feeling of the 
 Protestants, and the Catholics can be gained to throw 
 a casting vote on one side or the other, the politicians 
 will not deal altogether absurdly if they consent to buy 
 that vote by some great promise ; and I have so little 
 confidence in many of them, under the prodigious 
 temptations of a canvass, as to take it for granted 
 that they will stick at nothing which is possible. But 
 here, thank God, is one thing that is impossible, and 
 whatever politician ventures on the experiment will 
 find that he has not worked his problem rightly, — 
 that if Catholics can be often united and led in masses 
 to the vote, so Protestants will sometimes go in masses 
 where they are not led save by their principles. That 
 our legislatures cannot and will not be gained to allow 
 the ruling out of the Scriptures and all religious in- 
 struction from the schools, as in Xew York city, I am 
 by no means certain. I very much fear that they 
 will. But that they can ever become supporters and 
 fund-holders to ecclesiastical schools, or be induced to 
 give up common schools, I do not believe. Whatever 
 politician or political party ventures on that experi- 
 ment, will find that he has rallied a force manifold 
 greater against him than he has drawn to his aid. A 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 103 
 
 point so thoroughly un-American, so directly opposite 
 also to the deepest convictions of the great Protest- 
 ant majorities of the country, cannot be carried, and 
 if pressed, will suffice to fix a stigma that is immova- 
 able upon any leader who is desperate enough to try 
 the experiment. 
 
 Here I will close. The subject is a painful one,. 
 and not any the less so that the line of our duty is 
 plain. It cannot be said by any, the most prejudiced 
 critic, that our conduct as a people to strangers and 
 men of another religion has not been generous and 
 free beyond any former example in the history of man- 
 kind. We have used hospitality without grudging. 
 In one view it seems to be a dark and rather mysteri- 
 ous providence that we have thrown upon us, to be 
 our fellow-citizens, such multitudes of people, de- 
 pressed for the most part in character, instigated by 
 prejudices so intense against our religion. But there 
 is a brighter and more hopeful side to the picture. 
 These Irish prejudices, embittered by the crushing 
 tyranny of England for three whole centuries and 
 more, will gradually yield to the kindness of our hos- 
 pitality and to the discovery that it is not so much 
 the Protestant religion that has been their enemy, as 
 the jealousy and harsh dominion of conquest. God 
 knows exactly what is wanting, both in us and them, 
 and God has thrown us together that, in terms of 
 good citizenship and acts of love, we may be gradually 
 melted into one homogeneous people. Probably no 
 existing form of Christianity is perfect ; the Romish 
 
104 COMMON SCHOOLS. 
 
 we are sure is not ; the Puritan was not, else wiry 
 should it so soon have lost its rigors ? The Protest- 
 ant, more generally viewed, contains a wider variety 
 of elements, but these too seem to be waiting for some 
 process of assimilation that shall weld them finally 
 together. Therefore God, we may suppose, throws 
 all these diverse multitudes, Protestant and Catholic, 
 together, in crossings so various, and a ferment of ex- 
 perience so manifold, that he may wear us into some 
 other and higher and more complete unity than we 
 are able, of ourselves and by our own wisdom, to set- 
 tle. Let us look for this, proving all things and 
 holding fast that which is good, until the glorious re- 
 sult of a perfected and comprehensive Christianity is 
 made to appear and is set up here for a sign to all 
 nations. Let us draw our strange friends as close to 
 us as possible, not in any party scramble for power, 
 but in a solemn reference of duty to the nation and 
 to God. I cannot quite renounce the hope that a right 
 and cordial advance on our part, — one that, duly care- 
 ful to preserve the honors of Christianity, concedes 
 everything required by our great principle of equal 
 right to all, and as firmly refuses to yield anything so 
 distinctively American as this noble institution, iden- 
 tified with our history as the blood with the growth 
 of our bodies, — will command the respect and finally 
 the assent of our Catholic friends themselves. And 
 since God has better things in store even for religion 
 than the repugnant attitudes of its professed disciples 
 can at present permit, I would even hope that he may 
 
COMMON SCHOOLS. 105 
 
 use an institution so far external to the church, as a 
 means of cementing the generations to come in a 
 closer unity and a more truly catholic peace ; that, as 
 being fellow-citizens with each other, under the state, 
 in the ingenuous days of youth and youthful disci- 
 pline, they may learn how also to be no more stran- 
 gers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints 
 and of the household of God. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY A PRACTICAL TRUTH * 
 
 It is most remarkable that our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 at just the moment when we look to find him offering 
 what is most of all practical and distinctive in his 
 Gospel, most necessary in that view to its power in 
 the earth, advances just the Christian Trinity and 
 nothing else. His work is now done, and the hour of 
 his final ascension is come. His disciples are gathered 
 round him to receive their commission of trust and 
 the farewell address, so to speak, of their Great 
 Leader. Xow he will seize on the first truths of the 
 kingdom and put them forward. No matter of mere 
 theory or of idle curiosity will obtrude. He will give 
 them counsel for the guidance of their future course ; 
 cautions, encouragements, suggestions of heavenly 
 wisdom. He will bring out the great truth of salva- 
 tion, the change to be wrought in mankind, the man- 
 ner and means of the change ; the way to preach, 
 and what to preach, and all that is necessary to the 
 established polity and wise conduct of the future 
 
 * Contributed to the JVew Englander, November, 1854. Vol. XII. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY. 107 
 
 church about to be gathered in all parts of the world 
 by their ministry. What then does he say ? " Go ye 
 therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost." This, and this alone, is the commission. 
 What then does it mean, that Christ himself, the sim- 
 plest and most practical and, in the higher sense, most 
 rational of all teachers, in a parting charge to his 
 disciples, gives them not any truth or vestige of truth 
 over and above this one difficult, ever to be contested 
 formula of Trinity ? At first view the fact appears 
 to have no agreement either with the time or with the 
 general manner of the teacher ; but, as we pause upon 
 it and ponder it a little more deeply, we begin to sus- 
 pect that this formula of Trinity is given, simply 
 because it is the Gospel in its most condensed term 
 of statement, and is put deliberately forward in this 
 manner in the foreground of the commission, as a 
 general denomination for all that is practical in the 
 Christian truth. And that such was the real under- 
 standing of Christ sufficiently appears in the fact, 
 that the commission given is itself a working com- 
 mission. They are to go " teaching and baptizing all 
 nations," and the converts made are to be baptized 
 into the name of the Sacred Three, as being the name 
 of that power by which alone they are renewed, and 
 are to have their spiritual cleansing accomplished. In 
 some deeper sense of it open to him, the Trinity, as 
 we are thus left to understand, is the underlying 
 truth, and contains the whole working matter of Jus 
 Go-pel. 
 
108 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 No sentiment or opinion could be farther off from 
 the current impressions of our time. That the Chris- 
 tian Trinity is, in any sense, a practical truth appears 
 in our day to be very generally unsuspected. 
 
 Thus among the outsiders, the light-minded critics 
 and worldly cavilers of profane literature, the Trinity 
 is taken, ex concessis, for a standing example of the 
 utterly barren futilities preached and contended for 
 as articles of religion. 
 
 The class of Unitarian believers handle the subject 
 more seriously, and arrive at the conclusion, which 
 they assert with peremptory confidence, that it is a 
 stupendous theologic fiction, a plain absurdity in itself, 
 and in its effects, one of the worst practical hind- 
 rances to the power of the Gospel ; for how can it be 
 less when it annihilates the simplicity of God, con- 
 fuses the mind of the worshiper, and even makes the 
 faith of God an impossible subject to the unbeliever ? 
 
 Meantime how many of the formally professed be- 
 lievers of the doctrine are free to acknowledge that 
 they see no practical value in it, and will even blame 
 the preacher who maintains it for spending his time 
 and breath in a matter so far out of the way of the 
 practical life, a merely curious article or riddle of the 
 faith ! And how many others, even of the more 
 serious class of believers, would say, if they were to 
 speak out what is in their feeling, that they take the 
 Trinity as a considerable drawback on the idea of 
 God ! They would recoil indeed from the thought, as 
 being even a blamable irreverence, of imagining any 
 
A PR ACT] C.\ L TRUTH . 109 
 
 improvement of God; but it' they could think of him 
 
 as a simple unit of personality, in the manner of the 
 
 Unitarians, he could consciously be just so much 
 more to their mind, and their practical relations 
 towards him would be proportionally cleared and 
 comforted. 
 
 An issue is thus made up, it will be seen, between 
 the ascending Redeemer, on one side, and a very gen- 
 eral sentiment or opinion of the Christian world on 
 the other, regarding the practical import of the Chris- 
 tian Trinity. On the side last named, it is very com- 
 monly asserted that it has no practical value, and is 
 only a kind of scholastic futility which, if we do not 
 reject, we receive as a faith wholly inoperative and 
 useless. On the side of the Son of God himself, it is 
 assumed to be, in fact, a condensed expression for all 
 that is operative and powerful in the Christian faith. 
 Protected by so great a name, it requires no courage 
 in us to venture some considerations, from our human 
 point of view, that may go to illustrate the intense 
 practical significance of this great truth. For what 
 Christ has given us from his higher point of authority 
 evidently needs in this, as in other cases, to be natur- 
 alized in our human convictions by a discovery of the 
 want on our own side, which his truth is given to 
 supply. Indeed it has often seemed to us that noth- 
 ing is ever needed, as regards the evidence of this 
 much litigated truth, but to know it in its practical 
 uses, and perceive the sublime facility with which it 
 
110 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 limbers the play of our thought to all that is most 
 transcendent in the divine nature and the new 
 economy of the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 In asserting the immense practical value thus of 
 the Christian Trinity, we do not mean, it is hardly 
 necessary to say, that the Trinity is practical in the 
 sense of presenting something to be done or practiced. 
 Neither is it practical in the sense of showing in what 
 manner something else is to be done. It is practical 
 / only as an instrument of thought, action, self-applica- 
 tion to all the great matters of the faith. What is 
 more practical than human language ? And as^by the 
 use of language our understandings are adjusted/our 
 feelings expressed, our information received, our mind 
 itself developed; so (by the Christian Trinity it is that 
 our sense of God is opened ; )what he has done for us 
 and will do, put in terms of ji&e ; all the relations of 
 what he does in one part of his kingdom to what he 
 has instituted and done in another, — mysteries of law 
 and grace, letter and spirit, — played into our practi- 
 cal apprehension, so that by mere names and signals, 
 our faith is inducted into uses before we can discover 
 reasons and settle definitions. The Trinity, in short, 
 is so related to the Gospel and our approach to God 
 in the faith of the Gospel, that the grace of it, with- 
 out such a concomitant, w r ill be fatally baffled in its 
 access and rendered practically inefficient. 
 
 But this, again, we could not say of all the possible 
 or existing forms of Trinity ; for it is not to be denied 
 that conceptions of this great truth are held by many 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. Ill 
 
 which are so Ear abhorrent from its proper simplicity, 
 and so badly distorted by the perverse ingenuity of 
 human speculation, as to oppose great hindrances to 
 the practical repose of faith, and even to counter- 
 act, in a great degree, the real benefit of the doctrine. 
 We undertake to show the practical value only of the 
 Christian Trinity, or Trinity of the Christian Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 And the Scriptures offer no theoretic or scientific 
 statement of the doctrine whatever, give us nothing 
 pertaining to the subject in terms of logical definition. 
 They assume the strict unity and simplicity of God, 
 that he is one substance or entity, only one ; which 
 one they also assume will, at least, be most effectively 
 thought as three, a threefold grammatic personality, 
 or three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. These 
 persons are not even called persons, but are only set 
 in the grammar of uses silently as such. Of course 
 it is nowhere said or implied that they are three per- 
 sons in the same sense that John, James, and Peter 
 are three ; and the mere laws of grammar, in which 
 they stand, support no such inference, any more than 
 the grammar of sex supports a like inference respecting 
 the real gender of the sun and moon. The three are 
 persons, evidently, only in some sense that recognizes 
 a radical unity of substance which is not true of any 
 three men ; some tropical, or instrumental sense, that 
 needs not any way to be, and cannot be, exactly de- 
 finecL/ The plurality therefore, whatever it be, does 
 not divide, but only more sufficiently communicates, 
 the One. 
 
 ;i 
 
112 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 Our argument does not require that we should go 
 into any discussion regarding either the evidence, or 
 the interior significance of the Trinity. It fixes 
 simply on the Scripture fact, a phenomenon occurrent 
 in the Scripture, showing its practical use and neces- 
 sity. And for the present, we shall speak as if it 
 were only a matter of form or language, accommo- 
 dated in that manner to our finite wants and uses, 
 but before we close, shall ascend to a point more in- 
 terior, and to higher apprehensions of the subject, viz., 
 to the discovery of something more interior as a 
 ground in the eternity of God, antecedent to the reve- 
 lation in time. Our present concern is to show, that 
 assuming the oneness and infinity of God, Trinity is 
 needed as a way of conceiving God and working our 
 piety towards him, in the matters of grace and 
 redemption. So faiy Trinity may be regarded as lan- 
 guage for Godyor as an expedient in the manner of 
 the Sabellians. The argument for use or practical 
 necessity, will be greatly simplified by including in 
 the question nothing more than this : or at least, by 
 including nothing more, till we have reached a point 
 where the transition to a deeper view of the subject 
 can be made with advantage. 
 
 As a grand preliminary in this mode of argument, 
 we need to observe, that in conceiving God, we are 
 obliged to represent him, as we do all spiritual reali- 
 ties, by images and figures taken from things we 
 know. And then there is, of course, a sense in which 
 the representation is true, and a sense in which it is 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 113 
 
 not true, and exactly where the line is to be drawn, 
 we often cannot tell more exactly, than simply to say 
 that we speak in a figure. Thus we describe the 
 heavenly state as a paradise, a garden, watered by a 
 river, with trees of healing on its banks ; or we con- 
 ceive it as a city, whose height, length, and breadth 
 are equal, and whose walls are built of precious stones ; 
 and then we cannot tell more exactly where truth 
 ends and error begins, than simply to say that the 
 representation holds figuratively, and not literally. 
 
 Or we may take a different illustration, that will 
 assist our subject in other respects. We say, and 
 most of us have no thought of difficulty in affirming it, 
 that God is a person, or a personal being. But a little 
 reflection will show us, that the word person thus 
 applied is only a figure derived from our finite human 
 personality, and is, in fact, a strictly finite word. 
 After all, God is not a person save in a figure, as we 
 shall see at a glance if we ask what constitutes our 
 idea of a person. This we shall readily answer out 
 of our own consciousness, by saying that a person is a 
 conscious being, an agent or intelligent self-active 
 force, exactly what our consciousness conceives to be 
 included in itself. But the moment we begin to recite 
 the inventory of our consciousness, we find that almost 
 every article in it is in such a type of measure and 
 mode, that we cannot refer it to God at all. Thus a 
 person or agent, as we conceive the term, drawing on 
 our own consciousness, wills ; putting forth successively 
 new determinations of will, without which new deter- 
 8 
 
114 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 initiations persona lily is null, and no agency at all. 
 But God never does that. His determinations are all 
 passed even from eternity. So a person thinks, or has 
 successions of thought coming in, as it were, in file, 
 one after another. God never thinks in any such 
 sense. As all his acts are done, so all his thoughts 
 are present contemporaneously from eternity. A 
 person or intelligent agent reasons, drawing one prop- 
 osition out of others : in this sense God never reasons. 
 A person remembers : God never remembers ; for 
 nothing past is ever out of mind. A person hopes 
 and conjectures : God does neither ; for the future is 
 as truly present to him as the past. A person lias 
 e-motions, simple movings out of feeling into the fore- 
 ground of the hour. God has no such temporary 
 movings, in which one feeling jets up for the hour into 
 eminence, and takes the foreground of his life ; all 
 movings or states of affection are in him at once, and 
 appropriate exactly to their objects. And so we find 
 that a very great part certainly of what we were 
 affirming, in the assertion that God is a person, is in 
 some other view not true. Literally, God is not a 
 person ; for the very word is finite in all its measures 
 and implications, because it is derived from our- 
 selves. Figuratively, he is a person ; and beyond this, 
 nothing can be said which is more definite, save that 
 he is in some sense unconceived, a real agent who 
 holds himself related personally to us, meeting us in 
 terms of mutuality, such that we can have the sense: 
 of society with him, and the confidence of his society 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH 115 
 
 with us, as if he wore in truth a literal person like 
 ourselves. 
 
 There is a value in this last illustration, beyond the 
 mere showing under what conditions of figure we are 
 obliged to speak of the divine nature, and what are 
 the conditions of truth in our representation. We 
 do not remember ever to have seen the fact noticed, 
 but we do exactly the same thing, as regards truth or 
 intelligent comprehension, when we say that God is a 
 'person, that we do when we say that he is three per- 
 sons, and there is really no difficulty in one case that 
 does not exist in the other. As we can say that God 
 is a person without any real denial of his infinity, so we 
 can say that he is three persons without any breach of 
 his unity. Indeed, we shall hereafter see that he is 
 set forth, and needs to be, as three persons, for the 
 very purpose, in part, of mending a difficulty created 
 by asserting that he is one person ; that is, to save 
 the impression of his infinity. The word person is, in 
 either case, a figure, and as truly in one as in the other. 
 And if the question be raised, what correspondent 
 reality there is in the divine nature to meet and 
 justify the figure, there can plainly be no literal cor- 
 respondence between the infinite substance of God, 
 and any merely finite term, whether one or three ; or 
 if we suppose a correspondence undefinablc and tropi- 
 cal, it may as well answer to three persons as to one. 
 
 Neither is there any difficulty in removing the 
 logical objections so pertinaciously urged against the 
 Trinity, on the ground that three distinct personal 
 
116 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 pronouns are applied to God, requiring us to regard 
 him as a council or plurality of beings ; after which it 
 is impossible that he should be one being. Grammatic 
 laws and relations may as well pass into figure as 
 mere names of things. Thus, to convey a certain 
 undefined or indefinable impression, we may apply the 
 feminine pronoun she to a ship, using a grammatic 
 term of gender for a descriptive and representative 
 purpose. And then, to represent or connect another 
 impression, we may give the ship a masculine name, 
 such as Hercules or Agamemnon. Whereupon the 
 man of logic, scandalized by so great absurdity, may 
 begin to argue that since the ship is feminine as to 
 gender it cannot be masculine ; or if it is masculine 
 then it cannot be feminine. But it will be sufficient, 
 for any one but him, to answer that we use these 
 terms of gender only to represent some indefinable, 
 partially correspondent reality which we can signify 
 by this short method better than by any other. So if 
 it be urged that person means person, and number 
 means number, by the inevitable laws of grammar, 
 and that when we have called God three persons, it 
 must be absurd to speak any longer of his unity, it is 
 sufficient to answer, that there may be a representa- 
 tive personality and number, as well as a representa- 
 tive or tropical gender, and that any mere logical 
 practice on the words will, in both cases, be equally 
 futile and puerile. Indeed, the pronoun he applied to 
 each one of the persons of the Trinity is itself a word 
 of gender, as truly as of number and person, and it 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 117 
 
 would not bo as great an offense to the majority of 
 mankind to say that God is impersonal, as to apply to 
 him the feminine pronoun. Why then should it create 
 so great difficulty that God is represented as a Trinity 
 of persons ? Why not go into a logical practice on the 
 gender of the pronoun, as well as on the number and 
 the grammatic personality ? There may, it is true, be 
 a much closer degree of correspondence in these latter 
 cases with something interior in God, — of that we 
 shall speak hereafter, — but, for aught that appears, the 
 logical process covers precisely the same kind of falsity 
 in one case as in the other. 
 
 But these are matters introductive and preliminary. 
 We come now to the question itself, — What is the 
 practical import of the Trinity ? Wherein consists its 
 value ? It is needed, we answer, to serve two main 
 purposes : — 
 
 I. To save the dimensions or the practical infinity of 
 God, consistently with his personality. God is never 
 fully presented to the mind, or adequately conceived, 
 except when he is conceived under these two conditions 
 together ; viz., as a being really infinite, and also as 
 existing in terms of society and personal mutuality 
 with us. Accordingly we shall find, on the right and 
 left of the Christian Trinity, two distinct views which 
 are both fatally defective and mutually opposite to 
 each other. 
 
 First, the view of the pantheists, who are instigated 
 by a desire to establish, or adequately conceive, tho 
 
118 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 infinity of God. Struggling after this, they spread 
 themselves over all space and time and substance, 
 and looking at the All, as an eternal going on of 
 spiritual development under laws of eternal necessity, 
 they call it God. Their God is the largest thought 
 they can raise ; largest, that is, in extent, and con- 
 taining boundary, but he is no person. Personality 
 has been lost in the struggle after magnitude, or rather 
 it has been actually dismissed as untenable ; because 
 the word, logically treated and literally taken, presents 
 God under conditions of time and date, waking up to 
 create worlds, exercised by thoughts, remembrances, 
 reasonings, attentions and affections personal, — all 
 which is contrary to the rational infinity of God. The 
 doctrine of God's personality is therefore deliberately 
 cast away as being a logical and necessary limit on his 
 perfection; for it is not perceived that though the 
 word person is finite, it may yet have an application 
 figurative, that is legitimate, and_ leaves all finite im- 
 plications behind, availing only to set the infinite in 
 terms of society with us. J The result is that God, in 
 this rejection of his personality, becomes a vast plati- 
 tude ; or if not this, a dreary, all-containing abyss ; a 
 being unconscious, a fate, a stupendous IT, without 
 meaning or value to our religious nature ; a theme of 
 barren rhapsody and vaporing declamation, not a 
 friend, not a redeemer, not an object of personal 
 affinity, love or trust. 
 
 Over against these pantheistic aberrations, we have 
 the doctrine of Unitarianism, which represents God, 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 119 
 
 in opposition to pantheism, as a being personal, and 
 because of the supposed absurdities or rational im- 
 possibilities of Trinity, one person. Clearing thus, at 
 once, the dearth of pantheism and the contradictions of 
 Trinity, it presents a universal Father, one person ; who, 
 being a strict indivisible unity, is therefore no offense or 
 stumbling-block to reason. The result is that the 
 personality, or relational state of God is saved in the 
 completest manner. God is a person, a simple 
 unit of reason, a Father eternal, creating and 
 ruling the worlds and doing all things for the benefit 
 of his children. But the difficulty now is that the 
 dimensions are lost, the infinite magnitude is practi- 
 cally taken away. And precisely here, as was just 
 now intimated, is one of the grand practical uses of 
 Trinity. The Unitarians supposed that when they 
 had carried out their doctrine and shown that God is 
 a simple unit of fatherhood, they had gained a great 
 point, cleared the confusion, reduced the absurdity, 
 and presented to the world a being so lovely in his 
 character and so rational in his evidence, that all in- 
 telligent worshipers must rejoice and the world itself 
 must shortly turn itself to him in love. But alas ! 
 there was a fatal difficulty which they did not sus- 
 pect, and which time only could reveal; viz., that in 
 going on to assert the one God, always under the 
 same figure of personality, till that figure became a 
 well-nigh literal affirmation, the dimensions of God 
 would be reduced to the measures of the human figure, 
 and their one God, their Great Father, would be a 
 
120 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 name without magnitude or any genuine power of 
 impression. We do not of course mean, when we thus 
 speak, to imply that the Unitarian will become any 
 the less a believer theoretically in the infinity of God ; 
 or that he will not save himself from the letting down 
 process, in a degree, by the great tokens of power and 
 majesty he will trace in the worlds of matter, and the 
 adjectives he will set about the name of God, such as 
 eternal, infinite, all-present, all-seeing, all-powerful, 
 the Creator, Governor, Judge of the worlds. All this 
 he will do, and yet for some reason, he may not guess 
 what the reason is, he, will be conscious of a certain 
 decay of impression/ a diminution of tonic force in 
 the idea of GocL/such as once it had before he broke 
 loose from the absurdities of Trinity ; or above all, 
 such as he discovers in the writings and history of 
 his fathers, before they broke loose and led their chil- 
 dren out, as they supposed, in the paths of intelli- 
 gence and reason. An impression will finally begin 
 to crowd upon him that there is, after all, something 
 in the Trinitarian feeling not in his ; that their God 
 is more a God, higher in majesty, and heavier on the 
 soul's feeling. And the sense of this fact will by and 
 by appear in other and more decisive indications ; as 
 when, for example, poets, essayists, and nominally 
 Christian teachers brought up in his doctrine, begin 
 to be heard speaking in a heathenish and mock-classic 
 way of "the gods." They will do it because their 
 God, their one person or Father, has somehow lost 
 magnitude in their impressions, and because there 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 121 
 
 seems to be really more rhetorical power in the plural 
 
 "gods" than there is in their boasted unity-of-reason 
 God. 
 
 It could not be otherwise. How is it possible to 
 keep up the figure of a one personality, and be always 
 seeing God under that figure, without finally dragging 
 him down by the force of its finite associations, and 
 subjecting him practically to its measures ? Suppose 
 that by reason of some analogy discovered in the 
 rock, God were always called, as he is a few times in 
 the Scriptures, " The Rock," and conceived under no 
 other name, does any one doubt that such an image 
 would, by its natural associations, finally obdurate or 
 harden, and in that manner radically vitiate, the con- 
 ception of God's character ? He was familiarly 
 known to the ancient race as the " Jehovah-angel " ; 
 i. e., a visitor appearing in the human form to repre- 
 sent and speak for God. Suppose then he had always 
 been called The Angel, never conceived in any other 
 way, how plain is it that he would be gradually let 
 down to the grade of an apparition coming and going 
 and acting in space ! What then must follow when 
 he is spoken of and worshiped only in the type of a 
 person, which is nothing but a metaphysically finite 
 conception? One good point is gained, viz., the 
 mutuality, the reciprocal relationship of God ; but 
 with that everything necessary to the grandeur, the 
 transcendent wonder, the immeasurable vastness of 
 God, is lost or left behind. 
 
 Setting now these two failures against one another, 
 
1'2'2 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 the failure of pantheism and the failure of Unitarian- 
 ism, we perceive exactly what is the problem answered 
 by the Christian Trinity. By asserting three persons 
 instead of one. and also instead of none, it secures at 
 once the practical infinity of God and the practical 
 personality of God. By these cross relations of a 
 threefold grammatic personality, the mind is thrown 
 into a maze of sublimity, and made to feel at once 
 the vastness, and with that the close society also, of 
 God. He is not less personal than he would be under 
 the one personality of Unitarianism, and is kept 
 meantime, by the threefold personality, from any 
 possible diminution under the literal measures of the 
 figure ; for God cannot become either one person or 
 three, in any literal sense, when steadfastly held as 
 both.^/ 
 
 In this respect, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost, practically accepted and freely used, with 
 never a question about the speculative nature of the 
 mystery, with never a doubt of God's rigid and per- 
 fect unity, will be found to answer exactly the great 
 problem of the practical life of religion: viz.. how to 
 keep alive the profoundest, most adequate sense of 
 God's infinity, and. at the same time, the most vivid 
 and intensest sense of his social and mutual relation- 
 ship as a person. y And this, if I am right, is more to 
 say than could be said of any other known or possible 
 denomination for God. Regarded simply as a liter- 
 arv exploit, if that were all. it is at once the profound- 
 est practical expedient ever adopted, and the highest 
 wonder ever accomplished in human language. 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTII. 123 
 
 Many persons talk and reason of this matter, as if 
 it were the easiest, most extempore thing in the world, 
 to make a valid and true communication of God, not 
 considering cither the hard limitations of language, 
 or the more stringent limitations of a finite creature's 
 thought. In this radical and somewhat feeble assump- 
 tion, we have the beginning of the Unitarian attempt ; 
 as if it were nothing, could involve no mystery, no 
 paradox, to give expression to the infinite God ! Who 
 that can take Zophar's thought of his incomprehensi- 
 ble, inconceivable majesty : " Canst thou by searching 
 find out God ? canst thou find out the Almighty to per- 
 fection ? It is as high as heaven, what canst thou do ? 
 deeper than hell, what canst thou know ? The meas- 
 ure thereof is longer than the earth and broader than 
 the sea"; who, we ask, that can take up such a 
 thought of God, will have it for a perfectly easy and 
 simple matter to present such a being to the world ? 
 Far more equal and fit to the true import of the 
 problem was the answer of that wise heathen who, 
 when it was required of him to give the definition of 
 God, demanded a certain time for thought, and when 
 the time expired, double the time, and then again the 
 double of that, till at last, by so many delays, he had 
 given the most expressive and truest answer possible ; 
 declaring in that manner, the sense he had of God's 
 inscrutable, inconceivable mystery. Who that has a 
 mind really opened to the difficulties of the subject, 
 will not see beforehand, that when such a being com- 
 municates himself to the world, nothing will serve 
 
124 T11E CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 his object but some wondrous compilation of appar- 
 ently conflicting and paradoxical images. — such ex- 
 actly as we have in the Christian Trinity ': The very 
 mystery, and all the conflicting terminology which 
 the Unitarians undertook to clear and logically re- 
 duce, had even a presumption in their favor. And the 
 new explication they attempted of these absurdities 
 of Scripture, their - Truth made Simple." it was even 
 as clear beforehand as it could be afterwards, would 
 be only a substitution of the little for the great, the 
 feeble for the sublime, a merely childish half-truth 
 for the grand. Avell-rounded majesty of the triune 
 formula. Nothing is easier than the method of a 
 '•Xorton's Reasons:" and when implicitly followed, 
 nothing will more certainly show the problem resolved, 
 how it may be possible, with only a moderate force, 
 drudged in the ploddings of imilluminated scholar- 
 ship, to empty a Gospel most effectually of all that is 
 necessary to its life. It is no difficult task to make 
 God intelligible, and set him clear of all terms that 
 stagger comprehension : and then, when it is done, it 
 is not less easy to rind that he is just as much dimin- 
 ished as he is mote completely leveled to the logical 
 understanding. Withdrawn from the imagination and 
 reduced to the measures of logical practice, he will 
 be, in fact, to the true Almighty Infinite God. what 
 the wax-doll Napoleon is to the mysterious living para- 
 dox of genius, before whose name and coming the 
 nations shook with dread. J 
 
 Regarding the grammatic plurality, or three per- 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 125 
 
 sons, as a necessary means, in this manner, of pre- 
 serving at once the personality and practical infinity 
 of God, we ought perhaps to notice what is really a 
 st liking confirmation of our suggestion, that the Old 
 Testament word commonly translated God, Ulohi/n, 
 is a plural word. Over this word, particularly as it 
 occurs in the first chapter of Genesis, in connection 
 with the phrase, " Let us make man in our image," 
 there has been a good deal of frivolous and imperti- 
 nent debate ; frivolous and impertinent of necessity, 
 because the question raised, whether these pluralities 
 are not affirmations of Trinity, is a fictitious and 
 wholly unscholarly question. The true question is 
 different, viz., what is the reason, for some reason 
 there certainly was, why this plural name occurs and 
 becomes accepted as the name of God ? Such a ques- 
 tion opens up, it will be seen, a previous history in the 
 word, conducting us back upon the great natural fact, 
 that (plurality is a form of instrumentation for God 
 or the divine nature, quite as readily received and 
 for some purposes more adequate than a simple gram- 
 matic unity. J In this respect, the plural name of the 
 Old Testament answered some of the important condi- 
 tions of the Trinity of the New. The pluralities intro- 
 duced by means of the Jehovah Angel, the Memra or 
 Word of the Lord, and by such uses or conceptions of 
 the Holy Spirit as we find in the 51st Psalm, show also 
 in what manner the advantages of the New Testa- 
 ment Trinity are made up in the Old by another 
 process, if indeed it is another, which many will deny 
 We pass now, 
 
126 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 II. To another view of the Christian Trinity, in 
 which it is seen to have a practical relation to our 
 character and our state as sinners. Here it is the in- 
 strument and co-efficient of a supernatural grace or 
 redemptive economy. Not, as we sometimes hear, 
 that an infinite atonement is wanted, which none hut 
 an infinite and divine person could execute. That is 
 only a very crude and distant approximation to the 
 truth. The need we are here to discover is broader 
 and more comprehensive, resting in the fact that 
 God's universal economy is, in its very conception, 
 twofold ; comprising at one pole, an economy of na- 
 ture, and at the other, an economy of supernatural 
 grace ; requiring, in order to an easy practical adjust- 
 ment of our life under it, a twofold conception of God 
 that corresponds ; for which reason the Scripture 
 three are sometimes spoken of by Calvin and others, 
 as composing an economic Trinity. 
 
 In the department of nature, we discover, as we 
 think, a realm of complete systematic causation. All 
 events proceed in right lines of invariable sequence 
 under fixed laws. But as (laws are only another name 
 for God's will, or the action of forces representing 
 his will, the system of nature becomes a symbol in its 
 whole development of the regulative mind of God/ 
 What we call the natural consequences are determina- 
 tions of that mind in the same manner. In this view 
 it will be seen that, if the universal economy included 
 nothing but nature, the single term or conception God 
 would answer all our necessary uses. So far there 
 would be no discoverable economic need of Trinity. 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 127 
 
 F>ut the universal economy is Larger and contains, 
 of necessity, another and partially contending factor, 
 snpernaturalism, even as the balance of the firma- 
 ment is settled between two natural factors or forces 
 always contending with each other. Nature is a realm 
 so adjusted that, whenever any moral agent or race of 
 agents casts off the law moral, a train of natural 
 consequences forthwith takes them in hand for disci- 
 pline or retribution. The action begun is that of dis- 
 ease, disorder, pain, constituting what is fitly called a 
 fall. The penal train is a run of justice, and the run 
 is downward even forever ; for it is inconceivable that 
 disorder should ever of itself beget order. As little is it 
 to be conceived that we, who have broken up the ideal 
 harmony of nature by starting a malignant and dis- 
 eased action, should be able to will it back into a state 
 of perfection or ideal order, which we cannot even 
 conceive. To provoke and raise up nature was one 
 thing ; to smooth and restore it, another. Nothing 
 but. a force supernatural can restore the mischief, and 
 without that any thought of our own self-clearance 
 and self-preparation for a state of perfected health 
 and felicity is even absurd. 
 
 Inasmuch then, as the spiritual training of a race 
 of free moral agents included the certain fact of their 
 sin, there was, we perceive, a grand prior necessity 
 that, if they are to have any advantage in existence, 
 the scheme of God's economy should comprehend two 
 factors, nature and the supernatural. And this again 
 is the same, it will be seen, as to say that God wil) 
 
128 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 institute and actuate two realms of forces, a kingdom 
 of nature and a kingdom of grace ; for as we have 
 seen that (nature is the presiding will of God J so also 
 must the supernatural be ; and then, the perfection or 
 completeness of God's economy will consist in the 
 orderly comprehension of both, under harmonizing 
 principles of law and reason which are clear to him, 
 but only imaginable to us. 
 
 And now the question is, conceiving that we are in 
 the state of retributive disorder to be recovered from 
 it, related thus to God as the Head of the two econo- 
 mies, and having our salvation to seek under their 
 joint action, how we shall be able to conceive God in 
 any manner that will set him continually in this two- 
 fold relation towards us. /If we have only the single 
 term Grod, then we must speak of God as dealing 
 with God, contending with the causations of God, the 
 grace-force of God delivering from the nature-force of 
 God. If the work includes an incarnation, as we 
 suppose it must of necessity, then it must be/ God 
 sending God into the world.. Or, if it includes a 
 renovating spirit within, then we go to God to give 
 us God, and expect that God within will graciously 
 master the retributive causations of God within ; all 
 of which, as we may see, is a conception too clumsy 
 and confused to serve, at all, the practical necessity 
 of our state. There is, in short, no intellectual 
 machinery in ,. a close theoretic monotheism ;f or any 
 such thing as a work of grace or supernatural re- 
 demption. We should even say beforehand, that no 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 129 
 
 such thing can ever be; for bow can God rescue from 
 
 his own causes and open a way through his own retri- 
 butions ? Accordingly, it will be observed that where 
 this Unitarian conception is held, there is also dis- 
 covered an almost irresistible tendency to naturalism, 
 and so to a loss or dying out of all that distinctively 
 constitutes the gospel. God is the king of nature, 
 and nature is the inclusive name of all that consti- 
 tutes his dominion. There is, in fact, no legitimate 
 place for anything but nature. Sin is softened, 
 depravity ignored. Nature is conceived to be ideally 
 perfect and the palpable disorders and deformities of 
 the world are not regarded, in the admiration offered 
 to its beauty. The gospel is education and the run of 
 life is a course of development in right lines, without 
 a reversal or new creation of anything. Indeed, there 
 is no alternative but to say, as some are obliged in 
 fidelity to their scheme itself to do, and have not 
 shrunk from doing, that if we are saved at all, we 
 must be saved by justice or the natural law of retri- 
 bution. 
 
 Now there is, we have already intimated, a higher 
 and more comprehensive view of God's universal 
 kingdom, in which it includes and harmonizes these 
 two economies, viz., nature and the supernatural, and 
 by these two factors, like the contending forces of 
 astronomy, settles and adjusts its orbit. And the 
 Christian Trinity gives us a conception of God which 
 exactly meets such a truth, leveling it always to the 
 practical uses of our life. 
 
130 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 Using the term God sometimes in a sense broad 
 enough to comprehend all the complexities of his 
 kingdom, we are able, when we need such aid for the 
 practical accommodation of our faith, to lay hold of 
 relational terms that exactly represent the two econo- 
 mies in their action with and upon each other. First, 
 we have the term Father, which sets him before us as 
 the king of nature, the author and ground of all 
 existent things and causes. Next, we have the Son 
 and the Spirit, which represent the supernatural ; ( the 
 Son coming into nature from above nature, incarnate 
 in the person of Jesus, by a method not in the com- 
 pass of nature, erecting a kingdom in the world that 
 is not of the world j/the Spirit coming in the power 
 of the Son, to complete, by an inward supernatural 
 working, what the Son began by the address he made 
 without to human thought, and the forces he im- 
 ported into nature by his doctrine, his works, his life 
 and his death. 
 
 Having now these terms or denominations provided, 
 we use them freely in their cross relations, as a ma- 
 chinery accommodated to our sin and the struggles of 
 our faith; putting our trust in the Son as coming 
 down from God, offering himself before God, going 
 up to God, interceding before God, reigning with God, 
 by God accepted, honored, glorified, and allowed to 
 put all things under his feet ; (invoking also God and 
 Christ to send down the Spirit, and let him be the 
 power of a real indwelling life^oursing through our 
 nature, breathing health into its diseases, and so roll 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 161 
 
 ing back fehe penal currents of justice to set us frec^- 
 Haviiig these for the instruments of our thought and 
 feeling and faith towards God, and suffering no fool- 
 ish quibbles of speculative logic to intervene and 
 plague us, asking never how many Gods there are, or 
 how it is possible for one to come out from another, 
 act before another, take us from or to another ; but 
 assured of this, at every moment, that God is one and 
 only one forever, however multiform in his vehicle ; 
 how lively, and full, and blessed, and easy too, is the 
 converse we receive through these living personations, 
 so pliant to our use as finite men, so gloriously ac- 
 commodated to our state as sinners ! 
 
 Our argument for the twofold practical need of a 
 Trinity, and the consequent practical value of the 
 Trinity we have, is now sufficiently stated, and is 
 brought, we think, to a point of rational conviction 
 as decisive as the nature of the subject permits. Thus 
 far, it will be remarked, we have nothing to do with 
 the interior mystery of the divine nature. The argu- 
 ment amounts to nothing more than that God, even 
 assuming his strict unity, must needs be exhibited in 
 this way, in order to the uses stated. Finding a cer- 
 tain threefold designation of God given out in the 
 Christian Scriptures, in which he is presented, in 
 form, as three personalities, Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost, we take up the subject at this point and show 
 that, taken as means of divine representation, they 
 are necessary to the adequate impression of God, and 
 
 / 
 
132 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 the practical uses of a supernatural and redemptive 
 economy. 
 
 But the question will be raised by many, at this 
 point, whether after all, there is anything in God 
 answering to these personalities? Some Unitarian, 
 for example, having followed us to just this point and 
 admitted the force of our argument, may require to 
 be informed wherein the truth or reality of the triune 
 formula consists, or what there is in God's nature to 
 support these personalities of revelation? And to 
 this we might well enough reply by handing back the 
 question. Having shown the practical need of just 
 what the Scripture gives, it is not therefore specially 
 incumbent on us to settle all other and deeper ques- 
 tions that may be raised. Let him bring the matter 
 to that issue that will best satisfy himself. Let him 
 stop at Sabellianism, if the air is not too thin to feed 
 his breath. Or let him vault clean over, at a single 
 stride of logic, if he will, and rest himself in the con- 
 clusion that, since the three are persons, there must 
 be three Gods, or a council of Gods. Enough for us 
 that we have shown him the practical need of the 
 Scripture Trinity. 
 
 But we will not so dismiss the question, lest by an 
 evasion of responsibility, at the point reached, we 
 may seem to regard the Trinity as a matter only of 
 words, and not in any proper sense an eternal fact. 
 Our impression then is that a very great gain, as re- 
 gards the intelligent apprehension of this subject, 
 will be made by simply giving full place, at the out- 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 133 
 
 set, to the admission that God is not a person or per* 
 sonal being, save in some qualified and partly tropical 
 sense. For we can every one see, at a glance, that he 
 cannot, as an infinite being, be comprehended under 
 any such finite term literally taken. And yet he is a 
 person. Who of us except a few speculative panthe- 
 ists, doubts that he is a person, or apprehends any 
 want of honest reality or solid eternity in the word 
 when he is called a person ? Doubtless the word is a 
 figure, whether we have ever so thought of it or not ; 
 but it does not follow that because it is a figure, there 
 is therefore nothing in God to meet and support the 
 figure. Precisely in the same way, and with as good 
 reason, God may be a Trinity of persons. There is 
 in fact no greater difficulty in conceiving God as three 
 persons, than there is in conceiving him as one ; for 
 he may as well be three without any breach of his 
 unity as one without any breach of his infinity. 
 Indeed, it may be and very probably is true, that what 
 we mean by asserting the personality of God is simply 
 to predicate of him that sociality, conversability, or, 
 to coin a word yet more general, that relationality 
 which is verified to us, and practically realized in us 
 by the Trinity. 
 
 However this may be, it is an important considera- 
 tion, and one that goes far to evince the profound 
 reality of the persons, that as God in revelation as- 
 sumes all the attitudes and acts all the forms of per- 
 sonality, so, in a like free manner, he displays a 
 relative action of three persons towards each other 
 and upon the world : God and with God, sending and 
 
134 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 sent, conversing with, ascending to, proceeding from: 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In all which the 
 Trinity is seen to be not a matter of words only, but 
 a reality of fact in the world of action. So far at 
 least, the case is clear. What then shall we say of 
 this tri-personality acted by God ? What account 
 shall we make of it ? Is it that God will accommo- 
 date himself in this manner to finite minds ? That 
 would reduce the Trinity to an occasional matter, a 
 voluntary expedient ; which would be a supposition as 
 painful and quite as remote from all our most earnest 
 convictions as to believe that his personality is a 
 merely occasional matter, an act of voluntary accom- 
 modation to our finite apprehensions, and not any 
 part of his eternal property or idea. 
 
 What then is it that gives us the impression, when 
 we speak of God's personality, that it is an eternal 
 property in him, a something which appertains to the 
 divine idea itself ? It cannot be that he exists as an 
 infinite substance in the mold of our human person- 
 ality ; it cannot be that there is a core of literal per- 
 sonality wrapped up in his infinite substance. It is 
 not enough that he acts personality in a way of vol- 
 untary accommodation to men. It can be only that 
 by some interior necessity, he is thus accommodated 
 in his action to the finite ; for what he does by the 
 necessity of his nature as truly pertains to his idea, 
 and is as truly inherent in him, as if it were the form 
 of his divine substance itself. And precisely here we 
 come upon the Nicene Trinity. This and all the 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 135 
 
 formulas of Trinity that assert the " eternal genera- 
 tion,*' affirm the unity of the persons as a unity of 
 substance, — unoouaiot, " same in substance " ; and then 
 regarding the eternal going on, so to speak, of God, 
 ~1iis living* process or act, actus purissimus, they find 
 him eternally threeing himself, or generating three 
 persons. These documents do not mean that God, at 
 some date in his almanac called eternity, begat his 
 Son and sent forth his Holy Spirit ; but that in some 
 high sense undefinable, he is datelessly and eternally 
 becoming three, or by a certain inward necessity be- 
 ing accommodated in his action to the categories of 
 finite apprehension, adjusted to that as that to the 
 receiving of his mystery. 
 
 This necessary act of God is sometimes illustrated 
 by a reference to our necessary action, in the process 
 of consciousness. Thus in simply being conscious, 
 which we are, not by act of will, but by force of 
 simply being what we are, we first take note of our- 
 selves ; secondly, raise a conception or thought of 
 ourselves ; and thirdly, recognize the correspondence 
 of that conception with ourselves. And this we do 
 as long as we exist, and because we exist. And some 
 have gone so far as even to discover, in this fact, a 
 parallel and a real explication of the Trinity of God. 
 The illustration is reliable however, only as a demon- 
 stration of the intensely inherent character of all 
 necessary action. Were this three-folding of con- 
 sciousness a matter of substance, it would not be 
 more truly inherent than it is, regarded as an act. 
 
136 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 If then we dare to assume what is the deepest, 
 most adorable fact of God's nature, that he is a being 
 infinite, inherently related in act to the finite, other- 
 wise impossible ever to be found in that relation, thus 
 and therefore ia being who is everlastingly threeing 
 himself in his action, to be and to be known as 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost from eternity to eter- 
 nity, /we are brought out full upon the Christian 
 Trinity, and that in the simple line of practical in- 
 quiry itself. It is nothing but the doctrine that God 
 is a being practically related to his creatures. And for 
 just this reason it was that Christ, in the commission 
 given to his disciples, set forth his formula of Trinity 
 as a comprehensive designation for the gospel, and a 
 revelation of the everlasting ground it has in the in- 
 herent properties of God. He calls it therein as 
 emphatically as possible his " everlasting gospel," a 
 work as old as the Trinity of God, a valid and credi- 
 ble work, because it is based in the Trinity of God. 
 So glorious and high, and yet so nigh is God ; related 
 in all that is inmost, most inherent in his nature and 
 eternity, to our finite want, and the double kingdom 
 of nature and grace, by which we are to be raised up 
 and perfected for the skies : a being who is at once 
 absolute and relational ; an all-containing, all-support- 
 ing Unity, and a manifolding humanly personal love ; 
 the All in all itself, and yet above all, through all, and 
 in all ; of whom also, and through whom, and to whom 
 be glory forever. 
 
 How very distant any such conception of the Chris- 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 137 
 
 tian Trinity may be from most persons, we are well 
 aware. The most they look for in it, is to find that it 
 is barely defensible. That it contains the whole 
 staple of Christianity, they do not suspect, and will 
 be ready, it may be, to set it down as a visionary and 
 over-fond estimate of its import. With the greater 
 satisfaction therefore do we hail the expression of a 
 deeper and more adequate conviction, by some of the 
 first minds of our age ; accepting in their words, the 
 tokens of an ultimate return of the world to a more 
 thoughtful spirit and a more truly Christian impres- 
 sion. Thus Mr. Coleridge, — and who has given a more 
 pervading and more thoroughly Christian impulse to 
 the English mind of the day, than he ? — declares that 
 " the article of Trinity is religion, is reason, and its 
 universal formula ; that there neither is nor can be 
 any religion, any reason, but what is, or is an ex- 
 pression of the truth of, the Trinity." Neander, in 
 like manner, and with a similar title to respect, calls 
 it " the fundamental article of the Christian faith ; 
 and we recognize therein," he says, " the essential 
 contents of Christianity summed up in brief ; * * 
 in which threefold relation the whole Christian 
 knowledge is completely announced." (History, vol. 
 1, p. 572. 
 
 But these are testimonies of opinion, not of practice. 
 There is yet another class of witnesses, even a great 
 cloud of them, who are more to our purpose and bet- 
 ter authorities than these. We mean those living 
 myriads of God on earth and above, who, apart from 
 
188 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 all scholarship and philosophy, have been raised to a 
 participation of God so transcendent in the faith of 
 this adorable mystery. Why or how it is a truth they 
 have not been able, and it may be, as little cared, to 
 find ; for it had proved itself to their experience in 
 such a raising of their consciousness and a communi- 
 cation to them of the divine nature so indisputably 
 witnessed, as to make them inaccessible to all the 
 colder assaults of scepticism. Sometimes they have 
 stated a Trinity to which there have been abundant 
 reasons for exception, and yet they have found such 
 practical virtue in that, as to be raised quite above 
 the incumbrances added, and seem even to have had 
 it for/a part of their joy to see how the fires of their 
 faith could burn up all the chaff of their head. / The 
 wise ones of the church and the speculative schools 
 sometimes give them pity ; or, what is not far differ- 
 ent, set them forth as the weaklings of the faith, who 
 make a virtue of their ecstacies over what has been 
 imposed upon their superstition. But the revelations 
 of eternity will show who were weakest and most on 
 a level with pity, they who could so readily fall into 
 the abysses of the divine mystery, or the wise pre- 
 tenders who stood questioning over syllables and refin- 
 ing in distinctions, till they had shut away all mystery 
 and taken up for God a dull residuum just equal to 
 the petty measures of their understanding. 
 
 Could we bring up this great cloud of witnesses and 
 hear them speak to the question we have here on 
 hand ; or could we but gather up the Avords in which 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 139 
 
 they have recorded their experience in the faith, even 
 these would contribute a weight of evidence to the 
 truth we are asserting, and shed a glory over it such 
 as to quite forbid the need of any other argument. 
 Thus, for example, we should hear at Heidelberg, two 
 centuries and a half ago, the distinguished Professor 
 of divinity, Francis Junius, testifying that he was in 
 fact converted from atheism by the Christian Trinity, 
 or by the sense of God rolled in upon his soul by 
 means of that stupendous mystery of the gospel. 
 Having fallen into great looseness of living and be- 
 come an atheist in his opinions, his Christian father 
 kindly puts a New Testament in his hands, requesting 
 him to read it, and the result is that, opening on a 
 passage most of all likely as it would commonly be 
 supposed to offend and fortify his scepticism, he is 
 visited in its mysterious and sublime words by such 
 a sense of God as overwhelms and instantly stifles 
 the doubts which no mere argument of books and 
 treatises had been able to remove. He shall give the 
 account in his own words : " Here therefore I open 
 that New Testament, the gift of heaven ; at first sight 
 and without design, I light upon that most august 
 chapter of the Evangelist and Apostle St. John. ' In 
 the beginning was the word and the word was with 
 God, and the word was God.' etc. I read part of the 
 chapter and am so affected as I read that, on a sud- 
 den, I perceive the divinity of the subject and the 
 majesty and authority of the writing, far exceeding 
 all human eloquence. I shuddered, was confounded, 
 
140 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 and was so affected that I scarce knew myself. Thou 
 didst remember me, Lord my God, for thy great 
 mercy, and didst receive a lost sheep into thy flock." 
 (Bayle's Dictionary.) 
 
 The testimonies of Christian experience rejoicing 
 in this truth, are, of course, more frequent. Thus the 
 mild and sober Howe, explaining in what manner the 
 Trinity is to be connected with Christian experience, 
 says coincidently with what we have advanced con- 
 cerning the relational nature of the fact : " When, 
 therefore, we are to consider God as related to us as 
 our God, we must take in and bring together each of 
 these notions and conceptions concerning Him ; we 
 must take in the conceptions of each of the persons : 
 i God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy 
 Ghost is my God.' How admirable a thing is 
 this ! How great and high thoughts ought we to have 
 concerning the privilege state of our case ! Indeed 
 there is nothing that we have to consider of this God, 
 or to look after the knowledge of, to answer the 
 curiosity of a vain mind, but everything or anything 
 that may answer the necessity of a perishing soul. 
 Whatsoever is requisite to our real felicity and blessed- 
 ness, we may look to all that is in God, as determined 
 by a special relation unto us." (Works, p. 1100.) 
 
 Jeremy Taylor, holding the truth of the Christian 
 Trinity to be a truth entirely practical, apprehensible 
 therefore in its real evidence only by experience, says : 
 " He who goes about to speak of the mystery of the 
 Trinity, and does it by words and names of man's in- 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 141 
 
 vention, talking of essences and existences, hypostases 
 and personalities, priorities in coequalities, and unity 
 in pluralities, may amuse himself and build a taberna- 
 cle in his head, and talk of something he knows not 
 what ; but (the good man who feels the power of the 
 Father, to whom the Son is become wisdom, sanctifi- 
 cation, and righteousness, and in whose heart the 
 Spirit is shed abroad; this man, though he under- 
 stands nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone 
 truly understands the Christian doctrine of the 
 Trinity." J 
 
 Again, the Marquis de Renty, a distinguished French 
 disciple of the seventeenth century, opens the secret 
 of his own living experience in these words : " I bear 
 in me ordinarily an experimental verification and a 
 plenitude of the most holy Trinity, which elevates me 
 to a simple view of God, and with that I do all that 
 his providence enjoins me, not regarding anything 
 for the greatness or littleness of it, but only the order 
 of God and the glory it may render him." (Life of 
 De Renty.) 
 
 The testimony of Edwards, a man whose intellectual 
 sobriety and philosophic majesty of character are not 
 to be disrespected, corresponds : " And God has ap- 
 peared glorious unto me on account of the Trinity. It 
 has made me have exalted thoughts of God that he 
 subsists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost. The sweetest joys and delights I have expe- 
 rienced have not been those that have arisen from the 
 hope of my own good estate, but in a direct view of 
 the glorious things of the gospel." (Life, p 132-3.) 
 
142 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 The celebrated Lady Maxwell, a follower of Wesley, 
 is more abundant in these revelations. She says : 
 %i Yesterday he made his goodness to pass before me 
 in a remarkable manner, while attending public wor- 
 ship. I was favored with a clear view of the Trinity, 
 which I never had before, and enjoyed fellowship with 
 a triune God. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, 
 and felt my mind fixed in deep contemplation upon 
 that glorious incomprehensible object, the ever blessed 
 Trinity. Hitherto I have been led to view the Holy 
 Ghost chiefly as an o,gent, now I behold him distinctly 
 as the third person of the Trinity. I have in my own 
 soul, an experimental proof of the truth of this doc- 
 trine, but find human language perfectly insufficient 
 for speaking or writing intelligibly on the subject. 
 Eternity alone can unfold the sacred mystery, but in 
 the mean time what we may and do comprehend of it 
 is replete with comfort to the Christian." (Life, p. 
 258.) 
 
 It is impossible not to admire the Gospel formula, 
 that can so flood the human soul in its narrowed and 
 blinded state with the sense of God, and raise it to a 
 pitch of blessing so transcendent. The amazing power 
 of the Trinity, acting thus on the human imagination, 
 and the contribution thus made to Christian expe- 
 rience, cannot be over-estimated. 
 
 After we have discovered, in this manner, how 
 closely related the Christian Trinity is to Christian 
 experience and all the highest realizations of God, it 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 143 
 
 will Dot be difficult to account for the remarkable 
 tenacity of the doctrine. No doctrine is more para- 
 doxical in its terms. None can be more mercilessly 
 tortured by the application of a little logic, such as 
 the weakest and smallest wits are master of. None 
 has been more often or with a more peremptory con- 
 fidence repudiated by sections of the church and 
 teachers of high distinction. The argument itself too 
 has always been triumphant regarding the mere logi- 
 cal result : for the fact is logically absurd, and there 
 is no child who cannot so handle the words as to show 
 that no three persons can be one. And yet, for some 
 reason, the doctrine would not die ! It cannot die ! 
 Once thought, it cannot be expelled from the world. 
 And this for the reason that its life is in men's hearts, 
 not in their heads. Impressing God in his true per- 
 sonality and magnitude, impressing and communica- 
 ting God in that grand twofold economy, by which he 
 is brought nigh to our fallen state and accommodated 
 to our wants as sinners, showing us God inherently 
 related both to our finite capacity and our evil neces- 
 sity, what can ever expel it from the world's thought I 
 As soon shall we part with the day-light or the air as 
 lapse into the cold and feeble monotheism in which 
 some teachers of our time are ready to boast as the 
 Gospel of reason and the unity of a personal father- 
 hood ! Xo ! This corner-stone is not to be so easily 
 removed. It was planted before the foundation of the 
 world, and it will remain. It is eternally woven into 
 the practical economy of God's kingdom, and must 
 
144 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 therefore stand firm. Look up, man ! Look up, 
 thou sinner in thy fall, and behold thy God, eternally 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghpst, bringing all his vastness 
 down to thy littleness ; (all the power of his will to 
 release thee from the power of thy will ; acting, mani- 
 folding, circling round thee, inherently fitted, though 
 infinite, to thy finite want, and so to be the spring of 
 thy benediction forever ! 
 
 We are fully conscious of the tameness and poverty 
 of the illustrations by which we have endeavored to 
 set forth this greatest of all subjects. What can a 
 mortal say that is worthy of this transcendent myste- 
 ry of God ? Even if he should sometime seem to be 
 raised in it quite above mortality, how can he utter 
 that which is plainly unutterable ? Well is it if he 
 does not seem rather to have blurred than cleared the 
 glorious majesty of the subject, by the consciously 
 dull and feeble trivialities he has offered. Indeed we 
 could not dare to ofler a discussion so far below the 
 real merit of the theme, were it not for the conviction 
 that there is a lower and feebler inadequacy in our 
 common holding of the theme, from which it is scarcely 
 possible to detract. To hold this grand subtonic 
 mystery, in the ring of whose deep reverberation we 
 receive our heaviest impressions of God^as if it were 
 only a thing just receivable, not profitable ; a dead 
 truth, not a living; a theologic article, wholly one 
 side of the practical life ; a truth so scholastic and 
 subtle as to have, in fact, no relation to Christian 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 145 
 
 experience ; nothing, we are sure, can be less adequate 
 than this, or bring- a loss to religion that is more de- 
 plorable, unless it be a flat denial of the mystery 
 itself. In this view, we cannot but indulge a degree 
 of hope that what we have been able to say, however 
 insufficient or unequal to the theme, may yet have a 
 certain value as a tract for the times, raising at least 
 a question of respect for the doctrine where it has 
 been renounced, starting other and worthier contem- 
 plations of it where it is receiyed, and preparing some, 
 in the legitimate use, to find [how glorious and blessed 
 a gift to experience, how vast an opening of God to 
 man, how powerful, transforming, transporting, this 
 great mystery of God may be; We can wish the 
 reader nothing more beatific in this life than to have 
 found and fully brought into feeling the practical 
 significance of this eternal act or fact of God, which 
 we call the Christian Trinity. Nowhere else do the 
 bonds of limitation burst away as here. Nowhere 
 else does the soul launch upon immensity as here ; 
 nowhere fill her burning censer with the eternal 
 fires of God, as when she sings, — 
 
 One inexplicably three, 
 One in simplest unity. 
 
 Who. that has been able, in some frame of holy 
 longing after God, to clear the petty shackles of logic, 
 and the paltry quibbles of a world-wide speculation, 
 committing his soul up freely to the inspiring impulse 
 of this divine mystery as it is celebrated in some 
 
146 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 grand doxology of Christian worship, and has so been 
 lifted into conscious fellowship with the great celestial 
 minds, in their higher ranges of beatitude and their 
 shining tiers of glory, has not known it as being, at 
 once, .the deepest, highest, widest, most enkindling 
 and most practical of all practical truths ! 
 
 Regarding it then as such, it is only a part of the 
 argument by which we undertake to commend it to 
 faith and a practical use, that we indicate, in a few 
 brief suggestions, the manner in which its advantages 
 may be most fully received, and with fewest draw- 
 backs of hindrance and perplexity. 
 
 First of all, then, we must hold fast the strict unity 
 of God. Let there be no doubt, or even admitted 
 question, of that. Take it by assumption that God is 
 as truly one being as if he were a finite person like 
 ourselves, and let nothing ever be suffered to qualify 
 the assumption ; for the moment we begin to let in 
 any such thought, as that the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost are three beings, we shall be thrown out of all 
 rest, confused, distressed, questioning what and whom 
 to worship, consulting our prejudices and preferences, 
 and suffering all the distractions of idolaters. 
 
 Holding firm the unity in this manner, use the 
 plurality with the utmost unconcern, as a form of 
 % thought or instrumental verity, by which we are to be 
 assisted in receiving the most unrestricted, fullest, 
 most real and sufficient impression of the One. We 
 must have no jealousy of the three, as if they were 
 going to drift us away from the unity, or from reason ; 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 147 
 
 being perfectly assured of this, that in using the triune 
 formula, in the limberest, least eonstrained way possi- 
 ble, and allowing the plurality to blend, in the freest 
 manner possible, with all our acts of worship, preach- 
 ing, prayer, singing and adoring, we are only doing 
 with three persons just what we do with one ; making 
 no infringement of the unity with the three, more 
 than of the infinity with the one. Let God be three 
 persons forever, just as he is one person forever, and 
 as this latter is a truth accepted without difficulty and 
 held as the necessary truth of religion, so let it be our 
 joy that he is a being who needs for other purposes 
 equally dear, to be and be thought as three. 
 
 Meantime we must avoid all practices of logic on 
 the persons. We must take them as we take the one, 
 which if we will put our logic on the term, will 
 immediately turn out to be only a finite being, — a man. 
 They are to be set before the mind at the outset as a 
 holy paradox, that only gives the truth in so great 
 power of expression that it defies all attempts at 
 logic or definition. Seizing thus upon the living 
 symbols, we are to chant our response with the Church 
 and say : " God of God, Light of Light, very God of 
 very God ; " and, if we cannot reason out the para- 
 dox, to like it the better that it stops the clatter of 
 our speculative mill-work and speaks to us as God's 
 great mystery should, leaving us to adore in silence. 
 Not that we are here to disown our reason. God is 
 no absurdity as three persons more than as one. 
 Fully satisfied of this, we are only to love the grand 
 
148 THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 
 
 abyss of God's majesty thus set before us and rejoice 
 to fall into it, there to bathe and submerge our finite 
 love, rejoicing the more that God is greater than we 
 knew, taller than our reach can measure, wider than 
 our finite thought can comprehend. 
 
 Neither will it do for us to suffer any impatience, or 
 be hurried into any act of presumption, because the 
 Trinity of God costs us some struggles of thought, 
 and because we cannot find immediately how to hold 
 it without some feeling of disturbance or distraction. 
 That is one of the merits of the Trinity, that it does 
 not fool us in the confidence that we can perfectly 
 
 ^ know and comprehend God by our first thought. 
 Simply because God is too great for our extempore 
 and merely childish comprehension, he ought to be 
 given us in forms that cost us labor, and put us on a 
 ' stretch of endeavor. ^ So it is with all great themes. 
 The mind labors and wrestles after them, and comes 
 into their secret slowly. Let no shallow presumption 
 turn us away then from this glorious mystery, till we 
 have given it time enough, and opened to it windows 
 
 — enough by our praises and prayers, to let in the reve- 
 lation of its glory. Let it also be an argument of 
 modesty with us, and a welcome commendation to our 
 reverence, that so many friends of God and righteous 
 men of the past ages, such as bore a greater fight 
 than we and grew to greater ripeness in their saintly 
 walk, bowed themselves adoringly before this holy 
 mystery, and sung it with hallelujahs in the worship 
 of their temples, in their desert fastings and their 
 
A PRACTICAL TRUTH. 149 
 
 fires of testimony. And as their Gloria Patri, the 
 sublimest of their doxologies, is, in form, a hymn for 
 the ages, framed to be continuously chanted by the 
 long procession of times, till times are lapsed in 
 eternity, what can we better do than let the wave lift 
 us that lifted them, and bid it still roll on ! Glory be 
 to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, 
 as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, 
 world without end. Amen. 
 
V. 
 
 SPIKITUAL ECONOMY OP EEYIVALS OF EELIGION.* 
 
 We do not undertake the vindication of Revivals of 
 Religion. The Divine Husbandry in them is rather 
 our study. Shall we mask our conviction that here is 
 a want which has long demanded grave attention, — 
 that the views of this subject entertained by many 
 are unripe and partial, their notions of Christian in- 
 strumentality confused, and their practice desultory 
 to the same degree ? The discredit accruing from this 
 cause is really the heaviest argument that lies against 
 revivals ; heavier than all the attacks of their adver- 
 saries. Indeed, if we had it in hand to convince the 
 adversaries, we know not how we could hope more 
 effectually to succeed, than by unfolding the Divine 
 Husbandry, the Reason of God's Economy in them, — 
 which now is our attempt. 
 
 The term revival of religion is one not found in the 
 scriptures, and one to which we have decided objec- 
 tions. It properly denotes a reviving of Christian 
 
 *First published in the Christian Spectator of 1838, Vol. x; and 
 in 1847 re-published in a small volume, entitled, "Views cf 
 Christian Nurture, and of Subjects Adjacent thereto." 
 
SPIRITUAL ECONOMY OF REVIVALS. 151 
 
 piety, where it has sunk into decline. We use it to 
 denote a scene of conversion, of public exaltation and 
 victory ; and, what is even opposite to its proper 
 meaning, we use it as the name, not of a scene which 
 is counterpart to a state of dishonor in the church, 
 but of something which belongs inherently to the gos- 
 pel itself, in the same way as preaching or the sacra- 
 ments. And then, as the term itself is seen to be no 
 accurate measure of the idea, a feeling of distrust 
 arises in all thinking persons. It carries an air of 
 falsity, which is undignified and painful to the mind, 
 perhaps I should rather say an air of crudity or 
 superstition, as if cant were substituted for intelli- 
 gence. Or if it is heartily accepted, the more proba- 
 ble is it that faith embraces some portion of error, and 
 earnestness exults in a smoke of mental confusion. 
 For words are powerful instruments, and false words 
 can never be used without danger ; they mislead the 
 action even of philosophic minds, much more of those 
 who never think at all. Still the term revival has 
 found a current use, and convenience will perhaps 
 give it perpetuity. In this article we submit to the 
 term, only endeavoring, since it cannot be avoided, to 
 measure and guard its import. 
 
 This not being done, and the real position, if any, 
 which revivals hold in the economy of God's spiritual 
 administration not being well ascertained by the 
 Christian body, they are viewed by Christians them- 
 selves, with all the possible varieties of feeling be- 
 tween idolatry and distrust. Even the same mind 
 
152 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 often fluctuates between these extremes. To-day, the 
 face of God is bright upon his people, and the whole 
 community is, in a sense, visibly swayed by his power; 
 and now, in the happy freshness and vitality of the 
 scene, it is concluded that there is no true religion 
 but in a revival. To-morrow, as the freshness of new 
 scenes and new feelings is manifestly abating, there 
 begins to be an unhappy and desperate feeling ; some- 
 thing must be done ; religion itself is dying. And 
 yet what shall be done, it is very difficult to find ; for 
 every effort to hold fast the exact degree and sort of 
 feeling, to make a post of exercises, which in their 
 very nature have motion and change, only sinks the 
 vital force more rapidly. But the calm at length 
 comes, and now the prostration is the greater for the 
 desperate outlay of force used to prevent it. A dis- 
 satisfying look begins to rest, when it is reviewed, on 
 the scene of revival itself ; discouragement, unbelief, 
 sloth, — a long age of lead follows. Secretly sickened 
 by what is past, many fall into real distrust of spiritual 
 experiences. Many have made so heavy a draft on 
 their religious vitality or capacity, that something 
 seems to be expended out of the sensibility even of 
 their conscience : they sink into neglects, or crimes 
 close upon the verge of apostasy ; or they betake 
 themselves to the cheap and possible perfectionism of 
 antinomian irresponsibility. The extreme we here 
 depict is not often reached ; but there is very often a 
 marked approach towards it. The consequence is, 
 that the religious life, thus unskillfully ordered, is un- 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 153 
 
 happy, wears a forced look, goes with a perplexed and 
 halting gait. 
 
 Our present aim, then, is to ascertain the real office 
 and position of revivals, — to furnish, if possible, a 
 view of them which may be safely held at all times, 
 and must be so held, if any steady and intelligent 
 conduct in these matters is to be secured. We hope 
 to establish a higher and more solid confidence in re- 
 vivals, and at the same time, to secure to the cause of 
 evangelical religion a more natural, satisfactory, and 
 happy, as well as a more constant movement. 
 
 They are grounded, we shall undertake to show, 
 both in honor and in dishonor. They belong in part 
 to the original appointment and plan of God's moral 
 administration, in which part, they are only modes or 
 varieties of divine action, necessary to our renewal 
 and culture in the faith. For the remainder, they 
 are made necessary by the criminal instability of God's 
 people, or take their extreme character from unripe 
 or insufficient views in their subjects and conductors. 
 The two sides of the subject, thus stated, will require 
 to be prosecuted separately. 
 
 If we are to show revivals of religion in place, as 
 a geologist might say, or as they stand related to the 
 general system of God's works, purposes, and ends, we 
 need, first of all, to show in place the doctrine itself 
 of spiritual agency. In speaking of the divine agency 
 in men, we are obliged to use many and various figures 
 of speech, by way of giving sufficient vividness and 
 
15 4: SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 practical life to the truth, to make it answer its moral 
 ends. We speak of the Spirit of God as " descending," 
 or " coming down," or " sent down," as " poured out," 
 as " present " in a given assembly or place, as " grieved 
 away," or " dwelling " in the lieart of the believer. In 
 all this, if we understand ourselves, we only drama- 
 tize the divine action witli a view to give it reality 
 and conversableness. But some, there is reason to 
 fear, use these terms intending too literally in them. 
 They separate the divine agency in men, from the gen- 
 eral system in which it belongs ; they make the doc- 
 trine special in such a sense that God is himself 
 desultory in it, coming and going, journeying between 
 the earth and the sky, while all his other operations 
 go on by a general and systematic machinery which 
 takes care of itself. 
 
 The word of God sometimes speaks of the divine 
 or spiritual agency in men, as if it were only a new 
 or varied extension of the divine presence, and uses 
 the term presence as convertible with Spirit. - Whither 
 shall I go from thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee 
 from thy presence ? " " Cast me not away from thy 
 presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me." 
 " When the times of refreshing shall come from the 
 presence of the Lord." 
 
 Favored by this example, if we leave out of sight 
 the distinctions of the trinity, which we may for the 
 sake of greater simplicity in our subject, we shall 
 readily see, that the doctrine of spiritual agency is 
 grounded in the simple doctrine of God's omnipres- 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 155 
 
 ence. Here it is in place. Of this, in fact, it is only 
 a member. 
 
 What do we mean by God's omnipresence ? If we 
 
 k intelligently, not the extension, not the local 
 diffusion of the divine substance. We mean, nega- 
 tively, that we can conceive of no place above God's 
 works or outside of them, where the divine nature 
 
 resides : there is no such place. We are. there: 
 obliged to think of God as in-resident in hi.- works. 
 Xext we mean, positively, that God is potentially 
 present, present in act and sway (whatever may be true 
 of his substance, or of its relations to space.) filling 
 all things. The most ready illustration of this sub- 
 ject is the soul residing in the body. In what precise 
 organ its throne is we know not : but virtually or 
 energetically, it is all in every part. It is there to 
 perceive, to have control and use. and it is one will 
 which actuates and systematizes the action of all the 
 parts together. 
 
 Let it not offend, that we reduce the warm and 
 glowing doctrine of the agency of the Holy Spirit to 
 mere cold omnipresence. But rather let some just 
 degree of warmth be given to the latter. — a doctrine 
 chilled by the stagnant unbelief, and the more stag- 
 nant philosophy of men. The true notion of omni- 
 presence shows God in action everywhere, as much as 
 in the matters of grace. He is in all things, not 
 simply as staying in them, perchance asleep : but he 
 is in them by a pies design, a ; 
 
 moving all. advancing in all. towards his great ap- 
 
156 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 pointed ends. God is not entombed in his works. 
 That vital touch, which the bier felt and sent into the 
 quickened youth, touches all things and they live unto 
 God. Forms are his pliant investiture. Laws are 
 the currents of his will, flowing towards the ends of 
 his reason. The breast of universal nature glows 
 with his warmth. It enlivens even the grave, and the 
 believer's flesh, feeling the Lord of the resurrection 
 by, resteth in hope. When we reduce the work of the 
 Spirit then in man, to a branch of the divine omni- 
 presence, we seem, on the other part, to hear the 
 eternal voice lift up itself to the worlds also, the 
 forms, the forces, and thunder their holy inaugural 
 through the burnished pillars of the universe, saying : 
 " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and 
 that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you " ? 
 
 But observe more distinctly, the doctrine of God's 
 omnipresence does not affirm that he is present to all 
 things in the same sense. Presence being identical 
 with act and sway, it has of course this law in itself, 
 that God is present to each thing according to what 
 it is, and according to what he is doing with it. Thus 
 he is present to matter as matter and not as mind, 
 molding its forms, constructing its incidents. To 
 vegetable natures he is present according to what they 
 are, and according to their several growths and kinds. 
 So to a man he is present as animate in body, in spirit 
 an image of himself. If a man falls into sin, he is 
 then present to him as a sinner, offended by his trans- 
 gressions and averse to his character. If he under- 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 157 
 
 takes to redeem, he is then present as prosecuting 
 such an object : convincing of sin. righteousness, and 
 
 a judgment to come. And now. if any one is brought 
 to repentance, God is present to him in a still more 
 intimate and glorious way. In all the orders of 
 created being before named. God has found nothing to 
 reciprocate his moral feelings ; but here he finds 
 something which suits and sympathizes with his joys. 
 his principles, his whole spirit. Here his holiness en- 
 ters into a resting-place and a congenial hospitality. 
 He calls it his home, his palace, his sanctuary, aud 
 there he dwells, bestowing the cherishments of a God 
 in friendship. This, by way of eminence, is called 
 the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But here the great 
 law of omnipresence still pertains, — God is present to 
 believers according to their character, their times, 
 their works, their wants, and the great result he pur- 
 poses to bring them to. We are to expect, of course, 
 that there will be great variety in the manner of his 
 presence, or, what is the same, in the kind of act and 
 sway he will exert in them. He will strengthen 
 what is good, fan out what is evil, shed peace, impart 
 knowledge and understanding, invigorate hope, stimu- 
 late, try, purify, — in a word, he will order his agency in 
 every way so as to communicate more of himself to 
 them, and complete them in his likeness. So Paul, 
 contemplating the Spirit in believers under the figure 
 of an air-medium, common, or present, both to the 
 divine mind and to ours, says : •• the Spirit searcheth 
 all things, yea, the deep things of God.' 5 Like some 
 
158 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 breath of wind, which has passed through fragrant 
 trees and banks of flowers, searching them and bring- 
 ing grateful flavors of them ; so the all-present Spirit 
 ever wafts upon us the deep things, the hidden fra- 
 grance and the treasured sweetness of the divine 
 nature. 
 
 The doctrine of divine agency in men amounts, 
 then, to this, — that God is present to men, according 
 to what they are and his purposes in them, just as he 
 is present to material natures, according to what they 
 are and what he will do with them. No man who 
 believes in the divine omnipresence, the universal act 
 and sway of God, can reasonably question the work 
 of the Spirit in men. So far from being any pre- 
 sumptuous claim in us to think that God works in 
 us to will and to do, that he may mold us unto him- 
 self, it is rather presumptuous to question it. To 
 believe that God is present in act and sway to the 
 vital functions of a finger, and not to a mind, or the 
 character and welfare of a mind, is to reverse all 
 notion of justness and real dignity in the divine 
 counsels. 
 
 If these reasonings concerning the doctrine of di- 
 vine agency are somewhat dry and abstruse to the 
 general reader, it is yet hoped, that such as are more 
 practiced in questions of this sort, will have a higher 
 estimate of their importance. They enable us to 
 enter on the spiritual economy of revivals at a great 
 advantage, and from ground high enough to command 
 the whole field. 
 
OP REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 159 
 
 It is too readily conceded, indeed it is often stoutly 
 insisted on, even by those who may be called extreme 
 revivalists, that everything of a periodical or tem- 
 porary nature in religion is, of course, dishonorable 
 and suspicious. The adversaries of revivals are 
 ready, of course, to coincide. Further, they are 
 specially offended, when it is claimed that God exer- 
 cises any temporary or periodical sway in men. In 
 their view it is nothing but a weak conceit, or the 
 dream of a wild enthusiasm, when God is supposed to 
 be specially operative in the conversion of men, at 
 any particular time and place, or in any single com- 
 munity. 
 
 But if a periodical agency be so derogatory to God's 
 honor, what shall be thought of the seasons, the in- 
 tervals of drought and rain, and all the revolving 
 cycles of outward change ? If the adversaries of re- 
 vivals believe in God's omnipresence, is there not a 
 presence of act in all these things, according to their 
 nature and his purpose in them, as there is supposed 
 to be in the spiritual changes which affect communi- 
 ties ? On their principle, nature ought to perfect her 
 growths in the scorchings of an eternal sun, or in the 
 drenchings of an everlasting rain, and the flowers 
 ought to stand, from age to age, as changeless as petri- 
 factions. They ought to see, from year to year, the 
 same clouds in the same shapes glued fast upon the sky, 
 and the same wind everlastingly exact to a degree of 
 their thermometer ought to blow upon them. But no, 
 nature is multiform and various on every side. She 
 
160 SPIKITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 is never doing exactly the same thing, at one time, 
 which she has done at another. She brings forth all 
 her bounties by inconstant applications and cherish- 
 ments endlessly varied. A single thought extended 
 in this direction were enough, it would seem, to show 
 us that, while God is unchangeable, he is yet infinitely 
 various ; unchangeable in his purposes, various in his 
 means. 
 
 Is it said however, that God acts in nature by gen- 
 eral laws ? So doubtless he does in the periodical and 
 various cultivation of his Spirit. All God's works 
 and agencies are embraced and wrought into one com- 
 prehensive system, by laws. Even miracles them- 
 selves are credible only as being, in some sense, sub- 
 ject to laws. But he is no less the author of variety, 
 that he produces variety by system. 
 
 Is it said, that God produces the changes of nature 
 by second causes ? Is it meant, we ask in reply, to 
 deny God's omnipresence ? Having instituted second 
 causes to manage for him, has the divine nature gone 
 upon a journey, or is it, peradventure, asleep ? Or is 
 God still present (present, remember, by act and 
 sway,) inhabiting all changes ? The notion of a 
 second cause in nature, consistent with the divine 
 omnipresence, — meaning any thing by the term, — it is 
 somewhat difficult to frame. And as God's omni- 
 presence is an undoubted truth, it is better and more 
 philosophic not to displace it by one that is doubtful. 
 
 But we pass on. And it is instructing to advert as 
 we pass, to the various and periodical changes of tern- 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 161 
 
 perament which affect men in other matters than re- 
 ligion. Sometimes one subject has a peculiar inter- 
 est to Hie mind, sometimes another. Sometimes the 
 feelings chime with music, which again is not agree- 
 able. Society of a given tone is shunned to-day, 
 though eagerly sought yesterday. These fluctuations 
 are epidemical too, extending to whole communities, 
 and infecting them with an ephemeral interest in va- 
 rious subjects, which afterwards they themselves won- 
 der at and can in no way recall. No observing pub- 
 lic speaker ever failed to be convinced that man is a 
 being, mentally, of moods and phases, which it were 
 as vain to attempt the control of, as to push aside the 
 stars. These fluctuations or mental tides are due, 
 perhaps, to physical changes, and perhaps not. They 
 roll round the earth like invisible waves, and the 
 chemist and physician tax their skill in vain to find 
 the subtle powers that sway us. We only know that 
 God is present to these fluctuations, whatever their 
 real nature, and that they are all inhabited by the 
 divine power. Is it incredible, then, that this same 
 divine power should produce periodical influences in 
 the matter of religion ; times of peculiar, various, 
 and periodical interest ? For ourselves we are obliged 
 to confess, that we strongly suspect that sort of re- 
 ligion wdiich boasts of no excitements, no temporary 
 and changing states ; for we observe that it is only 
 towards nothing, or about nothing, that we have al- 
 ways the same feeling. 
 
 Need we say, again, that progress towards some end, 
 
162 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 which is the law of all God's works and agencies, nec- 
 essarily involves variety and change. Spring, for ex- 
 ample, is the first stage of a progress. The newnesses, 
 therefore, of spring, the first beginnings of growth, 
 must wax old and change their habit. So it is impos- 
 sible that the first feelings of religious interest in the 
 heart should remain. There is a degree of excitation 
 in the strangeness of new feelings, and so likewise in 
 the early scenes of a revival of religion, which belongs 
 to their novelty, and which is by no means incon- 
 siderable or improper. Such is human nature that 
 it could not be otherwise. In fact, there is no reason 
 to doubt that God, in framing the plan or system of 
 his spiritual agencies, ordained fluctuations and chang- 
 ing types of spiritual exercise, that he might take 
 advantage, at intervals, of novelty in arresting and 
 swaying the minds of men. These are the spring- 
 times of his truth, otherwise in danger of uniform 
 staleness. Thus he rouses the spiritual lethargy of 
 men and communities and sways their will to himself, 
 by aid of scenes and manifestations not ordinary or 
 familiar. Nor is it any thing derogatory to the divine 
 agency in the case, that the spiritual spring cannot 
 remain perpetual ; for there is a progress in God's 
 works, and he goes on through change and multiform 
 culture to ripen his ends. Doubtless too, there may 
 be a degree of sound feeling apart from all novelty, 
 in a revival of religion, which human nature is in- 
 competent permanently to sustain ; just as one may 
 have a degree of intellectual excitement and intensity 
 
OF RE VI V a L S F B E LIGION. 163 
 
 of operation, which he cannot sustain, but which is 
 nevertheless a Bound and healthy activity. In writing 
 
 a sermon, for example, every minister draws on a 
 fund of excitability, which he knows cannot be kept 
 up beyond a certain bound, and this without any 
 
 derogation from his proper sanity. 
 
 But we come to a stage in the subject, where the 
 advantage of our doctrine of spiritual agency is to be 
 more manifest. God has a given purpose to execute. 
 we have said, in those who have entered on the re- 
 ligious life, viz.. to produce character in them. To 
 this end he dwells in them, and this is the object of 
 his spiritual culture. And here, at the beginning, he 
 encounters the general truth, that varieties of experi- 
 ence and exercise are necessary to the religious char- 
 acter. How then shall he adjust the scale of his 
 action, if not to produce all such varieties as are nec- 
 esaary for his object ? We have just remarked on the 
 changes of temperament in men and communities, by 
 winch now one. now another theme is brought to find 
 a responsive note of interest What is the end of 
 this ? Obviously it is that we may be practiced in all 
 the many-colored varieties of feeling, and led over a 
 wide empire of experience. Were it not for this, or 
 if men were to live on from childhood to the grave in 
 the same mood of feeling, and holding fast to the 
 same unvarying topic of interest, they would grow 
 to be little more than animals of one thought. To 
 prevent which, and ripen what we call natural char- 
 acter to extension and maturity, God is ever leading 
 
164 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 us round and round invisibly, by n^w successions of 
 providence and new affinities of feeling. Precisely 
 the same necessity requires that religious character 
 be trained up under varieties of experience, and 
 shaped on all sides by manifold workings of the 
 Spirit. Now excitements must be applied to kindle, 
 now checks to inspire caution or invigorate depend- 
 ence. Xow the intellect must be fed by a seasuii of 
 study and reflection ; now the affections freshened by 
 a season of social and glowing ardor. By one mean> 
 bad habits are to be broken up. by another good habits 
 consolidated. Love, it is true, must reign in the 
 heart through all such varieties : but the principle 
 supreme love is one that can subsist in a thousand 
 different connections of interest and temperaments 
 of feeling. At one time it demands for its music a 
 chorus of swelling voices to bear aloft its exulting 
 testimony of praise : at another it may chime rather 
 with the soft and melancholy wail just dying on its 
 ear. And so. in like manner, it needs a diversity of 
 times, exercises, duties, and holy pleasures. It needs, 
 and for that reason it has. not only revivals and times 
 of tranquillity, but every sort of revival, every sort 
 of tranquillity. Sometimes we are revived individ- 
 ually, sometimes as churches, sometimes as a whole 
 people, and we have all degrees of excitation, all man- 
 ner of incidents. Our more tranquil periods are 
 sometimes specially occupied, or ought to be. in the 
 correction of evil habits : or we are particularly in- 
 terested in the study of religious doctrines necessary 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 165 
 
 to the vigor of our growth and usefulness ; or we are 
 interested to acquire useful knowledge of a more 
 general nature, in order to our public influence, and 
 the efficient discharge of our offices. In revivals we 
 generally prefer the more social spheres of religious 
 exercise ; so now the more private and solitary expe- 
 riences may be cultivated. Such is the various travail, 
 which God has given to the sons of men, to be exer- 
 cised therewith. 
 
 Another end prosecuted by the Spirit, in his work, 
 is the empowering of the Christian body, and the 
 extension of good, through them and otherwise, to 
 the hearts of others. Here also there is no doubt that 
 changes and seasons of various exercise, like these 
 called revivals, add to the real power of the faith. 
 We are so prone to think nothing of that which al- 
 ways wears exactly the same color and look, that 
 holiness itself needs to change its habit and voice to 
 command notice, or impress itself on the attention. 
 The power too of the Christian body rests, in the 
 main, on its appearing to the world to be inhabited 
 and swayed by an agency above nature. And this 
 can never appear, except by means of changes and 
 periodical exaltations therein. Nature would make 
 no manifestation of him who dwells in her forms, if 
 all stood motionless ; if the sun stood fast and clear 
 in everlasting noon ; if there were no births, decays, 
 explosions, surprises. Xature is called the garment of 
 the Almighty, bnt if there were no motion under the 
 garment, it would seem a shroud rather than a gar- 
 
166 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 ment of life. God is manifested in nature by the 
 wheeling spheres, light, shade, tranquillity, storm, — 
 all the beauties and terrors of time. So the Spirit 
 will reveal his divine presence through the church, 
 by times of holy excitement, times of reflection, times 
 of solitary communion, times of patient hope. A 
 church standing always in the same exact posture and 
 mold of aspect would be only a pillar of salt in the 
 eyes of men ; it would attract no attention, reveal no 
 inhabitation of God's power. But suppose that now, 
 in a period of no social excitement, it is seen to be 
 growing in attachment to the bible and the house of 
 God, storing itself with divine or useful knowledge, 
 manifesting a heavenly minded habit in the midst of 
 a general rage for gain, devising plans of charity to 
 the poor and afflicted, reforming offensive habits, 
 chastening bosom sins, — suppose, in short, that prin- 
 ciples adopted in a former revival are seen to hold 
 fast as principles, to prove their reality and unfold 
 their beauty, when there is no longer any excitement 
 to sustain them ; here the worth and reality of relig- 
 ious principles are established. And now let the 
 Spirit move this solid enginery once more into glow- 
 ing activity, let the church, thus strengthened, be 
 lifted into spiritual courage and exaltation, and its 
 every look and act will seem to be inhabited by a 
 divine power ; it will be as the chariot of God, and 
 before it even stubbornness will tremble. 
 
 We have spoken already of the probable fact, that 
 God has designed to take advantage of novelty in his 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 167 
 
 plan of spiritual action. Quite as great an addition 
 is made to the efficacy of his operations, by the ad- 
 vantage he takes of the social instincts of men./ 
 There is no impression which is not powerfully aug- 
 mented by participation. What a community, what 
 a crowded assembly feels is powerfully felt. Hence 
 it is an article of the divine economy in revivals, that 
 whole communities shall be moved together, as it 
 were by common gales of the Spirit. The hold thus 
 taken of men is powerful, often to a degree even 
 tremendous, and many a covenant with death is dis- 
 annulled which no uniform or unvaried tenor of divine 
 agency, no mere personal and private dealing of the 
 Spirit, would ever have shaken. 
 
 There is one more advantage taken of men by 
 periodical or temporary dispensations, in the very fact 
 that they are temporary. The judgment and obser- 
 vation of many who preach the gospel will bear us 
 witness that the certainty felt by those who are at 
 any time enlightened and drawn by the Spirit, that 
 they will not long be dealt with in the same manner 
 as now, that by delay they may dismiss the present 
 grace, and lose the most favored moment given them 
 to secure their salvation, is the strongest and most 
 urgent of all motives. This, in fact, is absolutely 
 requisite to the stress and cogency of all means and 
 agencies. Such is the procrastinating spirit of men, 
 so fast bound are they in the love of sin, that how- 
 ever deeply they may feel their own guilty and lost 
 estate, nothing but the fact that God is now giving 
 
168 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 them opportunities and aids which are peculiar and 
 temporary would ever foreclose delay. We need look 
 no farther to see the folly of supposing, that God 
 must not act periodically or variously, if he act at all, 
 in renewing men. Why act uniformly when it would 
 defeat all the ends of action ? 
 
 This attempt to exhibit the spiritual economy of 
 God in revivals might be prosecuted much farther. It 
 would be useful too, if we could stop here to admire 
 the wisdom of God's spiritual husbandry, the sys- 
 tematic grandeur with which he compasses all his 
 ends, and the illustrious honor that shines in his 
 works of grace. 
 
 But we must hasten forward. And here, on the 
 second side, or the side of dishonor, we pass to views 
 and exhibitions less agreeable, though not, we hope, 
 less welcome. 
 
 We should be sorry, if in what we have advanced, 
 a shadow of countenance has been given to the im- 
 pression that the Christian is allowed, at some times, 
 to be less religious than at others. He is under God's 
 authority and bound by his law at all times. He must 
 answer to God for each moment and thought of his 
 life. His covenant oath consecrates all his life to God, 
 and stipulates for no intermission of service. At no 
 time can he shrink from religious obligation, without 
 dishonor to his good faith, together with a loss of 
 character and of God's favor. Furthermore still, it 
 is his duty and privilege ever to be filled with the 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 169 
 
 Spirit, The believer is one chosen for his indwelling, 
 thus consecrated to be the divine temple. And God 
 will never leave his temple, except he is driven away 
 by profanation, — grieved away. " I have somewhat 
 against thee," said the Saviour, " because thou hast 
 left thy first love." He did not require, of course, 
 that the novelty and first excitement of feeling should 
 last, but that love, the real principle of love, should 
 lose ground in them was criminal. Let us not be mis- 
 taken. The Christian is as much under obligation at 
 one time as at another, though not under obligation 
 to be ever doing the same things ; no intermission, no 
 wavering or slackness is permitted him ; nay, he is 
 bound to increase, or gather strength in his religious 
 principles, every day and hour of his existence. 
 
 But how shall we harmonize this with what we have 
 advanced in the first side of our subject ? The answer 
 is this : God favors and appoints different mocd.3 or 
 kinds of religious interest, but not backslidings, or 
 declensions of religious principle. There are diversi- 
 ties of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are diversi- 
 ties of operation, but it is the same God who worketh 
 all and in all. There is a common mistake of sup- 
 posing that the Spirit of God is present in times only 
 of religious exaltation, or if it be true, that such need 
 be the case. It is conceivable, that he may be doing 
 as glorious a work in the soul, when there is but a very 
 gentle, or almost no excitement of feeling. He may 
 now be leading the mind after instruction, teaching 
 the believer how to collect himself and establish a 
 
170 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 regimen over his lawless will and passions, searching 
 the motives, inducing a habit of reflection, teaching 
 how to cany principles without excitement, drawing 
 more into communion perhaps with God, and less for 
 the time with men. And while the disciple is con 
 ducted through these rounds of heavenly discipline, 
 we are by no means to think, that he is, of course, 
 less religious, or has less supreme love to God, than 
 he had in the more fervid season of revival. A sol- 
 dier is as much a soldier when he encamps as when 
 ho fights, whin he stands with his loins girt about, 
 and his feet shod with the preparation, as when he 
 quenches the fiery darts of the enemy. The Chris- 
 tian warfare is not all battle. There are times in it 
 for polishing the armor, forming the tactics, and feed- 
 ing the vigor of the host. 
 
 These remarks bring us to conclude, that there is, 
 in what we call revivals of religion, something of a 
 periodical nature, which belongs to the appointed plan 
 of God in his moral operations ; but as far as they 
 are what the name imports, revivals of religion, that 
 is, of the principle of love and obedience, they are 
 linked with dishonor ; so far they are made necessary 
 by the instability and bad faith of Christ's disciples. 
 But here it must be noted, that the dishonor does not 
 belong to the revival, but to the decay of principle in 
 the disciple, which needs reviving. There ought to 
 be no declension of real principle ; but if there is, no 
 dishonor attaches to God in recovering his disciple 
 from it, but the more illustrious honor, Thus it is 
 
P R E V I V A L S F It ELIGI N. 171 
 
 very often true, when a revival seems to have an ex- 
 treme character, that the faet is due, not to the real 
 state produced, but to the previous fall, the dearth and 
 desolation with which it is contrasted. And com- 
 monly, if the ridicule, thrown upon a revival, were 
 thrown upon the worldliness, the dishonorable loose- 
 ness of life and principle which preceded, it would 
 not be misplaced. 
 
 We now pass on to a stage, in which dishonor 
 attaches to the scene of revival itself. This is when 
 it takes an extreme character, which is not given it 
 by the Spirit of God, but originates in some mistake 
 of opinion, or extravagance of conduct in the subjects 
 and conductors. We cannot pretend here to specify 
 every sort of error which may vitiate a revival, or give 
 it an extreme character ; but w r e will note a few 
 leading mistakes which have a prevalent influence. 
 
 And a capital mistake is that of supposing, that 
 we ought to have a revival, so-called, or the exact 
 mood of a revival, at all times. It is taken for 
 granted, when the peculiar fervor of the work begins 
 to abate, that the disciples are sinking into sloth and 
 criminal decay, and never, that the Spirit is now giv- 
 ing a varied complexion to his work. Prodigious 
 efforts are made to rally the church to renewed ac- 
 tivity. The voice of supplication is tried. But all 
 in vain ; it is praying against God and nature, and 
 must be vain. Not that it must be vain in every 
 case ; but only in cases where God's plan is otherwise 
 ordered, or where the natural cxcitabilities of the 
 
LiZ SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 church are so far exhausted as to demand a different 
 sort of exercise. Effort spent in this way produces 
 additional exhaustion and discouragement. A tedious 
 intermission of life follows. At length the suscepti- 
 bilities of nature to excitement and attention recruit 
 themselves, as by a very long sleep, and there flames 
 out another period of over-worked zeal to be suc- 
 ceeded as before. If, instead of such a course, the 
 disciple was taught, as the revival, so-called, declines, 
 that God is now leading him into a new variety of 
 spiritual experience, where he has duties to discharge, 
 as clear, as high, as in the revival itself ; if he were 
 encouraged to feel that God is still with him ; if he 
 were shown what to do and how to improve the new 
 variety of state, taught the art of growing in the long- 
 run, how to make the dews, the rain, the sun, and the 
 night, all lend their aid alike ; in a word, if he were 
 taught the great Christian art of discerning the mind 
 of the Spirit, so that he shall be ever pliant thereto, 
 and not to pass reluctantly into his progressive moods 
 of culture and duty ; can any one fail to see, that ex- 
 tremities of action would thus be greatly reduced ? 
 He has not some strained and forced sort of religion 
 to live always, which, after all, no straining or forcing 
 can make live. The pendulum swings in smaller 
 vibrations. There is no wide chasm of dishonor, no 
 strained pitch of extravagance, but only a sacred ebb 
 and flow of various but healthful zeal. It is the great 
 evil in that sort of teaching, which insists on the duty 
 of being always in what is called a revival state, that 
 
OF REVIVALS OP RELIGION. 173 
 
 it tries to force an impossible religion. The supposed 
 obligation is assented to, and the Christian struggles 
 hard to answer it. But nature struggles against him, 
 being utterly unable to keep up such a state. At 
 length he yields, in a perplexed and half-despairing 
 manner, not knowing what it means. Still he owns 
 very dutifully that it is his sin, and as he tries no 
 more to avoid it, he seems to himself to be sinning 
 by actual and daily consent ; and this becomes in fact 
 the real temper of his heart. He gives over all care 
 of his spirit, violates his conscience in other ways, 
 since he must do it in one, and sinks into extreme 
 declension. More judicious views of duty would have 
 saved him. 
 
 The feeling, extensively prevalent, that if anything 
 is to be done in religion, some great operation must 
 be started, is another pernicious mistake. The ordi- 
 nary must give way to the extraordinary. Machinery 
 must be constructed, and a grand palpable onset 
 moved. Let it not be suspected that we are afraid of 
 all stir and excitement. The views advanced in the 
 former part of our subject should teach us higher 
 wisdom. The greatest and best actions have ever 
 been performed in stages of excited feeling and high 
 personal exaltation. Nothing was ever achieved, in 
 the way of a great and radical change in men or com- 
 munities, without some degree of excitement ; and 
 if any one expects to carry on the cause of salvation 
 by a steady rolling on the same dead level, and fears 
 continually lest the axles wax hot and kindle into a 
 
174 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 flame, he is too timorous to hold the reins in the Lord's 
 chariot. What we complain of and resist is, the arti- 
 ficial firework, the extraordinary, combined jump and 
 stir, supposed to be requisite when any thing is to be 
 done. It seems often not to be known, that there is 
 a more efficacious way, and that the extraordinary 
 got up in action, as in rhetoric, is impotence itself. It 
 must come to pass naturally, or emerge as a natural 
 crisis of the ordinary, if it is to have any consequence. 
 How often would the minister of Christ, for example, 
 who is trying to marshal a movement, do a more 
 effectual work in simply reviewing his own deficiencies 
 of heart and duty, charging himself anew with his 
 responsibilities, and devoting himself more faith- 
 fully to his people and to God's whole truth ! A 
 secret work thus begun, is enough to heave in due 
 time a whole community ; and it is the more power- 
 ful, because it moves in the legitimate order of action. 
 It begins, bowing to duty first and chief, and leaves 
 results for the most part to come in their natural 
 shape. It works in the hand of God, trustfully, hum- 
 bly, pertinaciously, and following whithersoever he 
 leads. And when God leads his servant, as certainly 
 he will, into a crisis of great moment, he is in it 
 naturally, he molds it unto himself, as if constituted 
 for the time to be its presiding power. 
 
 Where too much is made of conversions, or where 
 they are taken as the measure of all good, it has a 
 very injurious influence. The saying constantly re- 
 peated and without qualification, that it is the great 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 175 
 
 business of the gospel and of Christian effort to con- 
 vert men, has about as much error as truth in it. As 
 well might it be said, that the great business of trav- 
 elers is to set out on journeys. The great business of 
 the gospel is to form men to G-od. Conversion, if it 
 be any thing which it ought to be, is the beginning of 
 the work, and the convert is a disciple, a scholar, just 
 beginning to learn. If all the attention of the church 
 then be drawn to the single point of securing conver- 
 sions, without any regard to the ripening of them ; if 
 it be supposed that nothing is of course doing when 
 there are no conversions ; if there is no thought of 
 cultivation, no valuation of knowledge and character, 
 no conviction of the truth that one Christian well 
 formed and taken care of is worth a hundred mere 
 beginners, who are in danger perhaps of proving that 
 they never began at all ; if revivals themselves are 
 graduated in their value only by the number of con- 
 verts, and Christians in declension are called to re- 
 pentance only for the sake of the unconverted public; 
 the whole strain of movement and impression is one- 
 sided, distorted, and tinctured with inherent extrava- 
 gance. 
 
 We name only one more mistake having a per- 
 nicious influence on the character of revivals, which 
 is, the want of a judicious estimate of the advantages 
 to be gained, in times of non-revival. This is the 
 great practical error of our times. Let it startle no 
 one, if we declare our conviction, that religion has as 
 deep an interest in the proper conduct of times of 
 
176 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 non-revival, as in these periods of glowing excitement. 
 For many religious purposes, and those not the least 
 important, a revival is less advantageous than other 
 times. There is very little trial of principle in a re- 
 vival, as is proved by facts always developed after- 
 wards, in some of the brightest examples of supposed 
 conversion. The time, pre-eminently the time to 
 strengthen principle and consolidate character, is 
 when there is no public excitement. And for this 
 reason, God's spiritual husbandry includes such times, 
 and makes them so prolonged as to constitute the 
 greater part of life, showing very conclusively the 
 estimate he has of them. At such times, the disciple 
 is occupied more in study and doctrine, in self -inspec- 
 tion, in contemplation of God, in acting from princi- 
 ple separately from impulse. In times of revival, 
 foundations are broken up, and new impulses received ; 
 now, these impulses are consolidated into principle, 
 and permanently enthroned in the heart. This, at 
 least, ought to be so. And because it is not, revivals, 
 when they come, have less power, and a more limited 
 sphere of influence. They are looked on often, by 
 those who weigh their effects, as only shallow frets of 
 excitement, and in many cases, none but the less con- 
 siderate and feebler class of minds feel their power. 
 Let not the intervals of revival be undervalued, or 
 the duties belonging to them disesteemed. Great oc- 
 casions are not necessary to good actions. To every 
 thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose 
 under the sun. He hath made every thing beauti- 
 ful in his time. 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 177 
 
 We have thus attempted to ascertain the divine 
 economy in revivals of religion. We see them to be 
 in no degree desultory, except as they partake of hu- 
 man errors and infirmities. They lie imbedded in 
 that great system of universal being and event, which 
 the divine omnipresence fills, actuates, and warms 
 Here they are cherished, and will be, as long as the 
 redemption of man is dear to the eternal heart, and 
 constitutes one of the ends of God's pursuit. As the 
 gospel gains enlargement in the world, and the Chris- 
 tian mind is enlightened, they will gradually lose their 
 extreme and dishonorable incidents, and will consti- 
 tute an ebb and flow, measured only by the pulses of 
 the Spirit. The church will then make a glowing, 
 various, and happy impression. Her armor, though 
 changed, will always shine, and will have a celestial 
 temper in it. Changing her front, she will yet always 
 present a host clad in the full panoply of God. 
 
 But really to act on views like these, and give them 
 their legitimate effect, would require the gospel minis- 
 ters, or many of them, to change somewhat the tone, 
 and enlarge the sphere of their instructions. Many 
 would need to acquire a nicer, more complete and pro- 
 portional sense of character themselves, and thus learn 
 to go beyond the line of exercises which only urge 
 repentance, and test the state of their people. By 
 this confined method, this continual beating on the 
 same spot, they only produce a sense of soreness, 
 which recoils from their attempts. It were only nec- 
 essary to open the epistles of Paul, we should sup- 
 
178 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 pose, to see, that he moved in a range of topics and 
 duties which find no place in the concern of many 
 modern preachers, — discontent, envy, anger, jealousy, 
 ambition, gentleness, purity, modesty, decency, can- 
 dor, industry, — a catalogue that cannot be recited. 
 We see at once, that he does not regard the religious 
 character in his converts as a thing by itself, a con- 
 version well tested and followed by a few duties 
 specially religious. He considered the whole charac- 
 ter of the disciple, — mind, manners, habits, princi- 
 ples, — as the Lord's property. He felt that the gos- 
 pel was intended and fitted to act on every thing evil 
 and ungraceful in man's character, and applied it to 
 that purpose. And thus he sought to present his 
 disciples perfect and complete in all the will of God ; 
 a much more difficult and laborious way of preaching 
 than the one to which indolence, we fear, now adds 
 prevalence. Let the minister of truth then occupy 
 such intervals as are suitable, and which we have 
 supposed to be ordered of the Spirit for that purpose, 
 in forming the character of his people to things lovely 
 and of good report. Let him take advantage of 
 scripture history, and especially of the history of 
 Christ's life and manners, to draw out illustrations of 
 character, and beget what is so much needed by the 
 Christian body, a sense of character, of moral beauty 
 and completeness. Let him not use the parable of the 
 talents always to enforce the duty of usefulness. 
 Sometimes, at least, let mention be made of doubling 
 the talents, making the ten twenty, the five ten. Let 
 
OP REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 179 
 
 him follow the people into their business, into their 
 civil duties, and especially into their domestic rela- 
 tions ; showing the manner in which children may be 
 trained up as Christians in the nurture of the Lord ; 
 seeking to surround the Christian homes with Chris- 
 tian graces ; teaching how to make them pleasant to 
 the youth, and at the same time spiritually healthful. 
 And let him do all this in the manner of Paul or 
 Oberlin, as a work of the Spirit, a work into which 
 the Holy Spirit leads him as truly as into any other. 
 The tendrils of the vines are small things, but yet 
 they support the grapes. In like manner this dispo- 
 sition to adorn the doctrine of Christ by a nice obedi- 
 ence and a faithful copying of the Saviour, is that 
 which knits the Christian, tendril-like, to God's sup- 
 port. On the other hand, the gross movement, 
 always aiming at a chief point of Christian character, 
 without any care to finish a Christian conscience and 
 a Christian taste, is only trying to make the vines 
 adhere by their trunks. 
 
 We are not without a sense of deep responsibility 
 in giving these views to the public. If they are mis- 
 understood or misapplied, they may work incredible 
 injury. We are anxious indeed, lest they be perverted 
 to the justification of real declension from God and 
 made to sanction a lower and perhaps more incon- 
 stant piety than we now have. And yet we are sure 
 that they provide for a higher class of attainments, a 
 more constant growth towards God, and favor the 
 preparation of a new order of Christians who shall 
 
180 SPIRITUAL ECONOMY 
 
 really walk by faith from year to year. In showing 
 the use and necessity of times of non-revival, we do 
 not justify the present habit of Christian declension 
 in these intervals ; we rather show the sinfulness of 
 it, that it is unnecessary, that it is a rank abuse of 
 sacred means and privileges. We make it possible 
 for the Christian at such times to be as holy, to do as 
 good a work, to have the communion of God as really 
 as in a revival, and since it is possible to be done, it 
 is only faithlessness, without excuse, when it is other- 
 wise. 
 
 Our doctrine naturally terminates here, — in proving 
 it to be the great business and art of the Christian to 
 watch for the mind of the Spirit, and shape the life 
 evermore pliantly thereto. They that walk in the 
 Spirit, shall be led by the Spirit ; this we firmly be- 
 lieve. Hence the Saviour was at great pains to incul- 
 cate on the disciples readiness, watching for their 
 Lord's coming, and observation of the signs of the 
 times. And his Spirit is to help their infirmity of 
 discernment, and guide them by his intercessions or 
 inward intercourses to such praying, such work and 
 occupations as are according to God's will. " I will 
 guide thee with mine eye," is the sure declaration of 
 God. But in order to this, the Christian must look 
 at the indications of his eye ; and in order to this he 
 must have a single eye himself. He must walk by 
 faith, he must never acquiesce in sin, he must never 
 allow the world to get dominion over him. Doing 
 this, he will be directed what to do, and where to go, 
 
OF REVIVALS OF RELIGION. 181 
 
 exercised in the best ways, led to perform the best 
 service. The eye of the Lord will lead him about 
 through all the rounds of the Spirit, and the glory of 
 the divine holiness will ever encompass him. 
 
 Christian ! man renewed by grace, dost thou in- 
 deed believe that God inhabits thee with his holiness, 
 and makes thee his temple ? Be thou then a temple 
 indeed, a sacred place to him. Exclude covetousness ; 
 make not thy Father's house a house of merchandize. 
 Deem every sin a sacrilege. Let all thy thoughts 
 within, like white-robed priests, move round the altar 
 and keep the fire burning. Let thine affections be 
 always a cloud, filling the room and inwrapping thy 
 priest-like thoughts. Let thy hallowed desires be ever 
 fanning the mercy-seat with their wings. 
 
VI. 
 
 PULPIT TALENT.* 
 
 There was never a time. I think, when so much was 
 made of talented preaching, and talents for preach- 
 ing, as now. I wish we understood a good deal better 
 what we mean by it. Every young candidate wants 
 the talents of course, and everybody is very decided 
 in the opinion that he must have them. Even the 
 little new hamlets crowded under the woods, and 
 the third-rate water-power villages sprinkled along 
 the brooks, have made up their minds that they too 
 must have a talented preacher : only they are not 
 always quite clear as to what may be necessary to 
 make one. Indeed, they are not as much baffled com- 
 monlv in the matter of salvation itself as in finding 
 just the minister that is worthy of them. The gen- 
 eral refrain is : -Do not our people want as good a 
 preacher as anybody ? " And the real wonder often 
 felt and sometimes expressed is that our schools, find- 
 ing how much a larger supply of Beechers is wanted, 
 
 * Delivered before the Porter Rhetorical Society of Andover 
 Seminary, at their Anniversary in 1866. 
 
 (182) 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 183 
 
 do not turn out the number demanded. Nay, there 
 is, 1 fear, a silent scolding of Providence that so few 
 of them arc born, when the world is overstocked by 
 such myriads of men propagated in the common fig- 
 ure. The result is, that the young men, looking out 
 on the held and preparing for it, are either prodig- 
 iously elated in the confidence that they have just the 
 talents required, as perhaps they have been told by 
 their admiring comrades ; or else that they are miser- 
 ably crushed by the discouraging prospect before 
 them, because nobody has told them that they have 
 any talent at all, and their modesty if not their real 
 lack has withheld them from the consciousness of 
 ar*. 
 
 Most wretched and pitiful are the hallucinations 
 here encountered. These forty hundred or forty 
 thousand churches, looking every one after a talented 
 preacher, will certainly not get one ; and the few that 
 are boasting their success will be discovering almost 
 certaiidy, after a while, that they have been a little 
 mistaken. Almost as certainly the young men, going 
 out with so great expectations, will find, a great part 
 of them, that they do not catch the popular approval 
 after all ; or, if they do, will shortly be obliged to 
 discover that they are much closer down to mediocrity 
 than they supposed. Meantime, of those who go out 
 in a tremor of weakness and discouragement, some 
 at least will begin to be set on powerfully by a hid- 
 den force they were unconscious of and which did not 
 enter into the computations of their friends. And so 
 
184 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 it will be shown, both by cases of unexpected failure 
 and of equally surprising success, that factors are 
 concerned in preaching not commonly included in our 
 computations. What I propose, therefore, at the pres- 
 ent time is, to discover, if I can, these hidden factors; 
 and by that means right our conceptions where they 
 seem to falter. And I have a considerable hope that, 
 by a certain process, it may be done. 
 
 Attempts are often made in this direction that are 
 much more distinctively Christian than what I now 
 propose, and so far more genuine ; but which, partly 
 for that reason, do not succeed according to theii 
 merit. They undertake to show, and do really show, 
 that preaching is not grounded in mere talent, but is 
 and must forever be a divine gift. No man, they in- 
 sist, ever becomes a prophet or a powerful Christian 
 preacher in whom this divine gift is wanting. And 
 here is the reason, they allege, why so many talented 
 preachers come to nothing, and why so many that 
 seemed to have little promise at first finally obtain so 
 great power and conquer a degree of success so un- 
 expected. We generally assent to this kind of argu- 
 ment, because it is honorable to religion, and what is 
 more, because it coincides with some very plain teach- 
 ings of Scripture. But the difficulty is that the truth 
 asserted is too particularly spiritual, and requires too 
 much faith to hold us up to it ; therefore, we fall away 
 from it shortly and, forgetting ourselves, begin again 
 to base our calculations of promise on mere judg- 
 ments of natural force ; that is, on the talents as 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 185 
 
 forces. What I propose therefore on the present occa- 
 sion, is to follow the bad method myself; to subside 
 into just this plane of unbelief or non-belief, and show 
 that, resting, as we so perversely do, all promise for 
 the pulpit on mere computations of personal talent, 
 we still need a complete revision commonly of our 
 judgments, because of the very insufficient conceptions 
 we have of the pulpit talents themselves. I shall 
 make out, if 1 am successful, a larger inventory of 
 the talents, and one that more sufficiently measures 
 the personal momenta necessary to success. 
 
 As we commonly speak, it takes just four talents 
 to make a great preacher ; namely. — a talent of high 
 scholarship ; a metaphysical and theologic thinking 
 talent : style or a talent for expression : and a talent 
 of manner and voice for speaking. In these four 
 talents the young men of the schools commonly settle 
 their comparisons, and graduate their prognostications 
 of success. The people too. so far as they think any 
 thing definitely in the matter, have no doubt that 
 these four things will make up the man they are to 
 seek. We may therefore call these four the canonical 
 talents, for they certainly have that kind of pre- 
 eminence. 
 
 Now, about the real importance of these four there 
 is little room to doubt, and the high opinion held of 
 them already makes it unnecessary to raise an argu- 
 ment for them. Our seminaries of learning lay their 
 >s on these, and exist in no small degree for the 
 
186 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 culture of these ; for these four, it happens, are the 
 specially cultivatable talents. And so much being 
 expended on them naturally induces a comparative 
 over-valuation, which makes it necessary to pass them 
 under review, if we are to get the scale of our inven- 
 tory settled to a right adjustment. 
 
 It is very clear then, first of all, that a dolt in 
 scholarship is not likely to become a great preacher. 
 And it is about equally clear that one may be an easy, 
 rapid learner, in the sense of acquisition, and be 
 really nobody. Sometimes it will be found that a 
 scholar preacher, who is partly somebody, will even 
 kill a tolerable sermon by letting his scholarship into 
 it. And then again it will sometimes be found that 
 a preacher, who is only not a scholar because lie has 
 never had the opportunity to be, will unfold the very 
 highest preaching power in the field of mere practice, 
 as we see by some noble examples among the great 
 preachers of Methodism. Still even such, if we can- 
 not speak of their scholarship, will be as far as possi- 
 ble from the state of ignorance. Meantime, if it be 
 not true, as it certainly is not, that the preachers 
 from a given school will be graduated in their preach- 
 ing merit and power by the amount of their learning, 
 it must not be understood that we have in such a fact 
 any derogation from the value of learning. In such 
 an age as this, we must have a proportion at least of 
 learned men in the cause of religion. Indeed, every 
 preacher wants, in a certain view, if it could be so, to 
 
P U L IM T TALENT. 187 
 
 know very nearly every thing. And yet let him not 
 mistake. Hooks are not every thing by a great deal. 
 It is even one of the sad things about book-learning 
 that it so easily beeomes a limitation upon souls, and 
 a kind of dry rot in their vigor. The receptive fac- 
 ulty absorbs the generative, and the scholarhood sucks 
 up the manhood. An oak that should undertake to 
 be a sponge would not long be mucli of an oak. I 
 know not how to put this matter of scholarship better 
 than to say that it needs to be universal ; to be out in 
 God's universe, that is, to see, and study, and know 
 every thing, books and men and the whole work of 
 God from the stars downward ; to have a sharp observa- 
 tion of war, and peace, and trade, — of animals, and 
 trees, and atoms, — of the weather, and the evanescent 
 smells of the creations ; to have bored into society in 
 all its grades and meanings, its manners, passions, 
 prejudices, and times ; so that, as the study goes on, 
 the soul will be getting full of laws, images, analogies, 
 and facts, and drawing out all subtlest threads of im- 
 port to be its interpreters when the preaching work 
 requires. Of what use is it to know the German 
 when we do not know the human ? Or to know the 
 Hebrew points when we do not know at all the points 
 of our wonderfully punctuated humanity ? A preacher 
 wants a full store-house of such learning, and then 
 he wants the contents all shut in, so that they can 
 never one of them get out, only as they leap out un- 
 bidden to help him and be a language for him. it 
 should even be as if he had a sky-full of helpers 
 
188 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 thronging to his aid when they are not sent for, and 
 endowing him with ministrations of power when they 
 do not show their faces. As far as the preacher is 
 concerned, this large, free kind of scholarship is the 
 only kind that will do him much good. 
 
 The metaphysical and theologic thinking talent has 
 a deeper and more positive vigor. There cannot be 
 much preaching worthy of the name where there is no 
 thinking. Preaching is nothing but the bursting out 
 of light, which has first burst in or up from where 
 God is, among the soul's foundations. And to this 
 end, great and heavy discipline is wanted, that the 
 soul may be drilled into orderly right Avorking. And 
 yet a merely cold, scientific thinking is vicious. The 
 method of preaching is not the scientific method. 
 The true thinking here is the original insight of 
 premises or first things, and not the building of cob- 
 house structures round them. An immense overdo- 
 ing in the way of analysis often kills a sermon, if it 
 does not quite kill the preacher. Death itself is a 
 great analyzer, and nothing ever comes out of the 
 analyzing process fully alive. There is a great deal 
 of anatomizing thought, but it is the weakest, cheap- 
 est kind of thought that flesh is heir to. The formu- 
 lizing kind of thought is but a little better. True 
 preaching struggles right away from formula, back 
 into fact, and life, and the revelation of God and 
 heaven. It is a flaming out from God ; it reproves, 
 testifies, calls, promises ; thinking always of the an- 
 gels going up to report progress, not of the answers 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 189 
 
 formulated for n catechism. I make no objection to 
 formulas : they are good enough in their place, and a 
 certain instinci of our nature is comforted in having 
 sonic articulations of results thought out to which our 
 minds may refer. Formulas are the jerked meat of 
 salvation, — if not always the strong meat, as many 
 try to think, — dry and portable and good to keep, and 
 when duly seethed and softened, and served with need- 
 ful condiments, just possible to be eaten ; but for the 
 matter of living, we really want something fresher 
 and more nutritious. On the whole, the kind of 
 thinking talent wanted for a great preacher is that 
 which piercingly loves ; that which looks into things 
 and through them, plowing up pearls and ores, and 
 now and then a diamond. It will not seem to go on 
 metaphysically, or scientifically, but with a certain 
 round-about sense and vigor. And the people will be 
 gathered to it because there is a gospel fire burning in 
 it that warms them to a glow. This is power. 
 
 The rhetorical talent or talent of style is a very 
 great gift, and one that can be largely cultivated. But 
 the ambition of style, or the consciousness of it, does 
 not always need to be. Neither is it always any great 
 sign for a preacher that he shows a considerable lux- 
 ury in this kind of excellence. About the weakest, 
 falsest kind of merit, and most opposite to good 
 preaching, is the studied, common-place -book style. 
 A great many preachers die of style, that is, of trying 
 to soar; when, if they would only consent to go afoot 
 as their ideas do, they might succeed and live. Sophist 
 
190 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 and rhetorician were very nearly synonymous in the 
 classic days ; for they had the same trade then of 
 taking men by a seeming, or a pretentious lie, as now. 
 The preacher wants of course to know his mother 
 tongue, and have a clear, correct, and forcible way of 
 expression in it. And then, if he has really some- 
 thing strong enough to say, to call in angels of im- 
 agery that excel in strength to help him say it, there 
 is no kind of symbol observed by him, in heaven 
 above, or in the earth beneath, that will not be at 
 hand to lend him wings and lift him into the neces- 
 sary heights of expression. But the moment these 
 aerial creatures begin to see that they are wanted for 
 garnish, and not for truth's sake, they will hide like 
 partridges in the bush. To get up grand expressions 
 in the manner of some, and then go a hunting after 
 only weak ideas to put into them, is the very absurd- 
 est and wickedest violation possible of the second 
 commandment. No man has a right to say any 
 beautiful or powerful thing till he gets some thoughts 
 beautiful and powerful enough to require it. Only 
 good and great matter makes a good and great style. 
 It is not difficult for power to be strong, or for any 
 real fire to burn. But mere rhetorical fire will neither 
 shake nor burn any thing. And just here it is that 
 the prodigious promise of so many young men is over- 
 estimated. Could they only understand how great a 
 thing in style is honesty, simple, self-forgetting hon- 
 esty, their would-be fine, or fanciful, or sublime would 
 fall away, and they would finally rise just as much 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 191 
 
 higher, even in stylo, as the cast-off trumpery of their 
 affectations and laborious inanities permits them to 
 rise. Simple modesty, earnest conviction, — what a 
 Lifting of the doom of impotence would they be to 
 many ! 
 
 What is called the speaking talent is often miscon- 
 ceived in the same way. It is mostly a natural talent, 
 though it can be modulated and chastened by criti- 
 cism. But the difficulty is, that such kind of disci- 
 pline has tc be commonly dispensed, before the sub- 
 ject is sufficiently advanced in age and maturity of 
 perception to have any thing on hand that is at all 
 worthy of a manner, or indeed even possible for it. 
 How can he fitly speak sentiments before he has them 
 and knows the weight of them ? If he takes the 
 boards in a declamation, astonishing everybody by the 
 wondrous figure he makes, and compelling his audi- 
 tors to imagine what a preacher he is destined to be, 
 it is more likely by far that he is destined to be a 
 very indifferent speaker in the humblest type of 
 mediocrity. I have never known a great college de- 
 claimer that became a remarkable preacher ; but I 
 have known them that could only stammer and saw, 
 and tilt up their rising inflections to the general pity 
 of their audience, who became natural at once when 
 they began to speak their own sentiments, and ob- 
 tained great power in delivery. Meantime, this special 
 fact in preaching is not always remembered, that the 
 artistic air kills every thing. The discovery of art is 
 very nearly fatal everywhere, and is never in fit place 
 
192 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 save when it garnishes temptation, — to make the devil 
 weaker than he would be. The absurdest thing ever 
 believed by mankind is the story of Demosthenes and 
 his pebbles : first, because it made such a hard time 
 for his mouth ; and second, because it made such a 
 hard time for the pebbles ; and third, because it made 
 even a harder time for the sea that was obliged to 
 hear such mouthings. All the worse if a speaker so 
 trained gets to be absolutely faultless ; for that is 
 about the greatest fault possible. I have heard 
 preaching more than once, that became first wearisome, 
 then shortly disgusting, for the simple reason that the 
 manner was so perfectly shaped by skill and self-regu- 
 lation. After such an exhibition, it is even refreshing 
 to imagine the great " babbler " at Athens, jerking 
 out his grand periods, and stammering his thunder in 
 a way so uncouth as to be even a little comtemptible 
 to himself. He at least meant what he said, and 
 because he did, was able to bring himself out in 
 respect at the close. In just the same way, there are 
 many young men who are thought to have no speaking 
 talent, and are greatly depressed themselves because 
 they have none, some of whom may yet become 
 preachers of Christ in the highest rank of power and 
 genuine eloquence. 
 
 We find then, as a result of this review, that the 
 four canonical talents, always valuable, are yet certain, 
 many times, to be no true signs of success. A man 
 may be a scholar and yet no preacher ; he may 
 be a tough thinker and great metaphysician and yet 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 193 
 
 no preacher; gifted in style, or thought to be, and yel 
 no preacher; an accomplished and fine speaker and 
 
 yci no preacher. Whence it also follows, that he may 
 be all four, and yet no preacher. All auguries there- 
 fore from them are found every day to miscarry. In 
 which we perceive beforehand, that there must be 
 other talents lurking somewhere that require to be 
 brought into the computation. 
 
 I shall name accordingly as many as six or seven 
 others, three of which are more or less necessary to 
 all kinds of speaking, though more nearly indispensa- 
 ble in preaching ; and three that are preeminently 
 preaching talents, in distinction from all others ; to- 
 gether with a fourth that only works indirectly. 
 
 In the former class then, first of all, I name what 
 may be called the talent for growth. Some men 
 never grow. They grew, and that was the end of it. 
 They excelled in the school, and gave the highest 
 promise in their first effort at preaching. But they 
 are soon at their limit, which limit they will never 
 pass. Xo matter how great their industry and fidelity, 
 they will never advance upon themselves ; and if you 
 wait for them to come on, the strange thing will be 
 that they do not come an inch. They appear to have 
 all the talents, and have them in full order, but some- 
 how the law of increment is wanting. Their capital is 
 good enough, but it is invested so as to gather no per 
 cent, of interest money. It is as if their mind grew 
 dimensionally with their body, and stopped when the 
 
194 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 vegetative principle of that came to its limit. Now 
 there is another kind of souls that mature more 
 slowly and under a different law. Increment is their 
 destiny. Their force makes force. What they gather 
 seems to enlarge their very brain. Nobody thought 
 of them at first as having much promise. Their 
 faculty was thin and slow. They were put down 
 among the mediocrities. But while the other class are 
 flagstaff s only, these are real trees, going to create 
 themselves like trees by a kind of predestined incre- 
 ment. By and by it begins to be seen that they move. 
 Somebody finally speaks of them. Their sentiments 
 are growing bigger, their opinions are getting weight, 
 ideas are breaking in and imaginations breaking out, 
 and the internal style of their souls, thus lifted, lifts 
 the style of their expression. They at length get the 
 sense of position, and then a certain majesty of con- 
 sciousness adds weight to their speech. And finally 
 the wonderful thing about them is that they keep on 
 growing, confounding all expectation, getting all the 
 while more breadth and richness, and covering in their 
 life, even to its close, with a certain evergreen fresh- 
 ness that is admirable and beautiful to behold. 
 
 Now it makes little difference whether we refer this 
 faculty of improvableness, this wonderfully cumulative 
 property, to a talent of growth in all the talents, or to 
 some function of endowment that is more general. 
 That some persons have the distinction is indisputa- 
 ble. The other class who are deficient in it will work 
 as hard and strain their application to as high a key, 
 
PULPIT TALENT. i'.).> 
 
 and yet they will not grow in the process, any more 
 than a violin thai has been thumbed, and sawed, and 
 kept throbbing with a body lull of sound for a hun- 
 dred years. If wo ask why it is that such application 
 misses the natural terms of reward, it may be that 
 they have sometimes overstrained their powers ; or it 
 may be that they work too much in the line of schol- 
 arhood and only get their souls incrustcd by the mere 
 cliency of their habit; even as the egg, that was 
 growing briskly in its first free state, enlarges never 
 by a line after it has found maturity in a shell. Or it 
 may be that they get over-conservative, which is the 
 same thing as secreting a shell, and then, even as the 
 egg may keep up a prodigious conatus of vitality 
 within, making no advance in dimensions, so their in- 
 dustry creates no movement of growth. 
 
 If then, we are to guess what amount of promise 
 there may be in any body of young men who are going 
 forth to assert themselves in the ways of speech and 
 public influence, it is very important to know who has 
 and who has not the talent of protracted unprovability ; 
 who can wax mighty and weighty by the longest pull 
 of increment, for that is even a kind of genius. No- 
 where else, save in the matter of genius, are mankind 
 distinguished as widely as here ; and the distinction is 
 one that specially concerns every preacher, in the fact 
 that he is obliged to stay by his place, and keep on in 
 his work, and provide his own subjects, and set his 
 people on by a correspondent growth in themselves. 
 
196 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 I name again, as another talent which greatly con- 
 cerns all public speaking and more especially preach- 
 ing, because this latter requires to be more piercing 
 and carry its effects on larger assemblies, what may 
 be called the individualizing power. At this point 
 there is a very great difference in the personality 
 function of men ; a difference great enough to be 
 designated as a talent. One will go before an audi- 
 ence and see nobody in particular in it. He will give 
 them forth a really grand sermon, it may be, with as 
 little aim, or particularity of aim, as a gunner firing 
 into Charleston five miles off. If any soul in the as- 
 sembly is hit, it is only because the general aim had 
 that chance in it. His eye did not preach, but only 
 his tongue ; whereas the eye-bolts of a great preacher 
 may be swifter, more piercing, and in better aim than 
 those of the tongue. Mere tongue-speaking, in this 
 view, is pointless. It will do in the senate. It will 
 possibly do at the polls. It is more deficient at the 
 bar, where every juryman needs to imagine that he is 
 particularly looked after. In preaching, the deficiency 
 is almost fatal. I have in mind, when I speak in this 
 manner, a certain preacher who was conspicuous only 
 because he was effective, and was effective only be- 
 cause of the wonderfully distributive power of his ad- 
 dress, not because of any remarkable merit in the 
 style, or thought, or substance of his sermon. That 
 keen, gray, individualizing eye, — it was shooting 
 everywhere, into every body. Xot five minutes passed 
 before every person in the assembly began to feel that 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 197 
 
 the preacher's two six-shooters were leveled directly 
 at him. Generalities were soon gone by, and the 
 dealing was become a very personal matter. So by 
 this one talent of individualizing, which perhaps was 
 never called a talent, and without any other of much 
 note, he became wonderfully effective. 
 
 Xow let any man try to command this sort of power 
 who is indeterminate and vague in his habit and with- 
 out eyes, and he will soon begin to show how much of 
 a talent it may be. His very stare will be as if he 
 were looking after a vacuum. His eyebolts will not 
 fly point-blank, but only whirl about giddily like the 
 wheels of a fire-work machinery. Or, if he tries to set 
 his gaze and be a presence to every body, the drowsy 
 opiate of his eyes, thus fixed, will not unlikely shut 
 the eyes of every body. 
 
 This remarkable, but not over-admired talent has 
 another use ; namely, that, while other talents are 
 talents of supply, this is the talent of economic dis- 
 tribution. To forge out masses of truth heavy enough 
 and wide enough in their range to sway whole audi- 
 ences, and continue to do it, week by week, and year 
 by year, requires a vast generative power such as few 
 men possess. But with more particularity of aim, a 
 much smaller expenditure will answer ; even as a 
 gimlet will do good service in worming its particular 
 hole, or many thousand holes, when, if it should 
 undertake to emulate the scope of the maelstrom, it 
 would hardly fill so large a figure. Xow and then a 
 man has capital enough for wholesale preaching, but 
 
19S PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 the particular manner of a retail delivery, both in 
 preaching and trade, is far more apt to succeed, and 
 the success to be more real and reliable. Hence also 
 it is that a great many young men die out in their 
 generalities and huge, overgrown subjects, and a great 
 many others who appear to be meagre and want cali- 
 ber, going to work in this hopeful way of economy, 
 will even preach better possibly, and more effectively, 
 than if they were more profusely endowed. They 
 will at least be saved from the folly of trying to do 
 something so great in the general as to do nothing at 
 all in particular. 
 
 1 name again as a talent of immense consequence in 
 all kinds of address, and especially in preaching, what 
 we may designate as having a soul, or as we some- 
 ,5 times say, a great soul. Now that one may have all 
 the talents we have named, including the four, and 
 yet have but a very small soul, or no soul at all, is 
 understood, or ought to be, by every body. His mo- 
 tivities may be visibly selfish, his judgments may be 
 weak, his impulse small, his action fussy and dry, his 
 resentments petty, his jealousies contemptible, his 
 prejudices shallow and pitiful, and the whole cast 
 of his nature mean. His character, even though it be 
 Christian as to principle, may be still uncomfortable 
 to himself, and wearisome or disgustful to others. 
 How can such a man, scholar and thinker though he 
 be, perfectly artistic in style and delivery, carry any 
 great effect in assemblies ? How, above all, can he 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 100 
 
 fitly represent a gospel ? On the other hand, a man 
 who is not as high in these gifts of promise as he 
 might be, but has a really great soul, — how often will 
 his mere felt quantity and weight of being give him a 
 considerable, or even a mighty, preaching power! 
 We call him, for example, a manly person; and 
 though there is just now an immensity of gas vented 
 in the word, we are still not so totally sick of it as to 
 be insensible to the very great dignity of manliness. 
 Paul, for example, had other high merits, but withal 
 lie had this in a most signal degree. Courage, for 
 instance, is one of the grandest elements of magnan- 
 imity, and his courage was perfect ; able to dare any 
 thing, prudent enough to dare nothing foolishly. In 
 the same way, his independence was at once complete, 
 and centralized in order as equably as the solar system. 
 His opinions were leveled by reason, clean above the 
 reach of conceit. His serenity was clear as the sky. 
 His half deific love put him above resentments. His 
 deep fellow-nature put him in the lot of others, apart 
 from all considerations of merit, or even of personal 
 wrongs to himself. And he had withal a sense of 
 self-respect so profound, that no indignity, stoning, 
 whipping, mocking, spitting, chains, could humble, or 
 bring down his manly consciousness, any more than 
 if he had been the angel in the sun. Doubtless he 
 was borne up into this transcendent dignity and su}>- 
 ported in it, partly by the inspirations of God in his 
 life, but every one can see that he had a naturally 
 great soul. And the soulhood of his action corres 
 
200 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 ponded. When we are most consciously in his power, 
 we hardly know whether it is the spirituality or the 
 manliness of his doctrine that most impresses us. I 
 think it likely that among the Jewish scholars and 
 thinkers of Germany there are some, in every gener- 
 ation, who are really superior to him as such, and 
 yet there is a quantity of soul, or great manhood in 
 him, that makes them all, from Spinoza downward, 
 little more than trivialities in comparison. 
 
 Passing now to the class of talents that are most 
 preeminently preaching talents and not specially 
 required in the other kinds of speech, I name, first 
 among the three, the talent of a great conscience or 
 a firmly accentuated moral nature. A man may, 
 plainly enough, be a great scholar, metaphysician, rhet- 
 orician, speaker in the artistic way, and yet have only 
 a weak, scarcely pronounced conscience ; and this, to 
 many, will pass for nothing, because they are not 
 accustomed to think of the conscience as being any 
 talent at all. I think otherwise. It is even one of 
 the grandest talents of human nature ; that which 
 gives it a reverberative quality, as by some tremendous 
 gong of conviction quivering in its chambers. No 
 great and high authority is possible in a movement on 
 souls, without a great conscience. Principles analyt- 
 ically distinguished and reasoned by the understanding 
 have a tame weak accent as respects authority, but 
 when they are issued from the conscience, rung as 
 peals by the conscience, they get an attribute of 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 201 
 
 thunder. Like thunder too, they are asserted bj 
 their own mere utterance and the unquestionable 
 authority of their voice. 
 
 Now it is not denied that all men, taken as being 
 simply men. have consciences : they would not be 
 men without consciences. But there is a very great 
 difference in the degrees of consciences and the kind 
 of timber they are made of. Some consciences seem 
 to be wholly insignificant and weak till they are tem- 
 pest-strung, or get mounted somehow on the back of 
 passion. Then there is no hydrophobia so incurably 
 mad ; and there is in fact no human creature so 
 thoroughly wicked and diabolical, as he that is pro- 
 testing in the heat of his will, or the fume of his 
 grudges and resentments, how conscientious he is. 
 Another kind of conscience appears to be felt mainly 
 as an irritant. It pricks and nettles, but does not 
 very much sway even the subject himself. It is sharp, 
 pungent, thin, bnt never kingly ; felt only as a sliver 
 or a wasp in the hair. There is also a slimy, would-be 
 tender, slow-moving conscience, that draws itself in 
 viscous softness like a snail upon a limb, till, presto, 
 the conscientious slime hardens into a shell, and what 
 seemed an almost skinless sensibility becomes a horny 
 casement of impracticability, obstinacy, or bigot stiff- 
 ness. Xow these and all such partial, crotchety, and 
 misbegotten consciences are insufficient to make a 
 powerful preacher. Their diameter is not big enough 
 to carry any great projectile of conviction. Xo mat- 
 ter what, or how great, his promise on the score of 
 
202 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 his other gifts and acquirements, he cannot be impres* 
 sive because there is no ring of authority in his moral 
 nature. He wants a lofty and large moral configura- 
 tion, a conscience astronomically timed and steady in 
 its wide orbit as are the stars in heaven's original 
 order. Wanting in this he only sputters before con- 
 viction ; his vehemence is only felt as annoyance, his 
 brilliancy as the glitter of tinsel, and his great think- 
 ing as a merely puerile, nerveless intellectuality. He 
 can hold a place at the bar, he can win golden opin- 
 ions in the senate, and even attain high rank as an 
 orator in all kinds of ornamental, political, and 
 humanly social kinds of speaking ; but without a 
 grand reverberative moral nature, towering as a kind 
 of Sinai thunder-capped in his soul, he can not be a 
 successful preacher. 
 
 Again, there needs to be in every powerful preacher 
 y. a large faith-talent. I do not say, you will observe, 
 a large faith, but a large faith-talent ; for if there is 
 to be a large faith, there must also be a large faith- 
 talent back of it, in which respect there is a very 
 great difference among men. Some souls have natu- 
 rally broad, high windows opening God-ward ; and 
 some have only little seams or chinks letting in just 
 enough true light to make them religious beings, 
 capable of salvation. Some like fires ascending seek 
 the sun, and some are punky natures, in which the 
 fire only smolders, making true heat, but scarcely 
 becoming luminous. These latter will live, as dig- 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 203 
 
 ciplcs, in a different plane ; prudcntially wise, it maj 
 be logical ; busied in questions of the understanding ; 
 but there is not simple seeing enough in them to make 
 great preaching. A large, immediate, and free be- 
 holding is necessary to make a powerful preacher. 
 A large deduction by the understanding will not do it. 
 Some things he may intuit by the reason, and some 
 by the moral sense ; some things he may interpret 
 and realize by his sympathies ; some he may imagine ; 
 some he may climb into by his aspirations. But these 
 are all mere functions of nature, included perhaps in 
 the faith-talent, but still in themselves not faith. Not 
 any one, nor all of them together, can reach the invis 
 ible, or put us in the sense of supernatural facts and 
 worlds. Faith only, as a talent in nature for a super- 
 natural beholding, bridges the gulf and takes us ever 
 into the knowledge of what natural premises do not 
 contain, and no mere investigation can reach. Faith 
 has a way of proving premises themselves, namely, 
 by seeing them ; seeing the known centralized in the 
 unknown, the visible in the invisible ; substance or 
 substantiator thus of things hoped for, evidence of 
 things not seen. As I prove the bridge by trusting 
 myself to it, so I prove all highest things in religion 
 by my faith in them. I get perception thus of God. 
 He dawns in my faith as the morning light in my eye. 
 So in virtue of the faith-talent, we have the possi- 
 bility also of divine inspirations, and of all those ex- 
 altations, — visibly divine movements in the soul, — 
 that endow and are needed to endow the preacher. 
 
204 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 Other speakers do not want such inspirations in their 
 common public spheres, but in the preacher they are 
 even indispensable. And there is a very great differ- 
 ence in men in this respect, as in respect to faith. All 
 men are spirit, permeable, that is, by the Spirit of 
 God, and able, in virtue of that fact, to be born of the 
 Spirit. But the being inspirable enough to barely be 
 saved is not the kind of capacity necessary to make a 
 great preacher of Christ. There may even be good, 
 serviceable men in religion, having a serviceable heat 
 not easily exhausted, who have yet no tinder-stock, or 
 infusion of naphtha mixed with their clay, to throw 
 them up ever into flame. They are anthracites all, 
 going by faith principally in the sense that they trust 
 the calculations of their understanding ; wise in coun- 
 cil, it may be, good for the composing of difficulties 
 and the planning of solid adjustments, and having an 
 immense value often as ballasting for the ship. But 
 as ballast is good for nothing above water-line, and 
 nobody can make sails of ballast, so these heavy 
 natures cannot preach in avoirdupois, or do anything 
 in a way of propulsion. 
 
 Neither is the case very much better where the tem- 
 perament rushes one directly by faith into great vehe- 
 mence and passion. This kind of nature is often less 
 inspirable even than the other. The zeal of the flesh 
 is too hot for the quiet zeal of faith. Nobody expects 
 either steam or lightning to be inspired. Such cannot 
 have a call of God, because they cannot stay for it. 
 Speaking in the vehemence of steam, there will be no 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 205 
 
 accent of divinity in what they say; Imt they will be 
 very much like those hideously sonorous throats of 
 iron, that publish a call every morning in the suburbs 
 of our cities, which is most perceptibly not divine. 
 
 Now there is nothing more evident than that one 
 may have all the four canonical talents in great prom- 
 ise, and yet have almost no faith-talent with them, no 
 inspiration, no capacity of any. Examples of the 
 kind are even common. The nature they have is 
 either a nature too impetuous, or too close, to let any 
 divine movement have play in it. The preacher must 
 be a very different kind of man ; one who can be uni- 
 fied with God by his faith, and go into preaching not 
 as a calling but a call ; one who can do more than get 
 up notions about God, and preach the notions ; one 
 who knows God as he knows his friend, and by close- 
 ness of insight gets a Christly meaning in his look, a 
 divine quality in his voice, action visibly swayed by 
 unknown impulse, imaginations that are apocalyptic, 
 beauty of feeling not earthly, authority flavored by 
 heavenly sanctity and sweetness, argument that 
 breaks out in flame, asserting new premises and ferti- 
 lizing old ones more by what is put into them than 
 by what is deduced from them. Such a man can be 
 God's prophet ; that is to say, he can preach. 
 
 In this view it is important to add that many per- 
 sons having this high talent will not, or may not, for 
 a long time, know it. The inspiration must be devel- 
 oped before either they or others are apprised of the 
 capability. Hence it is almost never included, when 
 
206 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 we make up our account of this or that man's talent 
 for the pulpit. For aught that appears, the candidate 
 may be a Savonarola, a Bunyan, or a Whitefield, but 
 we have no conception of the fact, and never can have, 
 till the inspiration takes him, and his quality is re- 
 vealed. Not even Luther was any so prodigiously 
 gifted person till he broke into God's liberty, and by 
 faith became his prophet. And then a great part of 
 his sublimity lay in that awful robustness of nature 
 that could be so tremendously kindled by God's inspi- 
 rations, burning on, still on, in a grand volcanic con- 
 flagration of faculty, yet never consumed. 
 
 There is yet another talent to be set in our inven- 
 tory, the reality and real supereminence of which I 
 do not doubt, but which still I know not how to name 
 or describe as exactly as I could wish. Man is a nature 
 none the less profoundly mysterious to us because we 
 are men ourselves, and this is the preeminently mys- 
 terious talent. It is what our language began, ages 
 ago, to call a man's air, and which now, since that 
 figure has been spoiled by resolving the felt impres- 
 sion of airs into mere external manner and carriage, 
 we are trying to call a man's atmosphere, regarding it 
 as the mysterious efflux, exhalation, aerial develop- 
 ment of his personality. 
 
 We appear to have some reference in the word to 
 the fact that natural substances or bodies throw off 
 emanations that represent their quality, and create a 
 circumambiency, or sphere of aroma about them. 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 207 
 
 Not all bodies do it ; rocks, ice-cakes, autumnal flowers, 
 have no such talent of aroma. Some bodies, again, 
 make a bad atmosphere, and some a good, the former 
 s affecting us disgustfully, the latter attractively. 
 These latter, too, will be in all degrees of power and 
 di ffusive capacity. The violets will breath their aroma 
 modestly and make a tiny atmosphere. The mignon- 
 nette and the sandal-wood will throw themselves out 
 farther and fill a wider circle. The orange-tree, or the 
 forest of bay, will spread its welcome sphere far out 
 at sea, flavoring whole leagues by its breath. We 
 must not omit also to observe that these atmospheres 
 of objects, whether good or bad, have an almost abso- 
 lute power. It is not for us to choose whether we will 
 be affected by them or not ; for they have us at a 
 great advantage, and will do the disgusting or the 
 attractive upon us very much at their will. 
 
 It is remarkable how far this analogy holds respect- 
 ing men. A certain class, otherwise highly gifted 
 and qualified by the finest accomplishments, make no 
 atmosphere any more than a stone or an egg. You 
 have their totality in what your eye or ear takes in, 
 and they never make you think of any mysterious, 
 unknown quality that inspheres them and flavors them 
 to your feeling. What success these autumn-born 
 souls will have in preaching it is not difficult to see ; 
 and here it is that we get our solution of those 
 thousand and one cases of failure, where there seemed 
 beforehand to be so much of merit and of genuine 
 promise. Xo matter what amount of merit one may 
 
B08 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 have, whether in himself or in his sermon, if he does 
 not make an atmosphere he is nothing. 
 
 Much worse and more hopeless is the candidacy 
 that makes only a bad or disagreeable atmosphere. 
 Thus yon will sometimes enter a room, where yon 
 encounter a stranger, and the moment your eyes fall 
 upon him a kind of revulsion seizes you. You can- 
 not tell why : he is not badly dressed, does not ap- 
 pear to : . ' is, has no particular features that are 
 bad enough to be remarkable : yet he fills you some- 
 how with uneasiness and an inexpressible dread. 
 Sometimes there will be a forward man in a church. 
 who, without doing anything specially bad. and even 
 contributing much to its advancement, will yet finally 
 quite kill it by his oppressive, suffocating atmosphere. 
 Imagine now some person such as these, or only less 
 disagreeable, appearing before an audience to assume 
 the preaching office. His studies are completed, not 
 without honor, and his Christian repute is clear of 
 scandal. He fails utterly, and many cannot account 
 for it. It was as if he had run upon some prejudice : 
 and it was true, because he raised a prejudice at once 
 against himself. Somehow there is a revulsion, but 
 nobody charges the revulsion to any particular offense 
 in his look or manner. Probably nothing more defi- 
 nite was thought than that he was somehow disagree- 
 able. For. — alas that we must say it ! some very 
 pious people are yet very disagreeable. It is not 
 use their piety does not do what it can to create 
 a favorable atmosphere of impression for them, but 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 that it is not strong enough as yet to master the 
 repulsive, pitifully bad atmosphere of their natural 
 character. 
 
 Again, there are some of the good atmospheres, or 
 such as are not bad, which are disqualifications in the 
 preacher. One carries about with him, for example, 
 the inevitable literary atmosphere, and a shower-bath 
 on his audience could not more effectually kill the 
 sermon. Another preaches out of a scientific atmos- 
 phere, which is scarcely better ; another out of a 
 philosophic, which is even worse ; for no human soul 
 is going either to be pierced for sin, or to repent of 
 it, scientifically ; and as little is any one going to be- 
 lieve, or hope, or walk with God, or be a little child, 
 philosophically. Xo man ever becomes a really great 
 preacher who has not the talent of a right and gen- 
 uinely Christian atmosphere. 
 
 Now what we mean, as in strict scientific concep- 
 tion, by this matter of an atmosphere, I will not over- 
 positively say. If we call it the moral aroma of char- 
 acter, or if we call it the magnetic sphere of the 
 person, we only change the figure, but do not resolve 
 the fact. Perhaps we make a little advance if we 
 ascribe the fact to the expression of the person ; that 
 is, to the voice, color, feature, manner, and general 
 soul-play represented in them ; still we can never tell 
 precisely what and where the expression is. If it is 
 imagined or objected that what we are calling an 
 atmosphere is in fact only the same thing over again 
 that we have called an inspiration, that can at most 
 
210 , PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 be true only in part ; for we feel it consciously as 
 being something which is natural endowment in the per- 
 son, and belongs, at least in part, to the spiritual 
 frojprium of his personal habit and quality. 
 
 After all, we only seem to know that the person 
 having a good or bad atmosphere plays himself, some- 
 how, or by some subtle talent, into others, by and 
 through their imagination ; whereupon they conceive 
 him with a halo, an air, an atmosphere about him. 
 He raises great imaginations in souls, and by these, 
 blazing as a flame-element in them, — not in him, but 
 in themselves, — they are made to see in him a flame, 
 a glory, a kind of circumambient quality, more diffu- 
 sive than his person ; so he inspheres, and so indomi- 
 nates. ^No great power is ever felt in mankind which 
 does not take them by their imagination ; and this, 
 at bottom, is what we mean by a man's atmosphere. /' 
 Hence the fact that no great commander is extem- 
 porized or provided ready-made. He must have time 
 to work imaginations into play and make his atmos- 
 phere. By his victories he must spread the horizon 
 of his life and authority, till he takes in senates and 
 states and legions trailing on to the fight, and be- 
 comes a one-man circumambiency, vast enough to fill, 
 if I may so speak, the solar spaces above and wide 
 geographic spaces below, as between the Mississippi 
 and the sea, dominating as by spell in the thousands 
 of commanders, setting fast the courage, steadying 
 the wheel, lifting the tramp of their columns, pour- 
 ing them down into rivers and over into fortresses, 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 211 
 
 and on through vast regions of swamp and forest, 
 harnessed all to him, a thousand miles away, and 
 campaigning for him in the punctual order of the sun. 
 In this manner, having gotten hold of imaginations 
 enough, and become an atmosphere of dominating 
 sway vast enough, behold the great general is born ! 
 So grand a thing, in the scale of it, is the gestation 
 process by which an atmosphere is sometimes created. 
 
 All great preachers get their power, in the long 
 run, by a similar process. 'The gift is partly natural, 
 as being a great soul gift, and for the rest, is a great 
 soul development in and through and upon the im- 
 aginative sense of other souls. In that manner the 
 greatest, highest, most necessary of all preaching 
 endowments, — who of us shall have it ? f Ah ! this \ 
 question of preaching : it is nothing, I may almost 
 say, but the question of an atmosphere. /Academic 
 attainments, standing, talents, are valuable, but the 
 possibility of a grand high atmosphere signifies more_ 1 y 
 
 Enter the great assembly, for example, where young 
 Summerfield is giving his call and testimony, and 
 there is a power upon you which it is the highest 
 luxury and dearest blessing of the earth to feel. You 
 know not where it is, but clearly it is not in the words 
 spoken. There is a something about the man which 
 (ills you with a sense of mystery. There is incense 
 here and the smell of sacrifice. The man is nothing, 
 and his atmosphere every thing. It fills the whole 
 concavity, from the rafters downward to the floor ; 
 nay, it presses the walls and issues from the doors. 
 
212 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 To be there, insphered in the sacred aroma of that 
 pure soul, is a kind of converting ordinance, apart 
 from all power of words. 
 
 ,/The example of Dr. Channing is different, but sin- 
 gularly impressive. TTe look in vain for any highest 
 force in his sermons. To be frank, they do not seem 
 to really preach at all, as being God's calls to faith 
 and salvation by the cross of his Son. They are 
 ethically conceived, and not evangelically. If we talk 
 of argument, they are honest and faithful, but not 
 specially robust. Where then was the power ? For 
 there certainly was a most grandly impressive power 
 in his pulpit efforts. It consisted, I conceive, to a 
 very great extent, in his personal atmosphere. -No 
 one could argue witji him, because every one was 
 obliged to feel hini./ The subdued manner, the keen- 
 edged, quivering delicacy of his moral perceptions, 
 the unqualified honesty of the man, sanctified by his 
 profoundly tender, always delicate reverence toward 
 God, made the atmosphere of the place sensational, 
 and no one was permitted to choose whether he would 
 be impressed or notj 
 
 And what shall we imagine concerning the personal 
 atmosphere of that wonderful being who spake as 
 never man spake ? It was not his look, nor his 
 declamation, nor his fine periods ; it was not even his 
 prodigious weight of matter ; but it was the sacred 
 exhalation of his quality, the aroma, the auroral glory 
 of his person : this it was that quelled the marshal 
 and his posse, and sent them back to make return, not 
 
TULPIT TALENT. 213 
 
 that he could not be found, but that he was too great 
 and awe-inspiring to allow the touch of their hands ! 
 And here, let us dare to say it, were, in a certain high- 
 est view, the significance and glory of his life. /He 
 took the human person to exhale an atmosphere of 
 God that should fill, and finally renew, the creation, 
 bathing all climes and time* and ages with its date- 
 less, ineradicable power ; j>o that, having made even 
 the world sensational from that time forth, he could 
 say, with a confidence how beautifully modest and 
 true : " I have glorified thee on the earth." 
 
 Xow, this particular talent, above all others, we 
 must note, is the special condition of pulpit excel- 
 lence. Much will often be accomplished in the sen 
 ate by a speaker whose personal atmosphere is for- 
 bidding or repulsive. One of the most powerful 
 advocates we have ever had at the bar was a man 
 whose air was brutal enough and low enough in 
 depravity, I may almost say, to raise a smell of dis- 
 gust. The poet Young has conquered somehow a 
 position of eminence, in spite of the really disagree- 
 able atmosphere of his mock sententious declamations. 
 Byron had two atmospheres, — a naturally noble and 
 high, and a morally low and repulsive. The same 
 was partly true of Burns. And they both obtain, it 
 may be, even the greater power that they carry an 
 atmosphere so interestingly bad. The talent, in short, 
 of a good, great atmosphere, is nowhere else a neces- 
 sity so nearly absolute as in preaching. Only here it 
 needs to be observed, lest one fall into mistake, that 
 
214 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 sometimes a man will be found to have really the 
 finer and more potent atmosphere, just because at 
 first he seems to have none at all ; that is, because he 
 is so crisp and clear as not, for the time, to put us 
 thinking of any thing but his crystal voice and his very 
 naked words. The prophets, for example, were the 
 old time preachers, and Isaiah had the atmosphere of 
 June ; and Jeremiah the tearful, tender, glittering 
 softness of April Then comes Ezekiel ; and we 
 think he is mere January. He thumps and crepitates 
 in his hard, metallic periods, and saying nothing of 
 his exhalations, he appears to be rather frosted about, 
 even as the auroral giants of the North, galloping 
 across their hyperborean icebergs, appear to shimmer 
 and quiver in their frozen element of sky ; and yet, 
 as the metallic ring of his strange, bare style con- 
 tinues, we begin to feel that he is bolting in a state of 
 bare conviction, more rigidly firm, more consciously 
 indivertible, because it is ( the clear January cold of 
 God's truth. | These clear, cold-feeling, bracing at- 
 mospheres are many times even more effective, as 
 regards certain impressions, than any other which 
 may seem to be more nearly aromatic. 
 
 There is yet one other talent which I may not hesi- 
 tate to call a preaching talent, though it does not 
 relate immediately to success in preaching, but only 
 indirectly. When we speak of a talent for preaching, 
 and of talented preachers, we must not stop at the 
 mere matter of speaking, or of what is spoken, but we 
 must also think of an ability to get on, carry on, win 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 215 
 
 a confidence by success in a cause. Our preacher, 
 therefore, is not a mere public speaker, — far from that 
 as possible, — but he is to have a capacity of being and 
 doing ; an administrative, organizing capacity , a 
 power to contrive and lead, and put the saints in work, 
 and keep the work aglow, and so to roll up a cause by 
 ingatherings and careful incrementations. The sue- 
 cess and power of the preacher, considering his fixed 
 settlement in a place, will not seldom depend even 
 more on a great administrative capacity than it will 
 on his preaching. And with good reason, for it really 
 takes more high manhood, more wisdom, firmness, 
 character, and right-seeing ability, to administer well 
 in the cause, than it does to preach well. No matter 
 what seeming talent there may be in the preaching, if 
 there is no administrative, then the man is a boy, and 
 the boy will have a boy's weight, — nothing more. On 
 the other hand, being a true man, able to be felt by 
 his manly direction, his mediocrity in the sermon will 
 be made up by respect for his always right-seeing 
 adivity. In this office then of preaching, one of the 
 very highest talents demanded is an administrative * 
 talent. Every preacher wants it even more than he 
 would in the governing of a state ; and yet how many 
 of our young preachers rush out on the beginning of 
 their work, as if holding the preaching stand on Sun- 
 days were to be the test of every thing. This very 
 dull matter of administration, — let those who will de- 
 scend to it,— is not for them. And the result will be, 
 in nine cases out of ten, that nothing is for them, but 
 
216 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 a mortifying disappointment and a terrible correction 
 of their greenness. Now it happens that a good many 
 young men, who have other talents in but a moderate 
 degree, could greatly excel in the organizing, admin- 
 istrative department, and could so even up the scale 
 of faculty as to command great power and influence. 
 An advantage so great they cannot afford to lose. On 
 the other hand, let any one most gifted turn himself 
 away from the work of a bishop at this point, and he 
 will assuredly make anything but a successor of the 
 apostles. Even Paul himself would have to drop off 
 all the honors of his epistles, and would only be that 
 mere " babbler," which the Athenians, or that god 
 " Mercury," which the stupid Lycaonians took him to 
 be. 
 
 There is then, as I now at last conclude, a much 
 greater number of talents concerned in the matter of 
 preaching than some of us are wont to suppose. The 
 canonical forms are not all. The inventory is a large 
 one, and might even be much farther extended. But 
 my practical object is gained, if I have only been able 
 to raise some fit impression of the very great diversi- 
 ties of gifts that are related, in as many colors and 
 degrees, to the equipment of a successful preacher. It 
 does not follow that being short in this or that will be 
 fatal, or that being first in many things greatly es- 
 teemed is any sure pledge of success. All that we 
 can say is, that the generalj^ast of the man must con- 
 tain possibilities enougH to make up the needed endow- 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 217 
 
 nicnt. Some very good candidates will be rated low 
 for a time in the scale of promise ; and some will 
 be rated high, because of certain attainments and 
 tokens, who will finally be discovered to have only the 
 meagerest, poorest kind of nature, such as almost 
 wants a soul. Meantime the poor distracted people 
 are fooling themselves in continual misjudgments, and 
 wondering why they are so unfortunate. Their dia- 
 mond, after all, is only a big stone. They rushed to 
 the post-office, sending out their paper missives all 
 over the land, asking for the diamonds, but they drew 
 the picture so big that they could only be great bowl- 
 ders, and they are surprised to find that the particular 
 bowlder they got is no diamond at all ! They did not 
 remember that these finest of the gems are the most 
 modest in size, and likeliest to be found, when they 
 are simple enough to only look after a broom for the 
 sweeping of their houses. If then our immense over- 
 talk about pulpit talent, or preaching talent, is still to 
 go on, let us at least contrive to include something 
 more adequate in it than we seen to have been doing 
 heretofore. We have too many young men of real 
 capacity in points one side of our common canonical 
 tests, that we cannot afford to crush, or to have 
 crushed in this way ; and the look of nonsense we 
 inflict on religion itself, by the feeble impertinence of 
 our pulpit ambitions and standards of prognostication, 
 can still less be afforded. 
 
 Let me add, as I close, a few words of friendly 
 
218 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 advice to the classes most concerned in the illustra 
 tions I have presented. It may be that some of you, 
 who are already entered on the preaching office, begin 
 to suffer many very gloomy misgivings and hard 
 rebuffs of discouragement. 
 
 You went forth, months or years ago, it may be, 
 in the conceit of your superlative standing, and 
 hung your flaunting colors out as challenges of 
 your expected victory, and now you begin to feel 
 that your talent, after all, is somehow fatally deficient. 
 It may be, or it may not. Be not hasty in accepting 
 the conclusion. Possibly the mere conceit you suf-. 
 fered has blocked your talents hitherto, and when it is 
 cured, so that you can take your place in true humility, 
 they will come out in a power that even astonishes 
 yourself. Conceit is the bane of faith, and where 
 there is no faith the possibility of power is barred./ 
 
 Some of you, again, are just now standing at the 
 gate and waiting to go forth. Your studies are con- 
 cluded, but not with much token of success. Hith- 
 erto you have not discovered the talents that appear to 
 be indispensable. Your friends do not flatter you, and 
 you see not how to flatter yourself. Your heart sinks 
 in discouragement. Do not think so meanly of your- 
 self that you cannot be yourself. There may be some- 
 thing in you that neither you nor your friends have 
 discovered ; something that must come out slowly, in j 
 a way of holy conflict, and yet will coxae. J Remember 
 also, as a law of the talents, that/ any one of them 
 waked into power wakes the talent next to it, I 
 
PULPIT TALENT. 219 
 
 and that in like manner another, till finally the whole 
 circle wakes into power, and it thunders all round the 
 sky. When the conscience that was only half awake 
 is fully roused by the Spirit of God, as, when the time 
 arrives, it may be, then the faith-talent leaps out, as 
 it were new-born, to seize on the knowledge of God 
 and climb into the fullness of his peace. Then comes 
 inspiration ; with that, courage. Now the imagination 
 is aglow, and hidden forces before unknown burst into 
 power. So it was with Luther, so with Chalmers, and 
 so proportionally it may be with natures of a humbler 
 mold. No man knows what endowments he may have 
 unfolded when the fit crisis arrives. Let us then 
 heroically hope and patiently wait. Perhaps we shall 
 some time find that we have more and better talents 
 than we thought. 
 
 ""Besides, there is another and holier ground of 
 encouragement for us all. Christ, our master, he that 
 gives us our message and our call, was himself a com- 
 plete man, having all the talents we have named, and 
 all others beside, that belong to the ideally perfect 
 human mind. What we therefore want is not to go 
 hunting our poor nature through, that we may find 
 what is slumbering in us waiting to be somehow 
 waked. But the grand first thing, or chief concern 
 for us is, to be simply Christed all through, filled in 
 every faculty and member with his Christly manifes- 
 tation, — in that manner to be so interwoven with him 
 as to cross fibre and feel throughout the quickening 
 contact of his personality ; and then every tiling in us. 
 
220 PULPIT TALENT. 
 
 no matter what, will be made the most of, because the 
 corresponding Christly talent will, be playing divinely 
 with it, and charging it with power from himself. 
 Xot that, even thus, every one is called to be a great 
 preacher, or indeed any preacher at all, but the fact 
 that one finds himself able to be thus opened to Christ, 
 and gloriously empowered by union with him, very 
 nearly amounts to a call, as it does to the needful 
 endowment. Be it invalid, or woman, or old man, 
 or boy, he must and will be somehow vehicle and tongue 
 and gospel for his Master. 
 
VII 
 
 TRAINING FOE THE PULPIT MANWAKD.* 
 
 Regret is frequently expressed and sometimes won- 
 der, that so many preachers, qualified apparently by 
 much talent and culture, fail so miserably in getting 
 any vital connection with men, or their people. And 
 we make short work of the mystery often, by saying 
 that they have not nature enough in them to get hold 
 of nature in others ; though a better and more true 
 solution would be, that they fail of any vital connec- 
 tion or power to gain it, because they have no such 
 Christian nearness to men or vitalized interest in 
 them, as begets a vitally responsive interest. Xobody 
 imagines that men will be morally quickened by words 
 spoken through a fire-trumpet ; neither will they any 
 more, by the words of a man who is equally brassy and 
 not more humanly alive. But where there is a soul 
 vitalized in feeling, where the look, the action, the 
 man, bespeaks a living and true interest in the per- 
 sons addressed, they must be somehow less than 
 human not to be quickened responsively. When the 
 
 ♦Delivered at the Anniversary of the Theological School of 
 Chicago.in 1868. 
 
 (221) 
 
222 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 true live magnet is thrust into a bag of iron-sand, it 
 will come out with innumerable adherents festooning 
 round its neck, and clinging fast to it, because it is 
 clinging fast to them. But the dead magnet clinging 
 to nobody will have nobody clinging to it. 
 
 The failures we lament then must be referrible to 
 some lack in the preachers of nearness to, or human- 
 ized perception of men. /The manward faculty) is 
 somehow undeveloped, or too scantily developed; to 
 bring them into their place among men and prepare 
 them to act their part effectively. And this very 
 practical matter it is that I propose to consider on the 
 present occasion ; stating briefly first, the causes of the 
 fact ; and then, more carefully, by what kind of train- 
 ing and self-exercise the necessary interest in men 
 may be duly unfolded and quickened. 
 
 As regards the causes of the fact in question, it 
 needs to be somewhere noted, that the unworldly 
 position of the preacher, qualified by no specially coun- 
 teractive grace, will itself, and often does, separate 
 him so far from his fellow- men as to make him a man 
 quite one side of life. Hence the abundant satire put 
 upon the clergy so called, as being ignorant of men, 
 living a dry kind of life, out of contact with the world, 
 and practically unqualified for any manly part in the 
 going on of human affairs. The lawyer conforms to 
 the world and is of it, and the preacher, not allowed 
 to be, loses just so much of interest in it, or capacity 
 to be a part of it ; unless,, coming down upon it in the 
 living charities of heaven, he takes hold thus again of 
 
PULPIT MAX WARD. 223 
 
 all he has let go, to be wiser and more alive in it than 
 ever ; more respected in his judgments and every way 
 more vitally felt as a man./ There is a most real dan- 
 ire r here, but the remedy it is not difficult to find. 
 
 But the inability we speak of is due, in a different 
 way. to a large variety of causes, among which I name, 
 first of all, a deficiency in the natural gifts of address. / 
 S< >me persons have a wondrous felicity in this respect. 
 They have large true sympathies. They fall in 
 always, somehow, at the dew-point of favor, and set 
 every sensibility a-dripping with the wet of their moist 
 kinship and life. They are beautifully considerate, 
 therefore considered. They confide and are con- 
 fided in. They are friendly and make friends. 
 Such persons have a great natural advantage in 
 this kind of gift, though, as we shall see by and by, 
 it is no sufficient guarantee of a permanently vital and - — 
 effective hold by itself. Others, who have greatly 
 inferior natural gifts in this respect, have yet such as 
 are capable of great enlargement by culture, and such 
 as, being duly unfolded by | the necessary Christian 
 inspirations, will even put them in advance of the class 
 just name(£ They will have a supernatural felicity^) 
 all the more perfect that it is felt to be not entirely 
 natural. And all that I am going to say, on this 
 occasion, will have its value principally in the encour- 
 agement given to such. For there are one or two 
 classes of natures more unfellow still, that will never />, 
 be much advanced by anything. One, for example, 
 who are too apathetic and dry to be ever much quick- 
 
224: TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 ened in the demonstrative sympathies that are needed 
 to engage responsive sympathies, who will continue 
 therefore to be socially^ inert as now, and be answered 
 by social inertness ; even as the corn that is piled 
 away in the cribs to dry makes heaps of creature life 
 in ear and kernel, that are quite dead to the sense of 
 neighborhood, or the touch of any fellow sensibility. 
 There is still another class, who are often taken by 
 their friends to have a special promise, but are even 
 more unhopeful, as regards being ever trained to a 
 genuine, solid interest in men, or a living place among 
 them, — such I mean as, by their light vivacity, are 
 gadding about everywhere, and pitching into every- 
 thing on foot; a kind of omnipresent, fac totum people, 
 that cannot be escaped. Their chaff is always blow- 
 ing in our faces, when we had much rather have a 
 chance to see. Such will hardly get to be even men 
 of the world, but will rather buzz themselves out of it, 
 than into it, by the annoyances they create. 
 
 A second cause of inability in the preacher to gain 
 a living contact with men, or his people, is to be 
 ry found in a bad moral development, such as makes him 
 at once less capable of a living interest in them, 
 and them less capable of interest in him. Thus if 
 one is seen to be acting the sycophant, if another is 
 jealous, scenting always visibly some disrespect or 
 higher claim of merit, if another is of a plainly sensual 
 habit, another pretentious or vain of his performances, 
 and, to make short a catalogue that is long, if any one 
 is unreliable, irresponsible, irritable in his tempers, 
 
PULPIT MANWARD. 225 
 
 obstinate in his will, or what is worst of all, practically 
 
 untrue, there will almost certainly be no genuine 
 heartiness in his devotion to them, and all their gates 
 will even be more certainly shut against him. For if 
 his particular obliquities are not formal!}' known, or 
 discovered, the stamp of a something sinister, untrust- 
 worthy, and low, will be felt upon him, and he will be 
 too scantily respected to have any considerable power. 
 But we have, again, three or four hindrances or 
 disqualifications, that come along, hand in hand, with 
 our ministerial training itself ; being false or dispro- 
 portionate modes of interest in other directions, that 
 take us quite away from all true interest in men. 
 Thus, brought together as they are in our seminaries, 
 young men talk much, almost unavoidably, of relative 
 standing, and the places to be gotten by each ; whereby 
 the ambition for place gets large development. Then 
 afterwards, when our places are taken, the same thing 
 still goes on, as we see by our frequent discoveries 
 that we have fallen into what we call " uncongenial 
 places." And then, as we must have our changes, it 
 comes out every week in gazette, that one or another 
 preacher, beginning to be known, is going to this or 
 that more prominent, that is, more congenial, place. 
 The people meantime, seeing how much it signifies to 
 be place, get tired of being place to second rate 
 preachers, and take their turn also in pitching us down 
 descending grades that mortify us, and make us more 
 discouraged, and push us farther away in feeling from 
 men, as we are less appreciated by them. Or, if our 
 
226 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 changes are all in the ascending order, we are likely to 
 be only so much better pleased with ourselves, and to 
 finally die in our position of prominence, only half as 
 much felt and respected as if we had died in the first 
 little nest that was given us. How many die beside 
 of too much place, before their time arrives, — not to 
 go, let us hope, to their own place afterwards. 
 
 Another infelicity of our training is, that it often 
 begets a very disproportionate interest in the direction 
 of abstractive theology. The result is that we are 
 taken quite away from men, and become practically 
 unsphered, or disabled. Our over-abstractive exer- 
 cise has extirpated our most valuable sensibilities. 
 We had a skin, and now we have a crust. I speak 
 here with the greater freedom, because I believe there 
 is less of undue theologic tension in your school than 
 elsewhere, and because your very scheme of terms 
 and studies proposes, if possible, to keep you in the 
 living world and make you a part of it. Still there 
 is danger for us all, that we get stalled in abstrac- 
 tions, and dry up in them. Our gospel, if we put 
 ourselves to thinking out a gospel, will of course be 
 a little too completely ours, small of course, and dry, 
 and pebbly, representing well the tiny molds of our 
 own abstractive faculty. And when we go to preach 
 it, we shall be looked upon rather as abstract men 
 than men alive, — theologic lay figures, sombre, intro- 
 verted, dreary-looking faces, beholding always, stick- 
 ing for and as it were becoming the inevitable propo- 
 sitions. There will be a kind of nonsense look both 
 
P L'LPI T M A N \V A R D . 
 
 227 
 
 in what we are and what we are doing, and the dry 
 formalities we range in will be like the corridors - 
 nicely flanked by the exactly piled bones of the ten 
 thousand virgins in the crypts of Cologne. I make 
 do objection here to theology. Abstractions will do 
 us no damage, if we do not make gods and finalities 
 of them. Our Christian mind must have them, it 
 would seem, for its gymnastic. Neither could we 
 understand ourselves, without some articulation of 
 our thoughts. The difficulty is that we so easily lose 
 the sense of persons, or souls, and get our whole 
 appetite set for propositions, needing every hour to 
 pray both God and our teachers : " feed me with food 
 convenient for me.'' If only we had each five hun- 
 dred theologies, just to show us what the true great 
 gospel is by so many little ones made out of it, our 
 ardor might be sufficiently checked to allow us some 
 right interest in the welfare of men. 
 
 We are likely also, in a similar way, to have a 
 wholly disproportionate interest awakened in subjects, 
 as distinguished from men, or persons. As our cul- 
 ture is advanced, and our invention sharpened, we 
 find a pleasure and sometimes take a pride, in raising- 
 great subjects, fine subjects, new subjects. It is 
 almost as good as if we made a gospel ourselves. 
 Our success too attracts a certain admiration. But 
 the gospel is not for subjects, save as the subjects are 
 for people, or souls. There are a great many grand, 
 beautiful, fresh subjects in it. — not one too many. — 
 and it is our privilege to catch the hint of all pro- 
 
228 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 foundest things from the subtlest intimations. God's 
 own Spirit too will show us tenderly in, where the 
 mines of truth are richest and least explored, that we 
 may bring out ores and gems and all best gifts for 
 his flock. But if we care to please ourselves in the 
 skill or beauty of our processes, if we have any 
 interest in our subjects that does not respect their 
 uses, — what feeling they will kindle, what conviction 
 raise, what comfort of God they will bring, what they 
 will be, when they have fallen off the tongue into the 
 ear, and are lodged there in the inward silence, — what 
 are we doing in our fine subjects that belongs any way 
 to our work in the hearts of our people ? And if we 
 complain that by such astounding merits they will 
 not be taken captive, is it they that are senseless, or 
 we ? As if by so great skill in raising subjects, we 
 were going to compensate them for making nothing 
 of their persons, or even of their personal eternity ! 
 Again our training often makes us disproportionally 
 alive to the matter of pulpit success, when we have 
 only the tamest concern for men. We are trained, 
 in fact, to look after and greatly value success. And 
 then, when we take our places, we are ready to com- 
 pliment our devotion in the felt intensity of our desire 
 to make such advances in our work. But there is a 
 distinction here that we are exceedingly apt to miss, 
 because of the subtlety of it ; we are running a mill, 
 otherwise called a church, which is ours, and we very 
 earnestly desire success, it may be, not for the souls' 
 sake of the people, but for the mill's sake. We put 
 
PULPIT MAN WARD. 229 
 
 ourselves into the cause with great industry of en- 
 deavor. We work our sermons in the hardest way, 
 and preach them in a way as hard, — not a whit harder 
 to us than to the people, — straining every faculty to 
 the utmost, and straining also them by our heavy 
 objurgations. What does it mean, we say, that, when 
 we are putting our lives into the grave, we get no 
 sympathy and nobody comes to our help ? Never was 
 there any Christian people, we think, so utterly dead 
 and destitute of care for their Master. It is as if we 
 were knocking at a tomb ! But verily there is no 
 wonder here ; we get no response, because there is 
 nothing to respond to. We are laying ourselves out 
 for the post, and not for the people, and it cannot be 
 expected that a post will respond. Our manner be- 
 sides tells the whole story. The fact is out by the 
 laws of expression, when neither we nor our people 
 think it. If we were after the men, if our spirit 
 yearned for the men, our eye, and voice, and tenderly 
 deep look of concernment, would be out, gathering in 
 all feeling responsive to our feeling, but since we 
 yearn only for the mill, there is no particular reason 
 why the men should be moved by it. I very much fear 
 that what we call our desire for the salvation of our 
 people, that which wears our life out so unsparingly, 
 is really a desire in a great many more cases than we 
 know to have success for ourselves. This ignis fatuus 
 hovers all the while about us, shallows our feeling 
 and beguiles our prayers. 
 
230 TRAINING FOE THE 
 
 We come now to the second general department of 
 
 our subject, where it is proposed to show, or at least 
 to suggest, the methods by which we may be trained 
 and may train ourselves to a more personal, or less 
 impersonal kind of interest. 
 
 And first of all. it must be noted, that any due 
 interest in men supposes a living observation of men. 
 Just here it is that a great many, falling into an 
 utterly heedless habit, sink all apparent capacity of 
 sympathy with mankind. We can do something to 
 break up such a habit, and something also may possi- 
 bly be done for us. Let it be understood that we have 
 a wonderfully fruitful out-door lesson here, that is 
 always demanding our study. God has given us eyes, 
 and we have no right to lose the benefit of eyes. And 
 yet there are thousands of men who are really halved 
 in capacity all their life long, because they omit to 
 see. Their human feeling gets no play : they miss 
 the possibility of living sympathies : they get too far 
 stupefied under the world to allow their ever knowing 
 what it is. or becoming a part of it. What can such 
 minds do in preaching a gospel ? Xo. the preacher 
 wants to be a man. as truly as to be a Christian, and 
 he will not be much of a Christian if he is not a man. 
 He must be out therefore, using sharp insight every- 
 where, and looking deep down through all the sinuosi- 
 ties and cunning varieties of the great world-pageant 
 before him. He must see the men. the women, the 
 children, the neighborhood, the nation, the times, 
 dramatizing themselves in what is called societv. And 
 
PULPIT MAN WARD. 231 
 
 it must be no mere beholding of surfaces, as when 
 some animal looks on the same things; but there must 
 be a looking far in, where the eternities are. Great 
 instincts must be seen overtopping the summits of 
 pride, and squatting among the lowest vices. The 
 grandeur of the being must be seen in the meanness 
 of the life. The honors that are due to principle must 
 be seen wriggling out under motivities that only pla)' 
 reverence and character. Everything must be signifi- 
 cant ; the house, the church, the school, the street, 
 the shop ; works, voices, gaits ; and, what is quite as 
 full of revelation, the concealments, — all to be con- 
 strued in no cynical way, but so lovingly that the 
 bright, sweet virtues will awaken no interest more 
 tender than the virtues that are sick or fallen. The 
 observer has a long inventory given him, and he must 
 play all his many-colored human sympathies into it 
 to bring out the interpretation. Nobody can tell or 
 guess what he will see, or meet, or be overtaken by, 
 going into the street any most common day of the 
 year. He cannot pass round a block, without meeting 
 some revelation that is a complete chapter of life. 
 And this open-eyed way of living would have a won- 
 derfully sharpening, freshening power in every one 
 who is being trained for the gospel, if only it were 
 faithfully maintained ; all the better if he would 
 formally engage, when he returns at night, to catechize 
 himself as to what he has seen and the meaning of 
 it ; better still if friends would engage to catcehize 
 each other; and it would not be absurd, if professors 
 
232 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 would sometimes drop the book-lore subjects and 
 spring the question, " What have you seen to-day ? " 
 And the answers gotten, I strongly suspect, would 
 give a more true indication of the men, than any of 
 the class-work answers they obtain. One must answer, 
 that he remembers seeing nothing but his own face in 
 the glass. Another will want prompting to be sure 
 that he has seen anything. Another will have seen 
 upon the street some thousands, probably, of faces, no 
 two of them alike, and having all as many thousand 
 characters and histories written upon them ; quite a 
 number of which, as he began to read them in passing, 
 had excited a wonderfully curious and deep interest. 
 A fourth, less discursive, but not less sharply percep- 
 tive, will perhaps only report having seen a horseshoe 
 nailed up over a door ; whereby he was let into a new 
 impression of superstition, as the underground fact, 
 or token, of man's religious nature ; and if he should 
 go on, for answer, to bring out the subterranean work- 
 ing of the same, it must be a very good lecture that 
 will signify more. Let this living out-door observa- 
 tion be kept up, and never intermitted. No man ever 
 is alive to his kind, who does not see them with a 
 living eye. 
 
 I suggest again, as a matter closely related, the very 
 large, really sublime interest we should get in persons, 
 or souls, in distinction from subjects, by putting the 
 mind down carefully on the study, or due exploration 
 of sin. I do not mean by this any theologic explora- 
 tion, such as we have reported in our systems, no 
 
PULPIT MAN WARD. 233 
 
 questioning about the origin, or propagation, or totality, 
 or disability, or immedicable guilt of sin, but a going 
 into and through it as it is, and the strange wild work 
 it makes in the intestine struggles and wars of the 
 mind. For it is a fact, I fear, that we sometimes very 
 nearly kill our natural interest in persons, by just 
 bolting them down theologically into what we call 
 death and there making an end. We clap an extin- 
 guisher on them, in this manner, and they drop out of 
 interest, just where they become most interesting, — 
 where meaning, and size, and force, and depth of sor- 
 row, and amount of life, and everything fit to engage 
 our concern is most impressively revealed. Say no 
 more of the dignity of human nature, here is some- 
 thing far beyond all that ; a wild, strange flame raging 
 inwardly in that nature, that, for combinations of 
 great feeling, and war, and woe, is surpassed by no 
 tragedy or epic, nor by all tragedies and epics together. 
 Here in the soul's secret chambers are Fausts more 
 subtle than Faust, Hamlets more mysterious than 
 Hamlet, Lears more distracted and desolate than Lear ; 
 wills that do what they allow not, and what they 
 would not, do ; wars in the members ; bodies of death 
 to be carried, as in Paul ; wild horses of the mind, 
 governed by no rein, as in Plato ; subtleties of cunning, 
 plausibilities of seeming virtues, memories writ in 
 letters of fire, great thoughts heaving under the brim- 
 stone marl of revenges, pains of wrong and of sympa- 
 thy with suffering wrong, aspirations that have lost 
 courage, hates, loves, beautiful dreams, and tears ; all 
 
i:3i ::i:::;v- ::: ::: 
 
 Hi se acting at cross-purposes and representing, as it 
 were to sight, the broken order of the mind. Getting 
 into the secret working, and seeing how the drama 
 goes on in so many mystic parts, the wondrous life- 
 scene, — shall we call it poetry- ! — takes on a look at 
 ::".:t "::--.: ..::" mi r:~"J. i~i -izzzli-z. :■.:'- i — ::;_- — -? 
 call the person becomes a world of boundless capaei- 
 :irs shaken out of their law, energies in full conflict 
 and without government, passions that are wild, sor- 
 rows that are weak. By such explorations, never to 
 be exhausted by discovery, our sense of person, or 
 mind, or soul, is widely opened and may always be 
 kept fresh; a most necessary qualification for any 
 right seeking of men, such as may obtain a living eon- 
 :: ion with them in the matter of their immortal 
 — T.:.":"r. I: — ill n::. ?:. ".: ■:- v.: t;:- zlj :'_,: rz,:. t r 
 as, but persons: for persons will have the freshest 
 meaning, and be thought of as the deepest and most 
 :;s:i:"-::i:".- kini ;: =-.: ::;■". Lr: nif "r-~i a :. :: : :^"- 
 tion here that reaches farther: viz.. that if some 
 qualified teacher, by some ten or twenty years of 
 study, could worm out a thoroughly perceptive inter- 
 pretation of sin, or course of lectures on the working 
 or pathology of mind under evil, he would offer a con- 
 tribution to the true success of Christian preaching, 
 greater than, perhaps, any human teacher has ever 
 yet lontributed. 
 
 Another very important thing, as regards training 
 ;■;: -t>t- :■: : 1: ..:_•- : :. 1 —>: 1 ::;~errs: ::: :\v: ::-ll :~-nirr.. 
 is the being earnestly and early engaged in efforts to do 
 
PULPIT MANWARD. 235 
 
 them good. For it is a fixed law of the mind that we 
 feel what we serve, and appreciate, even up to the 
 point of enthusiasm, what we long and strenuously 
 endeavor to aeconiplish. By such practical tension, 
 all our powers are harnessed and put to the draught 
 together. And it is a matter of immense consequence, 
 in this view, that every one who is preparing for the 
 Christian ministry should put himself into a Christian 
 way of training for it, by having on hand works of 
 love and mercy to man such as will draw him into the 
 closest terms of fidelity, and kindle in his feeling the 
 highest enthusiasm. Mere scholar-hood is no fit train- 
 ing without this. Taken separately from this, it is 
 really a training away from qualifications and not 
 towards them. Let him go into by-places and dark 
 neighborhoods, seeking out Christ's poor and sick ; 
 drawing others out of the wrecks of fortune and the 
 more appalling wrecks of vice, by his Christian sym- 
 pathy ; teaching the ignorant, and especially bending 
 himself upon the neglected little ones of the street ; 
 knowing well that every child's love wakened in his 
 bosom freshens him in the deepest springs of his life, 
 and keeps him young in the simple humanities that 
 draw him closest to his fellow-men. All this we say, 
 but we do not often take the force of it ; still the works 
 we put ourselves upon are too often only a matter by 
 the way. The great chief matter is the school and 
 what the school will do for us. No, no ! The true 
 preacher needs even more to be graduated at the great 
 university of sorrow than here. Mercies are greater 
 
236 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 things than notions, and here is the place to learn the 
 mercies. These are the talent of the heart and the 
 talent of the head is not greater. And how many of 
 our really best, most pungent, most effective preach- 
 ers, have "been almost wholly trained by their good 
 works, and the human wants and woes that engage 
 them ! By these they purchase also to themselves a 
 good degree ; much better than some of the degrees 
 Ave more frequently hear of and less frequently respect. 
 Little children, sorrows of the house, bitter sorrows of 
 the street and the saloon, — these are their professors 
 and they do their teaching well. Only be it under- 
 stood that every thing you undertake in this schooling 
 of work must be heartily done, and never in a way of 
 slackness that is glad when the time is up and the 
 duty ended ; for in that way all benefit will be reversed 
 and you will lose even twice as much as it was your 
 privilege to gain. One single hour in a week, given 
 to a Sunday-school in this slack way of merely formal 
 duty, will uncreate more capacity for living approach 
 to men, than six whole days of seminary training 
 ever created. 
 
 Thus far we have been moving, for the most part, 
 in the plane of mere self -exercise. We must now 
 ascend to the higher plane of God and the Spirit. It 
 may seem paradoxical, but it is profoundly true, that 
 if we are to get the highest possible, only true interest 
 in our fellow men, we must go up into God to find it. 
 They are made in his great image, which signifies much 
 to him, though commonly not much to us. We try 
 
PULPIT MANWARD. 237 
 
 to use the Pact sometimes as a theological magnifier 
 of man, but God feels it. And what is peculiar to 
 him, our bad state under evil does not abate his inter- 
 est in us, but rather seems to increase it. He beholds 
 the great machine of retributive causation, good in 
 itself, necessary even for us, crushing us, as phos- 
 phorated bones are crushed in the mill, and he does 
 not allow that his Fatherhood is measured, or was 
 ever to be, by this grinding machine of causes that we 
 call Nature. If Nature and her causes own him God, 
 there is in him what is more than a mere Godship of 
 nature, a Lamb-side of holy flexibility, where he suffers 
 and sorrows, and where, as Lamb, " he was slain from 
 the foundation of the world ;" always engaged, before 
 these fallen children were made, to unlock the crea- 
 tion's causes by suffering, and take them forth out of 
 their sin. All which is discovered to us, how sub- 
 limely, in that closing stage of revelation, where the 
 throne of the Universe is called no more henceforth 
 the throne of God, as if he were the God of Nature, 
 but the throne of God and of the Lamb !" Deific 
 sorrow or affliction then is here to be the power. "In 
 their affliction he is afflicted, and he bears them and 
 carries them all the days of old." He brings out 
 leaders and prophets rising up early to send them, 
 organizes rites, draws out migrations, leads back cap- 
 tivities, and, when the fullness of time is come, sends 
 forth his Son, — all which is opened to us in its inmost 
 meaning, when it is declared : " For God so loved the 
 world." 
 
238 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 Now therefore we are to see in him, that is in Jesus, 
 what kind of interest pertains to the lot and state of 
 man, taken as a fallen personality. Wonderful depth 
 of feeling and sacrifice, — how shall we compass it ? — 
 in the charities of his burdened life, his sorrow and 
 cross ! He so conceives the magnitude and tragic 
 pain of souls or persons, that he sinks all orders and 
 distinctions of men in one level of suffering pity. 
 And he is specially drawn to abject and low people, 
 because, understanding him quite as well, they are 
 much less withdrawn by hateful and low prejudices. 
 His great loving mind stoops to its burdens, and he 
 bears the world as we bear the weight of a sorrow. 
 The woman at the well is sure that there must be some 
 great riddle in him. Little children are gathered to 
 him and cannot look away from him. That he gets 
 the blind man's heart, when he leads him out, hand in 
 hand, to heal him, nobody need tell us. As little 
 need we be told, that he gets hold of another's when, 
 having healed him, he goes tenderly after him, cast 
 out for being healed, — even as some teacher of a Sun- 
 day-school goes after the poor, much persecuted pupil, 
 he has lately missed, — and leading him back, opens to 
 him some of the deepest matters even of his great 
 Messiahship. Why should not the penitent woman, 
 put in hope and courage by his friendly words, wash 
 his feet with her tears ? And would it not be strange, 
 if the two sisters of Bethany were at all less nearly 
 distracted by their tender hospitalities, after he has 
 wept the tears of Messiahship with them at their 
 
PULPIT MAN WARD. 239 
 
 brother's grave ? Notice further the significance of 
 his look, that so much impressed the evangelist, when, 
 
 surrounded by such forlorn multitudes of sick and 
 diseased people, his feeling is described by saying, that 
 w - he was moved with compassion on them, because 
 they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having 
 no shepherd." Humble in his figure, scandalously 
 unconventional, he is yet respected and felt every- 
 where. He touches the quick, so to speak, of all 
 human sentiment and conviction and makes a contact 
 so pervasive that all incrustations of sin are pierced. 
 Without a single air of popularity, or any bait thrown 
 out to catch applause, he settles straightway into vital 
 connection with men, because of the divine sorrow 
 that is in him ; and, though multitudes of high people 
 are offended in him, he is(the best approved, most thor- 
 oughly felt man that ever lived.y 
 
 Then follow the apostles, and especially Paul, the 
 most conspicuous of them. And here we are to see 
 how he takes the type of his Master, bearing the same 
 burden, and having in it the same call. There was 
 nothing of dear favor and popularity in him naturally. 
 He was just now but a fierce and fiery bigot and man- 
 hunter, wanting men's blood more than their salvation. 
 But he had such a burden rolled upon him, and such 
 an impression of men wrought in him by his call, that 
 the gaining a man was now a kind of supreme aspira- 
 tion of his Christcd life. He could not so much as 
 trim a sentence to catch the world's applauses ; but 
 he could be all things to all men himself, if by any 
 
24:0 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 means he could gain some. Looked upon as weak in 
 bodily presence and contemptible in speech or speak- 
 ing voice, he was yet so deep in love and was so let 
 into the knowledge of men by his urgent sympathies, 
 that he took the sense and rose to the level, as in 
 Athens, of all highest culture and philosophy, and was 
 able thus, surpassing art without art, to make about 
 the manliest and, morally speaking, grandest speech 
 that ever was made. He was never unequal to an 
 occasion, even though it was a shipwreck ; simply 
 because he had life enough to put his Avord into the 
 cargo, and the helm, and the scattered planks, and 
 the men. 
 
 In the same way, all the best preachers and pastors, 
 coming after, got their success. They had come down 
 close enough to men, in the Christly love, to catch the 
 sense of their magnitudes. They did not seem there- 
 fore to be sailing over the world, like a dust-cloud that 
 nobody wants to have settle, but they fell as dew on 
 the living sensibilities of their times, dissolving all 
 subtlest prejudices, and most cunning entanglements 
 of error. Such were Chrysostom, Augustine, Tauler, 
 Luther, Fenelon, Whitefield, Summerfield, Gossner, 
 all of them felt to be live men, whose contact, like 
 the touch of Gideon's angel, put men's hearts ablaze 
 on the rock. 
 
 But we must go back a little way to the Scripture 
 and observe a remarkable fact which distinguished the 
 apostolic preaching, and that of all the more successful 
 men that have come after, viz., that the interest they 
 
PULPIT MAN WARD. 241 
 
 feel in men, or human souls, is not gauged simply by 
 what they are, but more by what they are becoming, 
 
 or to be. They see themselves and all God's saints in 
 a glorious uplifting or ennobling process, that kindles 
 in them an immense expectation, and an almost super- 
 human ardor. Glorified mind ! — this is the purpose 
 of their gospel. And if there were a university that 
 could finish a pupil up to that measure, it would even 
 be a fault of the teachers, if their heads were not 
 turned by it. On this point these Christian preachers 
 put their eye, and the problem is, — " from glory to 
 glory." They say nothing of " perfection," save in a 
 certain lower, partly accommodated sense of the term, 
 where we see them rushing by, or beyond, to some- 
 thing better and higher. Or, if they sometimes speak 
 of it in the more absolute, ideal sense, they disclaim it 
 as a grace already attained, and we see them stretch- 
 ing on to apprehend, — not exactly that, which never 
 can be apprehended, — but the glory they were appre- 
 hended for, beholding, as it were, the gates of glorified 
 possibility set open before them, and tracing, with 
 their eye, the interminable progressions and the pros- 
 pects boundless. 
 
 They put down, first, three " full assurances ; " one 
 of : ' hope," one of " faith " and one of " understand- 
 ing;" showing the undone, guilty, fearing creature 
 put on a base, if he will be, of true certified confidence 
 that is well nigh deific. Next, they let him rise to 
 the level even of his conscience, which is God's own 
 level, pledging there the world, that he lives " in a con- 
 
242 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 science void of offence." Then as to the past, the 
 guilty and foul past, they allow him to be sure of his 
 complete, everlasting purgation ; of being washed and 
 made white, — " whiter than snow " ; and snow is very 
 white. Again they pledge him a way of duty that is 
 " liberty," done as in a " law of liberty ; " the cur- 
 rents of the soul being now so rectified as to run no 
 more against the currents of God ; for, at the bottom 
 of their promised liberty, they behold a paradox of 
 possibility given, — " that ye might be filled with all 
 the fullness of God" ; filled and tided on, that is, in 
 all the tides of God. They do more, they pledge what 
 it is scarcely possible to understand and only possible 
 to believe, a real traduction or passing over and per- 
 sonal appropriation of God's own characters and 
 qualities ; so that we may boldly " seek the righteous- 
 ness of God," and have it " unto and upon " us in the 
 faith of Jesus Christ ; being so restored to the origi- 
 nal normal footing, in which we and all upright crea- 
 tures were set, to be charactered in God's everlasting 
 overflow, even as the day is charactered from the sun. 
 So they are likewise to have a traductive knowledge 
 from him, that has no assignable limit, " the knowl- 
 edge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual under- 
 standing," his " anointing that teacheth all things." 
 They conceive also great incomings of power, which 
 are to put our being, so to speak, in the deific quanti- 
 ties ; saying, " whatsoever ye ask believing," — " greater 
 works than these," — " be thou, sycamine, plucked up 
 and cast in the sea ; " where they get us raised to 
 
PULPIT MANWARD. 243 
 
 gifts of possibility so nearly boundless, that we forth- 
 with set our incontinent reason, commonly, to a set- 
 tlement or defining of their necessary limitations ; not 
 perceiving that they are purposely made boundless, 
 oecause there is meant to be no bound, save what will 
 he contained in the immensely variable possibilities 
 and gradations of faith. They expect also a fertility 
 in works of beneficence that is not to be measured by 
 limitations ; that every man shall be a light, and a 
 salt, as diffusive as the sun and the sea ; where also 
 Christ himself declares: "He that believeth on me, as 
 the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow 
 rivers of living water." Rivers begin small, and 
 grow large, and run a long time, and stretch them- 
 selves afar, and move irresistibly ; and how much it 
 signifies to be a river ! And finally, what rises high- 
 est and signifies most, they behold a restoration begun 
 of the mind's broken order under evil, and a re-crys- 
 tallization of it in its normal working and harmony. 
 Thus, coming into " the spirit of love," they perceive 
 to be the same thing as coming into " a sound mind." 
 They also pre-figure in Christ a casting down of all 
 wild " imaginations " and a " bringing into captivity 
 of every thought to the obedience of Christ." Blessed 
 and high and dear captivity will it now be within, 
 when all the propagations of thought, free thought, 
 are captivated in sweet law, and set playing in the 
 chime of order. In all which there seems to be an- 
 ticipated a moving of the soul under its laws, so 
 angelically beautiful and true, that when the will is 
 
244 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 withdrawn, as in sleep, it will even dream in heaven's 
 order. 
 
 Conceiving now these dignities, and powers, and 
 forthcoming glories of souls, and beholding their 
 uplifting of stature in the new divine life which is 
 called their salvation, the preacher will better appre- 
 ciate both men and the gospel, and will be raised to a 
 new plane of action by the interest he feels. He will 
 have great inspirations manward, such as suffer no 
 slack working, such as make him instant in season 
 and out of season, and keep him always in a thoroughly 
 vital connection with his times. 
 
 Having suggested, in this very imperfect sketch, 
 some of the modes of training by which we may bring 
 ourselves closer to men, and make ourselves more 
 vitally felt by them, I abstain from further illustra- 
 tions. 
 
 One of my anxieties, in the treatment of this sub- 
 ject, has been to give no look of countenance, or favor, 
 to a certain frivolous and light way of speaking in 
 regard to it, such as we too frequently hear. As if it 
 were only a matter of natural address in which the de- 
 ficiency manwards appears, or as if nothing more were 
 wanting for the remedy, but to be more completely 
 and bravely men ; or, as some will phrase it, more like 
 natural born people and men of the world. But this 
 contemptuous lightness, this very cheap kind of satire, 
 is itself much further down below the range of dig- 
 nity than it supposes, in that it so little conceives, or 
 
PULPIT MANWARD. 245 
 
 so blindly ignores, what is the deepest, grandest note 
 of capacity in all high preaching, viz., the momentum 
 of God's private inspirations ; that which makes the 
 man a symbol, and a voice, and a power. Therefore, 
 let him be or become as bravely man as you please, 
 put him wholly on the felicity of his personal address, 
 or the popularity of his natural parts, and he is nobody. 
 A naturally demonstrative manner and action are 
 good, and yet, by themselves, are good for nothing. 
 The fine declaimers and speaking prodigies of the 
 schools turn out always here to be only men of straw ; 
 with the disadvantage of not being combustible. A cer- 
 tain manner of reserve and strong discipline is often 
 more impressive, even though there be some awkward- 
 ness in it. The preacher needs to be a man rather 
 who has been taken apart, sometime, from men, to be 
 closeted with God in private struggles. Any one can 
 be accepted and made welcome by men, who will take 
 their key and be one of them, but whoever will come 
 to them closely in the key of their religious nature, 
 must, first of all, be drawn up close to God, and come 
 down thence deifically flavored to them. Besides it 
 is only by sometimes getting far enough apart from 
 them to adequately think who they are, that any one 
 can duly understand them, and be qualified for the 
 friendliest, most effective care of them. Large natu 
 ral sympathies are good, but large supernatural are 
 better ; even such as have partly sounded the com- 
 passions of God, and had their own private Gethse- 
 mane. There will of course be no advertising by the 
 
246 TRAINING FOR THE 
 
 preacher of what God has been doing with him in 
 secret, no parade of sensibility, no affectations of con- 
 cern, but it will come out, as in spite of concealment, 
 and, if it may, in spite of a certain robust manner, 
 that here is one whose heart is heaving under a weight 
 of private burden unconfessed. And this is the true 
 hiding of power. A great, right soul, bearing visibly 
 such loads from God, will never have a dreary, 
 dreamy, far-off way, but will go directly into men's 
 bosoms by the certificate of his own true feeling and 
 his manly sense of man. Even his " good morning " 
 will go through them as a welcome word from some 
 beautiful otherwhere not of this world. 
 
 And such a man will not be simply one who has put 
 his education-money into the preparation of this par- 
 ticular trade or profession, going forward now into it, 
 as a practitioner duly qualified. He will not speak 
 secundum artem out of his mere school advantages, 
 but as one who has been training under the God-bur- 
 dens of the great salvation, one who is now harnessed 
 in the inspirations of his call and qualified as one of 
 God's prophets. 
 
 I must add yet one word more that will draw us 
 down upon the final point of our subject more closely. 
 I admitted in the outset that a preacher, separated 
 from men by his office, will be separated also from 
 tfieir sympathies, if he is not quickened from above, 
 to reclaim the hold he has lost. I have also just now 
 said, that a certain degree of withdrawment may be 
 necessary to the best understanding of them, and the 
 
PULPIT MAN WARD. 247 
 
 closest sympathy with their want. The two points 
 are not incompatible or contrary, but wholly compre- 
 hensible together. And these two poles we must 
 Learn how to hold in even conjunction. We are never 
 to be afraid of going into separation from men's 
 worldly tastes, or mere natural affinities, lest we lose 
 our hold of them, but we are to get the stronger hold 
 of their respect and sympathy by rightly doing it. 
 We are to be always going apart, that we may come 
 nigh ; to be getting our Promethean fire from above 
 and our clay from below ; to send our prayers up after 
 strength for our burdens and find below the burdens 
 to be carried ; to keep in God's high sympathy and 
 bring that sympathy down close to men. And who. 
 my friends, should better understand this footing of 
 adjustment than you ? For, look, what means yon 
 solitary bulkhead, pier, tower, standing a long way off 
 in the sea abreast of your city ? So lonely and so far 
 away, so nearly nowhere, has it not a look well nigh 
 absurd ? Ah, but there is a hidden connection. It is 
 there for what it may be here, or send in hither. Yea, 
 out of the belly of that creature flow rivers of living 
 water. And here, at this hither end, have you not a 
 whole great city pumping, and drawing, and drinking, 
 and bathing, day and night and year by year ? And 
 how many kinds of comfort does that ample flood dis- 
 pense ; slaking your fevers, quelling your fires, laying 
 the dust of your streets by showers that do not wait 
 for clouds, preparing all your food, feeding the bloom 
 of your gardens and conservatories, and filling the 
 
2iS PULPIT MANWAED. 
 
 lavers set for the Trashing of your sins. And if any 
 one should say, behold there is water enough closer 
 at hand, where the said f ar-off tower could hare been 
 more easily built, it must be enough to answer, that 
 it was purposely set a long two miles away, that it 
 might take in the waters of the clear, pure, central 
 deep, and not the filthy dregs of the shore. Men and 
 brethren, so be it ours to minister no gospel on the 
 hither shore of our mere natural parts and powers, 
 but to be conduit mouths opened far off rather, in 
 God's pure, deep eternity, thence to bring in rivers 
 of life for the cleansing, health-restoring, medicating 
 grace of the world. 
 
VIII. 
 OUT: rlFI 10 IHE DLiiSSAIIOS 
 
 The most unilluminated and least valuable of the 
 Bampton Lecture volumes has been recently published 
 by Mr. tt, under the title. -The Dogmatic 
 
 th : " a title which does al»out equal violence to both 
 the terms of which it is compounded. For the Gospel 
 is no dogma, and if it were, could not be a faith. 
 The word dogma indiea* in its etymology and sup- 
 poses in its common uses, -omething thought ; it is 
 opinion offered to opinion as having a standard right : 
 whereas the gospel is a revelation made up of fact 
 and form and fiarure. and offered as a presentation to 
 faith. It calls itself indeed ** the faith." and he infers 
 at once that, since it is an ** authoritative faith." it 
 must be dogmatic. Whereas all truth has this attrib- 
 f authority, though it does not follow that it has 
 such kind of authority as allows it to be no faith at 
 all. _:na. What is .riven to faith is put forth 
 
 in some fact-form or symbol to be interpreted by 
 
 * Contributed to the Hour* at Home, in 1869. VoL YIL The 
 reader is referred for a full discussion of this subject to the "Essay 
 on Language" in the volume^ " God in Christ." 
 
250 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 (imaginative insight, or the discerning power of faith/ 
 What is given to opinion is given to the notional un- 
 derstanding. One imports liberty, and the other a 
 certain dictational right as respects thinking. In one 
 there is a perceiving by trust and the soul-welcome of 
 trust : the other is a notional perceiving or thinking, 
 without perhaps any soul-welcome at all. In his 
 treatise therefore on the Dogmatic Faith, we are not 
 surprised to find that Mr. G-. is rather mixing ideas 
 than clearing them, confounding also things to be 
 spiritually discerned with things logically reasoned, or 
 ecclesiastically determined. 
 
 His argument is principally concerned in removing 
 " six " opposing claims, or points maintained. Whether 
 he succeeds or not is a matter of small consequence, 
 for he would not prove his doctrine if he should. Just 
 that after all may be a fact, which, by a certain 
 remarkable fatality, he assumes is not ; for he ventures 
 strangely on the affirmation, that the opposers of theo- 
 retic dogmatism in our day " do not rest on any alle- 
 gation of inaccuracy in the process of formulating 
 truth, but on objections against the existence and 
 certainty of the truth itself." Exactly contrary to 
 which, it will be seen that, on this question of a pos- 
 sible " accuracy in formulating truth." in distinction 
 from " the existence and certainty of truth," every- 
 thing, in the issue he makes, most emphatically 
 depends. He supposes himself that there is to be a 
 formulating process ; which is a virtual concession 
 that the gospel is not the complete dogma. And the 
 
TO THE I M A G I N A T I N . 251 
 
 g difficulty here to be encountered is that no 
 
 such process of accuracy in •• formulating " the dogma. 
 
 mite possible hope of bug 3S, \a provided by 
 
 human language. As he himself conceives, dogma is 
 M the settled and positive truth stated in words sharply 
 defined :" or again, more exactly still. *• a settled and 
 
 certain truth, an attained resting-place for belief, from 
 which, as from the maxims of mathematical science, 
 we may confidently argue.'" — just what everybody 
 knows has never yet been found. And could he simply 
 call it opinion, he would see at once that there has 
 been no end to opinions under it and against it. Dogma 
 has been always going to be. or just about to be settled, 
 by some new school or teacher, yet in fact never is. 
 If we could possibly think out a gospel, we could not 
 frame it and phrase it in language, so as to make a 
 finality of what we think. For we have no language 
 for opinions in moral and religious matters that is not 
 compounded in forms and figures, which are only 
 images, and not exact notations for what they repre- 
 sent. They are good for the uses of faith and. in fact, 
 more wondrously significant and sufficient in that 
 manner, but they have no such determinate property 
 as permits them to serve the uses of dogma. 
 
 I propose, in these suggestions, no formal contro- 
 versy with Mr. Garbett's book. I only refer to it in 
 the way of introducing a presentation as nearly oppo- 
 site as may be at the point here stated. What I am 
 advance will hold equally well in all matters of 
 philosophic speculation : but. to simplify the argument. 
 
252 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 I propose to confine nxy illustrations within the ranges, 
 for the most part, of the Christian truth. 
 
 I shall endeavor to exhibit, as far as I can in the 
 restricted limits of this article, the fact that our 
 Christian Gospel is a Gift more especially to the 
 Human Imagination. It offers itself first of all and 
 principally to the interpretative imaginings and dis- 
 cernings of faith, never, save in that manner, to the 
 constructive processes of logic and speculative opinion. 
 It is, in one sense, pictorial ; its every line or linea- 
 ment is traced in some image or metaphor, and by no 
 possible ingenuity can it be gotten away from meta- 
 phor ; for as certainly as one metaphoric image is 
 escaped by a definition, another will be taken up, and 
 must be, to fill its place in the definition itself. Math- 
 ematical, language is a scheme of exact notation. All 
 words that are names of mere physical acts and objects 
 are literal, and even animals can, so far, learn their 
 own names and the meaning of many acts done or com- 
 manded. But no animal ever understood a metaphor: 
 that belongs to intelligence, and to man as a creature 
 of intelligence ; being a power to see, in all images, 
 the faces of truth, and take their sense, or read 
 [intus lego'] their meaning, when thrown up in language 
 before the imagination. 
 
 Every word is a figure called in to serve a meta- 
 phoric use, in virtue of the fact that it has a physical 
 base naturally significant of the spiritual truth or 
 meaning it is used metaphorically to express. Physical 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 253 
 
 bases are the timber, in this manner, of all mental 
 language, and are generally traced in the etymologies 
 of the dictionaries ; though sometimes they are lost 
 and cannot be traced. And it is not merely the verbs, 
 nouns, adjectives, that carry these metaphoric uses, 
 but their very grammar of relationship, as they are 
 found originally in space themselves, is also framed 
 in terms of space by the little words called prepositions, 
 which show their spatial images in their faces, up, 
 down, by, through, to, under, from, beyond and the like. 
 The whole web of speech is curiously woven metaphor, 
 and we are able to talk out our thoughts in it, — never 
 one of them visible, — by throwing out metaphoric 
 images in metaphoric grammar so as to give them 
 expression. 
 
 Let us go back now and take our lesson at the type 
 history of the Scriptures. The temple and the whole 
 temple service, — the sacrifices, lustrations of blood, 
 purifyings, and the like, — was a figure, an apostle 
 declares, for the time then present. His word here 
 is xapapo\r) [par able. ~\ Sometimes he uses the word 
 image, sometimes ensample, and oftener the word type; 
 but they all mean nearly the same thing. And here it 
 is that we come upon the curiously fantastic type-learn- 
 ing, which figures so conspicuously in the sermons, 
 commentaries, and theologic treatises of the former 
 time. It is only fit subject of mirth, when it assumes 
 that the types were given to signify to the ages that 
 received them the great living truths of Christianity, 
 and not to be vehicle and metaphor, afterward, for 
 
i M or: jospbl a ift 
 
 them when they should arrive. These types, patterns, 
 shadows, images, parables, ensamples, or whatever 
 else they were called, are simply bases of words pre- 
 
 ":;..: :1 :•: ?rr~f : > —~~: .".-.::? :: :_t -r~ -:>: ::;._ — Lrii 
 it should come- Aud for this purpose, in part T the 
 altar service was instituted ; for the gospel grace was 
 to he a grace supernatural,, and there were no types, 
 no bases of words in nature, that could serve the 
 LtIt — ::;-i^t:: ;"..::: v — 5. All :lir :_;-v...". :_->-; .urs 
 were in a lower field of significance, and all mere 
 n; tiz :'-'-. ip: — irll -":::. :: :hf zi^rk 
 
 It may occur to some as an objection, that the 
 CLT-iSTle siys : •• : lirirf ::: :!_: ::zir tI-e-z. jr-r-f::.." 
 3-i: Iriir:-? ••::: :ii "-—- :_rii ;:r»Ti:. " inlj in The 
 sense that in using the altar-rites or rites of sacrifice, 
 ::: .IltLi Liririy o: ~:rslilp. :lir h:i :: ;!;: ~t-t 
 brought into faiths, repentances and tempers analogical 
 :■: :l:5r :: :le - : \ -- - " :-t. I: 1::- ::: _ :^>:::_ :h;-: 
 :l.r7 ; :~ '!".. :>":." :-".:" mi :lr _ : - rl r::.. :t ~:±ri 
 ::.! : It-'. :1: — t 1 iz rhri: rl:es X:: r~en :lif 
 :: : .I::- ":._t_i— >:- .:^1t:-:: : 1 -17 ^".;:h ibli.z. Iv.t 
 
 — :re searching what f and what manner of time, the 
 Spirit of Christ which was in them did sign 
 These men of old were in the patterns of the heavenly 
 -!__:__-. n;- :z :lr If.v-Tiilj -!:::_- -1:^^>:>. Tliri: 
 rites were the bases of words some time to be used as 
 metaphors of the Christian grace, but they did not 
 see, as yet, what things the metaphor 3 wei going to 
 express. They lived in the shadow of good thiiu - : 
 come, but not in the very import of them. 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION 255 
 
 But ire must look into language itself and see how 
 the great revelation of G \s soming and to come. 
 
 31 of all. it is iiii} 3si Le, as we have seen already, 
 that any terms of Language for mental notions, things 
 of the spirit, unseen worlds, beings invisible, should 
 ever exist, save as there are physical images found to 
 serve as rnetaphoric bases of the necessary words : 
 for we cannot show them to the eye and then name 
 them, as we do acts or objects visible : we can only 
 hint them by figures, or objects metaphorically signifi- 
 cant of them. And so we see beforehand, that all 
 the truths of religion are going to be given to men by 
 images ; so that all God's truth will come as to the 
 imagination. Hence the necessity of the old physical 
 religion to prepare draperies and figures for the new. 
 Hence also, when we come to the new. we are con- 
 stantly met. we perhaps know not why or how. by 
 images taken from the old. in a way that seems half 
 fanciful and curiously mystical. Adam is the figure 
 of him that was to come, the second Adam, because 
 he. Christ, was to be the head, correspondently. of a 
 spiritual generation. Christ is David. Melchizedek, 
 high priest, the spiritual Rock, a prophet like unto 
 If sea and I know not what beside. John the Bap- 
 tist is Elias that was to come. In the same manner. 
 heaven is a paradise or garden, or a new Jerusalem. 
 or a state of glorious city life in God ; the new society 
 of grace is to be the kingdom of God, or the kingdom 
 of heaven; and Christ himself Lb Messiah, that is. 
 king. All the past is taken up as metaphor for all the 
 
256 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 future. All these things, we are to say, "happened 
 unto them for ensamples," that is, types for the ex- 
 pression of our higher truth. 
 
 And so we are questioning often about the credibility 
 of a double meaning in scripture ; as if it were a 
 thing fanciful beyond belief. Whereas the meanings 
 double and redouble as often as new typologies are 
 made ready. The spiritual comes out of the physical, 
 and the more spiritual out of the less ; just because 
 one thing is ready for the expression of another and 
 still another. There is nothing fantastical in it, but 
 it comes to pass under a fixed law of language, — all 
 language, even the most common, — even as a stalk of 
 corn pushes out leaf from within leaf by a growth 
 that is its unsheathing. 
 
 Every dictionary shows the unsheathing process 
 always going on ; meanings coming out of meanings, 
 and second senses doubling upon first, and third upon 
 second, ajid so every symbol breeding families of mean- 
 ings on to the tenth or twentieth and saying always, 
 in the scripture way : " that so it might be fulfilled." 
 This fulfilling is no scripture conceit, but is the sys- 
 tematic fact of language itself. 
 
 We shall get further insight into this matter by 
 just considering the state of mind a prophet is in 
 when he writes. He is lifted by his inspiration into 
 a state of high beholding, as regards some matter 
 which is to be the particular subject of his testimony; 
 and the divine perceptiveness thus quickened in him, — 
 so far the particular matter he sees, — will be the spec- 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 257 
 
 ially God-given import of his message. Thou lie is 
 to conceive, express, set forth in words for himself 
 what is in his beholding. But he cannot testify any 
 thing unknown, we see at once, save by images taken 
 from the known. Suppose him to be set in some high 
 pose of seership that really relates, if he could say it, 
 to our new western world and the new day some time 
 here to be seen. He cannot say "America," for that 
 is a name not known as Grecia was. If he says, 
 " beyond the sea," it would only mean outside the 
 pillars of Hercules or Gibraltar Rock. He cannot 
 seize on images in the Gulf Stream, or the Mam- 
 moth Cave, or Niagara, or the great lakes, or the 
 forests, or the prairies, or the rivers, or the fierce, 
 wild warriors of the woods. He has not an image 
 distinctly American in his whole stock. What then 
 can he say ? Manifestly nothing ; because he has 
 nothing in which to say it. Possibly some of Isaiah's 
 pictures of the "Isles waiting for God," and "the 
 ships of Tarshish bringing sons from far, their silver 
 and their gold with them," may have a look this way, 
 taking old Tarshish for a figure, but we can never 
 know. Under this same law, we have the fact of 
 creation, as given in the first chapter of Genesis, 
 beautifully illustrated. No human spectator saw the 
 creation, and the only way in which it could ever be 
 reported was by a kind of prophecy backward. Some 
 great prophet soul, we may imagine, coasting round 
 the work of God in a power of holy insight, or divine 
 beholding, framed, as it were, his own divine concept 
 
258 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 tion of the fact as progressive, drawing itself on by 
 irregular, indefinite stages, — no matter how long or 
 short, or even how many, — and to set the stages forth, 
 he caught up the natural time-spacing symbol of days, 
 and made up a chapter of progressions that took a 
 week of days before it was finished. To conceive 
 anything more pitiful than the grubbing literalism 
 that cannot think of days going thus into metaphor 
 because they are in the Almanac would, I think, be 
 difficult. Was there ever a case for metaphor more 
 easily discernible beforehand ? 
 
 We perceive in these illustrations how every reve- 
 lator and teacher of things spiritual or things future, 
 gets and must get his power to express the unknown 
 by drawing images and figures from the known. As 
 he must portray the new world by some old image of 
 a Tarshish in the sea, or by some other like symbol, if 
 he does at all, or the creation by the spacing figure of 
 days, or heaven by the image of a paradise, or a great 
 city Jerusalem, so it must be with everything. 
 
 Thus if God is to be himself revealed, he has 
 already thrown out symbols for it, filling the creation 
 full of them, and these will all be played into meta- 
 phor. The day will be his image, the sea, the great 
 rock's shadow, the earthquake, the dew, the fatherhood 
 care of the child, and the raven and the feeble folk of 
 the conies, — all that the creation is and contains, in all 
 depths and heights and latitudes and longitudes of 
 space, — everything expresses God by some image that 
 is fit, as far as it goes. " Day unto day uttereth 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 259 
 
 speech, and night unto night showcth knowledge." 
 Metaphor on metaphor crowds the earth and the skies, 
 bearing each a face that envisages the Eternal Mind, 
 whose word or wording forth it is to be. Again he 
 takes a particular people into covenant specially with 
 himself, just in order to make their public history the 
 Providential metaphor, so to speak, of his rulership 
 and redeeming teachership, leading them on and about 
 by his discipline, and raising light and shade as be- 
 tween them and the world-kingdoms of the false 
 gods about them, to set himself in relief as the true 
 Lord of all. And then, following still the same law 
 of expression by outward fact and image, he crowns 
 the revelation process by the incarnate life and life- 
 story of his Son, erecting on earth a supernatural 
 kingdom to govern the world in the interest of his 
 supernatural redemption. And if we do not take the 
 word in some light, frivolous, merely rhetoricktrrway, 
 we can say nothing of Christ so comprehensively ade- 
 quate as to call him the metaphor of God ; God's last 
 metaphor ! And when we have gotten all the meta- 
 phoric meanings of his life and death, all that is ex- 
 pressed and bodied in his person of God's saving help 
 and new-creating, sin-forgiving, reconciling love, the 
 sooner we dismiss all speculations on the literalities of 
 his incarnate miracles, his derivation, the composition 
 of his person, his suffering, — plainly transcendent as 
 regards our possible understanding, — the wiser shall 
 we be in our discipleship. We shall have him as the 
 express image of God's person. We shall have " the 
 
260 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the 
 face of Jesus Christ." Beholding in him as in a 
 glass the glory of the Lord, we shall be changed into 
 the same image. The metaphoric contents are ours, 
 and beyond that nothing is given. 
 
 Going on then to matters of spiritual use and ex- 
 perience in what we call the doctrine of his gospel, 
 we have these given also to the imagination in terms of 
 metaphor. As far back as the days of Abraham and 
 Moses, words and images for this kind of use were 
 very scantily provided. Even prayer was best de- 
 scribed as a wrestling match. The prophets found 
 images more nearly sufficient. And when Christ 
 came, great images were evoked that never had been 
 used before. He was called a door to be entered, a 
 bread from heaven to be fed upon, a water of life to 
 quench the thirst, life, way, shepherd, healer, teacher, 
 master, king, and rock. And when the very point of 
 a new life begun is to be explained or expounded, he 
 draws on the well-known fact of proselyte baptism 
 and calls it regeneration : "Art thou a master in Israel 
 and knowest not these things ? " Have you not seen 
 the Gentile proselyte, before unclean, washed by a 
 baptism and so regenerated, born over, naturalized, as 
 we say, in Israel ? So the unclean soul of sin, born 
 of water and the Spirit, is entered, as a spiritually 
 new man, into the kingdom of God. The great expe- 
 rience wrought is imaged thus, how beautifully and 
 comprehensively, as a change from the unclean to the 
 clean ; and so the soul that was alien from God is 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 261 
 
 inducted into citizenship in God's everlasting king- 
 dom. No finest words of analysis and psychologic 
 statement could describe the great mystery of the 
 Spirit half as effectively. So in the same chapter, the 
 same thing is set forth under the image of the ser- 
 pent lifted up in the wilderness. " Look unto me," 
 says the Great Teacher now to be lifted up, " and, by 
 that fixed beholding of your faith, the sin-plague in 
 you shall be healed." That plague in its secret work- 
 ing, that healing in its secret cure, who shall describe 
 it psychologically, even as this simple image does by 
 its metaphoric use ? Both these images, however, of 
 regeneration and of spiritual healing were impossible 
 before the ministry of Providence had prepared them. 
 They came late because they could not come before. 
 The same again was true of the great reconcilia- 
 tion or atonement, in Christ's life and death. Plainly 
 there was here no lamb, no fire, no altar, no literal 
 sacrifice. There was a blood of murder, but no rite 
 in blood, no sprinkling, no kind of lustral ceremony. 
 And yet all these things are here as in metaphor, and 
 are meant to be. i One great object of the old ritual 
 was to prepare these images and get them ready as a 
 higher language for the supernatural truth. The 
 people of the law were put in training under these 
 patterns of the heavenly things, till the very mind of 
 their nation should be stocked with images and 
 metaphors thence derived for the heavenly things 
 themselves. Who could ever have conceived the 
 ministry and death of Jesus in these words of atone- 
 
262 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 ment, sacrifice, and cleansing, whose mind had not first 
 been Judaized in the stock images of its thinking ? 
 Suppose, for example, that some gifted Greek, having 
 a soul configured to Plato's methods and ideas, had 
 been with Christ, as Peter was, all through his life, 
 and then, after his death, had written his epistle to 
 expound him and his religion to the world. What 
 could he have said of him more adequate than to set 
 him forth as a beautiful and wise character doing- 
 wonders by his power ; a friend of the poor, a healer 
 of the sick, patient of contradiction, submissive to 
 enemies, meek, true, the ever good, the perfect fair ? 
 That he has done any thing which can be called his 
 sacrifice, any thing to recompose the breach of sin or 
 to reconcile the world to God, will not occur to him, 
 and he has no words to speak of any such thing. Not 
 one matter most distinctively prominent in Christ's 
 work, as expounded by his apostles^ filling out in 
 metaphoric glory all the terms of the altar, could have 
 been given, or even thought by him. All the better, 
 many will now say ; we shall gladly be rid of all such 
 altar figures ; for it is too late in the day to be mak- 
 ing Hebrews of us now. But suppose it should hap- 
 pen to be true that the all-wise God made Hebrews 
 partly for this very thing, to bring figures into speech 
 that Greeks and Saxons had not ; that so he might 
 give to the world the perfectly transcendent, super- 
 natural matter of a grace that reaches high enough to 
 cover and compose the relations of men to his gov- 
 ernment, a grace of reconciliation. Call the words 
 
TO THE IMAtil N A T I N . 263 
 
 "old clothes" then of the Hebrews, putting what 
 contempt we may upon them, still they are such types 
 ami metaphors of God's mercy as he has been able to 
 prepare, and Christ is in them as in "glorious ap- 
 parel ! " Why to say : " Behold the Lamb of God, 
 that taketh away the sin of the world," signifies, in 
 the heart's uses, more than whole volumes of palaver 
 in any possible words of natural languge. Xo living- 
 disciple, having once gotten the sense of these types 
 of the altar. Will ever try to get his gospel out of 
 them and preach it in the common terms of language. 
 Quite as certainly will he never try, having once got- 
 ten their meaning, to hold them literally, — Christ 
 made literally sin for us, a literal Lamb, literal sacri- 
 fice, bleeding literally for the uses of his blood. But 
 he will want them as the dear interpreters and equiva- 
 lents of God's mercy in the cross, putting himself 
 before them to read and read again, and drink and 
 drink again their full divine meanings into his soul. 
 Beholding more truths in their faces than all the con- 
 trived theories and speculated propositions of schools, 
 lie will stay fast by them, or in them, wanting never 
 to get clear of them, or away from the dear and still 
 more dear impression of their power. 
 
 . So far on our way in discovering the close relation- 
 ship of God's, revelations and /the inlet function of 
 imagination to which they are given, I cannot do 
 more, in this part of the subject, than simply to gen- 
 eralize the argument by just calling attention to the 
 fact that so great a part of our Bible is made up of 
 
264 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 compositions that are essentially poetic, — nearly all of 
 it, except the parts rigidly historic or didactic, and 
 even these have their prose largely sprinkled with 
 poetry. History itself, in fact, is but a kind of figure, 
 having its greatest value, not in what it is, but in what 
 it signifies. Besides, the scripture books most nearly 
 theologic are handling truths every moment, as we see 
 at a glance, by their images. How didactic are the 
 parables, and yet they are only metaphors drawn out ! 
 In the same way the disciples are God's living epis- 
 tles, temples of the Holy Ghost, cities on hills, work- 
 ing as servants, running as in races, beholding as in 
 glasses, — every single point of instruction comes out 
 in some metaphor, so that we may safely challenge 
 the specification of one that does not. And when we 
 look into the argumentations we find them also hang- 
 ing on figures of speech, such as law, circumcision, 
 heart, grace, kingdom, life, motions of sins, liberty, 
 flesh. Take up the chapters of Paul that are most 
 closely reasoned, the fifth to the ninth, for example, 
 of the Epistle to the Romans, and the scholar's eye, 
 if not the common reader's, will discover some meta- 
 phor showing its face and turning the current of 
 meaning in every sentence and in almost every prin- 
 cipal word. Nay, it will be seen that even the little 
 prepositions are struggling as hard in the metaphoric 
 revelations as any of the other images concerned 
 Thus when we read : " of many offences unto justifi- 
 cation ; " " dead to the law by the body of Christ ; " 
 " through righteousness unto eternal life ; " " of faith 
 that it might be by grace ; " we see the meanings 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 265 
 
 hanging quite as visibly on these little words as on 
 the more prominent, and we go back, as it were, to 
 their spatial images, before we get the meanings 
 hitched in fit relationship. In as many as two cases 
 they occur in triads, where some of our subtlest in- 
 terpreters discover, as they think, affinities that tally 
 secretly with the higher relativities of trinity : " For 
 of him and through him, and to him ; " " One God 
 and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
 and in you all." So strikingly is it shown us, every- 
 where on the face of scripture, that it is a gift in 
 metaphor to the world's imagination. 
 
 Only God forbid that, when we draw ourselves out 
 on this conclusion, we be understood to mean by the 
 imagination what the rhetoricians teach, in the girlish 
 definitions of their criticism. They describe it as a 
 kind of ornamental, mind's-milliner faculty, that excels 
 in the tricking out of subjects in high-wrought meta- 
 phoric draperies, and such they call " imaginative 
 writing." As I am speaking here, the imagination 
 has nothing to do with ornament. It is that which 
 dawns in beauty like the day because the day is in it ; 
 that power in human bosoms which reads the types of 
 the creation, beholding the stamps of God's meanings 
 in their faces ;/me power that distinguishes truths 
 in their images, and seizes hold of images for the 
 expression of truths. ) So that a free, great soul, when 
 it is charged with thoughts so high, and fresh behold- 
 ings in such vigor of life, that it cannot find how to 
 express itself otherwise, docs it by images and meta- 
 
2C6 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 phors in flame that somehow body the meaning to 
 imaginative apprehension. 
 
 Holding now this view of truth as presenting itself 
 always by images metaphorically significant, never by 
 any other possible means or media, it is very clear 
 that all our modes of use and processes of interpreta- 
 tion must be powerfully affected by such a discovery. 
 
 First of all it must follow, as a principal consequence, 
 that truth is to be gotten by a right beholding of the 
 forms or images by which it is expressed. Ingenuity 
 will miss it by overdoing ; mere industry will do 
 scarcely more than muddle it ; only candor, a graciously 
 open, clean candor will find it. We can take the sense 
 of its images, only by offering a perfectly receptive 
 imagination to them, a plate to fall upon that is flavored 
 by no partisanship, corrugated by no bigotry, blotched 
 by no prejudice or passion, warped by no self-will. 
 There is nothing we cannot make out of them, by a 
 very little abuse, or perversity. They are innocent 
 people who can never vindicate themselves when 
 wronged, further than to simply stand and wait for a 
 more ingenuous beholding. And it is to be a very 
 great part of our honor and advantage in the truth, 
 that we have it by the clean docility and noble rever- 
 ence that make us capable of it. We shall not be 
 afraid of worshiping its images ; for they are not 
 graven images, but faces that express the truth because 
 they are faces of God. We want, in fact, as a first 
 condition, a mind so given to truth that our love and 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 267 
 
 reverence shall open all our sympathies to it and quite 
 indispose us to any violent practice on its terms. 
 
 All mere logically constructive practice on them, 
 twisting meanings into them, or out of them, that are 
 only deducible from their forms and are no part of 
 their real significance, must be jealously restrained. 
 Nicodemus was falling straightway into this kind of 
 mischief, when the words " born again " put him on 
 asking, whether a man can be born of his mother a 
 second time ? It was in the form of the words, but 
 how far off from their meaning ! So, when it is 
 declared that God is a rock and that God is a river, 
 what follows, since things that are equal to the same 
 things are, in strict logic, equal to one another, but 
 that a rock is a river ? Meantime God was not de- 
 clared to be either rock or river, except in a very 
 partial, metaphoric way. In the same way Christ is 
 called a priest, and a sacrifice, and it follows in good 
 logic that a priest is a sacrifice. Nobody happens, it 
 is true, to have reasoned in just this manner, but how 
 many do reason that, being called a priest and a sac- 
 rifice, he must be exactly both in the sense of the 
 ritual ; when, in fact, he is neither priest nor sacrifice, 
 save in such a sense as these words, taken as meta- 
 phors, are able to convey. Nothing is to be gotten 
 ever, by spinning conclusions out of the mere forms 
 or images of truth, but mischief and delusion. And 
 the record of religion is full of just this kind of delu- 
 sion. All mere logical handlings are vicious, unless 
 they are so far qualified by insight that insight gives 
 
268 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 the truth, and then, of course, they are not wanted. 
 Indeed, there is nothing in which the world is so 
 miserably cheated, as in the admiration it yields to 
 what is most logically deductive concerning moral and 
 religious questions. It is even the worst kind of fault, 
 unless it be only meant, as it often is when we say it, 
 that they are written with true intellectual insight, 
 which is a very different matter. 
 
 But we must have a theology, some will say ; how can 
 religion or religious truth get body, or any firm hold 
 of the world, without a theology ? And what is the- 
 ology ? It is very commonly supposed to be a specu- 
 lated system of doctrine, drawn out in propositions 
 that are clear of all metaphor and are stated in terms 
 that have finally obtained a literal and exact sense. 
 But no such system is possible, for the very plain 
 reason that we have no such terms. We have a great 
 many words that have lost their roots or have come 
 to be so far staled by use that the figures in their 
 bases do not obtrude themselves on our notice. But if 
 we suppose, as we very commonly do in all the logi- 
 cal uses of speculation, that they have become exact 
 coins, or algebraic notations for the ideas represented 
 by them, we are in a great mistake. When they are 
 framed into propositions there is always some element 
 of figure in the other words conjoined, or in the gram- 
 mar of their prepositions, which makes a figure of the 
 sentences constructed. If there is anything we miss 
 in the really supreme merit of Professor Whitney's 
 late book on language, it is a chapter showing at what 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 269 
 
 poi nt the constructive processes of language leave it, 
 as regards the possibilities of an exact notation, for 
 the uses of moral and religious speculation. His 
 beautiful analysis and fine critical perception would 
 have shown us, I have no question, that theologic and 
 moral science are about as deep in metaphor as 
 prophecy and poetry themselves. 
 
 Some years ago one of our most brilliant, most 
 esteemed teachers of theology published a discourse 
 on " The Theology of the Intellect and the Feeling," 
 meaning, it will be seen, by the Feeling, that which 
 feels, or takes the poetic sense of figures and images ; 
 the same that I am calling here the Imagination. But 
 the Intellect, he conceives, comes in, after all such 
 vague presences or presentations to the feeling, gathers 
 up the varieties, eliminates the contrarieties, and puts 
 down in the terms of an exact language the real 
 Christian doctrine. Taking, for example, the mani- 
 fold various terms and figures employed in the meta- 
 phoric draperies of scripture language relating to the 
 beginning of a new life, — "repent," "believe," "make 
 you a new heart," " be converted," " born again," — 
 " the intellect," he says, " educes light from the col- 
 lision of these repugnant phrases, and then modifies 
 and reconciles them into the doctrine," — literal now, 
 exact, full-made theology, — " that the character of our 
 race needs an essential transformation by an interposed 
 influence from God." It does not appear to be observed, 
 that this very sentence, which affirms the great, 
 inevitable, scientific truth of regeneration, is itself 
 
-70 OUE GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 packed fall : figures and images, and is, in : 
 Lnterpretable onlj with more difficulty and more 
 ambiguity than any and all the figures proposed to be 
 resolved b j it Thus, for a first metaphor, we have 
 './•:" and what is character? Literally it is 
 >n. Then naturally it is one thing, 
 morally another, spiritually another. Is it external? 
 Is it internal I Is it made up ■;: acta and habits I Is 
 it the general purpose of the man ? Or is it a birth 
 into good affections by the Spirit of God ? Or is it 
 both ? There is almost nothing we conceive so 
 variously, and unsteadily, and advance upon by ac 
 many rectifications, even to the end of Mir. as this 
 matter of character. •■ Xi-tds : " and by what kind of 
 ssity : Is it in the sense that we have full capac- 
 ity, which, in our | erversity 3 v^e will not nse? Or in 
 the sense that we have no capacity '; Or that we have 
 a receptive, or a partly receptive and partly :~:~~: 
 capacity ? Do we need the change before believing, 
 or after believing, or by and through believing ? 
 - .£V> dial transformation" Here we have two figures 
 dead enough to be packed together, and which yet. if 
 they were less dead, could hardly be joined at all. 
 One relates to what is inmost, viz.. to what is in the 
 essence of a thing, and the other to what is outm st, 
 the/brai of a thing. In what sense then essenti 
 In what a transformation? In how many senses 
 lighter and deeper san the words be taken: -Intt - 
 post J influtnce:" first a word oi pose or position; 
 secondly, a word of motion, or flow. And what is 
 
TO TIIE IMAGINATION. 271 
 
 the inflow or influence, and what is it posited between? 
 Th • I k>spel revelation by Christ's life and death is one 
 mode of influence : the power of the spirit is another ; 
 the power of sacraments another: the human exam- 
 ple of Jr>us another. The influence maybe summed 
 up in truth, or it may be God's direct agency one side 
 of truth. Gould we but settle this one word influenet 
 alone, about all the great church controversies of 
 eighteen centuries would be settled. " From " : in 
 what sense from ? Is it by God from without ? Or 
 ly God within ? Is it by God directly, or by God 
 medially, as in the Gospel 2 Or is it only from God 
 as the source in whatever manner ? Xow I do not 
 mean that, knowing who the author of this general 
 proposition is. we have so many doubts about his 
 meaning in it. but that, bringing to it all the beliefs 
 and misbeliefs of the world and the age. we have all 
 these and a full thousand other questions raised by 
 it. In one view it may be true that it " educes light ; " 
 at any rate there may be uses in a proposition thus 
 generalized : and yet it was possible to be made, only 
 because the words were staled in so many ambiguities. 
 And all the terms of theology are under the same 
 conditions. TTe think we are coming down, perhaps. 
 on exajct statements; because we are coming down 
 upon /words that forget their figures, land yet the 
 propositions are all woven up in figures, and cover 
 ambiguities only the more subtle that we do not see 
 them. 
 
 But we must have science, sume will remember ; 
 
272 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 is there any hope for theologic science left ? Xone at 
 all. I answer most unequivocally. Human language 
 is a gift to the imagination so essentially metaphoric, 
 
 warp and woof, that it lias no exact blocks of mean- 
 ing to build a science of. Who would ever think of 
 building up a science of Homer, Shakespeare, Milton ? 
 And the Bible is not a whit less poetic, or a whit 
 less metaphoric. or a particle less difficult to be propo- 
 sitionized in the terms of the understanding. Shall 
 we then have nothing to answer, when the sweeping 
 question is put. why philosophy and every other study 
 should make advances, and theology be only spinning 
 its old circles and revising and re-revising its old 
 problems ? It must be enough to answer that philoso- 
 phy, metaphysical philosophy, having only metaphor 
 to work in, is under exactly the same limitation ; that 
 it is always backing and filling, and turning and 
 returning, in the same manner ; that nobody can 
 name a single question that has ever been settled by 
 all the systems it has built and the newly contrived 
 nomenclatures it has invented. Working always in 
 metaphors and fooling itself, how commonly, by meta- 
 phor, it gets a valuable gymnastic in words, and pre- 
 pares to a more full and many-sided conception of 
 words. So far it is fruitful and good, and just so far 
 also is the scientific labor of theology. After all it 
 is simple insight in both, and not speculation, that 
 has the true discernment. Words give up their deep- 
 est, truest meaning, only when they are read as im- 
 ages of the same. 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 273 
 
 Bat we must have definitions, it will be urged, else 
 we cannot be sure what we mean by our words, and 
 when we have the definitions, why can we not have 
 science ? But if we mean by definitions an exact 
 literal measurement of ideas, no such thing is possi- 
 ble. In what we call our definitions, whether in the- 
 ology, or moral philosophy, we only put one set of 
 metaphors in place of another, and, if we understand 
 ourselves, there may be a certain use in doing it, even 
 as there is in shifting our weight upon the other leg ; 
 perhaps we make ourselves more intelligible by doing 
 it. And yet there is a very great imposture lurking 
 almost always in these definitions. Thus if I may 
 define a definition, the very word shows it to be a 
 bounding off ; where it happens, not unlikely, that a 
 whole heaven's breadth of meaning is bounded out 
 and lost ; where again, secondly, it results that the 
 narrow part bounded in and cleared of all grand 
 overplus of meaning, is just as much diminished as it 
 is made more clear and certain; and thirdly, that 
 what one has bounded out another will have bounded 
 in, either in whole or in part ; whereupon debates 
 begin, and schools and sects arise, clinging to their 
 several half-truths and doing fierce battle for them. 
 And probably another and still worse result will ap- 
 pear ; for the generous broad natures that were going 
 to be captivated by truth's free images, having them 
 now defined and set in propositional statements, will, 
 how often, be offended by their narrow theologic look 
 and reject them utterly. Nothing makes infidels 
 more surely than the spinning, splitting, nerveless 
 
27 ± OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 refinements of theology. This endeavor, always go- 
 ing on, to get the truths of religion away from the 
 imagination, into propositions of the speculative un- 
 derstanding, makes a most dreary and sad history, — 
 a history of divisions, recriminations, famishings. 
 vanishings and general uncharitableness. Lively, full, 
 fresh, free as they were, the definitions commonly cut 
 off their wings and reduce them to mere pebbles of 
 significance. Before they were plants alive and in 
 flower, now the flavors are gone, the juices dried and 
 the skeleton parts packed away and classified in the 
 dry herbarium called theology. 
 
 TTe deplore, how often, with how great concern, and 
 with prayers to God in which we wrestle heavily, our 
 manifold sects and divisions. "We turn the matter 
 every way, contriving new platforms and better arti- 
 cles of dogma, and commonly find that, instead of 
 gathering ourselves into a new and more complete 
 unity, we have only raised new sects and aggravated 
 the previous distractions. And yet/many cannot con- 
 ceive that the gospel is a faith, only in that way to be 
 received, and so the bond of unhy\J They are going 
 still to think out a gospel, assuming that the Church 
 has no other hope as regards this matter but in the 
 completing of a scientific theology ; which will proba- 
 bly be accomplished about the same time that words 
 are substituted by algebraic notations, and poetry 
 reduced to the methods of the calculus or the loga- 
 rithmic tables. There was never a hope wider of 
 reason. The solar system will die before either that 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 275 
 
 or the hope of a complete philosophy is accomplished. 
 
 No, we must go back to words, and compose our dif- 
 ferences in them as they are, exploring them more by 
 our faith and less by our speculative thinking. Hav- 
 ing them as a gift to the imagination, we must stay 
 in them as such, and feel out our agreement there in 
 a common trust, and love, and worship. 
 
 See how it is with our two great schools or sects , 
 called Calvinism and Arminianism. The points at 
 issue in the propositional methods of their theology 
 are forever unreconcilable. They stand over against 
 each other like Gerizim and Ebal. And yet they 
 have a perfect understanding when they pray together, 
 because they pray their faith out through their im- 
 aginative forms, and drop the word-logic forms of the 
 Babel they before were building. 
 
 Again, we have a grand fundamental and most 
 practical truth that we call trinity ; Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost, one God. These three images are God 
 as delivered to the imagination, and the grammatic 
 threeness in w^hich they stand is a truth in metaphor, 
 even as the grammatic personalities are metaphoric 
 and not literal persons ; and the God-idea, figured 
 under these relativities, obtains, in the resulting mys- 
 tery, the largest, freshest, liveliest impression possi- 
 ble. In what manner, at what point, the unity and 
 plurality meet, we may never know. TTe only know 
 that the unity is absolute and eternal ; and the three- 
 ness, either a necessary incident of God's revelations, 
 or of his own self-conscious activities considered as 
 
:hi :t-t.i:::~ :•: ih^j :: ilzisiii; 
 etemaL We also know that usin*r the 
 
 ^~t : .1- : kzL:-nr ii_;.i i>-_i_ t - "It ;^:: ::r:/- ;- 
 
 apart, we have God is he is, and coalesce in 
 
 him _ perfect mrifcy Bnt we cannot rest in 
 
 - m - - b wiser; so we begin to speculate and 
 
 iiiit ii :. ilnliiy Z"t — t i:i linn - - n? 
 
 lin It :t-t_"t i 7 "It :r-= ill ~- ~~ - : l*i -.- 
 
 hit : Ani — "hit ii'T ..-..-' ii -vi- i_5 . > :_::■ 
 —ill Ti_ t - r: :i > --.- i._ iim - : -- li i: 
 
 : r. :vi— i~ — : V; f i_. ~t ^ihii : : ili - r> 
 
 ?.:i_5 :n :i lii miiiiii:r-^r:rli 11 ni:i iiiei 
 :._1 :.i t 1: iIt 1 :: : ; i_ — in iisiIhi-t niiliisii : n;i 
 ;.- " tI_i~- i: iziiy :.~. i_ t n~f _ i__ ~~ t _ t_ ii 
 
 ~t si 7 — t ii~i. In :_1 _ : -'iitt 15 : vi:.n i . ! 
 ii J; in. lizifs. ml ?i:-r I'-f-r 1:1 
 
 i :iin_. 
 i := :li 
 :1 ii 1t- 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 277 
 
 prised to find, as he goes on to assert the Father, 
 always the Father, under the type of a finite person- 
 ality, that his God is gradually losing dimensions and 
 growing smaller and smaller, even to worship itself^/ 
 The three metaphoric persons were going, at once, to 
 save God's personality and his magnitudes, by the 
 maze and mystery created, but now they are gone, and 
 the one finite personality left sinks everything with it 
 to the ground ; so that one, and another, and another 
 of the great authors in this key begin, spontaneously, 
 to make up size for their deity, by speaking of the 
 gods, and what is due the gods. How plain is it now 
 that, if we all could take the scripture one and three, 
 as given to the imagination, pouring in at that free 
 gate to get our broadest possible knowledge of God, 
 we should neither starve in the one, nor be distracted 
 in the three, nor worried by controversy with each 
 other as regards either one or three. 
 
 So when we come to the person of Christ ; what he 
 is to the imagination, as the express image of God, 
 God thus manifest in the flesh, is everything ; what 
 he is in his merely human personality, and how that 
 personality is related to and unified with the divine 
 nature, is nothing. All is easy when we take him for 
 what of God is expressed in him ; but when we raise 
 our psychologic problem in his person, insisting on 
 finding exactly what and how much is in it, and how 
 it is compacted, we are out of our limit, and our spec- 
 ulation is only profane jangling. 
 
 Exactly the same thing is true in respect to the 
 
278 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 metaphors of the altar, when applied to signify Christ's 
 saving work and sacrifice. Take them as they rise in 
 the apostolic teachings, God's figures for the men of 
 old, in the time then present, and for us in the time now 
 present ; then as facts of atoning, now as metaphors 
 of the same ; and they will be full of God's meaning, 
 we shall know ourselves atoned once for all by their 
 power. But if we undertake to make a science out of 
 them, and speculate them into a rational theory, it 
 will be no gospel that we make, but a poor dry jargon 
 rather ; a righteousness that makes nobody righteous, 
 a justice satisfied by injustice, a mercy on the basis 
 of pay, a penal deliverance that keeps on foot all the 
 penal liabilities. All attempts to think out the cross 
 and have it in dogmatic statement have resulted only 
 in disagreement and distraction. And yet there is a 
 remarkable consent of utterance, we plainly discover, 
 when the cross is preached, as for salvation's sake, in 
 the simple use of the scripture symbols taken all as 
 figures for the time then present. 
 
 Once more, even that most intractable and seemingly 
 unreducible division, in which communion is broken 
 across the mere form of Baptism, when there is an ad- 
 mitted agreement and even ready acknowledgment in 
 the living truth of experience, will at once be rectified 
 by simply consenting to make due account of meta- 
 phor. Nothing is more clear on the face of the rite 
 than that it has its whole significance as a metaphor 4 
 even as the Supper is a metaphor of hospitality. As 
 a mere touch of the elements too in the Supper signi- 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 279 
 
 tee metaphorically more than the gorging of a full 
 meal, so the mere touch of that most pure, pure ele- 
 ment, water, signifies practically more of the cleans- 
 ing than a bowl, or a barrel, or a full bath. A sprin- 
 kle of clean water makes clean, a washing of the feet 
 makes clean every whit. Nothing then is wanted for 
 communion here, but for every brother to know that 
 every other holds and means a baptism in the figure 
 of a cleansing by the Spirit. Peter the apostle was 
 able to draw this matter of baptism to a still finer 
 point. For as Noah's flood was the world's cleansing, 
 he declares that " the like figure, even baptism [bap- 
 tism was a figure, as we see, to him] doth also now 
 save us." In that water voyage of Noah, there 
 was baptism enough, in his view, to serve as the anal- 
 ogon of salvation, though the particular point of the 
 story was that, while the ark was sufficiently deluged 
 with rain, Noah and his household were kept dry. I 
 make nothing here of the burial figure, save that the 
 cleansing itself imports a consecration in which there 
 is, of course, a death to the world. Burials in water 
 are not among human events. Will not our Baptist bro- 
 therhood some time awake to their privilege, in the 
 discovery, that they may rightly own as the baptized 
 all such as have truly meant baptism, and signified 
 the same faith with them in God's all-cleansing Spirit, — 
 which is the all of baptism ? Go back here to the 
 metaphor and keep that good, and nothing more is 
 wanted, or can, without wrong, be required as the 
 gospel condition of acknowledgment and unity. Noth- 
 
280 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 ing more will be required when the day of promised 
 brotherhood and liberty arrives. 
 
 Here then is the point on which all sects and divi- 
 sions may be gravitating and coming into settled 
 unity. What is wanted, above all things, for this end 
 is not that we carefully compose our scientific theol- 
 ogy, but that we properly observe, and are principally 
 concerned to know God in his own appointed images 
 and symbols. y We must get our light by perusing the 
 faces of his truth ; we must behold him with reverent 
 desire in the mirrors that reveal him, caring more to 
 have our insight purged than to spin deductions and 
 frame propositions that are in the modes of science or 
 of system. We shall of course have opinions concern- 
 ing it. A considerable activity in opinions is even 
 desirable, because it will sharpen our perceptiveness 
 of the symbols and draw us on, in that manner, to- 
 wards a more general and perfect agreement. Only 
 our opinions must be opinions, not laws, either to us 
 or to anybody ; perhaps they will change color some- 
 what even by to-morrow. We must also understand 
 that our opinions or propositional statements are just 
 as truly in metaphor as the scripture itself, only met- 
 aphor probably which is a good deal more covert and 
 often as much more ambiguous. We may draw as 
 many creeds as we please, the more the better, if we 
 duly understand that they are standards only as being 
 in metaphor, and not in terms of exact notation. Xone 
 the less properly standard is the Nicene Creed, that 
 it is given visibly to the imagination, and has even its 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 281 
 
 highest merit at the point where it takes on figure up 
 to the degree of paradox : " God of God, Light of 
 Light, Very God of Very God." Visibly absurd, im- 
 possible, false to mere speculation, it is even the more 
 sublimely, solidly true. There has never, in fact, been 
 a dissent from it which did not take it away first from 
 the imagination and give it to the notional under- 
 standing. 
 
 And yet there will be many who can see no possi- 
 bility, taking this view of the Christian truth, of any 
 thing solid left. We set every thing afloat, they will 
 say ; nothing definite and fixed remains to be the 
 base-work of a firm-set, stanchly effective gospel. 
 /What is the Christian truth but a dissolving view of 
 something to be known only by its shadows ? , But 
 we are easily imposed upon here by whatTias no 
 such value as we think. We commence our think- 
 ing process at some point, we analyze, we deduce, 
 we define, we construct, and when we have got- 
 ten the given truth out of its scripture images into 
 our own, and made an opinion or definited thing of 
 it, we think we have touched bottom in it and feel 
 a certain confidence of having so much now estab- 
 lished. But the reason is, not that /we have made the 
 truth more true, but that we have entered our own 
 self-assertion into it in making an opinion or dogma 
 of it, and have so far given a positivity to it that is 
 from ourselves. /And yet, the real fact is exactly con- 
 trary ; viz., that there is just as much less of solidity 
 in it as there is more that is from ourselves. We take 
 
282 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 up, for example, the doctrine so-called of repentance, 
 and we find a certain word representing it which 
 means thinking over, changing the mind, and then 
 we lay it down as the positive doctrine that repentance 
 is forming a new governing purpose. That sounds 
 very definite, quite scientific ; something we have now 
 found that is clear and determinate. But it turns out, 
 after a few years of preaching in this strain, that the 
 truth we thought so solid is so inadequately true after 
 all as not to have the value we supposed. As a 
 merely one-figure doctrine it is of the lean-kine order, 
 and we get no sense of breadth and body in the change 
 defined, till we bring in all the other figures, the 
 " godly sorrow," the " carefulness," the "self-clearing," 
 the " indignation," the " fear," the " vehement desire," 
 the " zeal," the " revenge," conceiving all these fruits 
 to be from God's inward cogency working thus in us to 
 will and to do. Now we take broad hold ; these are 
 the solidities of a completely, roundly adequate concep- 
 tion. 
 
 We never so utterly mistake as when we attempt to 
 build up in terms of opinion something more solid and 
 decisively controlling, than what comes to us in the 
 terms of the imagination ; that is, by metaphor. The 
 Scriptures, we repeat how often, commend us to 
 " sound doctrine," and assuming this to be the same 
 as doctrine well speculated, we begin to magnify and 
 breed sound doctrine after that fashion ; whereas, they 
 only mean /sound-making, health-restoring j [hygeian] 
 doctrine ; which is sure enough indeed to Keep good, 
 because it is sure to be wanted, having always in it 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 283 
 
 the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 
 The most food-full doctrine is, in this view, the sound- 
 est . Is there any theologic article or church confession 
 more solid and fixedly standard-like in its ideas than 
 the Psalms and the Prophets ? The parables of Christ, 
 — what are they but images and figures visible given 
 to the imagination 1 ) We turn them a thousand ways 
 in our interpretations, it may be, but we revere them 
 none the less and hold them none the less firmly, that 
 they are rich enough to justify this liberty. A partic- 
 ular one of them in fact, the parable of the prodigal 
 son, is even a kind of; pole-star in the sky of the 
 gospel, kbout which formulas, and creeds, and confes- 
 sions, are always revolving in ephemeral changes, 
 while that abides and shines. Again there is nothing, 
 as we all are wont to feel, that is more solid than our 
 heavenly state, and we call it, in that view, the city 
 that hath foundations. And yet we have no formula 
 that defines it, and no single word of description for 
 it that is not confessedly a figure. It is a garden, a 
 tabernacle, a bosom of Abraham, a new Jerusalem, a 
 city of God cubically built on stones that are gems. 
 If then, nothing is solid, as some will be ready to 
 judge, that is representable only in terms of the imag- 
 ination, our hopes are all afloat in the sky, or on the 
 air, and our heaven is but a phantom-state which, 
 determinately speaking, is just nowhere and nothing. 
 And yet we do not think so. No Christian^ man or 
 woman has any such misgiving. Again, (why is it 
 that no dogmatic solution of the cross, solid enough 
 
284 OUR GOSPEL A GIFT 
 
 to hold the faith of the world, has ever yet been made, 
 while the gospel figures of it are accepted always, 
 rested in and regarded as the pillar of all comfort and 
 hope 1j 
 
 Glancing for just a moment at one or two more 
 strictly human illustrations, what utterance of mortal 
 mind, in what scheme of theology or church confes- 
 sion, has ever proved its adamantine property as 
 fixedly as the Apostles' Creed ? And yet there is not a 
 single word of opinion or speculated wisdom in it. It 
 stands wholly in figure, or what is no wise different, 
 in facts that were given to be figure. But if there is 
 any realm of central, astronomic order, it has been 
 this fact-form, truly Copernican confession, about 
 which all the orbits of all the saints, have, in all ages, 
 been revolving. 
 
 Summon again for comparison two such masters of 
 doctrine as Turretin and Bunyan ; one a great expoun- 
 der in the school of dogma, and the other a teacher 
 by and before the imagination. Which of these shall 
 we say is the more solid and immovably fixed in 
 authority? The venerable dogmatizer is already far 
 gone by, and will ere long be rather a milestone of 
 history than a living part of it. His carefully squared 
 blocks of opinion and the theologic temple he built of 
 them for all ages to come are already time-worn, 
 crumbling visibly away, like the stones of Tyre, and 
 as if the burden of Tyre were upon them. But* the 
 glorious Bunyan fire still burns, because it is fire, 
 kindles the world's imagination more and more, and 
 
TO THE IMAGINATION. 285 
 
 claims a righl to live till the sun itself dies out in the 
 sky. His Pilgrim holds on his way still fresh and 
 strong as ever, nay, fresher and stronger than ever, 
 never to be put off the road till the last traveler 
 heavenward is conducted in. And yet he saw before- 
 hand that he was likely to be considered a very light 
 kind of teacher, and bespoke more patience than some 
 could think he deserved. 
 
 ' 'But must I needs want solidness, because 
 
 By metaphors I speak ? Were not God's laws, 
 
 His gospel laws, in olden time, set forth, 
 
 By Shadows, Types, and Metaphors ? Yet loth 
 
 Will any sober man be to find fault 
 
 With them, lest he be found for to assault 
 
 The highest Wisdom ! No, he rather stoops, 
 
 And seeks to find out, by what 'Pins,' and 'Loops,' 
 
 By 'Calves,' and 'Sheep,' by 'Heifers,' and by 'Rams,' 
 
 By 'Birds,' and 'Herbs,' and by the blood of 'Lambs,' 
 
 God speaketh to him ; and happy is he 
 
 That finds the Light and Grace that in them be." 
 
IX. 
 
 POPULAR GOVERNMENT BY DIVINE EIGHT* 
 
 Jer. 30:21. And their nobles shall be of themselves, and their 
 governor shall proceed from the midst of them ; and I will cause 
 him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me : for who is this 
 that engaged his heart to approach unto me? saith the Lord. 
 
 Taken, as by the sound, these words appear to be a 
 kind of American Scripture ; and still more, when 
 the notably English word " nobles " is substituted, as 
 it should be in correct translation, by the singular 
 word chief or leader. Then the declaration is that 
 God will now be united to their chief or governor, so 
 that while he is one of the people, — exalted, or called 
 from among themselves, — he shall consciously and 
 even visibly rule by a divine sanction. In the restora- 
 tion at hand, it shall not, in other words, be as it was 
 before, when the kings and captains of the land were 
 so often idolaters, or infidels, but the discipline the 
 people have had in their bitter captivity shall have 
 brought them and their rulers in, at last, to God, 
 
 * Delivered on the day of the National Thanksgiving, Nov. 24, 
 1864, in the South Church, Hartford, before the congregations 
 of that and the South Baptist Church. 
 
 (286) 
 
POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 287 
 
 and given to their government a crowning authority 
 under religious ideas and sentiments. "And their 
 chief shall be of themselves, and their governor shall 
 proceed Erom the midst of them; and I will cause 
 him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me; for 
 who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto 
 me ? saith the Lord " ; — who, that is, but me, by my 
 own strong Providence in their captivity, and the 
 restoration now of their lately broken country and 
 government ? 
 
 Just as we ourselves, in this dreadful war-struggle 
 by which we are trying to vindicate and establish our 
 shattered unity, have our public feeling itself so visi- 
 bly tempered by religion, and have it even as a pleas- 
 ure, in our proclamations, dispatches, and speeches, to 
 submit ourselves, in homage and trust, to the sacred 
 name and Providential rule of God. Just as now, 
 for the first time, we issue a religious coin, with the 
 motto : " In God we trust." Just as many too of our 
 countrymen, dissatisfied with the irreligious or, at 
 least, unreligious accident, by which our Constitution 
 omits even the mention of God, began a year ago, and 
 this day are again assembled in Philadelphia, to ad- 
 vocate the memorializing of Congress for an amend- 
 ment, among others, to the Constitution, that shall 
 make some fit acknowledgment of God and of the 
 fact that human government stands in true authority 
 only when it rules in the emphasis of religious senti- 
 ments and sanctions. 
 
 What, I propose, accordingly, on the present occa- 
 sion, is to follow the train of suggestion started by 
 
288 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 the words of the prophet, showing especially this; 
 that popular governments, or such as draw out their 
 magistracies by election from among the people them- 
 selves, are not likely to be completed at the first, but 
 have commonly to be completed historically afterward, 
 and get their moral crowning of authority by a pro- 
 cess of divine discipline more or less extended. How 
 this process works, in our own case, it will be my 
 endeavor to show. And I hope to make it appear, to 
 the satisfaction of you all, that we are now come to 
 the final establishment of our government in those 
 religious sentiments and ideas, which are at once the 
 deepest bases and highest summits of a genuine 
 state authority. This, I think, we shall discover and 
 even thankfully accept, as being the true meaning of 
 the present awful chapter of our history. No people 
 of the world were ever sheltered under institutions so 
 genial and benign as ours. They have yielded us 
 blessings of freedom and security hitherto, which no 
 nation of mankind has ever enjoyed in the same de- 
 gree. But our sense of allegiance, or civic obligation 
 under these institutions, we have always felt and now 
 more than ever perceive, has hitherto been thin and 
 flashy ; as if they were, after all, inventions only of 
 man and not the ordinance of God. What more 
 stunning evidence could we have than the fact of this 
 horrid rebellion, — a whole third of the nation renounc- 
 ing their allegiance, even as by right, without so much 
 as an apparent thought of crime ! In this view let us 
 welcome God's process of training and see if we can 
 trace it. 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 289 
 
 Before proceeding, however, with the more direct 
 matter of our inquiry, let us first glance a moment at 
 the philosophic foundations of government, that we 
 may clear a way for the exposition of fact that is to 
 follow. 
 
 The more deeply we consider this matter of civil 
 government, the more nearly impossible it will be, on 
 mere grounds of philosophy, to construct a govern- 
 ment without some reference to a Supreme Being. 
 
 Thus if we say that the law is to be grounded in 
 right, right is a moral idea, at whose summit stands 
 God, as the everlasting vindicator of right. If we 
 imagine that mere enforcements will create obligation, 
 apart from any moral consideration whatever, we have 
 only to observe that when statutes are enforced by 
 fines, no good citizen is satisfied because, having 
 broken the statute, he has paid the fine. Enforce- 
 ments create fear but never obligation. True obliga- 
 tion towers above all enforcements. No touch of it 
 is ever felt, till the subject hears the state, unseen 
 yet somehow divine, commanding through the laws 
 enacted. 
 
 If we imagine that the human will of magistrates 
 may somehow create law and wield authority, what 
 do we find, in every real government, but that the 
 magistrates themselves are as truly bound by the laws 
 as the private subjects are ; and the insensible, corpo- 
 rate, everywhere electric presence of the state will 
 have magistrates and people all alike submitted to it, 
 as the instrumentalities and objects of its sway ? 
 
290 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 How plain is it, too, that civil obligation takes hold 
 of the conscience, whenever it is truly fastened upon 
 the subjects of government ! And what is the con- 
 science, but that summit of our nature where it 
 touches God ? 
 
 Nor is it any objection that the subjects of many 
 real governments are idolaters and have no rational 
 conception of God. Enough that their conscientious 
 obligations under law will reach higher than their 
 understanding, accepting with implicit and potential 
 homage the Being whom, as yet, they do not think or 
 know. 
 
 Regarding the state then as having a legitimate 
 and proper right of government only when it is a 
 factor, so to speak, in the Divine Government itself, 
 it becomes a very considerable question, when it may 
 be so considered. I cannot undertake, of course, to 
 settle all the difficult points of casuistry that may 
 here be raised. I am not required to show whether 
 the governments in Poland, France, and Mexico are 
 the ordinance of God, nor whether the governments 
 of Charles I. and Louis XVI. have ceased to be. It 
 must be enough that government, in the ordinary con- 
 dition of mankind, is universal, just as gravity is 
 universal in matter. And as gravity is just as real 
 and practically the same to them that do not know it, 
 as to them that do, so is God's ordinance of govern- 
 ment the same to them who only have it by impression, 
 as to them who have it by knowledge or opinion. The 
 real fact is that we have a nature configured inwardly 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 291 
 
 to the civil slate, and arc, in fact, civil-society crea- 
 tures. We do not even conceive the possibility of 
 living- without government. We fly to it, even the 
 world over, as the necessary shelter of our life. It 
 may be this or that, it may be in the chieftain of a 
 clan or tribe, it may be a wild, ungenial, or even a 
 bloody and barbaric absolutism ; be it what it may, the 
 civil-society nature invests it with a gloomy and blind 
 sovereignty, and bows to it as to some higher kind of 
 being, closer to God or the gods. And so the world 
 is parceled off, in all ages, into governments in the 
 most incongruous and grotesque as well as the most 
 august shapes, yet all alike, with only here and there 
 an exception, received with unquestioning homage, and 
 bearing rule in acknowledged right and authority. 
 
 Furthermore, as civil government is one of the 
 greatest interests of mankind, there is either no such 
 thing as Providence, or else it must also be one of the 
 principal cares of Providence. And it will almost 
 always be felt that the government in power is in 
 such a sense historic, that it could not well be different 
 from what it is. In that view it will be accepted as a 
 kind of Providential creation. And this is very 
 specially true of our own. It was not necessary for 
 God to give it authority by saying from the sky : 
 " This is from me." Enough that if we do not hear 
 the voice, we feel the hand. First, there is given us a 
 beginning here, in provinces, or colonies, hereafter to 
 be called states. We are set crystallizing, as such, in 
 the bosom of the common law. of _England, receiving, 
 
292 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 in that manner, all the great principles of right and 
 liberty that are the heritage of Englishmen. Next, we 
 are cut off from all distinctions of blood, which might 
 give us a possible king and nobility. And so, when 
 we came to institute a frame of government we were 
 literally cornered into just the government we have. 
 We must be states and also the United States. We 
 had, in fact, the name upon us before we spoke it, and 
 the Constitution in us before we saw it on paper. 
 The Philadelphia Convention did scarcely more, in 
 fact, than draw out the constitution already framed by 
 Almighty God in the historic cast of our nation itself. 
 We do not all say this or see it ; many of us do not 
 see distinctly any thing, but that certain men asserted 
 certain magic formulas, which are conceived to have 
 done everything for us. Still we have the feeling, all 
 of us, that we have just the government that belongs 
 to us : which is, in fact, the same thing as a feeling 
 that it is the creature of God's Providence. Moral 
 and religious ideas come slow and arrive late, but 
 what we have had implicitly as a feeling is now, I 
 trust, to be felt more distinctly, and even formally 
 thought and acknowledged. 
 
 Leaving now these generalities behind us, we go on 
 to sketch the process by which our American govern- 
 ment is to be thus consummated and to become a full- 
 toned, proper government, under moral and religious 
 ideas. I call it a process; and as every such process 
 advances by crises, not by an imperceptible growth, 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 293 
 
 there appear to have been three such crises that must 
 needs be passed. Let us note them in their order; 
 first, the two that are already passed, and then the 
 third, which we are passing now. 
 
 First, we have the stage of self-assertion or declared 
 Independence, in which our new state of order began. 
 It was no single champion that got us in his power and 
 fought us into separation, to be the prize of his own 
 chieftainship. That would have inaugurated a mon- 
 archy or absolute government, not a free and popular 
 government. vVe undertook, as a people, just opposite 
 to this, to champion our own right and assume a new 
 civil condition for ourselves. And this we should 
 naturally do, by reverting to principles conceived to 
 be most fixed and absolute. To separate was to rebel, 
 and rebellion could stand by no mere argument of 
 liking, or convenience, or interest, or passion. TVe 
 began thus to conceive that we had certain inborn 
 natural rights, and very soon also to maintain them 
 by a stiff and sturdy assertion ; sometimes, it would 
 seem, by a considerable over-assertion. 
 
 In some cases, our leaders had been considerably 
 affected by the political theories of Rousseau and 
 other French infidel writers, who began at the point 
 of what they called nature and natural right in men, 
 contriving how civil society might arise, and could 
 only arise lawfully, by their consent, or compact, or 
 vote, and the surrender of their individual rights, to 
 make up the public stock of powers and prerogatives 
 
294 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 in the state. In other cases and parts, we had been 
 shaped historically by our popular training in the 
 church, and the little democracies of our towns and 
 colonial legislatures, and so had become ready, as the 
 others, to make a large assertion of our inborn, sacred 
 rights and liberties. As a natural result, the two 
 schools flowed together, coalescing in the same 
 declarations of right, and the same impeachments of 
 wrong, followed by the assertion of a common inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 In this manner, without any very nice considera- 
 tion of our meaning, or precisely defined criticism of 
 our principles, we bolted on the world in our famous 
 July declaration. The pressure of the time was too 
 close to allow any very deliberate measurement of 
 ideas. Appealing thus to " the laws of nature and 
 of nature's God," we declare it " to be self-evident 
 that all men are created equal," — a very much easier 
 thing to say, than to show wherein they are equal, or 
 that simply created men, born into no social and civil 
 distinctions, have any where existed, since the time 
 of the creation, — also, that " they are endowed, by 
 their Creator, with inalienable rights," to secure which 
 " governments are instituted, deriving their just 
 powers from the consent of the governed." And so 
 we have New England and Virginia, Puritan church 
 order and the doctrine of the French Encyclopedia, 
 fused happily together in the language of Mr. Jeffer- 
 son, and the " Creator " and his friends are duly hon- 
 ored by admission to a considerable place in a really 
 
BY DIVINE EIGHT. 205 
 
 atheistic bill or doctrine. Our new political order 
 which is older, in fact, than this document, is yet 
 chronologically born of it, — though not, in any sense, 
 of the matter of this preamble. This is not the sober 
 tact of our history, but only the paradise of the July 
 orators. 
 
 Far be it from me to satirize this very dear chapter 
 of our nationality. The doing was grand, but the 
 doctrine of the doing was eminently crude, as Mr. 
 Jefferson very well knew how to be. In a certain 
 possible sense it was true, but in the sense in which 
 it is commonly understood it can only operate and 
 has always operated destructively ; working as a kind 
 of latent poison against all government from the first 
 day until now, as we shall by and by see. 
 
 The true merit of this document, for merit enough 
 it has, lies in the bill of facts and grievances stated 
 afterwards, not in the matter of the preamble. Proba- 
 bly some of these facts are a good deal exaggerated, 
 but we may take them all together, and sum them up 
 in a single inclusive impeachment, which is true 
 beyond debate and amply sufficient ; viz., that the 
 British mother country was holding us only as prov- 
 inces to be farmed for her own uses, and not with any 
 thought of benefit to us; keeping us for trade and 
 taxation, and place, and office, giving us no voice in 
 the parliament, and permitting us, in fact, no future. 
 Exactly this too, was what every American felt ; this 
 was the real grievance that stung our people, and that 
 sting was God's inspiration in their bosoms. And 
 
296 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 now, what living man, having simply reason for his 
 attribute, will imagine that God's high Providence 
 could have meant this vast, almost continental region 
 of the new world to be, for all time, the mere con- 
 venience and farmhold subserviency of a little patch 
 of island three thousand miles away ! We talk about 
 the right of revolution and puzzle ourselves much in 
 that kind of question. There is certainly no such 
 right in government itself, or under government; 
 which is the really new doctrine asserted in what is 
 called the right of secession. If there is any right of 
 revolution at all it is a right against government that 
 is really no government ; and it cannot stumble any 
 one to admit that such a right exists. Be that as it 
 may, we undertook no proper revolution of the mother 
 country, but leaving all her laws and magistracies still 
 standing as before, we simply assert the right to be, 
 and have a future ourselves. The real fact was that 
 we had the momentum, in our feeling, of too vast a 
 future, and slung away the British king and parlia- 
 ment just because they undertook to be the centre of 
 gravity for us, even as an asteroid might for the sun. 
 Weight of being, — here is the real argument, — weight 
 of being began to be felt here, and the laws of pro- 
 portion, consciously or unconsciously working in us, 
 threw us into separation, as it were by the laws of 
 arithmetic, or what is not far different, by the sen- 
 tence of God. We revolted transcendentally, for rea- 
 sons deeper than we conceived ; such as we could only 
 feel. The case was peculiar. There hac been many 
 
BY DIVINE BIGHT. l', 
 
 'lutions : aever before, that I know, a separation 
 ific gravity. 
 Bad we been able to conceive the matter in this 
 way. at the time, it would have saved us the necessity 
 of, alas ! how many pernicious nostrums, accepted 
 from that time onward as maxims even of political 
 philosophy. There was no need of adverting to some 
 original, barely created, ante-civil equality, as the 
 paradise of all true right and reason ; contriving, with 
 Rousseau, how we gave up. by consent, these primal 
 honors of equality, and surrendered this and that 
 natural right, to make up a pool of endowment large 
 enough for the outfit of a government. We never 
 had. as individual men. any one such right to surren- 
 der, — no right to legislate, make arrest, imprison 
 other men. try them, enforce contracts, investigate 
 titles, punish frauds and wrong doings. Governments 
 have such rights because we have them not. and we 
 have them not en the ground that governments have 
 them for us. And governments are as old as we. We 
 are not born sole men or monads, afterwards if we 
 can to come into society and manufacture govern- 
 ment from below. We are born into civil society as 
 we are into the atmosphere: we were already born 
 into British civil society and became legitimate sul> 
 jects of it : this too. with as little right of consent as 
 whether we should be born at all. The only question 
 was whether, having been grown as a seed in the cap- 
 sule of that stem, we had a right to get ripe and let 
 go connection, so to become a stem by ourselves. No 
 
298 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 greater fiction is conceivable, than that we fell back 
 in our act of separation from the mother country 
 upon an original equality, to give up a part of the 
 same by compact, and so become a state. It is very 
 true that we are all equally human, equally en- 
 titled, in the right of our inborn conscience and 
 eternity, to the best possible chances of intelli- 
 gence and character. But if we undertake to 
 assert that we are all, by nature, equally entitled to a 
 government by consent, and to count one in the public 
 suffrage of such a government, it may be very well 
 for us, Americans, that it is so ; better, in fact, than 
 any thing else ; but I know not where there is any 
 such universal principle. A born magistracy, however 
 unequal, be it kingly, or noble, is good without con- 
 sent, if only it rule well. What can be more preposte- 
 rous for us, or a conceit more fatal to our moral 
 sobriety, than to assume that there is no legitimate 
 government in the world and never has been, to the 
 present hour, but our own, in the principle forsooth 
 that all governments " derive their just powers from 
 the consent of the governed?" No such consent, 
 whether express or implied, was ever a fact. It never 
 has been, even with us. Our own original constitu- 
 tions were made, in general, by the votes of property- 
 holders. Minors and women, that is a full two-thirds 
 of our people, are excluded still from any such con- 
 sent, and, what is more, forbidden even the right of 
 dissent. We male citizens too, of the living genera- 
 tion, have never, in fact, had the opportunity of con- 
 
BY DIVINE BIGHT. 299 
 
 sent to the United States' government; and how little 
 any such consent may signify, we plainly see, in the 
 fact that the laws are, at this very moment, fighting 
 down with sword and gunpowder, whole sections of 
 country that have been protesting many years against 
 its sovereignty. They are going to be governed, we 
 still say, but where is their consent? Alas, had no 
 such half-principle, or no-principle of consent been 
 asserted, how different might our condition be ! 
 
 Furthermore, it is a remarkable fact that, after this 
 rather high sounding appeal to supposed foundation 
 principles of government, in many cases we did not 
 organize any new government whatever, but went on 
 generally with the old state governments, just as they 
 were, only declaring them to be "Independent States." 
 We did not even declare ourselves to be a nation. 
 Neither did we, in fact, organize a nation. The Ar- 
 ticles of Confederation were only a machine contrived 
 to make the states work together ; a harness and not 
 a Constitution. There was a Congress and the Con 
 gress had a President, or presiding officer, but there 
 was no President of the republic ; no supreme court, 
 no criminal code, and no right of criminal proceeding ; 
 no right of taxation or impost, save by the states ; no 
 law, in fact, which directly touched the person of any 
 citizen ; nothing but a right to get men and means for 
 the common purposes, by requisitions on the states, 
 where the congress voted only by states, — each state, 
 great and small alike, having a single and, of course, 
 equal vote. And even then the vote had no compel- 
 
300 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 ling sanction ; it was simply an appeal to the good 
 faith of the states. What, in this view, had become 
 of the ultimate principles announced, with so great 
 philosophic pretension, in the preamble of the declar- 
 ation ! 
 
 It was something, doubtless, that the states were 
 independent states, but we had, as yet, no common 
 government ; for the confederation was only a league, 
 and not, in any sense, a government. But the gov- 
 ernments, that is, the states, went on bravely together, 
 and fought the battle finally through, held together 
 firmly by the outside pressure of the war. Then came 
 the day of trial. As soon as the outside pressure was 
 gone, the loose-jointed machinery of the league began, 
 at once, to fall apart. The states laid impost duties 
 in their own right ; they often gave no heed to the 
 requisitions of the congress, killing them as it were by 
 simple silence ; the public credit gave way ; the paper 
 money lost value ; the common devotion grew slack, 
 collapsing in blank apathy and hopeless discourage- 
 ment. Whoever looks over the sad picture given by 
 Mr. Hamilton, in the Federalist, will see that a com- 
 plete lapse, under atrophy and final extinction, was 
 close at hand. 
 
 This brings me to the second stage or crisis in the 
 process of our advance towards a complete govern- 
 ment, that, viz., which we passed in the organization 
 of our National Constitution. Here the effect is, 
 though it is not commonly so stated, to drop the mere 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 301 
 
 machine, or harness of common working for the states, 
 and create or institute a proper government for them. 
 Before, the states were sovereign, and were not sub- 
 jects at all, in the sense of being under government. 
 There is now to be a power created that can move, 
 without moving solely through states ; the new gov- 
 ernment is to have a new order of subjects, viz., the 
 people themselves ; holding them in terms of direct 
 allegiance to itself. " The great and radical vice," says 
 Mr. Hamilton, " in the construction of the [then] ex- 
 isting Confederation, is in the principle of legislation for 
 states or governments, in their corporate, or collective 
 capacities, as contra-distinguished from individuals." 
 (Federalist, Xo. XY.) And, again, " We must incor- 
 porate into our plan those ingredients that may be con- 
 sidered as forming the characteristic difference between 
 a league and a government, and must extend the author- 
 ity of the Union to the persons of the citizens, the only 
 proper objects of government." (Federalist, Xo. XY.) 
 
 Hence the Constitution ; wherein we get a President 
 or National Chief Magistrate, a right of impost general, 
 of taxation, of military levy, of Courts of Admiralty 
 and a criminal jurisdiction, a Supreme Court with a 
 right of appeal from the state courts, arraignments 
 for treason, every thing that belongs to the highest 
 functions of a supreme government. 
 
 Now there begins to be a ring of authority and 
 decisive obligation in the civil order of the Republic. 
 The people feel the contact now of its laws, and rejoice 
 in the sense of a new born nationality. I need not 
 
302 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 sketch the picture ; sufficient to say, that no people 
 of the earth were ever before as free, and secure, and 
 prosperous, and happy. Our progress, accordingly, 
 even astonished ourselves. A national feeling, too, 
 was growing up. silently and imperceptibly to our- 
 selves, and the state feeling was subsiding into a 
 more nearly domestic or household sentiment. Both 
 kinds of allegiance are dear to us, but the higher 
 allegiance raises a higher devotion : even as the flag 
 which represents it everywhere, in every sea and clime 
 and field of common battle, becomes a symbol more 
 significant and sacred than the flags of the states. 
 The states, too, have consented knowingly to have it 
 so. They had rights of government as individuals 
 never had, and it is matter of indubitable and sober 
 history that they did surrender certain very eminent 
 rights, to endow the prerogatives of the general gov- 
 ernment. And to make it a sacrifice more free, and 
 give the act a greater solemnity, the People of the 
 States, in place of the State Legislatures, themselves 
 voted the surrender. And so it results that the states 
 are governments in virtue of their reserved rights, 
 and the State General or nation is a government in 
 virtue of its contributed rights. Both are sovereign 
 in their sphere ; both govern as final authorities. Only 
 it results, of course, that the General Government is 
 a higher and more eminent sovereignty, according to 
 the more eminent powers of peace, and war, and final 
 appeal, that are given it. 
 
 Still there is a weak spot here, and it was growing 
 
BY DIVINE BIGHT. 303 
 
 weaker f<n- a long time, till finally, four years ago the 
 i was broken asunder. This weak spot and final 
 break of order began at what is called "the State 
 Rights doctrine" of Mr. Calhoun. He takes ground 
 here exactly opposite to Mr. Hamilton and the Feder- 
 
 f, maintaining still "that there is no immediate 
 communication between the individual citizens of a 
 state and the general government. The relation be- 
 tween them is through the state.'' (Letter to Gov. 
 Hamilton.) This being true, the governmental 
 function proper, viz., that of authority to hind the 
 private wills and consciences of personal subjects, falls 
 to the ground, and nothing, after all. is really gained 
 by the Constitution. Still we have no government as 
 before, but only a league. 
 
 The claim of Mr. Calhoun is perfectly unhistorical 
 and against even the letter of the Constitution beside. 
 Has the man who wants a patent for his new inven- 
 tion or a copyright for his book, no immediate rela- 
 tion to the general government ? Has the smuggler, 
 the counterfeiter of national bills and coins, the per- 
 petrator of treason, the suitor of one state claiming 
 dues of the citizens of another. — have none of these, 
 and ten thousand others, expressly provided for in the 
 Constitution, no relation to the general government 
 except through the state ? 
 
 It is very true that the preamble of the Constitution 
 reads : •• We, the people of the United States ordain 
 and establish," and it is also true that they voted the 
 Constitution by states. All the more proper was it 
 
304 POPULAE GOVERNMENT 
 
 that the legislatures had never been appointed to sur- 
 render, but only to administer, the State Rights. 
 These rights, in fact, could only be conclusively and 
 absolutely surrendered, just as in fact they were, by 
 the people's vote. It is also true, as Mr. Calhoun so 
 pertinaciously insists, that the surrendering party will 
 naturally expect to be judges themselves of what they 
 have surrendered. And so too, will the party receiv- 
 ing the surrender. And then whose judgment will be 
 strongest in effect, and uppermost in prerogative, that 
 of a little, turbulent, uneasy state faction, or that of a 
 great nation having all its mighty concerns of benefit 
 and blessing embarked in the general unity ? It is 
 very true that the great nation thus constituted may 
 usurp to itself powers never granted, just as the small 
 state may factiously deny or reclaim powers that have 
 been granted. And if it be hard upon the small state 
 when it is oppressed in this manner by the nation, it 
 might also be hard upon a much vaster scale, if the 
 general order of the nation were compelled to submit 
 itself to the bramble judgment of a factious little 
 state and consent after all to be a nation only by 
 sufferance. It must be enough for the states that 
 exactly this kind of risk was submitted to by them, 
 in their vote of surrender, and that no such eminent 
 sovereignty could be created without a consent to the 
 risk. The judgment of the stronger and superior 
 party must prevail. Otherwise, if every state has a 
 right to decide peremptorily on what she has surren- 
 dered, she has in fact surrendered nothing. In that 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 305 
 
 simple righl asserted, goes down the whole mighty 
 fabric so carefully built, and the sublime fathers and 
 founders have their fool's errand revealed by the dis- 
 covery that the mere whim or conceit of a faction 
 has even the right to shiver all their work in pieces ! 
 
 But the root of Mr. Calhoun's famous state rights 
 speculation was not, after all, in the Constitution, as 
 he persistently claimed ; it was deeper than he even 
 knew himself ; viz., in the fact that he had received, 
 with such implicit trust, the spurious brood of false 
 maxims that began early to be hatched by our new 
 theories of liberty, and took them into his very life 
 with such unquestioning facility, that, without being 
 at all aware of it, he had not even the conception of 
 government left. My words are carefully measured 
 when I say this. I have made exploration of his 
 writings, with this very point in view, and I do not 
 anywhere find that he has the conception of a real 
 government, or of anything higher than a league. 
 Indeed he testifies, in fact, himself that he has not. 
 Thus he writes : (Letter to Gov. Hamilton) " accord- 
 ing to our theory, governments are in their nature 
 trusts, and those appointed to administer them, [that 
 is, the magistrates,] trustees, or agents, to execute trust 
 powers. The sovereignty resides elsewhere, in the 
 people, not in the government." What kind, now, of 
 government is that which has no sovereignty in itself, 
 and is under a sovereignty residing elsewhere ? And 
 then what kind of government there is in a mere trus- 
 teeship, where, as he continually insists, the trust may 
 
306 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 at any time be revoked by the principal, as in common 
 law, will be seen at a glance. And if any of us should 
 imagine that he is speaking thus only of the general 
 government, let it be observed, that he says, " govern- 
 ments " in the plural ; showing that he has no con- 
 ception of a government even in the states which is 
 more than a trust, terminable at will, and having no 
 real sovereignty ! 
 
 Now in this wretched figure of statesmanship, you 
 perceive that he only takes up what he conceives to 
 be the accepted doctrine of the country, yielding him- 
 self to it with unquestioning trust ; for he says, not 
 " according to my theory," but " according to our 
 theory." And he had a good right to that kind of 
 reference. What have our orators and public men 
 been saying and repeating for these many years, but 
 what Mr. Jefferson began to say at the first, — that 
 " government has no right but in the consent of the 
 governed ; " that " all the powers of magistracy are 
 delegated powers ; " that " the people are sovereign ; " 
 that " self-government is the inherent right of states ; " 
 that " the people are the spring of all authority ; " 
 that " the will of the people is the highest law ; " — 
 going on thus, without limit, in the ring of as many 
 thousand changes, as our one miserably ambiguous 
 and mischievously untrue maxim will permit ! Even 
 such a writer as Mr, Hamilton, wanting above all 
 things a government, was so far taken, unwittingly, by 
 this kind of chaff, as to say : " The fabric of American 
 empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 307 
 
 of the people. The streams of national power 
 ought to flow immediately from that pure, original, 
 fountain of all legitimate authority." (Federalist, 
 XXII.) So generally prevalent, in short, and so 
 unquestioningly received is this kind of maxim, that 
 I run a considerable risk of parting company with 
 this audience, if I do not explain what 1 mean by dis- 
 sent from it. 
 
 I dissent from it then, because it affirms the possi- 
 bility of making a real government over man by man ; 
 a government, that is, without ascending into the 
 region of moral and religious ideas, or going at all 
 above the mere wills of voters. As if any forty thou- 
 sand, or forty million wills, taken as mere wills, could 
 have any, the least right to command, or set obliga- 
 tion upon my will. According to our scheme of 
 order under the Constitution, these forty millions of 
 wills may, by their suffrage, choose the magistrates, 
 and that, for us Americans, may be the best scheme 
 possible, the ordinance even of God ; but it does not 
 follow that the binding authority of such magistrates 
 is carried over into them by distillation, or transfer, 
 out of the wills of the people. They only designate, 
 by vote, the men who are to be magistrates, just as 
 they are designated by birth in other countries ; and 
 their oath before God and God's ordinance in the Con- 
 stitution make them more than simply designated 
 men ; viz., magistrates, with authority to bind. 
 
 Such is the general account to be made of our pop- 
 ular elective function as related to government, or to 
 
308 POPULAR GOYEBXMEXT 
 
 magisterial right and authority. And all the thou- 
 sand axioms we repeat, as our political confession, are 
 in this way easily reduced to the small residuum of 
 truth that belongs to them. 
 
 Thus, if we say with Mr. Calhoun, that " govern- 
 ment is a trust." it is very true that the voters signify 
 a trust in the men when they vote for them : and so 
 does the woman signify a trust in the man. when she 
 becomes his wife, but it does not follow that her act 
 of trust makes him an agent and herself his princi- 
 pal, with a right to recall his trusteeship when she 
 pleases. She passes over no husbandship by her trust : 
 and as little does the voter pass over a magistracy : 
 neither one nor the other has any such functional 
 right to pass. To reason with Mr. Calhoun that 
 wherever there is a trust, that is. a confidence exer- 
 cised, there is of course a legal trusteeship, is only to 
 play with words without distinguishing their meaning. 
 Even God himself would, in this manner, be only our 
 trustee and we his principals. 
 
 So of •• the sovereignty of the people." of which 
 we hear so often. In our scheme of order, the people 
 are certainly arbiters in the matter of election or 
 designation. And so. if the magistrates were desig- 
 nated by lot. a lottery ^rheel or wheel of fortune 
 might be : but shall we all begin therefore to say that 
 the sovereignty is in the wheel, assuming it too for a 
 universal axiom that wheels are inherently sovereign 
 in states ? If we only mean by the sovereignty of the 
 people, that, in our particular scheme, nobody gets 
 
BY DIVINE BIGHT. 309 
 
 into place save by the popular vote, that is very well; 
 a grand distinction of our system, and a sheet anchor 
 of security tor our liberties. Still the magistrate is 
 sovereign over the people, not they over him. having 
 even a divine right to bind their conscience by his 
 rule. 
 
 In the same way. we are to interpret all we have to 
 say of - self-government," or k - the right of self-gov- 
 ernment." " By nature." says Mr. Calhoun, following 
 after Mr. Jefferson, " every individual has a right to 
 govern himself." deducing then all true right in gov- 
 ernment from the right of self-government in the 
 individual. He does not see that the word he plays 
 upon changes meaning, that, by self-government in a 
 person, we mean simply self-keeping, or self-restrain- 
 ing, and suppose no such thing as command or 
 authority at all. unless it be in God. whose all-gov- 
 erning law we are simply restraining ourselves to keep. 
 Our particular people do, indeed, choose their magis- 
 trates, and then, not governing the magistrates, the 
 magistrates govern them. Just so near they come 
 to self-government as — not to touch it. 
 
 "We deceive ourselves again by a like imposture of 
 language, when we say : u that magistrates have only 
 delegated powers." Doubtless they are in by election, 
 but there is no passing over of powers in the vote. 
 Not one of the supposed powers was ever in the per- 
 >"ii> of the voters, or by any possibility could be. 
 They are all from the Constitution, the sanction of 
 - Head Magistracy going with it. 
 
810 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 You perceive, in this manner, how we have been 
 taking down all magistracy from the first by trying to 
 get up authority from below, that is, out of man him- 
 self. Our very axioms go for the destruction of mag- 
 istracy ; ignoring always the fact so grandly and even 
 philosophically put by an apostle, when he says : 
 " there is no power but of God." There was never a 
 finer way of government for a people than God has 
 given us, and the special grounds of personal security 
 we have in our equal suffrage, and the choosing of 
 our own magistrates, are the admirable distinctions 
 we may fitly value and cherish. Still the whole 
 shaping of the fabric is Providential. God , God is in 
 it, everywhere. He is Founder before the founders, 
 training both them and us, and building in the Con- 
 stitution before it is produced without. Our whole 
 civil order is the ordinance of God saturated all 
 through with flavors of historic religion, sanctioned 
 every way by the sanction, and sanctified by the in- 
 dwelling concourse of God. This it is that crowns 
 the summit of our magistracies, and is going to give 
 us finally the most sacredly binding, most indissoluble 
 government in the world. 
 
 But as yet we have not come to this. For a long 
 time we have been trying, as it were, to shake off 
 Providence and law together, and we have so far suc- 
 ceeded that even the conception of government was 
 beginning to be a lost conception. Perhaps these 
 nostrums of atheistic philosophy must needs reveal 
 what is in them before they can be duly corrected. 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 311 
 
 The conceit must be taken out of us, enough to stop 
 us iii asserting, for axioms, doctrines that impugn the 
 right of all governments in the world beside ; recoil- 
 ing by a most fit retribution, that takes away even the 
 idea of government as for ourselves. Be this as it 
 may, we have, at last, come to the point where only 
 blood, much blood, long years of bleeding, can resanc- 
 fcify what we have so loosely held and so badly dese- 
 crated. To what else could we be descending, for 
 these generations past, when winnowing out, as we 
 have been doing, all the sacred properties and princi- 
 ples of the great fabric God had constructed, and re- 
 ducing it to a mere budget of " sovereignties," u con- 
 sents," " trusts," " delegations of power," contrived 
 " balances," and other as feeble pretences of philoso- 
 phy. And yet we have not got on with our desecra- 
 tions as fast, and come to the crisis of disruption as 
 soon, as might have been expected. Mr. Calhoun 
 wrote secession, but did not live to see it. Strange to 
 say, it did not come half soon enough to meet the 
 flash expectation of Mr. Jefferson himself. With a 
 lightness quite unworthy of a great statesman, he 
 says : " The late rebellion in Massachusetts, ' the Shay 
 rebellion,' has given more alarm than I think it should 
 have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen 
 states in the course of eleven years, is but one for 
 each state in a century and a half. No country 
 should be so long without a revolution." (Vol. II., 
 p. 331.) And taking his French principles of govern- 
 ment no one ever would be ; it would have a revolu- 
 tion every year. 
 
:1- POPtTLAB GOTIBXMI: II 
 
 Be that as it may T the fearful time has finally come. 
 By the unwisdoms pot upon it in the name of philo- 
 sophy., and the state-right speculation that much ad- 
 irired : ddo- i-rdj d.is :.:•:■;>'.. t 1. : :: :.:" .'.-> ::" :: : 
 been fatally weakened, and is now for the present only 
 a possibility , or government in abeyance. And so the 
 great third crisis of which I am to speak is upon us. 
 
 Let us see then, how we are now going to complete 
 :i: TSTi":lisli :dr b~i'.^ :: r :-:_.■.-._::..-. 7: ^: :7- 
 false axioms qualified., or expelled, so as to let in the 
 rule of goyernment. and make it solid in the people's 
 heart for ages to come, saying all that is genuine, all 
 that is free, is a truly difficult matter : but it will now 
 be done. Let it be our thanksgiving to-day, that we 
 can distinguish the manner and be certified of the 
 result. 
 
 In the first place, what are we doing but exactly 
 this. — dddrd:;: yii rde zicst e ~-t-~ hfrr-7 ;: :de 
 nation, that which, under the plausible name of u state 
 r: ± d:-.'" d:-s riVen :~:~ r~^z~ -1:" .;._:r :: :._d: in 
 the goyernment; that which revokes every function 
 
 :: '.; ::l;-::j:r:::ij: ;:T"7:::::.:r:::: ~t 
 
 are sajing continually that slavery is the ; 
 rebellion, and it is true ; but slavery could 
 drawn out a pin of the public order, if every pin had 
 not been first loosened by the false maxims repeated, 
 eyery bond of unity and dignity shivered by the pre- 
 -t:-."".:v> v.--.::;--;:..- :: dc <-:■.-? ri^d"- i:riziez.:s :ii 
 cabals. What now are we dohu M r/rhing down 
 ±fs--r :: r ".:— 7 _--.;::.:.:.. d... r .den. .d~_ — dd irrdlerj. 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 313 
 
 never to stop marching, or stop pounding, till they 
 are trampled so low and ground so fine that no search 
 can find them. Our issue is made up, we are going 
 to have a government, — no more by sufferance, but a 
 government. 
 
 We are going also to vindicate the supremacy of 
 the law, just where it broke down. We chose a Pres- 
 ident not liked in certain quarters. Without one pre- 
 tended injury from him, whole states rebelled. Now 
 we have chosen him again, and the issue is made up, 
 not upon some other, but upon him. They shall come 
 back thus and submit themselves to him at the very 
 point of their outbreak, and the sacred right of 
 election shall be vindicated. So that as he stole into 
 Washington to assume his office, the leaders of rebel- 
 lion may steal out of the land, if they can, to bemoan 
 as exiles the ignominy of their treason, and die with 
 the stamp of God's visible frown upon their awful 
 crime. 
 
 In the terrible contest waged, the government mean- 
 time is girding itself up in decision, and wrestling like 
 a giant with every sort of foe ; with conspiracies, 
 treacheries, factions secret, agitations public, midnight 
 arsons, foemen in the bush, armies in the field. The 
 grapple of law is upon us, and we see that government, 
 after all, is somewhat of a reality even with us. We 
 thought we could do as we pleased, and were all sov- 
 ereigns. We saw velvet gloves on all magistracy. 
 Poor Mr. Buchanan did not know any thing he could 
 do to coerce a state 1 We wake up now in the discov- 
 
314 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 ery that our government has, after all, some thunder 
 in it. That thunder too, is going to roll its reverbera- 
 tions down through all our future history, and what 
 we now feel is going to he felt, a hundred fold more 
 deeply, long ages hence, that we have the strongest, 
 firmest government in the world. 
 
 Again, it is a vast and mighty schooling of authority 
 that we have in our armies. Nothing goes by consent, 
 or trust, or individual sovereignty here. The power 
 is not delegated here and liable to be recalled. 
 Authority here lifts every foot by the drum-beat ; de- 
 fies all weather, and water, and mud, and swamp ; 
 forbids even hunger and sleep ; and squaring the 
 massed legions, hurls them in the face of gunpowder 
 and over the flaming edges of defence. This it was, 
 this military drill, so exact and sharp and systematic, 
 that made the Romans, always at war, the great law 
 nation of the earth. This is the kind of lesson we are 
 taking by the million now, and the result will be a 
 great moral intoning of our allegiance, such as we 
 could never have had from any other discipline. Why 3 
 that single flag of ours means even more to us now 
 than the Constitution of the United States did four 
 years ago. And the man who should set himself to 
 get one stripe or star out of it would fare as Mr. Cal- 
 houn did not, in that life-long public advocacy by which 
 he dismembered the Union itself. 
 
 Slavery again, we are dealing death blows upon that. 
 I say not how it shall go, but go it must ; nay, it is 
 already broken to the fall, if we touch it by no civil 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 315 
 
 action whatever. No human power under heaven 
 
 can put it on its feet again and make it stand. What 
 
 . are we all beginning to say. bnt to add our hearty 
 
 Amen to its final departure? There was never a 
 funeral where the mourners were so many and so 
 happy. We breathe more freely, as soon as we begin 
 to think that human slavery is gone. We are clear 
 thus of that miserable hypocrisy to our own first prin- 
 ciples, that has so long shamed our feeling and made 
 our very government seem hollow. We touch bottom 
 now in moral ideas, and do not skim the surface any 
 longer in lying platitudes that we do not ourselves 
 respect. The demoralizations are all stopped, and we 
 feel it in us to be true for liberty and right, true for 
 the law, and the good, great government our God has 
 given us. 
 
 Meantime, what are we doing so constantly, and in so 
 many ways, to invoke the sanctions of God and relig- 
 ion ? We are not wanting, any of us, to get our affairs 
 away from God as we used to be. We associate God 
 and religion with all that we are fighting for, and we 
 are not satisfied with any mere human atheistic way 
 of speaking as to means, or measures, or battles, or 
 victories, or great deeds to win them. Our cause, we 
 love to think, is especially God's, and so we are con- 
 necting all most sacred impressions with our govern- 
 ment itself, weaving in a woof of holy feeling among 
 all the fibres of our constitutional polity and govern- 
 ment. We think much of the righteous men who 
 have gone before us, and of their prayers descending 
 
316 POPULAR GOVERNMENT 
 
 upon us, and the sacred charges they have committed 
 to us. There is an immense praying too by day and 
 by night in all parts of the country ; wives, mothers, 
 children, fathers, brothers, praying for the dear ones 
 they have sent to the field, for the commanders, for 
 the cause ; soldiers fighting and praying together, and 
 many of them learning even in the field to pray and 
 catch heroic fire from God. Oh ! it is religion, it is 
 God ! Every drum-beat is a hymn, the cannon thun- 
 der God, the electric silence, darting victory along the 
 wires, is the inaudible greeting of God's favoring 
 word and purpose. 
 
 And, lest we should forget the religious mood of 
 the time, what forbids that, if we go into the revision 
 of the Constitution advocated by many, we take just 
 pains to record our thanksgiving in it, by inserting 
 in the preamble some fit recognition of God ? Not 
 that we are to think it a matter of consequence to 
 compliment God by inserting there his name ; not 
 that we are to think of inscribing there some evan- 
 gelic article of doctrine ; it must be enough, — and so 
 much ought to be done as a matter of philosophic 
 conviction, — to cut off all our noxious theories of 
 government by man, and make it the recorded senti- 
 ment of the nation that all true authority in law is 
 of a moral nature, and stands in allegiance to God. 
 
 How certainly, again, last of all, do we consecrate 
 or hallow any thing that we make sacrifices for ! And 
 what people of the world ever made such sacrifices of 
 labor, and money, and life, as we have made for the 
 
BY DIVINE RIGHT. 317 
 
 integrity of our institutions? How many of our 
 choicest, uoblesl youth, have yielded up their lives in 
 the held ? How many commanders, who were taking 
 their plaee with the world's great heroes, have fallen 
 to be mourned by a sorrowing country ? Blood, blood, 
 rivers of blood, have bathed our hundred battle-fields 
 and sprinkled the horns of our altars ! Without this 
 shedding of blood, how could the violated order be 
 sanctified ? And to see the maimed bodies, and the 
 disfigured, once noble forms, and go into the desolate 
 homes, and listen to the plaint of the mourning chil- 
 dren, — Oh ! it is a sacrifice how great that we are 
 making ! This is the price we are willing to pay for 
 our country and its laws. 
 
 And what shall be the result ? One only result can 
 there be. Nothing can be so evident as that we are 
 now in a way to have our free institutions crowned 
 and consummated. A great problem it was to con- 
 nect authority with so great freedom. The free 
 maxims we began with and took with no qualification 
 were continually demoralizing our conceptions. The 
 government had but a feeble connection with moral 
 ideas. Now it is to be the ordinance of God, and 
 nothing is to have a finer sound of truth for the ages 
 to come, I trust, than that famous opening of the 13th 
 chapter of the epistle to the Romans : " Let every 
 soul be subject unto the higher powers ; for there is 
 no power but of God." And when Ave have come to 
 this, there is no government on earth that compares 
 for strength with ours. Nay it has about as nearly 
 
318 POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 proved itself already in that figure as it could be de- 
 sired to do. We did not know how strong it was 
 before. Nobody had any conception of the immense 
 strain it could bear. How bright is the future now 
 of such a government and nation ! Hallowed by so 
 many battle-fields, and these by the tribute of so 
 many histories, and sung by so many songs of the 
 great poets of the future, how dear, and sacred, and 
 glorious will it be ! And God be thanked it was our 
 privilege to live in this great day of crisis, this always- 
 to-be-called heroic age of the republic ! 
 
 Let no one imagine that here we shall have reached 
 the goal of our progress. Now that government has 
 ceased to be itself a demoralizer, as it has hitherto 
 been, we may look even for a new-begun growth in the 
 moral and religious habit of the nation. What many 
 have been fearing, with so great and even rational 
 dread, a final collapse in public vice and anarchy, will 
 be a destroying angel passed by. There will, instead, 
 be a great and sublime progress in character begun. 
 There will be less and less need of government, 
 because the moral right of what we have is felt. And 
 as what we do as right is always free, we shall grow 
 more free as the centuries pass, till perhaps, even gov- 
 ernment itself may lapse in the freedom of a right- 
 eousness consummated in God. 
 
X. 
 
 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD * 
 
 Brethren of the Alumni : — 
 
 To pay fit honors to our dead is one of the frater- 
 nal and customary offices of these anniversaries ; 
 never so nearly an office of high public duty as now, 
 when we find the roll of our membership starred with 
 so many names made sacred by the giving up of life 
 for the Republic. We knew them here in terms of 
 cherished intimacy ; some of them so lately that we 
 scarcely seem to have been parted from them ; others 
 of them we have met here many times, returning to 
 renew, with us, their tender and pleasant recollections 
 of the past ; but we meet them here no more : they 
 are gone to make up the hecatomb offered for their 
 and our great nation's life. Hence it has been 
 specially desired on this occasion, that we honor their 
 heroic sacrifice by some fit remembrance. Had the 
 call of your committee been different, I should cer- 
 tainly not have responded. 
 
 * An oration given at the Commemorative Celebration held in 
 Xew Haven, on Wednesday of Commencement Week, July 26, 
 1865, in honor of the Alumni of Yale College, who fell in the 
 War of the Rebellion. 
 
 C319) 
 
320 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 And yet, over-willing as I have been to assume an 
 office so entirely grateful, it is a matter none the less 
 difficult to settle on the best and most proper way of 
 doing the honors intended. I think you will agree 
 with me, that it cannot be satisfactorily done by pre- 
 paring a string of obituary notices of our dead ; that 
 would be more appropriate to some published docu- 
 ment, and no wise appropriate to a public discourse. 
 Besides, to withdraw them from the vaster roll of the 
 dead, in which it was their honor to die, and set them 
 in a circle of mere literary clanship, bounding our testi- 
 mony of homage by the accident of their matriculation 
 here with us, would be rather to claim our honors in 
 them, than to pay them honors due to themselves. 
 We should seem not even to appreciate the grand pub- 
 lic motive to which they gave up their life. They 
 honored us in dying for their country, and we fitly 
 honor them, when we class them with the glorious 
 brotherhood in which they fell. Reserving it therefore 
 as my privilege, to make such reference specially to 
 them as befits the occasion, I propose a more general 
 subject in which due honors may be paid to all, viz., 
 The obligations we owe to the dead, — all the dead who 
 have fallen in this gigantic and fearfully bloody war. 
 There are various ways in which a people, delivered 
 by great struggles of war, may endeavor to pay their 
 testimony of honor to the men who have fallen. They 
 may do it by chanting requiems for the repose 
 of their souls; which, though it may not have any 
 great effect in that precise way, is at least an act of 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 321 
 
 implied homage and gratitude. The same thing is 
 attempted more frequently by covering the dead bene- 
 factors and heroes with tributes of eulogy ; only here 
 it is a disappointment, that none but a few leaders 
 are commemorated, while the undistinguished multi- 
 tude, who jeoparded their lives most freely, are passed 
 by and forgot. The best thing therefore to be done, 
 worthiest both of the dead and the living, is, it seems 
 to me, that which 1 now propose, — to recount our 
 obligations to the dead in general ; what they have 
 done for us, what they have earned at our hands, and 
 what they have put it on us to do for the dear common 
 country to which they sold their life. 
 
 First of all then, we are to see that we give them 
 their due share of the victory and the honors of vic- 
 tory. For it is one of our natural infirmities, 
 against which we need to be carefully and even jeal- 
 ously guarded, that we fall so easily into the impres- 
 sion which puts them in the class of defeat and 
 failure. Are they not dead ? And who shall count 
 the dead as being in the roll of victory ? But the 
 living return to greet us and be with us, and we listen 
 eagerly to the story of the scenes in which they 
 bore their part. We enjoy their exultations and exult 
 with them. Their great leaders also return, to be 
 crowned by our ovations, and deafened by our ap- 
 plauses. These, these, we too readily say, are the 
 victors, considering no more the dead but with a cer- 
 tain feeling close akin to pity. If, sometime, the story 
 
322 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 of their fall is told us. the spot described, far in front 
 or on the rampart's edge, where they left their bodies 
 with the fatal gashes at which their souls went out, we 
 listen with sympathy and sad respect, but we do not 
 find how to count them in the lists of victory, and 
 scarcely to include them in the general victory of the 
 cause. All our associations run this way. and before 
 we know it vre have them down, most likely, on the 
 losing side of the struggle. They belong, we fancy, 
 to the waste of victory. — sad waste indeed ! but not 
 in any sense a part of victory itself. Xo. no. ye liv- 
 ing ! It is the ammunition spent that gains the bat- 
 tle, not the ammunition brought off from the field. 
 These dead are the spent ammunition of the war. and 
 theirs above all is the victory. Upon what indeed 
 turned the question of the war itself, but on the dead 
 that could be furnished : or what is no wise different. 
 the life that could be contributed for that kind of 
 expenditure ? These grim heroes therefore, dead and 
 dumb, that have strewed so many fields with their 
 bodies. — these are the price and purchase-money of 
 our triumph. A great many of us were ready to live. 
 but these offered themselves, in a sense, to die. and by 
 their cost the victory is won. 
 
 Nay, it is not quite enough, if we will know exactly 
 who is entitled to a part in these honors, that we only 
 remember these dead of the war. Buried generations 
 back of them were also present in it. almost as truly 
 as they. Thus, if we take the two most honored 
 leaders. Grant and Sherman, who. besides the general 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 323 
 
 victory they have gained for the cause, have won their 
 sublime distinction as the greatest living commanders 
 of the world, it will be impossible to think of them 
 as having made or begotten their own lofty endow- 
 ments. All great heroic men have seeds and roots, 
 far back it may be, out of which they spring, and 
 apart from which they could not spring at all; a sub- 
 lime fatherhood and motherhood, in whose blood and 
 life, however undistinguished, victory was long ago 
 distilling for the great day to come of their people 
 and nation. They knew it not ; they sleep in graves, 
 it may be, now forgot. But their huge-grown, manful 
 temperament, the fights they waged and won in life's 
 private battle, the lofty prayer-impulse which made 
 inspirations their element, their brave self-retaining 
 patience, and the orderly vigor of their household com- 
 mand were breeding in and in, to be issued finally in 
 a hero sonship, and by that fight themselves out into 
 the grandest victory for right and law the future 
 ages shall know. So that if we ask who are the dead 
 that are to be counted in our victory, we must pierce 
 the sod of Wether sfield and Stratford, of Woodbury 
 and Norwalk, and find where the Honorable Sherman, 
 the Deacon Sherman, the Judge Sherman, and all the 
 line of the Shermans and their victor wives and 
 mothers lie ; and then, if we can guess what they 
 were and how they lived, we shall know who fought 
 the great campaigns at Atlanta, Savannah and Raleigh. 
 So again, if we begin at the good Deacon Grant in 
 Mr. Warham's church at Windsor ; descending to the 
 
324 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 historic Matthew Grant of Tolland, fellow-scout with 
 Putnam and captain of a French war company ; then 
 to the now living Joel Root Grant, who removed to 
 Pennsylvania, afterwards also to Ohio, afterwards 
 finally, I believe, to Illinois, whose wanderings appear 
 to be commemorated in the classic name of Ulysses ; 
 we shall see by what tough flanking processes of life 
 and family the great Lieutenant-General was prepar- 
 ing, who should turn the front of Vicksburg, and 
 march by Lee and Richmond, and cut off, by the rear, 
 even the Great Rebellion itself. 0, if we could see it, 
 how long and grandly were the victories of these great 
 souls preparing ! The chief thing was the making of 
 the souls themselves, and when that was done the 
 successes came of course. 
 
 And from these two examples you may see by what 
 lines of private worth, and public virtue, and more 
 than noble blood, the stock of our great patriotic 
 armies has been furnished. For how grand a pitch of 
 devotion has been often shown by the private soldiers 
 of these armies ! There was never embodied, in all 
 the armies of the world, a public inspiration so re- 
 markable. Really the grandest heroes are these, who 
 have neither had, nor wanted, any motive but the sal- 
 vation of the Republic. And do you think there was 
 nothing back of them to make them what they were ? 
 What but an immense outgrowth were they of whole 
 ages of worth, intelligence, and public devotion ? And 
 for what more honorable distinction should we here 
 and always pay our thanks to God ? 0, it is these 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 325 
 
 generations of buried worth that have been fighting in 
 our battles, ami it" we will pay our obligations to the 
 dead, it is this nameless fatherhood and motherhood, 
 before whose memory we shall bare our head in the 
 deepest homage and tenderest reverence. 
 
 Still, it is not my intention to occupy you with the 
 part fulfilled by these remoter generations of the past, 
 but with the more general remembrance of such as 
 have fallen in the war itself. I only refer you to 
 these, to show you how very trivial and weak a thing 
 it is, if we speak of our victories, to imagine that only 
 such as come out of the war alive are entitled to credit 
 and reverence on account of them. 
 
 But I pass to a point where the dead obtain a right 
 of honor that is more distinctive, and belongs not to 
 the living at all ; or if in certain things partly to the 
 living, yet only to them in some less sacred and prom- 
 inent way. 1 speak here of the fact that, according to 
 the true economy of the world, so many of its grand- 
 est and most noble benefits have and are to have a 
 tragic origin, and to come as outgrowths only of blood. 
 Whether it be that sin is in the world, and the whole 
 creation groaneth in the necessary throes of its dem- 
 onized life, we need not stay to inquire ; for sin would 
 be in the world and the demonizing spell would be 
 upon it. Such was, and was to be, and is, the economy 
 of it. Common life, the world's great life, is in the 
 large way tragic. As the mild benignity and peaceful 
 reign of Christ begins at the principle: "without 
 
326 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 shedding of blood, there is no remission," so, without 
 shedding of blood, there is almost nothing great in the 
 world, or to be expected for it. For the life is in the 
 blood, — all life ; and it is put flowing within, partly for 
 the serving of a nobler use in flowing out on fit occa- 
 sion, to quicken and consecrate whatever it touches. 
 God could not plan a Peace-Society world, to live in 
 the sweet amenities, and grow great and happy by 
 simply thriving and feeding. There must be bleeding 
 also. Sentiments must be born that are children of 
 thunder ; there must be heroes and heroic nationali- 
 ties, and martyr testimonies, else there will be only 
 mediocrities, insipidities, common-place men, and com- 
 mon-place writings, — a sordid and mean peace, liber- 
 ties without a pulse, and epics that are only eclogues. 
 And here it is that the dead of our war have done 
 for us a work so precious, which is all their own, — 
 they have bled for us ; and by this simple sacrifice of 
 blood they have opened for us a new great chapter of 
 life. We were living before in trade and commerce, 
 bragging of our new cities and our census reports, and 
 our liberties that were also consciously mocked by our 
 hypocrisies ; having only the possibilities of great 
 inspirations and not the fact, materialized more and 
 more evidently in our habits and sentiments, strong 
 principally in our discords and the impetuosity of our 
 projects for money. But the blood of our dead has 
 touched our souls with thoughts more serious and 
 deeper, and begotten, as I trust, somewhat of that 
 high-bred inspiration which is itself the possibility of 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 327 
 
 genius, and of a true public greatness. Saying noth- 
 ing then for the present of our victors and victories, 
 let us see what we have gotten by the blood of our 
 slain. 
 
 Ami first of all, in this blood our unity is cemented 
 and forever sanctified. Something was gained for us 
 here, at the beginning, by our sacrifices in the fields 
 of our Revolution, — something, but not all. Had it 
 not been for this common bleeding of the States in 
 their common cause, it is doubtful whether our Con- 
 stitution could ever have been carried. The discords 
 of the Convention were imminent, as we know, and 
 were only surmounted by compromises that left them 
 still existing. They were simply kenneled under the 
 Constitution and not reconciled, as began to be evident 
 shortly in the doctrines of state sovereignty, and 
 state nullification, here and there asserted. We had 
 not bled enough, as yet, to merge our colonial dis- 
 tinctions and make us a proper nation. Our battles 
 had not been upon a scale to thoroughly mass our 
 feeling, or gulf us in a common cause and life. 
 Against the state-rights doctrines, the logic of our 
 Constitution was decisive, and they were refuted a 
 thousand times over. But such things do not go by 
 argument. Xo argument transmutes a discord, or 
 composes a unity where there was none. The matter 
 wanted here was blood, not logic, and this we now 
 have on a scale large enough to meet our necessity. 
 True it is blood on one side, and blood on the other, — 
 
328 OUE OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 all the better for that ; for bad bleeding kills, and 
 righteous bleeding sanctifies and quickens. The 
 state-rights doctrine is now fairly bled away, and the 
 unity died for, in a way of such prodigious devotion, 
 is forever sealed and glorified. 
 
 Nor let any one be concerned for the sectional rela- 
 tions of defeat and victory. For there has all the 
 while been a grand, suppressed sentiment of country 
 in the general field of the rebellion, which is bursting 
 up already into sovereignty out of the soil itself. 
 There is even a chance that this sentiment may blaze 
 into a passion hot enough to utterly burn up whatever 
 fire itself can master. At all events it will put under 
 the ban, from this time forth, all such instigators of 
 treason as could turn their peaceful States into hells 
 of desolation, and force even patriotic citizens to fight 
 against the homage they bore their country. However 
 this may be, the seeds of a true public life are in the 
 soil, waiting to grow apace. It will be as when the 
 flood of Noah receded. For the righteous man per- 
 chance began to bethink himself shortly, and to be 
 troubled, that he took no seeds into the ark ; but no 
 sooner were the waters down, than the oaks and 
 palms and all great trees sprung into life, under the 
 dead old trunks of the forest, and the green world re- 
 appeared even greener than before ; only the sections 
 had all received new seeds, by a floating exchange, 
 and put them forthwith into growth together with 
 their own. So the unity now to be developed, after 
 this war-deluge is over, is even like to be more cordial 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 329 
 
 than it ever could have been. It will be no more 
 thought of as a mere human compact, or composition, 
 always to be debated by the letter, but it will be that 
 bond of common life which God has touched with 
 blood : a sacredly heroic. Providentially tragic unity, 
 where Gods cherubim stand guard over grudges and 
 hates and remembered jealousies, and the sense of 
 nationality becomes even a kind of religion. How 
 many would have said that the Saxon Heptarchy, 
 tormented by so many intrigues and feuds of war, 
 could never be a nation I But their formal combina- 
 tion under Egbert, followed by their wars against the 
 Danes under Alfred, set them in a solid, sanctified 
 unity, and made them, as a people, one true England, 
 instead of the seven Englands that were ; which seven 
 were never again to be more than historically remem- 
 bered. And so, bleeding on together from that time 
 to this in all sorts of wars ; wars civil and wars 
 abroad, drenching the land and coloring the sea with 
 their blood ; gaining all sorts of victories and suffer- 
 ing all kinds of defeats ; their parties and intestine 
 strifes are no more able now to so much as raise a 
 thought that is not in allegiance to their country. In 
 like manner, — let no one doubt of it, — these United 
 States, having dissolved the intractable matter of so 
 many infallible theories and bones of contention in 
 the dreadful menstruum of their blood, are to settle 
 into fixed unity, and finally into a nearly homogene- 
 ous life. 
 
330 OUE OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 Passing to another point of view, we owe it to our 
 dead in this terrible war, that they have given us the 
 possibility of a great consciousness and great public 
 sentiments. There must needs be something lofty in 
 a people's action, and above all something heroic in 
 their sacrifices for a cause, to sustain a great senti- 
 ment in them. They will try, in the smooth days of 
 peace and golden thriftiness and wide-spreading 
 growth, to have it, and perhaps will think they really 
 have it, but they will only have semblances and coun- 
 terfeits ; patriotic professions that are showy and 
 thin, swells and protestations that are only oratorical 
 and have no true fire. All the worse if they have 
 interests and institutions that are all the while mock- 
 ing their principles ; breeding factions that can be 
 quieted only by connivances and compromises and 
 political bargains, that sell out their muniments of 
 right and nationality. Then you shall see all high 
 devotion going down as by a law, till nothing is left 
 but the dastard picture of a spent magistracy that, 
 when every thing is falling into wreck, can only whim- 
 per that it sees not any thing it can do ! Great sen- 
 timents go when they are not dismissed, and will not 
 come when they are sent for. We cannot keep them 
 by much talk, nor have them because we have heard 
 of them and seen them in a classic halo. A lofty 
 public consciousness arises only when things are 
 loftily and nobly done. It is only when we are rallied 
 by a cause, in that cause receive a great inspiration, 
 in that inspiration give our bodies to the death, that 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 331 
 
 at last, out of many such heroes dead, comes the possi- 
 bility of great thoughts, fired by sacrifice, and a true 
 public' magnanimity. 
 
 In this view, we are not the same people that we 
 were, ami never can be again. Our young scholars, 
 that before could only find the forms of great feeling 
 in their classic studies, now catch the fire of it un- 
 sought. Emulous before of saying fine things for 
 their country, they now choke for the impossibilty of 
 saying what they truly feel. The pitch of their life 
 is raised. The tragic blood of the war is a kind of 
 new capacity for them. They perceive what it is to 
 have a country and a public devotion. Great aims 
 are close at hand, and in such aims a finer type of 
 manners. And what shall follow, but that, in their 
 more invigorated, nobler life, they are seen hereafter 
 to be manlier in thought and scholarship, and closer 
 to genius in action. 
 
 I must also speak of the new great history sancti- 
 fied by this war, and the blood of its fearfully bloody 
 sacrifices. So much worth and character were never 
 sacrificed in a human war before. And by this 
 mournful offering, we have bought a really stupend- 
 ous chapter of history. We- had a little very beauti- 
 ful history before, which we were beginning to cherish 
 and fondly cultivate. But we had not enough of it 
 to beget a full historic consciousness. As was just 
 now intimated in a different way, no people ever 
 become vigorously conscious, till they mightily do, 
 
332 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 and heroically suffer. The historic sense is close 
 akin to tragedy. We say it accusingly often, — and 
 foolishly, — that history cannot live on peace, but must 
 feed itself on blood. The reason is that, without the 
 blood, there is really nothing great enough in motive 
 and action, taking the world as it is, to create a great 
 people or story. If a gospel can be executed only in 
 blood, if there is no power of salvation strong enough 
 to carry the world's feeling which is not gained by 
 dying for it, how shall a selfish race get far enough 
 above itself, to be kindled by the story of its action 
 in the dull routine of its common arts of peace ? 
 Doubtless it should be otherwise, even as goodness 
 should be universal ; but so it never has been, and 
 upon the present footing of evil never can be. The 
 great cause must be great as in the clashing of evil ; 
 and heroic inspirations, and the bleeding of heroic 
 worth must be the zest of the story. Nations can 
 sufficiently live only as they find how to energetically 
 die. In this view, some of us have felt, for a long 
 time, the want of a more historic life, to make us a 
 truly great people. This want is now supplied ; for 
 now, at last, we may be said to have gotten a history. 
 The story of this four years' war is the grandest chap- 
 ter, 1 think, of heroic fact, and tragic devotion, and 
 spontaneous public sacrifice, that has ever been made 
 in our world. The great epic story of Troy is but a 
 song in comparison. There was never a better, and 
 never so great a cause ; order against faction, law 
 against conspiracy, liberty and right against the mad- 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 333 
 
 ness and defiant wrong of slavery, the unity and sal- 
 vation of thf greatest future nationality and freest 
 eminent of the world, a perpetual state of war to 
 be averted, and the preservation for mankind of an 
 example of popular government and free society that 
 is a token of promise for true manhood, and an omen 
 of death to old abuse and prescriptive wrong the 
 world over ; this has been our cause, and it is some- 
 thing to say that we have borne ourselves worthily in 
 it. Our noblest and best sons have given their life to 
 it. We have dotted whole regions with battle-fields. 
 We have stained how many rivers, and bays, and how 
 many hundred leagues of railroad, with our blood ! 
 We have suffered appalling defeats ; twiee at Bull 
 Run. at Wilson's Creek, in the great campaign of the 
 Peninsula, at Cedar Mountain, at Fredericksburg, at 
 Chancellorsville, at Chickamauga, and upon the Red 
 River, leaving our acres of dead on all these fields 
 and many others less conspicuous ; yet, abating no jot 
 of courage and returning with resolve unbroken, we 
 have converted these defeats into only more impres- 
 sive victories. In this manner too, with a better for- 
 tune nobly earned, we have hallowed, as names of 
 glory and high victory. Pea Ridge, Donelson, Shiloh, 
 Hilton Head, Xew Orleans, Yicksburg, Port Hudson, 
 Stone River, Lookout Mountain, Resaca, Atlanta, 
 Fort Fisher, Gettysburg, Nashville, Wilmington, 
 Petersburg and Richmond, Benton ville. Mobile Bay, 
 and, last of all, the forts of Mobile city. All these 
 and a hundred others are now become, and in all 
 
334 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 future time are to be, names grandly historic. And 
 to have them is to be how great a gift for the ages to 
 come ! By how many of the future children of the 
 Republic will these spots be visited, and how many 
 will return from their pilgrimages thither, blest in 
 remembrances of the dead, to whom they owe their 
 country ! 
 
 Among the fallen too we have names that will glow 
 with unfading lustre on whatever page they are writ- 
 ten ; our own brave Lyon, baptizing the cause in the 
 blood of his early death ; our Sedgwick, never found 
 wanting at any point of command, equal in fact to the 
 very highest command, and only too modest to receive 
 it when offered ; the grandly gifted young McPherson, 
 who had already fought himself into the first rank of 
 leadership, and was generally counted the peerless 
 hope and prodigy of the armies ; Reynolds also, and 
 Kearney, and Reno, and Birney ; and how many bril- 
 liant stars, or even constellations of stars, in the lower 
 degrees of command, such as Rice, and Lowell, and 
 Vincent, and Shaw, and Stedman, and a hundred 
 others in like honor, for the heroic merit of their 
 leadership and death ! And yet, when I drop all 
 particular names, dear as they may be, counting them 
 only the smoke and not the fire, letting the unknown 
 trains of dead heroes pack and mass and ascend, to 
 shine, as by host, in the glorious Milky Way of their 
 multitude, — men that left their business and all the 
 dearest ties of home and family to fight their country's 
 righteous war, and fought on till they fell, — then for 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DPI AD. 335 
 
 the first time do I seem to feel the tide-swing of a 
 great historic consciousness. God forbid that any 
 prudishness of modesty should here detain us. Let 
 us fear no more to say that we have won a history 
 
 and the right to be a consciously historic people. 
 Henceforth our new world even heads the old, having 
 in this single chapter risen clean above it. The wars 
 of Caesar, and Frederic, and Napoleon, were grand 
 enough in their leadership, but there is no grand peo- 
 ple or popular greatness in them, consequently no 
 true dignity. In this Avar of ours it is the people, 
 moving by their own decisive motion, in the sense of 
 their own great cause. For this cause we have vol- 
 unteered by the million, and in three thousand millions 
 of money, and by the resolute bleeding of our men and 
 the equally resolute bleeding of our self-taxation, we 
 have bought and sanctified consentingly all these 
 fields, all that is grand in this thoroughly principled 
 history. 
 
 Again, it is not a new age of history only that we 
 owe to the bloody sacrifices of this war, but in much 
 the same manner the confidence of a new literary age ; 
 a benefit that we are specially called, in such a place 
 as this, and on such an occasion, to remember and 
 fitly acknowledge. Great public throes are, mentally 
 speaking, changes of base for some new thought-cam- 
 paign in a people. Hence the brilliant new literature 
 of the age of Queen Elizabeth ; then of another golden 
 era under Anne ; and then still again, as in the arrival 
 
336 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 of another birth-time, after the Napoleonic wars of 
 George the Fourth. The same thing has been noted, 
 I believe, in respect to the wars of Greece and Ger- 
 many. Only it is in such wars as raise the public 
 sense and majesty of a people that the result is seen 
 to follow. For it is the high-souled feeling raised that 
 quickens high-souled thought, and puts the life of 
 genius in the glow of new-born liberty. This we are 
 now to expect, for the special reason also that we have 
 here, for the first time, conquered a position. Thus 
 it will be seen that no great writer becomes himself, 
 in his full power, till he has gotten the sense of posi- 
 tion. Much more true is this of a people. And here 
 has been our weakness until now. We have held the 
 place of cliency, we have taken our models and laws 
 of criticism, and to a great extent our opinions, from 
 the English motherhood of our language and mind. 
 Under that kind of pupilage we live no longer ; we 
 are thoroughly weaned from it, and become a people 
 in no secondary right. Henceforth we are not going 
 to write English, but American. As we have gotten 
 our position, we are now to have our own civilization, 
 think our own thoughts, rhyme in our own measures, 
 kindle our own fires, and make our own canons of crit- 
 icism, even as we settle the proprieties of punishment 
 for our own traitors. We are not henceforth to live as 
 by cotton and corn and trade, keeping the downward 
 slope of thrifty mediocrity. Our young men are not 
 going out of college, staled, in the name of discipline, 
 by their carefully conned lessons, to be launched on 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 33T 
 
 the voyage of life as ships without wind, but they arc 
 to have greal sentiments, and mighty impulsions, and 
 souls alive all through in fires of high devotion. 
 
 We have gotten also now the historic matter of a 
 true oratorio inspiration, and the great orators are 
 coming after. In the place of politicians we are going 
 to have, at least, some statesmen ; for we have gotten 
 the pitch of a grand, new, Abrahamic statesmanship, 
 unsophisticated, honest and real ; no cringing syco- 
 phancy, or cunning art of demagogy. We have also 
 facts, adventures, characters enough now in store, to 
 feed five hundred years of fiction. We have also 
 plots, and lies, and honorable perjuries, false heroics, 
 barbaric murders and assassinations, conspiracies of 
 fire and poison, — enough of them, and wicked enough, 
 to furnish the Satanic side of tragedy for long ages to 
 come ; coupled also with such grandeurs of public 
 valor and principle, such beauty of heroic sacrifice, in 
 womanhood and boyhood, as tragedy has scarcely yet 
 been able to find. As to poetry, our battle-fields are 
 henceforth names poetic, and our very soil is touched 
 with a mighty poetic life. In the rustle of our winds, 
 what shall the waking soul of our poets think of, but 
 of brave souls riding by ? In our thunders they may 
 hear the shocks of charges, and the red of the sunset 
 shall take a tinge in their feeling from the summits 
 where our heroes fell. A new sense comes upon every 
 thing, and the higher soul of mind, quickened by new 
 possibilities, finds inspirations where before it found 
 only rocks, and ploughlands, and much timber for the 
 
338 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 saw. Are there no great singers to rise in this new 
 time ? Are there no unwonted fires to be kindled in 
 imaginations fanned by these new glows of devotion ? 
 We seem, as it were in a day, to be set in loftier 
 ranges of thought, by this huge flood-tide that has 
 lifted our nationality, gifted with new sentiments and 
 finer possibilities, commissioned to create, and write, 
 and sing, and, in the sense of a more poetic feeling at 
 least, to be all poets. 
 
 Considering now these higher possibilities of litera- 
 ture,, who shall say how much our one hundred fallen 
 brothers have done for us in taking the field to die for 
 their country ? The literary talent of some of them 
 was in the highest grade of promise, yet even these 
 may have done more for us by their death than they 
 could have done by their life. As the scholarly and 
 piquant Winthrop became an author of renown only 
 after his death on the field of Big Bethel, so, in a 
 little different sense, may it be true of them all. They 
 reverse, how touchingly, the fable of Antaeus. Instead 
 of receiving from the earth, when they touch it, a 
 giant strength, they give to the earth, as it takes in 
 their blood, a new inspiration for all brothers in learn- 
 ing for long ages to come ; and so, for as long a time, 
 they will write, and speak, and sing in myriads of 
 great souls coming after. Perhaps we should not 
 think of educating men to be used in dying, yet the 
 dying nobly and with power is one of the most fruitful 
 and dearest uses to which any of us come. Would that 
 all our youth could see it ! Young Carrington, for ex- 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 339 
 
 ample, had just come to the flowerof his graduation, 
 and the loss of so greal promise, before the lime of 
 fruit, Beems to he total. Far from that as possible ! 
 How many of his comrades have been impressed, even 
 as they do not know themselves, by the sacred beauty 
 of his early sacrifice ; how many been impregnated 
 in their own flowering, with those best and highest 
 sentiments that never set their fruit after men are 
 past their flower ! I know not what the ingenious and 
 versatile Blake might have written, or how or when 
 the lines of humor he took so nicely by his eye, and 
 sketched so adroitly by the off-hand cunning of his 
 pencil, might have flashed into words and brilliant 
 authorship ; but the noble successes and honors of his 
 soldier life, too soon cut short in the fatal fight of 
 Cedar Mountain, have turned his key of humor, how 
 affectingly ; showing us in what close company a high 
 soul often joins the heroic impulse with exuberant 
 play. 
 
 Great action is the highest kind of writing, and he 
 that makes a noble character writes the finest kind of 
 book. To invent is one thing, to become is another, 
 and vastly higher. Young Rice, for example, who 
 begins a private and ends a brigadier, rushed up the 
 steep of promotion by the general acclaim of his supe- 
 riors, — I know not what he might have written; 
 enough to know what he was. Nothing makes so 
 grand a figure, whether in fact or fiction, as a charac- 
 ter of high adventure coupled with high principle ; and 
 this he began to show before he became a soldier. 
 
340 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 Thus, being in great trouble after his graduation for 
 the debt incurred in his studies, he dared exactly what 
 few young men could, and what still fewer could with 
 success ; he put himself boldly before a gentleman of 
 wealth to whom he was a perfect stranger, craving the 
 loan of $500, engaging to repay it within a year, from 
 an expected income in teaching ; and so well did he 
 manage himself and his story that he was successful. 
 The mere personal interest he excited won the cause 
 for him, and with only a faint glimmer of expectation 
 that the money would ever be seen again, it was 
 cheerfully put in his hands. But before the appointed 
 year is out, behold he appears with his fund of pay- 
 ment ready ! Does any one require to be told that 
 such a man will fight, or that he will do it well and 
 faithfully ? Passing through six great battles and 
 shining in them all, he fell on the banks of the Po, 
 and was carried to the field hospital to die. In the 
 death struggle which shortly followed, he asked to be 
 turned on his side. " Which way shall we turn you ? " 
 " Turn my face to the enemy," he replied, gaspingly ; 
 and in these six words the book God gave him to write 
 was finished. It was a book all action, and he might 
 never have written any other. It was a battle fought 
 out to the end, in the " front face " manner of a sol- 
 dier ; but it was none the less a poem, a tragedy, a 
 character fascinatingly drawn. If it had been some- 
 thing to compose it, as by literary art, how much more 
 to be it, with no art at all ! No, my brothers, we will 
 not bewail these dead of ours to-day as being lost to 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 341 
 
 the cause of letters ; for the inspirations and the grand 
 realities of letters they have given up their lives to 
 supply, as truly as to save their country. 
 
 I might also speak at large, if I had time, of the 
 immense benefit these dead have conferred upon our 
 free institutions themselves, by the consecrating blood 
 of their sacrifice. But I can only say that having 
 taken the sword to be God's ministers, and to vindi- 
 cate the law as his ordinance, they have done it even 
 the more effectively in that they have died for it. It 
 has been a wretched fault of our people that we have 
 so nearly ignored the moral foundations of our gov- 
 ernment. Regarding it as a merely human creation, 
 we have held it only by the tenure of convenience. 
 Hence came the secession. For what we create by 
 our will, may we not dissolve by the same ? Bitter 
 has been the cost of our pitifully weak philosophy. 
 In these rivers of blood we have now bathed our insti- 
 tutions, and they are henceforth to be hallowed in our 
 sight. Government is now become Providential, — no 
 more a mere creature of our human will, but a grandly 
 moral affair. The awful stains of sacrifice are upon 
 it, as upon the fields where our dead battled for it, and 
 it is sacred for their sakes. The stamp of God's sov- 
 ereignty is also upon it ; for he has beheld their blood 
 upon its gate-posts and made it the sign of his passo- 
 ver. Henceforth we are not to be manufacturing 
 government, and defying in turn its sovereignty 
 because we have made it ourselves; but we are to 
 
342 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 revere its sacred rights, rest in its sacred immunities, 
 and have it even as the Caesar whom our Christ him- 
 self requires us to obey. Have we not also proved, 
 written it down for all the ages to come, that the most 
 horrible, God-defying crime of this world is unneces- 
 sary rebellion ? 
 
 I might also speak of the immense contribution 
 made for religion, by the sacrifices of these bleeding 
 years. Religion, at the first, gave impulse, and, by a 
 sublime recompense of reaction, it will also receive 
 impulse. What then shall we look for but for a new 
 era now to break forth, a day of new gifts and powers 
 and holy endowments from on high, wherein great 
 communities and friendly nations shall be girded in 
 sacrifice, for the cause of Christ their Master ? 
 
 But these illustrations must not be continued far- 
 ther. Such are some of the benefits we are put in 
 obligations for by the dead in this great war. And 
 now it remains to ask, by what fitting tribute these 
 obligations are to be paid ? And it signifies little, 
 first of all, to say : Let the widows of these dead be 
 widows, and their children, children of the Republic. 
 Let them also be the private care of us all. Let the 
 childless families adopt these fatherless. Give the 
 sons and daughters growing up the necessary educa- 
 tion : open to them ways of industry ; set them in 
 opportunities of advancement. Let our whole people 
 resolve themselves into a grand Sanitary Commission, 
 for these after-blows of suffering and loss occasioned 
 by the war. 
 
OUK OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 343 
 
 Again, it is another of the sacred obligations \vc 
 owe to the dead, that we sanctify their good name. 
 Nothing can he more annoying to the sense of honor, 
 than the mischievous facility of some, in letting down 
 the merit and repute of the fallen by the flippant 
 recollection of their faults, or, it may be, of their 
 former vices. Who have earned immunity from this 
 petty kind of criticism, if not they who have died for 
 their country? How great a thing has it been for 
 many in this war, to spring into consciously new life, 
 in the ennobling discovery that they could have a 
 great feeling ! And what, in the plane of mere 
 nature, will so transform a man, as to be caught by 
 the heroic impulse, and begin to have the sense of a 
 cause upon him ? Indeed I am not sure that some 
 specially heroic natures do not flag and go down under 
 evil, just because the storm they were made for has 
 not begun to blow. Some such were greater souls 
 perhaps than we thought, and if they were not per- 
 fectly great, who but some low ingrate would now dim 
 their halo by a word ? And what if it should happen, 
 that even a Congressional Committee may so far turn 
 themselves into a committee of scandal, as to assail 
 with unrighteous facility the military merit of the 
 dead ? If the dead cannot answer, what shall we do 
 but answer for the dead ? 
 
 A great work also is due from us to the dead, and 
 quite as much for our own sakes as theirs, in the due 
 memorizing of their names and acts. Let the nation's 
 grand war monument be raised in massive granite, 
 
Ml OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 piercing the sky. Let every State, honored by such 
 names as Sedgwick, and Lyon, and Mansfield, claim 
 the right to their honors for the future ages, by rais- 
 ing, on some highest mountain top, or in some park 
 of ornament, the conspicuous shaft or pillar, that will 
 fitly represent the majesty of the men. The towns 
 and villages will but honor themselves, when they 
 set up their humbler monuments inscribed with the 
 names of the fallen. Let the churches also, and the 
 college halls and chapels, show their mural tablets, 
 where both worship and learning may be quickened 
 by the remembrance of heroic deeds and deaths. In 
 this way, or some other, every name of our fallen 
 Alumni should be conspicuously recorded in the Col- 
 lege ; that our sons coming hither may learn, first of 
 all, that our mother gives her best to die for their 
 country. 
 
 There should also be given to the public a carefully 
 prepared volume, containing distinct notices and recol- 
 lections of all our Alumni who have fallen in the war, 
 and have held a figure sufficiently public to be dis- 
 tinctly commemorated. There are many such names 
 that I should like to present for your particular re- 
 membrance on this occasion ; such as Hebard, and 
 Butler, and Hannahs, and Roberts, and Porter, and 
 Dutton, and others who have won distinction with 
 them. I have already named a few examples from 
 the general list in another connection. Excuse me if 
 I briefly commemorate two others ; viz., Captain 
 William Wheeler and Major Henry W. Camp ; doing 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 345 
 
 it partly for my own sat isi'act ion, because I had a 
 particular personal interest in them. 
 
 Young Wheeler's enlistment in an independent 
 battery put him completely out of the line of pro- 
 motion ; and yet it must have come, in some way 
 extraordinary, shortly; indeed, I learn that it was 
 just about to come, by a stride that would have set 
 him in a high position. No Captain of the war was 
 more efficient or more perfectly master of his place; 
 none more thoroughly idolized in the love and pride 
 of his command. Sober, and cool, and clear-headed, 
 and perfectly a man in every highest quality of energy 
 and correct principle and unfearing devotion to his 
 cause, he was already grandly promoted in the judg- 
 ment of all who knew him. Ordered in a severe fight 
 to shift his battery to another position, he sent it 
 promptly with his men, and having a piece too much 
 disabled to be moved, he could not leave it, but letting 
 go his horse took hold with a sergeant, and they two, 
 loading and firing in a battle of their own, leveled 
 their aim with such precision, while the enemy's grape 
 were spattering on the gun, that they drove back the 
 advancing column and saved the piece. How they 
 lived a moment in such a storm nobody could guess ; 
 but alas ! the sharpshooter's single bullet took him 
 afterwards, at a post of honor given him and his lit- 
 tle command to be maintained by them alone, and 
 there his brave, noble chapter of life was ended. 
 
 Major Cam}) I had known from his childhood, 
 onward, and had watched him with a continually 
 
346 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 growing expectation to the last. His wondrously fine 
 person was a faithful type of his whole character and 
 power. His modesty and courage never parted com- 
 pany. His almost over-delicate conscience was fitly 
 fortified by a strong, unsubduable will. He had no 
 flash qualities, but was always unfolding in full round 
 harmony with himself. As a man he scarcely dared 
 to think himself a Christian ; as a Christian he was 
 never any the less perfectly a man. My impression 
 of him is that I have never known so much of worth, 
 and beauty, and truth, and massive majesty ; so much, 
 in a word, of all kinds of promise, embodied in 
 any young person. Whatever he might undertake, 
 whether to be a poet, or a philosopher, or a states- 
 man, or a preacher, or a military commander, or in- 
 deed an athlete, he seemed to have every quality on 
 hand necessary to success. And this I think is the 
 impression of him that every reader of his noble story 
 will have received. When he fights a college boat 
 race at Worcester, or the sea at Hatteras Inlet, or the 
 enemy at Newbern, or the dreary rigors of a prison, 
 or the impossible rigors of an escape, it makes little 
 difference whether he is successful or not ; everybody 
 sees that he ought to be. Finally paroled and released, 
 after many long months of confinement, he returns 
 home on a short furlough ; but hearing, only five days 
 after, that he has been exchanged, he tears himself 
 away from furlough and friends, and is off in two 
 hours time for his regiment. And he joins them on 
 the field of battle, welcomed by the acclamations of 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 347 
 
 the men and the hearty cheers of the command. 
 
 Though he has a nature gentle as a woman's, he is 
 yet railed the [ron Man; and the iron property was 
 abundantly shown again and again, wherever that 
 kind of metal was wanted. His regiment, always 
 relied on, is finally brought up in two lines to head an 
 assault, and he is purposely set on the wing of the 
 second line, that he may not be thrown away. Be- 
 lieving that the assault must be an utter failure, for 
 that was the opinion of all, he still modestly suggested 
 that he might be put upon the forward line ! And 
 there he fell riddled with bullets, only not to see the 
 general massacre of the men. 0, it was a dark, sad 
 day that cost the loss of such a man ! 
 
 • ' For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
 Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer." 
 
 Little does it signify to him, though much to us, 
 that his memory should be sanctified by some endur- 
 ing record. 
 
 And yet, speaking thus of particular names and 
 leaders to be commemorated, it is impossible not to 
 be troubled by a certain feeling of absurdity, that our 
 honors cannot be graded, after all, by any scale of 
 justice. Multitudes of the bravest are nameless ; or 
 if we find their names, we know not whose they arc, 
 (>!• where or how they fell. I certainly would not 
 diminish the glory of the great commanders, whether 
 dead or living. Commanders are the brain of all 
 movement and the soul of all great confidence, gath 
 
348 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 ering up in their person whole divisions and armies 
 and hurling them forward upon victory. And yet 
 how much does it signify that they have men to in- 
 spire and lead who can dare to be men, and fight in 
 the sense of a cause ! And if we speak of courage 
 to die, how many thousands who were only privates, 
 and are now without a name, have faced, each one, 
 more perils, pitched themselves into more cannons' 
 mouths and more bayonetted columns, than all the 
 Major-Generals of the armies ! 
 
 Ten color-bearers, for example, seize the fatal staff, 
 one after another, and the last finally plants it on the 
 edge of the parapet to be gained ! Regiments that 
 are sworn to never falter, pushed into the assault 
 again and again because they can be relied on, bearing 
 off their dead each time till they are reduced to a 
 handful, yet ready to halve that handful, if they must, 
 in heading an assault that every man of them knows 
 to be senseless, — this I call great soldiership ! Make 
 due note too of those thousands of prisoners, shut up 
 in the pen of their captivity, without officers, deci- 
 mated every month and almost every day by starva- 
 tion, yet voting, to a man, that they will never yield 
 their allegiance to even that cogent argument ! Or 
 go through the wards of any crowded hospital, where 
 the men are dying every hour, and catch the mes- 
 sages they send to wife, or child, or sweetheart : " Say 
 that I am gone ; and that, never having once regretted 
 my enlistment, I willingly die for my country." Who 
 of you does not ache with me for the impossibility of 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 349 
 
 doing jusl 
 
 ps of them had 
 our good father and martyr President sent on before 
 him. from all his fields of battle ! And as our Abra- 
 ham's bosom was a such on earth, much 
 more tenderly open will it be now ! How pater- 
 nally has he greeted them ! How eagerly caught 
 the sublime story of their soldiership ! And if he 
 could return again to his office, it would not be 
 strange if he should send in a new batch of Major- 
 Generals to I ssed, whom the Senate never before 
 heard of ! Really this wonderful massing of private 
 worth and public valor in our armies, is the proudest 
 fact of the war. and it to ourselves to say it, 
 and to make our account of it. in whatever way we 
 are able. 
 
 But there is one other and yet higher duty that we 
 • tJ se dead ; viz.. that we take their places and 
 stand in their cause. It is even a great law of natural 
 duty that the living shall come into the places and 
 works of the dead. The same also is accepted and 
 honored by Christianity, when it shows the Christian 
 son. and brother, and friend, stepping into the pli 
 made vacant by the dead, to assume their blessed and 
 great work unaccomplished, and die. if need be. in the 
 testimony of a common martyrdom. They challeng 
 in this maimer, if the commentators will suffer it. 
 the vows of baptism, and M were baptized for the 
 i." — consecrated upon the dead, for the work of 
 the dead. Gud lays it upon us in the same way now, 
 
350 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 to own the bond of fealty that connects us with the 
 fallen, in the conscious community and righteous kin- 
 ship of their cause. And then, as brothers baptized 
 for the dead. — Alumni, so to speak, of the Republic. — 
 we are to execute their purpose and fulfill the idea 
 that inspired them. Neither is it enough at this point 
 to go off in a general heroic, promising, in high rheto- 
 ric, to give our life for the country in like manner. 
 There is no present likelihood that we shall be called 
 to do any such thing. No. but we have duties upon 
 us that are closer at hand : viz.. to wind up and settle 
 this great tragedy in a way to exactly justify every 
 drop of blood that has been shed in it. Like the 
 blood of righteous Abel it cries both to us and to God. 
 from every field, and river, and wood, and road, dotted 
 by our pickets and swept by the march of our armies. 
 First of all we are sworn to see that no vestige of 
 state sovereignty is left, and the perpetual, supreme 
 sovereignty of the nation established. For what but 
 this have our heroes died ? Xot one of them would 
 have died for a government of mere optional continu- 
 ance : not one for a government fit to be rebelled 
 against. But they volunteered for a government in 
 perfect right, and one to be perpetual as the stars, 
 and they went to the death as against the crime of 
 hell. Tell me also this. — if a government is good 
 enough to die for. is it not good enough to die by. 
 when it is violated '? Xot that every traitor is. of 
 course, to be visited by the punishment of treason. It 
 is not for me to say who. or how many or few. shall 
 
OUR BLIG ATI ONS TO Til E DEAD. 351 
 
 suffer i hat punishment. Bui 1 would willingly take 
 the question to the dead victims of Belle Isle, and 
 Salisbury, and Andersonville, and let them be the 
 judges. There is no revenge in them now. The wild 
 storms of their agony arc laid, and the thoughts which 
 bear sway in the world where they are gathered are 
 those of the merciful Christ, and Christ is the judge 
 before whose bar they know full well that their redress 
 is sure. And yet I think it will be none the less their 
 judgment that something is due to law and justice 
 here. As, too, it was something for them to die for 
 the law, I can imagine them to ask whether it is not 
 something for the law to prove its vindicated honor in 
 the fit punishment of such barbarities ? May it not 
 occur to them also to ask, whether proportion is not 
 an everlasting attribute of justice ? And if punctual 
 retribution is to follow the sudden taking off of one, 
 whether the deliberate and slow starvation of so many 
 thousands is to be fitly ignored and raise no sword of 
 judgment ? Neither is it any thing to say, that the 
 awful ruin of the rebellious country is itself a punish- 
 ment upon the grandest scale, and ought to be suffi- 
 cient ; for the misery of it is, that it falls on the inno- 
 cent and not on the leaders and projectors, who are 
 the chief criminals. Our liberal friends abroad con- 
 jure us to follow the lead of their despotisms, and 
 cover up gently all these offenses, because they are 
 only political. Ah ! there is a difference which they 
 need to learn. Doubtless governments may be bad 
 enough to make political offenses innocent; nay, to 
 
352 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 make them even righteous. But we have not fought 
 this dreadful war to a close, just to put our govern- 
 ment upon a par with their oppressive dynasties ! 
 We scorn the parallel they give us ; and we owe it 
 even to them to say, that a government which is 
 friendly, and free, and right, protecting all alike, and 
 doing the most for all, is one of God's sacred finalities, 
 which no hand may touch, or conspiracy assail, with- 
 out committing the most damning crime, such as can 
 be matched by no possible severities of justice. We 
 are driven in thus on every side, upon the conclusion 
 that examples ought to be and must be made. Only 
 they must be few and such as can be taken apart from 
 all sectional conditions ; for we have sections to com- 
 pose, and the ordinary uses of punishment in cases of 
 private treason do not pertain where the crime is 
 nearly geographic, and is scarcely different from pub- 
 lic war. 
 
 One thing more we are also sworn upon the dead to 
 do ; viz., to see that every vestige of slavery is swept 
 clean. We did not begin the war to extirpate slavery ; 
 but the war itself took hold of slavery on its way, and 
 as this had been the gangrene of our wound from the 
 first, we shortly put ourselves heartily to the • cleans- 
 ing, and shall not, as good surgeons, leave a part of 
 the virus in it. We are not to extirpate the form and 
 leave the fact. The whole black code must go ; the 
 law of passes, and the law of evidence, and the unequal 
 laws of suit and impeachment for crime. We are 
 bound, if possible, to make the emancipation work 
 
OUR OR LI (NATIONS TO THE DEAD. 353 
 
 well : as it never can, till tin 4 old habit of domination, 
 and the new grudges of exasperated pride and passion, 
 are qualified by gentleness and consideration. Other- 
 wise there will be no industry but only jangle; society 
 in fact will be turned into a hell of poverty and confu- 
 sion. And this kind relationship never can be secured, 
 till the dejected and despised race are put upon the 
 footing of men, and allowed to assert themselves some- 
 how in the laws. Putting aside all theoretic notions 
 of equality, and regarding nothing but the practical 
 want of the emancipation, negro suffrage appears to 
 be indispensable. But the want is one thing, and the 
 right of compelling it another. Our States have 
 always made their own laws of suffrage, and if we 
 want to resuscitate the state rights doctrine, there is 
 no so ready way as to rouse it by state wrongs. But 
 there is always a way of doing what wants to be 
 done, — pardon me if I name it even here ; for our 
 dead are not asking mere rhetoric of us, but duty. 
 They call us to no whimpering over them, no sad 
 weeping, or doling of soft sympathy, but to counsel 
 and true action. I remember too, that we have taken 
 more than a hundred thousand of these freedmen of 
 the war to fight our common battle. I remember the 
 massacre of Fort Pillow. I remember the fatal assault 
 of Fort Wagner and the gallant Shaw sleeping there 
 in the pile of his black followers. I remember the 
 bloody fight and victory on the James, where the 
 ground itself was black with dead. Ah, there is a 
 debt of honor here ! And honor is never so sacred as 
 
354 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 
 
 when it is due to the weak. Blasted and accursed be 
 the soul that will forget these dead ! If they had no 
 offices or honors, if they fought and died in the plane 
 of their humility, — Thou just God, forbid that we suffer 
 them now to be robbed of the hope that inspired them ! 
 
 Do then simply this, which we have a perfect con- 
 stitutional right to do, — pass this very simple amend- 
 ment, that the basis of representation in Congress 
 shall hereafter be the number, in all the States alike, 
 of the free male voters therein. Then the work is 
 done ; a general free suffrage follows by consent, and 
 as soon as it probably ought. For these returning 
 States will not be long content with half the offices 
 they want, and half the power allowed them in the 
 Republic. Negro suffrage is thus carried without 
 even naming the word. 
 
 Need I add, that now, by these strange fortunes of 
 the rebellion rushing on its Providential overthrow, 
 immense responsibilities are put upon us, that are 
 new. A new style of industry is to be inaugurated. 
 The soil is to be distributed over again, villages are 
 to be created, schools established, churches erected, 
 preachers and teachers provided, and money for these 
 purposes to be poured out in rivers of benefaction, 
 even as it has been in the war. A whole hundred 
 years of new creation will be needed to repair these 
 wastes and regenerate these habits of wrong ; and we 
 are baptized for the dead, to go forth in God's name, 
 ceasing not, and putting it upon our children never to 
 cease, till the work is done. 
 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE DEAD. 355 
 
 My task is now finished; only, alas! too feebly. 
 There are many things I might say, addressing you 
 as Alumni, as professors and teachers, and as schol- 
 ars training here for the new age to come. But you 
 will anticipate my suggestions, and pass on by me, to 
 conceive a better wisdom for yourselves. One thing 
 only I will name, which is fitting, as we part, for us 
 all ; viz., that without any particle of vain assump- 
 tion, we swear by our dead to be Americans. Our 
 position is gained ! Our die of history is struck ! 
 Thank God we have a country, and that country has 
 the chance of a future ! Ours be it henceforth to 
 cherish that country, and assert that future ; also, to 
 invigorate both by our own civilization, adorn them 
 by our literature, consolidate them in our religion. 
 Ours be it also, in God's own time, to champion, by land 
 and sea, the right of this whole continent to be an 
 American world, and to have its own American laws, 
 and liberties, and institutions. 
 
XL 
 
 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS, POPE GREGOEY XVL* 
 
 Venerable Pontiff: — 
 
 This letter, I am well aware, will be unwelcome to 
 you. I shall speak plainly in it, and I hope I may 
 suffer no undue restraint from the eminence of your 
 position. At the same time, it is my design so to 
 speak, that, if I seem to be your adversary in some 
 things, you may still acknowledge me to be a respect- 
 ful and not ungenerous adversary. I distinguish be- 
 tween your office and your person. If then I exercise 
 a degree of freedom, which indicates how little it 
 signifies to me that you are the pope, let it soften the 
 affront that your venerable age and, if I may trust 
 the opinion of many, the more venerable inoffensive- 
 ness of your gray hairs, require me to approach you 
 with sentiments of personal deference, which I could 
 not feel, either towards your office, or your peculiar 
 
 * Published in London, April 2, 1846, on his return from Italy; 
 afterwards translated into Italian and widely circulated ; recorded 
 also In the Index Expurgatorius, and specified by proclamation, 
 as one of the seditious publications to be suppressed by the 
 Police. 
 
 (356) 
 
LETTEB TO UIS HOLINESS 357 
 
 religious opinions. Indeed, there is one thing only 
 which withholds me in this duty. viz.. the question: 
 Why should 1 trouble thus an old man's end': — Is it 
 not unmerciful to meet him thus at his grave's edge, 
 and upbraid him there with errors he cannot rectify 
 and wrongs he cannot redress ': But I remember that 
 thi- sorrows and miseries of your dominion are 
 also old. — older far than you, and not less entitled to 
 pity. I remember too. that an old man. who has 
 pa^<cd over all the heights of honor and ambition, 
 and has nothing left him but his Judge, will some- 
 times be accessible to remonstrances which others 
 could not hear. At the same time, what I shall for- 
 mally charge will not be designed to lie against you 
 personally, but only against the system which is repre- 
 sented in you. and has you for its instrument. — I 
 would fain hope its unwilling and. in some things at 
 least, its unadvised instrument. — which if you dis- 
 cover, what is it but the dearest privilege God has 
 given you in life, that you may quit the world leaving 
 your paternal testimony to the evils and wrongs it is 
 too late for you to remedy '.' 
 
 Let it not be a forfeiture of your good will or pa- 
 tience, if I address you as a member of the Christian 
 Alliance of the United States. That society has none 
 of the atrocious designs you seem to have apprehended, 
 judging from the bull you issued so promptly on 
 receiving notice of its organization. It works no 
 secret plots against your peace. Its object is openly 
 se 1. namely, tu prepare the way for a reforma- 
 
358 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 tion of your church by rendering it accessible to truth. 
 We believe that the time for using church penalties in 
 place of Christian arguments, dungeons instead of 
 doctrine, has gone by ; that a better day has come, 
 one that better suits the rational and merciful spirit 
 of Christianity. We combine, therefore, to express 
 our grief at the dishonor you reflect upon religion 
 by suppressing longer the freedom of religious faith 
 and argument among your subjects. We believe that 
 England and the United States have only yielded to 
 first principles, in allowing your teachers the utmost 
 freedom of doctrine within their borders ; and that 
 you, in imposing a rigid silence upon our teachers in 
 the Roman States, violate the same first principles, 
 and that in a manner that is arrogant and offensive, 
 as well as a bitter violation of our Christian rights. 
 In one word, we ask of you to yield us and your sub- 
 jects religious liberty, that is, to renounce force as an 
 instrument of religion, that is, to give up a kind of 
 slavery as much more cruel than any other, as im- 
 mortality is dearer than the body, as much more 
 impious as it is closer upon the rights of God. 
 
 It is right to add that in making the tour of Italy, 
 which I have recently done, I have acted in no respect 
 as an agent of the Alliance. I came among you sim- 
 ply as an ordinary traveler, though not without appre- 
 hension, from the tone of your bull, that I must owe 
 it to some oversight of your police if I was permitted 
 to pass. I have seen of course what fell under my 
 eyes. I have inquired, as every intelligent traveler 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 359 
 
 will, and, perhaps, with a little more than ordinary 
 diligence. Nothing has been more agreeable to me 
 than to find, that in some things my judgments of 
 vour system would bear to be softened, and where I 
 have been able to find positive excellences or beau- 
 ties in it, they have yielded me the sincerest pleasure. 
 And yet, I return with a spirit afflicted by the dismal 
 picture of what I have seen. The mournful image 
 of your state follows me ; and I sit down to write this 
 remonstrance, not without some hope of the blessing 
 promised to such as visit them that are in prison and 
 minister unto them. The sentiments I offer are my 
 own, and are offered on my own responsibility. I 
 only hope they will meet the general approbation of a 
 society in whose dignified and merciful aims I feel so 
 profound an interest. 
 
 And first of all, I must protest against the dishonor 
 you do to religion, by the kind of civil government 
 you maintain, in connection with your spiritual office. 
 It is, to say the least, a very extraordinary thing that 
 you, who call yourself a minister and even vicar of 
 Christ, should become just that royal person, or king, 
 he dared not consent to be. This however you are, 
 and if so, the responsibility is on you ; a responsi- 
 bility measured not by the extent of your power only, 
 but more by the sacredness of your pretensions. You 
 assume to be the head of the Christian church, and a 
 large part of the world have so little knowledge of 
 any other form of religion, as really to suppose that 
 you are the veritable representation of Christianity 
 
360 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 itself. And yet you have the credit, everywhere, of 
 presiding over the worst government in Christendom ! 
 To the traveler passing through your states, nothing- 
 wears a look of thrift and happiness : no sign of im- 
 provement meets the eye, which is not refuted by 
 signs of decay and deterioration. As the dismal 
 Campagna, once a region of fertility and teeming with 
 life, circles Rome with silence and desolation, so in a 
 political sense, every thing about you that partakes 
 the nature of hope, of social beauty and public pro- 
 gress, is withered away in the malignant atmosphere 
 of your priestly despotism. 
 
 Your ministers, all absolute, have yet no definite 
 sphere of action, and are held to no responsibility. In 
 their decrees, they perpetually contradict each other 
 and you, encroaching too upon the tribunals of justice 
 in contrary ways, as these do, in their turn, upon the 
 jurisdiction and decisions one of another. Obedience 
 is confused and baffled ; and wrong surrounded by so 
 many rival functions, which ought to be its avengers, 
 is obliged to buy its redress at so dear a price, that 
 the public remedy is often worse and more cruel than 
 the private injury. For, with few exceptions, every 
 centre of power is the seat of some cabal ; and crea- 
 tures, male and female, glide about the precincts, who 
 are able, by the base and criminal secrets in their 
 keeping, or perhaps, by terms of partnership well 
 understood, to open or shut at will the gates of favor. 
 Innocence is no protection ; for your criminal trials 
 are secret, and have the character of all works of 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 361 
 
 darkness. If a man lias property, there is really no 
 chance for him but to run the gauntlet boldly, and 
 escape with what he ean, or else to worm his way 
 through by bribery. To exhibit talent, out of the 
 priesthood, is suspicious and dangerous; spies are 
 put upon watch for a reward, and exile most assuredly 
 is near at hand. Your ambitious and greedy priest- 
 hood have engrossed, not only the churches and the 
 monasteries, but the spheres of education, the courts 
 of law and all the higher magistracies ; even the min- 
 ister of war must be a prelate. Every nutritive and 
 stimulating hope is thus taken away from the youth. 
 No avenue to advancement is left open save through 
 the humble door of ecclesiastical dependence ; a fact 
 which discourages every magnanimous struggle, and 
 turns all the currents of ambition into the channels 
 of hypocrisy, the meanest of sins. Never shall I for- 
 get the sad look of a brilliant, accomplished youth, 
 when he said : " Sir, there is no hope for us here ; the 
 priests have taken every thing away from us." Mean- 
 time, the more profitable forms of business you have 
 sold, under favor, as monopolies. The contraband 
 trade, which is now in profit, is also virtually sold, 
 the duties by which it is created being kept up, it 
 is seriously declared, by a continued intrigue between 
 the smugglers and certain persons about the govern- 
 ment. What is left after public favoritism has ex- 
 hausted its smiles, and secret cunning its greediness, 
 goes to the benefit of honest enterprise. Physical 
 industry or labor, being naturally the most defence- 
 
362 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 less of all interests, sinks, of course, to a depression 
 most hopeless and sorrowful of all. Then, lest misery 
 should heave the sigh of impatience, or woe give vent 
 to the unlicensed groan, you quarter on your impov- 
 erished and dispirited States an army of soldiers large 
 enough to keep the peace of an empire. Next you 
 add another army of ecclesiastics, out of all proportion 
 with their resources, and I should hope even with 
 their sins, (at Rome one to every twenty-eight of the 
 people,) and these subsist of course, by dead com- 
 sumption too, and as a public burden. And then, as 
 if earth could not yield ministers of exaction enough, 
 you quarter on them also a third army of saints, who 
 are the worst and most terrible scourge of all ; inas- 
 much as they come down to chain the hands of indus- 
 try one day in three of the working days of the year. 
 Possibly your people might bear up and thrive under 
 your terrestrial exactions, but when heaven comes 
 down to mock them, the struggle is unequal. What 
 people bereft of a whole third part of their industry, 
 what people having all habits of industry broken up, 
 and turned into the street, as every observer knows 
 your people are on the saints' days, thus to spend a third 
 part of their time in compulsory idleness, could long 
 retain a vestige of thrift or virtuous economy ? In- 
 deed, I had never such a sense of the prolific bounti- 
 fulness of nature, as when I looked on the immense 
 army of dead consumption you had brought to the 
 prey without producing a general starvation. 
 
 To complete the misery of this picture, we have 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 363 
 
 only to add that you have blasted the homes of your 
 people, and made them dry of comfort ; for it is here 
 that the oppressed of other nations are ever able to 
 mitigate the bitterness of their sorrows, by the free- 
 dom of domestic love and sympathy. Your confessors 
 are continually at work, as your agents of police, 
 hunting after the symptoms of discontent; busied 
 every where, in scenting out, if possible, even the un- 
 easy thoughts of misery. Often have I heard it boasted 
 at Rome, that your confessors make such an admira- 
 ble police ! You have a confessor between every wife 
 and her husband, and between both and their child- 
 ren ; so that if one lisps a free thought, or vents a sigh 
 at the table, the story, he knows, will be wormed 
 out of some one in the family ; and then if he escapes 
 the prison, he must try what it is to wear out, by 
 penance, the dissatisfaction he sought to ease by ex- 
 pression. They must keep their secrets, therefore, to 
 themselves, they must not trust each other. There is 
 no freedom at the hearth, the table is a gathering of 
 spies, and the last relish of earthly comfort heaven 
 gives to soothe the misery of oppression is taken away. 
 It must follow, of course, that your people are de- 
 pressed in their character as they are in their circum- 
 stances ; a point about which no traveler is long in 
 doubt. He remarks, first of all, the generally fine 
 physical mold of your people, the look of brilliancy 
 and genius so common among them. But it requires 
 a short time only to detect the melancholy want of all 
 that is akin to magnanimity in their character. They 
 
364 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 are passionate, cruel, servile, faithless to a proverb, 
 and mournfully destitute of all habits of industry, 
 order, and providence. I say not this of all but of the 
 many ; and I charge it upon you, that reigning over 
 them in the name of a religion that promises to exalt 
 them to a godlike image, you have sunk them even 
 below the physical mold of their nature ; reduced them 
 to a deeper ignominy than sin, without your aid, was 
 able. Was it not some painful consciousness of this, 
 which induced you to undertake a more general plan 
 of education ? I was about to thank you for 
 it ; but why is it that when you undertake a duty 
 which approaches the Christlike character, you inva- 
 riably add some mark that is opposite to the genius of 
 Christ's religion ? Why is it, for example, that you 
 teach, as I was told you do, the geography of Italy, and 
 forbid the geography of the world ? Are you afraid to 
 let your people know the world which Christ under- 
 took to make one brotherhood in the truth ? — afraid 
 lest possibly some mischievous desire of liberty or 
 light should be wakened in them by the nobler his- 
 tory and happier state of other communities ? You 
 have a little newspaper too, just as you have a little 
 geography. It is about the size of a window pane, 
 and it is distinguished by the fact that every matter 
 is carefully sifted out which can possibly provoke an 
 opinion. Nay, the readiest way for a Roman to find 
 out what is going on in Italy itself is to take an 
 English or French newspaper. And is it thus, or by 
 sue!) kind of instruments, that you expect to redeem 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 365 
 
 the character of your people, and fche dishonored name 
 of your governmenl ': Air you so blind as to think 
 thai you can give your people a standing as men, in 
 such an age as this, without light, without a knowledge 
 
 of the world, — the empires between which it is distrib- 
 uted, and the institutions by which they are distin- 
 guished? 
 
 Possibly these strictures on your government may 
 £e, in some particulars, erroneous ; but their general 
 correctness is evident to the eyes of your people and 
 of all travelers. Perhaps you will plead, in answer to 
 them, the distinctness of your civil and ecclesiastical 
 rule, and that any apparent failure in your civil de- 
 partment must be taken by itself and attributed to 
 historical causes separate from your religion. On the 
 contrary, it will be found that every one of the marks 
 of civil depression which I have named, if you review 
 the catalogue, is the legitimate fruit of ecclesiastical 
 causes, and of nothing else. Of this, I can give you 
 also even statistical proof. I saw it established, not 
 long ago, by a curious collation of statistics from the 
 several states of Italy, though the document is not now 
 within my reach, that the deficiency of exports in the 
 several states, the want of education, the severity of 
 the public burdens, the number of crimes and of 
 illegitimate births, is just in proportion to the number 
 of ecclesiastics ! Rome, the spiritual city, the metropo- 
 lis of the church of God, having the greatest number 
 of ecclesiastics, is worst and basest of all. God grant 
 you the Christian sensibility to weep over a fact so 
 humiliating. 
 
S66 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 Consider, a moment, how you stand before us and 
 the world. We find you exercising kingly power. 
 You tell us also, that you are the chief bishop of the 
 church of God, and the representative of Christ on 
 earth. We expect you, therefore, as king of the 
 Roman States, to show us the most benign govern- 
 ment in the world ; the most enlightened, most mag- 
 nanimous, freest, happiest people. But you make it 
 instead the public shame of the Christian religion, that 
 every good interest of society is blasted under it. All 
 calculations based on the benignity of Christian virtue 
 are disappointed, and nothing is left us but the infer- 
 ence that, if Christ is indeed represented in you, then 
 is Christ one of the most malignant obstacles to the 
 advancement and happiness of mankind. The infer- 
 ence is irresistible, and what is more, it is taken. And 
 therefore, in the name of the Christian world, I pro- 
 test against the delinquencies by which you furnish so 
 baleful an argument. I do not say, or believe, that 
 you are a tyrant. I have seen no one of your people 
 who has that opinion of you. But the misery is that 
 your ecclesiastico-civil fabric has made your place the 
 place only of a tyrant. You are set by your office, in 
 the centre of a system of oppression, to preside over 
 it; so that if you do not overflow your office in some 
 positive demonstrations of mercy that amount to a 
 revolt against the system, you really act the despot, 
 with only the better grace for your gentle intentions. 
 You are called, in the style of your office, the pope, that 
 is, the father of your people ; and doubtless you take 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 367 
 
 an amiable pleasure in the designation. Would thai 
 your unhappy ignorance ot a relation so beautiful did 
 not make it easier to deceive yourself here, than it 
 miglri be. Where arc the signs of that mutual con- 
 fidence, that freedom of manner, that tenderness of 
 protection answered by tenderness of respect, which 
 mark the true paternal relation ? Is it paternal when 
 you go to your worship through files of soldiers? Is 
 it paternal when you are seen hiring regiments of 
 mercenaries, because you cannot trust the fidelity of 
 of your people ? Every few years they break out in 
 revolution, and the troops of Austria are sent for to 
 save you from defeat and expulsion. It is perfectly 
 well understood by the world, you yourself under- 
 stand it also, that there is no day in the year in which 
 you would not be driven out of Italy, if your people 
 were left to their will. I see nothing paternal in this. 
 I look in vain for some scene of fatherly benignity, 
 where you take your children to your arms in freedom, 
 and receive their filial demonstrations. The nearest 
 approach to it I have discovered is, when you arc seen 
 borne through the air above them, waving your bless- 
 ing. But when this pageant is over, you slink away 
 into the recesses of the Vatican, like some Eastern 
 despot, with sentinels to guard your sleep ; and if a 
 revolution should break out before morning, you have 
 a postern key under your pillow, and a covered gallery 
 of masonry strung through the air, a half mile in 
 length, through which you may slip into the fort of 
 St. Angelo, and take refuge behind the artillery! 
 
368 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 There your gun-powder paternity waits to caress its 
 children. 
 
 But I must draw myself a little closer, and speak of 
 things that lie within the sacred province of religion, 
 not Jiowever, to any great extent, of things most con- 
 nected with the internal merits of your system; for, as 
 questions of this nature are in dispute between you and 
 Protestants, I could hardly expect by any mere state- 
 ments to carry your convictions with me. But there 
 are things a little farther off where I shall have less 
 difficulty, and where, if I am successful, it will answer 
 my purpose very nearly as well. 
 
 Between you and your priests, it is a thing perfectly 
 well understood that your religion is not intellectual. 
 To act on men through truth, to address their under- 
 standings, to sanctify them through the truth, is not 
 your plan. You are as cautious to limit knowledge 
 as you are to give it, and you consciously appeal to 
 superstition as often as to reason. This is the more 
 unworthy of you, because you so often and so justly 
 make it the praise of your church that, in a former 
 age, when the many were struggling up into the light 
 from under their oppressions, she entered into their 
 case and strove with them. It was a noble office, and 
 nobly fulfilled. The more should it mortify you, that 
 you can praise so earnestly what you shun so care- 
 fully. You are afraid, — are you not ? — that more 
 light, a more elevated manly habit, a spirit less en- 
 thralled and humiliated by superstition, would neces- 
 sitate some change or reformation in your system. 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 369 
 
 You haw mortgaged yourselves also to the cause of 
 legitimacy and despotism; hoping, as it seems to me 
 very absurdly, to gain strength by foreign alliances; 
 when the real cause of your infirmity is that your 
 system Is rotting down on its own base. Thus it is 
 that you try no more to exalt them that are of low 
 degree. You come as ministers of light, but secretly 
 afraid of light, and more careful to measure it than 
 to give it. This I say is not concealed from your- 
 selves ; you know that you are putting your church 
 into a false position, though to save it ; you wish it 
 were not necessary ; you are secretly ashamed of it : 
 the penalty is to come. 
 
 You are equally ashamed, I am sure, of the relics 
 and the old wives' fables concerning them, w^hich the 
 former ages, so rmcomfortably for you, grafted into 
 your infallible system. You have here a holy coat, 
 and there another, — a half-dozen holy coats, — all cer- 
 tified by your predecessors, if I rightly remember, to 
 be the veritable seamless robe of Christ. You have 
 as many napkins or sudoria on which he wiped his 
 bloody face in his passion. You have the spear that 
 pierced his side, and the cross on which he expired. 
 Here you have a church, where the very foot-prints 
 are shown which St. Peter left miraculously indented 
 in a marble pavement when on his way to Rome. 
 Another is built to receive the chains he wore in 
 prison. A third exhibits the altar at which he said 
 mass. A fourth contains the very stairs of Pontius 
 Pilate, which Christ ascended when lie was taken 
 
370 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 before him. A fifth preserves the very table at which 
 Christ celebrated the first supper, and the porphyry 
 pillar on which the cock stood, when he crowed as a 
 sign of rebuke to Peter. A sixth contains the cradle 
 in which Christ was rocked ; and the seventh, if not 
 the very infant that he was, a bambino carved in 
 heaven to represent him and brought down by angels. 
 So also, you have the bones of the magi, the Virgin's 
 girdle, pictures by St. Luke, and I know not how 
 many silly trifles, which you call sacred relics. You 
 are obliged to call them so, because they are part of 
 your infallibility. If you display them to the multi- 
 tude to work on their superstitions, you must also 
 exhibit them before men of sense ; a formality which 
 is quite as visibly trying to your self-respect as to 
 their gravity. Then you have ceremonies, which you 
 understand as well as I are only solemn fooleries in 
 the sacred name of God and religion ; such,ior exam- 
 ple, as that festal day of buffoonery, when the cattle 
 and horses are brought to St. Antonio to receive the 
 priestly blessing. It is well for you, that the animals 
 are under a restraint of nature, else they might laugh 
 in your faces. As to the celibacy of the clergy, I 
 know very well that you are not yet ready to own it a 
 delusion. The same clinging to infallibility which 
 perpetuates the blessing of the horses, after the ab- 
 surdity of the ceremony is felt, perpetuates also this, 
 and doubtless there is as much true sanctity imparted 
 by one as by the other. A sad chapter of history is 
 here. I will not so far insult your understanding, as 
 
POP! GREGORY XVI. 371 
 
 to suppose thai you have tailed to learn from it to 
 entertain the most serious doubts of this special kind 
 of sanctity : or your love to Christ's lienor, so far as 
 to suspeci that if the question were now a new one, 
 you and your priesthood would not face the proposed 
 rule of celibacy with your most earnest protestations, 
 as offering to men spurious notions of virtue, and 
 fraught with bitter mischiefs to the church. 
 
 It is the doctrine also of your church, I believe, 
 that you are its earthly head, and, in your official 
 capacity, infallible. I would fain like to know what 
 you yourself think of this ? Do you find any spot in 
 you for the infallibility they speak of ? I saw you two 
 or three times during my stay at Rome. I should 
 have said that you might be a man of worth and mod- 
 esty, but I had no suspicion at all that you were in- 
 fallible in any sense. It is not claimed, I believe, that 
 you are infallible in your character, but in your office 
 only. Is it then your happiness, let me ask, that you 
 have fallen into no official mistake since you came 
 into your office ? Are your decrees and measures, like 
 those of the Almighty, the expression of a perfect 
 wisdom ? Is it possible that you are clear of the 
 ordinary pains of fallibility, the uncertainty of half- 
 seeing, the timidity of planning without foresight, the 
 indecision of measures that may possibly end in un- 
 known mischief? If so, your modesty may restrain 
 you from professing so great happiness, — do you then 
 feel it? Quite sure I am, that whatever there is of 
 Christian humility in you is hurt and offended by 
 
372 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 these pretensions. You secretly nauseate them ; you 
 wish it were possible to be excused from the legacy of 
 disgust the church has left you in this doctrine. 
 
 It is also a favorite representation of your office, 
 that you are the lineal successor of St. Peter. It is 
 not within my object to deny that you are. I only 
 say, that if you are the successor of St. Peter, there 
 is certainly much for you to do, a large reform to 
 make in order fully to justify your claim of successor- 
 ship. Until then, it must savor too much of irony. I 
 saw your three magnificent palaces, seats of regal 
 majesty which the most splendid monarch in the rich- 
 est and most populous empire of Europe might envy. 
 I remembered that the money which sustains this 
 royal ostentation is wrung out of a small state and 
 a poverty-stricken people, who have also to support 
 the splendors of the cardinals, and the golden liveries 
 that flame about the gates of the Vatican, — did I see, 
 in this, the unambitious manners, and the tender 
 ministry of the fisherman of Galilee ? I turned to his 
 words. I found him saying: "Feed the flock of 
 God." Do you call this feeding the flock ? I visited 
 your palace on the Quirinal ; I traveled through the 
 halls adorned with regal splendor, and more than regal 
 art ; I looked out from your terraced gardens, which 
 overhang the city as proudly as the palace of the 
 Caesars in the days of the Empire ; I noticed in parti- 
 cular the paraphernalia of luxury and pleasure on 
 every side, — your billiard tables, your grottos of statu- 
 ary, your closeted bowers, your musical fountains, and 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 373 
 
 the ingenious lollies you have prepared to frighten the 
 ladies ; 1 mt pardon me it' 1 could not bring myself to 
 regard this kind of machinery as exactly fitted to the 
 serious and responsible officeof one who keeps the souls 
 of the world ; least of all, to the successor of that hum- 
 hie, unambitious apostle, who took the legacy of poverty 
 and fiery trial his Saviour left him, bore it in rough 
 earnest as a rough man only could, and therein greatly 
 rejoiced. The stores of artistic wealth you have gath- 
 ered round you in the Vatican have a high dignity. 
 A cultivated sense of beauty is, at least, an accom- 
 plishment, and one which, in itself, is innocent. But 
 whosoever has wearied himself, day after day, in ex- 
 ploring the streets of the Vatican palace, — that city 
 populated by the pallet and the chisel, — will not think 
 of you merely as exercising there the dry paternity of 
 a monk towards the forms of beauty congregated 
 round you ; but he will think of these accumulated 
 stores as a pageant of ambition ; he will fancy the 
 priest engaged to rival the prince, and not displeased 
 with his victory. When it goes out, therefore, that 
 you are here as the anointed successor of an apostle, 
 even the apostle Peter, what has Peter to do with the 
 Vatican, or the lord of the Vatican with Peter ? What 
 bond of connection is there between the apostle of the 
 fine arts and the apostle Peter ? 
 
 Nor will your worship in the Sistine chapel any 
 better assimilate you to your supposed predecessor 
 and the manner of his time. Woman cannot enter 
 there ; the wile of Peter himself could not enter, save 
 
374 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 behind a screen, lest her presence should disturb the 
 flow of jour sanctified emotions. Xo profane laic can 
 enter save in a dress coat. The judgment of the 
 world is artistically transacted over jour altar, that 
 jou may not forget, I suppose, at jour altar the 
 judgment of the world. Sitting on jour throne, as the 
 successor of the fisherman of Galilee, jour august 
 person and the altar of the Lord are censed again and 
 again with the common honors of worship. The car- 
 dinals float about jou in stately trailings and gyra- 
 tions to paj jou their homage, and kiss jour golden 
 phylacteries; and jour slipper receives the humbler 
 homage of those who can stoop lower. What now 
 could Peter make of this ? What part of this pageant, 
 what single item, do jou imagine ever to have been seen 
 in the churches of the apostles ? Meantime I will not 
 dispatch with a question another item of the scene, 
 which I have not jet named. When the anthem rose, 
 which was to lift our soul to God, mj ear was caught bj 
 notes of a strange qualitj, — -not the voice of woman, not 
 of man. I turned my eye to the little gallery opposite 
 where I stood, and, through the open work of the 
 front, I spied the scrawny, sorrowful-looking faces of 
 the poor beings whom you have damned to a fall even 
 out of nature, to serve the luxury of your worship. 
 Merciful God ! Is this Christianity, the religion of him 
 who came to exalt the poor and restore God's image 
 in man ? That hour of disgust and indignation I shall 
 never forget. And I declare to you here, the only 
 place in which I can do it, that if there be a God in 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 375 
 
 heaven who hears your anthems in the Sistinc chapel, 
 the voices of these desecrated beings will go up, not 
 as praise, but as cries for redress and vengeance. 
 This cruelty is an insult to Christ, which we could not 
 pardon in a harem ; what then is it in a sanctuary of 
 worship ? Above all, what as an instrument of wor- 
 ship ? 
 
 The grand pageant of Christmas was only an exag- 
 geration of the irreverent exaggerations of the chapel. 
 1 pass by the attendant military pomp and preparation 
 of the hour, and the imposing show of princes and of 
 the great of the kingdom flowing majestically to their 
 honored places. What do we see, at length, but a 
 man, who is known as the successor to a poor pedes- 
 trian apostle, riding in through the air ; borne aloft 
 on the shoulders of men in a purple flood of glory ; 
 and followed on each side, in stately march, by slowly 
 nodding plumes of white, starred with the eyes of the 
 peacock's feathers, — emblematic, it is declared, of the 
 eyes of the whole earth, turning hither to behold the 
 representative of God ! But when the bearers depos- 
 ited their gilded burden, as they did very near to the 
 place where I stood, I thought I could detect in your 
 manner that you yourself were ashamed of the figure 
 that was made of you. Pardon me, if in the excess of 
 my charity, I make you feel as a sensible man and a 
 Christian ought. And what, I could not but ask, 
 would your favorite apostle think of this, if he were 
 here 1 Poor fellow ! Most likely he would have lacked 
 the dress coat necessary to come within the circle of 
 
376 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 gentility, and therefore could not have found a place 
 near enough to look on his gilded successor at all. 
 But I fancied him still in his weather-beaten cloak, 
 and his brown plebeian face, hanging round among 
 the distant crowd, and scarce restraining his indig- 
 nant fire. Well was it for the occasion that he was 
 not really there ; else, possibly, we might have had 
 some demonstrations of the human Peter, as well as 
 of the saint. I certainly would not like to engage, 
 that when he saw the multitude wearing out the toe 
 of his image by their idolatrous salutations, the old 
 sword that cut off the ear, (unless before dispensed 
 with,) would not have been heard clashing thick upon 
 the demolished head of his representative. But re- 
 turning to his better mind, he would doubtless blame 
 the impetuous gust which had hurried him away, and 
 he would go forth, weeping bitterly, to ask of his Lord 
 in secret, what crime he had committed, that men 
 should set up this grim idol in his name ? 
 
 In the points I have here collected for your notice, 
 I have purposely abstained from the grave questions 
 between you and Protestants ; and yet I hope to have 
 been even the more successful in this way in produc- 
 ing a conviction, which cannot be dislodged, of impor- 
 tant errors, and a grievous want of the original apos- 
 tolic simplicity in your church. Indeed, I have only 
 stirred convictions by which you must have been 
 visited many times before. The age creeps round 
 you, and whispers suspicions and uncomfortable dis- 
 trusts ; you try to send them away, but they come 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 377 
 
 back and loiter with pernicious obstinacy round you. 
 [f you could make certain reforms, without shaking 
 down your babel of infallibility, you would do it. But 
 time is a stubborn teacher, and his day must come. 
 What can you do with your infallibility, when it is 
 already shaken, when even now it begins to seem a 
 little fallible to you all ? See how easily you are dis- 
 turbed, and how ready you are to find enemies that 
 are going to overwhelm you ! No sooner does a little 
 society come into existence, or rather propose to 
 exist, the other side of the world, than you come forth 
 pale from your conclave, and publish your solemn bull 
 of caution to the flock. If a railroad is proposed by 
 your people, that ordinary blessing which modern 
 genius has offered to the internal commerce of states, 
 you dare not assent to what other rulers so eagerly 
 embrace as the most innocent well-disposed contri- 
 vance in the world, because you fear lest new ideas 
 may come in with new improvements. And doubtless 
 you are right in this. A steam-car whizzing into 
 Rome and by St. Peter's, bringing new faces from new 
 worlds, stirring a motion, filling men's heads with the 
 notion of modern improvement and the grandeur of 
 the conquests over nature achieved by modern art, — 
 what is this, but the arrival in Rome of the new age 
 of the world ? Why, St. Peter's might as well never 
 have been built. Type of immutability, confronted 
 by the proof of change, — henceforth it is no better than 
 an anchor that has slipped its hold. But the railroad 
 must come, and the new ideas too. You may possi- 
 
378 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 bly delay their coming, but they will only break over 
 you in the more terrible storm at last. If you are to 
 forbid new ideas, you ought also to forbid the English ; 
 for, if their money is convenient, their presence is 
 dangerous. What poison more fatal than their En- 
 glish manners to infuse into your Italian society ? 
 Rely upon it, new thoughts are shaken from their 
 skirts whenever they walk your streets. Their liv- 
 eries flash newness in the eyes of your people. Their 
 very money too, wearing the stamp of a protestant 
 face, and suggesting the prosperity of a people who 
 have equal laws, and a free religion, is a pernicious 
 thing to look upon. No, if the English occupy the 
 Pincian hill, it is vain for you to occupy the Vatican. 
 You may keep their little church under quarantine 
 outside the wall, but their new ideas will come in 
 through the gate and over the wall, — nay, they will 
 creep into your own windows, and those of your 
 priesthood, and disturb at last the peace of you all. 
 You may send for more troops, but your Swiss guard 
 cannot fight away ideas. And the power you have in 
 yourselves to fight them away is marvelously weak- 
 ened, when once they have forced their entrance, and 
 compelled you to feel their strength. For when once 
 you begin to be a little disingenuous ; when, despite 
 the many consecrated shams and superstitions out- 
 lawed by time, and pomps whose glitter has changed 
 to irony, all thronging round you Avith faces grinning 
 mockery, you still endeavor to support the infallibility 
 that has been so often flawed ; then begins a slow 
 
POPK GBEGOBT XVI. 879 
 
 hut sure process of debauchery in you, which ener- 
 vates not your integrity only, hut your will. Besides, 
 what you hold by your will separated from all firm 
 and hearty conviction is fcchly held of course. Merc 
 will may be stiff enough for a short time, but, like a 
 muscle long extended, it is sure at length to yield. 
 You are just now trying, I know, to encourage your- 
 selves in the hope of some unknown triumph, about 
 to be achieved in England and, perhaps, in the United 
 States. You are willing to believe that your cause is 
 rising, and are even ready to imagine that the domin- 
 ions you have lost are about to come back and own 
 your allegiance. But the very signs by which you are 
 cheered, I must warn you, foretoken rather an atti- 
 tude of firmness and more compact resistance ; nay, 
 it is well for you if they do not rouse a combined 
 movement sufficiently vigorous to overwhelm you. 
 Meanwhile, you arc losing in France and Germany 
 ten-fold what you gain elsewhere. And Italy itself, 
 you well know, is held to its allegiance by nothing but 
 the Swiss guards and the foreign alliances ; alliances 
 which may dissolve in a moment, as before the breath 
 of God, on the occurrence of the slightest change in 
 the attitude of the European states. To-morrow even 
 may find you without any protector but God, which 
 would be equivalent to your utter overthrow. 
 
 What then do we ask of you ? If I have spoken 
 of your administration in terms of decision, or ap- 
 parent severity, it is because I could not otherwise do 
 justice to the enormity of your oppressions, and the 
 
380 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 offensive baldness of your priestly frauds and usurpa- 
 tions. See now, whether I will ask you to do what is 
 wide of reason and charity. I do not propose to you 
 Protestantism, as the standard of all wisdom and 
 duty ; I simply ask you to submit your church to the 
 open trial of truth in the field of religious liberty ; to 
 withdraw your bayonets, close up the grim doors of 
 your prisons, and bare your bosoms to the truth. If 
 we are wrong, resist us by the truth : if you, then let 
 truth convert you. Now, you hold your church by the 
 tenure of a robber's castle, out of which you sally to 
 depredate, and within which you may gather the spoil; 
 whereas, it should rather be a city without walls, 
 whither all may come at pleasure, but fortified within 
 by law and equity. Doubtless, we have some attach- 
 ment to Protestantism, and must be allowed to have, 
 till you offer us what is better. That it is a great ad- 
 vance upon Rome we are quite certain, but we are far 
 from regarding it as a perfect thing. It gives too 
 many signs to the contrary. How indeed, was it pos- 
 sible for Luther, confronting your thunders alone and 
 quailing himself every hour in the face of unknown 
 perils, to settle, in so great want of tranquillity, a 
 perfect system of truth and order ? Or how was it to 
 be expected that a reformation begun by sin itself, 
 like that of England, could be so washed by the care 
 of good men afterwards, as not to come out with some 
 bad stains upon it, whether we can see them or not ? 
 Equally improbable is it that any reform has taken 
 place in a church so badly corrupted as yours, with- 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 381 
 
 out bringing truths to lighl thai are worthy of your 
 Btudy ami adopt ion. A.ccep1 the good, reject the bad. 
 The results you cannot use as models, use as antag- 
 onisms or reactive forces to steady your inquiries after 
 what is better ; for this is a help not insignificant. At 
 the same time, it is not to be questioned that if you 
 advance beyond us, your advances will accrue to our 
 benefit, and assist the final settlement and harmony 
 of the world's opinions. Therefore we regret the 
 more the apparent infatuation that urges you still to 
 cleave to your infallibility, and continue, in despite of 
 the frowns of the age, to maintain by force what you 
 dare not trust to argument ; for it is scarcely possible 
 that some political intrigue, in which your friends 
 may betray you, some fatal outbreak of the impatience 
 of Italy, or some hostile combination from without in 
 which the collected odium of the world shall pour its 
 vials of wrath into your bosom, will not ere long in- 
 terrupt your self-control, and tear you so violently as 
 to make deliberation impossible. Then all the rich 
 advantages that might accrue to mankind, through a 
 new and original reformation of your church, are 
 lost. 
 
 It is a remarkable feature of this age, let it also be 
 observed, that your religion and ours are becoming 
 intermixed as never before. In France, the Protestant 
 interest is rising daily. In the United States, a Cath- 
 olic interest is increasing by emigration. In England, 
 the action of the government and the late accessions 
 you have gained from the establishment are placing 
 
382 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 you upon a more even footing. In Switzerland, Ger- 
 many and the Austrian empire, the two religions have 
 long been set in proximity. Everywhere their repre- 
 sentatives meet each other face to face ; they inter- 
 marry, they are fellow-citizens of the same state, they 
 controvert, correspond, reason about and with each 
 other. This letter to you is only a sign of the times. 
 By means of the press, you are henceforth to stand 
 out in the face of the world and be made a study, — 
 which, if you have merits, it is well ; if not, then it 
 is well. What now we want is to have this intermix- 
 ture in Italy, as elsewhere, as we certainly know we 
 shall have it, and that soon. Then, after that, let the 
 ferment go on throughout the mass. If it be uncom- 
 fortable to us all, still let it go on. If in this univer- 
 sal interfusion Protestantism is dissolved by Roman- 
 ism, and this again by Protestantism ; then, if it please 
 God, let them dissolve, and it may be they will crys- 
 tallize together. I will dare to trust anything to truth. 
 Whatever cannot stand the free action of argument, 
 let it fall ; whatever truth will modify, let it be 
 modified. 
 
 We ask it of you, then, to give us religious liberty, 
 that is, to withdraw force as an instrument of relig- 
 ious opinion. And what has God been teaching you 
 of late, but to feel the humanity and justice of this 
 demand ? I pretend to know nothing of the rumored 
 persecutions of the Polish nuns, save that you and 
 your people earnestly believed the story. And what 
 have you been doing but filling Christendom with 
 
POPE GREGORY XVI. 383 
 
 your indignant outcries agaiusi this inhumanity ? And 
 what dul I hear from your priests and people at Rome, 
 
 a IV w days ago, but the bitteresl imprecations against 
 the Emperor of Russia, then present in the city; im- 
 precations, I had reason to believe, that drew their 
 bitterness from the feeling of the Vatican? But you 
 need to beware lest the righteous impulses of nature 
 in your bosoms betray you into hasty concessions. 
 For if it is good for Rome to employ f oree as an instru- 
 ment of religion, why not for Russia ? And if perse- 
 cution is so ill for the nuns of Minsk, is it any better 
 for the fifteen hundred nuns of Rome, should they 
 happen at some future day to renounce your church 
 and your doctrine ? If flogging or starvation is not 
 good discipline for the opinions in Russia, is it any 
 better in Italy ? Docs the virtue or validity of tor- 
 ture depend upon the latitude? Better is it ingen- 
 uously to adopt the conclusions to which the ready 
 promptings of humanity lead you, and what you detest 
 so bitterly in others for ever renounce in yourselves. 
 
 I have heard it suggested that you are the last pope 
 who will exercise temporal rule in Italy ; that the civil 
 powers who have acted as your guardians are so much 
 disappointed and chagrined by the incurable oppres- 
 sion they find to be involved in a priestly government, 
 as to have decided on leaving your successor a spirit- 
 ual jurisdiction only. I know not what authority 
 there may be in this rumor, but I hope for the honor 
 of religion it may be true. But, however this may 
 be, it is time for you and all princes to consider, 
 
384 LETTER TO HIS HOLINESS 
 
 whether the melancholy spectacle of divisions and 
 animosities in the Christian world is not caused by a 
 denial of the rights of truth, and attempts to guard by 
 force what force can only disturb. Whether, in 
 short, as trade has laws of equilibrium and health, 
 which are safest in their action when they act freely ; 
 so also restrictions of force in the arguments and faith 
 of men do not create, of necessity, false repugnances, 
 and disturb the even balance of their opinions. How 
 shall truth even hold her equilibrium, when it is not 
 error she has set against her, but force ? Emancipate 
 the truth of God, and it will be wonderful if truth 
 does not emancipate us. There will be no sudden 
 violent change perhaps, such as some men love to see, 
 and such as you have the greatest reason to fear, in 
 case you stand by your infallibility longer ; but error 
 will melt away in the sovereign light of truth, and we 
 shall melt together into the love of a conscious broth- 
 erhood. 
 
 One suggestion, and I leave you. I saw in the 
 cathedral at Lyons, as I passed through that city, a 
 proclamation of the archbishop, calling the faithful to 
 pray for the conversion of England ; and I have since 
 heard of a like summons proclaimed at Rome, and in 
 other places, even as far distant as Constantinople. 
 This, I said, is well ; it is at least a step in advance 
 of the fulminations that were smoking through the 
 kingdoms, on a former day, against this recusant em- 
 pire. I only suggest, whether it would not have been 
 a little more modest, if you had summoned your fol- 
 
POPE GREGORI xvi. 385 
 
 Lowers, instead, to pray, not for the conversion of 
 England to your opinion, but that you and all Christ- 
 ians may be guided into the truth, wherever it is, and 
 there embrace each other in a durable fraternity? 
 Issue now this for your proclamation. Call upon the 
 world to join you, and I will answ r er for it that all the 
 recusant millions, who roused themselves against you 
 in the days of Luther, will joyfully meet the summons, 
 and a spectacle shall be offered, at which the world, 
 and possibly other worlds may gaze, — all the divided, 
 clashing hosts of Christendom bowed together before 
 God, asking for the truth that shall end their disa- 
 greements, and make them one forever. 
 
 Pardon me now, if in this letter I have inflicted any 
 unjust wound upon your peace, or spoken aught that 
 savors of personal malignity. You are an aged man, 
 waiting on the shore, and will probably be called to 
 pass over before me. If I would not have you go to 
 lay up accusations against me, I ought as earnestly to 
 hope that you may so discharge the responsibility laid 
 upon you by this letter, as not to be required to 
 
 accuse yourself. 
 
 Yours in the truth, 
 
 HORACE BUSHNELL. 
 
 London, April 2, 1846. 
 
XII 
 
 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS.* 
 
 We are not among those who regard the Christian 
 sects as equivalent to so many schisms. Neither is it 
 necessary, in our view, to the unity of the church 
 that it should be politically one ; indeed the polity of 
 the Anglican establishment and that of the American 
 Episcopal Church are as truly separate, one from the 
 other, as the latter from the Congregational polity. 
 As little is it necessary to the unity of Christ's body 
 that the several polities should be similar to each 
 other ; for here again it can be shown, beyond a reas- 
 onable doubt, that the polity of the Anglican establish- 
 ment is less resembled, as regards all practical pur- 
 poses, to that of the American Episcopal Church, 
 than the latter to the Congregational. So if we speak 
 of brotherly love or the unity of the Spirit, it is clear 
 that distinct and dissimilar forms of polity work no 
 necessary detriment. How often indeed is it proved 
 that proximity exasperates disagreements, and that 
 men will only hate each other the more cordially, the 
 
 * Originally published in the New Englander for 1848, vol. VI. 
 
CHRISTIAN com i>i; k ii i:\ > i v KNESS. 387 
 
 closer the bond which unites them! Doubtless there 
 is such a thing as schism, divisions thai axe wrought 
 by evi] passions, therefore dishonorable, hurtful, and 
 criminal ; and Buch is the weakness of our nature that 
 there are doubtless vestiges of schism in all Christian 
 bodies. Still it is our privilege, on the whole, and 
 being our privilege, our duty, to regard the Christian 
 sects, not as divisions, hut as distributions rather ; for 
 it is one of the highest problems of divine government 
 in the church, as in all other forms of society, how to 
 effect the most complete and happy distribution, — 
 such a distribution as will meet all wants and condi- 
 tions, content the longings, pacify the diversities, and 
 edify the common growth of all. Thus it may be said 
 that the present distribution of the church, abating 
 what is due to causes that are criminal, makes it more 
 completely one ; just as an army set off into compa- 
 nies and battalions, some trained to serve as infantry 
 and some as horse, some with artillery and some with 
 the rifle, undergoing each a form of exercise and dis- 
 cipline peculiar to itself, becomes thereby not several 
 and distinct armies, but, because of the orderly dis- 
 tribution made, a more complete and perfect whole, 
 and in the field an engine of greater power, because 
 it unites so many forms of action and bears so many 
 sorts of armor. 
 
 At the same time, it is not to be denied that this 
 manifold distribution of the church has its propriety 
 in causes and events that imply a crude state, or a 
 state of only partial development. Therefore, while 
 
388 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 we do not regret the distribution, or proclaim it as the 
 public shame of religion, we may well desire a riper 
 state, in which the Christian body shall coalesce more 
 perfectly and draw itself towards a more comprehen- 
 sive and catholic polity. The work of distribution 
 and redistribution has already gone far enough, as 
 most Christians appear to suppose. We see, indeed, 
 that unity is rising now, as a new ideal, upon the 
 Christian world. They pray for a closer fellowship ; 
 they flock together from the ends of the world to con- 
 sult for unity. A proper and true catholic church is 
 before the mind as an object of longing and secret 
 hope as never before ; it is named in distant places 
 and by men who have had no concert, save through 
 the Spirit of God and the spirit of the age. And if 
 these are signs of capacity for a more catholic state, 
 it may also be seen, in the few persons rising up here 
 and there to speak of a more comprehensive faith, or 
 to handle questions of polity and doctrine in a more 
 comprehensive spirit, that there are powers coming 
 into the field which possibly God has trained for the 
 preparation of a new catholic age. Probably never 
 until now has the world been ready to conceive the 
 true idea of a comprehensive Christianity. Nor is it 
 ready now, save in part. The idea itself is yet in its 
 twilight, dimly seen, only by a few, — by none save 
 those who are up to watch for the morning. 
 
 Our object, in this article, is to say what we are able 
 of a subject formerly so remote from the world. We 
 confess that, in our own apprehension, we seem rather 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 389 
 
 to stammer than to speak plainly. Still, as it is by 
 stammering t hat we learn to speak, we go to our rudi- 
 mental effort suffering no pride to detain us. 
 
 What we mean by comprehensiveness, or a compre- 
 hensive Christianity, may be illustrated in part from 
 the manner and teachings of Christ himself, who is 
 the Lord of Christianity. In nothing did Christ prove 
 his superhuman quality more convincingly than by 
 the comprehensiveness of his spirit and his doctrine. 
 He held his equilibrium, flew into no eccentricities, 
 saved what was valuable in what he destroyed, 
 destroyed nothing where it was desirable rather to 
 fulfill than to destroy. It is the common infirmity 
 of mere human reformers that, when they rise up to 
 cast out an error, it is generally not till they have 
 kindled their passions against it. If they begin with 
 reason, they are commonly moved, in the last degree, 
 by their animosities instead of reason. And as ani- 
 mosities are blind, they, of course, see nothing to 
 respect, nothing to spare. The question whether 
 possibly there may not be some truth or good in the 
 error assailed, which is needed to qualify and save the 
 equilibrium of their own opposing truth, is not once 
 entertained. Hence it is that men, in expelling one 
 error, are perpetually thrusting themselves into 
 another, as if unwilling or unable to hold more than 
 half the truth at once. And so if any advance be 
 made, it is wrought out between battles and successive 
 contraries, in which, as society is swayed from side to 
 side, a kind of irregular and desultory progress is 
 
390 CHEISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 maintained. Thus if any human reformer had risen 
 up to assail the tithings, washings, and other tedious 
 observances of the Pharisees, observances the more 
 easy to regard as odious because the men themselves 
 were odious, — a sanctimonious race of oppressors and 
 hypocrites, who live by farming the public supersti- 
 tions,— this human reformer would have said : "Away 
 with you hypocrites, and away with your works. Let 
 your tithings go, and if you will do any thing right, 
 come back to the weightier matters of judgment, 
 mercy and faith." This Christ did not say. Detest- 
 ing the cruelties and base hypocrisies of the sect, as he 
 certainly did, he is yet able to see some benefit in 
 their practices, some truth in their opinions. There- 
 fore he says : " These ought ye to have done, and not 
 to leave the other undone ; " comprehending, at once, 
 the exact and the free, the disciplinary and the useful, 
 offerings to God and labors for mankind. And the 
 most remarkable feature in his sermon on the mount 
 is the fact that, while he perfectly transforms the old 
 doctrines and laws, he yet annihilates nothing. " I 
 came not to destroy, but to fulfill, to bring spirit to 
 form, to extend the outward law to the inward thought, 
 to fill out the terms of knowledge and the statutes of 
 duty, but to suffer no jot or tittle of the law to perish." 
 It is by this singular comprehensiveness in the spirit 
 of Christ that the grandeur of his life and doctrine is 
 most of all conspicuous. For by this it was that he 
 set himself in advance, most clearly, of his own and 
 of all subsequent times. With men, if they ever attain 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 391 
 
 to any thing of a comprehensive aim, it is only in what 
 may be called the second age of the church or society, 
 the historical and critical age. In the first age they 
 truth : in the second they consider the seeings of 
 others and their import. In the first age they regard 
 the forms of truth as identical with truth itself; 
 therefore they stand every man for his own form, 
 having no choice but to live and die by it, and no 
 thought, perhaps, but to make others live or die by it 
 too. But in the second age, opinions become a sub- 
 ject of comparison, their laws are inquired after, their 
 forms become plastic, and are seen melting into each 
 other. Under contrary forms are found common 
 truths, and one form is seen to be the complement of 
 another, — all forms, we may almost say, the comple- 
 ment of all others. But it was in no such philosophic 
 and critical method that Christ attained to so great 
 comprehensiveness. He found it rather in the native 
 grandeur of his own spirit. Speaking not as a critic, 
 lnit as a seer, his simple seeing placed him thousands 
 of years in advance of us, under all the lights of his- 
 tory. We seem now to be just beginning to spell out 
 in syllables, and by a laborious criticism, that which 
 Christ seized upon as an original intuition. 
 
 But we must enter, if possible, into the more inte- 
 rior merits of our subject. It was given out a few 
 years ago, by the distinguished French philosopher, 
 M. Cousin, that there are in philosophy three possible 
 & hools of opinions, which must each have an era to 
 itself : one that begins with the ideal, or absolute ; a 
 
392 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 second that begins with the empiric or conditional ; a 
 third which seeks to adjust the relations of the two, 
 producing an ideal-empiric, or as he would call it, an 
 eclectic school. Besides these three, he declares 
 that it is even impossible to invent another. And the 
 latter of the three he regards as the ripe school, one 
 that will contain the last and fully-matured results of 
 philosophic inquiry. Now as human life lies between 
 the infinite and the finite, as regards thought and the 
 objects of thought, having contact in fact with both, 
 there is certainly a show of truth in the theory offered. 
 The history of opinions too may be made, without 
 any great violence, to yield it a complexion of favor. 
 Still it is easy to show in what manner other and more 
 various oppositions may arise, and how they may be 
 multiplied almost without number. They are in fact 
 so multiplied, both in philosophy and in religious doc- 
 trine. 
 
 Having it then for our subject, in this article, to 
 investigate, as far as we are able, the causes out of 
 which religious oppositions arise, and to suggest the 
 true remedy, let us, first of all, glance at the methods 
 in which the Christian world fall into so many repug- 
 nant attitudes. 
 
 Doubtless it is true, in part, as M. Cousin suggests, 
 that many of these repugnances are due to the fact 
 that the material of thought is itself divided 
 between what is absolute or ideal, and what is actual 
 or empirical ; so that a mind viewing any subject 
 partially, that is from one pole, is likely to conflict 
 
CHBISTIAM COMPBEHENSIVENEBS. 393 
 
 with one viewing it from the other,and both with one 
 who endeavors fco view it from both poles al once. 
 
 I ml there are divisions or repugnances, that arc due 
 as much to the incomprehensibility of the matter of 
 thought, as to the twofold nature of its contents. 
 The matter of thought is infinite in quantity, as well 
 as ideal or empirical in quality. Hence it results 
 that, as the minds of men are finite, they can only 
 pull at the hem of the garment, and must therefore be 
 expected to pull in different ways, accordingly as they 
 fall upon the hem on one side or the other. For as 
 the garment is, to each, nothing but the hem in that 
 part where he has hold of it, he is likely to make up 
 his sect or school according to the view he has. But 
 after long ages of debate, wherein every part of the 
 hem is brought into view, then it is possible certainly 
 for any disciple, who will look through the eyes of all, 
 to form to himself some view of it that is broader and 
 more comprehensive. 
 
 Then again there are reasons for the rise of repug- 
 nant views in thought and religious doctrine, which 
 lie in what may be called the contents of persons. 
 For it is not merely the contents of thought, but quite 
 as much the contents of the thinkers, that give birth 
 to contrary opinions and sects. We speak here of 
 personal temperament, or of national temperament, 
 working in the subject ; of that which history has 
 produced, or waits to have produced ; of impulses, 
 wants, all of which need as much to have their day 
 and be tried, as the subject-matter of thought itself. 
 
394 CHRISTIAN COMPEEHENSIVENESS. 
 
 For example, the Pelagian doctrine of will or self-sup- 
 porting virtue, and the Quaker doctrine of quietism, 
 may arise, in no small degree, from varieties of per- 
 sonal temperament. And since temperament is as 
 much a reality as thought itself, what can ever display 
 the manifold forms of a perfect and complete doc- 
 trine, unless temperament also is allowed to have its 
 trial ? So also prelacy was produced by historic 
 causes, that is, by impulses and sympathies historically 
 prepared. So also of independency or equality. It 
 was something in the convenience of political power, 
 or private ambition, or Christian experience that pro- 
 duced these repugnant methods of organization, and 
 set them in conflict. And now, since they are both 
 set before the mind as exhibited on trial, it is possible 
 to decide with greater confidence on the method most 
 congenial to the Christian scheme ; perhaps on a 
 method that combines the excellences of both. 
 
 There is yet one more source of repugnant and par- 
 tial opinion, which is quite as fruitful as the others ; 
 namely, language. No matter whether we speak of 
 philosophic doctrine or of that which is derived from 
 revelation, every opinion or truth must come into the 
 world and make itself known under the terms of lan- 
 guage. And all the processes of ratiocination, under 
 which opinions are generated, are processes that are 
 contained within the laws of language. But language 
 can not convey any truth whole, or by a literal em- 
 bodiment. It can only show it on one side, and by a 
 figure. Hence a great many shadows, or figures, are 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 395 
 
 necessary to represent every truth; and hence again, 
 there will seem to be a kind of necessary conflicl 
 between the statements in which a truth is expressed. 
 One statement will set forth a given truth or subject- 
 matter under one figure, and a second under another, 
 and a third possibly under yet another. The doctrine 
 of atonement, for example, is offered in Scripture 
 under a great variety of figures, and a history of the 
 doctrine up to this moment consists, in a great degree, 
 of the thcologic wars of these figures doing battle each 
 for the supremacy. For as soon as any figure of truth 
 is taken to be the truth itself, and set up to govern all 
 the reasons of the subject by its own contents as a 
 figure, argument itself settles into cant, and cant is 
 enthroned as doctrine. For cant, in rigid definition, 
 is the perpetual chanting or canting of some phrase 
 or figure, as the fixed equivalent of a truth. And 
 hence, as most men who speculate, both in philosophy 
 and religion, are not fully aware of the power of words, 
 or how, if they place a truth under one word in dis- 
 tinction from another, it will assuredly run them into 
 dogmas that are only partially true, successive dogmas 
 in theology or philosophy are perpetually coming upon 
 the stage, and wearing themselves down into cant to 
 die, — in which, though they resemble themselves to 
 the swans, it is yet with a difference ; for the swans 
 only sing when they die, but these sing themselves to 
 death. The number of contrary theories that may be 
 gathered round a given subject is limited, of course, 
 only by the number of figures adjacent to it. 
 
396 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of the single cause for repug- 
 nant, or opposing theories, discovered by M. Cousin, 
 we find as many as four classes of causes ; one that 
 lies in the twofold quality of the contents of thought ; 
 a second in the infinite quantity of the contents ; a 
 third in the contents of persons, including society and 
 history ; a fourth in the containing powers of lan- 
 guage as an instrument of thought and speculation. 
 
 On the whole, it does not appear that the theory of 
 M. Cousin is sufficient. It is less defective as relat- 
 ing to questions of philosophy or philosophic systems, 
 for which it was specially intended, but it is defective 
 even here. For nothing is more certain than that the 
 thoughts and speculations of men are shaped by 
 causes which do not lie in the quality of the subject- 
 matter of thought. Far more extensively true is this 
 in matters of theology or revealed religion, where so 
 much depends on questions of fact or interpretation, 
 — questions that are not determinable by any philo- 
 sophic or a priori method. Still the doctrine he ad- 
 vances that all questions of philosophy lie between 
 two poles or extremes is one that has a vast and 
 almost universal application. So also of his doctrine 
 that, inasmuch as men are after truth and not after 
 falsehood, it may generally be assumed that under all 
 extremes advanced there dwells a truth. And these 
 will hold equally well in matters of theology. 
 
 Holding this view, it may seem to follow also, as 
 asserted by M. Cousin, that there can arise about any 
 subject or question only three schools of opinion, — the 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. ; J'.'T 
 
 schools of the extremes, and a third school which 
 undertakes to settle their relation, or comprehend 
 them in a common view. And perhaps there can not 
 
 in any legitimate way. Still it will be found in his- 
 torical fact, that men do not always proceed in a 
 Legitimate way. Other causes act upon them which 
 do not lie in the subject-matter of inquiry. As we 
 see them in actual controversy, they describe a history 
 which may be well enough represented by the five 
 stages or modes which follow. 
 
 First comes up into the light one extreme and, with 
 or without controversy, it is adopted. After a while a 
 second school, looking the dominant opinion or prac- 
 tice in the face, begins to see that there is something 
 wrong or false in it, and rises up as an assailant, to 
 assert the second extreme. Now comes the war be- 
 tween extremes. The parties are certain, both, that 
 they have the truth. They regard each other in their 
 present half-seeing state, as wholly repugnant and 
 contrary. The war goes on therefore, as a Avar be- 
 tween simple truth and falsehood, which no terms of 
 peace can reconcile, and which permits no issue but 
 one of life or death. Probably the new extreme will 
 prevail, and the old subside into a secondary place. 
 
 Meantime, there is likely to appear a neutral school, 
 made up of those who are disposed to peace, and 
 deprecate war, and who cannot escape the feeling that 
 there is something extravagant or excessive, (as there 
 certainly is,) in both the militant schools. These are 
 the moderate men who praise moderate things, tho 
 
398 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 wooden-headed school, who dread nothing with so 
 great reason as a combustion of any sort. Hence it 
 is the real problem with them to divide distances, and 
 settle themselves down as nearly midway between the 
 poles as possible. Sometimes they are called in deri- 
 sion, "men of the fence," but they call themselves, and 
 more correctly, neuters , that is, neithers ; for the real 
 study and problem of their school is negative. It is 
 not to find the truth as a positive form and law, but 
 it is simply to find a position halfway between the two 
 schools before them, — to be about as much and about 
 as little one as the other. They are prudent, but not 
 wise. They make a show of candor, without so much 
 as a thought of the truth. But as men grow weary 
 of controversy, and the passions that give zest to it 
 for a time are seen to die out, and give place at last 
 to a sense of disgust ; as extremes held singly are 
 seen moreover to bring a sense of defect and weari- 
 ness by themselves, the neutrals are very likely to get 
 their turn and become the reigning school. The pub- 
 lic are sick, why must their ears be stunned by the 
 perpetual din of controversy? So falling into the 
 sick-list of neutrality, one after another, the two 
 schools of the extremes are gradually thinned away 
 and seem about to be forgotten. But for some reason 
 it begins at length to be felt that there is a very pe- 
 culiar insipidity in this neutral state. There is noth- 
 ing sufficiently positive in it to waken a resonant 
 feeling in the soul. Plausibilities have taken the 
 place of truths, and the diet is too thin to feed the 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 399 
 
 blood. After spending thus a whole age or genera- 
 tion midway between somewhere and nowhere, or 
 rather between two somewheres, they begin to feel 
 that neutralities, after all, are more sickening than 
 controversies, and they arc willing, possibly, to go 
 back and resume the old quarrel of the extremes, if 
 it is only for the health of the exercise. 
 
 There is also what is sometimes called a liberal 
 school, which differs widely from the neutral, as hav- 
 ing aims of a more generous quality. For while the 
 timorous neutral is engaged to settle his position mid- 
 way between extremes, the liberal is extending an 
 equal indulgence to both. The former is moved by 
 prudence to himself, the latter by charity to others. 
 The virtue of one is moderation, that of the other 
 tolerance. One lets go the truth to consult distances, 
 the other admits that possibly we are all too distant 
 from the truth and see it too dimly to be over positive 
 concerning it. Xow most of the arguments and 
 motives to liberality are of a reasonable and generous 
 quality, and where the liberal spirit is connected with a 
 rigid and earnest devotion to truth, it is a condition 
 of health to itself and a mark of respect to others. 
 But how easy is it to be indulgent to others, if first 
 we are indifferent to the truth! And if liberality 
 itself is made to be the virtue and hung up as the flag 
 of a school, it is very sure to prove itself, ere long, to 
 be anything but a virtue. Or if still it be called by 
 that name, it will show itself to be the most un- 
 Uluminated, most impotent and insipid of all virtueSo 
 
400 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 Having no creed, in fact, save that other men shall be 
 welcome to theirs, — earnest in nothing save in vindi- 
 cating the right of others to be earnest, counting it 
 charity not to be anxious for the truth, but to be 
 patient with all error, smiling indulgently upon all 
 extremes, not caring how the truth may fare between 
 them, — the liberal school makes a virtue of negation, 
 and freezes itself in the mild and gentle temperature 
 it has mistaken for charity. The word liberal is in 
 fact a negative word ; there is nothing positive in it. 
 And as words are powerful, no body of men, however 
 earnest at the beginning, can long rally under this 
 word as a flag, without making it a sacrament of 
 indifference, and subsiding thus into a state which 
 involves a disrespect to all the sacred rights of truth. 
 But as life cannot long be endured where earnestness 
 is lost, so the liberalist will begin, ere long, to feel that 
 his supposed charity does not bless him. And now 
 he will gird himself again for war, seize upon some 
 post and fortify it, and though it do not cover a half- 
 acre of ground, he will swear to die fighting for some- 
 thing as better than possessing nothing. 
 
 Having now the schools above-named before us: 
 first the schools of the extremes with their wars ; 
 then the neutral or the liberal school or both, succeed- 
 ing and bringing in an age of dearth that cannot longer 
 be supported ; we may see how a fifth school rises to 
 complete the cycle and gather unto the truth her own 
 true catholic brotherhood. There rises up now a man, 
 or a few men, who looking again at the two extreme 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 401 
 
 schools, begin to ask whether it is not possible to com- 
 prehend them ; that is to receive, hold, practice all 
 
 which made the extreme opinions true to their disci- 
 ples ? The very thought gives compass or enlargement 
 to the soul in which it is conceived. It ascends, as it 
 were, to a higher position to look down upon the 
 strifes of the race and use them as the material of 
 its exercise, conveniences to its own final establish- 
 ment and victory. In this effort to comprehend ex- 
 tremes, it offers no disrespect, but the highest respect 
 rather, to the great and earnest spirits that have stood 
 for the truth and fought her battles, giving them all 
 credit for their courage and devotion, and considering 
 them, in fact, as the right and left wings of the field 
 which it now remains to include in one and the same 
 army. It is in fact a disciple of the extremes, taking- 
 lessons of both, and ceasing not till it has gotten 
 whatever good and whatever truth made their opin- 
 ions sacred to themselves. In the endeavor to com- 
 prehend extremes, it comprehends also both the views 
 of the neutral and the liberal schools. The neutral 
 was sure that there was some extravagance, some 
 defect of equilibrium in the extremes, and this he 
 thought to restore by dividing distances and holding 
 neither. The comprehensive school restores it by 
 holding both and bringing both to qualify and moderate 
 each other. The liberal saw charity perishing in the 
 earnest battle of the extremes, and required of itself 
 a more indulgent spirit. The comprehensive school 
 finds not only a defect of charity, but what is more, 
 
402 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 a real ground for charity, in the fact that both ex- 
 tremes are only standing for the two poles of truth; 
 earnest because they have the truth, and only quarrel 
 ing because they have not breadth enough to see that 
 they are one. In the comprehensive school it will be 
 a first conviction that all serious, earnest men have 
 something in their view which makes it truth to them ; 
 therefore that all serious, earnest men, however re- 
 pugnant in their words, have yet some radical agree- 
 ment, and if the place can be found, will somewhere 
 reveal their brotherhood. Therefore they are not only 
 to tolerate, but to love and respect each other. Nay, 
 they are each to ask, what has the other which is 
 necessary to its own completeness in the truth ? And 
 thus the comprehensive school, finding its liberality in 
 the higher pursuit of the truth, will have it not as a 
 negation, had exercise it not as a sacrament of indif- 
 ference. It will be moderate without pursuing mod- 
 eration, liberal without pursuing liberality, both be- 
 cause it follows after the truth, giving heed to all 
 earnest voices, and bowing as a disciple to all her 
 champions. 
 
 It is not our design, in giving out this distribution 
 of schools, to place them all upon an equal footing. 
 The first two and the last, the two extreme or parti- 
 san schools and the comprehensive school must appear 
 in their order ; they constitute the necessary condi- 
 tions of mental progress in the truth, and truth can 
 not find a complete and full development without 
 them. The other two, the neutral and the liberal, do 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 403 
 
 appear casualty or incidentally, and oi'ten hold an 
 important figure in the real history of sects and 
 opinions, and no sufficient view of the actual history 
 of opinions can be given without some reference to 
 them. They may both be regarded, perhaps, as 
 spurious modes of the comprehensive school, actuated 
 by some dim and undiscovered sense of the fact that 
 there is, doubtless, a higher, broader truth, which, il 
 it were known, would reveal an aspect of extrava- 
 gance in the partisan strifes of the world. In this 
 view, they may be looked upon as rudimental efforts 
 preparatory to the development of a true comprehen- 
 siveness. And therefore the proper dignity of a com- 
 prehensive effort, guided by intelligent convictions 
 and fixed laws of criticism, could not appear without 
 some notice of the contrast between it and them. 
 
 Having it for our design, in this article, to recom- 
 mend the comprehensive spirit in religion, we are 
 tempted, first of all, to speak of it as related to 
 character itself ; for this is the radical interest of the 
 subject, and the illustrations we may offer here will 
 be familiar to all our readers, even to those who are 
 unexercised in the higher abstractions of theology. 
 
 The endeavor to comprehend all antagonisms and 
 hold the just equilibrium of truth is the highest and 
 most ingenuous that a human soul can propose ; one 
 that God only can perfectly realize. Yet whosoever 
 has but conceived such a thought gives some evidence 
 therein of a resemblance to God, and lie is, according 
 to the measure of his success, a truly great character. 
 
404 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 A comprehensive character is, in fact, the only really 
 great character possible among men. And being that 
 which holds the fullest agreement and sympathy 
 with God, it is one, we are persuaded, that is specially 
 valued and cherished by him. We shall find also by 
 inspection, that all the defective modes of character 
 in Christian men are due to the fact that some 
 partial, or partisan view of duty sways their demon- 
 strations. Sometimes one extreme is held, sometimes 
 the other, and accordingly we shall see that, except- 
 ing cases where there is a fixed design to brave the 
 laws of all duty, the blemished characters go in pairs. 
 
 Thus one man abhors all prejudice, testifies against 
 it night and day, places all his guards on the side 
 opposite, and as prejudgments of some kind are the 
 necessary condition of all judgments, it results, of 
 course, that he falls into an error quite as hurtful and 
 more weak, ceasing to have any fixed opinion, or to 
 hold manfully any truth whatever. Another, seeing 
 no evil but in a change of opinions, holds his opinions 
 by his will and not by his understanding. And as no 
 truth can penetrate the will, he becomes a stupid and 
 obstinate bigot, standing for truth itself, as if it were 
 no better than falsehood. 
 
 There is a class of Christians who specially abhor 
 a scrupulous religion. It is uncomfortable, it wears 
 a superstitious look, and therefore they are moved to 
 assert their dignity by venturing out occasionally on 
 acts or exhibitions that are plainly sinful. And then 
 when they return to their duty, which they are quite 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 405 
 
 certain finally to omit, they consent to obey God, not 
 because of the principle, but because of the import- 
 ance of the occasion ! In expelling all scruples, they 
 have made an exile of their consciences. A man at 
 the other extreme will have it for his religion to be 
 exact in all the items of discipline, and will become 
 so conscientious about mint, anise, and cummin, that 
 no conscience will be left for judgment, or mercy, or 
 even for honesty. 
 
 Some persons are all for charity, meaning by the 
 term a spirit of allowance towards the faults and 
 crimes of others. Christ they say commands us not 
 to judge ; but they do not observe that there are things 
 which we can see without judging and which, as they 
 display their own iniquity, ought to be condemned in 
 the severest terms of reprobation. Charity will cover 
 a multitude of sins, — not all. The dearest and truest 
 charity will uncover many. Opposite to such, we have 
 a tribe of censorious Christians, who require us to be 
 bold against sin, who put the harshest constructions 
 on all conduct, scorching and denouncing as surely as 
 they speak. If they could not find some sin to de- 
 nounce, they would begin to have a poor opinion of 
 their own piety. These could not even understand 
 the Saviour, when he says, " neither do I condemn 
 thee." 
 
 Some Christian professors are so particularly pleased 
 with a cheerful spirit, and so intent on being cheerful 
 Christians themselves, that they even forget to be 
 Christians at all. They arc light enough, free enough; 
 
406 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 the longitude of face they so much dread is effectually 
 displaced. Indeed the godly life, prayer, sobriety 
 itself, are all too sombre for their kind of piety. 
 Opposed to these we have an austere school, who 
 object to all kinds of relaxation, and have even some 
 scruples about smiling. A hearty laugh is an act of 
 positive ungodliness. They love to see the Christian 
 serious at all times. Their face is set as critically as 
 the surveyor's needle, or they carry it as nicely as they 
 would carry a full vessel. But there is a certain meas- 
 ure of sourness in all human bosoms, which if it can 
 not be respited by smiles, becomes an active leaven. 
 The face that was first serious changes to a vinegar 
 aspect, and this reacts to sour the sourness of nature, 
 till finally it will be found that the once amiable per- 
 son has become nervous, acrid, caustic, and thoroughly 
 disagreeable. 
 
 We have a class of disciples who appear to sum up 
 all duty in self-examination. They spend their lives 
 in examining and handling themselves. They examine 
 themselves till they are selfish, and extinguish all the 
 evidences for which they look. They inspect and 
 handle every affection till they have killed it, and 
 become so critical, at length, that no feeling of the 
 heart will dare venture out, lest it should not be able 
 to stand scrutiny. Another class have it for a maxim 
 never to doubt themselves. " Let us do our duty," 
 they say, " and God will take care of us." So they 
 delve on, confident, presumptuous, ignorant of them- 
 selves, guarded against no infirmity. But they might 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 407 
 
 about as well do nothing in the name of duty, as to go 
 on with a spirit so ill regulated, and if they knew it, 
 so very nearly wicked. 
 
 There is a class of disciples who especially love pru- 
 dence. It is the cardinal virtue. They dread, of 
 course, all manifestations of feeling, which is the same 
 as to say that they live in the absence of feeling ; for 
 our feelings are the welling up of the soul's waters, the 
 kindling of its fires, when no jealousy is awake to sup- 
 press them. If they are watched, they retreat to their 
 cell, — joy, love, hope, pity, fear, — a silent, timorous 
 brood that dare not move. The prudential man be- 
 comes thus a man of ice, or, since the soul is borne up 
 and away to God only on the wings of feeling, sinks 
 into a state of dull negation. Then we have another 
 class who detest the trammels of prudence, and are 
 never in their element save when they are rioting in 
 emotion. But as the capacity of feeling is limited, it 
 comes to pass in a few days that what they had is 
 wholly burnt to a cinder. Then as they have a side 
 of capacity for bad feeling still left, new signs will 
 begin to appear. As the raptures abate and the high 
 symptoms droop, a kind of despair begins to lower, a 
 faint chiding also is heard, then a loud rail, then bit- 
 ter deprecations and possibly imprecations too ; 
 charges are leveled at individuals, arrows are shot at 
 the mark, and the volcanic eructations thrown up at 
 the sky are proofs visible and audible of the fierce and 
 devilish heat that rages within. This is fanaticism, a 
 malicious piety, kindling its wrath by prayer and holy 
 rites. 
 
408 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 In these examples we have brought into view ex- 
 tremes that are furnished principally out of the con- 
 tents of persons. How manifest is it that each of 
 these extremes, embracing its opposite, would rest in 
 a balanced equilibrium on the two poles of duty, and 
 be itself the wiser and the holier for that which is now 
 its mischief and its overthrow ! 
 
 There are other classes of extremes affecting the 
 character, which are more speculative in their nature. 
 What endless wars have we between the school of 
 reason and the school of faith. But the truly enlarged 
 disciple will somehow manage to comprehend both, 
 considering it to be the highest reason to believe, and 
 the highest faith to reason. One man places virtue in 
 action, another in feeling. Possibly it is in a moral 
 standing of the soul to which it ascends between 
 both, — action inspired by feeling, feeling realized by 
 action, — thus in the moral liberty of the whole man. 
 One class consider Christian piety to be a Godward 
 and devotional habit. Another class are equally sure 
 that God is pleased with us when we do our duties to 
 our fellow-men. Thus we have pietism or quietism 
 on one side, and philanthropy on the other. But the 
 comprehensive word commands us to do justly, to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with God ; to love God 
 and through him love our brother, to love our brother 
 and to see therein that we love God. Some are 
 justified by faith, some by works. But as faith with- 
 out works is dead, and works without faith are equally 
 so, there are some who prefer to show their faith by 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 409 
 
 tlicir works, and quicken their works by faith, and 
 thus to be alive in both. There is also a school of 
 Legalists, and a school of spiritualists. The former 
 live without liberty, the latter without law. But the 
 true Christian soul is free in the law ; for it is the art 
 of love to hold a soul under discipline, and beguile it 
 still of all sense of constraint. Some resolve all duty 
 into self-interest. Others are equally sure that all self- 
 interest is criminal. Possibly self-interest may offer 
 motives that will bring the soul up unto God and pre- 
 pare it to such thoughts that it will freely love God 
 and duty for their own sake, and thus go above self- 
 interest. So one person is for experience, another for 
 habits ; one for sentiments, another for principles. 
 But God is comprehensive, working all in all, only by 
 diverse operations. A large body of Christians insist 
 on a perfectly uniform exercise in religion. Another 
 body are for new scenes and high demonstrations. 
 But God, consulting both for uniformity and diversity, 
 perfers to bring us on towards one by means of the 
 other. 
 
 So in all the possible views or aspects of Christian 
 character, you will come nearest to what is great and 
 Christlike, if you seek to unite whatever repugnant 
 extremes are before you, — to be modest and yet bold ; 
 conciliatory and yet inflexible; patient in suffering, 
 sharp in rebuke : deferential to all men, independent 
 of all ; charitable towards the erring, severe against 
 the error ; at once gentle and rigid, catholic and ex- 
 clusive, all tilings to all men, and one thing only to 
 
410 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 yourself. The more numerous and repugnant the 
 extremes of character, excepting those which are sin- 
 ful, you are able to unite in one comprehensive and 
 harmonious whole, the more finished and complete 
 your character will be. 
 
 We have dwelt thus largely on illustrations derived 
 from the department of practical character, because 
 the tendency of mankind to assume opposite poles or 
 extremes is here so conspicuous, and a matter so fa- 
 miliar to observation. Our design is to get color, in 
 this matter, for the more difficult branch of our sub- 
 ject yet remaining. Man is not one being in the 
 practical life, and another in the intellectual or specu- 
 lative. Indeed there is no precise line of distinction 
 between matters of practice and matters of opinion ; 
 for practice molds opinion, and opinion practice. 
 And it will be found that in all the contrarieties of 
 character just set forth, the contrariety observed is 
 due to the fact that character and duty are seen at 
 opposite poles, and shaped in this manner by opposite 
 opinions. 
 
 Passing on now to matters of faith and doctrine, 
 we shall see the same only more distinctly. And as 
 all the extremes of practice go by pairs, so we shall 
 find that sects and dogmas are set off in pairs about 
 given points, and fighting each for its own opinion or 
 pole, and thus that all the Christian sects stand to 
 represent, in some sense, all the Christian truths. 
 Which, if we can manage to comprehend, as we know 
 they are acknowledged and comprehended by Christ in 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 411 
 
 the unity of his own body, then we shall complete 
 ourselves in Christian doctrine, and realize the idea 
 of a true Christian catholicity. 
 
 We do not, of course, maintain that there is no 
 error in the Christian sects. A want of catholicity 
 or comprehensiveness is itself error. To see any 
 thing partially, or at one pole, is to see it insufficiently, 
 thus in defective forms and proportions. Thus all 
 sects and schools hold mixtures of error created by 
 only half seeing what they see. Besides they are all 
 instigated, in part, by evil passions and blinded by 
 false prejudices, so that they not only fall into error 
 by half seeing, but sometimes by wrong seeing also. 
 Still it will generally be found, if we set ourselves to 
 a careful scrutiny of the tenet or opinion which is 
 distinctive in a given sect or school, that there is 
 some real truth in it, however repugnant at first view 
 to us ; something which makes it true to the school, 
 and the school earnest in maintaining it. As a mat- 
 ter of fact too, we have almost never seen a dogma 
 advanced by any body of men, however monstrous, 
 which, if it were dissolved and viewed in its contents 
 historically, would not yield some important truth. 
 
 Thus among the first efforts of the church to frame 
 a doctrine of atonement, the death of Christ is often 
 represented, and especially by Irenaeus and Origcn, as 
 as a ransom paid to the devil. No representation 
 probably could be more abhorrent, when taken on its 
 face, to the feelings of all modern Christians. But 
 if we can have patience to withhold our judgment 
 
412 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 long enough to take down the drapery of the lan- 
 guage, or dissolve its figures, thus to separate the real 
 truth of feeling they may have received, under a form 
 of dogma so abhorrent to our speculative views of 
 the subject ; in a word, if we can accurately conceive 
 their historic state of mind, when advancing this rude 
 theory of atonement, the first which unilluminated 
 reason had produced, we shall find no difficulty in 
 allowing that they held a warm and living truth, 
 under a form so badly misshapen. 
 
 No doctrine is sooner rejected, or more derided for 
 its absurdity, than the doctrine of the real presence. 
 But when taken with all the negations added in re- 
 gard to the sensible form of the elements in the sup- 
 per, it would be difficult to show that anything more 
 is left than what every believing Christian ought to 
 admit, viz., that the recipient of the supper is to meet 
 therein a grace which is above sensation, and feast 
 himself in the participation of the divine nature. 
 Out of this great truth of the presence passing into a 
 human philosophy, the doctrine of transubstantiation, 
 and of a sacrifice, probably grew. The injuriousness 
 of the doctrine is due, not to the fact that it contains 
 no truth, but to the fact rather, that the disciple is 
 likely to be confused and astounded as before a mira- 
 cle wrought by the priest, and thus to miss of the truth. 
 The exaggeration or over-statement smothers the 
 truth contained. Meantime, is it not also possible, 
 that the Protestant often misses the same truth under 
 the doctrine of Zwingle ? He comes, we will suppose, 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 413 
 
 to do ;m act, to use a symbol thai will assist him to 
 remember his Lord ? But ii' he is wholly occupied 
 with his own act, there is no commuuion. Be is only 
 magnetizing himself . Communion implies reciprocity; 
 
 and if he may not and does not receive the real Christ, 
 there is no reciprocity. If therefore, Christ does not 
 oiler himself there to be received by a presence above 
 Bensation, or if the disciple does not believe it, then 
 he is blinded by his rationalism as the Romanist by 
 his superstition. Two things are necessary to the 
 Christian idea of the supper. An act of reception 
 which is an act of faith, and a matter to be received 
 which is a matter offered to faith. If the Romanist 
 omits the faith, how often, both in practice and also 
 in theory, does the Protestant omit the matter of 
 faith! When both poles are united, when Christ the 
 matter of faith is offered to faith, and faith receives 
 the matter offered, then is the Lord's body discerned. 
 The Quaker doctrine of an inner light, however 
 derided, contains a great and sublime truth. And if 
 it be taken as antagonistic to the doctrine that all 
 true knowledge is derivable to the soul through sense, 
 whether as occupied with nature, or instructed by 
 revelation, it might be difficult to say which is nearer 
 to the truth. If one nullifies the word, the other 
 nullifies the soul as the candle of the Lord. If 
 the world is dark without Christ, so if the light that 
 is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness, 
 even having Christ before us! Without the inner 
 light revelation cannot certify its truth ; for there is 
 
414 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 nothing in the soul to measure and discriminate truth. 
 Without revelation visiting the soul from without, or 
 through the senses and the understanding, the inner 
 light of conscience and reason is provoked to no dis- 
 tinct announcement of itself. There is a divine 
 Word in the soul's own nature, but it shineth in dark- 
 ness and is not comprehended till the Word becomes 
 flesh and is represented historically without. And 
 even then the natural man discerneth not the things 
 of the Spirit, until the inner life of the soul is quick- 
 ened to perceptiveness by the inbreathing of God. The 
 Quaker and the Scripturalist therefore are both right 
 and both wrong ; right in what they assert, wrong in 
 what they deny. Unite the positive contents of both, 
 and we have the Christian doctrine. 
 
 The same may be said, in substance, regarding the 
 Absolute Religion of Theodore Parker ; for this is only 
 a modified Quakerism, a Quakerism whose inspiration 
 lies in natural ideas and instincts, and not, to any 
 extent, in spiritual gifts. Nor is any thing more true 
 than that the soul is constituted for religion, much as 
 he has represented. It is a great and divine truth 
 also, one that revelation itself presupposes and actu- 
 ally affirms. But if Mr. Parker had taken pains to 
 inquire why God has set us in a sphere of sensation 
 amid objects of knowledge and scenes of experience, 
 why he did not make us mere absolutes ourselves in a 
 world of geometries and bare intellectualities, he might 
 have been led to suspect that the same reasons 
 which determined to this, might require also historic 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 415 
 
 revelations and even miracles. For if it be needful to 
 live in a phenomenal world, if the absolutes of the 
 soul are nothing worth, until they are brought forth 
 into actual discourse, and represented and mirrored in 
 the objects and scenes of experience ; if seeing and 
 hearing, trial and work, are wanted to assist the abso- 
 lute religion, why may not a Divine Word in the flesh 
 be as needful as a Divine Word in the world ? At the 
 same time, Mr. Parker is not to be answered by deny- 
 ing the religious nature of the soul. If the soul were 
 not a religious nature, the historic Word would be 
 worthless ; and so, without the historic Word, the reli- 
 gious nature, as a glance at the nations of mankind 
 abundantly shows, will only baffle itself in its sins and 
 become a blinded and bewildered instinct. 
 
 Many persons are inexpressibly shocked by the Cal- 
 vinistic dogma of unconditional election and reproba- 
 tion, or of absolute decrees. But if they could sus- 
 pend their mind long enough to sound its depths and 
 measure its real contents, they would find a great 
 and holy truth enveloped in it, one that is even funda- 
 mental to God's empire, and necessary to the highest 
 power of his government over souls, the same which 
 has given to Calvinism a religious energy so peculiar. 
 If it be understood that God enters into the actual 
 historical world of men to pick out, unconditionally, 
 one for life and another for death, there is abundant 
 reason to be shocked by such a doctrine. But if we 
 go above the actual to contemplate God before the 
 foundation of the world, as dealing with intelligibles, 
 
416 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 or possibles, perusing systems of possibles, fore-know- 
 ing theru and their contents, not as actual, or histori- 
 cal, but as intelligible ; then instituting, or by a fiat of 
 will actualizing the best and wisest, we shall see that, 
 in putting that best system on foot, he has made it 
 certain that all the contents of the system will emerge 
 historically in due time. He has done it by an abso- 
 lute unconditional decree ; for if he had not put the 
 system on foot, nothing in it would ever become a his- 
 torical fact. And having done so, every thing in it 
 will, and he will not be disappointed. What he saw 
 in the intelligible will emerge in the historical, exactly 
 as he saw it. But not so as to exclude conditions in 
 the actual. For the intelligible system he selected 
 was a system linked together by innumerable causes 
 and relations ; comprising activities to be exerted by 
 himself, laws pronounced, works of grace performed, 
 acts and choices of the subjects as they, in their own 
 freedom or self -activity, would determine; results of 
 character and destiny, such as his own good activity, 
 and theirs, both good and evil, would produce. And 
 here is the great truth of Calvinism. Having this in- 
 telligible system before him, with all its ingredients, 
 conditions, and results, God by an absolute decree in- 
 stitutes the system ; which is the same as to say that 
 whatsoever it contains will come to pass, — come to pass, 
 that is, under the conditions, so as not to infringe upon 
 the responsibility of any subject, and so as to justify 
 him and his goodness in all. In this grand truth of 
 Calvinism, God's will becomes a reality. The world 
 is felt to be in his hands. He asks no leave to reign. 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 417 
 
 Be reigns not blindly, or as a being baffled by un 
 known contingencies. Trembling before his sover- 
 eignty, we find it still a benign sovereignty, a rock of 
 confidence and love. Unable to ascend above the 
 actual and historical, the Arminian sees no other way 
 to save the conditions of freedom and just responsi- 
 bility, but to deny a truth so essential to God's gov- 
 ernment. Probably the Calvinist, equally unable to 
 get above the actual, asserts his doctrine of divine 
 will and unconditional decrees, as holding under and 
 within the sphere of actual history. One destroys the 
 government of God, the other makes him a tyrant. 
 And yet they are both asserting great and fundamen- 
 tal truths. Unite the Arminian and the Calvinist, 
 comprehend both doctrines, and we have the Christian 
 truth. 
 
 In these illustrations, it has been our object to show 
 that, in dogmas regarded with the utmost repugnance, 
 there is generally to be found some important truth, 
 if only we have patience to look for it. In the same 
 illustrations, we have also advanced the general pur- 
 pose we have in hand, viz., to show that all the Christ- 
 ian truths stand in opposites, or extremes that need 
 to be comprehended. That something of this kind is 
 true in matters of natural science is known to all. 
 In the astronomic forces, in the chemical resolution of 
 substances, in light and electricity, Ave discover nature 
 lying between her poles, and science becoming a doc- 
 trine when it comprehends them both. And in this, 
 we have only a symbol of what relates to mind and 
 spirit, the doctrine of man and the doctrine of God. 
 
418 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 Accordingly, the first thing to be done in theology 
 is to reveal the poles, or the repugnant forms of truth. 
 In all matters of moral judgment or intellectual opin- 
 ion, there must be something in the nature of contro- 
 versy to prepare the way. The elements to be com- 
 bined or comprehended will thus be brought to light, 
 and set up as distinct objects of contemplation. Then 
 the man or the teacher that follows, holding himself 
 aloof from the controversy, and looking calmly on as 
 a spectator to ask, what do these combatants mean ? 
 what great truth have they each in mind for which 
 they are doing battle ? will almost uniformly find that 
 they have one, which is some how reconcilable with 
 the opposite. Accordingly, there is no one who has 
 so great advantage, in arriving at the truth, as he who 
 follows after a controversy, if only he has the inde- 
 pendence of mind, and the implicit love of truth, 
 necessary to improve his position. 
 
 Our churches, for example, have been recently 
 agitated by a warm and earnest controversy in refer- 
 ence to the doctrine of spiritual regeneration. Ask 
 what the antagonist parties are after, and it will be 
 found that one is after the truth of divine agency and 
 spiritual dependence, the other after the liberty and 
 responsibility of the subject. In this case neither of 
 the parties intends to deny what the other really 
 wishes to maintain. Both assert our dependence, 
 both our ability ; but one a dependence which to the 
 other destroys all ability ; one an ability which to the 
 other destroys all dependence. Never was there a 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 419 
 
 better opportunity to settle the true comprehensive 
 doctrine on this difficult subject, than when such a 
 controversy going before has set up in full view the 
 antagonistic elements to be united. But if w r e are to 
 use the advantage offered, we must not be in haste to 
 enroll ourselves as disciples or partisans. We must 
 ascend to a higher and calmer position, where we may 
 sec at once all the material offered us, and use it as 
 material to be comprehended in a single view or doc- 
 trine. Then possibly we may find that a soul under 
 the bondage of evil is able to renew himself in good in 
 and through dependence, able to work because God 
 worketh in him. It will not be said that he has a 
 natural ability which means nothing, nor a natural 
 ability which means that he can do all by himself. It 
 will not be found that God must dispense an ictic grace 
 before he can put forth any right motion, which ab- 
 solves the sinner from any attempt ; nor that he can 
 regenerate himself, and is dependent on God only by 
 consent or courtesy. But it will be seen that he can 
 do nothing out of God, any thing in God. 
 
 In the great question put in issue by the Unitarians 
 concerning the Trinity, or the nature of God, it is 
 difficult in a single paragraph to indicate the true 
 comprehensive doctrine. But we are ready to express 
 our firm conviction that the Unitarians will not be 
 found to have stood forth in the maintenance of a 
 pure error, when insisting on the strict unity of God. 
 There was a kind of Tiinity maintained, and still is 
 by many, which amounts to a practical triplicity, and 
 
420 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 breeds a mental confusion in the worshiper, that is 
 both painful and hurtful. For this there was no remedy 
 but to assert the absolute unity of the divine nature, 
 and the position here assumed is impregnable. No 
 doctrine of Trinity that infringes upon this can ever be 
 maintained. Does it therefore follow, since God is 
 one, that there is no conceivable tripersonality which 
 can be vindicated ? Others may thus judge, but for 
 ourselves we have no difficulty in perceiving either 
 the meaning or the practical need of such a doctrine. 
 For if there be a practical confusion in the triplicity 
 held by many, there is a practical impotence in the 
 bald philosophic unity and its representations, when 
 rigidly adhered to, that is even more injurious to the 
 life of religion. While our Unitarian friends, there- 
 fore, are reposing in all confidence on their impregna- 
 ble doctrine of the divine unity, it becomes them to 
 remember that if they are not reasoned out of it they 
 may yet be frozen out, which is quite as bad. For 
 without a Trinity subjective to us and filling the forms 
 of the mind, God is necessarily distant, unconversable, 
 and without any adequate warmth to sustain our re- 
 ligious vitality. Of this we feel quite as sure as we 
 do of God's objective unity. If in saying this we 
 seem to speak enigmatically, it is all we can say at 
 present. We only express, in addition, our confident 
 belief in the possibility of a doctrine that shall com- 
 prehend all which the Christian world, on both sides 
 of this great question, are contending for. For it 
 would be singular, a philosophic anomaly passing be- 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 421 
 
 lief, that all Christendom should have been standing 
 for so many centuries, for that which, after all, is a 
 pure phantasm, or hallucination. It is not in mankind 
 to go after naked error in this way. Even when they 
 stumble worst, it will be found that they have yet 
 some semblance of truth. 
 
 In the question of old and new, perpetually recurring 
 in matters of religion, we have the bigot on one side 
 asserting that nothing may be new, and the radical on 
 the other, that nothing shall be old. And if Chris- 
 tianity be a vital power in the church, both are true ; 
 for the new must be the birth of the old, and the old 
 must have its births, or die. The future must be of 
 the past, and the past must create a future. And 
 which is more violent, to make a future identical with 
 the past, or to make a future separate from the past, 
 it may be difficult to say. We shall commonly settle 
 on the right view, when we have schooled down the 
 bigot and the radical, and compelled them to coalesce 
 in some common result. And this Lord Bacon has 
 done most happily, in his masterly, comprehensive 
 maxim, when he says : " We are the real antiquity." 
 For in this he affirms both that all the wealth of an- 
 tiquity is accumulated upon us, and that we have it as 
 material out of which to make a future. If we cast 
 off the lessons of antiquity, we are not wise. If we 
 allow ourselves to be the mere ducts of antiquity, 
 supposing that antiquity is to repeat itself in us, we are 
 not wise. But we are wise only when we take note of 
 the past, observe it carefully, study it respectfully, cor- 
 
422 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 rect ourselves by its wisdom and its errors, and apply 
 it to fortify our own free judgment and use. 
 
 Nearly related to this is the question of church 
 authority and of private judgment. Doubtless there 
 is just so much authority in the decisions of the past 
 as private judgment can reasonably accept. More 
 there cannot be. For to what do the advocates of 
 ' church authority appeal, but to private judgment ? 
 They ask us, in fact, to give up private judgment, by 
 an act of private judgment ; in which it will be per- 
 ceived they set open the whole question. And what 
 do we, on the other side, in asserting private judg- 
 ment, but allow it for granted, that there are reasons 
 and authorities under which we are to judge ? Un- 
 less then we intend to say that the decisions and 
 opinions of past ages, or of all ages, are to have no 
 weight in determining questions, and are never to 
 turn the scales of evidence, there must be cases where 
 we are concluded by authority of the past. And how 
 far different is this from an appeal to private judg- 
 ment, in favor of accepting all the past ? For, if 
 there be any one article of the past which it cannot 
 accept, then it must be rejected under the question of 
 giving up our private judgment, precisely as if it were 
 cited only as an evidence offered to private judgment. 
 True, it is maintained, on one side, that the church of 
 the past has been illuminated by the Holy Spirit, so 
 as to judge rightly ; but this again can be decided 
 only by an appeal to private judgment ; and if the 
 advocates of church authority could allow a truth so 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 423 
 
 manifest, their difficulty with the advocates of private 
 judgment would soon be over. The sound reality of 
 the question would then be stated, and our passions 
 would not be smoking round a mock question that, 
 having no significance, admits no settlement. Now 
 we have it before us, on one side, to shut our eyes, 
 and accept the law of the past, which, if we do, we 
 use our will to sacrifice our understanding, which is 
 the most unmanly and basest kind of thralldom. Then, 
 on the other, seeing that a tyrant is set up, who re- 
 quires us first of all to put out our own eyes, we rebel, 
 we even scout his impudent usurpations. So we have, 
 on one hand, men who have lost their liberty ; on the 
 other, men w T ho have lost their reverence. One class 
 have their souls entombed under church authority. 
 The other torn from the past are living as vagrant 
 atoms in the open spaces of time, till the hunger of 
 inanity and isolation kills them. Piety to the past 
 that is a free and filial deference, a rational and duti- 
 ful love, is the common want of both. Let the slave 
 become a son, the libertine a son, the past a mother 
 to both, and the quarrel is ended. 
 
 We might go on with illustrations of this kind, till 
 a great multitude of the controverted doctrines of 
 Christianity are seen yoked Avith their opposites, in 
 friendly embrace, pantheism with theism, absolute 
 religion with revealed religion, supralapsarianism with 
 sublapsarianism, absolute decrees with self-active free- 
 dom, salvation by grace with salvation by works, in- 
 ability with ability, natural depravity with natural 
 
424 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 innocence, the bondage of sin with the freedom of the 
 sinner. In all these repugnances, we have only the 
 two poles of truth, which if we can manage to com- 
 prehend in one and the same mental view, we arrive 
 at the proper integrity of the Christian doctrine. In- 
 deed we may lay it down as true, in general, that all 
 the Christian sects, in all their manifold repugnances 
 of doctrine, are only concerned to exhibit the great 
 elemental truths of Christianity. They all have 
 errors, they all partially mistake, as it is human to 
 do, and yet they all have some form of truth to main- 
 tain, which, when it is viewed comprehensively, and 
 carefully distinguished under the forms of language, 
 will fall into the same great scheme of Christian doc- 
 trine and assist to fill out the body thereof. So that 
 when a man is able to comprehend the reality of all 
 sects, casting away the unreality, he will be a full- 
 grown proper Christian man. 
 
 Dismissing here subjects of doctrine, we go on to 
 speak of polities and organizations. Polities are not 
 so much essential truths or doctrines, as means to 
 ends. They embody each some practical aim or idea, 
 and offer each some valuable contribution to the com- 
 prehensive church of the future. Whether they will 
 ever coalesce in any practical unity or mutual ac- 
 knowledgment of each other, bringing in their treas- 
 ures to enrich the common body, many will doubt ; 
 but if a hope so beautiful must be renounced as vis- 
 ionary, we shall easily convince ourselves, by a study 
 of their contents, that they have each some kind of 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 425 
 
 wealth which makes their existence valuable, even 
 now, to the world. Or if some of them have no 
 Longer a sufficient reason for the maintenance of a 
 distinct existence, it is only because they have already 
 emptied their treasures into the world's history. Pos- 
 sibly such an opinion may sometime be held of them 
 all ; for it may be that they are all designed to serve 
 only temporary uses. And then, when they have all 
 emptied themselves into history, and history contains 
 the product of all, what forbids that a new church 
 may emerge that shall comprehend the uses of all ? 
 
 And if any such result is ever to appear, where 
 sooner than here in these United States ? Why else 
 are we thrown together in this manner, — Christians 
 of all names and sects, living in the same neighbor- 
 hoods, fellow-citizens under the same laws, holding 
 equal terms before the laws, united in business, inter- 
 married in families ? No such spectacle as this has 
 ever been exhibited before, since Christianity entered 
 the world ; and yet it seems to be the design of God 
 that it shall, ere long, be so in all the other nations 
 of mankind. The extension of liberty must bring 
 the same results to pass everywhere. It seems to be 
 God's purpose that all these multiform sects and poli- 
 ties shall either dissolve each other and lodge their 
 contents at last in a grand comprehensive unity, or 
 else wear themselves into similar shapes by their 
 mutual attrition. And how else could a properly 
 catholic state, which is the hope of us all, be con- 
 structed ? 
 
426 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 Forecasting such a possibility, let us glance at some 
 of the sects and take a survey of their contents. And 
 we begin with the Baptists, because they seem, in their 
 very distinction as a sect, to stand for that which can 
 never be accepted ; for there is not the least proba- 
 bility, however confidently they may expect it them- 
 selves, that the whole church of God will, at any future 
 time, become Baptists. How then, it will be asked, 
 can they ever come into any comprehensive state with- 
 out renouncing that which alone gives them a dis- 
 tinct existence ? But the question implies a view of 
 the Baptist sect, whether held by themselves or by 
 others, which is superficial and does not do them jus- 
 tice. Their real office, as a sect, does not lie in the 
 fact that they are Baptists, but in that which makes 
 them Baptists. And the fact is of little consequence 
 in distinguishing the sect, save as it indicates a deeper 
 and more significant cause in their character. Taken 
 as a class, the Baptists are the Christian impractica- 
 bles (not using the word in an evil sense), individual- 
 ists of the highest and most perfect degree. They 
 are each a kind of church by himself, holding his 
 minutest convictions as stern, immovable fatalities. 
 They are the intolerants, so to speak, of individual- 
 ism ; sacrificing to it communion and submerging 
 under it, to a great degree, the social instinct itself. 
 Assuming such a position, they stand off in solemn 
 antagonism, against the intolerance of all social con- 
 straints, in church and state. Such manifestly are 
 the men to be foremost in asserting the sacred rights 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 427 
 
 of the conscience. They did it in England, they did 
 it here, they have done it everywhere. And now, at 
 this present moment, nothing is wanted in Rome it- 
 self, and in all the nations still lying under ecclesias- 
 tical oppression, so much as the rising up of a race 
 of stern individualists, or impracticables like the Bap- 
 tists. In this view they have filled a noble office. 
 They represent, in the most naked form, that which 
 is the distinction of modern history, — the full recog- 
 nition of the individual man and the consequent 
 sanctification of his rights and liberties. 
 
 And this we may say is the real truth of the sect, 
 the practical idea which measures its value. This 
 being accomplished among any given people, there is 
 no longer any sufficient reason for its continued exist- 
 ence. And when the antagonism which gave it value 
 and life is completely routed, we may reasonably 
 doubt whether the anti-social or impracticable spirit 
 of the sect will not ultimately take away its own vital- 
 ity. Indeed we seriously doubt whether a community 
 wholly made up of Baptists could be molded into any 
 settled and permanent form of social order, whether 
 in church or state. They would fly asunder, just as 
 now they withdraw from one another, constituting 
 already as many as fifteen or twenty distinct sects. 
 They are too unreducible, too much given to their in- 
 dividuality, to melt into any solid form of social unity. 
 Besides, it is sure to be discerned also, as their mental 
 breadth increases, that the mere question of baptism 
 is one of too small consequence to make any dignified 
 
428 CHEISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 reason for the existence of a sect. It will be won- 
 derful too, if it does not sometime appear unchristian 
 to many to forswear the communion of the whole 
 Christian world for a pretext so slender. Possibly it 
 may also be discerned that the reasonings applied 
 to disprove the baptism of children are against the 
 spirit of the gospel, against nature, hurtful to the 
 family, hurtful to the church, proceeding from an ex- 
 aggerated individualism which takes away the Chris- 
 tian zest of life as a social ordinance, unsanctifies the 
 homes and reduces humanity itself, having Christ in- 
 carnate in its bosom, to a collection of dry and repel- 
 lent atoms. 
 
 The practical idea embodied in Congregationalism 
 or Independency is different, though its history is, in 
 some respects, parallel. It is less individual than the 
 Baptist sect and more so than the Presbyterian. And, 
 in common with all the forms of Puritanism, it is too 
 abhorrent of the past, too completely severed in feel- 
 ing from the past, owing to the fact that it took its 
 being in a contest for the right to reform the errors 
 of the past. Considered as a distinct form of polity, 
 it stands for equality ; not that equality which belongs 
 to separate atoms, but a social equality. It denies all 
 priestly dignities, and suffers no lords over the herit- 
 age of God. It makes the church a brotherhood, 
 equal to the work of self-government, and responsible 
 for the maintenance of its own order. Free tolera- 
 tion, liberty of conscience, it was sure to accept in 
 due time, but it was too much intent at the first on 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 4l2 ( .» 
 
 social ends to invent the doctrine, lis instinct was 
 
 to organize a social slate. — IT MUST BUILD. Hence it 
 had no thought but that the elements must coalesce, 
 and if they refused there was no place for them. The 
 lathers said they would have a free church and a free 
 commonwealth, but it was to be free only to them- 
 selves. In their doctrine of equality, there was a 
 germ of true religious liberty, but it was only a germ 
 and time must unfold it. But, going forward under 
 the impulse of a strong constructive instinct, the new 
 sect laid its foundations, built itself up into a solid 
 republican order, and became the type of all that is 
 distiuctive in our institutions. Taken as a construc- 
 tive power, it is to the Baptists what Massachusetts is 
 to Rhode Island, or rather to what Rhode Island was 
 in the social confusion of a former age. TVanting 
 originally in that which gave its practical value to 
 the Baptist sect, it supplied an element which in 
 that was deficient. Both are Congregational, but one 
 has furnished the antagonistic spirit of liberty, the 
 other its constructive social powers. One therefore has 
 filled a more occasional office, the other a more per- 
 manent. For if Congregationalism dies and the name 
 is lost, no frame of polity in church or state can hope 
 for a general prevalence which rejects the construc- 
 tive powers of American history. 
 
 Presbyterianismis substantially one with it, in this re- 
 spect,— a younger brother in our history, who has acted, 
 for the most part, in conjunction with the elder, assist- 
 ing the same results. Methodism has partially accepted 
 
•430 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 the same principles of equality and self-government. 
 It acknowledges no priesthood. The laity have an 
 operative sphere and are sure, at length, to have a 
 joint right in the government. Even American Epis- 
 copacy has sought to combine with prelacy a lay power 
 which represents the constructive basis of our institu- 
 tions. The whole American church must some time 
 do the same. Indeed there is a philosophic necessity 
 that the comprehensive church of the future, if ever it 
 shall appear, should conform to the constructive law 
 of our institutions. Whether it have one order, or 
 three ; whether it be distributed into parishes or dio- 
 cesan circles ; it must be a brotherhood, officered by 
 itself. The phantom of a priestly succession, distinct 
 from the succession of the brotherhood of grace, a 
 superstition cherished with so great industry in Eng- 
 land, as the last hope of a priestly fabric outlawed 
 by time, can never get possession of this nation. The 
 constructive law of our history is against it, and it is 
 a shadow too thin to battle with a force of so great 
 solidity. Our philosophy can never accept it and it is 
 too late in the day for a flat superstition to palm itself 
 on the earnest belief of a nation like this. Not one in 
 fifty of the Episcopal sect in this country earnestly 
 believes it now. Many adhere to the sect in spite of 
 it, and for reasons of a higher and manlier character. 
 We have barely touched upon the Methodist polity, 
 but it gives a beautiful illustration, in its history, of a 
 very important truth, viz., that any organization 
 formed with a godly purpose, and a desire to promote 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 431 
 
 holiness of life and effectiveness in action, will be 
 consecrated by Providence and perpetuated as a true 
 church. Methodism was not organized as a church, 
 but as an abnormal order in the church of England. 
 It proposed, not to call out a dissenting body from the 
 establishment, but to hold a position auxiliary to it ; 
 to stimulate its piety, supply its defects, repair the 
 desolations left behind it by its heedless and worldly 
 ministry. A more disinterested aim never actuated 
 any human society. And such has been its efficiency, 
 so manifest the good fruits it has yielded, that it has 
 been obliged, as it were, to become a church and be 
 perpetuated as such. God gives it the succession it 
 did not ask, and holds it up to mock all successions 
 that lie in tradition and not in duty. Methodism 
 also illustrates another truth, viz., that Arminianism 
 can be earnest in the godly life as well as Calvin- 
 ism, — a fact that God offers us to enlarge our charity 
 and prepare us to a broader spirit of comprehensive- 
 ness. Were it not for this, were it known that Armin- 
 ianism is synonymous only with deadness and spirit- 
 ual inefficiency, many would shrink from the compre- 
 hension of any one of its principles as from the contact 
 of death. Even now, when an age of dead Calvinism 
 appears, it has become a kind of habit with us, the 
 injustice of which many do not know, to call the 
 profitless churches and ministers Arminians. It 
 would seem that a glance at the doctrines held on one 
 side by these dead churches, then at our Methodist 
 brethren on the other, devout, earnest, filling the new 
 
432 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 regions and the desolate wastes of the land with their 
 fervent prayers and the fervent praises of men con- 
 verted to God, would suffice to show us all, first that 
 Calvinism may be dead, and second that Arminianism 
 may be alive, — possibly that a comprehension of both 
 will be safer than to rest in either. Nor is there 
 any sect in our country, we are sure, that will more 
 readily sink itself in a comprehensive unity of all 
 than this, which undertook in England to be auxiliary 
 only to another, and which here rejoices in being a 
 pioneer to all others. May it not be found also that 
 the true comprehensive church will require an order 
 of Methodism within itself, that all defects may be 
 supplied, and all waste places visited ? 
 
 The most obstinate impediment to a comprehensive 
 church is to be found, we fear, in the Episcopal church 
 of our country. There seems to be a kind of fatality, 
 if we should not rather say fatuity, in our American 
 Episcopacy, which forbids it to see where its own in- 
 terest lies, and also what is due from it to the com- 
 mon cause of God in the nation. It embodies in itself 
 treasures of spiritual wealth that were reluctantly 
 renounced by our fathers, and which many among us 
 now would gladly accept, if the wood, hay, and stub- 
 ble were removed. We could draw out a modification 
 of its liturgy and also of its polity, which would make 
 it inviting to the great body of Christians under other 
 names, and not a whit less satisfactory to its most 
 earnest lay adherents ; it only would not satisfy the 
 egregious claims of its priesthood. They would be 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 483 
 
 required to give up the superstitions they have gath- 
 ered round their office, and interwoven with their 
 priestly functions. If they could cease to Anglicize 
 and consent to be Americans ; if letting go their tradi- 
 tional grace, they could suffer a very little of true 
 Christian philosophy ; we would give them a divine 
 right in their office, quite as efficient and far more 
 valid than any which they cling to now. 
 
 Doubtless there is a truth, a great and momentous 
 truth, wrapped up in their doctrine of succession ; for 
 the church of God is a vital body, and a vital body is 
 one ; so completely one, in fact, as well-nigh to ex- 
 clude the idea of succession. Its life is the life of 
 God. This is its organific power, and it fills all ages, 
 not as collective or successive aggregations, but as a 
 corporate unity ; sets us in immediate and living con- 
 nection with the apostles and all saints of all ages, 
 makes them venerable to our thoughts, and us partici- 
 pants in their history. So that a church out of con- 
 nection with the past is impossible, and a church that 
 has lost the sense of its connection, regarding itself 
 as being historically new, is a church chilled and 
 benumbed by the fictitious isolation it assumes. But 
 it does not follow that the vital unity of the church is 
 constructed by an official succession of ministers or 
 church magistrates, but the contrary ; for then there 
 would be a complete vital organism in the magistracy 
 of the church, distinct from that of the general body 
 of disciples, requiring us to believe that there is either 
 no vital unity in that, or else that there are two dis- 
 
434 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS, 
 
 tinct unities, one of the magistracy and another of the 
 body, which is the same as to deny the unity of the 
 church. 
 
 At the same time, there is an important truth also 
 wrapped up in this idea of a magisterial grace descend- 
 ing from one to another. It is only misconceived. 
 The truth is this, that every officer in the church, as 
 in the state, must be in it by a divine right ; he must be 
 clothed in his office by God. But it does not follow 
 that he must be clothed in a certain way, viz., by a 
 traditional grace of succession. In the days when 
 kings and nobles succeeded by blood, and legitimacy 
 was the same thing as a divine right to reign, it was 
 natural that bishops, who do not succeed by blood, 
 should think it essential to their office that it be de- 
 rived by some kind of succession. Hence the fig- 
 ment of a bishop's grace was invented, and was read- 
 ily accepted by the church ; for how else could a 
 bishop have any right, unless by some kind of tradi- 
 tion or inheritance ? And how shall the Anglican 
 church fortify itself now against the inroads of change, 
 except as it consecrates this figment ? Might not our 
 American Episcopacy let go this fiction of legitimacy, 
 and, ceasing to nurse a superstition so feeble and void 
 of dignity, trust itself to such divine right as it may 
 have directly from God as the head of all society ? 
 For it is God who clothes all office with a sacred right, 
 an American president as truly as a British queen. 
 The designation may be by blood or by election ; the 
 investiture may be in one form or another ; still the 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 435 
 
 magistrate is in by a divine right under God as the 
 fountain of all magistracy. 
 
 We are the more willing to apologize for our Ameri- 
 can Episcopacy, as adhering until now to this Angli- 
 cizing habit, because of the practically atheistic no- 
 tions of government which have hitherto prevailed 
 among our people. But when we have had time to 
 bring out the true theory of our government, — elec- 
 tion designating the ruler, God accepting and clothing 
 him in his office, — authority derived not from men, 
 but from God, the only conceivable fountain of 
 authority ; when our political philosophy has brought 
 us to this, (for as yet Ave have no political philosophy 
 that relates to anything deeper than the forms of gov- 
 ernment,) then it will be more inexcusable to cling to 
 the superstition of a canonical succession in the 
 church. And why should not our American Episco- 
 pacy, embracing now a manlier doctrine, and niarry- 
 ing itself boldly to our American institutions, assist 
 us in consecrating the divine right of our civil mag- 
 istracies, instead of saying practically that God can 
 sanctify a magistracy only through a line of legiti- 
 macy and a traditional investiture ? 
 
 We can never have a comprehensive church, in this 
 nation, that mocks the political order of the nation. 
 Let our Episcopal friends consider this, and give to 
 the considerations we have offered their true weight ; 
 and then they will be ready to offer their church to 
 the nation, not as a foreign mannerism, not as an 
 affront to our feelings and our history, but as Christ 
 
4:36 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 offers love to the race, paying tribute even to Caesar. 
 We care not for three orders or thirty, if only they 
 bring us no superstitions and no lords over God's her- 
 itage. American Episcopacy is really nearer to Ameri- 
 can Congregationalism now than it is to the state 
 establishment of England, if only it could acknowl- 
 edge what a rigid analysis of structure would certainly 
 show. Let it thank American history that it is brought 
 so much nearer to the true apostolic model. And 
 if Puritanism has been a root in our history, let some 
 honor be ascribed to Puritanism. Being sure also of 
 this, that no church can unite itself to the love and 
 life of a nation, which does not honor its fathers. 
 Actuated by views like these, let our American Epis- 
 copacy pour itself into our bosom, as it may, with all 
 its venerable treasures ; neither suffer a doubt that 
 all it has, which is worth accepting, will be accepted. 
 We come now, last of all, to the Romish church, 
 which, at present, is not in any sense an American 
 church, but a Romish. It is foreign not in its sym- 
 pathies only, but in its organization ; its head and 
 ruling power is at Rome. What are to be its fortunes 
 in this country it may be difficult to foretell. It is 
 perfectly manifest, however, that our institutions must 
 communicate their spirit to its disciples in such a de- 
 gree, as to limit effectually the powers of its priest- 
 hood, and in process of time to require radical changes 
 in its discipline. It can live among us only as it sub- 
 mits to be Americanized. At present it has little 
 moral power in our country, and we see not how it 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 437 
 
 can well have more, until it suffers a closer conformity 
 with our institutions. Were it left to stand alone, as 
 a foreign religion, it would soon have less. But un- 
 happily another church, maintaining its pretensions by 
 arguments of a similar character, and associated with 
 the name of England, mitigates the alien aspect it 
 would have when standing alone, and imparts to it a 
 show of character it has not in itself. 
 
 We regard the Romish church as a kind of monu- 
 mental Christianity. Its rites, its creeds, its prayers, 
 are all monuments ; the shrines under which it has 
 gathered the bones of the dead ages of the faith are 
 monuments ; its cathedrals are representations in 
 stone of their builders, and the grandeur of their 
 Christian ideas. The saints' days are a practice in 
 the mnemonics of history. The mendicant orders, 
 monasteries, and religious houses still continued, after 
 the spirit of life in which they rose has departed, are 
 a pantomime all of death and the dead. So of the 
 pictures, images, altars, amulets, relics, and priestly 
 robes, — everything seen, handled, and used in the 
 machinery of the worship, is monumental. The in- 
 cense has a Jewish smell, the vestals are a classic, the 
 candles shed a pagan light. The whole immense 
 framework of the religion is monumental. It repre- 
 sents, not the contents of the Gospel of Christ, but 
 the history of that Gospel ; showing how it has acted 
 on the base elements of an idolatrous world and a 
 corrupt human nature, and how they, in turn, have 
 acted upon it. The good and the evil, the holy and 
 
4:38 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 the base, the charities of saints and the extortions of 
 sin, the pure breathings of the just and the cruelties 
 of power, trophies of faith and scars of wrong, gen- 
 tile prejudices, pagan philosophies, gods baptized, — 
 everything that has been since the Lord's ascension, 
 all that men have done out of an evil or a good heart 
 to build up his religion, is represented and embodied. 
 The power of Christ is visible ; in one view the struc- 
 ture is a memorial of his truth. Quite as visible is 
 the power of evil. It is such a fabric as man builds, 
 when he blends himself and the social delusions of 
 his race with the heavenly truth he will consecrate. 
 
 And yet, if we regard it as the design of God to 
 connect the Christian future with the Christian past 
 by means of Romanism, how manifest is it that Ro- 
 manism is what it should be! It garners up the life 
 of the dead ages, as it gathers the bodies of the 
 saints under its shrines, and bears them in palpable 
 show through dark ages of sense and oblivion, to 
 connect with the living thoughts of a more remote 
 and more intelligent future. For, though we may 
 shrink from any thought of union with its baser con- 
 tents, we shall embrace with the livelier and healthier 
 reverence on that account all it contains of sanctity 
 and truth. We shall see Christ struggling through 
 it, as the sun through clouds. The righteous good of 
 the past will appear in it, as in a dark and solemn 
 tragedy, to be embraced with tears. Great truths 
 prevailing still against long ages of superstition and 
 perverse speculation, as if unable to die, will shine 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 439 
 
 forth in it the more gloriously that they have proved 
 their divinity. Things thai move us by their sanctity 
 and grandeur will move us the more deeply, that things 
 base and offensive, always at hand, throw us into a 
 maze and mix our reverence with disgust. Protesting 
 against the human, we shall be the more impressed 
 by what is divine. 
 
 But this, we regret to say, is not yet the happiness 
 of Protestantism. The throe of the Protest has been so 
 severe, and the consequent antagonism so intense, 
 that a kind of horror, which absorbs all discrimina- 
 tive thoughts, separates us from Romanism and it from 
 us. As Protestants, we seem to imagine a new begin- 
 ning of Christianity. We assert a future seemingly 
 disrupted from the past, and Romanism confronts us 
 with a past disrupted from the future. And this is a 
 condition of death to both ; for every social body, 
 whether civil or Christian, is of the past and for the 
 future, and can not properly live save as it connects 
 with both. 
 
 What now we need is this ; being delivered of the 
 mutual horror, which has thrown both great divis- 
 ions of the church asunder and been a wall of unrea- 
 son between them, we must dare to look, one at the 
 other, with eyes of deliberative inspection. And thus 
 we shall be drawn gradually towards comprehension ; 
 one to unite with the Christian past, the other with 
 the Christian future ; the old to be purified by the 
 new, the new to be hallowed and made venerable by 
 the old. Is not such a process already begun ? What 
 
440 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 signifies the new sympathy, which now exists, between 
 the Romish state and the British government ; a sym- 
 pathy strong enough even to countervail the influence 
 of Austria ? And what is the import of the cheers 
 for Pius Xinth, that are rolling back upon Italy from 
 this democratic and Protestant people ? And what is 
 to be the necessary result of the spread of intelligence 
 and of popular freedom, the growth of commerce, the 
 rapid intercommunications of travel, and the universal 
 intermingling of sects, which are sure to arise, on the 
 future prevalence of liberty ? The laws of society 
 seem to prophesy here, and what do they tell us ? 
 Let no one imagine the impossibility of any such thing 
 as a gradual approach or even a final coalescence of 
 the two forms of religion. If a Grotius and a Leibnitz 
 maintained, in their clay, the possibility of a reconcili- 
 ation and a final comprehension, laboring earnestly to 
 accomplish it, we may well enough risk any sentence 
 that may be passed upon us for cherishing the same 
 thought now. 
 
 Unhappily we are accustomed only to speak of the 
 differences between us and the Romanists, not of our 
 agreements. Probably most Protestants would be 
 surprised by the results that might appear on a rigid 
 comparison of our doctrines, so many are the coinci- 
 dences on points generally considered to be of the 
 first consequence. And where some repugnances 
 exist, a still more comprehensive scrutiny would often 
 show that one is but the complement of the other. 
 Elements also in the Romish polity, which Ave regard 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 441 
 
 with unqualified repugnance or even abhorrence, will 
 sometimes be found, when viewed historically, to have 
 served uses so important as to allow a mitigation of 
 our judgments. We just now spoke, for example, of 
 the monastic institutions in terms that arc well enough 
 adapted to their present merits. But in their origin, 
 they were scarcely more than a natural development 
 or outward expression of the unworldly spirit of the 
 Christian life. And of this they stood as a living 
 symbol before mankind, setting forth, in visible show, 
 the antagonism between this world and the self -cruci- 
 fying spirit of a life of faith. And as every sort of 
 truth has been maintained by some extreme view of 
 it, we need not scruple to allow that the unworldly 
 nature of the godly life was more distinctly impressed 
 on the minds of men, and is also more seriously ap- 
 prehended even by us, by means of the ascetic or 
 monastic institutions. For we can not definitely tell 
 what causes in the past have assisted to construct our 
 own views and sentiments, or detect the secret chem- 
 istry of history by which they have been shaped. In 
 short, we may well doubt whether, if Christ had left 
 the world, and these institutions had not arisen, the 
 deep and awful chasm between the life of this world 
 and the life of faith would ever have been practically 
 set open to human apprehension, as it now is. If 
 then, we do not prefer, just now, to commence building 
 monasteries, or praising the sanctity of the living 
 monks, it should comfort us, if we can find any inlet 
 for respect in the history of their origin. 
 
442 CHKISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 The ecclesiastical supremacy of the Pope, and the 
 stern political unity of the church under him, are quite 
 as little respected by us as they can be, but even these 
 may yet be viewed in a similar light. The Romish 
 church glories in the word catholic, understanding 
 however, by that term, nothing different from a uni- 
 versal polity. It is not a world-religion, but an iron 
 ecclesiasticism for the world, the only possible church, 
 thus and therefore the catholic church. Under this 
 formal error, it represents and holds before mankind 
 a great and holy truth. It symbolizes unity and uni- 
 versality. And was it' not necessaiy, when the free 
 mind of the Protestant world fell off into contesting 
 bodies and scouting parties, flying hither and thither 
 in quest of truth, that some consolidated body should 
 remain, to hold itself up as a symbol of the catholic 
 unity, and recall the mind of the discursives to that 
 which is the only proper aim and last end of their in- 
 quiries, a true catholic unity ; that which is never to 
 be forgotten, always to be longed for, and as soon as 
 may be, to be realized ? For while Romanism stands 
 for unity, and holds up its symbol, it has not yet con- 
 ceived the idea of a true catholic church. No church 
 is catholic, simply because it includes the human race ; 
 it must include them in the truth ; it must compre- 
 hend them only as it is itself comprehensive. Hence 
 there is implied, as a necessary condition, so much of 
 disintegration, as will start a discursive process and 
 bring out all the antagonisms involved in a complete 
 and many-sided view of the truth. For this many- 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS 443 
 
 sided view is not the view of any single man or body 
 of men. God has it, for the absolute truth is in him. 
 We have it not, save by manifold experiment. Rome 
 assumes that it has even absolute truth, without 
 experiment, and in that right challenges the assent of 
 all mankind. But this is only to claim a universal 
 application for that which is itself partial, which is 
 not catholicity. True catholicity offers a universal 
 doctrine, and for that seeks a universal application. 
 The first problem is to find the universal doctrine, a 
 problem which Protestantism is faithfully engaged to 
 solve. For it is remarkable that, while the Romish 
 church holds out the formal type or symbol of catholi- 
 city in its discipline, Protestantism only supplies the 
 agencies by which catholicity may be realized. By 
 this only, in its free and discursive working, are 
 brought to light and set up for distinct apprehension, 
 all the elements to be combined in the settlement of a 
 universal or complete body of truth. Romanism holds 
 the mold of unity, and we are trying to fill it. And 
 when the comprehensive process is completed by 
 which the material we offer is brought into a common 
 result, a true catholic church will appear, — a church 
 including the free mind of the world, because it rep- 
 resents the free mind of the world. All the views of 
 all ages and schools being combined in a comprehen- 
 sive result, that result will be the nearest approxima- 
 tion to the absolute truth of God, and thus a fit 
 ground of catholicity. 
 
 That the whole Christian world, however, will ever 
 
444 CHKISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 fall under any form of strict ecclesiasticism, is hardly 
 to be expected. A machinery so cumbrous could 
 hardly be supported, and it would offer incentives to 
 human ambition more insupportable than the machin- 
 ery itself. The Romanist will, just now, think other- 
 wise. Arnold and the Chevalier Bunsen will prophesy 
 a " church of the future " whose organic polity is 
 national. We republicans may imagine the same, 
 only that the civil power will not intermeddle, save 
 as it offers a friendly protection to the church, repaid 
 by its sanctifying presence and the union it conse- 
 crates between the public life of the nation and God. 
 Enough that the church, in all lands and under what- 
 ever diversities, will know itself as one, in common 
 works, a common faith, and an accordant worship, — 
 the body of Christ on earth, the fullness of him that 
 nlleth all in all. And having come to this, it will be 
 strange if it should not sometimes gather its ecumeni- 
 cal assemblies, not as convocations of state and church 
 dignitaries like those of old time, deputed to legislate 
 over the faith ; but assemblies of the friends and min- 
 isters of God, convoked to speak of things pertaining 
 to the kingdom, and worship together before the King. 
 And if those magnificent piles, erected to God by the 
 men of past ages, should some time hang their arches, 
 like skies of stone, over the assembled messengers of 
 the world's churches, and shake with the sound of 
 their ecumenical hymn, it will then be judged that 
 the ancient builders piled these holy structures for a 
 purpose worthy of their grandeur. Assembled thus 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 445 
 
 in the grand cathedral of the North, it will nol be for- 
 gotten thai Protestantism and Romanism assisted 
 both together in piling up so vast a fabric, and then 
 the meaning of what was once a conjunction so 
 strange will be solved. The "Three Kings" then 
 will sleep as consecrated figments in their shrine, 
 blank nothings, lost to thought, before the King of 
 glory. Or assembled where a Borromeo sleeps en- 
 cased in gold and gems, a real and true saint of the 
 past, the past will be there, as a living power, repelled 
 by no disdain, welcome to all hearts, and breathing 
 into all a spirit of conscious unity with the buried 
 just of all ages and climes. We are willing too that 
 St. Peter's should witness a convocation like this ; for 
 then the true idea of the Catholic church will have 
 arrived at Rome. And if it may, for one such occa- 
 sion, be accepted as the metropolis of the Christian 
 world, edicts and bulls will no more be its delight ; 
 the tiara will pass to the head of the King, where it 
 belongs ; offerings holier than all incense will fill the 
 place, and the grand miserere of the nations, poured 
 out as a wail for sin, will melt them into a fellowship 
 so lowly that human dignities will be forgotten. And 
 then we cannot object if the Latin prayers, which em- 
 body the worship of past ages, should find their legiti- 
 mate use as a common language of devotion, for the 
 assembled tongues of mankind. 
 
 In offering these thoughts to the public, we are well 
 aware that some may be scandalized or alarmed by 
 their free spirit. But such will relieve their appre- 
 
446 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 hensions, if they consider that we ask no compromise 
 of opinions and do not even speak of liberality as a 
 special Christian virtue. We simply require it of all 
 Christians to look for the truth, and the truth only. 
 And if we require them to look beyond themselves 
 and across their own boundaries, we see not that there 
 is any thing specially frightful in this, if they look for 
 nothing but the truth. Or if we prepare a previous 
 conviction in their minds, that there is somewhat of 
 truth in all Christian bodies, does any one doubt that 
 there is ? And if it should happen that all these bodies 
 look upon the truth on a side peculiar to themselves, 
 what harm can it do us to pass round and look through 
 their eyes ? The method taken by the late Evangeli- 
 cal Alliance at London, was truly a dangerous method 
 and closely allied to licentiousness ; for it chose out 
 only common truths in which all the parties could 
 agree, and consented to let all other truths pass into 
 shade as of minor consequence. We recognize, con- 
 trary to this, the great principle that truth is a whole 
 and is to be sought only as a whole, anywhere, every- 
 where, and by all means. Let no one fear the de- 
 bauching of his Christian integrity in so doing. 
 
 Others probably will look upon our labor in this 
 matter as a useless expenditure of breath, and the 
 hope we encourage as altogether visionary and ro- 
 mantic. It would be, if we held the expectation that 
 the church of God is ever to become a political unity. 
 Or if we proposed to the Christian sects to come to- 
 gether and work out a comprehensive unity by any 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 447 
 
 deliberative effort, in the manner of compromise and 
 
 composition. Or if we looked for the realization of 
 any such result as we speak of, by any given method, 
 within ai y given space of time. Our object is simply 
 to mi before the Christian sects the comfortable truth 
 that our antagonisms are, to a great degree, compre- 
 hensible, — parts only or partialities, having each their 
 complement in all the others. Thus we seek to beget 
 a more fraternal feeling and soften the asperities and 
 prejudices that hold us asunder ; thus to set all think- 
 ing minds on an endeavor after the broadest and most 
 catholic views of truth, in the confident hope that God 
 will thus enlarge their souls, draw them together 
 towards a more complete brotherhood, and finally into 
 a full consent of worship. This, if we rightly under- 
 stand, is what the Scriptures mean by " seeing eye to 
 eye. " We now see shoulder to shoulder ; but when 
 we can look into the eye, every man of his brother, 
 and see what he sees, we shall be one. 
 
 And if any one asks, when shall these things be ? 
 we may well enough refer him to the geologists for 
 an answer. For if God required long ages of heav- 
 ing and fiery commotion to settle the world's layers 
 into peace and habitable order, we ought not utterly 
 to despair, if the geologic era of the church covers a 
 somewhat longer space of time than we ourselves 
 might prescribe. Enough for us that we show the 
 laws of commotion and the methods of final pacifica- 
 tion. Enough for us that the views we have advanced, 
 if accepted and held by our fellow-Christians, will be 
 
•±48 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 found to contain the philosophic causes of a better 
 day. drawing us all into a closer assimilation and, as 
 sure as causes must have their effects, into a final em- 
 brace in the truth. Confident of this, and leaving 
 times and seasons to God. we do not seem to propose 
 to the world unpractical schemes or romantic expec- 
 tations. 
 
 This discussion we have already protracted beyond 
 our ordinary limits, but the magnitude of the subject 
 must be our excuse. There is yet a whole branch of 
 it remaining untouched, and one that woidd require a 
 volume to give it a sufficient representation. It is 
 this. — to exhibit the laws and conditions under which 
 the comprehensive process we speak of may be con- 
 ducted to its results with the greatest certainty and 
 expedition. All we can do here at present is to offer 
 a few suggestions. 
 
 And first of all, there needs to be a more compre- 
 hensive character formed in individual Christians. 
 We must have a piety not of " our church," or " our 
 catechism,"' or " our baptism," or our - Christian 
 democracy." but a piety measured by God himself. 
 We must look upon the comprehensive character as a 
 Christian attainment. Such was the character of 
 Christ, and therefore we must lie as sure that he will 
 have it formed in us. as that he will bring us into his 
 own image. God himself too, is a comprehensive be- 
 ing in his character, so that coming unto him in the 
 closest and most intimate union of spirit, which is the 
 very idea of Christian piety, we must endeavor to par- 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 449 
 
 take of thai quality which most distinguishes him. 
 
 For it is not sonic holler philosophy generated in our 
 understanding that can work out, by itself, the process 
 of which we speak. We must have a better philoso- 
 phy in our heart and spirit, and this we must draw 
 from God. We shall attain to no true comprehen- 
 siveness, except as we find it in God; in the holier 
 love which melts away our prejudices, subordinates 
 our human passions, expands the narrowness of our 
 fallen nature, and makes us partake of the divine na- 
 ture. This will universalize, first our heart and, 
 through that, gradually, our understanding. ( We 
 shall have a single eye when we have a simple, godly 
 heart. A really comprehensive spirit, one all devoted 
 to truth, stretching itself to contain all truth, as seen 
 by all Christian minds, must be a religious spirit. 
 Clearing itself of all human trammels, it must go up 
 unto God himself ; for nowhere short of God do the 
 lines of truth meet and come into harmony so that a 
 mind may comprehend them. In him too, as we cer- 
 tainly know, all our sects and divisions melt into 
 unity. He is not the God of our sect. We dare not 
 say it or think it. We tacitly admit that he holds 
 some broader view, which is also and for that reason, 
 juster than ours. We do not doubt that he looks upon 
 us all as diminished atoms of intelligence ranging in 
 his infinite realm of truth, fixing here and there upon 
 our points of doctrine, and regarding each the field 
 that lies within his narrow horizon as the whole 
 field, — repugnant therefore, as between ourselves, but 
 
450 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 still in radical harmony, as before him. To such 
 thoughts we are to accustom ourselves, to consecrate 
 them in our prayers and nourish them before him by 
 a more conscious and habitual exercise. And if our 
 piety does not enlarge us in this manner, we are rather 
 to repent of it than to bless ourselves in it. But if 
 God be in us, enlarging us by his own measure and 
 causing us to receive of his own greatness, then shall 
 we cease to be straitened in ourselves, and be able to 
 comprehend that length and breadth and depth and 
 height, which it is the prerogative of his saints to do. 
 It will help us also to remember that, as men or 
 human creatures, our tendency is to err by narrow- 
 ness and partiality, never by completeness or compre- 
 hensiveness. We are not only finite, but we enter 
 into life only as rudimental beings, here to be 
 filled out into proper men. We are to study, 
 reflect, observe, rectify eriors, then to rectify rectifi- 
 cations, and thus to fill out the character of sons of 
 God. Children, we observe, always go for extremes. 
 They apprehend what they may, but in our sense of 
 the word, comprehend nothing ; and a very preponder- 
 ant number of our race seem never to get beyond 
 their childhood in this respect. Our very finiteness, 
 struggling after rest in the infinite, is obliged to seize 
 on single points ; and these glimmering points we 
 take for suns, partly because they are our seeing and 
 partly because they fill our vision. We are thus 
 occupied, for the most part, with half-seeing. And 
 having found some pole of truth or of duty, we go to 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 451 
 
 war lor that, as if our half truth were entitled to fill 
 and occupy the universe. Then again our passions 
 carry us away yet farther, like a very great sail upon 
 sonic feathery skiff which the gusts drive hither and 
 thither, and force upon the shallows when they will. 
 The pride which says, " this is my truth," or " our 
 truth," opinions held more firmly by the will because 
 they are so dimly seen by the understanding, the lust 
 of power, the fanatical idolatry of sect, all the venom- 
 ous spirits that hover in the steam of our carnal 
 hearts, conspire to narrow even our piety itself. Evil 
 is a perpetual astringent in our souls, and we can get 
 no breadth, save as we mortify and crucify ourselves. 
 These are truths which every Christian man must re- 
 gard more attentively than has yet been done in any 
 former age. They must enter into our practical life. 
 We must habitually suspect ourselves of limitation. 
 We must find the sect spirit in our nature keeping 
 close company with our sins and coiling itself also, as 
 a serpent, around the body of our piety. And when 
 this latter grows exclusive and repugnant, walling 
 itself up to heaven in its righteousness, we must have 
 it for a maxim that we are narrowing ourselves by the 
 measure of our sins. 
 
 Furthermore, it will be of great use, if we have 
 some philosophic view of life and its appointments, 
 that accords with God's design therein. He has put 
 us down in this many-sided world, where all manner 
 of contrary and controversial forces are pushing us 
 hither and thither, that he may bring us into all possi- 
 
•452 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 ble views of truth and duty, cure our half-seeing, fill 
 out our otherwise partial measure, and make us as 
 nearly complete as it is possible for us to be. All 
 that we see, hear, experience, in this multifarious 
 world of struggle and debate, is undoubtedly meant to 
 enlarge the comprehension of our mind, principles, 
 feelings, hopes, charities. Neither let any one shrink 
 from such a thought, as if it were akin to laxity or 
 licentiousness. There is a kind of liberalism, as we 
 have said, which is but another name for indifference 
 to the truth. With such a spirit the comprehensive 
 soul has no feeling of sympathy. This is, in fact, the 
 type of character most of all devoted to truth, regard- 
 ing it as the brightest beam of divinity that shines 
 into our world. Therefore it reverently seeks the 
 truth in all minds irradiated by its light, separates it 
 from the errors with which it is blended, sanctifies it 
 as holy and dear to God. On the other hand, if we 
 speak of the partisan classes or schools, sometimes 
 called illiberal, such as gather about some pole of 
 doctrine, stiff for their particular sect, impatient of 
 the least departure from it, how manifest is it that 
 these would rather die for half the truth than for the 
 whole ! But the comprehensive spirit seeks to com- 
 prehend all repugnances, and lose, if possible, no 
 shred of truth, wherever it may be found. Actuated 
 by this lofty spirit, in which it resembles itself to God, 
 it listens to all voices, searches out all forms of doc- 
 trine, proves all things and holds fast that which is 
 good. Let no one fancy that he finds in history 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 453 
 
 examples to deter us from the indulgence of such a 
 spirit, as if it were the omen of a licentious age; for 
 the history of man has never yet offered an example 
 of the kind. There have been many attempts, in the 
 Christian world, to bring about what is called, in the 
 history, a comprehension of sects and parties. And 
 the best men of the church have been forward in them. 
 Baxter, Howe, Dr. Watts, Bishop King, Tillotson, 
 Patrick, and others of the highest distinction in our 
 English race, have conceived the idea of a composi- 
 tion of sects, and labored in their time to bring it to 
 pass, — labored of course in vain ; for they conceived 
 no other method of comprehension, than one that is 
 to be realized immediately by an act of consent. 
 Their effort was to settle the church by concession, 
 compromise, and a moderation of extremes, not to 
 prepare the souls of all disciples by a gradual process 
 of enlargement in the truth. Our Episcopal friends, 
 too, sometimes delight to call their church, " The Com- 
 prehensive Church," gravely showing how many vari- 
 eties of faith may be quietly harbored, and have been, 
 under its convenient ambiguities ! We propose a 
 method somewhat different from all these, and one, 
 we think, which is as much more practicable as it is 
 less dangerous and farther removed from licentious- 
 ness. 
 
 At the same time, while we speak of it as a less 
 dangerous method, we cannot deny that it requires a 
 much higher courage and firmness of spirit; for it 
 lays upon every man, as an individual, to begin with 
 
454 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 himself, and trust his opinions to a law or process 
 which is higher than the law of any sect or school. 
 And it is scarcely possible that one, who is accustomed 
 to handle all the great subjects of religious inquiry in 
 this method, and to work his mind by the process it 
 prescribes, should not become a generally suspicious 
 character. But he must content himself with the 
 verdict of the future, not doubting that a spirit so in- 
 genuous will some time be as much approved by his 
 fellow Christians, as it certainly is by God himself. 
 Meantime, while resting himself in this manner on 
 the truth of his own intentions, he will probably find 
 also that he is delivered of an affliction which is the 
 necessary torment of all mere partisans, dwelling in 
 an element of composure which more than repays the 
 distrusts of his sect. The sectarian or partisan is the 
 man of a part, one who measures himself by the con- 
 tents of his sect, and not in reality by the truth itself. 
 And as every partial view must have its antagonist, 
 he is doomed to undergo a perpetual anxiety for his 
 position. For, regarding it as the very truth itself, 
 the complete truth of God, when he sees it assaulted 
 by some adversary, as it certainly will be, he is filled 
 with distressful anxiety lest the very foundations of 
 the Gospel should finally give way or be corrupted. 
 But the comprehensive method assists one to look on 
 the two adverse parties as half-seeing men, who, if 
 they see the whole truth between them, have yet the 
 disadvantage that they see nothing as a whole. It is 
 as if one saw the centrifugal and the other the attrac 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 455 
 
 live force of astronomy. One fears that the worlds 
 will fly asunder beyond all fellowship, the other shud- 
 ders Lesl they rush into a grand lump of ruins in the 
 center. Bui the man who can comprehend both forces 
 in a scientific view, rests in eomfort on the balanced 
 order of the worlds, knowing that nothing can ever 
 disturb the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or burst 
 the hands of Orion. In the same way it will ever be 
 found that the men of a part or a sect are an uncom- 
 fortable and anxious race, living in perpetual panic, 
 ;is if God's realm of truth were just about to dissolve, 
 because their truth is threatened by another which, 
 for some reason, will have advocates as earnest as 
 they. But there is calmness, comfort, courage, and 
 rest for any eomprehensive soul, knowing that if all 
 together succeed, they will only suffice to fill out the 
 measures of divine truth. 
 
 We have spoken already of language, as the fruit- 
 ful source of contrary opinions and sects. If our 
 schools of theology could, by three years of exercise, 
 get into the minds of their pupils a right understand- 
 ing of this one single matter, — the relation of a 
 thought to a word, — they would do more to quicken 
 their intelligence and prepare them to a skillful reso- 
 lution of the great questions pertaining to religion, 
 than is often done by their whole course of discipline. 
 This of itself would be the fruitful seed of a great 
 and powerful theology. This only can open a true 
 interpretation of Scripture, such as will suffice for a 
 settlement of Christian doctrine. The Scriptures are 
 
456 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 
 
 the truth of God under the forms of language, and 
 subject to its laws. Xo other book contains a system 
 of truth so complete and comprehensive as the Bible, 
 and for that very reason it combines all repugnant 
 modes of statement. Viewed in its forms of lan- 
 guage, without descending into its interior meaning, 
 it is the most contradictory of all books. It is the 
 product of all ages, and represents all kinds of mental 
 habit. It views every subject of truth and duty on 
 every side, and sets it forth at every pole. It offers 
 thus, to a perverse or insufficient interpretation, ma- 
 terial for every sect. Logically treated and without 
 any power of insight deeper than logic, sects are its 
 legitimate products. We hear it said on every side, 
 that there are no " isms " in the Bible. Rather should 
 we say, which is the real truth, that all manner of 
 " isms " are in it, comprehended there ; finite in in- 
 finite, as we ourselves in God. Therefore only is it a 
 complete and universal code of truth worthy of its 
 author. When the Christian scholars are able to dis- 
 tinguish between the forms of truth and truth itself, 
 receiving the latter without being enslaved by the 
 laws of logic enveloped in the former, the true catho- 
 lic doctrine will be seen and the sects will disappear 
 and die. Sooner they cannot. 
 
 It is of the highest consequence also that we should 
 understand the true import of the Christian history, 
 and discover what duty it has prepared for us. We 
 mourn over the controversies and contentions which 
 up to this time have rent, as we say, the unity and 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 457 
 
 peace of the church of God. Many minds have lately 
 been occupied with a peculiar grief on this account. 
 See, they say, into how many sects and schools the 
 body of our Lord is riven ! And if we look at the 
 evil passions and bitter strifes involved, it is truly a 
 mournful sight. But controversies must needs arise ; 
 in one view, controversies were needed, else the mani- 
 fold extremes of truth could never appear. It was 
 necessary for the great champions to gird on their 
 armor and take the field. It was necessary to see 
 behind us a long line of militant ages, smoking in the 
 dust of controversy and causing the air to ring with 
 the blows of their valiant encounter. So of the sects 
 that have multiplied upon us in these last ages. All 
 these are but the preliminary work necessary to be 
 done in the trying out of God's truth. In one view, 
 there have never been too many controversies, and 
 are not now too many sects ; for taken together they 
 are wanted, all, as a grand exhibit or practical dis- 
 play of the manifold extremes of truth. The first 
 ages could not take up the comprehending of oppo- 
 sites until the opposites were set forth ; but they did 
 what they could, they set them forth. And now, in 
 these last times, the result is to appear. 
 
 What then is now to be done ? What does God 
 require of us ? Controversy ? No, it is generally 
 agreed that we have worn out controversy. What 
 then ? Must we learn to hold opinions more loosely, 
 to be patient with error, and content ourselves in it ? 
 No, persecution itself were a dignified compliment to 
 
458 CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS, 
 
 God's truth in comparison with any such inanity as 
 that. Do we then want a grand, world-wide Alliance, 
 in which all Christians will agree to agree, or if they 
 cannot do that, to controvert harmoniously ? So many 
 have thought, and they appear to fancy that when the 
 Christian sects are strung together thus, like bells 
 without a tongue, they will ring the world a concert 
 by their external impact. Doubtless it is well, if they 
 only meet to pray together and blend their hearts in 
 communion before God. It is in itself a beautiful 
 sight, and quite as beautiful in what it indicates, — 
 the fact that now, at last, a comprehensive brother- 
 hood in Christ has become a want. That want is 
 above all things to be nourished. And being nour- 
 ished, how shall it be guided to the attainment of its 
 object ? Not by selecting from the contents of our 
 sects, and building up a union in diminished quanti- 
 ties of conviction. Every bell must have a tongue 
 and a voice of its own. What we need is enlarged 
 quantities of conviction, fullness of truth, not a com- 
 pact based on half the quantity possessed by us now. 
 We must take up the conviction that we do not all 
 together contain more than the truth, and the en- 
 deavor must be to end our strifes by such a kind of 
 enlargement as will comprehend all our antagonisms, 
 and bring us into the essential unity of truth itself. 
 We must have it as a settled conviction, that in almost 
 every form of Christian opinion earnestly maintained, 
 even those which are often regarded as pure error, 
 there is yet some element of truth, something which 
 
CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS. 459 
 
 makes it true to its diseiples. Then laying aside all 
 malice, our schools must go into the language, one of 
 another, asking what makes it true to the school 
 maintaining it, and thus we must proceed till all our 
 antagonisms are sifted and every school has gotten to 
 itself the riches of all. Or better still, admitting each 
 that our wisdom is not perfect, that the truth we 
 hold is only partial truth, we are to cherish the 
 want of something more perfect. And then, ceasing 
 to insist that others shall receive and justify us, 
 we are to ask, What have they which is a want in 
 us ? What views of theirs, qualifying ours, would 
 render them more valuable to us ? What contri- 
 bution, accepted of them, would make us more com- 
 plete in the riches of the Gospel ? Thus let Calvinism 
 take in Arminianism, Arminianism Calvinism ; let 
 decrees take in contingency, contingency decrees ; 
 faith take in works, and works faith ; the old take in 
 the new, the new the old ; not doubting that we shall 
 be as much wiser as we are more comprehensive, as 
 much closer to unity as we have more of the truth. 
 For then, as all are seen embracing and comprehending 
 all, we shall find that we are one, not by virtue of any 
 concert or agreement, but as the necessary consequence 
 of our completeness in the truth. To be strung to- 
 gether in outward alliances will now be a vain thing ; 
 for all Christian souls will ring in peals of harmony, 
 as a chime that is voiced by the truth. 
 

MAR 10 19'J9 
 

 
 
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