THE THEOLOGY OF TIIE INTELLECT AND OF TIIE FEELING(S.
A
D ISC OU R S E
DIELIVERED BEFORE
THE CONVENTION OF
THE CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS
OF MASSACHUSETTS,
IN BRATTLE STREET MEETING HOUSE, BOSTON,
MAY 30, 1850.
BY
IElI)WARDS A. PARK,
ABI:OT PROFESSOR iN THE ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
Reprinted from the Bibliotheca Sacra for July, 1850.
Third Thousand.
AN D O VE R:
WVARREN F. DRAPER.
1850.








THE THEOLOGY OF THE INTELLECT AND OF THE FEELINGS.
A
DISCOURSE
DELIVERED BEFORE
THE CONVENTION OF
THE CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS
OF MASSACHUSETTS,
IN BRATTLE STREET MEETING HOUSE, BOSTON,
MAY 30, 1850.
BY
EDWARDS A. PARK,
ABBOT PROFESSOR IN THE ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
Reprinted from the Bibliotheca Sacra for July, 1850.
Third Thousand.
ANDOVER:
WARREN F. DRAPER.
1850.




When the author began to prepare the ensuing discourse, he intended to avoid
all trains of remark adverse to the doctrinal views of any party or school belonging to the Convention. But, contrary to his anticipations, he was led into a course
of thought which he was aware that some clergymen of Massachusetts would not
adopt as their own, and for the utterance of which he was obliged to rely on their
liberal and generous feeling. Although it is in bad taste for a preacher on such
an occasion, to take any undue advantage of the kindness of his hearers, yet perhaps it is not dishonorable for him, confiding in their proverbial charity, to venture
on the free expression of thoughts which he cannot repress without an injurious
constraint upon himself.
ANDOVER: J. D. FLAGG,
STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER.




DISCOURSE.
THE STRENGTH OF ISRAEL WILL NOT LIE NOR REPENT: VOR HE IS NOT A
MAN THAT HE SHOULD REPENT.-1 SAM. 15: 29.
AND IT REPENTED THE LORD THAT HE HAD MADE MAN ON THE EARTH,
AND IT GRIEVED HIM AT HIS HEART.-GEN. 6: 6.
I HAVE heard of a father who endeavored to teach his children a system of astronomy in precise philosophical language,
and although he uttered nothing but the truth, they learned
from him nothing but falsehood. I have also heard of a mother
who, with a woman's tact, so exhibited the general features of
astronomical science that although her statements were technically erroneous, they still made upon her children a better
impression, and one more nearly right than would have been
made by a more accurate style. For the same reason many a
punctilious divine, preaching the exact truth in its scientific
method, has actually imparted to the understanding of his hearers either no idea at all or a wrong one; while many a pulpit
orator. using words which tire the patience of a scholastic
theologian, and which in their literal import are false, has yet
lodged in the hearts of his people the main substance of truth.
John Foster says, that whenever a man prays aright he forgets
the philosophy of prayer; and in more guarded phrase we may
say, that when men are deeply affected by any theme, they are
apt to disturb some of its logical proportions, and when preachers aim to rouse the sympathies of a populace, they often give
a brighter coloring or a bolder prominence to some lineaments
of a doctrine than can be given to them in a well compacted
science.




4
There are two forms of theology, of which the two passages
in my text are selected as individual specimens, the one declaring that God never repents, the other that he does repent.
For want of a better name these two forms may be termed,
the theology of the intellect, and the theology of feeling.
Sometimes, indeed, both the mind and the heart are suited by
the same modes of thought, but often they require dissimilar
methods, and the object of the present discourse is, to state
some of the differences between the theology of the intellect
and that of feeling, and also some of the influences which they
exert upon each other.
What, then, are some of the differences between these two
kinds of representation?
The theology of the intellect conforms to the laws, subserves
the wants and secures the approval of our intuitive and deductive powers. It includes the decisions of the judgment, of
the perceptive part of conscience and taste, indeed of all the
faculties which are essential to the reasoning process.  It is
the theology of speculation, and therefore comprehends the
truth just as it is, unmodified by excitements of feeling.  It is
received as accurate not in its spirit only, but in its letter also.
Of course it demands evidence, either internal or extraneous,
for all its propositions. These propositions, whether or not they
be inferences from antecedent, are well fitted to be premises for
subsequent trains of proof. This intellectual theology, therefore,
prefers general to individual statements, the abstract to the concrete, the literal to the figurative. In the creed of a Trinitarian it
affirms, that he who united in his person a human body, a human
soul and a divine spirit, expired on the cross, but it does not originate the phrase that his soul expired, nor that " God the mighty
Maker died."  As it is a science, strict and severe, it aims not
to be fascinating or impressive, but plain, instructive, defensible.
Hence it insists on the nice proportions of doctrine, and on
preciseness both of thought and style. Its words are so exactly
defined, its adjustments are so accurate, that no caviller can
detect an ambiguous, mystical or incoherent sentence. It is,




5
therefore, in entire harmony with itself, abhorring a contradiction as nature abhors a vacuum. Left to its own guidance,
for example, it would never suggest the unqualified remark
that Christ has fully paid the debt of sinners, for it declares
that this debt may justly be claimed from them; nor that he
has suffered the whole punishment which they deserve, for it
teaches that this punishment may still be righteously inflicted
on themselves; nor that he has entirely satisfied the law, for
it insists that the demands of the law are yet in force. If it
should allow those as logical premises, it would also allow the
salvation of all men as a logical inference, but it rejects this
inference and accordingly, being self-consistent, must reject
those when viewed as literal premises.' It is adapted to the
soul in her inquisitive moods, but fails to satisfy her craving for
excitement.  In order to express the definite idea that we are
exposed to evil in consequence of Adam's sin, it does not employ the passionate phrase, "we are guilty of his sin."  It
searches for the proprieties of representation, for seemliness
and decorum. It gives origin to no statements which require
apology or essential modification; no metaphor, for example,
so bold and so liable to disfigure our idea of the divine equity,
as that Heaven imputes the crime of one man to millions of
his descendants, and then imputes their myriad sins to him
who was harmless and undefiled. As it avoids the dashes of
an imaginative style, as it qualifies and subdues the remark
which the passions would make still more intense, it seems dry,
tame to the mass of men. It awakens but little interest in
favor of its old arrangements; its new distinctions are easily
introduced, to be as speedily forgotten. As we might infer, it
is suited not for eloquent appeals, but for calm controversial
treatises and bodies of divinity; not so well for the hymn-book
as for the catechism; not so well for the liturgy as for the
creed.
In some respects, but not in all, the theology of feeling differs from that of intellect. It is the form of belief which is
suggested by, and adapted to the wants of the well-trained
Note A.




6
heart.  It is embraced as involving the substance of truth,
although, when literally interpreted, it may or may not be false.
It studies not the exact proportions of doctrine, but gives especial prominence to those features of it which are and ought
to be most grateful to the sensibilities.  It insists not on dialectical argument, but receives whatever the healthy affections
crave.  It chooses particular rather than general statements;
teaching, for example, the divine omnipotence by an individual
instance of it; saying, not that God can do all things which
are objects of power, but that He spake and it was done. It
sacrifices abstract remarks to visible and tangible images;
choosing the lovely phrase that'the children of men put their
trust under the shadow of Jehovah's wings,' rather than the
logical one that his providence comprehendeth all events.  It
is satisfied with vague, indefinite representations.  It is too
buoyant, too earnest for a moral result, to compress itself into
sharply-drawn angles. It is often the more forceful because
of the looseness of its style, herein being the hiding of its
power.  It is sublime in its obscure picture of the Sovereign
who maketh darkness his pavilion, dark waters and thick
clouds of the sky.  Instead of measuring the exact dimensions
of a spirit, it says, " I could not discern the form thereof: an
image was before mine eyes; there was silence and I heard a
voice;" and in the haziness of this vision lies its fitness to stir
up the soul. Of course, the theology of feeling aims to be
impressive, whether it be or not minutely accurate.  Often it
bursts away from dogmatic restraints, forces its passage through
or over rules of logic, and presses forward to expend itself first
and foremost in affecting the sensibilities.  For this end, instead of being comprehensive, it is elastic; avoiding monotony
it is ever pertinent to the occasion; it brings out into bold
relief now one feature of a doctrine and then a different feature, and assumes as great a variety of shapes as the wants of
the heart are various. In order to hold the Jews back from
the foul, cruel vices of their neighbors, the Tyrian, Moabite,
Ammonite, Egyptian, Philistine, Babylonian; in order to stop
their indulgence in the degrading worship of Moloch, Dagon,




7
Baal, Tammuz, they were plied with a stern theology, well
fitted by its terrible denunciations to save them from the crime
which was still more terrible. They were told of the jealousy
and anger of the Lord, of his breastplate, helmet, bow, arrows,
spear, sword, glittering sword, and raiment stained with blood.
This fearful anthropomorphism enstamped a truth upon their
hearts; but when they needed a soothing influence, they were
assured that " the Lord shall feed his flock like a shepherd, he
shall gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his
bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young."
Thus does the theology of feeling individualize the single parts of
a doctrine; and, so it can make them intense and impressive,
it cares not to make them harmonious with each other. When
it has one end in view, it represents Christians as united with
their Lord; now, they being branches and he the vine-stock;
again, they being members and he the body; still again, they
being the body and he the head; and once more, they being
the spouse and he the bridegroom. But it does not mean to
have these endearing words metamorphosed into an intellectual
theory of our oneness or identification with Christ; for with
another end in view it contradicts this theory, and teaches that
he is distinct from us, even as separate as the sun or morning
star from those who are gladdened by its beams; the door or
way from those who pass through or over it, the captain from
his soldiers, the forerunner from the follower, the judge from
those arraigned before him, the king from those who bow the
knee to him. In order to make us feel the strength of God's
aversion to sin, it declares that he has repented of having made
our race, has been grieved at his heart for transgressors, weary
of them, vexed with them. But it does not mean that these
expressions which, as inflected by times and circumstances,
impress a truth upon the soul, be stereotyped into the principle
that Jehovah has ever parted with his infinite blessedness; for
in order to make us confide in his stability, it denies that he
ever repents, and declares that he is without even the shadow
of turning.  It assumes these discordant forms, so as to meet
the affections in their conflicting moods. Its aim is not to




8
facilitate the inferences of logic, but to arrest attention, to
grapple with the wayward desires, to satisfy the longings of
the pious heart. And in order to reach all the hiding-places of
emotion, it now and then strains a word to its utmost significancy, even into a variance with some other phrase and a disproportion with the remaining parts of the system. We often
hear that every great divine, like Jonathan Edwards, will contradict himself. If this be so, it is because he is a reasoner
and something more; because he is not a mere mathematician,
but gives his feelings a full, an easy and a various play; because he does not exhibit his faith always in the same form,
straight like a needle, sharp-pointed and one-eyed.
The free theology of the feelings is ill fitted for didactic or
controversial treatises or doctrinal standards. Martin Luther,
the church fathers, who used it so often, became thereby unsafe
polemics. Anything, everything, can be proved from them;
for they were ever inditing sentences congenial with an excited
heart, but false as expressions of deliberate opinion. But this
emotive theology is adapted to the persuasive sermon, to the
pleadings of the liturgy, to the songs of Zion. It is eloquence, but not that alone. By no means can it be termed
mere poetry, in the sense of a playful fiction. It is no play,
but solemn earnestness. It is no mere fiction, but a noutpouring
of sentiments too deep, or too mellow, or too impetuous to be
suited with the stiff language of the intellect. Neither can its
words be called merely figurative, in the sense of arbitrary or
unsubstantial. They are the earliest, and if one may use a
comparison, the most natural utterances of a soul instinct with
religious life. They are forms of language which circumscribe
a substance of doctrine, a substance which, fashioned as it may
be, the intellect grasps and holds fast; a substance which arrests the more attention and prolongs the deeper interest by the
figures which bound it. This form of theology, then, is far
from being fitly represented by the term imaginative, still
further by the term fanciful, and further yet by the word capricious. It goes deeper; it is the theology both of and for our
sensitive nature; of and for the normal emotion, affection, pas



9
sion. Much of it, however, may be called poetry, if this word
be used, as it should be, to include the impulsive developments
of a heart moved aright and to its depths by the truth.' And
as it is animated with the true poetic life, so it avails itself of
a poetic license, and indulges in a style of remark which for
sober prose would be unbecoming, or even, when associated in
certain ways, irreverent.  All warm  affection, be it love or
hatred, overleaps at times the proprieties of a didactic style.
Does not the Bible make this obvious? There are words in the
Canticles and in the imprecatory Psalms, which are to be justified as the utterances of a feeling too pure, too unsuspicious,
too earnest to guard itself against evil surmises.  There are
appearances of reasoning in the Bible, which the mere dialectician has denounced as puerile sophisms.  But some of them
may never have been intended for logical proof; they may
have been designed for passionate appeals and figured into the
shape of argument, not to convince the reason but to carry the
heart by a strong assault, in a day when the kingdom of heaven
suffered violence and the violent took it by force. In one of
his lofty flights of inspiration, the Psalmist cries, "Awake!
why sleepest thou, oh Lord?" and Martin Luther, roused more
than man is wont to be by this example, prayed at the Diet of
Worms, in language which we fear to repeat," Hearest thou not,
my God; art thou dead?" And a favorite English minstrel
sings of the " dying God," of the " sharp distress," the " sore
complaints," of God, his "last groans," his "dying blood;" of
his throne! also, as once a " burning throne," a "s seat of dreadful wrath;" but now " sprinkled over" by "the rich drops" of
blood " that calmed his frowning face."  It is the very nature
of a theology framed for enkindling the imagination and thereby inflaming the heart, to pour itself out, when a striking emergency calls for them, in words that burn; words that excite no
congenial glow in technical students, viewing all truth in its
dry light, and disdaining all figures which would offend the decorum of a philosophical or didactic style, but words which
wake the deepest sympathies of quick-moving, wide-hearted,
Note B.




10
many-sided men, who look through a superficial impropriety
and discern under it a truth which the nice language of prose is
too frail to convey into the heart, and breaks down in the attempt.
Hence it is another criterion of this emotive theology that
when once received, it is not easily discarded. The essence
of it remains the same, while its forms are changed; and these
forms, although varied to meet the varying exigencies of feeling,
are not abandoned so as never to be restored; for the same
exigencies appear and reappear from time to time, and therefore
the same diversified representations are repeated again and
again. Of the ancient philosophy the greater part is lost, the
remnant is chiefly useful as an historical phenomenon. Not a
single treatise, except the geometry of Euclid, continues to be
used by the majority of students for its original purpose.  But
the poetry of those early days remains fresh as in the morning
of its birth.  It will always preserve its youthful glow, for it
appeals not to any existing standard of mental acquisition, but
to a broad and common nature which never becomes obsolete.
So in the theology of reason. the progress of science has antiquated some, and will continue to modify other refinements;
theory has chased theory into the shades; but the theology of
the heart, letting the minor accuracies go for the sake of holding
strongly upon the substance of doctrine, need not always accommodate itself to scientific changes, but may often use its old
statements, eveni if, when literally understood, they be incorrect,
and it thus abides as permanent as are the main impressions of
the truth.  While the lines of speculation may be easily erased,
those of emotion are furrowed into the soul, and can be
smoothed away only by long-continued friction. What its
abettors feel, they feel and cling to, and think they know, and
even when vanquished they can argue still; or rather, as their
sentiments do not come of reasoning, neither do they flee before it.  Hence the permanent authority of certain tones of
voice which express a certain class of feelings. Hence, too,
the delicacy and the peril of any endeavor to improve the
style of a hymn-book -or liturgy, to amend one phrase in the




11
common version of the Bible, or to rectify any theological
terms, however inconvenient, which have once found their
home in the affections of good men. The heart loves its old
friends, and so much the more if they be lame and blind.
Hence the fervid heat of a controversy when it is provoked
by an assault upon the words, not the truths but the words,
which have been embosomed in the love of the church.
Hence the Pilgrim of Bunyan travels and sings from land to
land. and will be, as he has been, welcome around the hearthstone of every devout household from  age to age; while
Edwards on the Will and Cudworth on Immutable Morality,
knock at many a good man's door, only to be turned away
shaking the dust from off their feet.l
Having considered some of the differences between the intellectual and the emotive theology, let us now glance, as was
proposed, at some of the influences which one exerts on the
other.
And first, the theology of the intellect illustrates and vivifies
itself by that of feeling. As man is compounded of soul and
body, and his inward sensibilities are expressed by his outward
features, so his faith combines ideas logically accurate with conceptions merely illustrative and impressive. Our tendency to unite
corporeal forms with mental views, may be a premonition that we
are destined to exist hereafter in a union of two natures, one of
them being spirit, and the other so expressive of spirit as to be
called a spiritual body.  We lose the influence of literal truth
upon the sensibilities, if we persevere in refusing it an appropriate image.  We must add a body to the soul of a doctrine,
whenever we would make it palpable and enlivening. It is
brought, as it were, into our presence by its symbols, as a strong
passion is exhibited to us by a gesture, as the idea of dignity
is made almost visible in the Apollo Belvedere. A picture
may, in itself, be superficial; but it expresses the substantial
reality. What though some of the representations which feeling demands be a mere exponent of the exact truth; they are,
1 Note C.




as it were, that very truth.  What though our conceptions be'only the most expressive signs of the actual verity; they are
as if the actual verity itself.  They are substantially accurate
when not literally so; moral truth, when not historical. The
whole reality is at least as good, as solid as they represent it,
and our most vivid idea of it is in their phases.
The whole doctrine, for example, of the spiritual world, is
one that requires to be made tangible by an embodiment.  We
have an intellectual belief that a spirit has no shape, and occupies no space; that a human soul, so soon as it is dismissed
from the earth, receives more decisive tokens than had been
previously given it of its Maker's complacency or displeasure,
has a clearer knowledge of him, a larger love or a sterner
hostility to him, a more delightful or a more painful experience
of his control, and at a period yet to come will be conjoined
with a body unlike the earthly one, yet having a kind of identity with it, and furnishing inlets for new and peculiar joys or
woes.  It is the judgment of some that the popular tract and
the sermons of such men as Baxter and Whitefield ought to
exhibit no other than this intellectual view of our future state.
But such an intellectual view is too general to be embraced by
the feelings. They are balked with the notion of a spaceless,
formless existence, continuing between death and the resurrection. They regard the soul as turned out of being when despoiled of shape and extension.  They represent the converted
islander of the Atlantic as rising, when he leaves the earth, to
the place where God sitteth upon his throne, and also the
renewed islander of the Pacific as ascending, at death, from
the world to the same prescribed spot. When pressed with
the query, how two antipodes can both rise up, in opposite directions, to one locality, they have nothing to reply. They
are not careful to answer any objection, but only speak right
on. They crave a reality for the soul, for its coming joys or
woes, and will not be defrauded of this solid existence by any
subtilized theory. So tame and cold is the common idea of
an intangible, inaudible, invisible world, that few will aspire for
the rewards, and many will imagine themselves able to endure




13
the punishments which are thus rarified into the results of mere
thought.  Now a doctrine of the intellect need not, and should
not empty itself of its substance in the view of men because
it is too delicate for their gross apprehension.  "God giveth"
to this doctrine " a body as it hath pleased him," and it should
avail itself of this corporeal manifestation for the sake of retaining its felt reality.  If it let this scriptural body go, all is
gone in the popular consciousness.  It is not enough for the
intellect to prove that at the resurrection a new nature will be
incorporated with the soul, and will open avenues to new bliss
or woe; it must vivify the conception of this mysterious nature and its mysterious experiences by the picture of a palmbranch, a harp, a robe, a crown, or of that visible enginery of
death which, in the common view, gives a substance to the
penalties of the law. Our demonstrable ideas of the judgment are so abstract, that they will seemingly evaporate unless
we illustrate them by one individual day of the grand assize,
by the particular questionings and answerings, the opened book,
and other minute formalities of the court.  The emotions of a
delicate taste are, of course, not to be disregarded; but it is a
canon of criticism - is it not? - that we should express all
the truth which our hearers need, and express it in the words
which they will most appropriately feel. The doctrine of the
resurrection. also, seems often to vanish into thin air by an overscrupulous refinement of philosophical terminology. The intellect allows the belief that our future bodies will be identical
with our present, just as really as it allows a belief that our
present bodies are the same with those of our childhood, or
that our bodies ever feel pleasure or pain, or that the grass is
green or the sky blue, the fire warm or the ice cold, or that the
sun rises or sets. The philosopher may reply, The sun does
not rise nor set, the grass is not green nor the sky blue, the fire
is not warm nor the ice cold, and our physical nature in itself
is not sensitive. The man responds, They are so for all that
concerns me. The philosopher may affirm that our present
bodies are not precisely identical with those of our childhood;
the man answers, They are so to all intents and purposes; and
2




14
when we practically abandon our belief in our physical sameness here, then we may modify our faith in our resumed physical identity at the resurrection.  But while man remains man
upon earth, he will not give up the forms of belief which he
feels to be true.  He must vivify his abstractions by images
which quicken his faith; and even if these images should lose
their historical life, they shall have a resurrection in spiritual
realities. Through our eternal existence, the biblical exhibitions of our future state will be found to have a deeper and
deeper significance. They will be found to be literal truth itself, or else the best possible symbols by which that truth can
be shadowed forth to men incapable of reaching either its
height or its depth. In the Bible is a profound philosophy
which no man has fully searched out. As this volume explains
the essence of virtue by the particular commands of the law,
the sinfulness of our race by incidents in the biography of
Adam, the character of Jehovah by the historical examples of
his love, and especially by portraying God manifest in the flesh;
so, with the intent of still further adapting truth to our dull
apprehension, it condescends to step over and beyond the domain of literal history, and to use the imagination in exciting
the soul to spiritual research; it enrobes itself in fabrics woven
from the material world, which seems as if it were formed for
elucidating spiritual truth; it incarnates all doctrine, that the
wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err, and that all flesh
may see the the salvation of God.'
But the sensitive part of our nature not only quickens the
percipient, by requiring and suggesting expressive illustrations,
it also furnishes principles from which the reasoning faculty
deduces important inferences.  I therefore remark in the second
place,
The theology of the intellect enlarges and improves that of
the feelings, and is also enlarged and improved by it. The
more extensive and accurate are our views of literal truth, so
much the more numerous and salutary are the forms which it
may assume for enlisting the affections. A system of doc-'Note D.




15
trines logically drawn out, not only makes its own appeal to the
heart, but also provides materials for the imagination so to
clothe as to allure the otherwise dormant sensibility.  The perceptive power looks right forward to the truth, (for this end
was it made), from it turns to neither side for utilitarian purposes, but presses straight onward to its object; yet every doctrine which it discovers is in reality practical, calling forth some
emotion, and this emotion animating the sensitive nature which
is not diseased, deepening its love of knowledge, elevating
and widening the religious system which is to satisfy it.  Every
new article of the good man's belief elicits love or hatred, and
this love or hatred so modifies the train and phasis of his meditations, as to augment and improve the volume of his heart's
theology.
It is a tendency of pietism to undervalue the human intellect for the sake of exalting the affections; as if sin had less
to do with the feelings than with the intelligence; as if a deceived heart had never turned men aside; as if the reason had
fallen deeper than the will.  Rather has the will fallen from
the intellectual powers, while they remain truer than any other
to their office.  It cannot be a pious act to underrate these
powers, given as they were by him who made the soul in his
image. Our speculative tendencies are original, legitimate
parts of the constitution which it is irreverent to censure.  tWe
must speculate.  We must define, distinguish, infer, arrange
our inferences in a system. Our spiritual oneness, completeness, progress, require it.  We lose our civilization, so far
forth as we depreciate a philosophy truly so called.  Our faith
becomes a wild or weak sentimentalism if we despise logic.
God has written upon our minds the ineffaceable law that they
search after the truth, whatever, wherever it be, however arduous
the toil for it, whithersoever it may lead. Let it come. Even if it
should promise nothing to the utilitarian, there are yet within us
the mirabiles amrnores to find it out.  A sound heart is alive
with this curiosity, and will not retain its health while its aspirations are rebuffed. It gives no unbroken peace to the man
who thwarts his reasoning instinct; for amid all its conflicting




16
demands, it is at times importunate for a reasonable belief.
When it is famished by an idle intellect, it loses its tone, becomes bigoted rather than inquisitive, and takes up with theological fancies which reduce it still lower. When it is fed by
an inquiring mind it is enlivened, and reaches out for an expanded faith.  If the intellect of the church be repressed, that
of the world will not be, and the schools will urge forward an
unsanctified philosophy which good men will be too feeble to
resist, and under the influence of which the emotions will be
suited with forms of belief more and more unworthy, narrow,
debasi ng.
But the theology of reason not only amends and amplifies
that of the affections, it is also improved and enlarged by it.
One tendency of rationalism is, to undervalue the heart for the
sake of putting the crown upon the head. This is a good
tendency when applied to those feelings which are wayward
and deceptive, but an irrational one when applied to those
which are unavoidable and therefore innocent, still more to
those which are holy and therefore entitled to our reverence.
Whenever a feeling is constitutional and cannot be expelled,
whenever it is pious and cannot but be approved, then such of
its impulses as are uniform, self-consistent and persevering
are data on which the intellect may safely reason, and by
means of which it may add new materials to its dogmatic system. Our instinctive feelings in favor of the truth, that all
men in the future life will be judged, rewarded or punished by:in all-wise lawgiver, are logical premises from which this truth
is an inference regular in mood and figure.  Every man, atheist
even, has certain constitutional impulses to call on the name of
some divinity; and these impulses give evidence that he ought to
pray, just as the convolutions of a vine's tendrils and their
reaching out to grasp the trellis, signify that in order to attain
its full growth the vine must cling to a support. The wing or
the web-foot of an animal is no more conclusive proof of its
having been made with the design that it should fly or swim,
than the instinctive cravings of the soul for a positive, an historical, a miraculously attested religion, with its Sabbaths and




17
its ministry, are arguments that the soul was intended for the
enjoyment of such a religion. If the Bible could be proved to
be a myth, it would still be a divine myth; for a narrative so
wonderfully fitted for penetrating through all the different
avenues to the different sensibilities of the soul, must have a
moral if not a literal truth.  And so it appears to me, that the
doctrines which concentre in and around a vicarious atonement
are so fitted to the appetences of a sanctified heart, as to gain
the favor of a logician, precisely as the coincidence of some
geological or astronomical theories with the phenomena of the
earth or sky, is a part of the syllogism which has these theories
for its conclusion.  Has man been created with irresistible
instincts which impel him to believe in a falsehood? Or has
the Christian been inspired with holy emotions which allure
him to an essentially erroneous faith?  Is God the author of
confusion;-in his word revealing one doctrine and by his
Spirit persuading his saints to reject it?  If it be a fact, that
the faithful of past ages, after having longed and sighed and
wrestled and prayed for the truth as it is in Jesus, have at
length found their aspirations rewarded by any one substance
of belief, does not their unanimity indicate the correctness of
their cherished faith, as the agreement of many witnesses presupposes the verity of the narration in which they coincide?
In its minute philosophical forms, it may not be the truth for
which they yearned, but in its central principles have they one
and all been deceived? Then have they asked in tears for
the food of the soul, and a prayer hearing Father has given
them a stone for bread.
Decidedly as we resist the pretension that the church is infallible, there is one sense in which this pretension is well
founded. Her metaphysicians as such are not free from error,
nor her philologists, nor any of her scholars, nor her ministers,
nor councils.  She is not infallible in her bodies of divinity,
nor her creeds, nor catechisms, nor any logical formulae; but
underneath all her intellectual refinements lies a broad substance of doctrine, around which the feelings of all renewed
men cling ever and everywhere, into which they penetrate and
3*




take root, and this substance must be right, for it is precisely
adjusted to the soul, and the soul was made for it.
These universal feelings provide us with a test for our own
faith. Whenever we find, my brethren, that the words which
we proclaim do not strike a responsive chord in the hearts of
the choice men and women who look up to us for consolation,
when they do not stir the depths of our own souls, reach down
to our hidden wants, and evoke sensibilities which otherwise
had lain buried under the cares of time; or when they make
an abiding impression that the divine government is harsh,
pitiless, insincere, oppressive, devoid of sympathy with our
most refined sentiments, reckless of even the most delicate
emotion of the tenderest nature, then we may infer that we
have left out of our theology some element which we should
have inserted, or have brought into it some element which we
should have discarded. Somewhere it must be wrong. If it
leave the sensibilities torpid, it needs a larger infusion of those
words which -Christ defined by saying, they are spirit, they
are life. If it merely charm the ear like a placid song, it is
not the identical essence which is likened to the fire and the
hammer.  Our sensitive nature is sometimes a kind of instinct
which anticipates many truths, incites the mind to search for
them, intimates the process of the investigation, and remains
unsatisfied, restive, so long as it is held back from the object
toward which it gropes its way, even as a plant bends itself
forward to the light and warmth of the sun.'
But while the theology of reason derives aid from the impulses of emotion, it maintains its ascendancy over them. In
all investigations for truth, the intellect must be the authoritative power, employing the sensibilities as indices of right
doctrine, but surveying and superintending them from its commanding elevation.  It may be roughly compared to the pilot
of a ship, who intelligently directs and turns the rudder, although himself and the entire vessel are also turned by it. We
are told that a wise man's eyes are in his head; now although
they cannot say to the hand or the foot, we have no need of
Note E.




19
you, it is yet their prerogative to determine whither the hand
or foot shall move. The intellectual theology will indeed reform itself by suggestions derived from the heart, for its law is
to exclude every dogma which does not harmonize with the
well-ordered sensibilities of the soul. It regards a want of
concinnity in a system, as a token of some false principle. And
as it will modify itself in order to avoid the error involved in a
contradiction, so and for the same reason it has authority in
the last resort to rectify the statements which are often congenial with excited emotion. I therefore remark in the third
place.
The theology of the intellect explains that of feeling into an
essential agreement with all the constitutional demands of the
soul. It does this by collating the discordant representations
which the:heart allows, and eliciting the one self-consistent
principle which underlies them.  It places side by side the
contiradictory statements which receive, at different times, the
sympathies of a spirit as it is moved by different impulses. It
exposes the impossibility of believing all these statements, without qualifying some of them so as to prevent their -subverting
each other. In order to qualify them in the right way, it details their origin, reveals their intent, unfolds their influence,
and by such means eliminates the principle in which they all
agree for substance of doctrine. When this principle has been
once detected and disengaged from its conflicting representations, it reacts upon them, explains, modifies, harmonizes their
meaning.  Thus are the mutually repellent forces set over
against each other, so as to neutralize their opposition and to
combine in producing one and the same movement.
Seizing strongly upon some elements of a comprehensive
doctrine, the Bible paints the unrenewed heart as a stone needing to be exchanged for flesh; and again, not as a stone, but
as flesh needing to be turned into spirit; and yet again, neither
as a stone nor as flesh, but as a darkened spirit needing to be
illumined with the light of knowledge.  Taking a vigorous
hold of yet other elements in the same doctrine, the Bible por-'trays this heart not as ignorant and needing to be enlightened,




20
but as dead and needing to be made alive; and further, not
as dead but as living and needing to die, to be crucified, and
buried; and further still, not as in need of a resurrection or of
a crucifixion, but of a new creation; and once more, as requiring neither to be slain, nor raised from death, nor created
anew, but to be born again. For the sake of vividly describing
other features of the same truth, the heart is exhibited as needing to be called or drawn to God, or to be enlarged or circumcised or purified, or inscribed with a new law, or endued with
new graces. And for the purpose of awakening interest in a
distinct phase of this truth, all the preceding forms are inverted
and man is summoned to make himself a new heart, or to give
up his old one, or to become a little child, or to cleanse himself, or to unstop his deaf ears and hear, or to open his blinded
eyes and see, or to awake from  sleep, or rise from  death.
Literally understood, these expressions are dissonant from each
other. Their dissonance adds to their emn'phasis. Their emphasis
fastens our attention upon the principle in which they all agree.
This principle is too vast to be vividly uttered in a single formula,
and therefore branches out into various parts, and the lively
exhibition of one part contravenes an equally impressive statement of a different one.  The intellect educes light from
the collision of these repugnant phrases, and then modifies and
reconciles them into the doctrine, that the character of our
race needs an essential transformation by an interposed influence from God.  But how soon would this doctrine lose its
vivacity, if it were not revealed in these dissimilar forms, all
jutting up like the hills of a landscape from a common substratum.
We may instance another set of the heart's phrases, which,
instead of coalescing with each other in a dull sameness, engage our curiosity by their disagreement, and exercise the
analytic power in unloosing and laying bare the one principle
which forms their basis. Bowed down under the experience
of his evil tendencies, which long years of painful resistance
have not subdued, trembling before the ever recurring fascinations which have so often enticed him into crime, the man of




21
God longs to abase himself, and exclaims without one modify.
ing word: "I am too frail for my responsibilities, and have no
power to do what is required of me." But in a brighter moment, admiring the exuberance of divine generosity, thankful
for the large gifts which his munificent Father has lavished
upon him, elevated with adoring views of the equitable One
who never reaps where he has not sown, the same man of God
offers his unqualified thanksgiving: "I know thee, that thou
art not an hard master, exacting of me duties which I have no
power to discharge, but thou attemperest thy law to my strength,
and at no time imposest upon me a heavier burden than thou
at that very time makest me able to bear." In a different
mood, when this same man is thinking of the future, foreseeing
his temptations to an easily besetting sin, shuddering at the
danger of committing it, dreading the results of a proud reliance on his own virtue, he becomes importunate for aid from
above, and pours out his entreaty, with not one abating clause:
" I am nothing and less than nothing; I have no power to refrain from the sin which tempts me: help, Lord, help; for thou
increasest strength to him who hath no might."  But in still
another mood, when the same man is thinking of the past,
weeping over the fact that he has now indulged in the vety
crime which he feared, resisting every inducement to apologize
for it, blaming himself, himself alone, himself deeply for so ungrateful, unreasonable, inexcusable an act, he makes the unmitigated confession; with his hand upon his heart, he dares
not qualify his acknowledgment: "I could have avoided that
sin which I preferred to commit; woe is me, for I have not
done as well as I might have done; if I had been as holy as I
had power to be, then had I been perfect; and if I say I have
been perfect, that shall prove me perverse." Thus when looking backward, the sensitive Christian insists upon his competency to perform an act, and fears that a denial of it would
banish his penitence for transgression; but when looking forward, he insists upon his incompetency to perform  the same
act, and fears that a denial of this would weaken his feeling of
dependence on God. Without a syllable of abatement, he




22
now makes a profession, and then recalls it as thus unqualified, afterward reiterates his once recalled avowal, and
again retracts what he had once and again repeated.  It is the
oscillating language of the emotions which, like the strings of
an AEolian harp, vibrate in unison with the varying winds. It
is nature in her childlike simplicity, that prompts the soul when
swayed in opposing directions by dissimilar thoughts, to vent
itself in these antagonistic phrases awakening the intenser
interest by their very antagonism.  What if they do, when
unmodified, contradict each other? An impassioned heart recoils from a contradiction, no more than the war-horse of Job
starts back from the battle-field.
The reason, however, being that circumspect power which
looks before and after and to either side, does not allow that
of these conflicting statements, each can be true save in a
qualified sense.  It therefore seeks out some principle which
will combine these two extremes, as a magnet its opposite
poles; some principle which will rectify one of these discrepant expressions by explaining it into an essential agreement
with the other.  And the principle, I think, which restores
this harmony, is the comprehensive one, that man with no
extraordinary aid from Divine grace is obstinate, undeviating,
unrelenting, persevering, dogged, fully set in those wayward
preferences which are an abuse of his freedom.  His unvaried
wrong choices imply a full, unremitted, "natural power" of
choosing right. The emotive theology therefore, when it affirms
this power, is correct both in matter and style; but when it
denies this power, it uses the language of emphasis, of impression, of intensity; it means the certainty of wrong preference by declaring the inability of right; and in its vivid use
of cannot for will not is accurate in its substance though not
in its form.  Yet even here, it is no more at variance with the
intellectual theology than with itself, and the discordance,
being one of letter rather than of spirit, is removed by an explanation which makes the eloquent style of the feelings at
one with the more definite style of the reason.'
Note F.




23
But I am asked, Do you not thus explain away the language
of the emotions?  No. The contradictoriness, the literal absurdity is explained out of it, but the language is not explained
away; for even when dissonant with the precise truth, it has
a significancy more profound than can be pressed home upon
the heart by any exact definitions. Do you not make it a mere
flourish of rhetoric? I am asked again. It is no flourish; it is
the utterance that comes welling up from the depths of our
moral nature, and is too earnest to wait for the niceties of logic.
It is the breathing out of an emotion which will not stop for
the accurate measurement of its words, but leaves them to be
qualified by the good sense of men.
If, however, this language be not exactly true, I am further
asked, how can it move the heart?  We are so made as to be
moved by it.  It is an ultimate law of our being, that a vivid
conception affects us by inspiring a momentary belief in the
thing which is conceived. But, the objector continues, can the
soul be favorably influenced by that which it regards as hyperbolical? Hyperbolical! What is hyperbolical? Who calls
this language an exaggeration of the truth?  If interpreted by
the letter, it does indeed transcend the proper bounds; but if
interpreted as it is meant, as it is felt, it falls far short of them.
To the eye of a child the moon's image in the diorama may appear larger than the real moon in the heavens, but not to the
mind of a philosopher.  The literal doctrines of theology are
too vast for complete expression by man, and our intensest
words are but a distant approximation to that language, which
forms the new song that the redeemed in heaven sing; language which is unutterable in this infantile state of our being,
and in comparison with which our so-called extravagances are
but feeble and tame diminutives.
Astronomers have recommended, that in order to feel the
grandeur of the stellary sy~stem we mentally reduce the scale on
which it is made; that we imagine our earth to be only a mile
in diameter, and the other globes to be proportionally lessened
in their size and in their distances from each other; for the
real greatness of the heavens discourages our very attempt to




24
impress our hearts by them, and we are the more affected by
sometimes narrowing our conceptions of what we cannot at the
best comprehend.  On the same principle, Christian moralists
have advised us not always to dilate our minds in reaching
after the extreme boundaries of a doctrine, but often to draw
in our contemplations, to lower the doctrine for a time, to bring
our intellect down in order to discern the practical truth more
clearly, to humble our views in order that they may be at last
exalted, to stoop low in order to pick up the keys of knowledge; — and is this a way of exaggerating the truth?  We do
err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God, if we
imagine that when for example he says, the enemies that touch
his saints " touch the apple of his eye," and " he will lift up
an ensign to the nations from far and will hiss unto them from
the ends of the earth," he uses a mere hyperbole. No. Such
anthropopathical words are the most expressive which the debilitated heart of his oriental people would appreciate, but they
fail of making a full disclosure, they are only the foreshadowings of the truths which lie behind them.  These refined, spiritual truths, the intellect goes round about and surveys, but is
too faint for graphically delineating, and it gives up the attempt
to the imagination, and this many-sided faculty multiplies symbol after symbol, bringing one image for one feature, and another image for another feature, and hovers over the feeble emotions of the heart, and strives to win them out from their dull
repose, even as' the eagle stirreth up her nest, and fluttereth
over her young, and spreadeth abroad her wings, and taketh
up her little ones, and beareth them on her out-stretched pinions.' Into more susceptible natures than ours the literal verities of God will penetrate far deeper than, even when shaped
in their most pungent forms, they will pierce into our obdurate
hearts. So lethargic are we, that we often yield no answering
sensibilities to intellectual statements of doctrine; so weak are
we, that such passionate appeals as are best accommodated to
our phlegmatic temper are after all no more than dilutions of
the truth, as " seen of angels;" and still so fond are we of harmony with ourselves, that we must explain these diluted repre.




25
sentations into unison with the intellectual statements which,
however unimpressive, are yet the most authoritative.'
We are now prepared for our fourth remark,-the theology
of the intellect and that of feeling tend to keel) each other
within the sphere for which they were respectively designed,
and in which they are fitted to improve the character.  Both
of them have precisely the same sphere with regard to many
truths, but not with regard to all. When an intellectual statement is transferred to the province of emotion, it often appears
chilling, lifeless; and when a passionate phrase is transferred
to the dogmatic province, it often appears grotesque, unintelligible, absurd.  Many expressions of sentiment are what they
ought to be, if kept where they ought to be; but a narrow
creed displaces and thus spoils them. It often becomes licentious or barbarous, by stiffening into prosaic statements the free
descriptions which the Bible gives of the kindliness or the wrath
of God. The very same words are allowed in one relation,
but condemned in a different one, because in the former they
do, but in the latter do not harmonize with the sensibilities
which are at the time predominant. When we are enthusiastic in extolling the generosity of divine love, we feel no need
of modifying our proclamation that God desires all men to be
saved, and in these uninquisitive moods we have no patience
with the query which occupies our more studious hours,
" whether he desire this good all things, or only itself considered."  Often, though not in every instance, the solid philosophy of doctrine, descending into an exhortation, makes it cumbrous and heavy; and as often the passionate forms of appeal,
when they claim to be literal truth, embarrass the intellect until they are repelled by it into the circle distinctively allotted
them.
At the time when the words were uttered, there could not
be a more melting address than, " If I, your Lord and Master,
have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's
feet; but when this touching sentiment is interpreted as a legal exaction, an argument for a Moravian or Romish ceremony,
1Note G.
3




26
its poetic elegance is petrified into a prosaic blunder.  There
are moments in the stillness of our communion service, when
we feel that our Lord is with us, when the bread and the wine
so enliven our conceptions of his body and blood as, according
to the law of vivid conception, to bring them into our ideal
presence, and to make us demand the saying, as more pertinent
and fit than any other,' This is my body, this is my blood.'
But no sooner are these phrases transmuted from hearty utterances into intellectual judgments, than they merge their beautiful rhetoric into an absurd logic, and are at once repulsed by
a sound mind into their pristine sphere.  So there is a depth
of significance which our superficial powers do not fathom, in
the lamentation: "Behold! I was shapen in iniquity, and in
sin did my mother conceive me." This will always remain the
passage for the outflow of his grief, whose fountains of penitence are broken up. The channel is worn too deep into the
affections to be easily changed.  Let the schools reason about
it just as, and as long as they please. Let them condemn it
as indecorous, or false, or absurd, and the man who utters it as
unreasonable, fanatical, bigoted. Let them challenge him for
his meaning, and insist with the rigidness of the judge of Shylock, that he weigh out the import of every word, every syllable, no more, no less: -they do not move him  one hair's
breadth. He stands where he stood before, and where he will
stand until disenthralled from the body. "My meaning," he
says, " is exact enough for me, too exact for my repose of conscience; and I care just now for no proof clearer than this:' Behold! I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me.' Here, on my heart the burden lies, and I feel
that I am vile, a man of unclean lips, and dwell amid a people
of unclean lips, mand I went astray as soon as I was born, and
am of a perverse, rebellious race, and there is a tide swelling
within me and around me, and moving me on to actual transgression, and it is stayed by none of my unaided efforts, and,
all its billows roll over me, and I am so troubled that I cannot
speak; and I am not content with merely saying that I am a
transgressor; I long to heap infinite upon infinite, and crowd




27
together all forms of self-reproach, for I am clad in sin as with
a garment, I devour it as a sweet morsel, I breathe it, I live it,
I am sin; my hands are stained with it, my feet are swift in it,
all my bones are out of joint with it, my whole body is of
tainted origin, and of death in its influence and end; and here
is my definition and here is my proof, and, definition or no definition, proof or no proof, here I plant myself, and here I stay,
for this is my feeling, and it comes up from the depths of an
overflowing heart:' Behold! I was shapen in iniquity, and
in sin did my mother conceive me.' "- But when a theorist
seizes at such living words as these, and puts them into his
vice, and straightens or crooks them  into the dogma, that man
is blamable before he chooses to do wrong; deserving of punishment for the involuntary nature which he has never consented to gratify; really sinful before he actually sins, then the
language of emotion, forced from its right place and treated as
if it were a part of a nicely measured syllogism, hampers and
confuses his reasonings, until it is given back to the use for
which it was first intended, and from which it never ought to
have been diverted.' When men thus lose their sensitiveness
to the discriminations between the style of judgment and that
of feeling, and when they force the latter into the province of
the former, they become prone to undervalue the conscience,
and to be afraid of philosophy, and to shudder at the axioms
of common sense, and to divorce faith from reason, and to rely
on church government rather than on fraternal discussion.
It is this crossing of one kind of theology into the province
of another kind differing from the first mainly in fashion and
contour. which mars either the eloquence or else the doctrine
of the pulpit. The massive speculations of the metaphysician
sink down into his expressions of feeling and make him appear
cold-hearted, while the enthusiasm of the impulsive divine ascends and effervesces into his reasonings and causes him both
to appear, and to be, what our Saxon idiom  so reprovingly
styles him, hot-headed.  The preacher ought to lay a solid basis on which he may rear a bold superstructure.  He ought to
Note H.




28
prove with a clear mind, what he is to enforce with a free love.
There are intellectual critics ready to exclude from our psalms
and hymns all such stanzas as are not accurate expressions of
dogmatic truth.  Forgetting that the effort at precision often
mars the freeness of song, they would condemn the simplehearted bard to joint his metaphors into a syllogism, and to
sing as a logician tries to sing.  In the same spirit, they would
expurgate the Paradise Lost of all phrases which are not in
keeping with our chemical or geological discoveries. But it is
against the laws of our sensitive nature to square the effusions
of poesy by the scales, compasses and plumb-lines of the intellect. The imagination is not to be used as a dray horse for
carrying the lumber of the schools through the gardens of the
Muses.  There are also poetical critics who imagine that the
childlike breathings of our psalmody are the exact measures,
the literal exponents of truth, and that every doctrine is false
which cannot be transported with its present bodily shape into
a sacred lyric. But this is as shallow an idea of theology as it
is a mechanical, spiritless, vapid conception of poetry.  If this
be true, then my real belief is, that'God came from Ternan
and the Holy One from Mount Paran; that he did ride upon
his horses and chariots of salvation; the mountains saw him
and they trembled; the sun and the moon stood still; at the
light of his arrows they went and the shining of his glittering
spear; he did march through the land in indignation, he did
thresh the heathen in anger.'  And if this be the language of
a creed, then not only is the suggestion of Dr. Arnold 1 a right
one, that' in public worship a symbol of faith should be used
as a triumphal hymn of thanksgiving, and be chanted rather
than read,' but such is the original and proper use of such a
symbol at all times.  And if this be true, then I shall not demur at phrases in a Confession of Faith, over which, in my deliberate perusal, I stagger and am at my wit's end.  Wrap me
in mediaeval robes; place me under the wide-spreading arches
of a cathedral; let the tide of melody from the organ float
along the columns that branch out like the trees of the forest'Life, p. 102, First Am. Ed.




29
over my head; then bring to me a creed written in illuminated
letters, its history redolent of venerable associations, its words
fragrant with the devotion of my fathers, who lived and died
familiar with them; its syllables all of solemn and goodly sound,
and bid me cantilate its phrases to the inspired notes of minstrelsy, my eye in a fine phrenzy rolling, - and I ask no questions for conscience' sake. I am ready to believe what is placed before me. I look beyond the antique words, to the spirit
of some great truth that lingers somewhere around them; and
in this nebulous view, I believe the creed with my heart.
I may be even so rapt in enthusiasm as to believe it because it
asserts what is impossible.  Ask me not to prove it, —I am in
no mood for proof. Try not to reason me out of it, - reasoning does me no good. Call not for my precise meaning,- I
have not viewed it in that light. I have not taken the creed
so much as the creed has taken me, and carried me away in my
feelings to mingle with the piety of by-gone generations. - But
can it be that this is the only, or the primitive, or the right idea
of a symbol of faith?  For this have logicians exhausted their
subtleties, and martyrs yielded up the ghost, disputing and dying, for a song,   No. A creed, if true to its original end,
should be in sober prose, should be understood as it means,
and should mean what it says, should be drawn out with a discriminating, balancing judgment, so as to need no allowance
for its freedom, no abatement of its force, and should not be
expressed in antiquated terms lest men regard its spirit as likewise obsolete.  It belongs to the province of the analyzing,
comparing, reasoning intellect; and if it leave this province for
the sake of intermingling the phrases of an impassioned heart,
it confuses the soul, it awakens the fancy and the feelings to
disturb the judgment, it sets a believer at variance with himself
by perplexing his reason with metaphors and his imagination
with logic; it raises feuds in the church by crossing the temperaments of men, and taxing one party to demonstrate similes, another to feel inspired by abstractions.  Hence the logomachy which has always characterized the defence of such
creeds. The intellect, no less than the heart, being out of its
3*




30
element, wanders through dry places, seeking rest and finding
none. Men are thus made uneasy with themselves and therefore acrimonious against each other; the imaginative zealot
does not apprehend the philosophical explanation, and the philosopher does not sympathize with the imaginative style, of the
symbol; and as they misunderstand each other, they feel their
weakness, and " to be weak is miserable," and misery not only
loves but also makes company, and thus they sink their controversy into a contention and their dispute into a quarrel; nor
will they ever find peace until they confine their intellect to its
rightful sphere and understand it according to what it says, and
their feeling to its province and interpret its language according to what it means, rendering unto poetry the things that are
designed for poetry, and unto prose what belongs to prose.
The last clause of our fourth proposition is, that the theology of intellect and that of feeling tend to keep each other
within the sphere in which they are fitted to improve the character.'  So far as any statement is hurtful, it parts with one
sign of its truth.  In itself or in its relations it must be inaccurate, whenever it is not congenial with the feelings awakened
by the Divine Spirit. The practical utility, then, of any theological representations is one criterion of their propriety.
Judged by this test, many fashionable forms of statement will
sooner or later be condemned.  Half of the truth is often a
falsehood as it is impressed on the feelings; not always, however, for sometimes it has the good, the right influence, and is
craved by the sensibilities which can bear no more. The heart
of man is contracted, therefore loves individual views, dreads
the labor of that long-continued expansion which is needed
for embracing the comprehensive system.  Hence its individualizing processes must be superintended by the judgment and
conscience, which forbid that the attention be absorbed by any.one aspect of a doctrine at the time when another aspect
would be more useful. If the wrong half of a truth be applied
instead of the right, or if either be mistaken for the whole, the'In consequence of the length of the Discourse, this paragraph and that which
follows it, were omitted in the delivery.




31
sensibilities are mal-treated, and they endure an evil of which
the musician's rude and unskilful handling of his harp, gives
but a faint echo. The soul may be compared to a complicated
instrument which becomes vocal in praise of its Maker when it
is plied with varying powers, now with a gradual and then with
a sudden contact, here with a delicate stroke and there with a
hard assault; but when the rough blow comes where should
have been the gentle touch, the equipoise of its parts is d6stroyed, and the harp of thousand strings all meant for harmony, wounds the ear with a harsh and grating sound. The dissonance of pious feeling with the mere generalities of speculation or with any misapplied fragments of truth, tends to confine them within their appropriate, which is their useful sphere.
In this light, we discern the necessity of right feeling as a guide
to the right proportions of faith. Here we see our responsibility for our religious belief. Here we are impressed by the fact,
that much of our probation relates to our mode of shaping and
coloring the doctrines of theology. Here also we learn the
value of the Bible in unfolding the suitable adaptations of truth,
and in illustrating their utility, which is, on the whole, so decisive a touchstone of their correctness.  When our earthly
hopes are too buoyant we are reminded' that one event happeneth to all,' and " that a man hath no preeminence above a
beast;" but such a repressing part of a comprehensive fact is
not suited to the sensual and sluggish man who needs rather,
as he is directed, to see his' life and immortality brought to
light.' When we are elated with pride we are told that " man
is a worm;"' but this abasing part of a great doctrine should
not engross the mind of him who despises his race, and who is
therefore bidden to think of man as' crowned with glory and
honor.' If tempted to make idols of our friends, we are
met by the requisition to' hate a brother, sister, father and
mother;' but these are not the most fitting words for him who
loves to persecute his opposers, and who requires to be asked,
" He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can
he love God whom he hath not seen?"  In one state of feeling we are stimulated to " work out our salvation with fear and




32
trembling," but in a different state we are encouraged to be
neither anxious nor fearful, but to " rejoice in the Lord always."
I believe in the "final perseverance" of all who have been
once renewed, for not only does the generalizing intellect gather
up this doctrine from an induction of various inspired words,
but the heart also is comforted by it in the hour of dismal foreboding.  Yet when I wrest this truth from its designed adjustments, and misuse it in quieting the fears of men who are instigated to'count the blood of the covenant wherewith they
were sanctified an unholy thing,' I am startled by the threat
that' if they shall fall away, it will be impossible to renew them
again unto repentance.' This threat was not designed, like
the promise of preserving grace, to console the disconsolate,
nor was that promise designed like this threat, to alarm the presumptuous. Let not the two appeals cross each other. My
judgment, and, in some lofty views in which I need to be held
up by the Divine Spirit lest I fall, my feelings also are unsatisfied without the biblical announcement that "the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart;" but at my incipient inclination to per-'
vert these words into an excuse for sin, or a denial of my entire
freedom, or of my Maker's justice or tenderness, I regard them
as a " form of sound words " from which my depravity has expelled their spirit, and I flee for safety to the other words,
which are a complement to the first, that " Pharaoh hardened
his own heart."  When even a Puritan bishop is inflated with
his vain conceits, it is perilous for him to concentrate his feelings upon the keys with which he is to open or shut the door
of heaven.  Such a man should oftener tremble lest having
been a servant of servants here, he be cast away hereafter.
But with a melancholic though faithful pastor this application
of Scriptures may be reversed. We delight in the thought,
that he who hath made everything beautiful in its season, who
sendeth dew upon the earth when it has been heated by the
sun, —and again, when it has been parched by drought, sendeth rain; who draweth the curtains of darkness around us
when the eye is tired of the bright heavens, and irradiates the
vision when the night has become wearisome; who intermin



33
gleth calm with tempest and parteth the clouds of an April day
for the passage of the sun's rays, - hath also adopted a free,
exuberant, refreshing method of imparting truth to the soul;
giving us a series of revelations flexile and pliant, flitting across
the mental vision with changeful hues, ever new, ever appropriate, not one of its words retaining its entire usefulness when
removed from its fit junctions. not one of them being susceptible of a change for the better in the exigency when it was
uttered, but each being " a word spoken in due season, how
good is it."
There is a kind of conjectural doctrine, (which in the Swedenborgian and Millenarian fancies is carried to a ruinous excess, but) which within, not beyond the limit of its practical
utility may be either justified or excused.  Our feelings, for example, impel us to believe that we are compassed about with
some kind of superior and ever wakeful intelligence. To
meet this demand of the heart, Paganism has filled the air
with divinities, but a wiser forecast has revealed to us the omnipresence of an all-comprehending mind. Still our restless
desires would be sometimes gratified by a livelier representation
of the spiritual existence around us, and accordingly in the
more than paternal compassion of Jehovah, he maketh his
angels ministering spirits, sent forth to attend upon the heirs of
salvation, and to animate our spiritual atmosphere with a quick
movement. But even yet, there are times when the heart of
man would be glad of something more than even these cheering revelations. We are comforted with the thought that our
deceased companions still mingle with us, and aid us in our
struggles to gain their purity, and that, after we have left the
world to which thus far we have been so unprofitable, we shall
be qualified by our hard discipline here, for more effective ministries to those who will remain in this scene of toil. Such a
belief however is not one which the reason, left to itself, would
fortify by other than the slightest hints.  It is a belief prompted
by the affections, and the indulgence in it is allowed by the intellectual powers no further than it consoles and enlivens the
spirit wearied with its earthly strifes. If we begin to think




34
more of friends who visit us from heaven, than of Him who
always abideth faithful around and over and within us, if we
begin to search out witty inventions and to invoke the aid of
patronizing saints, if we imagine that she who once kept all
her child's sayings in her heart will now lay up in her motherly
remembrance the Ave Murias of all who bless her image, then
we push an innocent conjecture into the sphere of a harmful
falsehood.  The intellectual theology recognizes our felt need
of a tenderness in the supervision which is exercised over us,
but instead of meeting this necessity by picturing forth the
love of one who after all may forget her very infant, it proves
that we are ever enveloped in the sympathies of him who will
not give away to his saints the glory of answering our feeble
prayers. The intellectual theology does not indeed recognize
our felt want of a Mediator, through whose friendly offices we
may gain access to the pure, invisible, sovereign, strict lawgiver.
But instead of an unearthly being canonized for his austere
virtues, it gives us him who ate with sinners, who called
around him fishermen rather than princes, and lodged with a
tax-gatherer instead of the Roman governor, so as to remind
us that he is not ashamed to call us brethren.  Where men
looked for a taper, it gives a light shining as the day, and hides
the stars by the effulgence of the sun; where they looked for
a friend it gives a Redeemer, where for a helper, a Saviour,
where for hope, faith. It takes away in order to add more,
thwarts a desire so as to give a fruition.  It not so much unclothes as clothes upon, and swallows up our wish for patron
saints in the brotherly sympathies of him who ever liveth to
make intercession for us.
In conclusion allow me to observe, that in soine aspects our
theme suggests a melancholy, in others a cheering train of
thought.  It grieves us by disclosing the ease with which we
may slide into grave errors.  Such errors have arisen from so
simple a cause as that of confounding poetry with prose.
Men whose reasoning instinct has absorbed their delicacy of
taste, have treated the language of a sensitive heart as if it
were the guarded and wary style of the intellect.  Intent on




35
the sign more than on the thing signified, they have transubstantiated the living, spiritual truth into the very emblems
which were designed to portray it.  In the Bible there are
pleasing hints of many things which were never designed to be
doctrines, such as the literal and proper necessity of the will,
passive and physical sin, baptismal regeneration, clerical absolution, the literal imputation of guilt to the innocent, transubstantiation, eternal generation and procession.  In that graceful volume, these metaphors bloom as the flowers of the field;
there they toil not neither do they spin.  But the schoolman
has transplanted them to the rude exposure of logic; here they
are frozen up, their fragrance is gone, their juices evaporated,
and their withered leaves are preserved as specimens of that
which in its rightful place surpassed the glory of the wisest
sage. Or, if I may change the illustration, I would say that
these ideas, as presented in the Bible, are like oriental kings
and nobles, moving about in their free, flowing robes; but in
many a scholastic system they are like the embalmed bodies of
those ancient lords, their spirits fled, their eyes, which once had
speculation in them, now lack lustre; they are dry bones, exceeding dry. Not a few technical terms in theology are rhetorical beauties stiffened into logical perplexities; the exquisite
growths of the imagination pressed and dried into the matter
of a syllogism in Barbara. Many who discard their literal
meaning retain the words out of reverence to antique fashions,
out of an amiable fondness for keeping the nomenclature of
science unbroken, just as the modern astronomer continues to
classify the sweet stars of Heaven under the constellations of
the Dragon and the Great Bear.'
In this and in still other aspects our theme opens into more
cheering views.  It reveals the identity in the essence of many
systems which are run in scientific or aesthetic moulds unlike
each other. The full influence of it would do more than any
World's Convention, in appeasing the jealousies of those good
men who build their faith on Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone, and yet are induced, by unequal measures of genius and
1 Note I.




36
culture, to give different shapes to structures of the same material. There are indeed kinds of theology which cannot be
reconciled with each other. There is a life, a soul, a vitalizing
spirit of truth, which must never be relinquished for the sake
of peace even with an angel. There is (I know that you will
allow me to express my opinion,) a line of separation which
cannot be crossed between those systems which insert, and
those which omit the doctrine of justification by faith in the
sacrifice of Jesus. This is the doctrine which blends in itself
the theology of intellect and that of feeling, and which can no
more be struck out from the moral, than the sun from the
planetary system. Here the mind and the heart, like justice
and mercy, meet and embrace each other; and here is found
the specific and ineffaceable difference between the Gospel and
every other system. But among those who admit the atoning
death of Christ as the organific principle of their faith, there
are differences, some of them more important, but many far
less important, than they seem to be. One man prefers a theology of the judgment; a second, that of the imagination; a third,
that of the heart; one adjusts his faith to a lymphatic, another to
a sanguine, and still another to a choleric temperament. Yet the
subject matter of these heterogeneous configurations may often
be one and the same, having for its nucleus the same cross, with
the formative influence of which all is safe. Sometimes the intellectual divine has been denounced as unfeeling by the rude and
coarse preacher, who in his turn has been condemned as vulgar or
perhaps irreverent by the intellectual divine; while the one
has meant to insinuate into the select few who listened to him,
the very substance of the doctrine which the other has stoutly
and almost literally inculcated into the multitudes by which he
was thronged. The hard polemic has shown us only his visor
and his coat of mail, while beneath his iron armor has been
often cherished a theology of the gentle and humane affections.  Dogmas of the most revolting shape have no sooner
been cast into the alembic of a regenerated heart, than their
more jagged angles have been melted away. We are cheered
with a belief, that in the darkest ages hundreds and thousands




37
of unlettered men felt an influence which they could not explain, the influence of love attracting to itself the particles of
truth that lay scattered along the symbols and scholastic
forms of the church. The great mass of believers have never
embraced the metaphysical refinements of creeds, useful as
these refinements are; but have singled out and fastened upon
and held firm those cardinal truths, which the Bible has lifted
up and turned over in so many different lights, as to make them
the more conspicuous by their very alternations of figure and
hue. The true history of doctrine is to be studied not in the
technics, but in the spirit of the church. In unnumbered cases,
the real faith of Christians has been purer than their written
statements of it. Men, women, and children have often decided aright when doctors have disagreed, and doctors themselves have often felt aright when they have reasoned amiss.
"In my heart," said a tearful German, "I am a Christian,
while in my head I am a philosopher."  Many who now dispute for an erroneous creed have, we trust, a richer belief
imbedded in their inmost love. There are discrepant systems
of philosophy pervading the sermons of different evangelical
ministers, but often the rays of light which escape from these
systems are so refracted, while passing through the atmosphere
between the pulpit and: the pews, as to end in producing about
the same image upon the retina of every eye. Not seldom are
the leaders of sects in a real variance when the people, who
fill up the sects, know not why they are cut off from their
brethren, and the people may strive in words while they agree
in the thing, and their judgments may differ in the thing while
their hearts are at one.
Thus divided against itself, thus introverting itself, thus multiform in its conceptions, so quick to seize at a truth as held
up in one way, and spurn at it as held up in another, so marvellous in its tact for decomposing its honest belief, disowning
with the intellect what it embraces with- the affections, so much
more versatile in regulating its merely inward processes than in
directing the motions of an equilibrist, thus endued with an
elastic energy more than Protean,- thus great is the soul, for
4




38
the immense capabilities of which Christ died. Large-minded, then, and large-hearted must be the minister, having all
the sensibility of a woman without becoming womanish, and
all the perspicacity of a logician without being merely logical;
having that philosophy which detects the substantial import of
the heart's phrases, and having that emotion which invests
philosophy with its proper life, - so wise and so good must the
minister be, who applies to a soul of these variegated sensibilities the truth, which may wind itself into them all, as through
a thousand pores; that truth, which God himself has matched
to our nicest and most delicate springs of action, and which,
so highly does he honor our nature, he has interposed by miracles for the sake of revealing in his written word; that word,
which by its interchange of styles all unfolding the same idea,
by its liberal construction of forms all enclosing the same spirit,
prompts us to argue more for the broad central principles, and
to wrangle less for the side, the party aspects of truth; that
word, which ever pleases in order to instruct, and instructs in
such divers ways in order to impress divers minds, and by all
means to save some. Through the influence of such a Bible
upon such a soul, and under the guidance of Him who gave
the one and made the other, we do hope and believe, that the
intellect will yet be enlarged so as to gather up all the discordant representations of the heart and employ them as the complements, or embellishments, or emphases of the whole truth; that
the heart will be so expanded and refined as to sympathize with
the most subtile abstractions of the intellect; that many various
forms of faith will yet be blended intoa consistent knowledge, like
the colors in a single ray; and thus will be ushered in the
reign of the Prince of peace, when the lion shall lie down with
the lamb, when the body shall no more hang as a weight upon
the soul, and the soul no longer wear upon its material framework, when the fancy shall wait upon rather than trifle with
the judgment, and the judgment shall not be called as now to
restrain the fancy, when the passions shall clarify rather than
darken the reasoning powers, and the conscience shall not be
summoned as now to curb the passions, when the intellect




39
shall believe, not without the heart, nor against the heart, but with
the heart unto salvation; and the soul, being one with itself, shall
also be one with all the saints, in adoring one Lord, cherishing one
faith, and being buried in one baptism; and when we who are
united unto Christ on earth, he dwelling in us and we in him,
shall, in answer to his last prayer for us, be made perfect with
him in God.




N OTE S8
NOTE A. Page 5.
This reasoning is valid only on the supposition that our Saviour died for all
men. - One of Mr. Symington's arguments for the doctrine that Christ made his
atonement for a part only, not the whole of the race, is derived, singular as it may
appear, from the "rectitude of the divine character."  He says in his Treatise on
the Atonement, Part I. Sect. XI. ~ II. 2: " The supreme Being gives to every one
his due. This principle cannot be violated in a single instance. He cannot, according to this, either remit sin without satisfaction, or punish sin where satisfaction for it has been received. The one is as inconsistent with perfect equity as
the other. If the punishment for sin has been borne, the remission of the offence follows of course. The principles of rectitude suppose this, nay peremptorily demand it; justice could not be satisfied without it. Agreeably to this reasoning it follows, that the death of Christ being a legal satisfaction for sin, all
for whom he died must enjoy the remission of their offences. It is as much at
variance with strict justice or equity, that any for whom Christ has given satisfaction should continue under condemnation, as that they should have been delivered
from guilt without a satisfaction being given for them at all. But it is admitted,
that all are not delivered from the punishment of sin, that there are many who
perish in final condemnation.  We are therefore compelled to infer, that for such
no satisfaction has been given to the claims of infinite justice - no atonement has
been made. If this is denied. the monstrous impossibility must be maintained,
that the infallible judge refuses to remit the punishment of some for whose offences he has received a full compensation; that he finally condemns some the
price of whose deliverance from condemnation has been paid to him; that, with
regard to the sins of some of mankind, he seeks satisfaction in their personal punishment after having obtained satisfaction for them in the sufferings of Christ;
that is to say, that an infinitely righteous God takes double payment for the same
debt, double satisfaction for the same offence, first from the surety, and then from
those for whom the surety stood bound. It is needless to add that these conclusions are revolting to every right feeling of equity, and must be totally inapplicable to the procedure of Him who' loveth righteousness and hateth wickedness."'
Mr. Symington's inferences in this paragraph are correct, if his premises are to
be understood as intellectual statements of the truth. But Dr. Jonathan Edwards (in his Works, Vol. II. p. 26) teaches us that " Christ has not in the literal
and proper sense paid the debt for us; " that this expression and others similar to
it are " metaphorical expressions, and therefore not literally and exactly true."
He says further (Works. Vol. II. p. 8) concerning distributive justice, that it "is




41
not at all satisfied by the death of Christ. But general justice to the Deity and
to the universe is satisfied." A similar remark he appends with regard to the
satisfaction of the law. See also Andrew Fuller's Works, Vol. IV. pp. 92-100.
1st Am. Ed.
A true representation seems to be, that although Christ has not literally paid
the debt of sinners, nor literally borne their punishment, nor satisfied the legislative nor the remunerative justice of God in any such sense or degree as itself to
make it obligatory on him to save any sinners; yet the atonement has such a relation to the whole moral government of God, as to make it consistent with the honor
of his legislative and retributive justice to save all men, and to make it essential
to the highest honor of his benevolence or general justice to renew and save some.
Therefore it satisfies the law and justice of God sofar and in such a sense, as to
render it proper for him not only to give many temporal favors, but also to offer
salvation to all men, bestow it upon all who will accept it, and cause those to accept it, for whom the interests of the universe allow him to interpose his regenerating grace.
NOTE B. Page 9.
The theology of the intellect is far more aptly designated by the words literal,
didactic, prose, science, than is the theology of the heart by the words (so often
used to characterize it) figurative, practical, poetry, eloquence. Many elements of
prose, that is, the style fitted and intended to impart information, are involved in
the emotive theology. In many respects, then, this theology has the same form
with the scientific. Still it superadds the poetical to the prosaic essence; for it
delights in those representations which are congenial with an excited imagination
and heart, and which a man employs instinctively because he feels them to be congenial with his own state, and not deliberately because he calculates on their persuasive influence over others. It cannot, however, be fully described by the epithet poetical, for it often includes eloquence also, or those representations which,
whether belonging in their origin to prose or poetry. a man uses not on account of their agreeableness to his own' feelings, but on account of their fitness
to persuade the will of another. Yet it fails of being adequately represented by
the word eloquent or practical, for it often comprehends those forms of language
which one uses when overpowered by emotion and forgetful of all influence over
the will of others. Still less can it be faithfully explained by the word figurative,
for it involves much more than figures of speech, as, for example, certain peculiar
shadings and proportions of truth. Besides, the epithets figurative, poetical, and
even eloquent and practical, are undeservedly associated in many minds with a
want of solidity and substance; but the theology of feeling is as profound as it is
varied, and even suggests many truths which are too deep for our accurate and
complete analysis.
NOTE C. Page 11.
It has already been explained, that the theology of the intellect, is the system
which recommends itself to a dispassionate and unprejudiced mind as true, and
the present discourse has no direct and prominent reference to the various forms
of intellectual theology which, in the view of such a mind, are false. It has also
4*




42
been explained, that the theology of the heart is the collection of statements which
recommend themselves to the healthy moral feelings as right, and the present discourse has no direct and prominent reference to the various forms of representation which are suggested by and suited to the diseased, the perverted moral feelings. One of the most graphic descriptions of a theology which is neither of a
sound intellect nor sound heart, but is alike impervious to argument, reckless of
consequences, and dependent on an ill-balanced state of the sensibilities, may be
found in the following Letter to Dr. Henry Ware, Jr. That calm reasoner had
published a sermon in opposition to some injurious sentiments which had been recently propounded at Cambridge, and in acknowledging the receipt of the sermon,
the advocate of those sentiments replied:-If your discourse " assails any doctrines
of mine,-perhaps I am not so quick to see it as writers generally,-certainly I
did not feel any disposition to depart from my habitual contentment, that you
should say your thought, whilst I say mine.
" I believe I must tell you what I think of my new position. It strikes me very
oddly, that good and wise men at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising
me into an object of criticism. I have always been,-from my very incapacity of
methodical writing, —' a chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail,lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to
the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position; for I
well know, that there is no scholar less willing or less able to be a polemic. I
could not give account of myself if challenged. I could not possibly give you one
of the'arguments' you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands.
For I do not know what arguments mean, in reference to any expression of a
thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so,
or, why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see, that
either of these questions admits of an answer. So that, in the present droll pos-,ture of my affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance of a her-,etic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage,
who is to make good his thesis against all comers.
" I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other good men
write, as I have always done, -glad when you speak my thoughts, and skipping
the page that has nothing for me. I shall go on just as before, seeing whatever I
can, and telling what I see; and, I suppose, with the same fortune that has hitherto attended me; the joy of finding, that my abler and better brothers, who work
with the sympathy of society, loving and beloved, do now and then unexpectedly
confirm my perceptions, and find my nonsense is only their own thought in motley.
And so I am your affectionate servant,              R. W. EMERSON."
One of the amazing mal-adjustments in human lifet, is that in which a pious
man has such idiosyncracies, or has been so mis-educated as to believe in a false
intellectual system, and to feel an impulsive attachment to it. He is of all men
the most incorrigible. Argument is wasted upon him, and his prejudices are the
more unyielding because fortified by conscience. He is also an unhappy man, for
his erroneous views do not harmonize entirely or easily with his pious feelings.
Hence he often becomes a schismatic, a disorganizer, a crossed and uncomfortable
member of society, a public phenomenon.




43
NOTE D. Page 14.
The censure frequently pronounced upon the style in which writers like Baxter,
Bunyan, and Davies describe the punishment of the lost, is no further merited,
than this style can be shown to be unfaithful to the truth, or to the imperative necessities of the minds to which it was addressed. If the publications of the American Tract Society, which are designed not for philosophical criticism but for practical impression, should, as some would have them, describe the future state of the
lost as it is described by a merely scientific theologian, they would forfeit their
popular influence, and perhaps would convey error instead of truth to the mass of
their readers. That all uninspired volumes are imperfect in: delineating "the terrors of the Lord," is doubtless true. Their imperfection, however, does not consist in their using the Biblical forms of statement, but in their deviating from or
else misapplying these forms. Our Saviour adopted a different phraseology fromn
that of the prophets before him, and that of the apostles after him; and a wise
preacher would not exhort a Newton and a Leibnitz in the same terms, although
he would use the same great ideas, which he would employ in addressing little
children, or in expostulating with the rudest and coarsest of malefactors. The
Biblical impression of the particular incidents in the eternal punishment of some
and the eternal blessedness of others, is of course the best impression which can be
made upon the heart; but the mental eye hath not seen, nor ear heard of the exact, precise instruments which God hath prepared for the retribution of those who
hate, or of those who love him.
NOTE. E. Page 18.
It is on the principles indicated in the preceding topic, that the aphorism of Pascal (Thoughts, ch. III.) may be explained: God " has chosen that"' divine truths
"' should enter from the heart into the mind, and not from the mind into the heart,
in order to humble that proud power of reasoning, which pretends it should be the
judge of things which the will chooses, and to reform that infirm will which is
wholly corrupt through its unworthy inclinations. And hence, instead of saying,
as men do when speaking of human things, that we must know them before we
can love them, which has passed into a proverb, the saints, when speaking of divine things, say, that we must love them in order to know them, and that we receive
the truth only by love; - which is one of their most useful maxims." These words
mean, not that the heart ever perceives, for the intellect only is percipient, but that
holy feelings prompt the intellect to new discoveries, furnish it with new materials
for examination and inference, and regulate it in its mode of combining and expressing what it has discerned. An affection of the heart towards a truth develops
a new relation of that truth, and the intellect perceives the relation thus suggested
by the feeling. On the same principles may we iiterpret the celebrated paradox
of Anselm, of Canterbury: " I do not seek to understand a truth in order that I
may believe it, but I believe it in order that I may understand it." This remark
may be made to appear rational by the paraphrase: I first have some idea of a
doctrine; I then cordially believe all that I have an idea of; next, by the love involved in this hearty faith I am inspirited to form still more definite ideas of that
which I had before perceived clearly enough to believe it affectionately; and at




44
last, by the relation which is thus developed between the doctrine and my feelings,
I obtain yet more distinct and extended ideas of it, so that I may be said to understand it.
NOTE F. Page 22.
The preceding illustration suggests some, not all, of the causes why the doctrine
that men are unable to be more virtuous than they really are, becomes less injurious as it is taught by pious divines than as it is taught by infidel philosophers.
One generic cause is, that the earnest preacher often contradicts in his exhortation what he has seemed to advocate in his discussion; but the intellectual deist
has not the heart to modify his denial of human freedom; he retains in all exigencies
the unbending theory, that man has no power to be better than he is.
A second subordinate cause, really included in the first, is, that the Christian
points this doctrine chiefly to the present or the future, but the infidel extends it
equally to the past. The pious necessarian has a good moral purpose in declaring
that the present and future obligations of men, do and will exceed their power; he
designs to foster thus a spirit of dependence on God; but, for another good moral
purpose, he shrinks from informing men that their past obligations exceeded their
power. The reckless fatalist, however, is as willing to assert that men have obeyed
the law heretofore to the extent of their ability, as that men will have no ability,
without supernatual aid, to obey the law hereafter. He is ready to stifle remorse
by assuring the convicts of a penitentiary, that they have possessed no more power
than they have exercised to choose aright; that is, their choices have been as
benevolent as they could have been. It is doubtless true, that in precisely the
same sense in which a man is or will be unable to perform his duty, in that sense
he has performed his duty as well as he was able to perform it, has done all the
good which was possible for him to do. But the best feelings of a Christian forbid his use of such language in regard to the past, favor his use of the opposite,
and thus induce him to mitigate the evils of asserting without qualification that
man's power is less than his duty.
A third reason, why the necessarianism of Christian divines becomes less injurious than the fatalism of infidel philosophers is, that the most trust-worthy of
these divines acknowledge their necessarian doctrine to be expressed in the language of the emotions, while the fatalist contends for the intellectual exactness of
his phraseology. The wise preacher believes in only a moral, the fatalist in a natural impotence. In Andrew Fuller's Apparent Contradictions Reconciled (Works,
Vol. VIII. pp. 51-55, First Am. Ed.), his fourth proposition is, " The depravity
of human nature is such that no man, of his own accord, will come to Christ for
life;" and his fifth proposition is, " The degree of this depravity is such, as that,
figuratively speaking, men cannot come to Christ for life." The younger Pres.
Edwards says (Works, Vol. I. p. 307), " Dr. Clarke, in his Remarks on Collins
(p. 16), gives a true account of moral necessity:'By moral necessity consistent
writers never mean any more than to express in a figurative manner the certainty
of such an event."' Dr. Day (on the Will, p. 107) remarks,' "We are not justified in pronouncing this figurative use to be wholly improper " (inadmissible).
The elder Pres. Edwards, although he may not have applied the epithetfigurative
to the necessarian terminology which he employs, yet often applies to it the epithet improper, which means in this connection not inadmissable but figurative.
" No inability whatsoever," he says (on the Will, Part III. Sect. IV.),' which is




45
merely moral, is properly called by the name of inability." Natural inability " alone
is properly called inability." "I have largely declared," he says in his Letter
against the literal necessarianism of Lord Kaimes (Works, Vol. II. pp. 293-4. Ed.
1829), " that the connection between antecedent things and consequent ones which
takes place with regard to the acts of men's wills, which is called moral necessity, is
called by the name of necessity improperly; and that all such terms as must, cannot,
impossible, unable, irresistible, unavoidable, invincible, etc., when applied here, are not
applied in their proper signification, and arc either used nonsensically and with
perfect insignificance, or in a sense quite diverse from their original and proper
meaning, and their use in common speech; and that such a necessity as attends
the acts of men's will is more properly called certainty than necessity; it being no
other than the certain connection between the subject and predicate of the proposition which affirms their existence."
So sure is it that man with his unrenewed nature will sin, and only sin in his
moral acts, and so important is it that this infallible certainty befelt to be true,
that our hearts often incline us to designate it by the most forcible epithets. These
epithets often make the truth appear obvious to those whom pride has removed to
a distance from it, just as the colossal proportions of a statue raised above the capital of a pillar, make the statue appear like the exact image of a man to those who
look up to it from the remote valley. But if we infer from the literal meaning of
necessity, that our so-called necessary choices are in fact inevitable, we commit
the same mistake as if we should infer from the colossal dimensions of the statue,
that the individual represented by it is a giant. It is easy to see, that the language of feeling in which divines may and do occasionally express the certainty of
wrong choice, must be different in its influence from the language of the intellect
in which fatalists invariably express their doctrine of the necessity of all choice.
The demands of a soul which loves to invoke aid from Heaven, are met by a faithful description of that certainty which, in the words of Pres. Day (Examination
of Edwards, p. 167), is a "necessity falsely so called."  The truth is mournful,
humbling, well fitted to awaken a spirit of prayer, that man left to himself will
invariably, surely sin, but it gives no sanction to the demoralizing falsehood that, in
the literal and proper sense, he must inevitably sin.
That the terms of feeling and of common life should have been adopted as the
scientific nomenclature on the subject of the will, has been submissively regretted
by our best theologians. He must be a strong man who can bear up under this
cumbrous nomenclature without lapsing sometimes into its literal, which is not its
technical meaning; and many a Samson having been overpowered by its heaviness, has been compelled to " grind in the prison-house " of Gaza. In one of his
most eloquent passages, Pres. Edwards thus laments the deceptive influence of
these " terms of art:" " Nothing that I maintain supposes that men are at all hindered by any fatal necessity, from doing and even willing and choosing as they
please, with full freedom; yea, with the highest degree of liberty that ever was
thought of, or that ever could possibly enter into the heart of any man to conceive.
I know it is in vain to endeavor to make some persons believe this, or at least fully
and steadily to believe it; for if it be demonstrated to them, still the old prejudice
remains, which has been long fixed by the use of the terms necessary, must, cannot,
impossible, etc.; the association with these terms of certain ideas inconsistent with
liberty, is not broken; and the judgment is powerfully warped by it; as a thing
that has been long bent and grown stiff, if it be straightened, will return to its
former curvity again and again." (Works, Vol. II. pp. 293, 294. Ed. 1829.)




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The epithets figurative, improper, when applied by the Edwardses, Fuller, Day,
and others, to the necessarian phraseology of the will, are to be understood according to the principles laid down in the preceding Discourse, pp. 8, 9.
NOTE G. Page 25.
We have a safeguard against the dreams of visionaries in the two principles
already stated, that reason has an ultimate, rightful authority over the sensibilities,
and that it will sanction not only all pious feelings, but likewise all those which are
essential developments of our original constitution. It will of course oppose, and
with a force which we are not warranted to withstand, all sentiments which conflict either with piety, or with the necessary laws of our being. As the head is
placed above the heart in the body, so the faith which is sustained by good argument should overpower, rather than be overpowered by, those emotions which receive no approval from the judgment. The perfection of our faith is, that it combine in its favor the logic of the understanding with the rhetoric of the feelings,
and that it exclude all those puerilities and extravagancies, which have nothing to
recommend them but the pretended inspirations of the fanatic. Whenever a discrepancy exists between a creed and an expression of devotional feeling, as for
example between the " Thirty-nine Articles " and the " Book of Common Prayer,"
the symbol of faith ought to be in a style so prosaic and definite as to form the
decisive standard of appeal, and to explain, rather than be explained by the liturgical, which are apt to be fervid utterances. No one hesitates to say that the poetic
view of astronomy, in which the sun is described as masculine, the moon as feminine,
the stars as children of the moon, should be reduced into a consistency with the
philosophical view, and that the demonstrable science should not be distorted so
as to harmonize with the graceful fable. Neither does any one shrink from interpreting the assertion, God is a rock, into an accordance with the assertion, God is
a spirit; for both statements cannot be literally true, and the one which commends
itself to the intellect, is the rightful standard by which to modify the one suggested by the heart. Else the fancies and caprices of man will be, what his reason
and conscience ought to be, his guide.
NOTE H. Page 27.
The fallen, evil nature, which precedes and certainly occasions a man's first actual sin, is, like all other evil, odious, loathsome. So prolific is it in results which
are so melancholy, that while we are trembling at its power, we are roused up to
stigmatize it as " sinful." We may thus earnestly reprobate it, if we do not insist
that the word " sinful " shall be interpreted, in scientific language, to mean that
quality which is itself worthy of punishment. In our abhorrence of this disordered state of our sensibilities, we may call it " blamable, " if we do not insist that a
man is to be blamed for being involuntarily in this calamitous state; we may call
it " guilty," if we mean by this word " intimately connected with guilt," or " exposing us to suffering," for this diseased'nature leads to sin, and thereby to its
most painful consequences. We may in fact apply any epithet whatever to our
inborn, involuntary corruption, provided that this epithet express our dread or
hatred of it, and do not require the belief that a passive condition, previous to all
active disobedience, is itself deserving of punishment. As there was much that




47
was amiable in the young man who possessed nothing holy, so there is much that
is unamiable, and still not properly sinful, in every man. But although in our fervid
diaries we may often pour these unmeasured reproaches upon our corrupt nature,
yet in a scientific treatise we embarrass ourselves by using the emotional, as if it
were didactic language  by applying the loose terms of the heart to themes where
the sharpest discrimination is needed; by speaking, as many do, of a kind of sin
for which the man who is charged with it does not, in the view of conscience, deserve
to be punished; by reasoning about a state for which the child involuntarily subjected to it is': guilty," but not himself properly blamable. The well-schooled
divine may, although he seldom does escape the confusing influence of this ambiguous nomenclature; but men who are conversant with only the " English undefiled" of our literature, are led by such a peculiar, when used as a dogmatic
phraseology, into serious, perhaps fatal prejudices against the truth. When these
terms, often allowable for the heart, are used for the intellect, they change their
character, and although meant for " the lights of science," they fail of their artificial purpose, and become " in many instances the shades of religion."
Is it said, however, that a passive nature, existing antecedently to all free action,
is itself, strictly, literally sinful? Then we must have a new language, and speak,
in prose, of moral patients as well as moral agents, of men besinned as well as sinners, (for ex vi termini sinners as well as runners must be active); we must have a
new conscience which can decide on the moral character of dormant conditions, as
well as of elective preferences; a new law, prescribing the very make of the soul,
as well as the way in which this soul, when made, shall act; and a law which we
transgress (for sin is " a transgression of the law ") in being before birth passively
misshapen; we must also have a new Bible, delineating a judgment scene in
which some will be condemned, not only on account of the deeds which they have
done in the body, but also for having been born with an involuntary proclivity to
sin, and others will be rewarded not only for their conscientious love to Christ. but
also for a blind nature inducing that love; we must, in fine, have an entirely different class of moral sentiments, and have them disciplined by Inspiration in an
entirely different manner from the present; for now the feelings of all true men
revolt from the assertion that a poor infant dying, if we may suppose it to die, before its first wrong preference, merits for its unavoidable nature, that eternal punishment, which is threatened, and justly, against even the smallest real sin. Although it may seem paradoxical to affirm that" a man may believe a proposition
which he knows to be false," it is yet charitable to say that whatever any man
may suppose himself to believe, he has in fact an inward conviction, that " all sin
consists in sinning." There is comparatively little dispute on the nature of moral
evil, when the words relating to it are fully understood.
NOTE I. Page 35.
It is a noted remark of John Foster, that many technical terms of theology, instead of being the signs, are the monuments of the ideas which they were first intended to signify. Now it is natural for men to garnish the sepulchre of one whom,
when living, they would condemn.
When it is said in palliation for certain technics of theology, that they are no
more uncouth or equivocal than are the technics of some physical sciences, we may
reply, that the sacred science above all others should, where it fairly can, be so pre



48
sented as to allure rather than repel men of classical taste, and not snperadd factitious offences, to the natural " offence of the cross." True, we may be deceived
by the figurative terms of mineralogy or botany, but we are less liable to mistake
the meaning of words which refer to material phenomena, than the meaning of
those which refer to spiritual, and then an error in physics is far less baneful than
one in religion. If chemical substances were denoted by words borrowed from
moral science, if one acid were figuratively called " sanctification," and one alkali
were termed "depravity," and one solution were denominated "eternal punishment," we should weep over the sad results of such a profane style, even if it were
well intended. And on a similar principle, when we read of " the vindictive justice of God," although we revere the authors who use the term  in its technical
sense, we mourn over the ruinous impression that will be made by such a piously
meant phrase. Doubtless it may be needful for us to refer, occasionally, to the
obnoxious technics which were once in such authoritative use; but if we make
them prominent, or if, in employing them, we neglect to explain their peculiar
meaning, we unwittingly convey false and pernicious ideas to men who are wont
to call things by their right names.
It is against some first principles of rhetoric to say, that we may safely regulate
our scientific nomenclature by the figurative expressions of the Bible. These expressions are easily understood in the spirit which prompted them, but are less
easily understood in the spirit of the schools. If all the Biblical figures were arranged into a system, and if, when thus classified, they were reasoned upon as literal and dogmatic truths, we should have, on an extended scale, the same allegorical
logic which we now have on a scale so limited as to conceal many of its injurious
effects., Perhaps we should then begin to shape the Copernican and Newtonian
philosophy in the mould of the passage, " The Lord maketh the earth empty, and
maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down." Some errors are most easily refuted
by carrying them out to their entire length with all possible consistency. An extreme view of them develops their essential nature. What is a large part of Quakerism, and even Swedenborgianism, but a collection of fancies, interesting as such,
but now flattened into theories?